property of somebody. In other words, this "Samech' must be a fragment of a proper name, and the whole of that proper name can hardly have been other than Semachiah ("Jah is a support "), and if so the legend originally read, " Belonging to Semachiah." A single Semachiah is mentioned in Scripture, and he was a grandson of Obed-edom the Gittite! From this it by no means follows that the Samech-[iah] of Mr. Petrie's inscription was the veritable biblical grandson of Obed-edom, but these two circumstances do go a long way to show that Samech- or Semach-iah was a current personal name at Tell el-Hesy as Gath, many ages ago.

ARTICLE IX.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By the late Rev. William Henry Simcox, M. A. New York: Thomas Whittaker. (pp. xii. 226. 6%x4%.) 75 cents. The Theological Educator, Edited by the Rev. Robertson Nicoll, M. A.

The author of this neat little volume does much in advance to disarm criticism by his statement of his design. "This little book does not profess to be a complete grammar of New Testament Greek. . . . What is attempted wherein the language of the New Testament

is.... to indicate . . .

differs from classical and even post-classical usage: to classify such differences according to their origin." A careful study of the book leads us to doubt whether it should be called a grammar. While the absence of paradigms (there is not one in it, nor is there, for that matter, in Winer) does not put it out of that category, the form in which it is cast is rather that of an extended discussion, such as might be read before a philological association.

Terse statements of the classical usage of the cases considered, followed by others of the departures from this in the New Testament, would have given point to the discussion as given in the book, and have given it a better right to the title "grammar."

A

A book was needed to do just what has been attempted in this one. student of Winer is often perplexed and confused amid the maze of discussion and the richness of illustration, out of which sometimes the most painstaking study would not, apart from the student's own knowledge, gather just how New Testament Greek deviated from classical usage. Mr. Simcox had a clear field, and has contributed not a little to our knowledge, often tracing developments with remarkable acuteness and convincing clearness. Besides this merit, there is a freshness in the manner of exhibiting results and a manly independence of judgment which gives the book additional value. It is not composed of excerpts from other grammars, but bears on almost every page the marks of independent study of the text of the New Testament. Nor has the author confined himself to grammar. He has now and again a word to say on other though kindred matters. The relation of grammar to exegesis is touched on frequently, and generally we can say amen to his cautions. He has exposed a no uncommon fallacy in exegesis,―that of arguing from the usage of one writer to that of another. He has shown that there are wide differences in the usage of different authors, and that identical constructions are used differently in various authors. Mr. Simcox evidently started

out to point out deviations from classical Greek, but he has unconsciously illustrated the fact that it is difficult for an earnest Christian student to avoid taking an apologetic tone. This is especially shown in his endeavors to show that some usages in the New Testament are analogous to others of classic writers. The argument from analogy is an uncertain one at best, and grammarians are peculiarly prone to misuse it in trying to justify a doubtful construction.

Notwithstanding this, we can pay the author a high compliment by saying that he often reminds us of Dr. Hatch (e. g. pp. 92-93). He has done good service in emphasizing what other writers on grammar have too much lost sight of,-the influence of colloquial as distinct from literary Greek. Doubtless, just as the French preferred so often colloquial or "vulgar" forms to the classical and elegant in the parent Latin, the later Greek took up the expressions and constructions of common life instead of the more precise or ornate and literary. In a word, the book contains so much that is excellent, that, but for one prime defect, it might have claimed a place on the student's and the pastor's study table. A volume, to earn this place, must be easy of reference: its contents must be plainly indicated in indexes and in a table of contents. In these respects, Mr. Simcox's volume is sadly lacking. There is a very full index of Scripture texts, but it is the only one. The table of contents is also very meagre. There are headlines on alternate pages, but these do not supply the defect. The addition of an index of subjects and one of Greek words treated would increase the value of the book fivefold. Lacking these, the use of the book is limited mainly to its treatment of the passages given in the index. Another defect has been spoken of above. Clearly the man who wrote this book had not had the experience of teaching. His work betrays the earnest and patient study of a pastor and scholar, but lacks the precision and clearness of statement which the experienced instructor attains. Principles of grammar may be found in the book-after a hunt-but when the statement is found, it will often be seen that the lucidity of expression which is a sine qna non of a grammar is wofully lacking.

The author's knowledge of classical Greek was evidently very great, but he has doubtless made some slips. For instance, we find (p. III) that "the use of the subjunctive without ἂν . . . . . with ἄχρι and μέχρι . . . . is at most non-Attic." But Professor Goodwin (Grammar, 2d ed., p. 280) says, "The omission of av after these particles [including the two mentioned by Mr. Simcox] occurs sometimes in Attic prose." We prefer following Professor Goodwin to accepting the implication that the construction is “nonAttic."

The ascription (p. 112) of the more frequent use of où μý to “the tendency of a declining language [the italics are not Mr. Simcox's] to heap up emphatic words till emphasis is lost " loses sight of the well-known classic reiteration of negatives, e. g. in the oft-quoted passage from Plato :-"ovôéñoтa ovdaμý οὐδαμῶς ἀλλόιωσιν οὐδεμίαν ἐνδέχεται.” In the treatment of the article with Kúpios and Xplorós much help might have been got from Gersdorf's Beiträge

zur Sprach-characteristik der Schriftsteller des Neuen Testaments. We do not forget that the author disclaims making a "complete" grammar when we point out that readers would hardly suspect from reading pages 52-53 how frequently ὅς μεν ός δε have displaced ὁ μέν—ὁ δέ in the New Testament. In the list of passages (p. 111) where čav is found with the indicative, Rev. ii. 23 is omitted. The chapter on the prepositions is a good one. But we are surprised that so little is said of ews. This omission is the more strange from the fact that the purpose of the book included a discussion of this, since perhaps no word in the New Testament deviates more from classical usage than this one. In classical Greek ws is never used as a preposition, yet its most frequent employment in the New Testament is as a preposition governing the genitive.

The author's English is vigorous, though sometimes inelegant, as when he speaks of "sticking on a termination to foreign names.

The use of the form "Josepus" savors a little of pedantry. We do not see the need of changing the accepted form of that historian's name.

The publishers have gotten the book up in good shape; it is well printed, neat in appearance, and remarkably free from typographical errors. It is too bad that they allowed it to go forth without the requisite indexes.

By. J. H. A.

APOLOGETICS; or, the Scientific Vindication of Christianity. Ebrard, Ph. D., D. D., Professor of Theology in the University of Erlangen. Translated by Rev. John Macpherson, M. A. In three Volumes. Vol. II. (pp. viii. 423.) Vol. III. (pp. vii. 406.) New York: Scribner & Welford. 1877. 7x334. (Clark's Foreign Theological Library.)

The three volumes which Professor Ebrard has devoted to this subject are a cyclopædia in themselves. The range of discussion is enormous, and the literature brought under review is enough to appal any ordinary student. In the first volume, the author treats of natural theology in all its relations, including a discussion of the whole constitution of the human mind, and of the state into which it has been brought by sin, and of the whole doctrine of design in nature; in the second volume, he treats of Darwinism, materialism, and pantheism, and devotes three hundred pages to the subject of comparative religions, while the third volume devotes as much more space to a general discussion of ethnography.

The whole work is really a defence of the propositions that (1) “among all the peoples of the heathen world [there is] a most decided tendency to sink from an earlier and relatively purer knowledge of God; " (2) "the unity of the human race and the unity of its primitive tradition is an incontestable result of historical investigation." "The most diverse peoples, sprung from the most diverse stems, have the remembrance of one common primitive history of their common ancestors, and this common ground in their reminiscences extends down exactly to the building of the tower and the confusion of languages, and no further. These peoples could not have had a reminiscence of this common primitive history unless this had been transmitted to them by their forefathers. The conclusion that 'because the heathen have

similar traditions, the original biblical tradition is itself no better than such traditions,' is the ne plus ultra of absurdity and vacuity" (vol. iii. pp. 317-321).

The Redemptive Acts of God are considered under the titles of The Flood, The Confusion of Languages and Separation of Peoples, God's Educative Procedure in the Patriarchal Age, The Law and the Ordinance of Sacrifice, The Period of the Judges, The Period of the Kings and the Prophets, and The Divine Act of Redemption.

It is refreshing, in these days of materialistic evolution, to find an author of so much learning, approaching the subject entirely from the creative and supernatural standpoint. With reason he contends that, "from history it can be proved that with the entrance of redemption a ferment in the history of the human race began of an essentially new quality, which did not exist in that of man left to himself, which, where it enters, interrupts the process of a constant decline, and calls for and necessitates a decision for or against God, and thereby leads to a separation within the ranks of mankind, which becomes ever more and more clearly marked. This, we say, in opposition to pantheism and materialism which blindly maintain the contrary, can be proved from historical facts. These two theories of the universe, which are one at root, affirm that the human race has gradually developed from an undeveloped, even brutish, at least ‘a not yet moral,' and a 'religionless' condition, and is conceived of in a regular progression toward a higher development. According to the pantheistic theory, religion as such is only a relative stage in the development, and in the circle of the various religions Christianity is at best the most highly developed religion to which man has yet attained, but as a religion it is always only a stage in the development, which it must transcend for the higher stage of pure knowledge, so that from this higher, yea, highest stage (surmounted, however, since Hegel and D. Fr. Strauss), man looks down upon Christianity as upon a surmounted standpoint. According to the cruder forms of materialism, religion and Christianity are not at all a step upwards. but a step downwards, the development only of an impeding reaction. Both pantheism and materialism, however, assume that the human race has gradually advanced from a condition in which it had no moral law, first of all to a dull fetishism, then by degrees to a mythological polytheism, then to abstract monotheism, then to Christianity, and finally to pantheism. The actual history of religions, however, shows at all points precisely the contrary. If we turn to the history of ligion among the cultured nations of antiquity, taking as our guide the distinguished investigations of Max Müller, Spiegel, Lipsius, Ebers, Schrader, Duncker, etc., we find that in all cultured antiquity, the farther back we go into the past, there is a nearer approach to the knowledge of the one living, holy God, conjoined with a more wakeful ethical consciousness of the distinction between good and evil, and a more lively expectation of a coming redeemer; and that the farther down we come along the stream of time, the greater is the falling away from this primitive religion through moral levity in respect of the obscuration of