0000 - AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH

EDITION.

Having been honoured by a request to sanction an English translation of my Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien, I have felt it my duty to accede to the proposal. It seems to me that investigations based upon Papyri and Inscriptions are specially calculated to be received with interest by English readers. For one thing, the richest treasures from the domain of Papyri and Inscriptions are deposited in English museums and libraries; for another, English investigators take premier rank among the discoverers and editors of Inscriptions, but particularly of Papyri; while, again, it was English scholarship which took the lead in utilising the Inscriptions in the sphere of biblical research. Further, in regard to the Greek Old Testament in particular, for the investigation of which the Inscriptions and Papyri yield valuable material (of which only the most inconsiderable part has been utilised in the following pages), English theologians have of late done exceedingly valuable and memorable work. In confirmation of all this I need only recall the names of F. Field, B. P. Grenfell, E. Hatch, E. L. Hicks, A. S. Hunt, F. G. Kenyon, J. P. Mahaffy, W. R. Paton, W. M. Ramsay, H. A. Redpath, H. B. Swete, and others hardly less notable. Since the years 1895 and 1897, in which respectively the German Bibelstudien and Neue Bibelstudien were published, there has been a vast increase of available material, which, again, has been much more accessible to me as a Professor in the University of Heidelberg than it was during my residence at Herborn. I have so far availed myself of portions of the more recent discoveries in this English edition; but what remains for scholars interested in such investigations is hardly less than enormous, and is being augmented year by year. I shall be greatly pleased if yet more students set themselves seriously to labour in this field of biblical research. In the English edition not a few additional changes have been made; I must, however, reserve further items for future Studies. With regard to the entries κυριακός (p. 217 ff.), and especially ἱλατήριον (p. 124 ff.), I should like to make express reference to the articles Lord’s Day and Mercy Seat to be contributed by me to the Encyclopcedia Biblica. Finally, I must record my heartiest thanks to my translator, Rev. Alexander Grieve, M.A., D. Phil., Forfar, for his work. With his name I gratefully associate the words which once on a time the translator of the Wisdom of Jesus Sirach applied with ingenuous complacency to himself: πολλὴνἀγρυπνίαν καὶἐπιστήμηνπροσενεγκάμενος.

ADOLF DEISSMANN.

HEIDELBERG, 27th December, 1900.