HYPERBOLE (hi-pEr'bei-161, a figure of speech in which the expression is an evident exaggeration of the meaning intended to be conveyed, or by which things are represented as much greater or less, better or worse, than they really are.
Any one who carefully examines the Bible must be surprised at the very few hyperbolic ex pressions which it contains, considering that it is an Oriental book. Some of these few have oc casioned so much difficulty to sincere men that ne have reason to bless God that the scene of those great events which comprise the history of man's salvation was laid in Western, and not in Eastern Asia, where the genius of hyperbole reigns without limit or control. In Eastern Asia the tone of composition is pitched so high as to be scarcely intelligible to the sober intellect of Europe ; while in Western Asia a medium seems to have been struck between the ultra-extrava gance of the far East and the frigid exactness of the far West.
But even regarded as a book of Western Asia, the Bible is, as compared with almost any other Western Asiatic book, so singularly free from hyperbolic expressions as might well excite our surprise, did not our knowledge of its divine origin permit us to suppose that even the style and mode of expression of the writers were so far controlled as to exclude from their writings what in other ages and countries might excite pain and offense, and prove an obstacle to the re ception of divine truth. Nor is it to be said that the usage of hyperbole is of modern growth. We find it in the oldest Eastern writings which now exist ; and the earlier rabbinical writings attest that, in times approaching near to those in which the writers of the New Testament flourished, the Jewish imagination had run riot in this direction, and has left hyperboles as frequent and outra geous as any which Persia or India can produce.
These things being considered, we shall cer tainly have more cause to admire the rarity of hyperbolic expressions in the Bible than to mar vel at those which do occur.
The strongest hyperbole in all Scripture is that with which the Gospel of St. John concludes: 'There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that the world itself could not contain all the books that should be written' (John xxi :25). This has so much pained many conimentators that they have been disposed to regard it as an un authorized addition to the sacred text, and to re ject it accordingly. Now this is always a dan gerous process, and not to be adopted but on such overwhelming authority of collated manuscripts as does not exist in the present case. How much
more natural and becoming is it to regard the verse simply as a hyperbole, so perfectly con formable to Oriental modes of expression, and to some other hyperboles which may be found in terspersed in the sacred books, that the sole won der really is that this one should be rare enough to afford ground for objection and remark. Some claim that the text means that the world could not receive, or accept, the books. The same Greek word is translated "receive" in Matt. xix : II, 12. We often find sacred and profane au thors using hyperboles of the like kind and sig nification. In Num. xiii :33, the spies who had returned from searching the land of Canaan, say that they saw 'giants there, of such a prodigious size that they were in their own sight as grass hoppers." In Deut. i :28, cities with high walls about them are said to be 'walled up to heaven.' In Dan. iv:7 mention is made of a tree whereof 'the height reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof unto the end of all the earth ;' and the author of Ecclesiasticus (xlvii :i5), speaking of Solomon's wisdom, says, 'Thy soul covered the whole earth, and thou filledst it with parables.' As the world is here said to be filled with Solo mon's parables; so in John xxi :25, by one degree more of hyperbole, it is said that the world could not contain all the books that should be written concerning Jesus' miracles, if a particular account of every one of them were given. In Josephus (Antiq. xiv :22) God is mentioned as promising to Jacob that he would give the land of Canaan to him and his seed; and then it is added, 'they shall fill the whole sea and land which the sun shines upon.' Wetstein, in his note on the text in John, .and Basnage, in his Histoire des Jusfs (iii:i-g; v:7), have cited from the aneient rab binical writers such passages as the following: 'If all the seas were ink, and every reed was a pen, and the whole heaven and earth were parch ment, and all the sons of men were writers, they would not be sufficient to write all the lessons which Jochanan composed ;' and, concerning one Eliezer, it is said that, `if the heavens were parch ment, and all the sons of men writers, and all the trees of the forest pens, they would not be suffi cient for writing all the wisdom which he was pos sessed of.' Hyperboles not less strong than that under re view find their way into our own poetry, without shocking our judgment or offending our taste, thus : 'And I as rich in having such a jewel As fifty seas, if all their sands were pearl, Their rivers nectar, and their rocks pure gold.' (See Bishop Pearce's Commentary On the Four Evangelists.)