given occasion to the introduction of these Greek terms into the translation of the Seventy.' 1

The principle thus clearly laid down by Dr. Campbell is one of extreme importance. There cannot be a doubt that he is right in maintaining that the Greek of the New Testament is Judæo-Greek, or to use Dr. Duncan's expression 'Hebrew thought in Greek clothing,' being formed by the LXX regarded as an embodiment of that revelation which was made in Hebrew. Not only is the truth of the Old Testament taken for granted on every page of the New, but the very language of the latter has a vital connection with that of the former, the LXX being a natural, or we should rather say a providential, bridge spanning the gulf which separated Moses from Christ. Thus, to take a single short book, in the Epistle of St. James we meet with certain Greek words rendered dispersion, temptation, trial, doubting, firstfruits, respect of persons, Lord of Sabaoth, in the last days, stablish your hearts, justify, double-minded, long-suffering, of tender mercy, faith, spirit, wisdom, the judge. A Jew trained in the Greek translation of the Old Testament would naturally and almost unconsciously give to these words a peculiar richness and fulness of meaning from their usage in the Law and the Prophets when they appear as the rendering of certain Hebrew words and phrases. Again, such expressions as son of perdition,'' children of wrath,' ' if they shall enter into my rest,' by the hand of a mediator,' 'go in peace' (ɛis ɛipńvnv), 'living waters,' were familiar words to most of them from their youth up.2

§ 10. It may be objected, however, that the use of the LXX 1 Campbell's Preliminary Dissertations.

2 Mr. Webster rightly states, in his Grammar of New Testament Greek, that the influence of Hebrew on the Greek Testament is lexical rather than grammatical, but he somewhat underrates the bearing of the Hebrew voices, tenses, particles, and prepositions on New Testament Greek. Dr. Delitzsch in the learned introduction to his translation of the Epistle to the Romans into Hebrew (Leipsig, 1870) has some interesting remarks on this subject.

§ 10.] The Languages spoken by the Jews.

21

was confined to a small portion of the Jews, that most of them spoke Aramaic, and that we must not therefore press the resemblances between the Greek Testament and the LXX too far. The popular theory certainly is that our Lord and his disciples spoke in Aramaic or Syro-Chaldee,' an idea which is usually based on the fact that three or four words of this dialect are found amidst the Greek of the N. T. When Diodati propounded his view that our Lord was in the habit of speaking in Greek, it met with general contempt. De Rossi, no mean critic, controverted this novel view (as it was considered) in a treatise of some learning, though of short compass. Dr. Roberts in his 'Discussions on the Gospels,' has taken up the subject again, and has upheld the views of Diodati with much skill. His treatise has never been thoroughly answered; yet his arguments do not altogether carry conviction. It is strange that the learned are content to rest in uncertainty about a point of such deep interest. There is probably more to be said on each side than has yet been said; but the conviction which a student of the controversy is likely to come to at present is that a large number of the Jews were bilingual: they talked both Syro-Chaldee and Judæo-Greek; and our Lord and his apostles did the. same. Whilst, therefore, some of the addresses and discourses contained in the Greek Testament must be considered as translations, others may be fairly taken as giving us the ipsissima verba of Him who spake as never yet man spake. One thing is certain, that if the Greek Gospels do not give our Lord's original discourses, it is in vain to look to any other source for them. If they are not originals, we have no originals. The Peschito Syriac version of the New Testament bears evident

A compound of Babylonian and Syrian, of which there were two or three dialects, e.g. the Galilean, which was ruder than that spoken in Jerusalem. See Walton's Prolegomena on this subject; also De Rossi's work, referred to further on. 2 Dissertazioni della lingua propria di Cristo, Milan, 1842.

traces of having been made from the Greek; so does the early Latin; so do all the other early versions; nor is there any other practical conclusion to be arrived at than this, that the Greek Gospels are to be taken as the inspired transcripts of the words and deeds of the Saviour, written in a tongue which was intelligible to most Jews, to all Greeks, to many Romans, and to the great bulk of people whom the Gospel could reach in the course of the first century.

A difficulty which naturally presents itself here is that the LXX embraces a number of books and fragments for which we find no originals in the Hebrew Bible; if, therefore, its pages mainly represented the Scriptures of the O. T. to the Jews in our Lord's time, it might be supposed that He gave authority to the Apocrypha. But was it so? When He said Search the Scriptures,' did He mean, Search Judith, Tobit, Bel and the Dragon, and the Maccabees? No. By the Scriptures He meant the Law and the Prophets, which were read in the synagogue every Sabbath day, and He referred to the Greek interpretation of these Scriptures only so far as they were clear expositions of the Law and the Prophets.

