[B-Greek] Acts 2:42--3 or 4?

Steve Puluka puluka at verizon.net
Fri Oct 8 19:26:47 EDT 2004


on 10/8/04 5:56 PM, Harold R. Holmyard III at hholmyard at ont.com wrote:

> Dear James,
> 
>> Luke reports in Acts 2:42 that the Notzrim were steadfast in three main
>> activities: 1) The teaching of the apostles, 2) Fellowship in the Breaking
>> of Bread, 3) Prayer.  In many translations it appears as if there are four
>> items in which the believers were steadfast.
> 
> HH:  UBS, on the other hand, sees a parallelism between all the
> nouns in the dative case as signaling a series, four dative objects
> of the verb PROSKARTEREW. Your source may have been influenced by the
> absence of a copulative KAI after KOINWNIAi, but the UBS punctuators
> put a comma there. They see the series restarting after an absence of
> KAI. 


The Byzantine text here does have the additional kai making this a clear
series of four.  As Mr. Holmyard points out, the UBS editors see this as a
series of four even without the kai.

HSAN DE PROSKARTEROUNTES TH DIDAXH TWN APOSTOLWN KAI TH KOINWNIA, (KAI) TH
KLASEI TOU ARTOU KAI TAIS PROSEUXAIS.

However, the Vulgate seems to take this in the sense described by James
above.

erant autem perseverantes in doctrina apostolorum et communicatione
fractionis panis et orationibus.

My text critical notes say that the Syriac and coptic follow this Vulgate
reading as well, but I don't know these languages myself.

So I suppose the text is ambiguous in the UBS text (which includes P45 one
of the earliest witnesses).

-- 
Steve Puluka
Master's Student, SS Cyril & Methodius Seminary
Cantor, Holy Ghost Church, Mckees Rocks PA
http://www.geocities.com/spuluka




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