Acts 5
Acts 5 is the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the growth of the early church and the obstacles it encountered. Text The original text was written in Koine Greek and is divided into 42 verses. Textual witnesses Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are: Uncial 0189 (~AD 200) Codex Vaticanus (325–350) Codex Sinaiticus (330–360) Papyrus 8 (4th century; extant verses 2–9) Papyrus 57 (4th century; extant verses 1–2, 8–10) Codex Bezae (~400) Codex Alexandrinus (400–440) Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (~450; extant verses 35–42) Codex Laudianus (~550) Ananias and Sapphira (5:1–11) The narrative underlines the authority of Peter, who could see through the deception by Ananias and Sapphira (verses 3–5, 8–9) and highlights the spiritual authority of the "church" (Greek: ekklesia, first used in Acts in verse 11) in form of 'signs' of God (inducing 'great fear' in verses 5 and 11, as well as healing miracles in the next section). The sin of the couple was not simply the dishonesty on monetary value of the land sale, but rather the conspiracy to deceive the community (Greek: koinonia), which is a 'symptom of a more serious