Recourse to synonymas, analogy, and etymology, is necessary, and often successful, in discovering the sense of an obscure expression, whereof nothing less than the use of good authors will warrant the propriety or elegance. Sufficient evidence in the one case, is often no evidence in the other. 13. Blackwall admits freely that there are many Hebraisms in the New Testament, at the same time asserting that they are real beauties, which add both vigour and ornament to the expression. In this opinion, if he was serious, I believe that, upon examination, we shall not be found to differ. Abstracting from that lowest kind of beauty in language which results from its softness and harmony, considered as an object to the ear, every excellency of style is relative, arising solely from its fitness for producing in the mind of the reader the end intended by the writer. Now in this view it is evident, that a style and manner may, to readers of one denomination, convey the writer's sentiments with energy as well as perspicuity, which to those of a different denomination convey them feebly, darkly, and, when judged by their rules of propriety, improperly. This I take to have been actually the case with the writers of the New Testament. I speak particularly of the historical books. I look upon the language of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as better adapted to the readers for whose use the Gospels and Acts were at first composed, than the language of Plato or Demosthenes would have been. tionable English. "Is it not," he would argue, common to say, I will do my duty? Now, if this expression be classical, where is the impropriety in substituting one synonymous word for another?" And to show that do and make are synonymous, he might urge, first, that in most other tongues one word serves for both. Thus each of them is rendered into Latin, facere; into Italian, fure; into French, faire. Secondly, though he had not found in any English book the identical phrase to make duty, he could produce expressions in which there is an entire similarity. To make court, to make obeisance, are both good; nay, it strengthens the argument, that to do obeisance is also used in the same signification. Shakspeare says, "What make they there!" which is equivalent to What do they there? Dryden speaks of "the faults he had made;" though, doubtless, the more usual expression would have been, "the faults he had done." Now, from the first principles of analogy we are warranted to conclude, that if making a fault be proper to express doing wrong, making a duty is proper to express doing right.-All this is very plausible, and would probably be suffi cient to convince most strangers, but would only extort a smile from an intelligent native, on whom a thousand such arguments could make no impression. Yet I will venture to affirm, that, if there be no solidity in this reasoning, nine-tenths of what has been so pompously produced, to show that the supposed Hebraisms of the New Testament are in the genuine idiom of the Greek tongue, are no better than arrant trifling. It was to triflers of this sort that Chrysostom said very appositely, 'Iva un καταγελωμεθα ουτω διαλεγομενοι προς Έλληνας, επειδαν ήμιν προς αυτούς αγων ην, κατηγορωμεν αποστολών ὡς αμαθων, ἡ γας κατηγορία αυτη εγκωμιον. Chrys. Hom. 3. in 1 Cor. i. "That we may not render ourselves ridiculous, arguing thus with Grecians, for our dispute is with them, let us accuse the apostles of being illiterate, for this is an encomium." Origen goes still farther, and says, Oux aσuvaiconto ÓI ATOSTORO TUYXaκοντες των εν όις προσκόπτουσι, φασιν ιδιωται είναι τῷ λόγῳ, αλλ' ου τη γνώσει. Philoc. c. 4. "The apostles, not insensible of their own defects, profess themselves to be of the vulgar in speech, but not in knowledge." Sacr. Class. Part i. c. 1. I should at the same time think it unreasonable to deny, that the latter must have been more intelligible to an Athenian, and much more pleasing, nervous, and animated, than the former. Nay, if such a one had even denominated the idiom of the New Testament barbarous, I should not have thought it an unpardonable offence. The word indeed sounds harshly; but we know that, from the mouths of native Greeks, it could only mean that the idiom of that book is not conformable to the rules of their grammarians and rhetoricians, and to the practice of their writers of reputation;-a concession which we may easily make them, without derogating in the least from the apostles and evangelists; a concession which (as was observed before) the most learned and oratorical of the Greek fathers did not scruple to make. In such cases, it is evident that a native of common sense is a much better judge than a learned foreigner."* 14. I expressed myself dubiously of Blackwall's seriousness in affirming, that the oriental idioms, with which the sacred authors abound, are highly ornamental to their compositions; because nothing can be plainer than that he is indefatigable in controverting their claims to the greater part of those ornaments. I cannot think he would have willingly injured them; yet it is impossible not to perceive, that he is at infinite pains, though on the most frivolous pretexts, † to divest them of almost every beauty of this sort ascribed to them by others! I desire only to restore to them the merit, of which he has not very consistently, though I believe with a pious intention, endeavoured to strip them. This critic did not consider, that, when he admitted any Hebraisms in the New Testament, he in effect gave up the cause. That only can be called a Hebraism in a Greek book, which, though agreeable to the Hebrew idiom, is not so to the Greek. Nobody would ever call that a Scotticism which is equally in the manner of both Scots and English. Now, such Hardly any foreigner of the last century has been more conversant with English men and English books than Voltaire. Yet his knowledge of our language, on which I have been told he piqued himself not a little, has not secured him from blundering when he attempted to write it. In a letter to the Parisians, prefixed to his comedy L'Ecossaise, which he thought proper to introduce to the world as a translation, he quotes the following sentence as part of a letter he had received from the English author: "You have quite impoverished the character of Wasp; and you have blotted his chastisement at the end of the drama." An Englishman might have guessed what he meant by the first clause, but must have remained in total darkness about the second, if he had not explained himself by subjoining the translation: "Vous avez affoibli le caractère de Frelon; et vous avez supprimé son chatiment à la fin de la pièce ;" an explanation not less necessary to many of his English readers than to his French. The following is a specimen, vol. ii. part i. ch. 2. § 2. “Kaтaßoλn nooμou, in the sacred writers, seemed to some gentlemen conversant in these studies unexampled in the old Grecians. Indeed it is very rare; but it is found in the lofty Pindar, (Nem. Od. 2.) Καταβολαν ἱεραν αγωνων. A most extraordinary way of proving that the phrase Karaßon nooμo is not unexampled in the old Grecians. About the noun Karaßon no doubt was ever made, nor was any doubt made about Kooμos; the question was solely about the phrase. foreign idioms as Hebraisms in Greek, Grecisms in Hebrew, or Latinisms in either, come all within the definition of barbarism, and sometimes even of solecism-words which have always something relative in their signification; that turn of expression being a barbarism or a solecism in one language, which is strictly proper in another-and I may add, to one set of hearers, which is not so to another. It is, then, in vain for any one to debate about the application of the names barbarism and solecism. To do so, is at best but to wrangle about words, after admitting all that is meant by them. The apostle Paul, less scrupulous, does not hesitate by implication to call every tongue barbarous to those who do not understand it: "If I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be a barbarian to him that speaketh; and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian to me," 1 Cor. xiv. 11. Nor does it make any difference, as appears from the whole of the apostle's argument, even if what is spoken be spoken by the Spirit. Surely, with equal reason, we may say of those foreign idioms in any tongue, which render what is said unintelligible or even obscure to the natives, that, in respect of them, they are barbarisms. Nor is it, I think, denied by any judicious person, that there are some idiomatical expressions in the New Testament which must have puzzled those who were absolute strangers to the language of holy writ.* My intention, in observing this, is chiefly to show, that if we would enter thoroughly into the idiom of the New Testament, we must familiarize ourselves to that of the Septuagint; and if we would enter thoroughly into the idiom of the Septuagint, we must accustom ourselves to the study, not only of the original of the Old Testament, but of the dialect spoken in Palestine between the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; for this last, as well as the Hebrew, has affected the language both of the old Greek translation and of the New Testament. But of this more afterward. 15. Such is the origin and the character of the idiom which prevails in the writings of the apostles and evangelists, and the remarkable conformity of the new revelation which we have by * Take the two following for examples: Ουκ αδυνατησει παρα τῷ Θεῷ παν ῥημα, Luke i. 37, and oun av sown masa sagt, Matt. xxiv. 22; phrases which, in my apprehension, would not have been more intelligible to a Greek author than Arabic or Persian would have been. Ρημα for thing, παν ουκ and πασα ουκ for no or none, σαρξ for person, &c. would to him, I suspect, have proved insurmountable obstacles. Indeed, the vulgar translation of the last phrase is no more Latin than the original is classical Greek: 'Non fieret salva omnis caro;" which we may venture to affirm would have been no better than a riddle to Cicero or Cæsar. Castalio has expressed the sense in proper Latin," Nemo prorsus evaderet." Our translators have not unfitly kept in their version the one Hebraism flesh for person, to which our ears are by scriptural use familiarized, and not less fitly rejected the other saying, "No flesh should be saved;" for every body must be sensible that if they had preserved also the other idiom in English, and said, "All flesh should not be saved," the sense would have been totally altered. This is but a small specimen, not the hundredth part of what might be produced on this subject. them, though written in a different language, to the idiom of the old. It has been distinguished in the former by the name Hellenistic, not with critical accuracy, if regard be had to the derivation of the word, but with sufficient exactness, if attention be given to the application which the Hebrews made of the term Hellenist, whereby they distinguished their Jewish brethren who lived in Grecian cities, and spoke Greek. It has been by some of late, after Father Simon of the Oratory, more properly termed the Greek of the synagogue. It is acknowledged that it cannot strictly be denominated a separate language, or even dialect, when the term dialect is conceived to imply peculiarities in declension and conjugation. But, with the greatest justice, it is denominated a peculiar idiom, being not only Hebrew and Chaldaic phrases put in Greek words, but even single Greek words used in senses in which they never occur in the writings of profane authors, and which can be learnt only from the extent of signification given to some Hebrew or Chaldaic word, corresponding to the Greek, in its primitive and most ordinary sense. This difference in idiom constitutes a difficulty of another kind from that which is created by a difference in dialect; a difficulty much harder to be surmounted, as it does not affect the form of the words, but the meaning. 16. It is pertinent, however, to observe, that the above remarks on the Greek of the New Testament, do not imply that there was any thing which could be called idiomatical or vulgar in the language of our Lord himself, who taught always in his mother-tongue. His apostles and evangelists, on the contrary, who wrote in Greek, were, in writing, obliged to translate the instructions received from him into a foreign language of different structure, and for the use of people accustomed to a peculiar idiom. The apparently respectful manner in which our Saviour was accosted by all ranks of his countrymen, and in which they spoke of his teaching, shows that he was universally considered as a person of eminent knowledge and abilities. It was the amazing success of his discourses to the people, in commanding the attention and reverence of all who heard him, which first awakened the jealousy of the Scribes and Pharisees. PART II. THE STYLE AND INSPIRATION. WE are not however to imagine, that because all the writers of the New Testament wrote in the idiom of the synagogue, there is no discernible diversity in their styles. As the same language admits a variety of dialects, and even of provincial and foreign idioms, so the same dialect and the same idiom is sus ceptible of a variety of styles. The style of Paul has something peculiar, by which, in my opinion, there would be no difficulty in distinguishing him from any other writer. A discerning reader would not readily confound the style of Luke with that of either of the evangelists who preceded him, Matthew or Mark; and still less, I imagine, would he mistake the apostle John's diction for that of any other penman of the New Testament. The same differences of style will be discovered by one who is but moderately conversant in Hebrew, in the writers of the Old Testament. In it we have still greater variety than in the New. Some of the books are written in prose, and some in verse; and in each, the differences between one book and another are considerable. In the book of Job, for instance, the character of the style is remarkably peculiar. What can be more dissimilar in this respect, though both are excellent in their kind, than the towering flights of the sublime Isaiah, and the plaintive strains of the pathetic Jeremiah? In the books of Scripture we can specify the concise style and the copious, the elevated and the simple, the aphoristic and the diffuse. The difference, I own, is not so remarkable in translations as in the original. The reason will be evident on a little reflection. Every man, and consequently every translator, has his peculiar diction and manner, which will rarely fail to effect, not only his own compositions, but also the versions he makes from other authors. In every version of the Bible, therefore, wherein the different books have the same translator, there will be more or less of an assimilating quality, by which the works translated are brought, in point of expression, to bear some resemblance to the ordinary style of the translator. Now, by being all brought nearer the same thing they are brought nearer one another. Translation, therefore, is a sort of leveller. By its means, generally, not always, (for some can adapt themselves to different styles more easily than others), the lofty is depressed, the humble elevated, the looser strains are confined, and the laconic rendered more explicit. The learned reader will be sensible of the justness of this remark, when he reflects how much more distinguishable the styles of the sacred penmen above-mentioned are in their own language, than even in the best translations extant. Add to this, that if, of any two sacred authors who differ greatly in their style, we compare together some passages, as they are rendered in the same translation, we shall commonly find the sameness of the translator's styles more remarkable in them all, than the differences there may be of the styles of the authors. We shall be oftener at a loss to discover in the quotations (if the recollection of the sentiments do not assist us), Isaiah and Amos, Matthew and John, than to recognize Castalio and Beza, the Vulgate and Junius. Every translator, however, is not |