"The key to the theology of the Apostolic age is its relation to the Messianic expectation among the Jews. The central point in the teaching of the Apostles is the fact that with the coming of Christ was inaugurated the Messianic reign. It was the universal teaching of the Jewish doctors—a teaching fully adopted and endorsed by the Apostles—that this reign was to be characterized by righteousness.... The means by which this state of righteousness is brought about is naturally that by which the believer obtains admission into the Messianic kingdom,—in other words, Faith. Righteousness is the Messianic condition, Faith is the Messianic conviction. But by Faith is meant, not merely an acceptance of the Messiahship of Jesus, but that intense and living adhesion which such acceptance inspired, and which the life and death of Jesus were eminently qualified to call out."
In accordance with this view, Mr. Sanday, in his analysis of the Epistle, terms it "A treatise on the Christian scheme as a divinely-appointed means for producing righteousness in man, and so realizing the Messianic reign."
The simple view thus indicated, which is also borne out by the "Excursus on Faith, Righteousness and Imputation," is somewhat impaired by another Excursus (D), in which Sacrifice is regarded as the infliction of a penalty. In the notes also this view exercises a weakening influence, and, combined with some other similar features, produces a sense of indistinctness. Otherwise, the notes are written with great care, impartiality, and freedom. There is a devout sense of the greatness of the subject, and much modesty in the treatment of it, while at the same time the commentator does not hesitate to treat all the latter part of Gal. ii. as St. Paul's afterthoughts or comments upon his own words (a suggestion which has a wide application to other passages both in the Gospels and in the Epistles); or to speak of words such as those of Gal. v. 10: "I would that they were even cut off that trouble you," as "momentary ebullitions" which "are among the very few flaws in a truly noble and generous character." As regards the curious question suggested by the MS. discrepancies in the last three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans—namely, whether the Epistle was sent to the Romans alone—Mr. Sanday follows Dr. Lightfoot in believing that its original form was such as we now have it, with the exception of the last three verses, and that these formed an appendix, added on at the end of chapter xiv., when, during his captivity at Rome, St. Paul converted the earlier part into a circular epistle. The interesting view of M. Renan, who believes it to have been originally a circular epistle, and takes the four endings (xv. 33, and xvi. 20, 24 and 27) as the endings of the copies addressed respectively to the Churches of Rome, Asia, Macedonia, and some other unknown, is rather too curtly discussed with the remark that it fails when applied in detail. There is one more serious omission in this part of the commentary. Though honourable mention is made of the commentaries of Dr. Vaughan and Dr. Lightfoot, of Meyer and Wieseler, Alford and Wordsworth, not a single allusion is made to that of Professor Jowett. We can hardly believe that the old theological prejudice against the author has blinded the present commentator to the great exegetical and philosophical value of Professor Jowett's labours. But we cannot account for this strange omission of a work to which all English students of St. Paul's Epistles are so much indebted.
The two Epistles to the Corinthians are commented on respectively by Mr. Teignmouth Shore and Professor Plumptre. It is hardly possible that anything new or striking should be written on these Epistles, which in our day have not only passed through the hands of writers like Alford and Wordsworth, but have been a specially congenial field for the genius of F. W. Robertson and of Stanley. But Mr. Shore and Dr. Plumptre have well represented to English readers the sense and spirit of these Epistles and the Church-life which they reveal to us. Mr. Shore's judgment is, perhaps, at fault in a few special instances; he still believes not only in a non-extant Epistle to the Corinthians, but in an unrecorded visit of St. Paul to them; in which Professor Plumptre differs from him (conf. p. 285 with note on 2 Cor. xii. 14 and xiv. 1); he attributes the words, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Cor. vii. 1) to St. Paul, not to those who wrote to him; and he thinks the history of the Last Supper was revealed to the Apostle directly in a trance—as to which he might be corrected by Professor Plumptre's explanation of St. Paul's "going up to Jerusalem by revelation" in the note on Acts xv. 2. But these are comparatively small blots, if they be blots, in an exposition which is well worthy to take its place in this most useful of modern Commentaries on the New Testament.
We are glad to hear that Professor Plumptre's "Commentary on the Acts" has been reprinted for the use of schools, and we hope that the other parts of the Commentary may be similarly treated.
The translation of Professor Cremer's "Biblico-Theological Lexicon," from the German, by Mr. Urwick (Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek, by Hermann Cremer, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Griefswald. Translated by W. Urwick, M.A. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark), supplies a great want in our helps to the study of the New Testament. Parkhurst is out of date and limited in his range of reference. Winer is a Grammar, not a Lexicon. Archbishop Trench's Synonyms, with all their value, do not cover the whole ground. The student turns, therefore, with eagerness to such a book as that of Professor Cremer. And he will not be disappointed. The book is what it professes to be. The author speaks modestly and truly of his work: "The work which, after a labour of nine years, I have now brought to completion is certainly an attempt only, and effort to do, not a result accomplished; it simply prepares the way for a cleverer hand than mine." He writes as an earnest believer, a pupil of Tholuck's, whose commentaries he singles out as alone fully investigating the great conceptions embodied in particular words of the New Testament Greek. He seems to have been fired by an expression of Schleiermacher's, which might be taken as the motto for his work: "A collection of all the various elements in which the language-moulding power of Christianity manifests itself would be an adumbration of New Testament doctrine and ethics." Like so many of Tholuck's pupils, he has tested his theology by the practical work of the ministry, not, however, neglecting the student's part, which after many years' toil has issued in the important work which has won him his professorship. The work has reached a second edition, and it is from this second edition (which contains an addition of 120 words) that the present translation is made.
Some words will, we may hope, be added in future editions. Such a word, for instance, as θρησκεἱα (James i.), which is used for religion itself; or, again, such a word as πηροω, with its compounds, which St. Paul makes the vehicle of so much teaching in Rom. xi.; or αρἑσκω, a word which may be said to have been converted by the language-forming power of Christianity, and others of equal or greater importance, have as yet no part in this Lexicon. The classical use of the words is fully noticed; it is, he says, in many cases "a vessel prepared to receive the Christian thought." The use of Greek words in the Septuagint is also worked out, though the author laments that the helps for this are so few. Of the Rabbinical or Post-Biblical writings use is also made, and of some of the earlier Fathers of the Church. But we miss the wide range of varied illustration from mediæval and modern literature which charms us in the work of Archbishop Trench. One source of illustration is deliberately put aside. "The works of Philo and Josephus," he says, "afford little help, because of their endeavour to import Greek ideas and Greek philosophy into Judaistic thought." Most students will be surprised to find that, even in reference to the conception of the Λὁγος, Professor Cremer considers that Philo's use of the word has no bearing on its use by St. John, which he considers to be simply an adaptation of the "Word of the Lord," as commonly used in the Old Testament and the Rabbinical writers. The object of the work is to discover the conceptions or ideas of the New Testament (or, as the writer expresses it with Rothe, "the language of the Holy Ghost"), by bringing together the passages in which the words are used. Whether he has always succeeded in this, or whether, as in the case of αιὡν (where he says that Ο αἱων μἑλλων is even in Matt. xiii. and xxiv. the new age of the world inaugurated by the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Christ), or as in the case of σὡμα (where he does not even refer to the apparent use of the word by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. and otherwise elsewhere as implying hardly more than personality), he has not at times been dominated by conventional views, each reader must judge. But every student will find in the careful enumeration of passages, and the discriminating and decided but not dogmatic judgment pronounced upon them, materials which will assist him in working out (as each man must do) his own theological conceptions.
An edition of the Septuagint, with a literal translation into English (The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament; with an English Translation, and with various Readings and Critical Notes: Samuel Bagster and Sons), is a work attempted by no one, we believe, before Mr. Bagster, and will be welcomed by the increasing number of thoughtful students of the Bible. There is a short introduction, stating all that is known of the origin of the Septuagint; the Greek text and English translations are given in parallel columns, in neat and small type, which enables the whole work to be comprised in a moderate quarto volume; and short notes are added which notice variations of readings, alternative translations, and the additions made by the Hebrew original, and direct attention to the passages quoted from the Septuagint in the New Testament. There is also an Appendix noticing a very few words as to which some difficulty arises, and a few passages which are supplied from the Alexandrine text. No mention is made of the Apocrypha.