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
Issue
At Acts 13:33, UBS6/intended NA29 changes the NA28 main text from “[αὐτῶν]” to “om.”; this dossier compares both forms with the TR, the Authorized Version, and the canonical context.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
ὅτι ταύτην ὁ Θεὸς ἐκπεπλήρωκε τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν ἡμῖν, ἀναστήσας Ἰησοῦν· ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ ψαλμῷ τῷ δευτέρῳ γέγραπται, Υἱός μου εἶ σύ, ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε.
Authorized Version
“God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” — Acts 13:33, Authorized Version
Edition note
The full verse is supplied from the project’s Scrivener 1894 received-text source. Each edition-change row separately records whether its exact unit agrees with NA28, UBS6/intended NA29, neither form, or requires address-level review.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
NA29-015: [αὐτῶν]
Translation or explanation
The NA28 baseline contains 1 controlled unit at this verse. Square brackets and “om.” reproduce the project workbook; no bracket is silently converted into an unqualified printed reading.
Metzger’s report of the UBS committee
Metzger's second-edition commentary contains 4 earlier UBS4 notes at Acts 13:33. The discussion invokes external attestation, possible accidental omission, possible expansion, harmonization. The entry displays confidence rating {D}. Because Metzger predates the ECM/UBS6 revision, it supplies earlier committee context rather than the reason for the new decision.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes at Acts 13:33
ECM / CBGM evidence and editors
INTF states that all 52 Acts main-text changes are discussed in its online Text-Critical Commentary and linked through the digital ECM. H. A. G. Houghton's current UBS6 commentary also covers every UBS6 apparatus unit. This record links the exact passage and the current commentary, but it does not reproduce a passage-specific editorial synopsis that was not independently extracted. CBGM calculates coherence relationships from editorially defined data; human editors establish local stemmata and make the textual and philological decision.
4UBS6 and intended NA29 revision
1 controlled main-text change row affects this verse. Relative to the TR: 1 agrees with the TR in the NA28 form. UBS6 is published as the intended NA29 main text; the complete NA29 volume and apparatus remain forthcoming.
| Unit | NA28 baseline | Published UBS6 / intended NA29 main text | Source and verification |
|---|---|---|---|
| NA29-015 | [αὐτῶν] | om. | A1 A1 §3 — Workbook-transcribed; printed NA29 collation pending. TR comparison: The NA28 form agrees with the TR at this unit. |
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
God fulfilled the promise to the fathers unto their children by raising Jesus.
Doctrinal analysis
The possessive pronoun specifies whose children receive the fulfilled promise. Omitting it does not remove the promise or resurrection, but the received wording states the covenant succession explicitly.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Acts 13:33, the critical decision avoids arbitrariness only if the local witnesses, editorially proposed stemma, transcriptional account, intrinsic fit, and inferential step are made public. Naming the ECM or CBGM does not by itself supply that argument. The current controlled comparison is: 1 agrees with the TR in the NA28 form.
Inconsistency
The same canons must be applied at Acts 13:33 and at comparable units. A Byzantine or TR-aligned reading cannot be dismissed merely for being Byzantine when the ECM itself repeatedly adopts such readings, nor can “shorter,” “harder,” age, or coherence function as an unexplained trump only when convenient.
Consequences
Exegetical or interpretive consequence: The possessive pronoun specifies whose children receive the fulfilled promise. Omitting it does not remove the promise or resurrection, but the received wording states the covenant succession explicitly. Canonical and doctrinal consequence is evidence to explain, not a shortcut that permits the desired theology to dictate the wording.
Preconditions of intelligibility
The analysis presupposes stable authorship, meaningful language, objective logic, transmissible evidence, and an identifiable canon capable of judging later reconstructions. A method that treats the text as indefinitely revisable must still explain how its appeals to authorial meaning, Scripture-wide coherence, and ecclesiastical use remain intelligible.
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
This package does not claim a fresh witness-by-witness collation for Acts 13:33. The ECM/digital ECM apparatus and commentary remain the controlling sources for the critical edition’s external evidence. The TR’s broad ecclesiastical reception is relevant evidence, but it is not used as a substitute for identifying manuscripts, versions, corrections, and genealogical relationships at the unit.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
At Acts 13:33, compare accidental loss, deliberate or liturgical expansion, harmonization, and the author’s immediate syntax. “Shorter” and “harder” are questions to test, not automatic verdicts.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
The Authorized Version publicly represents the received Greek text at Acts 13:33. Its long ecclesiastical use is relevant to reception and intelligibility, but this record does not turn reception into a bare majority-vote rule or exempt the verse from source-level examination.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is treated as the confessional context for an identifiable text received in the church, not as permission to ignore variants. At Acts 13:33, the TR/AV is evaluated against the controlled edition rows, the passage, the rest of Scripture, and the available historical evidence.
