Greek Testament

“ No man ever attained eminence in this, or in any other worthy accomplishment, without much labour and some natural aptitude for the pursuit; but the criticism of the Greek Testament is a field in whose culture the humblest student may contribute a little that shall be really serviceable ”

“ It is only quite lately that the Revisers have been represented as being insufficiently acquainted, p. 97in several particulars, with the Greek of the New Testament, and in a word, being twenty years behind what is now known on the subject [97] . Such charges are easily made, and may at first sight seem very plausible, as the last fifteen or twenty years have brought with them an amount of research in the language of the Greek Testament which might be thought to antiquate some results of the Revision, and to affect to some extent the long labours of those who took part in it. ”

“ This avowal must, to some extent, affect our full acceptance of all the results arrived at in this striking and laborious work.
The third work is a “Grammar of New Testament Greek” by the well-known and distinguished scholar, Dr. Blass, and is deserving of the fullest attention from every earnest student of the Greek Testament. ”

“ The second class of documents consists of Versions, that is, ancient translations of the whole or parts of the New Testament, made chiefly for the service of churches in which Greek was at least not habitually spoken. Besides some outlying Versions, there are three principal classes, the LATIN, the SYRIAC, and the EGYPTIAN. The history of all is still more or less obscure. ”

“ The Old Testament was a Hebrew book, but before the Christian era it had been translated into Greek. From the beginning Christianity was provided with a Greek Bible. It is always difficult to make a new translation of the Bible. Every missionary knows that. The introduction of a new translation takes time. It was fortunate, then, that a Greek-speaking Church had a Greek Bible ready to hand.
Everything was prepared for the gospel. God's time had come. Roman rule had brought peace. Greek culture had produced unity of speech. ”

“ The so-called Epistle to the Hebrews (c. 90 a.d.) is the first document of the New Testament in which the Greek intellectual habit clearly appears. Although the unknown author was writing to Gentile Christians for practical and not doctrinal ends, there is good evidence that he had been influenced by Alexandrian thought. ”

“ We learn first that, notwithstanding the lateness of our earliest Greek MSS as compared with some of the versions, and the high absolute antiquity of the fundamental texts which the older versions represent, the constituent texts of our better Greek MSS must be in the main of at least equal antiquity, and that the best of them are, even as they stand, more free from Western and Alexandrian peculiarities than any version in its present state. ”

“ It now becomes necessary to scrutinise more closely the trustworthiness of the propositions laid down above respecting the preeminent excellence of the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS, which happen likewise to be the oldest extant Greek MSS of the New Testament. It is at the outset essential to distinguish carefully the readings and the groups of documents in which they stand side by side from those in which one of them stands alone. ”

“ He presents Christianity as the final and absolute religion, emphasizes Christ’s priestly office and his sacrifice, and gives a more philosophical and abstract definition of faith than any other writer of the New Testament. The great example, however, of the effect of the contact of Christianity with Greek thought is furnished by the Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles. ”

“ These virtues and the belief that Christ’s revelation and the mystic union of man with the Divine brought salvation, could be understood by the most unlettered. The intellectual classes found Christianity fulfilling the aim of both Greek thought and of Old Testament prophecy; in it they saw the ultimate philosophy. Christianity therefore proved itself a religion which satisfied men’s desires and hopes as well as their philosophic aims in a more complete and spiritual way than oriental mysticism or Greek rationalism; and it gave a nobler assurance of salvation. ”

“ The object which I have in view in this Lecture is to show the transition by which, under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word Faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics.
The Greek words which designate belief or faith are used in the Old Testament chiefly in the sense of trust, and primarily trust in a person. They expressed confidence in his goodness, his veracity, his uprightness. They are as much moral as intellectual. ”

“ Textual Criticism of the New Testament is a close inquiry into what is the genuine Greek—the true text of the Holy Gospels, of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Pauline and Apostolic Epistles, and the Revelation. ”

“ Latin continued to be the living language of learning and of literature, and a correct and elegant Latin style was regarded as the mark of an educated person. Greek was taught in all the great schools, but became more and more confined to the study of the Greek Testament. ”

“ The reason is because we do not believe anything certain to be as yet known. Up to a certain point the bilingual MSS (Græco-Latin and Græco-Thebaic) tell their own tale: about no other important early MS is it as yet possible to make any geographical assertion with confidence. It is indeed usually taken for granted that the chief uncials of the New Testament were written at Alexandria. ”

“ We must now describe the Lectionaries or Service-books of the Greek Church, in which the portions of Scripture publicly read throughout the year are set down in chronological order, without regard to their actual places in the sacred volume. In length and general arrangement they resemble not so much the Lessons as the Epistles and Gospels in our English Book of Common Prayer, only that every day in the year has its own proper portion, and the numerous Saints' days independent services of their own. ”

“ An educational aim is also apparent in his editions of Terence and of Seneca, while his Latin translations made his contemporaries more familiar with Greek poetry and prose, and his Paraphrase promoted a better understanding of the Greek Testament. He was not so much a scientific scholar as a keen and brilliant man of letters and a widely influential apostle of humanism. ”

“ There is no reason why in the New Testament (Greek) should always be rendered 'righteousness,' or (Greek) 'covenant.' In such cases the translator may be allowed to employ two words—sometimes when the two meanings occur in the same passage, varying them by an 'or'—e.g. (Greek) , 'science' or 'knowledge,' (Greek) , 'idea' or 'class,' (Greek) , 'temperance' or 'prudence,'—at the point where the change of meaning occurs. ”

“ A large proportion of variations still remains in which the assignation of the readings to different types of ancient text is in various degrees difficult or uncertain. The difficulty arises chiefly from two causes, the mixed composition of some of the principal extant documents, especially Greek uncials, and the not infrequent opposition of documents habitually agreeing as witnesses for one of the aberrant types, resulting in apparent cross distribution. ”

“ After this examination of the relation of the evidence of Versions and Fathers to that of the primary Greek MSS in respect of the final process of determining the text, we must now resume the consideration of the numerous variations in which the primary Greek MSS differ widely among themselves. Here, in investigating Internal Evidence of Groups for each individual group or class of groups, we lose clear and obvious parallelism with the great ancient texts. ”

“ In the last lecture we traced the growth of Christianity through the three stages that are represented in the New Testament, and we saw that when the new religion passed beyond the bounds of Palestine and entered on a campaign for converts among the Gentiles, it came into contact with Greek philosophic thought and perforce began to state its doctrines in terms which should be intelligible to educated men. ”

“ The problem is to find a solution which shall bring into harmony the following well-established facts: (1) that, according to the united testimony of the early church fathers, Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew; (2) that our present Greek gospel has all the freedom of an original work, that it has remarkable coincidences in language with the second and third gospels, and especially that the citations from the Old Testament which stand in our Lord's discourses follow as a rule the Greek version of the Seventy ”

“ Two of the uncial Græco-Latin copies of the Pauline Epistles, E3 and F2, cannot count as independent sources of evidence: E3 has long been recognised as a transcript of D2, and we believe F2 to be as certainly in its Greek text a transcript of G3; if not, it is an inferior copy of the same immediate exemplar. Not a single Greek MS of any age, as we have already (§ 171) had occasion to notice, has transmitted to us an Alexandrian text of any part of the New Testament free from large mixture with other texts. ”

“ Questions, however, are perpetually arising, when we come to examine the oldest manuscripts of Scripture, which cannot be resolved unless we bear in mind the leading particulars wherein the diction of the Evangelists and Apostles differs not only from that of pure classical models, but also of their own contemporaries who composed in the Greek language, or used it as their ordinary tongue. ”

“ Secondly, we argue from the usage of language in and after the New Testament age. The critics have collected, as any one desirous may easily find, and as every theological scholar well knows, scores of instances from the writings of authors contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and succeeding them, where the Greek word for "eternal" is used popularly, not strictly, in a rhetorical, not in a philosophical, sense, not denoting a duration literally endless, but one very prolonged. ”

“ His published works show a wide range of theological interests, and deal with the Greek version of the Old Testament, the exegesis of the New Testament, Christian doctrine, patristic studies, the history and interpretation of the Apostles' Creed, and Christian worship. ”

“ No Greek book can compare for one moment in general importance with that collection of history and letters called the New Testament, all written in Greek, and intended to reach the civilized world through the mediation of Greek. ”

“ Multitudes of variations present no difficulty at all, and as many need only a little consideration to interpret them.
228. Such Western readings as have acquired no accessory attestation by adoption into the Syrian or other mixed texts catch the eye at once in books or parts of books in which we have one or more Greek MSS with a tolerably unmixed Western text and in which Old Latin evidence is not wanting. In the Gospels such readings are attested by D, the chief Old Latin MSS and Fathers, the Old Syriac, and the Greek Ante-Nicene Fathers, those of Alexandria partially excepted. ”

“ VIII. The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the Native Language of the People of GOD of old,) and the New Testament in Greek, (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the Nations) being immediatly inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authenticall [17] ; so as in all Controversies of Religion, the Church is finally to Appeal unto them [18] . ”

“ A scholarly knowledge of Greek requires some time and effort. Every preacher and teacher of the New Testament books would be greatly helped by being able even to refer to the dictionary and to pick out the critical notes in a high-grade commentary. ”

“ Their consent is well supported by internal evidence, even where it has no documentary confirmation; and A stands quite alone, or unsustained by any other Greek MS, in some manifestly right readings, such as κατήγωρ in xii 10, and εἴ τις εἰς αἰχμαλωσίαν εἰς αἰχμαλωσίαν ὑπάγει in xiii 10. On the other hand the absolute proportion of wrong readings is great in each of them singly. As in most of the Epistles, P2 contains, in the midst of a somewhat degenerate text, so many good readings that it is entitled to an appreciable authority in doubtful cases ”

“ As some men keep up their Greek by reading every day a chapter in the New Testament, so Con-ingsby kept up his knowledge of the world, by always, once at least in the four-and-twenty hours, having a delightful conversation with his wife. ”