passage was admitted to the canon. Nevertheless, in spite of the unequivocal clearness of the text as thus written, the commentators perpetuated the in terpretation supported by the phrase which had been rejected in the canon. The passage evoked innum erable comments, which stray from the true signifi cation in proportion to the lack, en the part of the commentators, of fidelity to the simple and obvious meaning of Jesus doctrine. Most of them recog nize the reading rejected by the canonical text.

To be absolutely convinced that Jesus spoke only of the eternal law, we need only examine the true meaning of the word which has given rise to so many false interpretations. The word "law" (in (ireek rJ/xos, in Hebrew fn lp), torah) has in all languages two principal meanings: one, law in the abstract sense, independent of formulae; the other, the written statutes which men generally recognize as law. In the Greek of Paul's Epistles the distinc tion is indicated by the use of the article. Without the article Paul uses vo/xo? the most frequently in the sense of the divine eternal law. By the ancient Hebrews, as in books of Isaiah and the other prophets, m lp), torah, is always used in the sense of an eternal revelation, a divine intuition. It was not till the time of Esdras, and later in the Talmud, that " Torah " was used in the same sense in which we use the word "Bible" with this difference, that while we have words to distinguish between the Bible and the divine law, the Jews employed the same word to express both meanings.