Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/244

Rh handle the subject-matter with freshness and reality, almost every section being in effect a bright little historical essay. The ample new material was chiefly drawn from Greek and Latin inscriptions and the exact study of localities. To each commentary is appended a dissertation, which includes some of Lightfoot's most careful and thorough work. To the old problem ‘On the Brethren of the Lord’ he brings new light by tracing an orderly history in the seeming chaos of patristic tradition on ‘James, the Lord's brother.’ The dissertation on ‘St. Paul and the Three’ is the necessary supplement to the commentary on Galatians ii. Together they constitute Lightfoot's most important contribution to the Tübingen controversy. Both are written throughout temperately and dispassionately (cf. Preface, p. ix). The dissertation sketches with simple directness ‘the progressive history of the relations between the Jewish and Gentile converts in the early ages of the church, as gathered from the apostolic writings, aided by such scanty information as can be got together from other sources.’ Thus what he offers is not a refutation of the conclusions of the Tübingen scholars, but a rival interpretation and a rival picture. It is solid and lasting work, and hardly the less original because of a certain indebtedness pointed out by Lightfoot himself to the second edition of Ritschl's ‘Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche’ (p. 285; also ‘Philippians,’ p. 187). His edition of ‘Philippians’ contains, besides an interesting study on ‘St. Paul and Seneca,’ a much canvassed dissertation on ‘The Christian Ministry;’ that is, to use his own words of 1881 (Preface to sixth edition), ‘an investigation into its origin.’ The first part deals chiefly with the development of monarchical episcopacy out of the primitive presbyterate, a change which, so far as Asia Minor is concerned, Lightfoot holds to have been sanctioned by St. John in his old age, and with the chief changes in the office, and in the language used about it, in the early centuries. The second part traces the origin and growth of what Lightfoot calls ‘the sacerdotal view of the ministry.’ Probably no better sketch exists of what is even now known regarding these departments of the early history of Christian institutions. Similarly the three dissertations on the Essenes appended to ‘Colossians,’ if here and there open to criticism, are always rational and comprehensive. Lightfoot had looked forward to writing a commentary on the Acts. A partial substitute for it will be found in an article on the Acts which he contributed to the second edition of the ‘Dictionary of the Bible,’ 1893.

Lightfoot's book on ‘A fresh Revision of the New Testament’ (1871, reprinted 1881, with an appendix on the last petition of the Lord's Prayer from the ‘Guardian,’ 7, 14, 21 Sept. 1881) is not only the most trustworthy defence (by anticipation) of the revised version, but a valuable collection of biblical criticisms, at once accurate and readily intelligible.

A very different contribution to biblical criticism was the account of the Coptic versions of the New Testament, and of the known manuscripts of them, which Lightfoot wrote for the second and enlarged for the third edition of Scrivener's ‘Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament’ (1874, 1883). This is a tentative piece of work, but it supplies at present the only list of these manuscripts accessible in print. It is one fruit of the labour bestowed by Lightfoot on learning the Coptic and Armenian languages for purposes of criticism.

To biblical and patristic criticism alike belong the nine articles which Lightfoot wrote in the ‘Contemporary Review’ (December 1874–May 1877) in reply to the anonymous book entitled ‘Supernatural Religion.’ On the first or speculative part of the book he said very little. By mental habit he shrank from what seemed to him abstract speculation. In answer to the second or historical part, he discussed exhaustively the evidence borne by Christian writers of the first two centuries to the several books of the New Testament. The articles were unfortunately broken off by increasing want of leisure, but during Lightfoot's illness on his first stay at Bournemouth in 1889 he yielded at last to many urgent requests for republication, and with Mr. Harmer's help reprinted the papers in a volume. He added notes chiefly referring to changes made or not made by the anonymous author in his later editions, and an article, ‘Discoveries illustrating the Acts of the Apostles,’ from the ‘Contemporary Review’ for May 1878. It is matter for regret that the circumstances of republication involved the retention of ephemeral and merely personal matter. The tone of rebuke towards an opponent found here, and here only, in Lightfoot's writings, a tone forced from him by moral indignation, may easily hide from the reader the calm, judicial character and the permanent value of the discussion of patristic evidence.

The second great department of study on which Lightfoot left his mark was that of early post-biblical Christian literature and history. In 1869 he published all that was then known of the text of the ‘Epistle of Clement of Rome,’ and of the homily attri-