poORIRTURE, LORY SCRIPTURES,” IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
THE scope of this article does not permit the full discussion in it of the employment of Scripture, or of the estimate put upon Scripture, by either our Lord or the writers of the New Testament. It is strictly limited to what is necessary to exhibit the use of the terms ‘Scripture,’ ‘The Scriptures,’ in the New Testament and the more immediate implications of this use.
Abas use was an inheritance, not an invention. The idea oY a ‘canon’ of ‘Sacred Scriptures,’ and, with the idea, the
‘canon’ itself were derived by Christianity from Judaism. The Jews possessed a body of writings, consisting of ‘ Law, Prophets ae (other) Scriptures (K’thubhim),’ though they were often called for brevity’s sake merely ‘the Law and the Prophets’ or even simply ‘the Law.’ These ‘Sacred Scriptures”’ (wpm ‘3n3), — or, as they were very frequently pregnantly called, this ‘Scripture’ (=n="), or these ‘Books’ (a207) or, even sometimes, in the singular, this ‘Book’ (p05) — were looked upon as all drawing their origin from divine inspiration and as possessed in all their extent of divine authority. Whatever stood written in them was a word of God, and was therefore referred to indifferently as something which ‘the Scripture says’ ("Pp 78 or 3N57 7X or xp an>) or ‘the All-merciful says’ (s2mm 7x), or even simply ‘He says’ ("#8 xn 72 or merely 7") — that God is the speaker being too fully understood to require explicit expression. Every precept or dogma was supposed to be grounded in Scriptural teaching, and possessed authority only as buttressed by a Scriptural passage, introduced com-
1 A condensation of this article was published in Dr. Hastings’ “ Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels,’”’ sub voc. Scripture. It has been thought desirable after this interval to print the entire article. (From The Princeton Theological Review v. VIII, 1910, pp. 561-612.)
monly by one of the formulas, ‘for it is said’ (m#s2w), or ‘as 1t is written’ (s'n25 or >n2">), though of course a great variety of less frequently occurring similar formulas of adduction are found.”
Greek-speaking Jews naturally tended merely to reproduce in their new language the designations and forms of adduction of the sacred books current among their compatriots. This process was no doubt facilitated by the existence among the Greeks themselves of a pregnant legislative use of ypadw, ypadn, yeauua, in which they were already freighted with a certain implication of authority.® But it is very easy to make too much of this (as e. g., Deissmann does), and the simple fact should not be obscured that the Greek-speaking Jews follow the usage of the Jews in general. It may no doubt very possibly be due in part to his Graecizing tendencies that the Scriptures are spoken of by Josephus apparently with predilection as the ‘‘Sacred Books’’ (tepat GiBror or tepa 6.Brta) or ‘‘ Sacred Scriptures”’ (tepd ypauuara) or more fully still as the ‘‘ Books of the Sacred Scriptures”’ (ai tep@v ypadav GiBror); and quoted with the formula yéypamra: or more frequently avayéypamrra: — all of which are forms which would be familiar to Greek ears, with a general implication of authority.* Perhaps, however, the influence of the Greek usage is more clearly traceable in certain passages of the LX X in which ypa@n may seem to hover between the pregnant Greek losophie d. ersten nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts”’ (1892), the latter of whom discusses Philo’s ideas of Scripture also.
sense of authoritative ‘ordinance,’ and the pregnant Hebrew sense of authoritative ‘Scripture.’ When, for example, we read in I Chron. xv. 15, ‘* And the sons of the Levites took upon themselves with staves the Ark of God, ws évereiNato Mwvons &v OYw Beod KaTa THY ypadny,’’ we scarcely know whether we are to translate the xara Tv ypadnyv (which has no equivalent in the Hebrew) by “‘ according to the precept,”’ or by “‘ according to the Scriptures.’’? Something of the same hesitancy is felt with reference to the similar passages: II Chron. xxx. 5, ‘‘ Because the multitude had not done it lately xara THY ypadnv’’ (= sinsz); II Chron. xxx. 18, ‘‘ But they ate the passover wapa rv ypadnv’’ (= sinzD X53); II Esdr. vi. 18, ‘‘ And they established the priests in their courses and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God in Jerusalem, xara 77v ypadny Bib\ov Mwvon”’ (= an23 mv pe); I Chron. xxviii. 19, ‘‘ All these things David gave to Solomon é& ypad7 xerpos Kupiov’’ (= mint 79 sn>3): IT Chron. xxxv. 4, ‘‘ Prepare yourselves... kata tHv ypadny Aavid... Kal dua xelpos Datwuwv’’ (= rib smoen1 717 sm22); I Esdr.i. 4, “kata THY ypapdyy Aavid’’ xr; and especially the very instructive passage ITI Esdr. vii. 22, ‘‘ For which there is no ypad7.”’ Similarly in II Esdr. i. 2, ‘‘xara ta yeypaupéeva (= 31ND) in the law of Moses,” ra yeypauyéeva might very well appeal to a Greek ear as simply ‘‘the prescriptions’’; and there are a series of passages in which yéyparrat might very readily be taken in the Greek sense of ‘‘it is prescribed,’’ such as Josh. Perera viileo lon eWingsixiv. O,ixxn 21) 1 Chron: xxi118; xxv. 4, Neh. x. 34, (85), 35, (87), Tob. i. 6. Should this interpretation be put on these passages, there would be left in the LXX little unalloyed trace of the peculiar Jewish usage of pregnantly referring to Scripture as such by that term, and citing it with the authoritative ‘It is written.’ For clear instances of the former usage we should have to go to TV Macc. xvill. 14, and of the latter to Dan. ix. 13, and to the Greek additions to Job (xli. 18).° Philo on the other hand is absolutely determined in his usage by his inherited Jewish habits of thought. With him the Sacred books are by predilection a body of divine Oracles and are designated ordinarily either 6 \dyos with various adjectival enhancements — ‘ prophetic,’ ‘divine,’ ‘sacred’ — or, perhaps even more commonly, ‘“‘the Oracles,” or even “‘the Oracle,” (oi xpnopol, Ta NOyLa, 6 xpNouos, 70 AOyvov, or even possibly the anarthrous xpyopos, Ndyuor); and are adduced (as is also most frequently the case in the Mishna, cf. Edersheim as cited) rather with the formula, ‘* As it is said,’ than with the “‘ As it is written’’ which would more naturally convey to Greek ears the sense of authoritative declarations. Of course Philo also speaks on occasion (for this too is a truly Jewish mode of speech) of these ‘‘ Oracles’”’ as ‘‘the Sacred Books”’ (ta tepat BiBdou. “De Vita Moysis,”’ iii. 23, Mangey ii. 163; “Quod det. pot. insid.” 44, Mangey i. 222), or as ‘“‘the Sacred Scriptures”’ (ai tepwrarat ypadat, “ De Abrah.”’ i, Mangey ii. 2; iepai ypadat, ““ Quis rerum div. heres.”’ 32, Mangey i. 495; 7a tepa ypaupara, “ Legat. ad Caium,” 29, Mangey ii. 574); and adduces them with the pregnant yéypartat. But the comparative infrequency of these designations in his pages is very noticeable.°®
What it is of importance especially to note is that there was nothing left for Christianity to invent in the way of designating the Sacred Books taken over from the Jewish Church pregnantly as “Scripture,” and currently adducing their authority with the pregnant ‘It is written.’ The Christian writers merely continued in their entirety the established usages of the Synagogue in this matter, already prepared to their hands in Hebrew and Greek alike. There is probably not a single mode of alluding to or citing Scripture in all the of Moses, all this evil is come upon us”’; Job xhi. 18, ‘And Job died an old man and full of days, yéypamrra 6¢ that he shall rise again along with those whom the Lord will raise.”
New Testament which does not find its exact parallel among the Rabbis.’ The New Testament so far evinces itself a thoroughly Jewish book. The several terms made use of in it, to be sure, as it was natural they should be, are employed with some sensitiveness to their inherent implications as Greek words; and the Greek legislative use of some of them gave them no doubt peculiar fitness for the service asked of them, and lent them a special significance to Gentile readers. But the application made of them by the New Testament writers nevertheless has its roots set in the soil of Jewish thought, from which they derive a fuller and deeper meaning than their most pregnant classical usage could accord them. Among these terms those which more particularly claim our attention at the moment are the two substantives ypady and yeayya, with their various qualifications, and the cognate verbal forms employed in citing writings pregnantly designated by these substantives. There is nothing in the New Testament usage of these terms peculiar to itself; and throughout the New Testament any differences that may be observed in their employment by the several writers are indicative merely of varying habits of speech within the limits of one well-settled general usage.
To the New Testament writers as to other Jews, the Sacred Books of what was in their circle now called the Old Covenant (II Cor. ii. 14), described according to their contents as “‘the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Lk. xxiv. 44) — or more briefly as ‘‘the Law and the Prophets”’ (Matt. vim uke xviee LO eclasActsi xxvinle 23, Lk xvi.e29-31) or merely as ‘‘the Law” (Jno. x. 34, I Cor. xiv. 21) or even “the Prophets,” (Rom. xvi. 26),> — were, when thought of according to their nature, a body of ‘‘Sacred Scriptures’’ (Rom. i. 2, II Tim. ii. 16), or, with the omission of the unnecessary be-
7 This has been shown in detail by, for example, Surenhusius and Dépke, as cited above.
cause well-understood adjective, by way of eminence, “‘the Scriptures,’ ‘“‘the Scripture,”’ ‘‘Scripture,”’ (Matt. xxi. 29, Jno. x. 35, I Pet. ii. 6). For employment in this designation, either of the substantives, ypad7 or ypauya, would apparently have been available; although of course with slightly differing suggestions arising from the differing implications of the forms and the respective general usages of the words. In Philo and Josephus the more usual of the two in this application is ypauma, or, to speak more exactly, ypauuara, — for although yoda is sometimes in later Greek so employed in the singular ° it is in the plural that this term most properly denotes that congeries of alphabetical signs which constitutes a book (cf. Latin, literae). In the New Testament on the contrary, this form is rare. The complete phrase, ieod ypaupata, which is found also both in Josephus (e.g. “‘ Antt.’’ proem. 3; iii. 7, 6; x. 10, 4; xiii. 5,8) and in Philo (e. g., ‘‘ De Vita Moys.’’i. 2, ‘‘ Legat. ad Caium,” 29) occurs in II Tim. iii. 15 as the current title of the Sacred Books, freighted with all its implications as such, or rather with those implications emphasized by its anarthrous employment, and particularly adverted to in the immediate context (verse 16).’° Elsewhere in the New Testament, however, ypaupara scarcely occurs as a designation of Scripture. In Jno. v. 47, ‘‘ But if ye believe not his (Moses’) writings, how shall ye believe my (Jesus’) words?’’ to be sure we must needs hesitate before we refuse to give to it this its most pregnant sense, especially since there appears to be an implication present that it would be more reprehensible to refuse trust to these ‘‘ writings”’ of Moses than to the ‘“‘ words”’
10 H. Holtzmann accordingly accurately comments on this passage: ‘“‘The writer shares the Jewish view of the purely supernatural origin of Scripture in its strictest form, according to which ‘theopneustie’ is ascribed directly to the Scriptures.” (“N. T. Theologie”’ ii. 261).
of Jesus Himself. But on the whole, the tendency of the most recent exegesis to see in “his writings” here little more than another way of saying ‘“‘ what he wrote,’’ seems justified. The only other passage which can come into consideration is Jno. vil. 15, ‘‘ How knoweth this man ypauuara, not having learned?’”’ in which some commentators still see a reference to ‘‘the iepa yoauuara (II Tim. iii. 15) from which the Jewish ypauparets derived their title’’ (Th. Zahn, ‘ Einleitung,’ ii. 99). Most readers, however, doubtless will agree that ‘‘letters’’ in general are more naturally meant (cf. Acts xxvi. 24 and Meyer’s judicious note). Practically, therefore, ypadupa is eliminated; and ypad7, yeadai, in their varied uses, remain the sole terms employed in the New Testament in the sense of ‘‘Scripture,” ‘‘Scriptures.”’
This term, in singular or plural, occurs in the New Testament some fifty times (Gospels twenty-three, Acts seven, Catholic Epistles six, Paul fourteen) and in every case bears the technical sense in which it refers to the Scriptures by way of eminence, the Scriptures of the Old Testament. This statement requires only such modification as is involved in noting that from II Pet. iii. 16 (cf. I Tim. v. 18) it becomes apparent that the New Testament writers were perfectly aware that the term “‘Scripture’’ in its high sense was equally applicable to their own writings as to the books included in the Old Testament; or, to be more precise, that it included within itself along with the writings which constituted the Old Testament those also which they were producing, as sharing with the Old Testament books the high functions of the authoritative written word of God.” No modification needs:to be
11 For the currency of this sense, cf. G. Milligan, “Selections from the Greek Papyri,”’ p. 58, where commenting on the phrase 7 idéros ypauuara, he remarks: “The phrase occurs in countless papyrus documents written either in whole or in part by a scribe on behalf of the ‘unlettered’ author. Cf. the use of the corresponding adjective a&ypdauparos in Acts iv. 13 (ef. Jno. vil. 15, Ac. xxvi. 24) = ‘unacquainted with literature or Rabbinical learning.’”’
12 On the significance of the plural ai ypadai in 2 Pet. i. 16, see below p. 132. There is no justification for attempting to lower the high implication of the term here (e. g. Huther, Spitta, Mayor in loc., Ladd “Doct. of Sacred Scripture,” I. p. 211, note). The inclusion of New Testament books within the category made for the benefit of the few passages in which words are adduced as Scriptural which are not easily identified in the Old Testament text.’® The only passages which come strictly under consideration here are Jno. vii. 38 and Jas. iv. 5, to which may be added as essentially of the same kind (although the term ypad7n does not occur in connection with them), I Cor. ii. 9, and Lk. ix. 49. It is enough to remark as to these passages that, however difficult it may be to identify with certainty the passages referred to, there is no reason to doubt that Old Testament passages were in mind and were intended to be referred to in every case (see Mayor on Jas. iv. 5, and cf. Lightfoot on I Cor. ii. 9, Westcott on Jno. vii. 38, Godet on Lk. xi. 49). In twenty out of the fifty instances in which ypabn, ypadati occur in the New Testament, it is the plural form which is employed: and in all these cases except two the article is present, — ai ypadat the well-known Scriptures of the Jewish people, or rather of the writer and his readers alike. The two exceptions, moreover, are exceptions in appearance only, since in both cases adjectival definitions are present, raising ypadai to the same height to which the article would have elevated it, and giving it the value of a proper name (ypadal ayia, Rom. i. 2, here first in extant literature; ypadat, mpopytixat, Rom. xvi. 26). The singular form occurs some thirty times, and likewise with the article in every instance except these four: John xix. 37 ‘another Scripture’; II Tim. iii, 16 ‘every Scripture,’ or ‘all Scripture’; I Pet. ii. 6 ‘it is contained in Scripture’; II Pet. i. 20 ‘no prophecy of Scripture.’ Here too the exceptions, obviously, are only apparent, the noun being definite in every case whether by the effect of its adjunct, or as the result of its use as a quasiproper-name. The distribution of the singular and plural forms is perhaps worth noting. In Acts the singular (8) and plural (4) occur with almost equal frequency: the plural prevails in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. plural only; Mk. plural 2 to 1;
of ‘Scripture’ is witnessed also in 1 Tim. v. 18, Ep. Barnabas iv. 14, 2 Clem. Rom. ii. 4, and in the later Fathers passim. It is as early as literary Christianity. 18 See them in Hiihn, “ Die alttestamentlichen Citate,’”’ 270.
Lk. 3 to 1), while the singular prevails in the rest of the New Testament (Jno. 11 to 1; James 3 to 1; Peter 2 to 1, Paul 9 to 5). In the Gospels, the plural form occurs exclusively in Matthew, prevailingly in Mark and Luke, and rarely in John, of whom thesingular is characteristic. The usage of the Gospels in detail is as follows: aiypadai, Matt. xxi. 42, xxii. 29, xxvi. 54, 56, Mk. xii. 24, xiv. 49, Lk. xxiv. 27, 32, 45, Jno. v. 39; 7 oaon Vike xl Ow lkaive 2t Jnoe ll. 22) Vil3s 420 xo: xl. 18, xvil. 12, xix. 24, 28, 36, xx. 9; anarthrous ypa¢y, Jno. xix. 37 (but with érépa). No distinction is traceable between the usage of the Evangelists themselves and that of the Lord as reported by them. Matthew and Mark do not on their own account use the term at all, but only report it as used by our Lord: in Luke and John on the other hand it occurs not only in reports of our Lord’s sayings (Lk. iv. 21, Jno. v. 39, vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xiii. 18, xvii. 12), and of the sayings of others (Lk. xxlv. 32), but also in the narrative of the Evangelists (Lk. MIVA (Ory NOs lee, X1X 024,125) 50; 045 XX.9)) Loour Lord is ascribed the use indifferently of the plural (Matt. xxi. 42, Xxll. 29, xxvi. 54, 56, Mk. xii. 24, xiv. 49, Jno. v. 39) and the Sid ata Viker Xie Ow Lkeiv 21d NOm VilwoS 642ex 4 O0, a xIil 18, xvi. 12), and that in all the forms of application in which the term occurs in the Gospels. So far as His usage of the term ‘‘Seripture’’ is concerned, our Lord is represented by the Evangelists, thus, as occupying precisely the same standpoint and employing precisely the same forms of designation, with precisely the same implications, which characterized the devout Jewish usage of His day. ‘‘Jesus,”’ says B. Weiss, therefore, with substantial truth, ‘‘acknowledged the Scrip-
tures of the Old Testament in their entire extent and their complete sacredness. ‘The Scripture cannot be broken,’ He says (Jno. x. 35) and forthwith grounds His argument upon its language.’”’
