acquiesce in their judgment, for it is supported by the obvious principles of interpretation.* That the Apostle was seen at the end of the reign of Domitian, is phraseology applicable to an apparition, not to a living man. Besides, according to the testimony of Irenæus, John was to be seen as late as the reign of Trajan. It is really provoking to find a respectable writer reviving such absurdities, and then betraying his consciousness of the untenableness of Wetstein's interpretation by adding: 'If the other interpretation be retained, then the testimony should only be received with the degree of confidence due to one who was writing in his old age of the recollections of his youth, and whose skill in chronology was so imperfect, that he supposed Our Lord to have lived forty or fifty years.' What has chronological skill to do with the credibility of a writer who, deriving his information from Polycarp, the contemporary of John, could not possibly, on such a point, be mistaken? We might as rationally suppose that Dr. Watts, writing in old age, might have been mistaken as to the reign under which Baxter was tried by Judge Jefferies, or Bunyan wrote his inimitable parable.

The testimonies of Victorinus, Eusebius, Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, and Orosius, are dismissed with the remark, that there is nothing to show that these witnesses are independent. But does Eusebius refer only to the testimony of Irenæus? He, at all events, cites also the authority of Clement of Alexandria; and his testimony is decisive as to what was, in his day, the received tradition. It is not, therefore, without reason that Lardner, in his cautious and modest style, concludes: That the Book of the Revelation in its present form was not composed and published till the reign of Domitian, appears to me very probable from the general and almost universally concurring testimony of the ancients, and from some things in the book itself.' Among the critics who have adopted the same conclusion are Mill, Basnage, Leclerc, Vitringa, L'Enfant and Beausobre, Spanheim, Turretin, Mosheim, Dupin, Lampe, Bossuet, Whitby, Burton, Woodhouse, and Clinton. Coolly to assert, then, that the external evidence is rather in favour of the early date than against it,'† is a little too bold it goes beyond even Moses Stuart.

The internal evidence adduced by the writer in support of his hypothesis is scarcely worth a moment's examination. The first point is, that the Hebraistic character of the Greek of the Apocalypse proves it to have been written before, by a long residence at Ephesus, the Apostle had acquired a purer idiom. This assumes that a purer idiom was spoken by the Asiatic Jews of Ephesus, than by the Hellenistic Jews of Palestine, which may be

*Stuart, vol. i. p. 265. + Biblical Review, vol. i. p. 178.

doubted; nor is the Greek of the General Epistle less Hebraistic than that of the Apocalypse. Besides, we might expect to find more strongly marked, in the compositions of old age, the writer's native idiom. The next argument is, that the Apocalypse is in a style too vivid, animated, and rapid, to have been written in old age; which might serve as well to throw suspicion upon the last words of Moses. The third point insisted upon is, that the references made to the Jews in the epistles to the seven churches show that Judaism had not yet fallen from its power and glory; an inference so forced that it cannot be necessary to expose the gratuitous assumption upon which it rests. The other three arguments are drawn from the references to impending persecutions, the alleged correspondence of some of the predictions to those of Our Lord respecting the fall of Jerusalem, and the figurative description of the church as consisting of the sealed out of every tribe of Israel the latter is of a piece with Professor Stuart's astounding remark, that the commission given to the apostle to measure the temple, the altar, &c. (ch. xi.) could not have been given, if the temple at Jerusalem had already been destroyed by the Romans! Elliott has replied, (in the new edition of his Horæ,') that an argument which takes for granted the literal meaning of the designation, Israel, the temple, &c. is one of the most extraordinary cases of the petitio principii he has ever met with, especially considering Our Lord's own explanation of the candlesticks as the symbols of Christian churches.

:

Mr.

Of the internal evidence on the contrary side, that which appeared to Vitringa, Beausobre, and Lardner decisive, your contributor takes no notice. All' the internal evidence, forsooth, is 'on the same side,' and against the general voice of antiquity! And yet, not to speak of other objections to this hypothesis, we are required by it to suppose, that the Divine address to the church at Ephesus, as having left her first love, was dictated to St. John as apostolic superintendent of the Asiatic churches, prior to A.D. 68; whereas, St. Paul's second epistle to Timothy (at Ephesus), and his epistle to the Ephesians, were not written earlier than A.D. 61; and some have assigned to the former the date of A.D. 67! It may be worth while to add, that, in the Martyrium Romanum,' Antipas is said to have suffered in the tenth year of Domitian.

6

Had your contributor acknowledged a little more distinctly his obligations to Moses Stuart for almost the whole of his citations and arguments,-although I think he would not even then have been justified in his omission of the counter-evidence and his apparent disregard of our own critics and scholars,-it would have afforded some excuse for his imposing so unfair a view of the question upon the readers of The Biblical Review. But the worst is yet behind; and if you will allow me, I will devote another paper

to a refutation of the theory of interpretation for which the mystification in the paper' On the Date of the Apocalypse,' is intended to clear the way. If the Apocalypse' should be read as a poem,'it is but a step,-why not the Gospel?

C.

V.

CRITICISM ON 2 CORINTHIANS III. 13-18.

(From a Correspondent.)

Καὶ οὐ, καθάπερ Μωϋσῆς ἐτίθει κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἑαυτοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου. (14) ἀλλ' ἐπως ρώθη τὰ νοήματα αὐτῶν· ἄχρι γὰρ τῆς σήμερον τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναγνώ σει τῆς παλαιᾶς διαθήκης μένει, μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον, ὅτι ἐν Χριστῷ καταργείται· (15) ἀλλ ̓ ἕως σήμερον, ἡνίκα ἀναγινώσκεται Μωϋσῆς, κάλυμμα ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν αὐτῶν κεῖται· (16) ἡνίκα δ' ἂν ἐπιστρέψῃ πρὸς Κύριον, περιαιρεῖται τὸ κάλυμμα. (17) ὁ δὲ Κύριος τὸ πνευμά ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα Κυρίου, ἐκεῖ ἐλευθερία.) (18) ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν Κυρίου κατοπτριζόμε νοι, τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν, καθάπερ ἀπὸ Κυρίου πνεύματος.

And not, as Moses put a veil upon his face, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. (But their minds were blinded: for until this day the same veil remaineth in the reading of the old covenant, unremoved, because it is done away in Christ. Yea, until this day, when Moses is read, the veil lies upon their hearts. But whenever it shall turn unto the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.) But we all, beholding reflected the glory of the Lord in his unveiled face, are transformed into the same image, from glory into glory, as from the Lord the Spirit.'

SUCH, though not a very elegant, is, I conceive, a literally correct translation of this difficult passage; and it will be my object in this essay to state, as clearly and briefly as possible, the reasons which appear to me to compel the adoption of this translation.

I must premise, however, that I shall make no attempt on this occasion to ascertain or expound the sense of verse 17, and the last clause of verse 18. This has long appeared to me one of the darkest and most difficult questions connected with the criticism of the New Testament, nor have I anywhere met with what I could embrace as a satisfactory solution of it. Besides, its determination is not necessary to the exegesis of the remainder of the passage, and would require a long independent train of investigation. I have ventured, indeed, to insert a translation of these passages, but am by no means certainly convinced of its correctness.

It will be observed that the only novelty is this translation (if any novelty it is, and not, as has often happened in similar cases, the

revival of what had become obsolete) is the version of avaкeкаλvμμéν проσÓп катоπтρiČóμevoi, beholding reflected in,—instead of, beholding with and my special purpose in this essay is to show the necessity of this translation.

In conducting this discussion I shall assume the following points :

1. That from ch. iii. 7, to ch. iv. 6, inclusive, is a discourse intended to evince the superiority of the Christian to the Mosaic dispensation.

2. That in this discourse Christ, as the Mediator of the Christian, is contrasted with, and shown to be superior to, Moses, the head of the Jewish, dispensation; and further, that, in allusion to Exod. xxxiv. 29-35, both Christ and Moses are considered as the recipients, and representatives, and reflectors of the glory of God. Vid. ch. iii. 7, and iv. 6; ch. iii. 14, 15, and iv. 3, 4.

3. That, still with the same allusion, Christians are represented as holding the same general relation to Christ, which the Jews did to Moses, each receiving from their respective head, though with different degrees of manifestation, the knowledge of the glory of God; and that the superiority of the privileges and knowledge of Christians over those of the Jews arose from the superior glory of their Mediator and the superior distinctness of their vision of that glory. Ch. iii. 7, 8, and ch. iv. 4, 6; ch. iii. 14, and ch. iv. 3, 4, 6. Further, with more immediate reference to the passage itself.

1. We learn, from ver. 13, compared with ver. 7, that the glory which shone upon the face of Moses, upon the memorable occasion referred to, is considered as an emblem of the glorious truths embodied, though disguised, in those institutions of which he was, under God, the founder. It is this glory that is declared (ver. 7) to be done away, τὴν καταργουμένην, the glory that is done away. The Jewish glory is done away by the Christian; the glory of Moses' face is lost in the superior glory that appears in the

face of Christ.

2. In consistency with this representation, the veiling of Moses' face is represented in ver. 13, as emblematical of the obscurity which, to the Jews in general, rested upon their institutions, and prevented them from seeing the end,' the true import and tendency of that which is abolished.'

3. It is evident, from the way in which ver. 13 commencesand not, as Moses, &c., that with regard to this point, the veiling of Moses' face, and the consequent obstruction of the Israelites' view, the apostle intends to contrast the Christian with the Jewish dispensation; a contrast which would imply, that Christ's face was not veiled, and that, consequently, Christians might distinctly and stedfastly behold his glory, the glory of that new

dispensation of which he is the Head, Spirit,' and emblem, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' We should therefore expect that in the apodosis of that contrast of which ver. 13 is the protasis, the apostle will speak of the unveiled face of our Head and Lord, Christ, and of the privilege which Christians possess of gazing upon that unveiled face.

4. But where is the apodosis, the conclusion of the contrast, the counterpart of ver. 13? We cannot place it anywhere but at ver. 18. The intervening verses obviously form an explanatory parenthesis introduced by the appropriate conjunction and. The se in ýμcîs dé, ver. 18, marks the apodosis, and the verse itself evidently implies that it is the conclusion of a comparison or contrast. It is equally clear that the dià Touro of the succeeding verse, ch. iv. 1, supposes a conclusion established or a subject discussed, and introduces, in a new paragraph, its practical application. So that, unless we find in ver. 18 the apodosis of ver. 13, we can find it nowhere. And similarly, we must find in ver. 13 the protasis of ver. 18, or we shall not find it at all. It appears, therefore, to be a conclusion altogether inevitable, that ver. 13 and ver. 18 are related to each other as protasis and apodosis, and together form a complete contrast.

5. Before, however, we proceed to the examination of ver. 18, let us, in order more completely to elucidate the subject, and to clear up any objections which might arise from the obscurity of the parenthesis, pause a little to inquire into the meaning of verses 14 and 15, and the nature of their connexion with ver. 13.

They appear to be intended to anticipate an objection which was not unlikely to be suggested by the apostle's language in verses 7 and 13. ، If Moses' face was so veiled, that the children of Israel could not behold his glory,' it might be said, Surely they could not be culpable on that account; and similarly, in the application of this emblematical representation made by the apostle, the Israelites could not be considered as blameworthy, because they did not understand the import of that system which was designedly veiled from their comprehension: where, then, is the justice of the condemnation to which they have been subjected, and of the reproaches which have been cast upon their obstinacy and unbelief?' To this objection, conceived but not expressed, and met without being formally stated, the apostle replies in verses 14 and 15, introducing the reply by the appropriate word aλλá, which points to the implied objection. But,' he says, 'their minds were blinded,' or perhaps more properly-were made or became blind, and this was the reason that Moses' face-the meaning and glory of the Mosaic institutions-appeared veiled to them; for even until this day, notwithstanding that the end has come, and that the mysteries are explained, their minds refuse to receive the evidence, or to