renderings in St. Paul's Epistles. In Rom. iii. 8. render "whose judgment (xplois) is just." In Rom. xiii. 2 render " They shall receive to themselves judgment" (rpiow). 6. In 1 Cor. xi. 29 who could suppose that St. Paul meant that every unworthy communicant eats and drinks "damnation" to himself; and that, although in the next verse he speaks of the very same "judgment" as temporal and disciplinary (ñaidevóμe0a)? How many have been utterly terrified from the blessings of the Holy Communion, and have therefore been robbed of the highest means of spiritual grace by the deplorable reproduction of this mistrans lation in our Communion Service? All that St. Paul said was that a man who eats and drinks unworthily, by not discriminating the Lord's body, eats and drinks judgment to himself (кpíμa). On the shipwreck of sense caused by obliterating the distinctions of kρívw, diakoívw, katakoivw in this passage, see Ligh.foot On Revision, p. 85. 1. 1 Tim. v. 12. Why are English readers left unprotected to the dreadful perversion involved in saying that young widows who marry again "have damnation," whereas in vs. 14 he recommends them to do so? St. Paul merely says "incurring judgment," which is perhaps explicable by 1 Cor. vii. 28, 40. K. Rom. xiv. 23. "He that doubteth is damned if he eat "—i.e. damned for neglecting the mere scruple of a weak conscience! St. Paul says that if a man does not judge himself (ὁ μὴ κρίνων ἑαυτόν) in that which he alloweth he is happy; but if he eats in spite of a distinct scruple, he has been condemned (Kaтakéкρiтai),—obviously by his own conscience. II. Of the renderings of Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna, I have already spoken in the preface,' and will here only repeat that "hell" has entirely changed its old harmless sense of "the dim underworld," 2 and that, meaning as it now does to myriads of readers, "a 1 See too Lightfoot On Revision, p. 79. 2 "Helan" is "to cover." Archbishop Usher says that in Ireland "to hell the head" is to cover the head, and a hellier is a slater. In Hudibras the word is place of endless torment by material fire into which all impenitent souls pass for ever after death,"-it conveys meanings which are not to be found in any word of the Old or New Testament for which it is presented as an equivalent. In our Lord's language Capernaum was to be thrust down not "to hell," but to the silence and desolation of the grave (Hades); the promise that "the gates of Hades" should not prevail against the Church is perhaps a distinct implication of her triumph even beyond death in the souls of men for whom He died; Dives uplifts his eyes, not "in hell," but in the intermediate Hades, where he rests till the resurrection to a judgment, in which signs are not wanting that his soul may mean while have been ennobled and purified. The "damnation of hell" is the very different "judgment of Gehenna";'-a judgment which, in other passages, theologians with no shadow of secondary intention interpret to mean 'a disgraceful death"; and the words rendered "hellfire" are the "Gehenna of fire," an expression which on Jewish lips was never applied in our Lord's days to endless torment. Our translators are not, of course, responsible for the inferences drawn from words which have, since their day, changed their meaning; but our Revisers will be certain to bear in mind that "a good translator scrupulously abstains from introducing ideas of which the original contains no trace."2 66 used for the place where the tailor throws his shreds. The word must have begun to assume its darkest sense in 1611, or the translators would not have altered "O Hell, where is thy victory?" 1 Cor. xv. 55. "Gravissimae poenae et maxime contumeliosa mortis genera."-Schleusner, τ.υ. Γέεννα. 2 Origen tells us (c. Cels. vi. 25) that finding the word "Gehenna "in the Gospels for the place of punishment, he made a special search into its meaning and history; and after mentioning (1) the valley of Hinnom, and (2) a purificatory fire (εἰς τὴν μετὰ βασάνων κάθαρσιν), he mysteriously adds that he thinks it unwise to speak without reserve about his discoveries. No one reading the passage can doubt that he means to imply the use of the word "Gehenna among the Jews to indicate a terminable, and not an endless punishment. And he says in round terms that Celsus and others talked of "Gehenna" in total ignorance of its real meaning in which they have had many followers. : " EXCURSUS III. (p. 79). ON THE WORD αἰώνιος. The word "æonian," though sanctioned by Mr. Tennyson in the lines "Draw down æonian hills, and sow and though rendered very desirable by the sad confusion of eternity with the mere negative conception of endlessness, can perhaps hardly be naturalised. It is not worth while once more to discuss its meaning when it has been so ably proved by so many writers that there is no authority whatever for rendering it "everlasting," and when even those who, like Dr. Pusey, are