scarcely requires proof, that Jesus treats the Old Testament in its entirety as the Word of God. Down to the smallest letter and most casual word (Matt. v. 18; Jno. x. 34) it is to Him truth, and that, religious truth.” ‘An isolated expression of
That we may gather the precise significance of 7 ypad7, at ypadai, as a designation of the Scriptures, it will be well to attend somewhat more closely to the origin of the term in Greek speech and to the implications it gathered to itself in its application to literary documents. Its history in its literary application does not seem to have been precisely the same as that of its congener, To ypaupua, Ta yoaupata. paupya appears to have become current first in this reference as the appropriate appellation of an alphabetical sign, and to have grown gradually upward from this lowly employment to designate a document of less or greater extent, because such documents are ultimately made up of alphabetical signs. Although, therefore, the singular, 7o ypauua, came to be used of any written thing — from a simple alphabetical character up to complete works, or even unitary combinations of works, like the Scriptures, — it is apparently when applied to writings, most naturally employed of brief pieces like short inscriptions or proverbs, or to the shorter portions of documents such as the clauses of treaties, and the like; although it is also used of those longer formal sections of literary works which are more commonly designated technically ‘‘ Books.” It is rather the plural, Ta ypadupuara, which seems to suggest itself most readily not only for extended treatises, but indeed for complete documents of all kinds. When so employed, the plural form is accordingly not to be pressed. Such a phrase as ““Moses’ ypaupara’’ (Jno. v. 47) for example, need not imply that Moses wrote more than one “ work’’; it would rather mass whatever ‘writings’ of Moses are in mind into a single ‘writing,’ and would most naturally mean just, say, ‘‘the Pentateuch.’’ Such a phrase as iepa ypaupyara (II Tim. iii. 15),
precisely the book most subjective in its character in the whole canon is made use of and applied as meeting the case.” Cf. also Franke, “‘ Das Alt-Test. bei Johan.”
tradition, Jesus Himself and the oldest Christian authors were brought up; for them the whole Old Testament literature is already inspired (@eéxvevaros 2 Tim. ili. 16), every word, even those of the Psalms and of the Historical Books, an oracle.”
again, need not bring the Old Testament books before our contemplation in their plurality, as a “ Divine library’”’; but more probably conceives them together in the mass, as constituting a single sacred document, thought of as a unitary whole. On the other hand, ypad7, in its literary application, seems to have sprung somewhat lightly across the intervening steps, to designate which ypdyua is most appropriately used, and to have been carried at once over from the ‘ writing’ in the sense of the script to the ‘writing’ in the sense of the scripture or document. Although therefore it of course exhibits more applications parallel with those of ypdauua than of any other term, its true synonymy in its higher literary use is rather with such terms as 77 BiGXos (76 BiGAtov) and 6 dyos, in common with which it most naturally designates a complete literary piece, whether ‘‘ Treatise’’ or ‘‘ Book.’’ Each of these terms, of course, preserves in all its applications something of the flavor of the primitive conception which was bound up with it. When thought of from the material point of view, as, so to say, so much paper, or, to speak more respectfully, from the point of sight of its extent, a literary work was apt therefore to be spoken of as a BiGXos (B.GNior). When thought of as a rational product, thought presented in words, it was apt to be spoken of as a Noyos. Intermediate between the two stood ypad7n (vypauua) which was apt to come to the lips when the work was thought of as, so to speak, so much ‘writing.’ As between the two terms, ypad7 and ypaupa, Dr. Westcott (on Jno. v. 47) suggests that the latter ‘marks rather the specific form,’ the former ‘the scope of the record’; and this seems so far just that to ypauya there clings a strong flavor of the ‘letters’ of which the document is made up, while ypady looks rather to the completeness of the ‘scripture.’ To both alike so much of the implication of specific form clings as to lend them naturally to national and legislativeemployment with theimplication of the “ certascriptio.”’®
15 We meet the two words in a single context in Strabo, “Geog.” iI. 7 (Ed. Didot, p. 5, line 50, seq.) where we are told that Hecataeus “‘left a yeauya which is believed to be his ék rijs &\Ans abrod ypadjs.”’ Here ypauua appears to be used where
To put the general matter in a nutshell, Bi6dos (B:BXiov) may perhaps be said to be the more exact word for the ‘book’; ypabhn (ypauua) for the ‘document’ inscribed in the ‘book’; oyos for the ‘treatise’ which the ‘document’ records; while as between ypady and ypauua, ypauua, preserving thestronger material flavor, gravitates somewhat towards BiBdos (B.BXiLov) while ypad7 looks somewhat upwards towards \oyos. When in the development of the publishers’ trade, the “‘ great-booksystem’’ of making books gave way for the purposes of convenience to the ‘‘small-book-system,”’ and long works came to be broken up into ‘ Books,’’ each of which constituted a ‘volume,’ ’® these ‘‘Books’’ attached to themselves this whole series of designations and were called alike, — in each case with its own appropriate implications — BiBror, (B.GALa) ypapai (ypaupara) and doyor: BiGAor (B.GAia) because each book was written on a separate roll of papyrus and constituted one ‘paper’ or ‘volume’; ypadai (ypauuara) because each book was a separate document, a distinct ‘scripture’; and \déyou because each book was a distinct ‘discourse’ or rational work. Smaller sections than these ‘‘ Books’’ were properly called zepioxas, Tomous, xwpia, ypauwata (which last is the appropriate word for ‘ clauses’) but very seldom if ever in the classics, ypadas.”’
The current senses of these several terms are, of course, more or less reflected as they occur in the pages of the New Testament. In the case of some of them, the New Testament usage simply continues that of profane Greek; in the case of others, new implications enter in which, while not superseding, profoundly modify their fundamental significance; in yet other cases, there is a development of usage beyond what is traceable in profane Greek. The passages in which two or the mind is on the concrete object, and ypa¢% where it rests rather on the contents: that is, ypa4upa seems to reach down towards BiBXos (6.BXlov), ypadh upwards towards doyos. Does the singular ypa¢7y bear here a plural or ‘‘collective’”’ sense (Latin version: ex ceteris ejus scriptis)?
17 Cf., however, Eur. “Hipp.” 1311, where Phaedra is said to have written pevdeis ypadas which may mean “‘false statements.”
more of the terms in question are brought together are, naturally, especially instructive. When we read, for example, in Lk. ui. 4 seq. as yéyparrar &v BiB\w ANOywv ‘Hoatov tod rpodn- Tov, we perceive at once that what is quoted is a body of doyou which are found in written form (ypad7: cf. I Cor. xv. 54, 6 NOYos 6 YeYpapmmevos) in a PiBdos: the BiBros is the volume which contains the ypad7, which conveys or, perhaps better, records the Adoyou. So again when we read in Lk. iv. 17 seq. that there was delivered to our Lord the 6:8Xiov of Isaiah, on opening which he found the ré7ov, where a given thing jv vyeypaupevoy, and then closing the 6.6\tov he remarked 7 ypad7 airy is fulfilled in your ears, we perceive that the $.GXior is the concrete volume — a thing to be handled, opened and closed (cf. Rev. v. 3, 4, 5, x. 8, xx. 12), the manner of opening and closing being, of course, unrolling and rolling (Rev. vi. 14, cf. Heb. x. 7, Birt, “‘Das antike Buchwesen,’’ 116); and that the ypad7 is the document written in this 6.GAtov; while the various parts of this ypad7 are formally ré7o, or when attention is directed to their essential quality as sharers in the authority of the whole, ypadai (cf. Acts i. 16, ‘“‘ The ypadn which the Holy Spirit spake through the mouth of” the writer).
As might be inferred from these examples, BiGd\os and G.Bdtoy retain in the New Testament their current significations in profane Greek. Their application to sacred rather than to secular books in no way modified their general sense.”® It brought, however, to them a richness of association which prepared the way for that pregnant employment of them — beginning not indeed in the New Testament but in even earlier Hellenistic writings — to designate in its simple absoluteness the sacred volume, from which ultimately our common term “‘ The Bible”’ is supposed to have descended.”
