Torah quotations common to Philo of Alexandria and the Acts of the Apostles

Abstract

It is the intention of this contribution to investigate the text form of the LXX Torah quotations that overlap between the works of Philo of Alexandria and the Acts of the Apostles. It forms part of a larger project which investigates the common use of a possible Old Greek Version by both Philo and the New Testament. Six cases are investigated of which five are present in Stephen’s Speech in Acts 7. There were no clear traces found of another Textvorlage of the Torah that was used by Luke and/or Philo in these cases. Luke’s quotations here resemble adaptations and interpretations already made in the Christian tradition by his time. Several cases show evidence of conflations and paraphrases of the quoted passages. Noteworthy, however, is that Philo’s text form and that of the reconstructed LXX text are very close in the cases investigated here. Where Philo notably differs from the reconstructed LXX text, Luke tends to represent a text form that is in closer alignment to that of the LXX than to that of Philo.