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Roman Law and Contemporary Revelation. enemy that he might die without a will." All this is not only distinctly non-Hebrew usage; it is anti-Hebrew. 1 Judea " was never Romanized, never colonized by Roman citizens, or subjected to Roman law." (" Cont. Review.") They who regard the ninth of Hebrews as written by Paul have no ground, then, for even imagining that he framed it on the lines of what Phillemore calls " an eminently artificial chapter of human legislation " (" Private Law among the Romans.") Much less those who ascribe this scripture to some converted Jew, a follower of Paul, unversed in foreign institutions. There was, to be sure, a Rabbinical will, a copy of the Roman, unknown before the conquest of Palestine, and, were this an epistle to Rabbis of that later date, their form of will might have been meant and, by them, understood. (Cf. "Cont. Rev." and Jahn, "Bibl. Antiq." 168.) It was, indeed, used only in exceptional cases, and was strange to ordinary Jewish converts, — quite as much so as that which was once only a patrician privilege, with few legatees, was to Roman plebeians. More strange still to such converts was the latter, offering no probable metaphor for a general com parison of the Old Testament regimen and that of the New. The Scripture language : "For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it," is, moreover, loaded with the added difficulty — as given in both English ver sions — of implying that death came to Him who made the first one of old; but this was God! But more than a recogni tion of this would carry us too far. Only if the will of Roman law and usage is not meant in Hebrews ix. 15, 16, it is not meant in any writing of Paul whatever. It may be asked here : why do we still perplex the unlearned by calling the two Tacitus, about Paul's time, observed that there were no wills among the German tribes. " The barbarians were confessedly strangers to any such conception." (Maine, Ancient Law.)

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Biblical volumes, " Old and New Testa ments "? The misnomer came down to us, it is true, from so early times as those of Tertullian and Chrysostom. (Smith, "Bible Diet.") Even in New England pulpits, in childhood, we heard the Gospel spoken of as a documentary bequest of our Lord and Saviour at His death! What could the sacred " Testaments " have signified in England when there were but " four ex amples of wills in existence " in that coun try? And this was true "down to the mid dle of the tenth century." (Henry Cabot Lodge, " Essays in Anglo Saxon Law.") 1 The word S1aOrjin), employed thirty-three times in the New Testament, may have the meaning of the Latin testamcntum where no better can be found; but in thirty-one instances English translators find better ones.1 Indeed, just before the two verses in which they employ " testament," it is translated by " covenant," and in the very next verse thereafter, the subject matter remaining the same. (Hebr. ix. 16, 17; cf. with 15 and 18.) Why this sudden change? Simply because the "blood" and "death" of Christ have just been referred to; but the old word "dis pensation," thereby ratified or made sure, answers better than "testament" or even "covenant," reasons for which cannot here be given, save that it does not imply that the parties in relation stand on an equal footing, as "covenant" does. And did a Roman will ever require a "mediator" or a "surety"? Would one of the late revisers ever think of our lord as the "mediator of a better" will? We shall entangle ourselves in theological exposi tion if we go farther in this direction. But it is legitimate to say that, in reading the idea of Roman will-making into the text under consideration, that is implied which is not true of it, viz. that the testator 1 The tradition is that St. Austin preached at Canterbury four centuries before this, A.D. 596. 5 I.e. the Revises.