Acts 8:7 – An Alexandrian-Byzantine Textual Case Dispute Based on Degree of Confusion

I. BYZANTINE

πολλῶν γὰρ τῶν ἐχόντων πνεύματα ἀκάθαρτα βοῶντα φωνῇ μεγάλῃ ἐξήρχοντο, πολλοὶ δὲ παραλελυμένοι καὶ χωλοὶ ἐθεραπεύθησαν·

For from many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out crying with a loud voice, and many paralytics and lame were healed.

II. ALEXANDRIAN

πολλοὶ γὰρ τῶν ἐχόντων πνεύματα ἀκάθαρτα βοῶντα φωνῇ μεγάλῃ ἐξήρχοντο, πολλοὶ δὲ παραλελυμένοι καὶ χωλοὶ ἐθεραπεύθησαν·

IIA. LITERAL-GRAMMATICAL

For many of those who had unclean spirits crying with a loud voice came out, and many paralytics and lame were healed (Jerome, literal)

IIB. ANACOLUTHON

For many of those who had unclean spirits—crying with a loud voice they came out, and many paralytics and lame were healed (Metzger, anacoluthon)

IIC. ELLIPTICAL-PARENTHETICAL

For many of those who had unclean spirits (they came out crying with a loud voice) and many paralytics and lame were healed.

IID. EMENDATION MENTIONED, BUT NOT WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION

The difference between Alexandrian and Byzantine is πολλοὶ/πολλῶν. In this verse we encounter the phenomenon of major translators like NIV, ESV, ISV, NET, ASV, ERV, God’s Word, who say they are translating the Alexandrian text but actually do their own surreptitious text editing without public justification in favor of the Byzantine and reject the Alexandrian text but do not admit this fact.

Commentary

I. The problem with the Byzantine manuscripts is that the unclean spirits appear to switch from being direct object of ἐχόντων to subject of βοῶντα and ἐξήρχοντο mid-clause in an awkward way. A technical problem is that ἀκάθαρτα is accusative while adjacent βοῶντα appears to be a circumstantial participle and hence probably nominative, which is tricky. This is how it is interpreted in the modern Greek translation. In fact there is no precedent for such a tricky neuter accusative-nominative difference in the GNT for two adjectives or participles referring to the same subject or head because agreement is visible/auditory. Note that although awkward, this construction is not anacoluthon.

The level of grammatical difficulty with the Byzantine sentence is fairly severe. There is no such exact GNT precedent. There are many instances where the direct object of a verb phrase serves as the implicit subject of the following clause. An example is Titus 2:11–12, Ἐπεφάνη γὰρ ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ σωτήριος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις παιδεύουσα ἡμᾶς, ἵνα ἀρνησάμενοι τὴν ἀσέβειαν καὶ τὰς κοσμικὰς ἐπιθυμίας σωφρόνως καὶ δικαίως καὶ εὐσεβῶς ζήσωμεν ἐν τῷ νῦν αἰῶν. “The grace of God has appeared to all men for salvation teaching us that we, denying godlessness … should live righteously in this age.” Here the direct object ἡμᾶς us, of a participle παιδεύουσα, is followed by a nominative participle, ἀρνησάμενοι, referring to the same us, but the case switch to nominative ἀρνησάμενοι is explicit; the adjacent verb phrases do not suffer from the confused neuter adjective-participle case switch. So Titus 2:11–12 is a kind of general precedent for the Byzantine Acts 8:7, but not an exact neuter one.

Both the Byzantine and Alexandrian editors start by agreeing that Acts 8:7 is an awkwardly formed sentence, uncharacteristic of Luke, but the Alexandrian editors believe that the original was even more grammatically problematic than the Byzantine editors do. The Alexandrian translators are generally not prepared to go as far as the “experts.”

IIA. The problem with the literal-grammatical interpretation of the Alexandrian manuscripts is that ἐξήρχοντο, which normally would be associated with the unclean spirits, is here made to be the predicate of many people in the literal translation. The verb often applies to either people or demons, but in this context the fact that the people came out means too little and says too little. It leaves the purpose hanging. 

