A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Volume 1) [PDF]

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A GRAMMAR OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK

BY JAMES HOPE MOULTON M.A. (CANTAB.), D.LIT. (LOND.) LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE GREENWOOD PROFESSOR OF HELLENISTIC GREEK AND INDO-EUROPEAN PHILOLOGY IN THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER TUTOR IN NEW TESTAMENT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE WESLEYAN COLLEGE, DIDSBURY

VOL. I PROLEGOMENA

THIRD EDITION WITH CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS

Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College, Wenham, MA March 2006 EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 1908

IN PIAM MEMORIAM PATRIS LABORVM HERES DEDICO

PREFACE. THE call for a second edition of this work within six or seven months of its first appearance gives me a welcome opportunity of making a good many corrections and additions, without altering in any way its general plan. Of the scope of these new features I shall have something to say later; at this point I have to explain the title-page, from which certain words have disappeared, not without great reluctance on my part. The statement in the first edition that the book was "based on W. F. Moulton's edition of G. B. Winer's Grammar," claimed for it connexion with a work which for thirty-five years had been in constant use among New Testament students in this country and elsewhere. I should hardly have yielded this statement for excision, had not the suggestion come from one whose motives for retaining it are only less strong than my own. Sir John Clark, whose kindness throughout the progress of this work it is a special pleasure to acknowledge on such an opportunity, advised me that misapprehension was frequently occurring with those whose knowledge of this book was limited to the title. Since the present volume is entirely new, and does not in any way follow the lines of its great predecessor it seems better to confine the history of the undertaking to the Preface, and take sole responsibility. I have unhappily no means of divining what judgement either Winer or his editor would have passed on my doctrines; and it is therefore, perhaps, due to Pietat that I should drop what Pietat mainly prompted. It is now forty years since my father, to whose memory this book is dedicated, was invited by Messrs T. & T. Clark to translate and edit G. B. Winer's epoch-making Grammatik des neutestamentliehen Spraehidioms. The proposal originated with Bishop Ellicott, afterwards Chairman of the New Testavii

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ment Revision Company, and the last survivor of a band of workers who, while the following pages were in the press, became united once more. Dr Ellicott had been in correspondence on biblical matters with the young Assistant Tutor at the Wesleyan Theological College, Richmond; and his estimate of his powers was shown first by the proposal as to Winer, and not long after by the Bishop's large use of my father's advice in selecting new members of the Revision Company. Mr Moulton took his place in the Jerusalem Chamber in 1870, the youngest member of the Company; and in the same year his edition of Winer appeared. My brother's Life of our father (Isbister, 1899) gives an account of its reception. It would not be seemly for me to enlarge on its merits, and it would be as superfluous as unbecoming. I will only allow myself the satisfaction of quoting a few words from one who may well be called the greatest New Testament scholar this country has seen for generations. In giving his Cambridge students a short list of reference books, Dr Hort said (Romans and Ephesians, p. 71):— Winer's Grammar of the New Testament, as translated and enlarged by Dr Moulton, stands far above every other for this purpose. It does not need many minutes to learn the ready use of the admirable indices, of passages and of subjects: and when the book is consulted in this manner, its extremely useful contents become in most cases readily accessible. Dr Moulton's references to the notes of the best recent English commentaries are a helpful addition. In 1875 Dr Moulton was transferred to Cambridge, charged by his Church with the heavy task of building up from the foundation a great Public School. What time a Head Master could spare to scholarship was for many years almost entirely pledged to the New Testament and Apocrypha Revision. Naturally it was not possible to do much to his Grammar when the second edition was called for in 1877. The third edition, five years later, was even less delayed for the incorporation of new matter; and the book stands now, in all essential points, just as it first came from its author's pen. Meanwhile the conviction was growing that the next

PREFACE. edition must be a new book. Winer's own last edition, though far from antiquated, was growing decidedly old; its jubilee is in fact celebrated by its English descendant of to-day. The very thoroughness of Winer's work had made useless for the modern student many a disquisition against grammatical heresies which no one would now wish to drag from the lumber-room. The literature to which Winer appealed was largely buried in inaccessible foreign periodicals. And as the reputation of his editor grew, men asked for a more compact, better arranged, more up-to-date volume, in which the ripest and most modern work should no longer be stowed away in compressed notes at the foot of the page. Had time and strength permitted, Dr Moulton would have consulted his most cherished wish by returning to the work of his youth and rewriting his Grammar as an independent book. But "wisest Fate said No." He chose his junior colleague, to whom he had given, at first as his pupil, and afterwards during years of University training and colleagueship in teaching, an insight into his methods and principles, and at least an eager enthusiasm for the subject to which he had devoted his own life. But not a page of the new book was written when, in February 1898, "God's finger touched him, and he slept." Since heredity does not suffice to make a grammarian, and there are many roads by which a student of New Testament language may come to his task, I must add a word to explain in what special directions this book may perhaps contribute to the understanding of the inexhaustible subject with which it deals. Till four years ago, my own teaching work scarcely touched the Greek Testament, classics and comparative philology claiming the major part of my time. But I have not felt that this time was ill spent as a preparation for the teaching of the New Testament. The study of the Science of Language in general, and especially in the field of the languages which are nearest of kin to Greek, is well adapted to provide points of view from which new light may be shed on the words of Scripture. Theologians, adepts in criticism, experts in early Christian literature, bring to a task like this an equipment to which I can make no pretence. But there are other studies, never more active than now,

PREFACE. which may help the biblical student in unexpected ways. The life-history of the Greek language has been investigated with minutest care, not only in the age of its glory, but also throughout the centuries of its supposed senility and decay. Its syntax has been illuminated by the comparative method; and scholars have arisen who have been willing to desert the masterpieces of literature and trace the humble development of the Hellenistic vernacular down to its lineal descendant in the vulgar tongue of the present day. Biblical scholars cannot study everything, and there are some of them who have never heard of Brugmann and Thumb. It may be some service to introduce them to the side-lights which comparative philology can provide. But I hope this book may bring to the exegete material yet more important for his purpose, which might not otherwise come his way. The immense stores of illustration which have been opened to us by the discoveries of Egyptian papyri, accessible to all on their lexical side in the brilliant Bible Studies of Deissmann, have not hitherto been systematically treated in their bearing on the grammar of New Testament Greek. The main purpose of these Prolegomena has accordingly been to provide a sketch of the language of the New Testament as it appears to those who have followed Deissmann into a new field of research. There are many matters of principle needing detailed discussion, and much new illustrative material from papyri and inscriptions, the presentation of which will, I hope, be found helpful and suggestive. In the present volume, therefore, I make no attempt at exhaustiveness, and of ten omit important subjects on which I have nothing new to say. By dint of much labour on the indices, I have tried to provide a partial remedy for the manifold inconveniences of form which the plan of these pages entails. My reviewers encourage me to hope that I have succeeded in one cherished ambition, that of writing a Grammar which can be read. The fascination of the Science of Language has possessed me ever since in boyhood I read Max Muller's incomparable Lectures; and I have made it my aim to communicate what I could of this fascination before going on to dry statistics and formulae. In the second volume I shall try to present as concisely as I can the systematic facts of Hellenistic acci-

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dence and syntax, not in the form of an appendix to a grammar of classical Greek, but giving the later language the independent dignity which it deserves. Both Winer himself and the other older scholars, whom a reviewer thinks I have unduly neglected, will naturally bulk more largely than they can do in chapters mainly intended to describe the most modern work. But the mere citation of authorities, in a handbook designed for practical utility, must naturally be subordinated to the succinct presentation of results. There will, I hope, be small danger of my readers' overlooking my indebtedness to earlier workers, and least of all that to my primary teacher, whose labours it is my supreme object to preserve for the benefit of a new generation. It remains to perform the pleasant duty of acknowledging varied help which has contributed a large proportion of anything that may be true or useful in this book. It would be endless were I to name teachers, colleagues, and friends in Cambridge, to whom through twenty years' residence I contracted debts of those manifold and intangible kinds which can only be summarised in the most inadequate way: no Cantab who has lived as long within that home of exact science and sincere research, will fail to understand what I fail to express. Next to the Cambridge influences are those which come from teachers and friends whom I have never seen, and especially those great German scholars whose labours, too little assisted by those of other countries, have established the Science of Language on the firm basis it occupies to-day. In fields where British scholarship is more on a level with that of Germany, especially those of biblical exegesis and of Greek classical lore, I have also done my best to learn what fellow-workers east of the Rhine contribute to the common stock. It is to a German professor, working upon the material of which our own Drs Grenfell and Hunt have provided so large a proportion, that I owe the impulse which has produced the chief novelty of my work. My appreciation of the memorable achievement of Dr Deissmann is expressed in the body of the book; and I must only add here my grateful acknowledgement of the many encouragements he has given me in my efforts to glean

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after him in the field he has made his own. He has now crowned them with the all too generous appreciations of my work which he has contributed to the Theologische Literaturzeitung and the Theologische Rundschau. Another great name figures on most of the pages of this book. The services that Professor Blass has rendered to New Testament study are already almost equal to those he has rendered to classical scholarship. I have been frequently obliged to record a difference of opinion, though never without the inward voice whispering "impar congresses Achilli." But the freshness of view which this great Hellenist brings to the subject makes him almost as helpful when he fails to convince as when he succeeds; and I have learned more and more from him, the more earnestly I have studied for myself. The name of another brilliant writer on New Testament Grammar, Professor Schmiedel, will figure more constantly in my second volume than my plan allows it to do in this. The mention of the books which have been most frequently used, recalls the need of one or two explanations before closing this Preface. The text which is assumed throughout is naturally that of Westcott and Hort. The principles on which it is based, and the minute accuracy with which they are followed out, seem to allow no alternative to a grammatical worker, even if the B type of text were held to be only the result of second century revision. But in frequently quoting other readings, and especially those which belong to what Dr Kenyon conveniently calls the d-text, I follow very readily the precedent of Blass. I need not say that Mr Geden's Concordance has been in continual use. I have not felt bound to enter much into questions of "higher criticism." In the case of the Synoptic Gospels, the assumption of the "two-source hypothesis" has suggested a number of grammaticul points of interest. Grammar helps to rivet closer the links which bind together the writings of Luke, and those of Paul (though the Pastorals often need separate treatment): while the Johannine Gospel and Epistles similarly form a single grammatical entity. Whether the remaining Books add seven or nine to the tale of separate authors, does not concern us here; for the Apocalypse,

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1 Peter and 2 Peter must be treated individually as much as Hebrews, whether the traditional authorship be accepted or rejected. Last come the specific acknowledgements of most generous and welcome help received directly in the preparation of this volume. I count myself fortunate indeed in that three scholars of the first rank in different lines of study have read my proofs through, and helped me with invaluable encouragement and advice. It is only due to them that I should claim the sole responsibility for errors which I may have failed to escape, in spite of their watchfulness on my behalf. Two of them are old friends with whom I have taken counsel for many years. Dr G. G. Findlay has gone over my work with minute care, and has saved me from many a loose and ambiguous statement, besides giving me the fruit of his profound and accurate exegesis, which students of his works on St. Paul's Epistles know well. Dr Bendel Harris has brought me fresh lights from other points of view and I have been particularly glad of criticism from a specialist in Syriac, who speaks with authority on matters which take a prominent place in my argument. The third name is that of Professor Albert Thumb, of Marburg. The kindness of this great scholar, in examining so carefully the work of one who is still a]gnoou i]dou