which deal directly with the Greek of the New Testament. These
three works I will now specify.
The first, which is still in progress, and has not, I think, yet received
a translator, is the singularly accurate, and in parts corrective,
edition of Winer's "Grammar" by Prof. Schmiedel. The portion on the
article is generally recognized as of great value and importance.
The second work is the now well-translated "Bible Studies" of Dr.
Deissmann of Heidelberg {109}. This remarkable work, of which the full
title is "Contributions, chiefly from Papyri and Inscriptions, to the
History of the Language, the Literature, and the Religion of Hellenistic
Judaism, and Primitive Christianity," contains not only a clear estimate
of the nature of New Testament Greek, but also a large and instructive
vocabulary of about 160 words and expressions in the New Testament, most
of which receive in varying degrees illustration from the Papyri, and
other approximately contemporary sources. It must be noted, however,
that the writer himself specifies that his investigations "have been, in
part, arranged on a plan which is polemical {110a}." This avowal must,
to some extent, affect our full acceptance of all the results arrived at
in this striking and laborious work.
The third work is a "Grammar of New Testament Greek" by the well-known
and distinguished scholar, Dr. Blass, and is deserving of the fullest
attention from every earnest student of the Greek Testament. It has been
excellently translated by Mr. St. John Thackeray, of the Education
Department {110b}. It is really hardly possible to speak too highly of
this helpful and valuable work. Its value consists in this--that it has
been written, on the one hand, by an accomplished classical scholar, and,
on the other hand, by one who is thoroughly acquainted with the
investigations of the last fifteen years. As his Introduction clearly
shows, he fully accepts the estimate that is now generally entertained of
the Greek of the New Testament, viz. that it is no isolated production,
as regards language, that had no historic relation to the Greek of the
past or of the future. It was not, to any great extent, derived from the
Greek _translations_ of the Old Testament--often, as Dr. Blass says,
slavishly literal--nor from the literary language of the time, but was
the spoken Greek of the age to which it belonged, modified by the
position and education of the speaker, and also to some exte
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