18 They may, of course, be applied even in profane Greek to ‘‘sacred”’ books. Thus a magical formula among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Grenfell & Hunt, “Oxyrhynchus Papyri,’’ vi. p. 100, etc.) represents itself as an dvrliypadov tepas occurs in Dan. ix. 2 (cf. Driver in loc.). ‘H BiBdos absolutely for the Old Testa-
Throughout the New Testament the SiGdos or 6.6Atov when applied to literary entities is just the “volume,” that is to say, the concrete object, the ‘‘book”’ in the handleable sense. When we read of the GiBXos of the words of Isaiah (Lk. iu. 4), or of Moses (Mk. xii. 26) or of the Psalms (Lk. xx. 42, Acts 1. 20) or of the Prophets, i. e., of the Twelve ‘‘ Minor Prophets”’ (Acts vil. 42), the meaning is simply that each of these writings or collections of writings formed a single volume.” Similarly when we read of the @:8dtov of Isaiah (Lk. iv. 17) or of the Law (Gal. iii. 10), what is meant in each case is the volume formed by the document or documents named. The Gospel of John (Jno. xx. 30, xxi. 25) and the Book of Revelation (Rev. 1. 11, xxii. 7, 9, 10, 18, 19) are spoken of as each a B.Bdtov again because each existed in separation as a concrete unity. Accordingly BiS\o are things which may be burned (Acts xix. 19); 6.GAta, things which may be sprinkled (Heb. ix. 19) or carried about (II Tim. iv. 13), and may be made of parchment (II Tim. iv. 13). The Book of Life presented itself to the imagination as a volume in which names may be inscribed (GiSdos, Phil. iv. 3, Rev. i. 5, xx. 15; B.6- Aiov, Rev. xill. 8, xvii. 8, xx. 12, xxi. 27); the Book of Destiny as a volume in which is set down what is to come to pass (BiBAtov, Heb. x. 7, Rev. v. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, x. 8). There is no essential difference in fundamental implication when in Matt. xix. 7, Mk. x. 4 6:8Xéiov is used for a “‘bill’’ of divorcement, or in Matt.1. 1, Gi6Xos, under the influence of the LX X, is employed of a genealogical register. In both instances it would ment as a whole occurs first, apparently, in the “Letter of Aristeas’’ § 316 (cf. Thackeray, Jewish Quarterly Review, April, 1903, p. 391). Ta B:BAta absolutely of the Old Testament as a whole apparently occurs first in 2 Clem. xiv. 2 (cf. Lightfoot in loco). It has been customary to say that from the time of Chrysostom (Hom. 9 in Coloss., Hom. 10 in Genesim) ra BiBdia occurs absolutely for the Scriptures as a whole (cf. Suicer, ‘Thesaur. Eccles.’ I. 687, 696; Reuss, “Hist. of the New Testament,” § 320, E. T., p. 326). This usage is already found, however, in Clement Alex. and in Origen (ed. Lommatsch, i. 607). On the general subject see the detached note at the end of this article on the terms ‘Bible,’ ‘Holy Bible’ (page 149).
be understood that the document in question occupied a separate piece of papyrus or parchment and was therefore an entire “‘ paper.”
There is a much more marked enhancement of sense apparent in the New Testament use of \oyos. In Actsi. 1, to be sure, it occurs in the simple classical sense of ‘‘ Book’’; Luke merely points to his Gospel as “the first Book” of an extended historical treatise of which Acts is ‘‘ the second Book’’; and there is no implication of deeper meaning. The ordinary usage of \oyos, however, in the New Testament, is to express, in accordance with its employment in the Old Testament of the Prophetic word, the, or a, revelation from God, with no, or a very indistinct, reference to a written form. The Divine Word was, however, in the hands of the New Testament writers in a written form and allusion to this could not always fail. In passages like Jno. xv. 25, I Cor. xv. 54, the Aoyos that is cited is distinctly declared to be written: ‘“‘that the Adyos may be fulfilled that is written in their Law’’; ‘“‘then shall come to pass the Adyos that is written’’; and with these there may be connected such passages as Jno. xii. 38, (ef. Lk. iv. 6): ‘‘that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled,’ since, although it is not expressly stated, this \oyos too was in the hands of the New Testament writers in a written form. In this usage doyos is a particular passage of Scripture viewed as a divine declaration. In Matt. xv. 6 (if this reading be accepted), Mk. vii. 13 (cf. Jno. v. 38, x. 35, Rom. xiii. 9, Gal. v. 14) in accordance with a familiar usage (cf. Ex. xxxiv. 28, oi déxa \dyou), the specific reference is to a divine commandment; but this commandment is thrown up in sharp contrast with ‘‘tradition’’ and is thought of distinctly as a written one. It is only in a passage like II Pet. 1. 19 that \oyos comes to mean the entire Old Testament, after the fashion of Philo,” with the emphasis upon its divine character: that by ‘‘the prophetic word’’ here is meant not the prophetic portion of
21H. g. ‘De Plantat. Noe,” 28, Mangey i. 347: ‘The prophetic word (6 rpodn- TiKds Novos) seems to dignify the number four often throughout the voyofecias, and especially in the catalogue of the creation of the universe.”
Scripture but the Scriptures as a whole, conceived in accordance with their nature as ‘‘prophetic,’’ that is to say as a body of revelation, is made plain by the subsequent context, where this prophecy is defined by the exegetical genitive as just that prophecy which is Scripture raca mpogyreia ypadjs). Thus \dyos, under the influence of the Old Testament usage of the ‘‘ Word of Jehovah,’’ comes to mean in the New Testament specifically a divine revelation, and is applied to the Old Testament to designate it, as written in the Books which constitute it, the revealed Word of God.”
The ddyos, now, which was contained in the BiBros (6.B- Atov) (Lk. i. 4), and of course contained in it only in written form, was, naturally, conceived, as truly by the New Testament writers as by Greek writers in general, as a ypad7, (or in the plural ypadat). There seems to be no reason inherent in the case, accordingly, why ypad7 should not occur in the New Testament in its simple classical sense of a ‘‘ Treatise”’ or (as Adyos does, Acts i. 1) of a ‘‘ Book”’ or formal division of a treatise. It may very properly be considered therefore merely an accident that no instances are found in the New Testament of this general usage of the term without further implications.”’ It so occurs in Josephus (“‘ Antt.’’ III. viii. 10; 1V. vill. 44, of books of his own) and in Philo (“De Somniis,”’ ad init., ‘H pév otv mpd TavTns ypad7 meprecxe — i. e., the preceding Book of the Treatise in hand); and it is repeatedly used in the LX X to designate any piece of writing (cf. II Chron. li. 11, Neh. vil. 64, Dan. v. 5, I Macc. xiv. 27, 48). In point of fact, however, ypad7 (ypadat) appears in the New Testament only in its application to the Sacred Scriptures, and only in its high technical significance of ‘Scripture’? by way of eminence. It may be surmised that the long-established employment of the term as a designation of the Scriptures tended to withdraw it from common use on the lips of those
2 This idea is still more emphatically expressed by the kindred term \éyia, Rom. ui. 2, cf. Heb. v. 12, Acts vii. 38, the current use of which in this sense by Philo is adverted to above (p. 118, note 6). See The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for April 1900, pp. 217 seq.
to whom these Scriptures were a thing apart. It may even seem that a certain tendency is observable in the New Testament writers to distinguish between ypadn (ypadai) and yoduua (ypaupara) in favor of the former as the technical designation of the Scripture, while the latter is more freely employed for general uses. Certainly ypaduuara occurs occasionally in the New Testament for non-sacred writings (Acts xxvill. 21, Lk. xvi. 6, 7) and for sacred writings indeed but without stress on their sacredness (Jno. v. 47, ef. vu. 15), while it is only rarely met with in the pregnant sense of Seripture (II Tim. 111. 15 only) and then only in an established phrase which may be supposed to have obtained a standing of its own. There seems also in ypaupya a naturally stronger implication of the material elements of the script, which may have formed the point of departure for a depreciatory employment of the term to designate the ‘‘ mere letter’’ as distinguished irommilen spirits Cle ROM. 2/4, 29) Vil..0, 11 Corso. 7). On the other hand the free employment by later Christian writers of ypadn, ypadat of secular compositions, and of both ypaupyaandypauuarainthe high technical sense of‘ Scripture,”’ so far militates against the supposition that already in New Testament Greek the former were hardening into the exclusive technical designations of ‘‘Scripture.’’?’ Meanwhile the simple fact remains that in the New Testament while ypaupara is used freely, and with a single exception exclusively, without implication of sacredness, ypad7n and ypadai are employed solely as technical designations of Sacred Scripture and take their color in all their occurrences from this higher plane of usage. Throughout the New Testament the ypad7 which alone is in question is conceived as rather the word of the Holy Spirit than of its human authors through whom merely it is spoken (Acts i. 16), and is therefore ever adduced as of indefectible, because of Divine, authority.
