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.
