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GC: Variant e was adopted in the text of NA26-28 and UBSGNT 3-5, albeit with αὐτῶν in square brackets. Variant a, ἡμῖν without αὐτῶν, is suggested as an equally possible reconstruction of the initial text.[1] Variant e has a coherent majority attestation, but its A-related strand, with 81 as its text historically earliest witness, is relatively weak. Most early A-related witnesses support b, and since 05, several Old Latin manuscripts, the Vulgate, the Ethiopic, and two citations by Cosmas Indicopleustes,[2] also support variant b, this confirms that this variant was prevalent in early times.
TP: In his sermon in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia, Paul refers to the promise of the Messiah to the fathers of Israel, which is usually rendered like this in modern translations:
13:32 And we proclaim to you the good news about the promise to our ancestors, 33 that this promise God has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising (or resurrecting) Jesus...
This is the NET translation of the NA text containing [αὐτῶν] ἡμῖν in 13:33. It is the majority reading that fits the context best. The square brackets in the NA text, however, reflect a textual problem stated by Metzger (362): “both αὐτῶν and αὐτῶν ἡμῖν are so eminently appropriate that if either had been the original reading, one cannot understand how the readings ἡμῶν and ἡμῖν could have arisen.” By bracketing αὐτῶν, the NA editors in fact showed an inclination to prefer ἡμῖν, but abstained from adopting a conjectural emendation into the NA text.
The variant ἡμῶν has very good early support, but making “our children” the beneficiaries of God’s promise fulfilled now obviously is not the sense required by the context. Commentators generally agree with Hort’s statement that “it can hardly be doubted that ἡμῶν is a primitive corruption of ἡμῖν” (95).[3] According to this assessment, αὐτῶν ἡμῖν would be an early correction of ἡμῶν. Otherwise ἡμῶν would have to be explained as a mental contraction of the genitive αὐτῶν and the first person plural of the pronoun, but this appears unlikely because αὐτῶν ἡμῖν is in perfect accordance with the context. A scribal slip leading from ἡμῖν to ἡμῶν would clearly stand to reason. The difficulty arising from this reading would well explain an early editorial intervention which then became accepted throughout.
Therefore, a conjecture supported indirectly by the witnesses of ἡμῶν is adopted here.
[1] It is worth noting that in the 20th-25th Nestle editions, ἡμῖν was printed in the upper text with 142, an 11th century minuscule, as a sole witness. This goes back to Tischendorf’s 8th edition where he, in the numbering of his time, notes minuscule 76 as supporting ἡμῖν. However, here we have one of the few mistakes that can be found in Tischendorf’s apparatus: 142 actually has the Byzantine reading αὐτῶν ἡμῖν, and we still do not have any witness for ἡμῖν only.
[2] The majority reading a was adopted in the manuscript tradition of Cosmas.
[3] Cf. Ropes 124; Haenchen 395; Metzger 362; Barrett 645; Pervo 329. Hort cites the 1848 edition of Acts by Friedrich August Bornemann for this suggestion.
