290 NOTES. 



Yet here an interment of 36 hours is measured by the same 

 terms as one of 72 hours. In like manner, ^^ after eight 

 days" inay mean just a week; but I shall require decisive 

 proof, before believing that it here does, mean it. My friend's 

 '' Jewish usuage, as well as Christian/' he cannot establish. 

 I hesitate not to say, that there is no Hebrew or Jewish idiom 

 to countenance it.* 



The capabilities of language, under my friend's horticultural 

 treatment, are, by the way, somewhat surprising. In part 

 II. of his Reply (j9. 174), we have the foUowing: ^^^ After 

 six days,' says Matthew (xvii. 1) — ^ahoiU eight days,' says 

 Luke (ix. 28) — was the Transfiguration. Why this s^pecifica- 

 tion of time?'' he naively asks. And explaining the indefinite 

 ^^after^' by the still more indefinite ^^ ahout," and dividing the 

 difierence, he thinks ^^it is \n^\j probable, to say the least/' 

 that exactly '^ one week" had elapsed. So, whether an occur- 

 rence be '' after six days," or after seven days, or '' after eight 

 days," or anywhere "about" either of these periods, it is 

 precisely the same in my friend's dialectics; — else whi/ so exact 

 a specification ! 



He seems to forget, too, that even an exact "specification of 

 time" is nothing to his argument, unless it be shown that the 

 specification was relative — that this precise time determined 

 the occurrence.f Ever neglecting the essential, he builds 

 wholly on the accidental. 



* Hetlin, an English Divine of the seventeenth century, observes upon 

 the passage in dispute, "But where the Greek text readsit /msS' ^//csja? 

 oKToo [post octo dies in the Vulgar Latin — 'after eight days' according 

 to our English Bibles), that should be rather imderstood of the ninth 

 or tenth, than the eighth day after." [History of the Sahbath.^ 



f " We sailed away . . . and came to Troas va. five days." (Acts 

 XX. 6.) " We sailed thence, and came the next day over against Chios ; 

 and the next day vre arrived at Samos ; and the next day we came to 

 Miletus." (ib. xx. 15.) "And after ^ye days," &c. (ib. xxiv. 1.) "This 

 day is the fourteenth day," &c. (ib. xxvii. 33.) "We tarried there 

 three days" (ib. xxviii. 12), &c. &c. — "Why this specification of time, 

 if no special importance was attached to it?" — J. N. B. 

 \^ 