Canonical coherence with the rest of Scripture
The Authorized Version’s “unto us their children” coheres with the fathers-and-children structure of Acts 13:17, 26, and 32 and with Paul’s argument that the ancestral promise has reached the present hearers. The critical omission leaves the sense recoverable but less explicit.
Canonical-coherence verdict
Authorized Version / TR coherent; the UBS6 revision diverges without a demonstrated canonical gain in the evidence presently attached to this record. The critical reading must show an equal or better fit with the immediate passage and the rest of Scripture before displacing the received form.
Response to the principal critical argument
The editorial outcome is recorded exactly, but the argument is not allowed to collapse into an edition label or an unexplained coherence score. At Acts 13:33, the current comparison is: 1 agrees with the TR in the NA28 form. A complete critical case must disclose the local witnesses, the proposed local stemma, the transcriptional and intrinsic reasons, and the move from those premises to the selected reading. Where that passage-specific argument has not been extracted, the record says so instead of imputing a motive.
Conclusion
Retain the Authorized Version at Acts 13:33. The AV is correct at this locus because it faithfully represents the TR and that wording forms a coherent reading within the passage and the rest of Scripture. The newer critical revision moves away from that received form and, on the evidence presently attached to this record, does not demonstrate an equal or better canonical fit. The new form therefore should not displace the coherent received reading until its passage-specific external, internal, and canonical case is stated and answered.
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Acts 13:33
Received reading: God fulfilled the promise unto us their children
Principal competing reading: God fulfilled the promise to us, their children; SBLGNT reads ‘to us, their children’ in a shortened form
Issue class: Edition Split
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
NA28 agrees with Scrivener’s αὐτῶν ἡμῖν, ‘to us their children,’
while SBLGNT follows ἡμῶν, producing ‘to us, their children’ or ‘to our
children’ depending construction. The citation of Psalm 2 and the
raising of Jesus remain common.
In received form, Luke’s words are represented by “God fulfilled the
promise unto us their children.” The critical or alternative
presentation reads “God fulfilled the promise to us, their children;
SBLGNT reads ‘to us, their children’ in a shortened form.”
“God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath
raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” — Acts 13:33
Acts 13:33 shows why ‘the critical text’ can be an imprecise label:
SBLGNT, NA28, Tregelles, and Westcott–Hort may divide over the very
words at issue, so a claim about a modern critical reading must name the
edition meant.
Luke does not leave Acts 13:33 isolated from its setting. Just
outside the selected unit, Acts 13:32 says, “And we declare unto you
glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers,.”
Acts 13:34 says, “And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead,
now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give
you the sure mercies of David.”
Keep the received pronouns and explicitly note that the current
Nestle–Aland text supports them against SBLGNT.
Sources and further reading
- The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 13:33.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894),
Acts 13:33. - Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL
Edition, Acts 13:33 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-2254
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.2-na29-complete
- 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
- All 169 edition-change rows were reconciled to the controlled workbook and grouped into 154 canonical verse cards. TR and Authorized Version full-verse texts were attached from the project’s Scrivener/KJV sources. Row-level TR alignment is machine-assisted and manually overridden where the unit was known to require address-level judgment; printed NA29-apparatus review and independent witness collation remain open. Metzger notes are exact-verse matches to his earlier UBS4 commentary and are not represented as explanations of later ECM decisions.
- Rights and access
- Original editorial synthesis; short biblical and edition readings are cited for scholarly comparison. Source editions, photographs, and linked resources retain their stated rights.
- Known limitations
- Staging synthesis. The package records all edition changes, but it is not a new collation of every witness. A passage-specific ECM rationale is stated only when an identified official explanation was extracted; otherwise the linked commentary/apparatus remains the source to consult. Canonical coherence is asserted proportionately and no doctrinal conflict is manufactured for orthographic or equivalent forms.
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 13:33 — “Unto Us Their Children”: The Resurrection and the Second Psalm,” VAR-2254, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.2-na29-complete.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas