On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
genealogy , gives the more probable quotient of 27 or 28 years for each descent . It is observable , that this discrepancy has no reference to any of the hypotheses devised for reconciling the genealogies in other respects ; but applies to them when considered as independent documents .
Matt . iii . 1 . Ev Se rats w / J-epais ejteivair *— ' In those days ;'—in what days?—Certainly not the days which are mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter ^ which were nearly thirty years before ; an interval , which though to us , at this distance of time , it may appear comparatively short , to the Evangelist , as some believe not more
than eight or ten years after the resurrection , must have been quite too long to allow of the two periods being identified in this manner . The days of the preaching of John the Baptist were not the days of the birth of Christ . There is an abruptness here from the absence of an antecedent , which it is not easy to account
for , on the supposition that the Gospel of Matthew is read by us in its original form , and it is difficult to remove it except by supposing that the first two chapters of this book , as they now stand , did not originally form part of it , but being inserted by some very early transcriber , have excluded the original introduction , which would have supplied the connexion . So that the awkwardness of
supposing the third chapter to be the beginning of the book , which is sometimes urged as a ground of argument for the genuineness of the first and second , in reality furnishes an argument against them . The particle Se , with which it sets out , could scarcely be found at the beginning of any composition , but implies a reference of some kind to what has gone before . The reference , however , cannot be to what is actually found there ,
for the reason already stated ; there must consequently have been originally something else which no longer exists . The third chapter has no connexion of any kind with the first and second ; it makes no reference to them whatever ; and , indeed , there is not a text in the whole gospel from which , if these two chapters were not extant , we should have any ground to suspect that they had ever existed . It may be observed , that this is an argument against the genuineness , and consequent authenticity , of the first two chapters of Matthew only ; not to those of Luke , which are quite differently
circumstanced , and which may be received without acknowledging the authority of the others ; or the reality of the extraordinary history which they are commonly supposed to contain . W . T .
Untitled Article
108 Notes on Passages of Scripture .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 108, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/36/
-