00000 - FROM THE PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION

FROM THE PREFACE TO THE GERMAN

EDITION.

Bible Studies is the name I have chosen for the following investigations, since all of them are more or less concerned with the historical questions which the Bible, and specially the Greek version, raises forscientific treatment. I am not, of course, of the opinion that there is a special biblical science. Science is method: the special sciences are distinguished from each other as methods. What is designated “Biblical Science” were more fitly named “Biblical Research”. The science in question here is the same whether it is engaged with Plato, or with the Seventy Interpreters and the Gospels. Thus much should be self-evident. A well-disposed friend who understands something of literary matters tells me that it is hardly fitting that a younger man should publish a volume of “Studies”: that is rather the part of the experienced scholar in the sunny autumn of life. To this advice I have given serious consideration, but I am still of the opinion that the hewing of stones is very properly the work of the journeyman. And in the department where I have laboured, many a block must yet be trimmed before the erection of the edifice can be thought of. But how much still remains to do, before the language of the Septuagint, the relation to it of the so-called New Testament Greek, the history of the religious and ethical conceptions of Hellenic Judaism, have become clear even in outline only; or before it has been made manifest that the religious movement by which we date our era originated and was developed in history—that is, in connection with, or, it may be, in opposition to, an already-existent high state of culture! If the following pages speak much about the Septuagint, let it be remembered that in general that book is elsewhere much too little spoken of, certainly much less than was the case a hundred years ago. We inveigh against the Rationalists—often in a manner that raises the suspicion that we have a mistrust of Reason. Yet these men, inveighed against as they are, in many respects set wider bounds to their work than do their critics. During my three years’ work in the SeminariumPhilippinum at Marburg, I have often enough been forced to think of the plan of study in accordance with which the bursars used to work about the middle of last century. Listen to a report of the matter such as the following :— ¹

“With regard to Greek the legislator has laid particular stress upon the relation in which this language stands to a true understanding of the N.T. How reasonable, therefore, will those who can judge find the recommendation that the Septuagint (which on the authority of an Ernesti and a Michaelis, is of the first importance as a means towards the proper understanding of the N.T.), has been fixed upon as a manual upon which these lectures must be given! And how much is it to be wished that the bursars, during the year of their study of this book, should go through such a considerable part of the same as may be necessary to realise the purposes of the legislator!” I am not bold enough to specify the time when academical lectures and exercises upon the Septuawill again be given in Germany. ² But the coming century is long, and the mechanical conception of science is but the humour of a day! . . . I wrote the book, not as a clergyman, but as a Privatdocent at Marburg, but I rejoice that I am able, as a clergyman, to publish it.

G. ADOLF DEISSMANN.

HERBORN: DEPARTMENT OF WIESBADEN, 7th March, 1895.