AN EXAMINATION OF MODERN CRITICISM 263
would seem the Evangelist would inform us that those latter chapters ascribed to Zachary . . . are indeed the prophecies of Jeremy, and that the Jews had not rightly attributed them : . . . there is no scripture saith they are Zachary s, but there is a scripture saith they are Jeremy s, as this of the Evangelist." And proceeding from this point of view, he discovered, as he thought, internal proof that these chapters belonged not to Zechariah s, but to Jeremiah s time. He was followed by Hammond, Kidder, Newcome, etc. 1
We shall see when we come (D.V.) to the exposition of chap. xi. as to whether there is any other possible explana tion of the occurrence of Jeremiah s name in that passage in Matthew ; meanwhile, without entering more fully into this point here, we would adopt the words of another English Biblical scholar, 2 and say :
" Is it not possible, nay, is it not much more probable, that the word lepe/uov (Jeremiah) may be written by mistake by some transcribers of Matthew s Gospel, than that those of the Jewish Church, who settled the canon of scripture, should have been so grossly ignorant of the right author of these chapters as to place them under a wrong name? It is not, I think, pretended that these chapters have been found in any copy of the Old Testament other wise placed than as they now stand. But in the New Testament there are not wanting authorities for omitting the word lepe/juov (Jeremiah). Nor is it impossible to account plausibly for the wrong insertion of Jeremiah (Matt, xxvii. 9) by observing that exactly the same words occur in Matt. ii. 1 7, where we read Tore eir\r}pwOtj ro prfOev VTTO (in some copies Sia see Wetstein) lepepiov TOV
1 Archbishop William Newcome on the Twelve Minor Prophets. The spirit of these early English critics may be judged from the following words. After stating his reasons for accepting Mede s riew that chaps, ix.-xi. were written by Jeremiah, Newcome says : " But whoever wrote them, their divine authority is established by the two quotations from them in the New Testament." How different this from modern criticism, which takes no account of the New Testa ment in this respect, nor even of the direct testimony of Christ !
2 Dr. Benjamin Blayney, author of Dissertation on the Seventy Weeks of Daniel, etc. ; died in 1801.
