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LEHRE UND VVEHRE
MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LuTH. HOMILETIK
THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY
Vol. XVIII January, 1947 No.1
CONTENTS
Foreword. W. Arndt __ .. _. _. _____ ... ... _______ __ .. _____ .. _._ . __ . .. _ .. __ .. ___ .__ .___ . __ _
The Minister and His Greek New Testament. Eric C. Malte
Outlines on the Nitzsch Gospel Selections __ ._. ___ .. _. ____ . ______ _
Miscellanea _. _______ _
Theological Observer _. __ .. __ . _____ ._ .. ___ . ____ ... _.
Book Review __
Page
1
8
24
39
48
76
Ein P rediger muss n ieht allein wei-
den, also dass er die Schafe unter-
w eise. w ie sie r echte Ch risten sollen
sein. 50ndern auch daneben den Woel-
fen wehren, dass sie die Schafe n icht
angreifen und mit falscher Lchre ver-
fuehren und Irrtum einfuehren.
Es ist kein Ding. dr.s die Leute
mehr bei der Kircpe behl,lelt denn
die gute Predigt. - Apolog;e, Art. 24
Luther
If the trumpet give an uncertain
sound. who shall prepare himself to
the battle? -1 Cor. 14:8
Published by the
Ev. Lllth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States
CONCORDIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, St. Louis 18, Mo.
PRINTED ,tN tt. S. A.
8 MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
The Minister
and His Greek New Testament
(A CONFERENCE ESSAY)
By ERIC C. MALTE
I
Languages differ radically among themselves, but while
each of the modern nations is proud of its mother tongue and
will dispute its supremacy with any of the others, scholars
and competent authorities are generally agreed in conceding
that the classical Greek is in many ways superior to all its
successors and the well-nigh perfect medium for the utterance
of genius and the expression of thought. The Greek language
is a remarkable one in many respects and possibly the most
noteworthy product of the Greek nation.
Professor Felton declares: "The Greek language is the
most flexible and transparent body in which human thought
has ever been clothed." Farrar in his Greek Syntax (page 1)
says: "The Aryan family of languages is the most perfect
family in the world, and the Greek is the most perfect lan-
guage in this family; it is the instinctive metaphysics of the
most intelligent of nations." The historian Grote adds his
testimony: "The Hellenic language is the noblest among the
many varieties of human speech."
Says Professor Harris: "It is a marvelous language, made
for all that is great and all that is beautiful, in every subject
and under every form of writing. The Greeks excelled in an
instinct for beauty and in the power of creating beautiful
forms, and of all the beautiful things which they created, their
own language was the first and the most wonderfu1."
No one acquainted with the study of languages would
wish to deny that the Greek language is one which in meter
and music, in richness and variety, in fertility of inflection and
delicacy of intricate expression, in flexibility and multiform
capacity, in sweetness and strength, was, and is, unrivaled
among the many tongues of the world.
The poet Shelley paid this tribute to this wonderful
tongue: "The very language of the Greeks ... in variety, in
simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness excels every other
language of the Western World."
MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT 9
Goethe said: "Study Moliere, study Shakespeare, but be-
fore all study the ancient Greeks - always the Greeks." "As
the most beautiful, rich, and harmonious language ever spoken
and written," said Philip Schaff, it was worthy "to form the
pictures of silver in which the golden apple of the Gospel
should be preserved for all generations."
Now, if as Prof. A. T. Robertson said: "The chief treasure
of the Greek tongue is the New Testament," 1 then surely
everyone who is called upon to expound the Scriptures, and
who has the opportunity, will wish to be familiar with this,
the most beautiful of languages, the Greek.
II
But the Greek of the New Testament is not the classical
Greek, the Greek of Pericles and Sophocles and Euripides and
Homer. Until some forty years ago it was customary in many
circles to call the New Testament Greek "Biblical Greek" or
"Judean Greek" or to say that. it was distinguished from clas-
sical Greek by the many Hebraisms and the Aramaic idioms
found in it. Thayer in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament (1889) has fourteen columns of words which he
terms "Biblical Greek."
In 1894 Friedrich Blass said that New Testament Greek
was "to be recognized as something peculiar, obeying its own
laws." 2 In 1889 Edwin Hatch wrote: "Biblical Greek is thus
a language which stands by itself." In 1893 Cremer adopted
the words of Richard Rothe and declared: "We can indeed
with good right speak of a language of the Holy Ghost. For
in the Bible it is evident to our eyes how the Divine Spirit
at work in revelation always takes the language of a particular
people, chosen to be the recipients, and makes of it a char-
acteristic religious variety by transforming existing linguistic
elements and existing conceptions into a shape peculiarly ap-
propriate to that Spirit. This process is shown most clearly
by the Greek of the New Testament." 3
That was the way many scholars spoke a generation or two
ago, but now, due to the many recent discoveries in the field of
the Greek papyri, which constitute a dramatic and most im-
portant chapter in the history of Greek New Testament studies
and which throw a flood of brilliant light on the manners and
customs, the daily life and language, of the people in the
10 MINISTER AND IDS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
Graeco-Roman world of the New Testament period, the lan-
guage of the New Testament is no longer considered so peculiar
as it once was. Within the past five decades there have been
countless discoveries of Greek papyri which have brought us
into much closer touch with the ordinary speech of the people
of the New Testament days than we ever had been before;
and one of the first things which has been made clear is that
the old-time distinction between common Greek and a special
Greek created by the Holy Ghost can no longer be held valid.
The peculiarities which earlier scholars were able to discover
in the language of the New Testament are, in the light of the
papyrological discoveries of recent years, regular features of
the vernacular of the period.
These plain, unpretentious scraps of papyrus found in the
drifting sands of Egypt help us to reconstruct the background
of the New Testament with a wealth of detail in1.possible of
achievement before. "It is almost as though we were wit-
nessing a talkie film of the first century," says Caiger,
"a travelogue showing the contemporaries of our Lord and His
disciples." 4 Through the lens of the papyri we see the message
of the New Testament against the social and political back-
ground of that first century of our era.
For the lucid explanation and substantial proof of the real
character and nature of New Testament Greek we are indebted
to the mental alertness of the German scholar Adolf Deiss-
mann. The story is an interesting one. In 1895 Herr Deiss-
mann, at the time not a university professor or even a clergy-
man, but a young candidate for the ministry, a Privatdozent
at Marburg, happened one day to be turning over in the Uni-
versity Library of Heidelberg a new section of a volume con-
taining transcripts from the Berlin collection of Greek papyri.
As he read, he was suddenly arrested by the likeness of these
papyri words to the language with which he was familiar in
his study of the New Testament. Further examination served
to deepen the initial impression, and he realized that he held
in his hand the key to the old problem. To Deissmann, ac-
cordingly, is attributed the honor of an inference "which is
without doubt the greatest single discovery of an interpretative
principle ever made in New Testament archaeology." (Cobern,
The New Archaeological Discoveries, p.30.)
With regard to the New Testament, Deissmann first saw
MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT 11
that while the language differs from classical Greek, it is
neither "Special Greek," nor "Aramaic Greek," nor "Biblical
Greek," nor yet "Sacred Greek"; still less "tired Greek" or
"bad Greek"; he saw that it was just the common language of
the time, the everyday parlance of the masses of workaday
folk throughout the confines of the vast Roman empire in the
first century of our era. Deissmann in his Bible Studies and
Light from the Ancient East proved that the vehicle of the
universal Gospel was the universal language of the first cen-
tury, the spoken and written Koine. The Apostles, followers
of One whom the common people heard gladly, wrote in the
common language of living men and women of their day.
These facts can hardly fail to bring the Gospels and
Epistles of the New Testament nearer to us and to emphasize
the personal, living background which underlies them. It is
clear that Paul and Peter and John were sending living mes-
sages to living men and women, and the more clearly we are
prepared to realize what their messages meant to their first
readers, the more clearly are we prepared to realize what their
message is intended to teach the needy world of our twentieth
century.
Most of these papyri, now reposing in German, British,
and American museums and libraries (Chicago, Michigan,
Cornell, Princeton, Yale), were dug up from the rubbish
heaps of buried cities or taken from the mummified bodies of
men and crocodiles of Egypt. There they were thrown on
rubbish heaps - old discarded office records, worn-out books,
legal documents, leases, bills, receipts, marriage contracts, di-
vorces, wills, decrees issued by officials, denunciations, suits
for the punishment of wrongdoers, minutes of judicial proceed-
ings, tax lists and papers in great numbers. Here were letters
and notes and diaries, schoolboy exercises - all furnishing a
vivid cross section of contemporary life as it was lived during
the time when Christ and His Apostles were here on earth.
These show us the people, their characters, the inner recesses
of their minds and hearts, how they talked and how they
lived. As Schubart says in Einfuehrung in die Papyruskunde: 5
"Mehr als andere Zeugen des Altertums oeffnen uns die
Papyri einen Blick ins Leben der Familie und des einzelnen,
so dass wir den Menschen auf seinem Lebenswege von der
Geburt durch Kindheit und Schule, Ehe und Beruf bis zum
Grabe begleiten koennen."
12 MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
Now the hope and longing once expressed by Bishop J. B.
Lightfoot while lecturing before his class at Cambridge,
namely, "If we could only recover letters that ordinary
people wrote to each other without any thought of being
literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the
understanding of the language of the New Testament gen-
erally," 6 has been fulfilled and realized.
In view of the light and help which these recent dis-
coveries shed on the right understanding of the New Testa-
ment language, no one can deny the truthfulness of Good-
speed's statement in his introduction to A Greek Papyrus
Reader, namely: "The value of these studies for the language
of the New Testament has become increasingly evident, and
some acquaintance with such documents must now be rec-
ognized as an indispensable part of a thorough training for
New Testament work."
III
To this Greek New Testament we pastors and preachers
of the Gospel must go to find the precious truth often left
untranslated, because no two languages are exactly commen-
surate, and it is impossible for the English or the German com-
pletely and adequately to reproduce the Greek. The single
words of one language never can represent the single words
of another language. The idioms of one language never are the
exact equivalents of the idioms of another language. Of neces-
sity all translations, even the best, are only approximations.
To get at the original trulh, the translation must be supple-
mented by paraphrase and exposition, and these are accurately
possible only to the reader of the New Testament in the
original.
William G. Ballantine in the introduction to his The River-
side New Testament, A Translation from the Original Greek
into the English of Today (1923) says: "To translate from one
language into another is like playing on the piano what was
written for the violin. The fundamental melody may be faith-
fully reproduced, but many subtle effects which the composer
intended are inevitably lost, and effects which he did not in-
tend are added."
Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare in Latin. Ten-
nyson would hardly be recognizable in French. Webster's ora-
tions could not be made to thunder in Italian. Goethe would
MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT 13
appear somewhat stiff in English. There never yet was a trans-
lation which did not leave much untranslated, because it is
untranslatable. The Greek student, therefore, with his Greek
New Testament in his hand, reading the very words written
or spoken by the Apostles Peter or Paul, comes more nearly to
the men themselves and to their meaning than anyone can
hope in an English or German translation. "There are in every
New Testament book," says Buel, "fervors, sighs, heart tones,
tears half discernible, plays upon words, deft and delicate
ironies, the impress of which the Greek alone has preserved.
Translate them? Well, yes, when you can dig the fly out of
the amber and write out on paper the song of the skylark."
Surely, then, anyone who is responsible for the exposition
of the Scriptures and who has the opportunity ought to know
the words and idioms in the original. Matthew, Luke, Peter,
and Paul did not know English or German, and the only way to
converse with these men on familiar terms is to know their
language and to hear them speak their own tongues.
IV
We say that the Greek of the New Testament has riches
and beauties which are untranslatable. Let us notice a few
of these.
1. John records the words of the Lord: "In My Father's
house are many mansions" (John 14: 2). The Greek is [!OVaL
JtoAAat, from the Greek verb [!£vO) as its root. Why our English
translations should translate it "mansions" is difficult to say.
We know, of course, that the "mansions" came into our
English versions from the Latin in the Vulgate, "mansiones,"
but why that translation was carried over into the English
and maintained there we cannot see. The Greek word really
means «abiding places," «resting places"; the very heart of our
English word «home" is in it. Mansions? There is no thought
of mansions in the Greek word, no least suggestion of magnifi-
cence, or stateliness, or coldness, or servants, or formality,
which we usually associate with the word "mansions." It is
just the plain, simple, hearty, wholesome word for «home."
Jesus meant to say, and He did say: "Let not your heart be
troubled. In My Father's house are many resting places, just
like in a comfortable, peaceful, quiet home," and the reader
of the Greek Testament sees that meaning at the very first
14 MINISTER AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
glance. The student of the English versions is unable to see
the full and rich meaning of these words.
2. Another untranslatable peculiarity of the Greek is that
its verbs very frequently compound themselves with many dif-
ferent prepositions, anyone of which when used gives to the
verb its own somewhat new or entirely different shade of
meaning. Our English and German versions can never fully
reproduce these varying meanings, since they cannot be sim-
ilarly compounded.
For example, in Hebrews 12: 2 we have the phrase:
"Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith."
The verb in the Greek is not the simple verb for looking,
oQaw, but the compound verb with the preposition MO, which
becomes then (l