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of . the apostolic age and the Apocryphal books , and he thereby < Jf course proportionably increases his difficulty of accounting for the total disappearance of all this mass of original Latin literature . His remarks on tnetfe heads , however , contain a fund of highly curious and interesting matter , proving , no doubt , as might naturally be expected under such circumstances ,
that ' a great deal of Latinism exists in the corrupt and compounded Greek dialect then in use . But he is by no means so satisfactory in his opposition to the theory ( which has probably been pushed too far ) of the Hebraic or Syriac preponderance in this corruption , as he might have been , if he were acquainted , as it seems he is not , with those languages whose tracer he is so
anxious to disprove ; being , perhaps , under such circumstances , not very likely to discover them . It is one thing , too , to prove that a man writes either Latinized or Hebraistic Greek , and another to prove that he did not , in fact , write the Greek at all , but that what we suppose to be his work is a translation from a Latin or Hebrew orig inal . When an author like Eusebius , living comparativel y so near to the period of the writers of tnWe books , and speaking from his birth the same language , does not perceive the
circumstances of supposed mistake and confusion , which ( if they be well founded and obvious to a stranger in the nineteenth century ) must have been manifest to a Greek , in a hundred-fold degree ; when every peculiarity in their style is considered by such a man as accurately described and accounted for by the mere phrase of ryv &e yXwrrav iharsvovre ^ it requires a body of proof , strong indeed , to raise even a probable supposition that the peculiarities , of style in the books of the New Testament require any such
explanation as our author imagines . - The fifth disquisition strives , with much unsuccessful labour , at obviating a very important difficulty in the hypothesis , namely , how these Greek translations so completely got the better of the Latin originals;—how the influence of Roman literature declined , as Christianity spread in a western direction , so as to come more and more within its sphere;—how Latin
theology slept till the days of Tertulhan ;—and how , when the canon was formed , a general proscription of the Latin originals was proposed , resolved , and successfully executed . In this part of the work , by the way , are some important practical observations , which it would be well if critics , in discussing questions relative to the general state and diffusion of the books of the New Testament during the two or three first centuries , would always bear in mind . They relate to a common mistake of viewing and talking of these
writings in the early times of Christianity in the same way as they would do under our present advantages of having them printed , bound up in a volume ; and present in every house . Dr . Horsley tells Dr . Priestley , " that the principles of the Christian religion were to be collected neither from a single Gospel , nor from the four Gospels ; nor from the four Gospels with the Acts and the Epistles ; but from the whole code of revelation , consisting of the canonical books of the Old and New Testament . " The author before us very
properly observes , that •* in this case the principles of the Christian religion could scarcely have been collected till after the invention of printing . " We may add , that even some of the peculiar seats of learning , nearly a thousand years afterwards , seem , from the old catalogues preserved of their libraries , to have possessed only portions of the sacred books . But this observation rather militates against , than in any way supports , the author ' s hypothesis ; for it is obvious , that the dispersion and individuality of each book would reader a general concurrence in the desertion and destruction of the originals
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Original Language of the New Testament . 97
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VOL . I . H
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 97, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/17/
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