THE PHILOLOGY OF THE
GREEK BIBLE
THE PHILOLOGY OF THE
GREEK BIBLE
ITS PRESENT AND FUTURE
By
ADOLF DEISSMANN
D.Theol. (Marburg), D.D. (Aberdeen); Professor of New Testament
Exegesis in the University of Heidelberg; Professor
Designate in the University of Berlin
TRANSLATED FROM THE AUTHOR'S MS. BY
LIONEL R. M. STRACHAN, M.A., ENGLISH
LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERO
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMVIII
Butler and 1 anner, T/te Scltuotd Printing Wotk*, l'roinf.t ami London
TO
MY FRIEND
DR. J. RENDEL HARRIS
255332
PREFACE
WHEN Dr. Rendel Harris invited me to give
a series of lectures to the Cambridge Sum-
mer School of the Free Churches (July and
August, 1907) on the present state of the
study of the Greek Bible, I hesitated to
accept the invitation because I am only
able to speak English very imperfectly.
But three material considerations tri-
umphed over the one formal objection.
In the first place, my subject, namely
the Greek Bible and its scientific, particu-
larly its linguistic study, is regarded with
Vll
viii PREFACE
singularly great interest by wide circles
in the countries where English is spoken.
Secondly, it is in no small measure
British scholars who, by the discovery and
publication of important linguistic material,
have made the most valuable contributions
to Biblical philology.
Thirdly, it is to the industry and energy
of British scholars that we owe a number
of great works of fundamental importance
to the study of the Greek Bible. These
were reasons enough for me to regard the
invitation to Cambridge not only as a great
honour but also as a welcome opportunity
to discharge a debt of gratitude to British
Biblical scholarship.
There was added, moreover, the pleasant
prospect of a few days spent in company
PREFACE ix
with many prominent Christians of a
friendly country in the discussion of various
great problems of both scientific and prac-
tical interest. I felt that I should be able
to learn a great deal from the exchange
of ideas, and I should be helping, according
to my weak ability, to forge another small
link in the chain of Anglo-German recipro-
city and friendship.
These considerations were stronger than
my first hesitation. I accepted, therefore,
and the lectures were duly delivered at
Cambridge. I look back with great pleasure
to the time I spent there and the innumer-
able impressions, interesting and instructive,
that I received. This little book, contain-
ing my lectures, goes forth with a hearty
greeting to all my friends on the other side
x PREFACE
of the Channel — my old friends and also
the new ones whose acquaintance I made
at Cambridge.
The lectures were first published in The
Expositor (October, 1907-January, 1908),
and the present edition in book form en-
ables me to make a few additions that re-
cent publications have rendered necessary.
ADOLF DEISSMANN.
HEIDELBERG,
1908.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
THE GREEK BIBLE AS A COMPACT UNITY—
THE NEW LINGUISTIC RECORDS . . 3
II
THE PROBLEM OF " BIBLICAL " GREEK . . 39
III
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY .... 69
IV
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY . 10)
XI
THE GEEEK BIBLE AS A COMPACT
UNITY— THE NEW LINGUISTIC
RECORDS
P:O.B.
THE GREEK BIBLE AS A COMPACT UNITY —
THE NEW LINGUISTIC RECORDS
" THE Greek Bible ! "—There, in the bril-
liant sunshine of the south, stretched out
before the student's eye, lies the Hellen-
istic world as it was at the great turning-
point of religious history. Alexander, the
conqueror and moulder of the world, had
marched with his armies towards the
rising sun, bearing with him the spirit of
the Greek race, and round about the
Mediterranean basin the seeds of a world-
wide Greek civilization had been planted
in the ancient soil. In the State and in
TSffi GREEK BIBLE
society, in science and art, in language
and religion, the Mediterranean world was
in process of more or less vigorous Hellen-
ization and consequent levelling towards
uniformity.
About this time, say at the end of the
second or beginning of the first century
B.C., it happened that two Jewish girls,
named Heraclea and Marthina, were mur-
dered in the island of Delos. Their inno-
cent blood cried aloud for vengeance, but
the murderers were unknown. On the
Great Day of Atonement, therefore, the
relatives made their petition to the God
of their fathers. With fervent prayers
they consigned the cruel murderers to the
vengeance of God and His angels, and
their imprecations were immortalized on
AS A COMPACT UNITY 5
marble tablets above the graves where the
murdered girls lay buried in the island of
Kheneia, which was the cemetery of Delos.
The original text of these Jewish prayers
for vengeance, found at Rheneia 1 and now
preserved at Athens and Bucharest shows
us the Jews of Delos, about the year 100
B.C., in possession of the Greek Old Testa-
ment. This single picture is typical. The
Old Testament, as you know, had been
translated from Hebrew into Greek at
different times and by different persons in
Egypt, beginning in the third century B.C.,
and the complete version is known as the
Septuagint. We see then that by 100
1 Cf. my essay, " Die Rachegebete von Rheneia,"
in Philologus, Ixi. New Series, xv. (1902), pp. 252-
65 ; reprinted in my book Licht vom Osten, Tub-
ingen, 1908.
6 THE GREEK BIBLE
B.C. the Septuagint Bible had already
found its way from its home on the Nile
to the remoter Jews of the Dispersion —
a book from the Hellenistic world for the
Hellenistic world.
It is true that in spirit it was an Eastern
book, but as regards form and subject
matter it was adapted to the needs of the
Western world ; it was a book both of the
East and the West.1 It was not a book
according to the professional ideas of the
artistic literature of that age, for it was not
clad in the garb of the literary language.
But it was a book for the People ; for on the
whole, though in many passages that would
seem strange to the Greeks it did not
1 Cf. my little sketch Die Hellenisierung des
semitischen Monotfieismus, Leipzig, 1903.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 7
conceal the peculiarity of the original text
it spoke the colloquial language of the
middle and lower class, as is shown especi-
ally clearly by its vocabulary and accidence.
Here and there, less in some of the single
books and more in others, it was unintel-
ligible to the men of the Hellenistic world ;
but taken as a whole it must not be dis-
missed with the hasty criticism that it was
an unintelligible book. Such criticism is
the result of looking at the artistic Attic
prose instead of at the contemporary
popular language. Taken as a whole the
Septuagint became emphatically a popular
book — we may even say a universal book.
If the historical importance of things is
to be estimated by their historical effects,
how paltry must, for example, the History
8 THE GREEK BIBLE
of Polybius appear beside the Septuagint
Bible ! Of all pre-Christian Greek litera-
ture Homer alone is comparable with this
Bible in historical influence, and Homer,
in spite of his enormous popularity, was
never a Bible. Take the Septuagint in
your hand, and you have before you the
book that was the Bible of the Jews of the
Dispersion and of the proselytes from the
heathen ; the Bible of Philo the philo-
sopher, Paul the Apostle, and the earliest
Christian missions ; the Bible of the
whole Greek-speaking Christian world ; the
mother of influential daughter- versions ;
the mother of the Greek New Testament.
But is that true ? Is the Septuagint
really the mother of the Greek New Testa-
ment ? It seems a bold statement to
AS A COMPACT UNITY 9
make, but it is not difficult to show what
I mean by it.
The Septuagint was not necessary for
the coming of the Lord Jesus. The Semitic,
not the Greek, Old Testament was a con-
stituent factor in His Gospel. The historical
Jesus of Nazareth takes His stand firmly
on the non-Greek Old Testament. But
Paul, the preacher and propagator of the
Gospel, is not comprehensible without the
Septuagint. He is not only the great
Christ-Christian but also the great Septua-
gint-Christian. And the whole of Primitive
Christianity, so far as it is missionary
Christianity, rests on the Lord and the
Gospels as one pillar, and on the Septuagint
Bible as the other. Through the Pauline
Epistles and all the other earliest Christian
10 THE GREEK BIBLE
writings the words of the Septuagint run
like veins of silver.
We shall not, however, speak of the
Septuagint as the mother of the New
Testament in the sense that without it
the separate parts of the New Testament
would not have been written. They arose
as echoes of the prophecies of Jesus and as
the reflex of His personality. But in
respect to their contents they are immensely
indebted to the Septuagint Bible, and—
this is for us the matter of most importance
— the parts would never have grown into
the New Testament as a whole — the Canon
—but for the Septuagint. The Old Greek
Canon of Scripture is presupposed by the
New. The history of religion displays
the marvellous spectacle of the Old Bible,
AS A COMPACT UNITY 11
encircled by the apparently unscalable
walls of the Canon, opening wide her
gates and admitting a New Bible to the
sacred precinct : the Saviour and His
disciples take their places by Moses and the
prophets. This cohesion between the New
Testament and the Old was historically
possible only because the Old Testament
by its Hellenization had become assimilated
in advance to the future New Testament.
The daughter belongs of right to the
mother ; the Greek Old and New Testa-
ments form by their contents and by their
fortunes an inseparable unity. The oldest
manuscript Bibles that we possess are
complete Bibles in Greek. But what his-
tory has joined together, doctrine has put
asunder ; the Greek Bible has been torn in
12 THE GREEK BIBLE
halves. On the table of our theological
students you will generally see the Hebrew
Old Testament lying side by side with the
Greek New Testament. It is one of the
most painful deficiencies of Biblical study
at the present day that the reading of the
Septuagint has been pushed into the back-
ground, while its exegesis has been scarcely
even begun.
All honour to the Hebrew original ! But
the proverbial Novum in Vetere latet cannot
be fully understood without a knowledge
of the Septuagint. A single hour lovingly
devoted to the text of the Septuagint will
further our exegetical knowledge of the
Pauline Epistles more than a whole day
spent over a commentary.
We must read the Septuagint as a Greek
AS A COMPACT UNITY 13
text and as a book of the people, just as the
Jew of the Dispersion would have done who
knew no Hebrew, and as the converted
heathen of the first and second century
would have read it. Every reader of the
Septuagint who knows his Greek Testament
will after a few days' study come to see
with astonishment what hundreds of threads
there are uniting the Old and the New.
By underlining all the parallels and recipro-
cally illustrative passages it is easy to render
this impression concrete and permanent.
Many pages there are which we shall be
able to read without difficulty. Then, it is
true, we shall meet with obscurities here and
there, peculiarities and rare words, where
our lexicons give us no real information.
For the present let us simply pass over
14 THE GREEK BIBLE
whatever is doubtful. After all the total
impression will not be, " Here is a book
unintelligible to a Greek but containing
some things that he could understand,"
but, " Here is a text intelligible to him as
a whole but with some obscurities." These
obscurities did not prevent the Septua-
gint from influencing the Graeco-Jewish
and Graeco-Christian world, and even to-
day only pedants will be deterred by them
from reading the Septuagint.
He who does read, however, will be
amply rewarded. An empty abstraction
will have acquired reality ; a forgotten
Bible will have been re-discovered ; a sacred
relic, buried in sand and dust and unob-
served by hundreds of passers by, will have
attracted the pious eye for which it waited.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 15
And that eye'perceives that the re-discovered
Septuagint is the sanctuary leading to the
Holy of Holies, namely the New Testament,
and that both together make up the one
great temple, the Bible.
This connexion between the two Greek
Testaments will be recognized more and
more with the progress of scientific research.
In the study of Hellenistic civilization,
i.e., the civilization of the Hellenistic world
of the Mediterranean in the post-Alexan-
drian and Imperial ages, a study which
has developed so enormously during the
last twenty or thirty years, it will be more
and more clearly recognized that amid
the vast mass of witnesses to that civiliza-
tion the Greek Bible (Old and New Testa-
ment) is the chief.
16 THE GREEK BIBLE
It deserves to be so regarded not only for
the special character of its form and contents,
betokening as they do a union of the
Eastern with the Western spirit altogether
remarkable in the history of the world,
but also on account of the mighty influence
it exerted. To see things in their true
historical perspective we must place the
Greek Bible in the midst of the other wit-
nesses to the contemporary Hellenistic
world. This restoration of the Greek Bible
to its own epoch is really the distinctive
feature of the work of modern Bible scholar-
ship ; and by utilizing the newly discovered
texts of the Hellenistic age fresh vigour has
been infused into Bible scholarship, reviving
and rejuvenating that somewhat torpid
and inactive organism.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 17
What are these newly discovered texts ?
Your thoughts fly at first perhaps to newly
found books or fragments of ancient authors.
