Scripture Queries and Answers: Acts 8:37

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Duration: 1min
Acts 8:37  •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 9
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Q. I have seen it stated that “the whole of Acts 8:3737And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. (Acts 8:37), If thou believest with all,' &c., is universally pronounced by Biblists as an interpolation. It exists in only one Greek MS., having no place in the other MSS. It is marked in our Greek Text as spurious, is omitted from some, and never ought to have had a place in our English Bible.” G. T. A.
A. The verse exists in Laud's Uncial MS., now in the Bodleian, in Beda's Greek (unless it be the same copy), in about twenty cursives, as well as some versions. Nor has it wanted defenders, as Wolf abroad and Whitby at home. At the same time it was certainly not read by much the weightier as well as by the most numerous authorities, and is justly rejected by the best critics, and should disappear from all Bibles. It seems to have been read by several early fathers as Irenaeus and Cyprian, if it was not inserted to support the later copies of the Vulgate. Internal evidence is, at least, as decisively against it as external.