It is somewhat remarkable that even on this high plane of its technical application, in which it designates nothing but the Sacred Scriptures, ypad7 never occurs in the New Testament, in accordance with its most natural and, in the classics, its most frequent sense of “‘ Treatise,” as a term to describe the several books of which the Old Testament is composed. It is tempting, no doubt, to seek to give it this sense in some of the passages where, occurring in the singular, it yet does not appear to designate the Scriptures as a whole; and even Dr. Hort seems for a moment almost inclined to yield to the temptation.” It is more tempting still to assume that behind the frequent use of the plural, ait ypadat, to designate the Scriptures as a whole, there lies a previous current usage by which each Book which enters into the composition of these Scriptures was designated by the singular 7 ypag7n. In no single passage where the singular 7 ypad7 occurs, however, does it seem possible to give it a reference to the Book of Scripture to which the appeal is made. And the frequent employment in profane Greek of ypadai in the plural for a single document * discourages the assumption that it, like Ta B.GAta, has reference, when used as a designation of Scripture, to its composite character as a “‘ Divine Library.’’ It is true that in one unique passage, II Pet. iii. 16,”° ai ypadat bears a plural signification. But the items of which this plural is formed, as the grammatical construction implies, are not ‘‘treatises’’ (Huther, Kiihl) but‘‘ passages’’ (De Wette). Peter says that the unlearned and unstable, of course, wrested the hard sayings of Paul’s letters, as they were accustomed to wrest tas Aowras ypadas, 1. e., ‘the other Scriptural statements,’ ” due reverence for which should have protected
25 E. g. of a letter, Euripides, ‘‘Iph. in Taur.”’ 735, ‘‘Let him give an oath to me that he will bear ras ypadds to Argos”’; “Iph. in Aul.’’ 363 (a line of doubtful genuineness), where Agamemnon is said to be secretly devising &\\as ypadas; of a book, Georg. Sync., p. 168 ray & Trav Kehadriwvos ypaddv mpos tov Avddwpov dradwviar.
27 For ypadal in the sense of ‘‘statements,” cf. Eurip. “‘ Hipp.’ 1311, where Phaedra is said, under the fear of disgrace, to have written wevdets ypadas, probably not a “‘lying tablet”’ (ypadai in its singular sense as in note 25 above) but ‘‘false statements.’”’ Cf. also Philo, “‘De Praem. et Poen.”’ 11. near the end (Mangey, ii. 418), where he distributes the contents of the sacred volume into them from such treatment, the implication being that no part of Scripture was safe in their hands. This is a sufficiently remarkable use of the plural, no other example of which occurs in the New Testament; it is, however, an entirely legitimate use of the plural * and in its context a perfectly natural one, which, nevertheless, just because it is a special usage determined by its context, stands somewhat apart from the general technical use of ai ypadai to designate the body of Scriptures and cannot guide us to its interpretation. In no other passage where ai ypadat occurs is there the slightest hint that its plural form is determined by the conception of the Scriptures as a congeries of authoritative passages; this interpretation of the current plural form may indeed be set aside at once as outside of the possibilities of the case.
If we may not speak quite so decisively of the possibility of the plural form resting on a conception of ‘‘ the Scriptures”’ as made up of a collection of Books, it may at least be said that there is nothing in the New Testament use of the term to remove the general unlikelihood of that construction of it. There are indeed two or three passages in which ypadai might appear at first sight to designate a body of documents. Such are, for example, Rom. xvi. 26, where we read of ypadal mpopyrikat, and especially Matt. xxvi. 56, where we read of at ypadat Tov mpodntav. In the case of Rom. xvi. 26, however, al pnral ypadai and ai xa’ drdvocay adAnyopiat, Which may perhaps be taken as “literal statements” and ‘‘covert allegories.’”? The use of ypa¢7 in the sense of a ““passage’”’ of Scripture is found in Philo, the LX X and frequently in the New Testament (see below).
28 Accordingly ypadat is quite freely used by the Church Fathers of a plurality of passages of Scripture. The famous words in Polycarp “‘ Ad Phil.,”’ xii. 1 are probably not a case in point: ut his Scripturis dictum est here apparently refers back to the in sacris libris which just precedes them and not forward to the two passages adduced. From Justin on, however, numerous examples present themselves. Cf. e. g. Justin, ‘Contra Tryph.” 65 (Otto. p. 230): ‘And Trypho said, Being importuned by so many Scriptures (rév rocobtrwyv ypaddv) I do not know what to say about the Scripture (77s ypadjs) which Isaiah said, according to which God says He will not give His glory to another.” Again, ‘Cont. Tryph.” 71 (Otto. p. 255, cf. note): They have taken away zodAds ypadds from the LXX translation. Again, Clem. Alex. “Cohort. ad Gentes,” 9 ad init. (Migne, i. 192D), “I could adduce pupias ypa¢ds not one of which shall pass away.”
the very natural impression that here we have mention of the several books which constitute the second of the sections of the Jewish canon, known as ‘‘ The Prophets,” is almost certainly an error (cf. Vaughan 2n loc.). It is very unlikely that the ‘‘prophetic writings’’ with this mention of which this epistle closes are any other than the ‘‘ Holy Scriptures”’ of the prophets with mention of which it opens (Rom. i. 2); and it is quite clear that these ‘‘ Holy Scriptures”’ are much more inclusive than the writings of the second section of the Jewish canon, — that they embrace in fact the entirety of Scripture, thought of here as of prophetic, that is, revelatory, character (cf. Meyer, Weiss, Oltramare in loc.; Bleek on Heb. 1.1). Nor need the‘‘ Scriptures of the prophets’’ of Matt. xxvi. 56 have any different meaning (cf. Swete on Mk. xiv. 49, Morrison in loc.). Itis quite true that the term ‘‘ The Prophets”’ is sometimes in Matthew (v. 17, vii. 12, xxii. 40) and in the other Gospels (Lk. xvi. 16, 29, 31, xxiv. 44, Jno. 1. 45) and in the rest of the New Testament (Acts vil. 42, xiii. 15, xxiv. 14, Xxvill. 23, Rom. i. 21) a technical term designating the second section of the Jewish canon; but it is equally true that it is sometimes used much more inclusively. For example in Matt. li. 23 the reference seems to be quite generally to the Old Testament considered as a prophetic book (cf. Meyer in loc.); and in Matt. xi. 13, ‘all the prophets and even the law prophesied,’’ the Pentateuch is expressly included within the prophetic word (cf. II Pet. 1. 19). Passages like Lk. i. 70, xi. 50 show that by these writers the whole Old Testament revelation was thought of as prophetic in character, while Lk. Xvill. 31 is certainly entirely general (cf. Acts iii. 24). The most instructive passages, however, are doubtless those which follow one another so closely in Lk. xxiv. 25, 27, 44. It can hardly be doubted that the same body of books is intended in all three of these references, which merely progressively discriminate between the parts which make up the whole. The simple ‘‘prophets’’ thus becomes first ‘‘ Moses and indeed all the prophets”’ (cf. Hahn zn loc.) — further defined as the “whole Scripture’? — and then ‘‘the Law of Moses, and the Prophets and the Psalms.’ The term ‘‘the Prophets’’ occurs thus in this brief context in three senses of varying inclusiveness, and apparently lends itself as readily to the widest as to the narrowest application. In these circumstances there seems no reason why in Matt. xxvi. 56 “‘ the Scriptures of the Prophets”’ should be narrowed beyond the inclusiveness of the suggestion of ‘‘the Scriptures’’ of the immediately preceding context (xxvi. 54) or of its own parallel in Mk. xiv. 49. In other words there is every reason to believe that in this passage the defining adjunct ‘‘of the Prophets’’ does not discriminate among the books which make up the Scriptures and single out certain of these as prophetic, but rather describes the entire body of Scripture as prophetic in origin and character, that is to say as a revelation from God.” Tpadai does not here, then, mean ‘“‘books’’ ‘‘treatises,’’ but at ypadai, as in verse 54 and in the parallel passage, Mk. xiv. 49, means the one Divine book. That Lk. xxiv. 27, év tacats Tats ypadats, lends itself readily to the same interpretation requires no argument to show. If ai ypagai is employed in a singular sense, then 7acar ai ypadat means just the whole of the document so designated, and is the exact equivalent of Taga 7 Ypady or taoa ypady (II Tim. iii. 16 taken as a proper noun). The truth seems to be, therefore, that as there is no example in the New Testament of the use of 7 ypady in the sense of one of the Books of Scripture, so there is no trace in its use of ai ypadai of an underlying consciousness of the composition of the Scriptures out of a body of such Books.” Whether the plural ai ypadat, or the singular 7 ypad, is employed, therefore, the meaning is the same; in either case the
29 On this conception of the whole Old Testament as a prophetic book, cf. Willis J. Beecher, “The Prophets and the Promise,” 1905, pp. 168 seq.
