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LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT EAST
LIGHT FROM THE
ANCIENT EAST
THE NEW TESTAMENT ILLUSTRATED BY RECENTLY
DISCOVERED TEXTS OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD
ADOLF DEISSMANN
D.THEOL. (MARBURG), D.D. (ABERDEEN); PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
TRANSLATED BY
LIONEL R. M. STRACHAN, M.A.
ENGLISH LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG
FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF ST, JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD
WITH SIXTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMX
v
KR
A.r4 %2 64
ἦν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν, ὃ φωτίζει
πάντα ἄνθρωπον, ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν
κόσμον.
ALMAE MATRI
ABERDONENSI
SACRUM
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
Tuis translation of my friend Deissmann’s Licht vom Osten has
been made from the second edition (curiously called “second
and third”) of the German work (Tiibingen, 1909). The
genesis of the book, which was first published in May, 1908,
is described in the author’s Preface; its success may be judged
from the shortness of the time that elapsed before a second
edition was required. Arrangements for the English translation
were completed before the book was three months old, and
a preliminary advertisement appeared in the Athenaeum as
early as October 10, 1908. It is not the fault of the publishers
that the English version is ready a year later than was expected.
There was a miscalculation to begin with, and the work of
translation proceeded more slowly than had been estimated.
Well, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a
heaven for?” The delay has brought compensations. The
English reader now has the book in its revised and enlarged
form, including nine illustrations that were not in the first
edition (Figs. 22, 23, 25, 29, 41, 42, 48, 49, 50). These
facsimiles have their value not only for the learned, who (by
taking pains: see p. 362, n. 1) can spell out most of the old
writing, but also for the unlearned. Everybody can gain
from them, as the author says (p. 147), some idea of the
inimitable individuality of each single papyrus letter. “That
autograph Letter, it was once all luminous as a burning
beacon, every word of it a live coal, in its time; it was once
a piece of the general fire and light of Human Life, that
Letter! Neither is it yet entirely extinct: well read, there
vil
viii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
is still in it light enough to exhibit its own se/f; nay to
diffuse a faint authentic twilight some distance round it.
Heaped embers which in the daylight looked black, may still
look red in the utter darkness. These Letters . . . will con-
vince any man that the Past did exist! By degrees the
combined small twilights may produce a kind of general
feeble twilight, rendering the Past credible, the Ghosts of
the Past in some glimpses of them visible !”?
The printing of the second German edition began while
the author was in the East, and by his desire I saw the
work through the press. His return relieved me of responsi-
bility, but my duties as proof-reader remained unaltered, so
that for several months the whole of my leisure time was
devoted to this work. My translation came to a standstill,
but I acquired particular acquaintance with the original.
“Light from the East” would have been the title of the
book, literally translated, but as that had already been appro-
priated for the Rev. C. J. Ball’s work on the archaeology of
the Old Testament (1899), a distinguishing adjective had to
be inserted. Geographically the title refers to the Levant or,
to use the author’s own word, “ Anatolia.” As used in this
book, Anatolia does not mean Asia Minor alone, still less
a definite Turkish province in its western portion. The term
includes, as the reader will quickly discover, Asia Minor,
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, in fact the whole of the Eastern
Mediterranean lands, with the islands.
The whole of this English version has been read in proof
by the author, and I have had the great advantage of con-
sulting him in writing on a very large number of points, of
various importance, at every stage of the printing. The
amount of correspondence involved has been considerable, but
such trouble always brings its own reward. In certain details
this book is more correct than the latest German edition.
For example, the author has deleted a false reference to
1 Carlyle, Oliver Cromweil’s Letters and Speeches, Introduction, Ch. V.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE ix
Moschion for the word περισσεία (p. 80). Instances of the
author’s special additions are: p. 55, n. 4 (the whole); p. 332,
n. 4 (last sentence); p. 333, n. 2 (the whole); p. 341, n. 1
(last sentence). I have suppressed on my own responsibility
a mistaken allusion to English crossed cheques on p. 337. One
slight omission is unintentional, and may be here rectified :
at p. 278, n. 2, the words “at Didyma” ought to be inserted
after “next day” in the third line. All errors detected in
the German have of course been corrected (¢.g., p. 332, n. 2,
Buresch’s reading, given as Παιδίσχη, is in fact Παδίσχη ;
p. 367, n. 3, line 5, now rightly reads Trajan instead of
Hadrian). In some few places the German has undergone
silent adaptation for English readers. The changes are quite
unimportant, and generally obvious (¢.g., the measurements in
feet and inches instead of the metric system, the sums of
money expressed in English currency, and the reference to
Bradshaw and the Post Office Directory). The allusion to
the liturgy of the Church of England on p. 361 is perhaps
less easily recognisable as an instance of the same kind.
In other cases, where simple adaptation was impossible, I
have added an explanatory footnote. These and all other
additions for which the author must not be held responsible
are marked (Tr.). Where possible I have supplied references
to English translations of the works cited, but I am aware
that more might be accomplished in this direction. Schiirer’s
Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, for example, is
accessible in English.
I should have liked very much to find an English parallel
to the example at p. 220, n. 1, of a writer’s saying that his
letter has grown into an epistle, but my search hitherto has
been unsuccessful. The fact is that the words Jetter and
epistle have been so long used synonymously in English (at
first. seriously, and now half humorously) that it requires a
little effort to adapt oneself to Deissmann’s technical use of
these terms (pp. 147, n. 1; 220ff.). The English parallel I
x TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
seek will be found in some nineteenth-century writer, I think,
if it is discovered at all, for epistle is used as the exact
equivalent of Jetter from the time of James Howell (author
of the Epistolae Ho-Elianae, 1645) down to Robert Burns.
If at times the notes which I have added evince a liberal
conception of relevancy, it must be pleaded that to a person
like myself, representing the general reader rather than the
theologian, there were many temptations to indulge the anno-
tating habit. How delightful it was, for instance, at p. 23
to recognise in Dr. C. René Gregory the man who in 1883
made Ruskin! “feel like Sardanapalus and Ahasuerus and
the Caliph Haroun Alraschid and George the 4th and the
Count of Monte Cristo—and Dives and Croesus and Gorgius
Midas,” the man whose hard work and good writing are
praised in Fors Clavigera (Letter 94), and who correctly
dated Ruskin’s ΜΒ, of the Septuagint? 1463 instead of tenth
century as the owner had thought it to be. The mysterious
Nysa in Arabia Felix (p. 134 f.) has found its way, in another
connexion, into English poetry, for Wordsworth’s description of
“the chosen spot
In Nysa’s isle, the embellished grot,
Whither, by care of Libyan Jove
(High servant of paternal Love),
Young Bacchus was conveyed,” 8
was suggested by a later passage in Diodorus. Surprising, after
the lapse of centuries, was the parallelism between the language
of Antonis Longus—“ that I may do obeisance to [or kiss] thy
hand” (p. 169)—and the courtly phraseology in England in
the time of Charles I. Sir John Suckling, for instance, wrote
in a letter to a nobleman (c. 1632), “If these few lines shall
have the happiness to kiss your hand, they can assure you...”
A still closer parallel occurs in the letter of the poet Dryden to
1 Letters, Library Edition, II. 465,
* Library Edition of Ruskin’s Works, XXXIV. 701.
* From the poem called “ The Brownie’s Cell,” beginning “ To barren heath,”
etc. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 275-279.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE xi
his cousin Honor (23 May, 1655): “That I may one day again
have the happiness to kiss your fair hand ; but that is a message
I would not so willingly do by letter as by word of mouth.”
Dryden again seems to come near anticipating some points of
this book (pp. 224-284) when he writes! thus of the early
churches and the apostles’ care for them :
**For all their wants they wisely did provide,
And. preaching by epistles was supplied :
So great physicians cannot all attend,
But some they visit, and to some they send.
Yet all those letters were not writ to all,
Nor first intended, but occasional,
Their absent sermons.”
In other particulars, apart from the notes, I have constantly
tried to make the English reader’s version of this book more
useful, if possible, than the original, thus doing my best to
support the publishers in their manifest resolve to improve
upon the German edition as regards externals. When it came,
therefore, to what Thomas Fuller called “ the bag and baggage
of a book,” the Indices, I had no hesitation in preparing them
on the same elaborate scale as the author himself adopted.
The Indices may still be regarded as of the author’s own design,
but some changes have been made. References are now given
as exactly as possible, not by the page only, but also by the
number of the footnote, and this number is often to be taken
as a finger-post to a certain part of the text as well as to the
remark at the foot of the page. I first made this improvement
in the second German edition, where it was even more necessary
on account of the large size of the page. In Index II. I have
now, in accordance with English usage, included the names of
immortals, which in the German edition must be sought for in
the Subject Index. For the rest the Subject Index preserves
the idiosyncrasies of the original. Reference is facilitated by
placing a good many compound entries under two letters of
1 The Hind and the Panther (1687), II. 334-340.
xii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
the alphabet. Thus “Arm of God,” which is indexed only
under A in the German, can now be found either in this form
or in the form “God, Arm of.” The German Index, though
so extremely minute, was sometimes more terrifying than helpful.
On looking up such a word as Alexandria, Berlin, Jesus, or
Paul, one was confronted with a column of figures, half an inch
‘to three inches in length, representing perhaps more than fifty
references, but with not a single clue to the maze. In the
English Index something has been done to improve this.
In the translations of the Greek texts I was naturally guided
by the German, but I did not feel called-upon to follow
it literally. Even the translations of papyrus letters by
Grenfell and Hunt, which are of course made directly from
the Greek, and which in some cases have already attained
popular celebrity, did not seem to be the right thing for
me to use, though I have carefully considered them. There
is a modern ring about them! which separates them off from
the diction of the English Bible, and so would have weakened
the comparison which it is a main object of this book to
make between the sacred and profane memorials of Hellenistic
Greek. I therefore have tried to render the Greek literally |
in language as far as possible resembling that of the Authorised
Version and the Revised Version. If the word before me
occurs in the Greek Bible my principle is to adopt by
preference one of the renderings of King James’s translators.
It is hoped that in this way the kinship of these texts with
the style and language of the Bible may be made more
conspicuous, and that even a reader who neglects the Greek
may be struck by the frequent Biblical echoes. The result
may leave something to be desired as regards clearness, but
is it right in translating an ancient letter to give it a per-
spicuity which the original does not possess? And that.
ancient letters are not always perspicuous any person acquainted
only with English may see for himself if he will trouble to
1 Cf. the author’s protest about a similar matter, p. 10, n. 2 below.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE xiii
look at even a modernised edition of the fifteenth-century
Paston Letters. ;
This subject is, I think, sufficiently important to be
illustrated by a comparison. Take these two renderings of a
“ Saying” in the second Logia fragment from Oxyrhynchus :—
Jesus saith : Let him that seeketh
. . not cease... until he findeth,
and when he findeth he shall be
amazed, and having been amazed
he shall reign, and having reigned
he shall rest.
Jesus saith: Let not him who
seeks . . . cease until he finds,
and when he finds he shall be
astonished ; astonished he shall
reach the kingdom, and having
reached the kingdom he shall rest.
‘The first is as printed at p. 497 below, the second is by Grenfell
and Hunt. The forms seeketh, findeth, him that are preferred.
to seeks, finds, him who as being more archaic and Biblical.
The Greek word θαμβέω is translated amaze in Mark i. 27,
x. 32, astonish in Mark x. 24, Acts ix. 6; the R.V. uses
amaze in each place, except in Acts ix. 6, where the word
disappears from the text. So also βασιλεύω is translated
reign in Matt. 11. 22, Rom. v. 14, 17, 21, vi. 12, 1 Cor. iv. 8
(A.V. and R.V.). Note that and has dropped out before
the second astonished. It is unnecessary to give further
details, but I suppose there is not one of the translated texts
but contains at least one instance of specially chosen wording
on these principles.
I have promised the author to give here my reasons for
declining to follow his practice of trying to indicate in the
translations those portions which represent a restored original.
That practice is unnecessary and inexact. Lacunae and
restorations must of course be indicated as accurately as possible
in the printed Greek text. The scholar interested in
these things naturally looks at the Greek and finds there
what he wants. Those who are not scholars, those in fact
for whom the translations are provided in the first place,
take no interest in such minutiae. They can see in a general
way from the facsimile, or from the printed Greek text,
xiv TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
that the original is much or little mutilated, and they expect.
the translation to inform them of the final results of criticism
applied to the text. Now take an example. Had I followed
the author’s practice I should have written at p. 169 :—
. . if the glolds will. Salute
Capit{[o mu]ch and [my] brother and sis-
20 [ter and Se[reni]lla and [my] friend[s].
I sent the[e by] Euctemon a little [pilcture of me.
Moreov[e]r [my] name is Antonis Ma-
ximus. Fare thee well, I pray.
Centuri[a] Athenonica.
25 There saluteth thee Serenus the son of Agathus [Da]Jemon, [and
. . . 075 the son of [. . .]
rand Turbo the son of Gallonius and.[....]....[....]...—.-]
[:.:..1.}..1. 1
With all this trouble I should have succeeded in giving only
an imitation, not a representation of the actual condition of
the papyrus. A certain number of facts are correctly con-
veyed: 18 words are defective in the Greek, and 18 words are
distinguished by brackets in the English ; 35 letters have been
restored in the Greek, and 35 letters are bracketed in about
the same relative positions in the English lines; 10 of the
English words correspond exactly with the Greek in meaning
and in position in the line, and thus 22 of the restored letters
may be said to be successfully denoted in the English. In
the 8 remaining words (involving 13 letters) the right position
in the line is attained only by bracketing letters in the wrong
word. Thus an altogether wrong impression is created in the
reader who pays no attention to the Greek. He may think, for
instance, that the words my (three times) and by have been
supplied wholly by conjecture. By really is bracketed solely
because it occurs at that place in the line where in the original
the Greek word for picture stands minus its first two letters.
This important word, picture, which perhaps does deserve to
be marked as conjectural in an English rendering of the letter,
gets its brackets merely by accident—because in the English
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE xv
order of words it occupies the place of the word translated “ of
me.” The German word-order is more elastic, and German
employs more inflections than English, so that it is easier on
the whole to carry out this imitative process in German than
in English, but even then great care is necessary to make the
imitation successful. It so happens that in the above passage
the German is in some respects less accurate than the English
in its use of brackets. The German has only 17 words with
brackets (there should be 18); 40 letters are bracketed (there
should be only 35); 14 words (with 28 letters) may be pro-
nounced successfully imitated. Of the 4 unsuccessful cases two
may be due to oversight, and two seem caused by thinking
more of the words and the sense than of the single letters.
By discarding this artificial system of brackets the transla-
tions gain in simplicity for non-specialist readers, and it becomes
possible in case of need (¢.g. in Letter 16, p. 196 f.) to use
brackets to denote words that have to be supplied in order to
complete the sense in English.
As a rule I have not retained in the translations the original
division into lines, which Deissmann endeavours faithfully to
preserve. There would be practical use in this, if it could be
done, but even with the flexible word-order of German only
an approximation can be obtained. In English the approxima-
tion would have been less satisfactory, and as the pieces are
mostly short it will usually be possible to refer from the
translation to the original or vice versa without much trouble,
even though the lines of the translation are now run on, At
any rate the reader is no worse off than when using Grenfell
and Hunt’s translations. Those editors also neglect the division
into lines ; they distinguish none of the minutiae of restoration,
and do not even print their English side by side with the
Greek. In one text of exceptional length quoted in this book
(p. 254 ff.) the division into lines has been maintained, roughly
of course, in order to facilitate reference to the Greek.
A word must be said concerning the abbreviations, ‘There
xvi TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
are really remarkably few of them in the book. “I.G.” occurs
at p. 13, n. 1, but is explained at p. 11, n.1. A small numeral
above the line after the name of a book (thus: Sylloge”) in-
dicates the edition. A special monstrosity of this kind occurs
at p. 336, n. 2, where Kommentar, 8/9*" denotes the eighth
edition of vol. 8, and the seventh edition of vol. 9, which are
bound up together. At p. 216, n. 3, the symbol || means
“parallel with.” The other abbreviations, I hope, will explain
themselves.
In the German edition the diacritical marks employed in the
Greek texts receive as a rule no explanation. I think, however,
there may be many readers able to appreciate such things who
are nevertheless not quite certain of their precise signification.
The following list is based on Grenfell and Hunt’s introductory
note to the Amherst Papyri :—
Square brackets [ ] indicate a lacuna, e.g. pp. 130 f., 136 f,,
149 ff., 168.
Round brackets ( ) indicate the extension of an abbreviation,
the resolution of a ligature or symbol, e.g. pp. 152 f.,
158, 160 f.
Angular brackets <> indicate that the letters enclosed in
them were omitted (é.e. not written) in the original, e.g.
pp. 149, 154, 162, 191. (In the translation on p. 254
they indicate a word which, though actually written in
the Greek, should be omitted.)
Double square brackets [[ ]] indicate that the letters enclosed
in them were deleted in the original. See p. 151, n. 4.
Dots within brackets indicate the approximate number of
letters missing, ¢.g. pp. 123, 187, 168. ᾿
Dots outside brackets indicate mutilated or otherwise
illegible letters, e.g. pp. 123, 168.
Dots under letters indicate a probable but not certain read-
ing, e.g. pp. 123, 151, 162, 174, 176, 191.
Dashes under letters indicate an almost certain reading,
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE xvii
e.g. pp. 162, 168, 172 f., 176, 191. In the text given
on p. 415 f. the dots and dashes are now for the first
time used in conformity with the usual practice,
observed elsewhere throughout the book. In both
German editions, unfortunately, though no attention
was called to the fact, the functions of dot and dash
were by an oversight reversed in this text.
A dash above a letter indicates a contraction, e.g. p. 204,
lines 14 (ἁμαρτίῆ = ἁμαρτίην), 24, 28, p. 415f. Some-
times it means that the letter is used as a numeral,
eg. pp. 164, 186, 188. The mysterious ξ on p. 176,
line 23, is perhaps a numeral (= 5).
An oblique stroke / indicates (p. 102, n.2) the point
where a new line begins in the. original.
At the end of November last Mr. H. I. Bell, of the British
Museum (Department of MSS.), kindly gave me information,
in answer to an inquiry, which would have enabled me to
make improvements on p. 47, but by a misunderstanding
pp. 33-176 were printed off without being submitted to me
in revise. “Christian town of Menas” (p. 47, n. 2) is mis-
leading, since Menas was a saint, and it was only in course
of time that something like a town grew up around the
sanctuary connected with his tomb, which was a resort of
pilgrims. The Third Report referred to has been published
(Dritter Bericht iiber die Ausgrabung der Menas-Heiligtiimer
in der Mareotiswiiste, vorgelegt von Ο. M. Kaufmann, Cairo,
1908), and contains some account of the ostraca, with photo-
graphs. They were published by E. Drerup, “ Griechische
Ostraka von den Menas-Heiligtiimern,” Rémische Quartalschrift,
1908, pp. 240-247. Drerup is inclined to place the ostraca in
the sixth rather than the fifth century, but Mr. Bell thinks
they cannot well be later than the early sixth century.
In the last chapter, where the author speaks of the future
problems of Greek lexicography, I ought to have mentioned
b
xviii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
in a note that a “Lexicon: of Patristic Greek” is now in
preparation in England. The idea originated with the Central
Society of Sacred Study, and its Warden, Dr. Swete, Regius
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Since the death of
Dr. H. A. Redpath (September, 1908) the Rev. Herbert Moore,
Vicar of Acton, Nantwich, has acted as receiver of the materials
collected by voluntary readers from the Greek Fathers down
to ap. 500. If sufficient helpers! come forward the period
may be extended to a.v. 750.
Dr. Milligan’s Selections from the Greek Papyri, referred to
in the note on p, 21 as in preparation, appeared at the end
of February, 1910.
Nothing remains now but the pleasant duty of thanking
several kind helpers. The author himself is the person whom
I have troubled most, and to whom I am most indebted. My
grateful acknowledgments are also due to Mr. H. I. Bell, for
the information mentioned above; to my friend the Rev.
W. H. Hayman, Rector of Leckford, Hants, under whose hos-
pitable roof some of the first proofs were corrected, for his
opinion in certain Hebrew matters; to my friend Mr. F. W.
Henkel, B.A., F.R.A.S., for making a preliminary translation
of the Appendices; to my colleague Professor Gradenwitz
for help with the word mpoamodorns (p. 327, n. 4); and to
Miss C. E. Strachan, B.A., my sister, who read the proofs as
far as p. 184, and afterwards looked up all sorts of little
points for me at the British Museum. The proof-reading,
I may say, was made as easy and pleasant a task as possible
by the printers, Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney, of Aylesbury,
and their reader, Mr. W. H. Bridges, who sent out the proofs
in really beautiful condition. I was the better able to
appreciate this because in the smudgy proofs which I was
obliged to read for the second German edition one was often
1 There are already more than 100 of them, Mr, Moore tells me, at work
on the great bulk of the writings before A.D. 500, equivalent to 85 volumes
of Migne. 11 more volumes of Migne would include the later treatises down
to St. John of Damascus.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE xix
in doubt whether the accents were there or not, the distinction
between full-stop and comma was often unrecognisable, and
the sheets sometimes came back from correction looking worse
than they did before. To Mr. Bridges I am indebted for
much more than the technical excellence of the proofs. His
queries were always valuable, and as an instance of his interest
in the book I may mention that he called my attention to
the letter in the Times mentioned at p. 280, n. 1, which I
also discovered for myself independently a few hours before
his information arrived. I shall never know exactly how much
of the excellence in the proofs was due to his vigilant eye
and how much to the good workmanship of the compositors.
About thirty of them were employed on the book, it seems,
and their English names were pleasant to read on the MS. that
came back to me in a foreign town, and my thoughts often
ran gratefully to those men of Aylesbury,
The few errors that I have observed to be still in need of
correction are all of my making :—
37, 1. 3, read Praefect.
77, 1. 9, read No. 280.
85, 1. 2 of notes, read hyperbole.
. 95, n. 4,1. 2, for 188 read 183.
99, n. 1. Insert at beginning of note the reference Testa-
mentum Judae, α. ὃ.
105, 1. 4, read Pecysis.
157, 1. 1, read waiting.
218, 1. 6, read Nilus.
226, n. 3, 1. 1, read Paris Papyrus.
. 231, n. 2, 1. 1, read petition of Dionysia.
808, 1. 11, for is read was formerly.
. 358, n. 2, 1. 2, read 8576...
Ρ. 443, 1. 18, read considerations.
ry τ Ὁ ἴθ τὸ Ὁ
The colophon is taken from a Greek MS. of the year
939 a.v. I noted it in Montfaucon’s Palaeographia Graeca a
good many years ago, when I was only a scribe; but now I am
a ξένος as well, and I think the time has come to use it.
L. R. Μ. 5.
Huwerserc, April, 1910.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I was in the midst of preparations for a second
Anatolian journey when I heard from Dr. Paul
Siebeck, about Christmas, 1908, that the first edition
was nearly exhausted. I was able, however, before
my departure, to revise the book, making improve-
ments and additions to fit it for its new public
appearance. Many readers will welcome the con-
siderable increase in the number of illustrations. I
am indebted to many friends and colleagues who
have corrected me and added to my knowledge by
letter or in reviews. Numerous instances of this
indebtedness will be found in the notes. ...
My second journey, begun on 24 February and
safely ended on 6 May, 1909, was undertaken with
financial assistance from the Prussian Ministry of
Education. I travelled with my friends Carl
Schmidt, Wilhelm Weber, and one younger com-
panion. Our route led us wid Constantinople to
Asia Minor (Eski Shehr, Angora, Konieh and
environs, Afium-Kara-Hissar, [ Ala-shehr Philadelphia,
Sardis,] Smyrna, Ephesus, Laodicea, Hierapolis,
Mersina, Pompeiopolis, Tarsus), Syria (Alexandretta,
Antioch on the Orontes, Beyrout, Baalbec, Damas-
cus), Galilee (Tiberias, Tell Hum Capernaum and
xxii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
environs, Nazareth), Haifa with Carmel, Samaria,
Judaea (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho, Dead Sea,
Jordan, Jaffa), and Lower Egypt (Port Said, Cairo
and environs, Alexandria). This long itinerary
will gain in distinctness if I say, speaking in terms
of the New Testament, that I was privileged to see
the homes of St. Paul and the Saviour Himself,
and the principal roads traversed by them, so far
as these scenes of New Testament story were not
yet known to me from my first journey.
Looking back on the second journey, which took
me also for a brief space into the homeland of the
papyri and ostraca of which use is made in this
book, I consider it an advantage that I did not
see Palestine until after I had seen Asia Minor and
Syria. The great uniformity of the culture of the
Mediterranean lands was thus brought home to me
more clearly, and I think also that I was thus
better prepared to realise the peculiar characteristics
of Palestine. I consider it equally important that
Jerusalem should be entered from the north, by
the high-road from Galilee. That is the historical
road to the Holy City, the pilgrims’ way. Thus
Jesus as a boy of twelve, thus St. Paul as a young
man, and thus the Crusaders advanced to conquer
the city, and this ought still to be the only approach
to Jerusalem.
Only thus was it that Jerusalem became to me
in many respects the climax of the whole expedition.
The mass of pathetic facts and problems connected
with a unique past, the motley commotion in the
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xxiii
social and religious present, where, however, vigorous
types of ancient piety have kept alive to this day—
in all this the multitude of single observations
accumulated on the journey united to form one
great general impression of the essential character
and value of the religious East, which is a unity
amidst all the confusion of tongues and all the
play of colours in the costumes.
Of course it has not been possible for me yet to
work up these observations. For that I must have
time. But when I think of all that I have learnt
(I trust) for the better understanding of the gospels,
the letters of St. Paul, the Acts of the Apostles,
and the Revelation of St. John, I cannot but express
my gratitude to the Ministry of Education for
enabling me to undertake this journey. I wish that
right many of my fellow-students might be given
the same opportunity of beholding with their own
eyes the scenes of gospel and Primitive Christian
history. ‘The New Testament is the most important
monument of the East that we possess; those who
study it have therefore a claim upon the East.
ADOLF DEISSMANN.
Berurn-Wiimersporr, 9 June, 1909.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
“Licut from the East”—it is a curious title for
the book, but before you censure it just look for
a moment at the Eastern sunshine. On the castled
height of Pergamum observe the wondrous light
bathing the marble of Hellenistic temples at noon-
day. At Hagios Elias in Thera look with hushed
rapture upon the golden shimmer of the same light
over the endless expanse of the Mediterranean, and
then in the vino santo of the hospitable monks
divine the glow of that same sun. Mark what
tones this light has at command even within stone
walls, when at Ephesus a patch of deep blue sky
gleams through the roof of a ruinous mosque upon
an ancient column now mated to a fig-tree. Nay, let
‘but a single beam of the Eastern sun peep through
a chink of the door into the darkness of a poor
Panagia chapel: a dawning begins, a sparkling and
quickening; the one beam seems to wax twofold,
tenfold ; day breaks, you take in the pious meaning
of the wall frescoes and the inscribed words, and
the miserable poverty that built the shrine is
forgotten.
Make that sunbeam your own and take it with
ΧΧΥ͂
xxvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
you to the scene of your labours on the other side
of the Alps. If you have ancient texts to decipher,
the sunbeam will bring stone and potsherd to speech.
If you have sculptures of the Mediterranean world
to scrutinise, the sunbeam will put life into them
for you—men, horses, giants, and all. And if
you have been found worthy to study the sacred
Scriptures, the sunbeam will reanimate the apostles
and evangelists, will bring out with greater dis-
tinctness the august figure of the Redeemer from
the East, Him whom the Church is bound to
reverence and to obey.
And then, if you speak of the East, you cannot
help yourself: made happy by its marvels, thankful
for its gifts, you must speak of the kght of the East.
After fifteen years spent in studying the Greek
Bible and other secular documents of the Hellenistic
East, it was a matter of extreme moment to me
to be privileged in the spring months of 1906 to
take part in an expedition, assisted by a grant from
the Baden Ministry of Education, for study purposes
to Vienna, Buda Pesth, Bucharest, Constantinople,
Asia Minor, Greece with the principal islands, and
Southern Italy. The tour was organised and con-
ducted in masterly fashion by Friedrich von Duhn.
In the great museums and at the centres where
international excavations are in progress we had not
only him to instruct us, but the foremost authorities
in archaeology and epigraphy—Austrians, Hungarians,
Roumanians, Turks, our own German countrymen,
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xxvii
Greeks, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and _ Italians—
rendered us the greatest assistance in our studies.
We were indebted most particularly to Wilhelm
Dérpfeld and my old schoolfellow Theodor Wiegand.
For me personally the whole expedition was hallowed
with peculiar, unforgettable solemnity owing to a
deeply affecting family bereavement, the sudden
news of which reached me at Smyrna. Thus it
dwells in my memory now as a great event to which
I owe both widening and deepening of experience.
On my arrival home I began to write a book,
combining my impressions of the tour with observa-
tions I had already made in the course of my studies.
The foundation was provided by a course of lectures '
which I gave at the Hochstift, Frankfort on the
Main, in 1905, and which appeared afterwards in
English, first in serial? and then in book form.’ I
was also able to make use of smaller articles of
mine, most of which appeared in Die Christlche
Welt, some being reprinted with my permission in
the eighth volume of Ernst Lohmann’s journal,
Sonnen-Aufgang: Mitteilungen aus dem Orient
(1906).
The linguistic details in Chapter II. of the present
book are to some extent supplemented in my
Cambridge lectures,* one of which is devoted to
Septuagint philology. Of the new and great tasks
1 An abstract of the course, entitled “Das Neue Testament und die Schrift-
denkmiiler der rémischen Kaiserzeit,” was printed in the Jahrbuch des Freien
Deutschen Hochstifts zu Frankfurt am Main, 1905, pp. 79-95.
2 The Expository Times, October 1906 to April 1907.
3 New Light on the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1907.
4 The Philology of the Greek Bible, London, 1908.
xxvii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
which the new texts set before the Septuagint
scholar I have spoken but occasionally in the present
book; but nearly all the observations that I have
brought together on the New Testament could be
carried further back and applied in like manner to
the Greek Old Testament. ᾿
At the desire of my publisher, Dr. Paul Siebeck,
who displayed great and intelligent interest in the
whole field of my.researches, I have written the
main text of the book (as distinct from the foot-
notes) in a manner to be understood in all essentials
by the general reader without specialist knowledge.
For the same reason the Greek and Latin texts
have been furnished with translations—a good means,
by the way, of enabling the author to check his
impressions. Dr. Siebeck complied most willingly
with my suggestion that a large number of the more
important texts should be shown in facsimile. In
obtaining the necessary photographs, rubbings, etc.,
I was assisted by several scholars and publishers at
home and abroad, and with especial liberality by
the Directors of the Royal Museums (Berlin), the
Imperial Postal Museum (Berlin), the Epigraphical
Commission of the Royal Prussian Academy of
Sciences, Lord Amherst of Hackney, the Heidelberg
University Library, the Egypt Exploration Fund
(London), the British Museum, and the Imperial
Austrian Archaeological Institute. For all this aid
I return respectful thanks.
From the beginning I was accompanied in my
work by the practical sympathy of my friend Ulrich
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xxix
Wilcken, who was also one of those who helped
by reading the proofs. The extent of my indebted-
ness to this pioneer worker in classical antiquities
cannot be gauged from the mere quotations in the
book itself... .
Little did I dream in October last (1907), when
the book began to be printed, that its completion
would mark my farewell to the University of
Heidelberg. Even after my summons to another
sphere of work I should have preferred to be able
to publish it in my capacity as a Heidelberg
Professor, for it is a Heidelberg book. But that
summons caused the printing to be delayed some
weeks. If 1 am thus unable to write Heidelberg
after my name on the title-page, I must at least
in this place acknowledge what help and stimulus,
what true fellowship and friendship Heidelberg has
brought me. I regard it as a most kindly dis-
pensation of Providence that for more than ten
years I have been privileged to live, work, and
learn in this ancient University—and for just those
ten years in which, while one’s own aims become
gradually clearer, one is still independent and re-
ceptive enough to be moulded by the most various
kinds of men and institutions.
- ADOLF DEISSMANN.
Castacnota, Lake or Lugano,
19 March, 1908.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Tue Prostem—Discovery anp Nature or THE NEw =
Texts . ὅ ᾿ ᾿ : 3 ἢ . 1-53
1. The Problem 5 7 Ξ : " : 1
2. The Texts . ᾿ ‘ 7 ᾿ : ; 9
(a) Inscriptions . Ξ . i ᾿ . 10
(6) Papyri . . : : : 5 - 20
(c) Ostraca . ἢ : : . Ὁ . 41
CHAPTER II
Tue Lancuace or THE New TESTAMENT ILLUSTRATED
From THE New Texts . Ὲ 5 ᾿ 54-142
1. The Historical and the Dogmatic Method of
New Testament Philology. Principal Problems 54
2. The New Testament a Record of late sare i
Greek . ᾿ : ‘ ὃ 5 . 62
3. Examples : : ᾿ . 66
A. Phonology a Accidente ; . . 66
B. Onomatology . ἢ : : ᾧ . 68
C. Vocabulary . : 3 : : - 69
(a) Words . : : ὃ . 69
(δὴ) Meanings of Words. i é 107
(ὧ Standing Phrases and Fixed Form aus 117
D. Syntax . . Ξ ὃ : : . 121
E. Style. . 127
4, The Essential Character of the New ΠΝ 140
xxxi
ΧΧΧῚΣ
CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
Tue New Testament as LITERATURE, ILLUSTRATED BY
THE New TeExts
. The Problem of the Literary rere of
PAGE
143-246
Christianity . . a ce : 143
2, The Essential Distinction between “ Literary ”
and “ Non-Literary ἢ : : 145
3. A Series of Twenty-one Ancient ‘eas (from
Originals), ἘΠΕῚ Ἀν ὁ οἵ ΠΕ ΘΟ
Writing : 147
4. The Essential Distinction ἘΠῚ ἫΝ τὐϊίον
and the Epistle : 217
5. Ancient Letters and Epistles . 221
6. Primitive Christian Letters 224
7. Primitive Christian Epistles . 284
8. The Literary προσ of Primitive Chris-
tianity . : . 9388
9. The Essential Character a the New ne aan 244
CHAPTER IV
Soctat anp Rewicious Hisrory ΙΝ ΤῊΕ New TEsTaMENT,
ILLUSTRATED From THE New Texts. 24'7-400
1. Clues in the New Testament referring to the
Subject. Remarks on Method 947
2. The Cultural page aa of Primitive Chris.
tianity . : . 264
3. The Religious World edie with Primi-
tive Christianity . ᾿ . 283
4. The Competing Cults 288
5. Types of Individual Souls among the ΠΕ
Non-Literary Classes 290
6. Stimuli derived from Contemporary Popular
Religion 302
L
CONTENTS xxxili
PAGE
7. Stimuli derived from a a ἐὼν
Morality . : . 912
8, Stimuli derived from aaa Popular .
law... ee ee ee ee ϑθῷ
9. Christ and the cee Parallelism in the
Technical Language of their Cults . . 942
10. The Theological and the Religious Element in
Primitive Christianity . . : . 984
11. The Forces enabling Primitive Christianity to
gain Converts : : 390
12. The Essential Character of ‘ts New Teun $99
CHAPTER V
Rertrospecr—FurureE Work or ΒΈΒΕΑΒΟΗ. . 401-419
1. Retrospect . . : 401
2. Christianity Popular in its Personalities a
Forms of Expression. : : : . 404
3. Future Work for the Philologist . : . 406
4. Future Work for the Theologian . : . 409
5. The New Testament Lexicon . : : . 411
APPENDIX I
JEwisH Prayers FoR VENGEANCE FOUND AT RHENEIA . 423
APPENDIX II
On THE Text or THE Sreconp Locia FRAGMENT FROM
OxyRHYNCHUS . : : : i τ Ε . 486
APPENDIX III
Tue Suprosep FracMEnt oF a Gosret aT Carro . » 441
χχχὶν CONTENTS
APPENDIX IV
A Jewish InscriprioN IN THE THEATRE AT MILETUS
APPENDIX V
THE SO-CALLED “ PLANETARY INSCRIPTION” IN THE THEATRE
AT Mitetus a tare Curistian ProrectivE CHarM .
APPENDIX VI
Unrecoenisep ΒΙΒΙΙΟΑΙ, Quorations IN Syrian AND Mzso-
POTAMIAN INSCRIPTIONS
INDICES
I. Praces . . ‘ ἢ . ᾿ : :
II. Ancrenr Persons
III. Worps anp Puraszs
IV. Sussecrs. . : : : Ἢ ᾿ ᾿ .
V. Moprern Persons .
VI. Passaces Crrep 2 : : ᾿ ; :
PAGE
446
448
456
461
466
474
480
494
503
FIG.
10.
11.
12.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
‘
Door Inscription from Synagogue at Corinth, Tmperieh Period.
Now in Corinth Museum .
PAGE
14
FACING PAGE
The Papyrus Plant. From H. Guthe, Kurzes Bibelwirterbuch
Ostracon from Upper Egypt, inscribed with Luke xxii. 70f.,
7th cent. a.p. Now in the Institut francais d’Archéo-
logie orientale, Cairo ἕ ᾿ A 3 : :
Site of the Excavations in Delos. From a photograph by Miss
M. Ὁ. de Graffenried . : ᾿ : : :
Tombstone from Bingerbriick, early Imperial Period. Now at
Kreuznach . : . .
Limestone Block from the Temple of Herod at Jerusalem,
inscribed with a warning notice. Early Imperial Period.
Now in the Imperial New Museum at Constantinople.
Wooden Mummy-label from Egypt, Imperial Period
Stele with Decree of Honour from Syme, 2nd cent. B.c. Now
in the chapel of St. Michael Tharrinos, Syme . Ἢ .
Ostracon, Thebes, 4 August, 63 4... Receipt for Isis Collec-
tion. Now in the Berlin Museum : ‘ Ξ ᾿
Limestone Slab, Magnesia on the Maeander, 138 or 132 8.0.
Judicial Award by the aia lines 52-80. Now. in
the Berlin Museum ὃ . 3 : 3
Ostracon, Thebes, 32-33 a.p. Receipt for Alien Tax. Now
in the Author’s collection . ‘ : ὃ ‘ ‘4
Ostracon, Thebes, 2nd cent. a.p. Order for Payment of Wheat.
- Now in the Author’s collection . 5 és ‘ Ὶ :
ΣΧΧΧΥ͂
22
δ0
53
69
75
98
102
105
106
111
128
ΧΧΧΥΪ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIa.
18. Isis Inscription from Ios. Writing of the 2nd or 8rd cent. a.p.
Contents pre-Christian. Now in the Church of St. John
the Divine, Ios . : Ἶ : ξ
14,15. The Oldest Greek Letter yet discovered, Address (Fig. 14) and
Text (Fig. 15): Mnesiergus of Athens to his Housemates.
Leaden tablet, 4th cent. B.c. Now in the Berlin Museum .
16. Letter from Demophon, a wealthy Egyptian, to Ptolemaeus,
a police official, circa 245 B.c. Papyrus from Hibeh. Now
in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund
17. Letter from Asclepiades, an Egyptian landowner, to Portis.
Ptolemaic Period. Ostracon from Thebes. Now in the
possession of Ulrich Wilcken : ᾿ ᾿ ᾿
18. Letter from Hilarion, an Egyptian labourer, to Alis, his wife.
Papyrus, written at Alexandria, 17 June, 1 3.c. Now in
the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund
19,20. Letter from Mystarion, an Egyptian olive-planter, to Sto-
toétis, a chief priest, Address (Fig. 19) and Text (Fig. 20),
13 September, 50 a.p. Papyrus from the Fayim. Now
in the Imperial Postal Museum at Berlin . d
21. Letter from Harmiysis, a small Egyptian farmer, to Papiscus,
an official, and others, 24 July, 66 a.p., lines 1-381.
Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Now in the Cambridge Uni-
versity Library . ‘ : : : . ᾿
22, Letter from Nearchus, an Egyptian, to Heliodorus, Ist or 2nd
cent. a.D. Papyrus from Egypt. Now in the British
Museum : ὃ ᾿ i ὃ ῷ
23. Letter from Irene, an Egyptian, to a Family in Mourning,
2nd cent. a.p. Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Now in the
Library of Yale University . ᾿ . ὃ ᾿
24, Letter from Apion, an Egyptian soldier in the Roman Army,
to his father Epimachus, Misenum, 2nd cent. a.p. Papyrus
from the Fayim. Now in the Berlin Museum .
25. Letter from Apion (now Antonius Maximus), an Egyptian
soldier in the Roman Army, to his sister Sabina, 2nd
cent. a.p. Papyrus from the Fayim. Now in the Berlin
Museum . Ἴ . . ἢ i . ‘ ἢ .
FACING PAGE
136
148
150
152
154
157
160
162
164
168
172
FIG.
26.
27.
29.
30.
91,
32.
39,
86..
36.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ΣΧΧΥΪΣ
FACING PAGE
Letter from a Prodigal Son, Antonis Longus, to his mother
Nilus, 2nd cent. a.p. Papyrus from the Fayim. Now in
the Berlin Museum . :
Letter from Aurelius Archelaus, beneficiarius, to Julius Domi-
tius, military tribune, lines 1-24, 2nd cent. a.p. Papyrus
from Oxyrhynchus. Now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford
Letter from Harpocras, an Egyptian, to Phthomonthes, 29
December, 192 a.p. Ostracon from Thebes. Now in
the Author’s collection
Letter from Theon, an Egyptian boy, to his father Theon,
2nd or 3rd cent. a.p. Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Now
in the Bodleian Library, Oxford ὃ . .
Letter from Pacysis, an Egyptian, to his son, about the
8rd cent. a.p. Ostracon from Thebes. Now in the
Author’s collection
The Oldest Christian Letter extant in the Original. Letter
from an Egyptian Christian to his fellow-Christians in
the Arsinoite nome. Papyrus, written at Rome between
264 (265) and 282 (281) a.p. Formerly in the possession
of the late Lord Amherst of Hackney. Ἢ ᾿
Letter from Psenosiris, a Christian presbyter, to Apollo, a
Christian presbyter at Cysis (Great Oasis) Papyrus,
beginning of the 4th cent. a.p. (Diocletian persecution).
* Now in the British Museum ὃ ᾿ . ὅ :
Letter (with Address) from Justinus, an Egyptian Christian,
to Papnuthius, a Christian. Papyrus, middle of the 4th
cent. 4.p. Now in the University Library, Heidelberg
Letter from Caor, Papas of Hermupolis, to Flavius Abinnaeus,
an officer at Dionysias in the Fayim. Papyrus, circa
346 a.p. Now in the British Museum
Letter from Samuel, Jacob, and Aaron, candidates for the
diaconate, to Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis(?). Coptic
ostracon, circa 600 a.p. (verso). Now in the possession
of the Egypt Exploration Fund .
Letter probably from Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis(?) to
the clergy of his diocese. Coptic ostracon, circa 600 a.p.
(verso). Now in the possession of the Egypt Exploration
Fund . . . ; Ἶ 8 . . : ᾿ Ἵ
176.
183:
186
188.
191
194
202.
204.
206
210
214.
xxxvili LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fic.
37.
38.
99.
40.
41.
43.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
FACING PAGE
The first lines of the Epistle to the Romans in a rustic hand.
Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, beginning of the 4th cent. a.p.
Now in the Semitic Museum of Harvard University
Marble Inscription from Cos, containing the title Huergetes,
circa 53 a.p. Now in Sarrara Yussuf’s garden wall, in the
town of Cos
Folio 88 recto of the Great Magical Papyrus, written in Egypt
circa 300 a.p. Now in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris
Folio 33 verso of the Great Magical Papyrus, written in Egypt
circa 300 a.p. Now in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris
Report of Judicial Proceedings before the Praefect of Egypt,
G. Septimius Vegetus, 85 a.p. Papyrus. Now at Florence
Edict of the Praefect of Egypt, G. Vibius Maximus, 104 a.n.
Papyrus (part of a letter ΠΡΟΣ Now in the British
Museum 3 ‘ Fi
* Angel” Inscription from the Island of Thera. Gravestone,
Imperial Period. Now in the Thera Museum
Epigram on the Tomb of Chrysogonus of Cos. Marble Altar,
Imperial Period. Now built into the wall of a house in Cos
Charm for “ Binding.” Leaden tablet from Attica, first half
ofthe 4thcent.B.c. . 0. 0. wet
Charm for “ Binding.” Ostracon from Ashmunén, late Im-
perial Period. Formerly in the possession of the late
F. Hilton Price, London .
Marble Pedestal from Pergamum with an Inscription in honour
of the Gymnasiarch Apollodorus of Pergamum. Roman
Period. Original still at Pergamum .
Marble Tombstone of Otacilia Polla of Pergamum, about the
time of Hadrian. Now in the garden of Pasha-Oglu
Hussein, in the Selinus valley, near Pergamum .
Retaining-wall of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, inscribed
with numerous ancient records of manumissions. ᾿
Note of Hand for 100 Silver Drachmae, Ist cent. a.p. sa sans
from the Fayum. Now in the Berlin Museum . .
292
248
251
253
267
268
279
296
307
309
315
319
324
335
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS χχχὶχ
FIG. FACING PAGB
51. Original Limestone Plate (charagma) inscribed with the seal of
Augustus. Egypt, 5-6 a.p. Now in the Berlin Museum .
52. Marble Pedestal from Pergamum with an Inscription in honour
of a Priestess of Athene. Imperial Period. Now in the
Berlin Museum . : :
53. Marble Pedestal from Pergamum with an Inscription in honour
of Augustus. Age of Augustus. Now in the Berlin
Museum : : ᾿ : ὃ : : .
54. Marble Slab from Magnesia on the Maeander with a Votive
Inscription for Nero, 50-54 a.p. Original at Pergamum ;
Plaster Cast in the Berlin Museum : ἑ
55. Wall of the Propylon of the Temple at El-Khargeh (Great
Oasis) inscribed with an Edict of the Praefect Ti. Julius
Alexander, 6 July, 68 a.p., lines 1-46
56. Ostracon, Thebes. Dated on a Sebaste Day in August or
September, 33 a.p. Receipt for Embankment and Bath
Tax. Now in the Author’s collection.
57,58. Inscription of the Hymnodi of the god Augustus and the
goddess Roma on a marble altar at Pergamum, temp.
Hadrian, right side (B, Fig. 57) and left side (D, Fig. τ
Now in the courtyard of the Konak at Pergamum
59. Block of Blue Limestone from a Pillar of the North Hall of
the Market at Priene, with the Calendar Inscription,
lines 1-31, circa 9 B.c. Now in the Berlin Museum .
60. Block of White Marble from a Pillar of the North Hall of
the Market at Priene, with the Calendar Inscription,
lines 32-60, circa 9 B.c. Now in the Berlin Museum.
61. Marble Stele from Cos, Tombstone of Hermes, an Imperial
Freedman, after 161 a.p. Now in the house of Said Ali
in the town of Cos . é .
62. Onomasticon sacrum. Papyrus from Egypt, 3rd or 4th cent. a.p.
Now in the University Library, Heidelberg
68. Title-page of the first New Testament Lexicon, by Georg Pasor,
Herborn, 1619. From a ΠῺΣ in the University sea
Heidelberg ‘ ‘ : 3 ᾿ : 2
345
349
350
351
362
364
365
370
371
382
415
416
xl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. FACING PAGE
64, 65. Marble Stele from Rheneia, inscribed with a prayer for
vengeance on the murderers of Heraclea, a Jewess of
Delos, circa 100 B.c., front view (A, Fig. 64) and back view
(B, Fig. 65). Now in the Museum at Bucharest . . 424
66. Marble Stele from Rheneia, inscribed with a prayer for
vengeance on the murderers of Marthina, a Jewess of Delos,
circa 100 s.c. Now in the National Museum, Athens . 425
67. Inscription for the Jewish Seats in the Theatre at Miletus.
Imperial Period . : ᾿ ‘ : ᾽ ; . 446
68. Christian Archangel Inscription in the Theatre at Miletus.
Early Byzantine Period . . ὃ : . : . 449
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND NATURE OF
THE NEW TEXTS
1. THE gospel was first preached beneath an Anatolian
sky. Jesus and Paul were sons of the East. The
*« Amen” of our daily prayers, the “ Hosanna” and
“Hallelujah” of our anthems, names such as
“Christ” and “ Evangelist” remind us constantly
of the beginnings of our religious communion. Like
other words distinctive of our faith, they are of
Semitic and Greek origin. They take us back not
only to the soil of Galilee and Judaea but to the
international highways of the Greek or rather
Graecised Orient; Jesus preaches in His Aramaic
mother tongue, Paul in the cosmopolitan Greek of
‘the Roman Empire.
So too the book which preserves an echo of the
message of Jesus and His apostles: the New
Testament is a gift from the East. We are accus-
tomed to read it under a Northern sky, and though
it is by origin an Eastern book, it is so essentially
a book of humanity that we comprehend its spirit
even in the countries of the West and North. But
details here and there, and the historical setting,
would be better understood by a son of the East,
especially a contemporary of the evangelists and
apostles, than by us. Even to-day the traveller
who follows the footsteps of the apostle Paul from
1
2 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
Corinth past the ruins of Ephesus to Antioch and
Jerusalem, finds much revealed to him in the sun-
shine of the Levant which he would not necessarily
have seen at Heidelberg or Cambridge.
In our acts of worship we have, thank God,
nothing to do with the historical setting of the
sacred text. The great outlines of the shining
golden letters are clearly visible even in the semi-
darkness of the shrine, and here our business is
with things holy, not historical.
But theology, as an historical science, has a vital
interest in the discovery of the historical setting,
the historical background.
The ancient world, in the widest sense of that
term, forms the historical background to Primitive
Christianity. It is that great civilised world fringing
the Mediterranean which at the period of the new
religious departure displayed a more than outward
compactness so far as the Hellenisation and
Romanisation’ of the East and the Orientalisation
of the West had worked together for unity.
Any attempt to reconstruct this mighty background
to the transformation scene in the world’s religion
will base itself principally on the literatures of that
age,—and on earlier literatures in so far as they
were forces vital enough to have influenced men’s
minds in the Imperial period. There are two groups
of literary memorials deserving of special attention :
firstly, the remains of Jewish tradition contained in
the Mishna, the Talmuds, and kindred texts;
secondly, the Graeco-Roman authors of the Imperial
age.
Of neither of these groups, however, shall I speak
1 On this hitherto little-studied problem cf. Ludwig Hahn, Rom und
Romanismus im griechisch-rimischen Osten, Leipzig, 1907.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 3
here, although I am not unaware of the great im-
portance of this body of literary evidence. It were
indeed a task well worthy of a scholar to devote his
life to producing a new edition of Johann Jakob
Wetstein’s New Testament.’ That splendid book is
now a century and a half old, and its copious collec-
tion of parallels from Jewish and Graeco-Roman
literature could be supplemented from our present
stores of scientific antiquarian lore: it was one of
the dreams of my student days. But on the whole
ancient Jewish literature at the present time is
being explored by so many theologians, both Jewish
and Christian,—the Christian with fewer prejudices
than formerly, and the Jewish more methodically,—
and on the whole the Graeco-Roman literature of
the Imperial period has attracted so many in-
dustrious workers, that we are already familiar with
a wide extent of the terary background of Primitive
Christianity. Indeed, the literary memorials are
valued so highly that in some quarters it is
consciously or unconsciously believed that the
literature of the Imperial period will enable us
to restore the historical background of Primitive
Christianity in its entirety.
Those who think so forget that the literature, even
if we now possessed the whole of it, is after all only
a fragment of the ancient world, though an important
fragment. They forget that a reconstruction of the
1 Novum Testamentum Graecum cum lectionibus variantibus et commentario
pleniore opera Jo. Jac. Wetstenii, Amstelaedami, 1751-2, 2 vols. folio.
Dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II. Contains prole-
gomena, apparatus criticus, and commentary. Z£g. Matt. ix. 12, “they that be
whole need not a physician,” is illustrated by quotations from Ovid, Diogenes
Laertes, Pausanias, Stobaeus, Dio Chrysostom, Artemidorus, Plato, Quintilian,
Seneca, and Plutarch. There are appendices on the use of variants and on
interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse); ὦ list of authors quoted; a
Greek index verborum ; and, to crown the feast, the Syriac text of the Epistles
of Clement is given, (18.)
4 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
ancient world is bound to be imperfect if founded
solely on the literary texts, and that comparisons
between Primitive Christianity and this world re-
stored in fragments made up of fragments might
easily prove erroneous. Even so brilliant and learned
a scholar as Eduard Norden,’ in criticising Primitive
Christianity in its linguistic and literary aspects,
insisted upon contrasts between St. Paul and the
ancient world which in reality are mere contrasts
between artless non-literary prose and the artistic
prose of literature. Such contrasts are quite un-
connected with the opposition in which Primitive
Christianity stood to the ancient world.
As an attempt to fill in some gaps in the historical
background of Primitive Christianity, and as an
antidote to extreme views concerning the value of
the literary memorials, the following pages are offered
to the reader. I propose to show the importance of
the non-hterary written memorials of the Roman
Empire in the period which led up to and witnessed
the rise and early development of Christianity, the
period, let us say, from Alexander to Diocletian or
Constantine. They consist of innumerable texts on
stone, metal, wax, papyrus, wood, or earthenware,
now made accessible to us by archaeological discovery
and research. The discoveries belong chiefly to the
nineteenth century, which we might almost describe
as the century of epigraphical archaeology’; but their
1 Die antihe Kunstprosa vom VI, Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der
Renaissance, Leipzig, 1898. See the review of this book in the Theol. Rundschau
5 (1902) p, 66 fF.
? General readers as well as specialists will appreciate the review of the
century’s work (restricted, however, to the archaeology of art) in Adolf
Michaelis, Die archiologischen Entdeckungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,
Leipzig, 1906; 2nd ed. 1908, under the title Hin Jahrhundert kunstarchdolo-
gischer Entdeckungen, [Now accessible to English readers in translation, A
Century of Archaeological Discoveries, London (J. Murray), 1908. TR.]
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 5
importance for the historical understanding of Primi-
tive Christianity is still far from being generally
recognised, and it will be much longer before they
are fully exhausted.
How different it has been with the cuneiform in-
scriptions of the East and their application to Old
Testament study! Men who knew much about the
Bible, but nothing of cuneiform, entered into com-
petition with noisy and gifted cuneiform scholars, to
whom the Bible had not revealed its mysteries, and
an immense literature informed the world of the
gradual rise of the edifice behind the scaffolding amid
the dust and din of the Babylonian building-plot.
It was spoken of in the wardrooms of our men-of-
war and in the crowded debating halls of the trade
unions.
It cannot be said that New Testament scholarship
has hitherto profited on the same scale by the new
discoveries. The relics of antiquity found in Mediter-
ranean lands are able to throw light on the New
Testament, but their value is not so obvious as that
of the cuneiform inscriptions for the Old Testament,
and can certainly not be made clear to every layman
in a few minutes. No tablets have yet been found
to enable us to date exactly the years of office of
the Procurators Felix and Festus or of the Proconsul
Gallio, which would settle an important problem of
early Christian history, and Christian inscriptions and
papyri of the very earliest period are at present
altogether wanting. And yet the discoveries made
by our diggers of archaeological treasure in Greece,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt are of very great
importance indeed for the light they throw on the
earliest stages of Christianity.
It is not merely that the systematic study of the
6 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
new texts increases the amount of authentic first-hand
evidence relating to the Imperial period. The point
is that the literary memorials are supplemented by
an entirely new group, with quite a new bearing
on history.
In the literary memorials, what we have is practi-
cally the evidence of the upper, cultivated class about
itself. The lower class is seldom allowed to speak,
and where it does come to the front—in the comedies,
for instance—it stands before us for the most part
in the light thrown upon it from above. The old
Jewish literature, it is true, has preserved along with
its superabundance of learned dogma much that
belongs to the people—the Rabbinic texts are a mine
of information to the folklorist—yet it may be said of
the Graeco-Roman literature of the Imperial age that
it is on the whole the reflection of the dominant
class, possessed of power and culture ; and this upper
class has been almost always taken as identical with
the whole ancient world of the Imperial age. Com-
pared with Primitive Christianity, advancing like the
under-current of a lava stream with irresistible force
from its source in the East, this upper stratum
appears cold, exhausted, lifeless. Senility, the feature
common to upper classes everywhere, was held to be
the characteristic of the whole age which witnessed
the new departure in religion, and thus we have the
origin of the gloomy picture that people are still fond
of drawing as soon as they attempt to sketch for us
the background of Christianity in its early days.
This fatal generalisation involves of course a great
mistake. The upper class has been simply confused
with the whole body of society, or, to employ another
expression, Primitive Christianity has been compared
with an incommensurable quantity. By its social
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS. 7
structure Primitive Christianity points unequivocally
to the lower and middle class.! Its connexions with
the upper class are very scanty at the outset. Jesus
of Nazareth was a carpenter, Paul of Tarsus a weaver
of tent-cloth, and St. Paul’s words’® about ‘the origin
of his churches in the lower classes of the great towns
form one of the most important testimonies, histori-
cally speaking, that Primitive Christianity gives of
itself. Primitive Christianity is another instance of
the truth taught us with each return of springtime,
that the sap rises upward from below. Primitive
Christianity stood to the upper class in natural
opposition, not so much because it was Christianity,
but because it was a movement of the lower classes.
The only comparison possible, therefore, is that
between the Christians and the corresponding class
among the pagans.
Until recently the men of this class were almost
entirely lost to the historian. Now, however, thanks
to the discovery of their own authentic records, they
have suddenly risen again from the rubbish mounds
of the ancient cities, little market towns, and villages.
They plead so insistently to be heard that there is
1 This sentence, of which the whole of this book is an illustration, forms the
subject of an address by me at the nineteenth Evangelical and Social Congress,
held at Dessau, on “Primitive Christianity and the Lower Classes,” printed
together with the lively discussion that followed in the Proceedings of the
Congress, Géttingen, 1908; and in a second (separate) edition, Gdttingen,
1908. An English translation appeared in The Expositor, February, March,
and April 1909.—I am well aware that it is difficult in many cases to prove
the division into classes, the boundaries between the “upper class” and the
“lower” classes being often shifting. The speakers in the discussion at Dessau
had much to say of importance on this head, and several reviewers of this
book have discussed the point. I would refer particularly to Paul Wendland’s
review in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung 29 (1908) col. 3146f. The problem of
class-division has deeply engaged my attention.
31 Cor. i, 26-31. With this compare the humble inscription from the
synagogue at Corinth (Figure 1, p. it below), perhaps the very synagogue in
which St. Paul first preached at Corinth.
8 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
nothing for it but to yield them calm and dis-
passionate audience. The chief and most general
value of the non-literary written memorials of the
Roman Empire, I think, is this: They help us to
correct the picture of the ancient world which we
have formed by viewing it, hitherto, exclusively from
above. They place us in the midst of that class in
which we have to think of the apostle Paul and the
early Christians gathering recruits. This statement,
however, must not be pressed. Of course among the
inscriptions and papyri of that time there are many
that do not come from the lower class but owe their
origin to Caesars, generals, statesmen, municipalities,
and rich people.’ But side by side with these texts
lies evidence of the middle and lower classes, in
countless depositions made by themselves, and in
most cases recognisable at once as such by their
contents or the peculiarity of their language. These
are records of the people’s speech, records of the
insignificant affairs of insignificant persons. Peasants
and artisans, soldiers and slaves and mothers speak
to us of their cares and labours. The unknown and
the forgotten, for whom there was no room in the
pages of the annals, troop into the lofty halls of our
museums, and in the libraries, folio on folio, are
ranged the precious editions of the new texts.
In several ways these texts yield a respectable
harvest to the student of the New Testament. I am
not thinking now of the additions to our store of
New Testament and other early Christian MSS. by
the discovery of early Christian papyrus fragments,
although in this direct way the value of the new
1 Even these, however, especially the municipal documents of the Imperial
period, are, at least linguistically, representative not of the higher but of an
average culture.
‘NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 9
documents is considerable. 1am thinking rather of
the indirect value which the non-Christian, non-
literary texts possess for the student of Primitive
Christianity. This is of three kinds:
(1) They teach us to put a right estimate philo-
logically upon the New Testament and, with it,
Primitive Christianity.
(2) They point to the right kterary appreciation of
the New Testament.
(3) They give us important information on points
in the history of religion and culture, helping us to
understand both the contact and the contrast between
Primitive Christianity and the ancient world.
For the purposes of this work I have tacitly ex-
cluded one group of memorials. I shall in the
main deal only with Greek and Latin texts and
neglect those in other languages. I could not claim
to speak as a specialist with regard to all of them,
and moreover the sheer bulk of the Greek and
Latin texts makes it necessary to fix bounds some-
where. I desire, however, to call special attention
to at least one group, of the utmost importance
particularly in the history of religion. The Semitic
inscriptions, found in such numbers in the province
of Syria and the border-lands to the East and North,
enable us to reconstruct at least fragments of almost
unknown heathen cults that were practised in the
original home of Christianity.’
2. It will be our business to discuss the new texts
in the light of linguistic, literary, and religious
history; but before we address ourselves to this
1 A most promising beginning in turning the inscriptions and sculpture to
account in the history of religion has been made by René Dussaud, Notes de
Mythologie Syrienne, Paris, 1903 and 1905. Cf. Count Wolf Baudissin, Theol.
Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906) col. 294 ff.
10 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
triple task it is necessary that the teats themselves
should be briefly described.’
We divide them according to the material on
which they are written into three main groups.
This method of division is mechanical, but is
recommended by the simple fact that the texts are
generally published in separate editions according
to the material they are written on. We shall
speak in turn of:
(a) Inscriptions on stone, metal, etc.,
(ὁ) Texts on papyrus,
(c) Texts on potsherds.
(a) The bulk of the INscripTions’ are on stone,
but to these must be added inscriptions cast and
engraved in bronze or scratched on tablets of lead
or gold, a few wax tablets, the scribblings (graffiti)
found on walls, and the texts on coins and medals.
These inscriptions, of which there are hundreds of
thousands, are discovered on the site of the ancient
civilised settlements of the Graeco-Roman world, in
its fullest extent from the Rhine to the upper course
of the Nile, and from the Euphrates to Britain.
Inscriptions have been noted and studied since the
days of the Renaissance,’ and in the eighteenth
century there was one scholar, Johann Walch,‘ who
1 Of course no attempt is made here at exhaustiveness of statement.
2 To the layman needing a first introduction to Greek epigraphy, Walther
Janell, Ausgewdhite Inschriften griechisch wnd deutsch, Berlin, 1906, may be
recommended. It is only to be regretted that the translations often modernise
the originals far more than is necessary.
3. For the early history of Greek epigraphy see 8. Chabert, Revue Archéo-
logique, quatr. série, t. 5 (1905) p. 274 ff.
* Joh, Ernst Imm. Walch, Observationes in Matthaewm ex graecis in-
scriptionibus, Jena, 1779, This book is undoubtedly one of the best examples
of the many valuable “Observations” which that age produced, and from
which almost the whole of the philological matter in our New Testament
commentaries and lexicons is derived.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 11
pressed Greek inscriptions into the service of New
᾿ Testament exegesis. But the nineteenth century is
the first that really deserves to be called the age of
epigraphy.
Two names stand forth before all others as
personifying epigraphical studies: August Béckh
will always be associated with the Corpus Inscripti-
onum Graecarum, and Theodor Mommsen with the
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. The great col-
lection of Greek inscriptions has long ceased to be
up to date, and is gradually being replaced by newer
publications,’ but it was this first great attempt to
collect all the material that alone enabled Greek
epigraphy to develop so brilliantly as it has done.
Great societies as well as independent archaeologists
have added to the total number of inscriptions
known by carrying on systematic excavations, typical
examples being the work of the Germans at Olympia
and of the French at Delphi. New Testament
scholars will follow with interested eyes the dis-
coveries made in recent years by the English and
Austrians on the site of ancient Ephesus,’ by British
1 The first new Corpus was the Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, The
volumes have been numbered on a uniform plan so as to fit in with later
Corpora of Greek inscriptions in Europe still in course of publication (U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in the Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 25 June 1903). The comprehensive title of the new
Corpora is Inscriptiones Graecae editae consilio et auctoritate Academiae
Regiae Borussicae (abbreviated I. G.). An admirable guide to these publica-
tions is Baron F, Hiller von Gaertringen, Stand der griechischen Inschriften-
corpora, Beitrage zur Alten Geschichte [Klio] 4 (1904) p. 252 ff,
2 J. T. Wood, Discoveries at Ephesus, London, 1877; The Collection of
Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, edited by Sir C. T.
Newton: Part 111, Priene, Iasos and Ephesos, by E. L. Hicks, Oxford, 1890.
The provisional reports of the Austrians in the Beiblatt der Jahreshefte des
Osterreichischen Archaeologischen Institutes in Wien, 1898 ff., are now being
brought together and supplemented in the monumental Forschungen in Ephesos
veroffentlicht vom Osterreichischen Archacologischen Institute, the first volume
of which appeared at Vienna, 1906, with prominent contributions from Otto
Benndorf, and under his auspices.
12 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
investigators in Asia Minor in general,’ by the
Germans at Pergamum,’ Magnesia on the Maeander,’
Priene,* Miletus,’ and other places in Asia Minor,’ in
1 J will only mention here, since it appeals particularly to theological
students, the great work done by Sir William M, Ramsay and his pupils, the
latest presentation of which will be found in a book entitled Studies in the
History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire, Aberdeen,
1906, published in celebration of the Quatercentenary of the University of
Aberdeen, and valuable as a contribution to early Church History.
2 Kénigliche Museen zu Berlin, Altertiimer von Pergamon herausgegeben im
Auftrage des Kéniglich Preussischen Ministers der geistlichen, Unterrichts-
und Medicinal-Angelegenheiten, Vol. VIII.: Die Inschriften von Pergamon
unter Mitwirkung von Ernst Fabricius und Carl Schuchhardt herausgegeben
von Max Frankel, 1. Bis zum Ende der Kénigszeit, Berlin, 1890; 2. Rimische
Zeit.—Inschriften auf Thon, Berlin, 1895.—Recent finds are generally pub-
lished in the Mitteilungen des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen
Instituts, Athenische Abteilung (Athenische Mitteilungen).. Besides the great
German work on Pergamum there has appeared: Pergame, Restawration et
Description des Monuments de VAcropole. Restauration par Emmanuel
Pontremoli. Texte par Maxime Collignon, Paris, 1900.
3 Konigliche Museen 2u Berlin, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander
herausgegeben von Otto Kern, Berlin, 1890.
4 Kénigliche Museen zu Berlin, Priene Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und
Untersuchungen in den Jahren 1895-1898 von Theodor Wiegand und Hans
Schrader unter Mitwirkung von G. Kummer, W. Wilberg, H. Winnefeld,
R. Zahn, Berlin, 1904.—Znschriften von Priene unter Mitwirkung von
C. Fredrich, H. von Prott, H. Schrader, Th. Wiegand und H. Winnefeld
herausgegeben von Εἰ, Frhr. Hiller von Gaertringen, Berlin, 1906.
5 Of the great work on Miletus two instalments have so far appeared (Milet
Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen seit dem Jahre 1899, Heft 1,
Karte der Milesischen Halbinsel, 1 : 50,000, mit erlauterndem Text von Paul
Wilski, Berlin, 1906. Heft 2, Das Rathaus von Milet von Hubert Knackfuss
mit Beitrigen von Carl Fredrich, Theodor Wiegand, Hermann Winnefeld,
Berlin, 1908). Of. also the provisional reports by R. Kekule von Stradonitz (1.)
and Theodor Wiegand (II.-V.) in the Sitzungsberichte der Kgl, Preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1900, 1901, 1904, 1905, 1906, and by
Theodor Wiegand in the Archdologischer Anzeiger, 1901, 1902, 1904, and 1906.
Report No. VI. (on Miletus and Didyma) by Wiegand appeared at Berlin in
1908, in the appendix to the Abhandlungen der Kgl. Preussischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1908.
® I would mention specially: Karl Buresch, Aus Lydien epigraphisch-
geographische Reisefriichte herausg. von Otto Ribbeck, Leipzig, 1898;
Altertiimer von Hierapolis herausgegeben von Carl Humann, Conrad
Cichorius, Walther Judeich, Franz Winter, Berlin, 1898 (Jahrbuch des Kais.
Deutschen Archdologischen Instituts IV. Erganzungsheft); the inscriptions,
pp. 67-180, are dealt with by Walther Judeich. Other epigraphical material
in plenty will be found in the serial publications in the Athenischen Mittei-
lungen and the various special journals.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 13
Thera,’ Cos,’ and other islands, and in Syria and
Arabia,’ by the French at Didyma‘ and in Delos,’
by the Americans in Asia Minor ὁ and at Corinth.’
} Of. the great’ work on Thera by Baron F, Hiller von Gaertringen, Berlin,
1899 ff, and the same scholar’s edition of the inscriptions from Thera in 1.6,
Vol. XII. fasc. 111., Berlin, 1898.
? Rudolf Herzog, Koische Forschwngen und Funde, Leipzig, 1899. The
foundation was laid by W. R. Paton and Εἰ. L. Hicks, The Inseriptions of Cos,
Oxford, 1891.
3 Karl Humann and Otto Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und Nordsyrien
. . . (text with atlas), Berlin, 1890; Rudolf Ernst Briinnow and Alfred von
Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia . . ., 3 vols., Strassburg, 1904, 1905,
1909.
4 E. Pontremoli and B. Haussoullier, Didymes Fouilles de 1895 et 1896, Paris,
1904. For the inscriptions see the provisional publications in the Bulletin de
Correspondance Hellénique. The first account of the new German excavations
was given by Theodor Wiegand in his VIth provisional Report, see above,
p. 12, n. 5.
5 Cf. chiefly the provisional publications in the Bulletin de Correspondance
Hellénique. The inscriptions of Delos (with those of Myconos and Rheneia)
will be published by the Paris Academy as Vol. XI. of the Berlin Inseriptiones
Graecae (and those of Delphi as Vol. VIII.). Two important inscriptions from
the island-cemetery of the Delians, which throw light on the history of the
Septuagint and the Jewish Diaspora, are discussed in my essay on “ Die
Rachegebete von Kheneia,” Philologus 61 (1902) pp. 253-265, reprinted as an
appendix (No. I.) to the present work.
5 Cf. especially Vols. 2 and 3 of the Papers of the American School of
Classical Studies at Athens, Boston, 1888, with reports of two epigraphical
expeditions in Asia Minor by J. R. Sitlington Sterrett.
7 Cf. provisionally the inscriptions published by B. Powell in the American
Journal of Archaeology, 2nd series, Vol. 7 (1903) No, 1; also Erich Wilisch,
Zehn Jahre amerikanischer Ausgrabung in Korinth, Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das
klassische Altertum, etc. 11 (1908) Bd. 21, Heft 6. Among the inscriptions
there is one (No. 40), no doubt the remains of an inscription for a door, which
is of interest in connexion with Acts xviii. 4: [συνα]γωγὴ ‘Efp[alwv], “ Syna-
gogue of the Hebrews.” I reproduce it here from a rubbing taken by me at
the Corinth Museum, 12 May 1906 (Figure 1). The inscription is 183 inches
long; the letters are from 2} to 33 inches high, The writing reminds one
somewhat of the Jewish inscription in the theatre at Miletus, published in
Appendix IV. of the present work. Baron Hiller von Gaertringen very kindly
gave me his opinion (in letters dated Berlin, 14 January and 26 February,
1907) that the mason copied exactly the written characters that were set before
him; as extreme limits within which the inscription must have been made the
dates 100 B.c. and 200 A.D. might, with some reservation, be assumed.—It is
therefore a possibility seriously to be reckoned with that we have here the
inscription to the door of the Corinthian synagogue mentioned in Acts xviii. 4,
in which St. Paul first preached! The miserable appearance of the inscription,
which is without ornament of any kind, is typical of the social position of the
14 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
There are moreover plenty of native Greek archae-
ologists whose excellent work vies with that of their
foreign visitors.
We await with most lively expectations the Greek
volumes of the new Corpus of the inscriptions of
Asia Minor, Titult Asiae Minoris, now preparing
at Vienna after important preliminary expeditions
by the Austrian archaeologists’ in search of new
material. A large portion of the background of
St. Paul’s missions and the life of the primitive
Christian churches will here be made accessible to us.
Biblical philologists are provided with a mine of in-
formation in Wilhelm Dittenberger’s splendid Orientis
Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae,’ a comprehensive work
distinguished by the accuracy of its texts and the
people whom St. Paul had before him in that synagogue, many of whom
certainly were included among the Corinthian Christians that he afterwards
described in 1 Cor. i. 26-31.—The Corinthian inscription bears also on the
interpretation of the expression συναγωγὴ Αἱβρέων which is found in an
inscription at Rome (Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes IIL. p, 46;
Schiele, The American Journal of Theology, 1905, p. 290 f£.). Ido not think
that Ἑβραῖοι means Hebrew-speaking Jews.—Further reports of the American
excavations at Corinth are given in the American Journal of Archaeology,
2nd Series, Vol. 8 (1904) p. 433 f£., 9 (1905) p. 44%, 10 (1906) p. 17 ff.
PUP Ae
Fic. 1.—Door INSCRIPTION FROM SYNAGOGUH AT CORINTH, IMPERIAL
PERIOD. Now In CorINTH MuszeuM
| Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien, Vol. 1. Reisen in Lykien und Karien
εν von Otto Benndorf und George Niemann, Wien, 1884; Vol. II, Reisen
in Lykien Milyas und Kibyratis ... von Eugen Petersen und Felix von
Luschan, Wien, 1889; Opramoas Inschriften vom Heroon zu Rhodiapolis .. .
neu bearbeitet von Rudolf Heberdey, Wien, 1897 ; Stddte Pamphyliens und
Pisidiens unter Mitwirkung von G. Niemann und KE. Petersen herausgegeben
von Karl Grafen Lanckorotiski, Vol. I. Pamphylien, Wien, 1890; Vol. II.
Pisidien, Wien, 1892,
2 2 vols., Leipzig, 1903 and 1905.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 15
soundness of its commentary. Works like this and
the same author’s Sylloge Inscriptionum Graec-
arum, and the collections of Εἰ. L. Hicks,? E. 5.
Roberts [and Εἰ. A. Gardner],? Charles Michel,’
R. Cagnat,’ and others, are admirably adapted for
use by theologians as introductions to the special
studies of the masters of Greek epigraphy.°
I have already mentioned the study of St. Matthew
by Walch, who, so far as I know, was the first to
employ Greek inscriptions in the elucidation of the
New Testament. Since then’ his followers in this
path have been chiefly British* scholars, e.g. Bishop
Lightfoot and Edwin Hatch in many of their
writings ; E. L. Hicks,’ who has been already men-
tioned as one of the editors of the inscriptions of
Cos and of the British Museum inscriptions; and
most particularly Sir William Ramsay—who has him-
self done great things for the epigraphy of Asia Minor
—in a long series of well-known works. In Germany
in recent years Εἰ. Schiirer is pre-eminent as having,
1 3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1898-1901.
2A Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions, Oxford, 1882. New and
revised edition by ΕἸ. L. Hicks and G. F. Hill, Oxford, 1901.
3 An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Cambridge, 1887 and 1905.
4 Recueil @ Inscriptions Grecques, Bruxelles, 1900,
5 Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, Paris, 1901 ff.
_ § Indispensable is Wilhelm Larfeld’s Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik,
planned on a great scale: Vol. 1., Einleitungs- und Hilfsdisziplinen. Die nicht-
attischen Inschriften, Leipzig, 1907; Vol. II., Die attischen Inschriften, Leip-
zig, 1902. His sketch of Greek epigraphy in Iwan von Miiller’s Handbuch der
hlassischen Altertums- Wissenschaft,I’, Miinchen, 1892, must alsonot beneglected.
7 A complete bibliography is not aimed at.
§ Richard Adelbert Lipsius, the son who edited Karl Heinrich Adelbert
Lipsius’ Grammatische Untersuchungen tber die biblische Gracitdt, Leipzig,
1863, tells us (Preface, p. viii) that his father contemplated a large Grammar
of the Greek Bible, in which he would have availed himself of the discoveries
of modern epigraphy. He has in fact done so to some extent in the ‘“‘ Unter-
suchungen.”
9. “On some Political Terms employed in the New Testament,” The Classical
Review, Vol. I. (1887) pp. 4ff., 42 ff. I first heard of these excellent articles
through Sir W. M. Ramsay in 1898,
16 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
in his great classical work on the history of the Jewish
people and elsewhere, made the happiest and most
‘profitable use of the inscriptions, while their import-
ance has not escaped the learning of Theodor Zahn,
Georg Heinrici,’ Adolf Harnack, and others. Paul
Wilhelm Schmiedel, in his excellent adaptation of
Winer’s Grammar,’ has drawn most freely on the
inscriptions in dealing with the accidence. They
have been turned to account for the philology of the
Septuagint by Heinrich Anz,’ but most particularly
by the author of the first Septuagint Grammar,
Robert Helbing*; also by Jean Psichari® and Richard
Meister.’ Heinrich Reinhold,’ following Anz, com-
pared the inscriptions with the Greek of the Apostolic
Fathers and the New Testament Apocrypha. In
my “ Bible Studies "δ an attempt was made to show
what they will yield for the purposes of early Christian
lexicography, and the like has been done by H. A. A.
1In his studies on the organisation of the Corinthian churches the
inscriptions were made use of.
2 Gottingen, 1894 ff. ; cf. Theol. Rundschan, 1 (1897-98) p. 465 ff.
3 Subsidia ad cognoscendum Graecorum sermonem vulgarem 6 Pentateuchi
versione Alexandrina repetita, Dissertationes Philologicae Halenses Vol. 12,
Halis Sax., 1894, pp. 259-387; cf. Theol. Rundschau, 1 (1897-8) p. 468 ff.
4 Grammatik der Septuaginta, Laut- und Wortlehre, Géttingen, 1907. Cf.
the important corrections by Jacob Wackernagel, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 33 (1908)
col, 635 ff. [The first instalment of A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek
according to the Septuagint, by H. St. J. Thackeray, appeared at Cambridge,
1909. TR.]
5 Essai sur le Gree dela Septante. Extrait de Ja Revue des Etudes juives,
Avril 1908, Paris, 1908.
δ Prolegomena zu einer Grammatik der Septuaginta, Wiener Studien 29
(1907) 228-59.
7 De graecitate Patrum Apostolicorum librorumque apocryphorum Novi
Testamenti quaestiones grammaticae, Diss. Phil. Hal. Vol. 14, Pars 1, Halis
Sax. 1898, pp. 1-115; cf. Wochenschrift fiir klassische Philologie, 1902,
col. 89 ff.
8 Bibelstudien: Beitréage, zumeist aus den Papyri und Inschriften, zur
Geschichte der Sprache, des Schrifttums und der Religion des hellenistischen
Judentums und des Urchristentums, Marburg, 1895. English translation
(together with the “Neue Bibelstudien”) by A. Grieve, under the title
“ Bible Studies,” Edinburgh, 1901; 2nd ed. 1908,
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 17
Kennedy... In “New Bible Studies”’ I examined
particularly the inscriptions of Pergamon and part
of the inscriptions from the islands of the Aegean,
while Gottfried Thieme* worked at the inscriptions
of Magnesia on the Maeander. Epigraphy yields a
rich harvest in Theodor Nageli’s study of the language
of St. Paul,* in the Grammar of New Testament
Greek by Friedrich Blass,’ and still richer in that
by James Hope Moulton.° New Testament lexico-
graphers have made but occasional use of the in-
scriptions, and Hermann Cremer, when he does so,
is at times absolutely misleading in consequence of
his peculiar dogmatic attitude on the subject. The
additions which were made, chiefly by Adolf Schlatter,
to Cremer’s last edition of his Biblico- Theological
Lexicon of New Testament Greek" afford illus-
trations, in some important points, of the knowledge
which the lexicographer in particular may gain from
the inscriptions. Honourable mention is due to
' Sources of New Testament Greek, Edinburgh, 1895 ; cf. Gott. gel. Anzeigen,
1896, p. 761 ££.
2 Neue Bibelstudien: sprachgeschichtliche Beitrage, zumeist aus den Papyri
und Inschriften, zur Erklarung des N. T., Marburg, 1897.
3 Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maander und das Neue Testament :
eine sprachgeschichtliche Studie [Dissert. Heidelberg, 1905], Gottingen, 1906 ;
cf. Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906) col. 231.
4 Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus: Beitrag zur sprachgeschichtlichen
Erforschung des N. T., Gottingen, 1905; cf. Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906)
col. 228 ff.
5. Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch, Gottingen, 1896, 2nd ed.
1902 ; cf. Géttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1898, p. 120ff., and Berl. Philol.
Wochenschrift 24 (1904) col. 212ff. [Blass’s Grammar was translated into
English by H. St. J. Thackeray, London, 1898, 2nd ed, 1905. TR.]
6 Grammar of New Testament Greek, Edinburgh, 1906, 2nd ed. the same
year, 8rd ed. 1908; cf. Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906) col. 238 f£., 32 (1907) col. 38 ἢ.
Moulton’s inaugural lecture in the University of Manchester, “The Science
of Language and the Study of the New Testament,” Manchester, 1906, also
deserves notice,
7 Biblisch-theologisches Worterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Gracitadt, 9th
ed., Gotha, 1902, p.1119f. [The English translation of Cremer is now in its
4thed. TrR.]
2
18 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
Hans Lietzmann and Johannes Weiss for the atten-
tion they have bestowed on the inscriptions, Lietz-
mann in his Commentaries on Romans and First
Corinthians’ (excellent on the philological side), and
Weiss in his substantial articles in Herzog and
Hauck’s Realencyclopddie.” Copious use of new
material has also been made by George Milligan in
his Commentary on the Epistles to the Thessalonians,’
and by William H. P. Hatch.*
We are further indebted for most valuable en-
lightenment to the philologists pure and simple who
have extracted grammatical and lexical material from
the inscriptions, or have compiled from the new texts
complete grammars of the universal Greek current
from the death of Alexander onwards into the
Imperial age. Such are the special investigations
of Κα. Meisterhans,> Eduard Schweizer,’ Wilhelm
Schulze,’ Ernst Nachmanson,’ Jacob Wackernagel,’
1 Handb. zum N. Τ. (111.), Tiibingen, 1906 f.
2 Realencyclopadie fiir protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 8rd ed.; see
especially the excellent article on “ Kleinasien.”
3 London, 1908.
* Some Illustrations of New Testament Usage from Greek Inscriptions
of Asia Minor, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 27, Part 2, 1908,
pp. 134-46. Of special importance is the discovery of ἀγάπη, “love,” in a
pagan inscription of the Imperial period from Tefeny in Pisidia (Papers of
the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2, 57). If the word
ἀγάπην is here rightly restored, we now have a proof of the profane origin
of the word, which I have long suspected (Neue Bibelstudien, p. 27; Bible
Studies, p. 199).
5 Grammatik der attischen Inschriften, dritte verm. und verb, Aufl, von
Eduard Schwyzer, Berlin, 1900.
6 Grammatik der pergamenischen Inschriften, Berlin, 1898; and (published
under the name of Schwyzer, which he assumed) Die Vulgarsprache der
attischen Fluchtafeln, Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klass. Altertum, 5 (1900)
p. 244 ff.
” Graeca Latina, Gottingen (Einladung zur akadem. Preisverktindigung),
1901.
5. Laute und Formen der magnetischen Inschriften, Uppsala, 1903.
9 Hellenistica, Gottingen (Einladung zur akadem, Preisverkiindigung),
1907.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 19
and in a special degree the great works of G. N.
Hatzidakis,! Karl Dieterich,’ and Albert Thumb,’
which are full of references to usages in the language
of the Greek Old and New Testaments.
Of the Christian inscriptions‘ and their direct
value to the scientific study of early Christianity
I have not to speak; but I wish at least to say
that in one direction they promise a greater harvest
than many people might expect, viz. with respect to
the history of the text of Scripture and its use.
Already with the materials at present known to us
quite a large work could be written on the text
of Scripture as illustrated by Biblical quotations in
ancient Christian (and Jewish) inscriptions.’ It is
to be hoped that the Corpus of Greek Christian
inscriptions now planned in France will not only
1 Hinleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik (Bibliothek indogerm, Gram-
matiken, V.), Leipzig, 1892.
2 Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der yriechischen Sprache von der hellenis-
tischen Zeit bis zum 10. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Byzantinisches Archiv, Heft 1),
Leipzig, 1898.
3 Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus, Strassburg, 1901 ; cf.
Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 26 (1901) col. 684 ff.
4 The most distinguished workers on this subject in recent years are Sir
William M. Ramsay, Franz Cumont, Gustave Lefebvre, etc.
5 Single points have been treated by E. Bohl, Theol. Stud. und Kritihen,
1881, pp. 692-713, and E. Nestle, tbid., 1881, p. 692, and 1883, p. 153f.; by
myself, Ein epigraphisches Denkmal des alexandrinischen A, T. (Die Bleitafel
von Hadrumetum), Bibelstudien, p. 21 ff. [Bible Studies, p. 269], Die Rachegebete
von Rheneia (p. 13, n.5,above), and Verkannte Bibelzitate in syrischen und meso-
potamischen Inschriften, Philologus, 1905, p. 475 ff., reprinted in the Appendix
(No. VI) to this book; by Baron Εἰ, Hiller von Gaertringen, Uber eine jiingst
auf Rhodos gefundene Bleirolle, enthaltend den 80. Psalm, Sitzungsberichte
der Kgl. Preuss. Ak. der Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1898, p. 582 ff., cf. U. Wilcken,
Archiv ftir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 480 ; and by P. Perdrizet, Bull. de Corr.
hellén, 20 (1896) p. 394 ff., who comments on a marble slab from Cyprus
inscribed with the 15th Psalm, and refers to other texts of Scripture preserved
in inscriptions from Northern Syria, the Hauran, and Southern Russia. Cf. also
Ludwig Blau, Das altjiidische Zauberwesen (Jahresbericht der Landes-
Rabbinerschule in Budapest, 1897-8), Budapest, 1898, p. 95; and particularly
Richard Wiinsch, Antike Fluchtafeln (Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte fiir theologische
Vorlesungen und Ubungen, 20), Bonn, 1907 ; and Alfred Rahlfs, Septuaginta-
Studien IL, Gottingen, 1907, p. 14 ff.
40 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
put an end to the shameful neglect’ with which
epigraphists have treated these memorials, but will
also help towards the completion of this task.
There is one circumstance which sometimes makes
the inscriptions less productive than might have
been expected, especially those that are more or less
of the official kind. The style has often been polished
up, and then they are formal, artificial, cold as the
marble that bears them, and stiff as the characters
incised upon the unyielding stone.’ As a whole the
inscriptions are not so fresh and natural as the papyri,
and this second group, of which we are now to
speak, is therefore, linguistically’ at any rate, the
most important.
(6) The Papyri. One of the most important
writing materials used by the ancients was the
papyrus sheet.* It takes its name from the papyrus
1 Sometimes they are not even recognised. Z#.g. the inscription from
Tehfah (Taphis) in Nubia, Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 8888,
facsimiled at the end of the volume and considered unintelligible by the
editor, is a fairly large fragment of the Septuagint, from Exodus xv. and
Deuteronomy xxxii. It is all the more creditable of Adolph Wilhelm, there-
fore, to have detected in a pagan inscription of the 2nd century A.D. from
Euboea echoes of the Septuagint Deuteronomy xxviii. 22, 28 (Εφημερις Αρχαιο-
λογικη, 1892, col. 173 f£.; Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 891). This inscription is
one of the oldest of the records which have been influenced by the Greek
Bible. The assumption that it was composed by a proselyte is neither
necessary nor probable ; it is more natural to assume that the composer simply
adopted a formula of cursing which had been influenced by the Septuagint.
2 Οὗ, Neue Bibelstudien, p. 7£.; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 179; Thieme, Die In-
schrifien von Magnesia am Méander und das Neue Testament, p. 4f.
8 Lexically, however, the yield of the inscriptions is undoubtedly very
important.
4 In the following pages I have made use of my article on “ Papyri” in the
Encyclopaedia Biblica, 11. col. 3556 ff., and the article on “Papyrus und
Papyri” (founded on the other) in Herzog and Hauck’s Realencyclopadie fiir
Theologie und Kirche, *XIV. p. 667 ff. Cf. also an article intended for
theological readers by F. G. Kenyon on “Papyri” in Hastings’ Dictionary of
the Bible, Suppl. Vol. p. 352 ff Other excellent works that would serve as
introductions to papyrology are: Ulrich Wilcken, Die griechischen Papyrus-
urkunden, Berlin, 1897; Der heutige Stand der Papyrusforschung, Neue
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 21
plant (Cyperus papyrus L., Papyrus antiquorum
Willd. ; see Fig. 2). At the present day the plant
is found growing in the Sudan, in Palestine? (Lake
Hileh—* the waters of Merom”—and the Lake of
Tiberias), in Sicily (especially near Syracuse), and
also in Italy on the shores of Lake Trasimeno.*®
It is probably cultivated in most botanical gardens,
Jabrbb. fiir das klass, Altertum, etc., 1901, p. 677 ff. ; Ludwig Mitteis, dus
den griechischen Papyrusurkunden, Leipzig, 1900; Karl Schmidt (Elberfeld),
Aus der griechischen Papyrusforschung, Das humanist. Gymnasium, 17 (1906)
p. 33 ff. ; O. Gradenwitz, Hinfiihrung in die Papyruskunde, I., Leipzig, 1900
(especially for legal scholars). Bibliographies have been published by
Ο. Ha&berlin, Paul Viereck [three great reports so far in the Jahresbericht tiber
die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Vols. 98 (1898),
102 (1899), 131 (1906)], Carl Wessely, Seymour de Ricci, Pierre Jouguet, etc.
The best place to look for information is now Nicolas Hohlwein’s La Papyro-
logie Grecque: Bibliographie raisonnée (Ouvrages publiés avant le 1° janvier,
1905), Louvain, 1905, a careful book enumerating no less than 819 items.
Cf. also as brief guides Hohlwein’s essays, Les Papyrus Grecs d’fgypte
(extrait du Bibliographe moderne, 1906), Besancon, 1907, and Les Papyrus
Grecs et ’igypte, Province Romaine (extrait de la Revue Générale, Octobre
1908), Bruxelles, 1908 ; also George Milligan, Some Recent Papyrological Pub-
lications, The Journal of Theological Studies, April 1908, p. 465 ff.; and J. H.
Moulton, From Egyptian Rubbish-Heaps, The London Quarterly Review,
April 1908, p. 212ff. The central organ for the new science of papyrology is the
Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, founded and edited by
Ulrich Wilcken, Leipzig, 1900 ff., of which four volumes have already been
completed, Cf. also the Studien zur Palaeographie und Papyruskunde,
founded by Carl Wessely, Leipzig, 1901 ff. A very attractive book written
for a very general public is that by Adolf Erman and Fritz Krebs, Aus den
Papyrus der Koniglichen Museen (one of the illustrated handbooks issued by
the authorities of the Berlin Museums), Berlin, 1899. A papyrus-chrestomathy
corresponding to Dittenberger’s Syllogé Inscriptionwm Graecarwm is being
prepared by L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken (Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 3, p. 338).
Milligan is also preparing “Selections from the Papyri” for the Cambridge Press,
1 Β, de Montfaucon, Dissertation sur la plante appellée Papyrus, Mémoires
de YAcad, royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Vol. VI., Paris, 1729
p. 592ff.; Franz Woenig, Die Pflanzen im alten Agypten, ihre Heimat,
Geschichte, Kultur, Leipzig, 1886, p. 74ff.; L. Borchardt, Die aegyptische
Pfhlanzenséule, Berlin, 1897, Ὁ. 25.
2 Κι, Baedeker, Paldstina und Syrien,® Leipzig, 1904, pp. 221, 223 (= Pales-
tine and Syria,’ Leipzig, 1906, pp. 254, 252).
3 J. Hoskyns-Abrahall, The Papyrus in Europe, The Academy, March 19,
1887, No. 776 (E. Nestle, Hinfiihrung in das G@riechische N.T.,? Gottingen,
1899, p. 40; [1909, p. 48; English translation, Textual Criticism of the Greek
Testament (Theological Translation Library, Vol. XIII.), by Edie and Menzies,
London, 1901, p. 42, n. 8. TB.]).
22 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
e.g. at Berlin,’ Bonn-Poppelsdorf,? Breslau,’ Heidel-
berg. The plant may be purchased from the
frm of J. C. Schmidt, Erfurt, who wrote to
me* as follows: “Cyperus papyrus has proved its
suitability as a rapid-growing decorative plant for
large sheets of water, aquariums, etc. In the open
air it thrives here only in summer, and only in a
warm, sheltered position. It is propagated from seed
or from leaf-shoots ; the latter are cut down to about
half their length and put in water.” A. Wiedemann "
gives the following description of the plant: “A
marsh plant, growing in shallow water ; root creeping,
nearly as thick as a man’s arm, with numerous root-
fibres running downwards ; several smooth, straight,
triangular stalks, 10 to 18 feet high, containing a
moist pith (whence the Hebrew name, from gama’,
‘to drink,’ ‘to sip up,’ and the phrase bibula papyrus
in Lucan IV. 136), and surmounted by an involucre
with brush-like plumes.”
The use of papyrus as a writing material goes
back to extreme antiquity. The oldest written
papyrus known to be in existence is, according to
Kenyon,” an account-sheet belonging to the reign
of the Egyptian king Assa, which is conjecturally
dated circa 2600 B.c.° From these remote times
until well on in the Mohammedan occupation of
Egypt papyrus remains the standard writing material
of that marvellous country, so that the history of
1 As I was informed by the Director, by letter, 20 paves 1902.
2 Ditto, 17 October, 1902.
8 Ditto, 21 October, 1902.
‘ Personal information from the Director.
5 18 October, 1902.
§ Guthe, Kurzes Bibelworterbuch, p. 501.
” The Palacography of Greek Papyri, Oxford, 1899, p. 14.
5.1 now follow the chronology of Eduard Meyer. [Assa was a king of the
5th dynasty, and is often dated circa 3360 B.c. TR.]
Fig. 2.—The Papyrus Plant. From H.
Guthe, Kurzes Bibelworterbuch.
[Ρ. 22
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 23
its use in antiquity can be proved to extend over
a period of about 3,500 years. Brittle and perishable
as it appears on a superficial view, it is in reality
as indestructible as the Pyramids and the obelisks.
The splendid resistant qualities of the papyrus on
which they wrote have helped not a little to make the
ancient Egyptians live again in the present age.
The preparation of this material has been often
wrongly described. It is not correct to say, as
Gregory does, that it was made from the “bast ”
of the plant. The process of manufacture was de-
scribed for us by Pliny the Elder,’ and to make his
account still more intelligible existing papyri have
been examined by specialists. Kenyon’ accordingly
puts the matter thus:—The pith of the stem was
cut into thin strips, which were laid side by side
perpendicularly, in length and number sufficient to
form a sheet. Upon these another layer of strips
was laid horizontally. The two layers were then
gummed together with some adhesive material, of
which Nile water was one of the ingredients. The
resulting sheet was pressed, sun-dried, and made
smooth by polishing, after which it was ready for
use.
The manufacture of papyrus sheets goes on in
1 Texthritik des Neuen Testaments, I., Leipzig, 1900, p.7. Gregory informs
me (postcard, Leipzig-Stétteritz, 29 June, 1908) that he has been perfectly
acquainted with the method of making papyrus for more than thirty years,
and that the word “bast” was a mere slip of the pen. [The process is
accurately described in C. R. Gregory’s Canon and Text of the New Testament
(International Theological Library), Edinburgh, 1907, p. 301. TR.]
2 Nat. Hist. 13, 11-13. Cf. Theodor Birt, Das antike Buchwesen, Berlin,
1882, p. 223 ff.; Karl Dziatzko, Untersuchungen tber ausgewahite Kapitel des
antiken Buchwesens, Leipzig, 1900, p. 49 ff. Pliny’s statements have been given
popular currency in Georg Ebers’s romance Kaiser Hadrian. Cf.also an article
by Ebers, on “The Writing Material of Antiquity,” in the Cosmopolitan
Magazine, New York, November 1893 (Nestle,? p. 40; [%p. 48; Eng. trans.
p. 42, n. 87).
3 Palaeography, p. 15.
24 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
much the same way even at the present day. In
the autumn of 1902 my friend Professor Adalbert
Merx' met a lady in Sicily who had learnt the art
from her father and apparently still practised it
occasionally. It was probably the same lady that
was referred to in the following account of
“Modern Syracusan Papyri” in a German news-
paper” :—
“No visitor to Sicily who goes to Syracuse ever fails to take
a walk along the shore, in the shade of a trim-kept avenue of
pretty trees, to the Fountain of Arethusa. Here, transformed
into a bubbling spring, the daughter of Nereus and Doris
continues her deathless existence, and one likes to make her
acquaintance in her watery element. But there is another
attraction for the traveller besides the nymph, viz. the papyrus
plants growing by the spring. The papyrus flourishes not only
here, but also in great abundance in the valley of the Anapo
near Syracuse. At the end of the 18th[?]* century the plant
which has done such service to learning was introduced at
Syracuse from Alexandria and even employed industrially. In
the course of centuries, however, it seems that the plantations
in the Anapo valley ran waste, until at last a learned society at
Naples requested the Italian Government to take proper steps
for the preservation of the plant. The Government thereupon
instituted an inquiry and commissioned the Syracuse Chamber
of Commerce to report on the subject. From a translation of
this report in the Papierzettung it appears that a citizen of
Syracuse, Francesco Saverio Landolina, began in the 18th
century to manufacture papyrus exactly according to the
directions given by the Roman scientist Pliny in the 13th
Book of his Natural History. After Landolina’s death the
brothers Politi continued the manufacture, and were followed
by their sons, and to-day there are only two persons in Syracuse,
1 [The distinguished Orientalist (6.1838), who died suddenly at Heidelberg,
while he was attending the funeral of a colleague, August 1909. TR.]
2 Frankfurter Zeitung, 12 April, 1906, No. 101, 2nd morning edition. The
article is signed “ W. F.”
3 Presumably an error for “ 10th.”
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 25
viz. Madame de Haro and Professor G. Naro, descendants of
the Politi family, who know and practise the art of making
papyrus. They receive annually, with the consent of the
Ministry for Education, 400 bundles of the plant, which they
work up themselves, without assistance. They use for their:
work a wooden mallet made according to Pliny’s directions.
The product is by no means so fine, close-grained, and white
as the ancient papyri. The 200 sheets produced every year:
measure 94 x 74 inches each. Two bundles of the plant are
required to make one of these sheets. The papyrus sheets are
sold exclusively to tourists. Those with pictures of Syracusan
architecture painted on them are the most popular. A German
resident at Syracuse sticks these pictures on postcards and sells.
them to strangers. A sheet of papyrus costs from 1} to 2 lire,
and those with pictures are dearer.”
It is interesting to note that a project has been
put forward more than once lately to revive the
manufacture of papyrus and make it a Govern-
ment monopoly with a view to its employment
as a material for banknotes that should defy
imitation.
The size of the single sheet of papyrus was not
constant in ancient times, and there ought never to
have been any doubt of this fact. Kenyon’ has
collected some measurements. For most non-literary
documents (letters, accounts, receipts, etc.) a single
sheet was sufficient; for longer texts, especially
literary ones, the necessary sheets were stuck together
and made into a roll? Rolls have been found
measuring as much as 20 and even 45 yards. The
regular format for ancient works of literature was.
the papyrus roll. There is a large fragment of a.
1 Palaeography, p. 16 f.
2 Rolls were sometimes manufactured by the makers of papyrus, twenty
sheets being generally stuck together for the purpose. See L. Borchardt,
Zeitschr. £, die 4gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 27 (1889) p. 120, and.
τ. Wilcken, Hermes, 28 (1893) p. 166 f.
26 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
papyrus roll among the Leipzig fragments of the
Psalter.’ It was usual to write on that side of the
sheet on which the fibres ran horizontally (recto) ;
the other side (verso) was used only exceptionally.’
When a sheet of papyrus bears writing on both sides,
in different hands, it may generally be assumed that
the writing on the ecto is the earlier of the two.
Only in exceptional cases were the sheets of a
papyrus roll written on both sides; Nestle® refers
to Revelation v. 1, where some authorities read “a
book written within and without” or “on the front
and on the back.” In the later centuries of antiquity
we find also the papyrus book or codex. which finally
triumphs over the roll. It is not true that the
transition from roll to book was the result of the
introduction of parchment. To give only a few
instances, the British Museum possesses a fragment
of a papyrus codex of the had, probably of the 8rd
century 4.0). Among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri
there is a leaf from a codex of the gospels, con-
taining Matthew i. 1-9, 12, 14-20, of the 8rd
century, besides other fragments of Biblical codices.
The University Library at Heidelberg possesses
twenty-seven leaves from an old codex of the
Septuagint. And the celebrated fragment of the
* Logia” from Oxyrhynchus also once formed part
of a codex.
When we consider the important part played by
1 Edited by G. Heinrici, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Erklirwng des N. T.,
IV., Leipzig, 1903.
2 U. Wilcken, Recto oder Verso, Hermes (22) 1887, p. 487 ff.
3 Hinfihrung? p. 41. [The English translation, 1901, p. 43, n. 2, says the
passage “can no longer be cited in support of this practice, seeing we
must take καὶ. ὄπισθεν with κατεσφραγισμένον." In the third German edition,
however, 1909, p. 48, π, 1, Nestle still cites the passage, merely remarking
that the other way of construing it is perhaps more correct. TR.]
4 Kenyon, Palaeegraphy, p. 25.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 27
papyrus in the life of the ancient world, it is by no
means surprising to find it mentioned in Scripture.
The papyrus plant is spoken of in Job viii. 11 and
Isaiah xxxv. 7; in the former passage the translators
of the Septuagint use the word papyros, and again
in Job xl. 16 (21) and Isaiah xix.6. The “ark of
bulrushes” in which Moses was laid (Exodus ii. 3)
was a small papyrus boat,’ like the “vessels of bul-
rushes ἢ in Isaiah xviii. 2.2. The writer of the Second
Kpistle of St. John mentions papyrus as a writing
material, for the chartes referred to in verse 12 was
doubtless a sheet of papyrus. So too the “books”
that Timothy was requested to bring with him to
St. Paul (2 Tim. iv. 18) were no doubt made of
papyrus, for they are expressly distinguished from
“the parchments.”
We may now turn to the recent discoveries of
papyri and see what their value has been to scholar-
ship in general.
The first recorded purchase of papyri by European
visitors to Egypt was in 1778. In that year a
nameless dealer in antiquities bought from some
peasants a papyrus roll of documents from the year
191-192 a.p., and looked on while they set fire to
fifty or so more simply to enjoy the aromatic smoke
that was produced.’ Since that date an enormous
quantity of inscribed papyri in all possible languages,
of ages varying from a thousand to nearly five
thousand years, have been recovered from the
magic soil of the ancient seats of civilisation in
the Nile Valley. From about 1820 to 1840 the
1 Here Aquila translates παπυρεών.
2? See an ancient Egyptian picture in Guthe’s Kurzes Bibelwérterbuch,
p. 502; and cf. 8. Witkowski, Eos 14 (1908) p. 13.
§ Wilcken, Die griechischen Papyrusurkunden, p. 10; which see also for what
follows.
28 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
museums of Europe acquired quite a respectable
number of papyri from Memphis and Letopolis in
Middle Egypt, and from This, Panopolis, Thebes,
Hermonthis, Elephantine, and Syene in Upper
Egypt. Not many scholars took any notice of them
at first, and only a very few read and profited by
them.
The next decisive event, apart from isolated finds,
was the discovery of papyri in the province of El-
Fayim (Middle Egypt) in 1877. To the north of
the capital, Medinet el-Fayim, lay a number of
mounds of rubbish and debris, marking the site
of the ancient “ City of Crocodiles,” afterwards called
“The City of the Arsinoites,” and these now yielded
up hundreds and thousands of precious sheets and
scraps. Since then there has been a rapid succession
of big finds, which have not ceased even yet: we
are still in a period of important discoveries. In the
external history of the discoveries the most note-
worthy feature is that so many of the papyri have
been dug up with the spade from Egyptian rubbish-
heaps.' Antiquaries had set the example by exca-
vating in search of the foundations of ancient temples
or fragments of prehistoric pottery, and now the
excavators seek papyri. The excavations carried out
by Drs. Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt
rank with the most celebrated archaeological exca-
vations of modern times both in the delicacy of their
operations and in the value of their results. The
fact that so many of the papyri are found among
the dust-heaps of ancient cities is a valuable indi-
cation of their general significance. The multitude
of papyri from the Fayim, from Oxyrhynchus-
1 Including several that were written outside Egypt, cf. Archiv ἔ, Papyrus-
forschung, 2, 138,
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 29
Behnesa, etc., do not, as was at first supposed,
represent the remains of certain great archives. They
have survived as part of the contents of ancient
refuse-heaps and rubbish-shoots. There the men of
old cast out their bundles of discarded documents,
from offices public and private, their worn-out books
and parts of books; and there these things reposed,
tranquilly abiding their undreamt-of fate.
The papyri are almost invariably non-literary in
character. For instance, they include legal docu-
ments of all possible kinds: leases, bills and receipts,
marriage-contracts, bills of divorce, wills, decrees
issued by authority, denunciations, suings for the
punishment of wrong-doers, minutes of judicial pro-
ceedings, tax-papers in great numbers. Then there
are letters and notes, schoolboys’ exercise-books,
magical texts, horoscopes, diaries, etc. As regards
their contents these non-literary documents are as
many-sided as life itself. Those in Greek, several
thousand in number, cover a period of roughly a
thousand years. The oldest go back to the early
Ptolemaic period, 2.6. the 3rd century B.c.*; the
most recent bring us well into the Byzantine period.
All the chequered history of Hellenised and Roman-
ised Egypt in that thousand years passes before our
eyes on those tattered sheets.
The Greek documents are supplemented by large
! Recently there has even been discovered a Greek literary papyrus of the
4th century B.C., viz. “The Persians,” by the poet Timotheus, which has been
edited by Ὁ. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Leipzig, 1903. According to
F. Blass (Gétting. gel, Anzeigen, 1903, p. 655), Grenfell is disposed to date
the MS. between 330 and 280 B.c. More than this: the Frankfurter. Zeitung
for 16 March, 1907 (No. 75, evening edition) reported that Rubensohn had found
at Elephantine a bundle of papyri, among which was one dated with the
regnal year of Alexander Aegus, the son of Alexander the Great. That
would make it the oldest Greek papyrus document yet discovered.—It is
now No. 1 in the special publication Zlephantine-Papyri bearbeitet von
O. Rubensohn, Berlin, 1907.
30 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
numbers of others in Aramaic,’ Demotic, Coptic,’
Arabic,’ Latin, Hebrew,‘ and Persian. Of the most
ancient hieroglyphic papyri we here say nothing, but
there should be no possibility of disagreement as to
the value of those we have mentioned for the scientific
study of antiquity in the widest sense. They mean
nothing less than the reconstitution of a large portion
of the life lived by the ancients. They tell their
story of the past with a freshness, warmth, and
sincerity such as we can boast of in no ancient writer
1 Extremely important are the Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan,
edited by A. H. Sayce with the assistance of A. E. Cowley and with appen-
dices by W. Spiegelberg and Seymour de Ricci, London, 1906. They consist
of ten large original documents written in Aramaic by Jews of Upper Egypt
in the time of the Persian kings Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Darius, 471 or 470 to
411 B.c. Their eminent importance has been set forth in its linguistic,
religious, and legal aspects by Th. Néldeke, Zeitschr. £. Assyriologie, 20, p. 130#f.;
Mark Lidzbarski, Deutsche Lit.-Ztg. 27 (1906) col. 3205 ff.; E. Schiirer, Theol.
Lit.-Ztg. 32 (1907) col. 1 ff; U. Wilcken, Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, 4,
p. 228 fi.; Friedrich Schulthess, Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1907, p. 181 ff. ;
and many others. There is a handy edition by W. Staerk in Lietzmann’s
Kleine Texte, Nos. 22, 23, Bonn, 1907.—To these have now been added new
Aramaic documents from Elephantine, cf. Eduard Sachau, Drei aramiische
Papyrusurkunden aus Elephantine, aus den Abhandlungen der Kgl. Preuss.
Akademie der Wissenschaften 1907, Berlin, 1907; and W. Staerk, Aramaeische
Urkunden zur Geschichte des Judentums im vi. und v. Jahrhundert vor Chr.
sprachlich und sachlich erklart, in Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte, No. 32, Bonn,
1908. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy, 26 November, 1908, Sachau
spoke of a Jewish papyrus from Elephantine containing a long list of
names.
21 merely refer to the large collections of Coptic letters and documents
preserved at London, Vienna, Berlin, Strassburg, Heidelberg, etc. One of the
most important of the literary papyri is the Heidelberg MS. of the Acta Pauli,
discovered, pieced together with infinite pains and ingenuity, and then edited
by Carl Schmidt (of Berlin), Veréffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-
Sammlung 11., Leipzig, 1904 (a volume of text and a volume of plates), with
a supplementary volume, ‘“ Zusdtze,” Leipzig, 1905.
3. The Arabic papyri, especially those of the first century of Islam, have been
simply epoch-making as regards Islamic studies. Cf. C. H. Becker, Papyri
Schott-Reinhardt 1. (Veréffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Samm-
lung III.), Heidelberg, 1906, p. 1 ff., and Becker's other publications.
4 The best known is the Nash Papyrus, a copy of the Decalogue and a part
of the Sh’ma [i.e. Deut. iv. 1] with a peculiar form of text, of the first or
second century A.D. Cf. Norbert Peters, Die dlteste Abschrift der sehn Gebote,
der Papyrus Nash, untersucht, Freiburg i. B., 1905; and in connexion with
this, C. Stenernagel, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906) col. 489 f,
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 31
and in but very few of the ancient inscriptions. The
record handed down by the ancient authors is always,
even in the best of cases, indirect, and has always
been somehow or other touched up or toned down.
The inscriptions are often cold and lifeless.’ The
papyrus sheet is far more living. We see the hand-
writing, the irregular characters, we see men. We
gaze into the inmost recesses of individual lives.
Despite their unassuming simplicity the papyri are
destined to put new blood in the veins of learning.
Legal history in the first place, but afterwards the
general history of culture, and notably the history of
language will derive benefit therefrom. And here,
paradoxical as it will seem to many, let me say that
the non-literary papyri are of greater value to the
historical inquirer than are the literary. We rejoice
by all means when ancient books, or fragments of
them, are recovered from the soil of Egypt, especially
when they are lost literary treasures. But scienti-
fically speaking the real treasure hidden in the field
of Egypt is not so much of ancient art and literature
as there lies buried, but all the ancient life, actual
and tangible, that is waiting to be given to the world
once more. It is regrettable, therefore, to see the
merest scrap of an ancient book treated as if it were
something sacred—immediately published with notes
and facsimile, even if it be a fragment of some for-
gotten scribbler who deserved his fate—while on the
other hand the non-literary items are often not even
printed in full. Yet it may well happen that a
solitary lease of no intrinsic interest contains the
long-looked-for link completing the chain of develop-
ment from some early Hellenistic form down to its
representative in some dialect of modern Greek.
1 Cf. p. 20, above.
32 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
Something which an editor, with his eye bent on
a special subject of interest to himself, perhaps
suppressed as “unimportant,” may mean a priceless
discovery to another.
It cannot be my task here to recite the long list
of papyrus publications, great and small; I refer to
the bibliographies mentioned above. Every year,
however, increases the number of new editions. The
name by which a papyrus is known may refer either
to the place where it is now preserved (e.g. Berlin
Documents; London, Paris, Geneva, Strassburg,
Leipzig, Heidelberg, etc. Papyri), the person to
whom it belongs (e.g. the Archduke Rainer’s Papyri,
the Amherst Papyri, Reinach Papyri, etc.), or to the
place where it was found (e.g. Oxyrhynchus Papyri,
Tebtunis Papyri, Hibeh Papyri, etc.). From the
scientific point of view it would certainly be best to
name the papyri after the place where found, and
this will always be practicable where a great number
of papyri have been found in the same place and
kept in one collection. At any rate, when quoting’
a particular papyrus one should never omit to state
where and when it was written. The special excel-
lence of these texts is due in no small degree to the
fact that so many of them are dated to the very year
and day of the month, and that it is nearly always
certain where they came from. At some time in
the indefinite future a Corpus (or perhaps several
Corpora) Papyrorum may be called for. It would be
impossible at present to undertake such a collection, for
the discoveries show no signs of coming to a standstill.
? Ulrich Wilcken (Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, pp. 25 ff., 122 f., 544 f£. ;
2, pp. 117, 385; 3, pp. 113, 300) has introduced a uniform system of abbre-
viations for indicating the various editions. There is a complete list of these
abbreviations in Edwin Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus der
Ptoleméerzeit, Leipzig, 1906, p. vii ff.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 33
The prevailing tendency being to overestimate the
importance of whatever is literary, it is no wonder
that theologians have congratulated themselves most
of all on the recovery of parts of the Bible and early
Christian books. We have, truly enough, every
reason to be thankful that sources and textual
authorities are still forthcoming from such venerably
early periods of our faith. I have given elsewhere’
a list of the most important Greek fragments
recovered down to 1908, including altogether about
fifty fragments, large and small. The more recent
publications enable us to add largely to the list.
I will mention a few particulars.? Since 1908
Grenfell and Hunt* have published a _ second
fragment of “Logia,” and a fragment of a new
‘ In the article already mentioned which I contributed to the Realencyelo-
padie, XIV. p. 6711 ἢ. My Veréffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-
Sammlung 1., which were there quoted while still in the press, appeared in
1905 (not 1904 as was expected). Cf. also the article on “‘Papyri” by
Kenyon.
2 Cf, also Adolf Harnack, Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis
Husebius ΤΙ.., Leipzig, 1904, p. 179 ff., and the serial reports by Carl Schmidt
(of Berlin) in the Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung. A creditable collection of
the oldest literary and non-literary Christian texts on papyri was contributed
to the Patrologia Orientalis, IV. 2, by Charles Wessely, “ Les plus anciens
monuments du Christianisme écrits sur papyrus textes grecs édités, traduits
et commentés,” Paris [1907]. Cf. also A. Bludau, Biblische Zeitschrift, 4 (1906)
p. 25 ff. ; Hermann Miiller, ibid. 6 (1908) p. 26 ff.; and Caspar René Gregory,
Die griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, Leipzig, 1908, pp. 45-7.
3 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part IV. No. 654; cf, my article “Zur Text-
Rekonstruktion der neuesten Jesusworte aus Oxyrhynchos,” Supplement
No. 162 to the Allgemeine Zeitung (Munich) 18 July, 1904, translated as an
Appendix (No. II) to the present book; Εἰ. Preuschen, Antilegomena,? Gieszen,
1905, pp. 23 f£., 119ff.; Εἰ. Klostermann, Apoerypha ITI., Bonn, 1904, p. 17 ££. ;
J. H. A. Michelsen, Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1905, p. 160 f—I may be allowed
one remark concerning the first “ Logia” fragment of 1897. The last clause
(“colon’’) of Logion No. 4, σχίσον τὸ ξύλον κἀγὼ ἐκεῖ εἰμι, “split the wood and
I am there,” which has been so much discussed, has a remarkable parallel
{not yet pointed out, I believe) in the Gospel of Thomas, ch, x. The boy Jesus
heals a wood-cutter whose axe had fallen and severely injured his foot, and dis-
misses him with the words, ἀνάστα νῦν" σχίζε τὰ ξύλα καὶ μνημόνευέ μον, “ Arise
now: split the pieces of wood and remember Me.” This parallel suggests that
the Logion is a word of consolation for those engaged in dangerous work. |
3
34 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
gospel,’ which was followed by yet another fragment.
of a gospel, of considerable size.?, Another fragment
which the two distinguished explorers also consider
to be a portion of a gospel,’ is perhaps rather to be
looked on as part of a commentary or a sermon.‘
The Second Part of the Amherst Papyri contains a
large fragment of “'The Shepherd of Hermas” and
several Septuagint fragments, one of which has only
been identified since the book appeared.> The Fourth
Part of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri gave us, besides
the texts mentioned above, a good-sized fragment of
the Septuagint Genesis,’ and a still larger piece of the
Epistle to the Hebrews,’ which was found written
on the back of an Epitome of Livy. The Sixth
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part IV. No. 655, Also published separately
by Grenfell and Hunt with the second “Logia” fragment: Wew Sayings
of Jesus and Fragment of a Lost Gospel, London, 1904, See also Preu-
schen, Antilegomena,? p. 26; Klostermann, Apocrypha III. p. 20. Michelsen,
op. cit. p. 161 ff., successfully restores a portion of this hitherto unidentified
fragment.
2 Cf. the announcement in the Times, May 14, 1906. Grenfell and Hunt.
very kindly showed me the original at Oxford (Oct. 1906). It is a parchment
fragment from Oxyrhynchus, now published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part V.
No. 840; and separately, Fragment of an Uncanonical Gospel from Ony-
rhynchus, London, 1908. The fragment has already called forth a copious
literature. Cf. Henry Barclay Swete, Zwei neue Evangelienfragmente, Boun,.
1908 (Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte, No. 31), where the so-called Freer Logion is
also printed—a supposed conclusion, hitherto unknown, of St, Mark’s Gospel,
which has also given rise to a whole literature. Besides the works of Η, A.
Sanders, A. Harnack, and C. R. Gregory, mentioned by Swete, cf. among
others Hugo Koch, Biblische Zeitschrift 6 (1908) p. 266 ff.
3 Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, Vol. X.
(Nos. 10,001-10,869 Greek Papyri), Oxford, 1903, No. 10,735; Preuschen,
Antilegomena,? p. 114 £.
4 Cf. my article, ‘Das angebliche Evangelien-Fragment von Kairo,” Archiv
_ fiir Religionswissenschaft, 7, p. 387, translated as an Appendix (No. III) to
this book.
5 Namely the fragment after No. 191, p. 201. It contains LXX Isaiah lviii.
11-14, See the Supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung (Munich), No. 251,
31 October, 1901.
6 No, 656 ; now cited as U, by the editors of the great Cambridge Septua-
gint (Alan England Brooke and Norman McLean),
7 No. 657,
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 35
Part also presented us with new fragments.’ There
are other Biblical fragments on papyrus, some of
them very old, of which I received information by
letter when they were still unpublished,’ e.g. a large
4th-century MS. of Genesis obtained by Carl Schmidt
(of Berlin). Adolf Harnack has announced* the
discovery of a fragment of Ignatius by the same
Carl Schmidt. Several ancient Christian fragments
in the Strassburg collection of papyri have been
published by O. Plasberg.* Anton Swoboda thinks
he has discovered in one of the papyri of the
“Fayim Towns” volume some fragments of a
Gnostic (Naassenic) psalm about Christ’s descent
into hell.°
Of great importance too are the Coptic frag-
ments of Biblical, Gnostic, and other early Christian
writings, among which I have already mentioned
the Heidelberg “Acta Pauli.”° They are very
1 Fragments. of the LXX Psalter (No. 845), LXX Amos (No. 846), St. John’s
Gospel (No, 847), Revelation (No. 848), the Acts of Peter (No. 849), the Acts of
John (No. 850) ; and a fragment not yet identified (No. 851).
2 See now the Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 33 (1908) col. 360.
3 Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 31 (1906) col. 596 f.
‘ Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 217 ff.: a piece with proverbs, not yet
identified, and probably quite new, to the interpretation of which the editor
made excellent contributions ; a fragment of 2 Samuel xv. and xvi., Septuagint ;
a parchment fragment of the fifth century A.D. with remains of a Greek
translation of Genesis xxv. 19-22 and xxvi. 3,4. This last piece, which has
already been used in the great Cambridge Septuagint, where it is quoted as
As, is in my opinion very important indeed, It presents a text remarkably at
variance with the LXX but approximating to the Hebrew, and its variants are
remarkable for the occurrence four times over of σπορά, a reading not hitherto
recorded, instead of σπέρμα (xxvi. 3, 4. We may conclude with great
probability that this is a direct protest against St. Paul’s celebrated insistence
on the singular σπέρμα (Gal. iii. 16), and that the papyrus is therefore the
survival of a post-Christian, hitherto unknown Jewish revision of the LXX or
new translation. Graecus Venetus, a late and probably Jewish writer (ed. O.
Gebhardt, Lipsiae, 1875), has ὁπόρος in most of the Messianic passages of
Genesis; in xxvi. 3, 4 he has σπόρος three times and σπέρμα once.
5 Of. his provisional account, Wiener Studien 27 (1905) Part 2.
® Page 30, n, 2, above.
36 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
numerous,’ and have lately been reinforced by two
extensive fragments of translations of the first
Epistle of Clement, now at Berlin® and Strassburg,’
and by a beautifully preserved MS. of the Proverbs of
Solomon.* Graeco-Sahidic fragments of the Psalms,
of considerable extent, have been published by Carl
Wessely * from the collection of papyri belonging to
the Archduke Rainer. An entirely new field has
been opened up by the discovery, also due to Carl
Schmidt (Berlin), of the first fragments of Christian
literature in the language of ancient Nubia.°
The non-literary papyri also contain much that is
of direct value in the study of Biblical and Christian
antiquities. First must be mentioned the Aramaic
and Greek documents which from the 5th century B.c.
until long after the establishment of the Empire were
written by Jewish inhabitants of all parts of Egypt.
These furnish statistics of that cosmopolitan Judaism’
1 T had no intention of enumerating all the earlier publications. Budge’s
publication, the omission of which was noticed by J. Leipoldt (Theologisches
Literaturblatt, 29, 1908, p. 561) was not unknown to me; that of Rahlfs refers,
I believe, to a parchment MS.
? Karl [=Carl] Schmidt, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Berlin) 1907, p. 154 ff., and his edition, Der erste Clemensbrief
in althoptischer Ubersetzung (Texte und Untersuchungen, Dritte Reihe,
Zweiter Band, Heft 1), Leipzig, 1908.
3 Sitzungsberichte, 1907, p. 158 f.
4 Now at Berlin, ibid. p. 155. :
5 Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philo-
sophisch-Historische Klasse, Vol. 155, first article, Wien, 1907.
® Heinrich Schafer und Karl [=Carl] Schmidt, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl.
Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin) 1906, p. 774 ff, and 1907,
p. 602ff. They are parchment fragments from Upper Egypt, but were no
doubt found together with papyri. It is nearly always so with Egyptian
parchment fragments. In 1907 Rustaffael obtained new writings in Nubian
from Edfu, cf. Deutsche Lit.-Ztg. 28 (1907) col. 2012.
7 The Jewish papyri mentioned in my first list (No. 14) in the Realencyolo-
pédie have been the subject of several investigations since I wrote about them
in the Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 23 (1898) col. 602 ff. I would refer especially to E. von
Dobschiitz, Jews and Antisemites in Ancient Alexandria, The American
Journal of Theology, 1904, p. 728 ff. ; F. Stéihelin, Der Antisemitismus des
Altertwms, Basel, 1905; Aug. Bludau, Juden und Judenverfolgungen im alten
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 37
which was such a help to the Christian mission.
Next come the papyri which enable us to fix the
chronology of the Egyptian Prefect Munatius Felix,
and thereby the chronology of an important treatise
by Justin Martyr, or which make it possible to
determine the site of hitherto uncertain Egyptian
places mentioned in early Christian texts. The dis-
coveries have presented us with a few precious original
documents of the time of the Christian persecutions.
We have five belli issued to Christian Abellatici (or, as
U. Wilcken suggested to me in a letter of 1 March,
1902, to falsely suspected pagans’) at the time of the
Decian persecution,’ and then there is the letter of the
Christian presbyter Psenosiris in the Great Oasis to
the presbyter Apollo on behalf of a banished Christian
woman.* Highly remarkable is a Christian original
Alewandria, Minster i. W., 1906; U. Wilcken, Zum alexandrinischen Anti-
semitismus (Vol. XXVII. of the Abhandlungen der Philol.-Hist. Klasse der
Kgl. Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, No. XXIIJ.), Leipzig, 1909.
1 Cf. also Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 3, p. 311. ([JZébelli were official
certificates of the satisfactory performance of pagan sacrifices by the certi-
ficate-holders. ΤῊ.
Σ No. 1 published by Ε΄. Krebs, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Ak. ἃ.
Wiss. (Berlin) 1893, pp. 1007-1014; No. 2 published by K. Wessely, Anzeiger
der Kaiser]. Ak. ἃ. W. zu Wien, Phil.-hist. Klasse, XXXI. 1894, pp. 3-9; for
No. 8 cf. Seymour de Ricci, Bulletin Papyrologique, Revue des Etudes
Grecques, 1901, p. 203, and U. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1,
p. 174; No. 4 published by Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri,
No. 658; No. 5 published by Wessely in the Patrologia Orientalis, IV. 2,
pp. 113-115. Cf. also G. Milligan, The Expository Times, Vol. 20, No. 4
(Jan. 1909). A. Bladau’s article in Der Katholik, 88, 9, I know at present
only from the Deutsche Lit.-Ztg. 29 (1908) 00]. 2453.—A remarkable analogy to
these Libelli is furnished by the certificates of confession and profession
given to Lutherans in the 17th century, cf. Theol. Rundschau, 11 (1908) p. 430.
3 Papyrus 713 in the British Museum, edited with commentary in my little
book, Hin Original-Dekument aus der Diocletianischen Christencerfolgung,
Tiibingen und Leipzig, 1902; translated into English under the title The
Epistle of Psenosiris, London, 1902 (Cheap Edition, 1907). Cf. also
P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Una lettera del tempo della persecuzione Dioclezianta,
Nuovo Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 8 (1902) pp. 15-25. The late Albrecht
Dieterich proposed, in the Gétting. gel. Anz. 1903, pp. 550-555, an interpretation
of an important passage of the letter differing greatly from my own, and to
98 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
letter’ sent from Rome to the Fayim at some time
during the last thirty years of the 8rd century, which
is probably the oldest original Christian letter at
present known. There follows a long series of
Christian letters, from the 4th century onwards, which
have now been published some time, but deserve, I
think, more notice than they have yet received.
They are manifestos from those circles of Christendom
concerning which there are scarcely any other sources
of information available. The extensive corre-
spondence of Abinnaeus should be specially mentioned
in this connexion.? Even the legal documents of the
Byzantine period, e.g. the church inventories, which
are not yet all published, contain many details of
interest. Certain points, such as the palaeographical
history of the so-called monogram of Christ, X,
receive fresh illumination from the papyri.’ In an
this I replied in a monthly periodical, Die Studierstube, 1 (1903) pp. 532-540.
The whole problem received detailed treatment once more from August Merk,
8&.J., in the Zeitschr, fiir kathol. Theologie, 29 (1905) pp. 724-737, due
attention being given to the copious literature that had appeared in the
interval. Cf. Otto Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur, II.,
Freiburg i. B., 1903, p. 218f, and Adolf Harnack, Die Chronologie der
altchristl, Lit, IL p. 180, both of whom treat of the letter as part of Christian
“literature,” which strictly speaking is not correct ; Pierre Jouguet, Revue
des Etudes Anciennes, 7 (1905) p. 254f.; Ὁ. Wilcken, Archiv f, Papyrus-
forschung, 2 p. 166, 3 p. 125, 4 p. 204£.; F. Buecheler, Rhein. Museum, New
Series 61 (1906) p. 627; C. Wessely in the Patrologia Orientalis, IV. 2,
pp. 125-135; Paul Viereck, Jahresbericht iiber die Fortschritte der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft, 131 (1906) p. 124 , Text and facsimile of the letter
will be found in Chapter III. below (p. 201 ff.).
1 The Amherst Papyri, I. No. 3a, p. 28 ff. (facsimile IT. plate 25) ; cf, Adolf.
Harmack, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl, Preuss. Ak. der Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1900,
p. 987 ff. In Chapter IIL. (p. 192 ff.) I give a facsimile of the letter with an
attempt to restore and interpret it.
? Further particulars in my edition of the ancient Christian letter of J ustinus
to Papnuthius, Veréffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung I.
pp. 94-104, and in Chapter III. (p. 205 ff.) below.
3 The theological importance of some of the papyrus publications is pointed
out in the Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 1896, col. 609 ff. ; 1898, col. 628 ff. ; 1901, col. 69 ff. ;
1903, col. 592 f£.; 1906, col. δ47 Ε, ; Supplement to the Allg. Zeitang (Munich)
1900, No, 250, and 1901, No. 251.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 39
551
article entitled “ Pagan and Christian in Egypt,
Ulrich Wilcken published a number of new things,
two of which deserve special mention: an amulet
with an interesting text of the Lord’s Prayer,’ and
a petition of Appion, bishop of Syene, to the
Emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian 111. This
article, by the way, is a model example of the sort
of commentary that is called for by such texts. The
last publication to be mentioned here is that by
Lietzmann* of a curious text which still presents
many unsolved riddles.
It will be admitted that our knowledge of Christian
antiquity has been very considerably enriched by these
literary and non-literary Christian papyri from Egypt.
Our subject, however, is chiefly concerned with the
non-Christian texts and the great indirect value that
they possess for Bible students. The following
chapters will pursue that subject in detail. In these
introductory observations, however, we may remark
that, at a time when Greek papyri were still among
the rare curiosities of a few museums, Heinrich
Wilhelm Josias Thiersch realised their value for
Septuagint philology. Even before him Friedrich
Wilhelm Sturz® had made use of the Charta Bor-
giana’ (the first papyrus ever brought to Europe, in
1778) in studying the Alexandrian Old Testament,
! Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 396 ff.
2 Ibid. p. 431 ff.
3 Tbid. p. 398 ff. and 4, p. 172. Wilcken’s placing of this petition in the
ceign of Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. is confirmed by the praescript
of the letter addressed by these Emperors to John of Antioch, Migne,
Patrologia Graeca, 65, col. 880: there too Theodosius is placed first.
‘ Papyrus Jenensis, No. 1, Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie, 50
(New Series 15) 1907, p. 149 ff.
5 De Pentatevchi versione Alexandrina libri tres, Erlangae, 1841.
® De Dialecto Macedonica et Alexandrina liber, Lipsiae, 1808.
7 Charta Papyracea Graece scripta Musei Borgiani Velitris... edita a
Nicolao Schow, Romae, 1788. ΝΕ
40 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
and had cited it, for instance, to explain the word
ἀπάτωρ, “ without father,” in Hebrews vii. 3.’
Of late years the papyri have been used by almost
all the Biblical scholars whom I named above when
speaking of the inscriptions. Apart from the gram-
matical studies which he afterwards incorporated in
his “Grammar,” James Hope Moulton has made
valuable lexical contributions,’ which have lately been
continued in collaboration with George Milligan.*
The papyri have been successfully appealed to in
linguistic problems by J. de Zwaan in his article * on
Mark xiv. 41, and in his Dutch edition of Burton’s
Syntax of New Testament Moods and Tenses,’ and
Wilhelm Heitmiiller® did the same before him. By
means of the papyri J. Rendel Harris’ has advanced
the exegesis of the New Testament Epistles, and
H. Hauschildt * the history of the title “ presbyteros.”
Hermann Miiller® and Alfred Wikenhauser” have
also made a beginning with such studies. Hans
Lietzmann made industrious use of the papyri in his
Commentaries, already mentioned, and made the
Greek papyri available for theological class-work by
1 Op, cit. p. 1468.
2 Notes from the Papyri, The Expositor, April 1901, February 1903, Decem-
ber 1903.
3 Lexical Notes from the Papyri, The Expositor, January 1908 ff.
‘ The Text and Exegesis of Mark xiv. 41, and the Papyri, The Expositor,
December 1905.
5 Syntaxis der Wijzen en Tijden in het Grieksche Nieuwe Testament, Haarlem,
1906. The inscriptions are also used here and in Heitmiiller.
* “ Im Namen Jesu”: eine sprach- und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung
zam N. T., speziell zur altchristlichen Taufe, Géttingen, 1903; cf. Theol. Lit.-
Ztg. 29 (1904) col. 199 ff. '
7 A Study in Letter Writing, The Expositor, September 1898 ; Epaphroditus,
Scribe and Courier, ibid. December 1898 ; The Problem of the Address in the
Second Epistle of John, ibid. March 1901.
* Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 4 (1903) p. 235 ff.; cf.
Max L. Strack, ibid. p. 213 ff., and before that my Bibelstudien, p.153f., and
Neue Bibelstudien, p. 60 ff. [= Bible Studies, pp. 154, 233].
® Zum Pastor Hermae, Theologische Quartalschrift, 1908, p. 89 ff.
© Ποταμοφόρητος Apk. 12, 15 u.a., Biblische Zeitschrift, 6 (1908) p. 171.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 41
publishing his little book of ἰεχίβ: | Willoughby
C. Allen did not neglect the papyri in his Commen-
tary on St. Matthew.’
As a matter of course, the Greek philologists above:
mentioned in connexion with the inscriptions often
compare the Septuagint and the New Testament with. '
the evidence of the papyri whenever they happen to-
discuss the international Greek of the Imperial and.
earlier age. The most important achievements with
regard specially to papyrology are those of Edwin.
Mayser* and Wilhelm Crénert.* Mayser’s work.
has now found a Biblical counterpart in R. Helbing’s.
Septuagint Grammar.
(c) The Ostraca, constituting the third main group*
of texts, are closely allied to the papyri. We approach.
with them an entirely modern science, a science which
so far has relied on two men only for its main support.
One of them, Ulrich Wilcken, laid the foundations.
with his brilliant work on Greek Ostraca from Egypt
and Nubia ® ; the other, W. E. Crum, by the publica--
1 Griechische Papyri, No. 14 of the Kleine Texte fiir theologische Vorles-
ungen und Ubungen, Bonn, 1905. 2 Edinburgh, 1907.
3 Grammatih der griechischen Papyri aus der Ptolemierzeit mit Einschluss
der gleichzeitigen Ostraka und der in Agypten verfassten Inschriften ; Laut-
und Wortlehre, Leipzig, 1906 (cf. Stanislaus Witkowski, Deutsche Literatur-
Zeitung, 30 [1909] col. 347 ff.). The Syntax is to follow later. Small preliminary
studies had preceded Mayser’s. Other papers by Witkowski, Volker, Kuhring,
etc., will be found noted in Hohlwein’s Bibliography and in my summaries im.
the ‘Theol. Rundschau, 1 (1897-8) p. 463 ff, 5 (1902) p. 58ff., and 9 (1906)
p. 210 ff.
4 Memoria Gracca Herculanensis cum titulorum Aegypti papyrorum
codicum denique testimoniis comparatam proposuit Guilelmus Crénert,
Lipsiae, 1903.
5 What is said of the inscriptions on stone, the papyri, and the ostraca,.
applies also mutatis mutandis to the remaining smaller groups (wooden.
tablets, wax tablets, etc.).
4 Griechische Ostraka aus Agypten und Nubien: ein Beitrag zur antiken
Wirtschaftsgeschichte, in two Books, Leipzig, 1899. Remarks additional to-
the same by Paul Viereck, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 450 ff. The:
scanty previous literature is noted by Wilcken, I. p. 56 f.
42 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
tion of his great collection of Christian ostraca,' has
added fresh material. Addressed primarily to Copto-
logists, Crum’s book is nevertheless of importance to
Greek scholars and theologians.
The question “What are ostraca?” is easily
answered. They are pieces of broken pottery, on
which something has been written. “ Why were they
‘so neglected in the past?” is a more difficult ques-
tion.” I am reminded of a sentence in one of Pastor
von Bodelschwingh’s annual reports of a scrap-collect-
ing organisation for the support of the Bethel
charities near Bielefeld. ‘Nothing is absolutely
worthless,” he says, “except bits of broken earthen-
ware and the fag-ends of cigars,” and the opinion
‘seems to have been shared by the peasants of Egypt,
at least so far as bits of pottery were concerned.
They rummaged among ancient ruins, and whenever
‘they came across such pitiable objects as bits of
earthenware vessels, they threw them away at once.
Many a European with a scholar’s training must have
‘been quite convinced that ancient potsherds were
valueless, even when there was writing visible on
1 Coptic Ostraca from the Collections of the Egypt Exploration Fund, the
Cairo Musewm, and others. Special extra publication of the Egypt Explora-
‘tion Fund, London, 1902. For the important theological aspects of the book
-see especially the review by Erwin Preuschen, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 1906,
p. 641 ff. A further publication to be considered is H. R. Hall, Coptic and
Greek Texts of the Christian Period from Ostraca, Stelae, ete , in the British
Museum, London, 1905, Further information in the Archiv fiir Papyrusfor-
«schung, 4, p. 247 ff.
? In what follows I am making use of my notice of Wilcken’s Ostraka in the
Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 26 (1901) col. 65 ff. Many details will be found there which
care not mentioned here.
5 Neunter Jahresbericht der Brockensammlung der Anstalt Bethel bei
Bielefeld. [Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, 6. 1831, is a kind of German
Dr. Barnardo. He is a member of the Prussian Diet, and received in 1884
-an honorary degree from the University of Halle and in December 1908
another from the University of Miinster in recognition of his great social
‘work. TR.]
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 43
them’; otherwise one cannot understand why they
were to all intents and purposes ignored by research
for so long a time, comparatively. After all, what
can there be more pitiful than an earthen potsherd ?’
The prophet in his emphatic irony could think of no
image more apt to describe man’s nothingness than
that of a potsherd among potsherds.’
In the time of the ancients potsherds were not
thrown away as useless for ever. From the rubbish-
heaps they not unfrequently made their way once
more to the humble homes of the proletariat, there
to be used as writing material. Few of us, however,
realised this fact until Wilcken published his book
on the subject. Of course in our schooldays we
had heard of the judgment of Clisthenes, but in
such a way that most of us, if asked, would have
said that ostracism was the Athenian statesman’s
own invention, and that he caused small tablets of
earthenware to be made specially for the people to
record their votes. As a matter of fact, four of the
ostraca employed have been discovered at Athens,’
and two at least of them are obviously pieces of
broken vessels. Wilcken goes on to show most
convincingly that the habit of writing on ostraca
must have been in force at Athens in the sixth
century B.c. at latest, and that the potsherd was
highly popular as writing material throughout the
ancient Mediterranean world. With regard to the
Hellenistic period we know that it was so, firstly
from the evidence of various authors, and secondly
1 As late as 1819 an architect named Gau found “ an innumerable quantity "ἢ
of inscribed ostraca at Dakkeh in Nubia, He made drawings of several, kept
two, and threw the rest away as needless ballast! Of. Wilcken, @riechische
Ostraka, I. p. 20.
2 Isaiah xlv.9: “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! a potsherd
among the potsherds of the earth!” (R.V.)
8 Wilcken, Ostraka, I. pp. 4f. and 820.
44 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
from thousands of potsherds that were written on
then and which have been preserved, with the
writing still upon them, in the burning, rainless
soil of Egypt. Like the papyri, which the same
agency has preserved to us in such numbers, the
ostraca are a mirror of the changes of nationality
that occurred in the Nile Valley. All sorts of
alphabets are represented—the Hieratic and Demotic
scripts of the old Egyptian, besides Greek, Latin,
Aramaic, Coptic, and Arabic.
Of all the various kinds there can be little doubt
that the Greek are at present the most numerous.
They range from the time of the first Ptolemies
down to the beginning of the Arab occupation, 2.6.
over a period of roughly a thousand years. The
texts with which they are inscribed are of the most
miscellaneous kind—letters, contracts, bills, directions
as to payments, decrees, and even extracts from
classical authors. On the whole we may say that the
texts met with on ostraca are the same in contents
as those of the papyri—which we have already seen
to be so astonishingly abundant—the only difference
being that the ostraca on account of their size
generally have shorter texts than the papyri. The
great majority of the ostraca we possess are certainly
tax-receipts.
In the second book of his Greek Ostraca Wilcken
published 1,624 specimens of these modest records
of the past. No less than 1,355 of these had never
been published before: they were hunted out with
infinite pains by Wilcken in the museums of Berlin,
London, Paris, Rome, Turin, Leyden, etc., and in
private collections.. The task of decipherment was |
1 The number of ostraca in European museums and libraries has since in-
creased by thousands—U. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4,p. 146, En-
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 45
one of extreme difficulty ; the writing on the ostraca
is cursive, often running into grotesque eccentricities,
with a whole host of abbreviations and special signs.
But the masterly skill which Wilcken had shown
as one of the decipherers of the Berlin papyri was
again most brilliantly displayed. The result is that
these humble texts are now ready to the scholar’s
hand, not indeed in a form that presents no problems
and enigmas, but at least so edited as to be studied
without effort.
We are further indebted to Wilcken for a good
deal of the historical discussion of all this new
material. His Book I. constitutes ἃ commentary on
the grand scale, not in the sense that each single
one of the ostraca receives separate interpretation
{brief notes are given to many of them in Book II.),
but in the form of a systematised discussion of the
whole enormous miscellany. First comes a detailed
introduction on the ostraca as writing material,
including the origin and fortunes of the ostraca.
The formulae employed in receipts are next examined,
and the author then plunges into the minutiae of
the Egyptian system of taxes and duties in the
Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Next come economic
observations, and researches on topography, metro-
logy, chronology, and palaeography. Papyri, in-
scriptions, and ancient authors are constantly quoted
in illustration and comparison. The book was
dedicated to Theodor Mommsen, and no offering
more worthy of the great master’s acceptance could
tirely new collections, such as the one at Heidelberg, have been formed.
Egyptian dealers (and many European collectors) still attach no great value to
ostraca : twenty times as much is often asked for a papyrus text of the same
length. For a small outlay it is easy to acquire an extensive collection of
ostraca. That is one good result of the immemorial prejudice which, it would
almost seem, the centuries have bequeathed to us: the idea that a potsherd is
more plebeian than a bit of papyrus.
46 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
have been produced. It is in every respect a
monument of learning.
To theologians the ostraca are of no small value.
They add many new touches to our knowledge of
the life of ancient times. They throw light on
large tracts of the civilisation upon which the Greek
Old Testament, many of the books of the Apocrypha,
the works of Philo and of the Egyptian Christians.
were based. They show us the men of the age
of fulfilment’ in their workaday clothes, and they
afford reliable evidence concerning the language
spoken in the Hellenised Mediterranean world at
the time when the apostolic mission became to
“the Greeks” a Greek. In these facts lies the
great value of the ostraca (as of the non-literary
papyri) to the student of Greek Judaism and of
the first centuries of Christianity. Detailed proof
of this assertion will be offered in the following
chapters.
Even more decidedly than the papyri, the ostraca.
are documents belonging to the lower orders of the
people. The potsherd was infact the cheapest writ-
ing material there was, obtainable by every one gratis.
from the nearest rubbish-heap. For this reason it
was so admirably adapted for recording the vote of
the Demos in cases of ostracism. The ostracon was
beneath the dignity of the well-to-do. As a proof
of the poverty of Cleanthes the Stoic it is related
that he could not afford papyrus and therefore wrote
on ostraca or on leather.” In the same way we find
the writers of Coptic potsherd letters even in Christian.
times apologising now and then to. their corre-
} [“ When the fulness of the time was come,” Gal. iv. 4. TR.] ;
2 Diog. Laert. vii, 173-4. A similar story is told of Apollonius Dyscolus,
Wilcken, I. p. 6.
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 47
spondents for having made use of an ostracon in
temporary lack of papyrus.1 We, however, have-
cause to rejoice at the breach of etiquette. The:
_ostraca take us right to the heart of the class to
which the primitive Christians were most nearly
related, and in which the new faith struck root in.
the great world.
Direct information relating to the very oldest.
Christianity has not yet been yielded to us by the
ostraca. The Coptic potsherds, however, with their
abundance of letters, fragments of letters, and
similar texts, are of quite unique value for the:
light they throw on the religious and social history
of Christian Egypt; and they have lately been.
reinforced by Greek ostraca of the 5th century a.p.’
On the other hand, the space available for writing
being so small, we can hardly expect to recover on
ostraca any large remains of early Christian literary
texts.
The ostraca will restore to us no lost fathers οὖ
the Church and no lost heretical writers. They have
yielded hitherto only short quotations from classical
1 Οὗ, Crum, Coptic Ostraca, p. 49. For example No, 129, p. 55: “ Excuse-
me‘that I cannot find papyrus as I am in the country.”
2 My knowledge of these is at present confined to a notice in the Frank--
furter Zeitung, 12 July, 1907, 2nd morning edition: “It is reported from
Alexandria that the excavations in the ancient Christian town of Menas have-
brought to light amongst other things a series of valuable ostraca. These are
in all probability the oldest Greek writings of the kind from the Christian.
period. Dr. H. J.Bell of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum
examined with Dr. Kenyon a number of well-preserved specimens, and his.
results will be published in the forthcoming Third Report of the excavations.
Among these documents are instructions for the payment of vine-dressers,
wine-pressers (men who trod the grapes with their feet), laundrymen, and.
other workmen, for services rendered for the national sanctuary. Payment is
made in money, in kind, or in food, and disabled workmen are also provided
for. Comparisons with papyrus documents lead to the conclusion that the
specimens hitherto deciphered belong to the 5th century. The same date is
indicated by the stratum in which they were found. More than 200 ostraca
have been recovered so far.”
48 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
authors, and those probably schoolroom exercises.
The writers of ostraca were as a rule quite innocent
of literary interests. After the scanty fragments
discussed by Egger’ there seemed but little hope of
recovering even Biblical quotations,’ until R. Reitzen-
stein published from a Strassburg ostracon of about
the 6th century a hymn to the Virgin*® which
sshhowed decided marks of the influence of Luke i.
Since then Crum, in his Coptic Ostraca, has given us
ostraca with Greek quotations from the Bible, while
Pierre Jouguet and Gustave Lefebvre have published
a late ostracon from Thebes with a rude drawing of
«Saint Peter the Evangelist” and a few lines of
‘Greek that have not yet been identified. Besides
this Lefebvre has made known to us quite a series
of gospel quotations in his Fragments Grecs des
Evvangiles sur Ostraka.’ This publication alone
! Observations sur quelques fragments de poterie antique, Mémoires de
Académie des Inscriptions, t. XXI. 1, Paris, 1857, p. 377 ff.
2 The “fragment of earthenware” from Megara with the text of the Lord’s
Prayer, published by R. Knopf, Athenische Mitteilungen, 1900, p. 313 ff., and
Zeitschrift fiir die neutest. Wissenschaft, 2 (1901) p. 228 ff, is not a fragment
of a broken vessel, not a true ostracon, but a tablet no doubt made specially
to receive the inscription. The writing was scratched on the soft clay and
then made permanent by burning. I inspected the tablet on 28 April, 1906, at
Athens, and a plaster cast of it is in my possession.
5 Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen nach wngedruckten griechischen Texten
der Strassburger Bibliothek, Strassburg, 1901. Cf. the remarks by Anrich in
the Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 27 (1902) col. 304 f., and by U. Wilcken in the Archiv fiir
Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 140.
‘ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 28 (1904) p. 205 £., 29 (1905) p. 104.
In any case the “evangelist Peter” is remarkable—no doubt a reminiscence of
the Gospel of Peter.
5 Bulletin de l'Institut frangais d’archéologie orientale, t. [V., Le Caire, 1904 ;
the separate reprint which lies before me consists of 15 pages quarto, with
-3 plates of facsimiles. I here make use of an article on ‘“ Evangelienfrag-
mente auf dgyptischen Tonscherben ” which I contributed to Die Christliche
Welt, 20 (1906) col. 19ff. Cf. further A. Bludau, Griechische Evangelien-
fragmente auf Ostraka, Biblische Zeitschrift, 1906, p. 386ff. Caspar René
Gregory, Die griechisohen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, ἡ. 43, denotes
these ostraca by the number 0153 in his list, and the above-mentioned Lord’s
Prayer from Megara by the number 0152 (p, 42 ἢ).
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 49
enables us to fill an empty page in the history of
the New Testament. It gives us the text of 20
Greek ostraca, large and small, inscribed with
portions of our gospels. They were purchased many
years ago in Upper Egypt by Bouriant, and are
now a treasured possession of the French Institute
of Oriental Archaeology. The exact place and
circumstances of their discovery could not be
ascertained, but their authenticity is beyond question.
Their age can be conjectured from the style of the
handwriting, and it appears that they were written
probably in the 7th century, in the time of the
Arab conquest.
They afford interesting materials for saionenhy
and the history of the text’ of the gospels which
it is to be hoped will not be neglected by scholars.
