The life and work of St. Paul

BHETOBIO 0V ST. PAUL.
from the forma of one finite and earthly thought to the infinite and spiritual life embodied
in them;" the "language of ecstasy," which was to him, as he meant it to be to
his converts, the language of the work-day world ; that "transcendental-absurd," as it
seems to the world, which was the very life both of his conscience and intellect, and made
him what he was ; the way in which, as with one powerful sweep of the wing, he passes
from the pettiest earthly contentions to the spiritual and the infinite ; the " shrinking
Infirmity and self-contempt, hidden in a sort of aureole of revelation, abundant beyond
measure " ' this was due to the fact that his citizenship was in heaven, his life bid with
Christ in God.
EXCURSUS H. (p. 15).
BHETOBIO OF ST. PATH.
M. KENAN, in describing the Greek of St. Paul as Hellenistic Greek charged with Hebraisms
and Syriacisms which would be scarcely intelligible to a cultivated reader of that
period, says that if the Apostle had ever received even elementary lessons in grammar or
rhetoric at Tarsus, it is inconceivable that he would have written in the bizarre, incorrect,
and non-Hellenic style of his letters.
Now, I do not think that St. Paul would have made about his own knowledge of
Greek the same remarks as Josephus does, who tells us that he had taken great pains to
master the learning of the Greeks and the elements of the Greek language. St. Paul had
picked up Greek quite naturally in a Greek city, and I think that I have decisively proved
that he could not have possessed more than a partial and superficial acquaintance with
Greek literature. But I have little doubt that he, like Josephus, would have said that
he had so long accustomed himself to speak Syriac that he could not pronounce Greek
with sufficient exactness, and that the Jews did not encourage the careful endeavour to
obtain a polished Greek style, which they looked on as an accomplishment of slaves and
freedmen.* Yet, after reading the subjoined list of specimens from the syntaxis ornata
of St. Paul, few, I think, will be able to resist the conviction that he had attended, while
at Tarsus, some elementary class of Greek rhetoric. I will here content myself with brief
references ; if the reader should feel interested in the subject, I have gone further into it
in the Expositor for 1879.
Figures (ox 1
?!"""^) are divided by Greek and Latin rhetoricians into Figures of Language
(figurae verborum, elocutions, A.|e