The Expositor (Volume 8)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ...Acts and the Apocalypse, epistolary in character and purpose. The standpoint of the writers sufficiently explains the striking variance in the employment of the Name of Names. In the early material out of which the Gospels were constructed, whether such material were oral or written, the solitary name Jesus would be used. The simplicity of the facts stated answers to the simplicity of the personal title. But as soon as ever Apostolic writers speak or preach or pray or plead in the Name of Jesus then it appears (with exceptions so rare as almost to be ignored) together with such titles as a deep reverence would suggest, or an alternative title is used that all might know the majesty of Him whose bondservants they were. This change of use was clearly deliberate and advised. If the matter stood merely thus that the Evangelists use the single Name while St. Paul adopts more stately forms, then something might be said for the inference that the former was not pronounced enough for arguments and creeds, for Apologetic and Dogmatic. The issue does not however rest on such a comparison alone. It is now generally conceded that St. Luke is the author of the Acts of the Apostles; it is certain that the writer of the Fourth Gospel also indited the three letters which bear his name. It is very interesting to observe that as the standpoint and attitude of each of these two vary, so does their employment of the Name of Names. Writing as Evangelists, as biographers, they mainly, though not exclusively, use the historic personal Jesus. But when St. Luke appears as the historian of the origines of the Church, as the honest chronicler of the apology of the Protomartyr, of the speeches of St. Peter and St. Paul, then the change, with rarest exception,1 is made...