[B-Greek] Acts 2:42: Three or four concepts?
Scott Stocking
scottsox at conxxus.com
Sun Jul 9 17:30:51 EDT 2006
The phrase "the apostle's teaching KAI the fellowship, [KAI] the breaking of
bread KAI prayer" caught my eye this week as I was preparing a sermon. The
KAI in brackets is a textual variant (e.g., it appears in the TR, but not in
UBS4). I was wondering, if in fact the UBS4 is correct to omit it, are there
four concepts divided up into two couplets separated by a comma ("the
(1)apostle's teaching and (2)fellowship, the (3)breaking of bread and
(4)prayer") or perhaps just three phrases ("the (1)apostle's teaching and
the (2)fellowship in/of the breaking of bread and (3)prayer"). All phrases
are in the dative case because all are presumably indirect objects of the
verb (as they have traditionally been translated, anyway), but the dative
case sometimes can function have other functions that may connect
"fellowship" and "breaking of bread" (possessive, appositive, locative??) in
a modifier relationship, so I wonder if that may be the reason why the KAI
was not repeated here. Metzger's Textual Commentary says, "The Latin text of
codex Bezae read, with vg, syr(p) cop(sa,bo), 'in the fellowship of the
breaking of bread.'" My copy of the Vulgate doesn't have punctuation, but it
renders the middle phrase "et communicatione fractionis panis," so that
would seem to suggest Jerome understood a possessive relationship here. My
Latin dictionary lists "joint partaking" as a meaning of "communicatio." Am
I on to something here? Three concepts make more sense to me, just because
groups of three are common in the Bible, but the historical consensus seems
to be four concepts.
Scott Stocking
Pastor, Congregational Christian Church
Adjunct Professor, Lincoln Christian College
Instructor, Heritage Preparatory Academy
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