tender, sensitive nature would make him keenly sensible of the difficulties of his position.

Perhaps, says Dean Paget, the strength, the wickedness, the wealth, the confidence of paganism at Ephesus at times appalled and staggered him ; there seemed something irresistibly discouraging in the brilliance, the culture, the self-sufficiency of the society which ignored and ridiculed him. As a consequence he was in danger of being ashamed of the faith that brought such trouble. Paul was cognisant of this, and in the second Epistle seeks to banish the fears of Timothy, and to stir him up to a soldierly courage. Surely it is significant that this aspect of things is scarcely touched upon in the first letter, indicating that a new development had taken place both of trial and of character. "God has not given us," he says, "the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, His prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God." "Be strong," he says later, "and endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." He appeals to him as though he were a sentry on duty: "Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." He plies Timothy with an argument that must have gone straight to his heart. "I also suffer," he says, "nevertheless I am not ashamed." Yes, and more, Onesiphorus, whom you know so well, he was not ashamed of my chain, but when he was in Rome he sought me out very diligently and found me. He returns again and again to his own condition as giving force to his appeals, and a right to make them. "I suffer trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds I endure all things. Thou hast fully known my doctrine and manner of life

. . . and what persecutions

I endured." And then he adds with a sorrowful sort of

stedfastness, "yea, and all that will live godly in Christ

Jesus shall suffer persecution." As though he would have Timothy understand that there could be no sort of escape, unless indeed, he gave up the faith he professed.

In bringing this paper to a conclusion, it may be claimed that the character deduced from the various passages in the two Epistles hangs together, and is consistent with the conditions under which Timothy lived, and the circumstances of his parentage and upbringing; we feel that we have been dealing with a real person. That he was a man of a lovable nature, and of fine piety, need hardly be said; that he possessed qualities that indicated his fitness for a difficult post, must also be admitted; for Paul would never have asked him to undertake the onerous duties involved in the supervision of the Christian Church at Ephesus, if he had not been endowed with some fitness to discharge them; but he was not a man who could stand firmly alone.

It is inconceivable that the apostle should so often have urged him to take a bold stand, if he had evidently possessed a dauntless courage; nor would he so often have warned him against the claims of a false knowledge, if he had not been over-inclined to listen to them; nor would he have bidden him see to it that no man despised his youth, if it had been a needless injunction. We may safely say that when Paul himself was known as a young man, whose name was Saul, at whose feet the murderers of Stephen cast down their clothes, no one would have despised him.

It is reported that Timothy remained at Ephesus for many years after Paul's death; if so, it is just within the bounds of possibility that he was none other than the angel of the Church in that city, who is addressed in one of the letters to the seven churches which were in Asia. And again, if so, it is interesting to observe that something of the same type of character is there suggested, as that which we have already discovered. "I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and that for my

sake thou hast laboured, and hast not fainted." There is the unassuming, long suffering, laborious man, who wins all our hearts, "But," continues the Divine Word, "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love." Was that the sorrowful explanation of wavering and of weakness? We cannot tell, but if it was, it explains all.

The authenticity of the pastoral epistles has been called in question: Renan, in his bold way, calls the writer of them a forger, who perhaps incorporated some authentic notes of Paul in his apocryphal composition; and the School of Baur, as might have been expected, gives them short shrift, rejecting the whole of them. Such criticism can be met on its own ground, but is there not another method? Forgery stumbles, not when it sets itself deliberately to delineate character, but when character is not so much carefully outlined as taken for granted, and made the groundwork (almost invisible) of the superstructure. And if we have discovered in these letters a character consistent with itself and with its circumstances, if a score of delicate suggestions make us feel that we are dealing with a living man, who is being dealt with by one stronger than himself, whose words vibrate with the personal element, then we feel that we have got into that atmosphere in which the mere literary actor and the forger cannot live, and we gain a new evidence that these two letters are rightly entitled the First and the Second Epistles of Paul the Apostle to Timothy.

EDWARD MEDLEY.

235

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CODEX BEZE.

"THE internal character of Codex Bezæ is a most difficult and indeed an almost inexhaustible theme."

Thus wrote

Dr. Scrivener in a passage of his Introduction, which, as the new editor tells us (vol. i., p. 130), was penned before the publication of the highly ingenious treatise by Mr. Rendel Harris, entitled A Study of the Codex Beza (1891). After Harris, Mr. Chase took quite a different look at it, pointing to the Syriac element in Codex Beza, and now the question has taken quite a new start, or will do so, by the theory put forward by Prof. Blass, of Halle, that, as far as the Acts are concerned, this Codex has preserved us quite a different recension or edition of that book, flowing, as it seems to him, from the first draught or rough copy of Luke's text, while the other MSS. go back on the altered copy forwarded to Theophilus. Compare the Prolegomena of Acta Apostolorum sive Lucae ad Theophilum Liber alter : editio philologica apparatu critico, commentario perpetuo, indice verborum illustrata auctore Friderico Blass, Göttingen, 1895.

It is not my intention to enter upon this theme at large -I have not even the necessary books for doing so—but I believe I have made two observations, one as to the text and the other as to the origin of the Codex, which may turn out very important, if they be proved. If any one has already started them before me, I most willingly concede the priority, and beg to excuse my ignorance by my distance from all centres of learning.

1. My first observation is that the Greek text of the first chapters of Acts as contained in Codex Beze shows clear traces of an underlying Semitic original, namely, Acts ii. 47. All our Greek manuscripts and other sources read: ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν; Codex Bezæ alone πρὸς Öλov TÒν KÓσμov, apud totum mundum. As Prof. Blass

remarks, kóσμos may be used here in a similar way to John vii. 4, xii. 19 in the sense which the word has in modern Greek = le monde les hommes. But to a reader more versed in Hebrew and Syriac another thought might

occur.

=

Aaós is Dy, and Kóσμos is,

==

How

easily these two words have been confounded, a few examples will suffice to show. First, one from the New Testament.

2 Peter ii. 1, év T λa: Tischendorf quotes as variant, Syr. Bodl., in mundo. Now, it has long since been shown (1886) by I. H. Hall, in his edition of the William Manuscript, that the latter has correctly (people), and that

(world) in the Bodleian copy is a mere clerical error of the Syrian copyist. This variant has to disappear from the critical apparatus.

Another example from the Old Testament. In 1 Esdr. iv. 40 we have the doxology: xaì aỷтy—thus must be read, instead of αὕτη ἡ ἰσχὺς καὶ τὸ βασίλειον καὶ ἡ ἐξουσία καὶ ἡ μεγαλειότης τῶν πάντων αἰώνων: of all ages. Ball, in his Variorum Apocrypha, quotes for the last word as variant: "peoples, Syr." But it is clear, Syriac (peoples) is again a mere misspelling for l (ages).

On three witnesses a cause stands; therefore one more example from an ecclesiastical text. Within the last year, by a strange coincidence, the Vita Antonii was published twice, printed in the same printing house, the whole text by P. Bedjan in the fifth volume of his Acta Martyrum, the first part only by Friedr. Schulthess, of Zurich, in a dissertation of the University of Strassburg. Schulthess used three MSS. of the British Museum, Bedjan also three, one of them being identical with one used by Schulthess. Now, where Bedjan reads, and the people slept (p. 19 1. 8), Schulthess has (p. 14 1. 1.) and the world slept. Neither gives any variant in his critical apparatus;