Early Textual Scholarship on Acts: Observations from the Euthalian Quotation Lists

Abstract

This article examines two aspects of the ubiquitous, but oft-overlooked, set of paratexts known as the Euthalian Apparatus. The Euthalian apparatus supplements Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the Catholic Epistles in a variety of manuscripts, framing these works with prefaces, cross-references, lists of various kinds, and biographic texts relating to Paul. To begin to understand this variable system as a work of late-ancient textual scholarship, transmitted in hundreds of medieval manuscripts, I examine the two quotation lists provided for Acts, focusing on their various presentations in the manuscripts, using GA 1162 as an example. Examining these lists enables us to better understand the reception of Acts’ use of Jewish scripture, Acts’ reception in late-ancient scholastic contexts, the transmission of quotations, and the complexity involved in defining the boundaries of canonical ideologies.

1. Introduction

In 1889, Henri Omont, a thirty-two-year-old librarian and philologist trudging away at the catalogues of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, published a short essay on an early copy of the Pauline letters, now known as GA 015, Codex H, or Codex Coislinianus.1 The majority of Omont’s Notice sur un très ancien manuscript grec en onciales des Épîtres de saint Paul (Omont 1889) is devoted to an edition of the manuscript, parts which are still today spread across institutions in Paris, Turin, Moscow, Kyiv, St Petersburg, and the library of the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, the place where it was disassembled and re-used as binding material and fly leaves. Omont’s edition is a manual facsimile, reproducing the lineation, spacing, script, and some paratexts of the manuscript, based on his in-person inspection of the leaves in Paris, the few existing facsimile images, and older transcriptions. Omont’s work created a surge of interest in Codex H. But it also set off a flurry of studies on the broader tradition of which it is the earliest witness—the Euthalian apparatus. Intense critical attention to the constellation of features that comprise the Euthalian tradition—the Euthaliana—endured, more or less, until the First World War. Research on this material is now experiencing a resurgence in recent scholarship.

For nearly a century, scholars largely set the Euthalian apparatus to one side, ignoring its complex series of text divisions, tables, prologues, and subscriptions to Acts and the Pauline and Catholic Letters. There are many reasons for the critical neglect of a system that affects so many of the New Testament’s works and that is so widely transmitted in the manuscripts.2 Günther Zuntz (1945, p. 84), for one, found aspects of the Euthaliana to be too boring. “I cherish no allusions with regard to the dullness of the analysis just completed,” he states after describing the system’s multilayered textual segmentation into “readings” (ἀναγνώσεις), “chapters” (κεφάλαια), and “lines” (στίχοι) found in its lection lists (see below). Other possible factors are legion: the quantity of its features, their varied deployment and the peregrinations of the individual items in the manuscripts, significant uncertainty about the origins of the tradition and their connection to someone called Euthalius,3 the unclear literary relationships between its texts and other patristic sources, and the lack of any real editorial engagement with the system since Zacagni’s 1698 edition.4 Not to mention the fact that the work of Eusebius on the gospels and Origen on the Hexapla overshadowed the Euthaliana in the imagination of modern scholarship. Lang and Crawford (2017, p. 127) have even called the Eusebian canons the “pinnacle of ancient Christian innovation” in terms of the technology of textual division and cross-reference (see also Crawford 2019; Wallraff 2021).

The likes of Zuntz (1945) notwithstanding,5 scholars have, until recently, engaged the Euthalian apparatus and its manuscripts only tangentially since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. This discussion on the quotation lists of Acts is part of a broader, recent critical resurgence in interests in the Euthalina, headlined by the Nils Dahl’s lengthy programmatic article (Dahl 2000), the publication of Louis Charles Willard’s 1970 PhD thesis (Willard 2009), and the translation and analysis of significant portions of the system by Vemund Blomkvist (2012), picking up the threads from a discourse going back over a century (see also Scherbenske 2013, pp. 116–74; Fewster 2019, pp. 155–79).

These recent studies have demonstrated that the Euthaliana are important for multiple critical questions central to biblical scholarship, early Christian studies, and the intellectual world of late antiquity. The complexity of the Euthaliana, their various representations of textual knowledge, and intricate cross-references make the material relevant for multiple critical questions. The possibilities are numerous, but I will focus here on questions relating to canonicity,6 ancient literary interrelationships and the transmission of quotations, and the reception of the New Testament within its own paratextual systems. In essence, this study explores one of the earliest forms of the textual scholarship on the New Testament and how these late-ancient intellectual achievements are mediated to us through medieval manuscripts. The possibilities for further research on the Euthaliana are significant, especially since we now have access to digital images of nearly all the known manuscripts that preserve its features.7 What I want to do in this discussion is preliminarily explore one specific Euthalian paratext, the quotation lists to Acts, as an example of the critical value of the larger tradition for biblical and textual scholarship. But first we must locate the quotation lists in the broader context of the Euthaliana.

2. Constellations of Euthalian Paratexts

To begin, we need to problematize the idea of the Euthalian apparatus as a well-defined and unchanging set of features.8 The collocation “Euthalian Apparatus” is both useful shorthand and a serious misnomer for three reasons: first, because it is unclear to what extent the material associated with the apparatus can be traced to someone called Euthalius or to the work of any single individual (most manuscripts are anonymous); second, because the contents and arrangement of the apparatus change from manuscript to manuscript; and, third, because the most common feature of the system—the hypotheses for each individual letter also associated with the pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis scripturae sacrae (CPG 2249)—are probably not traceable to the earliest layers of the system.9 Additionally, the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century discourse on the origins of the system failed to reach consensus, leaving the system without a clear sense of its production context. Therefore, instead of speaking about the Euthalian apparatus, it is better to discuss the Euthaliana, a variable collection of paratextual features that shape interpretive encounters with Acts and the Epistles. In part because Zacagni’s seventeenth-century edition remains the main locus of engagement with the Euthaliana, we are primed to think of these features as stable and consistent, but this view is undermined when we turn to the manuscripts.

The opaque origins of the system and other complexities notwithstanding, its overarching structure in its fullest form, at least as laid out by Zacagni, is not difficult to follow, even if his efforts to regularize the system actually betray its variability. The Euthaliana are organized around three New Testament sub-corpora: Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and the Pauline Epistles. In its fullest instantiations, represented by the edition and a handful of manuscripts,10 each sub-corpus is accompanied by six major features:

• A prologue introducing each sub-corpus (usually denoted as a πρόλογος).11
• Prefaces for each individual work in the corpus (usually denoted as a ὑπόθεσις). For Acts, the preface is mostly comprised of a list of miracles and disciples.12
• A text segmentation list or lection list that divides each corpus into “readings” (ἀναγνώσεις), “chapters” (κεφάλαια), and “lines” (στίχοι) (usually with a short preface entitled ἀνακεφαλαίωσις τῶν ἀναγνώσεων (“summary of the readings”).13 The Acts list also includes the incipit of the biblical text that inaugurates each ἀνάγνωσις. This list is presupposed by the quotation lists.
• A short quotation list, entitled ἀνακεφαλαίωσις θείων μαρτυριῶν (“summary of the divine witnesses”; sometimes with a preface, entitled πρόγραμμα).14
• A longer version of the quotation list, also entitled ἀνακεφαλαίωσις θείων μαρτυριῶν (“summary of divine witnesses”).
• A list of chapter numbers, sub-headings, and their titles (called κεφάλαια). The list in Acts is sometimes prefaced with a text entitled ἔκθεσις κεφαλαίων (“list of chapter”), in which the compiler of the list notes his lowly state, identifies anonymous “fathers and teachers” from whom he has borrowed, and says that the chapter divisions are in black ink and their sub-chapters in red.15 This list in Acts is also sometimes followed by an additional list of chapter numbers that gives the incipit for the text that inaugurates each new chapter,16 sometimes as an integral part of the chapter list.

In addition to these six items that appear in each of the three sub-corpora in some form, other short literary texts and lists often appear as aspects of the apparatus, usually dealing with Paul’s life, travels, or works. These items include a text on Paul’s travels called the ἀποδημίαι παύλου (“travels of Paul”; often associated with Acts), the text on the Athens altar (Acts 17:23) called ἐπίγραμμα τοῦ ἐν ἀθήναις βωμοῦ (“inscription on the Athens altar”), another text on Paul’s journey to Rome (πλοῦς παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου ἐπὶ ῥώμην; “Paul the apostle’s sailing to Rome”), a text on Paul’s martyrdom (μαρτύριον παῦλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου; “martyrdom of Paul the apostle”), a list of Paul’s letters (starting with the phrase τάδε ἔνεστιν παύλου ἐπιστολαί), lists that identify the cities from which Paul wrote and the letters he wrote with co-workers, and another text on Paul’s writings that gives an answer to the question posed in its title (διὰ τί παύλου ἐπιστολαὶ δεκατέσσαρες λέγονται). Some manuscripts also preserve a colophon that connects the tradition to the work of Pamphilus in the library of Caesarea (e.g., GA 015 88). Stichometric notes are often appended to the different items.17

The Euthaliana are complex constellations, especially when we consider these items are deployed in various combinations, at various locations in relation to the New Testament works, at various production layers of particular manuscripts, and that the sub-corpora in any given manuscript can be treated in discontinuous ways.18 These items are also often encumbered with commentary texts or catenae (e.g., 91, 1162, 1905, 1924, 1933, 1934, 1970, and 1981)19 and integrated with Apostolos liturgical information (e.g., GA 24).20 The quotation lists are part of a larger paratextual ecosystem that revolves around the characters and authorial personae who appear in Acts and the Epistles, especially Paul. They represent perceptions of the text’s segmentation, narrative, and relationship to other ancient texts in a different visual form: the list.

Despite the close relationship of the quotation lists to the other parts of the apparatus, they stand apart from the other features in terms of function, insofar as they describe explicit and implicit intertextual relationships between the New Testament text and other ancient literatures. Unlike the prologue, prefaces, chapter lists, and segmentation systems, which function as forms of paraphrase or abstraction, the quotation lists go beyond simple summarization or textual representation, instead describing and systematizing perceived textual relationships between the New Testament and other texts. The quotation lists are integrated with these other paratexts in multiple ways, but they function differently by connecting the text to Jewish scriptural traditions, early Christian works, and other ancient authors, pushing readers beyond the bounds of Acts and the Epistles. The lists create a discourse between the texts of these works and the larger literary world of late antiquity, offering a window into the material and intellectual aspects of reading in the medieval and late-ancient eastern Mediterranean, perhaps even information on the library of Caesarea and other subsequent contexts that transmitted the lists.21

3. The Short Quotation List

The short and long quotation lists in Acts are largely representative of the traditions in the Pauline and Catholic Letters, even if they are transmitted only rarely in comparison to the letter collections. It is best to consider examples directly from manuscripts. In this case, take GA 1162 (Patmos, St John the Theologian Monastery, 15, diktyon 54259).22 Produced in the eleventh century, this copy of Acts and the Catholic and Pauline letters in two columns, complete with catena added by a later hand (CPG C156) (see Parpulov 2021, p. 174), preserves both the short and long quotation list to Acts. The short list starts in the first column on 3v (

Table 1. The short quotation list to Acts in GA 1162.

Transcription

Translation

+ ανακεφαλαιωσις θειων μαρ- τυριων ων εχειν βιβλος των πραξεων των αποστολων. εχει δε μαρτυριας. λα +. γενεσεως γ . η ι ια εξοδου ϛ24 . ζ ιβ ιγ ιδ ιε κθ25 δευτερονομιου α . ιε βασιλειων πρωτης α . κ ψαλτηριου ζ . β δ ε ϛ θ ιζ κβ αμως προφητ(ου) β . ιϛ κϛ26 ιωηλ προφητου α . γ αγγαιου προφητ(ου) α . ιη ησαιου προφητ(ου) δ . ιθ κγ κε λ27 ματθ(αιου) ευαγγελιστ(ου) β . α κα διαταξεων α. κη28 αρατου αστρονομου α . κζ29 30αμβακουμ προφητ(ου) α . κδ31 ομου μαρτυριαι λα . στιχοι ρκ

Summary of the divine testimonies which the book of the Acts of the Apostles have; and there are 31 testimonies. Genesis III: 8, 10, 11 Exodus VI: 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 29 Deuteronomy I: 15 1 Kingdoms I: 20 Psalter VII: 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 17, 22 Amos the Prophet II: 16, 26 Joel the Prophet I: 3 Haggai the Prophet I: 18 Isaiah the prophet IV: 19, 23, 25, 30 Matthew the Evangelist II: 1, 21 (Apostolic) Constitutions I: 28 Aratus the Astronomer I: 27 Habakkuk the Prophet I: 24 Together 31 witnesses, 120 lines

).23

The list arranges the 31 witnesses to the 30 quotations in Acts following an order that breaks up the sequence of quotations in Acts’ narrative, beginning with the Greek serial arrangement of Jewish scripture (Septuagint), followed by the New Testament (in this case, only Matthew), “apostolic writings” (the διατάξεις, referring to the διατάξεις τῶν ἁγίων ἀποστόλων or Apostolic Constitutions, CPG 1730), and ancient Greek literature (Aratus). Habakkuk is placed last, probably because it was accidentally omitted earlier in the list, where it is usually placed between Haggai and Isaiah.

The title for each work is followed by a numeral that denotes the number of times the work is cited in Acts, followed by an enumeration of where each quotation occurs in relation to the others in the narrative of Acts (added by a second hand in the case of GA 1162), starting from the quotation of Matt 3:11 (entry 1; Acts 1:5) through to the final lengthy quotation of Isa 6:9–10 in Acts 28:26–27 (entry 30). For example, according to the list, Haggai is quoted once, amid a string of quotations in Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:49–50), and that quotation is the eighteenth from the beginning of the work. The only problem in the case of the Haggai quotation is that it is clearly a version of the text in Isa 66:1–2 and has no obvious resemblance to any tradition of Haggai.32

Another problem with the short list, which the manuscripts resolve in multiple ways (see Willard 2009, p. 37) is the fact that the terse prologue to the list and the summary statement both say that Acts has thirty-one quotations (λα), even though the numeration of the quotations only goes as high as thirty (λ). This discrepancy can be traced to the string of quotations in Stephen’s speech, especially entry 15 (ιε), which is counted twice because it is attributed in the short list to both Exodus and Deuteronomy.33 This quotation, entry 15 in the short list, is usually identified as occurring in what we now know as Acts 7:40, the text of which corresponds quite closely to Exod 32:1^OG. Confusion between Deuteronomy and Exodus exists in the text in other places too, such as entry 7 (Acts 3:22–23), which is attributed to Exodus in the list, but which corresponds more closely with a combination of Deut 18:15–16, 19 and Lev 23:29 (see Barrett 1988, p. 238; Porter 2018, pp. 83–86). Part of Deut 18:15 is quoted again at Acts 7:37, just before its purported location at 7:40 (entry 15), but this quotation (the one at Acts 7:37) is not catalogued in the Euthalian lists, even though it is prefaced with a clear quotation formula that mentions Moses (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Μωϋσῆς ὁ εἴπας τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραήλ). Something has gone awry in the composition or transmission of the list (or in the changing conception of what constitutes a “divine witness”) in Stephen’s speech, but the fact that a quotation to Deuteronomy immediately precedes the misattributed quotation in Acts 7:40 may account for at least part of the confusion.

Other textual issues may also be at play. It is not clear which textual forms of Exodus and Deuteronomy the compiler had access to, nor is it clear which form of Acts lay before them; there is no guarantee that the compiler had access to the Greek texts of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Acts as we find them in our critical editions. And it is not clear what the relationship between the text of Acts in GA 1162 shared with the version of Acts initially used to design this system. It is possible that the compiler had access to a Greek version of Exodus that reflects the expanded reading of the Samaritan Pentateuch at Exod 20:21, a version that might lead one to attribute the quotation in Acts 3:22–23 (entry 7) to Exodus.34 The textual pluriformity of Jewish scriptural traditions in late antiquity, a phenomenon demonstrated by another Caesarean project—the Hexapla—makes the identity of sources more complex, a reality obscured by our reliance on critical editions.35 Nils Dahl even argues that the issues around these two Deuteronomy/Exodus quotations in Acts presuppose that the compiler had access to the Hexapla (Dahl 2000, p. 249). The problems here demonstrate the complexity of the short quotation list and its tradition. As it stands in GA 1162, there are a total of 31 entries, but only 30 quotations, with multiple possible misattributions and omissions of other texts that may be considered quotations in Acts (e.g., 7:37). The short list is perhaps the earliest material instantiation of Acts’ intertextual network, but it leaves significant space for scholars to continue to study these textual and paratextual intricacies.

The arrangement of the quotations against a serialized hierarchical list, beginning with Genesis and ending with ancient Greek authors, is also an important aspect of the short list. This form of presentation creates an abstraction that maps Acts’ references (as the compiler saw them anyway) against an existing arrangement of literary works that reflects ideas about the order and boundaries of canon. The text of Acts is systemized within a wider literary landscape that starts with Jewish scripture, moves to the New Testament, other early Christian literature, and then beyond to “pagan” authors. Because the list abstracts Acts’ quotations from the narrative and reconfigures them against this pre-existing order, we learn only very little about the quotations themselves, only the number of times a work is quoted. Nothing is proffered about the location of these quotations, the relationship between the source and target text, where the quotation may be found in, say, the very long work of Isaiah, or any other information that might help us to understand the significance of these literary relationships. Only if we read Acts front to back and can properly identify each quotation are we able to locate these references within the larger narrative. So it does help us to way-find through the texture of Acts’ quotations when reading it in a linear way. But the list on its own does little to help us navigate the textual details of the relationships it represents; instead it is a terse map for locating Acts in a larger scriptural and literary tradition, reinforcing canonical ideologies on the order and selection of Jewish scriptural works (limited of course by the presence of this material within Acts) and undermining them by attributing to the author of Acts the agency to quote works from other New Testament works, from other early writings (Apostolic Constitutions), and works no modern scholar of early Christianity would consider scriptural (Aratus).36

If we want more information on where a particular quotation occurs, for example the supposed quotation of Haggai (entry 18), we have access to two further resources in this manuscript. The first is the text segmentation or lection list, which divides the text of acts into “readings,” “chapters,” and “lines” (see above). We can flip back to 2v–3r, where we learn that the quotation attributed to Haggai occurs in the sixth αναγνωσις, which begins with the words ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις κτλ (Acts 6:1). We can at least locate the incipit of the larger section in which the quotation occurs and see that there are nine quotations in this section. From this list, we can also divine that our quotation probably appears near the end of the reading since it is the last in the nine quotations listed here and, if we wished, we could count the stichoi from the incipit to the end of the segment to define the boundaries of the reading in which the quotation might stand.37 We could also just find the incipit of reading 7 and work backward to the next obvious quotation. Luckily, the quotations are also marked in the margins of most manuscripts that contain these lists (and many others that do not). This is the case in GA 1162, where a note in the left margin reads ιη αγγαιου (18 Haggai), corresponding to the information on this entry in the short list, and the text of the quotation is marked with diplai.

Recourse to the text segmentation list, which coordinates the numerations in the short quotation list with textual divisions in descending order of length, offers some further aid in working out the location and significance of the quotations in Acts. At the very least, reading the lection list and short quotation list side by side gives us a deeper understanding of one possible configuration of Acts’ structure and the parts of the work that tend to include more quotations.38 (Zacagni 1698) But it does not, however, help us to identify the precise location of the source text within the narrative of Haggai or whatever the source text is for any one of these citations. The segmentation list is an enumerative summary of Acts’ narrative and the texture of its quotations, but it is ineffective on its own when it comes to locating particular texts, suggesting that it was created with a different function in mind, perhaps as an aesthetic representation of Acts’ narrative akin to data visualization. When used in coordination with the two quotation lists and one of Acts’ kephalaia tables, it may be more technically useful, but its primary purpose is to present a numerical representation of the underlying structure of Acts’ literary narrative.

4. The Long Quotation List

The other substantial Euthalian paratext that helps us to interpret the significance of the short quotation list is the long quotation list, located directly after the short list in GA 1162 (3v–4v;

Table 2. The long quotation list to Acts in GA 1162 (3v–4v).

Number	Source Text (Chapter and Verse)	Incipit of Quotation	Location in Acts According to Modern Chapter/Verse Locators
1	Matthew the Evangelist (3:11)	ιωαννης μεν εβαπτισεν…	1:5
2	Psalms 68 (v.26) and 108 (v.8)	γενηθητω η επαυλις αυτου ερημος…	1:20
3	Joel the Prophet (3:1–5OG)	και εσται μετα ταυτα…	2:17–21
4	Psalm 15 (vv. 8–11)	προορωμην τον κ(υριο)ν ενωπιον…	2:25–28
5	Psalm 132OG (v. 11)	…τον θρονον αυτου40	2:30b
6	Psalm 109 (v. 1)	ειπεν ο κ(υριο)ς τω κ(υρι)ω…	2:34–35
7	Exodus (cf. Deut 18:15–16, 19 and Lev 23:29)	προφητην υμιν αναστησει κ(υριο)ς	3:22–23
8	Genesis (22:18)	και εν τω σπερματι σου εν…	3:25
9	Psalm 2 (vv. 1–2)	ινατι εφρυαξαν εθνη και…	4:25–26
10	Genesis (12:1)	εξελθε εκ της γης σου και…	7:3
11	Genesis (15:13)	οτι εσται το σπερμα αυτου…	7:6–7
12	Exodus (2:14)	τις σε κατεστησεν αρχοντα…	7:27–28
13	Exodus (3:6)	εγω ο θ(εο)ς των π(ατρ)ρων…	7:32
14	Exodus (parts of 3:5, 7–10)	λυσον το υποδημα των ποδων…	7:33–34
15	Exodus (32:1)	ποιησον ημιν θεους…	7:40
16	Amos (5:25–26)	μη σφαγια και θυσιας…	7:42–43
17	Psalm 131 (v. 5)	ητησατο ευρειν…	7:46
18	Haggai (cf. Isa 66:1–2)	ο ου(ραν)ος μοι θρονος…	7:49–50
19	Isaiah (53:7–8)	ως προβατον επι σφαγην ηχθη…	8:32–33
20	1 Kingdoms (cf. Ps 88:21OG)	ευρον δα(υι)δ τον του ιεσσαι…	13:22
21	Matthew (3:11)	τι με υπονοειτε ειναι…	13:25
22	Psalm 2 (v. 7)	υιος μου ει συ, εγω σημερον…	13:32
23	Isaiah (55:3)	δωσω υμιν τα οσια δα(υι)δ…	13:34
24	Habakkuk (1:5)41	ιδετε οι κατατφρονηται και…	13:41
25	Isaiah (49:6)	…εως εσχατου της γης42	13:47
26	Amos (9:11–12)	μετα ταυτα αναστρεψω...	15:16–17
27	Aratus the Astronomer and Homer the Poet (Aratus, Phaen. 5)	του γαρ και γενος εσμεν	17:28
28	Apostolic Constitutions (4.3)	μακαριον εστιν μαλλον…	20:35
29	Exodus (22:27)	αρχτονα του λαου σου…	23:5
30	Isaiah (6:9–10)	πορευθητι προς τον λαον…	28:26–27

). The long list configures Acts’ quotations in sequential order of their appearance in the narrative instead of mapping them on an existing list of quoted works. Each entry begins by identifying the title of the quoted work (specific Psalms are further identified by their number in the Greek version of the Psalter), followed by the entire text of the quotation. This means that the length of entries ranges from the very long, such as entry 16 to Amos 5:25–26, quoted in Acts 15:16–17, to the minute, such as entry 28 to the Const. ap. 4.3 in Acts 20:35, a six-word saying that Paul attributes to Jesus.39

The relationship between the texts of quotations in the long list, the text of Acts, and the texts of the quoted sources is ripe for further investigation, but Zacagni’s edition and the text of the quotations in the long list in GA 1162 tend to follow Acts when the quoted text diverges from its purported the source traditions. In other words, the texts of the quotation list more closely follows the text of Acts, not the text of its purported sources.

For example, the first entry in GA 1162, the reference to Matt 3:11 in Acts 1:5, reads ματθ(αιου) ευαγγελιστου . Ιωαννης μεν εβασπιτσεν υδατι . υμεις δε βαπτισθησεσθε εν πν(ευματ)ι αγιω, a text that agrees in every detail with the version of the utterance as it appears in the main text of Acts at the bottom of the first column on 9r. The word order of the final clause in the quotation differs in a number of other witnesses and in the currently reconstructed Ausgangstext to Acts 1:5, and the text here differs from the Matthean utterance, which is presented as John’s first-person speech. Furthermore, the quotation is a selective composite of portions from the beginning and end of John’s discussion of Jesus’s coming baptism in Matt 3:11 (ἐγὼ μὲν ὑμᾶς βαπτίζω ἐν ὕδατι…αὐτὸς ὑμᾶς βαπτίσει ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ πυρί). The middle portion of Matt 3:11—John’s pontificating on his unworthiness to loosen the straps on Jesus’s sandals—is noted in quotation 21 (Acts 13:25). In this case, the text of quotation 1 in the long list corresponds to its representation in Acts, not the source tradition.

Other entries in the long list tend to follow the text of Acts as well, such as quotation 13 (ιγ), a short quotation in Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:32a) that references Exod 3:6. The entry in the list reads: εξοδου εγω ο θ(εο)ς των π(ατ)ρων σου θ(εο)ς αβρααμ και θ(εο)ς ισαακ και θ(εο)ς ιακωβ. The text of the quotation in Acts in GA 1162 is identical, except that the article ὁ is added before the three final instances of θεος. The text of Exod 3:6^OG also omits the articles, in agreement with the quotation in the list, and strands of Exodus’ Greek tradition preserve the plural των πατρων, against the singular του πατρου printed in the main text of Wevers’s edition. In this instance, there are differences between the text of the list, the text in Acts, and the text of Exodus. The quoted text in the list and its relationship to the textual history of Acts, the text of Acts in the particular manuscript in which it occurs, and the complicated textual traditions of the sources that Acts cites is a question that has not yet received significant attention. There is more to be said about the texts of the quotations in the lists as witnesses to the text of Acts and as witnesses to the texts of the sources of the quotations.

More generally, the information in the long list in GA 1162 coheres entirely with the representation of the quotations in the short list, with a few minor exceptions and anomalies.43 The first difference solves a potential issue with the short list: Deuteronomy is not mentioned in quotation 15. This relationship between the lists enables the short list to maintain thirty-one entries (a number mentioned in both its prologue and subscription) and enables the long list to silently correct the issue by referring only to Exodus at this point of Stephen’s speech. There is no way to get to thirty-one witnesses using the long list alone.

Another issue occurs in quotation 2 and highlights the potential problems associated with the accurate transmission of these complex paratexts. Entry 2 correctly notes that Acts 1:20 quotes portions of two separate Psalms. The quotation is a composite of Psalms 68 and 108, connected by the conjunction καί, and the numbers of both Psalms are given at the head of the entry.44 At least when it comes to the Psalter, the long list provides further information on the location of a quoted text by appealing to the Psalm number according to the Greek order. Interestingly, though, the scribe of GA 1162 likely misunderstood the combination here. Instead of writing the heading to the entry as ψαλμου ξη και ρη (Psalm 68 and 108), we read ψαλμου ξη κεφαλ(αια) ρη (Psalm 68 chapter 108). This reading is likely a simple oversight, influenced by confusion between the abbreviation for κεφάλαια and graphically similar και ligatures. Or perhaps it could be due to the ubiquitous use of the term κεφάλαια throughout the apparatus, especially the text segmentation list, which enumerates the “chapters” and quotations found in a particular “reading”. Regardless, this lapse demonstrates the high level of scribal skill, technical accuracy, and effort required to transmit the Euthaliana. It is a testament both to the high-level scribal performance and to the enduring importance of the Euthaliana that the system remains, for the most part, highly intelligible in its many hundreds of witnesses, including GA 1162. Now that most of the manuscript images are available to researchers, more effort could be focused on the transmission of these complex features from late antiquity, through the medieval period, and into the world of print.

The final issue the long list illuminates in conversation with the short list is found in the labelling of quotation 27. The short list simply attributes it to Aratus the Astronomer (αρατου αστρονομου), while the long list adds Homer the Poet (αρατου αστρονομου και ομηρου ποιητου). There is no obvious Homeric text that might serve as the source of this quotation, but the tradition of this quotation is highly interesting. In the encomium to Zeus that opens his Phaenomena, Aratus notes that humans never leave Zeus unnamed, that streets and marketplaces are full of him, and that humans always have need of Zeus, “for we are also his offspring” (5, τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν). The Aratus text is identical to the quotation in Acts except for the use of the more archaic form εἰμέν as opposed to the Lukan ἐσμέν. But the wording of Luke’s quotation in Acts 17:28 finds an exact parallel in the Jewish historian Aristobulus, who quotes Aratus’ introduction at length in fragment 4, exchanging the name Zeus for God (θεός).45 It is not clear if Luke (or the complier of the list that initially attributed this quotation) had direct access to Aratus or whether access was mediated by another source such as Aristobulus. In any case, the identification of two ancient poets as the source for this quotation in the long list, as opposed to Aratus alone in the short list, accounts for the use of the plural ποιητῶν in the quotation marker in Acts 17:28, which attributes the saying to multiple unnamed poets. There is significantly more to say about the fringe, “non-biblical” elements in these lists and what they reveal about the greater literary context of late-ancient interpretation.

These small inconsistencies aside, the short and long quotation lists in GA 1162 retain a high level of symmetry, complementing one another for differing tasks. The short list maps a version of the external references in Acts against a perceived hierarchical arrangement of canonical and non-canonical works, while the long list maps the same data according to the serialization of Acts’ narrative. The short list is a terse representation of knowledge about the quotations and the scope of Acts’ literary engagement, while the long list enables cross referencing and identification of the boundaries of quotations by comparing the text of the quotation and the text of Acts as it appears in the manuscript. Cross-referencing and systematization are further supported by in-text marginal notations and diplai that note the source of the quotation and demarcate its text. This is the case in GA 1162 and many other manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles and Praxapostolos, even those that do note preserve any corresponding lists.

5. Conclusions

What then is the value of these lists? This very brief overview signals that the lists are important for understanding Acts and its reception for multiple reasons. First, they offer a summative overview of literature that the compiler felt Luke engaged with, offering an overlooked view into late-ancient perceptions of early Christian literary culture. Although the precise location of each quotation in Acts is not clearly defined in the list, we are able to see where most of the scriptural references in Acts occur. Most are clustered around the three speeches of Peter (2:15–36), Stephen (7:1–53), and Paul at the synagogue in Pisdian Antioch (13:16–41). The lists offer a snapshot of the intertextual tapestry that comprises the narrative.

The long list in particular further enlightens our understanding of Acts because it functions as another possible text-critical witness and because it shows the textual complexity of late-ancient biblical traditions. The same holds true for the long lists of the Pauline and Catholic Epistles. Although Zacagni’s edition and our sampling of GA 1162 suggest that the texts of the quotations are usually taken directly from Acts instead of from the sources it cites, the relationship between the complex textual traditions of Acts, Jewish scripture in antiquity, and the text of the quotations in the long list remains to be substantially interrogated. When we start to unpick these nuances, we can crack open a door into the processes and avenues by which ancient textual scholars, scribes, and readers work together to enliven, interpret, and transmit sacred traditions. The long list offers another data point on the intricate détente between transmission and interpretation, a relationship that is largely unexplored and impeded by the fact that the manuscript traditions of these works represent only a fraction of the realities of their transmission. There is much more to be said about the Euthaliana, their transmission, relationship to one another, and relationship to the texts with which they engage.

Additionally, the lists also inform the ongoing discussion around the transmission of quotations in Christian literature and testimonia, excerpted collections of quotations from Jewish scripture used in literary polemic. It is possible that these lists reflect or inform such traditions. The classic case for the ubiquity of testimonia was articulated by Harris (1916/1920), who argued that a unified and widely available Testimony Book existed in Christian circles before most of the New Testament works were composed. According to Harris, it contained a stereotyped list of quotations and composite quotations from Jewish scripture, which were used by Christian authors to polemical ends, first against Jewish opponents and later against Muslim rivals, morphing eventually into a “handbook of Christian doctrine” (Harris 1916/1920, p. 1.100).46 Although I am not convinced that New Testament authors made use of a Testimony Book in this way or that such an artefact existed (see Allen 2015), it is clear that the Euthalian quotation lists are part of a larger, more ethereal tradition of the systemic arrangement of quoted works. It is possible that the compiler(s) of these lists used antecedent traditions to compose them, but it is not clear to what extent they relied on these sources and in what medium they would have encountered them. And interreligious polemics are not the only use to which the information in the lists may be put; in fact, I see the lists primarily as “scholarly” tools for engaging, interpreting, and systematizing scriptural traditions. The lists appear to have functioned as a locus for further analysis of the textual relationships they represent, aiding commentators on either Old or New Testament books by offering shortcuts for examining the significance of instances of scriptural reuse in the New Testament for theological or other purposes. More work needs to be done to locate traces of these lists in late-ancient commentary literature and catena traditions to see what (if any) effect the lists had on extant interpretations.

Finally, the quotation lists give a glimpse into perceptions of canon and the boundaries of canonical ideologies in late antiquity, perspectives that continued to pervade reading communities as the Euthaliana were transmitted. The composition of the lists problematizes modern views of ancient perspectives on canonicity. Writing in 1904, Theodor Zahn found the inclusion of non-canonical material in the lists confusing, arguing that the non-canonical material must have been inserted into the lists at a later stage (Zahn 1904, p. 388).47 How can Aratus the Astronomer or the Apocryphon of Moses (μωϋσέως ἀποκρύφου, quotation 11 at Gal 6:15) be considered “divine witnesses” (θείαι μαρτυρίαι)?

The problem with Zahn’s approach is two-fold: it does not follow that someone adding in non-canonical material later would have necessarily had a more fluid view of a what a “divine witness” was, and the manuscripts are unanimous on preserving 30 or 31 quotations in Acts. The manuscripts are consistent, for example, in including Aratus. Essentially, Zahn allows his views of the canon and what it must mean for intellectual engagement with the New Testament in late antiquity to override his observations on the lists, which simultaneously uphold a hierarchy of textual authority and undermine the firm boundaries that some wish to maintain. While the short list is arranged to correspond to existing ideas of the serial arrangement of scriptural works in a larger corpus, both lists also problematize any kind of absolutism by responding to cues in the text that reach beyond modern conceptions of what might constitute “divine witnesses”. Incorporating the quotation lists into more recent conversations around canon, which are increasingly taking the paratextual aspects of manuscripts into account, offers new avenues to explore the “continuing elasticity of the NT canon” (Rodenbiker 2021, p. 252). In the end, much remains to be explored among the many instantiations of the Euthaliana. But I think we can rest assured that the compiler of these lists has at least as flexible a view of scripture and as wide a sense of literary referentiality as the authors of the New Testament themselves.