Renan states:

"We think that the Syro-Chaldaic was the most widely spread language in Judea, and that Christ would not have used any other in his popular discourses."

of that language as the language of Christ | "It is self-evident that only the generally and his followers. This hypothesis was intelligible language of the country could first formally advanced by the Jesuit priest have served our Lord's purpose. There was Hardouin, in his Commentary on the New no occasion why, besides it, he should have Testament, published in 1741. It was revived, trace of his having employed anotherused another; nor do we find the slightest we may hope for the last time, in an anony- namely, the Greek." mous work published in London in 1822, under the title of Palæoromaica. This seems to have been a work devoid of common sense, but full of learning: and it elicited answers from Maltby, afterwards Bishop of Durham, Bishop Burgess, Dr. Falconer, and others. The cause of Greek was pleaded by We do not wonder that Mr. Roberts Diodati, in a treatise published at Naples in should have felt awed by these positive as1767, under the title De Christo græce sertions, but we are glad that he did not loquente. He maintains that, in the days of shrink from encountering such antagonists, our Lord, the vernacular dialect of Palestine and that he thought the whole question dehad been entirely supplanted by Greek, and serving of a new and minute re-examination. that no other language could have been used The result at which Mr. Roberts arrives is, by the Founder of our religion. About the that "Christ spoke for the most part in same time, however, a German scholar of the Greek, and only now and then in Aramaic " name of Pfannkuche published an essay of (p. 15), and he establishes this conclusion equal learning in support of a view diametri- by an amount of evidence which can hardly cally opposed to that of Diodati, arguing that leave a doubt in the minds of unprejudiced the Greek language was scarcely used at all readers. Nor is this conclusion a mere in ordinary intercourse by the Jews of our compromise between the two conflicting Saviour's time, and that Aramaic was opinions of Diodati and Ewald. The view spoken by him and his disciples generally that Christ was bilinguis is a new view, and or exclusively. If the truth of an opinion a view of no slight importance in the history could be settled by the prestige of names, of the world. the supporters of Aramaic would certainly carry the day against Diodati and his small train. From Eusebius down to Ewald and Renan, all the great names are on that side. Eusebius declares again and again that the apostles understood no language but that of the Syrians, and in one passage he represents them replying to their Lord's command to "go and teach all nations" in the following words: "What language shall we employ towards the Greeks, having been brought up only in the language of the Syrians?" It is curious that on so important a point the ecclesiastical historian should have given us none of the evidence on which he based his categorical statements. But in spite of this absence of evidence, his statement was accepted by nearly all subsequent writers, and is probably held at the present day by most who have given any thought to the subject. Even independent scholars men like Thiersch, Ewald, and Renan, who would certainly not be swayed by an unsupported assertion of Eusebius-hold the same opinion. Ewald says:

Christianity, from an historical point of view, is the reunion of the Jew and Gentile, and, from a still higher point of view, it clearly marks the confluence of the two great streams of human life and thoughtthe Semitic and the Aryan. How, wonderful, then, that He who came to reveal to the whole of mankind their common brotherhood and their common Father in heaven should have had his words and thoughts moulded in the two principal languages of the two principal families of human speech -the Greek and the Hebrew! And so it was, not by accident, but by the providence of God, who had scattered the nations that they each should walk in their own ways, whether haply they might find him, and who, in his own good time, called them all together to worship him in spirit and in truth.

To discover in the history of the world the indications of a divine plan is no less comforting than to recognize the working of God's grace even in the smallest events of our daily life; and if we consider how a lan

mass of evidence by which Mr. Roberts proves the prevalence of Greek in Judæa at the time of our Lord, we feel inclined to repeat the words of Isaac Vossius :—

"Verum nescio quâ ratione factum sit ut hoc nostro sæculo plerique fere Christum et Apostolos Hebraice locutos fuisse existiment, non autem Graece. . . Nullis profecto vel argumentis vel testimoniis nititur hæc opinio."-P. 9.

sage:-
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ine that the authorized English version is "As persons who have no education imagthe original of the Scriptures, so, too, scholars are apt to think and write as though the Greek of the New Testament were the original language in which Christianity was first conceived. But our Lord and his disciples were Galileans, whose familiar speech could

guage represents the intellectual heirloom thought of studying Latin as Greek had of a whole nation, to see Christ as the heir, been studied; and the Romans themselves not only of the Semitic, but even in a much were the foremost to display on every occahigher degree of the Greek and Aryan sion their familiarity with the Grecian lanraces, is a confirmation stronger than any, guage and literature. After reading the of his truly historical character a commentary clearer than any, on the true meaning of "the fulness of time." How was it that the language of Homer was spoken by the children of Abraham at the time of our Lord ? Without a knowledge of history such a fact would seem almost incredible; and yet no miracle can be better attested, none can at the same time more clearly proclaim its divine purpose than this-the intermingling of the Greek and the Jewish Dean Alford admits that Greek was comraces on the very threshold of the Christian monly spoken in Palestine (p. 11). Profesworld. The small canton of Attica had sor Jowett states that "Greek became a leavened the whole civilized world. Though familiar language, not only in Asia and conquered by Philip, it had conquered the Egypt, but also in Judæa" (p. 42). Yet the East through Alexander; and after the dis- former limits the employment of Greek conmemberment of his colossal empire, the siderably. The latter says in another passuccessors of Alexander, Greek in mind, if not by blood, became the rulers of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, brought Greek learning into Egypt, Seleucus into Syria, Eumenes into Asia Minor; and at Alexander, Antioch, and Pergamus the language of the educated classes became Greek. The effete civilization of these countries gave way before the healthy vigor of the Greek mind; and though the vernaculars were not swept away at once, all who wished to take part in the transactions of public life, or who had any pretensions to rank among the higher classes, had to acquire the Greek language, Greek manners, and Greek learning. The Greeks, even in Macedonia, were in the East what the Saxons were to the Britons, the Normans to the Saxons, the English to the Hindus. True, at the time of our Lord, a new conqueror had begun, or wellnigh finished, his career. Rome had conquered the world, and ruled then supreme even in Judæa. But the Roman was the pupil of the Greek, and the political supremacy of the pupil did not neutralize the intellectual supremacy of the master. Nor did the language of the Roman conqueror ever take the place of that of conquered Greece. Although Roman Judges had everywhere to be addressed in Latin, and although Greeks in pleading their causes had to avail themselves of the assistance of Roman interpreters, no one

never have been Greek."

But what evidence is there to prove this? Aramaic, no doubt, was the vernacular of Palestine, and it was certainly understood by every Jew at Jerusalem. But such was the preponderance of the foreign Greek element, that on all public occasions it would have been useless to employ that vernacular. As well might an M.P. for a Welsh borough think of addressing his constituents in Welsh. No doubt some of the lower ranks would understand him, but to all the rest he would be unintelligible, whereas his English is understood by nearly all, and certainly by those whose support is most essential.

era

Like Wales at the present moment, Judæa was at the beginning of our dotted over with names of places of foreign origin. Proper names were partly Aramaic, partly Greek, and in some towns, as, for instance in Cæsarea, the majority of the inhabitants were Greek.

It is impossible for us even to allude to each item of historical evidence which Mr.

that Greek must have been well known both to the writers and their readers? . . . When we find the Galilean Peter taking up his pen and writing in Greek, why should we not suppose that Greek was quite familiar to the inhabitants of Galilee ? And when we find the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writing to the Jews of Palestine in Greek, how can we escape from the conclusion that they generally understood that language?

hardly any facts to support the opposite the ory. The few Aramaic words which are mentioned in the New Testament in their original form, as having been used by our Lord on certain occasions, are generally quoted as evidence on the other side. But they, of course, prove just the contrary. Suppose our Lord had always spoken Aramaic, what reason was there to mention these few words? But if ordinarily he em-And how could it have been supposed by ployed the Greek language, then, to quote Mr. Roberts :

graciously and wisely accommodates His
actings to that spiritual and intellectual na-
ture which He has imparted . . .”
And again, in another place (p. 464):-

"Inspiration ought never to be had recourse to in order to escape the difficulties which arise from mere human opinions. If a man ties a knot so tangled that he cannot again unloose it, it is little short of impiety to call in divine aid in order to cut it."

par

follows: "The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ;" and if he maintains that the enthetical clause "which is called Christ" (ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός), was really uttered by the woman herself-the evangelist, as he says, "taking all pains to report the conversation very accurately "-he must have forgotten that the exact words of that conversation could have been heard by two persons only, and that, in repeating the tenor of that dialogue to his apostles, the main object of Christ was not to repeat the ipsissima verba, but to convey to his disciples the same lesson, probably with greater fulness, which he had delivered to the ignorant and worldly woman of Samaria. And, waiving this, there still remains the further objection that the evangelist who wrote down this chapter, the death and resurrection of Christ, might many years after the event, many years after surely have added this merely verbal explanation, on which Mr. Roberts attempts to rest his argument.

Throughout the whole of his book Mr. Roberts has handled his problems in the most excellent spirit. He never forgets what is due to the sacred character of Him whose language forms the subject of his inquiry, and he makes the fullest allowance for the susceptibilities of that class of readers who are not accustomed to see the principal characters of the New Testament treated as historical characters. But he never, on the other hand, forgets what is due to historical truth; and he has evidently arrived at the One other question we should like to ask. conviction that the New Testament history Mr. Roberts shows very clearly that at the need not shrink from the tests applied to time of our Lord the ancient Hebrew had other histories-that it has nothing to lose, ceased to be understood at Jerusalem, and and everything to gain from such a treat- that the Law and the Prophets and the ment. There is but one instance where he Hagiography could then have been read by seems for a time, to forget the position which, the Jews in Greek only, there being no trace as an historian, he ought to occupy in ex- whatever that any translation of those books amining the evidence supplied by different into the spoken Aramaic dialect, such as the portions of the Gospel in support of his the- so-called Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, ory. When treating of the conversation be- was then in existence. These Targums or tween our Lord and the woman of Samaria, Aramaic paraphrases, however, exist; and he points out with perfect truth that the Sa- whether they are referred to the first or the maritans, even more than the Jews, had second century of our era, they would seem adopted at that time the language and man- to show that soon after the apostolic age the ners of the Greeks. In the reign of Anti- necessity of a translation of the Scriptures ochus Epiphanes the very temple on Mount into Aramaic was felt in Judæa. Are we to Gerizim had been dedicated to the Jupiter suppose, then, that after the destruction of of the Greeks. In a letter addressed to An- Jerusalem, Greek died out very rapidly, the tiochus, the Samaritans are most anxious to higher ranks being swept away, and the impress on their king that they have nothing lower classes bringing the vernacular into in common with the nation or customs of more general use? Or, should we rather the Jews, and they are, in turn, congratu- suppose that these Targums or Aramaic lated by the Syrian monarch on "their de- translations were made for the Jews at Babsire to live according to the customs of the ylon, which at that time became the capital Greeks." It is perfectly true, as Mr. Rob- of the conquered race, and the centre of their erts points out, that if any communication literary activity? Some explanation of the took place at that time between the Jews circumstances which led to the translation and the Samaritans, both being bilingues— of the Scriptures into the spoken Aramaic i.e., both speaking their peculiar Aramaic dialects, together with Greek,-Greek would no doubt have been the language chosen for personal intercourse. For this reason, unless there were distinct evidence to the contrary, it would seem most natural to suppose that the conversation at Jacob's Well took place in Greek. But if in support of this view, Mr. Roberts quotes the 25th verse of the 4th chapter of St. John, which reads as

soon after the destruction of Jerusalem is certainly wanted; for, according to the views of Mr. Roberts, such versions would seem entirely uncalled for.

We hope on some future occasion to examine the second part of Mr. Roberts's work, which is chiefly directed against Dr. Cureton's supposed discovery of the original Aramaic or Syriac text of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

From Macmillan's Magazine.
HUMAN VEGETATION.*

BY THE REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, F.R.S.E., AUTHOR

OF" FOOTNOTES FROM THE PAGE OF NATURE."

a pot of jam, or a piece of bread, or any decayed vegetable or animal matter, to the air, and in a day or two it will be hoary with the gray stalks and powdery fructification of the common mould. Dam up a stream or the outlet of a lake, and convert it into a stagnant pond, and in a week or so its sides and bottom are covered with a luxuriant growth of green confervæ, which go on increasing until the water is choked up with vegetable matter, and becomes converted into a bog. How rapidly does Nature bring back into her own bosom the ruin which man has forsaken, harmonizing its haggard features with the softer hues and forms of the scenery around! How quickly does the newly built wall, which offends the eye by its garishness, become, by the living garniture of mosses and lichens that creep over it, a picturesque object in the landscape! Nature, faithful to her own law-"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth"

It cannot possibly escape the notice even of the most unobservant, that the tendency to vegetate is a power restless and perpetual. It has been in operation from the earliest geologic ages, as evinced by the fossil remains found in the most ancient rocks. Like a palimpsest, the successive strata of the earth have been covered with successive races of plants, destroyed by earthquakes, volcanoes, and torrents, but leaving their imperishable relics behind, and again restored, in full luxuriance, by the play of the life agencies. Wherever an igneous rock was upheaved into the sky by some internal convulsion, its bare sides and summit were speedily covered with vegetation; wherever the water retired, leaving its sediment behind, the dry land thus formed became, in a wonderfully short space of time, clothed with crimsons even the cold and barren surface verdure. From pole to pole, each stratum of the arctic or alpine snow with a portenof soil, as soon as deposited, was adorned tous vegetation. As if there were not room with a rich exuberance of plant-life. Nor is enough for the amazing profusion of plantthe layer of Nature's floral handwriting life, she crowds her productions upon each which now appears on the surface less ex- other into the smallest compass, and makes tensive, as compared with the page, than the the highest forms the supporters of the lowburied and partially obliterated layers be- est. Every inch of ground, however unneath, though the characters be less grand genial its climate or unfavorable its condiand imposing. The earth has lost much of tions, is made available; every object, its primeval fire, and has toned down the however unlikely at first sight, is pressed rank luxuriance of its green and umbrageous into her service, and made to bear its burden youth; but it still retains a considerable por- of life; and thus, the grandly wild Platonic tion of the vigor which characterized it dur-myth of the cosmos, as one vast living thing, ing the first great period of organized being -the period of herbs and trees" yielding One of the most remarkable examples of seed after their kind." The whole face of this universal diffusion and plastic power of the earth, and almost every object which vegetation is seen in the occurrence of a pebelongs to it, is still strangely instinct with culiar flora on living bodies. The irresistivegetable life. Coeval in its origin, it is ble torrent of vegetable life, overflowing the everywhere present with its indispensable whole earth and every inorganic object upon conditions. Burn down the forest, or plow its surface, has not left uninvaded the dothe meadow, and from the new soil thus ex- mains even of animal life. In its effort to posed springs up spontaneously a new crop extend itself, it has overleaped the barriers of vegetation. Hew a stone from a quarry, imposed by nature upon the law of propagaand place it in a damp situation, and shortly tion, and sought to establish a footing in a a green tint begins to creep over it. Con- strange region, foreign to all its conditions struct a fence of wooden rails round your and aptitudes. Several kinds of plants vegproperty, and in a few months it is covered etate on the bodies of living insects, such as with a thin film of primitive plants. Expose the wasp, the sphinx, and the may-bug. The story of Sindbad and his old man incubus, has its counterpart in the vegetable kingdom; for it is by no means rare to ob

*Des Végétaux qui croissent sur l'homme et sur les animaux vivants. Par M. Robin. Paris.

1862.

is not altogether without foundation.