Synonyms of the New Testament - Gordon College Faculty

SYNONYMS

OF

THE NEW TESTAMENT








By

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.







Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College, Wenham, MA
March 2006






London in 1880







PREFACE








THIS VOLUME, not any longer a little one, has grown
out of a course of lectures on the Synonyms of the
New Testament, which, in the fulfilment of my duties
as Professor of Divinity at King's College, London, I.
more than once addressed to the theological students
there. The long, patient, and exact studies in language
of our great Schools and Universities, which form so
invaluable a portion of their mental, and of their moral
discipline as well, could find no place during the two
years or two years and a half of the theological course-
at King's College. The time itself was too short to
allow this, and it was in great part claimed by more
pressing studies. Yet, feeling the immense value of
these studies, and how unwise it would be, because
we could not have all which we would desire, to
forego what was possible and within our reach, I two
or three times dedicated a course of lectures to the
comparative value of words in the New Testament-
and these lectures, with many subsequent additions
and some defalcations, have supplied the materials



i
ii
of the present volume. I have never doubted that
(setting aside those higher and more solemn lessons,
which in a great measure are out of our reach to
impart, being taught rather by God than men), there
are few things which a theological teacher should
have more at heart than to awaken in his scholars an
enthusiasm for the grammar and the lexicon. We
shall have done much for those who come to us for
theological training and generally for mental guidance,
if we can persuade them to have these continually in
their hands; if we can make them believe that with
these, and out of these, they may be learning more,
obtaining more real and lasting acquisitions, such as
will stay by them, and form a part of the texture of
their own minds for ever, that they shall from these
be more effectually accomplishing themselves for their
future work, than from many a volume of divinity,
studied before its time, even if it were worth studying
at all, crudely digested and therefore turning to no
true nourishment of the intellect or the spirit.
Claiming for these lectures a wider audience than
at first they had, I cannot forbear to add a few obser-
vations on the value of the study of synonyms, not
any longer having in my eye the peculiar needs of any
special body of students, but generally; and on that
of the Synonyms of the New Testament in particular;
as also on the helps to the study of these which are at
present in existence; with a few further remarks which
my own experience has suggested.
The value of this study as a discipline for training
the mind into close and accurate habits of thought, the

iii
amount of instruction which may be drawn from it,
the increase of intellectual wealth which it may yield,
all this has been implicitly recognized by well-nigh all
great writers-for well-nigh all from time to time have
paused, themselves to play the dividers and discerners
of words-explicitly by not a few, who have proclaimed
the value which this study had in their eyes. And
instructive as in any language it must be, it must be
eminently so in the Greek-a language spoken by a
people of the subtlest intellect; who saw distinctions,
where others saw none; who divided out to different
words what others often were content to huddle con-
fusedly under a common term; who were themselves
singularly alive to its value, diligently cultivating the
art of synonymous distinction (the a]no