They contain in the handwriting of three different
persons the text of Matt. xxvii. 31-32; Mark v.
40-41, ix. 17, 18, 22, xv. 21; Luke xii. 13-15,
15-16, xxii. 40-45, 45-49, 49-58, 53-54, 55-59,
59-60, 61, 61-64, 65-69, 70-71; John i. 1-9, 14-17,
Xvill. 19-25, xix. 15-17.
Thanks to the editor’s kindness I am able to give
1 Every ancient Bible-fragment that was certainly written in Egypt helps us
to answer the question, “What text of the Bible was current in Egypt?”
Lefebvre examined the character of the text provisionally, and Bludau has
added further details. The chief result is to establish the relationship of this
text with the BNL etc. group, ὁ.6. with the group of authorities claimed by W.
Bousset for the text of Hesychius. This is a new proof of the correctness of
Bousset’s hypothesis, on which cf. my Veréffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger
Papyrus-Sammlung I. p. 84, and Bousset’s report on H. von Soden’s recon-
struction of the text of Hesychius, Theol, Lit.-Ztg. (1907) col. 71 ff.
2 On the back of this ostracon (no. 5) there is the name Lwke and two lines
which the editor could not account for. I print them in minuscules:—
orthBov7[
of . . padel
This is certainly a fragment of Mark ix, 3 :—
στιλβοντί α λευκα Acav]
οἶα γ]ναφεῖυς etc.]
δ0 THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
here a (reduced) facsimile of ostracon no. 16, con-
taining Luke xxii. 70-71 (Figure 8).
The text runs thus :—
evray Se πάντες And they all said, Art Thou
gv ουν εἰ ο Us Tov θυ then the Son of God? And
o δὲ προς avtous
eo tueis* Nevers He said unto them, Ye say that
5 οτι εγὼ expe οἱ δὲ I δ. And they said, What
CUTAY, “TE ET Xperay further need have we witness
:© ἔχομεν μαρτυρίαν
5 avTo yap ἠκουσαμε3
amo Tov στοματος heard from . . . mouth.
(sic)? for we ourselves have
Of the two characters in the left-hand margin
(read vo by Lefebvre) the « is certainly a numeral
(=10) denoting that this ostracon is the tenth in
a consecutive series. The preceding ostraca with
Luke xxii. 40-69 do in fact bear the numbers 1-9.
The 6 however, which occurs with different pointing
on most of the other members of this group, has
not yet been explained. I conjecture that it is the
number of a chapter according to an old ecclesi-
astical division. In the copy of the gospel from
which the ostraca were made Luke xxii. 40ff.
would then belong to the 70th chapter of Luke,
whereas in the usual ancient division into chapters ὃ
it belongs to chapter 78.
It will be seen at once that among the 20
specimens the gospel of St. Luke is the most amply
represented.. Two ostraca contain the consecutive
text of Luke xii. 13-16, and ten ostraca actually
contain the complete text of Luke xxii. 40-71, ie.
1 [The dots above υ and ἡ (line 8) are characteristic of the writing of the
time. TR.]
2 [=nxoveapev. TR.]
® Hermann Freiherr von Soden, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer
dltesten erreichbaren Textgestalt I., Berlin, 1902, p. 411.
Fie. 3.—Ostracon from Upper Egypt, inscribed with Luke xxii. 70 ἔ,,
7th cent. A.D. Now in the Institut frangais d’Archéologie orientale,
Cairo. By permission of Gustave Lefebvre, of Assiout.
[». 50
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 51
a large portion of the account of the Passion. The
fact that these ten ostraca belong together is marked
externally by the numerals 1-10 which, as mentioned
above, the writer affixed to them. The fragments
from St. John probably also belong to one and the
same series. This observation is important in two
ways. On the one hand it points to the fact that
probably all these gospel ostraca represent a single
find. This is confirmed by the occurrence of
Mark ix. 3 on the back of one of the fragments of
St. Luke, as already pointed out. That passage
occurs in the account of the Transfiguration, which
immediately precedes the section from which ostracon
no. 3 (Mark ix. 17, 18, 22) is taken. On the
other hand we now have an indication of the
nature of the whole collection, for light is thrown
on the question, “For what purpose were they
inscribed with texts from the gospels ?”
If the ostracon inscribed with Mark ix. 17 ff. were
the only one that had come down to us it would
be easy to suppose that the text was to be used as
a curative amulet, in this case as an amulet against
demoniacal possession. In the Heidelberg Uni-
versity Library, for instance, there are several
Biblical amulets of this kind on parchment and
papyrus. The editor of the ostraca tells us in fact
that Perdrizet suggested the amulet hypothesis! to
him. But the series of ten consecutive ostraca and
the other series of. which we may conjecture demand
another explanation than this. It is inconceivable
that anybody should have carried ten ostraca about
with him as an amulet, for the simple reason that
1 There is an article on gospel amulets by E. Nestle in the Zeitschr. fiir die
neutest. Wissenschaft, 6 (1906) p. 96. Cf. further Gerhard Kropatscheck, De
amuletorum apud antiquos usu, Diss. Gryphiae, 1907, p. 28 ff.
δῷ THE PROBLEM—DISCOVERY AND
they would have been far too heavy. I have my-
self tried the experiment, though with no thought
of amulets in my mind, for I have often carried
ten or a dozen ostraca from my collection in my
pockets to show to the audience at a lecture. It
was in many respects a pleasing burden, but not in
the least comfortable.
Lefebvre’s own theory was that the ostraca were
written to form a cheap gospel lectionary, a book
(if we may use the expression) for private or public
reading consisting of extracts (Pericopae) from the
gospels or perhaps even a continuous text. This
theory we must accept unless, as now seems to me
more probable, the ostraca were copied out by poor
candidates for deacon’s orders at the command of
their bishop... Whoever has realised the character
of ostraca in general will not be slow to perceive
the real import of this new find. Ostraca were as
a rule the writing material used by the poor’; a
potsherd was to be had for nothing, even in the
most straitened household, when some person or
persons unknown had been unkind enough to break
the oil-cruse or the kneading-pan. The person who
wrote gospel texts on ostraca was a poor person: a
would-be deacon, or perliaps a monk, a schoolboy,
or a simple woman—some soul forgotten among the
myriads that perish.
So we might add this superscription to Lefebvre’s
fascinating work: “'The gospels in the hands of the
common people, the gospel among the poor of
Egypt at the time when the deluge of Islam was
approaching.” In the very selfsame division of
1 Cf. the notes to the last letter but one quoted in Chapter II. below
(p. 2128).
2. Cf. the references at p. 46 f. above.
Fie, 4.—Site of the Excavations in Delos. From a photograph by
Miss M. C. de Graffenried.
[p. 53
NATURE OF THE NEW TEXTS 58
society which made them what they are, the most
democratic texts of all antiquity, we encounter once
again the gospels. Six centuries have passed, during
which they have been copied on papyrus, on parch-
ment, yea even on purple vellum with letters of gold,
and thinkers and potentates, rich men and renowned
have read them. After their long journeying through
the world the gospels are at home once more: on
worthless castaway potsherds a poor man writes the
imperishable words that are the heritage of the poor.
Our brief general description of the newly dis-
covered texts is ended. New Testament in hand,
let us now betake ourselves to the sites of excavations
in the South and East and endeavour to decipher the
stone inscriptions from the period which witnessed
the great religious change.’ Or, if we must remain
at home, let us at least open the Sacred Book and
compare it with the folio volumes of inscriptions,
papyri, and ostraca. The New Testament is an exile
here in the West, and we do well to restore it to
its home in Anatolia. It is right to set it once more
in the company of the unlearned, after it has made so
long a stay amid the surroundings of modern culture.
We have had hundreds of University chairs for the
exact, scientific interpretation of the little Book—let
us now listen while the homeland of the New Testa-
ment yields up its own authentic witness to the
inquiring scholar.
1 An illustration offered itself unsought in a pretty little snapshot taken by
Miss M, C. de Graffenried, of Washington (Fig. 4). M. Holleaux, the director
of the French excavations, is seen explaining to us one of the two Heliodorus
inscriptions at Delos, 19 May, 1906. [M. Holleaux is pointing with his stick.
The stooping figure to his right is Professor Deissmann. The tall figure seen
against the fluted column is Professor von Duhn, of Heidelberg. Tr.] This
is the Heliodorus of the second book of Maccabees and Raffael’s Stanza
@ Eliodoro (οἴ, Bibelstudien, p. 171 ff. ; Bible Studies, p. 308).
CHAPTER II
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ILLUS-
TRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS
1. As we study the New Testament on the lines
indicated at the close of the preceding chapter, the
first great impression we receive is that the language
to which we are accustomed in the New Testament
is on the whole just the kind of Greek that simple,
unlearned folk of the Roman Imperial period were
in the habit of using. The non-literary written
memorials of that age at length have opened our
eyes to the true linguistic position of the New
Testament. That is the first and most easily de-
monstrated of the services rendered us by the new
texts.’
Fifteen years ago, when it began to be asserted
with some confidence that the isolation of “New
Testament” Greek as a separate entity was impos-
sible from the scientific point of view, since it was
practically identical with the popular international
1 Earlier works of mine dealing with the subject of the following pages
are: Bibelstudien; Neue Bibelstudien; an address on “Die sprachliche
Erforschung der griechischen Bibel,” Giessen, 1898; the article on “ Hellenis-
tisches Griechisch” in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyclopadie,? VII. 627 ff. ;
reviews of literature in the Theologische Rundschau, 1 (1897-98) p. 463 ££,
5 (1902) p. 58 ff, 9 (1906) p. 210ff.; and my Cambridge lectures on “ The
Philology of the Greek Bible,” published in The Expositor, October 1907 to
January 1908, and afterwards in book form, London, 1908.
54
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 55
Greek of the period, theologians’ and philologists
received the statement with more or less active
dissent. One eminent Greek scholar’ of the philo-
logical school said it was the language of a natura-
list rather than a theologian, and those familiar with
the polemical literature of that date will know what
the reproach of naturalism then meant in Germany.’
Since then, however, the specialists have changed
their minds on this not unimportant point. New
Testament philology is at present undergoing thor-
ough reconstruction; and probably all the workers
concerned in it both on the Continent and in English-
speaking countries * are by this time agreed that the
starting-point for the philological investigation of the
New Testament must be the language of the non-
literary papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions. The theory
scored a complete victory in Albert Thumb’s valuable
book on the Greek Language in the Hellenistic age’ ;
Stanislaus Witkowski acknowledged his adherence in
the critical review which he gave (1904) of recent
literature dealing with the Kowy.° In a number of
different articles,’ but more especially in his recent
1 The question was gone into most in detail by Julius Boehmer, Das biblische
“Im Namen,” Giessen, 1898, and Zwei wichtige Kapitel aus der biblischen
Hermeneutik, Beitrage zur Férderung christlicher Theologie,'5 (1901) Heft 6,
Giitersloh, 1902, p. 50ff.; and cf. his remarks in Die Studierstube, 1 (1903)
p. 340 ff., 2 (1904) p. 324 ff, 6 (1908) p. 587 f.
2 [F. Blass, reviewing Deissmann’s Bibelstudien in the Theologische
Literaturzeitung, 20 (1895) col. 487. TR.]
* [Conservative theologians accused their liberal colleagues of proceeding
on “naturalistic ” lines in disregard or in defiance of Divine Revelation. Tr.]
4 CL, for instance, the latest contribution : §. Angus, Modern Methods in
New Testament Philology, Harvard Theological Review, 2 (Oct. 1909) p. 446,
5 Cf. p. 19 above; also the Theol. Rundschau, 5 (1902) p. 85 ff., and Archiv
fiir Papyrusforschung, 2, pp. 410 ff., 455 ff.
6 Bericht iiber die Literatur zur Koine aus den Jahren 1898-1902 (Jahres-
bericht iiber die Fortschritte der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. 120
(1904 1.) pp. 153-256, especially p. 200 ff.
7 Cf. pp. 17, 40, above. [Moulton wrote on “New Testament Greek. in the
Light of Modern Discovery” in Zesays on Some Biblical Questions of the
Day, edited by H. B. Swete, London, 1909. TE,]
56 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Grammar of the New Testament, James Hope Moul-
ton worked out the most important of the details
that result from the application of the theory ; while
Theodor Nageli,’ working by the same method, ex-
hibited very effectively the vocabulary of St. Paul.
Lastly, not to mention others, three philologists of
repute have signified their acceptance of the theory
and its results: firstly Jakob Wackernagel, in his
article on the Greek language contributed to Die
Kultur der Gegenwart®; secondly Ludwig Rader-
macher,’ who is himself engaged on a new Grammar
of the New Testament for Germans ; thirdly D. C.
Hesseling,* who at the same time gave us the com-
forting assurance that no dogma of the Church is
threatened by the new method. There are also in-
stances of Catholic theologians both of the Western °
and of the Eastern ἡ Church who have signified their
approval.
What are the points concerned in judging of the
language of the New Testament ?
We may start from what is probably the average
educated person’s knowledge of the subject. He
would say that “the original language” of the New
Testament was Greek. This statement, however, is
really very vague.
1 Cf. p. 17 above.
2 Die Kultur der Gegenwart (edited by Paul Hinneberg), Part I. section viii.
Berlin and Leipzig, 1905, p. 303 f. ; 71907, p. 308 f.
3 In the specimen pages of his “Grammatik des neutestamentlichen
Griechisch "ἢ printed in the prospectus of Lietzmann’s Handbuch zum Neuen
Testament, 1906,
4 De betekenis van het Nieuwgrieks voor de geschiedenis der Griekse taal en
der Griekse letterkunde, Leiden, 1907, p. 17.
5 H.g. Josef Sickenberger, Zum gegenwiartigen Stand der Erforschung des
Neuen Testamentes, in the Literary Supplement to the Kélnische Volkszeitung,
29 Nov. 1906, p. 370.
5 Cf. 5. J. Sobolewsky, Orthodome Theologische Encyklopddie herausg. von
N. N. Glubokowsky, Vol. 9, St. Petersburg, 1908, col. 603-754, a summary
especially valuable for its references to the literature of the subject.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 517
It is true, certainly, that it is a Greek New Testa-
ment which presents itself to the scholar for study,
but within the New Testament there are portions of
which “the original language” was not Greek, but
Semitic. Jesus of Nazareth, the Man whose person-
ality was the decisive impulse, did not speak Greek
when He went about His public work. He spoke
the local idiom of His native Galilee, the language
which, in the night of betrayal, betrayed His disciple
Peter to be a Galilean. This language was Aramaic,
a dialect akin to Hebrew but not identical with it;
and, to be quite exact, it was Galilean Aramaic that
our Lord spoke. In that dialect the gospel was first
preached. The ordinary reader of the Bible even
now hears the last echo of the original when he
comes upon such words as mammon, talitha cumi, abba,
or such names as Barabbas, Martha, etc., which are
all of them Aramaic. Moreover, the oldest record of
the words that Jesus spake, the record of His apostle
Matthew, was no doubt written in Aramaic for the
Palestinian Christians who spoke that language. That
most primitive version of our Lord’s. words has
perished, unfortunately, so far as the Aramaic original
is concerned. What would we give if we could re-
cover but one papyrus book with a few leaves con-
taining genuine Aramaic sayings of Jesus! For
those few leaves we would, I think, part smilingly
with the theological output of a whole century.
But it is of little use to speak further of this “ if.”
It is more sensible to inquire why the words of Jesus
are no longer extant in their original Aramaic. The
answer is that Christianity, in becoming a world re-
ligion, gradually forgot its oldest records—records
that had originated far away from the world and
were unintelligible to the world—and so they were
58 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
lost.. The Christian missionaries with an. Aramaic
book of gospels in their hands would have been
powerless to make propaganda in what was in fact
a Greek or rather Hellenised world. An Aramaic
gospel-book would have condemned Christianity to
remain a Palestinian sect. Ere it could become a
world religion it had to learn the language of the
world, and that is why the gospels put on the habit
of the world; for that reason St. Paul and others
spoke and wrote the international language, and the
New Testament took final form as a Greek book.
The handful of earlier Aramaic copies vanished before
the multitude of Greek manuscripts of the gospels,
which from the second century onwards became more
and more widely diffused, Their fate was the same
as that of our spelling-books and copy-books. How
many of the men who go down from the university
with boxes full of Latin and Greek books and lecture
notes will find still in existence at home the thumbed
and ragged pages from which they first learnt the
ABC?
In the Roman Imperial period the language of
the great world was Greek, which numbered more
speakers then than the Latin with its millions. The
great military expeditions of Alexander the Great
had combined with the more peaceful victories of
commerce, art, literature, and science, to produce,
just at the great turning-point in religious history, a
more or less complete Hellenisation of those portions
of the Mediterranean area which had been from time
immemorial the home of civilisation. In the south
of Europe, in Asia Minor,’ Egypt, and along the
1 Karl Holl, Das Fortleben der Volkssprachen in nachchristlicher Zeit,
Hermes, 43 (1908) p. 240, must however not be forgotten for its important
evidence as to Asia Minor,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 59
northern shores of Africa, the culture and even the
language was Greek, right down to the lower orders,
of urban society especially. Even among the resi-
dents of Rome there were plenty who spoke Greek.
We know, for instance, that the Roman Jews of.
the period, a numerous body, spoke Greek almost
exclusively.
In this Hellenised world, however, men no longer
spoke local dialects of Greek. The world had
become unified, and men spoke no more the ancient
Doric, or Holic, Ionic, or Attic, but a single Greek
international language, one common tongue. The
precise origin of this international Greek, which it is
usual to refer to as the Kowy (“ common” language),
has not been made out,' nor need it detain us here.
The fact remains that in the period which gave birth
to Christianity there was an international Greek
language.
It was not indeed a uniform entity. Two main
divisions are recognisable, though the boundary
between them is anything but fixed. Like every
living language this international Greek possessed
one form marked by greater freedom, and another
marked by greater restraint. The one we call
colloquial, the other literary.
The colloquial language in its turn went off into
various shades of distinction, according to the refine-
ment of the speaker. It was natural, moreover, for
the literary language to display varieties of colora-
tion. One influence was at that time powerfully
affecting it, namely a romantic enthusiasm for the
‘ Good statements of the questions at present in dispute have been given
most recently by D. C. Hesseling, De Koine en de oude dialekten van Grieken-
land, Amsterdam, 1906; Mayser, Grammatik der griech. Papyri aus der
Ptolemderzeit, p. 1 8. ; and Karl Krambacher, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 17
(1908) p. 577 ff.
60 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
great classics of the former age in Attic Greek.
People imitated their manner of writing in the con-
viction that here once for all the standard of good
Greek had been set. The followers of this romantic
movement are called “ Atticists” after the model
they chose for imitation. Their convention was all
but binding on the cultured and literary of that
epoch, and has always remained one of the great
powers in the intellectual world, influencing our
humanistic studies even at the present day. We still
possess works in plenty that were written by the
ancient Atticists, and we are well informed as to their
theories.. We do, moreover, possess memorials of
the colloquial language of culture in that period,
since there were several authors who paid little or
no attention to the rules of the Atticists.
Memorials of the popular colloquial language, on
the other hand, memorials of the spoken Greek of
the people, were scarcely known to the general run
of scholars at a period distant only some score or
so of years from the present day. The lower orders,
in all their wide extent, who in the time of the
Roman Empire made up the bulk of the popula-
tion in the great cities of the Mediterranean coast
and the interior,—the non-literary people, whose
vulgarisms and expressive terms were scorned and
tabooed by the Atticists as weeds in the garden of
language,—the masses of the people whom St. Paul
at the end of 1 Cor. i. describes with the warmth
of a blood-relation—this whole stratum of society
seemed, with its language, to be buried for ever in
oblivion. ‘
1 Of fundamental importance is the excellent work of Wilhelm Schmid (of
Tiibingen), Der Atticismus in seinen Hauptvertretern von Dionysius von Hali-
karnass bis auf den zweiten Philostratus, 4 vols. and index-vol., Stuttgart,
1887-1897,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 61
And what judgment was usually formed of the
language of the New Testament, under these
circumstances ?
We may state the case thus: In many details
due emphasis was given to its relation with the
contemporary international Greek, but on the whole
it was isolated by the science of language, and
raised to the rank of a separate linguistic entity
under the title of “ New Testament” Greek.
Two circumstances more particularly helped to
make this isolative, dogmatic method prevail. From
the point of view of religion and theology the
isolation of the New Testament was encouraged by
the doctrine of mechanical inspiration, combining
with a very lively conception of the canon of the
New Testament as a hard-and-fast boundary. From
the point of view of language and philology every
one with a classical training felt the strong contrast
between the language of Scripture and the Attic
Greek he had learnt at school. Enslaved by the
immemorial prejudice of the Atticists, that the
Greek world ended with Alexander the Great
(whereas it really began with him), many who read
the Greek New Testament never dreamt of taking
up other Greek texts of the Imperial (and post-
Alexandrian) period. The result was that for such
readers there was a great gap between their New
Testament and the earlier stage of Greek with which
they were familiar, viz. the classical Attic of the 5th
and 4th centuries B.c.' Not only the theologians
were at fault: philologists were in the same condemna-
tion. So recently as 1894 the great Greek scholar
' Much in the same way as people used to be fond of ignoring the period
between the conclusion of the Hebrew Old Testament and the rise of
Christianity with reference to the history of religion.
62 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Friedrich Blass,’ of Halle, despite his marvellous
knowledge of the whole range of Greek literature,
asserted that New Testament Greek must be “ recog-
nised as something peculiar, obeying its own laws.”
We owe it to the newly discovered or at least
newly appreciated records that this isolative method
of treatment has been given up. Of the literary
language, with its trained obedience to artificial rules,
there were productions enough extant already. Then
came the inscribed stones, papyri, and potsherds—
themselves not absolutely free from the tyranny of
school and office usage’—and gave us a wealth of
documents representative of the colloquial language,
especially in its popular form, just as it had grown
and was still growing in a state of nature.’ The
papyri and ostraca particularly furnished ample
material for comparative purposes, first as regards
phonology and accidence, and then as regards the
meanings conveyed by words. ‘The _ inscriptions,
however, also produced a surprising harvest, princi-
pally of the lexical variety.
2. The work to be accomplished by the linguistic
historian on the New Testament is barely begun, but
one thing is clear already. The New Testament
has been proved to be, as a whole, a monument
of late colloquial Greek, and in the great majority
of its component parts a monument of the more or
less popular colloquial language.
1 Theologische Literaturzeitung, 19 (1894) col. 338. Blass afterwards
changed his opinion on the subject.
? On this point cf. especially Edwin Mayser, Grammatik der griechisohen
Papyri aus der Ptoleméerzeit, Ὁ. 3f.
8. It was long since noticed that the Mishna and other old Jewish texts con-
tain considerable traces of popular Greek, but the subject does not come within
the scope of this book, It was last treated by Paul Fiebig, Das Griechisch der
Mischna, Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 9 (1908) p. 297-314.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS _ 63
The most popular in tone are the synoptic gospels,’
especially when they are reporting the sayings of
Jesus. Even St. Luke, with his occasional striving
after elegance, has not deprived them of their simple
beauty. The Epistle of St. James again clearly re-
echoes the popular language of the gospels.
The Johannine writings, including the Revelation,
are also linguistically deep-rooted in the most popular
colloquial language. The Logos, occurring in the very
first line of the gospel, has blinded most critics to the
essential character of a book which, for all its share in
the world’s history, is a book of the people.
St. Paul too can command the terse pithiness of the
homely gospel speech, especially in his ethical exhorta-
tions as pastor. These take shape naturally in clear-cut
maxims such as the people themselves use and treasure
up. But even where St. Paul is arguing to himself
and takes more to the language of the middle class,
even where he is carried away by the priestly fervour
1 It is admirably remarked by J. Wellhausen, Hinleitung in die drei ersten
Evangelien, Berlin, 1905, p. 9: “In the gospels spoken Greek, and such Greek
ag was spoken by the people, makes its entry into literature. Some theologians
have made vain endeavours to reduce it to the rules of the school grammar.
Professed Greek scholars have in the past generally looked upon it from a
narrow point of view only to despise it, but have lately, under the influence of
comparative and historical philology, begun to criticise it with an open mind.”
In his own linguistic comments on the gospels, where it becomes necessary to
decide which phenomena are non-Greek, Wellhausen has, however, relied far
too much on the Attic standard of Greek. In many passages his book is a
testimony to the enormous influence which the orthodox doctrine of the
Atticists still exerts to-day on an enlightened mind. Wellhausen says him-
self (p. 35), “Greek being such an elastic and many-sided language, it may
well be that here and there a Semiticism may also prove to be a Greek
vulgarism ”—and his words certainly apply in the great majority of the cases
he has put down as Semitic. ‘“ There is not the slightest use,” he says immedi-
ately afterwards, “in thrusting one’s head into the Greek thicket ”—but are we
on that account to bury our heads in the sands of Semiticisms? The question
is, what was customary within the sphere of the living Greek language of the
people in the Imperial period? And if I am to answer this question I must
purge myself of the leaven of the Atticists and study that living language,
That Aramaisms exist, I have never denied; only as to the number of the
“ non-Greek” phenomena I am of another opinion than Wellhausen,
64 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
of the liturgist and by the enthusiasm of the Psalmist,
his Greek never becomes literary. It is never dis-
ciplined, say, by the canon of the Atticists, never
tuned to the Asian rhythm!: it remains non-literary.’
Thickly studded with rugged, forceful words taken
from the popular idiom, it is perhaps the most
brilliant example of the artless though not inartistic
colloquial prose of a travelled city-resident of the
Roman Empire, its wonderful flexibility making it just
the very Greek for use in a mission to all the world.
We are thus left with the total impression that
the great mass of the texts which make up the New
Testament, forming at the same time the most
important part of the sacred volume in point of
contents, are popular in character. The traces of
literary language found in some few of the other
texts cannot do away with this impression. On the
contrary, the contrast in which the Epistle to the
Hebrews, for instance, stands linguistically to the
earlier texts of Primitive Christianity, is peculiarly
instructive to us. It points to the fact that the
Epistle to the Hebrews, with its more definitely
artistic, more literary language* (corresponding to
1 Friedrich Blass, Die Rhythmen der asianischen und rimischen Kunstprosa,
Leipzig, 1905, regards the Epistles of St. Panl as largely consisting of
rhythmically elaborated artistic prose—a singular instance of the great
scholar’s having gone astray ; cf. Theol. Lit,-Ztg., 31 (1906) col. 231 ff,
21 entirely agree with Nageli (cf. especially p. 13 of his work) in his
opinion of the apostle’s language.
3 Nobody could appreciate this contrast more correctly or express it more
happily than Origen (quoted in Eusebius, Hecl. Hist. VI. xxv. 11) has done:
ὅτι ὁ χαρακτὴρ τῆς λέξεως τῆς πρὸς Ἑβραίους ἐπιγεγραμμένης ἐπιστολῆς οὐκ ἔχει τὸ ἐν
λόγῳ ἰδιωτικὸν τοῦ ἀποστόλου ὁμολογήσαντος ἑαυτὸν ἰδιώτην εἶναι τῷ λόγῳ τουτέστι
τῇ φράσει, ἀλλά ἐστιν ἡ ἐπιστολὴ συνθέσει τῆς λέξεως ᾿Ἑλληνικωτέρα, πᾶς ὁ ἐκιστά-
μενος κρίνειν φράσεων διαφορὰς ὁμολογήσαι ἄνγ----“ that the linguistic character of
the epistle entitled ‘to the Hebrews’ has none of that rudeness of speech
which the apostle himself confessed when he said [2 Cor. xi. 6] he was rude
of speech, i.c. in expression, that on the contrary the epistle is more Greek in
its stylistic structure, will be admitted by every one who is able to judge of
differences of style.”
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW ΤΕΧΤΘ 65
its theological subject-matter), constituted an epoch
in the history of the new religion. Christianity is
beginning to lay hands on the instruments of culture ;
the literary and theological period has begun. There
will be more to say on this head in the next chapter.
The modern conception of New Testament Greek
is not altogether a new thing : our advances in know-
ledge rarely are. Under the late Roman Empire,
when the old learning and culture came into hostile
collision with Christianity, pagan controversialists
spoke mockingly of the language of the New Testa-
ment as a boatman’s idiom. The Christian apologists
accepted the taunt and made the despised simplicity
of that language their well-warranted boast.t The
hopeless attempt to prove the Bible as a whole and
the New Testament in particular to be artistically
perfect in its external form was first made by Latin
apologists.° The same theory reappeared many
centuries later in the conflict between the so-called
Purists and Hebraists,? and was passionately main-
tained and disputed by these two rival schools of
1 For details see Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, ΤΙ. p. 512 ££.
3 Eduard Norden, IT. p. 526 ff.
3 See especially the account in Winer and Schmiedel, ὃ 2, p. 4 ff.—The
latest phase of New Testament philology has sometimes been described as a
revival of the strife between the Hebraists and the Purists. That is, however,
not quite accurate. The primary dispute no longer concerns the fact of
Hebrew (or rather, Semitic) intrusions in the Greek of the New Testament :
no one denies the existence of Semiticisms ; opinions are only divided with
reference to the relative proportion of these Semiticisms. On the other hand,
there is now no assertion of the “ purity” of New Testament Greek in the
sense of the old disputants. The new tendency in the work now being done
is to emphasise the popular and non-literary element in the language of the
apostles and to protest against the dogmatic isolation of New Testament
philology.—As early as 1863 we find Bishop Lightfoot remarking with the
keen vision of a seer in one of his lectures: “. . . if we could only recover
letters that ordinary people wrote to each other without any thought of being
literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the understanding of
the language of the N.T. generally.” (Note by the Rev. J. Pulliblank in J. H.
Moulton’s Grammar,’ p. 242.) Such letters (and other texts) have since then
been made accessible in great abundance by the papyri and ostraca.
5
66 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Biblical interpretation. To many it appeared as
something perfectly obvious that Holy Scripture
must be clothed in language at least as classical
as that of Demosthenes or Plato, and assertions to
the contrary were felt to be an outrage upon the
Holy Ghost. We for our part are on the side of
those who see beauty in the wild rose-bush as well
as in a Gloire de Dijon. What is natural is also
beautiful, and does not cease to be beautiful until
artificiality and pretence step in. Thus in our opinion
the new method of philological treatment brings out
the peculiar beauty of the New Testament, by
establishing the popular simplicity of the language
in which it is written. The relation in which the
language of the people stands to the artificial
language of literature reminds us of the Master’s
own words, when He said, ‘Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they
spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
3. How truly valuable the newly recorded docu-
ments are in the study of the language of the New
Testament can only be realised by examples. In
the following pages, therefore, some characteristic
examples have been selected from the vast mass of
available material. With regard, however, to the
first point to be illustrated, viz. the phonology and
accidence, there is no need to go into details here;
a few remarks of a general nature will suffice.
A. The characteristic features of the living Greek
language that was in international use are most
clearly seen in the phonology and accidence. The
1 In what follows I have made occasional use of my article on “ Hellenis-
tisches Griechisch ” in Herzog and Hauck, Realencyclopddie,® VII. p. 627 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 67
assumption of a special New Testament or Biblical
Greek is hopelessly refuted by the observations made
in this field. All the hundreds of morphological
details in the Biblical texts which strike a reader
accustomed to Plato and Xenophon will be found
also in the contemporary “ profane ” records of inter-
national Greek, especially in those texts which have
come down to us in their original form without
passing through the refining fires of an Atticist
purgatory. They occur in the inscriptions, but
most of all in the ostraca and papyri. P. W.
Schmiedel’s new edition of the Accidence of Winer’s
Grammar of the New Testament Idiom appeared
before the most important of the recently discovered
papyri had been published, so that no use could be
made of this most instructive material, and yet that
book contains so many trustworthy observations as
to make it impossible any longer to ignore the
morphological identity of the supposed “ New
Testament Idiom” with the Hellenistic colloquial
language. The other recent New ‘Testament
Grammars also bring out the fact, and, from another
point of view, so do Karl Dieterich’s Researches on the
History of the Greek Language from the Hellenistic
Period to the 10th Cent. A.D.’ Here we see the
value of things that are often loftily despised as
philological trifles: the overwhelming amount of
small facts ascertained with absolute certainty has
brought New Testament philology into such close
connexion with the general study of late Greek as
will never again be broken. R. Helbing’s Septua-
gint Grammar has established the same organic
connexion between Septuagint philology and the
wider subject.
1 Of, also Neue Bibelstudien, pp. 9-21; Bible Studies, pp. 181-193.
68 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
B. We quote one example from the special depart-
ment of word-formation which may be called onomat-
ology. The word Panthera, used as a man’s name,
is of great interest to New Testament scholars, though
it is not found in the Bible. It appears in later
traditions concerning the family of Jesus of Nazareth,
and plays a great part particularly in the Jewish
legends of the birth of Christ. A few years ago
Hickel’s unsuccessful foray in the domain of New
Testament research’ made the name familiar to a
large public. Many scholars have bestowed their
attention to it, and in almost every case they have
concluded it to be a nickname specially invented for
the purposes of Jewish polemics.? The problem as
to the origin of this name can now be solved with
certainty, thanks particularly to Latin inscriptions.
The name Panthera is known in Attic inscriptions,
but it occurs frequently in funeral and other inscrip-
tions of the Imperial period as a cognomen of both
men and women.’ Most interesting of all, perhaps,
is the tombstone of Tiberius Julius Abdes* Pantera,
of Sidon in Phoenicia, a Roman archer at the very
beginning of the Imperial period. It was found near
Bingerbriick, and is now in the museum at Kreuz-
nach (Fig. 5). Taken in conjunction with the other
1 In The Riddle of the Universe.
3 And derived either from πόρνος (fornicator) or παρθένος (virgin).
3 Detailed proofs will be found in my article “‘Der Name Panthera” in
Orientalische Studien (presentation volume to Theodor Néldeke), Gieszen,
1906, p. 871 ff. Cf. also the name Πάνθηρ Panther in a Faydm papyrus, 101-
102 a.D., which contains « number of Jewish names (Berliner Griechische
Urkunden, No. 715, I,).
‘Count Wolf Baudissin explained this Hbed name to me (by postcard,
dated Berlin, 29 January, 1907) as DN “IAD servant of Isis. This is not
the only example of Isis occurring among the Phoenicians. My attention was
called by the same authority to the soldier’s inscription at Ashmunén (Lidz-
barski, Ephemeris fir semitische Epigraphik 2. p. 338), Korriwy ᾿Αβδέους, “ Cottio
the son of Abdes” ( Αβδῆς).
1 Period,
tick, early Imperia
br
inger
Now at Kreuznach,
Fie, 5,—Tombstone from B:
[p. 69
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 69
inscriptions, this epitaph’ from the German frontier
of the Roman Empire’ shows with absolute cer-
tainty that Panthera was not an invention of Jewish
scoffers, but a widespread name among the ancients.
C. Viewed in the light of the new documents the
vocabulary of the New Testament also displays
features characteristic of the Hellenistic colloquial
language.
(a) With regard to the words themselves the proof
of our thesis cannot in all cases be made out with
the same completeness as in the phonology and
accidence ; but there is no need for absolute com-
pleteness here. It is obvious that the vocabulary of
the international language, recruited from all the
countries that had acknowledged the supremacy of
Greek, can never be completely known to us in all
its fulness. As a matter of fact words are constantly
turning up in the newly discovered texts which one
may seek in vain in the dictionaries. It is equally
natural that many words can only be found a few
times, sometimes only once, in the whole body of
the texts known to us. Nobody with common sense
will suppose that these were all coined by the writers
on the spur of the moment: they are little discoveries
for the lexicographer, it is true, but not inventions
by the authors.* Such little discoveries can be made,
not a few, in the Greek Bible. The advocates of the
theory of “ Biblical” Greek have often made capital
1 The complete inscription runs :—
Tib. Tul. Abdes. Pantera. Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera,
Sidonia. ann, LXTI, of Sidon, aged 62,
stipen. XXXX. miles. exs. a soldier of 40 years’ service,
coh. I. sagittariorum. of the 1st cohort of archers,
he 8 6. lies here.
2 The cohort of archers in which the Sidonian served had come to the
Rhine in the year 9 a.D.
* In Greek phrase I should say that they are ἅπαξ εὑρημένα, not ἅπαξ elpnuéva.
70 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
out of them. Cremer was especially fond of dis-
tinguishing these erratics as “ Biblical” or “New
Testament” words which were specially due to the
power of Christianity to mould language. Even
Grimm, in his edition of Wilke’s Clavis Novi
Testamenti, was always careful to mark the rarities
as “vox solum biblica,” “vox mere biblica,” “vox
profanis ignota,” thus creating everywhere the im-
pression that “ Biblical Greek” could after all be
discovered somehow by means of the lexicon.’
In quite a number of cases, however, there are
intrinsic reasons for saying at once: It is a mere
accident of statistics that this word has been found
hitherto only in the Bible. In other cases it is
possible to prove directly from some neglected or
newly discovered author, from inscriptions, ostraca,
or papyri, that the word does after all belong to
“‘ profane,” z.e. general Hellenistic, Greek. Such is
the case, for instance, with the following supposed
“ Biblical” or “ New Testament ” words and combina-
tions: dydmn,’ ἀκατάγνωστος, ἀντιλήμπτωρ, ἐλαιών,
ἐνώπιον, εὐάρεστος, εὐΐλατος, ἱερατεύω, καθαρίζω, κυρι-
’ 4 ¢ , 3 ld -
aKOs, λειτουργικός, λογεία, νεόφυτος, ὀφειλή, περιδέξιον,
ἀπὸ πέρυσι, προσευχή, πυρράκης, σιτομέτριον, ἔναντι,
φρεναπάτης."
1 The English edition of Grimm’s Wilke by J. H. Thayer, the best New
Testament dictionary hitherto produced (corrected edition, New York, 1896), is
more cautious here in the text; cf. Géttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1898,
p. 922,
2 Cf. the example now found by William H. P. Hatch, p.18, n. 4 above. Wilhelm
Crénert tells me (postcards, Géttingen, 26, 30 July, and 6 August, 1908) that
he conjectures with great probability ἀγάπη in a MS. of Philodemus (90-40 B.c.)
among the Herculanean rolls at Naples. Details are reserved by him for later.
8 For the last two words cf. Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen
Griechisch, pp. 129, 71. [English translation,” pp. 128n.1,68n.2. TR.] (In
his first edition Blass had also quoted φιλοπρωτεύω from an inscription, and
I unfortunately relied on this in my article in the Realencyclopidie, but it
afterwards proved to be an error.) Quotations will be found for the remain-
ing words in my Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien (= Bible Studies).
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS = 71
It will perhaps be objected, What are they among
so many? What is this secularisation of 21
* Biblical ” or “ New Testament ” words in comparison
with the large number of cases in which no secular
parallel has yet been found to characteristic peculi-
arities of the Greek Bible or New Testament? To
this it must be replied that the number of specifically
New Testament words at any rate has been
enormously overestimated by all the statisticians.
The chief of those who have taken up this
statistical problem in recent years is H. A. A.
Kennedy; but he himself, as he tells me,’ is no
longer prepared to insist on his figures. Out of
4,829 New Testament words (excluding proper names
and words derived therefrom) he formerly reckoned
580? or in round numbers 550° to be “ Biblical,” 2.6.
“found either in the New Testament alone, or,
besides, only in the Septuagint.” These figures were
no doubt obtained from the lists in Thayer’s Lexicon.
At the end of that volume we find, among other
statistical information, a list of “ Biblical, 2.6. New
Testament” words, 767 in number. From these,
however, Thayer himself excepted 76 words as
“late” (z.e. known to be used elsewhere) and 89 as
doubtful, leaving 602. But if we subtract from
767 the total number of words (some 218) in the
list which Thayer himself notes as occurring in
Polybius, Plutarch, and elsewhere, there remain only
549. That is approximately Kennedy’s number, and
is certainly a considerable amount.
But now comes the surprise. Among the 550
remaining words we find first a number of proper
1 Letter, Toronto, 13 October, 1908.
2 Sources of New Testament Greek: or the Influence of the Septuagint on
the Vocabulary,of the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1895, p. 62.
3 Page 93.
72 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
names, then a quantity of Semitic and Latin tran-
scriptions or borrowed words, then a series of
numerals.’ Finally, however, if we consult the
excellent articles in the Lexicon itself, we shall find
in the case of many of the words still remaining
that there are quotations given from Josephus,
Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, etc.! Thus, for example,
out of 150 words enumerated by Kennedy’ as oc-
curring “only” in the Septuagint and the New
Testament, 67 are quoted by Thayer himself from
pagan authors! The only excuse that I can see
for the inaccuracy in these old statistics is that most
of the authors quoted for the 67 words are later
in date than the New Testament. But are we to
regard words as specifically “ New Testament ” words
because they happen to make their first appearance
there? Did Plutarch, for instance, borrow words
from the Bible? That is altogether improbable.
The Bible and Plutarch borrow from a common
source, viz. the vocabulary of late Greek. *
That there are such things as specifically “Biblical”
and specifically ““ New Testament” (or rather, “ early
Christian ”) words, I have never denied. No lengthy
statistical investigations as to usage are necessary
in order to recognise these special words: a glance
is sufficient. But when a word is not recognisable
at sight as a Jewish or Christian new formation, we:
must consider it as an ordinary Greek word until the
contrary is proved.* The number of really new-
1 Eg. δεκαδύο, δεκατέσσαρες, δεκαπέντε, δεκαέξ, δεκαοκτώ.
2 Page 88 ff.
3 Cf. Géttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1896, p. 766. 1 there quoted the
following words from Plutarch: ἀποκάλυψις, γνώστης, ὁλοκληρία, πρόσκομμα,
σαγήνη, ψιθυρισμός, μίσθιος, ταπεινόφρων, ἐνταφιάζω, ἐξυπνίζω, μακροθυμέω.
4 ἐπιούσιος is a case in point, in my opinion, notwithstanding the well-known
remark of Origen. Asa rule little reliance is to be placed on observations of
the ancients with regard to the statistics of language. Jerome, for example,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 173
coined words is in the oldest (New Testament) period
very small. I estimate that in the whole New
Testament vocabulary of nearly 5,000 words not.
many more than 50—fewer than that, more likely—
will prove to be “Christian” or “ Biblical” Greek
words.! The great enriching of the Greek lexicon
by Christianity did not take place till the later,
ecclesiastical period, with its enormous development
and differentiation of dogmatic, liturgical, and legal
concepts. In the religiously creative period which
came first of all the power of Christianity to form
new words was not nearly so large as its effect in
transforming the meaning of the old words.
As we have said, a close examination of the ancient
literary texts? alone leads to the secularisation of
many words in Thayer’s “ Biblical” list, when it is
agreed to drop the petty quibble that pagan authors
of, say, the second century a.D. do not come into
account. It is a weak point in Cremer’s Lexicon
especially that “late” pagan parallels to New Testa-
ment words are apt to be treated with a certain
contempt, whereas in reality the “late” parallels
to the New Testament, which is itself “late,” are
in commenting on Gal. i. 12, was quite wrong in saying that ἀποκάλυψις was 8
Biblical word, never employed by any of the world’s wise men. Cf. R. Ὁ.
Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, 7th ed., London, 1871, p. 333 (§ xciv).
1 I therefore estimate the total of “ Biblical” words in the New Testament.
as (at the utmost) 1 per cent. of the whole vocabulary. Kennedy (p. 93)
estimated it at 12 per cent.
2 The medical, astrological, and legal writers especially have not yet been
thoroughly examined, and will prove very productive. Quite astonishing
lexical parallels to the Bible are found, for instance, in a writer of whom I
make repeated use later on in these pages, the astrologer Vettius Valens of
Antioch, who wrote in the 2nd century A.D. Cf. Guilelmus Kroll, Mantissa.
Observationum Vettianarum (Eacerptum ex Catalogo codicwm astrologorum
graecorum, t. V. p. ii.), Bruxelles, 1906, p. 152 ff. An edition of Vettius Valens
by Kroll appeared recently: Vettii Valentis Anthologiarum libri, Berlin, 1908.
Cf. the review by J. 1, Heiberg, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 29 (1908)
col. 1764 ff.
4 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
much more instructive than the quotations from
Homer or Plato.
The number of “ Biblical ” words shrinks, however,
still further if we pursue the search among our non-
literary texts. From the immemorial homes of
Greek culture in Hellas and the islands, from the
country towns of Asia Minor and the villages of
Egypt no less than from the great centres of com-
merce on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, year
after year brings us new illustrations. Non-Christian
texts are found containing words that were formerly
—although “the kingdom of God is not in word ”—
thought to pertain exclusively to Primitive Chris-
tianity or the Old and New Greek Testaments.
In proof that the list given above’ can already
be largely increased 1 will here give a number of
examples, beginning with 10 words which would
assert their secularity at first glance, even if no
quotations were forthcoming from extra-Biblical
sources.
(1) The word ἀλλογενής, “of another race, a
stranger, foreigner,” found frequently in the Septua-
gint and once in the New Testament (Luke xvii. 18),
is said by Cremer’ and the other lexicographers to
be “confined to Biblical and patristic Greek.” The
Roman authorities,’ however, in placing inscriptions
on the marble barriers of the inner courts of the
Temple at Jerusalem, thought differently of the word,
or they would not have employed it in a notice
1 Page 70.
2 9Page 247.
3 Theodor Mommsen, Rimische Geschichte, V.,‘ Berlin, 1894, p. 513, was of
opinion that the “tablets” were not put up by ‘the Jewish kings but by the
Roman government. So too Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones
Selectae, II. p. 295.
Fic. 6.—Limestone Block from the Temple of Herod at Jerusalem, inscribed with a warning
Early Imperial Period. Now in the Imperial New Museum at Constantinople.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS = 75
intended to be read by Gentiles, who were thereby
threatened with death as the penalty for entering.
One of these inscriptions was discovered by Clermont-
Ganneau in 1871. The stone on which it is cut—a
substantial block,! on which the eyes of Jesus and
St. Paul? may often have rested—is now in the
Imperial New Museum at Constantinople (Figure 6).
The inscription * is as follows :—
μηθένα ἀλλογενῆ εἰσπο- Let no foreigner enter within
A ἣν a
ρεύεσθαι“ ἐντὸς τοῦ πε- the screen and enclosure sur-
pl τὸ ἱερὸν τρυφάκτου καὶ
περιβόλου. ὃς δ᾽ ἂν λη-
φθῆ, ἑαυτῶι αἴτιος ἔσ-
ται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολου- be the cause that death over-
θεῖν ὃ θάνατον. taketh him.
rounding the sanctuary, Who-
soever is taken so doing will
It is very remarkable that Josephus, who refers
more than once to this ordinance, does not use our
word, but two others. Had ἀλλογενής been a
1 One reads generally of a “tablet”; but it is a limestone block, 224 inches
high, 333 inches long, and 143 inches thick. The letters are more than
ἘΣ inch high. I inspected the stone on 10 and 11 April, 1906 (it was then
in Chinili Kiosk), and it seemed to me that I could detect signs of the letters
having been formerly painted. “If the tablet really bears the marks of blows
from an axe, they must have been done by the soldiers of Titus ”—Mommsen,
p. 513. :
? It will be remembered that in consequence of an alleged breach of this
regulation by St. Paul, who had taken Trophimus into the inner precincts, a
tumult arose, and the apostle was then arrested, Acts xxi. 28 f.
5 It has often been printed, most recently by Dittenberger, Orientis Graecit
Inscriptiones Selectae, II. No. 598; references to previous literature will be
found-there and in Schiirer, IL° p. 272. Cf. also Moulton and Milligan, The
Expositor, February 1908, p. 179.
‘ The imperatival infinitive is common in edicts and notices (as in German).
Cf. Bibelstudien, p. 260; Bible Studies, p. 344; and E. L. Hicks, The Collection
of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, Part III. p. 176.
* ἐξακολουθέω is one of the words counted as “Biblical” by Thayer in his
list, although in his text he gives quotations for it from Polybius, Plutarch,
etc. |
“ ἀλλόφυλος and ἀλλοεθνής. The passages are collected by Dittenberger, op.
eit. p. 295 (Bell. Jud. 5, 193; 6, 124; Antt, 15, 417). Further quotations in
Schiirer, [1.5 p. 272.
76 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
specifically Jewish word, it would not be easy to
understand why he or his Greek revisers should
have suppressed it. The fact probably is that, being
an unliterary word of the people, it had to give way
to the two other literary words in the pages of a
writer who was aiming at elegance.
Even if the warning notice had been given its
final form by the Jewish authorities, that would
prove nothing against the view I have taken of this
word. There is nothing whatever specifically Jewish
about it either in sense or form.’
(2) One can scarcely repress a smile on discovering
in Thayer’s “ Biblical” list the word ὀνικός, “of or
belonging to an ass,” which seems anything but
“ Biblical” or “Christian,” though it is true that
oxen and asses are animals mentioned in the Bible,
and the word was only known in Matt. xviii. 6 and
Mark ix. 42 in the expression for “a millstone turned
by an ass.” We find the word, however, exactly
in the time of Christ in a Fayim contract for the
loan of an ass, dated 8 February, 33 a.p.,’ and again
exactly in the time when the gospels were being
written, in another Egyptian document relating to
the sale of an ass, dated 5 February, 70 a.p.° More-.
over in the scale of taxes at Palmyra, recorded on
stone in 186-187 a.p.,* there is twice mention of.
a tax on an ass’s burden of goods. The gospel word
is thus given both a southern and an eastern setting,
1 It is the opposite of αὐθιγενής, which is a similar formation, and good
Greek,
3 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 912,, τὰ ὀνικὰ κτήνη, ‘the asses,
referring to an ass and her foal.
3. Les Papyrus de Géenéve transcrits et publiés par Jules Nicole, Genéve, 1896
and 1900, No. 23s, ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἡμῖν ὀνικῶν κτηνῶν ὄνον ἕνα μνόχρουν,
“ of the asses belonging to us, one mouse-coloured ass.”
4 Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae No. 629,95 γόμου!
ὀνικοῦ.
a
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 777
and is doubtless to be regarded as belonging to the
colloquial language of every-day life. It survives
in the Middle Greek τὸ (ὀ)νικόν, which is still
in dialectal use, for instance in ἐπε island of
Carpathus.’
(3) βροχή, “a wetting, rain,” is aude described
by Thayer in his article as a late word, but neverthe-
less isolated in his “ Biblical” list. A lease among
the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (No. 280), of the year 88-89
A.D., uses it to mean irrigation by the overflowing
of the Nile.2. This one quotation is enough to show
that the word formed part of the living language.
It is therefore quite justifiable to refer to its
existence in Modern Greek.’ The present-day
language has not taken the word from the Bible,
but the Bible and Modern Greek have both drawn
from one common source—the ancient colloquial
language.
(4) κόκκινος, “scarlet,” an adjective frequently
occurring in the Greek Old and New Testaments, is
included in Thayer’s list of “ Biblical ” words, though
a good deal of ingenuity would be needed to say why
the Biblical language required this special expression.
Thayer himself, however, gives quotations for the
word from Plutarch and Epictetus*; he must have
placed it in his exclusive list because he considered
these two authors to be late, and almost post-Biblical.
The occurrence of the word, therefore, in an older
contemporary of the Septuagint that the papyri have
1 Hesseling, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 8 (1899) p. 149,
3 The document mentions βροχὰς τέσσαρες, “ four waterings ” of a piece of
land. Cf. H. van Herwerden, Lexicon Graecum Suppletorium et Dialecticum,
Lugduni Batavorum, 1902, p. 163.
5. Kennedy, Sources, Ὁ. 153; Thumb, Die griechische Sprache, p. 226.
4 To these must be added Martial, a contemporary of the New Testament,
who uses coceina ( Epigr. ii. 39, etc.) for “ scarlet garments,”
78 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
restored to us, Herondas (vi. 19),’ is not without
importance.
(5) In astonishment at finding in Thayer's list of
“ Biblical” words ἐνδιδύσκω, “I put on,” which,
though it occurs in the Septuagint and the New
Testament, is a perfectly colourless expression, in
no way deserving this sacred isolation,” we turn to
Thayer’s article on the word and find at least one
quotation from Josephus. As Josephus, however,
was a Jew, and may therefore seem to border on the
᾿ς Biblical,”* we welcome an undoubted quotation
from a profane source,* and yet contemporary with
the Septuagint, viz. an inscription from Delphi, circa
156-151 8.0."
(6) ἑματίζω, “1 clothe,” seems no less worldly than
the last word, which indeed it resembles in meaning ;
but because it was only known to occur in Mark v.
15 and Luke viii. 35 it appears in Thayer’s “ Biblical”
list. The Primitive Christians, however, had no call
to imvent new terms connected with dress,° and so
this word is of course secular in origin. It is found
in one of the pre-Christian Serapeum documents, 163
B.c.”; again later,* a welcome parallel to the New
“Testament,” it occurs among the Oxyrhynchus
1 Herondae Mimiambi iterum edidit Otto Crusius, Leipzig, 1894, Ὁ. 47, τὸν
κόκκινον βαυβῶνα.
2 Of, ἱματίζω, no. 6 below.
3 Philologically this statement could only be accepted with great reservations..
4 Van Herwerden, Lexicon, pp. 270 and 271.
5 Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, herausgegeben von H.
Collitz, II., Gottingen, 1899, No, 1899). = Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 857).
ἐνδυδισκόμενος (ste; a stonemason’s error), “clothed.” The statement of
Johannes Baunack, in Collitz, that ἐνδιδύσκω in the New Testament means
“make to put on” is not correct.
61 Peter iii. 3, 4.
7 Greek Papyri in the British Museum, ed. Ἐς, G. Kenyon, No. 24,,, Vol. I.
p. 82, ἱματιεῖ αὐτήν, “ will clothe her.” I am indebted to Mayser’s Grammar of
the Papyri, pp. 93, 465, for this passage.
® Cf. van Herwerden, Appendix, p. 107.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 79
Papyri! in the testament of a man who could not
write his own name, Dionysius the son of Harpo-
cration, 117 a.p., clearly in formular phraseology,”
which comes again in similar form in an instru-
ment of adoption from Hermupolis, 31 December,
381 a.D.°
(7) ὀπτάνομαι, “1 am seen, I let myself be seen,”
Acts 1. 8, is in Thayer’s list of ‘“ Biblical” words,
although E. A. Sophocles‘ had quoted it from the:
so-called Hermes Trismegistus.” More important
are the examples now known from two much older
Ptolemaic papyri® (Paris No. 49,3, cerca 160 B.C." 5
and Tebtunis No. 24,, 117 8.0.5), which prove that -
the word was at any rate current in Egypt and
explain the Septuagint usage (1 Kings viii. 8 ; Tobit.
xii. 19) in the most direct manner.
(8) ἐλχογέω, “1 put down to some one’s account, I
reckon, impute,” Philemon 18, Romans v. 13, is one
of those words that have as worldly a look as possible.
Thayer, however, in his “ Biblical” list separates it off
from all other Greek, although in his article on the
1 No. 4899 and 17.
? The children of a female slave are twice mentioned as having been “fed
and clothed” by the testator’s wife, ἐκγόνων τρεφομένων καὶ ἱματιζομέϊνων] ὑπ᾽
αὐτῆς (line 17).
5 Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 3, p. 174), (a Leipzig papyrus, published.
by L. Mitteis), θρέψω καὶ ἱματίζω εὐγενῶς καὶ γνησίως ws υἱὸν γνήσιον καὶ φυσικόν,
“1 will feed and clothe him nobly and properly as a proper and natural son.”
The passage is noted by van Herwerden in the Mélanges Nicole, Genéve, 1905,.
p. 250.
4 Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, New York and
Leipzig, 1888.
5 Poemander 31, 15.
5 Pointed out by Mayser, p. 404; cf. also J. H. Moulton, The Expositor,.
February 1903, p, 117.
7 Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothéque impériale, Vol. 18,,
Part 2, Paris, 1865, p. 320. The papyrus, which is of a very vulgar type, has
ὀπτάεται (sic).
δ The date 114 in Mayser is an error, The text is mutilated, but μηδαμῶς:
ὀπτανομένων is clear.
80 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
word he quotes pagan inscriptions‘ containing it. A
new?” and earlier reference is supplied by a military
diploma (imperial letter) on papyrus, written at Alex-
andria (?) in the time of Hadrian.’
(9) In defiance of the note “Inscr.” appended to
the word, περισσεία, “ abundance, superfluity, sur-
plus,” also figures in Thayer's “ Biblical” list. But
the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae had already cited
an inscription of the Imperial period from Sparta,‘
which is also referred to by Grimm and Thayer.
A further addition is now an inscription of 329 a.p.
from Rakhlé in Syria.’
(10) “ Never in profane writers,” say Grimm ° and
others of ἀναστατόω, “I incite to tumult, stir up
to sedition, unsettle,” another Septuagint and New
Testament word which at first sight certainly has
nothing Biblical or Christian about it, but seems al-
together profane. Cremer,’ however, gives from the
Thesaurus Graecae Linguae at least one quotation
from Harpocration, a profane writer of the fourth*
‘Inscription from Daulis, 118 Aa.p., Corpus Insoriptionum Graecarum,
No. 1732a,,; and the edict of Diocletian, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
ITI. p. 836.
2 Cf. van Herwerden, Lewxicon, Ὁ. 260.
2 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 140s, It is now so dated by
Wilcken, Hermes, 37 (1902) p. 84 ff The Emperor writes οὐχ ἕνεκα τοῦ δοκεῖν
pe αὐτοῖς ἐνλογεῖν, Which Theodor Mommsen (in Bruns, Fontes iwris Romani,’
pp. 381, 382) translated “non ut iis imputare videar” (as I was informed by
Wilcken, in ὦ letter dated Leipzig, 5 May, 1907). The Emperor wishes to
avoid the appearance of imposing an obligation, or debiting the soldiers with
the beneficium granted them,
4 Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum, No. 1378, concerning a certain president
of the games, who “handed over to the city the whole surplus of the money
belonging to the presidents of the games,” τὴν περισσείαν ἀποδοὺς πᾶσαν τῇ πόλει
τῶν ἀγωνοθετικῶν χρημάτων.
5 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 21 (1897) p. 65, ἐκ περισειῶν (sic),
«from superfluous (money).” The inscription, which was no new discovery in
1897, is not Christian.
8 Clavis,' p. 28. 7 *Page 515.
8 Eduard Norden (letter, Gross-Lichterfelde W., 3 September, 1908) dates
Harpocration earlier.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 81]
century 4.D. But, as Nageli' pointed out, we find
at any rate the word ἐξαναστατόω in a fragment of
an anthology written about 100 s.c. (Tebtunis Papyri
No. 2). Still more valuable is a passage in an
Egyptian letter of 4 August, 41 a.p. (Berliner
Griechische Papyrusurkunden, No. 1079.9;”), where the
word probably means the same as in the bad boy’s
letter among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (No. 119,)), of
the second or third century 4.p.2 The Paris Magical
Papyrus 1.2243f. also contains the word, in a good
sense.* We are therefore undoubtedly entitled to
reckon it as part of the general secular vocabulary.
I now add to these examples 22 words (nos. 11-
82) which in some way or other approach more
closely to the domain of religion and ethics, so that
it was at least not impossible from the first that they
might be peculiar to the Bible.
(11) ἀφιλάργυρος, “not covetous ” (1 Tim. 111. 3 ;
Hebrews xiii. 5), has been stated to be a “New
Testament word only,” and one might suppose it to
be really Christian when one remembers how the
Gospel is always antagonistic to mammon. But
Nageli’® has already quoted (besides certain authors
that had been overlooked) an inscription from Athens
36-35 B.c.,° another from Istropolis, first century B.c.,’
τ Page 48. 2 μὴ ἵνα ἀναστατώσῃς ἡμᾶς.
3 ἀναστατοῖ με, “ he drives me out of my senses,” Nageli, p. 47; or “ he upsets
me,” Blass, Hermes, 34 (1899) p. 314. Cf. Chapter III. below, letter No. 14
(p. 188). For both papyri cf. also Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor,
March 1908, p. 268 f.
‘4 Hdited by C. Wessely, Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Classe
der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 36, Wien, 1888,
p. 101: χαῖρε, ἱερὰ αὐγή, ἐκ σκότους εἰλημμένη, ἀναστατοῦσα πάντα, “hail! sacred
radiance, thou that art taken out of darkness and causest all things to rise
up.” Cf, Nageli, p. 47.
5 Page 31.
6 Michel, Recueil, No. 973,, = Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 732.5.
” Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 325,,
82 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
and a papyrus (Oxyrhynchus No. 88 verso, II,)
of the second century a.D., in which either adudp-
yupos or ἀφιλαργύρως occurs. To these may now
be added a still earlier quotation for the adjective
from an inscription at Priene (No. 187;), probably of
the second century B.c.
(12) πληροφορέω, “1 carry full, make full, fulfil,”
is according to Cremer’ found “only in Biblical
and patristic Greek; elsewhere not till very late.”
The earliest example hitherto discovered is in the
Septuagint, Ecclesiastes viii. 11. The papyri,’ how-
ever, show that this word, which occurs frequently
in the New Testament, was at any rate used in
Egypt at thesame period and immediately after-
wards. The earliest passages are: a letter from
the Fayim, now at Berlin, first century a.p.*; an
Amherst papyrus, of 124 a.p.°; a Berlin papyrus,
of 189 a.p.°; an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, of the end
of the second century a.p.’ If these Egyptian
quotations are not sufficient, the astrologer Vettius
Valens of Antioch, a contemporary of the last two,
‘It is there said of the Emperor Antoninus Pius: τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἢ[ν]
φιλόσοφος, τὸ δεύτερον ἀφιλάργυρος, τ[ὸ] τρίτον φιλάγαθος, “he was first a friend
of wisdom, secondly not a friend of money, thirdly a friend of the good.” As
in 1 Tim. iii. 3, the word occurs in a sort of list of virtues.
2 *Page 882.
3 Cf. Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 28 (1903) col. 593; J. H. Moulton, The Expositor,
February 1903, p. 118 f., December 1903, p. 486; Nageli, p. 60; Lietzmann on
Romans iv. 21 (the Wessely papyrus there cited is identical with the London
papyrus afterwards referred to). Lietzmann states the semasiological problem
well.
4 Berliner Griechische Urkunden No. 665 11., ἐπληροφόρησα αὐτόν. The
meaning is not certain; either ‘I have convinced him,” or “ paid him.”
5 The Amherst Papyri No. 66 II,,, ἵνα δὲ καὶ νῦν πληροφορήσω, “but in order
to settle the matter thoroughly.” Moulton gives a similar explanation of the
passage; the editors, Grenfell and Hunt, “but now also to give you full
satisfaction.”
® Berliner Griechische Urkunden No. 747 I,,, αἰ[τ]ούμ[ εἸνο[ -] π[λ]7}[ρ]οφορε[ν,
“asking them to settle the matter (7).”
7 Oxyrhynchus Papyri No. 509,, ruy[xé]yw δὲ men kupoornudios τοῖς ὀφειλο-
μένοις μοι, “I am completely satisfied with regard to what was owing to me.”
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 86
can help to increase the statistics. Considering the
undoubted rarity of the word a later quotation in
a “profane” context is also worthy of note: in an
inscription of the eighth century a.p. from Nicaea in
Bithynia” the verb is used of the completion of a
tower.
(18) συναντιλαμβάνομαι, “I take interest in (ἃ
thing) along with (others), take my share in, assist
jointly,” was first known to occur in the Septuagint.
It occurs twice also in the New Testament, Luke x.
40 and Romans viii. 26, in the latter passage
referring to the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
Though it is used by the pre-Christian writer
Diodorus of Sicily, and by Josephus,’ it is included
by Thayer in his “Biblical” list, with the note
“ Inscr.” appended, but without any quotation from
inscriptions. We can trace the word, however,
throughout the whole extent of the Hellenistic
world of the Mediterranean. An inscription of the
year 270 8.6. on the retaining-wall of the temple of
Apollo at Delphi* construes it with the genitive, an
inscription of Pergamum between 263 and 241 5.0.
with eis, a papyrus letter from Hibeh in Egypt
circa 238 B.c. with περί Then comes the Septuagint,
‘IT. p. 43), of Kroll’s edition. Before the book appeared the editor very
kindly sent me the passage in Greek and German (letter dated Miinster,
5 April, 1907) : ἵνα διὰ τῆς κατοχῆς ταύτης τὸ τῆς συνοχῆς σχῆμα πληροφορηθῇ, ‘in
order that the συνοχή (predicted by the whole constellation) may fulfil itself
(come to fulfilment) in this way.”
3 Athenische Mitteilungen, 24 (1899) p. 406, érAnpwl φόρη]σεν (sic), as read
and interpreted by A. Koerte.
3. Antt. IV. viii. 4; the word is, however, struck out in this passage by Niese,
4 Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 250,, συναντιλήψεσθαι τῶν τῆι πόλει συμφερόντων,
“to help in things profitable unto the city.” Van Herwerden’s citation of this
inscription, Lexicon, p. 780, is misleading.
5 Frankel, No, 1826, τοὺς εἰς ταῦτα συναντιλαμβανομένους, “ those helping in
this.”
ὁ The Hibeh Papyri No. 82179, καλῶς οὖν [π]οιήσεις συναν[τι]λ[α]μβανόμενος
προθύμως περὶ τῶν els ταῦτα συγκυρόντων, “thou wilt therefore do well to take
part zealously in the things relating thereto.”
84 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
with various constructions !; the Sicilian follows, with
the genitive,? while St. Luke and St. Paul use the
word with the dative. These statistics are absolutely
comprehensive geographically. Thus the word which,
in the absence of proper evidence, was consigned to
isolation, but which is in fact known to have been
used at Delphi, in Asia, in Egypt, and by a Sicilian
writer, might now serve as a school example of the
unity and uniformity of the international Greek
vocabulary.
(14) St. Paul in Philippians ii. 30 testifies of
Epaphroditus that he had for the sake of the work
of Christ come nigh unto death, having daringly
exposed himself? The verb παραβολεύομαι, “I
expose myself,” here used in the aorist participle,
has not been found in other writers, and was even
in ancient times such a rare word that some copyists
have altered it.‘ Nevertheless, though placed by
Thayer in his list, it is not a “ Biblical ” peculiarity.
An inscription at Olbia on the Black Sea, probably of
the 2nd cent. a.p.,° in honour of a certain Carzoazus
1 Sometimes with the genitive, sometimes with the dative; cf. Hatch and
Redpath’s Concordance. 3 Diod. xiv. 8.
3 Literally: “having offered himself with his soul.” [The R.V. has “ hazard-
ing his life.” Tr.]
4 Instead of παραβολευσάμενος they write παραβουλευσάμενος. [=the A.V.
“not regarding his life.” Tr.]
5 Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Huxini Graccae et
Latinae ed. Basilius Latyschev, 1., Petropoli, 1885, No. 21,5, ἀλλὰ καὶ (μέχρι)
περάτων “γῆς ἐμαρτυρήθη τοὺς ὑπὲρ φιλίας κινδύνους μέχρι Σεβαστῶν συμμαχίᾳ
παραβολευσάμενος. Latyschev considers this a very obscure text (p. 54). I find
not the least difficulty, if μέχρι (ἕως 1) περάτων is right: “but also to the ends
of the world it was witnessed of him that in the interests of friendship he had
exposed himself to dangers as an advocate in (legal) strife (by taking his clients’
causes even) up to emperors.” παραβολευσάμενος governs the accusative τοὺς
κινδύνους (cf. παραβάλλεσθαι τὸν κίνδυνον, Thuc. iii. 14, quoted in Pape’s
Lexicon) and the dative συμμαχίᾳ (cf. τῇ ψυχῇ in the passage from St. Paul,
and ψυχῇ καὶ σ[ὠ]ματι παραβαλλόμενος, inscription from the coast of the Black
Sea, cirea 48 a.D., Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 842,9; literary passages in
Thayer, 8.0, παραβολεύομαι, and J. H. Moulton, Grammar, I. p. 64). Hence,
“by his advocacy he exposed himself to dangers.” The whole passage has a
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 85
the son of Attalus, employs exactly the same parti-
ciple in a similar context, and helps to elucidate the
passage in Philippians, while itself receiving illumina-
tion from the New Testament.
(15) In 1 Tim. ii. 12 the woman is forbidden to
“have dominion over” the man. The word αὐθεντέω
appears here for the first time in Greek literature,
nor does it occur again except in ecclesiastical
writers. Of course, therefore, it has been described
as “only Biblical and patristic.”’ Now, as Nageli’?
points out, the word is twice used δ΄ in a non-literary
text, viz. a Christian papyrus letter of the 6th or
7th cent. a.D., No. 103 among the Berlin documents.
A superficial observer will say this is a new proof
that the verb is Christian. As a matter of fact its
occurrence in the letter is much rather an indication
of its popular character. And all doubt is removed
by Moeris,* one of the late lexicographers among
the ancients, who gives αὐτοδικεῖν as the Attic and
αὐθεντεῖν as the corresponding Hellenistic word (in
the Kowy). In the same way Thomas Magister’
warns against the use of αὐθεντεῖν as vulgar, and
recommends αὐτοδικεῖν instead.’ It is therefore
very “New Testament” ring. The ancient phrase πέρατα τῆς γῆς is also
familiar to us from the Greek Bible. For the actual hyperbola itself cf, for
instance the amiable exaggeration in Romans i. 8 and the emphatic ex-
pressions in Romans xv.19. The use of μαρτυρέομαι is quite as in the New
Testament (Neue Bibelstudien, p. 93; Bible Studies, p. 265).—In the Theo-
logische Rundschau, 9 (1906) p. 223, I quoted the inscription from van
Herwerden, Lexicon, p. 622, unfortunately with his error in the reference:
II. (instead of 1).
1 Grimm, Thayer, etc., .v, 2 Page 49.
5 The precise meaning is not completely clear, but the general idea of “ being
master ” seems to me to be decisive in this passage also.
4 Page 58 of J. Pierson’s edition, quoted by Nageli, p. 50.
* Page 18, 8 of Ritschl’s edition, quoted by Nigeli, p. 49f. This is not the
medieval lexicographer’s own wisdom, but borrowed from his predecessors.
* Cf. Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, October 1908, p. 374; and Jean
Psichari, Efendi, Hutrait des Mélanges de philologie et de linguistique offerts ἃ
M, Lowis Havet, Paris, 1908, p. 412 ff.
86 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
probably a mere statistical accident that αὐθεντέω
has not been met with earlier than in the New
Testament; any day may bring us an ancient
“profane ” quotation.
(16) διαταγή, “disposition, ordinance” (Ezra iv.
11; Rom. xiii. 2 ; Acts vii. 53) is said to be “ purely ”
Biblical and patristic: the “Greeks” use instead
διάταξις. Nevertheless E. A. Sophocles’ noted the
word in Ruphus of Ephesus,’ a physician who
flourished about 100 a.p. (so that he may well have
been a contemporary of the physician St. Luke).
That this pagan physician should have picked up
the word from the Christians is, I think, more im-
probable than that St. Paul and the Christian
physician St. Luke knew it from its use among
their medical contemporaries—if it was not known
to them naturally apart from that. And in all
probability it was so known to them. The word
is not merely a technical term in medicine: the
astrologer Vettius Valens of Antioch, of the 2nd
cent. A.D., also uses it.*
The inscriptions and papyri add their light.
Nageli® quotes inscriptions from Sardis’ (Roman
period), and Pergamum’ (date uncertain), and docu-
U Grimm and Thayer, s.v. Thayer certainly gives the note “ Inscr.” on p. 694.
2 Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Bysantine Periods.
3 In the Collectanea Medicinalia of the physician Oribasius, edited by
Bussemaker and Daremberg, I. p. 544¢¢., μόνον δὲ χρὴ τῇ ἐφεξῆς διαταγῇ τὸ σῶμα
ἀνακομίζειν εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν τάξιν, “it is only necessary by a subsequent ordered
way of living to bring back the body into proper order.” The French editors
translate régime, ἴ.6. “ diet.” The word has here already undergone a change
of meaning. :
4 Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, V. 2 p. 51, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ
κελεύοντος διαταγήν, “ according to the disposition of the person commanding.”
I am indebted for the reference to W. Kroll (letter, Miinster, 5 April, 1907).
5 Page 38.
5. Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum, No. 3465, a votive inscription, ἐκ τῆς
διαταγῆς.
7 No. 358, a votive inscription, [ἐκ] διαταγῆς.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 87
ments from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri dated re-
spectively 335(?) a.p.! and 362 a.p.? To these we
may add (beginning with the latest) a letter of
343-344(?) a.p.? from the Faytim, an inscription from
Irbid in the Hauran (288-239 a.p.),* an inscription
from Hierapolis* (2nd ? cent. a.p.), and an inscription
from Oenoanda in the south-west of Asia Minor
(Imperial period)’ Of still greater importance, if
rightly restored, is an inscription from Antiphellus’
in Lycia (2nd ? cent. a.D.), in which G. Hirschfeld
(rightly, I think) explains τῶν θείων δια[ταγ]ῶν as
“imperial ordinances.”* This would be a most exact
parallel to the celebrated passage in the Epistle to the
Romans, which also refers to the Roman authorities.
As we review the statistics’ we repeat the ob-
1 No. 92, order for payment of wine, ἐκ διαταγ(ῆ5).
? No. 93, order for payment of corn, ἐκ διαταγῆς. From these four passages
we may conclude that ἐκ διαταγῆς, “ by order,” was a regular formula,
3 Fayim Towns and their Papyri, No. 133, ἵνα τὴν διαταγὴν τῆς τρύγης
ποιήσηται (I take this as equivalent to ποιήσητε), “ that ye may make disposi-
tion concerning the harvest.”
4 American Journal of Archaeology, 10 (1906) p. 290, διαταγῇ BA. Οὐήρον
(or [Zelounpov) ἐκ δημοσίου, “by order of Flavius Verus (or Severus) from
public money.”
5 Altertiimer von Hierapolis [see above, p. 12, n. 6], p. 100, No. 78, ef τις
παρὰ τὴν διαταγὴν τὴν ἐμὴν ποιήσι, “if any one doeth contrary to my ordinance.”
Walther Judeich (ibid. p. 110) points out that in this and related inscriptions
from Asia Minor διατάσσεσθαι, διάταξις, διάταγμα, and, διαταγή display the
specialised meaning of “ determine by testamentary disposition,” etc., just like
διατίθεσθαι, etc. This use was also known to St. Paul: his ἐπιδιατάσσεσθαι
(Gal. iii. 15) also refers to a testament.
° Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien [see above, p. 14, n. 1], II. p. 180,
No. 281, κατὰ τὴν Σειγηλάσεος (sic) διαταγήν, “by order of Seigelasis.” ;
7 Corpus Inscriptionwmn Graecarum, No. 4300, with the reading on
p. 1128 : [ὑπ]εύθυνος ἔσται τοῖς διὰ τῶν θείων δια[ταγ]ῶν ὡρισμένοις, “ He will be
liable to the (penalties) appointed by the divine ordinances.”
5. Further details in Judeich, who does, not accept this explanation, but
thinks rather of some private document left by the owner of the tomb. But in
that case how is θείων to be explained? θεῖος, “divine,” has in countless
passages the meaning of “imperial,” just like the Latin divinus. See
Chapter IV. below, p. 351.
* Ludwig Mitteis (letter, Leipzig, 21 May, 1908) refers me further to the
Leipzig Papyrus No, 97 III,, X,;, XIII,, XVILI,, (in his edition).
88 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
servation already hinted above: we see unity and
uniformity prevailing in the use of words wherever
the international language was written. A supposed
Biblical word can be traced in the Imperial period
from one stage to another through the countries
bordering on the Mediterranean: from Pergamum,
Sardis, Ephesus, Hierapolis, by way of Oenoanda,
Lycia, and Cilicia (St. Paul), to Antioch, the
Hauran, and the little country towns of Egypt.
And in Egypt we found what is at present the
oldest example of all, the Septuagint Ezra iv. 11.
(17) πρωτότοκος, “firstborn,” occurs frequently in
the Septuagint and in important religious utterances
of the New Testament. Thayer quotes it twice
from the Anthology, but nevertheless leaves it in his
list of “Biblical” words. It is of some importance
therefore to find in Trachonitis, on the undated
tomb of a pagan “high priest” and “friend of the
gods,” a metrical inscription, mutilated indeed, but
plainly showing this word.’ It is noteworthy that
we have here, as in the Anthology, a poetical text.
Another metrical epitaph from Rome,’ Christian, and
not much later than the second (?) or third century,
uses the word with reference to a firstborn “sun-
child ” (2.6. child born on a Sunday) who died at the
age of two years.
(18) συγκληρονόμος, “fellow-heir,” is “ unknown
in profane Greek” according to Cremer.’ He has
just quoted Philo the Jew, who uses the word once,
1 Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus collecta ed. Georgius Kaibel, Berolini,
1878, No. 460, ipeds γάρ εἶμι πρωτοτόκων ἐκ τελεθ[ῶν 1] (= reder[Gv]?), ‘for I am
a priest by the rites of the firstborn.” Kaibel thinks that in the family of the
deceased the firstborn always exercised the office of priest. Cf. van Herwerden,
Lexicon, p. 710. [Cf. Pindar, Οἱ, x. (xi.) 63, ἐν πρωτογόνῳ τελετᾷ mapéorav ...
Μοῖραι. TR.]
2 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 9727 = Epigrammata ed. Kaibel,
No. 730. 5 *Page 584.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 89
so we must suppose Cremer to be as broad-minded
as the early Church in approximating Philo to
Christianity. But even in quite pagan surroundings
we encounter this word, the origin of which in the
legal terminology of the day is patent on the face
of it. In an Ephesian inscription of the Imperial
period! one C. Umphuleius Bassus mentions “Eutychis
as coheir.” If this woman was his wife, as is probable,
this example is a specially fine illustration of
1 Peter iii. 7, where the wife is honoured as being
(spiritually) a fellow-heir with her husband.
(19) The word δικαιοκρισία “is found only in
ecclesiastical and Biblical Greek, and that rarely,”
says Cremer. This time it is interesting to notice
that Cremer ’ has tolerantly admitted to Biblical (or
ecclesiastical?) precincts the Testaments of the
Twelve Patriarchs, in which the word twice occurs.’
Now on the fourth of the month Phamenoth, in the
year 303 a.D., a certain Aurelius Demetrius Nilus,
a former arch-priest of Arsinoé and undoubtedly a
heathen, caused a petition to be written (for he
could not write himself *!) to the Praefect of Egypt,
Clodius Culcianus, who is known to us from the
time of the Diocletian persecution. The petitioner
appealed confidently, “ being of good hope to obtain
. righteous judgment from thy Magnificence.”*° In
this passage the word δικαιοκρισία stands really for
that which is the outcome of just judgment, viz. “a
1 The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, III.
No, 633 (p. 249), Εὐτυχίδος.. .. . σ[νγ]κληρονόϊ μου αὐτ]οῦ.
2 Page 339.
3 Test. Levi 3 and 15.
4 Cf. line 11 of the petition, διὰ τὸ ἀγράμματόν με εἶναι, “ because I cannot
write.”
5 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri No. 71 1,, εὔελπις ὧν τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σοῦ μεγέθους
δικαιοκρισίας τυχεῖν. The passage is referred to by Νῶρβ,, p. 48, and by
Lietzmann on Romans ii. 5. The scribe who drew up this petition knew the
word from official usage, not from the Bible.
90 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
just sentence.” In Romans ii. 5 the radical meaning,
“just judgment,” * suffices, and Cremer’s discrimina-
tion between “judgment which does justice” and
“judgment in accordance with justice” is doubtless
too fine.
(20) The word κατήγωρ, “accuser,” is probably
still regarded by most commentators on Rev. xii. 10
as a Biblical speciality traceable to a Hebrew’ or
Aramaic * adaptation of the Greek κατήγορος. The
question why κατήγορος is always used elsewhere in
the New Testament is either not raised at all or
tacitly answered by reference to the supposed
strongly Hebrew character of the Revelation. We
find the word, however, in a very vulgar magical
formula in a British Museum papyrus (No. 124) of
the fourth or fifth century a.p., where it refers not
to the devil, as in the Biblical passage, but to human
enemies.* The papyrus itself is late; the formula,
however, to judge by the analogy of other magical
prescriptions, is older; and, in spite of the strongly
syncretic character of the papyrus, there is nothing
which points to a Jewish or Christian origin for
this formula.’ The only thing that can be ascertained
1 Cf. 2 Thess. i. 5, τῆς δικαίας κρίσεως ; John vii. 24, τὴν δικαίαν κρίσιν κρίνατε.
? W. Bousset on the passage in Meyer’s Commentary, XVI,‘ Gottingen, 1906,
p. 342.
3 P, W. Schmiedel, in his new edition of Winer’s Grammar, Gottingen, 1894,
§ 8, 13 (p. 85 ἢ.
4 Greek Papyri in the British Museum, ed. F. G. Kenyon (Vol. I.), London,
1893, p. 122, θυμοκάτοχον πρὸς πάντας ποιῶν᾽ ποιεῖ γὰρ πρὸς ἐχθροὺς καὶ κατήγορας
καὶ λῃστῶν καὶ φόβους καὶ φαντασμοὺς ὀνείρων, “a charm to bind the senses,
effective against everybody: for it works against enemies and accusers and
robbers and terrors and dream-spectres.” θυμοκάτοχον, which often occurs as a
title to magical prescriptions, I take (in the sense which κατέχω often has,
cf. Chapter IV below, p. 308, n. 5) to mean that the enemy’s senses will be
paralysed. [Eduard Norden, letter, Gross-Lichterfelde W., 3 September, 1908,
makes the excellent suggestion to delete the third καί. The translation will
then be “ fears of robbers” instead of “ robbers and terrors.”]
5 The formula next following has been influenced by Judaeo-Christian
conceptions of angels.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 91
with certainty is the vulgar character of the formula,
and the word κατήγωρ is also—as in the vulgar Greek
Revelation of St. John—a vulgarism.
The philologists who have discussed the word
recently 1 are doubtless on the right track : κατήγωρ is
a vulgar “back formation” from the genitive plural
κατηγόρων, on the analogy of ῥητόρων. Nearly all
of them’ quote, among numerous vulgar formations
of the same kind, the word διάκων (= διάκονος), and
refer to the Charta Borgiana (191-192 a.p.) for the
earliest example of its use. The phenomenon in
general is very old,’ and in this special case a much
earlier example can be quoted: a papyrus letter from
the Fayitim, dated 4 December, 75 a.p., and now
at Berlin, has the dative τῶι διάκωνι. It is therefore
impossible to call διάκων “late,” as Blass even did®;
or at least it is impossible in a New Testament
Grammar, for this example is no doubt older than
the Revelation.
(21) With regard to κατάκρισις, “ condemnation,”
Cremer ° expresses himself somewhat more cautiously :
“aword that appears to be found only in Biblical
and ecclesiastical Greek.” The appearance, however,
was deceptive. Christianity had no more need of a
* Wilhelm Schmid, Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1895, p. 42; Wochen-
schrift fiir klassische Philologie, 16 (1899) col. 541f., 18 (1901) col. 602;
A. Thumb, Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus, p. 126;
P. Wendland, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 11 (1902) p. 189; L. Radermacher,
Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie, New Series 57 (1902) p. 148; Grammatih
des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (Prospectus), p. 5.
? Even Schmiedel, in spite of his other statement.
* Wilhelm Schmid, Wochenschrift fiir klassische Philologie, 18 (1901)
col. 602.
* Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 597,. The iota adscript in the article
and elsewhere in the letter shows that the writer wished to be elegant; he
no doubt considered the word διάκων to be good Greek.
5 Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch,? p. 30; [Eng. trans.,?
p. 29, n. 21.
6 *Page 610,
92 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
special word for “condemnation”! than it has call
to be jealous in claiming the sole possession of words
for “a curse,” “to curse,” and “cursed.”? The
“ Biblical” word*® κατάκρισις is found more than once
in the astrologer Vettius Valens of Antioch (second
century A.D.).*
(22) ἀναθεματίζω, “I curse,” literally “I devote
(to the lower world)”°’—there was surely no reason for
the Bible religion to be particularly proud of having
invented such a word, and yet according to Cremer®
and other lexicographers it is found “ only in Biblical
and ecclesiastical Greek.” Among the ancient lead
tablets published and discussed by Richard Wiinsch
in the preface to his collection of Attic cursing-
tablets’ we find, however, one of the first or second
century .D., ἃ heathen curse from Megara, now in
the Royal Museum at Berlin, which throws a new
light on the words ἀνάθεμα and ἀναθεματίζω. ΑἹ
the end of the whole formula there is a separate line
of large letters* making up the word ANE@EMA,
which is obviously a form of conclusion—“ curse !”
1 John iii. 17.
2 Cf. the following nos. 22, 23.
3 Thayer, in his list.
4 I am indebted for the references to the kindness of W. Kroll (letter dated
Miinster, 5 April, 1907): Catalogus Codiewm Astrologorum Graecorum, V. 2,
p. 73,,, here Valens speaks 'περὶ δεσμῶν καὶ συνοχῶν καὶ ἀποκρύφων πραγμάτων
καὶ κατακρίσεως καὶ ἀτιμίας, about bonds and distresses and secret difficulties
and condemnation and dishonour”; and in Kroll’s new edition, I. 117,;, he
speaks of φθονικαὶ (Kroll: φονικαὶ 1) κατακρίσεις, ‘condemnations for envy
(murder ?).”
5 For what follows cf. Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2
(1901) p. 342,
ὁ 9Page 1003.
7 Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, Appendix (=Inscriptiones Graecae, III.
2) p. xiii f., and now accessible also in Wiinsch’s Antike Fluchtafeln, p. 4 ff.
8. Of. the facsimile, loc. cit. Ὁ. xiii. ἀνεθεμα-τ- ἀνάθεμα. The weakening of
the accented a to ε 15 probably not unique, Nageli, p. 49, following a hint of
Wackernagel’s, looks upon it as an example of vulgar Greek misplaced
extension of the augment to a derivative; so also Wiinsch, Antike Fluch-
tafein, p. 5.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 93
We find further in line 5f. ἀναθεματίζ[ομ]εν αὐτούς,
in line 8f. τούτους ἀναθεμα[ζτίἼζομεν, and on the back,
line 8 f., ἀναθεματί ζζομεν rovro[us]: “we curse them,”
three times over. We must therefore say that
ἀνάθεμα, meaning “curse,” belonged also to the
pagan vocabulary, and that ἀναθεματίζω will have to
be removed from the list of merely “Biblical” or
“ ecclesiastical” words. We may still reckon with
the possibility that the verb was first coined by
Greek Jews : technical expressions in magic are of all
places the most likely in which to assume that the
international language had been influenced by Judaism.
(23) The classical Greek for “cursed” is dparos,
ἐπάρατος, or κατάρατος. In the Septuagint we find
κατάρατος rarely, but a fourth word, ἐπικατάρατος,
occurs frequently. As it was met with elsewhere
“only” in the New Testament, it has been reckoned
among the words that are “only” Biblical and
ecclesiastical,'—as though Christianity had any need
to plume itself on the possession of this special word.
But why the secular words were not sufficient, and
how far a “ Biblical” distinction was secured by the
ἐπί prefixed, these questions have never been raised.
From the point of view of historical grammar the
correct thing would have been to assume ἐπικαταράομαι
and ἐπικατάρατος to be instances of those double
compounds or “ decomposites ”? which become more
and more common in later Greek, and to regard ézi,
therefore, as a late Greek, not a Biblical, feature.
We are therefore not surprised to find the adjective
used in a pagan inscription from Euboea* of the
! Grimm and Thayer, s.v.
2 Cf. Wilhelm Schmid, Der Atticismus, IV. p. 708 ff.; Mayser, Grammatik
der griechischen Papyri, p. 497 ff.; Arnold Steubing, Der paulinische Begriff
“ Christusleiden,” a Heidelberg Dissertation, Darmstadt, 1905, p. 9.
5 Εφημερις Apxacohoyixy, 1892, col. 173ff.; Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 891.
Cf. above, p. 20, ἢ. 1.
94 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
second century a.D.’ The inscription must be
pagan, for the Erinyes, Charis, and Hygeia are
named in it as goddesses. If it should be thought,
on account of the Septuagint formulae occurring in
this inscription,’ that Septuagint influence might
account for ἐπικατάρατος, we can refer to a pagan
inscription from Halicarnassus, of the second or third
century A.D., now in the British Museum.‘
(24) vexpdw, “I make dead, mortify,” is one of
the “ Biblical” words that Thayer even in his list
secularises by reference to Plutarch, the Anthology,
and inscriptions. In his article on the word he adds
to these Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, but he no-
where actually cites an inscription. He may have
been thinking of the metrical epitaph of one M.
Aurelius Eutychus (Athens, Roman period),’ which
employs the phrase “body deceased” or “dead
body” and thus furnishes an excellent parallel to
Rom. iv. 19.
(25) ἀναζάω, “I live again, revive,” which occurs
several times in the New Testament, is regarded by
1’Emxardparos ὅστις μὴ φείδοιτο κατὰ τόνδε τὸν χῶρον τοῦδε τοῦ ἔργον, “ cursed
whoever doth not spare this place with this work” (viz. a monument on a
tomb). 2 Cf. above, p. 20, n. 1.
3 Nageli, who quotes this inscription (p. 60), is so cautious as to make this
suggestion. It must be noted, however, that the extremely numerous
ἐπικατάρατος passages in the Septuagint never employ the formula of the
inscription, ἐπικατάρατος ὅστις. If the word were taken over from the
Septuagint we should expect in this case the construction also to be
borrowed.
4 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 2664 = The Collection of Ancient
Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, IV. 1, No. 918, εἴ τις δὲ (the same
collocation as in 1 Cor. viii. 2, Cod. 37; frequent also in the inscriptions -
of Hierapolis, cf. Altertéimer von Hierapolis, Ὁ. 201) ἐπιχειρήσι λίθον ἄραι ἢ
λῦσαι αὐτό, ἤτω ἐπικατάρατος rats προγεγραμμέναις ἀραῖς, “ but if any one shall
attempt to take away a stone or to destroy the monument, let him be cursed
with the imprecations written above.”
5 Inscriptiones Graecae, III. 2, No. 1355, “AvOpwre . .. μή μου παρέλθῃς σῶμα
τὸ νεν εἸκρ[ μένον, ‘man! pass not (unheeding) by my body dead!” Cf. vam
Herwerden, Lewicon, p. 555. .
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 95
Grimm, Thayer,’ and Cremer as specifically a New
Testament and ecclesiastical word. Cremer’ even
explains why Christianity had to invent the word :
“the ἀναβιῶναι of profane Greek does not suit the
soteriological sense of the Biblical ζωή.
Without raising the question why, if that were so,
it was not necessary to find a substitute for the
secular substantive ζωή, we are able in the first place
to quote from Nicander,’ a poet of the second
century B.c., at least the verb ἀναζώω, which the
lexicons describe as a poetical form of dvafaw. We
find the Biblical word, however, in Sotion,* a narrator
of marvels who possibly belongs to the first century
A.D.,° and again in Artemidorus,’ an interpreter of
dreams in the second century a.p. A Cretan inscrip-
tion’ of unascertained date, which moreover requires
restoration, was referred to by Nageli.® In the fifth
century we still find the word ἀναζάω used in a
1 In his list of “ Biblical” words Thayer adds to dvagdw the note “ Inscr.”—
another of these remarkable contradictions in so exact a writer.
2 sPage 464, ‘
* Fragment in Athenaeus, IV. 11, 133 Ὁ, θερμοῖς δ᾽ ἱκμανθεῖσαι ἀναζώουσ᾽
ὑδάτεσσιν, “ Till that the warm rains fall, and moistened therewith they revive
them.”
* Παραδοξογραφοι Scriptores Rerum Mirabilium Graeci ed. Antonius Wester-
mann, Brunsvigae, 1839, p. 138, παρὰ Κιλικίᾳ φασὶν ὕδατος εἶναί τι σύστημα, ἐν ᾧ
τὰ πεπγιγμένα τῶν ὀρνέων καὶ τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων ἐμβραχέντα ἀναζῆν, “they say
that in the neighbourhood of Cilicia there is a body of water, in which
strangled birds and irrational creatures, if plunged therein, come to life.”
5 Westermann, Praefatio (p. L).
* iv. 82, according to the reading of the Codex Laurentianus, preferred by
the editor, J. G. Reiff, Leipzig, 1805. Here again the subject is the return to
life of one supposed to be dead. R. Hercher inserts the reading ἀναβιοῦν in
the text of his edition, Leipzig, 1864. ᾿
” Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum, No. 2566 = Sammlung der griechischen
Dialeht-Inschriften, edited by H. Collitz and F. Bechtel, III. 2, Gottingen
1905, No. 4959, edited by F. Blass. A woman, ᾿Αρχονίκα, fulfils a vow io
Artemis which she had made “on coming to life again,” dvatéoa. The text is
not quite clear. Hiller von Gaertringen pointed out to me (letter, Berlin
Μεγαλοσάββατον [i.¢., the Saturday before Easter, 30 March], 1907) that Blass
has forgotten to print edydy at the end. ® Page 47.
96 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
physical sense, as in the above-quoted passages, by
the Christian writer Nilus'; and the late lexico-
graphers of antiquity, quoted by Nageli, now supple-
mented by the newly discovered fragment of Photius,’
give it as a synonym for ἀναβιώσκομαι and ἀναβιόω.
Our conclusion, therefore, must be this: ἀναζάω, “1
live again,” is an international Greek word, and its
radical (physical) meaning, which can be traced
through many centuries, has been hallowed and given
an ethical content by Christianity. Cremer’s theory
would reverse all this, and we should have to deplore
the profanation of a “ Christian ” word.
(26) εὐπροσωπέω, “1 look well, make a fair show ”
(Gal. vi. 12; and as a variant in the hexaplaric text °
of Psalm cxl. [cxli.]6), is described by Cremer‘ as “ not
discoverable in profane Greek.” We find it, how-
ever, in the letter of the Egyptian Polemon to his
“‘ brother” Menches (114 B.c.),° clearly used no longer
in the physical sense,° but (as by St. Paul) with
1 In Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 513,, (quoted from the Thesaurus Graecae
Linguae), οἱ yap κόκκοι μετὰ τὴν ἐκ σήψεως νέκρωσιν καὶ φθορὰν ἀναζῶσι, “for the
seeds come to life again after death and destruction by decay.”
2 Der Anfang des Lexicons des Photios, edited by R. Reitzenstein, Leipzig
and Berlin, 1907, p. 107: ἀναβιώσκεσθαι" ἀναζῆν.
3 Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt conc. F. Field, t. II., Oxonii, 1875,
p. 297, notes an ἄλλος who has εὐπροσωπίσθησαν and the variant εὐπροσώπησαν.
The Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (with false reference to “ Proverb.”) describes
εὐπροσωπίσθησαν, with doubtful correctness, as a contamination.
4 Page 765.
5 The Tebtunis Papyri No. 19122, ὅπως εὐπροσωπῶμεν, “50 that we may
make a fair appearance.” J. H. Moulton, The Expositor, February 1903,
p. 114, called attention to this passage.
® The physical meaning is of course the original one. We may imagine it
so used by physicians. W. Pape’s Handwérterbuch (2nd ed., 4th reprint,
Braunschweig, 1866, p. 982) s.v. refers to “ Galen.,” ὁ,6. the physician Galen of
the 2nd century A.D., but this is only by a cheerful misunderstanding of some
preceding dictionary, probably Passow’s, which rightly refers to “ep. Gal. 6, 12.”
“Gal.” it is true does also stand for “Galen” in Passow. Thus the Epistle to
the Galatians has been turned into an epistle of Galen’s! There is some right
instinct after all in the mistake, for the word was probably a medical expression
to begin with.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 97
reference to winning the good opinion of one’s
neighbours.
(27) When St. Paul preached as a missionary in
Athens he was suspected by Stoic and Epicurean
opponents of being “a setter forth of strange gods:
because he preached Jesus and Anastasis.” The
word καταγγελεύς, “proclaimer, herald, setter
forth,” here placed in the mouth of the pagan philo-
sophers, is according to Cremer’ and others only
found in this passage “and in ecclesiastical Greek.”
Even if no quotations were forthcoming from pro-
fane sources, this isolation of the word would for
intrinsic reasons be highly questionable ; for although
the sentence containing it is in the Bible, it is not
a “ Biblical” but a pagan utterance, emanating from
the pagan opposition, and of its authenticity Cremer
can have had no doubt. A less hasty examination
would have led to the recognition of the word as
pagan on internal grounds. As a matter of fact it
is found on a marble stele recording a decree of the
Mytilenians in honour of the Emperor Augustus
(between 27 and 11 B.c.).?
(28) In the First Epistle of St. Peter v. 3f we
read*: “. .. making yourselves ensamples to the flock.
And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall
receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.”
The “chief Shepherd” of course is Jesus; the
corresponding Greek word, ἀρχιποίμην, is according
to Cremer * unknown except in this passage. One
is tempted to regard it as a Christian invention;
1 9Page 32.
* Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No, 456) = Insorip-
tiones Graecae, XII. 2, No. 5819, καταγγελεῖς τῶν πρώτων a(x) Ono ol μένων
ἀγώνων, “ heralds of the first games that shall be held.”
3. On this subject cf. Die Christliche Welt, 18 (1904) col. 77£.
* *Page 906.
98 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
some people, I daresay, detect a sort of official ring
in the word. It is possible, however, to show that
the apostle, far from inventing the word, was merely
borrowing. A slip of wood (Figure 7) that once
hung round the neck of an Egyptian mummy, of
the Roman period, has been found with the following
Greek inscription,’ designed to establish the identity
of the deceased :—
Πλῆνις νεώ- Plenis the younger, chief
TEpos ἀρχιποί- shepherd’s. Lived .. . years.
μενος. ἐβίω-
σεν ἐτῶν.
The genitive here, “chief shepherd’s,” is probably
a mere slip in writing, but the occurrence of such a
slip is of some interest. Had the deceased been a
person of distinction the inscription would have been
more carefully executed. This label was hurriedly
written for a man of the people, for an Egyptian
peasant who had served as overseer of, let us say,
two or three shepherds, or perhaps even half a
dozen.? If a reading of Carl Wessely’s* may be
trusted, we have the same title again on another
mummy-label ;* but I believe from the facsimile
that the word is not really there.© The one instance,
however, is enough: it shows “chief shepherd” to
have been a title in genuine use among the people.
Moreover, the Thesaurus Graecae Linguaehad already
1 Cf. E. Le Blant, Revue Archéologique, 28 (1874) p. 249; the facsimile (see
our Fig. 7) is in Plate 23, fig. 14. I do not know where the tablet now is.
2 Wilcken (note on proof-sheets of the first edition of this book) thinks he
may have been the master of a guild of shepherds; for something similar see
Wilcken, Ostraka, I. p. 332.
5. Mittheilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer, V.,
Wien, 1892, p. 17. Wessely reads ἀρχιποίμ(ην).
* Also in Le Blant, p. 248 ; facsimile, Plate 21, fig. 9.
5 Ludwig Mitteis (letter, Leipzig, 21 May, 1908) refers me to the Leipzig
Papyrus No. 97 XI, (in his edition).
Fic. 7.—Wooden Mummy-label from Egypt, Imperial Period.
By permission of Ernest Leroux, of Paris.
(p. 98
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 99
quoted the word from the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs.1_ The Christians called their Saviour
“the chief Shepherd,” but this was not crowning
Him with jewelled diadem of gold: it was more like
plaiting a wreath of simple green leaves to adorn His
brow.
(29) προσκυνητής, “a worshipper,” is according
to Cremer’ “unknown in pre-Christian Greek, and
very rare afterwards, e.g. in inscriptions.” Which
inscriptions are meant, is not stated. The plural
“inscriptions” is no doubt traceable to Passow or
Pape s.v., where “ Inscr.” certainly means “ Inscrip-
tiones,” though the plural must not be pressed. As
a matter of fact the only inscription of which these
lexicographers could have had knowledge must have
been one of the third century a.p. from Baetocaece,
near Apamea in Syria, reprinted from Chandler in
the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (No. 4474,:),
so that Cremer’s statement would seem to be about
right.
In the addenda,’ however, he informs us that “the
word was not entirely unknown in pre-Christian
Greek,” and quotes an inscription (Waddington
3, 2720a) from the same place in Syria containing a
decree * drawn up in the interests of “the worshippers
that come up ”* and communicated to the Emperor
Augustus.
* The occurrence of the word has no bearing on the question of the Christian
origin of this work.—Symmachus uses the word in his version of 2 Kings
iii. 4.—At the present day the Chélingas, the hereditary leaders of the pastoral
Viache, are called ἀρχιποίμην by the Greeks (K. Baedeker, Greece,’ Leipzig,
1905, p. xlix). How old this title is, I cannot say.—The remark of the lexico-
grapher Hesychius, that among the Cretans ᾿Αρχίλλας was the name for the
ἀρχιποίμην, shows that the word was in use at any rate in the time of Hesychius.
? "Page 616.
3 Page 1120.
* Cremer says “ petition.”
5 Tots ἀνιοῦσει (sic; Cremer has ἀνιοῦσι) προσκυνηταῖς.
100 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
This inscription, however, is identical with the one
referred to above; it has been repeatedly discussed
of late.’ Though carved in the third century this
example of the use of προσκυνητής is really pre-
Christian; the inscription in fact includes older
documents: a letter of a King Antiochus, and the
old decree that was sent to Augustus.
Other examples are at present unknown to me.
I know no foundation for van Herwerden’s state-
ment,’ that the word is frequent in inscriptions and
papyti.
(80) προσκαρτέρησις, “ perseverance, constancy,”
which the lexicons hitherto have quoted only from
Eph. vi. 18, is strangely enough described by Cremer *
not as Biblical but as a “late” Greek word. This
is because he here follows Pape, who marks the word
as “late” though he certainly can have known no
example of its use outside the Bible. Thayer includes
the word in his “Biblical” list. It can now be
quoted from two Jewish manumissions recorded in
inscriptions at Panticapaeum on the Black Sea, one*
belonging to the year 81 a.D., and the other’ nearly
as old. These inscriptions, 1 admit, will not do more
than disprove the supposed “ Biblical” peculiarity of
1 Hg. Dittenberger, Orientis Gracci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 262; Hans
Lucas, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 14 (1905) p. 21 ff.
2 Lexicon, p. 702.
3 9Page 570.
4 Inseriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Huwint Graecae et
Latinae ed. Basilius Latyschey, IT., Petropoli, 1890, No. 5213-15, χωρὶς és τ[ἢ]ν
προ[σ)ευχὴν θωπείας τε καὶ προσκα[ρτερ]ήσεως, “ besides reverence and constancy
towards the place of prayer” (θωπεία, which generally means “ flattery,” is
here used in the good sense of “reverence”). Schiirer, Geschichte des jidischen
Volkes, 111. p. 53, points to the analogy between this inscription and the
usage, striking by its frequency in the New Testament, of combining the verb
προσκαρτερέω with προσευχή (meaning “prayer”: it could hardly be “place of
prayer ”).
5 Op. cit, No. 53, with the same formula as in No. 52, which we may there-
fore take to have been a standing expression.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 101
the word. For the present there is still the possibility
that προσκαρτέρησις was a Jewish coinage of the
Diaspora.
(31) The Greek word used for the veil or curtain
that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of
Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem is καταπέτασμα,
literally “that which is spread out downwards, that
which hangs down.” That this word should be found
in Thayer’s “ Biblical” list is not in itself surprising,
for the idea before us is a technical one, connected
with the apparatus of worship. The occurrence of
the word in the Epistle of Aristeas, in Philo and
Josephus, would not affect the case, for these writers
knew the word from the Septuagint. Nevertheless
it cannot be that we have here to do with a Biblical
or Judaeo-Christian’ speciality, created by the Sep-
tuagint. An inscription from Samos, 346-5 B.c.,’
cataloguing the furniture of the temple of Hera,
furnishes an example which is a century earlier, and
particularly valuable because it shows the word
employed in a religious context and incidentally
corrects the description ‘“ Alexandrian” * with which
the lexicons had mechanically labelled it.
(82) ἐπισυναγωγή., found only in 2 Mace. ii. 7,
2 Thess. ii. 1, and Heb. x. 25, where it denotes
various senses of the word “assembly,” is according
to Cremer* “unknown in profane Greek.” As
συναγωγή itself was originally a profane word, one
} That is the opinion of Kennedy, Sources, p. 118,
3 In Otto Hoffmann, Die Griechischen Dialekte, IIL, Gottingen, 1898, p. 72
(from Ath. Mitt. 7, p. 367 ff; cf. van Herwerden, Lexicon, pp. 433, 717):
καταπέτασμα τῆς τραπέζης, “ table-cover.”
* Even Thayer says, 8.v. καταπέτασμα, that it is an Alexandrian Greek ‘word,
for which “ other” Greeks used παραπέτασμα, But in the identical inventory
mentioned above, containing the καταπέτασμα τῆς τραπέζης, we find παραπε-
rdopara noted immediately afterwards, The two words therefore do not
coincide,
4 *Page 79,
e
102 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
is inclined to ask why ἐπισυναγωγή should be different,
especially as the profane συναγωγή became among
the Jews (and occasionally among the Christians)
the technical expression for the (assembled) congre-
gation and the house in which they met. As a
matter of fact a mere statistical accident was the
cause of error here, and a second accident has very
happily corrected the first. In the island of Syme,
off the coast of Caria, there was lately discovered,
built into the altar of the chapel of St. Michael
Tharrinos, the upper portion of a stele inscribed with
a decree in honour of a deserving citizen.‘ The
writing is considered to be not later than 100 B.c.,
so that the inscription is probably older than the
Second Book of Maccabees. By the kind permission
of the Imperial Austrian Archaeological Institute
I am able to reproduce here (Figure 8) a facsimile
of the whole stele (including the portion previously
discovered).
On the upper fragment of this stele we find our
word in the general meaning of “collection” *; the
difference between it and the common ΠΟΤ ΕΝ. is
scarcely greater than between, say, the English
“collecting” and “collecting together” *: the longer
Greek word was probably more to the taste of the
later period.
The stone which has established the secular
character of this Bible word—the heathen stone of
Syme built into the altar of the Christian chapel of
1 Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archiologischen Institutes in Wien, 7
(1904) p. 81 ff. (with facsimile, p. 84)=Inscriptiones Graeoae, XII. 3 Suppl.
No. 1270.
2 Lines 11 and 12: τᾶς δὲ ἐπισυναγω[γᾶς τοῦ διαφόρον γινομένας πολυχρονίου,
“the collection, however, of the (sum to defray) expenses proving a matter of
long time” (the translation was sent me by the editor, Hiller von Gaertringen,
in a letter, Berlin, 18 July, 1905).
3 [In German Sammlung and Ansammlung. TR.]
᾿Ξ
Fig. 8.—Stele with decree of honour from Syme, 2nd cent. 8.0.
Now in the chapel of St. Michael Tharrinos, Syme.
of the Imperial Austrian Archaeological Institute.
By permission
[Ρ 102
10
15
20
25
‘ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 108
St. Michael—may be taken as symbolical. It will
remind us that in the vocabulary of our sacred Book
there is embedded material derived from the language
of the surrounding world.
Even without the stone we could have learnt the
special lesson, for the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae
had already registered the word in the geographer
Ptolemy and in the title of the third book of
Artemidorus, the interpreter of dreams, both of the
2nd century a.p., and later in Proclus. Such “ post-
Christian” “late” passages, however, generally fail
to impress the followers of Cremer’s method, and
therefore the pre-Christian, and (if importance be
attached to the book) pre-Maccabean inscription is
very welcome.
In the above examples it has often happened that
the secularisation of a “ Biblical” word has been
effected by more than one solitary quotation, e.g.
from a papyrus ; again and again we have seen such
words occurring outside the Bible in secular uses
both in Egypt and also in Asia Minor.’ This
uniformity (or we might say, these real Kowy
characteristics) in the vocabulary of the Kouwj—an
observation of some importance to our total estimate
of international Greek—may now in conclusion re-
ceive further illustration from certain new discoveries
relating to the curious word λογεία (Noyia),? “a
* Another typical example is σιτομέτριον, used in Luke xii, 42 for “a portion
of corn.” In Bibelstudien, p. 156 [Bible Studies, p. 158], Iywas only able to
produce one Egyptian example, of which Mayser, Grammatik der griechisohen
Papyri, p. 431, afterwards took the same view as I did. We now find it in an
Opramoas inscription of 149 a.D, at Rhodiapolis in Lycia, with the spelling
σειτομέτριον (Heberdey, Opramoas, p. 50, xix A,); its exact meaning here is
not clear to me.
? This second spelling has also been found now in the new texts, 6.9. in the
Thebes ostracon given on p. 105 below.
N
104 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
(charitable) collection,” which I have already dealt
with elsewhere.’
This word, occurring “only” in 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2,
has been given a false etymology? and has sometimes
even been regarded as an invention of St. Paul’s.’
The etymology, however, is now definitely ascertained :
it comes from λογεύω, “I collect,” a verb which, like
the derivate, was found for the first time compara-
tively recently in papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions‘
from Egypt and elsewhere. We find it used chiefly
of religious ° collections for a god, a temple, etc., just
as St. Paul uses it of his collection of money * for
the “saints” at Jerusalem. Out of the large number
of new examples from Egypt’ I select an ostracon
which comes very near in date to the First Epistle
to the Corinthians. It was written on 4 August,
63 a.D., discovered at Thebes in Egypt,’ and is
now in the Berlin Museum.* For the photograph
1 Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 139 ff.; Neue Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 461, [Bible Studies,
pp. 142, 219].
3 From λέγω.
* Cf. Bibelstudien, p. 139 [Bible Studies, p, 142].
4 Cf. A. Wilhelm, Athenische Mitteilungen, 23 (1898) p. 416f.; Wilcken,
Griechische Ostraka, 1. p. 255, etc.
5 As shown especially by the ostraca, Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I.
p. 253 ff.
6 A most grotesque theory was put forward as late as 1897 by Linke in the
Festschrift fiir Professor D. Fricke (cf. Theol. Literaturblatt, 19 [1898] col.
121). He suggests that the “ great logia” in the field of St. Paul’s missionary
labours was not a collection of money but a determination of the forms of
doctrine: and liturgical formulations that had arisen within the churches
through special gifts of the Spirit. St. Paul, he thinks, wishes to obtain the
results of the thought and prayer, revelations and spiritual hymns of each
single church in the course of an ecclesiastical year. The parallel to the
modern German system of church returns is so close that one wonders almost
at the omission of statistics of mixed marriages !
7 Cf. especially Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. Ὁ. 253 ff.; J. H. Moulton,
The Expositor, February 1903, p. 116, December 1903, p. 484; Mayser,
Grammatik der griechischen Papyri, p. 417.
* Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, Il. No. 413.
® No, 4317.
Fia. 9.—Ostracon, Thebes, 4 August, 63 A.D. Receipt for Isis Collection. Now in the
Berlin Museum. By permission of the Directors of the Royal Museums.
[p. 105
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 105
(Figure 9) I am indebted to the kind offices of
Wilhelm Schubart.
The little document! runs as follows :—
Ψεναμοῦνις Πεκύσιος
λ
φεννήσιος ὁ ὁμοῦ Πιβούχι
Πατεήσιος χε". ᾿Απέχω πα-
λ
pa σοῦ S* ὃ ὀβοῦ τὴν λογίαν
ἍΜ \ a 4
Ἴσιδος περὶ τῶν δημοσίων
L° ἐνάτου Νέρωνος τοῦ κυρίου
Μεσορὴ τα.
Psenamunis, the son of Pekysis,
phennésis,’ to the homologos ®
Pibuchis, the son of Pateésis,
greeting. I have received from
thee 4 drachmae 1 obol, being
the collection of Isis on behalf
of the public works, In the
year nine of Nero the lord,’
Mesore 11th.
‘Beyond the numerous instances of the use of the
word in Egypt, the only witness for the word in
Asia Minor was St. Paul. Inscriptions now forth-
coming from Asia Minor are therefore a very welcome
addition to the statistics. A marble tablet of about
the first century a.D., found at Smyrna,”° enumerates
among the votive gifts presented by a benefactor
1 For explanation of the contents cf. the commentary in Wilcken, Griechische
Ostraka, 11. Ὁ. 253 ff£., and Archiv, 4, p. 267.
2 4.6, ὁμο(λόγῳ).
5 de. χ(αίρειν).
4 de. δραχμὰς.
> 4.€, ὀβολ(ὸν).
5 i.e. ἔτους.
τ Hellenised Egyptian title, “ priest of Isis.” .
5 Homologos is a technical term for a country labourer working under a
contract. [Cf. the labourers in the vineyard, Matt, xx. and 1 Cor. ix. 7.1 The
same man contributed in the same year and on the same day to another
collection called λογεία τοῦ θεοῦ, “collection of the god,” Wilcken, @riechische
Ostraka, 11. No. 414 ; the sum was 4 drachmae 2 obols. Other receipts for
contributions by the same man in other years are extant (ostraca Nos. 402,
412, 415, 416, 417, 418, 420). As a rule they are for 4 drachmae and a few
obols. They are interesting evidence of the extent of the financial claims
made upon persons of no great means for religious purposes in the period
which saw the rise of Christianity.
5. On this expression cf. Chapter IV. below, Ὁ. 353 ff.
19 Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. ὅ88,., κλεῖν κεχρυσωμένην καὶ ἐμπεφιασμένην
(the meaning of this word is doubtful) πρὸς τὴν λογήαν (sic) καὶ πομπὴν τῶν
θεῶν. The reference seems to be to ἃ procession on the occasion of which
money contributions were expected from the spectators,
106 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
of the god and the city “a gilded and... key
for the collection and procession of the gods.” In
this instance, not far removed in date from the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, the word is used in a
sacred connexion, but the oldest example from
Asia Minor hitherto known no doubt refers to
secular matters. A limestone slab, found at
Magnesia on the Maeander, and now at Berlin, is
inscribed with the award of the people of Magnesia
in a dispute between Hierapytna and Itanus in the
year 188 or 182 8... By the kind permission of
the Museum authorities at Berlin I am enabled to
give here a reduced reproduction of Kern’s facsimile’
(Fig. 10). Taken together with the poor Egyptian
potsherd given as a receipt to the country labourer
Pibuchis, this official inscription from Magnesia (a
duplicate of which has been found in Crete *) shows,
like the inscription from Smyrna, that the remarkable
word used by St. Paul in corresponding with the
Corinthian Christians was common to all grades of
the international language.
A considerable number of “ Biblical” words having
thus been brought into proper historical alignment,
it is scarcely necessary to enter into proofs that
many words hitherto described as “rare” in the New
Testament are authenticated by the new texts.’
1 The sentence is mutilated. G. Thieme, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am
Miander und das Neue Testament, Ὁ. 17, who noted the inscription and fully
appreciated its importance as a proof of the unity of the Kow#, thinks it refers
to the gathering together of supplies of corn for warlike purposes.
2 Die Insohriften von Magnesia am Méander, edited by Otto Kern,
No. 105,. = Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 9299, λογείαις τε σιτικαῖς, “ collections
of corn.”
3 Plate VI. No. 105.
4 But unfortunately mutilated, with loss of the λογεία passage.
5 Numerous references in my Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien (= Bible
Studies) and in the works of J. H. Moulton and Thieme.
Fig, 10.—Limestone Slab, Magnesia on the Maeander, 138 or 182 B.c. Judicial Award by
the Magnesians, lines 52-80. Now in the Berlin Museum, By permission of the Directors
of the Royal Museums.
Ip. 106
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 107
The harvest here is of course equally great in pro-
portion, and obtained with less trouble than in the
first group.
(6) As regards the meanings of words our know-
ledge has also been largely increased. I have already
remarked (p. 78 above) that the influence of Primitive
Christianity was far more powerful to transform
words, 2.6. to create new meanings, than to create
new words. But here again there has often been
great exaggeration in the statement of the facts.
Cremer especially had a tendency to increase as
much as possible the number of specifically “ Biblical ”
or “ New Testament” meanings of words common
to all Greek; and in exegetical literature, when
dogmatic positions of the schools are to be defended,
a favourite device is to assume “ Biblical ” or “ New
Testament” meanings. The texts that are now
forthcoming from the world contemporary with the
New Testament serve, however, to generalise not a
few of these specialities, eg. the use of ἀδελφός
(“brother”) for the members of a community,
ἀναστρέφομαι (“I live”) and ἀναστροφή (‘manner
of life”; “conversation,” A.V.) in an ethical sense,'
ἀντίλημψις (“help ”), λειτουργέω (“1 act in the public
service”) and λειτουργία (“public service”) in a
sacral sense, ἐπιθυμητής (“ desiring”) in a bad sense,
hovw (“I wash”) in ἃ sacral sense, πάροικος
(“sojourner ἢ), etc. ete.’
But there are other ways in which not unfrequently
the familiar words of the New Testament acquire
a new light. A new choice ‘of meanings presents
itself, changing, it may be, the inner meaning of
' Cf. Chapter IV. below, p. 315.
3 References in Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien (= Bible Studies).
108 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
the sacred text more or less decidedly, disclosing
the manifold interpretations of the gospel that were
possible to the men of old, illuminating in both
directions, backward and forward, the history of the
meaning of words.
Let us look at a few examples.
(1) When Jesus sent forth His apostles for the
first time He said to them’ (Matt. x. 8 ff.) :—
“Freely ye received, freely give. Get you no
gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses (margin:
girdles): no wallet for your journey ... ” (R.V.).
Or, as it is reported by St. Mark (vi. 8) :—
“He charged them that they should take nothing
for their journey, save a staff only; no bread, no
wallet, no money (margin: brass) in their purse
(margin: girdle)” (R.V.).
And thus in St. Luke (ix. 3; cf. x. 4 and xxii.
35 f.) —
“Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor
wallet, nor bread, nor money... . ” (R.V.)
One of the characteristic utterances of Jesus has
here been handed down, not without variations, but.
still in such form that the original can be discerned.
beneath them: the apostles were told to take with
them for their journey only the barest necessaries,’
among which was to be reckoned neither money
nor bread. According to St. Matthew’s report they
were further forbidden even to earn money on their
way, as they might have done by working miracles
of healing, etc. The meaning of the “ wallet” (A.V.
“scrip”) has seldom been questioned, because it
seems so obvious ; most commentators probably think
1 Cf. Die Christliche Welt, 17 (1903) col. 242 f.
? The one point on which the authorities leave us in doubt is whether the
staff was one of them.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 109
of it as a travelling-bag,’ or, more precisely defined,
as a bread-bag. The word in the original Greek,
πήρα, is capable of either meaning, according to
circumstances. In the context “ travelling-bag”
would do very well; “bread-bag ” not so well, being
superfluous after the mention of “bread,” and
tautology seems out of place in these brief, pointed
commands given by Jesus. But there is a special
meaning, suggested by one of the monuments, which
suits the context at least as well as the more general
sense of “ bag” or “ travelling-bag.” The monument
in question was erected in the Roman Imperial
period at Kefr-Hauar in Syria by a person who calls
himself, in the Greek inscription, a “slave” of the
Syrian goddess. “Sent by the lady,” as he says
himself, this heathen apostle tells of the journeys
on which he went begging for the “lady” and
boasts triumphantly that “each journey brought in
seventy bags.”® The word here employed is πήρα.
Of course it has nothing to do with well-filled
provision-bags for the journey: it clearly means the
‘beggar’s collecting-bag.* The same special meaning
1 In that case construing “ wallet” with “ for your journey.”
° Published by Ch. Fossey, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 21 (1897)
p.60, ἀ(π)οφόρησε ἑκάστη ἀγωγὴ πήρας o’.—Eberhard Nestle (postcard, Maulbronn,
13 March, 1903) called my attention to the punning observation in the
Didascalia = Const. Apost. 3, 6, about the itinerant widows, who were so ready
to receive that they were not so much χῆραι as πῆραι (which we may perhaps
imitate in English by saying that though spouse-less they were by no means
_pouch-less). Hermann Diels writes to me from Berlin W., 22 July, 1908:
“ Does not the beggar’s bag form part of the equipment of the mendicant friar
of antiquity, i.e. the Cynic? Crates the Cynic wrote a poem called pa
(fragm. in my Poetae philosophi, fr. 4, p. 218).”
3 [Wallet, then, is just the right word in English. Cf. Shakespeare, Troilus
and Cressida, 111, iii. 145, “ Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein
he puts alms for oblivion.” A writer in Notes and Queries, 7th Ser., iv. 78,
points out that the triangular piece of stuff, like a bag, which hangs from
behind the left shoulder of a junior barrister’s gown was originally a wallet
to receive fees.—There is an illustration of the ancient wallet in Anthony
Rich’s Dict, of Roman and Greek Antiquities, s.v.“ Pera.” TR]
110 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
would make excellent sense in our text, particularly
in St. Matthew’s version: there is to be no earning,
and also no begging of money. With this possible
explanation of the word πήρα the divine simplicity
of Jesus stands out afresh against the background
suggested by the heathen inscription. While Chris-
tianity was still young the beggar-priest was making
his rounds in the land of Syria on behalf of the
national goddess. The caravan conveying the pious
robber’s booty to the shrine lengthens as he passes
from village to village, and assuredly the lady will
not forget her slave. In the same age and country
One who had not where to lay His head sent forth
His apostles, saying :—
“Freely ye received, freely give. Get you no
gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses: no wallet
for your journey.”
(2) Among the sayings of our Lord we find thrice
repeated the phrase “ They have their reward,” e.g.
in Matt. vi. 2 of the hypocrites who sound a trumpet
before them when they do their alms. The Greek
word translated “have ”(A.V.), or preferably (with
the Revisers) “ have received,” is ἀπέχω, “I have or
receive in full,” “I have got.” Reward is spoken of
in the passage immediately preceding, but there the
simple verb ἔχω is used. I have long held? that the
word ἀπέχω is explainable by the papyri and ostraca.
In countless instances we find the word in these
texts? in a meaning that suits admirably our Lord’s
saying about rewards, viz. “I have received,” a
1 Neue Bibelstudien, Ὁ, 56; Bible Studies, p. 229. Cf. also Moulton and
Milligan, The Expositor, July 1908, p. 91.
2 The importance of this seeming trifle, both intrinsically and from the
point of view of historical philology, has recently received due recognition
from Heinrich Erman, who discussed the subject in an article on “ Die ‘ Habe ’-
Quittung bei den Griechen,” Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p.77 ff. His objec-
tions to the translation “I have received” are waived by A. Thumb, Prinzi-
e Author's collect
in th
Now
ipt for Alien Tax.
Rece
D.
32-33 A
Thebes,
>
11.—Ostracon.
Fig
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 111
technical expression regularly employed in drawing
up a receipt. Compare, for instance, two ostraca
from Thebes figured in this book, one (p. 152 below)
a receipt for rent in the Ptolemaic period, the other
(p. 105 above) a receipt for the Isis collection, 4
August, 63 a.p. Still nearer in date to the gospel
passage is an ostracon of very vulgar type in my
collection, a receipt for alien tax paid at Thebes,
32-33 a.D., of which I here give a full-sized repro-
duction (Figure 11).
With the help of Ulrich Wilcken the ostracon was
thus deciphered :—
Παμᾶρις ‘Eppoddpov Pamaris the son of Hermodorus
᾿Αβῶς. ᾿Απέχων “ παρὰ σοῦ | to Abos. Ihave receiving (sic)
τέλες 1 ἐπιξένον OdvO from thee alien tax‘ (for the
καὶ Φαῶφι S? B. 1. 10 months) Thoyth and Phaophi
Τιβερίου Καίσαρος 2 drachmae. In the year 19 of
Σεβαστοῦ. ; Tiberius Caesar Augustus.
This technical ἀπέχω, however, was in use not only
in Egypt but elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, as
shown by inscriptions at Delphi recording manu-
missions at the beginning ® and end of the second
century B.c., and again in the first century a.p.° An
pienfragen der Koine-Forschung, Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum,
1906, p. 255: “ ἀπέχουσι is, by reason of the nature of the action expressed,
identical with ἔλαβον or ἔσχον, i.e. it is an aorist-present.” Of. also J. H.
Moulton, Grammar,? p. 247. Further references in Mayser, Grammatik der
griech. Papyri, p. 487, and especially Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, 1. p. 86.
1 = τέλος, “toll, custom,” as in Matt. xvii. 25, Rom. xiii. 7.
* 4.e, δραχμὰς.
3 2,6. ἔτους.
* On this alien tax οἵ, Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 153,
where other quotations for the word ἐπίξενος, “stranger,” are given besides
Clement of Alexandria I. 977 A, which is the only example in E. A. Sophocles’
Lexicon. At present this ostracon is the earliest evidence of the tax.
5 Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 845,, τὰν τιμὰν ἀπέχει, “the price he hath
received.” Cf. p. 327 below.
6 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 22 (1898), e.g. p. 58, καὶ τὰν τειμὰν
ἀπέχω πᾶσαν, “and I have received the whole price”; first century A.D.,
eg. pp. 116, 120.
112 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
inscription from Orchomenus of the third or fourth
century B.c.’ shows the expression in use even then
in the Aeolic dialect ; it is close in date to the oldest
papyrus reference I know of, viz. Hibeh Papyri
No. 97; (279-278 or 282-281 B.c.).
I think we may say, therefore, that this technical
meaning of ἀπέχω, which must have been known to
every Greek-speaking person, down to the meanest
labourer, applies well to the stern text about the
hypocrites: “they have received their reward in
full,” 2:6. it is as though they had already given a
receipt, and they have absolutely no further claim to
reward. This added touch of quiet irony makes the
text more life-like and pointed. From the same
technical use J. de Zwaan’ has attempted to explain
the enigmatical ἀπέχει in Mark xiv. 41, and it is not
improbable that St. Paul is alluding to it in a gently
humorous way in Phil. iv. 18.°
(3) The first scattered congregations of Greek-
speaking Christians up and down the Roman Empire
spoke of themselves as a “ (convened) assembly” ; at
first each single congregation was so called, and after-
wards the whole body of Christians everywhere was
spoken of collectively as “ the (convened) assembly.”
That is the most literal translation of the Greek
word ἐκκλησία This self-bestowed name rested
on the certain conviction that God had separated
from the world His “saints” in Christ, and had
“called " or “ convened” them to an assembly, which
1 The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum,
Part 11. No. 158,,, ἀπέχι πάντα, “he hath received all things.”
2 The Text and Exegesis of Mark xiv. 41, and the Papyri, The Expositor,
December 1905, p. 459 ff. He takes the betrayer, who is mentioned immediately
in the next verse, to be the subject.
3 Asa matter of fact, ἀπέχω is frequently combined with πάντα in receipts ;
cf, the Orchomenus inscription quoted in the last note but one.
4 For what follows cf, Die Christliche Welt, 18 (1904) col. 200 f.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 113
was “ God’s assembly,” “ God’s muster,” because God
was the convener.’ _
It is one of the characteristic but little considered
facts in the history of the early Christian missions
that the Latin-speaking people of the West, to
whom Christianity came, did not translate the Greek
word ἐκκλησία (as they did many other technical
terms) but simply borrowed it. Why was this?
There was no lack of words for “assembly ” in Latin,
and as a matter of fact contio or comitia was often
translated by ἐκκλησία.2 There must have been some
special reason for borrowing the Greek word, and
it lay doubtless in the subtle feeling that Latin
possessed no word exactly equivalent to the Greek
éxxhynoia. There is evidence of this feeling even in
non-Christian usage. Pliny the Younger employs
the Latinised word ecclesia in one of his letters to
Trajan. Some years ago a bilingual inscription of
the year 103-4 a.p.* came to light at Ephesus, which
furnishes a still more interesting example. It was
found in the theatre, the building so familiar to
readers of Acts xix., and now, thanks to the labours
of the Austrian archaeologists, one of the best pre-
served ruins in the ancient city.’ A distinguished
ΤΊ pointed out in Die Christliche Welt, 13 (1899) col. 701, that an excellent
analogy to the Primitive Christian use of ἐκκλησία is afforded by the members
of so-called “ Pietistic’’ congregations in the valley of the Dill (a tributary of
the Lahn, a little below Giessen) in their use of the word “ Versammlung” for
“congregation.” [Cf. the English “meeting” and “ meeting-house” as used
by Quakers and Methodists, ΤῈ.
2 David Magie, De Romanorum iuris publict sacrique vocabulis sollemnibus
in Graecum sermonem conversis, Lipsiae, 1905, p. 17 etc. (see the index),
3 Epist. X. 111, “bule et ecclesia consentiente.” βουλή has also been
adopted.
4 Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archiologischen Institutes, 2 (1899),
Supplement p. 43 ἢ,
51 shall never forget the sunny Easter morning (15 April, 1906) when
Dr. Keil showed us the theatre. In the jointing of the white marble seats
blood-red anemones were blossoming high among the luxuriant greenery of the
Anatolian spring.
8
114 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Roman official, C. Vibius Salutaris, had presented a
silver image of Diana (we are reminded at once of
the silver shrines of Diana made by Demetrius, Acts
xix. 24) and other statues “that they might be set up
in every: ἐκκλησία in the theatre upon the pedestals.”
The parallel Latin text has, ita ut [om]n[i e]cclesia
supra bases ponerentur. ‘The Greek word was there-
fore simply transcribed. Here we have a truly
classical example (classical in its age and in its origin)
of the instinctive feeling of Latin speakers of the
West which afterwards showed itself among the
Western Christians: ἐκκλησία cannot be translated,
it must be taken over.
The word which thus penetrated into the West is
one of the indelible marks of the origin of Christi-
anity. Just as the words amen, abba, etc. are the
Semitic birthmarks, so the word ecclesia (and many
others besides) points for all time to the fact that the
beginnings of Christianity must be sought also in the
Greek East.
(4) For the word ἁμαρτωλός, “sinning, sinful,”
Cremer’ quotes but one passage from Aristotle and
one from Plutarch: “ besides these passages only, it
seems, in Biblical and ecclesiastical Greek.” In the
Appendix,’ however, comes this very necessary cor-
rection: “The word is found not only in the two
passages quoted but also in inscriptions, and so often
that it must be described as quite a usual word, at
least in Syria, to designate a sinner in the religious
sense.” There is only one more correction to make :
here, and in the epigraphical references which Cremer
1 wa τίθηνται κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν (for this formula cf. Acts xiv. 23) ἐν τῶ (sic)
θεάτρω (sic) ἐπὶ τῶν βάσεων. This is also a neat confirmation of Acts xix. 32, 41,
according to which the ἐκκλησίαι at Ephesus took place in the theatre.
2 *Page 151.
3 *Page 1119.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 115
proceeds to give, we must read not “Syria” but
“ Lycia.” ἢ
The subject had already been treated in detail by
G. Hirschfeld,? and more recently L. Deubner’
published a collection of passages from inscriptions,
which is almost identical with Cremer’s. The in-
scriptions are of a class very common in the south-
west of Asia Minor—epitaphs containing a threat
against any one who shall desecrate the tomb, apap-
τωλὸς ἔστω θεοῖς (κατωχθονίοις, “let him be as a sinner
before the (sub)terranean gods.” In the same district,
however, we find the words ἐπάρατος, “ cursed,”* and
ἔνοχος, “ guilty,” employed in exactly the same way :
[ἔνοχος ἔστω πᾶσι θεοῖς, “let him be guilty before
all the gods.”* This parallelism between ἁμαρτωλός
and ἔνοχος seems to be the solution of a grammatical
puzzle which has always caused me difficulties, viz.
the use of the genitive after evoyos® especially in
the important passage 1 Cor. xi. 27, to which I have
long sought a parallel in inscriptions and papyri,
but in vain, despite the frequent occurrence of the
word. We find, however, the parallel ἁμαρτωλός
with the genitive in inscriptions from Telmessus
in Lycia, 240 B.c.,” and from Myra in Lycia, before
1 Cremer probably misread the handwriting of Schlatter, to whom he no
doubt was indebted for this important correction.
2 Konigsberger Studien, 1 (1887) p. 83 ff.
5 Athenische Mitteilungen, 27 (1902) p. 262; cf. also G. Mendel, Bulletin de
Correspondance Hellénique, 24 (1900) p. 392,
‘ Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien [cf. p. 14, n. 1, above], 11. p. 159,
No. 187.
5 Ibid. p. 166, No. 193.
οὖ. Wilcken has also been struck by the New Testament genitive in
Matt. xxvi. 66, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 170, although this genitive
of the punishment is not without parallel. J. Wellhausen, inleitung in die
drei ersten Hvangelien, p, 34, says that ἔνοχον εἶναι τῇ κρίσει, Matt. v.21f., is not
Greek—why, I do not know.
7 Dittenberger, Orientis Θγαθοὶ Insoriptiones Selectae, No. 553 ¢, (=Michel,
Reoweil, No. 547312), ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἔστωσαν [θεῶ]ν πάντων, “let them be as sinners
before all the gods,”
116 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
A.D. 1,’ and this is sufficient to account for the
peculiar use of the synonymous ἔνοχος by St. Paul
the Cilician? in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
(5) The Hebrew name for the Feast of Tabernacles
is hag hassukkoth, “feast of booths.” To have been
quite literal, the Greek translators of the Old Testa-
ment must have rendered this ἑορτὴ (τῶν) σκηνῶν, as is
actually found in the Septuagint, Lev. xxiii. 34, Deut.
Xvi. 18, 2 Chron. viii. 18, Ezra iii. 4, 2 Macc. x. 6. In
the majority of passages, however, in which the feast is
mentioned (Deut. xvi. 16, xxxi. 10; Zech. xiv. 16, 18,
19, 1 Esdras v. 51,1 Mace. x. 21, 2 Mace. i. 9, 18)
we find the more cumbrous expression ἑορτὴ (τῆς)
σκηνοπηγίας, “feast of booth-making,” which has
found its way into the New Testament (John vii. 2),
and Josephus, and was therefore no doubt the most
usual.’ The reason for the choice of this cumbrous
expression is not discoverable in the Hebrew. [10 lies
rather in the fact that the verb oxnvornyeto Oat already
bore a technical religious sense in the world which
spoke the language of the Septuagint. There is a long
inscription‘ from the island of Cos, probably of the
2nd century B.c., which records the arrangements for
sacrifices and enumerates the acts of religion to which
the worshippers were obliged. They had to offer
sacrifice and they had to “erect a booth” (σκανοπα-
yeioOwv),° on the occasion of a great panegyry or
solemn assembly, “which was probably held only
1 Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien, ΤΙ. p. 36, No. 58, ἁμαρτωλὸς ἔστω θεῶν
πάντων, “let him be as a sinner before all the gods.”
2 Possibly it was a provincialism of §.-W. Asia Minor. For earlier treatment
of the supposed “Cilicisms” in the New Testament, see Winer and Schmiedel,
§ 3, 26 (p. 23).
3 Winer and Schmiedel, § 3, 2 e,(p. 23), reckon σκηνοπηγία among the words
that were certainly coined by the Greek Jews. But it is found in Aristotle,
4 Athenische Mitteilungen, 16 (1891) p. 406 ff.
5 This formula is many times repeated.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 117
once a year.”! It is well known that Plutarch re-
garded the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles as a festival
of Dionysus’; the Septuagint translators, with other
motives, did much the same thing: by choosing a
secular name for their feast they brought it more
into touch with the religious usages of the world
around them. This is one more factor in the great
adaptive process for which the Septuagint Bible
stands in general in the history of religion.’
(c) Standing phrases and fixed formulae have often
found their way from the contemporary language into
the New Testament.*
(1) The phrase δίδωμι ἐργασίαν, “ I give diligence,
take pains” (Luke xii. 58), explained in all the
grammars as a Latinism,’ and not known elsewhere
except in Hermogenes® (2nd century a.D.), is never-
theless found in an inscription recording a decree of
the Senate concerning the affairs of Stratonicia in
Caria (81 B.c.).’ It is possible, of course, to maintain
that the phrase is here imitated from the Latin
1 According to the editor, Johannes Toepffer, p. 415, who refers to the
Jewish Feast of Tabernacles and gives a number of pagan examples of the
custom of erecting booths for religious festivals, Theodor Wiegand writes
(postcard, Miletus, 22 May, 1908): “We have found in the market-place of
Priene, near the altar in the middle of the square, stones marked with letters
and perforated to receive wooden supports. They are evidently relics of
the custom of erecting tents at festivals.”
2 Sympos. iv. 6, 2.
* Cf. the appendix at the end of this book on the Jewish prayers for
vengeance found at Rheneia, and my little work Die Hellenisierung des
semitischen Monotheismus, Leipzig, 1903, reprinted from the Neue Jahrbiicher
fiir das klassische Altertum, 1903.
* Numerous examples have already been given in my Bible Studies and in
Moulton and Thieme.
5 = operam do.
® De invent. iii. 5, 7.
” Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 441,0» φροντίζωσιν
διδῶσίν τε ἐργασίαν, “ may they take heed and give diligence.” Dittenberger
(p. 28) criticises this phrase severely.
118 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
original,’ but a letter of vulgar type among the
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, dated 2 8.c., has it in the
imperative’ just as in St. Luke, and shows it (also
as St. Luke does) in living use among the people,
who no longer felt that it was a “ Latinism.” I am
informed by Wilcken that the phrase occurs again
in an unpublished letter, civca 118 a.D. (Bremen
Papyri No. 18).
(2) In the same context in St. Luke (xii. 57) we
have the expression κρίνω τὸ δίκαιον, literally «I
judge the right,” which used to be regarded as
unique, and which Bernhard Weiss* explains to
mean deciding about that which God demands from
us. It is made clearer, however, by a prayer for
vengeance addressed to Demeter which was found
inscribed on a tablet of lead at Amorgus.* There
the goddess is implored to give right judgment. So
Jesus advises those who would go to law with one
another not to wait for the judge to speak but to
become reconciled beforehand and thus put an end
to the dispute by pronouncing “just judgment ἢ
themselves.
(3) Another gospel phrase, συναίρω λόγον, “1
compare accounts, make a reckoning” (Matt. xviii.
23f., xxv. 19), is said by Grimm and Thayer not to
occur in “ Greek ” writers. Moulton,® however, has
pointed out that it occurs in two letters of the
1 So Paulus Viereck, Sermo Graecus quo senatus populusque Romanus
magistratusque populi Romani usque ad Tiberii Caesaris aetatem in scriptis
publicis usi sunt, Gottingae, 1888, p. 83.
2 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri No. 74217, δὸς ἐργασίαν, “ give diligence,”
8 Kritisch Eaegetischer Kommentar von H. A, W. Meyer, I. 2’, Gottingen,
1885, p. 482.
4 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 25 (1901) p. 416, ἐπάκουσον, θεά, καὶ
κρῖναι τὸ δίκαιον, “hear, goddess, and give right judgment.” The editor, Th.
Homolle, translates “ prononce la juste sentence.”
5 The Expositor, April 1901, p. 274f.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 119
2nd century a.D., one from Oxyrhynchus' and the
other in the Berlin collection,? while an ostracon
from Dakkeh in Nubia, dated 6 March, 214 a.D.,
contains the corresponding substantival phrase. *
(4) Speaking of the devoted couple Aquila and
Priscilla, in Rom. xvi. 4, St. Paul uses the words :
“ὙΠΟ for my life laid down their own necks.”*
Many commentators have taken this phrase literally,
as if Aquila and his wife had laid their heads on the
block to save the apostle after he had been con-
demned to death by the executioner’s axe. The
majority, however, explain it figuratively: “to lay
down one’s own neck” is the same as “to risk one’s
own life.” This interpretation is undoubtedly con-
firmed by a passage in one of our new texts. At
the destruction of the cities of Herculaneum and
Pompeii in the year 79 a.p. the citizens’ libraries
were of course buried along with the rest of their
household furniture. Remains of these domestic
libraries have been discovered in the course of
excavations, and means have also been found to
make the badly charred rolls in part at least legible
again. One of the rolls from Herculaneum (No.
1044), for the decipherment of which we are indebted
to the ingenuity and learning of Wilhelm Cronert,
contains a biography of the Epicurean Philonides,
who flourished about 175-150 B.c. The biographer’s
name is unknown; but he must have written after
150 s.c. and of course before the year in which
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 11397¢, ἵνα συνάρωμαι αὐτῶι λόγον, “that I may
make a reckoning with him.”
2 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 775ig¢, ἄχρης (sic) ἂν γένομε (sic)
éxt (sic) καὶ συνάρωμεν λόγον, “ until I come there and we make a reckoning.”
3 Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, No. 1190; ἄχρι λόγου συνάρσεως, “till the
reckoning of the account,”
4 οἵτινες ὑπὲρ τῆς ψυχῆς pov τὸν ἑαυτῶν τράχηλον ὑπέθηκαν. For what follows
cf. Die Christliche Welt, 17 (1903) col. 611.
120 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Herculaneum was destroyed, that is to say either in,
or at any rate not long before, the age of St. Paul.
In this biography there occurs the following passage,
mutilated at the beginning, but for our purpose
sufficiently clear :* “ [For (?)] the most beloved of his
relatives or friends he would readily stake his neck.”
Here we have the same phrase as in the Epistle
to the Romans, only with another verb,’ and it is
reasonable to suppose that in the Greek world “to
lay down, or to stake one’s neck for somebody”
was as current a phrase® as, say, “to go through
fire and water for somebody ” is with us. Originating,
no doubt, in the phraseology of the law,* the phrase
was probably in the time of the Epistle to the
Romans no longer understood literally. The merit
of the apostle’s devoted friends is in no way
diminished by this observation: it must certainly
have been an unusually great sacrifice of the personal
kind that Aquila and Priscilla had dared for St. Paul.
We may adopt the words of the pagan roll that
was buried under the lava of Vesuvius some twenty
years after the Epistle to the Romans was written,
and say it was something that one would dare only
“for the most beloved of one’s relatives or friends.”
(5) St. Paul’s fondness for legal expressions has
been often observed in other cases,’ and will meet
1 Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,
1900, p. 951, [ὑπὲρ 1] τοῦ μάλιστ᾽ ἀγαπωμένου τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἢ τῶν φίλων παραβάλοι
ἂν ἑτοίμως τὸν τράχηλον. The thought is somewhat parallel to Romans v. 7.
This, and the other passage about Aquila and Priscilla,—what perspectives they
open up for critics who are fond of tracing “influences.”
2 St. Paul uses ὑποτίθημι, the text from Herculaneum παραβάλλω τὸν
τράχηλον.
3 Οὗ above, p. 84, παραβολεύομαι.
4. The original idea is either that some one suffers himself to be put to death
in the place of another, or that he pledges his neck and goes bail for the
other.
5 Cf. Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 103 [Bible Studies, p, 107].
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 121
with further confirmation in these pages.’ In
Phil. iv. 8 we have another curious echo of the
language of the documents: “whose names (are) in
the book of life”? sounds like the formula “whose -
names are shown in the little book,” * which occurs in
a document of the year 190 a.p.* The coincidence
might be accidental, and I would not quote it here
were it not that the phrase ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα, “ whose
names,” is certainly demonstrable as a characteristic
documentary formula, often occurring in the Berlin
papyri, eg. No. 181,, (57 a.D.) and No. 72¢¢.
(191 a.v.). In No. 344, (second or third century
A.D.) it is even found, as in Mark xiv. 32 for
instance, without a verb, and it is certainly not a
Hebraism there.* ᾿
D. The Syntax of the New Testament has hitherto
been least of all regarded in the light of the new
texts. For instance, one of the greatest weaknesses
of Blass’s Grammar is that in the syntactical portions
the New Testament is far too much isolated, and
phenomena that might be easily ° illustrated from
the pagan inscriptions, papyri, and ostraca, are
frequently explained as Hebraisms. One typical
1 Cf. for instance in Chapter IV. below (p. 323 ff.) the ancient custom of
sacral manumission made use of by St. Paul as a symbol of our redemption
by Christ.
2 ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς.
3 Some document is thus referred to.
4 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 432 1153;, ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα τῷ βιβλιδίῳ
δεδήλωται.
5 Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch? Ὁ, 77 [English
translation,? p. 74], says that καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῆς is “ still more Hebraic” than οὗ
τὸ ὄνομα, thus making this latter also a Hebraism.—Ludwig Mitteis (letter,
Leipzig, 21 May, 1908) refers further to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri No. 4855,
and Berliner Griechische Urkunden No. 888,1.
6 Though not so easily as the lexical points, because the indices, when there
are any, often take no account of syntax. There is nothing for it but to read
the texts,
122 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
example is the phrase just mentioned, “whose
names,” used without any verb. And yet, at the
present day, there is so much new solid knowledge
to be gained !
(1) To take one example: in the period of the
new religious movement the colloquial language of
the Mediterranean area exhibits specially interesting
changes and additions with regard to prepositional
usages." How are we to understand the passages,
so important from the point of view of religious
history, in which St. Paul and others employ the
prepositions ὑπέρ and ἀντί, unless we pay attention
to the contemporary “profane” uses ?
The phrase βλέπειν ἀπό, “to beware of,” is
explained by Blass* as Hebrew, by Wellhausen?’ as
Semitic; and yet it is used in a papyrus letter
of strongly vulgar type, 4 August, 41 a.p., by a
writer who was surely not a Jew, for he gives this
warning: “and thou, do thou beware thee of the
Jews.” *
The combination of εἶναι and similar verbs with
eis, which is after a Hebrew model according to
Blass*® and like Lamed according to Wellhausen,°
occurs in inscriptions and papyri.” I have found
1 Cf. A. Thumb, Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus, p. 128,
and my hints in the Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, 24 (1904) col. 212 f.
A meritorious beginning has been made towards the study of the prepositions
in the papyri by Gualtherus Kuhring, De praepositionum Graecarwm in chartis
Aegyptiis usu quaestiones selectae, (a doctoral dissertation) Bonn, 1906.
2 Grammatihk des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch? p. 127 [Eng. trs.,? p. 126].
3. Hinleitung in die drei ersten Hvangelien, p. 32.
4 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 1079, καὶ od βλέπε σατὸν (sic) ἀπὸ τῶν
Ἰουδαίων. Here we have also the supposed “non-Greek” phrase, βλέπειν
ἑαυτόν. See also Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, October 1908, p. 380f.
5 Grammatik, p. 88 [Eng. trs.? p. 85]. See also Jean Psichari, Hssai sur le
Gree de la Septante, p. 201 f,
6 Hinleitung, p. 32. But δ is not the exact equivalent of εἰς. If 5 were to
be imitated we should expect some other preposition. 6.9. ἐπί.
7 J. H. Moulton, Grammar, Ὁ. 71 £.; Radermacher, Prospectus, p. 6.
ΕἸα. 12.—-Ostracon, Thebes, 2nd cent. A.D. Order for Payment of Wheat.
Now in the Author's collection.
7 [p. 123
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 123
anespecially valuable’ example among the inscriptions
of Priene, of about the second century 8.6."
What light has been shed on the formula εἰς τὸ
ὄνομα, “in the name,” by the inscriptions, papyri,
and not least by the ostraca! To the previous
examples* of this, a legal formula‘ current in the
Hellenistic world, I can now add from my own
collection an ostracon from Thebes, of the second
century A.D., which is important also in other respects
(Figure 12).
As deciphered by Wilcken the reading is :—
Κρεῖσπος" Na..a. [.]§ Crispus® to Na. . [a]. . (?)
BidorsSay εἰς ὄνοἹ Pay in the name} (for the
λ
εἰς. Νότου
Οὐεστ᾽ Σεροῦδα (Ρ)}9 διὰ Πολ- | Secunda (?), represented by ™
ie ; Pollia Maria the younger, the
M fal 12 yy
os eres aoe ees two and a half and a third and a
πυροῦ aptaB™ δύο ἥ- :
μισυ τρίτον τετρακαικοστ ™* twenty-fourth artabae"of wheat
(Here the ostracon breaks off.)
1 Because old, and occurring not in a vulgar text but actually in an official
document,
2 No. 5039, [τ]αῦτα δὲ εἶναι els φυλακὴν τῆς πόλεως, “but this is to be for a
guard to the city.” No. 594, (cirea 200 B.c.) is to the same effect: εἶναι δὲ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦτο ἐπὶ σωτηρίαι τῆς πόλεως, “but this decree is to be for the
salvation of the city,”
3 Bibelstudien, p. 143 ff.; Neue Bibelstudien, p. 25; Bible Studies, pp. 146, 197;
Theologische Literaturzeitung, 25 (1900) col. 73f.; and most particularly
Wilhelm Heitmiiller, “ ZJm Namen Jesu,” Gottingen, 1903, p. 100 ff.
4 It is possible, perhaps, that the formula found its way into Greek legal
phraseology at a very early period through Semitic influence. Cf. the BWA of
the Aramaic papyri of Assuan and the observations by Mark Lidzbarski,
Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 27 (1906) col. 3213. But this is no reason for
regarding it as a Semiticism felt as such in the lmperial period; it had been
amalgamated long before. Cf. also Heitmiiller, p. 104;, Jean Psichari, Zssai
sur le Gree de la Septante, p. 202 f., must not be neglected.
5 Occurs as the name of a Jew in 1 Cor, i. 14, Acts xviii. 8.
®° OrNe..a.[.], Wilcken. Νι[κολ]άω is very improbable.
7 de. els ὄνομ(α). The formula is so common that it is abbreviated.
f [For notes 8 to 16 see next page.
' south-west quarter) of Vestidia
124 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
As the ostracon contains the name “ Maria” it
constitutes a new document in the history of the
Jewish’ Diaspora in Egypt, and more particularly
in Thebes.? To claim it on that account as a proof
of the genuine “Judaeo-Greek” character of our
formula would be trivial, in view of the numerous and
early pagan examples that are already known.
(2) According to Mark vi. 7 Jesus sent forth
His disciples δύο δύο, “by two and two.” A dis-
tributive numeral relation is here expressed in the
Greek by repeating the cardinal number. Well-
hausen*® says this is not truly Greek, but‘ it is
found in Aeschylus ὅ and Sophocles.’ These examples
1 It is not very probable that this Maria was a Christian.
2 Cf, previous examples in Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, III.
p. 19ff. [the Jew Danoulos mentioned on p. 23 must be struck out, for the
papyrus passage in question is now read differently by Wilcken ; cf. Hpistulae
Privatae Graecae ed. 8. Witkowski, p. 84]; and Wilcken, Griechische
Ostraka, I. pp. 281 ££., 523 f. [the persons here mentioned with the name of Simon
need not all be Jews ; cf. Bibclstudien, p. 184 ; Bible Studies, p. 315, τ. 2], 535.
3 Das Evangelium Marci tibersetzt und erkiart, Berlin, 1903, p. 52.
4 Cf. Theologische Literaturzeitung, 23 (1898) col. 630f.
5 Pers. 981, μυρία μυρία, “ by myriads.”
86 From the lost drama called Hris the Antiatticist [an anonymous lexico-
grapher of late date, edited by Bekker; see W. Schmid, Der Atticismus, I. p. 208,
etc. TR.] quoted μίαν μίαν in the sense of κατὰ μίαν ; this was first pointed out
Continuation of notes to p. 123 :-—
8 4.6. els Νότου A(.Bés); on the quarters of the city of Thebes see Wilcken,
Griechische Ostraka, I. Ὁ. 713.
9 4.6. Οὐεστ(ιδία 7). The use of the cases (nominative for genitive) is vulgar,
as in the Revelation of St. John.
10 The reading is doubtful, Wilcken. It would = Σεκοῦ(ν)δα.
1 It is significant that the Hellenised form of the name, Μαρία, occurs also here.
2 4.¢, vewr(épa), abbreviated like our “jun.” or “jr.”
13 4,6, dprdB(as). The “ artaba” was a measure of corn,
4 With this form cf. a similar one in Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen
Papyri, Ὁ. 818.
15 46, “to the account of.”
16 This use of the preposition διά, occurring also in the papyri (cf. L, Wenger,
Die Stellvertretung im Rechte der Papyri, Leipzig, 1906, p. 9 ff.), is of important
bearing on the interpretation of the formula “through Christ” and the con-
ception of the Paraclete ; cf. Adolph Schettler, Die paulinische Formel “ Durch
Christus,” Tiibingen, 1907, p. 28 ad fin.
\
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 125
would be sufficient to account for the same use in
the Septuagint and in the New Testament ; it agrees
with the Semitic use,’ it is true, but it is good
popular Greek for all that. It has been shown by
Karl Dieterich? to exist in Middle Greek, and has
remained in Modern Greek down to the present
day.’ We can trace this use, therefore, through a
period of two thousand five hundred years. A
welcome new link in the long chain of witnesses
from Aeschylus to the Bible and from the Bible
till to-day was added by a letter of the 3rd century
A.D., among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (No. 121), in
which a certain Isidorus writes to one Aurelius to
“bind the branches by three and three in bundles.” Ὁ
Still more recently there has come in the Oxyrhyn-
chus Papyri (No. 886,».) a magical formula of the
8rd cent. a.D., which exhibits a curious mixture of
this and a prepositional construction.’ ;
(3) In conclusion we may select from the abundance
of new syntactical observations an example which
has lately met with general recognition, viz. the
peculiar “nominative” πλήρης in the prologue to
by Thumb, Die griechische Sprache, p.128. Blass, Grammatik des Neutesta-
mentlichen Griechisch,? p, 146 [Engl. ed.? pp. 145, 330], rightly inferred from
this that the Atticists opposed this form of expression, which they therefore
must have found present in the vernacular, “and it was not merely Jewish
Greek.”
1 We have here one of the numerous’ coincidences between the popular
phraseology of different languages, Cf. the popular distributive zwei und zwei
in German ; in English “‘ two and two.”
? Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der griechischen Sprache, p, 188.
5. Cf. Jean Psichari, Lssai sur le Grec de la Septante, p. 183 £.
4 εἵνα (sic) δήσῃ τρία τρίαᾳ. Cf. δήσατε δεσμὰς Seouds, “bind them in
bundles,” which Blass,? p. 146 [Engl. ed.? p. 145], considers to have been the
origina] reading in Matt. xiii. 80.
5 &e [ = alpe] κατὰ δύο δύο, “take them up by two and two.”—In the.
Oxyrhynchus Papyri No. 940, (letter, 5th cent. A.D.) μίαν μίαν is used, so the’
editors (Grenfell and Hunt) think, in the sense of wna = “together” (Part VI.
1908, p. 810).
126 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
St. John (i. 14), which bears intimately on a
celebrated problem of this gospel. If I am not
mistaken,’ this “nominative” has been regarded by
a pious Silesian commentator of our own day as a
peculiarly fine dogmatic distinction of the inspired
sacred text. In matters linguistic, however, the com-
mentator’s piety is not enough. I agree, mutatis
mutandis, with Hans Thoma,’ who once told the
Protestant clergy of Baden that it would be more
desirable to have a sinner painting good pictures
than to have a saint painting bad ones.‘ The
present case, therefore, must be decided by cold
philological considerations, and philology tells us, on
the evidence of papyri,’ ostraca, and wooden tablets,
that πλήρης as used by the people had often shrunk
and become indeclinable. The oldest example
‘hitherto known * is in the dreams of the twin-sisters
and Ptolemaeus,’ 160 B.c., contemporary, therefore,
with the Septuagint usage. Another pre-Johannine
example is afforded by an Egyptian wooden tablet,
probably of the reign of Augustus. Next come a
1 ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρὸς πλήρης [Codex D πλήρη] χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.
This πλήρης occurs also in other passages of the New Testament and the
Septuagint.
2 I cannot lay my hand on the passage, and I prefer not to waste time in
looking for it.
3 [The painter, ὁ. 1839. He is the holder of two honorary degrees of the
University of Heidelberg, Dr. phil. and D. theol., the latter conferred in
October 1909. TR.]
4 Bericht iiber die Tatigkeit des Wissenschaftlichen Predigervereins der
evangelischen Geistlichkeit Badens im Jahre 1906, Karlsruhe, 1907, p. 10.
5 Cf, Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen @riechisch, p. 84 and even
Ip, 81 [Engl. ed. p. 81]. Hermann Diels (letter, Berlin W., 22 July, 1908)
refers further to A. Brinkmann, Rheinisches Museum, 54, p. 94, and Berl.
Philol. Wochenschrift, 1900, col. 252,
© CE. J. H. Moulton, Grammar,? p. 50, and Mayser, Grammatik der griechi-
schen Papyri, p. 63. All other needful references will be found there.
7 Leyden Papyrus, Ο Il, (Papyri Graect Musei .. . Lugduni-Batavi, ed.
Ὁ. Leemans, t. I. [1843] p. 118).
* Revue Archéologique, 29 (1875) p. 233f. ἔδωκα αὐτῶ (sic) τὰ ναῦλα πλήρης
καὶ τὰς δαπάνας, “1 have given him his full fare and money to spend.”
t
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 127
number of quotations from papyri, and, as might
have been expected, the statistics have been further
enriched by the ostraca.' Moulton? is quite right
in saying that a Greek with a literary training would
not have used the shrunken form. But he goes too
far in assuming that it was first introduced into the
Gospel of St. John by a copyist. The copyists
worked as a rule quite mechanically, like our
compositors ; when they made linguistic changes in
the text of the New Testament they did so under
the orders of trained theologians—men who generally
must have been under the influence of Atticism and
opposed to the vernacular. Where the textual
authorities show variations, then in the gospels and in
St. Paul popular forms have always a fair claim to
preference. There is no special reason for regarding
πλήρης in St. John as not original. The vulgar form
occurring in the lapidary style of the prologue—a field
anemone amid the marble blocks—is in fact a clear
token of the popular character which even this gospel
bears. The scholar whose instinct may have been
misled by the word Logos in the first line is brought
back to the right road by this undoubted popular
form.
EK. We pass now to consider briefly, in conclusion,
the style of the New Testament in the light of the
profane texts.* The transition is an easy one, for
we can still take our examples from the Johannine
writings. It has become an inviolable tradition with
commentators to represent the Johannine style as
particularly Semitic, chiefly on account of its pre-
1 Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, No. 1071, Thebes, 16 February, 185 A.D,;
probably also No, 1222, Thebes, Roman period.
2 Grammar,’ p. 60.
* Cf. the general observations above, pp. 63 f,
128 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
ference for paratactic constructions, especially “and
... and,” which occurs so frequently. The very
latest critic of the Johannine style, E. von Dobschiitz,’
who distinguishes an original and an adaptation in the
First Epistle of St. John, has these observations on
the style of the original, conveyed, it may be re-
marked, in a highly paratactic style of his own :—
“Thesis stands beside thesis, sentence opposes sentence ;
there are none of the delicate connecting particles, appropriate
to every gradation in the thought, which are so abundant in
classical Greek. ‘These are no doubt greatly diminished in the
colloquial language of the Hellenistic period. But a style such
as we have here is really not Greek. It is Semitic thinking that
is here displayed. Only in the Septuagint is there anything
like it to be found.”
Apart from our new texts altogether, we could
appeal to the facts of Indo-Germanic philology in
refutation of this branding of parataxis as “not
Greek.” Parataxis appears to be not Greek only
from the orthodox point of view of the Atticists, who
laid it down that the periodic structure with hypo-
taxis was good, beautiful, and Greek par excellence.
As a matter of fact, parataxis was the original form
of Greek speech; it survived continuously in the
language of the people, and even found its way into
literature when the ordinary conversation of the
people was imitated. The facts are admirably stated
by Karl Brugmann? :—
1 “ Johanneische Studien,” Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissen-
schaft und die Kunde des Urchristentums, 8 (1907) p. 7. Wilhelm Heitmiiller
in the Gegenwartsbibel (Die Schriften des N. T. . . ., herausg. von Johannes
Weiss), 11., Gottingen, 1907, 3, p. 175, pronounces a similar judgment, and
even ventures from the structure of the sentences and their connexion to draw
conclusions as to the birth-certificate of the writer: “They betray beyond
doubt the Jewish origin of the evangelist.”
2. Griechische Grammati#® (Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschatt,
II. 1°), Miinchen, 1900, p. 555 ἔν
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 129
“It is beyond doubt that the language of Homer exhibits on
the whole far more of the original paratactic structure than the
language of Herodotus and the Attic prose writers, such as
Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes. . . . This is not because the
language of Homer is older and closer to the primitive Indo-
Germanic type of language, but rather because the epic is less
detached than the later literature from the natural soil of
language. Wherever in the Indo-Germanic sphere a genuine
popular dialect is found to exist side by side with a more highly
developed literary language, we see that the popular dialect makes
far more use of the paratactic form of expression than the literary
language. If a work of later date, say, for example, of the 3rd
century 8.0.» were preserved, presenting to us as true a specimen
of popular sentence-construction as the Homeric poems, the
language of Homer would probably in this respect appear
scarcely more archaic. There is in fact no very great difference
to be detected between Homeric Greek and the Modern Greek
dialects in this particular. When, in the age of literary practice
and scholastic training, we find authors using paratactic con-
structions where they might have employed hypotactic forms,
such being in general use in the cultivated language, we may
generally assume that there has been an upward borrowing
from the forms of the language of every-day life.”
Brugmann illustrates this last remark by examples
from the Greek Comedy and from Demosthenes ;
in both cases there is conscious imitation of the
popular’ style.’
If we have once recognised the popular character
of the Johannine style—not an imitation, this, but in
large measure a wild, natural growth—then we have
' This is obvious, of course, in the case of Comedy, We have here the
reason why the vocabulary of Comedy finds such frequent echoes in the New
Testament, It is not because the apostles were regular attendants at the
theatre or readers of Comedy, but Comedy and New Testament both draw
from the popular colloquial language as from a common spring.
? The examples in Wilhelm Schmid, Der Atticismus, I. p. 422, II. p. 299,
III. p. 326, are also very well worth considering. Cf. also Eduard Schwyzer,
Neugriechische Syntax und altgriechische, Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische
Altertum, etc., 1908, 1 Abteilung, 21 Band, p. 500; and Jean Psichari, Essai
sur le Gree de la Septante, Ὁ. 186,
9
130 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
solved the riddle which our Atticist commentators
with their censorial attitude are always discovering.
St. John is popular in style when he is narrating
something, or when he is making reflections of his
own, no less than when he reproduces the sayings of
Christ. It is easy to find examples of both—the
popular narrative style, with its short paratactic
sentences and its “and... and,” and the stately
style, impressive by the very simplicity of its popular
appeal, in which the Divinity speaks in the first
person to strangers and devotees.
One of the finest examples of popular narrative
style is the report by an Egyptian named Ptolemaeus,
in the year 160 B.c., of a dream that he had had
(Paris Papyri, No. 51). I should have liked to
reprint this extraordinarily interesting text here,’ but
it is advisable to await the appearance of Wilcken’s
edition of the papyri of the Ptolemaic period, which
will doubtless give us the dream of Ptolemaeus
with considerably improved readings.
Another good example is the letter of consolation
written by Irene, an Egyptian woman of the second
century A.D., and found at Oxyrhynchus. This letter
will be discussed in a later chapter.’
Here is the story told by two “ pig-merchants,”
about 171 a.D., in their letter of complaint to the
Strategus, found at Euhemeria (Kasr el-Banat) in
the Fayim * :—
. ἐχθὲς ἥτις ἦν ιθ τοῦ ... Yesterday, which was
[ὄϊντος μηνὸς Θὼθ ἀνερχομένων | the 19th of the present month
ἡμῶν" ἀπὸ κώμης Θεαδελφείας Thoth, as we were returning
Θεμίστονυ μερίδος ὑπὸ τὸν | about daybreak from thevillage
1 First published in Notices et Extraits, 18, 2, p. 323 f.
3 Cf. p. 164, below. 3 Fayim Towns and their Papyri, No. 108.
‘This “incorrect” genitive absolute with a following dative occurs in
exactly the same way in John iv. 51, and many other New Testament passages.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 131
ὄρθρον ἐπῆλθαν ἡμεῖν κακοῦρ-
γοί τινες ἀνὰ [μ]έσον Πολυ-
δευκίας καὶ τῆς Θεαδελφείας
καὶ ἔδησαν ἡμᾶς σὺν καὶ τῷ
μαγδωλοφύλακι καὶ πληγαῖς
ἡμᾶς πλίσταις ἤκισαν κ[αὶ]
τραυματιαῖον ἐποίησαν τὸν
[Πασίωνα καὶ εἰσανῆραϊν
ἡμῶν χοιρίδι [ον] a καὶ
ἐβάσίταξαν τὸν τοῦ ΠασίωνἾος
«ιτῶνα ... καὶ...
How firmly this “and. .
of Theadelphia in the division
of Themistes, certain . male-
factors came upon us between
Polydeucia and Theadelphia,
and bound us and also the
guard of the tower, and as-
saulted us with very many
stripes, and wounded Pasion,
and robbed us of 1 pig, and
carried off Pasion’s coat .. .
and...!
. and” style was rooted
in the language of the people is shown by a much
later bill of complaint of a Christian Egyptian
woman who had been ill-treated by her husband
(Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 903, 4th century a.D.).
The parallelism of the style comes out most
clearly if we compare texts of similar content. For
instance we might take these sentences from the
story of the man born blind (John ix. 7, 11) :—
ἡ. Καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ" ὕπαγε
ψίψαι εἰς τὴν κολυμβήθραν
τοῦ Σιλωάμ (ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται
7. And said unto him, Go,
wash in the pool of Siloam
(which is by interpretation,
Sent). He went away there-
fore, and washed, and came
seeing. 11. He answered, The
man that is called Jesus made
clay, and anointed mine eyes,
ἀπεσταλμένος). ἀπῆλθεν οὖν
καὶ ἐνίψατο καὶ ἦλθεν βλέπων.
11. ἀπεκρίθη ἐκεῖνος " ὁ ἄν-
θρωπος ὁ λεγόμενος ᾿Ιησοῦς
πηλὸν ἐποίησεν καὶ ἐπέχρισέν
1 Cf. the parallel descriptive details of the robber scene in the parable of
the Good Samaritan, Luke x. 30: mention of the road on which the outrage
took place (“from Jerusalem to Jericho”), the stripes (“beat him,” R.V.),
the theft of clothing. It is clear that Jesus was successful in hitting the
popular tone. The papyri and inscriptions furnish good contemporary illus-
trations of the same kind to other of our Lord’s parables, 6... the importunate
widow (Luke xviii. 1 ff.) Tauetis of the village of Socnopaei Nesus (Berliner
Griechische Urkunden, No. 522, Fayim, 2nd century A.D.), or the prodigal
son Antonis Longus with his confession of sins to his mother Nilus (Berliner
Griechische Urkunden, No, 846, Fayim, 2nd century A.D.; see below,
pp. 176 ff.).
132 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς Kal εἶπέν
μὲ [A 2 31 X\
μοι ὅτι ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν Σιλωὰμ
καὶ νίψαι. ἀπελθὼν οὖν καὶ
and said unto me, Go to
Siloam, and wash: so I went
away and washed, and I re-
νιψάμενος ἀνέβλεψα.
Compare with these sentences one of four records of
cures inscribed on a marble tablet some time after
138 a.D., probably at the temple of Asclepius on the
ceived sight. (R.V.)
island in the Tiber at Rome! :—
Οὐαλερίῳ Ἄπρῳ στρατιώτῃ
τυφλῷ ἐχρημάτισεν; ὁ θεὸς
ἐλθεῖν ὃ καὶ λαβεῖν αἷμα ἐξ
ἀλεκτρυῶνος λευκοῦ μετὰ μέ-
λιτος καὶ κολλύριονΎ συν-
τρῖψαι καὶ ἐπὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας
ἐπιχρεῖσαι" ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλ-
μούς. καὶ ἀνέβλεψεν ὃ καὶ
ἐλήλυθεν 1 καὶ ηὐχαρίστησεν ὃ
δημοσίᾳ" τῷ bed.
To Valerius Aper, a blind
soldier, the god revealed? that
he should go* and take blood
of a white cock, together with
honey, and rub them into an
eyesalve* and anoint ® his eyes
three days. And he received
his sight,® and came’ and gave
thanks ® publicly ’ to the god.”
This text is, if possible, even more paratactic
(“« Semitic,” people would say, if it were a quotation
from the New Testament) than the corresponding
passage in St. John.
1 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 5980i5¢ = Dittenberger, Sylloge,
No. 807:5¢, Apart from the mere words tlie parallelism is of course re-
markable. Similarities both formal and actual occur also in the three other
records and in numerous tablets of the same kind from Epidaurus. For a
perfectly simple narrative style, consisting almost entirely of participial
constructions and sentences connected by καί, cf, the long inscription record-
ing the “ Acts of Heracles,” Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarwm, No, 5984, The
word πράξεις is here used as in the title of St. Luke’s and other “ Acts of
the Apostles.”
2 So used frequently in the Greek Bible in the sense of divine warning
or revelation [e.g., LXX Jer. xxxii, (xxv.) 30, xxxvii. (xxx.) 2, xliii. (xxxvi.) 2, 4;
Matt, ii, 12, 22; Luke ii. 26; Acts x. 22; Heb. viii. 5, xi. 7, xii. 25].
3 Corresponding to the direct imperative “Go” in St. John.
>’ Cf, the clay made of earth and spittle in St. John.
5 The word is employed exactly as by St. John, who also construes it with
ἐπί (ix. 6). ® As in St. John.
7 As in Jobn ix. 7. 5 As often in the New Testament.
® As in the Acts [xvi. 37, xviii. 28, xx. 20].
1 Cf, the grateful Samaritan, Luke xvii. 15 f.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 198
Most striking of all, however, is the similarity
between St. John’s solemn use of the first personal
pronoun and certain non-Christian and pre-Christian
examples of the same style employed in the service
of religion. Diodorus of Sicily has preserved an
inscription in this style in honour of Isis at Nysa in
« Arabia,” and there has recently been discovered
another Isis inscription in the island of Ios, while
echoes of the same style are found in texts of post-
Johannine date. In the case of the second inscrip-
tion there is another’ of those delightful accidents
to be recorded which serve to recompense all who
are wearied by the toil of compiling the statistics of
language. This inscription, highly important also in
respect of its contents, is now in the church of St.
John the Divine, Ios, written on a portion of fluted
column which now serves to support the altar: St.
John the Divine has rescued this venerable document
of a prose akin to his own. The first editor of the
inscription, R. Weil,’ considered it, strangely enough,
to be an imperial edict or letter of the period of
the Christian persecutions. Its true character was
afterwards pointed out to him by Evstratiadis.’ It
has repeatedly engaged the attention of scholars, and
was last published by Baron F. Hiller von Gaert-
ringen,* who assigns the writing to the second or
* Cf. p. 102 above for the similar preservation of the ἐπισυνάγωγή
inscription.
2 Athenische Mitteilungen, 2 (1877) p. 81. Fortunately he was not a
theologian, or he would have been marked out as an example for all time of
the blindness inevitable to a member of our faculty.
3. Ibid. p. 189 ἢ,
* Inseriptiones Graecae, XII. V.1 No. 14, cf. p. 217; for an unimportant new
fragment see Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 28 (1904) p. 330. I
observed recently that Adolf Erman, Die dgyptische Religion, Berlin, 1905,
p. 245, also translates the inscription (in part), and takes the same view
of it as Ido. It shows, he says, “what the more simple souls thought of
Isis.”
184 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
third century a.p. By his kind agency I am enabled
to reproduce here (Figure 13), with the permission
of the Epigraphical Commission of the Prussian
Academy of Sciences, a carefully prepared facsimile
of this uncommonly interesting text by Alfred Schiff.
In spite of the late writing the text itself, as shown
by the parallel text from Nysa in our pre-Christian
authority Diodorus, is old in the main, and probably
much older than the Gospel of St. John.
In order not to break the historical continuity I
give first of all the text from Nysa, then that from
Ios,’ thirdly a Johannine text of similar form, and
lastly an example of the sacral use of the first person
singular that is no doubt later than St. John.
I
Diodorus of Sicily (Τ 27 B.c.) says in his History*
that he was acquainted with writers who had de-
scribed the tombs of Isis and Osiris at Nysa in
1 Among pre-Johannine texts we might also mention the “Praise of
Wisdom,” in Ecclesiasticus xxiv., where the first personal pronoun is used at
least four times in the solemn manner. This style can undoubtedly be traced
still further back: cf. the solemn “I am” of Jahveh in the Old Testament,
and the “I” used by the kings in ancient Oriental inscriptions, an echo of
which is found in the late inscription of Silco, a 6th cent. Christian King of
Nubia (Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 201). The
parataxis in this inscription, which is sufficiently barbaric in other respects, is
exactly paralleled in the Isis inscriptions of Nysa and Ios, The best parallels
to the use of the first personal pronoun are to be found in Egyptian sacred
texts. Of. for instance the texts in Albrecht Dieterich’s Hine Mithrasliturgie
erléutert, Leipzig, 1903, p. 194 f., and the same scholar’s references to the Ley-
den magical papyrus V. in the Jahrbiicher fiir classische Philologie herausg.
yon Alfred Fleckeisen, 16, Supplementband, Leipzig, 1888, p. 773. Hg., in the
same papyrus, VII,,, we have ἐγώ εἰμι[Οσιρις ὁ καλούμενος ὕδωρ, ἔγώ εἰμι Ἴσις ἡ
καλουμένη δρόσος, “I am Osiris, who am called ‘Water’; I am Isis, who am
called ‘Dew.’” Formal and actual parallels are also found in the London
magical papyrus No. 46qs6¢, and 121,98 (Kenyon, I. pp. 72, 100), and particularly
in Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11. 5.
2 7,27. I quote from the edition by F. Vogel, Leipzig, 1888.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 135
“Ὁ Arabia.” The tombstone of each deity bore an
inscription in “sacred characters,” and he gives as
much of the text as was still legible, the greater part
having been already destroyed by time.
᾿Εγὼ Ἶσίς εἶμι ἡ βασίλισσα
πάσης χώρας ἡ παιδευθεῖσα
ς Ἂν a S 2 x, 2
ὑπὸ “Ἑρμοῦ, καὶ ὅσα ἐγὼ ἐνο-
μοθέτησα, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ δύναται
λῦσαι. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ἡ τοῦ νεω-
τάτου Κρόνου θεοῦ θυγάτηρ
» 3 , > ‘
πρεσβυτάτη. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι γυνὴ
καὶ ἀδελφὴ ᾿Οσίριδος βασι-
λέως. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ἡ πρώτη
καρπὸν ἀνθρώποις εὑροῦσα.
"ἢ , 2 ͵7ὔ a fol
γώ εἰμι μήτηρ “Ὥρου τοῦ
- ΄Ζ > Ca 2 Ὁ. Ἃ fel
βασιλέως. ᾿Ἐγώ εἶμι ἡ ἐν τῷ
ἄστρῳ τῷ ἐν τῷ κυνὶ ἐπιτέλ-
I am Isis, the queen of every
land, taught by Hermes, and
whatsoever things I have or-
dained, no one is able to loose
them. I am the eldest daugh-
ter of Cronos, the youngest
god. I am wife and sister of
King Osiris. I am the first
that devised fruit for men.
I am mother of Horus the
King. I am she that riseth
in the dog-star. For me was
the city of Bubastis built.
λουσα. ᾿Εμοὶ Βούβαστος ἡ | Rejoice, rejoice,” Egypt, that
πόλις @xodounOn. Χαῖρε, nourished me.
χαῖρε Αἴγυπτε ἡ θρέψασά pe.
Diodorus also gives a fragment of the Osiris in-
scription. Like the other it consists of brief state-
ments by Osiris about himself, but the word “I” is
not so conspicuous as in the Isis text.
II
That the Nysa inscription was no fiction but a
permanent constituent in liturgical texts of the Isis
cult, is proved by the later record from Ios (Fig. 18),
which is longer, but in no other respect discordant.
I print it here without preserving the original division
into lines, only marking (for convenience in referring to
the facsimile) the point where every fifth line begins.
» This statement must be regarded with suspicion. The text came probably,
as Wilcken conjectures, from Bubastis, Nysa is a fabulous place.
2 Or ‘ Hail, hail!”
136 THE LANGUAGE OF
[Ὁ δεῖνα ἀνέθηκεν Εἴ]σι[ δι
Σεράπ]ἷ δ]. [ΑἸνούβιδι κ᾿ A[p-
ποκρά]τη. Εἷἶσις ἐγώ 1 εἰμι ἡ
τ[ύρανν]ος πάσης χόρας καὶ
(0 ἐπαιδ[ εὐϊθὴην ὑπὸ ᾿Ἑρμοῦ
καὶ γράμματα εὗρον μετὰ ‘Ep-
μοῦ τὰ δημόσια, ἵνα μὴ τοῖς
αὐτοῖς πάντα γράφηται. ᾿Εγὼ
νόὅμους ἀνθρώποις ἐθέμην καὶ
ἐνομο-(ϑ)θέτησα, ἃ οὐδεὶς δύ-
ψαται μεταθεῖναι. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι
Κρόνου θυγάτηρ πρεσβυτάτη.
"Eye εἰμι γυνὴ καὶ ἀδελφὴ
᾽Οσείρεος βασιλέος. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι
θεοῦ Κυνὸς ἄστρω ἐπιτέλουσα.
(5) Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ παρὰ γυναιξὶ
θεὸς καλουμένη. ᾿Ε[ μ]οὶ Βού-
βαστις πόλις οἰκοδομήθη. ᾿Εγὼ
ἐχώρισα γῆν ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ.
ἘΞγὼ ἄστ[ρ]ων ὁδοὺς ἔδειξα.
᾿Εγὼ ἡλίον καὶ σελήνης πο-
ρείαν συνέταξα. ᾿Εγὼ θαλάσ-
(Java ἔργα εὗρα. ᾿Εγὼ τὸ
δίκαιον ἰσχυρὸν ἐποίησα. ᾿Εγὼ
γυναῖκα καὶ ἄνδρα συνήγαγα.
᾿Εγὼ γυναιξὶ δεκάμηνον βρέφος
1 Iam not quite sure if these two words are rightly taken together.
THE NEW TESTAMENT
N. N. dedicated this to Isis,
Serapis, Anubis, and Harpo-
crates. I am Isis,? the mis-
tress of every land,’ and was
taught by Hermes, and devised
with Hermes the demotic4
letters, that all things might
not be written with the same
(letters). I gave and ordained
laws® unto men, which no one
is able to change. I am eldest
daughter of Cronos. I am
wife and sister of King Osiris.
I am that riseth in the star of
the Dog god. Tam she that
is called goddess by women.
For me was the city of Bubastis
built. I divided the earth
from the heaven.’ I showed
the paths of the stars,® I
ordered the course of the sun
and moon.’ I devised busi-
ness in the 868. I made
strong the right." I brought
together woman and man.”
I appointed unto women the
The
anaphoric ἐγώ in the following lines leads us to expect that the first sentence
should also begin with ἐγώ.
Ἐγώ.
Εἴσις would then stand alone : Εἰΐσις (sci. λέγει)"
On the other hand the metrical Isis inscription from Andros, Inserip-
tiones Graecae, XII. V.1, No. 739, of the age of Augustus, has Ἷσις ἐγὼ...
several times.
2 Or [2] “Isis (saith): Iam...”
3. Of. Ecclus, xxiv. 6.
‘ As distinguished from the hieroglyphics.
> Of. the idea of divine legislation in the Old Testament.
* Cf, LXX Psalm cxxi. (cxxii.] 3, 4 ; Ecclus. xxiv. 11.
7 Cf. LXX Gen. i. 7-10.
8. Cf. LXX Gen. i. 16£.; Job ix. 7ff.; xxxviii. 31f.
9 Cf, LXX Gen. i. 16f.; Job ix. 7ff.; xxxviii. 31 f.
Cf. Wisdom xiv. 3 ff.
" Of. LXX Psalm xxxvi. [xxxvii.] 17, 39.
2 Οὗ LXX Gen, i. 28, ii. 22.
10
15
20
2
a
ἢ;
ΠΤ ἢ
SO OP
ETINAROHNY TMCS KA
CPA MMATAEYPONMETAEPMOY,
TAAHM oLaa{NAMHT OIL /r TO If
TANTA PA SHITE ᾿ MENG δες
ΔΝΘΡΙΛΠΤΟΙΓΕΘΕ UNATAIMETA
OETHEAA OF AEILA ΗΡ
ΜΙΕΓΜΕΙΜΙΕΡΟΝΟΥΘΥΓΑΓ
ΣΝ ἩΈΕΓΜΕΙΜΙΓΎΝΗΈΑΙ
ΠΡΕΓΒΥΤΑΤ,
DNEACHOL FIPEOLBALIAE OL EW
EIMIORO YSYNOLALTPWENITEAOYLA
EPWEIMIHTIAPArYNAIZI OFOLKAAOY
MENHEMHOHOFBALTICT OAILOl KOAO
MHOH ETWEXWPICATHNATT OYPAN o
ETA BWNOAO YLEAELZAETW HA] oY ko
CEAHNHETIOPEIANEYNETASAErFW GAAAL
CIAEPTAEYPAETWT OAIKAI ON [EXYPONETTO}
HEA ET WIP Y NAIKAKAIANAPAL YN HIATA
EFNTYNAIZIAE KAMH NONBPE bOcEN ETASA,
“ΠῈΣ " Ἢ lee " one Filo
ETWTO! CALTOPrOICPONEIE!
EIMENOICTE| MW PIANETTEQH KA ETWMETA
ΝΟ, ΔΓ
ΚΕΙ
ΤΟΥΔΔΕΛΦΟΥΌΓΕΙΡΕΟΓΤΑΓΑΝΘΡΗΠΟ bATIALETAYED,
EIWMYHEEI ANSPATIOIANEAE-< 4 En JATANMATAS
(p. 136
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 187
ἐνέταξα. ᾿Εγὼ ὑπὸ τέκνων
γονεῖς φιλοστοργεῖσθαι ἐνομο-
θέτησα. ᾿Εγὼ τοῖς ἀστόργοις
γονεῖσι δια-(Ξ )κειμένοις τειμω-
ρίαν ἐπέθηκα. ᾿Εγὼ μετὰ τοῦ
ἀδελφοῦ ’Oceipeos τὰς ἀνθρω-
ποφαγίας ἔπαυσα. ᾿Εγὼ μυή-
σεις ἀνθρώποις ἀνέδειξα. ᾿Εγὼ
> iG aA a 2907
ἀγάλματα θεῶν τειμᾶν ἐδίδαξα.
"KR \ LL n e 7
γὼ τεμένη θεῶν εἱδρυσάμην.
᾿Εγὼ τυράννων alpyas κατέ-
λυσα. ᾿Εγὼ στέργε-(ϑ σθαι
γυναῖκας ὑπ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ἠνάνκασα.
"Ei ἣν \ Ψ > τ
᾿γὼ τὸ δίκαιον εἰσχυρότερον
χρυσίου καὶ ἀργυρίου ἐποίησα.
᾿Εγὼ τὸ ἀληθὲς καλὸν ἐνομο-
θέτησα νομίξ εσθαι. ᾿Εγὼ
συνγραφὰς γαμικὰϊς}] εὗρα.
"Eye [δ]ιαλέκτους “Ελλησι
καὶ βαρβάροις διεταξά-(ξ)μην.
᾿Εγὼ τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν
διαγεινώσκεσθαι [ὑπ]ὸ τῆς φύ-
[σ]ε[ω]ς ἐποίϊησ]α. ᾿Εγὼ ὅρ-
κου φόρον [ἐπέβαλο]ν ἐπὶ...
weer Ts Ἱν ἀδίκως εὖ,
new-born babe in the tenth
month. I ordained that
parents should be loved by
children.? I laid punishment
upon those disposed without
natural affection towards their
parents? I made with my
brother Osiris an end of the
eating of men.* I showed
mysteries unto men. I taught
to honour images of the gods.
I consecrated the precincts of
the gods. I broke down the
governments of tyrants. I
compelled women to be loved
by men.6 I made the right
to be stronger than gold and
silver.’ I ordained that the
true should be thought good.
I devised marriage contracts.’
I assigned to Greeks and bar-
barians their languages.? I
made the beautiful and the ill-
favoured to be distinguished by
nature. I laid (?) the burden (?)
of an oath upon . un-
justly...
It may seem surprising that in this case of a
religious text of really Egyptian origin the parallels
I have given (in the footnotes) are taken from the
Septuagint and not from other Egyptian texts.”
1 Cf. Wisdom vii. 1, 2.
But
2 Cf. LXX Exod. xx. 12; Deut. v. 16, ete.
3 Cf. Exod. xxi. 15, 16, etc.
4 ΟΕ, Wisdom xii, 3-5.
5 Cf. LXX Psalm cxxxiv. [cxxxv.] 10, 11, cxxxv. [cxxxvi.] 17-20.
5“ Cf. LXX Gen. ii. 24; Mal. ii. 15, 16.
7 Cf. LXX Psalm xxxvi. [xxxvii.] 16, exviii. [cxix.] 127.
* Of, LKX Mal. ii, 14; (Tobit vii. 18.)
® Cf. LXX Gen. xi. 7, 9.
19 Tt would have been easy to find them there.
Cf. for instance O. Gruppe,
Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte ΤΙ., Miinchen, 1906, p. 1563 ff.
1988 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
there is a good reason for this: in anticipation of
the problem which will engage our attention in
Chapter IV. 1 was anxious to show how close the
resemblance can be between the Hellenised Old
Testament and Hellenised Egyptian religion. The
actual relationship of ideas being so close, how easy
must it have been for Hellenistic Judaism and
Christianity to adopt the remarkable and simple style
of expression in the first person singular. ?
III
John x. 7-14 :—
99) , ? € t fol
γώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα τῶν προ-
΄ὔ /, Ὁ 5. Ν
βάτων ' πάντες ὅσοι ἦλθον πρὸ
μὴ a ,ὕὔ ΗΑ Ἂς Ν a
ἐμοῦ κλέπται εἰσὶν καὶ λῃσταί,
ee > > A " > fel A
ἄλλ᾽ οὐκ ἤκουσαν αὐτῶν τὰ
st ¥ mJ τὴ > Β ΄
πρόβατα. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα"
δὲ 2 n 3. >t
ὑ ἐμοῦ ἐάν τις εἰσέλθῃ,
σωθήσεται, καὶ εἰσελεύσεται
Ν 2 - \ Χ
καὶ ἐξελεύσεται καὶ νομὴν
εὑρήσε. ἋὋ κλέπτης οὐκ
ἔρχεται εἰ μὴ ἵνα κλέψῃ καὶ
A > i 3 Ἂν
θύσῃ καὶ ἀπολέσῃ. ᾿Εγὼ
ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσιν καὶ
περισσὸν ἔχωσιν. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι
ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός ὁ ποιμὴν
ὁ καλὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ
΄,ὔ e€ Ν lol 14
τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων.
€ Ν Ν > A ¥
O μισθωτὸς καὶ οὐκ ὧν ποιμήν,
,
οὗ οὐκ ἔστιν τὰ πρόβατα ἴδια,
ἢ
θεωρεῖ τὸν λύκον ἐρχόμενον
καὶ ἀφίησιν τὰ πρόβατα καὶ
΄ . oe , € ,
φεύγει (καὶ ὁ λύκος ἁρπάζει
I am the door of the sheep.
All that came before Me are
thieves and robbers: but the
sheep did not hear them. I am
the door: by Me if any man
enter in, he shall be saved, and
shall go in and go out, and shall
find pasture. The thief cometh.
not, but that he may steal,
and kill, and destroy : I came
that they may have life, and
may have abundance. I am
the good shepherd: the good
shepherd layeth down His life
for the sheep. He that is a.
hireling, and not a shepherd,
whose own the sheep are ποῖ,
beholdeth the wolf coming,
and leaveth the sheep, and
fleeth (and the wolf snatcheth
and scattereth them), because
1 At Ephesus, to which the Johannine texts point, there was a cult of
Isis.—In the inscription in Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum,,
III. No, 722, the reading Ἐΐσειον does not seem to me to be certain, but there
are other more certain epigraphical proofs. Cf. Adolfus Rusch, De Serapide:
et Iside in Graecia cultis, Diss. Berolini, 1906, p. 72 f.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 13%
αὐτὰ καὶ σκορπίζει)" ὅτι μισ-
᾿ 2 Ν > I 2 a
θωτός ἐστιν καὶ οὐ μέλει αὐτῷ
he is a hireling, and careth not:
for the sheep. I am the good.
περὶ τῶν προβάτων. ᾿Εγώ
εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός.
shepherd. (R.V., adapted.)
IV
In spite of distortion caused by the would-be
wizardry the features of the old style are recognisable:
in the following passage from the London magical
papyrus No. 46.,»..᾽ which was written in the 4th
century 4.D. Similar examples would not be difficult.
to find in other magical texts.’
Eye εἶμι ὁ ἀκέφαλος δαίμων,
ἐν τοῖς ποσὶν ἔχων τὴν ὅρασιν,
ἰσχυρός, τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἀθάνατον.
᾿Εγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀλήθεια ὁ μεισῶν
ἀδικήματα γείνεσθαι ἐν τῷ
κόσμῳ. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ὁ ἀστράπτων
[magic words inserted here]
καὶ βροντῶν. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι οὗ
> c 3 ἧς Μ > f
ἐστιν ὁ ἱδρὼς ὄμβρος ἐπιπεί-
πτων ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἵνα ὀχεύῃ.
°E , > a \ x rf
γώ εἰμι οὗ TO στόμα καίεται
δ ὅλου. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ὁ γεννῶν
καὶ ἀπογεννῶν. ᾿Εγώ εἰμι ἡ
χάρις τοῦ αἰῶνος.
I am the headless ? daemon,,
having eyes in my feet, the
strong one, the deathless fire.
I am the truth, who hateth
that evil deeds are in the
world. Iam he that lighteneth
[here follow certain magic words],
and thundereth. I am he
whose sweat is a shower falling
upon the earth to make it
fruitful. Iam he whose mouth.
burneth altogether. I am he
that begetteth and begetteth
again.t I am the grace of the
aeon.
The entire simplicity of the style of this solemn
monotone is seen all the more clearly if we compare
- | @reck Papyri in the British Musewm, ed, ¥. G. Kenyon, I. p. 69£.
* It was part of the proper procedure in ancient sorcery for the enchanter
to identify himself with powerful and terrible deities in order to impress
the demons who were to be overcome.
Studies, pp. 355, 360.
Cf. Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 271; Bible
3 Cf. Franz Boll, Sphaera: Neue griechische Texte und Untersuchungen:
zur Geschichte der Sternbilder, Leipzig, 1908, pp. 221 f., 438, 438.
4 Hermann Diels (letter, Berlin W., 22 July, 1908) considers it possible that.
the verb here means destroy.
140 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
‘it with metrical paraphrases. This we can do in
the case both of the Isis inscription and of the
Johannine texts. There is an inscription of the age
of Augustus in the island of Andros,’ consisting of a
hymn to Isis in hexameters, and based evidently on
the old formulae known to us from the inscriptions
of Nysa and los. For comparison with the Gospel
of St. John we have the pompous hexameters of
Nonnus. Contrasted with their originals these verses
sound something like the rhyming paraphrase of
the Psalms by Dr. Ambrosius Lobwasser (anglice
Praisewater), Professor of Law and Assessor to the
Royal Court of Justice at Kénigsberg, achieved in
1573.
“Zu Gott wir unser Zuflucht haben,
Wann uns schon Ungliick thut antraben ”—
‘so the good man begins the Psalm’ out of which
Luther had quarried the granite for his “ Feste Burg.”
The “watered praises” of Lobwasser’s Psalter are
about equal in merit, perhaps even superior, to the
hexameters into which Nonnus and the author of the
Andros hymn diluted the old lines couched in homely,
vigorous “I ”-style.
4, From whatever side the New Testament may
be regarded by the Greek scholar, the verdict of
historical philology, based on the contemporary texts
of the world surrounding the New Testament, will
never waver. For the most part, the pages of our
sacred Book are so many records of popular Greek,
1 Epigrammata Graeca, ed. G. Kaibel, No. 1028; most recently in the
Inseriptiones Graecae, XII. V. 1, No. 739.
2 [Psalm xlvi. Lobwasser might be thus imitated: “To God for refuge
each one flieth When to o’erride us trouble trieth.” Lwuther’s celebrated
“‘Hin’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” is best represented in Carlyle’s version,
“Α safe stronghold our God is still, A trusty shield and weapon,” etc. TR.]
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 14}
in its various grades; taken as a whole the New
Testament is a Book of the people. Therefore we:
say that Luther, in taking the New Testament from
the doctors and presenting it to the people, was only
giving back to the people their own. We enter,
perhaps, an attic-room in one of our large cities, and
if we find there some poor old body reading her Testa-
ment beside the few fuchsias and geraniums on the
window-sill, then we feel that the old Book is in a.
position to which its very nature entitles it. Think
too of the Japanese New Testament found by a Red.
Cross sister in a wounded man’s knapsack during the:
war between Russia and Japan: that was also a
grateful resting-place for the old Book. We will go
further, and say : this great Book of the people ought
really never to be published in sumptuous editions.
with costly engravings and expensive binding. The
Egyptian potsherds with Gospel fragments,’ the
Paternoster from Megara,’ the Biblia Pauperum*
and the Stuttgart Groschenbibel,* are in their ex-
ternals more in keeping with the character of the
New Testament than the proposed Double-crown
Bible® and the other éditions de luxe bought by rich
German godfathers for Confirmation presents. The
Cf. above, pp. 48-53. 2 Cf. above, p. 48, n. 2.
3 My friend Carl Neumann, the art-critic, in a letter dated Kiel, 17 May,.
1908, objects to this estimate of the Biblia Pauperum. [No doubt the author
was thinking not so much of the actual artistic merit or cost of production of
the block-books and their ΜΒ, predecessors, as of the contrast between them
and elaborately written (and illuminated) complete Bibles of the same date or
earlier. TR.]
4 Cf. an article on the Groschenbibel in Die Hilfe, 1898, No. 16. [The
article was written by Professor Deissmann on the publication of the first.
German “ penny Testament” by the Wiirttemberg Bible Institute, following the
example of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Tr.]
5 Cf. an excellent criticism of the plan by Johannes Ficker, Monatsschrift.
fiir Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst, 12 (1907) p.179ff. [This Bible was.
to be printed at the Imperial Government Printing Office in Berlin and sold
for a sovereign. TR.]
142 THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
plainer the cover, the more modest the type, the
coarser the paper, the nearer the pictures come to
the style of Diirer or Rembrandt, the more fitly will
the great Book of the people be arrayed. ἊἉ"νδΛ
The Book of the people has become, in the course
of centuries, the Book of all mankind. At the
present day no book in the world is printed so often
and in so many languages as the New Testament.
From the people to mankind at large: historical
philology establishes the causal connexion under-
lying this development. The New Testament was
not a product of the colourless refinement of an
upper class that had nothing left to hope for, whose
‘classical period lay, irretrievable, in the past. On
‘the contrary, it was, humanly speaking, a product
of the force that came unimpaired, and strengthened
by the Divine Presence, from the lower class
(Matt. xi. 25f.; 1 Cor. i. 26-31). This reason alone
enabled it to become the Book of all mankind.
And so the simple texts on stone, papyrus, and
earthenware have helped us, firstly, to a knowledge
of the sacred Volume on its linguistic side, and then,
by that means, to no small understanding of its
most distinguishing characteristic. A new ray of
light falls on its history among the nations. The
New Testament has become the Book of the Peoples
because it began by being the Book of the People.
CHAPTER III
THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE, ILLUSTRATED
BY THE NEW TEXTS
1. Our estimate of the New Testament will be
much the same as we have just stated if we now
approach it from the point of view of literary
history. Here again it is the records of the world
contemporary with the New Testament that have
supplied us with the right standard of criticism.
In saying this we may seem at first to be
preparing difficulties for ourselves. We have insisted
more than once that the records referred to are to
a great extent non-literary, yet now we claim that
they throw light on literary questions. This seems
to be self-contradictory ; and I can well imagine
that some readers will be astonished to hear me say
that these poor scraps of papyrus, or potsherds
inscribed with fragments of letters from unknown
Egyptians, have taught me to understand the true
nature of St. Paul’s Epistles and, ultimately, the
course by which Primitive Christianity developed
on the literary side. But I ask the incredulous to
give me a patient hearing.’
' For what follows cf. the “Prolegomena to the Biblical Letters and
Epistles” in Bibelstudien, 1895, pp. 187-252 [Bible Studies, pp. 1-59], and the
article “Epistolary Literature” in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, I1., London,
1901, col. 1828 ff.; also the outline in Beitrdge zur Weiterentwicklung der
christlichen Religion, Miinchen, 1905, p. 119ff. These sources have been
143
14 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
The mention of the literary side of Primitive
Christianity brings us to a branch of inquiry the
importance of which has until now been all too little
recognised. Whole libraries, it is true, have been
written concerning the growth of the New Testament.
and the origin of its several parts, but the fact.
remains that it has seldom been viewed, as the literary
historian would view it, in relation to the history of
ancient literature. None but a very few scholars
have felt the need of studying Primitive Christianity
with the strictness of the literary historian. One
honourable exception to be named here was Franz
Overbeck, whose important study “ On the Beginnings:
of Patristic Literature” ' was published in 1882. As
a general rule it is not so much as indicated that:
there is a problem to be solved, for the New
Testament is approached with the preconceived
idea that the Primitive Christian texts which owe
their preservation to their inclusion in that book.
were themselves without exception “books” and
works of literature.
But this preconceived idea must be given up. If
we were to regard the New Testament merely as.
an assemblage of little works of literature and treat.
made occasional use of here.—K. Dziatzko, article “Brief” in Pauly’s Real-.
Encyclopédie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, new edition by G. Wissowa,
IIL, Stuttgart, 1899, col. 886 ff., takes the same view as regards the main
questions.
1 Historische Zeitschrift, 48, New Series 12 (1882) p. 429ff. Views have
been expressed on the problem by Georg Heinrici (Das Neue Testament und
die urchristliche Uberlieferung, Theol. Abhandlungen C. Weizsaecker gewidmet,.
Freiburg i. B., 1892, pp. 321-352; Die Entstehwng des Neuen Testaments,
Leipzig, 1899; Der literarische Charakter der neutestamentlichen Schriften,
Leipzig, 1908) and Gustav Kriiger (Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments,*
Freiburg i. B. u. Leipzig, 1896; Das Dogma vom neuen Testament, Giessen,
1896). Much may be expected from Paul Wendland’s “Die urchristlichen
Litteraturformen,” a contribution to Lietzmann’s Handbuch zum Neuen.
Testament. G. Misch’s Geschichte der Autobiographie, I., Leipzig, 1907, is.
instructive.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 14
it accordingly in our studies, we should commit the
same mistake as an art-critic who proposed to treat
a collection of fossils and ancient sculpture as if it
contained nothing but works of art. We must not
assume that the New Testament is literature from
cover to cover. Whether it began as literature in
its single parts is a question to be inquired about.
The inquiry resolves itself into these questions :
Did Primitive Christianity begin by being literary ?
When did it become so? What were the stages it
went through in the process ?
2. These questions, I think, have more than
a purely academic interest: they contribute to a
thorough appreciation of what Primitive Christianity
really was. But in order to answer them we must
come to an understanding about the meaning of
our term “literature” and about the various forms
in which literature may find expression.
The service here rendered us by the inscriptions,
papyri, and ostraca is incalculable. Being them-
selves non-literary texts they remind us that a thing
is not necessarily literature because it has been
committed to writing and preserved in written form.
Being also popular texts they accustom us, when we
come to literature, to distinguish the popular from
the artistic.
What then is literature? Literature is something
written for the public (or at least for a public) and
east in a definite artistic form.
A man, however, who draws up a lease or an
application to some public official, or who writes
a receipt or a letter, is not engaged in literature.
Lease, application, receipt, letter, and a host of
similar documents, are non-literary. They are the
10
16 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
products not of art but of life; their destiny is not
for the public and posterity but for the passing
moment in a workaday world. This it is that makes
the thousands of non-literary texts, on stone, papyrus,
or pottery, such delightful reading. In large measure
they are records of life, not works of art: records
testifying of work, joy, and sorrow, and never in-
tended for us, though a bountiful fate, willing that
we after-comers should enter into pure human
contact with the past, has made them ours.
There is one special class of these records of human
life and work which the new discoveries have brought
to light again in astonishing plenty and most delight-
ful freshness. These are ancient non-literary letters,
exchanged by private persons on terms of intimacy,
and preserved not in late copies but in their originals,
on lead, papyrus, or earthenware fragment. What
would have been impossible in the seventies and
eighties of the last century is possible now, and ἃ
history of ancient letter-writing might really be
written. Conceived most comprehensively, it would
cover a period of several thousand years ; restricted
to ancient letter-writing in Greek and Latin it would
yet run to more than one thousand.
To think of “literature” or to speak of “ episto-
lary literature” in connexion with these hundreds of
ancient original letters would be utterly perverse * (or
only possible if we were to employ the word “litera-
ture” in a secondary and colourless sense with regard
to non-literary writing). The epistolary Lterature of
antiquity is something altogether different. That is
represented by the literary letter, the artistic letter,
1B, Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Wundererzahlungen, Leipzig, 1906, p. 98f.,
protests, with great justice, against the vagueness of the modern terms
employed to discriminate between literary genres.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 147
the epistle,’ of which we shall have to speak later on.
On the contrary, we must banish all thought of
literature, of conscious artistic prose, when we turn
the pages of the letters that have come down to us.
They are texts from which we can learn what is non-
literary and pre-literary. And that is precisely what
we must learn if we are to understand the New
Testament historically.
3. Let us then from this abundance select a few
specimens characteristic of the thousand years between
Alexander the Great and Mohammed, beginning
with the oldest Greek letter in existence and coming
down to the letters of Egyptian Christians in the
time before Islam.
The little collection’ will make admirably clear to
us the essential nature of the letter and the forms it
assumed in antiquity. The illustrations will give
some idea of the inimitable individuality of each single
original. We should give a false picture if we selected
only the choicest specimens, so we have been careful
to include some unimportant examples of average
letters.
The collection has moreover a secondary purpose,
1 I employ this word technically to distinguish the artistic letter from the
real letter.
2 Cf. also the collection of letters in Bibelstudien, p. 208 ff. (a different
selection in Bible Studies, p, 21ff.); Paul Viereck, Aus der hinterlassenen
Privatkorrespondenz der alten Agypter, Vossische Zeitung, 3 January, 1895,
first supplement ; Erman and Krebs, Aus den Papyrus der Kiniglichen Museen,
p. 209 ff. (also 90ff., etc.); R. Cagnat, Indiscrétions archéologiques sur les
figyptiens de l’époque romaine, Comptes rendus de ]’Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres, 1901, p. 784ff.; Léon Lafoscade, De epistulis (altisque
titulis) imperatorum magistratuumgque Romanorwm quas ab aetate Augusti
usque ad Constantinum Graece scriptas lapides papyrive servaverunt, Thesis,
Paris, 1902; Friedrich Preisigke, Familienbriefe aus alter Zeit, Preussische
Jahrbiicher, 108 (April to June 1902) p, 88ff.; E. Breccia, Spigolature
papiracee, Atene e Roma, 5 (1902) col, 575 ff.; and most especially Zpistulae
privatae Graecae quae in papyris actatis Lagidarum servantur, ed. Stanislaus
Witkowski, Lipsiae, 1907.
1418 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
as will appear in the fourth chapter. It is to bring
home to us certain types of the ancient soul.
1
Letter from Mnesiergus, an Athenian, to his housemates, 4th
century B.c., leaden tablet from Chaidari, near Athens, now
in the Berlin Museum, discovered by R. Wiinsch, deciphered
by him and A. Wilhelm (Figures 14 and 15).
This letter is the oldest Greek letter hitherto
known, and of the greatest importance especially for
the history of epistolary forms. We are indebted
for this valuable specimen to the careful labours of
Richard Wiinsch’; it was definitively deciphered
and explained in masterly fashion by Adolf Wilhelm.’
By permission of the Imperial Austrian Archaeological
Institute 1 am enabled to reproduce here a facsimile
of the same size as the original. The tablet was
originally folded together and perhaps fastened with
string and seal. On the outside of the tablet is the
address (Figure 14), which was written after the lead
had been folded :—
Φέρεν " is τὸν κέραμ- To be taken to the earthen-
ov TOY χυτρικόν" ware pottery market;* to
ἀποδόναι ὃ δὲ Ναυσίαι be delivered to Nausias or to
ἢ Θρασυκλῆι ἢ θ᾽ vids. Thrasycles or to his son.
On the inside, and with the lines running in the
opposite direction, is the salutation’ and the text
1 Inseriptiones Graecae, III, Pars III. Appendix inscriptionum Atticarum :
defixionum tabellae in Attica regione repertae, 1897, p. iif.
2 Jahyeshefte des Osterreichischen Archiologischen Institutes in Wien, 7
(1904) p. 94 ff.
3 On the infinitive absolute cf. p. 75, n. 4 above.
4 At Athens,
5 In the commentaries on the letters of St. Paul the salutation which serves
as introduction to the body of the letter is generally spoken of as the address.
That is not correct: the address, as shown by this letter, the oldest that has
come down to us, was written on the outside or on the cover of the folded
Fic. 14. : Τα, 15.
The Oldest Greek Letter yet discovered, Address (Fig. 14) and Text (Fig. 15): Mnesiergus of
Athens to his Housemates. Leaden tablet, 4th cent. B.c. Now in the Berlin Museum. By per-
mission of the Imperial Austrian Archaeological Institute.
{p. 148
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 149
of the letter proper (Figure 15). It seems that
Mnesiergus was in the country and had probably
been surprised by a sudden frost :—
Μνησίεργος Mnesiergus sendeth to them
ἐπέστελε τοῖς οἴκοι that are at his house greeting
χαίρεν καὶ ὑγιαίνεν 1 and health and he saith it is
καὶ αὐτὸς οὕτως ἔφασ[κ]ε | so with him. If? ye be
[ἔχεν]. willing, send me some covering,
5 Στέγασμα ei? τι βόλεστε | either sheepskins or goat-
ἀποπέμψαι ἢ ὦας ἢ διφθέρας skins,* as plain as ye have,
ὡς εὐτελεστάζταδς καὶ μὴ | and not broidered with fur,
σισυρωτὰς and shoe-soles : upon occasion
ὶ Ἵ : τυχὸν ἁ I will return th
καὶ κατύματα : τυχὸν ὃ ἀπο- will return them.
δώσω.
The contents of this letter, the earliest that we
possess, are not particularly striking, it is true; but
whoever thinks them trivial must also regard as trivial
St. Paul’s request for the cloak that he left at Troas
with Carpus (2 Tim. iv. 18).
letter, and in St. Paul’s case was no doubt much shorter than the salutation.
Not one of St. Paul’s letters preserves it.—On the ancient form of salutation
used in this letter (and on the salutations generally) cf. Gustav Adolf
Gerhard, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des griechischen Briefes. LErstes.
Heft, Die Anfangsformel, Diss. Heidelberg, Tiibingen, 1903, p. 32.
1 These two verbs occur in salutations in 2 Macc. i. 10, ix. 19.
* The sentence with εἰ is probably not, as Wilhelm supposes, the protasis to
the concluding words, τυχὸν ἀποδώσω, but a request made into an independent.
sentence by aposiopesis, as vivid and colloquial as the well authenticated
request in Luke xxii. 42, Πάτερ, εἰ βούλει παρενέγκαι τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ,
“Father, if Thou wouldest remove this cup from Me!” [Professor Deiss-
mann, it will be observed, deletes the comma before remove. It seems possible,
however, without assuming an aposiopesis, to take παρενέγκαι or ἀποπέμψαι as.
an infinitive absolute = imperative (cf. φέρεν, ἀποδᾶναι in the address of this.
letter), and to regard it as the apodosis. I have therefore ventured to harmonise:
the translation of the letter with the A.V. and R.V. of Luke xxii. 42. TR.]
* This brief colloquial use of τυχόν, for which there are other examples,
occurs also in 1 Cor, xvi. 6, with the meaning “it may be.”
4 [S80 Deissmann, according to Wilhelm’s interpretation. It would also
seem possible to translate: “either sheepskins or leathern garments, be they
never so shabby and with no more hair on them.” TR,]
150 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
2
Letter from Demophon, a wealthy Egyptian, to Ptolemaeus, a
police official, circa 245 3.c., papyrus from mummy
wrappings found in the necropolis of El-Hibeh, now in
the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund, discovered
and published by Grenfell and Hunt! (Figure 16).
Δημοφῶν Πτολε- Demophon to Ptolemaeus,
μαίωι 3" χαίρειν. ἀπό[σ]-
τείλον ἡμῖν ἐκ παν-
τὸς τρόπου τὸν αὐ- means the piper Petoys with
5 λητὴν Πετῶυν ἔχοντ[α] both the Phrygian pipes and
τούς τε Φρυγίους αὐ- the others, And if it j
λ[ο]ὺς καὶ τοὺς λοιπούς. suas ΒΘ. eas
κ[αὶ] sary to spend anything, pay
ἐάν τι Sénu ἀνηλῶσαι
δός. παρὰ δὲ ἡμ[ὦ]ν κομῳε-
10 εἰ". ἀπόστειλον δὲ ἡ[μ]ῖν
καὶ Ζηνόβιον τὸν μαλα- | the effeminate, with tabret,
κὸν“ ἔχοντα τύμπανον καὶ | and cymbals, and rattles. For
KipBara® καὶ κρόταλα.
χρεί-
α γάρ ἐστι ταῖς γυναιξὶν at the sacrifice. And let him
greeting. Send us by all
it. Thou shalt receive it from
us. And send us also Zenobius
the women have need of him
ν
ag Mee : shee J have also raiment as fair as
τὴν θυσίαν. ἐχέτω δὲ
καὶ thartople ὡς ἂσ- may be. And fetch also the
τειότατον. κόμισαι δὲ kid from Aristion and send it
1 The Hibeh Papyri, No. 54.—For the photograph here reproduced in slightly
reduced facsimile (Figure 16), by kind permission of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, I am indebted to the courtesy of Dr. Grenfell.
Σ Ptolemaeus seems to have held some post in the police force of the nome
wf Oxyrhynchus.
8 Wilcken’s conjecture. ;
4 The word is no doubt used in its secondary (obscene) sense, as by St. Paw
in 1 Cor. vi. 9. It is an allusion to the foul practices by which the musicians
eked out their earnings. Of. the remarks in Chapter IV. on the lists of
vices (p. 321, π, 1).
5 8t. Paul is thinking of cymbals such as these, employed for religious
music, in 1 Cor. xiii. 1.
Fre. 16,—Letter from Demophon, a wealthy Egyptian, to Ptolemaeus,
a police official, circa 245 B.c. Papyrus from Hibeh. Now in the
possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund, by whose permission it
is here repgoduced,
[p. 150
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 151
καὶ τὸν ἔριφον; rapa.’ Apic- | tous. Yea, and if thou hast
f Ν ᾿ς Lael . .
τίωνος καὶ πέμψον ἡμῖν. taken the slave, deliver him
20 καὶ τὸ σῶμα 883 εἰ συνεί-
χηφας παράδος αὐτὸ: to Semphtheus that he may
Σεμφθεῖ ὅπως αὐτὸ δι- bring him to us. And send
ακομίσηι ἡμῖν. ἀπόσ- us also cheeses as many as
τείλον δὲ ἡμῖν καὶ τυ-
25 pods ὅσους ἂν δύνηι καὶ
κέραμον κα[ι]νὸν καὶ λά-
thou canst, and new: earthen-
ware, and herbs of every kind,
χανα πἰαντ)]ροδαπὰ καὶ and delicacies if thou hast
ἐὰν ὄψον τι eynis.] | any.
ἔρρ[ωσο.}᾿ Farewell.
30 ἐμβαλοῦ δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ φυ- Put them on board and
λακίτας οἱ συνδιακομιοῦ- | guards with them who will
ow [[a]] τὸ πλοῖο[ν.] help in bringing the boat over.
Endorsed :
Πτολεμαίωι. | To Ptolemaeus.
The letter gives us a glimpse of the domestic life
of an obviously well-to-do family. <A festival is
coming on: mother and daughter insist that at the
sacrifice (and sacrificial dance ?) flutes and the rattle
of castanets shall not be wanting, and of course the
musicians must be nicely dressed. Then come
anxieties about the festive meal, from the roast to
the dessert, not forgetting the new crockery that
must be bought for kitchen and table, and added to
1 No doubt to furnish the roast meat at the feast, such as the brother of
the Prodigal Son considered himself entitled to (Luke xv. 29).
3 σῶμα means “slave,” as frequently in the Greek Old and New Testaments
(Bibelstudien, p. 158; Bible Studies, p. 160). This example is of exactly the
same date as the oldest portions of the Septuagint, and comes from the land
of the Septuagint.—The slave had run away from Demophon, as Cuesimus did
from Philemon (cf. St. Paul’s letter to Philemon).
3 δέ after καί and standing as the fourth .word of the sentence, as in Matt. x.
18, John vi. 51, 1 John i. 8,
‘The word enclosed in double brackets was erased by the writer of the
letter.
152 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
this the annoyance of the runaway slave—really, as
master of the house, there is much for Demo-
phon to think of; and it is no light matter, the
transport of man and beast, pottery, cheese, and
vegetables. But there, friend Ptolemaeus, who is
over the guards, will lend a few of his men who
can help the boatmen, and money shall be no
obstacle. Altogether the details of the proposed
festival remind us of the slight but very lifelike
touches with which Jesus pictures the feast at the
return of the Prodigal Son.’
3
Letter from Asclepiades, an Egyptian landowner, to Portis, his
tenant, B.c.— (Ptolemaic period), ostracon from Thebes,
now in the possession of Ulrich Wilcken and published
by him? (Figure 17).
This is a private receipt, written, like so many
others,’ in the form of a private letter. It is inserted
here as a characteristic example of a letter written by
some other person’s orders.
[4]σκληπιά(δης) Χαρμά- Asclepiades, the son of Char-
γοντος [(ρειν). | magon, to Portis the son of
Πόρτιτει Περμάμιος χαΐ: | Permamis, greeting. I have
᾿Απέχω! παρὰ σοῦ τὸ ἐπι- | received* from thee the fruit
βάλλον ὃ that falleth to me® and in-
μοιέκφόριον καὶ ἐπυγένη(μα) | crease of the lot that I have
1 Luke xv. 22 ff.
2 Griechische Ostraka, II. No, 1027. The facsimile there given (Plate IIIa)
is reproduced here (Fig. 17) by the kind permission of the author and Messrs.
Giesecke and Devrient, Leipzig.
3 Cf. examples above, pp. 105, 111.
4. Cf. above, pp. 110 ff.
5 A regular formula, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke xv. 12;
cf, Neue Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 57; Bible Studies, p. 280,
Fic. 17.—Letter from Asclepiades, an Egyptian landowner, to Portis.
Ptolemaic Period. Ostracon from Thebes. Now in the possession of Ulrich
Wilcken. Reproduced by permission of the owner and his publishers.
[p. 152
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 153.
ὃ οὗ ἐμίσθωσά σοι κλήρου let to thee, for the sowing of
eis τὸν σπόρον τοῦ Ke L the year 25, and I lay nothing
κοὐθέν σοι ἐνκαλῶ. to thy charge. Written for?
"Eypayev ὑπὲρ! ai(rod) | him hath Eumelus, the son of
Evjyn(ros)‘Eppa(....) | Herma... ., being desired
ἀξιωθεὶς διὰ τὸ Bpadd- so to do for that he writeth
10 τερα 3 αὐτὸν γρά(φειν). somewhat 5] ον ]γ.2 In_ the
L xe Φαμενὼθ β. year 25, Phamenoth 2.
1 This “for,” meaning “as representative of,” occurs in many texts of
similar character, and is not without bearing on the question of ὑπέρ in the:
New Testament.
2 This is no doubt a euphemism, but it helps to explain a habit of St, Paul,
the artisan missionary. St. Paul generally dictated his letters, no doubt.
because writing was not an easy thing to his workman’s hand, Then in his
large handwriting (Gal. vi. 11), over which he himself makes merry (Bibel-
studien, Ὁ. 264; Bible Studies, p.348; Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor,.
Oct. 1908, p. 383), he himself adds the conclusion, which perhaps begins at
verse 2 of chapter V. According to ancient procedure the autograph con-
clusion was proof of authenticity, cf. C. G. Bruns, Die Unterschriften in den
rémischen Rechtsurkunden, Philologische und Historische Abhandlungen der-
Kéniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin aus dem Jahre 1876, pp.
41-138, especially pp. 69 f., 81, 83, 90,121,137. Wilcken called my attention to.
this important essay. Dziatzko, in the article quoted at p. 144 above, refers to.
the statement of C. Julius Victor (Rhet. lat. min. p. 448 Halm): observabant
veteres carissimis sua manu scribere vel plurimum subscribere, “ to very‘intimate
correspondents the ancients used to write or, very often, sign the letter with their
ownhand.” The hundreds of autograph signatures to papyrus letters are greatly
in need of investigation at the present time. A study of them would lead to a
better appreciation of that extremely important passage in 2 Thess. iii. 17,
which some most strangely regard as a mark of spuriousness: “the salutation
of. Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every letter : so I write.”
The token (the last line or two in autograph) has the same significance as the
symbolum, which in other cases was sometimes given to the bearer to take:
with him as proof of his commission ; cf. the pre-Christian letter of Timoxenus
to Moschion, preserved in the Passalacqua Papyrus (Bibelstudien, p. 212f..
[not given in Bible Studies]; Witkowski, Hpistulae privatae, No, 25), and
Letronne, Notices et Extraits, 18, 2, p.407f. In one of the letters of Plato
(No, 13, Zpistolographi Graeci rec. Rudolphus Hercher, Parisiis, 1873, p. 528)
ξύμβολον actually has the same meaning as σημεῖον in St. Paul: a sign of
authenticity contained in the letter itself—From his own statement, just
quoted, it follows of course that St. Paul appended an autograph conclusion
to all his letters, even where he does not expressly say so. The recipients
observed it at once by the difference in the handwriting. Cf. the remarks on
letter No. 5 below, p. 158f. In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians the
autograph conclusion begins at x. 1, ,
154 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
4
Letter from Hilarion, an Egyptian labourer, to Alis, his wife,
Alexandria, 17 June, 1 3.c., Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus,
now in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund, dis-
covered and published by Grenfell and Hunt 1 (Figure 18).
The letter is of a very vulgar type, although the
writer makes efforts at the beginning, e.g. not to
forget the iota adscript.’
Ἱλαρίων αὖ "ἄάλιτι τῆι Hilarion to Alis his sister,‘
ἀδελφῆι ὁ πλεῖστα χαί-
pew καὶ Βεροῦτι τῆ κυρία ὅ
μου καὶ ᾿Απολλω- rus my Δαν ὅ and Apollonarin.
many greetings. Also to Be-
vapw. γίνωσκε ὡς ἔτι καὶ
νῦν ἐν ᾿Αλεξαν-
δρέα “oper. μὴ ἀγωνιᾶς,
ἐὰν ὅλως εἰς- not distressed if at the general
πορεύονται" ἐγὼ ἐν ᾿Αλεξ-
ανδρέα μένω.
ἐρωτῶ σε καὶ παρακαλῶ | andrea. I pray’ thee and
σε ἐπιμελή-
δ Cini ἀῶ παιδίῳ ead Bou beseech thee, take care of the
εὐθὺς ὀψώνι- little child. And as soon as
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, IV. No, 744.—A photograph was very kindly -
obtained for me by Dr. Grenfell, and from this was made the slightly reduced
facsimile (Fig. 18) which is here reproduced by permission of the Egypt
Exploration Fund.—The letter has also been published by Lietzmann,
Griechische Papyri, p. 8f., and Witkowski, Hyistulae privatae, Ὁ. 97 £.
2 Witkowski prints it wherever Grenfell and Hunt have inserted the iota
subscript, which Hilarion did not use, I give the text without alteration, so
.as not to detract from its vulgar character.
8 The a is a slip of the writer.
‘4 Alis is Hilarion’s wife. ‘Sister ” might be a tender form of address, but is
probably to be taken literally : marriages between brother and sister were not
uncommon in Egypt. Of. Egon Weiss, Endogamie und Exogamie im rémischen
Kaiserreich, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte, Vol. 29,
Romanistische Abteilung, p. 351 ff.
5 A courteous form of address in letters, as in 2 John i. and v.
6 Probably the return of Hilarion’s fellow-workmen from Alexandria to
Oxyrhynchus is referred to.
7 ἐρωτάω, “I pray (thee),” generally explained as a Semiticism in the Greek
Bible, is common in popular texts: Bibelstudien, p. 45; Neue Bibelstudien,
p. 28; Bible Studies, pp. 290, 195.
Know that we are still even
now in Alexandrea [sic]. Be
coming in® I remain at Alex-
Fig. 18.—Letter from Hilarion, an Egyptian labourer, to Alis, his wife. Papyrus,
written at Alexandria, 17 June, 1 3.c. Now in the possession of the Egypt Exploration
Fund, by whose permission it is reproduced.
ῇ [Ρ. 154
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 155
ov λάβωμεν. ἀποστελῶ oe” | we receive wages! I will send
Ν Nv
es “πὸ ως ay. | thee? up. If thou . . .} art
πολλὰ πολλῶν ὃ τέκης, ἐὰν ‘ ee
fy dpae- delivered, if i = " male
10 νον ἄφες, ἐὰν ἣν θήλεα | child, let it (live); if it was
εξέβαχες Le § female, cast it out. Thou
a eae Be Sibpapratare saidst ® unto Aphrodisias,
ὅτι μή με ᾿
ἐπιλάθης. πῶς δύναμαί σε | “ Forget me not.” How can
ἐπι- I forget thee? I pray 5 thee,
a > a o
λαθεῖν; ἐρωτῶ" σε οὖν iva | therefore, that thou be not
μὴ ἀγω- ἢ
widens. distressed. In the year 29 of
16 L«@ Καίσαρος Tatu xy. | the Caesar, Pauni 23.
Endorsed :
‘TAapiov "άλιτι ἀπόδος. | Hilarion to Alis. Deliver.
The situation in this letter is clear as to- the chief
facts. Hilarion is working for wages in the metropolis,
Alexandria, and intends to remain there although his
fellow-workmen are already about to return home.
Anxiety is felt for him at home at Oxyrhynchus by
his wife Alis, who is living with (her mother?) Berus
and (her only child?) Apollonarin. She is expecting
her confinement ; gloomy thoughts arise within her:
1 A regular formula, as in the New Testament: Weue Bibelstudien, p. 94;
Bible Studies, p. 266.
5 Hilarion has written the accusative instead of the dative. He means, “I
will send (them) up ἐσ thee.”
* πολλαπόλλων has not yet been explained. Witkowski thinks it implies a
wish, quod bene vertat, something like “great, great luck!” Other conjectures
in Grenfell and Hunt, and Lietzmann ; cf. also U. von Wilamowita-Moellendorff,
Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1904, p. 662; A. Harnack, Theol, Lit.-Ztg.
29 (1904) col. 457.
‘On the exposure of infants in antiquity Lietzmann quotes Justinus,
Apol. 1. 27 ff., who condemns the custom severely. See also J. Geffcken, Zwei
griechische Apotogeten, Leipzig und Berlin, 1907, p. 283; and especially Ludwig
Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht im den ostlichen Provinzen des rimischen
Raiserreichs, Leipzig, 1891, p. 361.
* No doubt Aphrodisias had been commissioned to convey this piteous
injunction to the absent husband.
* See note 7 on previous page.
156 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Hilarion has forgotten me, he sends neither letter
nor money, and where is bread to come from for the
growing family? She confides her trouble to her
friend Aphrodisias, who is going to Alexandria,
and through her Hilarion hears of his wife’s sad
case. He sends the letter (by his comrades who are
returning home, or by Aphrodisias): words merely,
no money (the wages are said to be not yet paid),
and in spite of a tender line for the child, in spite
of the sentimental “ Howe’er can I forget thee ?”?
nothing but brutal advice in the main: if it is a girl
that you are bringing into the world, expose it. Has
custom blunted the fatherly instinct in him? Has
poverty made him unfeeling towards his own flesh
and blood? Is he, as his name implies, a gay dog,
a good-for-nothing, to whom it is all one so long as
he can have his pleasure in the great city? Or are
we doing him an injustice, because we do not under-
stand that mysterious pollapollon? But there is no
explaining away the fact that a child is expected and
is perhaps to be exposed. I have met with a striking
parallel in Apuleius’: a man setting out on a journey
orders his wife, who is in expectation of becoming
a mother, to kill the child immediately if it should
prove to be a girl.
In any case, therefore, the letter displays a sad
picture of civilisation in the age which saw the birth
of the great Friend of Children, a scene in which the
fortunes of a proletarian family are reflected in their
naked horror, a background of distinct contrast to
what Jesus said of the value of children. In the
time of poor Alis mothers innumerable, who found
it difficult to be motherly owing to the scarcity of
1 [There is a Germau song beginning “ Wie kénnt’ ich Dein vergessen.” TR.]
* Metamorphoses, ed. Eyssenhardt, x. 23. :
54
if
yt
Fig. 20.
Letter from Mystarion, an Egyptian olive-planter, to Stotoétis, a chief
priest, Address (Fig. 19) and Text (Fig. 20), 13 September, 50 A.D, Papyrus
from the Fayim. Now in the Imperial Postal Museum at Berlin. Repro-
duced by permission of the Museum authorities.
p. 157
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 161
daily bread, were wailing for that which to us—such
is the extent of the moral conquests made by the
Gospel—seems to be a thing of course. A century
and a half later the Epistle to Diognetus (v. 6)
boasts that the Christians do not expose their
children.
5
Letter from Mystarion, an Egyptian olive-planter, to Stotoétis, a
chief priest, 13 Sept. 50 a.v., papyrus from the Fayim,
now in the Imperial Postal Museum at Berlin, published
by Fritz Krebs! (Figures 19 and 20).
ΜΜυσταρίων Στοτόητι τῶι Mystarion to his own?
Siw? πλεῖστα χαίρειν. | Stotoétis, many greetings.
Ἔπεμψα ὑμεῖν Βλάστον ὃ I have sent unto you my
τὸν ἐμὸν [τοὺς | Blastus® for forked (ἢ) ὁ sticks
χάριν διχίλων“ ξύλων eis | for my olive-gardens.® See
5 ἐλαιῶνάς" μον. “Opa οὖν | then that thou stay him not.
μὴ αὐτὸν [αὐτοῦ | For thou knowest how I need
κατάσχῃς. οἶδας yap πῶς | him every hour.
ἑκάστης ὥρας χρήζωι.
1 Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Koeniglichen Museen zu Berlin, Griechische
OUrkunden, No. 37 (with date and reading corrected, I. p. 353), cf. Bibelstudien,
p. 218 [not given in Bible Studies], where the old reading is followed. For the
photographs from which, with the permission of the Imperial Postal Museum,
the facsimiles (Figs. 19, 20) were made, I am indebted to the kind offices of
W. Schubart. The illustrations reduce the size of the originals by about one
quarter.
? ἴδιος, “his own,” is used quite in the colourless Biblical sense (without any
emphasis on “own”). Cf. Bibelstudien, p.120f.; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 123.
* The epistolary use of the aorist. For this whole line cf. St. Paul’s ἔπεμψα
ὑμῖν Τιμόθεον, “I have sent unto you Timotheus,” 1 Cor. iv. 17, and similar
passages.
* Presumably equivalent to διχήλων, and with decolorisation of the meaning,
in a general sense “cleft, forked.” Hermann Diels (letter, Berlin W., 22 July,
1908) would rather take it as δισχιλίων, “ two thousand.”
5 The New Testament word [Acts i. 12, “ Olivet.” ΤΕ.], so strangely rejected
by Blass [Grammar, Eng. trans? 82, 64, 85. Tr.], cf. Neue Bibelstudien,
p. 86 ff. ; Bible Studies, p.208. On the translation of εἰς by “ for,” cf. Bibelstudien,
p. 113 ΕΞ; Neue Bibelstudien, p. 23; Bible Studies, pp. 117, 194; this use, found
in both LXX and N.T., is not Semitic, but popular Hellenistic Greek,
158 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
(In another hand:) éppwoo. (In another hand :) Farewell.
L wa Τιβερίου Κλαυδίου In the year 11 of Tiberius
Καίσαρος Σεβαστοῦ Claudius Caesar Augustus
10 Τερμ[α]νικο[ῦ] Avtoxpdro- | Germanicus Imperator in the
pols] un(vt) Σεβα(στῶι)τε | month of August 15.
Endorsed in the first hand:
Στοτόητι λεσώνη εἰς τὴν | To Stotoétis, chief priest,’
νῆσον τί9]. at the island (?).
I give this little text, belonging to the time of the
Pauline mission, as an example of the letters of com-
mendation which St. Paul mentions more than once
(2 Cor. ili. 1; 1 Cor. xvi. 8) and himself employed
(Rom. xvi.). In the wider sense, at least, it is a
letter of recommendation. The Latin letter printed
below (No. 12) is an example in the narrowest
sense of the word.
The situation contained in the letter is extremely
simple, but for all that the document has an im-
portant bearing on the disputed passage in 2 Thess.
iii, 17.2 St. Paul, we are told, has not in fact
furnished all his letters with a salutation in his own
hand, therefore the words “which is the token in
every epistle” cannot be genuine. But the premise
from which this argument starts is a sheer petitio
principti. We must not say that St. Paul only
finished off with his own hand those letters in which
he expressly says that he did.* Mystarion’s letter,
with its greeting and the rest of the conclusion in
a different writing, namely in Mystarion’s own hand,
1 “Lesonis” is a newly discovered title of the Egyptian priesthood, cf.
Wilcken, Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 122; and particularly W. Spiegel-
berg, Der Titel λεσῶνις, Recueil de travaux rel. ἃ la philol. égypt. et assyr.
1902, p. 187 ff.
2 Of. p. 153, n, 2 above.
8 2 Thess. iii. 17; 1 Cor, xvi. 21; Gal. vi. 11; Col. iv. 18.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 159
was written only a few years before St. Paul’s second
letter to the Christians of Thessalonica, and it proves
that somebody at that date closed a letter in his own
hand without expressly saying so.’ It must not be
forgotten that we can have no proper conception of
what a letter was like unless we have seen the
original ; the copies in books and most certainly the
printed editions have taken more from the letters of
St. Paul than is generally suspected,’ while on the
other hand they have facilitated the discussion of
problems that originated in the study as mere
hallucinations of overtasked brains. The soldier
Apion, whose acquaintance we shall make in letters.
9 and 10, had the unsophisticated man’s natural
feeling for the significance of the original handwriting
of a letter: the mere sight of his father’s handwriting
makes him tender and affectionate. In much the
same way a contrast of handwriting awakes in
St. Paul a mood half jesting and half earnest.’
6
Letter from Harmiysis, a small Egyptian farmer, to Papiscus,
an official, and others, 24 July, 66 a.v., papyrus from
Oxyrhynchus, now in the Cambridge University Library,
discovered and published by Grenfell and Hunt ὁ
(Figure 21),
This is a good example of a communication to the
authorities couched in the form of a letter. The
1 There is another good instance, I think, in a letter of the 2nd cent. AD.,
Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 815; cf. Gregor Zereteli, Archiv fiir
Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 336 ff., and the facsimile there given.
? In all probability, for instance, the date of writing and the address,
" Of. Gal. vi, 11 ff, and Bibelstudien, p. 264; Bible Studies, p. 848,
* The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (II,) No. 246, A facsimile of lines 1-31 is given
there in Plate VII. With the consent of the Egypt Exploration Fund
I reproduce it here in slightly reduced form (Figure 21),
160 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
name of the addressee is politely placed at the begin-
ning, as often in official correspondence. ’
“Παπίσκωι coopyntedg{a(vte)]
τῆς πόλεως Kal στρα(τηγῶι)
᾿Οξυ[ρυγχί(ίτου)]
καὶ Πτολεμα(ίωι) βασιλι-
Kale γρα(μματεῖ)}
καὶ τοῖς γράφουσι τὸν νο-
[μὸν]
5 παρὰ “Αρμιύσιος τοῦ Πε-
[το-]
σίριος τοῦ Πετοσίριος μ[η-]}
τρὸς Διδύμης τῆς Διογέ-
[νους]
τῶν ἀπὸ κώμης Φθώχ[ιος]
τῆς πρὸς ἀπηλιώτην τρ-
[π(αρχίας).]
ἀπεγραψάμην τῶν ἐνεσ-]
tate ιβ L Νέρωνοϊς]
Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος
Σεβαστοῦ Γερμανικοῦ
Αὐτοκράτορος περὶ τὴν
αὐτὴν Φθῶχιν ἀπὸ γ[ο-]
νῆς ὧν ἔχω θρεμμάτων]
ἄρνας δέκα δύο . καὶ νῦ[ν]
ἀπογράφομαι τοὺς ἐπ[υγε-]
γονότας εἰς τὴν ἐνεστ[ὥσαν
40 δευτέραν ἀπογραφὴν ἀπὸ]
γονῆς τῶν αὐτῶν Opel ud-|
τῶν ἄρνας ἑπτά, yivor[ ται]
ἄρνες ἑπτά. καὶ ὀμν[ύω]
Νέρωνα Κλαύδιον Καί-
σαρ[α]
10
1ὅ
To Papiscus, former cos-
metes of the city and now
strategus of the Oxyrhynchite
nome, and Ptolemaeus, royal
scribe, and the writers of the
nome, from Harmiysis, the
son of Petosiris (the son of
Petosiris), his mother being
Didyme, the daughter of Dio-
genes, of the men of the vil-
lage of Phthochis which is
towards the east of the pro-
I enrolled* in the
present 12th year of Nero
*vince,?
Claudius Caesar Augustus Ger-
manicus Imperator, nigh unto
that same Phthochis, of the
young of the sheep that I
have, twelve lambs. And now
I enrol those that have since
been born, for the present
of the
young of those same sheep
second enrolment ;
seven lambs—they are seven
lambs. And I swear by Nero
1 Cf, Bibelstudien, p. 209, ἢ, 2 [not in Bible Studies].
2 [Or “toparchy ”; cf. 1 Macc. xi. 28. With regard to νομός cf. Bibelstudien,
p. 142 £.; Bible Studies, p. 145. TR]
3 Technical expression for making a return.
‘ Te., “ total seven.”
Fic. 21.—Letter from Harmiysis, a small Egyptian farmer, to
Papiscus, an official, and others, 24 July, 66 4.D., lines 1-31. Papyrus
from Oxyrhynchus. Now in the Cambridge University Library.
By permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund,
[Ρ. 160
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 161
25 Σεβαστὸν Γερμανικὸν Claudius Caesar Augustus
Αὐτοκράτορα μὴ ὑπεστά[λ- | Germanicus Imperator that I
(at). ] have kept back nothing.
eppw(c6e). | Farewell.
In another hand :
᾿Απολλώνιος 6 Tapa) Πα- I Apollonius, as commanded
m[ioxov] : by Papiscus the strategus, have
στρατηγοῦ σεση(μείωμαι) seeds Ἰατηθ.
ἄρν(ας) ζ. h
30 1. ιβ Νέρωνος τοῦ xup(i)o[v] In the year 12 of Nero the
Emel Δ. lord, Epiph 30.
There follow, in a third and fourth hand, the signatures of
the other officials to the same effect.
The handwriting of this document is interesting
on account of the clear, almost literary uncials of the
main text, sharply distinguished from the cursive
signatures of the attesting official We must
imagine this state of things reversed in the case of
the Epistle to the Galatians; the handwriting of the
amanuensis of Gal. i. 1-vi. 10 (or —v. 1) was probably
cursive, and the autograph signature of St. Paul the
stiff, heavy uncials’of a manual labourer ; the contrast
was just as great. In regard to contents this text is
one of the most important’ evidences that the title
Kyrios C lord ἢ) was applied to the emperor as early
as the reign of Nero. It is not the farmer Harmiysis
who employs it, but the officials use it three times
over in their formal signatures.
1 Cf. Chapter IV. (p. 355 ff.) below.
o
11
162 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
7
Letter from Nearchus, an Egyptian, to Heliodorus, 1st or 2nd
cent. 4.0.» papyrus from Egypt, now in the British
Museum, published by Kenyon and Bell | (Figure 22).
Nearchus . . . (to Helio-
Νέαρχος αἴ
πολλῶν τοῦ Kal
καὶ μέχρι τοῦ πλεῖν ¢ . [
μένων, ἵνα τὰς χε[ε]ροτ οἱ]-
AL Tous τέ-]
5 yvas ἱστορήσωσι, ἐγὼ παρ-
emg[ina |a-*
μὴν καὶ ἀράμενος ἀνά-
πλοίυν π]αρ[α-}
ψενόμενός τε εἴς τε Σοήνας
καὶ ὅθεν τ υγ]χά-
vet Νεῖλος ῥέων καὶ εἰς
Διβύην ὅπου
"Ἄμμων πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις
χρησμωδεῖ
10 [καὶ] ed<o>t0opa* ἱστόρ-
[η]σα καὶ τῶν φίλων
ἐϊμ[ῶν τ]ὰ ὀνόματα ἐνεχά-
pata τοῖς {[ε-]
dorus) . . ., greeting.
Since many . . . even unto
taking ship,° that they may
learn about the works made
by men’s hands, I have done
after this sort and undertook
a voyage up and came to
Soéne’ and there whence the
Nile flows out,® and to Libya,
where Ammon sings oracles
to all men,® and I learnt
goodly things,!’ and I carved
the names of my friends" on
the temples for a perpetual
pois depun<o>tws® τὸ
προσκύνημα
memory, the intercession . ..
[Two lines washed out.|
Endorsed :
᾿Ηλιοδόρω. | To Heliodorus.
ι Greek Papyri in the British Museum (Vol. 111.), London, 1907, No. 854
(p. 206); facsimile, Plate 28, here reproduced by kind permission of the
British Museum (Figure 22). The letter is assigned by the editors to the first
century; Grenfell and Hunt, as I was informed by Wilcken (letter, Leipzig,
13 October, 1907) would place it in the second century.
2 Wilcken’s reading, confirmed by Grenfell and Hunt.
3 Ditto (omitting καί).
[For notes 4 to 11 see next page.
Papyrus from
A.D.
1st or 2nd cent
ion of the Museum authoriti
Fie. 22,—Letter from Nearchus, an Egyptian, to Heliodorus,
165.
Τ Ώ155:
By pe
Now in the British Museum.
Egypt.
[Ρ. 162
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 163
This little fragment of a letter about travel is of
great interest to the historian of civilisation. It also
gives a good picture of the social piety which was
already known to us from the assurances of mutual
intercession in other papyrus letters. Nearchus*
does not neglect to pray for his friends at the seats of
grace, and, as if to make his intercession permanent,
he inscribes their names on the temple walls.
The writer seems to be a man of the middle class,
but his style, despite faint echoes of the book-
language, is on the whole non-literary.’
} Unfortunately nothing is known of the writer’s identity. As moreover
we have no exact data concerning the provenance of the papyrus, the utmost
that we can do is to suggest, without answering, the question whether this
fragment may have belonged to the correspondence of the Heliodoras who
is mentioned below (p. 227).
? Eduard Norden, in a letter to me (Gross-Lichterfelde W., 3 September,
1908), disagrees with this view.
Continuation of notes to p. 162 :—
‘The papyrus has εὔτομα. The meaning would then be: “and I visited
regions easily traversed.” (in opposition to the difficult approach to the oasis).
Hermann Diels (letter, Berlin W., 22 July, 1908) writes: “ εὔστομα = arcana,
mysteria, I take to be a reminiscence of the Αἰγυπτιακά of Herodotus (ii. 171),
which then, as now, every traveller on the Nile had in his pocket.”
5 Grenfell and Hunt’s reading.
6 Perhaps: “ Since many now make journeys and resolve them even to
“ὦ sea voyage.”
7 = Syene.
" With regard to the supposed source of the Nile “ between Syene and
Hlephantine,” which occurs already in a story told to Herodotus (ii. 28) by
the temple scribe at Sais, Wilcken refers me to Dittenberger, Orientis Gracci
oe Selectae, No. 168,, I. p. 243 £., and Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung,
» Ρ. ὅ20,
® The oracle of Jupiter Ammon in the oasis of Siwah is referred to.
© This refers either to the impressions of the journey in general or specially
to a favourable oracle of the god Ammon.
4 Inscriptions of this kind, the work of pilgrims and travellers of the
Ptolemaic and Imperial periods, still exist in great numbers, cf. the Egyptian
inscriptions in the Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum. They generally contain
the proskynema, a special intercession at the place of pilgrimage for absent
friends and relatives, Let us hope that some of the proskynemata inscribed
by Nearchus may yet be found.
164 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
8
Letter from Irene, an Egyptian, to a family in mourning, 2nd
cent. a.D., papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, now in the Library
of Yale University, U.S.A., discovered and published by
Grenfell and Hunt! (Figure 23).
Εἰρήνη Ταοννώφρει καὶ Φίλωνι
εὐψυχεῖν.
καὶ
οὕτως ἐλυπήθην ἔκλαυσα
ἐπὶ
τωι
εὐμοίρωι,} ὡς ἐπὶ Διδυμᾶτος
5 ἔκλαυσα. καὶ πάντα, ὅσα ἦν κα-
θήκοντα ἐποίησα καὶ πάντες
οἱ ἐμοί, ᾿Επαφρόδειτος καὶ
Θερμού-
θιον καὶ Φίλιον καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος
καὶ Πλαντᾶς. ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως οὐδὲν
10 δύναταί τις πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα.
παρηγορεῖτε οὖν ἑαυτούς."
εὖ πράττετε. ᾿Αθὺρ a.®
Irene to Taonnophris and
Philo, good comfort.
I was as sorry and wept
over the departed® one as
I wept for Didymas. And
all things, whatsoever were
fitting, I did, and all mine,
Epaphroditus and Ther-
muthion and Philion and
Apollonius and Plantas,
But, nevertheless, against
such things one can do
nothing. Therefore comfort
ye one another. Fare ye
well. Athyr 1.°
Endorsed :
Taovvddpe καὶ Φίλωνι.
| Τὸ Taonnophris and Philo.
Philo and Taonnophris, a married pair at Oxy-
rhynchus, have lost a son by death, and Irene, a friend
of the sorrowing mother,’ wishes to express her
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1.), No. 115. A translation is also given by
Preisigke, p. 109.
Text and notes in Ὁ. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
Griechisches Lesebuch, 1. 2°, Berlin, 1906, p. 398, and 11, 22, 1902, p. 263.
For the facsimile (Figure 23) I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Arthur
5, Hunt.
2 Preterite of the epistolary style.
+ The word was first taken as a proper name, Εὐμοίρωι. But, as pointed out
by Εἰ. J. Goodspeed, the article surely shows that the word is an adjective;
cf, Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, p. 250. This interpretation is
supported by the parallel τοῦ μακαρίου of the ancient letter-writer, cf. below
(p. 166).
4 Equivalent, I think, to ἀλλήλους, as often in the N.T., e.g. Col. iii. 16.
δ = 28 October.
* That is why Irene in the letter names the mother before the father:
Preisigke, p. 109.
FIG. 23.—Letter from Irene, an Egyptian, to a Family in
Mourning, 2nd cent. A.D. Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Now
in the Library of Yale University. Facsimile ‘kindly obtained
by Dr. Arthur 8. Hunt,
[p. 164
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 165
sympathy. She can fully understand the grief of her
friends ; she weeps over again the tears that she shed
before for her own lost one, the departed Didymas’:
personal sorrow has made her sympathetic with other
people’s trouble. She speaks therefore of her own
tears first. But she must write more than that: it is
to be a letter of consolation. Irene, who knows how
to write a business letter quickly and surely,’ experi-
ences the difficulty of those whose business it is to
console and who have no consolation to offer. And
so she ponders over sentences to fill up the sheet: it
will be a satisfaction to the mourners to hear that she
and all her family have fulfilled all the duties of
affection and decency that are customary in such
cases.? But after these lines full of names, slowly
written by great effort, the genuine feeling in her
heart breaks through, that despairing resignation which
speaks of inevitable fates. And then, illogical and
truly womanly, the concluding injunction, “ Comfort
ye one another!” Who could help feeling for the
helplessness of this woman, whose own sympathy was
assuredly so true ?
Poor Irene! It is certainly with no wish to do her
injustice that I call attention to the fact that similar
formulae of consolation were common to the age.
An ancient model letter-writer gives the following
formulary * :—
? Her husband (7) or, more probably, her son (1).
* Cf. her letter to the same family, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 116. To
judge from this, Irene was a landed proprietress.
3 Foneral offerings? Prayers? One would gladly know more.
* Proclus, De forma epistolari, No. 21 (Epistolographi Graecci, rec. Hercher,
p. 10). The authorship of this letter-writer has been sometimes attributed
to Libanins, as well as to the Neo-Platonist Proclus (cf. Karl Krumbacher,
Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur, Miinchen, 1897, p. 452, who rejects
both attributions). I regard the text as a Christian adaptation of ancient
models ; cf. the Biblical intrusions noticed in the next footnote and in the
formulary for a letter of contrition (see below, p. 181 on the letter of Antonis
Longus).
166 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
ἡ ἐπιστολή. λίαν ἡμᾶς ἡ
ἀποβίωσις τοῦ μακαρίον τοῦ
δεῖνος ἐλύπησε καὶ πενθεῖν καὶ
δακρύειν ἠνάγκασε" τοιούτου
φίλου γὰρ σπουδαίου καὶ παν-
[4 > / La
apérov ἐστερήθημεν. δόξα
οὖν καὶ αἴνεσις τῷ ἐν σοφίᾳ
Ν 2 , tA
καὶ ἀκαταλήπτῳ δυνάμει καὶ
f an aA
προνοίᾳ κυβερνῶντε θεῷ τὰς
διεξόδους τῷ θανάτῳ καὶ τὴν
ψυχὴν ἡνίκα συμφέρει παρα-
The letter. The death of
N. N., now blessed, hath
grieved us exceedingly and
constrained us to mourn and
weep; for of such an earnest
and altogether virtuous friend
have we been bereaved. Glory
then and praise be to God,
who in wisdom and incompre-
hensible power and providence
governeth the issues to death,
λαμβάνοντι. and, when it is expedient, re-
ceiveth the soul unto Himself.
If the second half of this formulary shows signs of
Biblical influence,’ the first half is obviously ancient
and secular. Irene’s letter exhibits very similar
formulae, the resemblance of the opening lines being
particularly striking. But it is not mere imitation ;
the no doubt familiar formulae are animated by the
personality of the writer, and we shall be justified in
regarding even the concluding words of resignation
as an expression of real feeling. That this feeling
was a widespread one,” and that it produced similar
thoughts in another formulary for a letter of con-
solation,* need be no objection to the view we have
taken.
St. Paul doubtless was thinking of such despairmg
souls in his letter to Thessalonica, when he inserted
these words of comfort for the Christians in trouble
for their dead * :—
1 Cf. the whole tenor and especially LXX Psalm Ixvii. [lxviii.] 20, τοῦ xuplov
ai διέξοδοι τοῦ θανάτου, “unto the Lord belong the issues from death,” and
John xiv. 8, παραλήμψομαι ὑμᾶς πρὸς ἐμαυτόν, “I will receive you unto
Myself.” ‘
. 3 Wilcken recalls a saying frequent in epitaphs, “ No one is immortal.”
3 Demetrius Phalereus, Typi epistolares, No. 5 (Epistolographi, rec, Hercher,
Pp. 2), ἐννοηθεὶς δὲ ὅτι τὰ τοιαῦτα πᾶσίν ἐστιν ὑποκείμενα. . ., “bearing in mind
that such dispensations are laid upon us all,” 4 1 Thess. iv. 13.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 167
“ But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,
concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not,
even as others which have no hope.”
And then with all the realism of an ancient popular
writer he unfolds a picture of the Christian's future
hope, culminating in the certainty *:—
« And so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
To which he immediately adds, in conclusion, the
exhortation ? :—
“ Wherefore, comfort one another with these words,”
reminding us of the ending of Irene’s letter of con-
solation,? except that behind St. Paul’s words there
is not the resignation of the “others” but a victorious
certitude, triumphing over death.
9
Letter from Apion, an Egyptian soldier in the Roman army, to his
father Epimachus, Misenum, 2nd cent. a.p., papyrus from
the Faydm, now in the Berlin Museum, published by Paul
Viereck * (Figure 24).
This splendid specimen has been frequently trans-
lated.?
1 1 Thess. iv. 17.
2 1 Thess. iv. 18.
2 Trene: παρηγορεῖτε οὖν ἑαυτούς. | St. Paul: ὥστε παρακαλεῖτε ἀλλήλους, etc.
St. Paul doubtless adopted the exhortation from the epistolary formulae of the
age (cf, also 1 Thess, v. 11, and later Heb. iii. 13). The model letter of
consolation already quoted from Demetrius Phalereus, No. 5, also ends with
the exhortation: καθὼς ἄλλῳ παρήνεσας, σαυτῷ παραίνεσον, “as thou hast
admonished another, admonish now thyself.”
4. Aegyptische Urhunden aus den Koeniglichen Museen zu Berlin (11.), No. 423
(cf. II.-p. 356). For the photograph here facsimiled by kind permission of the
directors of the Royal Museums at Berlin, I am indebted to W. Schubart. The
figure is about one-third smaller than the original,
5 By Viereck in his article in the Vossische Zeitung; by Erman and Krebs,
p. 214f.; by Cagnat, p. 796; by Preisigke, p. 101 f.
168 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
δ ᾿Απίων ᾿Επιμάχω τῶι πατρὶ καὶ
Be kupiw! πλεῖστα χαίρειν. πρὸ μὲν πάν-
a ἢ τῶν εὔχομαί σε ὑγιαίνειν 5 καὶ διὰ παντὸς
ἕξ, we ἐρωμένον εὐτυχεῖν μετὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς
5 HB μου καὶ τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ
3.83. μόυ. Εὐχαριστῶ τῷ κυρίω ὁ Σεράπιδι,
Dm ὅτι μου κινδυνεύσαντος εἰς θάλασσαν ὃ
: 3 ἔσωσε εὐθέως ὁ. ὅτε εἰσῆλθον εἰς Mn-
ἔὰ Σ σηνούς ἷ, ἔλαβα ὃ βιάτικον 3 παρὰ Καίσαρος
10 8, 9. χρυσοῦς τρεῖς. καὶ καλῶς μοί ἐστιν.
" 3 ἐρωτῶ ce οὖν, κύριέ! μου πατήρ,
SS. ηράψον μοι ἐπιστόλιον πρῶτον
ξ pay περὶ τῆς σωτηρίας 1} σου, δεύ-
δι ὃς τερον περὶ τῆς τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου,
1ὅ = & — rplé}rov, ἵνα cov προσκυνήσω τὴν
EN χᾶραν 12, ὅτι με ἐπαίδευσας καλῶς
πολ εν καὶ ἐκ τούτου ἐλπίζω ταχὺ προκό-
: : Ε σαι 13 τῶν θε[ῶ]ν θελόντων 4, ἄσπασαι 1
ἘΣΤΕ 5. ΚΚαπίτων[α πο]λλὰ 16 καὶ το[ὺς] ἀδελφούς
2 - 35 [Jou καὶ Σε[ρηνίΪλλαν καὶ το[ὺὑς] φίλους μο[υ.]
: ὃ. & Ἔπεμψά σοι εἰἸκόνιν 1 μ[ου] διὰ Εὐκτή-
sim: μόνος. ἔσ|τ]ι [δέ] μου ὄνομα ᾿Αντῶνις Μά-
Ἐπ ἡ ξιμος 15, ᾿Ερρῶσθαί σε εὔχομαι.
a Kevtupi(a) ᾿Αθηνονίκη 3,
23, The address on the back :
98 πα ται εἰἐς]1 Φ[ωλ]αδελφίαν ἢ ᾿Επιμ)ζάχω ἀπὸ
a fa en
aa ᾿Απίωνος υἱοῦ.
Two lines running in the opposite direction have been αἀαρα 3}:
᾿Απόδος εἰς χώρτην πρίμαν ᾿Απαμηνῶν ᾿Ιο[υλι]α[ν]οῦ
"Av .[..]
30 λιβλαρίω ἀπὸ ᾿Απίωνος do te Επιμάχω πατρὶ αὐτοῦ.
1 Lord, here and in 1. 11, is a child’s respectful form of address.
2 A frequent formula in papyrus letters, cf. Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 214 (not in
Bible Studies), and the similar formula in 3 John 2, περὶ πάντων εὔχομαί
σε εὐοδοῦσθαι καὶ ὑγιαίνειν, “I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper
and be in health.” Misunderstanding this formula, many commentators on
the Third Epistle of St. John have assumed that Gaius, the addressee, had
been ill immediately before.
5 This is a thoroughly “Pauline” way of beginning a letter, occurring also
elsewhere in papyrus letters (cf. for instance Bibelstudten, p. 210; it is not
given in Bible Studies), St. Paul was therefore adhering to a beautiful
Fra. 24.—Letter from Apion, an Egyptian soldier in the Roman Army, to his
father Epimachus, Misenum, 2nd cent. A.D. Papyrus from the Fayim. Now in
the Berlin Museum. By permission of the Directors of the Royal Museums,
(p. 168
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 169
Apion to Epimachus his father and lord,! many greetings.
Before all things I pray that thou art in health,’ and that thou
dost prosper and fare well continually together with my sister
and her daughter and my brother. I thank# the lord‘ Serapis
that, when I was in peril in the sea,’ he saved me immediately.®
When I came to Miseni’ I received as viaticum® (journey-
money) from the Caesar three pieces of gold. And it is well
with me. I beseech thee therefore, my lord! father, write unto
me ἃ little letter, firstly of thy health, secondly of that of my
brother and sister, thirdly that I may do obeisance to thy
hand” because thou hast taught me well and I therefore
hope to advance quickly, if the gods will.* Salute’ Capito
much 16 and my brother and sister and Serenilla and my friends.
I sent [or “am sending”] thee by Euctemon a little picture!”
of me. Moreover my name is Antonis Maximus.!* Fare thee
well, I pray. Centuria Athenonica.” There saluteth thee
Serenus the son of Agathus Daemon, and... the son of ...
and Turbo the son of Gallonius and...
The address on the back :
To Philadelphia ® for EpimXachus from Apion his son.
Two lines running in the opposite direction have been added™ :
Give this to the first Cohort of the Apamenians to (?)
x Julianus An...
the Liblarios, from Apion so that (he may convey it)
to. Epimachus his father.
secular custom when he so frequently began his letters with thanks to. God
(1 Thess, i, 2;.2 Thess, i. 3; Col. i, 3; Philemon 4; Eph. i, 16; 1 Cor. i. 4;
Rom, i. 8; Phil. 1, 8).
‘ Serapis is called Jord in countless papyri and inscriptions.
" Cf. St. Paul’s “perils in the sea,” 2 Cor. xi, 26, κινδύνοις ἐν θαλάσσῃ. The
Roman soldier writes more vulgarly than St. Paul, εἰς θάλασσαν instead of
ἐν θαλάσσῃ.
5 Cf. St. Peter in peril of the sea, Matt. xiv. 80f,, « beginning to sink, he
cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth His
hand . . .” (ἀρξάμενος καταποντίζεσθαι ἔκραξεν λέγων" κύριε, σῶσόν με,
εὐθέως δὲ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα... .). One sees the popular tone of the
evangelist’s narrative: he and the Roman soldier are undoubtedly following
the style of popular narratives of rescue.
7 There are other instances of this plural form of the name of the naval
harbour, generally called Misenum, near Naples.
(For notes 8 to 21 see next page
170 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Apion, son of Epimachus, of the little Egyptian
village of Philadelphia, has entered the Roman army
as a soldier,’ and after the farewells to father, brothers
; 1 Preisigke thinks (p. 101 ff.) as a marine.
Continuation of notes to pp. 168-9 :—
® This form is one of the many vulgarisms found also in the New Testament,.
cf. Neue Bibelstudien, p. 19; Bible Studies, p. 191.
9. The viaticum is aptly compared by Preisigke with the marching allowances
in the German army. It consists of three pieces of gold (awrei)=75 drachmae.
Alfred von Domaszewski writes to me (postcard, Heidelberg, 6 August, 1908) -
“The viaticum (cf. Corpus Inscriptionwm Latinarum, VIII. No. 2557) is
a stipendium.”
Again the “ Biblical” word.
" σωτηρία here means “welfare” in the external (not in the religious)
sense, as in Acts xxvii. 34, Heb. xi. 7. : :
12 χέραν = χεῖρα, with vulgar ν appended, like χεῖραν in John xx. 25, Codices.
N* AB; other examples in Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen
Griechisch? p. 27 [Eng. trans. p. 26].—By hand I think Apion means his
father’s handwriting, which will recall his father’s presence. A specially fine
touch in this letter of fine feeling.
18 προκόσαι no doubt = προκόψαι, “to advance,” as in Gal. i.14. The soldier
is thinking of promotion.
4 The pious reservation “if the gods will” is frequent in pagan texts, cf.
Neue Bibelstudien, p. 80; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 262.
% The writers of papyrus letters often commission greetings to various
persons, and often convey them from others (1, 25), just as St. Paul does in
most of his letters.
16 Of, the same epistolary formula in 1 Cor. xvi. 19.
” The reading here used to be σίοι τὸ ὀθ]όνιν, “the linen,” which was
understood to refer to Apion’s civilian clothes. Wilcken has re-examined
the passage in the original, and made the charming discovery that Apion sent
his father his [εἰκόνιν (= εἰκόνιον), ‘little picture ἢ (results communicated to
me in letters, Florence, 20 April, 1907, Leipzig, 5 May, 1907). It is just like
German recruits getting themselves photographed as soon as they are allowed
out of barracks alone.
8 Qn entering the Roman army Apion, not being a Roman, received a
Roman name. Antonis is short for Antonius. The passage has an important
historical bearing on the subject of changing names, cf. Harnack, Militia.
Christi, Die christliche Religion und der Soldatenstand in den ersten drei
Jahrhunderten, Tiibingen, 1905, p. 35.
19 The name of his company, given no doubt as part of the correct address
to be used in answering.
2% Philadelphia in the Fayim.
2 The cohort mentioned in these instructions for delivery was stationed
in Egypt (Preisigke, p. 102). The letter therefore went first of all from the
garrison of Misenum to the garrison of this cohort (Wilcken : Alexandria),
and the Liblarios (= librarius), i.e. accountant to the cohort, was then to
forward it, as occasion should serve, to the village in the Fayam.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS [11
and sisters, and friends, has taken ship (probably
at Alexandria) for Misenum. Serenus, Turbo, and
other recruits from the same village accompany him.
The voyage is rough and dangerous. In dire peril of
the sea the young soldier invokes his country’s god,.
and the lord Serapis rescues him immediately. Full
of gratitude, Apion reaches his first destination, the
naval port of Misenum. It is a new world to the
youth from the distant Egyptian village! Put into
the centuria with the high-sounding name “ Atheno-
nica,” with three pieces of gold in his pocket as.
viaticum, and proud of his new name Antonis.
Maximus, he immediately has his portrait painted
for the people at home by some artist who makes a.
living about the barracks, and then writes off to his
father a short account of all that has happened. The
letter shows him in the best of spirits; a rosy future
lies before Apion: he will soon get promotion, thanks.
_ to his father’s excellent training. When he thinks.
of it all, of his father, and his brother, and his sister:
with her little daughter, and Capito and his other
friends, his feelings are almost too much for him.
If only he could press his father’s hand once again |.
But father will send him a note in reply, and his.
father’s handwriting will call up the old home.
The letter is just about to be closed when his.
countrymen give him their greetings to send, and
there is just room for them on the margin of the
papyrus. Finally the letter must be addressed, and
that is a little troublesome: in the army there are
rules and regulations for everything, but to make
up for it the soldier’s letter will be forwarded by
military post, and by way of the Liblarios’ room of
the first Apamenian cohort it will reach the father in.
safety.
172 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Have I read too much between the lines of this
letter? I think not. With letters you must read
‘what is between the lines. But nobody will deny
that this soldier’s letter of the second century, with
its fresh naiveté, rises high above the average level.
We possess further the original of a second, some-
what later letter by the same writer, addressed to his
sister, which was also found in the Fayfim, and is
now in the Berlin Museum. I believe I am able
to restore a few lines additional to those already
deciphered.
10
A second letter from the same soldier to his sister Sabina, 2nd
cent. a.D., papyrus from the Fayim, now in the Berlin
Museum, published by Fritz Krebs 1 (Figure 25).
᾿Αν[τώνι]ος Μάξιμος Σαβίνη Antonius Maximus to Sabina
τῆ ἀ[δ]ελφῆ " πλεῖστα |
χαίρειν. his sister,? many greetings.
πρὸ μὲν πάντων εὔχομαί
σε ὑγιαίνειν, καὶ ᾿γὼ γὰρ
Before all things I pray that
αὐτὸς :
thou art in health, for I my-
5 ὑγιαίνίω! Mviav σου ἑ ᾿
ποιούμε- self also amin health. Making
νος ὃ παρὰ τοῖς [ἐν]θάδε
θεοῖς * mention of thee*® before the
1 Aegyptische Urhunden aus den Koeniglichen Museen zu Berlin (IL),
‘No. 632, published by Fritz Krebs; partly translated by Erman and Krebs,
p. 215, and by Preisigke, p. 103, For the facsimile (Figure 25) I am indebted
‘to the kindness of W. Schubart.
2 The sister was named in the first letter. Her daughter, not being named
in the second letter, had probably died meanwhile. It is not likely that
Sabina was a second sister of the writer, because in the first letter only one
‘sister is mentioned. The father too seems not to have been alive at the time
‘of the second letter.
8. Assurance of intercession for the receiver at the beginning of the letter
is a pious usage with ancient letter-writers, In exactly the same way St. Paul
writes μνείαν σον ποιούμενος, Philemon 4; cf. 1 Thess. i, 2, Eph. i. 16, Rom. i. 9f.,
2 Tim. i. 3; and see Bibelstudien, p. 210 (not in Bible Studies).—The participial
clause can also be taken with ὑγιαίνω (so Wilcken).
‘ See note 1 on next page.
Fig. 25,—Letter from Apion (now Antonius Maximus), an Egyptian
soldier in the Roman Army, to his sister Sabina, 2nd cent. A.D. Papyrus
from the Fayim. Now in the Berlin Museum. By permission of the -
Directors of the Royal Museums. (ἢ of the size of the original.)
[ν 172
illite
ILLUSTRATED BY
ἐκομισάμην [ὃ]ν 2 ἐπι[σ]τό-
λιον
παρὰ ᾿Αντωνεϊίνονυ τοῦ
συν-
πολ[ε]ίτου ἡμῶν. καὶ ἐπι-
γνούς
10 σε ἐρρωμένην λίαν ἐχάρην.
καὶ ᾿γὼ διὰ πᾶσαν ἀφορμὴν
ο[ὐ]χ ὀκνῶ σοι γράψαι περὶ
τῆς] σωτηρίας μου καὶ τῶν
ἐμῶν. "άσπασαι Μάξιμον"
THE NEW TEXTS 175.
gods here? I received a? little
letter from Antoninus our
fellow-citizen. And when I
knew that thou farest well, I
rejoiced greatly. And I at.
every occasion delay not to
write unto thee concerning the:
health of me and mine. Salute:
Maximus‘ much, and Copres°
my lord. There saluteth thee:
my life’s
partner, Aufidia,.
15 πολλά καὶ Korpny® τὸν
κῦρίν
μίου. ἀἸσπάξεταί σε ἡ
σύμβι-
ὅς [μον ΑἸὐφιδία καὶ [Μ]ά-
ξιμος
[ὁ vids μ]ου, [οὗ] ἐστι[ν]
τὰ γενέ-
1 Where Antonius Maximus was at
and Maximus my ® son, whose:
the time is not known. Alfred von
Domaszewski suggests Alexandria to me (postcard, Heidelberg, 6 August,
1908). The soldier now serves the gods of the place where he is garrisoned,.
as formerly he had served the lord Serapis of his native country; and this
is not without analogies, cf. the worship of local gods in the Roman army,.
von Domaszewski, Die Religion des rimischen Heeres, Trier, 1895, p. 54 ff.
2 ἕν =the indefinite article, a popular usage often found in the New
Testament, for which, according to Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen.
Griechisch,? p. 145 [Eng. trans, p.144], Hebrew affordedaprecedent, Wellhausen,,.
Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, Ὁ. 27, explains it as an Aramaism.
As.a matter of fact this usage of popular Greek, which has been still further
developed in Modern Greek, is parallel to the Semitic, Teutonic, and Romance:
usages.
* λίαν ἐχάρην is an epistolary formula like ἐχάρην λίαν in 2 John 4 and
8 John 3,
* Maximus is probably the sister’s son, who would then be named after
his uncle.
5 Copres is probably the brother-in-law.
4 So I have restored lines 18-21. I have altered nothing except rew to πειπ-
in line 19, Eze is the month Eel; for the spelling with final π᾿ οἵ, the
examples in Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. p. 809. καθ᾽ “Ἕλληνας, “ according
to the Hellenic (ὁ.6. not Egyptian) calendar,” is a technical formula; cf, the
2nd cent. horoscope, Faydm Towns and their Papyri, No. 139, καθ᾽ “EN\qvas
Μεσορὴ ε, and the editors’ note; also Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. p. 792 ff.
The nominative τριακάς is grammatically unimpeachable, for it is a predicate.
and not a statement of time (“on the thirtieth”), Even in the latter case,
174 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
[ova ᾿ΕἸπεὶπ τριακὰς καθ᾽ | birthday is the 30th Epip
σ Ex
90 [ληνα]ς, καὶ ᾿Ελπὶς καὶ according to Greek reckoning,
[ pa {a] , | and Elpis and Fortunata.
VvVaTa |. σ΄ πΊ αΙσαν TOV
κύριον Salute my lord...
There follow 6 mutilated lines, obviously containing more
salutations.
28 [ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχο]μαι. | Fare thee well, I pray.
On the verso the address :
[Σαβίνη] ἀ[δε]λφ[ἢ] ἀπ[ὸ] To Sabina his sister, from
᾿Αντ[ω]νίν Μαξίμ[ο]ν | Antonius Maximus her brother.
aderg[od].
I imagine the situation in this second letter to be
as follows :—
Years have passed. Apion, who has long ago
‘discarded this name and now uses only his soldier-
name Antonius Maximus, has taken a wife, called
Aufidia. She presents him with two daughters,
Elpis and Fortunata (the parents delight in beautiful
names with a meaning), and at last the longed-for
-son and heir. His birthday, according to the Greek
-ealendar, is 80 Epiph (24 July), and the soldier’s
child receives his father’s splendid soldier-name,
Maximus. Changes too have taken place at home,
in the far-away little village of Philadelphia, in
however, the nominative is occasionally left, ey. Berliner Griechische Ur-
“kunden, No. 55, II,, (161 a.D.), 64,, (216-217 A.D.), For the prominence given
to the birthday cf. for instance Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 333,
2nd or 8rd cent. A.D, (Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 215; notin Bible Studies).—W. Schubart
informed me by letter (Berlin, 6 June, 1907) that my conjectures fit in well
with the traces of letters remaining and with the size of the lacunae in
‘the papyrus; he approves also, in spite of doubts suggested by the hand-
writing, the reading πειπ.-.
1 Krebs wrote ἐλπίς and φόρτον. I regard both as proper names; of course
one could also conjecture Fortunatus (cf. 1 Cor. xvi. 17). As the son Maximus
has been already named, with special stress laid on his birthday, one is
‘inclined to assume here that the writer had two daughters.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 178
Egypt. The sister Sabina has lost her little daughter;
Epimachus, father and lord, has also died; but Sabina
and her husband Copres have got a little boy instead,
who is named Maximus in honour of his soldier
uncle: is not uncle’s portrait, left them by grand-
father, hanging on the wall? Sabina is the link
between her brother and his old home. He writes
as often as he can, and when he cannot write
he remembers his sister daily before the gods of his
garrison in brotherly intercession. But this is not
his only connexion with home. An old friend in
Philadelphia, Antoninus, has just written, and was
kind enough to assure him of Sabina’s being well.
That is the occasion of the letter to the sister.
Written in a perfectly familiar strain, simply to
impart family news and to convey all sorts of
greetings, it nevertheless, like that other letter of
richer content to the father, gives us a glimpse
of the close net of human relationships, otherwise
invisible, which the giant hands of the Roman army
had woven with thousands of fine, strong threads
and spread from coast to coast and from land to land
over the enormous extent of the Mediterranean
world at the time of the infancy of Christianity. In
judging of the Roman army of the second century
it is not without importance to know that among
the human materials of which that mighty organism
was composed, there were such attractive person-
alities as our friend Apion. Another soldier’s letter
(No. 12), given below, also permits favourable con-
clusions to be drawn.’
' Other soldiers’ letters, sometimes highly characteristic, are forthcoming
among the papyri. Preisigke, p. 99ff., translates the unblushing begging.
letter of a soldier to his mother, 3rd cent. a.p., Berliner Griechische
Urkunden, No. 814, =
116 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
11
Letter from a prodigal son, Antonis Longus,.to his mother
Nilus, Fayim, 2nd cent. a.v., papyrus, now in the Berlin
Museum, published by Fr. Krebs! and W. Schubart 3
(Figure 26). ἷ
᾿Αντῶνις ὃ Λόνγος Νειλοῦτι
[τ] μητρὶ πίλ]στα Χαίρειν: καὶ δι-
ὰ πάντῳ Ὁ] εὔχομαί σαι * ὑγιαίνειν. Τὸ προσκύνη-
μά σου [ποι]ῶ κατ᾽ αἱκάστην ἡμαίραν παρὰ τῶ
ὄ κυρίω [Σ΄ ερ]άπειδει. Γεινώσκειν σαι. θέλω, ὅ-
τι οὐχ [ἥλπ]ξον,ἷ ὅτι ἀναβέμις εἰς τὴν μητρό-
πολιν. σχ[ά]ρειν τοῦτο " οὐδ᾽ ἐγὸ εἰσῆθα 10 εἰς τὴν πό-
λιν. ἰδ ]σοποίύμην 1 δὲ ἐλθεῖν εἰς Kapaviba’. 3
ὅτι σαπρῶς παμρῳπατῶ. Αἴγραψά 13 σοι, ὅτε γυμνός
10 εἰμει. πρρακα[ λ]ῶ 1 σαι, μήτηρ, δ[ε]αλάγητί μοι. Δοι-
πὸν 15 οἶδα τί [ποτ᾽] [7 αἰμαυτῶ παρέσχημαι. παιπαίᾷδ-
δευμαι 18 καθ᾽ ὃν δὴ 15 τρόπον. οἶδα, ὅτι ἡμάρτηκα.39
Ἤκουσα παρὰ το[ῦ Ποστ]ρύμου ™ τὸν εὑρόντα 33 σαι
ἐν τῶ ᾿Αρσαινοείτη 3 καὶ ἀκαιρίως πάντα σοι δι-
15 ἥγηται. οὐκ οἶδες, ὅ ὅτι θέλω * πηρὸς γενέσται,᾽5
εἰ © γνοῦναι," dros 33 ἀνθρόπω 33 [ἔ]τ[] ὀφείλω ὀβολόν ;
[.-.«ὖὖ Ol «νον νιν νιν νινον͵ σὺ αὐτὴ ἐλθέ.
[ee eee ee eee ee ee χανε [. . . Jov ἤγουσα, ὅτι...
lc ke OR Aw wa ae ... 7. λησαι[. .] παρακαλῶ σαι
30 eee a τς ὡς eee eee κεν |. αἰ .]. αἰγὼ σχεδὸν
[--ττὐὐνὐ ον ννν κι ee cua o [ῳ παρακαλῶ σαι
[5 πον kG τ econ as tas ἢ ονον Ἰωνοῦυ θέλω αἰγὼ
{ποῦ dS, laa OPH a eee (CEOs ἐν ὡς DUE:
[oe αν Mra ee: sete Oe |
Here the papyrus breaks off. On the back is the address :
[....+. + ] μητρεὶ ἀπ᾽ ᾿Αντωνίω Advyou veiod.
! Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Koeniglichen Museen zu Bertin (111.),
No. 846.
2 Ibid. Heft 12, p. 6. Some conjectures by me are given below. The
photograph used for the facsimile (Fig. 26) here given by the kind per
mission of the directors of the Royal Museums was obtained for me by
W. Schubart.
[For notes 3 to 28 see pp. 178 and 179.
20
lus, 2nd cent, A.D.
Antonis Longus, to his mother Ni
Museum.
the Berl
—Letter from a Prodigal Son
Fic. 26
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Lp. 176
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 1577
There can be no doubt that this letter’ is one of
the most interesting human documents that have
come to light among the papyri. This priceless
fragment, rent like the soul of its writer, comes to
us as a remarkably good illustration of the parable
of the Prodigal Son (Luke xv. 11ff.).? Others may
improve on the first attempt at interpretation.
Antonis? Longus to Nilus his mother many greetings.
And continually do I pray that thou art in health. I make
supplication for thee daily to the lord Serapis.© I would
thou shouldst understand® that I had no hope that thou
wouldst go up to the metropolis. And therefore I came not
to the city. But I was ashamed to come to Caranis,” because
I walk about in rags. I write [or “have written” 1] to thee
that I am naked. I beseech thee,!* mother, be reconciled to
me.” Furthermore, I know what I have brought upon myself.
I have been chastened * every way. I know that I have
sinned.” 1 have heard from Postumus,2" who met thee in the
country about Arsinoé and out of season told thee all things.
Knowest thou not that I had rather be maimed than know
that I still owe a man an obol? .... come thyself! ....
I have heard that . . . . I beseech thee ....Ialmost....
I beseech thee .... Iwill .... not... . do otherwise
Here the papyrus breaks off. On the back is the address :
[- ως ὁ ] the mother, from Antonius Longus her son.
Hartly translated by Preisigke, p. 99, who also calls the writer a “ prodigal
son.
2. If this letter had happened to be preserved in some literary work there
would of course be a bundle of monographs, several pounds in weight, proving
the parable to be derived from the letter, and many a doctoral dissertation
would have been made out of it.
[For notes 3 to 21 see pp. 178 and 179
12
118 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Antonius Longus, of Caranis in the Faytim, has
quarrelled with his (widowed ?)1 mother Nilus and
left the village. The cause of the dissension seems
to have lain with the son—loose living, and running
up debts. It fares ill with him in the strange
country; he is in such wretched plight that his
clothes fall from him in rags. In such a state, he
' Otherwise there would surely have been some mention of the father.
Continuation of notes to pp. 176-7.
3 Antonis, short for Antonius, cf. letter 9 above.
4 cac=oe. Numerous repetitions of this word and similar cases are not
specially noted.
5 This sentence, occurring in innumerable papyrus letters, is the stereotyped
form of assurance of mutual intercession.
9 Epistolary formula, occurring also in St. Paul, Phil. i. 12 (with βούλομαι).
Other like formulae are frequent in the Pauline Epistles.
1 ἤλπιζον = ἤλπιζον, with the vulgar aspirate, as in the New Testament
instances ἀφελπίζω and ἐφ᾽ ἐλπίδι (Blass, Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen
Griechisch,? p. 17 [Eng. trans. p. 15]). W. Schubart examined the original
expressly and assured me by letter (Berlin, 14 June, 1907) that my conjectured
restoration of the text is quite feasible.
8 The metropolis is perhaps Arsinoé.
® =xdpw τούτου (as Schubart also pointed out in a letter to me). In the
papyri this prepositional χάριν often stands before its case; cf. for instance a
passage, somewhat similar to the present one, in the letter of Gemellus to
Epagathus, 104 a.p., Fayém Towns and their Papyri, No. 1169, ἐπὶ [=érel]
Bovredwpon [els π]όλιν ἀπελθῖν χάριν [rod] μικροῦ καὶ χάριν éxl[vou] τοῦ μετυώρου.
0 = ἐγὼ εἰσῆλθα.
" T at first conjectured ἐν[εἸκοπί τό]μην, “1 was hindered,” as in Rom. xv. 22.
From the photograph Wilcken and I came to the conjecture given above=
ἐδυσωπούμην, “1 was ashamed.” This word, which gives excellent sense, is
found more than once in translations of the Old Testament; in the letter of
Gemellus to Epagathus, 99 Α.Ὁ., Faydm Towns and their Papyri, No. 112,.;
‘and in another letter, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 128,, 6th or 7th cent. A.D.
Further particulars in the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae. W. Schubart, writing
to me from Berlin, 3 October, 1907, proposed after fresh examination of the
original κατ[εἸσκοπούμην. But that, I think, would not make sense. Schubart’s
reading, however, is a warning to be cautious in accepting mine.
12 Caranis (a village in the Fayim) was probably the writer’s home and the
residence of his mother.
15 Refers probably to the present letter.
“4 This verb, which occurs several times here, is used exactly as in the New
‘Testament.
8 Of, Matt. v. 24, διαλλάγηθι τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου, “ be reconciled to thy brother.”
16. Adverbial, without article, as in 2 Tim. iv. 8, 1 Thess, iv. 1.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 179
says to himself with burning shame,’ it is impossible
for him to return home. But he must go back—he
‘realises that, for he had soon come to his senses:
all this misery he has brought upon himself by his
own fault, and it is the well-deserved punishment.
Full of yearning for home he remembers his mother
in prayer daily to the lord Serapis, and hopes for
1 The word, if rightly read, is extraordinarily expressive. An ancient
lexicographer says, δυσωπεῖσθαι ἀντὶ τοῦ ὑφορᾶσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι καὶ μεθ᾽ ὑπονοίας
σκυθρωπάζειν, “ the word δυσωπεῖσθαι means ‘to stand with downcast eyes,’ ‘ to
be fearful, and figuratively ‘to look sad and gloomy’” (see the Thesaurus
Graecae Linguae). The position reminds one of Luke xviii. 13, says Heinrich
Schlosser (postcard to the author, Wiesbaden, 2 July, 1908).
Continuation of notes to pp. 176-7.
17 The restoration of the text is uncertain.
18 The word is used exactly in the “ Biblical” sense of “chasten,” which
according to Cremer, Biblisch-theologisches Worterbuch, Ὁ. 792, is “ entirely
unknown to profane Greek.”
” = δὴ. Virtually καθ᾽ ὃν δὴ τρόπον = καθ’ ὅντινα οὖν τρόπον, 2 Macc. xiv. 3,
3 Mace. vii. 17. The reading δίτροπος, “with two souls,” can hardly be enter-
tained. Wilcken makes a good suggestion : δῖ = δεῖ,
” Cf. the Prodigal Son, Luke xv. 18, 21, “Father, I have sinned,”
7 ΤῸ is best to assume some proper name here. I at first thought of
[Ac]évuov, but I now prefer the reading adopted above, although the space is
somewhat small for so many letters. The name Postumus occurs often in the
Berlin papyri, but must remain doubtful here.
# The construction is graramatically incorrect, but such cases are frequent
in letters, Preisigke (p. 99) translates the sentence differently.
23 « Nome,” “ district,” must be understood.
* θέλω with following 4 (papyrus εἴ, “I had rather. ..than.. «7 is
used exactly like this in 1 Cor. xiv. 19.
% The first editors read παρασγενεσται, which I at first took for παρασιαίνεσθαι
( σιγαίνω = σιαίνω, as ὑγιγαίνω = ὑγιαίνω, Karl Dieterich, Ontersuchungen zur
Geschichte der griechischen Sprache, p.91f.). With the photograph to help
me I read πηρος. Schubart tells me (letter, 3 October, 1907) this reading is
possible.
38 = le
2 = γνῶναι.
* This reading was also approved by Schubart (letter, 3 October, 1907) after
inspecting the original. ὅπως is used vulgarly like πῶς = ὡς = ὅτι (Blass,
Grammatik des Neutestamentlichen Griechisch? p. 235f. [Eng. trans.
pp. 230-1] ; Hatzidakis, Hinleitung in die neugriechische Grammatih, p. 19),
e.g. Mark xii, 26, dvéyore..., πῶς εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ θεός (quotation follows), and
many other passages, I find this use of ὅπως beginning in Luke xxiv. 20,
180 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
an opportunity of re-establishing communication with
her. Then he meets an acquaintance of his, Postu-
mus (ἢ). He hears how Postumus (?) had met his
mother in the Arsinoite nome, as she was returning
home from the metropolis, Arsinoé, (to Caranis,)
and how the poor woman had hoped to find her
son at the metropolis. Unfortunately Postumus (?)
recounted to the disappointed mother the whole
scandalous story of the runaway once more, reckon-
ing up his debts for her edification to the last obol.
That is the occasion of the letter: gratitude to
the mother for having looked for him, as he had
not ventured to hope, in the metropolis—and anger
at Postumus (?) the scandal-monger. The letter is
dashed off in a clumsy hand and full of mistakes, for
Antonius Longus has no practice in writing. The
prodigal approaches his mother with a bold use of
his pet name Antonis, and after a moving descrip-
tion of his misery there comes a complete confession
of his guilt and a passionate entreaty for reconcilia-
tion. But in spite of everything, he would rather
remain in his misery, rather become a cripple, than
return home and be still one single obol in debt to
the usurers. The mother will understand the hint
and satisfy the creditors before the son’s return. And
then she is to come herself and lead her son back
into an ordered way of life — — — — — —
“41 beseech thee, I beseech thee, I will..... ‘
—no more than this is recoverable of the remainder
of the letter, but these three phrases in the first
person are sufficiently characteristic. Antonius has
a foreboding that there is still resistance to be
overcome.’
1 A somewhat different explanation of the letter is attempted by Ad. Matthaei,
in the Preussische Jahrbiicher, January 1909, p. 133 f.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 181
Astute persons and models of correct behaviour
will tell us that the repentance of this black sheep
was not genuine; that sheer poverty and nothing
else wrung from him the confession of sin and the
entreaty for reconciliation ; that the lines assuring his
mother of his prayers to Serapis were mere phrasing.
But was not the prodigal’s confession in the Gospel
parable also dictated by his necessity? Jesus does
not picture to us an ethical virtuoso speculating
philosophically and then reforming, but a poor
‘wanderer brought back to the path by suffering.
Another such wanderer was Antonius Longus the
Egyptian, who wrote home in the depths of his
misery: “I beseech thee, mother, be reconciled to
me! I know that I have sinned.”
We see very plainly how genuine and true to life
it all is when we compare the tattered papyrus sheet
with a specimen letter of contrition, ship-shape and
ready for use, as drafted by an ancient model letter-
writer + :-—
The letter. I know that I
erred in that I treated thee ill.
Wherefore, having repented, I
beg pardon for the error. But
for the Lord’s sake? delay not
to forgive me. For it is just
ἡ ἐπιστολή. οἶδα σφαλεὶς
κακῶς σε διαθέμενος. διὸ με-
ταγνοὺς τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ σφάλματι
συγγνώμην αἰτῶ. μεταδοῦναι
δέ μοι μὴ κατοκνήσῃς διὰ τὸν
κύριον. δίκαιον γάρ ἐστι συγ-
, i Lad tf
γινώσκειν πταίουσι τοῖς φίλοις,
ὅτε μάλιστα καὶ ἀξιοῦσι συγ-
γνώμης τυχεῖν.
to pardon friends who stumble,
and especially when they desire
to obtain pardon.*
The person who calls himself “1 " in this letter is
a lay-figure, and not even a well-made one; when
1 Proclus, De forma epistolari, No. 12 (Epistolographi Graect, rec, Hercher,
p. 9). Of. the note on letter No. 8 above, p. 165, n. 4.
? This formula is undoubtedly Christian (1 Cor. iv. 10; 2 Cor. iv. 11;
Phil. iii. 7, 8).
3 Probably a faint echo of Luke xvii. 4.
182 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Antonis Longus says “I do this or that” a man of
flesh and blood is speaking, and it would make no
difference to the inward truth of his touching con-
fessions if his “1 know that I have sinned” were as
much a current formula as the “I know that I
erred.” The prodigal had gone through experiences
enough to animate even formulae into confessions.
12
Letter from Aurelius Archelaus, beneficiarius, to Julius Domitius,
military tribune, Oxyrhynchus, 2nd cent. 4.p., papyrus,
now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, discovered and
published by Grenfell and Hunt? (Figure 27).
This letter is of great interest in various respects :
as a good example of an ancient letter of recommen-
dation,’ as an early Latin letter, as a specimen of
vulgar Latin*® of the date of the Muratorian Canon.
Scholars of repute have even considered it to be
a Christian letter—and if that were so its value,
considering its age, would be unique.
I have retained the remarkable punctuation by
means of stops. The clear division of the words
should also be noticed.* ᾿
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1.) No.32. The facsimile there given (Plate VIII.)
is reproduced here (Figure 27) by permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
The last part of the letter, which was discovered later, is given by Grenfell
and Hunt in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part II. p, 318f. It comprises
lines 22-34.
2 Cf. p. 158 above.
3 Observe the marked use of parataxis, and cf. p.128 ff. above.
‘ The two little fragments to the right below (on a level with ll. 20, 21)
read respectively 180. and ]gwia[.
ἼΟ
15
20
Fie. 27.—Letter from Aurelius Archelaus, beneficiarius, to Julius Domitius,
military tribune, lines 1-24, 2nd cent. A.D. Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, Now in
the Bodleian Library, Oxford. By permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
τ. 100
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 183
I|uio Domitio! tribuno To Julius Domitius,! mili-
mil(itum) leg(ionis) ‘tary tribune of the legion,
αὖ' Aurelio) Archelao be- | som Aurelius Archelaus his
nef(iciario) ins
suo salutem beneficiarwus, peeing:
iam ἐλθὲ et pristine commen- Already aforetime I have
5 daueram Theonem amicum | recommended unto thee Theon
TU ᾿ modo guloque peto my friend, and now also I
doen Seen a Gas pray, lord,? that thou mayest
habeas® tanquam: me** est e- . ;
nim: tales omo® ut ametur | bave* him before thine eyes as
10 a te’ reliquit- enim su[o]s [6]} | myself.* For he is such a man
rem suam et actum et me that he may be loved by thee.
secutus est®. et per omnia | Foy he left his own people, his
me
se[clurum,fecit* et ideo peto goods and business, and fol-
a te’ ut habeat intr[o}itum: lowed me.° And through all
15 at te’. et omnia tibi refere- | things he hath kept me in
re potest’ de actu|m] nos- | safety, And therefore I pray
hea f thee that h h
quitquit m[e d}iait' []}- ΠΕΣ ete oe ee
[2] οἱ factLum . ἐν 611] entering in unto thee.’ And
amaui h[o}min{e]m [.........] he is able to declare unto thee
20 ml.....] set der [......... ] | all things concerning our busi-
Bp al Sore eke tie) ness.2 Whatsoever he hath
Nm. serv huid etn aa senieel ᾿ :
εἴ... Ἢ i hee eee ] told me, so it was in very
AL. ....006-[[......- ...] | deed.® I have loved the man
1 The subordinate politely places the name of his superior officer first,
cf. p. 160 above. Alfred von Domaszewski (postcard, Heidelberg, 6 August,
1908) refers to the forms of an official report; actus (1. 16) he takes to be
“conduct of my office,” the writer’s conscience being not quite easy on that
score. In line 26 my correspondent would conjecture suc]cessoris, supposing
the soldier about to be relieved of his post.
2 Lord is a polite form of address,
* For this phrase, which recurs in 1, 31f., cf. mpd ὀφθαλμῶν λαμβάνειν,
2 Mace. viii. 17, 3 Mace. iv. 4, and the Tebtunis Papyri, No. 28,, (circa 114 B.0.),
with Cronert, Wochenschrift fiir klassische Philologie, 20 (1903) col. 457 ; πρὸ
ὀφθαλμῶν τιθέναι, Epistle of Aristeas, 284, and Berliner Griechische Urkunden,
No. 362 Vee, (215 A.D.); and actually mpd ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχειν in an inscription at
Talmi, Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Insoriptiones Selectae, No. 210, (circa
[For notes 4 to 11 see next page.
184
25 tor.t..[...] ico[.........-]
illum: ut (.. .Jupse[.....
inter (?)-|
cessoris ult i|llum co[mmen-
darem (?)]
estote felicissi[mi domine
mul-| 12
tis annis cum [tuts omni-
bus (ἢ
30 ben[e agentes]
hanc epistulam ant’ ocu-
ἐο5 18 habeto domine puta[t]o
me tecum loqui 4
wale
On the verso
35 IOVLIO DOMITIO TRI-
THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
aoe lord 66" ex that te. 2s
have ....and....(fr)iend
.... himas.... mediator
that I would recommend (?)
him. Be ye most happy, lord,
many years, with all thine, in
good health. Have this letter
before thine eyes,! lord, and
think that I speak with thee.!4
Farewell.
the address : 15
To Julius Domitius, military
BVNO MILITVM LE-
G(IONIS)
ab: Aurelio: Archelao: b(ene-
Jjiciario) ciarius.
247 A.D.). Another inscription of the reign of Hadrian, from Pergamum,
Athenische Mitteilungen, 24 (1899) p. 199, should be compared. I note these
passages, because people might easily scent a Hebraism here.
* Cf. St. Paul, Philemon 17, προσλαβοῦ αὐτὸν ws ἐμέ, “ receive him as myself.”
5 =talis homo. With omo cf. odie, in the Muratorian Canon, 1. 11.
5 Cf. Matt. xix. 27 = Mark x. 28 = Luke xviii. 28, “Lo, we have left all, and
‘have followed Thee.” Cf. also Matt. iv. 20, 22.
7 Cf. St. Paul, 1 Thess. i. 9, ὁποίαν εἴσοδον ἔσχομεν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, “what manner
of entering in we had unto you.”
8 =de actu (or acto) nostro, Cf. ad nobis, Muratorian Canon, 1.47. For
the whole sentence cf. St. Paul, Col. iv. 7, τὰ κατ᾽ ἐμὲ πάντα γνωρίσει ὑμῖν Τυχικός,
“all my affairs shall Tychicus make known unto you.”
® The conjectured restoration of the text is uncertain. Grenfell and Hunt:
“ Whatever he tells you about me you may take as a fact.”
1 Hugo Koch, writing to me from Braunsberg, 25 November, 1908, con-
jectured a relative clause with the subjunctive here. He quoted Ambrosius,
De Obitu Theodosii, c. 34 (Migne, Patr. Lat. 16, col. 1459), “ dileaxt virum, qui
magis arguentem quam adulantem probaret.”
" Here begins the second and more recently discovered fragment.
12 Grenfell and Hunt conjecture to- instead of mul-.
18 See p. 183, n. 3.
“ This pretty observation should be compared with the ancient comparison
of a letter to a conversation, quoted below, p. 218, n. 1.
‘5 The address is written on fragment I.
tribune of the legion, from
Aurelius Archelaus, benefi-
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 18ὅ
The situation in this letter is quite clear, and
needs no reconstruction. It is only necessary to
say something about the theory, first advanced by
N. Tamassia and G. Setti in collaboration,’ and
approved by P. Viereck,’ that the letter was
written by a Christian. In support of it we are
referred to the various “Biblical” and _ especially
“New Testament” echoes it contains, the chief
being a striking parallel to the words of St. Peter,
“Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee.”
In conscious or unconscious recollection of these
Gospel words, we are told, Archelaus writes of
Theon that he had left his own people, his posses-
sions, and business, and had followed him—so
that Archelaus at least must be regarded as a
Christian.’ There is certainly something alluring
about this theory, but nevertheless I am not able
to accept it. If Archelaus were a Christian it is
extremely unlikely, I think, that he would have
profaned St. Peter’s words by applying them to the
relations of an ordinary human friendship. The
double concept of leaving and following is employed
by St. Peter in the deepest sense of evangelical self-
denial and refers to the disciples and the Master.
But the expression “leave and follow” is quite likely
to have been one of the stock phrases used in ancient
letters of recommendation ; in the Gospel it acquires
ethical status. The other “ Biblical” and particularly
“ Pauline” echoes are explainable in the same way.
Archelaus was not acquainted with the Pauline
? Due Papiri d’Oxirinco. An offprint from the Atti del R. Istit. Veneto di
Scienze, etc., t. 59, Venezia, 1900. I know this paper only from Viereck’s
review (see next note).
2. Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, 21 (1901) col. 907 f.
3 Viereck, col. 907.
186 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Epistles,’ but Paul and Archelaus were acquainted
with the complimentary phraseology employed in
ancient letter-writing.
To the historian of manners this letter of Aurelius
Archelaus is a speaking testimony to the noble,
unreserved humanity that was possible in the Roman
army of the second century, even in the relations
between a subordinate and his superior.
13
Letter from Harpocras, an Egyptian, to Phthomonthes, 29 Decem-
ber, 192 .p., ostracon from Thebes, now in the author's
collection, deciphered by U. Wilcken (Figure 28).
A delivery-order in letter-form, perfectly simple
and unassuming, but interesting in style and language.
‘Aptroxpas Φθομώ(ν)θη Harpocras to Phthomonthes,
χαίρειν. greeting. Give to Psenmonthes,
Δὸς Ψενμ(ών)θη Παὼ καὶ | the son of Pao, and to Plenis,
Πλήνι Παουώσιο(ς) the son οὗ Pauosis, of Phmau,
ano Φμαῦ γεωργοῖς λίμνης | husbandmen of the lake, 5
is (artabae) of wheat, to make
ate mipaowy | Neyiiarral) up the 35 (artabae) of wheat
Ne. ὃ
τ They are 35 (artabae) of wheat.
5 LAg// TdR(e) ὃ. :
! καὶ ἤδη more δὸς τῇ ἐμ | In the year 33, Tybi 3. And
παιδίσκη Ἷ now at length give to my maid
tas τοῦ fy & | the 3? artabae of wheat.
| What a significance for the history of the canon would attach to quotations
from St. Paul found in an unknown person’s letter in the second century !
How pleased we should be to be able to believe the letter Christian !
2 So read by Hermann Diels (letter to the author, Berlin W., 22 July, 1908).
3 The same ἀπό that has been so often misunderstood in Heb. xiii. 24; cf.
my little note in Hermes, 33 (1898) p. 344. As on the ostracon people at
Phmau are meant, so no doubt in the Epistle to the Hebrews οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς ᾿Ιταλίας
(‘they of Italy,” A.V., R.V.) means people in Italy.
4. Contraction for πυροῦ, “ wheat.” 5. ἤδη ποτέ is used as in Rom. i. 10.
5 ἐμός unemphatic as, for example, in Rom. x. 1.
7 Meaning, as in the New Testament, a “ female slave.”
Fic. 28.—Letter from Harpocras, an Egyptian, to Phthomonthes, 29 December, 192 A.D. Ostracon
from Thebes. Now in the Author’s collection.
[p. 186
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 187
14
Letter from Theon, an Egyptian boy, to his father Theon, 2nd
or 3rd cent. .D., papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, now in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, discovered and published by
Grenfell and Hunt ! (Figure 29).
This letter, written in a schoolboy’s uncial hand, is
of the highest importance for a variety of reasons:
it is at once a picture of ancient family life, a portrait.
of a naughty boy drawn by himself, and a specimen
of the most uncultivated form of popular speech.
Blass’s? remark, that the boy “ violates” grammar,
is about as true as if I were to call a sloe-hedge a
violation of the espalier. At the outset Theon had
no grammar to suffer humiliation and violence at.
a later stage of his career. He had merely the
language of the streets and the playground, and
that language the rogue speaks also in his letter.
The spelling too is “very bad,” says Blass—
as if the boy had been writing an examination
exercise ; but from this “bad” (really on the whole
phonetic) spelling the Greek scholar can learn more
than from ten correct official documents. The style
I recommend to the consideration of all who are
specialists in detecting the stylistic features character-
istic of the Semitic race.
Θέων Θέωνε τῶ πατρὶ χαίρειν.
καλῶς ἐποίησες:2 οὐκ ἀπένηχές * με μετ᾽ ἐ-
σοῦ εἰς πόλιν. ἠ " οὐ θέλις 1 ἀπενέκκειν ὃ με-
τ᾽ ἐσοῦ " εἰς ᾿Αλεξανδρίαν, οὐ μὴ γράψω σε ἐ- ,
? The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (1.) No. 119, cf. Il. p. 320. See also U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Géttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1898, p. 686;
F. Blass, Hermes, 34 (1899) p. 312 ff.; Preisigke, p. 110f. Grenfell and Hunt,
it seems, did not adopt all Blass’s suggestions. I follow their readings. For
the facsimile (Figure 29) I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Arthur 8. Hunt.
2 Page 312.
3 = ἐποίησας. 5 = σου, formed like ἐμοῦ, common. 7 = θέλεις.
‘ = ἀπήνεγκες. ® ἘΞ εἰ, 8 = ἀπενεγκεῖν..
18. THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
5 πιστολήν, οὔτε λαλῶ σε, οὔτε υἱγένω 1 σε
εἶτα. ἂν 2 δὲ ἔλθης εἰς ᾿Αλεξανδρίαν, οὐ
μὴ λάβω χεῖραν ὃ παρά [σἼου, οὔτε πάλι * χαίρω
σε λυπόν. ἂμ μὴ ὃ θέλης ἀπενέκαι ἴ με],
ταῦτα yelilvere.® καὶ ἡ μήτηρ μου εἶπε ’Ap-
10 χελάω, ὅτι ἀναστατοῖ με' ἄρρον ὃ αὐτόν.
