Matthew 13:51

13:51 “Have you understood all these things?” They replied, “Yes.”

Acts 8:30-31

8:30 So Philip ran up ¹  to it ²  and heard the man ³  reading Isaiah the prophet. He ⁴  asked him, ⁵  “Do you understand what you’re reading?” 8:31 The man ⁶  replied, “How in the world can I, ⁷  unless someone guides me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Acts 8:1

8:1 And Saul agreed completely with killing ⁸  him.

Saul Begins to Persecute the Church

Now on that day a great ⁹  persecution began ¹⁰  against the church in Jerusalem, ¹¹  and all ¹²  except the apostles were forced to scatter throughout the regions ¹³  of Judea and Samaria.

Colossians 1:7-8

1:7 You learned the gospel ¹⁴  from Epaphras, our dear fellow slave ¹⁵  – a ¹⁶  faithful minister of Christ on our ¹⁷  behalf – 1:8 who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Colossians 1:20

1:20 and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, ¹⁸  whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Revelation 1:3

1:3 Blessed is the one who reads the words of this ¹⁹  prophecy aloud, ²⁰  and blessed are ²¹  those who hear and obey ²²  the things written in it, because the time is near! ²³ 

Revelation 13:18

13:18 This calls for wisdom: ²⁴  Let the one who has insight calculate the beast’s number, for it is man’s number, ²⁵  and his number is 666. ²⁶ 

[8:30]  ¹ tn The participle προσδραμών (prosdramwn) is regarded as attendant circumstance.

[8:30]  ² tn The words “to it” are not in the Greek text but are implied.

[8:30]  ³ tn Grk “heard him”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:30]  ⁴ tn Grk “and he.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

[8:30]  ⁵ tn Grk “he said”; but since what follows is a question, it is better English style to translate the introduction to the question “he asked him.”

[8:31]  ⁶ tn Grk “He”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:31]  ⁷ tn Grk “How am I able, unless…” The translation is based on the force of the conjunction γάρ (gar) in this context. The translation “How in the world can I?” is given in BDAG 189 s.v. γάρ 1.f.

[8:1]  ⁸ tn The term ἀναίρεσις (anairesi") can refer to murder (BDAG 64 s.v.; 2 Macc 5:13; Josephus, Ant. 5.2.12 [5.165]).

[8:1]  ⁹ tn Or “severe.”

[8:1]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “Now there happened on that day a great persecution.” It is less awkward to say in English “Now on that day a great persecution began.”

[8:1]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[8:1]  ¹² sn All. Given that the Jerusalem church is still active after this and that the Hellenists are the focus of Acts 6-8, it is possible to argue that only the Hellenistic Christians were forced to scatter.

[8:1]  ¹³ tn Or “countryside.”

[1:7]  ¹⁴ tn Or “learned it.” The Greek text simply has “you learned” without the reference to “the gospel,” but “the gospel” is supplied to clarify the sense of the clause. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

[1:7]  ¹⁵ tn The Greek word translated “fellow slave” is σύνδουλος (sundoulo"); the σύν- prefix here denotes association. Though δοῦλος is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:7]  ¹⁶ tn The Greek text has “who (ὅς, Jos) is a faithful minister.” The above translation conveys the antecedent of the relative pronoun quite well and avoids the redundancy with the following substantival participle of v. 8, namely, “who told” (ὁ δηλώσας, Jo dhlwsa").

[1:7]  ¹⁷ tc ‡ Judging by the superior witnesses for the first person pronoun ἡμῶν (Jhmwn, “us”; Ì⁴⁶ א* A B D* F G 326* 1505 al) vs. the second person pronoun ὑμῶν (Jumwn, “you”; found in א² C D¹ Ψ 075 33 1739 1881 Ï lat sy co), ἡμῶν should be regarded as original. Although it is possible that ἡμῶν was an early alteration of ὑμῶν (either unintentionally, as dittography, since it comes seventeen letters after the previous ἡμῶν; or intentionally, to conform to the surrounding first person pronouns), this supposition is difficult to maintain in light of the varied and valuable witnesses for this reading. Further, the second person is both embedded in the verb ἐμάθετε (emaqete) and is explicit in v. 8 (ὑμῶν). Hence, the motivation to change to the first person pronoun is counterbalanced by such evidence. The second person pronoun may have been introduced unintentionally via homoioarcton with the ὑπέρ (Juper) that immediately precedes it. As well, the second person reading is somewhat harder for it seems to address Epaphras’ role only in relation to Paul and his colleagues, rather than in relation to the Colossians. Nevertheless, the decision must be based ultimately on external evidence (because the internal evidence can be variously interpreted), and this strongly supports ἡμῶν.

[1:20]  ¹⁸ tc The presence or absence of the second occurrence of the phrase δι᾿ αὐτοῦ (di’ autou, “through him”) is a difficult textual problem to solve. External evidence is fairly evenly divided. Many ancient and excellent witnesses lack the phrase (B D* F G I 0278 81 1175 1739 1881 2464 al latt sa), but equally important witnesses have it (Ì⁴⁶ א A C D¹ Ψ 048^vid 33 Ï). Both readings have strong Alexandrian support, which makes the problem difficult to decide on external evidence alone. Internal evidence points to the inclusion of the phrase as original. The word immediately preceding the phrase is the masculine pronoun αὐτοῦ (autou); thus the possibility of omission through homoioteleuton in various witnesses is likely. Scribes might have deleted the phrase because of perceived redundancy or awkwardness in the sense: The shorter reading is smoother and more elegant, so scribes would be prone to correct the text in that direction. As far as style is concerned, repetition of key words and phrases for emphasis is not foreign to the corpus Paulinum (see, e.g., Rom 8:23, Eph 1:13, 2 Cor 12:7). In short, it is easier to account for the shorter reading arising from the longer reading than vice versa, so the longer reading is more likely original.

[1:3]  ¹⁹ tn The word “this” is used to translate the Greek article τῆς (ths), bringing out its demonstrative force.

[1:3]  ²⁰ tn The word “aloud” has been supplied to indicate that in the original historical setting reading would usually refer to reading out loud in public rather than silently to oneself.

[1:3]  ²¹ tn The words “blessed are” are repeated from the beginning of this verse for stylistic reasons and for clarity.

[1:3]  ²² tn Grk “keep.” L&N 36.19 has “to continue to obey orders or commandments – ‘to obey, to keep commandments, obedience.’”

[1:3]  ²³ sn The time refers to the time when the things prophesied would happen.

[13:18]  ²⁴ tn Grk “Here is wisdom.”

[13:18]  ²⁵ tn Grk “it is man’s number.” ExSyn 254 states “if ἀνθρώπου is generic, then the sense is, ‘It is [the] number of humankind.’ It is significant that this construction fits Apollonius’ Canon (i.e., both the head noun and the genitive are anarthrous), suggesting that if one of these nouns is definite, then the other is, too. Grammatically, those who contend that the sense is ‘it is [the] number of a man’ have the burden of proof on them (for they treat the head noun, ἀριθμός, as definite and the genitive, ἀνθρώπου, as indefinite – the rarest of all possibilities). In light of Johannine usage, we might also add Rev 16:18, where the Seer clearly uses the anarthrous ἄνθρωπος in a generic sense, meaning ‘humankind.’ The implications of this grammatical possibility, exegetically speaking, are simply that the number ‘666’ is the number that represents humankind. Of course, an individual is in view, but his number may be the number representing all of humankind. Thus the Seer might be suggesting here that the antichrist, who is the best representative of humanity without Christ (and the best counterfeit of a perfect man that his master, that old serpent, could muster), is still less than perfection (which would have been represented by the number seven).” See G. K. Beale, Revelation, [NIGTC], 723-24, who argues for the “generic” understanding of the noun; for an indefinite translation, see the ASV and ESV which both translate the clause as “it is the number of a man.”

[13:18]  ²⁶ tc A few mss (̹¹⁵ C, along with a few mss known to Irenaeus {and two minuscule mss, 5 and 11, no longer extant}), read 616 here, and several other witnesses have other variations. Irenaeus’ mention of mss that have 616 is balanced by his rejection of such witnesses in this case. As intriguing as the reading 616 is (since the conversion of Nero Caesar’s name in Latin by way of gematria would come out to 616), it must remain suspect because such a reading seems motivated in that it conforms more neatly to Nero’s gematria.