CHAP. II.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THE first subject to be considered in the critical study of the New Testament is the language in which it is written; and those points of resemblance and contrast which are found between the Greek of the Evangelists and Apostles, and that of other writers in the same or previous ages.

The reason why the New Testament writers should have, under divine guidance and inspiration, employed the Greek tongue is sufficiently manifest. The intention of God now was to give forth a revelation, not confined in an especial manner to one particular people, who were peculiarly the depositaries of divine truth, but that which was intended for the lost children of men whether Jews or Gentiles. Just as the gospel was commanded to be preached, as God's message of salvation to sinners through faith in the Saviour's sacrifice, to all nations beginning at Jerusalem, so too the written Scripture of the New Testament was equally intended to go forth for the instruction of all whose ears and hearts should be opened to receive the teaching thus communicated and thus recorded for after ages.

Thus then it was in accordance both with the divine wisdom and even with what man would have felt to be fitting, that a language of wide extent as to use should be employed. For thus the written. record of God's truth became so much the more accessible to the many. And thus GREEK was the language to be employed; for this tongue was at the time of our Lord's advent diffused far more than any other throughout the civilised earth. There was also a fitness in the language, being one of high cultivation and flexibility, in which shades of thought were well and accurately defined, and which had been so cultivated that it would ever demand attention amongst the civilised races of men. These qualities were so peculiarly combined in the Greek language, that the means by which it had become diffused throughout the eastern and central portions of the civilised earth must be regarded as specially ordered by God, with reference to His own purpose in the mission of Christ, and the subsequent preaching of the gospel and the giving forth of this part of the written Word.

How had this been accomplished? How had the Greek tongue burst the narrow limits in which it had once been confined, on the western shores of the Egean Sea, and spread itself in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and other eastern lands; and how, even in Italy in general, and Rome itself, had it become amongst all the educated well known and familiar? A few words in reply to those questions will bring the subject clearly before us, and will show that before the New Testament had been written in Greek, nations of

Greek readers had been prepared, by whom it should be read and used.

Many centuries before the birth of our Lord, the Eolian, Ionian, and Dorian colonies had spread the Hellenic language far beyond the regions in which it had previously been spoken: and as these colonies were commonly, if not invariably, planted in lands inferior in all the arts of civilisation to the Hellenic race, each became a spot not only preserving its Grecian tone of feeling and tongue, but also a centre from which in some measure these things were diffused. Thus it was that in Asia Minor the Grecian cities might well be deemed the rivals of those which had been their elder sisters on the European shores. And even in literary eminence, it must be remembered that Herodotus, "the father of history," as his own race termed him, was an Asiatic Greek, Dorian by birth and citizenship, but Ionian by dialect.

In the literary eminence of Greece in the fourth and fifth centuries B. C., Athens took the first place; and this fact had this measure of importance, that it caused the dialectic forms of Athens to be imitated in a general manner in the more diffused period of the history of that tongue. Thucydides, Eschylus, and the other dramatists, the Attic orators, and Plato impressed a character on the tongue which they employed, which afterwards had an effect on the minds of those who used it, and which may still be observed in the language which the Greeks now speak after all the changes of two thousand three hundred years.

It was important that Attic supremacy of dialect should have preceded the wide diffusion of the language; for had this not been so, the outflowing of the Grecian population and the Grecian tongue would have resulted in dialectic distinctions of various kinds, taking root in various regions; and thus, those who adopted the Hellenic speech, instead of possessing a common dialect, would have used forms differing at first, and differing still more in each successive generation. This would certainly have been the result; for the Greek tongue, adopted in its varying forms of dialect as spoken at home, by peoples of less keen perceptions, and less exercised tones of thought, would, of necessity, have diverged more and more; producing, not the diffusion of one noble language, but the formation of a family of languages, bearing merely such traces of their origin as would, to the ear of the polished scholar, contrast painfully with the refined exactness of that from which they had sprung.

After Athens had gained and maintained her literary preeminence, the Macedonian supremacy over Greece arose. The kings of Macedon were themselves of Hellenic blood, and this was, on many occasions, a subject of boast to them when brought into connection with the Grecian states in the days of their independence. The Greeks regarded the Macedonians as being beyond the Hellenic pale, and thus, the claim of the ruling house was one which separated them as to race and feeling from their subjects. There are instances, before the days of Philip, of Macedonian sovereigns patronising the

literary men of Greece; and there can be no reasonable doubt that they sought to lead the Macedonians to the enjoyment of those arts of civilisation which in Greece proper were so intimately connected with their cultivated language. The Hellenic feeling of the Macedonian rulers was in the case of Philip materially strengthened by his Grecian education at Thebes; and thus the fashionable dialect of his court was formed on the model of that which had become the popular literary dialect.

Thus, before the conquests of Alexander, the Macedonians of the higher classes at least had learned from Athens: and even if some of the elegancies and proprieties had been impaired, it was patent to all in what school they had studied. The conquests of Alexander gave a new extension and energy of life to this speech; and wherever his successors bore sway, the Greek tongue, in a form based on the Attic dialect, obtained a footing, firmly established and long continued. In the capitals of states, and other large cities, amongst the educated classes, and with the officials of government, Greek, in the form of the common dialect, had become the proper and habitual language. No doubt that Egypt, Syria, and other countries retained their own languages also; but this does not impugn the fact that Greek had established itself, not as a temporary sojourner, but as a settled occupant of the same regions.

The Attic origin of the COMMON DIALECT has been already mentioned; wherein it differs from pure Attic, has been thus described:

"Its staple was of Attic texture, but it differed from that variety of the language in several main respects: it was divested of certain forms, especially Attic, such as might be termed provincialisms, if the idea of vulgarity were not associated with the word; it employed certain words, where the speech of Athens would, with the same meaning, have substituted others, either quite distinct, or differing from them in some point of structure; and it admitted some forms or words belonging to other dialects, or which, though of ancient use, had for a time disappeared, at least in Attic Greek. Besides, it should be observed that the classical type could not be sustained in rigid purity; because it came in collision with people who, taken in the mass, possessed not the exquisitely acute perception and severe taste of the extraordinary community among whom it had its birth. The Common Dialect, technically so called, was that of the courts of the Seleucida and the Lagidæ, of the schools of Alexandria and Tarsus, of the educated Roman, of Philo, Polybius, Plutarch, Origen, Chrysostom."

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Thus, by the supremacy of Macedon in Greece, and then by the conquests of Alexander, the diffusion was effected of such a tongue as should facilitate the first preaching of the gospel amongst Gentiles, and which should cause that the new revelation of divine truth, which God was about to give forth for a permanent record, should be the

A Treatise on the Grammar of the New Testament Dialect, by the Rev. T. S. Green, M. A., pp. 3-5.

more extensively used with familiarity by those amongst whom it was primarily circulated.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that the East merely had been affected by the expansion of the Greek tongue: to say nothing of Southern Italy, where the early colonies had implanted Hellenic institutions and forms of speech, ROME, the mistress of the civilised earth, had, at the Christian era, become familiar with the language and literature of Greece. Not only had the imperial metropolis attracted vast multitudes from among the Greek-speaking nations, but the Latins themselves so cultivated the literature of the ancient models and masters of poetry, philosophy, and history, that to them the Greek language was just as suited for a medium of communication as was their own vernacular Latin.

And the Roman, who deemed that his vocation was the government of the nations, was fain to employ the Greek tongue as that by which he could throughout the East communicate with the provincials. The Latin language was wholly unsuccessful as to any efforts to take root in a soil where Greek had preceded it. Thus Cicero truthfully said, as to the diffusion of the two languages, "Græca leguntur in omnibus fere gentibus: Latina suis finibus, exiguis sane, continentur." (Pro Arch. 10.)

But even though the fact be admitted and known that there was a fitness in the New Testament having been written in Greek, for the use of Gentiles, the question must arise, How far could this be suited to the Jews? They too had to do with the gospel; for to them it was commanded to be first preached; and thus the written record of that gospel might, perhaps, have been expected to be suited also to them. A few words on this subject is all that may be needed in this place; the Hebrew original of St. Matthew's Gospel may be discussed elsewhere; but it will suffice to remark, that the books of the New Testament were most of them written after the time when the Jews had rejected the gospel, both as a nation, and also as far as any united body amongst them was concerned; and thus in the written record Gentiles were especially to be considered. Also many of the books gathered in the collection called the New Testament were addressed to communities which consisted either of converted Gentiles entirely, or else with an admixture of Jews by nation, but who, by residence out of the land of their fathers, had become Hellenized as to their language. And, farther, it must be borne in mind that even when the gospel was first preached, and the New Testament books were first written, the portion of the house of Israel who were settled in various countries was very great; and such had long been accustomed to use for ordinary purposes the LXX. version of the Old Testament.

In regarding the diffusion of Greek as a providential ordering of God, to prepare for the spread of the gospel, and for the use of the New Testament Scriptures, it is not without significance that the destruction of Jerusalem and the entire dispersion of the Jews under Titus took place so soon after the writing of the New Testament, (and indeed before all the books had been penned,) that if this record

had been given forth either in the ancient Hebrew, like the Old Testament, or in the Syro-Chaldaic, which had become venacular r (under the name of Hebrew) amongst those residing in Palestine, it would have been an arrangement tending in very little measure for permanent or general utility.. How far a temporary need amongst the believers from the House of Israel was met by the Gospel of St. Matthew in Hebrew, may be considered elsewhere when the evidence on that subject is examined.

CHAP. III.

CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.

WE may plainly see that there were sufficient reasons to make it fitting that Greek should be the language employed by the sacred writers of the New Testament. The next points for examination are those which relate to the style of the writers, to grammatical peculiarities, and to the influence of Hebrew idioms to which their minds were accustomed, or modes of thought arising from the subjects on which they wrote.

Any work or works may be examined on three aspects as to its style and language, (i.), with regard to the words employed, or (as it might be termed) lexicographically; (ii.), as to the use of forms and constructions, grammatically; and (iii.), as to the phraseology, including form of sentences, and modes of expression arising from the character of thought, or from the subject matter on which the writer is engaged.

Thus a work may be written in a certain known language, — the words may be such as wholly belong to it (or there may be certain foreign admixtures); but still the question would remain, whether the use of grammatical forms is such that the laws of correct usage in the language in question might or might not have been observed; and besides these two points would always remain to be considered the writer's phraseology. For it might so happen that the lexicography and grammar had nothing peculiar, while the structure of sentences and form of expression were something by no means customary; and this might be the case even though no obscurity or ambiguity was occasioned in result. This remark bears especially on the New Testament; for the peculiarities which the diction presents have far more to do with phraseology and modes of expression than with either lexicography or simple grammar.

These three subjects must then be considered in their order.

I. LEXICOGRAPHY. The Greek of the New Testament is in its general form the Common Dialect, Kown SuáλEKTOS, which was established in a kind of general use at the Christian era: the basis of which was (as has been said) the Attic, but with by no means a thorough retention of its purity; and thus we might expect to find an admixture of words not Attic in form, whether they had been