καλῶς δὲ ἐποίησες. δῶρά μοι ἔπεμψεϊς] 11
μεγάλα, ἀράκια. πεπλάνηκαν ἡμῶς 13 ἐκε[],
TH ἡμέρα ιβ ὅτι." ἔπλευσες.4 λυπὸν ὃ πέμψον ells]
με, παρακαλῶ σε. ἂμ μὴ ὃ πέμψης, οὐ μὴ φά-
15 yo, οὐ μὴ πείνω.15 ταῦτα.
ἐρῶσθέ "δ σε εὔχ(ομαι).
Τῦβι τη.
On the verso the address :
ἀπόδος Θέωνι [ἀ]πὸ Θεωνᾶτος vid.
Theon to Theon his father, greeting. Thou hast done νμῈ]].17
“Thou hast not carried me with thee to the town. If thou wilt
not carry me with thee to Alexandria, I will not write thee 18
a letter, nor speak thee,!® nor wish thee health. But if thou
goest 1" to Alexandria, I will not take hand from thee, nor greet
thee again henceforth.” If thou wilt not carry me, these things
come to pass. My mother also said to Archelaus, “he driveth
me mad *!: away with him.” But thou hast done well.!’_ Thou
1 = ὑγιγένω (= ὑγιγαίνω from ὑγιαίνω, Karl Dieterich, Untersuchungen, p. 91 f.
and p. 179, n. 25 above).
2 = ἐὰν,
3 = χεῖρα.
‘ = πάλιν as in the oldest Christian papyrus letter extant (No. 16 below,
TIise.)
5 = λοιπόν.
6 = ἐὰν μὴ as in the letter of the Papas Caor (No. 19 below).
7 = ἀπενέγκαι. 0 = ἐποίησας. 18 = bre?
8. = γίνεται. N= ἔπεμψας. M ς- ἔπλευσας.
9 = ἄρον. 12 = ἡμᾶς. 8 = πίνω.
16 = ἐρρῶσθαί. 1 Tronical.
18 The word in the original has the form of the accusative. This is not
an outrage on grammar, but a symptom that the dative was beginning to
disappear in the popular language.
19 That is to say: alone, without taking the son.
39 λοιπόν, as used frequently in St. Paul’s letters.
21 The “New Testament” dvacraréw, cf. p. 80 above.
22 ἄρον is used exactly like this in John xix. 15.
Ls
My
Fie. 29.—Letter from Theon, an Egyptian boy, to his father Theon, 2nd or 3rd cent. A.D.
Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Facsimile kindly obtained
by Dr. Arthur 5. Hunt.
[Ρ. 188
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 189
hast sent me great! gifts—locust-beans.? They deceived ὁ us 4
there on the 12th day, when thou didst sail. Finally,’ send
for me, I beseech thee. If thou sendest not, I will not eat.
nor drink.6 Even 8ο. Fare thee well, I pray. Tybi 18.
On the verso the address :
Deliver to Theon from Theonas® his son.
A nice handful, this boy! He has wrought his.
mother to such a pitch that she is almost beside
herself and has but one wish: “ Away with him!”
And the father is no better treated. Little Theon
is determined at all costs to share in the journey to.
Alexandria planned by Theon the elder. There
have already been several scenes about it, and the
father, who has no need of the urchin on his long
journey, can think of no other way out of the diffi-
culty but to start on the voyage to the capital,
Alexandria, under the pretext of a little trip “to:
the town” (probably Oxyrhynchus).’? This was on
7 January. The weak father’s conscience pricks him
for his treachery, and so he sends a little present to
console the boy he has outwitted—some locust-beans.
! Blass and Preisigke take “great” with the word which I have translated
“locust-beans.” Our interpretation makes the irony clearer,
2 Perhaps something like the husks which the Prodigal Son (Luke xv. 16):
would fain have eaten.
3 πλανάω, as frequently in the New Testament.
4 Us = probably Theon and (his brother?) Archelaus, 5 See p. 188, n. 20..
8 This recalls the curse under which the Jewish zealots bound themselves,
“that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul” (Acts xxiii.
12, 21), Wetstein, Vovwn Testamentum Graecum, II. p. 615, quotes similar
formulae from Rabbinic sources,
7 After ταῦτα we must probably understand γίνεται (cf. 1.9). ΟἿ, the abrupt
ταῦτα in inscriptions: Eduard Loch, Festschrift ... Ludwig Friedlaender
dargebracht von seinen Schiilern, Leipzig, 1895, p. 289ff.; R. Heberdey and
E. Kalinka, Denkschriften der Kais. Akad. ἃ. Wissensch. zu Wien, Phil.-hist.
Classe, 45 (1897) 1 -bh. pp. 5 £,, 53,
8 Theonas is the pet-form of the name Theon.
® Isurmise that Theon’s home was some little place on the Nile (cf. ἔπλευσες,
1, 13), south of Oxyrhynchus, which would then be ‘ the town ” referred to.
199 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
for him to eat, which the father perhaps thought would
be a treat for him so early in the year. But he was
mistaken there. As day after day goes by and the
father does not return from “the town,” the victim
sees through the plot. He knows now why he was
not allowed to go with his father this time to “the
town”; he sees now why he received the fine present
—fine present indeed, why the poor people eat those
locust-beans'! Burning with rage, he sits down to
write on 13 January. Having found out that his father
was to stop somewhere en route, he composes this
blackmailing letter we have before us. Impudent,
ironical, with childish wilfulness he pours out his
threats. He will stop doing everything that a well
brought-up child should do to its parents—wishing
‘them good-day, shaking hands, wishing them health,
writing nice letters. Worst threat of all, he will
‘starve to death of his own free will. That will bring
daddy round, the device has never failed yet. And
‘still with all his defiant naughtiness Theon can con-
trive a tolerable joke. His mother had cried in
desperation to (his brother ?) Archelaus, “ He drives
me mad, away with him,” and Theon is quick-witted
enough to turn this into an argument with his father
for travelling to Alexandria after all! The same
derisive artfulness is apparent in the address. On
the outside of a letter bristling with impudence he
has mischievously written as the name of the sender
Theonas, the father’s pet name for his pampered child.
Did Theon the elder, to whom such a letter could
be written, do what the naughty boy wanted at last ?
The outlines which the son has unconsciously drawn
of his father’s portrait certainly do not encourage us
to answer the question in the negative.
1 Cf. Blass, p. 314.
Fig. 30.—Letter from Pacysis, an Egyptian, to his son, about the 8rd cent. A.D. Ostracon from
Thebes. Now in the Author’s collection.
[p. :
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW ΤΕΧῚΊΒ 191]
15
Letter from Pacysis, an Egyptian, to his son, about the
3rd cent. a.D., ostracon from Thebes, now in the author’s
collection, deciphered by U. Wilcken’ (Figure 30).
Πακῦσις Πατσέβθιο(ς) τῶ Pacysis, the son of Pat-
ae μου χί(αίρειν). sebthis, to my son, greeting.
« > Ἃ, La ( *
eS Sere ae μετῷ | Contradict not. Ye have dwelt
OT, ρατιῶώτου ἢ .
[au ?|enoare <2>xet. μ[ηδ]ὲ | there with a soldier. But re-
παραδέ- τ νὴ ; ceive him not till I come to
[fn αὐτό ἕως ἔλθω πρὸς you,
ἡμᾶς
5[ ἸΞρυτῶν ἔρρωσο Ὁ we ee ee Farewell.
In its wretchedly sorry state this greatly faded
ostracen is a typical example of a poor man’s
letter in ancient times. Theon, the father whose
acquaintance we made in the last letter, was
obviously better off, but would he, we wonder, ever
have been able, like Pacysis, in dealing with his
son to use such a wholesomely rough expression as
**Contradict not” ?
1 Wilcken examined the ostracon on two occasions, once in the autumn of
1904, and again at the beginning of 1907. Not all that was visible in 1904 can
be read now.
2 The punctuation is doubtful. 1 at first thought of reading μὴ ἀντιλογήσης
“μετὰ στρατιώτου, “dispute not with a soldier,’ when μετὰ would be used as it is
frequently in the New Testament and elsewhere after rodeuéw.
3 ἡμᾶς must certainly mean ὑμᾶς; this confusion, of which there are
countless instances in MSS. of the New Testament, arose in consequence of
doth words being pronounced alike, imas.
192 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
16
Letter from an Egyptian Christian at Rome to his fellow-
Christians in the Arsinoite nome, between 264 (265) and
282 (281) a.v., papyrus from Egypt (probably the
Fayim), formerly in the collection of Lord Amherst
of Hackney at Didlington Hall, Norfolk, published by
Grenfell and Hunt? (Figure 31).
This papyrus is at present the oldest known
autograph letter in existence from the hand of a
Christian, and in spite of being badly mutilated it
is of great value.
From external characteristics the fragment was
dated between 250 and 285 a.p. by Grenfell and
Hunt, who deciphered and first published it, and
their chronology has been brilliantly confirmed by
an observation of Harnack’s.? He found that the
“pope Maximus” mentioned in the letter was
Bishop Maximus of Alexandria, who was in office
from 264 (265) to 282 (281) a.p.
Little has yet been done towards the restoration
of the text. Two other texts contained on the same
precious fragment have from the first somewhat
diverted attention from the letter itself. A few lines
from the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews
have been written above the second column of the
letter in an almost contemporary hand,’ while on
the back Dr. J. Rendel Harris was the first to
recognise a fragment of Genesis i. 1-5 in Aquila’s
} The Amherst Papyri, Part I. No. 3a, with a facsimile in Part II. Plate 25,
which I here reproduce by the kind permission of the late Lord Amherst of
Hackney. The reproduction (Fig. 31) is about half the size of the original.
2 Sitzungsberichte der Kéniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
zu Berlin, 1900, p. 987 ff. Harnack thinks there is much to be said for the
theory that the papyrus contains two letters, Then, I think, we should have to
assume that the fragment was a leaf of the writer’s letter copy-book (cf. below,
p. 227, the remarks on Rom. xvi.). But the most probable assumption is that
we have only one letter here,
3 See the facsimile.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 196
translation preceded by the Septuagint parallel in a
handwriting of the age of Constantine.
So far as I know C. Wessely' is the only one
who has attempted to restore the missing parts of
the letter. My own attempt, here given,’ agrees in
several places independently with his. I feel obliged
to point out that parts of the attempted restoration
of the text are extremely hypothetical. But com-
bined effort is necessary for the solution of such
tasks, and I should be the first to discard these
conjectures in favour of better ones.
Cotumn I
contains the remains of 10 lines, not deciphered by Grenfell
and Hunt. A re-examination of the original is greatly to be
desired, but merely from the facsimile I should not venture
to say anything.
Cotumn II
rae ee eer Jvovy gov no ἀννυ[ώνης]
~[... . ἐξο]διάσαι τὴν κριθὴν... |
ἐκ Tod [αὐτοῦ] λόγου [καὶ] μὴ τὸ αὐτ[ὸ]
φροντ[ἰσωσι]ν οἷον καὶ εἴρητω“. [.. Jo
5 ἐνθηκ[ῶν ἀπο]στελλομένων πρὸς
αὐτὸν ἀπὸ] τῆς ᾿Αλεξανδρείας. καὶ
προφάσεΪις] καὶ ἀναβολὰς καὶ ἀνα-
δόσις " ποιησάμενος οὐχ οἴομαι αὐτ[ὸ]ν
ταῦτα [δίχα] αἰτίας οὕτος ὁ πεφρονι-
10 κέναιϊ, εἰ δὲ καὶ ἂν νῦν αὕτη ἡ περισ-
σότης ἡ συμβεβηκυῖαν ὃ μὴ ποιήσαι
λόγον, is τὸ καλῶς ἔχειν τ[ ελ]εῖν εὖ
1 Patrologia Orientalis, Tome IV. Fascicule 2, p. 135-ff.
? Cf. also a short notice in the Supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung
(Munich), 1900, No. 250.
3 This conjecture is not certain, but U. Wilcken agrees with me in thinking
it probable. The Latin annona often appears as a borrowed word in Greek
papyri. 4 = εἴρητο.
5 = ἀναδύσεις. 7 = πεφρονηκέναι,
5 = οὕτως, 8 = συμβεβηκνῖα.
18
194 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
ἀνέχομαι. εἰ δὲ εἰ. εν ν «| ἄρτοις πά-
re? πεπράςιν 3 ο ie Ty eg [. Ju ded μ[ι]κρὸν. γε-
15 νέσθαι πρὸς τὴν Ls ole ss bd Νῖλον
καὶ τὸν πατέρα ᾿Απολλῶνιν εἰς
A..7T.....4@. ἐπέστειλάν τε
παραχρ[ἢμ]α τὸ ἀργύριον ἐξοδιασ-
θῆναι ὑμῖν. ὃ καὶ καταγάγειται ᾿
20 is τὴν ᾿Αλεξάνδριαν ὠνησάμε-
γον ὃ ἀόνας δ παρ' ὑμῖν ἐν τῷ ’Apowo-
[ε]ίτη. τοῦτο γὰρ συνεθ é]uny Πρει-
μειτείνω, ὥστε τὸ ἀργύριον αὐτ[ῶῷ] és
τ[ὴν] ᾿Α[λε]ξάνδριαν ἐξωδιασθῆναι .' :
25 [(ἔτους).}} Παῦνι ἢ ἀπὸ Ῥώμης 8
Cotumn III
Καλῶς οὖν ποιήσαντες, ἀδελφοί,]
ὠνησάμενο]9 τὰ ὀθόνια. ἔπειτά τι-]
ves ἐξ ἡμ[ῶ]ν 3 τὸν αἴ... . .... λαβέτωσ- ] 11
αν σὺν αὐτοῖς ἐξορμ[ήσαντες πρὸς]
5 Μάξιμον τὸν πάπαν" καὶ... .....}7}
= ἄρτους Ἷ ? = πάλιν, as in Theon’s letter above, No. 14.
3. = rempd<ka>ow ? 4 = καταγάγετε. 5 = ὠνησάμενοι
5 Grenfell and Hunt cite from Epicharmus ἀών as the name of a fish. They
observe—very rightly—that this is not likely to be the word here. We may
assume with Wessely that ὀθόνας was the word intended (cf. column III),
Hermann Diels writes to me (Berlin W., 22 July, 1908): “ ὀθόνας is suggested
by the sense, but there is not room enough for it. Is it possible that the word
there was ἀόνας (vestimenta), the same which has hitherto defied explanation
in Bacchylides 17 (16), 112?” 7 = ἐξοδιασθῆναι.
8 This and the corresponding line in column III are written in another
hand than the body of the letter. Cf. above, pp. 153, 158 f.
9. After καλῶς ποιεῖν we have here as in Theon’s letter (No. 14 above) not the
infinitive, but a paratactic participle ; similar constructions in the Oxyrhyn-
chus Papyri, No. 113g and 116g¢, 14 (both letters of the 2nd cent, A.D.). The
use is, however, much older, as shown by the letter (Hibeh Papyri, No. 8217
, 238 B.C.) quoted above, p. 83, note 6.
10 = ὑμῶν.
Nu This conjecture is ‘not free from doubt, as the writer generally divides
avords differently.
12 For the title πάπας, “pope,” cf. Harnack’s observations on the letter,
p. 989 #£., and see Caor’s letter, No. 19 below.
13 Wessely here conjectures the name Primitinus. But this, in the ortho-
graphy of the writer, would be too long.
ΒΊΟ. 31.—The Oldest Christian Letter extant in the Original. Letter from an Egyptian Christian to hig
fellow-Christians in the Arsinoite nome. Papyrus, written at Rome between 264 (265) and 289 (281) a.v,
By permission of Lord Amherst of Hackney, the late owner,
Th 194
Paes
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 19ὅ
τὸν ἀναγνώστην. καὶ [ἐν τῇ ᾿Αλεξανδρία]
πωλήσαντΪες] τὰ ὀθόνια ἐκεῖνα ἐξο-]
διάσητε τὸ ἀργύριον [Πρειμειτεί-}
νω ἢ Μαξίμω τῶ πάπα ἀποχὴν ἀπο-]
10 λαμβάνοντί εἰς παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ. αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν]
ἐπιθήκ[ην, τὴν τιμὴν τοῦ ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν]
πῳλο[υμέΪνου ἄρ[ του καὶ τῶν ὀθονί-}
wv τὸ ἀργύριον, παρακᾳ [ταθέσθω παρα-}
δοὺς αὐτὸ Θεονᾶ 5, ἵνα σὺν [Θεῶ ὃ παρα-}
15 γενόμενος is τὴν ᾿Αλεξ[ἀνδρειαν]
εὕρο αὐτὸ is τὰ ἀναλώμαϊτά μον. μὴ]
οὖν ἀμελήσητε, ἀδελφο[ί, διὰ ταχέ-]
ὧν τοῦτο ποιῆσαι, ἵνα μὴ Πρειμει-]
τεῖνος διὰ τὴν ἐμὴν προ[θεσμίαν ἐν]
30 τῇ ᾿Αλεξανδρεία διατρίψη [πλεῖν μέλλω»
ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην, ἀλλ᾽ ds ἡμᾶς [ὠφέλησε πα-]
ράτευξιν ὃ πάπα καὶ τοῖς κατ᾽ αὐτὸν ἁγιω-]
τάτοις ὃ προεστῶσι "|, τείσω αὐτῶ χάριν]
καὶ πάντα σ᾿ύμφω]να τάξο ὃ ὑμῖν καὶ ᾽4-]
25 yaboBov[rw. ἐρρ]ῶσθαι ὑμᾶς εὔχομαι.
Jaranal
1 Grenfell and Hunt read rapaxo, but to judge from the facsimile rapaxa
would also be possible.
2 = θεωνᾷ.
* For this conjecture cf. 1. 16 of the letter of Psenosiris, No. 17 below, ὅταν
ἔλθη ov θεῷς The formula σὺν θεῷ, “ with God,” occurs frequently elsewhere.
The writer of this letter fulfils almost literally the injunction in the Epistle of
St. James iv. 13 ff. not to say, “ To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a
city . . . and trade, and get gain,” without adding, “If the Lord will and we
live.”
1 = εὕρω, cf. 1. 24 τάξο. The writer often confuses o and w.
5 παράτευξις is a new word, “intercourse, personal relations,” perhaps also
“intercession” (cf. ἔντευξις, Bibelstudien, pp. 117f., 143f.; Bible Studies,
pp. 121, 146).
5 For ἁγιώτατος cf. Jude 20. The superlative is common in both secular
and ecclesiastical use.
7 For προεστώς, “ chief man,” “ruler,” in early ecclesiastical use οὗ, Joh. Caspar
Suicerus, Thesawrus Ecclesiasticus* 11., Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1746, col. 840; for
the later Egyptian use see quotations in W. E. Crum, Coptic Ostraca, p. 113 of
the lithographed part.
5. = τάξω, cf. 116 εὕρο. σύμφωνος is common in the papyri in such contexts.
The phrase σύμφωνα διατάττω is quoted inthe Thesaurus Graccae Linguae from
Plato, Legg. 5. 746 E.
196 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
-Cotumn IT
... of the corn... deliver the barley! . . . from the
same account, and that they should not be careful of that
same which had also been said . . . when the stores [of money}
were sent to him? from Alexandria. And though I made
excuses and delays and puttings off, I think not that he* thus
desired these things* without cause. And even if now this
superfluity ° which hath happened should not make a reckoning
[possible], for the sake of [my own] good feelings ® I will gladly
endure’ to pay. But if ... they have again sold loaves,
. .. in a little while happen to . . . Nilus® and [my ?] father
Apollonis® in A... And they have written that the money
shall be delivered unto you immediately. Which also bring
ye down to Alexandria, having bought linen among you in
the Arsinoite [nome]. For I have covenanted this with Primi-
tinus, that the money shall be delivered unto him at Alexandria.
[Year]//, Pauni 8,19 from Rome.
Cotumn III
Ye shall do well,” therefore, brethren, having bought the
linen cloth. Then let some of you take the... and set forth
1 Hence we may conclude that dealings in corn are in the background of
this letter.
2 Te, Primitinus, who was then also in Rome.
* Primitinus.
4 Payment of the money in Alexandria instead of Rome.
5 The letter was dated or signed in the beginning of June; this suggests
that the harvest was unusually good, and business correspondingly heavy.
ὁ Of, the lastlines of column III. The writer wants to have his conscience
clear towards Primitinus.
7 The word is no doubt used playfully. Wilcken proposes: “yet I will
gladly make the sacrifice for the sake of decency.”
® Jf the reading “ Nilos” is not certain, I should expect a female name, say
“Nils” (cf. letter 11, above). The preceding word would then be [ἀδ]ε[λφὴ]ν»,
“ sister.”
9. Apollonis is short for Apollonius. Harnack assumed that “ Father” was
the title of the provincial bishop, and took Apollonius to be the bishop of the
particular church in the Arsinoite nome (p. 991; cf. also his Geschichte der
altchristlichen Literatur, II. 2, p. 180). This does not seem to me very
probable, I rather think that the writer is speaking of his real father (and
possibly of his sister just before).
0 = 2 June.
0 In the Greek text the verb is in the participle, through the carelessness of
the writer in haste.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 197
with it! unto Maximus the Papas and... the Lector. And
having sold that linen cloth in Alexandria, deliver the money
unto Primitinus or? Maximus the Papas, receiving a quittance
from him. But the gain, the price of the bread sold by you
and the money for the linen cloth, let him commit and deliver
it up unto Theonas,? in order that I, being come with God
to Alexandria, may find it [ready] against my charges.
Neglect not, therefore, brethren, to do this speedily, lest
Primitinus, on account of the time appointed of me,° should
tarry in Alexandria, being about to sail for Rome,* but that,
as he hath profited us by dealings with the Papas and the most
holy rulers who are before him, I may pay him thanks and
determine all things in agreement for you and Agathobulus.’
Fare ye well, I pray.......°
Let us now attempt to make out the situation
in this venerable document. A hint will be sufficient
reminder that, so far as the restored portion of the
text is concerned, the attempt must remain
questionable.
We might place as a motto at the head of this,
the earliest Christian letter of which the original
has come down to us, the words which Tertullian °
1 Or: “Then let some of you take the ... with you (αὑτοῖς) and set forth
unto...” ? If Primitinus has not yet arrived at Alexandria.
8. Theonas is therefore probably the financial agent of the Papas. Harnack
suggests very plausibly that he might be the Theonas who succeeded Maximus
as Papas of Alexandria, 282 (281)-300 a.p.
4 The writer therefore intends presently to go from Rome to Alexandria.
5 The date arranged with Primitinus for the payment of the money.
§ Primitinus is therefore at present in Alexandria, but intends to return to
Rome, where, according to column II, he had already been before.
7 Tf our conjectural restoration of the text is correct in principle, Agathobulus
would be eminently interested in the settlement of the money matters dis-
cussed in the letter. Perhaps he as well as the writer was the confidential
agent of the Arsinoite Christians at Rome.
8. The letters ἀπαλα defy all attempts at certain restoration. Can it be that
the Papas is once more named here? The conclusion of the letter containing
the good wishes seems to have been inserted at the right, which at a later date
was quite usual, cf. my note in Verdffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger
Papyrus-Sammlung I. p. 101, and the letters of Psenosiris, Justinus, and Caor
which follow below.
§ Apol. 42,“ Navigamus .. et rusticamur et mercatus proinde miscemus.”
198 ΤῊΝ NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
wrote two generations earlier: ‘We do business
in ships... we follow husbandry, and bear our
part in buying and selling.” The Christians of the
generation before the great tempest of Diocletian
persecution, whom we can here watch going about
their work from our hidden post of observation,
took their stand in the world, not alone praying
for their daily bread, but also trading in it; “they
bought, they sold.”
Christians,’ living somewhere in the fertile Arsinoite
nome’ of Egypt, have far away at Rome? a con-
fidential agent whose name we do not know, but
whose letter and Greek we have before us in the
original: rude clumsy characters in the main text
of the letter, a somewhat more flowing hand in the
concluding lines (perhaps in the agent’s autograph),
the spelling uncultivated as of the people, the
syntax that of the unlearned. This agent is
supported perhaps by another, Agathobulus.* They
are entrusted with the dispatch of certain business.
connected with corn.’
An almost contemporary letter written from Rome
by one Irenaeus to his brother a pelmanus who
also resided in the Arsinoite nome,’ gives us a
vivid picture of the kind of business. The man
landed in Italy on the 6th of the month Epiph,
finished unloading the corn-ship on the 18th Epiph,
went on 25th Epiph to Rome, “and the place
received us as God willed.”” After that, it is true,
1 Column III,, (11h).
2 Thos 8. 11,
‘ TIL. 5 IL.
© Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 27.
7 This phrase has led people to regard the letter as a Christian one. The
question, in spite of Wilcken’s decision in the negative (Archiv fiir Papyrus-
forschung, 4, p. 208f.), is still open; the other letters of the same circle of
correspondents do not prove that Irenaeus was a pagan. It is not altogether
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 199
Irenaeus had to wait day after day for the con-
clusion of his business: “to this present day not one
(of us) has finished this business of the corn.”
Such no doubt was the sort of work that the
writer of our letter had to do, and he was dealing
just now with a man named Primitinus,’ to whom
he had to pay money.’ That cannot very well be
money for corn, for it is to be assumed that the
people of Egypt sold corn rather than bought it.
Primitinus might be a shipowner, claiming the cost
of freightage of the corn. In that case it is not sur-
prising that he is now in Rome, now in Alexandria.*
At the present time he is expected at Alexandria
or is already there,‘ but will return to Rome before
long.’ First, however, he will receive his money at
Alexandria: so he had arranged at Rome with the
_writer of the letter.’ The latter would have pre-
ferred some other mode of settlement, and had
therefore at first tried all sorts of expedients,’ but
he came at last to !the conviction that Primitinus
had his good reasons,* and the writer of the letter
is now greatly concerned to keep his agreement with
the man. For to him, the Alexandrian shipowner,
the Christians of the Arsinoite nome are indebted for
their close relations with the Papas of Alexandria,
Maximus, the Lector , and other ecclesiastical
dignitaries in the great city. And although the
good harvest has greatly stimulated the trade in
corn, and the settlement of the bill might still
perhaps be postponed to some quieter time,” he
impossible that Irenaeus also was an agent of the Christian corn-merchants of
the Arsinoite nome: he speaks of a number of Colleagues. The letter is
dated 9 Mesore (2 August).
* Iyer, ee, 16, ? Too. * 35,6, ΠΙρ0, 1. * TL, 20.
* IITs, ἘΠῚ ” Dee. ® Ter,
5 Wing, © Thon,
200 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
presses for immediate payment: he wants his
conscience to be easy,’ is anxious to keep true to
his contract’ and not appear ungrateful.’
If, however, the Arsinoites do send people‘ on
the journey to Alexandria, to pay Primitinus, as
good business men they must not neglect to make
a little money at the same time. They must take
with them home-grown linen® and sell it in the
capital’; then, after Primitinus is paid,’ there
will remain a tidy balance,* which, with the profit
from other ventures,° they must hand over to the
Papas Maximus,” that is in reality to his steward
Theonas,” to hold as a deposit for the use of the
writer of the letter when he presently returns, God
willing, to Alexandria.” This is perhaps not the
first time that they have laid up such “stores” 1
at Alexandria.
To the ecclesiastical historian this is the most
interesting part of the letter: Egyptian provincial
Christians employ the highest ecclesiastic in the
country as their confidential agent in money affairs !
The link between the Christian corn-sellers in the
Faydm and their agent in Rome is no casual ex-
changer, intent on his share of profit, but the Papas
of Alexandria! This is certainly not a bad indi-
cation of the way in which the scattered churches
held together socially, and of the willingness of the
ecclesiastical leaders to help even in the worldly affairs
of their co-religionists. .
And so this oldest of Christian letters preserved in
the original, although it contains, thank God, not a
‘Thy * Tine, ILL, sie ‘ Te.
"ΤΠ, ὦ. Wop ὁ Wee. ” ne. * It,
® Of, in 1755. the hints, now unfortunately very obscure, of the sale of
bread.
10 Tilog, uM TD js¢, " Tae. τ Ise.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 201
word of dogma, is still an extraordinarily valuable
record of Christianity in the days before Constantine
—quite apart from its external value as an historical
document, which Harnack has already demonstrated
to satisfaction. Certainly this papyrus was not
unworthy of the impressive lines from the Greek
Old and New Testaments which were afterwards
written on it, and inscribed with which it has come
down to our own day.
17
Letter from Psenosiris, a Christian presbyter, to Apollo, a Chris-
tian presbyter at Cysis in the Great Oasis, beginning of
the 4th cent. a.v., papyrus from the Great Oasis, now in
the British Museum, published by Grenfell and Hunt?
(Figure 32).
This “original document from the Diocletian
persecution” was made the subject of a special
investigation by me in 1902. The copious lite-
rature to which the precious fragment has given
rise since then has been already noted,‘ and I will
only add here that I have been confirmed in my
theory of the letter by the agreement of almost all
the subsequent writers.” I here reprint the text
with a few improvements, which do not affect my
explanation of the letter, and with the corresponding
! Greek Papyri, Series II., Oxford, 1897, No. 73.
2 This reproduction is almost of the exact size of the original.
* Hin. Original-Dokwment aus der Diocletianischen Christenverfolgung,
Tiibingen und Leipzig, 1902 (translated under the title The Epistle of
Psenosiris, London, 1902; Cheap Edition, 1907).
* Page 37, n. 3.
5 Grenfell and Hunt have meanwhile published a new example of the word
that they print with a small letter instead. of a capital, πολιτική, “harlot”
(The Oxyrhynchus Papyri [VI.], No. 903,,, 4th cent. a.D.). But this does
not affect the possibility of my reading, Πολιτική, a proper name.
202 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
alterations in the translation, and refer for the rest
to my own little book and the other literature.’
Vevocip. πρεσβ[υτέρω
᾿Απόλλωνι
πρεσβυτέρω ἀγαπητῷ ἀδ-
ελφῶ
ἐν Κ(υρί)ω χαίρειν.
πρὸ τῶν ὅλων πολλά σε
ἀσπά-
ὅ ἕομαι καὶ τοὺς παρὰ σοὶ
πάντας
ἀδελφοὺς ἐν Θ(ε)ῶ. γιν-
ὥώσκειν
σε θέλω, ἀδελφέ, ὅτι οἱ
νεκρο-
τάφοι ἐνηνόχασιν ἐνθάδε
εἰς τὸ ἔγω τὴν Πολιτικὴν
τὴν
10 πεμφθεῖσαν εἰς "Oacw ὑπὸ
τῆς
ἡγεμονίας.
πα-
ραδέδωκα τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ
πι-
στοῖς ἐξ αὐτῶν τῶν νεκροτά-
φων εἰς τήρησιν, ἔστ᾽ ἂν ér-
15 θη ὁ υἱὸς αὐτῆς Νεῖλος. καὶ
ὅταν ἔλθη σὺν Θεῶ, μαρ-
τυρή-
σι σοι περὶ ὧν αὐτὴν πεποι-
καὶ [τ]αύτην
ἥκασιν. δ[ή]λω[σ]ον [δέ]
μοι
κ[αὶ σὺ] περὶ ὧν θέλεις
ἐνταῦ-
To (sic) Psenosiris _pres-
byter, to Apollo presbyter,
his beloved brother in the
Lord, greeting.
Before all things I salute
thee much and all the brethren
with thee in God. I would
have thee know, brother, that
the grave-diggers have brought
here to the inward (country)?
Politica, who hath been sent
into the Oasis by the govern-
ment. And I have delivered
her unto the good and faithful
of these grave-diggers in keep-
ing, till her son Nilus come.
And when he come, with God,
he shall witness to thee con-
cerning what things they have
done unto her. But do thou
also declare unto me concern-
ing what things thou wouldest
1 On 4 October, 1906, I examined the papyrus in the British Museum, and
convinced myself that Grenfell and Hunt were right in reading εξ avrwy in
1, 13, and Ψενοσιρι in 1. 1, and that 1. 9 reads not es ro ecw but (as Wilcken
had pointed out meanwhile) es το eyw. This might be the name of a place,
els Toeyw, but it is more probably a clerical error for εἰς τὸ ἔσω.
3 Or (improbably) ‘here to Toégo.”
το
15
20
Fig, 32.—Letter from Psenosiris, a Christian presbyter, to Apollo, a Christian
presbyter at Cysis (Great Oasis). Papyrus, beginning of the 4th cent. Α.Ὁ.
(Diocletian persecution). Now in the British Museum.
[Ρ. 202
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 203:
20 θα ἡδέως ποιοῦντι. have done, and gladly will I
᾿ς Δρρῶσθαί σε εὔχομαι | do them. Fare thee well,
ἐν Κ(υρίγω Θ(ε)ῶ. | I pray, in the Lord God.
On the verso the address :
᾿Απόλλωνν Χ παρὰ Pevo- | To Apollo X from Pseno--
σίριο[ς] siris
πρεσβυτέρω Χ πρεσβυτέρου | presbyter ΧΟ presbyter in:
ἐν K(upi)o. the Lord.
18
Letter from Justinus, an Egyptian Christian, to Papnuthius, a
Christian, middle of the 4th cent. a.p., papyrus from Egypt,
now in the University Library, Heidelberg, published by
Deissmann ! (Figure 33).?
I give here only the text and translation of the
letter, which is typical of the popular religion of
Egypt in the age of Athanasius and Pachomius, and
for the rest refer to my edition, which gives a detailed.
commentary.
[Τῶ κυρίω μου καὶ ἀγαπητῶ] To my lord and_ beloved
2 Ἃ, n θί. X
eee eae en eT brother Papnuthius, the son
στο-]
[φόρου ᾿Ιουστῖνος χαίρειν.] | of Chrestophorus—Justinus,,
5 ify ἔδει γρα]φῆν[ α], π[ρὸς greeting.
τὴν] . . . which it behoved [me]
σὴν χρ[ηστότ]ηταν, κύριε
μου to write to thy goodness, my
2 , St \
po oad ΤΠ ΟΡΕΙΟΕ: ἐν γὰρ | beloved lord. For we believe
τὴν πολιτίαϊν σον ἐνν
οὐρανῶ. thy citizenship in heaven.
1 Veriffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammiung, 1. (Die:
Septuaginta-Papyri und andere altchristliche Texte), Heidelberg, 1905, No. 6
(pp. 94-104),
2 This reproduction reduces the size of the original about one-third. On
the left is the text of the letter, on the right a part of the verso with the
address,
204 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
ἐγῖθεν θεοροῦμέν σε τὸν
10 δεσπότην καὶ κενὸν (π)ά-
[τ]ρω[να].
ἵνα οὖν μὴ πολλὰ γράφω
Kat
φλυραρήσω, ἐν yap [πο]λλῆ
λαλιᾶ οὐκ ἐκφεύξοντ ac}
(t)i(v) ἁμαρτίῆ, παρακαλῶ
[ο]ν,
15 δέσποτα, ἵνα μνημονΐ εἸύης
μοι εἰς τὰς ἁγίας σου εὐ-,
χάς, ἵ-
να δυνηθῶμεν μέρος τὸν
ec
(4p-)
a 0, 4 z
αρτιῶν καθαρίσεως. εἷς
γάρ
> tal e a 2
ἐμει TOV ἁμαρτουλὸν “. πα-
ρακα-
20
λῶ καταξίωσον δέξεσθαι
ἣν: ΝΥ 3. Ζ LY fo]
TO μικρὸν ἐλέου διὰ τοῦ
ἀδελ-
god ἡμῶν ΜΜαγαρίου.
πολλὰ
προσαγωρεί(ω) πάντες τοὺς
ἀ-
δελφοὺς ἡμῶν ἐν κῶ. ἐρρω-
μένον σε ἡ θί-
a πρόνοια φυλάξα[ 1.
ἐπὶ μέγιστον χρό-
νον ἐν K@ Χω,
κύριε ἀγαπητί ἐ]..
25
Thence we consider thee the
master and new patron. Lest
therefore I should write much
and prate—for in much speak-
ing they shall not escape sin!
| —I beseech thee, therefore,
master, that thou rememberest
me in thy holy prayers, that
we may be able [to obtain] a
part in the purifying from
sins. For I am one of the
sinners.? Count [me] worthy,
I beseech, and accept this
little oil through our brother
I greet much all
Lord.
Magarius.
our brethren in the
The divine Providence keep
thee in health for a very
great time in the Lord Christ,
beloved lord.
On the verso the address :
‘30 [τῶ κυρίω] μου Kai ἀγαπητῷ ἀδελφῶ Παπνουθίω Χρηστο-
φόρ[ου] παρ | Ἰουστίνου.
To my lord and beloved brother Papnuthius, the son of
Chrestophorus, from Justinus.
1 Justinus is here quoting the Septuagint (Prov. x. 19) in a form of
considerable textual interest.
? This confession of sin can hardly be so genuinely felt as the peccavi of
the prodigal son Antonis Longus (letter No. 11, above),
0 ES Spake i; Ra | τς
a BEN?
πες;
ΚΟ
25
Fig, 33,—Letter (with Address) from Justinus, an Egyptian Christian, to Papnuthius, a Christian.
Papyrus, middle of the 4th cent. A.D. Now in the University Library, Heidelberg.
[p. 204
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS = 205
19
Letter from Caor, Papas of Hermupolis, to Flavius Abinnaeus,,
an officer at Dionysias in the Fayém, c. 346 a.D., papyrus-
from Egypt, now in the British Museum, published by
Kenyon ! (Figure 34).
This little letter is one of the finest among the
papyri. The situation resembles that in St. Paul’s.
letter to Philemon, and the letter from the Papas to.
the officer can also be compared in contents with that
beautiful little letter of the Apostle’s, though the:
Papas is not fit to hold a candle to St. Paul.
Τῶ δεσπότη po” καὶ ἀγα- To my master and beloved.
πητῶ
ἀδελφῶ ᾿Αβιννέω πραι 3 brother Abinneus the Praepo-
Kdop* πάπας ‘Eppovro-
ews χαίειν."
ἀσπάξωμαι ὃ τὰ πεδία ὁ gov | polis, greeting. I salute thy
situs—Caor, Papas of Hermu-:
πολλά. ᾿
5 γινόσκιν Ἶ σε θέλω, κύριε, children much. I would have:
\ A a
m[ept] Παύλω τοῦ στρα- | thee know, lord, concerning:
τιότη 8
περὶ τῆς φυγῆς, συνχωρῆσε" | Paul the soldier, concerning
) Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Catalogue with Texts, Vol. II.,
London, 1898, p. 299f., No. 417. The facsimile is on Plate 103, and is here:
reproduced by kind permission of the British Museum authorities (Fig. 34).
2 Abbreviation for πραιποσίτω. The title πραιπόσιτος κάστρων is the Latin
pracfectus castrorum,
3 I at first suspected an abbreviation καστρ-: κάστρων. But Kenyon.
informed me (by postcard, London, W.C., 8 June, 1907) that the letters were
certainly not xacrp. Both Wilcken (letter, Leipzig, 5 May, 1907), Schubart
and Carl Schmidt (postcard, Berlin 29 June, 1907) read from the facsimile
xaop. The two latter conjecture that -op is the Egyptian god’s name Hor-
(as is commonly assumed, though not with certainty, to be the case in the
name of Origen).
§ = χαίρειν.
5 = ἀσπάζομαι,
ὁ = παιδία.
7 = γινώσκειν.
§ = Παύλου τοῦ στρατιώτου.
9. -- συνχωρῆσαι. Wilcken read from the facsimile συνχώρησον.
206 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
[2
αὐτοῦ τοῦτω τὸ ἅβαξ,1
ἐπειδὴ ἀσχολῶ ἐλθῖν 3
pols]
10 cév? αὐτεημερέ. καὶ
his flight: pardon him this’
once, seeing that I am without
leisure to come unto thee at
wane,”
ἂμ μὴ" raveetas,’ ἔρχεται
εἰς τὰς χεῖράς σοῦ ἄλλω
aBaé.®
3 a ’ὔ, PA
ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχο--
a la
μαι πολλοῖς χρό-
νοις,.9 κύριε jo”
ἀδελφέ.
this present. And, if he desist
not, he will come again into
thy hands® another time.
45 Fare thee well, I pray, many
years,!® my lord brother.
The letter forms part of the correspondence of
Flavius Abinnaeus, a Christian officer, who about
the middle of the fourth century a.p. was praefectus
castrorum of the camp of auxiliary cavalry at Diony-
sias in the Arsinoite nome. Important alike in
respect to the history of civilisation, of language, and
of the Christian religion, this correspondence consists
of some sixty original papyrus letters, some long, some
short, some at London and some at Geneva, and
still, in spite of excellent provisional publications by
1 = αὐτῶ τοῦτο τὸ ἅπαξ. This is a still older example of the substantival use
of drat which occurs in the inscription of King Silco (Dittenberger, Orientis
‘Graeci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 201; cf. p. 134, n. 1 above), which
R Lepsius took to be a Copticism. See Dittenberger’s notes, 7 and 10.
‘Wilcken considers it to be popular Greek.
2 = ἐλθεῖν.
3 =¢é, This σέν is not a clerical error, but a vulgar use.
* = αὐθημερόν, or αὐτημερόν 2
5 = way.
6 This ἂμ μὴ = ἐὰν μὴ occurs twice in the bad boy Theon’s letter to his
father Theon (2nd or 8rd cent. a.D.), Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 119, τε;
«cf, above, letter No. 14.
7 This is Wilcken’s reading from the facsimile. Kenyon read at first
webderan = ψεύδεται. According to the corrigenda in Vol. III. of the Greek
Papyri in the British Museum Grenfell and Hunt also read παύσεται.
8 = ἄλλο ἅπαξ, cf. n. 1 above.
9.7.9. he will not desert again while executing an order, but will return
‘to you.
10 χρόνος, “year,” is late Greek,
Fig. 34.—Letter from Caor, Papas of Hermupolis, to Flavius Abinnaeus, an
officer at Dionysias in the Fayim. Papyrus, circa 346 A.D. Now in the British
a a κτα rm ans _ — thorities,
(p. 206
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 201
Kenyon’ and Nicole,’ awaiting a collective edition.’
The earliest dated letter in this priceless collection
was written in the year 848, the most recent in
351 A.D.
Among the numerous unknown persons who have.
come to life again as correspondents of Abinnaeus in
this collection one of the most remarkable is the
writer of the present letter, Caor, Papas of Hermu-
polis. Like Kenyon‘ I at first took him to be a
bishop, understanding the word Papas in the same
way as in the Christian letter from Rome.’ But I
was unable to answer the difficult question, which
Hermupolis could then be meant? Lines 9 and 10
would suit neither Hermupolis Magna nor Hermu-
polis Parva, the only sees of this name; such an
expression as we have there could only be used by
somebody who lived not far from the residence of
the addressee. I talked the matter over with my
friend Wilcken, and he reminded me that several
other letters in the correspondence of Abinnaeus
were written from a village called Hermupolis, in
the south-west of the Fayim, which is mentioned
in the papyri from the Ptolemaic age down to
the seventh century a.p.° It then seemed to me
that the obvious thing was to identify the Her-
mupolis of our papyrus with this village, and to
regard the Papas not as a bishop but as a simple
priest. The word Papas was applied in early times
1 Grech Papyri in the British Museum, Vol. 11. pp. 267-307; and 307 ff,
2 Les Papyrus de Genéve, Nos, 45-65.
8 Wilcken’s valuable notes should not be forgotten, Archiv fiir Papyrus-
forschung, 1, p. 162; 3, p. 397.
4 Page 299.
» Letter No. 16, above,
* Details in Grenfell, Hunt, and Goodspeed, The Tebtunis Papyri, Part IL,
London, 1907, p. 376,
208 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
to village priests,’ so there is no difficulty in so under-
standing it here. This degradation of the writer of
the letter in no way detracts from the value of the
letter. Of the bishops of the fourth century we
already knew more than enough; in Caor, who calls
himself ‘“‘ pope,” but is no pope, we rejoice to meet
a representative of village Christianity, and we range
him beside Psenosiris, presbyter in the Oasis a genera-
tion earlier.
Whether the “ Pope” of Hermupolis was master
of the Greek language seems to me to be a doubtful
question. The good man was certainly not learned ;
indeed, his syntax is so rudimentary and his ortho-
graphy so autocratic that many a rude soldier’s
letter shows to advantage beside this of the Papas.
! In the Theologische Literaturzeitung, 27 (1902) col. 360, Harnack notes
the earliest passage known to him: in the Martyriwm Theodoti a Galatian
village-priest is called Papas. This passage is no doubt older than our
papyrus. (H. D[elehaye], however, in the Analecta Bollandiana, 27, p. 443,
considers that the Martyriwm is not so old.) Of. further the Thesaurus
Graecae Linguae, s.v. Πάπας. The differentiation, there shown to be as old
as Eustathius of Thessalonica (Opuscula, p. 38, 1. 58, about 1200 4.D.), between
πάπας the distinguished bishop and παπᾶς the insignificant presbyter is
probably mere learned trifling. The history of the meaning of the word
Papas is highly interesting. The question is, whether the grand word (for
bishop or even archbishop or pope) degenerated, so that it could be applied
to every presbyter, or whether an originally vulgar word was gradually
ennobled. Looking merely at the comparative frequency of the word in its
two meanings, one would be inclined to suppose that degeneration had
occurred. But the facts of the case were probably the other way round:
the word πάπας, a native of Asia Minor (A. Dieterich, Hine Mithrasliturgie
erldutert, Leipzig, 1903, p. 147), was probably first adopted from the popular
Christianity of Asia Minor, and rose only gradually to its narrower and more
distinguished meaning. Cf. Ὁ. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Gricchisches
Lesebuch, 11. 2 (Erléuterungen),’? Berlin, 1902, p. 260; and A. Margaret
Ramsay in Sir W. M. Ramsay's Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern
Provinces, p. 27. If we now possess more examples of the grand meaning
than of the other, that is because documents of popular Christianity have not.
been preserved in such numbers as those of the higher class (cf. the conclusion
of this chapter, p. 242f.). There is therefore philological justification for the
old saying that the pettiest priestling conceals a popeling. [The German
proverb says, “Es ist kein Pfafflein so klein, Es steckt ein Papstlein drein”—
“No priestling so mean But hides a popeling, I ween.” TR.]
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 209
Perhaps the man’s mother-tongue and language for
ordinary occasions was Coptic'; Greek he had learnt
in a very vulgar form, and, good or bad, he made the
best use he could of it. But I cannot help feeling
that this violence to grammar, which would be un-
endurable in a book, is really not so bad in a letter,
especially in this letter : it merely serves to strengthen
the tone of unaffected sincerity.
What is the letter all about? Paul, one of the
soldiers of the garrison under Abinnaeus, has been
entrusted with some commission to execute,” and has
failed to return to his commanding officer. After
more or less vagabondage the deserter tires of the
business and would like to go ‘back. But how is he
to set about it? how escape the punishment that is
certainly in store for him? Then at Hermupolis he
makes a village-priest his confidant and intercessor,
promising by all that is sacred that he will behave
better in future. The Papas is in some doubt about
the case ; perhaps he knows the ecclesiastical ordinances
dating from the concordat between church and state,
by which deserters are to be visited with ecclesiastical
penalties, and he is not sure whether the man’s good
resolutions may be trusted. But the pastor triumphs
over the man of ecclesiastical discipline, and he good-
naturedly gives the deserter this note to take with
him. If his Greek is not unexceptionable, his
command of the epistolary formulae of an age of
growing formalism is at least as good as that of the
polite and unctuous Justinus.* Without further
argument he throws into the scale for Paul his
1 Cf. the use of ἅπαξ, perhaps (1) under Coptic infiuence.
2 This seems a fair inference from lines 11 and 12.
* Note the formal resemblances between the letters of Caor and Justinus
(No, 18 above), and compare the stereotyped nature of the formulae in the
correspondence of Abinnaeus as a whole.
14
210 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
personal friendship with Abinnaeus and his children,
and then at once ventures to ask for a pardon.
“This once” is delightful, and the pastor, fore-
seeing the weakness of the flesh, must have smiled
as he wrote “if he desist not.” The officer, who
knows the fellow, is intended to smile too, in spite
of his wrath, and it may be that Paul will after all
go scot free.
This little genre painting gains in interest when we
remember that the treatment of deserters was a
problem that occupied the early church and even led
to a conciliar decree. In the year 314 the Council
of Arles determined “that those who throw down
their arms in time of peace shall be excommunicate.” *
Caor the Papas of Hermupolis, however, solved the
problem in his own way—and, I think, not badly.
20
Letter from Samuel, Jacob, and Aaron, three Egyptian candi-
dates for the diaconate, to their bishop, Abraham of Her-
monthis (2), c. 600 a.p., Coptic ostracon from Egypt, now
in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund, published
by Crum ? (Figure 35).
This and the following Coptic ostracon, of the
period preceding the tremendous upheaval that Islam
brought upon Egypt, may close our selection of
letters. The Bishop Abraham to whom the first
ostracon is addressed, and who probably caused the
‘Canon III: De his qui arma proiciunt in pace placuit abstineri eos
a communione; cf. Harnack, Militia Christi, Die christliche Religion und
der Soldatenstand in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Tiibingen, 1905,
p. 87 ff.
2 Coptic Ostraca from the Collections of the Egypt Euploration Fund, the
Cairo Museum and others, No. 29 (p. 8 of the lithographed part, and p. 9 of
the letterpress). The facsimile of the back of the ostracon (Fig. 35) is
reproduced here from Plate I. with the kind consent of the Egypt Exploration
Fund,
Fie. 35.—Letter from Samuel, Jacob, and Aaron, candidates
for the diaconate, to Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis (7).
Coptic ostracon, circa 600 A.D. (verso). Now in the possession
of the Egypt Exploration Fund, by whose permission it is
reproduced.
[p. 210
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW ΤΈΧΤΒ 21]
second to be written, Crum! conjectures with good
reasons to be identical with the Bishop of Hermon-
this who is known from his will, now extant on
papyrus’ in the British Museum, to have been living
as an anchorite on the Divine Hill of Memnonia
near Thebes, and who died most probably towards
the end of the 6th cent. a.p.° I owe the translation
of these instructive texts to the kindness of my friend
Carl Schmidt, of Berlin.‘
i
ReEcro
(?)° I, Samuel, and Jacob and Aaron, we write to our
holy father Apa Abraham, the jbishop.6 Seeing’ we have
requested® thy paternity that thou wouldest ordain® us
deacons," we are ready" to observe the commands ” and canons Ἶ5
and to obey those above us and be obedient 16 to the superiors
and to watch our beds on the days of communion” and to .". .
the Gospel’ according to! John and learn it by heart 18
VrERso
by the end of Pentecost. If we do not learn it by heart and
cease to practise it, there is no hand on us. And we will not
trade nor take usury nor will we go abroad without asking
(leave). I, Hémai, and Apa Jacob, son of Job, we are
guarantors for Samuel. I, Simeon and Atre, we are guarantors
for Jacob. I, Patermute the priest,2? and Moses and Lassa,
we are guarantors for Aaron, I, Patermute, this least * of
1 Coptie Ostraca, p. xiiif.
? Greek Papyri in the British Museum (Vol. 1.), No. 77 (p. 231 £f.).
3 Coptic Ostraca, Ὁ. xiii f.
‘ [As far as possible the wording of Crum’s (incomplete) translation has
been used here. TR.]
5 Coptic letters generally begin with the monogram of Christ.
§ ἐπίσκοπος. 7 ἐπειδή. [Crum compares 1 Cor. i. 22 (R.V.). TR.]
8 παρακαλεῖν. * χειροτονεῖν. 10 διάκονος, 1 ἕγοιμος.
12 ἐντολαί. 18 κανόνες. 4 ὑποτάσσεσθαι. 15. συνάγειν.
15 εὐαγγέλιον. [Crum gives “ master(?)” in the place of Schmidt’s blank. TR.]
” κατά. 8 ἀποστηθίζειν.
* μελετᾶν. [Crum has: “and if we do not so but keep it by us(?) and
recite it.” TR.] 20 arpeaB(trepos). 2 ἐλάχιστος.
212 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
priests,’ have been requested? and have written this tablet?
and am witness.
One wonders what the episcopal archives of the
holy father Apa Abraham can have looked like,
destined to contain such potsherd petitions as this.‘
Probably they were as primitive as the potsherd
itself, as primitive as the intellectual equipment of
the three prospective ecclesiastics, Samuel, Jacob,
and Aaron, who have displayed the extent of their
learning, ability, and ambition on this ostracon. We
ought rather to say, they got the least of all presbyters,
Patermute, to display it for them, for—there is no
concealing it—they themselves could perhaps only
read, and not write at all.
The three worthies are about to be ordained
deacons; but before the “hand” of the bishop
“is on them” they must fulfil the requirements
of the sacred ordinances.’ They must be prepared,
firstly to keep the commandments® and rules,’
secondly to obey their superiors, thirdly “to watch
their beds”*® on communion days, fourthly to
abjure commerce and take no usury, and fifthly
to fulfil the duty of residence. All this, however, I
expect, troubled them less than a special condition
which the bishop had imposed upon them. Apa
Abraham had set other candidates to learn the
1 xpe(oBbrepos). 2 αἰτεῖν. 5. πλάξ,
‘Crum (p. 91.) has published a number of similar petitions from
candidates.
5. Cf. Crum’s excellent citations (p. 9) from Egyptian ecclesiastical law,
which I have made use of in what follows.
* Of God and the bishop; this is clear from the allied ostraca.
7 Of the Church.
* Crum thinks this refers to sexual continence of the married clergy
(postcard to the author, Aldeburgh, 13 September, 1907). Still it should be
possible, I think, to explain the expression with reference to watching
through the nights before communion.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW ΤΕΧΥΡ 219
Gospel according to Matthew,’ or according to
Mark,* or a gospel,’ or a whole gospel‘ by heart, or
to write out the Gospel according to John*®; Bishop
Aphu of Oxyrhynchus once required of a candidate
for deacon’s orders five-and-twenty Psalms, two
Epistles of St. Paul, and a portion of a gospel to be
learnt by heart δ; and the task assigned to our three
friends was to learn by heart the Gospel according to
John by the end of Whitsuntide and practise reciting
it.’ Failing this, they could not be ordained. This
stipulation presupposes some sort of examination
by the bishop before ordination. The sureties pro-
duced by the candidates—three by one candidate,
and two each by the others—are again in accordance
with the ecclesiastical regulations.®
A singular revelation of sorry circumstances this
potsherd letter must be to those who imagine that
three hundred years after the triumph of Christianity
all the young clergy of Egypt would be theologians
gifted with the knowledge of an Origen. But there
can be no talk of a decline of learning in the case:
the average education of the clergy probably never
had been greater in this remote country district.
And Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis, with his
1 Ostracon No. 31, Crum, p. 9.
? Ostracon No. Ad. 7, Crum, p. 10.
* Ostracon No, 34, Crum, p. 10.
* Ostracon No. 39, Crum, p. 11.
5 Ostracon No. 37, Crum, p.10. This probably throws some light on the
origin of the gospel texts on ostraca already discussed (p. 48ff.). We might
suppose that they were written by prospective ecclesiastics at the bishop’s ἡ
orders. Our general judgment of the texts would not be affected by this
supposition ; these potsherd-clerics are certainly not to be counted with the
cultured class, they belong to the non-literary common people.
5 Evidence in Crum, p. 9, where still more examples are given.
” The future historian of this custom of learning by heart must not neglect
the similar phenomena in Judaism and Islam., Early Christian material is
collected by E. Preuschen, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 15 (1906) p. 644.
§ Cf. Crum, p. 9.
214. THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
sympathy for the life of an anchorite, was not likely
to be the man to raise the standard of learning
among his people. The numerous documents from
his hand, or from his chancery, written on the material
used by the very poorest, and published by Crum,
show him to have been a practical man, and par-
ticularly a man of discipline.
21
Letter probably from Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis (?) in
Egypt to the clergy of his diocese, c. 600 a.v., Coptic
ostracon from Egypt, now in the possession of the Egypt
Exploration Fund, published by Crum! (Figure 36).
There may be some doubt concerning the persons
to whom this episcopal letter was sent. It deals
with the excommunication of a certain Psate, who
was guilty of some misconduct towards the poor.
The letter might therefore have been addressed to
Psate’s own church, but it is equally possible that
copies of the letter of excommunication were sent
to all the churches in the diocese.’
The question, What was Psate guilty of ? depends
on the interpretation of μαυλίζω, a word borrowed
from the Greek, which keeps on recurring in the
letter. It is difficult to say* what its meaning is
here. The lexicographer Hesychius says it means
“to act as pander,”* and in this sense it occurs
- 1 Coptic Ostraca, No. 71 (p. 16, of the lithographed text, and p. 18 of the
letterpress). The facsimile of the back of the ostracon (Plate I.) is here
reproduced by kind permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Fig. 36).
2 Of. the similar practice of the West at this period, F. Kober, Der
Kirchenbann nach den Grundsiitzen des canonischen Rechts, Tiibingen, 1857,
ἐ bah A. Sophocles’ lexicon fails us completely : neither of its two quotations
can be found, The information in the Thesaurus is better,
4 μαυλίζων " μαστροπεύων.
Fig. 36.—Letter probably from Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis (7)
1o the clergy of his diocese. Coptic ostracon, circa 600 A.D. (verso).
Now in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Fund, by whose
permission it is reproduced.
[Ρ. 214
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 215:
according to Johannes Baptista Cotelerius in the
Nomocanon edited by him.’ It is, however, a question.
whether it has not a wider meaning there, something’
like “to bring into misery.”* In an old Greek.
penitentiary * the word occurs in a question of the
father confessor, probably in the meaning “to seduce.”
I know no other instances of the use of the word.
In the case of this ostracon the meanings “act as:
pander” and “seduce,” as Crum and Carl Schmidt.
pointed out, do not suit particularly well, although
they are not absolutely impossible. I conjecture:
the wider meaning “oppress,” “bring into misery,”
and I have employed it* in the following translation.
by Carl Schmidt.
Recro
Since (ἐπειδή) I have been informed that Psate oppresseth *
the poor and they have told me saying,’ “He oppresseth’ us
and maketh us poor and wretched”; he that oppresseth ® his:
neighbour is altogether reprobate® and he is like unto Judas.
who rose! from supper" with his Lord and betrayed 12 Him,
8815 it is written, “He that eateth my bread hath lifted up
his heel against me.”"* He that oppresseth® his neighbour-
) Ecclesiae Graecae Monwmenta, Tomus I., Luteciae Parisiorum, 1677,
p. 158A, cf. p. 7840 : eight years of penance are imposed on the μαυλίζξων.
? The μαυλίζων is in company with the men who plough false furrows, give
short measure and short weight, and sow their neighbours’ fields (?).
* Edited by Jo. Morinus in his Commentarius Historious de Discipline in:
Administratione Sacramenti Poenitentiae, p. 466 of the Venice edition of 1702:
which I use, ἐμαύλισάς τινα ; “hast thou seduced any one to unchastity ?”
‘ Crum says “ill-use.” (TR.) ;
5 μαυλίζειν.
* Cari Schmidt suspects a clerical error here.
7 μαυλίζειν.
8. μαυλίζειν.
9. Crom translates “is excluded from the feast,”
%” Carl Schmidt prefers “ who sat.”
11 δεῖπνον. 2 παραδιδόναι. 18 κατά,
4 Psalm xl. [xli.] 10 as quoted in John xiii, 18.
15 μαυλίζειν.
916 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
is altogether reprobate and he is like unto the man to whom
Jesus said, “It were better for him if he had not been born,”
that is Judas. He that oppresseth? his neighbour is altogether
reprobate and he is like unto them that spat in His face* and
smote Him on the head.* He that oppresseth ὅ his neighbour
is altogether reprobate and he is like unto Gehazi, unto whom
the leprosy of Naaman did cleave, and unto his seed. The
man that oppresseth’ his neighbour is altogether reprobate
and he is like unto Cain, who slew his brother. The man that
oppresseth ὃ
VERSO
his neighbour is altogether reprobate and he is like unto Zimri,
who slew his master.’ He that oppresseth 10 his neighbour is
altogether reprobate and he is like unto Jeroboam, who
(oppressed ?) Israel, sinning (ἢ). He that oppresseth!? his
neighbour is altogether reprobate and he is like unto them
that accused Daniel the prophet.’® He that oppresseth ™ his
neighbour is altogether reprobate and he is like unto them
that accused Susanna.’ Βαϊ 16 he that oppresseth "7 his neigh-
bour is altogether reprobate and he is like unto the men that
cried, “ His blood be on us and on our children.” 18 The man
that oppresseth his neighbour is altogether reprobate and
he is like unto the soldiers” that said, “Say ye, His disciples”
came by night and stole Him away, while we slept.” ”
1 Matt. xxvi. 24 = Mark xiv. 21.
2 μαυλίζειν.
3 Matt. xxvi. 67 || Mark xiv. 65.
4 Ibid. “On the head” is inexact.
5 μαυλίζειν.
5 σπέρμα. The allusion is to 2 Kings v. 27.
7 μαυλίζειν. 5 μαυλίζειν.
9.2 Kings ix. 31, ZapBpel ὁ φονευτὴς τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ, “ Zimri who ‘slew his
master.”
10 μαυλίζειν. n 1 Kings xii. 30. "ἋΣ μαυλίζειν.
18 προφήτης. Dan. vi, 18, 24. ᾿ι μαυλίζειν.
15. Susanna 28 ff. 6 δέ,
7 μαυλίζειν. 18 Matt. xxvii. 25. 9 μαυλίζεν.
* This is a slight error of the bishop’s; the words were spoken to the
soldiers, not by them.
21 μαθηταί.
3 Matt. xxviii. 13.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS Q17
This episcopal letter, which we may regard as a kind
of letter of excommunication, has nothing particularly
original about it. It is quite certain that practically
all of it is well-worn material, and that even the
monotonous formulae of excommunication are
borrowed.! But this record of episcopal discipline
was most certainly intelligible to common folk and
effective with them, and in the severity against Psate,
who had wronged “the poor,” we see the survival of
a sentiment thoroughly characteristic of the primitive
Christians.
4. In the foregoing pages we have put together
a collection of one-and-twenty letters of ancient date.
Had we merely printed the text of the letters, and
nothing more, a casual reader might have supposed
as he turned the pages that he had before him frag-
ments of ancient literature. Witkowski’s magnificent
collection of letters of the Ptolemaic age, which
happens to be included in Teubner’s “ Bibliotheca
Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum,” is no doubt
placed by many purchasers without further thought
1 For the passage about Judas and for the form in general cf. the Nomo-
canon above cited in Cotelerius, I. 155 CO, δευτέρα ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ὅστις . . . μισεῖ
καὶ καταλαλεῖ τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ. ὅμοιος γάρ ἐστιν τοῦ παραδώσαντος τὸν κύριον. διὸ
καὶ per’ αὐτοῦ ἔχωσιν μέρος, “the second sin is, whosoever .. . hateth and
slandereth his neighbour; for he is like unto him that betrayed the Lord.
Therefore shall they also have their portion together with him.” Judas is
frequently the type of the reprobate with whom no communion is possible:
[ἔχοι τ]ὴν μερίδα τοῦ Ἐϊουδᾶ rod [προδότου] τοῦ δεσπότου ἡμῶν "I[noot Χριστ]οῦ,
“ may he have the portion of Judas, the betrayer of our Lord Jesus Christ,” is
the imprecation in the epitaph of a Christian deaconess at Delphi (not later
than 6th cent. A.D.) on whomsoever shall open the tomb, Bulletin de Corre-
spondance Hellénique, 23 (1899) p. 274, and the same curse is found in many
other epitaphs (Victor Schultze, Die Katakomben, Leipzig, 1882, p. 15 ff.; Miinz,
Anatheme und Verwiinschungen auf christlichen Monumenten, Annalen des
Vereins fiir Nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung, 14 [1887],
p. 169 ff.), also in the official anathema of the Council of Toledo, 633 Α.Ὁ.,
and other councils (Kober, Der Kirchenbann, pp. 41, 37). Of course the eccle-
siastical formulae have been influenced by Jewish precedent: cf. the leprosy
of Gehazi in our ostracon and in a Jewish formulary cited by Kober, p. 5f.
218 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
on the same shelf as the other Scriptores. A glance,
however, at the facsimiles of the original letters will
banish at once in almost every case the thought of
hterature: no page of an ancient book ever looked.
like that letter of Antonis Longus to his mother
Neilus, or like the ostracon addressed by the three
candidates to Bishop Abraham. And whoever goes
on to make himself acquainted with the contents of
the texts will see still more clearly that he has before
him not products of literary art but documents of
life, and that Mnesiergus, Hilarion, and Apion are
not Scriptores, nor is even Psenosiris, although that
little letter of his, snatched from the dust of the
Great’ Oasis, already figures in two histories of litera-
ture. Though we have printed them in a book, these
ancient texts have nothing to do with books and
things bookish. They are non-literary—most of them
popular as well as non-literary—admirably adapted to
familiarise us with the essential characters of popular
and non-literary writing, and with the character of
the non-literary letter in particular.
What is a letter? A letter is something non-
literary, a means of communication between persons
who are separated from each other. Confidential
and personal in its nature, it is intended only for the
person or persons to whom it is addressed, and not at
all for the public or any kind of publicity. A letter
is non-literary, just as much as a lease or a will.
There is no essential difference between a letter
and an oral dialogue; it might be described as
an anticipation of the modern conversation by
telephone, and it has been not unfairly called a con-
versation halved.’ It concerns nobody but the person
’ The expression occurs in antiquity. Demetrius, De elocutione (Epistolo-
graphi Graeci, rec, Hercher, p. 13) traces back to Artemon, the editor of
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW ΤΕΈΧΤΘ 219
who wrote it and the person who is to open it. From
all other persons it is meant to be a secret. Its
contents may be as various as life itself, and hence
it is that letters preserved from ancient times form
a delightful collection of the liveliest instantaneous
photographs of ancient life. The form of the letters.
also varies greatly; but in the course of centuries
a number of formal peculiarities were developed, and
we not infrequently find the same forms becoming
stereotyped into formulae in civilisations apparently
quite independent of one another. But neither con-
tents, form, nor formulae can be decisive in deter-
mining the characteristic nature of a letter. Whether
the letter is written on lead or on earthenware, on
papyrus or parchment, on wax or on palm-leaf, on
pink notepaper or on an international postcard, is as
immaterial as whether it is clothed in the conventional
formulae of the period. Whether it is well expressed
or badly, long or short, written by a soldier or a bishop,
that does not alter the peculiar characteristic which
makes it a letter. Nor are the special contents any
more decisive: the cool business letter of Harpocras,
the impudent boyish scrawl of Theon, and the sancti-
monious begging-letter of Justinus are distinguished
‘from the coarseness of Hilarion and the despair of
Antonis Longus only by the tone and the spirit in
which they are written.
If the non-literary character of the letter, especially
the ancient letter, has not always been clearly grasped,
the explanation and excuse lie in the fact that even
Aristotle's letters, the saying that “a letter is the half of a conversation.”
See further in Bibelstudien, p. 190; Bible Studies, p. 348. Aurelius Archelaus,.
the benesiciarius whose letter we have cited above (No. 12), also knows this
comparison of a letter with a conversation: “hanc epistulam ant’ oculos
habeto, domine, puta[t]Jo me tecum loqui.” This beautiful simile was therefore:
quite a popular one.
1 CE. Bibelstudien, p. 190; Bible Studies, p. 4.
220 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
in antiquity the form of the non-literary letter was
occasionally employed for literary purposes. At the
time of the rise of Christianity the literary letter,
the epistle as we call it,' had long been a favourite
genre with writers among the Greeks, Romans, and
Jews.
What is an epistle? An epistle is an artistic
literary form, a species of literature, just like the
dialogue, the oration, or the drama. It has nothing
in common with the letter except its form; apart
from that one might venture the paradox that the
epistle is the opposite of a real letter. The contents
of an epistle are intended for publicity—they aim at
interesting “the public.” If the letter is a secret,
the epistle is cried in the market ; every one may read
it, and is expected to read it: the more readers it
obtains, the better its purpose will be fulfilled. The
main feature of the letter, viz. the address and the
detail peculiar to the letter, becomes in the epistle
mere external ornament, intended to keep up the
illusion of “epistolary” form. Most letters are,
partly at least, unintelligible unless we know the
addressees and the situation of the sender. Most
epistles are intelligible even without our knowing the
supposed addressee and the author. To attempt to
fathom the soul of a letter-writer is always ven-
turesome ; to understand what an epistolographer
has written is apprentice-work by comparison. The
epistle differs from a letter as the dialogue from
a conversation, as the historical drama does from
history, as the carefully turned funeral oration does
from the halting words of consolation spoken by a
1 #g., Adolf Wagner writes in Die Hilfe, 2 (1896) p. 2, to Friedrich Naumann,
the editor of that newspaper: “ But, my dear sir, what was meant to be a
mere letter has grown into a long epistle—a regular essay, though written
in haste.”
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 221
father to his motherless child—as art differs from
nature. The letter is a piece of life, the epistle is
a product of literary art.
Of course there are things intermediate between
letter and epistle. There are so-called letters in
which the writer ceases to be naive, perhaps because
he thinks himself a celebrity and casts a side-glance
at the public between every word, coquettishly court-
ing the publicity to which his lines may some day
attain. “Letters” such as these, epistolary letters,
half intended for publication, are bad letters ; with
their frigidity, affectation, and vain insincerity * they
show us what a real letter should not be.
5. A large number of examples of both groups,
letters and epistles, have come down to us from
antiquity.
For a letter to become public and reach posterity
is, strictly speaking, abnormal. The letter is essen-
tially ephemeral, transitory as the hand that wrote it.
or the eyes for which it was destined.” But thanks
to loving devotion, or learning, or accident, or spite,
we possess and may read letters that were not
addressed to us. At an early date it became the
1 Letters such as these no doubt inspired Grillparzer’s paradox (recorded by
August Sauer in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 27, 1906, col. 1315): “every
letter is a lie.” [Franz Grillparzer, the great Austrian dramatist, 1791-1872,—
The English reader may like to see the same thought expressed in character-
istic style by Dr. Johnson. Criticising the letters of ‘Pope, he says in the
Lives of the Poets: “There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger
temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse.” TR.]
2. Adolf Schmitthenner says (Die Christliche Welt, 15, 1901, col. 731) : “Printed
letters are really a self-contradiction. A letter implies pen and ink, the one
person who writes it, the other to whom it is written, and nothing more. It is.
a substitute for intercourse by word of mouth. Such intercourse ends with
the spoken word and leaves no trace, save in our inward being. Should it not
be the same also with that which takes its place? Ought we not from time to
time to burn all our correspondence ?—We do not.” [Schmitthenner was a.
Heidelberg pastor and story-writer of distinction, 1854-1907, TR.]
222 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
custom after the death of eminent men to collect
their manuscript remains. The first case of the
publication of such a collection of real letters among
the Greeks is considered to be that of Aristotle’s,
soon after his death in 822 B.c. Whether fragments
of this genuine collection are preserved among the
“ Letters of Aristotle”! that have come down to us,
is a matter of question. The traditionary letters of
Isocrates’ (+ 338 B.c.) are probably to some extent
genuine, and the letters of Plato have been recently,
in part at least, pronounced genuine by eminent
scholars. Authentic letters of Epicurus (+ 270 B.c.)
have also come down to us, among them a fragment
of a delightfully natural little letter to a child,’
comparable with Luther’s celebrated letter to his son
Hansichen.* We may mention further one example
among the Latins.’ Cicero (+ 43 B.c.) wrote an
enormous number of letters, four collections of which
have come down to us. Still more valuable to us
in many respects than these letters of great men
are the numerous letters of unknown persons which
the new discoveries have brought. to light, and of
! Edited by R. Hercher in the EZpistolographi Graeci, pp. 172-174.
2 In Hercher, pp. 319-336.
3 In Hermann Usener, Epicurea, Leipzig, 1887, p. 154; Bible Studies, p. 28
and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechisches Lessbvich, I. 2,3 p. 396, and
II. 2%, p. 260. It is not certain whether the child was Epicurus’ own.
‘4 [See Letters of Martin Luther selected and translated by Margaret A.
Currie, London, 1908, p. 221. TR.]
5 Hermann Peter, Der Brief in der rémischen Litteratur: Litterargeschicht-
liche Untersuchungen und Zusammenfassungen (Abhandlungen der philo-
logisch-historischen Classe der Kénigl. Siichsischen Gesellschaft der Wissen-
schaften, Bd. XX. No, III.), Leipzig, 1901, supplies a great deal of material,
but suffers from lack of a distinction between letter and epistle, isolates
“* Roman” literature too rigidly, describes the suppression of individuality as a
characteristic feature of classical antiquity, and judges the men of the period
far too much according to the accidental remains of classical literature. Cf.
my review in the Theologische Literaturzeitung, 27 (1902) cols. 41 ff.—I have
not seen Loman’s Walatenschap, I., Groningen, 1899, pp. 14-42; cf. G. A. van
den Bergh van Eysinga, Protestantische Monatshefte, 11 (1907) p. 260.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 223
which we have already given a selection in this book.
They possess the inestimable advantage that they have
come down to us in the autograph original, and that
their writers had not the slightest thought of future
publication, so that they constitute a completely
unprejudiced testimony on the part of the forgotten
writers. They not only yield valuable evidence
regarding the nature and form of the ancient letter,’
they are also instructive to those who study the
nature and form of Biblical and early Christian
letters.’
It is not surprising that we possess so many
specimens of ancient epistles. As an artistic literary
form the epistle has no intention of being transitory.
Being published from the first in a considerable
number of copies it cannot so easily perish as a letter,
of which there is only one or at most two copies
made. It is moreover a very easily manageable
form of literature. It knows no rigid laws of style;
it is only necessary to employ the few epistolary
flourishes and then affix an address. Hence it comes
that every man of letters, even the least well-fitted,
was able to write epistles, and the epistle became one
1 It was therefore an extremely promising subject that the Philosophical
Faculty of Heidelberg set for a prize competition in 1898-9 : “On the basis
of a chronological review of Greek private letters recently discovered in
ppapyri, to describe and exhibit historically the forms of Greek epistolary style.”
The subject was worked out by G. A. Gerhard, but down to the present only
the first part has been published (cf. above, p. 148, n. 5).
2 Some day, when we possess exact chronological statistics of the formulae
employed in ancient letters, we shall be better able to answer a whole series of
hitherto unsolved problems relating to the Biblical and early Church writings,
from the approximate chronology of the Second and Third Epistles of St. John
(and so, indirectly, of the First Epistle and the Gospel of St. John) to the question
of the authenticity of the epistle of Theonas to Lucianus (cf. Harnack, Theol.
Lit.-Ztg. 11, 1886, cols. 319 f£., and Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 1.
p. 790 ; Bardenhewer, Geschichte der althirchlichen Literatur, II. Ὁ. 216 f£.), etc.
On the other hand many of the early Christian letters that have come down to
us through literary sources can be exactly dated, and thus enable us to draw
conclusions as to the age of some papyri that have not yet been dated.
224 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
of the most popular genres. Right down to the
present day it has remained a favourite in all litera-
tures. Of ancient epistolographers there are, for
instance, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch
among the Greeks, L. Annaeus Seneca and the
younger Pliny among the Romans, to say nothing
of the poetical epistles of Lucilius, Horace, and Ovid.
The epistle was especially frequent in the literature
of magic and religion. Nor must we forget mention
of one special feature in the literary history, i.e.
pseudonymous (or rather “heteronymous”) epis-
tolography. Particularly under the successors of
Alexander and in the early Empire numerous epistles
were written under false names, not by swindlers,
but by unknown men of letters who for some reason
or other did not wish to mention their own namer
They wrote “letters” of Demosthenes, of Aristotle
and Alexander, of Cicero and Brutus. It would be
a mistake to brand as downright forgeries these
products of a literary instinct that was certainly not
very sincere or powerful. It is certain that letters
were forged, but it is equally certain that most
“‘pseudonymous” epistles are witnesses to a very
widespread and unobjectionable literary habit.’
6. What is the use to us of this distinction
between letter and epistle, to which we have been
led by the ancient letters on lead, papyrus, and
earthenware ?
The New Testament contains a considerable number
of texts, larger or smaller, calling themselves “Letters”
- Letters ” of Paul, of James, of Peter, etc. Fresh
from our consideration of the ancient letters and
epistles, we are at once alive to the problem: Are
1 Of, Bibelstudien, p. 199ff.; Bible Studies, p. 12 f.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 225
the “Letters” of the New Testament (and further,
of early Christianity in general) non-literary letters
or literary epistles? The fact that all these “letters”
have been handed down by literary tradition and
were first seen by all of us collected in a book, might. _
long deceive us as to the existence of the problem.
Most scholars regard all these texts unhesitatingly
as works of literature. But now that the new
discoveries of letters have shown the necessity of
differentiation, and have given us a standard for
judging whether an ancient text is letter-like in
character, the problem can no longer be kept in the
background. And I think the study of these ancient.
letters, newly discovered, obliges us to maintain that.
in the New Testament there are both non-literary
letters and literary epistles.
The letters of Paul are not literary ; they are real
letters, not epistles; they were written by Paul not.
for the public and posterity, but for the persons to
whom they are addressed. Almost all the mistakes
that have ever been made in the study of St. Paul’s
life and work have arisen from neglect of the fact
that his writings are non-literary and letter-like in
character. His letter to the Romans, which for
special inherent reasons is the least like a letter,
has determined the criticism of all his other letters.
But we must not begin our discussion of the question
how far Paul’s letters are true letters by examining
the one to the Romans. We must begin with the
other letters, whose nature is obvious at first sight.
The more we have trained ourselves, by reading
other ancient letters, to appreciate the true char-
acteristics of a letter, the more readily shall we
perceive the relationship of Paul’s letters to the other
non-literary texts of the period.
15
226 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Paul’s letter to Philemon is no doubt the one
most clearly seen to be a letter. Only the colour-
blindness of pedantry could possibly regard this
delightful little letter as a treatise “On the attitude
of Christianity to slavery.” In its intercession for
a runaway it is exactly parallel to the letter, quoted
above, from the Papas of Hermupolis to the officer
Abinnaeus. Read and interpreted as a letter this
unobtrusive relic from the age of the first witnesses
is one of the most valuable self-revelations that
the great apostle has left us: brotherly feeling, quiet
beauty, tact as of a man of the world—all these are
discoverable in the letter.’
If, as seems to me probable for substantial reasons,
the 16th chapter of Romans was specially written
by Paul to be sent to Ephesus, we have in it a text
about which there can be no doubt that it is letter-
like in character. It is easy to produce parallels
from the papyrus letters, especially for the one most
striking peculiarity of this letter, viz. the apparently
monotonous cumulation of greetings. There is,
for instance, Tasucharion’s letter to her brother
Nilus? (Fayim, second century a.p.) and the letter
of Ammonius to his sister Tachnumi* (Egypt, Imperial
period). Their resemblance to Romans xvi. is most
striking; Paul, however, enlivens the monotony of
the long list of greetings by finely discriminative
personal touches. So too there is no lack of analogies
for a letter of recommendation plunging at once
in medias res and beginning with “I commend.” *
1 C£ Wilhelm Baur, Der Umgang des Christen mit den Menschen, Neve
Christoterpe, Bremen und Leipzig, 1895, Ρ. 151.
2 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No, 601.
3. Pariser Papyrus, No. 18 (Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la biblio-
théque imp., t. XVIII. 2, p. 282£.) ; Bibelstudien, p. 215£. ; not in| Bible Studies.
4 The letters in Epistolographi Graeci, rec. Hercher, p. 259 (Dion to Rufus)
and p, 699 (Synesius to Pylaemenes) begin, like Rom. xvi, with συνίστημι.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 227
‘In opposition to the Ephesian hypothesis it is
usual to ask, How came this little letter to Ephesus
to be united with the long letter to Rome as handed
down to us? This question also can be answered
with some probability by reference to ancient customs
of letter-writing. We knew already that letter-books
were in use in antiquity, containing either copies
of the letters sent’ or collections of letters received.’
We now possess three interesting papyrus fragments
of letter copy-books: one of the Ptolemaic period,
now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with copies
of letters from an official*; one of the year 104 a.p.,
also with official documents (two letters and one
rescript), now in the British Museum‘; and one
from Hermupolis Magna, of the beginning of the
second century A.D., now in the Heidelberg Uni-
versity Library,’ with copies of three letters from
one Heliodorus * to Eutychides, Anubas, and Phibas,
each of whom he calls “brother.” These three letters
are written in three parallel columns in the same hand;
the upper margin contains in each case the praescript,
“‘ Heliodorus to N. N., his brother, greeting.”
Now we know that St. Paul did not write his
letters himself, but dictated them.” The handwriting
1 Libri litterarwm missarwm, References in Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrus-
forschung, 1, p. 372; and in Otto Seeck, Die Briefe des Libanius zeitlich
geordnet, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen.
Literatur, New Series, 15, 1, Leipzig, 1906, p. 19 ff.
2. Libri litterarwm adlatarum, References in Wilcken, Archiv, 1, p. 372,
Of special interest is a papyrus roll at Vienna, consisting entirely of different
letters to the same addressee stuck together.
* Edited by John P. Mahaffy, cf. Wilcken, Archiv, 1, p. 168.
4 Greek Papyri, Vol. III. No, 904, p. 1244, with facsimile (Plate 80). A
portion of this fragment (the rescript) is given below, Fig. 42, facing p. 268,
5 Provisional number 22; not yet published.
δ Letters from other members of this man’s family are preserved in the
Amherst Papyri, nos. 131-135. Heliodorus himself is mentioned there more
than once. There are other letters of his at Heidelberg.
7 Cf. above pp. 153, 158 £., 161.
228 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
of the originals and of the letter copy-books, if such
existed, will therefore have varied with the amanu-
ensis. The little letter to Ephesus was written by
a certain Tertius,’ and the letter to Rome, being of
the same date, would no doubt be written by the
same Tertius and stand in his handwriting next to
the Ephesian letter in the copy-book. In making
a transcript from the copy-book it was the easier
for the two letters in the same hand to run into
one another because in the copy-book the praescripts
were generally abbreviated.’ And how easily might
the upper margin, containing the praescript, break
off! And when once the praescript was gone, the
two letters would fall into one.’
The two “ Epistles to the Corinthians ” that have
come down to us also belong to the group of real
letters. What is it that makes the second Epistle
so extremely unintelligible to many people? Simply
the fact that it is out-and-out a letter, full of allu-
sions which we for the most part no longer fully
understand. St. Paul wrote this letter with the
full strength of his personality, putting into it all
the varied emotions that succeeded and encountered
one another in his impulsive soul—deep contrition
and thankfulness towards God, the reformer’s wrath,
irony and trenchant candour towards the vicious.
The first “Epistle to the Corinthians” is calmer in
tone because the situation of the letter is different,
1 Rom, xvi. 22.
2 Wilcken, Archiv, 1, p. 168.
3 There is perhaps a case of this kind in the unpublished Heidelberg
papyrus No. 87. This also belongs to the correspondence of Heliodorus and
contains a letter from him to his father Sarapion in one wide column. To the
right are visible remains of a second column; the right-hand margin has been
torn away. Was there a second praescript at the top of the second column?
If so, the papyrus must be part of a second letter copy-book belonging to
Heliodorus. Cf. also p. 192, note 2 above. ὶ
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 229
but this also is no pamphlet addressed to the Christian
public, but a real letter to Corinth, in part an answer
to a letter from the church there.
The two “ Epistles to the Thessalonians ” are also
genuine letters, the first even more so than the
second. They represent, so to say, the average type
of one of Paul’s letters; by which I mean that they
are written with comparative composure of mind.
The “ Epistle to the Galatians,” on the other hand,
is the offspring of passion, a fiery utterance of chastise-
ment and defence, not at all a treatise “ De lege et
evangelio.”
The “letters of the captivity,” of which we have
already mentioned that to Philemon, will perhaps gain
most in meaning when treated seriously as letters.
We shall come more and more, as we weigh the
epistolary possibilities and probabilities of actual
letter-writing, to shift the problem of their date
and origin from the profitless groove into which
the alternative “Rome or Caesarea” must lead;
we shall try to solve it by the assumption that at
least Colossians, Philemon, and the “Epistle to the
Ephesians” (Laodiceans) were written during an
imprisonment at Ephesus... The contrast both in
subject and style which has been observed between
Colossians and Ephesians on the one hand and the
rest of the Pauline Epistles on the other is likewise
explained by the situation of those letters. Paul is
writing to churches that were not yet known to him
personally, and what seems epistle-like in the two
letters ought really to be described as their reserved,
' The careful reader of St. Paul’s letters will easily find evidences of an
imprisonment at Ephesus.—I may remark, in answer to a reviewer of the first
edition, that I do not owe this hypothesis to H. Lisco’s book, Vincula
Sanctorum, Berlin, 1900. I introduced it when lecturing at the Theological
Seminary at Herborn in 1897.
230 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
impersonal tone. The greatest stone of offence has
always been the relationship between the contents
of the two texts. Now I for my part see no reason
why Paul should not repeat in one “ epistle ” what he
had already said in another; but all astonishment
ceases when we observe that we have here a mission-
ary sending letters simultaneously to two different
churches that he is anxious to win. The situation
is the same in both cases, and he treats practically
the same questions in like manner in each letter.
The difference, however, is after all so great that he
asks the two churches to exchange their letters.’ The
most remarkable thing to me is the peculiar liturgical
fervour of the two letters, but this is the resonance
of notes that are occasionally struck in other Pauline
epistles and which are not without analogies in con-
temporary non-Christian texts of solemn import.
The “Epistle to the Philippians,” most gracious
of all St. Paul’s writings to the churches, is obviously
letter-like. The question of where it was written
stands in great need of re-examination, for statistics
carefully compiled from inscriptions and papyri would
show that “ praetorium ”? and “ Caesar’s household,” *
which have hitherto always been taken to indicate
Rome, are not necessarily distinctive of the capital.
The Ephesian theory of St. Paul’s prison writings
(or some of them), suggested by a consideration of
the probabilities of actual letter-writing, opens up
new possibilities of accounting for the pastoral epistles,
or at least some of them. The chief problem lies
1 Col. iv. 16.
2 Phil. i. 13. A beginning of such statistics was made by Theodor Mommsen,
Hermes, 35 (1900) pp. 437-442.
8 Phil, iv. 22, This does not refer to the palace (there were imperial
palaces elsewhere than in Rome), but to the body of imperial slaves, scattered
all over the world. We have evidence of imperial slaves even at Ephesus.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 231
not in their language or the teaching contained in
them, but in the circumstances under which the
letters were written, the journeys that must be pre-
supposed, and other external events in the lives of
the apostle and his companions.
In the case of “ Romans” one might at first be in
doubt whether it were a letter or an epistle. At
any rate its letter-like character is not so obvious
as that of 2 Corinthians. Yet it is not an epistle
addressed to all the world or even to Christendom,
containing, let us say, a compendium of St. Paul’s
dogmatic and ethical teaching. Its mere length
must not be held an argument against its letter-like
character’: there are long letters,’ as well as short
epistles. “Romans” is a long letter. St. Paul
wishes to pave the way for his visit to the Roman
Christians ; that is the object of his letter. The
missionary from Asia does not yet know the Western
Church, and is known to it only by hearsay. The
letter therefore cannot be so full of personal details
as those which the apostle wrote to churches long
familiar to him. ‘“ Romans” may strike many at
first as being more of an epistle than a letter, but
on closer examination this explains itself from the
circumstances of writing. Here also, therefore, if
we would understand its true significance, we must
banish all thought of things literary. Not even the
' Of. Bibelstudien, p. 237; Bible Studies, p. 45.
? Eg. the petition of the Dionysia to the Praefect, Oxyrhynchus Papyri,
No. 237 (186 A.D.) is not much shorter than the Epistle to the Romans. This
gigantic letter, between two and three yards long, gives one a good idea of the
probable outward appearance of St. Paul’s “long” letters—great rolls made of
single-column sheets stuck together.
3 Wilhelm Bousset(Theologische Literaturzeitung, 22, 1897, col. 358) says
admirably: “Paul’s Epistles—even that to the Romans—must be read as
outpourings from the heart of an impulsive prophet-like personality, and not
as dialectic didactic writings.” Similarly Adolf Jtilicher in the Gegenwarts-
didel (Die Schriften des neuen Testaments neu iibersetzt und fiir die Gegenwart
232 ΤῊΝ NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
oldest codices of the New Testament, to say nothing
of printed editions, give a perfectly correct idea of the
spirit of this text. What was originally non-literary
has there by subsequent development become literary.
Early in the fourth century a Christian at Oxy-
rhynchus—his name was probably Aurelius Paulus
—copied the beginning of Romans for some private
purpose, very likely for use as an amulet, on a
sheet of papyrus that is now in the Semitic Museum
of Harvard University (Fig. 87)... The coarse, rustic,
non-literary uncials in which he wrote, or got some-
body to write, are more in keeping with St. Paul’s
letter than the book-hand of episcopally trained
scribes. Those powerful lines assume once more
the simple garb they probably wore in the auto-
graph of Tertius written from Paul’s dictation at
Corinth.
Taking one thing with another I have no hesitation
in maintaining the thesis that all the letters of
Paul are real, non-literary letters.? St. Paul was
not a writer of epistles but of letters; he was not a
literary man. His letters were raised to the dignity
of literature afterwards, when the piety of the
churches collected them, multiplied them by copying
and so made them accessible to the whole of
erklirt, herausgegeben von Johannes Weiss, II. 2, Gottingen, 1905, p. 2):
“The Epistle to the Romans remains a letter not only in form but in
essence... .”
1 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 209. The facsimile (Fig. 37) is reproduced
by kind permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Cf. my discussion of the
papyrus in the Theologische Literaturzeitung, 26 (1901) col. 71f. After
a long study of early Christian amulets, I now prefer the theory that the
papyrus served as an amulet for the Aurelius Paulus who is named in
a cursive hand beneath the text from Romans, The folds also favour this
explanation.
2 Cf. the fine observations of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die
griechische Literatur des Altertums, Die Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil I.
Abteilung 8, 2 Auflage, Berlin und Leipzig, 1907, p. 159f., and of Johannes
Weiss in the Gegenwartsbibel, II. 1, pp. 1 ££.
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ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS — 233
Christendom. Later still they became sacred litera-
ture, when they were received among the books of
the “ New” Testament then in process of formation ;
and in this position their literary influence has been
immeasurable. But all these subsequent experiences
cannot change the original character of Paul’s letters.
Paul, whose yearning and ardent hope expected the
Lord, and with Him the Judgment and the world
to come—Paul, who reckoned the future of “ this”
world not by centuries and millenniums but by years,
had no presentiment of the providence that watched
over the fate of his letters in the world’s history.
He wrote with absolute abandon, more so than
Augustine in his Confessions, more than the other
great teachers’ in their letters, which not infgequently
are calculated for publication as well as for the
immediate recipient.
This abandon constitutes the chief value of the
letters of St. Paul. Their non-literary characteristics
as letters are a guarantee of their reliability, their
positively documentary value for the history of the
apostolic period of our religion, particularly the history
of St. Paul himself and his great mission. His letters
are the remains (unfortunately but scanty) of the
records of that mission. The task of exegesis becomes
spontaneously one of psychological reproduction when
once the ebb and flow of the writer’s temporary moods
is duly recognised. The single confessions in the
letters of a nature so impulsive as St. Paul’s were
dashed down under the influence of a hundred
1 Again and again in conversation I have been reminded of the epistle-like
character of so many “letters” of the Fathers, and a similar character has
been claimed for the letters of Paul, But it is quite mistaken to attempt to
judge Paul’s letters by the standard of later degenerations from the type.
Paul wrote under circumstances that could not be repeated, circumstances
that preclude all possibility of playing with publicity or with posterity : he
wrote in expectation of the end of the world.
494. THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
various impressions, and were never calculated for
systematic presentment. The strange attempt to
paste them together mechanically, in the belief that
thus Paulinism might be reconstructed, will have to
be given up. Thus Paulinism will become more
enigmatical, but Paul himself will be seen more
clearly ; a non-literary man of the non-literary class
in the Imperial age, but prophet-like rising above his
class and surveying the contemporary educated world
with the consciousness of superior strength. All the
traces of systematisation that are found here and there
in him are proofs of the limitation of his genius; the
secret of his greatness lies in religion apart from system.
There are two more real letters in the New Testa-
ment, viz. 2 and 3 John. Of the third Epistle I
would say with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff':
“It was entirely a private note . . .; it must have
been preserved among the papers of Gaius as a relic
of the great presbyter.”* The second Epistle of
St. John is not so full of letter-like detail as the third,
but it too has a quite definite purpose as a letter,
although we cannot say with complete certainty who
the lady was to whom it was addressed. That it was
addressed to the whole church seems to me quite
impossible. The two letters are of especial interest
because they clearly betray in several instances the
epistolary style of their age, and it is to be hoped
that, with the aid of the papyri, we shall some day
be able to determine the date of that style more
exactly.
7. With the same certainty with which we describe
the Pauline and two Johannine epistles as real non-
) Lesefriichte, Hermes, 33 (1898) p. 529ff. This essay is especially
instructive on points of style.
2 Page 531,
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS δ
literary letters, we recognise in other New Testament
texts literary epistles, most clearly in the Epistles of
James, Peter, and Jude,’ which have from ancient
times been known as “ catholic” or “ general.”? A
glance at the “addressees” shows that these are not
real letters. Impossible demands are made of the
“bearer” if we are to imagine one. A “letter,” for
instance, superscribed “to the twelve tribes which
are scattered abroad” would be simply undeliverable.
James, in whose praescript we find this “address,”
writes as does the author of the Epistle of Baruch
“to the nine-and-a-half tribes that are in captivity.”
In these cases we have to do not with definite
addressees but with a great “catholic” circle of
readers. The authors did not despatch a single copy
of their “letter,” as St. Paul did of “ Philippians,” for
example: they published a number of copies of a
pamphlet.
The Epistle of James is from the beginning a little
work of literature, a pamphlet addressed to the whole
of Christendom, a veritable epistle. The whole of
its contents agrees therewith. There is none of the
unique detail peculiar to the situation, such as we
have in the letters of St. Paul, but simply general
questions, most of them still conceivable under the
present conditions of our church life. But the Epistle
of James is nevertheless a product of popular litera-
ture. The Epistles of Peter and of Jude have also
quite unreal addresses; the letter-like touches are
purely decorative. Here we have the beginnings of
a Christian literature ; the Epistles of Jude and Peter,
though still possessing as a whole many popular
1 Cf. the excellent remarks of Georg Hollmann and Hermann Gunkel in the
Gegenwartebibel, II. 3, pp. 1 and 25.
2. This old designation includes by implication the essential part of our
observations.
236 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
features, already endeavour here and there after a
certain degree of artistic expression.
The question of the “authenticity” of all these
epistles is, from our point of view, not nearly so
important as it would certainly be if they were real
letters. The personality of the authors recedes
almost entirely into the background. A great cause
is speaking to us, not a clearly definable personality,
such as we see in the letters of St. Paul, and it is of
little importance to the understanding of the text
whether we know the names of the writers with
certainty or not. From our knowledge of the
literary habits of antiquity, as well as on general
historical grounds, we are bound to regard the catholic
epistles first and foremost as epistles issued under
a protecting name, and may therefore call them, in
the good sense of the word, heteronymous.
It is very noteworthy in this connexion that the
longest “epistle ” in the New Testament, the so-called
Kpistle to the Hebrews, is altogether anonymous, as
it has come down to us. Even the “address” has
vanished. Were it not for some details in xiii. 22-24
that sound letter-like, one would never suppose that
the work was meant to be an epistle, not to mention
a letter. It might equally well be an oration or a
diatribe; it calls itself a “word of exhortation ”
(xiii. 22). Itis clear from this example how in epistles
all that seems letter-like is mere ornament; if any of
the ornament crumbles off the character of the whole
thing is not essentially altered. Failure to recognise
the literary character of the Epistle to the Hebrews
has led to a large number of superfluous hypotheses
about the “addressees,” οἷο, and the fact has been
! Cf. Wilhelm Wrede, “‘Das literarische Ritsel des Hebrierbriefs. Mit
einem Anbang tiber den literarischen Charakter des Barnabasbriefs” (Part 8
‘ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS = 237
overlooked that the Epistle gains immensely in im-
portance if really considered as literature: it is
historically the earliest example of Christian artistic
literature. What had been shyly attempted in some
other epistles has here been more fully carried out.
Alike in form and contents this epistle strives to rise
from the stratum in which Christianity had its origin
towards the higher level of learning and culture.
The so-called “First Epistle of St. John” has
none of the specific characters of an epistle, and
is, of course, even less like a letter. The little work
has got along with the epistles, but it is best.
described as a religious diatribe, in which Christian
meditations are loosely strung together for the
benefit of the community of the faithful.
The “ Apocalypse of John,” however, is strictly
speaking an epistle: it has in i. 4 an epistolary
praescript with a religious wish, and in xxii. 21 a
conclusion suitable for an epistle. The epistle is
again subdivided at the beginning into seven small
portions addressed to the churches of Asia—Ephesus,
Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia,
Laodicea. These again are not real letters, sent
separately to the respective churches and afterwards
collected together. All seven of them, rather, have been
written with an eye to the whole, and are to be read
and taken to heart by all the churches, not only by
the one named in the address. They represent, how-
ever, in my opinion, a more letter-like species of
epistle than those we have been considering hitherto.
The writer wishes to achieve certain ends with the
single churches, but at the same time to influence
of the “ Forschungen,” edited by W. Bonsset and H. Gunkel), Géttingen, 1906
Wrede agrees with my view. As he very well puts it (p. 73), “The main
point in the end is to recognise the whole epistle as a literary work.”
238 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
the whole body of Christians, or at any rate Asiatic
Christians. In spite, therefore, of their familiar form
his missives have a public and literary purpose, and
hence they are more correctly ranged with the early
Christian epistles than with the letters. They belong
moreover to a large species of religious epistolography,
which still plays an important part in the popular
religion of the present day,’ viz. the “letters from
heaven.” "
8. Having clearly worked out the difference
between the non-literary letter and the literary
epistle, we are now able to attempt a sketch of the
literary development of Primitive Christianity. If
in doing so we speak of times or periods, we do not
mean to imply that sharp chronological divisions are
possible.
Christianity, then, does not begin as a literary
movement. Its creative period is non-literary.
Jesus of Nazareth is altogether unliterary. He
never wrote® or dictated a line. He depended
entirely on the living word, full of a great confidence
that the scattered seed would spring up. Always
speaking face to face with His friends, never separated
from them by the ocean, He had no need to write
letters. In His remote country home He wanders from
village to village and from one little town to another,
preaching in a boat or in synagogues or on a sunlit
1In May 1906 I bought at Athens for 5 lepta a reprint of 5. “letter of
Christ ” that was being sold in the streets together with lives of saints :
Ἐπιστολὴ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εὑρεθεῖσα ἐπὶ τοῦ τάφου τῆς θεοτόκου,
“Letter of our Lord Jesus Christ, found on the grave of the Mother
of God.”
2 Cf, on this subject Albrecht Dieterich, Blatter fiir hessische Volkskunde,
3 (1901) No. 8, and Hessische Blatter fiir Volkskunde, 1 (1902) p. 19ff.
V. G. Kirchner, Wider die Himmelsbriefe, Leipzig-Gohlis, 1908, wages war of
extermination against these “letters from heaven,”
3 [The writing in John viii. 6, 8 was not literary, TR.]
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 299
hill, but never do we find Him in the shade of the
᾿ writing-room. Excelling them of old time in
reverence as in all things else, He would not have
ventured to take the prophet’s pen and add new
“« Scriptures ” to the old, for the new thing for which
He looked came not in book, formulae, and subtle
doctrine, but in spirit and in fire.
Side by side with Jesus there stands, equally non-
literary, His apostle. Even from the hand of St.
Paul we should possess not a line, probably, if he
had remained, like his Master, in retirement. But
the spirit drove the cosmopolite back into the
diaspora. The great world-centres on the roads and
on the coasts become homes of the gospel, and if
the artisan-missionary at Ephesus wishes to talk to
the foolish Galatians or the poor brethren at Corinth,
then in the midst of the hurry and worry of pressing
daily duties he dictates a letter, adding at the end
a few lines roughly written with his own hard and
weary weaver’s hand. These were no books or
pamphlets for the world or even for Christendom ;
they were confidential pronouncements, of whose
existence and contents the missionary’s nearest
‘companions often knew nothing: Luke even writes
his Acts of the Apostles without knowledge of the
letters of St. Paul (which were written but not yet
published). But the lack of all publicist intention,
the complete absence of literary pose, the contempt
of the stylist’s sounding phrase,—this it was that
predestined St. Paul’s unbookish lines, so unassuming
and yet written with such powerful originality, to
literary fortunes of truly world-wide import to
history. They were to become a centre of energy
for the future, influencing leading men and books
and civilisations down to the present day.
240 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
Such sayings of the non-literary Jesus as have been
reported to us by others, and such non-literary letters
as remain to us of St. Paul’s, show us that Christianity
in its earliest creative period was most closely bound
up with the lower classes‘ and had as yet no effective
connexion with the small upper class possessed of
power and culture. Jesus is more in company with
the small peasants and townsmen of a rural civilisa-
tion—the people of the great city have rejected Him ;
St. Paul goes rather with the citizens and artisans
of the great international cities’; but both Jesus
and St. Paul are full of magnificent irony and lofty
contempt where the upper classes are concerned.
But the conventional language of rural civilisations
is always the simpler, and therefore the popular
standard and popular elements are seen much more
clearly in Jesus than in St. Paul. Paul’s letters,
however, are also popular in tone. ‘This is most
conspicuous in his vocabulary, but even the subject-
matter is adapted to the problems, difficulties, and
weaknesses of humble individuals. Only, of course,
aman of St. Paul’s greatness has knowledge beyond
the thousand-word vocabulary of (say) a mere loafer
at the docks, leading a vegetable existence, and with
no religion except a belief in daemons. St. Paul has
a poet’s mastery of language, he experiences with
unabated force in the depths of his prophet-soul the
subtlest, tenderest emotions known in the sphere of
1 One of the worst blunders ever made by criticism was to explain the
particularly clear tokens of this connexion as later Ebionite interpolations.
But even if we surrendered to these critics all that Jesus says about
mammon, we shall still, for linguistic and other reasons, be bound to maintain
our thesis.
2 The whole history of Primitive Christianity and the growth of the New
Testament might be sketched from this point of view. [Cf. the author's
article in The Expositor, February to April 1909, “ Primitive Christianity and
the Lower Classes.” T2.]
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 241
religion and morals, and he reveals his experience in
the personal confessions contained in his letters.
The creative, non-literary period is followed by
the conservative, literary period, but this receives its
immediate stamp from the motive forces of the
former epoch. The earliest Christian literature is
of a popular kind, not artistic literature’ for the
cultured? It either creates a simple form for itself
(the gospel), or it employs the most artless forms
assumed by’ Jewish or pagan prose (the chronicle,
apocalypse, epistle, diatribe). The popular features
exhibited are of two kinds, corresponding to the
characteristic difference that struck us when com-
paring Jesus and St. Paul: we have on the one hand
the influence of the country and provincial towns,
on the other hand that of the great towns pre-
dominating.*
The synoptic gospels, themselves based on earlier
little books, exhibit the local colour of the Galilean
and Palestinian countryside; the great city, in which
the catastrophe occurs, stands in frightful contrast
to all the rest. The Epistle of St. James will be
best understood in the open air beside the piled
sheaves of a harvest field; it is the first powerful
echo of the still recent synoptic gospel-books.
St. Luke dedicates his books to a man of polish,
but this does not make them polite literature. Here
and there the language of his gospel, and more
' At the present day it is possible for literature to be both popular, in the
above sense, and artistic, viz. when it imitates consciously the forms which
have grown up naturally in popular books,
? ΟΕ, Georg Heinrici in “Theologische Abhandlungen Carl von Weizsicker
.. . gewidmet,” Freiburg 1, B., 1892, p. 329: “The New Testament writings
are distinguished by a far-reaching neglect of the laws that were recognised
throughout the classical world as governing artistic representation,”
* I hope nobody will suppose that I intend to hint at any difference of value
between these two classes.
16
242 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
especially the style and subject-matter of his book
of apostolic history, mark the transition to the popular
books in which the cosmopolite tone prevails. To
this latter class belong, so it seems to me, the Epistle
of Jude, the Epistles of Peter, and the book of the
seven cities (Revelation of St. John). This last is
particularly popular in character, written with the
passionate earnestness of a prophet who speaks the
popular language of his time, and is familiar with
the images created by the popular imagination of the
East.’
The Gospel of St. John, in spite of the Logos in
the opening lines,’ is altogether popular, and so is
the diatribe which goes under the name of the First
Kpistle of St. John. These Johannine texts are still
most decidedly popular works, but they are neither
decidedly rural nor decidedly urban ; rural and urban,
synoptic and Pauline are united together into what
I should call intercultural Christian characteristics.
After this the production of popular Christian
literature never ceased. It runs through the
centuries. Often it went on as it were subter-
raneously, in holes and corners, in secret conventicles
—from the earliest known texts of vulgar Latin, the
Muratorian Canon, and the swarm of late gospels,
“acts,” and “revelations” which are branded as
apocryphal, to the books of martyrdoms, legends
1 A sharp eye trained by the study of Diirer and Rembrandt sees clearly the
marked popular character of this picture-book. This was shown me by a
remark in a letter from Prof. Carl Neumann, of Kiel, dated Gottingen, 6 March,
1905: “In one of my Gottingen semesters I studied the Apocalypse with
Albrecht Diirer and then read ——’s commentary. Putting aside the thousand
and one pros and cons and questions about sources, and looking at the effect
of the whole, as the commentator is no longer naive enough to do, I must say
Ι have never come across a work of such coloristic power in the contrasts, I
might even say of such tremendous instrumentation. There is something
of barbaric unrestraint about it all.”
2 Cf. p. 63 above.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 94
of saints, and pilgrimages,—from the printed postils,
consolatories, and tractates down to the vast modern
polyglot of missionary and edifying literature. Even
to-day the greatest part of this popular literature
perishes after serving its purpose. The dullest
book of professional hypothesis in theology, which
nobody ever will read, finds a place in our libraries,
but books of prayer that served whole generations for
edification become literary rarities after a hundred
years. Thus of the whole vast mass of Christian
popular literature of all times only a scanty remnant
has come down to us, and even this is almost stifled
by the volume of learned theological literature, which
has pushed itself, bulky and noisy, into the fore-
ground.
If we-trace this technical literature of theology
back to its beginnings we come to the Epistle
to the Hebrews, a work which seems to hang in
the background like an intruder among the New
Testament company of popular books. It marks
an epoch in the literary development of Christianity
inasmuch as it is the first tolerably clear example
of a literature which still, like the older popular
writings, appealed only to Christians and not to
the whole world, but was consciously dictated by
theological interests, and dominated (quite unlike
the letters of Paul) by theological methods and the
endeavour to attain beauty of form. Christianity
has moved from its native stratum and is seeking to
acquire culture.
It was but a step from this artistic literature for
Christians to artistic literature for the world, such
as the apologists of the second century produced.
The subsequent lines of this development are well
known.
244 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
But before Christian literature ventured on this
great step into the world, the pristine inheritance
was separated off from the books of the after-genera-
tion by the insurmountable barrier of a new canon.
The formation of the New Testament is the most
important event in the literary history of mankind:
wherein lay its significance, merely as regards
literature? It meant, in the first place, the preser-
vation of the relics of the past age. Secondly, that
the non-literary part of these relics was raised to
the rank of literature, and the impulse given to unite
all the parts gradually into a single book. Finally,
that texts older than “the church” were elevated
to standards for the church, and popular texts
became a book for the world.’ The fact that
scarcely any but popular and primitive Christian
writings found their way into the nascent New Testa-
ment is a brilliant proof of the unerring tact of the
Church that formed the Canon.
9. We have reached the end of a chapter, and
if any one should object that its results could all
have been obtained without the aid of the in-
scriptions, papyri, and ostraca, it is not for me to
enter an indignant denial. Speaking for myself,
however, I am bound to say that I had never grasped
those main lines of the literary development of
Christianity until I took up the study of the class
of document we have been considering. Then
it was that the great difference between literary
and non-literary writing impressed itself on me, and
I learnt from the papyrus letters to appreciate the
characteristics of the non-literary letter.
1 Just as, philologically, it meant bias the vulgar language was elevated to
the realm of things literary.
ILLUSTRATED BY THE NEW TEXTS 245
From that time onward the literary history of
Primitive Christianity stood out before me in all its
grandeur.
It began without any written book at all. There
was only the living word,—the gospel, but no gospels.
Instead of the letter there was the spirit. The
beginning, in fact, was Jesus Himself. This age
of the spirit had not passed away before the apostle
Paul was at work. He wrote his letters not to
gain the ear of literary men, but to keep up con-
fidential intercourse with those dear to him.
Next there sprang up among the Christian brother-
hoods popular books with no pretensions to literary
art. Yet these were the beginnings of Christian
literature, and the authors—evangelists, prophets,
apostles—being themselves men of the people, spoke
and wrote the people’s language. :
The Epistle to the Hebrews shows us Christianity
preparing for a flight from its native levels into the
higher region of culture, and we are conscious of
the beginnings of a Christian world-literature. First,
however, the new religion, reviewing its own initial
stages, begins to collect the relics of that early period
as a standard for the future.
The development of the literature is a reflex of
the whole early history of Christianity. We watch
the stages of growth from. brotherhoods to church,
from the unlearned to theologians, from the lower
and middle classes to the upper world. It is one
long process of cooling and hardening. If we still
persist in falling back upon the New Testament
after all these centuries, we do so in order to make
the hardened metal fluid once more. The New
Testament was edited and handed down by the
Church, but there is none of the rigidity of the
246 THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE
law about it, because the texts composing it are
documents of a period antecedent to the Church,
when our religion was still sustained by inspiration.
The New Testament is a book, but not of your dry
kind, for the texts composing it are still to-day,
despite the tortures to which literary criticism has
subjected them, living confessions of Christian
inwardness. And if, owing to its Greek idiom,
the New Testament cannot dispense with learned
interpreters, it is by no means an exclusive book
for the few. The texts composing it come from
the souls of saints sprung from the people, and
therefore the New Testament is the Bible for the
many.
CHAPTER IV
SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT, ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS
1. In the days before the ancient inscriptions had
sunk beneath the soil, when men still wrote on papyrus.
and potsherd, and the coins of the Roman Caesars
were in daily circulation, Jesus of Galilee called for
a silver denarius of Rome when He was disputing
with His adversaries, and said, referring to the image
and superscription on the coin, “ Render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s ; and unto God the things
that are God’s.”' It was an age in which the Caesar
was honoured as a god; Jesus showed no disrespect
towards Caesar, but by distinguishing so sharply
between Caesar and God He made a tacit protest
against the worship of the emperor. That pregnant
sentence does not present us with two equal magni-
tudes, Caesar and God: the second is clearly the
superior of the first; the sense is, “Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and, a fortiori,
unto God the things that are God’s.”? The portrait
and legend were an ocular demonstration of the right
of the sovereign who coined the money to demand
1 Matt. xxii. 21, with the parallel passages.
? Cf. the remarks on the worship of the emperors, in ὃ 9 below, p. 342 ff.
This explanation of the passage is exactly how the Christian woman Donata
understands it, in the Acts of the Scilitanian Martyrs: honorem Caesari quasi
Caesari ; timorem autem Deo, “honour to Caesar as Caesar, but fear to God |”
(Ausgewahite Mirtyreracten, herausg. von R, Knopf, Tiibingen, 1901, p. 35).
247
448 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
tribute from the provincials. The claims of God
were in no sense affected, for they are high as the
heavens above this world’s claims. Thus Jesus made
use of the portrait and legend on a Roman coin to
give a concrete, tangible answer to a question of the
day involving religion and politics.
Some time later, on the eve of His martyrdom, in
the trusted circle of His immediate disciples, Jesus
referred to a secular custom, examples of which are
derivable from literature’ and most abundantly from
inscriptions and coins of Greek-speaking lands—the
custom of distinguishing princes and other eminent
men with the honourable title of Huergetes, ‘“bene-
factor.”* It would not be difficult to collect from
inscriptions, with very little loss of time, over a
hundred instances, so widespread was the custom.
I give here one example only, of the same period
as the evangelists. Gaius Stertinius Xenophon,
body-physician to the Emperor Claudius, whom he
afterwards poisoned, was contemporary with Jesus,
and received from the people of Cos, probably about
A.D. 58, in gratitude for his valuable services to his
native island, the title of “Benefactor.” The title
precedes his name, for instance, in a fragmentary
inscription from Cos* (Figure 88), which was probably
connected with some honour conferred on his wife : ὁ
τοῦ εὐεργέτ[α I. Xrep-]} | we ee τ" of the benefactor
πινίου Ἐενοφῶντ[ος] G. Stertinius Xenophon, . .
ἀνιερωθεῖσαν τί δι] consecrated to the city.
πόλει.
1 ΟἹ, for instance the Old Testament Apocrypha. 2 Luke xxii. 25 f.
9 Discovered and published by Rudolf Herzog, Koische Forschungen und
Funde, Leipzig, 1899, p. 65ff., Nos. 24, 256. The greatly reduced facsimile
(Plate IV. 2, 3) is here reproduced (Fig. 38) by the kind permission of the
«discoverer and his publisher.
4 The upper fragment ITHIOYA is perhaps part of another inscription.
Fie. 38.—Marble Inscription from Cos, containing the title Huergetes, circa 53 A.D. Now in
Sarrara Yussuf’s garden wall, in the town of Cos. By permission of Rudolf Herzog and the
publishing house of Theodor Weicher (Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung).
[Ρ. 248
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 249
Jesus knew this custom of “the Gentiles” most
probably from Syrian and Phoenician coins' which
circulated in Palestine, and it is, I think, justifiable to
suppose that this common Greek title existed as a
borrowed word in Aramaic. The Greek title in the
mouth of Jesus is, like His words about the denarius,
one of the instances in which we seem to hear in the
language of the Master the roar of breakers coming
from the great world afar off. He mentioned the
title not without contempt, and forbade His disciples
to allow themselves to be so called: the name con-
tradicted the idea of service in brotherhood.
About twenty years after this St. Paul, on his
journeyings through the world, finds himself at
Athens. He walks through the streets, and stands
meditating before an altar. He is profoundly in-
terested by the inscription?: “To the unknown
god.” That line on the stone is to him the embodi-
ment of the pagan yearning for the living God, whom
he possesses in Christ.
At Ephesus, whither St. Paul soon proceeded,
there was another experience, not with an inscription
this time, but with papyrus books. Preaching with
the Holy Ghost and with power he won over a
number of Jews and pagans, and many of them
who had dealt in magic brought their magical
books and burnt them publicly. There were such
quantities of them that St. Luke—perhaps with
some pious exaggeration—places their value at
50,000 silver drachmae.* The new discoveries en-
1 4g. coins of the cities of Ptolemais (Acre) and Aradus with Alexander I.
Bala, 150-145 B.c., Journal international darchéologie numismatique, 4 (1901)
p. 203, and 3 (1900) p. 148; and coins of Tyre and Aradus with Antiochus VII.
Huergetes, 141-129 8.c., ébid. 6 (1903) p. 291, and 3 (1900) ρ. 148,
2 ᾿Αγνώστῳ θεῷ, Acts xvii, 23,
® Acts xix. 19.
250 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
able us to form a peculiarly vivid conception of the
appearance and contents of these magical books.
There are in our museums numerous fragments
of ancient papyrus books of magic, sometimes of
very considerable size, for the publication and
elucidation of which we are especially indebted
to Carl Wessely, Albrecht Dieterich, and Frederic
Kenyon. The largest fragment is no doubt the
“Great” Magical Papyrus in the Bibliothéque
Nationale at Paris,’ which was written about
300 .D., and has been edited by Wessely.?
Though it was not written till some centuries
after St. Paul’s adventure, though it is in the
form of a codex (instead of the roll which was
probably still usual in the time of St. Paul), and
though the usurpation of the name of Jesus (among
other things) makes it no longer purely pagan or
Jewish, yet it will in the main afford us magical texts
that are considerably older than the MS., and we are
in a position to construct from it a distinct picture
of what ancient magical literature at the time of
St. Paul was like. There can, I think, be no doubt
that we must assume a strong strain of Jewish
influence in it even then. I choose as a specimen
leaf 88 of the Paris book* containing the end of a
1 No. 574 of the Supplément grec.
2 Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, Bd. 36, Wien, 1888, pp. 27-208.
8 Wessely has re-edited most of this leaf with a translation, Patrologia
Orientalis, t. IV., 2, pp. 187-190. Ihave silently corrected a number of readings
from the photograph; and my translation departs a good deal from Weasely’s
ideas. The Jewish part of this leaf was explained before Wessely by Albrecht
Dieterich, Abrawas Studien cur Religtonsgeschichte des spitern Altertwms,
Leipzig, 1891, p. 138 ff. He sees in the “pure men” of the concluding lines
members of a sect of the Essenes resembling the Therapeutae (p. 146).
Valuable elucidations were contributed by Ludwig Blau, Das altjtidische
Zauberwesen, Jahresbericht der Landes-Rabbinerschule in Budapest fiir das
Schuljahr 1897-8, Budapest, 1898, p. 112 ff.
2995
8000
8005
8010
8015
beat
3020 et ἢ eee ia tee
3025
3030
3035
3040
Fic. 39.—Folio 33 recto of the Great Magical Papyrus, written in Egypt
cirea 300 A.D. Now in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris. (The photograph
was obtained for me by the late Albrecht Dieterich.)
[μ. 251
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 251
pagan recipe, and a long recipe written by a pagan
but originally Jewish’ (Figures 89 and 40) :—
Recro, Pacan Txxr (Figure 39)
τοῦ βυθοῦ. αἱ δὲ δυνάμεις σου ἐν τῆ καρδία τοῦ ‘Ep-
μοῦ εἰσιν. τὰ ξύλα σου τὰ ὀστέα τοῦ Μνεύεως. καί σου'
4995 τὰ ἄνθη ἐστὶν ὁ ὀφθαλμὸς τοῦ “ρου. τὸ σὸν σπέρμα
τοῦ Πανός ἐστι σπέρμα. ἀγῶνι ξῶσεἶ ῥητείνη ὡς καὶ
τοὺς θεούς. καὶ ἐπὶ ὑγεία ἐμαυτοῦ καὶ συνοπλίσθη-
τι ἐπ᾽ εὐχῆ. καὶ δὸς ἡμῖν δύναμιν ὡς 6” Apns καὶ
ἡ ᾿Αθηνᾶ. ἐγώ εἰμι Ἑρμῆς. λαμβάνω σε σὺν ἀγαθῆ
8000 Τύχη καὶ ἀγαθῶ Δαίμονι καὶ ἐν καλῆ ᾧ ὃ καὶ ἐν καλῆ
ἡ {ἢ καὶ ἐπιτευκτικῆ πρὸς πάντα. ταῦτ᾽ εἰπὼν
τὴν μὲν τρυγηθεῖσαν πόαν εἰς καθαρὸν ἕλισσε
ὀθόνιον. τῆς δὲ ῥίζης τὸν τόπον ἑπτὰ μὲν πυροῦ
κόκκους τοὺς δὲ ἴσους κριθῆς μέλιτι δεύσαντες
3005 ἐνέβαλον καὶ τὴν ἀνασκαφεῖσαν γῆν ἐνχώσας
ἀπαλλάσσεται:
Recto, Jewish Text (Figure 39)
Γ πρὸς δαιμονιαζομένους ὃ Πιβήχεως δόκιμον.
λαβὼν ἔλαιον ὀμφακίζοντα μετὰ βοτάνης
μαστιγίας καὶ λωτομήτρας ἕψει μετὰ σαμψούχου
8010 ἀχρωτίστου λέγων - Ιωηλ" Ὠσσαρθιωμι"
Ἐμωρι" Θεωχιψοιθ' Σιθεμεωχ᾽ Σωθη"
Ιωη" Μιμιψωθιωωφ' Φερσωθι ΔΕ ΗΙΟΥ͂Ω
Ιωη" Εωχαριφθα" ἔξελθε ἀπὸ τοῦ id 8 wou".
τὸ δὲ φυλακτήριον ἐπὶ λαμνίω κασσιτερινῶ
1 I am indebted to the kindness of my friend the late Albrecht Dieterich
for the photographs of the two sides of the leaf, here reduced to about two-
thirds of the original size (Figs. 39 and 40). A new edition of the whole
papyrus is to be expected from a pupil of Dieterich’s. 2 = ζῶσαι.
3 = ὥρᾳ. Cf. the ostracon with the charm for binding, below, p. 309. This
and the one in the next line are good examples of p-monograms, which are
very numerous in the papyri. The so-called monogram of Christ, which
had been in use long before the time of Christ, is also one of them. Cf, my
Epistle of Psenosiris, Ὁ. 43 (in the German edition, Hin Dokument, p. 23),
4 = ἡμέρᾳ.
5 The word δαιμονιάζω, of which I know no previous example, is probably
formed on the analogy of σεληνιάζω.
7 == κοινά, 1.6. “and the other usual formulae,”
magical papyri.
& = δεῖνα.
This note is frequent in
252 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
8015 ypdde: Ianw: Αβραωθιωχ' P6a- Mecev-
τινιαω" Dewy: Lanw: Χαρσοκ" καὶ περίαπτε
τὸν πάσχοντα παντὸς δαίμονος φρικτὸν ὃ φο-
βεῖται. στήσας ἄντικρυς ὅρκιζε. ἔστιν δὲ ὁ ὁρκισμὸς
οὗτος " ὁρκίξζω σε κατὰ τοῦ θυ τῶν Ἑβραίων
3020 ᾿Ιησοῦ" Ιαβα" Ian: Αβραωθ- Αια" Θωθ' Ene:
Edw: Ano: Ἐου" IuBaex: Αβαρμας Ιαβα-
ραου" Αβελβελ: Δωνα" Αβρα' Μαροια" βρακί-
ων" πυριφανῆ " ὁ ἐν μέση ἀρούρης καὶ χιόνος
καὶ ὁμίχλης, Ταννητις, καταβάτω σου ὁ ἄγ-
$025 γέλος ὁ ἀπαραίτητος καὶ εἰσκρινέτω 3 τὸν
περιπτάμενον δαίμονα τοῦ πλάσματος τούτο",
ὃ ἔπλασεν ὁ θς ἐν τῶ ἁγίω ἑαυτοῦ παραδεί-
ao. ὅτι ἐπεύχομαι ἅγιον Ov ἐπὶ Aupov-
τ
“ψεντανχω. ο. ὁρκίζω σε λαβρία" Taxovd -
ἂς
3030 “βλαναθαναλβα" ἄκραμμ. 0. Awl: Taba-
βαθρα: XayOaB8paba- Xapvvyer*+ ABpo-
ωθ. σὺ Αβρασέίλωθ' Αλληλου" Ιελωσαι"
Ιαηλ " ὁρκίξω σε τὸν ὀπτανθέντα ὅ τῶ
᾿Οσραὴλ ὃ ἐν στύλω φωτινῶ καὶ νεφέλη ἡμε-
3085 ρινῆ καὶ ῥυσάμενον αὐτοῦ τὸν λόγον Ἶ ἔργου
Φαραὼ καὶ ἐπενέγκαντα ἐπὶ Φαραὼ τὴν
δεκάπληγον διὰ τὸ παρακούειν αὐτόν. ὁρκί-
fw σε, πᾶν πνεῦμα δαιμόνιον, λαλῆσαι ὁποῖ-
ον καὶ ἂν ἧς, ὅτι ὁρκίζω σε κατὰ τῆς σφραγῖ-
3040 δος ἧς ἔθετο Σολομὼν ἐπὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν
τοῦ ᾿Ιηρεμίου καὶ ἐλάλησεν. καὶ σὺ λάλησον
ὁποῖον ἐὰν ὃ ἧς ἐπεουράνιον " ἢ ἀέριον
1 = βραχίων.
2 This must be a technical expression : the daemon, freed by exorcism, and
fluttering about, is to be arrested so as not to enter into the man again
(cf. Mark ix. 25).
3 = λόγος.
4 The reading is uncertain; the text has been corrected.
5 For this supposed “ Biblical” word, cf. p. 79.
δ. = Ἰσραήλ!
τ Originally of course the formula contained the word λαόν and perhaps ἀπὸ
τοῦ ἔργου. :
8 For this vulgar ἐάν, which occurs again, instead of ἄν, οὗ, Neue Bibel-
studien, p. 29 ff,; Bible Studies, p. 202 ff.
3. = ἐπουράνιον.
8045
8050
3055
3060
3065
3070
3075
3080
3085
F1q, 40.—Folio 33 verso of the Great Magical Papyrus, written in Egypt
cirea 300 A.D. Now in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris. (The photograph
was obtained for me by the late Albrecht Dieterich.
[Ρ. 258
8045
3050
3055
3060
3065
3070
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS
Verso, Jewish Text (Figure 40)
εἴτε ἐπίγειον εἴτε ὑπόγειον ἢ καταχθόνιον
ἢ ᾿Εβουσαῖον ἢ Χερσαῖον ἢ Φαρισαῖον. λάλησον
ὁποῖον ἐὰν ἧς, ὅτι ὁρκίζω σε θεὸν φωσφό-
ρον ἀδάμαστον, τὰ ἐν καρδία πάσης ζωῆς
ἐπιστάμενον, τὸν χουοπλάστην | τοῦ γένους
τῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὸν ἐξαγαγόντα ἐξ ἀδήλων
καὶ πυκνοῦντα τὰ νέφη καὶ ὑετίζοντα τὴν γῆν
καὶ εὐλογοῦντα τοὺς καρποὺς αὐτῆς, ὃν εὐ-
λογεῖ πᾶσα ἐπουράνιος δυνάμιος 5 ἀγγέλων
ἀρχαγγέλων. ὁρκίξω σε μέγαν Ov Σαβα-
ώθ, δι’ ὃν ὁ ᾿Ιορδάνης ποταμὸς ἀνεχώ-
ρήῆσεν εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω καὶ ᾿Ερυθρὰ θάλασσα
ἣν ὥδευσεν Εἰσραὴλ, καὶ ἔσται ὃ ἀνόδευτος"
ὅτι ὁρκίζω σε τὸν καταδείξαν᾽α τὰς ἑκατὸν
τεσσεράκοντα γλώσσας καὶ διαμερίσαντα
τῷ ἰδίω προστάγματι. ὁρκίξω σε τὸν τῶν αὐὖ-
χενίων γυγάντων ὁ τοῖς πρηστῆρσι κατα-
φλέξαντα, ὃν ὑμνῖ ὃς " οὐρανὸς τῶν οὐρανῶν,
ὃν ὑμνοῦσι τὰ πτερυγώματα τοῦ Χερουβίν.
ὁρκίζω σε τὸν περιθέντα ὄρη τῇ θαλάσση
τεῖχος ὃ ἐξ ἄμμου καὶ ἐπιτάξαντα αὐτῇ μὴ ὑπερ-
βῆναι καὶ ἐπήκουσεν ἡ ἄβυσσος. καὶ σὺ ἐπά-
κουσον, πᾶν πνεῦμα δαιμόνιον, ὅτι ὁρκίζω σε
τὸν συνσίοντα τοὺς τέσσαρας ἀνέμους ἀπὸ
τῶν ἱερῶν αἰώνων οὐρανοιδῆ θαλασσο-
εἰδῇ νεφελοειδῆ φωσφόρον ἀδάμαστον.
ὁρκίζω τὸν ἐν τῇ καθαρᾶ “Ἱεροσολύμω ᾧ τὸ
ἄσβεστον πῦρ διὰ παντὸς αἰῶνος προσπαρά-
κειται τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ τῶ ἁγίω Ιαεω-
λ'
βαφρενεμουν, ο, ὃν τρέμει Τέννα πυρὸς
253
1 χουοπλάστης (χοοπλάστης) is ἃ word, not yet found elsewhere, of Jewish
origin.
2 δύναμις is meant,
* = ἔστη, cf. LXX Exodus xiv. 27, καὶ ἀπεκατέστη τὸ ὕδωρ.
* A word has dropped out here ; Wessely’s ὄχλον is a good conjecture.
> ὑμνεῖ ὁ.
5. Corrected from τειζος.
7
= συνσείοντα.
§ = λόγος.
254 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
καὶ φλόγες περιφλογίζουσι καὶ σίδηρος
λακᾶ καὶ πᾶν ὄρος ἐκ θεμελίου φοβεῖται.
c e , ᾿
3075 ὁρκίξω σε, πᾶν πνεῦμα δαιμόνιον, τὸν ἐφο-
ρῶντα ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ ποιοῦντα ἔκτρομα ' τὰ
b a
θεμίλια " αὐτῆς καὶ ποιήσαντα τὰ πάντα
ἐξ ὧν " οὐκ ὄντων εἰς τὸ εἶναι. ὁρκίξω δέ σε τὸν
παραλαμβάνοντα τὸν ὁρκισμὸν τοῦτον χοιρίον
3080 μὴ φαγεῖν καὶ ὑποταγήσεταί σοι πᾶν πνεῦμα
\ ὃ , € a 2\. Δ᾽ ἃ € ψ sy
καὶ δαιμόνιον ὁποῖον ἐὰν ἦν. ὁρκίζων δὲ
A 5B DAY a ” \ a a > ,
φύσα a° ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων Kal τῶν ποδῶν adai-
᾿
ρων τὸ φύσημα ἕως τοῦ προσώπου καὶ εἰσ-
κριθήσεται. φύλασσε καθαρός '" ὃ γὰρ λόγος
8085 ἐστὶν ἑβραικὸς καὶ φυλασσόμενος παρὰ κα-
θαροῖς ἀνδράσιν.
Recro, Pacan ΤΈΧΤ
The subject referred to is a root, which is dug up with certain cere-
monies, while a magic spell is pronounced, part of which comes on this
page. The daemon is being addressed. Note the paratactic style and
the frequent use of and.’
“..... of the depth. But thy powers are in the heart of
Hermes. Thy trees are the bones of Mnevis.* And thy
2995 flowers are the eye of Horus. Thy seed
is the seed of Pan. Gird thyself for the strife with rosin
as also®
the gods. And for my health” <and> be my companion
in arms
! ἔκτρομος is not in the lexicons, but it seems to be a synonym of ἔντρομος,
Acts vii. 32, xvi. 29; Heb. xii, 21. (ΤῈ)
2 = θεμέλια.
3 = ἐκ τῶν.
4 Wor ἣν after ἐάν cf, Neue Bibelstudien, pp. 29, 31; Bible Studies, p. 201 £.
5 This a is no doubt a dittograph and may be struck out.
6 The ΜΗ. has agaipwy, but ἀφαιρῶν would make no sense, ἀπαίρων, how-
ever, used as in LXX Psalm Ixxvii. [Ixxviii.] 26, 52 in the sense of “ make to
go forth,” suits admirably and was probably the original reading.
7 CE. p. 128 ff. above.
5 The Egyptian Sun-bull.
9 Here, I think, one line or more must have dropped out; even by taking ὡς
ag a preposition we get no good sense.
” These words perhaps should be construed with the preceding.
.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 255
at my prayer. And give us power like Ares and.
‘Athony Ἶ am? ΤΣ ηθοα, seize thee in fellowship
with? good
3000 Tyche and good Daemon, and in a good hour, and on a
day good and prosperous for all things.” Having said
this,
roll up the gathered herb in a clean
linen cloth. But into the place of the root seven wheat-
grains, and the like number of barley, they‘ mixed. with
honey
3005 and threw. And having filled in the earth that was
dug up
he® departeth.
Recto, Jewish ΤΈΧΤ
For those possessed by daemons, an approved charm by
Pibechis °.
Take oil made from unripe olives, together with the plant
mastigia’ and lotus pith,’ and boil it with marjoram
3010 (very colourless), saying : “ Joél,? Ossarthiomi,
Emari, Thedchipsoith, Sithemesch, Sothé,
1 Or “according to my wish.”
% Cf, pp. 134-139 above.
3 This σύν is a technical expression in the ritual of magic and cursing.
4 Note the change of subject.
5 Te. the digger of the root.
® A magician, cf. Albrecht Dieterich, Jahrbiicher fiir classische Philologie, 16,
Supplementband (1888), p. 756.
141 Οὗ Albr. Dieterich, Abrawas, p. 188, [Can “herb mastic,” a plant
resembling marjoram, be meant? TR.]
8. Lotometra is perhaps the name of a plant, cf. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae,
V. col. 473.
® In these charms we should try to distinguish between meaningless hocus-
pocus and words of Semitic (cf. Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 1ff.; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 321 f£.)
or Egyptian origin, etc., which once had and might still have a meaning. In
trying to recover this meaning we must not only employ the resources of
modern philology but also take into account the ancient popular and guessing
etymologies, of which we have a good number of (Semitic) examples in the
Onomastica Sacra, Several of the magical words in this text are Biblical
and are explained in the Onomastica Sacra, That the explanations in the
Onomastica Sacra were in some cases current among the people, is shown
by the Heidelberg papyrus amulet containing Semitic names and Greek
explanations (cf. Figure 62, facing p. 415 below).
256 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
J6é, Mimipsdthiddph, Phersothi AEEIOYO
Joe, Eochariphtha: come out of! such an one (and the
other usual formulae).”
But write this phylactery? upon a little sheet of
3015 tin: “Jaéd, Abraéthidch, Phtha, Mesen-
tiniad, Phedch, Jaé6, Charséc,” and hang it
round the sufferer: it is of every daemon a thing to be
trembled at,? which
he fears. Standing opposite, adjure him. The adjura-
tion is
this: “1 adjure thee by the god of the Hebrews
3020 Jesu,‘ Jaba, Jaé, Abradth, Aia, Thoth, Ele,
Elo, Aéé, Eu, Jiibaech, Abarmas, Jaba-
rau, Abelbel, Lona, Abra, Maroia, arm,
thou that appearest in fire,> thou that art in the midst.
of earth and snow
and vapour,® Tannétis’: let thy angel descend,
3025 the implacable one, and let him draw into captivity the
daemon as he flieth around this creature
which God formed in his holy paradise.®
For I pray to the holy god, through the might of®
Ammon-
ipsentanchd.” Sentence. “I adjure thee with bold, rash
words: Jacuth,
3030 Ablanathanalba, Acramm.” Sentence. “ Adth, Jatha-
1 The same formula exactly occurs in Luke iv. 35; with ἐκ instead of ἀπό in
Mark i, 25, v. 8, ix. 25.
2 Le. amulet.
ὁ Cf. James ii. 19, and Bibelstudien, p. 42£.; Bible Studies, p. 288,
4 The name Jesu as part of the formula can hardly be ancient. It was
probably inserted by some pagan: no Christian, still less a Jew, would have
called Jesus “the god of the Hebrews.”
5 The arm of God together with the jire is probably a reminiscence of
passages like LXX Isaiah xxvi. 11 and Wisdom xvi. 16.
* Snow and vapour coming from God, LXX Psalm cxlvii. 5 [16], cf. also
LXX Job xxxviii. 22, 9.
7? Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 138, alters it to τανυσθείς.
5. Cf. Tanchuma, Pikkudé 3: Rabbi Jochanan said: “. . . Know that all the
souls which have been since the first Adam and which shall be till the end of
the whole world, were created in the six days of creation. They are allin the
garden of Eden” (Ferdinand Weber, Jiidische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud
und verwandter Schriften,? Leipzig, 1897, p. 225).
® This ἐπί seems to be related to the technical σύν (p. 255, n. 3 above).
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 257
bathra, Chachthabratha, Chamynchel, Abro-
6th. Thou art Abrasiloth, Allélu, Jeldsai,
Jaél: I adjure thee by him who appeared unto
Osrael 1 in the pillar of light and in the cloud by
3035 day,? and who delivered* his word‘ from the taskwork ἢ
of Pharaoh and brought upon Pharaoh the
ten plagues ® because he heard not.’ I adjure
thee, every daemonic spirit, say whatsoever
thou art.’ For I adjure thee by the seal
8040 which Solomon " laid upon the tongue
of Jeremiah" and he spake. And say thou.
whatsoever thou art, in heaven, or of the air,
Verso, Jewish ΤΈΧΤ
or on earth," or under the earth or below the ground,"
or an Ebusaean, or ἃ Chersaean, or a Pharisee.” Say
3045 whatsoever thou art, for I adjure thee by God the light-
bringer, invincible, who knoweth what is in the heart
1 This form also suggests the pagan origin of the editor of the Jewish.
text.
? See for the facts Exod, xiii. 21, The LXX has pillar of fire, not pillar
of light.
1 A frequent expression in the LXX.
4 Word (λόγον) written by mistake for people (λαόν).
5 LXX Exod. i. 11. δ LXX Exod. vii. ff.
7 LXX Exod. vii. 4,
* To obtain complete power over the daemon it is necessary to know his.
name ; hence the question to the daemon in Mark v. 9 = Luke viii. 30. ;
5 Solomon's seal is well known in magic; see for instance Dieterich,
Abrawas, p. 141 f., Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, 111.8 Ὁ. 808.
* I do not know what this refers to. The tradition is probably connected
with LXX Jer. i, 6-10.
» In spite of the resemblance to Phil. ii. 10, Eph. ii. 2, iii. 10, vi. 12, this is
not a quotation from St. Paul, The papyrus and St. Paul are both using
familiar Jewish categories,
This remarkable trio of daemons obviously comes from LXX Gen. xv. 20,
Exod, iii. 8, 17, etc., where we find Xerraio (who have become Χερσαῖοι,
i.e. “land daemons”), Φερεζαῖοι (who have become the more intelligible:
“ Pharisees”), and Ἰεβουσαῖοι. Χερσαῖος, which also occurs elsewhere as 2.
designation applied to a daemon (see Wessely’s index), has here no doubt the
force of an adjective derived from a proper name, Dieterich, Abraxas, p, 139,
explains the passage somewhat differently.
19. Of. LXX Gen. i. ὃ and many similar passages.
4 CE. 3 Mace. vi. 13.
17
258 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of all life,! who of the dust? hath formed the race
of men, who hath brought out of uncertain [places]
and maketh thick the clouds? and causeth it to rain upon
the earth *
3050 and blesseth the fruits thereof®; who is
blessed by every power in heaven of angels,®
of archangels. I adjure thee by the great God Sabaoth,
through whom the river Jordan returned
backward,’—the Red Sea ® also,
3055 which Israel journeyed over and it stood ® impassable.
For I adjure thee by him that revealed the hundred
and forty tongues and divided them
by his command.” 1 adjure thee by him who
with his lightnings the [race ?] of stiff-necked " giants con-
3060 sumed,'* to whom the heaven of heavens sings praises,!8
to whom Cherubin * his wings sing praises.
I adjure thee by him who hath set mountains» about the
sea,
' LXX Job vii. 20; Psalm exxxviii. [cxxxix.] 23. An inaccuracy in the
translation here was corrected by P. W. Schmiedel (letter, Ziirich, 9 March
1909). 2 LXX Gen. ii. 7.
3 LXX Psalm cxxxiv. [cxxxv.] 7. 4 LXX Job xxxviii. 26.
5 LXX Deut. vii. 13. * LXX Isaiah vi. 3.
7 LXX Joshua iii. 13 ff.; Psalm cxiii. [cxiv.] 3.
*® LXX Exod. xiv.
® LXX Exod. xiv. 27.
19 Noah’s generations enumerated in Genesis x. contain the names of 70
peoples; the Jews therefore assumed that there were 70 different languages
(Weber,’ p. 66). Our papyrus has 2 x 70 languages—a number not mentioned
elsewhere, so far as I know.
u Of, LXX Psalm cxxviii. [exxix.] 4.
12 This is a combination from LXX Gen. vi. 4ff. and xix. 24ff. The giants
and the people of Sodom and Gomorrha are mentioned together as typical
evil-doers in Ecclus. xvi. 7, 3 Macc. ii. 4, and the Book of Jubilees xx, 5.
Dieterich, Abrawas, p. 143, explains the passage differently.
1% LXX Psalm xviii. [xix.] 2.
“ The use of Cherubin as a singular may perhaps be regarded as another
proof that this Jewish formula was written out by a pagan. σε. Tersteegen's
plural form die Seraphinen, resulting from a like misconception of Seraphin as
asingular. [Cherubin, -m, was formerly used as a singular in English. The
New English Dictionary has examples ranging from Wyclif to Dickens, and
the plural cherubims is familiar in the A.V. Even in the LXX χερουβίμ is
treated as ἃ neuter singular in 2 Sam. xxii. 11 and 2 Chron, iii. 11. TE]
18 Mountains (ὄρη) is a corruption of bownds (ὅρια), cf. LXX Job xxxviii. 10,
cand especially LXX Jer. v. 22.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 259
a wall of sand,! and hath charged it not to pass
over,? and the deep hearkened. And do thou
3065 hearken, every daemonic spirit, for I adjure thee
by him that moveth ὃ the four winds since
the holy aeons, him the heaven-like, sea-
like, cloud-like, the light-bringer, invincible.
I adjure thee by him that is in Jerosolymum* the pure,
to whom the
3070 unquenchable fire ὃ through every aeon is
offered, through his holy name Jaeo-
baphrenemun (Sentence), before whom trembleth® the
Genna’ of fire
and flames flame round about ὃ and iron
bursteth ® and every mountain feareth © from its founda-
tions.
3075 I adjure thee, every daemonic spirit, by him that
looketh down on earth and maketh tremble the
foundations! thereof and hath made all things
out of things which are not into Being.” But I adjure
thee,
thou that usest 15 this adjuration: the flesh of swine
1 LXX Jer. v. 22.
? LXX Job xxxviii. 11; Jer. v. 22.
3 LXX Psalm cxxxiv. [cxxxv.] 7.
* Cf, LXX Psalm cxxxiv. [cxxxv.]21. The form of the name of the city
again points to a pagan writer.
5 LXX Lev. vi. 9, 12,13. The fire is that on the altar of burnt-offering at
Jerusalem. As this fire was extinguished for ever in the year 70 A.D., this
portion of the papyrus at any rate must have originated before the destruction
of Jerusalem,
8 LXX Isaiah xiv. 9.
" Ie. Gehenna, On the Jewish conceptions of hell cf. Weber,? p. 393 ff.
The word Tacevva, from which (through an intermediate form Teewa) our word
Tevva is derived, occurs as ἃ transcription in LKX Joshua xviii. 16.
5. LXX Isaiah lxvi. 15 ff., etc.
5 The translation is not certain, I assume a form λακάω ( = λάσκω), a back-
formation from ἐλάκησα. For the allusion see LXX Jer, vi. 28, Psalm cvi.
{evii.] 16, xlv. [xlvi.] 10.
LXX Psalm xvii. [xviii] 8, etc.; of. also Bibelstudien, p, 45£.; Bible
Studies, Ὁ. 290 ἢ,
41 LXX Psalm ciii. [civ.] 32; cf. xvii, [xviii] 8 and Bibelstudien, p. 44;
Bible Studies, p. 290,
12 2 Mace. vii. 28.
48 Or “receivest.” (TR.)
960 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
3080 eat not, and there shall be subject unto thee every spirit
and daemon, whatsoever he be. But when thou adjurest,
blow,! sending the breath from above [to the feet] and
from the feet to the face,’ and he [the daemon] will
be drawn into captivity. Be pure and keep it. For the
sentence
3085 is Hebrew and kept by men
that are pure.®
Good parallels to the Jewish portion of the above
text, both as a whole and in details, are furnished by
the leaden tablet from Hadrumetum‘ and a magi-
cian’s outfit discovered at Pergamum.’ Any one
who can read this one leaf without getting bewildered
by the hocus-pocus of magic words, will admit that
through the curious channel of such magical literature
a good portion of the religious thought of the Greek
Old Testament found its way into the world, and
must have already found its way by the time of
St. Paul. The men of the great city in Asia Minor
in whose hands St. Paul found texts of this kind
were, though heathen, not altogether unprepared
for Bible things. The flames of the burning papyrus
books could not destroy recollections of sacred
formulae which retained a locus standi even in the
new faith. But, apart from this, the magical books
with their grotesque farrago of Eastern and Western
religious formulae, afford us striking illustrations of
how the religions were elbowing one another as the
great turning-point drew near. They are perhaps
1 Por this formula cf, Luke x. 17, 20; 1 Cor. xiv. 32,
2 Cf, LXX Gen. ii. 7 (John xx. 22),
8 These concluding lines again prove that the formula was written out by a
pagan magician.
4 Bibelstudien, pp. 21-54; Bible Studies, pp. 269-300.
5 Antikes Zaubergeraét aus Pergamon, herausgegeben von Richard Wiinsch.
Jahrbuch des Kaiserl, Deutschen Archiolog. Instituts, Erganzungsheft 6,
Berlin, 1905, p. 35f.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 261
the most instructive proofs of the syncretism of the
middle and lower classes.
Jesus handling coins, St. Paul reading the inscrip-
tion on the Athenian altar, or watching the burning
of magical books at Ephesus—are not these detached
pictures typical? Is not the New Testament itself
offering us a clue in our studies? Is it not telling
us that the texts contemporary with but not be-
longing to Primitive Christianity, which have come
down to us in the original, must be read with the
eyes of the religious man and with the spectacles of
the historian of religion? This raises the subject of
the present chapter: the bearing of the new texts on
social’ and religious? history. In the second chapter
we discussed the linguistic, in the third the literary
bearing of the new texts on the New Testament, and
we were chiefly, of course, concerned with the more
formal aspects of interpretation. Now we are pro-
posing an inquiry which involves deeper issues.
We seek to understand the substance of the New
Testament (and so of Primitive Christianity), and
} The application of the methods of social history (as attempted in the
following pages) seems to me particularly needful and profitable.
? The comparative study of religion, so it seems to me, has of late led to
an exaggeration of the so-called Oriental “influences” (Hermann Gunkel,
Zum, religionsgeschichtlichen Verstindnis des Neuen Testaments, Gottingen,
1903). The material must be more sharply discriminated as “analogical”
and “genealogical,” and the genealogical portion is in the main only of
indirect importance (this is also the opinion of Gunkel, who assumes that
Judaism acted as intermediary). Gunkel, however (p. 6), rightly emphasises
the fact that the New Testament is a Greek book. This is the side of the
problem which interests me most. My desire is to continue the work recently
begun by Georg Heinrici, Adolf Harnack, H. J. Holtzmann, Otto Pfleiderer,
and other theologians, by Hermann Usener, Albrecht Dieterich, Richard
Reitzenstein, Paul Wendland, and other classical scholars. To the literary
Greek sources, which have been chiefly studied hitherto, I would add the
non-literary ones, which are for the most part more congenial with the New
Testament, An excellent guide to the material hitherto collected by students
of comparative religion is Carl Clemen’s Religionsgeschichtliche Erklirung des
Neuen Testaments, Giessen, 1909.
262 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
here again, I beheve, the new texts will not
desert us.
Some kind of an understanding as to methods of
work would certainly be desirable at the outset ; but
I must resist the temptation to discuss here in its full
extent a methodological problem’ which has engaged
my liveliest interest since the beginning of my
studies. I will only remark that in the case of each
single observation made I find the questions resolve
themselves for me into the alternative’: is it analogy
or is it genealogy? That is to say, we have to ask:
Are the similarities or points of agreement that we.
discover between two different religions to be re-
garded as parallelisms of more or less equal religious
experience, due to equality of psychic pitch and
equality of outward conditions, or are they dependent
one on the other, demonstrable borrowings ?
Where it is a case of inward emotions and religious
experiences and the naive expression of these emo-
tions and experiences in word, symbol, and act, I
should always try first to regard the particular fact
as “ analogical.” ἢ
Where it is a case of a formula used in worship, a
professional liturgical usage, or the formulation of
some doctrine, I should always try first to regard the
particular fact as “ genealogical.”
The apologist, if he ever acknowledges anything,
acknowledges as a rule only analogy, and prefers
to erect walls and fences round his own little
precinct.
1 Richard M. Meyer, Kriterien der Aneignung (offprint from Neue Jahrbiicher
fiir das klassische Altertum, etc.), Leipzig, 1906, is very instructive.