But valuable though these discoveries are,
the chief importance attaches to the non-
literary texts, especially those on stone,
papyrus, and fragments of pottery, which
have been brought to light in their thou-
sands and ten thousands. The inscriptions,
papyri, and potsherds form a great store-
house of exact information, from which
Biblical research has recently drawn as
rich supplies as any other branch of the
science of antiquities.
The Inscriptions are found in astonishing
numbers on the site of the ancient seats of
civilization on the shores of the Mediter-
ranean, either in their original positions or
P.O.B,
18 THE GREEK BIBLE
lying under ruins and mounds of rubbish.
In the latter case they have to be excavated,
and some of them find a home in our
museums. They are rendered accessible
by publication in great cyclopaedic works,
the two largest of which are the Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum and the Inscrip-
tiones Graecae, the latter gradually replacing
the older and now obsolete Corpus Inscrip-
tionum Graecarum.
The period of the discovery of new
inscriptions is by no means ended. The
researches and excavations of the European
and American archaeological institutes, and
the archaeological expeditions sent out by
various governments or by private indivi-
duals, bring to light innumerable inscribed
stones year by year. To these agencies we
AS A COMPACT UNITY 19
must add the engineering enterprises for
opening up the old Mediterranean countries
to modern industry and commerce, which
are not always harmful but in many
cases helpful to the study of antiqui-
ties.
A particularly interesting example of an
unexpected find came under my notice in
the spring of 1906. My friend Theodor
Wiegand showed me among the extensive
ruins of ancient Miletus, now being exca-
vated by him, the remains of a temple of
Apollo Delphinios, the paving stones of
which consisted chiefly of highly impor-
tant ancient documents in stone. The en-
croachments of the surface water had at
some period made it necessary to raise the
level of the floor, and to effect this a number
20 THE GREEK BIBLE
of old inscribed slabs had been laid face
downwards on the original marble pave-
ment. By turning them up Wiegand had
discovered quite a collection of entirely
new inscriptions — the archives, one may
almost say, of ancient Miletus.
The student of the Greek Bible is of
course most interested in the inscriptions
found in Egypt, the country that gave
birth to the Septuagint, and in the centres
of early Christianity, i.e., Syria, Asia Minor,
and Greece. At the present moment exca-
vations are in progress that are certainly
full of promise in this direction, not only
at Miletus and at Didyma, where the
oracle of Miletus was situated, but also at
Ephesus, Pergamos, and Corinth. The
total wealth of the epigraphical material
AS A COMPACT UNITY 21
from the oldest seats of Greek Christianity
will be appreciated when the great Corpus
of the Inscriptions of Asia Minor as planned
by the Austrian archaeologists is completed.
Some conception of it can be formed even
now by reading the books of Sir William
Ramsay 1 or by studying the inscriptions
of a single small town, such as those of
Magnesia on the Maeander, published by
i Works by Sir William Mitchell Ramsay :— The
Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, London,
1893 ; 7th ed., 1903. The Cities and Bishoprics of
Phrygia, Oxford, 1895. St. Paul the Traveller and
the Roman Citizen, London, 1895; 3rd ed., 1897.
Was Christ born at Bethlehem ? A Study on the
Credibility of St. Luke, London, 1898. A Historical
Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians,
London, 1899. The Education of Christ, London,
1902. The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia,
London, 1904. Pauline and other Studies in Early
Christian History, London, 1906. Studies in the
History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman
Empire, London, 1906. The Cities of St. Paul : their
Influence on his Life and TJiought, London, 1907.
22 THE GREEK BIBLE
Otto Kern,1 or those of Priene by Hiller
von Gaertringen.2
Neither in form nor in subject-matter
do the inscriptions make a uniform group.
When they are of official origin, the work
of kings, emperors, high dignitaries, civic
authorities, they are usually very carefully
expressed and written in literary Greek.
When they are the work of private indivi-
duals they are not infrequently done rather
carelessly and are more or less specimens
of the colloquial language. This is particu-
larly the case with the private inscriptions
of the Roman Imperial period, which for
this reason are valuable for Biblical purposes,
1 Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander,
herausgegeben von Otto Kern, Berlin, 1900.
2 Inschriften von Priene, herausgegeben von F.
Frhr. Hiller von Gaertringen, Berlin, 1906.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 23
since the Greek Bible itself is for the most
part a monument of the spoken, not of the
written language. The inscriptions are
fruitful to Biblical philology chiefly from
the lexical point of view.
These epigraphical remains of antiquity
have for centuries attracted the attention
of scholars, and Biblical exegesis has turned
them to account since the end of the
eighteenth century. During the last quar-
ter of the nineteenth century they were
reinforced by a large new group of texts
written on what would seem to be a most
perishable material, viz., the Papyri.
Suppose that in the course of casual
excavations in a mound of absolutely dry
sand we were to find to-day whole bundles
of original private letters, contracts, wills,
24 THE GREEK BIBLE
records of judicial proceedings, and govern-
ment documents, emanating from our ances-
tors of the tenth century A.D. — the whole
of the learned world would be interested in
the discovery. How few original letters,
for example, written by humble individuals
have come down to us from the olden time.
The record of history has taken notice only
of the great. The scanty memorials of the
common people are found scattered here
and there — on a weathered tombstone,
maybe, or noted by chance in the reports of
legal cases or in the account books of towns
or shires.
So was it formerly with our knowledge of
antiquity. In so far as it was based on
literary tradition it was, roughly speaking,
the history of great things, the history of
AS A COMPACT UNITY 25
nations and their leaders in politics, learning,
art, and religion. Records of humble life,
written memorials of the masses, were
wanting. At best we caught glimpses of
such insignificant persons in the comedies
and some other literary works, but then
they were seen in the light thrown on them
by their social superiors. And so far as
the tradition was non-literary, the upper
classes again took the lion's share, for the
majority of the inscriptions come from the
privileged powerful and cultured class.
The discoveries of papyri have made
good this deficiency in a most unexpected
manner. Though they, too, throw a flood
of light on the upper, cultivated class, yet
in innumerable cases these scraps of papy-
rus are records of the middle and lower
26 THE GREEK BIBLE
classes. They possess for the study of
antiquity the same eminent degree of
importance as that sandhill we imagined
just now — alas that it is undiscoverable !
— would possess for our own earlier history
if it contained original letters of the tenth
century.
It is owing to the Egyptian climate that
such mounds exist beside the Nile, On the
outskirts of ancient Egyptian towns and
villages there were, as in our towns, places
where rubbish and refuse might be de-
posited. Whole bundles of old time-
expired official documents, instead of being
burnt or otherwise destroyed, were cast
out by the authorities on these rubbish
heaps. Private persons did the same when
clearing out their accumulations of old and
AS A COMPACT UNITY 27
therefore worthless written matter. The
reverence of mankind in antiquity for writ-
ing of any kind may have been a reason for
rejecting the more convenient method of
destruction by fire. The centuries have
covered these rubbish heaps with thick
layers of dust and sand, which, in conjunc-
tion with the dryness of the climate, have
preserved even papyrus most admirably.
Egyptian peasants, digging in these
mounds for earth to manure their fields
with, were the first chance discoverers
of ancient papyri. The news of such
discoveries first reached Europe in the
eighteenth century ; the nineteenth wit-
nessed the gradual arrival here and there
of a small number of papyri in the Euro-
pean museums. There they were looked
28 THE GREEK BIBLE
upon as curiosities until in the last quarter
of the century the great and astounding
discoveries began.
These discoveries immediately led to
systematic searches, and even excavations ;
and here it is chiefly British investigators
who have done the greatest service in
enlarging and publishing our store of papyri.
Flinders Petrie l has recovered magnificent
old specimens, particularly from mummy-
wrappings, which were made by sticking
sheets of papyrus together. Grenfell and
Hunt,2 the Dioscuri of research, have
1 Cf . J. P. Mahaffy, On the Flinders Petrie Papyri.
With transcriptions, commentaries, and index. Royal
Irish Academy, Cunningham Memoirs, 1891, vol. ii.
1893.
2 By B. P. Grenfell : — An Alexandrian Erotic
Fragment, and other Greek Papyri, chiefly Ptolemaic,
Oxford, 1896. By B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt :—
New Classical Fragments, and other Greek and Latin
AS A COMPACT UNITY 29
carried out epoch-making excavations at
Oxyrhynchus and other places, and have
published their treasures with astonishing
promptitude and masterly accuracy.
Thus during the last twenty years a new
science, Papyrology, has grown up and has
undergone division into numerous branches
according to the various languages in
which the documents are written. The
oldest documents, going back to more than
2500 B.C., fall within the province of
Egyptology. There are also Aramaic papyri,
Papyri, Oxford, 1897. Aoyia 'Irjaov . . . From
an early Greek Papyrus, London, 1897. The Oxy-
rhynchus Papyri, London, 1898-1907. Fayum Towns
and their Papyri (with D. G. Hogarth), London,
1900. The Amherst Papyri, London, 1900-1. The
Tebtunis Papyri, London, 1902-7. New Sayings of
Jesus and Fragment of a lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus,
London, 1904. The Hibeh Papyri, London, 1906.
Fragment of an Uncanonical Gospel from Oxyrhyn-
chus, London, 1907.
30 THE GREEK BIBLE
and great interest has been aroused by
those of the fifth century B.C., which were
recently published by Sayce and Cowley,1
and supplemented still more recently by
the texts deciphered by Sachau.2
With the fourth century B.C. begins the
main body of the papyri. Greek documents,
of the most various contents, they run
through the whole Ptolemaic period — i.e.,
for us the period of the origin of the Greek
Old Testament ; they run on through the
earliest Imperial period — i.e., for us the
period of the origin of the New Testament ;
1 A. H. Sayce and A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri
discovered at Assuan. With appendices by W.
Spiegelberg and Seymour de Ricci. London, 1906
(pp. 79 ; 27 plates).
2 Eduard Sachau, Drei aramaische Papyrusurkunden
aus Elephantine ( Abhandlungen der Kgl. Preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1907).
Berlin, 1907 (pp. 46, 1 plate).
AS A COMPACT UNITY 31
they continue from the second to the fourth
century, A.D. — i.e., for us the age of the
persecutions ; and finally they extend over
another five hundred years of Christian
Byzantine civilization. Together with them
are found also a number of Latin papyri ;
hi the later periods numerous fragments
in Coptic, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and
other languages.
The great published collections of these
treasures confront us like some high moun-
tain that has just been discovered, and
from whose summit we shall be able to see
farther than ever our ancestors could ;
but we have not yet climbed one tenth part
of the ascent. Papyrological students have
found a rallying-point in the Archiv fur
Papyrusforschung, a journal founded by the
32 THE GREEK BIBLE
greatest of German papyrologists, Ulrich
Wilcken.1
Students of the Greek Bible are indebted
principally to the Greek papyri for additions
to their knowledge. There are of course
numerous fragments of Biblical and early
Christian manuscripts, but of these I do
not intend to speak here. I am concerned
with the non-Christian texts. They are not a
uniform group. Side by side with documents
of the lower and middle class we find also —
and in the pre-Christian period find most
commonly — official texts written in official
style and in the unvarying language of
legal formularies. Even these afford us
deep insight into the civilization of their
time. But freshest and most direct in their
1 Archiv fur Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete,
hrsg. von U. Wilcken, Leipzig, 1900, etc.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 33
appeal are those written in the colloquial
language, often in the crudest of vulgar
Greek. Here truly are the great store-
rooms from which Biblical philology draws
its new knowledge.
Still more " vulgar " are the texts newly
discovered on the Ostraca. The ostracon or
potsherd, obtainable from any broken jug
or vessel, was the writing material of the
poor, a favourite even with the authorities
in then1 dealings with the poorer classes,
and used especially often for tax-receipts.
Formerly almost unnoticed and even despised
by investigators, the ostraca have now
attained a place of honour — thanks especi-
ally to the labours of Wilcken 1 on the
1 U. Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka aus Aegypten
und Niibien. Ein Beitrag zur antiken Wirtschafts-
geschichte, Leipzig and Berlin, 1899 (2 vols.).
P.G.B. 3
34 THE GREEK BIBLE
Greek, and of Crum x on the Coptic ostraca
— and large collections of them have been
rapidly formed in the European museums.
