Aramaic : 'n^^iTi a^hi^ 'lisiiiri >^':. Latin : Hie est Jesus Rex Judseorum. Greek : 6 ^aaCKeis tQiu 'lovdaiuv.
This view agrees with Edersheim (Life and Times, ii. 591 n.), except as regards the order. He supposes the Latin to have been at the top and the Aramaic last ; but this is contrary to the only evidence we have. He is certainly right in his attempt to give the Aramaic form of the inscription in words which are really Aramaic. It is strange to explain Hebrew to mean Aramaic and then to give the words in their Hebrew form (cf. Geikie, quoted in Hastings' DB iv. 781, and Farrar's St. Luke).
It may be, as Alford writes, ' hardly worth while ' to- com- ment on, and endeavour to explain, 'the variations in the Gospels with regard to the Title on the Cross ; but one can hardly forbear to remark, what has been so often noticed before, how the three great languages of the world of the time bear witness to the Saviour of Mankind.' ' The three representative languages of the world at that time,' says Plummer (on Jn 1919) — ' the languages of religion, of empire, of intellect — were em- ployed. Thus did they tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is king (or reigned from the tree. Ps 96J0LXX).' These three languages, Westcott writes, ' gathered up the results of the religious, the social, and the intellectual preparation for Christ, and in each, witness was given to His office.' These modern writers expand slightly the more expressive words of Grotius : ' Ille enim erat cui cedere debebat religio judaica, eruditio grasca, robur latinum ' (cf. also some little known words of Priscillian [Tract, i. p. 30] : ' In omni littera sive hebraea sive latina sive graeca in omni quod videtur aut dicitur, rex regum et dominorum dominus est, in quibus Unguis etsi titulus crucis ponitur, divinimi tamen deo testimonium litteratur '). 'Thus the three languages represent not only three races, but their cjualities and tendencies. AVherever these exist — where there is an eye to read, a hand to write, a tongue to speak — the cross has a message and the King a kingdom. The " Title " is, in St. John's view, the witness of language to the King of the Jews, who is also the King of humanity ' (Alexander, Leading Ideas of the Gospels, pp. 277, 278).
TITTLE
TOLERATIOA^ TOLERANCE 733
Literature.— The Comni., esp. Swete on Mk 15-6, Plumnier and Farrar on Lk 23'-», Grotius on MC 27^7 ; art. on same subject in Hastings' DB, vol. iv.; and Edersheim, LT ii. pp. 590-591.
J. M. Harden.
TITTLE (Gr. Kepaia [WH Kepia ; see vol. ii. App. p. 151]). — Both the Gr. and the Eng. words occur in NT only in Mt b^^, Lk W\ Kepaia ('little horn,' dim. of K^pas) was used by Hesychius and other grammarians of the accents and diacritical marks in Gr., and the slight jjoints and bends by which in Heb. such letters as i and n, t and "i, n and n are distinguished from each other. ' Tittle,' which is just ' title ' in another form of spelling (the shorter form is used in all the Eng. VSS, except the Rhemish, up to and including the AV of IGll), comes from titubis, which was used in late Lat. to denote any mark or stroke whereby one letter was distinguished from another. It was adopted by Wyclif and Tindale to render Kepaia — Luther similarly employing Tiittcl (Titel in modernized Germ, spelling). Great importance was attached by the Rabbis to the little marks by which certain Heb. letters are distinguished from others that they closely resemble, and there are several JeM'ish sayings wliich declare that any one who is guilty of interchanging such letters in certain passages of the OT will thereby destroy the whole world (see Edersheim, LT i. 537 f. ; cf. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. xi. 99).
On the lips of Jesus the saying, ' One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all be fulfilled ' (Mt 5^^}, is startling ; and a number of modern critical scholars are inclined to meet the exegetical difficulty by denying the genuineness of the foi^ion— regarding it as an answer of the Evangelist himself to the Pauline anti-legalism, or even as a later Jewish-Christian insertion. Certainly, if the saying stood bj' itself, unqualified and uninterjireted in any way, there might be some warrant for such criticism, even although on textual grounds there is nothing to be said against the verse, which, moreover, reappears in Luke, though in a shorter form. But the very fact that our Lord proceeds in what follows to repeal the old Law at various points, and to substitute for its enactments precepts of His own (vv.^^'- ^3'^- ^s"'), suggests that v.^^, so far from being likely on His lips to mislead His hearers utterly, would be understood easily enough as nothing more than an emphatic affirmation, in the Master's OAvn characteristic style, of the rounded perfection of the ideal law. The objection that the reference to the jot and the tittle implies the written Law, and not the ideal law, has little force. One might as well say that when Jesus, in vv."''"- 3*', bids His disciples pluck out their right eyes or cut off their right hands, He is urging them to a literal .self- mutilation, inasmuch as hands and eyes are physical realities, not ideal tilings.