2 Of, Die Christliche Welt, 14 (1900) col. 270.
35. To Georg Heinrici belongs the undoubted merit of having paved the way
for the analogical method, in Germany, at a time when such researches met
with little sympathy.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 263
The amateur in these subjects thinks as a rule only
of genealogy. His best instrument is the wooden
ruler with which, to his own increasing admiration,
he draws straight lines that can be produced to any
length. Finding a phantom of the desert among the
Bedouins and a slave possessed with a daemon in
the lanes of Smyrna, he triumphantly proclaims the
phantom as the ancestress of the daemon, and there
is nothing hidden from his sagacity after he has
persuaded himself that the gold in some prehistoric
shrine came from Saba, the marble from Paros, and
the cedar-wood from Lebanon.
Most pitiable of all, however, are the mere shifters-
on’ and wipers-out of names. Anything trivial they
regard as genuine; where there is a great name,
there is something to rub out: the Sermon on the
Mount cannot be by Jesus, nor the Second to
Corinthians by Paul. By whom then? The Sermon
on the Mount by X or Y, or possibly by seventeen
anonymous writers, and the Second to Corinthians,
if written by anybody, then by Z, yes, by Ζ! Having
thus made everything anonymous, they think they
have done a work of scholarship and have disposed of
the texts themselves for ever.
Now, supposing there were cogent reasons for
doubting St. Paul’s authorship of the confessions in
the Second to Corinthians, I should acknowledge
these reasons. But would the text itself be then
done away with? The text itself, with its thoughts,
remains, and remains classic: the disappearance of
the one word Paul from the first line does not detract
from the intrinsic value of the text. Does a coin-
collector throw one of his gold coins on the dust-heap
1 The term Weiterschieber (here translated “ shifters-on ἢ was coined by
Hermann Oeser, Die Christliche Welt, 5 (1891) col. 780.
264 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
because it was along with the Persian ones and he
finds it to be Lycian, or because he is unable to
identify it at all ?
What is the actual result of making the synoptic
sayings of Jesus anonymous? Merely the proper
name Jesus is erased ; the centre of energy, the “I,”
the personality behind the sayings, remains.
We will not dispute that the erasers and shifters-
on may in their zeal empty an ink-pot over the map
of the ancient Mediterranean lands; a great deal is
possible in the scholar’s study. But if these poor
people want us to do more than sympathise with
them in their misfortune—as we certainly do most
readily—if they ask us to believe that the blackened
provinces of their dirty map have swallowed up all
that was counted valuable evidence of the ancient
culture of the Mediterranean, they demand the sacri-
fice of our intellects. We must treat them kindly,
and let them go on shifting ; the earth is round, and
80, across sea and land, they will find their way back
to us some day.
Pledged to no inexorable “method,” but testing
each case as it arises; not providing an answer at
any cost to every question, but content to leave
doubtful what is really obscure; recognising, how-
ever, that light is light—the New Testament student
will reap a rich harvest from our texts. Let me
proceed to give some indication of the sort of thing
he is likely to find, and where it may be found."
2. He finds the world as it was in the age of the
Caesars, that is the historical background of Primitive
The following pages make no claim to even approximate completeness of
statement. ΑΒ ἃ rule only characteristic examples have been picked out; the
amount of material still to be worked up is enormous,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 265
Christianity—and first of all the general cultural
background.
In sketching the literary development of Primitive
Christianity we saw that in the growth of our religion
there is reflected from the very beginning the differ-
ence between the characteristics of the common
people in town and country. To comprehend this
difference we must know what the ancient civilisation
was like in town and country. From literary sources
we were fairly well acquainted with ancient city-life,
but the ancient village and small country town, being
seldom touched upon in literature, were practically
maccessible. Archaeological discovery, especially
since the finding of papyri and ostraca, has brought
about a resurrection of such places. As students
of the New Testament we are most interested
in the villages and little country towns of Galilee,
and we have at any rate become acquainted with
the same kind of places in the neighbour land of
Egypt.
Some idea of the abundance and freshness of the
materials now at our command to illustrate the
civilisation of certain Egyptian villages may be
gathered from an examination of Wessely’s! valuable
collections relating to the villages of Caranis and
Socnopaei Nesus. Any one who has been brought
up in the country and has a spark of imagination
clinging to him can now without difficulty participate
by sympathy in the thousand and one little things
that made up the social vortex for the men and
women of these places. The same trifles, of daily
occurrence among their not very dissimilar neighbours
1 Karanis und Soknopaiu Nesos, Studien zur Geschichte antiker Oultur-
and Personenverhiiltnisse, Denkschriften der Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissen-
schaften in Wien, philos.-hist. Classe, Band 47, Wien, 1902, p. 56 ££.
266 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
in Galilee at the same epoch, served the Master of
parable as symbols of the Eternal.
No less vividly, however,the country towns of Egypt,
large and small, arise before us—Arsinoé, Magdola,
Oxyrhynchus,’ Hermupolis,? and other places.
There must, of course, have been differences be-
tween country life in Egypt and in Palestine, owing
particularly to differences in the soil and methods of
work. The degree of Hellenisation must also have
been slighter in Galilee than in Egypt. But the
common element must have predominated.
The parallelism extends not only to details of social
history such as the unpopularity of the “ publicans,” *
or again the “tribute” of two drachmae‘ levied in
Egypt for the Great Great God Suchus in the gospel
age,” but also to peculiarities of legal life.
A Florentine papyrus* of the year 85 A.D.
(Figure 41) supplies a very noteworthy parallel to
Mark xv. 15, etc. In the words of the evangelist,”
‘ Erich Ziebarth discourses with charm and fascination of these three little
towns in his Kulturbilder aus griechischen Stidten (Vol. 131 of the series
called “Aus Natur und Geisteswelt ”), Leipzig, 1907, p. 96 ff. A rich collec-
tion οὗ material for Arsinoé is given by Carl Wessely, Die Stadt Arsinoé
(Krokodilopolis) in griechischer Zeit, Sitzungsber. der Kais, Akad. ἃ, W. in
Wien, philos.-hist. Cl., Bd. 145, Wien, 1902, pp. 1-58.
? Cf. the life-like description by Paul Viereck, Die Papyrusurkunden von
Hermupolis, Ein Stadtbild aus rémischer Zeit. Deutsche Rundschau, 35,
Part 1 (October 1908), pp. 98-117. ᾿
5. Cf. Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. p. 568f. 4 Matt. xvii. 24.
5 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 748, of the year 48 A.D. Cf. Wilcken,
Griechische Ostraka, I, 360. For the expression “Great Great (= greatest)
God,” imitated from the Egyptian (Wilcken), cf. Moulton, Grammar? Ῥ. 87. ἢ
4 No. 6195, Supplementi Filologico-Storici ai Monumenti Antichi Papiri
Greco-Egizii pubblicati dalla R. Accademia dei Lincei, volume primo, Papirt
Fiorentini . . . per cura di Girolamo Vitelli, Milano, 1906, p. 1188, with
facsimile ,(Plate IX.), here reproduced (Figure 41) by kind permission of
the R. Accademia dei Lincei. Of. the valuable notes by Ludwig Mitteis,
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte, 26 (1906), Romanistische
Abteilung, p. 485 ff. For the chronology cf. Wilcken, Archiv, 4, p. 445. Ν
7 ὁ δὲ Πειλᾶτος βουλόμενος ποιῆσαι τὸ ἱκανὸν τῷ ὄχλῳ ἀπέλυσεν αὐτοῖς τὸν
Βαραββᾶν καὶ παρέδωκεν τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν φραγελλώσας ἵνα σταυρωθῇ.
Fig. 41.—Report of Judicial Proceedings before the Praefect of Egypt, G. Septimius Vegetus, 85 4.D,
Papyrus. Now at Florence. By permission of the R. Accademia dei Lincei. (¢ of the size of the
original. )
(p. 267
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 267
“ And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released:
Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had:
scourged Him, to be crucified.”
The papyrus, containing a report of judicial pro-
ceedings, quotes these words of the governor of
Egypt, G. Septimius Vegetus, before whom the case
was tried, to a certain Phibion :—
‘Thou hadst been worthy of scourging! . . . but I will
give thee to the people.” ?
Phibion’s offence was that he had “of his own
authority imprisoned a worthy man [his alleged
debtor] and also women.” The Florentine papyrus.
is thus a beautiful illustration of the parable of the
wicked servant (Matt. xviii. 30) and the system,
which it presupposes, of personal execution by im-
prisonment for debt. Numerous other papyri and
inscriptions show that this was in Graeco-Roman
Egypt, and elsewhere, a widespread legal custom.*
Probably the most interesting example for us is an
inscription ὁ in the Great Oasis containing an edict.
of the governor of Egypt, Tib. Julius Alexander,
68 a.p. The technical expression here used has the
same ring as in the gospel. “ They delivered them
into other prisons,” says the Roman governor’; “he
cast him into prison,” says Jesus.°
‘A parallel to John xix. 1, cf. also Luke xviii, 33, etc., where, as in the-
papyrus, the word used is μαστιγόω.
a ἄξιος Hel Fs μαστυγωθῆναι, . . . χαρίζομαι δέ σε τοῖς ὄχλοις. Vitelli called.
attention to Mark xv. 15. I first learnt of the papyrus in conversation with
Wilcken.
3 Cf, especially Ludwig Mitteis, Reiohsrecht und Volhsrecht in den ostlichen.
Provinuen des romischen Kaiserreichs, Leipzig, 1891, p. 444 ff; also Zeitschrift
der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte, 26 (1905), Romanistische Abteilung,
p. 488, a note on the Reinach Papyrus No. 7,
= Dittenberger, Orientis Graect Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 66915 2, (cf. below,,
Fig. 55, facing p, 362),
ἡ παρέδοσαν καὶ els ἄλλας φυλακάς.
5 ἔβαλεν αὐτὸν εἰς φυλακήν.
468 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Perhaps the most remarkable discovery of this
kind in the new texts is a parallel found some time
ago to the statement in Luke ii. 8, which has been
50 much questioned on the strength of mere book-
learning, that on the occasion of the enrolment for
‘taxation made by Cyrenius, “all went to enrol them-
selves, every one to his own city.”’ That this was
no mere figment of St. Luke or his authority, but
that similar things 2 took place in that age, is proved
by an edict*® of G. Vibius Maximus, governor of
Egypt, 104 a.p. (Figure 42). I am indebted to
Ulrich Wilcken* for the following restoration of the
text, to which re-examinations of the original by
Grenfell and Hunt have also contributed :—
I dios Οὐΐβιοῖς Μάξιμος ἔπα]ρχ[ος]
Αἰγύπτίου λέγει "]
20 τῆς κατ᾽ οἰ κίαν ἀπογραφῆς συἹνεστώ[ σης] 5
ἀναγκαῖόν [ἐστιν πᾶσιν toils καθ᾽ ἥντινα]
δήποτε αἰτίαν ἐκστᾶσι τῶν ἑαυτῶν]
νομῶν προσᾳ[γγέλλε]σθαι ἐπανελ-}
θεῖν εἰς τὰ ἑαυτῶν ἐ]φέστια, ἵν[α]
25 καὶ τὴν συνήθη [οἰἸκονομίαν τῆ[ς ἀπο-]
γραφῆς πληρώσωσιν καὶ TH προσ[ηκού-
on αὐτοῖς γεωργίαι προσκαρτερήσῳ[σιν.
Gaius Vibius Maximus, Praefect of Egypt, saith: The enrol-
ment by household ® being at hand, it is necessary to notify all
) καὶ ἐπορεύοντο πάντες ἀπογράφεσθαι, ἕκαστος els τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πόλιν.
2 The Egyptian edict does not correspond with the passage in St, Luke in
every particular, but the similarity is very great.
3 Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Vol. IIL, ed. F. G. Kenyon and
H. I. Bell, London, 1907, p. 125, No. 90418, with facsimile (Plate 30), here
reproduced by kind permission of the British Museum (Fig. 42). Cf. J. H.
Moulton, The Expository Times, Vol. 19, No. 1, October 1907, p. 40f., and
E. Schiirer, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 32 (1907) col. 683 f.—I have already (p. 227 above)
-estimated the importance of this papyrus in other respects.
‘ Letter, Leipzig, 13 Oct. 1907.
5 P. W. Schmiedel would read é]vecra[ons].
5 The reference is to one of the censuses which were taken (according to
an important discovery by U. Wilcken, Hermes, 28 [1893] p. 230 ff.) every
Fic. 42,—Edict of the Praefect of Egypt, G. Vibius Maximus, 104 A.D. Papyrus (part of a letter
copy-book). Now in the British Museum. By permission of the Museum authorities. (ἢ of the size
of the original.)
[Ρ. 268
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 269
who for any cause soever are outside their nomes to return
to their domestic hearths, that they may also accomplish the
customary dispensation of enrolment and continue steadfastly
in the husbandry that belongeth to them.
With regard to the last two lines Wilcken * writes.
to me: “ We have several such edicts, requiring the
peasants to return and do their work (e.g.? Geneva
Papyrus No. 16). The Praefect here goes beyond
his immediate subject when he takes the opportunity
to enforce these injunctions once again.”
The cultural parallelism between Egypt and the
birthplace of Christianity again explains the fact that.
we are repeatedly able to illustrate from Egyptian
papyri details of the life of the people in Palestine
which Jesus immortalised in His parables.
Besides the above-mentioned parallel to the parable
of the wicked servant, we have illustrations to the
parables of the good Samaritan,’ the importunate
widow,‘ and the prodigal son.° To one familiar with
both the gospels and the papyri the general impres-
sion says even more plainly than the details that we
are dealing with the same kind of people in the two
countries.
Of course there are equally notable parallels to
gospel details in the written remains found in other
Mediterranean lands. The fact is that the threads
of connexion between Primitive Christianity and the
14 years in order to fix the poll-tax or other personal dues. Among the papyri
there are large numbers of documents relating to these assessments. Sir
W. M. Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem ? London, 1898, attempted to-
explain the enrolment in the time of Cyrenius by means of these facts; cf. on
the other hand E. Schiirer, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 24 (1899) col. 679 f.
1 Letter, Leipzig, 24 Oct. 1907.
? This and other edicts are cited by the editors Kenyon and Bell, p. 124 f.
3 Cf. above, p. 131, n. 1.
* Cf. above, p. 181, n. 1.
3 Cf. above, p. 131, π. 1; and especially p. 176 ff.
270 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
world are to be sought not in the high regions of
culture and power but in the lower levels of the
common life of the people, which has been far too much
neglected hitherto. When it has once been grasped
that the threads cross and re-cross where labourers
work for hire in the vineyard, and where the house
is swept for the sake of a lost drachma, we shall be
ready to receive with something more than indifference
a detail like the following, which brings so vividly
before our eyes the popular character of the gospel.’
In order to arm His disciples for their dangerous
work in the world with the same trust in God that
filled His own heart, Jesus exhorts them (Matt. x.
28 ff.) thus :—
“Fear not. . . . Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing ? and one of them shall not fall on the ground
without your Father. But the very hairs of your head
are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore; ye are of more
value than many sparrows.”
The evangelist Luke (xii. 6) has recorded this saying
somewhat differently :—
“ Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings ?”
The difference between these two versions is
practically quite unimportant, although the equa-
tion 2:5 = 1:2 does not hold mathematically. On
the purchaser taking a larger number of birds the
proportional price may well have been reduced ; as
we should say nowadays, they came cheaper by the
half-dozen. It is quite possible that Jesus repeated
this particularly homely analogical conclusion from
the less (the little sparrows) to the greater (the
infinitely more valuable human beings) on more
‘In what follows I avail myself of my article on “ Der Marktpreis der
‘Sperlinge” in Die Christliche Welt, 17 (1903) col. 203 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 271
than one occasion, with variants, so that both versions
might go back to Him. Be that as it may, the
saying about the sparrows—apart, of course, from
the mighty “Fear not,” which is indivisible—contains
a threefold statement if we analyse it as an economic
document of the Imperial period :—
(1) Sparrows were a very cheap article sold in
the market as food for the poor ;
{2) They were sold in the market either by the
pair or in fives, the pair being the smallest,
and five the next smallest quantity sold ;
(8) The market price in the time of Jesus was a
“farthing” (= about a halfpenny of our
money) a pair, or two “ farthings ” (= about
a penny of our money) for five.
The same three deductions, nearly, can be drawn
from one of the inscriptions discovered recently.
There is a highly important commercial law of the
Emperor Diocletian, known as the maximum tariff,
the greater part of which has long been known from
inscriptions. All kinds of articles of commerce are
quoted in this tariff, and to each item is attached
the highest price at which it is allowed to be sold.
Historians of the Imperial period are not agreed
as to the real purpose of this tariff; but the question
does not concern us here. The interesting point
for us is that a new fragment? of the tariff which
was discovered in Aegira in 1899 gives us the highest
price for sparrows. From it we learn the following
particulars, applying of course to the end of the third
century A.D. :—
(1) Of all birds used for food sparrows are the
cheapest ; they are cheaper, for instance,
than thrushes, beccaficoes, and starlings.
1 Published in an Athens journal, Εφημερις Αρχαιολογικη, 1899, p. 154.
272 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
(2) They were usually sold in decades. Ten seems
to have been the regular number with all
sorts of small animals (cf. our dozen); the
tariff, for instance, gives the prices for 10
thrushes, 10 beccaficoes, 10 starlings.
(3) According to the tariff 10 sparrows are to be
sold for at most 16 “denarii.” This does
not mean the old silver denarii, but the
new copper coins, whose value Theodor
Mommsen* and Salomon Reinach’? agree
in estimating at (1¢ pfennig, 2} centimes)
less than an English farthing. The market
price of 10 sparrows was fixed at a maxi-
mum of threepence-halfpenny (English).
From what Jesus says, the half-decade of sparrows
in His day cost about one penny (English); the
whole decade would therefore cost about twopence.
Taking into account the difference in date—which
is itself quite sufficient to explain the difference in
price—and the fact that Diocletian is fixing a maxi-
mum price, we cannot deny that Jesus spoke with
correct observation of the conditions of everyday life.
This is not a mere game that we have been playing with
farthings. The edict of the Emperor Diocletian helps
us, I think, to understand one of the finest utterances
of Jesus in its original significance. Even in small
things Jesus is great. The unerring eye for actualities
that asserts itself so repeatedly in the gospel parables,
comes out also in the saying about the sparrows. St.
Paul has been accused—but unjustly—of overreach-
ing himself in the figure (Rom. xi. 17ff.) of the
wild branch grafted on the cultivated olive. The
reproach is groundless, because St. Paul is there
1 Hermes, 25 (1890) p. 17 ff.
5. Revue numismatique, 1900, p. 429 ff.
te Ee ἜΝ Ὁ
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 273
bent on demonstrating something that is really
against nature; but St. Paul, the inhabitant of the
city, had not the grand simplicity of Jesus, the child
of the country, in his attitude to nature, or he would
never have written (1 Cor. ix. 9), with expectation
of a negative answer, “Doth God take care for
oxen?” Jesus grew up among country people, who
lived with their animals and felt for them: the ox
and the ass, as we know from pictures in the cata-
combs, were early placed beside the manger-cradle
of the child Christ, and the popular instinct that
borrowed them from Isaiah i. 3, and still speaks to
us from those pictures, was right. Jesus was in His
true element in the market-place, watching a poor
woman counting her coppers to see if she could
still take five or ten sparrows home with her. Poor,
miserable little creatures, fluttering there, such num-
bers of them, in the vendors’ cages! A great many
can be had for a very small sum, so trifling is their
value. And yet each one of them was loved by
the Heavenly Father. How much more will God
care for man, whose soul is worth more than the
whole world !
While the papyri from the villages and small
towns of Egypt introduce us indirectly to the
characteristic civilisation of the synoptic gospels, the
rediscovered culture of the cities of Asia Minor,
Greece, and Southern Italy shows us rather the back-
ground of St. Paul’s missionary labours.
Even Pompeii, although St. Paul probably never
walked its lanes, is extraordinarily instructive. It not
only furnishes us with texts; it has, by its peculiar
fate, been itself preserved with all the actuality of
petrifaction, and we may regard it as a typical
town. “Such was the actual appearance of a city
18
2174. SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of Campania at the time when the Emperors Nero,
Vespasian, Titus ruled the world of their day.”
This remark about Pompeii was made by Friedrich
von Duhn,' under whose masterly guidance I was
privileged to visit the place, gathering new and lasting
impressions ; and I would add, speaking in terms of
the New Testament: Such was the appearance of a
small Hellenistic town in the West in the time when
St. Paul wrote at Corinth his letter to the Romans,
his heart full of thoughts of the West, which began
for him with Italy.? Besides the indescribably valu-
able general impression, there are plenty of striking
details. The Pompeian inscriptions HRISTIAN (?)
and Sodoma Gomora have given rise to a well-known
controversy.’ In the Macellum‘* at Pompeii we can
imagine to ourselves the poor Christians buying
their modest pound of meat in the Corinthian
Macellum (1 Cor. x. 25), with the same life-like
reality with which the Diocletian maximum tariff
called up the picture of the Galilean woman pur-
chasing her five sparrows. How full the wall-
inscriptions are of popular wit and popular coarseness !
What an abyss of degradation in the higher classes
opens beneath us when the obscene Pompeian
bronzes, costly in material and execution, are shown
in the Naples Museum! One single example of a
1 Pompeji eine hellenistische Stadt in Italien (Aus Natur und Geisteswelt
114), Leipzig, 1906, p. 24. This is an excellent introduction. The large works
on Pompeii are easily accessible.
2 Paul obviously divided his world into two halves: the eastern half
stretched “from Jerusalem unto Illyricum” (Rom. xv. 19), What was under-
stood by “Illyricum” in the Imperial age is shown by Wilhelm Weber, Unter-
suchungen sur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, Leipzig, 1907, p. 55.
3 Cf, A. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den
ersten drei Jahrhunderten,? 11., Leipzig, 1906, p. 74, and ἘΠ Nestle, Zeitschrift
fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 5 (1904) p. 168, where other possible
direct witnesses to Judaism and Christianity in Pompeii are mentioned.
4.7.6. “shambles,” “ meat-market.”
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 275
contribution to our knowledge of the New Testament
from Pompeii may be given here in more detail.
In the Revelation of St. John (xiii. 18) we read :—
“Let him that hath understanding, count the number,
of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number
is, Six hundred three score and six.” (Some ancient
authorities read 616 instead of 666.)
Scientific commentators are probably by this time
agreed that the name to be “counted” must be
found by “ gematria,” 2.6. we must look for a name
the letters of which, taken separately in their ordinary
values as numerals and added together, will make
up the sum of 666 or 616. Now it has been generally
assumed by exegetists hitherto that gematria was
a specifically Jewish form of the numerical riddle,
and therefore attempts have often been made,
especially in recent times, to solve the number 666
or 616 by means of the Hebrew alphabet. As a
matter of fact, however, the interchange of numbers
for words and words for numbers was not unknown
to the ancient Greeks, as even Greek lexicons’ tell
us. The patristic writers, in so far as they attempt
to solve the riddle with the Greek alphabet, show
that such numerical puzzles were not entirely foreign
to the Greek world. From Pompeii, however, we
learn that they were current among the people at
the very time in which the New Testament was
being written. A. Sogliano® has published graffiti
{wall-scribblings) from Pompeii, ze. not later in
' Cf. Die Christliche Welt, 17 (1903) col. 746 ἢ,
? δυ. ἰσόψηφος. H. D[elehaye], in the Analecta Bollandiana, 27, p. 443, refers
to Perdrizet, Revue des études grecques, 17 (1904) pp. 350-360.
3 Isopsepha Pompeiana, Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 10
(1801) pp. 256-259. An extract is given in' the Wochenschrift fiir klassische
Philologie, 19 (1902) col. 52.
276 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
date than 79 a.p., one example of which is as
follows :—
᾿Αμέριμνος ἐμνήσθη “Appo- Amerimnus thought upon
vias τῆς ἰδίας κ(υ)ρία(ς) ἐπ’
ἀγαθῷ ἧς ὁ ἀριθμὸς pe’ (or 2
are’) τοῦ καὶ re ὀνόματος ie The number of her honourable‘
James ii. 7]. name is 45 (or 1035).
Another example reads :—
his lady Harmonia! for good
φιλῶ ἧς ἀριθμὸς hye’. | I love her whose number is 545:
These graffiti, in date not far removed from thé
Revelation of St. John, certainly suggest new riddles,
but they also establish, besides those already pointed
out, the following facts :— ,
(1) They are concerned with names of persons,
which names for some reason or other are to be
concealed.
(2) The name was concealed by resolving it into
a number. In all probability single letters were
given their usual values as numerals and then added
together. ox
(3) The similar numerical riddle in the Revelation
would not necessarily seem Semitic, i.e. foreign, to
the men of the Greek-speaking world. Examples of
such playing with numbers have been found on
inscribed stones? of the Imperial period at Per-
gamum, which was one of the cities of the Apoca-
lypse (Rev. ii. 12 ff.). Quite recently Franz Biicheler®
has proved how widespread the habit was at that
time, and a passage in Suetonius (Nevo, 39), hitherto
1 This name is probably only bestowed playfully by the writer on his
mistress; her real name is hidden in the number. [For the whole sentence
cf, LXX Neh. v. 19, xiii. 31. TR.]
2 Cf. Die Inschriften von Pergamon, Nos. 333, 339, 587. The Pompeian
grafpiti are, however, more valuable, because more popular.
8. Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie, New Series, 61 (1906) p. 307f. I owe
this reference to Wilhelm Weber.
sR
aie
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS QUT
obscured by false conjectures, has been cleared up
by his brilliant discovery that the name “ Nero” is
there resolved numerically into “ matricide.”
"4 In solving the apocalyptic numbers 616 and.
666, occurring in a Greek book, it is not only not
unfeasible to start from the Greek alphabet,’ it is in
“fact the most obvious thing to do.
In any case the graffiti at Pompeii bring the Book
of Mysteries a little bit nearer to the Hellenistic
world—the world in which it originated, but from
which the exegetists have often divided it by an all
too deep gulf, although in language and coloration
it shows clearly the reflection of that world.
A visit to Pompeii and the study of its records are
most excellent means of supplementing one’s Eastern
impressions, gathered from moderately sized towns
of Asia Minor, such as Magnesia on the Maeander,
or Priene, and deepened by the magnificent publica-
tions? of the inscriptions and other discoveries. The
same is true of Hierapolis* and many smaller towns
of Asia.‘
A good deal is also known about the civilisation of
‘ If I may here venture to propose a solution, 616 (= Καῖσαρ θεός, “ Caesar
god”) is the older secret number with which the Jews branded the worship of
the emperor. 666 is perhaps a Christian adaptation of the Jewish number
to bring it into (subordinate) harmony with 888 (= Ἰησοῦς, “ Jesus”).
2 For Magnesia on the Maeander, which I visited on 15 April, 1906, see
p. 12, n, 3 above, and Thieme’s book (p. 17, n.3 above), For Priene, which I saw
under the guidance of Theodor Wiegand on 16 April, 1906, cf. p. 12, n. 4 above,
and Ziebarth, Kulturbilder, Ὁ. 50ff, The early Christian “house-church” at
Priene is of great interest, cf. Priene, p. 480 £.
3. Cf. p. 12, n. 6 above.
* Cf. pp.12, 14above. To the Austrian researches there named we may add:
Rudolf Heberdey and Adolf Wilhelm, Reisen in Kilikien ausgefiihrt 1891 und
1892, Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philo-
sophisch-historische Classe, 44 Band (1896), 6 Abhandlung; also Rudolf
Heberdey and Ernst Kalinka, Bericht iiber zwei Reisen im siidwestlichen
Kleinasien [1894 and 1895], ibid. 45 Band (1897), 1 Abhandlung,
278 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
the islands in the Imperial age. The islands of the
sea between Ephesus and Corinth were not outside
the sphere of St. Paul’s missionary labours. There
‘are scholars who, in the 16th chapter of Romans,
assume with the utmost calmness wholesale migra-
tions of poor Christians from Asia to Rome,! and
who make the slave Onesimus mentioned in Philemon
run over from Colossae to Rome or Caesarea, as if it
were something quite ordinary ; and yet these same
scholars regard a journey of St. Paul from Ephesus
to Crete as wildly improbable. But the islands were
easier to get at than many towns in the interior of
Asia Minor: the list of perils encountered by Paul
the traveller in 2 Cor. xi. 23ff shows us that
travelling by land was fraught with great difficulties
for a poor man.’ From our authorities we must
certainly assume that St. Paul made many more
voyages than we are now able to determine in detail.
He had suffered shipwreck three times already before
the Second Epistle to the Corinthians was des-
patched’; and the Pastoral Epistles also mention
voyages of the apostle and his companions, of which
' The assumption breaks down at once from the fact that Aquila and
Priscilla were at Ephesus when the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written
(1 Cor. xvi. 19), and that their house was a centre for church meetings, Some
six months later the Epistle to the Romans was written, so that within that
short time Aquila and Priscilla must have not only gone to Rome, but also
have got together again at once the church meeting in their house mentioned
in Rom. xvi. 5.—To describe the personal names in Rom. xvi. as specifically
Roman on the strength of inscriptions found in the city of Rome is about as
safe as to describe Wilhelm, Friedrich, Luise as specifically Berlin names
because they are found on Berlin tombstones. The names referred to are
found swarming in inscriptions, papyri, and ostraca all over the Mediterranean
world.—Least appropriate of all to a letter to Rome is the passage
Rom, xvi. 17-20.
2 The “ perils of rivers, perils of robbers” (2 Cor. xi. 26) have remained the
same to the present day, as we were able to convince ourselves in April 1906,
riding through the swamps of the Maeander, and next day in the house of a
Greek who had been shot by robbers immediately before our arrival.
5 2 Cor. xi. 25.
Fie. 43,—* Angel” Inscription from the Island
of Thera. Gravestone, Imperial Period. Now in
the Thera Museum. From a photograph by Dr.
Hugo Kebrer.
[Ρ. 279
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 279
nothing more is known, the principal one being a
voyage of St. Paul to Crete.’ This last reference
points at least to the early establishment of Christi-
anity in the islands.” Even if it is not yet certam
whether the “angel” inscriptions from Thera are
Christian,’ the islands would deserve our attention
for at least one reason, viz. that the inscriptions
found there furnish a quantity of valuable information
bearing on the history of the “New Testament 2
voeabulary.: Especially noteworthy are the inscrip-
tions of Delos,’ Thera,° and Cos.’
Immeasurable, next, is the abundance of light,
ever increasing from year to year, that has been shed
1 Titus i. 5.
2 Cf, Hammack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, ΤΙ, p. 195 £.
8 Cf. the stimulating conjectures of Hans Achelis, Spuren des Urchristentums
auf den griechischen Inseln? Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissen-
schaft, 1 (1900) p. 87ff. I saw the &yyehos-inscriptions on 18 May, 1906, in
the Thera Museum. Many of them bear a rosette @, the central lines of
which look like a cross, but are not a Christian cross (on this rosette see
R, Herzog, Koische Forschaumgen und Funde, p. 90, π. 1). As Friedrich von
Duhn also remarked on that occasion, only one, No. 952, bears instead of Φ a
rosette with a p-cross. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Hugo Kehrer for
a photograph (Fig. 43). But I consider it highly probable that the rosette
was given its Christian character subsequently. On 14 May, 1906, in the New
Museum at Epidaurus, I saw a Christian rosette just like this on an ancient
stone inscribed to Asclepius. Christian symbols are often found on stones of
pre-Christian age.—In considering the question of the age of the Christianity
of the islands two things must not be forgotten : the older Jewish settlements
and the opportunities for intercourse between the islands, There were Jewish
congregations in Crete, and how near Thera is to Crete I first learnt from
personal observation : from the heights of Thera we saw in the south, where
sky and deep blue sea joined, the snowy peaks of Ida and the other mountains
of Crete. The preliminary conditions for a Christian mission from island to
island were therefore very favourable.—I may add that in the monastery of
St. Elias in Thera I saw a number of Biblical and patristic Greek MSS., the
existence of which is, I believe, not generally known. Cf. the account (not
quite exhaustive) of them given in the Theol. Lit,-Ztg. 33 (1908) col. 491,
by Samuel Brandt, who was travelling with me. There are also patristic
M88. in the Museum at Candia in Crete, as I was told by the director there,
Dr. Hatzidakis. I had no time to inspect them, but I obtained the titles
afterwards, 4. Cf. the examples in Chapter II. above.
5 Cf. p. 13, n. 5 above.
4 CE. p. 13, n. 1 above, and Ziebarth’s sketch, Kulturbilder, Ὁ. 16 ff.
7 OL p. 13, n. 2 above.
280 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
upon the great New Testament cities of Asia Minor,!
illuminating the mission-field proper of Primitive
Christianity. The spaciousness and boldness of their
proportions, the strength and grace of their architec-
ture, the equable beauty of their Graeco-Roman
works of art (from the marble miracles of masters in
sculpture down to the humblest of the terra-cottas
and small bronzes), the old places of worship, vener-
able still in ruins—whoever has seen, and seeing
has reanimated, all this in ever royal Pergamum,’ in
the solemn and oppressive gravity of Ephesus,’ and
in the silent and but recently desecrated fairy-world
of Miletus-Didyma,* will have acquired, even if all
1 Cf. on the whole subject Sir W. M. Ramsay, Pauline Cities, London, 1907.
[One of the latest discoveries, announced by Sir W. M. Ramsay’s fellow-
traveller, W. M. Calder, in The Times, 11 Nov., 1909, throws light on the
conduct of the natives of Lycaonia who called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul
Mercury, Acts xiv. 11 ff. An inscription of the 1st cent. a.D. (2) found at
Baluklaou, about a day’s ride south of Lystra, records the dedication of a
statue of Mercury to Jupiter by men with Lycaonian names, thus proving
the existence of a local cult of these deities, to which Ovid’s location of the
story of Baucis and Philemon (Metamorphoses viii. 620-625) also points. TR.]
2 For Pergamum cf, p. 12, n.2 and p.17 above. On Good Friday, 1906, I had
the advantage of seeing Pergamum under the guidance of Wilhelm Dérpfeld.
Actual inspection of the place suggests that “ Satan’s throne” (Rev. ii. 18) can
only have been the altar of Zeus ; no other shrine of the hill-city was visible
to such a great distance and could therefore rank so typically as the repre-
sentative of satanic heathendom.
8 For Ephesus cf. p. 11, n. 2 above. It is no longer difficult of access and
well repays the theological visitor. We inspected the Austrian excavations,
under Dr. Keil’s guidance, on Easter Sunday, 1906. Though one cannot see the
house inhabited by the mother of Jesus, in spite of the already highly reputed,
modern cult of Panagia Kapuli (cf. an article by me in Die Christliche Welt,
20 [1906] col. 873ff.), yet there are the tragic remains of the temple of
Artemis (Acts xix. 27), the well-preserved theatre (Acts xix. 29), the Stadium
in which St. Paul fought with beasts (if 1 Cor, xv. 32 is to be taken literally),
and important remains of early Christian architecture (the best, perhaps, still
unexcavated). And above all, one obtains an ineradicable impression of the
greatness and distinctiveness of the most important city in the world, after
Jerusalem, in the early history of Christianity—the city of St. Paul and
&t. John the Evangelist.
4 For Miletus-Didyma, see Ὁ. 12,n. 5 and p. 13,n. 4 above. We visited
these places under the guidance of Theodor Wiegand, 16-18 April, 1906.
Some Milesian matter will be found in the Appendices.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 281
the details were to escape him, a permanent possession
—the recognition of the grandeur of that world of
which a Paul had ventured to say that it was passing
away.’ Was this remark of the artisan missionary
dictated by the futile envy of one excluded from it ?
or did it come from the consciousness of an inner
power superior even to that world? And the quiet
little Book containing the simple evidences of that
power—does it not seem strangely great when we
open it among the ruins of Ephesus? greater than
the whole Bibliotheca Christiana of after times with
its frequent sins of prolixity ?
Some traditional lines in the picture of the ancient
world would have to be altered if we were to try
‘to-day to depict that world after a study of its own
records.? Most of us, probably, at some time or other,
have heard that the world to which the Gospel message
came was thoroughly corrupt. Many writers have
in good faith painted the situation in the Roman
Imperial period in the darkest colours ; and in cases
1 1 Cor. vii. 31.
2 The best works available to theologians are: Theodor Mommsen, Rémische
Geschichte, Vol. V.; Ludwig Friedlinder, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte
Roms in der Zeit von Augustus bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, 3 vols., 6th
edition, Leipzig, 1888-1890 (in the 7th edition, the notes are unaccountably
omitted) [Eng. trans. by L, A. Magnus and J. H. Freese, London, 1908 etc.,
in progress]; and especially Paul Wendland, Die hellenistisch-rimische Kultur
‘im thren Beviehungen zu Judentum und Christentum (Handbuch zum Neuen
Testament, I. 2), Tiibingen, 1907. The only thing I miss in this excellent
‘work is a stronger emphasis on the popular elements in the culture of the
Imperial age. The background sketched by Wendland is more suitable to
‘that stage of Christianity in which it was becoming literary and theological.
W. Staerk, WMeutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 2 small volumes in Géschen’s
series, Leipzig, 1907, gives a popular and well-ordered summary of recent
research.—Theologians must on no account neglect the investigations of
Ludwig Mitteis in the first part of his Reichsreoht und Volksrecht im den
Ostlichen Provinzen des romischen Kaiserreichs, Leipzig, 1891, entitled “Die
hellenistische (cf. p. vii) Civilisation und ihre Grenzen.” Though written
before the publication of most of the papyri and ostraca, this book was
-epoch-making in its use of the non-literary texts which were known down
ito that time.
282 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
where there was really nothing but light to be seen,
people have been only too often inclined to call the
virtues of the heathen brilliant vices.
This dark picture of the ancient world is due, I
think, to two main facts: it was drawn from the
literary records of the age, and it was influenced by
the polemical exaggerations of zealous Fathers of the
Church. St. Paul must not be held responsible for
it; in spite of his feeling of superiority to this:
transitory world and its hollow wisdom, and in spite:
of his knowledge of the corruption of a great city,’ he
did not overlook the light places, and he was never a
mere advocate abusing his opponent. It was other-
wise with the later champions of the faith, when the
world had declared war to the knife against it.
They had to struggle against the world outside and
the world in their own camp, and it is not difficult:
to understand their passionateness and to pardon
their heated exaggerations.
But the Christian historian of to-day ought to be
just in his judgments—because he is a Christian,
and, if not for that reason, then because he is
entered on the roll of the religion that came out.
victorious in the struggle. At any rate he ought.
to notice which lines are caricatured. And it ought
to be equally clear to him that the merely literary
records of an age are insufficient to give him a.
reliable picture.? As a general rule, literature is a
reflex of upper-class opinions. Doubt, denial, satiety,.
frivolity always proclaim themselves much more
loudly in the upper than in the vigorous and un-
spoiled lower classes. A lower class that begins to.
doubt and scoff is generally copying the educated.
1 Rom. i, 24 ff.
2 Cf. pp. 3, 4 above.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 283
classes ; it always lags some few dozen years behind
the class above it, that amount of time being
required for the impurities to filter down. Then,
however, purification takes place automatically ; the
giant body contains its own means of healing.
The Roman Imperial period of literature is, as a
matter of fact, rich in notes of negation and despair ;
the luxury of the potentates, with its refinements
in the cultivation of obscenity and brutality, certainly
does give the age a dark look. But even in the
literature forces of a different kind are heard and
felt. The popular writers on ethics in the narrower
sense, to whom Georg Heinrici’ so insistently refers,
served positively to prepare the way for Christianity ;
but, not to mention them, what an _ attractive
personality, taken all round, is Plutarch—and there
are many other good names besides his that could be
mentioned in the cultured and powerful class. And.
then, when we descend into the great masses and
listen to them at their work, in the fields, in the
workshop, on the Nile boat and the Roman corn-
ships, in the army and at the money-changer’s.
table,—he must be blind who cannot see that man
were leading useful, hard-working, dependable lives,
that family feeling and friendship bound poor people.
together and strengthened them, that the blessings.
of an old and comparatively established civilisation
were felt in the smallest villages, and, chiefly, that.
a deeply religious strain went through that entire
world.
3. This brings us to that feature of the world
contemporary with Primitive Christianity which is.
‘ Chiefly in his various commentaries on the Epistles to the Corinthians,
and in his semasiological analysis of the Sermon on the Mount (Vol. IIT. of:
his Beitrdge, Leipzig, 1905).
284 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
for us, of course, the most important, viz. its religious
position. The new texts are here extraordinarily
productive, for a large proportion of them are of a
directly religious nature. There are the innumerable
epitaphs, in poetry and prose ; there are prayers and
dedications, temple laws and sacrificial regulations ;
there are private letters with a religious colouring,
horoscopes, amulets, cursing tablets and magical
books ; there are oracles and thankful accounts of
deliverance from dire peril! or of miraculous cures
at the great shrines.? And if any one doubts the
words of these texts—setting aside the assurances
‘of intercession in the papyrus letters as mere phrases,
and the reports of cures as simply so much sacerdotal
fraud—perhaps figures will appeal to him. Let him
-ealculate the sums of money that were devoted to
religious purposes in the Imperial period on the
evidence of dedicatory inscriptions and the papyri’—
from the monster presentations to great temples
immortalised in marble splendour, to the drachmae
and obols of the Isis collections for which a receipt
was issued to the Egyptian peasant on a miserable
potsherd.*
Were it possible to collect before us, in all their
shades of variety, the original documents attesting
the piety of the Gentile world in the age of the
New Testament, and could we then with one
rapid glance survey them all, we should feel as
St. Paul did at Athens. After passing through the
1 Hg. letter No, 9 above, p. 168 ff.
2 Hg. p. 132 above.
3 There is much material in a book, excellent also in other respects, by
Walter Otto, Priester und Tempel im,hellenistischen Agypten, Ein Beitrag zur
Kulturgeschichte des Hellenismus, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1905 and 1908. A portion
-of Vol. II. was printed as a Breslau “ Habilitationsschrift,” entitled Die
-wirtschaftliche Lage und die Bildung der Priester im hellenistischen Agypten,
Leipzig, 1907. ‘ Cf. p. 105 above.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 285
streets of that one city he was fain to acknowledge
that the men he had seen were “extremely religious.” Ὁ
The impression is deepened when we gaze actually
upon some of the great places of worship which were
still in repute in the Hellenistic period of Roman
history. We experience over again in all their
complexity the feelings of the ancient devotee, so
far as they were determined by the prevailing
atmosphere of the sacred place itself. It is possible,
of course, unconsciously to read something modern
into our interpretation of the temple walls and
ordered columns rising from the debris. Above all,
the imposing solitude which usually surrounds us.
as we stand beside these ruins to-day may easily
mislead us into giving a false touch to the picture we
piece together for ourselves. But the great things
cannot be sophisticated: sky, and sea, and cliff,
gorge and plain, fig-tree and olive grove, and over
all the frolic strife of sunlight and shadow—these
are eternally the same. And it cannot be altogether
wrong to assume that the feelings which come over
us to-day * on the site of the ancient shrines were
experienced also by the pious men of old who dis-
covered and consecrated, settled and tended these
places. All the effects come under one of two main
heads: either the beauty and loveliness of the sacred.
place enlarge the heart to solemn devotion, or else
the grandeur and the vastness make it sink shudder--
ing before the terrible and the sublime.
There is Olympia, with the sprightly charm of what
might almost be a German hill-landscape—a place of
joyous festal celebration. There is Epidaurus, the
' κατὰ πάντα ὡς δεισιδαιμονεστέρους, Acts xvii, 22. The A.V. “too super--
stitious” is an incorrect translation, found also in Luther's Bible.
* The following is a sketch of my own impressions in April and May, 1906,
on visiting the places named.
286 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
goal of sick pilgrims, in its green forest solitude
remote from all the world. And Eleusis, above the
silent bay bounded by the cornfields and olive planta-
tions of the plain and by the cliffs of Salamis ;—the
spirit of this sanctuary is rendered with marvellous
feeling in the most deeply religious work of ancient
sculpture that I have ever seen, the Eleusinian
‘Triptolemus relief in the Museum at Athens.
There Corinth lies, above the gleaming beauty of
her rock-crowned gulf, not unlike Eleusis, only vaster,
severer, more masculine, possessing the oldest temple
on Greek soil, and overhung by the defiant mass of
the Acrocorinthus. There in her pride, and strength,
and beauty the Acropolis of Athens sits enthroned
above the crowded Polis, bearing sway over the sea
and the islands, and calling up feelings of patriotic
‘devotion.
And then the island shrines: the temple of Aphaea
in Aegina, on a steep wooded height, with wide
expanses of sea visible through the tops of evergreen
trees; lovely Delos in the circle of her humbler
sisters ; Thera, opening up to us from primeval peaks,
still sacred to this day, the beauty of sea and sunshine
stretching away into the blue limitless distance.
Finally the great seats of worship on the coast of
Asia Minor: Pergamum, Ephesus, and Miletus-
Didyma.
But nothing can approach the shrine of Delphi in
dignity and vastness. The giants of the prime whose
hands piled those frowning mighty walls of rock, the
Phaedriads,' have here created for the sacred precinct
a background of indescribable solemnity; not even
the extravagant profusion of costly votive offerings
1 [Steep rocks on one of the peaks of Parnassus, 800 feet above Delphi
2,000 feet above sea-level. TR.]
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 287
in bronze and marble can have banished that solemnity
in ancient times. And, on the highroad, if you let
the eye stray downward from the bare rocks opposite
into the valley, the stream that you see there far
below is a stream—or rather, sea—of gloomy, silent
olive woods: naught save the distant streak of some
bay on the Corinthian Gulf, lit up for a moment as
it catches a glimpse of the sun, gives to the heroic
outlines of this awesome picture a kindlier touch.
The inspection of all these venerable and solemn
places, their buildings and their sculptures, increases
our knowledge of ancient piety beyond what we
know from the inscriptions and papyri. This is
chiefly because in those texts—one need only recall
the magical texts, for instance—it is the coarser forms
of religion, strongly suggestive of “ heathenism,” that
come prominently to the front. If we did not know
it before, we learn now from this inspection that, even
at the time of the great turning-point in religious
history, there were various levels of piety. Just as
in museums we see the neolithic bowl side by side
_ with the masterpiece of Attic vase-painting, so in
Hellenism we find on the one hand vestiges of primi-
tive folklore, surviving in secret corners and at cross-
roads under cover of the night, and on the other hand
temples bathed in the streaming sunlight, and votive
gifts which nothing but a high religious culture could
have created. And if we,could awaken again to life
the choirs that sang in those temples and are now for
ever silenced, we should probably be still further con-
vinced of the refinement of that culture. The earliest
Christians certainly appreciated the mature beauty of
the religious art of the world surrounding them, as
we know from the comparatively unpolished writer
of the Apocalypse. A good deal of the colouring of
288 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
his visions is obviously derived from the religious art
and usage’ of Hellenistic Asia Minor; but he shared
the popular liking for strong effects, and it was
certainly the more startling shades that he adopted.
4. Amid the tangle of religions in the Hellenistic
world of the Mediterranean—this must at least be
hinted in this connexion—certain great lines become
clearer and clearer, chiefly as a consequence of the
discoveries of inscriptions: we see the other religions
that competed with Christianity because they were
themselves missionary religions. The great problems
suggested merely by the new material already pub-
lished are by no means all solved or even attacked
yet,’ but we can already reconstruct with great
certainty the religious map of the world in the
Imperial period,’ at least at some of the main
points.
To take the chief instance, Greek Judaism, the
mighty forerunner of Christianity as a world-religion,
yielded up its hidden inscriptions; papyri and the
evidence of literary writers did the rest,—and so
1 Cf. for instance my little essay on “White Robes and Palms” in Bibel-
studien, Ὁ. 285 ff.; Bible Studies, p. 368 ff. Much Hellenistic material for the
background of the various Apocalypses will be found in Albrecht Dieterich,
Nehyia, Beitrige cur Erklarung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse, Leipzig,
1893; and Georg Heinrici, Der litterarische Charakter der neutestamentlichen.
Schriften, Leipzig, 1908, p. 87 f.
2 The older Egyptian texts, doubtless containing much undiscovered materiat
of importance, ought to be examined, and the secularisation of the Egyptian
divinities has not yet been investigated. What a prospect one single inscrip-
tion opens up—the Isis inscription from Ios, p. 135 ff. above. Adolf Rusch, De
Serapide et Iside in Graecia cultis, a Berlin dissertation, 1906, under-
estimates its importance as evidence of the worship of Isis.—Meritorious,
if not always convincing, is R. Reitzenstein’s Poimandres: Studien zur
griechisch-igyptischen und friih-christlichen Literatur, Leipzig, 1904, It
investigates the new religious formations in Egypt, represented especially by
the Hermetic writings.
3 A good survey is given by Franz Cumont, Les Religions Orientales dans le
Paganisme Romain, Paris, 1907.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 289
Emil Schiirer? was able to write his very full sketch
of the Jews of the Dispersion.
Franz Cumont’s work on Mithras? is monumental,
not only in the sense of being written from the
monuments ; but there are also smaller investigations,
such as Alfred von Domaszewski’s on the religion of
the Roman army’ or Hugo Hepding’s on Attis,* which
would have been impossible without modern epigraphy.
Finally there remain to be mentioned the important
additions to our knowledge due to the light that has
been thrown upon the worship of the sovereign,
particularly emperor-worship, in antiquity—a form
of cult whose importance is becoming more and more
obvious in the religious history of the Graeco-Roman
period. Comprehensive works have lately been
published by ἘΠ Kornemann’® and J. Toutain.’ I
hope to be able to show later on in this chapter how,
considered in contrast with that of emperor-worship,
1 Geschichte des jidischen Volkes, III.’ pp. 1--135; cf. also Harnack, Die Mission
und Ausbreitung des Christentums, 1.5 pp. 1-16, and Theodore Reinach, article
Diaspora, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, IV., New York and London, 1903,
p. 559 ff.
2 Textes et Monuments figurés relatifs aux Mystéres de Mithra, 2 vols.,
Bruxelles, 1899, 1896. Two small epitomes have appeared, entitled Les
Mystéres de Mithra,? Braxelles, 1902, and Die Mysterien des Mithra. Ein
Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte der rémischen Kaiserzeit. Autorisierte
deutsche Ubersetzung von Georg Gehrich, Leipzig, 1903.—Albrecht Dieterich,
Hine Mithrasliturgie erléutert, Leipzig, 1903, contains besides the material
relating to the religion of Mithras (on which see Cumont, Revue de I’ instruc-
tion publique en Belgique, 47, p. 1, and Dieterich’s reply, Archiv fiir Religions-
wissenschaft, 8, p. 501) a number of other investigations bearing on our subject.
Dieterich had previously published a survey entitled “Die Religion des
Mithras” in the Bonner Jahrbiicher [Jahrbiicher des Vereins von Altertums-
freunden im Rheinland], Part 108, p. 26 ff. Cf. also Harnack, Die Mission und
Ausbreitung des Christentums, IL.? Ὁ. 270 ff.
3. Die Religion des rémischen Heeres, Trier, 1895; offprint from the West-
deutsche Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte und Kunst, 14 (1895).
‘ Attis seine Mythen und sein Kult, Giessen, 1903.
5 Zur Geschichte der antiken Herrscherkulte, Beitrige zur alten Geschichte
[Klio], 1, pp. 51-146.
δ᾽ Les cultes paiens dans lV empire romain. Premiére partie, tome I, Les
cultes officiels ; les cultes romains et gréco-romains, Paris, 1907.
19
290 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
much of the terminology of the earliest Christian
worship acquires once more its original distinctive
clearness.
5. One other thing the student of Primitive
Christianity owes to the new texts. It is something
to have perceived the religious feelings that animated
the great world contemporary with the New Testa-
ment, and to have learnt to know its forms of
worship, but much greater is the fact that ancient
souls, seemingly lost to us for ever, have leapt into
life once more.
It has always been characteristic of Christianity
from the beginning, that, as it lived in the souls of
individuals, so it influenced the individual soul.
Christianity is in the very front rank as regards the
discovery and culture of individual souls. Its oldest
documents are without exception reflexes of souls.
What a soul is reflected in the words of Jesus!
What souls has He depicted with a few touches in
His parables and words of disputation. And St.
Paul’s letters are soul-pictures in such high degree
that their writer is probably the best-known man of
the early Empire: not one of his celebrated con-
temporaries has left us such frank confessions. But
to understand the progress of the new faith through
the world we must know the spiritual constitution of
the men from whom the missionaries came and to
whom the message and pastoral care of the missionaries
were addressed.
That these were men of the non-literary lower and
middle classes has been so often indicated in these
pages from a variety of points of view, that I should
have no objection if this thesis were described as a main
feature of my book. Some little time ago there was
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 291
given us an admirable aid towards dividing off these
classes from the upper class which, being possessed
of power, wealth, or education, is the most seen and
heard in the literature of the Imperial age and else-
where. Under the auspices of the Berlin Academy
of Sciences three scholars, Elimar Klebs, Hermann
Dessau, and Paul von Rohden, presented us with a
three-volume work,’ Prosopographia Imperu Romani
Saec. I. II. 111., uniting in one great alphabetical
catalogue 8,644 men and women who are known from
literature, inscriptions, etc., in the three centuries
from Augustus to Diocletian, which of course mean
to us the primitive period of Christianity. Turning
the pages of these volumes we find among the men
of the Imperial age the deified favourite Antinous,
but not John the Baptist; Apollonius of Tyana,
but not Jesus of Nazareth; the celebrated robber-
chief Bulla Felix, but not Paul of Tarsus; the
historian Flavius Josephus, but not the Evangelist
Luke, to say nothing of the vanished souls in the
᾿ lists of salutations in the letters of St. Paul. This
is no mere accident; the editors intentionally
neglected “the endless multitude of plebeians that
crowd the pages of ecclesiastical and legal writers.” ?
I will not press the sentence; I will not refer
in confutation of it to the isolated examples of
insignificant persons who of course have found their
way into this book of grandees here and there. But
one thing I will say: That endless multitude, as it
is rightly called, which seems too big to be compre-
1 Berolini, 1897-1898.
3 Klebs in the Praefatio to Vol. 1, (p. viii), “sed hominum plebeiorum
infinita illa turba qua scripta ecclesiastica et auctorum iuris referta sunt
procul semota est.” In exactly the same way the aristocratic historians of
the Imperial age are devoid of almost all interest in Christianity in the first
stages ; and the fact that Jesus and St. Paul are not mentioned by certain
contemporary writers is admirably accounted for by social history.
292 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
hended historically, and which begins below the upper
eight-thousand found worthy to be catalogued in
the Berlin Prosopographia, deserves attention because
in it Primitive Christianity grew up and expanded.
One of the greatest pictures in the Revelation drawn
by one of that multitude and consecrated by the
tears of those nameless ones shows’ the “great
multitude, which no man could number, of all
nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues,
standing before the throne, and before the Lamb,
. who came out of great tribulation, . . . and
who shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.”
And now to-day the new texts have brought
a wonder to pass. That ancient world of the in-
significant and the many who hungered and thirsted,
which seemed to be inaccessible save to the dreamy
eye of the seer, and hopelessly lost to the scholar,
now rises up before us in the persons of innumerable
individuals. They sow grains of wheat once more
in the furrow blessed by the Nile; they pay their
drachmae for tax and impost, duty and rate and
collection; they travel by boat, on camels or on
donkeys to the capital, to fill the halls of justice
with their quarrels and abuse; adventurous youths
climb on board the imperial ships bound for Italy ;
in silent devotion the survivors observe ancestral
custom at death and burial. And so it goes on
from generation to generation, from the days of the
Septuagint to the gospels and the church-meetings
of the Pauline mission, on to Diocletian and the
baptised Caesars: in the lower stratum there is always
the same bustle of so many humble individuals
eating, drinking, sowing, tilling, marrying and given
in marriage. .
Rev. vii, 9-17,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 293
But out of the ceaseless rhythm of wholesale
existence souls emerge, individual souls, in which
the scholar may recognise types of ancient personal
life. The unparalleled value of the papyrus letters
is this, that they bring before us with all possible
truth ancient souls and spiritual conditions in the
non-literary classes.
What is it that makes these newly discovered
papyrus letters such splendid evidence of the soul-
life of the ancients ?
What literature has to show us in the way of
souls is a product of art, often of a high form of
art, but even then generally only a drawing from
the’ model. That which is literary cannot be com-
pletely naive. We cannot be sure whether it is
the real face or only a mask of concealment worn
by a player when the Emperor Hadrian writes these
verses * before his death :— '
“Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one,
Guest and partner of my clay,
Whither wilt thou hie away,—
Pallid one, rigid one, naked one—
Never to play again, never to play?”
And the works of the plastic arts? The marbles
and bronzes recovered from the ruins of ancient
1 Whether they are genuine IJ do not know: Eduard Norden (letter,
3 September, 1908) sees no reason for doubting their authenticity. They
are found in the Seriptores Historiae Augustae, Hadrian, 25 (rec. Peter,?
p. 27) :—
“Animula vagula blandula
hospes comesque corporis,
quae nune abibis in loca
pallidula rigida nudula
nec ut soles dabis iocos!"’
For the “naked soul” cf. for instance St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 3. [These verses are
of acknowledged difficulty to translate. Prior, Pope, Byron, and Christina
Rossetti are amongst those who have essayed the task. The version in the
text is by Merivale, Tz.]
294 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
cities and from the sea-bed around the coasts are
certainly not soul-less; but to whom would -the
athlete of Ephesus in the Theseion at Vienna, or
the youth of Anticythera at Athens, have ever
revealed his soul? These marvellous presentments
of the human body so captivate us that we do not
think of inquiring about their souls until we have
said farewell to them and the bronzes can no longer
understand our questioning. Who would venture
to make the great eyes of the Egyptian mummy-
portraits speak, or attempt to read the personal
secrets of even the portrait-busts of the Imperial
period? The connoisseur only ventures on hesitating
attempts at interpretation when he is supported by
literary tradition.’
And the men who speak to us on the inscribed
stones—do they stand quite naturally before us?
Are they not in the same publicity as the stone,
and are not their words calculated for publicity? We
could indeed make shift to patch together some
of their personalities, but we could put no life into
them. ‘The imperial physician and imperial murderer
G. Stertinius Xenophon of Cos,’ the contemporary
of St. Paul, is a case in point. The editor of the
inscriptions of Cos has tried to make him live again
and has found in him a figure for an_ historical
romance ὃ ;—a figure, certainly, but no soul.
Two generations later a Lycian millionaire,
Opramoas of Rhodiapolis, thrusts himself forward
with boastful ostentation among the crowd of
inscriptions from Asia Minor. On the walls of the
1 Hg, Wilhelm Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus,
p. 174: “A heaviness about the eyes and a reserved and piercing look give
even to his (Hadrian’s) face a peculiarly melancholy stamp.”
2 Cf. p. 248 above.
3 Rudolf Herzog, Koische Forschungen und Funde, p. 189 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 295
heroén destined for the reception of his mortal body
we find still to-day nigh upon seventy records which,
in order that his name might not perish, he engraved
in marble, immortalising his money benefactions and
other services, as well as the honours he received from
emperors, procurators, and municipal associations.
Thanks principally to modern archaeology’ this man
with the full-sounding name has attained his object :
Opramoas is to-day, at least in a few scholars’
studies, a sort of celebrity. But where is his soul?
So far as it was not identical with his treasure, it
is not to be found on all those great marble tablets.’
And if we were to receive it from the hand of the
angel who was sent to demand it of the rich man
in the night, it would not be a soul that felt at
home with the poor souls of the New Testament.
Even where the inscriptions seem to bear a more
personal note, we do not always find a personal
manifestation. In the poetical epitaphs, especially,
there is much that is borrowed and plenty of
second-hand feeling. It would be rash, for example,
to say that Chrysogonus of Cos, with his eighty-
three years, was a great drinker merely on the
strength of the epigram on his tomb (Figure 44),
even supposing he was himself responsible for the
epitaph.
This feeble epigram,’ the metre of which is here
) Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien, II. pp. 76-135; Rudolf Heberdey
Opramoas Inschriften vom Heroon zu Rhodiapolis, Wien, 1897. The inscrip-
tions extend from 125 to 152 a.p. Heberdey enumerates 69 of them.
? The Opramoas inscriptions are, however, of great value to us as religious
history ; first in illustration of the powerfully sarcastic parable of the rich fool
(Luke xii, 16-21) and the other allied types of the “rich man,” and secondly
in contrast with the spirit of Matt. vi, 1-4,
» Discovered and published by Rudolf Herzog, Koische Forschungen und
Funde, p. 103 fi., No. 163, The greatly reduced facsimile (Fig. 44) is given
here from Plate VI. 2 by kind permission of the discoverer and his publisher.
296 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
imitated in the translation, dates from the Imperial
period and runs as follows :—
οὔνομα <a> Χρυσό- One, Chrysogonus hight, lies
Le clea ad ν : ᾿ here, of nymphs an adorer,
pis ἐνθάδε κεῖται] Saying to each passer-by,
παντὶ λέγων παρό-
δω"2 πεῖνε, βλέπις “ Drink, for thou seest the
τὸ τέλος. end.”
ἐτῶν [Fr]. 83 years.
The exhortation to drink in anticipation of
approaching death is one of the well-known formulae
of ancient popular morals* (often, no doubt, of
popular wit), and is by no means rare in epitaphs.*
We can therefore draw no certain conclusion what-
ever as to the spiritual constitution of Chrysogonus in
particular from his epitaph. We know little about
the old man beyond his name and a cult to which
he was devoted ; his soul has disappeared for ever.
The epitaphs of antiquity as a whole are of this
service, that they reflect for us the emotions of a
class of men rather than the innermost thoughts of
individuals. Stones with long metrical inscriptions
almost provoke us, as we seek for something personal
behind the ornate forms, to cry sometimes in the
words of a medieval inscription from Heraclia on
the Black Sea °:—
1 Should no doubt be Νυνφῶν.
2 ὁ πάροδος, ‘the passer-by,” “ traveller,” was hitherto only known in LXX
2 Sam, xii, 4, Ezek. xvi. 15, 25, and Symmachus Jer. xiv. 8; but it occurs not
exactly rarely in inscriptions (Herzog, p. 104 1.) and is therefore to be struck
out of the list of “ Biblical” words. The word occurs also in the Inschriften
von Priene, No. 311, and there is no need to conjecture παροδ[ίτα]ις.
3 Cf. Isaiah xxii. 13 in the original text and in the interesting LXX transla-
tion; then cf. St, Paul’s use of the passage in 1 Cor, xv. 32, which is very
effective in a popular way. 4 Herzog, p. 105.
5 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No, 8748, 13th cent. A.D.:
ἂν οἱ λ]ίθοι xp[d]fwouw ἐκ [π]αροιμίας,
πέμψον βοήν, [ἄφωνἾος, ἄψυχος πέ[τ]ῤ[α].
I now read [ἄφων]ος, after J. H. Moulton, The Expository Times, October
1908, p. 82. ᾿
Fia. 44.—Kpigram on the Tomb of Chrysogonus of Cos.
Marble Altar, Imperial Period. Now built into the wall of a
house in Cos. By permission of Rudolf Herzog and the pub-
lishing house of Theodor Weicher (Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuch-
handlung).
[Ρ. 296
᾿ΠΙΒΥΒΑΤΕ. FROM THE NEW TEXTS 297
“If then the stones cry out, as saith the Word,
Send forth a shout, thou voiceless, soul-less rock !”
But the stones remain dumb: they have preserved
for us no souls.
Souls, however, living souls from the great
perished multitude, good and bad, beautiful and
ugly, joyful and tremulous, flutter towards us with
the papyrus letters’ that have been snatched from
the rubbish of villages and little towns in Egypt.
Those who, being vilely deceived in their hopes of
autograph MSS. of philosophers and poets, cast the
letters aside as lumber owned by the obscure, will
fetch them out again when they have learnt to
appreciate the value of non-literary naiveté. The
more obscure the writer, the more naive will be
the letter, at least as concerns the thought of future
publication. It may be said with some certainty
that most of the papyrus letters written by unknown
men and women of Egypt at the time when the
New Testament was growing and consolidating are
in the above sense of the word completely naive
and reflect single definite situations in the outer or
inner lives of their writers with the greatest sincerity.
This estimate of the papyrus letters is quite in
harmony with ancient ideas on the subject, as may
be shown by reference to Demetrius,’ a theorist on
the art of letter-writing, who says very finely that
in writing a letter one draws a picture of one’s
1 It is a remarkable fact that the 2nd cent. A.D. is especially rich in personal
letters allowing of conclusions as to spiritual conditions. Is that accident,
or were men then really more sentimental and communicative? This
openness and sensitiveness of soul was an important factor in the Christian
propaganda,
2 Epistolographi Graeci, rec. Hercher, Ῥ. 13: σχεδὸν γὰρ εἰκόνα ἕκαστος τῆς
ἑαυτοῦ ψυχῆς γράφει τὴν ἐπιστολήν. ‘Kal ἔστι μὲν καὶ ἐξ ἄλλου λόγου παντὸς ἰδεῖν
τὸ ἦθος τοῦ γράφοντος, ἐξ οὐδενὸς δὲ οὕτως ὡς ἐπιστολῆς.
298 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
own soul, and in nothing is the personality better
reflected than in a letter.
Interpretative scholarship ought certainly to come
first. to an understanding about the methods of
regarding, explaining, and reanimating these ancient
self-portraits. We are not yet sufficiently practised
in this new art. The best way is to read the texts
in conjunction with other scholars, with continuous
discussion of the various possibilities of interpretation.
What one regards as mummy-like another will
perhaps make live again. At any rate let us read
without unduly lauding any supposed child of nature
to the skies; let us brand as brutal what is brutal,
and accord no praise to vulgar narrowness. Not on
any account, however, must we come to the letters
with the condescending superiority of the man from
town who knows “the people” only from kail-yard
fiction or from stage-representations, and perhaps from
holiday tours in quest of old farmhouse furniture ;
who thinks Hodge stupid, and is hugely amused
at his lack of culture. In these texts we are dealing
not with curiosities but with human destinies ; some-
times only the humorous vexations of everyday life are
concerned—and then it is permissible to smile—but
often the trouble is very deep and real. We must
leave our linguistic red-pencils at home, for these are
not Greek examination papers to be corrected, and
we shall do better to ask ourselves whether soldiers
‘and day-labourers of the present day write any
better. These texts should be read only by those
who have hearts for the common people, who feel
at home among fields, vineyards, and dykes, guard-
rooms and rowing-thwarts, and who have learnt to
read the lines of a hand distorted by toil.
There is Alis, wife of the day-labourer Hilarion,.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 299
growing anxious as her hour of trial approaches:
a half-sentimental, half-brutal letter? is all that
her husband writes her from the capital, on 17 June
in the year 1 B.c.
Irene? is called upon to console a family that has
just been plunged into mourning, but the poor empty
soul has nothing to give but tears and a few good
words dictated to her by custom ; and yet we cannot
deny her our sympathy.
Or a young Egyptian soldier who has just been
saved from peril on the sea by the lord Serapis, lands
in Italy and writes to his father*® while the new
impressions are fresh upon him. <A thankful, hopeful
temperament this soldier’s, as he looks forward to
the future, nor does he lose his attractiveness after
years of hard service.* The same hearty goodwill
comes out in the letter of another soldier.’
And Nearchus prattles on to Heliodorus® about
his travels, and we see him in sacred places carving
the names of his friends with intercessory prayer.
Or we hear the prodigal Antonis Longus” coming to
himself and expressing his contrition in these moving
sentences in the first person :- “I walk about in rags,
I am naked. I beseech thee, mother, be reconciled
to me! I have been chastened. I know that I
have sinned.”
And so it goes on, the texts are inexhaustible.
The same papyri that we made use of above to make
clear the characteristics of the non-literary letter can
thus be employed also in solving a greater and still
more profitable problem—that of entering into the
nature of individual souls among the non-literary
1 Of. p. 154 ff, above. ? Cf. p. 164 ff. above.
5 Cf. p. 168 ff. above. 4 Cf. p. 172 ff. above.
5 CE, p. 183 ff. above. “ Cf. p. 1622, above.
’ Cf. p. 176 ff. above,
800 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
middle and lower classes of ancient society. One
soul is added to another, a new one in every letter,
and we even possess whole bundles of connected letters
from one and the same family, and are able to see
into the relationship between various families of the
same social stratum. Every new soul, however,
makes clearer to us the “world” which was the
object of the missionary labours of St. Paul and his
successors. This world was composed of human
souls. The interest of the first missionary generations
was directed; not to ancient systems of philosophy
and speculative ways of combating them, but to the
salvation of souls. It is, however, most highly pro-
bable that the souls of men on the coasts of Syria,
Asia Minor, and Greece were not essentially different
from those of their Egyptian contemporaries. This
is what I meant by saying above that we may take
the souls of the Egyptian letter-writers as types of
the ancient soul in general.? If individual proof be
wanted, think of the surprising similarity between
1 Cf. the 14 letters from the correspondence of the veteran L. Bellenus
Gemellus, of the years 94-110 a.D., which were found in a house at Kasr el-
Banat (the ancient Euhemeria) in the Fayam, and published in Faydm Towns,
Nos, 110-123. The handwriting of the letters written by the man himself
shows the advance of age. The letters yield an unusually rich lexical harvest.
For the epistolary formula οὖς (ὃν) ἐγὼ ἀγαπῶ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ, “whom I love in
truth” (2 Jobn 1, 3 John 1), there is analogy in the Gemellus letters 1192¢¢.
(ec. 100 A.D.) and 118, (110 A.D.), rods φιλοῦντες ἡμᾶς (σὲ) πρὸς ἀλήθιαν,
“who love us (thee) according to truth.” U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
Géttingische gel. Anzeigen, 1901, p. 37 f., made a beginning in the work of
turning these letters to scientific account.—There should also be mentioned the
correspondence of Heliodorus and others (see p. 227 f. above), part of which is
published in the Amherst Papyri, Nos. 131-135, the rest at Heidelberg still
awaiting publication. There are also connected family letters in the Berliner
Griechische Urkunden, etc. The correspondence of Abinnaeus, which next
follows in the Christian Imperial period, has been mentioned above, p. 206.
2 6, Heinrici says very justly (Der literarische Charakter der neutestament-
lichen Schriften, p. 58): “It is, I think, no unjustifiable generalisation to
regard the Egyptian papyrus letters as typical of the vulgar epistolary style
of antiquity at large.” The same generalisation may be extended to the
writers of the letters.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 301
the Prodigal Son depicted by Jesus the Galilean and
the real soul of the Egyptian Antonis Longus. But
chief stress must be laid on. the total impression
received ; any one coming from the soul-life of the
New Testament to the papyri finds himself in no
strange world, and whoever comes from the papyri to
the New Testament will encounter familiar states and
expressions of emotion at every step.
Someday perhaps, when all those men and families
of the ancient lower classes have received individual
attention and been made to live again, the command
will go forth from the citadel of learning that they
and the countless others whose names alone are
mentioned shall also be enrolled. The personal
register of the upper classes, which is a book of
contrast to the New Testament, will then be supple-
mented by a personal and family register of the
humbler classes, a book not of contrast but of contact.
And in this book, in which peasants and artisans
from Egypt jostle legionaries from Britain and the
frontiers of Germany, in which traders from Syria
and the Black Sea encounter with slaves from
Ephesus and Corinth—in this book of the Forgotten
we shall not search in vain for the Baptist, for J esus,
and for St. Paul.
Souls of the ancients! Before we leave them let
me commend their study to all those—I do not wish
to blame them—who are so fond of chasing the psyche
of “modern” man with the butterfly-net. If we
look to the really great events and possibilities of the
inward life, those ““ ancient ” souls seem to be separated
by no such great interval from our own. That is to
say, the papyri teach us the continuity of human
soul-life in all its main movements. If I may give
302 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
practical point to the observation, they diminish,
when heed is paid to things of the soul, the interval
that many people nowadays, exaggerating the value
of things intellectual, feel between themselves and
the New Testament.
6. When the individual souls of antiquity have
been studied so far that a beginning can be made
with the personal register of the humbler classes, we
shall recognise better than we can at present how
greatly Christianity met the needs of those souls.
The depth of meaning will become clearer and clearer
in that dream-vision ' of a man of Macedonia begging
the Apostle of the Gentiles, then in Asia, to “come
over into Macedonia, and help us.” Indeed, the old
and the new came to meet each other like two hands
stretched out for a friendly clasp.
In this connexion the fact which occupied us in
the second chapter appears in a new light, I mean
the fact of close relationship between the early
Christian missionary language and the popular
language of the age. The scholars who isolated
“ New Testament” Greek did not reflect that by so
doing they closed the doors of the early Christian
mission. Paul would have found no “open door”?
if he had not been to the Greeks “a Greek,” i.¢., in
our context, if he had not in the Hellenised world
spoken to Hellenised men in the Hellenistic popular
language.
We can, however, go still further: Paul and the
1 Acts xvi. 9.
2 This thoroughly popular expression, a favourite with St. Paul (1 Cor. xvi. 9;
2 Cor. ii. 12; Col. iv. 3), is very characteristic, Thanks probably to the
English, who know their Bibles so well, it has become a catchword of modern
international politics, but not many who use it are conscious of its Pauline
character. 86. Paul no doubt found it current in the world about him.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 303
other apostles are, in a much higher degree than has
probably been supposed, at home also in the world
of cultural, especially of religious, ethical, and legal
ideas peculiar to their Hellenistic age, and they are
fond of making frequent use of details taken from
this world of thought. This is a fact which is not
completely separable from the one discussed in
Chapter II.; at many points philology and social
history overlap... This is particularly true in the
case of technical ideas and liturgical formulae, but
also where institutions of the surrounding world
exert an influence on the figurative language of
religion.
One of the marks of the highly popular style of
St. Paul’s missionary methods is that in many
passages of his letters we find St. Paul employing a
usage particularly familiar and intelligible to popular
feeling—I mean the technical phraseology and the
cadence of the language of magic.
I have tried elsewhere’? to show that the curious
sentence about “the marks of Jesus” * is best under-
stood if read in the light of a magical formula handed
down in a Leyden papyrus.*
So too in the case of the directions to the Corinthian
church concerning the punishment of the transgressor
who had committed sin with his step-mother,® the
full meaning does not come out until the passage is
read in connexion with the ancient custom of exe-
cration, 2.6. devoting a person to the gods of the
lower world. A person who wished to injure an
enemy or to punish an evil-doer consecrated him by
' It is advisable, however, to keep the points of view of philology and social
history distinct, At many points philology holds its own completely.
2 Bibelstudien, p. 262 ff.; Bible Studies, p. 346 fi. 3. Gal. vi. 17.
‘ For this formula see also J, de Zwaan, The Journal of Theological Studies,
April 1905, p. 418, 5 1 Cor. v. 4, δ.
804 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
incantation and tablet to the powers of darkness
below, and the tablet reached its address by being
confided to the earth, generally to a grave. A
regular usage was established in the language of
these execrations,—a usage common to antiquity.
The only difference between Jewish and pagan
execrations probably lay in the fact that Satan
took the place of the gods of the lower world.
In form, however, there must have been great
similarities.’ This is seen in the words of St. Paul
to the Corinthians :—
“ Gather together in the name of the Lord Jesus, ye
and my spirit, and in fellowship with the power of our
Lord Jesus deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruc-
tion of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus.”
Two technical expressions are here adopted from
the ritual of cursing. The phrase “deliver unto
Satan that... ,” recurring in 1 Tim. i. 20, corre-
sponds to the formula in the London Magical
Papyrus 46534. :--
“Daemon of the dead, . . . I deliver unto thee N.N.,
in order that... ,”*
and even the unobtrusive little word σύν, “ with,” “in
fellowship with,” is technical in just such contexts
as this: we find it not only in the Paris Magical
ΟΕ Antike Fluchtafeln ausgewdhlt und erklart von Richard Wiinsch
(Lietzmann’s Kleine Texte, No. 20), Bonn, 1907.
2 Of, pp. 92, 93 above, the remarks on ἀναθεματίζω, “T curse.”
4.1 Cor. v. 4,5: ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ συναχθέντων ὑμῶν καὶ τοῦ ἐμοῦ
πνεύματος, σὺν τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ παραδοῦναι τὸν τοιοῦτον τῷ
Σατανᾷ εἰς ὄλεθρον τῆς σαρκός, ἵνα τὸ πνεῦμα σωθῇ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ.
4 Greek Papyri in the British Musewm, ed. Kenyon (Vol. I.) p. 75, νεκυδαίμων,
. παραδίδωμί σοι τὸν δ(εῖνα), ὅπως. .. - The papyrus was written in the
4th cent, A.D., but its formulae are ancient. The present formula, addressed
to a daemon of the dead, is neither Jewish nor Christian.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 305
Papyrus,’ but also on a much older Attic cursing
tablet of lead (8rd cent. 8.6.) :—
“J will bind her . . . in fellowship with Hecate, who is
below the earth, and the Erinyes.”
All this proves therefore that the apostle advises the
Corinthian churchto perform a solemn act of execration.
And in the concluding lines of 1 Corinthians,
which St. Paul wrote with his own hand,’ there is
a reminiscence of the cadence of ancient curses
imitated from the language of legislation :—
“Tf any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema.”
With this compare the epitaph from Halicarnassus
already cited above *:—
“ But if any one shall attempt to take away a stone .. .
let him be accursed.”
1 Cf. p. 255 above, line 2999.
2 Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarwm, Appendix (= Inscriptiones Graecae,
Vol. III. Pars 111.), No. 108, δήσω (cf. the following pages) ἐγὼ κείνην
. σὺν θ᾽ ‘Exdr(n)e χθονίαι καὶ "Epwtow. Considering the rarity of the
preposition σύν (cf. Tycho Mommsen, Beitriige zu der Lehre von den
griechischen Prdpositionen, 3 parts, Frankfurt a. M., 1886, 1887; at
p. 107 σύν is even described as an aristocratic word) this parallel is not
without importance.—For the same reason we may make room here for a
remarkable parallel to Phil, i. 23, “to depart, and to be in fellowship with
(σύν) Christ.” I have discussed the formula “with Christ" (σὺν Χριστῷ) in
my book Die neutestamentliche Formel “in Christo Jesu,” Marburg, 1892,
p. 126, and shown that it nearly always means the fellowship of the faithful
with Christ after their death or after His coming. Thus we read in a vulgar
grafito from Alexandria (Imperial period?) these words addressed to a
deceased person, εὔχομαι κἀγὼ ἐν τάχυ σὺν σοὶ εἶναι, “I would that I were
soon in fellowship with thee” (Sitzungsber. der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der
Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1902, p. 1098; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff there
points out the striking fact that the grafito already expresses the hope [not
current even in the New Testament] of meeting again after death which is
current among us. Hermann Diels, writing from Berlin W., 22 July, 1908, tells
me that the (certainly rare) mention of meeting again in ancient epitaphs has
its exact parallel in the ancient mysteries: the gold plates of the Oxphics
(Vorsokratiker? p. 480, No. 17 8.) have no other object than to guarantee this
certainty. The new thing about the graffito is its proof that the ideas of the
mystics had penetrated among the people. ;
2 1 Cor. xvi. 22, εἴ τις οὐ φιλεῖ τὸν κύριον, ἤτω ἀνάθεμα. Similar formulae,
Gal. i. 8, 9, ᾿ς 4 Page 94, n. 4 to ἐπικατάρατος.
20
806 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Akin to this is the parallelism between St. Paul's
asseveration * :—
“1 call God for a witness upon my soul ”
and the formula of an oath taken under Augustus
and recorded in an inscription from Galatia,’ in
which the taker of the oath says, in case of breach
of the oath :—
“I pronounce a curse against myself, my body, soul,
goods, children, etc.”
The clearest example of the use of technical ex-
pressions taken from magic is perhaps the phrase
“bond of the tongue.”* In the story of the heal-
ing of the deaf and dumb man St. Mark (vii. 35)
says :—
“ And straightway his ears were opened, and the bond
of his tongue was loosed.”
Most commentators, I think, have lightly pro-
nounced “bond of his tongue” to be a “ figurative”
expression, without realising the technical peculiarity
and therewith the point of the “figure.” But running
throughout all antiquity we find the idea that a man
can be “ bound ” or “ fettered ” by daemonic influences.
It occurs in Greek, Syrian, Hebrew, Mandaean, and
Indian magic spells.’ In Greek we even have a
1 2 Cor. i, 23, ἐγὼ δὲ μάρτυρα τὸν θεὸν ἐπικαλοῦμαι ἐπὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ψυχήν. “Ὅροι
my soul” or “ against my soul” in case I say what is untrue.
2 Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Insoriptiones Selectae, No. 53228, ἐπαρῶμαι
αὐτός τε κατ᾽ ἐμοῦ καὶ σ[ὦμα]τος τοῦ ἐμαυτοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς καὶ βίου κα[ὶ τέκνων, etc.
2 At the same time a fine analogy to Luther’s “Leib, Gut, Ehr, Kind
und Weib,” [‘ And though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small . . .” in Carlyle’s version of “ Hin’ feste Burg.” σε,
p. 140, π. 2 above. TR.]
4 ὁ δεσμὸς τῆς γλώσσης. For what follows cf. Die Christliche Welt, 17
(1903) col. 554 ff.
5 Cf, Mark Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fur semitische Epigraphth, 1, p. 31.
208 “61
‘oyNITISUT [Bo1Sopoowqory uewysny 1θαϑάσι] ey}
jo uorsstmsed fg ‘o'd “JU9O {1} 91] JO 7188 7510} ‘voryY ὕπο} 491081 9097 x
‘Zurputd » Loy mE Q—"9h “OL
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 307
detailed magical prescription for “ binding” a man,’
besides large numbers of inscriptions dealing with
the matter. One of the oldest of these is the
following, a leaden tablet from Attica of the first
half of the 4th cent. 8.0. (Fig. 45), which I give here
as read by Adolf Wilhelm ? :—
Θεοί. ᾿Α4γαθὴ Τύχη
Καταδῶ καὶ οὐκ ἀναλύσω εὐ εηδλϑοι ᾿Αντιφάνος καὶ ᾿Αντι-
φάνην Πατροκλέος καὶ Φιλοκλέα καὶ Κλεοχάρην
καὶ Φιλοκλέα καὶ Σμικρωνίδην καὶ Τιμάνθην καὶ Τιμάνθην.
Καταδῶ τούτος " ἅπαντας πρὸς τὸν ‘Epi τὸν [τὸν] χθόνιον
καὶ τὸν δόλιον καὶ τὸν
5 κάτοχον καὶ τὸν ἐριούνιον καὶ οὐκ ἀναλύσω.
“Gods! Good Tyche! I bind down and will not loose
Anticles, the son of Antiphanes, and Antiphanes the son
of Patrocles, and Philocles, and Cleochares, and Philocles,
and Smicronides, and Timanthes, and Timanthes. I bind
these all down to Hermes, who is beneath the earth and
crafty and fast-holding and luck-bringing, and I will not loose
them.”
Many other Attic binding-tablets have been pub-
lished by Richard Wiinsch,° but we also possess
examples from other localities and of later date.
The cases are particularly common in which a
man’s tongue is specially to be “ bound.” There are
no less than thirty of Wiinsch’s Attic tablets which
bind or curse the tongue. And in the Louvre at
' Details in the Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, on p. Xxx (by
R. Wiinsch).
2 Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archdologischen ἠροξεαἶοη in Wien, 7
(1904) p. 120f. The facsimile there (p. 121) is reproduced here (Fig. 45) by
kind consent of the Imperial Austrian Archaeological Institute.
3 Samuel Brandt, in a letter to me dated Heidelberg, 22 September, 1908,
proposes to write ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ. This is well worth noting. ‘ = τούτου.
5 Corpus Inseriptionum Atticarum, Appendix; cf. also A. Wilhelm, loc. cit.
p. 105 ff., and R. Miinsterberg, ibid. p. 145 ff.; and for “binding” see further
W. Kohler, Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 8, p. 236 ff.
908 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Paris ' there is this much later Mandaean inscription
on a magician’s dish :—
* Bound and fast held be the mouth and fast held the
tongue of curses, of vows, and of invocations of the gods.
. . . Bound be the tongue in its mouth, fast held be its
lips, shaken, fettered, and banned the teeth, and stopped
the ears of curses and invocations.”
A binding-charm of essentially similar nature is
found on an ostracon of the later Empire from
Ashmunén in Egypt, in which pagan and Jewish
elements are mixed (Fig. 46). It is in the possession
of Mr. F. Hilton Price, of London, and was first
published (as a Christian text) by F. E. Brightman.’
A similar charm was pointed out by Wilcken " in the
London Papyrus‘ No. 121,;;¢, and there are other
examples in allied texts of magical prescriptions
against anger.
The text of the ostracon (not yet fully established)
is as follows :—
Κρόνος, ὁ κατέχων τὸν
θυμὸν
ὅλων τῶν ἀνθρώπων, κάτε- | the wrath of all men, restrain
Cronos, thou who restrainest
\ Ephemeris fiir semitische Epigraphik, 1,p.100, The date cannot be ascer-
tained exactly.
2In W. E. Crum’s Coptic Ostraca, No. 522, p. 4f. (and p. 83 of the
lithographed text); cf, U. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 173, and
E. Preuschen, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 15 (1906) p. 642. I am indebted to
the kindness of W. E. Crum for the photograph which is here (Fig. 46) given
in slightly reduced facsimile.
3 Archiv, 2, p. 173.
* Published by Wessely, but now accessible in Greek Papyri in the British
Museum (Vol. J.) p. 114.
5 κατέχω in magical texts often has the sense of “I cripple,” and is com-
pletely synonymous with the “I bind ” which is elsewhere used. Cf. the term
θυμοκάτοχον, p. 90, n. 4 above.
Fig. 46.—Charm for “ Binding.” Ostracon
from Ashmunén, late Imperial Period. Former-
ly in the possession of the late F. Hilton
Price, London. (Kindly procured for me by
W. ἘΞ. Crum.)
[Ρ. 309
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 309
xe τὸν θυμὸν “Apt, τὸν
ἔτεκεν
5 Mapia?, κὲ" μὴ ἐάσης αὐὖ-
τὸν λαλή-
σεν “Ατρῷ [3], TH! ἔτεκεν
Ταήσης.
[- - . ἐξ]ορκίζξω κατὰ τοῦ
δακτύ-
λου τοῦ θεοῦδ, εἵναὐ μὴ
ἀναχά-
νὴ αὐτῶ, ὅτι Κρινουπελιῖ κὲδ
10 Κρόνω ὑπόκιτεβϑ. μὴ ἐάσης
the wrath of Hor, whom Mary
bore, and suffer him not to
speak with Hatros(?), whom
Taisis bore. I adjure ... by
the finger of god that he open
not his mouth to him, because
he is subject to Crinupelis (ἢ)
and Cronos. Suffer him not
to speak with him, neither for
αὐτὸν λαλήσεν ὁ αὐτῶ μήτε
νύκταν ὃ μήτε ἡμέραν
Ps , 10
μήτε μίαν ᾧ ““.
a night nor a day, nor for one
hour.
From these and many other texts we see what the
ancients thought of as the result of binding the
tongue, viz. inability to speak. The man whose
tongue was bound was intended to become thereby
dumb, so we may conclude conversely that the
1 The article is used instead of the relative pronoun.
2 The addition of the mother’s name is regular in magical texts, cf. Bibel-
studien, Ὁ. 37; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 283; L. Blau, Das altjiidische Zauberwesen,
p. 85; Wilcken, Archiv, 1, p. 423f. The occurrence of the name Mary once
more (cf. p. 123f. above) is interesting.
5 = καὶ. 4 = λαλήσειν. ;
5 The “finger of God” is an old Jewish expression, cf, LKX Exod. viii. 19,
xxxi. 18; Deut. ix. 10. In Luke xi, 20 we have “the finger of God” in con-
nexion with exorcism. Ample material will be found in Immanuel Liéw, Die
Finger in Litteratur wad Folklore der Juden, Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an
David Kaufmann, Breslau, 1900, p. 65 ff.
5 = ἵνα.
7 I cannot explain this name. In the Leyden Magical Papyrus V. ed. Albr.
Dieterich (p. 134, n, 1 above) XIIL,, the plant-name κρινάνθεμον, “ house-leek,” is
identified with γόνος “Auuwvos, “offspring of Ammon.” In the great Paris
Magical Papyrus, 1. 2979f. (ed. Wessely, p. 250 above) Ammon and Cronos
occur in close proximity. Perhaps the enigmatical word is a secret name for
the god Ammon. [κρινάνθεμον, according to Liddell and Scott, is a synonym
found in Dioscorides for ἡμεροκαλλές (-fs), a kind of yellow lily that blossoms
but for a day. The Greek words usually translated “house-leek” are ἐπίπετρον
and ἀείζωον. TR.] 8 = ὑπόκειται.
Vulgar for νύκτα. 10 = ὥραν, cf. p, 251 above, 1, 3000,
310 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
tongue of a dumb person was often considered in
ancient popular belief to have been “bound” by
some daemon. This view fits in with the wider
complex of widespread ancient beliefs that certain
diseases and morbid conditions were caused in general
by daemonic possession. Jesus Himself says (Luke
xii. 16) that Satan had “bound” a daughter of
Abraham eighteen years. He means the crooked
woman previously mentioned in the context, “ which
had a spirit of infirmity,” and whose “bond” was
loosed on the Sabbath. It seems probable, therefore,
that St. Mark’s “bond of his tongue” is also a
technical expression. The writer will not merely
say that a dumb man was made to speak—he will
add further that daemonic fetters were broken, a
work of Satan undone. Τὸ is one of those thoroughly
popular touches which helped Christianity to make
its way in the world !
The formulae usual in ancient accounts of healing,
of which we know plenty from inscriptions at
Epidaurus and other places where cures were wrought,
of course cannot have been unknown to the apostles.
As St. John’s story of the healing of the man born
blind finds a parallel in a Greek inscription from
Rome,’ reporting the cure of a blind man, and as
St. Matthew describes St. Peter’s peril on the sea in
the style of a popular narrative of rescue,’ so also
St. Paul clothes one of his most remarkable con-
fessions in the style of the ancient texts relating to
healing. Speaking of his severe bodily affliction, the
“thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet
me,” he confesses * :—
“ Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice,”
1 Cf. p. 132 above. 2 Cf. pp. 168-9, n. 6 above.
“42 Cor. xii. 8, ὑπὲρ τούτου τρὶς τὸν κύριον παρεκάλεσα.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 311
just as M. Julius Apellas, a man of Asia Minor in
the Imperial age, narrating on a marble stele how he
was cured at the shrine of Asclepius at Epidaurus,
acknowledges with regard to one of his various
ills 1 :---
“ And concerning this thing I besought the god.”
The parallel is all the more remarkable because
the verb” used for “beseech” does not seem to be
exactly common in such a context. It is moreover
factually important, as showing very clearly that
Christ ® was occasionally, even by the piety of St.
Paul, taken as the Saviour in the literal sense of
“ Healer.” Whoever fears that the New Testament
may suffer from the discovery of this parallel should
read the whole inscription of M. Julius Apellas and
the whole twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians side by
side, and then compare the souls and the fortunes
of the two men of Asia Minor, Apellas and Paul.
Two patients besought their Healers for healing,
and to which of them did his Healer give the most ?
What is greater? the cures of Apellas’ various ail-
ments, following one another in rapid succession, and
paid for in hard cash to Asclepius of Epidaurus? or
the answer that St. Paul received * instead of bodily
healing ?—
“My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is
made perfect in weakness.”
And which is the more valuable text ? the adver-
tising inscription on marble, ordered by the god
1 Dittenberger, Syllage,? No. 804zo¢,, καὶ γὰρ περὶ τούτου παρεκάλεσα τὸν θεόν.
2 Wilke-Grimm, Clavis Novi Testamenti,? quotes παρακαλεῖν θεούς or θεόν only
from Josephus.
3 To Him the word “ Lord” refers, cf. verse 9, beginning and end.
‘ 2 Cor. xii. 9.
812 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY.
himself*? or that line of a letter, wrung from suffering
and sent in confidence to the poor folk of a great
city, without a thought that it would survive the
centuries ?
7. But there are other ways in which St. Paul
made use of the forms and formulae of his age, as
they presented themselves to him, principally, no
doubt, in inscriptions. When in reviewing his past
work he professes ὃ :—
“T have kept faith,”
and when, probably in the 2nd cent. a.p., the Ephe-
sian M. Aurelius Agathopus, full of gratitude to
Artemis, makes the same profession in an inscription
in the theatre ὃ
“1 kept faith,”
both no doubt are drawing from the same source,
from the stock of formulae current in Asia Minor.*
On the other hand the metaphor employed by the
apostle in the same passage,’
“T have fought the good fight. . . . Henceforth there
is laid up for me the crown of righteousness . . . ,”
reminds one of phrases in an inscription relating to
an athlete of the 2nd cent. a.p., also in the theatre at
Ephesus ° :—
“ He fought three fights, and twice was crowned.”
1 Of. 1, 31 £. of the inscription. 29 Tim. iv. 7, τὴν πίστιν τετήρηκα.
2 The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum,
Part 111. No. 587 b, ὅτι τὴν πίστιν ἐτήρησα (i.e. with the Gerusia or Senate).
4 ΟἹ, also Jo. Jac. Wetstein’s Novwm Testamentum Graecum, ΤΊ., Amstelae-
dami, 1752, p. 366. The parallels show that πίστις in the passage in St. Paul
means “faith” in the sense of “loyalty,” not “the faith” in the sense of
“creed.”
5 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, τὸν καλὸν ἀγῶνα ἠγώνισμαι, . . . λοιπὸν ἀπόκειταί μοι ὁ τῆς
δικαιοσύνης στέφανος.
® The Collection of Ancient Greck Inscriptions in the British Museum,
Part III. No. 604, ἠγωνίσατο ἀγῶνας τρεῖς, ἐστέφθη δύω. J. Ἡ. Moulton, The
Expository Times, October 1908, p. 33, adds another inscription of 267 8.0,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 313
No doubt St. Paul in his time read inscriptions like
this.
The following is a still more striking case of
contact between the apostle and the world. In the
Pastoral Epistles we read * :--
“ Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; the
younger men as brethren: the elder women as mothers ;
the younger as sisters in all purity.”
In the same way a pagan inscription of the 2nd or
8rd cent. a.p., at Olbia on the Black Sea,’ in honour
of Theocles, the son of Satyrus, boasts of him as
“bearing himself to his equals in age as a brother, to
his elders as a son, to children as a father, being adorned
with all virtue.”
Though much later in date than St. Paul this
inscription is not dependent on the New Testament ;
both it and St. Paul have been influenced by old
tradition. Pithy sayings of ancient teachers, such
as Wetstein* has collected in his note on the New
Testament passage, were in the time of St. Paul
commonplaces of popular ethics. They were taken
over by him (perhaps after reading them in in-
scriptions) with a sure instinct of appreciation for
noble thought and pregnant expression, and in the
same way their echo reaches us again later on from
the Black Sea.
Much might be said about ancient popular ethics
in general and the fruitful effects of the same on
1 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, πρεσβυτέρῳ μὴ ἐπιπλήξῃς, ἀλλὰ παρακάλει ὡς πατέρα, νεωτέρους
ὡς ἀδελφούς, πρεσβυτέρας ὡς μητέρας, νεωτέρας ὡς ἀδελφὰς ἐν πάσῃ ἁγνείᾳ.
? Inseriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Eucini Graecae et
Latinae ed. Latyschev, I. No. 22v9q (cf. IV. p. 266 f.), τοῖς μὲν ἡλικιώταις προσφε-
ρόμενος ὡς ἀδελφός, τοῖς δὲ πρεσβυτέροις ὡς υἱός, τοῖς δὲ παισὶν ὡς πατήρ, πάση ἀρετῇ
κεκοσμημένος.
3. Novum Testamentum Graecum, 11, p. 889,
914 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
early Christian popular ethics. ‘The otherwise some-
what barren inscriptions,’ especially complimentary
and funeral inscriptions, yield an abundance of ethical
detailed material. The praises lavished on the
meritorious citizens, or the thankfully commemorated
good qualities of deceased persons, will not always
tell us what those people were really like, but all
such statements reflect the moral ideals of the men
who set up the inscriptions, and whatever seems
stereotyped may be reckoned part of the world’s
fixed moral consciousness at the time. It is once
more a mark of St. Paul’s fineness of perception
that, far from denying the world all moral attributes,
he credits the heathen? with a general fund of real
morality regulated by conscience, in the same way
as he praises the depth of their religious insight.’
In previous works* I have given a not incon-
siderable number of examples of the secular origin
of supposed exclusively “New Testament” ethical
concepts. For the sake of argument I was bound
to deal only with the more unusual concepts, when
of course the agreement between the apostles and
the world would be most striking, but if attention
is paid also to the concepts belonging to everyday
morality we discover an extensive common ground
on which the apostles could and did take their stand.
Particularly as we read the pastoral exhortations of
St. Paul in his letters (and not least in the Pastoral
Epistles) and others imitating them, we feel that,
instead of being spoken to the winds like so much
obsolete wisdom, they were bound to find in the
’ For the literary sources I refer to the works of Georg Heinrici and Paul
Wendland.
2 Cf. especially Rom, ii. 14 ff
3 Acts xvii. 28,
4 Especially in Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien (= Bible Studies),
ΟΔΗΜΟΣ EWIMHE ENANOAAOAN PONTIYP oy
fl tT E DANQIKAIEIKONTX A /AKHI
AWE NEKENKA JEYNOIAZ THEEIZEAY TON
KAIAIATOLPYMNAZIAPXHITANTA
5 ΚΑΛΩΣΚΑΙΕΝΔΟΞΩΣΑΝΑΣΤΡΑΦΗΝΑΙ
Fie. 47.—Marble Pedestal from Pergamum with an Inscription in
honour of the Gymnasiarch Apollodorus of Pergamum. Roman Period.
Original still at Pergamum. By permission of the Directors of the
Royal Museums at Berlin.
ul
[Ρ. 315
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 315
popular consciousness of that day a powerful
reverberating medium.
Here is an example. The expressions “con-
versation,” “to have conversation,” etc. (A.V.), in
an ethical sense (=‘“ behaviour, manner of life,”
“behave, live,” etc., R.V.), are frequent in the
apostolic writers, and many commentators explain
them as a Hebraism. But they were common to
the ancient world as a whole, and it is senseless
to make a difference between Semitic and non-
Semitic. I have given the necessary quotations
elsewhere already,’ but here is an additional illustra-
tion that appeals to the eye: an inscription ® (Fig. 47)
in honour of the Gymnasiarch Apollodorus, the son
of Pyrrhus, on a marble pedestal in the gymnasium
at Pergamum, of the Roman period (after 133 B.c.).
It reads thus :—
ὁ δῆμος ἐτίμησεν ᾿Απολλόδωρον Πύρρου
χρυσῶι στεφάνωι καὶ εἰκόνι χαλκῆι
ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν καὶ εὐνοίας τῆς εἰς ἑαυτὸν
καὶ διὰ τὸ γυμνασιαρχήσαντα
5 καλῶς καὶ ἐνδόξως ἀναστραφῆναι.
The people honoured Apollodorus, the son of Pyrrhus,
with a golden crown and a brazen image by reason of his
virtue and goodwill towards them, and because of his good
and glorious behaviour when he was Gymnasiarch.
' ἀναστροφή and ἀναστρέφεσθαι.
2 Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 83; Neue Bibelstudien, p. 22; Bible Studies, pp. 88, 194;
and, before that, E. L. Hicks in the Classical Review, 1 (1887) p. 6; and now
Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, March 1908, p. 269; W. H. P. Hatch,
Some Illustrations, p. 136 f.
3 Die Inschriften von Pergamon, No. 459. The facsimile there given on the
scale of 1 : 7°5 is reproduced here (Fig. 47) by kind permission of the Directors
of the Royal Museums, Berlin. (The translation of the inscription in
the first edition of this book was incorrect, as pointed out by Johannes
Imelmann; cf. also Eberhard Nestle, Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift,
28 [1908] col. 1527.) ᾿
916 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Extraordinarily interesting are the cases in which
the apostles, being still in living contact with the
lower classes, adopt the fine expressions which,
coined in the workshop and the marketplace, are
a terse and pithy presentment of what the people
thought was good. There is a phrase we find on
the tombstone of a humble man’ of the early Empire
in a country district not far from the home of St.
Paul in the south-west of Asia Minor. To the
eye wearied with the bombast of overloaded eulogy
in showier inscriptions it appears scarcely noticeable
at first, and yet how eloquent in reality is this simple
form of praise: Daphnus, the best among the
gardeners, has raised himself a hero’s resting-place
(Heroén), and now has reached this goal,’
“ after that he had much laboured.”
To any one with a sense for beauty in simplicity
these lines concerning the much labour of the
gardener Daphnus are as a green spray of ivy tenderly
clasping the tombstone of its old friend. And the
words of St. John, in the Revelation, are no less
racy of the people when, recording the voice heard
from heaven, he gives a slight Asiatic tinge* to an
old Biblical phrase,* and says that the dead “rest
from their labours.”*® St. Paul, however, the artisan
missionary, catches the popular tone of his native
1 The inscription was discovered in the village of Hbedjik (8.W. Asia
Minor) in the house of the mollah Mehmet, and published by Heberdey and
Kalinka, Bericht δον wet Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien [p. 277, τ. 4
above], Ὁ. 41, No. 59, μετὰ τὸ πολλὰ κοπιᾶσαι.
2 This translation of the brief ταῦτα of the inscription (cf. p. 189,1. 7 above)
is very free. : .
9 He says κόπων instead of ἔργων. He uses the latter word immediately
afterwards.
4 Cf. LXX Gen. ii. 2.
5. Rev. xiv. 13, ἐκ τῶν κόπων αὐτῶν.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 317
country even better when he boasts’ of an Ephesian
Mary, while she was yet living, that
‘she much laboured for you.”
Again, in a Roman cemetery? of later date, we hear
the old popular phrase re-echoed by a wife who
praises her husband,
“ὁ who laboured much for me.”
In fact, with regard to all that Paul the weaver
of tent-cloth has to say about labour, we ought
to place ourselves as it were within St. Paul’s own
class, the artisan *® class of the Imperial age, and then
feel the force of his words. They all become
much more lifelike when restored to their original
historical milzeu. “1 laboured more abundantly than
they all” *—these words, applied by St. Paul to
missionary work, came originally from the joyful
pride of the skilled weaver, who, working by the
piece, was able to hand in the largest amount of
stuff on pay-day. The frequent references to “labour
in vain” ® are a trembling echo of the discouragement
resulting from a width of cloth being rejected as
badly woven and therefore not paid for. And then
the remark to the pious sluggards of Thessalonica °:
“That if any should not work, neither should he eat.”
1 Rom. xvi. 6, πολλὰ ἐκοπίασεν els ὑμᾶς ; cf. also Rom. xvi. 12.
2 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 9552, inscription from the cemetery
of Pontianus at Rome (date?), τείς [= ὅστις μοι πολλὰ ἐκοπίασεν.
3 St. Paul speaks of himself as a manual labourer in 1 Cor. iv. 12, and he
writes to manual labourers (1 Thess. iv.11). There are two small works of
great importance in this connexion: Franz Delitzsch, Jiidisches Handwerkerleben
sur Zeit Jesu,? Erlangen, 1875; and Samuel Krauss, Parallelen im Hand-
werk, Vierteljahreschrift fiir Bibelkunde, Talmud und patristische Studien,
3 (1907) p. 67 ff.
41 Cor. xv. 10, περισσότερον αὐτῶν πάντων ἐκοπίασα.
5 Hg. Gal. iv. 11 ; Phil. ii. 16; 1 Cor. xv, 58.
® 2 Thess, iii. 10, ef τις οὐ θέλει ἐργάζεσθαι, μηδὲ ἐσθιέτω.
918 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
I remember a newspaper controversy in which a
social reformer, not quite so well up in his Bible as
he should have been, denounced this text as a modern
heartless capitalist phrase. As a matter of fact,
St. Paul was probably borrowing a bit of good old
workshop morality,’ a maxim coined perhaps by some
industrious workman as he forbade his lazy apprentice
to sit down to dinner.
In the same way we can only do justice to the
remarks in the New Testament about wages by
examining them in situ, amidst their native surround-
ings. Jesus and St. Paul spoke with distinct
reference to the life of the common people. If you
elevate such utterances to the sphere of the Kantian
moral philosophy, and then reproach Primitive
Christianity with teaching morality for the sake of
reward, you have not only misunderstood the words,
you have torn them up by the roots. It means that
you have failed to distinguish between the concrete
illustration of a popular preacher, perfectly sponta-
neous and intelligible in the native surroundings of
Primitive Christianity, and a carefully considered
ethical theory of fundamental importance to first
principles. The sordid, ignoble suggestions, so liable
to arise in the lower class, are altogether absent from
the sayings of Jesus and His apostle, as shown
by the parable of the labourers in the vineyard
and the analogous reliance of St. Paul solely upon
grace.
Still more instructive than the parallelism of single
ethical phrases in popular use are the formulae in
which pairs of ideas or whole series of ideas have
united. When in Titus ii. 4, 5 the young women are
exhorted to be “loving to their husbands, loving to
1 See Wetstein’s quotations at 2 Thess. iii. 10.
J | \
Yq
ee
loYAIO= ΒΑΣΣΟΣ
OTA KIAIANNAAR
THEAYKYTATH
YNAIKIOIAANAP,
5 AIPIAOTEKN
YNBIMZAEH
AMEMNITAZ
ETH A-
ὃ
5)
Fia. 48.—Marble Tombstone of Otacilia
Polla of Pergamum, about the time of
Hadrian. Now in the garden of Pasha-
Oglu Hussein, in the Selinus valley, near
Pergamum. By permission of the Directors
of the Royal Museums at Berlin.
(p. 319
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 319
their children, soberminded,”! this is quite a popular
way of speaking, for precisely this ideal of womanhood
is set up by the inscriptions. In an epitaph at Perga-
mum, of about the time of Hadrian ? (Figure 48), one
Otacilia Polla is called “loving to her husband and
loving to her children ἢ :— ᾿
᾿Ιούλιος Βάσσος Julius Bassus to Otacilia
? a Π. OA . :
lke pk Polla, his sweetest wife. Loving
TH γλυκυτάτη
Lyelwnacant Φ ds ated to her husband, and loving to
5 καὶ φιλοτέκνω
συνβιωσάση her children, she lived with
ἀμέμπτως
ἔτη 2. him unblamably 30 years.
That this formula was no extempore formation is
proved by a quotation from Plutarch, by an inscrip-
tion from Paros* of Imperial age, and by a metrical
inscription from Tegea.* The collocation “loving to
her husband and soberminded” is also not rare ; it
occurs in epitaphs for women of the Imperial period
at Termessus in Pisidia,° Prusias on the Hypius in
Bithynia,° and Heraclia on the Black Sea.’
Whole series of ethical concepts are brought
together in the well-known Primitive Christian lists
1 φιλάνδρους εἶναι, φιλοτέκνους, σώφρονας.
2. Die Inschriften von Peryamon, No. 604 (cf. Neue Bibelstudien, p. 83f.
Bible Studies, ». 255 £.). The drawing (scale 1 : 10) is here reproduced with the
kind consent of the Directors of the Royal Museums, Berlin (Fig. 48).
* References in Neue Bibelstudien, p. 83£.; Bible Studies, p. 255 £,
4 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 25 (1901) p, 279, φιλότεκνε φίλανδρε,
“Ὁ thou loving one to children and husband!” The date cannot be exactly
determined.
5 Ibid. 23 (1899) p. 301, τὴν σώφρονα καὶ φίλανδρον, “ soberminded and loving
to her husband.”
* Ibid. 25 (1901) p. 88, ἡ σόφρων (sic) καὶ φίλανδρος γυνὴ γενομένη, “ who was
a soberminded wife and loving to her husband.”
7 Ibid. 22 (1898) p. 496, ἡ φίλανδρος καὶ σίώ]φρων ἡ φιλόσοφος ζήσασα κοσμίως,
“loving to her husband and soberminded, a lover of wisdom, she lived
modestly” (cf. 1 Tim. ii. 9 for this last word).
920 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of virtues and vices. These were no new creations,
but based on Jewish and pagan series—this has long
been recognised.’ But it will be as well to give up
looking for the models exclusively in philosophical
literature, although there may still be much to find
there.” The popular lists of virtues and vices are of
more direct importance ; they show better than the
philosophical texts what had really made its way
among the people. Scattered in many museums we
find specimens of the counters* used in an ancient
game resembling draughts: one side of the counter
bears a number (up to 25 or 80 or 40), and on the
other side is a word addressed to a person, occasion-
ally in verbal form, e.g. “ Art thou glad?” or “Thou
wilt scarcely laugh,” ὁ but nearly always substantives
or adjectives, generally in the vocative case. These
give us a large number of popular names of vices ὅ
and virtues ; the Greek loan-words among the Latin
lists show the Hellenistic influence, and the decidedly
vulgar form of the Latin words indicates that the
game was a popular one. Although we have not yet
recovered all the counters necessary for the game,
and the sequence of the counters is not yet certain,
the parallels with St. Paul strike us immediately.
Take, for instance, the list of vices* in 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10,
“Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers
of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards,
revilers, extortioners.”
1 The latest treatment of this subject, brief but excellent, is in H. Lietz-
mann’s commentary on Rom. i, (Handbuch zum N.T., ΤΠ. p. 11). Abundant
material was collected by Albrecht Dieterich, Nekyia, Beitrage sur Erklirung
der neuentdechter Petrusapohalypse, Leipzig, 1893, Ῥ. 163 ff.
2 The astrologers, ¢.g. Vettius Valens, also furnish plenty of material.
* Details in Chr. Huelsen, Tessere lusorie, Rémische Mitteilungen, 11 (1896)
p. 2274f.; F. Buecheler, Rhein. Museum, New Series, 52 (1897) p. 392 ff.
4 gaudesne, via rides. ᾿
5. The vices greatly preponderate on the counters that have been preserved,
6 Hven Lietzmann (Joc. cit.) considers this list to be purely Jewish.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 321
Vith the exception of “ covetous,” which is rather
olourless, and “ idolaters,” which is not to be expected
1a pagan list, all these will be found substantially,
vord for word, on the counters.’
The comic dramatists afford us help in completing
hese popular lists of vices. No certain explanation
las yet been given of the mention of such rare crimes
5. parricide and matricide in the list of vices in
.Tim.i.9f The text there enumerates :—
‘The lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners,
unholy and profane, murderers of fathers and murderers
of mothers, manslayers, whoremongers, them that defile
themselves with mankind, menstealers, liars, perjured
persons.”
Now compare the “ scolding ” of Ballio the pander in
he Pseudolus of Plautus?: quite a number of the
nost characteristic terms of abuse in that popular
iecene occur again in St. Paul’s list, either literally or
n forms nearly synonymous.’ ι,
Nor is the parallelism between the New Testament
1 $t. Paul: The counters:
πόρνοι impudes (the n wanting as in Kpyoxys, 2 Tim. iv. 10)
μοιχοί φιοΐσθ, moece
μαλακοί patice
ἀρσενοκοῖται | cinaidus, cinaedus
κλέπται Sur
μέθυσοι ebriose and vinose
λοίδοροι trico?
ἅρπαγες ar pan
‘he last word ἅρπαξ was current as a loan-word in Latin comedy. In St. Paul
5 should probably not be translated “robber” but rendered by some other
vord, like “swindler” (“extortioner,” A.V., R.V.). “Robbers” were λῃσταί,
rith whom St, Paul became acquainted on his journeys (2 Cor. xi. 26).—For
αλακός cf. letter No, 2 above, Ὁ. 150, n. 4.
2 Cf. Hermann Usener, Italische Volksjustiz, Rhein. Museum, New Series, 56
1901) Ρ. 281. The passages in Wetstein, Novum Yestamentum, ΤΙ. Ὁ. 318 f.,
specially those from Pollux, afford a very interesting parallel to Plautus and
t. Paul.
[For note 3 see next page.
21
82) SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
and the world wanting in the corresponding lists of
virtues. This is shown by comparing 2 Peter i. 5, 6
with an inscription from Asia Minor, Ist cent. B.c.,
in honour of one Herostratus, the son of Dorcalion.*
The inscription mentions successively the faith,
virtue, righteousness, godliness, and diligence of the
person to be honoured; and the apostle incites his
readers to diligence in faith (= belief), virtue,
knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly
kindness, and love.’
8. The correspondences we have noted so far relate
only to isolated details of the popular religion and
popular morality of the world contemporary with
the apostolic texts. The cumulative effect even of
such details should be sufficiently remarkable, but
1 Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 438.
2 Inscription : 2 Peter:
ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν γενόμενον καὶ διενένκαντα σπουδὴν πᾶσαν παρεισενέγκαντες
ἐπιχορηγήσατε ἐν τῇ πίστει ὑμῶν τὴν
ἀρετήν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἀρετῇ τὴν γνῶσιν, ἐν δὲ
τῇ γνώσει τὴν ἐγκράτειαν, ἐν δὲ τῇ
" ἐγκρατείᾳ τὴν ὑπομονήν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑπομονῇ
ενηνεγμένον σπουδήν. τὴν εὐσέβειαν, etc.
Cf. also the remarks on the beginning of 2 Peter in Bibelstudien, p. 277 ff. ;
Bible Studies, p. 360 ff.
πίστει καὶ ἀρετῇ καὶ δ[ικ]αιοσύνῃ καὶ
εὐσεβείαι καὶ... τὴν πλείστ[η]ν εἰσ -
Note 3 front previous page.
2. St. Paul: Plautus :
ἀνόμοις legirupa ,
arovias ἢ "αρτάιορο
ἁμαρτωλοῖς sceleste
βεβήλοις caenum and
inpure
πατρολῴαις καὶ | parricida.—verherasti patrem et matrem, to which the
μητρολῴαις person abused janswers 'scornfully: atgue oocidi
quoque potius guam cibum praehiberem.
πόρνοις impudice
ἀρσενοκοίταις pernities adulescentum (this parallel is not certain)
ψεύσταις Sraudulente
ἐπιόρκοις
periure
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 929
there are besides in the New Testament whole
groups of thought, the peculiar strength and beauty
of which we can only appreciate from the vantage-
ground of the ancient world. Recent discoveries
have made it possible to reconstruct large portions
of Hellenistic popular law, which was previously
known only in miserable fragments, and this gives
us an uncommonly valuable means of judging some
of the figurative religious language of Primitive
Christianity. It has of course long been known, and
monographs have been written to prove, that St.
Paul was strongly influenced by legal ideas ; but the
fact was not sufficiently accounted for by comparisons
either with Roman or with Jewish law, the latter,
so far as the Diaspora was concerned, being probably
for the most part a dead letter. We now receive help
of a far different order from the law that was alive in
the popular consciousness up and down the Hellenistic
area in which the New Testament originated. A
few examples will confirm this statement.
The stupendous force of dogmatic tradition, and
the fact that the word slave’ with its satellites has
been translated servant, to the total effacement of
its ancient significance, in our Bibles, have brought
it about that one of the most original and at the
same time most popular appraisals of the work of
Christ by St. Paul and his school has been, I think,
only vaguely understood among us.? I refer to the
1 In Luther’s Bible the word “slave” (Skdave) does not occur once, although
its equivalent is used times without number in the original (Old and New
Testament). Knecht, the word used by Luther, is not the same as “slave.”
[The R.V. rendering, “ bondservant,” in text and margin, has helped to correct
the misapprehensions of English readers, “Slave” does occur in the A.V.,
but only twice: Jer. ii. 14, Rev. xviii. 13. Tr.]
? Similarly the mistranslation of διαθήκη as “covenant” instead of “ testa-
ment” has interfered with the right understanding of another great group
of ideas. The blame in this case does not fall on Luther.
924 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
metaphor of our redemption by Christ from the
slavery of sin, the law, and idols—a metaphor in-
fluenced by the customs and technical formulae of
sacred manumissions in antiquity. I should like to
illustrate a little more particularly this instance of
St. Paul’s having been influenced by the popular law
of the world in which he lived.
Inscriptions at Delphi have been the principal
means of enlightening us concerning the nature and
ritual of manumission with a religious object in
ancient times.” The French archaeologists have dis-
covered and published a vast number of records of
manumission relating to several different centuries,’
and particularly to that one which gave rise to the
New Testament. After two thousand years the
records stand to-day almost uninjured on the poly-
gonal retaining-wall of the temple of Apollo (Fig. 49),
the blocks of which seem, despite their bulk, to
1 Johannes Weiss, Die Christliche Freiheit nach der Verkiindigung des
Apostels Paulus, Gottingen, 1902, has the merit of bringing St. Paul’s idea
of freedom into connexion with ancient thought on the subject, But I think
the author has gone to too high a bookshelf: the inscriptions, to be found
among the folios at the bottom of the bookcase, are here more instructive
than the philosophers on the higher shelves, just as we saw in the case of the
lists of vices, Ὁ. 320ff, above. I agree in thinking that St. Paul was influenced
by popular philosophy, but I would lay stress on the mediation, mentioned
by Weiss, of popular culture, into which a great deal of philosophy had
percolated.
2 The pioneer works were Emestus Curtius, Anecdota Delphica, Berolini,
1843, pp. 10-47, 56-75, and P, Foucart, Mémoire sur Vaffranchissement des
esclaves par forme de vente ἃ une divinité d’aprés les inscriptions de Delphes
(Archives des missions scientifiques, deuxiéme série, t. III, Paris, 1866,
pp. 375-424). Cf. also Ludwig Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den
Sstlichen Provinzen des rémischen Kaiserreichs, Leipzig, 1891, p. 374. (a
short account, but containing everything that is essential), and H, Schiirer
Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, 111. p. 53f. There is much material on
the subject of manumission customs in Gualterus Rensch, De manumis-
sionum titulis apud Thessalos, Diss, Phil. Halenses, XVIII. 2, Halis Saxonum,
1908.
3 Including two records of the manumission of Jewish slaves between 170
and 157 B.¢., probably prisoners from the Maccabaean wars, cf, Schiirer,
LIL! Ὁ. 27.
Poe Ἃ]
‘SUOTSSTUNUBUT JO 5Ρτοῦθα qUOTOUG 5ποαθύσατ YA ρϑαμόθις ‘tydlaqy o[jody 10 aduray, 901} Jo [[em-Suturwejey—'gp “DIT
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 325
have collectively the effect of a poem in stone.
Climbing greenery and blue blossoms greet you
from the joints of the stone if you read the texts in
springtime.’
But these are not records of something peculiar
to Delphi. Manumission on religious grounds was
practised all about Parnassus and probably through-
out ancient Greece, and it even made its way into
Jewish and Christian ecclesiastical custom. As
examples from places outside Delphi I may refer to
inscriptions at Physcus in Aetolia? (sale to Athene,
2nd cent. B.c.), at Amphissa* (sale to Asclepius,
Imperial period), and also in Cos* (sale to Adrastia
and Nemesis [?], 2nd or Ist cent B.c.). Ernst Curtius°
has collected records from Naupactus (sale to
Dionysus), Chaeronia, Tithora, and Coronia (sale to
Serapis), Chalia (sale to Apollo Nesiotes), Elatia
and Stiris (sale to Asclepius), Daulis (sale to Athene
Polias). Th. Macridy has published records from
Notion.© We find this kind of manumission among
Jews:in two stone records from Panticapaeum,’ the
first of which can be certainly dated 81 a.p.; and
there is a record® of great interest from Gorgippia,
1 On 22 and 23 May, 1906, I was able to see these highly important remains
of ancient civilisation in situ (Fig. 49). The topographical remarks below
(p. 333) are the result of my own observation on 12 May, 1906.
? Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 22 (1898) p. 355.
3 Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 844.
“ Paton and Hicks, No. 29; and now Herzog, Koische Forschungen und
Funde, p. 89. This is not.a record of manumission, but manumission of a
sacred character is mentioned in it.
5 Cf. p. 324, n. 2 above,
6 Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archidologischen Institutes in Wien, 8
(1905) p. 155. (Pointed out to me by Theodor Wiegand, postcard, Miletus,
9. 26 May, 1908 ; and by Baron F, Hiller von Gaertringen, postcard, Berlin
W., 4 June, 1908.) :
7” Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Huxini, ed. Latyschev,
Vol. 11. Nos. 52 and 53.
8 Ibid, No, 400.
326 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
41 a.D., referring to the cult of “the Most High
God.” These Jewish and Judaeo-pagan records? are
of great importance in our problem, as sure proofs of
the influence of the pagan rite on Jewish Hellenism?
in the time of the apostle Paul. Finally, it has long
been recognised by experts that “‘manumission in the
church”* was nothing but a Christianised form of
the old Greek custom.
But between the Greek usage and the practice
of the early Church there stands St. Paul, who
made the ancient custom the basis of one of his
profoundest contemplations about the Christ.
What was this custom? Among the various
ways in which the manumission of a slave could
take place by ancient Jaw‘ we find the solemn rite
of fictitious purchase of the slave by some divinity.
The owner comes with the slave to the temple,
sells him there to the god, and receives the purchase
money from the temple treasury, the slave having
previously paid it in there out of his savings. The
slave is now the property of the god; not, however,
a slave of the temple, but a protégé of the god.
Against all the world, especially his former master,
he is a completely free man; at the utmost a few
pious obligations to his old master are imposed upon
him.
The rite takes place before witnesses ; a record is
taken, and often perpetuated on stone.
The usual form of these documents must have
1 See Schiirer, 111.5 p. 53 f.
3 For a similar process in another field cf. the prayers for vengeance from
Rheneia (Appendix I, below, p. 423), which exhibit a secularisation of the
Jewish ritual for the expiation of an unexplained murder.
> Me issto in ecclesia, cf. Curtius, p. 26 f., and Mitteis, p. 375.
" Cf. Mitteis, p. 372 ff. The redemptio servi suis nummis is discussed by
Lothar von Seuffert, Der Loskauf von Sklaven mit ihrem Geld, Festschrift fiir
die juristische Fakult#t in Giessen, Giessen, 1907, pp. 1-20.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 327
been extremely well known, because they are so
numerous. It is like this *:—
Date. “N.N. sold to the Pythian Apollo a male slave
named X.Y. at a price of — minae, for freedom (or on
condition that he shall be free, etc.).” Then follow
any special arrangements and the names of the witnesses.
Another form, which does not occur elsewhere,
but which makes the nature of the whole rite
particularly plain, is furnished by an inscription’ of
200-199 8.6. on the polygonal wall at Delphi :—
Date. ἐπρίατο ὁ ᾿Απόλλων | Date. Apollo the Pythian
ὁ Πύθιος παρὰ Σωσιβίου bought from Sosibius of Am-
᾿Αμφισσέος ἐπ᾽ ἐλευθερίαι phissa, for freedom, a female
σῶμ[α] γυναικεῖον, ὧν ὄνομα | slave,> whose name is Nicaea,
Νίκαια, τὸ γένος Ῥωμαίαν, | by race a Roman, with a price
τιμᾶς of three minae of silver and a
ἀργυρίου μνᾶν τριῶν καὶ half-mina, Former seller* ac-
ἡμιμναίου. προαποδότας“ κατὰ | cording’to the law: Eumnastus
τὸν νόμον Εὔμναστος of Amphissa. The price he
᾿Αμφισσεύς. τὰν τιμὰν hath received.’ The purchase,®
ἀπέχειϑ. τὰν δὲ ὠνὰν however, Nicaea hath com-
ἐπίστευσε Νίκαια τῶι mitted unto Apollo, for free-
᾿Απόλλωνι ἐπ᾽ ἐλευθερίαι. dom.
Names of witnesses, etc., follow.
St. Paul is alluding to the custom referred to in
these records when he speaks of our being made
free by Christ. By nature we are slaves of sin’;
1 The texts are so numerous that individual quotation is unnecessary.
? Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No, 845. 3 For σῶμα = “slave” see above, p. 151.
4 [προαποδότης, “ previous vendor” (Liddell and Scott,? 1901, wrongly
“previous traitor”; but see Addenda), in inscriptions and papyri = προτωλητής ;
often coupled with βεβαιωτήρ, “surety.” Sosibius had bought Nicaea of
Eumnastus, who thus became the guarantor of Sosibius’ rightful ownership. ΤῊ.
5 For this ἀπέχει see p. 110 ff. above.
5 Janell, Ausgewahite Inschriften, Ὁ. 107, wrongly translates “ purchase
money.”
7 Rom. vi. 17, 20, 6, 19; Titus iii. 8, The passage in Rom. vi. 6, “that the
body of sin might be destroyed,” is ambiguous, since “ body” (σῶμα) may also
mean “slave.”
828 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
ithe Jew is furthermore a slave of the law,! the
heathen a slave of his gods. We become free men
by the fact that Christ buys us. And He has done
SO :—
“Ye were bought with a price,”
says St. Paul in two places,’ using the very formula
of the records, “with a price.”* Again,
“For freedom did Christ set us free,>... ye were
called for freedom ” ὁ
—in these words of St. Paul we have literally the
other formula of the records.’ In numerous records
of manumission the nature of the newly obtained
liberty is illustrated by the enfranchised person’s
being expressly allowed henceforth to
“do the things that he will.”®
St. Paul, therefore, is referring to the danger of a
telapse into servitude when he points to the possible
1 Gal. iv. 1-7, v. 1.
2 Gal. iv. 8, 9.
5.1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23, τιμῆς ἠγοράσθητε. [ἀγοράζειν is used of the purchase
of slaves in the will of Attalus III., 133 B.c., Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci
Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 338,,. For τιμή, “price,” in the sale of a slave,
cf. also 1 Clem. lv. 2.] The repetition of this brief, but expressive, and
exceedingly popular saying leads us to imagine that it was a favourite watch-
word also -in the apostle’s spoken sermons. Cf. also Gal. iv. 5, “to redeem
them that were under the law ” (ἐξαγοράσῃ).
4 τιμῆς (Tyas) is quite a stereotyped expression in the records, of course with
the addition of a definite sum. But τιμῆς can also be used absolutely, as
shown by the great document containing royal ordinances of Euergetes IL,
118 B.c., The Tebtunis Papyri, No. 5195, 9, 09, Cf. the editorial note p. 50f.
Luther’s translation “dearly bought” can hardly be right. St. Paul is not
. emphasising the amount of the price, but the fact that the redemption has
taken place.
5 Gal. v. 1, ry ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡμᾶς Xpiords ἠλευθέρωσεν.
§ Gal. v. 13, ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἐκλήθητε.
7 ἐπ᾽ ἐλευθερίᾳ, cf. Curtius, pp. 17, 32. The formula is common at Delphi,
Naupactus, and Tithora. Rensch, p. 100, refers to G. Foucart, De libertorum
condicione apud Athenienses, Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1896, p. 14 f.
5 ποιῶν 8 κα θέλῃ, cf. Curtius, pp. 17, 89, and especially Mitteis, Reichsrecht
und Volksrecht, p. 390.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 329
result of the conflict between flesh and spirit with
these words *:—
“that ye may not do the things that ye would.”
Numerous manumissions, again, expressly forbid,
sometimes under heavy penalties, that the en-
franchised shall ever “be made a slave”? again.
We now see how wicked is the intention of those*®
“who ... spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ
Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.”
And we understand warnings like this* in the
letters :—
“For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast there-
fore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage,”
and the still more moving exhortation ° :—
“Ye were bought with a price, become not slaves of
men.”
‘Christians cannot become slaves of men because they
have become “slaves of Christ” * by purchase, and
have entered into the “slavery of God”’ or “of
righteousness.”* But, as in every other case of
purchase by a god, the slave of Christ is at the
' Gal. v. 17, ἵνα μὴ ἃ ἐὰν θέλητε ταῦτα ποιῆτε. Note the context ; “ under the
law” (v. 18) also points to slavery.
2 καταδουλίζειν or -εσθαι, and similar formulae, cf. Curtius, p. 43.
3 Gal. 11, 4, κατασκοπῆσαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶν ἣν ἔχομεν ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ, ἵνα
ἡμᾶς καταδουλώσουσιν.
4. Gal. v. 1.
5.1 Cor. vii. 28, The allusion is to moral slavery to human lusts and desires.
Christians should be slaves of the brethren.
® The expression δοῦλος Χριστοῦ is so common in St. Paul that there is no
need to give instances. It is not a consequence of the metaphor of manu-
mission, but, though older than that metaphor, it fits in admirably with it.
7 Rom. vi. 22,
8. Rom, vi. 18.
330 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
same time free: he is “ the Lord’s (z.e. Christ’s) freed-
man,” * even when he is outwardly the slave of a human
lord. When, further, in numerous documents this
pious obligation is imposed upon the enfranchised
slave 3 :--
“let him remain with N.N.” (his former master),
or when we hear occasionally * :—
“let Cintus abide with Euphronius . . . behaving
decently,”
we are reminded of expressions in St. Paul, eg.
“let him abide with God,” ¢
and especially of this one :—
“that which is decent, and attending upon the Lord
without distraction.” ὅ
If this last example is not fully parallel to the
pagan formulae because the reference in St. Paul is
to the new master, it corresponds nevertheless to the
Jewish formulae of manumission from Panticapaeum,®
which lay on the enfranchised slave the obligation
to be loyal to the synagogue.’
1 ἀπελεύθερος κυρίου, 1 Cor. vii. 22. So also Curtius, p. 24, is of opinion that
ithe expression “ freedman of the god Aesculapius” (libertus numinis Aesculapit)
in a Latin inscription possibly originated in a sacred manumission. On
St. Paul’s expression see more below, p. 382.
2 παραμεινάτω and similar formulae, cf. Curtius, p. 39 f.; Mitteis, Reichsrecht
nd Volksrecht, p. 386 £.; Rensch, p. 107 ff. A good example is the inscription
from Delphi 173-2 B.c., Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 850, παραμεινάτω δὲ παρὰ
ῬΑμύνταν Σωτήριχος ἔτη ὀκτὼ ἀνεγκλήτως, “ but let Soterichus abide with Amyntas
eight years, blamelessly.”
3. Inscriptions recucillies ἃ Delphes, publiées par C. Wescher P. Foucart,
Paris, 1863, p. 65, No. 66, παραμεινάτω [δὲ] Kivros παρὰ Εὐφρόνιον . .
«ὐσχημονίζων.
41 Cor. vii. 24 (in close proximity to the principal passage, “ye were
bought with a price”), μενέτω παρὰ θεῷ.
5 1 Cor. vii. 35 (cf. also “ blamelessly” in the inscription quoted in note 2
above), τὸ εὔσχημον καὶ εὐπάρεδρον τῷ κυρίῳ ἀπερισπάστως.
° Page 325 above.
7 On the technical terms there used cf. p. 100 above.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 33]
These parallels do not exhaust the cases in which
the apostle took his stand on this custom of the
ancient world. All that St. Paul and St. John’ have
to say about freedom has this background ; but, most
important of all, the frequently misunderstood con-
ception of redemption, i.e. buying-off and hence
deliverance (from sin, the law, etc.), belongs, as
St. Chrysostom knew and pointed out,’ to the same
complex of ideas. The inscription of Cos, above
referred to, uses this very word—a rare one—to
describe sacral manumission.*
St. Paul’s predilection for this whole group of
images would be most beautifully accounted for if we
knew him to have been previously acquainted with the
Greek form of our Lord’s deeply significant saying
about the ransom.’ And we have no reason to doubt
that he was. But when anybody heard the Greek
word λύτρον, “ransom,” in the first century, it was
1 Cf, especially John viii. 36, “if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be
free indeed,” a beautiful saying, quite in the character of St. Paul. The word
“ἐλευθερόω, which is here used, is found in innumerable documents of manu-
mission.—The metaphor has been taken up also by other apostles, and in some
cases further elaborated.
3 ἀπολύτρωσις. This rare word occurs seven times in St, Paul!
> On Romans iii. 24, καὶ οὐχ ἁπλῶς εἶπε λυτρώσεως, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπολυτρώσεως, ὡς
“μηκέτι ἡμᾶς ἐπανελθεῖν πάλιν ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν δουλείαν, “and he said not simply
*ransoming’ (lytrosis) but ‘ransoming away’ (apolytrosis), so that we come:
not again into the same slavery” (cf. R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testa-
ment, 7th ed., London, 1871, p. 273). With this sentence from St. Chrysostom
cf. the provisions in the records, as mentioned above, against reducing the man
to slavery again. In Theophylact, a late writer, we find the old apostolic
metaphor already varnished over (Trench, p. 274). Much material is given by
Joseph Wirtz, Die Lehre von der Apolytrosis. Untersucht nach den heiligen
Schriften und den griechischen Schriftstellern bis auf Origenes einschliesslich,
Trier, 1906. Later ecclesiastical speculation generally inclined to the view
that redemption from the slavery of Satan was meant.
‘It is called first ἀπελευθέρωσις, and then ἀπολύτρωσις (Herzog, p. 39f.):
those who perform the ἀπελευθέρωσις are not to make formal record of the
drodtrpwots until the priests have reported that the necessary sacrifice has
been made. See p. 325, n. 4.
5 Mark x. 45 = Matt. xx. 28, λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν, “a ransom for many,”
41 Tim. ii. 6 certainly sounds like an echo.
332 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
natural for him to think of the purchase-money
for manumitting slaves. Three documents! from
Oxyrhynchus relating to manumissions in the years
86, 100, and 91 or 107 a.p. make use of the word.
ἐξ Under Zeus, Ge (=Earth), Helios (=Sun) for a
ransom,” is the phrase used in the first two documents,
and it is not impossible that all three adumbrate
traces of sacral manumission.’
I refrain from entering into a criticism here of the
remarkable obscurations and complications which
this whole circle of ancient popular: metaphors has
undergone at the hands of modern dogmatic exegesis.
I would rather point out that St. Paul, in expanding
and adapting to the Greek world‘ the Master's old
saying about ransom, was admirably meeting the
requirements and the intellectual capacity of the
lower classes. For the poor saints of Corinth, among
' The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Nos. 48, 49, and 722.
2 ὑπὸ Ala Γῆν Ἥλιον ἐπὶ λύτροις. The plural is most usual, The singular
λύτρον for a slave’s redemption-money is found several times (together with the
plural λύτρα) in inscriptions from Thessaly, cf. Rensch, p. 101£.—On λύτρον (λύτρα)
cf, also Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht, p. 388, and especially a remarkable
inscription on a votive relief from Kéres near Koula in Asia Minor (1894 in the
konak at Koula), printed in Buresch, dus Lydien, p. 197: Ταλλικῷ ᾿Ασκληπιάς,
κώμη Kepugéwv, παιδίσχη Λιογένου λύτρον, “To Gallicus [=the god Men],
Asclepias (village of Ceryza), maidservant [cf. p. 186 n. 7 above; Buresch
writes Παδίσχη] of Liogenes (Diogenes 3), presents this ransom.” The word
here probably means tbat Asclepias was releasing herself from a vow. Theodor
Wiegand, who published the first picture of the stone in the Athenische
Mitteilungen, 1904, p, 318, informs me (postcard, Miletus, 6. 26 May, 1908)
that the original now belongs to the collection of the Lyceum Hosianum at
Braunsberg.
3. Cf. Mitteis, Hermes, 34 (1899) p. 104, and Ὁ, Wilcken’s remark there on a
Christian document of manumission of the year 354 A.D. containing the
formula “ free under earth.and heaven according to [xa7’, not καὶ] the service
due to God the compassionate.”
4 It isa matter of great importance how gospel conceptions were expanded
and adapted to the world, when we try to. understand Christianity as a world
religion, The most important example is the expansion of the originally
Palestinian word “the Christ” (=the Messiah) into ‘ Christ” as the world-
wide name of God. Further details -will-be found in a small work by me, Die
Orgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung, Tiibingen, 1910.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 333
whom there were certainly some slaves, he could not
have found a more popular illustration’ of the past
and present work of the Lord. A Christian slave
of Corinth going up the path to the Acrocorinthus
about Eastertide, when St. Paul’s letter arrived,?
would see towards the north-west the snowy peak of
Parnassus rising clearer and clearer before him, and
every one knew that within the circuit of that com-
manding summit lay the shrines at which Apollo or
Serapis or Asclepius the Healer bought slaves with a
price, for freedom. Then in the evening assembly
was read the letter lately received from Ephesus, and
straightway the new Healer was present in spirit
with His worshippers, giving them freedom from
another slavery, redeeming with a price the bondmen
of sin and the law—and that price no pious fiction,
first received by Him out of the hard-earned denarii
of the slave, but paid by Himself with the redemp-
tion-money of His daily new self-sacrifice, rousing up
for freedom those who languished in slavery.
The question how this ancient metaphor of St.
Paul’s is to be interpreted in detail, I will merely
mention. The chief point to examine is whether
St. Paul regards redemption through Christ as a
single summary act performed once for all in the
past, or (and this is to me more probable) as an act
of liberation experienced anew, in each single case
of conversion, by every person newly incorporated in
Christ. Further it may be asked whether the price
is a necessary link in the chain of thought, or merely
a pictorial detail of no ulterior significance. It is
clear from 1 Peter i. 18, 19 that at a very early
period the price was understood to be the Blood of
1 Of, 1 Cor. vii. 21 and the various names of slaves in‘1 Cor.
? The assumption is rendered probable by 1 Cor. xvi. 8 and v. 7, 8.
334 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Christ. The union of the idea'of manumission with
the idea of sacrifice was made easier for the ancient
Christians by the fact that sacral manumission, e.g.
at Cos, was not complete without sacrifice. Finally
should be pointed out the affinity between the idea
of redemption (manumission) and the idea of for-
giveness (remission) of our trespasses which was
established for the ancients by the legal procedure
they were accustomed to. In cases of non-payment
of a money debt the system of personal execution ?
allowed not only arrest but even slavery for debt.’
The series of Gospel and Primitive Christian
metaphors to which we have thus alluded—metaphors
connected with debt and forgiveness (or remission)\—
are likewise taken from the legal practice of antiquity,
and might receive many an illustration from the new
texts. I have pointed out elsewhere that the word
ὀφειλή, “debt,” supposed to be peculiar to the New
Testament, is quite current in the papyri.* So too there
are plenty of original documents on papyrus to teach
us the nature of an ancient acknowledgment of debt.°
A large number of ancient notes of hand have been
published among the Berliner Griechische Urkunden,
and probably every other collection of papyri contains
some specimens. A stereotyped formula in these
documents is the promise to pay back the borrowed
money, “I will repay”°; and they all are in the
1 Cf, p. 325, n, 4 above,
2 Cf. p, 267 above.
2 Cf, L. Mitteis, Reichsrecht wnd Volherecht, pp. 358f., 445 ff., and his
observation on the Reinach Papyrus No. 7 (see p. 267, n. 3 above).
4 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 48; Bible Studies, p. 221,
5 CE Mitteis, Reichsrecht wnd Volksrecht, pp. 484, 498 Ε,; Gradenwitz,
Einfithrung, I. p. 1094 One technical expression, among others, for a
memorandum of debt is the word χειρόγραφον, “ hand-writing,” “a writing by
hand,” which is also used for other private contracts.
® Generally ἀποδώσω.
Fie, 50.—Note of Hand for 100 Silver Drachmae,
Ist cent. A.D. Papyrus from the Fayam. Now
in the Berlin Museum. By permission of the
Directors of the Royal Museums.
[p. 335
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 8385
debtor’s own hand,! or, if he could not write, in
the handwriting of another acting for him with the
express remark, “I have written for him.” Thus,
for instance, in a very vulgar note of hand for 100
silver drachmae written in the Fayim? in the first
century 4.p. for two people who could not write by
one Papus, who was himself not much of a writer,
we have (Figure 50 ὃ) :—
[as καὶ ἀ]ποδόσωμεμϑδο — |; .... which we will also.
—[.... χ]ωρὶς ἄλλων ὧν | TePay- .- - with any other:
ἀφίχοεϊ, (Jian ay Dds that we may owe.... I Papus
᾿ cere Sette i wrote for him [sic; it should
ἔγραψα ὑϊπὲρ ait |wi% ἀγραμ- | be them], who is not able to:
μάτου. write.
It now becomes clear that St. Paul, who had
playfully given the Philippians a sort of receipt,‘ is
in the letter to Philemon (18 f.) humorously writing:
on behalf of the runaway slave Onesimus an
acknowledgment of debt to his master :—
εἰ δέ τι ἠδίκησέν σε ἢ ὀφεί- “If he hath wronged thee:
or oweth thee ought, put that
on mine account. I Paul have-
written it with mine own hand,,
ἐγὼ ἀποτίσω . I will repay it.”
λει, τοῦτο ἐμοὶ édrXoya®. ἐγὼ
μι
Παῦλος ἔγραψα τῇ ἐμῇ χειρί,
The parallelism between the legal formulae and the
letters of St. Paul becomes still clearer when we
) Hence the technical name, “ hand-writing,” “ writing by hand ” [cf, English
“note of hand”]. See Neue Bibelstudien, p. 67; Bible Studies, p. 247.
? Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 664. Wilcken recommends me, as-
a better example, the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus No, 269 (57 A.D.).
3.1 am indebted for the photograph to the kindness of W. Schubart.
4 Phil. iv. 18; cf. p. 112 above.
5 On this technical word, see p. 79 above.
* On this word, which is much stronger than ἀποδώσω, cf, Gradenwitz,
Hinfihrung, 1. p.'85; also Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, August 1908,
p. 191f.
336 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
observe that the ancient note of hand generally took
the form of a letter acknowledging the debt.
Some ancient customs connected with the law of
debt must be at the root of the celebrated. passage
in Col. ἢ, 14 where the technical expression “hand-
writing” (=bond) is employed in a religious sense
and brought into a remarkable connexion with the
cross. Christ, says the apostle, has forgiven us all
the debts incurred by our trespasses. ‘Then, with
a piling-up of cognate metaphors,’ the writer con-
tinues :—
ἐξαλείψας τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμῶν χει- “Having blotted out the
handwriting . . . that was
against us . . . and He hath
taken it out of the way, nail-
τῷ σταυρῷ. ing it to the cross,”
é
ρόγραφον. . . καὶ αὐτὸ ἦρκεν ἐκ
Ἐ
τοῦ μέσου, προσηλώσας αὐτὸ
“The handwriting nailed to the cross”—does that
simply mean “it is crucified,” ὦ.6. dead, ineffective ?
That would be possible. But probably the image is
a much livelier one’: there must be an allusion to
some custom which is not yet known to us. If we
are unable to point to the source of “the bond nailed
to the cross ” it may at least be allowed in passing to
refer to “the cross on the bond.” We have learnt
from the new texts that it was generally customary
' Such piled-up metaphors, not admirable in point of style, but not
ineffective in a popular sermon, often occur in St. Paul.
2 It was at least a right instinct for the technical something that led many
commentators to conjecture that bonds were cancelled in antiquity: by perfora-
tion with a nail. But, as far as I know, nail perforations are found only on
inscribed leaden rolls, ¢.g. the leaden tablet from Hadrumetum (Bibelstudien,
frontispiece and p. 26; not given in Bible Studies); but the nails were uot
meant to annul the text. [On the use of nails in magic cf. Richard Wiinsch,
Antikes Zaubergerit aus Pergamon, Jahrbuch des: Kaiserlich Deutschen Arcb-
Hologischen Instituts, Erginzungsheft 6, Berlin, 1905, p. 43 f.] Mozeover, as
Erich Haupt very rightly points out in his note on the passage (Meyer's
Kommentar, 8/9*:"-, Gottingen, 1902, p. 96), the main point with St. Paul is not
the nailing in itself, but the nailing to the cross.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 337
to cancel a bond (or other document) by crossing it
out with the Greek cross-letter Chi (X). In the
splendid Florentine papyrus,! of the year 85 a.D., of
which use has been made before (Figure 41), the
governor of Egypt gives this order in the course of a
trial :—
“Let the handwriting be crossed out.” 5
The same technical word, χιάζω, “I cross out,” occurs
in other similar contexts in papyri of New Testament
age,’ but the Florentine passage is especially valuable
as showing that the custom of crossing out (which
has endured down to our own day) was not a mere
private one, but also official We have moreover
recovered the originals of a number of “ crossed-out ” *
I.0.U.’s : there are several at Berlin,’ some at Heidel-
berg,’ and in other collections. The subject is
perhaps not without some bearing on the origin of
later allegorical and mystical trifling with the cross-
letter Chi among Christians.
Starting once more from the I.0.U. formulae of the
Epistle to Philemon we can touch on yet another
conception of Hellenistic law which was early applied
metaphorically within the Christian range of religious
1 No. 61 ρσε. ; p. 266 £. above.
2 καὶ ἐκ[ἐλευσε τὸ χειρ[ὀϊγραφον χιασθῆναι: the last two lines in the facsimile
(Fig. 41).
3 Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 11, p. 243, quote it as
occurring in Nos, 362), (75 A.D.), 363, (77-79 A.D.) ; they admit it in a restored
reading, No. 266,; (96 A.D.).
4 Of course the simple Chi is often somewhat altered, and no doubt other
forms of erasure will be discovered.
5 Berliner Griechische Urkunden, Nos. 101 (114 a.D.), 272 (138-139 a.D.),
179 (¢. Antoninus Pius), This last has been reproduced in facsimile and
explained by Gradenwitz, Linfiuhrung in die Papyruskunde, I. frontispiece and
p. 95 ff. [but see Wilcken, Deutsche Lit,-Ztg. 21 (1900) col. 2469.] It exhibits
a whole network of Chi-strokes, like the Heidelberg specimens and the London
Papyrus No. 336.
6 Nos, 8c, and 26, unpublished.
22
338 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
ideas, viz. the conception of agency. Here also the
new texts have opened up quite new views.
“Roman law, as is generally and according to the
sources in the Corpus Juris rightly taught, gave on
principle no recognition to direct agency, i.e. acting
in the name and at the expense of the principal, in
whose person arise the rights and duties resulting
from the business. Certain exceptions, especially
direct agency in. the acquisition of property, were
gradually acknowledged, ‘but the most important
department of private law, that of obligatory contracts,
remained entirely closed to direct agency.’” In these
words Leopold Wenger’ sketched what was known
of agency in antiquity before the papyri came to
enlighten us. Afterwards he himself in a very
informing monograph on Die Stellvertretung im
Rechte der Papyri* worked up the material so far
accessible in the newly discovered legal documents of
Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, explaining from the
original records, which are sometimes wonderfully
well preserved, the facts concerning agency in public
law, agency in actions, and agency in private law. It
follows that the idea of agency must certainly have
been one of the best-known elements of popular law
in Egypt, and from many other analogies we may
perhaps assume that Egypt, whose bundles of docu-
ments have been re-discovered, is here also only the
paradigm for the other portions of the former Empire
of Alexander, whose records, so far as they relate
to actions and private law, have almost entirely
disappeared.
The supposition is perhaps confirmed by the use
1 Papyrusforschung und Rechtswissenschaft, Graz, 1908, p. 26f. At the end
he is citing Josef Hupka, Die Vollmacht, Leipzig, 1900, p. 7.
2 Leipzig, 1906.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 339
which St. Paul, the man of Asia Minor, makes of the
idea of agency, which had certainly become dear to
him also through his Jewish education.1 The wish
expressed (Philemon 13) that Onesimus, the slave who
has run away from his master Philemon at Colossae,
and is now with St. Paul, might serve the apostle in
his captivity as the agent’ of Philemon, would be,
if there is really a legal allusion here at all, ex-
plainable even on Roman principles—the slave repre-
sents his master. But when St. Paul, after speaking
of his convert Onesimus in verse 10 as his child, goes on
to pledge himself for him financially in terms of a bond,
this corresponds best to a father’s agency for his son,
as in the Greek law and Hellenistic law of the papyri.*
Altogether, therefore, the idea of agency, which is
employed in several important statements of St. Paul
about the past and present work of Christ, cannot be
regarded as a foreign body inside Hellenistic Primitive
Christianity, but must be reckoned one of the many
thoroughly popular means to make things plain which
the earliest propaganda adopted. More important
than single passages on the vicarious work of Jesus
in the past is the general view taken of His vicarious
present activity. This view, hinted at in the gospels,’
was probably started by St. Paul*; it grew to full
maturity and attained classical formulation” in the
1 On agency in the religious contemplation and speculation of Judaism cf.
Ferdinand Weber, Jiidische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter
Schriften,’ pp. 292 ff, 326 ff., 361. Here again one can see how closely the
“ Semitic” may come in contact with the Hellenistic in matters of culture.
