Historical Commentary on the First Epistle to Timothy

By W. M Ramsay

XIII. THE IDEA OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE LETTERS OF PAUL.

The Apostle is speaking in ii. 9-12 of the conduct of women in the public assembly, though he gradually goes off into the wider topic of their conduct in life generally. They should learn silently (i.e. without asking questions openly in the assembly as men did)1 in a spirit of peaceful submission to constituted authority (i.e. the officials, and the regulations of the Church, and also doubtless their husbands);2 and Paul does not permit them to teach (i.e. publicly in the assembly of the congregation), nor to assume a position of authority over a man, but requires them to refrain from (public) action. He is silent about their right to prophesy; but that right he could not deny, where the Holy Spirit prompted, though it does not lie in his purpose throughout this letter to emphasize the right of prophesying or speaking with tongues in the assembly either for men or for women.

Then follows a quaint example of the way in which the Jews were wont to derive arguments from Scripture and to twist and torture its words in order to support the opinion which they were stating. Even where Paul is expressing a truth which he sees clearly with direct and unerring intuition, he sometimes draws from the Old Testament arguments which to us seem tortuous special-pleading and quite valueless as reasoning. The Jewish mind reasoned in a totally different way from us; and its line of reasoning often offends us. But we must not identify the truth of the opinion with the validity of the reasoning, or conclude that, because the argument is to us unconvincing, the opinion is therefore untrue.

Accordingly, we may set aside as not appealing to our minds and barely intelligible to us the argument drawn from the conduct of Adam and Eve. So far as it is intelligible, it fails to strengthen Paul's case in the judgment of modern readers. But his case is quite independent of the argument.

Moreover, his argument leads up to a most profound and a much misunderstood remark. In the primordial association with the temptation of evil, woman had been led into transgression; but the saving power remained in her own nature. What is this saving fact in the nature of woman? Opinion has been much divided as to the meaning of ii. 15; and I confess that none of the interpretations which the commentators give seem to touch the real sense and thought of Paul. The leading methods of interpretation are five.

(1) She shall be saved through child-bearing, i.e. as the means of her salvation; a narrow view, open to many objections (among others, that it would apparently imply that only a woman who bears a child shall be saved, a thought which is absolutely un-Pauline ).

(2) She shall be saved during the time of her child-bearing: although that is the period of the curse pronounced on her, yet in it she shall gain salvation, if she continue in faith and love and thanksgiving with sober-mindedness.3 This interpretation can be defended as an instance of the discursiveness and looseness of the Pastoral Epistles. One feels that it diverges from the direct line of the thought, and that there is about it a want of definiteness and of firm grasp of a central guiding idea; but many will not consider this objection to have any strength, because they find throughout the Pastoral Epistles the same want of that compactness and nervous energy which are characteristic of Paul. But, as it appears to me, the discursiveness of these Epistles takes the form of unexpected transition from one thought to another, and of loose connexion between the successive ideas and topics that come up for treatment: it rarely appears in any want of definite firm grasp and decisive treatment of each thought singly. The fault of this interpretation, then, lies in its being rather weak and disappointing; and those who are not. offended by that in the Pastoral Epistles will prefer it. It seems at first sight reasonable and not wholly out of keeping with Paul's tone of mind and thought. Personally; I could not accept it; and it may be added that, as regards the language, we should expect that if Paul intended to say this, he would have used the preposition ἐν, not διά. But, when one considers this interpretation more carefully, one asks whether it can be Pauline. What does it imply? What is the means through which it supposes that the salvation of the woman is wrought?  Through the time of child-bearing, in the hour when the primordial curse is upon her, she shall be saved, if she continue in faith and love and thanksgiving with sober-mindedness. Could Paul ever have put salvation on so external an issue as this? Let her be virtuous and she will be saved. One can understand that those who interpret in this fashion cannot accept Paul as the author-unless they have an astonishing power of shutting their eyes and minds to the possibilities of human development in thought. The soul of the Pauline thought lies in the underlying and indwelling idea of power. Where is the power here?  There is only a moral platitude.

(3) Some scholars, therefore, abandon wholly the idea that spiritual salvation is involved in the word " she shall be saved ":because they rightly see that the attempt to import it into the sentence on this construction is a failure. Yet they cling to the construction, and take "she shall be saved" in a simpler and purely non-spiritual sense, " women shall be brought safely through their child-bearing, if they continue in faith, etc." The sense is rather poor, narrow, and below the standard of Paul; but those who regard the Epistle as a forgery will not see any strength in this objection. But at least they will probably admit that, in any work of literature, the noblest and widest meaning, if it lies clearly within the unforced words, ought to be credited to the writer; and I think that a much nobler meaning lies within the scope of these words.

(4) She shall be saved because of her motherhood, i.e. because she is the mother of the race. This sense of διά, "by reason of," can hardly be admitted. Moreover, the course of the thought demands here a statement of the means by which she shall be saved, not of the reason why she shall find salvation.

(5) Von Soden, rightly feeling that all these interpretations are poor and unsatisfying, took refuge in a more mystical view. According to him Paul, when using the term "she" in the singular, is thinking of the generic idea "woman"-which is, of course, quite true-and from this he naturally passes to the idea of the typical woman, Eve. Accordingly woman, i.e. all women, shall be saved through the child-bearing of the typical woman, Eve, because there from sprang the Saviour Jesus Christ. The thought is extremely ingenious; but it is too clever, and it shipwreck» on the preposition διά, which it takes in the sense "by reason of."

It seems necessary, so far as I can judge, to return to the simple and natural construction, " She shall gain salvation by means of her motherhood (τεκνογονία)"; but the whole question turns on what Paul meant when he used this term -τεκνογονία. He is thinking philosophically, and not of a mere physical process. We have to take into consideration the whole manner of expression in Greek philosophic thought, and the whole history of Greek progress in language and in thought from the simple and concrete to the philosophic and abstract, from Homer to Aristotle and Paul. In that progress the Greek language was engaged in the creation of abstract nouns, just as Greek thought was teaching itself to generalize and to distinguish between ideas which are bound up with one another in the concrete world. If we had before us the works of Athenodorus the Tarsian, we should be better able to appreciate the linguistic task which Paul had to perform when he sought to express in Greek a Christian philosophy, and better able to understand the way in which he attempted to solve the problem before him.4

We must remember how simple and concrete are often the terms by which Greek attempted to express the highest thoughts of moral and metaphysical philosophy. Plato hardly attempted to create a language of the higher philosophy. He argues in the concrete example; he takes refuge in metaphor and poetry and myth, when he must attempt to give expression to the highest philosophical ideas. Aristotle set himself to create a technical terminology in the region of metaphysics; and how simple are his means. The essential nature of a thing is "the what-is-it?" of the thing, τὸ τί ἐστι; i.e. "the answer to the question, what is it? " The idealized goodness of a thing is τὸ ἀγαθῷ εἶναι: the law of its development is to τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι.5 How perfectly plain and common are the words ! How close to ordinary life! And yet what a lofty philosophic sense does Aristotle read into them.

Or again, let us turn to the Attic tragedy, which sounded the depths and estimated the heights of human feeling. I take an example which leads up suitably to the thought in this passage of the Tarsian Apostle-a passage the discussion of which by a modern writer6 first opened to me the realm of Greek thought, and showed me, when I was a student in Aberdeen, how different is interpretation from translation, and how easily one may learn to translate without having any conception of the real meaning of an ancient poet. Sophocles in the Electra pictures Clytemnestra as she realizes the dread bond of emotion that unites a mother to her son. She appreciates its power all the better that it is unwelcome to her. It is too strong for her, and masters her will. And how does she express this?  She uses no abstract terms, but four of the simplest and most commonplace words, δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστειν. Those who are content with translating according to the lexicon would render these words, "the giving birth to a child is a painful thing," and miss all the wealth of feeling and thought that lies in them. There cannot be a doubt that Sophocles was expressing the truth,7 which every one must appreciate who passes through the real experiences of life, that there is no power in human nature more tremendous, more overmastering, more dread to contemplate in some of its manifestations, than the tie of motherhood. Only when the human nature in her is deadened and brutalized or buried, can the woman become stronger than that tie. It is the divine strength moving in her, and it can bend or break her, if she resists.

