BUILDLN"G
BUSINESS
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are manifested. They have not grasped the Divine idea of the Church, and therefore they are rebuked : ' I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal' (3'). With a tender smile of blame he calls them 'babes in Christ,' who have not grown into the height and freedom of their calling as God's fellow-workers {(rwepyoL). Kindled with his metaphor, the Apostle rises to the thought of the gradual upbuilding of the Church (by transformation and accretion) through the ages, by many builders, and with varied material, but all on the once-laid foundation, to the glory not of the builders, but of the hand that guided and the heart that planned (cf. Longfellow's poem The Builders, and 0. W. Holmes, The Living Temple and The Chambered Nautilus).
2. 2 Co 5^ — ' We know . . . we have a building (olKodofiT^v) from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.' The punctuation in AV is wrong, and the sense of RV would be more ex- plicit if it read ' We have in the heavens a build- ing from God, an house not made with hands, eternal ' (so Alford, de Wette, Meyer, and most Modems). The house to which St. Paul looks forward is not heaven itself, though it is in the heavens, and comes from God as His gift. The Apostle is here moving among the conceptions of what he calls 'the spiritual body'(l Co 15^^-46)^ adumbrating in his paradox thoughts which are really unspeakable. Cf. also Ph 3^^ ' the body of our humiliation , . . the body of his glory.'
3. Eph 2^1. — ' Each several building (Trao-a okodo/xri) fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple' (RVm 'sanctuary'). AV has 'all the building,' and the difference ought to be carefully noted in point both of grammar and of thought. The weight of the best MSS favours the omission of the article, and Meyer translates accordingly ' every building.' Moule {Ephesians [in Cambridge Bible for Schools, 1886]) and Ellicott {Com. in loc.) contend that the article is implicit ; the latter calls its omission 'a grammatical laxity,' and the former is of opinion that the law of the article is in some respects less precise in the NT than in the classics. This does not appear to be made out, and it is safer to abide by the established usage than to allow an ad sensum interpretation (which really assumes the point in dispute). Westcott {Ephesians, 1906) prefers to abide by the classical use (cf. ExpT xviii. [1906-07] 2 for a note on the similar expression in Eph 3'^). Tras without the article = ' a various whole,' and this is the Apostle's thought. * The image is that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient temples commonly were, in process of construction at different points over a wide area' (Findlay, Ephesians [Expositor's Bible, 1892], 146). Uniformity is not necessary to unity. The true catholicity is found in Jesus Christ Himself, the chief corner-stone, and not in external uniformity. The reading adopted in RV may be claimed as an incidental testimony to the early date of the Epistle. In point of fact, in the 2nd cent, the desire for formal unity would have rendered impossible the text ' each several build- ing.' 'The Church swallowed up the churches' (Findlay). But here in the Apostolic Age, with the variety of circumstance, attainment, and social aspect in the churches, the essential idea of unity is nevertheless preserved, for ' each several build- ing' is destined to be 'fitly framed together.' Each serves to make up the ideal temple of God, which is being built for ever. Each is a true part of that mystical body of Christ, the habitation of God through the Spirit,
f. He 9". — 'But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building ' ( AV) ; better
RV ' but Christ having come a high priest of the good things that are come (RVm), through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation {ov ravTTjs rrjs Kriaeus).' The tabernacle is immaterial and spiritual as contrasted with the heaven and the earth. F. Field {Notes on the Translation of the N T [ = Otium Norvicetise, iii.], Cambridge, 1899, p. 142 ; II Farrar, Hebrews [in Cambridge Bible for Schools, 1883], p. 139 f.) would translate 'not of ordinary construction.' ' Human skill had nothing to do Avith its structure, for man's work finds its expression in the visible order of earth, to Avhich this does not belong ' (Westcott, Hebrews, 1889, p. 258). For the different meanings assigned to ' tabernacle ' and their bearing on the true humanity of our Lord, see TABERNACLE.
5. Rev 2118.— 'The building {ivdbixTicxis) of the wall thereof was jasper,' The word is passive and denotes the structure, what was built in. Cf. ' I will make thy battlements jasper ' (Is 54i"^ [LXX]). Some clear stone is intended, and not our modem jasper, which is generally red or brown.
W. M. Grant.
BUSINESS. — The word occurs in the AV in Ac 63 (xpf^a), Ro 12" {<n^ov^, ' diligence,' RV) 16^ {trpayna, ' matter,' RV), and 1 Th 411 (rd ISm). The last named passage, ' Study to be quiet, and to do your own business,' implies that every Christian is expected to have an occupation. Christianity in- troduced a new ideal in this respect. Greek ethics regarded only certain occupations as being fit for those leading the highest life, and from these com- mercial activity was excluded (Plat. Rep. 495 C). Jewish teaching improved on this by requiring that every boy should learn a trade (Schiirer, HJP II. i. 318). But even under this rule some trades were condemned, e.g. those of tanner, butcher, miner, goldsmith, and even the physician's calling (F. Delitzsch, Jewish Artisan Life in the Time of Christ, 1902, p. 56). Fishermen, on the other hand, were esteemed as being generally pious — an interesting fact in the light of our Lord's choice of some of them to be His apostles. The notion that some trades were necessarily degraded was abolished by Christianity, and St. Peter did not hesitate to lodge in the house of a tanner (Ac 9^*),