Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze 54 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  scholar

  Seabreeze

  For your information as discussed in the brilliant NWT Study Edition Matthew-Acts;

  with the blood of his own Son: Lit., “through the blood of the own (one).” Grammatically, the Greek expression could be translated “with the blood of his own” or “with his own blood,” so the context has to be taken into consideration. In Greek, the expression ho iʹdi·os (“his own”) could stand alone without a clarifying noun or pronoun, as seen by how it is rendered at Joh 1:11 (“his own home”); at Joh 13:1 (“his own”); at Ac 4:23 (“their own people”); and at Ac 24:23 (“his people”). In non-Biblical Greek papyri, the phrase is used as a term of endearment to refer to close relatives. A reader of this verse would logically understand from the context that a noun in the singular number is implied after the expression “his own” and that the noun referred to God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed. Based on this, quite a number of scholars and translators acknowledge that the word “son” is to be understood here and render the phrase “with the blood of his own Son.”

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  Further, in Craig S. Keene's 4 volume commentary on Acts in his Volume 3, Acts An Exegetical Commentary 15:1 - 23;35, 2014, p.3038 says "More often scholars prefer to read the text as "the blood of his (God's) own" - that is, the blood of Jesus-arguing that the construction appears in the papyri" n 868. This footnote directs the reader to comments made on this verse by Harris, Jesus as God 131-141 and Metzger, Textual Commentary, 481.

  Enjoy!!!

  scholar JW
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  aqwsed12345

  @scholar

  The Greek line Luke wrote for Paul’s farewell—διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου—does not license the NWT’s decision to add “Son,” and none of the linguistic or historical considerations adduced in the Study Edition overturn that judgment.

  Luke’s wording places the adjective-pronoun τοῦ ἰδίου in the second attributive position after αἵματος. Every secure NT parallel with this syntax is possessive, not substantival. Hebrews 13:12 (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) is identical in form; no commentator has ever felt compelled to gloss “his own [Son]” there, because the collocation self-evidently means “his own blood.” When Luke wishes to supply an implied noun he signals it differently, either by the first attributive position (τὴν ἰδίαν πόλιν, “his own city,” Lk 4:24) or by leaving ἴδιος in the nominative or vocative, as in the examples the Study Edition cites (Jn 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23). In every one of those occurrences the referent is already explicit in the sentence (“him,” “them,” “Paul and Silas”), so the ellipsis is recoverable. Acts 20:28 lacks such an antecedent; the only syntactically available head noun is αἵματος itself. The papyrological instances invoked (“to-his-own-one greeting”) are epistolary salutations in the vocative; they are not genitive modifiers following a concrete noun and so offer no true parallel.

  Because no manuscript, patristic citation, or version inserts υἱοῦ after ἰδίου, the proposed sense “blood of his own Son” depends on a hypothetical haplography—but a universal and undetectable one. Hort himself, whom the Study Edition quotes, conceded that this was purely conjectural; the editors of every critical text from Tischendorf to NA28 have rejected it.

  Appeal to “context” likewise fails. The nearest contextual marker is not filial but divine: Luke has just said “the church of God.” Throughout Luke-Acts, when αἷμα is combined with a possessor in the genitive, the possessor is the one whose blood is shed (Luke 22:20; Acts 5:28; 18:6). To shift possession from the expressed subject (“God”) to an unexpressed third party violates Luke’s own narrative habit and introduces a theological scruple alien to his style. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the same Ephesian church within two generations, could exhort them to “be subject to Jesus Christ and to the Father in the blood of God” (Eph 1:1); the phrase was evidently not “misleading” to readers nourished on Acts.

  Craig Keener’s remark that “many scholars prefer” an implied Son does not claim majority support; he is summarizing a minority view whose principal exponents (e.g., Harris, Metzger) still acknowledge that the Greek text itself reads τοῦ ἰδίου without υἱοῦ and that the traditional construal remains grammatically easier. Metzger, after rehearsing the same papyrus data, concludes that “the committee found no warrant for adding υἱοῦ to the text.”

  In sum, the expression Luke chooses is the same idiom Hebrews uses and the LXX employs (e.g., Isa 63:3) to denote a person’s own blood. The consistent manuscript tradition, the syntax of the clause, the narrative usage of Luke-Acts, and the reception among pre-Nicene writers all converge on the straightforward reading: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” The “Son” in the NWT is therefore not clarification but theological revision, unsupported by Greek grammar or textual evidence.
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  aqwsed12345

  @scholar

  The reasoning advanced by Greg Stafford does not withstand sustained philological or textual scrutiny. His case rests on three mutually independent propositions: first, that κύριος is more likely than θεός to be the original possessive in Acts 20:28; second, that the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου ought to be construed “through the blood of his Own [Son]”; third, that the whole question is Christologically inert because, even if θεός is read, the verse would not ascribe deity to Christ in any way congenial to classical Trinitarianism. Each step is flawed.

