⚠ Luke is careful, twice, and every version blurs it once. There is no wind and there is no fire. There is a sound (ēchos) like (hōsper) a violent wind being carried along, and there are tongues as of (hōsei) fire. Both comparisons are in the Greek and this translation keeps both. KJV “a sound as of a rushing mighty wind… cloven tongues like as of fire” is exact and unreadable; NIV “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind… what seemed to be tongues of fire” keeps both too. What is easy to lose is that Luke describes what the room could report, not what was there.

The wind-word and the Spirit-word are cousins. Pnoē (breath, blast) and pneuma (breath, wind, spirit) are the same root, and Greek hears the pun without help — as Hebrew does with ruach. English cannot, so the note carries it.

⚠ And glōssa means both things at once, which is the point of the whole chapter. A tongue is the organ, the shape a flame makes, and a language. Verse 3 has fire-shaped tongues sitting on people; verse 4 has them speaking in other tongues; verse 11 has the crowd hearing its own tongues. Luke uses one word for all three and the paragraph turns on it. This translation keeps tongues throughout rather than switching to “languages” where it would read more smoothly, because switching hides the hinge. ⚠ Note also what the miracle is placed in: not the speakers’ mouths only but the hearers’ ears — “each one was hearing them in his own language” (v6).

⚠ The list of nations has a famous problem in it, and it is not a variant. Between Mesopotamia and Cappadocia stands Judea — which is where everyone in the scene already is, which is not a foreign language, and which breaks a list that otherwise sweeps from Parthia round to Rome. The apparatus records no dispute: every printed text has it. So the difficulty is Luke’s, not a copyist’s, and the guesses are old and numerous — Armenia, India, Idumea, Syria, Lydia, or the whole territory once ruled by a Judean king rather than the province. Tertullian read Armenia. The library sets out that the reading is secure and the sense is not, and leaves it there.

“Sweet new wine” — and the sneer has a calendar problem. Gleukos is the sweet, barely-fermented juice of a fresh pressing. Pentecost falls in late spring, some months before the vintage. Luke does not point this out; the mockers say the least plausible thing available, and Peter answers the drunkenness rather than the vintage — it is nine in the morning. KJV “new wine”; ASV “new wine” with a margin; NWT “sweet wine,” which is the most exact.

⚠ Joel says “afterward.” Peter says “IN THE LAST DAYS.” The Hebrew of Joel 3:1 (Joel 2:28 in English Bibles) opens wehayah acharei-khen — “and it shall come to pass afterward” — a vague and undated connective. The Greek Old Testament renders it literally, meta tauta, “after these things.” What Acts 2:17 reads is en tais eschatais hēmerais, in the last days. That is not a translation of the Hebrew and not the wording of the Greek: it is an interpretation folded into the citation, and it converts an undated promise into a claim about what time it now is. ⚠ The library states the change and does not adjudicate it — ancient citation did not work the way modern quotation does, and the shift may be Peter’s, Luke’s, or a Greek text no longer extant. But no version on the shelf tells the reader that the prophet did not write those words, and this one does.

“God says” is inserted too. Joel has the first person without an attribution formula; the citation supplies legei ho theos. Small, and in the same direction as the first change.

The slaves keep their word. Doulous and doulas, male and female slaves — Joel’s Hebrew has avadim and shefachot, and this is one of the places where “servants” softens what the sentence is doing: the Spirit is being poured on the people at the bottom of a household, and the point is the leveling. KJV “servants… handmaidens”; NWT “male slaves… female slaves,” which is right.

⚠ “Loosing the BIRTH PANGS of death” — and you cannot loose a pang. The seam is a translation seam. Ōdines is specifically labour pain, and the verb lysas is what you do to a knot or a rope. The mixture comes from Hebrew: the Psalms speak of chevlei mavet, the CORDS of death (Psalm 18:5, and “the cords of Sheol” in the next verse) — and Hebrew chevel means both a cord and a birth pang. The Greek Old Testament took it the second way, and Acts inherits the Greek noun with a verb that belongs to the Hebrew one. So the phrase is exactly intelligible once you can see both languages at once, and slightly odd in either alone. This translation prints birth pangs and puts the cords in the note; KJV “pains”, ASV “pangs”, NIV “agony” — none of which lets the reader see the join.

“Determined plan and foreknowledge” sits in the same sentence as “you nailed up.” Hōrismenē boulē kai prognōsis — and then aneilate, you did away with him. Luke puts the settled purpose of God and the culpability of the hearers in one clause, joined by nothing, and offers no reconciliation. The library records that the sentence does not attempt one.

