Strange Bedfellows in Acts 4:12

     The Textus Receptus – the base-text of the New Testament in the King James Version – usually is precisely the same as the Byzantine Text, the New Testament text used by Greek-reading churches for over a thousand years, and represented in over 85% of Greek manuscripts (at least in Matthew-Jude).  But occasionally – 1,005 times, not counting differences involving the spelling of nomina sacra – the Textus Receptus has a reading that is not the same as what is printed in the 2005 Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform or the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, and agrees instead with the mainly Alexandrian Text found in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece compilation.  Acts 4:12 contains such a variant-unit.

Καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ οὐδενὶ ἡ σωτηρία οὐτὲ γὰρ ὄνομά ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐν ᾧ δεῖ σωθῆναι ἡμᾶς 

The TR and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation both read reads οὐδὲ instead of οὐτὲ, but the more significant agreement is that both include the words ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν, which are absent from the Byzantine Text, resulting in the absence of the words “under heaven” in the majority-based World English Bible.  Zooming in on this part of the verse we see a remarkable variety of readings after γὰρ and before τὸ δεδομένον (nomina sacra contractions are not noted here):

ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν:  03 05 1505 2147

ἕτερον ἐστιν ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν:  02 08 044 33 104 1175 1739

ἐστιν ἕτερον:  056 330 547

ἕτερον ἐστιν:  69 (ἐστι) 330

1611 reads ἕτερον ἐστι τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν

Codex Sinaiticus has a unique word-order:   ἕτερον ὄνομά ἐστιν ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν.

Codex Vaticanus agrees with the TR but reads ὐμᾶς instead of ἡμᾶς at the end of the verse.

Unraveling the likely mechanisms that led to each rival reading would be an interesting exercise and provide a basis for a family tree of witnesses, but here let’s be content to defend the original reading and account for the shorter Byzantine reading.  Internal probability commends Καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ οὐδενὶ ἡ σωτηρία οὐτὲ γὰρ ὄνομά ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐν ᾧ δεῖ σωθῆναι ἡμᾶς.  The words ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν were dropped accidentally when an early scribe’s line of sight drifted from -ον in ἕτερον to -ον in οὐρανὸν.