The Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT
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ve WORD STUDIES 4
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ACTS OF THE APOSTLES EPISTLES OF PETER, JAMES, AND JUDE
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“The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” John vi., 63.
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1887
Theol ogy, Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT California
CopyRIGHT, 1887, BY CHARLES: SCRIBNER’S SONS
To - HENRY DRISLER, LL.D. JAY PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Pete Be
New-Tesrament commentaries are so numerous, and, many of them, so good, that a new essay requires some explanation. The present work is an attempt in a field which, so far as I am aware, is not covered by any one book, though it has been care- fully and ably worked by many scholars. Taking a position midway between the exegetical commentary and the lexicon and grammar, if aims to put the reader of the English Bible nearer to the stand-point of the Greek scholar, by opening to him the native force of the separate words of the New Testa- ment in their lexical sense, their etymology, their history, their inflection, and the peculiarities of their usage by different evan- gelists and apostles.
The critical student of the Greek Testament will, therefore, find himself here on familiar, and often on rudimental, ground, and will understand that the book has not been prepared with any design or expectation of instructing him. It has in view, first of all, those readers whose ignorance of Greek debars them from the quickening contact of the original words, and to whom is unknown the very existence of those tracks which the Greek scholar threads with unconscious ease and in clear light.
No scholar will maintain that such a task is rendered super- fluous by even the most idiomatic and accurate translation. The most conscientious and competent translator is fettered by difficulties inherent in the very nature of a translation. Some- thing must exhale in the transfer from one language to an-
vi PREFACE.
other ; something which is characteristic in proportion to its subtlety. Reading an author in a translation is like hearing through a telephone. The words may reach the ear distinctly, but the quality of the most familiar voice is lost. In transla- tion, as in exchange of money, transfer often necessitates break- ing up—the destruction of the original symbol, in order to embody its contents in the symbols of another tongue. A par- ticular coin of one country may have no exact representative in a coin of another country; and the difference must be made out with small change. A single Greek word often requires two or three words for its reproduction in English, and even then the partial equivalent must be made good by comment or paraphrase. There are, besides, certain features of every language, and particularly of every dead language, which defy transfer by any process—embodiments of a subtle play of per- ception or of thought which has vanished, like the characteris- tic expression from a dead face, and which, though it may give some hint of itself to an English mind, eludes the grasp of an English formula.
Difficulties like these can be met only by the study of indi- vidual words. The translator is compelled to deal mainly with the contents of sentences and periods; to make the forms of thought subordinate to the substance. A translation which should literally reproduce the idiomatic structure of its original would be a monstrosity. If the thonght is to circulate freely and familiarly in Anglo-Saxon society, and to do its best work upon Anglo-Saxon minds, it must assume the Anglo-Saxon dress. It must modify or abandon its native habits. It can- not be continually thrusting into notice its native antecedents, and the forms of the life which evolved it. It must be natural- ized throughout. Hence the translator is compelled to have mainly in view his own audience; to expound the message rather than to flatter the nationality of the messenger. He cannot stop to show his reader how each constituent word of