80 In Patristic usage, on the contrary, a very large variety of applications of % ypabn and ai ypadat, in the sense of Biblical Books or more or less extensive. collections of Biblical Books, is found. Thus for example, in Athan. ‘‘Epist. Encyel.” 1 ad init. we meet with 7 Geta rv Kpirévy pad7: in Kus. h. e. ii. 11 with TOD evayyediov ypady; in ibid. 1. 1. 2. with 7 iepd T&v ebayyediwy ypad7; in Orig. “Contr. Cels.”’ i. 58, with 4 ebayyedix7) ypadh. In Origen, ‘‘ Contr. Cels.”’ vii. 24 and in ‘‘Fragmenta in Prov.” 2, we find 4 radad ypady, and in another place (Migne, i, 1365) the corresponding vewrepar ypadai where the plural is probably a real application of the term to the Old Testament writings by the writers of the New Testament is the outgrowth of their conception of these Old Testament writings as a unitary whole, and designates this body of writings in its entirety as the one, well-known, authoritative documentation of the Divine revelation. This is the fundamental fact with respect to the use of these terms in the New Testament from which all the other facts of their usage flow.
In saying this, we are brought at once, however, face to face with what is probably the most remarkable fact about the usage of 7 ypad7 in the New Testament. This is its occasional employment to refer, not merely, as was to be expected from its form and previous history, to Scripture as a whole, nor even as, had it so occurred in the New Testament, would have been only a continuation of its profane usage, to the several treatises which make up that whole, but to individual passages of Scripture. This employment finds so little support in profane Greek, in which ypauya rather than ypa¢7 is the current form for the adduction of clauses or fragmentary portions of documents,” that it has often been represented as a peculiarity of the New Testament and Patristic Greek. Thus, for example, we read in Stephens’ ‘‘Thesaurus’’ (sub voc.): “‘In the New Testament and ecclesiastical books, 7 ypapn and ai ypadai are used of the sacred writings which are commonly called ‘The Holy Scriptures.’ But ypag7 is sometimes in the New Testament employed peculiarly of a particular passage of Scripture.’’?’ And Schaefer adds to this merely a reference to a passage in one of the orations of plural. This is also the case in, say, Eus. h. e. ii. 3 when he speaks of “‘the acknowledged ypadat”’ of the New Testament, and (ad init.) mentions that II Peter had been used by many wera r&v &d\d\wv ypadar.
31. g. Thucyd. v. 29: ‘‘They were angry with the Lacedemonians chiefly because among other things it was provided in the treaty with Athens that the Lacedemonians and Athenians if agreed might add to or take away from them whatever they pleased: this clause (rofro 76 ypduua) aroused great uneasiness among the Peloponnesians.’”’ Cf. Philo. “De Congr. erud. grat.’”’ 12 (Mangey
Valckenaer, where commenting on Acts xvii. 2-3, he remarks that, in the New Testament, “‘ passages of the Old Testament such as are also designated zepioxds, té7ovs and xwpla are sometimes also called ypadas.” * The usage does not seem, however, to be peculiar to the New Testament and the Church Fathers: it occurs also, though rarely, in the LX X and Philo, and may claim therefore to be at least Hellenistic.*® It is probably the outgrowth of the habit of looking upon the Scriptures as a unitary book of divine oracles, every part and passage of which is clothed with the authority which belongs to the whole, and which is of course manifested in all its parts. No doubt this extension of ypa¢7 from a designation of Scripture as a whole to a designation of any given fragment of Scripture, however small, was mediated by the circumstance that in adducing the authority of ‘Scripture’ for any doctrine or practice, it was always inevitably not the whole of ‘Scripture’ but some special declaration of ‘Scripture’ which was especially in mind as bearing upon the particular point at the moment in hand. The transition was easy from saying ‘The Scripture says, namely in this or that passage,”’ to saying of this and that passage specifically, ‘‘ This Scripture says’’ and ‘‘ Another Scripture says.’’ When the entirety of Scripture is ‘‘Scripture’’ to us, each passage may readily be adduced as ‘‘Scripture”’ also, because ‘‘Scripture”’ is conceived as speaking in and through each passage. A step so inviting was sure to be taken sooner or later. Whenever therefore ypady occurs of a particular passage of Scripture, so far
33 TV Mace. xviil. 14: ‘And he reminded you of 77 ‘Hoatov ypadqv which says, Though you pass through fire.’’ Philo, ‘ Quis rerum div. her.’’ 53 (Mangey, i. 511); 7d 5& &kdNoWWor mrpocvdaiver TH yoahh packwv: eppeln mpds ’ABpaédpy; “De Praem. et poen.’’ 11 (Mangey i. 418). Cf. The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, XI (April 1900) 245-6 notes. For the possibility of a classical use of ypadai = “‘statements” see above p. 132 note 27. Of the ordinary Greek words for “passage” of a writing, neither ypdupa nor xwpiov occurs in the New Testament; rézos only at Lk. iv. 17 and epoxy only at Acts viii. 32 (cf. Dr. C. J. Vaughan on Rom. iv. 3 and per contra, Meyer in loc. and cf. I Pet. 1. 6 and the commentators there.) The place of all these terms is taken in the New Testament by ypad7.
from throwing in doubt its usage of Scripture as a whole, conceived as a unitary Divine authority, it rather presupposes this usage and is an outgrowth of it. It cannot surprise us therefore that 7 ypad7 occurs in the New Testament side by side in the two senses, and designates indifferently either Scripture as a whole, or a particular passage of Scripture, that is, is used indifferently ‘‘collectively”’ as it has not very exactly been called, and “‘ particularly.”’
It has often, no doubt, been called in question whether both these senses do occur side by side in the New Testament. Possibly a desire to erect some well-marked and uniform distinction between the usage of the plural ai ypadat and the singular 7 ypadn, has not been wholly without its influence here. At all events the suggestion has every now and then been made that the singular 7 ypad7 bears in the New Testament the uniform sense of ‘a passage of Scripture,’ while it is the plural, ai ypadai, alone which designates the Scriptures in their entirety. The famous Rationalist divine, Johannes Schulthess, for example, having occasion to comment briefly on the words raca ypad7) OcdrvevoTos, II Tim. ili. 16, among other assertions of equal insecurity, makes this one: “‘ypad7 in the singular never means in the New Testament 6i6dos, much less the entirety of Tav iep@v ypayupatwr, but some particular passage.” ** Hitherto it has been thought enough to meet such assertions with a mere expression of dissent. Christiaan Sepp, for example, meets this one with equal brevity and point by the simple observation: ‘‘ Passages like Jno. x. 35 prove the contrary.” *® But a new face has been put upon the matter by the powerful advocacy of the proposition ‘‘that the singular ypad7 in the New Testament always means a particular passage of Scripture,’’ by the late Bishop Lightfoot in a comment on Gal. iii. 22 which has on this account become famous. We must believe, however, that it is the weight of Dr. Lightfoot’s justly great authority rather than the inherent reasonableness of the doctrine which has given this opinion the great vogue which it appears to enjoy at present among English-speaking scholars. It was at once confuted, it is true, by Dr. C. J. Vaughan in a note on Rom. iv. 3; and in his own note on this passage Dr. Lightfoot seemed almost (not quite) persuaded to admit a doubt as to the usage of John, while reiterating, with respect to Paul at least, that in the matter of the use of ypa¢7 in the singular of a single passage of Scripture ‘‘ practice is absolute and uniform.’”’ Dr. Westcott took his stand by Dr. Lightfoot’s side (see on Jno. il. 22, x. 35) and labored to show that John’s usage conforms to the canon asserted; and Dr. Hort, though with some apparent hesitation with respect to John and Paul — the only portions of the New Testament, it will be noticed, of which Drs. Westcott and Lightfoot express assurance — inclined on the whole to give his assent to their general judgment (on I Peter ii. 6). With more hesitancy, Dr. Swete remarks merely that ‘‘ypa@7 is a portion of Scripture,”’ at least ‘‘almost always when the singular is used”’ (on Mk. xi. 10). General agreement in the view in question is expressed also, for example, by Page (Acts i. 16), Knowling (Acts vill. 32), Plummer (Lk. iv. 21), A. Stewart (Hastings’ BD. I 286). It is difficult to believe, however, that the reasons assigned for this view are sufficient to bear the’ weight of the judgment founded on them. They suffice, certainly, to show — what is in itself sufficiently remarkable, — that 4 ypad7 is repeatedly employed in the New Testament of a particular passage of Scripture. But the attempt to carry this usage through all the instances in which the singular appears involves a violence of exegetical procedure which breaks down of itself. Out of the thirty instances in which the singular, 7 ypadn occurs, about a score prove utterly intractable to the proposed interpretation, — these nineteen to wit: Jno. i. 22, vii. 38, 42, x. 35, xvii. 12, xix. 28, xx. 9, Acts vill. 32, Rom. iv. Daixmlon xc lle xie2enCalaiiese22ei1v. 50, Li himivalSe Jas. iv. 5, I Pet. ii. 6, II Pet. i. 20. In point of fact, therefore, in some two-thirds of the instances where ypag7 is employed in the singular, its reference is to the Scripture as a whole, to that unitary written authority to which final appeal was made. In some of these passages it is no less than impossible to take it otherwise. In Jno. ii. 22, for example, there is absolutely no definite passage suggested, and Westcott seeks one to which to assign the reference only under the pressure of theory. The same is true of Jno. xx. 9, where the reference is quite as broad asin Lk. xxiv. 45. In Jno. x. 35 the argument depends upon the wide reference to Scripture as a whole, which forms its major premise. In Gal. i. 22 there is absolutely nothing to suggest a reference to a special text rather than to the general tenor of Scripture, and Lightfoot supphes a special text only conjecturally and with hesitation. The personification of Scripture in such passages as Jas. iv. 5, Gal. ii. 8 carries with it the same implication. And the anarthrous use of ypadn7 in I Pet. ii. 6, II Pet. i. 20, cf. 11 Tim. iii. 16, is explicable only on the presupposition that 7 ypad7n had become so much the proper designation of Scripture that the term had acquired the value of a proper name, and was therefore treated as definite without, as with, the article. If anything were needed to render this supposition certain, it would be supplied by the straits to which expositors are brought who seek to get along without it.*” Dr. Hort, for example, after declining to understand ypad7 in I Pet. ii. 6 of Scripture in general, because he does not find ‘‘a distinct and recognized use of this sort,”’ finally suggests that we should render ‘‘simply, ‘in writing,’”’ so that “‘wepiéxe é€v ypady shall be held equivalent to ‘it stands written.’’’ But he is compelled to add: ‘That the quotation was authoritative, though not expressed, was doubtless implied, in accordance with the familiar Jewish use of the words ‘said,’ ‘written,’’?’ — apparently not realizing that, if the quotation is authoritative then, “‘It stands written”’ is the equivalent of the authoritative employment of this phrase in the adduction of what is specifically Scripture, and therefore means here distinctly not, ‘‘Itstands written — somewhere,” but “It stands written in the (technically so-called) Scripture.’’ This seems, therefore, to be only a roundabout way of saying that ypad7 here means and definitely refers to the authoritative Scripture, and not any ‘writing’ indifferently. The same is inevitably true of II Pet.i. 20. It is impossible that by ‘‘every prophecy of Scripture’”’ the writer can have meant ‘‘every prophecy which has been reduced to writing.” ** He undoubtedly intended the prophecies written in the Old Testament alone (cf., Bigg, Kiibel, Keil 7m loc.); and this is but another way of saying that anarthrous ypad7 is to him a technical designation of the Old Testament, or, in other words, that he uses it with precisely the implications with which we employ the term, “‘Scripture.”’ * In the presence of such passages as these there seems to be no reason why we should fail to recognize that the employment of ypad7 in the New Testament so far follows its profane usage, in which it is applied to entire documents and carries with it a general implication of completeness, that it in its most common reference designates the Old Testament to which it is applied in its completeness as a unitary whole.”
