The Other Acts of the Apostles

Until now, this course has usually compared one word, verse, or passage at a time. Acts presents a larger phenomenon. An ancient form of the text, conventionally called Western, is notably longer and freer than the form printed in modern Bibles. Its additions can be vivid, historically plausible, and theologically attractive.

The Western text is not the King James or the Byzantine text. At the Acts passages in this lesson, the Byzantine tradition often agrees with the shorter text against Western expansion. The question is not “old manuscripts against the church’s Bible.” It is how several ancient streams relate to one another.

The Western tradition preserves important evidence about how early Christians read Acts. Most scholars nevertheless conclude that its characteristic expansions belong to the reception of Luke’s book rather than to Luke’s original composition.

1. Textual families are working labels

Older introductions often present four families.

These are not four sealed containers. Manuscripts can share one cluster’s reading in one passage and another cluster’s reading elsewhere. The terms describe patterns and histories; they do not replace reading-by-reading analysis.

The label “Western” is especially imperfect. Its readings appear beyond the Latin West, and scholars disagree about how unified the tradition really is. We retain the conventional name while refusing to turn it into a geographical certainty.

2. Meet Codex Bezae

Codex Bezae, designated D in the Gospels and Acts, is a bilingual Greek-Latin manuscript commonly dated around the fifth century. Greek and Latin face one another on opposite pages. Its Gospel order is Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, followed by Acts in a form with many distinctive readings.

Theodore Beza gave the manuscript to Cambridge University in 1581, where it remains.

The Western tradition is older than Bezae. P38 and P48, papyrus fragments of Acts often dated around the third century, preserve some related readings. Irenaeus and other early Latin writers also know Western forms. Age gives this tradition weight; it does not make every expansion original.

One further caution prevents repeated mistakes: Codex Bezae contains the Gospels and Acts, not Paul’s letters. Codex Claromontanus is the bilingual Pauline manuscript also assigned the siglum D in its own corpus. The same letter can identify different manuscripts in different parts of the New Testament.

3. Acts 8:39: the Spirit and the angel

After Philip baptizes the Ethiopian official, the text familiar from modern Bibles says that the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away while the official continued rejoicing.

A longer form adds that the Holy Spirit fell upon the eunuch and makes an angel, rather than the Spirit, carry Philip away.

Codex Bezae cannot testify at Acts 8:39 because it is missing the section from Acts 8:29 to 10:14. Calling it the chief or fullest witness at this precise verse would be an argument from a page that no longer exists.

The expansion completes an expected pattern. Elsewhere in Acts the coming of the Spirit is sometimes narrated explicitly after Baptism or conversion. A reader may feel that Luke has left out the most important result and supply it. An angel then takes over Philip’s transport so the Spirit can remain with the new believer.

The shorter reading is harder because it does not spell out everything a later reader expects. Luke also narrates other Baptisms without separately describing the Spirit’s arrival. The official’s Baptism and joy remain entirely present.

4. Acts 19:9: Paul’s five-hour classroom

Luke says that Paul taught daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus for two years. The Western text adds “from the fifth hour to the tenth”—approximately eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon by common ancient reckoning.

Those were hot hours when a hall might be unused and much of the city rested. The detail paints a convincing picture: Paul labors at his trade in the morning, teaches through the midday lull, and continues ministry afterward.

Plausibility is not proof of composition.

The hours appear in Codex Bezae, Old Latin evidence including Codex Gigas, and a marginal note in the Harklean Syriac. P74, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, the Byzantine tradition, Coptic, and Vulgate lack them.

The addition may preserve a genuine local memory. It may be a reader’s informed reconstruction of Paul’s schedule. We cannot confidently decide between those possibilities. We can say that the evidence does not support assigning the words to Luke.

Luke’s own summary already supplies the scale: Paul taught daily for two years, and people throughout Asia heard the word of the Lord. The schedule adds color, not the substance of the mission.

5. Acts 15: the Apostolic Decree changes shape

At the Jerusalem Council, the apostles decide that Gentile converts need not be circumcised or placed under the whole Mosaic law. They send a short list intended to preserve fellowship between Jewish and Gentile believers.

The Western form removes the prohibition of strangled meat and adds the Golden Rule in negative form. A list concerning table fellowship becomes a more general moral list.

External evidence

The four-part form is preserved by P74, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi, Byzantine witnesses, Coptic, Vulgate, and Syriac traditions. A Western form appears in Codex Bezae, parts of the Old Latin tradition, and Latin writers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian.

P33, when relevant to discussion of Acts 15, is generally dated to the sixth century rather than the seventh.

Internal evidence

The four prohibitions reflect Leviticus 17–18, where sacrifices, blood, improperly slaughtered meat, and sexual relations are addressed in relation to both Israel and the resident foreigner. That background explains why the decree would help Jewish and Gentile Christians share meals.

As churches became predominantly Gentile, the strangled-meat rule could feel obscure or obsolete. Recasting the decree as a timeless moral summary makes it easier to use. The reverse is hard to imagine: a copyist would have little reason to delete the Golden Rule and insert an outdated food restriction.