  1. External evidence for θεός versus κύριος

  Stafford cites Abbot’s nineteenth-century essay and Keener’s survey to suggest an equilibrium between the two readings. In fact, the documentary weight has never been evenly balanced. θεοῦ is supported by the two great fourth-century uncials (א, B), by the earliest continuous-text papyrus of Acts (P⁷⁴), by the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic, by the Vulgate (per sanguinem illius), and by the earliest stratum of patristic citation (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian). κύριος appears in D and its Latin congeners, in Ψ and the Byzantine tradition, and sporadically among Fathers who often quote from memory. The editors of every major critical text from Tischendorf through NA28 have therefore printed θεοῦ and relegated κυρίου to the apparatus on methodological grounds: it is geographically restricted, and it readily explains itself as an early substitution by scribes uncomfortable with the notion of “God’s blood.” The converse cannot explain the rise of θεοῦ in the Alexandrian stream, whose scribes are otherwise noted for theological restraint.

  2. The syntactic force of τοῦ ἰδίου

  Stafford leans on Metzger’s caution that τοῦ ἰδίου could be understood substantivally. The caution is linguistically true but contextually irrelevant. In Acts 20:28 the adjective stands after its noun in the second attributive position. That construction in Koine Greek invariably yields a possessive sense (“his own blood”). No demonstrable NT or papyrus example shows a post-posed ἴδιος functioning as an independent noun when it follows—rather than precedes—the noun it qualifies. The papyrological salutations Stafford invokes (e.g., ὁ δεῖνα τῷ ἰδίῳ χαίρειν) occur in the vocative or nominative, not in genitive-attributive sequence. The NT parallels Stafford himself lists (Jn 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23) place ἴδιοι in nominative or accusative absolute constructions; they are not syntactically analogous to διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.

  If Luke had wished to mean “with the blood of his Own [Son]” he possessed two unambiguous formulas. He could have written διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ, Paul’s wording in Romans 8:32, or he could have shifted ἰδίου forward to the first attributive slot (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, as in Heb 13:12). He does neither. The NWT’s “Son” is therefore not a “completion of sense” but an interpretive addition unsignalled by the grammar Luke actually used.

  3. The conjecture of a lost υἱοῦ

  Hort’s suggestion that υἱοῦ was accidentally omitted after ἰδίου remains a permissible conjecture—but it is only that. Conjectural emendation has a place when multiple lines of internal evidence converge against every extant witness, yet here no Greek, versional, or patristic source preserves the longer reading, and the existing text is coherent as it stands. For that reason, the conjecture has been rejected by Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, von Soden, Westcott-Hort’s own margin, Nestle-Aland, UBS, SBLGNT, and the Cambridge Greek Testament.

  4. The claim that κύριος would better suit Pauline usage

  Paul’s undisputed letters do say “church of God” eight times and never “church of the Lord” in the singular—precisely the opposite of Stafford’s implication. Luke, too, has called the community τοῦ θεοῦ at Acts 20:28 already by v. 32 (“the word of His grace which is able to build you up”). Conversely, κύριος in Luke-Acts most often designates YHWH in Septuagintal citations (Acts 2:20–21, 25, 34; 3:22, 24; 4:26; 7:37, 49), not Jesus. Scribal change from θεός to κύριος therefore matches a well-known tendency: avoid attributing αἷμα to God by substituting the less theologically perplexing κύριος, whose reference could be taken as Christ without jangling sensibilities.

  5. The invocation of the Tetragrammaton

  Speculating that Luke originally wrote ἐκκλησία Ἰαχωβᾶ and that later hands replaced the name with κύριος or θεός is historically and palaeographically baseless. Not one Greek manuscript of Acts—papyrus, majuscule, or minuscule—shows a Hebrew Tetragrammaton or its paleo-Hebrew form. The Fouad Deuteronomy papyri demonstrate a Jewish practise within the Pentateuch, not a Christian habit in narrative prose. All earliest copies of Luke-Acts, including P⁷⁵ (early third century), write ὁ κύριος or ὁ θεός when citing OT kyrios texts. Luke’s own prologue (Lk 1:6, 9, 15, 16, etc.) embeds κύριος in every YHWH citation, showing that the author is entirely comfortable with the standard Septuagintal surrogate. The hypothesis of a lost Tetragrammaton therefore fails the simplest criterion of textual criticism—post eventum conjecture contrary to universal transmission.

  6. Christological implications

  Stafford concludes that even θεοῦ does not assist Trinitarian theology because Witnesses “unhesitatingly accept Jesus as theos” in a lesser sense. Yet Acts 20:28 does something no Arian scheme can tolerate: it predicates the concrete, historical shedding of blood to God as agent. Luke has already said that it was Jesus whose blood inaugurates the covenant (Lk 22:20) and whose death guards the flock (Acts 20:19 - 25). If Luke then attributes that same redemptive blood to “God,” the simplest hermeneutical explanation is that Jesus shares the divine identity, precisely the point at issue in later Nicene debate. By contrast, the forced insertion of “Son” into the text serves only to keep the divine title and the human action apart.

  7. Conclusion

  Every line of evidence converges on the traditional wording and sense: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” θεοῦ is the lectio difficilior yet the best-attested reading; τοῦ ἰδίου in second-attributive position is possessive, not substantival; conjectural emendation to include υἱοῦ lacks manuscript warrant; and appeal to an original Tetragrammaton is historically implausible. The addition in the NWT is therefore an apologetic gloss, not a translation.
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  scholar

  aqwsed12345

  Thank you for your opinion on the translation of this most controversial verse. There clearly remains differing views as to the meaning of this verse and no doubt theological views of the translator are dominant thus no doubt there remains much future discussion.

  No doubt the forthcoming WBC on Acts by Steve Walton will shed further light on this subject as this commentary series draws upon a wide breadth of scholarship illuminated by extensive bibliographies common to the series.

  scholar JW
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  scholar

  aqwsed12345

  Can you provide your translation of Acts 20:28 or nominate which translation of this verse is the most accurate? You seem to favour the following: "The church of God which he purchased with his own blood"

  Similarly, the NWT Reference Edition, 1984 renders the latter part of the verse: "the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own [Son].This is a literal rendering of the Greek text which in the NWT Kingdom Interlinear, 1969, 1984 renders it thus; "the ecclesia of the God which he reserved for self through the blood of the own (one)".

  Notice the definite article 'the' before 'blood' which in your translation is omitted, rendered alternatively as a possessive 'his own blood'?

  scholar JW
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  scholar

  aqwsed12345

  The problem, as I see it is that in this verse we have three articles in the Genitive case rendered as 'of the God or Lord' depending on various textual witnesses, 'the blood' and 'of the own'.Thus, in the final analysis, it is theology alone that is the decisive factor.

  This is recognized by the Analysis of the Greek New Testament by Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, 1981, p.423, which admits "for doctrinal reasons some would translate of one who was his own.

  scholar JW
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  aqwsed12345

  @scholar

  The phrasing τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου in Acts 20:28 is best rendered “the church of God, which He acquired with His own blood.” A strictly grammatical reading treats τοῦ ἰδίου as an adjectival genitive whose default reference is the possessor already present in the construction—namely τοῦ Θεοῦ. Greek regularly employs ἴδιος in this intensive sense (“one’s very own”) after a noun that already carries a genitive article; the phrase therefore means “the blood that is God’s very own.” The NT itself furnishes exact structural parallels: cf. 2 Peter 2:16 τῇ ἰδίᾳ παρανομίᾳ and Hebrews 9:12 διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, none of which invite us to supply an unexpressed noun. Where a clarifying noun is required, the writers state it explicitly, as in Romans 8:32 τοῦ ἰδίου Υἱοῦ. Luke, however, omits υἱοῦ here, and the absence is decisive; the author had just written αἵματος, so the most economical—and syntactically expected—way to say “His own Son’s blood” would have been διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ. His failure to do so shows that a supplementary noun was not in his mind.

  In English we omit the article before “blood,” not because it is absent in Greek, but because English normally suppresses the article with abstract nouns (“by blood,” “with courage,” “in hope”) and therefore a literal “the blood” would mis-portray the Greek sense. The Greek article here functions to mark the genitive phrase τοῦ αἵματος as a single semantic unit, not to signal contrast or identification; retaining it in English would create a false emphasis. The claim that three genitival articles (“of God,” “of the blood,” “of the own”) make the phrase so ambiguous that “theology alone is decisive” misunderstands Koine usage. Luke writes three genitives because each element belongs in that case for independent syntactic reasons: τοῦ θεοῦ depends on ἐκκλησία; τοῦ αἵματος follows the preposition διά; τοῦ ἰδίου completes an idiomatic possessive construction. Their co-occurrence is accidental, not hermeneutically charged. Greek readers met such strings daily; they did not stop to puzzle over Christological puzzles.

  The suggestion that τοῦ ἰδίου is a substantive standing for “His Own (Son)” derives not from linguistic necessity but from theological discomfort with the idea that Paul could speak, even rhetorically, of “God’s blood.” Max Zerwick’s standard reference grammar recognizes this when it observes on the passage that “for doctrinal reasons some would translate ‘of one who was his own’”. In other words, the alternative rendering rests on dogmatic preference, not on grammatical compulsion. Bruce Metzger, while conceding that some readers might recoil from ascribing blood to God, still judged θεοῦ to be “undeniably the more difficult reading”—and therefore on the principles of textual criticism the more likely to be original—precisely because a scribe would more readily substitute κυρίου to avoid what he thought a theological problem than introduce θεοῦ and create it.

  Appeal is sometimes made to papyrological instances where ὁ ἴδιος stands substantively as a term of endearment for family members. Those examples, however, are plural and arise in vocative or colloquial settings; they do not replicate Luke’s formal genitival sequence τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. Nor do the four NT occurrences of absolute ἴδιος (John 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23) help your case, because in each of them the context itself supplies a plural referent (“his own [people]”), whereas Acts 20:28 is singular and already has a perfectly serviceable head noun, αἵματος, to which ἴδιου naturally attaches.

  Textually, the external evidence for τοῦ Θεοῦ is at least as strong as, and probably stronger than, that for τοῦ Κυρίου. 𝔓74, ‫א, A, B, C*, 33, and the Vulgate stand together for θεοῦ, whereas κυρίου first appears distinctly in D and later Byzantine witnesses. The maxim “the harder reading is to be preferred” applies: θεοῦ would invite alteration on theological grounds; κυρίου would confer theological harmlessness. Internally, Paul’s noun phrase “church of God” is idiomatic for him (1 Cor 1:2; 10:32; 15:9; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:13; 1 Tim 3:5), whereas “church of the Lord” never elsewhere occurs in his letters or anywhere else in the NT. That perceived Pauline usage would have induced a copyist unconsciously to normalise κυρίου, not the reverse.

  Because τὴν ἐκκλησίαν … διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου is a single syntactic unit, the logic of the sentence is unforced only when τοῦ ἰδίου refers back to τοῦ Θεοῦ: “God purchased the church with His own blood.” Far from being alien to primitive Christian thought, that wording resonates with the confessional idiom of early writers who spoke of “the blood of God” (Ignatius, Eph. 1.1; Smyrn. 6.1). Their witness shows that believers who read Greek natively could apprehend the paradox without paling at its Christological force: the crucifixion is the act of the incarnate Son, yet because the Son is the definitive self-revelation of the Father, Paul can, in a doxological idiom, predicate the shed blood of God.

  Consequently, the attempt to safeguard monotheism by interpolating “Son” into the English text masks the literary artistry of Luke and obscures an early high-Christological confession. Grammar, textual evidence, and the history of interpretation all converge on the traditional rendering, whereas the “Son” of the NWT—and of any version that follows it—rests finally on theological expediency rather than on the data of the Greek text itself.
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  peacefulpete

  The grammar is somewhat ambiguous and as anyone who has researched it knows, translators have read the phrase through the theological lens they subscribe to. Some object to 'God' having blood, without qualifying it as belonging to the Christ man aspect of God and so render substantively. The JWs also object on the ground of denying the divinity of Christ whose blood purchases the flock. Others have no issue with reading the phrase attributively with the assumption that readers are clever enough to recognize the Christ aspect of God was referred to. Acts 20:28 - Bible Gateway

  What is rather surprising is the silence regarding the Holy Spirit being said to have done the appointing of overseers over God's church that was purchased with Christ's blood. However you wish to translate the last phrase, the writer is clearly assigning animate roles to 3 characters. No, this is not the Trinity, it is a rather clear expression of belief in divine agency (aka Second Power theology) manifest in multiple powerful figures.
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  aqwsed12345

  @peacefulpete

  Your message reflects a careful reading of the spectrum of English translations and recognizes both the enduring complexity and the theological stakes of Acts 20:28. However, the claim that “the grammar is somewhat ambiguous” and that “translators have read the phrase through the theological lens they subscribe to” deserves a more nuanced assessment. While it is true that doctrinal commitments have influenced certain translation decisions, the evidence of Greek grammar, manuscript tradition, and early patristic usage collectively favors the traditional rendering, “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood,” as both the most natural and the most contextually responsible reading.

  The grammatical ambiguity in Acts 20:28, specifically the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου, is sometimes overstated. Greek’s use of the second attributive position (genitive article + noun + genitive article + adjective) is unambiguously possessive, yielding “his own blood,” with τοῦ ἰδίου naturally referring back to τοῦ θεοῦ, the immediately preceding genitive. This pattern is regularly observed throughout the New Testament (cf. Hebrews 13:12 διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) and in the papyri, where “his own” modifies the previously stated noun rather than supplying an implicit noun such as “Son.” The much-cited examples of ἴδιος used absolutely (as in John 1:11, 13:1, Acts 4:23, 24:23) always occur in contexts where the referent is both clear and plural (“his own [people]”). Acts 20:28, by contrast, presents a singular noun, and the phrase structure directly attaches “blood” to “God.”

  Those who favor reading τοῦ ἰδίου as “his own [Son]” often do so not for grammatical but for doctrinal reasons, as even Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor’s Grammatical Analysis concedes (“for doctrinal reasons some would translate of one who was his own” [p. 423]). This is not a neutral observation: the normal force of the Greek is possessive, and deviation from this reading is motivated not by the demands of syntax, but by discomfort with the implication that Paul could write of “God’s own blood.” However, the earliest patristic evidence—including Ignatius of Antioch (Eph. 1.1), Tertullian, and Jerome—shows that second-century and third-century Christians understood the phrase as an affirmation of Christ’s full divinity, in keeping with their confession that the crucified Lord is “God in the flesh.”

  The proliferation of modern translations you cite, with their variety of renderings and footnotes, is not evidence of a grammatical ambiguity at the core of the Greek text, but rather of a modern ecumenical caution to avoid theological offense. The majority of critical Greek editions (NA28, UBS5, SBLGNT) and the majority of standard translations (KJV, NASB, ESV, CSB, etc.) still maintain the possessive reading, and where dynamic equivalents (such as “his own Son”) appear, they are universally acknowledged as interpretive glosses. Not a single Greek manuscript supplies υἱοῦ (“Son”); every insertion of “Son” is thus an explanatory paraphrase, not a translation of the text itself.

  On the theological dimension, the claim that Acts 20:28 only demonstrates “divine agency” or “Second Power theology” misunderstands both the literary context and the theological currents of early Christianity. The passage, indeed, features the Holy Spirit appointing overseers, but this is precisely because the Spirit is integral to the church’s life—a point entirely consonant with classical Trinitarian doctrine, not a denial of it. The text’s doxological shape, assigning redemptive action and possession to “God” in the context of Christ’s sacrificial death, does not merely posit “multiple powerful figures,” but presupposes the unity of divine action in the economy of salvation, which the doctrine of the Trinity later formalizes.

  The so-called “surprise” about the Holy Spirit’s active role in the appointment of overseers is only a problem for rigidly subordinationist frameworks. In fact, Acts and the Pauline epistles consistently attribute the activities of sanctification, guidance, and church governance to the Spirit as fully divine and personal (cf. Acts 5:3–4; 13:2), never as a mere extension of a “second power.” The triadic structure of Acts 20:28 is not an accidental byproduct, but a reflection of the apostolic faith in Father, Son, and Spirit.

  In summary, while theological lens can color translation choices, the overwhelming grammatical, textual, and historical evidence supports “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood” as the most accurate and faithful rendering. Early Christians accepted and preached this phrase as a profound statement of the unity of Christ’s divinity and humanity, and the unity of God’s saving act. The “ambiguity” is therefore not a defect of the text, but a revelation of the mystery that Christianity proclaims: that God himself, in the person of his incarnate Son, shed his blood for the church, and that the Spirit’s role in the church is not an outlier, but a confirmation of God’s Trinitarian life.

  The variations among English versions and the presence of interpretive footnotes do not undermine this reading, but rather witness to its continued theological potency. The NWT’s paraphrase, and the tendency of some modern versions to render the phrase “his own Son,” reflect not the logic of the Greek but the anxieties of later dogmatic positions—positions that, in their attempt to avoid the text’s force, inadvertently confirm just how high a Christology the passage in fact articulates.
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  peacefulpete

  The so-called “surprise” about the Holy Spirit’s active role in the appointment of overseers is....

  What I said was, it was surprising that in the endless debate with Jws to interpret the last phrase of the passage, there is a silence about the animate role assigned the Holy Spirit. Your AI needs to read more carefully. The animate and semiautonomous roles of the Holy Spirit in Christian writings is a refinement of earlier roles assigned God's spirit, Name, Prescence, Angel, Wisdom or the Logos. Even as early as in Is. 63:9-11 (5th-4th century BCE) we find an 'Angel of his Presence' apparently also described as his 'Holy Spirit" being 'grieved'. These agents or hypostases of God are God but at the same time serve God.