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lasting covenants.

The church is nowhere else to be found.

The ministry of the gospel is nowhere else to be met.

ARTICLE VII.

DOMINICI DIODATI I. C. NEAPOLITANI, DE CHRISTO GRÆCE LOQUENTE EXERCITATIO.

Translated by Rev. O. T. DOBBIN, LL. D., of Western Independent College, Exeter, England.

Continued from page 181, Vol. I.

CHAPTER II.-That Christ and the apostles spoke the Hellenistic tongue.

WHAT We have advanced hitherto, is more than enough to prove that Christ, his mother, and the apostles, must have spoken Greek, from their having been inhabitants of Judæa. Nevertheless, as our title, De Christo Hellenista, and our purpose, pledge us to something more precise and definite, we shall devote the present chapter to arguments that bear directly upon the exalted personage just named.

§ 1. Jesus assumed a Greek surname.

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Our first argument, then, is found in the additional name by which our Lord was distinguished. To his Hebrew name Jesus, he added the Greek cognomen Xororós, meaning anointed, as Chrysostom,' Theophylact, Ecumenius, and Cyril of Jerusalem inform us. "He is called Christ, because he was anointed; because, too, he was of flesh with what oil was he anointed, then? Not with oil, by any means, but with the Spirit." This unction with the Spirit occurred, according to Chrysostom, when he was baptized in Jordan by John,

1 Chrysostomus, homil. 1 in Ep. ad Roman. p. 6.
Theophylactus, cap. 1 ad Math. p. 4.

* Ecumenius, cap. 1 ad Roman. p. 245.
4 Cyrillus Hieros. Catech. 3, Neop. p. 202.

and when the Spirit in the likeness of a dove came down upon him." Then did he receive the name of Christ. It is worthy of observation that the Greek word Xolorós means precisely the same as Messiah in Hebrew, the word employed by the prophets to signify the coming One, and thus most familiar and agreeable to Jewish ears. But if Jesus preferred the Greek appellative Xororós to the Hebrew Messiah, it follows of course that the Greek was his native tongue. From this circumstance, too, his followers take their designation, not from his Hebrew name Jesus, but are called Christians, from the Greek Xororós.

$2. His band of disciples Christ called by a Greek name. The election of his disciples furnishes another argument. Out of his seventy-two followers Christ selected twelve to be instructed by him with a greater care, with a view to their future employment as the teachers of the world. To this inner circle he gave the Greek name άzooróλoi, apostles, that is, legates, or missionaries. "He called his disciples, and chose twelve out of them, whom he named apostles." When also he laid the foundations of the church upon Simon, he gave him the Greek surname of Пéroos, Peter, so that from that time his Hebrew Cephas gave place to his Greek name. Peter. These facts all go to show that the Greek language was the vernacular of Christ.

$3. Christ used Greek Bibles.

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The same thing is proved by Christ's only reading and quoting the Scriptures of the Greek version. This might be demonstrated by a thousand instances; but for brevity's sake we limit ourselves to a few. Our first example shall be from Luke 4: 16 sq.: "And Jesus entered in, according to his wont, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up

1 Chrysostomus, in Psal. 45.

Luc. Evang. cap. 6, v. 13.

Marc. cap. 3, v. 16; Math. cap. 16, v. 18.

to read; and there was delivered unto him the book of Isaiah the Prophet. And when he unrolled the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord," etc., etc. This passage of the prophet, Christ read in the version of the Seventy, for the reason directly to be given. That the point may be more easily ascertained, we here present the three texts in parallel columns, for the sake of comparison; first the Hebrew, secondly the reading of Christ, thirdly the Septuagint. It will thus be seen, at a glance, whether our Saviour's lection corresponds more closely with the Hebrew or with the Greek :

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1 « Το send away the bruised free” ἀποστεῖλαι τεθραυσμένους ἐν ἀφέσει. This

From the agreement of the lection of the gospel with the LXX, it is clear that Christ used the Greek version. Christ also used this in his quotations from the Old Testament, for from it are those passages of Deuteronomy taken wherein he defeated the Devil in the wilderness :

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A little after, he again quotes Deuteronomy in these terms:

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$4. Christ used Greek proverbs.

Matthew furnishes us with our fourth argument, in the place where he introduces Christ saying, "One iota or one apex shall not pass away from the law until all be fulfilled.” clause is superfluous, and is not found in Isaiah in the Hebrew Text, Greek Version, or Chaldee Paraphrase. With justice, therefore, do Erasmus, Beza, Lucas Brugensis, Calmet,* and others conceive these words to have crept in from the margin, where they were written as a gloss upon Isaiah. They do not appear in the Greek MSS., nor do Ambrosius nor Eusebius seem to have read them.

1 Matth. cap, 5, v. 18.

* In Comment. ad Luc. cap. 4, v. 19.

We may here, by the way, observe, that the Greek iota, the Hebrew yod, the Chaldee hik, and the Syriac yud, are all the smallest letters in their respective alphabets, so that the proverb would hold good in any of these languages. But as the speaker used none of these, but only the Greek characters, it is quite certain that it sprang from his speaking Greek. This is further confirmed by the fact that a Greek proverb was comInonly current at that day, whereby any thing exceedingly minute was compared to an iota.

$5. Christ used the Greek alphabet also.

Our last argument in regard to Christ is drawn from the title given to Christ in the Apocalypse, where, declaring himself to be the beginning and end of all things, he says, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." Again, in the beginning of the same book: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord." For as the Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and the Omega the last, so is HE alone the beginning from whom all, and the end for whom all things were created, and whom no end can follow, the Everlasting.3

1 Apocalyp. cap, 21, v. 6. Item ibid. cap. 22, v. 13.

2 Ibid. cap. 1, v. 8.

Here Grotius, anticipating the force of our argument, has commented upon the words in John in the following terms: This mode of expression, namely, Alpha and Omega, is borrowed from the Rabbins, who say from Aleph

to Thau, from the beginning to the end: thus Jalkuth on 2 Sam., Isaac Benarima on Lev. 26. And in the contracted form the beginning and the end, in the Book Zohar, the gate of light, the gates of justice, Bahir and others, John adapted the phrase to the Greek alphabet, because he was writing in Greek.

But with all respect for the illustrious dead, the argument was unworthy of so great a man. For if Christ really said these words in Chaldee, as Grotius thinks, and not in Greek, John would likewise have expressed them in Chaldee, thus: "I am Olaph and Tau, saith the Lord." Nor does it help his cause to say that John expressed these letters in Greek, because he was writing in Greek, for John himself on other occasions acts otherwise. Thus in chap. 9, v. 11, of the same book, he writes: "The king, the angel of the abyss, whose name is in Hebrew Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon." So also chap. 16, v. 16, " In the place which is called in Hebrew Armageddon." In the first chapter of the Gospel he

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