in Biblical literature is additionally severe, as three-fourths of his readers instinctively compare his version, not with the original, but with an English classic which has unrivalled associations of literary rhythm and of religious experience. The one claim of the present version is faithfulness. I have tried to make it accurate and idiomatic, besides presenting, to some extent, the nuances of individual writers. At the same time, I see very little literary or religious gain in making a fetish of over-precision in the verbal reproduction of the original. There is no obvious reason why the translator should not be allowed to exercise his right of inheritance to something of the same freedom that would be granted him if he were dealing with a Greek classic. Accordingly, while I admit that any version of the NT must incline to be literal, the following pages are not intended for the purists who expect to find in a translation those complete materials for stylistic and grammatical research which only a lexicon can properly afford. If a translator's first duty is to reproduce his text as exactly as possible, his final duty is to write English. As I conceive it, he is not bound to dislocate style in the pedantic attempt to eschew a reasonable use of English synonyms, or to rehearse at any cost Oriental and Hellenistic idioms that come uncouthly to the modern ear. Transliteration is not translation; nor is a paraphrase. The latter tends to looseness and weakness, while an absolutely literal version is often the most inaccurate, as it is sometimes the most hideous thing in the world. To be crabbed is the temptation of the one ; to be diluted, of the other. If I have in any degree attained the ideal of my conception, it has been by steering between these two shoals. Attention has been carefully paid to the more recent investigations by Hatch, Kennedy, and Deissmann into the linguistic features of the Kový, as well as to a series of grammatical studies in Hellenistic Greek by Viteau, Blass, Jannaris, and Schmiedel. I have further attempted, with

some hesitation, to reproduce, so far as that is possible or desirable in a translation, one or two of the rhythmical and rhetorical features (oxhuara) that mark the structure of the NT literature. These are due, in the main, to either of two influences. One is the gnomic method of parallelism, antithesis, and climax, pervading the older Semitic poetry, and especially the Wisdom-literature, upon which the NT writers, in company, e.g., with the author of 4th Esdras, have drawn in form and spirit to a much larger degree than is commonly suspected. Along with this influence (discussed by Jebb and Wilke) another falls to be placed, due to the rhetorical and artistic spirit of the later Greek and Roman prose, which had a vogue not merely in oratory but in the philosophical compositions of the period (Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, 1898, Anhang I., "Ueber die Geschichte des Reims "; and Wendland, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie u. Religion, 1895), where, as in the older Hebrew literature, poetry never lay far from what we should to-day distinguish as prose. It would be artificial, indeed, to rigidly reproduce all these strophic features in print. Some, like assonance, live only in the original. Some have to be felt rather than exhibited. Others again appeal to the ear more subtly than to the eye. Still quite a number of them are obvious, as Heinrici, Blass, and J. Weiss have seen in Paul, D. H. Müller (Die Propheten in ihrer ursprüng. Form, 1896, I. p. 216 f.), and Briggs (Expository Times, viii. pp. 393 f., 452 f., 493 f., ix. p. 69 f.) in the gospels; these it is well to mark, so far as is legitimate, in order to preserve the freshness of their literary charm, no less than for the sake of their occasional bearing upon the larger questions of exegesis and interpretation.

The translation is substantially based upon the critical text which Professor Eberhard Nestle has recently edited with accuracy and success (Novum Testamentum Graece cum apparatu critico ex editionibus et libris manu scriptis collecto,

Stuttgart, 1898; Zweite Auflage, 1900). Wherever I have been obliged to adopt a different reading, the departure is noted at the foot of the page. I am also responsible myself for the arrangement and punctuation of the text. Passages within brackets denote either displaced sections or interpolations belonging to a date subsequent to that of the writing as a whole. Single brackets imply that there is no MS evidence for the interpolation, while double brackets are used when such external evidence does exist. Darker type denotes a passage incorporated from some earlier source, and phrases or quotations from the OT are printed throughout in italics, although it is rather difficult in many cases to ascertain whether the use of OT language is due to direct reminiscence, to indirect allusion, or merely to the current religious vocabulary of the age. For the evidence upon most of the bracketted passages, as well as for a discussion of some critical points raised throughout the Notes, the reader is referred to the Appendix. The plan of the edition has not permitted any statement of the grounds upon which the Greek text has been determined.

. As I have explained in the Prolegomena, one is extremely conscious of the limitations which beset a pioneering edition like the present, both in idea and in execution, particularly when it has to be done practically single-handed. At point after point one has felt the lack of that width of survey, that minuteness of research, that balance of judgment, which are essential to any valid advance in a subject so wide and complex. Most of the volume also has been written and re-written at some distance from libraries, and apart from errors it is more than possible that some important literature has slipped through the editorial meshes, just as some has unfortunately proved inaccessible. I hope that such gaps or slips will not seriously

interfere with the utility and use of the volume.1 Under the Spartan maxim, Tout bien ou rien, it could not have been produced. But I am confident that it is upon the right lines at any rate, and that its general plan will be serviceable even to those who may dislike its presuppositions or dispute several of its particular results. Such as it is, it is offered as a secondary aid to the more exact appreciation of that early Christian literature, the study of which is bound up with so many vital problems in our modern faith.

My warmest thanks are due to those who have aided me during the preparation of this book with literature or suggestions. I wish particularly to thank the following scholars who have revised different parts of my translation: Professor Denney and Dr. H. A. A. Kennedy, who have read over the Pauline epistles (with the exception of 1 Corinthians, which has been undertaken by Rev. David Smith, M.A.); Dr. Marcus Dods (Hebrews and the Catholic epistles); Rev. Canon I. Gregory Smith (Mark); Rev. E. F. Scott, B.A. (Matthew); Rev. Ll. M. J. Bebb (Luke and Acts); Dr. George Reith (the Johannine literature); and Professor Walter Lock (Pastoral epistles). To these scholars I am indebted for the time and care they have generously bestowed upon another man's work. It is only right to add that they are not to be held responsible for any opinion or position expressed throughout the course of the volume, or even for the final shape in which the translation now appears. Mr. Scott and Dr. Reith have done me the further service of reading most of the proof-sheets.

1 I specially regret that my edition has to appear before the completion of such important critical enterprises as Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, the Encyclopaedia Biblica, edited by Dr. Sutherland Black and Professor Cheyne, and the Expositor's Greek Testament. For some literature which has come to hand or appeared during the printing of this volume, the reader is referred to the Addenda on pp. 709-710.

I should not like these pages to appear without also acknowledging how much they owe to the late Professor A. B. Bruce, without whose impulse and direction they would hardly have been written. Some years ago he was kind enough to look over the sheets and give me the benefit of his advice as the MS began to take shape. But one is indebted to him for much more than even the characteristic generosity which he showed to his old pupils and the demands for work with which he honoured them. His abiding service was one of stimulus; he naturalised critical processes, and with singular open-mindedness resisted tradition and intellectual torpor in handling the NT as a subject either for writing or for preaching. Few of us can take many steps in this department of study without realising more and more keenly that the very possibility of such an advance in this country is largely due to the work done by our old master upon these lines. Where he ventured, others follow. Both by teaching and example he has rendered to many in this generation a timely service of liberation not unlike that which in another sphere America is said by Lowell to have gained from Emerson: "He cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and the glories of blue water." Dr. Bruce's work thrust his students upon the responsibilities of freedom. It awakened them especially to the subtle and comfortable peril of antiquarianism in dealing with the Christian facts, while at the same time. it steadied them on the conviction that no genuine faith had ultimately anything to fear from strict and fair enquiry. This was conspicuously brought out in his treatment of the historical basis and element in early Christianity; within that department of theology, those who remember his unsparing methods of research will be the first to feel that the truest loyalty to their distinguished teacher lies not in the slavish repetition of his own ideas or in the reassertion