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Testament into Greek before this time, I do not see how they could have wrote the New Testament in Greek; for as they must have used Greek words in a different sense from what they were used in the Greek authors, there could have been no standard by which to have tried them, had not the LXX. Version been made. I think I am justified in saying, that, if there had not been a translation in Greek of the Old Testament, made and received by sufficient authority, a proper time before the advent of our Saviour, I do not see how the penmen of the New could have written Greek.'

Conversely, an acquaintance with the LXX. is rightly commended by Bishop Pearson, as a key to the New Testament style and diction:-'for the sacred penmen, not only frequently produce testimonies out of the Old Testament, but also accommodate Moses and the Prophets to the doctrines of Christianity and hence it will needs happen, that the mode and manner of expression, or the phraseology of the Hebrew, which was unknown or at least unusual amongst the Grecians, must, to such as only understand Greek, render the Apostolic writings more obscure than they would otherwise have been. Neither can this obscurity be taken away or cured by any other means than by the knowledge of the Hebrew idiom, in which the Old Testament is written; upon which the Apostles everywhere keep an eye, and which, a little varied from its original purity, the Jews spake in the time of our Saviour, to whose customs and manner of speaking they accommodated their discourses. For which reason, the Greek Version of the Old Testament will of necessity be of very great use in understanding the apostolic writings; since in that Version all the idioms of the language were transplanted, as well as the soil would bear them; in that, the sense of the prophetic writings was explained, as well as the Greek tongue and the skill of the translators would permit; and to that the Grecians, with whom the Apostles had most concern, had long been accustomed. And it is reasonable to believe, that this translation, by Divine Providence, was at first made to be the instrument and means of preparing the minds of the nations, who every

where had it among them, for the better and more kindly reception of the doctrines of CHRIST and His Apostles.'

VI. General Conclusion on the Authority of the LXX.

The Hellenistic dialect was to a large proportion of converts the sole medium whereby the truths of Christianity and its relation to Mosaism could have been communicated; and it must be admitted to have served as an instrument of thought, and a groundwork of theological conceptions, if not so much to the preachers, at least to no mean array of hearers of the Gospel. It followed as a natural consequence that theological ideas were developed through the instrumentality of the Septuagint; words and expressions occurring in the Greek to which nothing can be found precisely equivalent in the Hebrew. Thus Dr Lightfoot concludes', after an investigation into the origin and growth of the Hellenistic conception ioris, that the word 'Faith' can scarcely be said to occur at all in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament. As the Gospel to the Law, so is the plastic dialect of the Dispersion to its Hebrew archetype. The New may pass the limits of the Old, but the Old must contain the rudimentary principles of the New. Though the Hellenistic dialect may have been to the preachers of the Gospel a quasi-vernacular language; though they may have thought in and by it, and adopted therefrom words and phrases which could not have been simply and adequately retranslated into Hebrew; the ultimate appeal might (and would) still be from the Greek, as from any other vernacular rendering, to the original. The product of Greek thought must be a legitimate development from the Hebrew; the Hebrew must enfold the germ of the Hellenistic development. Granted that Hellenistic Greek was the vernacular language of Citation, analogy requires that we should presuppose a reservation-however seldom to be exemplified-in favour of the Hebrew.

1 Galatians, ed. 2, p. 1.6.

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1. Seeing that the LXX. rendering is sometimes rejected in citation, and sometimes retained, the enquiry suggests itself whether the New Testament writers may not have differed, as in their styles of composition, so in their Styles of Citation from the Old Testament Scriptures; and if so, whether arguments may not be deduced therefrom, evincing identity or diversity of authorship in cases where external (and other) evidences are conflicting. In illustration, it may suffice to call attention to a remark of Dr Wordsworth on the passage from Zechariah above considered. In the Apocalypse the Septuagintal ἀνθ' ὧν κατωρχήσαντο is replaced by εἰς ὃν éžekévтnoav, and by the same form of words in the fourth Gospel. Hence arises an argument for identifying the author of the fourth Gospel with the author of the Apocalypse-an argument the strength whereof is proportionate to the infrequency of such departures from the familiar phraseology of the LXX.

2. It may be remarked in further confirmation of this identification, that a prominent feature in the Apocalypse is the representation of CHRIST as the ἀρνίον ὡς ἐσφαγμένον, while the author of the fourth Gospel is careful to point out the fulfilment of the Paschal Type, ὀστοῦν οὐ συντριβήσεται αὐτοῦ ', and to record the saying of the Baptist: 'Behold the Lamb of God.' In this case indeed aμvós not apvíov is used, but the change of word is perhaps sufficiently accounted for by the difference of subject and accessories in the two compositions; and more than this, in the one case the description is the Evangelist's, and in the other the words are cited from the Baptist. But, be this as it may, CHRIST stands out prominently as the Sacrificial Lamb, in the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse alike; and hence a corroboration of the argument whereby it is sought to prove that the fourth Gospel was written by the author of the Apocalypse, ST JOHN.

1 See Note A, p. 323.

2 apvós, &c. are commonly used for the oblique cases of duvos.

3. The Hellenistic idiom and that singular admixture of the Old and the New which characterize the New Testament Scriptures, fix (within certain limits) the date, and may aid in determining the authorship of compositions in which they occur. This is well expressed by the subjoined remarks of Professor Jowett, with which we conclude:—

'Vestiges of Old Testament language are so numerous as to admit of an argument from their occurrence to the genuineness of the Epistles. If the same interpretation of new and old phraseology occurs in the Epistle to the Ephesians that we find in the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and the Galatians, here is considerable reason for supposing that they are writings of the same author, or at any rate of the same date. A new argument from coincidence arises, for no one would imagine that it could have occurred to a forger of a later age to imitate the manner in which St Paul used the language of the LXX.'

NOTE ON CHAPTER XV.

A. The notice of the efflux of 'blood and water' (Joh. xix. 34) is a strong testimony to the writer's having been an eye-witness of the Crucifixion. The phenomenon is at any rate a very rare one, and one therefore which was unlikely to have been thought of by any but an eye-witness, and more unlikely to have been mentioned, seeing that it must necessarily give rise to great perplexities. Some have assumed it to be wholly miraculous and of mystical import. For a striking investigation see Stroud's Physical Cause of the Death of Christ. Death ensued preternaturally soon (ver. 33), and that, some conjecture, from previous exhaustion. Against this is the fact, that JESUS cried with a loud voice when on the point of yielding up the ghost (Matt. xxvii. 50; Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 46). Dr Stroud's theory accounts for this fact, which St John does not mention, and at the same time for the very singular phenomenon which he alone records.

CHAPTER XVI.

Miscellanea.

I. Ps. cxvi. II; Ps. li. 4; Rom. iii. 4.

'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That Thou mightest be justified in Thy sayings, and mightest overcome when Thou art judged. I. THE words πᾶς δὲ ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης (Ps. cxvi. 11), which precede the formula of citation, are perhaps no more than an instinctive adaptation of a familiar phrase. The reference in the original is to man's weakness and frailty; and commentators have illustrated the Psalmist's meaning by such passages as: 'Vain is the help of man' (Ps. lx. 3); 'Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie; to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity' (lxii. 9); 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help' (cxlvi. 3). The meaning of the words 'All men are liars' would thus be, that men, owing to their frailty and inability to help, are deceivers of those who put trust in them. A further illustration might be drawn from a passage in which Job describes the failure of his friends' attempts to comfort him :-'My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away... What time they wax warm, they vanish; when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place... The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them. They were confounded because they had hoped; they came thither, and were ashamed. For now ye

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