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ἐπὶ τὸν Θεόν: 20. ἀλλὰ ἐπιστεῖλαι αὐτοῖς τοῦ ἀπέχεσθαι 1] ἀπὸ τῶν ἀλισγημάτων τῶν εἰδώλων καὶ τῆς πορνείας καὶ τοῦ πνικτοῦ καὶ τοῦ
1 απο om. ΝΒΏ 61, 180, so Tisch., W.H., Blass, Weiss, Wendt, Hilg. και του πνικτου om, art. AB 13, 61, so W.H., Weiss. D, Gig., Iren. omit kat του πνικτον (see also νετ. 29). Wendt (1888) accounts for the omission partly by the fact that no such command was precisely given in Lev. xvii. 13 (so Meyer, Alford), and partly from the laxer views of the Western Church; but (1899, Introd., p. 50) he now gives in his adherence to Corssen’s view (G. G. A., p. 442; 1896), with which compare for similarity Zahn’s explanation, Einleitung, ii., pp. 344, 345 (1899), Weiss, Codex D, Ῥ. 198, that the omission, as also the addition following (see below), were intended to do away with the Judaic and ceremonial character of the decree, and to substitute the comprehensive moral prescription of the Sermon on the Mount; so too recently Harnack. του πνικ. being eliminated αιµα can be referred to homicidium, Τοτί., De Pud., xii., so that the decree means that they should abstain from pollutions, viz., idolatry, fornication, bloodshed (cf. the punctuation in β), and that they should love their neighbours (the negative injunction of the Golden Rule); see below. See further in favour of the omission Blass, Pref., Evang. sec. Lucam, p. xxv. (1897) ; Philology of the Gospels, p. 250; but for a very different reason; as against the inter- pretation given above by Harnack and others to αιμα, see also Blass, Studien und Kritiken, i., 1900; Hilgenfeld, also Corssen, C. G. G., p. 445 ff., remark on the pro- bability of Montanistic influences in the Bezan text of the passage before us, and in reply to their strictures see Blass, Evang. sec. Lucam, Pret., p. xxiv. ff. At the end of the clause we have Και οσα µη θελουσιν εαντοις γινεσθαι ετεροις µη ποιειν, SO D, 11 minuscules, Sah., Aeth., Iren. (cf. also ver. 29). Harris, Four Lectures, etc., ΡΡ. 31, 32, points out that the addition was known to Aristides (Seeberg, Die Apologie des A., p. 213), and that therefore the Acts was known and used and interpolated by the middle of the second century. But he refrains from speaking positively as to the source of this variant in Acts, as ‘‘ the negative precept turns up everywhere in the early Church, having been absorbed in the first instance from Jewish ethics’’; cf. also Weiss, Codex D, p. 109. So Theophilus, Didache, Const. Apost. and Ephrem on Rom. iii. 21 and vili. 7; see Harris, u. s.; Resch, Agrapha, p. 95; W.H., App., 96. Zahn unhesitatingly refers the addition to the Didache, but it is very doubtful how far the Didache enjoyed the high and wide credit which Zahn attaches to it: about 110-140 the words were interpolated in the text in the East, and soon after, but by no means with universal acceptance, they found their way into the Western text. Blass in Studien and Kritiken, u. s., replies further to Harnack. Harnack asks why the “golden rule,” if genuine, is not found in xxi. 25. Blass replies that Luke kept a rough draft for himself in which were both πνικτα and the rule, and thus omitted πνικτα in B, and in α the rule “ brevitati consulens”’.
Ver. 19. διὸ ἐγὼ κρίνω: “ wherefore my judgmentjis”. St. James apparently speaks as the president of the meeting, Chrysostom, Hom., xxxiii., and his words with the emphatic ἐγώ (Weiss) may ex- press more than the opinion of a private member—he sums up the debate and proposes “the draught of a practical resolution ”’ (see however Hort, Ecclesia, 79; Hackett, in loco; and on the other hand Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, Ρ. 147). Ifa position of authority is thus given to St. James at the conference, it is very significant that this should be so in Jerusalem itself, where the Twelve would naturally carry special weight. But this presidency and Apostolic autho- rity of St. James in Jerusalem is exactly in accordance with the remarkable order of the three names referred to by St. Paul