39 Presumably few will take refuge in the explanation suggested by Dr. E. H. Plumptre (“‘Smith’s B. D.”’ 2874), which understands the “prophecy” here of New Testament, not Old Testament prophets and renders, every prophetic utterance arising from, resting on, a ypad7 — i. e. a passage of the Old Testament.
40 Precisely the same is true of the usage of the term in at least the earlier Patristic literature, although a contrary impression might be taken from a remark at the close of Dr. Lightfoot’s note on Gal. iii. 22. ‘H ypad7 of a passage of Scripture seems to be the rarer usage in, for example, the so-called Apostolical Fathers. It occurs with certainty, only at 1 Clem. xxiii. 3 (cf. xxv. 5), 2 Clem. xiv. 1, while 7 ypady = “Scripture”? as a whole, seems to occur at least at 1 Clem. xeRIV OG XkXVe 7, xiii. 5; 2:Clemlvi8) xiv. 2; Barn: iv. 11,)v.4yvi 12, xi) 2, xvi. 5. (The plural ai ypagdat occurs in 1 Clem. xlv. 2, and in the formula ai iepai ypagai in 1 Clem. liii. 1 [Polye. xii. 1]). In the later Fathers 4 ypad4 occurs in
It has seemed worth while to enter somewhat fully upon this matter, not only on account of its intrinsic interest and the importance given it in recent expositions, but also because the issue throws into a high light what is after all the fundamental fact about the New Testament use of 7 ypadn, ai ypadat. This is the implication which they bear not only of the uniqueness of the body of religious writings which they designate, entitling them to be spoken of as together, in a supereminent sense, ‘the Scriptures,’’ or rather “the Scripture,”’ or even ‘“Scripture’’; but also, along with this, of their irreducible unity, — as constituting in their entirety a single divinely authoritative “ writing.’ Francke is quite within the limits of clear fact, when he remarks,” ‘“‘ The contemplation of the entire body of Scripture as a unitary word, in all its parts equally resting upon a single authority, and therefore possessing the same authority everywhere, forms the most essential presupposition of the designation of the collection of the written word as the ypadn.” It only needs to be added that the same is true of its designation as ai ypadat. What requires emphasis, in a word, is that the two designations 77 ypapdn and ai ypadai are, so far as our evidence goes, strictly parallel; and neither is to be derived from the other. That the application of at ypadai to the Scriptures does not rest on a previous application of 7 ypadn to each of the Books of Scripture, we have already had occasion to show. It is equally important to observe that the application to Scripture of % ypap7.is not a subsequent development resting on a previous usage by which Scripture was known as ai ypadat. The contrary assumption is often tacitly made and it is sometimes quite plainly expressed, as, for example, in the concluding words of Dr. Lightfoot’s note on Gal. ili. 22, where he tells us that “‘the transition from the ‘Scriptures’ to the ‘Scripture’ is analogous to the transition from 7a B.BXta to the ‘Bible.’”’ Precisely what is meant by the last clause of this every conceivable variety of sense and application, but in none more distinctly than of Scripture as a whole. 41 “Das A. T. bei Johan,” p. 48.
statement is perhaps not perfectly clear. It is obvious, of course, that the designation of the Scripture as ta 6.6Ata antedates the misunderstanding of this term as a feminine singular, whence arose the Latin “‘ Biblia’’ and our “ Bible”’ treated as a singular — if this be really the history of the origin of these latter terms; but Dr. Lightfoot can hardly have meant that the use of 7 ypad7 as a designation of the Scripture arose similiarly through a misunderstanding of ai ypadai as a singular. It would seem that he can only have meant that the progress was in both cases from a view of the sacred books which was fully conscious of their plurality to a conception of them which has swallowed up their plurality in a unitary whole. There is no proof, however, that such a movement of thought took place in either case. The fact seems to be that ai ypadat was used from its earliest application to Scripture in a singular sense, in accordance with a current usage of the term in profane Greek. And we lack evidence that the Scriptures were known as 7a 6.8dta before they were known as 7) BiGXos.* These two modes of speaking of Scripture appear to have been rather parallel than consecutive usages. And it is probable that the same is true of the designations ai ypadai and 7 ypadn as well. It is true enough that we meet with ai ypadat, though somewhat rarely and perhaps ordinarily in the phrase [ai] iepat ypadai, in Philo “ and Josephus, whereas 7 ypad7 of Scripture in general is said to occur first in the New Testament.“ But it is not
44 Cf. Cremer, ed. 9, sub voc. ypady II: “In Philo, and as it seems, also in Josephus, the singular does not occur of the Scriptures as a whole, although the plural does. Cf. ai aroypadai 2 Mace. ii. 1, dvaypadai verse 14. The use of the singular in this sense seems accordingly to have first formed itself, or perhaps, more correctly to have manifested itself, in the New Testament community, and that in connection with its belief in the Messiah and its appeal to the Old Testament.” The use of singular ypa¢7 of the Scriptures is in any event not frequent
in Philo and Josephus: and Cremer’s inference is rash, even if the facts be as represented. It would be well, however, if the statement of fact were carefully verified. Cf. Josephus, ‘‘ Antt.’”’ III. i. 7, fin. where he tells us that a ypadq was probable that we are witnesses of the birth of a new usage in either case; and the evidence is too meagre to justify a pronouncement on the relative ages of the two forms. And in proportion as we recognize the singular sense of ai ypadat and the rooting of both usages in a precedent Jewish mode of citing Scripture as the unitary Law of God, does all the probability of the proposed development pass away. In any event when the New Testament was in process of writing it was much too late in the day to speak of the formation of a sense of the unitary uniqueness of the Old Testament or of the rise of a usage in designating the Old Testament in which that sense would first come to its manifestation. Both that sense and modes of expressing it were an inheritance of the New Testament writers from a remote past, and find manifestation in the whole body of Jewish literature, not merely in the usage of the Rabbis, but in the pages of Philo as well. The truth seems to be that whether ai ypadai is used or » ypadn or anarthrous ypady the implication is the same. In each case alike the Old Testament is thought of as a single document, set over against all other documents by reason of its unique authority based upon its Divine origin, on the ground of which it is constituted in every part and declaration the final arbiter of belief and practice. We need not, then, seek to discover subtle reasons for the distribution of these forms through the New Testament, asking why truly anarthrous ypadn is employed only by Peter (cf. II Tim. ill. 16); why John and Paul prevailingly use the singular, Matthew uniformly and Mark and Luke prevailingly the plural; and why our Lord is reported as employing the two numbers indifferently. These things are at most matters of literary habit; at least, matters of chance and occasion, like our own indifferent use of ‘The Scriptures,’ ‘The Scripture,’ ‘Scripture.’
