Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/vines/foreword.txt

Text File | 1994-07-31 | 10KB | 174 lines

                               Foreword

Anyone who makes a serious and substantial contribution to the
understanding of the New Testament, renders a public service, for if
religion is the foundation of morality, by the knowledge of God is the
welfare of the people.  As a book the New Testament stands alone and
supreme, simple in its profoundness, and profound in its simplicity.
It is the record, in twenty-seven Writings, of the origin, nature and
progress of Christianity, and in the quality of its influence it has
done more for the world than all other books together.

        We are more than fortunate to have this Book in a Version made
immortal by William Tyndale, and we are grateful to have it also in
the Revised Versions of 1611, and 1881-1885.  But the fact remains
that they who are entirely dependent upon a Version must miss very
much of the glory and richness of these Writings.  Provided there is
spiritual appreciation, he who can read the New Testament in the
language in which it was written stands to get the most out of it.
But, of course, all cannot do this; although the accomplishment is by
no means the preserve of the linguistic scholar.  Yet the average
reader is not wholly cut off from the treasures which lie in the Greek
of the New Testament, for these have been put within our reach by
means of Grammars and Lexicons, the special purpose of which has been
to aid the English reader. So far as my acquaintance with these works
goes, I do not hesitate to say that this Expository Dictionary more
completely fulfils this design than any other such effort, in that it
is at once a Concordance, a Dictionary, and a Commentary, produced in
the light of the best available scholarship.

        Without encumbering his work with philological technicalities
and extra-biblical references, Mr. Vine puts at the disposal of the
English reader the labours of a lifetime bestowed devoutly upon the
New Testament.

        To several of the features of this Dictionary I would like to
call attention.

        First, it shows how rich is the language of the New Testament
in words which present shades of the meaning of some common idea.

        A good illustration of this is found on pages 203-207, under
COME, and its related thoughts (e.g., APPEAR, pp. 64-67).  Here,
including the compounds, upwards of fifty words are employed to
express one general thought, and the employment of any one of these,
in any given passage, has precise historical or spiritual
significance.  If this root idea is followed out, for example, in its
bearing on Christ's Second Advent, it is profoundly important to
apprehend the significance respectively of erchontai, heko, phaino,
epiphaino, parousia, apokalupsis, and epiphaneia.

        Second, this Dictionary indicates the doctrinal bearing which
the use of chosen words has.  A case in point will be found on page
60, under ANOTHER.  The use of allos and heteros in the New Testament
should be carelully examined, for "another numerically" must not be
confounded with "another generically."  Mr. Vine points this out in
John 14:16.  When Christ said, "I will make request of the Father, and
He shall give you another Helper (allon Parakleton)," He made a
tremendous claim both for Himself and for the Spirit, for allos here
implies the personality of the Spirit, and the equality of both Jesus
and the Spirit with the Father. See also Mr. Vine's reference to the
use of these words in Galatians 1:6,7. For an illustration of how one
word can have a variety of meanings see pages 270-271, under DAY.
Unless such expressions as "man's day", "day of the Lord", and "day of
Christ", are distinguished, one cannot understand the dispensational
teaching of the New Testament. In this connection, the R.V. must be
followed in 2 Thess. 2:2.

        Third, this Dictionary shows how very many New Testament words
are compounds, and how important are prepositional prefixes.

        I think it was Bishop Westcott who said that New Testament
doctrine is largely based on its prepositions; in any case the
importance of them can scarcely be exaggerated.  These added to a word
either emphasise or extend its meaning, and many such words have
become Anglicized. For illustration take the three words anabolism,
katabolism, and metabolism. These words are used in relation to
biology and physiology. The root word in each is ballo, to cast, or
throw, and each has a prepositional prefix; in the first, ana, up; in
the second, kata, down; and in the third, meta, with.  Metabolism
tells of the chemical changes in living cells, by which the energy is
provided for the vital processes and activities, and new material is
assimilated to repair the waste; by a proper metabolism or
"throwing-together" of the substances of the body, health is promoted.
This building up of the nutritive substances into the more complex
living protoplasm is anabolism, or "throwing-up;" and the want of this
results in katabolism, or "throwing-down" of protoplasm. Now, two of
the three words occur in the New Testament.  For metaballo see p. 180;
and for kataballo, p. 172, in both cases all the references are given
(see Preface, p. 8, par. 4).

        For the possible range of prefixes to one word, see pages 203,
204; COME, with eis, and ek, and epi, and dia, and kata, and para, and
pros, and sun;  and two of the eleven compounds are double, No. 4 with
epi and ana; and No. 8 with para and eis.  These illustrations are
sufficient to show the scope and simplicity of this work and
consequently its immense usefulness to the English reader.

        Fourth, this Dictionary is compiled in the light of the new
knowledge which has come to us by the discovery of the papyri.  During
the last fifty years this light has been brought to bear upon the New
Testament with precious and priceless results.  In olden days in Egypt
it was a custom not to burn waste paper, but to dump it outside the
town, and the sands of the desert swept over it, and buried it, and
for centuries a vast mass of such rubbish has lain there.  However, in
1896-1897 Dr. Grenfell and Dr. Hunt began digging at Oxyrhynchus and
discovered a number of papyri, among which was a crumpled leaf,
written on both sides in uncial characters, which proved to be a
collection of Sayings attributed to Jesus, Logia which Dr. J. Hope
Moulton believed to be genuine.  These and very many other papyri were
classified and edited and one day when Dr. Deissmann was casually
looking at a volume of these in the University Library at Heidelberg,
he was impressed by the likeness of the language to that with which he
was familiar in his study of the Greek New Testament.  By further
study the great discovery was made that New Testament Greek is not the
Attic of the Classics, nor is it "a language of the Holy Ghost" as one
scholar called it, but it is the ordinary vernacular Greek of that
period, the language of everyday life, as it was spoken and written by
the ordinary men and women of the day, tradesmen, soldiers,
schoolboys, lovers, clerks, and so on, that is, the koine, or "Common"
Greek of the great Graeceo-Roman world.

        In illustration of this, look at Col. 2:14, which has several
words which are found in the papyri; and take one of these,
Cheirographon, handwriting.  This means a memorandum of debt, 'a
writing by hand' used in public and private contracts, and it is a
technical word in the Greek papyri.  A large number of ancient notes
of hand have been published and of these Dr. Deissmann says, "a
stereotyped formula in these documents is the promise to pay back the
berrowed money, 'I will repay'; and they all are in the debtor's own
hand, or, if he could not write, in the handwriting of another acting
for him, with the express remark, 'I have written for him'".  In such
a note-of-hand, belonging to the first century, and with reference to
a hundred silver drachmae, one named Papus wrote on behalf of two
people who could not write, "which we will also repay, with any other
that we may owe, I Papus wrote for him who is not able to write."

        Now, this expression occurs in the New Testament twice, in the
parable of "The Lord and his Servants", "have patience with me, and I
will pay thee all", and in Paul's note to Philemon concerning
Onesimus, "if he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on
mine account, I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay
it."

        In the famous Florentine papyrus of A.D. 85, the governor of
Egypt gives this order in the course of a trial,--"Let the
hand-writing be crossed out," which corresponds to the "blotting out
the hand-writing" of Col. 2:14.  Many such illustrations might be
given, from which we see that the papyri have a distinct expository
value.

        In Lexicons previous to this discovery are to be found lists
of what are called hapax legomena, words which occur once only, and
many of which, it was supposed, were created by the Holy Spirit for
the conveyance of Christian truth, but now all or nearly all such
words have been found in the papyri.  The Holy Spirit did not create a
special language for Christianity, but used the colloquial tonque of
the time; He employed the cosmopolitan Greek.  This fact has radically
affected our approach to the New Testament, and although, in view of
the magnitude of this Dictionary, it has been impossible to do more
than make a reference here and there to this learning (e.g., pp. 7, 8,
59), yet the whole is produced in the light of it, and so represents
present day scholarship.

        I might have made reference also to etymological,
cross-reference and other values in this work, but perhaps enough has
been said to indicate its scope and usefulness.  Mr. Vine has done a
great service to the non-academic reader of the New Testament, and
those also who are most familiar with the original tongue may learn
much from these pages.

                        W. Graham Scroggie, D.D.
                                        (Edin.)