In 1819 an architect named Gau, who was
working at Dakkeh in Nubia, threw away
nearly all the ostraca he found there as
worthless rubbish, but nowadays these
little texts are properly respected. Only
the dealers in antiquities have not yet
learnt to set a high value on them. A short
text written on an ostracon would cost
twenty times as much if it were on papyrus,
though there is no difference in the historical
value of its contents.
The number of Biblical fragments on
1 Coptic Ostraca from the collections of the Egypt
Exploration Fund, the Cairo Museum and others.
The texts edited with translations and commentaries
by W. E. Crum, London, 1902.
AS A COMPACT UNITY 35
ostraca is not large at present. The most
important find hitherto consists of twenty
ostraca from Upper Egypt, some large and
some small, with fragments from the Gospels.
But the ostraca, like the papyri, possess
a greater indirect value. As linguistic
memorials of the lower classes these humble
potsherd texts shed light on many a detail of
the linguistic character of our sacred Book —
that Book which was written not by learned
men but by simple folk, by men who them-
selves confessed that they had their treasure
in earthen vessels (2 Cor. iv. 7). And thus
the modest ostraca rank as of equal value
with the papyri and inscriptions.
In the following lectures we shall have to
speak of the great changes which Biblical
philology has undergone as a consequence
36 THE GREEK BIBLE
of the employment of these texts. But I
may say here that the autograph evidence
of the world contemporary with the Greek
Bible helps us to understand that Bible
not only linguistically, but also in other
ways. The most important thing of
all perhaps is that we become better
acquainted with the bright and dark side
of the men to whom were addressed the
propaganda of cosmopolitan Graeco-Juda-
ism and the missions of cosmopolitan
Christianity, and that we thus learn to
judge more justly of both the contact
and the contrast in which Primitive Chris-
tianity stood with the surrounding world.
THE PROBLEM OF "BIBLICAL"
GREEK
II
THE PROBLEM OF " BIBLICAL " GREEK
IN our first lecture we called attention to
the close connexion between the Greek Old
Testament, represented by the Septuagint
translation, and the Greek New Testament ;
and we described the new sources for the
philological investigation of the Greek Bible.
To-day we are to discuss briefly the great
fundamental problem of Biblical philology,
the problem of the language of the Greek
Bible.
The essence of the problem is indicated
at once by our manner of formulating it.
We are to inquire not about Biblical Greek
40 THE PROBLEM OF
but about the language of the Greek Bible.
This distinction is not a mere playing with
words ; it points to a fundamental principle
of great importance.
Most of the earlier books on the subject
were devoted to the investigation not of
the language of the Greek Bible but of
Biblical Greek, or of a part of it, namely,
New Testament Greek.
Let us glance at a few title pages. Edwin
Hatch wrote Essays in Biblical Greek,1 and
H. A. A. Kennedy wrote on the Sources of
New Testament Greek.2 Hermann Cremer's
work, even in the ninth edition, hi spite
of the sharp criticism it has undergone,
1 Edwin Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, Oxford,
1889.
2 H. A. A. Kennedy, Sources of New Testament
Greek : or the Influence of the Septuagint on the Voca-
bulary of the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1895.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 41
remains what it was before, a " Biblico-
Theological Lexicon of New Testament
Greek." 1 The new German revision of
Winer's Grammar appeared under the old
title, Grammar of the New Testament Idiom,2
and the late Friedrich Blass presented us
with a Grammar of New Testament Greek.3
We even find this kind of title used by
more recent scholars — Dr. J. H. Moulton,4
for example — but hi these cases it is merely
1 H. Cremer, Biblisch-theologisches Worterbuch der
neutestamentlichen Grdcitdt, Gotha, 1866-8 ; neunte
vermehrte Auflage, Gotha, 1902.
2 G. B. Winer, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen
Sprachidioms als siohere Grundlage der neutestament-
lichen Exegese : achte Auflage, neubearbeitet von
P. W. Schmiedel, Gottingen, 1894, 1897, 1898.
3 F. Blass, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen
Griechisch, Gottingen, 1896 ; zweite Auflage, Gottingen,
1902.
4 J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament
Greek, based on W. F. Moulton's edition of G. B.
Winer's Grammar. Vol. I. Prolegomena. Edin-
burgh, 1906. Second edition, 1906.
42 THE PROBLEM OP
a formal concession to the older phraseology.
With the older scholars, however, such a
form of the title indicated a distinct pecu-
liarity of scientific method, as is proved by
such pointed sentences as the following.
Hatch 1 writes, " Biblical Greek is thus a
language which stands by itself." Cremer 2
adopts the words of Richard Rothe : " We
can indeed with good right speak of a
language of the Holy Ghost. For in the
Bible it is manifest to our eyes how the
Divine Spirit at work in revelation always
takes the language of the particular people
chosen to be the recipient and makes of it a
characteristic religious variety by trans-
forming existing linguistic elements and
1 Op. cit., p. 11.
2 In his Preface of 1883. The quotation is from
Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, Gotha, 1863, p. 238.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 43
existing conceptions into a shape peculiarly
appropriate to that Spirit. This process
is shown most clearly by the Greek of
the New Testament." And Blass, though
the statements in his Grammar show,
notwithstanding its title, that he afterwards
altered his theoretical views on this ques-
tion, remarked once in a review 1 that
New Testament Greek was "to be recog-
nized as something peculiar, obeying its
own laws."
These quotations could be increased by
no small number of similar ones from
other books. I believe that they are the
expression of an opinion, still widely pre-
valent even at the present day, which,
whether openly avowed or not, is far-
1 Theologisohe Literaturzeitung, 1894, xix., col. 338
44 THE PROBLEM OF
reaching in its effects, particularly on exe-
gesis. The Greek Bible, or at least the
New Testament, is thus separated off from
the bulk of the monuments of the Greek
language that have come down to us from
antiquity, in just the same way as, for
example, the inscriptions in the Doric
dialect might be collected into a special
volume or section by some one who was
editing all the Greek inscriptions extant.
The Bible is thus isolated, because it is
supposed to be written hi " Biblical "
Greek, and the New Testament because it
is in " New Testament " Greek, in a
" language," an " idiom," a " Greek," that
must be sharply distinguished from the
rest of what people have been so fond of
calling " profane Greek." They could only
:c BIBLICAL " GREEK 45
commit one more blunder by speaking of
a Biblical or New Testament dialect. I
have never met with this term in the
literature of the subject, but I am sure it
represents the popular conception in many
quarters as to what the " language " of
the Bible or the New Testament is.
This Greek, so people go on to argue, is
outwardly, in comparison with other Greek,
of unmistakable individuality, and inwardly
it is uniform, subject to laws of its own,
and possessing its own vocabulary. Even
those words which are not to be reckoned
among the specifically " Biblical " or " New
Testament " words show for the most part
a change of meaning that is often consider-
able and not infrequently is owing to the
influence of the Hebrew or Semitic genius.
46 THE PROBLEM OF
To sum up : the two fundamental notions
most commonly met with in the older
literature of the subject concerning the
linguistic character of the Greek Bible
are firstly the peculiarity, and secondly
the uniformity of Biblical, or at least of
New Testament Greek.
Those who support these two fundamental
notions show more or less clearly by so
doing their connexion with the earlier
stages of research. The second idea in
particular, that of the uniformity of
Biblical Greek, is very old — as old as the
earliest scientific speculation about the
language of the Greek Bible. In the
controversy of the Purists and Hebraists
in the seventeenth century it was never
for one moment questioned ; it was a
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 47
postulate for the theories of both par-
ties.
And it is historically not difficult to
understand ; it is the simple consequence
of the mechanically conceived doctrine
of inspiration as applied to the New Testa-
ment. The extension of the idea to the
Greek Old Testament, which is no doubt
of recent date, probably originated in an
equally simple backward inference from
the New Testament. The idea, once estab-
lished, was supported by the concept, also
quite logical in its way, of what is Biblical
in the literary sense, the concept of what is
Canonical.
But how does this doctrine of the peculiar
and uniform nature of Biblical Greek
square with the facts ? One thing seems
48 THE PROBLEM OF
clear to me from the outset : it is, to say
the least, incautious to make this doctrine
the starting-point of research.
And if we have given up the theory of
mechanical inspiration, a glance at the
history of the growth of the Greek Bible
in its separate parts will make us still
more distrustful. For this history shows
us the possibility and the probability of
temporal and local differentiation.
But the sacred texts themselves speak
most clearly of all. They call emphatically
for division on linguistic lines into two
great groups — original Greek writings, and
translations of Semitic originals. Any one
who does not respect this boundary line
soon loses his bearings, especially in criti-
cizing the syntactical phenomena of the
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 49
Greek Bible. The boundary line, it is
true, does not run in such a way that the
Septuagint lies on one side and the books
of the New Testament on the other. On
the contrary, the sayings of Jesus in the
synoptic Gospels, and perhaps more of the
New Testament, must be counted with the
examples of translators' Greek, while several
of the so-called apocryphal books of the
Old Testament, adopted by the Septuagint,
go with the Greek originals.
These two groups differ very remarkably
from each other in respect to their linguistic
character. We might compare, for example,
the Second Epistle to the Corinthians with
the Greek version of Job. The original
Greek writings are examples of Greek as
it was really spoken ; the Greek of the
P.Q.B.
50 THE PROBLEM OF
translations often shows traces of being
influenced by the language of the original,
and may sometime^ be described as abso-
lutely artificial, for it was not a spoken
language but invented by the translators
for their immediate purpose. We must
not say, therefore, that this translators'
Greek was so spoken by the Jews of Alex-
andria and Asiatics ; we must not call it
"Jewish Greek." The real spoken language
of the Greek Jews is illustrated in the
writings of Philo, who inclined rather to
the use of the literary language, and in
the Pauline Epistles, Jewish inscriptions
and papyri, where we find more the collo-
quial language in its various grades.
Yet the non-Greek character of the
translated books must not be exaggerated.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 51
I myself have formerly been less reserved
in expressing my opinion on this point
than I should be now. The Septuagint
in many of its parts is not a non-Greek
book if only we take as our standard not
the classical Attic of the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C. but the popular cosmopolitan
Greek of the last three centuries B.C. Much
that is non- Attic in the Septuagint is not
necessarily non-Greek, but is proved by
contemporary " vulgar " texts to be popular
Greek.
We find, moreover, remarkable differ-
ences within the two main groups them-
selves, as was only to be expected. The
translations were not made by one and the
same hand, nor on a uniform method ; for
example, the sayings of our Lord in the
52 THE PROBLEM OF
Gospels are in general better translated
than many parts of the Septuagint. How
characteristic is the language of the Gospel
and Epistles of St. John as compared with,
say, the Epistle to the Hebrews. The
Johannine Epistles are classical examples
of the simplest popular language ; the
Epistle to the Hebrews exhibits a strong
leaning towards the literary language.
In the face of these facts, therefore, we
cannot assume that under the Ptolemies
a uniform Greek for religious purposes
grew up among the Egyptian Jews, and
that under Tiberius, Claudius, etc., until
right into the second century, this was also
the language of Christians in Syria, Asia,
Achaia, and Rome. These assumptions
are now seen to be fictitious.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 63
On the contrary, if we examine histori-
cally the language of the Old and New
Testaments, our decided impression can
only be this : Here we have side by side
linguistic elements of essentially dissimilar
types ; and in stating and in solving our
problem there can be no other point of
view to be adopted except the histori-
cal.
A good deal of the uncertainty, however,
which does nevertheless undoubtedly exist
on this matter, arises from people's con-
fusing the religious with the linguistic
point of view in their historical examina-
tion. From the point of view of the history
of religion the sacred books, despite their
want of linguistic uniformity, must be
taken together as documents and memorials
54 THE PROBLEM OF
of two phases of revelation that are insepar-
able from one another. That is beyond
doubt, and no less certain is it that the
thoughts, the concepts, the spirit of the
Greek Old Testament and of the New
Testament are related, and that they differ
characteristically in their main lines from
the average faith of Graeco-Roman religion.
But these are considerations dictated by
the history of religion ; they can play no
part in the determination of a specifically
Biblical or Christian Greek.
One single consideration drawn from
the history of language speaks for a certain
linguistic peculiarity and uniformity of
the Biblical writings, though only in a
formal sense. They must all be criticized
as monuments of late Greek, and most of
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 55
them as monuments of non-literary Greek,
and with the express reservation that
" late Greek " does not mean something
sharply defined, always recognizable at
once and with precision, but something
fluctuating, often problematical, something
which we do not fully know, a piece of
living and therefore mysterious linguistic
history.
