NOTE II,

CHAPTER V.

THE LITERARY FORM AND LANGUAGE OF THE GOSPEL.

1. HELLENISTIC GREEK.

The Alexandrian Greek dialect or Hellenistic Greek in which the N. T. is written was a result of the Macedonian conquests which swept away the ancient barriers of many forms of Greek speech. The mingled fragments of diverse elements gradually took shape in the κown diáλertos or the New Macedonian dialect as distinguished from the old Doric Macedonian. This in turn gathered to itself fresh forms and peculiarities in the various communities which adopted it, and thus separated off into distinct dialects.

One of these offshoots growing up in the newly founded city of Alexandria with characteristics of its own in tense-forms in vocabulary and in construction became the language of those Jews who gathered in Alexandria in large numbers, partly attracted by the privileges granted them by its founder, partly driven to take refuge there from the cruelties of the Seleucidæ. It is probable that with these settlers Hebrew soon ceased to be the language of daily life. Constant intercourse with the Greek-speaking population that surrounded them would necessitate the use of a common language. To this fact the LXX. itself bears witness. That version was made at various periods not, as is sometimes said, to satisfy the curiosity of a Ptolemy, but to meet the religious necessities of the Jew. Thus from the first the Alexandrian dialect became strongly tinged by an infusion of Hebrew words and phraseology. The LXX. version

stereotyped those new elements, and gave to the Greek of Alexandria a deep impress of Oriental idiom. This dialect thus dignified and consolidated by a great literary work was carried to all parts of the world by the Hellenist or Greek-speaking Jew.

At this stage Hellenistic Greek, as contrasted with Attic Greek, was distinguished by a simplicity of idioms and of syntax, by a restriction in the use of connecting particles, by less discrimination in the force of prepositions, by a growing disuse of the middle voice, and of the optative mood, by a preference for formulæ which, though rare in Greek, are common to that language and the Hebrew, by certain peculiar tense-forms, and by an increased employment of analytic tenses. The vocabulary was enriched by words unknown to the fastidious Attic of the literary style. 1. Vernacular words, which though long on the people's lips, now, for the first time, appear in literature; just as the vernacular Latin of Gaul rose to be the most polished European speech. 2. Words of ancient literature, Epic or Lyric, which had not held their own in Attic prose writers, emerging once more into the light of culture. 3. Words with a strong or a coarse meaning in classical days now weakened into the expression of gentler or more refined thoughts. 4. Outlandish words which could not have been in use when Marathon was fought-Macedonian-Persian-Egyptian-Hebrew, and later

still, Latin.

When Hellenistic Greek became the language of the N. T. its vocabulary was further modified, partly by the rejection of words too deeply steeped in heathen vice or in false religious thought, partly by the addition of higher and holier ideas to the words which Christianity selected. In three ways at least such a tongue was admirably suited to the work of evangelizing the world. 1. It was universally recognized and understood. 2. It was the language of the common people, not of a refined and exclusive caste. 3. The very loss of the old subtlety has been a gain to it as the channel of religious ideas.

Thus, though the language has lost some of its charms for the scholar, and though it has ceased to give, as once it did, the most perfect expression to human conceptions, yet it has been the chosen instrument through which the thoughts have been conveyed, which, far beyond any other thoughts, have moved and influenced the world.

And it has a wonderful interest of its own. For the scholar

it is the stepping-stone between Classical and Modern Greek. To the theologian it is the starting-point of sacred terminology. Each is concerned to detect the exact force of a word, the drift and associations of every phrase. The variety in the word-history of the New Testament, the diverse fortunes and lives, so to speak, of Hellenistic terms make the search interesting and the solution difficult. Some words are purely Hellenistic, they begin and die with that stage of the language; others lived on to the present day and are still in the mouths of the Athenian citizens and Boeotian peasants, expressing daily wants and simple thoughts. Some existing obscurely for long, disclaimed by Attic culture, are now lifted to a diviner height than if Plato had employed them. Others, though known to the purest classical diction, out of an ancient variety and wide range of thought, survive in a single meaning. Some seem to have been kept especially sacred and intact from heathen association as by a particular providence to enshrine the pure conceptions of Christianity. Others, teeming with Pagan thought, have come to Christ to be purified, or to lay at His feet the riches of the Gentiles-the high and inspiring ideas which had been given to men who 'felt after' God in the dark heathen days.

2. THE POETICAL ELEMENT IN THIS GOSPEL.

There are many a priori reasons which make it improbable that the poetry of the Bible would close with the canon of the O.T. It was not to be expected that the epoch which fulfilled the hopes expressed and vivified in successive ages by inspired odes of surpassing beauty should present the realization of them in a form less excellently perfect. Nor indeed was it to be expected that the greatest of Hebrew prophets should alone refrain from clothing His divine message in the glowing phrases, or in the exact and beautiful forms of Hebrew poetry. We should expect that in Him, who spake as never man spake, consummate excellence of thought and speech should be cast in the most perfect mould of human art.

Investigation shews that it is so. Poetry as real, as exquisite in

art and feeling, as inventive and varied in device, as full of fancy and of pathos and delicate turns of expression, is to be found in the New as in the Old Testament. Indeed it is an interesting question how much of the literary charm of many parts of the N. T. is due to the latent influence of poetical form.

It is of course possible that much has been lost through translation from the Aramaic into Greek. If our knowledge of Hebrew poetry had come through the LXX. alone many a delicate turn and point of the poetical original would have been lost to view. But as St Matthew has rendered the passages cited from the Hebrew Scriptures more faithfully than the LXX., and with a truer sense of poetic beauty, it may be inferred that our Saviour's Aramaic speech has lost little by its transference to another language.

Here a question of great interest may present itself. How far, it may be asked, is this form due to the Evangelist? How far is it an exact transcript of the Saviour's words? The point might be argued at length, but the decision could scarcely fail to be that in the poetical discourses and sayings recorded by St Matthew we have not only the subject-matter of Christ's teaching, but the very manner in which the sacred truths were delivered.

At the same time it is manifest that St Matthew is the most appreciative among the Evangelists of the form of the Saviour's teaching. He is the Hebrew prophet of the N.T. His writings are λóyia-the prophetic oracles of God. If to any the gift of poetical expression were granted in those days surely it was granted to him, if to any the kindred soul to catch and retain the accents of poetry falling from the Master's lips surely to him.

One argument for the existence of the poetical element in the Gospel might be found in the a priori probability that Christ would deliver His laws in a form which would lend itself easily to the memory of His disciples; and in the observed fact that wherever the discourse rises to matters of the highest consideration-wherever maxims are delivered essential to the Christian life, in one or other of its many forms the element of poetry