I have now probably dealt sufficiently with the second of the three questions which I have put forward for our consideration. I have stated the general substance of the knowledge which has been permitted to come to us since the revision was completed. I now pass onward to the third and most difficult question equitably to answer, "To what extent does this newly-acquired knowledge affect the correctness and fidelity of the revision of the Authorised Version of the New Testament?" It is easy enough to speak of "ignorance" on the part of the Revisers, especially after what I have specified in the answer to the question on which we have just been meditating; but the real and practical question is this, "If the Revisers had all this knowledge when they were engaged on their work, would it have materially affected their revision?" To this more limited form of the question I feel no difficulty in replying, that I am fully and firmly persuaded that it would _not_ have materially affected the revision; and my grounds for returning this answer depend on these two considerations: first, that the full knowledge which some of us had of Winer's Grammar, and the general knowledge that was possessed of it by the majority, certainly enabled us to realize that the Greek on which we were engaged, while retaining very many elements of what was classical, had in it also not only many signs of post-classical Greek, but even of usages which we now know belong to later developments. These later developments, all of which are, to some extent, to be recognized in the Greek Testament, such as the disappearance of the optative, the use of [Greek text] with the subjunctive in the place of the infinitive, the displacement of [Greek text], the interchange of [Greek text] and [Greek text], of [Greek text] and [Greek text], the use of compound forms without any corresponding increase of meaning, the extended usage of the aorist, the wider sphere of the accusative, and many similar indications of later Greek--all these were so far known to us as to exercise a cautionary influence on our revision, and to prevent us overpressing the meaning of words and forms that had lost their original definiteness. My second reason for the answer I have given to the question is based on the accumulating experience we were acquiring in our ten years of labour, and our instinctive avoidance of renderings which in appearance might be precise, but did in reality exaggerate the plain meaning intended by the Greek that we were rendering. Sometimes, but only rarely, we fell into this excusable form of over-rendering. Perhaps the concluding words of Mark xiv. 65 will supply an example. At any rate, the view taken by Blass {114} would seem to suggest a less literal form of translation.