1, LITERATURE, I The literature .availal:>le on this Epi,stle •is very, copi~u~'. Jimong the. xp.~st helpful: may b.e mentioned .the following_:--:Chryso~tom; . ,lc:foDlo; .l T4e9(io~~~; ?al:vin'~ 'Oom.wentarius • ' E.stius, ' In Ep1stolas ; ' ;Cornelius .a Lap1de.; Grotius (m Pol~ Synopsis); Be~gel's ' Gnonion ; ' Ili.ickert'e ~ Com~entar ; ' 'Windischmann's I Er-. llirung ; ' De W ette's ' Handbuch ; ' Meyer's 'Kommentar; ' Bishop Ellicott'a 'Critical and Grammatical Commentary;' Bibhop Lightfoot's 'Epistle to the Galatians;' ,Dean Howson, in 'Conybeare and Howson' and in the 'Speaker's Commentary;' Arch- deacon Farrar's 'Life and Work of St. Pnul.' No student should forget to use Lnther's • Commcntarius,' which he fondly and proudly cp.]Jcd hi~ ' CaLhcrine d" Bora.' THE EPIS'.l'LE TO THE GALATIANS. nlil
DISSERTATION L THE IMPORT OF -THE TERM: 11 APoSTLE" .AB •APPLIED JN THE NEw· TESTAMENT,
The, use. of ths wr,rd "apostle" b~fore it was adopted by Christ. The Greek wora 3.1r&0',,.01\.as, of which. apostle is the Anglicized transliteration, is employed by classical authors to describe a-person only in the Ionic Greek of Herodotus-in whose histories it occurs:twice (i.,21; v. 38)-in the sense of" envoy,"" commissioned messenger." In the Attic ,fprm pf. the language the word is of not unrrequent occurrence, but always ,with .a dif!'.er.ent II)._eaning; never. denoting an individual person, but only "a naval expeditionary forco" (Liddell and Scott, 'Lexicon'). In the Greek used among the Jews, the sense of the word as employed by Herodotus, but not, so far as critics have .observed, found in any intermediate writer, reappears afresh. Thus in 1 Kings xiv. 6 (" I am sent to thee with. hard tidings") we have in the Alexandrinc text of the .S.eptuagint, 'E-y.S ,lµ, botf1'a1\.as ..-p&s "• O'K1\.1Jpos, "I am a hard apostle unto thee." Sym- rnachus, the Jewish translator in the seqond century of.our era, used d,ratf'To1\.avs to render the Ileb1·ew word. tsirim in Isa. xviii. 2, where the Septuagint gives a different rendering of the Hebrew word, though in three other passages (Isa. lvii. 9; Prov. xiii.17; xxv. 13) rendering it either "ambassador" (,rpelf/1<V1'~s) or" messenger" (1£-y-yoJ\.os). It appears from different statements cited by Bishop Lightfoot, in his, important remarks "On the Name and Office of an Apostle" ('.Galatians,' pp. 92-101), that, at least subsequently to the dest_ruction of Jerusalem, the Jews used the term to designate persons employed to convey circular letters despatched by their authorities; and, in particuhr, that they so termed _the members of a sort of council attending upon their patriarch, assisting him in his deliberations, conveying his orders to Jews at a distance, and collecting of these their contributions to religious objects (Eusebius, 'Montf. Coll. Nov.,' ii. 425; Jerome,' Comm .. ad. Gal.,' i. 1; Cod. Theodos. xvi. 'Tit.,' viii. 14; Julian, 'Epist.,' 25; Epiphanius, 'Baires.,' pp. 128, 134). Now, as we cannot suppose that the Jewish authorities would have. chosen to borrow the term from the usage of those whom they regarded as abhorred Nazarene heretics, we are led to infer that Christ, in thus desig- nating the twelve, applied for his purpose a word which was already in vogue among the Jews, and used by them in a signification more or less cognate to that which he himself bad in view in his own application of the term. This conclusion is confirmed by;the consideration that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iii: 1, 2), the writer, whether St. Paul or. one writing under St. Paul's sug.~estion, applies the term "apostle" to Christ in such a connection as to warrant the belief that he does so as viewing Christ as standing parallel with Moses ; leading us on to the further surmise that the Jewish theologians were themselves wont thus to designate Moses himself. 'l'hat they were accustomed to do so seems probable enough when wo consider how frequently the verb d.1ranl1\.1\.o, is used in the Septuagint Versiou of thi earlier chapters of Exodus with reference to Moses' mission, and compare our Lord'~ words respecting himself in John xvli. 18. The review of the confessedly very scanty materials which are at hand relative to the use of the term· extrinsically to its application in the Christian Church, brings us to the following as probable conclusions::- 1. That at the period near the commencement of the Christian era it was current 88 designating an individua.l person, only in the Greek spoken by the Jews. TRE El>Is'l'tE rro l'BE GALA.tl'IA~S.