defence. It is incredible that it could have been used to mean "the last man left out of five." The expression which TEVTÉλOITOV Conceals serves in 15, 2, 4 as a sobriquet of Hirtius. But it does not seem to have been applied in exactly the same way in 14, 21, 4. The words et quidem introduce apparently something which strengthens cogitabam cenare, and leads up to the words that follow. Cicero's jest about bringing over Hirtius to the cause of the optimates must have had reference to a course of dining (like that of which he speaks in Fam. 9, 16, 7) rather than to a single dinner. Is there any simple correction of TevrÉλOTTOV which will be intelligible in itself and applicable both to 14, 21, 4 and to 15, 2, 4? I think there is, and would read ãv tò AoTóv in both places. Cicero may be repeating with mockery in the former passage a phrase which Hirtius, the arch-dinner-giver, often addressed to his friends: "dine with me to-morrow, and to the end of the chapter." The expression πāv тò Xoɩòv may have stuck to him as a nickname, just as certain prince of Denmark came to be described as "est-il-possible?"

J. S. REID.

THE HELLENIC ELEMENT IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

TH

HE influence of Greece on the New Testament is far greater than is generally supposed. Laying aside the ideas of those who lack acquaintance with any Greek, or with any Greek outside the New Testament, it may, I think, be fairly said that most scholars, either classical or Biblical, would hesitate to consider the New Testament, as a whole, in any way Hellenic. Its language has been called a barbarous pators. Its writers have been declared purely Hebraist in all their modes of thought. And, if classical scholars have hastily assumed that the contents of the New Testament, both as to thought and language, lie outside their sphere, theologians are often no less bigoted in believing that the New Testament must be taken as purely Jewish. Many believe-and I have heard some say that there is something almost indecent in the suggestion that the writers of the New Covenant used either classical ideas or Greek philosophy in conveying the message of the Gospel to men.

But there seems no just reason for marking off the New Testament from the whole of Greek literature in this way. Its language is no patois. Some of its books fall far below the standard of pure Greek: there are strange bits of grammar in the Apocalypse, and the Second Epistle of

S. Peter is weird and appalling in style. But, as a whole, the language of the New Testament is as honest Greek as the language we speak to-day is honest English. It is not the Greek of Euripides, nor is ours the English of Chaucer. One might as well refuse to call the language of Herodotus Hellenic because it is not Attic.

Again, certain New Testament authors bear individual marks of contact with Hellenism. Just as the Alexandrine dialect was a natural and orderly development from Attic Greek, so those who used that dialect could hardly avoid the influence of Greek thought. The Alexandrine school was a development of Platonism, and the vocabulary and method of S. John's Gospel certainly show traces of Alexandrine influence. So, too, S. Paul, the pupil of that most liberal and most Hellenistic of Rabbis, Gamaliel, distinctly shows "a gentleman's acquaintance" with Greek classical literature. He quotes Aratus (or Cleanthes) with approval, incorporates a line from Menander in one of his most telling arguments, and brands the Cretans with a scathing remark derived from one of their own poets.

None, however, of these effects of Greek influence has any special importance. It was as easy to embody Hebrew thought in Greek as it is to sing "God save Ireland" in English; and, though S. Paul spoke and wrote very excellent Greek, he constantly presses on us the fact that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. More significant is the point that, side by side with his claim to pure Jewish blood, we find him constantly declaring that, in religious philosophy, he was a Pharisee. Now Pharisaism, in its best. form, was simply the shape taken by Stoicism when combined with Hebrew religious thought, and Stoicism found its way into Judæa by way of Greece. From the hills round Tarsus came several leading doctors of the Painted Porch of the nature of Gamaliel's teaching there can be no historic doubt; and S. Paul's writings declare his

Stoicism almost as plainly as his Christianity. His use of almost fatalist terms, though not of fatalist teaching—all that element in his writings from which Calvin deduced

very terrible doctrines-his view of iκavóτns, through Christ and in the Christian, all have their basis in Pharisaism. But the Pharisees learned them from the Stoics.

Still, even in this, we cannot say that we have found pure Hellenic thought, for Stoicism was only Hellenic by accident. Zeno was notoriously a Phoenician, and his greatest successors came from Asia Minor and Palestine. So the Phoenician taught the Greek, and the Greek taught the Jew and in Pharisaism-strangely enough-it was the dread gods of the Kananites that were the ultimate victors.

:

But there is one book in the New Testament that stands apart from all others. Its vocabulary is very peculiar,

A full account of the connexion between Pauline theology and Stoicism, through the via media of Pharisaism, may be found in Sir Alexander Grant's Ethics of Aristotle. It is worth observing that S. Paul himself continued, after his conversion, to call himself a Pharisee; and his doctrine of "election," as given in the Epistle to the Romans, shows distinct traces of Stoicism. But S. Paul's doctrine was not exactly identical with that of the Pharisees, which may be found in several parts of the Gospels. Their doctrine was "harder" than his, and much more markedly Stoic.

"The Epistle to the Hebrews contains about 120 words that are not found elsewhere in the New Testament. Many are absolutely äaş λeyóμeva; some occur for the first time here, but are borrowed by later writers. Others have a more remarkable history.

2

Thus-(a) some are found only in this Epistle, and in the works of Philo and his school. The only tangible Idate in Philo's life is that of his embassy to Rome (A.D. 39 or 40); but while there seems no good reason to believe that the writer of our Epistle was acquainted with Philo's writings, it seems probable that the works of the latter are somewhat the earlier in date. These words, then, were probably derived by our writer and Philo from a common source. But Philo's object was to reconcile the Old Testament with Greek philosophy, in which he was deeply read: so these words are most probably derived from the lost writings of some Greek philosophers. But (8) many of the peculiar words in the Epistle are recognised technical philosophical terms, Aristotelian or Platonic. Of these I have spoken in the text. (7) Others, again, though not technical terms, are used in a

and it possesses some strange grammatical idiosyncrasies : yet its language is pellucid, and its arguments clear and straightforward. In its relation to Christian doctrine it is probably the most influential book outside the Gospels: the Nicene Creed, if destroyed and forgotten, could be almost entirely reconstructed from this one anonymous book.1 But it is practically impossible to account for the