The Augsburg Confession reads the historical setting

Article XXVIII of the Augsburg Confession addresses this decree directly. It observes that Christians no longer treat blood and strangled meat as permanently binding. The apostles gave the requirement for a time to avoid offense, not as an everlasting law imposed on consciences.

That reading fits the four-part form and its table-fellowship setting. The Western moralized form obscures why part of the decree could later cease to bind while Christian sexual ethics did not.

The textual decision therefore matters for interpretation. Recovering the historically specific list helps the church distinguish pastoral rules for peace from divine commands that remain binding.

6. Romans 16:25–27: a doxology that moves

The Western text of Acts is not the only large-scale textual phenomenon. The doxology at the end of Romans appears in several locations.

Vaticanus does witness the doxology at Romans 16:25–27; its famous later gap begins at Hebrews 9:14, not in Romans. Claromontanus, not Codex Bezae, is the relevant bilingual Pauline witness. The doxology names God and Jesus Christ but does not name the Spirit, so it should not be called explicitly Trinitarian.

The most common explanation is that Romans circulated early in more than one form. Marcion knew a shortened Romans, and copies ending at different points could carry the doxology with the conclusion available to them. Wherever a form of the letter ended, the doxology tended to follow.

Its location has a complex history; its authenticity is much less doubtful. Most forms preserve it somewhere. The movement shows how an apostolic letter was copied and adapted for use, not that its praise of God vanished.

7. What the Western text does

The Western text is ancient and valuable. It can preserve early memories, interpretations, and church practice. But at these points, the shorter form explains the longer form more readily than the reverse. The expansions show reception: what early Christians noticed, wanted clarified, or found applicable.

That distinction allows respect without confusion. A detail may be historically true without being part of Scripture. A paraphrase may teach orthodox doctrine without being Luke’s sentence. Ancient reception deserves study; apostolic composition deserves a distinct authority.

8. Hear the minority proposals

Friedrich Blass proposed that Luke produced two editions of Acts, one longer and one shorter. Later scholars including Marie-Émile Boismard and Arnaud Lamouille argued that Western forms preserve genuine Lukan material at many places.

These proposals take seriously the age and coherence of the Western evidence. They also face a repeated difficulty: at many individual variants, the longer form looks like an explanation, harmonization, or contextual adaptation of the shorter. The earliest and broadest non-Western evidence—including Byzantine witnesses—regularly supports the shorter form.

Most scholars therefore treat the Western text as an early recension or fluid stream of reception rather than a second authorial edition. The minority view should be heard because it identifies a real problem, not dismissed as though age and richness counted for nothing.

Practice

Read Acts 19:9 in Ad Fontes NT and compare Romans 16:25–27.

1. What does Acts 19:9 say without the added hours, and what does the expansion contribute?
2. At Acts 8:39, which added detail supplies something a reader might expect after Baptism?
3. Read Leviticus 17–18 beside Acts 15:20, 29. What pattern connects them?
4. List every location of the Romans doxology shown in the comparison.
5. Write a rule for handling an ancient detail that may be true but is probably not authorial.

Discussion

1. Why does great age not make every Western reading original?
2. What is the right use of a plausible but textually secondary detail such as Paul’s teaching hours?
3. How does the Apostolic Decree help distinguish temporary church rules from permanent divine commands?
4. What does the movement of the Romans doxology suggest about early use of Paul’s letters?
5. Can a textual tradition be valuable as reception history even when it is not followed as the apostolic text?

Working vocabulary

Western text. A conventional label for an ancient, often freer textual stream represented strongly by Greek-Latin manuscripts, Old Latin evidence, and some early writers.

Codex Bezae. A bilingual Greek-Latin manuscript of the Gospels and Acts and the most prominent witness to Western readings in those books.

Codex Claromontanus. A bilingual Greek-Latin manuscript of Paul’s letters, designated D within the Pauline corpus.

Caesarean text. A proposed Gospel grouping often associated with Family 1, Family 13, and Koridethi; its unity is disputed.

Apostolic Decree. The requirements sent by the Jerusalem Council to Gentile believers in Acts 15.

Recension. A deliberate editorial reworking of a text, as distinct from isolated copying errors.

Before the next session

Read: Chapter 12, “The Latin Bible, the Syriac Bible, and the Coptic Bible, and What the Fathers Quoted.”

Do one thing: Open a detailed textual note—such as Mark 1:1 or Acts 8:39—and list every non-Greek witness it cites: Latin, Syriac, Coptic, or an early Christian writer.

Bring: Your Bible, that witness list, and your vocabulary notes.

Think about: Love for Scripture led some Christians to fill in details they wished Luke had supplied. Where can love become an excuse to add rather than listen?

A closing word

Thanks be to God for Acts as Luke wrote it: the Spirit poured out, the Word crossing boundaries, and Jewish and Gentile believers learning to share one table. Thanks be to God for ancient readers whose expansions let us see how the church received the book. And thanks be to God for the freedom of the Gospel, which permits wise rules for a season without binding consciences forever.

“So the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number every day.”

— Acts 16:5 (NET)

Scripture quotations in this session are from the NET Bible, with the KJV referenced where the lesson compares translations. Confessional citations follow the Kolb-Wengert edition of the Book of Concord.