PROBLEMS OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDY 607 



us to perceive the relative value which they themselves put upon their 

 various ideas. It is at this point perhaps that the nature of the inter- 

 pretative process calls for more accurate definition than it has 

 generally received. For however common it may have been in the 

 past to assume that all a writer's thoughts are for him, and so must 

 be for the interpreter, upon one unbroken level, this is certainly an 

 error. Interpretation has for its task the recovery of the whole state 

 of mind of the author of which the passage or book under considera- 

 tion is the expression. But just as surely as men have different 

 thoughts, so surely do they themselves value their various thoughts 

 variously. One idea is simply an inheritance from the past, which 

 a man holds without repugnance, but without enthusiasm. Another 

 is a current notion that he will use to-day for illustration, and to- 

 morrow discard for its opposite. A third is the central, vitalizing 

 element of all his thinking, that by which he lives and for which he 

 would be willing to die. The interpreter who recognizes the full 

 breadth and depth of his task will see that it is just as much his duty 

 to discover the relative values which the author puts upon his thoughts 

 as to find out his thoughts themselves. Knowledge of the thought of 

 the time will help to solve the question of genesis; and knowledge 

 of genesis will help to the discovery of value. But genesis and value 

 are not necessarily correlative. What is inherited from the past is 

 often, and often rightly, precisely that which is held most tenaciously. 

 The problem of value is often a complex one, but it is none the less 

 a necessary one. That interpreters are already beginning to give 

 practical recognition to this important phase of their task asking, 

 for example, not simply what ideas Paul expresses in his various 

 epistles, but what was the source and genesis of these ideas, and how 

 they were related to one another; which are vital and central, which 

 peripheral and 'illustrative is an encouraging mark of progress. 

 The principle, we must believe, is destined to be yet more fully 

 recognized, to be more exactly defined, and to become more influ- 

 ential, not only in the constructive historical work, but in exegesis 

 proper. 



III. New Testament History 



We come at length to consider that division of New Testament 

 study in which, as already indicated, it culminates: New Testa- 

 ment history, or, more accurately stated, the history of the rise of 

 Christianity, including both the history of events and the history of 

 thought. The definition of the field as that of the rise of Christianity, 

 rather than as that for which the books of the New Testament furnish 

 the material, has already been defended. The inclusion of events 

 and teachings in one general division follows almost as a matter of 



