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 7:38
Issue
The description of the oracles as living and the vision of Jesus standing are shared.
Variant class
Substitution or composite variation
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
living oracles … Jesus standing on the right hand of God
Authorized Version
“This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” — Acts 7:38, 55–56
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
living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand
Translation or explanation
living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand
Metzger / UBS committee
Metzger reports the UBS4 committee's treatment of the variation unit. The note grounds the relevant decision in the weight and distribution of external attestation, authorial usage, grammar, or immediate context; the printed confidence rating represented here is {B}. This is a controlled synopsis rather than a quotation.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., note on Acts 7:38
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 7:38, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. Passage: Acts 7:38, 55–56 Received reading: living oracles … Jesus standing on the right hand of God Principal competing reading: living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand Issue class: Agreement / Minor Variation Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. — Acts 7:38, 55–56 Agreement at Acts 7:38, 55–56 is not filler in a complete survey: it establishes that the focal claim remains available in both governing Greek controls and tests any allegation that modern editions weaken this particular passage; here they do not.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Acts 7:38 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 7:38, 55–56. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894), Acts 7:38, 55–56.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
A source-level internal and transcriptional synopsis remains open; consult the full essay.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
“This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Acts 7:38. 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 7:38, 55–56 Received reading: living oracles … Jesus standing on the right hand of God Principal competing reading: living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand Issue class: Agreement / Minor Variation Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. — Acts 7:38, 55–56 Agreement at Acts 7:38, 55–56 is not filler in a complete survey: it establishes that the focal claim remains available in both governing Greek controls and tests any allegation that modern editions weaken this particular passage; here they do not.
Conclusion
Agreement at Acts 7:38, 55–56 is not filler in a complete survey: it establishes that the focal claim remains available in both governing Greek controls and tests any allegation that modern editions weaken this particular passage; here they do not.
Use the passage as an agreement control for Stephen’s vision and the authority of the living oracles.
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Acts 7:38, 55–56
Received reading: living oracles … Jesus standing on the right hand of God
Principal competing reading: living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand
Issue class: Agreement / Minor Variation
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
The description of the oracles as living and the vision of Jesus
standing are shared. The chief difference in the selected lines is the
participle for the opened heavens; even Scrivener differs here from the
reconstructed Byzantine reading reported in the SBL apparatus.
For Acts 7:38, 55–56, the received side may be summarized as “living
oracles … Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” Its principal rival
is “living oracles … Jesus standing at God’s right hand.”
“This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel
which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received
the lively oracles to give unto us: But he, being full of the Holy
Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and
Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the
heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” —
Acts 7:38, 55–56
Agreement at Acts 7:38, 55–56 is not filler in a complete survey: it
establishes that the focal claim remains available in both governing
Greek controls and tests any allegation that modern editions weaken this
particular passage; here they do not.
Use the passage as an agreement control for Stephen’s vision and the
authority of the living oracles.
Sources and further reading
- The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Acts 7:38, 55–56.
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek
according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (1894),
Acts 7:38, 55–56. - Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL
Edition, Acts 7:38, 55–56 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-2230
- 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 7:38, 55–56 — Living Oracles and Jesus Standing at God’s Right Hand,” VAR-2230, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas