Medicine Hat Joe

Week 38  Acts

Even though most people don’t seem too concerned about manuscript discrepancies they’re concerning to me.
I took about 30-minutes today looking through Acts for every marginal note that mentioned alternate manuscripts. I found 33 (what I’d call) Mss. Glitches (mss. = manuscript). Examples:
some ancient mss. do not contain…
some mss. add…
many mss. do not contain…
Getting a little reminder about the uncertainty of the verse is helpful. But it’s also demanding.
Helpful: Variations tell me: “there’s an indefinite-undecidedness in this text”. For me that means I might end-up saying: “I’m not sure” (and there’s nothing wrong with I’m-not-sure).
Demanding: Variations put added pressure on me as I read. They mean I have to be careful & cautious as I go. I have to be wary about what I’m extracting & accepting & deciding & concluding. What I’m believing.
Luke tells a story about the Bereans: they received the (gospel) message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
That second phrase is fine advice for an attentive reader.

Note: marginal notes from Acts 2:44 5:32 8:37. Quote from Acts 17:11 (NIV).
Added: I raced through my 33 mss. glitches. I wanted to see if any of them made any significant difference to the text. I didn’t find any. That’s not to say I’m okay with discrepancies. I’m not. I think they make the text untidy and make a reader uncertain. But that aside alternate mss. readings didn’t seem to change Acts in any serious way at all.

 

Week 38  Acts 24

Paul is on trial. The prosecutor lists the accusations:
5 …we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.
6 And he even tried to desecrate the temple; and then we arrested him. [We wanted to judge him according to our own Law.
7 But Lysias the commander came along, and with much violence took him out of our hands,
8 ordering his accusers to come before you.] By examining him yourself concerning all these matters you will be able to ascertain the things of which we accuse him.
There’s a note about the square brackets: “early manuscripts do not contain the remainder of v6, v7, nor the first part of v8”.
Without the brackets it looks like this:
5 For we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.
6 And he even tried to desecrate the temple; and then we arrested him.
8 By examining him yourself concerning all these matters you will be able to ascertain the things of which we accuse him.
Versions that omit the passage say it’s because they’re not in the earliest manuscripts.
And that’s a problem with Johnny-come-lately add-ons. Someone added them on. And later-additions muddy-the-water for bible readers.

Note: quote from Acts 24:5-8 (NASB 1995 edition)

 

 

Week 38  Acts 8:37

Some bibles have Acts 8:37. And some don’t. Which is a problem.
Someone – likely Luke – wrote the book of Acts.
It was hand-written document that he sent to a man named Theophilus.
That first copy was the single & pristine & original copy. I’ll call it Acts #1.
From-there-on-out no one knows exactly what happened. But it’s safe to say that Theophilus – or one of his friends – copied Theophilus’ pristine original Acts #1. Now there’s an Acts Copy #1 – a hand-copied version of Acts #1.
Public demand meant that more copies had to be copied. Some copies were most likely copies of the original Acts #1. Others were copies of Copy #1 or copies of Copy #2 or Copy #3. Copies of copies. Over time copies of copies of copies.
Hopefully the copiers were careful & focused & exacting. But let’s say one careless error was made in Copy #345. If a copier then copied Copy #345 carefully & with focused exactitude then Copy #346 would be wrong just like Copy #345. That’s one of the problems with hand-copied copies. The error might get to be inerrant.
Anyway it’s a different problem in Acts 8:37. There it’s not a typographical error. A copier stopped being a copier and intentionally added a fictional quote: I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
According to the gospel story what the copier added is true. The problem is the Ethiopian man didn’t say it. It wasn’t in Acts #1.

 

 

Week 38  Acts 8:37

Philip met an Ethiopian and told him about Jesus. The man believed. The story goes on to say:
36 …they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?”
37 [And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]
38 And he ordered the chariot to stop; and they both went down into the water…and he baptized him.
There are square brackets around verse-37. I’m reading a New American Standard Version bible published in 1977 and it has a note in the margin: ‘many manuscripts do not contain this verse’.
Hmm. I check a 2020 edition of the NASB:
36 …they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?”
38 And he ordered that the chariot stop; and they both went down into the water…and he baptized him.
Very interesting! The text jumps straight from 8:36 to 8:38. There’s no 8:37. It is there in 1977 and then forty-three years later it’s gone (well…not absolutely gone. NASB 2020 does slide 8:37 over into the margin and says: ‘late manuscripts add (it) as v 37’.)
Other versions marginalize 8:37 too:
‘Some manuscripts add all or most of verse 37’
Or: ‘early manuscripts omit this v’
Or: ‘a few later manuscripts add…’.
Manuscripts are a problem that I’ll have to think about for a bit. See what I can ferret-out.

Note: quotes from Acts 8:36-38 (NASB ESV LSB NET)

Week 37  Acts 8

Right away after Stephen was executed chapter 8 opened with this: on that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land (the other versions I checked all said “all” and all said “except”).
So there are two facts.
1. all the believers in Jerusalem left town
2. the 12 apostles stayed in town.
The explanation for the exodus of the believers was persecution.
By contrast there’s no explanation about why the 12 apostles stayed-put.
The problem with non-explanations is that I’m left wondering ‘why?’ Why did the 12 stay? I start thinking about what the answer could be. That might lead me to develop a theory about it – maybe… Leadership Mobility Decisions When Confronting Adversity.
There are a couple things I can do when faced with no explanation:
1. I can just read what’s in the text and decide to disregard speculative questions like ‘why did the 12 stay?’ (I don’t know so I don’t guess).
2. I can try filling-in my own answers or explanations (I don’t know but I can hypothecate).
Readers do both. With #1 I’m on pretty solid ground – I limit myself to The Text. With #2 I have to keep in mind that filling-in blanks is a conjectural exercise. What I end up with is The Text + My Addition to The Text.
It’s a distinction worth remembering. The text is The Text but My Addition to The Text isn’t.

Note: quote from Acts 8:2 (CSB)

Week 37  Acts 8

Simon the Magician appears once in the bible in Acts 8. Twenty-six verses and then never mentioned again.
He’s a pretty intriguing character. Famous & charismatic & mysterious:
Simon practiced sorcery…and amazed all the people of Samaria
He boasted that he was someone great
People said this man is rightly called the Great Power of God
He had amazed (people) for a long time with his sorcery.
Simon was a powerful & arrogant & well-established practitioner of dark magic. So it was against the odds when he believed and was baptized by Philip.
The last part of his story gets interesting… Simon offered Peter money so he would have power to dispense the Holy Spirit. It was an outrageous offer and Peter lowered-the-boom – told Simon to repent of his wickedness. The story ends with Simon asking Peter: pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.
That’s it. No report that Simon repented for himself. Just that he asked Peter to stand-in for him as a kind of proxy-repenter.
I looked outside the bible. There’s quite a bit about Simon. If it’s reliable none of it is very hopeful. It looks like he returned to sorcery and stayed a pagan & magician & heretic. A convert who un-converted.
Acts 8 doesn’t spell that out and it’s possible that Simon stayed true to the faith. But later tradition is pretty emphatic – after testing-the-waters of faith Simon decided he didn’t like what he’d found.

Note: quotes from Acts 8:9-11 & 24 (NIV)

 

Week 37  Acts 7

Almost 90% of chapter 7 is Stephen’s public speech. I’ve tended to think of it as his life-on-the-line self-defense speech. And my bible agrees – it adds the title “Stephen’s Defense”.
But there’s not a lot of self defense there. Mostly it’s a recap of Israel’s history. And Stephen ends up telling the court: you stiff-necked people!…You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One…and now you have murdered him.
It’s  pretty inflammatory. No detectable diplomacy.
I decided to take Stephen’s concluding idea about resistance and reread the speech with that in mind. Resistance & rejection did show up occasionally (but subtly):
• because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt
• Moses was challenged: who made you ruler and judge over us?
• later Moses was rejected – even though he was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself
• finally: our ancestors refused to obey Moses. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.
Stephen likely knew from the start which way the judicial winds were blowing. So instead of defending himself he gave a selective history of Israel that pointed out Israel’s resistance & rejection (and finally) persecution & murder of people the Lord sent. Looks like in his last speech Stephen decided to accuse the guilty rather than defend himself.

Note: quotes from Acts 7:51-52 7:9 27 35 & 39 (NIV)

Week 37  John 16

People make use of the bible in different ways. I heard where back-in-the-day people would put a bible under their pillow at night to keep witches away. The theory was that the witch had to count all the words of the bible before doing her evil plan…so hopefully the sun would rise before she finished. That might or might not be a yarn.
One practice that’s not a yarn is where people close their eyes & flip open the bible randomly & put their finger on the page. The theory there is that the word or phrase or verse they landed on contains some useful thing. One word for this type of drill is bibliomancy (and since divination usually figures in as a part of bibliomancy a lot of bible readers wouldn’t include that aspect). I’ve tried open-and-point a couple of times.
My normal practice using the bible is to sit down and read and in my reading I look for information. Reminders. Connected ideas. New angles. Personal prompts. Insights. I try fitting fittable things together. Try not to get out-of-my-depth.
I don’t have a Life Verse but if I did it’d likely be this pretty straightforward & understandable one: in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. Anyone could have written the first phrase. It’s the second that’s the big one – and the one that I need to refresh regularly: Be brave. Jesus has overcome the world.

Note: John 16:33 (ESV)

Week 37  John 16

Yesterday I noticed that people in the gospels had a hierarchy of connection with the Lord. Circles #1 & #2 & #3 each had a different position on the Familiarity Gradient. Circle #1 people had a close day-to-day tightness with Jesus that decreased in Circles #2 & #3 (the numbers rose as physical distance increased). But the one really unique & rare advantage that all three shared was that every one of them had an actual sensory connection with the human Jesus. Whether closer or more distant all of them had material contact with Jesus. So…I need a fourth circle for people who never saw him.
Circle #4 is numerically the biggest circle and it includes every person who has ever heard Jesus’ teaching and had their soul animated and has decided to follow him (and in that way Circle #4 is similar to Circles #1-3).
The big difference is that no one in Circle #4 has ever had any contact with the physical Jesus. That seems like a disadvantage. Which I think is why Jesus in his last conversation told the disciples: I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you.
The coming of The Counselor was guaranteed to be a definite benefit. Even so none of us in Circle #4 have gotten to see Jesus. Which seems like a liability.

Note: quote from John 16:7 (CSB). See also September 5/26 post ‘concentric circles’.

Week 36  Acts 1

The disciples had to find a replacement for Judas. They were looking for a specific kind of candidate: one of the men who…accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out…beginning from the baptism of John until the day when (Jesus) was taken up.
I wondered how large the candidate pool would be. Small I would think. I figure there were at least three circles of people loyal to Jesus:
Circle #1: the original 12 disciples (Judas excepted)
Circle #2: people who accompanied Jesus ‘all the time’ (that was the stated requirement). The group  included the two candidates in Acts 1 – Joseph Barsabbas & Matthias – and also a few other close & permanent & perpetual & full-time followers (the women named in Luke & the 70 men two chapters later might have been part of Circle #2).
Circle #3: people who were loyal to Jesus but not part of his day-to-day activities. People like Nicodemus. Joseph of Arimathea. The demon-possessed man of the Gadarenes. Zacchaeus. The Samaritan woman. The man born blind. Mary & Martha & Lazarus. Inside the circle…but not as close as the day-to-day insiders.
Anyway…I think Joseph Barsabbas & Matthias were part of that small & tight followership of Jesus that I’m calling Circle #2.

Note: quote from Acts 1:21-22 (ESV). The Circle #2 women are in Luke 8:1-3 and the 70 disciples in Luke 10:1 . Note 2: outside the circles were the thousands & thousands of people who’d had some exposure to the Lord’s teaching & miracles but had made the decision to not get on-board.