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PROOFS

INTERPOLATION OF THE VOWEL-LETTERS

TEXT OF THE HEBREW BIBLE,

AND GROUNDS THENCE DERIVED

A REVISION OF ITS AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION.

BY

CHARLES WILLIAM "WALL, D.D.,

VICE-PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." — Ps. cxix. 105.

LONDON:

WHITTAKER AND CO.

DUBLIN: HODGES, SMITH, AND CO., GRAFTON-STREET.

MDCCCLVII.

DUBLIN :

Iprintett at tl>e ©nibcrsitg ^rtsa,

BY M. H. GILL.

TO

THE PROVOST, MY BROTHER-FELLOWS, AND THE EX-FELLOWS

OF

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN,

&Ijis Work

IS DEDICATED,

AS A PARTING TRIBUTE OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM,

BY

THEIR AGED FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

Trinity College, Dublin,
July 1, 1857.

Page

ERRATA.

6, line

7, read 1638, instead of 1658.

54, „

1, ,

, is ,

it.

57, „

13,

, Henoch

, Henoil .

67, „

26, ,

, Aa-v-io ,

T>a-vic.

85, „

14, ,

, you ,

, your.

127, „

12,

, exhibited ,

exhibit.

168, „

19, ,

, m

nN

329, .,

9,

, in our ,

of our.

444, .,

34, ,

, addition ,

edition.

483, ,.

11,

, said ,

read.

490, „

29^ ,

, Tanaitis ,

Tauaiitis.

491, „

33,

' ' 't

7

502, „

25-6,

, chapters

, passages.

507, „

31,

. quibus ,

, uibus.

520, „

3,

, occurs ,

, occur.

538, .,

36, ,

names ,

name.

553, „

17, ,

. actions

action.

568, „

24, ,

, irtipwv-ai ,

7rtii)oj-at

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

Page.
General view of the advantages of the discovery here unfolded. —

2. Some prepossessions endeavoured to be removed. — 3. Traces of
a providential interference for the protection of the Bible. — 4. Two
circumstances in the Gospel history explained by means of the pre-
sent discovery. — 5. Brief notice of some points relating to the plan
of the following Treatise v

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY PHILOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

Brief review of the progress of Hebrew philology Analysis of successive

changes in the pronunciation of Hebrew. — On the earlier consonan-
tal powers of some of the Hebrew letters. — Remarks on the vocal
values of certain Hebrew letters.— rSome illustration of the evil
effects of the diaphonism of W. — Analogy of the Hebrew accents to
the oldest Grecian musical notes. — New classification suggested of
the Masoretic vowel-points. — Corrupt state of pronunciation of the
Syriac matres lectionis. — On some peculiarities of English pronun-
ciation of vowels. — On the present, compared with the former,
powers of J and V- — A requisite change in the English transcrip-
tions of Hebrew names. — Use in Hebrew writing of the Waw con-
versive of the future — Analysis of the strict meaning of the Waw
conversive ofthejxxst — Brief notice of the Hebrew prophetic future.
— First class of faults in the Authorized English Version. — Second
class of faults in the Authorized English Version. — Third class of
faults, and benefit of an additional use of Italics. — Fourth class of
faults in the Authorized English Version

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER II.

PROOFS OF THE SPURIOUSNESS OF THE MATRES LECTIONIS IN THE SACRED

TEXT DERIVED FROM THE USES MADE OF THEM IN ITS

NOMENCLATURE.

Page.

Spuriousness of those letters proved upon general grounds. — Why this
investigation begins with an analysis of proper names. — Examina-
tion of the Hebrew designations of David, Miriam, Sarah, Joshua,
a namesake of Joshua's companion, Joshua's first name, Isaiah,
Jeremiah. — Adventitious nature of the Nun Paragogic in the He-
brew text. — Examination of the Hebrew designations of Jethro,
Nun, Samaria, Solomon. — Vowel-letters proved spurious more
clearly by names of rare use. — How far the same written name im-
plies the same spoken one. — Agreement restored between Amos,
ix. 12, and Acts, xv. 17. — Of Shammuah, Shammua, Shirneah, Shi-
mea, Shammah, Shamma, Shimma, and Shimei, transcripts in our

version of one and the same original group A few more instances

adduced of contradictory vocalization. — Of the foreign names tran-
scribed in our version, respectively, On and Aven, Poti-Pherah,
Potiphar, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius. — Of the designation of
Jerusalem, why classed with foreign ones — On the correct pronun-
ciation of the four-lettered name of God 115

CHAPTER III.

PROOFS OF THE SPURIOUSNESS OF THE MATRES LECTIONIS IN THE

SACRED TEXT, DERIVED FROM THE USES MADE OF THEM

IN THE STRUCTURE OF ITS LANGUAGE.

Anomalies of a certain pronoun not attributable to copyists — Nor can
they be ascribed to the inspired authors of the Bible — The Hebrew
pronoun in question had originally but a single form. — Curious pe-
culiarity of Shemitic languages thereby accounted for. — Supple-
mental vocalization of Jewish edition of the Pentateuch — This
additional vocalization executed with the greatest haste. — Conse-
quent change of structure illustrated by an English example. —
Remains of masculine affix lie after nouns singular. — Analysis of
IIos. iv. 17-19, through the aid of the present discovery. — Analysis
of Hos. x. o, by means of the same discovery. — Remains of mascu-
line ailix He after an epenthetic Nun. — Vocalized forms of affix He
after nouns plural. — Various treatment by vocalizers of masculine
affix lie after verbs. — Correction of Gen. xvii. 10, suggested by pre-
ceding analysis 21f)

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

CONTINUATION OF THE ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM THE STRUCTURE
OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE.

Page.
Original use recovered of the Paragogic He. — Haleph and He often mis-
taken one for the other in the sacred text — Original forms of the
Hebrew and Chaldee pronouns of the first person singular. — Original
forms of whole Hebrew pronoun, and its affix, of the first person
plural. — Original forms of the parts of the pronoun of first person
singular used as affixes. — Original ambiguity of He affixed to nouns,
illustrated by examples. — Formerly a hint not always given of i" or
U sound at the end of words. — A difficulty cleared up in the exist-
ing state of the Peshitah. — The paragogic He after A now used
oftener than is commonly supposed. — Paragogic He formerly used
after verbs ending in I or U sound. — Mode proposed of ascertain-
ing poetic use of the Hebrew tenses. — Many differences can be re-
moved from the two copies of 18th Psalm. — Instance of erroneous
Masoretic change of an older vocalization 305

CHAPTER V.

FINAL PART OF THE ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM THE STRUCTURE OF
THE LANGUAGE.

A fourth class of omissions of the letter He by the old vocalizers. —
Some objections to the spuriousness of the matres lectionis removed.

— The Hebrew text formerly was not divided into words Inco-

herency removed from Ps. xi. 1, by means of the present discovery.
— The Hebrew text was formerly not distributed into verses. — nb
could formerly be read LiH} ' to me,' as well as LoH, ' to him,' or
LwH, ' pray.' — ^O and *D, at first written !~D, which was read either
KiH, ' because,' or KoH, ' thus.' — Analysis of the structure of the
Hebrew verse Gen. xxvii. 36. — Cause of confusion between first and
and second person singular of preterites. — Analysis reconsidered of
part of the verse Judg. xi. 34 417

CHAPTER VI.

CORROBORATION OF FOREGOING ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM
A FOREIGN SOURCE.

Kesult of inquiries of Gesenius about Phoenician vowel-letters. — Some
remarks on the foregoing extract from the work of Gesenius. — Ex-
amination of the principal inscription in his collection. — General

CONTENTS.

Page,
limitations of age to two kinds of Phoenician tituli. — No matres lec-
tionis earlier inserted in Shemitic writing. — Analysis of the epi-
graph and age of a Cilician coin — My views no way inconsistent with
recent discoveries. — Analysis of three Bilingual Inscriptions found
in Attica. — Exposure of our author's fundamental error in ac-
counting He a mater lectionis. — Analysis concluded of the three

Bilingual Inscriptions Invention of vowel-signs due to Grecian

sagacity. — Nature of the process through which this invention was

arrived at Why the credit of this invention was not claimed by

the Greeks 487

APPENDIX.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS.

Indications of unfair design which the first vocalization of the sacred
text betrays. — 2. The Christians utterly ignorant of Hebrew dur-
ing by far the greater part of the second century. — 3. Investigation
of the date of the first vocalization of the Hebrew text. — 4. Of the
spurious Greek versions of the Old Testament that were written,
most of them, in the second century. — 5. A brief review of the con-
duct of the Jewish rulers during the second century, and a few of
those next ensuing. — 6. Of the Peshitah, or first Syriac version. —
7. Of the Samaritan text and version. — 8. Of the Chaldee versions,
strictly so called, that is, the older Targums. — 9. Value of the pre-
sent discovery illustrated by one more example 545

INTRODUCTION.

t. GENERAL VIEW OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE DISCOVERY HERE UN-
FOLDED— 2. SOME PREPOSSESSIONS ENDEAVOURED TO BE RE-
MOVED 3. TRACES OF A PROVIDENTIAL INTERFERENCE FOR THE

PROTECTION OF THE BIBLE 4. TWO CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE GOS-
PEL HISTORY EXPLAINED BY MEANS OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY

5. BRIEF NOTICE OF SOME POINTS RELATING TO THE PLAN OF
THE FOLLOWING TREATISE.

WHEN through the publication of the Arcanum punctatio-
nis revelatum by Capellus in 1624, the comparatively mo-
dern origin of the vowel-points in Hebrew writing was clearly
exposed, vast advantages were expected to result from this
disclosure. These anticipations, however, have not been rea-
lized. In fact, the Masoretic system was the gradual produc-
tion of a long series of ages extending from about the seventh
or eighth to the twelfth century of our era ; and the Masorets
pointed their Scriptures, not only with great care and delibe-
ration, but also with the most scrupulous honesty : so that
the misreadings to be laid exclusively to their charge, which
have been detected by Hebraists since the period of its having
been found that the pointing of the sacred text is to be treated
as a work of uninspired, fallible men, are neither extremely
numerous nor of the very highest importance. But the case
is widely different with regard to the further disclosures made
in the following Essay, namely, that the Hebrew Bible, as it
issued from the pens of its inspired authors, was written with-
out vowel-signs of any kind, whether points or letters : — that
where Haleph, Yod, and Waw are now to be seen in the
pointed text useless, and in the unpointed one diverted from

B

vi INTRODUCTION.

their primary and proper use (of the same general nature as
that of all the other elements of the Hebrew alphabet) to the
occasional service of denoting vowels, they there constitute
no part of the original writing, but were interpolated in it
not long after the commencement of the second century ;
that this interpolation of vowel-letters, in the main correctly
ex< cuted, and which contributed essentially to preserving
the legibility of the Word of God in the original tongue
after the ancient Hebrew had ceased to be spoken as a living
language, was yet due to an improvement in orthography
which, as of foreign and of Pagan growth, the Jews were at
first reluctant to admit even into their ordinary writing, and
of which they were at length induced to extend the use to
their Scriptures solely from violent aversion to Christianity,
and with a view to evade the force of prophecies bearing on
the divinity of Jesus and on his identity with the promised
Messiah ; that, accordingly, it is in several passages of Holy
Writ designedly wrong, and in a great many more is so with-
out design, through the haste with which, from a desire of
concealment, the operation was conducted ; — that the Samari-
tans having also, in imitation of the Jews, introduced vowel-
letters by stealth into the Pentateuch, with like precipitation
and from like motives, their vocalization abounds with similar
faults, both intentional and unintentional ; but that these faults
are frequently neither the very same, nor occurring in the
same places, as those committed by the Jewish vocalizers ; the
two sets of scribes having scarcely agreed with each other, in
any other respect but in the feeling they entertained in com-
mon, of bitter hostility to the Christian religion. If these par-
ticulars be really founded in truth, it is evident that a dis-
covery which, in bringing them to light, strips the vowel-
letters or matres lectionis, as they are called, of the inspired
authority they have, up to the present day, been invested with,
and enables us to judge of the readings they confine the
original groups to, with the same freedom as we should ex-
amine any other merely human exposition of Scripture, must

INTRODUCTION. vii

lead to consequences of the greatest value and deepest interest
These consequences, which serve likewise as proofs, while the
matter is analytically investigated, include both the restora-
tion of the true sense of corrupted prophecies, and also the
accounting for discrepancies of various sorts, that have hither-
to proved most vexatious and perplexing to the learned, —
between the Old and New Testaments, — between parallel pas-
sages of the Old Testament, — between the Hebrew and Sama-
ritan copies of the Pentateuch, — and between the Hebrew
text at large and the translations of it that were made before
it was vocalized, namely, the first Greek and Syriac versions.

2. To prepare the reader for an unbiassed consideration
of the subject, I shall endeavour to remove a few objections,
likely to occur to him at his entrance on this discussion ; and
which, for the sake of brevity, I put in the form of questions,
with an answer subjoined to each. In the first place, then, it
may be asked, when was there a possibility of introducing
vowel-letters into the inspired volume secretly and without
detection ? In reply to this I admit, that such an operation
could not have been attempted while any of the Christians
were acquainted with Hebrew, and, consequently, was not
practicable in either the first century, or after Origen had in
the third century inserted the Hebrew text in one of the
columns of his Hexapla ; but in the intervening time the Old
Testament in the original language was exclusively in the
hands of the Jews, and the use of it confined solely to their
learned men ; the great body of the nation being then utterlv
unable to read, and having the Scriptures read to them only
in Greek. The interpolations objected to, may, therefore,
have been effected during that interval, with the privacy of
but a very small number of individuals.

In the second place, how can the Jews be supposed to
have availed themselves of this opportunity to tamper in
secret with any part of Holy Writ, — men who have ever
shown such a high veneration for the Hebrew Bible and such
a scrupulous regard to its exact preservation ? I reply that

b2

viii INTRODUCTION.

they certainly are entitled to the credit of having been most
faithful guardians of this Book at every known period of
their history except the one here referred to ; and that it is,
at first blush, very unlikely that their conduct should have
been, at this conjuncture, wholly at variance with what it
constantly and uniformly was for numerous ages before and
after. But, however strange a fact may appear, before its
circumstances are investigated, it must yet be assented to, if
sustained by sufficient evidence ; and there is connected with
this very case a still stranger fact, of whose reality we, not-
withstanding, cannot have the slightest doubt. The Jewish
priesthood have been clearly convicted of having at the period
in question, from hatred of Christianity, yielded to the temp-
tation of corrupting their Greek Scriptures, in prophecies
relating to the Messiah ; and it surely required a more extra-
ordinary and unaccountable degree of rashness on their part,
to take liberties with a translation under the public eye, than
to make free with the original in secret. Justin Martyr, who
wrote in the second century, has transmitted to us some ex-
amples of their suppressing, and others of their altering, pas-
sages of the Septuagint which the Christians brought forward
to identify our Lord with the predicted Messiah ; and his
charge against them on the latter point is fully verified by
remnants of certain Greek versions made about that time by
apostates from Christianity, or Judaizing heretics, and which
were introduced into the synagogues to supply the place of
the one first composed in that language. For instance, the
nliMve-mentioned author, in the account still extant of his dis-
putation w ith Trypho at Ephesus, expressly accuses the Jews
of having, in the remarkable prophecy of Isaiah commencing
with the declaration that a virgin should bring forth a son,
substituted veavis, the Greek for ' a young woman,' instead of
TrapOcvov, which denotes ' a virgin,' — a substitution which ob-
viously violates the context in divesting the predicted event of
a miraculous nature, — and this corruption of the Septuagint,
besides being commented on by Jerome, is actually found in

INTRODUCTION. ix

extracts from the spurious versions just alluded to, which are
preserved in the writings of Eusebius. The very same corrup-
tion, indeed, is attested specially to have existed in the ver-
sions of Aquila and Theodotion, by Irenseus, who, 'as well as
Justin Martyr, was a writer nearly contemporary with those
translators.

In the third place, if the vowel-letters were introduced
surreptitiously into the original text of the Old Testament
during the earlier part of the second century, how is it possi-
ble that the Christians could have failed to detect this change
in the orthography of the books on their return to the culti-
vation of Hebrew in the course of the third century? My
answer is, that we are now able to learn this written language,
and the mode of reading it, quite independently of the Jews,
by means of grammars founded on information derived from
the second and more complete vocalization of the Bible with
the system of points gradually invented by the Masorets: but,
at the early period under discussion, the Christians had no
such aid ; and Origen, who led the way in the return to this
study, was forced to get all his instruction in it from the Jews,
that is, from the very party who were interested in concealing
the fact of the interpolations in question having been com-
mitted. From the same party also he took the Hebrew text
inserted in the first column of his Hexapla; and so highly
were his learning and talents then estimated, that what passed
current with him on this subject was never after disputed, or
thought to require any further examination.

In the fourth place, the reader, even without admitting the
divine origin of alphabetic writing, may ask, if the Hebrew sys-
tem of letters, in its primitive state, was — as I have in a former
Essay endeavoured to prove it — a miraculous gift from God,
how could it be supposed to have been imperfect in that state ?
To this I reply, that there is no inconsistency between the two
suppositions : the first of them could, indeed, be hardly recon-
ciled with the existence in the system in question, as originally
constituted, of positive faults (such as the employment of the

, INTRODUCTION.

same character with powers of different kinds); but it may,
sun lv. with that i >f mere defects. The external gifts conferred
by the Almighty through natural means are not supplied to
us in the state fittest for use, but require the vigilant exertion
of our talents in their cultivation and improvement, in order
t<> their producing all the advantages they are capable of
affording. Where, then, is the wonder, if the full benefit of one
originally conveyed to our species from the same gracious
Being, though in a different manner, should be made to de-
pend upon the same proviso ? That in this, as in other cases,
what we are qualified naturally to effect, we should be left to
ourselves to accomplish, is entirely in accordance with the
o-eneral plan of God's government of the present world, as
Taught to us by experience : and it is gratifying to observe
the benevolence of his designs which is thus indicated ; for
the exercise of our natural faculties to which he encourages,
and, in some measure, compels us, tends to the strengthening
and enlarging of those faculties, and thereby contributes to
our advancement in the scale of* intellectual creatures. Of
this even a Pagan writer must have been aware, when he de-
scribed the manner in which lie conceived the Supreme Ruler
of mankind to be occupied, in the following terms : —

" curis acuens mortalia corda."

Had man been unable to rise by his own efforts from a sylla-
bary to a superior alphabet, no doubt this grand instrument
of human knowledge would have been given to him from the
first, in the Btate best adapted i'<>r preserving the divine reve-
lations. For this purpose, indeed, a more complicated miracle
would have been required than that actually wrought, and,
while the notion wi Bted to the first alphabetic writer

his thoughts by signs of things wholly different
from thoughts, there would have been impressed on hi. mind
not only the subdivision of significant words into syllabic
sounds destitute of signification, but also the -till more subtile
imposition of those sounds again, each of them, into tw<

INTRODUCTION.

parts, one of which (i.e. the consonantal part), taken by itself.
is destitute even of sound. But accounts are to be found in
the Bible of compound miracles having been display ed. when
there were strong reasons for their being of this description.

Such, for example, were all those worked by our Lord, in giv-
ing sight or speech to persons born blind or deaf. Thus, in
performing each of the former class, he conferred on some
blind individual not only the faculty of immediately perceiv-
ing light and colours, but also the power of instantaneously
inferring from the various appearances of those qualities the
shapes, sizes, and distances of the surrounding objects ; — a
power which is naturally acquired but by slow degree- in
infancy, and afterwards comes to be exerted with rapidity
through the force of habit. a Had he, in a case of this sort,
granted only sight without the judgment respecting external
things which, in the course of nature, is after some time con-
nected with its immediate perceptions, the man he had to deal
with would indeed eventually have arrived at the full use of
this sense, but in the first instance would have groped about
in the same manner as if he was still blind, and have thought
everything he saw to be in immediate contact with him, just
as those do on whom the surgical operation of couching
been performed, when first the cataracts are removed from
their eyes. But in the latter class of miracles referred to, -
worked by our Lord, the complexity is perhaps more obvious.

a In the instance recorded in Mark. viii. 23-5, of a complex miracle of the
above description, our Lord performed the parts of it separately, having con-
ferred at the first touch sight alone, and at the second the judgment neces-
sary to render that sight available for immediate use. The motive for his
making this separation may, possibly, have been to afford a very striking ad-
ditional indication of the veracity of the historian, as soon as the perceptions
employed in the ordinary process of vision should come to be better under-
stood. For the composite nature of those perceptions was entirely unknown
to mankind at the period when this account was written ; and, therefore, its
conformity with that nature could have arisen solely from the strict adhe-
rence of the writer to the circumstances of the case, just as they actually
came under human observation.

xij INTRODUCTION.

In the case of each of these he at once bestowed to the person
he operated on, 1st, the sense of hearing ; 2ndly, the power
of articulation which, in the usual course of things, is learned
but very slowly in childhood, and, if not then acquired, is
never after naturally attained to in perfection ; 3rdly, the
knowledge of a language before utterly unknown, and so fa-
miliar an acquaintance with it as to both speak and understand
the words, with the same fluency and readiness as if he had
been accustomed to each use of them all along from his earliest
years. But when a miracle of either class was to be performed,
if a single one of its ingredients had been omitted, the crowd
of ignorant bystanders would not have perceived that any at
all had been wrought. So, where the object was to convince
the fair-minded spectators of the divinity of our Saviour, there
was, in the case of both classes, an obvious reason for the mul-
tifold exertion of his almighty power.a And, in like manner,
if a syllabary had not sufficed for preserving at first the Word
of God, it may, I submit, be concluded, that the miracle by
which the use of syllabic letters was conveyed to the intellect
of Moses, would have been carried a step farther ; so as to
make him understand a superior mode of writing, and convert
his alphabet into one consisting of consonants and vowel-signs.
3. The inferior system, however, answered the purpose for
which it was given, during a great length of time, and even
for some centuries after the period when the ancient Hebrew
became a dead language; though the difficulty of reading the
divine record, while therewith written, increased of necessity,
according as men lived at a greater distance from that period.
But while, on the one hand, writing which contained no vowel-
signs of any kind must be admitted to have been peculiarly
defective in reference to a tongue in which the inflexions of

' It was oo1 the mere performance of miracles, however stupendous, that
I roved the divinity of our Lord, but the circumstance (.this working them
ns of himself and by lii> own authority; in which respect they differ promi-
nently from those recorded in the Bible as wrought by any other person.

INTRODUCTION. xiii

the words depend chiefly on their vowels, so that, if that of
the Hebrew Bible had always remained such, the sacred text
must at length have become quite illegible ; it is worth while,
on the other hand, to trace the steps by which frail human
beings were made to be unconsciously the agents in averting
this evil, as well as in furnishing the means of eventually re-
moving others, in the first instance, resulting from the mode
in which the antidote made use of was applied.

In the first place, then, about two centuries after the ter-
mination of the Babylonian captivity, and while a considerable
number of persons still continued to speak pure Hebrew as
their vernacular dialect, Asia was invaded by a people who
had introduced into the original alphabet the vast improve-
ment of vowel-letters ; and the Jews were, in consequence,
forced in spite of their prejudices to learn a species of wri ting-
that made them acquainted with the use of such letters.

In the second place, their Scriptures were very soon after-
wards translated into the tongue connected with this writing,
by the order, as tradition tells us, of a Pagan government,
and at any rate in a country in which they and their religion
were peculiarly hated and despised. This rendering of the
Old Testament into Greek a — a language at the time under-
stood throughout the civilized portion of the world — has

a It is a curious and interesting circumstance — which is well assorted, too,
with those noticed in my text — that the Greek character, which was origi-
nally the same as that of the Phoenicians, and therefore must after its intro-
duction into Europe have undergone great alteration, has been scarcely in
the slightest degree changed, since the Bible was first translated into Greek,
that is, during a length of time which now exceeds two thousand years.
TheRosetta inscription, which is about the same age as the oldest part of the
Septuagint, exhibits the elements of its alphabetic portion almost exactly the
same as the Greek capitals employed at the present day ; the chief difference
consisting in the want of cross lines in the Alphas and of central points in
the Thetas of that portion — a defect which most probably did not exist at
first, and is to be considered as the mere effect of age. On the contrary, in
every kind of ancient Shemitic writing whereof specimens of ascertained dif-
ferent ages have reached us, the letters have been considerably changed in
shape within an interval which is very short in comparison with that just
referred to.

INTRODUCTION.

always been considered most providential in serving the im-
portant use of preparing the minds of the Gentiles for the
reception of the Gospel; for, though but little studied by
heathens of distinguished learning, it was not so neglected by
others. Most of those called by St. Luke devout — an epithet
which, with a slight variation in the form of the original word,
he applies to great numbers of both men and women — were
converts from Paganism, who, without conforming to the rites
and ceremonies of the Jews, had yet become more or less
acquainted with the doctrines of true religion, through this
very translation, and were led by it to expect the advent of a
divine instructor and Saviour of mankind. But a further ser-
vice may now be perceived to have been performed by the
Septuagint, in tending to reconcile the Jews to the use of the
Greek alphabet, and render them less averse to borrowing
thence, in like manner as other Shemitic nations had pre-
viously done, a very important improvement of their ordinary
writing. Accordingly, the legends upon extant coins of their
country that were stamped during the high priesthood of
Simon of the Hasmonean race, show that they occasionally
employed Waw and Yod as vowel-letters within less than two
centuries after the death of Alexander the Macedonian con-
queror ; and if Hebrew inscriptions of ascertained greater agea
could be procured, we should most probably find that they
commenced this alteration of their original practice still sooner
and nearer to that epoch.

In the third place, all their scruples were at length over-

1 When Jewish coins dug out of the ruins of Jerusalem were brought un-
der the notice of the public about two hundred years ago, the writers of that
day assigned to thera an extravagant antiquity; but, after some had been
identified as belonging to the number of those which, in accordance with
historic information (1 Mac. xv. 6), were stamped during the independent
government of Simon, brother of Judas Maccabeus, it was found from a com-
parison of the characters on these and the rest, that none of them could be
so old, as was at first imagined. This conclusion is fully confirmed by the
present discovery ; for, although some other Asiatic nations making use of
Byllabariee may have been induced, by observation of Grecian practice, volun-

INTRODUCTION. xv

couie by the violence of their enmity to Christians ; and they
were induced to extend the benefit of this Pagan innovation
from their ordinary to their sacred writings in the early part
of the second century of our era, on account of the opportu-
nity it afforded them of perverting the sense of prophecies
relating to the divinity of Jesus, and to the fact of his being
the Christ ; as well as from an eager desire to throw discredit
on the Septuagint, and thereby weaken or evade the force of
arguments drawn from that version in support of Christian
doctrines. Their primary object is exposed by the parts of
their vocalization that are absolutely unfair ; while their secon-
dary one, and less direct attack upon Christianity, is betrayed
by the parts that are fair in effect, though very unfair in the
motive to which they can be traced : for, wherever the words
of the text in its original state could be read in any respect
variously without altering the general purport of a sentence,
they almost constantly vocalized the groups for a different form
of expression from that indicated by their Greek rendering ;
and so contrived to give the Septuagint the appearance of a
loose, inaccurate translation, where it did not, in the remotest
degree, deserve that character. But by far the greater num-
ber of their intentional deviations from this version are of the
latter description, those of the former kind being, compara-
tively speaking, very few ; and the consequence has most pro-
videntially resulted that, in spite of the extreme culpability of
the motives by which they were actuated, their work was in
the main correctly done. It deserves further to be noticed

tarily to change them into alphabets of a superior order through the intro-
duction of the irregular species of vowel-letters technically called rnatres
lectionis, yet the Jews, Avho were particularly averse to holding any commu-
nication with Pagans, cannot be supposed to have adopted this improvement
till they were compelled to learn the benefit of it, by being subjected to the
dominion of the Greeks. But all their extant coins exhibit either Waw, or
Yod, or both of these letters, employed as vowel-signs; and, therefore, each
must have been stamped subsequently to the period when they came under
the yoke of that people.

xvi INTRODUCTION.

with respect to the change thus made in the orthography of
the Hebrew Bible, that they were induced to adopt it, at a
period when Greek had become the mother tongue of the
great majority of their nation — as it continued to be for above
four centuries after3 — and when even those of the Jews who
still spoke a Shemitic dialect had been making use of vowel-
letters in their ordinary writing for above 250 years, and,
therefore, could scarcely have retained any longer the power
of reading the sacred text, if it remained unvocalized, or in a
species of writing, as well as in a language, with which they
had long ceased to be familiar. That I have rightly assigned
the period when this vocalization of the Bible took place, can
be easily proved : for, on the one hand, it certainly was not
effected till after the Syriac version was written, and, indeed,
could not have been attempted as long as either the Asiatic
or European Christians were acquainted with the Hebrew
Scriptures, nor, consequently, till after the end of the first cen-
tury; while, on the other hand, it must have preceded the
framing of the spurious Greek versions of the second century,
Avhich can now be clearly shown, by their extant remains, to
have been fabricated for the very purpose of supporting its
unfair parts. But the most remarkable of those versions, and
the one in greatest repute with the Jews while they continued

a In an edict of Justinian, passed in the year of our Lord 551 — being the
14Gth of the ' Novella? Constitutiones,' and which is also extant in the origi-
nal Greek — it is enacted that, whereas great tumults had been caused by an
attempt of the Archipherecitce, or Jewish chiefs, to innovate upon the established
practice, the Jews should not be compelled to hear the Bible in the original
Hebrew, but should continue to have it read to them in their synagogues in
Greek, or in whatever language might be the vernacular one of each congre-
gation. Hence it appears that, for a considerable length of time, which
reached down at any rate to some date later than the middle of the sixth
century, Hebrew was an unknown tongue to the great body of the Jews;
though the knowledge of it was all along kept up among the more learned
class of their priests — a result to which the vocalization of the inspired text
about the commencement of this interval must, no doubt, have mainly con-
tributed.

INTRODUCTION. xvii

to make use of any Greek translation, namely that of Aquila,
was composed during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, and,
therefore, before the year of our era 139.

In the fourth place, the vocalization of the Hebrew record
with letters having been by far too scanty to keep it perma-
nently legible, we find that, according as a fuller system of
vowel-signs became requisite for this purpose, a second one
was gradually formed to supply the defects of the first. The
Masoretic punctuation being founded on, the older vocalization
of the text, retains nearly all the errors of that vocalization,
and has superadded some of its own : but the latter class of
faults the system itself supplies the means of correcting ; and
— what is of immense advantage to the Hebrew student — it
has preserved and transmitted to us the inflexions of the
words, and through them, the grammatic structure of the an-
cient language. This system, indeed, was framed under the
direction of the Jewish priesthood solely for their own use ;
but at length it got into the hands of the Christians, who have
thereby been rendered quite independent of Rabbinical in-
struction, and have, in fact, outstripped their first instructors
in this study, and attained to a much superior knowledge of
the Hebrew Scriptures ; so that the custody of .those Scrip-
tures has been virtually transferred to them from the Jews.

At every step of this train of events, as far as we have as
yet traced them, the hand of an overruling Providence may, I
submit, be discerned protecting the Bible, and, for this end,
turning even the bad passions of mankind to good account.
But there yet remains to be considered a further step, which
places this interference in a still more striking light. However
valuable the first vocalization was, not only in itself, but also
on account of its constituting the groundwork of the second,
it, notwithstanding, was attended with the serious evil of the
perversion of the sense of certain prophecies of the highest im-
portance. In the fifth place, then, I have to state that provi-
sion was made from the very commencement of this evil, for
its eventual removal, through the manifestation of the adven-

xviii INTRODUCTION.

titious nature of the matres lectionis ; by means of which ex-
posure we are enabled to treat the use made of them in the
Hebrew Scriptures as an uninspired work, and retain only the
good parts of it, separated and purified from the bad. But,
although the perverted prophecies afford a strong confirmation
of the truth of the discovery in question, when once it has
been arrived at through other channels, yet they do not in the
first instance lead to it ; because, in the case of obscure pas-
sages, we could not venture to trust our judgment in pro-
nouncing them corrupted, till the letters confining them to
apparently objectionable senses were previously known to be
interpolated elements. Still less would the other class of
unfair readings already noticed conduct us at first to this dis-
covery ; because, each of these being consistent with the con-
text, it is only by viewing them in the aggregate that their
systematic deviation from the interpretation of the Seventy
can be perceived ; but it would never occur to a reader to
search for their collective bearing in this direction, till after it
was found out, or at least till after some suspicion had arisen,
that the letters restricting them to their present meanings, were
introduced into the text, since the period when the Septuagint
was finished. In order, therefore, that the writing of the sacred
record should of itself lead to the detection of the spuriousness
of its vowel-letters, it was necessary that it should betray, in
its present state, more obvious and glaring instances of their
misuse than are exhibited under either of the above heads ;
and, consequently, it was requisite to this end, that very gross
blunders should have been committed in the first vocalization
of the Hebrew Bible, and also that those blunders should have
been afterwards retained in all the successive transcriptions of
this book, till they answered the purpose for which their oc-
currence therein appears to have been at first permitted. Now,
both these conditions have been completely fulfilled, — as will
be shown with regard to each, upon frequent occasions, in the
following Essay, — and, moreover, fulfilled in ways which it
would be very difficult to account for, upon the ground of
human motives.

INTRODUCTION. xix

With respect to the mistakes above alluded to, an imme-
diate cause, indeed, can be assigned for them, in the precipi-
tation with which the old vocalizers executed their task from
an anxious desire for its concealment. But what was it that
impelled them, through this desire, to such haste ? They had,
at the time, the original text entirely to themselves : the very
language in which it was written was then understood by none
of the Christians, and by very few of their own nation, of whom
still fewer could decipher it ; as its orthography had become
obsolete not only to those habituated to Greek, but even to
such of them as still continued to make use of Shemitic writ-
ing. Truly, the shrewdness for which the Jews are in general
distinguished, failed their priests on this occasion in a very re-
markable manner. Again, the mistakes I refer to, are of so
obvious a nature and so manifestly at variance with the con-
text of the passages in which they occur, that they would have
been left uncorrected by no other series of transcribers that
ever existed :a yet they have, by the Jewish scribes, been fixed,
and, as it were, stereotyped ; so that the Hebrew text displays
them now in very nearly the same state as when it was first

a The framers of our English version indirectly support me in the descrip-
tion above given of the subject in question ; as they have taken no notice
whatever, in their translation, of the irregularities of the kind alluded to,
which are at present to be seen in the Hebrew text, — a mode of proceeding
which can be justified solely on the ground of those irregularities being
obvious mistakes ; and on the same ground that, as translators, they have ab-
stained from intimating those errors, they evidently would, if they had been
transcribers of the original record, have removed them. The Masorets, though
they have constantly, in such cases, pointed the Hebrew words as if the ob-
jectionable letters were not in them, have yet never ventured to omit those
letters. The corresponding line of conduct, on the part of our translators,
would have been, while they inserted, as they have done, in the body of their
work the renderings required by the context, to have subjoined others in the
margin, agreeing exactly with the sacred text in its existing state. The con-
trast here drawn between the Masorets and the English translators does not
warrant any censure of the latter party; but it certainly places in a very
prominent light the over- scrupulous honesty of the former one.

xx INTRODUCTION.

vocalized. The immediate cause of this fixedness, I admit, is
to be found in the scrupulous editorial honesty shown in every
instance but one by the scribes in question. But what was it
that induced them, in violation of common sense, thus to push
their scrupulousness to an extreme that actually amounts to
the weakest superstition ? — or how did it come to pass, that
men of this description should have abandoned their habitual
line of conduct, just at the moment when, if they had not done
so, the Bible in the original language must have ceased, in the
natural course of things, to be any longer legible ; and that
they should have directly after returned to, and ever since
persevered in that line, as the faithful, though blind guardians
of this record ? Surely, such extraordinary coincidences and
combinations of events indicate a design quite distinct from
the intentions of those through whose instrumentality it was
put in execution ; — the design of bringing about an important
good, and of providing at the same time means for eventually
cleansing it of the evil with which its introduction was at first
polluted.

I now pass on to later times and a very different class of
agents, not at all chargeable with the same culpability of mo-
tives, but still so far of the same character, inasmuch as
they were engaged in the execution of part of the same gene-
ral plan, and had just as little conception, as their predecessors,
of the noble end to the achievement of which they were thus
contributing. It is evident, that the provision which had
been made for the writing of the sacred text leading of itself
to the detection of its interpolated elements, could not take
effect, till the attention of the learned among the Christians,
which had been long drawn off from that writing, should be
directed to it again. In the sixth place, then, I have to bring
under notice the unqualified preference which Luther and
subsequent Protestant writers, while translating the Bible,
gave to the original record over all its ancient versions ; — a
preference which of necessity revived the study of the origi-
nal language of the Old Testament, and that too under the most

INTRODUCTION. xxi

favourable circumstances, after the labours of the Masorets en-
abled men to acquire a critical knowledge of its structure,
quite independently of Jewish instruction. For the dislike
of the older translations, shown by the leaders of the Protes-
tant Reformation, it is attempted to account, by the corrup-
tions introduced into the Vulgate with a view to countenanc-
ing Papal errors. But, surely, this afforded them no ground
of objection against the Septuagint or the Peshitah,a neither
of which had been so corrupted ; while, on the other hand,
those learned men must have been well aware, that these two
versions had greatly the advantage over the Hebrew text, in
its existing state, with regard to several of the prophecies
respecting the Messiah ; — an advantage sustained not only
by internal and external evidence of ordinary kinds, but also
in some instances by even the inspired authority of the New
Testament. Undoubtedly, their proper course would have
been, to make the sacred text the principal standard for their
modern translations, but still to deviate thence, whenever the
weight of evidence bears decisively against it in favour of its
oldest and best versions. But the zeal of our Reformers car-
ried them far beyond this point, in their adherence to the
original record as it now stands. To such an extent, indeed,
did they, in this respect, stray beyond the bounds of prudence,

a No part of the Peshitah was printed till about thirty years after the
publication of Luther's Bible; but the whole of it, if not in print, at least in
manuscript, was in the hands of the learned, while several of the principal
modern versions due to Protestants were not as yet framed, and in particular
before our present authorized English translation came out in the year 1611.
Archbishop Ussher, for instance, who was then past the age of thirty, and had
been some years previously appointed Professor of Divinity in the University
of Dublin, makes frequent reference in his writings to the Syriac version of
the Old as well of the New Testament. And, to go further back, Andrew
Masius, who published his Commentary on the Book of Joshua in the year
1574, mentions in his Dedicatory Epistle that in framing it he made use of
a Syriac version, and that he had also in his possession, taken from the
same version — most probably the Peshitah — a translation of Judges, Kings,
Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and of a good part of Deuteronomy.

C

xxii INTRODUCTION.

that they, in many instances, unwittingly rendered themselves
the aiders and abettors of the Judaizing translators of the
second century in supporting the fraudulent parts of the vo-
calization of the Hebrew Scriptures. Still, it is to be observed,
in this as well as in every preceding instance, that the tem-
porary evil of the course here brought under notice is greatly
overbalanced by the good which has thence arisen ; namely,
the increased spirit of inquiry, with regard to the original
text, and increased ability to examine it, which are so emi-
nently calculated, in combination with the other specified
means, to lead to the one grand result, the detection of the
cause of the present anomalies of that text.

The last step in this series of events to which I shall here
advert, as indicating the same design and tending to the same
result as those which precede it, is the re-introduction into
Europe of the Samaritan Pentateuch, through the exertions
of Archbishop Ussher and other eminent scholars, nearly two
centuries and a half ago, after the learned had lost sight of it
for about a thousand years. Of the high degree in which
this event actually drew attention, at first, to the very fea-
tures of the Jewish copy of the Hebrew text best adapted to
disclose the fact of its having been interpolated, we may
judge, by the great importance which Bishop Walton attached
to a judicious classification of the different sorts of discrepan-
cies subsisting between the two editions of the original Pen-
tateuch, as well as between them and the Septuagint ; and
by the anxious desire he expressed, that such a work should
be undertaken by some scholar of sufficient ability to give
reason able prospect of its being well executed.11 He had not,

a The following are the Bishop's words, above referred to — " Quod enim
de editione Grceca r&v o diximus, idem de exemplari Samaritano optandum,
ut doctus aliquis judicio ct linguaruin cognitione pollens, et partium studio
non abreptus, cui otium ct ingenium ad rem tantam aggrediendum suppetit,
accurate discrepantias has cxaminaret, et quamam ex scribarum errore, qua>
nam ex codicum Ilebrceorum varietate ortte sint, quamam de industria mu-
tationcs factae, distingueret. Ccrte qui hoc opus perficcret, magnam a grata
posteritate laudem reportarct," — Prolegom. xi. 16.

INTRODUCTION. xxiii

indeed, the slightest notion that a principle should ever be
arrived at, which would account for and virtually remove, all
at once, the vast majority of the discrepancies in question.
But still, the analysis he recommended had a tendency to
conduct to this unexpected result : for, if diligently gone
through, it must have shown the analyzer that, in the main,
the two texts were exactly the same in point of consonants,
and differed only in vowel-letters ; — an observation that
would have placed him in the direct road to the present dis-
covery, and which now serves powerfully to corroborate the
proofs of its truth derived from other sources. But what
likelihood was there, in the ordinary course of human affairs,
that the Samaritan Pentateuch should have been preserved to
answer this end ? — or how can we account, upon the ground
of ordinary motives, for the conduct of its vocalizers, in suffer-
ing it to yield such decisive evidence as it does of the inter-
polations they committed ? The Samaritans were, through
the earlier portion of their history, scarcely better than Pagans,
having, while Antiochus Epiphanes reigned over Syria, gone
so far in abandoning the worship of the true God, as to de-
dicate their temple on Mount Gerizim to the Grecian Jupiter ;
and, in later times, severely oppressed, first by the sovereigns
of the eastern division of the Roman empire, and afterwards
by their Mohammedan rulers, they sunk into the lowest depth
of ignorance, and their population dwindled into the most
insignificant number ; so that Bishop Walton describes them
and their religion as nearly extinct about the middle of the
seventeenth century.a Yet still, not only did they retain,
and continue to read their edition of the Pentateuch, but also
full evidence is afforded to us, of their having guarded it with
the strictest fidelity during the thousand years that it was
left in their sole keeping : for Jerome, and some later authors

* " . . . sub Imperatoribus ita fracti et dissipati sunt, ut pauoa- ipsorum

reliquiae hodie supersint ita ut tarn gens quam ipsorum

religio pene extincta esse videatur." — rrolegom. xi. 5.

xxiv INTRODUCTION.

extending us far down as the latter end of the sixth century,
noticed several points of agreement or disagreement between
it and the Jewish edition, which points were found, almost
without exception, to hold exactly in the same way between
the two texts, on the recovery of the Samaritan one by Euro-
peans, after it had been for so very long an interval out of
their possession. Again, the Samaritan scribes, when framing
their own vocalization of the Pentateuch, had to a certainty
under their inspection that previously applied to it by the
Jews ; from which they could not deviate, without affording
to those who might at any subsequent period compare the
differently vocalized texts, a strong ground of suspicion
against the genuineness of the matres lectionis in each. To
what cause, then, can we attribute their permitting a vast
multitude of discrepancies to appear between the two series
of interpolations ? It is true, they hated the Jews ; but they
could not expose the Jewish fraud without affording at the
same time evidence of that committed by themselves. To
me, I confess, it appears that the difficulties involved in the
consideration of the several occurrences here brought to-
gether under view, cannot, any of them, and still less all, be
satisfactorily explained, except by referring those events, and
the manner in which they have been interwoven and com-
bined, to the interposition of the Almighty, directing natural
means 1<> the protection of the Bible ; — an interposition which,
as it was more called for, so it has been likewise rendered
more visible, by the very defectiveness of the alphabetic sys-
tem with which he permitted his revealed Word to be, in
the first instance, committed to writing.8

° Some points in the above historic sketch will be more fully discussed,
and others therein omitted will be supplied on a future occasion, if it should
please God, in the exercise of his gracious providence, to grant me a continu-
ance of life and health sufficient for writing a supplementary volume, to com-
plete this Treatise. There are, indeed, certain portions of the investigation
itself "ii which also 1 would wish to enlarge, if an opportunity of so doing
Bhould he thus allowed me.

INTRODUCTION. xxv

4. Here I take the opportunity of noticing two points
connected with the Gospel-history of our Lord, not at all as
proofs that the Hebrew Scriptures were unvocalized at the
period when he dwelt in human form upon earth, but as fully
according with, and accounted for, by that fact. The first is
the great difficulty there was then found in deciphering the in-
spired text, as indicated not only by the multitudes of scribes
and lawyers mentioned in the New Testament (of whom the
former class had to read, as well as write that text, and the
latter to expound it), but also by the extreme surprise which
the Jews expressed, at seeing part of it read by a person in
the humble station of life in which Jesus was brought up.

" Whence hath this man this wisdom

is not this the carpenter's son ?" In the case, indeed, of the
incident which drew forth this exclamation from them, and
which is related by three of the Evangelists, their astonish-
ment is, by St. Matthew and St. Mark, described only in
general terms, as produced by what he taught upon the occa-
sion (Matt. xiii. 54, and Mark, vi. 2) ; but St. Luke more
particularly informs us of that teaching, that it commenced
with the reading out of a passage of Isaiah (Luke, iv. 16) ;
and St. John, in recording a similar transaction, expressly
states that the amazement of his countrymen was excited by
their perceiving that our Saviour understood the use of the
elements of the sacred writing : — " Now, about the midst of
the feast, Jesus went up into the temple, and taught : and the
Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters . .
. . ?"_John vii. 14, 15.

The other point to which I request attention, is the circum-
stance recorded by St. Luke, of our Lord's addressing to a
certain lawyer two questions regarding the ' Law,' or Hebrew
Pentateuch, which, if the text of that work was then in the
same state as it now is, would have been in effect identical,
and, consequently, one of them superfluous : — " He said unto
him, What is written in the Law? how readest thou ?" (Luke,
x. 26). Nor can the second question, for the sake of getting

xxvi INTRODUCTION.

rid of its apparent redundancy, be assumed to mean, ' What
construction puttest thou on that which is written ?' For, to
judge by the style of the Evangelist, the verb used by him, to
give such a signification to the clause, would have been Ziepfjuj-
veveis or eKTtQ})? ; while the one which occurs in this place,
avayivwaxeis, and which is always employed by him to denote
the act of reading, is in many passages of his confined beyond
a doubt by the context exclusively to that act.a Still, it is
extremely improbable that any sentence ever dropped use-
lessly from the mouth of Jesus Christ,b of whom it was allowed,
even by his enemies, that he expressed himself as no being,
merely human, ever spake. The difficulty, however, of this
case is wholly removed by considering the state of the sacred
text at the period referred to : for each line, being then utterly
unvocalized, admitted of having its several words pronounced
with different inflexions, and of thereby conveying a variety
of meanings ; so that, granting the lawyer questioned in this
instance to have known the series of alphabetic characters
written on the subject of his own inquiry, he had yet to exert
his judgment in determining by the context, how that portion
of the Hebrew Scriptures was to be read ; and the second
question he was asked by our Lord thus turns out to have
been quite distinct from the first.

5. I shall close this Introduction with a few remarks on the
ensuing investigation. In the first place, no interpolation of
the Hebrew text is therein brought under the reader's notice.

* As, for instance, the question of Philip, the deacon, to the eunuch — " Un-
derstandest thou what thou readest ?" — (Acts, viii. 30) — is, in the original
writing of St. Luke, upa 7c ^ivwaKCfi ll ava<yivwoicete ; where &va*fivw<ric€i9 not
only is used without reference to the meaning of what the eunuch was read-
ing, but is actually contradistinguished to a verb having such a reference.

b The above observation is not intended to apply to pleonasms with
regard to particles, and other subordinate words, which the idiom of the dia-
lect spoken by our Lord during his visible residence on earth may have re-
quired him to make use of ; but it is opposed to any redundancy of complete
expressions in his speech.

INTRODUCTION. xxvii

or, at any rate, none is pressed upon his attention as addino-
weight to my argument, when its exposure is not supported
by ancient testimony.

In the second place, the records I have principally con-
sulted, in addition to the Jewish and Samaritan Bibles, are the
Septuagint and the Peshitah ; because these are the only ver-
sions that were written before the Hebrew text was vocalized.
The Samaritan version, indeed, was supposed by Dr. Kennicott
to be older than either of these ; but it can be clearly shown
to have been composed in accordance with the erroneous parts
of the vocalization of the Samaritan edition of the Hebrew
Pentateuch, and therefore subsequently to the period when
that vocalization was effected. For a similar reason the very
oldest of the Targums, namely Onkelos's and the first part of
that called Jonathan's, could not have been written till after
the Jewish edition of the Hebrew Bible was vocalized. For,
although in those Targums, and more especially in that of
Onkelos, some passages are correctly rendered according to the
tenor of the Septuagint, and in opposition to gross violations
of the context produced by the existing use of the matres lec-
tionis in the original Scriptures, yet it is plain, from the fair-
ness of mind in those instances displayed by the translators,
that they would have much oftener abided by the authority
of the Seventy Interpreters, where it is manifestly supported
by the context, if they had lived before the introduction of
vowel-letters into the sacred text ; as in that case their judg-
ment would not have been fettered and cramped by the incor-
rect parts of a vocalization erroneously ascribed to inspired
penmen. But, notwithstanding the inferiority of these versions
to the first-mentioned pair in the service of exposing the spu-
rious nature of the matres lectionis in the Hebrew Bible, they
still are of some use for that purpose ; as are also the extant
fragments of the various Greek versions successively written
during the second and beginning of the third century, in sup-
port of this very vocalization, and which the priests of the
Jews got composed, or at any rate patronized and endeavoured

xxviii INTRODUCTION.

to bring into repute, in the vain hope of thereby supplanting
the Septuagint. Moreover, the Vulgate or Latin version of
Jerome, when cleared of the corruptions introduced into it
since his time, has likewise been of service to me. Nearly all
the rest of the extant ancient versions appear to have been
taken from that of the Seventy ; and so are useful rather with
a view to establishing the superior correctness of the Septua-
gint,3 or with that of restoring some of its mutilated passages,
than for the purpose of recovering the primitive state of the
original record. Two, indeed, of the Arabic versions are not
of this secondary nature, but are at least in part translated
immediately from the Hebrew Bible ; namely, that first printed
in the Parisian, and afterwards, with some corrections, in the
London Polyglot, and that composed by Saadias ; but these
can hardly be classed among ancient versions, as neither of
them was written till the tenth century, or consequently till
near eight centuries after the insertion of the matres lectionis
in the Hebrew text. The editions I have consulted of the
Septuagint are the Vatican and the Alexandrian, but chiefly
the former one. When the latter is made use of, the circum-
stance is expressly stated. Of all the modern versions of the
Bible, the present Authorized English one is, I believe, upon
the whole, by far the best ; others, however, at times, are also
referred to.

In the third place, the following particulars are to be no-
ticed in my mode of dealing with the elements of Hebrew
writing : — 1. I employ for the Samaritan, as well as the Jewish
representation of Hebrew words, the ordinary square charac-
ter, as likely to be more familiar to the reader than the Samari-
tan letters ; and also because it facilitates the comparison of
two exhibitions of the same Hebrew word, or sentence, to have
then presented to the eye in the same character. 2. To dis-
tinguish the matres lectionis from the original letters of the

« The Coptic version will be found applied to the above use in the chap-
ter of this Essay regarding the nomenclature employed in the Hebrew Bible.

INTRODUCTION. xxix

sacred text, when this service is not effected by means of points,
they are in such cases exhibited in an open type : but when
there is room for any uncertainty whether an unpointed cha-
racter be used as a vowel-letter or not, it is printed in the or-
dinary way. 3. Letters ascertained to be erroneously inserted
in the text are not erased from it, but marked with a little
circle placed over them : and, on the other hand, letters wanted
in the text, and now restored to it, are inclosed within brackets.
4. The initial letters of proper names are printed in a larger
form than their remaining elements, when they are not exhi-
bited in a separate state, but given in connexion with other
words ; and the sentences are divided by the notes of pauses
employed in modern European typography, with the sole dif-
ference of the commas and the lower part of the semicolons
having their direction changed to accord with that of Hebrew
writing. I venture upon the former innovation for the pur-
pose of avoiding the confusion sometimes occasioned by the
want of some distinction to the eye between the proper names
and other nouns ; and upon the latter, on account of the very
perplexing and occasionally erroneous use made of the Hebrew
accents as signs of stops. Moreover, notes of interrogation
likewise tend to facilitate the process of reading, for which
reason I introduce them also (with their direction of course
changed) into this writing; and I feel the less hesitation about
extending to it all those modern improvements, because, if
rightly applied, they afford some assistance to the reader, but,
if wrongly, there is little danger of their misleading him ; as
they have no pretension to antiquity, and still less to inspired
authority, so he need not follow their guidance any farther
than he finds it supported by the context. The like changes
were long since introduced into the Septuagint ; and, surely,
there is fully as much reason for applying them to the writing
of the original record. Persons who object to their adoption,
from a reluctance to allow any alteration whatever in the mode
of printing the sacred text, should be reminded that it was, till
many centuries after the commencement of the Christian era,

D

XXx INTRODUCTION.

written, every line of it, as one long word without any separa-
tion of the letters into groups corresponding to its several
words ; and, therefore, if they still adhere to their objection,
they ought, consistently with their own view of the matter, to
revert to the older very inconvenient method of exhibiting the
text undistributed into distinct groups.

In the fourth place, for the convenience of persons not
familiar with Hebrew, the words of this language are occa-
sionally transcribed into European groups of letters denoting
the same combinations of articulate sounds. In such cases,
the number of letters in each original group is represented by
that of capitals in the transcribed group ; and, consequently,
whenever any element is doubled in pronunciation which is
single in the Hebrew writing, or whenever its power is ex-
pressed by two European letters, the repetition of it, or the
second ingredient of its phonetic value, is denoted by a Roman
character of the ordinary shape. Moreover, in those transcrip-
tions, whenever any vowel-sounds are not represented by let-
ters separately applied to their expression in the original
groups, they are denoted in the transcribed ones by Italics.

In the last place, with regard to other uses I make of
Italics, — in the case of translated sentences, they are employed
to intimate that the words therewith printed have none to cor-
respond with them in the original lines, not only as in our
English Bible, where they are suggested by the context, but also
when they can be supplied onany other sufficient ground ; butin
instances of the latter kind the authority for their insertion is
notified. In sentences, not given as translations, Italics are
used in the ordinary manner, for the purpose of directing at-
tention to certain words ; while in translations the same object
is effected by means of capitals.

It is unnecessary hen; to dwell at any length upon the
particulars just enumerated; since such of them as appear to
require elucidation will be more fully explained in the first of
the ensuing chapters.

PROOF

OF

THE INTERPOLATION OF THE HEBREW TEXT
WITH VOWEL-LETTERS,

&c. &c
CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY PHILOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

BRIEF REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF HEBREW PHILOLOGY ANALYSIS

OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW

ON THE EARLIER CONSONANTAL POWERS OF SOME OF THE HEBREW

LETTERS REMARKS ON THE VOCAL VALUES OF CERTAIN HEBREW

LETTERS — SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL EFFECTS OF THE

DIAPHONISM OF W ANALOGY OF THE HEBREW ACCENTS TO THE

OLDEST GRECIAN MUSICAL NOTES NEW CLASSIFICATION SUG-
GESTED OF THE MASORETIC VOWEL-POINTS CORRUPT STATE OF

PRONUNCIATION OF THE SYRIAC MATRES LECTIONIS — ON SOME

PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION OF VOWELS ON THE

PRESENT, COMPARED WITH THE FORMER, POWERS OF J AND V
A REQUISITE CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTIONS OF HE-
BREW NAMES USE IN HEBREW WRITING OF THE WAWCONVERSIFE

OF THE FUTURE ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING OF THE WAW

CONVERSIVE OF THE PAST BRIEF NOTICE OF THE HEBREW PRO-
PHETIC FUTURE FIRST CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE AUTHORIZED

ENGLISH VERSION — SECOND CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE AUTHORIZED

ENGLISH VERSION THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT OF

AN ADDITIONAL USE OF ITALICS — FOURTH CLASS OF FAULTS IN
THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION.

A KNOWLEDGE of the principles of grammar commenced
so late among the Jews, that it can be clearly traced to
its origin, and the individuals specified who introduced it among
them. In reference chiefly to this point I give, through the
medium of Conant's translation, the following extract from the

d 2

2 BRIEF REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS [Chap. I.

grammatic treatise of Gesenius (in which it is inserted from
another work of his entitled Geschichte der hebrdischen Sprache
und Sehrift) ; as it conies from the pen of the latest author who
has with ability, though not without prejudice, touched upon
the subject ; and as it, after a few corrections, brings well
together a number of particulars occasionally referred to in
the ensuing pages, for whose explanation I should, otherwise,
have to cite various authorities.

"After the extinction of the Hebrew as a spoken lan-
guage, and the nearly contemporaneous collection of the books
of the Old Testament, the Jews applied themselves to the prepa-
ration of translations of this, their sacred codex, and to the criti-
cism and interpretation of its text. The oldest version is that
of the so-called Seventy interpreters : it was executed by seve-
ral translators, and at different periods of time. The work was
begun with the translation of the Pentateuch, under Ptolemy
Philadelphus, at Alexandria : it was designed to meet the
wants of the Jews residing in Alexandria and other Grecian
cities, and was made, in part, from knowledge of Hebrew
whilst it was yet a living language. At a later period, the
Chaldee translations, or Targums (^Olifljft, i. e. translations)
were made in Palestine and Babylonia. The interpretations,
drawn in part from alleged traditions, relate almost exclusively
to civil and ritual laws, and to doctrinal theology. These, as
well as the equally unscientific observations on various readings,
are preserved in the Talmud, of which the first part (Mishna)
was composed in the third century of the Christian era,
but the second part (Gemara) not till the sixth.8 The lan-

' The above dates appear to be fixed too early by at least two centuries.
From the active and persevering spirit of Jerome it is clear that, if any of the
Targums, or Chaldee versions, had been composed before the termination of
his life, he would have carefully studied their contents, and have transmitted
to us in his writings some account of those versions. From his total silence,
therefore, respecting them, it may be fairly inferred, that none of the Targums
came into existence till after his death, in the year of our era 420; but of the
works above referred to the commentaries were most probably written still

Chap. I.] OF HEBREW PHILOLOGY. 3

guage of both is a mixture of Hebrew and Chaldee [and in
neither does the slightest mention whatever occur of any of
the vowel-points, wherein it is evident, from the nature of the
subjects treated of, that they must have been noticed, had
they been in existence before those works were ended].

"To the period of time between the conclusion of the
Talmud and the age of the first writers on the grammar of the
[Hebrew] language belongs, chiefly, the application of vowel-
signs to the text.a Of the same period is the collection of
critical observations called the Masora (rnDft, traditio), by
which the received text of the Old Testament was settled, and
from which it bears the name of the Masoretic text. The va-
rious readings of the Qeri [or words inserted in the margin as
they should be read, instead of the Kethib, i. e., their corrup-
tions as at present written in the text] are the most important
portion of the Masora [but the most valuable result of the
labours of the critics who composed this work undoubtedly
was the introduction of the vowel-points, which are called,

later than the versions. Besides, in more immediate reference to those com-
mentaries, it may be stated, that the Jewish traditions comprising the Mish-
nah, or secondary law (called in Greek Deuterosis), were not committed to
writing till after the death of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in the year 430,
as appears from the following passage in his works: — " Nescit autem [adversa-
rius] habere praeter Scripturas legitimas et propheticas Judaeos quasdam tra-
ditiones suas, quas non scriptas habent, sed memoriter tenent, et alter in
alterum loquendo transfundit, quas Deuterosin vocant." — Augustinus contra
adversarium Legis et Proph., lib. 11. cap. i. sect. 2. The question when the
Gemara, a work later written than the Mishnah, was finished, is now of little
interest, further than as it supplies a limit to the antiquity of the Hebrew
vowel-points, the formation of the oldest of which, it is at present very gene-
rally admitted, did not commence till after both parts of the Talmud had
been completed.

a A limit is above correctly applied to the time of the commencement of
the system of Hebrew vowel-points, but that of its completion must be placed
at least two centuries later than the period when the first Hebrew grammar
Avas written : for nearly three centuries elapsed after that epoch before any
grammatic work of the Jews was composed in which technical names for all
of those points are to be found; and, as such names were given to some of

4 BRIEF REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS [Chap. I.

after them, Masoretic, although they only commenced this
system of vocalization, and left it to be completed by their
successors, the grammarians].

" The first attempts to illustrate the grammar of the lan-
guage were made, after the example of Arabian scholars, in
the tenth century. What was done by Saadia in this depart-
ment is wholly lost. But there are still extant, in manuscript,
the works of R. Juda Cidug and R. Jona ben Gannacli composed
in the Arabic language. Aided by these labours of his prede-
cessors, R. David Kimchi acquired among Jewish scholars his
reputation as the classical grammarian of the language. From
these earliest writers on the subject are derived many of the
methods of classification and of the technical terms Avhich are
still employed ; e.g., the use of the forms and letters of the
verb /j/D (formerly employed as a paradigm) in designating
the conjugations and the different classes of irregular verbs ;
the voces memorialed, as nD57^?, &e.

UR. Saadia Gaon,a Rector of the Academy at Sora, near

them at an early stage of the invention, it is not at all likely that the rest
should have been left without designations of the same kind for any consider-
able length of time. Upon this subject Cappellus makes the following obser-
vations: " antiquissima? notse Masorethicse, quurn punctorum memine-

runt, non alia usurpant eorum nomina, praeterquain ista, Cametz et Pathach.
Sub Cametz enim ill i complectuntur Tseri, quod vocant Cometz parvum;
eub Pathach autem comprehendunt Segol, quod ab eis vocatur Pathac parvum
(imo vero sic etiain loquuntur antiquiores grammatici Juda?i, qui ante quinquo
vel sex saxula scripserunt). Reliqua puncta vocant i, o, u, atque ea solent
sic experimere ^S, is, IS, W, S, N; eorum vero nomina [scil. Khireq, Kho-
lem, Shureq, Khireq parvum, &c] non occurrunt, nisi in posterioris am
grammaticis recentioribus ante annos 300, aut 400." — Arcanum Pnnctationis
lievelatum, lib. i. cap. 12.

* " Gaon (i. e. excellent) was the title given to those who presided over the
schools of Jewish learning in Babylonia. Bishop Walton tells us of Saadia
(Proleg. xiv. IS), that he translated the entire of the Hebrew Scriptures
into Arabic, wjitten by him in Hebrew letters; of which version the Penta-
teuch was printed by the Jews at Constantinople about the middle of the
sixteenth century. This people were, by Mohammedan oppression, driven
from Babylonia about a hundred years after the death of Saadia; and, in the

Chap. L] OF HEBREW PHILOLOGY. 5

Babylon (obiit A.D. 942), wrote Liber Linguae Sanctce, known
only from the quotations of the Rabbins. R.Juda Chiug, styled
caput sive princeps grammaticorum, was a physician at Fez
about the year 1040. He composed some treatises on diffi-
cult points in grammar; e.g., De verbis quiescentibus, geminatis,
in the Arabic language [the author here mentions his having
seen a manuscript copy of these works at Oxford]. R. Jona
ben Gannach, physician at Cordova about 1120, wrote the
first complete grammar, with the title Liber Splendoris,
*-d\\ c_Aj£, which is also found in manuscript (though very
indistinct) at Oxford. Even in this early work the arrange-
ment is made with reference to the three parts of speech [of
course it is, as having been derived immediately from the
grammatic system of the Arabians, who distributed the parts
of speech into verbs, nouns, and particles, deviating in this
respect from the Grecian models from which they had received
their first notions on the subject] : it was afterwards translated
by other Rabbins into Hebrew. Liber Supplementi is the title
of another grammatical work of this writer, intended as a sup-
plement to R. Chiug De verbis quiescentibus. R. Aben Ezra of
Toledo (ob. 1174), the most thinking, sagacious, and unpre-
judiced of the Rabbins, wrote on grammar D^tK/2 1SD [book
of scales], and mn¥ I^D (book of purity, or correctness). R.
David Kimehi flourished about 1200 in (the then Spanish)
Narbonne. He wrote 77pD (Perfectio), containing a lexicon
and grammar. Elias L^evita, a German who taught at Padua,
Rome, Venice (ob. 1549), first admitted the modern origin
of the vowel-points,a and was, in consequence, accused of

list above given of their subsequent Rabbins who were most distinguished
for learning, we may track them in their flight to Morocco and thence to
Spain, which latter country was for a long time their principal place of resi-
dence in Europe.

* Elias Levita himself appealed to earlier Jewish writers, and more espe-
cially to Aben Ezra and Kimehi, in support of his theory. Whether he
represented the sense of the passages he quoted from their works unfairly

6 BRIEF REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS [Chap. I.

heresy. He wrote Liber Electi, Capita Elio?, and many other
«rammatical works.

" The father of Hebrew philology, among Christians, was
the celebrated Reucldin (ob. 1522), to whom Greek literature
also is so much indebted. He, however, as well as Sebast.
Munster (ob. 1552) and J oh. Buxtorf (ob. 1629)^ adhered
closely to Jewish tradition. Lud. Cappellus (ob. 1658) led the
way to the opposite extreme — a rash distrust of this source of
knowledge, and especially of the authority of the vowel-points.

He maintained, with Elias Levita, the modern

origin of those points, and in some instances called in question

(as was subsequently asserted by the opponents of Cappellus, and seems to be
implied in the above statement of Gesenius) or fairly, it is not very material
now to decide; at all events he did not succeed in convincing either his
countrymen, or the public at large, of the justness of his views. The first
writer who completely established the modern origin of the Hebrew points
was Cappellus; but even his very able treatise on the subject did not, at the
outset, meet with general assent. The Eomanists, indeed, sided with him ;
because they thought that the vagueness of style produced in the Hebrew
text, by divesting it of points, favoured their doctrine of the necessity of an
infallible guide in the Church for the interpretation of Scripture; while the
Protestants, on the other hand, for the opposite reason, took up warmly the
opposite side of the question: and the then Calvinistic Church of Switzerland
went even so far as to compel its clergy to avow a belief in the inspired au-
thority of the points and their coevality with the letters of the sacred text;
as may be seen fully attested in the following extract: — " Sed ista Cappelli
sententia [de novitate scil. punctorum] adeo non approbata fuit fidei sociis,
ut potius llelvctii theologi et speciatim Genevenses, anno 1678, peculiari
canone caverint, ne quis in ditione sua minister Ecclesiae recipiatur, nisi
fateatur publice textum Hebrseum, ut hodie est in exemplaribus Masoreticis,
quoad consonantes et vocales, divinum et authenticum esse. Confer Acta
Erudit. anno 1686, p. 439, et Gilb. Burnetum in Epistolis Itinerariis,^. 152."
Wolfii Bibliothec. Heb. Pars ii. p. 27. But the violence of party zeal which
gave rise to this unprotestant and despotic infringement of the right of pri-
vate judgment, gradually subsided, according as it came to be known that
the sense of the Hebrew text could be determined with as much certainty,
though not with as much ease, in unpointed as in pointed editions ; and the
modern origin of the vowel-points is now very generally admitted on all sides
by the learned.

Chap. I.] OF HEBREW PHILOLOGY. 7

their correctness. Some of his partisans and followers wholly
discarded them."3 — Grammar of Gesenius, sec. 3.

From the foregoing historic sketch may be deduced — what
I have in a former essay endeavoured to prove from the in-
ternal evidence of the case — that the inspired authors of the
Hebrew text had no acquaintance with any technical rules of
grammatic composition. In fact, no systematic collection of
such rules was framed till long after the times in which they
severally wrote : and the cultivation of grammar, we here see,
was not taken up by the Jews till about the middle of the
tenth century, when its rudiments were first communicated to
them through one of their countrymen who derived his know-
ledge of it from the literature of the Arabians ; nor was this
information conveyed to them through any other channel than
a foreign dialect, till about 200 years later. Although the
title of Masorets is, in this sketch, confined to Jewish writers
who lived in the interval between the period when the Talmud
was finished and the middle of the tenth century, yet it is
usually employed in a more extended sense to include also
the scribes who immediately preceded and followed those
critics ; namely, on the one side, the Talmudists who, like

a In the above passage our author betrays a strong prejudice against Cap-
pellus, not only in withholding from him the credit to which he was emi-
nently entitled, of having been the first to make generally known to the
learned the modern origin of the vowel-points, but also in implicitly charging
him with faults for which he was not answerable— those of some injudicious
men who, because they found, through his valuable treatise on the subject,
that the Hebrew points were not invested with inspired authority, rashly
inferred that they were of no weight or use whatever. With respect to the
various imaginary systems of vowel-letters to which this unwarranted infe-
rence gave birth, they at first, indeed, caught the attention of the public,
through the flattering prospect held out of their making Hebrew as easy to
read as any species of European writing: but totally at variance, as they all
are, with the general mode, which subsists to this day, of reading the kinds
of writing employed in such of the cognate dialects as still continue living
languages, and resting on no better ground than mere arbitrary assumption,
they have long since fallen into merited neglect.

them, relied entirely on tradition, and wrote many observa-
tions of the same kind as are contained in the Masora ; and,
on the other side, the succession of early grammarians that
reached down to the middle of the twelfth century, or till
about the time when the system of vowel-points was com-
pleted. Accordingly, this system is termed Masoretic, although
only begun by the authors strictly called Masorets, and finished
by a later series of philologists, to whom the same denomina-
tion is loosely applied.

Here it may be observed, that great advantage has re-
sulted from the application of the vocalic points to the letters
of the sacred text, in transmitting the Hebrew inflexions of
words on which the grammatic structure of the language
depends, and in thus enabling us, quite independently of
Jewish instruction, to examine the meaning of each sentence
of that text with critical accuracy. But it would be going
much too far in praise of the Masoretic system of vowels to
assert that it has completely preserved the ancient pronun-
ciation of Hebrew, or kept it exactly the same as it was from
the very outset. On the contrary, external evidence which
is accessible to us on the subject serves to show that, in
the course of a vast number of successive ages, some changes
have taken place in this respect ; but still, that they are not
such as, in the least, to affect the sense of Scripture. To sa-
tisfy the reader on both points, but more especially on the
latter, a brief discussion of a few examples is subjoined.

The oldest memorial we have in European writing of a
Eebrew sentence is, I believe the exclamation of our Lord
upon the cross, — "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" — recorded by St. Matthew in the original sounds, HAt,
HXi, Aa/xtt aafiuxOavi ;a a comparison of which with the same

" Whatever may have been the reason for our Saviour's addressing his
Heavenly Father on the above occasion in the pure I [ebrew words, Hdi, Hdi,
rather than in those of the same signification, Halohi, Halohi, in the dialect
spoken at the time by the Jews; his having done so accounts for the circum-

Chap. I.] IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 9

exclamation as predicted in the twenty-second Psalm, ^N ^N
^rQtU J1D7, and with the Masoretic reading thereof, HeLl,
HeLI, LaMaH HaZaBTaNI, both proves the whole quotation, ex-
cepting the root of the verb, to be pure Hebrew, and verifies
in a very striking manner, as far as this example goes, the cor-
rectness of the system of vocalization by means of points, as
well as that of the older and more scanty one by means of
letters/ Only two very minor innovations of the Masorets,
or the critics who preceded them, are here exposed. According
to their system, the first syllable of the verb should have been
written o-e instead of <ra, with the A changed to a very short E
on account of the affix ; and the letter representing the He-
brew aiformative for the second person ought to have been
changed from 6 to t, to indicate that the original character was
here deprived of the aspirate part of its power in consequence
of its immediately following a syllable ending with a conso-
nant ; neither of which variations, the quotation from St. Mat-
thew clearly attests, had come into use as early as the period
when he wrote. But these are obviously mere phonetic nice-
ties, and do not in the slightest degree interfere with either

stance, mentioned by St. Matthew, of some of the bystanders misunderstanding
him, with respect to the person he invoked. Now, St. Mark notices the very
same mistake: whence, I submit, there is strong reason to suspect, that he too
wrote the words of the address in question in Greek characters expressive of
pure Hebrew, in like maner as St. Matthew, and that they were afterwards
altered by some transcriber from HXe, H\«, to EXtvi, EXwi, on the erro-
neous assumption that our Lord's exclamation must have been uttered by
him in the language then in common use among his countrymen. This in-
ference is supported not only by the internal evidence of the case, but also by
the testimony of the Peshitah ; in which the whole of the original exclama-
tion is quoted in exactly the same words from St. Mark's Gospel as from that
of St. Matthew. I may, perhaps, in a subsequent chapter return to the con-
sideration of the Syriac representation of this exclamation.

a The older vocalization of the text by means of letters is above adverted
to merely as a matter of fact which cannot be disputed by any one accustomed
to read unpointed Hebrew; but a direct inquiry into the question, whether
such vocalization existed from the first in the inspired writings of the Old
Testament, is reserved for the ensuing chapters of this Essay.

ID

ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES [Chap. I.

the context or the separate meaning of the words they are
applied to.

This investigation next brings me down to the age of Ori
gen, whose representation in Greek letters (preserved in a
celebrated manuscript of Cardinal Barberini) of the Hebrew
text of the first verse of the eleventh chapter of Hosea, I here
select for consideration. Of the few extant remains of the
second column of his Hexapla, the representation in question
is, I conceive, that which can be best depended on for correct-
ness ; both because it is taken from a very ancient copy of the
Septuagint translation of the Minor Prophets, which Bishop
Walton styles codex vetustissimas, and ranks for antiquity in
the same class with the Cottonian copy of the Book of Genesis
(Proleg. ix. 42) ; and also because it forms part of an extract
from the Hexapla,a which (as the Bishop informs us in his
publication of the whole passage, Polyglot, torn. vi. p. 133) is
given as a specimen of that work ; where the copyist must, of
course, have directed particular attention to the accuracy of
his transcription. For my present purpose, indeed, only one
column of the extract is wanted ; but as I may in a subsequent
chapter have occasion to refer to other portions of it, I here
adduce the entire. The first column, which should exhibit the
Hebrew text of the quoted verse in the original character, is
omitted in this specimen : the remaining columns stand in the
following manner : —

Xt vep \apaij\
ovcafiijov ov
fiefijucfr/xufi
KapuOi (3a vi.

A. Oil 7Trtt9 'I(T-

pnijX, kuI ij'p'nrij-
aa ainbv, Kalairo
Ai^jviriou eicaXc-
aa ibv viov /nov.

C. Oil 7TU ?S

'I(T/>a>}\ Kai j/7«-

7Tt]fldv09, eg Ai-

<yi>7rTov KCkXrjiai
vlof fiov.

01 6. BlOll Vtj-

ttio<s 'IfTparjX)
erya> tjn/a7rrjaa
CIV70V, kuI eg Ai-
rn'nnou ^teT€Ku\e-
aa ra tlkvu uvibv.

G. UTl V)'l7TlOS

'Iffpa/yX, e\a\t-
aa viov jliov.

The initials headinsx the last four columns are used to dc-

■ This extract, Bishop Walton states, is written in the margin of the above-
mentioned Barberini MS., and, therefore, is probably not as old as the text
of that manuscript.

Chap. I.] IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 1 1

note Aquila, Symmachus, the LXX. translators, and Theodo-
tion. The two circumstances above mentioned tend to sup-
port the correctness of the whole of this extract, as well as of
the part of it I am now going to make use of; and, before
doing so, I subjoin some additional particulars which have the
like tendency. First, the order of the columns of the Hexapla
is here exhibited the same as it is described by Jerome, in his
commentary on the third chapter of the Epistle to Titus: "Unde
et nobis curae fuit omnes veteris Legis libros, quos vir doctus
Adamantius \i. e. Origenes] in Hexapla digesserat, de Caesa-
riensi bibliotheca descriptos, ex ipsis authenticis emendare ;
in quibus et ipsa Hebraaa propriis sunt characteribus verba
descripta ; et Graacis litteris tramite expressa vicino. Aquila
etiam et Symmachus, Septuaginta quoque et Theodotio suum
ordinem tenent. Nonnulli vero libri, et maxime hi qui apud
Hebrasos versu compositi sunt, tres alias editiones additas
habent ; quam Quintam, et Sextam, et Septimam translatio-
nem vocant, auctoritatem sine nominibus interpretum conse-
quutas." — S. Hieron. Opera, Ed0. Benedic, torn, iv., col. 437.
Secondly, the extract from the Septuagint is here quoted ex-
actly as it is written in the Vatican copy, with the sole excep-
tion of Zioti substituted for its equivalent on. Thirdly, the
final part of Aquila's translation of the verse, where it differs
from the Septuagint, is transmitted to us in the same words
by Eusebius: — uhov\evaas rtp Efipaiicu) — e£ AlyvnTov eKoAeaa
tov vlov fxov — £%eSwKev 6 A/cvXas" — Euseb. de Demon. Evang.,
lib. ix., sec. 4. Fourthly, the representation in Greek cha-
racters of the Hebrew verse referred to agrees, as far as Greek
orthography admits, with the letters of the original text in its
present state, except in the absence of the prefix to the last
word ; — a prefix which the context obliges us to treat as an
unmeaning redundant, and whose omission, consequently, pro-
duces no alteration in the sense of the passage.

This much being premised, let us now compare the first
column of the foregoing extracts, — Xi vep \opat}\ oveafirjov ov-
lienixeopdin kctpaBt pavi, — with the Masoretic reading of the

12 ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES [Chap. I.

same verse, KI NaHaR Y<SKrtHeL WalloHaBeHU WuMiMmiSRaYiM
QaRaHThI Li'BNI;* — and we shall find in like manner, as in my
first example, an agreement in essentials, and difference only
in matters of very inferior importance. The circumstance of
Origen's pronouncing the second word as a monosyllable can
be accounted for, by the facility with which two vowels of the
same sound, with only a weak aspiration intervening, glide
into one in the rapid utterance of ordinary reading ; whereas
in the Masoretic pointing, which is adapted to the more solemn
mode of recitation used in divine service, this word has pre-
served its dissyllabic form. Besides this difference, some
change of pronunciation is here presented to our notice in the
interior parts of the words, but not in, what is the main thing
to be considered, their inflexions. There is but one exception
to this remark : it occurs in the instance of the preformative
of HaHaB, which has been regularly vocalized by Origen with
a short E, while the Masorets have substituted a long 0, to
compensate for the weak power of the initial letter ; — a sub-
stitution not always adhered to by them in such cases, and
which is of very little consequence, as having a reference
merely to sound. In the entire passage there is but one inno-
vation of theirs, or their predecessors, which has any effect on
the sense ; namely, their vocalizing the conjunction Waw with
an A, when employed before a verb in a future form with an
influence on the tense ; whereas, in whatever way it may be
used, Origen is found to have constantly pronounced it Wu
or £7,b not only here, but also in every other extant instance

■ If we should, in accordance with Origen's representation of the matter,
omit the prefix to the last word of the Hebrew verse, then the Masoretic
reading of this word would be iteXI, and would scarcely differ from his ex-
pression of its sound.

b Origen's mode of denoting the sounds Wu and U was of necessity the
same; as Greek orthography admits of no way of expressing the semi-conso-
nant W before U\ and, consequently, he was compelled to represent each of
the two sounds in question be the very same combination on. For a like

Chap. I.] IN THE PKONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 13

of his expression of its sound by means of Greek letters.3 The
distinction thus shown to have been introduced since his time
cannot, upon the whole, be deemed injurious ; because, if the
mode of applying it should give a wrong meaning to a passage,
the context would clearly expose the mistake ; and, on the
other hand, when rightly applied, it is of use, to the extent of
pointing out to a reader the tense of a verb at once, and with-
out the trouble of reflection.

My last example shall be from the writings of Jerome.
The fullest specimen I have met with, of his mode of reading
Hebrew, occurs in an epistle he wrote to Evangelius, a Pres-
byter, on the subject of the different opinions that were formed
respecting Melchizedek ; where, coming to that of the Jews,
he says : — " Ponam et Hebrseorum opinionem ; et ne quid
desit curiositati, ipsa Hebraica verba subnectam." He then
expresses the original words of Gen. xiv. 18-20, in Roman
capitals, as follows : — " umelchisedec melec salem hosi le-

HEM, VAIAIN, UHU CHOEN LEEL ELION : VAIBARCHEU, VAIOMER ;
BARUCH ABRAM LEEL ELION CONE SAMAIM VAARES : UBARUCH

reason he could make no distinction between the sounds Yi and I, but was
obliged to denote both of them in common by the Greek vowel i.

a The reader, on finding that the prefix Waw was formerly pronounced
the same way in all its different applications, may perhaps be amused with the
primitive origin, assigned by grammarians to the distinctive sound with which
it is now uttered, when used as Waw conversive of 'the future. " Ortum est hoc
praifixum ex verbo substantivo mil, ita ut primitus piene dictum sit nin
blSp\ fuit (ut) interficeret, dein 77 (quod etiam Syri in hoc vocabulo suppri-

munt, ]ooi) abjectum, et vtSp'J HI, ope Dagesch fortis conjunctivi, contrac-
tual in btops1." — Gesenii Lexicon Manuale Heb. et Chald. in loco. The evi-
dence adduced in my text upon this subject plainly exposes the absurdity of
the Rabinnical view of it here presented to us by Gesenius and adopted by him.
But he betrays nearly as great a defect of judgment in his Syriac illustration
of this view. For the linea occultans (warning the reader to avoid uttering the
letters it is placed under), which his explanation requires us to suppose co-
eval with Syriac writing, could not have been introduced into that writing till
after the words of the language had undergone a considerable alteration of
sound.

14 ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES [Chap. I.

EL ELION, ESER MAGGEN SARACH BIADACH, VAIETHEN LO

maaser mecchol." — S. Hieronymi Opera, Ed. Benedict., torn,
ii., col. 572. But the Masoretic reading of the same passage
runs thus :— WwMaLKISeDeQ MeLeK ShaLeM HOSIH LeHeM W«Y«-
YiN, WeHUH KoHeN LeHeL HeLYON : WaYyeBaReKeHU, WaYyoH-
MaR; BaRUK HaBRaM LeHeL HeLYON QoNEH ShaMaYiM WaHa-
ReS: WwBaRUK HeL HeLYON HaSheR Mi'GgeN SaREKa BeYaDKA.*
WoYyi'TteN LO MaHaSER MiKkoL.

The Benedictine monk, Martianay, whose edition I am
making use of, observes in a note upon Jerome's reading of
this passage, that he had found several corruptions of it in
former printed editions, which he corrected from ancient ma-
nuscripts ; the tendency of those corruptions being to approxi-
mate the words to their Masoretic pronunciation.b But no
errors of a like nature can be supposed to have crept into the
manuscript copies he consulted ; as they were produced in
times when the study of Hebrew was very little attended to
in the Western Church, and when, consequently, the repre-
sentations made in them of Hebrew groups in Roman charac-
ters were exposed only to ordinary faults of transcription, not
affecting the vowels in particular, but leaving those letters as

a The learned reader may perceive that, in the above word, I have omitted
a sign, between d and K, for the Segol interposed by the Masorets on account
of the pause immediately following ; and have preferred giving the reading
of this compound, as it is in general pronounced, in order the more strongly
to mark the distinction between the utterance of its final part after a singu-
lar and after a plural noun. An instance occurs, in the note after next, of
my taking the same liberty in my representation of the Masoretic reading of
a like compound in another passage. In the pointed original the Segol is suf-
ficiently distinct from the Seri ; but the difference could not easily be expressed
in Roman letters.

b The following is part of the note above referred to: — "Nullum fere in
hac pericope recitata extat verbum, quod non sit corruptum apud Erasmum
et Marianum, et contra antiquorum patrum consuetudinem positum. Non
enim exemplaria Ilieronymi manuscripta sequenda sibi proponunt; sed regu-
las hodiernorum grammaticorum longc diversas ab usu vetcrum Hebrseorum
atque ecclesiasticorum scriptorum."

Chap. I.] IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 15

little liable to alteration as the consonants. Of one vocalic
corruption, however, in our editor's exhibition of the above
reading, there can scarcely be a doubt ; though the proper
mode of correcting it is not quite so certain. In the case of
sarach biadach, which Jerome construes inimicos tuos in
maim taa, the affix for the second person singular is made ach
after the plural noun, the same as after the singular one ; al-
though in another place he informs us that ach is not an affix
to nouns in the plural number.8 Perhaps the letter / dropped
out of the first of those groups of capitals in the course of
successive transcriptions, and that it was written by Jerome
saraich : certainly, he has inserted a vowel for Yod, when
used as a mater lectionis, in every other place of its occurrence

a The passage of Jerome, above referred to, occurs in his commentary on
Habakkuk, iii. 13, and is as follows: — "Sciendum autem, ut supra dixi-
mus, quod ubi posuerunt LXX. plurali numero, ut sal oar es Christos tuos, ibi
esse in Hebraico LAIESUA ETH MESSIACH [^n^B HS Ett^b, read by the
Masorets LeYeShaH HeTh MeShlHKa], quod Aquila transtulit, in salutem cum
Christo tuoP"1 — Hieronymi Opera, Ed. Benedict, torn, iii., col. 1633. The anti-
thesis here drawn, in reference to the number of a noun, between its transla-
tion in the Septuagint and Jerome's reading of it in the original, shows ACH
in that reading to have been an affix for the singular number alone. With
regard to the discrepance upon this point between the version of the LXX.
and that of Aquila, I may here by anticipation observe, — what would more
regularly come under the head of the discovery unfolded in the ensuing chap-
ters,— that the Hebrew word to which those translators assigned different
numbers, was written along with its affix, in the time of the older party,
without any vowel-letter "jnttJE; which admitted of being read in either the
plural or singular number, whichever the context should be deemed to re-
quire. But after the introduction of matres lectionis into the sacred text,
the omission of a Yod between the last two letters of this compound restricted
its leading part to the singular number. Thus, Aquila's translation, in this
as well as in other instances, got the credit of being the more literal one ;
whereas, in point of fact, it is here closer, not to the original text, but
merely to the construction put upon that text by its first vocalizers: and
the question still remains to be determined by the context, which rendering
of the disputed compound is more correct, — a question left entirely undecided
in our Authorized Version, in which this combination is translated " thine
anointed."

16 ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES [Chap. I.

with that use, throughout the entire passage ; and, therefore,
it is very unlikely that he should have omitted a sign for it
here. It is, however, immaterial to ascertain what was exactly
the termination of this group, as it came from his pen : it was,
at all events, different from what it now is, and from that of
the group next following it. If .the emendation I have sug-
gested be the correct one, then the pronunciation of the affix
of the second person singular was, in his time, the same for
the masculine, as it still is for the feminine gender after plural
nouns ; and, at any rate, was very nearly so, after singular
nouns ;a whence it would appear that the distinction of gender
at present applied to this case is of modern origin ; — a con-
clusion which is not only completely accordant with the un-
pointed text, wherein no such distinction appears, but also is
in part supported by even the Masoretic system, which attaches
a common vocalization for both genders 'to the affix in ques-
tion, when it is subjoined to verbs, or certain prepositions, at
the close of a sentence. I should add, that the common read-
ing of the affix retained by the Masorets for those peculiar
situations, is precisely the same as was given to it by Jerome
after nouns singular ; which shows that, even where the mo-
dern pronunciation is different from the older one, it is still
grounded thereon, and has been gradually thence derived. I
may also observe of the innovation just discussed, as I have
already done with respect to those previously brought under
consideration, that the superfluously minute degree of dis-
tinctness thereby introduced of marking the gender of prono-
minal affixes for the second person, occasions no mischief; for,
were it in any case erroneously applied, the context would at
once enable a reader to detect the mistake.

Before concluding my examination of Jerome's mode of

■ The affix of the second person singular masculine in Jerome's time was
after nouns singular, ACII, and, according to the above emendation, after nouns
plural, AICH; or, in my way of transcribing the same Hebrew syllables, aK
and alK, respectively. But the corresponding affix for the feminine gender
is at present, in the former site, ZK, and in the latter, aYtK which would
be more regularly sounded alK.

Chap. I.] IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 17

reading Hebrew, I have to remark that the old Latin power
of V was that which we now connect with W; and although
the change of this power had commenced before his time, yet
there is no certainty of its having come into general use till a
later period. It may, therefore, be inferred from this circum-
stance, combined with his knowledge of Hebrew, that he em-
ployed the character with its original phonetic value, as being
the correct equivalent of that of 1, when used as a consonant.
It should also be noticed that Greek still continued to be gene-
rally spoken in the western parts of Asia, in the age when he
visited Palestine ; and, consequently, it was in all probability
through the medium of this language that he was taught He-
brew by the Jews ; which accounts for his following the Gre-
cian mode of expressing Hebrew words, in not using any sign
for the consonantal part of the syllables Wu and Yi, and also
in frequently omitting a letter with which Latin orthography
supplied him for the Hebrew aspirates. Moreover Sh is not a
Latin combination, and, therefore, he was precluded by Latin
as well as Greek orthography from giving a just representation
of the power of Shin. By making due allowance for these
particulars, we are led to two results. First, we shall find that,
in all probability, Jerome's reading of Gen. xiv. 18-20, in the
sacred text is, in the main, correctly preserved in the copy
given of it in the Benedictine edition of his works : as the
consonants, it is thus shown, certainly are so ; and there is no
reason to suspect that the copyists were less careful in their
transcription of the vowels, or that they dealt at all differently
with the two sets of letters, in the case of words whose Hebrew
originals where wholly unknown to them. Secondly, it will be
hereby perceived, that the greater part of the difference between
Jerome's reading of the passage in question and that of the
Masorets is only apparent, and that the small portion of it
which is real has, with the single exception of the peculiarity no-
ticed respecting the pronominal affix for the second person sin-
gular, a reference merely to euphony and to nice, but unneces-
sary, distinctions of sound. In the Latin author's reading of this

e 2

18 ANALYSIS OF SUCCESSIVE CHANGES [Chap.L

passage, the Masoretic form of the Waw conversive of the future
begins to make its appearance, but is not there complete, as
the duplication of the power of the following letter is still
wanted; also the Waw, when used simply as a conjunction, is
pronounced with other vowels besides U; but the distinction
of uttering it with the last-mentioned vowel, only before
labials or consonants sounded with a very short E, had not
yet commenced. In short, there is in the case before us just
enough of difference, in point of sound, to show that the Ma-
soretic system was not established till after the age in which
Jerome wrote ;a while there is none which affects the sense, as
even the alteration with the notice of which I commenced the
discussion of this example, does not at all influence the mean-
ing, but merely tends to render the expression of it more defi-
nite. All the other grammatical forms throughout the pas-
sage, of which there are several both regular and irregular,
are vocalized by him precisely as they might be at present ;
nor do I make any abatement of this general assertion, either
on account of his occasional omission of a letter to correspond
with the sounded SJiewa of the Masorets ( which is now also
slurred over, so as to be nearly imperceptible in familiar reci-
tation), or for his reading the verb \2D after the pronoun
governing it, in the infinitive instead of the preterite form ; as,
although this anomaly has been avoided by the Masorets here,
it is found in other parts of their pointing.

The particulars in which the modern way of reading He-
brew differs from that which prevailed in the age of Jerome,
or from the methods used in still earlier times, I call Masore-
tic innovations, because first committed to writing by the Ma-
sorets, through the application of their points to the letters of
the Hebrew text. But, from the strict attention of those cri-
tics to fidelity of transcription, it is most likely that they did

■ The use of the above limit to the age of the Masoretic system is super-
seded by the stricter one arrived at in a preceding part of this chapter: it,
however, as far as it goes, agrees with and corroborates that closer limit.

Chap. I.] IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW. 19

not originate, but merely transmit, the innovations in ques-
tion ; and that they conveyed the pronunciation of Hebrew
with scrupulous care exactly as it existed in their days, the
changes in the vocalic part of the words having gradually
taken place, while as yet that part was, either not at all repre-
sented with separate signs, or only very imperfectly denoted
by letters. Even since their time some minor variations of
the vowel sounds have crept into use ; but they are such as
no kind of writing could prevent ; and if the previous greater
alterations exerted no material influence on the grammatic
structure of the language, of course the lesser ones could not
seriously affect it. The ancient modes of pronunciation I have
traced as far back as external evidence has enabled me to go,
in order to show the real state of the case, but not with the
slightest wish to revert to the use of any of them. In fact, as
the Masoretic utterance of Hebrew substantially agrees with
the older ways of pronouncing it, no advantage of importance
could arise from going back to any such; while, on the other
hand, great inconvenience would result from deviating in any
respect from the at present received sounds of the words. In
reading, therefore, even unpointed Hebrew, we still should do
so according to rules deduced from the Masoretic system of
punctuation ; but where points are known to have been in-
serted with skilfulness and care, as in the case of the Bible,
the use of a pointed text is to be preferred, as saving trouble ;
only we are to bear in mind that the Masorets, though very
useful, were not infallible commentators on that text ; and,
consequently, when we meet with a sentence of obscure or dis-
puted meaning, it is better to examine it divested of points ; —
a remark which, I may here by anticipation add, will be found
equally to apply to the matres lectionis, after it shall have
been proved that those letters do not, any more than the points,
constitute part of the Hebrew Scriptures as originally written.
From the investigation of the ancient modes of pronounc-
ing Hebrew words, I naturally proceed to inquire into the
ancient powers of the Hebrew letters, as far back as they have

20 ON THE EARLIER CONSONANT POWERS [Chap. I.

been looked upon and treated as consonants, or into the initial
part of those powers, supposing them to have been at anytime
employed as syllabic signs. It is evident that, if the Old Tes-
tament was originally written without any separate represen-
tatives of vowels, whether letters or points, then, in order that
the groups of characters should fully denote words, as they
were obviously intended to do, their several elements must
have been employed to express entire syllables, composed of
consonants, and of the vowels with which the context and a
knowledge of the language showed that those consonants were
in each instance to be uttered. This state of the case, how-
ever, it would be premature as yet to discuss ; and I shall for
the present consider only the consonantal powers of the He-
brew letters, as if from the very commencement the whole of
the phonetic values of those characters — what they certainly
have been at as remote a period as it can be proved through
external evidence that there were matres lectionis in the
sacred text, that is, as far back, at any rate, as the days of
( )rigen.a But before entering on this inquiry I have to pre-
mise that, while I hold in great estimation the vocalic part of
the Masoretic system of punctuation, — on which our know-
ledge of the grammar of the language mainly depends, and
which, in the comparatively few instances wherein it is erro-
neously applied, furnishes itself the means of due correction, —
I do not at all value so highly that part of it which affects the
powers of the consonants, or either part as employed in the
pointing of foreign names or names of rare occurrence, but,
in reference to these subjects, attach far greater weight to the
evidence of the Jews who composed the Septuagint. In thus
preferring the more ancient testimony I find myself supported
to a certain extent by the example of the very learned framers
of our Authorized English Version, who, though they wrote
before the comparatively modern origin of the Hebrew points

The above point will be found proved fully in a subsequent chaptt

Chap. I.] OF SOME OF THE HEBREW LETTERS. 21

was completely established, have yet transcribed D^n^D,
for instance, after its Greek transcription <^u\iarieifjL, Philis-
tims* rather than Pelishtims, in accordance with the Masoretic
reading of this name. It is, however, chiefly with a view to
arriving at as correct a mode as I can get of transcribing He-
brew groups denoting proper names, that I inquire into the
more ancient consonantal powers of the characters. In regard
to the mode of reading the general text of the sacred record,
I would, with a single exception presently to be noticed, ad-
here to the choice of powers assigned to its elements by the
Masorets, as far as they have left us means of ascertaining
that choice ; and where they have not, I would conform to
the modern practice of the Jews, as far as it is consistent with
itself, and not in other respects objectionable. But in those
instances in which neither the testimony of the Seventy Jews
nor that of the Masorets is sufficient for the precise determi-
nation of consonantal powers, and in which the mutual disa-
greements of the modern Jews prove them to be no longer
known with exactness, as also in those in which double powers
have been transmitted to us without any criterion whereby to
ascertain which of them should in each instance be selected,
in all such cases I make use of certain distinguishing marks ;
since it is necessary to have some fixed standard of notation
at least (where one of pronunciation cannot be obtained), for
the sake of uniformity of transcription. The marks in ques-
tion have been already employed in the volumes of an earlier
work of mine ; but for the convenience of readers who may

a The above name is so written in the first edition of King James's Bible,
though it came in later editions to be changed into Philistines, by a latitude
of choice which custom has permitted with regard to the terminations of
words. A stricter transcription of the commencement of this name would
have been Phylish; as the vowel at present inserted in the first syllable devi-
ates unnecessarily from both Greek and Masoretic authority ; and with respect
to the Hebrew sibilant W, its ancient power was always Sh, though repre-
sented in the Sep tu agin t by a letter equivalent to S, merely because Greek
orthography supplies no means of expressing the former power.

2-2 ON THE EARLIER CONSONANT POWERS [Chap. I.

not have met with those volumes, their explanation is here
repeated. The letters on which I have to offer remarks, fall
under the heads of — 1st, the gutturals, or rather the aspirates ;
2ndly, the quiescents ; 3rdly, those technically called Begad-
kephath ; and, 4thly, the dentals, or rather the sibilants, of the
Hebrew alphabet.

1. There are no less than four aspirates in Hebrew writing,
which have been classed together by the Jewish grammarians
under the denomination of gutturals, namely X (when treated
as a consonant), H, n, and J/.a Their powers, taken in the
same order, are denoted respectively in this work, by H, H, Hy
and H; — a notation which of course is not intended for popu-
lar use, any more than the other specimens of peculiar mark-
ing that follow, and which, even for the purposes of more
accurate transcription to which it is applied, is adopted merely
to distinguish those powers from each other, as different aspi-
rations, the precise nature of three of which can now no longer
be determined. The four letters are, however, known to have
had a close affinity to each other, as they are frequently inter-
changed in the Hebrew Scriptures. With respect to K, the
circumstance of its being at present unsounded as a consonant
does not at all bear out the prevailing opinion, that it was
always the weakest of those so-called gutturals : it must, on
the contrary, have been formerly uttered with a stronger aspi-
ration than H ; since it is nowhere found changed or sup-
pressed to prevent a hiatus, as i"I is. Thus, for instance,
PPfl, HaYall, when inflected for the third person singular femi-
nine, and the third person plural, of the preterite tense, be-
comes HrPH, llaYeTfiall, and TH, I-I«YU ; while, on the other
hand, K¥Q, MaSaH, in the corresponding inflexions, retains its
third radical, and is written PJNVE, MaSeHoH, and 1N¥D,
MrtSellU. In regard to the two last letters of this class, n and J7,

il n and V are sometimes uttered with guttural powers blended with their
respective aspirations; which was probably the cause of all the four letters
above considered being ranked in the class of gutturals.

Chap. I.] OF SOME OF THE HEBREW LETTERS. 23

they appear to have become, each of them, diaphonous, before
the Septuagint was written, and to have been uttered either
with simple aspirations of some kind or other, or with such
aspirations compounded, for the former letter, with the power
of K, and for the latter with that of G. As examples of their
simpler powers we find (Tin, HeW«H, and "p^H, HeNOK, repre-
sented in the Greek version of the Seventy by Eva and Evwx,
also Itttf/, HeSaW, and f^, HaMaLeK, by Uaav and AfxaXfjK ;
and as examples of their compound powers, we have Dn,
HaM, and ?m, RaHeL, expressed by Xa/n and Pa^/A, also
nW, HaZaH, and m^, HoMoRraH, by Ta£a and Tofioppa^
The possession, I may here by the way observe, of double
powers by characters is one of the grossest faults to which
they are liable as phonetic signs ; since it not only is pro-
ductive of much inconvenience, but also frequently misleads.
Admitting, then, the first alphabet to have been derived im-
mediately from inspiration, it can hardly be conceived to have
contained diaphones in its original state. . Though proceeding
directly from a divine source, it may, indeed, like the exter-
nal benefits that are conferred through natural means, have
been given in a rude, imperfect condition, for the purpose of
inciting man to exertion, room being afforded for its improve-
ment through diligence and care as well as for its deterioration
through indolence and neglect. Derived, then, from this
source, it may be conceded to have had in its primitive con-
struction, wants and faults of defect, but not faults of a posi-
tively vicious nature, such as diaphones undoubtedly are.b This

a The character x is equivalent to an aspirated K; but the Greek alphabet
supplies no representative of an aspirated 7. The circumstance, therefore, of
the Seventy Jews sometimes denoting the power of the fourth element of the
class under consideration by simply a gamma is to be attributed merely to a
defect of Grecian orthography, and does not tell against the Shemitic evidence
which shows that the Hebrew letter always includes an aspiration in its pho-
netic value.

b The Arabians, whose alphabet is, through the medium of the Syriac one,
derived from that of the Jews, have corrected the diaphonism of the above

24 REMARKS ON THE VOCAL VALUES [Chap. I.

conclusion, however, rests only on probable grounds, and the
full establishment of its truth is by no means essential to the
support of my views ; it is at least unlikely that the two let-
ters above referred to were invested at first with more than
one phonetic value each ; but we are unable to trace with cer-
tainty the nature of their powers farther back than the date of
the Septuagint, since which epoch they have beyond all ques-
tion been diaphones.

2. Of the four quiescents, &, H, 1, \ the second alone is
ever naturally so, namely, at the end of syllables, — when, like
our H, to which it is equivalent, its power is not rendered per-
ceptible in utterance except in a few instances, — the other
three are, contrary to their nature, degraded to the rank of
mutes in places where in reality they were formerly employed
as vowel-letters, and still constitute the matres lectionis of the
unpointed text, the Masorets having put them to silence in
such situations, in order to avoid the confusion that would
arise from the simultaneous use of two systems of vocali-
zation which do not always agree with each other in their
application to the Hebrew Scriptures. This mode of dealing
with the earlier system, I may here by the way remark, is
evidently unwarranted, except on the supposition of that sys-
tem being, just as much as the later one, the mere work of
uninspired men. But the grammarians, after the time of the
Masorets, went a step farther, which can on no ground be jus-
tified ; and with a view to concealing this treatment of what
tiny conceived to be genuine elements of the original text of

noticed letters by distinguishing each with diacritical points into two; both
their Illia and Kha (denoted respectively by £ and £) being descended from
the Hebrew Heth, and also their Ain and Ghain (denoted by ^and £_) hav-
ing in like manner sprung from the Jlayin. As to the triple phonetic value
which the Jews at present attach to this last-mentioned letter, of gn in the
beginning, h in the middle, and ng at the end of a word, it is not at all war-
ranted, either by the modern use of the corresponding element of any of the
kinds of writing belonging to the cognate dialects, or by the ancient testimony
of the Septuagint.

Chap. I.] OF CERTAIN HEBREW LETTERS. 25

the Bible, as well as for the purpose of more completely pre-
venting the disturbing effects of those letters on the Masoretic
pointing, feigned them to be consonants in the sites in ques-
tion, as they certainly are everywhere else, but still consonants
there divested of their powers ;a — a fiction which, on the face
of it, betrays gross improbability, and imposes on no one who
can read the unpointed text. Neither have the later gram-
marians altogether abstained from misrepresentation on this
subject. Thus, while Gesenius (in section 7 of Conant's transla-
tion of his Grammar) admits that Haleph, Yod, and Waw were,
before the Hebrew Bible came to be pointed, occasionally
diverted from their appropriate use as consonants to that of
denoting vowels, he endeavours to account for the number of
letters so applied being limited to three, by maintaining that
of the five sounds contained in the common scale of vowels
only three are in strictness vowels, the other two being diph-
thongs ; — a position which he defends chiefly on the authority
of the Sanscrit system of orthography, in which the sound E is
represented as composed of those of J. and/, and the sound 0,
of those of A and U. But the two sounds thus deducted from
the five are clearly not diphthongal or less simple than any of
the other three ;b and the attempt made by this author to ex-

a Another motive of the grammarians in maintaining that the characters
silenced by them in the middle of syllables were consonants, and denying the
existence of any vowel-letters among the elements of the sacred text, may
have been the desire to make out a necessity for the use of the Hebrew points
in that text from the time when it was first written. But on this sub-
ject, mere reasoning cannot outweigh the force of testimony; and the latter
species of proof decidedly forbids the concession of such great antiquity to
those points.

b When there exists any composition in a vocalic sound, its want of sim-
plicity can be shown by a prolongation of its utterance, which is thus found
to terminate in the final, separated from the initial part of the compound. In
this manner composition can sometimes be detected, where it is not exhibited
in the writing. Thus, for instance, the English sound of /is in reality a diph-
thong terminating in a pure 7, which is in English orthography written EE;
and, accordingly, if an Englishman pronounces /with a lengthened utterance,
he unavoidably gets into a continuous sound which he would, in his mode of

26 REMARKS ON THE VOCAL VALUES. [Chap. 1.

tend the application of a false principle of the Sanscrit system
of vocalization to that of the Hebrew vowel-letters can hardly
be ascribed to any other motive than a design of reducing the
latter system to a derivative from the former one, and thereby
giving countenance to the delusion at present so popular of the
Sanscrit alphabet being of enormous antiquity. He, indeed,
in further support of the above position, appeals also to the
example of the French, who, in their written language, read
the combination of A and / as E, and that of A and U as 0.
But the connexion between the orthography and pronuncia-
tion of the French language is extremely capricious, and to
such an extent subject to this charge in the adduced instances,
that Frenchmen never undertake a formal vindication of them
by attempting to resolve the sound of E into those of A and /,
or the sound of 0 into those of J. and U; — resolutions which
the Brahmans affect to make only through sheer ignorance of
the subject. As to his examples of the Hebrew preposition
I'D, ben, ' between,' and the Hebrew noun DT, yom, ' a day,'
being pronounced respectively in Arabic baina and yaum, they
afford him no aid whatever; as they are not specimens of the
asserted transitions of sound occurring in Hebrew considered
by itself, but merely in Hebrew compared with one of the
kindred dialects. But the strangest point connected with his

writing, denote by the combination EE, repeated a greater or less number of
times, in proportion as he wishes to represent the time of the continued ut-
terance longer or shorter. On the other hand, a combination of letters appa-
rently expressing a diphthong may in reality denote a simple uncompounded
vowel. Thus A U is, in English orthography, equivalent to A used with one
of its pure open values, and therefore can be pronounced continuously for any
length of time without the slightest alteration of its sound: it may also be
treated in like manner with just a similar result in French writing, in which
it is equivalent to a pure open 0; but if in German, wherein it is equivalent
to OU in English, its pronunciation be continued beyond a second, the sound
of it is changed to that of a pure Z7, written in English 00; and to renew its
original sound, the speaker must break off the drawl and recommence his
enunciation of that sound. If this criterion be applied to the open sounds of
E and 0 — the sounds above referred to as examined by Gesenius — they will
be found as simple and devoid of composition as any of the other vowels.

Chap. I.] OF CERTAIN HEBREW LETTERS. 27

argument is that, immediately after venturing upon the account
of the matter whose fallacy has been just exposed, he notices
the very circumstance which furnishes the true reason of there
being no more than three matres lectionis in unpointed He-
brew writing ; namely, that Yod is therein used indifferently
to represent either /or E, and Waw, in like manner, to denote
either Uoy 0. In fact, the paucity of these clumsy substitutes
for vowel-letters is not to be attributed to a limitation of the
number of primary vowel-sounds that is quite imaginary, but
to the rude simplicity and imperfection of the attempt made
by Shemitic nations to express those sounds by means of let-
ters— a rudeness and imperfection that may be observed in
their use of alphabetic writing even up to the present day.

Another position of modern date, which appears to be
equally unsound, though not so from any intentional fallacy
on the part of its advocates, is that the vocal values ofHaleph,
Yod, and Waw, have sprung from the softened consonantal
powers of those letters. How the vowel A could ever have
been conceived to be derived from the softening of any modi-
fication of H power, it is not very easy to understand : it might
possibly have been deduced from the vowel-sound in the first
syllable of the name (Haleph) with which the letter express-
ing one of the modifications in question happens to be desig-
nated in the Hebrew alphabet, but certainly not from any
state, whether hardened or softened, of that modification itself.
As to Yod and Waw, they are, though usually termed conso-
nants, in strictness but semi-consonants ; so that the vowels /
and JTmight possibly be derived respectively from their powers ;
not, however, from those powers softened, but decomposed.
For, if I preceding any vowel different from itself, as for in-
stance A, should, therewith united, be contracted in utterance
into a single syllable, the resulting sound would be that of YA ;
and, consequently, YA could in turn be resolved by dia3resis
into the vowels / and A : and through a similar process WA
could be decomposed into U and A. From what source the
vocal vises of the matres lectionis were actually derived, it

28 REMARKS ON THE VOCAL VALUES [Chap. I.

would be premature as yet to inquire ; since I am here treat-
ing of them in accordance with, or at least without question-
ing, the at present received opinion, that they are, in such
application of them, coeval with the other elements of the sa-
cred text, and that the Hebrew alphabet was from the first
composition of that text employed as a system of consonants
and vowel-letters. With respect to the phonetic values of Yod
and Waw consonants, the former was at first denoted in Eng-
lish transcriptions of Hebrew names by 2, and afterwards, for
the sake of distinguishing between the consonant and vowel,
by /; but since the time that /has been corrupted among us
into an equivalent of soft G, it has become requisite still fur-
ther to change the representative character into Y. On the
other hand, the latter value has (probably on account of the
difficulty of pronouncing W immediately after some vowels,
more especially after 7) had its English indicator very gene-
rally altered from W to V; but still it is useful to bear in
mind the older power, for the preservation, as far as it is
within our reach, of the correct sounds of ancient proper
names, as well as to enable the reader to perceive the con-
nexion between the vocal and consonantal values of the He-
brew letter referred to.

Wherever in an unpointed edition of the Hebrew Scrip-
tures the Haleph, Yod, and Waw are known with certainty to
be used as vowel-signs, and should, according to a just appli-
cation of the Masoretic theory, be treated as quiescents, they
are, in the quotations in this work of the words they occur in,
printed in an open type, ^, \ 1, to distinguish them from the
same letters when employed as consonants, — a distinction
which is sufficiently indicated in correctly pointed writing
without the aid of this contrivance, — but where there is the
least room for doubting in which way they are used, they are
exhibited in black lines, N, \ "), like the other elements of the
Hebrew text. Great mischief has resulted from the employ-
ment hitherto of the latter set of characters with two such very
different uses ; and even the Masorets, though complete mas-

Chap. I.] OF CERTAIN HEBREW LETTERS. 29

ters of the language, will be shown in the ensuing investigation
to have, in the case of rare and foreign names, committed nu-
merous mistakes in pointing these letters, where they should,
according to their own theory, have been left quiescent, and
again in failing to point them, where they ought to have been
dealt with as sounded consonants. Such readers as agree
with me in the inference I have, in the course of my observa-
tions on the aspirates, drawn from the divine origin of the
Hebrew alphabet, with respect to the original powers of its
elements, will perceive in the evils thus resulting from the
extreme diaphonism of the above three lettersa good reason
for suspecting their genuineness when employed as vowel-signs.
I do not, however, wish to dwell on this first indication of the
spurious nature of the matres lectionis ; as abundance of
stronger and more direct grounds for rejecting them as origi-
nal ingredients of the sacred text will be given in subsequent
chapters ; besides that my present object is to treat of the
vowel-sounds occasionally attached to the characters in ques-
tion, without yet entering into the inquiry, whether they can,
when invested with this secondary set of phonetic values, be
included among the series of letters actually employed by the
inspired penmen.

3. Although the six letters technically called Begad-keph-
ath, 3, J, *T, 3, D, n, are at present invested with the double
powers denoted respectively by b, g, d, k, p, t, and by the same
letters aspirated, the last two are known to a certainty to have
had in former times but single phonetic values ; and, therefore,
the probability is that none of the rest originally had more.
This argument, however, from analogy for the primitive sin-
gleness of the powers of the first four letters of the class, is put
forward only in the absence of all ancient testimony on either

* Y is used with the ambiguity of a mater lectionis in English orthogra-
phy; but no evil consequence thence arises, as its position sufficiently indi-
cates its phonetic value, it being always employed in that orthography as a
consonant in the beginning of a syllable, and as a vowel-letter in the middle
or end of one.

30

ON THE EARLIER CONSONANT POWERS [Chap. I.

side of the question, and cannot, I admit, be relied on with
any degree of confidence. But, with regard to S and H, the
evidence is perfectly clear. Thus, J72, Gen. x. 25, and TIDfl,
Ezek. viii. 14, read by the Masorets PeLeG and TaMmUZ, have
been transcribed in the Septuagint 0aAey or 0aAeA-, and 6a/x-
yuot't' ; and D and H were confined to their original powers of
Ph and Th as late at all events as the age of Jerome, who ex-
pressly tells us in his commentary on Isaiah, that there was no
letter of P power in the Hebrew system,* and states when com-
menting on Ezekiel, in reference to the second example, that
the Hebrew pronunciation of its initial character was Th.h In
the transcription, therefore, of Hebrew names, I employ solely
Phc and Th as the respective equivalents of those two letters ;
and, on the point which is uncertain with regard to the other
four ingredients of the class, 2, J, 1, D, availing myself of the
latitude of selection which fairly arises from that uncertainty,
I assign to them also but single powers, namely, the unaspi-
rated values which are, in English pronunciation, attached to
their respective derivatives, B, G, D, K. But, in reference to
the use of the same letters in the general text of the Hebrew
Scriptures in which the Masoretic pointing could not be now
altered without great trouble, I do not — provided it be borne
in mind that the application of the double powers is, certainly
in the instance of two of those letters, and very possibly in

a " — P litteram sermo Hebraicus non habet ; sed pro e&Phi Grasco uti-
tur." — Opera Ilieronymi, Ed0. Benedict., torn, iii., col. 24.

b " — quem nos Adonidem interpretati sumus, et Hebrams et Syrus sermo
Thamuz vocat." — Opera Ilieronymi, Ed°. Benedict., torn, iii., col. 750.

c The ancient and modern powers of the combination Ph are different:
the former probably approached near to that of TfJ, which is the aspirate of
Xf (p) in the Sanscrit system ; while the latter value of the same combina-
tion is identical with that of F, and, therefore, would be more correctly
represented by Vh than Ph; as F is the aspirate, not of P, but of V. I do not,
however, make this observation with any desire of getting the ancient power
of Ph restored, which would be a vain attempt; but merely with a view to
justify the classification made by the Hebrew grammarians of the letter B as
a labial when used with cither of the powers they assign to it.

Chap. I.J OF SOME OF THE HEBREW LETTERS. 31

that of all of them, an innovation on the ancient mode of read-
ing — see any objection to retaining this distinction ; as it re-
lates only to niceties of pronunciation which have no bearing
whatever on the sense of Scripture ; and as the diaphonism
it introduces, extending no farther than the exchange of powers
closely connected, is not calculated to produce any confusion
of sounds. Neither do I object to the modern exponents of
the aspirated consonantal values of the six letters, except to
that of the first of them, which was till of late years repre-
sented by Bh, but at present is by F, — a letter whose modern
power is totally different from that of i>,a and such as no aspi-
ration of B could possibly produce. The attaching to 1 so
gross a diaphonism leads to the double evil of confounding its
power frequently with that of 1, and breaking off the connexion
that subsists in phonetic value between it and B : for, no mat-
ter what efforts we may make, we can articulate the latter
character only with a certain power, or, at any rate, with but
a very slight variation of that power ; and, consequently, if
the former character be uttered with quite a different articula-
tion, it must cease to be viewed, even in thought, as the pro-
totype of the Roman letter. A modern Greek, indeed, who
attaches to the second letter of his alphabet the same power
that we do to V, can very consistently pronounce 2 with the
modern consonantal value of V: so one person may correctly
read the Hebrew letter in question as B, and another as V;
but neither party has a right to pronounce it in both ways,
and thus throw upon the Hebrew alphabet the discredit of a
gross fault which cannot be justly imputed to that system of
letters. Of course it would be requisite, for the purpose of
holding personal intercourse with the Jews, to make ourselves

a The consonants 2 and 1 are ranked by Hebrew grammarians in the
same class, namely that of labials: and they certainly are to this extent con-
nected, as long as the latter of them is used with its TFvalue, or the ancient
power of V: but when 1 is employed, as it now is in general, with the modern
value of V, it is no longer a pure labial, but chiefly a dental, and becomes
wholly unconnected in power with 2.

F

32 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

acquainted with the present corrupt Rabbinical mode of speak-
ing Hebrew, just as it is necessary to learn the peculiarities of
Romaic pronunciation in order to be able to converse with the
modern Greeks. But, as no classical scholar would allow him-
self to be guided by the latter authority in his mode of reading
ancient Grecian authors, so neither should the Hebraist be
directed by the former, in his pronunciation of Scriptural He-
brew. In the case of the letter Hayin, the pronunciation of
the Rabbins has been very generally and very justly aban-
doned ; surely, then, we are at least equally warranted, in that
of Beth, to avoid an innovation introduced at a still later pe-
riod by the same party, and attended with more injurious
effects.

4. The Hebrew sibilants, ?, D, ¥, £>,a are, in my represen-
tation of the sounds of ancient names, transcribed respectively
Z, S, S, Sh. The power of the third is usually written TS;
and very possibly some approach to it may be made by utter-
ing the letters T and S together, in like manner as the simple
articulation of Z is in some measure similar to that produced
by pronouncing D in connexion with and immediately before
S. But the Jews do not, except in the case of the aspirates
n and V, appear to have made use of any complex articula-
tions : even BE, whose power is as easily articulated as any
other composite one, is uttered by them with an intervening
Shewa, whereby is indicated their severance of the compound
into its simple phonetic elements. As, then, DS would be an
inaccurate exponent of the power of the first Hebrew sibilant,
because of its implying some composition therein, so for like
reason TS is not a correct representative of that of the third.
The English alphabet supplies the letter Z to express the for-
mer simple consonantal value, but none to denote the latter ;

a The sibilants, or consonants whose phonetic values are modifications of
S power, are called by the Hebrew grammarians Dentals. But this is a wrong
designation of them, as it includes too much. For instance, the letter 1, when
used with its modern consonantal power, is chiefly, or at least partly a dental,
though it has no connexion whatever with the class of letters here referred to.

Chap. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF £\ 33

and, therefore, I venture to write it S. At the same time I
admit that, in works intended for popular use, wherein the
employment of peculiar signs is not allowable, it would be
better, in accordance with the practice of the framers of our
Authorized Version of the Bible, to transcribe the third He-
brew sibilant indifferently either S or Z, as it appears to be
intermediate in power between those two letters. The simple
power of the fourth Hebrew sibilant I represent by the com-
bination of letters Sh, in like manner as I denote the ancient
consonantal values, though simple, of S and J"! by Ph and Th ;
because the eye of the English reader is accustomed to these
combinations as the exponents of certain simple powers. Bat
the second of the combined letters is, in each instance, uni-
formly printed in the ordinary Roman type, for the same rea-
son that, in the case of a Hebrew character being dageshed, or
marked for double utterance, the second sign of its power is
likewise, according to my plan of notation, exhibited in this
form ; namely, in order to keep the number of capitals iden-
tical with that of the elements of the original group. The
Seventy Jews, in their transcriptions of Hebrew names, have
represented the fourth sibilant by the Greek letter of S power;
but upon this point the original is evidently entitled to greater
attention than even its very best version ; more especially as
the discrepance here noticed can be easily accounted for by a
defect of the alphabet with which that version is written.
When, however, a name containing the Hebrew sibilant in
question is transcribed in the Greek Testament, I feel myself
warranted by the inspired authority of that portion of the
original Scriptures to exhibit it, as far as regards this sibi-
lant, in the Avay most familiar to the English reader. Thus,
for instance, though I am compelled by my method to give
YeRUShaLeM as the immediate transcription of the Hebrew
group D7tW\ yet I would drop the h in the ordinary expres-
sion of this name, and write it Yerusalem.

The letter US was diaphonous as long ago as the time of the
Masorets, and has remained so ever since, being at present

f 2

34 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

treated as equivalent, not only to Sh, but also to S, which is
the proper power of a different Hebrew letter ; but it was at
first invested solely with the former consonantal value, and
did not acquire the latter, that of Samek, till at any rate after
the Book of Judges was written, as is clearly shown by the pas-
sage xii. 6, of that book. For the groups phlM (wiBboLelh)
and Tw2D (DiBboLeTh) are therein represented as quite dis-
tinct in sound, though they differ only by the two letters in
question ; and, consequently, those letters could not then, as
now, have been sometimes employed to denote the very same
articulation. This singleness of the power of W must have
continued at all events down to the age of Jerome, who de-
clares in his commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to Titus, that
while Latin and Greek in common possessed but one letter of
S power, there were in Hebrew no less than three, representing
modifications of this power which are different from each other,
namely Samech, Sade, and Sin* It is obvious that he could
not have represented in so unqualified a manner the powers
of ttf and D as different, if those powers were in his time, as at
present, occasionally identical. Besides, it may be remarked,
Shin in Syriac writing continues to this day restricted to the
original power of the letter; a power which neither Greek nor
Latin orthography enabled Jerome to express, but which is
appropriately denoted by the English combination Sh, or the
German one Sch; and it is further to be noticed that, where
Shin is now uttered in a Hebrew group with the articulation
of S, and the sound of the word in which it occurs is the same
in Syriac, in such cases the letter Samek is employed instead
of it, in the derivative writing. Thus, for instance, the proper
names, Sarah, Esau, and Israel, are pronounced in HebreAv,
as well as in Syriac, with the power of S (not with that of Sh)-,
but while that articulation is now denoted in the three Hebrew

» " — nos et Grceci unam tantum littcram S habemus, illi vero tres Sa-
mech, Sade, ct Sin ; quae divcrsos sonos possident." — Hieronymi Opera, Ed".
Benedict., torn, iv., col. 437.

Chap. L] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF p. 35

groups by Shin, it is expressed by Samek in the corresponding
Syriac ones.a Hence it is most likely that the Hebrew copy,
ists, in times very remote but subsequent to the period when
the Syriac version was written, substituted inadvertently Shin
for Samek in some instances,b in like manner as they are well
known to have occasionally interchanged other cognate letters ;
and that afterwards, in the case of the two under considera-
tion, they extended this accidental substitution, so as to ren-
der the spelling of the words it had partly affected, uniform
throughout. Now, although the changes of pronunciation,
previously noticed, may be acquiesced in, as relating solely to
phonetic distinctions that have no bearing on the sense of
Scripture, yet we would not, I submit, be warranted in so
dealing with the one here brought under consideration, which
seriously alters the meaning of passages ; besides that it pro-
duces unnecessary confusion in the unpointed text, while even

» The above observation may be verified by appellative words as well as by
proper names, and extends in a great measure to the Chaldee as well as the
Syriac dialect. Thus 2t£7, the Hebrew for a gray-headed or old man, is read
SaB, instead of ShaB, while this same word is written in Syriac ]^1CD, and in
Chaldee 2D, or emphatically SOD. — Again, 372E7, ' was satiated,' is pro-
nounced as a Hebrew verb SaBaH instead of ShaBaH ; but it is written, in
accordance with this pronunciation, in Syriac Vi^CT), and in Chaldee 272D. —
Again, S3E7 (or i~!3K7) ' was increased,' is pronounced in Hebrew SaGaH in-
stead of ShaGaH ; but it is written in Syriac !-ifr-£D, and in Chaldee either
N2D or K2E7. — Again, *"r1tt7, ' a branch,' is pronounced in Hebrew SOK instead
of ShOK ; but it is written in Syriac tlDCLCD, and in Chaldee "fiD, or empha-
tically either NDlD or HDiJP. — This rule holds always in Syriac, and for the
most part in Chaldee; as is admitted in the Manual Lexicon of Gesenius in
the following sentence, which occurs in his initial observations upon the letter
in question: — "Pro Hebrteo W Chaldasi plerumque, Syri (utpote littera Sin
carentes) semper substituunt D."

b When the reader comes to examine what is stated in the next chapter
respecting the designation of Sarah, the wife of the great progenitor of the
Jews, he may perhaps be led to suspect that the substitution above discussed
was intentional rather than accidental, and had its origin in the desire to con-
ceal the circumstance that the first form of her name signified ' an emigrant,'
and that it was only the second form of it which denoted ' a princess.'

36 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

in the case of pointed books the Masorets have not, with all
their skill and carefulness, been able to remedy the entire of
the evils thence resulting. To illustrate some of those evils a
single Hebrew word will suffice, though I must, for the sake
of brevity, confine myself to but a few instances of the misin-
terpretation of it which have been thus occasioned. The
acknowledged significations of the root "ID, when vocalized
with a Waw between its elements, and pronounced SUR, are,
to depart from, to turn aside (that is, depart from the high
way); or, if followed by the particle 7K, to turn aside into some
habitation, or unto some person to receive from him the ser-
vices of hospitality ; or, if written without the intervening
vowel-letter, and pronounced SaR, contumacious, degenerate; all
which meanings are more or less connected with each other.
But besides these significations, the context, corroborated by
ancient testimony, sometimes requires others including the
idea of command or power; which, notwithstanding, are re-
jected by the Rabbins, with the view of upholding the perfect
correctness of the Hebrew text in various places in which the
word of this sound is, for the latter class of significations, now
written with Shin instead of Samek as its initial element. Let
us try, then, whether they have not, by such rejection, actually
corrupted the sense of Scripture, in some passages in which
the substitution in question happens to have been overlooked,
and this root has been suffered to remain still commencing
with a Samek.

1. When Agag was brought before Samuel for instant exe-
cution,— 1 Sam. xv. 32, — and approached him ' delicately,' as
is stated in the authorized English version, or ' trembling/
according to the Septuagint and Vulgate, the terrified culprit,
in the presence of the indignant prophet ready with a drawn
sword to hew him in pieces, uttered an exclamation in which
the word under discussion occurs, and which our translators
have, in compliance with received opinion, construed " Surely
the bitterness of death is past;" — a speech of defiance utterly
inconsistent with the position in which Agag stood. Rut if

Chap. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF £>. 37

ID be here rendered, " is overpowering," the expression of
his feelings will be quite in keeping with the rest of the nar-
rative. But, however imperatively this correction may be
demanded by the context, I still should not venture to bring
it forward, if it had not the support of ancient testimony.
This support, I admit, is not as powerful as I usually adduce, in
consequence of some mutilation of the evidence of my princi-
pal witnesses ; yet still it is, I submit, entitled to considerable
weight. But to enable the reader to form his own judgment
on this point, I here place before him the original exclamation
and its oldest Greek, Syriac, and Chaldee renderings, as they at
present stand, with the literal meaning of each subjoined to it.

Original text* MIDM "ID ID pK

Surely, predominating [or has predominated] the bitterness of death.

Septuagint El [potius Ai,b] ov-tw micpos 6 Oavaro^.

If [or, rather, alas!] thus bitter is death.

Peshitah )Lq±d j_.jio A_.1^j_»

Surely, bitter is death.

Targum of Jonathan STHD THD-, mn (V22

With entreaty, my Lord, — oh the bitterness of death.

When the reader examines the meaning of the first two ad-
duced translations of this passage, he will see that "ID was
omitted in the Hebrew copies consulted by the framers of the
Septuagint and Peshitah — an omission that may possibly have
been occasioned by the similarity of this and the short word

a The above extract, I may here by anticipation observe, is in the strictest
sense a part of the original text; for there is not a single vowel-letter in the
entire exclamation, and it is in this respect written in the very way in which,
as I hope to satisfy the reader in subsequent chapters, the whole of the sacred
text was originally composed.

b The above correction of the Greek passage has been suggested to me by
comparing it with the original Hebrew, by which means it may be perceived
that, in former times, when the words of the sacred text were not separated
from each other, as now, by intervening vacancies, the Seventy Jews mistook
the last two letters of pN for a word which is by itself equivalent to the

38 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

next following. The Greek and Syriac renderings, therefore,
of the elause have no direct bearing on the question at issue,
nor even an indirect one, except inasmuch as they give a
doleful rather than a triumphant turn to the exclamation of
the captive king. But the Chaldee translation of the same
passage affords strong evidence in favour of my view of the
subject: it is looser, indeed, than the preceding ones, and j3ar-
takes more of the nature of a paraphrase, in which the dis-
jointed state of the ingredients of the sentence serves to por-
tray in a very striking light the agitation of Agag's feelings ;
but still we are bound to attend to its substance, though not
attaching much importance to its form. Now here the origi-
nal word in question is rendered by an expression (^i3"l, my
Lord) which clearly includes in its meaning the idea of mas-
tery or dominion ; and as "ID admits of being used not only as
a noun, but also as a verb or participle, its Chaldee translation
may be put in either of the latter forms of construction, and
then fully bears out the sense I have assigned to it in this
place. We thus find that the exclusion of this word from any
meaning connected with the ideas of rank or power, in order
to justify the denoting of its sound for such meanings by the
group "IIP, is a rabbinical conceit that it did not arise till after
the first part of the Targum of Jonathan had been written.

2. Let us look to the excuse of Ahimelech to Saul for
having given the shew-bread and a sword to David, —

nten |nm ,p*u /n"to 7m;/ ^n ^di

which is rendered in our Authorized Version : "And who is so

Greek adverb ovtw; and that, consequently, they must have looked on its
first letter S, Ila, as also constituting a complete word. But what that word
could have been, except the interjection expressive of violent emotion which
is common to most languages, and is written Al in Greek and Ah! in English,
I am unable to conceive. I admit, however, that no such interjection has
been noticed and recorded by the Hebrew grammarians; and I propose my
Greek emendation only as a conjectural one, which may perhaps be interest-
ing in itself to some scholars, but on which I lay no stress in relation to my
argument.

Chaf. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF V. 39

faithful among all thy servants as David, which is the king's
son-in-law, and goeth at thy bidding, and is honourable in thine
house ?" — 1 Sam. xxii. 14. If "ID be confined in this passage
to the class of its acknowledged meanings, the clause wherein
it occurs, and in which it is followed by the particle 7tf , should
be literally translated, " and turneth in to reside (not with thee
or in thy house, but) in thy bidding," — words of which it
would be very difficult to make any sense. Our English
translators, therefore, as they followed the received notions
on the subject, were compelled to adopt a very loose render-
ing of this clause — " and goeth at thy bidding ;" in taking
which liberty, however, with the original, they were, I ad-
mit, countenanced by the framers of the Peshitah, who with
still greater looseness have construed the same expression
^oJpQOE) r-6-Jo? 'and observing thy commands.' But if ID be
here translated ' a prince,' the propriety and force of Ahime-
lech's defence will be at once made conspicuous, by the gra-
dual ascent, in point of dignity, of the attributes with which
he invests the character of David ; and the meaning of the
whole passage can thereby, without any necessity for para-
phrase, be given strictly as follows : — " And who among all
thy servants is as David, faithful, and a son-in-law of the king,
and a prince at thy command, and one to be honoured in thy
house?" — a rendering which agrees word for word with that
transmitted to us in the Septuagint : Kal t/s- tv naai ioh hov-
Aoi? gov ft)? Aaw8, 7170-tos, Kal <ya/j.fip6$ tov /3a(nAew?, Kal apj^tov
iravros TrapayyeX/JLCtTo? troy, Kal evdot;os kv rw oik to gov, After
the complete vindication thus afforded by the Seventy Jews
of my interpretation of "ID in the original passage, it is
scarcely requisite to add that in the Targum of Jonathan this
word is here rendered 2"), which usually means ' a preceptor,'
but may also signify ' a master,' or ' Lord,' a more appropriate
title to enter into the description of David ; — and so we find
here likewise supplied the attestation of the author of this an-
cient paraphrase, that the Hebrew term before us, though not
made to commence with a Shin, must still be understood to

40 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

have a reference to authority or rank, whenever the context
requires the application to it of any such meaning.

3. Having so far illustrated my position, I select Hos. iv.
17, 18, as a third example, not only for a further confirmation
of what I have already laid down upon the subject, but also
with a view to try to extricate from extreme obscurity a sen-
tence which, I will venture to assert, has been misunderstood
by every modern expositor. If I succeed in this effort, I
trust I shall be enabled by the aid of my discovery to clear
up, in a subsequent chapter, the remaining difficulties, and
remove the apparent incoherencies of a much longer passage
comprehending the one now under consideration, and so to
exhibit the whole in a clear, intelligible light, without a single
alteration of the original Hebrew text, except that of supply-
ing a letter which can be clearly proved to have dropped
thence, both by the context and the united evidence of the
Septuagint and the Peshitah. In the shorter sentence above
specified, and of which only a part is at present to be ex-
amined, the prophet upbraids the Israelites with their vices,
speaking of them figuratively in the singular number, under
the designation and character of an individual, the progenitor
of their principal tribe. This much is rendered in the Autho-
rized English version as follows : — "Ephraim is joined to idols;
let him alone : their drink is sour ; — " or, according to the
marginal note, " their drink is gone." The original words of
the last clause are DKDD "ID, of which the second may be
read and construed, 1st, SoBHdM, 'their drink,' or their 'drink-
ing ;' 2ndly, SoBelKM^ 'drinkers,' or 'drunkards ;' 3rdly, SeBaHz'M,
' Sabeans,' whether by this be meant the inhabitants of a cer-
tain district, or the adherents of a certain false religion. Our
translators have followed the first reading, which in the ab-
stract, indeed, admits of two constructions, but in the place
before us only of one, namely, ' their drinking ;' as Hosea is
here speaking not of the possessions of Ephraim, but solely of
his actions. Now while we retain this sense of one ingredient
of the clause, the other, surely, cannot be construed 'is gone,'

Chap. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF £\ 41

but should rather have its interpretation taken from the
second class of meanings of the root, and be rendered ' predo-
minates,' or ' has gained the ascendancy ;' since the prophet's
declaration is obviously intended, not for praise, but for cen-
sure. The drift of DK3D "ID thus comes out, 'their drunken-
ness has got dominion over them / — a reproach cast upon the
Israelites by our author less obscurely in another place, —
"the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love
flagons of wine." — Hos. iii. 1. This construction, however,
produces an incoherence between the above clause and what
immediately precedes it, by the abrupt enallage of number
and sudden transition from an individual to the people by
him represented — an objection which is obviated by the second
of the cited readings of DfcOD, whereby we are enabled to
translate the two words under discussion, so as to have the
same meaning as before, but without any obscurity thence
arising, " he is prince [or chief] of drunkards."

It remains to be inquired whether this interpretation de-
rives any support from antiquity. Now, I admit that the
bearing of the ancient versions on this point is neither unani-
mous nor by itself convincing ; but when it is combined with
the internal evidence of the context, they constitute a proof
by no means destitute of weight. In the Peshitah, either the
clause in question was from the first passed over without any
attempt to interpret it, or the words made use of for the pur-
pose have since dropped from this version. In the Septuagint,
the translation is y pence Xavavaiow, ' he has joined the sect
of Canaanites ;' — a rendering whose connexion with the origi-
nal it is not very easy to penetrate. All that plainly follows
from this Greek is that the Seventy Jews read DN3D in the
third of the cited ways ; so that, if in their copy of the Hebrew
text the particle 7N came after "ID, they might have understood
the literal meaning to be, ' he has deviated/rom the right path,
to associate with the Sabeans,' with which construction their
interpretation can be brought in some measure to agree in
sense. But the forcedncss of that interpretation, joined to the

42 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

circumstance of its requiring an alteration of the original text,
deprives the Septuagint in this place of the authority to which
it is in general entitled,* and compels me to resort to a record
of far inferior weight, which is called the second part of the
Targum of Jonathan, but must evidently, from the greater
corruptness of its language, have been written many ages
later than the first part, and consequently by quite a different
author. In this work the clause referred to is loosely rendered
as follows :— DTM ]D pW IffUDK p.TOB1?^, ' their princes
have multiplied feasts supplied from plunder ;' — a paraphrase
which, if we look only to its substance, fully warrants me, as
far as the authority of this Targum in the absence of older tes-
timony goes, in translating the first word of the original clause
' a prince,' and in representing its two united ingredients to
convey a reproach against the descendants of Ephraim for ex-
cessive drinking — a vice which is evidently included under the
more general description of excessive feasting. Some further
corroboration of my construction of this very difficult clause
will, I am in hopes, be obtained by means of the light which
the different parts of the longer passage alluded to will be
found to reflect on each other, when a new translation of the
whole of it comes to be submitted to the reader in one of the
ensuing chapters.

Mistakes, it thus appears, have arisen even from the mere
incompleteness of the substitution of W for D, and of course
may be expected to have been produced with still more inju-
rious consequences by the actual substitution itself. Of the
latter class I here subjoin, furnished from the same word ID,
a curious example, although its explanation compels me to

a Supposing the Greek construction of the clause in question to be cor-
rect, this circumstance would not in the slightest degree bear against the
general view of the subject which has been advocated in the preceding para-
graphs; its only effect would be to withdraw this particular clause from the
class of examples illustrative of the point under discussion, namely, that ~>D
is sometimes used in the Hebrew Bible with a different set of meanings from
that at present conceded to it.

Chap. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPPIONISM OF W. 43

avail myself, by anticipation, of the discovery unfolded in the
subsequent chapters. When David attacked the fortress of the
Jebusites situated upon Zion, and which afterwards became
the citadel or more elevated portion of Jerusalem, he promised
that whoever first entered the place and slew a Jebusite
"should become head of the whole army, and governor of the city"*
or, as it is written in the original, "")tP71 BWI7 JTiT — 1 Chron.
xi. 6. Now, the first part of this promise was immediately
carried out, as is recorded to the following effect : — " So Joab,
the son of Zeruiah, got up first, and became head of the whole
army* — J2W17 TPl , — while the fulfilment of the second part
was deferred till the new city was built around the citadel, in
the manner described in the beginning of the eighth verse ;
just after which we find at the conclusion of the same verse,
through the alteration of only a single letter of the original
to one of very nearly the same shape, the ensuing statement
to be made: "And Joab became the governor of the city"
— -nj/H -ym n** mm l«lH By means of this sole change of
n into n in the verb (TIT, the accomplishment of each part
of David's promise comes out recorded in the very identical
words in which it had been previously announced, with the
exception that, in the case of the latter portion of the promise,

a The terms E7N"), ' head,' and "127, ' chief,' may each of them denote in
the abstract one presiding in any department, whether military or civil ; but
it is immaterial to the argument above used, in what sense precisely either
was intended to be understood in the portion of Scripture referred to. The
supplement by which I have distinguished the first of them is drawn from

the description given by Josephus of David's promise: iw eirl t^v

uKpav avafiavTi ical rainrju eXovri aTparyjiav aizavTO-i tov \aov £>u)aeii> eV»7<y-
<yei'\a,7o (Antiq. Jud. lib. vn. cap. iii. sec. 1); where the historian, for the sake
of brevity, mentions only the first, or principal part of that promise. The
supplement subjoined to my translation of the second term is taken from the
meaning of the word by which that term is accompanied on its second occur-
rence; where, indeed, it is written ("l^ttf) fuller than at first, but is shown
by the context to be meant for the very same designation.

b Joab was previously general of the soldiers of the tribe of Judah ; but
on the above occasion he was promoted to the post of commander-in-chief of
— uttclvtcxs tou \aou — the united armies of Judah and Israel.

44 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

an additional term is subjoined to "1 W, to indicate what kind
of chief or prince was thereby intended. This identity is per-
fectly obvious in reference to the first pair of corresponding
parts of promise and fulfilment, but is obscured with regard
to the second pair by the capricious conduct of the interpo-
lators of the matres lectionis, the first vocalizers of the sacred
text, in placing an Haleph between the letters of "lt^, to ex-
press the vowel A, in one place of the occurrence of this title,
and not in the other — an inconsistency which appears to have
arisen from the great precipitation with which they executed
their work. But in consequence of the rarity of the use of
Haleph as a mater lectionis in the Hebrew text, it came in the
course of time to be, in the group here referred to, mistaken
for a consonant, whereby this word was misread SheHaR, ' a
remainder,' instead of S AR, ' a prince, or governor ;' — an error
which of necessity brought with it a second, as iTPP, ' became,'a
makes no sense in the final part of the eighth verse when con-
nected with !W understood to signify ' a residue ;' whence
the verb was conceived to be JTJT, 'vivified,' through the
change of only a single letter, and the substitution for it of
one with which, from similarity of shape, it might easily be con-
founded. Yet, even with this alteration, the clause, as it
stands at present, cannot be at all reconciled with the context :
for, if it be translated, ' and Joab spared (or saved alive) the
remnant of the garrison,' the statement will be found quite at
variance with the sanguinary character of the man and the
circumstances of the case, more especially with the conditions
on which David founded his promise, and his mode of express-
ing them in the parallel passage, — "Whosoever . . . smiteth the
Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's
soul" — 2 Sam. v. 8 ; and if, on the other hand, we look to the
rendering of it in our Authorized Version, — " And Joab re-
paired the rest of the city" — here, independently of the very

a The Waiv conversivc of the future, as it is called, is in the above in-
stance prefixed, not to rr,ns, but to the noun governing that verb.

Chap. L] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF fc\ 45

forced construction put upon the verb PPrP, to make it signify
' repaired,' it is utterly inconsistent with the narrative to say
that Joab repaired a city which had been only just built, and
to talk of ' the rest of the city,' where it was previously spoken
of as a whole, and no one part of it separately specified. Most
of these objections against the only plausible renderings of the
original clause in its present state have been already urged
with much ability by Dr. Kennicott in his first Dissertation,
pp. 53-4; though he considerably weakened the force of his
argument against the first of those renderings, by admitting,
as I conceive, erroneously, that it is supported by the Syriac
version. He, however, advanced a great way in the true ex-
position of the matter ; but it is evident that the direct grounds
for the correct reading and interpretation of the above clause
could not be arrived at, without the aid of the discovery which
has now been applied to the investigation.

The Septuagint in this instance affords us no assistance, as
the translation of the clause in question has totally disappeared
from the Vatican copy ; and that in the Alexandrian copy —
h-al e7To\i/j.))(T€v ical e\a(3ev Tt/v noXiv — is obviously corrupted,
as having no relation to the original sentence. The Peshitah
has also undergone some corruption in this place, as it pre-
sents to us two interpretations of the clause under discussion
quite at variance with each other, one of which, consequently,
must be spurious ; but when that one is detected, as it can be
by means of the discovery above brought to bear upon the in-
ternal evidence of the case,3 the explanation I have submitted

tt The word «£3 5 , ' a master,' in the Syriac interpretation of the clause
in question first quoted in my text, shows that the Hebrew group to which
it refers, must, when that translation of the clause was made, have been read
Mwy'achief,' and that, whenever aHaleph made its appearance in that group,
it must have been therein used as a mater lectionis to denote the vowel A.
On the other hand, the word Pj-» , ' a remainder,' by which the same He-
brew term is interpreted in the second quoted translation, shows that it must,
at the time of that translation being introduced, have been read shehar, ' a
remainder,' with a Haleph so long inserted therein, that its use in that place

46 SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THE EVIL [Chap. I.

to the reader's judgment will be found clearly supported by
the other interpretation which is included in the sixth verse
of the same chapter. This verse runs to the following effect:
" Then said David, whosoever first slays a Jebusitish man, he

SHALL BE THE HEAD of the whole army AND MASTER OF POWEll

— |L»_k» *o5o 1 - »* ]ooiJ ocn — : and Joab, son of Suriah,
got up first ; so King David appointed him the head of the
whole army and master of power" — |L»^» ^$o ]_•_.> — .
Here we may perceive that the narrative of the fulfilment of
the second part of David's promise is shifted from the end of
the eighth to the end of the sixth verse, in order that the two
parts of the fulfilment may, like the two parts of the promise,
be recorded together; while, in the second instance, just as in
the first, the promotion conferred is related in precisely the
terms in which it was antecedently promised ; — a circumstance
which powerfully sustains the view I have put forward. The
vacuum, indeed, occasioned by the dislocation just described,
is at present filled up by another very different rendering of
the same clause, which is as follows :

} .in no A^l? \*S\ ..10; J3; a \ ] 1 1 V) » ,-.05 *ClOT_.0

" And David gave the right hand to the rest of the sons of men
that were in the city." But this very loose paraphrase, which
attributes to David an act of clemency that is, according to

was forgotten, and that it came to be there mistaken for a consonant. The
second, therefore, of the quoted Syriac translations of the original clause could
not have been framed till long after the insertion of the matres lectionis in
the sacred text, and, consequently, not till a still longer period after the com-
position of the Peshitah, which can be clearly proved to have been written
before the introduction of vowel-letters into the Hebrew Bible. The great
probability is that, after shehar came to be generally adopted as the reading
of "l^B? in the original clause, some Syriac scribe, finding no term of like
meaning in or near the corresponding part of the Peshitah, and moreover
missing the translation of this clause in its proper place, rashly took it for
granted that either it was overlooked by the translators, or that their render-
ing of it was subsequently lost, and in consequence interpolated the very in-
accurate paraphrase of it which now appears in the final part of the eighth
verse.

Chap. I.] EFFECTS OF THE DIAPHONISM OF &. 47

the present reading of the original, ascribed in another form
to Joab, is proved in the last note to be an interpolation of
a date long subsequent to that of the Peshitah ; and, conse-
quently, it does not in the least weaken the force of the evi-
dence which the genuine part of this version supplies upon
the same subject. To come now to the point for the illustra-
tion of which this example has been selected, it is evident that,
if the initial element of the group "ID had not been changed
into t£>, there would have been no room for the primary mis-
take here committed (or, consequently, for the secondary one
thereon depending) ; as there is not in the Hebrew language
any dissyllabic word written "1KD, with which the monosylla-
ble "1I§D could have been confounded.

It would detain me too lono; to enter into a more general
illustration of this subject; and I shall here only add that the
Samaritans, though for the most part agreeing with the Jews
in the changing of D into tif in the case of certain words, have
not been quite as guarded and vigilant in carrying out this
alteration.3 Thus, for instance, the Hebrew noun read Sar in
Gen. xl. 9, where it signifies 'the chief,' and is now written
"HP in the Jewish edition of the Pentateuch, still preserves a
Saniek as its initial element in the Samaritan edition ; and, in
like manner, the Hebrew compound group read saqqo ' his
sack,' which in every place of its occurrence in the former
edition is now written IpJP, has been left to commence with a
Samek in the verse, Gen. xlii. 25, of the latter. Independently
of the more serious evils that have resulted from the corrup-
tion just exposed, the inconvenience it produces in an un-
pointed copy of the sacred text is particularly obvious ; as a
reader who is not perfect master of the language cannot
always be certain with what power the character fi? is therein

a If the corruption in question originated, as it very possibly did, in the
design of concealing the circumstance that Sarah's name in its primary form
denoted ' a wanderer,' or ' an emigrant,' there would be nothing surprising
in the agreement of the Samaritans with the Jews in its perpetration, as they
too claimed the credit of descent from Abraham and Sarah.

G

48 ANALOGY OF THE HEBREW ACCENTS TO [Chap. I.

used, whether with that o£Sh or that simply of S. Where this
character, then, is in such copies employed with the latter
power, I would venture to recommend a little circle — the Ma-
sorctic sign of something wrong or at least questionable — to
be placed over it, and a Samek to be inserted in the opposite
part of the margin. But this correction is rendered unneces-
sary in pointed Hebrew Bibles, by the care with which the
Masorets have, through the varied position of a diacritical
point, indicated with which of the two powers the character
is in each instance to be articulated ; and all that is requisite
is to bear in mind that, where it is to be read with the power
of Samek, it should be called Samek, and considered as a secon-
dary form of that letter. Thus would be removed from the
system of pointed writing, not only the letter Sin, which is
on all sides admitted to be of comparatively modern date, but
also much of the evil consequent upon its introduction ; and
we should in this way return to the sole use of the two letters
Samek and Shin to which the Hebrew alphabet was originally
confined for the expression of S and Sh powers, through the
mere precaution of treating fr, as well as D, as a form belong-
ing to the first of those letters. Some advance towards this
step was made by Gesenius ; as he separated from each other
in his Dictionary the words commencing with \& and $ respec-
tively, and placed them under distinct heads ; but, to complete
the improvement, he should not only have detached IP from ttf,
but also have united it with D, and classed the words com-
mencing with W and D under one and the same common
head.

The medieval character of the combined system of Hebrew
accents and vowel-points is indicated by the degree of con-
nexion that subsists between them. In this system the open
vowels are not shortened by the absence of an accent, as in
modern writing ; and, on the other hand, the close vowels are
sometimes lengthened, or exchanged for open ones, in conse-
quence of the presence of an accent, — an effect that was never
thus produced in the kinds of ancient writing which we have

Chap. I.] THE OLDEST GRECIAN MUSICAL NOTES. 49

means for examining in reference to this subject. The in-
creased influence that accents have in the course of time
acquired over the length of syllables cannot, I apprehend,
be accounted for, otherwise than by an alteration which has
gradually taken place in their nature. Formerly, indeed, as
well as at present, the circumflex accent was essentially asso-
ciated with a lengthened pronunciation ; but the acute and
grave accents appear to have at first denoted solely, one of
them a raising, and the other a lowering or non-raising of the
voice ; at least, neither of them had then any connexion what-
ever with the quantity, as it is technically called, of the sylla-
bles to which they were attached ; as may be clearly perceived
in the case of ancient Greek that is accented, in which those
accents are continually seen placed over short vowels. But in
modern kinds of writing the application of the acute accent,
which is that in most general use, is entirely altered ; and what
it now chiefly denotes is a stress of the voice laid on the sylla-
ble marked with it, by which that syllable is of necessity length-
ened ; so that in Romaic even the vowels rj and w may become
short ; as, for instance, the middle syllable of avOpwnos, if I have
been rightly informed, is pronounced short by the modern
Greeks. But, while the degree of influence exerted by the
accents on the vowels of the Hebrew system agrees not exactly
with either ancient or modern usage, it in some measure ap-
proximates to the latter ; — a circumstance which squares with
the limit to the age of the older portion of this combined sys-
tem already arrived at through external evidence ; by means
of which it has been shown that the Masoretic plan of vocaliza-
tion was not completed, at the very earliest, before the mid-
dle of the twelfth century, and the Rabbins could hardly have
thought of applying signs to any modulation of vowels, till
they had first made up their collection of signs for the vowels
themselves. Be this, however, as it may, the Hebrew accents,
as they are termed, are far too numerous to have been intended
solely for the purpose of accentuation. They were applied,
indeed, to this purpose, as also to that of indicating the various

g 2

.50 ANALOGY OF THE HEBREW ACCENTS TO [Chap. T.

pauses to be made between the different parts of sentences ;
but these are shown to have been quite subordinate uses of
them, from the very imperfect manner in which they answer
each end. They were principally employed as musical notes
to r< sgulate the chanting of the parts of Scripture recited during
divine service in the Synagogues; — a view of the matter now
very generally assented to, and which is strongly corroborated
by the close analogy of these marks to others introduced some-
what earlier, for a similar purpose, first into Greek, and soon
after into Latin rituals. Montfaucon, in his treatise on Gre-
cian Palaeography, gives specimens of accented Greek manu-
scripts as far back as the seventh or eighth century, in the
earliest of which the secondary marks attached to the words
scarcely differ in shape or use from the signs of aspiration and
accentuation which are inserted in modern editions of Greek
books. But in the specimens of subsequent centuries those
marks are found gradually increasing in variety and number
according as the system of musical notation improved, till, in
one exhibited at the bottom of the 357th page of the learned
work referred to, and taken from a manuscript of the eleventh
century containing the services of the Greek Church for the
entire round of the year, they may be seen almost as diversi-
fied in form and as numerous as those of the corresponding
collection superadded to the Masoretic vowels in pointed He-
brew writing. No doubt, the Jews in their flight from Baby-
lonia to Spain brought with them a full recollection of the
modulations and inflexions of voice with which they used to
read out the text of their Bible in the East, where the custom
is still very prevalent of chanting sacred writings or uttering
them in a species of recitative ; and when once they got the
notion of representing the elements of those modulations by
written signs, the little figures selected by them for the pur-
pose were, in all likelihood, of their own invention. Still they
would appear to have taken the hint for the formation of
their system from one of the older cognate kinds to which
it displays so striking a correspondence ; but whether it

Chap. I.] THE OLDEST GRECIAN MUSICAL NOTES. 51

was the Greek or Latin branch of the art that they made
this use of, must have depended on the circumstance, which
of those kinds of musical notation first came under their ob-
servation.

What sounds in music the Hebrew notes in question were
originally intended to convey is now utterly unknown, as is
evident from the total disagreement in this respect between
the Hebraists who lay claim to any knowledge of the subject.
Such, for instance, of the Polish and the German Jews as pre-
tend to have preserved the original musical values of those
notes do not chant even a single series of them in the same
manner. It is also to be remarked that these same notes often
fail to point out the accented part of a word ; as no less than
seven of them are fixed in their respective sites without any
reference to the place of the tone syllable : and not only do
they afford but slight assistance to a reader as signs of pauses
or stops, — from the numerous and scarcely consistent rules to
which he must attend for the purpose of enabling him to ap-
ply them to this service, — but also, when thus applied, they
frequently mislead him, by actually separating parts of sen-
tences in direct opposition to their grammatical connexion and
the bearing of the context, As, then, their principal use is
irrecoverably lost, and the two subordinate applications of
them are either productive of scarcely any benefit, or posi-
tively injurious, I would venture to recommend the disembar-
rassing the pointed text of this cumbrous addition to the
Masoretic collection of vowel-signs, and the retention of but
one accentual mark, to be employed solely in the less usual
instances of the accent falling on the penultimate, instead of
on the last syllable of words ; while the requisite stops might
be far better expressed by means of the ordinary modern
points, with merely the tails of the commas and semicolons
turned, to suit the direction of the Hebrew writing. A vast
deal of useless trouble would be thus avoided, and the reading
of the sacred text be greatly facilitated ; while, at the same

52 NEW CLASSIFIC ATION SUGGESTED [Chap. I.

time, no liberty, not even the slightest, would be taken with
any of its original elements.

Up to a recent period the vowels of the Masoretic system
were distinguished from each other by the epithets of long,
short, and very short. But it having been noticed by the later
grammarians that some of those which come under the head
of the second epithet are occasionally long, it becomes neces-
sary to alter this series of names for the three classes ; and I
would, in consequence, venture to recommend calling them,
taken in the same order as before, open, close, and imperfect;
— a classification which is arrived at, by first dividing the
whole number into perfect and imperfect, and then subdivid-
ing the former class into open and close. By imperfect vowels
I mean such as differ from the perfect ones not absolutely, but
only in reference to the mode of utterance applied to them.
The 0, for instance, of ivory, is imperfect; as it is so indis-
tinctly pronounced that an illiterate person, who had never seen
this word written, and was only acquainted with its sound, might
be easily conceived to employ any one of the five Roman vowel-
letters for the expression of its second vowel. The open A,
of which there are two kinds, and the close one, are exempli-
fied by the vocal part of the sounds of all, art, and hat, respec-
tively. The open and close E may be compared in the words
they and then; the open and close 7, in machine and chin; the
open and close 0, in mope and mop ; the open and close U in
rule and run. A reader accustomed to the use of the Roman
alphabet might, perhaps, be induced, at first view of the mat-
ter, to think the vocal elements of each set of words here com-
pared the same, because denoted by the same character ; but
they are to be found in other systems represented respectively
by different letters or marks ; and a little consideration will
serve to show that in each instance, if not absolutely different
vowels, they are at least quite different modifications of the
same vowel. The distribution I propose of the perfect vowels
into open and close, is analogous to that formerly made by

Chap. I.] OF THE MASORETIC VOWEL-POINTS. 53

the Greeks, whose judgment on the subject is entitled to
some weight; since they were, as will be shown in the
course of this Essay, the original inventors of vowel-signs. In
the case of the vowels whose names, in the alphabet of this
people, are partly formed of epithets, the distinction thereby
drawn between them indicates an opposition, not of iianpov to
ppa-xv, or of long to short, but that of /xeya to /xihpov or ^i\ov,
that is, of great, broad, or open, to small, narrow, or close; and
although the open vowels, rj and w, were in ancient pronunci-
ation uniformly long, yet it is quite a mistake to distinguish
from them the corresponding close ones, e and o, as constantly
or essentially short. Thus, for example, in the line of Homer
in which iEneas is describing the swiftness of his horses to
Pandarus, —

Kpacirva /nd\' i'vOa icai ei>0a CtivKe/iiev i]Se (pej3ea6ai. II. v. 223

the e of evOa is just as long as the q of tfie ; and it is not by
their quantity, but by their sound, that these vowels are here
to be distinguished. Again, in a line of the same poem, that
follows soon after —

Tbv d' up', VTToepa lewv, vpoaeCJirj Kpcnepbs ^.lofiyjcrps. II. v. 251 —

the o is but twice short, and is three times long, and then
just as long as the w in icwv. In Latin orthography the like
remark holds good. For instance, in the verb haberent, the
first E is open, and the second close ; but the second is just
as long as the first : and in the term fortiores, the first 0,
which is close, is as long as the second, which is open. In
each of the latter examples, the vowels, though denoted by a
common character, are as different modifications of the same
vowel as in each of the former ones, and are to be distinguished
by their sound, not by their quantity or length. In fact, if we
look to the general nature of vowel-sounds, we shall find that
every one of the five principal perfect vowels admits of both
an open and close modification, and may be uttered either long
or short in each of those states. This variety of length, in-
deed, was in ancient times confined to perfect vowels in the

54 CORRUPT STATE OF PRONUNCIATION [Chap. I.

second state, but in modern systems it; extended equally to
those in the first. To return now to the Masoretic system, —
it shows an improvement on the Greek one, in supplying dis-
tinct signs for all the vowels of the first or open class, instead
of for only two of them ; but, on the other hand, it is itself
defective in confining the variations of quantity to only three
of those belonging to the second class, and shifting the remain-
ing two, viz., the /and 0, to the first class as soon as they are
made long. That this restriction is merely an arbitrary one,
and which has no foundation in the nature of vocal sound,
may be rendered obvious to an English reader by an example
or two selected from his own language. Thus, the first vowel
of incline is close and short ; but the same vowel is long in the
word intimate, yet does not, in consequence, cease to be close ;
and, in like manner, the initial vowel of oppose and oppjosite,
which is both close and short in the former word, continues
close in the latter also, although it therein becomes long. The
Masoretic vowels of the third class are denoted by one simple
and three compound signs, of which the latter three are redun-
dant ; as their office might be performed with more clearness
by the sole aid of the first, namely, the Shewa simple. There
is also a redundancy in the use of this Shewa, which is fre-
quently inserted when it is not to be pronounced. Latterly,
however, this vowel-mark has been judiciously left out for the
most part at the end of words ; and the improvement would
be still greater, if it were to be always omitted in such posi-
tions, as also in every other site in which it is quiescent.

In Syriac writing are employed the same three matres lec-
tionis as in Hebrew, but only five vowel-marks, whether con-
sisting of one or two points variously placed, or of little figures
similar to five of the Greek vowel-letters. The a«;e of the for-
mer set of marks is now unknown ; but that of the latter set
has been found to reach somewhat farther back than the end
of the eighth century.3 No signs for the imperfect vowels are

a Asseman, in his introductory description of a Syriac manuscript of the
ninth century, containing the annotations of Ephraim the Syrian on the books

Chap. I.] OF THE SYRIAC MATRES LECTIONIS. 55

given in this writing even where in other respects pointed ;
but it is left to the judgment of the reader to supply their
sounds in accordance with the analogies of the language. Since
the introduction of five signsforthe perfect vowels, the values of
the older three have been greatly corrupted. The misuse, how-
ever, of the first of the matres lectionis is confined to the Syriac
Christians of the western part of Asia, namely, the Maronites
and Jacobites, who call this letter Holcvpli instead of Haleph,
and attach immediately thereto, or associate therewith when
it is not itself employed as a mater lectionis, the phonetic va-
lue of 0, instead of that of A; while the correct sound of it, or
of the vowel therewith associated, is still preserved by the
Nestorians, or Syriac Christians of the more eastern regions.
Thus in the command addressed by our Lord to a dead child,
- .win ]Ai \£, ' Maid, arise,' which has been transcribed by
St. Mark, Ta\i6a Kovfxi, the first word is pronounced TaLIThO
by the western, and TaLIThA by the eastern Syrians. In this
mode of representing the two pronunciations the final Haleph
is treated as a mater lectionis ; a view of its employment
which, perhaps, is warranted by the consideration that it does
not here serve to give an emphatic signification to the group
to which it is annexed. But we should arrive at a like result,

of the Old Testament, gives the following information on the point above re-
ferred to: — " In scriptura hujus codicis maxime notanda? sunt quinque voca-
lium Syriacarum figura? ad similitudinem Grascarum eflformatse, qua? puncto-
rum loco vocibus lectu difficilioribus apponuntur. Harum inventor fuisse
perhibetur Theophilus Edessenus, Maronita, qui decessit anno Hegirse 169,
id est, circa annum Christi 791, feste Gregorio Barhebraso, lib. 9. Chroni-
corum, apud Abr. Echellensem, Not. in Catalogum Hebedjesu, p. 180. Nam
quum ille Homeri versus e Gra^co Syriacos faceret, ambiguas voces vocalibus
Grsecis notavit .... quod punctandi genus omnes deinde Syri, Nestorianis
exceptis, amplexi sunt .... Atqui codex noster, ut supra, vidimus, scriptus
fuit Edessse anno Christi 861, nimirum, anno ab obitu Theophili septuagesi-
mo; puncta verd ista ab eodem codicis scriptore apposita sunt, ut inspicienti
ea liquet." — Bibliotheca Orientalis, torn. i. p. 64. It may be added that,
although the use of the five vowel-marks here described has been confined to
the western Syrians, yet that of the older set, consisting of the same number,
was extended to all Syriac writers in common.

56 CORRUPT STATE OF PRONUNCIATION [Chap. I.

if this letter were to be dealt with as a consonant, whereby the
two readings of the Syriac group would come out TaLIThoH
and TaLIThaH ; while, according to the latter, as well as the
former method, the western pronunciation of this word is
proved corrupt, and the eastern one vindicated, by the inspired
testimony of St. Mark. The same charge of corruption can be
brought home to the western mode of pronouncing groups
which do not exhibit an Haleph, but still are read as if they
had been vocalized with this letter. Thus the name ^?, ' Dan,'
is sounded DoN by the western, but DaN by the eastern Sy-
rians ; and the incorrectness of the former pronunciation is
established through the authority of the Seventy, who have
constantly transcribed the Hebrew prototype of this name
Aav. The superiority, indeed, of eastern enunciation in refe-
rence to the first mater lectionis is admitted by the learned
Asseman, though himself a Maronite ;a but the vicious mode
of reading this letter, being that which first made its way to
Europe, has been since retained here through the force of
habit. With regard to the other two vowel letters, their mis-
use pervades the modern pronunciation of the eastern as well
as the western Syriac Christians. That the Syriac, like the
Hebrew Yod, formerly served to denote an E as well as an i,
may be shown by the example of the name om . s, ' Esau,'
which is now read HISaW, though the transcription of its
Hebrew origin by the Seventy, H<rau, clearly proves that it
must in ancient times have been pronounced HESaW; and

a Upon the above point Asseman expresses himself very candidly as fol-
lows:— "Verum pro Orientalibus tota antiquitas clamat, eosque priscum
legendi Syriace morem retinere suadent turn voces, qua; apud veteres scrip-
tores Grseee et Latine e Syriaco sermone express^ leguntm-, ut Abba, Talitha,
Phadana, Ilaceldama; turn urbium pagorumque nomina in Assyria, Mesopo-
tamia, a Phoenicia, qute Orientalium more usque in prajsentem diem pro-
nunciantur, ut ]3q-k>; ^n, Caphar-Aura, "jA.... <^o Caphar-Hata ; et
csetera hujusmodi, quce a SyrisMaronitis atque Jacobitis secundum propriani
illorum dialectum aliter proferri deberent." — Bibliotlieca 0rierUali8t torn. hi.
pars ii. pp. 379-80.

Chap. L] OF THE SYRIAC MATRES LECTIONIS. 57

in like manner that the Syriac Waw was not at first, any more
than the Hebrew one, confined, as it now is, to expressing the
sound £7, but occasionally represented that of 0, may be ex-
emplified by the name -oj-k» , ' Enoch,' which is read by
modern Syrians HaNUK, or HeNUK, but is proved by the
corresponding Greek transcription in the Septuagint, Ei/ar^,
to have been formerly uttered HeNOK. The modern pronun-
ciation, indeed, of either or both classes of Syrians, in the in-
stance of the three names here adduced as samples, is so ob-
viously corrupted that, although Gabriel Sionita has pointed
them for respectively the sounds Don, Hisu, and Hnuk, yet
has he in his own Latin version transcribed them Dan, Esau,
and Henoch For my own part, I follow as far as I can the
older pronunciation of Syriac, not only as the more correct one,
but also as that which more strikingly exhibits the close ana-
logy that subsists between the Hebrew and Syriac tongues.
In fine, I take this opportunity of stating why I deviate from
the commonly received pronunciation of the name of the first
Syriac version, )k~ "**, ' the pure,' which is usually transcribed
PeShlTO, in accordance with the western mode of reading, and
as if the Haleph at the end of the word was a mater lectionis.
But this letter is evidently here employed as a consonant (to
give the epithet an emphatic signification); for which reason,
as well as on account of the preference to be conceded to the
eastern pronunciation, I read the same group PeShlTaH. Al-
though the consonant Haleph is unsounded in modern utter-
ance, yet surely, where it serves to convey so important a part
of the meaning of the title, a sign for it should not be omitted
in the transcription of this name.

I have now to offer a few remarks on the peculiarities of
the English mode of pronouncing some of the vowels. I am
aware that, in venturing to touch upon this subject, I run the
risk of appearing presumptuous, and of giving offence where I
should be very sorry to do so: yet, surely, useful improve-
ments may at times occur to individuals who are neither the
most likely in point of talent to hit upon them, nor placed in

58 ON SOME PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH [Chap. I.

the most favourable circumstances for their discovery; and an
inquiry should not be considered as hostile, upon which I
by no means enter with a view to disparage the English tongue,
but solely for the purpose of contributing, as far as very limited
powers enable me, to the removal of what I conceive to be a
great blemish in this noble language, and a great impediment
to its more general diffusion.

Besides the two principal phonetic values attached to each
of the five Roman vowel-letters, according as it is used to
denote an open or close sound, there are a great many subor-
dinate ones, arising from various causes, and prevailing in dif-
ferent countries, which render, indeed, the niceties of pro-
nunciation in each language very difficult of attainment to
foreigners, but still produce no confusion as long as the powers
of different vowel-letters are not interchanged, by the occa-
sional assignment to any one of them of a sound which falls
under the general class of those belonging to another. Thus,
for example, there can be no objection to the open sound
attached by the English to 7, as it is never given by them ex-
cept to this vowel-letter, nor by other nations using the Roman
character to any single letter. The English use, therefore, of
this vowel-sign may, indeed, strike foreigners as a peculiarity,
but causes them no embarrassment : it prevails still more than
with us among the Anglo-Americans, who employ it in many
words which we utter with the close i, as, for instance, in the
word genuine. The sound in question, however, is not a sim-
ple vowel ; and the Germans and Greeks, in whose language
it occurs as well as in ours, are quite justified in representing
it as a diphthong. The complex nature of this sound can, as
I have already observed in the present chapter, be clearly
evinced by prolonging its utterance, through which means it
is stripped of its other ingredients, and reduced to a pure open
i, or that which is, in English orthography, expressed by the
combination EE ; whereas a vowel really simple does not by
any prolongation of its sound undergo the least alteration of
its phonetic value. I have here only to add respecting the

Chap. I.] PRONUNCIATION OF VOWELS. 59

English open /, that its employment does no harm in the
pronunciation of Latin, but is injurious in reading out Greek ;
as an important distinction in the utterance of the latter lan-
guage, namely, that between the sounds of ei and i, is thereby
annulled. A similar exposition vindicates with still more force
the use of U in England, where, indeed, the open sound given
to the character is, for the most part, diphthongal ; but so,
likewise, is it in other countries, different nations blending
with the pure vowel different ingredients in the formation of
the open complex sounds they respectively denote by this
letter. Moreover, the irregularity of varying, to a certain
extent, the open power of this character is not confined to
England, analogous liberties being taken with it elsewhere.
In English orthography, the pure open sound of TJ is usually
expressed by 00, as in the words boot, cool, root, but is also
represented in some instances by the character itself, as in
brute, flute ; while the open value in general annexed to this
vowel-letter is compounded of the pure ones belonging to it
and to 7, as may be perceived by comparing the words mute
and pure with, respectively, moot and poor. But the English
betray no direct inconsistency in their pronunciation of U,
and never transfer to any other letter the designation of either
of the open sounds they attach to it ; so that the inaccuracies
they can be charged with, respecting its employment, are not
greater than those committed by other nations who make use
of the Roman character.

But what can be pleaded in defence of their practice with
regard to A and E, to the first of which they give, not only
both of its own proper open sounds, but also the single one of
the second ; and again, to the second for the most part, that
of the third Roman vowel-letter ? The shifting of those letters
to the designation of sounds expressed quite differently by all
the other nations, without exception, that make use of the Ro-
man character, causes the greatest perplexity to foreigners, and
throws unnecessary difficulties in the way of learning to read,

60 ON SOME PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH [Chap. I.

even in the case of natives. Thus, for instance, how embar-
rassing must it not be to a child to be taught to call the first
letter of his alphabet by the open sound of E, and yet to be
made frequently to pronounce it with one or other of two open
powers of a totally different kind ! If it be said that the
Eno-lish have a right to intermix and interchange the sounds
of their vowel-letters in any manner they please, no matter
what inconveniencies may thence result to themselves or to
others, I do not dispute such right, — I only question the policy
of exercising it. Surely, it is not the part of a great and en-
lightened people to endeavour to insulate their language, and
prevent the spread of it beyond their own country. The na-
tions, indeed, of Eastern Asia think it becoming their dignity,
as I have elsewhere shown, to have each of them an alphabet
quite different, at least in the shape of its elements, from that
employed by any of the rest ; in consequence of which the
number of derivatives from the Sanscrit collection of letters
is almost endless. What an obstruction this multiplicity of
alphabetic systems opposes to mutual intercourse, to the pro-
gress of civilization, and to the diffusion of knowledge in that
quarter of the world, I need not insist on ; as the evils it ne-
cessarily produces must be obvious upon the slightest consider-
ation. But it is evident that the adoption of a new set of
characters cannot be more detrimental, in any respect, than
an arbitrary and inconsistent use of an old set. Here it should,
however, be noted that the English are not more irregular in
their designation of the open vowels, than the French are in
that of the close ones. In the case of vowels of the latter sort,
or rather, perhaps, in the latter state, a Frenchman attaches to
E the sound of 0, and to /that of A ; as, for instance, en fin
is pronounced by him on fang. Strange, that the greatest two
nations in the world, which have done more for the advance-
ment of learning than all the rest besides, should yet, through
faulty and capricious alterations of vowel sounds, have ren-
dered their respective systems of orthography, compared with

61

existing modes of pronunciation, the very worst of all those in
which the Roman character is employed !a

The English misuse of A and E is not of very old stand-
ing, and was not fully established till some time after our pre-
sent Authorized Version of the Bible was framed ; in the early
editions of which many traces are preserved of an older pro-
nunciation of those letters. Thus the pronouns he, she, we, me,
and the verb be, which, we may be certain from their shortness
and continual use, were all along pronounced just as they are
at present, are found occasionally printed in the editions re-
ferred to, hee, shee, wee, mee, and bee, in like manner as thee is
still written to distinguish its sound from that of the article
the. But when they were uniformly so written in every in-
stance, as was the case not long before the age in which our
translators lived, the sound of the single E must have been
different from that ofEE ; since, otherwise, writers would not

a The most obvious methods, as far as they are practicable, of remedying
the evil above complained of would be, either to return to the older pronun-
ciation of words suited to their orthography, or to alter this orthography in
accommodation to existing pronunciation. But those modes of proceeding
are frequently not within our reach ; and, even when they are, it is very dif-
ficult to determine how far each of them should be resorted to. There is,
however, a third remedy more under human control, and yet of considerable
efficacy, which consists in a uniform adherence to whatever system of vocali-
zation may be adopted, and a constant representation of the same articulate
sounds, wherever they may occur, by respectively the same combinations of
letters. It is chiefly through the observance of this last plan that the Ita-
lians have got the credit of employing a better system of spelling than any
other nation which makes use of the Roman alphabet. But they appear to
have carried too far their application of the second of the methods just enu-
merated, more especially in the alterations they have introduced into their
written designations of scriptural names. With regard to the pushing of that
method to its utmost extent, as is recommended by some modern advocates
of what is termed ' the phonetic system,' it would — besides tending to with-
draw all traces of the etymology of words — render them as variable and fluc-
tuating in their written, as in their spoken forms; and so remove the check
to the continual variation of language which alphabetic writing, in the case
of every system of orthography not thus tampered with, more or less sup-
plies.

62 ON SOME PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH [Chap. I.

have taken the trouble of constantly adding the second E in
the designation of those monosyllables : and, as long as they
were sometimes spelled in the one way, and sometimes in the
other, the process of change was going forward and the mode
of pronouncing this vowel-letter was in a state of transition.
Hence it may be concluded that, in England, E did not quite
lose its old open sound, and become identified in open power,
as it now is, with EE, till those editions of our Authorized
Version came out in which the second E was entirely dropped,
in the spelling of the words in question : but, according as the
single letter was deprived of the open phonetic value formerly
attached to it, this value was transferred to the class of sounds
denoted by A. In Ireland — at least in the country parts of it
in which I passed the earlier portion of my life — the old pro-
nunciation of A and E held its ground, even among persons
of education, till a later period, and was not altogether aban-
doned to the humbler classes much before the end of the last
century ; all changes making their way more slowly in the
remote provinces of a great empire than in its central districts.
At present, the modern abuse of the above letters, particularly
of the first, is not only very generally adopted by my coun-
trymen, but also appears to be, from their disposition to run
into extremes, carried farther by many of them than by its
original introducers ; A being not unfrequently pronounced
by them as E, in words in which it still retains its proper
sound in English utterance.

But as fashions, when pushed to extremes, have a tendency
to correct themselves, it is to be hoped that the natural good
sense of the English people will bring back the practice under
consideration to a fitter and juster state. Should they return
to a use of their vowel signs more in accordance with the
general practice of European nations, the change will probably
commence in foreign proper names ; and in these some im-
provement has already taken place ; as, for instance, Athens
and Acre are now pronounced correctly by well-educated Eng-
lishmen, and no longer uttered by them with sounds that

Chap. I.] PRONUNCIATION OF VOWELS. 63

would have been expressed two hundred years ago in England
by writing those words Athens and Ecre. The universities
and greater classical schools might contribute much to the
forwarding of a more extensive improvement in this respect,
by obliging their students to read A and E in Latin, and the
corresponding letters in Greek, with the phonetic values for-
merly attached to them in England ; and, surely, even were
the correcting of the modern pronunciation of Latin the only
object in view, a barbarism that confounds in speech such
words as musd and musce, and thereby abolishes an important
distinction in that language, ought to be put an end to. This
barbarism has not yet reached the English pronunciation of He-
brew ; and, therefore, it might, I apprehend, be easily removed
from the enunciation of Scriptural proper names. The ma-
jority of our clergymen are, I believe, in some degree, ac-
quainted with the Old Testament in the tongue in which it
was originally written, while a considerable number of them
are well versed in that tongue, and familiar with the Hebrew
Bible. When, therefore, they read in the Church service such
words, for instance, as Satan, Sabaoth, and Abraham, with
sounds which, if unchanged since former times, would indicate
that they were written (as in point of fact they never were) in the
earlier editions of our Bible and Prayer-book, Setan, Sabeoth,
and Abraham, it is only necessary to remind them how they
themselves pronounce the very same words in the sacred lan-
guage. The present mode of uttering in English the last-men-
tioned word is peculiarly offensive to a Hebrew scholar. For
the name is a composite term of which the parts are separately
significant in the original writing ; but, in order to shift the
initial A from a close to an open state, and so leave room for
the favourite transmutation of it into an open E, the next let-
ter B is severed from the first ingredient of the compound, and,
in consequence, united to the second, whereby both ingre-
dients are rendered wholly unmeaning ; while, at the same
time, the B and R that are by this contrivance brought toge-
ther, being uttered without any intervening vowel, form a

H

64 ON THE PRESENT COMPARED AVITH [Chap. I.

complex articulation which has no place in Hebrew speech.
Surely, a capricious practice which leads to so gross a viola-
tion of both the sense and sound of an important name, ought
to be discontinued, even if no other instance could be adduced
of its inj urious effects.

As J and V, in the times when they were respectively used
with the powers that are now assigned to Fand IT, had a close
connexion with vowels, I shall here offer a few remarks on
each pair of corresponding letters, in addition to those I have
already made on their Hebrew prototypes Yod and Waw. The
character J was originally introduced into European writing
to serve the purpose of contraction, and subsequently, after a
long interval of disuse, was reverted to for that of caligraphy,
it being found substituted, in ancient Latin inscriptions, for
//, and in modern writing and print of, however, not very re-
cent date, for the second element of that combination, merely
to vary its shape without effecting any alteration of its sound.
The first use of this character as a single letter different from
/ commenced as soon as it came to be substituted for that
sign, where placed immediately before another vowel-letter in
the same syllable ; — an innovation adopted for the convenience
of getting distinct signs for the semiconsonantal and vocal va-
lues of/, which thenceforward was confined to the latter value.
Thus, for instance, the proper names, Jacob, Jehu, Jidlaph,
Joseph, Judah, and the pronoun ejus, were, previously to this
change, written Jacob, Jehu, Iidlaph, Joseph, Judah, and eius ;
and as the words of the latter series were obviously of the
same length in utterance as the corresponding ones of the for-
mer, their ingredients la, Ie, lid, Io, Iu, and ius, must have
been pronounced as single syllables, and consequently their
common initial must have been articulated with the power
which is now expressed by Y. But when /was substituted for
i, so placed, it must evidently have been employed witli the
same power as was just before attached to that/; and, there-
fore, /too must have then been equivalent to our present Y,
— a result, indeed, which might be more directly arrived at,

Chap. I.] THE FORMER POWERS OF J AND V. 65

with regard to the proper names, by an immediate comparison
of them, as now written, with the sounds of their Hebrew ori-
ginals. In order to make some approach to the time of the
above described change, I shall here notice a few works pub-
lished at dates not far asunder, which yet are at different sides
of that under inquiry. On the one side, I submit to the rea-
der's inspection a passage of theVulgate, exactly as it is exhibited
both in a Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bible, printed at Heidel-
berg in the year 1616, and likewise (with the sole exception
of its being given, as a quotation, in Italics) in a commentary
on the Old Testament by Fabritius Paulutius, edited at Rome,
in the year 1625. The following is a reprint of the verse re-
ferred to : — " Et ingressus est Noe & filij eius, vxor eius &
vxores filiorum eius cum eo in arcam, propter aquas diluuij."
— Gen. vii. 7. Here we have ocular proof of the older uses of/
and Shaving been retained as late as the year 1625 ; while, on
the other side, I find those uses of the two characters discon-
tinued, and each of them employed, as it ever since has been,
as a letter quite distinct from the other, in an edition of the
Authorized English Version of the Bible printed at Cambridge
in 1629. This alteration in European typography may very
possibly be traced to a prior date, though certainly not to one
a great deal earlier ; as the improvement could scarcely have
made its way to Rome till after the commentary of Fabritius
Paulutius had been printed, and it is not at all likely to have
commenced in any other part of Europe much sooner than in
that city. J still continues equivalent to our semiconsonant
Fin German and Italian writing ; but its phonetic value has de-
generated into modifications of that of G soft, or Gh in French,a
English, Portuguese, and Spanish ; while the pronunciation of
it somewhat varies in the first three of those written languages
compared with each other, and more prominently differs in

a The French corruption of the original power of J" may, perhaps, be bet-
ter represented by Zh than by Gh; but even so, it still appears to be con-
nected with the other corruptions of /power with which it is above compared.

ii 2

66 ON THE PRESENT COMPARED WITH [Chap. I.

each of them from what it is in the fourth, in which it has
nearly lost the guttural, and retains scarcely more than the
aspirate part of the composite power. These curious adulte-
rations of the value which was attached to,/ on its first intro-
duction into alphabets of the Roman class, have so much in
common as to show that they are mutually connected, and the
probability is that the French corruption is the parent of the
rest ; as the people of France have for a great length of time
past taken a prominent lead in regulating matters of taste and
fancy, the changes thus introduced by them being very gene-
rally adopted with more or less modification by the surround-
ing nations. But as only about two centuries and a quarter
have elapsed since the origin of the Y power of J, the corrup-
tions of that power in different countries must have occurred
still later,a and be referred to dates which, however unknown
they may be in other respects, at all events fall within the spe-
cified interval.

As the letter B had in remote times the power now as-
signed to V, so likewise V had formerly that which we now
attach to W. For instance, the ancient power of B in the
Latin verb habere is preserved in avere and avoir, its Italian
and French derivatives, respectively ; while that of V in the
Latin noun vinum may be detected in its English derivative
wine and (though perhaps not so clearly) in its Greek original
o<i/o?.b Both changes, however, are too well known to require

• The change of the power of J among the French — the people by whom
this corruption appears to have been introduced — did not commence till after
the year 1665 ; as may be plainly collected from a French version of the Bible
published that year at Geneva, in which the pronoun of the first person sin-
gular is printed as often ie asje. For, when this pronoun was written indif-
ferently in either way, it is evident that ie and je must have expressed the
very same sound, and that a monosyllabic one in the case of the former, as
well as of the latter combination. But the initial clement of ie, read as a
monosyllable, can be uttered with no other power than that attached to y in
English orthography; and, consequently, the initial element of^'e must also
have been used with that power at the date referred to.

b Although it is possible that the sound of the Greek diphthong 01 formerly
bore some resemblance to that of a syllable commencing with W, yet from

Chap. L] THE FORMER POWERS OF J AND V. 67

any lengthened illustration or proof in this place. The old
power of B still maintains its ground in Greek, and did so
likewise till a recent period in Spanish ;a but the case is very
different with respect to the old power of I7, which, though of
such frequent occurrence in the ancient Latin, has no direct
representative in the alphabet of any of the modern languages
thence descended, and is itself entirely banished from all those
languages, as now spoken, except the French. In a few words
of the last-mentioned tongue this W power is to be met with,
as, for example, in oui and avjowd'-Jiui, and the ease with which
a native of France can articulate it is well evinced by the ra-
pidity with which he utters such words : a whole volley of oui's
may be heard issuing from his mouth in the time that an
Englishman would take to pronounce one solitary ' yes.' And
yet, should he have occasion to utter a foreign word, whose
written expression he knows to contain a IF, he is very apt
either to substitute for the articulation thereby denoted the
modern one belonging to F, or, like the ancient Greeks, to
resolve the syllable which includes it into simpler elements
both in writing and in speech.b This striking inconsistency is,

our ignorance of the ancient pronunciation of Greek, this resemblance cannot
be insisted on with much confidence. In general the Greek writers of old ap-
pear to have decomposed by diaeresis into simpler elements the powers of Wand
Y, when occurring in foreign words, whose sounds they had occasion to ex-
press. Thus, the Hebrew names TH (DaWiD) and ^2', (YaPheTh) were tran-
scribed by the Seventy T)a-vt'd and l-«0e# ; — transcriptions which we now
can, indeed, by the contraction in each instance of two syllables into one, get
to convey the TFand Y articulations respectively; but it is not at all likely
that, in the use of the ancient Greek, this recomposition was ever actually
made. The probability rather seems to be, that persons who had separated
the powers in question into distinct parts in the writing of this language, did
always adhere to a corresponding separation in its pronunciation.

a Thus Badajos, a name rendered familiar to the English public by the
events of the war conducted by Wellington in Spain, was, at the time when
our troops took the place by storm, very generally pronounced by the Spa-
niards Vadalwse instead of Badahose.

b As, for instance, Edward is written in French Edouard, and lengthened
in pronunciation into a word of three syllables.

68 ON THE PRESENT COMPARED WITH [Chap. I.

perhaps, to be accounted for by the circumstance of his not
being habituated to the use of the letter IF; for although of
late years introduced into learned French works to facilitate
the representation of sounds occurring in some Oriental lan-
guages, it has hardly }^et become naturalized in the French
alphabet. An Italian, in like manner, but not with the same
inconsistency, either substitutes for the IF articulation that of
a different consonant, or decomposes it, in his pronunciation
of foreign names ; while, in transcribing those names, he
changes the W into V, in the former case, and into U in the
latter. The Spaniards and Portuguese, on the other hand,
in imitating the sounds of foreign words, endeavour to form
the IF articulation, although as utterly unconnected with their
dialects as it is with Italian, and represent it in their respec-
tive systems of writing by combinations of vowels, principally
by U, and more rarely by 0, before other vowels. The power
which a Spaniard at present attaches to J, together with his
mode of denoting that of IF, may be illustrated to an English
reader by the following examples. To convey the sounds of
what, where, when, which, through the medium of Spanish or-
thography, these words should be written respectively, joat,
joer, joen, juich. Thus, it turns out that, while V has lost its
original power in every modern alphabet without exception
of which it constitutes an element, that power itself has been
completely excluded from all the principal modern dialects of
Lathr.but one, and the letter now serving to denote it is also
banished from their respective alphabets; whence it seems
desirable to inquire into the commencement, and trace, as far
as we can, the progress of this change. Now this object may
be effected with, I conceive, some approach to exactness, by
means of coins still extant in great numbers, which the Roman
emperors of the first four centuries of our era had got stamped
with Greek legends, for the accommodation of their eastern
subjects. Thus, in the ample stock of them of which engrav-
ings are supplied in the Thesaurus Rei Antiquarian ofGaltzius,
Vitellius is constantly represented in Greek, by the group

Chap. I.] THE FORMER POWERS OF J AND V. 69

OvtreWios; Vespasianns, by Oveo*naaiavo<; ; Vespasianns, the
surname of Titus, by Ove<nraoiavos or Yeoiraaiavos', Nerva, by
Ne/joua?; Nerva, the surname of Trajan, by Nepay; FgrM5,
the surname of L. Aurelius, by Ovypo? ; and Helvius, the pras-
nomen of Pertinax, HXouto?. Hence it would appear that the
Roman letter V was always used with its ancient W power,
till the end of the second century. No vestige of the modern
power of this letter is presented to us in the above-mentioned
collection, in any older name than that ofSeverus, who was the
first emperor of the third century ; wherein, as might be ex-
pected at the beginning of the change, it is found but very
sparingly used, the pronunciation of the word being expressed
by 2eoi»)//9o? in fifteen of the legends referred to, and only in
three of them by 'Sepypos. The same mode of investigation will
enable a reader to see that the ancient power of ^continued
to predominate at all events as late as the commencement of
the fourth century. Galtzius gives three Greek legends from
coins of Flavins Valerius Severus, who held part of the Roman
empire for a short time, just before Constantine mounted
the throne : — namely, <E>Aa. OvaXep. Seow//?oc Kaiaap, <3>A.
Ba\. Se/3i//909. Ken?., A17. K. <E>A. "Zcoinjpos ; — in two of which
the sounds of the Latin words are expressed according to the
ancient mode of articulating the letter in question. The sepa-
ration, afterwards, of the Roman dominions into two empires,
which put an end to the practice of issuing Roman coins with
Greek legends, deprives us of any positive proof derived from
that source, of the subsequent employment of V with its ori-
ginal power ; but the great probability is, both from the gene-
ral nature of habit, and the particular rate of alteration here
depicted, that this power of the letter continued its principal
one for some time longer, and then remained in partial use
for many centuries after. Direct evidence, indeed, to this
effect might be drawn from a comparison of names of no great
antiquity (such as ' Edward,' for instance) with their Latin
representatives. But I have no motive for conducting the
inquiry lower down than the time when the Vulgate was

70 ON THE PRESENT COMPARED WITH [Chap. I.

written. As late, at an)- rate, as that date, V, it has been
above shown probable, was chiefly used with W power ; and,
therefore, in all likelihood was so employed in Jerome's Latin
transcriptions of Hebrew names.

It is a curious circumstance that the Hebrew 1 and the
Latin V underwent, quite independently of each other, the
very same change of power. If we compare Aa-vih (contracted
in pronunciation into a dissyllable), the Greek transcription
of the name of the Royal Psalmist made by the framers of the
Septuagint, with that given of it by the authors of the New
Testament, Aa/3/6, we shall find that the central letter of the
orioiiial designation, TH, was shifted from the ancient to the
modern power of F, in the interval between the ages in which
the two sets of writers lived. This alteration, however, of the
power of Waw did not take place till after Hebrew had lost
its purity, and degenerated into the corrupt dialect spoken by
the Jews in the time of the Evangelists.

As long as J retained its original affinity to 7, it was per-
fectly justifiable to rank under the same head in dictionaries
the words which commenced with those letters ; but the total
change of power which the former character has undergone in
the writing of, I believe, every language but Italian and Ger-
man, in which it is employed, renders the continuation of the
practice very absurd, except in the dictionaries of those two
languages. In any others, the words having G and I, or H
and i, for their respective initials, might just as rationally be
now classed together. The same observation applies to the
present arrangement in dictionaries of vocables commencing
with I^and U under the same head; which, indeed, was quite
warranted when V was equivalent to IF, but is now just as
unmeaning as would be the placing of words beginning with
B and U in the same class. The latter mistake is of wider
extent than the former ; since it is to be seen as well in Italian
and German dictionaries, as in all others written with systems
of letters derived from the Roman alphabet. Here, I may, in
addition, notice an anomaly with regard to the two letters in

Chap. I.] THE FORMER POWERS OF J AND V. 7 1

question which is confined to the English system of writing.
The W and Y of this system are not denominated, like its
other elements, from their powers ; but the first is called from
its shape, and that too, by a distinctive appellation which, since
the interchange of the characters Fand U, is no longer ap-
plicable to it, as it should obviously from its present figure
be termed, not double-u, but double-vee ; and, moreover, the
name which it ought by analogy to have from its power, is
strangely transferred to the second letter, which thus comes
to be called after a power different from its own, Wi instead
of Yi.

The earliest date to which we can trace back the power of
the Hebrew 1, through external evidence, is the time when the
Septuagint was written ; and its phonetic value at that period
(or the initial part of this value, supposing the character to
have been then used as a syllabic sign) is exactly represented
by our W. This circumstance gives a great advantage to the
English system of orthography over others, in recording the
sounds of Scriptural names : for in most of the modern Euro-
pean alphabets the letter IF" is entirely wanting ; and, although
it is to be found in the German collection of letters, it no longer
therein retains its original value, but is employed with a power
more nearly approaching that which is at present attached to
V. On the other hand, the German and Italian systems are
better adapted for the above purpose than any of the other
derivatives of the old Latin alphabet, in the circumstance that
they preserve uncorrupted, the power assigned to J when first
it was introduced into modern Avriting as a letter distinct from
/; — a power exactly agreeing with that which has invariably
been, as far back as we have means of tracing it, the semi-
consonantal value of (or the initial part of that value when
the Hebrew letter was a syllabic sign, supposing it to have
been ever so employed). This advantage, however, the Italians
have, in a great measure, forfeited, by the strange liberties
they take with Hebrew names whose originals commence with
^ ; such, for instance, as. Jacob, Joseph, Jerusalem, which, de-

72 REQUISITE CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH [Chap. 1.

viating from their older practice,8 they now transcribe Gia-
cobbe, Giuseppe, Gerusalemme. This unwarrantable alteration
of the initial part of the sounds of Hebrew denominations is
obviously of foreign origin, as it could not have been derived
from their previous transcriptions of those names consistently
with their own s}rstem of orthography, and was most probably
borrowed by them from the practice of the French, with whom
they have had more intercourse than with any of the other
nations who have fallen into the like corruption. It may be
further observed, that the extent to which they indulge in this
corruption depends upon the degree of familiarity they have
with the transcribed names. Thus, the initial part of the three
above specified is always changed by them ; but Jericho, which
is not of such frequent occurrence in Scripture, they write only
in some passages Gerico, and in others more correctly Jerico ;
while they never tamper with Jebus,h — a name very seldom
mentioned in the Bible, — but suffer it to remain, wherever it
occurs, with the" initial J unchanged. From combining these
considerations it would, I think, appear, that the Italians de-

a In an edition of Diodati's Italian version of the Bible printed at Geneva
in the year 1641, the above names are written Iacob, Iosef, Ierusalem. Nor
is the alteration of Italian orthography, thus shown to have taken place, con-
fined to Scriptural names. For instance, the Pagan name Jupiter or Jove,
which is printed in the same edition of 1641, Ioue, is in more modern Italian
books transformed into Giove.

b In the present state of the sacred text, the Hebrew group for the above
name (omitting its prefixes) is written in Josh, xviii. 28, ^Dl^ (YeBUSl);
of which the final element can be clearly shown to be spurious by the con-
curring independent testimonies of the Septuagint and Peshitah; it being
transcribed here, as well as in every other place of its occurrence, as the name
of a town, without any letter to correspond to that element, Ie/W's in the for-
mer version, and ,£Oa£l_i (YeBUS) in the latter. But, indeed, the interpo-
lation of the Yod at the end of the word in question in this verse is also proved
by the clearest internal evidence; both by the circumstance of the group
being written without it, wherever else it is intended to designate a place
(as, for instance, twice in the eleventh chapter of the First Book of Chroni-
cles), and also by the analogies of the Hebrew tongue, according to which
•DOs is an inhabitant of DC\ i. e., a ' Jebusite,' and is so rendered elsewhere

Chap. I.] TRANSCRIPTIONS OF HEBREW NAMES. 73

siring to imitate a French mispronunciation with which they
had become familiar in the case of certain names commencing
with J, and unable to make this letter of their alphabet accom-
modate itself to the change, were induced to substitute for it
a soft G (ecpiivalent to our Gh) in transcribing those names.
Whether the corruption in question be thus sufficiently ac-
counted for or not, its existence in the Italian writing of the
present day is, at all events, unquestionable.

The English corruption of the sounds of Scriptural names
whose originals begin with Yod cannot be proved of foreign
descent in the same manner as the Italian one : and yet it is
most probably derived from the same external source ; as dif-
ferent nations could hardly have adopted a very arbitrary and

in our Authorized Version; but the specified verse expressly relates to towns,
and not to their inhabitants. Certainly, the inserters of the matres lectionis
in the Hebrew text have betrayed great precipitation in the case before us, in
which they acted so contrary to their own practice with regard to the same
group in other passages of Scripture, while they, at the same time, grossly
violated, either the grammar of their language, or the demands of the con-
text; and, although the interpolation of those letters is a subject not yet
regularly entered upon, yet, meeting incidentally with so glaring an instance
of it, I could hardly pass it over without notice. Unaided by the discovery
which is unfolded in the ensuing volume, the framers of our Authorized Ver-
sion were reduced to a state of great perplexity in the passage referred to.
They could not render ^D^ here, as they correctly have in other passages,
' Jebusite' (what would according to the present powers of the English letters
be written ' Yebusite'), because such rendering would have violated sense in
this place: nor could they, on the other hand, transcribe it ' Jebus,' as they
would thus have abandoned their favourite maxim of the ' Hebrew verity'
(and, in truth, the Yod at the end of the above group in Josh, xviii. 28, could
not fairly be laid to the fault of transcribers, as there is not a single known
copy without it in this passage; at least not one among the vast number ex-
amined by Kennicott and De Rossi: the former author, indeed, specifies
several copies in which the Waw is omitted in this group, but none in which
the second Yod is wanting). Under these circumstances our translators in
this instance entered into rather a strange compromise between right and
wrong, and transcribed the group, neither Jebus nor Jebusite, but Jebusi, — a
word which they have not ventured to make use of anywhere else through
the entire range of their version.

74 KEQUISITE CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH [Chap. I.

capricious change of the power of J quite independently of
each other ; and, for a reason already stated, the English are
far more likely to have taken it from the French, than the
French from the English. But, however this may be, the fact
is undeniable that, in English orthography, the power of the
letter in question has been altered, and its original value trans-
ferred to Y. To correct, therefore, the injurious effect of this
alteration upon the pronunciation of Scriptural words, it be-
comes necessary to substitute the latter character for the for-
mer in the English transcriptions of Hebrew names.a Changes
fully as great, if not greater, have already been made in our
Authorized Version of the Bible ; as may at once be perceived
upon consulting the Oxford reprint in 1833 of the first edition
of it, or that which was published in 1611. Let us, for in-
stance, compare the folloAving extract from this edition with
the same passage of Scripture, as it is printed in the Bibles of
the present day: — "0 Hierusalem, Hierusalem, which killest
the Prophets, and stonest them that are sent vnto thee : how
often would I have gathered thy children together, as a henne
doeth gatherb her brood vnder her wings, & ye would not ?
Behold, your house is left vnto you desolate. And verely I
say vnto you, ye shall not see me, vntill the time come when
yee shall say, Blessed is hee that commeth in the Name of the
Lord." — Luke, xiii. 34-5. As all the words of this and the
corresponding extract from any modern edition are either

a The change above recommended has already been made in the Hebrew
expression transcribed into Roman letters Hallelujah, which is now more
usually, as well as more correctly, presented to us in English hymn-books
Halleluyah (" praise ye Yah") ; although the name of the Deity herein em-
ployed is still suffered to remain in our Bible written Jah instead of Yah.

b The words of the above extract from the first edition, doeth gather, her
before ' wings,' and the time, are not printed in Italics, as they are in modern
editions, though such words (namely, that are introduced to render the sense
complete, without having any to correspond to them in the original text) are
occasionally so pointed out in the same edition ; — a circumstance which shows
that this valuable improvement upon older versions was not all at once accom-
plished, but was gradually brought to its present state.

Chap. I.] TRANSCRIPTIONS OF HEBREW NAMES. 75

exactly or virtually the same (though many of them are dif-
ferently spelled, and some even differently pronounced3), those
extracts are justly considered as parts of the same version ;
nor is this identity affected by even the changes of the proper
name, though so much greater than those undergone by any
of the other ingredients of the compared extracts. In the first
place, the H was very properly dropped, as soon as a reference
to the original Hebrew designation of the name showed that
the accentuators were mistaken in prefixing the spiritus asper
to its Greek transcription ; and, secondly, the 1, which thus
became the initial element of the word, was with equal pro-
priety changed to J, as soon as the semiconsonantal part of the
phonetic value of the former character was transferred to the
latter. But if two alterations of this name could be made
without disturbing the identity of the version, surely a third
may, which rests now upon the very same ground as the
second did at the time of its introduction, and which, more-
over, does away with the corruption that followed that second
alteration, and brings us back again to the previously correct
pronunciation of the initial syllable. Here it may, perhaps,
be objected that Jerusalem is not only an ancient name, but
also a modern one in general use, which it would be mere
affectation to deviate from the received mode of writing or
pronouncing ; and I admit this remark to be just, in reference
to the mode of dealing with such words in ordinary books or
in ordinary conversation. But in the transcription of ancient
names in our Bible, and in the solemn recitation of them when
therein occurring, we are, as I conceive, bound to pay more
attention to ancient pronunciation, and to approach, as nearly
as we can, to their original sounds : besides which, it is to be
observed, that the great majority of names of men and places
in Scripture are such that the objection cannot in any way

a For instance, ' doeth,' though above used as an auxiliary verb, is given
in a dissyllabic form; but in modern writing and speech it is always, when
so used, reduced to a monosyllable.

76 REQUISITE CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH [Chap. I.

reach them, seeing that they are to be met with only in the
works of very ancient authors, and a large proportion of them
in the Bible alone.

To place the foregoing observations in a stronger light, I
will venture to apply them to a name which is, indeed, in
modern and frequent, but not in familiar use, and which never
should be written or uttered but with feelings of the utmost ve-
neration,— I mean, Jesus, the appropriate designation of our
Lord, given to him, before the time of his birth, by an angel.
We surely have no right to tamper with the pronunciation
of this sacred name, or to vary it with the varying fashion of
the day ; and the present spelling of it in our Authorized
Bible and Prayer-book, which misleads the public as to its an-
cient sound, ought to be corrected. The original sound, in-
deed, of this word both in Hebrew and in Syriac (which ap-
proaches nearer than pure Hebrew to the vernacular dialect
of the Jews in the age when our Saviour dwelt in human form
upon earth), viz., that denoted by Yeshuh or Yeshudh, was
changed into one which I-e-soos expresses, by the authors of
the New Testament, to suit its pronunciation to the genius of
the Greek language, as well as to meet the deficiencies of the
Greek alphabet, which contains no consonants equivalent to
Y, Sh, or H. But those authors were inspired men, and,
therefore, Christians of subsequent ages were fully j ustified in
adopting the whole or any part of the alteration thus intro-
duced. Accordingly, the fathers of the Western Church, not
having the use of the combination Sh in the system of writing
employed by them, followed the Greek termination of the
name in question ; but, as the Latin /was capable of being
used with I^power,a they adhered to the original sound of the

a "Ab Jove principium generis, Jove Dardana pubes

Gaudet avo." A£n. vii. 219-20.

This extract from Virgil is quite sufficient to show that, in the ancient

language of the Romans, Jove, or rather love (according to the older mode of

writing the word), was dissyllabic, and, consequently, that the first two letters

of this group, as constituting but a single syllable, must have been equivalent

Chap. L] TRANSCRIPTIONS OF HEBREW NAMES. 77

initial syllable, and so came to write this name Iesus ; — a form
of the word which was thence communicated to all the modern
languages written with derivatives of the Roman alphabet,"
and retained therein till the introduction by the printers of/
as a letter distinct from /. Now, though the Greek transcrip-
tion of the first part of the above name does not express the
true sound of its initial syllable, it still enables us to ascertain
that sound ; because, when we undo the diasresis into which
the Evangelists were driven by the defects of Grecian ortho-
graphy, and recompound the two syllables / and v] into one,
we shall find their combination to yield the sound, not of Ghe,
but of Ye ; so that the inspired Greek Testament confirms the
testimony of its Syriac version, as to the modern corruption
of the initial syllable of this name. The final part of the word,
I admit, is changed, but it is so on the authority of inspired
writers; while, on the other hand, the modern change of its com-
mencement rests on no ground whatever but that of French
caprice. As long as this name was written Iesus or fesu, there
could be no material alteration of the initial part of its sound,
as there is but one consonantal power that has any affinity
with the vowel /; but when /was substituted for /as its ini-
tial letter, it then became liable to change according as the
power of J was changed. Where people have been thus led
to an altered pronunciation of the name, they may have been
unconscious of its corruption, the spelling of it remaining un-
varied ; but no such excuse can be pleaded for the Italians,
who must have been perfectly aware of its alteration of sound,
when they changed the initial letter from J to G, that is, to
one which, in their system of orthography, is of an entirely

in sound to the modern English combination To. The ancient pronunciation
of the entire word would, according to the present use of the elements of our
alphabet, be expressed by the series of letters Yo-ive.

a In Italian the above Latin name was at first transcribed lesu, which
came as near to the Syriac sound of the original expressed by Yeshuh as the
Italians could reach to; as their orthography does not admit of the combina-
tion of letters s/a, nor of the occurrence of h at the end of a word.

78 USE IN HEBREW WRITING OF THE [Chap. I.

different power. If, however, we should still adhere to our
present mode of pronouncing this name after having become
sensible of its incorrectness, I confess I do not see how our
treatment of the word could be considered more excusable
than theirs ; for, on this supposition, the case would stand as fol-
lows. The Italians intentionally altered the first letter of the
name for the express purpose of introducing a French corrup-
tion of its sound ; while the English, on the other hand, retain
that letter in its place, although they thereby continue the
same French corruption, into which, indeed, they had at first
glided unconsciously, but now wittingly persevere in it. I can
hardly bring myself to think that in English practice this
course will be much longer adhered to. At present, however,
the Germans are the only people who avoid corrupting the
sound of this holy name ; as they have neither followed the
French in the alteration of the power of J, nor the Italians in
the substitution for it of G soft ; — a circumstance which gives
a great advantage to the books written by them on religious
subjects. But why should our version of the Bible, or our
formularies of devotion, be suffered to remain, in this respect,
inferior to those of the Germans, or of any other nation upon
earth ? The removal of this blemish falls in a great measure
within the province of our clergy. If they should, in the per-
formance of divine service, deem it right to pronounce the
name Jesus in the same manner as if it were written Yesoos, —
which, I conceive, they are fully warranted in doing, by the
example of the entire German nation, as well as by the origi-
nal English power of the initial letter, — that letter would soon
come to be changed, both in writing and in print, so as, in
accordance with the present powers of the elements of the
English alphabet, to accommodate the spelling of this word
to its corrected pronunciation.

I take this opportunity of submitting a few observations
on the Waw conversive, as it is termed, to the judgment of my
reader, with the hope of contributing somewhat to the eluci-
dation of points involved in the subject, which, I believe, have

Chap. I.] WAW CONVERSIVE OF THE FUTURE. 79

not as yet been sufficiently considered or explained. The ge-
neral nature of this Waw is already well understood; namely,
that coming between two verbs in different tenses it commu-
nicates that of the preceding to the following verb, so as to
make the tense of the latter verb a compound one, of which
its own separate tense constitutes only a subordinate part.
Thus, when the preceding verb is in a past tense, the Waw
prefixed to the following one in a future form is called Waw
conversive of the future; because it turns that future into a
tense that bears chiefly on the past, its original reference to
the future being preserved merely so far as to indicate, that
the narrated event took place after that just previously men-
tioned. This compound tense cannot be translated literally
into our language ; because the combination of auxiliaries in
the expression, ' and did shall (or will) perform,' does not
make sense in English. But if the same compound be para-
phrased, ' and did next (or subsequently) perform,' it becomes
perfectly intelligible to an English reader, and might be
termed a continuative preterite, from its serving expressly to
denote a continuation of the narrative. The framers of our
authorized translation of the Bible have not placed outside
their text the literal construction of this, as they have of other
idiomatic forms of expression ; since the continuative tense is
of such frequent occurrence that the requisite repetition of
the idiom would have quite overloaded the margin ; neither
have they, in the body of their version, distinguished it from
a simple preterite ; as, in modern composition, the order of
narration sufficiently indicates the order of occurrence, except
when it is expressly stated that no such arrangement is ad-
hered to. Where, then, is the use of the continuative prete-
rite in the original Bible ? To answer this query, I must
observe that the indication of the commencement of a new
subject which is afforded by the non-employment or disconti-
nuance of the tense in question, though it would be quite
superfluous in an English version, was by no means so in the
Hebrew text, when written, as it formerly was, without any

i

80 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

separation of the words from each other, or marks of pauses
at the end of sentences. Nay, even since the introduction into
that text of stops and blank spaces of greater length after pas-
sages closing subjects, the aid of this tense is still wanted to
obviate the ill effects of the ambiguity of the Hebrew conjunc-
tion WaWj which considered by itself has the force of either a
continuative or inceptive particle ; and it is yet more required
for the purpose of supplying us with authoritative ground for
the due correction of erroneous divisions, from whatever cause
they may have arisen, but which are not so likely to have been
made by the immediate translators of the sacred record, as by
subsequent copyists of their versions.

Thus, the continuative style which, in the original, per-
vades the first chapter of Genesis, does not commence till the
third verse of that chapter, and is carried on without interrup-
tion to the end of the third verse of the next chapter. We
have, therefore, the inspired authority of Moses himself for
making this chapter begin at what is at present its second
verse, and include the first three verses of the following chap-
ter. Had the author intended to connect the second verse
with the preceding one, he would have employed in it a con-
tinuative tense, instead of the simple preterite which he has
actually made use of. He, consequently, meant to keep the
first verse quite distinct by itself, as an introduction to his re-
cord ; and it well deserves this prominent and conspicuous
site, from the very important truth it reveals, the production
of this earth and all the great bodies of the universe out of
nothing by the mighty power of God ; — a truth discovered by
none of the Pagan philosophers of antiquity, who universally
held that nothing can be produced out of nothing, in accord-
ance with the Latin maxim, ex nihilo nihil Jit. The Waiv, then,
at the beginning of the second verse of the first chapter is not
employed as a continuative, but an inceptive particle; exactly
as it is at the beginning of the first verse of the third chapter,
where, indicating the commencement of a new subject, it is
correctly rendered ' now,' instead of ' and,' by our translators;

Chap.L] OFTHEWAWCONVERSIVEOFTHEPAST. 81

and it ought, precisely for the same reason, to have been con- '
strued likewise ' now' in the former of the two places just com-
pared. Thus, again, the third chapter of Genesis commences
one verse earlier in the Septuagint than in our Authorized
Version : but a reference to the original of the second chap-
ter, in which the continuative style is kept up to the end of
that verse, decides the point here at issue between the two
versions in favour of the English division, and against the
Greek one. The verse in question describes the state of inno-
cence in which Adam and Eve lived, before they yielded to
temptation : and, supposing the scribes who arranged the Sep-
tuagint in the manner in which it is at present distributed into
chapters, to have confined their attention solely to the sub-
stance of the narrative, they may have been induced to insert
this verse at the head of the third chapter, for the purpose of
bringing into more immediate contrast the states in which the
first human pair were placed before and after their fall. But
the very form of expression here used by the inspired author
of the Pentateuch forbids this mode of dividing the subject.

My limits preclude me from dwelling at present any longer
on the use of the Waw conversive of the future; and I proceed
to the consideration of the Waw conversive of the preterite, which,
coming after a future or an imperative (reckoned by He-
brew grammarians as a species of future), has the effect of
changing the preterite tense of the verb to which it is prefixed,
into a future combined with a subordinate reference to the
past. In the instance of the former compound tense, the
meaning is perfectly understood, though the form of expres-
sion cannot be rendered literally in correct English ; but, on
the other hand, in the instance of one species of the latter
compound, the form is strictly conveyed by the English com-
bination ' shall (or will) have done,' while in that of both
species of it the meaning has, I suspect, come to be forgotten
through disuse, and is not at present known. With a view,
then, of making some effort to recover this meaning, I proceed
to inquire whether modern translators are warranted in the

i2

82 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

practice universally observed by them of drawing no distinc-
tion in their respective versions between the compound future
and the simple future (or compound imperative and simple
imperative) of the Hebrew tongue, in like manner as I admit
they are in not distinguishing, as to the mere relations of time-,
between the compound preterite and simple preterite of that
language. To assist the English reader in forming his own
judgment on this point, I lay before him rather a long extract
from our Bible, selected simply for the circumstance of its
containing several of the futures or imperatives under consi-
deration ; and in which I deviate from the English translation
solely in giving a more literal rendering of those compound
forms, with the single exception of restoring one of them that
has been overlooked by the framers of our version, the ground
of which correction is given in a note upon the place.

" Haste ye, and go up to my father, and ye shall have
said unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me
lord of all Egypt; come down unto me, tarry not; and thou
shalt have dwelt in the land of Goshen, and thou siialt
have been near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy
children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that

thou hast ; and there will I have nourished thee,

and ye shall have told my father of all my glory

in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall have

MADE HASTE, AND SHALL HAVE BROUGHT DOWN my father

hither And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say

unto thy brethren, This do ye; lead your beasts, and go, get
you unto the land of Canaan; and take your father and your
households, and come unto me ; and I will give you the good
of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land :
and tiiou siialt have commanded them, This do ye f take

a The above sentence is rendered in our version, " Now thou art com-
manded, this do ye," between the parts of which translation there is no con-
nexion, and from which F have found myself compelled to deviate, not only
in form, but also in substance. The room for diversity of construction, in

Chap. I.J OF THE WAW CONVERSIVE OF THE PAST. 83

you waggons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and
for your wives ; and ye shall have brought your father,
and shall have come." — Gen. xlv. 9-11, 13, 17-19.

Now I request my reader to consider this extract with at-
tention,— and there are multitudes of passages in the Bible of
a similar nature, — in which such repeated use is made of a
very idiomatic form of expression, intermixed with another in
some measure corresponding, but still quite free from all
idiom ; and I then beg him to ask himself whether the origi-
nals of those forms can be wholly equivalent (as they are re-
presented to be, not only in, I believe, every modern European
translation, but also, for the most part, in the Latin Vulgate),
or if they be really so, what could possibly have been the
motive of the inspired historian in resorting, and more espe-
cially in resorting so often, to the, under this supposition, un-
natural, and, at any rate, more complicated form ? To my
mind, I confess, it has long appeared almost certain, that there
must be some difference of meaning between the two forms,
though by no means so clear in what that difference consists.
As I was reflecting on this difficulty a few years past, a phrase
came to my recollection which I had frequently heard in the
days of my boyhood in a remote part of the country, where
the common people were not at that time as familiarly ac-

this instance, has arisen from an ambiguity in the first clause of the original,
nn^l^ nnsi. For, according as the second word, which is a verb, is read
in an active voice SiVvIThaH, ' thou hast commanded,' or in the corre-
sponding passive one SwVvEThaH, ' thou hast been commanded,' this clause
admits of being rendered either, " and thou shalt have commanded," or " Now
thou hast been commanded." The Masorets have pointed the verb in question
for the latter reading, the insurmountable objection to which is, that it makes
the whole sentence incoherent, and destroys all connexion between the two
constituent clauses. Yet our translators, misguided by the authority of
those critics, adopted this reading; which is proved erroneous, not only by
the context, but also by the very superior authority of the Jewish framers
of the Septuagint, as well as by that, likewise entitled to more weight, of
Onkelos, who in their respective renderings of the verb in this place have
assigned to it an active signification.

84 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

quainted with English as they now are, and were in the habit
of thinking in Irish and afterwards mentally translating the
expressions so formed into what was then to them a foreign Ian-
guage. Under these circumstances, when a gentleman has
called out to one of them to carry a message, or do some other
piece of service for him quickly, I have constantly heard the
answer given, " Please your worship," or " Please your reve-
rence," as the case might be, " Fll be after doing it for your
honour;" by which he was understood to convey the assu-
rance, that he would execute the commission intrusted to
him with such expedition, that his employer might look upon
it in the same light as if it was already fulfilled. I have since
inquired from competent Irish scholars, and find there is no
such paidd post futurum tense in Irish ; nor does any such
exist in English ; and yet certainly, this one appears to have
resulted from the combination of the two languages in the
manner I have stated. But in whatever way this Anglo-Hi-
bernian phrase came into existence, every reader must, I think,
be struck with the close resemblance it bears to the Hebrew
compound tense under examination, in that they both of them
unite a reference to the future with a subordinate one to the
past. It, therefore, very naturally occurred to me to try, whe-
ther, thus corresponding in form, they might not also agree in
meaning ; and, after numerous trials, I can safely affirm, that
I never found the signification, so attributed to the Hebrew
idiom, at variance with the context ; while, on the other hand,
it frequently tended to increase the force and expressiveness
of the style. To illustrate this point I revert to the extract
from our English Bible already given, from which I deviate,
as before, only in the case of the compound tense under in-
quiry. But instead of substituting a stricter rendering of the
Hebrew form of this tense, I now introduce, in each place of
its occurrence, the meaning for it which has been suggested
to me by the corresponding Anglo-Irish expression.

" Haste ye, and go up to my father, and instantly say unto
him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all

Chap. I.] OFTHEWAWCONVERSIVE OF THE PAST. 85

Egypt ; come clown unto me, tarry not : and thou shalt in-
stantly dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt instantly
be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's
children, and thy nocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast :

and there will I instantly nourish thee, And ye

shall instantly tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of
all that ye have seen ; and ye shall instantly haste, and in-
stantly bring down my father hither And Pharaoh

said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye ; lade
your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan ; and
take your father and your households, and come unto me ;
and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye
shall eat the fat of the land. And instantly command tliem,
This do ye ; take your waggons out of the land of Egypt for
your little ones, and for your wives, and instantly bring your
father, and instantly come."

Excepting the correction of the short sentence already no-
ticed as a mistranslation, the extract from our Authorized
Version here referred to is altered, in this quotation of it,
solely by the insertion of a supplementary adverb before each
of the verbs whose originals are written in the compound
tense under discussion, which additional word is printed in
Roman characters instead of Italics ; because, though not ex-
pressed by the verbs themselves, it is, I conceive, by the pecu-
liar form in which they are exhibited. The frequent repetition
of this adverb may, perhaps, offend the taste of modern
readers ; but they are requested to bear in mind, that a very
idiomatic form of expression is just as often repeated, and lies
fully as open to the charge of tautology in the original He-
brew ; while, on the other hand, the marked repetition of this
very supplement serves to place in a more prominent and
conspicuous point of view the filial piety of Joseph and the
gratitude of Pharaoh. Upon the eagerness of the former to
see a beloved, long-lost parent, and upon his delight at the
thoughts of instantly pressing to his breast that parent, who
was ever after to live near him, — of instantly rescuing from

86 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

famine, and thenceforward sustaining with abundance of food
that venerated object of his affection, — upon these and other
like feelings of the son, which, by means of the peculiar form
of construction here brought under observation, are so art-
lessly and yet so graphically described, it is unnecessary that
I should dwell. But in the picture similarly drawn of the
second character, there is a trait to which I must beg to direct
attention, as it is wholly lost in the Authorized English Ver-
sion, in consequence of the error therein committed which has
been above alluded to. In the latter part, then, of the extract
in the altered state in which it has just been presented to view,
we may perceive displayed the anxiety of Pharaoh to antici-
pate the wishes of an able minister of state to whom he and
the country at large were deeply indebted, not merely by de-
siring that officer to say to his brothers, ' This do ye,' after
which follow some special directions which it must have been
most gratifying to Joseph to communicate, but also by repeat-
ing the injunction in a still more urgent manner, and requir-
ing him instantly and without loss of time to command his
brothers, ' This do ye,' — the very words with which he was
before desired to begin his address to them, followed by orders
closely connected with those previously specified, and which
he must have been equally delighted to convey. I may add
that the gratification, here depicted, as intended for him, is
considerably heightened, not only by the speed with which he
was directed to issue those orders, but also by the speed he
was required to enjoin upon his brothers in their execution, —
• instantly bring your father and instantly come.' As far, then,
as this example goes, my conjecture is, I submit, clearly borne
out, that the compared compound tenses, which have so strik-
ing a correspondence in form, would be found to agree also in
M'lisc. But to prosecute the investigation farther on the same
plan would require more time and space than I can devote to
it ; and I must, therefore, leave the learned to satisfy them-
selves upon this point by further trials of the same kind and
of their own selection.

Chap. I.] OF THE WAW CONVERSIVE OF THE PAST. 87

The Jews, after the corruption of their language produced
by the Babylonian captivity, appear to have gradually dropt
and at length wholly abandoned the compound tense which
has been just examined. This remarkable change commenced
among them at any rate before they framed the Septuagint,
in which the sense in question is frequently interpreted, not as
a compound, but as a simple one ; and it was completed before
the times when they composed the Targums, which, written in
the dialect then spoken by them, do not exhibit any vestige
whatever of this tense. Hence we need not be surprised that
this people should now, in reading the Hebrew Bible, make no
distinction between the above tense and a simple imperative or
simple future, considering that they have so long since lost the
use of it in their national dialect. But, surely, we are bound,
as far as lies in our power, to look to the sense in which this
tense was employed by the original authors of the inspired
text, rather than to that in which it has come to be more
loosely interpreted, and confounded with other tenses, by
modern Jews. The restored distinction is not, I admit, essen-
tially necessary to our understanding the general bearing of
Scripture ; but it is, to our recovering a nicety in the struc-
ture of the ancient language which, as I conceive, is well
entitled to attention.

When the Seventy Interpreters exhibit the meaning of the
tense before us in a future form, they represent it as one quite
simple and uncompounded ; but when they translate it in the
form of an imperative, they for the most part employ for the
purpose one or other of the Greek indeterminate tenses called
aorists, whereby a compound tense is produced, in which the
futurition essentially connected with the imperative mood is
combined with one or other of two kinds of indefinite reference
to time which is chiefly the past. Thus, — to confine myself to
the case in which imperatives are used in the Greek translation
of the Hebrew tense in question in the places of its occurrence
in the original passage of Genesis above referred to, — the in-
junctions which, in my first modification of the rendering given

88 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

of this passage in the Authorized English Version, are con-
strued as follows : — 1. " And ye shall have said unto him" —
2. " and ye shall have told my father" — 3. "and thou shalt
have commanded" a — have their bearing represented in the Sep-
tuagint through, respectively, the clauses, 1. Kcu etTrare. aww,
— 2. a.7rayy elXare ouv tw Trcnpi jxov — 3. Su he evreiXai. But
when two clauses containing verbs in such forms come imme-
diately together, the first of those verb's is in general denoted
in the Greek version by a participle belonging to one of the
aorists, which gets included in its meaning partly the sense of
a future by means of its immediate connexion with the subse-
quent imperative : as, for instance, the originals of the sentences
in my first rendering of the same passage — 4. " and ye shall
have made haste, and shall have brought down my father
hither" — 5. " and ye shall have brought your father, and shall
have come" — are construed respectively in the Septuagint — 4.
kcu TayyvavTes, KaTCiyayere rov Trarepa /jlov tS8e — 5. kcu avaXa-
ftovTes tov Trnrepa bjxwu 7rapayti/e(r6e. The last of the Greek verbs
in these five examples is the only one exhibited in the present

a I have been obliged to make the verbs in the above clauses compound
futures, for want of compound imperatives in the English language. I could
not, for instance, write the last of those clauses, " and do thou have com-
manded;" as the two auxiliaries thus brought together are, I conceive, at
variance with each other, the first of them implying that the required act has
not, and the second that it has, been already performed. The Anglo-Irish
idiom alluded to, in a preceding paragraph, as often heard by me about sixty
years ago, supplies the species of imperative here wanted quite free from any
incoherence, " and do thou be after commanding;" while even, in the case of
the Hebrew compound future, which admits of a strict English rendering,
the same idiom presents the advantage of a closer approach to the original
tense. For the translation, "and thou shalt have commanded," gives the
form of this tense without the meaning; while the rendering, "and thou
shalt instantly command," gives the meaning without the form; but the con-
struction, " and thou shalt be after commanding," yields, in the acceptation
in which I have heard it employed, the meaning, at the same time, that it in
a great measure agrees with the form of the Hebrew tense. But, notwith-
standing this advantage of the mongrel phrase, I could not venture to adopt
myself, or recommend to others, the use of such broken English.

Chap. I.] OF THE W AW CON VEESIVE OF THE PAST. 89

imperative, or, as I should prefer calling it, the simple impe-
rative form.a I must, however, add that the verb in the first
example (eWaxe), though strictly in a compound imperative
form, came in the course of time to be used as a simple impe-
rative, in consequence of the present tense of this verb having
fallen into disuse. The other verbs and the participles are
employed in compound tenses, one part of whose composition
was indeterminate from the very first, and whose totalities are
now to the apprehension of moderns particularly vague, in
consequence of there being no forms of expression precisely
equivalent to them in any of the modern European tongues.b
As far, however, as the meaning of these compound tenses has
been ascertained, it is not identical with that I have detected

a The imperative of the second aorist, or compound imperative, 7rapa^ev-
eoOe, may be easily conceived to have been changed by oversight of copyists
into Trapa^iveaOe, differing as it does therefrom only by a single letter. I do
not, however, lay much stress on the possibility of this alteration having taken
place; as the likelihood of its having done so is, I admit, greatly diminished,
by the circumstance of the verb being, in this site, written in the present
tense, in both the Vatican and Alexandrian copies of the Septuagint.

b It is extremely hard for persons who make use of but one tense in the
imperative mood to conceive how the several tenses of that mood in the an-
cient Greek language differed from each other. This difficulty is strongly
indicated in the attempt of the learned French authors of the Port-Royal Greek
Grammar to distinguish between the first aorist imperative and preterperfect
imperative, by translating tv^ov, fac verberaveris, and T6TV06, verberaveris ;
where, in point of fact, they have made a distinction without a difference.
For the word inserted before verberaveris in the former instance is equally
wanted in the latter, to give an imperative turn to the expression ; for which
purpose it, or some equivalent one, as not written, must be there understood.
The same difficulty may be further illustrated by the very forced explanation
they have given of their rendering of Teri;0e, which is as follows, verberaveris,
i. e. hoc age ut postmodum verberasse dicaris. The application of the idiom
already noticed to this case would at least yield a more intelligible meaning
for the two imperatives, and convey some difference of tense. Their interpre-
tation would thus come out ti^o^, ' do thou be after beating' — T£Tt/0e, ' do
thou be after having beaten.' I do not, however, pretend to assert, these are
correct renderings of the two Greek words; nor, indeed, am I able to adduce
their exact equivalents.

90 ANALYSIS OF THE STRICT MEANING [Chap. I.

for the Hebrew form, to the interpretation of which they have
been applied. The Seventy Jews, therefore, must be considered
as having, for want of a Greek inflexion exactly corresponding
in sense with the Hebrew compound,11 selected the Grecian
tenses which approached nearest to it in form ; and as they
frequently introduced into their version Hebrew idioms in a
corrupt Grecian dress, so, in the instances here referred to,
they appear to have employed pure Greek forms in, not their
native, but a foreign acceptation. Hence, although there is a
Latin inflexion which somewhat answers to the specified Greek
ones, — namely, the tense of the optative or subjunctive mood
which is used indifferently as a preterite or a future, and is in
some measure compounded of both ; — yet this inflexion is not,
I believe, ever employed in the Vulgate in the translation of
the Hebrew tense in question. As far as my trials happen to
have reached, that tense is always therein rendered by simple
imperatives or simple futures (with scarcely ever any supple-
mentary words added to remedy the simplicity of those forms) ;
in consequence of which it came to be translated in all the
modern versions of the Vulgate also in the same loose manner :
and even when the German and English Reformers turned to
the original Hebrew Bible, for the purpose of obtaining cor-
recter translations of it, they did not attempt to revive the
strict meaning of this tense, partly from its not having been
preserved by the Jews, in whose critical knowledge of the
ancient language, as originally used, they placed too implicit
a reliance ; and partly from their having no forms in their
respective tongues exactly agreeing with the compound He-
brew imperatives.

I shall conclude this discussion with comparing the several
representations of the last sentence of the examined passage of
Scripture as it is exhibited in the Hebrew text, and in the
principal versions that were written, either immediately by

■ The Greek jiaido post futurum was of no use to the Seventy for the above
purpose, as it is confined to the passive voice.

Chap. I.] OFTHEWAW CONVEliSIVE OF THE PAST. 91

Jews, or under their superintendence ; placing under each
representation its meaning, as closely as I can.

Hebrew, . . Dfl^m .WOK'ntf DMStWI D

And do ye instantly bring your father, and instantly come.

Septuagint, . teal dvaXafioi/Tes tov TTaripa bfxwv [TrapaycveoQe?]
TrapaytveaOe.
And do ye, instantly taking up your father, [instantly ?] come hither.

Vulgate, . . Tollite patrem vestrum, et properate quant-
ocyus venientes.

Do ye take up your father, and hasten as quickly as possible coming.

Targum, . . ]OTm fpm-JT ptem

And ye shall take up your father, and shall come.

I have here expressed the meaning of the translation given
by the Seventy Jews of this sentence, not according to the
Grecian use, as far as it can now be ascertained, of the com-
pound tense employed in its first member, but according to
that made of the corresponding compound in the original ;
and I have marked only as possible, the use of the same Greek
tense in the second member. But I wish to direct the atten-
tion of the reader, in the first instance, not so much to the
meaning of this tense as to the composite nature attached to it
by the combination of the participle of the second aoristwith
the verb in the imperative mood, whether that verb be also in
the second aorist or not. With regard to Jerome's translation
of the sentence, it must be considered as virtually that of his
Jewish instructors, on whom he was totally dependent for any
knowledge he possessed of Hebrew ; as he had not the advan-
tage now afforded by the Masoretic system, which, by laying
the grammar of the language open to inspection, would have
enabled him to judge for himself of the bearing of each passage
in the original Scriptures. It is only by taking into account
the state of subserviency to the dogmatic teaching of his H c-
brew masters in which he was thus placed, that I can form any

92 A BRIEF NOTICE OF THE [Chap. I.

conception how a man of his great ability came, after he had
once been taught the full signification of the Hebrew compound
tense, to refrain, as he has done, from applying that significa-
tion wherever the context required it. Thus, for instance, to
return for a moment to the whole of the quoted passage of
Genesis terminating with the sentence just brought under view,
— surely, Joseph must have been more eager for the arrival
of Jacob in Egypt than Pharaoh could by any possibility have
been ; yet, in the version now referred to, a graphic descrip-
tion of this eagerness is given in the latter case, while it is
omitted in the former, wherein the attribution of such a feel-
ing to the speaker would have been far more in keeping with
the character of the man and the circumstances of the narra-
tive ; and this omission, I may also remark, is made, though
the very same idiomatic structure in the original warranted
the translator in the use of the same description in both cases.
As to the very slight attention paid to the idiom in question
by the instructors of Jerome, it is, I conceive, to be accounted
for by the total absence of this form of expression from both
the Chaldee and Syriac, the former of which languages was
identical with, and the latter had a close affinity to, that long
employed only as the sacerdotal dialect of the Jews ; so that
the above idiomatic tense must have been discontinued in this
dialect, at all events before the date of the composition of any
of the Targums, and probably before that of the Peshitah ; —
a discontinuance, indeed, which, as I have already stated, seems
to have commenced even before the Septuagint was written.
Accordingly, we may perceive symptoms of a gradually in-
creasing neglect of the proper bearing of this tense in their
interpretations of it, on our comparing the several portions of
the last example. The inspired author presents to us a verb
with a Waw conversive of the preterite prefixed to it in each
member of the Hebrew sentence: while, in their respective
translations thereof, the circumstance of this combination
being invested with a peculiar force is indicated, by the Seventy
Jews, in reference to at least one, if not both clauses ; by

Chap. I.] HEBREW PROPHETIC FUTURE. 93

Jerome, in unquestionably the case but of one ; and by On-
kelos, in that of neither clause ; from whose time onward all
distinction between the tense so constructed and a simple im-
perative, or simple future, appears to have been overlooked or
abandoned by his countrymen in their interpretation of the
sacred text. In fine, with respect to the proof to be derived
from ancient testimony in support of the meaning I have re-
covered for this tense, the evidence of the Seventy Jews, I ad-
mit, goes barely to the extent of attesting that it differs from
the simpler tenses with which it is at present confounded, but
conveys to us that difference only through combinations of
tenses which are now but very imperfectly understood, even
if we could be secure (which we are not) that they were em-
ployed by those writers in a purely Grecian acceptation. This
deficiency, however, is, in some degree, made up for by the
testimony of Jerome, who, in his rendering of the second clause
of the original sentence, fully bears out the correctness of the
assigned meaning, as must at once be seen on comparing his
and my translations of that clause.

Besides the peculiar use of the Hebrew preterite investi-
gated in the foregoing paragraphs, by which, as I have endea-
voured to prove, it is converted into a species ofpaulo post
futurum tense, it is also employed in the original Scriptures
with a reference to the future (even when unconnected with
any preceding verb in the future tense), in order to indicate
that we may be as certain of the fulfilment of a prediction thus
conveyed, as if the predicted event had already come to pass.
It is by the prophets that the preterite is chiefly used in the
latter sense, in consequence of which it may be denominated,
when so applied, the prophetic future. The occurrence of
this idiomatic species of future tense in the sacred text is now
so generally admitted, that I shall not detain the reader with
any proof of its actual existence therein ; but, assuming this
point to have been already established, will confine myself to
noticing two others relating to the same subject. In the first
place, then, it would, I submit, be an improvement to our An-

94 A BRIEF NOTICE OF THE [Chap. I.

thorized Version, if a distinction were to be introduced into it
between the prophetic and the simple future ; which might be
clearly effected by uniformly joining to the English rendering
of the former future some adverb expressive of certainty, and
by steadily abstaining from any other use of that adverb. In
this way, not only would the English reader be supplied with
a correcter interpretation of the prophetic future than is at
present afforded to him, but he would also be apprised of the
places of its occurrence in the Hebrew text of which all indi-
cation has been hitherto withheld from him.

In the second place, there is an instance in which I think
I can show that an employment in Scripture of the idiomatic
future in question has been overlooked, not only by the framers
of our Authorized Version, but also by all the modern com-
mentators on the Hebrew text, even, as far as I can find, up
to the present day. The instance to which I allude, will be
found in the parallel passages which are rendered in our ver-
sion as follows : — " By thy messengers thou hast reproached
the Lord, and hast said, ' With the multitude of my chariots I
am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of
Lebanon;'" — 2 Kings, xix. 23. "By thy servants hast thou
reproached the Lord, and hast said, ' By the multitude of my
chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the
sides of Lebanon ;' " — Isaiah, xxxvii. 24. I do not here com-
plain of these renderings being only equivalent and not iden-
tical, though their originals (with the exception of a single
letter, on all sides admitted to be redundant in one of them)
are exactly the same ; but, turning attention to the words of
each rendering which are printed in Italics, and are the trans-
lations of one and the same expression in the original passages,
Why ^N, I would observe that, — besides the omission in
these translations of all notice of the boasting insertion in the
original of the Hebrew pronoun of the first person, where not
wanted to convey the sense, and which consequently ought to
have been here interpreted ' I, even I,' or 'I myself,' — the tense
in them assigned to the verb is compounded of the present

Chap. I.] HEBREW PROPHETIC FUTURE. 95

and the past, and terminates in a reference to a time just past,
— a bearing of it which in the adduced passages is utterly in-
admissible. It would obviously have been an absurd act of
Sennacherib to boast of his having already driven the multi-
tude of his chariots over the tops of Lebanon, at a period when
it was notorious that he had not as yet done so ; and, ac-
cordingly, the Hebrew expression here referred to is rendered
by the Seventy, in one of the passages in which it is recorded,
eyw avafitjaoixai, and in the other, lyw dvefrjv ; where, I admit,
the second rendering affords no evidence on the point in ques-
tion ; as the aorist might be employed to convey an indeter-
minate reference to either a past or future time ; but the first
rendering unequivocally attests the inflexion under examina-
tion to have in this situation the force of a future tense ; and
this attestation is powerfully sustained by the Syriac rendering
of the whole expression in both places of its occurrence, it
being therein translated in each place by the words .r>m] ]_j")?
1 1 myself [or I, even I] will ascend.' The reference therefore
of the verb in the above Hebrew expression to a future time
is fully established by the internal evidence of the case,
combined with the joint and independent testimonies of the
Septuagint and Peshitah. But this reference could not have
been produced by a Waw conversive of the preterite
understood, though not written, before the verb ; because,
although the liberty of thus attaching the force of a future
tense to a preterite inflexion is occasionally taken in the poe-
try and prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, in which the con-
nexion of the sentences is not as fully indicated as in other
parts of the sacred text, yet it could not by any possibility
have been here resorted to, as the essential requisite to such a
conversion is wanting ; there is no preceding verb in the
future tense to which the one in question could be referred.
It only remains, therefore, that this Hebrew verb should be
construed in the same prophetic tense as the learned have
already ascertained that absolute preterites ought to be con-
strued, when they are similarly situated with regard to the

96 FIRST CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE [Chap. I.

relations of time in other sentences of Scripture. I would,
therefore, recommend the entire original passage to be trans-
lated in exactly the same words in each place of its occur-
rence, as follows : — "By thy messengers thou hast reproached
the Lord, and hast said, 'With the multitude of my chariots
I myself will certainly ascend to the height of the moun-
tains, to the sides of Lebanon ;' " — without the adverb ' cer-
tainly' being exhibited in Italics ; because, though not directly
expressed by any separate word in the Hebrew passages re-
ferred to, it still is so, by the peculiar inflexion therein em-
ployed with the force of a future tense. By this change in
the rendering of those passages, one of the most striking marks
of the impious audacity of the speaker, — in arrogating to him-
self a style of expression appropriated in Scripture to the
Almighty, or to the prophets speaking in the name of the
Almighty, — which has been hitherto concealed from the Eng-
lish reader, would be laid prominently open to his view. I
shall here only add, that a considerable part of the difficulty of
the very obscure remainder of this verse, as written in each
of the specified places, can be removed by the aid of the
discovery unfolded in the course of the ensuing investigation.
But this is a subject into the discussion of which it would
be premature here to enter.

The remainder of this chapter shall be devoted to pointing
out some features of the Authorized English Version, in re-
spect to which it appears to require correction : for, although
it is, I believe, the very best that has yet been published in
any modern language, and constitutes an admirable work for
the age in which it was composed (when as yet no collation
of Hebrew MSS. had been made, nor had either the Samari-
tan text of the Pentateuch or the Syriac Version of the Old
Testament been printed; and when the knowledge of Hebrew
and the cognate dialects was not by any means as far advanced
among Christians as it is at present), still, in the interval that
has since elapsed, amounting to nearly two centuries and a
half, many errors and inaccuracies have been detected in it

Chap.L] AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION. 97

from time to time, and their number, I apprehend, will be
found, through the aid of the discovery unfolded in this Essay,
so vastly increased, that a revision of the entire transla-
tion can hardly be deferred much longer. Beside the faults
of nomenclature I have already noticed in this version, as oc-
casioned by causes over which the translators had no control,
— to wit, the changes of power which certain letters of the
English alphabet have undergone since their time, — there are
others, the blame of which must, at least in part, be laid upon
themselves ; such, for instance, as inconsistent and defective
transcriptions of names.

