Porque nele vivemos, e nos movemos, e somos; assim como também alguns de vossos poetas disseram; porque também nós somos descendência dele.
Comentário de David Brown
Porque nele vivemos, e nos movemos, e somos – Isto não apenas significa: “Sem Ele não temos vida, nem aquele movimento que toda natureza inanimada exibe, nem mesmo a própria existência” (H.A.W. Meyer), mas que Deus é o princípio vivo e imanente de todos estes em homens.
como também alguns de vossos poetas disseram; porque também nós somos descendência dele – a citação vem, palavra por palavra, de um poema de Arato, um compatriota grego do apóstolo, e seu antecessor de três séculos antes. Mas, como ele sugere, o mesmo sentimento pode ser encontrado em outros poetas gregos. Eles queriam dizer isso sem dúvida em um sentido panteísta; mas a verdade que expressa o apóstolo se volta para seu próprio propósito – ensinar um Teísmo espiritual puro e pessoal. (Provavelmente durante seu retiro em Tarso (Atos 9:30), entendendo sua especial vocação aos gentios, ele se entregou ao estudo de literaturas gregas que poderiam ser transformadas em relato cristão em seu futuro trabalho. Daí esta e suas outras citações dos poetas gregos, 1Coríntios 15:33; Tito 1:12). [Jamieson; Fausset; Brown]
Comentário de Lake e Cadbury
some of your poets. With the B-text this phrase may refer either backwards or forwards or both. To enforce the belief —probably erroneous — that it refers only to what follows, Irenaeus inserts an extra ‘and’ so that his text reads, ‘and — as some of your own writers have said — ‘for of him'”, etc. The original text of the phrase is curiously doubtful. O Codex Vaticanus reads ‘some of our poets’, which indicates the confusion between ἡμᾶς and ὑμᾶς, so common in Greek manuscritos. ‘Your’ must mean ‘you Greeks’, and likewise the ‘our’, if we could accept it, would mean ‘we Greeks’. Did the author, who contrasted ‘us’ with βάρβαροι in Atos 28:2, go so far as to think of himself as one with the Greeks or make Paul so think? Philo once did so, and the reading of Codex Vaticanus is supported by at least one interesting minuscule, 33. Compare com nos in gig. The Western text omits ‘poets’, and Ropes thinks that this is a ‘Western non-interpolation’ and should be accepted. But the arguments for and against the Western reading are nicely balanced.
(i.) The καθ’ ὑμᾶς (or ἡμᾶς) is not an emphatic expression but a common substitute for the genitive — it is ‘your’ (or ‘our’), not ‘your own’. κατά was used in this way particularly with the personal pronouns (the possessives were becoming rare) and usually after another genitive (where ambiguity is often possible), as has been extensively shown by G. Rudberg, Eranos, xix, 1919, pp. 173 ff. (So Acts xviii. 15 περὶ λόγου καὶ ὀνομάτων καὶ νόμου τοῦ καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς, xxνi. 3 πάντων τῶν κατὰ Ἰουδαίους ἐθῶν τε καὶ ζητημάτων.) This is perhaps an argument against omitting ποιηταί with the Western text, as Ropes recommends. It is easy to see that in Latin the literal translation would be awkward and might easily lead to the secundum vos (without poetarum) of d gig Iren. If so, the omission in D, like the ὲστιν in the preceding verse, may be due to retranslation from the Latin. Moreover, we may note that D, besides omitting ποιητῶν, has quite consistently substituted the prose τούτου for the poetic τοῦ as the next word. Perhaps there was some moral objection in the mind of the Western editor to quoting ‘poets’. If these arguments be considered valid, the case for regarding the Western text as editorial is much strengthened.
(ii.) On the other hand transcriptional probability favours the Western reading, because οἱ καθ’ ὑμᾶς without a substantive is rare, though τὰ καθ’ ὑμᾶς is common. Thus the tendency of scribes would have been to insert ποιητῶν, not to omit it. Possibly the Western text is original — omitting ποιητῶν and reading τούτου for τού. τούτου was then corrected by some one who recognized τούτου γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμεν as an imperfect quotation from Aratus. The next stage was the insertion of ποιητῶν in the text, and later still came the marginal notes referring to Aratus and Homer.
The omission of the name or names of the writers quoted is not really strange. The anonymous citation of authors was common in classical and Hellenistic writers (compare com Titus 1:12 εἶπέν τις ἐξ αὐτῶν ἰδίων αὐτῶν προφήτης and the notes on ii, 16, vii. 42, etc, above). Sometimes they were referred to by the historians as Eviot when the source being followed was for the moment contradicted or questioned. At other times, by a literary convention of affected indefiniteness intelligible even to-day, τίς, του, τις, etc, were used. (See Cadbury, Making of Luke-Acts, p. 159, note.) τινες, however, is not customary and may therefore be a real plural, and may indicate that the author either (i.) intended to refer to both the preceding (Epimenides) and the succeeding (Aratus) quota tions, or (ii.) was aware that the words in the latter had been used by more than one poet (Aratus, Cleanthes).
For of him. The emphasis in the Greek is clearly on the ‘of him’. The quotation is from the Phaenomena of Aratus, in which the τοῦ refers to Zeus. It is curious to note the extent to which Greek Christianity both in literature and in sculpture adopted the features of Zeus and attributed them to Yahweh or to God the Father. [Lake e Cadbury, 1933]
<Todas as Escrituras em português citadas são da Bíblia Livre (BLIVRE), Copyright © Diego Santos, Mario Sérgio, e Marco Teles, com adaptação de Luan Lessa – janeiro de 2021.