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especially of those who feel bound to promulgate somewhat liberal opinions, not merely to prosecute their studies with determination, but also in a religious temper to make a conscience of removing, at every possible opportunity, any gratuitous stumbling-block which misrepresentation or misunderstanding is apt to fling upon the path of simple, openminded faith. Even though one may be unable to win any wide assent for a time to one's conclusions and convictions, one would like to secure confidence and gain some sympathy at least for the spirit and aims of a critical endeavour. Strictly speaking, the critic has nothing to do indeed with the effects of his inquiries. But this canon has its obvious limitations. At any rate one may be educative and irenical. Besides, as the honour of any science is committed even to its humblest worker, he must see to it that no silence or unguarded language upon his part, any more than needless misconceptions on the part of others, be allowed to prejudice the interests or hinder the acceptance of what is true within his own department. Biblical criticism, especially, demands this sense of responsibility from all her servants. She must be free from gratuitous aspersions. And I shall not regret having written these paragraphs if they tend in any sense or in any quarter to allay misgivings, with many of which one has great sympathy, and also to clear the science of NT historical research, so far as that science (in a victorious and somewhat liberal phase) touches the present volume, from imputations of irreverence or the suspicion of innate iconoclasm.

The last written words of the NT happen to bear out not inaptly what has been already urged. But, says the writer, using sure and gracious language for an age perplexed amid other things by biblical disputes, and by some of those perils which accompany the benefit of Scripture— but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour

Jesus Christ.

To him be the glory, both now and for ever. It is in this spirit that a Christian critic of the NT would approach and execute his task. It does not enter his commission, in the more technical branches of the subject, to parade such a religious gain as the end and motive of his own researches. Yet he entertains no manner of doubt that this must be their ultimate effect, or that one outcome of such genuine historical research as he is able to pursue into the origins of Christianity, will prove to be some enlarged and worthier appreciation of the fact that, when rightly conceived, the spiritual and the historical are but complementary aspects of that real and absolute revelation which has been vouchsafed by God in Christ to human thought and trust.

JAMES MOFFATT.

DUNDONALD, AYRSHIRE,

June 1, 1901.

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Davidson S. (3rd ed. 1894). SBBA.

Bacon B. W. (1900).

Salmon G. (8th ed. 1897).

Godet, Introduction

au

Nouveau Testament-1. SK.

Les Epitres de S. Paul

(1893). Eng. tr. 1894.
II. (div. 1) 1899.

Jahrbücher für protestant.
Theologie.

Journal of Theological

Studies.

Die Apokryphen

Pseudepigraphen

SPT.

Syr-Sin.

U.

d.

Alten Testaments, ed.
Kautzsch (1898-1899).

Keim (i.-vi.) Eng. tr. of Geschichte

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Jesu von Nazara.

Neutestamentliche Studien

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Protestantische Monatshefte (1897- ed. Websky). E. Reuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften NT (Eng. tr. of 5th ed. 1884).

A. Réville, Jésus de Nazareth: études critiques sur les antécédents de l'histoire évangélique et la vie de Jésus (1897, deux tomes).

Prof. E. de W. Burton, Records and Letters of the Apostolic Age (1895). Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (ed. Hauck) 1896

Sitzungsberichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Studien und Kritiken (ed. Köstlin and Kautzsch).

Prof. W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (1895).

The Four Gospels translated from the Syriac of the Sinaitic palimpsest (Lewis, 1894).

Theologische

schrift.

Theologische

(ed. Bousset).

Quartal

Rundschau

Texte und Untersuchungen

zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (ed. Harnack and Gebhardt).

Theologische

Abhand

lungen C. von Weizsäcker gewidmet (1892).

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The other abbreviations employed throughout the volume are either obvious or familiar. In addition to what has been already said, however, upon the types employed in the translation (p. xxi), the reader is requested to observe that where OT quotations occur in the body of an earlier source (e.g. pp. 189, 295), they are always printed in italics, as elsewhere throughout the volume, although they must in these cases be strictly regarded as part and parcel of the darker type which forms their immediate context. Also, in Tables IV.-V. the straight lines represent more or less direct literary filiation, while mere affinities or indirect influences are marked by means of dotted lines.

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