The LXX had certainly received a quasi-authorisation by age and custom in our Lord's time, and perhaps it had been more formally authorised. Father Simon considers that it may have obtained its name from the fact that it was sanctioned by the Sanhedrim, which consisted of seventy members. He remarks that the Synagogue was used not only for a place of religious service, but as a school. It was in this sense called Beth midrash, the house of exposition; and whereas the Talmud prohibited the reading of the law in any language but Hebrew during divine service, the LXX and also the Chaldee Targums were the main basis of teaching in school hours. Thus the Hebrew sacred books constituted the canon, whilst the LXX, so far as its rendering of those sacred books is concerned, became what we may call the Authorised

$ 11.] Principles to be borne in mind by Translators. 23 Version in daily use in the school, and to a certain extent in the family; and its modes of expression would gradually form the religious language of the bulk of the people.1

§ 11. Those readers who have carefully followed the statements now advanced will understand that the studies of Old Testament synonyms contained in the following pages are not intended to initiate any novel mode of interpreting Scripture, but simply to apply those principles which all students, theoretically at least, hold to be sound.

The translator must deal with words before he can render sentences. He finds 1860 Hebrew roots in the Old Testament for which he has to discover equivalents. Each of these may have several shades of meaning; and the various senses given to the original word may not exactly tally with

1 NOTE ON ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.-A possible solution of a long-standing difficulty may be here presented for the consideration of the learned. There is an old tradition that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew; but the opinion of some modern scholars who have subjected the matter to the severest criticism is that it was written in Greek. This view is upheld with much force by Dr. Roberts in his Discussions on the Gospels. But, after all, may not some copies of St. Matthew's Gospel have been specially prepared in Hebrew characters for those Jews who talked Greek, but did not read it? In the present day we find Greek, Spanish, German, Polish, Persian, and Arabic works (especially Bibles) printed in the Hebrew character. So early as the time of Origen, the Hebrew Scriptures were written in Greek letters. Why, then, should not the Greek Scriptures have been written in Hebrew characters for the benefit of a portion of the Jewish people who would otherwise have been debarred from access to them? Transliteration is Arabic Scriptures are printed in Syriac characters, Turkish in very common now. Armenian, Turkish in Greek, Kurdish in Armenian, Indian languages in Arabic, Malay and even Chinese in Roman. The version which the Caraite Jews especially esteem is a Greek Pentateuch, printed at Constantinople in Hebrew characters. According to the opinion of most scholars, the whole Hebrew Scriptures have been transliterated from Samaritan characters, whilst the Samaritans still retain a text of the Pentateuch in their own character. There would, therefore, be nothing novel or extraordinary in the plan which is here conjectured to have been adopted by St. Matthew or some of his followers, namely, to make copies of the Gospel in Hebrew characters. Any person not versed in the study of Hebrew would naturally suppose, on seeing such a copy, that it was written in the Hebrew language. It is true that such scholars as Origen and Jerome would not be so imposed upon; but there is no proof that either of these learned men had ever held the book in their hand. The solution now proposed is only ventured on as a possible, though very natural, clue to the problem.

those which are represented by the word adopted as a translation. It is a great help to him to find that the rendering of a great proportion of them has gradually become fixed by a sort of tradition. If, however, fresh light can be obtained either from the context, or from the LXX, or from the general usage of a Hebrew word, and still more if the N. T. can be more clearly rendered through comparison with the LXX, tradition must be sacrificed to truth.

The translator's business is to give the idea which the Jew' would have in reading the Old and New Testaments, in as idiomatic a form as possible, but without trenching on the duties of the expositor. A word ought to be translated according to its general usage unless there is some plain reason to the contrary. When a word is capable of being rendered either in a general or in a specific or technical sense, there is much need of caution and judgment; here, however, the shades of meaning represented in the Hebrew Voice often come to the help of the translator, the Piel being peculiarly a technical or ceremonial Voice. Where critics or theologians differ as to the sense conveyed by the original, the translator must content himself by adhering to the most literal or the most natural rendering of the text. Martin Luther departed from this principle when he translated δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ the righteousness which is valid before God,' because, whether this idea might or might not be conveyed by the general teaching of St. Paul, the bare words do not teach it. This is thrusting a theological view into the translation, which ought to be scrupulously avoided, as far as possible. The revisers of the English Bible would be justly censured if they were to translate TOÛTÓ ÉσTI TÒ

2

It may be objected that some portions at least of the New Testament were intended for Gentile readers; this may have been the case, but they were written by Jews, and consequently more or less in the Judæo-Greek diction.

2 Die Gerechtigkeit, die vor Gott gilt.