the Roman State, the position of the book was fairly secure. New systems of interpretation, allegorical (e.g., that of Tyconius) and semi-historical, were devised to vindicate its rights as a scripture of the church, and these were the more cordially welcomed, as the book itself was enigmatic and in parts ambiguous. All sense of its original object had faded from the uncritical mind of the church. Dogmatic prepossessions underlay its rejection as well as its recep- tion; it was exposed to extravagant censure and extravagant praise, but the growing belief in its apostolic origin helped to save it, like Hebrews, from ultimate exclusion or depreciation. In the case of the one book as of the other, the instinct which determined the judgment of the councils and the churches was sounder than the political reasons which they adduced. Nostra res agitur, they felt. The authentic note of loyalty to Jesus Christ at all costs was audible enough to prevail with them over their antipathy to the crashing discords of Christian apocalyptic.!
§ 10. Literature, etc.—In addition to abbreviations which are already noted (page 284), or which are obvious enough, the following may be mentioned :—
Abbott = E. A. Abbott’s Notes on N. T. Criticism (1907), pp. 75 f., 175 'f.
AC =Bousset’s der Antichrist (Eng. Tr. by Keane, 1896).
Baldensperger=sec. ed. (1892) of Baldensperger’s das Selbst- bewusstsein Fesu.
Blass=Grammatik des NTlichen Griechisch (2nd ed. 1902; Eng. Tr. 1905). '
Boéklen=B.’s die Verwandtschaft d. jiidisch-christlichen mit der Parsischen Eschatologie (1902).
Burton=E. de W. Burton’s New Testament Moods and Tenses (2nd ed. 1894).
C.B.P.=W. M. Ramsay’s Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. i. part i. (1895), part ii. (1897).
Dalman = Dalman’s Worte Fesu (Eng. Tr. The Words hes Sesus).
Dieterich =A. Dieterich’s Nekyia (1893).
1 «Tf a great man interprets a national crisis so as to bring home to the nation its true ideals and destination, he remains a true prophet even if his forecast was mistaken. Without the critical situation it is probable that the great man could never have brought so much truth to such powerful expression. So an eschatology is not to be judged by a simple rule of agreement with facts, but rather by its fitness under the circumstances to quicken faith in God, to stir the conscience and put men’s wills under the domination of ideal motives, to give a living sense of God and eternity ’ (F. C. Porter, Messages of the Apoc. Writers, p. 73).