74 REV. GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D., ON THE GREEK PAPYRI. 



As one who has followed these matters with some diligence, I 

 must confess to a feeling that, in regard to this phase of New 

 Testament study, the present are really good days in which 

 to live ! From the most unexpected quarter there has come 

 to us light which invests the study of the New Testament with 

 a new and lively interest — in fact, in some respects, a quite 

 surprising interest. We are now able to la}" aside certain lexical 

 helps of a generation ago, which, though ingenious, were largely 

 speculative and far from satisfying, and we have the comfort 

 of placing our feet on the rock-bottom of linguistic assurance. Now, 

 as never before, we are able to study the words of Christ and 

 His Apostles in the light of the every-day life and feelings of the 

 common people to whom their ministry meant so much. And, more- 

 over, we are ever expecting an increase of knowledge from the same 

 quarter — a zest-giving experience to which our fathers and grand- 

 fathers were utter strangers. 



May I hazard a brief reflection Surely one message of the 

 Papyri is that the New Testament is a living book — a book of 

 divine instruction, given in human words and phrases. Though there 

 is nothing commonplace about the Gospel, yet it was assuredly pro- 

 mulgated in commonplace conditions. Hence the constituent books 

 of the New Testament were not written by professional scribes and 

 given to the world on material of great commercial value ; but rather 

 they were written by men of practical feeling and religious purpose, 

 who sent their thoughts abroad in the simple speech of the people, 

 written on material such as served the work-a-day purposes of non- 

 literary communications. In a word, the New Testament shows 

 itself to be essentially a book for the people — not so much a volume 

 for the library shelf, as a budget of reading for the hands of men 

 and women, to be copied and circulated, to be translated and 

 diffused, even as these operations continually engage the energies of 

 our modern Bible Societies. 



Dr. MiLLiGAN, in reply, said : I feel that it is I who owe you 

 thanks for listening to me for such a long time. AYith reference to 

 the questions that have been asked, I may say that Hellenistic 

 Greek is a somewhat vague term, but, generally speaking, it refers 

 to the later Greek that was in use throughout the Gra3CO-Roman 

 Empire at the beginning of the Christian Era. And the important 

 point for our present purpose to notice is, that recent discoveries 



