Complete textual-variant dossier
No adverse entailment · agrees with the received text
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 16:17, UBS6/intended NA29 changes the NA28 main text from “κατακολουθοῦσα” to “κατακολουθήσασα”; this dossier compares both forms with the TR, the Authorized Version, and the canonical context.
Variant class
Orthography / numerical notation
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
αὕτη κατακολουθήσασα τῷ Παύλῳ καὶ ἡμῖν, ἔκραζε λέγουσα, Οὗτοι οἱ ἄνθρωποι δοῦλοι τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου εἰσίν, οἵτινες καταγγέλλουσιν ἡμῖν ὁδὸν σωτηρίας.
Authorized Version
“The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” — Acts 16:17, 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
NA29-019: κατακολουθοῦσα
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 2 earlier UBS4 notes at Acts 16:17. The discussion invokes external attestation, grammar, usage, or context, comparative difficulty. The entry displays confidence rating {B}. 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 16:17
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 UBS6/intended-NA29 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NA29-019 | κατακολουθοῦσα | κατακολουθήσασα | A1 A1 §3 — Workbook-transcribed; printed NA29 collation pending. TR comparison: The UBS6/intended-NA29 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
The enslaved woman followed Paul and his companions while announcing a way of salvation.
Doctrinal analysis
The participial form affects the temporal relation between following and crying out. It does not change the reality of salvation or the apostles’ message.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Acts 16:17, 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 UBS6/intended-NA29 form.
Inconsistency
The same canons must be applied at Acts 16:17 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 participial form affects the temporal relation between following and crying out. It does not change the reality of salvation or the apostles’ message. 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 16:17. 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 16:17, compare authorial morphology, agreement, spelling conventions, and ordinary scribal normalization. The analysis distinguishes a formal change from a change in propositional content.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
The Authorized Version publicly represents the received Greek text at Acts 16:17. 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 16:17, 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 represents the following as continuing action within the narrative. That reading coheres with verse 18, which says she did this for many days; UBS6/intended NA29’s participial revision must be read in a way that preserves the same narrative continuity.
Canonical-coherence verdict
Authorized Version / TR coherent; the published UBS6 text now converges with it. The earlier NA28 difference no longer represents the current critical main text at Acts 16:17.
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 16:17, the current comparison is: 1 agrees with the TR in the UBS6/intended-NA29 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 16:17. The AV is correct at this locus because it faithfully represents the TR and that reading is coherent with the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. The published UBS6/intended-NA29 revision now agrees with the TR at the substantive unit on this card, so the current critical text is correct here precisely insofar as it has moved into that same coherent reading. The convergence should be acknowledged rather than treating NA28 as permanently synonymous with the critical text.
Logical entailment
The Authorized Version serves as the faithful English representation. The preservation claim applies immediately to the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts—not to an English translation as though it were the inspired source.
No adverse entailment: agrees with the received text.
Necessary reasoning chain
- The current critical main-text reading assessed at Acts 16:17 agrees with the received Hebrew/Greek reading at the variation unit governed by this card.
- An adverse preservation entailment at this locus would require the current critical form to displace a different received reading.
- Because no such displacement occurs at the assessed locus, no adverse preservation consequence follows here.
Sources
- Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)Chapter 1, section 8 — Governing confessional preservation claim
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorized VersionReceived Greek reading
- INTF — Online Tools for the ECM (52 Acts changes and commentary)Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- Digital ECM — Acts 16:17Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- German Bible Society — UBS6 publications and relation to NA29Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Acts 16:17
Received reading: which show unto us the way of salvation
Principal competing reading: who proclaim to you a way of salvation
Issue class: Textual Variant
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
“The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the
servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.”
— Acts 16:17
The central pronoun is ἡμῖν, ‘to us,’ in Scrivener and ὑμῖν, ‘to
you,’ in SBLGNT and NA28. The noun carries the article in the principal
Greek forms, so ‘a way’ is an interpretive English choice rather than a
necessary absence of the definite article.
The Authorized Version presents Acts 16:17 as “which show unto us the
way of salvation.” In the competing textual or editorial form, the line
is “who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
The variation at Acts 16:17 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.
Read in place, Acts 16:17 stands beside stable narrative statements:
Acts 16:16 says, “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain
damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her
masters much gain by soothsaying.” Acts 16:18 says, “And this did she
many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I
command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came
out ….”
Retain ‘unto us the way,’ which reports the slave girl placing
herself among the audience she addresses.
Sources and further reading
- The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 16:17.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894),
Acts 16:17. - Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL
Edition, Acts 16:17 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-2267
- 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 16:17 — “Which Show unto Us the Way of Salvation”: Us or You, the Way or a Way?,” VAR-2267, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.2-na29-complete.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas