upon the whole the significance of a NT writing is never reduced-now and then it is immensely heightened-by juxtaposition with its antecedents and context, even in the outlying history and literature which are lightly named "pagan" and untruly judged as alien. To approach and analyse the NT in the sphere of the unconditioned, is an indefensible mistake: unfortunately it is a mistake which has been hitherto confessed rather than avoided in several schools of criticism. The NT may stand by itself; but the full secret of its genius will be yielded only to the research which goes patiently behind and outside the limits of the canonical collection. Of all unhistorical or semi-historical methods, none has operated so disastrously upon the interpretation of the NT as the tendency to insulate its form and contents; and it is to supply some materials for a mental impression that may counteract such an error, that these Tables have been compiled. In the Jewish and early Christian literature (it is only fair to add), while the various documents have been dated in view of the most recent and reliable criticism, one cannot hope to assign much more than an approximately accurate position to a number of the records, where so considerable a portion of the field is disputable and disputed. As the printing of the NT text has reduced the available space, I have been obliged substantially to cut out a Historical Introduction written to accompany the Tables, in which the origin and development of the NT literature was sketched from 30 to 150 A.D., in relation to the external context of the Roman Empire as well as to the inner forces at work within the Christian Communities. Some paragraphs from this have been incorporated in the Prolegomena and Notes, and its outlines are reflected throughout the volume. But I wish to take this opportunity of reiterating the need for treating these subjects in connection with each other, since the impression often left upon most people's minds by the average NT Introduction is that the literature in question lies unrelated and accidental, resembling either A lonely mountain tarn, or a series of deep scattered pools, one book or group of books. coming after the other in a more or less haphazard fashion. Such a dead and spiritless disconnection is to be strenuously repudiated. It is essential for the modern reader to detect the running stream of life that winds, for all its eddies and backwaters, steadily between and through these varied writings. They possess remarkable cohesion. But it is a cohesion which is either misinterpreted or wholly invisible until you stand beside the life they presuppose, and out of which they rise. In fact, NT Introduction and the History of early Christianity are two departments of research which cannot be prosecuted with entire success, so long as they are held apart. Each gains in vitality as it approaches the other. For similar reasons of brevity, the critical Notes are limited to what is practically a condensed statement of results. Anything like a detailed or continuous account of the processes of argument which lead up to the conclusions underlying the printed text, has been impracticable. I have merely attempted to collate some of the chief results of modern research upon the NT along its literary and historical sides; although even there many details have been left unelaborated, and some almost untouched. At one or two points, I am afraid, this lack of space and scope in which to deploy argument has given an appearance of summary The compression will be felt most where affinities of language and style come up for discussion. These factors often contain important criteria for dating or placing a given document, and their evidence is repeatedly used throughout the Notes. But the complete grounds for one's judgment in this class of problems are so delicate and various that they cannot be stated, much treatment or of arbitrariness; but in order to partially obviate this defect, the Notes have been drawn up in such a way as to include copious references to the bibliography of recent criticism. What is offered is no catena or inventory of opinions. It is merely a conspectus of relevant authorities, together with a note of the main arguments in support of each position. One hopes thus to be able to take a line of one's own, without producing an unfair impression or incurring censures like that once passed by Bacon upon tradition and knowledge "which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not ingenious and faithful; in a sort as may be soonest believed, and not easiliest examined." Whereas, he rightly proceeded, "in the true handling of knowledge men ought to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as they stand in a man's judgment proved more or less." My plan, then, in the Notes has been to indicate in a handful of sentences the leading data for each book's origin and object, the division and preponderance of authorities upon the question, and finally-by means of sifted references-the select literature. The latter includes for the most part what has proved of chief service in my own work; but the plan also involves a series of references, as any trained observer will detect, to some works which are to be regarded in the main as landmarks and beacons for progressive study. The wealth and the complexity of modern literature upon the NT make selection and economy imperative in drawing up Notes of this kind. But although the method becomes now and then depressingly utilitarian, it will always serve to less discussed, except at a length which would unduly distend the volume. The result is, one has had to rest content with merely indicating the more salient linguistic parallels upon which the position adopted in the text depends. The whole argument from such parallels and affinities in regard to the filiation of early Christian literature is one of several problems that still await discriminating treatment. Hitherto its use has been mainly characterised by arbitrariness and artificiality, and in this respect the critical and the conservative wings of scholarship are equally to blame. furnish materials by which the view adopted in the text may be corroborated or modified or refused. Both in the Notes and in the Appendix one has constantly felt, indeed, as the translators of the AV put it in their shrewd and neglected Preface, liable "to weary the unlearned, who need not know so much, and trouble the learned, who know it already." As it is never easy to know how far an acquaintance or sympathy with the subject can be presupposed, and to what extent critical processes in this particular department are as yet naturalised, it is hard to judge what materials should be inserted or omitted. However, it is annoying to find that authoritative references are sometimes as inaccessible as the accessible are unauthoritative, and I have therefore chosen in the bibliography to err upon the side of fulness; all the more so, seeing that the present state of NT criticism in this country is still marked by immaturity in many vital sections. Not a few of the arguments in this volume, and indeed whole pages of it, would have been gladly omitted, had there been (for example) any modern and thorough NT Introduction to which an English student could be referred with safety or satisfaction. The lack of such a volume is only one of many desiderata felt at every turn by the English worker in NT research. Here, perhaps more than in most branches of historical science, investigation continues to be hampered by the resurrection of the obsolete, the survival of the unfit, and the prominence of the irrelevant; as if the subject itself did not bring with it sufficient obstacles and problems. It is devoutly to be hoped that in the next century some of the enterprise and enthusiasm which have made the OT blossom like the rose during the past fifty years, may be spared by English scholarship to the task of handling with truer reverence and courage the more central problems raised by the NT literature. Few of these are solved; some are scarcely stated yet in proper form. Indeed, for some time to come it is to be b feared that the prospects of free and full NT criticism in this country will be hampered by the fact that not all the results already gained seem to have been perfectly assimilated, while the very methods by which alone conclusions can be formed or adequately tested are often misunderstood or sadly misapplied. Conditions such as these, to say nothing of the movements. within criticism itself, make any enterprise like the present extremely tentative. But I believe it is timely. Unprejudiced treatment of the historical element in Christianity is one of the most immediate needs for faith and truth alike. For if holiness has not its sources in history, the supreme expression of religious thought and conduct has come to us in a historical form, and any intellectual neglect of that form is an error which cannot long be harboured with impunity. More things than wisdom are best left to be justified by their works, if they are to be justified at all. But a word must be added here upon the translation; especially as that has been an after-thought, or rather an after-necessity. Owing to the difficulty of securing permission to reprint the RV, the only practicable course was evidently to undertake the preparation of an independent version, and it is the result of this difficult and audacious attempt which is now offered to the reader, with extreme diffidence. It is neither a revision nor an adaptation of any previous translation, but has been made directly from a critical study of the literature itself. The task originally lay as far outside my plan as it has proved beyond my powers. Still, I am in hopes that, despite its many drawbacks, the present rendering will contribute something to that mental impression of change and progress in the NT literature which it is the aim of the whole edition to accentuate. Translation, like peace-making, is always a delicate and often an ungrateful business. The translator pleases nobody, not even himself. But his task |