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in the mouth of a Jew the word "Greek" had two senses, in one of which it was a national term, the opposite of "barbarian" (Rom. i. 14), and in the other a quasi-religious one, the opposite of "Jew" (Rom. i. 16). In the former sense it excluded Hellenists; in the latter, it included all Hellenists of other than Jewish blood and faith. From the strongly Jewish standpoint of II. Macc. it was inevitable that Antioch should be thought of and called Greek or Heathen; from the liberal standpoint of Luke, himself a Gentile, and perhaps even a Greek in the narrower sense, the same city might rather seem Hellenistic. It is, therefore, of much greater importance to note Luke's own use of the term "EXλŋv. It lies on the face of things that he not only speaks of the Corinthians (xviii. 4) and Amphipolitans (xvii. 4) and Asians (xix. 10) as Greeks, but also of the Gentiles that lived in Iconium (xiv. 1), and Timothy's father at Lystra (xvi. 1, 3). It also lies on the face of things that the standing opposite to 'Iovdaíovs in Acts is Ἕλληνας, not Ἑλληνιστάς. Luke thus apparently adopts the Jewish standpoint, and speaks from that point of view. Presumptions thus arise against his calling the Antiochian heathen, Hellenists, rather than Greeks or Gentiles; and against his opposing to 'Iovdaíous other than its usual and accurate opposite Anvas or evŋ (xiv. 5). These presumptions are still further increased by the fact that quirás and Ιουδαίους are not in any event mutually exclusive ; ἑλληνιστάς in the sense of "Greek-speaking Jews" is but a part of 'lovdaíovs, and the Ἰουδαῖοι of Antioch were but a part of the ἑλληνισταί understood in the broad sense of "Græcizers." The weight of these presumptions is certainly very great, but hardly great enough to render it impossible to suppose that Luke has used EXAŋviorrás here to express the pupulation of Antioch in general. Paul, a Jew, could desert his usual Jewish standpoint and usual contrast of "Greeks and Jews" just once for the more Greek view-point and expression of "Greeks and barbarians" (Rom. i. 14); and there is no reason why Luke, a Gentile himself, may not similarly have deserted just once the Jewish standpoint, and have written "Jews and Græcizers" rather than "Jews and Greeks.” And it needs to be observed, also, that, however true it may be that "Jews and Hellenists" do not constitute an exclusive and clear partition, generally speaking, it is sharply enough drawn for the needs of our present passage, and suffices for the progress of thought there indicated. The advance from the narrower word to the broader, from which the narrower by the very contrast is excluded, secures the progress demanded by the context. "Some preached to the Jews only, but some preached also to the Hellenistic population in general.”

This last remark anticipates somewhat the discussion of the fitness of this understanding of the term to the immediate context. It cannot be denied that it has a somewhat strange appearance there. The inexactness of its contrast to 'lovdaíovs is disturbing, especially after force has been thrown upon the contrast by the kai. That the demands of the contextual flow of thought are preserved, however, has been already pointed out; and the strangeness of the word here to us may result from the rarity of it in general. If it were an ordinary term in the common speech of the day to describe the population of the Hellenizing cities, it would become very natural in this context. Difficult, then, as it confessedly is to take it here in the sense of the Antiochians in general, it is scarcely impossible; and thus there emerges at least one way in which the conflict between the intrinsic evidence and the other forms of testimony çan be voided.

The Conclusion.

In attempting to combine the various elements of this evidence and reach a conclusion, four courses are open to us:

(1) We may follow the external and transcriptional evidence to the neglect of the intrinsic, and read λŋviorás in the sense of "Greekspeaking Jews."

(2) We may follow the intrinsic evidence to the neglect of the external and transcriptional, and read ëŋvas.

(3) We may follow the external evidence as valid for the transmitted text, and then assume, on the basis of the intrinsic evidence, a "primitive error," arising probably from the proximity of evayyedıgóμevoi, and so venture to restore ŋvas by critical conjecture.

(4) We may harmonize the external and transcriptional evidence on the one side with the intrinsic evidence on the other by reading Anvuras, and understanding it in the broad sense of "Græcizers," meaning thereby the total mixed population of Antioch.

No one of these courses is free from grave difficulty. To the present writer the first appears almost, if not quite, impossible; it does absolute violence to every exegetical hint a context could well give. And however true it may be, as Dr. Hort says, that "the difficulty probably arises from the brevity of the record and the slightness of our knowledge," it remains equally true that, in the present state of our knowledge, it is impossible to do such violence to contextual indications. The third method, again, can be but the resort of desperation, and cannot be adopted so long as any loophole of escape is open to us. Conjectural emendation is, no doubt, a proper

enough method of castigating the text; but every resort to it, and every use of it, in cases where intrinsic evidence and transcriptional evidence do not unite to compel the resort and suggest the remedy, is not only precarious but unjustifiable. Drs. Howson and Spence1 well remark that the remedy offered by the second method is very suspiciously easy. It is a dangerous expedient to adopt the easiest reading in such cases as this, especially when it is done in the face of apparently decisive external testimony. It cannot be too strenuously emphasized that divided internal evidence is suspicious.2 To venture to cast aside, on intrinsic grounds alone, the combined external and transcriptional probabilities, differs in little but the name from the most uncertain kind of conjectural emendation. Nevertheless, if any of the first three methods are to be adopted, it must be this; although it is essentially the acceptance of an impure conjecture of a tolerably precarious kind. No doubt other cases may be pointed out where an equal array of external witnesses is confessedly overborne by the weight of internal considerations; the difficulty here lies in the division of the internal evidence itself. If we can persuade ourselves that the transcriptional evidence is also in favor of Anvas, our procedure will become easy and certain. Then, it will be plain that the stem of descent became corrupt after the divergence of the Western class, and before the separation of the Neutral and Alexandrian. This occurs actually in other cases, and is theoretically conceivable. But in the present case the transcriptional evidence apparently stubbornly arrays itself on the wrong side to allow this supposition. According as we consider the transcriptional evidence here to be strongly for, faintly for, or possibly against Enviorrás, ought we to judge this second method of procedure to be impossible, improbable, or probable. The difficulties that lie against the fourth method have been already sufficiently adverted to and are obvious of themselves. The fact that it alone harmonizes the various kinds of evidence is much in its favor. It is possible that it has the support of the Greek commentators, from Chrysostom to Theophylact, who apparently read Enviarás in their text, and without any hesitation explain it of the Gentiles. It may account for the carelessness of the versions in not seeking discriminating equivalents for Έλληνες and ἑλληνισταί, in which they may be simply a reflection of the usage of their day. It is still

1 Schaff's Popular Commentary on the New Testament, in loco.

2 Compare the brief and pertinent remarks in Wescott and Hort's Greek Testament, vol. i., p. 542, and the corresponding passage of vol. ii., in §§ 32-37

further supported by the failure of the fathers to preserve a distinction between the words. Our choice must certainly lie between this method and the second, and beset with difficulty as it is, this fourth method appears to the present writer, on the whole, the easier solution. We propose, therefore, the provisional adoption of the reading [viorás] -enclosed in square brackets-with the reading Aŋras on the margin, and the understanding that it stands there as a true gloss as well as less well-authenticated various reading. It may not be impossible that some such process may go on in our minds in this case as that which Dr. Vaughan describes in the preface to the third edition of his Commentary on Remans: "It is deeply interesting," he says, "to take note of the process of thought and feeling which attends in one's own mind the presentation of some unfamiliar reading. At first sight the suggestion is repelled as unintelligible, startling, almost shocking. By degrees light dawns upon it; it finds its plea and its palliation. At last, in many instances, it is accepted as adding force and beauty to the context, and a conviction gradually forms itself that thus, and not otherwise, was it written." The same process may attend the consideration of a new understanding of an old reading.

1 5th ed., London, 1880, p. xxi. Cf. also Authorized or Revised? Sermons, etc., London, 1882, p. xii.

Ænon near to Salim.

BY PROF. WM. ARNOLD STEVENS.

THE

HERE is perhaps no lost Biblical site, unless it be "Bethany beyond Jordan," that the student of the Gospel narrative is now

so eager to recover, as the Ænon of. John iii. 23.

Here John the Baptist appears for the last time on the public arena of history. Here he delivers his last recorded testimony to the Messiah, unsurpassed in moral sublimity by any utterance that has since fallen from human lips. Neither Ænon nor Salim occurs elsewhere in the New Testament; whether either is mentioned in the Old Testament remains to be ascertained. Both names have wandered like disembodied spirits in search of their proper habitat. They have traversed Palestine from south to north, on both sides of the Jordan, and sometimes have settled down in very "dry places."

That the Greek Alvó represents an Aramaic derivative of 'Ain, "spring," either an intensive or a plural (see Grimm, Clavis N. T.), is scarcely to be questioned. It is therefore a descriptive local name, equivalent to "the Springs." So J. Lightfoot: "I should rather take Ænon for the name of some large and spacious compass of ground, full of fresh springs and waters, than for any one particular town, river, or city" (see Harmony of the Four Evangelists, on John iii. 23). Its situation is only defined as that of the well-known, or at least the better known, Salim. The latter name, it is to be noted, is an unexplained exception to current Greek usage as to names of towns; it is not feminine (though so given in Robinson's Lexicon; in Grimm's Clavis the question of gender remains unnoticed), but either masculine or neuter.

The writer has been led, while treating of the life of Christ, in the classroom, to a frequent examination of the arguments pro and con for each of the proposed sites. From data supplied by the Gospel narrative itself, he had been inclined to seek the locality in central rather than southern Palestine, and that, either in the valley of the Jordan, south of Beisân, or, following Robinson, in the neighborhood of Sâlim, east of Nâblous. A three or four months' tour in Palestine,

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