There is no formula by which to describe
briefly the characteristics of late Greek,
and qualitative judgments describing it
as " bad " Greek, and so on, are either
uttered by doctrinaires regardless of history
or echoed from the grammarians who
fancied themselves able by their authority
to prevent the changes and chances of things.
Greek philologists, enslaved to the pre-
56 THE PROBLEM OF
judice that only the so-called classical
Greek is beautiful, have long treated the
texts of the later period with the greatest
contempt. A good deal of their false
judgments about late Greek is the simple
consequence of their complete ignorance
of it. The renaissance of Greek philology
in our own day, owing to the progress of
Epigraphy and Papyrology, has made
amends for the neglect of late Greek by the
older generation of scholars. At the present
day there are plenty of accurate workers
engaged in investigating philologically the
newly discovered specimens of cosmopolitan
Greek of the period from Alexander the
Great to Constantino. I will mention only
the most important : Dr. Wilhelm Cronert
of Gottingen (Memoria Graeca Hercula-
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 57
nensis) ; x Dr. Karl Dieterich, of Leipzig
(Investigations on the History of the Greek
Language) ; 2 Dr. Hatzidakis, the well-
known Professor at Athens (Introduction
to Modern Greek Grammar) ; 3 Dr. van
Herwerden, the veteran Dutch philologist
(Lexicon Graecum Suppletorium et Dialec-
ticum) ; 4 Dr. Jannaris, the St. Andrews
lecturer (Historical Greek Grammar) ; 5 Dr.
Kretschmer, of Vienna (The Origin of the
1 Memoria Graeca Herculanensis. Cum titulorum
Aegypti papyrorum codicum denique testimoniis corn-
par -atam proposuit Guilelmus Cronert. Lipsiae, 1903.
2 Karl Dieterich, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
der griechischen Sprache von der hellenistischen Zeit
bis zum 10. Jahrh. n. Chr., Leipzig, 1898.
3 Georgios N. Hatzidakis (=Chatzidakes), Ein-
leitung in die neugriechische GrammatiJc, Leipzig, 1892.
4 Henricus van Herwerden, Lexicon Graecum
suppletorium et dialecticum, Lugduni Batavorum, 1902,
1904 (two parts).
5 Antonios N. Jannaris ( = Giannares), An Historical
Greek Grammar, London, 1897.
58 THE PROBLEM OF
; i Dr. Mayser, a Stuttgart school-
master (Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the
Ptolemaic Period) ; 2 Dr. Meisterhans and Dr.
Schwyzer, two Swiss scholars (Grammar of
the Attic Inscriptions) ; 3 Dr. Nachmanson, a
Swede (Phonology and Morphology of the
Inscriptions of Magnesia) ; 4 Dr. Wilhelm
Schmid, the Tubingen Professor (The
Atticists) ; 5 Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt, a Prus-
1 Paul Kretschmer, Die Entstehung der Koine,
Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissen-
schaften in Wien, philos.-hist. Klasse, Band cxliii.,
Nr. 10.
2 Edwin Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen Papyri
aus der Ptolemderzeit, mil Einschluss der gleichzeitigen
Ostraka und der in Agypten verfassten Inschriften.
Laut- und Wortlehre. Leipzig, 1906.
3 K. Meisterhans, Grammatik der attischen In-
schriften, Berlin, 1885 ; zweite Auflage, Berlin, 1888 ;
dritte vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage, besorgt
von E. Schwyzer, Berlin, 1900.
4 Ernst Nachmanson, Laute und Formen der
magnetischen Inschriften, Upsala, 1903.
6 Wilhelm Schmid, Der Atticismus in seinen
Hauptvertretern von Dionysius von Halikarnass bis
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 59
sian schoolmaster (De Flavii Josephi elo-
cutione) ; 1 Dr. Wilhelm Schulze, a member
of the Berlin Academy (Graeca Latino) ; 2
Dr. Schweizer (Grammar of the Inscriptions
of Pergamos),3 who now calls himself
" Schwyzer " and has been already men-
tioned as the reviser of Meisterhans ; Dr.
Thumb of the University of Marburg
(The Greek Language in the Hellenistic
Period) ; 4 Dr. Wackernagel, the Gottingen
auf den zweiten Philostratus, Stuttgart, 1887-97
(5 vols.).
1 Guilelmus Schmidt, De Flavii losephi elocutione
observations criticae, Lipsiae, 1893 ; (from Fleckeisen's
Jahrbiicher, Suppl. xx., pp. 345-550.
2 Guilelmus Schulze, Graeca Latina (Einladung
zur akademischen Preisverkiindigung), Gottingen,
1901.
3 Eduard Schweizer, Grammatik der pergamenischen
Inschriften, Berlin, 1898.
4 Albert Thumb, Die griechische Sprache im
Zeitalter des Hellenismus : Beitrdge zur Geschichte
und Beurtheilung der Koivr]> Strassburg, 1901.
60 THE PROBLEM OF
Professor of Comparative Philology (Hel-
lenistica),1 and other scholars.
In this renaissance of Greek philology
the Greek Bible has also been regarded
with new eyes. It may now be described
as the central object of the investigations
into late Greek. Whereas formerly the
qualitative judgments, " good " or " bad,"
prevented the clear recognition of its
linguistic character, now, owing to its
being brought into vital connexion with
late Greek, floods of light are being shed
upon the Bible. We may say that the
Greek Bible is now seen to be, in its very
nature and in its influence, the noblest
monument of cosmopolitan late Greek.
1 Jacobus Wackernagel, Hellenistica (Einladung
zur akademischen Preisverkiindigung), Gottingen,
1907.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 61
This late Greek, including the original
Greek of the Bible, is neither good nor bad ;
it bears the stamp of its age and asserts
its own distinctive position in a grand
process of development in the language,
which, beginning in the earliest times, has
lasted down to the present day. Late
Greek has stripped off much that was
customary in the earlier period, and it
contains germs of future developments
destined to be completed in Modern Greek.
We may then speak of a certain pecu-
liarity and uniformity in original " Bible "
Greek, but solely as opposed to earlier or
later phases of the history of the language,
not as opposed to " profane Greek."
The peculiarities of late Greek are most
clearly discernible in the accidence. We
62 THE PROBLEM OF
are now so far advanced as to have estab-
lished almost completely the morphology
of the popular and colloquial forms of
Hellenistic Greek. And we find that there
is remarkable agreement between these
forms and the forms that used to be con-
sidered peculiar to New Testament or
Septuagint Greek.
From the lexical point of view there is
also found to be great community between
the Biblical and non-Biblical Greek.
As for the syntactical and stylistic
peculiarities that formerly were considered
the chief reason for isolating " Biblical "
Greek, they also appear now in a different
light. We have come to recognize that
we had greatly over-estimated the num-
ber of Hebraisms and Aramaisms in the
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 63
Bible. Many features that are non-Attic
and bear some resemblance to the Semitic
and were therefore regarded as Semiticisms,
belong really to the great class of interna-
tional vulgarisms, and are found in vulgar
papyri and inscriptions as well as in the
Bible.
The number of real Semiticisms is there-
fore smaller than was supposed, and smaller
than Julius Wellhausen,1 for example, has
recently declared it to be. But not one of
the recent investigators has dreamt of
denying the existence of Semiticisms . They
are more numerous in the Septuagint
than in those parts of the New Testament
that were translated from the Aramaic ;
1 Julius Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten
Evangelien, Berlin, 1905, p. 9 ff.
64 THE PROBLEM OF
but in the original Greek texts they are
very rare.
In pronouncing on them philologically a
distinction must be observed that was
formulated by Hermann Paul * in a case
of the same kind : the distinction between
what is occasional and what is usual.
Semiticisms are " occasional," for example,
if they are brought about in a translation
by the accidental influence of the original
from which the translation is made ; they
are " usual " if, for example, they have
become stereotyped in " sacred formulas "
or other phrases. A certain number of
these " usual " Semiticisms were moreover
coined by the Septuagint, and may there-
1 Hermann Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte,
3. Auflage, Halle, 1898, pp. 67, 145.
"BIBLICAL" GREEK 65
fore, as Theodor Nageli 1 well suggested,
be called Septuagintisms.
What we do deny is merely this : that
the Semiticisms, particularly those of the
New Testament, are sufficient reason for
scholars to isolate the language of our
sacred texts. Our opinion of the Biblical
language is reached by considering its
innumerable coincidences with the cosmo-
politan language, not its numerable differ-
ences from it. The Semiticisms do not
place the Bible outside the scope of Greek
philology ; they are merely birthmarks.
They show us that in this great cosmopolitan
Book the Greek cosmopolitan language was
spoken by men whose home lay in the
East.
1 Theodor Nageli, Der Wortschatz des Apostels •
Paulus, Gottingen, 1905, p. 74.
T.G.B. 5
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
Ill
SEPTTJAGINT PHILOLOGY
OUR discussion in the second lecture on
methods of studying the language of the
Greek Bible may be said to result in two
requirements, one for specialization of the
study, the other for its incorporation as a
branch in the larger complex of studies
dealing with late Greek.
For future linguistic work on the Greek
Bible, particularly the Septuagint, on these
lines we now possess an auxiliary of more
than ordinary importance in a great three-
volume concordance that has recently been
completed : the Concordance to the Septua-
70 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
gint and the other Greek Translations of the
Old Testament, by Edwin Hatch and Henry
A. Redpath.1 Apart from the " Indices "
to some classical authors and concordances
to the more important English poets books
of this sort are really a speciality of the
theological tool-basket. Originally, no
doubt, they were designed to assist in
practical exegesis, but they now form part
of the indispensable apparatus of scientific
investigation. They enable us to take
a rapid survey of the uses of words, forms,
and constructions, and though they may
seem to be a satire on the saying that the
Scripture cannot be broken, if rightly used
they do indeed promote the more intimate
knowledge of the Bible.
r l Oxford, 1892-1906, 3
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 71
The chief requisites indispensable in any
concordance are trustworthiness and com-
pleteness of statement. The old Septua-
gint Concordance by Tromm,1 to which
one was formerly obliged to have recourse,
did not fulfil these requirements. It was
published in 1718, and is responsible for a
good deal of original sin in the quotations
to be found hi commentaries.
The new Concordance was prepared and
begun under the auspices of Hatch, who,
however, did not live to witness the publica-
tion of even the first instalment. He died,
according to human reckoning, much too
early, on the eleventh of November, 1889,
at Oxford. I consider the preparation of
1 Abraham Tromm, Concordantiae Graecae versionis
LXX. Inter pretum, Amstelodami et Trajecti ad
Rhenum, 1718 (2 vols., folio).
72 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
the Septuagint Concordance to have been
his greatest service to learning. That mon-
umental work is the abiding fulfilment of
the simple aspiration that Hatch himself
once expressed in verse :
For me . . .
To have been a link in the chain of life :
Shall be immortality.
Like all human work, it is not free from
errors, but it is on the whole thoroughly
trustworthy. One of its chief advances
on its predecessor is shown in the attention
paid to those minute words, the particles,
which are of such great interest philologi-
cally. Schmiedel,1 however, is certainly
right in wishing that in the case of particles
the editors had not only noted the passages
but also printed them in full. It is really,
1 Winer-Schmiedel, p. xv.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 73
in some cases, of more importance to be
able to inform oneself rapidly concerning
the uses of the particle av than to be able
to trace in long lists the occurrence of such
a word as ai>6pw7ros.
It is a defect, in my opinion, that the
principle of absolute completeness has not
been carried out. Thus, for example, the
personal pronouns are not given, or rather
they are only recorded with the addition
of the word passim — a remark which may
of course mean very much or very little.
Not long ago I had occasion to examine the
uses of the solemn formula " I am," eyw
€«V, which occurs in the Gospel of St.
John and in inscriptions relating to the
cult of Isis. Here the Concordance, article
ey<*>, failed to assist me, for the ey«>
74 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
which it records is something different.
In this case of course it was possible to look
for ei/uu in the article elvai ; but what is
to be done when the grammarian wishes
to examine the use of the emphatic ey«
or <rv ?
I am unable to agree with the aggrieved
complaint of Cremer,1 to whom the statis-
tical system followed in the Concordance
seems to be a mistake. On the contrary, I
consider it an advantage that we now obtain
more rapid information as to the linguistic
usages of the separate books. The numbers
appended always will afford information
as to the Hebrew original for which the
Greek word stands. We must also be
grateful for the notice taken of the chief
1 Bibl.-Theol. Worterbuch, 8th ed., p. xv. f.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 75
variants in the manuscripts. Many details
of importance in the history of the language
are concealed in them. For example, the
word SoKijjLios, of great importance in two
places l in the New Testament where it
was not recognized, can be established
from Septuagint variants, and its occur-
rence is then confirmed by the papyri.
The third volume is particularly valuable.
It contains a Concordance of proper names
in the Septuagint and other translations
which may be called epoch-making as
regards the study of Semitic and Greek
sounds and pronunciation. It contains
further a Concordance of the parts of the
Greek Ecclesiasticus where corresponding
Hebrew equivalents can be given. Thirdly,
1 Jas. i. 3, 1 Pet. i. 7.
76 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
there is new Hexaplaric material, chiefly
from the discoveries of Dr. Mercati in the
Vatican Library ; and finally there is an
Index to the Hebrew words in the whole
work.
This last index possesses an importance
that has not yet been generally recognized.
We knew already from the Greek Concord-
ance that the Septuagint exhibits a striking
simplification of the vocabulary of its
original. One single Septuagint word
serves not infrequently to translate a hun-
dred and more different words in the
Hebrew. How far this reduction of the
copiousness of the Hebrew was neutralized
by Hebrew words receiving a variety of
Greek translations, it was hitherto, except
by very troublesome work with the Hebrew
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 77
Concordance, impossible to ascertain. The
Hebrew index of the Oxford Concordance
has now made it possible to examine with
both speed and accuracy this not unim-
portant question in the statistics of the
language. We see that there are also
Hebrew words which the translators have
rendered in over a hundred different ways.
The same index will also prove of excellent
service for investigating the peculiarities
of the individual translators.
The work is printed with simple English
elegance and will remain for years and
perhaps for centuries the only one of its
kind. Remembering this we can only
repeat with deep gratitude the words of the
surviving editor, Henry A. Redpath, in his
last preface, dated May, 1906, where he
78 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
describes the work as a labour of love.
Truly, such a monumental work could not
have been created without love and
enthusiasm.
A Concordance does not pretend to be a
positive advancement of philology ; but
it can be the stimulus to a revival of the
study, for it is to the scholar the same as a
large, well-arranged herbarium is to the
botanist — material for research in con-
veniently accessible form.
Other equally important auxiliaries for
students of the Septuagint are the new
editions of the text. Oxford presented us
with the new Concordance, and Cambridge
is giving us the new text. First Henry
Barclay Swete produced a highly successful
manual edition of the Vatican text,1 with
1 The Old Testament in Greek according to the Sep-
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 79
the variants of the other most important
manuscripts, and supplemented it with the
first Introduction to the Old Testament
in Greek.1 His labours are the most
important that have been bestowed on the
Septuagint since Lagarde's valuable work
in the last third of the nineteenth century.
His Introduction in particular is at once a
compendium of all the earlier Septuagint
philology and a stimulus for all future work
on the subject.
Then the " large " Cambridge Septua-
gint 2 began to appear, Genesis being
tuagint. Edited by H. B. Swete, 3 vols., Cambridge,
1887-94 ; 2nd ed., 1895-1900 ; 3rd ed., 1901-7.
1 An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek,
by H. B. Swete. Cambridge, 1900 ; 2nd ed., 1902.
2 The Old Testament in Greek according to the text
of Codex Vaticanus, supplemented from other uncial
manuscripts, with a critical apparatus containing
the variants of the chief ancient authorities for the
80 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
published in 1906 as the first part of the first
volume. This great work was also origin-
ally under the management of Swete, but
when he was obliged to relinquish the
execution of the larger plan in 1895 it was
entrusted to Alan England Brooke and
Norman McLean. The Cambridge Septua-
gint does not aim at determining the primi-
tive text — the time is not yet ripe for that —
but it tries to give a collection, as complete
and trustworthy as possible, of all the
materials for the text, which, since the
great Oxford edition of Holmes and Parsons,1
have been greatly increased. Such a col-
text of the Septuagint. Edited by Alan E. Brooke
and Norman McLean. Vol. i., Part 1., Genesis.
Cambridge, 1906.
1 R. Holmes and J. Parsons, Veins Testamentum
Graecum cum variis lectionibus, Oxonii, 1798-1827
(5 vols.).
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 81
lection of the materials was as necessary
as daily bread to Biblical philology. I
was at the Hamburg Congress of Oriental-
ists in 1902, when Professor Nestle made the
first authentic announcement concerning
the forthcoming work based on an article
by Brooke and McLean, and there can be
no doubt that all present were impressed
by the extreme importance of the matter.
The Genesis which has since appeared has
not disappointed our highest expectations.
The editors have worked with the greatest
accuracy. All the available witnesses to
the text have been cited, down to the
most recently published papyri, includ-
ing the most important cursive manu-
scripts, the old translations, Philo, the New
Testament, and the quotations in the old
P.G.B.
82 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
ecclesiastical writers. The thread upon
which everything is strung is usually, as in
Swete's edition, the Codex Vaticanus. The
typography is a masterpiece of the Cam-
bridge University Press.
It is to be hoped that, as we now possess
such splendid new auxiliaries, Biblical phil-
ology will address itself to the great task
of compiling a Septuagint Lexicon. It
would be quite mistaken policy to postpone
work on the Lexicon till we have something
like a critical text. That would be putting
it off till the Greek Kalends. But we can
begin at once. A Lexicon is not intended
to last for centuries ; it does duty only until
it is relieved by a better one, and the textual
critic is the last person who can afford to
do without a Lexicon. Hitherto we have
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 83
had only the old Septuagint Dictionary by
Biel,1 or the revision of it by Schleusner,2
which is a rather insipid adaptation of
Tromm's Concordance, useless at the present
day except as a collection of material.
The Key to the Old Testament Apocrypha
by Christian Abraham Wahl 3 is better in
its way, but also no longer up to the stan-
1 Joannes Christianus Biel, Novus Thesaurus
Philologicus : sive Lexicon in LXX. et alias interpretes
et scriptores apocryphos Veteris Testamenti. Ex Bielii
autoris manuscripto edidit ac praefatus est E. H.
Mutzenbecher. Hagae Comitum, 1779-80 (3 parts).
2 Johann Friedrich Schleusner, Novus Thesaurus
philologico-criticus : sive Lexicon in LXX. et reliquos
interpretes Graecos ac scriptores apocryphos Veteris
Testamenti. Post Bielium et alios viros doctos con-
gessit et edidit J. F. Schleusner. Lipsiae, 1820-1 (5
parts) ; editio altera, locupletata, Londini, 1829
(3 vols.).
Lexici in Interpretes Graecos Veteris Testamenti,
maxime Scriptores Apocryphos spicilegium. Post
Bielium congessit et edidit J. F. Schleusner. Lipsiae,
1784-6 (2 vols.).
3 C. A. Wahl, Clavis librorum Veteris Testamenti
Apocryphorum philologica, Lipsiae, 1853.
84 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
dard of modern requirements. Particularly
for the Septuagint Lexicon the inscriptions
and papyri are of the very greatest import-
ance.
Recent years have produced only prelim-
inary studies for the future lexicon. Those
contributed by Hermann Cremer in his
Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testa-
ment Greek1 must on no account be for-
gotten. Yet I cannot help feeling that
partly at least they are influenced by the
belief in " Biblical" Greek, and I consider
critical revision to be imperative. The
same applies to the lexical work in
Hatch's Essays in Biblical Greek,2 which are
full of fine observations. H. A. A. Ken-
1 See above, p. 41, n. 1.
2 See above, p. 40, n. 1.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 85
nedy, in his Sources of New Testament
Greek* a book which is unfortunately not
always correct in its detailed statements,
supplies many correct illustrations of the
vocabulary of the Septuagint, and after-
wards of the New Testament, from con-
temporary Greek sources. A gratifying
piece of work in the form of a ^doctoral
dissertation was published at Halle in
1894 by Heinrich Anz,2 investigating the
relation of two hundred and eighty-nine
verbs in the Pentateuch with the popular
language. The conception of " Biblical "
Greek, which might so easily have been an
obstacle to the work, obviously causes
1 See above, p. 40, n. 2.
2 Heinrich Anz, Subsidia ad cognoscendum Grae-
corum sermonem vulgarem e Pentateuchi versione
Alexandrina repetita. Dissertationes Philologicae
Halenses, vol. XII., Halis Sax., 1894.
86 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
the author few misgivings. He takes the
Book of the Seventy frankly for what it is
and what it claims to be, and treats it as a
specimen of popular Greek. His investiga-
tions into the history of the words selected
impress one as thoroughly sound, and may
be regarded as preliminary studies for the
Septuagint Dictionary. It is a pity that
the more recent papyrus discoveries were
not then accessible to the author.
In 1897 and 1899 the Professor of Theo-
logy at Utrecht, J. M. S. Baljon,1 published
a Dictionary of Early Christian Literature,
which as regards the New Testament
articles was founded on Cremer. It pro-
fesses to contain the vocabulary of the
1 J. M. S. Baljon, Grieksch-theologisch Woordenboek
hoofdzakelijk van de oud-christelijke letterkunde,
Utrecht, 1895-9 (2 parts).
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 87
Septuagint and its satellites, besides that of
the New Testament and of Early Christian
literature in general. The idea of construct-
ing a common dictionary for the whole of
this large field is undoubtedly a good one,
but one cannot help suspecting that the
idea is too great for the present time. A
lexicon, whether to the Septuagint or to
the New Testament, cannot be constructed
off-hand, if it is to contain what we have a
right nowadays to expect. Blass criticized
the book l and found in it not a little that
a philologist could not approve. With all
admiration for Baljon's industry it must
nevertheless be said that he does not even
touch, much less solve, the really great
problems of a Septuagint Dictionary.
1 Theologische Liter aturzeitung, 1897, xxii. col. 43 f.
88 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
In 1895 a Cambridge committee drew up
a plan for a Dictionary of the Septuagint,
but Swete some time ago informed us that
the plan had been suspended for the present.
This is highly regrettable, but the reasons
for the suspension are intelligible to any
one who knows the present position of
research. The difficulties are very great,
and those peculiar to a Septuagint Diction-
ary are commonly underestimated. People
think that the problem is solved by ascer-
taining what Hebrew word or words are
represented by the Septuagint word. They
then look up the meaning of the Hebrew
and thus obtain what they consider the
" meaning " of the Septuagint word. Equiv-
alence of the words — an obvious fact, easily
ascertainable — is taken without further ado
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 89
to denote equivalence in the ideas conveyed.
People forget that the Septuagint has
often substituted words of its own rather
than translated. All translation, in fact,
implies some, if only a slight, alteration of
the sense of the original. The meaning of
a Septuagint word cannot be deduced from
the original which it translates or replaces
but only from other remains of the Greek
language, especially from those Egyptian
sources that have lately flowed so abund-
antly. Even Professor Blass, I am glad to
say, took up this position at last — a position
which, unfortunately, is not conceded at
once, but has to be slowly won by combat
with an unmethodical school.
To give one example : Baljon in his
Lexicon gives as meanings for the Septua-
90 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
gint word apitevOos " olive tree " and
" cypress tree." The Hebrew words for
these two trees are certainly sometimes
rendered apKevOos by the translators, and
so Baljon concludes that in the language
of the Septuagint apicevQos had these
meanings. No, says Blass 1 very truly,
apicevOos means " juniper," and " a wrong
translation does not turn the juniper into
an olive or a cypress." There can be no
doubt about that.
I can perhaps make my point clearer by
an analogy. In the English Authorized
Version the " terebinth " of the original
is usually translated " oak " (Isa. i. 29 ;
Gen. xxxv. 4). On the analogy of Baljon's
article a Dictionary of the Authorized
1 Col. 44.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 91
Version would have to say that " oak "
meant " terebinth," whereas the truth of
the matter is that the English translators,
like Luther in the German translation, have
rendered the Hebrew — I will not say
wrongly, but — inexactly. They have
Anglicized and Luther has Germanized
the Oriental tree.
In the case of Septuagint words of
importance in the history of religion the
unhappy confusing influence of the mechan-
ical equating process is shown still more
clearly ; the apparent and external equival-
ence of words is made the basis of far-
reaching deductions. Even a Septuagint
scholar like Eberhard Nestle, whose scat-
tered notes are usually most instructive,
does not keep altogether clear of this
method.
92 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
As an example to illustrate this whole
subject I may mention the word IXao-Trjpiov.
You will read of this word in many respect-
able books on theology that in Septuagint
Greek or in " Biblical " Greek it " means "
" the lid of the ark of the covenant/'
because the corresponding Hebrew word
" kapporeth " is in most cases so translated
by modern scholars. Now the etymology
of the word, confirmed by certain inscrip-
tions, shows that IXaa-rripiov means "ob-
ject of expiation or propitiation." In
choosing the word IXaa-rripiov to denote
the lid of the ark of the covenant the
Septuagint has not translated the concept
of " lid " but has replaced it by another
concept which brings out the sacred purpose
of the ark. The lid of the ark of the
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 93
covenant is an iXaa-Trjpiov, but it does not
follow that tXavTvpiov means " lid " either
in the Septuagint, in St. Paul, or anywhere
else ; it can only mean " expiatory or
propiatory object."
A large proportion of the so-called "Bib-
lical " meanings of words common to all
forms of the Greek language owe their
existence in the dictionaries solely to
this mechanical equating process. In
order to effect such comparisons of words
there is no need of a lexicon at all ; the
concordance is sufficient. The lexicon has
very different and much more complicated
tasks before it. It must exhibit the Greek
word in the history of its uses, availing
itself specially of the linguistic remains
that are locally and temporally most appro-
94 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
priate. It must try to discover and explain
the discrepancies of meaning between words
equated with one another by the compara-
tive method.
This task is as profitable as it is vast.
It will be discovered that the translators,
despite their reverence for the syntactical
peculiarities of their original, have made
liberal use of their own everyday vocabu-
lary, especially in the case of technical and
expressive phrases. This has been shown
in an instructive essay by B. Jacob l
on the Book of Esther. Various details
will be found in the writings of Jean
Antoine Letronne 2 and Giacomo Lum-
1 B. Jacob, Das Buck Esther bei den LXX., Zeit-
schrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1890, x.
p. 241 fit.
2 J. A. Letronne, Recherches pour servir a Vhistoire
de rEgypte pendant la domination des Grecs et des
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 95
broso * on Egyptian history under the
Ptolemies, and in the still valuable work
of H. W. J. Thiersch on the Greek
Pentateuch.2
As examples of the Egyptianizing and,
from their point of view, modernizing
tendency of the translators, I may quote
the following. In the book of Esther (ii.
21) certain officials are mentioned who
bear the title of " keepers of the thresh-
Romains, tirees des inscriptions grecques et latines,
relatives a la chronologic, a 1'etat des arts, aux usages
civils et religieux de ce pays. Paris, 1823. — Recueil
des Inscriptions Grecques et Latines de Vfigypte,
etudiees dans leur rapport avec 1'histoire politique,
Padministration interieure, les institutions civiles et
religieuses de ce pays, depuis la conquete d'Alex-
andre jusqu'a celle des Arabes. Paris, 1842-8.
1 G. Lumbroso, L'Egitto dei Greci e dei Romani ;
seconda edizione . . . accresciuta di un appendice
bibliografica. Roma, 1895. — Recherches sur V economie
politique de VBgypte sous les Lagides. Turin, 1870.
2 Heinrieh Wilhelm Josias Thiersch, De Pentateuchi
versione Alexandrina libri ires. Erlangae, 1840.
96 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
old." The Septuagint renders this title
by apxio-(0juLaTo<pv\a%9 that is " chief of the
body-guard," a designation that occurs in
Egyptian inscriptions and papyri l as the
title of an official in the court of the
Ptolemies.
In Joel i. 20, describing the distress of
the land, it is said that the rivers of waters
are dried up. The Egyptian translators
have turned the " rivers of waters " into
" canals," thus making the description
much more life-like to Egyptian readers.
In Genesis 1. 2 ff. it is written that the
physicians embalmed the body of Jacob.
The Septuagint says evrafaaa-Tai instead
of " physicians " (iarpol), for cvTCKpiaa-n]?,
as we know from a papyrus 2 of the first
1 Deissmann, Bible Studies, 2nd ed., p. 98.
2 Ibid., p. 120 f.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 97
century B.C., was the technical term for
members of the guild that looked after
embalming.
Thiersch's little book, already mentioned,
consists chiefly of grammatical studies of
the translation of the Pentateuch. It is in
every respect a most excellent performance,
and was in many points decidedly in advance
of its times. Unfortunately, for a long
period Thiersch had practically no followers.
Purely grammatical investigations of the
Septuagint were altogether wanting except
what was now and then contained in
Grammars of the New Testament, especially
Schmiedel's.1 The spell was broken by
Swete in his Introduction.2 His fourth
1 See above, p. 41, n. 2.
2 See above, p. 79, n. 1.
98 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
chapter, containing an account of the Greek
of the Septuagint, includes an outline of
the grammar ; another is given by Cony-
beare and Stock x in their Selections from
the Septuagint, which will be referred to
again presently. A larger Septuagint
Grammar is announced as in prepara-
tion by Thackeray, the editor of the
Epistle of Aristeas in Swete's Introduc-
tion.
In the autumn of 1907 there was pub-
lished, after years of preliminary labour, a
German Septuagint Grammar by R. Helb-
ing,2 closely in touch with the recent
developments of Greek philology, and based
upon an exact study of the enormous
1 See below, p. 101, n. 2.
2 Robert Helbing, Orammatik der Septuaginta
Laut- und Wortlehre, Gottingen, 1907.
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 99
materials drawn from the three parallel
sources — inscriptions, papyri, and late
authors. The extent of the material
furnished merely by the papyri of the
Ptolemaic age, contemporary with the
Septuagint, may be judged from the highly
meritorious Grammar of Greek Papyri of
the Ptolemaic Epoch recently published
by Edwin Mayser,1 who, like Helbing, has
turned his attention in the first place to
the Phonology and Accidence. The syn-
tactical problems will be treated in separate
volumes by both scholars.
The exegesis of the Septuagint forms by
itself a special department of Septuagint
philology. Its aim is to interpret the Greek
Old Testament as the Greek Bible. The
1 See above, p. 58, n. 2.
100 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
Seventy represented a Hellenization of
Semitic monotheism on a great scale, and
their work became a force in literature and
in the history of religion, just like Luther's
Bible in later times. But, apart from
commentaries on the Old Testament by
ancient fathers of the Church, exegetical
works on the Septuagint compiled in earlier
times are unknown. Such work was neg-
lected probably because the Septuagint was
generally used simply as a means for the
reconstruction of the Hebrew original text,
and because the few who were interested in
the contents of the book for its own sake
were much too strongly inclined to believe
that the sense of the Greek text was one
and the same with that of the Semitic
original. In countless instances, however,
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
the sense of the two texts does not coincide
—and then is the time for Septuagint exe-
gesis to step in : it is a fine large field,
and until lately was quite un worked.
Three beginnings have recently been
made: one by R. R. Ottley in his Book of
Isaiah according to the Septuagint 1 ; the
second by F. C. Conybeare and St. George
Stock, who in their Selections from the
Septuagint 2 have provided a series of
stories from the historical books of the
Septuagint with a detailed introduction
and exegetical notes; and the third by
F. W. Mozley, who wrote a commentary
1 The Book of Isaiah according to the Septuagint,
Codex Alexandrinus. Translated and edited by R. R.
Ottley. With a parallel version from the Hebrew.
Cambridge, 1904, 1906. (2 vols.)
2 Selections from the Septuagint according to the
text of Swete. Boston (U.S.A.) and London [1905].
(Ginn & Co.'s College Series of Greek Authors.)
102 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
on the Septuagint Psalms.1 The English
translation of the Septuagint by Charles
Thomson,2 which I have not yet seen
1 The Psalter of the Church, Cambridge, 1905.
2 [Translator's Note]. Charles Thomson (1719-
1824) was Secretary to Congress, United States of
America. His translation of the Septuagint was
printed at Philadelphia, 1808, and was apparently
the first English version of the Old Testament made
from the Greek. It has recently been reprinted :
" The Old Covenant, commonly called the Old Testa-
ment : translated from the Septuagint. By Charles
Thomson. A new edition by S. F. Pells," London
(Skeffington), 1904 (2 vols.). A " second issue," with
the introductory matter increased from thirty-four
to sixty- two pages was " published by the Editor,
Hove, England, 1907." Stamped on the cover of
each volume are the words : " The Septuagint. The
Bible used by our Saviour and the Apostles. Used
in the Christian Church for a thousand years." In
the Editor's preface we read (p. xi.) : "It was out
of this version that our Saviour was taught when a
child, and out of which He read in the synagogue
the things concerning Himself (Luke iv. 18, 19)."
A similar statement is repeated in the second issue,
p. li. : " The language of Christianity in Palestine
was Greek, and the language of the Synagogue was
Greek. When our Saviour ' stood up for to read '
in the synagogue of Nazareth, it was from the Greek
Septuagint, Luke iv. 16-21 (not Hebrew) ; the
ordinary speech of the country at this period was
Aramaic, or Syriac." The inscription on the covers
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 103
myself, ought to be mentioned here, al-
though the assertion in the preface to the
new edition that the Septuagint was the
Bible used by Christ is not correct.
The Bible that our Lord used was a Semitic
Bible. Paul, however, a child of Hellenized
Judaism, used the Septuagint, and with
him and after him Greek Christianity,
before ever there was a New Testament,
of the second issue is altered to read : " Used in
the Churches of England for a thousand years," it
being a fond delusion of Mr. Pells that the Bibles in
use before the Reformation were derived from the
Septuagint and therefore more authentic than our
present translation from the Massoretic text !
Other English translations of the Septuagint are : —
(1) The, Septuagint Version of the Old Testament,
according to the Vatican text, translated into English,
with the principal various readings of the Alexandrine
copy, and a table of comparative chronology. By
Sir L. C. L. Brenton. London, 1844 (2 vols.).
(2) The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament,
with an English translation : and with various readings
and critical notes. London (S. Bagster), [1870].
Reissue, 1879, pp. vi., 1130 + 4 pp. Appendix ;
Apocrypha paged separately, iv. 248.
104 SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY
reverenced the Septuagint as the Bible
and made it more and more a possession
of its own. It has served the Christian
Church of Anatolia in unbroken continuity
down to the present day. It is peculiarly
moving to a Bible student of our own day
when, in a remote island of the Cyclades,
he passes from the glaring noonday sunshine
into the darkness of a little Greek chapel
and finds the intercessory prayers of the
Septuagint Psalms still as living on the
lips of a Greek priest as they were two
thousand years ago in the synagogues of
Alexandria and Delos.
One who has experienced that will return
with new devotion to the Book of the
Seventy, strengthened in the conviction
that this monument of a world- wide religion
SEPTUAGINT PHILOLOGY 105
is indeed worthy of thorough and profound
investigation on all sides, not only because
of its Hebrew original but also for its own
sake.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
IV
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
WE concluded our third lecture with a
short mention of the beginnings that are
just being made in the exegesis of the
Greek Old Testament. The exegesis of
the Greek New Testament can look back
upon a history of many centuries. The
fact, however, that the New Testament
as distinguished from the Greek Old Testa-
ment possesses an international exegetical
literature of its own which promises soon
to attain unmanageable dimensions, is not
necessarily a proof of a revival of interest
109
110 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
in its philological investigation. The more
recent commentaries, indeed, leave much
to be desired from the philological point of
view.
How greatly the exegesis of the New
Testament is able to profit by the progress
of classical archaeology in the widest sense
is shown by the writings of Sir William
Ramsay,1 the Commentary on the Epistle
to the Romans by Hans Lietzmann,2 the
Commentary on the Gospel according to
St. Matthew by Th. Zahn 3 and by W. C.
Allen,4 and the excellent Commentary on
1 See above, p. 21, n.
2 Hans Lietzmann, Handbuch zum Neuen Testa-
ment, vol. iii., pp. 1-80, Tubingen, 1906.
3 Theodor Zahn, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament,
vol. i., Leipzig, 1903 ; zweite Auflage, 1905.
4 W. C. Allen, A Critical and Exegetical Commen-
tary on the Gospel according to S. Matthew. Edinburgh,
1907. (The International Critical Commentary.)
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 111
St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians by
George Milligan.1
Any further discussion of the enormous
output of Commentaries in the last few
years is beyond our present scope. Nor
is this the occasion to review the work
accomplished in New Testament textual
criticism, important as it is to the New
Testament philologist and tempting as it
would be to speak of it here in Cambridge,
where great traditions in textual criticism
have been inherited and made greater by
men and women of distinguished learning.
We may, however, mention in the first
place as a book of great value to the New
Testament philologist the Concordance to
the New Testament by W. F. Moulton and
1 London, 1908.
112 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
A. S. Geden.1 A revised edition of an
older work, the excellent Concordance of
Bruder,2 is also being prepared by Schmiedel.
But the most remarkable fact that strikes
us on reviewing recent work is that, after
a long period of stagnation in the gram-
matical department, we have had in the
last twelve years three new Grammars of
the New Testament, by Paul Wilhelm
Schmiedel, Friedrich Blass, and James
Hope Moulton, and that the publication
1 A Concordance to the Greek Testament according
to the text of Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf, and the
English Revisers. Edited by Rev. W. F. Moulton
and Rev. A. S. Geden. Edinburgh, 1897.
2 Ta/jbieiov TWV rr}s Kaivfjs Aiadr)K7]<$ Xefecov sive
Concordantiae omnium vocum Novi Testamenti Graeci,
primum ab Erasmo Schmidio editae, nunc secundum
critices et hermeneutices nostrae aetatis rationes emen-
datae, auctae, meliori ordine dispositae cura C. H.
Bruder, Lipsiae, 1842 ; editio stereotypa quarta,
Lipsiae, 1888, sexta 1904.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 113
of a fourth, by Ludwig Kadermacher, is
impending.
Schmiedel's book claims only to be a
revised edition (the eighth) of G. B. Winer's
Grammar.1 The old Winer, when first
published, was a protest of the philological
conscience against the caprices of an arro-
gant empiricism. For half a century it
exercised a decisive influence on exegetical
work — which is a long time for any Gram-
mar, and for a Greek Grammar in the nine-
teenth century a very long time indeed.
While most warmly appreciating its merits
we may yet say, without prejudice to the
truth, that it has had its day. If you use
the old edition of Winer now — and it is
still to some extent indispensable — it is
1 See above, p. 41, n. 2.
P.G.B. g
114 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
possible to find yourself thinking that
what was once its strength constitutes also
the weakness of the book. And I believe
the feeling is not without foundation.
Often you feel that something is represented
as regular where there is no such thing as
regularity, or uniform where the charac-
teristic individuality of the single fact calls
for recognition. In short you receive too
much the impression of a " New Testament
idiom " as a sharply defined magnitude in
the history of the Greek language.
If in speaking of Schmiedel's new Winer I
may be allowed to begin with an objection, it
is a fault, so it seems to me, that there is still
too much Winer and too little Schmiedel
in the book. This applies, however, only
to the introductory paragraphs, where
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 115
Schmiedel has allowed much to remain
that is afterwards tacitly contradicted by
his own statements. On the whole the
new edition — or new book, as it is really —
marks a characteristic and decisive turning
point in New Testament philology. The
phenomena of the language of the New
Testament are exhibited conscientiously,
and as a rule adequately, in relation
with the history of the Greek language.
The sources accessible to Schmiedel, especi-
ally the inscriptions and papyri, are made
exhaustive use of. Unfortunately the
majority of the papyrus discoveries did
not come until after the appearance of
Schmiedel's Accidence in 1894. Such
preliminary studies as existed for the philo-
logist were used by Schmiedel, and, sad
116 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
to say, there were not many. All the more
must we admire the industry, the faithful-
ness in detail, and the eye for the great
connexions traceable in the history of
language, to which the book bears witness.
Schmiedel's minute accuracy is well known.
It does one's heart good in this false world
to meet with such trustworthy quotations.
It is a pity that Schmiedel has not yet
been able to complete the work ; but as a
splendid Greek scholar, Eduard Schwyzer
of Zurich, the grammarian of the Pergamos
inscriptions, has been recently engaged
as a collaborator, it may be hoped that
" Winer and Schmiedel " will not have
to remain a torso much longer.
In his review 1 of Schmiedel's Accidence
1 Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1894, xix. col.
532-4.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 117
Friedrich Blass was not so warm as he
might have been in acknowledging the
merits of the work. In his own Grammar,1
however, he openly acknowledges that he
owed very much to Schmiedel.
And, indeed, without Schmiedel's book
Blass's Grammar would not have been
possible. In the review mentioned Blass
observed that the gulf between theology
and philology was noticeable here and
there in Schmiedel, and by saying so invited
the use of the same standard on his own
Grammar. Now in my opinion the separa-
tion between theology and philology is
altogether without justification in this field
of research, and the controversy that
1 See above, p. 41, n. 3. Translated into English by
H. St. J. Thackeray, London, 1898 ; 2nd ed., 1905.
118 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
occasionally flares up is most regrettable.
But as things are at present, the professed
Greek scholar who takes up the study of
the Bible has generally the advantage of a
larger knowledge of the non-Biblical sources
of the language, while the theologian is
better acquainted with the Biblical texts
and their exegetical problems. Prejudiced
though it may sound to say so, my impres-
sion on comparing the two Grammars was
that Schmiedel's defects in philology were
slighter than those of Blass in theology.
To speak in the language of mankind that
knows no Faculties, as regards the positive
interpretation of the texts of the New
Testament Schmiedel is the more stimu-
lating, so far as can be judged from the
first instalment of his Syntax.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 119
A Grammar must not be wanting in
cheerful willingness to leave some things
undecided. It must be seriously recognized
and admitted that there are such things as
open questions. That Blass theoretically
held this view is shown by the following
chance remark in his Grammar.1 " The
kind of relation subsisting between the
genitive and its noun can only be recognized
from the sense and context ; and in the
New Testament this is often solely a matter
of theological interpretation, which cannot
be taught in a Grammar." But this prin-
ciple, so extremely important methodologi-
cally, is not always followed. In passages
where it is certain that the phraseology is
peculiar, and where the exegetical possi-
1 Zweite Auflage, p. 97, § 35, 1.
120 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
bilities are equal, Blass often comes and
smooths away with his grammatical plane
something that seems like an irregularity
but is really not so.
Beginners in exegesis are apt to content
themselves with what they find by help
of the index of texts in Blass. That is
certainly not at all what Blass intended,
but it is probably the consequence of what
must be complained of as the theological
deficiency of the book. A Grammar, especi-
ally when it bears the name of a famous
philologist, is easily regarded by the average
person who uses it as a compendium of all
that is reducible to fixed laws and therefore
as absolutely dependable. If Blass could
have brought himself to rouse up energeti-
cally this easy-going deference of the youth-
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 121
ful reader, as he might have done in many
parts of the Syntax, his book would have
gained decidedly in value as a book for
students.
I count it as one of the excellencies of
the book that in the introduction the
author adopts a definitive attitude on the
4
question of " New Testament " Greek. In
spite of the title, and in spite of some
occasional relapses (which must not be
regarded too seriously) to the method
formerly championed by Blass, it is made
plain that there is no such thing as a special
" New Testament " Greek, and that there-
fore the claim of the New Testament to
have a special grammar of its own can
only be based on the practical needs of
Bible study. As was only to be expected
122 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
from Blass, the book contains many fine
observations in the details. The Syntax,
however, is decidedly the weakest part
of the book. The comparatively small
number of examples from secular sources
is particularly striking there. On the other
hand — and this undoubtedly deserves our
thankful attention — Blass makes ample
use of the Shepherd of Hernias, the Epistle
of Barnabas, and the Clementine literature.
This is putting into practice the excellent
remark in his grimly humorous dedication
to August Fick, where he writes : " The
isolation of the New Testament is a bad
thing for the interpretation of it, and
must be broken down as much as pos-
sible."
In very different fashion the latest of
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 123
the grammarians, James Hope Moulton,1
has broken down the isolation of the New
Testament . He introduces himself modestly
as inheritor of the work of his late father,
W. F. Moulton, whose English edition of
Winer's Grammar 2 had for almost forty
years favourably influenced exegetical
studies in England and America. His aged
mother, who compiled the copious index
of texts for him as she had done forty years
before for her husband, may symbolize
to us the personal continuity between the
elder and the younger generation of gram-
marians. The son has inherited firstly
the scholar's instinct for research, united
with fervent love of the New Testament.
1 See above, p. 41, n. 4.
2 Edinburgh, 1870.
124 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
He has further inherited the solid founda-
tion of the book itself, Winer and Moulton's
Grammar. But he was also equipped with
a modern training in Greek, and by his own
industry he has created on that foundation
an entirely new book. In the second
edition, therefore, which was called for
within a few months, the title has rightly
been simplified.1 The first volume bears
the descriptive title of Prolegomena ; a
second volume, containing the grammar
proper, is yet to follow. With intentional
avoidance of systematic severity and con-
cision the nine chapters of the Prolegomena
aim at making clear by a selection of
especially striking linguistic phenomena
1 A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by James
Hope Moulton, vol. i., Prolegomena, Edinburgh, 1906.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 125
the general character of the Hellenistic
cosmopolitan language and the position
of the New Testament in the history of
that language. These chapters are partly
based on earlier publications of the author's
in the Expositor, and his articles in the
Classical Review are also made use of.
What the learned doctrinaire may carp at
as a fault in the character of the first volume
is for the reader, and especially for the young
reader, a great advantage. The opinion
that a Grammar can only be good if it is
dull, is completely refuted by these Prole-
gomena. You can really read Moulton.
You are not stifled in the close air of
exegetical controversy, and you are not
overwhelmed in a flood of quotations.
The main facts and the main questions are
126 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
* always seen distinctly and formulated
clearly. It is an important work, in many
points stimulating to research, and it should
leave one great conviction behind it, namely,
that the New Testament, from the linguis-
tic point of view, stands in most vital
connexion with the Hellenistic world
surrounding it. The earlier grammatical
treatment of our sacred Book was above
all dominated by a sense of its contrast with
the surrounding world, and the new method,
conceived and followed more energetically
by Moulton than by Schmiedel and Blass,
emphasizes above all the contact with the
surrounding world. The last word has not
yet been said about the proportion of
Semiticisms. A large number of miscon-
ceptions in earlier exegetists come from
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 127
failure to notice the fact that the speech
of the people in Greek and in non-Greek
languages had many points in common.
Thus many phrases which strike both the
classical Greek scholar with his public
school and university training and the
divinity Hebrew scholar, and which they
triumphantly brand as Semiticisms, are
not always Semiticisms, but often interna-
tional vulgarisms, which do not justify the
isolation of " New Testament " philology.
Excellent indices — only the Greek one
is too modest — afford a convenient sum-
mary of the results of the Prolegomena.
The list of papyri and inscriptions quoted
shows the author's wide reading and makes
it possible to use the New Testament as a
source for the study of papyri and epigraphy.
128 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
The accuracy of the printing and the
beautiful get-up of the book are very
pleasing. The only thing that caused me
misgivings was the praise given to a German
scholar who had lighted by chance upon
the papyri and there seen what of course
would have been seen by anybody else.
It is to be hoped that the publication
of these three great works, to be followed,
as already mentioned, by a fourth, does not
mean that the grammatical study of the
New Testament will come to a standstill
for a time. There are plenty of detached
problems, both in accidence and syntax ;
for example, it seems to me that a close
examination of the syntax of the preposi-
tions and cases, especially in St. Paul,
would be particularly desirable and fruitful.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 129
In his inaugural lecture at Manchester
two years ago on "The Science of Language
and the Study of the New Testament," 1
Moulton gave a short sketch of the present
state of New Testament problems.
Edwin A. Abbott's Johannine Grammar,2
a special Grammar of the writings of St.
John, which appeared recently, is a work of
great merit. I have not yet been able to
examine this book, nor the same author's
Johannine Vocabulary,3 but I can rely upon
the opinion of Dr. Moulton, who praises
the book highly and would only have
liked to see in it a closer acquaintance
with the facts of late Greek.
1 Manchester, 1906, p. 32.
2 E. A. Abbott, Johannine Grammar, London, 1906.
3 E. A. Abbott, Johannine Vocabulary : a com-
parison of the words of the Fourth Gospel with those
of the three. London, 1905.
P.G.B.
130 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Two detached investigations, not, how-
ever, purely grammatical, are contained
in two Heidelberg dissertations presented
for the licentiate in theology, by Arnold
Steubing * on the Pauline concept of
" sufferings of Christ," and by Adolph
Schettler 2 on the Pauline formula " through
Christ." The latter especially is very
instructive, and by proving that St. Paul
in that formula always means the risen
Lord constitutes a great simplification and
deepening of our conception of the personal
religion of St. Paul.
An American book from the earlier years
of the modern period of research, Ernest
1 Arnold Steubing, Der paulinische Begriff
" Christusleiden" Darmstadt, 1905.
2 Adolph Schettler, Die paulinische Formel
" Durch Christus" Tubingen, 1907.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 131
de Witt Burton's Syntax of the Moods and
Tenses in New Testament Greek,1 deserves
honourable mention, while the two very
detailed grammatical works of the French
Abbe, Joseph Viteau,2 entitled Etudes sur
le Grec du Nouveau Testament, must be
used with great caution. Burton's book
has moreover been recently translated into
Dutch by J. de Zwaan,3 a Dutchman, who
enriched it with good additions of his own.
As a proof that also the Roman Catholic
1 E. de Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses
in New Testament Greek, Chicago, 1893 ; 2nd ed.,
London (Isbister), 1893 ; 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1898.
2 Joseph Viteau, Etudes sur le Grec du Nouveau
Testament. Le Verbe : Syntaxe des Propositions.
(These.) Paris, 1893. — Ettule sur le greo du Nouveau
Testament compare avec celui des Septante : Sujet,
Complement et Attribut. Paris, 1896. (Bibliotheque
de 1'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, fasc. 114).
3 J. de Zwaan, Syntaxis der Wijzen en Tijden
in het Grieksche Nieuwe Testament . . ., Haarlem,
1906.
132 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Church in German lands is at least not
wanting in good will to assist in the
grammatical work I may mention two
" Programms " by Alois Theimer,1 an
Austrian schoolmaster, on the prepositions
in the historical books of the New Testa-
ment.
The greatest task for the philologist of
the New Testament is again a Dictionary.
Excellent in the main as was Wilibald
Grimm's revision 2 of Wilke's Clams Novi
Testamenti Philologica (as may be seen
1 Beitrdge zur Kenntnis des Sprachgebrauches im
Neuen Testamente, Programm, Horn in Niederoster-
reich, 1896 and 1901.
2 C. G. Wilke, Clavis Novi Testamenti Philologica,
Dresdae et Lipsiae, 1841, 2 vols. ; another, Roman
Catholic edition, Lexicon Graeco-Latinum in libros
Novi Testamenti, by V. Loch, Ratisbonae, 1858 ;
another Protestant edition by C. L. W. Grimm,
Lipsiae, 1868, vierte Auflage, 1903 ; translated by
J. H. Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament, Edinburgh, 1886; New York, 1887.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 133
especially in the much more correct English
edition by Joseph Henry Thayer), and
much as Cremer's Lexicon has improved
in the course of years, both these works,
Grimm and Cremer, to say nothing of
others, are no longer adequate. We now
have the right to expect of a Dictionary
that it shall take account of the results
of modern philology, and that it therefore
in particular shall not ignore the splendid
additions to our knowledge due to the
discoveries of the last twenty or thirty
years. As far as the inscriptions are
concerned, both Grimm and Cremer might
have derived much information from them,
and it is regrettable that they did not do
so. Already a large number of words
formerly considered " Biblical " or " New
134 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Testament " can be struck off the list on
the authority of inscriptions, papyri, or
passages in authors that had escaped
notice.
It used to be a favourite amusement of
the older lexicographers to distinguish words
as specifically Biblical or New Testament,
and the number of such words has been
enormously overestimated. Even Ken-
nedy l calculates, from the lists in Thayer's
Lexicon, that among the 4,800 to 5,000
words used in the New Testament (omitting
proper names), about 550 are " Biblical,"
that is, words " found either in the New
Testament alone, or, besides, only in the
Septuagint. That is, about twelve per cent,
of the total vocabulary of the New Testa-
1 P. 93. See above, p. 40, n. 2
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 135
ment is ' Biblical.' ' But this estimate
will not bear close examination.
Many of these 550 words are quoted by
Thayer himself from non-Christian authors,
and though these authors are often post-
Christian, there is no probability of their
having learnt the words from the New
Testament or from the mouth of Christians.
A large number of other words have since
then turned up in the inscriptions, papyri,
and ostraca, and as regards the rest we
must always ask in each case whether there
is sufficient internal reason for supposing
the word to be a Christian invention . Where
one of these words is not recognizable at
sight as a Jewish or Christian new formation
we must consider it as a word common to
all Greek until the contrary is proved.
136 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
The number of really new-coined words
is in the earliest Christian period very small.
There can hardly be more than 50 Christian
new formations among the round 5,000
words of the New Testament vocabulary,
that is, not 12 per cent, but 1 per cent.
Primitive Christianity was a revolution of
the inmost life of man, but not a revolution
of the Greek lexicon — so might we, as
modern philologists, vary the old witness
of St. Paul, that " the kingdom of God is
not in word but in power " (1 Cor. iv. 20).
The great enriching of the Greek lexicon
by Christianity did not take place till later
in the ecclesiastical period, with its enormous
development and differentiation of the
dogmatic, liturgical, and legal vocabulary.
In the religiously creative period the power
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 137
of Christianity to form new words was not
nearly so large as its effect in transforming
the meaning of the old words.
The New Testament lexicographer will
therefore have to make himself familiar
above all with the great range of sources
for the Greek popular language from Alex-
ander the Great to Constantine. His field
is the world — that world which from the
most ancient seats of Greek culture in
Hellas and in the islands, in the little country
towns of Asia Minor and in the villages of
Egypt, as well as from the cosmopolitan
trading centres on the shores of the Mediter-
ranean and the Black Sea, presents us year
by year with memorials of itself, i.e., with
actual documents of the living language
which was the missionary language of St.
Paul.
138 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Studies such as those of E. L. Hicks
in the Classical Review,1 James Hope
Moulton's lexical work in the Expositor,2
Theodor Nageli's Examination of the
Vocabulary of the Apostle Paul,3 Wilhelm
Heitmiiller's book 4 on the formula " in
the name of Jesus/' Gottfried Thieme's
Heidelberg dissertation on The Inscriptions
of Magnesia on the Maeander and the New
Testament,5 Wendland's essay on the word
Saviour (crornjjo), 6 and the excellent " Lexi-
cal Notes from the Papyri " 7 just begun
1 Vol. i., 1887, pp. 4-8, 42-6.
2 April, 1901 ; February, 1903 ; December, 1903.
3 See above, p. 65, n. 1.
4 W. Heitmiiller, Im Namen Jesu, Gottingen, 1905.
6 G. Thieme, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am
M dander und das Neue Testament, Gottingen, 1906.
6 Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft,
1904, v., pp. 335-53.
7 The Expositor, January, 1908, and following
numbers.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 139
by J. H. Moulton and George Milli-
gan, have all by this method obtained
accurate results and laid the founda-
tions for the future new Lexicon. Georg
Heinrici 1 in his examination of the
Sermon on the Mount from the point of
view of the history of ideas has made
valuable contributions by drawing materials
from the old philosophical and ethical
writers. Baljon 2 also, at least in the
Appendix to his Dictionary, was able to
incorporate some of the results of recent
investigations. It will also be possible
for synonymic studies to receive a new
impetus from the new sources. Archbishop
1 Georg Heinrici, Die Bergpredigt . . . begriffs-
geschichtlich untersucht, Reformationsfestprogramm,
Leipzig, 1905 (and as vol. iii. of Heinrici's Beitrdge,
Leipzig, 1905).
2 See above, p. 86, n.
140 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Trench's l well-known work is the classical
representative of the older philological
method. Though in many points out of
date, it is still the best work on New Testa-
ment synonymy, and a selection from it
has lately been published in a German trans-
lation by Heinrich Werner.2 The German
Synonymy of New Testament Greek by
Gerhard Heine 3 is quite elementary.
Any one who shall in future pursue
studies in synonymy based on an intimate
knowledge of the late Greek popular lan-
guage, will without doubt come to the
1 R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament,
Cambridge, 1854 ; 7th ed., 1871, last edition, 1906.
2 Synonyma des Neuen Testaments, von R. Ch.
Trench, ausgewahlt und iibersetzt von Heinrich
Werner. Mit einem Vorwort von Prof. D. Adolf
Deissmann. Tubingen, 1907.
3 Gerhard Heine, Synonymik des neutestamentlichen
Crriechisch, Leipzig, 1898.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 141
conclusion that the stock of concepts
possessed by Primitive Christianity was
much more simple and transparent than
used formerly to be assumed. The con-
cepts have hitherto been too much isolated ;
for example, the differences between " Justi-
fication," " Reconciliation," and " Redemp-
tion " in St. Paul have been much more
strongly emphasized than the relationship
which before all things is recognizable
between them. In particular the person-
ality and the piety of the Apostle Paul
appear much more compact and more
impressive, if, avoiding the failings of the
doctrinaire method as commonly employed
in Germany by the Tubingen School and
their opponents, we consider him against
the background recoverable from the new
142 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
sources of the Graeco-Roman world as the
great hero of the faith from the East.
Finally, there is great need for critical
studies of the style of the separate books
of the New Testament. In Eduard Nor-
den's book l on The Artistic Prose of the
Ancients will be found a number of fine
observations, although his whole procedure
in connecting the New Testament with
Greek artistic prose is not correct. The
greater part of the New Testament writings
is not artistic prose but artless popular
prose ; which, however, is often of greater
natural beauty than the artificial products
of the hollow rhetoric of post-classical
antiquity. The words of Jesus and many
1 Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa vom vi.
Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance,
Leipzig, 1898.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 143
utterances of St. Paul and the other
apostles are either instinct with a calm,
chaste beauty that is aesthetically worthy
of admiration, or else they are written
with truly lapidary force, worthy of marble
and the chisel. The importance of the
New Testament in the history of style rests
on the fact that through this book the
language of natural life, that is, of course,
language as it lived upon lips specially
endowed by grace, made its entry into a
world of outworn doctrine and empty
rhetoric. It was a great mistake of Fried-
rich Blass 1 to try to represent St. Paul as
an adherent of the Asian rhythm, so that,
for example, the Epistle to the Galatians
1 F. Blass, Die Rhythmen der asianischen und
romischenKunstprosa, Leipzig, 1905. See Theologische
Literaturzeitung, 1906, xxxi., col. 231 ff.
144 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
would be supposed to be written with due
observance of the rhythmical rules of
art. This error ranges Blass with a number
of older writers by whom the Apostle Paul
was praised for his great knowledge of
classical literature.
Primitive Christianity — this is one of
the main results of the modern philology
of the New Testament — Primitive Christi-
anity in its classical epoch is set in the
midst of the world, but it still has very
little connexion with official culture ; in-
deed, as an energetic and one-sided reli-
gious movement it is distrustful in its
attitude towards the " wisdom " of the
world.
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 145
It rejects — this is the second result of
our inquiry — it rejects, in this epoch, all
the outward devices of rhetoric. In gram-
mar, vocabulary, syntax, and style it
occupies a place in the midst of the people
and draws from the inexhaustible soil of
the popular element to which it was native
a good share of its youthful strength.
In opposition to its later developments
towards dogma, differentiation, and com-
plexity— and this is the third result — in
opposition to these later developments it
is, in that classical epoch, in spite of the
glowing enthusiasm of its hope, entirely
simple and forceful, intelligible in its appeal
to the simple and the poor in spirit, and
therefore appointed to a mission to the
whole world.
P G.B. 10
146 NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY
Modern New Testament philology, there-
fore— I may say in conclusion — does not
mean any impoverishing of our conceptions
of the beginnings of our faith. On the
contrary, although apparently concerned
only with the outward form of the New
Testament, it opens up new points of view
as regards its inward meaning, deepening
our knowledge of Primitive Christianity
and strengthening our love of the New
Testament.
And if this study has brought together
a band of workers from all Protestant
countries on one common field— workers
whom enthusiasm for Christ and His Cause
and the desire for knowledge have united
in one great brotherhood — then the phil-
ology of the New Testament, with this
NEW TESTAMENT PHILOLOGY 147
international alliance in work, is helping
in little to fulfil the great hope of the New
Testament " that we may all be one in
Christ."
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