Moreover, the various senses of a word, even after they have once been dillerentiatcd by custom, may act and react upon one .another in their further use. And tlius there can be little doubt that the conception formed of religious and intellectual truth must have been more or less afl'ectcil by the various a.ssociation9 of the term wliicli had come to be employed to designate it. In particular, the contemplation of truth as an attribute of the Divine nature and operations must in devout and reflective minds have jiromotcd a comprulicnsive and ])rofound view 01 the quality. It will be important to bear this in mind when we pass on to consider the meaning of ' truth ' in the NT. First, however, we must briefly notice the usage of the LXX, whereby the Greek lan^;uage itself, which the NT writers were to use, was m a measiua roniinted.
The verb pij — to pass over the ptcp. of Qal, meaning *a nurse,' or liaving kindred signiiicationa to this — is represented by VKTrovn (Niph.), TruTiiJur (Niph. and liiph.), irlany txc (Nipli.), Triarit thai, or ptcp. iriffT-is (Nil)h.). njiCK 20 times by iricrTii and once adjectivally by maTit, '22 times by i\-/l$tta (20 of these being in the I'salniH, 8 in P« 88 (89) alone: the other two are 2 Ch U)". Is IP), twice by dX-qeiris (Is 25' 2ti*). n;t< in nearly four
818
TRUTH
TRUTH
filths of the passages in whicli it occurs is rendered by dX^tftta, 12 times by d\T]div6s, a few times by j\7)9^! and d\j;9it, 12 times by SLKaioaiifri or okacos, and once by iXi-qixoawti.
The dill'erence in the treatment of n:DN and nyx shows a sense, which is up to a certain point correct, of the dill'erence between tliem in mean- ing. One of the most instructive points, however, in connexion with our present subject is the prac- tice of the LXX in regard to the rendering of the former word. Broadly speaking, ttIo-tis or Triartii is used where it is a question of human character or conduct, dXvjfffia and its derivatives with refer- ence to Divine.
ILVtk is. however, attributed to God once, aoc. to Q™g, at La 323 ; the adverbial phrase iv ir'nrtu is also used a few times of God, Ps 3-2 (33)-', Ho8 22>, Jer 34 (28)9 S9(32)J1, and the epithet a-ffl-Toc is applied to God, Dt 7^ 32-*, and to the Divine testimony, covenant, etc., Ps 18 (19)' 88 (89)2»n0 (m)'. Is 653. „ iArtt/. is used in a charge to judges, 2 Ch 19y, d^rHii of human char- acter, Neh 72 ; a few other similar instances might be given ; aA)if(i« is used for njiox at Is 11* to describe an attribute of the Messianic king. It may be further noted here that wtrrn is only once used to render n"N ^vith reference to God, and there only in the phrase iv a-itf-rK (JerSl (32)'"). iriVn? at Pr 1422 refers, according to LXX, to men.
The idea of ' faithfulness ' is, as a matter of fact, very prominent in OT in connexion with the Divine character, and is undoubtedly conveyed by the word n;?Ds, used of God, and from this point of view would have been best represented by irfo-Tis or ■marSt. But the LXX translators seem to have felt that the ordinary associations with these words were too purely human. aX-qBeia was a word of liirger meaning, and, though the same ideas were not connected with it by reason of its derivation and history, it conveyed, even according to classical usage, — though especially, of course, that of the pliilosophical writers, — the notion, not simply of agreement between speech and fact, but of reality. This helped to make the word serviceable as a ren- dering alike of niJO.;^ and of nj.x. At the same time, the new contexts into which it was brought could not fail to have an effect upon its signification. Its former use could scarcely make intelligible such expressions, for instance, as ^{airocrT-AXfiv dXijffeiav (Ps 42 (43)» 55 (57)*), or Troier.- dX^feav (said of God Gn 47™ etc., and of men Jos 2" etc.). It is not, however, to be supposed that the translators either intended, or would have been able, to transfer to dX^Sfio all the associations of the original words. But it acquired a connotation which was partly the result of its classical u.sage — for on this side, also, the biblical use received enrichment — partly of the Hebrew words for which it now stood. Lastly, the occurrence of ^ dXiJ^eia repeatedly in books of the Apocrypha, in remarkable sayings, in the sense in which we have met with ns.x two or three times in the Sapiential books of the Canon, for the sum of true knowledge, or Divine revela- tion, deserves to be noticed. E.g. see 1 Es 3" 4'°- *', Sir 42»- ^.
The use of a\-n9-^s and d\7)9£s in LXX need not detain us ; there is nothing in the case of either that <;alls for special remark, with the exception that once the former is applied as an epithet of a man. But the use of dXTj^ii-it must be examined. The eflect of the termination -ivos is to draw attention, as it were, to the presence of the quality denoted by the root, in that to which the epithet is applied. Sometimes d\Tiffiv6s does not practically im]>ly more than dXTjSTJs with a certain amount of emphasis on it, e.q. 3 (1) K 10'. But in other places dXi/fficis signifies in a more specific manner that the thing is what it professes to be, or that it really corre- sponds to the idea of the name given to it. This seems to be the force of the word at 2 Ch 15' — ' for a long while there was in Israel no God who was truly such.' But this sense is not common in