Acts xvii. 21.:
"For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time
in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing."
Can any of your biblical correspondents inform me in what commentary upon
the New Testament the coincidence with the following passages in
Demosthenes is noticed, or whether any other source of the historical fact
has been recorded? In the translation of Petrus Lagnerius, Franc. 1610 (I
have not at hand the entire works), we find these words:
"Nihil est omnium, Athenienses, in praesentia nocentius, quam quod vos
alienati estis a rebus, et tantisper operam datis, dum audientes
sedetis, si quid Novi nuntiatum fuerit" (4. contr. _Phil_.).
Again:
"Nos vero, dicetur verum, nihil facientes, hic perpetuo sedemus
cunctabundi, tum decernentes, tum interrogantes, si quid Novi in foro
dicatur."--4 _Orat. ad Philipp. Epist._
Pricaeus, in his very learned and valuable _Commentarii in varios N.T.
Libros_, Lond. 1660, fol., at p. 628, in v. 21., says only--
"Videantur quae ex Demosthene, Plutarcho, aliis, _Eruditi_ annotarunt."
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Matthew xiii. 14.:
"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By
hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall
see, and shall not perceive."
This proverb seems to have been common to all ages and countries. It is of
frequent occurrence in the New Testament (Mark iv. 12.; viii. 18.; John
xii. 40.; Acts xxviii. 25.; Romans xi. 8.), and, as in Matthew, is referred
to Isaiah. But, in the Old Testament, there is earlier authority for its
use in Deuteronomy xxix. 4. It occurs also in Jeremiah v. 21.; in Ezekiel
xii. 2., and, with a somewhat different application, in the Psalms, cxv.
5.; cxxxv. 16.
That it was employed as an established proverb by Demosthenes seems to have
been generally overlooked. He says:
[Greek: Hoi men houtos horontes ta ton etuchekoton erga, hoste totes
paroimias, horontes me horan, kai akouontas me akouein. (Kata
Aristogeitonos,] A Taylor, Cantab. vol. ii. pp. 494-5.)
It is quoted, however, by Pricaeus (p. 97.), who also supplies exactly
corresponding passages from Maximus Tyrius (A.D. 190), Plutarch (A.D.
107-20), and Philo (A.D. 41). Of these, the last only can have been prior
to the publication of St. Matthew's Gospel, which Saxius places, at the
earliest, in the reign of Claudius.
Hugo Grotius has no reference to Demosthenes in his _Annotationes in Vet.
Test.,_ Vogel & Doderein, 1776; but cites Heraclitus the Ephesian, who,
according to Saxius, flourished in the year 502 B.C., and Aristides, who,
on the same authority, lived in the 126th year of the Christian era. Has
any other commentator besides Pricaeus alluded to the passage in
Demosthenes?