1. In the next chapter some very striking examples will
be produced of names of rare occurrence, which, even while
unvaried respectively in their personal application, are differ-
ently transcribed in different parts of our Authorized Version.
A less violent liberty, which however, not being supported by
ancient testimony of any weight, is quite unwarranted, may
be seen taken in the same version with a Hebrew group of
very frequent occurrence, which is therein transcribed ' Isaiah,'
Avhen applied to the son of Amoz, but ' Jeshaiah,' when re-
ferred to another person in 1 Chron. xxv. 3 and 15, or to a
third one in 1 Chron. xxvi. 25. In a species of writing, in-
deed, in which so sparing a use is made of letters for the
expression of words, it is just possible that the same group
should, in its application to the designation of different indi-
viduals, be employed to stand for different spoken names : and
it must be further conceded that the particular group, or He-
brew-written name, here alluded to, is, in the present state of
the Septuagint, actually transcribed therein differently for its
different personal applications. But the evidence thus afforded
by the Greek version refutes itself, as it presents to us different
transcriptions of the above group in the two places of its occur-
rence in 1 Chron. xxv., where it is employed to denote one
and the same individual. Moreover, the second of those tran-
scriptions is different in the Vatican and Alexandrian manu-
scripts ; so that the two principal copies of this version here

K 2

98 SECOND CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE [Chap. I.

contradict each other, besides each of them, separately consi-
dered, contradicting itself. The testimony, then, of the Sep-
tuagint on the point before us has evidently undergone cor-
ruption, and is entitled to no attention. It may be added, ex
abundantly that the evidence of the Syriac Bible on the same
point is to the opposite effect, and is perfectly clear and con-
sistent, as far as it goes. The latter part, indeed, of the twenty-
sixth chapter of first book of Chronicles, in which the third
person referred to is mentioned, is lost from the Peshitah ; but
in, I believe, every other place where the Hebrew group in
question occurs, whether applied to the prophet or the second
person thereby designated, it is uniformly represented in this
version by the same Syriac transcription. Another instance
of unwarrantable liberty taken with Scriptural names, of con-
tinual occurrence, and one indeed of direct inconsistency in
their treatment, is supplied by comparing the three transcrip-
tions in our Authorized Version, ' Isaiah,' ' Jeremiah,' and
' Ezekiel,' with each other and with their respective originals.
Those originals in the Hebrew text actually commence, all of
them, with the very same letter — a circumstance which clearly
shows that the initial syllables of two of the English-written
names must be wrong ; and, as it happens, those of all three
are so at present. The correct expression in English writing
of the sound with which the three Hebrew spoken names in
common begin, was, at the time when our version came out,
the syllable le; it afterwards, from a change of English ortho-
graphy, became Je, and now is Ye. It is unnecessary to dwell
longer on the several points here touched upon, as they will
be more fully discussed in the next chapter.

2. A vast number of proper names are exhibited in the
present Authorized Version, without substitutes for the aspi-
rate, or, as they are more usually called, the guttural elements
of the original groups, even when occurring at the commence-
ment of syllables. Such omissions, at the end of syllables in
the transcribed words, is in a great degree warranted by the
analogous treatment, occasionally to be met with, of one of the

Chap. I.] AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION. 99

gutturals themselves, He, in Hebrew writing. But the leaving
Haleph in every site of it unrepresented in those transcripts,
cannot with equal force be defended on the ground put for-
ward for the purpose, that the letter itself is always (except,
indeed, when used as a mater lectionis, — a case which is not
here taken into consideration) passed over without any per-
ceptible modification of sound, in the modern way of reading
Hebrew. This circumstance affords no reason for omitting a
substitute for the letter just referred to, but merely one for not
pronouncing such substitute : H is frequently retained in
English orthography, where it, notwithstanding, is left abso-
lutely mute ; as, for instance, in the words honour and honesty,
in which it is kept on account of its employment in their Latin
originals. But, surely, we ought not to be less attentive to
etymology in the case of Hebrew, than in that of Latin deriva-
tives ; or to think the correct spelling of Scriptural names a
matter of less consequence than that of terms of Pagan origin.
Besides, it may be further urged in support of this view of the
subject, that the omission of an equivalent for any of the He-
brew gutturals (not excepting even Haleph) at the beginning
of syllables, in the transcripts in question, is injurious in two
ways ; first, it leads an English reader into the notion that
some of the Hebrew groups denoting names commence with
vowels, when in reality there is not a single instance of a name
so written in Hebrew orthography ; and, secondly, it tends to
deceive him as to the number of syllables in such names.
Thus, for example, Seir, in Gen. xiv. 6, is, I believe, very
commonly read as a monosyllable ;a — a mistake which could

a It may be worth noticing here, that Cain is also incorrectly read as a
monosyllable (as a reference to the original name, J!>p, QaYt'N, will clearly
show); although the error does not belong to exactly the same class as the
one above considered, and is to be removed by the insertion between the
word's two vowels, not of H, but of Y. This name was correctly transcribed
Cayin in the, I believe, oldest translation of the Bible into English, viz., that
made by Wycliffe.

100 SECOND CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE [Ghap.I.

not occur if the name were written Sehir, and a letter thus
inserted in it to correspond with the Hayin of the original
group.

The defect above described in the mode of representing the
sounds of Hebrew names was, from the nature of the Greek
alphabet, unavoidable in the Septuagint ; from which it made its
way into an immediate translation thereof, the old Italic version,
and thence into the Vulgate ; again, from this, which was
Jerome's version, it got into the first English one, Wycliffe's,
subsequently into Tindal's, and still later, in a greater or less
degree, into all the English translations that were afterwards
successively formed. For, although in those last-mentioned
translations, as well as in the Vulgate, many of the errors of
the respectively preceding versions were corrected through a
direct reference to the original Hebrew, yet great numbers of
inaccurate transcriptions previously introduced were retained
in them, from a reluctance, on the part of their respective
framers, to alter the spelling of names with which the public
had already become familiar. This excuse, however, cannot be
pleaded for several of the faulty transcripts of Hebrew names in
our present Authorized Version. Thus, for instance, the names
mn (HeWaH), hin (HaBeL), and ftin (HeNOK)? which are
transcribed Heva, Habel, and Henoch, in Parker's Bible, that
was used in churches for the forty years immediately 'pre-
ceding the time when King James's Bible came out, — Hevah,
Habel, and Henoch, in the Geneva Bible, which was generally
read in the houses of private families for the fifty years before
the same epoch, — and Heva, Habel, and Henoch, in Cranmer's
Bible, which was the Authorized English Version for thirty
years before Parker's, — may be seen in our present English
Bible changed respectively into Eve, Abel, and Enoch. It is
true that the three earlier versions, just specified, exhibit, each
of them, in the New Testament, the foremost of those names
in the mutilated form, Eve; and that Miles Coverdale's Version
— the first printed English translation of the entire Bible

Chap.L] AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION. 101

betrays the very same inconsistency as they do, of presenting
to us the name in question transcribed Heva9 in the Old Testa-
ment, and Eve in the New. But, surely, if the framers of
King James's Bible wished to confine their transcripts of this
name to the same form in both Testaments, and one already
in use, they ought, for such purpose, to have immeasurably
preferred Heva to Eve, as approaching so much nearer to the
sound of the original word. That sound the Seventy Jews
and the inspired authors of the Greek Testament concurred in
representing by Eua— a trisyllable which, by the combination
of its two latter elements into one syllable, would become
equivalent to Ewa, and thus denote, as far as it goes, the cor-
rect pronunciation of the name, falling short of the full ex-
pression thereof only through the want of aspirates, that is,
through the want of letters which the Grecian alphabet
does not furnish. But Ewa would in Jerome's time have
been written Eva; and he, by prefixing H to this latter
group, remedied the defect of the Grecian transcript quite as
much as was requisite in a practical point of view ; since the
addition of a second H at the termination of the same group
would not have sensibly altered the pronunciation of the word,
and its non-insertion in that site was warranted by the frequent
dropping of the corresponding Hebrew aspirate at the end of
syllables in the original writing. The framers, therefore, of
the earlier English versions above enumerated were perfectly
justified in borrowing the Latin transcript Heva from the Vul-
gate; and they only erred in not changing its Fto W {to
make it convey the very same sound as it did in the days of
Jerome), and in not extending the use of it, so modified, to
their respective translations of the New Testament. In fine,
the composers of our present Authorized Version can be still
further shown to have misrepresented the sounds of all the

a Strictly speaking, only two of the earlier versions referred to give the
name of the first woman Heva in the Old Testament; the third, for extreme
accuracy, exhibits it therein printed Hevah. But Hevah and Heva are vir-
tually the same; as there is no perceptible difference between them in sound.

102 THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT [Chap. I.

three examined names in the body of their translation, by
means of evidence which they have themselves supplied in the
margin with respect to those sounds ; — evidence, indeed, which
is very inaccurate in itself, in consequence of their having pre-
ferred the guidance of the Masorets to the far older and more
valuable testimony of the Seventy Jews upon this subject ;
but which still deserves attention as furnishing virtually their
own admission, that they ought to have commenced with an
aspirate their transcript of each name.

3. The two classes of faults as yet exemplified, being con-
fined to the subject of nomenclature, affect the form rather
than the substance of our version ; so that there may be some
difference of opinion on the point, how far they really come
under the head of inaccuracies requiring correction. But
those of the class next to be noticed are of a nature more de-
cidedly objectionable, as having arisen from an effort to con-
ceal blemishes in the existing condition of the Hebrew text —
an effort which led the translators not only to a partial sup-
pression of the truth, in the cases referred to, but still further
to, at times, its positive misrepresentation. It would seem,
indeed, from this conduct that, notwithstanding their aversion
to Popery, they were not quite emancipated from all its errors,
but still adhered, in some degree at least, to the very dangerous
and beguiling one, that 'the end justifies the means,' — a prin-
ciple which, put in this undisguised form, they probably would
have rejected with indignation, but by which they yet appear
to have been, perhaps unconsciously, influenced in practice.
They were, no doubt, actuated by the best motives in the in-
stances to which I allude ; but no motives could justify the
reserve therein practised by them ; nor should they have been
deterred by any consideration of consequences from communi-
cating to the public the whole of what they knew with regard to
the inspired volume." That book has far greater safeguards to

■ The above observations, respecting the propriety of notifying chasms in
the Hebrew Bible, are of course applied to only such as cause some alteration

Chap. I.] OF AN ADDITIONAL USE OF ITALICS. 103

shield it than any that could be supplied by mere maxims of
worldly prudence ; and is visibly under the all-powerful pro-
tection of God, who has graciously condescended to let his
providential interference in its defence come in various ways
within reach of human observation.

An example of the kind of fault I am now complaining
of, occurs in a very early part of our version ; — " And Cain
talked with Abel his brother ; and it came to pass, when they
were in the field, that Cain rose up against his brother Abel,
and slew him." — Gen. iv. 8. Here no chasm appears ; yet
the context of the original passage clearly shows one, as may
be perceived at once from its first clause — 7DH 7K pp 1?2W)
«WK, signifying literally, "and Cain said to Abel his brother,"
— a statement which obviously implies, that some words used
by Cain on this occasion originally followed in the text, which
are now no longer to be found in it.a Accordingly, a vacant
space is left immediately after this clause in several Hebrew
MSS., above twenty of which have been specified byKennicott ;
and the Masorets, to whose authority our translators elsewhere
pay the greatest deference, have not only inserted here in their
edition of the text a mark of something being omitted, but
have also added the observation that there are twenty-eight

of the meaning of passages, or of the sound of names in Scripture ; nor, even
when the loss of single letters affects the sense in a minor degree, is it requi-
site to apprize the English reader thereof, provided that the dropped elements
be replaced within brackets in the text of the original record, and that full
warrant for their restoration can be added in its margin.

a The expression, "and he talked with," is the correct rendering, not of
the Hebrew words bw ~l»W,1, but of QV ~QT\ The difference between the
two verbs here adduced is well known, and thus briefly told by Gesenius in
his shorter Lexicon : — " A 12.1 locutus est ita differt "IBS [dixit], ut illud
absolute ponatur, hoc additis verbis qua? quis dixerit." This difference is
more fully explained by an older commentator, as follows : — " "ifiN significat
actum dicendi ; ideoque semper sequitur declaratio et expressio dictionis, ubi
ilia non potest subintelligi. Ut, Gen. i., dixit Deus, nempe, fiat lux ; item,
fiat firmamentum, colligantur aqua?, germinet terra, fiant luminaria, &c. At
121 est loqui, et ponitur sine subjunctione rei dicta?." — Avenarius.

104 THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT [Chap. I.

such blanks in the middle of verses in the sacred record. The
framers, therefore, of our version could not have been ignorant
of the existence of a chasm in this place, no more than they
could of the true signification of the verb in the first clause,
IDfcn, — a word of the most ordinary and familiar occurrence
in the acceptation to which it is there confined by the context ;a
— and the circumstance of their mistranslating that ingredient
of the clause could have arisen solely from a desire to conceal
the above chasm. This piece of contrivance on their part, I
am sorry to be obliged to state, appears to me very reprehen-
sible. The Hebrew text is, no doubt, in a wonderful state of
preservation, considering the great age of the whole of it, and
that its earlier portions constitute by far the oldest book in
the world. But what right had they, in consequence, to re-
present that text to the public as more perfect than it really
is ? and why should they not rather have candidly acknow-
ledged the present defect of the original in the passage in ques-
tion, and availed themselves of the means which Providence
had placed within their reach for remedying in their version
this blemish ? The purport of the omitted words of Cain is
recorded in the Septuagint, without any variation between its
Vatican and Alexandrian copies, AieXOw/nev eh to neUov, let us
pass into the plain, and also in the Peshitah, )A\n<*\ "),.j } let
us go into the plain ; while the original expression itself is pre-
served in the Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch,
i"lW[D]n PD7J, let us go into the field (or plain* ). Here are

a The expression ^pbi HEN, ' he said within his heart,' or ' he said within
himself,' is used in the simple language of the Bible to signify 'he meditated;'
and sometimes HEN (varied of course in its inflexion according to the circum-
stances of the case) is therein employed in this sense without the addition of
the second part of the phrase, but not when it is followed, as in the above
clause, by the particle ?N, ' to' : Cain could not be represented as meditating
to Abel.

b I was at first disposed to suspect that the preposition bs had dropped
out between the two words above quoted from the Samaritan text ; but on
consideration it will, I think, be found that the incomplete expression, as it
stands, is much more consonant to the violent agitation of mind under which
Cain must have laboured at the time when he uttered it.

Chap. I.] OF AN ADDITIONAL USE OF ITALICS. 105

three testimonies perfectly independent of each other, yet fully
agreeing as to the substance of the meaning of the words
dropped from the verse under examination in the Jewish edi-
tion of the sacred text : in addition to which I do not lay much
stress on a fourth from the Vulgate, ' egrediamur foras,' let us
go out ; /because a note of the author, elsewhere made, shows
this evidence not to be an independent attestation, but given
by him only on the authority of the Samaritan record and the
old Italic translation of the Septuagint; and consequently that
the chasm had got into the Jewish text before the period when
he wrote. a

The disingenuous practice exemplified in the foregoing
paragraph did not, I grant, originate with the composers of
the present authorized translation of the Old Testament : on
the contrary, its working can be traced more or less through

a Jerome, in his Liber Questionum Hebraicarum in Genesim, makes the fol-
lowing observation: — " Et dixit Cain ad Abel fratrem mum. Subauditur,
ea qua? locutus est Dominus. Superfluum ergo est quod in Samaritanorum
et nostro volumine reperitur, transeamus in campum." — Hieron. Opera, Ed°.
Benedict., torn, ii., col. 511. The unsoundness of the view of the subject
offered in this note will at once be perceived, by giving an equivalent English
translation at full length, with a supplement agreeing with the words here
stated to be understood, and printed, after the modern fashion, in Italics. The
meaning of the clause in question would in this way be exhibited as follows : —
"And Cain repeated to Abel his brother the words which the Lord had said to
himself, as stated in the preceding verses.'''' Not only is the forced and arbitrary
nature of this construction of the passage quite obvious, but also its inconsis-
tency with the rest of the narrative may be easily shown. There does not
appear any ground whatever for assuming that the words of the Lord were
not pronounced in the hearing of both brothers ; but, even supposing them
heard by the elder alone, surely it would be utterly at variance with the state
of angry feeling in which Cain must have been at that period, to imagine that
he then would have volunteered to give Abel any information, and more espe-
cially information that included a censure of his own conduct. From the ex-
treme subserviency, however, of Jerome's mind to the prejudices of his Jewish
instructors, which is indicated by the circumstance of his yielding assent even
for a moment to such a view of the case, he eventually in this instance freed
himself ; as may be clearly inferred from the translation of the above passage
which he finally adopted in his version.

106 THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT [Chap. I.

nearly all the English versions that preceded theirs.11 I further
admit that the evidence of all the records above referred to
was not presented to them, nor a fortiori to their predecessors,
in as clear a form as it now is to us ; but still the light thence
reflected was such as would, if duly attended to, have been
sufficient to guard them from the sort of faults here canvassed.
Of the Peshitah, indeed, only the New Testament had in their
time been as yet printed ; but manuscript copies of the Old
Testament in that version were then in the hands of the learned ;
so were, or at any rate might have been, consulted by the
translators in question : and, although Samaritan copies of
the Hebrew Pentateuch were not, after a disappearance of
above a thousand years, brought back to Europe till a period
shortly subsequent to the publication of the first edition of
their version,b yet notices are preserved in the writings of the

a Wycliffe is entirely free from the above charge (of which, indeed, he
could not have been guilty, as he was ignorant of Hebrew, and translated
solely from the Vulgate) ; and the individuals who under the superintendence
of Archbishop Cranmer wrote the English Bible called after his name, are
also to be exempted from it in some instances, as they had the honesty and
candour to mark by a difference of type the words of their version which they
translated from the Vulgate when there were no corresponding ones in the
Hebrew text. Thus, for example, in the case of the examined verse of Genesis
they are just as clear of the imputation as the earlier writer. WyclifFe's
rendering of this verse, as exhibited in a MS. copy of his work, classed A. 1. 9,
in the Library of Trinity College (after substituting Roman letters for those
he used, excepting his character of th power, somewhat like his y, in place of
which I here employ the Greek Theta for want of an equivalent Roman letter),
stands thus : — " And Cayin seyde to abel his bro#, Goo we oute, whan 0ei
weren I 0e feeld, aros <?erwi0 cayin ageynst his bro# abel, & slewe hy." And
the translation of the same verse in the edition of Cranmer's Bible printed in
1540 (after substituting the Roman for the old English black letter) is as
follows : — "and Cain spake unto Habell hys brother (let us go forth^ Ariel it
fortuned when they were in the feld Cain rose up agaynst Habel hys brother,
& slue hym."

b The copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch which first reached Europe in
modern times appears to have been that purchased from the Samaritans by
Pietro della Valle for M. de Sancy, French ambassador at Constantinople, by
whom it was sent to Paris in 1616, just five years after the first edition of the

Chap.L] of an additional use OF ITALICS. 107

fathers of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries of several of
the more striking differences between these and the Jewish
copies of the same work. Of such notices an instance is
afforded in the case of the very passage just examined ; and
Jerome's evidence incidentally given of the virtual agreement
in this instance between the Samaritan and Greek records is
fully borne out by inspection of the Samaritan text. At pre-
sent, however, it is not so material to inquire how far our last
set of authorized translators were answerable for the faults of
commission and omission included in the particular case above
brought forward, as to consider in what way those faults may
best be removed. Their rendering, then, of the verse, Gen.
iv. 8, I would venture to recommend being corrected as fol-
lows : — " And Cayin said to Habel his brother, let us go into
the field ; and it came to pass, while they were in the field,
that Cayin rose up against his brother Habel, and slew him."
But the alterations here suggested are not, without some fur-
ther change, sufficient to effect the object in view: as, accord-
ing to the use made of Italics in our version, the words therein
so printed indicate, not only that there are no corresponding
ones in the Jewish edition of the Hebrew text, but also that
they are necessarily implied by the context ; of which posi-
tions the latter is, in the instance before us, untrue. The con-
text, indeed, shows very plainly that some words are wanted
in the original passage, but does not (though it excludes any
inconsistent with itself) positively determine what are those
words ; and to justify the supplement here given, the authori-
ties should be specified on which it has been adopted. There
should, then, besides, be placed in the margin, as a note upon
this supplement, the words ' Samaritan text and Septuagint and
Peshitah versions,' or more briefly, ' Samar., Sept., and Pesh.'
The insertion in translations of words in a different cha-

present Authorized English Version had been published. It is not, however,
quite certain whether some of the copies procured by Archbishop Ussher from
the East did not reach him at a somewhat earlier date.

108 THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT [Chap. I.

racter from that employed in the main body of each of them,
for the purpose of denoting those necessarily implied by the
context, but to which there are none to correspond in the
respective originals,11 commenced, as far as I can find, with the
authors of the Geneva Bible,b and constitutes evidently a vast
improvement on the previous mode of exhibiting such works ;
as it enables translators of ancient writings, and more espe-
cially of those composing the several parts of the inspired
volume, to give their renderings in a fuller and freer style, and
one more accordant to the peculiarities of modern languages,
without, at the same time, deviating from a strict representa-
tion of the state of the originals respectively undertaken to be
interpreted. This improvement has been followed in each of
the authorized English versions that were framed since the
date of its introduction ; though less accurately in the earlier
one, or that called ' Parker's Bible' ; but both its introducers
and the two subsequent sets of translators referred to were
precluded by their prejudices from the very important exten-
sion of its use that has just been pointed out. Now, at length,
however, surely sufficient time has been afforded for the sub-
siding of the party zeal which gave birth to the prejudices in
question, and for allowing the obviously sound principle to
come into operation without any abatement or alloy, that, in
everything relating to the Bible, the public have a right to
be told " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
I shall here only add that in reference to the Hebrew text, I

a Italics were not introduced for the above purpose, till after some editions
of the present Authorized Version were printed, at the period when the Roman
character came to be substituted in that version for the old English black
letter.

b The English version that was authorized next before Parker's Bible, that
is, Cranmer's Bible, is older than the Geneva Bible, and yet has some words
printed in a different character from that generally used in it ; but these are
not at all words implied by the context, but constitute the translation of Latin
expressions in the Vulgate which have none to correspond with them in the
Hebrew text as it stands at present.

Chap.L] of an additional use OF ITALICS. 109

would insert in the chasm occurring in the examined place the
words I have quoted from the Samaritan record, including
them, however, between brackets, and putting in the margin,
as a note upon them, the words Codex Samar. Prejudices,
surely, that interfere in any way with a just representation of
the subject should not be deferred to, in the case of Jews any
more than in that of Christians.

For a second example of the same class of faults and also
of the value of the proposed additional use of Italics, I would
request attention to the translation in the present Authorized
Version of the Bible of the last verse of the twenty-seventh
chapter of Deuteronomy, as exhibited in the reprint, published
at Oxford in 1833, of the first edition, where it runs thus : —
" Cursed be hee that confirmeth not all the words of this Law
to doe them : and al the people shal say, Amen." The Hebrew
for ' all,' on which the whole drift of St. Paul's argument rests,
in the place (Gal. iii. 10) where he quotes the meaning of the
first clause of this verse, does not appear in the original text
in its present state ; and this English word cannot be admitted
to be implied by the context, as the clause yields very intelli-
gible sense without it, and that too quite a different sense
from the one produced by its insertion. Yet, while the verb
1 be,' — which is so far from being here essentially requisite that
it might be erased without either altering the meaning of the
passage or rendering it unmeaning, — is carefully marked out
as having no corresponding word in the Hebrew text, not the
slightest intimation is given of the omission of infinitely more
importance in the same passage of that text which causes the
original, as it stands at present, and its version to have quite
different bearings in this place ; and the Hebrew clause is
likewise treated as if there was no such omission in it, by all
the earlier English translators, excepting the first of them,
Wycliffe.a This misrepresentation of the existing state of

Wycliffe's translation of the verse including the above clause, when
the characters used by him are changed in the manner described in a preced-
ing note, stands thus: — " Corsed 0 dwellifl not i Oq wordis of 0\s lawe, ne he i

110 THIRD CLASS OF FAULTS, AND BENEFIT [Chap. I.

the original record is, however, more pointed in the English
versions that have been written since the method was intro-
duced of distinguishing by a difference of character between
the words in them that have, and those that have not, corre-
sponding vocables in the Hebrew text ; and it was continued
in its more deceptive form in our present Authorized Version,
at any rate, as late as the edition which issued from the Uni-
versity Press of Cambridge in the year 1629. How soon after
the word ' all' came to be printed in Italics in the place under
discussion, I cannot state ; but it has been so exhibited in every
edition that has been published for a great length of time past.
This correction, however, is not of itself sufficient to remedy
the evil of the fallacy previously imposed on the public, and
give an adequate view of the subject. It is further necessary,
not only to guard the reader from an error into which he
might be very apt to be inadvertently drawn by the ordinary
use of Italics in our version, that, I mean, of assuming that the
supplementary word in the examined place must, from the
manner in which it is printed, be implied by the context; but
also to inform him, since its introduction into the English
translation of the clause is not warranted, either by the exist-
ing state of the original text, or by the demands of the context,
on what grounds it is there inserted. Both objects would be
answered by the marginal reference, ' Samaritan text and Sep-

dede fulfills, and all the peple schal sey amen." This is a strictly literal
rendering of Jerome's translation in the Vulgate of the same passage (" Ma-
ledictus qui non permanet in sermonibus legis hujus, nee eos opere perficit.
Et dicet omnis populus, Amen") ; — so much so, indeed, that if the reader
should be at a loss for the meaning of any of the old English words, he can
ascertain it by means of the corresponding words in the Latin verse: as, for
instance, 'ne he' is the exact translation of 'nee eos,' ' hem' being the old
English for ' them.' Here I have further to observe, that the word, ' hee' or
4 he,' in the translation given of the same passage in the present Authorized
Version, has none exactly corresponding to it in the Hebrew, anymore than
it has in the Latin verse; so that in order to the observance of perfect accu-
racy, this pronoun, just as well as the verb 'be,' ought to be printed in
Italics.

Chap. I.] OF AN ADDITIONAL USE OF ITALICS. 1 1 1

tuagint,' each of which records clearly, and, quite independently
of the other, attests, that the sacred text originally contained
the Hebrew for ' all' in the place in question, by actually now
exhibiting, the former record, the word itself, 73, and the lat-
ter, its Greek translation, in that site. Here I may add, as a
general remark, that such references would serve the twofold
end of distinguishing the new use of Italics here recommended
from that to which they have hitherto been applied, and of
communicating to the public the defects in the existing state
of the Hebrew text, tog-ether with the means which a gracious
Providence has supplied for their removal.

In the instance of the particular passage under discussion,
the force of the independent, yet perfectly concordant, testi-
monies of the Samaritan text and oldest Greek version is con-
firmed in the most convincing manner by the inspired autho-
rity of St. Paul, who read and translated this passage in exactly
the same manner as did the framers of the latter record. It
is in vain here to object that this Apostle quoted but loosely
from the Hebrew Scriptures. The objection can be shown, by
means of the discovery unfolded in the ensuing investigation,
quite erroneous in a vast majority of the passages adduced in its
support; but even supposing his practice to have been of this
description in other cases, it cannot for a moment be allowed
to have been such in that before us. For, if the word 7D did
not exist in his time in the specified site, his quotation in
Greek of the meaning of the clause in question would be not
merely loose, but absolutely false, and the argument of vital
importance in which he makes use of that quotation would
have been grounded by him on a falsehood, — a view of the
matter which is utterly inadmissible. But all-powerful as is
the bearing of his quotation on the subject, it still is not by
itself sufficient to prove the existence of a chasm in the above
site to every one, as, for instance, to a modern Jew strongly
prepossessed with the notion of the perfect preservation of the
Hebrew text. A Christian, indeed, might argue, that St.
Paul was inspired, therefore his evidence on the point must be

L

112 FOURTH CLASS OF FAULTS IN THE [Chap. I.

true, and therefore the word 73 must have originally stood in
the place alluded to ; but the Jew would, on the other hand,
insist on the actual absence of 73 from that place, and thence
infer the falsehood of the adduced evidence. For the latter of
these disputants, then, further proof of the point in question
is obviously requisite ; and, though not wanted for the former,
still, even to him it may be gratifying to find additional au-
thorities ex abundanti supplied for the missing word.a

Before quitting this example, it may be worth while to
consider the manner in which Jerome dealt with it, as afford-
in g an additional illustration of the benefit of the proposed
extension of the use of Italics. Although this author's judg-
ment was greatly fettered by the prejudices of those to whom
he was forced to resort for instruction in the mode of reading
and interpreting the Hebrew text, yet he at least dimly per-
ceived the very grounds above stated for the chasm I have
brought under notice, as well as another of minor importance
in the same passage, which I had no occasion for my present
object to advert to ; and he further was led to suspect those
chasms, more especially the principal one, to have been made
designedly by Jews of former times for the purpose of fraudu-
lently defeating the argument founded on this passage by St.
Paul.b Still, when he came to translate the verse in question,
he abandoned this view of the subject, in order that he might

a In the example above discussed, the marginal note, Gal. iii. 10, not only
points out a parallel passage of Scripture, but also serves to show how a
chasm, which it proves to exist in the original of the verse it is annexed to,
ought to be filled. When Scriptural references answer this twofold use, it
would perhaps be expedient, for the sake of distinctness, to have them printed
in Italics.

b The observations of Jerome above alluded to are conveyed by him in the
following terms: " — incertum habemus utrum Septuaginta Interpretes ad-
diderint, omnis homo, et, in omnibus; an in veteri Hebraico ita fuerit, et postea
a Judseisdeletnm sit. In hanc me autem suspicionem ilia res stimulat; quod
verbum, omnis, et, in omnibus, quasi sensui suo necessarium, ad probandum
illud, quod quicumque ex operibus Legis sunt, sub maledicto sint, Apostolus,
vir Hebrspse peritia? et in Lege doctissimus. minquam protulisset, nisi in He-

Chap. I.] AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION. 113

rigidly adhere to what he, upon the whole, notwithstanding)-
his doubts thereon, was eventually persuaded to think the
genuine original state of the sentence in the Hebrew text.
Hence he was in the end induced to render this verse as fol-
lows : — " Maledictus qui non permanet in sermonibus hujus
legis, nee eos opere perficit. Et dicet omnis populus, Amen."
But had any mode occurred to him, analogous to that just
recommended, of distinguishing supplementary words from
the rest of his version — had he, for instance, inserted the word
' omnibus,' between brackets immediately before ' sermonibus,'
with a note on it referring to authorities for its insertion which

are supplied in his own observations upon the passage ; he

might then have avoided a fatal defect in his translation, and
done justice to the fairness of St. Paul's argument, consistently
with giving at the same time a strictly correct representation
of the Hebrew verse in the then existing state of the original
text, which was exactly the same as that in which it is exhi-
bited at this day.

4. The last class I shall notice of faults in our Authorized
Version — which, indeed, is common to all the translations
framed in modern times immediately from the Hebrew Scrip-
tures— comprises those occasioned by a strict adherence to the
sacred text, as it stands at present, in cases where the read-
ings to which it is now confined by the matres lectionis, make

braeis voluminibus haberetur. Quam ab causam Samaritanorum Hebrtea
volumina relegens, inveni chol, quod interpretation omnis, sive omnibus, scrip-
turn esse; et cum Septuaginta Interpretibus concordare. Frustra igitur illud
tulerunt Judsei ; ne viderentur esse sub maledicto, si non possent omnia com-
plere quse scripta sunt; quum antiquiores alterius quoque gentis litteree id
positum fuisse testentur." — S. Hieronymi Opera, Ed0. Benedict., torn, iv., col.
257. Here is a very striking admission from one so strongly impressed as this
writer was by his teachers with the notion of the ' Hebrew verity,' or per-
fect preservation of the Hebrew text. It may, by the way, be worth here
noticing, the attestation given at the end of this extract to the greater anti-
quity of the Samaritan, than of the Jewish shapes of the Hebrew letters ; — a
fact which has, since Jerome's time, been fully confirmed by the evidence of
coins dug out of the ruins of parts of Jerusalem.

L 2

114 FOURTH CLASS OF FAULTS, &c. [Chap. I.

it convey senses inconsistent in themselves, as well as at
variance with the interpretations given of the same passages in
the oldest and best versions. In a few instances, indeed, the
erroneously inserted vowel-letters have been branded by the
Masorets, or later set of vocalizers, with a little circle, their
mark of censure, and left unpointed by them ; in consequence
of which those letters have been equally neglected by modern
critics, and the words containing them are correctly read and
translated, as if quite free from such interpolations. But in
the vast majority of cases the discrepancies and inconsistencies
produced in this manner have been passed over unnoticed and
uncorrected both by the Masorets, and, after their example,
by the composers of the modern versions referred to. On this
account, however, no blame is to be imputed to either party :
for, as long as the disturbing letters were looked upon as
genuine elements of the original text, the respect felt for the
sacred Word of God must have prevented men from examin-
ing with freedom the bearing of passages supposed to be pre-
served exactly the same as they were written by their inspired
authors. Hut when the three letters in question are shown
to have constituted, in their capacity of vowel-signs, no part
of the writing of the Old Testament in its original state, but
to have, been therein subsequently inserted, we shall be entitled
to treat their application to the original text as merely a human
commentary, which is, indeed, respectable for its antiquity, and
has proved in general of considerable benefit in facilitating
the reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, but yet in some places
misleads, either from oversight or through design on the part
of its trainers. A great part of the ensuing argument will be
taken up with examples to sustain this view of the matter,
which serve not only to confirm the reality of the discovery
proposed for discussion, but also to illustrate its usefulness.
To adduce, then, any such examples here would be super-
fluous as well as premature ; and I shall, therefore, without
further preamble, enter at once on the direct investigation of
my principal subject.

Chap. II.] SPURIOUSNESS OF THOSE LETTERS, Etc. 115

CHAPTER II.

PROOFS OF THE SPURIOUSNESS OF THE MATRES LECTIONIS IN

THE SACRED TEXT DERIVED FROM THE USES MADE OF

THEM IN ITS NOMENCLATURE.

spuriousness of those letters proved upon general grounds

why this investigation begins with an analysis of proper

names examination of the hebrew designations of david,

miriam, sarah, joshua, a namesake of joshuah's companion,
joshua's first name, isaiah, jeremiah — adventitious nature

of the nun paragogic in the hebrew text examination of

the hebrew designations of jethro, nun, samaria, solomon

vowel-letters proved spurious more clearly by names of

rare use — how far the same written name implies the same

spoken one agreement restored between amos, ix. 12, and

acts, xv. 17 of shammuah, shammua, shimeah, shimea, sham-

mah, shamma, shimma, and shimei, transcripts in our ver-
sion of one and the same original group — a few more in-
stances adduced of contradictory vocalization of the

foreign names transcribed in our version, respectively, on
and aven, poti-pherah, potiphar, nebuchadnezzar, cyrus,

darius of the designation of jerusalem, why classed with

foreign ones — on the correct pronunciation of the four-
lettered name of god.

IN the unpointed Hebrew Bible the characters of which the
text is composed are not any of them appropriated ex-
clusively to the representation of vowels ; they all serve in
general to denote either consonants or syllables, according as
the reader is or is not familiar with the notion of a consonan-
tal power. If the inspired penmen used their letters in the
latter way, they were not conscious of leaving any part of the
sounds of their words unexpressed by signs ; but, if in the
former, they must have been aware that they wrote those
words in a very defective manner, — a piece of intentional ne-
glect which can hardly be imputed to them. Three of the

116 SPURIOUSNESS OF THOSE LETTERS [Chap. II.

characters, however, which, when looked upon as consonants,
arc equivalent respectively to H, Y, and W, appear in the pre-
sent state of the text to be sometimes divested of their primary
powers, whether consonantal or syllabic, and shifted to desig-
nating, the first of them an A or E ; the second, an E or / ;
and the third, an 0 or U. This additional office, indeed, was
denied to them by the Masorets, who maintained that they
were everywhere employed as consonants, though in some
places without any consonantal use, and merely with that of
subserviency to the Masoretic points, either in giving length
to the vowels thereby denoted, or in other ways ; while they
remained themselves unuttered in reading, in consequence of
which they got the name of quiescents. But, — independently of
the consideration that no such application of them is possible
in the sites in which they are called otiants, — how could they
have been anywhere intended for silent dependents upon the
points in question before those signs had existence, or were ever
thought of? When, therefore, the Rabbinical fable of the
Scriptures having been, from the first, written with vowel-
points came to be exploded, this concomitant fiction necessa-
rily shared the same fate. In reading pointed Hebrew it is, I
grant, convenient, for the purpose of avoiding the confusion that
would be produced by the simultaneous use of two different
sets of vowel-signs, to pass over the above-mentioned letters in
certain situations without utterance ; but it by no means hence
follows that they were always so treated : on the contrary, it
is now almost universally admitted that they preceded the
Masoretic points in the office of expressing vowels, on which
account they have been, when thus employed, technically de-
1 1 ( >) n i 1 1 ; 1 1 ( d matres lectionis, or ' mothers of reading.' Assuming,
then, their occasionally vocalic use as a matter already estab-
lished,— a use, indeed, which the perusal of any single page
of an unpointed copy of the Hebrew Bible is quite sufficient
to force upon our conviction, — I shall proceed to inquire
whether, in the places where they are applied to this secon-

Chap. II.] PROVED UPON GENERAL GROUNDS. 117

dary service, they constitute an original part of the sacred
text ; and, if not, how and when they came to be introduced
into it.

Before entering on a detailed investigation of this subject,
I have to observe, that the very nature of the twofold applica-
tion, just described, of Haleph, Yod, and Waw, is directly at
variance with the supposition of its being coeval with the first
use of alphabetic writing. It is obvious that Moses either did or
did not make use of the Hebrew alphabet as a syllabary. If
he did, no vowel-letters could have entered the text of the
•Pentateuch, in the form in which the matres lectionis are at
present found there, as signs of parts of syllables. On the
other hand, if he did not, he must by some means or other
have resolved his syllables into their elements of both kinds ;
in which case he would of necessity have got at least as early
a conception of vowels as of consonants, and consequently have
as primarily and as appropriately applied letters to their desig-
nation. It is wholly reversing the natural Order of things, to
suppose that he would have first apprehended and given
signs to the more difficult objects of thought, the consonantal
powers, which are, when taken by themselves, unpronounce-
able ; and thence have borrowed characters to be transferred,
as the matres lectionis are, to denoting, through a secondary
application, the vowels. In neither case, therefore, of the alter-
native just stated, could the matres lectionis have made their
appearance in his original writing, or, consequently, in that of
any of the succeeding authors of the Old Testament, who all
followed the example he set to them, and adhered exactly to
the same method of employing the Hebrew letters.

With regard, however, to a question of fact, as is that
before us, — whether the matres lectionis be spurious or ge-
nuine elements of the sacred text, — testimony is suited to make
a stronger impression on the mind than any sort of abstract
reasoning. Upon this point, then, evidence can be brought
to bear from various sources, each of which yields a most co-
pious and abundant supply of materials to work on. In the

1 18 WHY THIS INVESTIGATION BEGINS [Chap II.

rirst place, we have the Hebrew text itself attesting the spu-
riousness of the letters in question, by the numerous discre-
pancies and inconsistencies they attach to it, — faults which,
surely, cannot be imputed to its inspired authors ; neither can
they be accounted for by the carelessness of transcribers, or the
injuries of time. From casual blemishes so produced, of which
I may here by the way observe, there are vastly fewer in the
Bible than in any other ancient book, the faults alluded to are
distinguished in a very marked way, as well by a certain degree
of constancy and uniformity that, in general, prevails among
them in other respects, as by the circumstance of their being
in every instance confined to three, and mostly to two, letters
of the Hebrew alphabet. It only remains, therefore, that the
elements of the text which make it betray such faults in its
present state, must have been interpolated therein subsequently
to the original composition of its several parts. Secondly, we
find the Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch directly
attesting the spuriousness of the matres lectionis in innumera-
ble places of the Jewish edition, by exhibiting the text either
with no vowel-letters, or with different ones in those places.
Thirdly, we obtain indirect evidence to the like effect from an
endless stock of passages in the Septuagint which indicate that
the Greek translators read the corresponding parts of the ori-
ginal with different vowels from those at present to be seen
therein expressed. Fourthly, we are furnished with the very
same kind of indirect testimony, and in similar abundance, by
the Peshitah, or oldest of the Syriac versions. These four
heads of evidence, I should add, are independent of each other,*

* The Jewish vocalization, or reading, of the sacred text was not made
without a knowledge of the Septuagint, but still, the two works, having been
executed by adverse parties, may so far be considered as mutually indepen-
dent; as also may the Samaritan and Jewish vocalizations, for the like
reason and to the same extent; but the Peshitah and the Septuagint are ab-
solutely independent of each other. These points will clearly come out on a
comparison of the details of evidence drawn from the four sources of informa-
tion referred to.

Chap. II] WITH AN ANALYSIS OF PROPER NAMES. 119

yet perfectly agreeing in the result to which they severally
conduct. Some of the items under each head may not strike
the reader as powerfully as others ; but he is to judge of the
force of the argument thus sustained, not by the separate in-
stances of attestation which shall be here produced, but by
the combined bearing of them all ; and he is to recollect that
the funds from which those instances are drawn may be almost
said to be inexhaustible, if any further accumulation of evi-
dence should be deemed wanting. I shall commence with
analyzing proper names, because the testimony of each of the
above-mentioned versions bears upon them, with regard to this
subject, as directly as that of either of the editions of the ori-
ginal ; as also because this branch of the inquiry does not so
much require a knowledge of Hebrew, and consequently may
be brought under the full and immediate cognizance of a
wider circle of readers than the remaining parts of the inves-
tigation.

1. The name of the royal Psalmist is constantly written
TH, DrtWi'D, without any vowel-letter, in Ruth, Samuel, Kings,
Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel ; and it is at
present found as constantly written TH, DaWID, with a Yod
inserted in its second syllable to express the vowel i, in Chro-
nicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, the Song of Solomon, Hosea, Amos,
and Zechariah. The difference here exposed affects not, in-
deed, the pronunciation of the name, but merely relates to
the comparative degree of fulness with which it is written ;
yet a variation of it even to this limited extent could hardly
have been admitted into the Scriptures in their original state.
Not only the high respect in which this name has always been
held by the Jews, but also the strict uniformity of its spelling
in each of the sacred compositions into which it has been in-
troduced,3 precludes the notion that the authors of those

a The uniformity above noticed is particularly remarkable in the books
of Samuel ; since the name in question is repeated in them above one hundred
and seventy times, but never with the Yod inserted in it. On the other hand,
this name does not occur more than once, I believe, in either Ruth, Ezra,

120 EXAMINATION OF THE [Chap. II.

works, supposing them to have had the option, could have
felt indifferent, as to which way they wrote it. Each of them
would certainly have looked upon the mode adopted by him-
self as the right one. Can it, then, be imagined that prophets
differed from prophets on this point, or that Solomon could
have considered David an incompetent judge of the proper
way of writing his own name ? These improbabilities, how-
ever, are forced upon us, unless we reject the Yod with
which they are essentially connected, and disallow it the rank
of an original ingredient of the group in question.

Here, by the way, I beg to avail myself of my discovery,
though not yet fully developed, to clear up a difficulty con-
nected with this case. From the spelling of David's name
being different in the Canticles from what it is in the Psalms,
and the same as in parts of Scripture that are some hundred
years less ancient than the Psalms, Dr. Kennicott inferred
{First Dissertation, pp. 20-2), that the poem alluded to must
have been written many ages after the lifetime of David ;
and, consequently, that it was not a work of Solomon's com-
position. This inference, though ingeniously supported, yet,
from being at variance with the evidence expressly conveyed
in the very first sentence of the poem itself, is wholly inadmis-
sible ; and would be so, even though we were unable to ac-
count for the circumstance on which it is grounded. Now,
however, this difficulty will be found entirely removed ; and
the phenomenon in question serves to show, not that the Can-
ticlcs were written long after the Psalms, and even after the
books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but merely that they
happened to be vocalized somewhat later, when the Jewish
scribes became a little more familiar with the use of the ma-
tres lectionis. The same phenomenon serves also to determine,

Hosea, or the Song of Solomon : but as I have, in my observations respecting
it, laid some stress on its displaying the fuller mode of spelling in the last
mentioned of these works, I should add, that it is to be found so written in
the place alluded to, viz. Cant, iv. 4, in every one of the numerous copies of
the Hebrew Bible consulted by Dr. Kennicott.

Chap. II.] HEBREW NAME OF DAVID. 121

with respect to all the books of Scripture above enumerated,
and distributed into two sets, which set was vocalized before
the other.

To bring my observations on this name to a close — its
ancient pronunciation was certainly Dawid; as is proved, with
regard to its consonants, by the combined evidence of the
Hebrew text and the Septuagint; and, with regard to its
vowels, by the combined evidence of the Septuagint and the
New Testament. The two Greek records, however, differ as
to the middle articulation of this word ; it being written in
the former Aavih (Da-u-id) which, contracted into two syllables,
becomes Dawid, in conformity with its pure Hebrew pronun-
ciation ; and in the latter, Aafiih (David), to accord with the
change of its sound that had taken place in the corrupt dia-
lect spoken by the Jews in the time of the Evangelists. But,
while the alteration to this extent in the sound of the word is
sanctioned by the authority of inspired writers, and sustained
by universal agreement, can the further variation, by which
the English have, in opposition to the practice of every other
nation, come to pronounce it just as if it were written Devid,
be defended upon any rational ground? Surely, whatever
liberties we may take with it when used as a modern Christian
name, we are bound, where we meet it in Scripture, to ap-
proach, as nearly as the general usage of modern nations will
allow us, to its ancient pronunciation. The reader will find,
as he proceeds, frequent occasions where this observation
might be renewed ; but, having here introduced it in the case
of a very conspicuous name, I shall not urge it any further
by subsequent repetitions.

2. The name of the sister of Moses, D^IQ, MaRYaM, in every
place of its occurrence in the sacred text, is, like a great many
others, exhibited without any vowel-letter,a in accordance with

a The above name is likewise written in the very same manner without
any vowel-letter in the Samaritan text, the first Syriac version, and the
Tanmin of Jonathan.

122 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

the view of the matter I am engaged in disclosing, that the
whole of that text was originally so written. This group is
transcribed in the Septuagint Mapiap, and in the "Jewish An-
tiquities'' of Josephus, Mapia/jLfx)}* the augmentation of the lat-
ter word having been obtained by treating the final character
as a double, or what in pointed Hebrew would be called a
dageshed letter ; and both transcriptions are, as far as respects
the vowel sounds of the name itself, considered apart from any
addition made to it, sanctioned by the authority of the New
Testament, in which it is found written either Mapia/m, or, more
usually, Mapta, with the last letter cut off, for the same reason
that a syllable was added to the second representation of the
word,b — to give it a termination suited to the nominative case
of Greek nouns of the feminine gender. That Josephus was
a priest, and well versed in the Hebrew tongue, is proved by
his own attestation. For instance, near the beginning of his
treatise against Apio he writes as follows : — " For, as I have
already said, I have translated my history of antiquity from
the sacred writings, being by descent a priest, and participat-
ing in the knowledge contained in those writings."0 And in
the preface to his Antiquities he says: — " I have taken in hands
the present work, thinking it w^ould appear worthy of parti-

* In some copies of Josephus the above name is written Mapia/uvi), in which
transcription of the original group, the additional syllable, indeed, is accom-
modated to Grecian taste in a more arbitrary manner; but still we may
observe in it the same agreement with the testimony of the Septuagint* as to
the vowel sounds of the unaugmented Hebrew designation.

1 Although the name of the mother of our Lord is more usually given in
the Greek Testament Mapca, in accommodation to the taste of Greek readers,
yet, where a direct reference is made to her name — as for instance in the pas-
sages, " Is not his mother called Mary?" — Mat. xiii. 55; " And the virgin's
name teas Mary" — Luke, i. 27 — it is therein written Mapta/u; whence it would
appear that the latter was deemed by St. Matthew and St. Luke to be, even
in a Grecian narrative, the more formal and regular representation of this
word.

e Tijv (lev "pip ApxaioXo'pdi', wairep <'/"/'\ ek tG>v icpCa> ^pap^u'nwv pieOep-
/oji/eiz/ca, 7C701/WV lepeiit ex yevous, ical ficTca^jiiW'} 7/ys (j)i\oao(f>ias T>ys- iv

cTcetvoM tois -/pd/ipani. — Flavii Josephi Opera Hvdsono edita, p. 1335.

Chap. II.] NAME OF THE SISTER OF MOSES. 123

cular attention to all that are acquainted only with Greek ;
for it will contain all our ancient history and the constitution
of our government, translated from the Hebrew writings."3
Hence we may conclude that he read the name before us in
the same manner as the priests of his day, and the few others
of his countrymen who then still retained a knowledge of the
Scriptures of the Old Testament in their orignal language.
His representation, therefore, of this name, divested of the
syllable that had been added merely for the purpose of accom-
modating its form to Grecian taste, shows that the Jews ad-
hered to their ancient pronunciation of it, corresponding with
that preserved in the Septuagint, till, at any rate, near the close
of the first century of our era ; as the work of his in which
the sister of Moses is mentioned, viz. his Antiquities, did not
come out till about A.D. 94. That, however, they subse-
quently changed one of the vowels in this pronunciation, is
rendered evident by the Masoretic pointing of the group in
question, according to which it must be read MfRYaM; and
this change, which could not have arisen from oblivion or
neirlio'ence in the case of a name so well known and belongino-

CO o o

to a person so highly respected, is to be imputed neither to
the Masorets, who have shown the strictest honesty in the
mode of annexing their vowel-marks to the Hebrew text, nor
to any of their successors in the charge of that text, of which
those grammarians likewise have proved themselves most faith-
ful guardians. The corruption, then, which has been just ex-
posed, must have originated in earlier times ; and was most
probably introduced by the Jews of the second century, to
whom many offences of a like nature will be brought home in
the course of this investigation.b But at whatever period the

a TavTtjv ce ttjv eve<nwoav e^/KC^eipiafiai 7rpa<y/iiaTeiav, vofit^wv airaai
(pavelffOai to?? EWt] a ii> a^lav GTrovh?)?. /iieWei jap Trepie^eiv airaaav 7yju Trap'
y/u7v ap-^aioXojlav, ical Tr\v htaTa^iv rod 7ro\nev/itnos eye twv Efipaiicwv

peOr]pp?fi>ev/iievr)v jpafipuiwv." — Flavii Josephi Opera Hudsono edita, pp. 1-2.
'' The sister of Moses is denominated ' Maria' in the Vulgate, whence it
would at first view appear to follow, that the Jewish corruption of her name

124 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW NAME [Chap. II.

offending party may have lived, the motive by which they
were influenced, as betrayed by the tendency of their act, was
to put an end to calling the sister of their great Lawgiver by
a name which had become odious to them, in consequence of
its having been employed to designate the mother of the cru-
cified Jesus : and to the success of this fraud the framers of
our Authorized Version have, through too great deference to
the Masoretic pointing, unconsciously contributed ; for it could
hardly, on first view of the matter, be supposed that their
' Miriam' and ' Mary' were intended for the very same deno-
mination. No further difference, surely, ought to be admitted
between the two forms of the name referred to, than what
arises from the different kinds of orthography and articulation
connected with the languages in which they have been trans-
mitted to us by inspired authors ; and under such limitation
this name should be transcribed Maryam or (through a
diaeresis authorized by the testimony of the Septuagint)
Mariam in our version of the Old Testament, and Maria in
that of the New. In this way the virtual identity of the two
transcriptions of the same name would be restored ;a and the
minor difference still remaining between them, of the final
letter removed in the application of the word to the designa-
tion of the virgin-mother of our Lord, could be accounted for

did not take place till after the time of Jerome. This inference, however, is
not conclusive; for though Jerome in general adhered closely to the instruc-
tion of his Rabbinical teachers, he may in the instance before us have felt him-
self bound to attach greater weight to tradition, combined with the testimony
of the Seventy Interpreters.

■ The expression ' restored' is above used, because in the first English
translations of the Bible the name in question was transcribed either exactly
or very nearly the same way in both Testaments. A copy of Wycliffe's ver-
sion, and another of a revision thereof, completed soon after his death by some
of his followers, have been edited at Oxford, 1850, in parallel columns, by the
joint labours of the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden; in the
former of which versions this name is written Mari, Mary, or Marye in the
Old Testament, and Marie in the New; while in the latter it is uniformly
written Marie in each Testament.

Chap. II.] OF THE SISTER OF MOSES. 125

by the greater familiarity of Jewish writers with Greek ortho-
graphy in the latter part of the first century than three centu-
ries before. The name in question, however, is sometimes,
though but rarely, written Mapiafi in the Greek Testament ;
and, therefore, if it be deemed right to restore the complete
identity of its two representations, we have the inspired autho-
rity of two of the Evangelists for transcribing it Mariam in its
later as well as in its earlier application. With regard to the
proposed correction of the English transcription of this name
in the Old Testament, there can be the less hesitation about
acceding to it, since it requires not the alteration of a single
element of the original group.a

3. The name of Abraham's first wife is represented in
Gen. xvii. 15, according to the existing state of the Hebrew text,
as having been changed from tHttf, SaRal, to PHlf, SaRaH ; the
second of which forms of the word exhibits no vowel-letter
even to this day ; and that now placed at the end of the first,
can be proved beyond a doubt not to have been originally
there, by the testimony of the Septuagint, — by the context of
the passage in which this change of name is recorded, — and
by the grammatical structure of the Hebrew language. 1st,
*H2f, in every place of its occurrence in the sacred text, is
transcribed "Eapa by the Seventy ; which clearly shows that
the Yod by which this group is now closed did not constitute
a part of it, till after their version was written. 2ndly, ac-
cording to the received interpretation of the two groups, the
first means ' my princess,' and the second ' a princess ;' so that,
it seems, the command given to Abraham in the passage con-

a I should here state that, however incorrect a transcription of ffniD I
have proved Miriam to be, I still feel bound to adhere to it, for the purpose
of preventing confusion, as long as it continues sanctioned by the Authorized
English Version of the Bible; and I observe the same rule likewise with re-
spect to every other Scriptural name whose transcription appears to require
correction; — a rule from which I never deviate, except in the case of passages
containing such transcriptions which are faulty in other respects also, and of
which I in consequence venture to submit corrections to the judgment of the
learned in neAv translations of the original sentences referred to.

126 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW NAME [Chap. II.

taining those words, was to call his wife for the future ' a
princess,' instead of ' my princess.' Surely, it is not to be sup-
posed that the Deity would have thus drawn a distinction
without a difference between the two designations. 3rdly,
tHI2f, SaR«I, is in the plural number and masculine gender ;
so that it is, in both respects, incorrectly applied to the female
in question. Had the name before its change been, in accor-
dance with the opinion which now prevails on the subject, a
compound term of which the leading part was the same as the
entire word after the change, then, in order to the first form
of this denomination signifying ' my princess,' it should have
been written, not tH£>, but ^FntP, SaRaThi. Very strong evi-
dence, therefore, is supplied by the Hebrew text itself, as well
as by the Septuagint, in proof of the spurious nature of the
Yod in the examined group.

So far the result of my investigation is, I submit, per-
fectly clear and certain : but it is much easier to prove that
a mistake has been here committed, than to arrive at its due
correction, as to either the meaning or form of Sarah's name
in its primary state; and, in this latter branch of the inquiry,
I do not lay claim to having effected more than discover a
probable solution of the difficulties in which it is involved.
The reader is requested to bear in mind the grounds already
adduced, in support of the position that Shin was at some
remote period substituted for Samek, in those words of the
Hebrew text which still continue to be read as if they were
written with the latter letter. Now the name before us, in
each of its states, belongs to this very class of words : the
written varieties of it begin respectively with Sh, yet have
always, as far back as tradition reaches, been pronounced as
if they commenced with an S ; to which pronunciation they
have been hm.iv clearly restricted by means of a diacritical
point attached to their initial element since the introduction
of the Masoretic system ; while the Syriac transcriptions of
both forms of it, in every place of their occurrence in the
Peshitah, still up to the present moment begin with a Samek.

Chap. II.] OF THE FIRST WIFE OF ABRAHAM. 127

The root of this name is universally agreed to be a verb admit-
ting of the different forms Sur, Sarah, or Sarar, which all of
them commence, in pronunciation at least, with an S, and even
yet are written, as well as their derivatives, with a Samek, for
the significations ' to depart,' — ' to be perverse,' — ' to wander,'
— or any thence derived : but, where the context requires for
them meanings connected with ' having dominion,' or ' acting
the part of a sovereign,' they now begin with a Shin, though,
as I have already shown, they for such meanings still display
in some instances the former letter ;— a circumstance which
fully accords with the supposition that originally they were
written therewith for every acceptation, and exhibit uni-
formly, as their initial element, the letter with whose power
they are to this day in all instances uttered. The difference
between the two articulations was probably not very marked
among a people who have a tendency to aspirate nearly all
their letters ; so the interchange of the Hebrew characters
appropriated to those articulations may have taken place in
some roots through inadvertence, and have been then ex-
tended, for the sake of uniformity, to all the words connected
with those roots. But, in the case before us, the substitution
can be distinctly traced to national vanity. The Jewish scribes
would have it— and on this point the guardians of the Sama-
ritan text entirely agreed with them — that the wife of their
great forefather, Abraham, was distinguished by a characteristic
name, which, before as well as after its change, included in its
meaning the notion of ' a princess.' This object they effected,
by restricting the root of the name to significations connected
with royal dominion and rank, through the expedient just
described ; and by making a corresponding alteration in the
orthography of the name itself in both its states. On the
other hand, to clear the passage under examination from the
effect of this clumsy artifice, which has rendered it very nearly
unmeaning, we must restore to the root of the name all its
significations ; and then, selecting that for its primary form
which the context requires, we shall find that the bearing of the

M

128 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW NAME' [Chap. II.

command given to Abraham was to call his wife no longer by a
denomination meaning ' an emigrant/ but by one denoting
' a princess ;' and the commanded change will thus come out
quite intelligible, and perfectly in keeping with the known his-
tory of the female in question.

But it maybe asked, how could the two forms of this name
be distinguished in writing, without some such alteration of one
of them as that made by the insertion of a vowel-letter at the
end of the first ? To this I reply, that although two of the
elements of those forms are the same, yet the third might be
different, which would sufficiently distinguish them. Certainty,
indeed, is no longer attainable, as to what was the letter of the
first form whose place is now occupied by the interpolated
Yod; but I think I can furnish a clue to its recovery, with great
probability of a correct result. 1st. As ^apa gives, by the tes-
timony of the Seventy, the sound of this form, the final element
of the group must have been an aspirate, — a condition which
limits it to one of four Hebrew letters. 2ndly. This aspirate
must constitute a termination suited to the feminine gender ;
which further reduces the number to two. And 3rdly. It should
be different from the termination of the second form, He ;
which confines it to the single letter Haleph. Hence it would
appear that the two original forms of Sarah's name were N1D,
SaRaH and HID, SaRaH. But what may have been the pre-
cise difference of their pronunciation can no longer be deter-
mined ; as the Haleph has ceased to be a sounded letter, except
when used as a mater lectionis. All we know of the power of
this aspirate is, that it was stronger than that ofHe; so that,
very possibly, it may have drawn the emphasis with it, and
have made the difference between the sounds of the two forms
chiefly such as would be expressed in modern accentuation, by
' Sarah' for the first form, and ' Sarah' for the second. And
this difference maj be well conceived to accord with that con-
veyed through the Greek transcriptions of the two forms "2apa
and 'S.appa ; as signs of accents did not come into general use
till after the Septuagint was written ; and. even if they had,

Chap. II.] OF THE FIRST WIFE OF ABRAHAM. 129

the ancient acute accent, unlike the modern one, did not indi-
cate any lengthening of, or stress on, the syllable over which it
was placed. If, then, the Seventy wished to express that the
emphasis was to be thrown back from the second to the first
syllable, they could hardly have done it in any other way than
by doubling the middle letter — an operation which in their
orthography had the effect of lengthening the initial syllable.
And that such was actually their object, and not the rendering-
close the vowel of that syllable, — the only remaining conceiv-
able effect of the duplication in question, — is made apparent
by the rough power of JResh, the Hebrew representative of the
doubled letter, which is itself scarcely ever pronounced dou-
ble, and never admits immediately before it a close vowel.

The alteration of the initial letter in the example under
discussion could not be expressed by means of Grecian ortho-
thography, which supplies no letter of Sh power. The only
clue, therefore, we have to the age of this alteration is, that
it did not creep into the sacred text till after the Peshitah was
written ; as it has not therein made its appearance. For the
very opposite reason, the remainder of the corruption adopted
in this instance must be older than the version just specified,
in which the primary form of Sarah's name is constantly ex-
hibited wj;-CD, SaRal ; although there is abundance of internal
evidence to prove that version again older than the first vocali-
zation of the original text. To account for this seeming dis-
crepance, I have to observe, that in case of un vocalized Hebrew
words, erroneous supplements of the vowel portion of their
sounds might come into use, before a reader was tied down to
those mispronunciations through the instrumentality of vowel-
letters ; so that there is no inconsistency in the conclusion
just come to, that the vocal corruption of the final syllable of
the form in question commenced among the Jews, in their
mode of reading, before it did in that of their writing this
form. Accordingly, we find this corruption to be not only
more ancient than the Peshitah, but even of greater age than
the works of Philo Judseus, which plainly indicate that it was

m 2

130 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW NAME [Chap. II.

already prevalent in his time, or during the reign of the Ro-
man emperor, Caligula. His statement relative to this subject,
which gives a view of it not essentially different from that in
later times maintained, is delivered by him in his treatise re-
specting the change of Scriptural names, to the following ef-
fect:— "Zapa, indeed, is interpreted ' my authority [or rank] of
princess;' but 2a/>pa, 'a princess.'" And the difference he
endeavours to make out in this case is, that " the former [title]
is the symbol of a special quality ; but the latter, of a general
one."a This quotation not only serves to push the origin of
the specified corruption farther back than the date of the Pe-
shitah, but also contributes to establishing another point of
some importance in reference to the history of the Jews. The
two forms of Sarah's name are here retained in the original
writing of the author, for the purpose of more clearly showing
that he took them immediately from the Septuagint. On the
other hand, he must have received his interpretation of them
only at second hand, and not have derived it from immediate
examination of the sacred text. For, according to the signi-
fication he himself attaches to the first of these forms, it must
have been pronounced in Hebrewr with the vowel / at its ter-
mination ; and, consequently, its written expression in Greek
should have been closed with an iota. The sound, then, and
the meaning he assigns to this form of the name, are directly
at variance with each other ; and the circumstance of his not
having perceived this glaring inconsistency in his representa-
tion of the matter affords a very convincing proof, that not-
withstanding his plausible pretensions to skill in Hebrew, lie
was in reality utterly ignorant of that language. But he was
the most Learned, or, at any rate, one of the most learned,
among such of the -lews of his day as did not belong to the
sacerdotal order. The ignorance, therefore, betrayed by him

;1 epfiTjveverat 2o/>a pdv, apxq fiov "Zappa Be upxovaa. to ftev odv Trpore-
pov eldiKTJs av/ifioXov ape-rrji iari- to St Sorepnv, yeviicr}?. Philonis Judcvi Opera,
Pariaiis edita, A. D. 1640, p. 1056.

Chap. II.] OF THE FIRST WIFE OF ABRAHAM. 131

in this instance concurs powerfully with proofs derived from
other sources, to show that even the very best informed of the
Jewish laity must have ceased to read the Scriptures of the Old
Testament in the original tongue, — and so have left room for
the introduction by the priests of the misreading in question,
— before the time when he flourished ; that is, before the
middle of the first century of our era. To turn now to the
writings of Josephus, — who, though he lived in a later age than
Philo, must have been perfectly aware of the nature of this cor-
ruption from his acquaintance with the original text, — his mode
of dealing with it is very remarkable. He could not have
written the form in question of Sarah's name Sa^cu, without
giving his sanction to what he well knew was a misrepresen-
tation of its sound ; and he could not, on the other hand, make
it ^apa, without condemning his fellow-priests for the unwar-
rantable liberty they had then already got into the practice of
taking with it, To avoid, or rather to evade, both sides of this
dilemma, he passed over this form of her name in total silence ;
and everywhere applied to her designation the second form
2a/?/?a, even in relating the parts of her history which preceded
her change of name. I have here only further to add, in re-
ference to the primary form of her name, that the circumstance
of its being written in the Peshitah «-.;£D, SaRal, tends to show,
as far as one example goes, that the authors of the first Syriac
version framed it quite independently of the Septuagint, but
not independently of the mode of reading proper names in the
unvocalized Hebrew text, which was in vogue among the Jew-
ish priests and scribes who then had the charge of that text.
In fine, I would venture to propose having the two forms

o o o

of the examined name written 'Httf and PHt^ in the text of
the Hebrew Bible, with the insertions in the margin of *OD
opposite the former, and of D opposite the initial element of
the latter, in each place of their respective occurrences. This
mode of presenting the two forms has the advantage of keep-
ing the recommended alterations quite distinct from the ex-
isting state of the sacred text, and of so leaving it to the dis-

132 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

cretion of the reader, whether lie will adopt them or not. In
our English version, the present transcription of the second
form, ' Sarah,' requires no correction ; but instead of the first,
I would recommend ' Sarah' in the body of an amended trans-
lation, and put opposite to it in the margin, in each place of
its occurrence, 'Heb. voc. SaraV* Here I must admit that
the insertion of an accent in an English work intended for
general use is objectionable; and I would readily abandon it,
if any better mode of expressing the difference I have arrived
at between the two forms could be obtained. Still further, I
grant that I may possibly have misunderstood the bearing of
the ancient Greek testimony on which I have chiefly grounded
my correction of the first form ; but the reasons adduced in
support of that correction are, I submit, entitled to some
weight ; and it surely is preferable to adopt a new reading,
which is probably, though not certainly, right, rather than
persevere in adherence to an old one, which has been to a cer-
tainty proved wrong.

4. The leader of the Israelites, who is called Joshua in our
version, has his name at present written in the Hebrew Bible
JWim, YeHOShUaH But, most unquestionably, this word,
in the original state of the text, was )}W ; and, had it been
fairly vocalized, it would now appear there in the form JW,
YeShU«H, — the Hebrew for Jesus. Of this, abundant and de-
cisive proofs can be given. In the first place, the Vatican
and Alexandrian copies of the Septuagint, however they may
differ with respect to several other denominations, never do
bo as to this one, but uniformly agree in presenting to us, as

in

■ When I recommend placing at the commencement of a marginal note
the English Bible, ' Heb. voc.,' or ' Heb. Cop.,' or ' Heb.,' I mean, by
the first of" those introductions, the old Hebrew vocalizers or interpolators of
vowel-letters in the Hebrew text; by the second, the Hebrew copyists; and
as to the third, which 1 make use of only where the original text is uncor-
rupted, I employ it in the same sense as it is already found applied in our
Authorized Version.

Chap. II.] NAME OF JOSHUA. 133

its translation, in every place of its occurrence, Ir/aow,8 — the
very same word by which our Lord is designated in the orioi.
ginal Scriptures of the New Testament, In the second place,
both names are constantly and uniformly rendered in the
Peshitah by one and the same group, vx o • ■ (agreeing letter
for letter with JW), in which, I grant, the vowel part of the
first syllable is left undetermined ;b but, as the Greek Testa-
ment shows us, beyond all doubt, that this Syriac group was
read, not Yoshua, but Yeshua, when applied to our Saviour,
it certainly must have been so read in its other application
also, the same written name necessarily implying the same
spoken one, where no credible evidence is expressly opposed
to the application of this principle. In the third place, to the
perfect agreement of the principal copies of the Septuagint
with each other and with the Peshitah on this point, is to be
added the testimony inadvertently given by the interpolators

a In 1 Chron. vii. 27, Joshua's name is written Uaove in the Vatican, and
IrjfTove in the Alexandrian copy of the Septuagint; but there is some reason
to think the passage corrupted in both copies, and, at any rate, neither repre-
sentation of it gives the slightest sanction to pronouncing an 0 in the first syl-
lable of this name.

b If the secondary vocalization of the Peshitah by means of points could
be relied on, I might avail myself of its support also, to prove the vowel
sound in question to be E in the above group when applied as a name to Jo-
shua, as well as when used to denote our Lord; but that vocalization is, I
admit, quite unworthy of credit; and, accordingly, it is stigmatized by
J. D. Michaelis in these terms: — " Vetere Testamento Syriaco si quis uti vo-
luerit, hoc statim ante omnia statuat punctorum vocalium nullam omnino esse
auctoritatem." — Grammatica Syriaca, p. 25. Moreover, with regard to this
pointing, Bishop Walton further gives us the following information: — " Cum
Novo Testamento habuerunt etiam Syri et Vetus Syriace versum, ejusdem
cum Novo antiquitatis, quod, licet in privatorum quorundam bibliothecis
Europaeis extaret manu scriptum, typis tamen primum edidit Michael de Jay
[Anno Domini 1645] in splendido suo opere Heptaglotto Parisiensi, usus
prsecipue, in hac re, opera clarissimi viri Gabrielis Sionita? Maronitce, S. T. D.,
qui primus illud punctavit, et Latinam ejusdem interpretationem adjunxit:
antea enim MSS. omnia punctis vocalibus, vel prorsus destituta erant, vel si
in una dictione punctum aliquod vocale notatum esset, in aliis oral omis-
suin." — Prole<jomc?ia, p. 89.

134 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

of the text themselves : for, though they have corrupted the
name of the immediate successor of Moses in every place
where his history is directly recorded, they have, in spite of
all their cunning, overlooked this word in Neh. viii. 17, where
it is only incidentally mentioned, and have suffered it to re-
main there written with a fair, though indeterminate vocaliza-
tion, Jfi2^, — a group which, I have just shown, must be read
Feshua, and which is actually pointed for this pronunciation
by the Masorets. I do not see how the corruption of this
name by the vocalizers of the text with matres lectionis could
be more decisively proved by means of mere human testi-
mony : but I have now, in the fourth place, to produce the
evidence of inspired writers to the same effect. Both St. Luke,
in Acts, vii. 45, and St. Paul, in Heb. iv. 8, have translated the
Hebrew group under examination, not Iwo-ow, but lyaovs. II
it be said, with respect to the former author, that, writing
chiefly for persons who were acquainted with the Old Testa-
ment only through its Greek version, he quoted this name as
he found it in the Septuagint, without pledging himself for its
expressing, as nearly as the difference of the two languages
admitted, the right pronunciation of the original word, I do
not think that the force of the natural inference from his tes-
timony can be thus got rid of. The individual whose name
is rendered in our version Joshua, got that name by divine
appointment: we can hardly, therefore, suppose the correct
transcription of it a matter of no importance, or that St. Luke
would not have been restrained, by the influence of the Holy
Spirit, from conveying to us an erroneous impression of its
sound. But, however this may be, the objection is at all events
utterly futile, in respect to the evidence of St. Paul in the
passage above specified ; as he is.there drawing a parallel be-
tween the Jesus who led the people of God into the land of
Canaan, and our Saviour, who is to conduct us to an infinitely
superior place of rest; — a parallel which depends in part upon
the identity of the names of the two leaders compared toge-
ther; and it is utterly inadmissible, as well as absolutely in-

Chap. II.] NAME OF JOSHUA. 135

credible, that an inspired author could allow into his writings
any misrepresentation on a point essentially connected with
his argument. The accumulation of proofs here brought to-
gether, though it does not amount to strict demonstration, yet
is calculated, I submit, to produce as thorough a conviction in
the human mind as any demonstration whatever. Thus, — to
pass over the case in regard to other inspired writers, — the
apparent contradiction between Moses and St. Paul, as to the
vowel part of the initial syllable of a name recorded by both
of them, is fully accounted for ; and this blemish will, I trust,
be removed ere long from our English Bible.

The motive of the Jewish scribes for corrupting the sacred
text, in the instance just brought to light, may be easily per-
ceived. Besides their desire to throw discredit upon the Sep-
tuagint in the passages in which it gives support to Christian
views, as far as they could effect this object without incurring
too much risk of detection, they had the further inducement
of divesting a prominent and favourite character in their his-
tory of a name that had become hateful to them, in conse-
quence of the extension of its use to the designation of our
Lord. But they can be convicted, as may be here stated ex
abundantly of the fraud of which they were guilty in this par-
ticular instance, even upon the evidence of writers of their
own nation. Both Philo and Josephus constantly and uni-
formly employ the word lyjoov? (and never even once Iwaous),
to designate the successor of Moses ; and although the former
may have borrowed this transcription of the Hebrew name
under examination from the Septuagint, yet the latter, who
was educated for the priesthood, and intimately conversant
with the Scriptures of the Old Testament in their original
tongue, must be considered as having derived it immediately
from that source. While both authors, then, concur in prov-
ing the vowel part of the sound of this name to have been,
since their respective times, corrupted by the Jews, the testi-
mony upon this point of one of them at least is independent
of that previously yielded to the same effect by the Scptua-

136 EXAMINATION OF GROUP DENOTING [Chap. II.

print ; and, being given yery near the end of the first century,
serves to put a limit to the antiquity of this corruption, closely
agreeing with that which can, on other grounds, be affixed to
the remoteness of the period when vowel-letters were first in-
troduced into the sacred text.

The matres lectionis appear to have been interpolated
somewhat later in the Samaritan than in the Hebrew edition
of the Pentateuch, as they are, in a slight degree, more copi-
ously used there ; and, although the vocalizers of the two
editions were deadly enemies, they participated in one com-
mon sentiment of hatred to Christianity : it is, therefore, no
Avay surprising that the Jewish corruption of Joshua's a name
should be found adopted in the Samaritan text. The two
misrepresentations, however, of the subject do not entirely
agree : the Samaritan evidence makes both names of the im-
mediate successor of Moses exactly the same, and thereby ob-
viously stultifies itself. The passage, in Num. xiii. 17, relating
to the point in question, is exhibited, as follows, in the Sama-
ritan record: —

" And Moses called Yehoslma, the son of Nun, Yehoshua:" that
is, Moses gave this Israelite a new name, which was exactly
the same as his old one. The bare inspection of this part of
the Samaritan text is sufficient to show that it must have been
tampered with, and that, too, in a very rash and precipitate
ii i;i nner; as is not unusual with those who act fraudulently
and by stealth.

In fine, 1 would write the Hebrew group just examined,
jntPIIT, with the Masoretic little circle over the two letters
fraudulently inserted therein ; and I would transcribe this

" Although I have proved that the Hebrew name of the individual above
alluded to was, in the original state of the text, written for the pronunoiation
Yeshva, I am obliged to call him Joshua; according to the rule I have, as
already stated, laid down, of adhering to the nomenclature of our Authorized
Version, for the purpose of avoiding confusion.

Chap. II.] A NAMESAKE OF JOSHUA'S COMPANION. 137

group into English Yeshua, instead of Joshua, changing the
first vowel on the grounds above given, and the initial letter
for the same reason as that of the name Jesus, — on account of
the altered power of J, which in English orthography is no
longer used, as at first, for the semi-consonant connected with
7, but has become a soft G.

5. One of the sons of Hezron, who was namesake of
Joshua's companion, Caleb, is mentioned seven times in the
second chapter of the first book of Chronicles, viz., in verses
9, 18, 19, 42, 46, 48, and 49. In the Hebrew text, as it stands
at present, his name is written in the first of those verses
^2TO, KeLUBI, but in the remaining six, without any vocaliza-
tion, 2/3, KaLeB ; while it is transcribed in the Septuagint
Xa\e/3, in all the seven verses ; and in the Peshitah, ^Ad,
KaLeB, in all of them in which it is preserved unmutilated.
But in the latter version the rendering of this name is ob-
viously corrupted in the first of the enumerated places, being
there exhibited under the form . t o\co; SaLKI ; and, in the last
two, it is, along with the verses that contained it, altogether
lost. Upon a review of these several designations of one and
the same word, there cannot, I submit, be a doubt, but that
the Waw and Yod, in the first of them, are interpolations of
the old vocalizers of the sacred text. The evidence to this
effect of the Hebrew record, even when taken by itself, is very
nearly conclusive. It cannot be rationally supposed, that an
author of ordinary discretion — to say nothing of his being
inspired — would change his mind, as to the proper sound of
a name, while he was writing the eight verses intervening be-
tween the 9th and 18th ; or that, having, by the time that he
came to the latter verse, thus altered his opinion, he would
overlook, and fail to correct an error committed by him so
shortly before. Neither can it be allowed, that the original
compiler of the Chronicles all along held Kelubi to be the right
pronunciation of this name, but that, having written it at full
length on its first occurrence, he thought it sufficient after-
wards to give merely the consonants of the word. This mode

138 EXAMINATION OF THE PRIMARY [Chap. II.

of evading the obvious inference from the discrepant Hebrew
exhibitions of the name, in the existing state of the sacred text,
is refuted by the whole of the Greek, and all the unmutilated
part of the Syriac testimony on the subject ; and besides, the
Septuagint directly attests that the specified vowel-letters were
not introduced into the original group, in the first, no more
than in any other of the quoted places of its occurrence, till
after the time when that version was composed. This exam-
ple affords a striking instance of the fallibility of the Masorets,
according to whose theory the 1 and ^ in "0 173, ought to be
looked upon as quiescents (the matres lectionis having been
silenced by them to make way for vowel-signs of a different
kind); and they treated accordingly the former vowel-letter,
but mistook the latter for a sounded consonant, and have
pointed the entire group in such a way as to make it be read
KcLUBaY. A limit to the age of this additional error can be
derived from the works of Jerome, who, under the direction of
the more learned Jews* of his day, transcribed this group Ca-
luhi ; as may be seen in the Vulgate, which does not in its
present state vary here from his edition of it. Our English
translators, however, have adhered to the combined errors of
both sets of vocalizers, with respect to the above name, by ren-
dering it Clielubai in the place in question. In the Hebrew
text this name should, according to the notation I have adopted,
be there written °2°l7D, and left unaltered in the rest of the
enumerated verses ; while, in an English version, it should be
transcribed Kaleb in all the seven places, with the marginal
note annexed to it in the first of them, ' Heb. voc. Kelubi]

(i. Joshua's first name yttHfJ, HaWSheaH, affords me an op-
portunity of bringing under notice an error of the Masorets,
of an opposite kind to that exposed in the preceding article,
in mistaking a syllabic or consonantal sign for a vowel-letter,
or, according to their theory, for a quiescent attendant on a
vowel. The Greek transcription of this name occurs, I believe,
only twice in the Septuagint, but the Alexandrian and Vatican
eopies perfectly agree in exhibiting it Avori m each place;

Chap. II.] HEBREW NAME OF JOSHUA. 139

there can scarcely, therefore, be a doubt, but that the group
which the framers of that version had in those places to tran-
scribe was the same as it is now, J/tfiHPT, it having been read by
themHaWSeH;a whereas the prophet's name which they rendered
CI aye must in their time have been J/J^n. After the Hebrew
text was vocalized, the two groups, although still really different
on account of the different powers of their ambiguous element
Waw, became apparently the same, and the Jews most proba-
bly soon availed themselves of this ambiguity to represent
HOShmH as the true sound of the former name, and thereby cast
a reflection on the accuracy of the Seventy Interpreters. Their
actual practice, however, of this fraud I am unable to trace
earlier than the age of Jerome, who has transcribed this name
Osee, no doubt under the guidance of his Hebrew teachers, by
which alone he could have been induced to neglect the very
best evidence to be had upon the subject, as also to confound
the name in question with that of a prophet, both being writ-
ten by him exactly in the same manner. This confusion of
the two names became in later times more firmly established
by means of their Masoretic pointing, which indicates that they
should in common be read HOSheaH. But the Septuagint, by
being restored to its proper authority, disengages us from this
error, and shows that Joshua's first name should be transcribed,
in English orthography, Hawshea, and that of the prophet,
Hoshea ; while the corresponding difference, in the Hebrew
groups, is again made visible, and their apparent identity re-
moved, by writing them, in accordance with the notation I
have adopted, J7BHP! and JWM. In our Authorized Version,
the former name is transcribed Oshea, and the latter, Hosea ;
a comparison of which with their Hebrew originals exposes, in
addition to the Masoretic blunder, two inconsistencies : a letter

a The Pathac furtivum before a guttural at the end of a Hebrew word is
now pronounced rapidly and indistinctly ; and the sound it expresses was most
probably, in like manner, short and indistinct, at the period when the Septua-
gint was written; as this sound is sometimes therein denoted by e, and at
other times, as in the above instance, passed over without any notice.

140 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

to correspond with PI is omitted in the first transcription, but
inserted in the second ; while, on the other hand, the IP is re-
presented by Sh in the first, but simply by S in the second.

7. In the Hebrew text, as it stands at present, the desig-
nation of the prophet Isaiah is constantly exhibited inu^,
YeShaH YaHU, and that of the prophet Jeremiah almost as con-
stantly 1iTO"P, YeEeMYaHU ; while both the Septuagint and
the Peshitah concur in attesting that the Waw now terminat-
ing each of those groups formed no part of their original
composition. For, whether applied to the above prophets or
other individuals, they are found always transcribed respec-
tively, in the earlier of those versions, Edam? and lepe/jaas (or
lepe/jua); and in the later, U^-»1, HeShaHYaH, and U^']?
HeReMYaH.a In corroboration of this powerful junction of in-
dependent testimonies, it is to be observed that no subsequent
version I can find — not even any of the spurious Greek ones
of the second century, as far as can be known from their ex-
tant remains15 — supports the present Hebrew termination of
these names ; so that in those two instances the first vocal-
izers of the sacred text completely failed, though in most
others they were but too successful, in their efforts to give the
translation oftheLXX. an appearance of incorrectness that
did not, in reality, belong to it. Here, then, the common
sense of mankind has always been with me, not only as to the
adventitious, but also as to the fraudulent nature of the above

■ In a few passages of the Peshitah, the Syriac rendering of Jeremiah's
name is different from what it is above given, but is not, in any instance,
terminated by a Waw. In Jer. xxv. 3, this name is at present written, in
this version, \u-^d\ HcMeBToH; in I Chron. v. 24, ] > JoQ-j), IleDUMYaH;
and in Neh. xii. 1, ]±D\±, HcZcMoH. The first of these variations is ob-
viously to be attributed to an accidental transposition of two letters ; and the
second, to the confounding of two very similar Hebrew characters, ~) and "T,
combined with an erroneous vocalization of a name which had, in conse-
quence of this mistake, become one unknown to the translators. For the
third corruption I am unable to account.

h In Montfaucon's collection of extant remains of the Greek versions of
the second century, or of Origen's notes upozi those versions, the name of

Chap. II.] NAMES OF ISAIAH AND JEREMIAH. 141

termination : for, while the rejection of it in every version
shows that it never was deemed genuine, it could not, on the
other hand, have been laid to the account of casual errors of
copyists, connected as it is with names of such importance and
of such frequent occurrence in Scripture. And, what renders
the evidence thus arrived at more cogent on my side of the
question, is, that it is extorted, as well from Greek translators
of the second century, who ventured as far as they could in
support of the misrepresentations concocted by the Jews of
their day, as from writers of later times who were strongly
prejudiced in favour of the ' Hebrew verity,' as it has been
termed, and who, besides, had not the remotest conception
how or when the fraud virtually attested by them was com-
mitted. The difficulty of this case, which has hitherto proved
insurmountable, must have sorely perplexed Jerome, and,
afterwards, the several Protestant framers of versions ; since
it compelled them, in rejecting the final syllable under exami-
nation, to violate their leading principle of placing the autho-
rity of the Hebrew Bible, beyond comparison above that of
all its translations, even when conjointly opposed to it. Now,
however, the source of their embarrassment is removed ; and
the Septuagint, as well as subsequent versions, is found, in the
instances under consideration, to be at variance, not at all
with the original text, but only with a spurious addition to
it, made by uninspired vocalizers for the dishonest purpose
already stated. It cannot be urged in their defence, that they

Isaiah, I believe, does not occur ; but that of Jeremiah is frequently to be
met with, written in just the same way as in the Septuagint. Thus we find
in this collection the following note on Jer. xxxii. 2 : — S'OSn irPXD~),,,1. O. ical
lepefu'a? ^ II. o tt/>o0>Jt?;?. The Hebrew part of this extract was supplied by
Montfaucon from modern books : the rest of it was taken by him — to use his
own words — "ex Manuscripto illo antiquissimo R R Patrum Jesuitarum
Collegii Ludovici Magni." The latter part informs us that, while the name
lepefxia? is written in O, that is, in the Septuagint, without any translation
of the word N^H subjoined in this place (as is, indeed, confirmed by the
evidence of both the Vatican and Alexandrian copies), there was added in
n, that is, in all the other Greek versions, n 7rpo(firjTt]v after lepc/tuis.

142 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

may possibly have interpolated the Waw, in those instances,
in order to distinguish the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah from
other individuals of respectively the same appellations ; since
the context of itself sufficiently marks this distinction, in
respect to each name, and the interpolation does not, in the
case of either of them : for, as to the first, it is everywhere
found with the mater lectionis in question at its termination,
no matter to whom it may be applied ; and, with regard to
the second, the Hebrew designation of Jeremiah the prophet
is, in some places, as in Jer. xxvii. 1, and Dan. ix. 2, exhibited
without the additional letter ; while, on the other hand, this
appendage is retained in 2 Kings, xxiii. 31, 1 Chron. xii. 13,
and Jer. xxxv. 3, where three of his namesakes are referred
to, and omitted in 1 Chron. v. 24, xii. 4, xii. 10, and Neh. x. 3,
where four more of them are mentioned. In short, the
analysis of this subject shows clearly, that it was intended to
insert the Waw at the end of both names, no matter to what
individuals they were applied, in every place of their occur-
rence in the Hebrew text, for the purpose of throwing discre-
dit on the Greek representation of their sounds in the Septua-
jiint : and the omissions must be ascribed to the circumstance
of their having been overlooked, from the hurry with which
this operation was conducted through fear of detection. The
clumsiness of the execution, so completely in accordance with
the fraudulence of the design, can, I will venture to assert, be
accounted for no otherwise, than by the explanation just
given.

With regard to the initial letter of Isaiah's designation in
Hebrew, the Peshitah determines nothing, as Haleph and Yod
are frequently interchanged in Syriac orthography ; but the
Greek transcription of this word plainly shows, that it must
have commenced with a guttural, in the copies of the original
text consulted by the framers of the Septuagint. Whether
the variation, thus indicated, be due to the circumstance of
the exchanged letters having formerly produced, in rapid
utterance, no sensible difference of sound, or from whatever

Chap. II.] NAMES OF ISAIAH AND JEREMIAH. 143

other cause it may have arisen, we should not be at all war-
ranted in its adoption ; for, although the Septuagint is our
only secure guide for the vowels of Scriptural names, the
Hebrew text must still, where there is no internal evidence of
corruption, be referred to, as the main standard for their con-
sonantal elements. The composers, therefore, of our autho-
rized translation decided rightly in dealing with the group in
question, as one headed by Yod ; but it seems very strange
that they should have denoted the power of this initial by a
vowel, as no Hebrew word was ever written with a mater lec-
tionis for its first letter. In the Vulgate, indeed, the prophet's
name is translated Isaias; but if Jerome meant to express the
syllable Yi, he could do so in Latin no otherwise than by the
vowel /; whereas English orthography affords not any excuse
for a like deviation from the Hebrew in our version. Admit-
ting that Je was formerly, and consequently that Ye is at pre-
sent, the right commencement, in English writing, of the
second of the names here examined, Ye must also be the pro-
per commencement of the first : for, as the two begin with a
common syllable in Hebrew, they ought evidently to do so in
every translation likewise. I would, then, write the names in
question in the Hebrew text with the Masoretic marks of re-
jection over the fraudulently interpolated letters, as follows,

o o

liT^t^, and liTET ; and transcribe them into English Yeshaiah
and Yeremiali. Their strict transcriptions, indeed, are Yeshah-
yah and Yeremyah ; but Yeshaiah differs not at all, in the
sound it expresses, from the first of these, while Yeremiali
differs from the second only by a cliseresis that is in common
use ; and the latter forms of the two words appear to be pre-
ferable, on account of their receding less from those at present
employed. The translation given in the English New Testa-
ment of the first name is, of course, not affected by these ob-
servations, nor does it require any correction.

With a view to investigating interpolations of a certain
class to be found in the Hebrew designations of names in the
present state of the sacred text, it is necessary that I should

N

144 ADVENTITIOUS NATURE OF THE [Chap. II.

here premise some remarks upon the Nun paragogic, as it has
been termed ; — a letter occasionally placed after a vocalic
Yod, or Waw, at the end of Hebrew groups, to indicate a
fuller utterance of their final syllable, and, through a delivery
thus rendered more emphatic, to communicate greater impres-
siveness to their meaning ; though, from a more frequent and
indiscriminate application subsequently made of it in Shemitic
dialects, its use in them appears to have ceased to produce
the second effect, and to have been confined to the first one
of merely strengthening the pronunciation of a mater lectionis
at the termination of a word. The influence of the character,
in this position of it in Hebrew writing, on the sound of the
vowel with which it is connected, is attested by the Masorets ;
as they have made it draw the accent with it ; and accent in
their system, just as in modern ones, implies emphasis.3 Upon
this point there is no reason to question their evidence ; and,
granting it to be correct, the inference is inevitable, that the
paragogic Nun is not an original element of the sacred text ;
as it cannot be supposed to have had existence there, sooner
t li;u I the vowel-letters, to the expression of whose sounds it
is subservient, as far as showing when they are to be pro-
nounced with peculiar force. This conclusion will be found
strongly borne out by a comparison of the Jewish and Sama-
ritan editions of the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch ; in each
of which several instances are to be seen of verbs having the
letter under consideration annexed to them, though they are
not so terminated in the other. Of these instances a few are
subjoined ; and their number might be increased to any extent
that could be desired.

" In the systems of known antiquity, the accent was not accompanied with
any stress of voice; as it affected not the length of the syllables to which it
was affixed, the accented ones being often found short. But in the Masoretic
system of accentuation, just as in those of the present day, the accented
vowels are always long; — a circumstance which tends obviously to indicate
the comparative modernness of this system.

Chap.IL] NUN PABAGOGICIN THE HEBREW TEXT. 145

Geil. XX. 9, l^tiT, in the Jewish edition, is written jlJ^iT1 in the Samaritan.

13,— wn iwn

xli. 55,— WD jltfi^n

xiii. 20,— ^nn ptfon

1.17,— noMfi paan

Ex. iii. 21,— l^n p^n

iv. 9— ]WQW tyftW

xiv. 13,— ison p^Din

xv. 14,— ^rjn> irj-n

xvii. 2,— ]1DJn ^D^n

xviii. 22,— IRa"1 pRO1

xx. 23,— pawn wri

It is unnecessary to pursue this illustration of the subject any
further ; as the adduced examples are abundantly sufficient
to establish the adventitious nature of the letter in question,
each of them supplying the evidence of the edition of this text
without this letter, against its genuineness in that which has
it. There is, then, very nearly a certainty of the paragogic
Nun being a spurious element of the Hebrew Scriptures ; and,
as it is therein employed in subservience to the matres lectio-
nis, the great probability is, that it was inserted in the sacred
text by the same party as they were, namely by the first vo-
calizers of that text.

It accords with this representation of the matter, that, in
proportion as Shemitic writers became more familiar with
vowel-letters, they made a freer use of the paragogic Nun: as,for
instance, it occurs oftener in the Samaritan than in the Jewish
copies of the Hebrew text, and still oftener in the Peshitah and
the Chaldee Targums. This letter, indeed, is so much more
frequently employed in the latter records, that it is to be seen
in them constantly and uniformly annexed to inflexions of
verbs to which it is but occasionally appended in the former
ones. Thus, the inflexions for the second and third persons
masculine plural of the future tense in the several conjugations
or voices of Shemitic verbs, which sometimes end in the sound

n 2

146 EXAMINATION OF THE NAME [Chap. II.

of U and at other times in that of UN, as they are to be read
in the Jewish and Samaritan Bibles, always terminate in the
latter sound in the Syriac and Chaldee dialects ; in conse-
quence of which the JSfun paragogic fails to communicate to
"them in those dialects the impressiveness it occasions in He-
brew ; as an addition to words made indiscriminately, what-
ever influence it may exert on the force of their utterance,
can have no bearing on their sense. The subservience of the
letter in question, in the imagination of Shemitic writers, to
whatever mater lectionis it was placed after, is illustrated by
the use of the anuswara in Sanscrit orthography ; — a point
which is conceived by the Pundit to connect the articulation
of N or NG with the sound of the vowel over which it is
placed, without making the combination thus produced a syl-
lable, or taking it out of the class of mere vowels. And, as
the Syriac system of writing reached India, at the latest, in
the fifth century through the hands of the Nestorian Chris-
tians, it is very possible that this peculiarity of the Sanscrit
system may have taken its rise from the corresponding one
under examination, whose use in Shemitic writing it contri-
butes to explain. But however this may be, a clearer illus-
tration of the nature of the paragogic Nun, and one supplied
by a practice more directly traceable to the Syriac, and thence
to the Hebrew employment of this very letter, as its origin, is
presented to our observation in the mode pursued of reading
pointed Arabic texts. In such documents the vowel-marks at
the end of words are sometimes doubled, to intimate that the
vowels so denoted are to be pronounced in a more forcible
manner. But in what is their increased strength of utterance
made to consist? Simply in articulating Nun immediately
after their respective sounds. Hence this process has been
denominated nunnation—Si nana! that might, perhaps, be still
more appropriately given to the operation here investigated;
in which the expression of the Nun is not, as in the case just
cited, confined chiefly to its pronunciation, but is also made
directly to appear in the writing. I shall now adduce three

Chap.IL] OF THE FATHER-IN-LAW OF MOSES. 147

examples of this nunnation, — one of them from the Peshitah;
another, from the Peshitah and both editions of the Hebrew
text ; and the third, from the same Syriac version and the
Jewish edition of the text.

8. The name of the father-in-law of Moses is exhibited, in
both the Jewish and Samaritan copies of the Hebrew Penta-
teuch, I") TV, Yi'TkRO ; but its transcription in the Septuagint,
\o6op, proves that the mater lectionis at present terminating
the Hebrew group is a spurious letter, and was not interpo-
lated in the original text till after the first Greek version was
written. Against the genuineness, indeed, of this letter, the
sacred text itself, even in its present state, can be made to
bear evidence ; as the interpolators, in their hurry, overlooked
this group in one passage, Ex. iv. 18, where they suffered it
to remain in its original state, "lTV, without any vowel-letter
subjoined. If we turn now to the oldest Syriac version, we
shall find this name uniformly transcribed in it vo5Aj, YiThRON.
But the vocal part of this transcript was evidently not ob-
tained from tlie Septuagint ; and Jewish instruction was the
only other source from which the writers of the Peshitah could
have derived it. The pronunciation, therefore, which is hereby
conveyed must be considered as authorized by the learned
class of Jews in their day ; and the nunnation of the final
vowel clearly indicates the animus with which these instruc-
tors were actuated : they dwelt with peculiar emphasis on the
sound added to the name, from an eager desire to establish the
correctness of this addition to it. Their immediate object, in-
deed, could not in this instance have been to disparage the
Septuagint, as the persons they had here to deal with appear
to have been wholly unacquainted with that version ; but still
they might have had this end remotely in view, as the Syriac
transcription of the word which sprung in reality from their
teaching, would have the appearance of a testimony, indepen-
dent of theirs, to the erroneousness of its Greek pronunciation,
Vothor, with such readers as might be able to consult both
versions. But, however this may be, it is evident that the

148 EXAMINATION OF THE NAME [Chap. II.

Jewish scribes of the age in which the Peshitah was Avritten
not only laid the principal stress on the vowel sound they sub-
joined to the above name, but also that they pronounced that
vowel to the Syriac translators in a stronger manner than a
later set of them afterwards ventured to express its sound in the
vocalized text : for the form in which the entire word is ex-
hibited in the Peshitah fully accords with the fact which can be
abundantly established from other sources, that this version
was written before the introduction of the matres lectionis into
the Hebrew Bible ; since, had it been subsequently composed,
its framers would obviously have left the vowel-letter here em-
ployed in the same state as it is presented to us in the sacred
text, without any nunnation.

Jethro, or (as the word should be written to express the
sound it formerly conveyed) Yethro, is a pronunciation of the
name in question not exactly the same as any of those above
considered ; and it is a curious fact that, although this is the
one at present most generally received among Christians of all
denominations, it yet originated with Aquila, an apostate and
most bitter enemy of the Christian faith. In a fragment of his
translation of the verse, Exod. xviii. 5, given in the notes at
the end of the London edition of the Septuagint, taken from
the Vatican MS., the above name may be seen, as written by
him, 'leOpw ; which Jerome, imposed upon by his Jewish in-
structor, transcribed lethro into the Vulgate; and Luther,
notwithstanding his prej udice against the latter work, adopted
this transcript, wherein he has been followed by most, if
not all, the Protestant framers of English translations of the
Bible. As long as the Jews continued to make use of Greek
versions, that of Aquila was by far the greatest favourite with
them, and that which best accorded with their views. This
version, as well as some others, framed upon a similar plan
during the second century, was written at a period when copies
of the sacivd text and knowledge of its language were wholly
confined t«» the sacerdotal class and the scribes in their interest,
together with the few renegades, or Judaizing heretics whom

Chap. II.] QF THE FATHER-IN-LAW OF MOSES. 149

they successively employed as translators of the Hebrew Bible,
under the impression that works issuing from such authors
would incur less suspicion than if composed avowedly by them-
selves. Accordingly, the main object of the versions alluded
to, and more especially of the first and principal one, may be
collected from their extant remains to have been the attach-
ment to the Septuagint of an appearance of great inaccuracy ;
as may be exemplified even by the word just extracted from
a fragment still preserved of Aquila's translation. For, though
\e6pw does not exactly agree with Yithro, the pronunciation
yielded by the Masoretic pointing, it yet completely sustains
the alteration of the sound of this name introduced by the
vocalizers of the second century, giving the vowel belonging
to that alteration its full length, and thereby making the old
transcription of the Seventy, Io66p, appear the more incorrect.
In the insidious object, however, which has been just adverted
to, the above versions most providentially failed ; and then at
last the Jewish priesthood, above a hundred years after they
had got vowel-letters introduced into the writing of the He-
brew Bible, ventured upon a more daring attempt to under-
mine the credit of the Septuagint, as well as a more direct
mode of attacking Christianity, by resorting to the hazardous
expedient of placing a copy of the sacred text in its altered
state, and also the means of learning to make use of it, within
reach of the orthodox Christians. This, however, is a subject
which will require a further discussion than I could here spare
room for, and which I hope still to go through, if I be spared
long enough to write another volume. For the present I shall
confine myself to the remark, that Aquila and some of his
fellow-translators have been hitherto supposed to adhere more
closely to the sacred text than did the Seventy ; — a supposi-
tion which has sorely perplexed Hebraists. But the difficulty
of this case is now entirely cleared up, and it turns out that
the extant fragments of the version written by those suspicious
authors do not at all approach nearer than the Septuagint to

150 EXAMINATION OF THE NAME [Chap. II.

the original text of the Hebrew Bible, but merely to that text
as vocalized during the second century.

9. In my next example of the same class, the nunnation
is just as evident as in the first, but the mode of correcting it
is not quite as certain. The name of Joshua's father is tran-
mitted to us, in both the Jewish and Samaritan copies of the
Pentateuch p3, NUN, as also in the Peshitah, <qj, NUN ; but the
older representation of its sound preserved in the Septuagint,
Nai>//,a proves very clearly that the true value of the middle
letter of the group is not a vowel, but, according to the concep-
tion of the reader, either a W or a syllable beginning with that
consonant, and that the third element, subsequently displaced
by the nunnation, was one of the Hebrew aspirates. Which of
these aspirates originally occupied the third place, can now no
longer be determined to a certainty ; but the great probability
is, that it was H, as mj, N« WeH, is a Hebrew word signifying
' handsome,' which is very likely to have been employed as a
proper name, at a period when characteristic denominations
were in general use ; and at all events NaWeH is a correct
transcript of this name, provided it be left undetermined
which of the aspirates // is here made to stand for. As to the
altered form of the same denomination, pJ, NUN, it is assumed
to mean 'a' fish,' because fcOT, NUNaH, has that meaning in
Chaldee, and ]jqj, NUNaH, in Syriac ; but there is no evidence
whatever of its having been significant in the parent Hebrew

* Lest it should occur to the reader that tiavq may possibly have not been
the original transcript of this name in the Septuagint, I have to observe
that it is found so written in, I believe, every place of its occurrence in the
"Vatican and Alexandrian copies, except in one passage, 1 Chron. vii. 27, in
which it is at present, exhibited Noui> in the Vatican, and Novfi in the Alex-
andrian copy. But this place, which betrays several discrepancies between
the two copies of the Septuagint, is evidently much corrupted in both of
them. The Masoreta have here added to the confusion of the subject, by
vocalizing "JlS in this passage for the pronunciation NON; and the framers of
our Authorized Version have actually followed them in this whimsical varia-
tion of its sound.

Chap. II.] OF THE FATHER OF JOSHUA. 151

language, and, even if it had been so, it could not, with the
meaning attributed to it, have been applied to Joshua's father,
except as a nickname, — a species of opprobrious designation
with which there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he
was branded. This difference, however, between the two forms
of the name is here noticed, merely as falling in with much
stronger grounds for preferring the more ancient form. The
testimony of the Jews who wrote any part, indeed, of the Sep-
tuagint, but more particularly its oldest part, which is that
here appealed to, immeasurably outweighs the united evidence
of both the Jewish and Samaritan scribes of the second cen-
tury. As to the Syriac representation of the word, it can be
considered only as Jewish contemporary evidence repeated
in another shape ; for, however independent the authors of
the Peshitah might be in translating the general text of Scrip-
ture, where their judgment could be guided by the bearing
of the context, yet in completing the sounds of unvocalizecl
Hebrew denominations, they were under the necessity of lean-
ing on external aid ; and, as they were obviously unacquainted
with the Septuagint, they must have resorted to the most
learned Hebraists they could confer with, as their best autho-
rity on this subject. The Syriac transcription, however, of
this word serves to show that the Jews tampered, if not in
writing, at least in pronunciation, with Joshua's patronymic,
before they ventured to meddle with his proper name; as the
corruption only of the former part of his designation, and not
that of the latter, appears in the Peshitah.

Josephus fully corroborates the representation given by the
Seventy of the sound of the name of Joshua's father, and at the
same time does so in such a manner as to show that he took
his conception of this sound, not from them, but from his own
immediate reading of the original group, combined with his
traditional knowledege of the subject : for what they made
Nay//, he transcribed Naw/j/o?. As the Jews were about 350
years longer accustomed to Greek orthography in his day than
when the oldest part of the Septuagint was written, it is no

152 EXAMIN ATION OF THE HEBREW AND [Chap. II.

wonder that he should make a freer use of Grecian termina-
tions to Hebrew names than the Seventy did ; and, accordingly,
we here see him adding vos to his immediate reading of the
original group, Nat»/, which is the same as their entire tran-
scription of it ; just as, in an instance previously noticed, we
found him subjoining /*>/ or vrj to Ma/wa/x, for the like purpose
of accommodating; the Hebrew denomination to the taste of
Greek readers. It may be well here further to observe, that,
in his ad libitum choice of a termination in this instance, he
employs the Greek N, not in order to represent the occurrence
of a nunnation in the original group (for then he would have
transcribed the name in question Now/o?, instead of Nav^vos),
but merely to prevent the hiatus which would otherwise arise
from so many vowels coming together without any interven-
ing consonant ; and he could not make use of the letter more
commonly applied to the purpose by the Greeks, the Digamma,
in this place, as its power is just before virtually brought into
play by the contraction into one syllable of the second and
third vowels of his transcription. The full designation of
Joshua by Josephus is given in the third book of his Antiqui-
ties, fourteenth chapter, lyoovs 6 rov Navyvov irais, (pvXfjs E0-
paifxiTilos ; and from the circumstance of his freely supporting
the evidence of the Septuagint both as to the patronymic, and
the more immediate denomination of Joshua, it evidently fol-
lows that the corruption of neither word commenced, even in
the mode of reading them, till after the year 94 or 95 of the
first century of the Christian era, when this Avork was pub-
lished; for, otherwise, the author, from his tenderness to the
character of the Jewish priests, would have observed the same
reserve with respect to the corrupted words, as we have already
seen he did with regard to the misrepresentation which had
been introduced before his time of one of the forms of Sarah's
name.

In fine, I would write the name.just analyzed \\rt\M in the
Hebrew Bible, with the marginal note on the letter substituted
for the final one, 'Sept.'— an authority, indeed, which, consi-

Chap. II.] SYKIAC DESIGNATIONS OF SAMARIA. 153

dered by itself, only shows that the element to be restored is
an aspirate, but, when combined with the internal evidence of
the case, limits that aspirate to He. But as H may be used
to denote indifferently any of the Hebrew aspirates, the evi-
dence of the Septuagint alone affords sufficient ground for
transcribing this name in an English version Naweh; to which
I would recommend subjoining, on its first occurrence, the
note ' Sept, — Heb. voc. Nun,1 in order to point out, not only
the authority for its correction, but also the source to which
its present corruption is to be traced.

10. The name of the capital city of the ancient kingdom
of Israel is always, with but one or two exceptions, exhibited
Hafxapela in the Septuagint, and uniformly, without any ex-
ception, so written in the original text of the New Testament.
This designation, therefore, omitting its final element, which
appears to have been added merely for the purpose of giving
it a Grecian termination, may be safely referred to, as a stan-
dard for determining the correct vowel-sounds of the original
name in question. In the existing state of the Hebrew text,
this name is at present therein written jTlft^, and read
ShoMeRON. The first two vowels of this reading are taken
from the Masoretic pointing of the adduced Hebrew group.
But how little the Masorets can be depended on for the just
pronunciation of foreign words, is evinced in the present in-
stance, even without any reference to the above standard, by
the contradictory nature of their own evidence on the subject.
For they pointed the proper name Hft^, from which the one
under examination is, inl Kings, xvi. 24, expressly stated to be
derived, so as to be read, not ShoMeR, but SheMeR, The chief
blame, however, of the present erroneous pronunciation of the
Hebrew derivative name falls upon the first vocalizers of the
sacred text, who expressed the principal vowel of this name
with a Waw, instead of a Yod, and, by subjoining to that mater
lectionis a Nun, attached a greater stress to the utterance of
the 0 sound thereby denoted, than they were warranted in
doing. The part, indeed, of the mispronunciation which is to

154 EXAMINATION OF THE HEBREW [Chap. II.

be traced to their fault is so very gross as to give strong ground
for suspecting, that they must have resided at a great distance
from Palestine, and most probably somewhere in Europe. For,
surely, at the period when they performed their task, that is
(as will be shown in a subsequent chapter), within thirty years
after the commencement of the second century, they could not
have been so ignorant of the vowel portion of the name of a
city that had been the metropolis of the ancient kingdom of
Israel, if they lived in any of the adjoining countries. The
corruption, however, which is here exposed, had partly begun
before this time. For the Syriac Christians who framed the
Peshitah about the end of the first century (as shall be shown
most probable in an ensuing chapter), must be supposed well
acquainted with the manner in which the above name was then
pronounced, and they transcribed it in their version i?la»
ShaMaRIN, with the third vowel, indeed, correctly selected, but
corrupted through a nasal pronunciation which was not applied
to it till, at any rate, after the Gospel of St. John had been
written. Thus the nunnation of the final vowel of this name
made its way into the first Syriac version, as well as into the
vocalized text. From what is proved in the chapter after the
next, respecting the treatment by the old vocalizers of words
ending in a paragogic He, it will, I think, be found likely that
the original form of the name of the town and surrounding
district was distinguished from *")££>, the designation of the
man after whom they were called, by the addition of a final
He, which those scribes erased when they subjoined the Waw
and Xun thereto. This, however, is suggested merely as a
conjecture on a point whose determination is not essential to
my theory. Had they acted correctly on their own plan in
this instance, they would have put the derivative name in the
form "HOT, ShaMaRl, whether there had or had not been ori-
ginally annexed to it a He. The framers of our Authorized
Version exercised a sound discretion in transcribing this word
Samaria in the Old Testament, in order to exhibit the name
in the same form in both Testaments. They also acted judi-

Chap. II.] NAME OF SOLOMON. 155

ciously in noting Shomeron, as the present Hebrew reading of
this name, in the margin of the place (1 Kings, xvi. 24) where
its derivation is recorded. But the heading of this note should
be changed from ' Heb.' to ' Heb. voc' ; as the specified cor-
ruption of the word is not at all warranted by the Hebrew
text in its orignal state, but sprung partly from the mistakes
of the Masorets, and partly from those of the older set of voca-
lizers.

11. Although the names examined in the three preceding
articles have been, to a certainty, corrupted by nunnation, yet
the peculiar utterance of vowels which gave rise to the pro-
cess, just investigated, is not in every instance erroneous. On
the contrary, traces of the early existence of such a pronun-
ciation can be established, by a comparison of Hebrew deno-
minations suffered to remain in their original state, with the
transcriptions given of them in the oldest versions ; — a pro-
nunciation, too, which will be found, by the same means, not
confined to vowels at the very end of words, but to have been
applied to them also when followed by a feeble aspiration. Of
this a very striking example is afforded in the Hebrew desig-
nation of Solomon, which, from some cause or other, has been
left untouched by the first vocalizers ; and whose analysis
will enable me, through the aid of the theory above un-
folded, to account for a remarkable discrepance, hitherto
unexplained, between its sound, as it is now uttered, and, as
we know upon unquestionable authority, it was formerly
read. This name remains to the present day inscribed in
the sacred text, without a single vowel-letter, ilft/t^ ; — a
group which, even with the advantage of the most favour-
able vocalization, cannot be made, according to the modern
way of reading it, to yield a closer approximation to the
sound in question than ShaLoMoH, or ShoLoMoH. But the
fact of the initial part of the process of nunnation, or the part
relating to pronunciation, having been in very remote times
applied to this group, in reading it, is directly attested both
by the Seventy Jews and by the framers of the Peshitah,

156 VOWEL-LETTERS PROVED SPURIOUS [Chap. II.

who have transcribed it respectively ^oXw/jlwv, and yoViA*,
ShoLIMON ; and their attestation to this effect is powerfully
supported by the testimony of the inspired authors of the New
Testament, who have uniformly written it SoAo/xwi/ ; not, in-
deed, as an immediate transcript of the Hebrew group, but as
an original designation of the name, which, however, shows
clearly how they would have read and transcribed that group,
if they had quoted from the Old Testament any passage that
contained it. The differences between the adduced pronuncia-
tions of the name are to be attributed to the emphasis required
by the nunnation, which, by throwing the stress of voice on
the last syllable, gives a comparative indistinctness to the
utterance of the preceding ones ; so that even persons who
heard the same authoritative reading of the skeleton group,
might still, very possibly, fill up the expression of the less pro-
minent portion of its sound with different vowel-letters. These
differences, however, prove that the three representations of
the sound of this group were made in a great measure inde-
pendently of each other ; and yet they all perfectly agree as
to the nunnation of its last syllable : so it is quite plain that,
if the old vocalizers had ventured to apply their improved
method of spelling to the example before us, they would have
changed the Hebrew group in question into pu7tP. But they
having failed to do this, and the Jews having subsequently
deprived themselves of the use of the Septuagint, the true pro-
nunciation of the original group was in the course of time lost
among this people ; so that it came at last to be read by them
SheLoMoll, — a misreading which has been perpetuated by the
Masorets, who did not, in their system of points, reserve to
themselves even the bare power of expressing, what the Ara-
bic scribes freely represent in their's, the nunnated sound of a
final vowel.

The framers of our Authorized Version have in this instance
deviated from their usual practice of deferring to Masoretic
authority, and have rendered the mi me here analyzed Solomon
throughout the English Bible. This rendering is perfectly just

Chap.IL] MORE CLEARLY BY NAMES OF RARE USE. 157

in the New Testament, and, though not equally so in the Old,
is still there warranted by the advantage of exhibiting the
designation in the same form in both ; but, undoubtedly, Sho-
lomon would be a more correct transcription of it from the
Hebrew record considered alone. I shall only add that, in
whichever form this word is exhibited, the stress of voice, in
pronouncing it, should be thrown on its last syllable, and not,
as is at present the more usual practice, be laid upon the
first.

The corruptions exposed in most of the examples as yet
anaryzed having been traced to design, it may at first sight ap-
pear surprising, that the individuals who at any time had the
charge of the Hebrew Scriptures should have ventured to
tamper with names so familiar to the Jews. But a little con-
sideration will serve to show, that circumstances were pecu-
liarly favourable to the concealment of the operations of the
scribes alluded to, while they were engaged in introducing into
the sacred text the fuller mode of denoting words which had
previously got into general use in writings upon ordinary sub-
jects. The number of those individuals was very limited, —
the number, indeed, of persons who could then read at all, but
especially of those who could read a work in a dead language,
and in a species of writing that was becoming every day more
obsolete, was exceedingly small; — so that, with the exception
of those few, the Hebrew Bible was to mankind a sealed book
during the entire of the second century, and continued so to
the Christians, till the time of Origen in the third century, and
to the Jews till, at any rate, near the end of the sixth cen-
tury ; before which date the latter party certainly did not re-
turn to the employment of the Hebrew tongue in divine ser-
vice, nor to the practice of hearing the Scriptures read in their
original language in the Synagogues. Moreover, the Septua-
gint, which might have guarded this nation from tolerating
the corruption of any of the names of the class in question,
and which was held in the highest repute by their instructors
till about the close of the first century, was early in the next

158 HOW FAR THE SAME WRITTEN NAME [Chap. II.

one withdrawn from their use, under the pretext of its having
been corrupted by the Christians ; and other Greek versions
were substituted for it, which countenanced the misapplication
of the new and fuller mode of writing, in the cases which have
been as yet investigated. In point of fact, therefore, the in-
terpolators of the vowel-letters might have taken still greater
liberties with Scriptural names than they actually did, with-
out incurring any immediate risk of detection. In general,
however, their representation of the vocal part of names to
which the Jewish ear was familiar, though it is defective, is
correct as far as it goes ; and they, for the most part, confined
their erroneous or dishonest interpolations to those of rarer
occurrence. It is, then, to names of the latter class that we
are chiefly to look for proofs of the spuriousness ofthematres
lectionis ; and they will be found to supply evidence to this
effect, not only in greater abundance, but also of a more con-
vincing nature ; as, from the haste with which the operation
was conducted, the vocalization of such names frequently be-
trays inconsistencies so palpable that they cannot, without
absurdity as well as impiety, be attributed to the inspired
authors of the Bible. Hence the sacred text itself, as well as
its versions, can in those instances be brought to yield evi-
dence against the genuineness of its vowel-letters. The same
line of research, carried on through a comparison of names of
rare occurrence, as written in different passages, will also
enable me to restore some of the original letters of the He-
brew text, a few of which have been corrupted from other
causes in the course of a very long series of ages ; and, like-
wise, to correct the corresponding elements of those names in
the oldest Greek and Syriac versions.

Here, as a preliminary step to the branch of this investi-
gation upon which I am about to enter, I have to inquire, how
far the principle, that the same written name implies always
the same spoken one, which pervades the general class of
alphabetic designations (and gives them so vast a superiority
over those of an ideagraphic nature), extended also to the

Chap. II.] IMPLIES THE SAME SPOKEN ONE. 159

particular species employed in the Hebrew text in its primi-
tive state. It is quite obvious that, in the case of a system
whose elements originally denoted syllabic sounds that were
fixed in their consonantal, and mutable only in their vocal in-
gredients, there might, from an identity of the series of letters
by which two names were expressed, be at once inferred an
identity of pronunciation, at any rate as far as respects the
series of articulations employed. But whether this sameness
extended, for the most part, to the vowel portions also of the
represented words, remains still to be determined. I have
already availed myself of an immediate consequence of the
above principle, where I assumed that, as the two forms of
Sarah's name differed in sound, they must also have exhibited
some difference in writing. But I did not put forward as ab-
solutely certain the inference I partly thence drew, as to the
final letter of the first of those forms ; because I was conscious
that, although the principle in question holds very generally
with regard to the designations employed in the primitive
state of the sacred text, yet it was not therein adhered to in
every case without exception. I do not allude now to the
changes of pronunciation that are occasioned by difference of
nations, or by difference of times. Such changes reach to even
the very superior and far more perfectly vocalized writing
of Europeans : as, for instance, the same expression of a name
in Roman characters may be pronounced very differently by
the French from what it is by the English, and again by the
English at present from what it was by their ancestors two
hundred years ago. But, without taking into consideration
the variations so produced, I am obliged to concede that in
unpointed Shemitic writing, even at the same period and in
the same country, a group of letters used as a name might
possibly represent more than one combination of sounds.
This is confessedly the case with respect to groups denoting
appellative terms of the Hebrew tongue ; and consequently
may be equally so in reference to such as are applied to the

o

100 HOW FAR THE SAME WRITTEN NAME [Chap. II.

expression of proper names, as far as those names are identi-
cal with words of the former class.

Thus one and the same group DTK stands for two ordinary
terms of the language that are also occasionally employed as
proper names, viz. HaDoM, which, according to the exigencies
of the context, signifies ' man,' or ' mankind,' or ' Adam;' and
HaDoM, or HeDoM, which in like manner denotes ' red,' or ' red-
ness,' or ' Edom:'a while for all the significations of the first of
these words it remains up to the present time wholly unfur-
nished with vowel-letters in every place of its being so applied
in the sacred text, and likewise for the general meanings of
the second word, in every place but one, namely Cant. v. 10,b
where it is now written in the form DVF& In this form, how-
ever, the group in question is, I grant, at present always ex-
hibited for the last meaning of the second word ; but that it
was originally framed as bare of vowel-letters for the sixth ap-
plication as the five previous ones, is rendered probable even by
the manner in which this use of it is first mentioned in Scripture
(Gen. xxv. 30), where the Hebrew for ' red' is identified with
that for ' Edom,' and yet remains still written D"F^, with the
article H, indeed, prefixed, but wholly unvocalized. But the
absence of the Waw from the above group in its primitive
state, for every application of it, is proved nearly to a certainty
by what has been already shown of the spuriousness of the
matres lectionis ; and the fact of the interpolation of this letter
in it in one of the instances in which it is now read ' Edom/

■ DIN admits of being read a third way also, HoDeM, an appellative term
signifying 'a ruby;' but as no proper name is connected with this pronun-
ciation of the group, it is not above taken notice of. In every place like-
wise of the occurrence of DIN with this signification, it has been left wholly
unvocalized by the inserters of the matres lectionis.

b The above circumstance relative to the Song of Solomon agrees with one
previously noticed in this chapter, in its tendency to show that, although
this poem is older than several parts of the Bible, it was vocalized later, when
the scribes who performed this operation became more accustomed to their
work, and in consequence made a freer use of the matres lectionis.

