The Promises Fulfilled for Whose Children? The Problem of the Text of Acts 13:33 in Contemporary Debate

Abstract

For over a century, commentators have puzzled over the text of Acts 13:33, in which God fulfills his promises to "children" (τέκνοις), but the manuscript tradition is divided about whose children they are. Most manuscripts, which are late, Byzantine texts, report that God has fulfilled the promises "to their children, us" (τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν ἡμῖν). This text is adopted in the majority of modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, translations, and commentaries. The Editio Critica Maior's (ECM) recent critical edition of Acts, however, alters this text to the conjectural "to the children, us" (τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῖν). This decision was made over against two prominent options: τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν ἡμῖν and τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῶν, "to our children." This second variant, found among the earliest and best manuscripts for Acts, is routinely overlooked in favor of τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν ἡμῖν in most editions, commentaries, and translations, and now τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῖν in the ECM. This article makes a case against this tendency, by arguing that τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῶν should be adopted in the critical texts and by pointing out the methodological problems of the ECM's emendation.