Samuel Ayres - The Expositor's Bible - Index

This brief survey has necessarily been occupied for the most part with the developments of recent research. But in these years as in previous periods the Old Testament has been the subject of much searching, preaching and writing which has taken little or no account of changes in criticism, or, indeed, of any criticism at all; but have taken the narratives as they found them, and, as far as authorship has been concerned, have made the assumptions which seemed easiest and most edifying. Such work, too, is most valuable. The spiritual life which speaks to us through the Hebrew Scriptures is so full of energy, variety, and truth that even the simplest methods of treatment yield great results. These results, moreover, have sometimes a special quality which is absent from more studious exposition. Even after many centuries the inspired books are like rich virgin soil which yield a harvest even to the crudest methods of cultivation. Thus the scribes of our day, instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven, are still bringing out of their treasures things new and old; and both alike minister to the coming of the Kingdom, both the new and the old, both the influence of ancient association and venerable tradition, and the new life and power and hope that spring to birth in dawning light of a new day of the Lord.

That the Old Testament will still hold its place of power in any new dispensation is guaranteed by its significance for Christ and His Gospel. As Prof. G. A. Smith has said in a work which states the religious position in the light of recent Biblical study, 33 33 Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, p. 11. Christ accepted the history recorded in the Old Testament "as the preparation for Himself, and taught His disciples to find Him in it. He used it to justify His mission and to illuminate the mystery of His Cross… Above all, He fed His own soul with its contents, and in the great crises of His life sustained Himself upon it as upon the living and sovereign Word of God. These are the highest external proofs – if indeed we can call them external – for the abiding validity of the Old Testament in the life and doctrine of Christ's Church. What was indispensable to the Redeemer must always be indispensable to the redeemed."

When we pass from the volumes of the Expositor's Bible that deal with the Old Testament to those which expound the books of the New Testament we discover less departure from the traditional attitude. And yet a very little knowledge of the enormous amount of research which has been prosecuted during recent years in the fruitful field of primitive Christian literature and its surrounding scenes must convince us that here also was a clamorous call for a fresh treatment of the whole subject. It is much to have the books taken one by one and treated each as a distinct entity; in this way we are led on to perceive that richer harmony of the various apostolic notes which means so much more than the unison of the older methods: First, instead of the familiar treatment of minute phrases commonly known as "text," we have the wider survey and broader handling of the arguments of the books, which to those who have not been accustomed to it appears as a revelation, so that these books become new things to them. Then we have that individual treatment, that temporary isolation of the books, which enables us to understand their limitations as well as the amplitude of their contents. Lastly, we come to see the specific teaching of the several New Testament writers, so that we can no longer confuse the distinctive message of the author of Hebrews with that of St. Paul, or confound the ideas of St. Peter with those of St. James.

The Expositor's Bible is based upon a more accurate text and more exact renderings of the New Testament than were available for previous works of exposition. The discovery of one of the two oldest known manuscripts at the Monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai, in the middle of the nineteenth century, is only one, though perhaps the greatest, of the steps in advance towards obtaining a correct Greek Testament which have been taken during the last hundred years. The immense labors of Tischendorf in the collation of manuscripts and readings from the Fathers, following the earlier work of Mill, Griesbach and others, but with a much richer mine of materials to draw upon, laid a foundation on which later experts have been laboring with the aim of producing the purest possible text. 34 34 See Tischendorf, Novum Testamentum Græce , 8th edit. Westcott and Hort went further in working out a scientific theory with canons of interpretation which at first appeared to sweep the field and claim almost universal assent. 35 35 See Hort, Introduction to Westcott and Hort's N.T. More recently, however, it has been felt that these scholars were tempted to rely too much on one or two old manuscripts – chiefly, indeed, on a single manuscript, the Vatican, and to treat too contemptuously the claims of what is known as the "Western Text," represented among other authorities by the great Cambridge MS., the Codex Bezae . Accordingly their text cannot be regarded as final. 36 36 See Blass, Philology of the Gospels ; Nestlè, Textual Criticism of the Greek Testament ; Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament . Meanwhile perhaps the soundest working Greek Testament is that edited by Nestlè for the "British and Foreign Bible Society," which strikes the mean of several critical editions. The more accurate text has been accompanied by more correct translations, of which the most conspicuous are the English and American Revised Versions. This may be described as substantially one and the same revision of the so-called "Authorized Version"; but there are several emendations of the American revisers which were not accepted by their more conservative English coadjutors, although in nearly every case they must be allowed to be improvements both as regards scholarship and also in lucidity. Since the Revised Version appeared several completely new translations of the New Testament into modern English have been published. 37 37 See especially Weymouth, The New Testament in Modern English ; Moffatt, The Historical New Testament ; The Twentieth Century New Testament .

The most remarkable characteristic of the latest Biblical criticism is the application to the New Testament of those disintegrating processes with the results of which on Old Testament studies we have long been familiar. This, however, is by no means so alarming as the claims of the more radical critics might suggest. It is true that some scholars carry their destructive criticism to an extreme – for instance, Schmiedel with the gospels, refusing to allow full assurance for the authenticity of more than five of our Lord's sayings, and Van Manen with the epistles, repudiating the authenticity of all those ascribed to St. Paul. 38 38 See Encyclopædia Biblica ; also Cheyne, Bible Problems . But these critics stand almost alone; at all events they do not represent anything like the normal position of New Testament scholarship. The accident of their prominence in one of the great Bible dictionaries, which is simply due to editorial sympathies, must not disguise the fact of their eccentricity. Nothing is more remarkable in recent criticism than the fact that while the more conservative of the two new dictionaries 39 39 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible . accepts the main critical position of advanced scholarship with regard to the Old Testament, it differs toto coelo 40 40 The Encyclopædia Biblica . from its rival in its treatment of the New Testament. In these respects it fairly corresponds to the position taken up by most of the writers of the Expositor's Bible.