One of the outgrowths of the conception of the Old Testadeposited in the Temple which informs us that God foretold to Moses that water should be drawn thus from the rock. By this ypa¢4 he means of course precisely what he elsewhere calls ai iepai ypadat: but he necessarily speaks of it indefinitely.
ment as a unitary Divine document, of indefectible authority in allits parts and declarations, was the habit of adducing it for the ordinary purposes of instruction or debate by such simple formulas as ‘It is said,’ ‘It is written,’ with the pregnant implication that what is thus adduced as ‘said’ or ‘written’ is ‘said’ or ‘written’ by an authority recognized as Divine and final. Both of these usages are richly illustrated in a variety of forms and with all high implications, not only inthe New Testament at large, but alsoin the Gospels, and not only in the comments by the Evangelists but also in reported sayings of our Lord. We are concerned here particularly only with the formula ‘‘It is written,’’ in which the consciousness of the written form, the documentary character, of the authority appealed to is most distinctly expressed. In its most common form, this formula is the simple yéypar- Tat, used either absolutely, or, with none of its authoritative implications thereby evacuated, with more or less precise definition of the place where the cited words can be found written. By its side there occurs in John the resolved formula yeypappevov éotiv; and in the latter part of Luke there is a tendency to adduce Scripture by means of a participial construction.” These modes of citation have analogies in profane Greek, especially in legislative usage.** But, as Cremer points out, their use with reference to the Divine Scriptures, as it involves the adduction of an authority which rises immeasur-
45The various formulas may be commodiously reviewed in Hihn, “Die alttestamentlichen Citate,” pp. 272 seq.
46 Of, Cremer ed. 9 sub voc. ypadw, fin.; Deissmann, “ Bible Studies,” 112, 250. A good example of the classical mode of expression may perhaps be found in the third Philippic of Demosthenes (III. 41, 42, p. 122): ‘‘That our condition was formerly quite different from this, I shall now convince you, not by any arguments of my own, but by a decree of your ancestors (ypaupara Tay mpoyovwr)... What then says the decree (ra ypdumara)?... In the laws importing capital cases it is enacted (yéyparra)’’? Deissmann calls attention to the fact that Josephus uses yéyparra infrequently in his references to the Old Testament, preferring avayéyparrat; and refers to a passage in which he uses yéeypamracof a profane document. The passage is ‘Contr. Ap.’ IV. 18: “‘For if we may give credit to the Phoenician records (4vaypadats), it is recorded (yéyparrat) in them,” etc. It should be observed that this is not an instance of the absolute yéypamraz; but yet it is not without an implication of (notarial) authority.
ably above all legislative authority, so is freighted with a significance to which the profane usage affords no key. In the Gospels, — if we may take the Gospels as an example of the whole — of the two forms, yéypamrac alone occurs in Matthew (ii. 5, iv. 6 in the narrative; iv. 4, iv. 7, 10, xi. 10, xxi. 13, xxvi. 24, 31 in the report of our Lord’s words) and in Mark (i. 2in the narrative; viii16,1x1 12°13) x1. 7, xieeZ ae the report of our Lord’s words), and predominantly in Luke (ii. 23, iii. 4, iv. 10 in the narrative; iv. 4, 8, vu. 27, x. 20; xix. 46, xxiv. 46 in the report of our Lord’s words), but only once in John (vill. 17 in the report of our Lord’s words). In the latter part of Luke the citation of Scripture is accomplished by the aid of the participle yeypaupévor ([cf. iv. 17 | Xvill. 31, xx. 17, xxi. 22, xxl. 37, xxiv. 44), while in John the place of the formula yéypamrat (viii. 17 only) is taken by the resolved form yeypappevoy éoriv (il. 17, vi. 31, x. 34, xii. 14, cf. 16, in the narrative; vi. 45, [ vill. 17], cf. xv.. 25) in the report of our Lord’s words). The significance of these formulas is perhaps most manifest when they are used absolutely, where they stand alone in bare authoritativeness, without indication of any kind whence the citation adduced is derived, the bald adduction being indication enough that it is the Divine authority of Scripture to which appeal is made. Instances of this usage are found in the Gospels for yeypamrat in Matt. iv. 4, 6, 7, 10, xi. 10); xxi. 13, xxvi. 24, 318 in Mk) vil 6, ixv12, 13,9x1. 17, xive21) 27 Li ee vu. 27, xix. 46, xx. 17, xxii. 37; for vyeypappeévov éortv in Jno. ii. 17, vi. 31, xii. 14, [16 ]. In only a single passage each in Matthew and Mark is there added an indication of the source of the citation (Matt. 11. 5, “it is written through the prophet’’; Mk. 1. 2, “it is written in Isaiah the prophet’’). In Luke such defining adjuncts are more frequent (ii. 23, in the law of the Lord; ii. 4, in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet; x. 26, in the law; xviii. 31, through the prophet; xxiv. 44, in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, i. e., in Scripture, verse 45). In John also such definitions are not relatively rare (vi. 45, in the prophets; viii. 17, in your law;
x. 34, in your law; xv. 25, in the law). These fuller passages while they identify the document from which the citation is drawn, in no wise suggest that the necessity for such identification was felt; by their relative infrequency they rather emphasize how unnecessary such specification was except as an additional solemn invocation of the recognized source of all religious authority. The bare “‘It is written”’ was the decisive adduction of the indefectible authority of the Scriptures of God, clothed as such, in all their parts and in all their declarations, with His authority. We could scarcely imagine a usage which would more illuminatingly exhibit the estimate put upon Scripture as the expressed mind of God or the rooted sense of its unity and its equal authoritativeness in all its parts.“ |
We should not pass lightly over this high implication of the employment of absolute yéypamrac to adduce the Scriptural word, and especially the suggestions of its relative frequency. No better index could be afforded of the sense of the unitary authority of the document so cited which dominated the minds of the writers of the New Testament and of our Lord as reported by them. The consciousness of the human authors, through whom the Scriptures were committed to writing, retires into the background; thought is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine authority which lies behind them and expresses itself through them. Even when explanatory adjuncts are added indicating where the words to which appeal is made are to be found written, they are so framed as not to lessen this implication. Commonly there is given only a bare reference to the written source of the words in mind; “ and when the human authors are named, it is not so much as the responsible authors of the words adduced as the intermediaries through whom the Divine authority expresses itself.“* In the parallel usage by which the Scriptures are appealed to by ‘‘It is said’’ and similar formulas the implication in question is perhaps even more clear. In Matthew, for example, Scripture is often cited as ‘‘what was spoken through (6:4)’’ the prophets (ii. 23) or the prophet (xii. 35, xxi. 4), or more specifically through this or that prophet — Isaiah ((iii. 3], iv. 14, viii. 17, xii. 17, ef. Jno. xii. 38), or Jeremiah (ii. 17, xxvii. 9) or Daniel (xxiv. 15). In a few passages of this kind the implication is explicitly filled out, and we read that the Scripture is spoken ‘‘by the Lord”’ (i760 xupiov) through (61a) the prophet (i. 22, 1. 15, ef., xxii. 31, ‘‘ Have ye not read what was spoken by God to you,”’ that is, in their Seriptures; Acts i. 16, ‘‘ The Scriptures which the Holy Ghost spoke before through the words of David”’; xxviii. 25, ‘‘ The Holy Ghost spokethrough Isaiah the prophet to yourfathers’’). A similar use of eipnuévoy or etpnrar occurs in the writings of Luke, whether absolutely (Lk. iv. 12, [Rom. iv. 18 ]) or with indication of the place where it is said (Lk. 11. 24, Acts xiii. 40); and here too we find occasionally a suggestion that the human speaker is only the intermediary of the true speaker, God (Acts i. 16, 6ca the prophet Joel). It is possibly, however, not in the Gospels that the general usage illustrated by these passages finds its fullest or most emphatic expression; but rather in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Scriptures are looked upon almost exclusively from the point of sight of this usage. Its height perhaps is attained in the designation of Scripture as 7a \oyra (Rom. ill. 2, cf. Acts vil. 38, Heb. v. 12, I Pet. iv. 11) and the current citation of it by the subjectless gyotv (I Cor. vi. 16) or Aéyer (Rom. xv. 10, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. 1. 16, Eph. iv. 8, v. 14), the authoritative subject being taken for granted.” In the Gospels, however, we have sufficient illustration of the same general method of dealing with Scripture, side by side with their treatment of it as documentary authority, to evince that their writers and Jesus as reported by them, shared the same fundamental viewpoint.”