Neil's "Figurative Language of the Bible" (Nisbet & Co., 1892).
1892 79 It is not pleasant but a duty to question and even condemn a few of the author's positions. There is always a danger of exaggeration when a point is made of style (and indeed of other things less weighty), and an unconscious effort to justify a new work by multiplying technical manner and distinctions. It is true that Mr. N. spares his readers J. Holmes' 252 figures! and Mr. G. W. Harvey's systematic discussion, giving them a quantity of chatty remarks. But it is too much to say that no branch of Bible study is more important, and none so utterly neglected. Figures belong to rhetoric for the most part rather than to grammar, but far more generally common sense; for christians a spiritual mind is the best guide. The general outline is set out in any ordinarily full grammar. For scripture, Glassius' Phil. Sacra is well known, whence Keach drew largely for English readers; also W. Jones, J. Brown, T. Horne, and others. Dr. Alex. Carson in our day wrote still more ably and with less prolixity; as also Drs. T. Leland, Blair, Campbell, Lord Kames, and many more since Quintilian.
No doubt the author meant a short, cheap popular treatment. But he greatly over-estimates the value of knowing eastern habits. The true wonder of the Bible is its superiority to age, clime, or race in the main; and there is a real danger, especially in our day, of losing the kernel in excessive attention to the husk of local and temporal surroundings, and the like. Even we, English, talk figures incalculably more than most perceive; and though it might furnish matter for ingenious lectures and interesting papers to analyse this character of every day intercourse, it would be little better than pastime and might readily turn away the mind from the really important. Origen was a greater scholar than any man who ever wrote on figures of speech, and could scientifically explain the simile, metaphor, and every other figure beyond most; yet he fell a victim to a glaring misconception of our Lord's words in Matt. 19:12, and wasted a life of study in windy allegories. It was assuredly no lack of learning that exposed him so greatly to misapply the third case, nor lack of zeal to act at all cost on the supposed meaning.
Now the temptation to which Mr. N. has yielded is not anything corporeal as befell the Alexandrian divine, but divorcing scripture from its spirit. He must be singularly preoccupied to set the ascension of Christ to heaven, and His having a risen body, against the reality of His presence in the midst of those gathered to His name. The presence of the Holy Spirit sent here below is an absolute truth; that of Christ, whatever the mode which we pretend not to define, is contingent on gathering to His name collectively, and on obedience individually (Matt. 18, John 14). To confound truths so distinct is to lose one of them, perhaps both.
So his treatment of Hendiadys is precarious. "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory" is an ecclesiastical gloss, and not scripture. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," he emasculates into "the true and living way." Nor does Peter mean apostolic ministry in Acts 1:25, but service generally and apostleship in particular; hence he speaks of himself as an "elder" as well as "apostle." So Paul's "hope and resurrection" is curtailed into "the hope of the resurrection," though it signifies far more. Nor does "kingdom and glory" import "glorious kingdom," any more than "life and incorruptibility" "incorruptible life." And "a kingdom and priests," is debased to "a great priestly kingdom," which is refuted by Rev. 1:5, Rev. 20:6. Still more serious is the misapplication of John 3:5, John 4:24.
But passing over lesser matters, John 3:13 is an instance of the daring to which the hobby exposes the author. It is of the essence of the truth of Christ's person that ho on here as in John 1:18 means "who is," not "who was;" and so the Revised no less than the Authorised Version. So even Winer and other Germans, poor as they are, and all men taught of God. It is true that the present participle, combined with a past tense or qualified by an adverb of time, may have an imperfect force, as in 1:29, 5:13, etc. But here nothing enters to weaken its simple, special, and emphatic force. The words are only difficult to unbelief. The late Dean Alford was hold enough in free thought; yet he expressly affirms that in both texts the present participle is used to signify essential truth without any particular regard to time.* The figurative idea destroys that truth here as elsewhere; and here it is fundamental. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. To read this "Who was" may be natural perhaps, but is certainly neither spiritual nor accurate, but downright, though of course ignorant, perversion from an inveterate hunt after figurative language.
{*A similar ignorance vitiates Dr. Steele's Tense-reading in his "Mile stones." The present in perhaps all languages is employed ethically and quite independently of the present moment. This is peculiarly true of the New Testament.}
Just before, the beautiful truth of Luke 2:14 is lost through similar vagueness. It is not "toward man, goodwill," but "goodwill (or rather good pleasure) in men," as evinced by the incarnation of the Son of God. It would appear that it is borrowed from the American Macbeth, who published not many years ago a treatise on Figurative Language. But this should have given the author time to weigh. Again, what can be feebler or more nugatory than the remarks on Acts 15, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us"? How does it help the reader's better understanding to remark that "the words doubtless are a strong form of the figure of Omission" etc.? I should have thought that no reverent mind could have lowered it to "us [as a church and people acting under His influence and teaching to whom He has revealed it]" but must recall the sense they had of the Spirit's action, as well as the weight of the apostles present, however they might associate not only the elders but the assembly with the decision to which the words of the prophets had given an inspired basis.
The rest of the work calls for no notice in particular, save the illusion of counting what is really trivial and often erroneous to be a "vast and important subject." No intelligent reader will be surprised to see misapprehension of prophecy here, and so inadequate a notion as "a princely people!" in Dan. 9:26, in the Romans, as almost all admit. He is just as far from the truth as the writer who makes "a coming prince" to be Antichrist. It is really the chief of the Roman empire in its last form (not the wilful king, the Antichrist that reigns in Jerusalem over the land, Dan. 11:36-39), who confirms covenant for a week, or seven years, with the many or mass of apostate Jews. These are the personages symbolically presented in Rev. 13 as the two beasts rising out of the sea and out of the earth, the beast and the false prophet of Rev. 19. The close of Daniel 11 shows us the king of the north, the Assyrian of many prophets, whose course is antagonistic to both the Latin Beast and the Jewish Antichrist; but he too, as we see in Dan. 11:40-45, shall come to his end, and none shall help him.