enter into questions that did not then appear to bear directly on our engrossing and responsible work.
But now it must be distinctly admitted that recent investigation and, to a certain extent, recent discoveries have cast so much new light on New Testament Greek that it becomes a positive duty to take into consideration what has been disclosed to us by the labours of the last fifteen years as to New Testament Greek, and then fairly to face the question whether the particular labours of the Revisers have been seriously affected by it. Let us bear in mind, however, that it may be quite possible that a largely increased knowledge of the position which what used to be called Biblical Greek now occupies may be clearly recognized, and yet only comparatively few changes necessitated by it in syntactic details and renderings. But let us not anticipate. What we have now to do is to ascertain the nature and amount of the disclosures and new knowledge to which I have alluded.
This may be briefly stated as emanating from a very large amount of recent literature on post-classical Greek, and from a careful and scientific investigation of the transition from the earlier post-classical to the later,
and thence to the modern Greek of the present time. Such an investigation, illustrated as it has been by the voluminous collection of the Inscriptions, and the already large and growing collection of the Papyri, has thrown indirectly considerable light on New Testament Greek, and has also called out three works, each of a very important character, and posterior to the completion of the Revision, which deal directly with the Greek of the New Testament. These three works I will now specify.
The first, which is still in progress, and has not, I think, yet received a translator, is the singularly accurate, and in parts corrective, edition of Winer’s “Grammar” by Prof. Schmiedel. The portion on the article is generally recognized as of great value and importance.
The second work is the now well-translated “Bible Studies” of Dr. Deissmann of Heidelberg [109]. This remarkable work, of which the full title is “Contributions, chiefly from Papyri and Inscriptions, to the History of the Language, the Literature, and the Religion of Hellenistic Judaism, and Primitive Christianity,”
contains not only a clear estimate of the nature of New Testament Greek, but also a large and instructive vocabulary of about 160 words and expressions in the New Testament, most of which receive in varying degrees illustration from the Papyri, and other approximately contemporary sources. It must be noted, however, that the writer himself specifies that his investigations “have been, in part, arranged on a plan which is polemical [110a].” This avowal must, to some extent, affect our full acceptance of all the results arrived at in this striking and laborious work.
The third work is a “Grammar of New Testament Greek” by the well-known and distinguished scholar, Dr. Blass, and is deserving of the fullest attention from every earnest student of the Greek Testament. It has been excellently translated by Mr. St. John Thackeray, of the Education Department [110b]. It is really hardly possible to speak too highly of this helpful and valuable work. Its value consists in this—that it has been written, on the one hand, by an accomplished classical scholar, and, on the other hand, by one who is thoroughly acquainted with the investigations of the last fifteen
years. As his Introduction clearly shows, he fully accepts the estimate that is now generally entertained of the Greek of the New Testament, viz. that it is no isolated production, as regards language, that had no historic relation to the Greek of the past or of the future. It was not, to any great extent, derived from the Greek translations of the Old Testament—often, as Dr. Blass says, slavishly literal—nor from the literary language of the time, but was the spoken Greek of the age to which it belonged, modified by the position and education of the speaker, and also to some extent, though by no means to any large extent, by the Semitic element which, from time to time, discloses itself in the language of the inspired writers. This last-written epithet, which I wittingly introduce, must not be lost sight of by the Christian student.
Dr. Blass quite admits that the language of the Greek Testament may be rightly treated in connexion with the discoveries in Egypt furnished by the Papyri; but he has also properly maintained elsewhere [111] that the books of the New Testament form a special group to be primarily explained by itself. Greatly