Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

-OF-

BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND EXEGESIS,

INCLUDING THE

PAPERS READ AND ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS

FOR-

JUNE AND DECEMBER, 1881.

The Society prints the papers read in full, but is not respon-
sible for any opinions expressed therein.

MIDDLETOWN, CONN.:

PELTON & KING, PRINTERS AND BOOK-BINDERS,

1882.

On the Construction of Titus ii. 13.

BY PROF. EZRA ABBOT, D. D., LL. D., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

The Greek reads as follows : προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (or Χριστοῦ Ἰησού).

Shall we translate, "the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ"? or, "the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ"?

It was formerly contended by Granville Sharp, and afterwards by Bishop Middleton, that the absence of the Greek article before

in Tit. ii. 13 and 2 Pet. i. 1, and before 0 in Eph. v. 5, is alone sufficient to prove that the two appellatives connected by za belong to one subject.* "It is impossible," says Middleton in his note on Tit. ii. 13, "to understand 0:05 and 6-pos otherwise than of one person." This ground is now generally abandoned, and it is ad

*Sharp applied his famous rule also to 2 Thess. i. 12, but Middleton thinks that this text affords no certain evidence in his favor. Winer disposes of it summarily as merely a case in which zóptos is used for ptos, the word ziptos taking, in a measure, the character of a proper In 2 Thess. i. 11, ó òýμ☎ denotes God in distinction from "our Lord Jesus" (ver. 12); it is therefore unnatural in the extreme to take this title in the last clause of the very same sentence (ver. 12) as a designation of Christ. We may then reject without hesitation Granville Sharp's construction, which in fact has the support of but few respectable scholars.

name.

As to

of Bishop Middleton and Bishop Ellicott on the former passage. Compare the remarkable various reading in Gal. ii. 20, adopted by Lachmann and Tregelles (text), but not by Tischendorf or Westcott and Hort, ὑπίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ Χριστοῦ.

1 Tim. v. 21 and 2 Tim. iv. 1, it is enough to refer to the notes

In Eph.

Bo are

v. 5, dy - Buathsig rod Npratos za Oco, the Xptoro) and regarded as denoting distinct subjects by a large majority of the best commentators, as De Wette, Meyer, Oldshausen, Meier, Holzhausen, Flatt, Matthies, Baumgarten-Crusius, Bleek, Ewald, Schenkel, Braune and Riddle (in Lange's Comm., Amer. trans.), Conybeare, Bloomfield, Ellicott, Eadie, Alford, Canon Barry in Ellicott's V. T. Com., and Prebendary Meyrick in "the Speaker's Commentary" (1881). strenuously by Middleton in Eph. v. 5, and by Sharp in 2 Thess. i. 12, has not been deemed worthy of notice.

mitted that, grammatically, either construction is possible. I need only refer to Winer, Stuart, Buttmann, T. S. Green, and S. G. Green among the grammarians, and to Alford, Ellicott, Wace, and other recent commentators. It will be most convenient to assume, provisionally, that this view is corrrect; and to consider first the exegetical grounds for preferring one construction to the other. But as some still think that the omission of the article, though not decisive of the question, affords a presumption in favor of the construction which makes tou μsɣákov Osoù a designation of Christ, a few remarks upon this point will be made in Note A, at the end of this paper. It may be enough to say here, that cod has already an attributive, so that the mind naturally rests for a moment upon του μεγάλου θεοῦ as a subject by itself; and that the addition of Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ το σωτῆρος ἡμῶν distinguishes the person so clearly from τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ according to Paul's constant use of language, that there was no need of the article for that purpose. The question presented derives additional interest from the fact that, in the recent Revision of the English translation of the New Testament, the English Company have adopted in the text the first of the constructions mentioned above, placing the other in the margin; while the American Company, by a large majority, preferred to reverse these positions.

I will first examine the arguments of Bishop Ellicott for the construction which makes to perálov Oso an appellation of Christ. They are as follows:

"(a) èлçávea is a term specially and peculiarly applied to the Son, and never to the Father." The facts are these. In one passage (2 Tim. i. 10) the word èлçávea is applied to Christ's first advent; in four to his second advent (2 Thess. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1, 8); and as èñçávea denotes a visible manifestation, it may be thought that an лiçávsia of God, the Father, "whom no man hath seen nor can see," could not be spoken of.

But this argument is founded on a misstatement of the question. The expression here is not "the appearing of the great God," but "the appearing of the glory of the great God," which is a very different thing. When our Saviour himself had said, "The Son of man

+ See Winer, Gram. 2 19, 5, Anm. 1, p. 123, 7te Aufl. (p. 130 Thayer's trans., p. 162 Moulton); Stuart, Bibl. Repos. April, 1834, vol. iv. p. 322 f.; A. Buttmann, Gram., 125, 14-17, pp. 97-100, Thayer's trans.; T. S. Green, Gram. of the N. T. Dialect (1842), pp. 205-219, or new ed. (1862), pp. 67-75; S. G. Green, Handbook to the Gram. of the Greek Test., p. 216; and Alford on Tit. ii. 13. Alford has some good remarks on the passage, but I find no sufficient proof of his statement that swip had become in the N. T. "a quasi proper name."

shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels" (Matt. xvi. 27, comp. Mark viii. 38), or as Luke expresses it, "in his own glory, and the glory of the Father, and of the holy angels" (ch. ix. 26), can we doubt that Paul, who had probably often heard Luke's report of these words, might speak of "the appearing of the glory" of the Father, as well as of Christ, at the second advent?*

This view is confirmed by the representations of the second advent given elsewhere in the New Testament, and particularly by 1 Tim. vi. 14–16. The future èçávera of Christ was not conceived of by Paul as independent of God, the Father, any more than his first inçaveza or advent, but as one “which in his own time the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen nor can see, shall show” (òsis). The reference is to the joint manifestation of the glory of God and of Christ at the time when, to use the language of the writer to the Hebrews (i. 6), “he again bringeth [or shall have brought] the first-begotten into the world, and saith, Let all the angels of God pay him homage.” That God and Christ should be associated in the references to the second advent, that God should be represented as displaying his power and glory at the casera of Christ, accords with the account given elsewhere of the accompanying events. The dead are to be raised at the second advent, a glorious display of divine power, even as Christ is said to have been "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father" Rom. vi. 4). But it is expressly declared by Paul that "as Jesus died and rose again, even so shall GOD, through Jesus, bring with him them that have fallen asleep" (1 Thess. iv. 14; comp. Phil. iii. 21); and again, "GOD both raised the Lord, and will raise up us by his power” (1 Cor. vi. 14). There is to be a general judgment at the second advent; but Paul tells us that "God hath appointed a day

Even if the false assumption on which the argument is founded were correct, that is, if the expression here used were idetav tod μεγάλων θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, the argument would have little or no weight. The fact that gaveta is used four times of Christ in relation to the second advent, would be very far from proving that it might not be so used of God, the Father, also. ́ Abundant examples may be adduced from Jewish writers to show that any extraordinary display of divine power, whether exercised directly and known only by its effects, or through an intermediate visible agent, as an angel, might be called an intę veta, an “appearing" or "manifestation" of God. The word is used in the same way in heathen literature to denote any supposed divine interposition in human affairs, whether accompanied by a visible appearance of the particular deity concerned, or not. See Note B.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »