The Writers of the New Testament by William Henry Simcox

THE “Language of the New Testament” was an attempt to describe what was common to its writers; what marked them off as a body, both from pagan writers, Attic and Hellenist, and from Jewish Hellenists, like Philo and Josepus. But though all New Testament writers approach more or less to a common type, and diverge more or less from the established style of their contemporaries and predecessors, each of them has not only a style and a manner, but almost a language, of his own,—each, at least, has his own compromise or compromises between the Hebraistic elements of his thought and the Hellenic or Hellenistic elements of his language. Then, too, each has, to some extent, a vocabulary of his own; and the vocabularies of the New Testament writers suggest groupings which do not always coincide with the groupings suggested by style. In the text of the present work, my brother has given a description in outline of the style and language of each of the writers of the New Testament. The first of the Appendices is intended to bring out something of the affinities of vocabulary between different groups of writers. Perhaps the most important point which they illustrate is that in vocabulary, though not in style, St. Luke stands closely related to the disputed or disputable works of St. Paul on one side and to the so-called catholic epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. Jude on the other. The second of the Appendices is intended to illustrate with something of detail the contrasts between the Greek of the New Testament and other Greek, which have been described in the “language” and in the “writers” of the New Testament. I have only to add that the book is printed from my brother’s MSS., which he left ready for press, and that Mr. Thompson renewed his kindness in reading the proofs of the text.

G. A. SIMCOX.

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