During recent years the methods of the commentator have undergone almost as great a revolution as those of the critic. New dictionaries and grammars[56] have helped to a more accurate understanding of words and phrases. But the most remarkable contribution to this form of study comes from a wholly new region, the region of contemporary records. Inscriptions in Greece and Asia Minor and _Papyri_ discovered in Egypt, dating from the very time when the New Testament was written, are found to contain phrases identical with what we had been accustomed to regard as peculiarly characteristic of Hellenistic or New Testament Greek. The conclusion to be drawn from these remarkable discoveries is that the books of the New Testament were written in the ordinary spoken Greek of their day, the very same form of language in which leases were drawn up and private letters were written by people at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, in which inscriptions were chiseled by sculptors in Cos among the isles of Greece. From this we are led to see the mistake of the old commentators in interpreting the New Testament by means of their knowledge of the classics. The consequence is that the Revised Version must be regarded as already partially out of date, since its committees were dominated by English university classical scholarship, as represented by Dr. Ellicott, the chairman of the English committee. [56] _E. g._, Grim-Thayer, _Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament_, and Grammars of New Testament Greek by Winer, Schmiedel and by Blass. Another modern movement of research also carries us away from the old classicism. While the New Testament writers used the colloquial language of the cosmopolitan Greek-speaking people of their day, they were all, or nearly all, brought up in Jewish schools and taught to think in Jewish modes of thought. This indicates that some of their expressions can best be interpreted by a knowledge of Aramaic, the language of Palestine in the time of Christ. And now Aramaic studies have been brought in to assist in the interpretation of the New Testament with luminous results.[57] [57] See Deissmann, _Bible Studies_; Dalman, _The Words of Jesus_.