What Does Acts 15:1 Mean in the King James?
And certain men which came down from Judæa taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
A bodily cut is turned into a gate: without it, these teachers say, deliverance is impossible.
THE MEANING
Whenever a voice makes a bodily mark the price of being brought out, a sign has become a claimed condition for deliverance. This verse makes that condition plain: without the cut, these teachers say, you cannot be delivered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a bodily mark makes deliverance possible for one person and impossible for another. Acts 15:11 names the Lord Jesus’s favor as the ground of deliverance, “even as they.”
THE ROOT
σωθῆναι
sōthēnai
GROWS FROM
σώζω
sōzō
Deliver, rescue, or preserve; bring someone safely through.
“saved” in this verse is sōthēnai. The word names being delivered, not earning a status. Its word-family includes both the deliverer and deliverance itself, so the claim makes circumcision a barrier to rescue.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēr: Deliverer, savior
σωτήρ
This branch names the one who enacts deliverance, rather than a mark that qualifies someone to receive it.
sōtēria: Deliverance
σωτηρία
This branch names the rescue itself, the very thing the teaching claims is unavailable without circumcision.
περιτμηθῆτε
peritmēthēte
GROWS FROM
περιτέμνω
peritémnō
Cut around; the word joins περί (perí, around) with τέμνω (témnō, cut).
“circumcised” in this verse is peritmēthēte. The Greek word makes the bodily boundary visible: it describes a cut around the flesh. Here that physical mark is made the line between those said to be deliverable and those said not to be.
ALSO GROWS
peritomē: Circumcision
περιτομή
The related noun names the same bodily mark that this teaching makes a condition for deliverance.
témnō: Cut
τέμνω
The verb within the compound makes the act concrete: a cut in the body, presented here as a religious credential.
מֹשֶׁה
Mōsheh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
māshāh
Draw out.
“Moses” in this verse is Mōsheh. The name invoked to anchor the required custom carries the image of being drawn out. That nature sits in sharp tension with turning a bodily mark into a barrier to deliverance.
ALSO GROWS
māshāh: To draw out
מָשָׁה
The name’s root carries the movement of extraction that echoes the verse’s language of deliverance.
yimshēnî: He drew me out
יִמְשֵׁנִי
This form describes being drawn out of many waters, reinforcing deliverance as being brought from danger.
THE PATTERN
A covenant sign can mark belonging without becoming the source or price of deliverance.
And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.THE THREAD
But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.The answer uses σωθησόμεθα (sōthēsometha, “we shall be delivered”), from the same root σώζω (sōzō, deliver) as “be saved” here. It names χάρις (cháris, favor) of the Lord Jesus as the ground of deliverance, “even as they,” so the disputed mark no longer sets its limit.
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