erfect freedom. Formally a contradiction of -anlinism, it is at bottom the same kind of ex- perience which is here described. To St. Paul
hristianity is a new religious relation to God, which he defines by contrast to legalism; to St. James it is rather a new ethical life, which he describes in terms of law, but of law from which legalism has been eliminated. See, further, JAMES (EPISTLE OF).
The conception of St. James is that from which the phenomena of nascent Catholicism can best be understood, and this is a strong argument for pase the book late. In the other Catholic
pistles Law is not mentioned, but it is clear from Jude, 2P and 1Jn, that there were tendencies to antinomianism at work in many places. Such tendencies seem inseparable from every revival of religion, religion, as already remarked, transcending even while it guarantees morality. To counteract them without reintroducing legalism and lapsing from a Christian to a pre-Christian type of religion, was not easy; and the use of νόμος by St. James, the habit of conceiving the OT as a revelation of God’s will for the ordering of life, and of regarding Jesus as the Legislator ἣν whom the revelation was made perfect, led inevitably and not slowly to the conception of Christianity itself as a new law. This conception is common to Christian writers from Barnabas onward. The new law might have been, and at first was, akin to ‘ the law of liberty ἡ in St. James, ‘ the law of faith,’ ‘ the law of Christ,’ ‘the law of the spirit of the life in Christ Jesus’ in St. Paul; but as the Church became a State, and orthodoxy took the place of inspiration, the new law was correspondingly degraded, and in the early and the mediwval Catholie Church the very idea of spiritual liberty was lost. The religious idealism of St. Paul was far above out of its sight, and it was not till the Church was born again in the 16th cent. that the gospel, which brings a righteousness of God to which
ιν
LAWGIVER
works of law contribute nothing, fairly found access into the human mind.
Romans the Jewis, pp. 20-68.
ype to Introduction); Mackintosh, Christ and aw; Clemen, Die Christliche Lehre von der Siinde, J. DENNEY.
LAWGIVER occurs six times in AV of OT (Gn 49, Nu 2118, Dt 337, Ps 607 Heb. 9]- 1088 (Heb. 9], 15 33%) and once in NT (Ja 4"). Inthe OT it is the tr® of pphp, in NT of νομοθέτης. ‘The root ppn means ‘to cut in,’ ‘inscribe,’ ‘engrave,’ and hence, from the practice of inscribing a decree (ph, APR) upon tablets [see LAW (IN OT) above, ᾿ oro ‘to enact or command.’ Thus we find in
g 5° ὈΝ σ᾽ *ppin=‘ the commanders of Israel.” The Poel ptep. ppd appears to have two distinct senses: (a) that of ‘leader,’ ‘commander’ (‘law- giver’ is too narrow a term, especially as in the mind of the English reader it is associated so closely with the Mosaic law). This is the meaning of the word in Dt 33%! (‘a commander's portion was reserved’), where it is used of the leader of the warlike tribe of Gad ; in Jg δ᾽" (‘out of Machir came forth leaders’ [opp || OPPIN of v.*]); and in Is 3323, where 33p7h2 ‘ our lawgiver’ (LX.X ἄρχων) is used in parallelism with s222% ‘ our judge’ and 337> ‘our king.’ (δ) The other meaning which it appears to be necessary to postulate is that of ‘ruler’s or commander’s staff,’ which it would bear in Gn 4910 (where ppn> is parallel with »32¥), ‘The [royal 3] sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet’; in Nu 218 ( myn ‘staff’), where RV ‘with the sceptre’ is plainly more appropriate as a rendering of ppnos than AV and RVn ‘by direction 07 order of the lawgiver’ (LXX ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτῶν, Vulg. in datore legis); and in Ps θ07-Ξ 1085 ‘Judah is ny sceptre,’ although LXX has βασιλεύς ‘king’ (simi- larly Pesh. and Vulgate).
The most controverted of the above passages is Gn 4910, For ¥539 p32 ppnp: the LXX has καὶ ἡγού- μένος ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ, Vulg. et dux de femore gus, Targ. Onk. ‘m3 %325 x50), all three taking pene in a personal sense, and understanding 7.39 co to be a promise of an unbroken succession of descendants. But the parallelism between pphp and τῷ demands that these two words have similar senses (the LXX is consistent in this respect, rendering δῦ by ἄρχων); and as there can be little doubt that ‘(royal?) sceptre’ is the meaning of »3¥, ‘ruler’s staf!’ seems a very ap- propriate sense for pphp. Then again the expres- sion 1527 p29, which is parallel to aj", may mean ‘from before him’ (ef. m531;'2 used of Jael in Jg 5”), referring to ‘the actual position of the long staff, grasped in the right hand as the chief walks or stands still’ (Ball in SBOT7, adTloc.). Tle mention of the ‘feet’ rather than the hands Ball explains as due to the fact that it is not a short ornamental sceptre that is in view but a long staff reaching to the ground, and he compares the Egyp. hieroglyph for ‘great man,’ ‘chief,’ ‘king’ (wra), which 1s a lizure holding the staff as described above. He