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THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU

In Acts 8, Philip baptizes the Ethiopian official after the official confesses, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God' (Acts 8:37). Is that confession in the earliest manuscripts?

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The answer

Verse 37 — the spoken confession — is absent from the earliest and best manuscripts of Acts. That's why many modern Bibles jump from verse 36 to verse 38, with the confession dropped to a footnote.

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Why it’s interesting

It likely grew out of an early baptismal practice, where a confession of faith was spoken before baptism, and a scribe wrote the familiar words into the margin, then into the text. Ever notice a verse number 'missing' in a modern Bible? This is one of those.

Scholarly consensus
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