Complete textual-variant dossier
Sections distinguish readings, edition history, evidence, theological consequences, and the Research Center's evaluation. CBGM is an analytical tool; editorial committees—not the software—make textual decisions.
1Passage and issue
Passage
Acts 1:14
Issue
The received text adds ‘and supplication’ and repeats the connective before Jesus’ brethren.
Variant class
Addition / omission
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
continued … in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary … and with his brethren
Authorized Version
“These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” — Acts 1:14
Edition note
The Research Center uses the received Greek text underlying the Authorized Version as its baseline; edition-specific differences are recorded when the variation unit requires them.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren
Translation or explanation
continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren
Metzger / UBS committee
Metzger reports the UBS4 committee's treatment of 6 variation units within this record's range. The notes ground the relevant decisions in the weight and distribution of external attestation, a proposed mechanism of accidental omission, the likelihood that the competing form is a scribal correction or emendation, the likelihood of scribal or liturgical expansion; the printed confidence ratings represented here are {D}, {C}. This is a controlled synopsis rather than a quotation.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes on Acts 1:14, 1:14, 1:14, 1:14, 1:14, 1:14
ECM / CBGM evidence and editors
No passage-specific ECM/CBGM editorial explanation is attached to this record. Official method sources describe the CBGM as a set of coherence procedures, not a decision-maker: editors define variation units and local stemmata and evaluate pre-genealogical, genealogical, and stemmatic coherence together with transcriptional, intrinsic, and other philological evidence.
4UBS6 and intended NA29 revision
No UBS6 / intended NA29 main-text change is recorded for this passage in the controlled 169-change ledger.
No change row is attached to this passage.
UBS6 is published, and the German Bible Society identifies its Greek main text as identical to the intended NA29 main text. The complete NA29 volume and its apparatus remain forthcoming. Project-ledger rows retain their source and verification statements until they are checked against the published UBS6 text and, when available, the NA29 apparatus.
5Doctrinal and four-point analysis
Effect class
Exegetical or interpretive consequence
Exact proposition affected
No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
Doctrinal analysis
Exegetical or interpretive consequence. The record does not establish that the variant by itself removes an entire Christian doctrine; explicit wording, exegesis, and cumulative testimony must be distinguished.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Acts 1:14, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. Passage: Acts 1:14 Received reading: continued … in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary … and with his brethren Principal competing reading: continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren Issue class: Textual Variant Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. The critical or alternative presentation reads “continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren.” The critical form retains the women, names Mary as Jesus’ mother, and includes his brothers; the dispute is therefore not over their presence.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Acts 1:14 must be applied to comparable readings as well. A principle such as age, difficulty, brevity, or coherence cannot be decisive here and quietly reversed elsewhere merely to escape a historical, grammatical, or theological difficulty.
Consequences
Exegetical or interpretive consequence: No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
Preconditions of intelligibility
The argument presupposes stable authorship, meaningful language, objective logical norms, transmissible evidence, and a coherent account of how Scripture can be received and identified by the church. The analysis tests whether the method can make those conditions intelligible without reducing the text to an indefinitely revisable editorial construct.
This framework examines an argument and its conditions; it does not claim to read an editor's private motives.
6Argument for the received reading
External and historical evidence
Sources and further reading The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 1:14. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894), Acts 1:14.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
Preserve the received fuller cadence, but describe the shorter form accurately rather than suggesting that it erases Mary or the brethren.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
— Acts 1:14 The received text adds ‘and supplication’ and repeats the connective before Jesus’ brethren.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Acts 1:14. It supplies the confessional context in which manuscript transmission, broad reception, and the church's actual possession of Scripture are evaluated together.
Response to the principal critical argument
Passage: Acts 1:14 Received reading: continued … in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary … and with his brethren Principal competing reading: continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren Issue class: Textual Variant Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. The critical or alternative presentation reads “continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren.” The critical form retains the women, names Mary as Jesus’ mother, and includes his brothers; the dispute is therefore not over their presence.
Conclusion
The neighboring verses keep the Acts 1:14 question tied to the episode: Acts 1:13 says, “And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, ….” Acts 1:15 says, “And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,).”
Preserve the received fuller cadence, but describe the shorter form accurately rather than suggesting that it erases Mary or the brethren.
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Acts 1:14
Received reading: continued … in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary … and with his brethren
Principal competing reading: continued in prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren
Issue class: Textual Variant
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
In received form, Luke’s words are represented by “continued … in
prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary … and with his
brethren.” The critical or alternative presentation reads “continued in
prayer, with the women and Mary … and his brethren.”
“These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with
the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” — Acts
1:14
The received text adds ‘and supplication’ and repeats the connective
before Jesus’ brethren. The critical form retains the women, names Mary
as Jesus’ mother, and includes his brothers; the dispute is therefore
not over their presence.
The variation at Acts 1:14 changes emphasis or explicitness within an
otherwise recognizable account; shared words should be acknowledged
before the distinct reading is defended, and the difference should not
be enlarged beyond the clause that carries it.
The neighboring verses keep the Acts 1:14 question tied to the
episode: Acts 1:13 says, “And when they were come in, they went up into
an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew,
Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus,
….” Acts 1:15 says, “And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of
the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an
hundred and twenty,).”
Preserve the received fuller cadence, but describe the shorter form
accurately rather than suggesting that it erases Mary or the
brethren.
Sources and further reading
- The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 1:14.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894),
Acts 1:14. - Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL
Edition, Acts 1:14 and apparatus.
7Related materials
Open a group to follow connected articles, books, biographies, media, research notes, variants, or downloads. Research Center relationships use permanent record IDs; external items retain their actual link.
- Record
- VAR-2204
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.1-dossier
- Review
- Level B — Editorial synthesis
- Editor
- Chris Thomas
- Reviewer
- Independent reviewer pending assignment
- First date
- 1st century · Date Range
- Last revised
- 2026-07-22
Evidence and editorial controls
- Verification
- Passage, received reading, principal SBLGNT reading, and reported NA28 alignment checked against Scrivener’s received Greek text and the official SBLGNT text and comparison apparatus; exhaustive manuscript collation remains open. Metzger commentary entries were matched by exact passage where present; ECM/CBGM rationale is passage-specific only when an official editorial explanation is cited. Ledger rows are identified as UBS6 / intended NA29 data but retain their row-level verification caveats pending direct collation.
- Rights and access
- Original editorial synthesis. Authorized Version Scripture is public domain in the United States; cited editions and digital witnesses retain their stated rights and access conditions.
- Known limitations
- This staging record summarizes the defined variation unit and representative edition evidence. It is not a fresh collation of every extant manuscript, version, lectionary, patristic citation, or ECM coherence relation.
Links from this record
No public outgoing links are recorded.
Records that cite or connect here
No public backlinks are recorded.
Corrections and evidence submissions
No correction submission is presently attached to this record. Submit evidence or read the correction policy.
Chris Thomas, “Acts 1:14 — Prayer, Supplication, the Women, Mary, and the Brethren of Jesus,” VAR-2204, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas