17. In what concerns civil offices, our translators have very properly retained some names to which we have none entirely equivalent. Of this number is the name tetrach, which admits no explanation but by a periphrasis. Centurion and publican are of the same kind. The word legion, though not a name of office, being the name of a military division to which we have not any exactly corresponding, may be ranked in the same class. The three words last specified are neither Hebrew nor Greek, but Latin; and as they are the names of things familiar only to the Latins, they are best expressed by those names of Latin derivation employed by our translators. Two of them occur in the Latin form in the New Testament, λεγεων and κεντυρίων, though for the latter word the Greek Karovτapxos is oftener used. It may be proper here to observe, in regard to such Latin appellatives, that from the connexion which has subsisted between all European countries and the Romans, and from the general acquaintance which the western nations have long had with the ancient Roman usages, history, and literature, their names of offices, &c. are naturalized in most modern languages, particularly in English. This makes the adoption of the Latin name for an office, or any other thing which the Jews had solely from the Romans, peculiarly pertinent. The remark now made holds especially when the persons spoken of were either Romans or the servants of Rome. If, therefore, after the Vulgate, we had rendered xixiaoxos, tribune, avevarоs, proconsul, and perhaps opa, cohort, the expression, without losing any thing in perspicuity, to those of an inferior class, would have been to the learned reader more significant than chief captain, deputy, band. The word nyeuwv also, though sometimes a general term, denoting governor or president, yet, as applied to Pilate, is known to import no more than procurator. Properly there was but one president in Syria, of which Judea was a part. He who had the superintendency of this part was styled imperatoris procurator. For this we have the authority of Tacitus the Roman annalist, and of Philo the Alexandrian Jew. And though the author of the Vulgate has commonly used the term præses for ǹyɛμwv, yet, in translating Luke iii. 1, he has rendered ἡγεμονευοντος Ποντίου Πιλάτου της Ιουδαίας, procurante Pontio Pilato Judaam. Το those who know a little of the language, or even of the history, of ancient Rome, the Latin names in many cases are much more definite in their signification, than the words by which they are commonly rendered; and being already familiar in our language, are not, even to the vulgar, more obscure than names originally English, relating to things wherewith they are little acquainted. For a similar reason I have also retained the name pretorium, which, though a Latin word, has been adopted by the sacred writers, and to which neither common-hall nor judgment-hall entirely answers. That the evangelists, who wrote in Greek, a more copious lan guage, found themselves compelled to borrow from the Latin the name of what belonged to the office of a Roman magistrate, is to their translators a sufficient authority for adopting the same method. 18. I shall conclude this Dissertation with observing, that there are two judicatories mentioned in the New Testament, one Jewish the other Grecian, the distinguishing names of which may, not without energy, be preserved in a translation. Though the noun avvedprov is Greek, and susceptible of the general interpretation council or senate; yet as it is commonly in the Gospels and Acts appropriated to that celebrated court of senators or elders accustomed to assemble at Jerusalem, and from the Greek name called sanhedrim, which was at once their national senate and supreme judicatory; and as it appears not in those books to have been ever applied to any other particular assembly, though sometimes to such in general as were vested with the highest authority; I have thought it reasonable to retain the word sanhedrim, in every case where there could be no doubt that this is the court spoken of. The name has been long naturalized in the language; and, as it is more confined in its application than any common term, it is so much the more definite and energetic. The other is the famous Athenian court called the Areopagus, and mentioned in Acts xvii. 19; which, as it was in several respects peculiar in its constitution, ought to be distinguished in a version, as it is in the original, by its proper name. To render it Marshill from etymology, without regard to use, would entirely mislead the unlearned, who could never imagine that the historian spoke of bringing the apostle before a court, but would suppose that he only informed us that they brought him up to an eminence in the city, from which he discoursed to the people. This is in part effected by the common version; for, though in verse 19, it is said, "They brought Paul to Areopagus," it is added in verse 22, "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars-hill, and said." This leads one to think that these were two names for the same hill. The Areopagus with the article is the proper version ín both places. DISSERTATION IX. INQUIRY WHETHER CERTAIN NAMES WHICH HAVE BEEN ADOPTED INTO MOST TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE IN THE WEST, COINCIDE IN MEANING WITH THE ORIGINAL TERMS FROM WHICH THEY ARE DERIVED, AND OF WHICH THEY ARE It was observed in a former Dissertation,* as one cause of difficulty in the examination of the Scriptures, that before we begin to study them critically, we have been accustomed to read them in a translation, whence we have acquired a habit of considering several ancient and oriental terms as equivalent to certain words in modern use in our own language, by which they have been commonly rendered. What makes the difficulty the greater is, that when we become acquainted with other versions beside that into our mother tongue, these, instead of correcting, serve but to confirm the prejudice; For, in these translations, we find the same original words rendered by words which we know to correspond exactly in those tongues, to the terms employed in the English translation. In order to set this observation in the strongest light, it will be necessary to trace the origin of some terms which have become technical among ecclesiastic writers, pointing out the changes in meaning, which they have undergone. When alterations are produced gradually, they escape the notice of the generality of people, and sometimes even of the more discerning For a term once universally understood to be equivalent to an original term, whose place it occupies in the translation, will naturally be supposed still equivalent, by those who do not attend to the variations in the meanings of words which a tract of time often insensibly produces. Sometimes etymology contributes to favour the deception. How few are there, even among the readers of the original, who entertain a suspicion that the words mystery, blasphemy, schism, heresy, do not convey to moderns precisely those ideas which the Greek words (being the same except in termination) μventov, βλασφημία, σχισμα, αίρεσις, in the New Testament conveyed to Christians in the times of the apostles? Yet, that there is not such a correspondence in meaning between them as is commonly supposed, I intend, in the present Dissertation, to put beyond a doubt. That there is a real difference in regard to some of those words, is I think generally allowed by men of letters; but as all are not agreed in regard to the precise difference between the one and the other, I shall here examine, briefly, the import of the original terms, in the order above-mentioned, that we * Diss. II. Part iii. sect. 6. may be qualified to judge how far they are rightly rendered by the words supposed to correspond to them, and that we may not be misled, by the resemblance of sound, to determine concerning the sameness of signification. PART I. OF MYSTERY. THE Greek word μvenolov occurs frequently in the New Testament, and is uniformly rendered in the English translation mystery. We all know that by the most current use of the English word mystery (as well as of the Latin ecclesiastic word mysterium, and the corresponding terms in modern languages) is denoted some doctrine to human reason incomprehensible; in other words such a doctrine as exhibits difficulties, and even apparent contradictions, which we cannot solve or explain. Another use of the word, which, though not so universal at present, is often to be met with in ecclesiastic writers of former ages, and in foreign writers of the present age, is to signify some religious ceremony or rite, especially those now denominated sacraments. In the communion-office of the Church of England, the elements, after consecration, are sometimes termed holy mysteries. But this use seems not now to be common among Protestants, less perhaps in this country than in any other. Johnson has not so much as mentioned it in his Dictionary. Indeed, in the fourth and some succeeding centuries, the word unpiov was so much in vogue with the Greek fathers, and mysterium or sacramentum, as it was often rendered, with the Latin, that it would be impossible to say in what meaning they used the words: nay, whether or not they affixed any meaning to them at all. In every thing that related to religion there were found mysteries and sacraments in doctrines and precepts, in ordinances and petitions: they could even discover numbers of them in the Lord's Prayer. Nay, so late as Father Possevini, this unmeaning application of these terms has prevailed in some places. That Jesuit is cited with approbation by Walton, in the Prolegomena to his Polyglot, for saying, "Tot esse in Hebraica Scriptura sacramenta, quot literæ; tot mysteria, quot puncta; tot arcana, quot apices;" a sentence, I acknowledge, as unintelligible to me as Father Simon owns it was to him. passing this indefinite use, of which we know not what to make, the two significations I have mentioned are sufficiently known to theologians, and continue, though not equally, still in use with modern writers. But 2. When we come to examine the Scriptures critically, and make them serve for their own interpreters, which is the surest way of attaining the true knowledge of them, we shall find, if I mistake not, that both these senses are unsupported by the usage of the inspired penmen. After the most careful examination of all the passages in the New Testament in which the Greek word occurs, and after consulting the use made of the term by the ancient Greek interpreters of the Old, and borrowing aid from the practice of the Hellenist Jews in the writings called Apocrypha, I can only find two senses nearly related to each other which can strictly be called scriptural. The first, and what I may call the leading sense of the word, is arcanum, a secret; any thing not disclosed, not published to the world, though perhaps communicated to a select number. 3. Now, let it be observed, that this is totally different from the current sense of the English word mystery, something incomprehensible. In the former acceptation, a thing was no longer a mystery than whilst it remained unrevealed; in the latter, a thing is equally a mystery after the revelation as before. To the former we apply properly, the epithet unknown; to the latter we may, in a great measure, apply the term unknowable. Thus, the proposition that God would call the Gentiles, and receive them into his church, was as intelligible, or, if you like the term better, comprehensible, as that he once had called the descendants of the patriarchs, or as any plain proposition or historical fact. Yet, whilst undiscovered, or at least veiled under figures and types, it remained, in the scriptural idiom, a mystery, having been hidden from ages and generations. But after it had pleased God to reveal this his gracious purpose to the apostles by his Spirit, it was a mystery no longer. The Greek words αποκαλυψις and μυστηριον stand in the same relation to each other that the English words discovery and secret do. Muσrηolov аπокаλυρJEν is a secret discovered, and consequently a secret no longer. The discovery is the extinction of the secret as such. These words accordingly, or words equivalent, as μυστήριον γνωρισθεν, φανερωθεν, are often brought together by the apostle to show that what were once the secret purposes and counsels of God had been imparted to them to be by them promulgated to all the world Thus they invited the grateful attention of all to what was so distinguished a favour on the part of heaven, and must be of such unspeakable importance to the apostate race of Adam. The terms communication, revelation, manifestation, plainly show the import of the term μvorηolov, to which they are applied. As this, indeed, seems to be a point now universally acknowledged by the learned, I shall only refer the judicious reader, for further proof of it from the New Testament, to the passages quoted in the margin,* in all which he will plainly perceive that the apostle treats of something which had been concealed for ages, (and for that reason called μvorηρiov,) but was * Rom. xvi. 25, 26. 1 Cor. ii. 7-10. Eph. i. 9. iii. 3, 5, 6, 9. vi. 19. Col. i. 26, 27. |