? That is the meaning of ὑπὲρ gov in Philemon 13, just as in so many papyri
the scribe representing an illiterate debtor writes ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, “for him,” “as
his agent,” 6.5. Ὁ. 153 above, letter 3, and p. 335.
3 Cf, Wenger, Die Stellvertretung, p. 157 ff. 4 Ibid. pp. 169 £., 235.
* Mark xiii. 11; cf. Matt. x. 19f£.; Luke xii. 11 f£., xxi. 14f£,
® As it happens, St. Paul has not used the word Paraclete in his letters; but
the idea is clearly there in Rom. viii. 26-34.
7 John xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7; 1 John ii. 1.
340 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Johannine writings. Christ is our Paraclete, i.e.
advocate, our representative in the trial, our inter-
cessor, comforter. Again the new texts help us to
understand what a thoroughly popular conception
was covered by this primitive and deeply expressive
element of our religious vocabulary. The work of
the advocate in the Hellenistic world has been
illustrated by Mitteis,’ Gradenwitz,? and W enger *
with so many speaking examples, notably the reports
of actual cases, which have lost nothing of their fresh-
ness and colour, that it has become simply tangibly
clear.* It should be specially pointed out that the
Pauline formula “through Christ,” so often wrongly
explained, but recognised by Adolph Schettler® in
its true character and relative unambiguity, is in
many passages intelligible only if we start from the
thought of the Paraclete.*
Much more might be said about the background of
the New Testament figurative language, but I am
not aiming here at completeness of statement. I am
content to have shown by some examples’ the im-
portance of the whole subject. Perhaps the most
1 Reichsrecht und Voiksrecht, pp. 150, 189 ff.
2 Kinfiihrung, I. Ὁ. 152 ff.
3 Die Stellvertretung, pp. 123 ff., 150 ff. .
‘ For Asia cf. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 35, 15 (von Arnim, p. 335 f.).—The
popularity of this particular word is perhaps best shown by the fact that it has
gone over as a borrowed word into Hebrew and Aramaic.
5 Die paulinische Formel “ Durch Christus,” Tiibingen, 1907. .
® Cf. p. 123 n. 16 above, and Schettler, p. 28 f.
7 I have given other examples elsewhere already ; cf. the notes on adoption,
Neue Bibelstudien, p. 66£., Bible Studies, p. 239; on evictio and arrha, Bibel-
studien, p. 100 £., Neue Bibelstudien, Ὁ. ὅθ, Bible Studies, pp. 108f.,, 183f.,
230 (also Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, Sept. 1908, p. 280) ; on ἀγγαρεύω,
B. St, p. 81£., B. Studies, p. 86.3 ἀξίωμα, B. δέ., p. 87£., B. Studies, Ὁ. 92;
γέγραπται, B. St. p. 1094. NW. B. St, p. T7£, B. Studies, pp. 1128, 2498,;
δίκαιος, B. St., p. 112f., 8. Studies, p. 11 f. (also Moulton and Milligan, The
Expositor, Dec. 1908, p. 565£.); els τὸ ὄνομα, p. 123 above; ἐἔντευξις, B. &t.,
pp. 117f., 143, B. Studies, pp. 121, 146; πράκτωρ, B. St., p. 152, B. Studies,
p. 154; πρεσβύτεροι, B. St., p. 153 f., Δ᾽. B. St, p. 6048, B. Studies, pp. 154f,,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 341
necessary investigation still waiting to be made is
that relating to the word διαθήκη, which so many
scholars translate unhesitatingly “covenant.” Now
as the new texts help us generally to reconstruct
‘Hellenistic family law and the law of inheritance, so
in particular our knowledge of Hellenistic wills has
been wonderfully increased by a number of originals
on stone or papyrus. There is ample material to
back me in the statement that no one in the
Mediterranean world in the first century a.p. would
have thought of finding in the word διαθήκη the idea
of “covenant.” St. Paul would not, and in fact did
not. To St. Paul the word meant what it meant in
his Greek Old Testament, “a unilateral enactment,”
in particular “a will or testament.” This one point
concerns more than the merely superficial question
whether we are to write “ New Testament ” or “ New
Covenant” on the title-page of the sacred volume; it
becomes ultimately the great question of all religious
history : a religion of grace, or a religion of works ?
It involves the alternative, was Pauline Christianity
Augustinian or Pelagian ?*
233f.; els ἀθέτησιν, VN. B. St., p. 556, B. Studies, Ὁ. 228f.; ἀκατάγνωστος,
ΜΝ. 8. St, p. 28f., B. Studies, p. 200; ἀπόκριμα, N. 8. St. p. 85, B. Studies,
p. 257 (also Moulton and Milligan, The Expositor, Aug. 1908, p. 187); ἐμμένω,
N. 8. St.,p. 76£., B. Studies, p. 248 f.; τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος, VN. B. St., p. 57,
B. Studies, p. 230; ἐπίσκοπος, NV. B. St., Ὁ. 57£., B. Studies, pp. 156, 230f. ;
πρᾶγμα, NV. B. St., p. 60, B. Studies, p. 233; ἐκ συμφώνου, NV. B. St., p. 82£.,
B. Studies, p. 2555; τήρησις, N. B. St, p. 95, B. Studies, p. 267; χωρίζομαι,
N. B. St, p. 67, B. Studies, p. 247. Several new examples are given in
Chapters II. and III. of this book.
! See the hints in my little sketch, Die Hellenisierung des semitischen Mono-
theismus, Leipzig, 1903, p. 175 [15]. Future investigators will find matter
of great importance in Eduard Riggenbach’s “ Der Begriff der AIAOHKH im
Hebrierbrief” in Theologische Studien Theodor Zahn zum 10 Oktober 1908
dargebracht, Leipzig, 1908, pp. 289-316. Cf. also Moulton and Milligan, The
Expositor, Dec. 1908, pp. 563, 565. Frederick Owen Norton’s ‘ Lexicographical
and Historical Study of AIAOHKH from the earliest times to the end of the
classical period,” Chicago, 1908, does not get far enough to deal with the period
of the Greek Bible.
942 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
9. Closely connected with the lower classes by the
ties of popular language and non-literary culture, by
the realism of religious imagery, by popular morality
and popular law, Primitive Christianity displays more-
over in one group of its most characteristic utterances
a tone that might be interpreted as one of protest
against the upper classes, and which certainly has
that effect, although it arose less from conscious
political or social antipathies than from the passionate
determination of the monotheistic cult. of Christ to
tolerate no compromises. I mean the strongly pro-
nounced tone of protest against the worship of the
Caesar.’ In so far as the religious adoration of the
sovereign is the crown and summit of the culture
of the ruling classes,’ the Primitive Christian abhor-
rence of emperor worship does form an upper line
of demarcation, and in course of time it unites here
and there with those political and social instincts
of the oppressed which had long been present in
Judaism.
Politically the earliest Christianity was compara-
tively indifferent,’ not as Christianity, but as a
movement among the humble classes, whose lot had
undoubtedly been on the whole improved by the
Imperium. The fire of national hatred of the
foreigner which smouldered in Palestine remained
practically confined to this area, and seems to have
gained no hold among the disciples of Jesus at
1H, A. A. Kennedy’s “‘ Apostolic Preaching and Emperor Worship,” The
Expositor, April 1909, pp. 289-307, takes a similar view. His article was
written before the publication of this book (letter, Toronto, 18 October, 1908).
2 Of. the brief but comprehensive account of emperor worship by U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, “Geschichte der griechischen Religion” in the
Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts, 1904, Frankfurt am Main, p. 23 ff.
9. Heinrich Weinel, in his otherwise excellent work, Die Stellung des Urchristen-
tums zum Staat, Tiibingen, 1908, exaggerates the political antipathies of the
earliest Christianity.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 343
the outset. Their opponents were none other than
His opponents, viz. the leaders of the nation itself,
and the expectation of the coming kingdom of God
is much more of a polemic against the Scribes and
Pharisees than against the Romans.
St. Paul, too, in spite of occasional conflicts with
Roman officials on his journeys, had probably in
his own person more often experienced the blessings
than the burdensome constraint of State organisation.
In what was to him personally the most momentous
legal affair of his life he asserted his rights as a citizen '
and appealed to the Caesar. He sees no theoretical
difficulties in all the small political questions that
affect the humble individual: to respect and pray
for the powers in authority is as natural to him as
the payment of tribute and custom.’ It is no right
view of the subject to say that Paul was indifferent
to political problems because of his religious expecta-
tions of a coming end; if anything, those expectations
were calculated to make him interested in politics.
The fact is that political interest and political activity
were on the whole remote from the class to which
he belonged. The comparatively marked indifference
of St. Paul to politics is not specifically connected
with Primitive Christianity, its causes are secular and
social.
All the more sensitive, however, was Primitive
Christianity in its own most special field, the religious,
on which all its passion was concentrated. The
deification of the Caesars was .an abomination to
Acts xxii, 27. On the whole subject cf. Theodor Mommsen, “ Die Rechts-
verbiltnisse des Apostels Paulus,” Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche
Wissenschaft, 2 (1901) p. 81 ff.
2 The first volume of Wilcken’s Griechische Ostraka, with its evidence of
218 different kinds of dues payable in Egypt, is a splendid commentary
on Rom. xiii, 7.
944 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Christianity from the beginning. It is very probable
that this antipathy was inherited by the daughter
from monotheistic Judaism. In those words of quiet
delicacy in which Jesus names both the Caesar and
God, we see already the place reserved for God
which belongs to Him alone.’ Two generations
later the Book of the Revelation, coming from the
classical land of emperor worship, gives most powerful
voice to the religious contrast, which by that time
was heightened by the political resentment of the
oppressed. This access of passion would be histori-
cally unintelligible were it not for the years that lie
between the calm dignity of Jesus and the volcanic
ardour of the Apocalypse. With the lapse of time,
the religious antithesis must have been felt more
and more acutely until at length imprinted on the
Christian conscience in indelible characters.
And so it really was. If it has not been seen
before, that is because the literary sources of the
Imperial age are particularly deficient on the point.
The new texts, however—some of which are them-
selves direct evidence of the cult of the Caesar—enable
us to judge of the feelings aroused by exhibitions
of the cult of the sovereign even at the time of
St. Paul’s mission in the minds of those who had
nothing but their God in Christ and their con-
science.
It must not be supposed that St. Paul and his
fellow-believers went through the world blindfolded,
unaffected by what was then moving the minds of
men in great cities. These pages, I think, have
already shown by many examples how much the
New Testament is a book of the Imperial age. We
may certainly take it for granted that the Christians
1 Of, p. 247 above.
Fig. 51.—Original Limestone Plate (cha-
ragma) inscribed with the seal of Augustus.
Egypt, 5-6 A.D. Now in the Berlin Museum.
By permission of the Directors of the Royal
Museums.
[p. 345
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 345
of the early Imperial period were familiar with the
institutions and customs that the Empire had brought
with it. That they were familiar even with apparently
out-of-the-way points is shown, for instance, by the
allusion in Rev. xiii. 16 f. to the custom,:-now known
to us from the papyri, of imprinting on deeds of
sale and- similar documents a stamp which contained
the name and regnal year of the Emperor and was
called, as in the Revelation, a charagma. To the
examples previously given’ from Augustus to Trajan
there now comes a welcome addition in the form
of an imperial stamp affixed to documents’ from the
Fayiim, dated 48 a.v. As a concrete illustration
I reproduce* here an actual-size facsimile of one
of the original stamps, a soft plate of limestone now
in the Berlin Museum (Figure 51). The legend, the
letters of which are of course reversed, runs :—
L λε Καίσαρος In the 35th year of the Emperor
γρ(αφεῖον 3) Scribe’s chamber (9)
If such superficial details were known among the
people, how much more so the deification of the
emperor, with its glittering and gorgeous store of
the very loftiest terms employed in worship, com-
pelling every monotheistic conscience to most powerful
reaction! Such jewels were never intended for mortal
brow! And so from out the despised mass of the
unknown Many the hard and deformed hands of
the saints in Christ stretch forth and appro-
priate from the crown of the Caesars such old and
new divine insignia as offered, and deck therewith
their Son of God, whose they are, because before
' Neue Bibelstudien, pp. 68-75; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 240f.; cf. also Wilcken,
Archiv {. Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 76, and J. C. Naber, ibid. pp. 85 f., 316 ff.
? Berliner Griechische Urkunden, No. 748.
3. Neue Bibelstudien, p. 71; cf. Bible Studies, Ὁ. 243.
346 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
He was set over them He had stood beside them ;
who became poor with the poor, who humbled Him-
self with the lowly and humble and had lived sub-
missively in the likeness of a slave, and who after a
shameful death on the cross had been raised by God
and had received a name which is above ad/ names.’
And that is what we may actually observe. The
cult of Christ goes forth into the world of the
Mediterranean and soon displays the endeavour to
reserve for Christ the words already in use for
worship in that world, words that had just been
transferred to the deified emperors or had perhaps
even been newly invented in emperor worship. Thus
there arises a polemical parallelism between the cult
of the emperor and the cult of Christ, which makes
itself felt where ancient words derived by Christianity
from the treasury of the Septuagint and the Gospels
happen to coincide with solemn concepts of the
Imperial cult which sounded the same or similar.
In many cases this polemical parallelism, which is
a clear prophecy of the coming centuries of martyrdom,
may be established by very ancient witness. In other
cases the word which corresponds with the Primitive
Christian term of worship may turn up only in later
texts relating to the cult of the emperors. It could
hardly be otherwise considering the fragmentary
nature of the tradition.? I am sure that in certain
19 Cor. viii. 9; Phil. ii. 5-11. These two passages certainly give the
strongest outlines of Pauline “ Christology,” at any rate those most effective
with a popular auditory.
2 The New Testament also uses technical terms of contemporary con-
stitutional law which by accident are not known to us from other sources
until later, e.g. Acts xxv. 21, els τὴν τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ διάγνωσιν, “ for the decision
of Augustus.” διάγνωσις is a technical expression for the Latin cognitio, but
is not found elsewhere until the end of the 2nd cent. A.D. in the title of
an official in a Roman inscription, Inscriptiones Graecae, XIV. No. 1072 (also
with the genitive τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ, as in the Acts), ém... διαγνώσεων τοῦ
Σεβαστοῦ, “a... cognitionibus Augusti.”
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 947
cases a polemical intention against the cult of the
emperor cannot be proved; but mere chance coinci-
dences might later awaken a powerful sense of
contrast in the mind of the people.
It cannot be my task to collect together the whole
gigantic mass of material in even approximate com-
pleteness ; I can only offer a selection of characteristic
parallelisms. ‘Those versed in the subject will agree
with me that it is not always possible in such cases
to distinguish between the Imperial cult and the
Imperial Jaw ; the Imperial cult was in fact a portion
of the law of the constitution.
The work, already referred to,’ of David Magie on
the official formulae of the Imperial age is of great
help here. It does not, however, in the least exhaust
the epigraphical and papyrological material; by far
the larger number of my examples are derived from
my own reading of the texts.
I begin with the family of ideas which groups itself
round the word θεός, “God.” There can be no
question of any kind of Christian borrowings from the
language of the Imperial cult, because both the cult of
Christ and the cult of the emperor derive their divine
predicates from the treasure-house of the past. But
the words compounded with or derived from “God”
in the Imperial cult were the most likely to arouse
the sensation of contrast ; they were known to every
plain Christian man by reason of their frequent
occurrence, and their lack of all ambiguity brought
even the very simplest souls, in fact the very simplest
souls rather than others, into the most painful con-
scientious difficulties. Even St. Paul declared one of
the signs of Antichrist to be that he would proclaim
himself as God? We may leave to themselves all
Ὁ Page 113, n, 2, ? 2 Thess, ii. 4,
948 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
the minuter side-issues, e.g. the date when the divine
titles were first bestowed on the living sovereign.
As we are specially concerned with what the Primitive
Christians felt, we need only point out that the
problem of this contrast is older than the Imperial
period. Under the successors of Alexander, who
handed on to the Empire ready-made all the essential
forms used in the adoration of the sovereign, exactly
the same problem confronted the pious Jew into
whose hands fell, let us say, the coins of the
Seleucidae* with the legend “God ” upon them applied
to the kings. The Imperial age strengthened the
feeling of contrast, since all the titles formerly be-
stowed on the various smaller rulers were now con-
centrated on one great ruler, and the conjecture
made above’ that the apocalyptic number 616 means
“Caesar God”* appears in this connexion fairly
obvious.
A few examples will show with what force
those titles must have struck upon a monotheistic
conscience. In an official inscription* the town
council of Ephesus, in conjunction with other Greek
cities of Asia, spoke of Julius Caesar, who was
then Dictator, as. “the God made manifest, off-
1 To take one example out of many: a coin of the city of Aradus in
Phoenicia has the legend Βασιλέως Δημητρίον θεοῦ Φιλαδέλφου Nexdropos
(Demetrius 11., Nicator, 144 8.0.), Journal internat. d’archéologie numis-
matique, 3 (1900) p. 148. The title “god” was however applied to Antiochus II.
in the 3rd cent. B.C., cf. J. Rouvier, ibid. p. 146 ; also to Antiochus IV. Epiphanes,
ibid. 4 (1901) p. 202.—Ptolemaic parallels are very plentiful.—The Attalidae of
Pergamum seem to have been less assuming (Max L. Strack, Rheinisches
Museum, New Series, 55 [1900] p. 180 f.), The best account of the whole matter
is given by E. Kornemann, “ Zur Geschichte der antiken Herrscherkulte,”
Beitrige zur alten Geschichte [Klio] 1, pp. 51-146. 2 Page 277, n. 1.
3. Καῖσαρ θεός. The word “Caesar” of course means “ Emperor” here.
4 Dittenberger, Sylloge, No. 347, τὸν ἀπὸ "Αρεως καὶ ᾿Αφροδεζἤτης θεὸν ἐπιφανῆ
καὶ κοινὸν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου σωτῆρα. The combination οὗ σωτήρ and θεός,
which is also used of Augustus, Inschriften von Olympia, No. 53 [quoted by
Wendland, Zeitschrift f, d. neutest. Wissenschaft, 5 (1904) p. 342], is much
ΤΙΚΛ' ΜΕΛΙΤΊΝΗΝ,
IEPAZTA MENHNTHENI (
KH OP OYKAINOAIA AOX
5 ἈΘΗ͂ΝΑΣΈΝΔΟΞΟΣ ΚΑΙφιλο
ΤΙΜΩΣ OYTATEPATIEKA ΜΙ
ATOY APOMENSTIAPAAH AY
HIANTOXIEPOYE EJZSE
TIKOYE ATANALAEKA ἵ
10 pacreurpem AO ΘΕ OYAYTOY ZTOY
K
TEAEZANTOZAWAUNTNE KAIKA
ΦΗΜΙΑΣ OYTATEPATS) 4p
Fic. 52.—Marble Pedestal from Pergamum with an
Inscription in honour of a Priestess of Athene. Imperial
Period. Now in the Berlin Museum. By permission
of the Directors of the Royal Museums.
[Ρ. 349
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 349
spring of Ares and Aphrodite, and common saviour
of human life.” An inscription from Socnopaei
Nesus in the Fayfim, dated 17 March, 24 B.c., gives
to Augustus the title “god of god”’; the calendar
inscription of Priene (Figure 60) speaks of the birth-
day of Augustus simply as the birthday “of the
god ”’; and, to mention one very remarkable instance
from the time of St. Paul, Nero is actually called, in
a votive inscription® of the before-mentioned * Gaius
Stertinius Xenophon of Cos, “the good god,” with
which, for the sake of the contrast, one may compare
the classical saying in the gospel,’ “ There is no man
good, but one, that is God.” Further quotations
for the title “god” are unnecessary; the nets break
if we try to get them all.° Merely as an ocular
demonstration of the way in which the inscriptions
dinned this term of worship every day into the
ears of every one that could read, I reproduce here
an inscription of the Imperial age from Pergamum’
older: a votive offering at Halicarnassus, 3rd cent. B.c. (The Collection of
Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, IV.1, No. 906), is dedicated
to the honour “of Ptolemy the saviour and god,” Πτολεμαίου τοῦ σωτῆρος καὶ
θεοῦ. The double form “God and Saviour” afterwards became important in
early Christian usage,
1 Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 655, θεοῦ ἐκ θεοῦ.
This formula is Ptolemaic (cf. the Rosetta Stone in honour of Ptolemy V.
Epiphanes, ibid. No. 909, ὑπάρχων θεὸς ἐκ θεοῦ καὶ θεᾶς καθάπερ ρος ὁ τῆς “Iotos
καὶ ᾽Οσίριος νἱός, “he is god of god and of goddess, as Horus the son of Isis
and Osiris”) and becomes very important later in Christianity.
? Inschriften von Priene, No. 1050s, [ἡ γενέθλιος] τοῦ θεοῦ.
3. Paton and Hicks, No. 92; cf. Herzog, Koische Forschungen und Funde,
p. 196, ἀγαθῷ θεῷ. No other example of this title for an emperor is known
at present.
4 Cf. pp. 248, 294 above. :
5 Mark x. 18 = Luke xviii. 19 (cf. Matt. xix. 17), οὐδεὶς ἀγαθὸς εἰ μὴ
els ὁ θεός. ἕ
* Many instances from a single city, in Thieme, Die Inschriften von
Magnesia am Méander wnd das Neue Testament, Ὁ. 28.
τ Die Inschriften von Pergamon, No. 523, The facsimile (Figure 52) is
reproduced by kind permission of the Directors of the Royal Museums,
Berlin. Cf. also Fig. 53,
950 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
(Figure 52) which mentions in line 10 a Hymnodus
of the god Augustus, and in line 14f. a priestess of
the goddess Faustina (wife of the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius),
I have already treated of the title θεοῦ υἱός, “son
of God,” in another place.!_ I remember discussing
with a librarian friend of mine the fact that in many
inscriptions and papyri of the Greek East Augustus?
is called “the son of a god.” My friend, a classical
scholar, smiled benignly and said there could be no
significance in that, “for” it was a translation of the
Latin divi filius. I do not think that a Christian
out of one of St. Paul’s churches would have smiled
at the expression or have considered it non-signifi-
cant.’ St. Paul’s preaching of the “son of God” had
so quickened his religious feelings that he was bound
to protest against the adornment of any other with
the sacred formula. New individual quotations are
unnecessary here; I give, again for ocular demonstra-
tion, only two inscriptions. Five fragments of a
marble pedestal from Pergamum‘ (Figure 53) bear
this inscription, which was put up in honour of
Augustus while he was still alive :—
[ΑὐτοκράτΊ]ορ[α K]aicapa [θ]εοῦ υἱὸν θεὸν Σεβαστὸ[ν]
[πάσης] γῆ[ς κ]αὶ θ[αἸ]λάσσης [ἐ]π[ ὀπΊτ[ην]
The Emperor, Caesar, son of a god, the god Augustus,
of every land and sea the overseer. ἡ
' Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 166f£.; Bible Studies, p. 166f, Friedrich Pfister,
Siidwestdeutsche Schulblatter, 25 (1908) p. 345 ἔ,, tries to account for the
legend that Augustus dedicated an altar to Christ the Scn of God by supposing
that a votive inscription dedicated to the Emperor as “the son of a god” was
misinterpreted.
° Also his successors, with the name of their divine father inserted.
3 Cf, Ὁ. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen
Hochstifts, 1904, p. 24: “ Whoever regards the divi filius as empty ornament, .
or fraud, does not understand either the time or the man (Augustus).”
4 Die Inschriften von Pergamon, No. 381. The facsimile (Fig. 53) is
reproduced with authority from the Directors of the Royal Museums at Berlin.
ogg "α]
‘stunosny Tedoy 911 Jo ΒΙΟΊΌΘαΤΩ 961 10 ποιββιτπαθά Ag -mnasnyl ulpag 952
UL MON ‘snysnsuy jo 98 Ὁ ‘snysndny Jo mouoy ur Uordriosul ue YIM wNUeSieg WOIT Teqsepeg aque —
‘SG ‘OLA
iption for Nero,
Fic. 54.—Marble Slab from Magnesia on the Maeander with a Votive Inscri
50-54 A.D. Original at Pergamum ; plaster cast in the Berlin Museum. By permission of the
(p. 851
Directors of the Royal Museums.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 351
“Overseer” as a title of honour in this inscription
recalls the use of the same word as a predicate of
God in Judaism and Primitive Christianity.’
Then an example of St. Paul’s time—a votive
inscription for Nero on a marble slab at Magnesia
on the Maeander? (Figure 54), between his adoption
by Claudius and his accession to the throne (50 and
54 a.p.). Nero is called (line 3ff.) “Son of the
greatest of the gods, Tiberius Claudius,” etc.’
The adjective θεῖος, “divine,” belonging to the
same family-group of meanings, is, like the Latin
divinus, very common‘ in the sense of “ Imperial”
throughout the whole Imperial period. So firmly
had it established itself in the language of the
court that it is found even in the period when
Christianity was the religion of the State—a period
far removed from the Primitive Christian standard
of conscience. I will give but one example from
the earliest, and a few from the later and latest
period.’ The calendar inscription of Priene (Figure
59), about 9 B.c., speaks of the birthday of Augustus
“the most divine Caesar.”* The usage continues
through the centuries, ¢.g. in the phrases’ “divine
commandments,” “ divine writings,” “divine grace.”
In the third volume of Greek Papyri in the British
Musewm* we have no less than ten documents in
1 ἐπόπτης used of God in Additions to Esther v. 1 (xv. 2); 2 Macc. iii. 39,
vii. 35; 3 Mace. ii. 21; and Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. lix. 3. Cf. p. 429 below.
32. Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Miander, No. 157b; the facsimile (Plate
VIIL) is here reproduced (Fig. 54) by kind permission of the Directors
of the Royal Museums, Berlin. The text on the left of the plate belongs to
another inscription.
3 τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ μεγίστου θεῶν Τιβερίου Κλανδίου, etc, Cf. Thieme, Die Inschriften
von Magnesia am Méander und das Neue Testament, p. 33.
41 cannot understand why Magie (p. 31) says the word was seldom used.
* Cf. p. 87 above, and Neue Bibelstudien, p. 45 (= Bible Studies, p. 218),
* Inschriften von Priene, No. 105,» τοῦ @nordrov Katoapo{s].
7 ΟΕ, ἐντολή, γράμματα, below, p. 380 f.
4. See the index of that volume, p, 888.
352 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
which Christian emperors are called “our most
divine Lord” !—Justinian twice, 558 and 561 A.D.;
Justin II. four times, 567, 568, 571, 576; Tiberius I].
twice, 582; Maurice once, 588; Heraclius once, 638
A.D. Similarly we find θειότης, “ divinity,” used
of the (Christian) Emperor’s majesty,’ this also, of
course, being taken over from the old language of
religious observance.
Tn this connexion some light is perhaps thrown on
the old title θεολόγος, “the theologian,” bestowed
on the author of the Apocalypse. The well-known
explanation, that he was so called because he taught
the divinity of the Logos, is so obviously a little
discovery of later doctrinaires, that it does not merit
serious discussion. The title is much more likely
to have been borrowed from the Imperial cult. The
theologi, of whom there were organised associations,
were quite well-known dignitaries in the Imperial
cult of Asia Minor, against which the Apocalypse
protests so strongly. I have given the quotations
elsewhere,’ and it is significant that the examples
come from the very cities mentioned in the Apoca-
lypse, Pergamum, Smyrna, Ephesus. When we
further consider that these “theologians,” whom
we may probably regard as the official special
preachers in connexion with the Imperial cult in
Asia Minor, were often Hymnodi‘ at the same
1 σοῦ θειοτάτου ἡμῶν δεσπότουν, The superlative is still used as under
Augustus,
2 Grech Papyri in the British Musewm, Vol, 11. p. 273, No, 288 (846 A.D.).
Other quotations in EB. A. Sophocles, Greek Lewicon, p. 572.
3 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 58 £,; Bible Studies, p.231f, Cf. also Wilhelm Weber,
Untersuchungen sur Gesohiohte des Kaisers Hadrianus, pp. 140, 214.
4 References, ibid, The Greek expression is ὑμνῳδός, “singer of hymns,” 6.9.
Die Inschriften von Pergamon, No. 523,,, Figure 62 above, p. 349. Minute
details of the functions of the Hymnodi are given in the Pergamum inscription
No. 374, which has been excellently commented on by Max Frinkel, and two
portions of it are facsimiled below (Figs. 57 and 58). Hugo Koch, writing
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 353
time, the borrowing of the title becomes all the
more intelligible. John the Theologian, the herald’
of the true and only’ God, is δὲ the same time His
great Hymnodus, leader of the choir of those who
sing “a new ode”® and “the ode of Moses, the
slave of God, and the ode of the Lamb.”*
Most important of all is the early establishment
of a polemical parallelism between the cult of Christ
and the cult of Caesar in the application of the term
κύριος, “lord.” The new texts have here furnished
quite astonishing revelations.’
It was previously known that Augustus and
Tiberius had scorned the title of “lord,” because
it directly contradicted the Roman conception of the
empire as a “principate.” “Lord” is a term instinct
with Oriental feeling; the kings of the East have
from time immemorial been “lords,” and_ their
subjects nothing better than slaves.
The same conception runs through the Oriental
religions, which delight to express the relation of
the divinity to the worshipper as that of the “lord,”
from Braunsberg, 25 November, 1908, refers me to his book Ps.-Dionysius
in seinen Beziehungen zum Neuplatonismus und Mysterienwesen, 1900,
pp. 38-49.
1 “Herald of God” is perhaps the best translation of θεολόγος. A memory
of this meaning lingers in John Chrysostom, who calls the author of the
Apocalypse θεολόγον θεοκήρυκα, “theologian and herald of God,” Orat. 36 (cf.
Suicerus, Thesawrus Heclesiasticus, s.v. θεολόγος); so too an Anonymus in
Boissonade, Anecdota, 5, p. 166 (quoted in the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, s.v.
θεοκῆρυξ). In the word “theologus ” the primary sense is that_of a prophet ;
the doctrinal sense that now prevails among us is secondary.
? In Rev. xv. 4 the word “only” has been inserted by John in the Old
Testament quotation. 8 Rev. v. 9, xiv. 8.
4 Rev. xv. 3. Cf. the many other hymn-like portions of the Revelation.
* I pointed out the essential lines in the history of this word in Die Christ-
liche Welt, 14 (1900) col. 291; cf. also Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 27 (1906)
col. 588f. Similarly Lietazmann, Handbuch zum N.T. 111. (1906) p. 588, Cf.
also Weinel, Die Stellung des Urchristentums zum Staat, p. 19; and W. H.
P. Hatch, Some Illustrations, Ὁ. 139f. There is also important matter in
Ferdinand Kattenbusch, Das apostolische Symbol, II., Leipzig, 1900, p. 605 ff.
23
354 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
or, as we saw in the inscription of the beggar-priest
of the Syrian goddess from Kefr-Hauar,' of the
“lady” to the slave. In religious history the most
important illustration of this is undoubtedly the Old
Testament, especially in the Greek Septuagint trans-
lation, which, following Jewish custom, has even
replaced the divine name Jahveh by “ Lord.”?*
But we find “lord” or “lady ” as divine names*
extending also into a number of cults of the Graeco-
Roman world. “The lord Serapis,” to take but
one example, encountered us in the letters of Apion,
the soldier,* and the prodigal son Antonis Longus.’
It may be said with certainty that at the time when
Christianity originated “ Lord ” was a divine predicate
intelligible to the whole Eastern world. St. Paul’s
confession of “ Our Lord Jesus Christ ”—his cosmo-
politan expansion of an Aramaic title ° for Jesus the
Messiah, employed by the Primitive Christians and
occasionally even by himself in the world—was, like
the complemental thought, that the worshippers are
the “slaves”’ of the Lord, understood in its full
meaning by everybody in the Hellenistic East, and
the adoption of the Christian terms of worship was
vastly facilitated in consequence. This becomes
still clearer if we compare, for instance, St. Paul’s
1 Above, p. 109. Cf. also the inscription from the temple of Isis at Philae,
p. 866, π. 6 below.
2 On the far-reaching importance of this substitution see my little sketch
Die Hellenisierung des semitischen Monotheismus, Ὁ. 173 [13] ff.
31 bave already referred (ibid. p. 174 [14]) to the article “ Kyrios” in
W. H. Roscher’s Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der griechischen und romischen
Mythologie.
4 Page 168 and Fig. 24 above.
5 Page 176 and Fig. 26 above.
8 Marana = Our Lord, 1 Cor. xvi. 22.
7 This thought, also Eastern in origin, was specially adapted to the Hellen-
istic world by St. Paul through the metaphor of sacral manumission; see
p. 324 ff, above.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 355
expression “the table of the Lord (Jesus Christ),”
1 Cor. x. 21, with the analogous Egyptian ex-
pression,’ “the table of the Jord Serapis,” which
has been discovered in the papyri.’
This is no déubt a case of independent parallelism.
St. Paul’s expression was most probably influenced by
such passages as Malachi i. 7, 12, and Ezekiel xxxix.
20, xliv. 16 in the Greek Old Testament. Another
Pauline phrase, “the table of devils” (1 Cor. x. 21),
seems to be connected with Isaiah lxv. 11, Septuagint
version. It is of course chronologically possible, but
not at all probable, that the Serapis formula was
influenced by the Christian one. All that can be |
said at present is that the two formulae are found
side by side, and that no genealogical connexion is
perceivable. The Egyptian analogy shows that in
yet another vital point the language of ancient
Christianity was approached by a usage of ancient
paganism. St. Paul himself, wishing to make the
Corinthians realise the nature of the Lord’s Supper,
alluded to the analogy of the sacred feasts of the
pagans (1 Cor. x. 19-21).
Now it has generally been assumed hitherto that
the Roman emperors were first named “lord” or
“our lord” from Domitian onward, 2.6. not until
after St. Paul’s time. That may be true of Rome
and the West. In the East, however, as the records
now show, the ancient title, which had long been
in use in the language of the native courts, and
had moreover an essential touch of the religious
1 Cf. Die Christliche Welt, 18 (1904) col. 37.
2 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Nos. 110 and 523, 2nd cent. A.D., invitations to
“sup at the table [literally “couch” or “sofa”] of the lord Serapis,” δειπνῆσαι
eis κλείνην τοῦ κυρίου Σαράπιδος. Wilcken refers to Archiv, 4, p. 211. These
invitations are at the same time an excellent illustration of 1 Cor. x. 27; cf.
Die Christliche Welt, 18 (1904) col. 36 £.
956 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
about it, was bestowed on the emperors: much
earlier. The subsequent victory of the “ Dominate”
over the “ Principate”’—ultimately a victory of
Oriental over Roman feeling—was thus foretold
centuries in advance.
Here too Hellenistic culture paved the way,? at
least in Egypt. As it had been usual to address
the Pharaoh with “Ὁ king, our lord,”* so a
Munich Papyrus gives as one of the official titles
of King Ptolemy IV. Philopator (221-205 5,6),
translated into Greek, “lord of the diadems”‘;
and the Rosetta Stone’ attaches the same title to
Ptolemy V. Epiphanes (205-181 3.c.). Still more
remarkable is it, however, when on 12 May 62 B.c.
a high Egyptian official in an inscription on the
door of the temple of Isis on the island ot Philae
calls Ptolemy XIII. “the lord king god,”* or
when in an inscription from Alexandria of the year
52 5.6. the co-regents with this king (Ptolemy XIV.
and Cleopatra) are called “the lords, the most great
gods.”’ It cannot, therefore, have sounded foreign
to Egyptian ears when the Egyptian translators of
the Old Testament into Greek rendered quite
literally ® the Semitic “ Lord King” which occurs
1 Ze. in constitutional law the victory of the theory that the Caesar is
“‘ Lord” over the other theory that he is “ First” in the State.
2 Lietzmann, op. cit., p. 54 middle, disputes this.
8 Of. U. Wilcken, Zeitschrift fiir die igyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde,
35 (1897) p. 84.
4 κύριος βα[σιλειῶν] ; cf. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p. 481 ff.
* Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 90,. :
6 Ibid, No. 186g, τοῦ κυρίου βασιλζέ]ος eos. Before that he says ἥκω πρὸς τὴν
«[υ]ρίαν Ἴσιν, “I came to the lady Isis”—a good example of “lady” as a
divine title (cf. above, p. 354), but still more important as an analogue to the use
of ἥκω, “1 come,” in the language of worship: cf. the Septuagint Psalter and
John vi. 37, πρὸς ἐμὲ ἥξει, “shall come to Me.” ;
7 Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,
1902, p. 1096, τοῖς κυρίοις θεοῖς μεγίστοις (cf. the explanation by U. von Wila-
mowitz-Moellendorff, <b¢d.).
6. κύριος βασιλεύς is therefore common in the LXX, including the Apocrypha.
ILLUSTRATED FROMZTHE NEW TEXTS 357
not unfrequently in thei original. Semitic and
Egyptian here coincided, and when we find the same
title applied to the Herods in (Greek inscriptions *
of Palestine (and other places), that is only another
instance of the parallelism already insisted on
between Egyptian andj Palestinian culture.
It is therefore in accordance with Egyptian or
Egypto-Semitic custom that in numerous Greek
inscriptions, papyri, and ostraca of the earliest
Imperial period the title “lord” is attached to the
Caesars by Egyptians and Syrians. An inscription
from Abila in Syria, which afterwards names “the
lord Cronos,” speaks of “the lords Augusti,”’ by
which perhaps Tiberius and his mother Livia are
meant.? There is literary record that Caligula
allowed himself to be called “lord.”* An Egyptian
document *® of the year 49 and an ostracon® from
Thebes of the year 54 call Claudius “the lord.”
For Nero “ the lord,” z.e. in the time of the most
important of St. Paul’s letters, the number of examples
suddenly rushes up tremendously. Wilcken’s book
alone contains 27 ostraca dated after Nero “the
lord,” among them the one of 4 August 63 which
is facsimiled above.” My own collection also contains
some yet unpublished Neronian Kyrios-ostraca. We
find the title “lord ” applied to Nero also in papyrus
documents, of which a good example is the letter of
Harmiysis, 24 July 66, of which a picture is given
1A number of examples in Dittenberger, Orientis Graect Inscriptiones
Selectae, No. 415 (Herod the Great), 418 (41 a.p., Herod Agrippa I.), 423, 425,
426 (Herod Agrippa 11.).
2 Thid. No. 606, τῶν κυρίων Σε[βαστῶν].
3 So Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, 1? p. 603, and Cagnat, Inscrip-
tiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, note on No. 1086.
* Aur. Vict. Caes. 3; cf. Christoph Schoener, Ueber die Titulaturen der
rémischen Kaiser, Acta Seminarii Philologici Erlangensis, 2 (1881) p. 476.
5 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 37s¢,
6 Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, No. 1038. 7 Page 105.
958 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
above’ (Figure 21). The officials who sign the
document use the title three times. It is a very
important fact that under Nero we first find the
Kyrios-title in an inscription in Greece. The marble
tablet of Acraephiae in Boeotia’ which has yielded
such an extraordinarily rich harvest, and which
immortalises, among other things, a speech made
by Nero at Corinth in November 67, contains a
decree of honour in which the Boeotian town calls
him once “lord of the whole world,” and then, what
is in my opinion more important, simply “the lord
Augustus,” divine honours being awarded him by the
decree. This important inscription shows how far
the East had already penetrated on its march of
conquest into the West. A living illustration of the
inscription and the forebodings it arouses is supplied
by the journey undertaken a year before (66 a.D.) by
the Persian king Tiridates to do homage to the
Emperor. Tiridates came from the East to Italy
and did homage to Nero at Naples as “the lord”
and in Rome as “the god.” ἢ
The fact that a New Testament writer‘ well
acquainted with this period makes Festus the
Procurator speak of Nero simply as “ the lord,” now
acquires its full significance in this connexion. The
insignificant detail, questioned by various com-
mentators, who, seated at their writing-tables in
Tiibingen or Berlin, vainly imagined that they
knew the period better than St. Luke, now appears
thoroughly credible.
1 Page 160.
2 Most easily accessible in Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 376,, ὁ τοῦ παντὸς
κόσμου κύριος Νέρων ; 87θις; τοῦ κυρίου Σεβαστοῦ [ΝέρωνοΞ].
5. Albrecht Dieterich, Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft,
8 (1902) p. 9ff., has seen in this journey, which is recorded by Dio Cassius and
others, one of the motives of the gospel story of the Adoration of the Magi.
‘ St. Luke, Acts xxv. 26.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 359
Further examples of the Kyrios-title down to
Domitian could be easily given, especially from the
ostraca,' but they are not necessary. It is sufficient
for our purpose to have realised the state of affairs
in the time of Nero and St. Paul. And then we
cannot escape the conjecture that the Christians of
the East who heard St. Paul preach in the style of
Phil. ii. 9, 11 and 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6 must have found
in the solemn confession’ that Jesus Christ is “the
Lord” a silent protest against other “lords,” and
against “the lord,” as people were beginning to call
the Roman Caesar. And St. Paul himself must
have felt and intended this silent protest,—as well as
Jude, when he calls Jesus Christ “our only master
and Lord.” ὃ
Not many years later, soon after the destruction of
Jerusalem, Jewish rebels in Egypt, so Josephus * tells
us (doubly credible when one knows the Egyptian
use of the title “lord” at this time), refused to call
the Caesar “lord,” because they “held God alone to
be the Lord,”—and died as martyrs, men and boys.
Though the grief and resentment of these desperate
ones did not burn in those who loved Jerusalem
before the catastrophe of the year 70, yet St. Paul
and his friends were one with them in the religious
protest against the deification of the Caesar. And a
hundred years later the Christian exclusive confession
of “our Lord Jesus Christ,” which could not but
sound politically dangerous to a Roman official (from
1 My collection contains, for instance, some Vespasian-ostraca with the title
Kyrios.
2 «God hath given Him [Jesus Christ] a name [ = Kyrios] which is above
every name ... that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
[Kyrios],” Phil. ii. 9,11; “... as there be gods many, and lords many; but
to us there is but one God . . , and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. viii. 5, 6).
3 ray μόνον δεσπότην καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν, Jude 4,
4 Jewish Wars, VII. x. 1.
960 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Domitian onwards “our lord” is found applied to
the Caesars),' led to Christian martyrdoms. In the
case of Polycarp, at Smyrna in the year 155, it was
a question of the “lord”-formula. ‘“ What is the
harm in saying ‘lord Caesar’?” the Irenarch Herod
and his father Nicetes asked the saint seductively.’
The scene enacted on 17 July 180 at Carthage before
the judgment-seat of the Proconsul P. Vigellius
Saturninus stands out even more plainly.’ The
Roman official commands the Christian Speratus of
Scili (Scilli) in Numidia‘: “ Swear by the genius of
our lord the Emperor!” And the Christian answers :
“1 know no imperium of this world, ... I know
my Lord, the King of kings, and Emperor of all
nations.” °
That the old polemical parallelism was felt even
after Christianity became the state religion, is shown
perhaps by the fact that the Christian emperors,
though they did not drop the title of “lord,” often
chose another Greek word instead. In Greek titles
of Christian emperors in the papyri the word Kyrios
is conspicuously eclipsed by the title Despotes (which
occurs towards the end of the 3rd cent.°), as though
1 Alfr, Fincke, De appellationibus Caesarum honorificis et adulatoriis, Diss.
Regimonti Pr. [1867] p. 31 f.
2 Martyrium Polycarpi, viii. 2, τί γὰρ κακόν ἐστιν εἰπεῖν" κύριος Καῖσαρ;
Extraordinarily characteristic of the Christian sense of the contrast is the
date of this Martyrium (c. 21)—month, day, hour, names of the high priest
and the proconsul, and then in the place where one would expect the Imperial
regnal year: βασιλεύοντος δὲ els τοὺς αἰῶνας Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ᾧ ἡ δόξα, τιμή,
μεγαλωσύνη, θρόνος αἰώνιος ἀπὸ γενεᾶς εἰς γενεάν ἀμήν, “ and Jesus Christ reigning
for ever, to whom is the glory, honour, greatness, and an eternal throne from
generation to generation, Amen.”
3 Passio Sanctorum Scilitanorum, in R. Knopf’s Ausgewdhite Martyreracten,
p. 34£, Quoted in this connexion by Lietzmann, p. 55.
4 Tura per genium domni nostri imperatoris.
5 Ego. imperium huius seculi non cognosco, . . . cognosco domnum meum,
regem regum et imperatorem omnium gentium.
® Cf, Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, p. 260.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 361
Kyrios was intended to be reserved for the heavenly
Lord.
The Church of England prays “through Jesus
Christ our Lord” for “our most gracious Sovereign
Lord” the King, and there is no offence in the collo-
cation, but few users of the prayer ever dream of
what lies behind those words—that there were times
in which the most earnest among Christians went to
execution rather than transfer to a man the divine
title of their Saviour.
Still more strikingly than with the substantive, the
parallelism between the language of Christianity and
the official vocabulary of Imperial law shows itself in
the use of the adjective κυρια κό ς, “belonging to the
Lord,” “ Lord’s.” Familiar to every reader of the
New Testament from 1 Cor. xi. 20 and Rev. i. 10,
where it occurs in the phrases “the Lord’s supper”
and “the Lord’s day ” (z.e. probably’ Sunday), it may
certainly be described as a very characteristic word of
the early language of Christian worship, and it was
formerly considered as a specifically Biblical and
ecclesiastical word, some even going so far as to
regard it as a coinage of St. Paul’s. But as a matter
of fact St. Paul took it from the language of con-
temporary constitutional law, in which it meant
“Imperial.” I have shown elsewhere’ on the authority
of papyri and inscriptions that the word was common
in Egypt and Asia Minor during the Imperial period
in certain definite phrases, e.g. “ the lord’s treasury ”
= imperial treasury, “ the lord’s service” = imperial
1 The Old Testament “day of the Lord” might perhaps be meant. Later,
however, the expression is often used for Sunday.
2 Neue Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 44; Bible Studies, Ὁ. 217, For the two mistakes
in the spelling of the place-names at the end of paragraph 1 in the German
edition, I am not responsible. Read, of course, “ Aphrodisias ” and “ Thyatira.”
Cf. also W. H. P. Hatch, Some Illustrations, p, 138 f.
962 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
service, and I could now perhaps quadruple the
number of examples from the 2nd cent. a.p. onwards.
Instead of doing so here, I will only show a picture
(Figure 55) of the inscription containing the oldest
example yet known of the official use of the word
in the Imperial period. It is an edict of the Praefect
of Egypt, Ti. Julius Alexander, 6 J uly, 68 a.D.,
inscribed.on the wall of the propylon of a temple
at El-Khargeh in the Great Oasis.!
In this edict the high Roman official, who was
also a Jew like St. Paul, uses the word κυριακός
twice. In line 18 he speaks of the “imperial
finances,” ’ and in line 18 of the “ imperial treasury.” ἢ
In their bearing on the methods of research these
‘passages are extremely instructive. Scholars who
only believe in the borrowing of secular words for
purposes of the Christian religion when they are
shown pre-Christian quotations,‘ will hardly wish
‘to assert here that the Praefect of Egypt, had
borrowed the remarkable word which he uses a few
years later than St. Paul from Christianity and
introduced it into his own vocabulary of constitutional
law. It is much more likely to be the case that
the presumably older Hellenistic (perhaps Egypto-
Hellenistic) * word κυριακός was in use as a technical
1 The best edition so far is that of Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscrip-
tiones Selectae, No. 669; all further literature ὁδί, The photograph of this
important inscription is due to Professor Moritz, of Cairo. A diapositive of
‘this (lines 1-46), which I received from Baron F. W. von Bissing through
Wilcken’s kind mediation, has been used for Fig. 55. The gigantic inscription
can here only be given in a greatly reduced form; but with a magnifying
glass even inexperienced persons can probably check the text roughly to
‘some extent. :
* rais κυριακαῖς ψήφοις ; cf. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, p. 240.
3 τὸν κυριακὸν λόγον.
* Cf. p. 72£. above.
5 Cf. the Egypto-Hellenistic use of the substantive κύριος in sacral lan-
gnage, p. 356 above.
698 "α]
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ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 363
expression of constitutional law before St. Paul,
though it happens not to be discoverable in con-
stitutional use until after St. Paul had introduced
it into the language of Christian worship.
In line 8 of the same inscription the Strategus
of the Great Oasis, Julius Demetrius, who had to
publish the Praefect’s edict, distinguishes the day
of publication (1 Phaophi=28 September, 68 a.p.)
by a name which must also be noted in this con-
nexion, viz. Julia Sebaste.. This name for a day,
shortened to Sebaste, occurs very frequently in the
Imperial period, both in Egypt and in Asia Minor.
It was first made known to us by the new texts,
and although the problems it raises are not all
solved yet, it may be said with certainty that it
means something like “ Emperor’s Day”; that is to
say, a certain day’ of the month received the name
Sebaste in honour of the Emperor. On collecting
the examples known to me some time ago,’ I said
that this name, formed probably after some
Hellenistic model,* was analogous to the Primitive
Christian “Lord’s Day” as a name for Sunday.’
But the more I regard this detail in connexion with
the great subject of “Christ and the Caesars,” the
more I am bound to reckon with the possibility
1 Ἰουλίᾳ Σεβαστῆι. Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. Ὁ. 818, considers it
possible that the expression does not here denote a day.
? Or certain days of the month? Or (later) a certain day of the week??
3 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 45f.; Bible Studies, p. 218f.; and Encyclopaedia
Biblica, 3, col. 2815f. References are there given to other literature on the
subject, the chief additions to which are Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, 1,
p. 812f, and H. Dessau, Hermes, 35 (1900) p. 333 f.; cf. also Thieme, Die
Insehriften von Magnesia am Miander wnd das Neue Testament, p. 15 £.
4 Of. the “King’s Day” in the time of the Ptolemies, Encyclopaedia Biblica,
3, col. 2815 ἢ,
5 H, Schtirer expressed himself in agreement with this, Zeitschrift fiir die
neutestamentl. Wissenschaft, 6 (1905) p.2. A. Thumb, Zeitschrift fiir Deutsche
Wortforschung, 1 (1900) p. 165, and Archiv ftir Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 424,
comes also to my conclusion.
364 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
2
that the distinctive title “Lord’s Day” may have
‘been connected with conscious feelings of protest
against the cult of the Emperor with its “ Emperor's
Day.”
The “ Sebaste Day,” although never mentioned in
literature, cannot have been a passing fancy of the
“ adulators.”' The ostraca show it as an Eastern
institution familiar even to the lower orders in the
period which saw the birth of Christianity. Wilcken’
was able to refer to seven ostraca, ranging from 15
to 44 a.D., which are dated by the Sebaste Day.
My own collection contains an eighth example,
from Thebes, end of August or September 33 a.p.
(Figure 56), which Wilcken has deciphered for me.
As a document from the hand of a simple money-
changer it may serve to supplement the high
official’s inscription in the Oasis :—
διαγέγρα(φεν) ὃ “pos Περμάμιος ὑπ(ὲρ) χω(ματικοῦ)
A
a a
00 L455 ἐξ retpoBo® καὶ βα(ανικοῦ) τετροβο ®
27 £8 5% 2 =? 2! καὶ τὰ τούτ(ων) προσδ(ιωγραφόμενα)
ἐξ- — 27, L4K Τιβερίον Καίσαρος
Σεβαστοῦ μηνὸς Σεβαστοῦ
Σεβαστῆι. Πετεμε(νῶφις) Πικ(ῶτος.)
Horus, the son of Permamis, has paid for embankment tax"
of the 19th year six drachmae four obols, and for bath tax”
four obols ἡ : they are 7 drachmae, 24 obols; and of these the
1 Harlier investigators misunderstood many of the institutions of the
Imperial age by dismissing their technical expressions as “ adulatory.” ;
2 Griechische Ostraka, 1, p. 812; and the Strassburg Ostracon No. 203, Archiv
fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, p. 146. 3 Or διαγεγρά(φηκεν).
4 Te. ἔτους. 5.1.6. δραχμὰς. 8. 7.6. τετρόβολον.
1.7.6. Σ 000]. 85.7.6. γίνονται. 9.7.6, 2 obols.
% Ze, 1 obol. The beginning of the line is to be extended: ἐξ ὀβολοῦ
ἡμιοβολίον.
1 For the embankment tax cf. Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, 1, p. 333 ff.
2 For the bath tax cf. Wilcken, ibid. p. 165 ff.
fw τος τ
Fig. 56.—Ostracon, Thebes. Dated on ἃ Sebaste Day in
August or September, 33 A.D. Receipt for Embankment and
Bath Tax. Now in the Author’s collection.
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ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 365
further levy of 14 obols.1 In the year 20 of Tiberius Caesar
Sebastos, in the month Sebastos, on Sebaste Day.? Peteme-
{nophis), the son of Picos.*
I have already hinted that these examples from
Egypt are not isolated. Here, as so often, corre-
sponding examples from Asia Minor‘ prove the unity
of the culture on the eastern and southern shores
of the Mediterranean. To illustrate the uniformity
I give here (Figures 57 and 58) two portions of the
inscription at Pergamum, of the reign of Hadrian,°
which has been mentioned already in connexion with
the hymnodi. The name Sebaste is here assumed
to be so well known that it is not written out in
full but abbreviated in three places (B. 4, 8; D. 10)
as Σεβ or Σεβ.
In these three passages where the Sebaste Day
is mentioned in the inscription the reference is to
money payments of a religious nature which two
officials, the Eukosmos and the Grammateus, of the
association of hymnodi have each to make on this
day. Money payments due on Sebaste Day are heard
of again on an inscription at Iasus,° and all the
ostraca that mention the Sebaste Day are receipts
for money. Were then the Sebaste Days, I would
ask, favourite days for effecting payments in the
Hellenistic East? And I would further ask, with
1 Le. 13 obols per stater of 4 drachmae, cf. Wilcken, Archiv fiir Papyrus-
forschung, 4, p. 147.
? Note the cumulation of Sebastos = Augustus. The month Sebastos is the
Egyptian month Thoth, 29 August—27 September.
3 This collector’s name appears on other ostraca.
4 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 45 £.; Bible Studies, p. 218f.; Encyclopacdia Biblica,
8, col. 2815 ἔ,
5 Die Iuschriften von Pergamon, No. 374 B and D. The drawing there
given (p. 261) of sides B and D, on a scale of 1: 6%, is here reproduced by
kind permission of the Directors of the Royal Museums at Berlin (Figures
57 and 58). Cf. p. 352, n. 4 above. :
6 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 46; Bible Studies, p. 219.
366 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
all caution: When St. Paul advised the Christians
of Galatia and Corinth’ to raise their contributions
to the collection for the saints by instalments payable
every Sunday, was he thinking of some such custom
then prevalent in the world around him? The
question is at least justifiable. For my own part
I hesitate to return an affirmative answer, because
it seems to me more probable to assume that St.
Paul’s advice was connected with some system of
wage-paying (of which, however, I know nothing)
that may have been customary in the Imperial
period.
If at the pregnant words “God” and “ Lord ” all
manner of sensations of protest were roused in the
Christian worshipper against the cult of the Caesar,
this was of course also the case with the still more
impressive combination κύριος καὶ θεός, “ Lord and
God,” which, as the confession of St. Thomas,’ is
one of the culminating points (originally the climax
and concluding point) of the Gospel of St. John.
In Christian worship it was probably a direct
suggestion from the Septuagint. It probably made
its way into the Imperial cult from Mediterranean
cults: an inscription at Socnopaei Nesus in the
Faytim, 17 March 24 B.c., already cited,* mentions
a building dedicated “to the god and lord Socno-
paeus,” and an inscription of the Imperial period at
Thala in the Province of Africa® is consecrated to
“the god lord Saturnus.” Under Domitian (z.e.,
in New Testament terms, in the Johannine period)
we have the first example in the cult of the Caesars.
1 1 Cor, xvi. 1, 2. 2 John xx. 28.
3 Hig. Psalm lxxxv. [lxxxvi.] 15, lxxxvii. [lxxxviii.] 2.
4 Page 349. τῶι θεῶι καὶ κυρίω Σοκνοπαίωι.
5 ΟΕ, Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, 21 (1901) col. 475 : deo domino
Saturno,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 867
Domitian himself arranges to be called “our lord
and god.” In the third century the phrase be-.
comes quite official, but its use had continued mean-
while in the East, as shown by an inscription from
the Tauric Chersonese* in which the Emperor
Antoninus Pius is called “our god and lord.”
A whole chain of sensations of contrast and protest
is dependent on the central thought in Primitive
Christian worship, that Jesus is the βασιλεύς, the
“King.” In the Hellenistic ast, which received
its stamp from the post-Alexandrian kings, the title
“king” had remained very popular,’ and was even
transferred to the Roman Emperor, as we see for
example in the New Testament.‘ It has been well
shown by Weinel® that in the age of the Revelation
of St. John to confess the kingdom of Jesus was.
to set vibrating a tense polemical feeling against the
Caesars. The clearest example is perhaps the apo-
calyptic formula’ “Lord of Lords and King of
Kings.” The title “king of kings”’ was originally
' Sueton., Domit. 13, dominus et deus noster. Further examples in Schoener,
p. 476f., and Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 15, Freiburg i. B., 1888,
p. 159.
® Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Eusini Graecae et:
Latinae, ed. Latyschev, IV. No. 717+, τὸν [θε]ὸν ἁμῶν καὶ δεσπόταν.
* The expression réuos βασιλικός, “ the royal law,” James ii. 8, occurs also in
the technical usage of the surrounding world. The law of astynomy at
Pergamum, carved on stone in the time of Trajan but going back probably
to a time before the Christian era, has a heading, formulated perhaps by the:
donor of the inscription in the time of Trajan, which says: τὸν βασιλικὸν νόμον
ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἀνέθηκεν, “he set up the royal law out of his own means”; cf.
Athenische Mitteilungen, 27 (1902) p. 48 ff. Isaw the original at Pergamum on
Good Friday 1906. The law is called “royal” because it was made by one of
the kings of Pergamum. So too in the Epistle of James we must probably
understand the term in the first place with reference to the origin of
the law.
“1 Tim, ii. 2; 1 Peter ii. 17. Numerous examples from inscriptions, etc., in.
Magie, p. 62.
5 Die Stellung des Urchristentwms zum Staat, pp. 19, 21 f., 50 ff.
* Rev. xvii. 14, xix. 16. Of. also the confession of the martyr Speratus,,
p. 360 above. 7 βασιλεὺς βασιλέων.
368 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
in very early Eastern history a decoration of actual
great monarchs and also a divine’ title, especially
well known as applied to the Achaemenidae in
Persia. It was suggested to the Christians not only
because it was attached to God in the Greek Bible,?
but also because according to the evidence of coins
and inscriptions it was actually borne at the period
in question by princes of Armenia,’ the Bosporan
kingdom,* and Palmyra.®
It would be possible in the case of many individual
words ἢ belonging to the retinue of “king” to prove
the parallelism between the language of Christian
worship and the formulae of the Imperial law and
the Imperial cult. But I wish only to emphasise
the characteristic main lines and accordingly dispense
with details.
In the case of the word σωτήρ, “Saviour,” the
parallelism is particularly clear. I will simply refer
to the splendid articles by Harnack’ and Wendland,°
1 Cf. Otto Pfleiderer, Das Christusbild des wrchristlichen Glaubens in religions-
geschichtlicher Beleuchtung, Berlin, 1903, p. 95ff. Samuel Brandt (postcard,
Heidelberg, 10 December, 1908) refers for the profane use to Humann and
Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und Nordsyrien, p. 281.
2 2 Mace. xiii. 4; 3 Macc. v. 35. ;
3 A Tigranes has it occasionally on his coins from 83 to 69 B.c., Wochenschrift
fiir klassische Philologie, 20 (1903) col. 218,
4 Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Eumwini, ed. Latyschev,
IV. Nos. 200, 202 (probably Sauromates I., 93-123 A.D.) ; IT. Nos. 27, 358.
5 Septimius Herodianus, the second son of Zenobia, has the title in an
inscription at Palmyra, Lidzbarski, Hphemeris fiir semitische Epigraphik, 1,
. 85. ;
6 Eg. ἐξουσία, κράτος, ἰσχύς, δύναμις, μεγαλειότης, θριαμβεύω, λάμπω, δόξα, τιμή,
χάρις, δωρεά, φιλανθρωπία, ἀρετή, αἰώνιος. See in Bibelstudien, p. 277 ff., Bible
Studies, p. 360 ff., the parallel between 2 Peter i. 11, “ the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” and a Carian inscription Corpus
Inseriptionum Graecarum No. 2715 a, Ὁ (Stratonicia, earliest Imperial period),
“the everlasting dominion of the lords the Romans.” There is also material
in Thieme, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Méander und das N.T.
7 “Der Heiland,” Die Christliche Welt, 14 (1900) No, 2; now in his Reden
und Aufsatze, I., Gieszen, 1904, p. 307 ff.
® SOTHP, Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 5 (1904)
p. 335 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM 'FHE NEW TEXTS 369
and call attention to one special point. The ample
materials collected by Magie’ show that the full
title of honour, “Saviour of the world,” with which
St. John? adorns the Master, was bestowed with
sundry variations in the Greek expression * on Julius
Caesar, Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Trajan,
Hadrian, and other Emperors in inscriptions of the
Hellenistic East.* The exact Johannine term’ is
specially common in inscriptions for Hadrian,’ and it
is only what might be expected from the parallelism
between the cult of Christ and the cult of the
Caesars when the adjective σωσικόσμιος,, “ world-
saving, world-rescuing,” found in the papyri, alluding
to Hadrian’s title of “saviour of the world,” and
perhaps invented in his honour, afterwards turns up
many centuries later Christianised and in Christian
use.”
The word ἀρχιερεύς, “high priest,” to which the
Epistle to the Hebrews gave currency as a worshipful
term applied to Christ, shows how a cult-word that
was certainly developed within Primitive Christianity
‘from Jewish premises entered spontaneously into the
usual parallelism as soon as it found itself in the
world. .It was by this Greek word, as numerous
1 Op. cit., p. 67 £.
? John iv. 42, 1 John iv. 14, σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου.
3. σωτὴρ τῆς (ὅλης) οἰκουμένης, σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου, etc. Cf. H. Lietzmann, Der
Weitheiland, Bonn, 1909.
* On the combination ‘God and Saviour” cf. p. 348, n, 4 above.
* Wilhelm Weber, Untersuchungen zur Gesch. des Kaisers Hadrianus,
pp. 225, 226, 229.
° Weber, ibid. pp. 241, 250 ; Kenyon, Archiv ἢ. Papyrusforschung, 2, p. 70 ff.,
especially pp. 73, 75. Σωσικόσμιος is the name of a deme of the city of
Antinoé which Hadrian had founded in Egypt. Cf. also W. Schubart,
Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, 5, pp. 94-103. Friedrich Pfister, Siidwestdeutsche
Schulblatter, 25 (1908) p. 345, points out the importance of the expression
σωσικόσμιος in the history of cosmopolitanism.
"Cf. E. A. Sophocles’ Lewicon, 8.0. σωσικόσμιος (and swolkocuos), and the
Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, 8.v. σωσίκοσμος.
24
370 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
inscriptions’ have shown, that the title pontifexr
maximus, borne by the Emperors, was translated in
the East.
The parallelism exists not only with sacred titles,
it goes further. Two examples are now forthcoming
to prove that the. word εὐαγγέλιον, “gospel, good
tidings,” which was in use in pre-Christian times in
the profane sense of good news, and which then
became a Primitive Christian cult-word of the first
order, was also employed in sacral use in the Imperial
cult. One of the examples is that calendar inscrip-
tion of Priene, about 9 B.c., which we have mentioned?
twice already, and which is now in the Berlin
Museum. Discovered by German archaeologists on
two stones of different kind in the north hall of the
market-place at Priene, and published for the first
time by Theodor Mommsen and Ulrich von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff with other allied texts and
a commentary,’ this inscription, designed to introduce
the Asian calendar, has already been appreciated by
Adolf Harnack* and Paul Wendland® as of great
importance in the history of the sacred language
of Asia Minor. Harnack translated the most im-
portant parts into German.’ H. Winnefeld kindly
obtained for me a photograph of lines 1-60, from
which, with the consent of the Directors of the
Royal Museums, our Figures 59 and 60 have
been made, their size being less than one-quarter of
the original. As far as I know these are the first
1 See Magie, p. 64.
2 Pages 349, 351 above.
8 Athenische Mitteilungen, 24 (1899) p. 275 ff.
4 “Als die Zeit erfiillet war,” Die Christliche Welt, 13 (1899) No. 51; now
in his Reden und Aufsitze, I. p. 301 ff.
5 Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 5 (1904) p. 335 ff.
6 The Greek text is now most easily accessible in Dittenberger, Ortentis
Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 458, and Inschriften von Priene, No, 105.
φως “ἃ
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ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXT'S 371
facsimiles to be published of these important texts.’
Here we find (line 40, Figure 60) this remarkable
sentence referring to the birthday of the Emperor
Augustus :—
ἦρξεν δὲ τῶν κόσμων τῶν | But the birthday of the god was
δι’ αὐτὸν edavyedilwv ἡ ye- | for the world the beginning of
νέθλιος | τοῦ θεοῦ. tidings of joy on his account.?
Two and a half centuries later we hear the echo of
these festal trumpets when, on the receipt of the
“joyful tidings” that G. Julius Verus Maximus had
been appointed Caesar, an Egyptian, probably a high
official, wrote to another a letter, preserved on a
fragment of papyrus in the Royal Library at Berlin,’
calling for a procession to be arranged for the gods.
The fragment reads :—
ἐπεὶ γν[ώ]στ[ης ἐγενόμην rod] Forasmuch as I have become
εὐανγελ[ίο]ν * περὶ τοῦ ἀνη-
γορεῦσθαι Καίσαρα τὸν τοῦ
θεοφιλεστάτου κυρίου
ὅ ἡμῶν Αὐτοκράτορος Καί-
aware of the tidings of joy
concerning the proclaiming as
Emperor of Gaius Julius Verus
σαρος Maximus Augustus, the son
Taiov ᾿Ιουλίου Οὐήρου of our lord, most dear to
Μαξιμίνου ἡ _ the gods, the Emperor Caesar
' The whole inscription consists of 84 lines,
? Hans Lietzmann, Studien und Kritiken, 1909, Ρ. 161, translates differently.
* Published by G. Parthey, Memorie dell’ Instituto di Corrispondenza
Archeologica, 2, Lipsia, 1865, p. 440. Ulrich Wilcken revised the text some
years ago, and very kindly supplied me with his readings, which I have adopted
here (letter, Leipzig, 4 October, 1907).
* Lines 1 and 2 are so restored by me, Parthey read y[w]or after ewe ;
when Wilcken re-examined the fragment these letters were no longer there,
For γνώστης. οἵ, Acts xxvi. 3. A possible reading would be ἐπεὶ γν[ω]στί εία
ἐγένετο τοῦ, “ now that confirmation has come of the good news”; for γνωστεία
cf. Fayém Towns and their Papyri, No. 65, (2nd cent. A.D.).—The first
word of the second line was wrongly read by Parthey εὐανγέλθαι. To judge
whether the restoration εὐανγελ[ίο]υ, suggested by Wilcken’s reading evavyed.. v,
is right, the papyrus must be re-examined. There is nothing else that could
very well be intended.
372
Εὐσεβοῦς Εὐτυχοῦς Σ ε-
β[αστο)ῦ
παῖδα Γάϊον ᾿Ιούλιον Οὐῆ-
SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus,
pious, happy, and Augustus, it
is necessary,O most honourable,
pov
Mékipov S<Baorbv, that the goddesses be celebrated
10 χρή, τιμιώτατε, τὰς in festal procession. In order,
θεὰς κωμάξεσθαι. ἵν’ therefore, that thou mayest’
[ο]ὖν εἰδῆς καὶ παρατύχης | know and be present . . .
[Here the papyrus breaks off.]
Yet another of the central ideas of the oldest
Christian worship receives light from the new texts,!
viz. παρουσία, “ advent, coming,”? a word expressive
of the most ardent hopes of a St. Paul. We now
may say that the best interpretation of the Primitive
Christian hope of the Parusia is the old Advent text,?
“ Behold, thy King cometh unto thee.” From the
Ptolemaic period down into the 2nd cent. a.D. we
are able to trace the word in the East as a technical
expression for the arrival or the visit of the king or
the emperor.‘ The parusia of the sovereign must
have been something well known even to the people,
as shown by the facts that special payments in kind
and taxes to defray the cost of the parusia were
exacted, that in Greece a new era was reckoned from
the parusia of the Emperor Hadrian, that all over
the world advent-coins were struck after a parusia
of the emperor, and that we are even able to quote
examples of advent-sacrifices.’
The subject of parusia dues and taxes in Egypt
has been treated in detail by Wilcken.° The oldest
1 Even Cremer,’ p. 403, could only say : “How the term came to be adopted,
it would be difficult to show.” He inclines to think it was an adaptation of
the language of the synagogue. 2 The translation “coming again” is incorrect.
3 Zech. ix, 9; Matt. xxi. 5. 4 Or other persons in authority, or troops.
5 Otto Immisch (letter, Giessen, 18 October, 1908) refers to the λόγοι
ἐπιβατήριοι, “speeches on entering a place,” for the forms of which see Menander
in the Rhetores Graeci, ed. Spengel, 3, p. 377 ff. i
5. Griechische Ostraka, I. p. 274 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 373
passage he mentions is in the Flinders Petrie Papyrus
II. 89 e, of the 3rd cent. B.c., where, according to his
ingenious interpretation, contributions are noted for
a crown of gold to be presented to the king at his
parusia." This papyrus supplies an exceptionally
fine background of contrast to the figurative language
of St. Paul, in which Parusia (or Epiphany,
“ appearing ”) and crown*® occur in collocation.
While the sovereigns of this world expect at their
parusia a costly crown for themselves, “at the parusia
of our Lord Jesus” the apostle will wear a crown—
the “crown of glory” (1 Thess. ii. 19) won by his
work among the churches, or the “ crown of righteous-
ness” which the Lord will give to him and to all
them that have loved His appearing (2 Tim. iv. 8).
I have found another characteristic example in a
petition,’ circa 118 B.c., which was found among the
wrappings of the mummy of a sacred crocodile. A
parusia of King Ptolemy, the second who called himself
Soter (“ saviour ἢ), is expected, and for this occasion a
great requisition has been issued for corn, which is
being collected at Cerceosiris by the village headman
and the elders of the peasants.‘ Speaking of this and
another delivery of corn, these officials say :—
. καὶ προσεδρευόντων διά . . . and applying ourselves
Te νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας μέχρι | diligently, both night and day,
τοῦ τὸ προκείμενον ἐκπληρῶ- | unto fulfilling that which was
σαι καὶ τὴν ἐπιγεγραμμένην | set beforeusand the provision of
πρὸς τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως παρου- | 80 artabae which was imposed
σίαν ἀγορὰν 7... for the parusia of the king . . .
1 ἄλλου (scil, στεφάνου) παρουσίας ιβ, “ for another (crown) on the occasion of
the parusia, 12 (artabae).” ΟΣ, also Griechische Ostraka, 1. p. 296,
? Cf, also p. 312 above. :
ὅ The Tebtunis Papyri No. 489,
* πρεσβυτέρων τῶν yew(pydv). This is ὦ new quotation to show the age of
the title “ presbyter,” cf, Bibelstudien, p. 153 f. 3 Neue Bibelstudien, p. 60 ££. ;
Bible Studies, pp. 154 £., 233 Ὁ, F
374 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Are not these Egyptian peasants, toiling day and
night in expectation of the parusia of their saviour
king, an admirable illustration of our Lord’s words
(Luke xviii. 7) about the elect who cry day and night
to God, in expectation of the coming of the Son of
Man (Luke xviii. 8) ?
Again among the Tebtunis Papyri’ there is a bill,
from the end of the 2nd cent. 8.c., which mentions
“the parusia of the king,” while an ostracon? of the
2nd cent. B.c., from Thebes, reckons the expenses
of the “ parusia of the queen.”
As in Egypt, so also in Asia: the uniformity of
Hellenistic civilisation is proved once more in this
instance. An inscription of the 3rd cent. B.c. at
Olbia* mentions a parusia of King Saitapharnes,
the expenses of which were a source of grave anxiety
to the city fathers, until a rich citizen, named
Protogenes, paid the sum—900 pieces of gold,
which were presented to the king. Next comes
an example of great importance as proving an un-
doubted sacral use of the word, viz. an inscription
of the 3rd. cent. B.c., recording a cure at the temple
of Asclepius at Epidaurus,* which mentions a parusia
of the healer (saviour) god Asclepius. Other
examples of Hellenistic age known to me are a
passage in Polybius® referring to a parusia of King
Antiochus the Great, and two letters of King
1 No. 116,,, βα(σιλέως) παρουσίας.
2 Wilcken, No. 1481, λόγος rapou(slas) ri(s) Bactd (loons).
3. Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 226gs¢,, τήν τε παρουσίαν ἐμφανισάντων τοῦ βασιλέως,
“ when they announced the parusia of the king.”
‘ Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 803g, τάν τε πία]ρουσίαν τὰν αὑτοῦ π]αρενεφάνιξε
ὁ ᾿Ασκλαπιῤ[-], “and Asclepius manifested his parusia,” For the combination
of parusia with manifestation see 2 Thess. ii. 8.
5. Hist, xviii, 31, Diibner : ἀποκαραδοκεῖν τὴν ἸΑντιόχου παρουσίαν, “to expect
earnestly the parusia of Antiochus.” The verb is very characteristic, cf.
Rom. viii. 19, and p. 378, n. 1 below, the petition of the small proprietors of
the village of Aphrodite.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 375
Mithradates VI. Eupator of Pontus at the beginning
of his first war with the Romans, 88 B.c., recorded
in an inscription at Nysa in Caria.’ The prince,
writing to Leonippus the Praefect of Caria, makes
twofold mention of his own parusia, 2.6. his invasion
of the province of Asia.’
It.is the legitimate continuation of the Hellenistic
usage that in the Imperial period the parusia of the
sovereign should shed a special brilliance. Even the
visit of a scion of the Imperial house, G. Caesar
(t 4 a.D.), ἃ grandson of Augustus, was, as we know
from an inscription,’ made the beginning of a new
era in Cos. In memory of the visit of the Emperor
Nero,‘ in whose reign St. Paul wrote his letters to
Corinth, the cities of Corinth and Patras struck
advent-coins.” Adventus Aug(usti) Cor(inthi) is the
legend on one, Adventus Augusti on the other.
Here we have corresponding to the Greek parusia
the Latin word advent, which the Latin Christians
afterwards simply took over, and which is to-day
familiar to every child among us. How graphically
it must have appealed to the Christians of
Thessalonica, with their living conception of the
parusiae of the rulers of this world, when they read
in St. Paul’s second letter ° of the Satanic “ parusia ”
1 Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 32821, 20, ν[ῦν] τε τὴϊν ἐμὴ]ν παρουσίαν ἐπιγνούς
(or πυθόμενος), “and now, having learnt of my parusia,”
? This is Theodor Mommsen’s explanation of the expression, Athenische
Mitteilungen, 16 (1891) p. 101 f.
3 Paton and Hicks, The Inscriptions of Cos, No. 391 [ἐ]νιαυτοῦ πρώτον τᾶς
[Γαΐου Καίσαρος ἐπιφανείας, “in the first year of the epiphany [synonymous
with parusia, cf. p.378 below] of Gaius Caesar.” This prince enjoyed a regular
cult in Cos, cf. Herzog, Koische Forschungen wnd Funde, p. 145.
‘ For this visit cf. the inscription of Acraephiae, p. 858 above.
* Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, p. 98, cites
the two coins (=Cohen I. 307, No. 403/4).
* 2 Thess. ii. 8, 9, ὁ ἄνομος, ὃν ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς... καταργήσει τῇ ἐπιφανείᾳ
τῆς παρουσίας [cf, the inscription of Epidaurus, p. 874, ἢ. 4 above] αὐτοῦ, οὗ
ἐστὶν ἡ παρουσία κατ᾽ ἐνέργειαν τοῦ Zarava, “the lawless one, whom the Lord
376 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of Antichrist, who was to be destroyed by “the
manifestation of the parusia” of the Lord Jesus!
A whole host of advent-coins resulted from the
numerous journeyings of the Emperor Hadrian;
we have specimens,’ 1 suppose, from most of
the Imperial provinces, and these, it may be
remarked, were official coinages of the Empire.’
The arrival of Hadrian at Rome on 9 July, 118,
was even celebrated by the Arval brothers with
solemn sacrifices in the Emperor’s presence, to which
the inscriptions containing the Acts of their college
bear record.’ The parallelism between the Hellenistic
and the Imperial period is seen also in the fact that
the expenses attending a parusia of the sovereign
were considerable.* How deeply a parusia stamped
itself on the memory is shown by the eras that were
reckoned from parusiae. We have heard already of
an era at Cos dating from the epiphany of G. Caesar,’
and we find that in Greece a new era was begun ®
with the first visit of the Emperor Hadrian in the
year 124;—the magnificent monuments in memory
of that parusia still meet the eye at Athens’ and
Eleusis. There is something peculiarly touching
in the fact that towards the end of the 2nd century,
at the very time when the Christians were beginning
Jesus .. . shall destroy by the manifestation of His parusia, whose parusia
is according to the workings of Satan.”
1 Examples in Weber, Untersuchungen, pp. 81 (Rome), 109 (Britain), 115
(Spain), 125 (Bithynia), 130 (Asia), 150 (Moesia), 155 (Macedonia), 197
(Sicily), 198 (Italy), 201 (Mauretania), 227 (Phrygia), 247 (Alexandria),
2 I have this on the (unwritten) authority of Wilhelm Weber.
* Weber, Untersuchungen, ».81 8, The Acts read ob adventum I[mp(eratoris)
etc.] and οὗ adven[tum faustum eiusdem].
4 Weber, Untersuchungen, p. 188,
3 Page 375, n. 3 above.
“ Weber, Untersuchungen, pp. 158 f£., 183, 186.
” The gate of Hadrian and the Olympieum, which was then begun (Weber,
Ontersuchungen, p. 164).
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 377
to distinguish the “first parusia” of Christ from the
“ὁ second,”! an inscription at Tegea’ was dated :—
ἔτους ξθ΄ ἀπὸ τῆς θεοῦ ‘ASd- | in the year 69 of the first
ριανοῦ τὸ πρῶτον is τὴν ‘EX- | parusia of the god Hadrian
λάδα παρουσίας. in Greece.
To make the circle of Hellenism complete once
more, this inscription from Arcadia gives us again
the word parusia, which we found in Egypt, Asia
Minor, and the New Testament. In Greece, how-
ever, a synonym is more usual.’
Even in early Christian times the parallelism
between the parusia of the representative of the
State and the parusia of Christ was clearly felt by
the Christians themselves. This is shown by a newly
discovered* petition of the small proprietors of the
village of Aphrodite in Egypt to the Dux of the
Thebaid in the year 537-538 a.p.,° a papyrus which
at the same time is an interesting memorial of
Christian popular religion in the age of Justinian.
“It is a subject of prayer with us night and day, to be
held worthy of your welcome parusia.” 5
The peasants, whom a wicked Pagarch has been
oppressing, write thus to the high official, after
' Cf. for instance Justin Martyr, Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, c. 14 (Otto,
p. 54) τὴν πρώτην παρουσίαν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, and similarly in c. 52 (p.174). The
Christian era was afterwards reckoned from the first parusia.
? Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 25 (1901) p. 275. Quite similar
formulae occur in Attic inscriptions of earlier date, but with another sub-
stantive: “in the year x of the first epidemia of the God Hadrian,” cf. Weber,
Untersuchungen, p. 159.
* ἐπιδημία. Examples are quoted from inscriptions by Weber, Untersuch-
ungen, pp. 159, 183, 188.
* I owe this excellent example to Ulrich Wilcken (letter, Leipzig, 6 February,
1909); cf. Archiv, 5, p. 284.
5 Published by Jean Maspéro, Etudes sur les papyrus d’Aphrodité, Bulletin
de l'Institut frangais d’archéologie orientale, t. VI., Le Caire, 1908.
5 IL. 16, καὶ εὐχῆς ἔργον ἡμῖν ἐστιν νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ἀξιωθῆναι τῆς κεχαρισμένης
ὑμῶν παρουσίας.
378 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
assuring him with a pious sigh at the beginning
that they awaited him
“as they watch eagerly from Hades for the future parusia
of Christ the everlasting God.” *
Quite closely related to parusia is another cult-
word, ἐπιφάνεια, “ epiphany,” “appearing.” How
closely the two ideas were connected in the age of
the New Testament is shown by the passage in
2 Thess. ii. 8, already quoted, and by the associated
usage of the Pastoral Epistles, in which “ epiphany ”
or “appearing” nearly always means the future
parusia of Christ,? though once* it is the parusia
which patristic writers afterwards called “the first.”
Equally clear, however, is the witness of an advent-
coin struck by Actium-Nicopolis for Hadrian, with
the legend “Epiphany of Augustus”*; the Greek
word coincides with the Latin word “advent”
generally used on coins. The history of this word
“epiphany” goes back into the Hellenistic period,
but I will merely point out the fact, without illustra-
tion: the observation is not new, but the new proofs
available are very abundant.’
The same parallelism that we have hitherto been
observing is found again in the names applied to
persons standing in the relation of servants to Christ
and the Caesars, and in other similar points. The
11, 2, ἐκδέχομεν . . . οἷον οἱ ἐξ “Adov καραδοκοῦντες τὴν τότε τοῦ Χ(ριστο)ῦ devdov
θ(εο)ῦ παρουσίαν... For the Greek text cf. Rom, viii. 19, and p. 874, π. 5 above.
21 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim, iv. 1, 8; Titus 11, 13,
3 2 Tim, i. 10.
4 Weber, Untersuchungen, p. 196, ἐπιφάνια Αὐγούστου.
5 Cf, [Sir] W. M. Ramsay, “The Manifest God,” The Expository Times, Vol. 10
(1899, February) p. 208; Thieme, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Miander
und das Neue Testament, p. 84 f£.; Weinel, Die Stellung des Urchristentwms zum
Staat, pp. 20, 50,—Parallels are traceable also in the Christian and secular use
of the adjectives ἐπιφανής and ἐμφανής. There is much material relating to the
Christian use in Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,
Erster Theil, Das Weihnachtsfest, Kapitel I-III, Bonn, 1889.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 379
proud words of St. Paul, “We are ambassadors for
Christ ” (2 Cor. v. 20; cf. Eph. vi. 20), stand out in
quite different relief when we know that rpeo Bevo,
“1 am an ambassador,” and the corresponding sub-
stantive πρεσβευτής, “ambassador,” were the proper
terms in the Greek East for the Emperor’s Legate.’
In the same way πεπίστευμαι, “I am entrusted
(with an office, with the gospel),” which is repeatedly?”
used by St. Paul, recalls the Greek name (known
from literary sources) of the Imperial secretary for
Greek correspondence,’ especially when we remember
the beautiful figure in 2 Cor. iii. 3, according to which
St. Paul has a letter to write for Christ.‘ This
characteristic expression includes a parallel to the
technical term “letter of Augustus,” ze. Imperial
letter, which is found in an inscription of the Imperial
period at Ancyra.> The seven letters of Christ in
the Revelation to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum,
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, which.
as regards their form must be reckoned with the
letters from heaven,’ find a background in the social
history of the time in the numerous Imperial letters
to cities of Asia Minor or to corporations in those
cities, which were immediately published in the form
of inscriptions, and so became known to everybody.
To mention only addresses that occur in the Apoca-
lypse, we possess at the present day in inscriptions
1 Examples of the verb from inscriptions, etc., Magie, p. 89; innumerable
examples of the substantive, ibid. p. 86 ff.
? Gal. ii. 7; 1 Cor. ix. 17; cf. 1 Thess. ii. 4; 1 Tim. i. 11; Titus i. 3.
ἢ In Latin ab epistulis Graecis; in Greek ὁ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ἐπιστολὰς πράττειν
πεπιστευμένος, and τάξιν ἐπὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἐπιστολῶν πεπιστευμένος ; examples
from Galen and Josephus, Magie, p. 71.
4 ὅτι ἐστὲ ἐπιστολὴ Χριστοῦ διακονηθεῖσα ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν, “ that ye are a letter of
Christ, ministered by us.”
5 Cagnat, Inseriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, II. No, 188,
ἐπιστολῶν Βλληνικῶν [Σε]β(αστοῦλ), “ of the Greek letters of Augustus,”
° Cf. p. 238 above.
380 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
larger or smaller fragments of at least six Ephesus
letters,’ three Smyrna letters,? at least seven Per-
gamum letters,’ and perhaps. one Sardis letter,’ from
Roman Emperors. The introductory formula in
those letters of Christ—the solemn “ Thus saith ”°—
comes most assuredly from an Oriental (Old Testa-
ment) usage, but it is certainly not without interest
to find at least “Saith”® as the formula at the
beginning of Imperial letters already of the first
century.
Philo, Josephus,’ and 2 Tim. iii. 15 have made us
familiar with the name ἱερὰ γράμματα, “sacred
writings,” “holy scripture,” as a title of dignity for
the Old Testament. The parallelism between letters
of Christ and letters of the Emperor becomes still
clearer when we find the same term in technical use
in the East*® for Imperial letters and decrees. In
pre-Christian inscriptions it often ὃ means the “ hiero-
glyphs.” But an inscription from Nysa in Caria of the
time of Augustus” uses it probably of an Imperial”
1 References in Léon Lafoscade, De epistulis (aliisque titulis) imperatorum
[p. 147, τι. 2 above], pp. 12, 14f. (Hadrian), 23, 24, 25 (Antoninus Pius), 34
(Septimius Severus and Caracalla).
2 Lafoscade, pp. 29 (Marcus Aurelius), 28 (Antoninus Pius), 29 f. (Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus); all three are addressed to religious associations
(σύνοδοι) at Smyrna.
8 Lafoscade, pp. 7f. (Nerva or Trajan), 9 (Trajan), 10, 17 (Hadrian), 23
(Antoninus Pius), 35 (Caracalla), 58 (various emperors).
4 Lafoscade, p. 59 (uncertain).
> τάδε λέγει.
6 dicit and λέγει. References to inscriptions in Lafoscade, p. 63.
7 References to both authors in Cremer,® Ὁ. 276 f.
® Cf, A. Wilhelm, Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archiologischen In-
stitutes in Wien, 3 (1900) p. 77.
9. Examples in Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, I. p. 642.
% Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum, No. 2943,. I think it also possible
that τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα here means old temple documents.
" Ample illustration of the use of the word “holy” or “sacred” (sacer,
sanctus, sanctissimus, sacratissimus) as a designation of the Emperor and
Imperial institutions in pagan and Christian times is given by W. Sickel,
Gittingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1901, p. 387 ff.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 381
decree ; and this is certainly the case with an inscription
from Aezani in Phrygia of the time of Hadrian,’ an
unpublished inscription of the Imperial period at
Athens,’ and a bilingual inscription at Paros,’ 204
A.D., which translates the Greek term in Latin as
sacrale littjerae. The Latin Vulgate employs exactly
the same phrase in rendering 2 Tim. iii. 15! The
phrase θεῖα γράμματα, “divine writings” (used of
the Bible by patristic writers), is applied quite
synonymously to letters of the Emperor in an in-
scription from Tyras on the Dniester, 17 February 201
A.D.,* and an inscription from Scaptopare in Bulgaria,
238 a.D.° The latter refers to Imperial ordinances as
“divine commandments,” " which resembles the New
Testament term “God’s commandments.” ”
In this connexion attention may once more be
called to the Primitive Christian’s designation of
himself as δοῦλος Χριστοῦ, “ slave of Christ,” which
we have already® looked at against another back-
ground. Though not designed originally as a formula
of contrast to the cult of the Caesar, it certainly aroused
sensations of contrast when heard beside the frequent
title of “slave of the Emperor”:—there were
Imperial slaves all over the world. One example out
of many is an inscription’ from Dorylaeum in Phrygia,
’ Le Bas-Waddington, No. 860,,, τῶν ἱερῶν τοῦ Kaloapos ypaypdrw[v].
2 Cf. A. Wilhelm, Joe. cit.
5. Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 415 = Inseriptiones Graecae, XII., V.1, No, 182.
‘ Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Huwini Graecae et
Latinae, ed, Latyschev, I. No. 35, ἀντίγραφον τῶν θείων γραμμάτων, “copy of the
divine writings.”
* Dittenberger, Sylloge,? No. 418,;,, τὰ θεῖά σου γράμματα, “thy divine
writings,”
§ Line 51, ταῖς θείαις ἐντολαῖς.
” ἐντολαὶ θεοῦ, 1 Cor. vii. 19; Rev. xii. 17, xiv. 12.
® Page 324 ff.
® Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 28 (1904) p. 195, ᾿Αγαθόποδι δούλῳ
τοῦ κυρίου Αὐτοκράτορος.
382 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Imperial period, which mentions “ Agathopus, slave
of the lord Emperor.”
The same order of parallelism obtains between the
genitive Χριστοῦ, “belonging to Christ ” (Gal. iii. 29,
v. 24; 1 Cor. i. 12, iii. 28, xv. 28; 2 Cor. x. 7), and
the simple genitive Καίσαρος, “belonging to the
Emperor.” The latter, first revealed by the new texts,
goes back to the Latin elliptic Caesaris, and can be
established for Egypt by several papyri of the reign
of Augustus and by inscriptions of the reign of
Hadrian."| The analogy which has been already?
claimed on linguistic grounds between the oldest name
for the followers of Christ, Χριστιανός, “ Christian,”
and Καισαριανός, ““ Caesarian,” “ Imperial (slave),” *
receives in this connexion new and remarkable
illustration.
Characteristic too is the parallel between St.
Paul’s phrase ἀπελεύθερος κυρίον, “freedman of
the Lord” (1 Cor. vii. 22), and the frequent title
“freedman of the Emperor.” It appears, for instance,
in a Latin inscription of the 2nd century at Cos‘
(Figure 61), on the tombstone of the Imperial freedman
Hermes, who had been an official of the inheritance-
duties department. In the third and fourth lines he
is called Augustor(um) n(ostrorum) lib(erto), “freed-
man of our Augusti.” In Greek the title is also of
1 The first examples were given by Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. p. 661 f.
(the London Papyrus No, 256 is now accessible, Greek Papyri in the British
Musewm, Vol. 11, p. 95 ff.) ; cf. also Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 1, p.145. New
examples are given by W. Schubart, Archiv, 5, p. 116 ff., who thinks they refer
to freedmen.
2 Winer-Schmiedel, ὃ 16, 2c, note 18 (p. 135).
3 References for Caesarianus in Theodor Mommsen, Hermes, 34 (1899)
p. 151 f., and Magie, p. 73.
4 Rudolf Herzog, Kvische Forschungen und Funde, p. 106£., No. 165. The
facsimile there given (plate V. 4) is here reproduced (Fig. 61) by kind per-
mission of the editor and his publisher. The terminus post quem for the
inscription is 161 a.D.
ΕἸ. 61.—Marble Stele from Cos, Tombstone
of Hermes, an Imperial Freedman, after
161 A.D. Now in the house of Said Ali in
the town of Cos. By permission of Rudolf
Herzog and the publishing house of Theodor
Weicher (Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhand-
lung).
[Ρ. 382
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 988
frequent occurrence, with many variations,’ from the
first century A.D. onwards.
Finally, when Christ says in St. John’s Gospel?’
(xv. 14 ἢ) :—
“Ye are My friends. . . . Henceforth I call you not slaves "—
the collocation of “slave” and φίλος, “ friend,”
reminds us that the Emperor also had “ friends,” as
well as “slaves.” “Friend of the Emperor” is an
official title,* going back probably to the language of
the court under the successors of Alexander,‘ and
found, for instance, in two inscriptions of the Imperial
period at Thyatira.© The parallelism becomes still
clearer afterwards if we compare the adjectives
φιλοκαῖσαρ and φιλοσέβαστος, “friend of the Emperor,”
which are frequent ἢ in inscriptions, with the similarly
formed word φιλόχριστος, “friend of Christ,” which
is a favourite with patristic writers,’ or if we
compare the extraordinary word σεβαστόγνωστος,"
1 Σεβαστοῦ ἀπελεύθερος or ἀπελεύθερος Καίσαρος. Many examples in Magie,
p. 70. 2 ὑμεῖς φίλοι μου ἐστέ. . .
5 Latin amicus Caesaris, Greek φίλος τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ (cf. the two inscriptions
from Thyatira), or φίλος τοῦ Καίσαρος, John xix. 12,
4 Cf. Bibelstudien, p. 160; Bible Studies, p. 167 ff. (The note in Bibelstudien,
p. 161, Bible Studies, p. 168 f., about John xv. 15 should be cancelled.)
J. Leipoldt, Theologisches Literaturblatt, 29 (1908) col. 561, shows that the
title is an ancient Egyptian one.
5 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarwm Nos. 34994, and 3500,.
4. Many examples in Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, II.
Index, p. 719.
7 φιλόχριστος also made its way among the people, as shown by Christian
inscriptions, e.g. one from Zorava in Syria, 22 March, 515 Α.Ὁ. Dittenberger,
Orientis Graeci Inseriptiones Selectae, No. 610,.
8 Inscriptions from Olbia ¢, 200 a.p., Latyschev I. No. 24,; from Panti-
capaeum 249 A.D., Latyschev II. No. 46,; from Prusias on the Hypius in
Bithynia 9. 215 A.D., Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 25 (1901) p. 62 ff.
The word receives some explanation from a decree of the Byzantines, Ist cent.
A.D., Latyschev I. No. 47¢¢, which boasts of a citizen of Olbia that μέχρι τᾶς τῶν
Σεβαστῶν γνώσεως rpoxd[ ψἼ)αντος, “he had advanced to personal acquaintance
with the Augusti (Augustus and Tiberius),” This inscription helps us more-
over to understand some yvdo.s-passages in the N.T. In Phil. iii. 8, for
instance, the word does not denote speculative knowledge of Christ, but
personal and pneumatic acquaintance with Christ.
984 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
“acquainted with the Emperor,” with the Christian
θεόγνωστος,"; “ acquainted with God.”
10. Have the gold coins regained somewhat -of
their old clearness of definition? Looking back on
the parallelism between the cult of Christ and the
cult of Caesar, the lines of which might be yet further
prolonged, we may say this: it is one of the historical
characteristics of Primitive Christianity that it made
religion a serious business. Its uncompromisingly
religious” character, tolerating no concessions to
irreligion, is never seen more clearly than when we
try to realise the oppressive sensations of contrast
that tortured the saints in Christ even in the days
of Nero when confronted with the glittering formulae
of the cult of the sovereign.
In fact one abiding result of every really close
study of the religious records of the world contem-
porary with the New Testament is this: they quicken
our sense of religion, especially of the simple, vigorous,
popular forms of the religion which is seen at work
in the gospel and in the earliest cult of Christ, and
which is still a living force in the New Testament
to-day. Our learned forefathers used most commonly
to pursue a retrospective method in their study of the
sacred volume, looking backward into the earliest ages
of Christianity from the point of view of churchmen
and theologians of their own day. They judged the
primitive age accordingly ; and the New Testament,
containing the relics of that age, they conceived and
made use of as the classical textbook of dogma and
ethics. But if we approach our sacred Book from
1 References in Thesaurus Graecae Linguae and Sophocles’ Greek Lexicon.
2 This side is rightly emphasised by Franz Cumont and Albrecht Dieterich ;
cf. Bonner Jahbrbiicher, Heft 108, p. 41.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 385
the very world that surrounded the New Testament,
2.6. from the Imperial age and from the middle and
lower classes of society, then with the same eyes that
modern theological prejudices had previously blinded
to religion, we shall see that the New Testament,
really a sacred Book, is not a creature of theology,
but of religion. The written memorials of the New
Testament age quickened our sense of the charac-
teristics of the popular language, and of the nature
of things non-literary, and now they make clear to us
the nature of things non-theological.
I speak of course of theology and things theological
in the sense that we connect with the words nowadays.
If we still felt and appreciated the ancient meaning
of the word “theologus,”’ we might unhesitatingly
call the New Testament a theological book ; for that
would mean practically nothing more than that it
was a prophetic and religious book. But that was
certainly not the meaning of those scholars who laid
stress on the theological character of the New Testa-
ment. They wanted to display its (in the main)
didactic, considered, systematic contents. If religion
is to us an inner life in God, theology is scientific
consideration about religion and its historical effects.
But the considered element in the New Testament
falls very much behind the unconsidered naiveté of
the purely religious, the prophetic, and the devotional.
And though we may be inclined, in the atmosphere
of our Western doctrinairism, to spread the grey
nimbus of system over the New Testament, the sun
of its Anatolian home affords us joyful glimpses of
the breadth and depth of that divine strength grown
human which streams immeasurable from the con-
fessions in this Anatolian book. The mere paragraphs
1 Cf. p. 352 f. above.
25
886 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
vanish ; personalities rise before us, heroes from the
multitude of despised and forgotten ones: Elias is
come again to prepare the way, then the Anointed
of the Lord in His first parusia, and lastly His world-
evangelist, St. Paul, and our other Apostolic Fathers.
Like John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth is al-
together non-theological. He is. not a speculative
doctrinaire. He is altogether religion, spirit, fire.
It would be a mistake to speak of a theological
system in the case of Jesus. He never thought out
a paragraph, never penned a single tractate. He is
so simple that the children cry out with joy at His
approach, and the very poorest understand Him.
Insignificant persons, unknown by name, who had no
idea of the value of literal accuracy, handed on His
“doctrine” in the homely garb of the popular lan-
guage. Jesus thought nothing of the theology of
His age: He even thanks His Father for having
hidden His profoundest revelations from the wise
and prudent. The lightnings of His prophetic scorn
descend upon the theological authorities who paid
tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, but omitted
mercy and faith. Contemplative theology, the off-
spring of doubt, was completely outside the sphere
of His nature, because He was in daily personal in-
tercourse with the higher world, and the living God
was in Him. To this latter fact His confessions,
His words of controversy, consolation, and reproof
bear witness. It is impossible to unite all these
sayings into the artistic mosaic of an evangelical
system: they are the reflection of an inner life full
of unbroken strength, full of purity, full of devotion
to God and His human family.
1 For what follows cf. my sketch entitled Theologie und Kirche, Tiibingen
und Leipzig, 1901, p. 6.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 987
Again Paul the Apostle, the other great figure that
stands sharply outlined historically at the beginning
of our religion, belongs, best part of him, to the age
before theology.’ It is true he is the disciple of a
theological school, and as a Christian missionary he
not unfrequently makes use of the traditional theo-
logical methods. But the tent-weaver of Tarsus must
not for that reason be numbered with Origen, Thomas
Aquinas, and Schleiermacher, but with the herdman
of Tekoa, the shoemaker of Géorlitz, and the ribbon-
weaver of Miilheim.? Are we really listening to the
pulsations of his heart when we hear him interpret
allegorically the story of Hagar and Sarah? Are we
not infinitely nearer to his soul, his personality, the
best that is in him, when we behold him on his
knees, crushed, annihilated, and new-created by the
grace of His God? His sentences concerning the
Law—are they calm, pointed theses from a theo-
logical debate, or are they not rather confessions of
a tortured and liberated soul? Is Paul the inventor
of a dogma of Christ, or is he not rather the witness
of the Christ experienced by him? Is to him the
glory of the Living One a theory thought out in the
study, or was it not rather flashed upon him in a
sacred hour of revelation? Paul the theologian
belongs to the history of Rabbinism: his interpre-
tation of Scripture, in which his theology for the
most part concentrates, is in no way original or
historically distinctive. Paul the theologian vanishes
beside Rabban Gamaliel and the other Tanaitic
! Ibid, p. 6 ff.
? [The prophet Amos is fairly recognisable, but English readers may be re-
minded that Jakob Béhme, the mystic, 1575-1624, lived and died at Gdérlitz,
Gerhard Tersteegen, the devotional writer, 1697-1769, at Miilheim. The hymn
“Thou hidden love of God, whose height,” was translated by John Wesley
from Tersteegen. Tz.]
388 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
fathers." It is not in the history of theology that
Paul is a characteristic figure, but in the history
of religion. And there his importance lies essen-
tially in the fact that, being wholly un-rabbinic
and wholly pre-dogmatic, he planted the living roots
of religion in the spiritually present Person of the
living Lord Jesus Christ. This he did, not by any
new artifices of speculative theology, but by the
power of his experience of Christ, from which faith
streamed forth with triumphant strength of attrac-
tion. From the time of St. Paul there is, not
Christology, but Christolatry, a Christianity of
Christ. Paul is not like the many Christological
speculators among us, who attain to the worship of
Christ on a Sunday only if they have somehow
during the week assured themselves of a Christology.
Primary with St. Paul are his mystic appreciation
of Christ, based on his experience at Damascus, and
the cult of Christ which was kindled at that flame.
Out of the mysticism and the cult there springs his
contemplation of Christ, which, though occasionally
employing the forms of older Messianic dogmatic, is
in its whole tone different from later Christological
speculation. The subject upon which Christological
speculation exercises itself so painfully is Christ as
experienced by other people in the past; St. Paul’s
contemplation of Christ proceeds from his own ex-
perience of Christ and is nourished by the spiritual
strength of the present Christ. Doctrinaire Christology
looks backward into history as if under some spell;
St. Paul’s contemplation of Christ gazes clear-eyed
into the future. Christology stands brooding beside
! The Tanaim, so called from tana, “ to repeat,” were the scholars, over 100
in number, who ὁ. 10-210 A.D. helped to make the tradition which was finally
embodied in the Mishna (‘‘ repetition,” from shana, ‘to repeat”). [T'B.]
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 989
an empty grave; St. Paul: sees piercingly into a
heaven full of the Living Presence. Even the cross,
as viewed by the apostle, is not a bald, lifeless “ fact ”
in the past, but a portion of the living present. To
him there is no such thing as a completed “work”
of Christ: Christ is working still perpetually, and
in fact the best is yet to come, for Christ Himself
shall come.
Ultimately, therefore, it is the religious content’
that gives its stamp to Primitive Christianity. The
Epistle to the Hebrews, being marked by a strongly
theological character, with artistic literary form to
match,’ cannot be assigned to the classical age of
Primitive Christianity. Modern scholasticism has
turned confessions of the inspired into chapters of
the learned, and in so doing has worked the same
change on the subject-matter of the New Testament
as was produced in its form when its non-literary
letters were treated as works of literature and its
popular language as a sacral variety of Greek. If,
however, we approach the sacred Book by way of
the ancient world contemporary with it, our pre-
conceptions vanish.
Far away in the East there rises up before us,
higher and higher above the thronging crowd of
poor and lowly, a Sacred Form. To His own He
is already the Saviour and giver of light; to the great
world He is invisible as yet in the morning twilight,
but it too shall one day bow before Him. In His
profound intimacy with God and in manly strength
1 It was significant in the history of New Testament scholarship that the
venerable Nestor of the subject, Bernhard Weiss, should crown his life-work
on the New Testament with a book (1903) entitled Die Religion des Neuen
Testaments, To investigate the religion of the New Testament remains the
last and highest task of every specialist in these studies,
2 Cf. pp. 64 f., 243, 245, above.
990 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of consciousness of His Messianic mission Jesus of
Nazareth is the sheer incarnation of religious inward-
ness fixed solely on the Kingdom of God, and
therefore He is strong to fight and worthy of the
highest grace in store for Him—that of being
allowed to lay down His life for the salvation of
the many.
Not as second beside Him, but as first after Him
and first in Him, stands the great convert in whose
ardent soul all the Paschal experiences of the first
disciples, with their insistent trend towards a cult
of Christ, were focussed. Paul of Tarsus, having
experienced in his own person more than any other
man the mysteries of the cult of Christ, creates
classical forms for their expression, and goes out
to the Mediterranean world from which he sprung
to gain adherents for the gospel that is being so
gloriously extended.
11. What were the forces enabling this infant cult
of Christ to gain its converts? Let us attempt to
view the new propagandist religion as it presented
itself characteristically to the men of the Hellenistic
Mediterranean world.
Our survey of Primitive Christianity on its way
from the East can of course take account only of
the most strongly marked lines. Microscopic ex-
amination is as impossible as when we view some
great antique sculpture in relief. We have to step
backward ; then, and not till then, we see what
gave to the propagandist religion of Primitive.
Christianity its historic character. And so we will
not make ten, a dozen, or maybe scores of longitudinal
sections through Primitive Christianity, legitimate
as such work is in itself, but we will take one single
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 391
transverse section through Primitive Christianity
conceived as a whole and a unity. For even
though the religion of the apostles does display
an abundance of different personal types, the men
of antiquity were influenced first of all not by the
abundance of individual elements, but by the style
and spirit of the common element.
I have a lively sense of the difficulty we encounter,
as men of another epoch, in taking this rapid survey
of Primitive Christianity from the point of view of
.an ancient, and I shall be glad to receive instruction
if I have seen wrongly. But to prove that the
main result of my inspection is not altogether wrong
I may mention an observation of mine made after
I had myself ventured on that rapid survey. I
found that the greatest missionary document in the
New Testament, St. Paul’s speech on the Areo-
pagus at Athens,’ which aimed at exhibiting to
pagans of a great city in the Mediterranean world
what was characteristic of the new religion as con-
cisely as possible, has selected as characteristic just
the very things which seem to us by the aid of
recent discoveries to be so. The speech is not a
verbatim report, but it is no less certain that it
reveals the spirit of St. Paul, and that it is a
“manifesto of worldwide importance in the history
of religions and of religion. For the sake of this
speech the philologists ought to forgive cheerfully
all the sins subsequently committed by theological
fanatics against the ancient world, especially if they
are themselves preparing to atone for their own
shortcomings, at least for their indifference towards
the greatest book of the Imperial age.
Before pointing out positive characteristics of the
1 Acts xvii. 22-31,
892 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
ethical and religious order certain preliminary questions
must be touched upon. .
In the first place we must refer once again to
the great fact of social history which has so often
engaged our attention in these pages—the popular
character of Primitive Christianity. Unless this fact
is known and well emphasised it is impossible to
explain historically the success of the attractive
power of the gospel. St. Paul’s mission was the
mission of an artisan, not the mission of a scholar.
The gospel call, intelligible to the many because
uttered in the popular colloquial language of the
world, never implied the social uprooting’ of. any-
body by renunciation of his native stratum and
elevation to the regions of anaemic theory. On
the contrary, we shall see that it only strengthened
and ennobled the feeling of solidarity among the
humbly situated.
There is one other fact closely connected with
this. The characteristic features of the propagandist
religion were not contained. in separate novel “ideas.”
The book which has most strongly insisted on the
supposed novelty of countless “ideas” and “ mean-
ings” in the New Testament—I mean Cremer’s
Lexicon—is by reason of this dogmatic tendency
one of the greatest hindrances to an historical grasp
of the real expansive force of Primitive Christianity.
In all that relates to the forms and meanings of
words Primitive Christianity is more in contact than
in contrast with the surrounding world:
“Christians are distinguished from other men neither by
country, nor by language, nor. by customs.. For nowhere
do they inhabit cities of their own, nor do they make use
1 1 Cor, vii. 20.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 393
of any exceptional dialect, nor do they practise a con-
spicuous mode of life.”
In these words a Christian writer’ of a very early
period, almost contemporary with the new Testament,
has sketched for us the outward contact between his
co-religionists and the surrounding world.
Nor to the men of antiquity did those features
appear characteristically Christian which the common
sense of a modern agitator generally seizes upon as
the really remarkable thing about the New Testament,
and which, modestly content to annihilate Christianity
by means of common sense alone, he cheerfully pro-
ceeds to refute while their no better equipped apologist
as excitedly defends. them—TI mean the miracles. As
a matter of fact the miracles gave to the New Testa-
ment a singularly popular position in the world around
it. The whole ancient world is full of miracles ;
definite types of miracle become fixed by the tradition
of thousands of years and occur again and again in all
sorts of places. Viewed amid the surroundings of its
own age and social stratum the New Testament is
seen to be shy, rather than otherwise, of narrating
miracles.2 With Jesus, St. Paul, and St. John we
even find occasionally an ironical attitude towards
the popular taste for miracles,‘ and it is highly
significant that the great mass of the sayings of Jesus
1 Epistle to Diognetus, 5: Χριστιανοὶ γὰρ οὔτε γῇ οὔτε φωνῇ οὔτε ἔθεσι διακεκρι-
μένοι τῶν λοιπῶν εἰσιν ἀνθρώπων. οὔτε γάρ που πόλεις ἰδίας κατοικοῦσιν οὔτε δια-
λέκτῳ τινὶ παρηλλαγμένῃ χρῶνται οὔτε βίον παράσημον ἀσκοῦσιν.
2? Much material will be found in Th, Trede, Wunderglaube im Heidentum
und in der alten Kirche, Gotha, 1901 (cf. my remarks in Die Christliche Welt, 20
[1906] col. 291 £.); R. Lembert, Der Wunderglaube bei Rimern und Griechen,
‘I. Teil : Das Wunder bei den rémischen Historikern, Augsburg, 1905 ; R. Reitz-
enstein, Hellenistische Wundererzihlungen, Leipzig, 1906 (on aretalopy cf. also
my Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 88 ff. ; Bible Studies, p. 93 ff.).
3 This point is very properly emphasised by G. Heinrici, Der litterarische
Charakter der neutestamentlichen Schriften, Ὁ. 41 £.
‘ Luke xi. 29 with parallels; Matt. xvi. 1 ff. ; 1 Cor. 1. 22; 2 Cor, xii. 8£.;
John iv, 48, xx. 29.
394 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
in the synoptic tradition are not brought into any
organic connexion with miracles. Nevertheless the
New Testament, as it was bound to be, zs a book of
miracles. If, however, we have once grasped historic-
ally the nature and necessity of the miracles in the
New Testament, we realise also how dear they are to
the heart of the people, how childlike in their piety,
how sincerely beautiful, and what high value they can
even possess as revelation. But the miracles, as such,
have nothing to do with the historical peculiarity
of Primitive Christianity.
First and foremost among the historical charac-
teristics of Primitive Christianity we should rather
place that which the journalism of our day, as ignorant
as it is impious, often dares to represent as a perfectly
obvious triviality, viz. the One living God. The
solemn and impressive presence of the One God
pervades the lines of that powerful manifesto on the
Areopagus. Not that the world was unprepared for
the One God: the Greek thinkers, Plato especially,
had prepared the way for Him, and the Christian
orator speaks thankfully of certain among their poets
who had had knowledge of God.* These had been
helped by the propaganda of the Greek Jews of the
Dispersion with their cosmopolitan Bible.” And now
He came, the One and Eternal, on the way prepared
by Greeks and Jews, came to souls drawn hither
and thither by the worship of many gods; to souls
restlessly seeking and feeling after Him ;° and came
as a God who, though Creator and Lord of Heaven
and of earth,‘ is yet worshipped without image and
) Acts xvii. 28.
2 Of, my sketch Die Hellenisierung des semitischen Monotheismus, Leipzig,
1908,
3 Acts xvii. 27.
* xvii, 24.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 395
without temple,’ and is always accessible even to the
poorest, in a spiritual presence,’
“For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”®
But the new cult took this One God seriously. No
compromises detracted from the Christians’ faith in
God, and in their protest against the deification of the
Sovereign they were ready before long to face even
martyrdom.
And second we should place the object of the cult
in the narrower sense, Jesus Christ, who did not
displace the One, but was in the eyes of the
worshippers His incarnation. All the preaching of
the missionaries was, like the speech on Mars’ Hill,‘ a
preaching of Christ ; and every hearer of the mission-
aries felt that they were introducing the cult of
Christ. Of course it was the cult of a Living Person.*
The cult of Christ is no feeble meditation upon
“historical” facts, but pneumatic communion with One
Present. The facts of the past first receive illumina-
tion from the heavenly transfiguration of the Present
One. But thus illumined they appeal to the souls of
those who are touched, thrilling, comforting, trans-
forming, edifying them. The eternal glory of the
Divine Child with His Father, His coming down to
earth in voluntary self-abnegation and servitude, His
life of poverty with the poor, His compassion, His
temptations and His mighty works, the inexhaustible
riches of His words, His prayers, His bitter suffering
and death, and after the cross His glorious Resur-
rection and return to the Father—all these episodes
in the great divine drama, whose peripeteia lay not
in hoary antiquity, but had been witnessed a score or
so of years ago, were intelligible to every soul, even
) xvii. 24 f., 29. % xvii. 27. 3 xvii, 28,
4 xvii. 31. 5 xvii. 31.
396 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
to the poorest, and particularly to the poorest. And
the titles with which the devotee decked the beloved
object of his cult could, many of them, claim domicile
in the souls of the poor and the simple: titles such
as Lamb of God, the Crucified, Shepherd and Chief
Shepherd,’ Corner Stone, Door and Way, the Corn
of Wheat, Bread and Vine, Light and Life, Head
and Body, Alpha and Omega, Witness, Mediator and
Judge, Brother, Son of Man, Son of God, Word of
God and Image of God, Saviour, High Priest, Lord,
King. Unfathomable in intellectual content, giving
scope to every variety of personal Christian experience
and every motive of self-sacrificing obedience, this
series contains not a single title that was likely to
impress by mere sacerdotal associations or unintelli-
gibleness. In the same way the gospel tradition of
worship, with its sturdy, popular tone, was far
superior to the fantastic, hysterical mythologies of the
other cults, which piled one stimulant on another.
So too the celebration of the mysteries of Christ
required no magnificent temple or awe-inspiring
cavern: it could take place wherever two or three were
gathered together in His name. All great move-
ments in the history of our race have been determined
by conditions of the heart of the people, not by
intellect. The triumph of the cult of Christ over all
other cults—the point must here be once more
emphasised—is in no remote degree explainable by
the fact that from the first Christianity took deep
root in the heart of the many, in the hearts of men
and women, old and young, bond and free, Jews,
Greeks, and Barbarians.’ In its early days Christianity
' Cf. pp. 97 ff. above.
3 The popular universality of the cult of Christ is reflected by such passages
of St. Paul’s writings as Gal. 111, 28, Col. iii. 11, 1 Cor, xii, 18,
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 397
made conquest of hearts not because it was a “ re-
ligion of redemption,” as people are fond of saying
nowadays, substituting the impersonal for the personal,
—but because it was the cult of a Redeemer.
The Primitive Christian cult of Christ was preserved
from doctrinaire congelation not only by the tendency
to realise daily the presence of the living Master, but
—and this is the third characteristic feature—by the
expectation of His second parusia and the hope of
Eternity that grew therefrom. The climax of the
speech on the Areopagus was a proclamation of
the approaching Last Judgment.’ This is not the
simple extension of the belief in immortality which
had long been quickening here and there in men’s
hearts; it is a clamping together of the fortunes of this
world with the future of the Kingdom of God such
as probably no other religion could show. Not only
were souls upheaved and brought to a state of tense
excitement, but consciences were filled with pro-
found earnestness.
And that is the last feature: the moral earnestness
of Christianity. ‘Fhe moral element is not a foreign
body within the cult, still less is it external to the
sacred precinct; it is indivisibly united with the religion
and the cult. No artist versed in things of the soul,
whether of the earlier or of the subsequent period,—
not Sophocles, nor Augustine, nor Dante, nor
Goethe has succeeded in disclosing deeper depths
of guilty consciousness than the apostolic pastors
found in themselves. No one has borne more
convincing testimony concerning personal responsi-
bility, the necessity of inward regeneration and
reconciliation with God, than the missionaries whom
the Spirit of Jesus Christ impelled through the
) Acts xvii. 31.
398 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
world. The organic connexion of religion with
morality, which from the first formed part of ‘the
essence of Christianity, and might be experienced
anew daily in the realisation of the presence of God
and of Christ, was intelligible even to a plain man
when next to love of God love of one’s neighbour
was demanded, and next to fellowship with Christ
the following after Him. Moreover, the organisa-
tions of the earliest churches were visible embodiments
of such social ethics as fairly filled the soul of ancient
man with enthusiasm. The idea of the unity of the
human race, classically expressed in the speech on
the Areopagus,’ united with St. Paul’s preaching of
the Body of Christ to strengthen and ennoble the
feeling of solidarity which then, as the inscriptions
have shown, pervaded the lower orders of society
like a healthy arterial current and had led to the
formation of numerous guilds’ among the common
people. In the “assemblies” of the Christians, which
were doubtless looked upon as guilds of Christ’
by the men of the time, that brotherhood which
proved itself effectual by charitable gifts dispatched
over land and sea took shape. Considered even from
the general point of view of social history they
were probably the most vigorous organisations, and
the richest in inspiration, of the whole Imperial
period. We must never forget that for them those
pages were penned whose remains were afterwards
saved from destruction in the New Testament. A
cult in whose conventicles a prayer like the Lord’s
Prayer could be offered and an ethical text be read
1 Acts xvii. 26.
2 The literature relating to ancient guilds (including religious guilds) is
well summarised in Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidisohen Volkes, I11.* p. 62 ff.
3 Cf, the works (quoted by Schiirer, op. cit., p. 62) of Georg Heinrici, who
was the first to point out this analogy with proper emphasis.
ILLUSTRATED FROM THE NEW TEXTS 399
such as the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, simple in
form as it is mighty in ethos, possessed powers of
gaining converts which were irresistible.
12. The paean of love chanted at Ephesus under
Nero for the poor saints of Corinth, has not perished
with Corinth. Annihilated for ever, the magnificence
of Nero’s Corinth lies buried to-day beneath silent
rubbish-mounds and green vineyards on the terraces
between the mass of the Acrocorinthus and the shore
of the Gulf: nothing but ruins, ghastly remnants,
destruction. The words of that paean, however, have
outlasted the marble and the bronzes of the Empire,
because they had an unassailable refuge in the secret
depths of the soul of the people. The Corinthian
Christians, who suffered other writings of St. Paul
to be lost, preserved these ; copies were taken and
circulated ; at the turning-point of the first and
second century 1 Corinthians was already known at
Rome, and probably St. Paul’s other letters were
also in circulation then in the Christian assemblies
of the great Mediterranean coast-cities, guarded
with the gospels and other texts of the fathers as
an heirloom and treasure, separated from the false
texts, becoming more and more identified with the
books, and finally incorporated in the Book of the
sacred writings of the New Testament.
Without shutting our eyes to the dangers that
lay in the Book when it came to be judged as
a book, we may nevertheless confess that this Book
of the New Testament has remained the most
valuable visible possession of Christendom, down
to the present day.
A book from the ancient East, and lit up by the
light of the dawn,—a book breathing the fragrance
400 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
of the Galilean spring, and anon swept by the
shipwrecking north-east tempest from the Mediter-
ranean,—a book of peasants, fishermen, artisans,
travellers by land and sea, fighters and martyrs,—
a book in cosmopolitan Greek with marks of Semitic
origin—a book of the Imperial age, written at
Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome,—a book of
pictures, miracles, and visions, book of the village
and the town, book of the people and the peoples,—
the New Testament, if regard be had to the inward
side of things, is the great book, chief and singular, of
human souls.
Because of its psychic depth and breadth this book
of the East is a book for both East and West, a
book for humanity: a book ancient but eternal.
And because of the figure that emerges from the
book—the Redeemer, accompanied by the multitude
of the redeemed, blessing and consoling, exhorting
and renewing, revealing Himself anew to every
generation of the weary and heavy-laden, and grow-
ing from century to century more great—the New
Testament is the Book of Life.
CHAPTER V
RETROSPECT—FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH
1. Asout mid-day on Easter Sunday, 1906, at
Ephesus, I was crossing in company with Friedrich
von Duhn and other friends a wildly luxuriant field
of acanthus on our way from the Library of Celsus to
the luncheon tent hospitably erected for us by the
Austrians, when my eye fell on an antique marble
acanthus capital that lay to the left of the path com-
pletely embedded in the thick, exuberant greenery of
living acanthus leaves.
That little episode kept recurring to my mind, and
its symbolism revealed itself afterwards when, as we
sailed the waters of Crete and the Cyclades, we found
leisure to meditate upon what we had seen.
The contrast between the conventionalised marble
acanthus leaves and their verdant wild originals seemed
to me an image of the contrast between the methods
of research characteristic of my own special studies.
On the one hand the method which convention-
alises the New Testament by isolating and canonising
its language, by turning its non-literary texts into
literature and its religious confessions into hard and
stony dogma ;—on the other hand the method which
takes possession in the work-room of every one who
studies the New Testament historically and psycho-
logically as the ancient East at large can and must
be studied at the present day.
This method does not look upon the New Testa-
401 26
402 RETROSPECT
ment as a museum of statues in marble and bronze,
but as a spacious garden, God’s garden, thriving in
luxurious growth under the spring sunshine of the
Kast. No painter can reproduce the pale green of
its young fig-leaves and the blood-red of its Easter
anemones ; the sombre melancholy of its olive groves,
the gentle tremor of its vine tendrils cannot be de-
scribed; and in the sacred precinct, where for the pure
a fountain of living water springs beneath primeval
cedars, the solemn silence bids the surveyor avaunt
who had approached with line and measuring staff.
Some day, when yet stronger waves of light come
flooding over to us from the East, it will be recognised
that the restoration of the New Testament to its
native home, its own age and social level, means
something more than the mere repatriation of our
sacred Book. It brings with it new life and depth to
all our conceptions of Primitive Christianity. But
already perhaps we may say that when theologians
engage in the study of inscriptions, papyri, and ostraca
of the Imperial period, their work is not the pastime
of cranks, but is justified by the imperious demands
of the present state of scholarship. For a long time
the theologians were content to don the cast-off gar-
ments of the philologists, and to drag with them
through the New Testament critical methods that
had long been given up by the masters of the scien-
tific study of antiquities, until they fairly dropped to
pieces. Are we now to wait another twenty years,
and then go limping after the philologists, who by
that time will have struck still better sources? Or
shall we not rather, undeterred by the absurd and
depreciatory remark about being “mere” philologists,
ourselves lay hands on the mighty mass of material
for research that a bountiful Providence has bestowed
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 408
on our unworthiness? In particular, the one great
historical fact which must be recognised if a man is
to be either a good exegetist and systematist or a
good preacher and pastor—the fact of the close in-
ward connexion between the gospel and the lower
classes—cannot be realised by visionary speculation,
however ingenious, working solely upon the common-
places of obsolete monographs. Such knowledge
must be deciphered and painfully deduced from the
thousands and tens of thousands of lines of torn and
mangled writing newly recovered from the age of the
New Testament. Albert Kalthoff’ was certainly
a gifted writer, and he certainly had a heart for the
lower orders of the people, but he was not fitted to
be the historian or even the historical philosopher
of the origins-of our faith, and his attempt to demo-
cratise Primitive Christianity was doomed to failure
because he had not by the tedious process of detailed
work made himself at home among the mass of
humanity in the Imperial period. Instead of inves-
tigating the real psyche of the masses and ultimately
discovering within the masses the leading personalities
who made the individual to be an individual indeed
and raised him out of the masses, Kalthoff and his
works ended like an unhappy “ stickit minister ” ?—
with a witches’ sabbath of homeless ideas.’
1 [The Bremen pastor (1850-1906), author of Die Entstehung des Christen-
tums, Jena, 1904, translated by Joseph McCabe under the title, The Rise of
Christianity, London (Watts), 1907. TR.]
2 (German, wie cin missratener Stiftler, “like an unsuccessful alumnus of
the (Tiibingen) Seminary.” The Protestant Seminary or “ Stift” at Tiibingen,
founded in 1537, has a very high reputation and is recruited from the pick of
the schools of Wiirttemberg. F.C. Baur and Ὁ, F. Strauss (the theologians)
F. T. Vischer (writer on aesthetic), Eduard Zeller (the philosopher), and
Morike (the poet) were among its distinguished pupils. But of course there
are also failures. TR.]
* Karl Kautsky’s theory must be similarly criticised ; cf. his book, Der
Ursprung des Christentums, Eine historische Untersuchung, Stuttgart, 1908.
In contrast therewith, because springing from real familiarity with the
404 RETROSPECT
2. The method of research suggested by the new
texts is valuable also in tracing the later history of
Christianity. I merely mention the fact, and may be
allowed to refer to the hints. given in Chapter IIL,
in the course of interpreting certain early Christian
letters emanating from the lower classes. Even when
Christianity had risen from the workshop and the
cottage to the palace and the schools of learning, it
did not desert the workshop and the cottage. The
living roots of Christianity remained in their native
soil—the lower ranks of society—and regularly in the
cycle of the years, when autumn had gathered the
topmost leaves and the dry boughs had snapped
beneath the storms of winter, the sap rose upward and
woke the buds from slumber, with promise of blossom
and rich days of fruitage.’ Jesus the carpenter and
Paul the weaver of tent-cloth mark the beginnings,
and again at the most momentous crisis in the history
of later Christianity there comes another homo novus
in the person of Luther, the miner’s son and peasant’s
grandson.
The history of Christianity, with all its wealth of
incident, has been treated much too often as the
history of the Christian literary upper class, the
history of theologians and ecclesiastics, schools,
councils, and parties, whereas Christianity itself has
modern scientific study of antiquity, cf. Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der
christlichen Kirchen, Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 26,
. 18.
ae Since writing the above I have come across the following beautiful
quotation from Raabe’s Hungerpastor in a review by Wilhelm Kosch (Deutsche
Literaturzeitung, 29 [1908] col. 2826) of August Sauer’s Literaturgeschichte
und Volkshunde, Prag, 1907, a book with an important bearing on our subject,
as regards the methods to be employed. Raabe says: ‘‘ The deliverers of
humanity rise from the depths, and as the springs of water come from the
depths to make the land fruitful, so the field of humanity is perpetually being
refreshed from the depths.” \[Wilhelm Raabe, ὃ. 1831, published his. most
characteristic novel, Der Hungerpastor, in 1864. TR.]
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 405
often been most truly alive in quarters remote from
councils and outside’ the polemical tractates of
Protestant zealots. One great merit of the book
on German Church History in the nineteenth century
by Christian Tischhauser,' lecturer at the Bale Mis-
sionary College,’ is that it takes account of under-
currents which are usually ignored either because
they erect themselves no literary monuments, or
because the humble literature produced by them is
overwhelmed, if it ever survives the day for which
it was written, and crowded out into the worst-
lighted rooms of the bibliotheca christiana by the
collected works of writers on academic Christianity
and church politics.
From gospel times down to our own day Christian
piety, simple and vigorous, has been a living force
in the middle and lower classes. There its own
popular forms iof expression were created and its
own popular types of personality were experienced.
To investigate the laws determining the formation
of these expressions, to study the psychology of the
inner life of spontaneous Christian piety, is a task
of great charm and value to the scholar and an
absolutely indispensable pre-requisite in the training
of a popular pastorate. The training of our candidates
for the ministry is as a rule far too scholastic for the
actual work they are called upon to do in practice.
Most of us criticise the forms of expression chosen
by popular Christianity in the past and in the
present, much as Blass did the letter written by the
bad boy Theon *—as if it were a case of degeneration.
} Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands in der ersten Hilfte des
19 Jahrhunderts, Basel, 1900. See the important review of the book by
W. Walther, Theologisches Literaturblatt, 21 (1900) col. 282,
? It is no mere accident that this task should have been taken up by one
connected with missionary work, 8. Cf. p. 187, above.
406 RETROSPECT
There are very few people, for instance, who can
enter into sympathetic relation with the popular
art of the Catacombs and with the naiveté, true-
hearted as it often is, of the early Christian popular
literature that has come down to us in the remains
of “ apocryphal” gospels and acts of apostles. Deluded
by the belief that there is no value except in things
that have really happened and can be proved to have
happened, we cast out the miracles in these popular
books, and with them the books themselves, upon
the dust-heap.
As a matter of fact, however, the child Jesus
healing the woodman who had been injured by the
falling axe,’ and the Jesus who restores the withered
hand of a stonemason,’ are striking proofs of the
intenseness of the confidence with which the various
handicrafts did homage to the carpenter’s Son, each
in its own place of work. We know how it will
be: to shepherds He will become the Chief Shepherd,
to sailors the steersman, to travellers the guide, to
soldiers the commander; He will bless the seed for
the peasants, and He will sit at table with us, a
daily invited guest, in the breaking of bread.
8. Thus I have already been led to speak of the
work in store for research.’ Further to speak on this
subject is at the same time easy and yet difficult for
me. It is easy because I believe [ can discern
problems in plenty, because I am convinced that
1 Of, p. 33, n, 3 above,
2 Special addition in the Gospel according to the Hebrews to Matt. xii, 10
and parallels.
3 Of course I speak here only of problems connected with the subject of
this book. For other New Testament problems see the programme suggested
in an important work by Johannes Weiss, Die Aufgaben der neutestamentlichen
Wissenschaft in der Gegenwart, Gottingen, 1908; and Paul Fiebig, Die
Aufgaben der neutestamentlichen Forschung in der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1909.
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 407
they must be solved, and because I would fain
regard a humble fraction of them as filling a part
of my own life. On the other hand I find it
difficult to speak of problems, because to do so is
to speak of things unfinished. It raises a vision of
books by the dozen lying open upon one another,
of hundreds of written slips and sheets of MS., of
library dust and work done by artificial light on dull
days, of hopes raised only to be dashed, and of the
investigator’s sorry bartering day after day a single
problem solved for ten others unsolved. This last
part of my book is difficult more especially because
I know that what the student strives to attain is
something great, whereas what he actually does
attain will be but the poor work of man after all,
and by speaking of the great thing too soon he
awakens expectations which he cannot fulfil, But
this, I take it, is the fate, and I do not hesitate to
say the happy fate, of all real research, showing how
closely akin it is to the work of the artist: its powers
must be strengthened by struggling towards an ideal
which is unattainable, because ideal, but which
nevertheless always remains the goal to be attained.
The most obvious task has reference to the written
records themselves. As many new texts as possible
must be discovered and published with all care.
The period of excavations for papyri in Egypt is
by no means ended, and many workers are still
required for the systematic collection and preservation
’ of the despised ostraca.
New editions of the inscriptions on stone, metal,
etc. are, as was shown in the first chapter, in active
preparation at the present time on a large scale.
But the amount of inscriptions still lying under-
ground or built into the walls of mediaeval and
408 RETROSPECT
modern edifices is beyond computation; the lime-
kilns fortunately have not swallowed up everything.
The remark may be added that, whereas the acqui-
sition of new texts, especially where excavations have
to be made, is largely a question of funds, it is still
possible at the present day to accomplish much
with a comparatively small outlay if the money is
entrusted to the right people. In Germany our
gratitude is especially due to the wealthy private
individuals who of late years have shown their
interest in the cause of learning by supplying the
means for excavations and purchases, England and
America having long ago set us an admirable example
in this direction.
The next duty of scholars is to discuss the texts
scientifically in their bearings on language, literature,
religious and general social history. Editors ought
to facilitate this discussion by making the arrange-
ment of the printed texts as convenient and clear
as possible. There should be no false shame about
providing (always, if possible) translations of the
texts; many hidden difficulties first show themselves,
even to the specialist, when he really begins to
translate sentence by sentence.
Of the many individual problems which the new
texts can help to solve there are some to which
I would call special attention. The types of popular
narrative style must be traced throughout the extent
of the ancient civilisations, particularly the following :
narratives of miracles,’ accounts of healing and de-
liverance from danger, narratives of expiation,’
dreams, visions, travellers’ tales of adventure, and
stories of martyrdom. The history of ancient letter-
' Cf. the works of Reitzenstein and others mentioned at p. 393 above.
? Hints in Buresch, Aus Lydien, p. 111 ff,
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 409
writing, accompanied by careful reconstruction of
autograph letters and fragments, must be continued
further with special attention to the formal phrase-
ology which is of such importance in problems of
chronology. ‘The letters and allied texts must more-
over be interpreted as reflections of the family life
and soul-life of antiquity, particularly with the object
of investigating the emotions at work among the
lower classes. All the resources of ancient folklore
are to be pressed into the service of this research: it
is not to be a mere collection of curiosities enabling
us to feel the contrast between ourselves and an-
tiquity ; it must be reconstitutive psychology of the
people, enlightening us as to our permanent contact
with antiquity.
4. Most of these problems, no doubt, will find
their solution beyond the pale of the Faculties of
Theology, although the hard-and-fast divisions be-
tween the guilds of learning have vanished here
and there, and are still vanishing, greatly to the
advantage of research. But there will be quite
enough for the theologians to do. The tasks pre-
sented to us may be summed up in a single sentence:
We have to establish, with the aid of the authentic
records of the ancient world,’ the positive position,
based on social history and psychology, on which
scholarship may take its stand for the study of the
New Testament. The one-sided method of retro-
spection, which has too often blinded us to religion
by its insistence on dogma, must give way to
inquiries concerning the history of religion and the
1 Including, of course, the authentic records of ancient Judaism and the ‘
other Semitic religions, of which we had not to speak in the present
context,
410 RETROSPECT
psychology of religion. That is the motto, as it
were, and in it more stress is to be laid than usual
upon the word religion. The study of purely religious
texts—manifestations of piety that certainly did not
proceed from learned meditation—must inevitably
open our eyes to the living piety with which the
New Testament is instinct.
These historical and psychological inquiries will
lead on to a new problem, the solution of which has
an equally important bearing on the detailed exegesis
and on the collective criticism of the classical texts
of Christianity, viz. the problem of defining the
various types of religious production within the New
Testament. What many have taken to be one vast
expanse of neutral tint will be seen to be a har-
monious succession of the most varied shades of
colour. What injustice, for instance, has been done
to the great Evangelist, St. John, by demanding
from him a “ progress of thought” in the speeches in
his gospel, and a “consecutive plan” in his epistle,!
as if his were a systematic nature. St. John has no
liking for progress along an unending straight road ;
he loves a circling flight, like his symbol, the eagle.
There is something hovering and brooding about his
production ; repetitions are in no wise abnormal with
him, but the marks of a contemplation which he
cherishes as a precious inheritance from St. Paul
and further intensifies. The other types of religious
production may be worked out with the same clear-
ness of definition—Jesus most certainly, Paul also,
and the rest of the seers, consolers, and evangelists.
In far higher degree than is possible to any kind of
dogmatist exegesis, the historical and psychological
exegesis will help us to understand why the cult
1 [1.6..1 John. TR.J
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 411
of Christ was destined to mark the turning-point
in the world’s religion. And the forces of inward
life which this exegetical method sets free once
more in the New Testament will bring forth fruit
in quite another manner in our own generation,
bestowing refreshment on the weary. and heavy-
laden (not on the well-filled and the bored) to-day
as on the first day.
5. Finally, among the multitude of particular
problems there is one which may be specially
selected as probably the most important task of
New Testament research at the present time, viz.
the preparation of a new Lexicon to the New
Testament.
A lexicon is only another name for a dictionary.
A dictionary, most people would say, is a very simple
thing—a book containing foreign words in alpha-
betical order, with their English meanings. So
there is nothing remarkable about it, nothing re-
markably learned or scientific; it is in the first
place a business enterprise, a book to meet the
requirements of practical life, ranking with Bradshaw
and the Post Office Directory: a portly volume
perhaps, but its inside merits more dependent on
the printer than on the author; the chief thing is
to. find a publisher, and all the rest will follow.
Memory reverts, perhaps, to our schooldays. That
awful passage in Caesar, where he describes how
he bridged the Rhine—how unintelligible it all
was, until we looked up the hard words in the
dictionary and saw in an instant what each one of
them “meant.” Nothing could have been simpler
for a boy who knew his A Β C and had the gump-
tion to look for trabs under the letter T.
412 RETROSPECT
If there is a tendency in some quarters to despise
dictionaries as ‘“ unscientific,” there exists a no less
widespread tendency, to bow slavishly to their pro-
nouncements. “It is in the dictionary, so it must
be right ”—that is the spoken or unspoken thought
in innumerable cases where a person hurriedly con-
sults the dictionary to settle the meaning of a
foreign word.
The scientific attitude towards lexicography begins
the minute we learn that the meaning of a given
word cannot always be got straight from the dic-
tionary, that every word presents a problem in
itself, and that we have no right to speak scien-
tifically about a word until we know its history,
2.6. its origin, its meaning, and how meanings have
been multiplied by division or modification.
Scientific lexicography undertakes, therefore, to
reconstruct the history of words from the earliest
times to which our sources go back, in fact from
the primitive prehistoric period of the language
which comparative philology establishes theoretically,
down to the time when we find the words spoken
or written by a given individual.
Hence it follows that lexicography, in spite of
many technical appendages, in spite of the fact
that the customary alphabetical arrangement of
words is dictated by practical and technical, and
not by scientific considerations, is after all one of
the historical sciences. It compiles the historical
statistics of the language.
Lexicography in this sense is still a young science.
Lexicons were first made thousands of years ago,
dictionaries on historical principles not until the nine-
teenth century. As examples I may mention two of
the latest big dictionaries, which are still incomplete:
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 418
the Egyptian Dictionary prepared by the Berlin
Academy of Sciences, and the Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae, a great Latin Dictionary which has the
joint support of a number of associated Academies.
A Thesaurus Graecae Linguae also exists, and
has often been cited in this book. It is a costly
work in nine huge folios, but it by no means fulfils
the requirements of scientific lexicography,’ and it
is altogether out of date. The same may be said of
all Greek dictionaries whatever, even of the “Great
Lexicon ”* now in course of publication at Athens,
which is only great, and not a lexicon at all. There
is probably no department of classical philology in so
backward a state at the present day as this of Greek
lexicography. There is not a single manual Greek
lexicon which takes adequate account of the great
advances that have been made in etymology,* or of
semasiological problems, or of the enormous additions
to our statistical materials furnished by the new
texts,’ though it is to be hoped the new edition of
Franz Passow’s old Lexicon undertaken by Wilhelm
Crénert will mark the beginning of an improvement.
The fact that our present lexicons hardly ever
1 Cf. the Hamburg address by Hermann Diels quoted below, p. 414, n. 2.
? Information on the history and requirements of Greek lexicography will
be found most conveniently in Leopold Cohn’s appendix on the subject
contributed to Karl Brugmann’s Griechische Grammatih, Miinchen, 1900.—A
very useful book is Hermann Schine, Repertorium gricchischer Worterver-
zeichisse und Speziallexika, Leipzig, 1907.
5 Meya Λεξικον της Ἑλληνίκης TAwoons Avecry Κωνσταντινιδου, ev Αθηναῖις,
1901 ff. (3 volumes so far). ;
* A good beginning among lexicons for school use has been made by
Hermann Menge, G@riechisch-Deutsches. Schulwérterbuch, Berlin, 1903.—For
the scientific lexicographer the most important work is Walther Prellwitz,
Etymologisches Wirterbuch der Griechischen Sprache, Gottingen, 1905.
* In recent years H, van Herwerden, following an example set by others,
has done most towards collecting the new details (Lexicon Graecum Supple-
torium et Dialecticum, Lugduni Batavorum, 1902; Appendix Lewici Graeci
- + », Lugd. Bat., 1904; Nova Addenda... in the Mélanges Nicole, Genéve,
1905, p. 241 ff,
Egypt, 3rd or 4th cent. AD. Now in
um. Papyrus from
Library, Heidelberg.
Fie. 62.— Onomasticon sacr
the University
{p. 415
\
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 415.
it in the inscriptions, papyri, etc. ; and the practical
needs of Biblical students suggest that at the present
time the more necessary of these two special tasks is.
the production of a revised New Testament Lexicon
which shall promote the work of research without
ceasing to be valuable for purposes of study.
The lexicography of the Greek Bible can look back
upon a venerable history. Philo of Alexandria, the
contemporary of Jesus and St. Paul, was in all
probability the author of a work explaining the
Hebrew names in the Septuagint, which was after-
wards used by Origen and St. Jerome. Portions
of this earliest lexical tradition made their way
among the Christian common people at an early
date, as is shown by a precious papyrus fragment '
of the 3rd or 4th century a.p. (Figure 62) from
Egypt, now in the Heidelberg University Liorary.
This fragment—one of the few quite early Christian
relics extant—is inscribed, probably for use as an
amulet, with powerful and comforting Biblical names
and phrases, accompanied by a Greek translation
which is dependent on the learned lexical tradition. ?
The text, exactly transliterated, is as follows :—
Apia ἴησους Ἰωσωτηρια Arima. Jesus: 90 ὃ salvation
Apinr φωσμουθυ Ariél : my light of God.
Atannr ἐσχυσθυ Azaél : strength of God.
ἐξ τρτο τοῖς (a word crossed out) . + «+» (a word crossed out)
5 Ιωμαν ἸΙαωπιστις 5 Joman: 9688 faith.
Ἰωβαβ Iw πατὴρ Jobab : J6 father.
Ηλι Ηλι σαζξαχθανι : θεμουθε Eli Eli sazachthani: my God,
μονεστιμεενκατελύπες my God, to what purpose
hast Thou forsaken me ?
1 Published by me in the Verdffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-
Sammlung 1. No. 5 (p. 86 f£.). ? Cf. my detailed commentary, ibd.
5 Jo and Jao are divine names, derived ultimately from Jahveh,
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 417
of two abridgments, one (Manuale) of medium and
the other (Syllabus) of quite small size.’
The greatest additions to New Testament lexico-
graphy were made by the eighteenth-century com-
pilers of ‘ Observations,” the most remarkable of
whom, Walch, has been already mentioned above.”
It was chiefly their material that supplied the later
lexicographers, including those whose books we still
use to-day: Wilke and Grimm, Cremer, Joseph Henry
‘Thayer, etc. Of these Thayer, working upon the
solid foundation of Wilke and Grimm, produced the
best and maturest results. But even Thayer is now
out of date. In the second and fourth chapters of
this book I have shown, I think, what an abund-
ance of material is now waiting to be worked up
systematically. For no other book of the ancient
world are the new texts of the Graeco-Roman period
lexically so productive as for the New Testament.
The first main task of the future lexicon will be
to place the New Testament vocabulary in living
linguistic connexion with the contemporary world.
‘Only in this way can the right place be found for
every word, the place to which it belongs in the
complete history of the Greek language, and only in
this way can the points of contact and of contrast
be established between the contemporary world and
the cult-words used in the gospels and apostolic
writings. An author who undertook a New Testa-
ment Lexicon at the present day without sketching
in each article the history and statistics of words
and meanings, would banish the apostle of the
world from his own world, banish the gospel from
1 T myself possess altogether 29 different editions of the Lexicon, Manuale,
and Syllabus, and should be very grateful for information about any copies of
the three works, 2 Page 10, ἢ. 4,
3. Cf. my review in the Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1898, p, 920 ff.
27
418 RETROSPECT
history, shut off the New Testament from the light
of research, and take up his own position far
behind Thayer and Grimm, even far behind Cremer,
along with Stellhorn and Schirlitz, i.e. outside the
pale of scientific lexicography altogether. ‘The second
main task is to ascertain carefully the phases in the
changes of meaning. It will first be necessary, it is
true, to bestow some more reflection on the nature
and laws of the changes to which religious concepts are
liable—this being perhaps the most interesting branch
of the whole subject of semasiology.| The third main
task is to simplify once more and put warmth again
into the popular concepts of Primitive Christianity,
which have been artificially complicated and deprived
of life by scholastic prejudice and a too anxious
process of isolation. The new Lexicon will bring
out once more the simplicity, inwardness, and force
of the utterances of evangelists and apostles. And
as in the days long gone an Egyptian Christian wrote
down on the papyrus the interpretation of powerful
and comforting holy names to be his shield and
buckler against all evils, so perhaps the new Lexicon
will meet with that best of all rewards, far exceeding
all scholarly recognition, the reward of exerting an
influence in real life. It may be that in a lonely
parsonage in the Westerwald,’ or in the hired lodgings
of the city preacher, it will help on Saturday mornings
to unfold the thought in the sacred text to the benefit
of the Sabbath congregation.
1 Detached problems of religious semasiology are touched on in my lexical
studies on “Elements” (στοιχεῖα) in the Encyclopaedia Biblica ΤΙ., London,
1901, col. 1258 ff., and on “ἱλαστήριος und ἱλαστήριον," Zeitschrift fiir die neu-
testamentliche Wissenschaft, 4 (1903) p. 193 ff. Of. also p. 208 n., etc. above.
? [A rather bleak hilly district of Nassau, north-west of Coblenz, bounded
by the Dill (p. 113, n, 1 above) and the Lahn. The author was born at a village
on the Lahn, and Herborn, where he and Pasor worked (pp. 229n., 416 above),
is on the Dill. Tz.J
FUTURE WORK OF RESEARCH 419
Inspired by such objects to work for, the New
Testament researcher hears with composure and
without lasting disgust the unbrotherly insults of
excited ignoramuses who, agitating for the quiet
Kingdom of God with the paltry means of this
world, and imitating in their dwarfishness the in-
tolerance of the heroes, think themselves able to
break the bonds that connect him with his fathers
and forefathers—bonds that he would fain cherish
with reverence and gratitude.
Such noise from the street disturbs him less,
perhaps, than a feeling that comes over him at times
in his own study. He feels there is a painful side
to the learned work of the scholar—a risk that amid
the chaos of paper-slips he may lose his own self,
while the age he lives in calls for men who can do
more than decipher old handwriting, excerpt words
on paper-slips, and read proof-sheets. In the midst
of his learned labours comes the question: Is not
more accomplished by the men who hoe the vine-
yard, who descend the mine, repair the steamer’s
screw, help a degenerate back to the right path,
exhaust themselves as teachers, leaders, and evange-
lists among the masses—do they not all do more work
for God’s cause than the man who proposes to write
a new book, thus adding to the hundredweights’
which already bind our generation in slavery to the
past? ...
It is always the New Testament itself that calls
the man of research back from his wandering thoughts
to work on the New Testament again. Daily it
bears witness to him of its own veriest nature: the
little Book is not one of the paralysing and enslaving
forces of the past, but it is full of eternal strength to
make strong and to make free.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
JEWISH PRAYERS FOR VENGEANCE FOUND AT RHENEIA
(Reprinted with slight alterations and with the illustrations now first added,
from Philologus 61 [1902] pp. 253-265)
Tux “ prayers for vengeance” from Rheneia (Rhenea), though
published long ago and several times discussed, at least in part,
were first made really accessible in 1901, by Adolf Wilhelm.’
He not only reproduced them in facsimile, but also for the
first time settled with certainty the questions of their connexion,
their provenance, and their age. They are inscribed on two
avestones, one of which is now in the Museum at Bucharest,
gr 9
and the other in the National Museum at Athens.? That the
stele at Athens originally came from Rheneia (Magna Delos),
the burial-place of the inhabitants of ancient Delos, Wilhelm
was able to show from a note which he re-discovered in the first
publication ?; and he proved clearly that the stone at Bucharest
was of the same origin. Wilhelm also recognised that the
inscriptions were Jewish and closely connected with the text
of the Septuagint, yet even after his fundamental labours the
texts still require to be interpreted, and their high value for
the history of the Jewish religion in the Hellenistic world still
stands in need of appreciation.
1 Jahreshefte des Osterreichischen Archdologischen Institutes in Wien, 4
‘1901) Supplement, cols. 9-18. The whole previous literature is there referred
0. Incol. 9, ἢ. 1, read LXXVII instead of XXXVIL
2 Even Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,? 11. (1900) p. 676 £.,
yonsidered the Bucharest stone as identical with the Athenian, and said it
same from Aegina to Athens, and from there to Bucharest. This seems,
aowever, to have put Wilhelm upon the right track.
3 Hapédition scientifique de Morée . .. Architecture, Sculptures, Inscrip-
dionset Vues . . . publiées par Abel;Blouet, III., Paris, 1836, plate xiii., cf p.7;
ind especially the exhaustive commentary by Le Bas in the separately paged
supplement to this work: Inscriptions copiées dans les iles de la mer Egée,
2. 41 Κ,
423
424 APPENDIX I
I will first describe the stones and reproduce the texts accord-
ing to Wilhelm, checking his statements by my own observations
of the originals. ‘The Bucharest stele, being the less damaged
of the two, had better be described first. I saw it on 5 April,
1906. It is made of white marble, broken at the top, provided
with a tenon underneath, and now still 16} inches high, 12%
inches broad, and 24 inches thick. Both sides of the stone
have the same inscription, but with a different division into lines
and other trifling variations (Figures 64 and 65). Above the
written words on both sides there is a pair of uplifted hands,
with the palms turned outwards. The text of the side A
(Figure 64), which still shows traces of having been originally
picked out in red, runs as follows (the words have been
separated ; accents and punctuation are supplied, and the
variant readings of the side B are noted- below; no attempt
has been made to exhibit the differences in the division into
lines) :—
᾿Επικαλοῦμαι καὶ ἀξιῶ τὸν θεὸν τὸν
ὕψιστον, τὸν κύριον τῶν πνευμάτων
καὶ πάσης σαρκός, ἐπὶ τοὺς δόλων φονεύ-
σαντας ἢ φαρμακεύσαντας τὴν τα-
λαίπωρον ἄωρον Ἡράκλεαν ἐχχέαν-
τας αὐτῆς τὸ ἀναίτιον αἷμα ἀδί-
κως, ἵνα οὕτως γένηται τοῖς φονεύ-
σασιν αὐτὴν ἢ φαρμακεύσασιν καὶ
τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν, κύριε ὁ πάντα ἐ-
10 φορῶν καὶ οἱ ἄνγελοι θεοῦ, ὦ πᾶσα ψυ-
χὴ ἐν TH σήμερον ἡμέραι ταπεινοῦται
μεθ᾽ ἱκετείας, ἵνα ἀγδικήσης τὸ αἷμα τὸ ἀ-
ναίτιον ζητήσεις καὶ τὴν ταχίστην.
