one of two things; a native of Judea, or a follower of the religion of Moses. It does not mean a man who speaks Hebrew, and the antithesis to it is not a Hellenist, or man who speaks Greek; but a Gentile by birth or a Pagan in religion. It is sheer assumption to resolve the antithesis into Hebrew-speaking Jews, and Greek-speaking Jews; and to advocate the reading 'EXλnvioτás, as the basis of that rendering is only the more clearly to expose its unsoundness. If the persons first addressed at Antioch were Jews only, those addressed in the second place could not have been Jews at all. The first signal admission of Gentiles to the Christian Church took place at Antioch, we should say somewhat irregularly, that is, without waiting for instructions from Jerusalem; and there is unquestionably implied in the mission of Barnabas, himself a Cypriote, sent to look after the work of these native Cypriotes, a distrust of what had been reported to have taken place. This appears, as we think with Alford, on the surface of the transaction.

5. With what exquisite propriety the name of Christian dates itself from that locality in which first a large infusion of Gentile blood into the body of the Church took place, let those decide who think the glory of that Church consists in its Catholicity, in making both Jew and Gentile one in Christ Jesus. The name is evidently of Gentile origin, no doubt an adoption of the Church itself, and not a term of reproach. The beautiful 'Christianus sum' of Polycarp and the martyrs, before the tribunal of their persecutors, indicates no suspicion of the name as an ignominious epithet, rather as a simple and appropriate designation of a matter of fact-that they were followers of Christ. Tacitus indeed says that the Roman mob hated them, and called them Christians; but does not say that this was in its origin any name of reproach. Antioch was evidently the place where first the Church of the Lord Jesus emerged out of the penumbra of Judaism, a feat which it could scarcely achieve in its head quarters, Jerusalem, surrounded as it was there, by an overwhelming predominance of Jewish association; and Christian was the name which this now completed organization assumed when it shewed itself to the world, "bright as the sun, fair as the moon."

6. The sanction and precedent of the Church at Antioch, given to Barnabas and Paul, it was which justified those ministers in their succeeding evangelistic mission in introducing so freely as they did Gentiles [rà čovη, xiii. 46] into the Church.

7. And that such was the constitution of the Church at Antioch itself is rendered clear by the appeal to the mother Church at Jerusalem, recorded in the fifteenth chapter. In the Church at Antioch were sundry uncircumcised persons, which

could not have occurred amongst the Hellenists, that is, Greek Jews, or Jewish proselytes; they must therefore have been converted heathens, namely, the "EXλnvas of the amended reading. Barnabas and Paul were evidently men of large hearts and unsectarian sympathies. What they saw and aided in accomplishing at Antioch and elsewhere, made them decided advocates for an enlarged Church, and the free admission of Gentiles thereto, without submission to purely Mosaic institutions. When they defended, at Jerusalem, this liberal constitution of things, they were not vindicating their own proceedings and converts in the other Antioch; but addressed themselves to the actual condition of that Syrian Antioch of which we are now speaking: hence when the letter of license and approval arrived from Jerusalem, the brethren at Antioch "rejoiced for the consolation" (xv. 31).

On a review of all that has been stated here, we are justified in saying that the evidence derived from MSS. is not clear enough to decide the question; wherefore we freely own that in the present state of that evidence we should not feel confident in altering the text. At the same time we cannot but add that all the considerations of historical propriety preponderate decidedly in favour of the reading "EXλnvas; that Jew and Greek are never contrasted, as here, in the writings of St. Luke without meaning Jew and Gentile, unless accompanied with some qualifying term; that the proceedings in the Syrian Antioch were the precedent followed by the apostles in Asia Minor; that the state of the early Church at Antioch awakened surprise if not alarm in the Church at Jerusalem, which would not have been the case if only Hellenists had been admitted freely to its ranks, as those already abounded in the mother Church, and can only be accounted for on the supposition that the large recent admissions consisted of Gentiles; and that the transition from the admission of Hellenists to the admission of Gentiles took place there and then, without any further gradation of circumstance or interval of time, such as Mr. Kay pleads for with Greswell (vol. iv., p. 58).

Thus the external and direct evidence, so far as hitherto ascertained (although we cannot but believe that it has been most imperfectly gleaned), can scarcely be said to be in favour of the common reading; while the internal evidence of the sense of the context requires the substitution of "EXλnvas. This is the conclusion of the distinguished Neander, in vol. i., p. 65, of his History of the planting of the Christian Church :

Though the Christians of Jewish descent, who were driven by persecution from Jerusalem, were by that event induced to spread the gospel

VOL. V. NO. IX.

K

in Syria and the neighbouring districts, yet their labours were confined to the Jews. On the other hand, the Hellenists, such as Philip and others, who originally came from Cyprus and Cyrene, made their way among the Gentiles also, to whom they were allied in language and education, which was not the case with the Jews."

To this statement Neander appends a note :

"In Acts xi. 20, the common reading 'EXŋviorás is evidently to be rejected as formed from a false gloss, and the reading which refers to the Gentiles ("Envas) must be substituted as undoubtedly correct.'

This is the conclusion at which the Rev. Thomas Sheldon Green has arrived in his very valuable recent work, A course of developed criticism of passages of the New Testament, materially affected by various readings, published by the Messrs. Bagster. ORLANDO T. DOBBIN, LL.D.,

Of Trinity College, Dublin.

SUPPOSED ERRORS IN THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

In the last number of the Westminster Review is a long article on the revision of the English Bible, which ought to receive a careful perusal from all those who think a new translation necessary, for this article must be considered as giving the deliberate opinion of that party which has F. W. Newman and Co. for its leaders, and a quarterly Review for the promulgation of their opinions.

The writer of the article alluded to appears to be well acquainted with the original, yet his criticisms on the passages as rendered in the Authorized Version which he examines, are untenable, and prove-if they prove anything-the correctness of the present translation. This will appear evident to those who examine the passages without prejudice or desire to prove the correctness of preconceived opinions regarding the truth or falsity of the facts stated in the Scriptures. The first passage animadverted upon is given in the following extract:-"It does not belong to translators to rectify providence or inspiration, if they have 'permitted' the irreconcileable discrepancy, however fruitful it may be of controversy. In some cases the decision will be difficult. In the Gospel of Mark xv. 23, we read, and they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh,' apparently out of humanity; which act seems to have been repeated at intervals during the crucifixion; compare ver. 36, and John xix.

29. In Matthew and Luke these acts have a different aspect. Luke, xxiii. 36, makes the soldiers offer the vinegar in mockery, and Matthew appears to refer to Psalm lxix. 21, 'They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' But in Matt. xxvii. 34, there is a various reading of olvov for oços, of at least equal value, and adopted both by Lachmann and Tischendorf. Is the translator to conciliate this text with that of Mark, by rendering, as Wycliffe and the Rheims version, wine'-the proper English of olvov, and a permissible English for gos; or with Tyndale and the other versions, by the rendering of vinegar,' to dissociate the text in Matthew from the other evangelist, and to adapt it to the presumed prophecy in the Psalm ?" It is added in a note that this word oços "might mean a kind of sour wine, served out with the soldiers' rations; or if not a wine, it was a drink for refreshment; see Ruth ii. 14 (ev тâ öğel, Sept.), compare Numb. vi. 3."

The Hebrew word in (chometz) is derived from you (chamatz), to be sour, acid, bitter; hence the origin of the proverb, "Vinegar the son of wine:" it is rendered vinegar both in this Psalm, and in Ruth ii. 14; Prov. xxv. 20; x. 26, by the LXX., öcos; Vulgate, aceto; Luther, essig; Tremellius and Junius acetum; the only difference is that the Septuagint has in the last passage oupas, i.e., sour fruit. A sour drink is then, to be understood by the term chometz, and it would appear from Num. vi. 3; Ruth ii. 14, that it was a kind of sour-wine. This drink was mixed with rosh. The LXX., Xoλýv; Vulgate, fel; and Luther gall; agree with our version in translating it as meaning gall; the Targum has "the gall of asp's heads.” Bythner maintains it to denote the peculiar bitterness of an asp's poison; Trem. and Junius amarorem, bitterness; while Gesenius thinks it to be the poppy. This prophecy is rightly considered to have been fulfilled when our Saviour suffered death. The question: Are we to consider the öğos of Matthew the same drink as the divov of Mark? is rightly answered in the affirmative by Bloomfield and others. That they cannot both be translated wine is certain, for oços is correctly rendered vinegar, understanding by that term, what it originally meant, sour-wine (from the French vin, wine, and aigre, sour); St. Matthew names the particular kind of wine, whereas St. Mark only tells us that it was wine. It could be no other kind than the acetum of the Romans, thus described by Professor Ramsay in his brief but excellent account of Roman wines (Rom. Antiq., p. 439); "If the fermentation was pushed too far, or if the wine was kept too long, it was changed into acetum; the vinegar itself in process of time

underwent decomposition and was transformed into an insipid useless liquor to which the name Vappa was given (Hor. Sat., lib. i., v., 16).” Not only do the Evangelists allude to the same liquid, but it is probable, if not certain, that they also allude to the same plant, although it is named gall by Matthew, and myrrh by Mark. Dr. Macknight has a most excellent note on this subject in his Harmony of the Gospels; in his opinion the Evangelists may be reconciled more directly by supposing that Xoλn signifies any bitter drug whatsoever, as it is applied to wormwood in Prov. v. 4, and by parity of reason may denote myrrh, which has its name from a Hebrew word signifying bitterness. He also states that Casaubon thinks that our Lord's friends being hindered from coming near to him by the soldiers, put a cup of myrrhed wine into the hands of one of them to give it to Jesus; but that the soldiers, out of contempt, added gall to it.

In several parts of the Highlands of Scotland there is a plant which receives the name gall and sweet-smelling-myrtle from the inhabitants. It is thus noticed by Sir Walter Scott in the Fair Maid of Perth, chap. xxvii.: "But fare you well, for I must go, as beseems me, to the burial of the best Chief the clan ever had, and the wisest Captain that ever cocked the sweet gall (bogmyrtle) in his bonnet." One thing at least is certain, viz., that both of the Evangelists prove the prophecy in the 92nd Psalm to have been fulfilled. But it is useless to consider this subject any longer, for in the words of Dr. Isaac Barrow, "that Jesus our Lord did most thoroughly correspond to whatever is in this kind declared by the prophets concerning the Messias, we need not by minutely relating the known history of his life and death, make out any further, since the whole matter is palpably notorious, and no adversary can deny it" (Sermon on Acts iii. 18).

Those who undertake a new translation, "must render," says the rather dogmatic critic, "Psalm xvi. 10, as the words intend, of providential preservation in this life, although in Acts ii. they are applied to the resurrection." The reference in Acts ii. 25, to Psalm xvi. 8-11, is to shew that David prophesied of Christ's resurrection. The apostle could not, therefore, have considered David's remarkable words to mean only "providential preservation in this life," for there is not a single word in the original that could justify us in translating the passage as meaning anything but the resurrection of the body of him who is called the Holy One. The Vulgate is the same as the A. V., and also Luther, and the LXX.; Van Ess translates leshol as meaning "in the realm of the dead," (im Todtenreiche), a most beautiful translation; De Wette renders it "lower regions" (Un