Chap.IL] IMPLIES THE SAME SPOKEN ONE. 161

can be established beyond all doubt by the inspired authority
of the New Testament. This will be clearly perceived by
comparing, in the Authorized English Version of the Bible,
the following prophecy of Amos with the reference made to
it by St. James (as reported by the Evangelist St. Luke)
which is identical with its translation in the Septuagint. " In
that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen,
and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his
ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old ; that they

MAY POSSESS THE REMNANT OF EdOM AND OF ALL THE HEA-
THEN WHICH ARE CALLED BY MY NAME, SAITH THE LORD

that doeth this." — Amos, ix. 11, 12. " as it is written :

After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of
David which is fallen down ; and I will build again the ruins
thereof, and I will set it up : that the residue of men might

SEEK AFTER THE LORD, AND ALL THE GENTILES ETON WHOM
MY NAME IS CALLED, SAITH THE LORD, WHO DOETH ALL

these things." — Acts, xv. 15-17. If we refer both these
renderings to the original passage, as at present written, we
shall see that its group DTTtf , transcribed in the first ' Edom,'
is construed in the second, ' men,' so must have been read by
St. James HaDaM ; and that, consequently, the Waw which now
appears in this group is spurious, and could not have been
inserted therein, till after the period when an inspired Apostle
supplied decisive ground for the rejection of its genuineness
in the specified place. It is, therefore, certain that in the pri-
mitive state of the sacred text, the series of letters DTK, em-
ployed as the representation of a proper name, served to
denote either ' Adam' or ' Edom,' according to the demands
of the context. a

a It cannot from the above example be inferred that the context did not
always suffice to determine which of the specified spoken names the group in
question was intended to denote: because, on examining the original passage
referred to in this example, we shall find that the Jewish scribes were forced
to introduce into it some additional changes to warrant their vocalizing D7N

o 2

162 HOW FAR THE SAME WRITTEN NAME [Chap. II.

Now although this ambiguity in regard to two names as
familiar to the Jews as any appellative words of their lan-
guage, occasioned no embarrassment, it would have been pro-
ductive of much confusion, if it had been extended to many
of their written designations of human beings, more especially
to many of rare occurrence. There is, however, no ground of
the slightest weight for supposing this to have been the real
state of the case: for whenever, except in the instance of the
above adduced example, the Septuagint, our oldest authority
for the vocal part of the sounds of Scriptural names, attests a
varied pronunciation of a Hebrew group representing a man,
it fails — at least in the cases that have come under my obser-
vation— of being consistent in that evidence; that is, while it
transcribes the primitive group with different vowels to denote
different persons, it does not constantly and uniformly tran-
scribe that group with the same vowels when applied to the
designation of one and the same individual. The variation
in question, therefore, would appear to have arisen, not so
much from an original difference of spoken names denoted by
one group in common, as from the circumstance of the true
sound of that group having been lost before the Septuagint
came to be written. On the other hand, in a matter which
now, I believe, for the first time comes under discussion, with
whatever care I may have examined it, I would not venture
to pronounce with certainty, that no other instance but that
above canvassed can be produced, of the same written name
Inning served in the original state of the sacred text to denote
more than a single spoken one. But I conceive myself fully
warranted in asserting that, if there be any additional instances
of such ambiguity in that text, as originally written, their
number must l>e extremely limited ; and that, being at variance
with the distinctness of nominal designations generally obser-
vable therein, no one of them can be admitted — at least with

therein for the name 'Edom;' and, consequently, that the context of the
passage in its genuine state excluded that signification of the group.

Chap. II] IMPLIES THE SAME SPOKEN ONE. 163

any degree of confidence — unless its reality be sustained by
consistent ancient evidence. In one of the examples, indeed,
to be presently brought forward, in which the required con-
sistency has been to some extent observed, I have conceded a
diversity of the vocal part of the sound of a Hebrew name in
its primitive state, without a complete fulfilment of the speci-
fied condition ; but I have done so only conventionally, for
the mere convenience of distinguishing different persons by
some difference of verbal nomenclature, and without pretend-
ing to fix to a certainty the correctness of the difference I have
adopted. If my leaving the matter in this state of unfixed-
ness should give dissatisfaction, I am sorry for it ; but I will
not represent our knowledge of the sounds of Scriptural names
as greater than it really is ; and, in extenuation of this defi-
ciency, I would only beg to remind the reader, that the uncer-
tainty here noticed affects solely names of rare occurrence.
Wherever it is of more importance to be acquainted with the
full pronunciation of Hebrew names, in consequence of their
frequent occurrence in Scripture, in such cases we are abun-
dantly supplied with means of ascertaining that pronunciation
with exactness. I shall here add but one more observation,
having an immediate reference to the object for which atten-
tion will presently be directed to Hebrew names variously
transcribed in the Septuagint, without any variation of the
persons thereby denoted: viz. that the more diversified the
vocalization is of a Greek transcript, while applied to the
designation of the same individual, the more striking is the
proof thus afforded, that no separate signs for vowels were
employed in the original group till after the Septuagint had
been written.

Having in the preceding paragraphs incidentally touched
upon a very important prophecy of the Old Testament, and
the reference made to it in the New, which are at present ex-
hibited, in their final portions, utterly irreconcilable, — as may
be seen by comparing the lines of each quotation which are
given in capitals, — I cannot pass by this remarkable discre-

164 AGREEMENT RESTORED BETWEEN [Chap. II.

pance, which equally holds between the original sentences in
the existing state of the Hebrew text, without some further
investigation of its cause. It is in vain to urge, with a view
to removing the difficulty before us, that St. Luke, writing
for persons acquainted with the older volume of Scriptures
only through the medium of the Septuagint, quoted the pro-
phecy referred to from that version ; for, even admitting this
to have been the case, surely he would not have substituted
for his own translation of the passage that given by the
Seventy, if he did not consider it a correct one. We, there-
fore, must either adopt the monstrous supposition that St.
James and St. Luke entirely mistook the bearing of the second
verse of the prophecy in question, and that the latter gave his
sanction to an erroneous translation of that verse (whether
made by himself or taken from another quarter, need not here
be inquired into) ; or we must come to the conclusion that
the Hebrew text has been altered in this place since the time
when 'the Acts of the Apostles' were written; — a conclusion
for the arrival at which a way has been paved, by the disclo-
sure already effected respecting the very passage under exa-
mination ; for, as the Jewish scribes have been convicted of
misreading one term in it, we need not be surprised at their
having tampered with two more of its words also. And this
result is further strengthened by the obvious effect of the cor-
ruption here imputed to them, which is to change a prophecy
detested by the Jews — of the call of the Gentiles to a seeking
after the true God and a consequent state of salvation — into
one in favour of which all the prejudices of this people were
enlisted, — a prediction of their universal dominion upon earth.
To put this matter in a clearer light, I here bring together
some quotations to be considered by the reader: — 1st. The
original passage, witli the corrections inserted in it that I shall
endeavour to establish, but which I translate in the first in-
stance without any reference to those corrections, and in ac-
cordance with the sense attributed to it by the Jews; 2ndly.
The paraphrase of this passage in the Targum of Jonathan, to

Chap.IL] VERSES, AMOS, ix. 12, AND ACTS, xv. 17. 165

show I have given a fair representation of the Jewish con-
struction of it ; 3rdly. For the same purpose, the translation
of this passage by Hieronymus ; 4thly. The translation of it
in the Peshitah ; and, 5thly. The translations of it in the
Vatican and Alexandrian copies of the Septuagint, compared
immediately with each other and with the corresponding pas-
sage of the Greek Testament : —

Hebrew, .tfUT^n DHK TVIX® [.TirPHlK lanCT^ \pdl

.nar i-b^ rw mn1 dsu .Dirty ^m xnpi n^K d

in order that they upon whom my name is called, should
inherit possession of (or dominion over) the remnant of
Edom and all the Gentiles, saith the Lord who doeth
this (or these things)."

Targnmof)TP2 WDW* by\ DHKl 81XV JT pmH VH1
Jonathan, 1^11^; * ISJK pi ;JW^ 'OP'Hprua btin&* D

in order that the House of Israel upon whom my name is
called, should inherit possession of (or dominion over)
the remnant of Edom and all the Gentiles; wherefore I
the Lord do this.

Hieronymus, ut possideant reliquias Idumsea? et omnes na-
tiones ; eo quod invocatum sit nomen meum
super eos ; dicit Dominus faciens ha3c.e

a The pronoun nST is, in the Hebrew grammars and lexicons, confined to
the singular number ; but that it admitted of a plural, as well as singular appli-
cation, is evident from both its Syriac and Greek translation, not only in the
very passage under examination, but in other verses of Scripture also. Thus, in
Isaiah, v. 25, fiHT~b32 is translated, in the Peshitah .m\^ . \mn
' in these things all of them,' and in the Septuagint, iv vaai tovtois.

b The Yod in the above group is at present read as a consonant ; but the
analogy which holds between the Syriac and Chaldee dialects shows, that it
was originally employed in such sites to denote the vowel E, for the purpose
of distinguishing the plural from the singular emphatic termination of nouns.

c The translation of the passage by Hieronymus differs from all the others
quoted by me, in representing "1E7N as therein used, not as a pronoun, but as

166 AGREEMENT RESTORED BETWEEN [Chap. II.
Peshitah, -rO^l? te>^ ^ooiXdo 1oo?1? hi-» ^pZ5]j? ^H^

in order that they may inherit possession of (that is,
dominion over) the remnant of Edom and all the Gentiles
upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord that doeth
these things.

Vatican, o7rw9 t/c^ifrijaeDai ol KaraKovnoi rwv av0pw7T<ov
Alexan. o7TW9 au ttcg-iprijowoi ol Karu\oi7roi twv avOpwitiov tov
Gi\ Test, onto? av ehgijTijawcrii/ ol KardXonroi rwv avOpwiriav tov

Vatican, kcu itdvTa to. edvy t0' ovs eiruceic\i]Tat to ovojjlu

Alexan. Kuptov, kclI Tiavra rd eOvij e(f> obs k7tuceKKrjfrai to ovofxd
Gv. Test. Kvpiov, nal 7rdvTa rd eOvij ecf) ovs e7nKeK\yrai to ovo/jlu

Vatican, jjlov kit avrovs, Xeyei Kvpios, 6 ttoiwv -ndvTa tclvtci.

Alexan. fjiov kit avrovs, \e<yet 6 Geo?, 6 noiwv ravra.

Gv. Test, fxov t7r' a'vTovs, Aeyei Kvpios, 6 moiwv Taura iravra.

that there should seek after the Loud a residue of men,
even" all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith
the Lord, who doeth all these things.

The close correspondence above exhibited between the

a conjunctive particle, — a sense which it occasionally serves to convey. Had
he construed the word here in the same manner as the rest of the interpre-
ters, his translation would have run thus: — Ut possideant reliquias Idumtea}
et omnes nationes ii super quos invocatum est nomen meum; dicit Do-
minus faciens hsec. This rendering has the advantage of adhering exactly to
the order of the words in the original verse, — a closeness of interpretation
which cannot be attained to in English without some awkwardness in the
form of expression, but which, notwithstanding, I shall endeavour to observe
in my translation of the Greek lines, and in that of the corrected Hebrew
sentence.

■ The ical of the foregoing Greek lines is above translated by the English
word 'even;' because it is used, in those lines, as the representative of the
Hebrew conjunction Wcno, which is sometimes shown by the context to have
this meaning.

Chap. II.] VERSES, AMOS, ix. 12, AND ACTS, xv. 17. 16T

three Greek representations of the meaning of the original
verse is, surely, very striking. Even with regard to the one
important difference which at present exists between them,
. there is internal evidence of their having all formerly agreed.
For the transitive verb ex^rijataai requires after it a noun in
the objective case, such as no longer now appears in the clause
that should contain it in the Vatican copy. Some noun,
therefore, in this case has, to a certainty, dropped out of the
first clause of the verse in that copy of the Septuagint ; and
as the Lord is the only fit object of the act of ' seeking after,'
or worshipping, we might a priori conclude the missing ex-
pression, in the requisite case, to be tov Kvpiov, just as we
find it written in the other two representations of the same
clause. There is another circumstance which, though minute
in itself, I think worth noticing, as an illustration of the scru-
pulous accuracy of the Septuagint in this place. The expres-
sion which I have translated ' upon whom my name is called,'
means literally in the Hebrew passage, as well as in the cor-
responding Chaldee and Syriac verses, ' whom my name is
called upon them,' by an idiom that is common to the three
dialects. But this pleonasm is as repugnant to the genius of
the Greek, as it is to that of the English language ; yet we
find it strictly adhered to in the translation given of it by the
Seventy — e(j) ov? e7TaciK\yrai to ovojjlcl fxou lit avrom. The
main point, however, on which I rely as giving a preponde-
rating and, indeed, irresistible weight to the evidence of the
Seventy with respect to the meaning of the entire original
passage in question is, that it is fully borne out and sustained
by the inspired authority of St. Luke, and, I may add, by that
also of St. James ; as the suspicion cannot for a moment be
entertained, that the substance of the speech of that Apostle
has been misstated by the Evangelist.

Guided, then, by the light thus supplied, let us see to what
corrections of the original passage it clearly leads. It is con-
stantly and uniformly the Hebrew verb t£H*T, and not t£H\ that
the Seventy translate by e/cgvp-eiv, ' to seek after,' or by girreiv,

108 AGREEMENT RESTORED BETWEEN [Chap. II.

i to seek.' Thus, in Ps. xiv. 2, they give L-gyrwu tov Qeov (seek-
ing after God), as the meaning of D^T7N~ntf ttHI ; and, in
Is. lviii. 2, they write ifxe fjfUpav e£ ///xe'/Ki? Q]T))aovoiv (me day
by day they shall seek), to interpret the clause D'v Di*1 ^ITiNI
| WIT: but there is not, I will venture to assert, a single
passage of Scripture in which they translate the verb t^T by
cither eicgr/recv, or gvjreiv. The concurrent testimonies, there-
fore, of the Septuagint and Greek Testament here combined
serve plainly to show that the Jews substituted a Yod for
Daleth in the first verb of the Hebrew verse under examina-
tion, as is expressed in my mode of writing that verb. In the
same manner, and by the united force of the same authorities
combined together, they can be convicted of having dropped
from this verse the proper name of God, whether written with
four letters, as it now always is in Hebrew, or only with the
two small letters "*, as it is at present in Chaldee, and as Dr.
Kennicott states that he found it represented in several of the
older copies of the Hebrew text consulted by him. As to the
place of the omitted word, it is marked out by the particle HN,
which, coming after a verb transitive in the voice Kal, denotes
the objective case — the very case in which the context requires
this word to be taken ; and, accordingly, I have inserted it
between brackets in the site thus indicated. The third corrup-
tion, to which I have directed attention by the Masoretic sign
of rejection, has been already established ; and I have only
here to add respecting it, that, as the Syriac quotation shows
the tampering of the Jews with this verse to be older than
the Peshitah, and, consequently, a fortiori, older than the vo-
calization of the Hebrew text, the corruption in question must
have at first consisted solely in an erroneous mode of reading
DT* ; and the Waw confining the group to such pronuncia-
tion was not inserted in it till a subsequent period. The fourth
corruption, indicated by the same marks as the first and third,
refers not to the sense, but merely to the orthography of the
passage ; and the proof of its true nature being here assigned
to it is based upon a position for which I have in the first

Chap.II.] VERSES, AMOS,ix. 12, AND ACTS, xv. 17. 169

chapter given my reasons — that, whenever Shin is used with the
power of Samek, the latter element was originally there writ-
ten. But, according to the rule already laid down by me on
the subject, the correction depending on this position is, in
the place before us, shifted to the margin. The final corrup-
tion in this verse — the omission of the word *73 — does not
materially affect the meaning of the passage, and is therefore
to be attributed to oversight of copyists rather than to design.
It is in the same way that naura, the translation of this word
by the Seventy, must be considered to have dropped from the
Alexandrian copy of their version. In accordance with these
corrections of the Hebrew verse, I would venture to recom-
mend the following translation of it : —

" in order that there should seek after Hhe Lord a^l£pl7'
a residue of mankind, even all the Gentiles upon
whom my name is called ; saith the Loed, who

Acts, xv. 17,

doeth hall these things."

This specimen belongs to a class of examples in which
parallel passages of the Old Testament, or of the Old and New,
are compared together, and the authority of Scripture itself
thereby got to bear upon the spuriousness of the vowel-letters
in the sacred text. Their value consists not merely in afford-
ing the most decisive confirmation of other proofs of the re-
ality of my discovery, but also in powerfully leading, through
the means it furnishes, to the removal from the Old Testament
of corruptions productive of the greatest mischief. But as
proofs of the spuriousness of the matres lectionis which require
not the alteration of any other letters of the Hebrew text are
more readily assented to, examples of the former kind ought
in general to be postponed, till after the reader has been fur-
nished with an abundant supply of such as are of the latter
description. On this account the adduced example is to be
considered as here prematurely canvassed : but, coming across
the set of discrepancies which have just been examined, I
could not bring myself to dismiss this complicated mutilation

170 SHAMMUA, SHIMEA, SHAMMA, SH1MMA, [Chap.IL

of a very important passage, without an effort to trace it at
once to its source, and clear the inspired record from so foul a
blemish.

12. To return now to my subject from this digression —
the first name I shall bring under notice, belonging to the
class of those of rare occurrence, is one transcribed in our
Authorized Version, with considerable freedom and very con-
spicuous variety, in no less than eight different ways, five of
which are specified at the top of the page, and the remaining
three, which are there omitted only from want of room, can
be furnished by subjoining the letter H to each of the first
three. The Hebrew designation, which in the original mode
of writing it can be clearly proved to have exhibited no vari-
ation, was common to a son of David, a brother of David, and
a son of Gera, as well as to some other individuals, its appli-
cation to whom, as being made, I believe, but once to each,
need not here be considered ; but, whether it was likewise the
same in speech for all those different uses of it, cannot be so
confidently asserted ; as, from the very inconsistent manner
in which its vowel-sounds are represented in the Septuagint,
all certainty with respect to the vocal parts of its composition
appears to have been lost before that version was framed.
This name, in the first-mentioned application of it, occurs at
the head of the list of the sons of David who were born in
Jerusalem, where it is written, in 2 Sam. v. 14, JTift^,
ShaMmUflH; in 1 Chron. iii. 5, ®PDW, ShaMaHA, and in
1 Chron. xiv. 4, IMft£>, ShaMmUaH : while it is transcribed in
the Septuagint, in the first of those places, Sa/x/xou? or Sa/x-
povef in the second, ^a/jiaa ; in the third, Sa/xaa or Ha/uL/uiaov ;
and in the Peshitah, in all three places, vx oia*, ShaMUoII.b

a Where the Vatican and Alexandrian copies of the Septuagint differ, two
Greek readings of each examined name are given, of which that supplied from
the Vatican copy is placed first.

b How very inaccurately the vocalization of the Peshitah with points has
been executed by the Maronite divine, Gabriel Sionita, may be judged of, by

Chap.II.] AND SHIMEI, EXAMINED & COMPARED. 171

Even were we here to confine our attention to the Hebrew
text alone, we might, from the different ways in which this
name is at present therein exhibited, clearly deduce that it
was originally written with solely three letters, VDU? ; and,
consequently, that the reader must, before the number of those
letters was increased, have been left entirely to the resources
of his own mind to determine, by means of oral tradition, the
vocalic part of the syllabic elements of the word in question.
The first or third Hebrew combination attests that the Haleph
is an interpolated letter in the second ; while the second
equally testifies that the Waw is of the like adventitious na-
ture in the first and third.a But when the evidence of the
two versions on this point is also taken into account, both of
the specified exclusions from the original group are fully
thereby confirmed. The uniform Syriac exhibition of the
word, in all the three places from which it has been quoted,
certifies that the Haleph was not added to the second Hebrew
combination till after the Peshitah was written ; while the

the example of the name above examined ; which, though written with
exactly the same group of Syriac letters in the three specified places, has its
pronunciation variously represented by him in his Latin translation ; wherein
it is transcribed, for the first and third of those places, Somua, and, for the
second, Semu.

a The bearing above attributed to the testimony of each of the groups
2?]ftE7 and ^37X3127 against the genuineness of the mater lectionis in the other,
is grounded on a position which can hardly be denied, that the original group
was read with the same vowel-sounds in, at any rate, all its applications to
one and the same individual. Nor can it be assumed that V^W and $V12W
are vocalized consistently with this position, so as to admit of being read in
common by the word Shamuha; for where, in this writing, an A follows a
long or open U that is placed before a final guttural, it becomes what the
grammarians call a pathac furtivum, that is, a short A immediately before
that guttural, instead of a long one after it. In the next batch, however, of
vocalized groups applied in common to one individual, the attestation by
each of the groups ^37Dtt7 and ^27X227 against the genuineness of the mater lec-
tionis in the other is more obvious, as the opposition between the vocalization
of those groups is direct, they exhibiting different vowel-letters in the very
same syllable.

172 SHAMMUA, SHIMEA, SHAMMA, SHIMMA, [Chap. II.

Greek transcriptions in like manner evince that neither the
Haleph nor Waiv was inserted in any of the three combina-
tions till after the Septuagint was framed. Of these latter
transcriptions, indeed, 2«/*aa is not only at variance with
JfiDty, but even directly contradicts it, as to the vowel part
of the second syllable ; and ^afifxaov is likewise directly op-
posed to the vocalization of both JfiDttf and ®yi2W.

By the same process it can be shown that Vteti? was also the
name, as originally written, of one of the brothers of David ;
though it is, in the present state of the sacred text, exhibited
in no less than four different ways, only one of which gives it
a common pronunciation for himself and his nephew. This
name, in the application of it which now comes under consi-
deration, is written in 1 Sam. xvi. 9, and xvii. 13, tlDW,
ShoMmaH ; in 2 Sam. xiii. 3 and 32, H^ft^, ShaMaHaH ; in
2 Sam. xxi. 21, y!2W, SheMeHI ; in 1 Chron. ii. 13,andxx. 7,
t^Qttf, ShaMaHA ;a and is translated by the Seventy, in the
first of the quoted places, ^afifxa or Sa/xa, and in the second,
^a/jL/da ; in the third and fourth places, Ha/xaa ; in the fifth,
2e/xeV or 2e/ieet ; in the sixth, Sa/xaa or 'Ea/jLaia ; in the seventh,

a The chasms in the first Hebrew vocalization of words are, in my read-
ings of the several modifications of the original group examined in the ten
sites specified in the present and the preceding paragraph, filled up from the
vowel sounds of the Greek transcripts in those sites, as being the only source,
though often a neglected and disparaged one, from which the old vocalizers
could have derived any correct information on the subject. According to the
Masoretic pointing of the same group, as varied in the different sites referred
to, it should be read in the first and third of those sites ShaMmU«II, — in the
second, ninth, and tenth sites, ShiMHSH, — in the fourth and fifth, ShaMmaH, —
in the sixth and seventh, ShiMHaH, — and in the eighth, ShtMHo. There is less
discrepance between these readings of the several modifications of the group
in question than between those given in my text. This difference, however,
cannot be attributed to any superior information enjoyed by the Masorets,
but merely to the circumstance of their having collated the different parts
of their works more carefully than the Seventy. In the eighth of the above
sites the reading adopted by them is not supplemental to, but quite eversive
of that employed by the first set of Hebrew vocalizers.

Chap. II] AND SHIMEI, EXAMINED & COMPARED. 173

Sa^uaa or Sa/xaa9 ; and uniformly in every one of those places
in the Syriac version, ]io», ShaMaH, without any vowel-let-
ter, and with one guttural substituted for another at the end
of the word, by an exchange that is occasionally made in Syriac
writing, and which seems to have been adopted in this tran-
scription of the name, for the purpose of better distinguishing
the uncle from the nephew. In the Hebrew text, however,
the two first of this latter set of variations betray faults which
should, I grant, be attributed to the copyists rather than to the
old vocalizers ; but even with this reduction of their number,
the additional instances of inconsistent vocalization here ex-
posed, powerfully strengthen my argument. A direct contra-
diction as to the vowel part of the last syllable of the name
subsists, not only between 1,afxaa, or 2a/xcua, or Ea/xaa?, and
one of the two remaining Hebrew groups, ^Dttf, and again
between Se/xeV or Se/xeet, and the other ^Dt^, but also imme-
diately between those Hebrew groups themselves ; while their
common Syriac transcription, ]i£L», refutes the existence of
matres lectionis in either of them, at the time when the Peshi-
tah was written, not as directly, indeed, as the Greek transcrip-
tions above compared with them, by displaying different vowel-
letters from what they do in respectively the same syllables,
but almost as efficaciously, by exhibiting none at all. Surely,
if the original groups contained any, at the period referred to,
the framers of the Syriac version could not have omitted them,
in transcribing those groups from Hebrew into writing of the
same general nature, — and that too, writing in which, confes-
sedly, a freer use was made of the very letters in question.

The main point having been now, I submit, fully estab-
lished,— that the groups applied to the designation of the two
relatives of David alluded to, were at first utterly destitute of
vowel-letters, and, consequently, that those persons had, in the
original state of the sacred text, the same written name, — it
remains to be inquired whether they had also the same spoken
one, and, if so, what is the verbal denomination that was com-
mon to. both of them. How, indeed, two individuals were

174 SHAMMUA, SHIMEA, SHAMMA, SHIMMA, [Chap. II.

exactly called, of whom not a single act is recorded in Scrip-
ture, it is not very material to determine ; and as certainty on
this subject is no longer attainable, so neither is it at all wanted
in order to the completion of my argument. As, however, the
proposed questions relate to points nearly connected with that
already established, I shall examine them, and hope to arrive
at their most probable solution, through the following consi-
derations. In the first place, it is evident from the foregoing
analysis, not only that the original group was not vocalized
till after the Septuagint was written, but also that its several
vocalizations were, all but one of them, derived from this very
record. The analysis made use of has, indeed, been hitherto
confined to bringing together under view contradictory pro-
nunciations of the same group in different verses ; but if it be
extended to comparing the Hebrew groups in the ten specified
places with the Greek transcriptions of the original group in
respectively the same places, we shall find that, in each in-
stance, the two representations of the same word, though differ-
ing in fulness of vocalization, are not in this respect directly
at variance with each other, except in the third place, in which
JfiEttf cannot at all be reconciled in pronunciation with 2a/xaa,
or Sa/mou. In a matter in which the Hebrew scribes acted
so capriciously, it is no longer now discoverable, with any ap-
proach to certainty, why they selected this site wherein to
deviate from the Greek vocalization. They may, perhaps,
have thought the appearance of inaccuracy thrown by such
contrivance upon the Septuagint more likely to attract obser-
vation, where the group they operated on is put forward at
the head of a list of persons of elevated rank and distinguished
birth, than in obscurer places of its occurrence ; or they may
have honestly considered JfiDtP more suited to the genius of
the Hebrew tongue than #£&' vocalized in any way that could
be derived from Sa/^aa or 'Za/naov. But, however that may be,
if we pass over this single instance, we may perceive in every
other one a striking correspondence between the adduced
representations ; as, fin- example, JfiDtf, j/E£>, and &U7DJP, are

Chap.IL] AND SHIMEI, EXAMINED & COMPAKED. 175

presented to us in the one record, in respectively the same places
as Sa^u/xow or Saft/ioue, Se/xeV or 2e/iee*, and 2a/xaa or 'Sba/j.aas, in
the two principal copies of the other. It is quite impossible
that such coincidences between two series of discordant repre-
sentations could have occurred without their mutual com-
parison ; and the Hebrew vocalization being that of later
elate, must in these instances have been borrowed from the
Greek one. This example supplies, as far as it goes, internal
evidence that, however eagerly the Hebrew vocalizers endea-
voured to disparage the Septuagint, it was solely thence they
derived their knowledge of the vowel part of the pronuncia-
tion of Scriptural names of rare occurrence ; and that, conse-
quently, where this source of information failed, they had
no other guide or standard to direct them. Accordingly,
they, by their vacillating and inconsistent representations,
show themselves just as much at a loss as the Seventy were,
for the correct pronunciation of the group under examina-
tion, in both the applications of it as yet considered. All
certainty, indeed, with regard to that pronunciation, having
been lost before the Septuagint was written, there could be no
human means of recovering it with exactness at any subsequent
period. The framers of the Peshitah, therefore, must have
been fully as much in the dark on this point, as either the first
Greek translators, or first Hebrew vocalizers of the sacred text ;
and their consistency, in reading this group always in the same
way, when employed as the name of the same individual,
merely shows that they attended to — what was overlooked by
both the other parties — a careful collation of the different parts
of their work ; while the circumstance of their reading it dif-
ferently for the two individuals referred to, is to be attributed
to the latitude of choice left open to them by the very uncer-
tainty in which they were placed, and to their availing them-
selves of this latitude for the convenience of distinguishing
between these persons. As this case, then, furnishes no evi-
dence deserving credit on the matter here under inquiry, I
conclude, in accordance with the general position already laid

p

176 SHAMMUA, SHIMEA, SHAMMA, SHIMMA, [Chap. II.

clown upon the subject, that the son and brother of David, who
had the same denomination in writing, had likewise the same
in speech. In the second place, though there be no certainty
as to what was the verbal designation common to the two re-
latives in question, yet as it is necessary to pitch upon some
one or other, I would venture to propose Shammuah ; not only
for its agreement with a very usual mode — perhaps the most
usual — of vocalizing names ending with the guttural Hayin, —
as may be illustrated by the instances of Abishua, Elishuah,
Jeshua, Malchishua, Zeruah, — but also for the preference the
three parties whose dealing with the original group is under
examination, appear to have given to it, — the Seventy, by em-
ploying a correspondent transcription in the first of the three
more distinguished applications of this group,8 — and the He-
brew vocalizcrs and Syriac translators, by selecting a corre-
spondent vocalization, the former set of scribes, in two of these
applications, and the latter set, in all three. Hence I infer it
to be most likely, that the family name by which the uncle
and nephew were called in common was Shammuah.

In the third-mentioned cuse of the group in question,
wherein it serves to denote a member of the house of Saul and
son of Gera, it occurs thrice in 2 Sam. xvi., four times in
2 Sam. xix., and eleven times in 1 Kings, ii.; in every one of
which places it is to be seen uniformly vocalized WDW, SheMelll,
in the Hebrew record, as the sacred text at present stands,
and also uniformly transcribed S^ueV in the Septuagint, and
- . wn«) SheMelll, in the Peshitah. As WDW has been already
proved to have been at first written without any vowel-letter
whatever, the consideration of the third application of the
primitive group is here introduced merely in reference to the
subordinate inquiry, with what vocal sounds it should be read

J1 Although nothing is recorded of the above relatives but their genealo-
gies, yet one of them, the son of a very remarkable man and powerful king,
may be said to have been, at least by birth, a more distinguished individual
than the other, who was son of only a peasant.

Chap. IL] AND SHIMEI, EXAMINED & COMPARED. 177

in this use of it. Now, although the authority of the Septua-
gint upon this point is greatly weakened by the vacillation it
betrays with regard to the two previous applications of the
same group, yet, as its attestation in all the instances of that
at present under view is perfectly consistent, and as the He-
brew and Syriac vocalizations, here also consistent, quite har-
monize, as far as they respectively go, with the fuller Greek
one, I do not feel myself at liberty to reject this accumulation
of concordant evidence. Taking, then, the powers of the con-
sonants, as before, from the Hebrew text, and the remaining
elements of the word from the older and more complete re-
presentation of its vowels supplied by the first Greek version,
I would venture to recommend Shemehi as the pronunciation
of this group, when used to designate the son of Gera.

A circumstance may be here noticed ex abundantly as ac-
cordant with the original identity of the above examined
group in its references as a proper name to various indivi-
duals,— that in every place of its occurrence in either of the
two first-mentioned applications of it, and in every chapter in
which it occurs in the third application, we are expressly told
whether it be a son of David, or a brother of David (or, what
comes to the same thing, a son of Jesse), or a son of Gera,
that is spoken of; — a piece of information quite unnecessary
to be so often repeated, if the written name employed to de-
note those persons had been at first made in any respect dif-
ferent for each of them.

The Hebrew group just analyzed, which is constantly vo-
calized IPDttf in its third application, is for this use of it trans-
lated in the Authorized English Version Shimti, with uni-
formity, indeed, but not with any degree of close adherence
to the expression of its sound derived from its oldest Hebrew
vocalization, as filled up and completed from either the Greek
transcription of the word, or from its Masoretic pointing : for
it ought, according to the former combination of authorities,
be read Shemehi, and, according to the latter, Shimhi. With
regard to the ten quoted instances of the first and second ap-

r2

178 A FEW MORE INSTANCES ADDUCED [Chap. II.

plications of this group, the renderings by our English trans-
lators of its several forms, in those instances, exhibit the fol-
lowing variations, put in the order of my quotations, the
repetitions of the same readings being omitted : — Shammuah,
Shimea, Shammua, Shammah, Shimeah, Shimma, and Shamma.*
Though fidelity of transcription is the only conceivable object
that could have induced them to adopt such a heap of con-
tradictory readings, yet they deviated in some of these read-
ings from the ancient authorities which bear upon the subject.
The most curious of those instances occurs in 2 Sam. xxi. 21,
where the Hebrew group is written in the same way as it
always is for its third application, ^DtP, and where both the
Masorets and the English translators support my view of the
spurious nature of the final letter, the former set of writers,
by branding it with their little circular mark of censure, and
pointing the remainder of the group for the pronunciation
Shimha; the latter set, by transcribing this name Shimea,
which, it may be observed, is at variance with its Masoretic
pointing and Greek transcription, as well as with its first He-
brew vocalization.

In conformity with the foregoing exposition of the matter,
the Hebrew name just examined requires no correction where
it is yiDty, that is, in the first and third of the specified places,
nor does "^Dttf in any of the eighteen last referred to. But
the vocalized forms of the original group in the second, ninth,
and tenth places, — in the fourth and fifth, — in the sixth and
seventh,— and in the eighth, — should be exhibited respec-
tively S0/ri]DW, n[jn]BB>, foraE&>, and ^raw. In an
English version, according to the same views, the group in
question should be rendered Shammuah in the first ten places,
and Shemehi in the last eighteen ; while there ought to be in-
serted in the margin opposite Shammuah, in the second, ninth,

* The last of the above variations does not appear in the later editions of
our Authorized Version; as, in them, Shamma has been changed into Sham-
mah in the margin of 1 Chron. ii. 13.

Chap. II.] OF CONTRADICTORY VOCALIZATION. 179

and tenth places ' Heb. voc. Shamaha,' — in the fourth and
fifth, ' Heb. cop. Shammah,' — in the sixth and seventh, ' Heb.
cop. Shamahah] — and in the eighth, ' Heb. voc. ShemehV

13. The following examples of names inconsistently voca-
lized may, from the degree of similarity which holds between
them, be briefly considered together. The spuriousness of
the matres lectionis found in these examples is proved, not
only by the evidence of the oldest versions, but also by that
of the sacred text itself, on the ground that no direct inco-
herency could have existed between any different parts of it
in their original state. Moreover, the versions referred to
contribute valuable aid to the determination of the vowel or
vowels in each conflicting instance to be corrected, as also in
some of the cases to the restoration of a genuine element of
the text thence dropped.

Gen. xxxvi. 22. 1 Chron. i. 39-

Hebrew text, .... D^H, HEMaM. DD1H, HOMaM.

Septuagint, .... At/uav. Atfxav.

Peshitah, isoioocn, HOMaM. :>oSooai, HOMaM.

Authorized English Vers., Heman. Homam.

Although the two ancient versions concur in proving the spu-
riousness of the vowel-letters in the Hebrew exhibitions of
this name, they disagree as to its proper vocalization, in con-
sequence of which a choice must be made between their testi-
monies on this point ; and as that of the Septuagint is consis-
tent in itself, a decided preference should be given to it on
account of its far greater antiquity. The Hebrew group,
therefore, requires no correction in Genesis, but should be

o

exhibited in Chronicles DftlDlH, with the marginal note on
its altered vocalization ' Sept. ;' while it ought to be transcribed
in both of the corresponding places of the Authorized English
Version Hemam, with the marginal note upon this transcript
in the second place of its occurrence, ' Heb. voc. Homam.'

180 A FEW xWORE INSTANCES ADDUCED [Chap. II.
Gen. xxxvi. 23. 1 Chron. i. 40.

Hebrew text, .... \by, HaLON. p^, HaLiN.

Septuagint, .... TwXafx — TwXto/x. AXwv — IwXafx,

Peshitah, va\i>, HaLON. ,_QJJ>, HaNON.a

Pointed text, .... HaLWaN. HaLYaN.

Authorized English Vers. Alvan. Alian.

From the vacillating Greek vocalization of this name in each
copy of the Septuagint, it would appear that all certainty as
to the vocal ingredients of its sound was lost before the oldest
part of this version was written ; as it can hardly be supposed
that the framers of the Peshitah, who lived between three and
four hundred years later, could have had better information
on this subject. The uniformity, therefore, with which the
latter set of translators vocalized this name is, I fear, to be
attributed merely to the care with which they collated the
different parts of their work. The Syriac vocalization, how-
ever, as the best within our reach, and as being in part sup-
ported by that of the Seventy, must be here adhered to. The
Hebrew name, then, should be left in its present state in
Genesis, and altered in Chronicles into the form pH]7# with
the marginal note on the altered part, 'Pesh.' To change on
such uncertain grounds any genuine element of the sacred
text would be quite unwarrantable ; but it is to be borne in
mind that the correction here recommended affects only an
interpolated letter. The vocalization of this name in the two
places of its occurrence in the pointed text is here given, to
show that the Masorets entirely mistook the nature of the in-
troduced letters, which they dealt with as uttered consonants,
and not, as they ought according to their own theory, as qui-
escents. To determine the best English transcript of the above
name which the case admits of, it should be ascertained whe-

* The substitution of the Syriac N for L in the Syrian transcript of the
above name in the second place of its occurrence has obviously been occasioned
by a mere oversight of the copyists.

Chap. II.] OF CONTRADICTORY VOCALIZATION. 181

ther the diaphonous element of the Hebrew designations be
used with its composite or simple power. Now, if the initial
letter of the fourth Greek transcript be, as is most likely, a T,
which from great age has lost its transverse line, the evidence
of the Septuagint is three to one, and at any rate is two to
one, in favour of the composite power of the Hayin. This
name, I therefore conceive, should be transcribed in both
places of its occurrence in a revised English version Ghalon,
with the marginal note upon it in the second of those places,
' Heb. voc. Ghalin?

Gen. xxxvi. 23. 1 Chron. i. 40.

Hebrew text, .... 1SB>, ShoPhU. ^B>, ShoPhl.

Septuagint, .... 2w0a/9 — Sw0. 2w0t — 2w0/.

PeshitCih, ;^ », ShoPhaR. ; a », ShoPhaR.

Authorized English Vers. Shepho. Shephi.

In the four Greek representations of the name before us, the
vocalization of the first syllable is perfectly identical, while no
inconsistency can be made out against that of the second syl-
lable, which is preserved unmutilated only in one of those
representations. The Greek vocalization, therefore, of this
name in the first place of its occurrence in the Vatican copy
of the Septuagint may be admitted correct ; while the Peshi-
tah proves the spuriousness of the vowel-letters in the Hebrew
groups, not, as in previous instances, by the use of different
vowel-letters in respectively the same syllables, but by abstain-
ing from the employment of any vowel-letters whatever in
either exhibition of this word. Here a second service of the
two versions is presented to us in the restoration of an original
letter of the above Hebrew name, of which no trace is to be
found in any of the extant copies of the sacred text. In com-
mitting to writing vowel sounds that had been previously
preserved chiefly by means of oral tradition, the later the
operation was performed, the less its accuracy could be relied
on. So far the authority of the Peshitah is inferior to that

182 OF THE FOREIGN NAMES TRANSCRIBED [Chap. II.

the Septuagint. But with regard to the service which now
comes under consideration, the two versions are more upon a
par ; for it is possible that the Syriac translators may have
had access to as perfect a copy of the original text as any made
use of by the Seventy. In reference, indeed, to the present
case, they at first view of the matter appear to have obtained
a better one ; as they have given a transcript of the lost letter
in both Genesis and the Chronicles, which the Seventy have
preserved in the former place alone. But the advantage thus
shown upon the side of the Peshitah is much more likely to
have arisen from the practice observed by its framers, of col-
lating the corresponding parts of Scripture, than from any
superiority of the copy or copies of it in their possession. But
however this may be, the circumstance of the name before us
having been originally terminated with a letter of R power, is
established by the joint, and at the same time perfectly inde-
pendent, attestations of both versions. I would therefore ven-

o

ture to recommend this name to be written ["l!h^ in the

o

first place of its occurrence in the sacred text, and [H?D£> in
the second, with the marginal note upon the final letter, ' Sept.
et Pesh.' in the former place, and ' Pesh.' in the latter ; while
it should be transcribed in an English version ' Shophai' in
both plaees, with the note, ' Heb. voc. and cop. Shophu,' in the
margin of the verse containing it in Genesis, and 'Heb. voc.
and cop. ShophiJ in that of the corresponding verse in Chro-
nicles.

Gen. xxxvi. 11. 1 Chron. i. 36.

Hebrew text, . . . . 13V, SoPhU. ^V, SoPhl.

Septuagint, .... Huxpap — ^cocpap. ^wcpap — Huxpap.

Peshitah, Q^, SoPhU. *»$, SoPh.

Authorized English Vers. Zepho. Zephi.

The circumstances of this case are nearly analogous to those
of the last one, with the exception that the final letter of the
name here brought under notice appears to have dropped from

Chap. II.] IN OUR VERSION ON AND AVEN. 183

the sacred text before the Peshitah was written; in conse-
quence of which only the evidence of one of the principal
versions is afforded to us, as to the loss of that letter and the
proper vocalization of the word. But on each point this evi-
dence is perfectly consistent and complete in itself. The name
should therefore, I submit, be written FOIStf in the first place
of its occurrence in the Hebrew Bible, and D")]^¥ in the second,
with the marginal note in both places upon the introduced
letter, ' Sept. ;' and it should be transcribed in an English ver-
sion Zophar in both of the verses containing it, with the note
in the margin of the first of them, ' Heb. voc. and cop. Zephoj
and in that of the second, ' Heb. voc. and cop. Zeplii?

14. The errors of the Masorets, already exposed with
regard to the use of the matres lectionis in names of rare occur-
rence, can be also exemplified by their treatment of foreign
designations, and indeed are therein peculiarly observable.
Thus, the power of Waw in |1tf has in two instances been
mistaken by them, where that group serves in the Hebrew
text to denote localities outside Judea. First, a town of Egypt
is mentioned four times in Scripture (Gen. xli. 45, 50, xlvi.
20, and Ezek. xxx. 17) by its Egyptian name, which is con-
stantly paraphrased in the Septuagint by the characteristic
denomination 'WkioimoKis, i. e., ' city of the Sun,' on account
of the Pagan deity who was principally worshipped there. This
name has been allowed to remain, as it was originally penned,
)tf, HoN, in the first and third places of its occurrence in the
Jewish edition of the Hebrew text ;a but, in the second and
fourth, it is at present exhibited with a Waw inserted between
its genuine elements, to denote the vowel 0. Now the Maso-
rets could not be ignorant of the nature of the introduced
letter in the second of the four specified places ; because they

* In the Samaritan edition the above name is written without a Waiu in
the second, as well as in the first and third place of its occurrence; — a cir-
cumstance which affords additional proof, if any were wanting, of that letter
being an interpolated one in ]1N, where this group makes its second appear-
ance in the Jewish copies.

184 OF THE FOREIGN NAMES TRANSCRIBED [Chap.II.

had the word under their eyes only five verses before, written
without any such addition. They, in consequence, rightly
marked the Waw in that place as, according to their theory,
the quiescent accompaniment of a vowel ; whereas, in the
fourth place, where they had not the like aid for their guidance,
they pointed it as a sounded consonant, and. thereby con-
verted an Egyptian proper name into a Hebrew word that
signifies iniquity ! It is in vain urged, in defence of so extraor-
dinary a transmutation, that Hon was a very wicked, idolatrous
city ; for this character might have been given of every place
without distinction throughout the entire of Egypt in the days
of Ezekiel ; and, therefore, was not calculated to suggest to
those whom he addressed the notion of any one town of that
country more than another. It is true that Beth-liel (house
of God), a place where Hebrew was spoken, is sometimes
styled by the inspired writers Beth-hawen (house of inquity),for
a reason well known to the Jews, namely, the idolatry there
practised ; and, upon one occasion, this town is called simply
Hawen (iniquity), familiarity with the compound term na-
turally leading to the use of its principal ingredient with the
same signification, besides that the context of the passage marks
out the locality referred to: "the high places also of Aven, the
sin of Israel, shall be destroyed." — Hos. x. 8. The worship of
a golden calf is emphatically termed in Scripture ' the sin of
Israel ;' Avert, therefore, or Hawen, must here denote one or
other of the two cities of Israel in which that sin was habitually
committed, and Bethel was the chief one. But Hebrew never
was the national dialect of Egypt ; and there is nothing what-
ever to countenance the supposition that one of its towns in
particular could have been specially known to Ezekiel's coun-
trymen under the vague designation of a general term of the
Hebrew language, except the assumed identity of the groups
of letters with which that term and the proper name of the
Egyptian city in question were all along written in the sacred
text ; an identity which, it now turns out, did not present
itself till many centuries alter the lifetime of the Prophet, and

Chap.IL] IN OUR VERSION ON AND AVEN. 185

which is only apparent, and not even to appearance complete,
the first vocalizers having, in two cases out of four, over-
looked the group employed to express the Egyptian name, and
suffered it to remain in its original state.

Secondly, another foreign locality — a valley or plain
in the territories of Damascus — is mentioned in Scripture
(Amos, i. 5) under the designation of |1N, the transcription
of which in the Septuagint, our oldest and best authority on
the subject, is Civ ; which clearly shows that it should be read
HON, whereas it is pointed by the Masorets for the pronun-
ciation HaWeN ; — a misreading, however, which did not
commence with them, but had a much older origin. The
word is not in this, as in the former example, restricted to
HON by the internal evidence of the case : for, neither does
the group with which it is written occur with its present
application in different parts of the text, by a comparison of
which the true reading might be ascertained ; nor, where the
language of the Syrians and that of the Jews had so close an
affinity, would there have been any absurdity in the supposition
of a valley in Syria having been called by a Hebrew name.
Accordingly, the Jewish scribes of older times, who took every
opportunity they could of throwing discredit on the testimony
of the LXX., and had in the instance before us nothing to
contend with but that testimony, at an early period adopted
HaWeN as the right pronunciation of ]1N, in the verse just
referred to. This proceeding of theirs may be collected from
the renderings of the group in question in some of the spurious
Greek versions, or of new editions of the genuine one, that
were published in the course of the second century of our
era, under their direction, or that of Judaizing heretics, who,
to a certain extent, concurred in their views. The pretended
corrections I here allude to are preserved in the Commenta-
ries of Jerome, in a passage upon Amos, i. 5, which runs in
the following terms : — " Campum autem idoli quod Hebraice
dicitur Avert, et LXX. et Theodotio interprctati sunt Civ ;
Symmachus et quinta editio transtulerunt hiiquitatem ; Aquila,

186 OF THE EGYPTIAN NAME TRANSCRIBED [Chap.II.

avwcpeXovs, id est, inutilem:" — Hieronymi Opera, Ed0. Benedict,
torn. iii. col. 1374. In this instance, as well as some others,
the spurious Greek versions of the second century actually,
in their deviation from the earlier genuine one, went beyond
the Hebrew vocalization in support of which they were writ-
ten ; for the Hebrew group pN does not contradict the Greek
transcription Civ, except through the reading to which they
have restricted it ; — a reading which is unquestionably false,
since the testimony of the LXX., which is opposed thereto,
vastly outweighs that by which it is supported, not only as
the oldest that has reached us on the subject, but also as given
by a party above suspicion, and before the written expression
of the word in question became ambiguous in the sacred text.
As the misreading of this word can be traced as far back as
the age of Aquila, that is, to a date very shortly subsequent to
the introduction of vowel-letters into the Hebrew Bible, it must
have originated in design ; but its continuance by the Maso-
rets can be attributed solely to ignorance, those scribes having
always exhibited the most scrupulous editorial honesty, and
the secret of the interpolation of the vowel-letters in the
original text having been lost among the Jews long before
their time.

15. To revert from the mistakes of the Masorets to the
intentional misrepresentations of the older set of vocalizers, —
the Hebrew designation of Poti-pherah affords, in its present
state, compared with the transcription of it by the Seventy, a
striking example of groups wrongly supplied with matres lec-
tionis; and, at the same time, places in a conspicuous light
the very superior value of the Septuagint, even when consi-
dered barely in the service it performs of recording the vocal
portion of the sounds of names. The Hebrew group here
referred to, j/ID^LD^, is, through accident or caprice, separated
into two parts in the copies of the Jewish edition of the Pen-
tateuch which were consulted by the framers of our Autho-
rized Version (as may be perceived by their mode of transcrib-
ing it); but it is correctly written as a single word in several

Chap. II.] IN OUR VERSION POTI-PHERAH. 187

others, in manuscript, that are enumerated by Dr. Kennicott,
as also in all the Samaritan copies he collated, except one, and
is likewise translated as such in the Septuagint and Peshitah.
The transcription of the original group in the former version,
Here(pp>/, represents a combination of sounds that are signifi-
cant in Coptic, — a medley offspring of Greek and Egyptian, —
wherein pH means ' sun ;' $pH, ' the sun ;' and e-cbpH, ' to the
sun ;' while eT is the pronoun ' who ;' and nex, ' he that.'
The entire compound, therefore, neT-e-^pH, is literally ' he
that — — to the sun,' or ' one dedicated to the service of the
sun ;' — a characteristic description, of the same nature, in its
immediate signification, with all the old ideagraphic designa-
tions, and which constituted a very appropriate name for a
priest of On, a town called by the Seventy e HXiovttoXis, ' the
city of the sun.' This analysis of the meaning of HerecppPj in
a foreign tongue is, I admit, taken from the Coptic, as exhi-
bited in copies of works that were not composed before the
second or third century of our era ; but still is applicable to
this dialect in much earlier stages of its existence. The in-
gredients and structure of the analyzed expression having no
connexion whatever with Greek, must have been derived from
the ancient language of Egypt ; and they appear to have un-
dergone no perceptible change in their transition from it into
its mongrel descendant, or during an antecedent period of
considerable length. For their combination agrees in sense
with the meaning which may well be conceived, for the reason
above stated, to have been conveyed by the name of the father-
in-law of Joseph : and it also agrees in sound, as closely as
the rules of Hebrew orthography will allow, with the designa-
tion of that name transmitted to us by the author of the Pen-
tateuch. At least jn^EDlD, when stripped of its adventitious
elements, admits of being read, PheTePheReH,a or, according to

a The circumstance of the Seventy having recorded this name Hereby,
instead of (fierefapij, shows that they were guided by its original Egyptian
sound, rather than by the imitation of that sound in Hebrew

188 OF THE EGYPTIAN NAME TRANSCRIBED [Chap.1I.

modern usage, PeTePheRell, and so differs in pronunciation
from the Greek or Coptic group compared with it, only in the
separation of the Ph and R powers, which are never completely
united into one articulation in Hebrew.

The extraordinary permanence and durability thus indi-
cated of the verbal ingredients of a description, in a country
which had not the benefit of even the rudest syllabary, — much
less of an alphabet of consonants and vowels, — for nearly a
thousand years after the age in which Joseph lived, must, I
conceive, be attributed to the extreme shortness of the words
brought together, and their necessarily frequent occurrence in
the use of the language to which they belonged. But how-
ever this may be, the reading of the original group suggested
by its Greek transcription, supported as it is by the internal
evidence of the case, vastly outweighs in authority the united
force of the Jewish, the Samaritan, and the Syriac representa-
tions of this name by means of letters exactly the same in
value, and differing only in shape, which may all in com-
mon be read PUTIPlwRaH, or POTIPheRaH. The circumstance
of the word having been thus misvocalized by the framers of
the Peshitah, who transcribed it \\t a . I o^j, shows this corrupt
pronunciation of it to have been adopted by the Jews, before
they introduced matres lection is into the sacred text; but still
they did not venture on the change of its sound till after the
time of Josephus, as we find the transcription employed by
the Seventy adhered to by him. Although the second vowel-
letter of the Hebrew group in its present state might be read
E as well as /, yet both require, I apprehend, the little circu-
lar mark of censure, without the entry of any substitute for
either in the margin ; as the matres lectionis were employed
solely for the expression of open long vowels. This group
should, therefore, as I conceive, be written in the sacred text
jnD'LD ID, and be transcribed in an English version Petephereh,
or, if such a mode of printing it be allowable in a work in-
tended for general use, Petepftreh.

16. From the difference in termination of the Hebrew,

Chap. II.] IN OUR VERSION POTIPHAR. 189

Samaritan, and Syriac representations of the foregoing deno-
mination, and the similar name applied to one of the officers
in Pharaoh's service, as well as from their different treatment
in the Septuagint, in which one of them is exhibited with an
unaltered Coptic, and the other with a Grecianized ending, it
would appear that the last syllable of the former word had a
fuller or longer sound than that of the latter ; — a circumstance
which still is compatible with their having had the same cha-
racteristic signification, as pa, the final element of the above
analyzed compound, is written pe, without any alteration of
its meaning, in the Bashmuric dialect. But in process of time,
according as Greek came into more constant and general use
in Egypt, both names were alike transcribed in that language
into Uere(f)py^ at the period when Josephus flourished ; and by
the time that the Coptic versions were composed, they were
both in common therein written IIeT"ed>pH : whether it was
the case, that increased familiarity with Greek, reacting on
Coptic, extended to the two transcriptions in the latter lan-
guage the sameness which commenced between those employed
in the former one ; or that identity of characteristic significa-
tion of the two original names led eventually to the identity
of their sounds, after the Egyptians had become habituated to
alphabetic designations. But however this result may have
been produced, at any rate the joint testimony of the Hebrew
and Samaritan editions of the sacred text, supported by that
of the first Greek and Syriac versions, proves beyond a doubt
that the two Egyptian names in question had originally dif-
ferent terminations, one of which alone has been preserved in
the Septuagint, the other having been therein transmuted into

a The name of Potipherah does not occur in Scripture in the nominative
case; but from its genitive being written Tle7e<fip>) in the Septuagint, and
YLe7c<fipod by Josephus, it would appear that the Greek transcription of that
name for the nominative case had been changed from ITeTc0/)ry to IIeT£0/>?)? in
the interval between the age in which the oldest part of the Septuagint was
written, and that in which Josephus lived.

190 OF THE CHALDEE NAME TRANSCRIBED [Chap.II.

a Grecian form. Hence the oldest combined vocal and con-
sonantal representation we have of the sound of the last syl-
lable of the second name is to be found in (povrKJyap, the tran-
scription of IS^GDISi given, according to Origen, by both Aquila
and Symmachus, and which continued to denote the pronun-
ciation of the entire name till, at all events, the age when
Jerome wrote it ' Phutiphar,' after which the reading of the
Hebrew group was changed to ' Potiphar,' and has, through
the operation of the Masoretic pointing, been retained in that
form up to the present day. In these successive representa-
tions of the word, however otherwise different, the pronunci-
ation of the last syllable remains unchanged ; and, though it
can be traced to no older or higher authority than that of two
of the spurious Greek versions of the second century, yet in
the absence of any better, we should not, I conceive, be justi-
fied in deviating therefrom : while at the same time the first
two syllables, being exactly the same as those of the name pre-
viously examined, must of course require the same corrections
both in their Hebrew and their English designations. I would,
therefore, affix to the Hebrew group the same marks as in

o o

the preceding instance, exhibiting it in the form "ID^ID, and
would transcribe it in an English version Petephar.

17. Of foreign names designedly misvocalizcd with Haleph
we have a remarkable instance in the Hebrew designation of
Nebuchadnezzar, which in the present state of the sacred text
is to be seen generally therein written 1V^*TD33 or "ly^lS'DJ.
Whether the two final syllables of these groups were, upon the
interpolation of the Haleph, at first read ndzor or nezor? can

ft Among the possible readings, in the time of the first vocalizers of the sacred
text, of the two final syllables of the above groups, are not included nazar
and nezar; because, wherever the very last syllable exhibits a mater lectionis(as
in Jer. xlix. 28, Ezra, ii. 1), it is always a Waiv, whose vocal values are incon-
sistent with those readings. The Waio in this situation is always noted by
the Masorets with the little circular mark of censure, as at variance with
their pronunciation of the name; but still their retaining it at all in the

Chap. II.] IN OUR VERSION NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 191

no longer now be determined : all that is known to a certainty
on the subject is, that they came at length to be uttered nezzar,
in which pronunciation they have been permanently fixed by
their Masoretic pointing. Before proceeding further, it may
be worth while to notice, by the way, an inconsistency in that
pointing. In the system of the Masorets, the regular effect of
a quiescent upon the preceding vowel is to render it open as
well as long, while, on the other hand, the doubling of the fol-
lowing consonant in utterance has the very opposite effect,
upon the same vowel, of giving it a close sound. Of these
contradictory influences the latter has been attended to, and
the initial letter of the two syllables pointed with a segol;
while the Halepk interposed between this close vowela and a
dageshed letter is suffered to appear as if it had no business
there. Modern grammarians attempt to account for the dis-
crepance here betrayed, by calling the mater lectionis so
placed an otiant instead of a quiescent; just as if the introduc-
tion of a new term could suffice to explain the cause of this
anomaly. The true solution of the difficulty, I submit, is to
be found in the firm determination of the Masorets nowhere
to deviate, in the slightest degree, from either the letters of the
text, or the pronunciation of its groups which had been trans-
mitted to them, — not even where these were irreconcilable with
each other. This scrupulous strictness of the Jews, carried to
an extreme that would have been observed by no other set of
scribes in the world, was admirably calculated for the preser-
vation of the sacred text in an unaltered state, during the
many centuries before the Reformation that it was virtually in
their sole keeping : for, though the proof of their editorial
honesty, which here incidentally presents itself, applies imme-
diately to only the Masorets, yet we have no reason to think

text, under such circumstances, is a strong additional indication of their
scrupulous honesty.

a The segol has sometimes, I admit, a quasi open sound, but not where it is
followed by a dageshed letter, without any other vowel-point intervening
between it and that letter.

Q

192 OF THE CHALDEE NAME TRANSCRIBED [Chap. II.

any preceding set of Jewish scribes at all different in this re-
spect, till we go back to the second century of our era, when
we find them repeatedly charged by the Christians with cor-
rupting the Greek version of the Bible, and when, it now turns
out, they also tampered with the original Scriptures.

That in the case before us the Haleph is an interpolated
letter is proved by the Syriac transcription of the name in
question, which is uniformly j^j^qjcu in every place of its
occurrence in the Peshitah ; and as the use of matres lee-
tionis in Syriac writing gradually increased, the circumstance
of the Haleph not appearing at present in this transcription
supplies an a fortiori argument against its existence there at
the time when the first Syriac version was written, and con-
sequently against its having been inserted in the original He-
brew group till after that period. This inference from the
Syriac evidence on the subject is powerfully corroborated by
that of the sacred text itself, in which the designation of
Nebuchadnezzar is, even to the present day, exhibited in va-
rious forms without the Haleph (as, for instance, it has been
suffered to remain in its original wholly unvocalized state
"IV31D33, in Dan. ii. 1, iv. 34, v. 18, and is found written
WaTyEU in Ezra, i. 7, v. 12, 14, vi. 5, Jer. xxiv. 1, Dan. iii. 1,
19, 24, iv. 28, and 'TOJTD^ in Ezra, ii. 1). Now the interpo-
lation of the above mater lectionis would have been actually
an improvement on the original spelling of the group, if it had
served to convey the true vowel-sound of the penultimate
syllable ; but the old vocalizers certainly did not believe it to
perform any such service; as they had under their eyes
Napovxocovooof), the transcription of the name in the Septua-
gint, which had up to their time been always considered by
the Jews as the beat, or rather indeed the only authority on
the subject. The circumstance, therefore, of their deviating
here from the first Greek version could have arisen solely from
the dishonest wish of bringing that standard into disrepute ; —
a design which, though conceived with great art, was not in
this instance put into execution with equal care ; as we see that,

Chap. II.] IN OUR VERSION NEBUCHADNEZZAR, 193

in several places just quoted, the Hebrew designation has been
either overlooked and left in its original state, or displayed in
other forms likewise admitting to be read in exact accordance
with its Grecian vocalization. The correctness of this vocaliza-
tion is supported by the constant and uniform agreement, with
respect to it, of the Seventy and the framers of the Peshitah :
and the uniformity, on this point, of the former set of transla-
tors is of the more weight, inasmuch as it is evident, from
other instances, that they did not collate the different parts of
their version. Josephus moreover vocalizes this name exactly
as the Seventy, and only differs from them in writing the word
Na.pov%o%ov6(Topo$, and so adding to it a Greek termination ; —
a difference which might naturally be expected from the in-
creased familiarity of the Jewish public in his day with the
Grecian language. It is also to be observed that both of the
above-mentioned set of translators always retain the consonants
of this name the same, even where the Nun of the Hebrew
designation has been changed to Resh : and, although in gene-
ral the authority of the sacred text is higher than that of any
version, as to the consonants of names, yet, where it is incon-
sistent with itself, the combined testimony of the Greek and
Syriac versions is obviously entitled to a preference. Where,
then, the penultimate syllable of the Hebrew group exhibits
an Haleph or a Resh, the little circular mark of rejection
should be placed over these letters, and a Nun within brackets
should be prefixed to the latter ; while, in an English version,
this name should, I conceive, be transcribed Nabukodonozor,
uniformly in every place of its occurrence.

18. Of the Hebrew representations in their existing state,
KHID and ^TTT,* of the Persian names of Cyrus and Darius,
the former is brought under notice, not only to establish the

a In the above group neither the Yod nor the Waw is printed in open
type ; because it is doubtful which of those letters is therein employed as a
mater lectionis, as may be seen by a subsequent part of the paragraph. All
that we can be certain of is, that one of them must be so used, or the word

Q2

194 OF THE HEBREW IMITATIONS OF THE [Chap. II.

adventitious nature of its mater lectionis Waw by the testi-
mony of the first Hebrew voealizers themselves, who over-
looked this group, and suffered it to remain wholly unvoca-
lized in two places of its occurrence (Ezra, i. 1, 2) ; but also
to expose the mistake committed by the second set (whether
it originated with them or earlier critics), of pointing this Waw
for its 0, instead of its U sound ; — a mistake which shows that
the Jews must have abandoned the use of Greek versions of
their Scriptures (wherein the name in question has always
been transcribed Kvpos) long before the period when the sacred
text came to be pointed ; and, at the same time, gives a very
striking instance of their gross ignorance, in losing the princi-
pal vocal part of the sound of a name which was so promi-
nently connected with the history of their nation. The latter
group, as at present written in the sacred text, £H?"n, places
the historic ignorance of the Masorets in nearly as conspi-
cuous a light, by the manner in which they have pointed it, and
affords thereby a further exemplification of a mater lectionis
mistaken by them for a consonant. The first voealizers of the
Hebrew Bible cannot be supposed to have misrepresented the
vocal part of the sound of this name with the intention of dis-
paraging its transcription in the Septuagint, Aapeios ; — an ex-
pression of the word which was quite unassailable, as supported
by the authority of Herodotus and the general consent of the
Grecian public. The group J^V"lT, therefore, must be consi-
dered as agreeing in sound with Aapeios, as closely as the
powers of the letters in the two kinds of writing admitted ;
according to which view of the matter it must have been read
cither DaRYUSh, or DaRlWwSh. The former reading is the
nearest approach to the sound of Aapeios that the Hebrew
group can be made to convey, if the Yod be in it an original

expressed would differ too much from the well-known attestation of its
sound, Ao/36tos; and at the same time that both of them cannot be vowel-
letters, as the reading of this group DaRIUSh is prohibited by Hebrew ortho-
graphy, which does not allow any syllable to commence with a vowel.

Chap. II.] PERSIAN NAMES OF CYRUS AND DARIUS. 195

element ; the latter, if the Waw be so. But, whichever may
be the true pronunciation of OT"n, one of its two specified
letters is a mater lectionis, and consequently, according to the
theory of the Masorets, a quiescent accompaniment of a
vowel ; whereas those critics have treated both of them as
sounded consonants, and pointed the entire group so as to be
read DaRYaWeSh. It is unnecessary to dwell on the incorrect-
ness of this reading ; as it never met with any extensive re-
ception : even the various Protestant translators of the Bible,
who all of them paid too great deference to the Masoretic vo-
calization in its application to foreign denominations, yet in
the instance before us deviated from their usual practice, and
uniformly abandoned the pronunciation of this name, as fixed
by the Hebrew points, for the far older one adopted long be-
fore the commencement of the Christian era by both Jews and
Greeks in common.

19. But the most surprising instance of the mistake in
question, committed by the Masorets, is betrayed in their point-
ing of the Hebrew designation of Jerusalem, — a name which
might naturally be supposed one of those best known to them.
Notwithstanding the very numerous occurrences of this name
in Scripture, it is, I believe, written but five times in the fuller
manner, Dv&^iT, YeRUShaLEM, with a Yod in the penultimate
place; — a circumstance which even of itself serves to prove
that letter an interpolated element ; and the proof thus sup-
plied from the internal evidence of the case is clearly borne
out by the independent, yet so far concordant testimonies of
the Peshitah and the Septuagint. In the former version the
name before us is transcribed ^o\»3o1, HUReShaLeM, with, in-
deed, the initial letter and the place of the Waw changed, but
still with no Yod in the final syllable ; and in the latter it is
rendered 'lepovaaXi'i/j., so that, while the Syriac transcription
attests the spuriousness of the letter under consideration in
the Hebrew group, the Greek one further shows it to have
been therein inserted for the purpose of denoting the vowel E.

190 OF THE DESIGNATION OF JERUSALEM, [Chap. II.

According to the theory, therefore, of the Masorets, this letter
in DvEfiT should be viewed as a quiescent attendant on the
vowel-mark substituted for it in their system ; yet they treated
it as a sounded consonant, having pointed the entire group so
as to be read YeRUShaLaYj'M ; and such was their partiality
for this pointing, that they continued it the same even where
the letter in question is wanting ; though the reading so pro-
duced, YeRUShaLm'iM, is irregular, and implies, what is scarcely
credible, that a Yod has dropped from the original text the
vast number of times that the last syllable of this word is ex-
hibited without it, and consequently that a name to which the
Jews are so much attached has yet been preserved but five
times correctly written throughout the whole range of their
Scriptures. But, even in the very few instances in which this
pointing is not irregular, that is, where it is applied to the
fuller form of the Hebrew group, the reading which thence
results, Yerushalayim, can be shown erroneous, not only in
sound, through the very superior authority of the Septuagint
which sanctions quite a different pronunciation of the word,
but also in sense, through the meaning, ' the two Jerusalems,'
which this reading conveys. It surely is not to be supposed,
that two cities were so united in the Jewish metropolis as not
to form conjointly a single Jerusalem, but to bear, each of
them, separately, that name ; the notion appears absurd in
itself, and is utterly unwarranted by history. Besides, wherever
the point can be determined by the context, this word is always
found in Scripture to be used in the singular number; as, for
instance, in the following passage : — " Our feet shall stand in
thy gates, 0 Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built as a city that is
at unity in itself." — Ps. cxxii. 2, 3. In the original lines, as
well as in this translation of them, the name is strictly limited
to the singular number by the forms of the pronoun and verb
connected with it. The Hebrew word, I admit, is, in both
instances of its occurrence in the lines referred to, written with-
out a Yod in its last syllable ; but the coins dug out of the

Chap. II.] WHY CLASSED WITH FOREIGN ONES. 197

ruins of Jerusalem supply the deficiency in this step of my
argument, by presenting to us in Hebrew letters of an older
shape the legend iWTpPT ErhwT\\ that is, ' Jerusalem the
holy.' The circumstance of the adjective subjoined to the
name in this legend being in the singular number, plainly
shows, that even the fuller designation of this name has been
erroneously pointed by the Masorets ; and, at the same time,
it proves that the Yod before the Mem being neither the con-
sonant Y, which would put the word in the dual form, nor
the vowel i, which would make it plural, must be therein used
for the vowel E, in complete accordance with the sound as-
signed to the vocal part of its final syllable in the Septuagint.
To the like result, I may add, we are also led by the evidence
of those very scribes themselves,11 if the original name of the
city be allowed, on the authority of Josephus, to have been
D7i^, the final part of its later denomination ; for, where this
part occurs as the name of a place in Scripture (viz., Gen. xiv.
18, and Ps. lxxvi. 3), they have pointed it so as to be read,
not ShaLa/M, but ShaLeM. Josephus, I admit, transcribed the
shorter group So Av/za ; but, in perfect agreement with this re-
presentation of its sound, he rendered the longer one *Iepoo6-
Au/xa;b and, if the Masorets had been equally consistent, voca-
lizing the former Shalem, they should have made the reading
of the latter Yerushalem ; and, consequently, when Yod ap-
pears in the final syllable of the Hebrew designation, they
should have treated it, not as a sounded consonant, but as a

a The Masorets may likewise be shown to have misvocalized for the dual
number even some of the ordinary words of their language. Thus, where se-
raphs with wings are mentioned, Is. vi. 2, the Hebrew groups, DiD23 WW, are
pointed for the reading SheSh KeNaPhaYi'M, 'six pairs of wings;' though the
subsequent part of the verse clearly proves that each seraph had only six wings
altogether. It is true that the regular plural form of the above noun femi-
nine is rfi23D, KeNaPhOTh ; but this circumstance is in no way inconsistent
with the existence of an irregular plural for the same noun, 0^233, KeNaPhlM,
and the context compels us to attach such form to it in this place.

b Ttjv [tivTOt So'Xiyia varepov etcakeaav 'lepooo\v/;ia. — Josephi Artiiq. Jud.
lib. i. cap. x. sect. 2.

198 OF THE DESIGNATION OF JERUSALEM, [Chap. II.

quiescent one, and that, too, an attendant on their vowel-point
for E instead of I.

The change of the Greek rendering of this name from
lepovaaXi'ifi to lepoaoXv/jia, by authors who may be fairly sup-
posed to have transcribed it immediately from its designation
in the sacred text, deserves here to be noticed, as falling in
with the supposition of that designation having been originally
unvocalized : it was rendered, as far as I can find, solely in
the former of those ways by the Seventy, in both of them by
the Evangelists, and in the latter alone by Josephus. But
after the Hebrew group was interpolated with matres lectionis,
and put in the form D v&'IT, it could no longer be read in
the way indicated by the second rendering. The misreading
of this group YeRUS/jaLaY«'M, which has been perpetuated
through the pointing applied to it by the Masorets, may very
possibly have been transmitted to them from earlier times,
but still could not have commenced till after the Jews had lost
all knowledge of the Septuagint ; and it most probably origi-
nated with some extremely ignorant set of scribes, to whom,
in consequence of their residing in countries far removed from
Judea, the name of its ancient metropolis had virtually
become a foreign denomination.

This name is rendered in the earlier editions of the Au-
thorized English Version of the Old Testament Ierusalem ;
but, as soon as the vocal and semi-consonantal parts of the
phonetic value of / were, for the sake of distinctness, appropri-
ated to different characters, and J came into established use
as the representative of the latter part of that value, the
initial element of the word was very properly changed to this
letter ; and it should now still further, for precisely the same
reason as before, be changed to T; since the very power that was
previously shifted from I to J has, for some time past, been
transferred, in English orthography, from / to Y. In our
Authorized Version of the New Testament, the same name was
at first transcribed fFi<>rtis<tl<>m, in consequence of too implicit
a reliance on the correctness of the marks of aspiration em-

Chap II.] WHY CLASSED WITH FOREIGN ONES. 199

ployed in the copies of the Greek Testament, — marks which
were not inserted therein, any more than in the copies of the
Septuagint, before the seventh or eighth century of the Chris-
tian era. How the first accentuators came to attach the
spiritus asper to the initial letter of lepovaaX^fx can, I appre-
hend, be easily explained. For the city so called having been
very generally styled, by Christians as well as by Jews, holy, — an
epithet expressed in Greek by a word pronounced hieros, — it
was very natural for men acquainted with that language, but
ignorant of Hebrew, to take it for granted that lepos formed
part of the etymology of the name lepovaaXi]^ and so to pre-
fix the sign of the stronger species of aspiration to its initial
element. But a reference to the Hebrew designation clearly
shows this mode of aspirating its Greek transcription to be
erroneous ; and the detection of this error very soon led to
the dropping from the English rendering of the Greek word
its initial H, which we find omitted, besides the / being changed
to J, in the edition of our Bible that was printed at Cambridge
so early as the year 1629. In this state the name has con-
tinued to be exhibited in, I believe, every subsequent edition
of the Authorized Version of the New Testament ; wherein it
now should, for just the same reason as in that of the Old
Testament, be still further changed from Jerusalem to Yerusa-
lem. Upon this subject I shall add but one more remark,
that in strictness the name in question should be rendered
Yerushalem in the English version of the Old Testament. But,
as we have inspired authority for pronouncing the sibilant
part of this name with an articulation equivalent to that of
either Sh or S, it appears better, for the sake of uniformity, to
exhibit the word the same way in both English Testaments,
Yerusalem, in like manner as we at present find it printed
Jerusalem in both of them in common.

20. I shall close this chapter with an inquiry into the
correct mode of reading the Hebrew group HIT, representing
a proper name for the Almighty which He condescended to
reveal to Moses, and by which He expressly declared in Exod.

200 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

iii. 15,a that He should ever after be called; though the Jews,
through a degree of reverence for it carried to a superstitious
extreme, have now for more than two thousand years abstained
from its utterance, and substituted, in reading out the text of
their Bible, at first a single, and subsequently one or other of
two words, quite different from it in sound. But, as the re-
moval of error in this case is naturally the first step towards
the attainment of truth, I shall commence with a brief review
of the various transcripts of this name to be met with in the
works of ancient authors, taken in the order of their dates,
placing immediately after each transcript the mode thereby

a If the group STliT1 be substituted for its English rendering in the Autho-
rized translation of Exod. iii. 15, this verse will be presented to us in the
following state: — " And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say
unto the children of Israel, TXW, the God of your fathers, the God of Abra-
ham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you : this is
my name for ever, and this is my memorial for all generations." By this
arrangement we may at once perceive the relation of the introduced Hebrew
group to the words by which it is surrounded in the original verse; whereby
it is shown that mrP is here expressly revealed to be the name by which the
Almighty chose to be called, and moreover is expressly declared (that is,
surely not the mere group of four letters, but the sound they properly con-
vey) to be one which should ever after be preserved among the successive
generations of men. In this verse mrP should certainly not be paraphrased
' the Lord,' but ought to be transcribed into a group of English letters de-
noting its sound, on account of the direct reference here made to it as a name.
Hitherto the preceding verse has been supposed to be the answer to the query
of Moses, because it immediately follows that query ; but it is only prelimi-
nary to the answer, and reveals what is in strictness not a name of God, but
merely a description of His nature; although this description is used, pre-
viously to the communication of the proper name, as a quasi name, in accom-
modation to the apprehension of Moses, who was habituated to the employment
of such substitutes for names in hieroglyphic writing. This is a point which,
on account of its importance, has been discussed at considerable length in the
third Part of my Treatise on the Ancient Orthography of the Jews, together
with a question therewith connected, why nUT ought in general to be dealt
with in translations of the Hebrew Bible as a descriptive term. On the
present occasion I confine myself to the inquiry, how this group, when used
as a proper name, should be read, or, in other words, how the name thereby
denoted should be pronounced.

Chap.IL] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 201

indicated of reading the original word, and expressed in the
peculiar kind of notation adopted by me, which serves to de-
note both the sound of the Hebrew group, and at the same
time the manner in which each of its elements contributes to
the formation of that sound.

In the historic work of Diodorus Siculus (lib. i. §. 94),
written nearly half a century before the commencement of
the Christian era, the name of the God of the Jews is tran-
scribed law ; which shows the four-lettered name, ("HIT, to have
been read by those from whom the transcriber derived his in-
formation respecting it, YaHOH. We next find, in a fragment of
the history by Philo Byblius, preserved in the Prceparatio Evan-
gelica of Eusebius (lib. I. cap. 9), the same name transcribed
levw, which accords with the reading of the original group,
YeHUHo. Philo, indeed, gave out that his work was a transla-
tion of a much older one by Sanchoniatho ; but this account
of the matter is now very generally looked upon as a mere
fiction, resorted to by him for the purpose of gaining more
credit for what in reality was entirely his own composition ;
and, even if it were true, the names occurring in the record
should still be ascribed to himself, since he would naturally
write them so as to represent the sounds with which they were
pronounced in his day. But he is related by Suidas to have
flourished as late as the reign of the Emperor Hadrian ; accord-
ing to which statement he must have written this history before
the thirty-eighth year of the second century. In the latter
part of that century Clement of Alexandria gave in his Stro-
mata (lib. v. § 6), as the transcript of the four-lettered mystic
name, laov, corresponding with the reading thereof, YaHUH.
In the early part of the third century, his pupil Origen tran-
scribed this name in two different ways: Iwa in the second
division of his Commentary on St. John, and law in the thirty-
second section of his sixth book against Celsus, corresponding
respectively with the readings of the Hebrew group, YeliO«H
and YaHOH. A pronunciation corresponding to the latter of
these readings appears to have held its ground for about two

202 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

centuries after, among Pagans as well as Christians. Thus,
for instance, the name in question was transcribed by Macro-
bius in the latter part of the fourth or beginning of the fifth
century, law, in his Saturnalia (lib. I. cap. 18) ;a and about the
same time by Jerome, Iao, in his book De Interpretatione No-
minum Hebraicorum, and Iaho in the commencement of his
Commentary on the eighth Psalm ; all of winch transcripts
severally agree with the reading of the original group YaHOH.
In the fourth century Epiphanius also adduced, in the tenth
section of his treatise against the Gnostics, the transcript law,
stating it to be the name given by those heretics to ' the Ruler
in the highest heaven;' and in the fifth section of his Treatise
against the Archontics, he includes, among the names of the
true God, Ia/3e, corresponding with the reading YaHVeH. This
last transcript (la(3e) Theodoret, who flourished about the
middle of the fifth century, informs us, in his fifteenth question
upon Exodus, accorded with the Samaritan pronunciation of
the four-lettered name ; while, in the same place, he tran-
scribes the Jewish pronunciation of that name, Ami, — a tran-
script which shows that the Jews had, by that time, abandoned
the pronunciation YaHOH, so long previously sanctioned by
them, and substituted another, with which no possible mode
of reading ITliT could be made to agree, and which could not
impose upon any one who had ever seen this Hebrew group,
and was acquainted with the powers of its separate elements.
Yet Theodoret was followed in the adoption of this transcript
by subsequent writers, among whom the Constantinopolitan
Patriarch, Photius, is particularly to be noticed, on account of
his having been by far the most learned man of the age when
he lived, which formed part of the ninth century. A<a, I
should observe, is obviously the transcript, not of HliT, but of

a Macrobius in the place above specified quotes an oracle wherein 6 iravjiuv
vTTaio<i 0ed<? is called law; from which description of the Being so denomi-
nated we may perceive, that low conveys the sound of the name then circu-
lated by the Jews as that of the supreme God, although this Pagan writer
applied it to Apollo or Bacchus.

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 203

the substantive verb iTPT, HaYaH ; of which this inflexion sig-
nifies ' he was,' or ' he has been,' and therefore implies not, as
those Christian writers were taught to believe, essential and
eternal existence, but rather a cessation of existence. Hence
it appears that they were deceived by their Hebrew instruc-
tors, not only as to the true sound of the four-lettered name,
but also as to the meaning of the sound which was imposed
upon them as the true one.

As the transcript A ia is assumed by some modern com-
mentators to be spurious in the passage of Theodoret above
referred to — though for no other reason that I can find, except
their preconceived notion that he could not be so utterly ig-
norant of Hebrew as is shown by this word in its present
state — I shall here bring under notice another passage of his,
containing the same transcript, where no objection is made to
its genuineness, and where several additional proofs of his
extreme ignorance of the language in question are supplied.
It may be rendered as follows : — " For, since those who are
stupified [in its primary sense, thunder-struck] have, through
ignorance of the signification of Hebrew names, imagined that
Acwvat, and EAwt, and 2aj3aw0 are different Gods, I think it
worth while to explain to the ignorant what each of these
signifies in the language most familiar to them [literally, in the
Greek language]. The name EAw0, then, is interpreted ' God ;'
and EXwi, ' my God.' But HA, pronounced with a smooth
breathing of the initial letter, itself also denotes ' God ;' while,
uttered with a rough breathing, it signifies ' the strong one :'
and A8wi/ou, ' the Lord.' But Kvpios *2a(3aw0 is interpreted 'Lord
of forces;' or 'Lord of armies,' as legions of soldiers are among
the Greeks called forces. But 'Zaffiai designates ' Him that is
sufficient and powerful ;' and A<a, 'the self existent.' This/a^,
moreover, was unutterable among the Jews ; but the Samari-
tans read it Ia/3cu, not knowing the meaning of the word."a

a E7rei£y yap ol ipfipovTrjioi, tu>i> T&fipa'iicwv ovo/.u'nti)v ovk eyvwuoTes itjv
(rr']puai'r]v^ fiacfiopovi evo/maav elvai 6eoi>9, tov AFioval, kcu tov EXj^V, koi tov

204 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

At the very commencement of the explanatory part of
this extract our author commits the mistake of writing E\«0
instead of EAwa, as a name of God. It must have been
from a malicious motive that his instructors were led to
teach him thus to designate the Almighty by a Hebrew
term which signifies, not ' God,' but ' curses.' The distinc-
tion he draws between the pronunciation of 7K, ' HeL,' accord-
ing as it is applied to God or man, is entirely without
foundation : there is, as far as I can find, but one instance of
the latter application of it (Ezek. xxxi. 11), where Nebuchad-
nezzar is the person referred to, and where it is very ques-
tionable whether it should not be written (without, however,
any change of its sound) rW, HEL: at least Kennicott enume-
rates thirty MSS. in which it is so exhibited in that place.
But however this may be, the word in question is frequently
applied to human beings in a plural form, either absolute or
construct ; and then it is written, sometimes with and some-
times without a Yod between its radical elements; while, on
the contrary, it is always written without the intervening
Yod, when applied to God. The actual existence of the dif-
ference just specified is obvious to every one who has the
slightest acquaintance with the sacred text ; yet it could not
have been known to our author, or he would have been eager
to notice it in the passage under examination. But the reason
of this difference, though hitherto unknown, can now be easily
assigned. The root Ttf, HeYaL, ' strength,' drops its middle
radical in the derivative /&, HeL, 'strong,' to whomsoever

IZaftawO, Trpovpyov vo/iigu) ti arjfiai'vei roinwv eicatnov Kara tijv EWaSa ty\wTTav
C7ricc?gai toTs- uyvoovai. To E\w0 lolvvv ovofia, 0eoe epprjveverai' to cg E\w*',
6 6c6<s fiov. To ce U\ yJri\ovp,evov [iev ical avrb crjXo? ibv Oebv, caavvofievoy
Se -top layypov to ce kcwvai, tov Kvpiov. To Se KVpio<3 2a/:W<6> Ki>pio<s -rwv
cvva/icwv epfMjveverat, y icvpios aTpariwv kcii yap Trap1 EkXrjfft to arariwriKa
Tw/para cvvd/nci? koKovvtui. To r< "Sacxal tgi> iicavbv kcu Bvvotov aiiuaivcc
to he Am, tov bvia. Tovro nai uveK(j)wi>)j-ov ?ji> nap' E/3pat'otv "2,apapc?Tai Se
lajiai avib \tl"jovaiv, ayvoovvTc? 7i)v to?) pypmo? cvvapiv. Theodorcti Ilcere-

licce FabulcC) lib. v. cap. 3.

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 205

that derivative may be applied. But, on the introduction of
matres lectionis into the Bible, the vocalizers inserted between
the radical letters of this word, when applied to men, a Yod
(apparently the letter which had been dropped from the root,
but in reality one used with quite a different phonetic value)
to express the vowel E, though they sometimes failed to do so,
through oversight occasioned by the haste with which they
executed their work. On the other hand, the uniformity with
which they abstained from this insertion where the derivative
is applied to God, shows the omission to have been therein
made from design, in consequence of their reluctance to tarn-
per with a word for which they felt the most profound respect
in this application of it. The next mistake observable in the
passage before us is exhibited in the assumption that, because
Zwaixeis signifies primarily ' forces,' and thence ' armies,' the
corresponding Hebrew word mfcQV, SeBaHOTh, must likewise
undergo this transition of meaning ; which is not at all the
real state of the case, as it is used, indeed, in the second of
those significations, but never in the first. As to the igno-
rance of Hebrew betrayed by his employment of Aia to convey
the sound of the four-lettered name, it has already been suffi-
ciently noticed. He rightly condemns the Samaritan pronun-
ciation of this name; but they adopted Ia/3e, or Ia/3at, not, as
he supposed, because they were ignorant of the meaning of
the original word, but because they, as well as the Jews, were
resolved to conceal its true sound. The mispronunciations to
which the two parties resorted, we may perceive, were quite
different. But this is most usually the case with witnesses
giving false evidence, who have no secret understanding with
each other ; and is indeed one of the ways in which falsehood
can be brought home to both Jews and Samaritans, in the
present instance.

To convict the Patriarch Photius of like ignorance of He-
brew, it will be sufficient to direct attention to part of a letter of
his respecting the signification of the four-lettered name, near
the end of which he expresses himself on the same subject as that

206 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

discussed in the fifteenth question of Theodoret upon Exodus,
and very much in the same style, to the following effect : —
" Then, he subjoins, ' and my name I did not make known to
them,' in order that you [Moses] might say that I have deemed
you worthy of greater honour than the patriarchs your ances-
tors ; for my name which I did not make known to them, or
even to Jacob, though urgently asking, that I clearly revealed
to thee, when I declared, ' I am the ^//"-existent one.' Now
this name is pronounced by the Jews Aia, but by the Samari-
tans Ia/3e; and it is written with these letters, Yoth, Alph,
Wauth, Heth?* The extract I have adduced from the writings
of Theodoret supplies, as has been already observed, clear evi-
dence, through the use he makes in it of Aia, that either he had
never seen a group of the highest importance and most fre-
quent occurrence in the sacred text, or that he must have
been unacquainted with the powers of the letters of the He-
brew alphabet. The passage now before us furnishes the very
same evidence against Photius, with the addition of his own
declaration to the same effect, given by him indeed very un-
consciously, but still in the most express manner. For, while
he, from a desire of appearing to know Hebrew, volunteers to
specify the elements of the four-lettered name, he actually
misstates those elements, introducing into the group two let-
ters that do not in reality belong to it ; and I may add, that
he does so without any advantage to his representation of the
subject : since the sound of Am, by which he denotes the pro-
nunciation of this name, is just as irreconcilable with any
legitimate modification of the powers of the erroneous group
nW, as it is with a similar treatment of the true one, ffiiT.

* EtTa, Kal to ovofu'i ju.ov ovk icrfKwaa avTo7r iva eiVrys, /le/^ovo? ae (fiiXoii-
fliat y TOVS Trcnpidpxw, TOWS croi's 7rpo~{6i>ovs, ijtjiwrra- to ryop ovofid fiov oircp
ckcivoi's ovk tdr/Xwaa, icai tot iu> laKw/1, Kal 7rpoo\i7rapi'jaavTit jovto aoi hieaa-
(frrjoa a7ro(fii]vup.ci>09, 'E7W elfit b"i\v. ToSto £e irapa fiev 'Ejipaiocs Xe^erai
Aia' Trapa ce So/ta/JCiTatS, \aj3c. Tpn(j)cjai £c Kal rypdfipaoi Toirrot?, iwO, «\0,

ovaijO, ijO." — Pholii Epistokc, ah Episcopo Montacatio editce, p. 219.

Chap.IL] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 207

Verily, his instructors musthave entertained the most thorough
contempt for his knowledge of Hebrew, when they ventured
to impose upon him so barefaced a misrepresentation of the
subject. But, as Theodoret and Photius held the foremost
rank among the learned in the ages in which they respectively
flourished, Hebrew cannot be supposed to have been more
known to any other Christians in those ages than it was to
them. This limitation, however, to the Christian knowledge
of Hebrew may be more strictly applied in the case of the
latter of those authors, the superiority of whose attainments
over all contemporary learning was more decided than that of
his predecessor. The first, therefore, of the passages just ex-
amined suffices to show that the knowledge in question began
to decline among Christians very soon after the age of Jerome ;
while the second serves to prove that it became utterly extinct
among them before the middle of the ninth century, — as com-
pletely extinct, indeed, as it previously had been for about a
century after the termination of the age of the apostolic
fathers of the Church.

To turn our attention now to the series of readings of the four-
lettered name, arranged in the order of their dates, which were
successively introduced by the Jews, — YaHOH, YeHUHo, YaHUH,
YeHOaH, YaHOH, HaYaH,3— the fraudulent nature of each
reading is established by the only evidence that can be given
for its fairness, that of the Jews themselves, who, by abandon-

a Besides the above untenable pronunciations of mn\ another has been
transmitted to us (Pipi), the blame of which falls not on the Jews. In MS.
copies of the Septuagint no longer extant, ttltti is recorded to have been writ-
ten, instead of Kvpio?, to represent the four-lettered name. The reason of this
misrepresentation of the sound of the word in question is explained by Jerome
as follows: — " Nonum [nomen Dei apud Hebra^os] Terpd<^pnfi/u,ov, quod aveic-
(jiwvrpov, id est, ineffabile, putaverunt, quod his letteris scribitur, Jod, He,
Vau, He. Quod quidam non intelligentes, propter elementorum similitudi-
nem, quum in Grsecis librisrepererint, twti legere consueverunt." — Hieronymi
Opera, Ed". Benedict, torn. ii. p. 705.

R

208 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

ing it for the next one, virtually acknowledged that it does not
supply the true pronunciation of this name. By thus pro-
ceeding through the terms of the series according as they are
here arranged, we find every one of them proved by the very
party from which it originated a false representation of the
sound which is the object of our search, till we come to the
last term ; and the fallacy of that reading is at once exposed
by an immediate comparison of it with the original group,
PHiT, of the pronunciation of which it could not have been re-
ceived as the correct exponent by any set of men who were not
utterly ignorant of Hebrew. With regard to YaH VeH,the Sama-
ritan reading of the same name, its erroneousness is on all
sides admitted ; and, since but one more reading of the above
group, as far as I can learn, has been transmitted to us, viz.,
YeHoWaH, which is furnished through its Masoretic pointing,
the only inquiry that remains to be made is, whether this one
yields, or not, a just representation of its sound. Before, how-
ever, entering on the examination of this point, I would ven-
ture to offer by the way the following remark. From a com-
parison of the various readings here specified of the four-lettered
name, it is plain that both Jews and Samaritans endeavoured,
as far as they could, to impose erroneous pronunciations of it
on all those belonging to other nations with whom they re-
spectively had intercourse. But, besides this design of imposi-
tion which was common to both parties, though differently
carried out by each, a separate one can with a considerable
degree of probability be traced to the Jews : that, I mean, of
giving to the Hebrew vowel-letters the fallacious appearance
of genuine ingredients of Scriptural writing. If we look to
the Jewish portion of the above series of readings, we shall
find that, however they may differ in other respects, the Waw
of the original group is treated as a mater lectionis in all of
them except the last, which was not brought into use till after
the Christians had lost all power of reading Hebrew. But,
as it was notorious that the Jews would not tamper with the

Chap.IL] OFTHEFOUIi-LETTEREDNAMEOFGOD. 209

letters of this sacred group,8 if a mater lectionis should be
found among their number, it might be concluded to have been
there from the first, and thus vowel-letters would be made to
appear coeval with the other elements of the inspired text.
This observation, however, does not apply to the first term of
the series, which the Jews could have given currency to solely
with the intention of concealing the true sound of the name
of God. The further design just described could not have
been entertained by them as early as the age of Diodorus Sicu-
lus ; since they had not then as yet extended the use of vowel-
letters from their ordinary writing to the text of their Bible.
But the more important point here to be considered is the
question whether Yehowa be not the true sound of the four-
lettered group. Two reasons are very generally and very
justly assigned in favour of this pronunciation of the name
referred to, which have not as yet been allowed their due
weight, in consequence of the fallacy of the grounds support-
ing the other pronunciations of it not having been sufficiently
exposed. The first is the close resemblance in sound to Ye-
howa of the Pagan name for the supreme ruler of the world,
Jo-ve, or rather (according to the original powers of the first
and third letters) Yo-we, — a resemblance which cannot be ra-
tionally accounted for, except on the supposition of the Pagans
having, at a remote period before the Jews had fallen into the
superstitious practice of abstaining from the utterance of the
former word, borrowed the sound of it from them, and curtailed
its first two syllables in rapidity of speech into one. Accord-
ingly, the strong likelihood of a connexion between the two
names is admitted, even by persons who attempt to invert the
order of that connexion, and derive the Jewish from the
Pagan one, in utter disbelief of the Mosaic account of the ori-

The group above referred to is said to have been exhibited in some an-
cient copies of the Hebrew text in the contracted form «, and is still to be
seen occasionally so written in the Targums; but in its fuller form no element
of it is ever found to have been in any way altered by the Jews.

R 2

210 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

gin of the older name.a The second reason is supplied by
human proper names formed from compounding HIPP with
other words, such as jr01!T, or |rOT, YellONaThaN or YONoThaN,
* God has given ;' DTWT or D"1T, YeHORaM or YORuM, ' God is
exalted ;' EDDfiW or E02OT, YeHOShaPhaT or YOShaPhaT,b ' God
has judged.' It is on all sides admitted that, in the case of the
fuller form of each compound of this description, the two first
syllables0 should be pronounced Yelw ; but it seems evident
that the true sound of those syllables, when not contracted
into one, must be the same, whether the name in question be
read by itself, or joined in composition with another word.
The chief ground, however, for the correctness of the Masore-
tic pointing of m!T which attaches to it the sound Yehowa is,
that all the other modes of reading it having been proved falla-
cious, if this were so likewise, then there would be no written
memorial of the true sound of this name ; and consequently
that sound must have been long since lost, notwithstanding the
express declaration of the Almighty that the knowledge of it

a Among the persons above alluded to, I regret to state, is included Gese-
nius, who, in the observations made by him on the word mrP in his Lexicon
Manuale Hebraicum, ventured (upon the evidence, forsooth, of certain ideagra-
phic inscriptions that can now be no longer read, and which, even if they
were legible, would be of no authority whatever, in comparison with that of
the Pentateuch) to broach the following opinion of the origin of this name: —
" Ut dicam quod sentio, hoc vocabulum remotissimae antiquitatis esse suspi-
cor, nescio an ejusdem stirpis atque Jovis, Jupiter, ab JEgyptiis translatum
ad Hebraaos (confer quae de usu ejus in gemmis iEgyptiacis modo dicta sunt),
ab his autem paululum inflexum, ut formam et originem Semiticam redo-
leat."

b The Waw in each of the above composite names is not one of the original
elements of the four-lettered group, but a mater lectionis introduced to ex-
press the vowel part of the second syllable of that group, and to serve as a
connecting link between the two parts of the several written compounds.

c The first of the two syllables above referred to is not usually reckoned
as a syllable, on account of the imperfect sound of the Shewa, the vowel with
which its consonant is uttered. But this, I conceive, is a reason only for
viewing the combination only as an imperfect syllable, and not for altogether
excluding it from the class of syllables.

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 2 1 1

should ever after the time of Moses be preserved among man-
kind. But as the conclusion to which we are thus led is ob-
viously false, so likewise must be the supposition on which it
is founded.

The last of these proofs, though by far the most convincing
of all, has hitherto been overlooked in consequence of the erro-
neous treatment of the group miT in Exod. iii. 15, whereby
the prediction contained therein has been suppressed. But in
order to perceive the full force of this proof it is necessary not
only to correct the translation of the verse referred to, but also
to bear in mind that the specified group became a still more
vague designation of the name in question after the introduc-
tion of matres lectionis into the sacred text than it was before,
on account of the ambiguity thereby attached to its third ele-
ment ; and that if the subsequent completer vocalization of
the same group had been deferred much longer than the period
when it was actually applied thereto, the true sound of this
name must have been eventually forgotten even by the very
priests of the Jews. It has been already shown in the present
chapter that mere oral tradition is not sufficient to preserve
permanently the vocal part of the sounds of Scriptural names
of rare occurrence ; and to this class the superstition of those
priests reduced the name before us by the very rare use they
made of it (according to rabbinical accounts, they uttered it
only in solemn benedictions of the people two or three times
each year). Besides, it is to be observed, that they not only
abstained almost entirely from the right pronunciation of the
name in question, but also habituated themselves to wrong
ones which they successively adopted for the purpose of decep-
tion : so that, as they confined themselves after the sixth cen-
tury— at least in the case of religious subjects — to the Hebrew
method of writing, the true sound of this name must, not-
withstanding the deep respect they felt for it, have been at
length effaced from their memory through the combined ope-
ration of the causes here specified, if that effect had not been
prevented by the application to the sacred text of the Maso-

<2\'2 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

retic system of vocalization. The remedy, indeed, was a natu-
ral one, produced by human ingenuity ; but still, its seasonable
introduction, just at the time when it was wanted, may with
a high degree of probability be ascribed to a superhuman
power, which appears to have been exerted in this, as well as
in various other instances, for the protection of the Bible.

When the pointed text at last got into Christian hands, —
as it did, no doubt, quite contrary to the intention of the Jew-
ish priests, — those men, still persevering in their old plan of
concealing the true sound of the four-lettered group, had no
expedient left for the purpose except the barefaced assertion
of its being nowhere in the Bible pointed so as to convey that
sound. In refutation of this assertion of theirs, it might, per-
haps, be sufficient to refer to its inconsistency with the use
uniformly made by them of the Masoretic pointing in the case
of every other word of the sacred text, as well as to the earnest
desire they must have felt permanently to preserve the me-
mory of the sound of this one for their own benefit (though
not for that of others), and the consequent utter improbability
of their neglecting the means for that end which the Masoretic
system afforded them. A fuller view, however, of the subject
will be obtained by examining the argument employed on the
opposite side of the question. It may be thus stated, — the Jews,
in reading out the sacred text, always substitute for the sound
of the four-lettered group that of either ^*TK or OWN, two
groups quite different from it; but the Masoretic pointing, in
accordance with this practice, always denotes the vocal part
of the sound of one or other of those substituted groups, and
therefore, never that of the group itself. The first step of this
argument may be assented to ; for, though the Jews, after they
fell into the superstitious practice of suppressing the sound of
the group under discussion, did not always deal with it as
they now do,a yet their treatment of it has been such as is

* As the Seventy have translated mrp everywhere in their version by
the Greek word Kvptot, which answers to the Hebrew one "0"TN, they must

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 2 1 3

here described ever since the time when the sacred text was
pointed ; and, as far as concerns the question at issue, there
is no need of tracing their practice to a remoter period. But
the second step, in which truth is mixed up with falsehood,
entirely fails of conducting to the adduced conclusion ; as may
be shown by entering into particulars. It is quite true that,
if the group HIPP, which is in general pronounced with the
sound of ^"Ttf, HaDoNaY, ' the Lord,' should immediately pre-
cede or follow the latter group — when it is, according to the
present practice, not uttered with the sound thereof, but with
that of D^PfrK, HeLoHIM, ' God,' in order to prevent the recital
of the word Hadonay twice over in immediate succession, — in
a case of this kind it is constantly pointed Hi IT (YeHoWiH)
with exactly the same series of vowels as is applied to the group
D^rwtt ; and therefore we must at once concede, what is here
insisted on by the Jews, that this pointing of it expresses, not
the vocal part of its own sound, but such part of the sound
of the latter group. Again, when any of the prefixes 2,1, 2, or 7,
is placed before HIIT, the compound is always pointed as OIK
would be after the same prefix ; as, for example, niPP2 is
constantly pointed HlIT?, in like manner as "0*183 is 0*7^3.
In these four cases, then, it must also be admitted that, as the
pointing corresponds with the Jewish practice of substituting
the sound of "OTtf for that of ffijT in reading out the specified
compounds, it is employed to denote the vocal part of the for-

have read it in every place of its occurrence in the original by the sound Ha-
donay: and the mode of pronouncing it with this sound alone continued at
any rate till after the age of Origen, who, in his Commentary on the second
Psalm gives upon this subject the following evidence: — "Eari Be t< TeTpa<ypd/&-
fiarov aV€K(f)u]vrfTbv irap' avrois, oirep ical eVt too wgtciXov too ^pvaoo too 'Apxl€-
pews ava<ye <*{pcnnai, ko.1 Xe^erai [lev ttj ABwval vpoarj^opla, ov^l tovtov ry&ypap-
/iievov ev tu3 TeTpa^fpafifiaTif irapa Be "EXXtjgi ttj Kvpios eic(f)wvelTui. (But there
is a certain four-lettered name unutterable among them [the Jews] which is
inscribed on the golden plate uponthe forehead of the high priest, and is read by
the title ABwvai, although this is not the word that is actually written with the
group of four letters; but among the Greeks it is expressed by the title
K/yxo?). Origenis Opera, Ed". Benedict, torn. ii. p. 539-

214 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

mer, instead of the latter, sound in each combination. But
when the four-lettered name is headed by the prefix D, or when
it is written without any prefix, and is not coupled with ^"Ttf,
— in the former of which cases the letters are pointed njflJQ,a
and in the latter, HilT, — the pointing applied to the group
itself, which is just the same in both cases, is obviously not
that of ^"T£, the group whose sound is in each case substi-
tuted for its own sound in reading out the sacred text. Nor
can it be maintained that this pointing, though somewhat dif-
ferent from that of ''JH^, was yet intended to suggest to the
reader the latter punctuation. This prop to the Jewish argu-
ment, besides that it has no ground to rest on but gratuitous
assertion, is at once removed by the evidence of the punctua-
tors themselves, to whom their own intentions in the manage-
ment of the operation must have been better known than to
any subsequent set of Jews. For, wherever those scribes
meant, by their mode of pointing the name in question, to
direct the reader's attention to the punctuation of D^Pi/K, they
annexed to it the very series of points that belongs to that
group, and exhibited it in the form HiPP ; whence it follows,
pari ratione, that, if they had anywhere, by their treatment of
the same name, intended to suggest the vocalization of ^"TN,
they would have applied to it exactly the series of points ap-
propriated to this latter group, and presented it to us in the
form niP£. As, then, this attempt to make out in either of
the above cases an exception to the general practice of the
Masoretic vocalizers has proved quite ineffectual, we arc
unavoidably led by analogy to the conclusion that, in those
cases, they dealt with the group under examination precisely
in the same manner as they have uniformly done with every
other group in the Hebrew text, and applied to it the signs of

a The Masorets, from a reluctance to tamper in any way with the elements
of the group 7V\n*> or alter their number, refrained from dageshing its initial
letter; in consequence of which they had to point the prefix D with an open
E instead of a close /, in order to compensate for the want of a dagesh in the
Yod; just in the same manner as if that initial letter had been a guttural.

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 215

the vowels that belong to its own proper sound, — a sound
which thus comes out (by combining those vowels with the
articulations expressed by the letters of the group now become
consonants) to be YeHoWaH.

The variation observable in the mode of pointing this
group — sometimes with the vowels appertaining to its own
sound, and sometimes with those of other words — betrays, on
the part of the Jewish rulers under whose direction the ope-
ration was performed, an unsteadiness of purpose which must
be ascribed to the conflicting nature of the motives by which
they were actuated, — the desire of getting inserted in their
Bibles an improved expression of the sound of the four-lettered
name, and the, if possible, still stronger one (therewith scarcely
compatible) of keeping that sound concealed from all but
the individuals of their own nation. The pointing, however,
that was suited to the latter object, we may perceive, was not
allowed to prevail to the extent of excluding that required for
the former ; so that the priests, or their scribes, were eventu-
ally made to apply to this name an adequate and permanent
completion of the marks of its sound in the very numerous sites
which fall under the heads of the last two of the above described
cases. Thus came to be fulfilled the prediction communicated
to Moses, which has been already referred to, — a prediction,
be it observed, which was made respecting the group HliT,
without limitation to any particular class of men, that it should
be " a memorial unto all generations" (Exod. iii. 15); and con-
sequently, that the power of correctly reading it should be per-
petuated for the benefit of various branches of the human race.

As the pointed text has now been shown to yield a just
representation of the sound of the four-lettered name in the
sites of its most frequent occurrence, or those which come
under the head of the last of the seven above described cases,
it may appear, at first view, unaccountable that the Jewish
priesthood, considering the strong prejudices they felt on the
subject, should have ever permitted the Hebrew Bible, with
its vocalization thus improved, to get into Christian hands.

216 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION [Chap. II.

But the fact is that, however eagerly they may have desired
to prevent this event, — and the expectation that they would
be able to do so was probably one of the natural means by
which they were induced to suffer the vowels belonging to the
proper sound of the group in question to be applied to it in
any site, — it became eventually quite beyond their reach to
secure this object of their most ardent wishes. They might
indeed have retarded the event referred to more than they
actually did, if they had not been thrown off their guard by
the grossness of Christian ignorance during the mediaeval ages ;
in consequence of which they were led to think it quite unne-
cessary to adopt any measures of concealment with regard to
men who were then just as incapable of making use of the
sacred text in its pointed as in its unpointed state. But they
could not permanently obstruct the spread of the benefit of
this improvement among mankind. I grant that, when in
the second century all knowledge of the ancient Hebrew be-
came extinct among the Christians, the priests of the Jews
were able to defer, as long as suited their designs, the resto-
ration of any part of that knowledge, which was then confined
exclusively to their own order and the scribes in their interest.
But the state of the case was quite altered when the Christians
sunk a second time into total ignorance of the sacred language.
Before this calamity befell them, the Jewish rulers, disappointed
of the effects they had expected from the substitution of the
spurious Greek versions of the second century for the Septua-
gint, abandoned the use of those versions, and returned to
the performance of divine service in the ancient Hebrew,
though a tongue then quite unknown to the great body of the
Jews. In this change they were at first strenuously opposed
by their own congregations, as appears by a decree, yet extant,
of Justinian, in which he took the part of the people, and very
justly condemned the attempt to compel them to hear their
Scriptures read in a language they did not understand. But
notwithstanding this opposition, which was for a time rendered
quite irresistible by the interference of the imperial govern-

Chap. II.] OF THE FOUR-LETTERED NAME OF GOD. 2 1 7

ment, the priests eventually succeeded, and appear to have
carried their point soon after the death of that emperor, or, at
any rate, early in the seventh century. To reduce, however,
the odium of so despotic a measure, it became their interest
to encourage and assist, in every way they could, the educated
and influential portion of the laity to learn the original lan-
guage of the Bible ; and the result clearly shows that they
must have acted on the plan of such an alteration of their
former policy. For the knowledge of this language, together
with the possession of the pointed text, was so extensively
diffused among the Jews, beyond the circle of the scribes who
were under the immediate control of the priesthood, about
the time when the Christians were returning to the study of
Hebrew in the fourteenth century, that they easily procured
pointed copies of the Hebrew Bible, and found numbers of
Rabbins who were most ready for hire to give them the in-
struction requisite to enable them to make use of those copies.
The consequence was, they applied themselves to this study
with the advantage of aids greatly beyond those enjoyed by
the series, commencing with Origen, of the early fathers of
the Church, and which it was out of the power of the Jewish
priesthood to intercept and prevent from reaching them. But
what rendered them completely independent of either priestly
or rabbinical instruction was the printing of the pointed He-
brew text near the end of the fifteenth century ; and they
have, in fact, so advanced since that period in the critical
analysis of Hebrew, that, by means of close attention to the
grammatical structure of the sacred text, and more especially
through the light thrown upon its sense by the inspired
writers of the New Testament, they have arrived at a far su-
perior knowledge of it to that possessed by the very priests of
the Jews. Before, however, this result was attained to, the
effect of the above event, in reference to the name which is
the subject of the present inquiry, became visible. The whole
Hebrew Bible was first printed with points at Soncino, in the

218 ON THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION, &c. [Chap. II.

year 1488 ;a and in twenty-eight years after, came out the
Arcana Catholicce Veritatis (by Galatinus, a Franciscan monk,
or, as he styles himself in the dedication of his work, one
belonging to the ordo fratrum minorum), in the tenth chapter
of the second book of which the true pronunciation of the
four-lettered name is given ; nor, from the manner in which
the subject is there discusssed, does the proper sound of this
word appear to have been then for the first time announced.
The date of the work is placed, as was usual in those times,
at its very conclusion, and is expressed by the author as
follows : — " Peractum est, divina opitulante gratia, Opus de Ar-
canis Catholics Veritatis, ex Iudaicis codicibus excerptum atque
Invictissimo Maximiliano Ccesari semper Augusto dedicatum;
Barij, anno Virginei partus m.d.xvl, pridie nonas Septembris"
The edition of this work to which I have had access is dated
in the year 1603 ; and the right pronunciation of the name in
question is therein printed Iehoua, which would, in the modern
form of it, be exhibited Jehova; which again, by substituting
equivalents for the two letters whose original powers have
since been changed, would come out Yehowa, differing from
YeHoWaH, the exact transcript of FTJPIJ, only by the omission of
an unsounded H at its end. This restoration, however, of the
true sound of the examined name was for a considerable length
of time admitted to be correct only by individuals : the first
Bible into which it was introduced is, I believe, that of Mat-
thews, published in the year 1537, whence it spread through all
the authorized English versions which after that date succes-
sively came out ; so that it is wanting in only the first of them,
namely, Coverdale's Bible. Thus the English Church appears
entitled to the credit of being the first Christian community
which has given its sanction to this important correction.

a A copy of the above-mentioned Bible is preserved in the Library of
Exeter College, Oxford. At the end of the Pentateuch there is a long lie-
brew subscription, indicating the name of the editor (Abraham Ben Khayim),
the place where it was printed, and the date of the edition.

Chap.IIL] ANOMALIES OF ACERTAIN PRONOUN, &c. 219

CHAPTER III.

PROOFS OF THE SPURIOUSNESS OF THE MATRES LECTIONIS IN THE

SACRED TEXT, DERIVED FROM THE USES MADE OF THEM

IN THE STRUCTURE OF ITS LANGUAGE.

ANOMALIES OF A CERTAIN PRONOUN NOT ATTRIBUTABLE TO COPYISTS

NOR CAN THEY BE ASCRIBED TO THE INSPIRED AUTHORS OF THE

BIBLE THE HEBREW PRONOUN IN QUESTION HAD ORIGINALLY

BUT A SINGLE FORM — CURIOUS PECULIARITY OF SHEMITIC LAN-
GUAGES THEREBY ACCOUNTED FOR — SUPPLEMENTAL VOCALIZA-
TION OF JEWISH EDITION OF THE PENTATEUCH — THIS ADDITIONAL
VOCALIZATION EXECUTED WITH THE GREATEST HASTE CONSE-
QUENT CHANGE OF STRUCTURE ILLUSTRATED BY AN ENGLISH EX-
AMPLE REMAINS OF MASCULINE AFFIX HE AFTER NOUNS SINGULAR

ANALYSIS OF HOS. IV. 17-19, THROUGH THE AID OF THE PRESENT

DISCOVERY ANALYSIS OF HOS. X. 5, BY MEANS OF THE SAME DIS-
COVERY REMAINS OF MASCULINE AFFIX HE AFTER AN EPENTHE-
TIC NUN — VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL

VARIOUS TREATMENT BY VOCALIZERS OF MASCULINE AFFIX HE

AFTER VERBS CORRECTION OF GEN. XVII. 16, SUGGESTED BY PRE-
CEDING ANALYSIS.

FROM considering the inconsistencies of nomenclature
which the sacred text in its present state betrays, I pro-
ceed to inquire into others more immediately connected with
its language, whose exposure will tend with still greater force
to establish the spurious nature of the matres lectionis therein
employed ; and I commence with a very remarkable peculia-
rity in the style of the Hebrew Pentateuch,3 with regard to the
pronoun of the third person singular ; because its analysis not
only will afford a most decisive proof to the effect in question,

a It is only the Jewish edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch that is above
taken into consideration. The peculiarity referred to does not exist in the
Samaritan edition, — a circumstance which supplies one of the indications of
the Samaritan copies having been later vocalized.

220 ANOMALIES OF A CERTAIN PRONOUN [Chap. III.

but will also lead to other proofs of the same bearing, as well
as to the solution of a class of difficulties which are widely dif-
fused through this writing. The feature of the inspired com-
position just mentioned, to which I wish here to direct atten-
tion, and which has hitherto proved utterly inexplicable, both
makes it appear to differ in grammatic structure from all the
rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, and, still further, gives it the
semblance of being, in this respect, at variance with itself ; so,
comes under our consideration in a twofold point of view.
First, the specified pronoun has in the record of Moses but
one form, tflH, whatever may be the gender of the noun re-
ferred to ; but in those of all the subsequent prophets it has
two, the second being produced by changing the mater lec-
tionis in the middle of the adduced group from Ho ^ ; whereby
its pronunciation comes out HUH for the masculine, or, as the
case may require, the neuter gender, and HIH for the feminine
or neuter.a The Masora attests (in a note upon Gen. xxxviii.
25) that there are but eleven instances in which this distinc-
tion of gender, by means of the second form, is made in the
former portion of the Hebrew Bible ; while Hebraists have
since remarked that there are but three in which it is omitted,
where requisite, in the latter. But these exceptions to the
difference of structure in question are so few, in comparison
with the vast number of cases in which it holds good, that
they can be looked on only as mere errors of transcription ;
and it deserves to be noted that not one of them occurs in the
book of Joshua, the part of Scripture which, there is every
reason to suppose, was written next after the Pentateuch. Se-
condly, although throughout the general course of the Mosaic

a As there are but two genders in Hebrew, the masculine and feminine
words of that tongue supply the place, not only of masculine and feminine,
but also of neuter terms in our language. This remark applies to pronouns
as well as to nouns ; and, supposing any Hebrew pronoun to have originally
had but a single form, then that form, as long as it was the only one, must
have corresponded to all the forms of the equivalent English pronoun.

Chap. III.] NOT ATTRIBUTABLE TO COPYISTS. 221

record, no distinction of gender is expressed by this pronoun
in its integral state, yet the fragments of it that are used as
affixes to other words mark such distinction just as frequently
and as prominently as in any other part of the sacred text.

A very able modern Hebraist has in vain attempted to get
rid of the difficulties of this case, by assuming that the pronoun
under examination had originally in the Pentateuch, as well
as in the remainder of the Old Testament, two forms ; and by
representing its present usual singleness of form therein, as a
corruption of the text, through the fault of the Hebrew copy-
ists. The charge so brought against those scribes is quite
inadmissible : since, on the one hand, they cannot be suspected
of having made, from design, a change which, upon the as-
sumed hypothesis, would be attended with the effect of giving
an air of absurdity to numerous passages in the very portion
of their Bible most revered by them ; and, on the other, the
nature of this change is wholly incompatible with the suppo-
sition of its having been repeatedly produced through over-
sight. It is obvious that transcribers must have a strong
tendency to quit, when off their guard, uncommon forms of
words, and to glide insensibly into the use of those to which
they are accustomed ; — a tendency that not only is directly
opposed to the casual and undesigned production of the
peculiarity in question, but also very plainly accounts for
the eleven instances of deviation from it which occur in the
Pentateuch ; and the sole cause for wonder, with respect to
such instances, is that more of them are not to be found in
this part of the Hebrew Scriptures. Let us, however, look to
Dr. Kennicott's representation of the matter, as put forward
by himself : —

" Gen. xx. 5.a KVl DJ ,^iT) 5 ffH ^fini* fi "1EK KV1 *bn

.Kin ^rm fnnx

a It is right here to observe that, in giving the above extract, I have so
far taken a liberty with it, as to exhibit the Hebrew line, not exactly as writ-
ten by Dr. Kennicott in the usual manner, but according to the mode of no-

222 ANOMALIES OF A CERTAIN PRONOUN [Chap. III.

In these twelve words we find the pronoun of the third person
five times ; twice properly he, and three times originally she;
but, in the printed editions, two of the three feminine pronouns
have been most absurdly changed into masculine. So that
the preceding words, if closely, or rather if truly translated,
contain the following expostulation of Abimelech on account

of Sarah said he not unto me, he is my sister ? And

she, even he said, he is my brother ! And is this the boasted
integrity of Jewish transcribers ? I should humbly presume,
that this single specimen, read seriously but twice over, is suffi-
cient to convince men, the most obstinately prejudiced, that
every Hebrew letter is not printed, as it was writ originally."
— First Dissertation, pp, 355-6.

0 ur author was perfectly safe in the conclusion he here came
to, that there was something wrong in the Hebrew passage
quoted by him, as it stands at present ; but he was quite un-
warranted in throwing the whole blame of this upon the Jewish
transcribers. The nonsense, too, which he derives from the
words in his translation of them, is entirely of his own crea-
tion, and results from his unfounded assumption that the pro-
noun contained in the passage had originally in the writings
of Moses two forms ; for, if it had but one, as is clearly attested
by the general evidence of the text of that part of Scripture,
that single one ought evidently to be construed, in each place
of its occurrence, he, she, or it, according to the demands of

tation I have adopted. The like liberty is taken in the rest of my Hebrew
quotations. No change of letters is therein attempted without due notifica-
tion, but minor alterations are made in the appearance of some of them, the
initials of proper names being enlarged, and the matres lectionis printed in an
open type, while the modern plan of stopping sentences is introduced. These
alterations, which would greatly contribute to facilitate the reading of the
sacred text, if applied to it, are justifiable on the very same grounds as that
already adopted and universally assented to, of separating the letters of this
record into distinct groups, to correspond to the words they respectively de-
note,— a state of distinctness which was not communicated to this species of
writing till after the benefit of it had been experienced in other kinds.

