Yesterday I blogged about the HCSB of Acts 17:26, and in particular the portion that reads something like “made of one ______”. The KJV reads “blood” which is one of the textual variants, while the HCSB says “man” which apparently does not occur in any of the ancient manuscripts.
Since I read these lectionary texts daily for two weeks, today I encountered it in a different version, this time the TNIV, surely not one that could be accused of supporting anything like “male representation”, and it also read “man” in this case.
I’m not at home right now, so just looking at the immediately available Bible versions, I see the following:
- REB reads “from one stock”
- NRSV reads “from one ancestor”
- CEV reads “from one person”
- ESV reads “from one man”
- TEV reads “from one human being”
- God’s Word (GW) reads “from one man”
- ISV reads “from one man”
I think that’s enough to see that most of the versions break where I would expect, with the exception of the TNIV. I wonder what their justification is here. It seems to me that since a number of ancient scribes appear to have provided options, but none thought of “man” here, it is unlikely that ancient readers would have understood this to refer specifically to the one man as human ancestor.
I’d be interested in comments on the reasoning behind the use of “man” in this verse.
