J.N. Darby: “Nothing could be more mischievous than the resting the divinity of the Lord Christ on this passage [Acts 20.28] - a passage tortured by critics, no two of whom hardly can agree upon it. […] For my own part I am perfectly satisfied that ‘by the blood of His own’ - that is, what was more than our words of ‘near’ and ‘dear’ can possibly convey, it was God's own dear and beloved Son - is the true translation.” (STEM Publishing: Acts 20:28 <34004E> 105)
Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT
by Sea Breeze 19 Replies latest watchtower bible
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aqwsed12345
The contention surrounding the rendering of Acts 20:28 in the New World Translation (NWT) hinges on its insertion of the word "Son" in the phrase "to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own [Son]." Apologists of the NWT assert that this interpolation is justified, claiming that the original Greek text and its theological implications support their translation. The apologists who defend the New World Translation’s paraphrase of Acts 20:28 proceed from an understandable instinct: a wish to shield the text from the formula “the blood of God,” lest the verse imperil a non-Trinitarian theology. Yet none of the considerations they advance—text-critical, grammatical, historical, or theological—can overturn the overwhelming evidence that Luke has Paul tell the Ephesian elders that “God purchased the Church with his own blood.”
First, the textual data. Manuscript variation is confined to the word θεοῦ / κυρίου: some witnesses read “the Church of God,” others “the Church of the Lord,” and a few compound the two. The genitive phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου is immovably fixed; no Greek copy, uncial or minuscule, inserts υἱοῦ. The Sahidic, Bohairic, and Peshitta versions likewise attest the shorter reading. Westcott and Hort’s conjecture that huiou “may have dropped out” was acknowledged by Hort himself to be no more than a rescue-hypothesis, offered because—if accepted—“the whole passage is free from difficulty.” Textual criticism, however, does not emend clear unanimity on the strength of theological discomfort. Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Bover, B M Metzger, the fourth and fifth editions of the UBS, and the Nestle–Aland tradition all declined to adopt Hort’s conjecture because no stemmatic logic justifies it: one cannot postulate a universal early error without a single surviving trace of the longer form.
While such variants exist—notably in Codex Bezae and some Old Latin texts—they affect only the antecedent ("God" or "Lord"), not the phrase "τοῦ ἰδίου." Both readings still result in "his own blood," and the majority of textual critics favor "church of God" as the original, given its stronger attestation in earlier and more reliable manuscripts. This variant, therefore, does not justify inserting "Son" but rather underscores the consistency of the blood reference across textual traditions.
Because the text is stable, the dispute moves to syntax. The construction τοῦ ἰδίου follows αἵματος in the second‐attributive position; throughout the New Testament that position marks a simple possessive relationship (“his own blood”), not a hidden substantive. Hebrews 13:12 (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) is grammatically identical and universally translated without supplying “Son.” The papyrological examples often cited by NWT defenders, where ὁ ἴδιος functions as a term of endearment, occur either in the nominative or in a vocative formulary and never in Luke’s attributive pattern; no extant Christian or Jewish text uses ὁ ἴδιος as an independent christological title. Consequently the most unforced reading is the traditional one: God acquired the church “through his own blood.”
In the Greek text, “τοῦ ἰδίου” follows “αἵματος” (haimatos, “blood”) in the second attributive position, a syntactic structure that typically denotes a possessive relationship—“his own blood”—rather than a standalone substantive. This pattern is evident in Hebrews 13:12, where “διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος” (dia tou idiou haimatos) is universally rendered “with his own blood” without necessitating “Son.” The papyri examples, while illustrative of “ὁ ἴδιος” as a term of endearment in nominative or vocative contexts, do not align with Luke’s attributive usage here, where the adjective modifies the preceding noun directly. Moreover, the New Testament employs explicit Christological titles like “the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6) or “the Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), yet nowhere uses “ὁ ἴδιος” independently to designate Christ. The appeal to implied referents in other verses, such as John 19:27 or 1 Timothy 5:8, is contextually distinct, as those passages rely on immediate narrative cues absent in Acts 20:28. The most natural and grammatically consistent reading, therefore, is adjectival—“with his own blood”—a conclusion reinforced by the NWT Reference Bible’s own acknowledgment of this possibility in its notes.
The grammatical appeal to a supposed “absolute” substantive ὁ ἴδιος is equally fragile. The papyrological parallels adduced—where ho idios stands as a term of endearment—occur in vocative or epistolary formulae and always with explicit pronominal reference earlier in the sentence. In Acts 20:28 the article and adjective follow, they do not precede, the noun; placed in the second attributive position, τοῦ ἰδίου most naturally qualifies the immediately prior head-noun αἵματος. Luke elsewhere uses the possessive pronoun αὐτοῦ when a simple genitive of ownership is intended; his choice of idios here is stylistically marked, but not obscure. Hebrews 13:12 employs an identical construction—διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος—without provoking the least controversy, and no one has felt compelled to supply “Son” in that verse. The same idiom surfaces in the LXX at Leviticus 17:11 and Isaiah 63:3. To treat τοῦ ἰδίου as a christological title (“His Own One”) is linguistically possible but historically unattested: in no extant Christian or Jewish Greek document is Jesus ever called simply ὁ ἴδιος. By contrast, attributive uses of ἴδιος modifying a preceding noun are ubiquitous.
The primary assertion is that the Greek phrase "διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου" (dia tou haimatos tou idiou), translated literally as "through the blood of his own," is ambiguous and that the NWT’s addition of "Son" clarifies its meaning. Apologists argue that since "the church of God" (τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ) typically refers to God the Father, and God the Father cannot have blood, the reference must be to the Son’s blood. This reasoning, however, rests on a theological presupposition rather than textual evidence. The Greek text, as preserved in all extant manuscripts—such as the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Alexandrinus—lacks any explicit mention of "Son" (υἱοῦ, huiou). The phrase "τοῦ ἰδίου" is an adjectival construction modifying "blood" (αἵματος), yielding the straightforward rendering "his own blood." Early translations, including the Sahidic Coptic and the Peshitta, consistently reflect this reading, offering no support for the insertion of "Son." The claim that "Son" may have been present in earlier manuscripts and accidentally omitted, as speculated by some like F. J. A. Hort, lacks substantiation, as no manuscript evidence corroborates this hypothesis. Scholarly consensus, reflected in critical editions like the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, upholds the adjectival interpretation, affirming that the text states God purchased the church "with his own blood."
Apologists further contend that the phrase "church of God" appearing with the articular form "τοῦ θεοῦ" (tou theou, "the God") exclusively denotes God the Father, thus necessitating the NWT’s clarification. This argument overlooks the flexibility of New Testament usage. While "the church of God" often refers to the Father, the context of Acts 20:28, with its reference to blood, aligns with Christological themes elsewhere in the New Testament, such as Hebrews 9:12-14, where Christ’s blood is central to redemption. The suggestion that rendering it as "God’s blood" implies patripassianism—a heresy asserting that the Father suffered—is a mischaracterization. The doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, posits that Christ’s divine and human natures are united in one person, allowing attributes of either nature to be ascribed to his person. Thus, the statement "God purchased the church with his own blood" is theologically coherent when understood as referring to Christ, the incarnate Word, who is both fully God and fully man. Early Christian writers, such as Ignatius of Antioch in his Epistle to the Romans (ca. 107 CE), employed phrases like "the blood of God," indicating that this interpretation was not only acceptable but prevalent in the early church.
Another claim is that the grammatical possibility of construing "τοῦ ἰδίου" substantivally as "of his own [one]"—implying the Son—supports the NWT’s rendering. Scholars like J. H. Moulton have noted that in Greek papyri, "ὁ ἴδιος" (ho idios) can function as a term of endearment for a close relation, suggesting it could refer to Christ. However, this interpretation is less probable in Acts 20:28. New Testament Christological titles, such as "the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6) or "the Righteous One" (Acts 3:14), are explicitly attested, whereas "his own" as a standalone title for Christ is not. The simpler, adjectival reading—"his own blood"—is grammatically natural and contextually consistent, as even the NWT Reference Bible acknowledges in its notes. The appeal to papyri usage, while intriguing, does not override the manuscript evidence or the broader syntactic patterns of the New Testament.
