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Re: Antecedent of AUTOIS in Acts 5:13

At 8:03 AM -0400 6/7/97, Clayton Bartholomew wrote:
>Having performed a "Cocktail Party" reading of Acts 5:13-14,  there seemed
>to be a flat
>out contradiction between the two verses.
>
>After long and deep reflection (2-3 minutes) I discovered that the problem
>seemed to
>hinge on the antecedent of AUTOIS in Acts 5:13. I broke down and consulted
>my paltry
>collection of commentaries and discovered that there was not universal
>agreement on
>this subject. Some took AUTOIS to refer to H EKKLHSIA (my initial reading)
>and others OI
>APOSTOLOI.
>
>I am still leaning toward H EKKLHSIA because I always prefer the more
>difficult reading in
>exegesis.

Where are you getting hH EKKLHSIA? It's not among variants cited in UBS4 (I
did not bring NA27 with me to NC), but surely you wouldn't be making it
your own conjecture (I sort of assumed that "I always prefer the more
difficult reading in exegesis" refers to the text-critical maxim LECTIO
DIFFICILIOR PROBABILIOR). Or are you extracting the sense of EKKLHSIA from
hAPANTES in the last clause of 5:12? I think I'd go with APOSTOLWN in 5:12
as an antecedent.

Metger's 2nd edition commentary on the UBS text (the text is the same in
UBS3 and UBS4) doesn't discuss the antecedent of AUTOIS and AUTOUS, but
focuses on the difficulty of the verb KOLLASQAI, which ought to mean "cling
to," "associate with." In that case the problem is with TWN LOIPWN in 5:13,
but after surveying the suggested solutions to that problem, he indicates
that he (and presumably the ediorial committee) found none of them
convincing.

>I'll take another Martini James, two olives please.

Is this a new cocktail named after the so-called STULOS of the Jerusalem
church? Or is it an application of a new principle of punctuation whereby
commas are based upon real verse pauses rather than upon syntax? I just
want to get the assessment of a bona fide linguist (in his lighter moments)!

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(704) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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