€hap. III.] NOT ATTRIBUTABLE TO COPYISTS. 223

the contexts The only fault, then, which can here be fairly
imputed to the copyists, is the introduction once of the second
form of this pronoun from the force of habit ; of which mis-
take there are but ten more instances to be met with through-
out the entire range of the Pentateuch. Now, the circum-
stance of their writing this word in the above-quoted passage
in two instances of its application to a female, as well as in
hundreds of others of the same kind in the Mosaic record, in
a form that was, according to their general practice, quite
anomalous, can, I will venture to assert, be rationally ascribed
to no other cause than a fixed determination, on their part, of
adhering strictly to the sacred text as they found it, and not
altering a single letter, even where the sense appeared indis-
pensably to require such alteration, in conformity with the
general structure of the language in their time. The very cir-
cumstance, therefore, which Dr. Kennicott considered as re-
flecting on their integrity, is one that affords the strongest
proof of the scrupulous fidelity with which they executed their
task;— a fidelity, indeed, quite singular in the history of tran-
scriptions, and which was carried by them to an extreme that
amounted to superstition, but which has been most fortunate, or
rather providential in its effects. For the preservation of the He-
brew text in very nearly the state in which it was left by the

a In the correctness of the above observation I am supported by the Au-
thorized English Version, in the five first books of which the rendering of
S^n is constantly she, wherever such construction of it is required by the
context. Thus, for example, the passage of the original which Dr. Kennicott
would have us believe quite absurd in its present state, is in this translation
rendered as follows: — " Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even
she herself said, He is my brother." In so construing free from all absurdity
this, and similar passages of the Pentateuch, the framers of our version were
perfectly warranted, provided the pronoun in question had therein regularly
but one form. They must, therefore, be considered as agreeing with me in
the inference I have drawn from that proviso; namely, that the Hebrew copy-
ists were not in fault in the hundreds of instances, in the specified part of the
Hebrew Bible, in which they wrote this pronoun for the feminine gender
ayn, though they were in the eleven instances in which they made it S^H.

S

224 NOH CAN THEY BE ASCRIBED TO THE [Chap. III.

first vocalizers after their interpolations, affords an aid to in-
quiry, without which it would now be no longer possible to
trace back and detect those interpolations.

If we turn from the transcribers to the authors of the in-
spired text, we shall find the idea equally chimerical, of the
difference of structure in question between the Pentateuch
and the rest of the Old Testament having originated with the
latter class of individuals. According to the supposition with
which I have now to deal, a most important improvement in
the distinctness of the language of the Jews was suddenly
brought about, and all at once completed, within a few years
after the death of their great lawgiver : and the succeeding
prophets, who all held him and his work in the highest venera-
tion, yet virtually condemned, or at least abandoned, in their
own mode of writing, the grammatical structure of that work
in one of its most prominent features. The mere statement of
this hypothesis is sufficient to mark its extreme improbability,
or — perhaps I might say — its absurdity. But let us examine
the supposed case more in detail, and inquire, in the first
place, how the writer, therein imagined to have introduced
the change in question, could have gained the information
that conducted to it ; or how, after having made the acquisi-
tion, he could possibly use it in the manner he is represented
to have done ! Was Joshua favoured with a higher degree of
inspiration than Moses? Certainly not. Was he more skilled
in human learning? Certainly not. Was he placed in a situa-
tion in which he could be expected to receive foreign instruc-
tion in the matter under inquiry? Certainly not : it is very
unlikely that the tribes he met with in Canaan spoke a dialect
at all better than, or different from, his own ; or, even if they
did, he was not on terms of peaceable intercourse with any of
them except the Gibeonites, whom he treated with the greatest
contempt, and looked down upon as his slaves. Admitting,
however, for a moment, that he, some way or other, most un-
accountably arrived at the improvement here referred to, I
have still to ask : Could lie, then, in the natural course of

Chap. III.] INSPIRED AUTHORS OF THE BIBLE. 225

things, have adhered to it uniformly in every instance ? Cer-
tainly not : it is contrary to all that is known of the power of
habit, to suppose that he would not have sometimes relapsed,
in this respect, into the mode of expression to which he had
been previously accustomed. In the next place, even laying
aside the consideration of the priority of the book of Joshua
to the writings of all the subsequent prophets, which is an in-
superable barrier to the supposition of the above improvement
having commenced with any of them, we shall find this suppo-
sition in a great measure pressed by the same difficulties in
their case as in the one already examined. Not one of them
was more highly inspired than Moses ; not one, Solomon ex-
cepted, was more learned ; not one, supposing the alteration
to have begun with him, can be admitted to have by natural
means completed it, in the manner in which it is exhibited
in his compositions in the present state of the Hebrew text.
There is, besides, this additional objection to the change hav-
ing been made by any of the successors of Moses : they all, in
common, imitated his style so closely, that, although Hebrew
continued a living language till near the end of their series,
or for almost a thousand years, it yet remained the whole of
that time absolutely the samea in its idioms and in every other
particular except the one under consideration. To attribute,
then, this single instance of alteration to them, in opposition
to the entire of their ascertained practice, instead of viewing
it as a work of after-ages, is directly repugnant to the rules of
reasoning which analogy and common sense prescribe.

The case of Moses himself remains still to be discussed :
and here the peculiar structure of the Pentateuch, in the

a Hebrew scholars have detected some very slight differences oflanguage,
as they conceived, between the earlier and later books of the Hebrew Bible;
but if these differences be examined with the aid of the light now thrown
upon the subject, they will be found to have been produced almost entirely
by the different degrees of fulness of the matres lectionis in the sacred text,
the vocalizers having inserted them more freely, according as they became
more habituated to their use.

s2

226 THE HEBREW PRONOUN IN QUESTION [Chap. III.

second of the aspects which I have brought under notice, comes
to our aid. To ascribe this peculiarity to the Jewish legisla-
tor, as its author, involves, I do not hesitate to assert, a direct
contradiction. I allow it quite possible that a writer might
give distinct forms for two genders to the pronoun in question
in its integral state, and yet only one of them appear in the
fragments of it used by him as affixes ; but to imagine that he
should express a difference of gender in the fragments, and
not in the entire word, is a manifest absurdity. For, be it
observed, the omission, here supposed, does not consist in his
leaving this word equally unvocalized for both genders, but in
his inserting constantly and uniformly in it a vowel that would,
for his feminine references, according to his own conception of
the subject, as indicated by his variation of the affixes, be posi-
tively wrong; — a line of proceeding which cannot be imputed
to any rational being, and least of all to an inspired one. The
consideration, then, of the various ways in which this pronoun
is written both in the Pentateuch alone, and in that work com-
pared with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, affords a very near
approach to demonstration, that it was not put in the different
forms which it now displays, by the inspired composers of the
sacred text.

But it is by means of the matres lectionis that the varia-
nt >ns in question were produced. We have here, therefore,
an independent proof of the strongest kind, with respect to
those letters, that they neither constitute a part of the ori-
ginal writing of the Bible, nor were subsequently added
through any mere faults of transcription ; and, consequently,
that their insertion therein is due to persons quite different
both from its authors and from its copyists. These scribes
are called by me vocalizers, on account of their having inter-
polated the sacred text with vowel-letters, and still further
the first or the old vocalizers, in order to distinguish them
from the Masorets, who in later times vocalized the same text
with points. This reasoning, indeed, bears immediately on
the interpolation of only the matres lectionis found in the

Chap.IIL] HAD ORIGINALLY BUT A SINGLE FORM. 227

Hebrew pronoun of the third person singular ; but, as they
are shown to a certainty to be spurious in one most important
and extensive class of instances of their employment in Scrip-
ture, how can they be allowed genuine in any other ? The
argument, therefore, virtually extends to every use made of
them in the Hebrew record, and serves greatly to strengthen
the proofs previously adduced to the same effect. In order to
the establishing, however, of the first step in a direct synthe-
tic explication of the difficulty here proposed for our conside-
ration, the immediate result of the foregoing analysis is all
that is wanted. The vowel-letters now found in the analyzed
pronoun, which give it two forms in its integral state, are
spurious ; and it originally had in that state but one form,
which was written tf PJ, and pronounced HuH, alike for every
gender. Strange as this primary step may appear, I yet do
not see how its deduction from the facts above proved can be
resisted ; and, besides, it derives some support from the ana-
logy of the other Shemitic dialects. In the Persian tongue, in-
deed, he, she, and it, are, even up to to this day, still expressed in
common by .\ HO, a derivative from HmH ; and Ms, her, and
its, are likewise in common denoted by the affix j, O, — a frag-
ment of the same derivative, which of necessity has but one
form for the three genders, in consequence of its integer hav-
ing but one.a And in the rest of the Shemitic languages there
is a peculiarity arising, I submit, out of the one in question,
which continues to hold in all of them, though the cause of

a The Persian and English languages resemble each other in a very re-
markable feature, that in each the genders of nouns are dependent, not on
termination or any other cause equally arbitrary, but on the nature of the
subject denoted; so that they both have in this respect a great superiority
over most, or nearly all, other languages. The degree, however, of this supe-
riority is considerably reduced in the Persian tongue, by the indistinctness
of the reference to nouns by means of the single form for all genders of the
pronoun t\ and affix .. From a description of a Malabar dialect of Sanscrit
subjoined to an account of the alphabet it is written with, which was pub-
lished at Rome in the year 1772, this dialect would appear to enjoy the same
advantage, and to rather a greater extent than does the Persian language.
Respecting the genders of nouns in the lingua Malabarica it is therein stated

228 CURIOUS PECULIARITY OF SHEMITIC [Chap. III.

it has from each been long since removed. In all those lan-
guages a distinction of gender, by means of a second form, is
imparted to the third person singular of the verb, in every
conjugation and tense ; — a property which would be much
more naturally attached to the pronoun of that person and
number, since, in correctness of thought, gender belongs not
to actions, but only to agents.

This very remarkable peculiarity in the structure of all
the Shemitic tongues, except the Persian, has not hitherto
been accounted for, but can now, I apprehend, be traced with
a high degree of probability to its cause ; namely, the original
singleness of form in those tongues of the pronoun in question,
which alone could have given rise to any occasion for forcing
on the corresponding inflexion of the verb an expression of
gender that is not properly applicable to it. But when this
attribute was communicated to one part of the verb, it was
through analogy extended to others. Hence it would appear
that, in all the Shemitic dialects whose structure is known,
with the one exception just specified, a change has occurred
with regard to the above pronoun, by the addition to it of a
second form : and as this change, granting it took place, was
effected in all of them the same way, — by pronouncing the
monosyllable alluded to, or a derivative from it, no longer in-
discriminately for every gender, but only for the masculine or
neuter with the sound of the vowel U, and for the feminine or
neuter with that of 7,a — it would further appear, that the na-

as follows: — " Generis masculini sunt ea omnia quse ad Deum, angelos, ac
homines pertinent; femininum est quod rationalem feminam sonat; cetera
autem cujuscumque ordinis sint, sive irrationabilia, sive insensibilia, sunt
generis neutrius." — Alphabeium Grandonico-Malabaricum, p. 17.

a Thus the distinction of gender in the above pronoun is made in the
Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic, as now written, in the following
manner: —

inc.

SHE.

Chaldee, . .

sin, HUH.

s^n, iiih.

Syriac, . .

OOi, 1111, or HaW.

—CJI, III, or IlaY.

Arabic, . .

y*>, HUa.

^Jfc, lib).

Ethiopic, . .

. (DTvfc, WeHTtt.

S$\% YeBTi

Chap.IIL] LANGUAGESTHEREBY ACCOUNTED FOR. 229

tions speaking those dialects borrowed the improvement, one
from another in succession, after they had become sensible of
the benefit of it, from being compelled to learn the language
of their Grecian conquerors. With which of them the altera-
tion commenced, it would be impossible now to determine ;
each probably adopted it gradually in a manner not likely to
arrest observation ; and they all in common must have been
just as anxious to conceal their obligation to foreigners, in this
respect, as they were with regard to the introduction of the
matres lectionis into their several systems of writing.

The main proof, however, of the pronoun under examina-
tion having at first had but one integral form for every gender
in the Hebrew language, rests upon the evidence of the Jew-
ish transcribers of the Pentateuch ; — evidence which carries
with it, as has been already shown, the clearest indications of
truth, and in further support of which I shall here offer two
remarks. First, there are still extant in the Hebrew text re-
mains of a single form for both genders of the affix derived
from this pronoun ; which, indeed, do not necessarily imply
that their integer was likewise of only one form, but are in
accordance with the supposition of its having been so. These
remains, which were overlooked by the old vocalizers, from the
haste with which they executed their work, shall a little fur-
ther on be more particularly considered. Secondly, it is to be
borne in mind, that the peculiarity above noticed in other She-
mitic tongues, holds also in Hebrew ; namely, that of the
several inflexions of verbs for the third person singular having
two forms, which could scarcely have been given to them in
the first instance, if the distinction of gender thereby conveyed
had originally been expressed through the corresponding pro-
noun.

According to the representation now given of the origin
of the double forms of Hebrew verbs, however superfluous
they may be elsewhere, they are still wanted in the Penta-
teuch, where the pronoun of the third person singular has
been suffered, in the integral state of it, to retain its primitive

230 SUPPLEMENTAL VOCALIZATION OF [Chap. III.

single form ; and the continuation of their usefulness in this
part of Scripture may be illustrated by the following example.
In the prediction contained in Gen. iii. 15, respecting the seed
of the woman, that it should bruise the serpent's head, which
is written in the Hebrew text EW1 "f^lt^ K1PF, the first word,
HUH, considered by itself may, from the extreme simplicity
of the sacred language, as preserved in the Pentateuch, be
rendered he, she, or it; and the context leaves it open to either
the second or third of these renderings, as ' the woman' is men-
tioned in the preceding part of the verse as well as ' her seed.'a
In consequence of the latitude which so far appears to be
afforded, with regard to the sense in which this word may be
taken, it has been referred to ' the woman' by Romanists, from
their anxiety to extol the merits of the Virgin Mary; and the
prediction is translated in the Vulgate, as that version stands
at present, ' ipsa conteret caput tuum.'b But there is a restric-
tion yet to be looked to in the original, which wholly excludes
this meaning : the verb "f^W is not in the feminine form ;
and, therefore, the prophecy can be applied only to the seed
of the woman, or to what is thereby denoted, the Messiah.

As a second step in the direct explication of the case before
us, I have to oifer a remark, — fully borne out by anomalies
connected with this subject in the style of the sacred text, —

a Even the masculine sense of HUH is not excluded in the case of the
above prediction, if the word be referred, not immediately to ' the seed of
the woman,' but to ' the Messiah,' as the ulterior signification of that expres-
sion ; and, accordingly, the pronoun in this passage is rendered ovto's in the
Septuagint, and ipse in the translation of Jerome.

b The first word of the above extract from the Vulgate must have been
changed since the time of Jerome; fur not only has he transmitted this word
ipse in his own translation of Genesis, but also has, in his Liber Qutvstio7ium
Ikbraicarum in Genesim, given a reason for so rendering it, which excludes
the possibility of ipse being a corruption introduced by his copyists. The
following is his note upon the subject: — "Ipse conteret caput tuum, et tu
conteres ejus calcaneum: quia et notri gressus prccpediuntur a colubro; et
Dominus conteret Satanam sub pedibus nostris velociter." — Hieronymi Opera,
Ed0. Benedict, torn. IL p. 510.

Chap. III.] JEWISH EDITION OF PENTATEUCH. 231

that it did not occur to the old vocalizers to introduce into
the original language of the Bible the improvement of a second
form of the pronoun under discussion, or at least that they
did not carry their intention in this respect into effect, till
after they had reached the end of the Pentateuch in the pro-
cess of interpolating its written ingredients with matres lectio-
nis. Of course what is here stated of those scribes must in
strictness be understood to apply rather to their directors the
Jewish priesthood, the sole guardians among the Jews of the
Hebrew Scriptures during the second century, even the most
learned of the laity having been then utterly ignorant of the
ancient Hebrew tongue. When the pronoun NPI was voca-
lized with a Waw for the feminine, in like manner as for
the masculine gender, it evidently had but one sound in
speech as well as only one form in writing ; and, conse-
quently, the fragment of it used as an affix to other words,
— viz. n, either alone, or preceded by an epenthetic 3, —
must have then been the same for both genders, and unvo-
calized for the masculine, just as it still remains for the femi-
nine gender. On the other hand, by the time that a distinc-
tion of gender made its appearance in the affix, — through
either the substituting for it, or the subjoining to it of a Waw
for the masculine gender, — this distinction must have been
already established in the integral pronoun, and in conse-
quence thenceforward exhibited, by means of a second form,
in whatever mode was adopted of conveying by letters a full
expression of each of its sounds. The operation, therefore,
of inserting vowel-letters in the sacred text was, to a cer-
tainty, twice applied to the portion of it written by Moses ;
and, through the second part of the process, a great improve-
ment in the distinctness of the pronoun in question, which
had previously crept into nearly all the Shemitic dialects, was
introduced into the parent tongue, though no longer then a
living language.

The third and last step in the solution of the difficulties
involved in the proposed case is supplied by the observation

232 THIS ADDITIONAL VOCALIZATION [Chap. III.

that, when the old vocalizers went over the Pentateuch a
second time, and displayed throughout its text two distinct
forms of the fragment of KIT for different genders, they most
inconsistently omitted to make a corresponding alteration in
the integer, and failed to change into Yod for the feminine
gender the Waw that had previously been inserted in it indis-
criminately for both genders ; although, by their omission of
this correction of the part of the operation executed the first
time of vocalizing the Mosaic record, they left the way open
for — what they were most anxious to prevent — the eventual
detection and exposure both of the interpolation of the matres
lectionis in the sacred text, and of the fraudulent perversion
thereby effected of several of its most important passages.
However surprising this inconsistency in their conduct may
be, yet the fact of their having acted so is incontestible ; and
this fact, combined with the two previously established, suffi-
ciently accounts for the discrepancies and contradictions which
the integral and fractional representations of the pronoun in
question, compared together, betray in the existing state of
the sacred text. With regard to the cause of the omission
noticed in the last step of this explanation, — no doubt the
Jewish rulers under whose superintendence the vocalizers
worked, would have been reluctant to let a great many era-
sures be made in their Bibles, or to resort, for the purpose of
avoiding this evil, to the trouble and expense of getting their
copies of the Pentateuch written all over again. Yet still,
had they perceived in time the great peril of eventual detec-
tion they exposed themselves to, by leaving this part of the
sacred text in the state in which it has been transmitted to us,
they would evidently have incurred every minor risk and re-
sorted to every expedient, however laborious or expensive, to
secure the execution of the requisite corrections. From their
having, then, neglected to take this precaution, it is quite plain
that they failed to perceive the discrepancies above pointed out,
and the remote consequences that were sure thence eventually
to follow, till after the opportunity was lost of remedying the

Chap. III.] EXECUTED WITH EXTREME HASTE. 233

evil in secret, and without incurring a risk of instant exposure.
This degree of blindness on their part is, I conceive, unques-
tionable, though it can hardly be accounted for in men of such
acuteness in their general conduct, and who besides exerted
in this very same transaction no small amount of cunning, in
contrivances to ward off the more pressing dangers of imme-
diate detection, as I hope to have an opportunity of more
fully showing in a subsequent chapter. It is true, they acted
with great precipitation in the case before us ; which circum-
stance may, indeed, have contributed to the oversight in ques-
tion, but certainly does not supply an adequate cause for it.

Of the haste and confusion with which the vocalization of
the Pentateuch was extended, by means of a supplementary
process, to the additional service of distinguishing the gender
of the pronoun Kfl, when in its fragmental state, some notion
may be formed by the aid of the following example, taken
from a part of this record in which one might expect more
especially to find the operation performed with the greatest
care and deliberation. The original of the expression, " beast
of the earth," in the 24th and 25th verses of the first chapter
of the Authorized English Version of Genesis, is correctly
printed in the latter of the corresponding Hebrew verses,
fHKil JTH ; but, in the former, it is at present put in the ano-
malous form, yiX 1JTn,a that is, literally, " his beast, earth,"
— a meaning scarcely intelligible, and which, at any rate, can-
not be reconciled with the context in the specified place. The
manner in which this Hebrew expression is written in the
second verse shows clearly how it should be corrected in
the first ; and, accordingly, it is in the Samaritan edition of
the Pentateuch presented to the reader in exactly the same
form, fHKPl JTn, iu both verses. How the erroneous reading
got into the Jewish edition, can now at last be easily explained.

a The T which is prefixed to the first of the above groups in the one in-
stance, and the HN which precedes it in the other, are omitted, for the pur-
pose of confining attention to the portions of the two original expressions
that ought to be exhibited perfectly identical.

234 THIS ADDITIONAL VOCALIZATION [Chap. III.

The scribe who undertook to go over the book of Genesis a
second time for the purpose of supplying a deficiency in its
primary vocalization, casting his eye down each page in search
of H used as a masculine affix to a noun singular, mistook this
letter on its first occurrence after JVH for such an affix ; and,
in consequence, changed it to 1, to indicate that the compound
should be read KhaYaThO, ' his beast,' instead of KhaYoThoH,
' her beast :' whereas, if he had even perused the single verse
through, instead of confining his attention to a combination
of only four of its letters, he must have at once perceived that
the character he operated on, did not at all represent a pro-
noun subjoined to TVn, but, on the contrary, denoted the defi-
nite article prefixed to JHK. His mistake plainly shows, —
what indeed is at any rate known from other sources, — that
in remote times the sacred text was written continuously
without any blank spaces between the words : for, had they
been then separated into distinct groups in the manner in
which they now are, the bare position of the He would have
been quite sufficient, without any consideration of the sense
in which it was employed, to guard him from the error into
which he here fell. But this example is further worth noticing
for the striking specimen it affords of the blunders which were
committed in the process of vocalizing the sacred text, and
which had an obvious tendency to lead eventually to the de-
tection of the interpolation therein of the matres lectionis. If
the Jewish priesthood, who superintended the execution of
this work, had carefully revised it before they suffered a voca-
lized copy to get out of their hands, they must have perceived,
and would evidently have in consequence removed, the more
glaring of the inconsistencies and self-contradictions which it
at present betrays ; and then they would in the natural course
of events have been nearly secure from the risk of any subse-
quent exposure of their fraudulent contrivance. From this
state of security, however, they were precluded by their own
act. The bearing of the extant fragments of Aquila's Greek
Version of the Old Testament renders it clear that he must,

Chap. III.] EXECUTED WITH EXTREME HASTE. 235

while writing his translation, have had the aid of a vocalized
copy of the Hebrew Bible ; and, as he lived at a time when
all transcripts of this record, as well as all knowledge of the
ancient Hebrew, were confined to the sacerdotal class and the
scribes under their direction, it is evident that he could not
have acquired his copy, or the degree of proficiency in its lan-
guage which was requisite to qualify him for making use of it,
without their clandestine assistance. But after they had thus
enabled him to write a translation fitted for the support of
their views and the disparagement of the Septuagint, they
could no longer correct any mistake detected by them in the
vocalization of the original text, without letting him perceive
the adventitious nature of that vocalization, and, consequently,
subjecting themselves to the peril of instant exposure ; for
Aquila was a man on whose fidelity they could not depend.
Thus, in their eagerness to avail themselves of the services of
this apostate, they allowed a copy of their Bible to get into
his possession before their vocalization of the text was suffi-
ciently corrected ; and this step proved fatal to the eventual
preservation of their secret. This much I feel it necessary to
offer at present in explanation of the subject: I may soon,
perhaps, have an opportunity of entering more fully into the
particulars of the entire transaction, as far as its history can
be deduced from internal evidence and external sources of
information.

To return to the combination of Hebrew groups analyzed
in the earlier part of the preceding paragraph, — it should,
according to the notation recommended in this essay, be
printed in an amended edition of the sacred text JHN[!T] IJW,
in which way the true reading is restored, and, at the same
time, the double mistake committed in the mode that has
hiterto prevailed of transmitting it, is exposed to the eye of the
reader. The Authorised English translation of this Hebrew
expression requires no correction, being exactly the same for
it in the 24th as in the 25th verse '; — a sameness with regard
to the renderings of it in the two places, which holds in, I

236 THIS ADDITIONAL VOCALIZATION [Chap. III.

believe, all the known ancient, and nearly all the modern ver-
sions of the Hebrew Bible, and which virtually yields an
attestation, on the one hand, from both of the versions that
are older than the second century, how the above expression
was originally written in the first place of its occurrence, and,
on the other, from all the subsequent ancient ones, how it
ought to be written in that place. The two earlier renderings
alluded to are, besides, worth noticing, the Greek one, — 0>jpla
t>/9 y//9, ' beasts of the earth,' — for its expressly proving that
the article H preceded the second Hebrew group in the speci-
fied place, at the time when the Septuagint was composed ;
and the Syriac one ,— M? ]lo+*>, KhaYOThaH D'HaRH«H, 'the
beasts of the earth,' — because, by the non-substitution of the
affix en for the final letter of its first word, although this affix
is frequently employed without any use in the Syriac dialect,
it just as pointedly vouches that no such redundant affix fol-
lowed the first Hebrew group in the same place, at the period
when the Peshitah was written.3 The next words of the Greek
version, Kara yeVo?, show that the corresponding group of the

■ The vocalizers giddily fell into the very same combination of mistakes
in their treatment of the three following expressions in the Psalms, which
are here exhibited in such a way as to point out, along with the blunders
committed, the mode of correcting them ; and the Authorized English render-
ings of these expressions are subjoined to them respectively, to show that the
learned framers of our version would have agreed with me, as to the correc-
tions requisite, if they had known that the irregularities hence removed in their
translation, were due, not to the inspired penmen, but to scribes who ope-
rated on the sacred text by stealth, and were in consequence induced to do so
with great precipitation.

12T[n] yrn b3, "every beast of the forest."— Ps. 1. 10.
V"iS[n] liTTlb, " unto the beasts of the earth."— Ps. lxxix. 2.
[n]i-Tttf[n] ]H^n b3, "every beast of the field."— Ps. 104, 11.

For all these instances, the Septuagint and Peshitah concur in estab-
lishing the faults of the writing, in the present state of the text, exactly with
the same force as they do in the case above selected from the first chapter of
Genesis. In the third example the additional blunder was committed of

Chap. III.] EXECUTED WITH EXTREME HASTE. 237

Hebrew text, \1FU7, was written without the affix H in the
copies consulted by the Seventy, in consequence of which
they were at liberty to read the group, TVn, in the plural
number KhaYoTh, ; beasts of,' instead of KhaYaTh, ' beast of ;'
but it is limited to the singular number by that affix in the
Samaritan, as well as in the Jewish edition of the text, and
by the equivalent affix en in the corresponding place of the
Syriac version ; so that the balance of ancient authority is
greatly in favour of the received reading of JVH in the singular
number, and the received writing of WD/ with the affix H
at its termination. But although there be no absolute neces-
sity for any change of the last mentioned group, its significa-
tion would be rendered more distinct by a Yod before the He ;
and, at any rate, it should be read as if it was thus more fully
written. Before the introduction of vowel-letters into the
sacred text, when this group was exhibited in the form (13D7,
it admitted of being read with a feminine reference, either
LeMiNaH, ' after its kind,' or LeMi'NeHa, ' after its kinds,' accord-
ing to the demands of the context ; but ever since, it would,
in order to the full and distinct representation of the latter
sound and sense, require a Yod between its last two letters,
exclusively of that wanted within the body of the word. On
the other hand, the old vocalizers, having, from the haste with
which they executed their task, or from want of room,a fre-
quently omitted to insert this mater lectionis between nouns

vocalizing TVV&, or rather mD, with the pronoun possessive of the first per-
son, or for the plural construct state, neither of which operations was allow-
able upon a noun with a He emphatic prefixed ; and there is the still further
grammatical objection to placing this noun in the construct state, that no
other follows in immediate connexion with it.

a The frequent omission of the mater lectionis Yod in the sacred text in
places where it is wanted to denote the plural number of nouns, is most pro-
bably to be in part accounted for by the want of room for its insertion ; as
there is reason to think that vowel-letters were first introduced into unvoca-
lized copies of the Bible previously in existence, instead of into copies written
out entirely anew.

238 CONSEQUENT CHANG EOF STRUCTURE [Chap. III.

plural and their affixes, the great number of alterations of the
sacred text requisite for supplying those omissions would be
very objectionable. Upon the whole, then, I consider it the
lesser evil to leave such groups in their defective state, and
follow the example of the Masorets, or second set of vocalizers,
who have pointed them for the same pronunciation as if the
defect in question had not occurred in the first vocalization.
In a few instances, indeed, the punctuators neglected this rule ;
but they appear to have done so, merely from failing to per-
ceive that the nouns in the groups operated upon were in the
plural number. Thus, in the case before us, they pointed
n^2j7 for the sound LeMi'Nall ; and the framers of our Autho-
rized Version, in deference to their punctuation, translated
this group ' after his kind.' But it is quite obvious from the
context that the inspired historian used the words expressing
in this place ' beast of the earth,' in the same manner as nouns
of multitude are employed, and intended thereby to denote all
the various kinds of 'beasts of the earth,' or 'wild beasts,' which
were created at the period referred to.a Notwithstanding,
then, the circumstance that I have met with no ancient autho-
rity directly supporting the plural number of the noun in the

a The best English translation, as I conceive, which has been hitherto
published of either of the passages containing the combination of groups
above examined, is that given of the second one in Myles Coverdale's Bible,
printed in 1535, and which I copy from the edition of it reprinted in 1838.
" And God made ye beastes of the earth every one after his kynde." Here,
by the interpolation of the words 'every one' (which might, according to the
excellent plan subsequently introduced, be exhibited in italics, and the force
of the objection to their insertion be thereby greatly reduced) Coverdale
avoided any inconsistency between the plural number of 'beastes' and the
singular number of the possessive ' his,' as well as any opposition to the con-
text arising from the singular number of 'kynde;' so that he actually suc-
ceeded in conveying the true sense of the passage. But, by means of my
discovery, the very same meaning is expressed, without deviating in the
slightest degree from the strict rendering of the Hebrew words, as originally
written.

Chap. III.] ILLUSTRATED BY ENGLISH EXAMPLE. 239

next ensuing group of the original passage,3 except the ver-
sion of Jerome, in which that group is translated ' secundum
species suas,' I have no hesitation to maintain that it should
be read LeMINeHa, and translated, in a revised edition of our
English Bible, ' after its kinds.'

My principal reason, however, for here bringing under
consideration the group last analyzed, is to avail myself of the
opportunity which its Authorized English Translation, ' after
his kind,' affords, of illustrating the change of grammatic
structure, with respect to the use of the pronoun of the third
person singular, which was introduced into the original lan-
guage of the Bible in the course of the second century.
Through a practice which formerly prevailed in English com-
position, the personal and possessive forms he and his, she and
her, of this pronoun, were applied not only to nouns with
which they agree respectively in gender, but also to neuter
nouns. Of this practice, as far as it relates to one of the speci-
fied possessive forms, an example is supplied in the above ad-
duced translation, taken from our last Authorized Version ;
and, of the same practice with regard to the corresponding
personal form, two instances will be found in the rendering of
the 29th and 30th verses of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew,
given in the first Authorized English Version, or that edited
by Coverdale in 1535, and reprinted in 1838. These verses
are exhibited in the reprinted work, with the original spelling,
but in modern English character, as follows : — " Wherfore yf
thy right eye offende the, plucke hym out, and cast him from
the. Better it is for the, that one of thy membres periszhe,
then that thy whole body shulde be cast in to hell. Also yf
thy right honde offende the, cut hym of, and cast him from the.
Better yt is that one of thy mebres periszh, the y* all thy
body shulde be cast in to hell." The particulars noticed in

* It will presently be shown that the reading of the above noun in the
plural number is indirectly supported by the Septuagint.

T

240 CONSEQUENT CHANGE OF STRUCTURE [Chap. III.

this and the preceding example, which could not have been
irregular at the times when the versions in which they occur
were written, are obviously incorrect in reference to the pre-
sent grammatic structure of English. The anomalies of the
latter description ma}^ possibly have arisen from a change of
gender of some nouns formerly deemed masculine or feminine,
which are now classed under the neuter gender. For the
feature of the English tongue which gives it a superiority
over every other language of Europe —that, I mean, of dis-
tinguishing the genders of nouns, not by their terminations
on any other arbitrary criterion, but by the nature of the sub-
jects they denote, — did not belong to it at first, as may be
clearly inferred from its German origin, but was only gradually
acquired. But the anomalies of the former description can-
not be accounted for in the same manner ; as we find, even in
the last Authorized Version, the possessive form ' his,' of the
pronoun in question, and, in some of the earlier English ver-
sions, the possessive ' her,' referred to nouns singular to which
the neuter form ' it,' of the same pronoun, is also applied, and
which, therefore, must have been deemed neuters at the times
when those references were severally made to them. Thus,
the ninth verse of the fourth chapter of the book of Numbers
is translated in our present Authorized Version as follows : —
" And they shall take a cloth of blue, and cover the candlestick
of the light, and his lamps, and his tongs, and his snuff-dishes,
and all the oil-vessels thereof, wherewith they minister unto
it." The same passage is rendered in Matthewe's Bible (which,
as the title-page informs us, was written in 1537, though not
printed till 1549, and which having been taken, the earlier
books of it, from the portion of the Old Testament translated
by Tyndal, must be referred to a date somewhat anterior to
that of Covcrdale's version), in these words : — " And they
shall take a cloth of iacincte, & couer the candlesticke of light, &
her lampes, and her sn offers & fyre pannes, and al her oyle
vessels whiche they occupye aboute it." Hence it would appear

Chap. III.] ILLUSTRATED BY ENGLISH EXAMPLE. 241

to follow that the possessive form, ' its,' which is now appro-
priated to neuter nouns singular, did not come into use, or at
all events not into general use, till after the period when our
present Authorized Version was written. Now the changes
of each of the personal forms of the pronoun in question into
the impersonal form which, in certain cases, have already been
made in the later English versions of the Bible, and the corres-
ponding changes of the possessive forms of this pronoun which
have also been already effected in part, and will undoubtedly
be completed in like cases, whenever a new version, or a re-
vision of the present one, comes to be sanctioned by the autho-
rity of our Church, are closely analogous to those of the same
pronoun in Hebrew which have crept into the original record,
the integral and fractional forms of this pronoun in the ancient
tongue corresponding to a considerable extent with its personal
and possessive forms in the modern language. By these alte-
rations not the slightest variation of the meaning; has been
produced, either in any of the English versions, or (where they
have been correctly applied) in the Hebrew text ; but merely
greater distinctness and appropriateness have been given to the
expression of that meaning in each kind of writing; and thus,
by means so far corresponding, the grammatic structure of
both languages has been greatly improved. There is, how-
ever, this material difference between the two sets of alterations,
that the English set, as far as it has been as yet carried out,
was made deliberately in a series of versions written in a liv-
ing language, according as that language was changed in its
structure ; and also made openly, so that the reader can trace
in the successive versions the gradual progress of the change :
while, on the other hand, the Hebrew set was introduced into
a compilation which is the sole ancient remnant of a dead
language, with such precipitation that many errors and incon-
sistencies were suffered to get into this part of the vocalization
of the sacred text; and by stealth, during a period in which
the Christians had neither any copy of that text, nor the slight-
est knowledge of the language in which it is written : so that

t 2

242 REMAINS OF THE MASCULINE AFFIX [Chap. III.

when a vocalized copy of it was purposely placed within reach
of Origen, the most able of the early fathers of the Church,
and he was taught to read it by the very party who were in-
terested in concealing the fact of its having been tampered
with, he entertained not the least suspicion of that tampering,
and had no opportunity of detecting it by a comparison of
this exemplar with older copies. But some of the last points
here incidentally touched upon, as well as others essentially
connected with them, are of too much importance to be dealt
with in only a cursory manner. I shall, therefore, reserve
them for fuller discussion, — as far as they can by internal evi-
dence and the very scanty external means within my reach
be established, — in a supplementary volume, wherein they may
be made the chief subject of examination, if I be spared life
and health sufficient to complete this treatise ; and will now
proceed to follow up the argument supplied through the dis-
covery of the introduction into the sacred text of a second
integral form of the pronoun here referred to, by adducing
some instances of the mistakes committed with regard to each
of the several forms of the fragment of it used as an affix.

The cases which here naturally come first under conside-
ration are those to be found of the affix H employed in refe-
rence to masculine nouns singular, which are by no means as
few as they are generally supposed to be : nor are they to be
looked upon in the light in which they are represented by
Hebrew grammarians, as irregularities ; but should be viewed
as remains of the original use of a common fragment of tf H
for both genders, which were, through precipitancy, overlooked
by the old vocalizers, in the process of substituting for, or
adding to this fragment, when used with a masculine reference,
the mater lectionis 1, for the purpose of marking a distinction
of gender. It would, indeed, be strange, if H was an irregular
affix for the masculine gender in Hebrew, when it is on all
sides admitted to be a regular one for that gender in Chaldee
and Syriac. In each of these three cognate dialects the affix
under consideration is, I grant, now read with different vowel

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS SINGULAR. 243

sounds for different genders ; but such a distinction could not
have been made in the fragment, till a corresponding one was
introduced into the integral pronoun ; and it is certain that in
Hebrew, at all events, this pronoun in its unbroken state had
at first but one pronunciation. In this dialect fl, when used
as an affix to a noun singular, is at present read oH for the
masculine, and aH for the feminine gender ; but which of these,
or whether either of them was originally its common pronun-
ciation for both genders, can no longer be determined to a
certainty. The probability, however, is, that the former was
that common one, as connected in vowel sound with HwH,a the
original single reading of the entire pronoun for all its appli-
cations. The latter is, and most likely always was, in Hebrew
a terminating sound of both nouns and verbs for the feminine
gender ; and, therefore, was naturally selected as the utterance
of the above affix for its feminine references, as soon as a dis-
tinction of gender was extended to the pronoun from which
it is derived. The Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Penta-
teuch will be of considerable use to me in the present, and
some of the subsequent investigations to be made in the course
of this Chapter ; because the Samaritan scribes did not in
every instance adhere strictly to the Jewish vocalization of the
Mosaic record ; in consequence of which I am enabled (by
selecting words differently treated by the two sets of scribes)
to bring together for immediate comparison those groups of
letters, as written before and after vocalization, and so to
trace them back from their vocalized to their original states.
Here I have to point out what appear to me two very strik-
ing marks of a providential interference for securing the even-
tual exposure of the insidious conduct of the Jewish priests of
the second century. The first is supplied by their having failed

* That the first vocalizers of the Hebrew text made little or no distinction
between the vowels 0 and U is evident, from their having employed but one
and the same mater lectionis to denote each of them.

244 KEMAINS OF THE MASCULINE AFFIX [Chap. III.

to correct the grosser mistakes committed in vocalizing the
sacred text, before they suffered any copies to get anew into
the hands of the orthodox Christians, who had lost all know-
ledge of the original language of the Bible, together with their
copies of it as originally written, not long after the beginning
of the second century. Those mistakes the rulers of the Jews
must have detected soon after having been committed, and
consequently had near a hundred years to correct before the
date of the event just referred to. How then came they to
neglect a precaution for the observance of which they had
such abundance of time, and whose necessity, one would think,
the lowest degree of prudence must have indicated ? This
precaution they were precluded from resorting to, by another
step incompatible with it, which notwithstanding their extreme
cunning they were led to adopt. From the very commence-
ment of the specified interval, they employed heretics or apos-
tates to write new Greek versions in disparagement of the
Septuagint, whom for this purpose they entrusted with voca-
lized copies, and got taught a moderate share of the ancient
Hebrew tongue. But if they had attempted to introduce any
changes into the vocalization, after once they had put copies
into the hands of those men, they would have thereby revealed
the secret of their treatment of the original text to persons
in whose fidelity they could not place the slightest reliance ;
and they preferred leaving their fraud subject to a remote
danger of detection, to running the risk of its instant exposure.
The second of the marks in question is furnished by the con-
duct of the Samaritan scribes in reference to the same sub-
ject. The Jewish priests hated those scribes and the entire
nation to which they belonged ; yet it was necessary that they
should let the Samaritan guardians of the Pentateuch be fur-
nished with a vocalized copy of that record, before any such
copy was allowed to get into Christian hands ; as, otherwise,
the alarming risk must have been incurred of vocalized and
unvocalized copies being compared, and the fraudulent treat-

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS SINGULAR. 245

ment of the former class thereby at once detected.3 On the
other hand the Samaritans hated the Jews, but they hated still
more the Christians ; and being less prejudiced than the for-
mer party against the admission into the sacred text of a Pagan
invention which produced, as far as it was fairly applied, a most
valuable and important improvement in the mode of writing
that text, they must have eagerly adopted it even on this account
alone, though in all probability they did so, like those from whom
they borrowed this innovation, chiefly for the sake of the per-
versions thereby effected of prophecies supporting the truth of
Christianity. But, surely, if their judgment had not been
blinded in some extraordinary manner, they would have per-
ceived that, to give weight to those perversions, the spurious
nature of the interpolated letters should be kept concealed, and
that, in order to this concealment, the interpolations should
be exactly the same in the two editions of the Hebrew Penta-
teuch. They could not, indeed, even if they had been ever so
much on their guard, have contrived any mode of dealing in
perfect safety, with the grosser mistakes of the JeAvish vocali-
zers ; which, whether left in statu quo, or corrected, powerfully

a The Christians became totally ignorant of the ancient Hebrew after the
death of the immediate disciples of the Apostles, that is, very soon after the com-
mencement of the second century ; and continued so till about a third part of
the third century was over, when Origen learned this language and obtained
possession of a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. Both acquisitions are attri-
buted solely to Origen's energy and talent by Eusebius, who speaks of them
in his Ecclesiastical History in terras of the greatest admiration, and as two
of the most extraordinary achievements of this extraordinary man. But, on
a full examination of the case, there will, I think, be found very strong rea-
son for concluding that he made neither acquisition without the connivance
and concealed permission of the Jewish priesthood, to whom (setting aside
the consideration of the Samaritan priests and the immediate dependents of
both parties) all extant copies of the whole or any part of the sacred text, as
well as all knowledge of the language in which it is written, were at the time
exclusively confined. Their motives for selecting this able and zealous father
of the Christian Church, as their unconscious agent for the publication of the
vocalized text, will be fully considered in my next volume, if I be spared life
and health to prepare for the press the materials I have collected relating to
this subject.

246 REMAINS OF THE MASCULINE AFFIX [Chap. III.

tended to the exposure of their secret, in the former case
through a due consideration of the nature of the retained
blunders, and in the latter through the discrepancies produced
by the removal of those blunders from only one of the two
editions compared together. But with regard to the general
vocalization of the text, their different treatment of its conso-
nants and vowel-letters, which they might have avoided, was
obviously fitted to arrest observation, and thereby lead to the
discovery of the interpolation of the latter class of elements ;
for the circumstance of the two editions disagreeing every
here and there in this latter class, while yet they constantly
and uniformly, with very few exceptions, agree in the former,
cannot be attributed to any accidental faults of transcription,
but must have originated in design. In consequence of this
oversight on their part, each record at present affords far
more copious testimony than it could otherwise have done,
against the genuineness of the matres lectionis in the other,
and, in reference to the examples to be adduced in the course
of the present chapter from those records mutually compared,
the reader is requested to bear in mind that, besides the par-
ticular use to which each is applied, they, all in common serve
the general purpose of contributing to establish the fact, that
the vowel-letters employed in the sacred text constitute no
part of its original writing.

To proceed now to the above-proposed analysis, — I subjoin
a few instances of the affix il employed in the Jewish edition
of the Hebrew Pentateuch, with a masculine reference, and in
which it is accordingly vocalized for such reference in the Sa-
maritan edition, except in the case of the last example, which
was equally overlooked by both sets of vocalizers with letters.

Gen. xxxv. 21,

Jewish Edition.

nbns, HoiioLoH.

Samaritan Edition.

^bn«, HoIloLO,

Authorized Eng. Ver.
his tent.

xlix. 11,

mil?, HIEoH.

r>^, HIRO,,

his foal.

Ex. xxii. 5,

imp*, *suThoH.

rrnsn, BeHIRoH.

^nlDD, KeSUThO,
•p^a, BeHIRO,

his clothes,
his beast.

27,
Deut. xxxiv. 7

nfllDD, KeSUThoH.

, nnb, Leiioii.

1n"iD3, KeSUThO,
nn\ LeHoIl,

his covering,
his natural force.

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS SINGULAR. 247

In all these instances the affix H is admitted by the Masorets
to have a masculine reference, being pointed by them for the
sound oH, in agreement with the representation I have given
of the pronunciation of the several groups in the column ex-
tracted from the Jewish edition of the Pentateuch. Notwith-
standing the number of differences here exhibited between the
two editions, only one of them is in reality a discrepance,
namely, that produced by the loss of the initial letter of the
third group in the Jewish column, which is proved to have
been dropped thence, not only by the testimony of the Sama-
ritan edition in the corresponding place, but also by that of
the Jewish edition itself in every other place of the occurrence
of the word with which this group commences ; as, for instance,
in the fifth of the examples just adduced. The group in ques-
tion, therefore, is evidently mutilated, and ought to be writ-
ten nniDD] in an amended edition of the sacred text. All
the other differences are occasioned merely by an altered mode
of spelling the words, which makes no change whatever in
their several meanings and no perceptible one in their sounds.
From the practice here exemplified of the Samaritan set of
vocalizers (in which they imitated that of the Jewish set)
whereby they substituted the Waw for the original affix, in-
stead of coupling it therewith, we may perceive that this alte-
ration of the spelling was first introduced, not into copies
written out entirely anew, but into unvocalized ones then
already in existence ; and that, as He at the end of a syllable
causes no perceptible change of its sound, they erased the old
affix before inserting the Waw, in order to avoid crowding two
letters into the space intended only for one. We shall, how-
ever, presently see that, pressed by want of room, the old voca-
lizers took the same liberty with this original element of the
sacred text in places where it was at the commencement of a
syllable, and where, consequently, they had not the same ex-
cuse for its removal.

The old affix for the masculine gender, FT, having been
rightly pointed by the later set of vocalizers in the foregoing

248 ANALYSIS OF HOS. iv. 17-19, THROUGH [Chap. III.

examples, requires therein no correction as to the mode of
either reading or translating it. But there are many cases in
which the Masorets have, from a prejudice in favour of the
more usual employment of this affix with a feminine refe-
rence, mistaken its true application; and in which, conse-
quently, the demands of the context indispensably require
that the translation, given of it in deference to their mispoint-
ing, should be changed. Of this necessity no less than three
instances are afforded within the short compass of the original
of the following very obscure and confused passage, as at pre-
sent exhibited in our Authorized Version. " her rulers

with shame do love, Give ye. The wind hath bound her up
in her wings." — Hos. iv. 18, 19. It is no excuse for pointing
the affix H, on each occurrence of it in this place, for the
feminine gender, and translating it by the pronoun ' her,' that
' a backsliding heifer' is mentioned two verses before ; as the
animal there denoted by a feminine noun is not at all the sub-
ject of the prophet's censure, but is merely alluded to inciden-
tally in a simile. The party here upbraided is the people of
Israel, figuratively represented as an individual under the de-
signation of Ephraim the progenitor of their principal tribe,
and expressly referred to by that name in the verse imme-
diately preceding this quotation. The sense, therefore, abso-
lutely requires the change of the first ' her' into ' his,' and of
the second into ' him ;' while the grammar of the English
language, as at present constituted, equally demands the alte-
ration of the third, which refers to the wind, into ' its.' By
these corrections great confusion is at once got rid of; yet the
chief source of obscurity has not been hereby removed ; as,
without further alteration, the first clause of the above quota-
tion still remains utterly unintelligible. But the present dis-
covery, I am in hopes, will enable me to arrive at the true
meaning of the sentence, so grossly mistranslated. The Avhole
Hebrew passage, with as much of its oldest Greek and Syriac
renderings as contribute to the recovery of the sense of the
portion of it corresponding to the clause in question, stands
thus : —

Chap. III.] THE AID OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 249

Hebrew, . . mrn 4DSUD "id 5«fc n:n ;DfnaN D^nxi; imn

ntrm rrn my .n^jz: pSp ian inrm /urn

.Dnraro lean .n-Httaa

$<?£#., .... ')]'-/ a7nj(rav cLTifxoav, ' have loved infamy.'
Peshitah, . . 1a^ oScuj?, 'have from the inmost bowels
loved infamy.'

Before grappling, with the principal difficulty of this passage,
I have to conclude my remarks upon the affix H three times
therein repeated. On the first and second occurrence of this
affix it should evidently be read in the masculine gender, for
the same reason as in the English translation, on account of
its being referred to Ephraim ; and, on its third occurrence,
it should also be pointed and pronounced for that gender, in
consequence of its reference to nfl, ' the wind.' For, although
this Hebrew word is more usually treated as a noun feminine,
it must be here looked upon as masculine, since the verb con-
nected with it, "11V, is exhibited in the form of a masculine
inflexion. Grammatic concords, I admit, are sometimes
found violated in the Hebrew Scriptures, which were com-
posed long before the art of grammar was understood or even
thought of; but, as they are therein, for the most part, ad-
hered to, we are in fairness bound to suppose that they are
so, in every case in which the original elements of the sacred
text do not force upon us the opposite conclusion ; and no
vocalization, whether with letters or with points, is to be
admitted as sufficient evidence of the employment of any false
concord in it as originally written. The fact is, the old voca-
lizers, in their procedure of changing the affix H into 1 for
masculine references, overlooked in the above passage the
three groups iTJJD, MaGz'NnEHw, ' his rulers,' or, more literally,
' his shields ;' Hmtf, HOThoH, ' him ;' and iTO^D, BiKNaPhEHa,
' in its wings ;' and the Masorets, or later set of vocalizers,
sooner than acknowledge the occurrence so close to each other
of what, according to their view of the matter, would have
been three irregularities, pointed the final letter of those seve-

250 ANALYSIS OF HOS. iv. 17-19, THROUGH [Chap.III.

ral groups for the feminine gender, in direct opposition to both
sense and grammar. These glaring blunders are corrected,
without the slightest alteration of the Hebrew text, simply by
reading the letter in question, in the first and third instances,
H.u instead of Ha, and, in the second instance, oH instead of aH.
In each of the two former examples, it is to be observed, the
affix follows a plural noun, and belongs to a set of cases which
shall, a little farther on, be more particularly considered. In
concluding, however, this branch of the investigation, I should
add that, according to a new exposition of the nature of the
paragogic He submitted to the judgment of the learned in the
next chapter of this treatise, more especially the part of it
arranged under the heading, ' The paragogic He after A now
used more than is commonly supposed,' the feminine gender
of ID") can be reconciled with the form of Tl¥ ; and still far-
ther that, according to the construction given by the Seventy
of the clause containing those groups — a construction which
will presently be examined — the gender of one of the three
specified affixes depends on that, not of either word separately
considered, but of the term compounded of both, which there
is nothing to hinder from being feminine. But, if the view
of the matter supplied in either way be adopted, the Masoretic
pointing of the last of those affixes would require no altera-
tion, and only the modes of reading two of them would then
want correction.

The first clause of the adduced Hebrew passage has been
already examined in the first chapter of this volume ; and,
according to the analysis there gone through, it may be ren-
dered, as follows: — "Associated with idols is Hephrayim ;
quit him ; he is prince of drunkards." Next comes the clause
in whose discussion I here propose to engage. The learned
framers of our Authorized Version have in vain attempted to
make sense of this clause by separating the term ] up, ' shame,'
from the verb which it immediately follows ; for, surely, the
series of words, ' do love, Give ye,' is just as destitute of mean-
ing as, ' do love, Give ye shame.' In fact, it is quite plain that

Chap. III.] THE AID OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 251

there must be something wrong in the writing of the Hebrew
sentence as it stands at present ; and attentive consideration
of its several ingredients is necessary, in order to preparing
the way for the detection of that fault. Now the first two
words of this sentence — 13TH Ptt?i7, ' in fornicating; have forni-
cated,'a — present to us a Hebrew idiom which, by means of
the infinitive mood of a verb used with the force of a Latin
gerund, and combined with a definite inflexion of the same
verb, serves to attach the notion of vehemence or excess to
the manner in which the act represented by that inflexion is
performed. But the next two words, "Ofl >QilK] would, by
inserting an N at the commencement of the second of them,b
exhibit another instance of precisely the same idiom, were it
not for the 1 at the end of the first, which interferes with its
being read in the infinitive mood ; and, of course, as long as
that letter was held to be an original element of the inspired
text, inquiry could be pushed no further in this direction.
But now that this barrier is removed, and that we are at
liberty to question the propriety of the insertion of the mater
lectionis at the close of the first word as an addition made to
it by fallible scribes, we are placed in a situation, with respect
to the analysis before us, that may be illustrated to an English
reader by a sentence which indeed, after a certain correction,
will eventually turn out to be the exact literal translation of
the Hebrew clause under consideration, but to which atten-
tion is here directed, merely on account of the manner in

a Literally, ' in causing to fornicate have caused to fornicate.' But, as
the Seventy have translated the words in question 7ropve-6avTei egeiropvevoav,
I follow their authority in understanding the Hiphil modification of the verb
as used in this instance simply with the force of its Kal modification. In
fact, the Greek interpretation includes the more literal one: for, if the rulers
were themselves guilty of idolatry, — the crime here metaphorically called
fornication, — their example had an obvious tendency to lead the people to
the perpetration of the same crime.

b The English reader is requested to bear in mind that the Hebrew writ-
ing and his own proceed in different directions; and, consequently, that the
second of the above specified groups is the one to the left.

252 ANALYSIS OF HOS. iv. 17-19, THROUGH [Chap. III.

which one of its ingredients is written. ' His rulers [literally,
his shields] in fornicating have fornicated, in loving have
oved infamy.' No one, surely, on the perusal of this sentence,
could have the slightest doubt but that, through the fault of
some copyist or printer, the letter I had been here omitted at
the beginning of the penultimate word. But the case of 'QH
in the original clause is precisely analogous : for, although it
be, when considered by itself, a significant word, it makes no
sense in connexion with those among which it is placed ; and,
consequently, it requires correction just as much as ' oved'
does in the English example ; while its comparison with the
Hebrew verb immediately preceding points out just the same
way of correcting it. An Haleph, therefore, should obviously
be prefixed to the above group, this addition to it being im-
peratively demanded by the circumstances of the case ; and
the validity of the correction which is thus supported by the
context, is still further corroborated and, I may say, confirmed
by the joint testimony of the oldest and best versions of the
sacred text. For the two groups here more immediately
under examination, together with the noun placed just after
them, are translated in the Septuagint ^am^av cm/x/ai/, ' have
loved infamy ;'a while they are, along with the same addition,

■ The Greek rendering of the whole clause above referred to is as follows:
7ropverjovre9 e^ewopvevaav, ^air^aav c'nt/xiav eic (ppva^ifiaTO* av7Tj<s. ' forni-
cating they have fornicated; they have loved infamy for its very insolence.'
The learned reader may perhaps be disposed to ask, why, following the Se-
venty in the main body of this rendering, I yet reject the final part of it, and
give a preference to the construction of the last group rPMB, * his shields,'
which results from its Masoretic pointing for the pronunciation MaGiNnEIIa,
after the vocalization of the affix with which it is closed has been corrected.
To this I reply, that their translation of the group in question, attaching to
it the sense, ' on account of its pride or insolence,' would require its being
written n3N2tt, MiGgeHoNoH ; that is, would require the insertion therein of
an Haleph not used as a vowel-letter. But I make it a rule never to deviate
from the consonants of the sacred text, as transmitted to us by the Jews, ex-
cept where there it an absolute necessity for such deviation. It is for the
same reason that I avail myself but once of the aid of the Pcshitah through-
out the discussion of the entire passage to which this clause belongs.

Chap. III.] THE AID OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 253

rendered still more closely in the Peshitah, ];A. qLok»5, ' have
from the inmost bowels loved infamy,' through the use of a
verb common to the Hebrew and Syriac tongues, and of which
the inflexion here specified, oSojoj, ReKhaMU,a is exactly equi-
valent to the Hebraism ' in loving have loved,' both expres-
sions equally serving to convey the meaning, ' have exceed-
ingly loved.' I have no hesitation, then, in maintaining that
the above groups should be written *QPirtf] 1DPJK in an
amended edition of the sacred text : nor is it an objection of
any importance against these corrections, that they derive no
support from manuscript copies of the Hebrew Bible ; since
the restored Haleph must have been omitted by copyists be-
fore the text was vocalized, that is, a great many centuries
before the oldest copies now extant were written. Thus the
present discovery leads to the corrections just effected, which
again, in their turn (verified and confirmed as they have been
by the most powerful combination of internal and external
evidence), react upon that discovery, and contribute to the
proof of its reality, by establishing the spuriousness of the
Waw at the end of the foremost of the corrected groups.
Upon this point the testimony of the Syriac translators bears
with peculiar force, by showing beyond a doubt that they
attributed to the specified group the meaning, ' in loving,' and
consequently the sound, HeHoB ; but how could they possibly
have read it with this sound, if the mater lectionis, now found
at its end, had been there at the period when they wrote?
Here I might close my analysis of the Hebrew passage,

a The above representation of the sound of the Syriac group accords not,
I admit, with its modern pronunciation, the Waw at its termination being
at present passed over without utterance; but this evidently could not have
been the case when vowel-letters were first introduced into Syriac orthogra-
phy. The Waw must have then been employed to distinguish the plural,
from the corresponding singular inflexion, in sound as well as in writing;
and I give a preference to the more ancient mode of reading the word, not
only for its greater distinctness, but also for its nearer approach to RrrKheMU,
the Hebrew pronunciation of the same inflexion of the very same verb.

254 ANALYSISOFHOS.iv. 17-19, THROUGH [Chap. III.

but that in the next clause a further correction is suggested
by the Septuagint, which, though not required with the same
urgency as the two just arrived at, and though it quite changes
the uses of the letter il in one of the three places wherein it
has been treated as an affix, yet appears entitled to attention,
not merely on account of the support it derives from the oldest
version of the Hebrew Bible, but also because it makes way for
what, I submit, is an improved rendering of part of this pas-
sage, without altering any of the original elements of the text.
The clause in question, together with the literal meaning of it
in its present state, and its Greek interpretation, with the lite-
ral sense thereof likewise subjoined, stands thus —
Hebrew, . . ^MD3 T\tf\)H T\T\ Tltf

The wind hath bound him up in its wings.

Sept., . . . 2u(ny>o0?} 7rvevfxaTos. av tv reus mrepv^iv avr?j<;.

The whirlwind! thou on its wings!

Upon a comparison of this Greek line with its original, we may
clearly perceive that the Seventy read Tltf, not as the verb
SaRaR, ' hath bound up,' but as a noun in regimen, SeRoR, ' a
bundle of;' and their attestation is here given that the word
with this signification, combined with the Hebrew for ' wind,'
was employed in the ancient language of their countrymen to
denote a whirlwind or hurricane ; — a matter of fact for the
truth of which there could not be produced any higher unin-
spired authority than theirs. This sense of the compound,
therefore, may be safely assented to, though no opportunity
is afforded of testing its correctness through the occurrence
together of the two component words in any other passage of
the sacred text. By means of the same comparison it will
further be seen that these interpreters read the third group of
the Hebrew line, not as the pronoun HOThoIl, ' him,' but
IlaTtaH, ' thou ;' and here, by the way, I may again appeal
with confidence to ancient testimony in support of my disco-
very, and ask, how could they by any possibility have attached
the sound IlaTtaH to Hni^, if the Waw which now appears in

Chap. III.] THE AID OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 255

this group, had been there at the date of the framing of their
version ? But — to return to my subject — the construction
which results from their mode of reading the clause imparts
to it, as I conceive, much greater force of expression than that
to which it was afterwards confined by the vocalizers of the
second century ; and, in favour of this construction, we are
also to take into account that it clears the prophet's language
of the awkward metaphor of a person bound up in, or confined
by the wings of the wind, instead of being uplifted and carried
away thereon. If, indeed, this metaphor had been conveyed
solely by means of genuine elements of the sacred text, I should
not have presumed to question its propriety ; but when I find
it due to the colouring given to the sentence by a set of falli-
ble scribes, I must demur to its reception. For both reasons,
then, I would venture to place a little circle over the Waw of
HffiN, and recommend a return to the more ancient reading
of the adduced Hebrew line, which requires not the alteration
of a single one of its original letters as given in the Masoretic
text. According to that reading, Hosea, after censuring the
vices of the Israelites and their rulers, and speaking of the
people as an individual, the forefather of one of their tribes,
suddenly turns round, as it were, to this individual, and thus
addresses him : — " Behold the whirlwind ! thou art already on
its wings !" As much as to say, — Thou art on the point of
being attacked by hostile armies, which shall bear thee off to
a distant land with the violence and the rapidity of a storm ;
— a threat not the less impressive for the abruptness of the
enallage of person, or the darkness of the allusion. In con-
trasting this construction of the Hebrew clause with that
which is at present received, the reader is to bear in mind that
the question at issue is not at all between the first translators
and the sacred text (which is, in its original elements, exactly
the same for both constructions), but between those transla-
tors and vocalizers posterior to them by more than three hun-
dred years ; and, although the later set of scribes might, from
the obscurity of this sentence, be conceived to have honestly
differed from their predecessors, as to its meaning, or rather

256 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. 111.

as to the form of expressing that meaning, yet when we find
them constantly disagreeing with the Seventy, wherever the
unvocalized original admits of the slightest variation in the
mode of reading it, this general conduct of theirs greatly re-
duces the authority of their decision in the case before us, in-
dependently of the more intrinsic reasons for preferring the
Greek rendering in this particular instance. After the apos-
trophe which tins clause, according to its oldest interpretation,
conveys, the prophet returns to the form of speaking of the
Israelites in the third person, but mentions them no longer
under the figurative character of a single individual, but in
their collective capacity as a nation: — "Moreover they shall
be put to confusion for their idolatrous sacrifices."

The value of the several corrections made here and in the
first chapter of this treatise, in three analyzed verses of a pro-
phecy of Hosea, will perhaps be better seen by an immediate
comparison of the unbroken series of these verses, as exhibited
in the Authorized English Version, and as now proposed to
be changed : —

Received Translation o/"Hos. iv. 17, 18, 19.
" 17. Ephraim is joined to idols ; let him alone.

18. Their drink8 is sour ; they have committed aHeb. is gone.

whoredom continually : herb rulers with h Hei>. shields.
shame do love, Give ye.

19. The wind hath bound her up in her wings,

and they shall be ashamed because of
their sacrifices."

Altered Translation of the same verses.
" 17. Ilephrayiin is associated with idols ; quit his
company ; (18) he is prince of drunkards.
His0 rulers have committed excessive for- c iieb. shields.
nication ; they have exceedingly loved
infamy. (19) Behold the whirlwind ! thou
art already on its wings ! Moreover they
shall be put to shame on account of their
idolatrous sacrifices."

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 257

But a far more striking and copious illustration of the
egregious blunders of the old vocalizers, with regard to the
affix in question, as well as in reference to other points, is fur-
nished by a subsequent passage of the same prophet, rendered
in our Authorized Version as follows : — " The inhabitants of
Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Beth-aven : for the
people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof
that rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed
from it." — Hos. x. 5. Even in this translation an inconsis-
tency, in respect to grammatic number, may be perceived to
occur thrice between a pronoun and the noun to which it
refers ; but in the original, as it stands at present, this incon-
sistency is found to hold, not only as to number, but also as
to gender, and is repeated in both respects no less than six
times. The errors, however, of gender here to be noticed
differ from those illustrated in the previous example, in the
circumstance of their having arisen from the vocalizers of the
second century having meddled with the affix referred to in
places where they ought to have left it in its original state ;
while, on the other hand, occasion was given for those just
before exposed, through the neglect of those scribes to voca-

sys-

lize the same affix, where, according to the then introduced

W, TTXiV/i^,

tern, its form should have been changed. But besides the six
double violations of concord, with respect to the above affix, in
the second clause of thepresent example, there is one more error
of vocalization therein, together with three more in its first
clause ; and, in fact, the mistakes here committed by the old
vocalizers are so numerous that I am obliged, for the purpose
of avoiding confusion, to deviate from my usual plan, and, in
the first instance, lay before the reader both the Hebrew pas-
sage, with the corrections it would require in an amended
edition, and the Authorized English Translation of it altered
accordingly ; deferring till afterwards to state the grounds of
those corrections and alterations. After the corrected Hebrew
verse, with its meaning expressed in English, are placed the

u2

258 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

renderings given of the same verse in the Septuagint and Pe-
shitah, with a literal interpretation subjoined to each. For,
although both renderings yield internal evidence of being
erroneous, and so afford no aid towards ascertaining the true
construction of this obscure passage, they are of considerable
use in supporting my description of the original state of
the Hebrew text and of the original mode of reading it.
Besides, I am in hopes I shall be able satisfactorily to ac-
count for the strange deviation of the Seventy from the mean-
ing of one part of the passage, and to trace their translation,
and the vocalizers' reading of that part, though so much at
variance with each other, to one and the same state of the
corresponding portion of the original text ; — an attempt which,
as far as I can find, has never yet been made, and which, in
reality, it would have been impossible before now to bring to
a successful issue. In the last place is inserted the Latin ren-
dering of this verse in the Vulgate (with its interpretation
according to Jerome's view of the subject), on account of the
connexion with it of the earlier English translations of the
passage. It may, perhaps, be of use here to add that, accord-
ing to the method of notation I have adopted, the corrected
Hebrew lines exhibit the present state of the verse in the
sacred text, as well as the corrections of its vocalization which
I venture to recommend ; — corrections which atfect only the
mode of reading the original elements of the passage, and re-
move none of those elements, but, on the contrary, restore one
of them six times removed by the old vocalizers.

Hebrew, fthix *o ifEhDtP p]J3tt> m:n ps-nO Fftbwb

The inhabitants of Samaria are alarmed for the safety of the she-
calf of Beth-hawen; because the people thereof and the priests
thereof, that have hitherto rejoiced on it for the glory thereof,
shall certainly mourn over it, as that glory shall certainly depart
from it.

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 259

Greek, Tw fioayw tov o'i'kov Civ 'KapoiKffaovai ol KaToiKovvres
^afxapetav, on bnkvQr\a^v \ao<s clvtov e7r' avrov' ical,
icaOws 7tapeniKpavav ai>ToV, kiuyapovvTai em ryv lo^av
clvtou, OTt fieTtOKitrOi] an ahrov'

The inhabitants of Samaria shall dwell near the calf of the house
of On, because its people mourned for it; and, as they exaspe-
rated it, they shall rejoice on account of its glory, because that
glory has been removed from it.a

Syriac, \J^d . ^t; "jVoVis ]^loL ^ooou ^o] A^jdj jl ,. <A

:cmV> ^m? . a-if-a-i] ^lo vPr^*-3

The inhabitants of Samaria shall be sojourners with the calf of
Beth-hawen, because that its people and its priests have so-
journed in grief for it ; but they shall rejoice for it and for its
glory, that has departed from it.

Latin, Vaccas Bethaven coluerunt habitatores Samariae :

quia luxit super eum populus ejus, et Eeditui ejus
super eum exultaverunt in gloria ejus, quia mi-
gravit ab eo.

The inhabitants of Samaria have worshipped the she-calves of Beth-
aven ; because the people thereof have mourned over it, and
the priests thereof have rejoiced on it as the glory of the people,
because it has departed from them.b

To commence with an inquiry into the cause of the failure
of the Seventy Jews in their effort to convey the meaning of

a I have construed the three first aorists in the Greek verse according
to the force commonly attached to them of a past tense: but I strongly
suspect that they are therein used with some reference to the future; as a
verb in the same tense is certainly so employed in the beginning of the next
verse which contains the remainder of the entire passage. This observation
is not offered with any hope of its contributing to make sense of the Greek as
it stands in this place, but merely for the purpose of bringing under notice
at least one instance of a first aorist employed by the Seventy as a species of
future tense.

b For the above interpretation of Jerome's rendering of the passage, look
to his own explanation of its meaning, quoted a little farther on.

260 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

this passage,— it is to be observed that *n£3, included in one
of the groups of the Hebrew verse, or ffHDS, the same noun
in the absolute state, is a Chaldee and Syriac word for 'priests,'
with the Hebrew termination for the plural number annexed
to it, which is to be met with only in two other passages of the
sacred text besides that before us, and is in all three places
used contemptuously to denote ' priests of idols,' to whom the
inspired writers disdained to apply, in those instances, the
proper Hebrew term for ' priests.' AVith this foreign word
the composers of the first Greek version appear not to have
been familiar: for, on its first occurrence (2 Kings, xxiii. 5),
they passed over its meaning, and merely recorded its sound,
Tov? x^M^'M f anc^ on its las* appearance (Zeph. i. 4), where
it is united with the proper Hebrew noun for ' priests,' in the
expression D^rDPI W D'HOSH, ' the Komarim along with the
priests' — they avoided to give any separate interpretation of
it, and lumped together their translation of the two words
under the common designation rwv lepewv. It is, then, no
wonder that, when the original group, H1DD1, was presented
to their observation in the place before us, they overlooked
the circumstance of the entrance of the foreign term "I ft 3 into
its composition. Hence has resulted the very striking diffe-
rence that exists between the reading of this group prescribed
by its present vocalization, and that indicated by its Greek
rendering ; while, notwithstanding, both readings can be de-
duced from one and the same original series of letters. On
the one hand, the old vocalizers read the group just specified
(as shall be presently shown when I come to examine the affix

a The above term, as written in Hebrew, DY"1E3, has been pointed by the
Masorets for the pronunciation K'MaRIM, with the vocal sound of the first
syllable that of an E scarcely perceptible; while, on the contrary, this sound
is recorded both by the Seventy Jews and the Syriac translators to have been
the open, full one of either 0 or U. This shows, as far as one example goes,
that the Jews preserved the vocal sounds of foreign appellative words, just
as imperfectly as they did those of uncommon proper names, whether national
or foreign.

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 261

of the third person singular after nouns plural) WeMIeReHw,
' and its priests ;' they then substituted a Waw for the He, in
accordance with their erroneous notion of the affix being mas-
culine, and through this alteration, combined with the insertion
of a Yod before the substituted letter for the purpose pf de-
noting the plural number of the foreign noun, they reduced
the compound to its present state, YHD31. On the other hand,
the Seventy decomposed the very same original group, PDDDI,
into the component parts 1, W«, ko.1 ; 3, K<?, h-aOws ; H"IQ, MeReHw,
Ttape-niKpavav ; and construed the following group (in its origi-
nal state iTTJ/) avrov instead of tV avrov, thus leaving the pre-
position IV redundant. It will, no doubt, here strike the
Hebrew scholar that the verb HID, which borrows the signifi-
cations of 1~\D, 'to be bitter,' should be read, in the third person
plural of the preterite of its Pihel modification, MeRw instead of
MeReHw, and consequently that there is in the above group,
rnft^l, a letter too much (H) to admit of its being decomposed
in this way. But it will be made out, I trust, satisfactorily
in the chapter after the next, that the ellipsis of the third radi-
cal of verbs ending in He is entirely the work of the old voca-
lizers of the text ; that, for instance, JTVl could originally
have been read either HaYaH, 'he was,' or HaYeE.it, 'they were;'
and that, whether the sound of this word with the latter sig-
nification was, or was not, contracted before their time from
HaYeRu into HaYw, they, at all events, in their mode of voca-
lization, contracted the writing of it from ffll into Y*iT.. But
although the original compound, just analyzed, admitted, in
the abstract, of the decomposition of its ingredients which
serves to convey the meaning, ' and according as they exaspe-
rated,' yet it could not be here so dealt with consistently with
the context ; as this meaning does not, in combination with
any fairly assignable interpretation of the remainder of the
verse, yield an intelligible sentence. Besides, from their
treatment of the compound, the further evil woidcl appear to
have resulted, that they having looked upon its final part, HID,
as a preterite with the ordinary reference of that tense to the

262 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

past, were obliged to employ the two real preterites of the pas-
sage, 73^ and !T0, with a like reference ; and so were pre-
cluded from perceiving the true bearing of those Hebrew
preterites as prophetic futures. Some uncertainty, I admit,
is thrown upon the latter part of the result here arrived at,
by the Greek tense of the verbs with which they translated
the three specified preterites, namely, the first aorist, the exact
bearing of which is, I fear, no longer completely known for all
its applications, so as to enable a modern reader to ascertain,
beyond a doubt, when it is employed with a past, when with
a present, and when with a future reference. The most usual
acceptation, however, of this aorist is that which I have as-
signed to it of a past tense, while interpreting the Greek trans-
lation of the above verse ; and it depends upon the correctness
of the application so made of that acceptation whether the
Seventy have conveyed the sense, in point of reference to time,
as erroneously as I have represented them to have done, of the
two verbs in the form of preterites that really occur in the
original passage.

The Syriac translators having been perfectly familiar with
the group l^cos, as the designation of ' priest,' or ' priests/
correctly interpreted the Hebrew compound [of which this
group forms part ; and they also correctly represented the lay
and sacerdotal worshippers of the idol at Bethel as joined in
the same feelings in common with regard to it, whether of
grief or of joy. But, trusting too much to the close affinities
of the two languages, they translated the Hebrew tenses by
Syriac ones corresponding in form, though by no means con-
sequently corresponding in reference to time : and this appears
to be the chief cause of their having failed to arrive at an in-
telligible construction of the passage. After the age in which
they wrote, and a space next ensuing of about 1 30 years
(during which, as I hope to have an opportunity of fully
showing in a supplementary volume, the orthodox Christians
laboured under the disadvantage of total ignorance of the
original language and writing of the Old Testament), the

Chap.IIL] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVEKY. 263

Fathers of the Church, who, resuming the study of the Hebrew
text, undertook to explain the verse before us, had to contend
with not only its inherent difficulties, but also the adventitious
ones superadded through the mistakes or designed misrepre-
sentations of the old vocalizers. It is, therefore, no way sur-
prising that the rendering of this verse should be still more
incoherent and unintelligible in the Vulgate than that pre-
sented to us in the Peshitah. Jerome's commentary on this
rendering deserves notice : the principal part of it may be
construed as follows : — " In Bethaven, then, that is in Bethel,
the inhabitants of Samaria worshipped golden she-calves, which
[the prophet] called, not male, but female calves, through
derision ; namely, that Israel might be taunted as worshipping
not only gods, but also goddesses, of the bovine race. And, in
order to show that by the she-calves of Bethaven a single male
calf in Bethel was to be understood, he introduced not the ex-
pression, the people mourned ' over them,' but ' over it,' that
is, over the golden he-calf. But if the people mourned, why
did its priests exult on it ? Hebraists transmit the account
that the golden calves were furtively removed by the priests ;
and that brazen and gilded ones were substituted in their
stead. While, therefore, the people were lamenting, in time
of need and distress, that the golden calves were also sent, in
addition to other gifts, by the King of Israel to the Assyrian
kings, and chiefly to King Sennacherib, the priests were exult-
ing, because their fraud could by no means be proved against
them, or detected to their prejudice. And this is the meaning of
what he says : ' the priests of it,' that is, of the calf, ' exulted
over it in the glory of the people,' that is, in the calf which
they considered as glory ; because it had departed from them,a

a In the Hebrew text, the verb signifying • to depart,' is exhibited in a
masculine form, TT>1\ so, must not be referred to the feminine noun JTib32?b,
but to the masculine one, "T^D. What, therefore, is here predicted, is not,
as was supposed by Jerome, the departure of the calf from the Israelites, but
the departure of glory from the calf. The deportation of this idol, indeed, is

264 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

that is, from the people, and had been transferred to the Assy-
rians."3

Here, some reason, indeed, is given for the wrong gender
attributed to the animal represented by the idol at Bethel,
but none whatever for the wrong number assigned to it, nor
any valid one for the series of inconsisteneies, with respect to
both gender and number, introduced between this noun and
the pronouns referred to it in the same sentence. A mistate-
ment hazarded in the former respect was obviously intended
as a jeer which could deceive nobody, but one offered in the
latter respect might lead into error, if not the contemporaries
of the prophet, at least those who should in after-ages come
to read his work ; and the true way to prevent any such mis-
take was to give, from the first, the grammatic number of the
noun in question correctly, instead of in vain trying to coun-
teract the effect of a mistatement on this point, by the sub-
sequent introduction of incoherencies between this noun and
its pronouns, which, whether they bore upon gender or num-
ber, served to destroy all connexion between the parts of the
sentence, and so to render it, taken as a whole, utterly unin-
telligible. The main point, however, of Jerome's comment

also predicted in the same passage, but not till we come to the part of it con-
tained in the beginning of the next verse.

a " In Bethaven igitur, id est, Bethel, vaccas aureas coluerunt habitatores
Samarise, quas cum irrisione non vitulos sexus masculini, sed vaccas, id est,
feminas appellavit; ut videlicet Israel non solum deos vitulos, sed deas vaccas
coleret. Et ut ostenderet vaccas Bethaven, unum in Bethel vitulum senti-
endum, non intulit: luxit ' super eis' populus, sed ' super eo,' id est, vitulo
aureo. Si autem luxit populus, quare seditui ejus super eo exultaverunt?
Tradunt Hebrasi vitulos aureos a sacerdotibus furto esse sublatos, et pro his
ameos et deauratos repositos. Quum igitur lugeret populus tempore neces-
sitatis et angustias, etiam vitulos aureos inter munera csetera Assyriis regibus
et maxinie regi Sennacherib ab Israel rege esse directos, exultabant a;ditui,
quod fraus eoruin nequaquam posset argui vel deprehendi. Et hoc est quod
ait: 'iEditui ejus,' id est, vituli, 'super eo exultaverunt in gloria populi,'
hoc est, in vitulo quern habebant pro gloria; ' quia migrasset ab eo,' id est,
a populo, et translutus esset ad Assyrios." — Hieron. Opera, Ed0. Benedict,
torn. iii. p. 1303.

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 265

relates to the silly tale imposed upon him by the persons he
calls Hebraists, and to the reasoning grounded upon it, which is
just as contemptible as the tale itself. For, of whatever mate-
rial the idol of Bethel may have been formed, no set of men
could be consistently deemed its worshippers, and at the same
time represented as rejoicing at the extinction of its glory, or
at its removal from them to a hostile nation. Here, then, our
author, while interpreting a passage of Scripture under the
arbitrary dictation of certain Hebraists of his day, is exhibited
sanctioning, not only an idle story destitute of all foundation,
but also a manifest self-contradiction. The picture thus laid
before us of his abject submission to the absurdities of Rabbi-
nical teaching, is worth considering : for he was a man of ex-
traordinary talents and unwearied diligence ; and where he,
notwithstanding, showed himself so helpless and eager for
external support, even of the frailest kind, how could others
engaged in similar inquiries look for more success, without
better aid than was placed within his reach ? This view of the
subject puts in a very prominent light the vast importance of
the Masoretic pointing, introduced after his day, during a pe-
riod in which the Christians had a second time relapsed into
total ignorance of the ancient Hebrew tongue, and had besides
sunk so low in all other branches of literary knowledge, that
the Jewish priesthood, looking upon them as incapable of ever
rising from that state, took no pains to conceal this pointing.
The consequence is, that when the Christians, upon the revival
of learning in Europe after the Dark Ages, resumed the study
of the Hebrew Scriptures, they found themselves in a far better
condition for its successful prosecution than Jerome ever was ;
and the Masoretic system, together with the grammars, dic-
tionaries, and concordances, in a great measure thereon
founded, having rendered them independent of Rabbinical
instruction, and capable of exerting their own judgment in
the analysis of difficult Hebrew passages, thus supplied the
first great step towards a result to which, it would appear, a
benevolent Providence had all along intended they should

266 ANALYSIS OF HOSE A, x. 5, [Chap. III.

eventually be conducted, — the detection of the fraudulent
treatment of the sacred text by the Jewish vocalizers of the
second century.

The effect of the additional aid afforded to Hebrew investi-
gations, by the means above alluded to, is made visible, in the
case of the verse under examination, through a comparison
of its modern and ancient renderings. The Authorized English
Translation of this verse, though very obscure and confused,
still shows two decisive improvements on the older ones. In
the first place, while a comparison of the different passages in
Scripture in which the verb 11J occurs, discloses the fact that
Jerome was quite deceived by his Jewish instructors when
they led him to attribute to it the sense of ' worshipping,' the
same method of inquiry will enable us to see that it may be
employed to signify, either ' taking up a temporary residence/
according to which interpretation it has been translated in this
verse by the writers of the Septuagint and Peshitah, or ' fear-
ing,' the construction here assigned to it by the framers of our
Authorized Version. But although this verb admits, in the
abstract, of either signification, it is clearly limited to the latter
one by the context of the place before us. For the particle
*0, ' because,' which connects the two clauses of the verse, indi-
cates that the second conveys the ground of the statement
made in the first ; but the dangerous situation of the idol at
Bethel, described in the latter of those clauses, afforded no
reason whatever to its worshippers for going to reside in the
defenceless country in its neighbourhood, and quitting their
stronghold, Samaria, yet, on the other hand, supplied them
with a very urgent one for entertaining fears for the safety of
this object of their veneration. In the next place, to point out
the second improvement, it is requisite again to advert to the
authorized English rendering of the second clause: — " For the
people thereof [that is, of the idol] shall mourn over it, and
the priests thereof that rejoiced on it for the glory thereof,

because it [namely, that glory] is

departed from it." Here may be detected, notwithstanding

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 267

some obstructions in the way, an approach to an intelligible
construction of the clause, which gives this rendering a very-
striking superiority over all the ancient ones. This meliora-
tion has been effected, first, by the insertion of the relative
pronoun, ' that,' in Italics between the verbs expressive of grief
and joy, on the supposition of an ellipsis of the corresponding
pronoun in the original text, such as occasionally occurs
therein ; and, secondly, by rendering those two verbs in dif-
ferent tenses ; through the combination of which expedients
they both are made applicable in common to the same persons.
The second of these expedients, however, the framers of our
version appear to have carried too far, by assigning to the lat-
ter verb a reference purely to the past, as the form of its
Hebrew inflexion regularly includes only modifications of the
future or the present tense ;a and one of the latter class of
tenses would have served just as well as a purely past tense
to distinguish it, in point of reference to time, from the first
verb, which is written in the Hebrew form of the prophetic
future. Moreover, if we inquire into the cause of the very
unnatural derangement of the parts of the English sentence,
in consequence of which its purport still remains involved in
much obscurity, we shall find this evil produced by the desire
of the translators to adhere strictly to the existing state of the
Hebrew clause, in which the verb expressive of mourning is
exhibited in the singular number. Hence they would not
allow the corresponding English verb to be preceded by more
than one noun in the nominative case, viz., the collective
term ' people' treated by them as a word in the singular num-
ber. But, through the same inquiry we shall also find that
they here abandoned clearness of interpretation, without at-
taining the object for which this sacrifice was made. For,

a The above Hebrew inflexion cannot be regularly extended to purely
past references without the aid of a Waw conversive of the future, or of some
adverb of time, such as VS, ' then,' D*")£), ' not yet,' or Q""ltt2, ' before;' none
of which are employed in the place in question.

268 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [CHAr.III.

upon examining the above adduced rendering, we shall per-
ceive, that the second subject mentioned in the clause, — " the
priests thereof that rejoiced on it for the glory thereof," — has
no verb expressed after it to which it can stand in the relation
of a noun in the nominative case. In order, then, to make
sense of this clause, it is absolutely necessary to understand
the statement, — " shall mourn over it," — as inserted again,
with its verb in the plural number, in the place where I have
intimated something wanted to complete the sentence by leav-
ing a blank space ; so that the adherence of the translation to
the original upon the point in question is merely apparent.
Great allowance, however, is to be made for any failure here of
our translators, on account of the perplexing difficulties with
which they were beset in their efforts to reconcile with sense
an exact rendering of this clause, — difficulties which could not
be surmounted without the help of the present discovery.

These observations should, in strictness, be applied rather
to the parties from whom the framers of our last Authorized
Version borrowed the above improvements (together with the
specified serious deductions from the value of the second) than
to themselves. Searching, then, in conformity with this prin-
ciple, we are carried back, through the Geneva Bible, to that
published by Miles Coverdale in the year 1535, the first printed
English edition of the whole Bible, as well as the first that was
sanctioned by the authority of our branch of the Catholic
Church. In that version the passage under examination is
thus rendered : —

" They that dwell in Samaria haue worshipped the calfe
of Bet-haue : therfore shall the people mourne ouer them[it ?]a
yee and the prestes also, that in their welthynesse reioysed with
them : and why ? it shal passe awaye from them."

a The expression, 'over them,' is, I submit, in the above place an obvious
misprint for 'over it.' For, surely, it cannot lie supposed that Coverdale
would correct the number of the noun denoting the idol at Bethel, in order
to give consistency to the parts of his translation of the verse, and yet imme-

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVEKY. 269

In the Geneva Bible, which came out twenty-five years
after, from the pen of the same Miles Coverdale, assisted by
other translators, this passage is construed as follows : —

" The inhabitants of Samaria shall feare because of the
calfe of Beth-auen : for the people thereof shall mourne over it,
and the Chemarims thereof that rejoyced on it for the glorie
thereof ; because it is departed from it."

Upon a comparison of these two, and the present Autho-
rized English rendering of the verse, it will be seen that, when
Miles Coverdale made his first translation, the discovery had
not yet been arrived at, through Hebrew researches, that the
meaning attributed in the Vulgate to "hJ, of colere, ' to wor-
ship,' was utterly unfounded. Moreover, it was not then as yet
perceived that Jerome's interpretation of the last words of his
own Latin construction of this verse was quite erroneous.
Hence the oldest of the three English translations of the pas-
sage in question is, upon those points, inferior to the two de-
rived from it ; but in other respects it seems preferable to
both of them, more especially on account of its being less
obscure ; while, on the other hand, the last one would appear
to be the worst of all three, from the relapse it betrays of the
word ' calf into the plural number, in violation of all sense.
Surely, the strictest fidelity of interpretation could not have
required from the very learned authors of this version a closer
adherence to the Hebrew text, in its existing state, than was
compatible with the intelligibility of their translation of this
passage and with the coherency of its parts. With this condi-
tion they might, I submit, have fully complied, by here insert-
ing ' she-calf' in the body of their version, and subjoining in
the margin, as a note thereon, ' Heb. she-calves.1 Had they so

diately after destroy that consistency, by assigning an erroneous number to
one of the pronouns referring to the same noun. Accordingly, we may per-
ceive this misprint removed in the second translation of the verse, which,
though not composed solely by Coverdale, was written under his superin-
tendence.

270 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

acted in this and similar cases, the attention of a greater num-
ber of thoughtful persons would have been drawn to this
subject ; and the discovery now at last made would in all
probability have been much sooner effected.

Here I should observe that, although we have no older
authority than that of Miles Coverdale for the improved con-
struction which has been just described, yet there are ancient
authorities for all the separate corrections which constitute
this improvement, and when once those corrections, shown to
rest on sufficient grounds, are brought under notice, the adop-
tion of their combined bearing is unavoidably forced upon us
by the context. I now turn to a more detailed view of the
errors of vocalization in the Hebrew verse under discussion,
which led me to select this example for the illustration of my
subject.

rri7J#7] Before the sacred text was vocalized, this group
could be read either LeHeGLaTh, in the singular number, or
LelleGLoTh, in the plural ; but since the insertion of the Waw
therein, it has been confined to the latter number. The actual
interpolation of the mater lectionis in this place is proved, not
only by the inconsistencies it produces in point of grammatic
number between a noun and six pronouns referred thereto in
the very same verse, but also by the oldest testimony available
upon the subject, that of the Seventy Jews, who translated the
group containing this noun r<3 fxooxw '■ nor is their testimony
on this point in the slightest degree invalidated by their mis-
apprehension in some respects of the literal meaning of the
verse ; for at any rate they could not have been mistaken as
to the manner in which the above group was written in their
time ; and it certainly did not then exhibit the Waw which
now appears in it, as they construed the name therein con-
tained in the singular numbera. Thus the spuriousness of this

■ The testimony of the Syriac version cannot be in like manner appealed
to on the above point; because, from a defect of the species of writing therein
employed, the number is ambiguous of the noun with which its authors trans-

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 271

Waw is established by a very powerful combination of inter-
nal and external evidence ; and it is further evinced, ex abun-
dant^ by the utter futility of every attempt to account for the
incoherencies it occasions which has been made on the sup-
position of its being a genuine element of the original text.
The unwarrantable shifting here betrayed from one gramma-
tic number to another has been termed an enallage ; but in
this way nothing more is gained than a mere technical name
for the change in question, without any explanation whatever
of its cause. Again, it has been asserted that the Hebrew
noun for ' calf' was here written in the plural number, not for
the purpose of denoting a plurality of idols, but in order to in-
timate that the one at Bethel was very large, or very remark-
able in some way or other : just as if this copious language
afforded no means of expressing greatness of size, or what might
be otherwise extraordinary, except by confounding the gram-
matic distinction of numbers ! In the third place, it has been
attempted to sustain the abuse here committed, by instances
of the same abuse in other passages of Scripture, as at present
written. But upon examination it will, I think, be found that
the ground of the disturbance of coherency is, in each of those
instances, just as inexplicable as in the case before us, on the
supposition of the disturbing letters being genuine ; and that
the only cause free from absurdity that can be assigned to
it is the interpolation of those letters by a set of persons quite dis-
tinct from the inspired authors of the sacred text. Thus, two
passages have been appealed to, which are rendered in our
Authorized Version as follows : — " Wisdom crieth without ;
she uttereth her voice in the streets" — Pro v. i. 20 ; " Wisdom
hath builded her house" — Prov. ix. 1 ; — and in each of which

lated the Hebrew one in question, and is restricted to being singular only by
the context of the Syriac rendering of the verse. But that rendering is to
some extent erroneous; and, therefore, no consequence deduced from its con-
text can be depended on. At the same time, it is material to observe that the
evidence of the Peshitah is, at any rate, not here opposed to that oftheSep-
tuaaint.

272 ANALYSIS OF HOSE A, x. 5, [Chap. III.

the Hebrew for wisdom is at present exhibited in the plural
number, fiiDDn, while the verbs and pronouns connected with
this noun are all of them singular. Surely, now that another
way has been got of accounting for these incoherencies, it is
not for a moment to be admitted, that Solomon could have
thus outrageously violated the plain dictates of common sense.
The passages, therefore, here referred to, instead of giving any
countenance to the erroneous notion they are quoted to sup-
port, might be themselves adduced as very striking proofs,
not only of the interpolation of the sacred text by the old vo-
calizers, but also of the great haste and giddiness with which
this operation was conducted. The mater lectionis, by which
the above word is made plural, most unquestionably should
not have been therein inserted in either of the specified verses ;
and to this fact the common consent of mankind may be shown
fully to agree : for although it has been hitherto unknown
how exactly the error was produced, yet a consciousness of
something wrong in the Hebrew of each verse is betrayed in,
as far as I can find, every translation that has been made of
the Old Testament since the original text was put in its pre-
sent state. In no one of these versions is the meaning of the
word in question represented by a plural noun in either place
of its occurrence ; and in none that ever got into general use
is there joined to the term expressive of ' wisdom' any epithet
for extraordinariness of some kind or other, by way of giving
the singular noun in the translation an equivalence to the
plural one in the original.

Eere I am bound to observe, with respect to the two ori-
ginal verses referred to in the Book of Proverbs, that all in-
accuracy is not removed from them by marking the Waw as
otiose in fYDDn, and reading it KhoKMaTh in the singular
number : as it is thus put in what is technically called 'the
construct state,' and gets a termination that, in strictness, it
should have, only when followed by another noun, holding
tli«' connexion witli it which is expressed in European lan-
guages by means of a genit Lve case. But this irregularity shows

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 273

merely inattention to a form arbitrarily adopted in particular
languages, which is a very different thing from a direct viola-
tion of sense : the word so read still agrees fully with the verbs
it governs, and likewise with the pronouns referred to it,
though it has no other noun coupled with it in the relation
implied by its final syllable. Instances of the like inattention
to this point of form are occasionally to be met with in other
parts of Scripture also ; as, for example, in Ps. viii. 8 ; Isa.
xxxv. 2 ; and Hos. xiv. 2 ; in the first of which places HtP,
the Hebrew for ' fields of,' is substituted for D^ W or iTTtP ;
in the second, JY?^, 'joy of,' for PJTO, each word being put in
the construct, instead of the absolute state ; and in the third,
the expression l^fiSttf D^")2 — translated in our Authorized
Version ' the calves of our lips,' but by St. Paul ' the fruit of
our lips,' — exhibits vice versa its first word in the absolute,
instead of the construct state. Irregularities of these kinds
are so few that they may possibly have been occasioned by the
injuries of time or oversight of copyists ; but, even supposing
them to have been committed by the authors of the sacred
text, they prove nothing more than the great antiquity of
the Hebrew Scriptures, which were written before any system
of grammar was ever composed, or even thought of. On the
other hand, concords with respect to number and gender more
or less pervade all languages alphabetically written ; and their
neglect constitutes a violation, not only of the grammatic rules
that relate to them, but also of the common sense of man-
kind, upon which, through the aid of alphabetic writing, those
rules are founded. Such irregularities as these — at least
where the words in which they occur come so near each other
as to render them at once obvious — cannot be imputed to
any of the authors of the Old Testament, and they are by far
too numerous to be accounted for by mere faults of transcrip-
tion, or the effects of time. They have, in consequence, hither-
to sorely perplexed both translators and commentators ; and
one of the great advantages of the present discovery is, that it
relieves us from all embarrassment upon the subject, by shift*

x 2

274 ANALYSIS OF IIOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

ing the blame of the faults in question to the right shoulders.
Thus — to revert to the ease of the group here proposed for
examination — the scribe to whom was committed the task of
secretly vocalizing the Book of Hosea with as much deviation
from the Septuagint, and as little delay as possible, observing,
while engaged in the hurried execution of this work, a word
denoting the molten calf at Bethel written in a form which
admitted of its being read in either the singular or plural ; and
finding it translated by the Seventy for the former number, he
in consequence vocalized it for the latter, without waiting to
try first whether such acceptation of it was compatible with
the context ; and, further, having been accustomed to the
masculine form of this word for calf, when employed to sig-
nify an idol, he giddily vocalized for that form the affixes re-
ferring to it in the subsequent portion of the same verse,
without looking back to the group upon which he had just
operated, or considering that the noun therein contained was
restricted by the author himself to the feminine gender.

IIN-TVD] This name is properly written 7^-JlO ('house
of the Lord'), which Hosea changed to |lK-nu ('house of
iniquity'), on account of the idolatry practised in the town
referred to. From the sarcastic style indicated by the employ-
ment of this nickname, as well as by the application of a wrong
gender to the noun contained in the preceding group, it
would appear that, besides the principal scope of the passage
before us — which was to announce to the Samaritans the fate
that awaited their favourite idol — there was the subordinate
one of turning this people into derision for worshipping a mol-
ten image, which was so far from being able to protect them
that it could not even defend itself, and of whose utter help-
Lessness they actually showed themselves conscious, by the fears
they betrayed for its safety. The Greek transcription of this
name serves to illustrate the disadvantage arising from the
want of a distinct mode of writing proper names in the sacred
text ; in consequence of which the Seventy fell into the mis-
take of supposing the first syllable of this one to be here used

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 275

as a distinct significant word. From their having transcribed
the remainder of the name Hi/, instead of A-veu, it results that
the Waw of ptf must have been lost from the copy of the text
consulted by them.

THr] Of the two senses of which this verb is susceptible, it
has been already shown that only one — ' to fear' — is consistent
with the context. It is, however, objected to the application
of this meaning to the verb in the place before us, that the
preposition |Q (from), or equivalent prefix ft, ought to follow
it when so used, which is not here done. But the omission
can be easily accounted for ; as the object mentioned in con-
nexion with this verb is not the one ' from' which danger was
apprehended, but that 'for' whose safety fears were entertained;
and a proper prefix to the noun denoting the latter party is
obviously the very one, 7 (for), which is here employed.

DQJStP] This group in its present state might, before the
sacred text was vocalized, have been read either SheKaN, 'the in-
habitant of,' or Stu'KNe, 'the inhabitants of;' but afterwards it was
confined to the former acceptation, and could not be used in the
latter without the addition of the mater lectionis which I have
subjoined to it. Our vocalizer, then, availing himself of the
original ambiguity of the above group, and finding it trans-
lated in this place by the Seventy for the plural number, so
dealt with it as that it should be here read ever after in the
singular. Were it not for this coincidence of effect with that
produced in more obvious cases of fraud, one might be inclined
to attribute his failing to insert a Yod at the end of this group
to the force of habit, combined with the great haste with which
he was compelled to work, and divested of any intention of
deceit. For it is to be borne in mind that, up to the date of
the vocalization now brought to light, the Jewish scribes were
accustomed to meet with but very few vowel-letters in their
ordinary writings (as is shown by extant specimens of coins
issued by the princes of the Asmonean race), and none at all
in their Scriptures ; so that the particular scribe here referred
to may possibly have intended that ptP in the passage under

276 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap. III.

examination should be read ShiKN« in the plural number,
although he omitted the introduction of the additional letter
which was requisite in order to its being thenceforward taken
in this sense and read in this manner. Cases, therefore, of
erroneous omissions in general supply not as clear proofs of
fraudulent design against the old vocalizers, as do those of
positively erroneous insertions ; but where, as in the present
instance, they contribute to the same effect — of tending to
oive the Septuagint a false appearance of inaccuracy — we
are, I submit, fully warranted in ranking them under the
same head in common of intentional misrepresentions.

pPTlDttP] Our vocalizer here merely adhered to the cor-
ruption of the word introduced by his co-operators in other
parts of the sacred text. The case of this noun has been
already considered ; and from its treatment by the vocalizers
of the second century — in tampering with it, which they never
ventured to do but with such as they conceived to be scarcely
known — the inference has been drawn that they must have
resided in some quarter very remote from Palestine, where the
term Samaria or Shamari was then still in use, as the desig-
nation of a district occupied by a particular tribe. In this
instance their attempt to represent the record of a name in
the Septuagint as inaccurate entirely failed ; and the only
effect of their substituting Shomeron for Shamari has been to
deprive their own nation of the true sound of this name.

Til ?2 N] We have here presented to us a practical illustra-
tion of my theory, that, before the sacred text was vocalized,
the Hebrew verb in its primary form might have been read in
either the singular or the plural number, according to what
the reader conceived to be required by the context. For this
group is, in the two versions that were Written previously to
the vocalization of the Hebrew Bible, construed in such a
manner as to show that it was actually read in those different
ways by the two sets of translators; it having been rendered
t-ncvOi^aev ('lias grieved') by the Seventy, and jlol^ ooA^
('have dwelled in grief) by the framers of the Peshitah. But

Chap. III.] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 277

after the introduction of vowel-letters into the sacred text, a
Waw was wanted at the end of verbs in the above form,
wherever the context required them to be read in the plural
number ; and it was the omission of this supplement, in the
case of the verb before us, by the scribe commissioned to vo-
calize the book of Hosea, that so completely misled Jerome,
and so sorely perplexed all subsequent translators in their
respective attempts to arrive at the meaning of the passage
under consideration. It is, however, but right to add, with
respect to this omission, that it is to be attributed merely to
precipitation, together with the force of previous habits, and
not to any unfair design on the part of our vocalizer ; since
the reading it occasions of the above verb in the singular num-
ber agrees with that indicated by the translation of this word
in the Septuagint.

The six remaining corrections consist merely in the resto-
ration of the affix of the third person singular to its primitive
state, in which, I grant, it could originally have been read
with either a masculine or feminine reference ; but unques-
tionably the inspired author did not, in any of those cases, use
it with a reference of the former kind, as the Hebrew text in
its present condition represents him to have done in all of
them. He himself gave the noun at the beginning of the sen-
tence, through derision, a feminine termination, which, from
its not being that commonly applied to the word, was the more
calculated to arrest his attention ; and it cannot be supposed
that he immediately afterwards forgot or intentionally aban-
doned his own choice, and, before he came to the end of the
verse, referred repeatedly to the very same noun, as if it had
been written by him in its usual masculine form ! Before the
present discovery, indeed, was made, we could not venture to
criticize this passage, but were compelled to refrain from exer-
cising our judgment thereon, and to remain, with regard to it,
inert under the pressure of the most distressing perplexity.
How gratifying, then, must it not be to the pious reader, to
be relieved from this state of coercion, and find the inconsis-

278 ANALYSIS OF HOSEA, x. 5, [Chap.III.

tencies here betrayed, which are so utterly irreconcilable with
steadiness of thought or coherency of expression, due to a per-
son quite distinct from the inspired author of the text ! This
example, therefore, I submit, affords not only a very striking-
proof of the reality of my discovery, but also a most satisfac-
tory illustration of its value.

Before closing my remarks on the passage just analyzed,
I have to examine an objection which may possibly occur to
the reader. He may observe that the first clause of the next
verse is in reality the final one of this passage, though at pre-
sent separated from it by a full stop, and that the noun femi-
nine at the beginning of the entire sentence is, through the
intervention of a pronoun, referred to in this clause by a verb
in a masculine form given to it, independently of its vocaliza-
tion, by the original author ; and he may, in consequence, be
led to ask, if there be a violation of concord in point of gender
between the above noun and a verb compared with it, why
may not such violation equally subsist between the same noun
and the several pronouns therewith connected? This objec-
tion, which, if valid, would throw back examiners of the pas-
sage into the state of embarrassment from which I have
represented them as relieved, is fortunately deprived of all
weight by the circumstance of the received reading of the verb
in question, on which it is grounded, being quite erroneous.
To place the incorrectness of this reading in a clear light, I
here subjoin, — 1st, the Hebrew clause with the requisite cor-
rections marked in the same manner as in the two preceding
ones ; 2ndly, the Authorized English Translation of it ; 3rdly,
that translation altered in accordance with the adduced cor-
rections of the original ; 4thly, the Greek rendering of it,
accompanied by a lit end interpretation ; and 5thly, the Syriac
rendering, in like manner interpreted : —

Chap. Ill] BY MEANS OF THE SAME DISCOVERY. 279

Hebrew, OlP l^d? HIDE hAiY1 WN1? ItHin^ DJ

Authorized \ it shall be also carried into Assyria/or a present
English, j to king Jareb.

Altered ~) it alsoa shall they carry away to Assyria as a
English, ) present to king Yareb.

Septuagint, ko! avrov els Acravptovs drjaames cnn)ve<yKavf %evia
tw BaaiXei \apelfx.
it also shall they binding carry away to Assyrius as pre-
sents to the king Yarim.

Peshitah, *^r-»? ]n\V)\ ).lo?q-q <o^sqj 3oA]J cnX *2*jo

and also it shall they carry away to Assyria as a present
to the king of Yareb.

Upon the misvocalization of the pronoun in the adduced He-
brew line it is unnecessary to offer any observation, after what
has been already stated respecting the same violation of con-
cord committed six times in the preceding clauses of this pas-
sage. But with regard to the treatment of the verb in the
same line, it is to be remarked that, before the text was voca-
lized, this verb could have been here read, either YoBiLu, ' they
shall carry away,' or YuBaL, ' it shall be carried away ;' and
that, as the Seventy translated it for the former reading, our
Jewish scribe confined it from his day forward to the latter,
by avoiding to subjoin to it a Waw. The two readings, in-
deed, differ only in form, and yield virtually the same mean-
ing, so that neither is excluded by the context ; but still our

a Also, that is, as well as they had previously carried off to Assyria its
fellow-idol from Dan. The persons or people who were to bear away the idol
of Bethel are not expressly named by Hosea in the above place; but it may,
in some measure, be collected who they were, from two intimations. First,
they would appear to have been subjects of King Yareb; and, secondly, it
seems hinted that they were the same individuals, or belonging to the same
nation, as those who shortly before took off with them the molten calf that
had been worshipped at Dan.

b We have above an instance in which the Seventy certainly employed a
first aorist with the force of some species of future tense.

280 REMAINS OF MASCULINE AFFIX [Chap.III.

choice may be decided between them even by means of inter-
nal evidence alone, namely, by the structure of the Hebrew
sentence. For, on the one hand, the second reading is cen-
surable in two respects, namely, that it renders the pronoun
of the clause superfluous, and that it attaches thereto the
bearing of a nominative case, which this pronoun, whether
written 1JHK or ilTfiK, holds, as far as I can find, nowhere else
in the sacred text ; while, on the other hand, the first can be
charged with neither fault, as it makes the pronoun in ques-
tion requisite to complete the sense, and exhibits it used in
its regular acceptation of an accusative case. Accordingly,
we may perceive that the Seventy Jews and Syriac interpre-
ters, however otherwise differing in their translation of the
Hebrew line, have fully concurred in translating its verb con-
formably to the first of the above readings. There can then, I
submit, be no doubt but that a reading so powerfully sustained
ought to be restored ; and this reading entirely removes the
objection here proposed for discussion ; as it shifts the noun
which stands in the relation of nominative case to the verb of
the clause — and which should, in consequence, agree with that
verb in gender — from the calf of Bethel to the persons who
were, according to the prediction of Hosea, to carry off that
idol to Assyria.

An instance of the afiix H misunderstood, when preceded
by an epenthetic Nun, occurs in the final clause of a verse of
the Book of Judges, which is translated in our Authorized
Version as follows: — "And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto
his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him
with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child;
besides her he had neither son nor daughter." — Judg. xi. 34.
Of the close of this verse another rendering is given in the
margin, — " he had not, of his own, either son or daughter,'11 —
while the remark — " Heb. of himself" — is there added as a note
upon the words, 'besides her,' through a mistake of the edi-
tors; as it is obviously not applicable to those words, but to
the expression in the second rendering, 'of his own;' — a mis-

Chap.IIL] HE AFTER AN EPENTHETIC NUN. 281

take, however, which is as old, at any rate, as the Cambridge
edition of the year 1629. The Hebrew of this clause with its
literal interpretation annexed, and its Greek, Syriac, and Chal-
dee translations, with their literal meanings likewise subjoined,
stand thus : —

Hebrew, . fQ IX ]2 13D/2 *b ptf

In some copies, PI3IDD

there was not to him, sprung from himself, son or daughter.

Sept. ovk yv avrw erepos vlos y Bvyaryp

there was not to him other son or daughter.

Pesh. cruiD ;jqX ]L& o] )^ <n\ "jocn A_J\oa

and there was not to him son or daughter besides her.

Tarqum of) , ,

Jonathan,}*™ * "n rroe n* nb

there was not to him, sprung from himself, son or daughter.

It has hitherto been taken for granted that the group of the
Hebrew line written in some copies IJDQ, and in others i"UOD,
conveys different meanings for its different terminations ; but
this may now be clearly seen to be an erroneous assumption.
In fact, 13 QQ, pointed by the Masorets for the pronunciation
Me'MmeNnU, and signifying ' from him,' is a vocalized form of
rWDD, which admits of being read and translated, according
to the demands of the context, either M*'MmeNnMH,b ' from him'

a From comparing the above Syriac line with the Authorized English
Translation of the Hebrew one, it would appear that the framers of our ver-
sion consulted the Peshitah in this place. If they did so, they must, I sub-
mit, have mistaken the relation of the last two words of the Syriac clause to
the original ; as I endeavour to make evident in the subsequent part of the
paragraph. But, at any rate, their rendering of n2Ett, in the examined
clause, by the expression ' besides her,' affords a very striking instance of the
old affix n after an epenthetic ) being misunderstood.

b According to the reasons usually assigned for the dageshing by the
Masorets of the two middle letters of ^iftft, I ought, through my notation, to
have above represented the pronunciation of the original group H2U12, for the

282 REMAINS OF MASCULINE AFFIX [Chap. III.

(with exactly the same meaning and very nearly the same
sound as have been just assigned to the former group), or
MiMmeNnaH, ' from her.' In the present instance, the original
form H2DD is confined by the tenor of the narrative, as much
as 13CQ is by its vocal termination, to a masculine reference :
for the inspired historian, surely, could not have deemed it
necessary to inform us that Jephthah had no children sprung
' from her ;' as the female referred to was his own daughter,
and a virgin. In the renderings of the Hebrew line in its
original state given in the Septuagint and Peshitah respec-
tively, the group PODQ, 'from him' (that is, in the application
here made of it, ' sprung from himself,' or ' of his own'), is
passed over as redundant ; while a supplement is introduced
to reconcile this clause with the preceding part of the verse, in
which mention is expressly made of a daughter of Jephthah.
The word erepos is obviously applied to this use in the former
version ; and the expression mivn :-A serves the same pur-
pose in the latter. For though ouio, which, according as it is
read MeNeH or MeNaH, signifies ' from him,' or ' from her,' is by
itself perfectly equivalent to i72QO ; yet, when it is combined
with ,-n\ LeBaR, 'outside,' its meaning is thereby quite
changed. The combination, therefore, of the two Syriac
groups could not have been intended to convey the sense of

masculine gender, by the form MfMmcNHa. For while the reduplication of
the Mem is held to compensate for the omission in rapid utterance of one of the
letters of the double preposition ]tt2ft, that of the Nun is looked upon as a
compensation for the elision of the initial element of the affixed pronoun.
But the latter part of this explanation is proved erroneous by the Masoretic
pointing of ri2ttft lor the feminine gender so as to yield the sound MiMmeNnaH ;
where, we may observe, there is no elision of the He to account for the da-
gesbing of the Nun. I have, therefore, while conforming to the Masoretic
pointing, preferred at the same time to exhibit the sound of the original
group In an analogous manner for the two genders ; and have left the doubled
utterance of the Nun, in the case of the masculine gender, to be explained in
the same way as it is in that of the feminine gender; namely, as occasioned
by the use of an epenthetic Nun before the affix.

Chap III.] HE AFTER AN EPENTHETIC NUN. 283

the Hebrew one just specified, and must be looked upon
merely as a supplemental expression. The same consequence
follows also from the separate meaning of the Hebrew prepo-
sition which forms part of this group, namely )ft, MiN, which
denotes ' of,' ' from,' or ' in comparison of,' but never ' besides ;'
the sacred text affords no instance of this preposition, whether
in the reduplicated or single form, yielding, when taken by
itself, the last-mentioned signification. The Greek and Syriac
renderings, therefore, of the Hebrew clause afford no evidence
either way upon the point in question : but its Chaldee con-
struction directly supports the bearing of the context in con-
fining the sense of t!2DD (supposing the group to have been
so written in the copy of the sacred text consulted by Jona-
than) to a masculine reference. For this group is translated
therein PFJQ, which might indeed, if written without the Tod,
be read and interpreted either M«NneH, 'from him,' or MihNaH,
' from her,' but is by means of this vowel-letter strictly limited
to the former pronunciation and meaning. As, then, ilJDD,
if employed in the Hebrew line in the present state of the
text, is proved by ancient testimony as well as by the context
to be used in this clause with exact equivalence to 13QQ, it is
perfectly immaterial in which way the group is written in an
amended edition of the Hebrew Bible. I may here, by the
way, observe that the equivalent original group PJ3Q has been
sometimes vocalized by the addition of a Waw, instead of its
substitution for the affix. This, however, is a very unusual
treatment of the group by the first set of vocalizers ; and the
consequence is that, in the few instances in which it occurs so
vocalized, the second set have shown themselves at a loss how
to deal with it. Thus 1PJ3D, ' from him,' or 'from it,' has been
pointed by the Masorets so as to be pronounced MeNHU in
Job, iv. 12, and MiNNeHU (as if the affix came after a noun
plural instead of after a preposition) in Ps. lxviii. 24.

In a new English version the examined clause would admit
but of one translation. There might, indeed, be some varia-
tion in the form of the supplemental words introduced for the

284 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

purpose of removing all appearance of inconsistency between
the different parts of the verse ; but a difference of this sort
would not justify the insertion of a second rendering in the
margin. The whole second member of this verse might be
construed in one or other of the two following ways : —

and she was his only child; he had, of his
own,a no son or daughter besides her."

and she was his only one ; he had, of his own,b
no other child, whether son or daughter."

* Heb. out of himself.
h Heb. out of himself.

The affix H was originally employed in common not only for
both masculine and feminine references, but also after nouns
in both numbers ; and, with a feminine reference, it still
maintains its ground after nouns in the plural, as well as in
the singular number ; its sound being in my notation repre-
sented, after nouns singular by aH, and after nouns plural, on
account of its then usually following a Yod, by EHa. In a few
instances, however, which were overlooked by the second, as
well as by the first set of vocalizers, the Yod has been omitted
in the latter position ; where this affix should, notwithstand-
ing, be read efla, with the same sound as before, according to
the analogy of Masoretic practice in cases of the like omission
between nouns plural and other affixes. Had the instances
here alluded to (of which one has been adduced in the pre-
ceding part of this chapter) been earlier noticed, this affix to
nouns plural would, for its feminine as well as its masculine
references, have been distinguished by grammarians into
' full' and 'defective,' according as the Yod was expressed or
only understood before it, This Yod, I may here observe by
the way, is in strictness no part of the affix in question (but
merely the indication of the plural number of the preceding
noun) ; yet it is considered as belonging to that affix when
used with a masculine reference, in consequence of its being
closely united in pronunciation with the \\'<ur, which is most
commonly then substituted for the He ; and it obviously should

Chap.IIL] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 285

be viewed in the same light when this He is referred to nouns
feminine, as the gender of the affix produces no difference in
its general nature.

When the masculine affix PI comes after nouns plural, a
Waw is sometimes subjoined, but much more frequently sub-
stituted for it ; and in each case it may be found exhibited
either ' full' or ' defective,' according as it is, or is not, imme-
diately preceded by a Yod. Hence there are four varieties of
this affix : 1st, I.T, EHU ; 2nd, 1H, eHU ; 3rd, f, AW ; 4th, \
aW ; all of which are, in the present improved state of our
language, to be rendered ' his,' or ' its,' according as the English
translation of the masculine Hebrew noun referred to is a
word in the masculine or neuter gender. The first form is
evidently the best ; as it expunges not any genuine element
of the sacred text, but retains the very one by which this affix
was originally represented, and adds other letters serving to
give a full representation of the vocal part of its sound. Yet
this form is, of the whole set, that which is most rarely to be
met with ; — a circumstance which completely accords with the
supposition that the old vocalizers were cramped in their ope-
rations, by having to deal with copies of their Bible previously
in existence, instead of introducing the matres lectionis into
new ones, in which vowels and consonants were all to be writ-
ten at the same time. And, what still further supports this
view of the matter, is, that the form in question occurs only in
the poetic books of Scripture (on which account it has been
termed a poetic affix) ; but it is obvious that, the lines in
poetry being shorter than in prose, the letters might natu-
rally be expected to be therein written further asunder, and
so to yield more room for interpolating additional characters
between them. An example of this form is presented to us
in the following group, extracted from Job, xxiv. 23, IH^^l,
"VVeHENEHU, ' yet his eyes.' The second form is the next best,
as it participates with the first in exemption from the serious
abuse of effacing an original element of the sacred text, when
not quiescent ; yet still it is also the next rarest in use. And

286 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

this again accords with the representation just given of the
subject : for while there was more opportunity of employing
the second than the first on account of its occupying less room,
there was, for the opposite reason, less facility of introducing
it than the third. The relative rarity, however, of the second
form, in comparison of the third, cannot be accounted for ex-
clusively in this way ; as, on the one hand, in, though seldom
affixed to nouns, is often annexed to verbs, and it cannot be
supposed that more space was left for augmenting the original
affix n after the latter class of words than after the former ;
and, on the other hand, the third form 1^ takes up scarcely less
room than in, since the Yod, though smaller than He* requires
as much blank space on each side of it in order to the distinct
appearance of the writing. There must, therefore, have been
some additional reason for the preference given by the old
vocalizers to the third form over the second ; and this could
have been no other than the difference in their effects, that ^
expresses the plural number of the preceding noun, which in
fails to do. Hence it appears that those scribes very inju-

a That the Yod was the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, at the
period when the sacred text was first vocalized, is shown by the specimens of
Palmyrene inscriptions deciphered by Swinton, which exhibit the earliest
known approach of the elements of a cognate system to the modern square
character of the Jews. Fac-similes of two lines of these inscriptions, in which
Yod appears four times, are given in the plates of the first volume of the second
part of my work on the "Ancient Orthography of the Jews;" whereof the
earlier one was written at a date corresponding to the year of our era 135,
that is, very shortly after the above-mentioned period. The comparative
smallness, indeed, of the letter in question may be traced still further back,
even to the time of our Saviour's ministry upon earth ; as can be plainly
collected from the manner in which he incidentally speaks of it in Matt. v. 18.
Nor is it any objection to this inference, that the Yod is as large as the
other letters on the Jewish coins dug out of the ruins of Jerusalem : for
those coins must have been above 150 years old at the period when he alluded
to its diminutive size in the passage just specified, the Jews having so long
before lost the right of coining as an independent state; and during this inter-
val there was quite .sufficient time for the introduction of a change in the
shape of the Hebrew characters.

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 287

diciously attached greater weight to this advantage than to the
counter-disadvantage of expunging an original element of the
Hebrew text ; and the same advantage, unalloyed by the
same abatement in reference to the fourth form, must have
made them greatly prefer the third thereto ; — a circumstance
which sufficiently accounts for that fourth being more rarely
used than the third, notwithstanding that it occupies less
space.

