The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans — John Shaqi
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the RomansMoule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans
Moule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Bible. Romans -- Commentaries
Again, he is aware that his rendering of the Greek article in many
passages (for example, where he has ventured to explain it by "_our_,"
"_true_," etc.) is open to criticism. But he intends no more in such
places than a suggestion; and he is conscious, as he has said
sometimes at the place, that it is almost impossible to render the
article as he has done in these cases without a certain exaggeration,
which must be discounted by the reader.
The use of the article in Greek is one of the simplest and most
assured things in grammar, as to its main principles. But as regards
some details of the application of principle, there is nothing in
grammar which seems so easily to elude the line of law.
It is scarcely necessary to say that on questions of literary
criticism which in no respect, or at most remotely, concern
exposition, this Commentary says little or nothing. It is well known
to literary students of the Epistle that some phenomena in the text,
from the close of ch. xiv. onwards, have raised important and complex
questions. It has been asked whether the great Doxology (xvi. 25-27)
always stood where it now stands; whether it should stand at the close
of our ch. xiv.; whether its style and wording allow us to regard it
as contemporary with the Epistle as a whole, or whether they indicate
that it was written later in St Paul's course; whether our fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters, while Pauline, are not out of place in an
Epistle to Rome; in particular, whether the list of names in ch. xvi.
is compatible with a Roman destination.
These questions, with one exception, that which affects the list of
names, are not even touched upon in the present Exposition. The
expositor, personally convinced that the pages we know as the Epistle
to the Romans are not only all genuine but all intimately coherent,
has not felt himself called to discuss, in a devotional writing,
subjects more proper to the lecture-room and the study; and which
certainly would be out of place in the ministry of the pulpit.
Meantime, those who care to read a masterly _debate_ on the literary
problems in question may consult the recently published volume (1893),
_Biblical Studies_, by the late Bishop Lightfoot, of Durham. That
volume contains (pp. 287-374) three critical Essays (1869, 1871), two
by Bishop Lightfoot, one by the late Dr Hort, on _The Structure and
Destination of the Epistle to the Romans_. The two illustrious
friends,--Hort criticizing Lightfoot, Lightfoot replying to
Hort,--examine the phenomena of Rom. xv.-xvi. Lightfoot advocates the
theory that St Paul, some time after writing the Epistle, issued an
abridged edition for wider circulation, omitting the direction to
Rome, closing the document with our ch. xiv., and then (not before)
writing, as a finale, the great Doxology. Hort holds to the practical
entirety of the Epistle as we have it, and reasons at length for the
contemporaneousness of xvi. 25-27 with the rest.[1]
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