PAPYRI AND OSTEACA

to the scientific scholar, who must worii with the fidelity of the wise steward.

In the same way problems of syntax and of style are considerably advanced by the papyri. It is possible, lor example, to place the whole theory of the preposi-tions on a new basis. The use of the prepositions in Late Greek is very interesting. To mention but one small point, we are now able to make much more exact statements with regard to those prepositions in the NT which denote a vicarious relation — and how im-portant these are in the Apostles' personal confessions of faith 1 The syntactical peculiarities of the NT, which used often to be traced back to Semitic influence, can also as a rule be paralleled from the papyri. The whole question of Semiticisms will now be able to be treated afresh. Formerly, when the NT used to be 'isolated' far too much, the question was generally answered in such a way that the influence of the so-called 'genius' of the Hebrew or Aramaic language, especially on the Primitive Christians, was greatly exaggerated. Linguistic phenomena that could not be found recorded in the ordinary Greek Grammars were described summarily as Semiticisms. It was forgotten that the NT and the Septuagint are for the most part documents of the popular language, and that the popular language in Greek and in Semitic has much in common. For example, the so-called 'paratactic' style of St. John's Gospel and St. John's Epistles, which used generally to be pronounced strongly Semitic, is in fact simply popular style, and has its parallels in inscriptions and papyri which certainly are not under Semitic influence. The existence of Semiticisms in the Greek Bible is of course not denied by recent BibUcal investi-gators — in the books translated from Semitic originals they are really numerous — but the number of Semiticisms has been considerably reduced, and in proportion as the Semitic character of the NT recedes, its popular character is made to advance.

It is lexicography, perhaps, that derives most benefit from the new documents. Late Greek is rich in new words and new meanings of old words: the virgin soil of the fife of the people is inexhaustible. Grammarians of a later age — the so-called Atticists — lured by Attic Greek of the classical period as by a phantom, fought against these new words and meanings, branded them as 'bad,' and tried to root them out. A number of litterateurs suffered themselves to be bound by the rules of the Atticists, as if they had been hving in the 5th cent. B.C. This unhistorical, pedantic, and dogmatic tendency left the men of the NT practically untouched. Men of the people themselves, they spoke as the people spoke, and in the Gospels, for example, they for the first time introduced the language of the people with vigour into literature. By reason of its popular character, the language of the first Apostles is pre-eminently a missionary language, and this language it was that really enabled Christianity to rise to a world-religion. All this is confirmed most amply by the new discoveries. Words that we used formerly to regard as speciflcally 'BibUcal' or 'New Testament,' we find now in the mouth of the people. Besides the papyri the inscriptions are also rich sources. Illustrative quotations from the papyri are for us particularly UfeUke, because we can generally date them even to the day. Turn over the pages of the second volume of Oxyrhynchus Papyri pubhshed by Grenfell and Hunt, and you find that the non-literary examples are almost exclusively documents of the 1st cent, a.d., i.e. the exact time in which the NT grew up. It will be possible from these and other papyri to enrich very greatly the future Lexicon of the NT.

Thus we see the justification of the statement that the new texts of popular Late Greek have placed the Unguistic investigation of the Greek Bible on new founda-tions. In yet another direction they yield an important harvest to theology. The more we realize the missionary

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PARABLE (IN OT)

character of Primitive Christianity, the more clearly we grasp the greatness of the Apostle Paul working among the proletariat of the great centres of the world's com-merce — Ephesus, Corinth, etc. — the more we shall feel the necessity of studying the merl to whom the gospel was preached, i.e. of obtaining, where possible. Insight into their Hfe, not only into their economic position and their family hfe, but into their very soul. As regards Egypt, we now possess wonderful documents among the papyri, especially in the numerous private letters, which were not intended for pubUcity, but reflect quite naively the mood of the moment. As they have made clearer to us the nature of the non-literary letters of St. Paul — and this alone constitutes a large part of the value of the papyri to NT study — so they make live again for us the men of the middle and lower classes of the age of the Primitive Christian mission to the world, especially for him who has ears to hear the softer notes between the lines. But we may assume that the civiUzation of the Imperial age was tolerably uni-form throughout the whole range of the Mediterranean lands, and that if we know the Egyptians of the time of St. Paul, we are not far from knowing the Corinthians and the men of Asia Minor of the same period. And thus we possess in the papyri, as also in the inscriptions, excellent materials tor the re-construction of the historical background of Primitive Christianity.

In conclusion, reference may be made once more to the fact that recently, in addition to the papyri, a great number of similar ancient texts, written on fragments of pottery, have been discovered in .Egypt, viz. the Ostraca. As the potsherd cost nothing (anybody could letch one from the nearest rubbish heap), it was the writing material of the poor man, and revenue officials were fond of using it in transactions with the poor. The ostraca, which are also numbered by thousands, are on the whole even more 'vulgar' than the papyri, but for that very reason valuable to us in all the respects already specified with regard to the papyri. The real founder of the study of ostraca on the great scale is Ulrich Wilcken, who has collected, deciphered, and historically elucidated the Greek ostraca. Next to him W. E. Crum has rendered similar services to the Coptic ostraca. To show that the ostraca, besides their in-direct importance, have also a direct value for the history of Christianity, we may refer to the potsherds inscribed with texts from the Gospels, or the early Christian legal documents recently discovered at the town of Menas, but chiefly to the Coptic potsherds containing numerous Christian letters and illustrating particularly the inner history of Egyptian Christianity.

The whole study of papyri and ostraca is still in its infancy. The scholar still sees before him a large portion of the field of work uncultivated. The layman also who loves his Bible may still expect much Ught from the wonderful texts from the period of the origin of the Septuagint and the NT, and there is no need to fear that the Light of the world (Jn 8'^) will pale before the new Ughts kindled for us by research. The more we set the NT in its own contemporary world, the more we shall reaUze, on the one hand, the contact between it and the world, and the more we shall feel, on the other hand, the contrast in which it stands with the world, and for the sake of which it went out to fight with and to conquer that world.

Adolf Deibsmann.

PARABLE (IN OT).— 1. The ward represents Heb. mashal, which is used with a wide range of meaning, and is very variously tr. both in LXX and in EV. The root means 'to be Uke,' and Oxf. Heb. Lex. refers the word to 'the sentences constructed in parallelism,' which are characteristic of Heb. poetry and gnomic Uterature; i.e. it refers to the Uterary form in which the sentence is cast, and not to any external comparison implied in the thought. Such a comparison, however, is often found in the m&shal, and, according to many