The appeal to modern versions that paraphrase the clause “blood of his own Son” cannot decide the question, because those translations openly acknowledge that they are interpretive. They stand alongside, not against, a much larger bloc—KJV, ASV, NASB, ESV, NIV, CSB, NET, the Vulgate’s ecclesiam Dei… proprio sanguine—whose translators judged that fidelity to the Greek forbade supplementation. Rendering decisions driven by dynamic equivalence testify to translators’ judgments about meaning, not to the state of the Greek evidence. Translations incorporating “Son” or “Lord” often do so as interpretive paraphrases, explicitly noting in footnotes that “Son” is absent from the Greek text, as seen in the Revised Standard Version or New Jerusalem Bible. The majority of critical editions—Nestle-Aland, UBS, SBLGNT—and standard translations like the King James Version, New American Standard Bible, and English Standard Version retain “church of God” and “his own blood,” aligning with the manuscript evidence and resisting unnecessary supplementation. The preference for “church of the Lord” in some versions stems from weaker manuscript support (e.g., Codex Bezae) and does not alter the phrase “τοῦ ἰδίου,” which remains consistent across variants. Commentators like A. W. Wainwright or Murray J. Harris, cited by apologists, express caution about “God’s blood” but do not deny the textual integrity of the traditional reading; rather, they explore interpretive options without endorsing the NWT’s interpolation as normative. The reliance on a minority of dynamic equivalence translations reveals a theological bias—specifically, the Watchtower Society’s rejection of Christ’s deity—rather than a textually grounded necessity.
These renderings reflect interpretative choices rather than fidelity to the Greek text. The majority of standard translations—such as the King James Version, New International Version, English Standard Version, and New American Standard Bible—opt for "his own blood," aligning with the manuscript evidence and scholarly consensus. The NWT’s reliance on a minority of translations does not bolster its case; rather, it highlights a departure from the textual norm driven by theological bias. The Watchtower Society’s denial of Christ’s full deity, evident in their handling of passages like John 1:1, suggests that the insertion of "Son" in Acts 20:28 is motivated by a desire to avoid affirming Christ’s deity, rather than by linguistic or historical necessity. Every translation that prints “his own Son” acknowledges in a footnote that the word is absent from the Greek text; the decision is an interpretive paraphrase, not a textual alternative. By contrast, the majority of critical translations—NA/UBS, Nestle‐Aland, SBLGNT, and the main English, German, French, Spanish and Italian standard versions—retain the literal wording precisely because it reflects the unanimous manuscript tradition.
The interpolation of "Son" lacks textual grounding, contradicts the unanimous witness of extant manuscripts, and introduces a clarification not demanded by the Greek. The traditional rendering not only preserves the original text but also coheres with the New Testament’s portrayal of Christ as the divine-human redeemer. The NWT’s rendering, far from standing the test of time, reflects an interpretative overlay that prioritizes doctrinal commitments over textual integrity.
Theologically, NWT apologists assert that rendering the phrase as “God’s own blood” is untenable, arguing that it conflicts with the biblical depiction of God as a spirit without blood (John 4:24; Luke 24:39) and risks implying patripassianism, the notion that the Father suffered. They maintain that the blood must be Christ’s, not God’s, citing passages like 1 John 1:7 (“the blood of Jesus his Son”) and Revelation 1:5 (“washed us from our sins in his own blood”) to argue that Acts 20:28 should be harmonized accordingly. This position, however, rests on a misunderstanding of early Christian theology and the doctrine of the incarnation. The phrase “church of God” (τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ), while often referring to the Father, does not preclude a Christological interpretation in this context, where the reference to blood evokes the redemptive act of Christ, as seen in Hebrews 9:12-14. The doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, formalized at Chalcedon in 451 CE but implicit in apostolic teaching, holds that Christ’s divine and human natures are united in one person, allowing attributes of either nature to be predicated of him. Thus, “God purchased the church with his own blood” is coherent when understood as referring to Christ, the incarnate Word, who is fully divine and fully human. Early Christian writers like Ignatius of Antioch, in his Epistle to the Ephesians (ca. 107 CE), unabashedly spoke of “the blood of God,” reflecting a second-century understanding that embraced this unity without lapsing into patripassianism. Paul’s own language in 1 Corinthians 2:8 (“they crucified the Lord of glory”) similarly juxtaposes divine and human attributes, underscoring that such expressions were not foreign to the apostolic mind. The objection that God cannot bleed dismisses the incarnational reality affirmed in John 1:14 and Philippians 2:6-8, where the divine Word takes on flesh and experiences human death.
That wording, hencethe apologists claim, would be “incredible” for Paul and would entail patripassianism. The early church, however, heard it without embarrassment. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the same Ephesian community to which the elders belonged, exhorts them to “rekindle yourselves in the blood of God,” echoing Acts 20:28 and demonstrating that second‐century believers grasped the statement as a christological, not patripassian, affirmation. Paul himself elsewhere juxtaposes a divine title with a human act (“they crucified the Lord of glory,” 1 Cor 2:8), showing that the communicatio idiomatum was already implicit in apostolic teaching. To object that “God is spirit and cannot bleed” is therefore to object to the incarnation itself.
Historically, the phrase “blood of God” is neither novel nor scandalous in early Christianity. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the very community whose elders Paul addresses in Acts, exhorts the Ephesians to “rekindle yourselves in the blood of God” (Eph 1.1). Ignatius is no patripassian; he distinguishes the Father and the Son as sharply as later Nicene theology. His diction shows that second-century readers—Greeks steeped in Luke’s idiom—did not stumble over Acts 20:28, because they understood the communicatio idiomatum long before Chalcedon gave the principle its name. The person who bleeds is the identical person who is eternally God; what belongs to either nature may be predicated of the one prosōpon.
The charge of patripassianism, therefore, misfires. Acts 20:28 does not say that the Father, qua Father, bleeds; it says that God, understood christologically after the pattern of Acts 2:36 (“God has made him both Lord and Christ”) and Acts 3:15 (“you killed the Author of life”), redeems the Church through the incarnate economy. Luke, like Paul in 1 Cor 2:8 (“the Lord of glory was crucified”), is perfectly willing to place a divine title and a human action in the same clause, because he thinks of Christ as a single subject in whom divine and human predicates converge.
A related argument posits that the broader biblical narrative, emphasizing Christ’s blood as the means of redemption (e.g., Matthew 26:28, Hebrews 9:14, 1 Peter 1:19), demands that Acts 20:28 be adjusted to avoid attributing blood to God. This harmonization, however, imposes an external theological framework onto the text rather than allowing it to stand on its own terms. The New Testament consistently presents Christ as the divine-human mediator whose blood redeems, a role compatible with Acts 20:28’s assertion that God, through the person of Christ, purchased the church. Passages like John 3:16 and 1 John 4:9 highlight God’s act of sending his Son, but they do not negate the unity of Christ’s person, through whom God acts redemptively. The traditional rendering enhances, rather than contradicts, this theology by underscoring the infinite value of the church as purchased by God himself in the incarnate Son.
Finally, the “difficulty” that motivates the bracketed Son exists only for those committed a priori to a theology in which the Word is not fully God. The very patristic writers whom NWT defenders cite against a “strange and startling phrase” read the same Greek we read and nevertheless invoked Acts 20:28 when defending the full deity of Christ. The Watchtower’s rendering is therefore not a neutral clarifying gloss; it is a doctrinal correction imposed upon a recalcitrant text. Remove the doctrinal pressure and the Greek stands clear: the flock belongs to God because God himself, in the person of the incarnate Son, has paid for it with his own blood.
The claim that Acts 20:28 cannot bear theological weight because “critics torture the passage” ignores the role the verse played in pre‐Nicene exegesis. Long before Trinitarian controversies crystallised, early Christians cited it as a witness to the infinite worth of the redemption purchased in Christ’s blood. The NWT’s interpolation does not clarify the text; it neutralises it in order to avoid a doctrinal implication that the Witnesses’ theology cannot sustain. When the conjecture is removed, the passage resumes its original force: the flock is supremely precious because God himself, in the person of the incarnate Son, has ransomed it with his own blood.
Hence, the suggestion that no definitive conclusion can be drawn about Acts 20:28 due to its complexities, and that dogmatism should be avoided, sidesteps the overwhelming evidence favoring the traditional text. While apologists frame their position as a balanced consideration of variant readings and scholarly opinions, their interpolation of “Son” introduces an alteration unsupported by the Greek, driven by a desire to align the verse with a non-Trinitarian theology. The early church, as evidenced by Ignatius and pre-Nicene exegesis, found no difficulty in the phrase “blood of God,” interpreting it as a profound affirmation of Christ’s deity and the unity of his redemptive act. The NWT’s rendering, by contrast, dilutes this significance, prioritizing doctrinal presuppositions over textual fidelity.
The NWT’s translation of Acts 20:28 is neither textually justified nor theologically necessary. The Greek text, supported by all available evidence, declares that God purchased the church with his own blood—a statement that, through the lens of Christ’s dual nature, affirms his deity and underscores the unity of his person. The apologists’ arguments, while citing selective scholarly opinions and alternative translations, fail to overturn the clear weight of the evidence, rendering their defense of the NWT’s interpolation unpersuasive in the face of rigorous academic scrutiny.
In conclusion, the NWT’s translation of Acts 20:28 lacks textual, grammatical, and historical justification. The Greek phrase “διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου,” supported by all manuscript evidence, declares that God purchased the church with his own blood—a statement that, through the lens of Christ’s dual nature, affirms his deity and the unity of his person. The apologists’ arguments, while appealing to selective translations, early testimonials, and theological concerns, fail to overturn the clear weight of the evidence. The traditional rendering not only preserves the integrity of the text but also resonates with the New Testament’s portrayal of Christ as the divine-human redeemer, rendering the NWT’s interpolation an unpersuasive departure from both linguistic accuracy and theological coherence.
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Sea Breeze
@aqwsed
Early Christian writers like Ignatius of Antioch, in his Epistle to the Ephesians (ca. 107 CE), unabashedly spoke of “the blood of God,” (Note: Antioch was where the term "Christians" was first used)
Ignatius of Antioch is traditionally believed to have been a disciple of John the Apostle along with Polycarp.
He was simply repeating what him and John and Polycarp repeatedly talked about, and what is clearly taught in scripture. Otherwise he would have been abandoned as a heretic.
Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Ephesian community to which the elders belonged, exhorts them to “rekindle yourselves in the blood of God,” echoing Acts 20:28
More from Ignatius:
He uses the phrase "blood of God" in his letter to the Ephesians, stating that they "took on new life through the blood of God". He also refers to "Jesus Christ, our God" and his blood as the means of salvation.
He also wrote:
"Being the followers of God, and stirring up yourselves by the blood of God, ye have perfectly accomplished the work which was beseeming to you."
Tertullian:
Tertullian writes, regarding Christians: "So far as I know, we are not our own, but bought with a price; and what kind of price? The blood of God."
The overwhelming evidence for anyone truly seeking salvation, friendship, and peace with God is that: The Christian God bleeds. If anyone is seeking any other kind of god, they got the wrong God, the wrong Jesus, and the wrong Savior.
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Earnest
In Philip Comfort's Commentary on NT Text and Translation he says that the textual evidence allows for four different meanings :
(a) "Take care of the church of God which he [God] purchased with his own blood".
(b) "Take care of the church of God which he [God] purchased with the blood of his own Son".
(c) "Take care of the church of the Lord which he [the Lord] purchased with his own blood".
(d) "Take care of the church of the Lord which he [the Lord] purchased with the blood of his own Son".
In connection with (b), he says that the expression τοῦ ἰδίου ("his own") was also used in Greek papyri to mean "one's own child" (The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Moulton & Milligan, 1997, p.298) in the same way as he is called "only-begotten" (John 1:14). Thus, the expression could mean "the blood of his own" (i.e., "the blood of his Son" - see ESVmg). ESV margin reads "Or with the blood of his Own".
When one can choose between four textually valid readings it is absurd to say that anyone choosing (b) is interpretive but if you choose (a) you are not. All translation is interpretive but RSV, NRSV, CEB, CEV, LEB, CJB, GNT, NCV, MRINT (Mounce Reverse Interlinear NT) also chose (b).
One interesting point that Metzger makes regarding the reading ἰδίος αἵματος in many Byzantine witnesses is that "as Lake and Cadbury point out, after the special meaning of "own" [meaning "own child"] had dropped out of Christian usage, the τοῦ ἰδίου ("his own") of this passage was misunderstood as a qualification of αἵματος ("his own blood"). This misunderstanding led to two changes in the text : τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου was changed to τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, which is neater but perverts the sense, and θεοῦ [God] was changed to κυρίου [Lord] by the Western revisers.
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Sea Breeze
@Ernest
When one can choose between four textually valid readings it is absurd....
Your premise is unfounded. There are not 4 equally valid readings of this passage. This is easily proven by how the early church leaders quoted and paraphrased this passage.
Aqwsed and I have provided numerous examples of these in our previous posts on this thread. How do you propose to overcome those? -
aqwsed12345
@Earnest
Comfort’s brief note has often been pressed far beyond what it will bear. By setting out four conceivable English renderings he does not claim that four distinct Greek texts lie behind them. His first and third lines simply register the well–known variation θεοῦ / κυρίου; his second and fourth explain how an English translator might attempt to convey, by paraphrase, what he or she supposes to be the sense of the fixed words διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. Nothing in Comfort’s apparatus suggests that the Greek ever read “διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ,” still less that such a form enjoys equal textual standing with the transmitted wording. The choice, therefore, is not between four Greek readings but between two: ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ and ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου. The rest is interpretation.
That point is decisive for the appeal to J. H. Moulton’s discussion of ὁ ἴδιος in the papyri. Moulton observes that in familiar letters the noun may function vocatively (“to his own, greetings”), an idiom of affection for one’s family circle. The vocative, however, is the very feature that marks the usage: the adjective is treated as a substantive in place of the addressee’s name. Luke’s clause stands in a wholly different syntactic environment. Here τοῦ ἰδίου is post–posed to αἵματος in the second attributive position, the standard means of expressing possession. Where the New Testament does wish to employ ἴδιος as a substantive, the form appears with the article in nominative or accusative position and is contextually obvious (John 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23). Luke never elsewhere builds a christological title out of the adjective, and no extant Jewish or Christian writer calls Jesus simply ὁ ἴδιος. The papyrological analogy therefore fails; the idiom behind “his own child” is grammatically remote from “his own blood.”
The further claim that Byzantine witnesses shifted the word order to repair a lost sense cannot be sustained. Westcott and Hort already explained that transposition as a stylistic correction: scribes familiar with the more fluent genitive sequence τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος simply inverted Luke’s marked order. What those copyists did not do—though it would have resolved the supposed ambiguity at a stroke—was add υἱοῦ. The absence of any such expansion in the Byzantine tradition, whose scribes were extraordinarily willing to harmonise and clarify, is powerful negative evidence: they read the phrase as possessive and saw no theological peril in confessing that God purchased the church with “his own blood.”
Nor does Metzger’s comment alter the picture. He notes that some later readers, after the specific sense of ὁ ἴδιος had faded, misunderstood τοῦ ἰδίου as an adjective and therefore inverted the genitives; yet Metzger preserves the earlier text precisely because the mistaken reversal is so transparent. If anything, his judgement underlines the point that the original construction speaks of blood that is God’s own, not of “the blood of God’s own Son.”
Because no manuscript supplies υἱοῦ, translations that insert “Son” are not rendering a different Greek reading but offering an explanatory gloss. That is why the Revised Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible and others mark the word as conjectural in their marginal notes. An explanatory gloss may be pastorally defensible, but it remains a gloss. To treat it as a co-equal textual option is to confuse commentary with evidence.
Finally, theological scruple cannot overturn linguistic fact. The New Testament is perfectly willing to predicate human sufferings of the divine person of Christ: Paul writes of “the crucifixion of the Lord of glory,” Peter speaks of “the Author of life” killed by men, and Ignatius of Antioch urges the Ephesian believers to abide “in the blood of God.” Such language is not patripassian; it is the practical outworking of the communicatio idiomatum. To deny that God can be said to have blood is implicitly to deny that “the Word became flesh.”
Acts 20:28 therefore remains what the earliest and best witnesses declare it to be: a confession that the flock is so precious to God that he acquired it at the cost of his own blood. Every attempt to dilute that wording by the interpolation of “Son” is exegetically unnecessary, text-critically unanchored, and historically out of tune with the church’s earliest reception of Luke’s narrative.
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Earnest
Earnest : When one can choose between four textually valid readings ...
Sea Breeze : There are not 4 equally valid readings of this passage.
Whether or not a particular interpretation of a Bible reading is supported does not make it more or less textually valid. Only the underlying text does that, and Philip Comfort (who was a critic of JWs but well-versed in textual criticism) maintains the four textually valid readings.
We have already discussed that writings of early church leaders were hopelessly corrupted by the fourth century and cannot be relied on. If you wish to rely on tradition rather than scripture it is no wonder that you align yourself with Catholicism.
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Sea Breeze
@Earnest
We have already discussed that writings of early church leaders were hopelessly corrupted by the fourth century.
And that charge has been roundly defeated. You have shown no evidence of this charge. Where is the push-back that would have come from the disciples of the apostles? It is the other way around isn't it? The disciples of the apostles were fighting heresies, which is the reason they wrote so much material for us to check with,
We have thousands of pages from the 1-4th centuries. So, your claims are easily fact-checked and defeated.... as have been so thoroughly demonstrated on this thread. -
Earnest
aqwsed12345 : Because no manuscript supplies υἱοῦ [son], translations that insert “Son” are not rendering a different Greek reading but offering an explanatory gloss.
I can concur with this if we are talking about a literal word-for-word translation of scripture. But one can also translate thought-for-thought, also known as dynamic equivalence, like the NIV [which reads "which he bought with his own blood" footnote "Or with the blood of his own Son"], NLT [which reads "purchased with his own blood" footnote "Or with the blood of his own [Son]"] and NRSV [which reads "that he obtained with the blood of his own Son" footnote "Or with his own blood; Gk with the blood of his Own"]. In this case it is warranted to go beyond word-for-word to complete the sense for a modern English reader.
So if the ancient Greek reader would understand "with the blood of his Own" as referring to "his own Son" then it is legitimate to complete that sense in the translation. If, on the other hand, the ancient Greek reader would understand "with the blood of his Own" as referring to "his own blood" then it is legitimate to translate it in that way. The point is that when there are two ways of translating a passage then it will be translated in the way that it is believed the author intended it.
Interestingly, in the 1984 NWT, which was a a literal word-for-word translation, it read "which he purchased with the blood of his own [Son]" and referred to an appendix for a discussion of the translation.
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Earnest
Sea Breeze : You have shown no evidence [that writings of early church leaders were hopelessly corrupted by the fourth century].
Evidence has been provided on a number of threads, such as this one where we were also discussing Acts 20:28. But any review of the recensions of the Ignatian letters (there were three) should convince you they were hopelessly corrupted by the fourth century. Wikipedia would be a good start (see particularly Reception in Antiquity).