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perhaps in a very few in the Gospels, it may be regarded as a matter of indifference, in which of the two ways the term is translated.

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Thus, in the first λεγόμενος Χριςος,

may be either, Jesus, who is called Christ, that being a surname which, when Matthew wrote, was frequently given him, or Jesus who is called (that is, accounted) Messiah. I have, in my version, preferred the second interpretation; as, in the verse immediately following, we cannot understand otherwise the words έws 78 xp58, with the article, and without the name Inos prefixed. If so, o 2εyouevos λεγομενος xpiços is mentioned to prepare us for this application of the title. Besides, the same phrase occurs again in this Gospel, as used by Pilate at a time when it was never applied to our Lord but by his followers, and that solely as the denomination of his office. So much for the method whereby we may discover when this word is emphatical, and when it is merely a sur

name.

§ 10. It is proper now to inquire, in the last place, which of the three terms, Messiah, Christ, or Anointed, is the most proper to be applied in an English version. The word Anointed is indeed an English word, and is, besides, in respect of the idea it conveys, expressive of the etymological import of the Hebrew and Greek terms. But, notwithstanding these advantages, it is not so proper in this case for

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being used in a version. For first, the original term had early been employed, as we have seen, without any regard to the literal signification; and, in the ordinary application of it, in our Lord's time, little or no attention seems to have been given to the circumstance of unction, which gave rise to the name. Though the word Anointed, therefore, expresses the primitive import of the Hebrew name, it does not convey the meaning in which it was then universally understood. It was considered solely as the well-known title of an extraordinary office, to which there was nothing similar, amongst any other people. The original name, therefore, agreeably to what was concluded in a former discourse 65, ought to be retained. Secondly, it deserves some notice, that the word, both in Hebrew and in Greek, is a substantive, and therefore, in point of form, well adapted for a name of office, being susceptible of the same variety, in number and mode of construction with other substantives; the English word Anointed is a participle and indeclinable, and so far from being adapted for the name of an office, that it is grammatically no more than the attributive of some name, either expressed or understood.

§ 11. As to the other two words, Messiah and Christ, it may be thought a matter of indifference which of them should be preferred. The following are the reasons which have determined me to give the pre

65 Diss. II. P. 1. § 5.

ference to the former. First, our Lord's own ministry was only amongst his countrymen the Jews, to whom the title of Messiah was familiar. With them, wheresoever dispersed, it is considered as the title of that dignity to this day, and is accordingly naturalized in every language that they speak. We never hear of the Jewish Christ, it is always the Jewish Messiah. When the English translators found it convenient, in translating Daniel, to adopt a term more appropriated than the general word anointed, they chose the Hebrew term Messiah, in preference to the Greek; and it is surely proper, when the meaning of a word in the New Testament is manifestly the same, to conform, as much as possible, to the language of the Old. That the word Messiah was constantly used in Palestine, in our Lord's time, is evident from the two passages in the Gospel of John ", where, after mentioning it as the title in current use, both with Jews, and with Samaritans, he adds the explanation in Greek. Secondly, Messiah is, even in English use, much more familiar, as the name of the office, than the term Christ, which is now universally understood as a proper name of our Saviour. The word Messiah, on the contrary, is never employed, and consequently never understood, as a proper name. It is invariably a name of office and even this circumstance, however slight it may appear, has a considerable influence on perspicuity.

66 i. 42. iv. 25.

67

§ 12. I SHALL only add here, before I conclude this subject, that the word xp50s is frequently used by Paul as a trope, denoting sometimes the Christian spirit and temper, as when he says, My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you 7. Sometimes the Christian doctrine, But ye have not so learned Christ *. And in one place at least, the Christian church, For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ". In these cases it is better to retain the name Christ, as used hitherto in the version.

13. SOME have thought that the expression To vis te ardowas, the son of man, which our Lord always uses when he speaks of himself in the third person, is also a title which was then understood to denote the Messiah. But of this there does not appear sufficient evidence. The only passage of moment that is pleaded in support of it, is from the Prophet Daniel, who says, that he saw in the night visions, one like the son of man come, with the clouds of heaven, to the ancient of days, and that there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom 7. There can be no reasonable doubt, from the description given, that the Messiah is meant. But this is not notified by any of the terms or phra

70

67 Gal. iv. 19.

69 1 Cor. xii. 12.

68 Eph. iv. 20.
70 Dan. vii. 13, 14.

ses taken separately; it is the result of the whole. Nothing appears to be pointed out by this single circumstance, one like the son of man, or like a son of man (as it ought to have been rendered, neither term being in statu emphatico, which in Chaldee supplies the article), but that he would be a human, not an angelical, or any other kind of being: for, in the oriental idiom, son of man and man, are terms equivalent.

The four monarchies which were to precede that of the Messiah, the Prophet had, in the foregoing part of the chapter, described under the figure of certain beasts, as emblems severally of the predominant character of each; the first under the figure of a lion, the second under that of a bear, the third of a leopard, and the fourth of a monster more terrible than any of these. This kingdom, which God himself was to erect, is contradistinguished to all the rest, by the figure of a man, in order to denote, that whereas violence, in some shape or other, would be the principal means by which those merely secular kingdoms would be established, and terror the principal motive by which submission would be enforced, it would be quite otherwise in that spiritual kingdom to be erected by the ancient of days, wherein every thing would be suited to man's rational and moral nature; affection would be the prevailing motive to obedience, and persuasion the means of producing it; or, to use the Scripture expression, we should be drawn with cords of a man, with bands of love.

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