The second of the adduced forms 1H, eHU, has been hitherto
deemed an affix to nouns singular ; a classification of it which
Hebraists have attempted to establish by such examples as
1HW (or rather 1iTTD),SaD«HU, ' his field.' In cases, however,
of this sort the affix is not %1, but simply 1, which is substi-
tuted for an expunged H ; and the introduced letter should
regularly be pronounced 0, but, being uttered along with the
third element of the noun, which happens to be a H, their
combination is pronounced HU. The specified group in its
original state was iliTTD, SaDeHoH, ' his field ;' but its final T\
having been erased to make room for the \ and the D, for rea-
sons explained in a preceding chapter, changed to ttf, the entire
came out UTTBP ; in which the grammarians, having no clue
whereby to ascertain whether the retained H belonged to the
noun or to the affix, made the wrong choice respecting it. On
the other hand, the portion of the group WSJ (PIHU, ' his
mouth') which constitutes the affix, I admit, is lil, though the
noun it follows is in the singular number ; it is not, however,
pronounced, as the second of the foregoing forms, cHU, but
simply HU, and is here employed on account of this noun
singular having taken, after vocalization for the construct
state, a form similar to that of nouns dual or plural in the
same state. For ff£}, PeH, ' mouth,' being read when in regi-
men P«H, the vocalizers, to express the latter sound of it, in-
terpolated a Yod, to make room for which they expunged its
second element ; and it thus became ^, to which He being
affixed was vocalized Iff, in the same manner as if it followed
a noun in the dual or plural number. Thus the original group

Y

288 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

finSJ, P«'HoH, ' his mouth,' was vocalized %Ta, PIHU ; that is,
in parts of the sacred text where there was room for the addi-
tion of the Waw ; but, where there was not, this group took
the vocalized form T^, after the erasure of the second He as
well as of the first. In the latter case the vocalizers, or subse^
quent scribes, changed the pronunciation of the group from
PI-U to PIW (for the purpose of avoiding, what is repugnant
to the genius of the Hebrew language, the occurrence of a
sound not commencing with a consonant), and this again in
after times to PIV, on account of the difficulty of pronouncing
a IF after the vowel /. The form Y*£i is far more objection-
able than VPS*, on account of the extinction, not only of a
quiescent He, but. also of a sounded one belonging to the ori-
ginal group ; yet it is more frequently to be met with in the
sacred text, — a circumstance which, surely, could not have
occurred, if there had been everywhere room for the fuller
form. And, what still further accords with the view here given
of this subject is, that both forms are to be found in the very
same passage, as exhibited in the different editions of the He-
brew Pentateuch. Thus, in Exod. iv. 15, the group in ques-
tion is vocalized IffS in the Jewish, and T^ in the Samari-
tan edition of that record ; — a variation which fully harmo-
nizes with the supposition of the letters of the original group
in the specified place having been written not so close to each
other in the copy first vocalized by the Jews, as in that simi-
larly operated upon by the Samaritan scribes. This difference,
however, between the two editions is not of necessity to be
traced to the cause just assigned for it ; as it might likewise
have been occasioned by the greater familiarity of the latter
set with the process of vocalization at the time when they were
engaged in this task, they having then had the advantage of
previously reading a copy vocalized by the former set ; and
it is obvious that the vocalizers, who were more habituated to
the erasure of a quiescent He, would feel less compunction and
greater boldness in expunging it, where it was a sounded letter,
and where, consequently, there was less excuse for its removal.

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 289

A real specimen of the second form of the masculine affix
H after nouns plural is presented to us in the final part of the
group WD1?, LeMINeHU, 'after its (or his) kinds,'3 which oc-
curs in verses 12, 21, and 25, of the first chapter of Genesis,
as well as in other passages of the Pentateuch. Modern He-
braists, indeed, are not agreed as to the number of the noun
in this group, it being, according to the letters, in the singu-
lar, but, according to the points, in the plural state ; and the
framers of our Authorized Version adopted the former repre-
sentation of the subject ; while the elder Buxtorf, in his Hebrew
and Chaldee Lexicon, published four years before the first edi-
tion of their work came out, adhered to the latter. It will,
however, now be seen that the question at issue is not between
any genuine elements of the sacred text and the Masoretic
points, but merely between the first and second set of vocali-
zers ; and that it is to be decided, not by the comparative
weight of their respective shares of authority, but by the con-
text and the tenor of the narrative. Judged by this criterion,
the latter set of scribes will be found to have been here clearly
in the right, and to have corrected a defect of the older voca-
lization, in like manner as they did in innumerable other in-
stances. By the same criterion also it can be shown that the
noun in question should be read in the plural number, and
translated ' kinds,' wherever it has been employed in the first
chapter, even in those places in which both sets of vocalizers
have concurred in representing it as singular. Thus, for in-
stance, in verse 11 of this chapter we are told that, on the third
day of the first week after the Chaos, the earth was com-
manded to bring forth " the fruit-tree yielding fruit," a generic
expression of very extensive application, the Hebrew for which
is immediately followed by a group at present written ITO/,
which is thus supplied with vowel-letters for the reading

* The above reading of the group is that assigned to it by its Masoretic
pointing; if the letters alone were to be taken into consideration, it would be
read LeMINHU, ' after its (or his) kind.'

y2

290 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

LeEMlNO, ' after its kind,' and is likewise pointed by the Maso-
rets for that reading and signification. But the same group
might equally, in accordance with the principles of the Maso-
retic system, have been pointed so as to be read LeMlNaW,
' after its kinds ;' and it is quite plain that the later set of
vocalizers ought to have thus corrected the defective vocaliza-
tion of the earlier set here, in like manner as, we have above
seen, they did in the next ensuing verse. For the perfect con-
formity of the execution recorded in verse 12, with the com-
mand given in verse 11, is expressly asserted in the words
connecting the two verses, " and it was so." The qualities,
therefore, which, giving rise to the distinction of ' kind,' are,
through the use of the original of that term, involved in the
notion conveyed by the WD/ of the one verse, must have
been exactly the same as those similarly included in the 13*tt37
of the other ; so that, although those groups, in the present
state of the Hebrew text, differ by a letter, — a difference which
most probably arose merely from the accidental circumstance
of there having been more room for the retention of this let-
ter in the one place than in the other, — they yet have precisely
the same meaning in the specified places ; and, consequently,
as the Masorets vocalized the noun in one of them for the
plural number, they ought likewise in consistency to have so
dealt with that in the other. This view of the subject, how-
ever, I admit, supplies only an argumentum ad hominem against
those critics ; but we are led quite conclusively to the very
same result by the context. For, surely, it cannot for a mo-
ment be imagined that the inspired historian intended here to
intimate that only one kind of fruit-tree was produced at the
time referred to. The very reverse of this, indeed, is not only
implied by the general tenor of the narrative, but is also ex-
pressly stated in the next chapter, where we find it related
that God made then to spring from the ground " every tree

that is good for food." But it may perhaps be asked,

— in consequence of the original words for the compound term
' fruit-tree' being used, like a noun of multitude, in a plural

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 291

sense, though written in the singular number, — why may not
the Hebrew noun denoting ' kind' be here employed with the
same latitude ? — to which I reply, that it might, if it had been
put in a form abstracted from all consideration of the gram-
matic distinction of numbers. Accordingly, on the first
occurrence of one of the groups containing this noun, it is
paraphrased in the Septuagint Kara yevos ical naO1 6/j.oioTrjTa,
' according to kind, and according to similitude,' which, I con-
ceive, may be further interpreted to intimate that the living
substances respectively compared in the place referred to were
framed with such a degree of similitude as caused those of each
set to be of the same kind. But, whether this be the correct
signification, or not, of the adduced paraphrase, it is at all events
obvious that the term <yeVo9 is therein employed unrestricted
by any reference to number, just as much as is o/jLOLoryTa.
And although the latter term is afterwards for brevity sake
omitted, the former continues to be used in the same abstract
form, constituting in combination with Kara an expression
(' according to kind') equivalent to merely an adverb, till, in
stricter conformity with the original, the circumstances of the
case are particularized through the introduction of a pronoun
corresponding with an affix in the Hebrew group ; and then
the number of the Greek noun in question immediately comes
out plural. Thus, in verse 21, DITTO?, which, according to the
letters of this group, may be read LeMINHeM, ' after their kind,'
and according to the points LeMINeHeM, ' after their kinds,' is
translated in the Septuagint, not Kara yevos, but Kara yivy
avrwv, ' after their kinds.'3 As far, then, as the testimony of

a To the effort above made to restore the consistency of the Greek trans-
lation upon the point referred to, it may be objected, that in verse 25 the
expression occurs, Kara 761/os avrwu. But the last word of this expression is
omitted in the Alexandrian copy of the Septuagint ; and, when a correspond-
ing correction is made in the Vatican copy, it will be found that, in every
place in this chapter in which the Greek noun in question is written in the
singular number, it is put in an abstract form, without any pronoun sub-
joined to it.

292 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

this ancient record bears upon the point under discussion,0 it
concurs with the evidence of the context in supporting the re-
presentation here made of this subject; and ^1 subjoined to a
noun is to be considered as, in general, an affix to nouns plural,
differing from the masculine affix 1!T only in the circumstance
of being less fully written.

Before quitting the consideration of the example discussed
in the last paragraph, I take the opportunity of noticing, by
the way, the intimation it supplies to the effect that the Sama-
ritan scribes had the vocalized text of the Jews under inspec-
tion, while they were vocalizing their own copies of the Hebrew
Pentateuch. The original group rtfft1? admitted, when the
final He was intended for a masculine affix, of two modes of
vocalizing that affix, by either substituting for it, or subjoining
thereto, a vocal Waw. The choice, in each instance, made
between those different modes appears to have depended, either
on the mere arbitrary caprice of the vocalizers, or on a diffe-
rence of room, in the copy, or copies, first operated upon, be-
tween the characters in different parts of the text, which
allowed space, in some places and not in others, for the inter-
polation of an additional letter. Such a want of uniformity
in the collocation of the characters may very possibly have
existed in extremely ancient writing ; but it is utterly impro-
bable that the greater or less, than usual, distances between
the letters should have in general occurred in exactly the same
passages respectively of copies written by scribes who held no
intercourse with each other. Now the group in question is
only three times found differently vocalized in the same verses
respectively of the two editions referred to ;b — namely, in each

a Upon the above point the translation of the first chapter of Genesis in
the Peshitah tells the opposite way ; but in this instance the Septuagint is
entitled to more weight, not only on account of its greater antiquity, but also
because of the agreement of its evidence with that of the context.

b There are three instances of a difference, with regard to the vocalization
of the above group, which do not bear upon the case under inquiry. First,
in Gen. vi. 20, besides the occurrence of In^nb in both editions, this form

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLUEAL. 293

of the sites, Lev. xi. 16 and 29, it is now written WD7 in
the Jewish, and *\Fu? in the Samaritan set of copies ; and vice
versa in Lev. xi. 22, it presents to us the shorter vocalization
in the former, and the longer one in the latter set ; — while, on
the other hand, in no less than twelve places it is shifted from
the shorter to the longer form, or from the longer to the shorter
one, exactly the same way in the two editions ; — viz., in both
editions, it is exhibited, first in the shorter form, in Gen. i. 11,
then seven times successively in the longer form, to wit, in
Gen. i. 12 (bis), 21, 25 ; vi. 20 ; vii. 14 (bis) ; then in the
shorter form in Lev. xi. 15 ; then twice in the longer form in
Lev. xi. 22 (bis) ; and finally, in the shorter one in Deut. xiv.
14. So near an approach to exact coincidence of variation,
surely, could not, under the circumstances of the case, be ex-
pected in the vocalization of the two editions, unless the set of
scribes who later undertook this operation had the use of the
earlier work, while they were engaged in the performance of
their task. This proof, I grant, is not by any means, when
taken by itself, decisive on the question at issue ; but as it can
be repeated in an endless number of other instances with re-
sults of the same kind, the accumulation of evidence, thus
afforded, to the same effect, can hardly be resisted.

of the group appears a second time in the Jewish edition, but Drf^ftb in the
corresponding part of the specified verse in the Samaritan edition ; where,
through the fault of the one or the other set of copies, the original groups
operated upon are not the same. Secondly, in Lev. xi. 22, while the group
in question is vocalized twice in the same, and once in a different manner in
the two editions, it occurs a fourth time in this verse, written ^HD^b in the
Jewish copies, and n^tf? with its affix untouched and left without any voca-
lization in the Samaritan copies ; so that the last pair cannot be stated to have
their final elements vocalized in either the same or in different ways. Thirdly,
in Deut. xiv. 15, ^n^ftb occurs in the Jewish copies, and ^ttb in the Sa-
maritan ones, but not in the same part of the verse, so that most probably
the above group, however written, has been once dropped from this passage
in each set of copies ; and it is impossible now to determine whether, sup-
posing the dropped groups to be restored, those of each pair would be found
vocalized in the same, or in different manners.

294 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

With respect to the third and fourth forms of the mascu-
line affix for the third person singular after plural nouns, there
is no difference of opinion as to their meaning or application,
and consequently no use of entering into any discussion about
them, except as to the origin of the modes in which they are
now written and pronounced. The fourth form, 1, which is
that also of the same affix after nouns singular, only differently
uttered, is obviously the third one, T1, defectively written (the
Yod having been omitted, either from want of room for its
insertion, or from a mistake of the old vocalizers as to the
number of the preceding noun, or from oversight, owing to
their having been previously accustomed to read the text of
the Hebrew Bible without the aid of matreslectionis); accord-
ingly, the two forms are pointed in just the same way by the
Masorets,3 and the one inquiry will answer regarding the in-
gredients and sounds of both. The third form, ^, differs from
the first or complete one, W, by the omission of the letter H,
which was originally the sole representative of the affix in
question for every variety of circumstance ; — an omission
which cannot, like that of a mater lectionis, be attributed to
mistake or oversight, but must be ascribed to the design of
making room for indications of the gender of this affix and
number of the preceding noun. Now, when the old vocalizers
were compelled by want of space to forego the employment
of one of the ingredients of the complete form, it appears, at
first view, rather strange that they should have selected for
omission the only one of the three that was a genuine element
of the sacred text, and that too in a position in which it was
sounded, as placed at the commencement of a syllable. But
if we closely examine their initiatory steps, we shall find that
they did not all at once proceed to so very objectionable an
extreme of hardihood, but that they began with erasing the

* The instances of the affix 1 pointed by the Masorets for the pronunciation
a\v — the same as that attached by them to'P, when affixed to plural nouns —
are too numerous to require here the production of any examples.

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 295

H only where it was, or where they thought it was,a at the end
of a syllable, and looked upon it as quiescent ; in consequence
of which it is more in proportion retained in the first chapter
of Genesis than in any other part of the sacred text ; — a cir-
cumstance which gives this chapter the appearance of being
written in a peculiarly antiquated style. But after they had
removed this H, under the specified restriction, about a dozen
times, they became bolder in the performance of their task,
and at length ventured to expunge it at the beginning of syl-
lables, in the seventh verse of the second chapter ; where this
group HDfcO, BeHaPpeHtt, ' into his nostrils,' was vocalized by
them Y^N3. As to the sound of the transformed affix t\ in
this group, one might naturally suppose that, being derived
from W, EHU, by the omission of the middle ingredient it
would be uttered E-U ; and so it probably was at first ; but
in all likelihood it soon after came, as it has since continued, to
be pronounced AW, — not, however, universally, as there is,
even up to the present day, much uncertainty and disagree-
ment among Hebraists upon this subject. To confine myself,
however, to the more usual pronunciation of this affix, — the
capricious change herein made of the phonetic value of Yod
from E to A is just as unaccountable as the opposite one now
prevailing in the English language, whereby A is most fre-
quently deprived of its proper sound, and shifted to that of E.
But the Hebrew alteration referred to was adopted at a very
remote period ; and H is not the only affix before which, or
its substitute, the Yod indicative of the plural number for-
merly had, under certain circumstances, its pronunciation
changed, although the only one in whose case that corruption
still maintains its ground. Thus, in the illustration of the

a The very first time of their erasing the afiix H was in vocalizing the
original group i"?3ftb in Gen. i. 1 1, which ought to have been read by them,
as has been already shown, in the same way as it actually was in the very
next verse, LeMiNeHu ; but from their mode of vocalizing it in the former place,
^ISv, we may perceive that they there read it LeMiNoII, with the H at the
end, instead of where it should be, at the beginning of a syllable.

296 VOCALIZED FORMS OF AFFIX [Chap. III.

mode of reading Hebrew in the time of Jerome, which is
quoted from his works in the first chapter of this volume, we
may observe SARACH given by him to denote the sound of
"p1¥, - thine enemies,' which is now read SaREKa; and the Yod
of frhx (HeLoHEKa, 'thy God,' in which the noun is exhibited
in a plural form, though understood in a singular sense) was
in like manner pronounced A by Chrysostom in his commen-
tary on the forty -fifth Psalm, at the eighth verse of which he
has represented the sound of this group by EAwa^.a

With respect to the change which has taken place in the
phonetic value of the other element of T1, though more violent
(as not being from one vowel to another, but from a vowel to
a consonant), it yet can, I apprehend, be accounted for with
a high degree of probability. For the old vocalizers having
left the second syllable of this affix without a consonant at its
commencement, subsequent scribes were compelled, for the
purpose of avoiding this anomaly, to reduce its two syllables
into one through the transmutation of the second vowel into
a W. If the Jewish priests had not resorted to this artifice,
before they allowed the means of learning the ancient Hebrew
tongue to be placed within reach of Origen (the first orthodox
Christian who, after the commencement of the second cen-
tury, attained to this knowledge), they would have run great
risk of his detecting what they were most anxious to keep
secret, the improved mode of spelling they had got introduced
into the sacred text. Accordingly, the altered pronunciation
under discussion can be traced as far back as his day. Thus
Chrysostom, in his commentary on the forty-sixth Psalm, when
he comes to the fifth verse, adduces ®a\a<yav — the sound of
the group T073 alone — in such a manner as to have the ap-
pearance, at first blush, of having been given by him as that
of the Hebrew for the entire expression in the Septuagint,
too 7roTanov Ta 6/?/x///xaTa, which includes another group besides

* 'O gg 'Efipaios (bfjoi to, o $eo9, o 0q6i aov, E\weifi} E\w«x- — Chrysostomi
Opera, Ed0. Benedict., torn. v. p. 172.

Chap. III.] HE AFTER NOUNS PLURAL. 297

this one.3 But whether ignorance of the original text to this
extent can be fairly imputed to him or not, at all events the
degree of inaccuracy here betrayed is quite sufficient to prove
that he did not bring forward the specified pronunciation from
his own knowledge of the language, but from the second column
of the Hexapla, wherein the sounds of the Hebrew groups
were recorded in Greek letters ; so that the sound AW of the
affix T\ can be shown to have commenced, at any rate, before
that celebrated work of Origen was written. In fine, I have
only to add, that my analysis of the pronunciation of this affix
has not been undertaken with any desire of restoring a mode of
reading it more conformable to the phonetic values of its sepa-
rate elements, but merely for the object already stated, of tracing
the corruptions of those values as near as I could to their ori-
gin, and of accounting for the more extraordinary one of the two,
whereby a vowel-sign has been changed to a consonant ; which,
however, when that consonant is equivalent to V (the affix in
question being by many pronounced AV instead of AW), is
closely analogous to an alteration adopted by the modern
Greeks, of pronouncing their Ujjsilon after Alpha, or Epsilon,
as a V or F. Thus, for instance, the words avpiov and civtos
are read by them with the sounds respectively of avrion and
aftos. As to the other corruption of the same affix, by which
the value of its first ingredient has been shifted from the sound
of E or I to that of A, I confess myself unable to assign for

a Tow 7rorafiov 7a 6p/wr]/£a7a, uWos, diaipeaeis. 6 £e IZfipcuos, 0a\a<Yat).—

Chrysostomi Opera, Ed°. Benedict, torn, v., p. 184. The original Hebrew for
the Greek expression here commented upon is ^nbs ITO, N«H«R PeLaGAW.
* As to the river, its impetuosities, (that is, its torrents) :' so that, while our
author gives the sound of only one of those groups, he would, at first sight,
appear to attach to it the signification of both. As, however, the interpre-
tation, Btaipeaei9, quoted from another version, can be compared with no more
than the second term of the above expression, <fia\a<yav may possibly be un-
derstood to have its meaning confined by him to the same term, though this
restriction is not expressly stated ; yet, even so, he still was guilty of great
inaccuracy as a commentator; since, if the group read <pu\a<yuu be considered
by itself, its correct rendering is not to op/iyficna, but to opfiijfia-Ta avrov, — a
distinction to which he does not make the slightest allusion.

298 VAKIOUS TREATMENT BY VOCALIZERS [Chap. III.

it any rational ground ; but it can be illustrated, or at least
kept in countenance, by changes introduced into other systems
of writing, which, though fully as capricious and unwarranted,
are yet sanctioned, each of them, by the general practice of an
entire nation.

The masculine affix He after verbs is to be seen in the
sacred text, as at present written, either changed to ^1 or 1,
or left in its original state H ; and so has been treated in the
same variety of ways, and nearly in the same manner, as after
nouns singular ;a with this difference, however, that it has
been less frequently expunged in the process of vocalization.
Whether it was that the first vocalizers deemed this affix a
more important ingredient of a sentence when standing for a
personal pronoun governed by a verb than when denoting a
possessive one connected with a noun, or by whatever other
view of the subject they may have been guided, they certainly
took less liberties with it after verbs than after nouns ; so that
the Waw, which is more usually found substituted for the
original He in the latter sites, is in general only subjoined to
it in the former ones. The VI thus produced has the sound
HU attached to it by the second set of vocalizers after verbal
inflexions ending in a vowel, but has been pointed by them
after all but oneb of those ending in a consonant so as to be
mostly read, either aHU, or cHU, according as the inflexion to
which it is annexed belongs to the preterite tense or other
parts of the verb. On the other hand, in the comparatively
few cases in which the original He has been erased, the sub-
stituted Waw has been pointed so as to be read 0, when it
immediately follows a consonant, just in like manner as after
nouns ; but when it is immediately preceded by the sound 7,

a Although ^H is in general an affix of only nouns plural, yet in a few-
instances it is affixed to nouns singular, as, for example, in the case of ^mD,
' his mouth,' as has been already explained.

b After the H of the feminine inflexion of the verb for the third person
singular of the preterite tense, the affix HU immediately follows without any
intervening union- vowel.

Chap. III.] OF MASCULINE AFFIXES AFTER VERBS. 299

its phonetic value is — to avoid the anomaly in Hebrew writ-
ing of a syllable commencing with a vowel — changed to a W,
and that again to a V, on account of the difficulty of pro-
nouncing the former consonant after /; precisely in the same
manner as we have seen these alterations made under like
circumstances after nouns. These variations of the affix in
question are to be met with after the same inflexions of the
same verbs, not only in different passages of the sacred text,
but also in the very same verses, as written in the two editions
of the Pentateuch ; — a point for the illustration of which the
following examples are adduced : —

Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition. Authorized Eng. Vers.

Gen. xxvii. 27.
1313, BeRaKO, ^313, BeRaKaHU, hath blessed it*

Gen. xxxvii. 20.
1nnb3W, HaKaLaThHU, 1nb3H, HaKaLaThO, hath devoured him.
Gen. xxxvii. 21.
5)n1?2vl, WaYyaSsiLeHU, ^V5T»1, WaYyaSseLO, and he delivered him.
Num. xxiii. 8.
J13p «b, LoH QaBboH, ^3p Mb, LoH QoBbO, hath not cursed him.8

Gen. xvii. 16.
mri313% WwBeRaKTIHa, "JVOTffl, W^BeRaKTIV, yea, I will bless her.

As far as these examples go, they serve to show that the Sama-
ritan scribes resorted more freely than the Jewish ones to the
very objectionable step of expunging an original element of
the sacred text ; — a circumstance which accords with the sup-
position of their having vocalized that text at a later period,
and when they were more familiar than their Jewish prede-
cessors had been, with this operation. The fourth example
clearly exhibits, in its Jewish portion, the affix in question, as
originally written; the group ending with which has been

a In each of the examples above marked, the pronoun after the verb, being
redundant, on account of the preceding relative, is omitted in our Version, to
avoid a Hebrew idiom that could not with propriety be introduced into an
English sentence.

300 CORRECTION OF VERSE, GEN. xvn. 16, [Chap. III.

pointed by the Masorets QaRboH, they having been prevented
from applying to it the fuller and more regular pronunciation
QaBbaHw, by the oversight of the first vocalizers in failing to
subjoin to it a Waw.

The last of the above examples not only serves the more
immediate purpose for which it has been adduced, of illustrat-
ing the curious transformation of a mater lectionis from a
representative of the vowel 0 or TJ to a sign of the consonant
V, but also supplies a valuable correction of the Jewish read-
ing of the group therein quoted ; with an examination of which,
as well as of the whole passage to which it belongs, I shall
close the present chapter. This group, in its original state
nilS'm, admitted of being read either WuBeRaKTiKa, ' and I
will bless her,' or WttBeRaKTVHw, ' and I will bless him :' but it
is limited to the latter reading by the context ; and that limi-
tation, which is powerfully supported by the joint and inde-
pendent testimonies of the Septuagint and the Peshitah, is
also sustained by the evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch,
as soon as a manifest self-contradiction, which now appears in
its text, is thence removed. The Authorized English Transla-
tion of the entire verse containing the group under discussion
is, according to the more literal rendering given of part of it
in the margin, conveyed in the following words : — " And I will
bless her, and give thee a son also of her : yea, I will bless her,
and she shall become nations [or, still more literally, she shall
be into nations8] ; kings of people shall be of her." But, accord-
ing to the Samaritan text, cleared of the inconsistency just

a The above second construction enclosed within brackets is scarcely intel-
ligible English, and is not adduced with any view of recommending its adop-
tion, even in the margin of an amended version, but merely for the purpose
of enabling an English reader to compare more exactly the Hebrew verse
with the corresponding Greek and Syriac ones. The strict closeness of these
translations to their original is thus put in a very conspicuous light; and,
where translators show such scrupulous fidelity of interpretation, even upon
points relating to mere form of expression, their evidence, surely, is entitled
to the more weight in regard to its substance.

Chap.IIL] SUGGESTED BY PRECEDING ANALYSIS. 301

alluded to, the second part of this verse should be translated :
" moreover, I will surely bless him, and he shall surely become
[literally, be into] nations, and kings of nations shall be de-
scended from him." Now, with regard to the demands of the
context, in the first place, it is evidently more suited to the
notions that prevailed in ancient times, as well as to the Ian-
guage of the Bible, to speak of a man, rather than of a woman,
as the origin from whom nations and kings of nations were to
be derived. Secondly, it is more natural to refer the pronoun
at the end of the above group to the person mentioned imme-
diately before, namely, the son, than to a remoter antecedent,
the mother. And thirdly, it is far more in keeping with the
simplicity of the style of Moses, that this group should have
been employed by him to convey an additional piece of infor-
mation, than that it should have been superfluously inserted
for the mere purpose of repeating a second time, without any
variation,3 what had been already stated in the beginning of the
very same verse. In complete accordance with these views,

a There is, however, a slight variation in the original, which could hardly
be transfused into a version, and which rather strengthens the objection
against the Jewish vocalization of the passage. After the first prediction
therein contained of a blessing comes a pronoun in a detached, separate form,
to bring more strongly under notice the person who was to be blessed,
through a distinctness of expression that evidently rendered it the less neces-
sary to repeat this prediction. On the other hand, in the case of the prediction
of a second blessing, its object is referred to only in the more usual manner,
through the fragment of a pronoun amalgamated with the verb in the shape
of an affix; as it would have been superfluous to have more prominently
pointed out an individual to whom attention was sufficiently drawn by the
declaration immediately following, that he should be the origin from whom
nations and kings of nations were to be descended. The difference is some-
what analogous to that which would be produced in a correct English trans-
lation of this passage, by reading it with a short pause between the verb and
pronoun, and some emphasis on the latter word, in the case of the prediction,
' I will surely bless her,' but without resorting to either part of this expe-
dient in the case of the second one, ' I will surely bless him,' the emphasis
in the latter instance being reserved for the pronoun in the subsequent decla-
ration, ' and he shall surely become .'

302 CORRECTION OF VERSE, GEN. xvn. 16, [Chap. III.

the first Greek and Syriac renderings of the entire verse are
worded as follows ; while a literal interpretation is subjoined
to each.

Septliagint, EvXoyijaw he avrrjv, kcli hwaw aoi e£ arvfjs tckvov'*
kolI €v\o<yi)<y<D auTO, teal eorai eh e'0v}]1 kcu fiaaiXeis
eOvwv e£ avrov eoovrui.

And I will bless her, and will give thee out of her a child ;
moreover, I will bless it, and it shall become [literally,
be into] nations, and kings of nations shall be from it.

Peshitah, . . ^(Tia-^i^lo :1^ ctliSo ^V| **>lo .cru^^lo

• vootru OLiio ISokiL} ]n\'V)0 .lVAns\ "joouo

And I will bless her, and also will give thee out of her a
son: moreover, I will bless him, and he shall become
[literally, be into] nations, and kings of nations shall be
from him.

The original verse, with two requisite corrections, indi-
cated by marks inserted according to my method of notation,
stands thus : —

Jewish Ed. fra.TrD-i:n ;p f> jtob vina dji <nm witi
/rot mnn dw "otei p^b nfrm

The two corrections here marked, each of which is Avanted
in order to restoring the application of the second clause to
Isaac, are both of them evidently supported by the context,
as well as by the joint bearing of the above translations of
the verse ; and the first of them is still further sustained by
the express evidence of the Samaritan edition of the text, as
far as depends on the first group of the second clause therein
written W3"m, in respect to which alone there is any differ-

tt The Hebrew term p, B<?N, may be translated two's, ' a son,' where no
limitation with respect to age is put upon its meaning, or tckvov, ' a child,' if
confined to young persons ; and the Seventy appear to have, in the above
passage, given a preference to its more restricted sense, for the purpose of
marking in a stronger manner the greatness of the promised transition from
a single individual, when a child, to nations and kings of nations.

Chap. III.] SUGGESTED BY PRECEDING ANALYSIS. 303

ence between the Jewish and Samaritan representations of this
verse, and, therefore, it is needless to adduce separately the
latter, in addition to the former one which has been just
quoted. There is, indeed, another difference which holds in
part between the two representations : the 1 before ^ft, which
is preserved in, I believe, all the Samaritan copies that have
reached Europe, and must have been so in the Jewish ones
till after the Septuagint and Peshitah were written, has dis-
appeared from most of the latter set that are now extant.
But as the letter in question is retained in seven of the
ancient Jewish MSS. consulted by Kermicott (viz. those
numbered by him 9, 69, 80, 89, 109, 150, 157), it is unne-
cessary to consider the two records as differing with respect
to this element, or to mark it as a modern restoration by en-
closing it within brackets, in an amended edition of the He-
brew text. In borrowing the first of the above corrections,
or that of the first group of the second clause, from the Sama-
ritan scribes, I have avoided the extreme liberty they took
therewith, and have resorted to the more usual and far pre-
ferable mode of confining the affix He of a verb to the mascu-
line gender, by subjoining to the final element of this group,
instead of substituting for it, a vocal Waw. The second cor-
rection, which, by marking the Taw in the next group of the
verse as spurious, limits the verb substantive in that group to
a masculine form, is of more importance than the first, as hav-
ing a reference to the original writing of the sacred text, and
should not be adopted till after the most careful scrutiny.
But the combination of internal and external evidence against
the genuineness of this letter is so very powerful, . that I do
not see how it can be resisted. Besides these two corrections,
no other is wanted, with respect to either the original or the
subsequently added vocal elements of the writing of this verse :
for, where the context requires it, the group J13DD, I have
already shown, can be read Mi'Mm«NnoH or MiMmeNHw, ' of or
from him,' as well as Mz'MmeNnaH, ' of or from her,' without
any change of its letters.

304 CORRECTION OF VERSE, GEN. xvn. 16, Etc. [Chap. III.

With respect to the date of the interpolation of the spu-
rious Taw, it could not have crept into the Jewish copies of
the Pentateuch till after the Syriac version was written ; while,
on the other hand, it must have found its way into them be-
fore they were vocalized ; as otherwise the Jewish scribes
would have had no ground whatever for vocalizing, in the
manner they did, the first group of the second clause. This
corruption, therefore, must have got into the Jewish set of
copies within the first thirty years of the second century ; and
the high antiquity thus made out for it sufficiently accounts
for the circumstance of no manuscript copy of that edition
now extant having been found exempt therefrom. The same
corruption could not, for the very opposite reason, have
<rot into the Samaritan edition till after it had been voca-
lized ; but still was most probably introduced into it at a
very remote period. There is one omission in the Greek and
Syriac renderings of the examined verse which appears to
me rather strange in translations that are, in other respects,
so extremely literal. In neither of them is any distinction
expressed between the ordinary and the prophetic futures of
the original passage ; perhaps from a want of such distinction
in Greek and Syriac. The same want exists in English like-
wise, but may be supplied by the frequent use of an adverb ;
though, I admit, the tautology so occasioned ought to be
avoided, if the same effect could be produced in any other
way. But, however this may be, a translation of the verse,
framed according to the expedient just alluded to, is here
submitted to the judgment of the reader : — " And I will surely
bless her, and also will surely give thee out of her a son ;
moreover I will surely bless him, and he shall surely become
nations, and kings of nations shall be descended from him/'

Chap.IV.] ORIGINAL USE RECOVERED, Etc. 305

CHAPTER IV.

CONTINUATION OF THE ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM THE
STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE.

ORIGINAL USE RECOVERED OF THE PARAGOGIC HE HALEPH AND HE

OFTEN MISTAKEN ONE FOR THE OTHER IN THE SACRED TEXT

ORIGINAL FORMS OF THE HEBREW AND CHALDEE PRONOUNS OF
THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR ORIGINAL FORMS OF WHOLE HE-
BREW PRONOUN, AND ITS AFFIX, OF THE FIRST PERSON PLURAL

ORIGINAL FORMS OF THE PARTS OF THE PRONOUN OF FIRST PER-
SON SINGULAR USED AS AFFIXES ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE

AFFIXED TO NOUNS, ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES — FORMERLY A
HINT NOT ALWAYS GIVEN OF / OR U SOUND AT THE END OF WORDS

A DIFFICULTY CLEARED UP IN THE EXISTING STATE OF THE

PESHITAH THE PARAGOGIC HE AFTER A NOW USED OFTENER THAN

IS COMMONLY SUPPOSED PARAGOGIC HE FORMERLY USED AFTER

VERBS ENDING IN / OR U SOUND MODE PROPOSED OF ASCER-
TAINING POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES — MANY DIFFERENCES
CAN BE REMOVED FROM THE TWO COPIES OF 18th PSALM — IN-
STANCE OF ERRONEOUS MASORETIC CHANGE OF AN OLDER VOCA-
LIZATION.

BESIDES the pronominal affixes of the third person sin-
gular masculine, those of the first person singular and
plural are at present written, either wholly or in part, with
vowel-letters. The integral pronoun also of this person in
both the singular and the plural number, and various inflex-
ions of words, are now terminated with such letters. It is,
therefore, desirable, in order to the more satisfactory develop-
ment of my discovery (though not absolutely requisite to the
establishment of its truth) to ascertain how those affixes, or
parts of affixes, and terminations of integral words, were dis-
tinguished before the introduction ofmatres lectionis into the
sacred text. The investigation of this point has led to — what
I conceive to be a desideratum in Hebrew philology — the
detection of the original use of the paragogic He. This letter,
which is assumed to be invariably preceded, in the course of

z 2

306 ORIGINAL USE RECOVERED [Chap. IV.

enunciation, by the sound of the vowel A, and on all sides
admitted (as, indeed, is in some measure implied in its tech-
nical designation) to cause no alteration in the meaning of
the group to which it is subjoined, is yet supposed by the few
grammarians who have touched upon its use (for all allusion
to this subject has been cautiously avoided by most of them*),
to render the expression of that meaning more emphatic.
But this supposition cannot be allowed valid by any one who
attaches weight to the united evidence of the pointers and
accentuators of the Hebrew text. For the former set of cri-
tics have never in any instance inserted their mappiq in the
paragogic He, which they have in consequence left everywhere
destitute of all perceptible aspiration, while, on the other
hand, the latter set have never (except in a particular class of
instances presently to be noticed) changed the site of the tone
syllable of a group on account of the addition to it of this
character ; and it is plain that a letter which causes no altera-
tion whatever in the sound of a Avord cannot indicate any
stress of voice laid upon its pronunciation. In a text, how-
ever, of such vast antiquity, the original mode of pronouncing
its ingredients is now but very imperfectly known, whereas
the sense conveyed by them can, except in the case of some
passages still involved in obscurity, be perfectly ascertained.
The latter subject, therefore, is far more to be relied on than
the former as a criterion for determining the justness of the
above notion ; and by such test its validity certainly cannot
be sustained; as the reader may perceive by a reference to
the context of, I believe, any of the passages in which the
letter in question is to be met with. Thus, for example, this
letter is annexed to the expression fifO, ' thou gavest,' thereby

■ The He local is the only one added at the end of words that is in general
explained in Hebrew grammars, in several of which it is described under the
head of the paragogic He — a class of letters to which it certainly does not in
strictness belong; since it makes a well-defined addition to the meaning of
such word5; as it may be subjoined to.

Chap. IV.] OF THE PARAGOGIC HE. 307

altered to nnfO, in the twelfth verse of the third chapter of
Genesis ; where Adam in some degree throws the blame of
his violation of God's command upon Eve. But he did not
venture to shift this blame further back ; and even if he had
dared to do so, he would have laid it, not upon the act through
which he obtained a companion, but on the Performer of that
act. Supposing him, then, to have adopted such a line of
defence, there would, indeed, have been a word of the above
verse delivered by him with emphasis, yet still not the adduced
one, but the pronoun connected therewith, which should then
have been added in a separate form (as in Judges, xv. 18) im-
mediately before the verb, whence the literal meaning would
have come out, ' whom thou thyself gavest.' On no supposi-
tion, then, can any degree of impressiveness be made out to
have been communicated to the utterance of HfirO, in the
specified verse, in consequence of the paragogic letter there
subjoined to it ; and in like manner it may be shown in, at
any rate, the great majority of places of the occurrence of
this letter, that the only use as yet imagined for it is not borne
out by the context of those places.

Under these circumstances I venture to bring forward a
new explanation of the use of the paragogic He, extending to
every case of its employment ; and to which the present dis-
covery has led, through a comparison of groups vocalized in
some places of the Jewish edition of the Hebrew text, and
passed over in others without any alteration, or which have
been thus differently treated in the same places respectively
of the two editions of the Pentateuch. I shall commence with
giving a general view of the result of this inquiry, and then
subjoin examples by which the soundness of the investigation
may be tested. The letter in question, then, itself unsounded,
yet served as a mark to notify to the ancient reader that the
last element of the word to which it is annexed was not to be
united to the preceding one in the expression of a compound,
or, as it is by some called, a mixed syllable, but to be read by
itself as a simple or pure syllable, the vocal part of which was

308 ORIGINAL USE RECOVERED [Chap. IV.

to be determined by the context ; or, according to the im-
proved conception of the subject which was arrived at, after
men had distinctly resolved syllables into their component
parts, the above letter served to apprize the reader that it was
immediately preceded in the course of enunciation by a vowel-
sound — by no means invariably that of A — which he was left
to select in accordance with the demands of the context, but
in the choice of which he was so far assisted by this notifica-
tion, inasmuch as that, by being put upon his guard as to the
want of a vowel, and the necessity of searching for it, he was
more likely to perform the operation with correctness. This
use, in the earlier conception of its nature, is just the reverse
of one effected by a different expedient in the Ethiopic species
of writing. For, whenever in that species a letter at the end
of a word is not to be read by itself as a pure syllable, but to
be joined to the preceding one in the representation of a com-
pound or mixed syllable, a particular modification of its shape
is employed, namely that found in the sixth column of the
syllabary it belongs to, and which, for this application of it,
drops the vocal part of its syllabic value. With regard to the
above use, in the later and fuller conception of it, two parti-
culars are to be noticed in the practice of the vocalizers of the
second century. First, whenever they, in compliance with
the suggestion of a paragogic He, inserted a mater lectionis in
the text, they omitted the older element, as its service was
more directly and efficiently performed by the introduced
letter, and they could not venture to let both signs appear
together ; for the redundancy thus occasioned would have
led to the suspicion of the spuriousness of one of them ; it
being most unlikely that the original authors employed any-
where two signs for the same sound. Hence it follows that
the occurrence of this paragogic character in the Hebrew text
must have been much more frequent before the introduction
into it of vowel-letters, though not so much so as we might at
first view of the matter be led to imagine ; since the inspired
writers of the Old Testament very often withheld the aid

Chap. IV.] OF THE PARAGOGIC HE. 309

afforded by the letter in question, in suggesting what words
were to have their pronunciations terminated by vocal sounds.
Secondly, the vocalizers abstained from erasing this letter
where the vowel-sound thereby suggested is that of A; as they
did not consider it necessary in such sites to insert any vowel-
letter ; whence it has resulted that in the great majority of
instances in which the paragogic He still remains in the text,
it immediately follows the A sound — a circumstance which
has given rise to the erroneous notion that it was always, in
reading out, preceded by that sound. Respecting the use I
assign to this letter, I have further to observe, that it is ana-
logous to that on all sides conceded to the matres lectionis, in
reference to the exertion of thought it required in order to
the attainment of any benefit from its assistance. For a Yod
or a Waw, employed as a vowel-letter, does not directly inform
a reader what vowel it expresses in each place of its occurrence.
He still must consult the context of that place, and the in-
flexion thereby required of the word in which it is inserted,
before he can determine whether it there stands, if the former
letter, for an E or i, or, if the latter, for an 0 or U. But the
paragogic He, by intimating some vowel or other to be wanted
after the last consonant of a word, calls for an exercise of
judgment of just the same kind, though extended through a
wider range of choice. Where, indeed, a mater lectionis has
been substituted, it facilitates this choice, by contracting the
range thereof ; but it still leaves the general nature of the
requisite mental operation exactly the same as before.

Hitherto I have only considered the class of instances in
each of which the vowel-sound intimated by the paragogic He
closes the pronunciation of a regular inflexion of the word
before it or of an affix to that word ; so that, according to the
pointing and modern way of reading the text, the enunciation
of the entire group comes out just the same, whether that letter
form part of it, or not. Thus — to revert to an example already
touched upon — the group fifO must have been pronounced
by an ancient reader, as nearly as we now can approach to the

310 ORIGINAL USE RECOVERED [Chap. IV.

sounds employed by him, NaThaTt*, if the context showed him
that it was used in the first person singular, or NaThaTta, if in
the second person singular masculine ; and if a paragogie He
had been added, then nnro, the group thus increased would
have been read by him, for the same two cases, NaThaTtz'H or
NaThaTtaH, differing from the former readings only by the
addition of a quiescent H, and so, virtually yielding the same
sounds as before. The addition to the original group of the para-
gogie character would have at once excluded the pronunciation
NaThaT, and so far have lessened the trouble of the selection
he had to make ; yet it would not in the slightest degree have
altered either of the combinations of articulate sounds pre-
viously arrived at by the aid of the context alone. But, to
include every case, I must notice another class, though not
referred to in the ensuing course of investigation, in which the
suggested vowel belongs not to any regular inflexion of the
preceding word, or to any affix thereof ; and where, though
the letter in question has no effect on the sound of the sylla-
ble composed of that vowel and the preceding consonant, it
yet, through the intervention of that syllable, perceptibly alters
the sound of the entire group. Thus, for example, "DIN, ' I
will remember,' is in some places of the sacred text written
m^TS, whereby the pronunciation of the group is altered,
according to the present mode of reading it, from HeZKoR to
H'/.KcRaH, and the tonic accent shifted to the addition so made
to it. Here undoubtedly there not only is, but also must
always have been, a change of sound, produced immediately
by the paragogie syllable, and mediately by the paragogie let-
ter which indirectly suggests the vowel part of that syllable.
Yet, tried by the context of the places in which it occurs, the
paragogie He is found in this way of employing it, just as in
the one before examined, to communicate no impressiveness
whatever to the meaning of the word to which it is attached.
The above specified forms of the inflexion of the verb "D? for
the first person Bingular of the future tense occur, both of them,
in the verse of the 77ih Psalm which is translated in our Au-

Chap. IV.] OF THE PARAGOGIC HE. 311

thorized Version as follows : — " I will remember the works of
the Lord ; surely I will remember thy wonders of old." The
simple regular form appears in the first, and the irregularly
augmented form in the second clause of the original verse :
but the act of remembering is not at all more forcibly ex-
pressed in the latter place than in the former, being inter-
preted by the very same words in both places ; and, conse-
quently, if the second clause be the more impressive one, it is
rendered so by the introduction of the adverb and the repeti-
tion of the act referred to, but not in the slightest degree by
the form of the word through which that act is conveyed.
The efficacy, therefore, which is attributed by grammarians to
the letter in question seems to be as untenable in the present
class of cases as in that previously noticed. But, with respect
to the changes of pronunciation occasioned by this letter in the
set of instances now before us, irregular forms of words are
employed in most languages ; and even though we should not
be able to ascertain for what end those here alluded to were
intended, still it is desirable at all events to adhere as nearly
as we can to their original sounds. But for this purpose the
use I assign to the paragogic He was, before the text became
pointed, quite indispensable. In the cases previously consi-
dered, wherein the forms of the words are all regular, the
ancient reader could have arrived, though not without some
additional trouble, at those forms, and, consequently, at the
correct pronunciation of the groups, to which they belong,
through the sole aid of the context ; but in the cases now
brought under consideration he could never have determined
that pronunciation without the further aid of the letter in
question, which thus appears to have been still more wanted
for this service in the latter class of instances than in the for-
mer ; — a service which in those different degrees continued
needful, till the fuller vocalization of the text was effected by
means of the Masoretic points.

As far as this preliminary description is borne out by the
ensuing analysis, it must, I think, be admitted that the para-

312 HALEPH AND HE OFTEN MISTAKEN [Chap. IV.

gogic He, as originally employed, is not to be considered in
strictness as a letter denoting a power of its own, but as a sign
or mark of a different kind, indirectly turning attention to,
and suggesting something quite alien from itself, namely,
the vowel-sound that ought, in the course of reading out, im-
mediately to precede it. The service of this quasi letter having
been more directly and distinctly performed by the matres
lectionis, they, in a great measure, banished it from the text,
and superseded its use ; and this application of it, which
appears to have been entirely put an end to upon the introduc-
tion of the Masoretic points, was most probably soon after lost
sight of, and at all events has long since become quite effaced
from the memory of Hebrew readers. Of course, no one could
now approve of restoring the par agog ic He in the sites from
which it has been erased, or of returning to a mode of reading
which had, in part, to depend on the imperfect aid of the ser-
vice formerly yielded by so indirect a sign ; but still the reco-
vered knowledge of the ancient employment of the character
in that service is not only interesting as a matter of antiquarian
research, but also valuable to the Hebrew student ; as it con-
tributes to account for several mistakes in the text of the
sacred volume, and thereby leads to their correction.

Before entering on the proposed investigation, I must
briefly advert to a second subject, — the frequent interchange
of the letters Haleph and He which is observable in the He-
brew Bible. Many instances of mistakes of this sort in the
sacred text are already well known ; and I here adduce a few
additional examples, to show how much the stock of them
might be increased through a comparison of the Jewish and
Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch. These instances are
taken solely from the Book of Genesis, from which alone more
than double the number might easily be quoted ; and such
only are selected as exhibit a direct opposition between the
two editions in respect to the letters in question, and so render
obvious an erroneous use of them in one or other edition.

Chap. IV.] ONE FOR THE OTHER IN THE TEXT. 313

Genesis, xix. 29,

Jewish Edition.

rosnn

Samaritan Edition.

Authorized Eng. Ver.
the overthrow.

xxiv. 25,
xxv. 15,

provender.

a proper name.

xxxviii. 1,
xli. 13,

a proper name,
he hanged.

xli. 25,

fan

7^M

hath showed.

xliii. 12,

m»»

N3.HW3

an oversight.

xlvi. 21,
xlix. 9,

ma

a proper name,
and as an old lion.

1. 17,

S2N

n:s

I pray thee.a

The numerous instances in which these letters were mis-
taken, one for the other, by the copyists of each edition of the
Pentateuch, in the manner here exemplified, appear to indi-
cate a close similarity of shape formerly subsisting between
them, without which they could hardly have been so often
confounded : and, as the effect is common to both editions,
so in all probability was likewise its cause ; whence it would
further appear that this similarity commenced before the very
remote period when the Samaritan set of copies was derived
from the Jewish one. But this inference admits not of being
confirmed by actual observation ; since the oldest known re-
mains of ancient Hebrew writing are upon coins, and these go
no farther back than the year B. C. 140, when the Jews, under
the government of the Maccabean Simon, first obtained per-
mission from the Greeks to have a coinage of their own.b The

a In the place above specified, the rendering, ' we pray thee,' is required
by the context, instead of ' I pray thee.' But this violation of grammar in
the Authorized English Version does not extend to the original text, in which
the particle of entreaty made use of, S3S, is applicable indifferently to either
number; just in like manner as is in English the single word, ' pray,' ellip-
tically used. Our translators appear to have been led into the mistake here
committed by them, through a desire to avoid tautology ; as they have em-
ployed the expression, ' we pray thee,' in a subsequent part of the same verse,
Avhere the same Hebrew word occurs, in the contracted form S3. But, surely,
they might have effected this object more correctly by introducing a corre-
sponding contraction into their rendering of the passage; namely, by translat-
ing the full particle, ' Ave pray thee," and its abbreviation, 'pray.'

b See 1 Mac. xv. (}.

314 ORIGINAL FORMS OF THE HEBREW AND [Chap. IV.

difficulty, therefore, of distinguishing between the letters
Haleph and He, it is most likely, began several centuries be-
fore the date of the oldest specimens of them now extant ; —
a length of time abundantly sufficient for pointing out the
cause of this evil, and so leading to its gradual diminution.
Still, it is to be noted, that the above letters upon the coins
alluded to approach much nearer to mutual resemblance than
their modern equivalents ; — a fact which accords with the sup-
position that, if we could get them of sufficient age, we should
find them nearly identical in shape. They cannot, however,
be supposed to have been to this degree similar at first, by
those who admit the divine origin of the Hebrew alphabet ;
for a gift from our beneficent Creator, in the state in which it
immediately came from him, could not have had any faults of
a positively injurious kind like that here brought under con-
sideration, though it might, faults of mere defect, such as man
is made capable of removing, and which, accordingly, he has
been left to remove through the exertion of his own faculties.
In order to trace to the original state the two forms of the
Hebrew pronoun of the first person singular, ^K and "O^N, as
also the single Chaldee form of the same person &IJK, I select
the following examples : —

Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition.

Gen. xlii. 2, H3H behold. ^3N I.

Ex. xviii. 6, ^W I. mna behold.

Ex. iii. 13, ^3S I. rDDN I.

Dan. ii. 8, ^DS I. Dan. ii. 23, TON I.

In the first and second of these examples we may perceive
that the groups now written ^N and fUM were at a remote

■ In the Samaritan manuscript which has been printed in Bishop Walton's
Polyglot, the above word is exhibited ^S, the same as in the Jewish edition
of the Hebrew Pentateuch ; but this is the only copy of the Samaritan text
in which Dr. Kenuicott found it so written. In the notes to his edition of

the Bible he has specified fourteen other Samaritan MSS numbered by him

61, 64, 65, 66, 127, 183, 197, 221, 333, 334, 364, 503, 504, 670,— in all of
which the group in question has been preserved nm.

Chap. IV.] CHALDEE PRONOUNS OF 1st PER. SING. 315

period confounded with each other ; for which, as far as re-
spects their initial elements, one can easily account by the
close similarity that formerly subsisted between the shapes of
these letters ; but not by any possibility in respect to their
terminations, unless it be conceded that the former group
was, before its vocalization, written PIJK. The original state
of the form of this Hebrew pronoun is more directly laid be-
fore us in the third example, wherein the group vocalized
"OJK in the Jewish edition of the text, was overlooked in the
very same spot of the Samaritan edition, and left in its primi-
tive state, PDJtf. It thus turns out that both forms were at
first ended with a paragogic He, which (as soon as distinct
conceptions were obtained of the component parts of syllables)
served in these examples indirectly to suggest the vowel I;
and that the vocalizers, having in compliance with this sugges-
tion inserted a Yod directly to denote this vowel, erased the
paragogic sign whose service after each form of the pronoun was
so much better effected by means of the introduced mater lec-
tionis. In like manner the fourth example shows that the Chal-
dee form of this pronoun ^3N, HaNA, was originally written
PUK, and read H«NaH ; as also that the paragogic termination
of the older form, which served indirectly to suggest the
vowel-sound A, was erased by the vocalizers, as soon as they
had more distinctly represented that sound by means of an
Haleph.

The first example is extracted from an observation of
Jacob to his sons, the introductory part of which is written,
in the Jewish edition of the Pentateuch, \TU/E£> HJH, 'Behold,
I have heard,' but in the Samaritan edition ^tfI2& ^^, 'I my-
self have heard.' Some degree of emphasis is attached to the
latter exhibition of this part of his speech, by the repetition of
the pronoun (which is given first separately, and then in a
connected state at the close of the inflexion of the verb) ; but
its former representation evidently agrees much better with
the context ; and is, besides, supported by both the Septua-
gint and the Peshitah. Here, then, the Jewish reading of the

316 ORIGINAL FORMS OF THE HEBREW AND [Chap. IV.

initial word must be deemed correct, and the Samaritan one
be consequently rejected. On the contrary, in the second
example, the Samaritan reading is the true one, and that
adopted by the Jews fallacious ; as can be shown by a
very powerful combination of external and internal evidence.
To make this plain to the reader, I commence with laying be-
fore him the Jewish and Samaritan readings of the Hebrew
clause which contains the disputed word ; also the Greek and
Syriac translations of this clause ; and the literal meanings of
the four lines subjoined to them respectively : —

Hebrew, — «T^ ^ ^ l:r,n ^ <nj^ ^ "'^l

And he said to Moses, I thy father-in-law Yithro am
coming unto thee, —

Samaritan, — flh* K3 ruV l^Tin pX) Jivfch 1DW)

And it was told to Moses, Behold, thy father-in-law Yithro
is coming unto thee, —

Greek, ' AvijyyeKi-j ce Mwuffj/, XeyovTesf Idov 6 yafxfipos gov

loOop Trapaylverai 7rpos ae, —

And it was told to Moses, saying, Behold, thy father-in-law
lothor is coming unto thee, —

Syriac, — y.Lo^ )L) <p5A_» ^oV>^> "jcn? /UoV>\ £dUlo

And it was told to Moses, that behold, thy father-in-law
Yithron is coming unto thee, —

The various pronunciations here exhibited of the name of
the father-in-law of Moses, lothor, Yithro, and Yithron, have
been already canvassed, and the discrepancies between them

a The false concord in the above Greek sentence is avoided in three MSS. —
numbered, in the notes to Holmes's edition of the Septuagint, 53, 58, 72 —
wherein the first word is written avq^eiXav. The irregularity of the re-
ceived reading may, in a great measure, be accounted for by the discovery
unfolded in this volume. Before the original text was vocalized, the initial
group of the corresponding Hebrew sentence could have been read in either
the singular or plural number, and must have been taken in the latter num-

Chap. IV.] CHALDEE PRONOUNS OF 1st PER. SING. 317

accounted for, in a preceding chapter. But, with respect to
the main point for which these lines are at present adduced,
it will be seen, upon a comparison of the last three, that the
reading of the word under examination, lUH, 'behold,' is sup-
ported, and consequently the other, *^N, ' I,' rejected, by the
so far perfectly concurrent, though quite independent attes-
tations of the Samaritan, the Greek, and the Syriac records :
and, besides this powerful evidence against the latter reading,
its correctness is further disproved even by the sole conside-
ration of the context. For as, on the one hand, it was very
natural for messengers to specify the name and quality of a
person whose approach they were announcing, and to state
that he was coming, while he was yet on the way ; so, on the
other, it is wholly unaccountable that Jethro, when arrived in
the presence of his son-in-law (after a separation of scarcely
more than a year following the space of forty that they lived
together), should think it necessary to tell his name, or how
he was related to the Prophet, and that he should say he was
' coming,' after his actual arrival. In our Authorized Version,
indeed, &2 is construed, 'am come ;' but, to justify this tense of
the English verb, the Hebrew one should have been put in the
inflexion ^DN3. The corruption, however, of the Jewish read-
ing of the Hebrew line is even still more clearly evinced by
comparing its drift with that of the next verse : — " And Moses
went out to meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and
kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they
came into the tent." — Exod. xviii. 7. According to the repre-
sentation of the matter produced by combining the contents
of the two verses, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law,

ber, by those who connected Ae'701/Tes with their translation of it. The mean-
ings, however, are perfectly equivalent of the two expressions, ' they' (that
is, some persons) ' announced to Moses,' and 'it was announced to Moses;' and
if, in consequence, the rendering of the Hebrew verb came to be dvy<y^et\av
in only some copies of the Septuagint, and avrj<y<ye\r] in others, the supplemen-
tary word Xt^ovTcs, which was consistently used in the former set, may,
through the ignorance of copyists, have been transcribed into the latter.

318 ORIGINAL FORMS OF THE HEBREW AND [Chap.IV.

and had his first interview with Jethro just after this same
Jethro had already been speaking to him ! So preposterous a
statement, surely, could not have issued from the pen of the
inspired historian. As long, indeed, as the matres lectionis
were thought to be original elements of the sacred text, the
pious reader hesitated to question their authority, or to trust
his judgment in too closely sifting their correctness; but, now
that they have been shown to be the interpolations of fallible,
uninspired men, they must be considered as forming merely a
human commentary on the text of the Bible ; — a highly use-
ful one, I admit, but still not to be implicitly relied on in every
instance, and especially not in such as that before us, where
the colouring given to the original clause is utterly at variance
both with the internal evidence of the case and with the una-
nimous testimony of the Samaritan editors, and the Greek
and Syriac translators of that passage. In the first, then, of
the above quoted lines, the word under examination should be

o o

written, according to my notation, ^[TflJCrtlN ; or, on account
of the double correction, it would perhaps be better to restore
nil in the text, and to remove 'OK to the margin. Moreover,
the name of the father-in-law of Moses should be exhibited
with a mark of censure over its final element, 11TV. Besides
these corrections no further one is required in an unpointed
text ; since the initial group, "l£Nvl, can be read WaYyeKaMeR,
' and it was said (or told),' just as well as WaYyoHMeR, 'and he
said.' In fine, the English translation of the examined clause,
no more altered from that given in our Authorized Version
than is absolutely necessary, will come out as follows : " And
it was told to Moses, Behold, thy father-in-law Yothor is com-
ing unto thee."

I have already remarked in the second chapter, that in a
fragment of Aquila's translation of the verse immediately be-
fore the clause above examined, his transcription of the name
of the father-in-law of Moses is preserved leOpw. This single
instance of agreement, as to the main part of the expressed
sound, with the present state of the sacred text wherein the

Chap. IV.] CHALDEE PRONOUNS OF 1st PER. SING. 319

same name is now written T)TV, does not, I grant, afford
sufficient ground for concluding that he made his version
from a vocalized copy of that text ; because there are some
well-ascertained cases of the Jews having adopted fallacious
pronunciations of the vocal part of Scriptural names, before
they were enabled to give stability to those misrepresentations
through the introduction of vowel-letters into the writing of
the Hebrew Bible. But there are several more examples pre-
served of his accordance in sound or sense with the vocalized
text, and of his consequent deviation from the Septuagint,
quite enough to render it evident that he must have made use
of a vocalized copy ; and it was most probably eagerness to
have such a copy in readiness to place within his reach that
was one of the chief causes of the great precipitation with
which the old vocalizers appear to have executed their task.
To this precipitation must be attributed their overlooking the
gross perversion of sense produced by changing tl2H in the
above clause into ^K, — a perversion which, combined with
others of the same kind, was calculated in the most efficacious
manner to lead eventually to the detection of their fraudulent
treatment of the sacred text. But the Jewish priests must
before long have perceived the blunders thus committed by
the scribes in their employment, as well as the peril of expo-
sure thence resulting ; and in the hundred years that inter-
vened between Aquila and Origen there was abundance of
time to get rid of this danger, before they allowed the ortho-
dox Christians to recover possession of the Hebrew Bible.
But, upon turning attention to the subject after we are once
put upon the scent, the fact stares us full in the face, that, not-
withstanding all their sagacity and cunning, they actually failed
to avail themselves of this opportunity of effecting the object
theymust have had nearest to their heart ; — a fact which places
in so strong a light the interposition of the Deity for the pro-
tection, through natural means, of his Holy Word, that I can-
not forbear noticing it by the way, though I must leave this,
and its more immediate cause, together with some other points,

2 a

320 ORIGINAL FORMS OF WHOLE HEBREW [Chap. IV.

for fuller consideration in another volume, if a gracious Pro-
vidence should grant me life and health sufficient to add a
brief supplement to this treatise.

I have not met with the integral Hebrew pronoun of the
first person plural in its primitive state ; but an oversight of
the Jewish vocalizers, corrected by the Samaritan scribes, brings
to light the original form of the part of this pronoun used as
an affix ; whence may be deduced the corresponding form of
the unmutilated integer. The discrepancy to which I allude,
between the two editions of the Pentateuch, is as follows : —

Exod. i. 10.

Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition.

TOH-ipn, TYQReHNaH. ^Sipn, TeQRaHeNU, or TYQRaHeNnU.

The pronunciation subjoined to the Jewish exhibition of the
group here referred to is that conveyed by its actual Masoretic
pointing, according to which it has the signification, 'there
happeneth, or may, or shall happen.' On the other hand, the
pronunciations annexed to the Samaritan exhibition of this
group are yielded by pointings of the same system that might
be applied to it, and serve, each of them, to denote, ' there
happeneth (or may, or shall happen) unto us ;' but the former
is preferable, as it is free from ambiguity, while the latter bears
a second signification, — ' there happeneth (or may, or shall
happen) unto him,' — which is excluded from the specified
place by the context.* On the one side, then, we find this
group overlooked by the Jewish scribes, and left in its original
st ;itc, with its final syllable written PU, while, on the other, we

■ The reader is requested to bear in mind that I do not claim for the
Masoretic system of pointing the credit of preserving exactly the ancient
Jewish pronunciation of Hebrew, but merely that of supplying us, when it
is correctly used, with the means of ascertaining the sense of the Hebrew text,
which is all that is absolutely requisite for us to know respecting it; and the
same remark equally warrants the application of this system in like manner
to the old Samaritan pronunciation of the language and extant edition of that
text.

Chap. IV.] PRONOUN AND AFFIX OF 1st PER. PLUR. 321

may perceive, it was vocalized by the Samaritan scribes so as
to change that syllable into 13, which, whether it was in its
enunciation connected with the preceding verb by means of
the sound e or en, was itself pronounced NU, and signified 'us.'
As, then, the fragment PU was in the last chapter proved to be
the primitive form of the affix of the third person singular
after an epenthetic Nun, so from the comparison here made
it results that the same fragment presents to us also the affix of
the first person plural in its original state ; and this conse-
quence is valid, whether the Samaritans were right or not in
the meaning which, their vocalization shows, they attached
to the entire group ; as they could not here have vocalized it
for this meaning, unless it admitted in the abstract of such
vocalization. They were, however, perfectly warranted in the
alteration here made by them ; and as this point needs but a
short discussion, and leads to a requisite correction of both
the Hebrew text and the English version, I shall state the
grounds on which it rests. Let us, then, look to the clause
containing the above group, which, with the exception of the
final letter of that group, is the same in both editions, and
written in the Jewish edition \1DTV772 H2tXlpr\ "p. This line
is in our Authorized Version rendered, in accordance with its
Masoretic pointing, " when there falleth out any war ;" which,
altered no further than is necessary to suit it to the Samaritan
reading of the middle group, comes out as follows, — ' when
there falleth out unto us any war.' The latter translation far
better agrees with the context ; since the Egyptian king is
described, in the place referred to, as speaking not at all of the
occurrence of wars in general, but of the chance of one assail-
ing his own people, the persons whom he was then addressing.
But there is a still more cogent reason for preferring the Sama-
ritan line, namely, that it is strictly grammatical, while, on the
contrary, the Jewish one, as pointed by the Masorets, betrays
a gross violation of concord, the verb being, according to that
pointing, in the plural number, though the noun immediately
after it, by which it ought to be governed, is in the singular. Now

2 a 2

322 ORIGINAL FORMS OF WHOLE HEBREW [Chap. IV.

I admit there are some grammatic irregularities in the sacred
text, — a work composed long before rules of grammar were
ever thought of, — but those irregularities are much fewer than
they would at first blush appear to be. Thus, for example,
the false concord before us belongs not to the original writing
of the above line, but solely to the Masoretic pointing of the
principal group in that line : it cannot even be traced as far
back as the first vocalizers, who may have read that group
correctly TiQRaHeNwH, with its verb in the singular number
followed by an affix, and most probably did so read it, as there
is no reason to suppose them inferior to the Samaritan scribes
in knowledge of the sacred language. Their omitting, therefore,
to insert therein the vowel-letter that would have excluded the
violation of grammar in question, is in fairness to be attributed
to mere oversight, occasioned by their having been previously
in the habit of reading the Hebrew text without the help of any
vowel-signs. At the same time, the blunder here committed
by the Masorets is to be ascribed to ignorance on their part,
not of the original language of the Bible, but of the nature of
the matres lectionis, which they erroneously looked upon as
genuine elements of the writing of the inspired volume, and
in consequence paid too much deference to the absence of the
one omitted in this place. No argument, therefore, against
the internal evidence of the case can be drawn from the treat-
ment of the group in question by either set of vocalizers ;
while, on the other hand, this evidence is corroborated by a
most powerful weight of testimony ; as the Samaritan voca-
lization of the clause under examination is fully sustained by
its oldest Greek and Syriac translations, which are as fol-
lows : —

Septuagint, i/vUa av ov/nflf} y/J.tv 7roAe/xo9, —

When there may happen unto us war, —

Peshitah, -te^o ^4^> ]lnX?

Lest by chance there should happen unto us war, —

Chap. IV.] PRONOUN AND AFFIX OF 1st PER. PLUR. 323

Upon this example I have only further to observe, that
after the Samaritan scribes had here inserted the mater lec-
tionis, to the want of which, as required by the context, atten-
tion was loosely pointed by the paragogic He, they, in confor-
mity with the invariable practice of both sets of old vocalizers
in such cases, erased the letter whose service was more effec-
tually performed by the introduced one ; so that, had not the
Jewish set overlooked the group just analyzed, Ave should
now have no direct evidence that it was originally terminated
with a paragogic element. To remove the present defect of
this group, as exhibited in the Jewish copies of the Penta-
teuch^ it should, I conceive, be written in an amended edition
of the sacred text, HDOafcOpfi ; and in the English translation
of the verse, the supplementary expression, ' unto us,' should
be inserted immediately after the words ' falleth out ;' or per-
haps it would be better to render anew the entire clause thus :
" when a war may befall us."

The group iia having now been proved the original form
of 12, the final part of the Hebrew pronoun of the first person
plural used as an affix, it will be seen that, if the initial part of
this pronoun, which remains still un vocalized, and consequently
has undergone no change, be added on both sides, Plana K must
upon the same ground be the original form of the integer

farm

As naK has been shown to be the original form of ^, the
Hebrew pronoun of the first person singular, it follows that
Jl and Ha must be those respectively of ^ and ^a, the parts of
this pronoun used as affixes. But this inference can be arrived

a Before the text was vocalized, the above group was ambiguous, and could
be read in accordance with the representation given of it in either the Jewish
or the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch; but after the introduction of
vowel-letters into the sacred record, this group could not be read according
to its Samaritan exhibition without the insertion of a Waw in its last syllable.
In a pointed text, indeed, the defect might be supplied by means of a Qibbus,
but in an unpointed one due correction can be made only in the way above
recommended.

324 OLDER FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUN [Chap. IV.

at independently of what has been already proved on the sub-
ject, through the sole consideration of the affixes themselves,
as differently treated in the same passages of the two editions
of the sacred text, or in different passages of the same edition.
Thus, in order to ascertain the original state of \ the present
form of the affix of this person, after nouns and prepositions,
let us look to the following example : —

Gen. xliv. 32.

Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition.

^nS, HaBI, ' my father.' «fQH, HaBIV, ' his father.'

The passage of the original text in which this discrepance
occurs is translated in the Authorized English Version, in
accordance with its Jewish vocalization, as follows : — " For
thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying,
If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to
my father for ever." In the beginning of this verse, Judah,
speaking of himself to Joseph in the third person, ought of
course to have said ' his father,' whether he used the posses-
sive pronoun in reference to himself, ' thy servant,' or to the
more immediate antecedent, ' the lad ;' though he correctly
employed the expression ' my father' in the latter part of the
same verse, because he was there telling what he had said in
the first person. The mere context, therefore, is quite sufficient
to decide the question here at issue between the two sets of
old vocalizers in favour of the Samaritan set.a Accordingly,
the compound expression *QK, on its first occurrence in the
specified verse of the Hebrew text, as vocalized by the Jewish
scribes, ought in an amended edition thereof to be written

a The older Greek and Syriac versions afford no assistance in the determi-
nation of the above point; as the group in question is rendered in one of them
lov mvrpof, ' the lather'' (whence it would appear to have been written simply
3S without any addition in the copies consulted by the Seventy), and is con-
strued in the other ^Q_oj, ' our father,' a rendering which can scarcely be ac-
counted for, except by some corruption either of the Syriac version, or of the
copies of the original from which it was derived.

Chap. IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 325

COON ; and the possessive pronoun, ' my,' should be changed
into ' his,' in the corresponding place of the English translation
of this verse.

In reference, however, to the more immediate subject of
my inquiry, it is wholly immaterial which set of vocalizers
were in this instance right. From what has been already ex-
plained in the preceding chapter respecting the analogous
form T'D, it is plain that the original state of the group here
vocalized by the Samaritan scribes lOK was PQN, which was
read HaB»H« before its vocalization, and afterwards succes-
sively, for the reasons stated in the previous case just referred
to, HABI-U, HaBIW, and finally HaBIV. The original group,
then, which the Jewish scribes here transformed into 'ON, turns
out to have been PQK ; their vocalization of which shows that
they read it H0B1H, and that, having inserted therein a Yod,
in conformity with the suggestion of the final letter which they
looked upon as a paragogic element, they then dropped this
element, its service being more efficiently performed by the
introduced mater lectionis. But, whether they were right or
not, in taking the He at the end of this group for an indirect
indication of the sound of the pronoun possessive of the first
person singular, it evidently must have been employed to con-
vey this intimation in other parts of the sacred text, or they
could not have assigned to it such a use in this place. Hence
it results that, in the primitive state of the Hebrew text, the
letter Re, employed as a pronominal affix at the end of a group,
was ambiguous, and served to denote, according to the de-
mands of the context, either the third, or, less directly, the
first person, it being derived in the former case from an intrin-
sic element of NH, H?<H, and in the latter form a paragogic ele-
ment of H3N, HaN«'H. Between the ways in which the old
vocalizers treated the two affixes, this difference is to be ob-
served, that they frequently retained the original affix of the
third person singular masculine along with the Waw intro-
duced to distinguish its gender ; whence the probability is that
they would have always, or at least much oftener, so retained

320 OLDER FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUN [Chap. IV.

it, if not prevented by want of room : but there is not, as far
as I can find, any instance of their having suffered to remain
in the text, along with the introduced Yod, the more ancient
affix of the first person singular ; which, consequently, they
must have voluntarily removed, as one cannot suppose that
there was not occasionally room for both letters in the voca-
lized text, if they had wished to retain this one. But there is
an obvious " reason for the difference here pointed out : not
only was the Yod a more direct and definite sign than the pa-
ragogic He of the vowel to be in this case pronounced, but also
it would have been quite superfluous to have kept together in
the text two different signs of one and the same vocal sound ;
and besides, it is to be considered that the redundancyproduced
by the retention of the second sign would have seriously en-
dangered the preservation of the secret of the old vocalizers,
and have had a strong tendency to lead to the exposure of the
interpolation of the matres lectionis in the writing of the He-
brew Bible.

As the affix Yod is at present read after nouns plural, by
the utterance of the diphthong AI instead of the vowel /; it
may be as well to exemplify a case of this kind also, whether
the distinction thus indicated did, or did not, always exist in
the pronunciation of the sacred language. Now the circum-
stance of the preposition 7tf taking the form of a plural noun
before affixes gives me an opportunity of bringing such a case
under notice, through the comparison of a clause of a prophecy
of Zachariah which contains this preposition, followed by Yod,
with the translation thereof in the Gospel of St. John. The
two passages here referred to, with their literal interpretations
subjoined to them respectively, stand thus: —

Zech. xii. 10, —Mpi "IB>K TIN *b$ 1CD*Om

'and they shall surely look upon me, the very one whom
they pierced, — '

John,xix. 37, o^rovrai ek ov e^e/cevTrjaav.

' they shall look on him whom they pierced.'

Chap.IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 327

There is no difference between these lines, in the substance of
their respective meanings, further than except that between
vtf and its translation, which, it now turns out, was occa-
sioned by the ambiguities of the Hebrew group as originally
written. From what has been already explained upon the
subject in the preceding chapter, it will be seen that, as St.
John applied to this group an interpretation signifying ' on
him,' its form in his time must have been iT7N, which he read
HaLeHw, ' on him,' and which the vocalizers of the second cen-
tury, if they had read and understood it in the same way,
would have put in the form TvK. But from their actual
vocalization of the original form PI7tf, we may perceive that
they read it HeLm'H, 'upon me,' and that, after having inserted
therein a Yod to denote the diphthong A I, they dropped its
final element, which they conceived to be a paragogic He, and
to have less directly suggested the same diphthong. This
exposition of the matter is, I conceive, sufficient to account for
the discrepance at present subsisting between the compared
lines, without entering into any inquiry whether H7K has been
rightly vocalized, or not, in the Hebrew line. The latter
question, however, I should add, is set quite at rest by St.
John's construction of the clause ; and, even independently of
his authority, the incorrectness of the vocalization adopted in
this instance is proved by its violation of the context ; for, in
consequence of the meaning, ' upon me,' thus given to the
above group, the English translation of the sentence is deprived
of any antecedent to which we could refer the pronoun in the
expression ' for him,' which twice occurs in the subsequent
part of the verse.

The translations of the Hebrew line in the Septuagint and
Peshitah, though here of little use, are in themselves interest-
ing. After annexing to each of them a literal interpretation,
they are presented to observation as follows : —

328 OLDER FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUN [Chap. IV.

Septuayint, tad t7Tifi\e^rovTai irpos /xt, avff wv Karwp^ijaavTO' —

' and they shall look to me, on account of what they have
insulted; — '

Peshitah, — :o;_o>j ^V?n ^Lo\ ^ojo^jo

' and they shall look to me through (or in) him whom
they pierced.'

The copy, or copies, of the Hebrew text consulted by the
Seventy Jews must evidently have been here inaccurate. A
part of the error of their translation of the clause is accounted
for by the very similar appearance, in Hebrew writing, of the
verbs IpT, ' to pierce,' and *Tp"), ' to mock in the mode of danc-
ing,' or ' to insult.' But neither is there anything in the rest
of the clause, as it stands at present, which, when put in its
original state, could have driven those translators to a viola-
tion of the context, the same as that committed by the first set
of vocalizers ; nor does the particle iHtf admit of the interpreta-
tion clvti, ' on account of.' For both these reasons it would seem
that there was some further inaccuracy in the Hebrew line, as
written in their copies, besides the interchange of similar let-
ters in its final group. The Syriac rendering of the same line
yields good sense, and avoids any violation of the context ;
but it is open to the objection of assigning to the particle flN
a meaning (viz. ' through,' or 'in,') which, in like manner as
that attached thereto in the Greek version, is found nowhere
else applied to it in the sacred text. Happily, the aid of those
versions can, in the present case, be dispensed with, in conse-
quence of the information transmitted to us upon the point in
question by St. John. Fully warranted by the authority due
to his interpretation of the adduced Hebrew line, I would
recommend the alteration of the group ^K into nrttf, in an
amended edition of the sacred text, and the substitution of
the pronoun 'him' for 'me,' in the English translation of the
line. The reader will bear in mind that by this alteration no
change whatever is made of any of the original elements of
the Hebrew text, but merely a correction introduced into the

Chap.IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 329

mode of reading a group containing two of those elements, —
a group to which the first set of vocalizers are clearly proved
by indisputable authority to have attached an erroneous sense,
and in consequence an incorrect pronunciation.

The final part of the verse, which includes the clause just
examined, affords by the way an opportunity of illustrating
the usefulness of the present discovery by an example, which
it may be worth while here to bring under notice. The ren-
dering of this part of our Authorized Version is as follows : —
" And they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only
son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitter-
ness for his first born." This translation is in substance cor-
rect, according to a mode of reading the original elements of
the Hebrew passage which, it now appears, they clearly admit
of, but not at all according to that to which their treatment by
both sets of vocalizers has confined them. The original of the
expression, 'and they shall mourn,' is correctly exhibited in the
Hebrew text ITSDl, WeSaPheDU, with its verb in the third per-
son plural of the prophetic future (that is, of the preterite sub-
stituted for the future, to indicate the certainty of the fulfilment
of the prediction) of the active voice of this verb in its simplest
form. In like manner the original of the expression, ' and (they )
shall be in bitterness,' which was overlooked by the first voca-
lizers, and left in its original state 1^/11, ought to be read for
this signification of it, which the context indispensably requires,
WeHuMaRu, with its verb in the third person plural of the pro-
phetic future of the passive voice of the causative modifica-
tion of "HE, ' to be bitter ;' and, no doubt, it was so read by
the first vocalizers. But they having been accustomed to read
the group in this manner, without the help of any vowel-
letters, overlooked in their haste the circumstance that, after
the introduction of matres lectionis into the sacred text, men
would not any longer attach to this group its correct pronun-
ciation arid sense without the insertion of one Warn in its
second, and another in its fourth syllable. This oversight of
the first set of vocalizers the second set might have remedied

330 OLDER FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUN [Chap. IV.

by means of their Qibbus ; but, referring the omission of the
two Waws to the inspired writer of the prophecy, they dreaded
to deviate from such high authority, and in consequence
pointed the group for the reading WeHaMeR, ' and to embitter ;'
thus sacrificing the sense of the passage to what they con-
ceived to be strict adherence to the original form of expres-
sion, and passing over the consideration that the meaning of
this form is here utterly excluded by the context. The sub-
stitution in this place of the infinitive mood for a definite
inflexion of the verb is defended on the ground of its being
an idiom of frequent occurrence in the Hebrew record ; and,
undoubtedly, such anomalies are sometimes to be met with in
the sacred text in its present state ; — anomalies which gram-
marians have hitherto attributed to the inspired writers, because
unable otherwise to account for them; but which, it now
turns out, are not at all to be laid to the fault of those writers,
but ascribed to the giddiness of the first set of vocalizers of
the Hebrew Scriptures, and to the great precipitation with
which they executed their task. Let us, however, for a
moment suppose the received explanation of the subject in
this instance correct, and that Zachariah really wrote the above
verb in the infinitive mood, though he intended it to be un-
derstood in the sense of the third person plural of the prophe-
tic future tense ; yet even this monstrous concession will not
suffice to remove all the difficulties of the case. For the irre-
gularity still remains of the verb being read in the active voice
of the causative modification, in consequence of which it yields
a meaning quite at variance with that which the prophet
intended it to convey; as what he predicted was evidently,
not that the Jews should embitter the lives of others with
grief, but that they should have their own lives so embittered, —
not that they should inflict, but that they should suffer the
bitterness of grief. The framers of our Authorized Version
were certainly here placed in a very embarrassing situation ;
as they were compelled to deviate, either from the true mean-
ing of* the prophecy, or from what they conceived to be the

Chap. IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 331

true reading of the passage which contains it. This dilemma
is now removed ; and what must be abandoned, for the sake
of adhering to the sense of the prediction, is now found to be,
not the true reading of the examined group, but a false read-
ing of it, occasioned by an oversight of the first set of vocalizers,
and the ignorance, on the part of the second set, of the real
nature of the first vocalization of the Bible. This group, I
submit, should be written in an amended edition of the sacred
text WlftEUm ; but its translation in our Authorized Version
requires no alteration. Part of the same observations may be
applied to the group "IDH^ in the same sentence, which is
pointed by the Masorets for the reading KeHaMeR, ' like the
embittering,' or ' like the inflicting of bitter grief ;' where the
verb above analyzed appears a second time in the sentence.
The inflexion of this verb is here in one respect correctly
given, as the infinitive mood is sometimes employed in Hebrew
as a noun ; but it is exhibited in a wrong voice, as can be
shown in the same way as in the previous instance. The whole
group should, therefore, be read KeH^MaR, ' like the being
embittered,' or ' like the bitter grief endured ;' and for this
reading and sense it should be written in an amended edition
of the Hebrew text, lOnirD. The interpretation of this
group in our version is substantially correct ; though, per-
haps, the Hebrew form of expression might be here more
closely adhered to, without any injury to the language of the
translation.

In order to trace *£, the fuller form of the affix of the first
person singular (which, according to the nature of the word
it follows, is read NI, aNI, or eNl) to its original state H3} I
select an example supplied by two different exhibitions of
the last group of a verse of an inspired Song of David, trans-
mitted to us in two copies of this poem, which occupy the
twenty-second chapter of the second book of Samuel, and the
eighteenth Psalm. The two representations of the Hebrew
verse terminated by the varied group in question, with their
authorized English translations subjoined to them respectively.

332 FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUNS [Chap. IV.

and with a second authorized rendering also added in the case
of that which has two, stand as follows : —

2 Sam. xxii. 23, J13JDD TON tih .TOpHl ; '•"uA T»BatPD ^ "O

. ( "For all his judgments were before me; and

-„.„"} as for his statutes, I did not depart from
sion at Bible, ) _ J ,, r

J ' ( them."

Ps. xviii. 22, .^D. TDK ^ TOplTI ^TlA ^C02^Q ta ^

Authorized Ver- ( "For all his judgments were before me ; and

swm (9/ 2?&fe, ' I did not put away his statutes from me."

/ " For I have an eye unto all his laws ; and
/ '/ < lyer-bookj J will not cast out his commandments from
' me."

Exclusively of the consideration of the two groups here ad-
duced for discussion, the entire of the two lines to which they
belong, as well as the entire of the two copies of David's
poem, from which those lines have been extracted, are espe-
cially deserving of the Hebrew student's attention ; not only
with respect to the particular branch of the inquiry now
before us, but also in reference to the general subject of the
spurious nature of the matres lectionis in the sacred text.
They are so much so, indeed, that if he compare with diligence
and an unprejudiced mind all their corresponding ingredients
respectively, the investigation, confined even within those
limits, will, I have no hesitation to assert, be quite sufficient
to convince him of the reality of my discovery. In this in-
quiry he will be considerably assisted by the Table which, in
pages 596-7 of the first volume of Kennicott's Hebrew Bible,
is given of the specified portions of Scripture, compared verse
by verse with each other ; particularly, if he attach some mark
to the vowel-letters to distinguish them to the eye from the
other elements of the text. This Table he will now find doubly
interesting ; since lie will be able, as he goes step by step along,
to shift to the vocalizers a great number of discrepancies which
Kennicotl attributed to injuries of time or faults of transcrip-

Chap. IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 333

tion ; and he will be aided in correcting the erroneous part
of the work of those scribes by a collation of the corresponding
verses. This operation, if here undertaken, would draw me off
too much from the particular investigation on which I am now
going to enter ; but I may, perhaps, find room for it in a subse-
quent volume, and at any rate I will at the end of this chapter
discuss some of the points which the comparison in question
suggests ; while I for the present confine myself to briefly
touching upon those more immediately connected with the
quoted Hebrew lines, just as far as is necessary for introducing
the examination of their final groups.

Upon a comparison of these lines, it will be seen that they
differ merely in their vocalization, with the sole exception of
a variation produced by the loss of a single letter dropped
from the commencement of the final group of the under line
— a loss which does not occasion the slightest alteration of
meaning, as ^2D and ^2DD are perfectly equivalent. With
respect to the two English translations of the under line,
although that taken from our Prayer-book is in other respects
less exact, it is in reference to the choice of tenses by much
the better one ; as I hope to be able to show at the end of
this chapter. The upper line may be correctly translated as
follows : — " For all his judgments are before me ; and as for
his statutes, I will not depart from any of them."a The last
part of this line is rendered literally, ' I will not depart from
her :' wherein the pronoun is read in the same gender as the
Hebrew noun for ' statutes ;' but in a different number, to
intimate (through the use of a Hebrew idiom which occurs
sometimes, though not by any means as often as is generally

a The above declaration can with truth be applied only to the prospective
intentions of the author at the time when he wrote this poem, and not to the
actual course of his external conduct. The Hebrew verb, therefore, with
which this declaration is made, although the inflexion in which it is exhibited
admits in the abstract of a reference to either the future or the present, is yet
here restricted to the former acceptation, and must be translated in the future
tense.

334 OLDER FORMS OF PARTS OF PRONOUN [Chap.IV.

supposed, in the sacred text) that it is to be here understood
as taken in a distributive sense. The altered vocalization of
the verbal inflexion "IDN in the under line is occasioned merely
by the altered meaning of the final group in that line ; for
after this group was made to signify ' from me,' the combina-
tion of the same expression of the verb with the altered pro-
noun— ' I will not depart from me,' — was no longer intelligible.
To restore, then, the coherence of the parts of this declaration,
it became necessary to shift the specified inflexion of the verb
from a neutral to a transitive sense, and read it in what is
technically called its Hiphil, instead of its Kal modification,
with the pronunciation HaS*'R instead of HaSwR, and with a
corresponding change of the vowel-letter inserted therein.
The vocalization, then, of this verb depends on the treatment
of the final group ; and, consequently, it remains still to be
inquired, which of the modes of dealing therewith, adopted by
the first set of vocalizers, is the correct one. But the discus-
sion of this question is postponed to the end of the chapter ;
as its decision is not here wanted, and I wish to disembarrass
of every unnecessary difficulty the investigation which I now
proceed to lay before the reader.

As the final group in question, according to the represen-
tation given of it in the upper line, is referred to a noun of the
feminine gender, it was there read M/MmeNnaH, in consequence
of which it escaped all tampering of the first set of vocalizers
in that place. The original form, therefore, of this group was
H212D ; and from the treatment thereof in the under line it is
evident that the same set of scribes there read it MiMmeNm'H,
i from me,' and that they substituted a Yod for the final He,
which they in the latter case looked upon as a paragogic ele-
ment. But as the pronunciation of the letter of JV power is
doubled in this way of reading the original group, and only
the first Arcan be referred to the preposition, the second must
belong to the affix, of which, consequently, the fuller form
after this preposition was PI3, N*H, that is, the entire final
syllable of the pronoun of the first person singular, which was

Chap.IV.] OF FIRST PER. SING. USED AS AFFIXES. 335

originally written H2N and pronounced HaNz'H. No inference,
however, can, in like manner, be drawn from the former way
of reading the same group ; because the duplication in that
case of the letter of JST power is arbitrarily made from mere
fancy, and is what the grammarians call euphonic — an epithet
technically applied by them to all pointings for which no satis-
factory reason can be assigned. Here it may be worth observ-
ing that, when the He subjoined to the above preposition was
thought to signify the third person feminine, it was constantly
retained as an essential element of the pronoun NH, and even
when the same original group TM12D was read M2MmeNH«, 'from
him,' and in consequence vocalized 13DD, the disappearance
of the He was compensated for by the doubled pronunciation
of the Nun. But whenever the vocalizers read this group
MiMmeNntH, ' from me,' they uniformly expunged without any
compensation the paragogic element of its affix, upon their
inserting therein a Yod ; and they obviously did so, to avoid
the awkwardness of leaving in the sacred text two different
signs for one and the same vocal sound. This analysis serves
to prove that the group HJOD originally admitted, among
other pronunciations, of being uttered MiMmeNm'H, ' from me,'
whether the old vocalizers were right, or not, in applying this
utterance and a conformable vocalization to it at the end of
the under line. For, unless it was in the abstract readable
with this sound and sense, they could not have so read it in
the specified place.

Two opportunities of illustrating the original ambiguity of
the affix H after nouns are afforded by the passage of Scripture
which, in our Authorized Version, is thus translated : — "When
Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them :
they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burnt incense to graven
images. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their
arms." — Hos. xi. 1-3. The Hebrew of the first verse of this
passage, with the final group restored to its original state, for
a reason that shall be presently explained, should be written,

2b

336 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF //£ AFFIXED [Chap.IV.

I conceive, in an amended edition of the sacred text, as fol-
lows : —

A mark is placed over the final group referring to the margin,
where it is written in the manner in which it is exhibited in the
present state of the sacred text ; and in like manner another
mark is placed over a restored letter of Israel's name referring
to one in the margin which is now erroneously substituted for
it in Hebrew writing, but not in the Syriac of the Peshitah,
wherein the proper sibilant of this word is still retained. A
blank space is left between the second and third groups of this
line, to intimate, not any chasm produced by loss of original
elements, but an ellipsis in the sentence attributable to the style
of the author, which it is of importance to bring prominently
under the reader's observation. This line is rendered in strict
accordance with the context thus : — ' When Yisrahel was a
child, then I loved him, and called his descendants out of
Egypt :' that is, I loved Israel even from the earliest stage of
his existence, and I brought his descendants out of Egypt.
The signification here applied to the final group, which agrees
exactly with that given of it in the Septuagint, to TeKva avrov,
not only is adapted to the general tenor of this prophecy,
which, in its more open and obvious sense, relates entirely to
the Israelites, but also will be found especially requisite to
preserve coherence between the first and second verse, as soon
as the latter of those verses is restored to an intelligible form.
But to warrant this signification of the above group, it must
be read LeBaNeHu, ' his descendants ;' while, on the other hand,
to account for the meaning attached to it by St. Matthew (in
the translation given by .him of its second clause, "Out of
Egypt have I called my son"— Matt, ii. 15), the same group
must be read LjBNj'H, ' my son.' The reader may now per-
ceive my reason for restoring this group to its original state ;
because it is only in that state that it yields the two read-
ings here required. [n general, the suggestion of a second

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 337

interpretation of a sentence, in the margin of a version of the
Bible, is allowable only when the first is doubtful. Where the
open meaning assigned to it is clear, and suited to the context
of the place in which it occurs, we have no right of ourselves
to add another, and more especially an occult one, at variance
with that context ; as such a liberty indulged in might lead
to the wildest extravagancies. In the present instance, how-
ever, which is a very remarkable one, while the primary sense
of the verse is perfectly clear and consistent with the context,
the secondary one is equally certain, being sanctioned by the
authority of an inspired writer, and its want of coherence with
the context only serves to show that it is to be separated from
the body of the translation and put in a detached form in the
margin.

But the latter sense of this verse rests not solely upon in-
spired authority, though an abundantly sufficient ground for
its support. Upon a closer inspection of the Hebrew line, we
shall, I think, be enabled to perceive, that it was all along in-
tended to convey an occult meaning to this effect, whether the
prophet, while writing it, was conscious, or not, of its admit-
ting this interpretation. When a translator first turns his at-
tention to this line, he very naturally and correctly interprets
the initial group *D, by a meaning which, though not the pri-
mary one, it sometimes bears, that of the conjunction 'when ;'
as, in fact, without this meaning being here assigned to it, the
first clause of the verse (supposing the ellipsis therein to be
filled up with the ordinary supplement of the verb substantive)
would be senseless. In this manner the plain obvious inter-
pretation of the clause in question comes out : — ' When Yis-
rahel ivas a child, then I loved him.' But, if the reader looks
back to page 10 of the present volume, in which the princi-
pal Greek translations of the entire verse are copied from a
specimen of Origen's Hexapla preserved in the Barberini MS.,
he will find the above group construed in every one of them
by a conjunction (either on or hiori) attaching to it in this
place its primary signification, 'because.' This circumstance,

2 b 2

338 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

even independently of the inspired authority of St. Matthew,
leads one to reconsider the clause before us, and to try whether
the want of connexion, given to its parts by the primary
sense of the particle *0, may not be removed by some modifi-
cation of the supplement which is to be introduced ; — a re-
medy which is naturally suggested by the elliptic style of the
author. In this way we arrive at a more covert interpreta-
tion of the same clause, involving a deeper sense of it than
appears upon the surface, and which may be expressed in
words to the following effect : — ' Because Yisrahel consented to
become a child, therefore I love him.'8 Conformably to this
interpretation, that of the remaining portion of the verse (sup-
posing its final group written in the same manner as in the
time of St. Matthew) will come out thus : ' and I will surely
call him my son, while in that state, out of Egypt,' The Evan-
gelist, in quoting the purport of this latter part of the verse,
has translated the verb in it literally by a Greek inflexion, sig-
nifying, ' I have called ;'b but it would perhaps be better, for

a With respect to the tense of the verb included within ^rQnSI, the Ma-
sorets have pointed this group, in accordance with the moreobvious meaning of
the entire verse, WalloHuBeHU, with the vowel of the Waw conversive of the
future lengthened, to compensate for the non-admittance of a dagesh into the
aspirate Haleph; and the framers of our Authorized Version have translated
it agreeably to the same meaning, ' then I loved him.' For the initial particle
<0 having in this case the signification ' when' applied to it, the correlative
Waw must be translated ' then,' and so identifies the tense of the verb to
which it is prefixed, with that of the verb substantive ' was,' which is supplied
to fill the ellipse of the sentence. On the other hand, when the initial particle
is construed ' because,' its correlative Waw becomes ' therefore,' and no
longer exerts a conversive power on the tense of the following verb; in con-
sequence of which the same group must, for the less obvious meaning of the
verse, be read WeHoHaBeHU, and translated ' therefore I love him,' or 'therefore
I will love him.' Hut to the first of these renderings we are confined by the
nature of the case before us ; for, as the effect expressed by the verb in the
more hidden sense of the passage is not restricted by time, its tense must be
understood as indefinite; and for such aoristic application of a verb the
present tense is that fittest to be employed in English.

b Although the Greek aorisl iicakeaa admits of a reference to the future,

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 339

the sake of readers unacquainted with Hebrew forms of ex-
pression, to render the Greek verb in the body of our version
of the New Testament according to the meaning it was in-
tended to convey, ' I will surely call,' and to transfer to the
margin its literal translation, under the head of a Hebraism.
In fine, it is worth while to observe, how the cunning of the
old vocalizers was here made the means of counteracting their
own design. For while they unfairly attempted to give the
Septuagint the false appearance of an incorrect translation, in
order to undermine the credit of the powerful testimony it
bears to the truth of Christianity, they were unconsciously help-
ing to establish, by their vocalization, such a detached oracular
reading of the sentence just analyzed as was highly corrobo-
rative of Christian views. Verily, if those scribes had been as
intimately acquainted with the Gospel of St. Matthew as they
were with the Septuagint, they would have cautiously ab-
stained from tampering with the ambiguous group of this
verse, and have vocalized it ^327, in accordance with the de-
mands of the context, notwithstanding that their vocalization
would have supported the correctness of the Greek rendering
applied to it by the Seventy Jews.

The second verse of the Hebrew passage under examina-
tion, with two corrections applied to it, and with its Autho-
rized English Translation subjoined, is as follows : —

" As they called them, so they went from them ; they sacrificed unto Baalim,
and burnt incense to graven images."

The first step towards the removal of all incoherence between

yet I assent to the commonly received opinion, that it was, in the place above
alluded to, employed by St. John as a preterite tense ; but still I maintain that
it was so employed by him only in like manner as he must have read the ori-
ginal word (rtNIp', QaRaHTi) in the corresponding place of the Hebrew text ;
that is, as a preterite substituted for a future, to indicate the certainty of the
prediction.

340 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

this verse and the preceding one has already been taken, by
reading the ambiguous group above analyzed so as to confine
it to the signification ' his descendants.' The two remaining
steps consist in marking as redundant the vowel-letter at the
end of the initial group of the verse now before us, so as to
admit of this verb, put in a singular form, being read imper-
sonally ; and in separating from each other the two groups
^£1D and DH, which were united into one by the Masorets, in
utter disregard of the context. By means of these two cor-
rections the translation of this verse will come out changed as
follows : —

' .45 one called them [namely, the descendants of Yishra-
hel], so they receded from my presence ; they sacrificed unto
the Bahals,a and burnt incense to graven images.'

The separation of the groups ^20 and Oil is not only de-
manded by the context, but is also supported by the joint and
independent testimonies of the Septuagint and Peshitah ; as
is evident from the commencing part of their respective trans-
lations of the verse : —

Septuagint, kciOws fxereKaXeaa avTovs, ovrws airiv^ovTO ck izpoaio-

7TOV jJLOV' aUTOt, K. T. \.h

' As I called them, so they receded from my presence ;
they,' &c. &c.

Peshitah, ^d^d rk> a\i) ]±dct\ . ^oj] ojjOj y,^)

'As that they called them, so they receded from before me.'

■ That is, the false gods who were in common denominated Bahal, some of
whom are mentioned in Scripture with distinctive titles subjoined, such as,
Bahal-bcrith, Judg. viii. 33; Bahal-zebub, 2 Kings, i. 2; Bahal-pehor, Num.
xxv. 3. Baalim is employed in our Authorized Version to signify the word
Baal taken in the plural number. But, as appears to me, this meaning is
more naturally expressed in our language by adding to the word in question
the English, rather than the Hebrew plural termination.

b In the above line we may perceive that the expression, eV wpoaw7rov fiov,
answers to 'ODE, and afoot to Eil, of the original sentence; so that the Ma-
sorets appear to have quite mistaken the use of the Yod at the end of the first

Chap. IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 341

According to the joint representation of both versions, the
original line would, if written fully, have commenced with
"ItMO, 'in proportion as.' From the elliptic style, however,
of the prophet, he may be easily conceived to have omitted
this group, and left it to be understood, as implied by its cor-
relative p, ' so.' But, with respect to the group with which
the Hebrew line at present commences, the evidence of the
Septuagint clearly proves that it was written in their time
n^lp, QaRaHTY, ' I called ;' and a corresponding correction of
this text is further sustained by the context, For the very
next verse commences with *03N1, ' moreover I myself did so
and so ; where the particle prefixed to the pronoun indicates
that the act there mentioned follows a previous one performed
by the same speaker. The action, therefore, denoted by the
verb now before us, was also his performance, and should be
expressed likewise by an inflexion in the first person. As,
however, the correction of the initial group, thus indicated by
the context as well as by its Greek rendering, is not likewise
supported by the testimony of the Peshitah ;a and as the sense
may be preserved, though not so distinctly conveyed, by treat-

group (which was there inserted to denote, not the plural number of the noun
it follows, but the possessive pronoun of the first person), and to have jum-
bled together two groups that not only should be kept separate, but even
belong to different clauses of the verse.

a The want of support from the Syriac version upon the above point does
not tell positively against the Greek evidence on the same point, but merely
serves to show that the missing j~l had dropped from the end of the group
under examination in the interval between the times when the Septuagint
and Peshitah were written. Nor does the testimony of the Syriac transla-
tors upon this subject even go to the extent of proving that the letter in
question was absolutely lost before their time, but only that it was wanting
in the particular copies of the Hebrew text in their possession. The second
part of the Chaldee paraphrase, called the Targum of Jonathan, which appears
to be erroneously ascribed to the same author as the first, was not composed
till many centuries after the Peshitah ; and yet the first two groups of the
above verse are therein rendered as follows: — X\7v> S27S7 ^23 H^rPE?,
' I sent my prophets to instruct them ;' — a rendering which, however loose

342 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

ing the word in question as a verb impersonally used, the
adoption of this expedient, which requires the rejection of only
an interpolated vowel-letter, appears preferable to an altera-
tion relating to an original element of the sacred text.

The part of the third verse which here comes under exa-
mination, with the requisite corrections marked, and the prin-
cipal English translations of it subjoined in the order of their
dates, as also the Greek, Syriac, and Chaldee renderings of this
part, accompanied by their respective literal interpretations,
are as follows : —

Hebrew, *& onpt1?] «DnaNl7 vtontmn 'oaro

Coverdale's Bible, \ I lerned Ephraim to go, and bare them

Cranmer's Bible, j in myne armes ; —

Geneva Bible, I led Ephraim alsoa [as one] should beare

the in his armes ; —
Parker's Bible, I gave to Ephraim one to leade

hym,f who shoulde beare t Moses.

him in his armes ; —

it may be, yet plainly indicates that the verb here paraphrased must have
been in the first person, and that the two Hebrew groups referred to were
written Dnb TIK"ip, in the copies of the sacred record consulted by the
author of this Targum.

a The above conjunction is removed from its proper place, and its applica-
tion shifted from the act just previously mentioned to the object of that act,
apparently for the purpose of avoiding the awkwardness of attributing a
second action to the speaker, where, according to the existing state of the
Hebrew text, none is expressly ascribed to him in the preceding sentence.
But this dislocation is quite inadmissible; as the object here specified is the
same as that before mentioned, though recorded under a different designation,
the name of a single tribe being substituted for that of the entire nation ;
and, accordingly, we may perceive, this change of designation is not adopted
in the Chaldee paraphrase of this sentence. I notice this error in the Geneva
Bible, only because it has been thence transferred into our present Autho-
rized Version; for, as to a separate examination of the older English render-
ings of the passage in question, it would require a long digression, without
any compensating advantage.

Chap.I V.] TONOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 343

King James's Bible, " I taught Ephraim also to go, taking
them by their arms ;" —

Septltagi?lt, Kal eyw avvenobioa tov 'E0/?cu/x, aveKafiov

ovtov tm rov fipayfova fxov' —
Moreover I myself swathed the feet of Ephraim, I
took him up on my arm; —

Peshitah, .^^55 ^ ^qj] A\oso -.^^j] A^j \i]o

Moreover I myself led Hephrayim, and I took them
on my arms [or, on my arm] ;a —

Seeondparto/Tar. ^ ^^ ^^ p

gum of Jonathan, I w~\l bv 13

Moreover I, even I, by a messenger sent from before
me, led Yisrahel in the right way, and I carried

them, as it were, on the arms.

The translation of the above Hebrew line which accords with
the corrections marked in it, and results from the ensuing in-
vestigation, runs thus, —

'Moreover I myself swathed the feet of the Hephrayimites,b
taking them in my arms.'

The first correction of the Hebrew line is made in conformity
with the generally received opinion (of the justness of which
there can scarcely be a doubt), that the verb of the first clause,
whatever may be its precise meaning, is in the Hiphil modifi-
cation, and consequently should be made to commence with

a The noun in the final group of the above Syriac line is at present re-
stricted to the plural number by the Ribui mark: but before that mark
(which can scarcely be supposed coeval with the Peshitah) was attached to
this noun, it, just in like manner as the equivalent one in the corresponding
Hebrew group, admitted of being read in either the singular or plural form.

b The above noun is, in the original sentence, exhibited in the singular
number; but the plural pronoun referring to it evidently shows that it is
there employed in a plural sense ; and I have in consequence translated it in
a plural form, not only for the purpose of adhering to its meaning in this
place, but also in order to avoid an incoherence between it and the following
pronoun.

344 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

a He instead of a Taw. The two remaining corrections will
be accounted for as the investigation proceeds. The utter
impossibility of making sense of the Hebrew line in its exist-
ing state is strongly marked by the discrepancies between its
successive English translations, each of which virtually con-
demns the preceding one ; and, I must add, the last of them
is just as vulnerable as any of those previously adopted. To
point out an inaccuracy that appears even on the surface of
the present authorized rendering of the sentence, and which,
on the supposition of the original line being in a correct state
of preservation, must be deemed a very gross one, all that is
necessary is to compare the expression ' upon his arms,' which
conveys the literal meaning of the last two groups with that
which our translators have substituted for it, ' by their arms!'
It is, however, much easier to point out errors than to cor-
rect them ; and in order to effecting a due correction in the
present case, it will be requisite to push our inquiries more
deeply into the subject. In this investigation two very per-
plexing difficulties impede our progress. The first is occa-
sioned by the occurrence of a verb in the Hiphil, or causative
modification, which is nowhere else in the sacred text to be
met with in that state. The primary signification of this verb
in its Kal state is well known, namely, 'to move the feet,' that
is, ' to walk,' or, in a more general sense, ' to go ;' and if the
meaning of its Hiphil state were thence derived in accordance
with the usual force of this modification, the verb would, in the
latter state, bear some such interpretation as 'to cause to walk,'
' to teach to walk,' ' to cause to go,' ' to lead,' &c, &c. But in very
numerous instances, verbs in the Hiphil state are employed in
senses quite distinct from any that are usually connected with
this state ; and in the present instance the Hiphil inflexion of the
verb in question has a peculiar signification of this sort assigned
to it by the Seventy, while it has been interpreted by all sub-
sequent translators with some meaning or other in accordance
with the ordinary force of the Hiphil modification. Before
we can determine which kind of signification will suit fin

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 345

context of this place, the second of the difficulties in our way
must be surmounted, and the point be ascertained, with what
affix the final group of the line should be read. This diffi-
culty, however, which has hitherto baffled all inquiry, can
now be easily disposed of. From what has been proved in the
last chapter, it will be seen that ^Aimf was originally written
HW11, which, among other readings for the affix of the
third person singular, admitted of being uttered ZeRoHoTheHw,
' his arms ;' while, on the other hand, from what has been
shown in the present chapter, it equally follows, that the ori-
ginal nrtfTl? might also be read ZeRoHaTfo'H, 'my arm,' or
ZeRoHoThm'H, ' my arms ;' for each of which readings it would
in common be vocalized ^j/l")T. But the Seventy having
translated this group for one of the latter readings, the Jewish
scribes of the second century, according to their usual practice,
vocalized it for the former pronunciation, without waiting to
try whether the sense resulting from this reading could be
reconciled with the context. Hence arose the utter incohe-
rency of this sentence ; and, consequently, it cannot be re-
stored to an intelligible state, without changing the vocalization
of its final group to that required for the reading which is
indicated by both the Greek and Syriac renderings thereof in
common. As soon as the last element of this group is, for
this purpose, marked to be passed over unused, and the ante-
penultimate group has got its initial element (7) restored, so
as to put its verb in the form of the Benoni participle,a we shall
find the meaning of the second clause of the line to be, ' taking
them upon my arm,' or ' taking them upon my arms,' or (sub-
stituting for the latter phrase the equivalent English one)
1 taking them in my arms.'

We are now at last advanced to a condition in which we
can form a just estimate of the various senses assigned to the

a In the present state of the group in question, without the addition
above recommended, it signifies ' take thou them,' an expression which is
quite senseless in the place referred to.

346 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF /£E AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

verb in the first clause ; and the immediate effect of this ad-
vancement is at once to show us, that not one of the meanings
attributed to it upon the assumption of its primary significa-
tion being modified according to the ordinary force of the
Hiphil, or causative state of verbs, is here admissible. For we
cannot be said ' to cause children to walk,' or ' to teach them
to walk,' or * to make them go,' or ' to lead them,' while we are
taking them in our arms; we cannot be said 'to lead children,'
at the very time that we are carrying them : the two statements
are quite inconsistent, — they cannot possibly hold at the same
time. On the other hand, the meaning given to the above
verb by the Seventy — owiroli^w, 'to tie the feet together,' 'to
bind the feet in chains,' ' to fetter one,' and consequently, in
reference to infants, ' to swathe their feet,' — is not at all liable
to the same objection. For it is the most natural time to take
children in our arms, when they are deprived of the power of
moving their feet : and although, in the British islands, only
new-born infants are thus confined in their limbs, yet even to
this day on the continent of Europe children may be seen, as
long as they are fed at the breast, swathed with linen or flan-
nel bands, rolled not only round their lower extremities, but
also about their arms, so as to render them as motionless as
Egyptian mummies. We may, therefore, easily conceive the
lesser degree of confinement of the Jewish infants in former
times (extending only to their under limbs) which is implied
in the old Grecian interpretation of the verb before us. Be-
sides, this interpretation is not only unobjectionable in itself,
but it is also positively recommended by the peculiar force
and propriety it attaches to the metaphor which Hosea here
employs, as a picture of the utter inability of the Israelites to
move in a right direction by their own exertions, without the
aid of God. According to the writers of the present Autho-
rized English Version, the prophet draws this picture of the
descendants of Israel or Ephraim, by comparing them to
children who are already entering upon an attempt to make
use of their feet ; but, according to the framers of the Septua-

Chap. IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BYEXAMPLES. 347

gint, the children referred to for an illustration of the subject
were entirely destitute of locomotive power. If from consi-
dering the internal evidence, both positive and negative, with
which the interpretation just analyzed is supported, we turn
our attention to the nature of the testimony on which it rests,
surely we can find no authority so high upon the point in ques-
tion as that of the Seventy Jews. No other witnesses can now
be appealed to upon this point, who lived so near the time
when Hebrew was spoken as a living language, or who could
be so familiar with the customs upon which the peculiar mean-
ings of many of the words of that language must have de-
pended. The great value of the Septuagint has been exhibited
in the course of this investigation in a very conspicuous point
of view, and is here illustrated, among other ways, by the
striking fact which the sentence quoted from the second part
of the Targum of Jonathan discloses ; namely, that the true
meaning of the verb last examined is obliterated and entirely
lost among the Jews, which it could not have become, till after
they had abandoned the use of this version.

On account of the importance of the errors produced
through the ambiguity of the original affix He, I shall add
two more instances of the designed misvocalization of this
affix by the Jewish scribes of the second century ; taken,
one of them from the writings of the Royal Psalmist, and
the other from the Proverbs of Solomon. The former ex-
ample, as exhibited in the present state of the Hebrew text,
with the discrepant English renderings of it that are now sanc-
tioned, both of them at the same time, by the authority of our
Church, and also its oldest Greek and Syriac translations, with
their literal interpretations subjoined to them respectively,
stands thus : —

348 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

ps. ilx. 10, mow T*ix W

Prayer-book, " My strength will I ascribe unto thee."a

A7//7 James's Bible, " Because of his strength will I wait upon
thee."a

Septliagint, To Kparo? /nov 717969 o-e (f}v\d%(0.

' My strength will I guard unto thee.'

Peshitah, w*^-»] ^ "JctlIL

' 0 God, I will glorify thee.'

It being clear, from what has been already proved upon the
subject, that the original form of the initial group of the He-
brew line before us was HU/, which might, considered by it-
self, be read either HwZZoH, ' his strength,' according to its pre-

a An equal discrepancy is observable between the English translations of
the above clause which were sanctioned for about forty years before the pub-
lication of our present Authorized Version, while Parker's, or that called the
Bishop's Bible, was in use : but it was then more glaring, in consequence of
the discordant renderings being inserted in parallel columns opposite to each
other in that earlier version. Brought together for the purpose of immediate
comparison, in like manner as those at present authorized are above, they
stand thus: —

"My strength will I ascribe unto thee."

" I will reserve his strength for thee."
To the latter of these is attached the marginal supplement: — " for tovanquishe
Saul my cheefe enemie." The earlier translation of the Psalms, which is the
same in our prayer-book and in Parker's Bible, is, with the exception of some
difference in the spelling, taken exactly from Cranmer's Bible; but, in the
case of the clause before us, as well as in some other instances, the older ren-
derings may be traced still higher up to Coverdale's Bible. The translation
of the same clause in the Geneva Bible, from which the later of the two at
present authorized is derived, is as follows: — "He is strong [but] Iwilwaite
upon thee;" to which is annexed in the margin this paraphrase or explanatory
note : — " Though Saul have never so great power, yet I know that thou doest
bridle him." Now upon a comparison of the three later renderings with the
earlier one, it will be found in each instance to have been altered much for
the worse; and the like observation applies to a great number of other
changes also, of which those before us may be taken as a sample. Yet the

Chap. IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 349

sent vocalization, or HwZZiH, ' ray strength,' according to its
Greek interpretation, — the question in which way it should be
here taken is plainly decided in favour of the latter reading,
not only by the very superior authority of the Seventy Inter-
preters to that of the Jewish vocalizers of the second century,
but also by the context and the very forced nature of the con-
struction to which the framers of our Authorized Version were
compelled to resort in consequence of their adherence to the
former reading. Through that construction they have ascribed
great obscurity, if not actual incoherence of style, to the original
composition, by referring the term signifying 'strength' to a
person never once mentioned in this Psalm,a and, still further,
have run counter to the open character and steady loyalty of
David, by representing him as darkly writing against his so-
vereign in a hymn addressed to God.b They had, I grant, no

blame of this deterioration is not to be thrown upon the Protestant translators.
They acted with an honest and conscientious determination to adhere closely
to what they conceived to be the original text, no matter what the consequence
might be; and though their labours were not at once crowned with success,
yet those labours prepared the way for, and have supplied the initiatory steps
to a result of the highest value, — the detection of the original state of the
sacred text and the consequent removal of a vast number of incoherencies
with which it has long been embarrassed. The very fact, indeed, of their
successive translations being found to betray a greater number of incoheren-
cies, according as they were made with stricter fidelity and care, has assisted
in conducting to this result, by pointing attention in the right direction, and
showing that there was something wrong to be searched for in the existing
state of the original record.

a The name of Saul occurs in a short introductory notice, which, though
exhibited in the present state of the Hebrew text as part of the above Psalm,
is clearly shown by its purport to be not so ; and, accordingly, it is translated
as a mere heading to this Psalm in the Septuagint and the last three Autho-
rized English Versions, while it is altogether omitted in the Peshitah and the
first Authorized English Version.

1 The above imputation against David, which is more strongly conveyed
in the Authorized Version that immediately preceded the one now in use, as
well as in the Geneva Bible, is very strikingly refuted by the account given
of his conduct with respect to Saul in the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth
chapters of the first Book of Samuel.

350 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

alternative but to adopt this very objectionable representation
of the subject, or deviate from what they held to be the ge-
nuine text of the Psalm, as it came from the pen of its inspired
author. How gladly, then, would those learned men have
availed themselves of the means at last obtained of escaping
from this very distressing dilemma, if the present discovery
had come within their reach !

The main point, which of the possessive pronouns is in-
cluded in the signification of the initial group, having been now
determined, the entire clause, as far as depends upon gram-
matical views, still admits of two constructions. For, if the
verb IDt^ in this clause be taken in its primary sense of
' guarding,' it must be referred immediately to some object dif-
ferent from God ; as it would be a vain and indeed an impious
boast of feeble man, to speak of ' guarding' or ' preserving' the
Almighty : and, on the other hand, if it be applied directly
to God, then we must search for some one of its secondary
meanings which is compatible with that application of it, as
well as consistent with the force of the preposition 7N. Ac-
cording to the choice made between these two plans of con-
struction, the rendering of the clause will come out equivalent
to one or other of the following sentences : — ' My strength I
will guard unto thee (that is, will keep for thy service).' ' 0
my strength, I will look unto thee (or will attend unto thee,
or will wait upon thee).' Grammar scarcely decides between
these two modes of dealing with the clause. But, if we take
into consideration the style of language employed by David,
according to which he frequently addresses the Deity by the
designation, ' 0 my strength,' and more especially if we reflect
on the pious humility of spirit which led him to depend, not
at all on his own strength, but on the power of God, we shall,
I think, see strong reasons for preferring the latter mode.
Tin' Syriac translators, though under the disadvantage of con-
sulting a copy of the sacred text from which the initial group
had dropped, appear to have approached nearer to the true

Chap.IV.] to NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 351

bearing and tenor of the clause than the Seventy.3 In general,
indeed, the Septuagint is our highest uninspired authority for
determining the meaning of difficult passages of the Old Tes-
tament ; but, in the particular instance now before us, its
framers allowed their judgments to be fettered and cramped
by too rigid an adherence to the primary signification of the
verb "1QJ£\ In fine, I submit, there can be no doubt that the

o

initial group should be written i !?]?#, in an edition of the He-
brew text amended according to my plan of notation : and,
although there may be some difference of opinion, not as to
the tenor of the analyzed line, but as to the best selection of
words for its expression, I would, from a desire to keep as
close as I could to the present Authorized Version, venture to
recommend the following translation of it : — ' 0 my strength,
I will wait upon thee.'

The Hebrew line which supplies my second additional
example of the ambiguity under examination, and the trans-
lations of this line in the successively Authorized English Ver-
sions, as well as in the Geneva Bible, also its oldest Greek and
Syriac renderings, and its Chaldee paraphrase, with their re-
spective literal interpretations, are here submitted to the rea-
der's inspection.

Ecci. ii. 25, c. *mn f n anm ^i ^d^ ^ ^

Coverdale's Bible, " For who maye eate, drynke, or brynge eny
thige to passe without Him [that is, with-
out the permission of God]?"

Cranmer^s ditto, " For who will eat, or go more lustely to hys
worcke then I ?"

a The circumstance of the Syriac interpreters having translated mEKJN
in the above clause by the verb «_kk£13, one of whose significations is ' to
sing praises,' affords some reason to suspect that the Hebrew word was writ-
ten in their copies of the text H1Z3TS, ' I will sing praises.' Upon the sup-
position of this being the real state of the case, their translation of the clause,
I admit, would yield no assistance in determining the sense of it, as written
in any copy now extant.

2 c

352 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF TIE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

<;, u, va Bible, " For who could eat, and who could haste to
outward things more then I ?"

Parker's ditto, " For who wyl eate, or goe more lustily to his
worke then I ?"

King James's do. " For who can eat, or who else can hasten
hereunto more than I ?"

SeptUOgint, ok t/s (payerai, k-ai t/s wferai 7ra/>e£ aurov ;

For who shall eat, or who shall drink without Him?

Peshitdh, cruio ;nl }L*s cllSoo •AqdIj qjIo? ^i°

Because that who shall eat, or who shall drink without
Him ?

Because who w he that has been occupied with the
words of the law, and who is that man who has
anxiety about the day of the great judgment pre-
pared for the dead, besides me ?

The incorrect vocalization of an ambiguous group, as origi-
nally written, is, if possible, still more glaring in the present
example than in the preceding one. The point having been
already ascertained respecting the final group of the Hebrew
line now before us, that its original form was POOD, which
might be read either MiMmeNniH, ' from me,' MiMmeNHw, ' from
him,' or M*MmeNnaH, 'from her' (of which, however, only the
first and second come here under consideration, as nothing is
previously mentioned in the line itself, or the preceding ones,
to which the feminine affix of the third reading could be
referred); and the effect produced upon the preposition of
this group by combining it with the preceding adverb, pH,
Ch«S, ' outside,' being to change its force into ' without' or
'besides;'8 it follows that the combination of the last two

a The compound expression p y\n is not to be found in any other part of
the Hebrew Bible except in the above line ; but the Chaldee and Syriac combi-
nations by which it is translated (]£ 13 and ^.Lo ;*"A) occur sufficiently
often in the Targums and Peshitah respectively, to have their significations

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 353

groups of the line admits, before any further limitations are
brought into view, of four significations, ' without him,' or
' besides him,' for the vocalization of the very last 13 DD, and
' without me,' or ' besides me' for the vocalization of the same
group ^2DD. But on more particularly considering the cir-
cumstances of the case under examination, the last three of
these interpretations will be found quite inapplicable to it.
For if each of them be in succession placed after the transla-
tion of the part of the line whose meaning is perfectly ascer-
tained, and the verb of doubtful sense (which, however, is only
supplemental, and affects not the general scope of the sentence)
be for the present omitted,11 the author's question will come
out diversified as follows : —

' For who can eat . . . besides him (that is, besides God)?'
' For who can eat . . . besides me (that is, besides Solomon)?'
' For who can eat . . . without me (that is, without Solo-
mon's permission)?'

But in every one of these representations of his query some
assertion is implied which is manifestly false. With regard
to the first representation, besides that it is very unlikely that
a pure Spirit eats — a point beyond our means of discussing
with respect to the Supreme Being — it is obviously false that
no one else can eat. With regard to the second, it is equally
false that no one could eat except Solomon at the period when
he wrote ; and with regard to the third, it is not only false,
but also would have been impious on the part of this monarch
to maintain, that no one could eat without his permission.

well ascertained, and to show that it denotes, according to the demands of
the context, either ' without' or ' besides.' The same meanings of this Hebrew
expression may also be deduced from its Grecian equivalent, the compound
preposition -n-dpe^.

a To warrant the rejection of an incorrect translation, no more need be
quoted than its objectionable part; but when another comes to be recom-
mended in its stead, the whole of the new one must, of course, be submitted
to inspection.

2 c2

354 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF BE AFFIXED [Chap.1V.

Thus, by the method of exclusions, we are conducted to the
first interpretation of the final pair of groups ; and if this in-
terpretation be tried in the rendering of the Hebrew line, the
meaning not only will come out free from objection, but also
will positively recommend itself to our moral convictions by
the soundness of the doctrine it inculcates. This result, I
grant, is arrived at only through the general bearing of the
sentence (the exact signification of the second verb as therein
employed not being perfectly ascertained); but still, I think,
it will be found to hold its ground upon our taking the follow-
ing view of the subject. The inspired author having, in the
preceding verse, recommended a moderate enjoyment of the
fruits of a man's labour, and observed, " This also I saw, that
it was from the hand of God," here in the present verse
subjoins, in support of this remark, the following query : —
" For who can eat, or who can hasten thereto, without Him
(that is, without His permission)?" This statement, made
through the medium of an interrogative form, is, notwith-
standing some obscurity in its supplemental portion, well
suited to a religious and moral treatise, being to the general
effect, that every blessing we enjoy, even of the lowest kind,
comes from God, and that his Providence reaches to the mi-
nutest circumstances of human life : so that it bears some
analogy to the teaching of our Saviour, as conveyed in the fol-
lowing passage : — " Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
ye1 one of them shall not fall on the ground without your
Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered :
fear \ e not therefore, ye are of more value than many spar-
rows.''— Mutt. x. 29-31. But the meaning of the principal part
of the Hebrew line thus deduced from the internal evidence
of the case is abundantly confirmed by testimony : its trans-
lations in the Septuagint and Peshitah, though made quite
independently of each other, are absolutely identical in their
bearing. These translations, indeed, do not throw any light
on the sense of the second Hebrew verb (and only serve to
,>liow that it was a different one, in ancient copies of the sacred

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 355

text,a from what it has as yet been found in, I believe, any of
those now extant) ; but still the external evidence they afford
is perfect and complete with respect to the solution of the main
difficulty of the case — the fact that the final group of the above
line was read by both the Greek and the Syriac translators
with the affix of the third, instead of the first person singular;
so that a conformable change of its vocalization is not only
indispensably required by the context, but also is actually
warranted by the highest combination of uninspired authori-
ties that could possibly be brought to bear upon the subject.
There can then, I submit, be no doubt but that, supposing my
plan of notation to be adopted in an amended edition of the
Hebrew text, the final group of the analyzed line should be
therein written ^CuJEQ.

The value of the correction just established is strikingly
illustrated, not only by the failure of every attempt to pene-
trate, without its aid, the meaning of the Hebrew line in ques-
tion, but also by the objectionable nature of the means which,
for want of it, men were led to employ, in their efforts to
make out an interpretation of this sentence in any degree
plausible. In this way, it may be observed, the Chaldee para-
phraser was here induced to violate truth, deviating altogether
from the ascertained part of the meaning of the sentence, and

a The Greek and Syriac renderings of the Hebrew line in question, both of
them, in common prove the meaning of its second verb, in the copies con-
sulted by the framers of the Septuagint and Peshitah, to have been, ' can
drink ;' but the latter rendering proves still further its form in those copies
to have been nnttf\ TiShTheH, with which the corresponding word of the
Syriac line |A_flLJ, NeShTheH, is identical in root, and only varied in its in-
flexion in consequence of the difference of dialect. In respect, therefore, to
this word, the Syriac version may be looked upon as more than a mere trans-
lation, and rather as, in some measure, an edition of the original record.
Yet I would not, in consequence, venture to substitute TIHW^ for tt^rP
in the Hebrew line: as the Hebrew copies must still be our main guide with
respect to the original elements of the sacred text; nor can it be shown that
the Jews ever changed designedly any of those elements, except in a very few
instances bearing upon Christian views.

356 ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap.IV.

attributing to Solomon a foreknowledge of the final clay of
judgment, — a day which is nowhere mentioned in the whole
range of his extant writings. This part, indeed, of the Tar-
gum referred to is entitled to attention only on the point
relating to the structure of the original sentence, in which the
paraphraser agrees with the framers of the Septuagint and
Peshitah, viz., that the last two groups should be considered
as combined in their meanings, and accordingly be translated
together. On the other hand, the English translators are
entirely free from any imputation of intentional misrepresen-
tation ) but still, unwarrantable steps were taken by all of
them to arrive at their respective renderings of the above line.
The nearest approach effected by any of them to a correct in-
terpretation of the sentence is that exhibited in Coverdale's,
or the first Authorized Version ; but it was made on the
principle of preferring the Greek rendering of this sentence to
its original, — a principle which could not be justified, as Co-
verdale was unable to show how and where the Hebrew line
was corrupted. At the same time, I must add that, consider-
ing the circumstances of the case, his attempt displays won-
derful sagacity and strength of intellect. Afterwards, however,
yielding to the prevailing opinion respecting the 'Hebrew
verity/ as it has been termed, or the perfect preservation of
the sacred text in its original state, he abandoned this trans-
lation; as may be concluded from the subsequent English
ones adduced by me, some of which are taken from versions
in whose formation he acted the part of superintendent, or at
least that of a very important assister. All these, in direct
opposition to the so far united decisions of the Greek, the
Syriac, and the Chaldee translators, are formed upon the plan
of construction whereby the interpretation of the last group
is separated from that of the preceding one, without which
contrivance it could not be rendered, as it is in each of them,
« more than I,' or by some expression to the same effect. The
expedients, however, through which this rendering has been
arrived at, not only are at variance with the oldest authori-

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTKATED BY EXAMPLES. 357

ties on the subject, but also can be proved untenable upon
intrinsic grounds. For, in the first place, with respect to the
Geneva Bible and our present Authorized Version, the penul-
timate group (fin) has in the former work been separated
from the last by interpreting it in connexion with the one
before, instead of that after it, ' could haste to outward
things,' — an interpretation of very doubtful correctness, and
which, besides, is scarcely intelligible in the place where it is
inserted ; — while, in the latter work, that with which we are
most concerned, the separation in question has been effected
in a still more objectionable manner, by translating the above
group by the word 'else' in an earlier part of the sentence,
whence has resulted the form of inquiry, ' who else can.' But
if wTe consider the bearing of this form in connexion with the
rest of the sentence, we shall find it actually equivalent to the
following one, ' who besides me can ;' so that the planners of
this construction virtually translated the last two groups by
the word ' else ;' and, after so doing, they had certainly no
right to give a second rendering of one of those groups, and
interpret it by the expression 'more than I,' at the end of the
passage.

In the second place, with respect to all the adduced Eng-
lish translations of this line subsequent to that extracted from
Coverdale's Bible, if we omit what is peculiar to each, in order
to judge of the effect common to all of the change of the final
words introduced by their respective framers, the general bear-
ing of Solomon's question will be altered from the immediate
sense of the first to that of the second of the following lines : —

' For who can eat,' &c, &c, 'besides me?'
'For who can eat,' &c, &c, 'more than I can?1

According to the transition here exhibited, the royal mora-
lizer, indeed, is no longer represented as virtually stating that
he was the only glutton among the human beings of his day ;
but the assertion comes out nearly as objectionable, that he
was as great a glutton as any of them,— a boast which, now

:m ORIGINAL AMBIGUITY OF HE AFFIXED [Chap. IV.

that it has been divested of all claim to being a correct inter-
pretation of an imcorrupted passage of the original text, I
have no hesitation in pronouncing far more suited to Sarda-
napalus, than to the wisest of men. To this view of the mat-
ter it would be in vain to object, that the author is not here
1 m »ast ing of what he could do at the time of his writing, or would
thenceforward do, but stating with regret what he had for-
merly done, and making this admission merely for the sake of
obtaining greater weight for his opinion upon the subject, as
that of a person speaking from experience. To justify this
representation, some words to the effect, ' formerly did,' should
have come after the pronoun, ' I,' in the English translation ;
without which the verb understood after this pronoun must
be taken in the same tense as those expressed in the preceding
part of the verse. But it is quite plain that the Hebrew text,
even in its existing state, does not warrant the introduction
of any such supplement. These observations are not made
with any intention of censuring the several sets of learned
men referred to : in fact, under the circumstances of the case
it was impossible for them to succeed in what they attempted,
namely, to give a faithful translation of the above Hebrew
line in its existing state, and at the same time to produce a
sentence free from objection. Surely, then, the blame of their
failures should be cast, not on them, but on the Jewish scribes
who occasioned the impossibility in question, by misvocalizing
the last group of this line, whereby they changed a fine, moral
sentence into the disgusting boast of a person represented as
indulging in the grossest sensualities. Certainly the hatred the
old localizers bore against the Septuagint, on account of the
support it yields to Christianity, must have been excessive,
when, from the eagerness of their desire to fasten on this ver-
sion an appearance ofinaccuracy, they were induced to resort
to means which at the same time contributed, in the present
instance and thai previously examined, to lower the charac-
.fi he two mosl distinguished oftheir sovereigns. Possibly
the} w< re not, while vocalizing the sacred text, aware of the full

Chap.IV.] TO NOUNS ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 359

consequence of the misvocalizations adopted by them in those
instances ; but if this was the case, it only serves to show with
what extreme precipitation they must have executed their task.
It remains that I should make a few remarks on the word
t^IPP, which is in the above line of no very certain significa-
tion. The primary meaning of this verb, and the only one in
which it is well ascertained to be used in the sacred text, ' to
hasten,' cannot be applied to it here without much obscurity ;
in consequence of which some secondary meaning of it that
would suit the context has been sought for among the cognate
dialects. This mode of supplying what is here wanted would
perhaps be effectual, if we could consult books in those dialects
written as far back as the days of Solomon. But the very
oldest works of the kind now accessible are dated more than a
thousand years after the age in which he nourished ; and, in
living languages, the secondary senses of words are liable to a
vast amount of change in the course of so long an interval.
Hence it appears to me to be a safer mode of proceeding to
search for some meaning of the verb, tt^n, which is connected
with its primary sense, and at the same time consistent with
the general scope of the analyzed sentence ; while, as a check
upon the looseness of the interpretation thus determined, the
primary sense of this word might be added in the margin.
Now the expression, ' to take a pleasure in,' conforms to both
of the prescribed conditions ; as, on the one hand, it will be
found not to alter the general bearing of the sentence ; and,
on the other, the act it denotes is naturally connected with
that represented by ' hastening to :' for we are apt to hasten
only to those occupations which are pleasing to us. Upon
these grounds I would venture to recommend the following
translation of the line just examined : —

" For who can eat, or who cana take any a Heb. hasten thereto.
pleasure therein, without him ?"

The assistance formerly afforded to readers by the para*
gogic He was greater than what it would now seem to have

360 FORMERLY A HINT NOT ALWAYS GIVEN [Chap.1V.

been : because this letter has been suffered to remain in the
Hebrew Scriptures only where it follows the A sound ; and
the places where that sound should in the course of read-
ing be uttered, have, since the interpolation of vowel-letters,
been in a great measure indicated by the mere absence there-
from of Yod and Waw. With respect to the rate of frequency
of occurrence of this paragogic element, the state of the sacred
text appears to be exactly the same now as from the first, in
the case of groups whose pronunciation is closed with the
sound of the A vowel ; since we have no ground for suppos-
ing that the old vocalizers ever erased it except when they
inserted a mater lectionis, and they made no such insertion
for the expression of this vowel, in, at any rate, the final syl-
lable of Hebrew words.a For the same reason we may con-
clude that no paragogic He was originally employed, where
there is not one now to be found at the end of groups which
ought to be read with the I ov U sound at their close, but
which the old vocalizers failed to mark for such readings by
the insertion of matres lectionis corresponding to those sounds.b
It is, therefore, only in cases where a Yod or Waw has been
actually inserted at the end of a group, that an erasure of the
paragogic element in question is to be sought for ; and al-
though the number of such erasures can now no longer be
exactly ascertained, yet there is reason to think that it was
but small in proportion to the whole number of Hebrew
groups at present closed by one or other of those vowel-let-
ters. For, as Ave have already seen, this element occasionally
served to give a hint of the / sound of the Hebrew possessive
pronoun of the first person singular ; and its aid was certainly

0 An instance has been given in the preceding part of this chapter of a
paragogic He following the A sound, which was erased to make room for a
vocalic Halc/ih, in the case of the pronoun originally written H3S; but it was
when this pronoun was employed, not as a Hebrew, but as a Chaldee word.

b The present discovery serves to expose in the sacred text a vast number
of the failures above described of the first set of vocalizers ; and some of them
;ire to be teen attested even by the pointing of the second set.

Chap.IV.] OF/OR £7 SOUND AT THE END OF WORDS. 361

far more wanted by an ancient reader thus to suggest to him
the vocal fragment of an addition to be made to the word
under his inspection, than merely to intimate a regular vocal
termination of that word : yet instances can be adduced of its
non-employment for the more requisite service, whence we may
fairly infer that it was often omitted in cases where its use was
less wanted. I shall here bring forward two examples of the
omission of the paragogic He in the original state of the
Hebrew text, where it would have served to suggest the /
sound of the above-mentioned affix : — one of them in which
a Yod was afterwards in like manner omitted by the old vo-
calizers, and the other where it was inserted by them, for the
purpose of denoting that affix. The former example occurs
in the Hebrew passage which is, in our Authorized Version,
thus translated : —

" For I spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them, in
the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, con-
cerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ;" — Jer. vii. 22.

The part of the original of this extract here to be con-
sidered, and the oldest Greek and Syriac renderings of that
part, together with a literal interpretation subjoined to each,
as follows : —

Hebrew Text, HntfQ p»D DniK ffWT DTQ

In the day of the bringing of them out of the land of

Egypt.

Septuagintj Iv y/mepa y avrjyarfov avrov? Ik yfjs Alyv7TTOv.

In the day in which I brought them up from the land of
Egypt.

Peshitah, ^5^? U'l ^ <qj| Anrolj ]Sdq_^

In the day that I made them ascend from the land of

Egypt.

The circumstance of the group KWl (a verb in the infi-
nitive mood used in the above Hebrew line as a noun) hav-
ing no Yod written immediately after it, reveals the fact that

302 FORMERLY A HINT NOT ALWAYS GIVEN [Chap. IV.

neither was it originally accompanied by a paragogic He ; as,
if it was, it would still retain the same attendant, no cause
for the removal of this letter having occurred, as no mater
lectionis was here inserted. So much for the omission by
the original writer, as well as subsequently by the old voca-
lizers, of the letters which, in their respective times, would
have contributed in very different ways to direct attention to
the necessity of reading this group with the sound of the affix
of the first person singular at its termination. But it may be
worth while to offer a few more remarks on each omission,
separately considered. Before the Hebrew Bible was vocalized,
the adduced verbal noun could, in an abstract point of view,
have been translated either ' the bringing out,' or ' my bring-
ing out,' but was confined to the latter rendering, if not strictly
by the context, at any rate by the history of the event referred
to, and the style of language uniformly held respecting it in
Scripture. For the person here represented as the speaker is
the Lord ; and the deliverance of the Israelites from the grasp
of their Egyptian oppressors is proved, by a most stupendous
miracle wrought upon the waters of the Red Sea, to have
been his act, and is constantly insisted upon as such by every
inspired writer who has touched upon the subject. It is, there-
fore, perfectly clear that, although the nature of Hebrew writ-
ing in the time of Jeremiah left room for two modes of read-
ing the verbal noun in question, it yet was meant by him to
be uttered only in one of those ways, with the /sound to
denote a possessive pronoun at its end, and must have been
for a long time after so read and understood by every one
acquainted with the Jewish historyunder whose inspection it
may have e<>me; and, accordingly, we may perceive, it has
been translated fortius rending both by the Seventy Jews and
by the framers of the Peshitah. But, after the introduction of
the matres lectionis into the original text, the same word could
no Longer be rend in this place correctly without a Yod sub-
joined to it, which, notwithstanding, the old vocahzers omit-
ted, in pursuanceofa plan acted upon with a wonderful degree

Chap. IV.] OF I OR U SOUND AT THE END OF WORDS. 363

of steadiness, considering the great precipitation with which
they executed their task. For, wherever the unvocalized writ-
ing admitted of being read in different ways consistently with
the context, they almost invariably selected the opposite one
to that followed by the Seventy Interpreters ; whereby they
contrived to give the translation made by these men the fal-
lacious appearance of being very loose and inaccurate. For
the most part, indeed, the variations hence arising in the form
of expression caused no alteration of the sense or deterioration
of the style ; and, consequently, they produced in each in-
stance a reading of the original text unobjectionable in
itself, yet very objectionable in the motive in which it origi-
nated. But the one adopted in the present instance by the
scribes in question, though it does not run directly counter to
the meaning of the clause, is still very defective in the expres-
sion of this meaning ; and, what further shows the intensity
of their desire to throw discredit on the oldest and best ver-
sion of the Hebrew Bible is, that the correct reading here
abandoned by them for this purpose is that which even their
national pride must have strongly prompted them to retain.
Nor should the circumstance be overlooked, that in a few cases,
such as those discussed in some of the preceding examples,
they, from excessive eagerness to effect their dishonest object,
still more transgressed the bounds of prudence, to such an ex-
tent as, by their interpolations, manifestly to violate the con-
text, thereby leaving behind them clear indications of the fraud
they committed. Thus, while the benefit of preserving the
legibility of the Hebrew Bible was secured by means which
were at the same time applied by wicked men to perverting
the meaning of some of its most important passages, provision
was all along made by the Almighty Disposer of events for the
removal of the evil with which this invaluable good was
accompanied, as soon as attention should come to be seriously
directed to the subject,

To conclude my analysis of the example before me, I have
to observe, that several copies of the sacred text are enumc-

364 FORMERLY A HINT NOT ALWAYS GIVEN [Chap.IV.

rated by Kennicott which exhibit a Yod at the end of the group
in question ; but it is evident, from the manner in which the
Masorets have dealt with the case, that they would gladly have
availed themselves of the use of such copies, if known to them;
whence it is most likely that those now extant were written
since their time, accommodated to the correction which their
punctuation had suggested. These critics, who did not flourish
till many centuries after the secret of the first vocalization of
the Hebrew Bible was lost even among the rulers of the Jews,
have unconsciously given their support to my condemnation
of the treatment of the above group by the set of vocalizers
who preceded them ; as is clearly shown by their mode of
pointing it, IjFyin. The little circle, used by them in this
instance to mark a defect, would be more regularly placed, if
shifted to the left, just over the site which the wanted letter
ought to occupy, and seems to have been thence removed
merely by the fault of the printers. In full accordance with
the Masoretic correction of this group, I would recommend it
to be written, in an unpointed edition of the text, N&W7.
The Authorized English Translation of the examined clause
requires no alteration ; nor does candour any longer require
a marginal note to show how the Hebrew here differs from
this translation ; since the want of a Yod at the end of the
analyzed group is not to be laid to the account of the original
writing, but ascribed solely to a fault in its subsequent voca-
lization.

My second example is supplied by comparing the first two
grbups of the twenty-second Psalm, now written ^7K ^7N ('my
God, my God'), with their translation in the Septuagint, 6 Geo?
6 Oco? /jlou (' God, my God'). From this comparison, provided
the general accuracy of the old Greek version be taken into
account, it may be inferred, with a high degree of probability,
thai the Tod now at the end of each of the Hebrew groups
did not displace a paragogic He previously employed there,
but that tliey were originally destitute of any sign, direct or
indirect, of the vowel / to be pronounced at their respective

Chap. IV.] OF I OR U SOUND AT THE END OF WORDS. 365

terminations, and that the reader was formerly left to the ex-
ercise of his judgment to deduce solely from the context the
propriety of uttering that sound after each of them. For, the
liberty taken in the Greek version of rendering one of the
above groups without, and the other with the possessive pro-
noun of the first person singular after it, was perfectly fair,
provided they were written in the time of the Seventy Jews
7& 7tf. But if they were then exhibited with a paragogic He
at the end of each, the same latitude of interpretation would
have been utterly unwarranted on the part of those translators.
A more convincing proof, however, to the same effect may be
deduced from the representation twice given in the Peshitah
of the words composing our Lord's exclamation on the cross,
which commenced with those contained in the very two groups
just examined. But as this proof serves also to give a striking
illustration of the more general discovery respecting the ori-
ginal non-existence of vowel-letters in the writing of the He-
brew Bible, and as, through the explanation thus supplied, it
clears up a considerable difficulty in the existing state of the
Syriac version, — a difficulty which till now was wholly unac-
countable,— I trust that, in dwelling at some length upon the
subject, I shall not be deemed to trespass on my reader's
patience.

In the Gospel of St. Matthew the exclamation above re-
ferred to is exhibited as follows : —

HA*, HAt, Aa/xa aa^a^Oavi,

but in that of St. Mark its first two groups are written EXwi,
EXioi ; with just the same signification of ' My God, My God,'
as the corresponding two in the former Gospel, but not in the
same language. For HA«, HA/, denote the sounds of the words
having this meaning in pure Hebrew, and EAw/, EA«u, those
of the equivalent words in the corrupt dialect of Hebrew
spoken in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion, that is,
in the Jerusalem Chaldee, or Syro-Chaldee, which scarcely
differed from the ancient Syriac. But that EXwi, EXwi, are,

366 A DIFFICULTY CLEARED UP IN THE [Chap. IV.

as 1 have already observed in the first chapter of this treatise,
a corruption of the genuine writing of St. Mark, is perfectly
evident from the next following verse of his Gospel, wherein
he informs us that the words thereby denoted were misunder-
stood by those looking on, which, repeated as they were, and
uttered with a loud voice, they could not possibly have been
if they were spoken in the language of the surrounding multi-
tude, and consequently written in the form in which they are
now exhibited. The same inference may also be drawn from
the evidence afforded by the Peshitah on this subject. For
the words in question are represented by the very same groups
of letters in the two specified Gospels, as translated in this
version ; and, besides, there is inserted in the second of them
an interpretation of our Lord's exclamation, of which it ob-
viously would have been absurd therein to offer any, if the
entire was in Syriac, as it must have been, if its commence-
ment was so. In all probability, some transcriber of St. Mark's
original Gospel, finding the latter part of the exclamation to
be in this ancient dialect, and assuming that the whole of it
was uttered without any diversity of language, altered the ini-
tial groups to suit them to this erroneous assumption. But
whether the corruption here brought home to this Gospel was
or was not thus occasioned, there cannot, I submit, be the
slightest doubt, in the first place, that the sounds of our Lord's
words referred to are preserved in the original Gospel of St.
Matthew," as nearly as they can be conveyed through the me-

1 11 all those particulars transmitted to us respecting ' the Hebrew Gospel
of St. Matthew,' or ' the Gospel to the Hebrews' (as it has been variously
designated l>y ancient writers) in which it differs from the Greek Gospel
ascribed to the same author, the Syriac rendering of his work in the Peshitah
tly with the latter, and differs from the former narrative. Hence,
it clearly follows that, even supposing the Syro-Chaldee document attributed
to St. Matthew older than the above Syriac Gospel, this translation must at
any rate be referred to the specified Greek Gospel as its original; and this
evidence to the genuineness of the latter production is of far greater weight
than any that has been, 01 by any possibility could be, adduced on the oppo-

Chap. IV.] EXISTING STATE OF THE PESHITAH. 367

dium of Greek letters ; secondly, that they were originally
written exactly the same way in the two Greek Gospels in
which they are recorded ; and thirdly, that they were not cor-
rupted in the second of those Gospels till after the Peshitah
had been composed. Subjoined are the transcript of the above
exclamation, which is common to the Syriac rendering of both
of the Gospels referred to, and its interpretation, which is con-
fined to the Syriac of St. Mark's Gospel, together with two
modes of reading this transcript, — the one according to the
western pronunciation and modern curtailment of the words,
which is adduced from Gabriel Sionita's Latin translation of
the Peshitah, and the other according to their eastern, fuller,

site side of the question. The Syriac translators wrote either before the end
of the first century or within a very few years after the commencement of the
second, that is, at an earlier period than any of the fathers of the Church, and
their language was very nearly identical with the Syro-Chaldee; for both
which reasons combined they were the best judges that can be appealed to,
as to which of the compared Gospels is genuine. Besides, we should bear in
mind, in favour of their decision on this point, that it is supported by a long
series of subsequent writers, intimately acquainted with the Greek Gospel in
question, who, in the manner of their quoting from or speaking of that work,
uniformly attest it to be the genuine production of St. Matthew. Nor are
we here to overlook the invalidity of the evidence on the opposite side: it
rests chiefly on a vague report spread by interested parties, and first commit-
ted to writing by Papias, who, as Eusebius informs us, was a man of weak
mind, and who, besides, was an incompetent witness from ignorance of the dia-
lect in which he attested the Gospel of this Evangelist to have been originally
written. Yet did not Jerome adopt the latter side of the question? True;
but this, among many other instances that might be adduced to the same
effect, only serves to show a failure of judgment on the part of this learned
father, notwithstanding the great power and brilliancy of his talents in other
respects. The following passage of his writings forms the commencement of
the brief account he gives of St. Matthew in his Catalogus Scriptorum Eccle-
siasticorum: — "Matthaeus, qui et Levi, ex publicano apostolus, primus in
Judaea propter eos qui ex circumcisione crediderant, Evangelium Christi He-
braicis litteris verbisque composuit: quod quis postea in Graecum transtule-
rit, non satis certum est." — Hieronymi Opera Martianceo edita, torn. iv. pars
2nda, col. 102.

2d

368 A DIFFICULTY CLEAKED UP IN THE [Chap. IV.

and more ancient pronunciation, as exhibited through my
notation : —

^>jAnn* ]ivA ^ctlI^ ^(jl^n

11 11 lemono scebacton.

HEL HEL LeMaNaH SheBaQTaNI.

From a comparison of the Syriac lines here brought toge-
ther, it is evident, respecting the first two groups of the upper
(me, that they alone were in a dialect differing from Syriac,
the two remaining groups being exactly identical with their
Syriac interpretations ; and also that, although written so as
to convey, according to the ordinary use of the letters, the
articulate sounds Hel, Hel, they yet were intended to be read
Helij Helij with the vowel / denoting the possessive pronoun
of the first person singular pronounced at their end; since the
groups with which they are interpreted terminate in Tod,
which represents this vowel and signifies this pronoun in
Syriaca as well as in Hebrew. Moreover, a comparison of the
two subjoined readings of the upper line with the Greek ori-
ginal of that line previously quoted from St. Matthew's Gospel,
serves to illustrate the great superiority of the mode of read-
ing Syriac followed in this work to that now prevailing in
Europe, in reference to the nearest approach that can at pre-
sent be made to the ancient pronunciation of the language.
But even the reading which comes the nearer of the two to
the Grecian memorial of our Lord's exclamation on the cross
deviates from it in two particulars which require explanation.

' According to the curtailed pronunciation of Syriac words which now
prevails, the above mater lectionis is passed over unsounded. But this is
obviously a corruption of the language, to accommodate it to modern tongues
in which the final syllables of inflexions are seldom varied; and it is quite
plain that this letter would not in ancient times have been written at the end
of the words to which it is subjoined, if it was not meant by the writer to
be there pronounced.

Chap. IV.] EXISTING STATE OF THE PESHITAH. 369

In the first place, the difference between Xafxa and LeMaNaH
may, I conceive, be accounted for by the circumstance that
St. Matthew, quoting a foreign word, of itself unintelligible to
his Grecian readers, and reserving its interpretation for a
second line, gives only its sound in the first one, in conse-
quence of which his representation of this word was not affected
by any change of language, and was just the same as if it had
been written immediately after the crucifixion of our Saviour:
while, on the other hand, the Syriac translator has denoted
this part of the exclamation by a significant word of his own
dialect, which, as an element of a living language, was subject
to alteration. The difference, therefore, which is observable
between Aafxa and LeMaNaH, is to be laid to the account of the
change which the Syriac word here employed underwent in
the interval between the periods when our Lord was crucified
and the Peshitah was written : at the former date this word
was identical with that of the same signification in the pure
ancient Hebrew, though at the latter date it had become per-
ceptibly different from its Hebrew original.

But, in the second place, the difference between HA<, HA*,
and HEL, HEL — a far more surprising one, and for the eluci-
dation of which this discussion has chiefly been entered upon
— is totally unaccountable on any principle which could have
been hitherto applied to its explanation ; as may be shown
from several considerations. First, the latter pair of articulate
sounds were in themselves just as unintelligible to the Syriac
reader as the former pair were to the Grecian reader ; and,
consequently, the difference between those pairs could not
have been produced by any alteration of the Syriac dialect
within the interval of time above specified. Secondly, it can-
not be conceded that the two Syriac groups were originally
closed, each of them, with a Yod (to denote the sound /)
which has since been erased from the writing : for the uni-
form practice in this writing has been to retain the final Yod,
even where it has ceased to be pronounced. Thus, to give an
2 d2

370 A DIFFICULTY CLEARED UP IN THE [Chap. IV.

example somewhat analogous to that under consideration, the
words Kvpie, Kvpie (Matt. vii. 21) are rendered in the Peshitah
^ad _»jio, MrtRI, MaRI, ' My Lord, My Lord ;' respecting which
Syriac groups it is to be observed, that they are pointed by
Gabriel Sionita so as to be read Mar, Mar; and yet they still
retain the mater lectionis Yod which is omitted in their
modern pronunciation. Thus, again, in the very example
before us, though ujj^nn», SheBaQTaNI, is shown by Gabriel's
pointing of it to be now pronounced shebocton by the Maro-
nites and such other Christians of Western Asia as still make
use of Syriac formularies in divine service, yet the Yod at the
termination of this group has not been in consequence ex-
punged. Thirdly, it cannot be imagined that the Syriac
translators, or afterwards any transcribers of their work,
omitted the Yod at the end of each group through oversight ;
as such an omission would have been calculated most strongly
to force itself on observation, through the losses thereby occa-
sioned of a syllable in the sound of those groups, and of a
possessive pronoun in their sense. The insertion, indeed, or
omission of a Yod serving to denote the vowel E in the inte-
rior of the noun contained in the same groups, might possibly
escape notice for the very opposite reason ; as such vowel-
letter would have no effect whatever upon that noun, whose
meaning and pronunciation remain exactly the same, whether
that internal Yod be inserted or omitted. But the case is
quite different with regard to the external Yod, which neither
translators nor copyists could have left out, without being
conscious of having done so. Lastly, quite exclusively of the
consideration of the character of strict honesty to which the
Syriac translators are entitled on account of the manner in
which they have executed every other portion of their work,
they cannot be charged with a misrepresentation here design-
edly adopted of the initial sounds of our Lord's exclamation ;
;is tlicy have fairly translated the passage of each Gospel suc-
ceeding that in which this exclamation is recorded, wherein it

Chap. IV.] EXISTING STATE OF THE PESHITAH. 371

is stated that those sounds were mistaken by some of the by-
standers for the name Elias ("U-^, HeLz'YAa) repeated; and
have thus supplied their readers with a proof to the same
effect as that furnished, not only in this way by both of the
original Gospels, but also more directly by the transcript of
the sounds in question still preserved in one of them, namely,
to the effect that the vowel I followed immediately after the
articulation L in each of the repeated sounds.

Now if all this be true, — if there be a moral certainty that
the Syriac translators wrote each of the groups in question
without a Yod at its close, — and if, on the other hand, it be
equally certain that they intended those groups to be read
Hell, Hell, in accordance with their own interpretation of the
meaning of the same groups which requires them to be thus
pronounced, and also in accordance with the direct represen-
tation of their sounds now given, indeed, in only the one of
the Greek Gospels referred to, but which in all probability was
at first given in both of them ; — how are these conflicting posi-
tions to be reconciled ? The solution of this difficulty is, I
submit, to be found in the state of the Hebrew Bible at the
time of the formation of the Peshitah. At that time — as has
been already shown to some extent, and will be more fully
proved when I come to discuss the age of this ancient version
— there were no vowel-letters in the sacred text. The first
two groups, therefore, of the twenty-second Psalm (putting

a In both of the Syriac passages above referred to, the name in question
is written with a Lamed prefixed, which I have omitted for the purpose of
exhibiting barely the word itself. In the sacred text this name is still writ-
ten without any vowel-letter n*>bw, HeliYaH; but in its Syriac transcript
1 . ^\ if I am not mistaken, the final Haleph was inserted to express the
vowel A, and the He was then dropped; while, on the other hand, it conti-
nues in the Hebrew group, in which it served indirectly to intimate the use
of the specified vowel after the consonant Yod, until such application of it fell
into oblivion, in consequence of the introduction of matres lectionis into the
writing of the Hebrew Bible. It is from this view of the subject, as far as
respects the Syriac designation, that I have above given, conformably to my
notation, the reading of it, HeLiYA.

372 A DIFFICULTY CLEAEED UP IN THE [Chap. IV.

out of consideration for the present whether they were or were
not then closed with a paragogic He) must at all events have
been at that date written without a Tod at their termination ;
and yet the context required them to be read ReLi, HeL«, ' My
God, My God,' exactly in the same way as if they had been
written, just as they now are, ^K vN. This Psalm, which
was composed above a thousand years before the crucifixion
of our Lord, gives as vivid a description of several particulars
connected with that awful event as if it had been written by
one of those actually present at the scene. To bring this to
the recollection of my readers in the case of an inspired com-
position, with which they must be perfectly familiar, it will be
sufficient to quote the following extracts from the translation
of it inserted in our Authorized Version: — " My God, My
God, why hast thou forsaken me T — " All they that see me
laugh me to scorn ; they shoot out the lip ; they shake the
head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver
him : let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him f — " they
pierced my hands and my feet f — " they look and stare upon
me ;" — " they part my garments among them, and cast lots
upon my vesture." As our blessed Redeemer evidently appro-
priated this remarkable series of prophecies to himself, by
making use of the identical exclamation with which they com-
mence ; so his uttering its initial words in the very language
in which they were originally pronounced, was calculated to
direct attention to the portion of Scripture containing them,
for the edification of such persons as then were, or might at
any subsequent period become, acquainted with the sacred
text. And the 1'ramers of the Peshitah appear, in conformity
with the benevolent intention thus shown by our Lord, to
haw endeavoured to contribute to the same effect, by exhibit-
ing those words, not only in their original language, but
also with their original spelling, which, though already at
that date obsolete in the ordinary use of Shemitic writing,0

* In speaking above of Shemitic writing in the singular number, I refer
to only the kinds of it used by the early Christians and the Jews, which must

Chap.IV.] EXISTING STATE OF THE PESHITAH. 373

was still retained in the text of the Hebrew Bible. There was
then, indeed, no prospect of this spelling being ever changed
in the inspired volume ; as it was well known that the Jews
were violently prejudiced against the introduction of any in-
novation, and particularly of one of Pagan origin, into the
mode of transcribing their Scriptures. The Syriac translators,
therefore, very naturally thought that the above groups would
always continue to be written in the Hebrew text, without a
Yod at their close, and yet be read, in accordance with the
demands of the context, the same way as if that mater lectio-
nis had been annexed to them. In this expectation, indeed,
those scribes were mistaken : the Jewish priests, tempted by
the opportunity which the employment of the matres lectionis
afforded them, of perverting the sense of the prophecies relat-
ing to Christ, admitted those letters by stealth into the inspired
text, not long after the Peshitah was written, at a period when,
as I propose to show in a future chapter, all power of reading
that text, and all knowledge of the ancient Hebrew tongue, had
ceased among the Christians. After the introduction of vowel-
letters into the original writing of the Bible, the Hebrew groups

have been originally the same; since the first Christians were converted Jews.
But as the Samaritan and Jewish kinds, originally the same in every respect,
were gradually altered in the shapes of their elements, in consequence of the
strong tendency of handwriting to change in the course of time, and also to
change differently in the employment of different parties who held no com-
munication with each other; so likewise, for precisely the same reason, the
Jewish or Chaldee, and the Syriac kinds, diverging from a common origin in
the latter part of the first century, became at length quite different in the
forms of their respective sets of letters. These two kinds, however, of She-
mitic writing would appear to have continued very nearly the same down to
a period somewhat later than the middle of the third century, from the Pal-
myrene inscriptions of that date, which plainly exhibit the origin of the
square character of the modern Jewish or Chaldee, as well as that of the cur-
sive character of the modern Syriac kind. But in whatever degree their
identity may have been continued to the specified epoch, it must at all events
have been, quam proxime, complete down to the end of the first century,
within a few years of which date, as I hope to be able to show in a subsequent
chapter, the Peshitah was composed.

374 A DIFFICULTY CLEARED UP IN THE [Chap. IV.

under consideration could no longer be read, in their unvocalized
state, with the /sound at their termination, conformably to
the transcription given of them in the first, and the translation
of them in both the first and second of the Greek Gospels ;
but, notwithstanding this, the Syriac translators certainly read
them in this way, and, accordingly, meant that their Syriac
transcripts should likewise be so read. If now we revert to
those transcripts, we shall see that they clearly afford, as the
evidence of their framers, that the Hebrew groups from which
tht'V were copied, though formerly pronounced with the sound
of a fragment of the possessive pronoun of the first person sin-
gular subjoined to them, were yet written not only without a
Yod, but also without a paragogic He, at their termination.

The manner in which I conceive the translator more im-
mediately engaged in the framing of this part of the Syriac
version to have proceeded is as follows : — His first impulse
must naturally have been to transcribe the groups HAt, H\<,
into the Syriac ones . ■ \ ■] « i \ .] with two Yods in each ; that
inside the noun contained in those groups to represent the Eta,
and that outside the same noun to stand for the Iota of their
Grecian models. But, referring his Syriac transcripts still far-
ther back to the two Hebrew groups at the commencement of
the twenty-second Psalm, and wishing to mark their identity
with those groups, not only by their conveying the same sounds,
but also by doing this through the same combination of letters,
he cut off the external Yod, but retained through oversight
the internal oik: (which escaped his notice in consequence of
its nut affecting in the slightest degree the pronunciation or
meaning of the noun it enters), and confined his attention to
the omission of the former Yod, whose absence from the ori-
ginal groups made the way of reading them in the Bible, with
the / sound at their end, quite different from that to which
he was habituated in his own writing. But what thus com-
menced with one of the translators may be easily conceived
to have passed current with the rest of their body, who, in
addition to tlie natural tendency to receive passively what has

Chap. IV.] EXISTING STATE OF THE PESHITAH. 375

been introduced by an associate, were influenced by just the
same causes as he was, to overlook what was usual in their
time in the form of those groups, and to mind only what was
then uncommon therein. It is, however, possible that the
Yod inside the Syriac groups was inserted in them, not by the
translators, but subsequently by copyists ; as, from the grow-
ing familiarity of those scribes with the matres lectionis, there
was at first an increase in the number of those letters conti-
nually going forward in every kind of Shemitic writing em-
ployed to denote the words of a living language ; more espe-
cially in situations where, as in the instance before us, they
altered neither the sound nor the sense of the terms into which
they were introduced. In either of those ways all inconsis-
tency maybe removed between the appearance at present of the
internal Yod in the above groups, and the intention I have as-
cribed to the Syriac translators of writing them in the same
manner as they were then written in the original text of the
Hebrew Bible ; an intention, on their part, which solves the
difliculty proposed for investigation, and without the admission
of which it would be impossible to reconcile their own inter-
pretation of the meaning of those groups with the fact of their
having left out the external Yod at the end of each group.

If this view of the subj ect be well founded, not only does
my exposition remove a serious difficulty with which the text
of the Peshitah has been hitherto embarrassed, but it also
supplies us with a striking instance of two groups in the He-
brew Bible which the context requires to be read with the 1
sound (to express a possessive pronoun) at their end, and
which, notwithstanding, are thus attested to have been origi-
nally written without any direct sign or indirect intimation of
this vowel in that site. For the Syriac groups just analyzed,
^-.] ^-»1, have neither a Yod nor a He at their close ; and,
consequently, the Hebrew groups, the final part of whose ori-
ginal form they may be depended on as correctly representing,
must have been at first equally destitute of either termination.
They do not, indeed, for the reason above explained, serve to

376 THE PARAGOGIC HE AFTER A NOW USED [Chap.IV-

prove that the groups in question, vK vK, had originally no
vowel-letter inside the noun they contain ; but no proof of
this is wanted, as those groups do not exhibit any vowel-letter
in that site even at the present day.

The paragogic He after the A sound occurs, as has been
already observed, with the same degree of frequency in the
sacred text now as from the first ; but that degree is, I appre-
hend, much greater than it is generally supposed to be. For
the He placed at the end of a great number of Hebrew words
which are read with the final sound of the vowelJ., is proved
to be of this nature by the anomalies arising from the present
mode of using it, which are removed by an alteration of its
treatment conformable to the view of the matter here pro-
posed ; as I will endeavour to show in the instances of nouns
feminine, of pronouns masculine or feminine, of participles
feminine, and of verbs masculine or feminine. But, to avoid
dwelling too long on a point which, though of itself deserving
attention, is a digression from my subject, I must confine my-
self to a single example for each class, and leave it to the
learned reader to increase their number, which he can easily
do from his own observation. For the illustration of the first
class, I select the following expression, to which is subjoined
its Authorized English Translation : —

1 Kings, xix. 11, p?m iT^u: HIT)

" and a great and strong wind."

Here the first noun adjective (GeDoLall) is feminine, while
the second, according to the present mode of reading it
(KhaZaQ), is masculine ; and grammarians attempt to justify
the contrariety of gender thus exhibited, on the ground of the
Eebrew substantive HD being indifferently masculine or fe-
minine. Now, as gender is but arbitrarily applied to this
word, there is nothing strange or objectionable in the circum-
stance of its being treated in some places as a feminine, and
in others as a masculine noun ; still, that it should in one and

Chap. IV.] MORE THAN IS COMMONLY SUPPOSED. 377

the same place be dealt with in these opposite ways, is scarcely
consistent, and must at any rate be deemed very incongruous.
But, according to my view of the case, the expression before
us is entirely free from this anomaly. The inspired author
of the book in which this expression occurs employed the He
at the end of the first adjective, not like the other elements of
his writing, as a letter invested with a power of its own, but
merely as a quasi letter, or a mark to intimate the addition of
a syllable to the word it is annexed to ( which, after men had
got distinct notions of consonants and vowels, had the effect
of suggesting, instead of the entire syllable, its final part A),
whereby that word was put in a feminine form. Such intima-
tions he gave only according as it happened to strike his ima-
gination that they were wanting ; and, in consequence, he
omitted them in some places where they might, perhaps, have
been as useful to a reader, as in those wherein he actually in-
serted them. In the present instance, however, he had an
obvious reason for such an omission after the second adjective :
for, as the two are immediately connected at the very same
time with the very same noun substantive, they evidently
should be read in the same gender ; whence, having intimated
this gender by the introduction of the paragogic He after one
of them, he considered it unnecessary to subjoin the same hint
to the other. The second adjective, therefore, of the above
expression was intended by the original writer to be in this
place read KhaZaQa ; and, accordingly, it ought still to be so
read, with a view to conforming, not only to his intentions,
but also to the grammatical analogies of the language. This
correction requires no alteration of the letters, and merely the
insertion in pointed texts of a Qames under the third letter,
with a corresponding shortening of the pronunciation of the
preceding part of the word ; to which I should add, that such
a reading of groups wanting the final He has in many in-
stances been adopted by the Masorets themselves, though not
in, I believe, any that belong to the class now under conside-
ration.

378 THE PARAGOGIC #E AFTER .4 NOW USED [Chap.IV.

In the second class are included the masculine pronouns
HUN, ' thou,' and HDl"!, ' they,' and the feminine ones rODtf,
1 ye,' and rUH, ' they ;' but, as the final He in the case of each
of the last three of these is, I believe, on all sides allowed, on
account of the frequency of its omission, to be paragogic, I
select an example from the sacred text and its Authorized
English Version, in which the first comes under consideration,
as follows : —

Deut. v. 27, " Go thou near,— JinK Tip — and hear all that
the Lord our God shall say ; and speak
thou unto us— I^N ")21T\ ntfl — all that
the Lord our God shall speak unto thee,
and we will hear it and do it."

Here the pronoun in question is by the terrified Israelites twice
addressed to Moses, but, being in the second instance written
without a final He, it is pointed by the Masorets for the pro-
nunciation which belongs to it when spoken to a female ; and
the reason assigned for the irregularity thus attributed to the
speakers is the confusion of mind produced by the state of
terror in which they then were. But, surely, this terror could
not have led them to express themselves in a disparaging, con-
temptuous manner to Moses, as if they considered him only
as a woman, just at the moment when they were most anxious
for his intervention, that they might thereby be relieved from
their fears. On the contrary, the repetition of the pronoun
in this place, — more especially as, on its second occurrence, it
is connected with a verb ("OTH) which contains a fragment
of the very same pronoun in the preformative of its inflexion ;
so that its strict translation here is 'thou thyself;' — such repe-
tition of it, I say, is emphatic, and indicates a feeling of
earnestness on the part of the Isralites the very reverse of
disrespect. It is, therefore, perfectly obvious that this pro-
noun was intended by the author to be here read in the mas-
culine gender, with the J sound a1 its end; although it is not
cl< »sed with a paragogic lie, that would have served to intimate

Chap. IV.] MORE THAN IS COMMONLY SUPPOSED. 379

the addition to it of that sound. Very possibly, he may have
deemed such an intimation quite unnecessary in so obvious
a case ; or the paragogic letter may have been here inserted
by him, and have since disappeared : for this character is no
more exempt from the effects of time or of faulty transcription
than any other element of the sacred text ; and when that
text is said to be in the same state with regard to it after the
A sound as from the first, such effects are put out of conside-
ration. But, whatever may be the cause of the pronoun in
question presenting the bare form fiK in this site, it still ought
to be here read just in the same manner as if it was written
nfitf, with the sound of A at the end of its second syllable ; and
for this mode of reading it I might appeal even to the practice
of the Masorets themselves against their own treatment of it
in this particular instance ; since, as has been noted by gram-
marians, they have pointed Htf for such a pronunciation in
five other places,3 where the context did not in any degree re-
quire them to do so, more than in the present case. They
have, indeed, in the five instances alluded to, attached to the
group of two letters their little circular mark of censure, as if
a third one ought to have been added to it. But here again
they may be shown inconsistent ; as there are innumerable
instances where the second part of this pronoun, used as an
afformative in the inflexion of verbs for the second person sin-
gular masculine of the preterite tense, is written solely fl, which
they have pointed for the sound Ta, just the same as if it had
been followed by PI, and yet have never attached to the affor-
mative so written any mark of censure. The grammarians, I
should add, are here as inconsistent as the Masorets : for where
the part of this pronoun used as an afformative is written PHI,
they admit the final PI to be paragogic ; and yet they maintain
the very same fl, at the end of the same pronoun in its integral
state, to be an intrinsic and essential element of it. In fact,
both parties seem to have determined the nature of this letter,

a 1 Sam. xxiv. 19; Neh. ix. 6; Job, i. 10; Ps. vi. 4.; Eccles. vii. 22.

380 THE PAR AGOGICS AFTERS NOWUSED [Chap.IV.

not by the kind of use made of it in the sacred text, but by
the more or less frequency of its occurrence therein : it is
almost always found at the end of the integral pronoun mascu-
line just examined, and in consequence they have decided
on its being there intrinsic ; on the other hand, it seldom
appears at the end of the portion of the same pronoun mascu-
line used as an afformative, on which account they at once
admit it to be in such places paragogic.

As an example of the third class, that is, of the participles
or participial adjectives at present erroneously read, the fol-
lowing expression, accompanied by its translation in the Au-
thorized English Version, is adduced : —

Hos. xiii. 8, Vdp m

"as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps."

The second word of this expression is at present read ShaKUL
in the masculine gender, although it is connected with the first
one 2"T (or, as it is written when vocalized, 21*1), a noun which
is in this place feminine : and the excuse given for this ano-
maly is, that 21 is employed in some parts of the sacred text
as a masculine, and in other parts as a feminine noun ; whence
the inference is attempted to be drawn that the prophet could
with propriety use it here in either gender. But the weakness
of this reasoning may be exposed by means of the rendering
of the above words in our Authorized Version, wherein the
English term ' bear' is, through the reference to it of the pro-
noun ' her,' confined to the feminine gender, although it is in
general applicable to a male, as much as to a female of the
species, precisely in like manner as is the Hebrew equivalent
term 3"T. In fact, the subject denoted by the original expres-
sion is literally ' a bear bereaved.' But as the only possession
of a wild beast is its young, which again can be said to belong
only to the parent that takes care of them, the dam, ' a bear
bereaved' must signify 'a she bear deprived of her whelps.'
The mere statement of the animal's being robbed suffices to
indicate its sex, and shows that the secondary word connected

Chap. IV.] MORE THAN IS COMMONLY SUPPOSED. 381

with the noun which designates it ought to be read in the
feminine gender, SheKULo ; — a reading which was considered
by the inspired writer to be so obviously requisite, that he
omitted to give a hint of its additional syllable by means of a
paragogic He at the end of the group, which appeared to him
to be here quite unnecessary and superfluous. According to
this view of the matter, the violation of grammar which has
been just exposed is not to be imputed to the original writing,
but to the mode of reading it which now prevails.

To supply an example of the fourth class, or of inflexions
of verbs which I conceive to be erroneously read, I select the
following clause of a sentence, together with its Authorized
English rendering : —

Isaiah, xlvii. 11, HITl "pfy VG\

" Therefore shall evil come upon thee."

Here the verb K2 (' there hath come,' that is, ' there shall
surely come'), is at present read in the masculine inflexion for
the third person singular of the preterite tense, BaH, although
the noun connected with it, JTjn is feminine. The way in
which grammarians attempt to evade this anomaly is, by sup-
posing some word understood which can agree in gender with
the verb, and whose introduction into the clause will not mate-
rially alter its meaning, as, for instance, DT* placed before HIT),
whereby the only requisite change in the above English ren-
dering will be the substitution of ' a day of evil' instead of the
single word ' evil.' But if a license to this extent be allowed
to a grammarian, no irregularity whatever could occur in a
passage proposed for examination, which he might not thus
account for : so that, in fact, the circumstance of Hebraists
having recourse to such an explanation affords their virtual
acknowledgment of the existence here of a gross violation of
concord, on the supposition of the verb of the sentence being
at present correctly read. On the other hand, it may perhaps
be objected to a different mode of reading iO in this place,
that a final He is an essential element of the feminine inflexion

382 THE PARAGOGIC HE FORMERLY USED [Chap. IV.

of a verb for the third person singular of the preterite tense ;
as is shown, not only by its nature (it being a fragment of the
pronoun NVI introduced for the very purpose of marking the
gender), but also by the circumstance of this inflexion being
never found written without it. But to the first ground of this
objection it may be replied, that the origin here, in accordance
with the prevailing opinion, assigned to the usual termination
of the feminine inflexion in question, is erroneous ; as the pro-
noun referred to was at first written KH without any distinc-
tion of gender, and what the whole pronoun did not, a part
could hardly serve to distinguish : and, with regard to the
second ground, it consists in taking for granted upon one side
the decision of the very point at issue ; for if N3 can be read
in the feminine gender, then a final He does not always termi-
nate the inflexion under inquiry for that gender. The impe-
diment, then, to my correction being thus disposed of, I would
venture to recommend the reading of the above verb BaHa,
whereby all violation of concord is removed from the adduced
clause without any change of its writing. This correction,
which (as well as similar ones in various other places) is sup-
ported by its removal of a difficulty that cannot be otherwise
cleared up without an alteration of the Hebrew text, is
grounded on the paragogic nature I attribute to the He com-
monly found at the end of the feminine inflexion here required,
which the original writer inserted only where he conceived it
to be wanted, and which he appears to have thought in this place
rendered, by the close proximity of the governing noun femi-
nine, in i necessary for marking the gender of the verb. He in-
serted, I grant, this paragogic letter in many places where it
was n< )\ in the slightest degree more wanted than in the clause
before us ■ but if his omission of it in the present, and other
similar instances, be in consequence deemed an irregularity, it
is one of a very different kind from a false concord ; and it
ran with no more reason be censured in this ancient species of
writing, than the variability of spelling can, which is observ-
able in the earlier English versions of the Bible. The case of

Chap.IV.] AFTER VERBS ENDING IN /OR U SOUND. 383

the masculine inflexion of verbs for the second person singular
of the preterite tense has been already alluded to under the
head of pronouns, and, even if I had room to spare, requires
no more discussion, as the He at the end of this inflexion is on
all sides admitted to be paragogic. So likewise is the He at the
end of the first person singular and plural of the future tense.
With respect to that which is found at the end of the inflexions
for the second and third persons feminine plural of the future
tense, and of the second person plural feminine of the imperative
mood, I have only to observe, that it is universally allowed to
be paragogic at the end of the pronouns from which the affor-
matives of those inflexions are derived, and, therefore, ought
equally to be deemed so at the end of these afFormatives.

The paragogic He, which formerly, in some instances at
least, followed the inflexions of verbs ending in / or U sound,
was always erased on the insertion of a Yod or Waw, for the
purpose of more directly indicating one or other of those
sounds; but still its original occurrence in such sites may
occasionally be detected by a comparison of the different ways
in which the old vocalizers treated the same inflexion, in the
same place of the two editions of the sacred text, or in diffe-
rent places of the same edition. This point I shall endeavour
to establish, first, by means of the following examples of in-
flexions belonging to the imperative mood : —

Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition. Author. Eng. Vers.

Gen. xi. 3, 4, 7, ran, HaBaH, (11H, go to.

xix. 32, l"D7, LeKaH, W, LeKI, come.

xxxviii.16, ran, HaBaH, Knn,a goto.

a The Haleph of the above group is not a mater lectionis ; for, if the Sa-
maritan scribe had vocalized the word, he would have done so with a Yod,
as in the parallel case of the second example : it is, therefore, merely one gu t-
tural substituted for another through a mistake of the copyists, — a mistake
which, it has been already noticed, is of such frequent occurrence as to show
that there must, at one time, have been a strong resemblance of shape between
the characters with which Haleph, and He were written.

2e

384 PARAG0G1C HE FORMERLY USED [Chap. IV.

The pronunciation of the groups extracted from the Jewish
edition of the Pentateuch is here given according to their
Masoretic pointing: hut it is evident that the verbs employed
in the second and third examples, being addressed, each of
them, to a female, ought to have been pointed respectively for
the sounds LeKt'H and HaBiH ; and that the latter verb being,
in the series of places specified in the first example, addressed
to a number of persons, ought in each of those places to have
been pointed for the sound HaBwH. Accordingly, we may
perceive that, in the case exhibited in the second example, the
Samaritan scribes, while correcting the oversight committed
by the old Jewish vocalizers in leaving PD7 un vocalized, in-
serted after the two intrinsic elements of this group a Tod to
express the vowel i, and at the same time erased the extra-
neous letter which had before served less definitely to suggest
the same vowel. The requisite corrections, indeed, of the
Masoretic pointing in the places referred to in the first and
third examples cannot be established in as direct a manner ;
because those plaees were overlooked by both sets of voca-
lizers: but still they are supported by the practice of those
scribes in parallel cases. Thus, POPT being in the site, Ruth,
iii. 15, addressed to a female, is there exhibited "OP! by the
Jewish set of old vocalizers; and being, in Gen. xlvii. 16,
addressed to a plurality of men, is there put in the form "OPT
by both the Jewish and the Samaritan set. In neither of
these two instances, indeed, have we, as in the case of the
second example, a direct proof of the paragogic He having
been originally employed at the end of the group operated
ii poll. Bui suppose this group to have been 3PI, instead of
POP!, in each instance, and the alterations so made rather
tend to strengthen the evidence adduced in support of the
above corrections. For, if the old vocalizers, guided by the
context, subjoined to 3H, in the one instance, a Yod, and in
the other a Waw, without the help of any hint suggested
immediately by the mode in which this group was written,
they would afortiori have done so, if a paragogic He had in

Chap.IV.] AFTER VERBS ENDING IN I OR U SOUND. 385

each place drawn their attention to the want there of a vowel,
and had so put them to some extent on their guard in the
selection of that vowel. The authority, therefore, of both the
first set of Jewish, and the only set of Samaritan vocalizers,
combines with the grammatical analogies of the ancient He-
brew language to establish the justness of my representation
of the matter, and convict the Masorets of incorrect pointing
in the instances just noticed. This incorrectness, however, is
to be attributed to ignorance, on their part, not at all of the
structure of the above language, but of the nature of the ma-
tres lectionis ; which they looked upon as genuine elements of
the text, and in consequence paid far more deference to, than
they ought. In a few, indeed, of the more glaring instances
of defectiveness in the older vocalization, they have noticed
with their little circular mark of censure the absence of ma-
tres lectionis where those letters ought to have been inserted;
but in general they have, as in the instances before us, regu-
lated their pointing by, and made it conform with, those
unwarranted omissions. To conclude, then, with reverting
to those instances, — the paragogic He which has hitherto been
assumed never to come after any vowel but A, is here proved
beyond a doubt to follow the sound of Um the three adduced
cases of the first example, and that of / in each of the two
remaining cases.

Instances of the paragogic He formerly used to intimate
syllables ending in / and U sounds respectively, at the close
of other inflexions of verbs, may be detected as follows : —

Gen. xviii. 19-

Jewish Edition, WT, YeDaHTIV, I know him.
Samaritan Edition, W"P, YaDaHTI, I know.

Gen. xxxvii. 24.

Jewish Edition, lP!ftinpv),a WaYyiQqaKhUHU, and they took him.
Samaritan Edition, ^p^, WoYyiQqaKhU, and they took.

a A vocal Waw, which the context obviously requires, has been inserted
between brackets in the above group, to make the reading of it correspond
with its Masoretic pointing.

2 e 2

386 PARAGOGIC HE FORMERLY USED [Chap. IV.

Here we may perceive, by a comparison of the different modes
of vocalizing the same groups respectively, that what the
Jewish set of old vocalizers in each instance took for an affix
of the third person singular masculine, the Samaritan set, on
the other hand, considered as a paragogic element. From the
Jewish treatment of each group it is evident that both were
at first terminated by a He, and that, in their original state,
they were written respectively Hr^T and Hnp'1! ; while from
their Samaritan treatment it is equally plain, that the Samari-
tans read the former YeDaHTe'H, and the latter WaYyiQqaKhwH;
and that, having inserted in one of then a Yod, and in the other
a Wdw, to denote their respective final sounds, these scribes
at the same time omitted the He which had, in their view of
the matter, previously served less directly to express those
sounds. Whether the Samaritan scribes here judged rightly
or not, it is quite clear, from their vocalization of those
groups, that the paragogic He was formerly used in some
places to intimate syllables ending in / or U sound ; be-
cause, otherwise, they could not possibly have imagined the
letter in question to have been of this nature, and so em-
ployed in the sites under examination. But if we wish to
ascertain whether the He erased from either site was actually
a paragogic one, we must proceed to inquire, further, whether
the view taken of it in that site by the Samaritan vocalizers
was correct. Now, with regard to the first example, were the
declaration contained in it made by an ordinary person, the
sense would be just the same, whether conveyed in the series
of words, l I know him, that he will command, &c.,' or in the
shorter form, l I know that he will command, &c.;' since we
can form ;i judgment as to the future actions of a man, only
from observation of his past external behaviour, and not from
an insight into his internal nature. But unto God each indi-
vidual is thoroughly known, as to himself and his inmost
thoughts and intentions, as also with respect to his future
conduct. The Longer form, therefore, of the above declara-
tion has, when coming from the Almighty, more meaning than

Chap.IV.] AFTER VERBS ENDING IN 1 OR U SOUND. 387

the other, and must have been that intended by the inspired
writer of the text, as more appropriate to the omniscience of
the Great Being to Avhom this speech is attributed. In this
case, then, the Jewish reading of the group should be deemed
correct, and the Samaritan one rejected as erroneous. But
the proper use of the He at the end of the second group can-
not in like manner be determined by the sole consideration of
the context; as the meaning of the clause in which this group
occurs is not in the least altered by the different ways of voca-
lizing it, the two translations thence resulting — ' they took him
and cast him into a pit,' and ' they took and cast him into a
pit' — being completely equivalent. A reference, therefore,
must here be made to the structure of the Hebrew sentence :
and when the group in question is examined in conjunction
with those immediately subsequent, a comparison of the two
modes in which it has been dealt with will be found to tell
very decidedly in favour of its Samaritan vocalization, and of
the briefer of the two translations of it which have been just
adduced.

The part of the original sentence which requires examina-
tion (after the insertion in its initial group between brackets of
a Waw, the want of which was obviously overlooked) is voca-
lized in the Jewish edition of the Hebrew text as follows : —

in** ■oSfcn ^nranp^i

' and they took him and cast him.'

Here a circumstance presents itself to observation which it
would be extremely difficult to account for, without more aid
than is afforded by the Jewish copies of the Pentateuch. The
pronoun of the third person singular masculine is in this clause
expressed in two very different ways, being intimately con-
nected with the first verb of the extract as an affix thereto,
and separated from the second in a detached form. But what
conceivable ground can, by any possibility, be assigned for
this difference ? each exponent of the pronoun stands precisely
in the same relation to the verb by which it ib governed ;

388 PARAGOGIC HE FORMERLY USED [Chap. IV.

whence we might naturally anticipate that, as the first is at-
tached to its governing verb in the usual form of an affix, the
second would likewise be tied to the second verb in just the
same manner. But when we substitute the Samaritan read-
ing of the same words, this difficulty at once disappears, and
the reason for putting the pronoun at the end of the clause in
a detached form is made quite obvious : —

' and they took and cast him.'

In the reading here given of the Hebrew line, the treatment of
the first group by the Samaritan vocalizers shows that they
looked upon the He which they had erased at its close, as in-
tended merely to intimate wdiat, through an improvement
then recently introduced into the mode of writing the Hebrew
text, they were enabled more directly as well as more defi-
nitely to express by means of the substituted vowel-letter ;
namely, that the verb contained in this group was to be read
in the plural number. We might, perhaps, at first view, be
inclined to think that the context, which in general indicated
without the aid of a paragogic letter the number of a verb in
this writing, even while it was as yet unvocalized, must have
sufficiently done so here likewise. But still, the additional in-
timation supplied by that letter was not superfluous ; as will, I
conceive, be perceived from the mode of dealing with this case
resorted to by the Jewish vocalizers. For, having lost the bene-
fit of the hint in question in the line under examination, in con-
Bequence of their attributing quite a different use to the letter
by which it was conveyed, they actually omitted to put the
verb preceding that letter in a plural form ; so that, although
the Masorets, contrary to their more usual practice, corrected
in this instance the glaring fault of the earlier Jewish voca-
lization, still this -roup remains up to the present day, in
unpointed copies of the Jewish edition of the sacred text, erro-
neously exhibited in the singular number. Now the restora-
tion of the exact sense of the first -roup, thus arrived at.

Chap. IV.] AFTER VERBS ENDING IN/OR U SOUND. 389

through the aid of the Samaritan vocalization, entirely removes
the difficulty under consideration. For as the adduced extract
really contains but one pronoun, which is governed by two
verbs in common, it was requisite, for clearness of expression,
that this pronoun should be exhibited in such a state as would
show that it stood in the same relation to both of the govern-
ing verbs ; that is, it was requisite to write it in a detached
form, and not as an affix to the second verb. In an amended
edition of the Hebrew text, the initial group of this extract

o o

should accordingly be printed inninpl ; and the only altera-
tion wanted in the Authorized English Translation of this
clause would be to expunge the pronoun ' him' on its first
occurrence. Here, by the way, a use which, I believe, has
been hitherto passed over unnoticed, of the separate form of a
pronoun in the objective case, is presented to view through a
comparison of the Jewish and Samaritan editions of the He-
brew Pentateuch. The discovery, indeed, bears but slightly
on a translation ; yet still, it is, I submit, valuable in reference
to the original record, as tending to point out the clearness
of the author's style, as far as that quality could be displayed
in the primitive species of alphabetic writing which he em-
ployed.

To conclude this analysis — only one of the groups just
examined, I admit, has been actually traced back to a former
state in which it exhibited a paragogic He immediately fol-
lowing a syllable ending in / or U sound, where it must have
been employed to intimate at first the whole syllable, and
afterwards the final part thereof ; but, no doubt, an attentive
comparison of the two editions of the sacred text will enable
the learned reader to detect, through the same or like modes
of investigation, various other instances of this letter giving an
indirect hint of one or other of the specified vowels. We are
not, however, hence to infer that inflexions of verbs ending
with these sounds were formerly always closed with a para-
gogic He. For there are many instances, as I shall take an
opportunity in the next chapter of showing, in which the voca-

390 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

lizers failed to insert a Yod to denote the vowel I at the end
of the inflexion of the preterite tense for the first person singu-
lar, and where, consequently, there is not the slightest reason
to suppose a paragogic He was ever placed, none being at pre-
sent found in that site : and the instances are still more nu-
merous in which those scribes omitted a Waw to express the
vowel U at the end of the inflexion of the preterite for the
third person plural, and where, in like manner, no He now
appearing, there is not the least ground for allowing that one
formerly existed. The probability, therefore, is that the ori-
ginal writers of the sacred text inserted this letter after syl-
lables ending in / or U sound, in like manner as after those
ending in A, just where the thought happened to strike them
that the hint thus suggested might be useful to the reader ;
but which of the three classes of syllables they most frequently
employed it to intimate, can now no longer be ascertained.

I now proceed to examine a few of the points which are
brought under observation through a comparison of the two
copies of David's inspired composition already noticed, but
whose discussion was, on my first reference to those copies,
passed over, in order to avoid interrupting the course of the
argument, and deferred to the end of this chapter. I shall com-
mence with directing attention to one of the most remarkable
of those points, and that which, as I conceive, stands most in
need of elucidation ; namely, the actual force and bearing of the
Hebrew tenses in the poetic parts of Scripture. The extreme
uncertainty which prevails upon this subject (notwithstanding
the many learned dissertations that have been written there-
on) is very strikingly exemplified by the discrepancies, in re-
spect to tenses, between the two translations of the copy of the
above Hebrew poem (as recorded in the Book of Psalms) which
are at present sanctioned in common by our Church ; there
being above thirty of the verba of this poem construed as pre-
terites in the Authorized English Version of the Bible, which
are rendered in a future tense in the older translation pre-
served in our Prayer-book. To the uncertainty thus exem-

Chap. IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 391

plified several causes have contributed : first, the very few
Hebrew forms employed to express the various modifications
of tense, and the mutual convertibility of meaning of the two
principal forms, in consequence of which, much consideration
and attention to the tenor of the composition are required, to
guard us from the danger of confounding the meanings of those
forms ; secondly, the imperfect acquaintance of moderns with
the ancient use of the Greek aorists, through which, in a great
measure, the bearings of the Hebrew forms in question are in-
terpreted in that version (the Septuagint) upon which our
chief dependence must be placed, among the means put by a
gracious Providence within our reach for arriving at a fuller
knowledge of those forms ; thirdly, the apparent discrepancies,
in the interpretation of the Hebrew tenses, between the several
ancient versions in the cognate dialects ; and, fourthly, the
occasional pointing of the Hebrew verbs for wrong tenses by
the Masorets, — whether it was that they failed, in those in-
stances, to perceive the right application of the rules of struc-
ture of this language, which they must have well understood,
or that, perceiving the true sense of the passages operated upon,
they yet scrupled to follow their own judgment on this sub-
ject, and preferred transmitting the readings of those passages
which were sanctioned by the Jewish priesthood of their day.
Now, as the removal of any of these causes of uncertainty
must contribute to reduce the obscurity in which the poetic
use of the Hebrew tenses is involved, it evidently would
much contribute to throw light on the nature of that use, if
the apparent discrepancies of the tenses in the versions in dif-
ferent ancient languages could be so accounted for, as to give
the representations of the subject in those versions the force
of concordant testimonies : since thereby evidence of consider-
able strength would be obtained for the explanation of what-
ever might be doubtful in the Greek aorists on the one side,
and for the refutation of the mispointing of tenses by the Ma-
sorets (and that, too, through the attestation of writers of their
own, as well as of foreign nations) on the other. But, after

392 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

working at this problem for some time, I at last arrived at
an exposition of the matter which, I am in hopes, will be found
to answer the desired end. I now proceed to lay before the
reader the result of my investigation ; and will afterwards
give two examples of a mode of testing its validity, as well as
showing its use, which may be applied to it in an endless va-
riety of other cases.

Throughout the poetic portions of Scripture, declarations
are frequently made, not respecting particular definite acts,
but about courses of action ; while indefinite references to
those courses are in different languages usually pointed to
different parts of them, and take the form of present, past, or
future tenses, as they are directed to the middle, the earlier,
or the later parts of each course. In Hebrew, for instance,
the present, as conveyed by a participle or by a second use of
the primary form for the future, is occasionally used in this
sense ; but much more frequently the future, as represented
by its own primary form, or by the secondary form of the prete-
rite, is thus applied. In the Greek language, as written by the
Seventy Jews, the two aorists are, each of them, more com-
monly so employed than present or future tenses, except in the
Book of Proverbs, in which the present tense is oftener, thougli
not exclusively, applied in this manner. In the Syriac of the
Peshitah the participle present is sometimes used in this sense,
but much more frequently the verb preterite. In the Chaldee
of the Targums the participle of the present is the form most
commonly applied to denoting such reforences. In English,
tin present tense is that most suited to the purpose ; though,
in the case of a reference to the intentions of the mind rather
than to a course of actual external conduct, a future form of
expression would best answer. Accordingto the above expo-
sition, then, the modern language being put out of considera-
tion, the versions in the ancient tongues previously specified
will be found, in each instance of an indefinite reference, to
agree with the original record and with each other in alluding
bo the very same course of action, although (lie}- present the

Chap. IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 393

appearance of disagreement in this respect, in consequence of
the habits contracted by different nations of referring to diffe-
rent parts of a course of this sort, and thence of expressing such
references in different tenses.

The poem of David which has suggested the discussion of
this subject is peculiarly fitted for its illustration ; as this
composition supplies not merely an additional field for the
determination of the force of the tenses in Hebrew poetry, but
even one of the kind which is most of all to be relied on, as
yielded by a comparison of corresponding parts of parallel
passages of the sacred text itself ; nor is the further additional
aid to be overlooked which is afforded by comparing the ren-
derings of such parts respectively in the different versions.
For my first example, then, I select a passage of this poem,
respecting the force of whose tenses there can now be scarcely
any difference of opinion, and in reference to which the two
English translations sanctioned by our Church quite agree : it
is rendered in the Authorized Version of the Bible as fol-
lows : —

" It is God that (1) girdeth me with strength, and (2) maketh
my way*perfect ; he (3) maketh my feet like hinds' feet,
and (4) setteth me upon mya high places ; he (5)teacheth
my hands to war." — Ps. xviii. 32-34.
In the Hebrew of this extract the first, third, and fifth modifi-
cations of tense are represented by participles present ; the
second and fourth, by verbs in the primary form for the future,

" The writers of the older English translation in the book of Common
Prayer, guided by the sense, left out the above superfluous pronoun posses-
sive, which the framers of our present Authorized Version felt bound to re-
tain, from their desire to adhere strictly to what they conceived to be the
original text. But, on referring to that text, it will now be seen, that the
letter denoting this pronoun, viz. the final element of ^""1X22, is a mater
lectionis introduced by the vocalizers of the second century, and proved to be
wrongly here inserted by the concordant testimonies of the Septuagint and
Peshitah, given through their respective renderings of the original group in
both of the places referred to.

394 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

which, however, is also used to denote the present, and in which
signification, consequently, they must, from the expressions of
time with which they are immediately connected, be here taken:
while, in the parallel passage of Samuel, the first clause, which
in all probability originally contained, in like manner as in the
former case, a participle present, now exhibits in lieu thereof
a noun ;a but the four remaining forms of tense stand exactly
the same as in the place referred to in the Book of Psalms. In
the Septuagint the second expression of time is a second aorist
in the Psalms and a first aorist in Samuel ; while the four re-
maining expressions are, all of them, participles present in both
places. Here, by the way, we may see, by comparing the two
translations of the same original passage, that the Seventy
Jews made no distinction between the two kinds of aorists ;
and still farther, by comparing those aorists, on the one hand,

a The Hebrew word above referred to, which is at present exhibited in the
form ^3?ft, MaHUZI, 'my strength,' is shown by its translation in thePeshi-
tah «_»_J_QV-k», ' hath girded me,' and more especially by its rendering in the
Septuagint, KpcnaiCbv ytte, ' fortifying me,' as well as by the form of the corre-
sponding word in the eighteenth Psalm, ^"ITND, 'girding me,' to have been
formerly written W^3?E, MeHOZeZl, ' fortifying me (literally, ' my fortifier').
The dropping once of a letter which ought to be written twice continuously
may be easily accounted for by giddiness of transcription ; more especially on
the part of Shemitic copyists, who were in the habit of constantly denoting
an articulation repeated without the intervention of a vowel-sound by a sin-
gle character; and a copyist wtio did not take the trouble of reading, as he
proceeded, what he had written out, may be readily conceived to have failed
to observe that a vowel should be pronounced between the two letters of Z
power, and so to have intentionally omitted one of them as quite superfluous.
In an amended edition of the sacred text I would recommend the dropped
consonant to be restored ; in such a manner, however, as to show the resto-
ration to be modern ; for which purpose it should be exhibited, in accordance
with the notation I employ, ^[T]fj3?». The corresponding clauses in the two
copies of the poem would thus come out, in Samuel, ' God fortifieth me with
strength' (instead of the present authorized rendering, ' God as my strength
and power'); and in the Book of Psalms, without any change of the wording
in either of the Authorized Translations, 'It is God that girdeth me with
strength.' The two clauses, I admit, are oot thus exhibited absolutely iden-
tical, but they are at leasl restored to perfeol equivalence.

•Chap.IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 395

with the Hebrew tenses they were intended respectively to in-
terpret, and on the other, with the Greek tenses with which
they are each of them associated, and also by bearing in mind
that the translators were in the habit of assimilating in their
own language the force of tenses thus connected, we shall per-
ceive that the Greek forms in question are in this place used
as indefinite present tenses ; although they are, each of them,
employed in translating the narrative parts of the very same
poem to denote a past event, with scarcely any distinction
from definite preterites, or at least with none that can be
easily apprehended by modern readers. In the Peshitah all
the five expressions of time in both of the original passages
are translated in the preterite tense. Here a remarkable pecu-
liarity in the idiomatic forms of the ancient Syriac is very
prominently displayed ; as, from a comparison of the corre-
sponding verbs or participles of the two parallel passages, even
in the Hebrew alone, but more especially from this comparison
taken in both the Hebrew and Greek, it is rendered clear be-
yond a doubt that all of those words in the original record are
used with the force of a present tense ; and yet they are all
translated in the dialect in question by preterites. To recon-
cile these preterites in any degree with their ascertained value
in the passages referred to, what would first occur, as I con-
ceive, to an investigator would be to translate them as mixed
preterites, as for instance, to render the first of them, ' he hath
girded me with strength,' wherein the reference is made, in-
deed, chiefly to the past, but so far indefinitely as not to ex-
clude all consideration of the present. So imperfect a degree
of agreement, however, with the original text is by no means
satisfactory. To do justice, therefore, to the well-known accu-
racy in other respects of the first Syriac version, we must, I
submit, have recourse to the theory above propounded, and
conclude that the people who formerly spoke the language of
this version were in the habit of referring generally to indefi-
nite courses of action, by pointing in particular to the earlier
part of each course, in consequence of which their preterites.

396 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

taken in this indefinite acceptation, were equivalent to present
or future tenses indefinitely used in other languages ; whence
the correct English translation of the expression above alluded
to would come out, ' he girdeth me with strength.' In Hebrew,
preterites are frequently converted into futures, and that, too,
without limitation to indefinite forms. It is, therefore, I sub-
mit, not very strange, that the conversion of preterites into
present or future tenses should, in a particular case, have held
in the cognate Syriac dialect, — at least not so strange as to
warrant our refusing to consider the evidence by which this
view of the matter is sustained, and rejecting it without exa-
mination.

With regard to the adduced example, I have only further
to notice two very gross mistakes relating to it, committed by
the Masorets. The second of the modifications of time therein
(viz., in the clause, ' and maketh my way perfect') referred to,
which is exhibited in both of the original passages in the pri-
mary form of the future or present tense, is in each place con-
verted by those critics into a secondary form of the preterite,
through their mode of pointing the verb and the Waw prefixed
to it. To expose the glaring incorrectness of their representa-
tion of this subject, it will not be necessary to appeal to the
combined evidence of the Hebrew and Greek records, which
is here irresistible ; I prefer opposing to them in this instance
the attestations of their own countrymen, the joint testimonies
of the two Targums, in which the Books of Samuel and that
of the Psalms are respectively interpreted, in each of which
the tense in question is translated by a participle present. But
of the former Targum, called that of Jonathan, the first part,
which included the translation of the specified historic books,
i. of considerable authority, and far older than the Masoretic
pointing ; while the circumstance of the latter Targum being
of much less antiquity serves to prove that a view of this
matter directly opposed to that of the Masorets prevailed
among the Jews for a great length of time. In fact, the
Waw prefixed t<» verbs was formerly pronounced in every in-

Chap.IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 397

stance Wu, as is shown by the extant remains of the column
of the Hexapla of Origen, in which he represented the sounds
of Hebrew groups by means of Greek characters, and in which
the sound in question is always denoted by ov, there being no
way of representing the articulation of W before the vowel U
with Grecian letters. The variation, therefore, of the sound
of this Hebrew conjunction, according to the uses to which it
is applied, is a distinction introduced since the days of Origen,
which indeed is a very useful one, in saving the reader trouble,
as far as it is correctly applied. But whenever the pointing
for a change of tense appears to be at variance with the con-
text, we are by no means tied down to it, more especially where
it is found to be contradicted by older authorities.

I am now in a condition to avail myself of the aid of the
proposed theory, in analyzing the force of the Hebrew tenses
where their meaning is less obvious, and for my second exam-
ple select the passage of the above inspired poem which first
betrays a disagreement on this point between the two Autho-
rized English Translations : it is rendered in the sixth verse
of this Psalm in our Bible, thus : — -

" In my distress I (1) called upon the Lord, and (2) cried
unto my God ; he (3) heard my voice out of his temple,
and (4) my cry came before him, even into his ears."

The very same passage is interpreted in the fourth and fifth
verses of this Psalm in our Prayer-book, as follows : —

"In my trouble I (1) will call upon the Lord, and (2) com-
plain unto my God ; so (3) shall he hear my voice out of
his holy temple, and (4) my complaint shall come before
him, it shall enter even into his ears."

According to the former rendering of the passage here re-
ferred to, it constitutes part of a highly figurative and poeti-
cal narration of an awful danger with which David had been
beset, and of a wonderful display of God's power, by which he
was thence extricated ; which, commencing two verses before,

398 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

is continued without interruption through above twenty
verses. But, according to the latter rendering, the same pas-
sage conveys an outburst of pious and grateful feeling, excited
by the thoughts of the dreadful danger by which the author
had been encompassed, of which he had just begun to write,
but interrupts his narration to give vent to the expression of
his sense of the goodness of the Almighty in always listening
to his prayer, when offered up in time of danger and trouble.
It is besides to be noted that, before we come to the end of
the narrative portion of the Psalm, there are more interrup-
tions of the same kind, in which the verbs employed do not,
as they are represented in the former account of the matter,
point definitely to a single past act of God, but indefinitely to
a number of acts constituting the general tenor of his provi-
dential treatment of the Royal Psalmist. Thus the translation
of the first half of this Psalm in the Prayer-book would appear
to breathe a stronger spirit of devotedness to God than the
rendering given of the same part in our Authorized Version,
and so to be preferable in itself, as well as more in keeping
with the zealous disposition of the author. But to arrive at a
stricter decision between the two translations of the specified
portion of the poem, it would be necessary to examine the in-
ternal structure of their common original compared with the
corresponding portion of the other copy of the same original,
and with the like portions of the more ancient renderings of
both copies, as far as respects the passages which are of dis-
puted meaning. Here, however, to avoid too long a digres-
sion, I must confine myself to such an examination of the first
of those passages, namely, that of which the two English ren-
derings have been above quoted ; and, as the question, whe-
ther it be parenthetically used or not, depends on the force of
its tenses, I shall commence with a, comparative analysis of
their bearings, similar to that made in the case of the previous
example.

In this passage, then, as it is exhibited in the Hebrew
Psalter, all the ("our verbs are in the primary form of the

Chap. IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 399

future or present tense ; while, in the parallel passage of Samuel
all the three that are preserved are likewise in that form ; but
the fourth is dropped from the text. In the Greek of the
same passage in the Psalms, the first three verbs are aorists,
and the fourth a future tense ; while in Samuel the first three
are all futures, and the fourth clause is left without any ex-
pression of tense, showing that the fourth verb had been lost
from the text, or at any rate from the copies of it consulted
by the Seventy before their time. In the Syriac of this pas-
sage, as given in both places of its occurrence, all the four
verbs are in the preterite tense. Finally, in the Chaldee para-
phrase of the Psalms, the four Hebrew verbs of the above pas-
sage are translated by five participles present, there being
a supplementary expression of tense given in the last clause
in the same manner as in the older of the two English trans-
lations ; while in the closer Chaldee interpretation of Samuel
given in the Targum of Jonathan, the tenses of the same pas-
sage are conveyed through four participles present.

Now — to examine the point under inquiry by the aid of
the particulars just furnished — I am quite ready to admit
that, although in prose a Hebrew verb in a future form re-
quires a Waw to be prefixed to itself, or to the noun govern-
ing it, for the purpose of assimilating the force of its tense to
that of a preceding preterite with which it is connected in
sense, still, in poetry this alteration of tense may take place
without the intervention of the Waw conversive, as it is tech-
nically termed ; and that, accordingly, the Hebrew futures
in the passage before us may be translated as preterites, pro-
vided this verse was intended by the author as a continuation
of the account commenced in the two preceding verses. But
to the condition here required is opposed the alteration of
style indicated by the abrupt introduction of four verbs in
continued succession, all of them, in the primary form for the
future or present tense ; besides that the union of such a
number of verbs in this form appears to convey a reference to
the future, or the present, too strong to be changed in subor-

2 F

400 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

duration to a preceding preterite. Accordingly, it may be
observed, that the three futures of this passage which are
preserved in Samuel are all translated as futures in the Sep-
tuagint ; while its four futures in the Book of Psalms are
rendered in that version by three aorists and one future ;
where it would appear that the three indeterminate tenses
must take their reference to time from the determinate one
with which they are associated, — an observation which is
strongly supported by the fact above stated, that the three
Hebrew verbs which these aorists are employed to interpret
are, all of them, rendered by futures in the corresponding pas-
sage of Samuel. Upon the same side with this evidence
stands the whole of the Chaldee testimony on this subject, as
attaching to the Hebrew verbs a reference to the present, which
renders the passages containing them distinct from the course
of the narrative, and parenthetic, just as much as would a re-
ference to the future : neither can that. given by the Peshitah
be viewed as telling the opposite way, since we have already
seen, in the case of the example previously analyzed, Syriac
preterites used with an indeterminate reference to a course of
acts or events, in like manner as is the indefinite present in
English. The Vulgate, I may here observe by the way, con-
tradicts itself upon the point before us, the Hebrew verbs re-
ferred to being therein translated, in one of the compared
passages, as preterites, and in the other as future tenses. The
only ancient evidence, then, I have met with on the opposite
side of the question, is that of the Masorets, who, availing them-
selves of a Waw prefixed to the third verb in the passage of
Samuel, have pointed it as if it was thereby converted into a
preterite, which would imply that the two preceding futures
were likewise employed as past tenses. But to refute this
attestation it will be sufficient to contrast it with, even solely,
the Chaldee testimony of the first part of the Targum of Jona-
than, in which, as has been already noticed, the very same
three verbs arc translated in the present tense.

Upon the whole then, I submit, ancienl testimony must

Chap. IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 401

be looked upon as concurring with the interval evidence of
the case, to prove the translation in our Prayer-book of the
analyzed passage of the Book of Psalms preferable to that ap-
plied to the same passage in the present Authorized English
Version of the Bible. The reference to the future therein
attached to the tenses of the verbs sufficiently marks the pa-
renthetic nature of the passage containing them. This end,
I must however add, would be equally effected by assign-
ing to them a reference to the present, — a force which the
form of the original verbs equally admits, and which would at
the same time better answer in English the purpose of indi-
cating the indefiniteness of their bearing, or the circumstance
of their pointing to habits rather than to single definite acts.
I would, therefore, venture to modify, as follows, the render-
ing of this passage exhibited in the Authorized English Ver-
sion, which, with the exception of its tenses, is more accurate
than that given in our Prayer-book : —

" Whenever in my distress I call upon the Lord, and cry unto
my God, he heareth my voice out of his temple, and my
cry cometh before him, even into his ears. Moreover — "

The corresponding verse of Samuel, treated in like manner,
comes out thus : —

" Whenever in my distress I call upon the Lord,
and cry to my God, he heareth my voice out
of his temple, and my cry * cometh before him, * r$. xvrn. e.
into his ears. Moreover — "

With respect to the initial word of the translation here recom-
mended of each passage, I have to observe that the commence-
ments of the two clauses of this verse in Samuel are literally

interpreted, ' In my distress I call upon the Lord , and

he heareth Q}ENF\)] for which the rendering, — 'Whenever (or
when) in my distress I call upon the Lord . . . . , he heareth,' —
may be fairly substituted, as conveying exactly the same mean-
ing. I have, therefore, felt at liberty to adopt the latter form,

2 f 2

402 MODE PROPOSED OF ASCERTAINING [Chap. IV.

and have given it the preference, not only for the purpose of
expressing more distinctly the connexion of the two clauses,
which is made somewhat confused by the use of the conjunc-
tion ' and,' three times in the same verse,a but also, more espe-
cially, to mark the beginning of the parenthesis and the
indefinite hearing of the tenses. But in order to employ the
same form in the translation of the corresponding passage of
the Psalm, it is necessary to restore a Waw dropped from that
passage, and to print its third verb in an amended edition of
the text J/D£*[l] ; as we are fully warranted in doing by a
collation of the two extant Hebrew copies of this poem. On
the other hand, to indicate the termination of the same paren-
thesis, and the return to the narrative, I have in both instances
changed the initial word of the next verse from c then' to
' moreover,' — a rendering which approaches nearer to the pri-
mary meaning ('and') of the original conjunction.b It is not
sufficient to exhibit in italics the expression, ' cometh before
him,' in the rendering given of the second passage ; because,
although the context shows that something is in this place
wanting, it does not tell exactly what that something is. The
true ground for the insertion here of this expression is the
circumstance of its original having been preserved in the cor-
responding part of the other copy transmitted to us in Scrip-

a The verse in Samuel which is above referred to is translated in our
Authorized Version as follows: — " In my distress I called upon the Lord,
and cried to my God : and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my
cry did enter into his ears." Here, it may be observed, the distinction be-
tween the two clauses of the sentence is made solely by the stops applied to it.

b The general reader may, perhaps, be surprised at the latitude of choice
with which translators interpret the Hebrew conjunction (1) above referred
to. But they are compelled so to deal with this particle, from the circum-
stance of its including under its primary signification of « connexion' a great
variety of particular modes of connecting words or sentences, which are in
other Language! expressed by a corresponding variety of conjunctions. Hence
an interpreter is compelled first to ascertain through the context the nature
of the connexion denoted by the 1 in each instance, and thereby to determine
the conjunction with which it should be translated in that instance.

Chap.IV.] POETIC USE OF THE HEBREW TENSES. 403

ture of the very same poem; the site of which part is
accordingly noted in the margin, and printed in italics to mark
the peculiar nature of the reference here made to it. In the
Hebrew text, however, I would not venture to fill up the chasm
which a comparison of the corresponding passages in this case
serves to expose, but would merely leave a blank space in the
site of that chasm in the defective passage.

Although the translation of the passage, just examined,
which is given in our Prayer-book, be older than that in the
present Authorized Version of the Bible, having been intro-
duced as early as the time of Archbishop Cranmer, in whose
version it first appeared, yet the preterite form of the verbs
employed in the later renderings of this and other passages of
the same kind may be traced as far back as the first Autho-
rized English Bible, namely, that written by Bishop Cover-
dale. The adoption of the form in question of the tenses by
the earlier English translators, in the class of passages alluded
to, appears to have been occasioned by their attaching too great
weight to the Masoretic pointing, to which they seem to have
paid nearly the same deference as to the inspired ingredients
of the sacred text. The Authorized use, however, of this
form was suspended for the space of about thirty years during
which Cranmer's Bible was that sanctioned by our Church ;
but it was restored on the publication of Archbishop Parker's
translation, in the year 1568, and was thence transferred to our
present Authorized Version. Just about the time of the in-
troduction of Parker's Bible, the Syriac version of the Old Testa-
ment was brought much into notice by the erudite publications
of Masius relating to it ; — a circumstance which, I think, gives
some reason to suspect that a misconception of the force, in
certain cases, of the preterite tense in that version may, pos-
sibly, have occasioned the return to a corresponding mistake
in the last two of the successively Authorized English Bibles.
For it may be easily conceived that the learned, on their first
acquaintance with the Syriac version of the Hebrew record,
and before they had the advantage of consulting it in a printed

404 MANY DIFFERENCES CAN BE REMOVED [Chap. IV.

form, might have failed to perceive, and distinguish between,
all the bearings of the preterite tense in the language of that
version.

The next point to which I would beg to draw attention
is a brief classification of the differences which have in the
course of time arisen between the two copies of David's poem,
with a view to inquiring how far those differences can be re-
moved through a collation of the contents of those copies,
supported by the context as well as by the evidence of ancient
versions, and still further strengthened, as such a collation
must be now, by the aid of the discovery unfolded in these
pages. The differences in question, then, are either occasioned
by omissions or chasms which occur, each of them, in but one
of the above copies, or consist in discrepancies of a more po-
sitive nature ; and those of each kind may be subdivided into
three classes, according as they relate to parts of words, to entire
words, or to pluralities of words, whether partly or wrholly dis-
agreeing, and contained in the same clauses of corresponding
sentences. Taken altogether, they amount to above a hun-
dred ; but by far the greater number of them rank under the
first of the classes belonging to the first kind, and are chiefly
confined to omissions of single letters, many of which affect
not the sense, or even the sound, of the words, but merely their
spelling, through which they are said to be, in one or the other
copy, defectively written. But as the mode of spelling which
has afforded room for these differences is now detected to be
an innovation upon the original writing, introduced by fallible
men, we surely have as good a right to correct this spelling,
where found to be inaccurate, as former critics had to intro-
duce it, provided the alterations thus made be marked as
modern corrections. Of this class, however, four or five speci-
mens, produced by variations between the two copies in respect
to the use of the paragogic IZe, may have existed therein from
the first ; so they now admit not of being thence removed,
neither do they in the least interfere with the identity of the
intrinsic ingredients of the writing of those copies. With re-

Chap. IV.] FROM THE TWO COPIES OF 18th PSALM. 405

gard to those specimens, I shall here only further observe, that
they afford a good illustration of the nature of the paragogic
character referred to, and assist to bear out the description I
have already given thereof; namely, that, being devoid of the
phonetic power of a letter, it is used merely as an extrinsic sign
to intimate how some of the proper letters or intrinsic elements
of the text are to be read, though the same intimations might,
with a little more consideration, be arrived at without its aid,
through the inflexions, suggested by the context, of the words
represented by the groups to which it is subjoined ; except,
indeed, when those inflexions are irregular, in which case it
exerts some influence on the sounds of those words, but never
any on their sense. Thus, for example, the original clause, at
the end of the fiftieth verse, which is in both places of its occur-
rence translated in our Authorized Version of the Bible, " And
I will sing praises unto thy name," is written regularly in the
second Book of Samuel "ON "p^7"), and in the Book of Psalms,
with an irregularity allowed by poetic license, !TON fft&6l;
where the final word is to be pronounced HaZaMmeR in the
former place, and HaZaMmeEaH in the latter, but obviously
without the slightest variation of its meaning. All the re-
maining differences of the same class are clearly removable
from the sacred text, where they relate to its genuine elements,
on the ground of the original identity of the portions of it
here compared, as proved by the introductory description
which is prefixed to both of them in common ;a and they
can be got rid of with still less scruple where they are con-

a It is but right to observe, respecting the above introduction, that,
although exhibited in the present state of the Hebrew Bible, as part of the
inspired text in both of the places referred to, it yet is represented, where
prefixed to the Psalm, as a heading distinct from that text in the trans-
lation given of it in the Septuagint ; the Vatican and Alexandrian copies of
which are nearly double the age of the oldest extant copy of the original
record. But, even according to the Greek representation of the matter
(which seems to be followed in our present Authorized Version, though
not quite so decidedly as in the earlier ones), the identification of the two
portions of Scripture in question rests upon very high authority. For the

406 MANY DIFFERENCES CAN BE REMOVED [Chap.IV.

fined, as a great number of them are, to matres lectionis, of
the proper use of which the learned now are fully as adequate
judges, as of that of the points employed by the second set of
vocalizers. In each case, however, as indeed I have already
observed with respect to the latter one, the introduced letters
ought to be marked as modern corrections by being placed
(supposing my notation adopted) within brackets ; while the
corresponding changes in an amended edition of the Autho-
rized English Version would require no sort of distinctive
sign, in consequence of their being immediately referable to
the corrected Hebrew text. In most instances, indeed, those
alterations not affecting the sense would at any rate not
cause any change in a translation ; but even where their
interpretation requires the subordinate addition of some auxi-
liary particle, that addition can, for the reason just stated of
its capability of immediate reference to the original record,
be exhibited in the ordinary character without the use of
italics.

To fill up the chasms belonging to the second and third
classes of omissions in the same way, by supplements within
brackets, would, I fear, be deemed too bold a mode of dealing
with the Hebrew text. But fairness and candour demand
that at least those chasms should be pointed out by blank spaces,
or collections of stars, in the sites in which they are proved to
exist by a collation of the two copies of David's poem : while

description which to a certainty appertains to one of those portions must
have been prefixed to the other at a very remote period, since the Seventy
Jews found it in that site; neither would they, by giving a translation of it
in the second place of its occurrence, have sanctioned its insertion there, un-
less they had reason to think it justly applied to the second portion; and they
had better opportunities of knowing the true state of the case than any other
ancient authors whose writings have come down to our time. It is, however,
scarcely necessary to appeal to any authority on this subject; as the two por-
tions of Scripture here compared are, to a great extent, either exactly or very
nearly the same, even in their existing state; and even when they most differ,
they can be restored to complete identity, by the aid of the present discovery.

Chap. IV.] FEOM THE TWO COPIES OF 18th PSALM. 40T

translations of the supplements which this collation yields
might be introduced into an amended edition of our Autho-
rized Version, on the very same ground as that which warrants
the insertion in it of renderings of such supplements of the
chasms of the first class as bear upon the sense ; with this dif-
ference, however, that the English words, or collections of
words, thus introduced, should be printed in italics, with mar-
ginal references to the full passages which warrant their inser-
tion in respectively the defective ones. Thus, for example, —
adhering to the present very incorrect division of the text,
because a deviation from it would be attended with much
inconvenience, I would render the second verse of 2 Sam.
xxii. as follows : —

" And he said, * I will exceedingly lovea thee, 0 ' Ps. xviu. i, and Pesh.
Loud, my strength. The Lord is my
rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer."

Not only the clause here introduced is exhibited in italics,
but also the specification in the margin of the part of Scripture
which warrants this supplement, is likewise so distinguished,
to mark the peculiar nature of the reference. And although
an appeal to the sacred text itself may be supposed to super-
sede the necessity of one to any other authority, yet I refer also
to that of the Peshitah, which directly attests the original ex-
istence of the above clause in the quoted verse of Samuel by
actually giving a translation of it in the Syriac rendering of
that verse ; while, on the other hand, the testimony of Scrip-

a The verb of which the inflexion for the first person singular of the fu-
ture tense is rendered in our Authorized Version in the part of it above re-
ferred to, simply ' I will love,' signifies literally ' to love from the inmost part
of the body,' or from the part which was considered by the Jews as the seat
of the benevolent affections (and which was translated in old English ' the
bowels'); whence this verb came to signify, 'to love with great intensity.'
I do not maintain that it is always used strictly in this sense; but the context
in the quoted place, I conceive, requires that the full force which its etymo-
logy warrants should be there assigned to it.

408 MANY DIFFERENCES CAN BE REMOVED [Chap.IV.

ture on the subject, though strong, is only inferential, being
in part deduced from the principle of the original identity of
the two copies of the poem in question. Upon the occasion
afforded by this example, I cannot refrain from observing,
that the desire to conceal from the public the existence of some
imperfections in the present state of preservation of the He-
brew Bible, however well meant it may be, is not at all jus-
tifiable in itself; and still less does it supply any just ground
for our failing to avail ourselves of the means which a bene-
volent Providence has placed within our reach, for wholly re-
moving, or at least diminishing, those imperfections.

To turn now to the consideration of the differences of the
second kind, or more positive discrepancies — the following-
extracts from corresponding verses of the copies in question
supply two examples belonging to the first class of those dis-
crepancies. But the second one having been corrected by
the Masorets, need not be here brought under discussion, and
on this account I exhibit the upper line with their correction
of it expressed according to my system of notation : —

2 Sam. xxii. 33, frOTH tf»n Wl
Ps. xviii. 32, ^11 D^DM jrO"!

The framers of our Authorized Version have removed the dis-
crepancy between the meanings of the initial groups, and so
have virtually changed the Resh of the upper line into Nun,
by giving exactly the same translation of the two extracts :a —

" and he maketh my way perfect."

But, as the verbs denoted by the above groups cannot be
proved equivalent by an examination of the uses made of the
rarer one in the other places of its occurrence, nor does the

:' A second translation, indeed, of the initial group of the upper line is
added in the margin. But that in the body of our version, by being placed
in the foreground, is obviously represented as more deserving of attention,
and in fact is the only one attended to by the great majority of readers.

Chap.IV.] FROM. THE TWO COPIES OF 18th PSALM. 409

Septuagint concur with the Peshitah in assigning to them the
same meaning in the place before us, it must have been on the
general ground of the original complete identity of the copies
referred to, that our translators rendered those groups by the
very same words, ' and he maketh ;' — a ground, however, which
in this particular instance is fortified by the subsidiary consi-
deration, that the copyists certainly wrote Resh by mistake
for Nun in other parts of the Bible,a and, consequently, there
is no a priori improbability of their having committed here also
the like mistake. But it is a much bolder proceeding to erase
a letter of the Hebrew Bible, and then introduce another into
the vacancy thus created, than merely to fill up a chasm already
existing therein ; yet we may here perceive that the framers
of our version went fully to this extent in their virtual correc-
tion of the original text, where they could do so, without be-
traying to the generality of readers the existence of any blemish
in the present state of that text. Now, I do not by any means
presume to find fault with their having virtually made the
correction just described ; on the contrary, I maintain that in
so acting they exercised a sound discretion ; and, still further,
I would imitate them in abstaining from getting printed in
italics the translation of the group requiring correction,
though not from any motive of concealment, but because I
would refer to that group as, I conceive, it ought to be writ-
ten ("I Dim) in an amended edition of the sacred record. I
bring their treatment of this example under notice, merely for

* The name "12^3^23, NeBUKaDNESaR, in some places in the Book of
Jeremiah and in that of Ezekiel, is written with a Resh instead of the Nun in
its interior, evidently through a mistake of the copyists. This variation
certain critics, indeed, of the present day attempt to account for by assuming
that the word in question formerly admitted of either pronunciation ; but
their view of this case is directly opposed to the best ancient testimonies now
attainable on the subject. This name is constantly exhibited, both in the
Septuagint and in the Peshitah, with a letter of N power in its interior, even in
those places where it is at present mis-written in the Hebrew text, "I2fc§m3l23,
NeBUKaDRESaR.

410 MANY DIFFERENCES CAN BE REMOVED [Chap.IV.

the purpose of strengthening with the sanction of their own
practice the case made out for the mode of correcting the He-
brew text here recommended ; — a sanction which, I submit,
they have actually afforded me, as far as their maxims of
reserve would allow them.

The discrepancies of the second class are not very nume-
rous, and most of them are occasioned by the occurrence of
words in corresponding places, which, though disagreeing, each
pair, in letters, yet agree to some extent in sense, or at all
events do not interfere with an equivalence in the general
scope of the clauses to which they respectively belong ; so I
need not dwell upon them. But those of the third class are
of more importance, appearing in sentences of corresponding
sites which, though only in part disagreeing in their ingre-
dients, yet differ in tenor to such a degree, that all attempts
to reconcile them have hitherto proved quite ineffectual. It
is by the service performed in the removal of discrepancies of
this class from Scripture, that the value as well as the reality
of the present discovery is displayed in the most striking
manner. An example of such a discrepancy is supplied by a
comparison of parallel verses of the two copies of David's
poem already quoted in this chapter, page 332, the latter
clauses of which, in their present state, may be rendered lite-
rally as follows : —

' and as for his statutes, I will not depart from any of them.'
' and his statutes I will not put away (or cast out) from me.'

The previous reference to those clauses, as they are at present
exhibited in the Hebrew text, was made for the more imme-
diate purpose of tracing the final group of one of them, with
its initial letter restored, ^Cft, to its original state, PEED. But
it was also there explained that the difference between them,
though producing so wide a discrepancy in their renderings,
was occasioned by merely different modes of vocalizing, and,
consequently, different modes of reading, one and the same

Chap.IV.] FROM THE TWO COPIES OF 18th PSALM. 411

original clause [H3DD "ID K N7 Hflpm]. For the combination
of groups, ")DK «7, which is vocalized so as to be read in the
upper one of the Hebrew lines referred to, LoH HaS?<R, ' I will
not depart,' could not be so read in the under line, where the
final group is vocalized for the signification ' from me ;' as the
statement, ' I will not depart from me,' would be quite unin-
telligible. Hence it became necessary in the latter line to read
the same original combination with a different vocalization of
its second part, LoH H«SiR, ' I will not drive off (or make to
depart,)' that is, ' I will not put away,' according to its trans-
lation in our Authorized Version of the Bible, or, ' I will not
cast out,' according to that given of it in our Book of Common
Prayer. Thus it was shown that the last two groups of the
original clause, about which alone any doubt could arise as to
the true mode of vocalizing or reading them, are in that re-
spect essentially connected with each other ; so that of which-
ever line the reading of the last group is adopted, that of the
penultimate group in the same line must be therewith united.
It now, therefore, only remains to inquire which pair of con-
nected readings should be preferred. But for the determina-
tion of this question it will be sufficient to compare the very
different meanings which result from the two sets of readings,
and to consider whether it was more in keeping with the pious
character of David, to declare that he would not ' depart (or
deviate) from any of the commandments of God,' or — without
at all disclaiming an intention of disobeying most of them — to
confine himself barely to promising that he would not proceed
so far in wickedness as to repudiate, or contemptuously reject,
their entire collection — that he would not 'put them away from
him,' or ' cast them out.' Much deliberation cannot, I appre-
hend, be here wanted to satisfy an investigator, not only that
the treatment of the two groups under examination, which
leads to the former interpretation of the clause containing
them, is that which should be preferred, but also that it alone
is admissible ; since the form of declaration or promise which
results from the latter treatment of the same groups is, by no

412 INSTANCE OF ERRONEOUS MASORETIC [Chap.IV.

means, suited to either the zealous disposition of the author,
or the occasion on which he composed this poem, as it might
naturally be expected that he would be most ardent in his
professions of devotedness to God's service immediately after
having been delivered by the Almighty from great danger.

1 would, therefore, extend the mode of dealing with those
groups in the upper original line to the lower one, where in
consequence they should be written in an amended edition of
the sacred text, according to the notation employed by me,
TfilDK and [H]^D[Q] ; and I would translate the final clause
of both lines in exactly the same words : —

" and as for his statutes, I will not depart from any of them."

The Greek and Syriac renderings of this clause in the two
places of its occurrence in Scripture, with their literal' inter-
pretations subjoined, stand thus in the Septuagint and Peshi-
tah respectively: —

2 Sam. xxii. 23, Kal Tahacaiw/JLaTa avrov, ovk aTteoT^v ut: alnwv.

' and, as for his statutes, I will not depart from them.'

Psalm xviii. 23, Kal ra hiKaiw/dLara avTov ovk aTteoTrjoav aii efxov.

' and his statutes shall not depart from me.'

In both places, *-*-iio L^m] tf ^qioronVno

' and his statutes I will not drive off (or make to pass
away) from me.'

The translation of the clause in question by the Seventy in
the first of the specified places supports in the main my ren-
dering of it. But that given by them in the second of those
places appears to have undergone some corruption. The Greek
verb here employed would seem to have been put in the third
person plural, in the vain effort to reconcile it with the final
part of the sentence, by some scribe who had not consulted the
original text; as no mode of vocalizing the corresponding He-
brew verb could exhibit it in that person without an alteration
of its genuine elements. The framers of the Peshitah also sup-

Chap.IV.] CHANGE OF AN OLDER VOCALIZATION. 413

port my representation of the subject to some extent, by show-
ing that the clause referred to ought to be read and interpreted
in exactly the same way in the two places of its occurrence ;
although, in consequence of erroneously reading, they have
erroneously interpreted it in both those places. The tenses of
the verbs used in these renderings are worth noticing ; as the
two Greek aorists and the Syriac preterite are here proved, by
the context as well as by the structure of the Hebrew, to be
employed with the force of indefinite futures.

The last point regarding this subject to which I shall in
the present chapter advert, is a strange mistake committed by
the Masorets, in altering the reading correctly applied by the
older set of vocalizers to the initial group of the last verse of
the poem of David under examination, in the copy of it given
in the second book of Samuel. I here subjoin as much of the
verse as is wanted for the exposition of this case, transcribed
from both places of its occurrence in the sacred text, with its
Masoretic pointing attached to the initial group in one of those
places, which erroneously implies that the Yod should be
changed to a Waw, and with the letter of S power restored in
the group of each line in which it has been altered by the
Jewish scribes into a Shin.

2 Sam. xxii. 51, .liWE1? 1DH flDST) «i:fe MTW ^J? W
Psal. xviii. 51, ^Vftb IDn HRI/I ,13^0 rfiW 'hjjQ W

Here it is to be observed, that the original elements of the two
lines are entirely the same ; in consequence of which they
ought to be read and translated the very same way, even inde-
pendently of the consideration of the identity of the two copies
of the poem to which they belong being attested in the sacred
text, or at least in headings of great antiquity prefixed to those
copies ; and, accordingly, they are translated by exactly the
same words in the Septuagint, the Peshitah, and the Targums3

a Some of the groups of the Chaldee interpretation are fuller of vowel-
letters in the Targum of the Psalms than in the Targum of Jonathan, on ac-

414 INSTANCE OF ERRONEOUS M A SORETIC [Chap. IV.

respectively. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the Masorets have
pointed the initial group in the two places for quite different
readings and significations. To commence with a separate
examination of the lower line, with the vocalization of which
they have not tampered, — when the Hebrew idiom is taken
into account which gives intensity to the meaning of the second
group by putting the noun it denotes in the plural number,
we shall find that this line is literally translated as follows : —
"magnifying the great deliverance (or salvation) of his king,
and exerting mercy towards his anointed." The initial group,
indeed, might in the abstract be read and construed, either
MaGDiX, ' magnifying,' or Mz'GDoL, ' a tower ;' but in the site
here considered it is confined by analogy of structure to the
former reading, and limited to the signification of a participle
rather than of a noun, to make it correspond with the partici-
ple present of the subsequent part of the sentence. Accord-
ingly, this group has been here interpreted as a participle pre-
sent by all the ancient interpreters ; and although the old
vocalizers left it open to either reading, it is evident that they
did so only through oversight, as they restricted it in the upper
line to a participial form by the insertion of a vocal Yod in its
final syllable, where there is evidently no more reason for
putting this limitation on it than in the lower one. Even the
Masorets themselves pointed the group in question for the
reading magdil, ' magnifying,' in the under line, where they
were guided only by the natural structure of the sentence and
the Targum of the Psalms ; and, consequently, they ought a
fortiori to have thus pointed it in the upper line, where they
were limited to thus reading it by the same requisite structure,
and by the much higher Chaldee authority of the Targum of
Jonathan, as also by the older vocalization of the group, which

count of the interval between the dates of those Targums, during which the
Jewish scribes became more familiar with the use of such letters; but the
words denoted by those groups are exactly the same, and the remaining in-
gredients of the two Chaldee sentences referred to are completely identical in
writing as well as in sound.

Chap. IV.] CHANGE OF AN OLDER VOCALIZATION. 415

they had no way of distinguishing from its original elements.
While, however, they showed a want of proper attention to
these considerations in their mode of pointing this group in
the upper line, they are not to be charged with also disregard-
ing the authority of the Septuagint and Peshitah ; as before
their time the Jews had abandoned the use, and in consequence
lost the benefit, of the former record, and most probably never
consulted the latter. But the framers of the Geneva Bible,
and after them the editors of Parker's Bible, and after the
latter set of translators the writers of the present Authorized
English Version, adopted the very gross blunder here com-
mitted by the Masorets, and translated the above group at the
beginning of the upper line a ' tower,' in opposition to the
natural structure of the line ; in opposition to the Targum of
Jonathan, in which the group in this site is interpreted \]DD,
' multiplying,' or ' increasing ;' in opposition to the Peshitah,
in which it is rendered ^5o!o, ' magnifying ;' in opposition to
the Septuagint, in which it is translated /neyaXvvwv, ' magnify-
ing ;' and, above all, in opposition to the inspired text, in which
it is written 7HJQ, ' magnifying.' The vowel-letter, indeed,
of this last expression is now ascertained to constitute no part
of the original writing of this group ; but if we were to attach
ever so little weight to its first vocalization, or even to deal with
it as if it was unvocalized, we still should be obliged to read it,
not as a noun, but as a participle, for the same reason, or at
least as strong ones, as those on account of which we thus read
it in its unvocalized state in the under line, and also for the
additional reason, that the two verses therewith commencing
are corresponding parts of the very same original poem, and
are to this day exactly the same in all their original letters.
The alteration, therefore, of the group in question recommended
by the Masorets in the upper line ought to be rejected ; and
it should be suffered to remain in the state in which it is at
present exhibited in that line in the unpointed text. The
translation of this verse at the end of the eighteenth Psalm in
our present Authorized Version of the Bible gives correctly

2 G

4 1(3 INSTANCE OF ERRONEOUS, &c. [Chap. IV.

the substance of its meaning ; for the change of the participles
present to verbs in the present tense makes no alteration of the
sense, and yields a preferable form, as that of a sentence com-
plete in itself. But, through whatever words the meaning of
the above verse is conveyed in the specified Psalm, it should
be expressed by exactly the same words in the second Book of
Samuel.

The case here examined is worth noticing for the striking
illustration it affords of the great value of the Arcanum puncta-
tionis revelatum of Cappellus, which was not published till a few
years after the first edition came out of King James's Bible. For
if the very learned assemblages of men that severally composed
the three above-mentioned English versions had been able to
consult this work, which reduces the authority of the Masoretic
system to its true level, they would have been prevented from
falling into the strange error in their respective translations
which has been just exposed. Another reason for my adducing
this example is to show the reader, that I am not to be consi-
dered as an innovator on account of my occasionally dissent-
ing from the Masoretic punctuation. In the present case, for
instance, the charge of innovation evidently lies not against
me, but against the Masorets themselves ; and, in here correct-
ing their misvocalization, I have but restored the true reading
of the analyzed group and its ancient interpretation.

Chap. V.] A FOURTH CLASS OF OMISSIONS, &c. 417

CHAPTER V.

FINAL PART OF THE ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM THE
STRUCTURE OF THE LANGUAGE.

A FOURTH CLASS OF OMISSIONS OF THE LETTER HE BY THE OLD VOCA-

LIZERS SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE SPURIOUSNESS OF THE MATRES

LECTIONIS REMOVED THE HEBREW TEXT FORMERLY WAS NOT DI-
VIDED INTO WORDS INCOHERENCY REMOVED FROM PS. XI. 1, BY

MEANS OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY — THE HEBREW TEXT WAS

FORMERLY NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES rib COULD FORMERLY

BE READ LiH, 'TO ME,' AS WELL AS LoH, 'TO HIM,' OR L«H, ' PRAY'

"O AND 13, AT FIRST WRITTEN H3, WHICH WAS READ EITHER KtH,

' BECAUSE,' OR KoH, ' THUs' ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE

HEBREW VERSE GEN. XXVII. 36 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN

FIRST AND SECOND PERSON SINGULAR OF PRETERITES — ANALYSIS
RECONSIDERED OF PART OF THE VERSE JUDG. XI. 34.

THROUGH a comparison of groups of corresponding sites
in the Jewish and Samaritan editions of the Hebrew
Pentateuch, which have been differently treated in those edi-
tions and vocalized in either, while they were, in the other,
overlooked and suffered to remain in their original state, three
classes of suppressions of the letter He by the old vocalizers
have been already exposed : namely, first, where this letter
had been a paragogic element of the word operated on ; se-
condly, where it had been a paragogic fragment, or element of
a fragment, of the pronoun of the first person singular or plu-
ral, affixed to that word ; and, thirdly, even when not para-
gogic, where it had been an intrinsic element of the pronoun
of the third person singular employed as an affix. I now pro-
ceed to bring under view a fourth class, of great extent and
importance, and detected through the same method of compa-
rison, wherein the suppressed He is the final element of the root
of the word which may happen to be presented for our consi-
deration. The withdrawal of letters from the Hebrew text is
to be distinguished from their elision by its original writers,

2 g 2

418 A FOURTH CLASS OF OMISSIONS OF THE [Chap.V.

and may be justified, in the case of the first two classes of
( maissions just specified, on the ground of the introduction into
this writing of an improved mode of representing the sounds
of its syllables and the necessity of suppressing the inferior
part of their older representations, in order to avoid the con-
fusion attendant on the simultaneous employment of two dif-
ferent sets of designations of the same sounds. But the third
class of omissions, by which an essential element of a pronoun
is removed, can hardly be excused ; and the liberty taken with
the text by the old vocalizers was still more daring in the in-
stance of the fourth class, where the omitted radical is an essen-
tial ingredient, not of the mere affix of a word, but of the word
itself, which is referred to. Yet the mode of investigation
here pointed out, which admits of being repeated in an endless
variety of cases, will, I expect, suffice to convince the learned
reader who tries it, of the reality of the last, as well as of the
preceding classes of omissions above enumerated.

The removal of the final He of Hebrew roots from the
sacred text, in the class of instances now to be considered, had
the effect of contracting two syllables into one, and appears to
have been ventured upon by the old vocalizers, for the pur-
pose of denoting alterations previously introduced into the
pronunciation of the words of this language. It is unneces-
sary to detain the reader with a lengthened proof of those
removals ; as he can satisfy himself of their reality through
the means already indicated ; and I shall, in consequence, here
direct attention to only a very few cases, which are adduced
:is much to explain the meaning of my remark, as to support
its truth. For the sake of distinctness, I distribute this class
into three subdivisions, including respectively nouns, partici-
ples, and verbs ; under each of which heads examples might
be abundantly furnished even from the Book of Genesis alone.
In the first place, then, with respect to nouns, the changes in
question may l.e illustrated from Gen. iii. 7, and xlvii. 3. In
the former of these verses the expression T\y&T\ H^, construed
in tin' Septuagint <J>i>A\a trvKfjv, and iii our Authorized Ver-

Chap. V.] LETTER HE BY THE OLD VOCALIZERS. 419

sion "fig-leaves," has evidently its first term in the plural
number ; which, therefore, must have been originally read
here (according to the analogy of other Hebrew nouns not
dropping their final element for this inflexion) HaURe ;
whereas it is vocalized in the Samaritan text "by, HaLE : and
a comparison of these two readings serves to display both the
omission in writing and the contraction in sound which I wish
to bring under the observation of my reader. In the latter
of the specified verses, the designation jiW rtfTI, rendered by
the Seventy 7rot/xeVe? 7rpofiaTwv, and by the framers of our Au-
thorized Version " shepherds," has of necessity its first term
plural, which, therefore, must have been formerly read in this
place RoHelie, but is vocalized in the Samaritan text UH, RoHE ;
where the like omission and contraction may be seen as in the
preceding instance. The change of pronunciation just exem-
plified is very far from an improvement ; for while, according
to the older method, the singular and plural numbers of nouns
ending in He, and in regimen, were perfectly distinct in sound,
though not in writing, they are now confounded in the for-
mer respect ; as there is no perceptible difference of utterance
between Haleh, ' the leaf of,' and Hale, ' the leaves of;' or be-
tween Boheh, 'the feeder of,' and Bohe, 'the feeders of:' so that
the old vocalizers would obviously have done much better
(exclusively of the consideration of a very unwarrantable
liberty taken with the sacred text being thus avoided) by sub-
joining to the He, instead of substituting for it, the Yod in
cases of this sort. But one of the alterations, here described,
had most probably made its way into the mode of speaking
the ancient Hebrew, which was practised by the sacerdotal
class in their time, or the other could hardly have been ad-
mitted by them into their manner of writing the Bible.

In the second place, with regard to participles', these altera-
tions may be illustrated through the complex appellation given
by Hagar to the Deity, as recorded in Gen. xvi. 13, which is
rendered, in the Authorized English Version, "Thou God seest

420 A FOURTH CLASS OF OMISSIONS OF THE [Chap. V.

me,"a and in the Septuagint, 2u 6 0ed? 6 eirtiwv fie. Of the
original compound, the part that literally denotes ' my see-er,'
i. e. ' the see-er of me,' has been left in the Samaritan edition
of the Pentateuch in its primitive state, nN"l, and must, for
the meaning it conveys in this place, have been read RoHeH*';
whereas in the Jewish edition, wherein it has been vocalized,
it is written ^"l, RoHl, and consequently exhibits, when com-
pared with the former group, both the contraction and the
omission here under inquiry. This example, by the way,
deserves further notice, as affording a very striking illustra-
tion of the fact, already proved by means of various other
extracts compared together, that in some instances the primi-
tive orthography of the Hebrew Scriptures afforded no sign,
even ever so indirect, of the shorter fragment of the pronoun
of the first person singular pronounced after words, although
the vowel for this signification must, in reading Hebrew,
have been always uttered at the end of nouns, or words treated
as nouns, where the context required it.