“My flesh will pitch its tent on hope.” Kataskēnōsei — to encamp, to tent. The Greek Old Testament’s word here for Hebrew yishkon, dwell, and it keeps a picture the smoother “will live in hope” loses: temporary quarters, pitched somewhere, for now.

“His tomb is among us to this day.” The argument’s hinge is an address in Jerusalem. David said it, David is buried down the road, therefore David was not talking about David.

⚠ But the argument turns on a word that means one thing in Greek and another in Hebrew. Psalm 16:10 in Greek reads “you will not give your holy one idein diaphthoran” — to see DECAY, corruption, a body rotting. That is what Peter presses at v31: David’s flesh did decay, so the psalm must mean someone else. ⚠ The Hebrew reads shachat, which the standard Jewish rendering gives as THE PIT — the grave itself, parallel to Sheol in the line before. On that sense the verse is a prayer not to die and not to go down to the grave, and the argument from a decayed body does not arise. Both readings of shachat are defensible in Hebrew (the root can be pit or corruption), and the Greek translators chose one; Peter is reasoning from theirs.

⚠ The library states this plainly because it is the kind of thing that usually goes unmentioned: this is a New Testament argument that depends on the Greek Old Testament and is weaker on the Hebrew. That is not a scandal — the Greek was the Bible of the people Peter was addressing in a Greek-speaking city, and Luke wrote the speech in Greek for Greek readers. It is simply a fact about how the argument works, and a reader entitled to know it. Every version on the shelf reads “corruption” or “decay” here and prints “the pit” at Psalm 16, three hundred pages apart, with nothing connecting them.

“Lord and Messiah” — and the verb is MADE. Epoiēsen: God made him both. It is the plainest verb available and it has caused a great deal of discussion; Luke does not qualify it, and neither does this translation. KJV “hath made”; ASV and NWT “made.”

⚠ And here is the verse Matthew 28 pointed at. Matthew 28’s note observed that the triadic baptismal formula — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is the only one in the New Testament, and that it sits awkwardly beside Acts, where baptism is consistently “in the name of Jesus,” naming this verse among others as not yet on these pages. It is now. Peter says epi tō onomati Iēsou Christou, and the preposition is worth keeping: ON the name, not “in” it — on the authority of, on the basis of. Acts will vary the preposition (en at 10:48, eis at 8:16 and 19:5) and never vary the name. ⚠ The library reports the pattern and does not resolve it, exactly as it declined to resolve it from the other end: no Greek manuscript of Matthew reads anything but the triad, and no passage in Acts uses the triad at a baptism. Both facts stand.

“Change your minds.” Metanoēsate — the change-of-MIND word, kept distinct throughout this project from metamelomai, the change of feeling that Mark 2’s note gave to Judas. This translation renders it literally here because it is being used as an instruction and the mechanism matters.

“Pierced to the heart.” Katenygēsan, from a verb for stabbing or stunning — used once in the New Testament, here. It is not remorse in the abstract; it is what a sentence does to a person.

“For the forgiveness of your sins.” Eis aphesin — and eis can be purpose (“in order to obtain”) or ground (“on the basis of”), and a very large argument has been built on that preposition in both directions. ⚠ The library notes that the Greek does not settle it and that anyone claiming it does is claiming more than the word gives.

Four things, with the article on each. The teaching of the apostles, the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, the prayers. Luke is listing known items, not describing a mood, and this translation keeps the definite articles that most versions drop.

“Fellowship” is a money word as much as a warm one. Koinōnia is sharing-in-common, and in Paul it regularly means a financial contribution (Romans 15:26). Verses 44-45 tell you which sense Luke has in mind: they had hapanta koina, everything in common, and were selling property to meet need. ⚠ And the library will note what Acts itself will note later: this is described, not commanded, and chapter 5 will show it going wrong.

“With one accord.” Homothymadon — chapter 1’s note called it Luke’s word for the church at its best and it returns here on schedule, in the temple, daily.

“Simplicity of heart.” Aphelotēti — a rare word, from a root meaning smooth or without stones, so: unencumbered, uncomplicated. It occurs only here in the New Testament. KJV “singleness of heart” is good.

⚠ And the last clause gives the arithmetic to somebody else. “The Lord was adding day by day…” — not the apostles, and not the preaching. Luke has just reported three thousand from one sermon and then attributes the growth away from the sermon. The participle sōzomenous is present and continuous, those being saved, which this translation keeps rather than the tidier “the saved.”