Appendix: 247 Lindisfarne cueth thus, thu Joseph, sunu Dauides, nelle thu the ondrede to onfoanne maria gebede thin; cwethende, Josep, sunu Davithes, ne ondréd thu the onfoh Maria wife thinum; Rushworth Parker and him to cweth, Iosep, Dauides sunu, nelle thu ondrædan Marian thine gemeccean to on fonne; 1st Wyclifite sayinge, Joseph, the sone of Dauyd, nyl thou drede to take Marie thi wyf; 2nd Wyclifite and seide, Joseph, the sone of Dauid, nyle thou drede to take Marie thi wijf; Tyndale, 1525 sayinge, Joseph, the sonne of David, feare not to. take vnto the Mary thy wyfe; Tyndale, 1534 saynge, Ioseph, the sonne of David, feare not to take vnto the Mary thy wyfe; Coverdale Cranmer Geneva Bishops1 Reims Authorized saynge, Ioseph, thou sonne of Dauid, feare not to, take unto the Mary thy wyfe; sayinge, Ioseph, thou sonne of Dauid, feare not to. take vnto the Mary thy wyfe; saying, Ioseph, the sonne of Dauid, feare not to take Marie for thy wife; saying, Joseph, thou sonne of Dauid, feare not to, take [unto thee] Marie thy wife; saying, Ioseph, sonne of Dauid, feare not to take MARIE thy wife; saying, Ioseph, thou sonne of Dauid, feare not to. take vnto thee Mary thy wife; Lindisfarne that forthon in thær acenned is of gast halig is. Rushworth thætte sothlice in hire akenned is of them Halgan Gaste is. Parker that on hyre acenned ys hyt ys of tham halgan gaste. 1st Wyclifite forsothe that thing that is born in hire is of the Holy Goost. 2nd Wyclifite for that thing is borun in hir is of the Hooli Goost. Tyndale, 1525 for that which is conceaved in her is of the holy goost. Tyndale 1534 for that which is conceaved in her is of the holy Coverdale goost. for that which is conceaued in her is of the holy goost. Cranmer Geneva Authorized 21. Lindisfarne Rushworth Parker gecennes wotetlice sunu, and geceig thu noma is haelend, hio kenneth sothlice sunu, and thu nemnest his noma hælend, witodlice heo centh sunu, and thu nemst hys naman Hælend, 1st Wyclifite Sothely she shal bere a sone, and thou shalt clepe his name Jesus, 2nd Wyclifite And she shal bere a sone, and thou shalt clepe his name Jhesus, Tyndale, 1525 She shall brynge forthe a sonne, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, Tyndale, 1534 She shall brynge forthe a sonne, and thou shalt call his name Iesus, She shall brynge forth a sonne, and thou shalt call his name Iesus, Coverdale Lindisfarne the ilca ec hál doeth he gewyrcas fole his from -Appendix 249 1st Wyclifite for he shal make his peple saif fro* her synnes. 2nd Wyclifite for he schal make his puple saaf fro/her synnes. Tyndale, 1525 for he shall save his people from their synnes. Tyndale, 1534 for he shall save his peple from their synnes. Coverdale Geneva for he shall saue his people from their synnes. B. NOTE ON THE RENDERING OF THE AORIST. In the Authorized Version the Greek aorist is yery often rendered as a perfect-'I have done,' 'I am come'; not 'I did, ‘I came.” To do this is generally looked on as bad scholarship, but I hold that, unless unsuited to the context, it is always allowable, and that it is sometimes imperative. Winer (Moulton's ed., 1877, p. 344) says: There is no passage in which it can certainly be proved that the aorist stands for the perfect. More specious examples of this interchange would perhaps be L. xiv. 18, ἀγρὸν ἠγόρασα ; xiv. 19, ζεύγη βοῶν ἠγόρασα κ.τ.λ. But in all these instances the action is merely represented as having occurred, as filling a point of past time, as simply and absolutely past (in L. xiv. in antithesis to a present act), I bought a field, a yoke of oxen, etc.' . Let us turn to the verses referred to-Luke xiv. 18-20: The first said unto him "I have bought [Gk. aorist] a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused." And another said “I have bought [Gk. aorist] five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said “I have married [Gr. aorist] a wife, and therefore I cannot come." It is allowed by every one that the idea which lies in the perfect 'I have done,' 'I am come,' and does not lie in the aorist 'I did,' 'I came,' is present permanence of the result of the past action. Now in the above passage of Luke is not this the very essence of the past tense? Did one man want to be excused because he once bought a a piece of ground, another because he once bought five yoke of oxen, a third because he once married a wife? No; but because the result of their doing these things in the past was continuous up to the present, and stopped them from going to the wedding-they had done this * The Southcountry equivalent of 'their.' 250 Appendix. and that. The Authorized Version is quite right in its rendering, and Winer quite wrong. Again, what are we to say to the following?-John iii. 32, And, what he hath seen [Gk. perfect] and heard [Gk. aorist], that he testifieth;' Acts xxii. 15, For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen [Gk. perfect] and heard [Gk. aorist].' Will any one hold that there is meant to be the slightest difference between the aorist and the perfect in these passages? Farrar says (Gk. Syntax, pp. 126-7), Very rarely indeed we are compelled by the English idiom to introduce the present perfect (or perfect with "have ") in rendering the aorist. . . . All such cases prove, not any identity of meaning between the tenses, but a different intellectual standpoint; the aorists here (as in modern Greek) express merely a finished past action, with no reference to the time of completion.' Now, as it is very seldom indeed that we are ever tempted in classical Greek to render an aorist as a perfect, while we are so tempted very often indeed in the Greek of the N.T., it follows that if Farrar be right we get a delicate psychological difference between the N.T. writers and the classical Greek writers. And it seems to me far more likely to allow that one of those accommodations had taken place which are so common in the history of speech, and of which the N.T. gives us at least one unquestioned example in the frequent substitution of the subjunctive for the optative mood. We know indeed that modern Greek has gone very much farther. It has altogether thrown over the classical perfect, except in the passive participle, and uses instead sometimes the verb 'have' or 'am' with that participle, and sometimes the aorist, as in άkóμn dèv Oɛ, he is not yet come.' The reasons of the change were doubtless that dislike to reduplication which in modern Greek has shorn it away from the last relic of the perfect, its passive participle, leaving not yɛypaμμévos, but ypaμμévos; and maybe also a liking for the soft ending -σa of the aorist rather than the guttural -ra of the perfect. σα I hold, then, that, like the Latin perfect and the modern Greek aorist, the aorist of N.T. speech had the twofold power of aorist and perfect, and that in rendering it we should be guided by the context, as we are in translating Latin. To deny this in face of the immense number of apparent examples of the second power which the N.T. yields, and to set up instead a different intellectual standpoint' for the N.T. writers, is, in my judgment, to sink from grammatical reverence to grammatical superstition.. C. Appendix. 251 TABLE OF MEMBERS OF THE HEROD FAMILY MENTIONED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. i. 18, note] It should have been added that there is a fourth. reading, simply 'Jesus,' but that it is supported only by one cursive, a Persian version (or two Persian versions?) of seemingly unknown. date, and (expressly) by the Dialogi de Trinitate ascribed to Maximus. the Confessor (died in 662) or sometimes to Athanasius or Theodoret. The statement that there are no 2nd cent. authorities against' of the Christ' 'unless the South Egyptian version be so early,' leaves out of sight the possibility that even the North Egyptian and, as Tischendorf and Scrivener hold, the Peshitta Syriac belong to that. century. i. 22 It seems from a passage in Bp. Lightfoot's book On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament (91) that I do not stand alone among modern commentators in reviving the old interpretation which assigned these words to the speech of the angel. After urging that. the perfect tense should be rendered as a perfect in the three passages, i. 22, xxi. 4, xxvi. 56, Bp. Lightfoot says/In two of these passages. editors sometimes attach the τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν to the words of the previous speaker-of the angel in i. 22 and of our, Lord in xxvi. 56— in order to explain the perfect. But this connection is very awkward even in these two cases, and wholly out of the question in the remaining instance (xxi. 4). Is not the true solution this; that these tenses, preserve the freshness of the earliest catechetical narrative of the Gospel history, when the narrator was not so far removed from the fact. that it was unnatural for him to say "This is come to pass"?' Now (i) on the lowest possible computation an entire generation would have passed away between the date of the dream narrated in Matt. i. and the earliest catechetical narrative,' while hardly anybody supposes that this Gospel was written till about a generation later. 1st/ |