Perhaps because this descent of the Holy Spirit upon the eunuch was extraordinary, and seemed to place him beside those who received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, it was omitted in some codices.
In any case, one must acknowledge that what is reported here was an undoubted truth. It fully accords both with the qualities of the newly baptized man himself and with his position among the Ethiopians, where he became a kind of apostle, as tradition also testifies.
Nicephorus Callistus reports in the second book that the eunuch was named Indich. He was the first evangelist in his own country and converted many to Christ, including the queen.
In new translations and in many Greek texts, the words about the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the eunuch are absent. Even Saint John Chrysostom had a text in which these words were absent.
Yet they were found in some texts, and therefore entered both the Slavonic and the Russian translations. These words are precious for the fullness of the account concerning the eunuch, for whom the descent of the Holy Spirit was a great necessity.
One may also explain how the omission occurred. In all the other texts the word Spirit (Πνεύμα) is joined with “of the Lord” (Κυρίου). This same word appears further on, after a line: “the angel of the Lord” (Άγγελος κυρίου).
Perhaps an ancient copyist mistook these two words, Κυρίου, as one, through an error of the eye. Thus he wrote, “The Spirit of the Lord (Κυρίου) caught Philip away,” leaving out the words, “The Spirit of the Lord descended upon the eunuch.”
Other copyists began to repeat this error, except those who copied from more ancient texts.
The English professor Bartlett, in his commentary published in London in 1901, argues that Κυρίου, not Άγιον, should have stood here.
He bases this on the fact that Philip's being caught away is described according to the pattern of similar Old Testament cases, for example with the prophet Elijah (see 3 Kingdoms 18:12) and the prophet Ezekiel (see 3 Kingdoms 8:3).
There the form “Spirit of the Lord” is used, as here, in the older, semi-physical sense, distinct from the more typical New Testament phrase “Holy Spirit.”
Since the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the eunuch had to be understood in the New Testament sense, this reading could naturally be introduced, namely Άγιον instead of Κυρίου.
One may also allow that the texts received in the West had as their archetype an ancient text in which one column had crumbled away. This may be observed in papyri published in London in 1898 in two volumes by Grenfell and Hunt.
THEOSIS