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    ( Continued from p . 17 . ) The author of Palaeoromaica , in his first disquisition , examines the opinion , that a knowledge of the Greek language was general and almost universal in the age of the apostles , an opinion which , he submits , he proves to be at once contrary to probability and to facts . Now a great ideal of this

    argument , in which the author discusses at some length the opinions of Walpole and Dr . Falconer , has really very little to do with the main question . Indeed we may say that it has none at all , except as it bears on the argument of antecedent probability , which , as Dr . Maltby observes , after all " must partly at least be founded in a species of a priori reasoning against a supposed historical fact . " It is not , perhaps , so completely open to the objection as Hardouin ' s second position was ; but the latter has , on the other hand , the advantage of being a much more cautious and proveable proposition than that of his disciple .

    In the second and third disquisitions , the author submits on somewhat the same line of argument , that , considering that at least one of the Gospels and several of St . Paul ' s Epistles ( including , as the strongest point , the Epistles to the Corinthians , on the same ground as Hardouin had put it ) were addressed to Latins , if might have been expected that these portions , at least , of the New Testament should have been sent to them rather in Latin than Greek . He further argues that our Elzevir * text bears marks of being a version from

    the Latin , and that it is not improbable that a translated or retranslated text may have supplanted the ori ginal ; the author not himself determining the question in all cases whether the lost Latin , from which the present Greek text is a supposed translation , was the immediate original , or only itself a version from a lost Greek original . The interesting part of this disquisition consists in an inquiry , well worthy of clos ^ ihvestigation , into the striking peculiarities of the Apostle Paul . To support , however , the author ' s argument , that the existing Greek of the Apostle ' s Epistles cannot be his original

    text , because he must have been a man of learning and therefore able to write purer Greek than these Epistles exhibit , rests on the assumption of a great deal to which it is very difficult to allow any probability , in the face of universal testimony and tradition to the authenticity of his writings . No reasonable allowance for defects in translation would , moreover , in any way account for or bear the blame of the main peculiarities of the Apostle ' s style , though they might be the occasion of some of the present anomalous words used in the Greek text .

    The fourth disquisition proceeds to support the author ' s theory by a list of words , phrases , &c . ; all , as he contends , tending to establish that what is called the Hellenistic style is not Hebrew but Latin-Greek , and to prove the conclusion which he draws , that our present text is derived from the Latin . In doing this , he is obliged to deal the same measure , for like reasons , to the existing Greek versions of the Old Testament , as well as to all the remains

    * By this of course he means all the existing Greek texts and MSS ., though he chooses throughout ( except in a short note ) to adopt rather an absurd system of reference to and impeachment of this edition only ; a plan which answers no other end than to give a needless appearance of evasion and disingenuousness to a book otherwise sufficiently open and straight-forward .

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    OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONTR 6 VERSY AS TO THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF THE BOOKS OP TOE NEW TESTAMENT ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 96, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/16/