They might have come out to be healed, but the way they were healed is by the demons coming out. The demons coming out parallels the paralytic and lame being healed. The semantic problems with the literal interpretation are so severe that the editors of the Alexandrian text and virtually all translators reject it, and even Metzger rejects it. Jerome in the Vulgate translates Acts 8:7 literally. Douay–Rheims gives the literal translation, but even the Vulgate is, like the Greek and unlike English, subject to several interpretations.

IIB. The problem with the anacoluthon interpretation is that people doubt that Luke put this kind of anacoluthon in a historical work. Anacoluthon is a conveniently stretchy word. The textual critics like Metzger, who have lively imaginations in favor of the Alexandrian, imagine that this is an anacoluthon where the author switches unclean spirits from object to subject mid-sentence. Luke was a sophisticated writer. No one would buy this explanation in English, because that is not the kind of errors ungrammatical people make, and there is no reason to think it is any more likely in Greek prose. Tellingly, all the translators reject Metzger's anacoluthon interpretation.

Metzger, following the modern critical story line, imagines that the Byzantine scribes changed πολλοὶ to πολλῶν to improve the grammar, although this assumed change would not improve the grammar much, but it is just as likely that some early Alexandrian scribe changed πολλῶν to πολλοὶ to make the two clauses parallel. It is a common scribal error.

People generally do not hold the anacoluthon theory because it ascribes grammatical confusion to the original. This kind of anacoluthon could possibly occur in a letter in a breathless sequence, but probably not in simple prose. Luke 11:11 is sometimes called anacoluthon, but it is debatable and not narrative. Some commentators call such constructions as Luke 5:14 or Luke 21:6 anacoluthon, but these are better called nominative or relative pendant because they have a pronominal resumption. The word anacoluthon is often applied loosely to grammatical phenomena like Luke 24:49, a dangling participle, that should get more specific names. Real anacoluthon is obvious and rare in prose.

Some people call Acts 17:2 anacoluthon because the genitive absolute is supposed to have a different subject, but this is not a strict rule. Clearly, Acts 8:7 is not a genitive absolute. The effectiveness of the anacoluthon argument depends on the trick of calling lots of different phenomena anacoluthon and then bringing the one which does not occur under the big tent, but it convinces none of the translators.

IIC. The problem with the elliptical-parenthetic interpretation is that it suffers from the same case confusion that the Byzantine text has. There is no GNT precedent for a parenthesis that suffers this kind of neuter case-switch confusion. In the elliptical interpretation ἐθεραπεύθησαν predicates both πολλοὶ, skipping over the intervening finite ἐξήρχοντο. However, real parentheses involve obvious breaks in subject. Metzger mentions the elliptical theory (along with other emendations that none of the translators accept), but he does not subscribe to it, and the translators reject it. A set of bad options does not add up to an acceptable option. 

IID. Metzger gives a list of emendations but does not subscribe to them, and none of the translators adopt them. Some of the translators, like the New Living Translation or Jubilee Bible 2000, are so sloppy with their grammatical emendations that they make masculine πολλοὶ modify neuter πνεύματα—a correction of the text that not even Metzger dares to advocate. NASB creatively invents a kind of genitive of general reference (in the case of), but there is no evidence that such a construction, based loosely on a genitive absolute, actually exists. When we see this kind of creative diversity proliferating, we know that an original textual difficulty lies behind it.

All of the interpretations of the Alexandrian manuscripts are so severe that many of the main translators, who claim to be translating the Nestle-Aland, secretly switch over to the Byzantine texts and make πολλῶν modify genitive people rather than the nominative or accusative demons. None of the interpretations of Alexandrian hang together for them. Most people believe that the original had to be somewhat clear.

The case of πολλοὶ/πολλῶν cannot be determined by construction precedents.  It comes down to this. Most people believe that the original made good sense and was not grammatically confused, but critical editors go out on an edge and believe that grammatical confusion is a sign of originality (lexio difficilior) because the Holy Spirit passed human confusion in the Word to believers because it is a human product. Most translators prefer something like the Byzantine version because it makes sense; they refuse to translate severe grammatical confusion here.

The issue is not of theological significance. The idea that should be broken here is the idea that the Alexandrian text as a whole is the most original. Most people just do not believe that in practice every time, but they hide that fact from themselves. It is a double standard that gasps for air. Better to lift up the carpet and let the light in and break the addiction, to neat but inaccurate dividing lines. Light is better than darkness, even if it breaks down beloved categories.

— Dennis Kenaga, July 2018