In this feeling of motherhood Paul found the power that he needed for his purpose. Here is the divine strength in the nature of woman, which can drive her as it will, and which will be her salvation, "if she continue in faith and love and thanksgiving with sober-mindedness "; but which may drive her in the wrong direction if it be not guided by those qualities. The idea of power, of growth, of striving towards an end outside of oneself, always underlies Paul's conception of the relation of a human being towards God. To his Greek hearers he often compared the true Christian life to the straining effort of a runner competing for the prize, because he knew that there he touched a feeling which was extraordinarily strong in the mind of a Greek man. In the woman's nature the maternal instinct presented itself as a force that had more absolute power over her than any emotion in a man's nature had over him. Paul rarely touches on the love between the sexes, and had small respect for it as a divine emotion capable under proper guidance of working out the salvation of either man or woman.

In giving expression to this psychological observation, Paul was under the influence of his own time, when philosophical expression was more developed. Abstract nouns had been created in great numbers to express the higher ideas of thought; an abstract noun was needed to express this idea of the power of maternal instinct; and Paul found it in τεκνογονία, which is a simpler and certainly not a less reasonable or correct term than a sham word like "philoprogenitiveness" or a question-begging circumlocution like "maternal instinct."

Thus, as so often elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles, the apparent difficulty is caused by a wrong point of view, and disappears as soon as one looks from the right point of view. The "maternal instinct" does not require actual physical motherhood. It may be immensely powerful in a childless woman, and may be her salvation, though it is, of course, quickened in a wonderful degree towards her own child, and is often dormant until so quickened.

I do not remember that Paul touches this spring of life in any of his earlier letters. But what rational critic would find in that any proof that this letter is not his composition?  Is there any of Paul's letters which does not throw its own distinct rays of light on his character?  Is there any of them which can be cut away without narrowing and impoverishing to some degree our knowledge of his nature?  Must we regard it as an essential 'Condition in proving the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles that they should contain nothing which widens our knowledge of him or throws new light on his character?  Rather, would it not be a conclusive reason against Pauline authorship, if it were wholly immaterial to our conception of Paul's personality whether they were accepted or rejected?  Moreover, we observe also that, in writing to Timothy, Paul addressed one who probably gained from his home life a strong sense of what maternal feeling is. Paul had a marvellous power of unconsciously sympathizing with his correspondents. It is only in writing to Timothy that he gives a picture of home life (2 Tim. i. 5) under a mother's care. He uses the word "mother" twice in writing to Timothy: except in two quotations from the Old Testament (Eph. v. 31, vi. 2), he uses it only three times in all the rest of his letters put together (Rom. xvi. 13, as a metaphor to express his affection for a friend's mother:8 Gal. i. 15, iv. 26, in a generic and unemotional sense). He does not show the want of love for the idea of mother which is conspicuous in Horace;9 but except in sympathy with Timothy he nowhere shows a deep sense of what a mother is and feels and does to her child.

These considerations explain why two words otherwise unknown in Paul's writings10 are forced on him in expressing his thought on this subject. The word for grandmother is "un-Pauline"; but where else could Paul use it except in 2 Timothy i. 5? where else does his interest in family life appear? The word for motherhood is used only in I Timothy ii. 15, but that is the only place in which he speaks of the idea that lies in the word. The wider terminology of the Pastoral Epistles, called through a too narrow outlook "un-Pauline," really corresponds to and is the inevitable result of a wider range of thought.

The use of the verb τεκνογονεῖν in the physical sense in I Timothy v. 14 is no proof that the abstract noun derived from it must also have the physical sense in Paul. Sophocles uses τίκτειν often in the physical sense; but that does not prevent him from employing it in the philosophic or emotional sense in the passage quoted above.

XIV. THE BISHOPS OR ELDERS OF THE CONGREGATION.

The description of the character of Bishops and Deacons (iii. 1-7) is probably largely responsible for the prejudice against the Pastoral Epistles; and it cannot be denied that there is a certain externality about the passage. Nowhere else does Paul in so long a passage say so little that touches the heart of his subject or of mankind. Here, again, the difficulty seems to lie in the point of view. The opinion seems to be commonly entertained-to judge from much of what has been written on these passages-that Paul is describing the ideal Bishop and the ideal Deacon. Nothing can be further from the truth.

What then was the writer's intention in those words, and how did he understand that Timothy should read them! As it appears to me, Paul indicates in the opening words the intention which he has, and the point of view from which the whole passage must be understood by the reader. "If a man desires the office of bishop, he is seeking for an honourable work."11 This statement, put so prominently at the beginning of the paragraph, is extremely important. The question then is what we are to gather from the opening sentence, on which Paul evidently lays so strong emphasis.

In the first place, this statement implies that the, office was aimed at and sought for: in other words, there were candidates for the office, persons who were known to be desirous of the office. This is not consistent with the opinion that bishops were selected and appointed by one single administrator or head. In the Church of that period, where the Holy Spirit was the inspiring and guiding influence, there can be no doubt that any single head of the Church, such, for example, as Paul himself in some cases, or as Timothy at Ephesus in the present case, would act under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and would pick out and appoint on his own responsibility and of his own knowledge, with or without consultation, "as seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to him." He would not call for candidates, and make his selection among those who applied for the office. He would know well that the best man might not apply at all. Paul, in these words, anticipates and approves of candidature; and therefore he does not understand that Timothy was to nominate the Bishops. The only alternative it't that the congregation, either directly or through its officers and representatives, made the appointment by some form of election out of those who were candidates.

In the second place, it follows from this that the rest of the passage describing the Bishop is to be understood as advice about '.the scrutiny of candidates. Paul is not describing the ideal; had he been doing that, he would not have exhausted himself in a long list of qualities, but rather would have set before us a living being; he is dealing with the practical difficulty of sorting out and estimating the candidates. The electors may suitably begin by scrutinizing them, and setting aside those who are deficient in any of the qualifications which a Bishop ought to have. But a Bishop should have more than mere qualifications; doubtless Paul held that he must be inspired by the Holy Spirit; but at present he is only concerned with the practical difficulty of the preliminaries to appointment or election.

In the third place, we observe that in the parallel passage Titus i. 5 ff., there is no allusion to candidates. Titus has to discharge forthwith the difficult duty of appointing elders in all the cities. It was the same task which Paul had to perform when he returned through all the cities of Galatia (Acts xiv. 21 ff.), because his sudden expulsion during his first visit had prevented the proper organization of the several Churches. This was a different task from what lay before Timothy in the cities of Asia. The whole body of officials had to be quickly appointed in the Cretan cities: the whole organization had to be created: each congregation had to be scrutinized man by man, each individual's claims and merits to be estimated, and his faults considered Paul sketches out the way in which Titus may set about this task: probably election played some part even in Crete, but much influence would be exercised by Titus in consultation with those whom he knew to be leading men in the congregation.

In the Asian cities, among which Timothy was stationed, the Churches had been long established and organized; the attainment of office in the commonwealth of God was an object of desire; and Paul approves of this desire. But he recognizes also that when an office rouses desire, it may become an object of ambition, and may be sought for the sake of distinction, not for the sincere purpose of performing the onerous work attached to it. Hence, while expressing approval of the desire, he also states that it is a work (not a mere honour)12; and he enumerates the qualifications that are required to do the work.

In the fourth place, the remarks in our preceding paragraph have made it clear that the whole passage about the Bishops is not merely advice to Timothy and to other electors. It is also a caution to candidates, that they may examine themselves before publicly professing their aspiration. This is one of the cases in which the letter, though primarily a letter to Timothy personally, was influenced by the thought of reaching others.

