ht up in our discussions, the influence
his grammar exerted among us, directly and indirectly, was certainly
great; but it went no further than grammatical details. His obvious
gravitation to the idea of New Testament Greek forming a sort of separate
department of its own probably never was shared, to any perceptible
extent, by any one of us. We did not enter very far into these matters.
We knew by every day's working experience that New Testament Greek
differed to some extent from the Greek to which we had been accustomed,
and from the Septuagint Greek to which from time to time we referred.
But further than this we did not go, nor care to go. We had quite enough
on our hands. We had a very difficult task to perform, we had to revise
under prescribed conditions a version which needed revision almost in
every verse, and we had no time to enter into questions that did not then
appear to bear directly on our engrossing and responsible work.

But now it must be distinctly admitted that recent investigation and, to
a certain extent, recent discoveries have cast so much new light on New
Testament Greek that it becomes a positive duty to take into
consideration what has been disclosed to us by the labours of the last
fifteen years as to New Testament Greek, and then fairly to face the
question whether the particular labours of the Revisers have been
seriously affected by it. Let us bear in mind, however, that it may be
quite possible that a largely increased knowledge of the position which
what used to be called Biblical Greek now occupies may be clearly
recognized, and yet only comparatively few changes necessitated by it in
syntactic details and renderings. But let us not anticipate. What we
have now to do is to ascertain the nature and amount of the disclosures
and new knowledge to which I have alluded.

This may be briefly stated as emanating from a very large amount of
recent literature on post-classical Greek, and from a careful and
scientific investigation of the transition from the earlier
post-classical to the later, and thence to the modern Greek of the
present time. Such an investigation, illustrated as it has been by the
voluminous collection of the Inscriptions, and the already large and
growing collection of the Papyri, has thrown indirectly considerable
light on New Testament Greek, and has also called out three works, each
of a very important character, and posterior to the completion of the
Revision,