VAMVAS, vdm'v6s, NEOPHYTOS: Greek Orthodox; b. in Chios in the latter part of the eighteenth century; d. at Athens 1855. He was first a monk, apparently in Patmos, and later returned to Chios for further study, completing his education at Paris. In 1813 he was appointed teacher at the gymnasium of his native island, and during the Greek war for independence was secretary to Prince Demetrius Ypsilanti. He was then a teacher at the Ionic Academy in Corfu (1828-33) and at Syra (1833-37), and from 1837 until his death was professor at the University of Athens. A representative of liberalism in Church and State, Vamvas became known to the West by being involved in the struggle of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Greece. This society determined, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, to translate the Old Testament without the Apocrypha from Hebrew into Romaic, and Vamvas was engaged to assist in the work as a Greek scholar. In 1833 the Greek Church became independent, and the eleventh para-

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graph of its statutes required the synod to protect pure doctrine and guard against proselytizing. Under these circumstances, a storm of protest arose against a translation which not only undermined the authority of the Septuagint, but also lacked the Apocrypha, especially as there was an earnest desire to educate the people to use the Old Testament in the Septuagint and the New Testament in the original Greek instead of a Romaic version. So sharp became the controversy that in Apr., 1835, the government forbade the use of the new translations in schools and churches, thus restoring the authority of the Septuagint. The orthodox party was not satisfied, however, and Vamvas was denounced as the chief translator for the English. He replied in a "Brief Answer" (Athens, 1836), defending the translation and his work on it on both religious and scientific grounds, and referring pointedly to abuses existing in the Greek Church, particularly in the ignorance of the clergy. He was now obliged to defend his alleged attacks on the Septuagint before the synod, which condemned both his " Brief Answer " and his pamphlet " On the Modern Greek Church " (Athens, 1839), and sought in vain to have the government proceed against him. Though the entire affair ended disastrously for the Bible Society, Vamvas was instrumental in arousing a more active study of the Bible among his countrymen.

Vamvas was likewise active in other departments of theology. Besides a work on the inspiration of the Scriptures, he wrote a "Handbook of the Rhetoric of the Sacred Pulpit" (Athens, 1851), but became most famous for his "Elements of Ethics" (1818), a rationalistic philosophy of religion and system of ethics. The great ethical principles he held to be God and the human conscience, and he divided duties into those toward God, toward self, and toward man. The proof of, the existence of God forms the introduction to the duties toward the Deity, and the demonstration of the immortality of the soul that of the duties toward self; while the theory of human society forms the preface to the duties toward man.

(Philipp Meyer.)

Bibliography: J. Wenger, Beiträge zur Kenntnia des gegenm&rtigen Getstes . . , der griechischen Kirche, Berlin,

1839; R. Nicolai, Geschichte der nevgriechiacherc Littera- tur, p. 128, Leipsic, 1576; A. D. Kyriakos, Geacltichte der orientatischen. Kirche, 1463-1898, ib. 1902.