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catalogue of illustrious men, and says that "Tertullian commends. him, and adds that by many Christians he was accounted as a prophet." He was characterized by an eloquent and persuasive genius, and was an active and earnest defender of the Christian cause.'

In the Paschal Chronicle of the year 165 we read, "Melito of Asia, Bishop of Sardis, presented an apologetical book to the Emperors, namely Aurelius and Verus, as also many others, among whom was Justin (martyr)."

Again, after the death of Verus the Emperor, and the martyrdom of Justin, a second apology, in which Melito of Sardis, Appolinarius, Bishop of Hieropolis, and many others of the Christian faith, joined, was presented to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. These efforts were made on behalf of persecuted Christians, and seem to have secured them some relief, after the second had been received at Court. This eminent man knew, not only Greek, but also Syriac and Hebrew; and it is with his reference to the Old Testament Peshito" that we have first to do.

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Commenting on the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac, by the angel, and the substitution of a ram in his place, he uses these words. "For detained (KaTexóμEvoc as the LXX.) the Syriac and the Hebrew say suspended (peμáμεvos), thus typifying more evidently the cross." This quotation is worth notice on several grounds.

I.-It proves the antiquity of the Syriac Version of the Old Testament.

II.-It shows the high position which the Syriac held in that early period.

III. It makes known the fact that men, in that early period, were not uncritical students of the Word of God.

IV. It also indicated the existence of a wide brotherhood among the followers of Christ who spake different languages.

V. In the case of Melito it evidences great earnestness and labour in qualifying for teaching the Word.

VI. This reference to the Syriac enables us to see that no such overweening confidence in Greek had taken possession of great leaders in the church as has since obtained.

Let us study these several points with a view to find out where we may look for the best source of Divine instruction.

I. We say this quotation proves the antiquity of the Old Testament Peshito.

The composition of an apology designed to obtain the ear of the cultured and philosophical Emperor Marcus Aurelius, would not be entrusted to a mere youth. In Africa they knew better than to do so, and Justin Martyr was employed in their behalf, in the very maturity of his powers, and so it would be in Asia. Now it is not unreasonable to suppose that Melito was sixty-five years old when he presented his first apology in 165, and that he was bordering upon seventy years of age when he presented the second one.

But there is little doubt, but that those writings which have been preserved from his numerous works, such as our extract, were written before the two apologies. This man might be born at the beginning of the second century, and might have, in early youth, begun those studies of which he was master when a mature Bishop. In this case he would very probably begin to write out his thoughts at from thirty to forty years of age. And at the latest he would be an author by the middle of the second century.

Notice how he introduces the Syriac. It is in the manner of one who well knows his hearers, for he preached this matter before he put it forth in writing, and that his readers knew and accepted not merely the existence, but the well-established reputation of the Syriac.

See, then, how the Syrian tradition that the full and final edition, of the Old Testament Peshito, was secured for their churches by the Apostle Thady or Jude, about a century before Melito made this reference to Genesis xxii. 13, prepared the way for that version being known and esteemed in other lands than Syria, and then how, a century later, this off-hand but respectful reference to the Peshito, in or about 150, by a writer in Sardis, goes to confirm the Syrian account of their venerated Bible! Find any time later than the apostles and earlier than Melito when this work of supplying a better version than the LXX. could have been done, and won for its translators the deference of the learned and pious Bishop of Sardis, Melito.

You can point out the names of men who, about and after Melito's time, made versions of Hebrew into Greek, as Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, but where will you find the man or number of men who supplied the Syrian Scriptures anywhere else than where these churches place them. A century is short enough for the Syriac to have come into such repute as it evidently has in Melito's quotation.

II.-Melito's use of the Syriac shows not merely its antiquity but its high reputation. The Septuagint is considered by our bishop as giving less clearly than the Syriac the true force of the passage about the ram caught in the thicket. Besides, he appears in preparing his matter to have consulted his Peshito first, and put down its teaching and then to have referred to his copy of the Hebrew. If he knew the origin of the Old Testament Peshito in the twofold sense, of superior derivation and apostolic sanction, he would naturally refer to it as he has done.

There are able scholars who hold that the Old Testament Peshito was translated from a better Hebrew text than that we have now, and one better too, than that followed by the LXX. We call this superior derivation.

Then if he knew the tradition of the Syrian churches that the Peshito had apostolic sanction, how naturally would he place its reading above the Greek and before the Hebrew.

Be this as it may—and his learning and piety fitted him to value the Syriac on both these grounds-that he, a Greek-speaking bishop, should set the Syriac above the much lauded Septuagint, speaks volumes in favour of the Peshito. Not only must it have been highly esteemed among the people for whom it was prepared, in the first instance, but its reputation had travelled far and risen high in Melito's time, or he could not have expected a Greek-speaking people to tolerate his placing it above their Septuagint.

We should have expected some apology or explanation of his reference to it if he had doubted his intelligent Greek readers accepting the Peshito as good authority. But there is no modifying clause. Its reading is most simply and naturally quoted and used to give what he thought a better lesson than the LXX. supplied. It must then have been both ancient and reputable.

III.-This quotation from Melito shows that men, in that early Christian period, were not uncritical students of the Scriptures. Modern critics would make them to have been most uncritical in the second century. Now a man that examines three languages all containing his text, and shows a fine shade of difference in their teaching is not open to the charge of uncritical. If you hear a preacher dwelling with strong emphasis on a reading which critics have shown to be faulty, you may put him down as uncritical; but not one who searches his Bible in three languages and gives you the results of his search. Now this is what Melito does on this one text. And then he has evidently striven after a full restoration of the picture of the entangled ram and seen a marked difference between one whose wool had become entangled in thick thorns, from which it could not get free, and this which Abraham saw caught by the horns. He saw the body of the animal suspended from the branches, like Absalom from the oak, when his mule left him hanging there, and thence drew a comparison with Jesus on the cross.

Such exercise of the critical judgment as this man thus shows, leads to the conclusion that even though the Syriac had been foisted upon the thoughtless without any real merit, that would not have satisfied Melito or caused him to make reference to it with such confidence. He was able to determine its merits and willing to take the trouble to do so. For many of our scholars it would have been quite enough to refer to the Hebrew Bible and then argue from it; but Melito must have two good witnesses over against the testimony of the Septuagint. Nor is it reasonable to conclude that he was alone in either a turn for criticism or ability to work it out, but this will come under review as we advance.

IV. This quotation indicates a wide-spread union and cooperation among the early Christians. The reference to the Syriac shows that Melito felt interested in knowing how Divine truth was presented, in other tongues, to Christians who did not speak Greek. Otherwise he would have made no reference to the

Syriac. But in those days books were very costly, and he lived when persecution was despoiling Christians of their worldly substance, as he shows the Emperor in his apology. For he says, "The race of the godly is persecuted, driven by new edicts through Asia. For shameless sycophants, and affectors of other's goods, taking occasion from the prescripts, openly plunder by night and by day, spoiling those who have done no wrong." Now at a time when possibly the uncertainty of his position, when exposed to such sanctioned robbery, had much to do with his living a single life, and when he needed means to produce his numerous writings, we can scarcely think our Bishop could buy a costly copy of the Syriac Bible. And there were no doubt many other bishops in his district who would wish to possess copies. Two centuries later we find the writings of Ephraim the Syrian were of such interest to the Greek Christians, that works which he wrote in Syriac were translated into Greek in his lifetime. Now the latter end of the first century and the first half of the second one are stated to have been the period of the greatest activity and prosperity of the churches of Edessa. What then if this prosperity and activity took the form of circulating their excellent Bible among other churches and their bishops when, themselves exempt from persecution and sustained by their own sovereign, their brethren in Asia Minor and Africa and Europe also were spoiled and martyred? Much help, even in temporal things, was in those days sent far away to the needy, and is it not reasonable to look for their sending therewith manuscript baskets of the bread of life? From such a basket Melito gathers a morsel to illustrate the typical significance of the sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Nor does he forget to make significant reference to the New Testament Peshito in other portions of his teaching to which we may refer hereafter. If then this man, who happens to be better known than other worthy labourers, had a full copy of both Testaments, we see the kindly help of Syrian Christians. And then there is another hint at the union which then obtained seen in the fact that much of Melito's writing which has been of late recovered has been found in Syriac manuscripts. It may well then have happened that he supplied his own works to Syrian brethren in return for what he received of them. No doubt much of this kind of exchange took place in that early time, and had its after influence on copies of the Greek Testament which have come down to our time. The careful consideration of this observation by the earnest critic, might assist him in tracing back the water of life to its fountain head. But as yet it does not seem to have been made a guiding rule of critical study.

V. This quotation by Melito indicates great earnestness and study in qualifying himself for teaching the Word of God. order to speak eloquently and write forcibly in one's own tongue, a man must do much more than learn it from common converse.

And even among the so-called educated classes few could com

pare with Melito. But besides Greek, he mastered Hebrew and Syriac, and quotes them, not at second hand from some author whom he had to take on trust, but just as one does who knows what he is dealing with. Only by hard work could he thus have mastered three languages and followed out the duties of a bishopric in these trying times so carefully that he can be quoted as a pattern to Victor of Rome. That our bishop was a hard student, mastering no mean difficulties, follows from what is said of his travels in the East and the information which he gathered when there.

If the Jews had been open and communicative on the subject of their canonical books in cities distant from the Holy Land, Melito and his friend Onesimus might have gained satisfaction at home. But they became so bitterly opposed to the Christians that they refused them information on the Old Testament. In Canaan this could not be concealed, and so Melito took a journey thither, and has given his friend the first list of the canonical books of the Old Testament, which can be produced from the early Greek or Latin writers. This list is often referred to, to show the difference between these books and the apochryphal ones to which Rome gives sanction; but the critical earnestness of the student who travelled to Bible lands to obtain it, is too little thought of. Writers stay not to ask what doubts had been raised among Christians by their Jewish opponents as to what books of the Old Testament could be appealed to with authority to prove that Jesus was the long foretold Messiah. Scholars are aware how the Jews began to discredit the Septuagint when they could not answer the Christian argument. Did they not get one of their school to produce a rival version? Aquila and Theodotion were both contemporary with Melito, and Justin Martyr quotes the version of the latter in a discourse with Tryphon the Jew, composed in 160. These versions, which were followed by a third, that of Symmachus, by the year 200, go to prove that confidence in the LXX. must have been shaken. Melito then acts as a wise and energetic champion of the truth when he goes to the home land of the Bible to find what the Jews in Canaan held and taught as of Divine authority. Christian watchmen were not asleep in those days, as has been too much the notion of modern critics.

VI. This quotation from Melito shows that no such overweening confidence in Greek, as now obtains, had taken possession of the great leaders of the Church of the second century. If there be one portion of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament which is credited with superior excellence more than another, it is that containing the five books of Moses. The old story of the almost, if not altogether, miraculous production of that version being given up, the Septuagint is now judged to have been produced at various times and by men of very unequal ability. But the first portion is held to be both best executed at first, and most carefully preserved afterwards. The reason assigned for this is, that it contained the

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