Passage

Acts 8.37

Book: Acts · NASB95

Immediate context (±2 verses)

KJV

35. Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. 36. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?

37. And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. 39. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. (Acts 8:35-39, KJV)

YLT

35. and Philip having opened his mouth, and having begun from this Writing, proclaimed good news to him, Jesus. 36. And as they were going on the way, they came upon a certain water, and the eunuch said, 'Lo, water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?'

37. [And Philip said, 'If thou dost believe out of all the heart, it is lawful;' and he answering said, 'I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God;']

and he commanded the chariot to stand still, and they both went down to the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him; 39. and when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he was going on his way rejoicing; (Acts 8:35-39, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Luke, narrating. Acts is the second volume of a two-part work addressed to Theophilus (Acts 1:1, compare Luke 1:1-4). In the KJV text, Philip and the eunuch speak.
Audience: Theophilus and the wider church.
Location: "The way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza" (8:26), the road southwest to the coast and on toward Egypt. Hautē estin erēmos, "the same is desert," may describe the road or the old city of Gaza; the Greek allows either.
Time period: c. AD 33-35, after the Samaritan mission (8:25). Acts was composed c. AD 62-90; the date is debated, and Colin Hemer (The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History) argued for the early 60s.

Theological reading

"And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." (Acts 8:37, KJV)

A verse missing from most translations. The ASV and WEB above move straight from verse 36 to verse 38; the YLT prints the verse in brackets; only the KJV gives it as text. The verse is absent from the major early manuscripts, including Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, and from P74. It appears in Codex Laudianus (E, sixth century) and in many later manuscripts and Latin witnesses.

Old, but added. Irenaeus quotes the eunuch's confession, "I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God" (Against Heresies 3.12.8), so the words were circulating by the late second century. Bruce Metzger (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament) judges that they were added to supply a confession of faith before baptism, reflecting early baptismal practice, since verse 36 asks a question that the shorter text never answers in words. Erasmus included the verse in his printed Greek New Testament, having found it in the margin of a later manuscript, and it passed into the Textus Receptus and the KJV.

No doctrine depends on it. The content of the verse is affirmed throughout Acts. Paul "proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God" (Acts 9:20, ASV), and faith precedes baptism in the surrounding narrative (8:12). Whether the verse is original or not, nothing in Christian teaching rises or falls with it, which is typical of the variants in the New Testament text.

Faith before baptism. The longer text's "if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest" states the pattern Acts shows elsewhere: hearing, believing, then baptism. See Baptism.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

G2588 - kardia, kardia, Strong's G2588
G4100 - pisteuo, pisteuo, Strong's G4100
G5207 - huios, huios, Strong's G5207
G5547 - christos, christos, Strong's G5547
G2424 - Iesous, Iesous, Strong's G2424
G2316 - theos, theos, Strong's G2316

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Africa in the Table of Nations, via Acts 8.26-40
Baptism, via Acts 8.26-39
Black Hebrew Israelite Doctrine, via Acts 8.26-40
Ethiopian Orthodox Church, via Acts 8.26-40
Evangelist, via Acts 8.26-40
Mission Geography (Acts 1-8), via Acts 8.26-40
Preaching to Non-Believers, via Acts 8.26-40
Seeking God, via Acts 8.26-39

People:

Ethiopian Eunuch

Passages:

Notes

Your annotations.

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.