Subject: Acts 8:37 origins etc.?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 13:57:16 -7000

This morning I received a question about Acts 8:37, the spurious 
verse preserved in the KJV where Philip tells the Eunuch "If you 
believe with all your heart, you can [be baptized]" and the Eunuch 
replies "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."  UBS3 gives 
its omission an A rating (and rightly so) but I'm wondering about the 
rise of the other readings.  I have a little working hypothesis that 
I would like some feedback on.  The answer may be in Metzger's 
Textual Commentary, but my copy is several states away from me at the 
moment.

The witnesses are as follows:

"Philip said, 'If you believe with a whole heart'; and the Eunuch 
answered him, 'I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'"  According 
to UBS3, this form is unique to 629.

"Philip said to him, 'If you believe with your whole heart, you will 
be saved;' He answered and said, 'I believe in the Christ, the Son of 
God.'"  This is the reading of both the Greek and Latin of E, and some 
mss. according to Bede.

"Philip said, 'If you believe with a whole heart, it is possible 
(EXESTIN)'; he answered and said, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the 
Son of God.'"  With minor variations, this is the reading of several 
minuscules, most of the Old Latin, syr(h) with asterisks, arm, geo, 
Irenaeus, Tertullian and some other fathers. 

All other witnesses including the papyri, the uncials, the 
Byzantines, the lectionaries, the Syriac and Coptic and a couple of 
fathers omit it.  But notably, UBS3 doesn't list any Old Latin 
witnesses for omission.

This leads me to wonder: is it possible that this insertion arose out 
of the OL tradition, perhaps under the influence of an early 
baptismal liturgy?  With the exception of the form found in E, the OL 
are the earliest witnesses (unless one counts Irenaeus and 
Tertullian, and I would be interested to see the contexts of the 
quotes before concluding too much about the form of text they used).  
It sure looks to me as though the OL was the origin-point of this 
addition (and its variations branched off from there), and later 
witnesses picked it up from there.  The formality of it also leads me 
to suspect that it slipped into the text when some scribe, perhaps 
recalling the "standard" baptismal liturgy of his congregation, put 
it in thinking it had been accidentally omitted...or something like 
that.

I would very much like to hear others' views on this suggestion.  I 
would also be curious to know from what mss. it slipped into the KJV 
if anybody knows.

TIA,
Dave Washburn
[email-masked]
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/home.html