Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/75

 for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art a rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven." In such high terms was the chief apostle distinguished, and thus did his Master peculiarly commission him above the rest, for the high office, to which all the energies of his remaining life were to be devoted.

Who do men say that I am.—The common English translation, here makes a gross grammatical blunder, putting the relative in the objective case,—"Whom do men say," &c. (Matt. xvi. 13-15.) It is evident that on inverting the order, putting the relative last instead of first, it will be in the nominative,—"Men say that I am who?" making, in short, a nominative after the verb, though it here comes before it by the inversion which the relative requires. Here again the blunder may be traced to a heedless copying of the Vulgate. In Latin, as in Greek, the relative is given in the accusative, and very properly, because it is followed by the infinitive. "Quem dicunt homines esse Filium hominis?" which literally is, "Whom do men say the son of man to be?"—a very correct form of expression; but the blunder of our translators was, in preserving the accusative, while they changed the verb, from the infinitive to the finite form; for "whom" cannot be governed by "say." Hammond has passed over the blunder; but Campbell, Thomson, and Webster, have corrected it.

Son of Man.—This expression has acquired a peculiarly exalted sense in our minds, in consequence of its repeated application to Jesus Christ, and its limitation to him, in the New Testament. But in those days it had no meaning by which it could be considered expressive of any peculiar characteristic of the Savior, being a mere general emphatic expression for the common word "man," used in solemn address or poetical expressions. Both in the Old and New Testament it is many times applied to men in general, and to particular individuals, in such a way as to show that it was only an elegant periphrasis for the common term, without implying any peculiar importance in the person thus designated, or referring to any peculiar circumstance as justifying this appellative in that case. Any concordance will show how commonly the word occurred in this connection. The diligent Butterworth enumerates eighty-nine times in which this word is applied to Ezekiel, in whose book of prophecy it occurs oftener than in any other book in the Bible. It is also applied to Daniel, in the address of the angel to him, as to Ezekiel; and in consideration of the vastly more frequent occurrence of the expression in the writers after the captivity, and its exclusive use by them as a formula of solemn address, it has been commonly considered as having been brought into this usage among the Hebrews, from the dialects of Chaldea and Syria, where it was much more common. In Syriac, more particularly, the simple expression, "man," is entirely banished from use by this solemn periphrasis, (bar-nosh,) "," which every where takes the place of the original direct form. It should be noticed also, that in every place in the Old Testament where this expression ("son of man") occurs, before Ezekiel, the former part of the sentence invariably contains the direct form of expression, ("man,") and this periphrasis is given in the latter part of every such sentence, for the sake of a poetical repetition of the same idea in a slightly different form. Take, for instance, Psalm viii. 4, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" And exactly so in every other passage anterior to Ezekiel, as Numbers xxiii. 19, Job xxv. 16, xxxv. 8, Isa. li. 12, lvi. 2, and several other passages, to which any good concordance will direct the reader.

The New Testament writers too, apply this expression in other ways than as a name of Jesus Christ. It is given as a mere periphrasis, entirely synonymous with "man," in a general or abstract sense, without reference to any particular individual, in Mark iii. 28, (compare Matt. xii. 13, where the simple expression "men" is given,)