Or
3 Sorat: B δολω | 6 avartiov: B αν. (]τίον | 7 ovtws:
B of.]Jrws | 105: Wilhelm ᾧ | 11 74: Wilhelm τῇ | ἡμέραι:
Βημερα | 12 ἐγδικήσης : Wilhelm ἐγδικήσῃς | aa: Β αἴ. .Ja
The Athenian stele, which I saw on 8 May, 1906, is also of
white marble, adorned with a pediment above, and provided
with a tenon below; it is much damaged above and on the
left side, but still 22 inches high, 13 inches broad, and 3}
inches thick. It is inscribed only upon one side; and there is
not the slightest doubt, judging from the general structure
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Fie. 66.—Marble Stele from Rheneia, inscribed
with a Prayer for Vengeance on the Murderers of
Marthina, a Jewess of Delos, circa 100 B.c. Now
in the National Museum, Athens. By permission of
the Imperial Austrian Archaeological Institute.
[Ρ. 425
APPENDIX I 425
of the mutilated upper portion, and from certain remaining
traces, that above the inscription there was engraved a pair
of hands similar to those on the Bucharest stele’ (Figure 66).
The text, which may be confidently restored with the help of
the Bucharest inscription, runs as follows :—
[Ἐπικ]αλο[ῦμαι καὶ ἀξιῶ τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕ-}
[ψηστοῖν, τὸν κύριον] τῶϊν πνευμάτων
[κ]αὶ πί ἀ]σίης σαρκό]ς, ἐπὶ τοὺς [δόλω!]}
φοϊνεύσαντας] ἢ φαρμακεύσαν-
5 ταῖς τὴν ταλαΐπωρον ἄωρον Map-
[θ]ν[ην ἐχχέαν]τας αὐτῆς τὸ ἀναίτι-
ον αἷμα ἀδίκω]ς, ἵνα οὕτως γένηται
τοῖς φον[εύσα]σιν αὐτὴν ἢ φαρμακεύ-
σασιν καὶ [τοῖς τ]έκνοις αὐτῶν, κύριε
10 ὁ πάντα ἐϊφ]ορῶν καὶ οἱ ἄνγελοι θεοῦ, ὧι
πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἐν τῆ σήμερον ἡμέραι τα-
πεινοῦται μεθ᾽ ἱκετείας, ἵνα ἐγδικήσηϊ ς]
τὸ αἷμα τὸ ἀναίτιον καὶ τὴν ταχίστη[ν].
11 τῆ : Wilhelm τῇ | 19 ἐγδικήση[ς] : Wilhelm ἐκδικήσῃΪ ].
The question of the age of these texts at Athens and
Bucharest shall be postponed until after their interpretation ;
but we may remark here that according to Wilhelm they both
originated not only at the same spot, Rheneia, but also at the
same time. There is such close agreement between the two
inscriptions throughout that we are entitled to interpret them
as two texts of the same original.
It is evident at the first glance that the texts are either
of Jewish or of Christian origin, for they are a mosaic from the
Septuagint Bible which was common to the Greek Jews and
the Greek Christians. The echoes of the New Testament
observed by Otto Hirschfeld? are in fact, as closer comparison
shows, echoes of the Septuagint. The texts contain nothing
specifically and exclusively Christian either in formula or in
symbol; nevertheless decisive judgment must be suspended
until the interpretation has been attempted.
1 Wilhelm, col. 12.
2 Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserl.Akademie
der Wissenschaften [zu Wien], 77 (1874, Parts IV.-VL) Ὁ. 404,
426 APPENDIX I
The pair of hands above the writing is, as Wilhelm! has
already shown, a by no means uncommon symbol of the
invocation of divine help on pagan stones. It might very
easily pass over into the usage of Jews and Christians, since they
too lifted up their hands in praying.? In this case, moreover,
a prayer is being uttered—a prayer for vengeance on the un-
known miscreants by whom: two murders had been committed.
The rites prescribed by Old Testament law for atonement in
the case of murder by an unknown hand facilitated the borrow-
ing of the symbolic pair of hands in this case.3 Though this
ritual, as shown by our texts, was not observed in the present
case, we may nevertheless suppose that here and there a devout
person, who knew his Bible, at sight of the uplifted hands
would think not only of hands in prayer, but also of hands free
from blood.‘
The prayer begins with the verb ἐπικαλοῦμαι, which occurs in
the same way very commonly in the LXX and in early Christian Ὁ
texts,” and often in the forms of prayer found in magical texts.°
The combination ἐπικαλοῦμαι . . . τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον has
good analogies, e.g. in Ecclus. xlvi. 5, ἐπεκαλέσατο τὸν ὕψιστον
δυνάστην ; xvii. 5, ἐπεκαλέσατο γὰρ κύριον τὸν ὕψιστον ;
2 Mace. iii. 31, ἐπικαλέσασθαι τὸν ὕψιστον. We also find
ἀξιῶ used of prayer, e.g. LXX Jer. vii. 16, xi. 14 (synonymous
with προσεύχομαι), Ecclus, li. 14, and frequently in the second
book of Maccabees. It is still more significant that both
verbs are found together in the same sentence in Jer. xi. 14,
though not in the same combination as in our text. On the
1 Col. 16f. There also will be found the full literature on this symbol. See
also Rudolf Pagenstecher, Die Auferweckung des Lazarus auf einer rémischen
Lampe, Extrait du Bulletin de la Société Archéologique d’Alexandrie, No. 11,
Alexandrie, 1908, p. 6 f.
? Besides the Old Testament passages cf. for example 1 Tim. ii. 8.
3. Deut. xxi, 6, 7, καὶ πᾶσα ἡ γερουσία τῆς πολέως ἐκείνης οἱ ἐγγίζοντες τῷ τραυματίᾳ
vipovra τὰς χεῖρας ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τῆς δαμάλεως τῆς νενευροκοπημένης ἐν τῇ
φάραγγι. καὶ ἀποκριθέντες ἐροῦσιν" αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν οὐκ ἐξέχεαν τὸ αἷμα
τοῦτο κτλ.
‘ The kohanim hands represented on late gravestones of the descendants
of Aaron (Immanuel Low, Der Finger in Litteratur und Folklore der Juden,
Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an David Kaufmann, Breslau, 1900, p. 68) are of
course not to be thought of in this connexion.
5 Separate quotations are unnecessary.
* Often, for example, in the texts edited by Wessely.
APPENDIX I 427
expression τὸν θεὸν τὸν ὕψιστον Wilhelm? refers to Εἰ. Schiirer’s
and Ἐς Cumont’s well-known researches on the cult of the
“Most High God,” but what we have here is not a divine
name in use among monotheistic worshippers who derived it
only indirectly from the Bible: it is in fact the direct equivalent
of the Biblical γῶν bx.
Very remarkable too is the next divine name, τὸν κύριον
τῶν πνευμάτων καὶ πάσης σαρκός, which is obviously (as also
in Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. lxiv., δεσπότης τῶν πνευμάτων καὶ κύριος
πάσης σαρκός) based upon the formulae, LXX Numbers xvi. 22,
xxvii. 16, θεὸς or κύριος ὁ θεὸς τῶν πνευμάτων καὶ πάσης
σαρκός. The first part of the formula, “ Lord of the spirits,”
is especially characteristic. Already in the Septuagint formula
the πνέυματα are the ministering spirits, the angels, who in
Hebrews i. 14 are expressly so called. In the second part of
the Book of Enoch “ Lord of the spirits ” is an almost constant
appellation of the Deity. Elsewhere the form is not to my
knowledge a common one, apart from the Greek liturgies and
magical texts; of earlier date may be mentioned 2 Macc. iii. 24,
on good authority, and the above-cited passage from the first
Epistle of Clement.
For the construction of ἐπικαλοῦμαι καὶ ἀξιῶ with ἐπί, I
have no Septuagint example to offer. But the sense of
“against,” rightly advocated also in 2 Cor. i, 23 (μάρτυρα
τὸν θεὸν ἐπικαλοῦμαι! ἐπὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ψυχήν) by Heinrici and
others,’ is quite certain, The phrase δόλωι φονεύσαντας at
once reminds us of the old Biblical law, which distinguishes
between accidental homicide (Deut. xix. 4, ὃς ἂν πατάξῃ τὸν
πλησίον αὐτοῦ οὐκ εἰδώς, cf. verse 5, τύχῃ) and deliberate
murder (Exodus xxi. 14, ἐὰν δέ τις ἐπιθῆται τῷ πλησίον
ἀποκτεῖναι αὐτὸν δόλ ῳῇ. The word δόλῳ is also used in
Deuteronomy xxvii, 24 (ὁ τύπτων τὸν πλησίον δόλῳ) in the
forensic sense,
The words immediately following are all found in the LKX
(φονεύω very often ; φαρμακεύω, 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6, Psalm lvii,
[Iviii.] 6, 2 Macc. x. 13; ταλαίπωρος frequently, e.g. of a
woman Psalm cxxxvi. [cxxxvii.] 8 ; ἄωρος frequently, ¢.g., with
nothing to correspond in the Hebrew, Proverbs x. 6, xi. 30,
1 Col. 16.
* Cf. p. 306, n. 1 above,
428 APPENDIX I
xiii. 2); but none of them is specially characteristic ; the same
is the case with the common word ἀδίκως.
On the names of the two murdered girls, Heraclea and
Marthina, Wilhelm,! who correctly explains the latter as formed
from Μάρθα, has already made all necessary remarks. He con-
jectures that two other gravestones discovered in Rheneia with
the inscriptions Ἡράκληα χρηστὴ χαῖρε (Corpus Inscriptionum
Graecarum 11, add. No. 2322 b. 69; Le Bas, fies, 2039) and
Μαρθείνη Εὐτάκτον χρηστὴ χαῖρε (Corpus Inscriptionum
Graecarum Il, add. No. 2322 Ὁ. 78; Le Bas, fles, 2041) relate
to the same two murdered victims, but concerning this I do
not venture to pronounce. But I would at least raise the
question whether we are to suppose two separate murders at
different times, or whether Heraclea and Marthina met their
death at the murderer’s hand simultaneously. Seeing that
the two inscriptions agree even in the decisive passage, ll. 10 ff.,
I take the latter assumption to be more probable, though
the other is of course not altogether excluded.
Very familiar to the reader of the Septuagint is ἐχχέαντας
αὐτῆς τὸ ἀναίτιον αἷμα (A 5f, B 6). αἷμα ἐκχέω is a
phrase, not indeed specifically “ Biblical,”? but very common
in the Greek Bible. αἷμα ἀναίτιον occurs five times, and in
Deuteronomy xix. 10 we have the whole phrase, καὶ οὐκ
ἐκχυθήσεται αἷμα ἀναίτιον. After the two verbs of asking
iva (line 7) is used instead of ὅπως, as often in the Bible and
other Hellenistic texts.? The sense of the petition ἵνα οὕτως
γένηταν κτλ.» which has a formal ring, is: “May the guilty
murderers be overtaken by a violent death like that of their
innocent victims”; οὕτως is strongly accentuated and seems
really to mean “in the same way,” a use which we may under-
stand as an abridgment of expressions like LXX Judges i. 7,
καθὼς οὖν ἐποίησα, οὕτως ἀνταπέδωκέ μοι ὁ θεός. On the
subject of retaliation the prayer takes exactly the view of
Genesis ix. 6, ὁ ἐκχέων αἷμα ἀνθρώπου ἀντὶ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ
ἐκχυθήσεται, ὅτε ἐν εἰκόνι θεοῦ ἐποίησα τὸν ἄνθρωπον, and
Deuteronomy xix. 10-13. The addition of the phrase καὶ τῶν
τέκνων αὐτῶν is thoroughly Biblical, as in Exodus xx. 5, ἐγὼ
γάρ εἶμι κύριος ὁ θεός cov, θεὸς ζηλωτὴς ἀποδιδοὺς ἁμαρτίας
1 Col. 14 ff. 2 The dictionaries quote it from Aeschylus.
® Eg. Epistle of Aristeas (ed. Wendland) 17, 193, 226, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι ἵνα.
APPENDIX I 429
πατέρων ἐπὶ τέκνα ἕως τρίτης καὶ τετάρτης γενεᾶς τοῖς
μισοῦσί pe, cf. Exodus χχχίν. 7, Numbers xiv. 18.
“The all-seeing Lord” is also a not uncommon formula?! in
the Bible: LXX Job xxxiv. 23, 6 γὰρ κύριος πάντας (Cod. A
τὰ πάντα)" ἐφορᾷ : similarly 2 Macc. xii. 22, xv. 2: οἵ, Ad-
ditions to Esther v. 1 (xv. 2), τὸν πάντων ἐπόπτην θεόν ;
3 Mace. ii. 21, ὁ πάντων ἐπόπτης Geos; 2 Macc. vii. 35
(cf. iii. 89), τοῦ παντοκράτορος ἐπόπτου θεοῦ. Later echoes
of this formula are very marked: 6.5. Epistle of Aristeas (ed.
Wendland) 16, τὸν yap πάντων ἐπόπτην καὶ κτίστην θεόν ; Clem.
Rom. 1 Cor. lxiv., 6 παντεπόπτης θεός, cf. lv. 6, 11χ. .3, τὸν
ἐπόπτην ἀνθρωπίνων ἔργων ; Hadrumetum lead tablet,’ 36,
παντεφόπτου ; a prayer in the Great Magical Papyrus (Paris)
calls the holy πάρεδρον of the Great God (the angels)
παντεπόπτας (1. 1969) and éddmras* (1. 1353); in the same
papyrus God is called ὁ δύσιν καὶ ἀνατολὴν ἐφορῶν καὶ
μεσημβρίαν καὶ ἄρκτον ἀποβλέπων ὃ (]. 2195 f.).
The invocation of the ἀνγελοι θεοῦ (line 10) does not warrant
us in assuming a special cult of the angels. The prayer, in
fact, keeps well within the bounds of the Biblical creed. An
invocation of the angels, and the assurance that the angels
carry out God’s will, are both found in LX X Psalm οἷ]. (ciii.) 20,
εὐλογεῖτε τὸν κύριον πάντες οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ, δυνατοὶ ἰσχύϊ
ποιοῦντες τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ. The corresponding ideas on this
subject in later Jewish belief have already been pointed out
by Wilhelm.®
The most important and, for the general criticism of the
texts, decisive passage is undoubtedly line 10 ff. : ὧν πᾶσα ψυχὴ
ἐν TH σήμερον ἡμέραι ταπεινοῦται μεθ᾽ ἱκετείας. The phrases
πᾶσα ψυχή, ἐν τῇ σήμερον ἡμέρᾳ, ταπεινόω, ἱκετεία, are all
more or less common in the Greek Old Testament. The
whole sentence has the sound of LXX Leviticus xxiii. 29,
πᾶσα ψυχή, ἥτις μὴ ταπεινωθήσεται ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ταύτῃ,
which passage Wilhelm’ probably had in mind. But we should
~ | Of. Bibelstudien, p. 47; Bible Studies, p. 298 ; and p. 351, n. 1 above.
Codex A, therefore, as Wilhelm pointed out (col. 15f.), has the same
reading as our inscriptions imply, but with the article added, The article,
however, is wanting in 2 Mace. xii. 22, xv. 2.
® Bibelstudien, pp. 30,47; Bible Studies, pp. 276, 293.
“ Wessely, pp. 79, 78. 5 Wessely, p. 99 f.
® Col, 18. 7 Col. 16.
430 APPENDIX I
explain little by the bare reference to this formal dependence
on the Greek Bible. The question is: What is to be under-
stood by “ this same day, on which every soul is humbled with
supplication”? It must refer to some day of. celebration—as
remarked by Dittenberger,! though he gives no further ex-
planation. From the text itself it seems only to follow that
a general day of prayer is meant. But we find more than
this. The expression ψυχὴν ταπεινοῦν is obviously used, not
in the general ethical sense of “humbling one’s self” (as in
LXX Isaiah ii. 17; Psalm xliii. [xliv.] 26; Ecclus, ii. 17, vii. 17;
cf. the use of ταπεινοῦν in the Gospels and other early Christian
texts), but, as the context surely shows, in the technical sense
of “ mortifying the flesh” = “ fasting.” The Greek expression
is an exact imitation of the Hebrew wa) mw and is used thus
in LXX Leviticus xvi, 29, 31; xxiii. 27, 29, 32; Isaiah lviii.
3, 5 (in verse 10 it means “to hunger,” probably by an
extension of this sense); Judith iv. 9 (cf. verse 13). In
Psalm xxxiv. [xxxv.] 13 it is expressly explained : καὶ ἐταπείνουν
ἐν νηστείᾳ τὴν ψυχήν μου. ‘Thus our text speaks not only
of a day of prayer, but of a day of prayer and fasting. Are
we then to imagine a day of prayer and fasting specially
appointed on account of the murder of the two girls? The
authorities frequently mention? public days of fasting on the
occasion of some great public danger or heavy visitation ;
especially instructive, for instance, is the statement in the
Mishna (Taanith III. 6) that the elders of Jerusalem once
proclaimed a fast because the wolves had devoured two little
children. We might assume from the nature of things that
these days of fasting were also days of prayer, but the fact
is expressly confirmed by the account in Judith iv. 9-13.
On the other hand, against the assumption that the fellow-
believers of the two murdered maidens in Delos observed an
extraordinary day of prayer and fasting whilst the awful shock
of the dark deed was still upon them,’ we must set the words
1 Op, cit., p. 677, “Quinam potissimum dies festus intelligendus sit, .. .
diiudicandum relinquo.”
2 The best collection of the evidence is still that in Winer’s old Bibi.
Realwirterbuch 1.5} (1847) p. 364 £.
3M. Meinertz, of Braunsberg, writing from Berlin, 5 September, 1908,
advocates this assumption, connects the ta-Clause with ἱκετείας, and takes
πᾶσα ψνχή to mean the whole Jewish community of Delos,
or
APPENDIX I 431
πᾶσα ψυχή, which point rather to a general day of prayer
and fasting. The word πᾶσα must of course not be pressed ;
it does not mean every person whatever, but every one that
raises his hands in prayer to the “ Most High God, the Lord
of the spirits and of all flesh,” in other words, every Jew.
Thus we have already taken sides on the question whether
the text is Christian or Jewish. ‘he fast day on which all
fast and pray is evidently the jom hakkippurim, the great
Day of Atonement, to which the above-mentioned provisions
of the law concerning ψυχὴν ταπεινοῦν relate. All the other
expressions in the texts might be either Jewish or Christian ;
the really characteristic sentence, however, fairly provokes
reference to the Jewish Day of Atonement, whilst there is
scarcely an early Christian festival to which it could be made
to apply without forcing the meaning. Wilhelm’s conjecture
that the texts are Jewish is admirably confirmed by this
explanation.
On this point a further remark must be made. That a
prayer for vengeance should be offered on the Day of Atone-
ment is not remarkable, when we find that later prayers
for use on that day also ask for vengeance for blood that
has been shed.! I cannot refrain from remarking that, while
prayers such as these are certainly below the level of the
prayer in Luke xxiii. 34, the prayer in Revelation vi. 10 is
not a whit above them. ͵
. The last two lines also are in agreement with the whole
tenor of the rest. I suppose that the copy given to the stone-
cutter ran: ἵνα ἐγδικήσης τὸ αἷμα τὸ ἀναίτιον καὶ ξητήσης τὴν
ταχίστην, and can see no necessity for Dittenberger’s trans-
position (adopted by Wilhelm?) ἵνα ξητήσῃς τὸ ἀναίτιον αἷμα
καὶ ἀγδικήσῃς τὴν ταχίστην. The two verbs are synonymous,
so that in LXX Joel iii. [iv.] 21, for instance, Cod. A writes
ἐκδικήσω τὸ αἷμα instead of ἐκζητήσω τὸ αἷμα. αἷμα ἐκδικεῖν
! A specialist would have more quotations to offer than I can command.
But I think « single quotation at second hand sufficient in this case, J. A.
Eisenmenger, Hntdecktes Judenthwm, 1700, II. p. 101, quotes from the Dicke
Thephilia, Frankfurt a. M., 1688, fol. 50, col. 2, a prayer for the Day of
Atonement: ‘“ Make me also worthy to behold the coming of Thine Anointed,
and avenge Thy people, the House of Israel; and avenge the blood of Thy
servants that has been shed, swiftly and in our days.”
2. Col. 13,
΄
432 APPENDIX I
occurs elsewhere in LXX Deuteronomy xxxii. 43, 2 Kings
ix. 7; αἷμα ξητεῖν is used like αἷμα ἐκζητεῖν, which is very
common in the LXX (cf. also Luke xi. 50).
The ending τὴν ταχίστην, a formula found also in 1 Mace,
xi, 22, reminds. one of the very common ἤδη ἤδη ταχὺ ταχύ
of many prayers of conjuration.!_ But similar formulae can be
cited from prayers in official use among the Jews: the twelfth
Berakah of the Shemoneh Esreh, to mention but one example,’
runs: “. . . May all they that do evil perish quickly, and may
they all right soon be rooted out; and do Thou cripple and
break in pieces and overthrow and bend the haughty, soon,
with speed, in our days.”* We are also reminded of the early
Christian ἐν τάχει, Luke xviii. 8, Romans xvi. 20, Revelation
i. 1, xxii. 6, and ταχύ (frequent in Revelation). The observation
of L. Blau,‘ that in Jewish texts of conjuration (as might be
expected) echoes of the prayer-book are not wanting, receives
new confirmation from this little touch.
The interpreter has yet another question to answer. Why is
the text repeated in duplicate on the Bucharest stone? We
must conjecture that the prayer was to be made more insistent
by this means. Repetition makes an incantation “more
powerful,” ° so we may suppose the same to hold good here.
The question as to the age of our text was answered by
Le Bas, the first editor, on the supposition that he was dealing
with a Christian epitaph. From its similarity to certain
cursing formulae in Christian epitaphs, or at the end of
Christian manuscripts, or in the ritual of the Church, he felt
obliged to conclude, although the shape of the letters did not
seem to suit the assumption, that the inscription belonged
to the 11th or 12th century a.v.! A reflecting reader of his
investigations might easily, without recourse to other works,
1 Cf, for example, Bibelstudien, p. 43; Bible Studies, p. 289.
2 The later prayer-books furnish many instances ; cf. “swiftly and in our
days” in the prayer already quoted from the Dicke Thephilla.
4 The translation by Schiirer, Gesch. des 2, Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu
Christi, IL.3 p. 461, has been followed.
4 Das altjiidische Zauberwesen, p. 110.
5 Tbid., p. 86 with reference to Jewish conjurations. Eduard Norden (post-
card, Gross-Lichterfelde W., 4 September, 1908) confirms this conjecture, and
refers to his commentary on Vergil, Aeneid VI. 45 (p. 136).
APPENDIX I 433
have observed two things. The characteristic Christian phrases
in the late cursing formulae quoted by Le Bas were wanting
in the text of the inscription, and the actual resemblances
between the inscription and the late formulae occurred only
in the gaps of the text which Le Bas had filled up con-
jecturally.! It was therefore quite right of Wilhelm not
to beg the question by assuming the Christian origin of the
text, but to start from the form of the letters and the outward
appearance of the stone. He arrived at the result that the
writing was that of the second century z.c.! This great
difference in the opinions of two epigraphists might well make
us diffident, were it not that between 1836 and 1901 there lies
more than half a century ,of epigraphical research, which
brought an enormous increase of data and steady progress in
method. The history of the exposition of our texts is the
history of that progress. In 1874 Otto Hirschfeld? declared
that “to judge from the writing” the Bucharest text (the
chronology of which does not differ from that of the Athenian)
could scarcely be later than the second century 4.0. In 1900
W. Dittenberger? from the style of the writing placed it in
the first century a.v. Wilhelm has now set the date of the
Athenian text still further back, and three specialists, after
inspecting the stone, have corroborated his opinion. At his
request, Th. Homolle, P. Wolters, and Baron F. Hiller von
Gaertringen examined the writing, without regard to the
subject-matter, and assigned it to the second century B.c.,
“without of course excluding the possibility that it was
written in the early decades of the following century, but in
any case before the pillage in the year 88 8.0, and the fall
of Delos.” 4
In this judgment we may have full confidence. The proba-
bility of a Christian origin has been already disproved by
interpretative criticism. ‘The simplicity of the texts bespeaks
a high antiquity ; the intricate confusion of the later incanta-
: ‘ Le Bas restores lines 2 and 3 thus: [ai] ἀραὶ [τῶν ἁγίων πατέρων] ; and
line 7, αἴμ[α' καὶ ἀνάθεμ]α οὕτως γένηται. Out of all Le Bas’ material there
only remains the combination “God and the angels ’’ common to the inscrip-
tion and a 10th-century formula of excommunication. But it is self-evident
that this combination is extremely ancient.
? Loe, cit. p. 404 £. 5 Loe. cit. Ὁ. 677. * Wilhelm, col. 11.
28
484 APPENDIX I
tions is altogether wanting in these formulae. The contents
afford not the smallest inducement to dispute the date
established by the specialists in epigraphy. The prayers are
Jewish inscriptions of the end of the second or beginning of
the first century B.c.
What is the importance of this fact ? Jewish inscriptions
of the pre-Christian period are very rare, and merely on that
account every increase of material is of interest. But even in
details the texts yield a respectable harvest. They afford
confirmatory proofs of the existence of a Jewish community
at Delos in the time of the successors of Alexander!; they
moreover render it probable that the Jews of Delos also buried
their dead at Rheneia. That must have been in compulsory
conformity with the customs of the place. But the name
Heraclea, the ending of the name Marthina, the shape of the
gravestones, the symbol of the two hands on the stones, and
notably the whole style of the prayer?—these are all adapta-
tions to the Hellenic surroundings. Hellenism is already at
work on the great task of peacefully secularising the Jewish
faith, and this at a time when in the old home of that faith
men were still living who had witnessed the great days when
the Maccabean martyrs poured out their blood for the law
of their fathers.
This Hellenisation from outside was assisted from another
direction by the Hellenisation of the Bible which originated
with the cosmopolitan Jews of Alexandria. The Septuagint
was already in use among the Jews of the Diaspora when
the inscriptions.at Rheneia were composed. This is a very
important fact. Our inscriptions add to the literary evidence *
of the existence and use of the Septuagint in early times
an original document that is only a few decades later than
the celebrated testimony of the prologue to Ecclesiasticus.. In
this respect they are more valuable than the tablet of
Hadrumetum.
They show further that the great Day of Atonement was
1 Other evidence in Schiirer ITI. p. 27.
2 The old rite (Deuteronomy xxi.) referred to above (p. 426, n. 3) could not
be carried out amid foreign surroundings, Ancient analogies can easily be
found from the references in Wilhelm, col. 16 f.
Schiirer III. p. 310.
APPENDIX I 435
actually celebrated by the Jews of Delos in the period about
100 3.c. We are not particularly well informed about worship
in the Diaspora, and we therefore welcome the evidence that our
stones give as to the celebration of the Feast of Feasts one
hundred and fifty years before the time when the apostle
Paul sailed in an Alexandrian ship on Cretan waters, shortly
after the Fast! (i.e. the Day of Atonement).
Finally the inscriptions from Rheneia afford us a glimpse of
the inner life of the Jewish community at Delos. Two girls,
Heraclea and Marthina, have been murdered; the murderers,
to whose guile or magic the poor things have fallen victims,
are unknown. The blood of the innocent cries. aloud to
Heaven, for it is written, “ Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by
man shall his blood be shed.” So vengeance is left to Him
who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children. On the
most solemn festival of the year, when all Israel afflict them-
selves and the prayers of the scattered children of Abraham
rise everywhere on the four winds of heaven to the throne of
the Eternal, whilst at Jerusalem the high priest enters the
“Holy οἵ Holies,"—the mourners bring their grim petition
before God; in fervent prayer on the Day of Atonement they
consign the murderers to the vengeance of the Omniscient and
His angels :—
“1 call upon and pray the Most High God, the Lord of the spirits
and of all flesh, against those who with guile murdered or poisoned
the wretched, untimely lost Heraclea, shedding her innocent blood
wickedly : that it may be so with them that murdered or poisoned
her, and with their children; O Lord that seeth all things, and ye
angels of God, Thou before whom every soul is afflicted this same day
with supplication : that Thou mayst avenge the innocent blood anu
require it again right speedily ! ”
And the same prayer is recited for Marthina, and immortalised
in marble above the graves of the murdered maidens yonder in
the island of the dead; daily shall the words of the prayer,
dumb lines on the marble to the passer-by, but loud groans to
the living God, tell of the unexpiated blood of Heraclea and
Marthina ; and even the Greek, to whom the formulae of the
prayer seem strange, observes the uplifted hands, and perceives
with a shudder the meaning of the writing on the Jewish graves.
1 Acts xxvii. 9.
APPENDIX Il
ON THE TEXT OF THE SECOND LOGIA FRAGMENT FROM
OXYRHYNCHUS
(First published in the Supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung [Munich]
No, 162, 18 July, 1904, and now adapted.)
Tue fourth volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri! offers, in
addition to other theological texts, a new fragment with sayings
of Jesus, which is assigned to the third century.
The most important task in connexion with the venerable
document is the reconstruction of the text. Although more
easy to read for a non-expert than the first fragment with
sayings of Jesus from Oxyrhynchus, published in 1897, the new
papyrus presents harder riddles, because the number of missing
letters, and in consequence the number of possible restorations,
is far greater. Altogether there are five or perhaps six longer
or shorter sayings, which are said to be by Jesus. It is
a fortunate circumstance that one of them was already known
as an Agraphon (from the Gospel according to the Hebrews
as quoted by Clement of Alexandria). Thus the approximate
number of letters to be restored was ascertained, and this part?
of the fragment could be completed with tolerable certainty :—
I
5 [λέγει ᾽Ιης +]
μὴ παυσάσθω ὁ ξη[τῶν .... ..«-. ἕως ἂν]
εὕρῃ καὶ ὅταν εὕρῃ [θαμβηθήσεται καὶ θαμ-]
βηθεὶς βασιλεύσει κα[ὶ βασιλεύσας ἀναπα-]
ἥσεται. ᾿
1 The Oxyrhynohus Papyri, Part IV., edited with translations and notes
by Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur 5, Hunt, London, 1904, No. 654, p. 1 ff
2 I pass over the first lines; they contain a “Saying of Jesus” that is by no
means so interesting as the rest,
436
APPENDIX I 437
Jesus saith: Let him that seeketh . . . not cease... until he.
findeth, and when he findeth he shall be amazed, and having been
amazed he shall reign, and having reigned he shall rest.
Far less certain than this? is the restoration of the two follow-
ing “Sayings.” The editors read and conjecture as follows :—
II
λέγει ἽΓ[πΦ᾽ . 2... . τίνες]
10 of ἕλκοντες ἡμᾶς [εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν εἴ]
ἡ βασιλεία ἐν οὐραϊνῷ doTw;.........]
τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρ[ ανοῦ καὶ τῶν θηρίων ὅ-]}
τι ὑπὸ τὴν γῆν ἐστιν ἢ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ]
οἱ ἰχθύες τῆς θαλάσσης οὗτοι οἱ ἕλκον-]
15 τες ὑμᾶς, καὶ ἡ βασ[ιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν]
ἐντὸς ὑμῶν [ἐ]στι [καὶ ὅστις ἂν ἑαυτὸν]
γνῶ ταύτην εὑρήσει .. ..........0]
ἑαυτοὺς γνώσεσθε [καὶ εἰδήσετε ὅτι υἱοὶ]
ἔστε ὑμεῖς τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ T[.-. 2. eee ee ee eel
20 γνώσ <er> θε΄ ἑαυτοὺς ἐν [..... τεὴν πο θῶ Ὡτο oll
καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐστὲ nro [. . .7
Jesus saith: . . . who are they that draw us into the Kingdom
if the Kingdom is in Heaven? . . . the fowls of the air, and of beasts
whatsoever is under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of
the sea, these are they that draw you, and the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you, and whosoever knoweth himself shall find
it. . . . Know yourselves, and ye shall perceive that ye are sons of
the Father of . . . Know yourselves . . . and yeare .
The whole restoration is ultimately dependent on the inter-
pretation given to the word ἕλκοντες, which the editors under-
stand in a good sense, and at the same time ethical sense, on the
analogy of ἑλκύω in John vi. 44 and xii. 32. I must confess
that this meaning was clear to me neither at first reading nor
after considerable reflection, and that in the whole passage as
1 [In the English renderings of these “Sayings” it has not been considered
necessary to adhere to the translations given by Grenfell and Hunt. An
attempt has been made, as in dealing with the documents in the text of the
book, to harmonise the language of the translations with that of the English
Bible as far as possible. Tr.]
* The meaning of the ‘“‘Saying” may be disputed; cf. A. Harnack’s new
discussion in the Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie, 1904, p. 175 ff.
* Papyrus: γνώσεσθαι.
* Papyrus: γνώσθε.
438 APPENDIX II
restored by the editors I find much that to me seems unin-
telligible, extraordinary in itself and doubtful linguistically.
My first impression of the word ἕλκοντες was that its meaning
is the same as in James ii. 6, etc., “to drag,” “to hale.” I
thus agree as regards the sense rather with Bartlet, who pro-
posed another restoration to the editors, taking ἕλκω in the
sense of “to persecute.”! But I cannot bring myself to adopt
Bartlet’s restoration. With the same reservation that I ex-
pressed in restoring the supposed Gospel-Fragment from
Cairo? (a reservation that will seem perfectly natural to
every one conversant with the subject), I venture to submit
the following attempted restoration, which is to be judged,
of course, not by the details (which are capable of manifold
and obvious variations), but by the idea underlying it. The
parallels of words and subjects, which furnish at least hypo-
thetical justification for my attempt, are noted below.
λέγει “I[AS* πῶς λέγουσιν ὃ]
10 οἱ ἕλκοντες ἡμᾶς “ [εἰς τὰ κριτήρια," ὅτι]
ἡ βασιλεία ἐν οὐρα[νῷ ἐστιν ; μήτι δύνα(ν)ται 5]
τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρ[ανοῦ ἐπυγινώσκειν,]
τί ὑπὸ τὴν γῆν ἐσί[ιν ; καὶ τί ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]
οἱ ἰχθύες τῆς θαλάσσης ; οὕτως οἱ" ἕλκον-]
15 τες ὑμᾶς. καὶ ἡ βασ[ιλεία ὅμως μέντοι "]
ἐντὸς ὑμῶν [ἐ]στιν. καὶ ὃς ἐὰν τὰ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν]
γνῷ, ταύτην εὑρήϊσει 5. .........
ἑαυτοὺς γνώσεσθε 1} [ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ," καὶ υἱο] ,
1 George Wilkins (letter, Dublin, 24 October, 1908) takes the word in the
sense of “ carping at” (Latin vellicare) and refers to Pindar, Nem. 7, 152.
2 See Appendix No. III. p. 445 below.
3 Mark xii, 35; Luke xx. 41.
4 quas might stand for ὑμας, as Grenfell and Hunt observed.
5 James ii. 6; συνέδρια of course would suit just as well, Matt, x. 17, Mark
xiii, 9.
4. Luke vi. 39. De
7 For the chiasmus in the arrangement of the clauses cf. Ed. Konig,
Stilistih, Rhetorik, Poetik in besug auf die biblische Literatur, Leipzig, 1900,
p. 146f. 8 Luke xii. 21, etc.
® John xii. 42; for the thought Luke x. 11, xvii. 21.
1% For the thought cf. Matt. x. 40.
4 ‘Phe future is hortative; the following καί introduces the consequence :
“ Know yourselves... , andyeare...”
2 Luke xvi. 15.
APPENDIX II 439
ἐστε ὑμεῖς τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ τί ἐλείου ἐν οὐρανῷ."
20 yuan <eo>Ge ἑαυτοὺς ἐν[ ὠπιον τῶν ἀνθρώπων,"
καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐστε, ἣ πτο[εῖσθε.5]
Jesus saith : How say they that draw us before the judgment seats
that the Kingdom is in Heaven? Can the fowls of the air know what
is under the earth? and the fishes of the sea what isin the heaven?. So
are they that draw you. And the Kingdom nevertheless is within
you. And whosoever knoweth your inward parts shall find it.
Know yourselves in the sight of God, and ye are sons of your Father
which is perfect in Heaven. Know yourselves in the sight of men,
and ye are there where ye are terrified.
I regard the whole as being spoken to the apostles in the
same tone as the well-known words at the sending forth. As
a mocking objection to the message of the apostles, “The
Kingdom is at hand,” a sentence like “The Kingdom is
in Heaven” is well conceivable in the mouth of opponents.
The comparison with the birds and fishes illustrates the
opponents’ want of apprehension.
The next “Saying” may be restored more simply and, in my
opinion, with much greater certainty as regards the underlying
principle. The editors print it thus :—
ΠῚ
[ λέγει ᾿Ιῆς "]
οὐκ ἀποκνήσει ἄνθήρωπος ........ .]
pov ἐπερωτῆσαι" πα... . ... at 1
ρων περὶ τοῦ τόπου TALS... 2. ee ee ee el
25 cere ὅτι πολλοὶ ἔσονται πρῶτοι ἔσχατοι καὶ]
οἱ ἔσχατοι πρῶτοι καὶ [...... irene ale Ἵ
σιν.
In line 24 they incline to propose τῆς βασιλείας], and in
lines 26 f. [ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἕξου jouw.
1 Matt. v. 48. 2 Luke xvi. 15.
F 3 T.e.“ye are there where ye must be terrified” (Luke xxi. 9, xxiv. 37).
For the thought cf. Luke xvi. 15: “Know yourselves before men” is the
preliminary step to “justify yourselves before men,” Closely akin to this,
only from a different point of view, is 1 John iii. 1: tere ποταπὴν ἀγάπην
δέδωκεν ἡμῖν ὁ πατήρ, wa τέκνα θεοῦ κληθῶμεν καὶ ἐσμέν. διὰ τοῦτο ὁ
whaeine Tin moaning idantioal with al AuAnawal αὐ αν σαι hue —Tha
440 APPENDIX II
Jesus saith: A man... will not delay to ask . . . concerning
his place in the Kingdom. . . . [Know ye] that many that are first
shall be last, and the last first, and shall have eternal life.
Here too I feel bound to take quite another course; Luke
xiv. 7 ff. gives me the hint :—
[ λέγει ᾽Ιης "]
οὐκ ἀποκνήσει ἄνθρωπος κληθεὶς σώφ-]
pov ἐπερωτῆσαι πάϊντως ἕνα τῶν κλητό-]
ρωνὶ περὶ τοῦ τόπου τῆϊς δοχῆς ποῦ ἀνακλιθή-]
25 cera.” ὅτι πολλοὶ ἔσονται π[ρῶτοι ἔσχατοι καὶ]
οἱ ἔσχατοι πρῶτοι καὶ [δόξαν " εὑρήσου-]
σιν.
Jesus saith : A man that is bidden will not delay, if he is prudent,
by all means to ask one of them that did the bidding, concerning his
place at the feast, where he shall sit. For many that are first shall
be last, and the last first, and shall find worship.
Thus we have a variation of the words concerning those who
chose out the chief rooms, and in this (new) context the saying
about the first and the last! The restoration that I have
made in line 26 f., [εὑρήσου]σιν, is of course quite uncertain. I
may refer, however, to an observation that, so far as I know,
has not yet been made. In the Logia of 1897 there was
frequent mention of “finding,” as now also in the two new
“Sayings” I. and II. The same applies to “seeing” (and its
synonyms). Is it possible that we have here a hint of the
method on which these collections of apophthegms were
arranged ?
“ Saying” No. IV. is an interesting variant and enlargement
of Matthew x. 26 and its parallels. Here too the last word
has yet to be spoken concerning the text, but for the present I
have no independent proposals to make. “Saying” No. V. is
so greatly mutilated that the combined work of many students
is necessary, before attempts at reconstruction can be made.
1 Cf. δειπνοκλήτωρ, Matt. xx. 28 Cod. Ὁ. For the plural number of slaves
who carry the invitations cf. Matt. xxii. 3 ff. The guest on entering asks
one of the house-slaves standing ready to wait (e.g., the one known to him
already as the bringer of the invitation) where he is to sit, or he inquires
directly he receives the invitation.
2 -cere in the papyrus may easily be meant for -cerat; cf. erepwrnce instead
of ἐπερωτησαι above.
5 Luke xiv. 10.
APPENDIX III
THE SUPPOSED FRAGMENT OF A GOSPEL AT CAIRO
(Reprinted with slight alterations from the Archiv fiir Religionswissen-
schaft, 7, pp. 387-392.)
In the Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée
du Caire, Vol. X. (Nos. 10001-10869 Greek Papyri), Oxford,
1903, B. P. Grenfell and A. 5. Hunt publish a papyrus
fragment (No. 10735) with the following text written in a
small uncial hand of the 6th or 7th century. I print it with
the editors’ restorations.
Recto VERSO
ayyedos κυέλαλησεν Iolonp | .-.....
maparaBe Μᾶαριαν την »[v- 7. ερμηνενετω σοι o [
ναικα σου καὶ 7 φησι τη παρθενω ἴδον
φευγε εἰς ἄνγυπτον κοι ο συγ͵γενης σου Ks αὐτὴ συν
ΠΡ Bicsane 2 [-.7..{} 5 Js ἐστι μην αὑτὴ τὴ καἰ
ὅτ. (βιοῖ...1.ρ.. Ἰτω εκτω ο εστιν [
παν δωρον xs εανΐ Ιωαννην συνέλαβε
φίλους αὐτου καθ [ ]eew τον ἀρχίστρα
βασίλεως Δ [ Ἵν ouxerny προβαδι
εἰ. νΪ 10 ] παρουσιας
Wascwessa ]t¢
The editors see in the sheet the remains of a book “con-
taining apparently an uncanonical gospel. The verso (10
incomplete lines) is concerned with the Annunciation (?); the
recto (9 incomplete lines) with the flight to Egypt.”
Regarding the opinion here expressed, that the fragment
before us is part of an uncanonical gospel, certain doubts
suggest themselves.
441
442 APPENDIX III
In the first place the order in which the two pages stand is
against it. Ifthe fragment is a leaf from a book containing a
gospel, it was no doubt one of the first leaves in the book, as
we may conclude from the contents (flight to Egypt and an-
nunciation of the birth of the Baptist to Mary); and in that
case it would belong to that half of the first quire in which
verso follows recto. We should thus have a gospel in which
the annunciation of the birth [of Jesus and] the Baptist to
Mary followed after the flight into Egypt, and that is very
improbable.
Then the contents of the text, so far as they can be made
out, are not reconcilable with the assumption of Grenfell and
Hunt. If the fragment is part of a gospel, then the recto-text
requires us, after the words of the angel to Joseph, “ Flee into
Egypt,” to reconstruct lines in which there is mention of a
“ gift,” “his friends,” and a “king.” Though we might
imagine Herod as the king, the other two legible fragments
of lines hardly suit the context in a narrative of the flight
into Egypt. The verso-text, on the other hand, requires after
the words of the angel Gabriel announcing the birth of the
Baptist to Mary, a sentence or sentences with the words
archistraltegus |,? “servant,” “arrival.” These also are elements
which one would hardly expect to find in this place in a gospel.
The doubts vanish if we assume that the fragment contains
some kind of reflections on the flight into Egypt and the words
of Gabriel, reflections either of an exegetical or edifying nature,
and that instead of coming from a gospel it comes from a
commentary or a book of sermons.
On this supposition the verso-text may really be in great part
recovered. The problem of finding a text logically coherent
with the words of the angel and containing the above-named
elements became easier when προβαδὲὶ was recognised as the
remains of some part of the verb προβαδίξω:; after words referring
to the conception of the Baptist it was quite appropriate to
find a sentence describing John as the “servant ” who “goeth
before” the “ coming” of the Master. Then when I had found
that in Byzantine writers the archangels Michael and Gabriel are
1 [In the second half of a quire recto follows verso. See the explanation of
these terms, Ὁ. 26 above. TR.]
2 This restoration of line 8 is perfectly obvious.
APPENDIX. IIL 443
sometimes called by the name of ἀρχιστράτηγος, which pre-
sumably goes back to LXX Joshua v. 14, the last doubtful
word in this curious passage was brought into connexion with
the rest, and it was possible to attempt restoration, provided
that the approximate length of the lines was ascertainable.
The length of the lines, however, followed with some pro-
bability from lines ] and 2 recto, which I thus completed? from
Matthew ii. 13 :—
ayyeros KU ehadynoev’ Ιωσηφ εγερθεις]
παράλαβε Μαριαν την ylvvaixa cov xs]
φευγε εἰς Auyurrroy, etc.
The lines 4 and 5 verso also gave the length with reasonable
probability, after I had thus restored them from Luke i. 36 :—
[Ελισαβετ ἡ συγ͵γενης cov xs αὐτὴ συν
[εὐλήφε xs εκτοὶς ἐστὶ μὴν αὐτὴ τη κα[λου]
[μενη στείρα, etc.
There are thus about 30 letters to the line.
The consideration that led to the further experiment of
restoring lines 6, '7, and 8 will appear from the little commen-
tary below. I first give the text as restored and punctuated :—
VERsO
7. epuenveverw σοι. οἶδε
ἀρχιστρατηγος] φησι τὴ παρθενω" ἴδου
Ἐλισαβετ ἡ συγ͵γενης σου Ks αὐτὴ συν-
5 εὐληφε xs extols ἐστι μὴν αὑτὴ τη κα[λου-
μενὴ στείρα. εν |] τω εκτω, ο εστιν [θωθ, μη-
νι ἢ finp apa Ἰω)αννὴην συνέλαβε.
ede. Se προκηρυσΊσειν Tov ἀρχιστρα-
τηγον Ιωαννην τοῖν ovxetny προβαδι-
10 ἕοντα της του KU αυτου] παρουσιας.
7τᾳ
A few remarks may be permitted on the above.
Ὁ E, A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, New
York and Leipzig, 1888, p. 259.
21 had to remember that the abbreviation xs might be written instead of
«at (as in 1, 6 recto and 1. 4 verso), [Ιωσηφ I take as a vocative.
444, APPENDIX ΠῚ
Line 8. The restoration is of course not certain ; there are
other obvious possibilities.
Line 4. συγγενής in Luke i. 36 has the support of not a few
authorities; most read συγγενές, cf. the apparatus criticus in
Tischendorf.
Line 4 συνείληφεν in Luke i. 36 also has the support of
several authorities (partly the same as those for συγγενὴς), the
more general reading being συνειληφυια, cf. Tischendorf. The
shorter word is to be conjectured on account of the limited
number of the letters.
Line 5f. The quotation? from Luke i. 36 must certainly
have been abridged: there is no room for υἱὸν ev ynpe αὑτῆς,
nor for ovTos.
Line 6f. tw extw pretty certainly demands a preposition
which governs the dative. The conjectural ev would, I think,
fix the point of time thus: “in the sixth month (reckoned
backwards).” ὁ ἐστιν seems to be a sort of formula, “ that is to
say”; the neuter is therefore not surprising. The name of some
month is a very obvious thing to supply. When we know that
the time of the Baptist’s conception was determined by Chry-
sostom (II. 862 BCD ed. Montfaucon) after laborious calculation
to be September, we naturally think of this month, and I have
inserted above its Egyptian name. But it is evident that the
restoration of the two lines is uncertain.
Line 8 ff. From the supposed infinitive . . .Joe and the
accusative τὸν ἀρχίστραΐ. . . I have argued the existence of
a governing verb ede. That οἰκετὴν refers to John, is an
obvious deduction from the well-known saying of the Baptist
about the ‘shoe-latchet.” An excellent parallel, both real
and verbal, to προβαδιΐ Covra,? etc., is the passage quoted by
Boissonade in the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, VI. 1647, from
an unprinted sermon by Chrysostom,’ which calls John the
Baptist τὸν τοῦ ἀύλου φωτὸς προβαδίσαντα λύχνον.
Line 9. Instead of Iwavyny we might have Γαβριηλ, and in
line 10 instead of αὐτου we might have ἡμῶν.
1 και wou Ἐλισαβετ ἡ σνγγενὶς σου Kat αὐτΉ συνειληφνια νιον εν γήρει aUTNS και
OUTOS μὴν EKTOS ECTLY AUTH TH καλουμενὴ στειρᾶ.
2 ‘The word seems to be rare and to belong to the lofty style; so far it has
been found only in Plutarch, Mor. II. p. 707 B, Greg. Naz. I. 1248 C (Migne),
and the sermon by Chrysostom mentioned in the text.
> Ido not know whether this sermon has since been printed..
APPENDIX III 445
There is little to be said with regard to the recto. What can
still be completed has been shown above. Lines 6-8 may have
contained a sentence like “ And if God protecting looks down
upon His friends, even the anger of a king is powerless.” The
form of the quotation! from Matthew ii. 13 is remarkable; the
Child is clearly not named, and instead of “His mother” we
have “Mary thy wife.” I have found the name Mary in this
context only in the Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew xvii. 2,
Tischendorf, p. 84: “tolle Mariam et infantem.” ?
If the interpretation here given of the Cairo fragment is right
in principle, it follows that we must be cautious in describing
fragments with gospel words as “ fragments of a gospel.”
I subjoin a translation of the restored verso-text :—
VERSO
. . let... interpret? to thee. But the archistrategus saith
unto the virgin: ‘Behold, Elizabeth thy kinswoman, she also hath
conceived and the sixth month it is with her that was called barren.”
In the sixth (month), therefore, that is in the month Thoth, did his
mother conceive John. Butit behoved the archistrategus to announce
beforehand John, the servant who goeth before the coming of His
Lord. ...
It only remains now for somebody to identify the Cairo
fragment. I have not succeeded in discovering from what book
itcomes. Should some one who is wider read succeed in iden-
tifying the fragment, and thus perhaps put a speedy end to
my restorations, I should be the first to remember that, as
St. Paul says, “we know in part.”
1. αγγελος κυρίου pawerae Kar’ ovap Tw Iwond λεγων" εγερθεις παραλαβε
To παιδιον Kat THY μητερα avrov και φευγε ets AvyuTTov.
2 Quoted by A. Resch, Das Kindheitsevangelium, Texte und Untersuchungen,
X. 5, Leipzig, 1897, p. 156. For the form Μαρία cf. above, pp. 123 f. and
309, n. 2.
4 Ῥ, W. Schmiedel pointed out ὦ slip that I made in the translation as
printed in the first edition of this book.
APPENDIX IV
A JEWISH INSCRIPTION IN THE THEATRE AT MILETUS
On the 17th April, 1906, Theodor Wiegand showed us a
number of inscriptions on the seats of the theatre of Miletus,
which dates from the Roman period. Among them was the
following Jewish inscription in the fifth row from below in the
second block (κερκίς) from the west. It is 4 feet broad, and
with its letters 1} to 2} inches in height partly reminds one
of the Jewish inscription from Corinth.) I give it here in
facsimile (Figure 67) from a squeeze kindly made for me in
1907 by August Frickenhaus at the instance of Wiegand.
The inscription, doubtless of Imperial age, runs thus :—
TOTIOZEIOY AEWNTWNKAIOEOZEBION
Τόπος Εἰουδέων 3 τῶν καὶ Θεοσεβίον.3
Place of the Jews, who are also called God-fearing.
Of Jews at Miletus nothing was previously known except a
letter from the proconsul of Asia to the authorities of this
town, saying that the Jews are not to be prevented from
keeping their Sabbaths, practising their religious customs, and
managing their revenues after their own manner.‘ Our inscrip-
tion is an original document proving the existence of the Jewish
colony at Miletus. St. Paul perhaps, when he stayed at
Miletus, came into some sort of contact with the Jews living
there.*®
1 Of, p. 13, n. 7 and Figure 1 above. 2 Te. ᾿τουδαίων.
9.1.9. Θεοσεβίων. Ziebarth, Kulturbilder aus griechischen Stédten, p. 73, cites
this inscription erroneously in the form τόπος Εἰουδαίων φιλοσεβάστων.
4 Josephus, Antt. XIV. x. 21; cf. Schiirer, III. p. 68.
5 Acts xx. 15, 17; and 2 Tim. iv. 20.
“It is probable that, wherever there were Jews, Paul first sought to open
communications with them.
446
oF “d] -
“puesolM Iopoayy, 10 uorssturred 4g ‘poeg peweduy
SMIOIA 218 ΘΙΉ 897, 84} UL syeag YsIMar 9881 10} ποῃάμοθαη---" 29 ‘DI
APPENDIX IV 447
Very remarkable is the form of the name “ God-fearing.” !
The form “ they that fear God”? is very well known, from the
Acts of the Apostles and other sources? ; it denotes pagans who
were in close touch with the Jewish worship, if not officially
connected as proselytes. In the Milesian inscription the Jews
themselves are similarly styled Θεοσέβιοι and the word must
have already been felt to be a proper name. So far as I know
it occurs elsewhere only as a proper name. As I read the
actual inscription there at Miletus I wondered that it did not
run “Place of the Jews and of those who are called God-
fearing.” But there can be no doubt that “ God-fearing” is
here an appellation of the Jews.’ The imperfect execution of
the inscription allows us, perhaps, to suppose that the Milesian
Jewish community, like that of Corinth,® was not very wealthy.
The inscription is important in social history chiefly as
showing that the Milesian Jews did not share the antipathy of
their strict co-religionists to the theatre, of which there are
frequent signs elsewhere.’ The process of Hellenisation or
secularisation that we have frequently observed in Jewish
inscriptions ὃ is reflected also in this one, put up in a pagan
theatre by worshippers of the One God, or put up for them by
the theatre authorities. We are reminded of the Jew Philo
of Alexandria, who relates? that he was once present at a
performance of a tragedy by Euripides.
1 Θεοσέβιοι.
* φοβούμενοι or σεβόμενοι (metuentes) τὸν θεόν.
3 Of. Schiirer, 111. p. 123.
‘ As shown by the τῶν καί, which should be regarded in the same way as the
ὁ καὶ found as a stereotyped form with double names (Bibelstudien, Ὁ. 181 ff. ;
Bible Studies, p. 313 ff.).
5 The nearest parallel would be Θεοσεβεῖς used as a proper name for the
Hypsistarians (Schiirer, ITI.* p. 124).
8 Page 13, n. 7 above.
7 Abundant data in Schiirer, 11. p. 45f.
8 Cf. the Jewish records of manumission, p. 325f. above, and the prayers
for vengeance at Rheneia, p. 423 ff. above.
9. Opera (ed. Mangey) II. p. 467 ; cf. Schiirer, 11. p. 45.
APPENDIX V
THE SO-CALLED “ PLANETARY INSCRIPTION” IN THE THEATRE AT
MILETUS A LATE CHRISTIAN PROTECTIVE CHARM
In the north-west corner of the same theatre which has given us
the new inscription described in Appendix IV. there is on the
outer wall an inscription which has long been known and which
has often been discussed under the name of the “ planetary
inscription ” of Miletus. I'knew of it from the Corpus Inscrip-
tionum Graecarum (No. 2895), and had no doubt met with
it occasionally in commentaries on the New Testament, there
quoted in proof of the worship of angels! in Asia Minor in
the time of St. Paul (Colossians ii. 18). When it was shown
to us in situ by Theodor Wiegand on 17 April, 1906, in the
brilliant light of an Ionian sun, I immediately perceived a
strong contrast between its real appearance and the picture left
upon my memory by the Corpus of Inscriptions. There was’
quite a late look about the inscription, and its “mistakes” in
form reminded me of the early Byzantine papyri.
My impression was confirmed by Wiegand’s opinion of the
style of the characters, and especially by his accurate recon-
struction of the architectural history of the theatre.? Wiegand’s
1 The late Christian character of the inscription once established, it follows
that it can no longer be thus appealed to. Moreover, the “ worshipping: of
the angels” of which St. Paul speaks is an ironical designation for strict
Jewish piety, regulated by the law (which originated with the angels),
2 Cf, Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904,
p. 91. A fragment of the same text, agreeing with this, has been found mean-
while in another part of the theatre. It is, as Frickenhaus writes to me
(letter, Miletus, 28 September, 1907) the left-hand upper corner of a block
of grey marble; two mortise-holes to the left on top ; greatest height 7} inches ;
greatest breadth 103 inches; greatest thickness 123 inches; greatest height of
the letters linch. The remaining letters of the inscription are the same as
at the beginning of the great inscription: [ΟΥ̓ ΑἹ (the last letter is no doubt
the remains of an H); beneath this come A and the remains of an Ε ; and,
above there is the same monogram as in the great inscription.
448
Ετα. 68.—Christian Archangel Inscription in the Theatre at Miletus. Early Byzantine Period.
By permission of Theodor Wiegand.
[p. 449
APPENDIX V 449
opinion, shared also by Schiirer,! agrees with Cumont’s theory,’
but stands in sharp contrast to the traditional view, according
to which the text is either pagan or Judaeo-pagan.’ Rigid
examination of this important text, however, completely vin-
dicates Wiegand’s judgment.
My readers are indebted to Wiegand for the good facsimile—
the first, I believe, to be made from a photograph—here given
in Figure 68. The dimensions ‘ are as follows: present breadth
41 inches, height 24 inches, height of the largest letters 1 inch,
height of the smallest letters 4 inch. The peculiar arrange-
ment of the inscription is clearly seen from the figure. It
begins with a line consisting of symbols; originally no doubt
there were seven, but they are now reduced to five. Then
comes a line carved in large letters; it will be seen from the
figure to what extent they are separated ὅ :—
IEOYAHWIAWAIE OY AHWIWAEHOYIAWIHEOY ENON
[+ about 14 letters].
It consists, then, of a row of vowels, seemingly without re-
cognisable principle of permutation,® but perhaps to be thus
divided :—
Ἰεουαηω IawaI Eovanot Ώαεηουι Αωιηεου ἐν ὀν[όματι Ἷ
+ about 9 letters],
or thus :—
it Teovanos AwA Ieovanan, etc.
Under the row of vowels there were originally no doubt seven
ovals, of which five and a half now remain. The outlines are
rudely drawn and the spacing is irregular, but each oval is
1 Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 6 (1905) p. 50.
2 Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire, 15 (1895) p. 273.
5. Cf. for example Ernst Maass, Die Tagesgitter in Rom und in den Provinzen,
Berlin, 1902, p. 244f.: “It is no doubt a compromise between Jewish and
Hellenic” (p. 245).
4 Communicated to me by A. Frickenhaus (letter, Miletus, 28 September,
1907).
5 The text of this line in the Corpus is very faulty, and moreover broken up
into single words in a misleading manner.
4 On such series of vowels in magic cf. Bibelstudien, p. 1 ff.; Bible Studies,
p. 321. No separation of this row of vowels into groups of seven is possible.
7 This restoration is not certain,
29
UNG UPPCLAUdL 1111Ce S4UOUIL VULLUGLLID Git LLIDULApUIuaL χὰ DLLIALUL
characters, and each inscription begins with the series of seven
vowels arranged in exact alphabetical permutation (aeyiove,
envovwa etc.), and ends with the prayer :—
ἅγιε, O Holy One,
φύλαξον ! keep
τὴν πόλιν the city
Μιλησίων of the Milesians
καὶ πάντας and all
TOUS KATOL- that dwell therein.
κοῦντας.
At the bottom of all is the following, again in the large letters
of the first line :-—
% F , =
Apyayyenot, φυλάσσεται 3 ἡ πόλις Μιλησίων καὶ πάντες οἱ
κατ[ οἰκοῦντες. |
Archangels, keep the city ofthe Milesians and all that dwell therein.
Boeckh in the Corpus began his commentary with the remark
that no doubt the inscription originally had seven compart-
ments for the seven “ planets.” Since then the name “ planetary
inscription” has been regularly employed, although Boeckh’s
assertion was a pure petitio principii. And although Boeckh
himself showed that the symbols placed over the compartments
were by no means the stereotyped ones for the planets, the
descriptions always say that the inscription begins with the
“planetary symbols.” In order to be sure on this point I
submitted the symbols to Franz Boll, who is our best authority
on ancient astrology, and received from him the assurance that
they are not planetary symbols, or at least that up to the
present he had never met with any certain example of their
use as such.®
1 This reading is certain; the Corpus gives an erroneous reading.
2 Te. φυλάσσετε. The incorrect nominative which follows shows that the
inscription is vulgar and not official.
3 Letter, Wiirzburg, 19 October, 1907. Out of the stores of his learning
Boll provided me with abundant data relating to ancient symbols which I
unfortunately cannot utilise here.—It seemed to me when I was in Galilee, in
April 1909, that some of the ancient magical symbols are still in use among
the modern Arab population as tattoo marks,
APPENDIX V 451
In interpreting the inscription, therefore, we must not
begin with the uncertainties—“ planetary symbols” which are
really nothing of the kind; we must begin with the cer-
tainties, which are the word “archangels”! and the series of
vowels. Are there any other cases known where the archangels
occur in combination with series of vowels ?
This question must be answered in the affirmative. Papyrus
No. 124 in the British Museum,? written in the 4th or 5th
century 4.D., gives a powerful formula consisting of four parallel
columns, each containing seven magic names. In columns 1
and 3 the following series of vowels and names of archangels
are found exactly corresponding with one another :—
1 aenuove Μιχαὴλ
2 εηιουωα Paganr
3 niovwae Ταβριηλ
4. ιονωαεη Σουριην >
5 ονωαεὴι Ζαζιηλ
6 νωαεηιοὸ Βαδακιηλ ὁ
ἢ ὡαεηιουν Συλιηλ,
These series of vowels in the Egyptian papyrus are, however,
down to the last letter, exactly the same as those carved in
regular alphabetic succession on the marble at Miletus in the
several (originally seven) compartments. On this account, and
more especially since the bottom line of large letters expressly
addresses the archangels, we must interpret the symbols over
each of the seven compartments as symbols of the archangels.
Since the names of the seven archangels vary® and they do
+ Tam well aware that elsewhere the archangels are frequently brought into
connexion with the planets by the ancients, but that is no reason for identi-
. fying archangels and planets without special grounds.
2 Greek Papyri in the British Museum, ed. F. G. Kenyon (Vol. 1.), p. 123.
After completing my manuscript I saw that Wiinsch, Antikes Zaubergerat aus
Pergamon, p, 30, also compares this papyrus with the Milesian inscription.
3 This is perhaps equivalent to the stereotyped form Uriel. There are, how-
ever, other instances of Suriel.
4 This is of course a clerical error for Zadakiel (Zadakael, Zidkiel), cf. W.
Bousset, Die Religion des Judentwms im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Berlin,
1903, p. 319.
5 Of. the literature referred to in Schiirer’s article, p, 21.
452 APPENDIX V
not always occur in a stereotyped order, we are not bound
to. assign the seven compartments of the Milesian inscription
precisely to the seven angels mentioned in the papyrus. The
only thing necessary is that in the symbols above the several
compartments, which have been hitherto regarded as planetary
symbols, we should look for monograms or tokens of the seven
archangels. Experts in Byzantine monograms and masons’
ligatures will do well to take account also of the symbols and
ligatures employed in astrological texts,! magical papyri,’ and
Christian inscriptions * of other periods. We may in any case.
expect the most popular of the archangels, Michael, Raphael,
and Gabriel; Michael, as the most powerful, would perhaps
be in the middle, Raphael and Gabriel perhaps at the be-
ginning,’ and in the fifth place perhaps (as in the papyrus)
Zaziel or Zadakiel.® The distribution of the single names is,
however, for the present not at all certain, and remains of
secondary importance.
Further confirmation, importing a new factor into the
discussion, is afforded by a Vienna magical papyrus of the
4th century a.p. published by Wessely.” It consists of two
columns; in the left-hand column is the magic word
αβλαναθαναλβα, written out so that the letters form a triangle
1 Franz Boll, as hinted above, has great store of material at his command;
cf. his hints in the Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum, 21 (1908)
pp. 121, 126.
2 For example in Kenyon, pp. 90-122, there are a number of symbols, some
of them resembling the Milesian ones; similarly in the magical papyri edited
by Wessely and others.
8. Some examples in the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, IV. pp. 395, 397.
‘ For the position of Michael in the middle cf. Bousset, Die Religion des
Judentums, p. 319; and especially the Jewish identification of Michael with
Mercury, over whose day, Wednesday (dies Mercurii), he is placed, U. Ε', Kopp,
Palaeographia critica, I1I., Mannhemii, 1829, p. 334f.; W. Lueken, Michael
Gottingen, 1898, p. 56.
5 The series of archangels begins thus occasionally elsewhere, Ferd. Weber,
Jiidische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften, Ὁ. 169.
The first symbol in the Milesian inscription seems to contain a P, the second
af. With the same serpentine ligature [ occurs as an abbreviation for part
of a word in an inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae, 1V. No, 205) on a similar
subject quoted below, p. 455, n. 1.
8 There seems to be clearly a Z in the symbol.
7 Denkschriften der Kaiserl, Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philos.-
histor. Classe, vol. 42 (1893) p. 70 f.
APPENDIX V . 453
with the apex downwards!; in the right-hand column and at
the bottom of the left column, a large number of angelic? and
Divine names promiscuously. The end runs thus :—
Μιχαήλ, ἄδηνι Ουσουρ, Michael, Adeni Usur,
Γαβριήλ, Σουριήλ, Ῥαφαήλ, | Gabriel, Suriel, Raphael
τς, φύλαξον Zodia(sic) ἣν ἔτεκεν | keep Sophia, whom
. Θεαΐ. .. ?] ἀπὸ παντὸς... | Thea... ?) bore, from all...
Here we have still more clearly the plan of the Milesian
formula :—
(1) magic letters,
(2) invocation of the archangels,
(3) the prayer “keep . . .”
Those who attach importance to chance circumstances may
insist on the incorrect nominative Σοφία, which corresponds
to the incorrect nominative in the last line of the Milesian
inscription.
Thus the inscription at Miletus would seem to be a prayer
made more powerful by the use of magic symbols, and addressed
to the seven archangels, for the preservation of the city and
its inhabitants. First of all the angels are indicated severally
by their secret symbols ; then follows a great line of adjuration
applying to them collectively ; and the compartments (origin-
ally seven in number) contain the’ adjuration, strengthened
by the magic vowels, addressed to each of the Holy Ones
in turn.:—
“0 Holy One, keep the city of Miletus, and all that dwell therein.”
y ; Pp y
Last of all comes the prayer to them collectively :—
** Archangels, keep the city of Miletus, and all that dwell therein.”
The question whether this inscription is pagan, Jewish, or
Christian has a different meaning, according as we are thinking
of the contents, or of the men who had it carved on the wall of
1 Wessely says ‘‘in the form of a wing”; that would be in the technical
a language of magic πτερυγοειδῶς, which, however, surely indicates an arrange-
‘, ment of letters in this shape, J. The figure Ὁ, which we have in the papyrus,
is called βοτρυδόν, “ shaped liked a bunch of grapes” ( Testamentum Salomonis,
ed. Fleck, p. 183.)
‘2 In line 4 Wessely reads μελχιηα; it is certain to have been originally
Μελχιηλ.
454 APPENDIX V
the theatre at Miletus. The contents do not in the least point
to paganism, and all the externals are against its having
originated in pagan times. In itself the inscription might
be Jewish: the archangels are Jewish, although not primitive
Jewish, and in ancient Miletus, where we even encounter St. Paul
at a solemn hour in his life,! there certainly were Jews.’
Moreover, as regards contents, the prayer has been influenced
by the Septuagint.2 Yet the prominent position of the
inscription and its repetition in another place make it very
improbable that the text was set up by the doubtless small
Jewish minority or even by a single Jew. What sounds Jewish
in the contents of the prayer has long become Christian by
inheritance and adoption. Prayer “for the city” particularly
was an invariable concomitant of Christian worship in Anatolia
even in early times,‘ and must therefore have been something
quite familiar. Furthermore, the worship of the archangels,
especially of Michael, was extremely popular in early Christian
Asia Minor.’ Theodor Wiegand, the explorer of ancient
Miletus, found some years ago between Didyma and Miletus an
early Byzantine basilica, in which an inscription was discovered,
built into the mosaic of the narthex, and containing an in-
vocation of an archangel.6 To this day throughout Greek
Christendom innumerable evening prayers are uttered to the
guardian angel: “O holy angel of God, . . . keep me from
every assault of the Adversary.”?
In all probability, therefore, we have here before us a Christian
memorial of the period when the theatre was converted into a
citadel. Not indeed an official manifesto of the clergy of
Δ Acts xx. 15 ff.
2 Of. the remarks above, p. 446, on the Jewish inscription in the theatre
at Miletus,
3 Psalm cxxvi. [exxvii.]1, ἐὰν μὴ κύριος φυλάξῃ πόλιν, els μάτην ἠγρύπνησεν ὁ
φυλάσσων, “ except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”
Again, πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες is a common Septuagint formula, the fixity of
which perhaps helped to occasion the error in the last line of the inscription.
4 The Greek Liturgies, ed. by C. A. Swainson, Cambridge, 1884, pp. 84,
92, 110. 5 Lueken, Michael, p. 73ff.
§ Sitzungsberichte, 1904, p. 89.
7 ἅγιε Ἄγγελε τοῦ Θεοῦ, . . . διαφύλαξόν με ἀπὸ πάσης ἐπηρείας τοῦ ἀντικειμένου
CTepa Συνοψις και τα ayia παθη μετὰ των κυριάκων εναγγελιων εκδοσιξ νεωτατῆ ὁμοία
κατὰ πάντα πρὸς τὴν ἐγκεκριμένην ὑπὸ τοῦ Οἰκουμενικοῦ Πατριαρχείου τελευταίαν.
ἔκδοσιν, εν Αθηναις, 1094 ste [1904], p. 90).
APPENDIX V 455
Miletus; they would surely not have employed magic symbols
thus publicly. It is more likely to have been a private venture,
perhaps the work of the guardsmen of the Christian stronghold
that was built on the secure and massive foundation of the
ancient masonry. The prayer on the stone imploring the
princes of the heavenly host to protect the city from all
the dangers to which it was exposed in a troublous age seemed
to the faith of the soldiers more efficacious in the form of a
protective charm.
In the reign of Justinian an imperial official named Bictorinus
caused two very similar prayers for protection to be carved on
stone at Corinth or in the Isthmus, addressed to Christ and the
Virgin Mary. There are no magic lines, but there are similar
formulae and similar mistakes.1_ These prayers seem to me to
be an additional confirmation of the Christian nature of the
Milesian inscription. They may even throw light on the exact
date of its origin, which will no doubt be more closely determin-
able as the study of late inscriptions advances. The influence
of the Christian liturgy on these Corinthian prayers is likewise
unmistakable.”
1 Inscriptiones Graecae, IV. No. 204 (discovered in the Isthmus, now lying
in front of the Demarchy at New Corinth): + Φῶς ἐκ φωτός, θεὸς ἀληθινὸς ἐκ
θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, φυλάξῃ τὸν αὐτοκράτορα ᾿Ιουστινιανὸν καὶ τὸν πιστὸν αὐτοῦ δοῦλον
Βικτωρῖνον ἅμα τοῖς οἰκοῦσειν (sic) ἐν λάδι (sic) τοὺς κατὰ θεὼν (sic) ζῶντας t,
“+ Light of Light, very God of very God, keep the Emperor Justinian and his
faithful slave Bictorinus, together with them that dwell in Hellas and godly
live.” Ibid., No. 205 (discovered at or near Corinth, now in the Museum at
Verona): Τ᾽ Αγζία) Μαρία, θεοτόκε, φύλαξον τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ φιλοχρίστον
Ἰουστινιανοῦ καὶ τὸν γνησίως δουλεύοντα αὐτῷ Βικτωρῖνον ἡ σὺν τοῖς οἰκοῦσιν ἐν
᾽Κορίνθῳ κ(ατὰ) θεὼν (sic) ¢ favrast, “+ Holy Mary, Mother of God, keep the
kingdom of Justinian, the friend of Christ, and Bictorinus +, who served him
truly, with them that dwell in Corinth and godly ἡ live f.”
? Cf, for example the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom (Swainson, p. 92), μνήσθητι,
κύριε, τῆς πόλεως ἐν ἢ παροικοῦμεν καὶ πάσης πόλεως καὶ χώρας καὶ τῶν πίστει
κατοικούντων ἐν αὐταῖς, ‘Remember, O Lord, the city in which we dwell and
every city and district, and them that dwell in them in the faith.”
APPENDIX VI
UNRECOGNISED BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS IN SYRIAN AND MESOPOTAMIAN
INSCRIPTIONS
(Reprinted with slight alterations from Philologus 64 [1905] pp. 475-478.)
In the Byzantinische Zeitschrift 14 (1905) pp. 1-72, Baron Max
‘von Oppenheim and Hans Lucas published “Greek and Latin
Inscriptions from Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor.”! The
majority of the Greek inscriptions are of Christian origin, and, as
most of them are dated, they are particularly valuable, especially
for the palaeography and textual history of the Greek Bible.?
The importance of inscriptional evidence as to the text of the
Bible in general has not yet been sufficiently recognised, but any
one familiar with the present position of the problems relating
to the recensions by Lucianus and Hesychius will welcome every
Greek Biblical quotation that can be certainly located and dated.
The above-mentioned inscriptions contain a comparatively large
number of Biblical references, and almost all of them can be
located and dated. So far as they originate from places in
Syria, they arouse our interest on account of the text of
Lucianus, the sphere of whose influence is to be looked for
especially in those regions. Hans Lucas, the editor of the
‘inscriptions, of course recognised most of the quotations;
in the following pages we shall only bring forward a few
inscriptions in which he either failed to see, or perhaps inten-
tionally left unnoticed, the Biblical quotations. I content
myself with merely pointing them out, without addressing —
myself to the Lucianus problem or the general question of
1 Cf. also the notes by Mercati in the same volume of the Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, p. 587, and by Clermont-Ganneau, ibid., 15 (1906) p. 279 ff., which |
did not come to my notice until after my article was printed.
2 Cf. p. 19 f. above,
456
APPENDIX VI 457
the relationships of the text. The numbers are those used
by Lucas; the names denote the places where the inscriptions |
were found ; the illustrations referred to for comparison are in
Lucas.
No. 15. ‘Ali Kasim, 394 a.v., πάντα ἐκ θεοῦ comes from
2 Corinthians v. 18.
No. 21. Tamak, 559 a.p., thus read by Lucas :—
JON@CEITIPO
J] NXEPOYBE}
and transcribed :—
τῶ]ν χερουβεί[ μ],.
is a quotation from LXX Psalm Ixxix. [Ixxx.] 9 :—
[6 ποιμαίνων τὸν Ἴηλ πρόσχες, 6 ὁδηγῶν ὡσεὶ πρό-
[Bara τὸν ᾿Ιωσήφ᾽ ὁ καθήμενος ἐπὶ τῶ]ν χερουβεὶμ]
[ἐμφάνηθι.......
No. 38. Kasr Nawa, undated, facsimile figure 4, is thus read
by Lucas :—
Wy AXClo
) TION
JWPAIAWC
JProcaaa
JIKAAHKAI
Ἰνοοι ἔ
and transcribed :—
? π]λησίο-
vp. . . τιον
. ὡραία ὡς
.]ργος δαδ-
. καλὴ καὶ
oy σοι
The editor remarks: “The contents were probably of a religious
nature, but my attempts at restoration have not succeeded.
One is much reminded of the Song of Solomon, cf. vi. 3: Καλὴ
εἶ πλησίον pov, ὡς εὐδοκία, ὡραία ὡς ᾿Ιερουσαλήμ (cf. also
verses 5, 6). Von Wilamowitz reminds me that 444 in line 4
458 APPENDIX VI
might signify 4aGeid.” It is a pity that this right clue was
not followed up. The inscription is in fact made up of words
taken from the Song of Solomon, viz. from chapter iv.; but
only a selection, not the full text, is given. This makes it
much more difficult to reconstruct the lines correctly. The |
following restoration on the basis of LX X Song of Solomon iv.
1, 3, 4, '7, makes no claim to have recovered the original arrange-
ment of the lines; it merely tries to hinge the endings of the
lines together :—
[ (1) ἰδοὺ εἶ καλὴ ἡ π͵]λησίο[ νἹ
[μου. ὀφθαλμοί σου περιστεραί. (3) ὡς σπαρ]τίον
[τὸ κόκκινον χείλη σου, καὶ ἡ λαλιά σου] ὡραία. ὡς -
[λέπυρον τῆς ῥόας μῆλόν σου" (4) ὡς πύ]ργος Aad
[τῥράχηλός σου. (Ἴ) ὅλη, ἡ πλησίον μου, eli καλὴ καὶ
[ μῶμος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐ]ν σοί. ἢ
With regard to ZAA = Δανειδ it is to be noted that the mark
of abbreviation seems to be recognisable in the facsimile.
No, 24. Kasr Nawa, undated, facsimile figure 5, is read by
Lucas :—
+ GICEACL
MOACTE
E=OMOL
MAAYTL
and transcribed :—
Εἰσελεῖύσ.......... ἐξο-
μολογή[σ...
ἐξομοΐλογ ...
μα αὐτί ....
It is added that “the contents are at all events of ἃ religious
nature”; the editor is reminded of passages such as LXX
Psalm xlii. [xliii.] 4 and Revelation iii. 5. The inscription is,
however, a quotation from LX X Psalm xcix. (c.) 4 :—
Εἰσέλθ[ατε εἰς τὰς πύλας αὐτοῦ ἐν é£o-]
4 \ > \ > A? 4
μολογή[σει, τὰς αὐλὰς αὐτοῦ ἐν ὕμνοις *]
ἐξομο[λογεῖσθε αὐτῷ, αἰνεῖτε τὸ ὄνο-}
μα αὐτ[οῦ"
APPENDIX VI 459
It is very improbable that there was εἰς before τὰς in line 2
(as there is in Codices 8 ART etc.).
No. 25. Kasr Nawa, undated, is read by Lucas :—
Vin \CYMOYKPCL
\MOYTIAHCIC}),,[
ἸΙΗΚΕΦΑΛΗΜΙ
} OIMOYY ( ,
transcribed :—
«ὦ. σύ μου, Κ(ύ)ρ(ιο)ς,
. 2» μου πλησίο[ν]
.. ἡ κεφαλή μ[ου]
οἵ μου ψ[υχῆς 7]
and translated :—
. . Thou to me, O Lord,
. . to me art near,
. my head
alas, my soul (?)
The inscription is, however, again a quotation from the Song
of Solomon,! LXX v. 2 :—
[φωνὴ ἀδελφι]δοῦ μου κρούει ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν. ἄνοι-Ἶ
[ξόν μοι ἀδελφή] μου, πλησίον μου, περιστερά μου,
[τελεία μον. ὅτ]ε ἡ κεφαλή μου ἐπλήσθη δρόσου]
[καὶ οἱ βόστρυχ]οί μου ψ[εκάδων νυκτός.
No. 89. Kasr el Beriidj, undated, Εμανουὴλ μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὁ Oe[d]s.
Cf. Matthew i. 23. For the spelling "Ewavound see Onomastica
Sacra, ed. Lagarde,” 493) Cod. F.
No. 49. Kasr ibn Wardan, 564 a.p., πάντα eis δόξαν θ(εο)ῦ.
Quotation from 1 Corinthians x. 31.
No. 99. Diarbekr, 437 (?) a.v., ὦ[ν] τὰ ὀνόμ(ατα) ἐν B(t)B(A@)
[this, and not βιβλίῳ, would be the proper extension] ξω(ῆς).
Quotation from Philippians iv. 3.
Apart from their importance as witnesses to the text, Biblical
quotations in inscriptions are always full of interest for the
history of devotion. They show what books of Holy Scripture
’ Probably an inscription for a door, with a religious application ; the words
of the Song of Solomon were probably connected with Rev, iii. 20 and
interpreted allegorically of Christ.
460 APPENDIX VI
were the favourites, and what were the really popular texts.
Not infrequently they enable us to see how they were interpreted.
But none of this has yet been worked out; people still prefer to
cite the Biblical quotations in the Fathers from bad editions of
their works. Let us hope that in the Corpus of Christian
Inscriptions to which we look forward the Biblical material will
be treated in a manner satisfactory alike to the demands of
epigraphy and of modern Biblical philology.
INDICES
(The references are to pages and footnotes.
£.g., 269; = p. 269, n. 1; and
2699 = the portion of note which has overlapped from p. 268.)
I
PLACES
Aberdeen, v, 12;
Abila, 357
Acraephiae, 358, 375,
Acrocorinthus, 286, 333, 399
Acropolis (Athens), 286
Actium-Nicopolis, 378
Aegean, 17
Aegina, 286
Aegira, 271
Aetolia, 325
Aezani, 381
Afium-Kara-Hissar, xxi
Africa, 59; Province of, 366
Ala-shehr (Philadelphia), xxi
Alexandretta, xxi
Alexandria, xxii, 24, 472, 154 ff,
171, 1732, 187-190, 1192-197,
199, 200
advent-coin, 376;
Alexandrian O.T., 39, 434
Biblical lexicography begins, 415 |
bishop and clergy, 192, 194 f.,
197, 199 f.
graffito, 3052
inscription, 356
Jews at, 367, 434, 447
papyri written at, 80, 154
‘All Kasiin, 457
Amorgus, 118
Amphissa, 325, 327
‘Anapo, river, 24
_Anatolia, viii, 1, 385, 454
\Ancyra, 379
_ Andros, 136,, 140
Angora, xxi. See Ancyra
Anticythera, 294
ΑἸ ποῦ, 3696
Antioch on the Orontes, 393, 732,
82, 86, 92, 400
Antiphellus (Lycia), 87
Apamea, 99
Aphrodisias, 361,
eae: village in Egypt, 374,
Arabia, x, 13, 133, 135
Aradus,-249,;, 348,
Arcadia, 377
Areopagus, 391, 394-398
Arethusa, Fountain of, 24 ;
Arles, 210
Armenia, 368
Arsinoé (Crocodilopolis), 28, 89,
1788, 180, 266,
Arsinoite nome, 176f., 192, 194,
196-200. See Fayim
Ashmunén (Eshmunein), 68,,
308
Asia, Province of, 375, 3761, 446
Asia Minor, viii, xxi f., xxvi
archaeology and inscriptions, 5,
11-15, 17, 3322, 456
cult of archangels, 454
culture and civilisation, 273, 277,
280 f., 286, 288
difficulties of travel in, 278
influences St. Paul, 311, 339
Κοινή, 86 ff., 103, 105 ἢ.
languages, 58;
south-west, 115, 2774, 316
special words : πάπας, 208; ; Kupia-
«és, 361; Sebaste Day} 363,
365 £.; παρουσία, 375
Assuan. See Syene
Athens, the Acropolis, 286
antiquities preserved there, 482,
294, 423 ff., 433
author’s visit, 482, 238;, 424
Hadrian at, 376
461
462 INDEX I
Athens (con.) : Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A. [232
inscriptions, 81, 94, 381 (Fig. 37)]
oldest Greek letter found there,
148
ostraca at, 43
publications, 2385, 413
St. Paul at, 97, 249, 391, 394-398
Attica, 92, 305, 307
Baalbec, xxi
Baden, xxvi, 126
Baetocaece, 99
Baluklaou, 280;
Behnesa. See Oxyrhynchus
Berlin, xxviii, 358
Academy, 11;, 125, 301, 134
Botanical Gardens, 22
Imperial Postal Museum, 157
inscriptions, 106, 3153, 3192,
345, 3492, 7, 3504, 3512, 3655,
370
Museum, oldest Greek letter, 148
Museum, papyri, 167, 172, 176
Museum, publications, 12,4
names and tombstones, 278,
ostraca, 44, 104
papyri (‘Berliner Griechische
Urkunden”’), 302, 32, 36, 45,
805, 81, 824,6, 85, 91, 119,
1214, 5, 1311, 1740, 1986, 2665,
300;
Royal Library, papyrus, 371
Bethel (Bielefeld), 42
Bethlehem, xxii, 2600
Beyrout, xxi
Bielefeld, 42
Bingerbriick, 68
Bithynia, 319, 3761, 3888
Black Sea, 84, 313, 319. See
Latyschev in Index V
Boeotia, 358
Bonn-Poppelsdorf, 22
Bosporan Kingdom, 368
Braunsberg, 3322
Bremen, 118
Breslau, 22
Britain, 10, 876.
Bubastis, 135 f., 135;
Bucharest, xxvi, 423 ff., 433
Buda-Pesth, xxvi
Bulgaria, 381
Byzantium, 3838
Caesarea, 229, 278
Cairo, xxii, 34,, 425, [49 (Fig. 3)],
438, 441 ff.
Cambridge, xviii, xxvii, 2, 210, 159
edition of LXX, 346, 354
Campania, 274
Candia, 279,
Capernaum, xxi
Caranis, 176 ff., 265
Caria, 14;, 3686, 375, 380
Carmel, xxii
Carpathus, 77
Carthage, 360
Cerceosiris, 373
Ceryza, 3322
Chaeronia, 325
Chaidari, near Athens, 148
Chalia, 325
Chersonese, Tauric, 367
Chinili Kiosk, 75,
Cibyratis, 14,
Cilicia, 88, 95,, 116, 277,
Coblentz, 4182
Colossae, 229, 278, 339
Constantinople, xxi, xxvi, 75
Corinth, advent-coin, 375
archaeology and inscriptions, 13,
16;, 455 ;
Christian church at, 274, 808 ff.,
332 f., 366
Gulf of, 287
the Macellum at, 274
Nero at, 358, 375
St. Paul at, 232, 274, 278, 400
St. Paul’s letters to, 228 f., 239,
278, 303 ff., 333, 366, 399
situation of, 286, 399
synagogue inscription, 72, 13,7,
6f.
‘Coronia, 325
Cos, 18, 15, 116, 248, 279, 294 ft.,
325, 331, 334, 349, 375 £., 382
Crete, 95, 99;, 106, 278, 279;, 3, 401,
435
Crocodiles, City of, 28
Cyclades, 401
Cyprus, 19.
Dakkeh, 43;, 119
Damascus, xviii;, xxi, 388
Daulis, 80;, 325
Dead Sea, xxii
Delos, 13, 53:, 279, 286, 423 ff.,
433 ff.
Delphi, 11, 135, 78, 83 f., 111, 2171,
286 f., 324 £., 327 ff.
Dessau, 71
Didrbekr, 459
Didlington Hall, Norfolk, 192
Didyma, ix, 12ς, 13, 280, 286, 454
Dill, river, 113;, 4182
Dionysias (Fayam), 205
PLACES
Dniester, 381
Dorylaeum, 381
Ebedjik, 316,
Eden, 2563
Edfu, 366
Egypt, viii, xxii, 5
Christianity in, 198 ff., 201 ff,
207 ff., 213
inscriptions, 135;,
362 £., 366
Κοινή, 103
legal documents, 338
ahr 41-53, 152, 186, 191, 210,
21
Pagan piety in, 284
papyrus and papyri in and from,
21-41, 250 ff., 415f., 436 ff.,
441 ff,
papyrus letters, 150, 154, 157,
159, 162, 164, 167, 172, 176,
182, 187, 192, 201, 203, 205,
226, 297 ff., 371
soul-types, 297 ff.
special words: κύριος, κυριακός,
356 f£., 359, 361 ; Sebaste Day,
363 ff. ; παρουσία, 372 ff.;
Καίσαρος, 382
topography of, 37
village life, 265 f.
wooden tablets, 98, 126
See also Index IV
Elatia, 325
Elephantine, 28, 29;, 30;, 1633
Eleusis, 286, 376
El-Fayim. See Fayim
El-Hibeh. See Hibeh
El-Khargeh, 362 f.
Ephesus, xxi, 286
archaeology and inscriptions, 112,
89, 113, 138;, 2803, 312, 348
Isis cult, 138,
St. Paul at, 229, 239, 249, 278,
2803, 333, 400
St. Paul’s letters to, 226 ff., 817:
in the Revelation, 237, 379
Ruphus of, 86
sculpture from, 294
theatre of, 113, 2803, 312
Epidaurus, 132;, 2793, 285, 310,
374, 3756
267, 349,
Erfurt, 22
Eshmunein. See Ashmunén
Eski Shehr, xxi
Euboea, 20;, 933
Euhemeria (Kasr el-Banat), 130,
300;
Euphrates, 10
463
Fayim, papyri from, 28, 35, 38,
683, 76, 82, 87, 91, 130, 157, 167,
172, 176, 178::, 192, 226, 300;,
345, 371,; an inscription from,
349, 366
Florence, 266 f., 337
Frankfort on the Main, xxvii
Galatia, inscription from, 306;
πάπας, 208;; St. Paul’s letter to,
229, 239, 366
Galilee, xxi, 265 f., 400, 4503
Geneva, 32, 206, 269
Giessen, 113;
Gomorrha, 258;2
Gorgippia, 325
GGrlitz, 387
Greece, xxvi, 273, 358, 372 ff., 4142
Hadrumetum, 19;, 260, 3362, 429
Hagios Elias (monastery in Thera),
xxv, 2793
Haifa, xxii
Halicarnassus, 94, 305, 3499
Halle, 42,
Harvard University, 232
Hauran, 19;, 87
Heidelberg, xxix, 2, 24, 1263, 2212,
416 (Fig. 63
Botanical Gardens, 22
ostraca, 459
papyri, 26, 302,3, 32, 35, 203,
227, 2559, 3001, 415
Heraclia on the Black Sea, 296, 319
Herborn, 229;, 416, 418,
Herculaneum, 702, 119
Hermonthis, 28, 210 f., 214
Hermupolis, village, 205, 207 ff.,
226
Hermupolis Magna, 79, 207, 227, 266
Hermupolis Parva, 207
Hibeh, 32, 83, 112, 150, 194,
Hierapolis, xxi, 126, 87 £., 94,, 277
Hierapytna, 106
Hileh, lake, 21
TIasus, 365
Ibedshik. See Ebedjik
Ida, Mount, 279,
Iilyricum, 2742
Ios, 133-137, 2882
Irbid, 87
Islands, viii, xxvi, 13, 17, 2781. See
also Aegean, Aegina, Amorgus,
Andros, Carpathus, Cos, Crete,
Cyprus, Delos, Iasus, Ios, My-
conos, Mytilene, Paros, Rheneia,
Rhodes, Salamis, Samos, Sicily,
Syme, Thera
464
Isthmus of Corinth, 455
Istropolis, 81 |
Italy, xxvi, 21, 24£., 1863, 198, 273f.,
299, 358, 376;. See also Cam-
pania, Florence, Herculaneum,
Misenum, Naples, Pompeii, Rome,
Tiber, Turin, Venice, Verona
Itanus, 106
Jaffa, xxii
Jena, 394
Jericho, xxii, 131,
Jerusalem, xxii, 74f., 131;, 253
(1. 3069), 2594, 2742, 2803, 359,
430, 457
Jordan, xxii, 253 (1. 3053), 258,
Judaea, xxii
Karlsruhe, 126,
Kasr el-Banat. See Euhemeria
Kasr el Bertidj, 459
Kasr ibn Wardan, 459
Kasr Nawa, 457 ff.
Kefr-Hauar, 109, 354
Konieh, xxi
KGres, 3322
Koula, 3322
Kreuznach, 68
Lahn, river, 113;, 4182
Laodicea, xxi, 229, 237, 379
Lebanon, 263
Leipzig, 26, 32, 879, 985
Letopolis, 28
Levant, viii, 2
Leyden, 44, 303, 3097
Libya, 162
London, British Museum, 472
Egypt Exploration Fund, ostraca,
42,, 210, 214; papyri, 150, 154,
1594, 182;
inscriptions in B.M., 112, 15, 891,
94, 112;, 1381, 3123, 6, 349%
ostraca in — 43 αὐ: wae ay
apyri in B.M., 26, 302, 32, 373,
ἡ ΣΝ 139;, 162, 201, 202;, 205 ff.,
227, 268, 304, 308, 3522, 382;,
451 ,
the late F. Hilton Price’s collec-
tion, 308
Lycaonia, 280;
Lycia, 14;, 108:, 115, 294
Lydia, 126
Lystra, 2801
Macedonia, 302, 376
Maeander, 2782. See Magnesia
Magdole, 266
INDEX I
Magnesia on the Maeander, 12, 17,
106, 277, 3496, 351, 3686, 3785
Manchester, 176 ‘
Mars’ Hill, 395
Mauretania, 376,
Medinet el-Fayam, 28
ae Saati world, viii, 46, 74,.
Megara, 482, 5, 92, 141
Memnonia, 21
Memphis, 28 ‘
Menas, shrine in Egypt, xvii, 472
Merom, waters of, 21
Mersina, xxi
Mesopotamia, 19ς, 456 ff.
Miletus, 12, 13,, 280, 286, 446f.,
448 ff.
Milyas, 14,
Misenum, 167 ff.
Moesia, 376,
Miilheim (near Cologne), 387
Munich, 356
Miinster, 42,
Myconos, 13,
Myra (Lycia), 115
Mytilene, 97
Naples, 24, 702, 1697, 274, 358
Nassau, 416
Naupactus, 325, 3287
Nazareth, xxii, 7, 390
New Corinth, 455
New Haven, Conn., U.S.A. [164]
Nicaea (Bithynia), 83
Nile, 10, 23, 27, 44, 162, 189,
Notion, 325
Nubia, 20:, 36, 41, 43;, 119
Numidia, 360
Nysa (‘“‘ Arabia”), x, 133 ff.
Nysa (Caria), 375, 380
Oasis, Great, 37, 201 f., 218, 267,
362
Oenoanda, 87
Olbia, 84, 313, 374, 3833
Olympia, 11, 285, 348,
Orchomenus, 112
Oxford, 342, 182, 187, 227
Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa), 1899, 266
bishop of, 213
nome of, 1502, 160
papyri from, 28f., 32, 77, 791,
81, 82, 87, 895, 118, 119,
1215, 125, 180 £., 154, 159, 164,
1652, 17811, 182, 187, 1949,
3015, 2312, 332, 3373,. 3552,
35
Biblical papyri, 26, 34f., 232
Logia from, 26, 333, 436 ff. .
PLACES
Palestine, viii, xxi f., 21, 265 £., 269,
τς 887
Palmyra, 76, 868
Pamphylia, 14:
Panagia Kapuli, 280;
‘Panopolis, 28
ticapaeum, 100, 325, 330, 3838
aris, Academy, 13,
‘“Mandaean inscription, 308
Ὁ ostraca, 44
‘papyri, 32, 79, 130
Great Magical Papyrus, 250 ff.,
τ 80ὅ,, 3097, 429
Parnassus, 286,, 325, 333
Paros, 263, 319, 381
‘Patras, 375
Pergamum, xxv, 237, 286, 379
- archaeology and inscriptions, 12,
17, 83, 867, 1843, 260, 276,
280, 315, 319, 3362, 348,
349,, 350, 352, 365, 3673
Persia, 358, 368
Phaedriads, 286
Philadelphia (Fayam), 168 ff., 174
Philadelphia (Lydia), 237, 379
Philae, 354;, 3566
Philippi, 230, 335
Phmau, 186
Phoenicia, 68, 249, 348,
Phrygia, 376;, 381
Phthochis, 160
Physcus, 325
Pisidia, 14;, 18,, 319
Polydeucia, 131
Pompeii, 119, 273-277
Pompeiopolis, xxi
Pontus, 375
Port Said, xxii ,
Priene, 12, 82, 117;, 123, 2772, 2962
calendar inscription, 349, 351,
. 370
Prusias on the Hypius, 319, 383g
Ptolemais (Acre), 249:
Rakhlé, 80
Red Sea, 253 (1. 3054), 258g
Rheneia, 185, 195, 1173,
. 423 ff., 434, 4478
Rhine, 10, 692
Rhodes, 19,
Rhodiapolis, 14;, 1031, 294
Rome, Hadrian at, 376 :
inscriptions, 149, 88, 132, 278,
317, 3462, 376
oldest Christian papyrus letter
written at, 38, 192-201
ostraca, 44
St. Paul at, 229, 230, 400
St. Paul’s letter to, 87, 231 f., 278
3262,
465
Rome (con.) :
1 Cor. known at, 399 ©
Tiridates at, 358
Rosetta, 349;, 356
Russia, 19;, 565. See Black Sea
Saba, 263
Sais, 163g
Salamis, 286
Samaria, xxii
Samos, 101
Sardis, xxi, 86, 237, 379
Scaptopare, 381
Scili (Seilli, Numidia), 247.2, 360
Selinus, river, 319 (Fig. 48)
Serapeum, 78
Sicily, 21, 24, 376;
Diodorus of, 83, HA
Sidon, 68, 69:
Silesia, 126
Siloam, 132
Siwah, 163,
myrna, xxi, 237,
263, 360, 379
Socnopaei Nesus, 131;, 265, 349,
366
Sodom, 258;2
xxvii, 105f.,
‘Spain, 376,
Sparta, 80
Stiris, 325
Strassburg, 302, 32, 35f., 48
Stratonicia, 117, 3686
Stuttgart, 141
Sudan, 21
Syene (Assuan), 28, 30;, 39, 128,,
63,7, 8
Some 102
Syracuse, 21, 24 f.
Syria, viii, xxi, 5, 9, 13, 195, 80,
99, 109f., 357, 3837, 456 ff.
Talmi, 183,
Tamak, 457
Taphis (Tehfah, Nubia), 20,
Tarsus, xxi, 387, 390
' Taurie Chersonese, 367
Tebtunis, 32, 79, 81, 965, 1833,
328,, 3733
Tefeny, 18,
Tegea, 319, 377
Tehfah (Taphis), Nubia, 20;
Tekoa, 387
Tell Hum (Capernaum), xxi
Telmessus, 115
Termessus, 319
Thala, 366
Theadelphia, 131
Thebaid, 377
30
466
Thebes, ostraca from, 48, 104f.,
111, 123£., 127;, 152, 186, 191,
357, 364, 374
papyri from, 28
Thera, xxv, 13, 279, 286
Thessalonica, 158 f., 229, 317, 375
Thessaly, 3322
This, 28
Thyatira, 237, 3612, 379, 383
Tiber, river, 132
Tiberias, lake, xxi, 21
Tithora, 325, 328,
Toégo (3), 2022, 2
Toledo, 217;
Trachonitis, 88
Trasimeno, lake, 21
Troas, 149
INDEX II
Tubingen, 358, 4082
Turin, 44
Tyras, 381
Tyre, 249;
Venice, 354
Verona, 455;
Vienna, Archaeological Institute,
ies 148, 3072, 424 ἔ, (Figs. θ4--
6)
papyri at, 302, 227, 452
publications, 112, 14
statue at, 294
Yale University, 164
Zorava, 3837
II
ANCIENT PERSONS
(The names of persons mentioned in the Bible are IN SMALL CAPITALS.)
AaRoN, 426,
Aaron, 210 ff.
Abdes, father of Cottio, 68,
Abinnaeus, Flavius, 38,
226, 300;
Abos, 111
Abraham, Bishop, 210-218
Achaemenidae, 368
ApDaAM, 2568
Adrastia, 325
Aeschylus, 124 f., 428,
Aesculapius, 330;. See Asclepius
Agathobulus, 195 (Il. 24, 25), 197),
198
Agathopus, 381). See Aurelius
Agathus Daemon, 168f. (1. 25), 251
and 255 (1. 3000)
Alexander Aegus, 29;
ALEXANDER I., Baa, 249:
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 4, 18, 58,
. 61 ‘
Greek world begins with, 61
“ letters’ of, 224
successors of (7.e. the Diadochae),
224, 348, 383, 434
Alis, 154 ff., 298 £.
Ambrosius (St. Ambrose), 18410
Amerimnus, 276
Ammon, 1629, 10, 3097
Ammonius, 226
Amos, 3872
Amyntas, 3302
205 ff.,
ANASTASIS, 97
Anticles, son of Antiphanes, 307
Antinous, 291
Antiochus, King, 100
Antiochus IT., 348,
Antiocuts III., THE GREaT, 281
AntTiocuwus IV., EpIPHANES, 348,
Antriocuus VII., EUERGETES, 249:
Antiphanes, son of Patrocles, 307
Antoninus, 173, 175
Antoninus Pius, Emperor,
367, 3801-3
Antonis (Antonius) Longus, x, 131,
165,, 176 ff., 204,, 218f., 299,
301, 354
Antonis Maximus.
Anubas, 227
Aphaea, 286
Aphrodisias, 155 f.
Aphrodite, 348,, 349
Aphu, Bishop, 213
Apion, a soldier, 159, 167-175, 218,
299, 354
Apolinarius, 198
Apollo, god, 324 f£., 327, 333
Apollo Nesiotes, 325
Apollo, presbyter, 37, 201 ff.
Apollodorus, son of Pyrrhus, 315
Apollonarin, 154 f.
Apollonis, 194, 196
Apollonius Dyscolus, 462
Apollonius of Tyana, 291
82,,
See Apion
ANCIENT.
Apollonius, scribe, 161
Apollonius, son of Irene (?), 164
Appion, Bishop, 39
Apuleius, 134:, 1562
Aguita, husband of Priscilla, 119 f.,
278;
Aquila, translator of Old Testa-
ment, 27;, 192
Archelaus, 188, 189),
Aurelius
Archonica, 95,
© Ares, 251 and 255 (1. 2998), 348,,
τοῦ 849
' Aristeas, Epistle of, 101, 1833, 4283,
429
εν Aristion, 150 f.
, Aristotle, 114, 1163, 2199, 224
_ ARTAXERXES, 30:
. Artemidorus, interpreter of dreams,
31, 956, 103
Artemis, 957,
Diana
Artemon, 218,
Asclepiades, son of Charmagon, 152
Asclepias, 3322
_ Asclepius, 132, 2793, 311, 325, 333,
374
Assa, King, 22
Athanasius, 203
Athene, 251 and 255 (1. 2999), 325,
349 (Fig. 52)
. Athene Polias, 325
_ Atre, 211
Attalidae, 348,, 367,
ἡ Attalus IIL, 328,
ἃ Attis, 289,
Aufidia, 178 f.
Augustine, 233, 397
Ὁ Avueusrus, Emperor, 291
charagma of, 345
grandson of, 375
inscriptions in honour of, 97, 350
- inscriptions mentioning him, 99,
349, 351, 371, 3838
inscriptions of his reign, 126,
136,, 306
papyrus mentioning him (‘“‘ the
Caesar ’’), 155
refuses the title ‘‘lord,’’ 353
“saviour of the world,” 369
es a god Augustus,” 365 (Fig.
8
“letters of Augustus,” 379
Aurelius, 125
M. Aurelius, Emperor. See Mar-
cus
M. Aurelius Agathopus, 312
Aurelius Archelaus, 182-186, 2190
Aurelius Demetrius Nilus, 89
190. See
2803, 312. See
PERSONS 467
M. Aurelius Eutychus, 94
Aurelius Paulus, 232
Aurelius Victor, 357,
Bacchylides, 1946
Badakiel (clerical error), 451
Ballio, 321
BaRaBBas, 57, 267
Barnabas, 280;
BaRucH, 235
Baucis, 280,
L. Bellenus Gemellus, 1789, 300:
Beri, 154 ἢ.
Bictorinus, 455
Blastus, 157
Brutus, 224
Bulla Felix, 291
G. ae grandson of Augustus,
375 ἢ.
J. Caesar, 348, 369, 411
Carn, 216
Caligula, Emperor, 357
Caor, 1886, 1973, 205-210
Capiton, 168 f., 171
Caracalla, Emperor, 380;, 3
Carpus, 149
Carzoazus, son of Attalus, 84 f.
Celsus, 401
Charis, 94
Charmagon, 152
Chrysogonus, 295 f.
Chrysostom, 444, 455,
Cicero, 224
Cintus, 330
Cuaupius, Emperor, 158, 351, 357,
369
Cleanthes, the Stoic, 46
Clement of Alexandria, 1114, 436
Clement of Rome, 3;, 3283, 351:,
427, 429
Cleochares, 307
Cleopatra, 356
Clisthenes, 43
Clodius Culcianus, Praefect, 89
Constantine the Great, 4
Copres, 173, 175
Cottio, son of Abdes, 68,
Crates, 1092 ,
Crinupelis (?), 309
Crispus, 123
Crispus, 1235
Cronos, 135 £., 308 f., 357
CYRENIUS, 268, 2690
Danret, 216
Daphnus, 316
Darius, 30:
Davip, 457 f.
468
Decius, Emperor, 37
Demeter, 118
Demetrius, 114
Demetrius, author, 2181, 2972
J. Demetrius. See Julius
Aurelius Demetrius Nilus.
Aurelius
Demetrius Phalereus (?), 1663, 1673
Demetrios II., Nicator, 348;
Demophon, an Egyptian, 150 ff.
Demosthenes, 129, 224
See
Diadochae (= post- Alexandrian
Kings), 367. See Alexander the
Great
Diana, 114. See Artemis
Didymas, 164 f.
Didyme, 160
Didymus (?), 17921
Dio Cassius, 358,
Dio Chrysostom, 31, 340,
Diocletian, Emperor, 4, 373, 80:,
89, 201, 271 f., 291 f.
Diodorus of Sicily, 83, 133 f.
Diogenes, 160
Diogenes (3), 3322
Diogenes Laertes, 3:, 462
Diognetus, 157, 393:
Dion, 226,
Dionysia, 231,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 224
Dionysius, son of Harpocration, 79
Dionysus, 117, 325
Dioscorides, 309,
Domitian, Emperor,
8661.
Donata, 2472
355, 359f.,
Elias, 386
Exizazeta, 443 ff.
Elpis, 174
Ewoon, 427
Epagathus, 1785
Epaphroditus, an Egyptian, 164
EpapHRopDItus, 84
Epicharmus, 1946
Epictetus, 77, 94
Epimachus, 167-171, 175
Erinyes, 94, 3052
Euctemon, 168 f.
Euergetes II. See Ptolemy VII.
Eumelus, 153
Eumnastus, 327
Eumoerus (?), 1643
Euphronius, 330
Euripides, 447
Eusebius, 643
Eustathius of Thessalonica, 208:
Eutychides, 227
Eutychis, 89
INDEX II
Faustina, 350
Feuix, Procurator, 5
Festus, Procurator, 5, 358
Fortunata (?), 174
Fortunatus (?), 1742
GABRIEL, 442 ff., 451 ff.
Gatous, 168,
Galen, 966, 3793
Gallicus (—the god Men), 332,
Gatzio, Proconsul, 5
Gallonius, 168 f.
Ge, 332
GerHazi, 216, 217;
Gemellus. See Bellenus
Graecus Venetus, 35,
Gregory Nazianzen, 4442
Hadrian, Emperor, ix
his face, 294,
inscriptions of his reign, 365, 369
“letters ”’ of, 3801, 3
papyri of his reign, 80
parusiae of, 376 ff.
verses to his soul, 293
Harmiysis, 159 ff., 357
Harmonia, 276
Harpocras, 186, 219
Harpocration, father of Dionysius,
79
Harpocration, writer, 80
Hatros (3), 309
Hecate, 3052
Heliodorus, 162, 299
Heliodorus, son of Sarapion, 227,
800:
Hetiovorvs, Syrian favourite, 53,
Helios, 332
Hémai, 211
Hera, 101
Heraclea, 424, 428, 434 f.
Heracles, 132:
Heraclius, Emperor, 352
Hermes, god, 135 f., 251 and 264 f.
(ll. 2998, 2999), 307. See Mer-
eury
Hermes, Imperial freedman, 382
Hermes Trismegistus, 79, 2882
Hermogenes, 1176
Herop tHE GREAT, 357;, 442
Herop Aerippa I., 357;
Herop Aarirpa II., 357:
Herod, Irenarch, 360
Herodotus, 129, 1634, 8
Herondas, 78
Herostratus, son of Dorcalion, 322
Hesychius, lexicographer, 99;,: 214
Hesychius, Egyptian bishop and
Biblical critic, 491, 456
ANCIENT PERSONS
Hilarion, 154 ff., 218 f., 298 ἢ.
Homer, 129
Hor, 309
Horace, 224
Horus, god, 135, 2053, 251 and 254
τ, 9995), 349:
ΣΙ Horus, son of Permamis, 364
Hygeia, 94
Ignatius, 35
Irenaeus, 198 f.
Irene, 130, 164-167, 299
Isidorus, 125
Isis, 68,, 183-137, 2882, 3491, 354,
- 356
Isis collections, 105, 111, 284
‘IsraEt, 216, 2526, 253 and 258
(1. 3055), 257,
Jacob, 210 ff.
Jacob, son of Job, 211
JAHVEH, 354
Jamus, 224, 235
JEREMIAH, 252 (1. 3041), 25710
JEROBOAM, 216
Jerome, 724, 415, 416;
JESUS OF NazARETH—
(i) Personality :
a son of the East, 1
a@ carpenter, 7, 404, 406
spoke Galilean Aramaic, 57
a man of the people, 240, 318,
406
country-bred, 240, 273
friend of children, 156, 386
friend of animals, 273
(ii) Life :
Jewish legends of His birth, 68
an inscription He may have
. seen, 75
sends forth the apostles, 108 ff.
peame of the blind man, 131 f.,
10
healing of the deaf and dumb
man, 306
healing of the woman with the
issue of blood, 310
betrayal, etc., of, 215 f.
scourged by Pilate, 267
(iti) Sayings :
“ they have their reward,” 110 ff.
“judge what is right,” 118
“render unto Caesar,” etc., 247 ff.,
᾿ς 844
parable of the wicked servant, a
parallel, 267
469
Jesus or NAZARETH (con.):
(iii) Sayings (con.):
other parables and parallels,
131,, 269, 301
the price of sparrows, 270-273
“‘a ransom for many,” 331 ἢ.
“ Logia”’ of, 436 ff.
popular tone of His sayings, 63,
1
1,
(iv) As viewed by Primitive
Christiana and ancients :
popular titles applied to, 396,
406 :
“the Chief Shepherd,” 97, 406
“the King,” 367
His vicarious present activity,
339 f.
His coming expected, 233, 343,
389, 397
“the marks of Jesus,” 303
“* Jesus and Anastasis ”’ preached
by Paul, 97
legendary altar dedicated to Him
by Augustus, 350;
name interpolated in a magical
papyrus, 252 (1. 3020), 256,
invoked in inscriptions, 455
(v) As viewed by modern criti-
cism :
altogether unliterary, 238 f., 240,
386
altogether untheological, 386,
388 ἢ
embodies the most primitive
Christianity, 245, 388 ff.
the object of the Primitive Chris-
tian cult, 395 ff.
His care for individual souls, 290,
301
the Redeemer, 397, 400
““the sheer incarnation of re-
ligious inwardness,” 390
politically indifferent, 342 ff.
His attitude towards miracles,
393
His type of religious production
to be worked out, 410
certain critics try to wipe out the
name, 240;, 263
not included in the Berlin Proso-
pographia, 291, 301
See also Christ in Index IV
Jochanan, Rabbi, 2563
JoHN THE Baptist, 291, 386, 441-
445
470
JOHN THE EVANGELIsT, St. JOHN
THE DIvINE:
at Ephesus, 280,
his attitude towards miracles,
393
his title ‘‘ Theologos,” 352.
his type of religious production,
410
parataxis in, 127-132
solemn use of “1,᾽" 133-140
taste for strong effects, 287 f.
uses metaphor of ‘“‘redemp-
tion,” 331
uses the form πλήρης, 126 f.
John of Antioch, 39,
John Chrysostom, St., 3313, 3531
John of Damascus, St., xviliz
JosePH of Nazareth, 441 ff.
Josephus, 72, 75, 78, 833, 101, 116,
291, 359,, 3793, 380, 446,
JupaH. A reference to the Testa-
mentum Judae, c. 8, has been
accidentally omitted, 99:
Jupas Iscariot, 216, 217;
JUDE, 235, 242, 359
Julianus, 168 f.
Tib. Julius Alexander, 267, 362
M. Julius Apellas, 311
Julius Bassus, 319
Julius Demetrius, 363
Julius Domitius, 182 ff.
JUPITER (= ZEUS), 2801, 2, 332
Jupiter Ammon, 163g, 10
Justin II., Emperor, 352
Justin Martyr, 37
Justinian, Emperor, 352, 377, 455
Justinus, 382, 1973, 203f., 2093,
219
Lassa, 211
Lazarus, 426;
Leonippus, 375
Levi, Testamentum, 893
“ Libanius, 165,, 221:
Liogenes (?), 3322
Livia, 357
Livy, 34
Longus. See Antonis Longus
Lucianvus, praepositus cubiculorum,
2232
Lucianus, priest of Antioch, Biblical
critic, 456
Lucilius, 224
1σκε, St.:
accuracy, 268, 358
his dedications, 241
language, 84, 86, 118, 132, ᾿
not in the Berlin Prosopograpma,
291
INDEX ἢ
Luxe, St. (con.):
pious exaggeration (1), 249
style, 63
unacquainted with St.
letters, 239
Paul’s
Magarius (Macarius), 204
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 72, 94,
350, 3802
Maria. See Mary, Pollia
MazxK, St., 310
Marrna, 57
Marthina, 425, 428, 434 f.
Martial, 77,4
Mary, the mother of Jesus, 48,
280,, 441-445, 455
Mary of Ephesus, 317
Mary, mother of Hor, 309
. MatTHEw, St., 57, 310; Gospel of
the Pseudo-Matthew, 445
_ Maurice, Emperor, 352
Maximus, son of Apion, 173 f.
Maximus, son of Copres, 173, 175
Maximus, Papas, 192-200
Maximus. See Antonis Maximus
Melchiel, 4532
Men, a god, 3322
Menander, 372;
Menas, St., xvii, 472
Menches, 96
Mercury, 280;, 452,. See Hermes
MicHakEt, archangel, 442 f., 451 ff.
Michael Tharrinos, St., 102 f.
Mithradates VI., Eupator, 375
Mithras, 289
Mnesiergus, 148 f., 218
Mnevis, 251 (1. 2994), 2548
Moeris, lexicographer, 85,
Moschion, 1532
Moschion, physician, ix
Mosss, 353
Moses, 211
Munatius Felix, Praefect, 37
Mystarion, olive-planter, 157 ff.
Naaman, 216
Nausias, 148
Nearchus, 162f., 299
Nemesis (7), 325
Nero, Emperor, 274, 384
advent-coins, 375 ὁ
mentioned in inscriptions, 349,
351, 358
ostraca of his reign, 105, 357
papyri, 160 f., 357 £.
6 good god,” 349
“the lord,” 105, 161, 357 ff.
visit to Corinth, 358, 375
Nerva, Emperor, 3802
ANCIENT PERSONS
‘
Nicaea, 327
Nicander, poet, 953
Nicetes, 360
Nilus (?), 194, 196
Nilus, brother of Tasucharion, 226
Nilus, son of Politica, 202
Nilus, 5th-cent. Christian writer,
96;
Nilas (?), 1968
Nilas, mother of Antonis Longus,
131:, 176 ff., 218
Noad, 25810
Nonnus, 140
Onesimvus, 1512, 278, 335, 339
Opramoas, 14;, 103;, 294 f.
Oribasius, 86,
Origen, 643, 72,, 963, 387, 415
Osiris, 1341, 135 ff., 349;
Otacilia Polla, 319
Ovid, 3;, 224, 280;
Pachomius, 203
Pacysis, son of Patsebthis, 191
Pamaris, son of Hermodorus, 111
Pan, 251 and 254 (1. 2996)
Pant(h)era, 68 f.
Pao, father of Psenmonthes, 186
Papiscus, 160 f.
Papnuthius, 38,, 203 f.
Papus, 335
Pasion, 131
Patermute, 211 f.
Patrocles, father of Antiphanes, 307
Paul, ὦ deserter, 205 f., 209 f.
Pau, St., named as a chrono-
logical Jandmark, 294, 349, 351,
355, 359
(i) Personality -
a son of the East, 1
his home in Asia Minor, 1162, 316,
339
a Jew, 362
a weaver of tent-cloth, 7, 317, 404
his clumsy handwriting, 1532, 159
his ‘‘ thorn in the flesh,”’ 310 ff.
attitude to nature, 272 f.
comparatively indifferent to poli-
tics, 343
presumably familiar with Im-
perial institutions, 344
division of his world into East
and West, 274
closely united with the lower
classes, 60, 316 ff., 332 f.
as non-literary as Jesus, 239 f.
471
Paut, St. (con.):
(i) Personality (con.) -
certain critics try to wipe out the
name, 263
not included in the Berlin Pro-
sopographia, 291
(ii) Incidents in his life :
an inscription he may have seen,
75
at Lystra, 280:
probability that he visited the
islands, 278 f.
his dream of the man of Mace-
donia, 302
at Athens, 97, 249, 284f., 391,
394-398
at Ephesus, 249 f., 280,
at Miletus, 446
arrested at Jerusalem, 752
Jewish zealots swear to kill him,
1896
appeals to Caesar, 343
voyage to Rome, 435
his arrangements for the collec-
tion in Galatia and Corinth,
366
‘‘ perils in the sea,”’ etc., 1695, 278
cloak left at Troas, 149
(papyrus) books asked for, 27
(iii) Language :
Nagehi’s monograph, 17, 56
Cilicisms, 116,
words and phrases :
ἀπελεύθερος κυρίου, 382
αὐθεντέω, 85
γινώσκειν ὑμᾶς βούλομαι, 1786
διαθήκη, 84]
διαταγή, 86
ἔνοχος, 115 f.
εὐπροσωπέω, 96
κύμβαλον, 1505
κυριακός, 36) ff.
λογεία, 104 ff.
μαλακός, 1504
μνείαν σου ποιούμενος, 1723
παραβολεύομαι, 84
πεπίστευμαι, 819
πρεσβεύω, 819
σπέρμα, 354
συναντιλαμβάνομαι, 84
ὑποτίθημι τὸν τράχηλον, 119 ἔ,
ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα, 121
resemblances (not quotations) in
papyri, 184,, 7,8, 185 f.
resemblances (not quotations) in
magical papyrus, 25711
472
.
Ῥασι, St. (con.):
(iii) Language (con.) :
resemblances (not quotations) in
inscriptions, 313, 362
E. Norden on St. Paul’s style, 4
popular tone of his prose, 63 f.,
127, 240, 2963, 3022, 318
fondness for legal expressions,
120, 323-341, 361
his use of the language of magic,
303-306
his use of a formula connected
with healing, 310 ff.
his τὸ οἱ inscriptional formulae,
312 £.
(iv) His letters :
dictated, 1532, 227, 232
autograph signature, 153.2, 158 f.,
305
begin with thanks to God, 168,
epistolary formulae, 1683, 1786,
184,, 7, 8, 185 ἢ.
non-literary in character,224-234,
235, 236, 245, 399
. their frank self-revelation, 290
letters of commendation, 158
letter to Philemon, 1512, 205, 229
For other letters see Index IV.
For quotations see Index VIa.
(v) His Christianity and mis-
stonary work :
less theological than religious,
387-390
his type of religious production
to be worked out, 410 ,
his hope of the Lord’s coming,
233, 343, 389, 397
transitoriness of this world, 281 f.,
343, 397
attitude towards miracles, 311,
393
comforts mourners, 166 f.
Antichrist, 347
his preaching antagonistic to.
Emperor worship, 350, 359
‘‘ worshipping of the angels,” 448
preaches ‘‘ Jesus and Anastasis,”’
97
background of his missionary
labours, 273 f., 300
the souls that he sought to win,
300
his ‘‘ open door,” 302
popular style of his missionary
methods, 303
his generous estimate of pagan-
ism, 282, 314
INDEX. II
Paut, St. (con.):
(v) His Christianity and mis-
_ stonary work (con.):
his employment of popular ethics,
316-321
his list of vices compared with
pagan lists, 320 f.
his idea, of freedom, 324,
his metaphor of redemption taken
from the practice of sacral
manumission, 324-334, 354,
‘his metaphors of debt and re-
mission taken from legal prac-
tice, 334-337 ,
his use of the legal conception of
agency, 339 f.
his use of the word διαθήκη, 341
his use of ‘‘ Lord ”’ facilitated the
spread of Christianity, 354 f.
Paulus, Aur. See Aurelius Paulus
Pauosis, 186
Pausanias, 3;
Pecysis, father of Psenamunis, 105
Permamis, father of Horus, 364
Permamis, father of Portis, 152
Peteme(nophis), son of Pic(os),
641.
ῬΈΤΕΕ, St., 48, 57, 1696, 185, 224,
310
Petosiris, father, 160
Petosiris, son, 160
Petoys, 150
PHaRaon, 252 (1. 3036), 257
Phibas, 227
Phibion, 267
PxitEeMon, 1512, 1723, 226, 335, 339
Philemon, husband of Baucis, 280,
Philion, 164
Philo of Alexandria, 46, 88 f., 101,
380, 415, 447
Philo, husband of Taonnophris, 164
Philocles, 307
Philodemus, 702
Philonides, Epicurean, 119
Photius, 96:1, 2
Phthomonthes, 186
Pibechis, 251 (1. 3007), 2556
Pibuchis, son of Pateésis, 105 f.
Pic(os), 364 f.
PiuatE, 267
Pindar, 88, 438:
Plantas, 164
Plato, 3,, 67, 129, 1532, 195g, 394
Plautus, 321
Plenis, chief shepherd, 98
Plenis, son of Pauosis, 186
Pliny the Elder, 23 ff.
Pliny the Younger, 113, 224
‘
, ANCIENT
Plutarch, 3;, 71 f., 755, 77, 94, 114,
1172, 224, 283, 319, 444,
Polemon, 96
Politica, 201,, 202
Pollia Maria, 123
Pollux, 321,
Polybius, 71, 755, 374,
Polycarp, 360
Pontianus, 317,
Portis, son of Permamis, farmer,
152
Postumus (?), 176 £., 17921, 180
Primitinus, 194-200
Priscitua, 119 f., 278;
Proclus, author of De forma episto-
lari, 165,, 181:
Proclus, Neo-Platonist, 103, 165,
Protogenes, 374
Psate, 214-217
Psenamunis, son of Pecysis, 105
Psenmonthes, 186
Psenosiris, 37, 1953, 1978, 201 ff.,
208, 218
Ptolemaeus, dreamer, 126, 130
Ptolemaeus, police official, 150 ff.
Ptolemaeus, royal scribe, 160
Ptolemies, the, 3482, 363,
Ptolemy, King, 349
Proremy IV., Paitopator, 356
Protemy V., EprIPHanes, 349;, 356
Protemy VII., Evercstss II., 328,
Ptolemy VIII., Soter II., 373
Ptolemy XITI., 356
Ptolemy XIV., 356
Ptolemy, geographer, 103
Pylaemenes, 226,
Quintilian, 3,
RapHakt, archangel, 451 ff.
Roma, goddess, 365 (Fig. 58) *
Rufus, 226,
Ruphus of Ephesus, 86
ΒΑΒΑΟΤΕ, 253 and 258 (I. 3052)
Sabina, 172-175
Samuel, 210 ff.
Sarapion, 228,
Satan, 2802, 304, 310, 3313, 3756
Saturnus, 366;
Sauromates I., 368,
Seigelasis, 876
Seleucidae, 348
Semphtheus, 151
Seneea, 3:, 224
Septimius Herodianus, 3685
Septimius Severus, 380;
G. Septimius Vegetus, 267
PERSONS 478
Serapis, 168 f., 171, 178:, 1161. (. δ),
299, 325, 333, 3552
Serenilla, 168 f.
Serenus, 168 f.
Silco, 134,, 206;
Simeon, 211
Simon, 124,
Smicronides, aA
Socnopaeus, 366
Sotomon, 252 (1. 3040), 257
Proverbs of, 36
Testamentum Salomonis, 4531
Sophia, 453
Sophocles, 124, 397
Sosibius, 327
Soterichus, 330,
Sotion, author, 95,
Speratus, 360, 3676
G. Stertinius ‘Xenophon, 248, 294,
349
Stobaeus, 3;
Stotoétis, chief priest, 157 f.
Suchus, a god, 266
Suetonius, 276, 367:
Suriel, archangel, 451, 453
Susanna, 216
Syliel, archangel, 451
Symmachus, Old Testament trans-
lator, 99:, 296,
Synesius, 226,
Tachnumi, 226
Taisis, 309
Tannetis (?), 252 (1. 3024), 256,
Taonnophris, 164
Tasucharion, 226
Tauetis, 131;
TERTIUS, 228, 232
Tertullian, 1975
Theocles, son of Satyrus, 313
Theodosius II., Emperor, 39
Theodotus, 208;
Theon (Theonas), son of Theon,
187-190, 1945, 2066, 219, 405
Theon, father of Theon (Theonas),
187-190, 2066
Theon, friend of Aur. Archelaus,
183 ff. ᾿
Theonas (bishop, reputed author
of letter to Lucianus), 2232
Theonas, steward (?) to Maximus,
195, 197, 200
Theophylact, 331,
Thermuthion, 164
Tromas, St., 366; Gospel of, 333,
406;
Thrasycles, 148
Thucydides, 845, 129
474.
TiseRius, Emperor, 111, 353, 357,
364 f., 3838
Tiberius IT., 352
Tigranes, 368,
Timanthes, 307
Timotheus, poet, 29;
TrmorHEvs, 157,
Timoxenus, 153,
Tiridates, 358
Titus, Emperor, 75;, 274, 369
Trajan, Emperor, ix, 113, 345, 3673,
369, 3803
Triptolemus, 286
TROPHIMUS, 752
Trypho, 877:
Turbo, 168 f.
Twin-sisters, 126.
Tyche, 251 and 255 (1. 3000), 307
Tycuicus, 1848
C. Umphuleius Bassus, 89
Uriel, 451;
Valens. See Vettius Valens
Valentinian III., Emperor, 39
Valerius Aper, soldier, 132
INDEX ΠῚ
Venetus, Graecus, 35,
Vergil, 432;
Flavius Verus (Severus 1), 87,
Lucius Verus, 380,
G. Julius Verus Maximinus, Em
peror, 371 f.
G. Julius Verus Maximus, Emperor,
371
Vespasian, Emperor, 274, 359;, 369
Vestidia Secunda, 123
Vettius Valens, 732, 831, 86, 92, 3202
G. Vibius Maximus, 268
C. Vibius Salutaris, 114
P. Vigellius Saturninus, 360
Xenophon, 67
XERXES (= AHASUERUS), x, 30;
Zadakael, 451,
Zadakiel, archangel, 451 f.
Zaziel, archangel, 451 f.
Zenobia, 3685
Zenobius, an effeminate, 150
Zeus Ammon, 1639; τὸ
ZEvs (Jupiter), 280z, 2, 332
Zidkiel, 451,
ZIMRI, 216
Iii
“WORDS AND PHRASES
Cin some cases the English equiwalents witl be found in Index IV.)
a weakened to e, 92,
ἀγαθὸς θεός, 349,
ἀγάπη, 70,
ἀγγαρεύω, 340,
ἄγγελος, 279,
ἁγιώτατος, 195,
ἀγοράζω, 328,
ἀγών, 97,, 512.
ἀδελφή, 154,
ἀδελφός, 96, 107, 227
ἀείξωον, 309,
εἰς ἀθέτησιν, 341
αἷμα ἀναίτιον, 428
αἷμα ἐκδικῶ, 431 £.
— ἐκζητῶ, 431
— ἐκχέω, 428
— ἑητῶ, 481 Ἐ,
αἰώνιος, 368,
ἀκατάγνωστος, 10, 841.
ἀλλογενής, 74 ff.
ἀλλοεθνής, 75,
ἀλλόφυλος, 75,
ἀλήθεια in epistolary formulae, 300,
ἂμ μή, 188,, 206,
ἁμαρτωλός, 114, 322,
dy = ἐάν, 188,
ἀναβιόω, 95 £.
ἀναβλέπω, 132
ἀναζάω, 94 ff.
ἀναζώω, 95
ἀνάθεμα, 92 f.
ἀναθεματίζω, 92 £., 304,
ἀναστατόω, 80 f., 188,,
ἀναστρέφομαι, 107, 315
ἀναστροφή, 107, 315
ἀνέθεμα, 92
ἄνομος, 322,
ἀνόσιος, 322,
ἀντί, 122
ἀντιλήμπτωρ, 70
ἀντίλημψις, 107
ἀντιλογέω, 191 .
᾿Αντῶνις, 168,5, 176,
ἀξιῶ, 158, 426. i
ἀξίωμα, 340,
ἀπάτωρ, 40
WORDS AND PHRASES
ἀπελεύθερος Καίσαρος or Σεβαστοῦ,
8
ἀπελεύθερος κυρίου, 330), 882
ἀπελευθέρωσις, 331,
. ἀπέχει, 112
_ ἀπέχω, 110 ff, 327;
ἀπό, 186,
ἀπὸ πέρυσι, 70
ἀπαίρω, 254,
τὸ ἅπαξ, 206,, 209,
ιἀπογραφή, 160, 268
ἀποδίδωμι, 884 f.
ἀποκάλυψις, 12., 739
ἀποκαραδοκέω, 374;
ἀπόκριμα, 3414
᾿Απολλῶνις, 1969
ἀπολύτρωσις, 381
ἀποτίνω, 335,
ἀράκιον, 188 ff.
dparos, 93
ἀρετή, 322,, 368,
ἄρον, 188,.
ἅρπαξ, 321,
ἀρραβών (arrha), 340,
ἀρσενοκοίτης, 321,, 3225
ἀρχιερεύς, 369 f.
᾽Αρχίλλας, 99,
᾿ἀρχιποίμην, 97 ff.
ἀρχιστράτηγος, 442-445
ἀσεβής, 322,
αὐθεντέω, 85 1.
αὐθιγενής, 76,
αὐτοδικέω, 85
ἀφελπίζω, 178,
ἀφιλάργυρος, 81 f.
ἀφιλαργύρως, 82
ἀών, 194,
ἄωρος, 427 f.
βασιλεύς, 367 Ἐ,
βασιλεὺς βασιλέων, 360, 867 f.
βασιλεύω, xiii
βεβαιωτήρ, 327,
βέβηλος, 822ς
βιάτικον, 168,
βλέπω ἀπό, 122
βλέπω ἐμαυτόν, 122,
βοτρυδόν, 453,
βουλή, 118.
βροχή, 11
Ταιεννα, 259,
γέγραπται, 840,
Teevva, 259,
Tevva, 259,
γνῶσις, 383,
γνωστεία, 371,
γνώστης, 724, 371
γράμματα, 351,, 380 f.
γυμνός, 293,
δαιμονιάζω, 251;
ὁ δάκτυλος τοῦ θεοῦ, 309,
Δανοοῦλος (false reading), 124,
δειπνοκλήτωρ, 440,
δεισιδαίμων, 285,
δεσμὰς deouds, 125,
6 δεσμὸς τῆς γλώσσης, 306-310
δεσπότης, 860
δημοσίᾳ, 1829
διά, 124.6
διὰ τὸν κύριον, 181,
διὰ Χριστοῦ, 124,,, 840
διάγνωσις, 846,
διαθήκη, 828,» 841
διάκων, 91
διαλλάσσω, 178}ς
διαταγή, 86 ff.
ἐκ διαταγῆς, 87,
διάταγμα. 87,
διάταξις, 86 f.
διατάσσομαι, 87.
διατίθεμαι, 87,
δίδωμι ἐργασίαν, 117 ἢ,
δικαιοκρισία, 89 f.
δίκαιος, 340,
δίτροπος, 1790
δίχηλος, 157,
δόλῳ, 421
δόξα, 868, :
δοῦλος, 109, 323 ff.
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ, 329,, 381
δύναμις, 368,
δύο δύο, 124 £.
δυσωπέω, 178, 179;
δωρεά, 368,
ἐάν with indic., 155, 254,
ἐάν for ἄν, 252,
ἑαυτούς = ἀλλήλους, 164,
᾿Ἐβουσαῖος, 253 (1. 3044), 257).
‘EBpata, 13,
ἐγκόπτω, 178)
ἐγώ εἶμι, 134, 185 f., 138 f.,
(1. 2999), 255,
εἰ in aposiopesis, 149,
εἰκόνιν, 170,7
εἰμὶ εἰς, 122 f.
els, 157,
eis for ἐν, 169,
εἴσοδος, 184,
ἐκ διαταγῆς, 87,
ἐκκλησία, 112 ff.
κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν, 114)
ἔκτρομος, 254,
ἐλαιών, 70, 1575
ἐλευθερία, 328-331.
ἐπ ἐλευθερίᾳ, 327 f.
. ἐλεύθερος, 328 ἔ.
ἐλευθερόω, 328,, 331,
475
251
476
ἑλκύω, 437-439
ἕλκω, 437
ἐλλογέω (-dw), 79 £., 335,
ἑλπίδι, ἐφ᾽, 178,
ἐλπίζω, 178,
ἐμμένω, 341,
ἐμός, 186,
ἐμφανής, 378,
ἕν as indef. article, 173,
ἔναντι, 70
ἐνδιδύσκω, 78
ἔνοχος, 115 f.
ἐνταφιάζω, 72,
ἔντευξις, 195,, 340,
ἐντολή, 351,, 381,, 7
ἔντρομος, 254,
ἐνώπιον, TO
ἐξαγοράζω, 328,
ἐξακολουθέω, 755
ἐξαναστατόω, 81
ἐξουσία, 368,
ἐξυπνίζω, 72,
ἑορτὴ (τῆς) σκηνοπηγία9, 116 ἢ,
ἐορτὴ (τῶν) σκηνῶν, 116
ἐπάρατος, 93, 115
ἐπί, 256, 306,, 427
ἐπιβάλλω, 1525
τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος, 341,
ἐπιδημία, 377,, 4
ἐπιδιατάσσομαι, 87;
ἐπιθυμητής, 107
ἐπικαλοῦμαι, 426 f.
ἐπικαταράομαι, 93
ἐπικατάρατος, 93, 305,
ἐπίξενος, 111,
ἐπίορκος, 322,
ἐπιούσιος, 72,
ἐπίπετρον, 309,
ἐπίσκοπος, 341,
ἐπισυναγωγή, 101 ff.
ἐπιφάνεια, 375, 378
ἐπιφανής, 348,, 378,
ἐπιχρίω, 132,
ἐπόπτης, 351,, 429
ἔριφος, 151,
ἐρωτάω, 154,, 155¢, 1080
ἐσοῦ, 187,
εὐαγγέλιον, 370 ἔ,
εὐάρεστος, 70
εὐεργέτης, 248 f.
εὐΐλατος, 70
εὔμοιρος, 164,
etm poowméw, 96
εὐπροσωπίζω, 96,
εὐσέβεια, 322,
εὕστομος, 163,
εὕτομος, 163,
εὐχαριστέω, 132,, 168,
ζωή, 95
INDEX III
ἤδη ἤδη ταχὺ ταχύ, 432
ἤδη ποτέ, 186;
ἥκω, 356,
ἡμᾶς = ὑμᾶς, 191,
ἡμεροκαλλές, 309,
'Ἡράκλεα, 424, 428, 434 f.
Ἡράκληα, 428
θαμβέω, xiii
θεῖα γράμματα, 381
θεῖος, 87ς, 351 f.
θειότης, 852
θεόγνωστος, 884
θεοκήρυξ, 353,
θεολόγος, 352 f., 385
θέλω... Hes y 17%,
θεός, 347-351
θεὸς ἐκ θεοῦ, 349,
θεὸς καὶ σωτήρ, 348,, 369,
θεὸς ὕψιστος, 427
Θεοσεβεῖς, 447,
Θεοσέβιοι, 446 f.
θεοῦ υἱός, 350 £.
σὺν θεῷ, 195,
τῶν θεῶν θελόντων, 168,,
Θεωνᾶς, 188--190
θριαμβεύω, 368,
ὁ θρόνος τοῦ Σατανᾶ, 280,
θυμοκάτοχον, 90,, 308,
θωπεία, 100,
Taw, 415,
ἴδιος, 157,, 276
᾿Ιεβουσαῖοι, 257,,
ἱερὰ γράμματα, 380 f.
ἱερατεύω, 70
ἱλαστήριον, 418,
ἱλαστήριος, 418,
᾿Ἰλλυρικόν, 274,
ἱματίζω, 78 £.
ἵνα, 428
ἰσόψηφος, 275,
ἰσχύς, 368,
To, 415,
καθαρίζω, 70
καθ’ Ἕλληνας, 173,, 174
καί, 130 ἢ.
καὶ... 6é..., 151,
Καῖσαρ θεός, 277,
Καισαριανός, 382
Καίσαρος, 882
Καίσαρος οἰκία, 280,
καλῶς ποιῶ, 194)
Κάορ. 205,
καραδοκέω, 378,
καταγγελεύς, 97
καταδουλίζω, 329,
καταδουλόω, 329,
κατάκρισις, 91 £.
WORDS AND PHRASES
ἀταπέτασμα, 101.
4 κατάρατος, 93
. κατάσκοπέω, 178),
_Karéxw, 90,, 308,
«Κατήγορος, 90
᾿ κατήγωρ, 90 ἢ,
᾿ κλέπτης, 321,
κοινά, 251,
Κοινή, 55, 59, 106,
κόκκινος, 77 £.
'κράτος, 368,
Κρήσκης, 321,
κρινάνθεμον, 309,
κρίνω τὸ δίκαιον, 118
κύμβαλον, 160,
κυρία, 109, 354, 356,
κυρία courteous form of address, 154,,
276
κυριακός, 70, 361 ff.
κύριος, 1059, 161, 168,, 176,, 353-364
κύριος courteous form of address, 168,,
174, 183,, 184, 203 f., 205 f.
κύριος βασιλειῶν, 356,
ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν, 354, 356
κύριος τῶν πνευμάτων, 427
κύριος καὶ θεός, 866 ἢ.
κῦρις, a shortened form of κύριος (7),
173, 1, 16
λακάω (7), 259,
λάμπω, 368,
λέγει, 380,, ¢
λειτουργέω, 107
λειτουργία, 107
λειτουργικός, 70
λεσῶνις, 158,
λῃστής, 321,
λίαν ἐχάρην, 173
λιβλάριος, 168 £., 170,,, 171
Aoyela, 70, 103-106
λογεύω, 104
λογία, 103-106
λόγοι ἐπιβατήριοι, 3725
λοίδορος, 321,
λοιπόν, 176)ςῳ 188ς
λούω, 107
λύτρα, 882,
λύτρον, 331 f.
λύτρωσις, 331,
λωτομήτρα, 251 (1. 3009), 255,
μακάριος, 164,
μάκελλον, 274
. μακροθυμέω, 72,
μαλακός, 150, 321,
Mapéetvy, 428
Μαρθίνη, 425, 428, 434 f.
Μαρία, 124,, 1, 441-445
paprupéopat, 859
μαστιγία, 251 (1. 3009), 255,
471:
μαστιγόω, 267,
μαυλίζω, 214 ff.
μεγαλειότης, 368,
'ῬΜεγαλοσάββατον, 95,
μέγας μέγας, 266,
μέθυσος, 321,
μένω, 880,
μετά, 191,
μητρολῴας, 322,
μίαν μίαν, 124.
μίσθιος, 72,
μοιχός, 821)
μυρία μυρία, 124.
νεκρόω, 94
νέκρωσις, 96,
νεόφντος, 70
(δ)νικόν, τὸ, 77
νομός, 160,
νόμος βασιλικός, 367,
ξύμβολον, 153,
ὁ καὶ .. .. 447,
| ὁλοκληρία, 72,
(ὃ)νικόν, τὸ, 11
éuxés, Τ6 f. ©
els τὸ ὄνομα, 123, 840,
τὸ καλὸν ὄνομα, 276
ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα, 12],
ὁπτάνομαι, 79, 252,
ὅπως, 179,5
ὀφειλή, 70, 334
πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχω, 183,
πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν λαμβάνω, 183,
πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν τίθημι, 183,
ὀψώνιον λαμβάνω, 155,
παιδεύω, 1795
παιδίσκη, 186,
παιδίσχη, ix, 332,
πάλι, 188,, 194,
Πάνθηρ, 68,
πάπας, 194,,, 207 f.
παπᾶς, 208,
παπυρεών, 27,
πάπυρος, 27
παραβάλλομαι, 84:
παραβάλλω τὸν τράχηλον, 120,
παραβολεύομαι, 84, 120.
παραβουλεύομαι, 84,
παραδίδωμι, 804
παρακαλῶ, 176,,, 310,, 311,
παράκλητος, 339; 340
παραμένω, 330,, 3 ᾿
παραπέτασμα, 10]:
παρασιαίνω (1), 119,
παράτευξις, 1955
παρθένος, 68,
ὁ πάροδος, 296,
478 INDEX III
πάροικος, 107
παρουσία, 372-378, 441, 443, 445
πατήρ, 196,
Tarporwas, 322,
πεπίστευμαι, 879
πέρατα τῆς γῆς, 84,
περιδέξιον, ΤῸ
περισσεία, ix, 80
ἀπὸ πέρυσι, 70
πήρα, 108 ff.
πίστις, 312, 322,
τὴν πίστιν τηρῶ, 312,,,
πλανάω, 189,
πλήρης, 125 ff.
πληροφορέω, 82 f.
πνεύματα, 427
ποιῶν ὅ κα θέλῃ, 328,
πολεμέω, 191,
πολλὰ κοπιῶ, 316 f.
πολλαπόολλων ([), 1δδς, 156
πόρνος, 68,, 321;, 322,
ποταμοφόρητος, 40.
πρᾶγμα, 341,
πραιπόσιτος κάσφρων, 205.,
πραιτώριον, 280
πράκτωρ, 840,
πράξεις, 132,
πρεσβεντής, 379
πρεσβεύω, 379
πρεσβύτερος, 405, 340,, 373,
προαποδότης, XViii, 327,
προβαδίζω, 442-445
προεστώς, 195,
προκόπτω, 170;,
προπωλητής, 327,
προσευχή, 70, 100,
προσκαρτερέω, 100,
προσκαρτέρησις, 100 ἢ,
πρόσκομμα, 72,
προσκύνημα, 162, 163,,
προσκυνητής, 99 f.
πρωτότοκος, 88
᾿ πτερυγοειδῶς, 453,
πτοή, 439,
πτόησις, 439.
πυρράκης, 70
σαγήνη, 72,
Σεβαστή, 363-366
σεβαστόγνωστος, 383
σεβόμενοι τὸν θεόν, 447,
σειτομέτριον, 103,
Σεκοῦδα = Σεκοῦ(ν)δα ? 123,,
of for σέ, 206,
σημεῖον, 153,
σιαίνω, 179,5
Σίμων, 124,
σιτομέτριον, 70, 103,
σκηνοπηγέομαι, 116
σκηνοπηγία, 116 f.
σπέρμα, 35,
σπορά, 35,
σπόρος, 35,
σπουδὴν εἰσφέρω, 322,
στέφανος, 312, ἢ 373
τὰ στίγματα τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ, 808
στοιχεῖον (clementum), 414,, 418,
σνγκληρονόμος, 88 ἴ.
σύμβολον, 153,
σύμφωνος, 195,
ἐκ συμφώνου, 341,
σύν, 255,, 2565, 804 f.
σὺν θεῷ, 195,
σὺν Χριστῷ, ‘3205,
συναγωγή, 101 f.
owalpw λόγον, 118 f.
συναντιλαμβάνομαι, 88 f,
συνίστημι, 226,
σύνοδος, 880,
σῶμα, 151,, 327,
σωσικόσμιος, 369
σωσίκοσμος, 369,
σωτήρ, 311, 348,, 868 f.
σωτὴρ τοῦ Kéq ov, 369
σωτηρία, ea 168,,, 173
σώφρων, 319
τάδε λέγει, 380;
ταπειν ὀφρων, 725
ταπεινόω, 429 f.
ταπεινόω ψυχὴν, 480
ταῦτα abrupt, 189,, 316,
ἐν τάχει, 432
τὴν ταχίστην, 482
ταχύ, 432
τέλος, 111,
τήρησις, 341.
τιμᾶς (τιμῆς), 327 ff.
τιμή, 327 £., 368,
τρία τρία, 125,
τρόπος in formulae, 1719.
τυχόν, 149,
ὑγιγαίνω, 179,., 188,
viodecia (adoption), 340,
ὑμνῳδός, 352 ἢ.
ὑπέρ, 122, 153,, 335
ὑπὸ Ala Τῆν Ἥλιον, 332,
ὑποτίθημι τὸν τράχηλον, 119 f.
Φαρισαῖος, 253 (1. 8044), 257,,
φαρμακεύω, 427
Φερεζαῖοι, 257),
φίλανδρος καὶ σώφρων, 319
φίλανδρος καὶ φιλότεκνος, 819
φιλανθρωπία, 368,
φιλοκαῖσαρ, 888
φιλοπρωτεύω, 70,
φίλος τοῦ Καίσαρος, 888,
φίλος, 888
WORDS
φίλος τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ, 383
Φιλοσέβαστος, 888
φιλόχριστος, 888
φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν, 447,
φρεναπάτης, 70
χάραγμα, 345
ἡ χάριν, 178,
χάρις, 368,
χάρτης, 21
χεῖραν, 170,,, 188,
χειρόγραφον, 334;, 336
χειροποίητος, 162
χερουβίμ, 258,,
Xepoaios, 253 a. 3044), 257,,
Χετταῖοι, 257.5
χῆραι mips 109,
χιάζω, 88
pee eee (xoorAdorns), 253,
Χριστιανός, 382
ὁ χριστός and Χριστός, 332,
Χριστοῦ, 882
διὰ Χριστοῦ, 124,,, 840
σὺν Χριστῷ, 305,
χρόνος, 206i,
-χωρίζομαι, 341,
ψεύστης, 322,
ψιθυρισμός, 725
Ὦριγδης, 20ὅς
adventus, 375 £.
advocatus, 340
amicus Caesaris, 383,
annona, 193,
arrha, 340,
bule, 113,
Caesarianus, 382,
Caesaris, 382
coccina, ΤΊ,
eognitio, 346,
comitia, 113
contio, 113
dicit, 3805
divi filius, 350
AND PHRASES 479
divinus, 87,5, 351
dominus et deus noster, 367,
ecclesia, 113 f.
elementum, 414,
ab epistulis Graecis, 379,
evictio, 340,
impudes, 321,
legatus, 379
librarius, 170,
metuentes, 447,
odie, 184,
omo, 184,
operam do, 117,
pontifexr maximus, 370
praefectus castrorwm, 205,
sacer, 380,
sacrae litterae, 381
‘ sacratissimus, 380),
sanctissimus, 380),
sanctus, 880}:
abba, 57
Abdes, 68 f.
Barabbas, 57
Ebed, 68,
lesonis, 158,
mammon, 57
marana, 354,
Martha, 57, 428
Panthera, 68 f.
phennésis, 105,
talitha ewmi, 57
480 INDEX IV
IV
SUBJECTS
Abbreviations, xv, xvi; of titles of
papyrus publications, 32;
Abide with, 330
Abinnaeus, correspondence of, 206 f.
Accounts of deliverance from
danger, 284;, 3102, 408
Accounts of dreams, 126, 130, 408
Accounts of the miraculous, 95,,
284, 408:
Accounts of visions, 408
Acknowledgment of debt, 334 ff.
Acquainted with the Emperor, 3838
Acquainted with God, 384
“Acta Pauli,” Heidelberg ΜΗ.,
302, 35
“ Acts,” apocryphal, 302, 351, 242
Acts of the Apostles, 132;, 239,
241 f.
Acts of the Arval brothers, 376
“* Acts of Heracles,’’ 132;
Acts of John, 35;
Acts of Peter, 35;
Address (in letters), 407, 148,, 1592
Adoption, 793, 3407
Adulation of the emperors, 360,,
364, ὶ
Advent, 372-378
Advent-coins, 372, 375 1£., 378
Advent-sacrifices, 372, 376
Adventure, travellers’ tales of, 408
Advocate, 340. See Agency, Me-
diator, Paraclete
Aeolic dialect, 59, 112
Agathus Daemon, 168f. (1. 25),
251 (1. 3000), 255 (1. 3000)
Agency, 120,, 12476, 153;, 335, 3392
“ Alexandrian ”’ Greek, 101;
Alien tax, 111, ;
All-seeing Lord, 429
Alpha and Omega, 396
Ambassador for Christ, 379
American archaeologists and
scholars, 136, 7. See also Index
V: Angus, Burton, Graffenried,
Hatch, W. H. P., Norton, Thayer
Amos, fragments of, 351
Amulets, 392, 51 £., 282, 2562, 284,
415
Analogy and genealogy, 262 f.
Anathema, 92 f., 217;
and... and, 128, 130 ff.
“« Angel ” inscriptions, 279
Angels, 90;, 427, 429
Angels, cult of, 429, 448 ff.
Annona, 193,
Anthology, the Greek, 88, 94
ἈΕΊ ΒΟΙΘΕΥ, in the Tebtunis Papyri,
Antiatticist (lexicographer), 1246
Antichrist, 3472, 375 f.
Aorist, epistolary use of, 1573, 164,
Aorist-present, 111,
eta cohort, 168f., 17021,
Apocalypse, 3;. See Revelation
Apocalypse as literary genre, 241
Apocalypses, 242, 288,
Apocalyptic numbers, 275 ff., 348
Apocrypha (O.T.), 46
Apocryphal literature, 242
Apolytrosie, 3312, 3
Apophthegms, collections of, 440
Aposiopesis, 1492
Apostolic Fathers, 16,
Aquila’s translation of the O.T.,
271, 192
Arab tattoo marks, 450;
Arabic ostraca, 44
Arabic papyri, 30;
Aramaic, 57 f.
Aramaic ostraca, 44
Aramaic papyri, 30;, 123,
Aramaisms, 63;, 903, 1732
Archangel inscriptions at Miletus,
448 ff.
Archangels, cult of, 454
Archangels, monograms of, 451 f.
Archangels, names of, 451 f.
Areopagus, St. Paul’s speech, 591,
394-398
Aretalogy, 3932
Arm of God, 2565
Army, Roman, 167-175, 183-186
Army, Roman, religion of the, 289,
Arrest for debt, 267, 334
Artisans, 240, 317,
Artistic literature, for the world,
2481.
Arval brothers, 376
Asian rhythm, 64;
Aspirate, vulgar, 1787
Assembly, 112 f.
Associations, religious, 3802. See
Guilds
Astrologers, 732, 831, 864, 924, 3202,
4503, 452;
SUBJECTS
Athenonica, centuria, 168;
Atonement for murder, 426
Atonement, Great Day of, 431-435
Atonement, narratives of, 4082
Attic dialect, 59
Atticism, Atticists, 60f., 631, 67,
1246, 127, 128 f.
Augment, misplaced extension of,
in vulgar Greek, 928
Austrian investigators,
113, 277,, 401
Authenticity, questions of, 236
Authorities, communications ad-
dressed to the, 145, 159 ff., 374,
Autograph conclusion to letters,
1532
112, 14,,
Baruch, Epistle of, 235
Bath tax, 364;2
Beauty in simplicity, 66, 316
Beds, to watch, 211 f.
Behaviour, 315
Beggar-priest, 109 f.
Beggar’s bag, 109
Begging-letter, 175
Belonging to Caesar, 382
Belonging to Christ, 382
Bible, double-crown, 141
Bible, history of its use, 19, 459 f.
Bible text, history of the, 19
Bible text, Egyptian, 49;
Bible text of Hesychius, 49,;, 456
Bible text of Lucianus, 456
Biblia Pauperum, 141,
Biblical fragments, 33-36
Biblical MSS. in Thera, 279,
Biblical papyri, 33-36
Biblical passages on ostraca, 48-53,
213;
Biblical quotations, 19 f., 456-460
“* Biblical ” words, 70 ff.
Bill of complaint, 130 f.
Bind (in magic, etc.), 306-310
Birthday, 173 (11. 18, 19), 1740, 1»
371
Blind, healing of the, 131 f., 310
Blood, to shed, 428
Boatman’s idiom, 65
Body (Christ), 396
Bond. See Note of hand
Bond of the tongue, 306-310
“ Bondservant,’’ 323;-
Borrowed words, 72
Bread (Christ), 396
British and Foreign Bible Society,
141
British investigators, 1lz,12;. See
also Index V: Allen, Bartlet,
Bell, Brooke, Budge, Crum, Gren-
481
fell, Hall, Harris, Hatch, E.,
Hicks, Hill, Kennedy, Kenyon,
Lightfoot, Mahaffy, Milligan,
Moore, Moulton, Paton, Petrie,
Ramsay, Redpath, Sayce, Swain-
son, Swete, Trench, Wilkins
Bronze inscriptions, 10
Brother (Christ), 396
Brother and sister, marriages be-
tween, 135 f., 154,
Buying-off, 331. See Redemption
By two and two, 124 f.
Caesar, belonging to, 382
Caesarian, 382 f
Caesars, cult of the, 247, 277;, 289,
342 ff., 395
Calendar, Greek, 1736
Canon, Muratorian,
242
Canon of the New Testament, 61,
244
Canticles, 457 ff.
Captivity, St. Paul’s, letters written
during, 229 f.
Cases, vulgar use of, 124, 1736
Catacombs, pictures in, 273
Catholic epistles, 235 ff.
Census, 268 f.
Certificates of confession, 372
Chapters, gospel divided into, 50
Charagma, 345
Charm, protective, 448 ff.
Charms, 139, 449-455
Charta Borgiana, 39 f., 91
Chélingas, 99;
Cherubin, 253 (1. 3061), 25814
Chi (Greek letter), 337
Chiasmus, 4387
Chief Shepherd, 97 ff., 396
Children, exposure of, 155,, 156 ἢ,
Choirs of Greek temples, 287
Christ, ambassador for, 379
Christ, belonging to, 382
Christ and the Caesars, 342 ff.
Christ, contemplation of, 388
Christ, cult of, 388, 395 f.
Christ’s descent into Hell, 35
Christ, following after, 398
Christ's freedman, 330, 382
Christ, friend of, 383
Christ, guilds of, 398
Christ, insignia of, 345
Christ, letters of, 238;, 379 f.
Christ, monogram of, 38,
2513, 2793
Christ, mystic appreciation of, 383,
388
Christ, parables of, 131;, 269
31
182, 1845, 8,
2115,
482 INDEX IV
Christ, past arid present work of,
333, 339, 388 f.
Christ, slave of, 328 ff., 354, 381
Christ's sufferings, 932
Christ, through, 12416, 340
Christ, titles and offices, 396
Christ, with, 3052
Christian, 382
Christian inscriptions, 19
Christian letters, 37f., 182 ff. (2),
192-201, 198, (?)
Christian new formations (words),
72 £.
Christian papyri, 33-39
“ Christian ’’ words, 70 ff.
Christianity, Primitive, 6f., 384-399
Christianity, Primitive, its literary
development, 238 ff.
Christianity, Primitive, its moral
earnestness, 397 f.
Christianity, Primitive, not inter-
ested in politics, 342 f.
Christianity, Primitive, its popular
character, 240, 392, 396
Christianity, Primitive, social struc-
ture of, 6-f.
Christians, persecution of, 37, 133,
20] ff.
Christians, their social solidarity,
200
Christolatry, 388
Christology, 3461, 388
Chronicle as literary genre, 241
Church inventories, Byzantine, 38
Church, manumission in the, 3263
Cilicisms, 1162
Cities, cosmopolitan, culture of,
239 £. :
Cities, great, 280 ff.
Cities, great, culture of, 281 f.
Cities, great, Greek of, 64
Civilisation of the Imperial period,
281 ff.
Civilisation, Mediterranean, 2
Civilisation, rural, 240 f.
Class-division, 7:
Classes, lower, 71, 240, 290 ff.,
332 £., 342, 403 ff.
Classes, upper, 71, 240, 342
Clay for anointing eyes, 1324
Clergy, Egyptian, standard of
learning of, 211-214
Coins, 247 £., 249;, 348:, 3683, 372,
375 £., 378
Collections for Isis, 105, 111, 284
Collections for religious and chari-
table objects, 104 f., 284, 366
Colloquial language, 59 f.
Comedy, 129;, 321
Comfort, words of, 415 f.
Coming again, 3722
Commandments, 3816, 7
Commandments, divine, 351, 381
Commandments of God, 381
Commendation, letters of, 158, 226,
Committed to my trust, 379
Communications to the authorities,
145, 159 ff., 374,
Complaint, bill of, 131
Complaint, letter of, 130 f.
Confession, certificates of, 372
Confession of sins, 131;, 176-182,
2042
Conjuration, 432. See Exorcism
Consolation, formulae of, 165 f.
Consolation, letters of, 164-167
Consolation, words of, 333, 415 ἔ.
Consolatories (old books of edifi-
cation), 243
Constitutional law (Roman), 347
Contrition, letters of, 165,, 176-182
Conversation, 18414, 2190
Conversation, to have, 315
Coptic ostraca, 42;, 44, 210-217
Coptic papyri, 302, 35 f.
Copticisms (?), 206;, 209;
Copy-books (for letters), 1922, 227 f.
Corinthians, Epistles to the, 228
Corinthians, Second Epistle to the,
231, 263
Corn, dealings in, 193 ff.
Corn, order for payment of, 872, 123
Corn ships, 198 f.
Corn of Wheat (title of Christ), 396
Corner Stone, 396
Corpora of inscriptions, 11-14
Corpus of Christian Inscriptions,
19, 460
Corpus of papyri, 32
Correspondence of Abinnaeus, 206 £.
Correspondence, family, 2276, 300:
Cosmopolitan cities, 239 f.
Cosmopolitan Greek, 18, 54 ff.
Cosmopolitan Judaism, 36f. See
Jews: Diaspora
Cosmopolitanism, 3696
Council of Arles, 210
Council of Toledo, 217:
Counters, playing, 320 f.
Country civilisation, 240 f.
Country labourer, 105g
Covenant, 3232 °
Covenant or Enactment ? 341
Creation of all from nought, 254 and
259 (1. 3077)
Cross, bond nailed to, 336
Cross rosette, 2793
Crossing-out of documents, 337
SUBJECTS
Crown, 312
Crown of glory, 373
Crown of righteousness, 373
Crucified, The, 396
Cult and law, 347
Cult of archangels, 454
Cult, solemn style appropriate to,
133-140
Cult, Christian, words employed in,
396
Culture of the Imperial period,
281 ff.
Culture of the Imperial period,
religious, 284 ff.
Culture, Mediterranean, 2
Culture, rural, 240 f.
Cuneiform inscriptions, 5
Cures, miraculous, 284
Cures, records of, 132, 310 ff., 408
Curse, Jewish zealots bind them-
selves by a, 1896
Cursing, formula of, influenced by
Septuagint, 20; ,
Cursing tablets, 186, 195, 92, 284,
808 ff.
Cynics, 1092
Daemon. See Agathus
Daemon of the dead, 304,
Daemon, headless, 139
Daemon, name of, important in
exorcism, 2578
Daemonic possession, 310
Daemons, trio of, 25712
Danger, narratives of deliverance
from, 284;, 3102, 408
Date (of letters), 1592
Dative, 18838
Day of Atonement, Great, 431-435
Day of the Lord, 361:
Days for effecting payments, 365 f.
Days of prayer and fasting, 431 f.
Deaconess, 217;
Deacons, 52, 210-213
Death and drinking, 221
Death, meeting after, 3052
Debt, 334 fi.
Debt, arrest for, 267, 334
Debt, letter acknowledging, 336
Debt, slavery for, 334
Decalogue, Hebrew papyrus, 30,
Decomposites, 93
Dedications, religious, 284
Deliverance, 331
Deliverance from danger, narratives
of, 284;, 3102, 408
Demotic characters, 136,
Demotice papyri, 30
Demotic script (ostraca), 44
483
Desecrators of tombs, 115, 217:
Deserters, 205 f., 209 f.
Despotes, 360
Devotion (= execration), formulae
of, 92 £., 303-306
Devotion, Christian, titles in, 396
Diaconate, candidates for the, 52,
210-213
Dialect, Galilean, 57
Dialects, ancient Greek, 59
Diaspora, 124, 289:, 434f. See Jews
Diatribe as literary genre, 236, 241,
242
Dictionaries, xviii, 411 ff.
Dictionary, Egyptian, 413
Diligence, to give, 117
Diploma, military, 80
Distributive numerals, 124 f.
Divine, 351 £.
Divine commandments, 351, 381
Divine grace, 351
Divine writings, 351, 381
Divinity, 352
Do the things that ye will, 328 ἢ.
Dominate, 356
Door, the (title of Christ), 396
Door,. the open, 3022
Doric dialect, 59
Double names, 4474
Double-crown Bible, 141
Dream of Ptolemaeus, 130
Dream-spectres, 904
Dreams, accounts of, 408
Dreams, interpreter of, 95
Dreams of the twin sisters, and of
Ptolemaeus, 126
Drinking and death, 295 f.
Dues payable in Egypt, 45, 3432
Ebionite interpolations, supposed,
240: ‘
Edicts, imperatival infinitive in, 75,
Education of clergy, 211-214
Egypt, Bible text current in, 49;
cults in, 2843, 2882
dues payable in, 45, 3432
gods of. See Index II: Ammon,
Horus, Isis, Osiris, Serapis,
Socnopaeus, Suchus
Praefects of, 37, 89, 267 f., 362
sacral texts from, 134;
taxes in, 364.
See also Index I
Egyptianism in Greek, 2665
Embankment tax, 364:
Emperor, acquainted with the, 3838
Emperor, belonging to the, 382
Emperor, friend of the, 383
Emperor, slave of the, 382
484 INDEX IV
Emperor-worship, 247, 277;, 289,
342 ff., 395
Endogamy, 135 1., 154,
Enoch, book of, 427
Enrolment for taxation, 268 f.
Entrusted with the gospel, 379
Ephesians, Epistle to the, 229 £.
Ephesians, letter to the (Rom. xvi.),
226 ff.
Epidemia, 3772, 3
Epiphany, 3753, 376, 378
Epistle as literary genre, 241
Epistle, the English word, ixf.
Epistle of Baruch, 235
Epistle of Theonas to Lucianus, 223,
Epistles, 146 f., 220f., 223 £., 241
Epistles, catholic, 235 ff.
Epistles, Pastoral, 230 f., 278, 313;,
314, 378
Epistles, Primitive Christian, 235-8
Epistles of Dionysius of Halicar-
nassus, 224
Epistles of Horace, 224
Epistles of Lucilius, 224
Epistles of Ovid, 224
Epistles of St. Paul, 225 ff., 399
Epistles of St. Paul to be learnt by
heart, 213
Epistles of St. Peter, 235, 242, 322
Epistles of Pliny the Younger, 224
Epistles of Plutarch, 224
Epistles of L. Annaeus Seneca, 224
Epistolae Ho-Elianae, x
Epistolary formulae, 1682, 3, 170:5,
. 1706, 1723, 1733, 300;
Epistolary literature, 146
Epistolary style, 234
Epistolary style, preterite of, 1573,
164,
Essenes, 2503
Eternity, hope of, 397
Ethical concepts, 314
Ethics, ancient popular, 312-322
Ethics of the workshop, 318
Etymology, 413,
Etymology, popular, 2555
Examination subjects for Egyptian
deacons, 52, 212 f.
Excavations, xvii, xxvi, 28, 407 f.
Excommunication, formulae of,
217;
Excommunication, letter of, 214-17
Execration, 92 f., 303-306
Exorcism, 252 and 256 (1. 3019), 3095
Expansion of Gospel conceptions,
382
Expiation, narratives of, 4082
Expiation of murder, 426
Exposure of infants, 155, 156 f.
Eyesalve, 132,
Faith, keep, 312
Family letters, 2976, 300,
aw life, ancient, 150 ff., 189 £.,
Fasting, days of, 431 f.
Fear God, they that, 447
Feast of Tabernacles, 116 f.
Fervour, priestly, 63 f., 230
Festivals, tents erected at, 117:
ἢ 312
igurative language (religious
isa. sen Έ ΤΩΙ
Finger of God, 309;
First person singular, stately use
of, 130, 133-140
Folklore, ancient (= science of
ancient beliefs), 409; (= the
beliefs themselves), 287
Folklorist, 6
Fool, the rich, 295,
For freedom, 327 ff., 333
Forgiveness, 334
Forms of expression, popular, 405
Formula, magical, 90
Formulae, epistolary, 1682, 3,
170;5, 16, 1723, 1733, 800.
Formulae, fixed, in N.T. language,
117 £.
Formulae of consolation, 165 f.
Formulae of excommunication, 217;
Formulae of thanks to God, 1683
Free, 328 fi.
Freedman of Aesculapius, 230,
Freedman of Christ, 330, 382
Freedman of the Emperor, 382
Freedman of the Lord, 330, 382
Freedom, St. Paul’s idea of, 324;
Freer Logion, 342
French investigators, 122, 18,» 5,
19, 48 ff., 324
Friend of Christ, 383
Friend of the Emperor, 383
Galatians, Epistle to the, 229
Galatians confused with Galen, 966
Galilean dialect, 57
Game played with counters, 320 f.
Ge(he)nna, 253 (1. 3072), 2597
Gematria, 275
Genealogy and analogy, 262 f.
Genesis, 345
Genitive absolute, 130,
Genitive represented by nomina-
tive, 124,
Genres, literary, 146,, 241
Gentiles, their piety, 284-288
German investigators, 12 f., 370
SUBJECTS
Giants, 253 (1. 3059), 25812
Give diligence, 117
Glory, crown of, 373
Gnostic fragments, 35
God, 347 ff.
God, acquainted with, 384
God and Lord, 366
God and Saviour, 348,, 3694
God, arm of, 2565
God-fearing, 446 f.
God, finger of, 3095
God, formulae of thanks to, 168;
God, herald of, 353
God, Image of (Christ), 396
God of God, 349,
God of the Hebrews, 252 (1. 3019),
256,
God, Son of, 350 f., 396
God, the good, 349
God, the Most High, 326, 427
God, they that fear, 447
God, Word of (Christ), 396
God’s commandments, 381
Gods, of the country worshipped by
foreigners, 173;
Gold tablets, 10, 3052
Good god, the, 349
Good Samaritan, 131;, 269
Gospel, 370 f.
Gospel as literary genre, 241
Gospel committed unto me, 379
Gospel conceptions expanded, 332,
Gospel (?), fragment of a, at
Cairo, 441 ff.
Gospel, fragment from Oxyrhyn-
chus, 26
Gospel ostraca, 48-53, 141;
Gospels, 399
Gospels, fragments of, 33 ff.
Gospels, synoptic, 63, 241
Grace, divine, 351
Grace or works ? 341
Graeco-Sahidic fragments of the
Psalms, 36
Graffiti, 10, 274 ff., 3052
Grave-diggers, 202
Greek investigators, 14
Greek language, ‘‘ Alexandrian,”
101
Greek: cosmopolitan, 18, 54 ff.
Greek, Hellenistic (Κοινή), 18, 54-62,
83 f., 87 f., 103, 428,
Greek, modern, 31, 77, 125, 129
Greek, ‘‘ New Testament,” 54 ff.
Greek, universal, 18, 54 ff.
Greek, vulgar, 154 f., 187 f.
Greek papyri, 29 ff.
Greeting. See Salutation
Greetings in letters, 170;5, 226
485
Groschenbibel, 141
Guarantors, 211, 213, 327,
Guild of shepherds, 982
Guilds, 398
Guilds of Christ, 398
Guilds, religious, 3802
Hagiology, 242 f.
Hand, to kiss one’s, x £.
Hand, note of, 334 ff.
Hands, kohanim, 426,
Hands on tombstones, 424 ff.
Handwriting, contrast of, 161
Handwriting, rustic, 232
Head (Christ), 396
Healer (Asclepius), 374
Healer (Christ), 311
Healing, accounts of, 132, 310 ff.,408
Healing, miracles of, 284
Heaven, letters from, 238, 379 ἢ.
Hebraisms, 90, 121-125, 1732, 1845
Hebraists and Purists, 65
Hebrew papyri, 304
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 34, 64f.,
192, 236 £., 248, 245, 389
Hebrews, God of the, 252 (1. 3019),
256,
Hebrews, Gospel according to the,
4062 .
Hell, 259,
Hell, Christ’s descent into, 35
Hellenisation of Judaism, 326,
423 ff., 434, 447
Hellenisation of the East, 2
Hellenistic Greek (Κοινή), 18, 54-62,
83 f., 87 £., 103, 428,
Herald of God, 353:
Herb mastic, 2557
Herculanean rolls, 702, 119
Hesychius, Biblical text of, 49;, 456
“ Heteronymous ” epistolography,
224, 236
Hexapla, 963
| Hieratic script (ostraca), 44
Hieroglyphic papyri, 30.
Hieroglyphs, 136,, 380
High Priest (Christ), 369, 396
Historical things, distinct from
things holy, 2
Hocus-pocus, 2559, 260
Holy, 38031
“ Holy, not historical,” 2
Homologos ( = labourer), 1058
Horoscopes, 1736, 284
“* House-church,”’ 2772
Humble the soul, to, 429 ff.
Hymn to the Virgin, 48
Hymnodi, 350, 352 f., 365
Hyperbole, 859
486 INDEX IV
Hypotaxis, 128
Hypsistarians, 447,
1 am, 133 ff.
“I -style, 130, 133-140
Ideal of womanhood, 318 f.
Ignatius, fragment of, 35
Iliad, papyrus fragment, 26
Image of God (Christ), 396
Imperatival infinitive, 149,
Imperial, 382
Imperial cult and Imperial law, 347
Imperial letters, 803, 379 ff.
Imperial period, 281 ff.
Imperial period, religious culture
of, 284 ff.
Imperial slave, 382
Imperial stamp, 345
Importunate widow, 131;, 269
Imprisonment for debt, 267, 334
In the name, 55,, 123
Incantation, repetition of, 432
Indian magic, 306
Individual souls, 290-302
Infinitive absolute ( = imperative),
754, 1483, 1492
Inflections, shrinkage of, 126
Inscriptions, 10 ff.
Inscriptions, “‘ angel,” 279
Inscriptions, archangel, at Miletus,
448 ff.
Inscriptions on bronze, 10
Inscriptions, Christian, 19
Inscriptions, Christian, Corpus of,
19, 460
Inscriptions, corpora of, 11-14
Inscriptions, cuneiform, 5
Inscriptions on stone, 10
Inscriptions on tombs, 295 f., 313,
316 f., 319
Insignia of Christ, 345
Inspiration, 61, 246
Intercession, 1723, 1785
International cities, 239 f.
International excavations, xxvi,
407 £.
International Greek, 18, 54 ff.,
Interpreter of dreams, 95
Inventories, Byzantine church, 38
Inventory of temple furniture, 101
Investigation. See Methods
Investigators. See American,
Austrian, British, French, Ger-
man, Greek
Ionie dialect, 59
Iota adscript, 914, 154
1.0.U., 334-337
Islam, 303, 210, 213,
Islands, Christianity in the, 278 £.
Islands, civilisation of the, 277 ff.
Islands, intercourse with, 278 f.
Isolative method of New Testa-
ment criticism, 54, 61 f., 401 ff.
James, St., Epistle of, 63, 235, 241
Jesus, marks of, 303
Jews and Judaism :
“beware thee of the Jews,” 122
cosmopolitan Judaism, 36 f.
Diaspora -
at Corinth, 137
in Egypt, 30, 367, 124, 359
law in, 323, 325 f.
at Miletus, 446 f.
at Pompeii, 274,
propaganda, 394
in Rheneia, 415-435
at Rome, 149, 59
works on, 289;
Hellenisation of Judaism, 326,
423 ff., 434, 447
idea of agency in Judaism, 339,
Jewish elements in magic, 308 f.,
250-260
Jewish Greek, 124, 1255
Jewish Greek Bible, cosmopoli-
tan, 394, 434
Jewish law, 328, 325 ἢ,
Jewish manumissions, 325 f.
Jewish martyrs, 359, 434
Jewish names, 123 f£., 3092
Crispus, 123,
Danoilos, 124,
Maria, 123 f., 3092
Simon, 124,
Jewish papyri, 30, 36
Jews, persecutions of, 367, 359
Jewish Praefect of Egypt, 362
Jewish precedents in formulaé of
anathema, 217;
Jewish records (not discussed in
this book) illustrate the New
Testament, 623, 409;
Jewish revision of LXX (?), 35,
Jewish translation of Genesis (?),
35,
Jewish words (?), 76, 118.
learning by heart in Judaism,
213
supposed Hebraisms, 122-125,
Brémew ἀπό, 122
δύο δύο, 124 f.
εἶναι els, 122 £.
els τὸ ὄνομα, 123
πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχειν, 1833
the name Panthera not a Jewish
invention, 68 f.
SUBJECTS
Johannine style, 127-140
Johannine writings, 63, 339 f.
John, St., Acts of, 35,
John, St., First Epistle of, 128,
223,, 237, 242, 410
John, St., Second Epistle of, 40,,
223.2, 234
John, St., Third Epistle of, 223),
234
John, St., Gospel of, 35;, 63, 126 f.,
211, 213, 242
John, St., Revelation of, 35;, 63,
237 £., 242, 345, 352 £., 367, 379 Σ.
Jém hakkippurim, 431-435
Jude, Epistle of, 235, 242
Judge (Christ), 396
Judge the right, 118
Keep faith, 312
King, 367 £., 396
King of Kings, 360s, 367 f.
King’s Day, 363,
Kiss one’s hand, to, x f.
Knecht, 323;
Kohanim hands, 426,
Koine (Kow7, Hellenistic Greek),
18, 54-62, 83 f., 87 f., 103, 428,
Labour, 316 ff.
Labour in vain, 317 f.
Laboured, much, 316 f.
Labourers (homologi), 105g
Labourers in the vineyard, parable,
318
Labourers, manual, 240, 3173
Lady, 354, 3566
Lamb of God, 396
Language, colloquial, 59 f.
Language, missionary, 302
Language of magic, 303-310
Language of the workshop, 316
Language, original, of the New
Testament, 57 ὁ
Language, popular, 8, 18, 46, 54 ff.
Languages, number of, 258:0
Laodiceans, letter to the, 229
Lapidary style of St. John’s pro-
logue, 127
Latin ostraca, 44
Latin papyri, 30
te ae 182 ff., 242
Latinisms, 117 f.
Law, .266 ff.
Law of the constitution (Roman), 347
Law, popular, 322-341
Law, the royal, 367;
Leaden roll from Rhodes; 195,
Leaden tablet from Hadrumetum,
195, 260, 429
487
Leaden tablets, 10, 92, 118, 148 f.,
304, 305, 307
Learning by heart, 211 ff.
Leather as writing material, 462
Lectionary (1), 52
Legal expressions, 339 ff.
Legal ideas in the New Testament,
339 ff.
Legal writers, 732
Legends of saints, 242 f.
Leib, Gui, Ehr, Kind und Weib,
306, 5
Letter? the English word, ix f.
Letter acknowledging debt, 336
Letter, begging, 175;
Letter copy-books, 227 f.
Letter of complaint, 130 £.
Letter of excommunication, 214-7
Letters, 146 ff., 208 ff., 297-300
Letters and epistles in N. T., 224 ff.
Letters, autograph conclusion, 1582
Letters, Christian, 37 f., 182 ff. (2),
192-201, 1987 (?)
Letters, conclusion indented, 1978
Letters, epistolary, 221
Letters, family, 2276, 300;
Letters from heaven, 238, 379 f.
Letters, greetings in, 170;;, 226
Letters, Imperial, 803, 379 ff.
Letters of Alexander the Great, 224
Letters of Aristotle, 2199, 222, 224
Letters of Brutus, 224
Letters of Christ, 238,, 379 ἢ.
Letters of Cicero, 222, 224
Letters of commendation,
226,
Letters of consolation, 164-167
Letters of contrition, 165,, 176-182
Letters of Demosthenes, 224
Letters of Epicurus, 222
Letters of Isocrates, 222
Letters of Plato, 222 .
Letters of recommendation,
_ 182 ff., 226
“Letters of the captivity,” St.
Paul’s, 229 ff.
Letters of the Emperors, 379 f.
Letters, religious, 284
Letter-writers (treatises), ancient,
165,, 181;
Letter-writing, its history still un-
written, 408 f.
Lexicography, xviii, 411 ff.
Libellatici, 37
Libelli, 37
Liddell and Scott, w correcticn,
168,
168,
327,
Life (Christ), 396
Ligatures, 452
488 INDEX IV
Light (Christ), 396
Linguistic importance of the ‘ne
texts, 54 ff. :
Literary and Non-literary, 145 ff.
Literary development of Primitive
Christianity, 238 ff.
Literary history applied to the
New Testament, 144 ff.
Literary language, 59 f.
Literature, artistic, 237, 241, 243
Literature, epistolary, 146 |
Literature of the Imperial period,
2
. Literature, popular, 241
Liturgies, Greek, 454 f.
Liturgy, Mithraic, 289,
Livy, Epitome of, 34
Loan-words, 72
Logia fragment, First, 26, 33,
Logia fragment, Second, 333, 34,,
436 ff.
Logia fragment, Third, 34,
Logia, translation of, xiii
Logion, the Freer, 34,
Logos, 63, 127, 242, 352
Lord, 161 (1. 30), 353-363, 366,1.,
396 |.
Lord and God, 366
Lord King, 356 1.
Lord of the diadems, 356
Lord of the spirits, 427
Lord, Our, 355
Lord’s day, 361, 3638
Lord’s freedom, the, 330, 382
Lord’s Prayer, 398
Lord’s Prayer on a fragment of
earthenware, 482, 5
Lord’s Prayer on papyrus, 392
Lord’s service, 361 £.
Lord’s supper, 361
Lord’ table, 355
Lord’s treasury, 361
Lotometra, 251 (1. 3009), 2553
Lower classes, 7;, 240, 290 ff., 332 £.,
342, 408 ff.
Lower classes, solidarity of, 398
Lucianus, Biblical text of, 456
Luke, St., Gospel of, 241 f.
Lutherans, 372
Magi, Adoration of the, 3583
Magic, 139, 449-455
Magic, language of, 303-310
Magic spells, Greek, Hebrew, In-
dian, Mandaean, Syrian, 306
Magic words, 251 f., 255-257
Magical books, 249-261, 284
Magical formula, 90
Magical papyri, London, 304, 308
Magical papyrus, Paris, 250-260,
305,
Magician’s outfit, 260
Mammon, Jesus on, 240,
Mammon, the Gospel antagonism
to, 81
Mandaean spells, 306, 308
Manumissio in ecclesia, 3263
Manumission, Jewish records of,
4478
Manumission, records of, 111, 324 ff.
Manumission, sacral, 100, 121,,.
324-334, 354,
ere St., Gospel according to, 342,
2132
Marks of Jesus, 303
Marriages between brother and
sister, 135 f., 154,
Martyrdoms (literary genre), 242;
408
Martyrs, 359 £.
Martyrs, Scilitanian, 247,, 360
Masses, the, 291-302. See Lower
classes :
Mastic, herb, 255,
Mastigia (?), 251 (1. 3009), 2554
Matthew, St., Gospel according to,
213,
Maximum tariff (Diocletian’s), 271f.
Mediator, 396. See Agency, Para-
clete :
Medical terms, 86, 966
Medical writers, 73,
Mediterranean civilisation, 2
Meeting, 113;
Meeting again after death, 3052
Meeting-house, 113,
Metaphors, Primitive Christian,
323 f£., 336 £.
Methodists, 113,
Methods of research and interpre-
tation, 262 ff., 298, 303,, 362,
390 f., 401 ff., 404;, 409 f., 436 ff,
44) ff.
Military diploma, 80
Miracles, 393 f.
Miracles, aceounts of, 95,, 284, 408;
Miracles of healing, 284
Mishna, 2, 623, 388;
Missionary language, 302
Missionary religions, 288 f.
Mithraic liturgy, 2892
Modern Greek, 31, 77, 125, 129
““Modern ” souls, 301
Money devoted to religious pur-
poses, 104 f., 284
Money payments, sacral, 365 f.
Monogram of Christ, 38, 2115, 2513,
279,
SUBJECTS
Monograms of archangels, 451 f.
‘Monograms with p, 2513, 30910
Monotheism, 394 f.
Moral element in Christianity, 397 f.
Morality, 397 f.
Morality for the sake of reward, 318
Morality of the workshop, 318
Morals, ancient popular, 312-322
Most High God, 326, 427
Mother’s name in magical texts,
3092
Mount, Sermon on the, 263
Much laboured, 316 ἢ,
Mummy-labels; 98
Muratorian canon, 182, 1845, 3, 242
Murder, expiation of, 426
Naassenic psalm, 35
Nails, 336,
Naked soul, 293,
Name, change of, 170;
Name, in the, 55;, 123
Name, mother’s, in magical texts,
3092 i
Name of daemon, important in
exorcism, 2578
Names, double, 447,
Names in Rom. xvi., 278:
Names in the book, 121
Names, list of, 30;. See Onomas-
tica
Names of archangels, 451 f.
Narrative style, popular, 408
Narratives of adventure, 408
Narratives of expiation, 408,
Narratives of rescue, 284,, 3102, 408
Narratives of the miraculous, 95,,
_ 284, 408;
Naturalism, 55
Neck, to lay down one’s, 119 f.
_ New English Dictionary, 2581,
New Testament. Seo Testament
“New Testament ’’ Greek, 54 ff.
““New ” words, 69 ff., 158;, 1955,
254,
Nominative for genitive, 124,
Non-literary, the, 218 ἢ.
Non-literary memorials, 4
Non-political character of Primitive
Christianity, 342 f.
Note of hand, 334 ff.
Nubian language, 36
Number 616, the, 348
Number 666 (or 616), the, 275 ff.
Number 888, the, 277;
Number of languages, 25810
Numerals in Greek New Testament,
72,
Numerical riddles, 275 ff.
489
Obscenity, 274
“Observations,” 18th-cent,
pilers of, 10,, 417
Odes, 353
Officers of the Roman army, 182-
186, 205-210
Official style, 62,
Ointment for eyes, 132,
“ Olivet,” 1575
Onomastica sacra, 2559, 415 f.
Onomatology, 68
Open door, 3022
Oracle, 16310, 284
Oration (literary genre), 236
Order for payment of corn, 872; of
wheat, 123 i
Ordination, requirements for, 211 ff.
com-
Orientalisation of the West, 2
“ Original. language” of the New
Testament, 57
Orphics, 3052 »
Ostraca, 41 ff.
Ostraca, Christian, from Egypt, xvii
Ostraca, Coptic, 42;, 210-217
Ostraca, inscribed with Gospel
passages, 48-53, 141,
Our Lord, 355
Overseer (title of honour), 350 f.
Ox and ass, 76, 273
Papas, 192-200, 1942, 205-210
Papyri, 20 ft., 29 ff.
Papyri, Christian, 33-39
Papyri, Coptic, 302, 35 ἢ.
Papyri, corpus of, 32
Papyri, discoveries of, 27 ff.
Papyri, excavations for, 28
Papyri, Hebrew, 304
Papyri, hieroglyphic, 30
Papyri, Jewish, 30, 36
Papyri, Latin, 30
Papyri, Persian, 30
Papyri, publication of, 32 ff.
Papyrus boats, 27
Papyrus codex, 26
Papyrus manufacture, 23 ff.
Papyrus plant, 21 f., 27
Papyrus rolls, 25 f.
Parable of the Good Samaritan,
1311, 269
Parable of the importunate widow,
269
‘Parable of the labourers in the vine-
yard, 318
Parable of the prodigal son, 177,
269
Parable of the rich fool, 2952
Parable of the wicked servant, 267
Parables, our Lord’s, 131;, 269
490 INDEX IV
Paraclete, 83, 124;6, 340
Paradise, 2563
Parallelism of Christian and Pagan
pairs of ideas, 318 f.
Parataxis, 128-132, 182,
Parchment fragments, 35,, 361, 6
Paris Magical Papyrus, 250-260
Parricide and matricide, 321
Parusia, 372-378
Parusia coins, 372, 3755, 376, 378
Parusia crown, 373;
Parusia dues and taxes, 372 f.
Parusia, eras reckoned by, 372,
376 £.
Parusia, expenses of, 372f., 374,
376
Parusia, manifestation of, 374,
Parusia of Antichrist, 375 f.
Parusia of Antiochus the Great,
374,
Parusia of Asclepius, 374,
Parusia of G. Caesar, 375,
Parusia of Christ, 372 ff., 397
Parusia of the Emperors, 375 ff.
Parusia of Mithradates, 375;
Parusia of Nero, 375,, 5
Parusia of Ptolemies, 3742
Parusia of Saitapharnes, 8743
Parusia sacrifices, 372, 376
Parusia, the first, 377,
Parusia, the second, 377: 397
Paston Letters, xiii
Pastor Hermae, 34, 409
Pastoral Epistles, 230 f., 278, 3131,
314, 378
Patristic MSS., 2793
Paul, St., Epistles of, 225 ff., 399 ;
to be learnt by heart, 213
Paul, St., his idea of freedom,
324;
Paul, St., writes letters during im-
prisonment, 2291. See also
Index II
Pay days, 365 f.
Payments, days for effecting, 365 f.
Payments of a religious nature,
365 f.
Perforation of documents, 3362
Peril of the sea, 1696
Persecutions of Christians, 37, 133,
201 ff. τὸ
Persian papyri,
Parenual eee salon: 267, 334
Personal names in Rom. xvi., 278
Personality, popular, types of, 405
Peter, Acts of, 35;
Peter, Epistles of, 235, 242
Peter, Second Epistle of, 322
Peter, Gospel of, 48,
Petition, 3745, 377
Pyafflein and Pdpstlein, 208;
Pharaoh, 356
Philemon, Epistle to, 205, 226, 229,
278, 335, 337, 339
Philippians, Epistle to the, 230
Philological importance of the new
texts, 54 ff.
arr cas and theologians, 391,
02 j
Phonetic spelling, 187, 416;
“| Phonology and accidence, 66 f.
Physicians, 86, 966
Pietistic congregations, 113,
Piety, Gentile, evidenced by the
ancient shrines, 285-288
Piety, various levels of, in the
ancient world, 287
Pilgrimages (literary genre), 243
Planetary inscription at Miletus,
448 ff.
Pneumatic communion, 3838, 395
Poemander (Poimandres), 795, 2882
Polemics, Christian, 282
Politics, Primitive Christianity not
interested in, 342 ζ,
Poll-tax, 269
Pope, title, 194;2, 208;
Popular character of Primitive
Christianity, 240, 392, 396
Popular ethics, ancient, 312-322 .
Popular etymology, 2559
Popular forms of expression, 405
Popular language, 8, 18, 46, 54 ff.
Popular law, 322-341
Popular literature, 241
Popular morality, 312-322
Popular narrative style, 408
Popular personality, types of, 405
Popular religion (“‘ folklore”), 287
Popular scene (in comedy), 321
Popular style, 127-140
Postils, 243
Potsherds, 41 ff.
Praescript( = salutation), 1485, 149:,
228,
“* Praise of Wisdom,” 134,
Prayer and fasting, days of, 431 f.
Prayer “for the city,” 453 i.
Prayer, Lord’s, 392, 482, 5, 398
Prayers, 284
Prayers for protection (Corinth), 455
Prayers for vengeance (Amorgus),
118
Prayers for vengeance (Rheneia),
18ς, 1173, 3262, 423 ff., 4478
Prepositions, 122 ἢ,
Presbyter, 37, 3407, 373,
Presbyter,.Christian, 37, 201 ff.
SUBJECTS
Preterite of the epistolary style
1573, 1642 ὴ aes
Price, 327 ff., 333
Priest, High (Christ), 369, 396
Priestling and popeling, 208;
Priests in Hellenistic Egypt, 284,
Primitive Christianity. See Chris-
tianity
Principate, 353, 356
Problems awaiting solution, 406-419
Processions, 105;0, 106, 37] ἢ.
Proclamation in the Temple at
Jerusalem, 74 ff.
Proclamations, imperatival infini-
tive in, 75,
Prodigal son, 131;, 151;, 152;, 5,
176-182, 189.2, 300 ἢ,
* Prodigal son, parable, 177, 269
Production, religious, 410
Profession, Lutheran certificates of,
372
Proletarian life, 155 f.
Proselytes, 447
Proskynemata, 163;
Prosopographia of the Imperial
period, 291 f.
Protective charm, 448 ff.
Proverbs of Solomon, 36,
Proverbs, unidentified, 35,
Provincialism (?) of S.W. Asia
Minor, 1162
Psalms, fragment at Leipzig, 26;
Psalms, fragment from Oxyrhyn-
chus, 35;
Psalms learnt by heart, 213
Pseudonymous letters, 224
Publicans, 266
Purchase-money (of slaves), 331 f.
Purists and Hebraists, 65
Put in trust with the gospel, 379
Quakers, 118:
Ransom, 331 f.
Receipts, 111 f., 152 f., 335, 364 f.
Reckoning, to make a, 118 f.
Recommendation, letters of, 158,
182 ff., 226
Reconciliation, 176 f. (1. 10), 1785
Recto and verso, 26, 442
Redeemer, cult of the, 397
Redemptio servi suis nummis, 326,
Redemption, 324-334
Redemption money, 331 f.
Religion and theology, 384 ff.
Religion, history and psychology
of, 409 f.
Religion, money spent on, 104f.,
284
491
Religion, popular (‘‘folklore ”), 287
Religions, missionary, 288 f.
Religious atmosphere of the ancient
shrines, 285-288
Religious culture of the Imperia}
period, 284 ft.
Repetition of an incantation, 432
Representation of one person by
another, 120,, 12416, 153;, 335,
3392
Research. See Methods
Research, international. See Ameri-
ean, Austrian, British, French,
German, Greek
Research, future work of, 406-419
Research, joys and sorrows of, 407,
419
Revelation of St. John, 35;, 63,
237 f., 242, 345, 352 £., 367, 379 f.
“Revelations,” apocryphal, 242,
288,
Reviewers of this book, xxi, 7;, 861,
229;, 3153, 3501, 3696
Reward (in the New Testament),
110 ff., 318
Rhythm, Asian, 64
Rich fool, the, 2952
Rich, the, 2952
Riddles, numerical, 275 ff.
Right judgment, give, 118
Righteousness, crown of, 373
Robbers, 90,4, 2782, 291, 321
Robber scene, 130 f.
Roll, of lead, 19,
Roll, papyrus, 25 f., 119
Rolls, Hereulanean, 702, 119
Romanisation of the East, 2
Romans, Epistle to the, 226 ff.,
231 £., 274, 278:
Rosette with cross, 2793
Rosettes, 2793
Royal law, the, 3673
Rustic uncials, 232
Sabaoth, 253 and 258 (1. 3052)
Sacred, 380rr
Sacrifice, 150 ἢ.
Sacrifice, idea of, 333 f.
Sacrifices, 37:
Sacrifices, advent, 372, 376
Sacrificial regulations, 284
Saints, legends of, 242 f.
Salutation (in letters), 1485, 149:, 25
1532, 158
Samaritan, the good, 131;, 269
Samaritan, the grateful, 132:0
Saviour, 311, 368 £., 373 £., 396
Saviour and God, 348,, 3694
Saviour of the world, 369
402
Scilitanian martyrs, 247,, 360
“‘Scolding ” scene in Plautus, 321
Scripture, 380 £.
Sea, peril of the, 1696
Sea voyages, 278 f.
Seal, Solomon’s, 257,
Sebaste Day, 363-366.
Secularisation of ‘‘ Biblical ”’ words,
70 ff.
Secularisation of Jewish rites, 326,
Seleucidae, coins of the, 348;
Semasiology, 413
Semasiology, religious, 208,, 418
Semiticisms, 63,, 653, 124 f., 127 £.,
154,, 157,; Lord King, both
Semitic and Egyptian, 356 f.
Semitic religions, 409,
Septuagint:
concordance, 84, .
cosmopolitan, prepared the way
for Christianity, 394
Grammar, 163-6, 19, 395, 41, 67
illustrated by the ostraca, 46
influence on New Testament
vocabulary, etc., 712, 346, 355,
366,
influence on “planetary in-
scription” at Miletus, 484.
its history illustrated by in-
scriptions from Rheneia, 135,
19, 423ff.,. 434; by other
inscriptions, 195, 20;
Jewish revision of (?), 354
lexicography, 414 f.
papyrus fragments, 345, 6, 352, 4 ;
at Heidelberg, 26, 33:
parchment fragment, 35,
parallels to an Egyptian sacral
text, 136f. (notes); to Paris
Magical Papyrus, 2533, 256-260
(notes)
quotations in inscriptions, 195,
20; ; unrecognised, 20;, 456 ff.
quoted in a papyrus letter, 204:
substitutes Lord for Jahveh, 354
supposed “Biblical” words in,
70 ff., 77-84, 86-88, 93f., 101,
116f., 125 f.
words and phrases: εἰς = “ for,”
1575; κύριος βασιλεύς, 3568;
σῶμα, 1512
Seraphinen, Die, Tersteegen’s, 25814
Sermon on the Mount, 263
Servant, 323
Servant of Isis, 68,4
Servant, the wicked, 267
' Shed blood, to, 428
Sh(e)ma, Hebrew papyrus, 30,
Shepherd, 396. See Chief
INDEX IV
Shepherd of Hermas, 34, 40,
Shepherds, guild of, 982
Shifters-on, 263 ᾿
Shrines, ancient, their religious
atmosphere, 285-288
Shrunken grammatical forms, 126
Sign of authenticity in a letter, 1532,
158 ᾿
Signs of the archangels, 449 ff.
Sins, confession of, 131:, 176-182,
2042
Siz hundred three score and siz,
275 ff., 348
Slave of Christ, 328 ff., 3547, 381
Slave of Isis, 684
Slave of the Emperor, 381 f.
Slave of the Syrian goddess, 109
Slavery for debt, 334
Slavery of God, 3297
Slavery of righteousness, 3293
Slavery of Satan, 331,
Slaves, Imperial, 2303, 381 ἢ.
Slaves, names of, 333;
Slaves of sin, 3277
Slaves of the gods, 3282
Slaves of the law, 328:
Slaves, sacral manumission of, 100,-
1211, 324-334, 354,
Social history, 261 ff.
Social piety, 163
Social solidarity of the Christians,
200
Social structure of Primitive, Chris-
tianity, 6 f.
Soldiers, 167-171, 175, 1912
Soldiers’ letters, 167-175, 182-186
Soldier’s portrait, 1101)
Solidarity of the lower classes, 398
Solidarity, social, of the Christians,
200
Solomon’s Song, 457 ff.
Son of God, 350 f., 396
Son of Man, 396
Son, prodigal, 177, 269
Song of Solomon, 457 ff.
Soul, naked, 298:
Soul, to humble the, 429 ff.
Soul-life of antiquity, 409
Soul-pictures, 297 ff.
Souls, ancient, 290-302
Souls, individual, 290-302
Souls, ‘‘ modern,”’ 301
Sovereign, worship of the, 289,
342 ff.
Sparrows, market price of, 270-273
Spelling, phonetic, 187, 416;
) Spells, 306. See Magic
Standard of learning among the
clergy, 211-214
SUBJECTS
Stanza d’Eliodoro, 53,
Statistics of the New Testament
vocabulary, 71 ff.
‘Stone, inscriptions on, 10
Style, epistolary, 234
aoe epistolary, preterite of, 1575,
2
Style, Johannine, 127-140
Style, of edicts, 75,
Style of New Testarhent and of
profane texts compared, 127-
140
Style of St. John’s Prologue, 127
Style, official, 622
Style, popular, 127-140
Style, popular narrative, 408
Style, solemn, in sacral use, 133-
140
Style, stately, use of “I,”’ 130, 133-
140 ᾿
Sufferings of Christ, 932
Suicide threatened, 188 (ll. 14, 15),
1896, 190
Sun-child (Sunday child), 88
Sunday, 361,
Sureties, 211, 213, 327,
Symbols, supposed planetary, 450 ff.
Synagogues, inscriptions for, 137
Syncretism, 261
‘Synoptic gospels, 63, 241
Syntax of the New Testament, 121-
127
Syriac, ὃ:
Syrian goddess, 109 f., 354
Syrian magic, 306
Tabernacles, Feast of, 116 f.
Table of the Lord, 355
Tablets, cursing, 186, 19,, 92, 284,
303 ff.
Tablets, gold, 10, 3052
Tablets οὗ wax, 10, 41;
Tablets, wooden, 415, 98, 126
Talmuds, the, 2
Tanaim, 388,
Tariff, Diocletian’s Maximum, 271f.
Tattoo marks, Arab, 4503
Tax, on aliens, lll, *
Tax, bath and embankment, 364
Taxation, Egyptian, 45, 3432
Taxation, enrolment for, 268 f.
Temple at Jerusalem, warning
notice, 74 ff.
Temple furniture, 101
Temple laws, 284
Temples, xxv, 284 f., 287
Tents erected at festivals, 117;
Testament (or will), 79:, 875, 2112»
3232, 3283, 341
498.
Testament, New:
essential characteristics, 140 ff.,
244 ff., 281, 399 f., 419
legal ideas in, 339 ff.
meanings of words, 107-117
‘original language ” of, 57
peculiar beauty of, 66
statistics of its vocabulary, 71 ff.
style compared with that of
profane texts, 127-140
syntax of, 121-127
text of, 49:, 456
Testament, Old. See Septuagint
Thanks to God, formulae of, 1683
Theatre at Ephesus, 113 f., 280,
Theatre at Miletus, 446 f., 448 ff.
Theatre-going, 129;, 447
Theologians and philologists, 391,
402
Theologos, 352 £., 385
Theology distinct from religion, 385.
Therapeutae, 250; '
Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, 413 f. ;
quoted, 179:, 1953, 208:, ἽΝ
2558, 3531, 3697, 3841, 444
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, 413,,
414, 2
Thessalonians, Epistles to the, 229
Things that ye will, do the, 328 1.
Thorn in the flesh, 310
Throne of Satan, 2802
Through Christ, 12416, 340
Thus saith, 380
Times, The, quoted, xix, 342, 280;
Titles used in Christian devotion,,
396
Token, 1532, 158
Tombs, desecrators of, 115, 217:
Tombs, inscriptions on, 295 f., 313,
316 f., 319
Tombstones, hands on, 424 ff.
Tongue bound, 306-310
Tongues, the number of, 2589
“Toparchy,” 1602
Topography, Egyptian, 37
Towns, great. See Cities
Towns, provincial, life in, 265 ff.
Tracts (tractates), 243
Transcriptions in the New Testa--
ment, Semitic and Latin, 72
Translation, principles of, xii ff.
437:
Travellers’ tales of adventure, 408
Tribute of 2 drachmae, 266
Trio of daemons, 25712
Trust, committed to πῶ, 379
Two and two, by, 124 ἴ.
Types of ancient soul-life, 293-301.
Types of popular personality, 405
494 INDEX V
Uncials, rustic, 232
Universal Greek, 18, 54 ff.
Upper classes, 7;, 240, 342
Versammlung, 113;
Verso and recto, 26, 442
Viaticum, 168 f., 1709, 171
Vicarious present activity of Christ,
333, 339, 388 f.
Vices, lists of, 150,, 324:
Vices and virtues, 320 ff.
Village-life, 265
Village-priest, 208;
Vine (Christ), 396
Vineyard, parable of the labourers
in the, 318
Virtues, lists of, 82:
Virtues and vices, lists of, 319-322
Visions, accounts of, 408
Viachs, 99;
Vocabulary, 69-121
Vocabulary, New Testament, sta-
tistics of, 71 ff.
Vowels, rows of, 449 ff.
Vulgar Greek, 154 f., 187 f.
Vulgar Latin, 182 ff., 242
Vulgar use of cases, 1249, 1736
Vulgarisms, 127, 1708
Vulgate, 381
Wage-paying, 366
Wages (in the New Testament),
110 ff., 318
Warning notice in the Temple at
Jerusalem, 74 fi.
Watch beds, to, 211 f.
Wax tablets, 10, 41;
Way, The (title of Christ), 396
Weiterschieber, 208:
Wheat, Corn of (title of Christ), 396
Wheat, order for payment of, 872,
123
Wicked servant, the, 267
Widow, the importunate, 131,, 269
Widows, itinerant, 109,
** Wisdom, Praise of,” 134;
With Christ, 3052
Witness (Christ), 396
Wizardry, 139. See Magic
Womanhood, ideal of, 318 f.
Wooden tablets, 415, 98, 126
Word-formation, 68
Word of God (Christ), 396
Words becoming indeclinable, 126
Words, borrowed, 72
Words, Christian new formations,
72 £.
Words, magic, 251 f., 255-257
Words, meanings of, in New Testa-
ment, 107-117
Words, ‘‘ new,” 69 fi., 1581, 1955,
254,
Words of consolation, 333, 415 f.
Words, statistics of New Testa-
ment, 71 ff.
Work, 316 ff.
Workmen’s sayings, 316 ff.
Workshop language, 316 ff.
Workshop morality, 318
World, literature for the, 243 ἢ.
World, Saviour of the, 369
World, the ancient, 281 ff.
World-centres (great cities), 239 f.
Worship, ancient places of, 285 ff.
Worship of local gods, 173;
Writings, 380 f.
Writings, divine, 351, 381
Wiirttemberg Bible Institute, 141,
MODERN PERSONS
(a, 6, ἃ count as ae, oe, ue)
Achelis, H., 2793
Allen, W. C., 412
Amherst of Hackney, Lord, xxviii,
32, 192
Angus, 8., 55,
Anrich, 48
Anz, H., 163
Arnim, von, 3404
Baedeker, K., 212, 99:
Ball, C. J., viii
Bardenhewer, O., 380, 2232
Barnardo, T. J., 423
Bartlet, J. V., 438
Baudissin, Count W., 97, 684
Baunack, J., 785
Baur, F. C., 4032
Baur, W., 226;
Bechtel, F., 95,
Becker, C. H., 303
MODERN
Behmen, Jacok, 3872
Bekker, I., 1246
Bell, H. 1., xvii f., 472, 162, 2683,
2692
Benndorf, O., 112, 14;
Bergh van Eysinga, G. A. van den,
299.
Birt, Th., 232
Bissing, Baron F. W. von, 362;
Blass, F., 291, 95
his Grammar quoted, 175, 703,
915, 1225, 1250,4, 1265, 1575,
170:2, 1732, 1787, 17928
once a believer in ‘“‘ New. Testa-
ment ” Greek, 552, 62;
on St. Paul and the Asian rhythm,
64,
on the bad boy Theon’s letter,
81, 187, 1897, 190;, 405
Blau, L., 195, 2503, 3092, 432,
Blouet, A., 423,
Bludau, A., 332, 367, 372, 485
Bodelschwingh, F. von (died 2 April,
1910), 42,
Béckh, A., 11, 450
Bohl, E., 19,
Béhme, Jakob, 3872
Boehmer, J., 55;
Boissonade, 353;, 444
Boll, F., 1393, 450, 452;
Borchardt, L., 21:, 252
Bouriant, 49
Bousset, W., 49:, 902, 2313, 2375,
451,, 452,
Brandt, 8., 2793, 3073, 368;
Breccia, E., 1472
Bridges, W. H., xviii f.
Brightman, F. E., 308
Brinkmann, A., 126,
Brooke, A. E., 346
Briinnow, R. E., 133
Brugmann, K., 128 f., 4132
Bruns, C. G., 803, 1532
Budge, E. A. W., 86:
Biicheler, F., 380, 2763, 3203
Buresch, K., ix, 126, 3322, 4082
Burns, R., x
Burton, E. de W., 405
Bussemaker, 863
Byron, 293;
Cagnat, R., 155, 147,, 167s, 35735
379
Calder, W. M., 280,
Carlyle, T., viif., 1402, 3063
Chabert, 8., 103
Chandler, R., 99
Cichorius, C., 126
Clemen, C., 261,
PERSONS 495
Clermont-Ganneau, 75, 456;
Cohen, 375,
Cohn, L., 4132
Collignon, M., 122
Collitz, H., 785, 957
Cotelerius, J. B., 215,, 217;
Cowley, A. E., 30,
Cremer, H., 17, 70, 73, 742, 807, 822,
88 ff., 916, 952, 964, 9715 4, 992-5,
1003, 101,, 103, 107, 1142., 17918,
3727, 3807, 417
Crénert, W., 414, 702, 119, 1833, 413
Crum, W. E., 41f., 47:, 48, 195,,
210-215, 308,
Crusius, O., 78:
Cumont, F., 194, 2883, 2892, 3842,
427, 449,
Currie, M. A., 2224
Curtius, E., 3242, 3263, 3287, 8,
3292, 3301, 2
Dante, 397
Daremberg, 863
Delehaye, H., 208;, 275,
Delitzsch, Franz, 5173
Dessau, H., 291, 3633
Deubner, L., 1153
Dickens, C., 25814
Diels, H., 1092, 1265, 1394, 1574,
163,, 1862, 1946, 3052, 413;, 414;, 2
Dieterich, Albrecht :
a pioneer in comparative religion,
261,
his Abraxas, 2503, 2557, 256»,
2579, 12, 25812
Leyden Magical Papyrus, 134,
309,
Nekyva, 2881, 320;
on the adoration of the Magi, 358,
on letter of Psenosiris, 373
on letters from Heaven, 238,
on magical texts, 250, 251;, 2556
on Mithras, 134;, 208,, 289,
on religious character of Primi-
tive Christianity, 384,
Dieterich, Karl, 192, 67, 1252, 17925
Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhand-
lung, Figures 38, 44, 61
Dittenberger, W., Orientis Gr. Inacr.
Sel., 14, 743, 3809, 3836 ; Sylloge,
15;, 210, 4232, 430;, 431, 4381.
See also Index VI B
Dobschiitz, E. von, 36,, 128
Déorpfeld, W., xxvii, 2802
Domaszewski, A. von, 133, 170 ,
173;, 183;, 2893
Drerup, E., xvii
Dryden, J., xi
Diibner, 374,
496
Diirer, 142, 242,
Duhn, F. von,
2793, 401
Dussaud, R., 9:
Dziatzko, K., 232, 1440, 1532
2741,
xxvi, 531,
Ebers, G., 232
Edie, W., 21,
Egger, 48;
Eisenmenger, J. A., 481:
Erman, A., 210, 1334, 1472, 1675,
172:
Erman, H., 110,
Evstratiadis, 133
Eyssenhardt, 1562
Fabricius, E., 122
Ficker, J., 141,
Fiebig, P., 623, 4063
Field, F., 96;
Fincke, A., 360;
Fleck, 453,
Fleckeisen, A., 134;
Fossey, Ch., 1092
Foucart, G., 328,
Foucart, P., 3242, 3303
Frankel, M., 122, 835, 352,
Franchi de’ Cavalieri, P., 373
Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of
George II., ὃ:
Fredrich, C., 124, 5
Freer, 342
Freese, J. H., 2812
Fricke, 1046
Frickenhaus, A., 446, 4482, 449,
Friedlaender, L., 1897, 2812
Fuller, T., xi
Gardner, E. A., 153
Gau, 43,
Gebhardt, O., 35,
Geffcken, J., 1554
Gehrich, G., 2892
George II., King of England, ὃ:
Gerhard, G. A., 1499, 223;
Giesecke and Devrient, 1522
Glubokowsky, N., 566
Goethe, 397 '
Goodspeed, E. J., 1643, 2076
Gradenwitz, O., xviil, 219, 3345,
3356, 3375, 3402
Graffenried, M. C. de, 53
Gregory, C. R., x, 231, 332, 342, 485
Grenfell, B. P., 291, 150;, 154;
Grenfell, B. P., and A. 5. Hunt:
Biblical and early Christian frag-
ments discovered by, 33 ff.
diacritical marks employed by,
xvi
INDEX V
Grenfell, B. P., and A. 8. Hunt
. (con.):
excavations by, 28
Inbelli published by, 372
opinions and editorial comments,
82s, 1255, 1621, 2, 3 1635,
1840; 12, 1946, 195;, 2015, 202;,
206), 337
papyri published by them dis-
cussed and printed in full,
150f., 1δ4 ., 159 ff., 164 ff.,
182 ff., 187 ff., 192 ff., 201 ff.,
436 ff., 441 ff.
translations by, xii f., xv, 437,
See also Index VIc : Amherst,
Fayim, Grenfell, Hibeh, Oxy-
’ rhynchus, Tebtunis .
Grenfell, Hunt, and Goodspeed,
2076
Grieve, A., 16g
Grillparzer, F., 221:
Grimm, C. L. W., 701, 80 (§ 9), 806,
851, 861, 931, 95, 118 (§3)
Gruppe, O., 13710
Gunkel, H., 235,, 2375, 2612
Guthe, H., 226 (Fig. 2), 272
Haberlin, C., 210
Hickel, E., 68;
Hahn, L., 2:
Hall, H. R., 42:
Halm, C., 1532
Harnack, A., 16, 353, 2612
Chronologie d. altchr. Lit., 332, 380
Dogmengeschichte, 367;
Geschichte d. alichr. Lit., 2232
Militia Christi, 11018, 210
Mission ... des Christentume,
2743, 2792, 289, 2
on the calendar inscription of
Priene, 870,» 5
on the Epistle of Theonas to
Lucianus, 2232
on the letter of Psenosiris, 385
on the Logia, 4372
on the oldest Christian letter, 38;,
192, 19412, 1965, 1973, 201
on πάπας, 1942, 308;
on πολλαπόλλων, 1553
on Pompeian inscriptions, 274,
on uncanonical gospels, 342
Haro, Madame de, 24 f.
Harris, J. R., 40,, 192
Hastings, J., 20,
Hatch, E., 15, 84:
Hatch, W. H. P., 184, 702, 3152,
3535, 3612
Hatzidakis, G. N. (Athens), 193,
17928
MODERN
Hatzidakis, Dr. (Crete), 2793
Haupt, E., 3362
Hauschildt, H., 40g
Haussoullier, B., 13,
Havet, L., 856
Hayman, W. H., xviii
Heberdey, R., 14,,
108;,
2774, 2981, 316;
1897,
᾿ Heiberg, J. L., 732
Heinrici, G., 16;, 26;, 144,, 2412,
261.2, 283;, 288;, 3002, 314;, 3933,
3983, 4272
Heitmiiller, W., 406, 1234, 128;
Helbing, R., 164, 41, 67
Henkel, F. W., xviii
Hepding, H., 289,
Hercher, R., 956, 165,, 1663, 181,
218;, 222;, 2, 226,, 2972
Herwerden, H. van, 772, 784, 8, 7935
802, 834, 850, 881, 945, 1002, 1012,
413;
Herzog, R., 132, 2483, 2793, 294,,
2953, 2962, 4, 3254, 3314, 3493,
3753, 382,
Hesseling, 10. C., 564, 59:, 77:
Hicks, E. L., 112, 132, 152, 9, 754;
3152, 3254, 3493, 3753
Hill, G. F., 152
Hiller von Gaertringen, Baron F.,
11,, 12,4, 181, 137, 19;, 957, 1022,
133,, 3256, 433
Hirschfeld, G., 877, 3, 1152
Hirschfeld, O., 4252, 4332
Hoffmann, O., 101,
Hohlwein, N., 210, 413
Holl, K., 58,
Holleaux, 53,
Hollmann, G., 235;
Holtzmann, H. J., 2612
Homolle, Th., 118,, 433
Hoskyns-Abrahall, J., 21;
Howell, J., x
Huelsen, Chr., 3203
Humann, C. [K.], 126, 133, 368:
Hunt, A. 8., 164;, 187;. See Gren-
fel}
Hupka, J., 338;
Imelmann, J., 315;
Immisch, O., 3725
Janell, W., 102, 3276
Johnson, §., 221,
Jouguet, P., 210, 389, 48
Judeich, W., 126, 875, 8
Jiilicher, A., 231
Kaibel, G., 88,
Kalinka, E., 189), 277,» 316:
PERSONS 497
Kalthoff, A., 403
Kattenbusch, F., 3535
Kaufmann, C. M., xvii
Kaufmann, D., 309,, 426,
Kautsky, K., 4033
Kehrer, H., 2793
Keil, 1135, 280,
Kekule von Stradonitz, R., 12,
Kennedy, H. A. A., 17;, 71 f., 732,
773, 101y, 342;
Kenyon, F. G., 250, 3696
Greek Papyrt in the British
Museum, 787, 904, 134, 2071,
304,, 4512, 4522; extracts
discussed, 139, 205 ff.
on age of papyri, 22
on manufacture of papyrus, 23
on Menas ostraca, 472
on size of papyri, 25
Palaeography of Greek Papyri,
22,, 233, 251
“ Papyri,” in Hastings’ Dict., 33:
Kenyon, F. G., and H. I. Bell:
Greek Papyrt in the British
Museum, 227,; extracts dis-
cussed, 162 f., 268,
Kern, O., 123, 1062
Kirchner, V. G., 2382
Klebs, E., 291
Klostermann, E., 33,
Knackfuss, H., 12,
Knopf, R., 482, 2472, 360,
Kober, F., 2142, 217:
Koch, H., 342, 18410, 3524
Kéhler, W., 307;
Konig, E., 4387
Koerte, A., 832
Konstantinidis, A., 4133
Kopp, U. F., 452,
Kornemann, E., 2895, 848:
Kosch, W., 404;
Krauss, 5., 3173
Krebs, F., 210, 372,
1675, 1723, 1741, 1761
Kretschmer, P., 4142
Kroll, W., 732, 831, 864, 924
Kropatscheck, G., 51;
Kriiger, Gustav, 144:
Krumbacher, K., 59;, 1654, 414,
Kuhring, Gu. [W.], 413, 122:
Kummer, G., 124
Lafoseade, L., 1472, 380: 4, 6
1472, 1573,
- Lagarde, P. de, 459
Lanckoronski, Count K., 14;
Landolina, F. 8., 24
Larfeld, W., 156
Latyschev, B., 845, 1004, 5, 3132s
3257, 8, 3672, 368,, 3814, 3838
32
498
Le Bas, 423,, 428, 432 f.
Le Bas-Waddington, 381,
Le Blant,’E., 98;, 4
Leemans, C., 126,
Lefebvre, G., 19,, 48 ff.
Leipoldt, J., 36, 383,
Lembert, R., 3932
Lepsius, R., 206;
Leroux, E., 98 (Fig. 7)
Letronne, 153,
Liddell and Scott, 309,, 327,
ee M., 30;, 684, 1234, 306,,
Τὴ σι βρῆ; H.:
Handbuch zum Neuen Testament,
563, 144;; on Romans and
1 Cor., 18:, 40; on Romans,
82,, 895, 3201, 6, 3535, 3562,
3603
Kleine Texte: ‘“‘ Griechische
Papyri,” 41;, 154;, 1553, 4
Staerk’s ‘‘ Aramaeische Ur-
kunden,” 30;
Swete’s ‘“ Evangelienfrag-
mente,”’ 34,
Wiinsch’s ‘“Antike Fluch-
tafeln,” 19,, 804;
on Jena Papyrus, 39,
Studien und Kritiken, 3712
Lightfoot, J. B., 15, 65,
Linke, 1046
Lipsius, K. H. A., 153
Lipsius, R. A., 153
Lisco, H., 229;
Lobwasser, A., 140
Loch, E., 1897
Low, I., 309, 426,
Lohmann, E., xxvii
Loman, 222,
Lucas, H., 100,, 456 ff.
Lueken, W., 452,, 454,
Luschan, F. von, 14,
Luther, 1402, 222,, 285;, 3063,
3231, 328,, 404
Maass, E., 4493
McCabe, J., 4031
McLean, N., 346
Macridy, Th., 3256
Magie, D., 1132, 347, 3514, 367,,
3693, 370;, 3791, 3, 3823
Magnus, L. A., 2812
Mahafty, J. P., 227,
Matthaei, A., 180,
Mayser, E., 321, 413, 59:, 622, 78,,
796, 932, 1031, 1047, 11lo, 1241,»
1266
Mehmet, mollah, 316;
Meinertz, M., 430;
INDEX V
Meister, R., 166
Meisterhans, K., 18,
Mendel, G., 115,
Menge, H., 413,
Menzies, A., 21,
Mercati, 456;
Merivale, C., 293,
Merk, A., 385
Merx, A., 24;
Meyer, Eduard, 228
Meyer, H. A. W., 902, 1183, 3362
Meyer, R. M., 262,
Michaelis, A., 42
Michel, Ch., 15,, 816, 1157
Michelsen, J. H. A., 333, 341
Migne, J. P., xviiir, 393, 18410, 4442
Milligan, G. :
articles by, 210, 372
Commentary on Thessaloniana,
18
lexical notes in the Expositor.
See Moulton
Selections from the Greek Papyri,
xviii, 210
Milton, x,
Misch, G., 144,
Mitteis, L., 121,
articles by, 2666, 2673, 332,
Aus den gr. Papyrusurkunden,
210
Leipzig papyri published by, 793,
» 98
Papyrus-chrestomathy preparing,
21
ο
Reichsrecht und Volksrecht, 1554,
2673, 2812, 3242, 3263, 4, 3288,
3302, 3322, 3343, 5, 3401
MGrike, E., 4032
Mommsen, Theodor, 11, 45, 743,
751, 803, 2302, 2721, 2812, 343;,
370, 3752, 3823
Mommseen, Tycho, 3052
Montfaucon, B. de, xix, 21,, 444
Moore, H., xviii
Morinus, Jo., 2153
Moritz, 362;
Moulton, J. H., 1065, 117,
articles by, 210, 557
Grammar of New Testament Greek,
176, ὅθ, 653, 845, 1110, 122,,
1266, 1272, 266,
inaugural lecture, 176
notes in the Eapositor, 402, 554,
796, 823,5, 965, 1047, 1185,
2683, 2965, 3126
Moulton’ J. H’, and G. Milligan :
lexical notes in the Expositor
403, 753, 813, 856, 110;, 122,,
1532, 3152, 3356, 3407, 34lo, x
MODERN
Miiller, Herm., 332, 40,
Miiller, Iwan von, 156
Miinsterberg, R., 307,
Miinz, 217:
Naber, J. C., 345;
Nachmanson, E., 188
Nageli, Th., 17,, 56:, 642, 813, 4,
825, 852, 45» 865, 895, 928, 945,
958
Naro, G., 25
Nash, 30,
Naumann, F., 220;
Nestle, E., 19,, 213, 263, 51, 1092,
274,, 315
Neumann, C., 1415, 242;
Newton, Sir C. T., 11,
Nicole, J., 763, 793, 2072, 413,
Niemann, G., 14;
Niese, 833
Néldeke, Th., 30:, 68;
Norden, E., 41, 652, 805, 90,4, 1632,
293, 4325
Norton, F. Ο., 341; Γ
Oeser, H., 263;
Oppenheim, Baron M. von, 456
Otto, W., 284,
Overbeck, F., 144
Pagenstecher, R., 426;
Pape, W., 84-, 966, 99, 100
Parthey, G., 3713, 4
Pasor, G., 416 f., 4182
Passalacqua, 1532
Passow, F., 966, 99, 413
Paton, W. R., 132, 3254, 3493, 3753
Perdrizet, P., 195, 2752
Peter, H., 222,, 293;
Peters, N., 30,4
Petersen, E., 14:
Petrie, W. M. Flinders, 373
Pfister, F., 350;, 3696
Pfleiderer, O., 2612, 368,
Pierson, J., 85,
Plasberg, O., 35
‘Politi, the brothers, 24
' Pontremoli, E., 122, 134
Pope, A., 221;, 293;
' Powell, B., 13,
_ Preisigke, F., 1472, 1641, 6, 1675,
1701, 21, 1723, 175;, 1771, 17922,
187;, 189;
Prellwitz, W., 413,
Preuschen, E., 333, 841, 42;, 2137,
308, :
Price, F. Hilton, 308
Prior, M., 298:
Prott, H. von, 124
PERSONS 499
Psichari, J., 165, 856, 122;, 123,,
1255, 129,
' Puchstein, O., 133, 368,
Pulliblank, J., 65,
Raabe, W., 404,
Radermacher, L., 563, 91;, 122,
Raffael (Raphael), 53,
Rahlis, A., 19., 36,
Rainer, Archduke, 32, 36
Ramsay, A. M., 208,
Ramsay, Sir W. M., 12,5, 159, 194,
2081, 2690, 280:, 3785
Redpath, H. A., xviii, 84;
Reift, J. G., 956
Reinach, 8., 272,
Reinach, Th., 32, 289,
Reinhold, H., 16,
Reitzenstein, R., 48, 62,
2612, 2882, 3932, 408,
Rembrandt, 142, 242,
Rensch, Gu. [W.], 3242, 828, 3302,
3322
Resch, A., 445,
Ribbeck, O., 12
Ricci, 5. de, 210, 301, 372
Rich, A., 109;
Riggenbach, E., 341,
Ritschl, F., 85,
Roberts, E. 8., 155
Rohden, P. von, 291
Roscher, W.' H., 354,
Rossetti, C., 293; ᾿᾿
Rouvier, J., 348;
Rubensohn, O., 29;
Rusch, A., 138;, 288,
Ruskin, J., x
Rustaftfael, 366
146,,
Sachau, E., 801
Said Ali, 382 (Fig. 61)
Sanders, H. A., 342
Sarrara Yussuf, 248 (Fig. 38)
Sauer, A., 221,, 404,
Sayce, A. H., 30;
Schafer, Heinrich, 366
Schettler, A., 12416, 3405, 6
Schiele, 140
Schiff, A., 134
Schirlitz, 418
Schlatter, A., 17, 115,
Schleiermacher, 387
Schlosser, H., 179,
Schmid, Wilhelm (Tiibingen), 60,,
91;, 3, 932, 1246, 1292
Sobmnidt, J. C. (Erfurt), 22
Schmidt, Carl (Berlin), 302, 332,
35, 366, 2053, 211, 215
Schmidt, Karl (Elberfeld), 210
500
Schmiedel, P. W., 91,, 2ὅ8., 268.,
445,; his adaptation of Winer’s
Grammar, 16, 653, 67, 903, 1162, 3,
3822
Schmitthenner, 2. ., 221,
Schone, H., 413,
Schoener, Chr., 357,, 367;
Schott-Reinhardt collection of
papyri, 30,
Schow, N., 39,
Schrader, H., 12,
Schubart, W., 105, 1571, 167,, 1721,
1745, 1762, 1789, 17925, 2053,
3353, 382:
Schuchhardt, C., 122
Schiirer, E., articles by, 30;, 2683,
2690, 3635, 449;, 451,
his Gesch. ἃ. jiid. Volkes, ix, 151.,
288 f.
his Gesch. d. jiid. Volkes quoted on:
Diaspora, 289;, 4341, 446,
guilds, 398,
inscriptions, 149, 753.6 100,,
3242, 3, 326;, 3573
Jewish names, 124,
Jews at Delos, 434;
Jews at Miletus, 446,
manumissions, 3242, 3, 326;
“Most High God,” 326, 427
Septuagint, 434,
Shemoneh Esreh, 4323
Solomon’s seal, 257, |
Temple inscription, 753, 6
theatre-going of Jews, 447,, 9
θεοσέβιοι, 4473, 5
προσευχή in inscriptions, 100,
Schulthess, F., 801
Schultze, V., 217:
Schulze, Wilhelm, 18,
Schweizer [ = Schwyzer], E., 186
Schwyzer [= Schweizer], E., 186,
129, :
Seeck, Otto, 227:
Setti, G., 185
Seuffert, L. von, 326,
Shakespeare, 109,
Sickel, W., 3801:
Sickenberger, J., 565
Siebeck, P., xxi, xxvili
Sobolewsky, 5. J., 566
Soden, Baron H. von, 49;, 503
Sogliano, A., 2753
Sophocles, E. A., 794, 862, 111.»
' 2143, 3522, 3697, 3841
Spengel, 372;
Spiegelberg, W., 30:, 158:
Stahe in, F., 367
Staerk, W., 30;, 2812
Stellhorn, 418
INDEX V
Sterrett, J. R. S., 136
Steubing, A., 932
Steuernagel, C., 30,
Strack, M. L., 40g, 348,
Strauss, D. F., 4082
Sturz, F. W., 396
Suckling, Sir J., x
Suicerus, J. C., 1957, 353,
Swainson, C. A., 454,, 4552
Swete, H. B., xviii, 342, 55,
Swoboda, A., 35,
Tamassia, N., 185
Tersteegen, 2584, 3872
Thackeray, H. St. J., 16,4, 175
Thayer, J. H., 70:, 75;, 76-80
(ἐδ 2-9), 83, 84, 851, 88; 923, 931,
951, 100, 101, 1013, 118 (§ 3), 417
Thieme, G., 173, 202, 1061, 117.»
2772, 3496, 3513, 3633, 8686, 378,
Thiersch, H. W. J., 395
Thoma, Hans, 126,
Thomas Aquinas, 387
Thomas Magister, 855
Thumb, A., 193, 55, 773, 911, 1102,
122;, 1250, 3635
Tischendorf, 444, 445
Tischhauser, Chr., 405:, 2
Toepffer, J., 1171
Toutain, J., 2896
Trede, Th., 3932
Trench, R. C., 739, 3313
Troeltsch, E., 404,
Usener, H., 2223, 2612, 3212, 3785
Viereck, P., 210, 38, 416, 118,
1472, 1674, 5, 1853-3, 2662
Vischer, F. T., 4032
Vitelli, G., 2666, 2672
Volker, 41,
Vogel, F., 1342
Wackernagel, J., 164, 189, 56, 92s
Waddington, 99, 3811
Wagner, A., 220;
Walch, J. E. 1., 104, 15, 417
Walther, W., 405;
Weber, Ferd., 2563, 25810, 2594,
339;, 452;
Weber, W., 2742, 2763, 294:, 3523,
ee δ᾽ 375s, 376-4, 62 7» 3772, 39
4
Weicher, Th., Figures 38, 44, 61
Weil, R., 133
Weinel, H., 3423, 3535, 3675, 3785
Weiss, B., 118 (§ 2), 389:
Weiss, E., 154,
Weiss, J., 182, 1281, 2320, 3243, 406,
MODERN PERSONS
Weizsacker, C. von, 144;, 241,
Wellhausen, J., 63:, 1156, 1226,
1243, 1732
Wendiland, P., 71, 911, 144:, 2612,
2812, 314;, 348,, 3683, 370;
Wonger, L., 12416, 338, 3393, 4, 3403
Wescher, C., 3303
Wesley, J., 3872
Wessely, C. :
Archduke Rainer’s papyri, 36,,983
Arsinoé, 266;
bibliography of papyri, 210
Caranis and Socnopaei Nesus,
2651
Graeco-Sahidic Psalms, 36,
libellus, 372
London papyri, 823, 308,
magical texts, 4266, 4522
Paris Magical Papyrus, 814,
2502, 3, 2534, 25712, 3809,,
4294, 5
Patrologia Orientalis, 332, 380,
1931, 1946, 13, 2503
Studien zur Palaeographie und
Papyruskunde, 21o
Vienna magical papyrus,
4531, 2
Westermann, A., 954, 5
Wetstein, J. J., 3, 1896, 3124, 3133,
818:, 3212
Wiedemann, A., 22
Wiegand, Th., xxvii,
117x, 2772, 280,, 3256, 3322, 446,
448 £., 4546
Wikenhauser, A., 4010
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von:
Bellenus Gemellus, L., corre-
spondence of, 800:
calendar inscription of Priene, 370
Corpora of Greek inscriptions, 111
emperor-worship, 3422, 350,
graffito from Alexandria, 3052
Griechisches Lesebuch, 1641, 2081,
222
inscription from Kasr Nawa, 4571.
John, St., Third Epistle, 234
“lords, the most great gods,”
356,
Paul, St., letters of, 2322
Theon the bad boy’s letter, 187;
Timotheus, ‘‘ The Persians,” 29;
πάπας, 208:
πολλαπολλων, 1553
Wilberg, W., 12.
‘Wileken, U.—
(i) Personal help to the author :
communications respecting :
Apamenian cohort, garrison of,
17021
452,,
12,4, 5, 134, }
501
Wilcken, U. (con.):
autograph conclusions to docu-
ments, 1532
Hermupolis, 207
Isis inscription, source of, 135,
letter from Antonius Maximus
to Sabina, construction in,
172, ς
letter from Caor, 2053, 9, 206, 4
letter from Nearchus to Helio-
dorus, 1621-3, 163g
letter, oldest Christian, con-
jecture in, 193,
letter, oldest Christian, trans
lation of, 196, .
note of hand written by
amanuensis, 3352
parusia mentioned by villagers
of Aphrodite, 3774
resignation (‘‘no one is im-
mortal’) in epitaphs, 1662
restoration of text of edict of
G. Vibius Maximus, 268 f.
revision of text of papyrus
letter published by Parthey,
3713, 4
“scourge and release” (papy-
rus parallel to Mark xv. 15),
2662
“table of the lord Serapis,”
3552
δίδωμι ἐργασίαν in Bremen
papyrus, 118
elkéuy, ‘“‘little picture,” in
soldier’s letter, 170,7
conjectures, 135;, 1503, 178rr,
7919
illustration obtained, 362,
ostraca in author’s collection
deciphered, 111, 123, 1236,
12410, 186, 191, 364
proof-sheets read, xxix, 982
(ii) Works :
Works on papyrology, 20,
Works, forthcoming :
Chrestomathy, 21,
Ptolemaic Papyri, 130
Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 2193
referred to for:
abbreviated titles for papyrus
publications, 32;
Abinnaeus correspondence, 207
alien tax, 111,
Appion, bishop of Syene, pe-
tition, 39,
Aramaic papyri, 30; ,
charagma, 345;
commentary, model, 39
502
Wilcken, U. Archiv fir Papyrua-
forschung (con.) :
Despotes, title of Christian
emperors, 3606
Florentine papyrus, 2666
“further levy of 14 obols,”
365,
hymn to the Virgin, 48,
Irenaeus to Apolinarius, letter,
198
letter opy-booka, 2271-3, 2282
libellus, 372
“lord of the diadems,”’ 356,
Lord’s Prayer, 392
mother’s name
texts, 309,
ostraca in museums, 44:
ostracon, commentary on, 105;
ostracon with binding-charm,
3082, 3
“Pagan and Christian in
Egypt,” 391-3
petition of Appion, bishop of
Syene, 39,
. Psalm Ixxx. from Rhodes, 19;
Psenosiris, 38, 202;
Sebaste Day, 364,
ἔνοχος with genitive, 115g
ἐπίξενος, 111,
εὔμοιρος, 1643
κυριακαὶ ψῆφοι, 3022
λεσῶνις, 158,
Die griechischen Papyrusurkun-
den, 20,, 273 .
Griechische Ostraka, 416, 422,
43 ff.; texts quoted in full
from, 105, 152f.; referred
to for:
Apollonius Dyscolus, 462
bath tax, 364;2
collections, religious, 104<, 7, 8,
10ὅ;, 8 Ε
dues payable in Egypt, 45, 3482
embankment tax, 364;,
Hellenic calendar, 1786
Jewish names, 1242
in magical
“Jord,” 3576
parusia dues and taxes, 3726,
8742
δὴ publicans,” 266,
Sebaste Day, 363:, 3, 3642 :
Thebes, quarters of the city,
1248
INDEX V
Wilcken, Ὁ. Griechische Ostraka
(con.) :
“tribute” of two drachmae,
266,
ἀπέχω, aorist-present, 1110
ἀρχιποίμην, ἃ parallel, 982
Ἐπείπ, 1736
Καίσαρος, 382:
λογεία, 104., 7,8, 105;, 8
πλήρης, 127,
Hermes, articles in, referring to:
Berlin papyrus, date of, 80,
census, 2686. -
manumission, Christian, 3323
recto and verso, 26,
rolls, papyrus, 25,
Other publications :
Antisemites at Alexandria, 37)
crossed-out I.0.U., 337,
Danoilos, 124,
oe oe form of addressing,
565
Wilhelm, A., 201, 1044, 148, 1492, 4,
2774, 3072, 5, 380g, 3812, 423-434
Wilisch, E., 13,
Wilke, Chr. G., 70
Grimm’s Wilke, 70;, 3112, 417
Wilkins, G., 438,
Wilski, P., 12,
Winer, G. B.,
Schmiedel
Winnefeld, H., 12,» 5, 370
Winter, F., 126
Wirtz, J., 331,
Wissowa, G., 1445
Witkowski, S., 272, 413, 556, 1242,
1472, 1532, 1541, 2, 1553, 217
Woenig, F., 21;
Wolters, P., 433
Wood, J. T., 112
Wordsworth, W., x
Wrede, W., 236;
Winsch, R., 195, 92», 8, 1481, 260s,
3041, 3071, 5, 3362, 4512
Wyelif, J., 25814
Zahn, R., 12,
Zahn, Th., 16
Zeller, E., 4032
Zereteli, G., 159:
Ziebarth, ἘΠ, 266;,
446,
Zwaan, J. de, 404, 1122, 303,
4302. See also
2772, . 2796,
PASSAGES CITED
VI
~ PASSAGES CITED
A. Tue Greek BIBLE
Septuagint
Gen. i. 1-5 192
1.8 257:
i. 7-10. 136,
i. 16 f. 1368, 9
i. 28 13612
ii. 2 316,
ii. 7 258%, 260.
ji. 22 18612
ii, 24 1376
vi. 4 ff 25812
ix. 6 428
‘x. 25810
xi. 7, 9 1379
xv. 20. 25712
xix. 24 ff. 25812
xxv. 19-22 354
xxvi. 3, 4 354
Exod.i. 11 . 2575
i.3. 21:
iii. 8, 17 25712
vii. ff. 2576
vii. 4. 2574
viii. 19 3095
xiii. 21 2572
xiv. . 2588
xiv. 27 2533, 2585
XV. 20;
xx. 5. 428
xx. 12 1372
xxi. 14 427
xxi. 15, 16 1373
xxxi. 18 3095
xxxiv. 7 429
Lev. vi. 9, 12, 13 . 259.
Xvi. 29, 31 ἃ 430
Xxili. 27, 29, 32 430
xxiii. 29 428
xxiii. 34 116
Num. xiv. 18 429
xvi. 22 427
xxvii. 16 427
Deut. v. 16 . 1372
vii. 13 2585
ix. 10 309,
xvi. 13 116
xvi. 16 116
xix. 4, 5 427
Deut. xix. 10 ἃ
xix. 10-13 .
xxi. . ἃ
xxi. 6, 7
xxvii. 24
XXvili. 22, 28
xxxi. 10
Josh. iii. 13 ff.
Judg. i. 7
2 Sam. xii. 4
xv.
xvi. .
xxii. 11
1 Kings viii. 8
xii. 30
2 Kings v. 27
ix. 7
ix. 31
2 Chron. iii. 11
viii. 13 .
xxxiii. 6.
Ezra iii. 4
iv. 11.
Neh. v. 19
xiii. 31
Job vii. 20
viii. 11.
xxxviii. 10
xxxviii. 11
XXXVili. 22
Xxxviii. 26
xxxviii. 31 εἰ
xl. 16 [21]
Ps. xv. ᾿
xvii. [xviii.] 8.
XViil. [xix.] 2.
xxxiv. [xxxv.] 13
Xxxvi. [xxxvii.] 16.
xxxvi. [xxxvii.] 17, 39
xl. [xli.] 10
ΧΙ. [xliii.]4 .
xliii. [xliv.] 26
xlv. [xlvi.] 10.
ΣΙΝ].
503
504 INDEX VI
Ps. lvii. [Iviii.J 6 . : . 427
Ixvii. [Ixviii.] 20. . 166;
Ixxvii. [Ixxviii.] 26,52 . 2546
lxxix. (Ixxx.] 2 Ἶ . 457
Ixxx. . : . . 19ς
lxxxv. [Ixxxvi.] 15. . 3663
lxxxvii. [Ixxxviii.] 2 - 366,
xcix [c.] 4 ᾿ " . 458
cii [0111.120. : . 429
iii. [civ.] 82. ᾿ . 2ὅ9:;
evi. [evii.] 16. : » 2595
exili. [cxiv.] 3 Γ . 2584
exviii. [exix.] 127 . . 137,
exxi. [cxxii.]3,4 . .- 1366
exxvi. [exxvii.J1l . . 454,
exxvili. [exxix.]4 . . 25817
exxxiv. [cxxxv.]7. 2583, 259,
exxxiv. [cxxxv.] 10,11 . 137,
exxxiv. [cxxxv.] 21 » 259,
exxxv. [cxxxvi.] 17-20 . 137,
exxxvi. [exxxvii,] 8 » 427
Cxxxviii. [cxxxix.]23 . 258:
exl. [exli.] 6 ᾿
exlvii. ὅ [16]. : . 2566
Prov. x.6 . : ᾿ . 421
x. 19 ¢ δ τ . 204.
xi. 30. ᾿ 6 . 427
xiii. 2. 5 ᾿ - 428
Eccles. viii. 11. 82 (ὃ 12)
Song of Sol. iv.1,3,4,7 . 458
v.2. ᾿ . 459
vi. 88... . 457
Isaiahi.3 . s e . 273
ii. 17. : ᾿ . 480
νι. 3. : : . 2586
xiv. 9 ἑ " . 2596
xviii. 2 5 3 ‘ 27
xix. 6 2 : : 21
xxii.13 $ - 296,
xxvi.ll ᾿ . 2565
xxxv.7 . : ᾿ 21
xlv. 9 Ε ‘ . 432
lviii.3,5,10 . . 430
Iii. 11-14. . ϑ8άς
Ixv. 11 ᾿ 355
Ixvi. 15 ff. . 2598
Jer. i. 6-10 25710
ii. 14 3231
ν. 22 25815, 259:, 2
vi. 28 9
vii. 16. 426
xi. 14 : 426
xxxii. [xxv.] 30 1322
XXXVii. [xxx.J2 . . 1322
xiii. [xxxvi.] 2,4. . 1822
Ezek. xvi. 15, 25. ‘i . 2962
xxxix. 20 . - . 3855
xliv. 16 ᾿ A . 855
Dan. vi. 13,24 . ᾿ . 21θχ
Joel iii. [iv.] 21
Zech. ix.9 . ὃ
xiv. 16, 18, 19
Mal. i. 7,12. 5
1.14.
ii. 15, 16
lEsdrasv. 51.
Tob. vii. 13 [14] .
xii. 19. 3
Judith iv. 9-13.
Esther v. 1 (xv. 2)
Wisdom vii..1, 2 .
xii. 3-5 .
xiv. 3 ff..
xvi. 16
Ecolus: ii. 17
vii. 17
xvi. 7
xxiv.
xxiv. 6
xxiv. ll .
xivi. 5
xlvii. 5
li. 14
Susanna 28 ff.
1 Mace. iii. 25
x. 21
xi. 22
xi. 28
2 Mace. i. 9, 18
i. 10
ii. 7.
3 Macc. ii. 4
Aquila, Gen. i. 1-5
Exod. ii. 3
Symmachus, 2 Kings iii 4 990,
Jer. xiv. 8
. 149;
101 (§ 32)
. 497
. 426
3511, 429
. 259re
3511, 429
183,
149;
116
Pets tama ets
New Testament
Matt. i. 1-9, 12, oid
i, 23 ἃ
ii. 12, 22 7 Fi
ii. 13. ὰ Ξ
xviii. 6
xviii. 23 £.
xviii. 30
PASSAGES CITED
Mark ix. 18 .
ix. 22.
26 ix. 25.
459 ix. 42.
- 1322 x. 18
443, 445, x. 24
. xiii x. 28
439 x. 32
439 x.45 .
1846 xii. 26
1156 xii. 35
17815 xili. 9.
439; xiii. 11
2952 xiv. 21
110 (§ 2) xiv. 32
3x xiv. 41
439 xiv. 41, 42
108 ff. xiv. 65
438, xv. 15
151, xv. 21
3395 | Luko i. Β
270-273 i. 36
43810 ii. 3.
142 li. 26
406, iv. 35
125, vi. 39
1696, 310s viii. 30
393, viii. 35
266, ix. 8 4
ee χ. 4
σ 11,
118 (§ τ x. 17,20
267 x. 30 .
349, χ. 40.
1846 xi. 20.
331, xi. 29.
440; xi. 50.
372, xii. 6.
440: xii. 11 f.
241. xii. 13-15
118 (§ 3) xii. 13-16
216z xii. 15-16
1156 xii. 16-21
2163 xii. 21
21618 xii. 42
49 xii. 57
21622 xii. 58
256, xiii. 16
xiii xiv. 7 ff
256, xiv. 10
2578 xv. LI ff
78 (§ 6) xv. 12
4 xv. 16
124 (§ 2) xv. 18, 21
. 108 ff. xv. 22 ff.
306-310 xv. 29
. 492 xvi. 15
3 49 xvii. 4
51 xvii. 15 f.
. 266 ἪΝ 267:
48
443 £.
; 268
; of 260;
118 (§ 2)
τς ἀπ(8 1)
Sf 310
506
Luke xvii. 18
xvii. 21
xviii. 1 ff.
xviii. 7, 8
xviii. 8
xviii. 13
xviii. 19
XViii. 28
xviii. 33
xx. 41
xxi. 9.
xxi. 14f,
xxii. 25 f.
xxii. 35 ἢ.
xxii. 40-71 .
xxii. 42
xvi. 7. τ ᾿
xviii. 19-25. ‘6
xix. 1. ᾿ 5
xix. 12
xix. 15 ‘
xix. 15-17 .
xx. 22
xx. 25
xx. 28
xx. 29
Acts i. 3
1.12
vii. 52.
vii. 53 .
INDEX VI
74(§1) | Actsix.6 . . . xiii
. 4385 x. 22 132,
181: χῖν. 11. 280:
874 xiv. 28. 114:
432 xvi.9 . 802:
1791 xvi. 29. 254;
349. xvi. 37. 132
1846 xvii. 18 97 (§ 27)
267: xvii. 22 2851
4383 xvii. 22-31 391 ff
439 xvii. 24-31 294 f.
339, xvii. 23 2492
2482 xvii. 26 . 98χ
108 xvii. 28 3143, 9941
49 ff xvii. 31 . 897:
1492 xviii. 4 13,
431 xviii. 8 1235
17928 xviii. 28 1325
439, xix. 113
49 xix. 19 249,
126 f xix. 24 114
49 xix, 27 2803
92; xix. 29 2803
3692 xix. 32, 41 114:
398, xx. 15 ff 454,
130, xx. 15,17 446,
3566 xx. 20 1329
437 xxi. 28 f 782
151, xxii. 27 ᾿ 848:
116 xxiii. 12,21. 1896
90: xxv. 21 . 3462
2383 xxv. 26 3584
331, xxvi. 3 371,
310 xxvii. 9 4351
132, xxvii. 34 170rr
131 | Bom. i. 1-7. 232 (Fig. 37)
138 1.8 . . 85o, 1693
437 i. Of . 1723
4385 i. 10 186,
21514 i. 24 ff » 282:
166; ii. 5 90 (§ 19)
3397 ii. 14 fi. 3142
3832 iii. 24 3313
383, iv. 19 94
3397 iv. 21 823
3397 ν. 7. 120:
49 v.13 79 (§ 8)
267: ν. 14, 11, 21 xiii
3832 vi. 12. ἷ xiii
18822 vi. 17, 20, 6, 19. 3277
49 vi. 18. . 8298
2602 vi. 22. . 8297
17012 viii. 19 . 3745, 3781
3662 viii. 26 ᾿ = 83
. 393, viii. 26-34 . . 3396
79 (§ 7) x1. 1866
. 1575 xi. 17 ff. . 272
254, xiii. 2. . 86, 87
86 xiii. 7. 1111, 3482
1 Cor.
PASSAGES CITED
xv. 19 850, 2742
xv. 22
Xvi. 158, 226 ff., 278
xvi. 1 : 226,
xvi. 4. . 1198.
xvi. 5. 2781
xvi.6,12 . 817:
xvi. 17-20 5 278:
xvi. 20 432
xvi. 22 228,
1.4. 1693
1.12 382
1.14 128ς
i, 22 2117, 898.
1. 26-31 Tes 149, 60, 142
111. 23 . 3882
iv. 8 xiii
iv. 10 1812
iv. 12 3173
iv. 17 1573
iv. 20 : 74
v. 4,5 3035, 304,
v. 7,8 . 3332
vi. 9. 1504
vi. 9, 10 320
vi. 20 328,
vii. 19 381,
vii. 20 392;
vii. 21 . 888:
vii. 22 330;, 382
vii. 23 8285, 329.
vii. 24 3304
vii. 31 281,
vii. 35 ἢ . 880ς
viii. 2, Cod. 37 . - 94,
viii. Εἰ 6 7 . 8592
ix.9. 273
ix. 17 3792
x. 19-21 355
x. 21. 355
x. 25 274
x. 27 3552
x. 31. 459
xi. 20 . 361
xi. 27 115
xii. 13 3962
xii. . 399
xiii. 1 150,
xiii. 9 445
xiv. 19 17924
xiv. 32 260;
xv. 10 3174
xv. 23 382
xv. 32 2803, 2963
xv. 58 3176
xvi. 1,2 104, 3661
xvi. 3 158
xvi. 6 1493
xvi. 8 . - 8332
1 Cor. xvi. 9
xvi. 17
xvi. 19
xvi, 21
Xvi. 22
2 Cor. i. 23 .
_ xii. 9.
18,9.
Phil. i. 3
: 17026, 2781
: 158
3
3053, 3546
306;, 427
3022
158
379
181,
293,
457
379
846.
15382
382
645
278
. 2785
τούς, 278, 8215
311
310;
393,
96 (§ 26), 986
3033
1693, 1723
. 2
Ir
. 257 rr
» 287s
100
379
1693
1786
2302
3052
3461
508
ii. 10
ii. 16 F
1.80. .
iii. 7, 8
lii. 8
Phil. ii. 9, 11 .
iv. 16
iv. 18. F
1 Thess. i. 2. .
2 Thess, i. 3.
2 Tim. i. 3
INDEX VI
ὦ . 8592 | Tit. 1. 4,5
᾿ . 26517ιτ: ai. 18
3175 iii. 3
84 | Philem. 4
1812 10.
. 3838 13.
121, 459 WT
112, 335, 18.
. 280ς 18 f.
1693 | Heb. i. 14
336 iii. 13.
448 vii. 3
3962 viii. 5 .
164, x. 25
3022 xi. 7
184g xii. 21.
2801 xii. 25.
158, xiii 5. Ἢ
1693, 1723 xiii, 22-24 .
184, xiii, 24
3792 | Jamesii.6 . 2
373 ii.7 .
178136 1.8 .
3173 ii. 19.
166, iv. 13 ff.
167: | 1 Peteri. 18, 19
1672 ii. 17
1673 iii. 3, 4
1693 ili. 6
. 90 ili. 7
101 (§ 32) v. 81.
. 8472 | 2 Peter i. 5,6
3744, 378 1.11
. 8756 | 1 Johni.3
3176, 318: iil.
1532, 1582, 3 iii. 1.
. 821 iv. 14
3792 | 2John 1
304 1. δὼ
3674 4
3316 12
4262 | 3 John 1
319, 2
ς is 85 3
81 (§ 11), 82: | Jude 4.
ξ . 8185 20
3782 | ον. 1.1
1723 1. 4
3783 i. 10
381 ii. 12 ff.
3782 ii. 13
. 38122 iii. 5
. 3125 iii. 20
17816, 373 Ved os
. 82:1: ν.9
21 vi. 10
446ς vii. 9-17
3792 xii, 10
279, xii. 15
| 1322, ἴοι
. 132,
101 (§ 32)
254,
. 1322
81 (8 11)
. 236
- 1863
438, 438,
. 276
367,
2563
1953
333
367,
786
- 4393
89 (§ 18)
97 (§ 28)
. 3822
3686
PASSAGES CITED
Rev. xii. 17. 381,
xiii. 16 f. 345
xiii. 18 275
xiv. 3. 3533
xiv. 12 381,
xiv..13 316,
xv. 3 3534
xv.4. 3532
xvii. 14 3676
xviii. 13 3231
xix. 16 3676
xxii. 6. 432
237
xxii. 21
B. Inscriprions
American Journal of Archaeology,
2nd ser. :
Vol. 7 (1903) No. 1, Inscriptions
from Corinth No. 40 . 13,
Vol. 10 (1906) p. 290 . 874
American School at Athens, Papers
of the, 2, 57. Ἶ - 18,
Athenische Mitteilungen Z
2 (1877) p. 81 . 1332
7 (1882) p. 367ff. 101,
16 (1891) p. 406 ff. . 116,
24 (1899) p. 199 1845
24 (1899) p. 275 Εἴ. . 3705
24 (1899) p.406 . . 882
27 (1902) p. 48 ff. . 3
Berliner Philologische Wochenschr.
21 (1901) col. 475. 366;
Bulletin de See: Hollénique :
21 (1897) p : 092
21 (1897) p ΠΝ se Ae
22, (1898) p. 58 « . 1116
29 (1898) p. 116 1116
22 (1898) p. 120 1116
22 (1898) p. 355 3252
22 (1898) p. 496 319,
23 (1899) p. 274 217;
23 (1899) p. 301 319,
25 (1901) p. 62 ff. 8888
25 (1901) p. 88. 3196
25 (1901) p. 2915. 3772
25 (1901) p.279 = . 319,
25(1901)p.416 . . 1184
28 (1904) Ρ. 15 . +. 8819
28 (1904) p. 330 1334
Byzantin. Zeitschr. :
14 (1905) pp. 1-72
14 (1905) p. 21 ff. 100;
Cagnat, Inscriptiones Graecae ad
res Rom. pert. :
III. No. 188 3795
TII. No. 1086 3573
509
Collection of Ancient Greek Ineer.
in the Brit. Mus. :
No. 1583, . 112;
587b . 312,
604 . ° - 3126
a (Pp. 249) : . 89;
722 p . 138;
906 τ . 8490
918. 94,
Collitz and Bechtel, Dialektin~
schriften :
II. No. 1899;3 . » 78s
11.323 No. 4959 . ᾿ » 957
Corpus Inseriptionum Apicarem:,
Appendix p. xiii f. - 92,
Corpus Inseriptionum Graecarum :
No. 1378 . . 80,
1189.., . + .~ 80s
2566. . |] 98)
2664. |.) 941
27158, b 3686
2895 . 448 ff.
294310 38010
3465 . . 866
349945. - 383,
3500, » = B83,
4300¢ (p. 1128) . . 87)
444: «τ 960
5980158. ΠΣ 192;
5984 . 182:
8148. ΠΣ 2965
8888 . 2 F . 201
9552 . τ ᾿ . 8172
9727 . 5 . 882
II. add. No. 2322 b. 69 428
II. add. No. 2322 b. 78 428
IV. pp. 395, 397 ‘ 452,
Corpus Inscriptionum Dabinarum Ὁ
III. p. 836 ᾿ 80;
VIII. No. 2557 170,
Delphes, Inscriptions rec. ἃ, par
Wescher et Foucart No. 66 3303
Diels, Vorsokratiker? :
p. 480, No. 17 ff. 3052
Dittenberger, Orientis Graect In-
scriptiones Seleciae -
No. 55grf. : 2 .- 115,
90; . ξ . - 3565
9010. . 349;
168, . 163
1863 . - 3566
201 1341, 206,
2108 . . 183,
262 100,
8382. 328,
415 357;
418 357,
423 357,
425 357,
510 INDEX VI
Dittenberger, Orientis Graecit In-
scriptiones elena (con.) :
No. 426 . - . 857
4388. : 4 - 322;
441109 A ἕ . 117)
45610. : ξ 3 972
4581-60 . . . 370
458,06 + + - 871
aaa . . . 3062
598 : : . 753
006. é . 8572
610; . 383,
62930, 45 764
: : Υ . 3849;
6691-46 Fig. 55 (p. 362)
669, . a A . 363
66973, 18 : . 362
669x5 8. 2674
Dittenbergor, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum? :
No. 226g5¢. » 874,
250, . . 83,
32517 . 5 81»
32821, 30 . 8751
᾿ ὦ 84
347. 1 348s
376315 55 . 3582
᾿ . 381;
41857, 95 . 88165
926. - 1050
73225. - 816
8033, . . 374
80430. . 8lly
807 r5f. . 132;
844. . 3253
845 . 9272
845, . ~ ig
850 - 38302
85713 . 78
891. 20:, 985
929100 . 1062
Ed. Apx. 1892, col. 173%. 93,3
Heberdey, Opramoas, p. 50
XIXAg . 1038;
aaa! and Kalinka, Bericht,
ε 316;
Videos: Koische "Forschungen und
Funde :
No. 24, 25 : Ξ .- 248,
163... : : . 295,
165. . . 382,
Hierapolis, Altertiimer von :
No. 78 . Ἶ 875
Hoffmann, O., Die Griech. Dialekie.
III. p. 72 . 101,
Jahreshefte des Osterr. "Arch. Inst. :
2 (1899) Suppl. p. 48. . 118,
4 (1901) Suppl. cols. 9 ff. . 423 ff
7(1904)p. 81 ff. . . 102;
Jahreshefte des Osterr. Arch. Inst.
(con.) :
7 (1904) p. 94 ff. Σ . 1482
7 (1904) p. 1202. . . 8072
8 (1905) p. 1558... . 3256
Inscriptiones Graecae :
ἯΙ]. 2, p. xiiif.. . - 929
TIT. 2, No. 1355. . - 94,
TIT. Pars III. App.p. iif. 148;
ITI. Pars III. No. 108 - 3805,
IV. No. 204. 5 455,
IV. No. 205. 7 4525, 455,
XII. 2, No. 5810 . 972
XII. 3, ‘Suppl. No. 1270r1512 ΓΝ
ΧΙΠΨ. 1,,Νο.14. - 188,
XII. V.1, No. 132. . 381;
XII. V. 1, No. 739 . 136;, 140;
XIV. No. 1072. : . 8462
Kaibel, Zpigrammata Graeca :
No. 460 . . Σ . 88;
7950. 2 : . 882
102. F : . 140;
Latyschev, Inscriptiones Antiquae :
I. No. 33 = : . 9381,
2126-28 84
22,288. 3132
246 3838
4761 3898
11. Νο. 27 368,
46, 3838
52 3257
5213-15 - 100
53 1005, 325,
358 Se bs . 368,
400 ᾿ ᾿ . 8288
IV. Νο. 7171... : . 3672
200 . 3 . 368,
202 . 368,
Le Bas, fles, 2039, 2041 . 428
Le Bas- Waddington, No. 860;3
3
I
Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fiir sem.
Epigraphik :
Ip. 85 . ᾿ . 368,
1.0.100. 3 308;
Magnesiaa. M., Die Inachriften von,
herausg. von O. Kern:
No. 10572 . 4 - a 1062
157b . : ᾿ .- 8612
Michel, Recueil :
No. εἰς ἃ . = ey 115,
9732 . 8l6
Olympia, 7 nsthrafen von :
No. δ᾽ . . 348,
Paton and Hicks, The Inscriptions
of Cos:
No. 29. . ς - 9828,
9ο2. ἐ . - 3493
391. ‘ ° .- 3753
PASSAGES CITED
Pergamon, Die Inschriften von,
herausg. von M. Frankel :
No. 18268. . ΕἾ . 835
333. ᾿ : . 2762
999. τ ᾿ . 2762
88δι᾽ . «Ὁ .ὖῦΘ- 8,
814. 3 ᾿ . 952,
374 Β and D 3655
374 By, 8, Dro 365
881. 350,
459 . 3153
52310 352,
523305 τα . 349.
87 ᾧ . 276,
604 3192
Priene, Inachriften von, herausg. von
F, Frhr. Hiller von Gaertringen:
No. 5039 - z 1232
5934 ᾿ 1232
105;-60 ᾿ . 3870
10522. ἃ 7 - 8616
105408 eta 371
1375 . Ξ ᾧ 82
311 . 2962
Reisen im siidwestlichen Kleinasien :
II. p. 36, No. 58 ᾿ .- 116;
II. pp. 76-135 . 295;
ΤΙ. p. 159, No. 187 115,
II. p. 166, No. 193 1155
II. p. 180, No. 281. . 876
Schiirer, Sapa des jiid. Volkes,
121.3 p. 4 " 140
Siicungeterionte der Berliner Aker
demie, 1902:
p. 1096 356,
p.1098_ . 3052
Times, 11 Nov., 1909. : 280;
Waddington 3, 27208 . 99
C. Papyri
Amherst Papyri :
No. 3a . 88,5, 192 ff.
ἢ 82ς
6611,2
131-135 2276, 300;
191. 34
Berliner Griechische Urkunden :
No. 22. : . 1986
2. “ ἃ . 1517,
55 11τὸ 1740
Ar 4 . 174.
Ἴ26ι. 121
101. 3375
1093. 85
1403rt. 803
179. 3 3375
181x6. 121
212. ᾿ " 3375
511
Berliner Griechische Urkunden
(con.) :
No. 333. : . 1740
344, . ᾿ Ε . 121
362 Ver. . , 183,
423 1674
432 172: 121,
522. 131,
597, . 91,
601 2262
632. 172,
064. 3352
665 II, 82,
715 16 68,
747 Io. . 826
7418. 266,, 3452
775x188. 119,
814 175;
815 159;
846 1313, 176;
8882: 121s
9122,. ὃ ᾿ . 762
1079208. . 81
Bremen Papyri No. 18. .- 118’
Bulletin de VInstitut francais
d’archéol. orient. VI., Le Caire,
1908. . 3775
Cairo Papyri No. 10735 34,;, 441 is
Elephantine-Papyri bearb. von O.
Rubensohn No. 1 . . 29:
.Faytim Towns and their Papyri :
No. 2(Swoboda) . ἡ 80
65, . . 371,
108” . 1303
110-123 300;
112;.. 1781
11698 178,
11836 300;
119268. 300;
33. : i . 873
+139 1736
Flinders Petrie ‘Papyti IL.
No. 39e . 373
Florence i
No. 61. ; . 267
6lsof- «2666
6 lest. 3371
Geneva Papyri:
No. 16. 5 ὦ . 269
2338. is . . 763
45-65 ν c 2072
Grenfell Papyri Series tL,
No. 73 201 ff.
Heidelberg “Papyri, Veréffentlich-
ungen I.
No. 415;
203
Heidelberg “Papyri, Unpublished :
Provisional No. 8c. . . 3376
512
Heidelberg Papyri, Unpub. ΓΝ ):
Provisional No. 22 . + 2275
20. . 3376
851. . 228ς
Hibeh Papyri :
No. δ. ᾿ 150 ff.
82r 78. i 836, 194.
97; . Te
Jena Papyri No.1 ‘ 394
Leipzig Papyri, edited by τί
Mitteis, No. 97 87, 985
Leyden Papyri :
°C ΤΙΣ 126,
V. VIL . 134,
V. XII, 26+ ‘ 309,
London (Brit. Mus. i) Papyri
No. 24;,. 78)
461,58. 139
462368. 134;
46534ff- 304
77 2112
121 ,οδῆ. 134:
12Lo3sft. 308
124 904, 4512
233 3522
, 256 382:
838 3375
417. : 205 ff.
7118. : ᾿ . 3873
864. ; 162 £.
904 2274
904,88. és ᾿ . 2681.
Munich Ῥαρσεῖ, Archiv 1,
p. 481 fi ‘ 3564
Oxyrhynchus Papyri:
No. ‘ . 182 fi.
4 verso Ty: ‘ 82
37 sf Ε 3575
48 332,
49. . 332;
7114, 11 894, 5
2 i 87
93 872
110 3552
1186. 1940
118.» 1191
115 164 ff.
116 1652
11655 194,
116;, 1945
119 187 ff.
119g, 14 2066
11930 81
121 125
128, 1781
209 232;
237 ᾿ 2312
246. i . 159 ft., 358;
2665. : . . 337,
INDEX VI
Oxpeliypenan rae ἴσον; ys
No. 2 - 3352
380, . 77 (§ 3)
362;5. . 3373
3638 . - 3373
4853; . - 121,
4899, x7 . 19:
509:0. - 82,
523. - 3552
654 333, 436 ff.
656 . 846
657 34,
658 : 372
722 . 332
co τῆ. 1182
744 154 ff.
840 342
845 . 381
846. 35z
8417. ϑὅχ
848. . ὅδ:
849 351
850 35,
851 35x
886 ro 125
903 131
90337 2015
9406 . - 1255
Paris Great Magical Papyrus:
Leaf 33. . 250 ff.
Line 1353 - . . 429
1369 - 429
2195. 429
ae . . . 81
309,
Paris Berk Notices ot extraits,
2:
226,
49 79
ae 130
Passalacqua. Papyrus : 1532
Reinach Papyri, No. 7. 2675, 334,
Tebtunis Papyri :
No. 2 ὃ 7 ᾿ ᾿ ‘se,
5385, 1 » 20 . . 4
one few 96
24. : A 79
2838 183,
48 off. 3733
116.7 374,
Vienna Magical Papyrus 452,
D. OsrRaca
Crum, Contie Ostraca :
No. 29. ὃ : 210 ff.
81. . 218:
34 2133
37 213,
PASSAGES CITED
Crum, Coptic Ostraca (μον ):
No.39 .. . 918,
71 . " Ρ . 214 ff.
§22 « 3082
Ad. 7 : 2182
Deissmann’s Collection :
Receipt for alien tax 111
Order for payment of wheat 123 f.
Letter from Harpocras . 186
Letter from Pacysis . . 191
Receipt for embankment and
bath tax ξ . 864,
Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka :
No. 402 . 1058
412 . ‘ ‘ - 1058
413. 104 £., 357
414 1058
415 1058
416 1058
417 105g
418 . δ ᾿ - 1053
420 . * ὁ - 1058
1027. . ‘ . 1621.
1088... 3576
1071. . δὶ 127:
1135. 3 ‘ 1193
1222 . Ἑ 3 127;
1481 3742
E. Woopren Tasrets
Revue Archéologique :
28(1874)p.248 . . 98%
28 (1874) ρ. 949. . . 98:
39 (1818) p.233f -.
F. Coins
(See also Index IV. s.v. Coins)
Cohen I. 307, No. 403/404 . 375,
G. Avrsors (OTHER THAN
BIBLICAL)
Acta Mart. Scilit. . » 2472, 3603
Aeschylus, Pers. 981 . - 124,
Ambrosius, De Obitu Theodosit,
ο. 34 . 18410
Apuleius, Metam. x. 23 1562
Metam. xi. 5 184:
Aristeas, Epistle of, 16 429
17, 198,226 . . 428;
284. ᾿ ᾿ . 1833
Artemidorus, i iv. 82 Ξ 956
Aur. Vict. Caes. 3 857,
Bacchylides, 17(16)r12. . 1946
513
Boissonade, Anecdota 5, p. 166 353;
Book of Jubilees, xx. 5 . 25812
Clem, Alex. I. 977 A 111,
Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. lv. 2 328,
1 Cor. lv. 6 : . 429
I Cor, lix. 3 3511, 429
1 Cor. lxiv. 427, 429
Const. Apost. 36 . . - 1092
Council of Arles, Canon IIT. 210;
Crates (Poetae philos. ir. 4, p. 218,
ed. Diels) 109.
Demetrius, De elocutione (Hercher,
p- 13) . 218:, 2972
Demetrius Phalereus, Typt eptsto-
lares, No. 5 - 1663, 167,
Dicke Thephilla, fol. 50, col. 2 431,
Dio Chrysostom, Or. 35, 15. 340,
Diodor. Histor. Bibl. Τ᾽ 27. 134,
Diog. Laert. VII. 173-4 462
ey to Diognetus, ν᾽ 393:
157
Bpistalograpi, ed. Herchor :
Ῥ. 259 226,
Ῥ. 699 2264
Euseb., Eccl. Hist. VI. xxv. 11 64,
Eustathius of Thessalonica, Opus-
cula, p. 38,1.58 . . 208;
Ev. Pseudo- Matthaei, Xvil.2 445
Ev. Thom. x. ἃ - 333
Greek Liturgies, ed. Swainson :
PP, 82, 84, 110. 454,
4552
One. Nae. I. 1248 C 444,
Hermes Trismegistus, RO:
3l1r5
Hermogenes, De inwent. 8, 6; 1176
Herodotus, ii, 28. P 1638
ii, 171; , ‘ . 1634
Herondas, vi. 19 . a a 78:
Jerome on Gal. i. 12 . 730
John Chrysostom, Orat. 88. 3531
on Rom. iii. 24 Ρ 3313
Josephus, Antt. IV. viii. 4. 833
Antt. XIV. x. 21 . 446,
Antt. XV.417 . ᾿ . 7156
Bell. Jud. V. 193 756
Bell. Jud. VI.124 756
Bell. Jud. VIT. x. 1 . 359,
Jubilees, Book of, xx. 5 25812
C. Julius Victor (Rhet. lat. min. ed.
Halm, p. 448) 4 . 1532
Justin Martyr, Apol. I. 27 ff. 155,
Dialogue with the ἕω Trypho,
e. 14 . . 377:
c. 52 . 3771
Logia fragment L No. 4. 333
II. . 33, ae 436 =
III. ἢ 84:
Martial, ii. 39 174.
33
δ14
Mart. Polycarpi, viii. 2 . 3602
Martyrium Theodoti 208;
Menander (Rhet. Gr. ed. Spengel,
3, p. 377 ff.) . " . 872ς
Mishna Taanith, ITT. 6 430
Moeris, p. 58 Σ 8ὅ,
Nicander, in Athenaeus, IV. 11,
133D. 953
Nilus, in Photius, Bibliotheca,
p. 51336 . 96:
οὐῥωρίαθν Collectanea Med. 1.
p. 54462. . - 863
Ovid, Met. viii. 620-625 280;
Philodemus . ἢ 702
Photius, Anfang des Lexikons, ed.
Reitzenstein, p. 107. 962
Bibliotheca, p. 51336 . . 96;
Pindar, Nem. 7, 152 . . 438,
Ol. 10(11),68. . . 88.
Plato, Hpist. Νο. 15. . 1582
Legg. 5, 746E. . - 1988
Pliny, Nat. Hist. 1331-13 . 232
Epist. 10,111 . 1133
Plutarch. Mor. ΤΙ. p. 701 B. 444,
Sympos. 4,62 . 1172
Polybius, Hist. xviii. 81, . 874;
INDEX VI
Proclus, De Jonna epistolari :
No. 12. . 1811
Ὁ], - 165,
Ruphus in Oribasius, Coll. M ed
Lp. 5446. . . . BG
Scriptores Hist. Aug. ἘΘΘΡΙΟΝ,
25 298:
Shemoneh Esreh, 12. . . 432
Sophocles, Hrie fragment. 1246
Sotion, Scriptores Rer. Mir. Gr.
p. 188. é . - 954
Suetonius, Domit. 18. 867:
Nero, 39 . - 276
Tanchuma, Pikkudé 3 2568
Tertullian, Apol. 42 . . 197%
Test. XII. Patr. Test. Judae, 8 99:
Levi, Zand 15. ᾿ . 89,
Test. Salomonis, p. 133 .
Thomas Magister, p.18,8 . 85;
Thucydides, iii. 14 " » 84,
Vergil, Aeneid, VI. 45. Ξ
Vettius Valens, I. p. 48:7 » 88.
Ῥ- 11 735 . 924
Cat. Codd. Aetr. Gr. V. 2:
p51. - - - 8&
Ῥ. 7334 . . - “ 92,
ὥσπερ ξένοι χαίρουσι πατρίδα βλέπειν,
a if I:
οὕτως καὶ τοῖς κάμνουσι βιβλίου τέλος.
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
THE PHILOLOGY OF
THE GREEK BIBLE
ITS PRESENT AND FUTURE
By Professor
ADOLF DEISSMANN, D.D.
Translated by LIONEL R. M. STRACHAN, M.A. 3/- net
“Greek of the Bible is supposed to be easy Greek by men who are
deep in Sophocles, Aristotle, Lucian, and the classics ; but it has pecu-
liarities and difficulties of its own, and offers a fruitful field of investigation
to the philologer. The old texts have to be examined in the light of
newly discovered documents, and the results have their own bearing
upon the meaning of the Bible and upon modern notions of Primitive
Christianity. This is shown with a rare learning in the valuable lectures
delivered at Cambridge by Professor Deissmann. . . . They illuminate
every aspect of their subject, but perhaps the most important point they
make is to obliterate the old-fashioned distinction between ‘ Bible Greek’
and ‘ profane Greek,’ and to show that the language of the Septuagint has
Not, as so many dictionaries suggest, any peculiarly Biblical meanings, but
must be interpreted as, neither good nor bad Greek, easy or hard Greek,
but ‘cosmopolitan late Greek,’ with its own distinctive position in a
linguistic development which has gone on from Hesiod’s day until our
own.” — Scotsman.
“These brilliant lectures, most adequately translated from the
author’s manuscript by Mr. Lionel R. M. Strachan, were delivered by
Dr, Adolf Deissmann at Cambridge. They place before the reader in a
clear and very vivid form the revolution that modern discoveries as to the
character of the Greek tongue in the periods when the Greek Old Testa-
ment and the Greek New Testament came into existence have made in
our appreciation of the Bible as an indivisible work.”—Conzemporary
Review.
“The Greek of the New Testament is a subject to which Professor
Deissmann has made original contributions, and with its study his name
will be honourably associated in the years to come. No one can sketch
the newer development of the science with more authority.”—British
Weekly.
“No man has done more than Dr. Deissmann to promote these
studies, and his lectures are a delightful encouragement to others to
follow in his train.”—Oudlook.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, ΕΟ.
JERUSALEM
THE TOPOGRAPHY, ECONOMICS, AND HISTORY, FROM THE
EARLIEST TIMES TO a.vd. 70
By the Rev. Principal
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., L.L.D.
Complete in Two Volumes with Maps and
Illustrations. Price 24/- net the two vols.
“There are too many books upon Jerusalem, good and bad, but no
one will hold that Dr. Smith’s addition to the long list is superfluous.
It was, on the contrary, extremely desirable that just such a book should
be written by just such a man. The mass of literature on the subject,
and the conflicting theories of recent critics, combine to overwhelm all
but the most persevering students. ... Dr. Smith has produced a
critical survey of the whole field. His acute reasoning and judicial
balance of mind give his work an importance not easily exaggerated.
We admire especially the coolness of his judgment, and his avoidance
of theorising on insufficient evidence. . . . We must content ourselves
with recommending his admirable chapters to the attention of all serious
students. We feel that even in a long review it is impossible to do full
justice to‘the many-sided interest of this important work, in which true
scholarship is never flaunted, but is felt in every line, and in which
moderation and sound sense dominate every conclusion,”—A ¢henaeum.
“ The author, we feel, has chosen his vocation well. He not only has
the eye of a geographer to see at once the salient features in the scene
that he is describing, but he has also the ‘visual’ imagination to conjure
up at will the picture of the past. And his many other accomplishments
as a trained scholar and historian enable him to enrich each aspect of
his subject from his ample knowledge and command of other aspects
of it. This geography, history, criticism, and exegesis are all intertwined
together ; and they are seen with that heightened colour, which comes
from observing the past in the light of the actual life of to-day... . We
congratulate ourselves on possessing in Dr. Smith’s book a work of
ample dimensions, thoroughly up-to-date, based upon a careful study
of detail, and written in a most reasonable and judicious spirit, which to
this spirit adds the attractiveness of a writer who has always had a
special gift of attraction on the important subject with which it deals.
It must at once take its place by the side of the best that has been pro-
duced by the scholars of other nations.”— Zzmes.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, ΕΟ,
THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
OF THE HOLY LAND
By the Rev. Principal
GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.
With Maps and Index. 15/-
“A very noteworthy contribution to the study of sacred history, based
upon the three indispensable conditions of personal acquaintance with
the land, a study of the explorations, discoveries, and decipherments,
especially of the last twenty years, and the employment of the results of
Biblical criticism during the same period.”— Zimes.
“This is one of the most remarkable books of the year, and will be
welcome to that large circle of readers who are familiar with the author’s
-brilliant chapters on Isaiah, to those who are interested in geography as
it bears on history, to those who have travelled in the Holy Land, and to
all who welcome from every source fresh contributions to the better
understanding of the surroundings of those wonderful passages in history
which contain the record of the gradual formation of the people who
prepared the way for Christ, and who eagerly scan the descriptions of
those holy places which have been trodden by the feet of the Son of God.
... The merit of the book is enhanced by its excellent paper and type,
while the wide margin and fly leaves between the chapters all facilitate
the reading of a work which repays diligent attention by a never failing
store of suggestive and valuable matter.”—Church Times.
“ Every student of the Bible will welcome this scholarly treatise, every
minister will be grateful for such an addition to the living apparatus of
the pulpit ; yet is the volume so well written, so rich in suggestiveness, so
finely knit and reverently toned, that many who are entirely unused to
this branch of literature will be surprised to find themselves fascinated
by its pages. It is a geography made picturesque, illustrated richly
with historic expositions, and lit up with frequent passages of rare
spiritual beauty. . ..
“Dr. Smith grasps his subject firmly and expounds his views with
lucidity. He has caught the true inwardness of the geographical situa-
tion in a way that we cannot remember in any other expositor... .
“Without any ‘purple patches’ laboriously vivid, the book is so full of
the comment, historic and religious, that could proceed only from a well-
stored brain and sensitive spirit, that it is impossible to alight on a dull
page.”—Christian World.
“Dr. George Smith has succeeded in producing the work that was
required, . . . Dr. Smith’s accounts are always vivid and picturesque ;
those who have travelled in the Holy Land will bear witness to his
accuracy. He gives an admirable idea of the general configuration of
the country ; he has a great eye to the advantages of a position, and to
the features which have made a place of historical importance. . . . We
have, we hope, made clear the value of the work. . . . It is written with
full critical and historical knowledge ; it describes the physical features
in a vivid and clear manner.’— Guardian.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, E.C.
THE THOUSAND AND ONE
CHURCHES
By Prof. Sir W. M. RAMSAY, D.C.L., and
GERTRUDE L. BELL
With over 400 Illustrations, 20/- net
“It was a happy train of events that led Sir W. M. Ramsay to visit Bin-
bir-Kilisse along with a first-rate authority on architecture. This ruined
Roman and Byzantine city, the Turkish name of which, being interpreted,
supplies the title of the book, lies in a valley of the Karadagh, a
commanding block of mountains rising out of the Lycaonian plain about
fifty miles south-east of Konia, The imposing ruins of a large number
of Early Christian churches have impressed every visitor. Several
travellers have studied part of the architectural material in detail ; but
an exhaustive examination of the ruins, coupled with a study on the
spot of the epigraphy, was evidently required in order to settle the
diverse architectural and historical problems raised by the great variety
of structural forms existing together on a single site. Miss Bell—whose
courage and energy in exploring this remote region, and others wilder
still, have laid archaeology under a debt it seldom owes to a lady—added
to her work at Bin-bir-Kilisse an exhaustive examination of the Karadagh
and the neighbouring mountain ranges.” 77mes.
“The book before us is an excellent example of the work which is
being done by the archaeologists of to-day. ... Fifty miles south of
Konia, in Asia Minor, on the slopes of a volcanic range, are situated
a series of ruins which had for some years attracted the attention of
archaeologists. Fortunately the site was almost deserted, and till
recently the ruins had not been disturbed by the hand of man. The
ruins are mostly the remains of churches built from the fifth to the
eleventh centuries, and exhibit the history of early church development
in clear and well-preserved examples. They have now been carefully
examined, planned, and photographed, and the book before us is a record
of these labours, enriched by the valuable comments of the explorers.
“ There is no historical record of the city, which is probably the ancient
Barata. And there are very few inscriptions, But the careful and
minute examination of the site has led to results which are in the highest
degree interesting and instructive.”— Spectator.
“Sir William and Lady Ramsay have done an immense amount of
work, and this carefully descriptive and richly illustrated volume is the
result of their labours. . . . The labour of producing this most instruc-
tive book, whether in the way of travels and exploration on the spot,
or of arranging and writing in the study, must have been immense ; and
students of Church architecture and of Byzantine history owe a large
debt of gratitude to its authors. The bountiful supply of photographs
implies a great deal; but along with them Miss Bell gives us accurate
measurements, very full descriptions of details, drawings of leading
architectural features, and ground-plans of what still exists and what
may be conjectured to have existed. Her contributions are a model
of how such work ought to be done.” —Guardian.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, E.C.
BIBLE SIDE-LIGHTS FROM
THE MOUND OF GEZER
A RECORD OF EXCAVATION AND DISCOVERY IN PALESTINE
By R. A. STEWART MACALISTER, M.A., F.S.A.
Director of Excavations, Palestine Exploration Fund.
With 48 Illustrations. 5/-
“Mr. Macalister is Director of Excavations for the Palestine Exploration Fund,
and therefore has every claim to be listened to when he discourses on the excavations
made on behalf of that Fund. The present volume does not pretend to be an
exhaustive or technical account of what has been done at Gezer, but is a very
successful attempt to popularise the results that have been reached. . . . A number
of excellent illustrations make the book still more useful and valuable,"—Church Times.
“.Α most interesting volume.” —Sjectator.
‘‘Qne of the freshest and most interesting works on Palestinian exploration that
has been published for a long time, Though written for the ordinary reader, it is
accurate and scholarly from beginning to end. . . . A word of commendation is due
for the way in which the book is illustrated, No fewer than forty-seven excellently
produced photographic plates serve to bring the scenery and objects described vividly
before the mind of the reader.” —Methodist Times.
‘Mr. Macalister’s materials are of remarkable interest, whether to those whose
starting-point is the Bible or to those whose outlook is more purely archaeological.”
—Scotsman,
OUT OF DOORS IN THE
HOLY LAND
By HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D., LL.D.
Illustrated in Colour. . 6/- net
“Dr, Henry Van Dyke in his new book brings Palestine) of the past and of
to-day before us with an intense vividness that illuminates the scenes of the Bible
narrative in a fascinating and profoundly moving way. The book is, as he says,
‘a long journey in the spirit, and a short one in the body,’ and it is not only his
description of the country and of the scenes of those great events, but his power’ of
recalling their associations and meaning that makes his book so deeply and intensely
interesting to every reader of the Bible. Coloured illustrations add to the attractive-
ness of the book.” —Glasgow News. !
‘ This is in every way a beautiful and distinguished book. The keynote is struck
in the preface, which is a remarkable piece of writing. The author has brought two
lessons from Palestine, The first is the conviction that Christianity is an out-of doors
religion, All of its important events took place out of doors. Except the discourse
in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words from the Sermon on the
Mount to the last commission to the disciples were spoken in the open air, The
next is the deepened sense that Jesus Himself is the great, the imperishable miracle.
His words are spirit and life. His character is the revelation of the perfect love.
. . » Dr. Van Dyke is an eminent theologian, but he is also a poet and a man of
letters. ΑἹ] these qualities meet in this graphic narrative, which is copiously illustrated
with some of the best coloured pictures we have ever seen. . . . There is great charm
about this volume—something magical and entrancing in its quality, No one will
read it without seeing many things in the Gospel set in a new light."—Church
Family Newspaper.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, E.C.
A HISTORY OF EGYPT
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PERSIAN CONQUEST
By JAMES H. BREASTED, Ph.D.
Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History in the University of Chicago ;
Director of Haskell Oriental Museum ; Director of the Egyptian Expedition of
the University of Chicago.
With two hundred Illustrations and Maps. In one handsome volume,
large 8vo, 634 pages with Index. 20/- net.
Po ae ee ae νοι
“ At length we have'a readable history of Ancient Egypt, on a large
enough scale to give the chief events in considerable detail, and to
depict the social and religious life in a vivid manner. At the same time
the general trend of things is kept clear. Dr. Breasted’s careful study
of the inscriptions and papyri has made his work both scientific and
authoritative, while the lucid style and an abundance of excellent illus-
trations should attract the general reader."—Church Times,
“Dr. Breasted’s four volumes of documents show how assiduously he
has laboured to collect his facts ; the masterly way in which he recasts
them into bright pictures shows him to have a genius for writing history.
. .. We have no history of Egypt to compare with it in English, nay,
not even in French or German. ... This beautiful and admirable
volume should find a place in every good private library, and help to
form the ideas of the next generation on the Egypt which no education,
however narrow and practical, can afford to ignore.”—Morning Post.
“This valuable and interesting work will bring Professor Breasted to
the acquaintance of many readers who make no professions of erudition
in Oriental history. . . . It is lavishly illustrated by pictures and draw-
ings interesting upon artistic grounds, and invaluable as documents to
readers who have no opportunity of visiting the scenes which they
represent. The book, in fine, is an account of ancient Egypt which must
prove instructive to readers of the most varied interests, from the student
of Old Testament history and the intelligent modern tourist to the
specialist who needs to have at hand a trustworthy compendium of the
existing learning upon his own subject.”— Scotsman.
“A history must be more than a collection of documents, however
accurately transcribed and interpreted. Professor Petrie has demon-
strated how unsightly the bare dry bones of Egyptian history may be
made to appear. Dr. Breasted, on the contrary, has made the dry bones
live, He brings to his task a warm enthusiasm, a broad and tolerant
sympathy, and a restrained imagination. . . . We have never seen the
great epochs of Egyptian history more vividly portrayed than in his
eloquent pages. . . . This history is, in some sense, a work of art, no less
than a presentation of the mature results of scholarly research. . . . The
illustrations are numerous and well chosen.”— Zzmes.
HODDER ἃ STOUGHTON, Publishers, Warwick Square, LONDON, ΕΟ,
414
THE ATHENAZUM
No. 4328, Ocr. 8, 1910
used of the Athenians by St. Paul, means
“too religious,” and not “rather super-
stitious.” Menander, Plutarch, and
Lucian agree with the A.V. in the latter
sense. We will not do more than praise
the excellence of the translation, though
we dislike the words ‘‘ dependable,”
“reliable,” and ‘‘ pneumatic ” (for
spiritual), and we suspect that “the
five observations of Prof. Wilamowitz ”’
represents “die feinen Bemerkungen,”
which is an obvious slip if our conjecture
is right. am 0) eS
We turn in conclusion to the dis-
tinction on which the author lays
great stress—that between the informal
personal letter and the literary. non-
personal epistle. In the main this is a
perfectly sound distinction. There are
many epochs when the form of addressing
an individual or a collection of people as
if in a written missive or letter has been
very fashionable, but the epistolary
clauses are mere ornamental accessories.
Notable examples are Junius, or the
Drapier’s letters, or the Epistle to the
Hebrews, or those of St. James and St.
Jude. “A glance at the addresses,”
says our author, ‘“‘ shows that these are not
real letters. A letter, e.g., ‘to the twelve
tribes which are scattered abroad,’ would
be simply undeliverable.” Agreed: but
what, then, shall we say of St. Paul’s
2 Corinthians, addressed ‘‘ to the Church |
is in Corinth. with all the saints that
heat” _Achma,
hic
mos ie whole of Achzxa.
in Imperial days meant the whole of
Greece. This then, being equally “ un-
deliverable,” is clearly not a letter, but
anepistle. Yet, to our astonishment, Prof.
Deissmann will have none of it. With
him all St. Paul’s epistles, even the
Romans, even this 2 Corinthians, are
personal letters, and not epistles.. When
we endeavour to understand this obvious
and. striking inconsistency, we find that,
while he uses the large number of the
addressees when it suits him, he applies
another test when this becomes in-
convenient. All St. Paul’s epistles are
full of personal confessions, complaints, .
vindications, and so forth, and these make
them the outpourings of an individual
heart, not the literary work of a writer
for general purposes. This criterion seems
to us so subjective as to be of little use.
In any case, the gradations from a purely
private letter on private matters, like
the letter to Philemon, to an epistolary
discourse on religious or political topics,
are innumerable. Where does the letter
end, and the epistle begin, in this series 2
To us the number addressed seems a
better test. All St. Paul’s letters to the
Churches are intended for public perusal,
even for interchange among Churches.
They are sermons, lessons in doctrine,
exhortations to holy life. To call them
letters, and not epistles, because of the
strongly personal complexion of them,
seems to us a very bad argument, even for
controversial purposes. Thus the Epistle
- to the Romans is plainly a manifesto of
St. Paul to a Church which he had not yet
visited. It preaches doctrine from the
outset—so much so that Prof. Deissmann
himself looks upon the concluding personal
salutes in chap. xvi. as a fresh document,
not belonging to the rest. Here, then,
is a letter tacked on to an epistle. But
that is the essence of St. Paul’s style, and
therefore with him the distinction is
almost idle.
On the title ‘‘ Slave of Jesus Christ,”
which St. Paul adopts, the author is very
instructive. He shows that an ordinary
form of obtaining liberty was the sale of
a slave by his master to a god, whose
slave he then became in theory. This
ownership on the part of the god was his
title to liberty from any human master.
The many texts known, recording this
transaction, never tell us what evidence
the slave of the god carried with him
to show his enfranchisement from men.
How could he escape molestation, or the
assertion that he was still a slave from
the heirs of his former master? The
texts are on stone, mostly at Delphi; what
if he was arrested at Corinth or Ephesus ?
We suggest that a verse of St. Paul’s shows
that some mark was indelibly branded
upon the new slave of the god: ‘‘ Hence-
forth let no man trouble me, for I bear in
my body the stigmata of the Lord Jesus.”
This was the evidence. Almost every
page of this eloquent book affords matter
for such observations.
‘Chats o
INTEREST in the autograph is perennial,
and hardly needs arguing from high
prices, while it is likely to increase in
| these days of type-writing. Beyond the
amusing book of Mr. Adrian Joline,
‘Meditations of an Autograph Collector ’
(1902), which we like none the less for its
hard words about The Atheneum, very
little has been written of recent years on
the subject, and Mr. Broadley is entitled
to speak as a collector of note who has
secured, for instance, the original marriage
settlement of Pamela Fitzgerald, and
Dumouriez’s holograph plan for the defence
of England, to say nothing of many
literary letters of high interest.
The need for practical advice is evident,
for it is not so long since a daily paper
with pretensions to literature went into
raptures and copious misprints over a
“new letter” of Dickens which was
simply a facsimile of a document familiar
to Dickensians, and already printed more
than once. The wonderful popularity
of Dickens makes anything which bears
trace of his hand valuable, even his
signature on a cheque—a dull sort of
autograph ; and his style of writing is
certainly characteristic. He always found
common in those of actors.
fact, ο
πὸ My
| flattery —of
time to write out the date instead of using |
numerals, and to insert beneath his name |
and the interest of his and other auto-
graphs lies not so much in the prices they
fetch as in the revelations they afford
of character, education, natural aptitude
for writing, gush or reserve. Thus we
see in Ruskin’s hand enormous fluency, in
Tennyson’s fastidious neatness, in Landor’s
a dashing boldness disregarding minute
detail, in Stevenson’s a fluency which
from much writing has become fluidity.
The cramped hands of Carlyle and John-
son struggle for utterance. The bro
signature of Shakespeare (reproduc
p. 196) looks like ill-health, and ha’
to the accusation that he was epileptic ;
but to the present writer it bears a re-
markable similarity to that of Beethoven,
who had no such disease.
The obsession of prices and “ records ”
always attacks collecting of any sort when
it has become a trade, and leads, as in
pictures, to a standard which is apt to be
a trade fashion. The intrinsic worth of
an autograph cannot be judged merely
by its price. Some of the eminent, like
Tennyson, get out of writing letters as
much as possible, and their letters are
bound to be rarities. Others, like Nelson,
are most determined and _ frequent
correspondents, and are consequently apt
to flood the market later. The poverty
which leads to sudden dispersals of docu-
ments which might be regarded as private
and family treasures is a less pleasant
asnect,, of the τις wee Oe es i Ἢ
autograph βοηά," 0
whom Mr. Broadley gives some amusing
details, show to what lengths in deceit
the collector will go. Carelessness about
papers and letters is another source of
profit for the autograph-hunter. They are
lost by the rightful owner, fall into com-
mercial hands, and are finally conveyed
away by the collector. The person whom
Johnson called a ‘‘ very pompous, puzzling
fellow’ because he wanted to have
a letter back for which he “expressed a
mighty value” has always had our sym-
pathy. When the letter was récovered
“he did not know that it signified any-
thing,”’ an expression which we take to be
ordinary politeness, not lack of logic.
The rage for publishing letters in John-
son’s day induced him to put little in
them; and writers of to-day may well
cherish a similar caution unless they
leave definite instructions in their wills
concerning their letters as literary pro-
perty. Mr. Broadley makes the usual
remark about
QIAO
‘the now extinet race of letter-writers, for
the epistolary art has succumbed beyond
hope of recovery to the combined influences
of the telegraph, the telephone, the type-
writer, and the halfpenny newspaper.”
This is only trie so for
“newspaper ik
cellent letters
who havi
them,
the
a number of the flourishes which are rare ἢ
in the signatures of great men, tho
He was
Light from the Ancient East: the New
Testament illustrated by Recently Dis-
covered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World.
By Adolf Deissmann. Translated by
Lionel R. M. Strachan. (Hodder &
Stoughton.)
Tue author of this striking book, which
is full of interest, has risen rapidly from
| being what we call a country parson to
a high chair in the University of Berlin,
and we are happy to find that he has
brought with him his simple and devout
Christianity into an atmosphere where
such views are uncommon. Among
famous Greek scholars of modern Germany,
eee
sents
“Rie
eet nia Ὁ
Maia,
Rervsis
CLLUUR LL ννυυσι ULOUR Wusauy, Wasavasn sere y
have introduced some Semitic phrases, and
possibly he is right. Our knowledge has
been recently so much widened by inscrip-
tions on stone, by ostraca, and by
papyrus fragments, that a new lexicon of
Hellenistic Greek is urgently required.
This task is being attempted, he tells us,
by Wilhelm Crénert, a promising scholar,
who will at least give some conspectus of
our enlarged Greek vocabulary.
Prof. Deissmann begins by supplying a |
sketch of the gradual accumulation of
new texts of all sorts during the last
generation—in particular of papyri, which
present the daily use of Greek among
the settlers in Egypt and elsewhere under
Alexander and the Ptolemies. In this
history he has made one capital omission.
“Fe never mentions the Petric papyri,
which were the first great collection of
early dated documents given to scholars.
He does not even enumerate the carionnage
of mummy-cases as one of the sources of
these discoveries, though the importance
of such coverings was pointed out by
Letronne some seventy years ago. He has
used none of the interesting personal
documents of this collection, though he
proceeds to cite a number of early and late
Greek letters and receipts, with facsimiles
in the text, to show, first what language
was in common use, secondly what were
the habits and the temper of society,
in the days when the New Testament
books were written.
The general result of his long and
detailed catalogue of words and phrases
is undeniable. New Testament Greek
is much closer to the ordinary com-
mon dialect of the first century a.D. than
older critics had imagined. The effect of
local languages, Aramaic or Egyptian,
was small in adulterating the style of the
New Testament. But we might have been
spared much of his exposition of simple
papyrus texts—letters and accounts, where-
in he cannot resist the temptation, com-
mon to Evangelical preachers, of reading
all sorts of things into the plain and
unadorned original, things which generally
Here are examples.
8 By
7}y i 7 GQ To. ᾿
δον aot present
0) >4 Cesar and
ΒΡ ΘΕΙ͂ΟΣ
‘er unto
THE ATHENAUM
413
xsar the things that are Czsar’s, and
rear. unto God the things that are
d's.
» do not agree with him. What the
t does say is that the imperium of
sar is distinct from that of God. Each
3t be loyally served in his own sphere,
| it says nothing more.
‘he price of sparrows mentioned in the
spels leads him into an interesting
juisition on the accuracy of the text
o for a farthing, five for two farthings),
d he shows that an edict of Diocletian
ing the prices of such things agrees
rfectly with the words of Jesus. But
here is the amplification :—
‘“‘Even in small things Jesus is great*
The unerring eye for actualities that asserts
itself so repeatedly in the Gospel narratives
comes out in the saying about the sparrows.”
And presently :—
“Jesus was in His true element in the
market-place, watching a poor woman count-
ing her coppers to see if she could still take
5 or 10 sparrows home with her. Poor
miserable little creatures, fluttering there,
such numbers of them, in the vendor’s
cages. And yet each one of them was loved
by the heavenly Father.”
Now whatever the meaning of the argu-
ment is—a fortiori is here in its place—
this way of bringing before us the love of
God for His most insignificant creatures is
an amazing homily.
‘The third example we select 18° ὁπό χαοϑὺ
important, because it underlies the main
thesis of the book, and will therefore
fitly introduce a discussion of it :—
“‘ With regard to all that Paul the weaver
of tent-cloth has to say about labour, we
should place ourselves within St. Paul’s
own class—the artisan class of the Imperial
age, end then feel the force of his words....
ΕἾ laboured more abundantly than they all’
—these words, applied by St. Paul to mis-
sionary work, came originally from the
joyful pride of the skilled weaver, who,
working by the piece, was able to hand in the
largest amount of stuff on pay day. ‘ Labour
in vain? is the trembling echo of the dis-
couragement resulting from a width of
cloth being rejected as badly woven, and
therefore not paid for.”
We find it difficult to justify this
embroidery. Wherever the author finds
κόπος or its verb, he translates it by
“labour,” or the work of an artisan.
The whole tradition of the word through-
out centuries of Greek is not this, but
“toil,” the weariness of the labourer. In
all the passages where the word occurs
in the New Testament this classical
meaning is still the natural one, as may
be seen from the author’s ample references.
The Thessalonians are told by Paul
to mind their own business, and work
(ἐργάξεσθαι) with their own hands.
He himself says (1 Cor. iv. 12) “we toil
(κοπιῶμεν), working (ἐργαζόμενοι ) with
our own hands.” Still more decisive is
the famous text (where the Professor
tells us that κόπων is used for ἔργων)
“Blessed are the dead,” &c., “for they
shall rest from their toils (κόπων), and
their works ( ἔργα) shall follow them.”
Everywhere the idea of weariness accom-
panies the word, and if there be a stray
passage where it really means manual
labour, with no other suggestion, we should
hold such use to be exceptional, or even
inaccurate.
But in the book before us the author
desires to prove that St. Paul was an
“artisan missionary,” preaching to the
lower classes. He suggests that his
epistles were written by an amanuensis
because the Apostle, with his horny hand,
found writing difficult, and only sub-
scribes in sprawling characters over which
he makes merry! (‘Ye see with what
large characters I subscribe myself.”) Is
this a reasonable picture of Saul of Tarsus ἢ
We think not. We have but few facts to
go upon, but these tell us that though a
Jew by parentage, he was born a Roman
citizen—that is to say, his father had
obtained this great privilege—at Tarsus,
a famous city, where education was the |
main interest, and which contained many ;
Why he first went to |
Jerusalem we are not told; but there he ὁ
occupies a prominent place. He is the |
main witness to the death of Stephen. ©
learned teachers.
He leads the persecution of the Christians.
He receives legal authority from the ,
chief priests for his mission to Antioch. ᾿
These things imply a young man of social ©
position and leisure, not a mere artisan :
neglecting his trade to turn agitator. How
else could he have been entrusted by the’
heads of his people at Jerusaleus wit oss
public mission ?
After his conversion, and his permanent
estrangement from Tarsus, his circum-—
stances of course change. He becomes an:
itinerant missionary, with no private '
means, and thinks it not only necessary, |.
but also honourable, to labour with his;
hands for his support. This cannot have ἢ
been a continuous trade, owing to his ©
But though his money ;
was gone, nothing could deprive him of the |
intellectual education he received in his ¢
constant voyages.
famous home. He quotes Aratus and ,
Menander. He knows all about the;
Stoic paradoxes. He has learnt to argue |
with the subtlety of a sophist in the;
schools of Tarsus. The man who wrote:
the Epistle to the Romans was no artisan!
writing to artisans, but a cultivated
teacher writing a treatise which was fit
for the Imperial household. i
This traditional view may some day
be proved false, and then we shall be
ready to abandon it, but it must be con-
futed by arguments very different from
those produced by Prof. Deissmann.
That Christianity was the religion of the
poor, and preached by the poor, is an
important truth. The ignorance of Plu-
tarch and Dion, the surprise of Pliny, show
clearly that it was not discussed in “ good
society”; but ‘that does not prove that
St. Paul, or St. Luke either, belonged to
the working classes.
We will not delay over smaller matters,
such as the assumption that St. Matthew’s
was the earliest Gospel, and its original
in Aramaic, or that δεισιδαιμονεστέρους,
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