PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT ILLUSTRATED FROM DEMOSTHENES.
Acts xvii. 21.:
"For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing."
Can any of your biblical correspondents inform me in what commentary upon the New Testament the coincidence with the following passages in Demosthenes is noticed, or whether any other source of the historical fact has been recorded? In the translation of Petrus Lagnerius, Franc. 1610 (I have not at hand the entire works), we find these words:
"Nihil est omnium, Athenienses, in præsentiâ nocentius, quam quod vos alienati estis a rebus, et tantisper operam datis, dum audientes sedetis, si quid Novi nuntiatum fuerit" (4. contr. Phil.).
Again:
"Nos vero, dicetur verum, nihil facientes, hic perpetuo sedemus cunctabundi, tum decernentes, tum interrogantes, si quid Novi in foro dicatur."—4 Orat. ad Philipp. Epist.
Pricæus, in his very learned and valuable Commentarii in varios N.T. Libros, Lond. 1660, fol., at p. 628, in v. 21., says only—
"Videantur quæ ex Demosthene, Plutarcho, aliis, Eruditi annotarunt."
Matthew xiii. 14.:
"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive."
This proverb seems to have been common to all ages and countries. It is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament (Mark iv. 12.; viii. 18.; John xii. 40.; Acts xxviii. 25.; Romans xi. 8.), and, as in Matthew, is referred to Isaiah. But, in the Old Testament, there is earlier authority for its use in Deuteronomy xxix. 4. It occurs also in Jeremiah v. 21.; in Ezekiel xii. 2., and, with a somewhat different application, in the Psalms, cxv. 5.; cxxxv. 16.
That it was employed as an established proverb by Demosthenes seems to have been generally overlooked. He says:
"Οἱ μὲν οὕτως ὁρῶντες τὰ τῶν ἠτυχηκότων ἔργα, ὥστε τὸτῆς παροιμίας, ὁρῶντες μὴ ὁρᾶν, καὶ ἀκούοντας μὴ ἀκούειν. (Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος, A Taylor, Cantab. vol. ii. pp. 494-5.)
It is quoted, however, by Pricæus (p. 97.), who also supplies exactly corresponding passages from Maximus Tyrius (A.D. 190), Plutarch (A.D. 107-20), and Philo (A.D. 41). Of these, the last only can have been prior to the publication of St. Matthew's Gospel, which Saxius places, at the earliest, in the reign of Claudius.
Hugo Grotius has no reference to Demosthenes in his Annotationes in Vet. Test., Vogel & Doderein, 1776; but cites Heraclitus the Ephesian, who, according to Saxius, flourished in the year 502 B.C., and Aristides, who, on the same authority, lived in the 126th year of the Christian era. Has any other commentator besides Pricæus alluded to the passage in Demosthenes?
C. H. P.
Brighton, April 21.