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Articles_of_he_Bishop_of_Uramiah, page : 591
wonder if there are many, even among the hierarchy of the
Christian Church, who could follow the erudite exposition of
the learned Professor. All the more do I wonder when he seeks
to carry his readers into a labyrinth of languages, dead and
done with thousands of years ago. What about Aramaic, when very
few even among the Clergy are able to understand the Vulgate and
the original Greek version of the New Testament? More
especially when our researches are based simply upon Greek
and Latin etymology! Whatever may be the value of such
dissertations in the eye's of others we, nowadays, are absolutely
incapable of appreciating them from the angle of erudition;
for the oracular ambiguity attached to the prophetic utter-
ances to which I allude makes them elastic enough to cover
any case.
The "least" in the prophecy of St. John the
Baptist may not be the son of Mary, though he was looked
upon as such contemptuously by his own tribe. The Holy
Carpenter came from humble parentage. He was shouted
down, mocked and discredited; he was belittled and made
to appear the "least" in the public estimation by the Scribes
and Pharisees. The excess of zeal displayed by his followers
in the second and third centuries A.D., which was ever prone
to jump at anything in the form of a prophecy in the Bible,
would naturally induce them to believe that their Lord was
the person alluded to by the Baptist.
However, there is another difficulty in the way. How
can a person rely on the testimony of a book admittedly filled
with folk-lore? The genuineness of the Bible has univer-
sally been questioned. Without going into the question of
its genuineness, we may at least say that we cannot depend
on its statements concerning Jesus and his miracles. Some
even go so far as to assert that his existence as an historical
person is questionable, and that on the authority of the
Gospels it would be dangerous to arrive at any apparently
safe conclusion in this matter. A Christian of the Funda-
mentalist type cannot well say anything against my statement
of the case. If "stray sentences" and detached words in the
Old Testament can be singled out by synoptic writers as
applicable to Jesus, the comments of the learned writer of
these erudite and absorbing articles must command every
respect and appreciation even from the Clergy. I write in
the same strain, but I have tried to base my arguments on
portions of the Bible which hardly allow of any linguistic
dispute. I would not go to Latin, Greek, or Aramaic, for
that would be useless: I just give the following quotation in
the very words of the Revised Version as published by the
British and Foreign Bible Society.
We read the following words in the Book of Deuteronomy
chapter xviii. verse 18: "I will raise them up a
Christian Church, who could follow the erudite exposition of
the learned Professor. All the more do I wonder when he seeks
to carry his readers into a labyrinth of languages, dead and
done with thousands of years ago. What about Aramaic, when very
few even among the Clergy are able to understand the Vulgate and
the original Greek version of the New Testament? More
especially when our researches are based simply upon Greek
and Latin etymology! Whatever may be the value of such
dissertations in the eye's of others we, nowadays, are absolutely
incapable of appreciating them from the angle of erudition;
for the oracular ambiguity attached to the prophetic utter-
ances to which I allude makes them elastic enough to cover
any case.
The "least" in the prophecy of St. John the
Baptist may not be the son of Mary, though he was looked
upon as such contemptuously by his own tribe. The Holy
Carpenter came from humble parentage. He was shouted
down, mocked and discredited; he was belittled and made
to appear the "least" in the public estimation by the Scribes
and Pharisees. The excess of zeal displayed by his followers
in the second and third centuries A.D., which was ever prone
to jump at anything in the form of a prophecy in the Bible,
would naturally induce them to believe that their Lord was
the person alluded to by the Baptist.
However, there is another difficulty in the way. How
can a person rely on the testimony of a book admittedly filled
with folk-lore? The genuineness of the Bible has univer-
sally been questioned. Without going into the question of
its genuineness, we may at least say that we cannot depend
on its statements concerning Jesus and his miracles. Some
even go so far as to assert that his existence as an historical
person is questionable, and that on the authority of the
Gospels it would be dangerous to arrive at any apparently
safe conclusion in this matter. A Christian of the Funda-
mentalist type cannot well say anything against my statement
of the case. If "stray sentences" and detached words in the
Old Testament can be singled out by synoptic writers as
applicable to Jesus, the comments of the learned writer of
these erudite and absorbing articles must command every
respect and appreciation even from the Clergy. I write in
the same strain, but I have tried to base my arguments on
portions of the Bible which hardly allow of any linguistic
dispute. I would not go to Latin, Greek, or Aramaic, for
that would be useless: I just give the following quotation in
the very words of the Revised Version as published by the
British and Foreign Bible Society.
We read the following words in the Book of Deuteronomy
chapter xviii. verse 18: "I will raise them up a