Apart from general moral qualities which are universal conditions of church membership, there are certain qualifications that attract notice. The Bishop must be "given to hospitality." It has often been noted13 how important a part in the early Church was played by frequent intercourse between the scattered congregations. That was essential to its existence: without that its cohesion as an institution and its unity in belief and practice could not have been maintained. Travelling was, therefore, frequent among the Christians; and the experience of finding everywhere amid the alien pagan society bands of fellow-Christians thinking and believing alike had a powerful influence on the traveller, as we know from the epitaph which the early Phrygian Saint, Avircius Marcellus, wrote in his old age to be placed over his own grave. An important duty for all the Brethren, and especially for the officials and representatives, was that they should be "given to hospitality." Their Brother from a distant land must not be left out of their home life, to find a dwelling for himself during his stay. He must be welcomed, and must live among the Brethren. Nor need it be thought that this hospitality was shown only to fellow-Christians. It was certainly shown also to the poor and needy and sick, whatever their religion. This procedure increased the influence of the Church, strengthened its position in society, and offered many opportunities for proselytizing. The public inns were usually filthy and immoral;14 and were avoided as much as possible by all travellers. Guest-friendship for mutual hospitality was common, and was reckoned among the pagans as a strong bond of union; nor was the force of this tie likely to be neglected by the Christians in their relations to the pagan society around them.

The Bishop requires to be "apt to teach." Considering how much Paul's mind was occupied with the dangers caused in Ephesus by the false teachers, we cannot doubt that this requirement has the effect of laying on the Bishop the responsibility of correcting the false teaching by imparting the true teaching. That this is so appears from Titus i. 9, where the requirement is more fully expressed. When he was writing to Timothy, Paul had in the earlier part of his letter expressed his opinion emphatically and fully about false and true teaching, and he therefore had no need to explain what he had in mind as to the Bishop's teaching. But, in writing to Titus, he had not alluded to the subject previously, and therefore it was needful to specify definitely what the Bishops had to teach, and that they must know how to supply the antidote to the false teaching. Accordingly, instead of the single word "apt to teach,"15 Paul, though he was aiming at brevity much more than in 1Timothy, substituted the elaborate statement, " holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict the gainsayers." That was all implied in the single word "apt-to-teach," as Paul used it. In this we have a good example of the creativeness of Paul in language, and of the manner in which the needs of the situation caused the creation of the new terms which abound in the Pastoral Epistles.16 Not that the Greek adjective was coined by Paul. It is so obvious and natural a formation that it was doubtless used already by other philosophic writers; and it occurs in Philo. But Paul gave it a new and far richer meaning than it had before. He wanted to sum up in one word the requirement which was so much in his mind at the time, and he seized on this word and used it in the sense of "qualified by education and moral power to impart the sound Christian teaching in opposition to the many false teachers." He had never used the word before, because he had never needed it. The new circumstances demanded a word, and he supplied it.

We have here also a good example of the manner in which several slight differences between the two descriptions of the Bishop, similar in thought and word as they are, were necessitated by the different circumstances of Timothy and Titus. Another example has been given above in regard to the appointment of the Bishops. A third will be stated in an immediately following page.

Such slight variations to suit difference of situation prove that we have before us two original letters adapted to two real occasions by one writer, and not two forged Epistles concocted in imaginary circumstances, addressed to two names taken out of ancient history, but intended to emphasize one: thought in one crisis of the Church. The two letters have the living quality M adaptation to real situations similar and yet differing from one another.

