The Variant Readings of the Western Text of the Acts of the Apostles (XIII) 131 33vid. 88*. 206s. 221*. 452*. 628*. 808*. 1877*. 1892*. 2544* rell vgww syp.h sa bo aeth; Chr Thphlta. K. Aland35 sets out the eight forms in which this verse is found in the 64 MSS he consulted, all of them minuscules except for E08 (whose singular Greek form is due to its being a retroversion of its Latin text). The reading of Ireneus (Adv. Haer., III, 12.8) represents the text in its simplest form: Credo filium dei esse Iesum, as does the Greek fragment of the Catena of Ireneus: Πιστεύω τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν (cf. Adv. Haer., IV, 23.2). Irlat, together with itb.dem and vgmss, omit Χριστόν. Despite the weight of evidence against the reading, the witnesses that include it are a mixed collection without the usual profile of the WT readings. In summary, the dialogue between Philip and the eunuch is far from being an attempt to insert a confession of faith into the baptismal scene in order to make it conform with ecclesiastical practice, as many suppose. On the contrary, the scene needs to be pictured in its Jewish context, in which the regulations of the law had hitherto barred the eunuch from baptism and therefore entry into the People of God was forbidden him. Philip’s ‘good news’ is that it is faith in Jesus that is the new qualifica- tion, so the eunuch’s physical condition is no longer an impediment to baptism. He asks his question in v. 36 precisely with the aim of seeking out this information. 8:39 πνεῦμα κυρίου ἥρπασεν τὸν Φίλιππον B P45vid.74vid ) E rell ‖ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐπέπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸν εὐνοῦχον, ἄγγελος δὲ κυρ. ἥρπ. τ. Φίλ. A 36. 323. 453. 467. 876. 913. 945. 1739. 1765. 1891. 2298 pc l p w vgms syh** mae geo arm; Ephr Hier Aug Cass. The reading of B03 has echoes of the scene when Elijah was taken up: ‘It may be the Spirit of the Lord has caught him up (ἦρεν)’ (LXX 4Kgdms 2:16: cf. 3Kgdms 18:12). This may have been deliberate, or it may have been an error caused by a scribe accidentally jumping from πνεῦμα to κυρίου in the following clause. There could equally have been a theological reason for wanting to avoid the suggestion that the Holy Spirit could fall on someone without the presence of the apostles. According to M. Black, ‘the shorter text could … have arisen by scribal parablepsis ... The omission of the Holy Spirit clause is more readily explained than its insertion, for, as Menoud (‘The Western Text and the Theology of Acts’, SNTS Bulletin 2, [1951], pp. 19-32 [30]) has convincingly argued, 35 ‘Der neutestamentliche Text in der vorkonstantinischen Epoche’, PLÉROMA. Salus carnis. Homenaje a Antonio Orbe (E. Romero-Pose ed., Santiago de Compostela 1990), pp. 66-70.