ART. II. ON THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK STYLE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

By Henry Planck, Professor of Theology in the University of Gottingen. Translated from the Latin by the Editor.

PRELIMINARY NOTICE.

THE following article is a translation of the celebrated Commentatio de vera Natura atque Indole Orationis Graecae Novi Testamenti; which, in this short compass, has contributed more to illustrate and fix the character of the New Testament Greek, than any other work that has ever appeared. It was first published in 1810, on occasion of the author's becoming Professor Extraordinary in Göttingen; and was afterwards reprinted in the Commentationes Theologicae of Rosenmueller, Leips. 1825. The author is the son of G. J. Planck, also a professor in Göttingen, who has long been distinguished in Germany as an ecclesiastical historian. The younger Planck was born in 1785, was educated in his native university, became afterwards Repetent at the same time with Gesenius, was made Professor Extraordinarius in 1810, and Ordinarius in 1823. The present article then was written when he was twenty-five years of age; and a fairer pledge of future usefulness and celebrity has rarely been held out. It was the plan of the author to pursue his inquiries farther, and to embody the results of them in a work to be entitled: Isagoge Philologica in N. T. i. e. 'A Philological Introduction to the New Testament.' After the appearance of Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon in 1812, his publisher applied to him to prepare a similar lexicon of the New Testament. This however he declined, thinking it more judicious to confine himself entirely to the Old Testament; but recommended warmly the younger Planck, as peculiarly qualified for such a work. It was therefore proposed to him and undertaken; and he has ever since been nominally engaged in it. But the fair fruits of early promise have all been blasted by repeated and habitual attacks of epilepsy, under which both body and mind have sunk into decrepitude; and it is only with. feelings of unmingled sadness, that one can behold him in his lecture-room; whence not unfrequently he must be carried out in a fit. A few articles, as specimens of his projected lexicon, have occasionally been published; some of which we may here

after present to our readers; but the work itself has made little progress. The writer was informed by Gesenius, who had recently seen the collections and preparations which the author has made for it, that they all amount to little, and would be comparatively of no value in other hands. Indeed, Planck has published nothing of importance for the last ten

years.

This is not the proper place to enter into an account of the contest, which was so long carried on in regard to the character of the Greek style of the New Testament; which contest the present article seems to have put completely at rest. It is however within the Editor's plan, to give at some future time a history of this controversy. In the mean time the reader may be referred to Winer's Grammatik, 3d Ed. p. 11 seq. and p. 18, Amer. Ed. Planck's Einleitung in d. theol. Wissensch. II. p. 43 seq. Morus' Hermeneut. ed. Eichstadt. I. p. 216 seq.

The way first laid open by Planck in the following essay, has been followed out to a great extent by Winer, in his well known Grammar of the New Testament. Still the objects of these two writers are different. It was the design of the former to point out the elements of the later Greek as found in the New Testament, so far only as they relate to single words and forms of words; and since he expressly excludes the Syntax, it is obvious that his plan embraces only those points which belong, not to grammar, but properly to the lexicon. Of course, out of the eight classes into which he divides the traces of the later language in the New Testament, only the third and fourth, which embrace the differences of flexion and gender, fall within the province of the grammarian. The main object of Winer was, upon the elementary materials thus collected by Planck, and augmented by his own long continued researches, to erect a grammatical system of the later Greek as exhibited in the New Testament; including of course the deviations as to the form and flexion of words, but having regard chiefly to the syntax, or at least to the use of words in connexion, as well as to the structure of sentences. The first work of Winer on the subject appeared in 1823, and was translated and published by Prof. Stuart and the Editor in 1825. Another edition of the original appeared in Germany in 1826, which was soon followed by a second volume of Excursus on some of the more important topics of the work. In 1830 a third edition was published, in which both the former volumes are united,

and the subjects reduced to their proper order. In this edition the author has also given the further results of his continued studies; and especially those flowing from an attentive and systematic perusal of all the later Greek writers.-It is not too much to say, that the labours of Planck and Winer have produced an entire revolution of opinion in regard to the language of the New Testament; and have placed the character of it in a light so strong and definite, that its general features can no longer be mistaken or perverted.

At the close of the following article are annexed, by way of appendix, some remarks of Planck on the proper mode of conducting the lexicography of the New Testament. They are too valuable not to be generally known; while the programm to which they are prefixed, is not of a nature to interest the public generally. And in order to lay before the reader the whole subject of the Greek language at once, I have inserted in a subsequent article a spirited "View of the Greek Language and its Dialects," from Buttmann's larger Greek Grammar. It will be seen that his views coincide with and elucidate those of Planck and Winer. EDITOR.

ON THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK STYLE of THE NEW TESTAMENT.*

Introduction.

There have been many writers on the subject of the Greek style of the New Testament; but their works, of course, are not all deserving of the same degree of estimation. Since the time when Henry Stephens, in jest as it would seem rather than

* In regard to the marginal references appended to this article, the Editor has preferred to let them remain as in the original. Since the date of its first publication, the excellent edition of Phrynichus by Lobeck, has appeared; but as this is accompanied by a very complete index, it was thought better not to change the references, which are now adapted to the edition of De Pauw; because, by so doing, those who possess the earlier edition would have no good clue to guide them, while those who have the edition of Lobeck will find every facility in the index. So also with regard to the Etymologicum Magnum, and particularly Josephus; of whom there are perhaps more copies in this country in the Cologne edition, (the one quoted by pages,) than in that of Havercamp or Oberthür. ED.

in earnest, pronounced the diction of the Scriptures of the New Testament to be pure Greek, and comparable in elegance even with the Attic, theologians know that there have ever been philologists, who have called in question this purity and inviolable chastity of the Greek of the New Testament. The contest has been long and attended with various success on both sides. In the course of the struggle, little attention has been paid to any correct explanation of the thing itself in question; for those who have tried their strength on this arena, have always attempted to shew, that the diction of the sacred authors was either wholly good Greek, or wholly barbarous and mixed up with Hebraisms. Those who maintained the former opinion, supposed they could not better accomplish their purpose and repel the charge of Hebraism, than by adducing from the profane writers, and chiefly from the poets, those passages which, either in the sense of the words, or in the composition, or in the construction, might seem in some manner reducible to the same appearance of Hebrew idiom. It was a more easy task for those who held the contrary opinion, to shew that the language of the New Testament is corrupted by many Hebraisms. But they too satisfied themselves, with merely pointing out in the sacred books that which is foreign to the genius of good Greek, and which may be referred to oriental usage. Hence it has arisen, that the whole controversy being thus brought to bear solely on the Hebrew colouring with which the diction of the sacred writers is tinged, the point which is of most importance for the correct interpretation of the sacred volume, was wholly left out of view, viz. the nature and character of that later Greek, which arose and flourished from the time of Alexander the Great, and of which so many traces are discoverable in the diction of the New Testament; though not without the trouble of laborious investigation. There are only three writers, who have treated of the common language of the Greek in the periods after the destruction of Grecian liberty, whose labours can be cited with approbation. The first is Salmasius, who in his Commentationes de Lingua Hellenistica, and other works, has discussed the subject at large and elegantly. Fischer is the second, who deserves and receives even at this day the thanks of all theologians, for the aid which

1 One work which Sturz quotes I have not been able to inspect, viz. Ge. Guil. Kirchmaieri Dissert. de Dial. Graccor. communi, Viteb. 1709, 4to.

he has afforded towards the correct interpretation of the sacred books in his Prolusiones de Vitiis Lexicorum N. T. To these a third has lately joined himself, viz. the learned Sturz, in his work De Dialecto Macedonica et Alexandrina,2 in which he has collected with great diligence and judgment the remains of this later language from the ancient sources.

Nevertheless and I wish to say it without arrogance-the subject in question seems to me not yet to have been developed by these three writers, with all the accuracy and fulness of which it is susceptible. For in regard to Salmasius, although he entered upon the right way, and well observed that after the subjugation of the Grecian cities by the Macedonians the dialects which had formerly prevailed separately, now coalesced; and that thence there arose a mixed or common language, which passed over also into the foreign provinces subdued by the Macedonians; yet, nevertheless, he paid little attention to the nature and character of this common language, which is the foundation of the sacred Hellenism; but thought it enough to shew, in opposition to the followers of D. Heinsius, who made of the language of the New Testament a peculiar dialect, that whatever is common to all and brought together from all the dialects, can no longer be regarded as being itself a peculiar dialect. Fischer advanced farther. Following up the beginning of Salmasius, he endeavoured to shew by examples, that the diction of the Macedonians and Alexandrians, which after the times of Alexander began to prevail in common life and intercourse, differed much from the more ancient language, whose force and elegance are still visible in the works of Attic writers now extant. It is understood not to have been the purpose or wish of this author, to investigate fully those things in the language of the sacred writers, which approach nearer to the character of this later idiom. This fuller and more accurate investigation, although exceedingly desirable, could not well be expected of him in accordance with his plan. But there is also another thing wanting in him, which I would estimate as of no less moment, viz. an historical exposition of the causes and progress by which all the Grecian dialects became thus intermingled and confounded; for it is only by such an exposition, that the internal character and the prevalence of this later idiom can be rightly understood. In regard to the plan of Sturz, we have