Principles of New Testament Quotation. By Rev. J. Scott, M.A.
(T. and T. Clarke, Edinburgh.)—This is a book for Biblical students, and we think it will be of service to them. The different varieties of quotation are classified and illustrated, and the principles on which they are to be interpreted are discussed. The main purpose of the New Testament quotations was to reproduce the general drift and pur- pose of the texts and passages to which reference is made. We are not to assume that what we should call a loose or free quotation was due to the imperfections of memory. There was no aim at exact literalism or verbal accuracy. This would have been making truth subservient to form and sense to sound. All writers have more or less paraphrased, what they have found suitable to their purpose in existing books, and that the writers of the New Testament should have done the same is what might have been reasonably expected. The author works out this line of thought with considerable minuteness. The Septuagint was preferred for quotation, both because of the prevalence of the Greek language, and also of its peculiar capability to express the characteristic ideas of Christianity. Much of the book is ingenious, and shows re- search. But it strikes us that the author is a little too fond of meta- physical phrases. Possibly this may be due to a Scotch training. In defining what he calls paraphrastic quotations, that is to say, quota. tions which give the sense rather than the words, he tells us that "tin' mental process of the writer making the quotation, involves four things,—an analysis of the text, abstraction of the sense from the form, generalisation of the internal idea, and a corresponding objective ex- pression." One would suppose he had set himself to try how many - long philosophical words he could compress into a single sentence. Isis . meaning, unless we are much mistaken, might have been much•-roilre_ simply and quite as accurately expressed. Again, he talks of the " psychology of a text," by which it appears he means its inner sense and signification. We cannot say that we think the use of the term "psychology " is particularly happy or exact in this connection. On the relation of the Old Testament to the New and of the Jewish to the Christian economy, he has some very true and instructive remarks.
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