GIFT-BOOKS.
AN ILLUSTRATED NEW TESTAMENT.*
THERE are several ways of illustrating the Bible, and we should not like to lay down any rule which would enforce one to the exclusion of all others. There is much to be said, for instance, for an Art Bible, properly BO called, for a selection, that is, of the masterpieces in which the genius of man has from time to time embodied its conceptions of sacred scenes and personages. We have the wealth of six centuries to choose from, and a list of splendid names, from Fra Angelico, Francia, and Raphael down to Holman Hunt, Dore, and Munkacsy. But to this method there is an opposition which cannot be ignored. There is what may be called the Puritan objection to the representation of such subjects, a feeling both strong and widespread, though it has lost its hold on the educated classes, and is indeed so inarticu- late that it is apt to be forgotten. And there is the very serious division between the classicists and the realists to be taken into account. Are we to have, for instance, the conventional representation of the Madonna, whether Spanish, Flemish, or Italian, or a photograph taken from a Jewish girl of to-day, the traditional Christ, or a modern Syrian carpenter ? No such objections or questions can be roused by the illustrations of the volume before us. Of course the idea of illustrating the New Testament from the actual scenes of its narratives, or of the things and places to which its writers refer, is not new ; but it has never, we think, been done so well and thoroughly before. The illustrations are described as of 'Bible scenes and sites." But the traditional, and so the disputable, element is not absent even here. It could not be. It would have been a great mistake to exclude even so doubtful an object as the "Traditional Tree of the Virgin at Heliopolis." When we come to such scenes as the "Virgin's Well at Nazareth" we feel that we must be at least very near the truth. The stonework can hardly be unchanged, but the spring is undoubtedly the same as that from which the Nazareth maidens filled their pitchers nineteen centuries ago. On the other hand, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the adven- titious element is overpoweringly strong, and the interest belongs to Christendom rather than to Christ, has been quite rightly excluded. Of all the books of the New Testament there is none which lends itself so readily to illustration of this kind as the Acts. Nearly a quarter of the whole number have been allotted to it, and there are few of them that do not justify their name, as helping to cast some light on the narrative. Among the most interesting are the "Gate by which Paul entered Damascus," "Tarsus," "Ruins of the Castle at Caesarea," "Salamis and Paphos," the "Remains of Fort Antonia, or the Castle, Jerusalem," "St. Paul's Bay, Malta," and " Pateoli." (The " Cilician Cates" can hardly be said to be "near Tarsus." It took Cyrus the younger four days' marching after Syennesis had abandoned the pass to reach the city of Tarsus.) Coins, of course, supply a specially interesting and valuable class of illustrations. Even in the • The New Testoinent. With 200 Illustrations. London : Nelson aud Sons. unchanging East time and the hand of man work great alterations in the face of Nature, and still greater in human modifications of it. At least half of the towns and cities men- tioned in the New Testament are now ruins. But the coin pre- serves its identity as nothing else preserves it. It is even possible that the stater or double drachma figured on p.45 may have been actually paid as the Temple-tax of Matthew xvii. 27, and the denarius of Tiberius Cmar, the "tribute-money" of Matthew xxii. 19, the very coin on whose "image and superscription" the Master founded his distinction between the civil and the spiritual. Among the natural features of the country, Jordan and the Sea of Galilee are well repre- sented. We miss Machaerus on the Dead Sea, the undoubted locality of the Baptist's execution. Among pictures of life, where the modern probably represents the ancient as closely as possible, we may mention "Women Grinding at the Mill" and the "Easter Wine Bottles." The photograph of a Greek inscription forbidding strangers to enter the Temple, which has been found built into the wall of a Moslem cemetery, is a felicitous illustration of Acts xxi. 28. We may suggest that in a future edition reproductions of the most ancient MSS. of the New Testament might be added.
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