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
This long unit contains several small differences and two conspicuous shortenings: ‘gladly’ is absent from the critical form, and ‘to the church’ becomes ‘together’ or ‘to their number.’ Repentance, baptism in Jesus Christ’s name, the gift of the Holy Ghost, apostolic doctrine, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers remain common ground.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
they that gladly received his word … the Lord added to the church daily
Authorized Version
“Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? … Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. … Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” — Acts 2:37–47
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
those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number
Translation or explanation
those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number
Metzger’s report of the UBS committee
Metzger reports the UBS4 committee's treatment of 7 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 of scribal or liturgical expansion, the comparative difficulty of the readings; the printed confidence ratings represented here are {B}, {C}, {D}. 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 2:37, 2:38, 2:38, 2:42, 2:43, 2:44, 2:44
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
Repentance, baptism in Jesus Christ’s name, the gift of the Holy Ghost, apostolic doctrine, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers remain common ground.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Acts 2:37–47, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. Passage: Acts 2:37–47 Received reading: they that gladly received his word … the Lord added to the church daily Principal competing reading: those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number Issue class: Clustered Variant Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. This long unit contains several small differences and two conspicuous shortenings: ‘gladly’ is absent from the critical form, and ‘to the church’ becomes ‘together’ or ‘to their number.’
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Acts 2:37–47 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: Repentance, baptism in Jesus Christ’s name, the gift of the Holy Ghost, apostolic doctrine, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers remain common ground.
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 2:37–47. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894), Acts 2:37–47.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
A source-level internal and transcriptional synopsis remains open; consult the full essay.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
Passage: Acts 2:37–47 Received reading: they that gladly received his word … the Lord added to the church daily Principal competing reading: those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number Issue class: Clustered Variant Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” This long unit contains several small differences and two conspicuous shortenings: ‘gladly’ is absent from the critical form, and ‘to the church’ becomes ‘together’ or ‘to their number.’
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Acts 2:37–47. It supplies the confessional context in which manuscript transmission, broad reception, and the church's actual possession of Scripture are evaluated together.
Canonical coherence with the rest of Scripture
Canonical coherence remains an explicit test: a proposed reading must make grammatical and theological sense within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. No conflict is asserted merely because two editions differ; the claimed incoherence must be demonstrated at this passage.
Canonical-coherence verdict
The Authorized Version is retained where its representation of the TR forms a coherent reading within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. Any competing form must demonstrate an equal or better canonical fit rather than merely invoke an edition or method label.
Response to the principal critical argument
Passage: Acts 2:37–47 Received reading: they that gladly received his word … the Lord added to the church daily Principal competing reading: those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number Issue class: Clustered Variant Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. This long unit contains several small differences and two conspicuous shortenings: ‘gladly’ is absent from the critical form, and ‘to the church’ becomes ‘together’ or ‘to their number.’
Conclusion
Because Acts 2:37–47 contains more than one subreading, the unit cannot be reduced to a single longer-versus-shorter slogan: each change belongs to its own clause, and a conclusion about one cannot simply be transferred to the whole paragraph.
The received close identifies the growing body as the church and should be preserved without overstating the lesser variations in the paragraph.
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Acts 2:37–47
Received reading: they that gladly received his word … the Lord added to the church daily
Principal competing reading: those who received his word … the Lord added daily to their number
Issue class: Clustered Variant
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
“Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said
unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall
we do? … Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. … Praising God, and having favour
with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as
should be saved.” — Acts 2:37–47
Acts 2:37–47 is best examined by separating the shared narrative from
the focal reading.
This long unit contains several small differences and two conspicuous
shortenings: ‘gladly’ is absent from the critical form, and ‘to the
church’ becomes ‘together’ or ‘to their number.’ Repentance, baptism in
Jesus Christ’s name, the gift of the Holy Ghost, apostolic doctrine,
fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers remain common ground.
Scrivener’s received text underlies the reading “they that gladly
received his word … the Lord added to the church daily.” The principal
competing form is “those who received his word … the Lord added daily to
their number.”
Because Acts 2:37–47 contains more than one subreading, the unit
cannot be reduced to a single longer-versus-shorter slogan: each change
belongs to its own clause, and a conclusion about one cannot simply be
transferred to the whole paragraph.
The received close identifies the growing body as the church and
should be preserved without overstating the lesser variations in the
paragraph.
Sources and further reading
- The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 2:37–47.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894),
Acts 2:37–47. - Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL
Edition, Acts 2:37–47 and apparatus. - Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New
Testament, discussion at Acts 2:37–47.
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-2211
- 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 2:37–47 — Repentance, Baptism, Fellowship, and Those Added to the Church,” VAR-2211, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas