THE EXPOSITOR EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M. A., LL.D. Contents I. A Criticism of Dr. Hatch's "Essays in Biblical Greek," by Dr. Hort. (A Fragment.) II. Liberty of the Tree of Life. BY THE REV. G. MATHESON, M.A., D.D., F.R.S.E. III. Christ's Attitude to His Own Death. BY THE REV. A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D., LL.D., PRINCIPAL IV. Moses at the Battle of Rephidim. BY THE REV. G. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A. V. The Threefold Cord. BY W. R. INge, m.a., HERTFORD College, oxford. VI. Christian Perfection. 2. Other New Testament Teaching. BY THE REV. JOSEPH AGAR BEET, D.D. VII. Professor Hommel on Arphaxad. BY THE REV. PROFESSOR T. K. CHEYNE, D.D., OXFORD. VIII. Survey of Literature on the New Testament. London: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, MDCCCXCVII. PRICE ONE SHILLING. Subscription price 12s. per annum. Published monthly, by Hodder and Stoughton, 27, Paternoster Row, London. With Additions, Corrections, and New Index of Scripture References. THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND. By GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. With six specially prepared Maps. 8vo, cloth, 15s. *** For the convenience of those who already possess the previous Editions, the Additions, Corrections, and New Index of Scripture References may be had separately. Price Sixpence. "A very noteworthy contribution to the study of sacred history, based upon the three indispensable conditions of personal acquaintance with the land, a study of the explorations, discoveries, and decipherments ... and the employment of the results of Biblical criticism."-Times. "In some respects the book is the most comprehensive and complete contribution to Palestinian literature of the last twenty years."-Daily News. "The book is too rich to summarise. The language is particularly well chosen. Few pages are without some telling phrase happily constructed to attract attention and hold the memory, and we often feel that the wealth of imagery would be excessive for prose were it not that it is chosen with such appropriateness and scientific truth. . . To the reader much of the pleasure of perusing the volume comes from its luxurious typography, and the exquisite series of orographical maps prepared by Mr. Bartholomew from the work of the Survey. These maps alone are more suggestive and enlightening than many treatises, and they are destined, we trust, to enliven many a sermon, and turn the monotony of the records of Israelitish wars into a thrilling romance."-The Speaker. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. The Anglican Pulpit Library. SERMONS-OUTLINES-ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE SUNDAYS AND HOLY DAYS OF THE YEAR. Original and Selected. Vol. V.-Whit Sunday to the Ninth Sunday after Trinity. Now Ready. Subscriptions to Volumes IV.--VI. are now due. The price is 24s. in advance for he Three Volumes; to Non-Subscribers the price is 15s. each Volume. Set 1. may still be had at Subscription Price. Full particulars and specimen pages sent on application. * To Non-Subscribers the price of the Volume is 158. Subscriptions may, however, still be placed for Vols. I-III.; price 248, the Three Volumes. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER Row, E.C. MASS. A CRITICISM OF DR. HATCH'S "ESSAYS IN BIBLICAL GREEK," BY DR. HORT. (A FRAG- THIS volume of 293 pages contains "the substance of the lectures delivered at Oxford by Dr. Hatch during his terms of office as Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint. It thus gathers up for us the chief points of the labour bestowed by a man of rare power, knowledge, and freedom from prepossession, upon a field of criticism which opens directly into several more important subjects, and in which a trained, historic sense like his is of special value. From beginning to end the book abounds in minute and careful work, directed and interpreted by vigorous intelligence. Its true importance, however, will be best understood by clear recognition of the limitations explicitly pointed out by Dr. Hatch himself in the preface. His work is exactly what he calls it, "almost entirely tentative in its character." "It is designed not so much to furnish a complete answer to the questions which it raises as to point out to students of sacred literature some of the rich fields which have not yet been adequately explored, and to offer suggestions for their exploration." Not a few of the results obtained, and some even of the methods employed, will hardly hold their ground. But that is of secondary importance. It is enough that the book is throughout a practical invitation to Biblical students of all grades of maturity to verify current assumptions, that it reminds 1 Essays in Biblical Greek. Ecclesiastical History, Oxford. VOL. V. By Edwin Hatch, M.A., D.D., Reader in Oxford, 1889. 81 6 them of a large mass of valuable evidence as yet hardly brought into use, and that it enforces and illustrates the need of scientific procedure in the handling of this and all other evidence. The seven essays included in the volume fall under two heads, the Greek vocabulary of the Bible (I.-III.), and the text of the Septuagint and Apocrypha (IV.-VII.). Perhaps, however, more justice would be done to the ideas which seem to have governed Dr. Hatch's own studies by saying that five essays (I.-III., V., VI.) deal with the evidence to be obtained from the LXX. for the examination of problems external to itself, while the remaining two (IV., VII.) are concerned with the textual criticism of the LXX. and Apocrypha. The reader will do well not to be frightened at some paradoxes which enliven the opening paragraphs of Essay I. (On the Value and Use of the Septuagint). Without at all concurring in Dr. Hatch's sweeping disparagement of all that has been hitherto done for the elucidation of the language of the New Testament, one must needs welcome so stout an ally against the delusion of finality; for assuredly much of the vocabulary of the New Testament, and even some parts of its grammar, stand urgently in need of fresh and more methodical investigation. The series of paragraphs in which Dr. Hatch discriminates various causes of difference between " Classical" Greek and that of the New Testament are in substance admirable and instructive, though exception might be taken to some verbal details and many examples. Their value fortunately does not depend on the strange initial assertion that "in almost every lexicon, grammar, and commentary' the New Testament is chiefly interpreted according to Attic standards. Dr. Hatch rightly distinguishes these causes of difference under two heads, roughly described as time and country. Differences due to the lapse of time, he points out, arose partly from causes external to language, such as "the rise of new ideas, philosophical and theological, the new social circumstances, the new political combinations, the changes in the arts of life, and the greater facilities of intercourse with foreign nations" (p. 3); partly from those spontaneous changes in living speech which literary archaism is powerless to arrest. Thus far, he says, the LXX. and New Testament "may be treated as monuments of Post-Classical Greek," and their language illustrated from contemporary secular writers" but the several books which make up both the LXX. and the New Testament vary largely among themselves in philological as well as in literary character, and in many cases contemporary Greek fails to give an adequate philological explanation such as it supplies elsewhere. Hence account has to be taken, secondly, of difference of country. This consists partly in difference of physical and social conditions, as shown by the change from the Attic metaphors of the law-courts, the gymnasia, and the sea, to metaphors suggested by "the conditions of Syrian life," and still more by the change from the religious and moral ideas of the Greeks to those of a Semitic race, "whose traditions came down from Moses and the Prophets." In the striking paragraphs here condensed (pp. 9 ff.) respecting physical and social differences, it seems to be too hastily assumed by implication that the LXX. translators, no less than the Apostles, were inhabitants of Palestine; and no allowance is made for the influence of the Hellenized cities of the sea-board on the whole country. But what is said of the effect of differences of religious and moral ideas is undoubtedly true, though not the whole truth. These paragraphs lead the way to a generalization which is virtually the text of the first three essays, and the importance of which, if it be true in the rigorous sense in which |