renes, terrified and alarmed by the injurious though miraculous destruction of their swine, entreated him to leave their coasts: and he accordingly went up into the ship, and returned back again to Capernaum. In Galilee, therefore, on the western side of the Lake, he ought to be found in the following part of the history; yet, in the very next chapter, we are plainly told, without the slightest insinuation of his having crossed the Lake again, that he was on the eastern side of the Lake; for from thence he sent out his twelve Apostles, and thither they returned to him again; because, immediately on their return, he took them aside into a desert place belonging to the city Bethsaida, which we learn from Josephus,*(who, having had the command of the forces of the Jews in that district, must have been perfectly acquainted with the situation of every town upon the Lake, was on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. If then this very exceptionable miracle be an interpolation, and not part of the original writing of Luke, the narrative proceeds consistently and regularly: but if it be taken as authentic, there is such a geographical confusion * Josephus, p. 1066. Ed. Hudson. and disorder in this part of the history, as occurs no where else in this author's works; and such as can neither be allowed, nor indeed supposed, in an historian, who, writing upon a subject of the greatest importance, sets out with professing to write accurately and in order. There is, however, another circumstance in this story of the demoniac, as also in the passage cited as objectionable in the Acts of the Apostles, which, if considered as it deserves, appears very satifactorily to evince the spuriousness of both passages, and even to point out nearly the date of their interpolation: which is, that the word legion in the first, and the words aprons and handkerchiefs in the second, are not Greek, but Latin words written in Greek characters. When different and distant nations, by the means either of conquest or commerce, have much and frequent intercourse with each other, they must of necessity soon adopt the proper names of many places and persons, and also of coins, and perhaps of some meain use amongst each other; but in all other cases, where the words of one language are capable of being rendered by corresponding words of the other, the writers in the one sures, will not adopt the words of the other and use them as their own, especially where the characters, in which the two languages are written, are totally different, till after a great length of time, and a concurrence of many particular circumstances, have introduced such a custom. And, with respect to the Greek and Latin languages in particular, the Romans themselves acknowledged the Greeks to be so superior to them in the arts and sciences, and their language so much more copious and expressive than their own, that for many ages after their first intercourse with the nations who spoke Greek, instead of the Greeks introducing Latin words into their language, the Roman writers were continually adding to their native tongue, by the adoption of words and phrases from the Greek. It is not probable, therefore, that common Latin words were adopted into the Greek language by any, and still less so by good writers, till after the arms and arrogant haughtiness of the Romans, and the servile adulation of the conquered provinces, had been carried to their greatest height; that is, till the latter end of the reign of Trajan, or beginning of the second century of the Christian æra. The conquests of D Rome reached their utmost extent under that Emperor: and the consequent insolence of the Roman Nobility, and fawning servility, even of Philosophers and men of letters amongst the Greeks, so indignantly described by Lucian* not long afterwards, easily account for the adulatory practice of later Greek writers, in affecting to borrow words from the Latin; as if the language of the Romans was more copious and expressive than the Greek, and as much superior to the languages, as their arms had proved to the arms, of all other nations. I do not recollect any Greek writer of note who has adopted such a practice, prior to the historian Herodián, in the third century. But Lucian, in his tract upon the proper manher of writing history, Sect. 15, tells us, that one of the Greek historians of Aurelian's war with the Parthians, which was not ended till the year 164, though a professed imitator of the style of Thucydides, had adopted many Roman names of arms and machines, and even those of a foss, a bridge, and the like. His manner of noticing it, however, and the indignation he expresses at seeing In his discourse about those Greeks who were hired to be companions to the wealthy Romans. the language of Attica interspersed with Italic words, as if by way of ornament, shews that the practice even then was quite novel; and therefore it cannot be supposed to have been in use at all earlier than near the middle of the second century. At least, that it was not in use some time after the writings of Luke's histories, appears evidently from the writings of Josephus, who, though he composed some of his works in the very camp of Titus, and was induced by every consideration to adopt such a mode of expression, as was most likely to please the Emperor and ingratiate himself with the Romans, instead of using Latin military terms, even those which had no directly corresponding term in the Greek language, such as Legio for instance, never once writes the Latin word itself in Greek characters, but translates it by an original Greek word, denoting a corps of soldiers regularly arrayed. In the same manner, in every other passage of Luke's histo- Josephus ries where a Roman legion is mentioned, it is expressed by a Greek word which signifies a band or collection of soldiers, even where some particular Legion* is spoken of to distinguish it from the others, and consequently Legio Italica, Legio Augusti. |