It may seem at first sight strange to us that Paul should think it needful to state the requirement that the Bishop should not be given to wine-drinking,17 and should not be the sort of person that strikes others with his fists: two faults which naturally go together in a rude class of society. But we have always to bear in mind that Paul is speaking about congregations where all (except a few Jews) were converts from paganism, many of them very recent converts; and that such new Brethren could not always be trusted not to relapse into their old ways and faults of life. Hence Paul requires that the Bishop must not be a recent convert, but one who had been a Christian long enough to have proved his steadfastness and the consistency and certainty of his standard in living. He knew well (and his knowledge finds brief expression in verse 6) that the novice, converted in a moment of exalted feeling, often proved unable to maintain his life continuously on the same high level. Paul had learned by many bitter lessons that the novices had to be watched over,18 and that some of them, especially if they were blinded with self-conceit about the high standard of life to which they had attained, were liable to make a terrible break-down and fall under the jeering condemnation pronounced by the Enemy of all good (a term which includes not merely the Devil as the Arch-enemy, but all who gird at the good man and triumph when he falls into misconduct). This allusion to wine-drinking and fighting brings out very clearly that Paul in this list is (as was said above) not describing the ideal Bishop, but showing how to weed out the list of candidates.

Another of the differences between the Cretan and the Asian Churches appears in the prohibition against admitting novices to be candidates for a position among the Bishops. In the corresponding passage of the letter to Titus novices are not alluded to. Titus had to select the Elders or Bishops in new congregations, where all were novices; he must do his best with such material as he had. On the other hand, Ephesus and many Asian cities contained congregations which had by this time existed for a considerable period, and here there was a patent distinction between new converts and those of longer standing.

We observe also that the term novice, or new convert, could hardly occur in Paul's earlier writings, but only in his last letters. A certain time must pass before the founder can write to the Churches which he himself has founded in terms which presuppose a recognized distinction between new and old members. Could such a distinction by any possibility have existed in Galatia when Paul wrote to the Galatians? or in Asia, when he wrote to the Ephesians and Colossians? The nearest approach to such a possibility was in Philippi, when the Epistle to that city was written; but even there distinctly less time had passed over the Church than in Ephesus when Paul wrote to Timothy; and even assuming that the distinction was recognized in Philippi when Paul was writing, he did not exhaust his vocabulary in the one short letter to the Philippians. Moreover, the growth of such a distinction and of a word (or words, rather) to express it, could take place only when the Churches of Aegean lands were as a body beginning to attain some age and standing. The idea in the word is thoroughly Pauline. Paul uses φυτεύειν, to plant, to indicate conversion, and when he wanted a word to indicate new converts, it was natural that he should employ the term νεόφυτος, newly planted. One could not easily find in any writer a better example of the growth of his vocabulary, proceeding within his own mind through the widening of his experiences, and based on his older vocabulary, than in this growth of the later Pauline νεόφυτος out of the older Pauline φυτεύειν.

The distinction between novices and Christians of longer standing and experience implied that two terms would grow up to express the two classes. How would Paul have described the older class?  Would he have used the periphrasis ἀρχαῖος μαθητής, by which Luke designated Mnason? At any rate, the term used by Luke indicates that the distinction of the two classes was beginning to be felt in the Church generally during the lifetime of Luke, and we shall find it hard to draw any strong line between Luke and Paul.

The reference to the opinion entertained in pagan society about the Bishop is interesting. It was Paul's practice, as we see in the case of Timothy, to take account of the reputation which one whom he was thinking of placing in a position of authority or responsibility had gained among the Brethren. But it may seem strange that here the testimony of the Brethren should not be alluded to,19 whereas good reputation among the pagans is a condition which should be applied in scrutinizing the candidates for the office of Bishop. The opinion of the Brethren, however, cannot here be a condition, because it constitutes the method of election; and it would be mere verbiage to say that a person who is to be appointed by vote of the Brethren must have their good opinion. As the Church was surrounded by critical pagan society, the election of one who was considered by the pagans not to be a worthy and good man would be a dangerous thing; the tongue of scandal and reproach would be let loose against him and against the congregation amid which he had been placed in authority; thus he would fall into the snare which the Devil is always laying for all Christians.