such earnest defenders of the doctrine of an endless hell, yet admit that the word only means "endless within the sphere of its own existence," so that on their own showing the word docs not prove their point, and is, for instance, powerless against those who hold the doctrine of Conditional Immortality. But that the word does not always imply endlessness even with this very material limitation may be seen by any one who will consider some of the texts referred to on the following page. It may be worth while, however, to point out once more to less educated readers that αἰών, αἰώνιος, and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations, are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what, indeed, no one can deny) that in Scripture alúv, aivios must in many instances mean “having an end;" and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who at least knew Greek, uses alwvios as the epithet of "an interval." לְעוֹלָם pressions like Thus in the Old Testament αἰών, αἰώνιος, and many such varieties of expression as els alŵva alŵvos, &c., which with the Hebrew exor Ty hi? (è' alwva kal ĕrı, in saeculum et ultra, "for ever and beyond!") are in our version rendered "for ever," or "for ever and ever"; but so far from necessarily implying endlessness, they are used of many Jewish ordinances which ceased centuries ago, such as the sprinkling of the lintel at the Passover (Ex. xii. 24), the Aaronic priesthood and its institutions (xxix. 9; xl. 15; Lev. iii. 17; Numb. xviii. 19); the inheritance given to Caleb (Josh. xiv. 9); Solomon's temple (1 Kings viii. 12, 13); the period of slave's life (Deut. xv. 17, Job xli. 4); the burning of the fire upon the altar ("The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out," Lev. vi. 13, &c.); and the leprosy of Gehazi (2 Kings v. 27). How purely figurative these phrases are may be seen by such passages as the following :-"The land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night or day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever" (Is. xxxiv. 9, 10). And so fully is this a recognised idiom that in Deut. xxiii. 3, 6, we find "for ever" put side by side with "till the tenth generation;" and though it is added "thou shalt not seek their peace and prosperity for ever," yet of the very Moabites and Ammonites of whom this is spoken we find a prophecy of peace and comfort in Jer. xlviii. 47; xlix. 6. That the adjective aivios is applied to some things which are "endless" does not of course for one moment prove that the word itself meant "endless ;" and to introduce this rendering into many passages would be utterly impossible and absurd. To translate it in a few passages by "everlasting,” when in the large majority of passages it is rendered " 'eternal," is a purely wanton and arbitrary variation, which unhappily occurs in one and the same verse (Matt. xxv. 46). Our translators have naturally shrunk from such a phrase as "the endless God." The utter dearth of metaphysical knowledge renders most people incapable of realising a condition which is independent of time-a condition which crushes eternity into an hour, and extends an hour into eternity. But the philosophic Jews and the greatest Christian Fathers were quite familiar with it. "Eon," says Philo, "is the life of God, and is not time, but the archetype of time, and in it there is neither past, nor present, nor future." 1 "We that are not all, As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make One act a phantom of succession: thus Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow Time." In answer to the old argument invented by St. Augustine," and since his day so incessantly repeated,—the argument, namely, that if we do not make αἰώνιος κόλασις mean endless punishment, we have no security that alúvios (w means endless life, and that we thus lose our promise of everlasting happiness, I reply 1. That this is absolutely no argument whatever, and ought never to be heard again, because the very men who most insist upon it contemptuously set it aside if we ask them to apply identically the same argument, analogously, to such texts as 'all' die, even so in Christ shall 'all' be made alive." 66 As in Adam 2. That our sure and certain hope of everlasting happiness rests on no such miserable foundation as the disputed meaning of a Greek adjective which is used over and over again of things transitory. If we need texts on which to rest it we may find plenty, such as Luke xx. 36, Hos. xiii. 14, Rev. xxi. 4, Is. xxv. 6-8, 1 Cor. xv. passim, 2 Tim. i. 1c, 1 Pet. i. 4. v. 4, &c. Philo. TI άTрEπтòν Oeîov, ed. Mangey, i. 277; De Nom. Mutat. ad. fin (Mangey, i. 619): Greg. Naz. Orat. 38, "What to us is time measured by the motion of the sun, is to the Immortals the Eon."-See Ecclus. xviii. 8-11. 2 "Dicere autem in hoc uno eodemque sensu, vita aeterna sine fine erit, supplicium aeternum finem habebit. multum absurdum est." (De Civ. Dei, xxi 23.) |