It is evident that this condition, which is stated last, by a sort of afterthought, merely repeats and enlarges the condition which is placed first of all, that the Bishop must be free from reproach. In the corresponding passage in the letter to Titus, the first condition is stated twice, as it is here; but the second statement gives precision to it in a different fashion: a Bishop, as being the steward of God, must be subject to no imputation. The two passages are in this point parallel to one another: both place this condition in the forefront, as of the highest importance: both repeat it a second time, making it more definite. There may very well have been in the varying forms of the repetition some special suitability to the respective cases of Ephesus and Crete; but we have not sufficient information to judge on this point.

The conditions which are to be applied in choosing Bishops, etc., as stated to Titus, do not otherwise vary essentially from those stated to Timothy; the terms selected to describe the moral qualities vary without any noteworthy divergence in moral character. It is remarkable that in each passage Paul uses some words which he never employs except in these two Epistles, and that also (where they differ) he uses some which he never employs except in the single Epistle. That again illustrates the origin of Paul's new language in the Pastorals: in none of Paul's other letters have we any list of this kind: new terms were necessary, and yet Paul does not confine himself to one set of new terms, but draws from his great store of language with inexhaustible profusion, so that in stating what is practically the same list twice over, he uses two different sets of novel words.

At the same time, both the contrast between novices and old converts and the growth of new words to express new ideas and conditions in the Church imply a distinct interval dividing the Pastoral from the other Epistles of Paul. They are not intelligible as contemporary with the others, but only in succession to them.

W. M. RAMSAY.

 

 

1) Compare I Cor. xiv. 35.

2) Although that is not stated expressly here, it is in Paul's mind always, 1 Cor. xiv. 34 f., Tit. ii. 5.

3) The thought is universal; and, though the expression begins in the generic singular, "she," it changes ungrammatically to the plural "if they continue."

4) St. Paul the Traveller, p. 354; The Cities of St. Paul, p. 216 ff.

5) I give my own idea of this much-disputed metaphysical term, which perhaps nobody will accept as a translation; but at least all recognize that the idea in Aristotle's mind was highly abstract and metaphysical, and that the words are chosen from the commonest range of expression used by every Greek peasant.

6) I have been trying in vain to recall the writer and the book. My memory in a vague way connects the incident with George Eliot.

7) The context removes all doubt: the following words are enough

δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστειν ἐστίν οὐδὲ γὰρ κακῶς
πάσχοντι μῖσος ὦν τέκῃ προσγίγνεται,

which the late Professor Lewis Campbell renders-

To be a mother hath a marvellous power,
No injury can make one hate one's child.

Moreover, the translation which is condemned in the text above approaches perilously near the grammatical crime of taking the present infinitive in the sense of the aorist infinitive.

8) With this compare 1 Tim. v. 2: παρακάλει . . . πρεσβυτέρας ὡς μητέρας.

9) The writer has studied this side of Horace's poetry in Macmillan's Magazine, Oct., 1897, pp. 450-457, on" The Childhood of Horace," and advanced a theory to account for it.

10) Unknown also elsewhere in the New Testament.

11) The obscure and difficult adjective καλός, one of the first that a beginner in the Greek language learns to translate, and one of the most difficult for an advanced scholar to understand, unites the ideas of good and honourable and beautiful in a thoroughly Greek fashion.

12) Meyer-Weiss refuse to accept any such implication in ἔργου, but I cannot think that their view is justifiable.

13) Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 288, 368; Luke the Physician, pp. 154, 353 f.; Pauline and Other Studies, pp. 118, 382-386, 402 f.

14) Pauline and Other Studies, 384 f.

15) διδακτικός

16) Compare the example given in the EXPOSITOR, June, 1909, p. 489, and in the preceding section of this article.

17) That the word πάροινος must be taken in its own sense, and not as a figure of speech implying only "brawler," seems beyond question; see Meyer-Weiss in Krit. exeg. Kommentar. So also πλήκτης must be interpreted literally.

18) That one was one of the wearing anxieties in " the care of all the churches," which were always with him.

19) It is of course indirectly implied in ἀνεπίλημπτος, ἀνέγκλητος, but good reputation among the Brethren is not formally mentioned as a condition.