In the third place, with respect to verbs, two examples,
taken from Gen. ii. 24 and xx. 13, will be sufficient for my
purpose. In the former verse the verb near its close has been
suffered to remain in the Samaritan edition of the text, as it
was originally written, iTO!, which, being in this site used in
the plural number, must have been read WeRaYeRu ; but in
the Hebrew edition it is exhibited without its third radical
VCn, and has been contracted in sound into WeHaYU. In the
latter verse, the verb in the third person, signifying 'caused

* In the above English expression, the original of which conveys, not a
full sentence, but merely a name, the relative pronoun, 'who,' ought to have
been inserted before the verb. Moreover, the framers of our Authorized
Version ought, in consistence with their own practice in other such cases, to
have introduced the Hebrew denomination into the body of their work, and
to have shifted this translation of it into the margin. They so dealt with the
composite designation (of which this one forms a part) that occurs in the
very next verse of the Bible.

Chap. V.] LETTER HE BY THE OLD VOCALIZERS. 421

to wander,' has been rightly left by the Samaritan scribes in
its primitive unvocalized state 7iyr\T], where it admits of being
read, in conformity with the context, HiThHaH in the singular
number. But if this same group were employed in the plu-
ral number, it must have been read He'ThHeHw ; in which sense
the Jewish vocalizers here erroneously understood it, and,
dropping its final element, contracted the pronunciation of it
into H2ThHU.

Independently of the use to which the last example has
been just applied, it is worth attention in another point of
view also : the clause which contains it, as exhibited in the
Jewish and Samaritan editions of the text, and the transla-
tions given of this clause in the most ancient versions, with
literal interpretations subjoined to each line, stand thus : —

Gen. xx. 13.

Jewish Edition, — «tOK JTOft Drf7K ^riK Wl "HMO

' when the gods caused me to wander from my father's
house.'

Samar. Edition, HOTT

" when God caused me to wander from my father's
house."

Septuagint, t'/ULKa e^yyaye jxe 6 6eos etc too oI'kov tov

irarpos fxoV

' when God led me away from my father's house.'

Peshitah, : ^-»-ol A_^ ,_So ]ctl^\ . . i n^) p>

' that when God caused me to depart from my father's
house.1

The error in the first of the above lines, in the avoidance of
which all the rest fully agree, can now be easily traced to its
source. The old Jewish vocalizers, not forming at first an
entirely new copy of the text, but merely inserting matres

a Of the Samaritan line no more is above quoted than the word in which
it differs from the Jewish exhibition of the same clause.

422 A FOURTH CLASS OF OMISSIONS OF THE [Chap. V.

lectionis in one already written after the more ancient fashion,
and glancing the eye along its pages to try where they should
introduce those letters, in their great haste attended only to
the form of the group Dn7K in this place, and so vocalized for
the plural number the verb thereby governed ; whereas, if they
had paused for a moment to consider the bearing of the pas-
sage it occurs in, they must have perceived that it was therein
used to denote the God of Abraham, that is, the true God, and
they would, in consequence, have understood it (or at least
any verb connected therewith) in the singular number, ac-
cording to their constant practice in every other instance of
its being so employed. Now the unity of the Godhead is a
point of doctrine which the whole body of the Jews have
been most anxious to uphold, ever since idolatry ceased
among them, that is, ever since a period long antecedent to
the time when their Scriptures were vocalized. The present
example, therefore, in the origin it unfolds, and the retention
it displays, of a reading so much at variance with their prin-
ciples, affords, perhaps, the strongest illustration that could
by any possibility be given, not only of the extreme precipi-
tation with which the first Jewish vocalizers of the text were
compelled to execute their work, but also of the extraordinary
degree of fidelity with which the copyists who came after them
preserved the writing of their Bible exactly in the state in which
they found it. The word whose misvocalization has been
just exposed, should, I conceive, be written in an amended

o

edition of the sacred text, ICnjJ/fin. The meaning of the exa-
mined clause has been correctly given in the Authorized
English Version ; but no notice has been inserted in its mar-
gin of the different sense attached to this clause in the Jewish,
or generally received, edition of the Hebrew record;— an omis-
sion which, if not justifiable in the time of our translators, is
now at any rate fully so ; since the objectionable reading in
that edition has been above accounted for, and is no longer
to be imputed to the original text. In fine, I have to observe
with regard to the cases of altered pronunciation of Hebrew

Chap. V.] LETTER HE BY THE OLD VOC ALIZERS. 423

above exemplified, that they have not in the slightest degree
affected the bearing of any passage of Scripture f as will be
readily perceived upon' considering that, in general, the words
of every language, even while they continue unchanged in
writing, are constantly liable to being altered in sound, but
without any alteration of sense thence resulting. Thus, for
example, notwithstanding the great changes which have taken
place in the pronunciation of English within the last 200 years,
each sentence of King James's Bible now conveys exactly the
same meaning as it did, when first all the words of this ver-
sion came to be exhibited in their present forms. But,
although the more ancient alterations of this kind which have
been noticed under the present head of inquiry, do not alter
the purport of any sentence of the sacred text, their investi-
gation is by no means a matter of mere curiosity, but is
strictly connected with the support of my discovery.

The circumstance of the old vocalizers having deviated, not
only from the earlier spelling, but also, though less frequently,
from the earlier pronunciation of the words of the ancient He-
brew language, supplies answers to objections, which may pos-
sibly occur to some of my readers, against the spurious nature
of the matres lectionis in the text of the Bible. One class of
these objections can be thus stated. The letters in question oc-
casionally appear to be radical elements of the groups they
belong to ; but such elements must, in the sites wherein they are
now found, have been in the sacred text from the first moment
of its having been written. Thus, for example, Yod is an in-
gredient of the root of the following inflexions of the substan-
tive verb ^HN, "HA, VP, TO, and consequently must have

a In the last of the above examples, indeed, the sense has been corrupted;
yet not in consequence of the pronunciation of the group therein referred to
being changed from HiThHeHw to HiThHU, but on account of the writing of
that group being altered from n37Dn, which admitted formerly of being
read in either number, to *jj?j"in, which is confined to the plural number, in
opposition to the context of the place where this group occurs.

424 OBJECTIONS TO THE SPURIOUSNESS [Chap. V.

existed from the commencement in the place it now occupies in
each of them ; but it is a vowel-letter in those inflexions, since
they are pronounced respectively HeHI, TeHI, YeHI, NeHI ; and
therefore, it affords instances in those groups of vowel-signs
employed in the Hebrew record, as originally written. Here
it is tacitly assumed, and taken for granted without any proof,
that the specified inflexions were always read with the same
sounds as they are at present ; — a position on which the ex-
amples discussed in the course of the last investigation throw
considerable doubt, and which, besides, equally requires proof
as that for which the supposed objectors contend, since the one
virtually includes the other. For if the above inflexions were
always pronounced with their present sounds, then a charac-
ter must have been used to denote the vowel I in the original
state of the Hebrew text. This consequence of the assumed
position has already been fully proved false : the position it-
self, therefore, is false ; and so, the objection which rests upon
it utterly fails. Exclusively, however, of this more decisive
refutation of the proposed objection, other reasons opposed to
the assumption on which it depends may, even without taking
into consideration the age of the matres lectionis in the He-
brew text, be adduced to show that, where the Yod really ex-
isted from the commencement in that text, and is now uttered
with the sound of the vowel 7, it was most probably at first
employed with a different phonetic value. Thus, in a very
extensive class of instances, the Yod now read at the end of
national designations as an 7, is virtually attested by the tran-
scriptions of those names in the Septuagint to have been for-
merly uttered with the sound of the syllable A 7, pronounced
as the English monosyllable 'aye,' with the character Fthere-
in used, not as a vowel-letter, but as a semiconsonant. Take,
for example, the following verse from Gen. x. 16, or 1 Chron.
i. 14, there being subjoined to it the Authorized English ren-
dering from the latter place (wherein the names are more
correctly transcribed), and it> Greek translation which is the
sann in both places : —

Chap. V.] OF THE MA TEES LECTIONIS REMOVED. 425

" The Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite."

Kal top 'lepovaaiov, /cat toj/ Afxoppcuov, kclI tov Yepyeacuov.

If their Grecian terminations be withdrawn from the designa-
tions in the last line, we shall see that the corresponding ones
in the first line which are now read, Yebusi, Hamori, Gergashi,
were pronounced in the time of the Seventy, Yebusay, Hamo-
ray, Gergeshay. To the same effect tells the present seeming
anomaly in the plural termination A YIM, of Hebrew nouns
which for the singular number end in I; — an anomaly which
is entirely removed by supposing the Yod at the close of those
nouns in their singular state, which is now read as the vowel
7, to have been formerly uttered with the phonetic value of the
syllable A Y. Thus, the plural forms of HJ7 GeDI, ' a kid,' —
"QV, SeBI, 'a deer,'— TID, PeThl, ' simple,'— are respectively
D^fJ, GeDaYIM,— D^3V, SeBaYIM,— D^fiB, PeThaYIM. Nor is
the introduction of the A sound into the pronunciation of these
forms, which occasions their apparent irregularity, a modern
innovation, or one resting on the mere authority of the Maso-
rets, but is at any rate as old as the existing state of the He-
brew text: since a Haleph is occasionally to be met in some of
the groups belonging to the class in question, where it is ob-
viously employed to denote this very sound ; as, for instance,
D^3¥ is written, in 1 Chron. xii. 8, D^IQV, SeBAY«M ; and
D^riD, in Prov. ix. 6, DWS, PeThAY?M.a Moreover, a further
probable ground for maintaining the change of pronuncia-

a It may be worth observing, that the Haleph in the above groups, and
others of the same kind, is technically termed by the Hebrew grammarians
' epenthetic,' that is, in plainer language, ' a supernumerary letter, of no use
whatever in such sites.' This designation, therefore, virtually conveys an
admission, on their part, of utter inability to account for the occurrence of
the Haleph in those places, or to reconcile its appearance therein with the
Masoretic principle, that all the elements of the Hebrew text in its present
state are consonants.

420 OBJECTIONS TO THE SPURIOUSNESS [Chap. V.

tion under discussion may be derived from comparing toge-
ther, as follows, such of the groups first adduced in this para-
graph as happen to be found differently written in the two
editions of the Hebrew Pentateuch.

Hebrew Edition. Samaritan Edition.

Genesis, xxvi. 28. Tin, TeHI. mniT, TiHYeH.

xxx. 34. Tf\ YeHI. r\>71\ YiRYeU.

xxxviii. 23. rPPU, NeHYeH. TTJ, NeHI.

The pronunciation of each of these groups is given on the
authority of the Masoretic system applied to the Samaritan, as
well as the Hebrew set. From this table it may be seen, that
the last three of the curtailed groups previously adduced were
in their original state read TzHYeH, Yi'HYeH, NtflYeH ; whence,
through analogy, it may be fairly inferred that the first of
them was in like manner read HeHYeH. Now, whether the H
at the end of the fuller groups was elided by the original writers
of the text, or subsequently dropped by copyists, what more
likely reason can be assigned for its omission, by either party,
than their conviction that no perceptible difference in the
sounds of the words would be thereby occasioned ? But, ac-
cording to this view of the matter, the curtailed groups must
have been at first pronounced HeHYe, TYHYe, YiRYe, Nz"HYe ;
which sounds the Jewish priesthood, at a period when the know-
ledge of the ancient Hebrew was entirely confined to them and
the scribes in their interest, appear to have changed, as soon
as the introduction of the matres lectionis into the writing of
their Bible afforded them the' opportunity, into HeHI, TeHI,
YcHI, NeHI, and to have made this alteration for the very pur-
pose of confounding vowel-letters with original elements of
the sacred text. It was with the same design, as has already
been shown most probable, that, under their secret direction,
the instructors of Origcn in Hebrew imposed upon him the
sound YaHOH as the correct pronunciation of the venerated
name iTWT, whereby they gave a Waw, acknowledged to be-
an original ingredienl of the text, the false appearance of
being a vowel-letter.

Chap. V.] OF THE MA TEES LECTI0N1S REMOVED. 427

Another class of objections of the same tendency may pos-
sibly be urged as follows, or in some similar way. Tod and
Waw are, on all sides, admitted to be original elements of the
sacred text, when they are the middle letters of groups pro-
nounced as dissyllabic words. But if those groups should in
utterance be contracted into monosyllables, then the very
same letters become signs of vowels, and so exhibit instances
of vowel-letters in the original writing of the Hebrew Bible.
Thus, for example, the Tod in ^N, YLaYiL (or HeYaL), ' strength,'
in JVD, BaYiTh, ' house,' and JVT, ZaYiTh, ' olive-tree,' as also the
Waw in JTO, MaWeTh, ' death,' are original elements of the
text. But they obviously become signs of vowels, as soon as
those groups are, in the mode of reading them, contracted into,
respectively, HEL, ' strong,' BETh, ' house of,' ZETh, ' olive-tree
of,' and MOTh, ' death of ;' whence it follows that there are
vowel-letters among the original ingredients of the writing of
the Hebrew record. The class of objections here exemplified
fails in the same way as that previously discussed, by resting
on an erroneous foundation. The fallacies depended on con-
sist in assuming, in the one case, that the pronunciation, and
in the other, that the spelling of the words of the Hebrew text
was always the same as it now is. Both assumptions are fully
refuted by the proofs which serve to establish the reality of the
discovery unfolded in these pages. But, even without this aid,
the latter one can, in like manner as the former, be shown, at
least with some degree of probability, untrue. Thus, — to re-
vert to the examples above adduced, — in the first place, the
monosyllable Hel ' strong,' when applied to Him who is pre-
eminently ' strong,' and used as a name of the Deity, is in
every place of its occurrence in the text constantly found
written with barely two letters 7K ; and as the group is, up to
this moment, exhibited without an intermediate Tod in its
most important application, it might naturally be expected to
have been (when pronounced as a monosyllable) thus written
for other senses also, in former times. In the second place,
though the monosyllable Beth, 'house of,' is, as far as I can

428 THE HEBREW TEXT FORMERLY [Chap. V.

find, written now everywhere in the text with three letters
JTQ, yet, in the group representing the plural number of this
noun, D^rQ, BeThIM, the same sound is still constantly denoted
by only two. I admit that E^TQ is at present read BoTtIM, —
probably in consequence of the want of a vocal Yod in its first
syllable, — and I do not complain of this mode, though so ex-
tremely anomalous, of reading the group, as no alteration of
its meaning has thence resulted ; but still I must maintain
that BeThIM, being its regular sound, is very likely to have been
that formerly attached to it ; and that, as its first syllable
remains to this day uniformly written without an interme-
diate Yod, it is most probable that the same syllable in the
singular construct state of the same noun was, in ancient times,
likewise thus written. In the third place, the monosyllable
Moth, ' death of,' is at present, I believe, represented in every
place of its occurrence in the sacred text by three letters, rfift.
But, though this group, when serving by itself to denote a
word, be always written in the fuller way, yet it is sometimes
found without the middle element, when it constitutes part
of a longer derivative of the same root ; and, therefore, it ob-
viously might at first have been exhibited without that element
in its separate state also. Of the occasional omission of the
vocal Waw in some inflexions of the root in question, the fol-
lowing instances may be taken : —

Gen. xxv. 17.
Jewish Edition. Samaritan Edition,

nn^, WaYyaMoTh, ' and he died.' ft]72>\ WaYyaMOTHh. .

Num. xxiii. 10.
nnn, TaMoTh, 'let-die.' n*pn, TaMOTh.

From comparing the different modes of representing the same
syllable in each of these lines it will be seen, — I may here by
the way observe, — that the insertion, or non-insertion, of a
Waw in this syllable depended merely on the accidental cir-
cumstance, whether its use therein happened to be perceived,
or overlooked, by men who had been previously accustomed

Chap. V.] WAS NOT DIVIDED INTO WORDS. 429

to read all the words of the text without the aid of any vowel-
letters. Accordingly, oversights of this kind are to be found
sometimes committed by the Jewish set of vocalizers, some-
times by the Samaritan set, and very frequently by both sets.
I have also to remark, that the advantage of distinguishing the
syllabic or semiconsonantal Waw and Yod from the vocal cha-
racters of respectively the same shapes and names, by means
of the notation employed by me, or through some other simi-
lar contrivance, is strongly illustrated by the error here ex-
posed, from which this distinction helps to guard us ; namely,
that of confounding letters of different kinds of phonetic
value, and inferring from their assumed identity that, because
the Waw and Yod of one kind are original elements of the
Hebrew text, those of the other kind must be so likewise.

The distribution of the elements of the sacred text into
separate groups, to correspond with the words by which it
should be read, is not the work of its original authors, but an
improvement introduced after the lapse of many centuries, and
which has been, in various instances, marred by an incorrect
execution. This is admited even by the Jews themselves ; as
may be seen through the following extract from one of Dr.

Kennicott's Dissertations: — " books were anciently written

without any distinction of words, in the manner of the Greek
manuscript quoted in page 214 [the Colbertine manuscript,
said to have been copied from the Hexapla]. The Hebrew
text was probably written in the same manner ; and such a
tradition is thus mentioned by Elias Levita: —

.rsnx n:nn ^idik un ;inx p^dm rrnnn hi

* Tota lex ut versus unus ; et, ut quidam dicunt, ut dictio una.'

The consequence of this has been, that the Jews afterwards
introduced some corruptions, by associating letters improperly;
and 'tis remarkable, that the Masorets reckon above twenty
sets of letters, as made two words instead of one, or one instead
of two." — Dissertation the Second, p. 341. But errors of the
sort described in this passage are far more numerous in the

430 INCOHERENCY REMOVED FROM Ps. xi. 1, [Chap. V.

Hebrew Bible than the Masorets were disposed to acknow-
ledge ; and several, of which they were not aware, may, under
the guidance of the present discovery, be detected and fully
exposed by means of the light which the context supplies,
combined with the testimony of the more ancient versions.
An instance of wrong grouping, thus discovered and accounted
for, has been already adduced in Chapter m. from the combi-
nation ¥"IK Wm, Gen. i. 24, the prefix of the second part of
which was mistaken by the old vocalizers for an affix of the
first, and in consequence changed by them into the mater lec-
tionis Waw ; though the actual separation of the groups in
accordance with this error was, in all probability, not made till
long after their time. In subsequent ages, the second set of
vocalizers adhered to the mistake here committed by the first,
and pointed the Waw for the sound of the affix of the third
person singular masculine, instead of leaving it, as they ought,
unpointed, and attaching to it their little circular mark of cen-
sure. But the grammarians who came after the Masorets,
perceiving the violation of sense produced by the Waw so
pointed, divested it in this site, not merely of the meaning it,
through the annexed sound, usually conveys, but even of all
meaning whatever, and dubbed it here a paragogic letter ;
just as if the introduction of a technical designation could solve
the difficulty of the case. Thus they preferred imputing to
the original author the serious fault, in style, of employing a
significant ingredient of his written language without any sig-
nification, rather than admit that some corruption had here
crept into the text ; and this strange decision appears to have
been acquiesced in up to the present day, not indeed by the
Samaritan scribes, for they corrected the mistake, but by every
Christian as well as Jewish critic who has touched upon the
subject.

I now proceed to lay before the reader another instance of a
wrong grouping of elements of the Hebrew text, which besides
exhibits two of those elements transposed : it is taken from a
passage of Scripture translated in our Authorized Version as

Chap. V.] BY MEANS OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 431

follows : — " In the Lord put I my trust : how say ye to my
soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain ?" — Ps. xi. 1. Here, ex-
clusively of the consideration that it is scarcely reconcilable with
correctness of expression to speak of any mountain as belong-
ing to the soul of a man, or of one mountain being so appro-
priated more than another, there are inconsistencies, in both
gender and number, between the original term for ' soul' and
the second possessive pronoun referred to it, which utterly
confound the sense, and cannot therefore be admitted to have
been contained in the Hebrew passage, as it was at first written.
These inconsistencies, indeed, are concealed in our version, in
consequence of the word ' your' being indifferently applied to
any gender, as well as on account of its being used in modern
English with either a singular or a plural reference ; but they
are at once laid open to view upon our consulting the original
record. So much of the verse in question is here adduced as
is necessary for the exposure of the specified anomalies ; and
after this part of the Hebrew line are placed its Greek, Syriac,
and Chaldee translations, with their literal meanings subjoined
to them respectively : —

Hebrew, $Tft¥ D31H 1113 ?V&h TiDXn f«

Septuagint, Trias Ipehe t?; yjrvxfl pov, Meravaarevov cm Ta opt]
w$ arpovOiov ;

* how shall ye say to my soul, Depart to the mountains as a
bird?'

Peshitah, W ^ -J^*o -?QJ .. . ««n\ vpAj^^l ,-a-l

' how saying are ye to my soul, Depart and dwell on the
mountain (or, on the mountains) as a bird ;'

Targumof)^n Xliub ^£38 W&h pDK pn» pDH
the Psalms,) JmaSf

' how are ye saying to my soul, Betake thyself to the moun-
tain as a bird?'

2 H

432 INCOHERENCY REMOVED FROM Ps. xi. 1, [Chap. V.

Besides the double violation of concord above stated to
exist in the Hebrew line, there may be observed in it the very
same twofold incoherency between the verb signifying ' to
depart,' and either the noun or the affix with which it is im-
mediately connected. If, in accordance with the first set of
vocalizers, we should read this verb NUDU, ' depart ye,' in the
plural masculine form, it then disagrees in both number and
gender with the noun singular feminine ^M7. If, on the
other hand, we adopt the correction of this reading by the
second set of vocalizers, who attached their little circular mark
of censure to the final U of the same verb, and pointed it for
the pronunciation NUD*', ' depart thou,' in the singular femi-
nine form, then disagreements of the very same kind as before
are found to hold between it and the plural masculine affix
DD. The double violation of grammatic concord thus, in one
way or the other, unavoidably produced, arises from the cor-
responding twofold discrepance previously noticed between
the words with which this verb is compared ; — a discrepance
which is quite independent of their vocalization, and yet can-
not, amounting as it does to absolute nonsense, be ascribed to
the original composition of the Psalm. That the quoted pas-
sage, then, has undergone some change, exclusively of the intro-
duction into it of vowel-letters, is obvious even from the sole
consideration of its own ingredients. But to ascertain where
this corruption lies, and how it was occasioned, we must have
recourse to external evidence.

Now, on comparing with the Hebrew line its Grecian,
Syriac, and Chaldee translations respectively, we shall find
them all concurring to disprove the existence of the affix D3
in that line, as originally written, not one of them containing
a pronoun to correspond in meaning with this affix ; and we
shall moreover find them all agreeing to attest the original site
of the first letter of D3 to have been immediately before the final
group ; where, employed as a prefix, it served to denote the
particle ' as,' and was accordingly translated w?, ' as,' in the
Greek line, ^1, H«IK, 'as,' in the Syriac line, and "pH, HEK,

Chap. V.] BY MEANS OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 433

i as,' in the Chaldee line. So far all three are unanimous on
the subject ; but the Greek rendering still further shows, by-
translating the Hebrew for ' mountain' in the plural number,
that the second letter of D2 was at first placed immediately
after Ifl, since the plural form of this noun is D1H. But
when, in conformity with the information so furnished, the
two elements of D3 are transposed, every one of the violations
of sense and grammar which the Hebrew verse at present
betrays, is at once removed, and the Greek line turns out to
be its exactly literal translation. Thus it follows with irresis-
tible force from the internal evidence of the case, supported
fully by the Septuagint and partly by the Peshitah and Tar-
gum of the Psalms, that, before the sacred text was divided
into separate groups corresponding to the words it denotes,
the two letters in question had, through some accident or
other, got their order inverted. This inversion, only serving
to render the passage senseless, was evidently unintentional,
but it could not have been effected without design after the
introduction of blank spaces between the words (as those
intervals would have guarded copyists from such an over-
sight); it, therefore, must have taken place, as has been just
observed, while the mistreated letters were not as yet pointed
out to the eye of the reader as elements of quite different
groups.

It may, perhaps, be interesting to trace back the history
of this corruption, even as a matter of curiosity, and indepen-
dently of the consideration of the aid which the investigation
will be found to contribute to the support of my discovery.
The date, then, of the first inversion of the order of the letters
under examination (Kaph and Mem) can be fixed within very
narrow limits ; as it must have occurred during the short
interval of time that elapsed between the formation of the
Peshitah and the introduction of the matres lectiones into the
sacred text, — an interval that will, I expect, be proved in a
subsequent chapter to have fallen inside the first thirty years

2 h 2

434 INCOHERENCE REMOVED FROM Ps. xi. 1, [Chap. V.

of the second century. This inversion could not have taken
place till after the Peshitah had been composed ; since the
rendering therein given of the final clause shows clearly, as
has been already explained, that, when Syriac writers were
framing that version, at least one of the letters in question (the
Kaph) was in its correct site (immediately before the Hebrew
group denoting 'a bird'); and, consequently, even supposing
the two were then in the text — a condition indispensable to
their inversion — they could not at any rate have been therein
exhibited in an inverted order. On the other hand, the same
inversion must have occurred before the vocalization of the
Hebrew record with letters ; as the scribes engaged in that
operation vocalized the verb of the final clause, so as to be
read (NUDU, ' depart ye') in the plural number, obviously
for the purpose of making it agree in sense with the combina-
tion of letters, then already inverted in their order, which was
mistaken by those critics for the plural affix M. This inver-
sion, however, was put an end to by the dropping of the Mem
from the text before the time of the composition of the Tar-
gum of the Psalms ; as is evinced by the rendering therein
given in the singular number of the Hebrew noun DIP?,
' mountains,'11 which consequently must have then appeared
in the original line divested of its final element. The present
inversion, therefore, of the two letters under examination is a
second one, which did not take place till after the specified
Targum had been written ; and as it was preceded by the
dropping of one of those letters from the text, so in all proba-
bility the same omission occurred likewise before their first in-
version. The Peshitah affords no assistance in this part of the
investigation, in consequence of the ambiguous number of the
Syriac written noun with which the Hebrew word for ' moun-

tt In the quoted Chaldee line, the noun by which D"in is translated,
Nlit-i1?, is restricted to the singular number by the omission of a vocal Yod
between its last two letters.

Chap.V.] BY MEANS OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY. 435

tains' is therein translated. That noun, indeed, is at present
restricted to a plural form by the ribui mark attached to it ;
but the use of this mark can hardly be supposed as ancient as
the oldest of the Syriac versions. On the contrary, that the
Syriac translators intended the above noun, in their construc-
tion of the passage, to be read in the singular number, is ren-
dered likely by the first inversion of the letters referred to,
which has just been stated to have taken place in less than
thirty years after the formation of their version, and may be
easily conceived to have resulted from the loss which the speci-
fied reading implies of one of those characters. For the usual
process of restoring to the text an element thence dropped is
well known to have been, first, the insertion of it in the margin
of copies opposite its original site, together with a mark applied
to one or other of the two letters between which that site is
included ; and, secondly, the transferring of it in subsequent
copies from the margin to the body of the text, next the
marked letter. But as no limitation was here fixed, with re-
gard to the side of that letter on which the restitution should
be made, the latitude of choice thus left to the discretion of the
copyists naturally led to several inversions. It is, however,
not very material to determine whether the first of those above
investigated took place, or not, in the manner just described.
At any rate, the reality of the two, and limits of time to the
introduction of each, as well as to the duration of the first,3
have, I submit, been established with a near approach to cer-
tainty. But, as even the later of them must have crept into
the text before it was distinguished into groups corresponding
to its words, and consequently before any of the manuscript

a That is to say, they were introduced, the first in the short interval
between the dates of the composition of the Peshitah and of the vocalization
of the Hebrew text, and the second, not till after the formation of the Tar-
gum of the Psalms. On the other hand, the first of them was brought to an
end before that Targum was written; but I do not presume to fix the time
when the second will be terminated, as that will depend on the reception
given by the learned to my proof of the reality of those inversions.

436 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap. V.

Hebrew copies now extant were written, we cannot be sur-
prised at meeting with no traces of the inverted letters placed
in their proper order among any of the varias lectiones collected
by Kennicott or De Rossi.

The framers of the older English translation of the Psalms
in our Book of Common Prayer, in order to avoid the inco-
herencies which the quoted part of the original verse at present
betrays, paraphrased the entire sentence very loosely, as fol-
lows : —

" In the Lord put I my trust : how say ye, then, to my soul,
that she should flee as a bird unto the hill ?"

The writers of the last Authorized Version, on the other hand,
gave up the demands of the context, for the purpose of keep-
ing close to what appeared to them to be the very letter of
the text. But we are no longer subjected to the distressing
necessity of choosing between the evils of this alternative :
the analyzed passage can now be translated with the strictest
adherence to the genuine Hebrew line, and at the same time
without the slightest deviation from sense. On the grounds
stated in the foregoing analysis, the clause requiring correc-
tion should, in an amended edition of the text, I submit, be
thus written : —

and the whole verse might be rendered as follows : —

" In the Lord put I my trust : how say ye, then, to my soul.
Depart to the mountains as a bird?"

In this rendering I have changed the word ' flee,' as likely to
be confounded by a modern reader with the verb ' to fly,' —
more especially on account of its being in this place connected
with the expression, ' as a bird.' My chief reason, however,
for the substitution here made is, that it is warranted, and at
the same time the translation ' flee' is opposed, by the concur-
rent evidence of both the Septuagint and the Peshitah. In

Chap. V.] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 437

the construction now submitted to the judgment of the reader,
the particle ' as' is not exhibited in italics ; since it is expressly
denoted by an equivalent particle in the corrected original
sentence.

That the sacred text was originally exhibited without any
separation of its ingredients into verses, is, in the passage
quoted near the commencement of this chapter from Elias
Levita, attested still more strongly than the circumstance, that
it was at first written continuously without any blank intervals
between the words. For the latter piece of information is
therein presented to us upon merely hearsay evidence, while,
on the other hand, the former is stated absolutely and without
any qualification. But the same fact can still be arrived at
through actual observation, independently of any testimony,
if the reader will take the trouble of noticing cases of disagree-
ment which are occasionally to be detected between the seve-
ral texts and versions, with regard to the place of separation
between contiguous verses ; — a disagreement which could
scarcely have arisen if the divisions of this nature had origi-
nated with the framers of the sacred text, and so, had the
sanction of inspired authority. Some curious instances of
such variations will be found on comparing the following sets
of extracts from the account given in the twenty-third chap-
ter of Genesis, of a purchase made by Abraham, as it has been
transmitted in the Jewish and Samaritan editions of the
Hebrew text and the oldest Greek and Syriac versions re-
spectively. In each set is placed first an extract from the
Authorized English Version ; then comes the portion of the
Hebrew text from the Jewish edition of which, in its present
state, the preceding English extract is a literal translation ;
then, as much of the corresponding portion of the Samaritan
edition as differs therefrom (but, where no difference occurs
between these two extracts, they are represented in common
by one and the same line) ; and then the corresponding Syriac
and Greek renderings, with their literal significations subjoined
to them respectively. Moreover, in each extract, the place of

438 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap. V.

separation between the two verses of which it contains a part
is marked by an asterisk.

Gen. xxiii. 5, 6.

Authorized Eng. " — saying unto him, * Hear us, my lord ;"

Jewish Text,
Samaritan Text,
Syriac Version,

<£o k i sV)» * ojiolo —

' and they said Hear us, our lord ;'

Greek Version, — Xeyovres, * Mij KVfxte' ukovoov le rj/jLwu'

' — saying, Nay, master, but hear us ;'

Gen. xxiii. 10, 11.

Authorized Eng. " — saying, * Nay, my lord, hear me f
JewishS(Sam.Text,i*Wm ,VTH <vb * t112tih —

i 1 i SV) m .wjjId ]J * .... jlojo —

Syriac Version,
(h-eek Version,

Authorized Eng.

Jewish Text,
Samaritan Text,
Syriac Version,

Greek Version,

' — and he said Nay, my lord, hear me;'

— Xeywv, * Ylap ifxoiyevov Kvpie, kcu ukovoov

flOV'

' — saying, Be on my side, master, and hear me ;'
Gen. xxiii. 14, 15.

" — saying unto him, * My lord, hearken
unto me ;"

* : . , i , sV> m .wjjId jJLdJo —

' — and he said My lord, hear me;'

— Xeywv, * Oi^ Kvpie' aieyicoa yap,

'—saying, Nay, master; for I have heard,'

Chap. V.] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 439

Besides the disagreements which may be here remarked
between the different texts and versions, with regard to the
places of the asterisk employed to indicate where adjoining
verses are separated, — disagreements which tell strongly
against the supposition of any such places having been fixed
in the Hebrew text by its inspired authors, — a few more par-
ticulars in these extracts deserve notice for the illustrations
they afford of points discussed in the last two chapters.

In the first place, then, I request attention to the confu-
sion between the monosyllables K7, LoH, ' not,' and Y7, LO, ' to
him,' or ' to it,' which has to a certainty glided into one or
other edition of the sacred text, in the first and third sets of
extracts. The reader will, I expect, be presently satisfied that
the erroneous substitution has, in each of these instances, been
made in the Jewish edition ; and several more cases, hitherto
unobserved, of the same mistake may probably be detected in
that edition, through the mode of investigation here pursued.
Some, indeed, are already admitted to exist therein ; of which
a remarkable specimen is afforded in the original of the pas-
sage of our Authorized Version, Isa. ix. 3 : — " Thou hast mul-
tiplied the nation and not increased the joy : they joy before
thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when
they divide the spoil," — wherein the monosyllable N7 should
obviously be changed to w, in order to remove the glaring
contradiction which the sentence at present betrays, between
the denial of the greatness of the joy referred to, and the im-
mediately ensuing description of that very joy as exceedingly
great. Accordingly, the mistake here committed by the
Jewish transcribers of the text is acknowledged even by the
Masorets ; for they have branded the Haleph of the is? in this
verse with their little circular mark of censure.3 But the

a The framers of our Authorized Version have virtually admitted the
mistake of S7 for y? in the Hebrew verse above referred to, as exhibited in
the Jewish edition of the sacred text. In their translation, however, of this
verse, they have followed the correct reading of the monosyllable in question.

440 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap. V.

cause of this confusion, which has at any rate taken place in
several instances, between the final elements of K7 and Y7, has
hitherto proved quite inexplicable. It cannot be accounted
for by any mutual resemblance of those letters ; since they
are wholly unlike, in all their known ancient shapes as well
as in their modern forms. Neither can the supposition be
admitted of their having been similar, at some period remoter
than any to which the representations of them in extant in-
scriptions reach back ; for, surely, if this assumption had any
ground to rest on, the occasional interchange of the letters in
question would not be confined, as it is, to the single case of
their occurrence in the above monosyllables. Hence critics
have been induced to resort to another hypothesis, and have
imagined that formerly the copyists of the Hebrew text fol-
lowed the recitation of assistants, and thus came to be mis-
guided, not by the eye, but by the ear, in the prosecution of
their task. But here again the attempt at explication fails ;
for N7 and r? are to be met confounded with each other,
where they are pronounced quite differently. Thus, for ex-
ample, in Gen. 1. 15, the word w in the Jewish edition of the
Hebrew text, which is there translated by the framers of our

not in the body, but only in the margin of their work ; and, what is worse,
have made their correction scarcely intelligible, by translating y?, in re-
ference to its antecedent, ' the nation,' by the expression 'to him,' instead of
' to it.' It is besides to be observed that the preterite tenses employed by
Isaiah in this passage have the force of prophetic futures; so that the render-
ing of it might, I submit, be altered to advantage, as follows: — 'Thou wilt
surely multiply the nation, ana? make great its joy; they [i. e. the individuals
of this nation] shall certainly rejoice before thee according to the joy in har-
vest, and as foragers exult when they are dividing spoil.' I may add, that
the enallage in point of grammatic number which occurs in the second clause
of this rendering is by no means necessary; for the Hebrew verb (jnHJtf)
here read ShaM«KhU, and construed 'they shall certainly rejoice,' might, be-
fore the vocalization of the text, have equally been read Sh«M«Kh, and con-
strued, ' it shall certainly rejoice.' But, as the Seventy translated this verb
in the plural number (eicppafOrjooi'Tai), I could not venture to recommend an
alteration in this respect of its Authorized English rendering.

Chap. V] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 441

Authorized Version " peradventure,"is pointed by the Masorets
for the sound LU ; and yet it is found written, in the same
verse of the Samaritan edition, N7, which is always read LoH.
Now at last, however, the difficulty adverted to is entirely
cleared up, by the discovery that H1? was the original form of
the pronoun w ; whence it follows that the confusion which
has occasionally taken place between the monosyllables in
question is to be accounted for just in the same manner as
the frequent erroneous interchange, already explained, of the
letters Haleph and He, and actually serves to afford additional
examples of that interchange. Here I should add, that as *h
has been confounded with N/, not only in its ordinary sound
and acceptation, LO, an inflexion of a pronoun, but also when
employed as a particle and pronounced LU ; we may naturally
infer that it was originally written PI7 for both of its uses ;
since the similarity, at some former period, of the letters Ha-
leph and He, which serves to account for the one mistake, and
is equally wanted for the explanation of the other, is thus
rendered equally adequate for that explanation.

In the second place, let us look to the gross mistake com-
mitted by the Jewish, and subsequently adopted by the Sama-
ritan vocalizers of the Hebrew line belonging to the first set
of extracts, by affixing to its final word a mater lectionis to
denote the sound of the pronoun possessive of the first person
singular, although that word is shown, by the one immediately
preceding it, to have been spoken by a plurality of persons. As
this mistake cannot be attributed to the inspired authors of the
sacred text, it is perfectly clear that the vocal Yod which
occasions the incoherence could not have formed part of the
original writing of the passage ; and, for the same reason, it
is equally certain that no paragogic He previously occupied
the place, and performed (less directly) the service of this
interpolated letter ; so that the pronoun possessive of the first
person singular could not have been originally indicated here
in either way. Moreover, this inference from the internal
evidence of the case is fully supported by the testimony of the

442 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap. V.

Septuagint,3 in which the group referred to is rendered simply
h-vpte, 'master,' without any pronoun subjoined thereto. Here,
then, we have, besides a striking instance of the interpolation
of a mater lectionis, a proof of considerable force, in corrobo-
ration of what has been already in a preceding chapter urged
upon the subject, that in the original state of the sacred text
a written sign was not always given of the above possessive
pronoun, where it ought to be pronounced ; but that sometimes
a discretionary power was allowed to the reader of supplying
its sound after the last letter of a word, where his judgment
pointed out to him that the context obviously required this
supplement. In the case before us, indeed, the old vocalizers
made an erroneous use of this power ; but even their abuse of
the described practice still proves its former existence : they
could not have read the I sound in the place in question, in
which it certainly was not before their time represented, di-
rectly or indirectly, by any written sign, unless it was then
rightly pronounced in other sites in which it was left equally
destitute of every kind of designation. The violation of sense,
however, which they committed by the insertion of a Yod in
this place, answered no end they could by any possibility have
had in view, so must evidently have been unintentional on
their part ; but it now serves to put in a very conspicuous light
the extreme giddiness and precipitation with which they exe-
cuted their task.

In the third place, the Greek line belonging to the se-
cond set of extracts particularly deserves notice ; for the

* The attestation of the Peshitah upon the above subject, in which the
group under examination ("OHN) is translated (Vr^O) ' our master,' fully con-
curs with the testimony of the Septuagint and the internal evidence of the
case, as far as is requisite for proving the interpolation of the Yod at the end
of the above group. To warrant, however, the Syriac translation, not only
this Yod should be rejected as spurious, but also there should be inserted,
instead of it, a second Nun, or, after the introduction of vowel-letters into
the text, the syllable ID; while, on the other hand, the Greek rendering com-
pletely answers the demands of the context, without any alteration whatever
of the original elements of the Hebrew group.

Chap. V.] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 443

expression in it, -nap t'^ot, shows that that the Seventy, after
mistaking N7 for iT7, read the latter monosyllable, not accord-
ing to its more usual acceptation, LoH, ' for him,' but Lz'H, ' for
me.' As, however, even after this explanation, it still remains
difficult to reconcile the Greek with the corresponding Hebrew
line, — a circumstance which affords room for suspecting that
the former has been, some way or other, here corrupted ; —
and as I shall presently have an opportunity of bringing under
observation a rendering by the Seventy, of the monosyllable
in question, which implies the same rarer mode of reading it
in a place evidently free from corruption, I defer my observa-
tions on this point till I come to the next example, where it
can be discussed under more favourable circumstances.

It now remains, with regard to the present example, that
I should endeavour to ascertain the correct readings of the
Hebrew text, in those places where the Jewish and Samaritan
representations of the same extracts disagree with each other.
All the three speeches, of which parts are in this example given
in different languages or different kinds of writing, commence
in the Samaritan edition of the text with the particle tf7, 'nay ;'
while only the second of those so commences in the Jewish
edition, wherein the corresponding monosyllable is at present
detached from the first and third speech to close the words of
the preceding verse, and must have been written JT7, ' unto
him,' in the time of the first Jewish vocalizers of the text, as
they have in each instance transmitted it 17 with this signifi-
cation. In both cases of difference between the two editions,
the Samaritan reading of the monosyllable in question is sup-
ported, not only by the Septuagint, but also by the context.
The very expression, 'hear us,' or 'hear me,' which is included
in the introductory portion of all the three speeches, implies
some negation before it ; for, while this expression is a fit pre-
cursor to an entreaty, on the side of an applicant, it just as
naturally leads the way to an excuse for a refusal, on that of
the person or persons applied to. Besides, those speeches are,
all of them, answers from the same party (the Hittites, or one

444 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap. V.

of their community) to the same proposal of Abraham ; and,
as they all commence, in other respects, in the same form, it
is natural that they should have their very first word also the
same. But «?, ' nay,' is confessedly at the head of the second
speech. It, therefore, was most probably the initial particle
of the first and third likewise : and this inference is conside-
rably strengthened by a more particular review of each an-
swer. The first was made by the general body of the Hittites,
in reply to the declaration of Abraham, that he was a mere
stranger and sojourner among them, and to his consequent
proposal to pay" for a spot of ground wherein to bury his dead :
— " Nay, hear us, master," [nay, that is, thou art not a mere
stranger and sojourner, but, on the contrary] " thou art a
mighty prince among us ;" [and, therefore, without any pay-
ment] " in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead." The
second speech was made by an individual Hittite, Ephron, in
reply to Abraham's proposal, more specifically expressed, to
purchase for the above purpose a cave in the possession of that
individual, at the end of his field : — " Nay, my lord, hear me,"
[nay, that is, I will not sell the cave to thee, but] " the field

give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee

bury thy dead." The third speech was made by Ephron, in
reply to Abraham's proposal repeated : — " Nay, my lord, hear
me ;" [nay, that is, I cannot think of taking money for this
burying-place from thee] " the land, indeed, is worth four hun-
dred shekels of silver: but what is that betwixt me and thee?
bury therefore thy dead." Thus, in each instance, a prefatory
negative is required by the context, and is more especially
wanted in the third speech, in which, without it, the question —
"but what is that betwixt me and thee?" — would be quite
irrelevant. The last of these refusals was rendered one of
mere ceremony, by the circumstance of Ephron's naming im-
mediately after it the price at which he valued the specified
portion of land ;— an edition to the speech which was evidently
intended by the one party, and understood by the other, to
contain its main drift. Accordingly, Abraham forthwith

Chap. V.] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 445

weighed out this sum ; and Ephron, without more ado, poc-
keted the cash. This anecdote is interesting, even in its bearing
upon antiquarian researches, as affording the oldest account
upon record of a pecuniary negotiation ; and it is curious to
observe the extreme degree of ceremony practised between the
negotiators at so very remote a period.

As the bearing of the Syriac lines in the foregoing sets of
extracts agrees with that of the corresponding portions of the
Jewish edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch, in two of the cor-
ruptions thereof which have been above detected (viz. the *b
twice substituted for N7) ; the particular instances of confusion
between the letters Haleph and He which occasions those cor-
ruptions must be older than the Peshitah, and consequently
still older than the first vocalization of the sacred text.a The
corruptions themselves, therefore, must have commenced as
soon as this vocalization took place, to which epoch the date
of the erroneous annexation of the vocal Yod to the group
)*T& is also to be referred ; and, as all the three misreadings
appear to be of such great antiquity, we need not be surprised
that no manuscript copies of the Hebrew Bible have been met
with free from them. In an amended edition of the sacred
text, I would recommend the little circular mark of censure
to be placed over the Yod at the end of the group ^*TN in
the first of the Hebrew lines in question ; and the w in the
first and third of those lines to be changed into 1[N]7, and
transferred in each instance from the end of the verse it now
closes, to the commencement of the following one. The cor-
responding corrections in the Authorized English Translation
of the same lines would be made, by changing the form of ad-
dress, ' my lord,' on its first occurrence in this example, not
into ' Lord,' which, as I conceive, is with propriety directed

a Although the age of the first Syriac version has not yet been here strictly
investigated, it has already been shown in a variety of ways, by means of the
internal evidence of the case, that the Peshitah must have been written before
the Hebrew text was vocalized.

446 THE HEBREW TEXT WAS FORMERLY [Chap.V.

only to the Deity, but into ' master ;' and by expunging the
words, ' unto him,' at the end of the fifth and fourteenth verses,
and substituting for them the particle ' Nay,' at the commence-
ment of the sixth and fifteenth verses.

The connexion just exhibited between the meaning of the
corrupted particle and the divisions of the verses, strengthens
the argument against an inspired origin of those divisions.
It has been already inferred from the variations which pre-
vail between the different editions and versions of the He-
brew Bible, with regard to the places of separation between
the verses, that those places could not have been fixed by
the original writers of the text ; since, if they had, their
subsequent alteration would have been prevented by respect
for the authority of those individuals. If it be objected, that
the places in question may have been at first the same in
the Samaritan edition and the several ancient versions as in
the Jewish edition, but subsequently changed through mere
oversight, a reply is obvious. In the first place, this eva-
sion of the argument is a mere gratuitous assumption ; and,
secondly, in cases like those belonging to the foregoing ex-
ample, wherein the divisions of the verses are determined
by the sense of a prominent particle, those divisions could
not be altered without changing that sense, — a change which
cannot be conceived to have been made without exciting ob-
servation. In fact, the fair way of reasoning on this subject
is to argue, not from any imaginary state of the divisions of
the verses in the several editions and versions of the text
compared together, but from that state, as it is now found
actually to exist, or can be proved to have existed at any
former period ; and the investigation, conducted under this
restriction, tells very decidedly against the division of this
kind in the Jewish edition of the Hebrew text having been
the work of inspired men. In the case, indeed, of the first
and third sets of extracts belonging to the above example, the
uninspired origin of the divisions in question, in the principal
edition of the sacred text, can be arrived at through a briefer

Chap. V.] NOT DISTRIBUTED INTO VERSES. 447

course. Those divisions have, I submit, been shown absolutely
erroneous ; and, consequently, cannot be ascribed to inspired
writers. Before quitting this subject I have to notice a re-
markable instance of giddiness and precipitation betrayed by
the Samaritan scribes. In their mode of dealing with the first
extract, in the above example, from their edition of the He-
brew text, they have written the disputed particle, tib l nay,'
to form the commencement of a speech, and yet have placed
it at the end of a verse, just in the same manner as they would
have done, if they had agreed with the Jewish vocalizers in read-
ing it 17, ' unto him.' This inconsistency on their part leads to
the suspicion that, notwithstanding all their hatred of the Jews,
they yet borrowed the divisions of the text into verses from a
Jewish copy, and marked them with such haste as not always
to wait long enough to ascertain whether those divisions were
consistent with the meanings they themselves assigned to the
several ingredients of the divided sentences. In their treat-
ment, however, of the Samaritan line belonging to the third
set of extracts, they showed more circumspection ; for, hav-
ing therein assigned to the separating particle the same mean-
ing as in the former instance, «7, ' nay,' they yet gave it a
position better suited to that meaning, and placed it at the
head of a verse.

For the farther illustration of one of the chief points on
which the last example bears, I revert to the account, given in
the twenty- third chapter of Genesis, of Abraham's treaty with
Ephron for the purchase of a field ; and will employ, with re-
gard to the part of this account now brought forward, the
same mode of investigation as has been applied to the portions
of it previously analyzed. The example thus to be dealt with
is as follows : —

Gen. xxiii. 13.

Authorized Eng. Vers. " saying, But if thou wilt give it, I

pray thee, hear me :"

Jewish Edition, ; WDW 'b , HnK DK 1* ,10)6

Samaritan Edition, e v

2i

448 nb COULD FORMERLY BE READ LiH <TO ME,' [Chap.V.
PesMtah, : . » i » s^n • . tS\ U^ J £°1°

4 and he said . . . since (willing, that is) a well-
wisher thou, hear me;'

Septuagint, Kal ewre 'E7re/cV/ 7r/>o9 kfxov e?,

(iKOvaov fiov.

' and he said .... Since thou art on my side,
hear me.'

The Jewish reading of this passage affords internal evidence
of some corruption, by the impossibility there is of collecting
from it any intelligible and consistent meaning : and, accord,
ingly, all the various attempts to fill up the chasm thereby
produced have proved utterly ineffectual. Thus, for instance,
the supplement which is introduced into the Authorized
English rendering of the sentence, and marked with italics,
is quite at variance with the context. Ephron had, just before
this verse, declared that he would not sell, but that he would
give to Abraham the field sought for ; and when he had so
contrasted the two modes of proceeding, it surely would not
have been consistent with the punctilious courtesy observed
by the negotiators throughout all the remainder of the trans-
action, that Abraham should, immediately after, show a total
disregard to the opposition drawn between those acts, and
speak of them as connected to such a degree that one followed
from the other : — ' If thou wilt give the field, I request that
thou wilt sell it.' But in the Samaritan mode of vocalizing
the passage, and the Syriac way of rendering it, there is no
chasm except the obvious and easily filled one of the verb sub-
Btantive, while in the Greek rendering there is none at all ;
and these three representations of the part of Abraham's speech
here brought under notice have the great advantage of per-
fectly agreeing, Dot only with each other, but also with the
context. The literal meaning of the Samaritan line, omitting
the introductory word, runs thus : — ' But since thou art for
me [ vl, hear me ;' that of the Syriac line, with the same omis-

Chap.V.] AS WELL AS LoH « TO HIM,' OR LmH, ' PKAY.' 449

sion :— ' Since a friend art thou, hear me ;' and that of the Greek
one : — ' Since thou art' [w/ao* i^od, which is in effect identical
with the nap' ifiol in the Greek line belonging to the second
set of extracts in the preceding example] ' on my side, hear
me.' The bearing, then, of these three lines is just the same,
and also is completely in keeping with the pointed civility
which characterizes every other part of the recorded negotia-
tion : since, according to each of them, no slight is put upon
the words previously uttered by Ephron, and a favour is asked
from him, solely on the ground of his friendly regard for the
person who makes the request.

Thus the Samaritan correction of the Jewish vocalization
of the Hebrew passage just analyzed, is fully supported by the
context, as well as by the concurrent evidence of two perfectly
independent witnesses, the oldest Greek and Syriac versions ;
and, what is still more, even the Jewish vocalizers can be com-
pelled to bear testimony in favour of this correction, by their
treatment, in parallel cases, of the monosyllable in dispute.
Let us, for instance, turn to the following passage of our Au-
thorized Version : — " Then he wrote a letter the second time
to them, saying, If ye be mine [or, according to another trans-
lation in the margin, if ye be for me], and ?/ye will hearken
unto my voice, take ye the heads of the men your master's

sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to-morrow this time."

2 Kings, x. 6. The words here translated, ' if ye be mine,' or,
' if ye be for me,' are in the Hebrew text Dfltf *h DN, which
express precisely the same proviso as those in the Samaritan
portion of the present example, v HIIX DX, with the sole ex-
ception of the former clause being addressed to more persons
than one, and the latter to only a single individual — a varia-
tion which does not make the slightest difference in the nature
of the stipulation itself. But two of the ingredients of these
equivalent clauses are, with the specified exception, identical.
Their third ingredients, therefore, must be equivalent ; and
as those monosyllables beginning with the same letter have
the same meaning, they must have originally ended, as well

2i2

450 ^ AND 13 AT FIRST WRITTEN HD, WHICH [Chap.V.

as commenced, in the same way. But the monosyllable re-
ferred to in the Samaritan line is known by the appearance it
presents in the corresponding Jewish line Cm, to have been
at first written PJ7. The Jewish scribes, therefore, have given
their sanction to the Samaritan treatment of this original
monosyllable in the Samaritan portion of the example before
us, by vocalizing the same monosyllable for the expression of
the same meaning in the very same manner in the parallel
clause adduced from the second Book of Kings. They, indeed,
endeavoured, though without success, to attach some other
meaning to the clause of Genesis which has here been exa-
mined, and according to their view of that meaning read
L«H or Loll the monosyllable contained therein which was
read LiR by the Samaritan scribes. But the Samaritan bear-
ing of this clause is sustained by the strongest combination of
internal and external evidence ; and, admitting the correctness
of that bearing, the Samaritan vocalization of the disputed
monosyllable can, as I have just shown, be proved right even
by the evidence of the Jews themselves. But when this mono-
syllable was in conformity with the several modes of reading
it LwH, Li'H, or LoH, vocalized with either a Waw or a Yod,
its' final element, He, was dropped ; in which proceeding the
old vocalizers appear to have been justified in two of the cases
referred to, on account of this letter being paragogic, and of
the service previously performed by it being better and more
directly executed by means of the introduced vowel-letters ;
but in the third case, namely, where the original monosyllable
was read Loll, ' unto him,' the final He was by no means para-
gogic, but an essential element of the pronoun SH, and ought,
if possible, to have been always retained. In fine, the analyzed
monosyllable should, I conceive, be written in an amended
edition of the Jewish representation of the Hebrew text 1D31? ;
and the clause containing it might be rendered in English as
follows : —

" saying, But since thou art for me, hear me:" —

Chap.V.] WASREAD KiH'BECAUSE,' OR KoH ' THUS.' 451

Other instances of the original He termination of words
now closed with a Warn or Yod, may be detected by comparing
the cases which are occasionally to be met of groups ended
with either mater lectionis in one edition of the sacred text
which are differently treated in the other. Thus Jacob's reply,
Gen. xxxi. 31, to one of the questions put to him by Laban,
— " Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly ?" — runs in the
Jewish edition of the Hebrew text as follows : —

.sqj/B Trim na bun p ,imds <o ;^kt «o

which is literally rendered : — " Because I was afraid ; because
I thought, that perhaps thou wouldest take by force thy
daughters from me." But the Samaritan edition has left
the first word of this passage unaffected by vocalization, i"D,
which is at present confined to the signification 'thus,' —
a construction of it which, as I conceive, gives a much clearer
and more natural turn to Jacob's answer : — ' I was thus afraid'
[that is, I was in such fear as to make me flee away se-
cretly] ; ' because I thought that, perhaps, thou wouldest
take by force thy daughters from me.' I grant, however, that
the Greek and Syriac versions favour the idiomatic form of
expression which the Jewish vocalization attaches to this sen-
tence. I have, therefore, brought forward this example, not
with any view of recommending a change, in the mode of read-
it, which is unsupported by ancient testimony, but merely for
the purpose of taking advantage of the circumstance of a group
having been suffered to remain in its original state in one of
the editions of the text which is terminated by a Yod in the
other. From this comparison it will be seen that rD was the
original form of the group in question, which admitted of
being read, not only as at present, KoH, ' thus,' but also occa-
sionally KtfT, ' because,' according to the different demands of
the context in different places ; and which was, in the site
before us, read by the Jewish scribes K?'H, then vocalized by
them with a Yod to suit this reading, and then divested of the
paragogic He, whose service was no longer wanted after the
introduction of the Yod.

452 ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF [Chap. V.

I shall now apply the principles unfolded in this and the
two preceding chapters to an examination of the Hebrew pas-
sage containing the remark of Esau on his brother's name,
Gen. xxvii. 36 ; the meaning of which has been all along pre-
served by the most ancient versions, but the structure of it
yielding that meaning has been long since lost, through the
misvocalization of its initial group by the Jewish set of old
vocalizers ; — an operation in which, by the way, the Samari-
tan set disagreed with them ; so that each edition of the text
bears witness against the genuineness of the vowel-letter placed
at the end of the specified group in the other edition, while
both of the testimonies to this effect are sustained by the
united evidence of the Septuagint and Peshitah. Here follows
the English translation of this passage extracted from our
Authorized Version ; the passage itself, as at present exhibited
in each edition of the sacred text ;a and the renderings given
of it in the two versions that were written before that text
was vocalized. But, in order the better to compare these ex-
tracts, a literal interpretation is subjoined to each of them,
except the English one : —

Authorized Eng. Vers. " Is not he rightly named Jacob ? for
he hath supplanted me these two
times ;" —

Jewish Edition, U>JtyZ MT ^pm $ 3p^ 1W 8Tp *On

' Whether because one hath called his name Yaha-
cob? for he hath supplanted rue this pair of
turns ;' —

Samaritan Edition, "0*1

1 Whether thus one hath called his name Yahacob?
for he hath supplanted me this pair of

" No more of the Hebrew line is quoted from the Samaritan Pentateuch
the first group, all the rest of it being exactly the same in the two edi-
tions of the sacred text.

Chap. V.] THE HEBREW VERSE, GEN. xxvn. 36. 453

Septltagiflt, AiKalm ca-A//#>/ to ovofxa avrov Ia/roi/3*

iwr&pviKG yap fie yhrj levrepov tovto'

4 Justly hath his name been called Yacob; for he
hath supplanted me now this second time;' —

Peshitah, « » iNno : ^ons. cnV)» -is-oll A_/j ;_,;_»

' Rightly hath his name been called Yahacob ; for he
hath prevailed against me, lo ! two turns ;'

Upon an attentive consideration of the lines here inter-
preted, it will, I think, be clearly perceived that there must be
something wrong in the first two, each of them being incohe-
rent in itself and at variance with the other ; but that the last
two are in the main correct, as they mutually agree in express-
ing the same general meaning, and are besides, each of them,
perfectly intelligible and consistent throughout. The latter
pair, therefore, may be fairly applied to the correction of the
former set ; in which way it will be found that the initial
group of the original passage has been misvocalized both in
the Jewish and in the Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Pen-
tateuch : and when, by means of the expositions supplied in
the preceding pages, it is traced back from either of its pre-
sent forms, "OH, or *Dn, to the primitive one, POT, we may,
through the aid of the two adduced ancient translations, plainly
see that the group so restored is to be read, neither HaKe'H,
'whether because,' nor HaKoH, 'whether thus,' but HaKkeH, 'in
hitting the mark; in consequence of which the literal signi-
fication of the first clause of the verse referred to comes out : —
'In hitting the mark, one hath called his name Yahacob.' Now,
as Hebrew infinitives, when connected with finite inflexions
of verbs, are often used with the force of adverbs, the inter-
pretation here given of the initial group naturally conducts

454 ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF [Chap. V.

to the meaning, 'fitly,' 'appropriately,' 'justly,' or 'rightly,'
which is required for it by the context, as well as sanctioned
by the authority of the oldest and best versions of the Bible ;
while, on the other hand, there is no conceivable mode of de-
ducing that meaning from the form in which this group is at
present exhibited in either of the two editions of the sacred
text.

The hostility of the old vocalizers to the Septuagint, and
the precipitation with which they performed their task, are
very strongly illustrated by this example ; for, in their eager-
ness here to give that version an appearance of inaccuracy, they
actually deprived the sentence operated on of all consistency
between its two clauses. Afterwards, no doubt, their employers,
the Jewish priesthood, must have become aware of the blun-
der in this way committed ; but not till the opportunity was
passed, when it could have been with safety corrected. Even
an author belonging to their own nation has virtually acknow-
ledged the Hebrew text in the keeping of the Jews to be in
this place corrupt, by interpreting the passage in question, not
according to that text, but according to its Greek rendering
in the Septuagint. The interpretation to which I allude is
that of Onkelos, which is given in his Targum as follows : —

*' Well hath one called his name Yahacob ; for he hath craftily treated me these
two turns;" —

According to the prevalent notion of the antiquity of this
author, that he flourished about the commencement of the
Christian era, he must have written before the sacred text
was vocalized, which would sufficiently account for the cor-
rectness of the adduced sentence of his translation. But, in
point of Tact, lie could not have composed his Targum till after
the death of Jerome, that is, till three centuries after the in-
troduction of vowel-letters into the writing of the Bible, by
which time the secret of that vocalization was most probably

Chap. V.] THE HEBREW VERSE, GEN. xxvii. 36. 455

lost even among the sacerdotal class. At all events, he can-
not be supposed to have detected this secret ; for he would
in that case have made a much freer use of the Septuagint in
correcting the errors of the Hebrew text : and it can scarcely
be imagined how he followed the specified Greek version for
this purpose even to the extent that he actually did, unless
he lived at a period when the Jewish priests, the bitterest
enemies of that version, had for some reason or other become
very unpopular among their people, in consequence of which
he could deviate with safety from their views in the execution
of his work. Where, in the course of events, that period was
placed, I shall endeavour to show in a subsequent chapter, if
life and strength be spared to me sufficient for writing another
volume.

How grievously the later sets of English translators were
perplexed by the structure of the Hebrew passage here ex-
amined, is placed in a prominent light by the artifice to which
they were induced to resort, in order to give their respective
renderings of it, in seeming conformity with the profession
made by them in the title-pages of their versions, some faint
appearance of being taken from the Hebrew. It is obviously
for this purpose that they put the first clause of their several
translations of this passage in an interrogative form. But a
question coupled with a negative substantially amounts to a
positive statement ; and the query, ' is he not rightly named,'
is virtually equivalent to the assertion, ' he is rightly named ;'
so that the renderings employed by them certainly could not
have been derived from the Hebrew text in its present state
(in which the line referred to is made to commence with an
interrogation), but must have been surreptitiously borrowed
from one of the ancient versions. The very negation intro-
duced into these renderings estranges them from the Hebrew
passage, wherein no warrant whatever is to be found for such
an expression, any more than for the adverb 'justly' or
' rightly,' here inserted in their translations. This artifice ap-
pears to have commenced with the writers of the Geneva

456 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

Bible ; so the framers of our present Authorized Version3 have
to bear the blame, not of originating, but only of adopting
it. The difficulty of the case, however, is now entirely re-
moved, through the application to it of the present disco-
very, whereby the Hebrew clause is restored to its original
state, and to congruity with its ancient renderings ; so that
a modern translation which agrees with those renderings
agrees also with the genuine Hebrew. The group just ana-
lyzed should, I submit, be written in an amended edition
of the sacred text ^[HJ^n ; and the whole of the adduced pas-
sage might be translated into English as follows : — " Rightly
hath he been named Yahacob ; for he hath supplanted me these
two times ;" — with the marginal note on the beginning of the
sentence : — ' Heb. In hitting the mark, one hath called his name
Yahacob ;' and likewise with a note on the proper name, the same
as is already given in the margin of our Authorized Version,
which is absolutely requisite for the purpose of explaining to

a The translations of the above examined passage in the successively Au-
thorized English Versions and in the Geneva Bible, arranged in the order of
their respective dates, are as follows : —

CoverdaWs Bible, " He maye well be called Iacob, for he hath vndermined
me now two tymes."

Cranmer's Bible, " He may wel be called Iacob, for he hath vndermyned

me now two tymes."

Geneva llible, " Was he not justly called Iaakob? for he hath deceived

me these two times."

Parker's Bible, " Is not he ryghtly named Iacob? for he hath vnder-

myned me nowe two tymes."

King James's Bible, " Is not he rightly named Iacob? for he hath supplanted
me these two times."

The last quotation is taken from the first edition of our present Authorized
Version, and differs from the same sentence, as printed in late editions, only
in the initial letter of the proper name. In the earlier editions this letter
had the same shape as the vowel /, and the same power as this vowel has,
when read in combination with a following vowel as a single syllable; but
subsequently it wus changed in shape from / to J, and in power from Y to a
toft G.

Chap. V.J AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 457

an English reader the connexion between the two clauses of
the sentence.

I shall close this chapter with some illustrations of a sub-
ject which is not exceeded, perhaps, by any other, in the force
and convincing nature of the proofs it affords of the spurious-
ness of the matres lectionis in the text of the Hebrew Bible.
I mean the mistakes which this record, in its present state,
occasionally betrays between the first and second person singu-
lar of verbs in the preterite tense ; — mistakes that could never
have arisen if the Yod which now distinguishes those inflexions
by appearing at the end of the former one, had been all along
made use of for that purpose. The mere circumstance, how-
ever, of a common form having been originally employed for
both the specified persons of the verb in the sacred text is not
sufficient to account for misconceptions respecting its appli-
cation, on the part of those who afterwards undertook to in-
troduce into it a distinction. There must besides have been,
from some cause or other, want of time for the deliberate
execution of their task ; as they would have been protected
from confounding so prominent a difference as that in ques-
tion, by the slightest attention to the context, in each place of
the occurrence of this form : and, in fact, the very same form,
applied not only to the first person common and second per-
son masculine, but also the third person feminine, of the spe-
cified number and tense, has been suffered to remain in use in
the cognate Syriac and Chaldee written dialects, even since
the introduction of vowel-letters into their respective systems
of writing, — without misleading the reader who peruses any
of the unpointed works transmitted to us in those dialects
with a sufficient degree of care. The mistakes, therefore, to
which I refer serve to prove in a very striking manner, with
regard to the vocal distinction of persons just described, which
now meets our eye in almost every page of the Hebrew record,
not only that it was made subsequently to the original com-
position of the sacred text, but also that it was made with
great precipitation. These mistakes consist in the erroneous

458 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

substitution of the first person of verbs of the above-men-
tioned number and tense for the second, or of the second for
the first. I shall here adduce some instances of each kind,
beginning with those of the former description.

1. In the following passage of our Authorized Version, —
" And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this
pillar which I have cast betwixt me and thee" — Gen. xxxi. 51
— an assertion is attributed to the speaker which strictly ac-
cords, indeed, with the present state of the text in the Jewish
edition of the Pentateuch, but is in direct opposition to the
tenor of the inspired narrative. For we are expressly in-
formed in the forty-fifth and forty-sixth verses of the very
same chapter of Genesis, that the pillar here mentioned was
set up, not by Laban, but by Jacob ; and that the heap of
stones was collected, not by Laban's, but by Jacob's direction.
Hence it is quite evident, even independently of the bearing
of ancient testimonies on the subject, that [the verb in the
latter part of the quoted verse should be inflected, not in the
first, but in the second person ; and I proceed to lay before
the reader the oldest representation of the assertion referred
to, not so much for the sake of corroborating a proof of the
spuriousness of the Yod at the end of the Jewish exhibition
thereof, which is sufficiently established by the authority of
Scripture alone ; but rather with a view to inquiring into the
cause of the blunder here committed by the Jews, as well as
to avail myself of the aid this example affords in the discus-
sion of some other points. The expression in question, then,
is written in the Jewish edition of the sacred text WT,
YaRIThI, ' I have raised ;' in the Samaritan edition TW,
YaRATha, ' thou hast raised ; in the Septuagint cW^o-a?, ' thou
hast raised ;' and in the Peshitah (omitting the prefixed rela-
tive) b\n i ol, which might, indeed, in an unconnected state,
be read, either HaQIMaTh, ' she hath raised,' HaQEMT, ' thou
(masculine) hast raised,' or HaQEMeTh, ' I have raised;' but it
is by the tenor of the narrative restricted in the specified place
to the second of these readings and senses. Thus, the oldest

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 459

extant collateral testimonies on the subject furnish evidence
ex abundanti against the Jewish vocalization of the original
group, to the same effect as that derivable from certain facts
referred to by Laban, which are on all sides admitted to be
expressly recorded in Scripture itself.

But to give a fuller view of those testimonies, I shall offer
a few more observations on each of them, beginning with that
last adduced. As the Syriac verb, then, whose evidence on
the subject is above described, admits of being read in the
second person singular masculine of the preterite tense, it is
unavoidably limited to that inflexion by the portion of the
sacred history immediately preceding, the true bearing of
which is preserved in, I believe, every edition and every ver-
sion of the Hebrew text. Gabriel Sionita, indeed, in his Latin
translation of the Peshitah, construed this verb in the first
person singular, by the same word (' erexi') as is used for the
purpose in the Vulgate —a version which has been proclaimed
immaculate by the authority of the Romish Church. He was,
however, by much too skilful a Syriac scholar to fail of being
quite aware of the misconstruction of which he was here
guilty ; and, if it be fair to judge of his motive for the com-
mission of this fraud by its obvious tendency, it will follow
that his design in perverting the sense of the passage of the
Peshitah containing this verb was to falsify the evidence which
its correct translation yields against the perfection of the Vul-
gate in this place, and, consequently, against the infallibility
of the Popes. But whatever his object may have been, the
erroneous rendering he has transmitted to us of the Syriac
expression in question tells not in the least against the real
meaning of that expression in the place referred to, but only
against the honesty of its translator.

With regard to the adduced Grecian evidence, I admit that
it is not furnished by the common editions of the Septuagint,
in which there may be detected, through their comparison
with the received Hebrew text, a considerable chasm in this
place. But the words of this chasm, including the one yield-

460 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

ing the above evidence, are preserved in a MS., numbered 135,
from which Holmes has quoted them in a note to his learned
edition of the specified version. They are here inserted within
brackets, between those placed immediately next to each other
in the ordinary editions of this work ; and, to render their
correctness more conspicuous, a literal translation of as much
of the Hebrew text as is here referred to is subjoined with
the part of that translation corresponding to the chasm, like-
wise included within brackets : —

Kal elite Aafiav t<2 laicwp, Ihov 6 fiovvos ovros [nai idov y aryXy
avT)]^ yv eaTijoas fxera^u e/xov kcu fxera^v aov' fxaprv? o <rwpo<;
ovroi] lad /Aaprvs i) aiyXy aurrj.

* And Laban said to Yacob, Behold this heap [and behold this pillar which I
have raised between me and thee; this heap be witness] and this pillar be
witness.'

From the strict closeness (with a single exception) of the un-
accented Greek words to the bearing here exhibited of the
corresponding portion of the Hebrew passage in the at present
received edition of the sacred text, one might at first be led
to suspect, that they were a comparatively modern restoration,
made by the help of a copy of that edition ; but, on consider-
ation, this suspicion will be found refuted b}^ the circumstance
of the Greek verb earrjoas being written in the second person.
Neither is it at all likely that they were arrived at by the aid
of the Samaritan edition — a work which was formerly little
known, and of no repute among the Greek Christians. The
most probable supposition, therefore, is, that they really are
the genuine words of the Septuagint, though preserved, as far
as lias been as yet ascertained, in only one manuscript copy of
that version ; while the manner in which they came to be
dropped from other manuscripts may be accounted for by
the oversight of some transcriber, who confounded the second
occurrence of the expression, v arrj\v aim/, with the first, and,
in consequence, omitted the intervening words.

The Samaritan evidence on this subject is particularly in-

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 46 1

teresting, on account of the hint it suggests upon another
point connected with the primitive structure of the Hebrew
language. At the beginning of this chapter it is proved, I
submit, beyond a doubt, that Hebrew verbs ending in He were
at first regularly inflected with regard to their final syllables,
in cases where those syllables are now found irregularly con-
tracted in both writing and pronunciation. But the Samari-
tan group which yields the direct evidence already noticed
upon the question here discussed, affords also ground for sus-
pecting that the class of verbs just mentioned were at first
regularly inflected in their medial, as well as in their final
syllables. For, supposing, for instance, the Hebrew verb !VP,
1 he cast,' or ' he raised,' to have been regularly formed, like
other triliteral verbs, for the inflexions in which it was capable
of being used in the example before us, it would have been
originally written fi!Tiy and have admitted of being read,
either YoRaHTha, ' thou hast raised,' or YaRallTh/, 'I have raised,'
according to what the reader conceived to be required by the
context ; but, after the introduction of vowel-letters into the
text of the Bible, the group previously common to both in-
flexions would have been distinguished into two different ones,
fi&ST, YaRATho, for the former signification, and ^fi^T,
YaRAThl, for the latter, the He having in each case been
omitted after the vocalization of the syllable which it had ter-
minated. Now the Samaritan vocalizers, for the inflexion
which suited their view of the demands of the context, actu-
ally treated the medial syllable in the manner here described ;
and it is inconceivable how they could have been led to do so,
by any other state of the case than the supposed one from
which I have just shown that this vocalization would follow.
Their exhibition, therefore, of this syllable verifies to a certain

■ The Jewish representation of the above group leaves the point undeter-
mined whether it was originally closed, or not, with a paragogic He; but the
Samaritan representation of the same group decides against the addition to it,
in its original state, of that supplement.

*

462 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

extent the proposed supposition. On the other hand, it may
be objected, the Jewish scribes vocalized the same syllable in
another way. But their substitution therein of Yod for Haleph
can be accounted for, by the disinclination they have shown
to the employment of the latter vowel-letter throughout the
entire of their work, and more particularly in forms of in-
flexion of frequent occurrence, such as those under considera-
tion ;a while, it should at the same time be added, this substi-
tution made no alteration whatever in the meaning of the
group referred to, but only in the sound of its second syllable,
— a change which those vocalizers were enabled to introduce,
in consequence of the ancient language of the Bible having
been, in their time, utterly unknown to all the Jews except
themselves, and the priesthood in whose interest they wrote,
and under whose direction they acted. Again, it may per-
haps be further objected, the Samaritan scribes, in most, if not
all instances but the one before us, conformed to the Jewish
vocalization of the syllable in question. But they may have
been induced, by the superior authority of the Jewish pronun-
ciation of Hebrew, to conform for the most part to that pro-
nunciation where it affected not the meaning of the text ;
while, on the other hand, their deviation from it, where placed
under this restriction, even in a single instance, is utterly un-
accountable, except on the supposition of their restoring the
ancient sound of an inflexion which had been arbitrarily
changed by the Jews : and as the latter set of vocalizers have
been proved to a certainty to have altered both the writing and
pronunciation of the final syllable of one inflexion of verbs end-
ing in He, there is the less unlikelihood of their having treated

* The vocal values /and U of Yod and Waw are immediately derivable by
direresis from their original powers Tand W. But the vocal value A of Haleph
cannot in any way be deduced from its original value, which was a species
of //power, and must have been borrowed from some foreign system. Ik'iiei',
in all probability, arose the disinclination of the old vocalizers to the employ-
ment of this mater lectionis, whose foreign origin it was scarcely possible for
them to conceal.

Chap.V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 463

in like manner the medial syllable of other inflexions of verbs
of the same class. I am, however, quite ready to admit the
danger of resting any view of a subject on a single example ;
and I propose that here brought forward only as a conjecture,
the decision of which in either way is immaterial to my gene-
ral theory, but whose discussion may still prove interesting
to the antiquarian philologist.

With regard to the Jewish vocalization of the final syllable
of the above group for the inflexion in the first person of the
verb thereby denoted, the egregious blunder here committed
by them leaves great room for the suspicion — which is sug-
gested by many other mistakes also of the same kind — that
they did not deliberately peruse the contents of the sacred text,
according as they proceeded with its vocalization, but merely
cast the eye along its pages in search of words which required
the addition of vowel-letters ; and that, finding the inflexion
of the verb under discussion in the first person to make sense
in the verse wherein it occurs, when that verse is considered
alone, they at once vocalized it for this inflexion, as the Se-
venty had translated it for a different one. But if they had
reflected on the contents of the sacred history only five and
six verses back, they must have seen that the inflexion here
chosen by them, for the purpose of giving the Septuagint an
appearance of inaccuracy in this place, instead of producing
the effect they intended, had merely that of making their own
vocalization of the text absolutely absurd, as representing La-
ban to have stated two falsehoods, and that too, without any
conceivable motive ; since, from the very nature of the case,
it was impossible that the person to whom these falsehoods are
imagined to have been addressed, could have been deceived by
them.

Before quitting this subject, I have to observe, that the
Hebrew verb in question is translated by the very same group
in the Targum of Onkelos as in the Syriac version, fi^ptf,
only with the exception of the Yod in its last syllable, which
confines it to the reading HaQlMETh, ' I have raised.' Accord-

2 K

464 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

ing to the more usual mode of writing Chaldee, this second
Yod might have been omitted ; and then the Chaldee group
would have been restricted by the context to the same reading
as is the Syriac one, HaQIMT, or HaQEMT 'thou (masculine)
hast raised.' As the case stands, however, this group yields
the same erroneous sense as the corresponding Hebrew one in
its present vocalized state ; — a circumstance which contributes
to show that the Targum of Onkelos was not written till after
the sacred text had been vocalized ; as so gross a blunder as
that here referred to could hardly have been committed by
two parties independently of each other. A much closer limit,
indeed, to the age of this Targum has been pointed out in the
course of the last discussion ; but still, this one is worth no-
ticing, on account of the endless number of examples which
can be applied to its confirmation.

In fine, I would recommend the Hebrew group just ana-
lyzed to be written, in an amended edition of the sacred text,
WP ; and the Authorized English Translation of the verse
in which it occurs, might, I submit, be improved by altering it
as follows : — "And Laban said to Yahacob, Behold this heap
and behold this pillar which thou hast erected between me and
thee." Besides the change of the inflexion of the verb in the
latter part of this verse from the first to the second person, the
verb itself has also been changed from ' cast,' into 'erected,'
an alteration which is not only sanctioned by the authority of
all the more ancient versions, but also required by the context ;
for the former verb can in strictness be stated only respecting
the stones which formed the heap, while the latter is applicable
witli propriety to both the heap itself and the pillar.

2. The Hebrew of the clause translated in our Authorized
Version, " Now thou art commanded," — Gen. xlv. 11), — has
been transmitted to us, vocalized

By the Jewish scribes, nrPT¥ nnXT

And by the Samaritans, Wl¥ nriN'l

The two readings here adduced of* the same group, which exhi-

Chap. V] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 465

bit a verb, the upper of them, in the second person, and the
lower one, in the first, are worth considering together ; as
their comparison supplies a conspicuous instance, both of the
ambiguity of the original Hebrew form of inflexion under ex-
amination when viewed apart from the context, and also of the
practice of the old vocalizers (Samaritan as well as Jewish) of
dropping a paragogic He, after vocalizing the syllable that had
been closed by it. The Jewish part of this example, which is
clearly right with regard to the person in which it represents
the verb to be inflected, has been already analyzed in the first
chapter of the present volume ; where, however, the Masoretic
pointing of this inflexion for the passive voice, according to
which it has been translated in the Authorized English Ver-
sion, is proved quite erroneous, not only by the inconsistency
it introduces between the clause before us and the next en-
suing one with respect to the number of persons to whom the
command therein contained is addressed, — "Now thou art
commanded ; this do ye, take you waggons," — but also by the
bearing of the most ancient testimony extant upon the sub-
ject. The Syriac translation, indeed, of the above clause —
tS\ 4\«V) loi 4?1° — is ambiguous ; for, according as the par-
ticiple in it is read MiShoLeT, or MeShaLaT, it admits of convey-
ing one or other of these significations : — 'Now, as for thee, be-
hold, commanding be thou,' or, ' Now, as for thee, behold,
commanded art thou.' But the Septuagint, which is our oldest
and best authority for the interpretation of the sacred text in
its original state, is perfectly clear with respect to the voice as
well as the person in which the inflexion under inquiry should
be read: — 2u ce evretXai ravra' Xafieuv uvtols afxa^a^, k. t. X. —
" And do thou have given [i. e. do thou instantly give] these
orders to them, that ye should take for yourselves waggons,
&c. ;" where, we may perceive, the incoherency above exposed
is avoided, and the transition from the singular to the plural
number of the persons commanded is accounted for. But my
chief motive for bringing under notice, in a preceding chapter,
the group in question as vocalized by the Jewish scribes of the

2k2 '

466 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

second century, was on account of the aid which, where its
vocalization is completed, as it should be, for the active voice,
it contributes to illustrating the force of the Hebrew tense
compounded of the future, or imperative (which is looked upon
by Hebrew grammarians as a species of future), and the pre-
terite tense. As, however, my views upon this point have been
already detailed, in the place above specified, no further expo-
sition of them is here wanted.

I now proceed to direct attention to the Samaritan part
of the same example, which, with the words next following,
can be thus translated : — ' And as for thee, I have commanded
thee; this do ye, take for yourselves waggons, &c.' Here may
be observed the very incoherency, in the use of the singular
and plural numbers, which was previously noticed in the
Jewish passage, as the vocalization of the principal group of
its leading clause has been filled up by the Masoretic pointing.
The Samaritan reading, then, of this group for the first per-
son is shown to be incorrect, first, by the context ; secondly,
by the old Jewish vocalization of the same group, which is,
indeed, incomplete, but, as far as it goes, is right; and, thirdly,
by the independent testimonies of the Septuagint and Peshi-
tah, which are, upon this point, perfectly concordant. This
reading, therefore, of the group referred to, presents to us a
clear instance, not indeed in the received edition of the He-
brew Pentateuch, but in its Samaritan edition, of a Hebrew
form of inflexion of a verb which ought to have been exhi-
bited in the second person, but has, through mistake, been
vocalized for the first.

3. A prolific supply of examples of the mistake under
examination is furnished by the part of Naomi's advice to
Ruth, which is translated in our Authorized Version as fol-
lows : — " Wash thyself, therefore, and anoint thee, and *put
thy raiment upon thee, and *get thee down to the [thrash-
ing-] floor ; but make not thyself known unto the man, until
he shall have, done eating and drinking. And it shall be,
when be lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 467

shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and
*lay thee down." — Ruth, iii. 3, 4. Of the verbs in this quo-
tation, the three marked with an asterisk are, just like the
rest of those addressed to Ruth, rightly formed for the second
person ; but in the Hebrew text, as it has been transmitted to
us, they are inflected for the first, in direct opposition to
sense and to both of the ancient versions that were written
before that text was vocalized. In the three records re-
ferred to they are, when compared respectively, exhibited
as follows : —

First verb, tTlQ^CD]1,a 'and I shall have put on (raiment).'
kciI 7T€pi6f'i(T€i^ 'and thou shalt put on.'
*_»Ar^."jo, 'and be thou (feminine) dressed.'

Second verb, TllTl, 'and I shall have descended.'

kol ava(3yay, 'and thou shalt ascend.'
_2.o_»»iO 'and descend thou (feminine).'

Third verb, *tf"Q3t&H, 'and I shall have lain down.'

nu Koi/xfjOrjay, 'and thou shalt he down.'
. ^KnJ<~>/ 'and thou (feminine) shalt lie down.'

Upon the spuriousness of the Yod at the end of each of the
adduced Hebrew verbs, by means of which their present erro-
neous form of inflexion is given them, I need not dwell ; for,
although the cause of its appearance in those three sites has
hitherto proved utterly inexplicable, yet, that it has been
wrongly inserted therein, is on every side admitted. Even
the Masorets have acknowledged as much in their mode of
exhibiting those verbs, which, notwithstanding their attaching

a The corrupt change by the Jewish scribes of Samek into Shin, in cases
where the power of the former letter is still retained, is proved, in the
instance of the above verb, by the joint evidence of the Syriac and Chaldee
dialects, in which it is used with just the same sound and signification as in
the ancient Hebrew, but is always written in each of them with a Samek.

468 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

thereto the little circular mark of censure, they have left un-
changed, so as to be read respectively, according to the letters,
in the first person, WeSaMTI, WeYaRaDTI, WeShaKaBTI, but Still
have pointed for the respective readings in the second person
feminine WeSaMT, WeYaRaDT, W«ShaKaBT. Thus they honestly
confessed that the sacred text was handed down to them, in
these three instances, written in a way quite at variance with
that according to which the context required it to be read ; —
a confession well worth noticing, on account of the very
striking illustration it affords of the scrupulous fidelity with
which they preserved this text in the very state in which they
found it.

The same degree of candour has not been shown upon
this occasion by the framers of the English Authorized Ver-
sion : they have, indeed, rightly attended to the sense of the
passage in construing the above verbs in the second person ;
but, though professing in their title-page to translate from
the original Scriptures, they have here, within the short com-
pass of two verses, deviated no less than three times from
those Scriptures, as at present written, without giving in the
margin of their work the slightest intimation of their having
done so. Whether the reserve thus practised by those learned
men, in regard to the Old Testament, was justifiable or not, it
at all events serves to show, in a very prominent manner, how
sorely perplexed they were, and to what a distressing dilemma
they must have felt themselves reduced, by the existing state
of the Hebrew text. Now, however, the whole source of their
embarrassment is removed: the inaccuracies in the sacred
record which they attempted to conceal from the English
reader turn out to have no genuine connexion with the in-
spired writing, but to be merely the effects of interpolations
therein made by fallible, uninspired men; and, consequently,
neither honesty Qor candour any longer requires an acknow-
ledgment of those inaccuracies in the margin of our Bible.
The exposed anomalies, indeed, not only are accounted for bv
my discovery, but they also contribute in turn to its support

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 469

by increasing the number and variety of cases which it is
impossible to explain in any other way : for no other cause
of corruption can be assigned, that would invariably operate
on a very limited class of letters, and leave all the rest un-
touched. I have here only further to observe, that the little
circular mark of censure with which the Masorets branded the
three groups just analyzed, ought to be attached to them in
unpointed editions also, but placed more exactly over the
spurious element of each, — a caution less necessary in Maso-
retic copies, in which the faulty letter is sufficiently indicated
by the pointing. The corrected groups would thus come to
be exhibited in an amended edition of the text, T1D£>[D]1

4. In the chapter of the Authorized English Version next
to that from which I have taken my last quotation, the fol-
lowing passage occurs : — " Then said Boaz, What day thou
buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also
of Ruth, the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up [an
offspring that shall bear] the name of the dead [and be main-
tained] upon his inheritance." — Ruth, iv. 5. The verb pre-
terite which, in consequence of the Waw at the commencement
of the second clause being treated as a Waw conversive imme-
diately thereto prefixed, is here translated, ' Thou must also
buy,' is exhibited in the Hebrew text, as it stands at present,
WJp, QaNIThI, ' I must have also bought ;' and the elements
of the group have been honestly preserved by the Masorets in
this state, though they pointed it so as to be read QaNITha,
1 thou must have also bought.' This case supports my view
of the general subject just as powerfully as those previously
adduced ; and we may observe in it precisely the same can-
dour exerted by the Jewish punctuators, and the same reserve
by the English translators as in the last batch of examples.
So far, therefore, it does not call for any additional remark.
But while one error has been avoided in our Authorized Ver-
sion with regard to the above verb, another has been fallen
into, which it may be worth while to bring under the reader's

470 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chaf.V.

notice. The supplement ' it' has been wrongly introduced as
the word governed by the verb : the tenor, even alone consi-
dered, of the quoted verse shows plainly, — what, indeed, is
rendered, if possible, still more evident by the ensuing part
of the narrative, — that the supplied pronoun, if any were here
wanted, should not be ' it,' but ' her ;' and that the second
part of the demand made on the nearest kinsman of the de-
ceased was not the purchase over again of the field, which
would seem to have been quite superfluous, but the additional
purchase of the widow, without whose co-operation there
could not be raised up an heir to the estate entitled to the
name of its late proprietor. But to point out the further sup-
port which tins correction derives from both of the versions
that were composed before the sacred text was vocalized, so
much of the original passage, in its existing state, as comes more
immediately under discussion, is here adduced, together with
its oldest Greek and Syriac renderings,- while a literal interpre-
tation of each rendering is subjoined thereto.

Hebrew text, nil riNBI ^/DjO TO iTTBtfl IJYttp D^!! D

-w:p nnn nu/x maKiDn

Septuagint, tv y/JLepa rov KTyjaaoBai ae rov dypov t/r y^iepov
Nwefxiv* Kal 7iapa Fov6 t>/9 Mwa/3/Ttco?, yvvaikos
rov Te0j/^/iOTo?, Kal avryv KTijaaaOat ae cei —

'In the day of thy getting the field from the hand of Noemin
and from Ruth the Moabitess, widow of the dead, thou
must gain possession also of herself [i. e. of the latter
woman].'

• The above proper name is written in the Alexandrian copy Noofi/xee,
though exhibited in the Vatican one Nwefitv. The difference between the
two transcriptions of the same word marks the imperfection of the original
Hebrew mode of recording names, in the case of those of rare occurrence.
The one before us, which is written in Syriac with exactly the same elements
as in Hebrew, was pronounced by the Seventy, according to one copy of their
work, NoHeMtn, and according to another, NoHoMmt; while it was pointed by
the Masorets so as to be read NaHoMi. The Au at the end of this name in the

Chap.V.] and second per. sing. OF PRETERITES. 471

Peshltah, Z.ai»5o : . iVtsi ^So Uq *> Aj"| ^>i> }^nn . ^

' In the day of buying thou the field from Nahomi, do thou
also of Rehuth the Moabitess, his widow of him the dead,
get possession.'

The two sets of translators here perfectly agree in sub-
stance, though differing somewhat in form. They both concur
in rendering the final group of the Hebrew sentence as a verb
in the second person, in opposition to the error subsequently
committed by the Jewish scribes of vocalizing it for the first ;
and they also concur in referring the bearing of this verb to
the acquisition or purchase, not of the field, but of Ruth, in
opposition to the more recent error on this point which has
been above noticed. On the other hand, the field is repre-
sented as bought, according to the Seventy, from each of the
women here mentioned, but, according to the Syriac transla-
tors, from Naomi alone ; and the final He of the last group
(restored through my discovery to its original state), which
was dropped by the old vocalizers on their insertion of a Yod
in the syllable that had been closed by it, is shown by their
respective renderings to have been treated, by the former set
of translators, as the pronominal affix for the third person sin-
gular feminine, but by the latter set as merely a paragogic
element. The view taken of this letter by the Seventy in the
case of the group in question deserves attention ; for, whether
they were right or not in this instance, they could not have
looked upon the He here referred to as an affix, unless it ac-

Vatican MS. is worth noticing; as the testimony of this copy is hereby
given, that the strong pronunciation of vowel-sounds at the end of words,
which after the introduction of matres lectionis into the sacred text came to
be denoted by the addition of a paragogic Nun, had commenced before the
Septuagint was written. It appears strange to find in Greek writing the
combination u> used to denote the vowel I strongly sounded; but we are to
recollect that the Septuagint was written, not by Greeks, but by Jews, and
that, too, by Jews who had but very shortly before begun to learn the use
of vowel-signs.

472 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

tually performed the service of this curtailed pronoun at the
end of other groups, denoting the same inflexion. I should,
however, add, that the twofold nature of the He in this site
attaches no ambiguity to the original sentence ; as it is strictly
confined to a single service in each way of dealing with the
passage. If, along with the Greek translators, we retain the
Mem of the group which immediately precedes the proper
name Ruth, it excludes that proper name from being go-
verned as an accusative case by the verb at the end of the
sentence ; and then the service of the final He as an affix is
wanted, to supply the place of a word so governed. But if,
on the other hand, we, along with the Syriac translators, reject
the Mem in question, the above proper name is then put in
the accusative case to the specified verb, and the He, not being
wanted for this use, becomes merely paragogic. According
to the Greek rendering, a Waw conversive of the preterite should
be prefixed to the final group of the Hebrew passage ; but
no such alteration of the text is wanted according to the
Syriac rendering, which makes the Service of this Waw be
performed by the one at the head of the second clause. On
the other hand, the latter rendering calls for the rejection of
the Mem in the group immediately preceding the proper name,
Ruth, — an alteration of the text which is not required by the
former rendering of the same passage.

In support of the Greek construction of the sentence un-
der examination, one might at first be disposed to urge, that
it is taken from the older of the two versions ; and also that
the Mem which, according to it, should be retained in this
sentence, is still there found in, as far as has been yet ascer-
tained, every extant copy of the sacred tcxt.a But both con-
siderations are entirely overruled by the authority of Scripture

8 Kennicott found but one Hebrew MS. without the Mem in the site
above referred to; and even in that one, numbered by him 31, it was only in
part erased. Neither was De Rossi able to find any other copy wanting this
letter in the site in question.

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 473

itself, by which the question at issue between the two con-
structions is fully decided in favour of the Syriac one. For,
in the inspired narration, a few verses further on, Boaz pro-
claiming his own performance of the very conditions he had
previously required in vain to be executed by another, and
which are recorded in the sentence just analyzed, expresses
himself as follows : — "And Boaz said unto the elders and unto
all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought
all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's
[that is, the whole of the field in question] of the hand of
Naomi. Moreover, Ruth, the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon,
I have purchased to be my wife, . . ." — Ruth, iv. 9, 10. Hence
it plainly results, that the field was sold by Naomi alone, and
that Ruth, instead of taking any share in the ratification of
the sale, was herself a part of the property then sold. I would,
therefore, adhere to the Syriac construction of the above He-
brew sentence, in conformity with which I would recommend
the first and last groups of its second clause to be written, in

o o

an amended edition of the sacred text, DND1 and ^BUn^p ;
and, deviating as little as possible from its Authorized English
Translation, I would venture to render it as follows : —

" What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou
must also speedily buy Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of
the dead."

I would not annex to the expression, ' thou must also speedily
buy,' the marginal note, 'Heb. thou must also have bought/
since, from the frequent occurrence of this form of compound
tense, the margin would be too much overloaded with its
explanation.

5. I have next to proceed to some cases of omission of the
vocal Yod at the end of the form in question, where the want
of it, according to the present mode of writing Hebrew, can
be evinced by the context, by the united evidence of the oldest
pair of versions among the ancient ones still extant, and even

474 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

by the admission of the Jews. In the original of the passage,
" I know that thou canst do every thing" — Job, xlii. 2, — the
initial group, I^T, could, before the introduction of vowel-
letters into the sacred text, have been read, either Y«DaHT7, ' I
know,' or YaDaHTa, ' thou knowest ;' but afterwards, in con-
sequence of the old vocalizers having, through oversight, failed
to annex to it a Yod, it became restricted to the latter sense.
Yet, in the first place, the former alone is suited to the tenor
of Job's speech. Secondly, the group in question is translated
in the Septuagint oita, ' I know,' and in the Peshitah, — with
a periphrasis to avoid the ambiguity of the corresponding in-
flexion of the Syriac language, — ]S\ vx^, ' knowing am I.'
Thirdly, this group has been pointed by the Masorets for the
reading Y«D«HT7, ' I know,' with the little circular mark placed
over it to indicate something wrong therein ; — a mark which,
according to my notation, is confined to cases of redundancy,
while for the sake of distinctness those of defect are denoted
in another way. Fully, then, agreeing with them in the just-
ness of their correction, I would conform to it by inserting a
Yod within brackets in the place where it is wanted ; and,
accordingly, would recommend the group just analyzed to be
written DIjVT in an amended edition of the Hebrew text.

6. Let us turn to the following clause, in which Solomon
is represented as speaking of the Temple he had just finished;

" the house which I have built for thy name." — 1 Kings,

viii. 48. In the Hebrew of this clause the verb is written
rv:3, which, since the text was vocalized with letters, has been
restricted to the reading BaNiTha, 'thou hast built.' But, in
the first place, the sense of the clause in connexion with the
entire of Solomon's prayer obviously requires this verb to be
inflected in the first person. Secondly, it is rendered in the
Septuagint wxc^ofj^Kc^ 'I have built,' and in the Peshitah,
omitting the prefixed relative, Zv_>_i_o_the very same as the
Hebrew group in Letters, though not in pronunciation— which,
indeed, might, considered by itself, signify ' I have built,' ' thou

Chap.V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 475

hast built,' or ' she hath built,'a but is strictly confined to the
first of these significations by the context. Thirdly, it is
branded by the Masorets with their little circular mark of cen-
sure, and pointed so as to be read B«NITh?, ' I have built.'
Their correction is perfectly just ; and I only differ with them
in the mode of expressing it. According to my notation the
above group should be written, in an amended edition of the

text, mr^a

7. " For thus saith the Lord God, I will even deal with
thee, as thou hast done, — " — Ezek. xvi. 59. In the Hebrew
of this sentence the middle verb is TW^I, which, according
to the present orthography of the sacred text, must be read
WeHaSITh«? ' and thou shalt surely deal.' But, in the first
place, this verb by being so inflected would make absolute
nonsense of the passage. Secondly, it is translated in the Sep-
tuagint a-cu 7ro^/<Tw, ' and I will do ;' and is paraphrased in the
Peshitah \S\ ,n\ ' about to do am I.' Thirdly, it has been
marked by the Masorets with their little circle, and pointed by
them so as to be read WeHaSITl™, ' and I will surely deal.' In
this correction I fully concur with them, and would, accord-
ingly, recommend the above group to be written, in an
amended edition of the Hebrew text, Nn^ED]^! ; where the
last alteration alone relates to the present discussion ; while
the preceding ones are made in conformity to the rule that,
in words now written with SiShin, but pronounced as if written
with a Samek, the former letter should be rejected, and the
latter restored. I have here only further to observe that, in
this and the two preceding examples, the framers of our Au-

a The Syriac group in question might for the last of the above three sig-
nifications be written without a Yod; but as it can also be written for such
meaning with this letter, it must, when so exhibited, be viewed, even up to
the present day, as open in the abstract to all those significations; — a point
upon which I dwell for the purpose of showing, that there is nothing incre-
dible in the lesser ambiguity of a twofold sense, in an unconnected state,
which I attribute to the corresponding Hebrew group in the original condi-
tion of the sacred text.

476 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

thorized Version adopted the Masoretic emendations of the
sacred text; but they did so without acknowledging in the
margin of their work the errors in the existing state of that
text which were thus corrected. Candour, indeed, now no
longer demands any such acknowledgment ; as the errors in
question have been traced to the fault of the old vocalizers,
and are found to have no connexion with the inspired compo-
sitions as originally penned. It is, however, to be recollected,
to the honour of the Masorets, that, although utterly unable to
account for those blemishes, and as much distressed at their
appearance in Scripture as any other sect of men could be,
they yet never attempted to suppress what was known to them
under this head, with regard to the existing state of the writ-
ing of the Hebrew Bible.

8. I shall now give an example of the same defective mode
of exhibiting the Hebrew form in question, which escaped the
observation of those critics : — " Preserve me, 0 God ; for in
thee do I put my trust. 0 my soul, thou hast said unto the
Lord, Thou art my Lord." — Ps. xvi. 1, 2. The original of
this extract from our Authorized Version is, in the present
state of the Hebrew text, written as follows : —

-:nm ^"tk .mrrt rratf /p won ■o &x ^nw

The verb at the commencement of the second part of this line
is addressed to some person (or thing figuratively viewed as a
person) that is not expressly mentioned ; and there is no limi-
tation to the noun which is wanting, except that it should
denote a believer in the true God, and that it should be in the
singular number : it is not even confined to the feminine
gender, ;is the punctuation employed by the Masorets would
imply ; for they pointed it for that gender without any neces-
sity for doing so, and apparently for the mere purpose of
making it agree with the supplementary word here introduced
in the Chaldee Paraphrase of the Psalms, ^M, ' 0 my soul,'
and which is the same, as well as of the same gender, in He-
brew also. This supplement makes sense, indeed, of the pas-

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 477

sage headed by it ; but so would equally any one of an innu-
merable set of others ; as, for instance, the Hebrew for ' 0 my
son,' or ' 0 my friend,' or ' 0 my heart.' Surely, such an
extreme degree of vagueness cannot be ascribed to the inspired
author of the Psalm ; but this vicious style is now removed
from the original line, and traced to the giddiness of the old
vocalizers, in failing to annex a Yod to the group mDtf.
The verb, indeed, thereby denoted could up to their time have
been read, .without the aid of this adjunct, in the first person,
as the tenor of the passage obviously requires that it should ;
but it afterwards became, in consequence of the non-insertion
of the above vowel-letter in the specified site, restricted to the
second person. From the cause of this corruption, once ascer-
tained, we are directly led to its remedy ; and the correction
thus shown to be demanded by the context is also sustained
by the concurrent attestations of the two versions that were
written before the Hebrew text was vocalized. The above
group, niDS, in the adduced line is translated in the Septua-
gint e?7ra, ' I have said,' and in the Peshitah L£d\ ' I have
said.' The Syriac group, which is exactly the same as the
original one in letters, though not in the pronunciation of its
vocal portion, is particularly deserving of attention ; as it may
even still, when considered by itself, be read either HeMReTh,
' I have said,' HeMaRTh, 'thou (masculine) hast said,' or HeMRaTh,
' she hath said.' There is, therefore, nothing incredible in the
view I maintain respecting the very same group in Hebrew
writing, that originally, when considered by itself, it was am-
biguous, though not as much so as it is to this day in Syriac
writing. But as there is no word of the sentence in reference
to which the Syriac verb could be used in the second or third
person, it is in consequence necessarily confined to the first ;
and so would the Hebrew one also, for part of the very same
reason, if men had known that they had a choice open to them
on the subject. This choice is now restored ; and all that re-
mains to be done is to write the analyzed group, in an amended
edition of the sacred text, WmD^ (or in any other way that

478 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

will serve to indicate the same correction, according to the
mode of notation which may eventually be adopted), and to
insert in the Authorized English Version for its translation the
statement 'I have said,' instead of '0 my soul, thou hast said.'

This example, I may here add, clearly shows that the
Targum of the Psalms inserted in Walton's Polyglot, though
of greater age than .the Masoretic pointing, was not written
till after the Hebrew text had been vocalized with letters.
For the translation of JY1C8 therein given, Pir/D, which is
as ambiguous as the Syriac one, when considered by itself, is
in the place referred to restricted to the second person by both
1 tarts of the supplement immediately following it, ^W£2 rOtf,
'thou 0 my soul;' but no one who examined the passage
with any deliberation could have interpreted the original verb
in this inflexion, if he had the power of taking it in the first
person, — a mode of reading it which was put a stop to only
through the oversight of the old vocalizers. Closer limitations,
indeed, to the age of the Targum in question may be derived
from other considerations ; but as this one is suggested by the
Chaldee interpretation of the passage which is the subject of
the present discussion, I have thought it worth bringing here
by the way under notice.

9. For one more instance of the former mode of mistreat-
ing the Hebrew form of inflexion in question— and that also
one which the Masorets failed to correct — I request attention
to a sentence in the blasphemous speech of Rabshakeh to the
mi >sengers of King Hezekiah, recorded in two different parts
of Scripture, by lines which, in their existing state, are trans-
lated in our Authorized Version as follows : —

" Thou sayest (but they are but vain words), I have counsel and
strength for the war." — 2 Kings, xviii. 20.

"I say, sayest thou (but they are but vain words), I have coun-
sel and strength for war." — Is. xxxvi. 5.

Even without any reference to the upper of these extracts, or
jo the original of either, the bare inspection of the lower one

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 479

is sufficient to show that there must be something wrong in
it. For, if we omit the supplementary words, ' sayest thou,'
the sentence conveys the admission of Rabshakeh that he was
himself a liar, and had neither counsel nor strength for war ;
— an admission utterly incompatible with the boasting tenor of
all the rest of his speech. On the other hand, if we retain the
above words, the lie is shifted to another individual, and
Hezekiah turns out to be the person represented as destitute
both of counsel and strength for war ; by which means,
indeed, the incoherency of the former construction is avoided,
but the bearing of the passage is entirely changed, — an effect
quite beyond the province of a supplement, the legitimate use
of which is not to alter, but only to complete the sense of the
rendering of whatever line of a translated work it may relate
to. At the same time, it may be observed that the upper ex-
tract is not liable to either of these objections, from which
circumstance, combined with the consideration that the ori-
ginals of the two extracts must have been at first the same,
we are naturally led to anticipate that the lower extract ought
to be corrected so as to agree with the upper one, and, conse-
quently, that the objectionable supplement in it should be
omitted, and the inflexion of the verb at its commencement
be changed from the first to the second person.

But to probe the subject more deeply, it is requisite to in-
spect the two original lines of the extracts just examined ;
which, accordingly, are here laid before the reader in their
existing state, with merely the exception of an error in their
orthography corrected, by restoring in the margin of each a
Samek instead of a Shin, in the case of a group containing at
present the latter sibilant, but still pronounced with the power
of the former one.
2 Kings, xviii. 20, iTTliw i"W tDTlB& "11*7 "|K ,mDK D

is. xxxvi. 5, mny\ rrap <tma& "im is ,*mcK d

rtDrhnh

The lower of these lines agrees in meaning with the lower of

2l

480 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap. V.

the adduced English extracts, divested of its first supplement;
and. consequently, is liable to the very same objection as that
extract is, when so curtailed. The candour, indeed, and hu-
mility attributed to the speaker by this line, as at present
vocalized, are entirely at variance with the general bearing of
Rabshakeh's speech ; — a fact which the framers of our Au-
thorized Version have virtually acknowledged, by introducing
into their translation of the passage a supplement which quite
reverses the sense it conveys in its existing state. But sup-
pose the matres lectionis to be a spurious addition to the
writing of the sacred text, inserted therein after its original
formation, by uninspired fallible scribes, and then we should
have a right to dispense with their use whenever they might
be found to interfere with the coherency of Scripture, by which
means the whole difficulty of the particular case now under
consideration would be at once removed. For, by rejecting
the vocal Tod at the end of the initial group of the under line, it
would be made to denote a verb inflected in the second person
instead of the first, and the meaning of the whole line would
be so altered as to come out perfectly in keeping with the
rude and insulting tenor of the remainder of the barbarian
orator's harangue. Thus, there would be effected by legiti-
mate means a correction in the sense of the original line which
was in vain attempted to be introduced into its translation by
the framers of our version, through an exceedingly awkward
and perplexing form of expression, and what is still worse, by
1 1 1 < • aid of a contrivance that was quite unwarranted. But the
Bpuriousness of the specified Tod, which has been just derived
from the con text, is powerfully sustained and, I may even
assert, confirmed by the authority of Scripture. For, upon
turning to the upper line, we shall see that, although in
oth-r respects exactly identical with the lower one, it yet
exhibits t\\<- initial group actually clear of the perturbat-
ing Letter. It cannot be here urged that the evidence of
Scripture on the subject is rendered void by incoherency, the
meanings conveyed by the two lines being at variance with

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 481

each other. For this objection would be valid, only provided
both lines were in their original state, which they are shown
not to be by the very discrepance which now subsists between
them : and when the bearing of each is examined with a view
to ascertaining which of them has undergone corruption, the
lower one is clearly found to be that whose testimony must
be rejected. Notwithstanding, then, their present mutual op-
position, the attestation of the upper line still continues with
unabated force to sanction and confirm the inference above
drawn from the context ; and the combination of both proofs
establishes beyond a doubt the spuriousness of the Tod in
question, as well as the complete identity of the compared
lines, as originally written. This specimen of the class of ex-
amples which may be derived from parallel passages of Scrip-
ture serves to give some notion of their efficacy in upholding,
not only the truth, but also the usefulness of my discovery :
the class alluded to, indeed, affords so powerful a corrobora-
tion of my argument, that I would gladly devote more space
to the discussion of cases which come under this head, if life
and health should be allowed me sufficient for writing a sup-
plementary volume to complete this treatise.

The proof already given of the spuriousness of the Tod in
the lower of the compared lines is so strong, that I refer to
the evidence of the Septuagint and Peshitah on the subject,
not so much for the purpose of making any addition to the
strength of that proof, as for the sake of some hints thus sup-
plied for the correction of the Authorized English Translations
of those lines. The Greek and Syriac renderings of the same
lines are here adduced, with their literal interpretations sub-
joined to them respectively : —

2 Kings, xviii. 20, Et7ra9, nXyu Xoyoi y^eiXeutv, ^ovXy ml Ivvajjiis
ety iroXefiov.

' Thou say est — but they are deceitful words [literally,
•words of lips] — that thou hast counsel and strength
for war.'

2 l 2

482 CAUSE OF CONFUSION BETWEEN FIRST [Chap.V.

Isaiah, xxxvi. 5, IYL) Iv f3ov\)j kcil Xoyocs yeiAewv 7rapa.Tat;i$
yiverai ; —

4 Whether is war carried on by [literally, does ma-
nagement of war consist in] merely counsel and
deceitful words [literally words of lips] ?'

2 Kings, xviii. 20, | ]A.v;7n |/ntsm? jlVnvn ^ a_»1j 1$\d\q
and Is. xxxvi. 5, ) £>r^ Uoj-^^o

'And thou sayest that thou hast [literally, that
there are in thee] deceitful speech [literally,
speech of lips] and counsel and strength for war
[or for the war].'

The upper Greek translation most rigidly agrees in sense with
the upper Hebrew line, and so vouches for the genuineness of
the meaning conveyed by that line in its present state ; but
the lower Greek translation manifestly betrays corruption, and
besides exhibits no rendering whatever of the initial group of
the corresponding Hebrew line. The evidence, therefore, of
the Septuagint, on the main point under discussion, must be
deemed lost, unless we be allowed, in consequence of the ob-
vious corruption of the lower Greek passage, to transfer the
upper one to the interpretation of the lower Hebrew line, on
til- ground of the original identity of both Hebrew lines.
The Syriac translation is less accurate than the upper Greek
one, in consequence, as it would appear, of the want of the
adversative particle "|N in both lines of the Hebrew copy con-
sulted by the framers of the Peshitah ; but on the main point,
thai the initial group of the lower, as well as the upper line,
should be rendered as a verb in the second person, it is unequi-
vornlly correct For the form of inflexion therein used for
the purpose not only admits of being read in the second per-
son, but also, notwithstanding its capability of other readings
when taken in an unconnected state, is strictly confined to this
on.- by flu- context of the place before us, as has been already
explained in the instance of the occurrence of the very same
S i-iar group in another place. The evidence here given by

Chap. V.] AND SECOND PER. SING. OF PRETERITES. 483

the Peshitah is also valuable on another account ; for, by ex-
hibiting precisely the same rendering of the two Hebrew lines,
it clearly attests the identity of those lines, or, at any rate, that
of the sense conveyed by them, down to the period when this
version was written.

To turn now to the correction of the Authorized English
translations of the compared lines, — the verb represented by
the initial group of each line is, in.strictness, confined to the
preterite tense, or one compounded of the preterite and pre-
sent, equivalent to that employed in the English expression,
' thou hast read ;' but still, the rendering of this group by the
Seventy in the upper line (in the case of which alone, of the two,
their translation of it has been preserved) by a Greek verb in
the form of a past tense (eiWa?), which yet is used to denote
the present, justifies, I conceive, the framers of the English
Version in their construction of the initial verb of both Hebrew
lines in the latter tense. The next point I have to notice in
their translation of each line is their putting the term ' word'
in the plural number, in conformity, indeed, with both the
Greek renderings of its Hebrew original, but in direct opposi-
tion to that original, as at present read in both Hebrew lines.
It is quite true, as is shown by my discovery, that the original
group, 121 in the construct state, could, before the introduc-
tion of vowel-letters into the writing of the Hebrew Bible, have
been read either in the singular number DeBaE, ' word of,' or
DiBRe, ' words of ;' and the strict accuracy of construction
which was constantly observed by the Seventy proves that
they must have here read it in the latter way. But this group
could not be so read at present, without subjoining to it a Yod,
or exhibiting it according to my notation in the form WQ"T,
— an alteration that is not at all requisite, as the sense is just
as good which is supplied by the other mode of reading it. I
should, therefore, prefer construing the above group in the
singular number, in order to avoid introducing into the sacred
text a correction in itself unnecessary, and which is wanted
solely through an inversion of the natural mode of proceeding,

484 ANALYSIS RECONSIDERED OF [Chap.V.

to justify the existing English translation of the noun referred
to in each of the specified places of its occurrence. The last
point to which I shall here advert is the manner in which the
framers of our Version dealt with the final group of the two
Hebrew lines, they having rendered it ' for the war' in the
upper line, and ' for war' in the lower one. On the contrary,
the Masorets consistently pointed this group so as to be read
with the definite article in both lines, and the Seventy, with
ecpial consistency, read it so as to be translated without that
article in either fine. Each of the latter modes of treating
the group in question makes good sense ; but, as far as autho-
rity is to be consulted on the subject, the Greek rendering of
it is entitled to far greater weight than its Masoretic pointing,
as having been framed so much nearer to the time when the
Hebrew of the Bible was a living language : and, at any rate,
whichever construction of it be adopted in the one line, ought
in consistency to be adhered to likewise in the other. In fine,
I would recommend the censurable group at the commence-
ment of the lower line to be written, in an amended edition

o

of the sacred text, TTlftK ; and I would translate the com-
pared lines exactly the same way, thus: —

" Thou sayest, — but it is a false assertion,8 — a neb. « word ofiips.
that thou hast counsel and strength for

Before closing the argument I have derived from the struc-
ture «»f the sacred language, I take this opportunity of stating,
with respect to one of the examples, Judg. xi. 34, therein ad-
duced, which is discussed in pages 280-4, that, without in the
least altering the use i nade of it *to illustrate the occasional
employment of an epenthetic .flftm before the pronominal affix
lh\ I find upon consideration its rendering in the body of the
Authorized English Version preferable to either of those pro-
posed by me. For that rendering, I apprehend, can be main-
;. lined on a supposition which has but lately occurred to me,

Chap. V.] PART OF THE VERSE, JUDGES, xi. 34. 485

that the group *Q7 was originally placed, and so may now be
restored, or at least understood, before HIDE) in the Hebrew
clause: — a supposition which appears far less objectionable
than the two required to the support of each of my transla-
tions : namely, 1st, that there is no expression in the origi-
nal passage for the important part of its meaning conveyed by
the words ' besides her,' or ' other child,' in consequence of
which those words are represented in my constructions of the
sentence as merely supplemental ; and 2ndly, that the group
Hi/D/D, or 13£72, was passed over without any interpretation by
such close translators as the Seventy Jews and the framers
of the Peshitah. Both of the latter suppositions are got rid
of by means of that first mentioned ; as, on the adoption
thereof, the Greek eVe/jo? would cease to be supplemental, and
become a correct paraphrase of the original words H2D12 "TD7,
LeBaD Mi'MmeNnaH, 'besides her,' and the Syriac otj^d ;^\
LeB«R MeNaH, would not only be the exact literal rendering of
the Hebrew expression, but would consist of the very same
combination of words, subjected to no other alterations than
such as are caused by mere difference of dialect ; so that the
Syriac version attests the original existence of the group *7H7
in the site referred to with nearly the force of an edition of
the Hebrew text. In favour of the first-mentioned supposi-
tion, it may also be observed, that in another part of the same
book, — in Judg. viii. 26, — the very same compound, ]!2 *T27, is
employed to denote the preposition ' besides ;' to which I have
to add that the context demands the restoration of the omit-
ted ingredient of this compound in the place before us, in order
to prevent a great deficiency in the expression of an essential
part of the meaning of the clause under examination. The
only serious objection, indeed, to the hypothesis here adduced
in support of the authorized construction of this clause, is, that
it would require the restoration within brackets of the group
"T37 before H2f2D in an amended edition of the sacred text,
without the authority for this correction of any extant Hebrew
manuscript. But perhaps the end in view might be sufn-

48G ANALYSIS RECONSIDERED, Etc. [Chap. V.

ciently attained to in a less objectionable manner, by leaving
a small chasm in the amended text immediately before H300,
and inserting opposite thereto in the margin 'T37, quod in
Peshitah vertitur s^A,' in which way the requisite correction
would be suggested and the authority for it given. By this
arrangement the rendering of the analyzed sentence in the
body of our Authorized Version can, as I conceive, be de-
fended, and may be adhered to even in the particular of exhi-
biting the expression ' besides her,' in the ordinary character
instead of italics; since only part of one of its ingredients, and
not an entire word, is left without an express sign for it in the
present state of the Hebrew text. In fine, I have to remark
an awkwardness in the mode of dealing with the original of this
expression in our Authorized Version, that the construction
of it given in the body of that Version relates to PUOQ, while
those in the margin are referred to 1300, which our transla-
tors must have looked upon as quite distinct from the former
group ; whereas, if I mistake not, the only latitude allowed to
them as interpreters was to adduce different significations in
the body of their work and in its margin of respectively the
same original groups. This difficulty, however, is removed by
the present discovery, which shows H300 to have been the
original form of 1300 ; so that even if there was no copy now
extant with the group under examination in the place in ques-
tion written H300, still a translator would be justified in deal-
in- with it as if it was so written in every copy. But as the
case turns out, this group is found in the site referred to pre-
served in its original form in two of the copies consulted by
Kennicott, which have been numbered by him 300 and 683.
A 1 1< >t 1 ier <•< >i i sequence of the same discovery is, that it saves the
necessity of inquiring into the bearings of the analyzed clause
resulting from the 1300 form of one of its groups; as that
form is now ascertained to be due, not to the inspired authors
who composed, but to fallible scribes who subsequently voca-
lized, the sacred text.

Chap. VI.] RESULT OF INQUIRIES OF GESENIUS, Etc. 487

CHAPTER VI.

CORROBORATION OF FOREGOING ARGUMENT DERIVED FROM
A FOREIGN SOURCE.

RESULT OF INQUIRIES OF GESENIUS ABOUT PHOENICIAN VOWEL-LET-
TERS— SOME REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING EXTRACT FROM THE
WORK OF GESENIUS — EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL INSCRIP-
TION IN HIS COLLECTION — GENERAL LIMITATIONS OF AGE TO TWO
KINDS OF PHOENICIAN TITULI — NO MATRES LECTIONIS EARLIER
INSERTED IN SHEMITIC WRITING — ANALYSIS OF THE EPIGRAPH

AND AGE OF A CILICIAN COIN MY VIEWS NO WAY INCONSISTENT

WITH RECENT DISCOVERIES ANALYSIS OF THREE BILINGUAL IN-
SCRIPTIONS FOUND IN ATTICA EXPOSURE OF OUR AUTHOR'S FUN-
DAMENTAL ERROR IN ACCOUNTING HE A MATER LECTIONIS

ANALYSIS CONCLUDED OF THE THREE BILINGUAL INSCRIPTIONS

INVENTION OF VOWEL-SIGNS DUE TO GRECIAN SAGACITY NATURE

OF THE PROCESS THROUGH WHICH THIS INVENTION WAS ARRIVED

AT WHY THE CREDIT OF THIS INVENTION WAS NOT CLAIMED BY

THE GREEKS.

THE extant remains of ancient Phoenician inscriptions
which were collected by Gesenius, in a Latin treatise
on the subject published by him at Leipsic, in the year 1837,
powerfully support my view of the total absence of vowel-signs
of every kind from the earlier stages of Shemitic writing. For,
exclusively of the consideration that those remains contain no
marks whatever for vowels distinct from letters, they, in the
first place, exhibit in general a much smaller proportion of
matres lectionis than that pervading the lines of the Hebrew
Bible ; and, by thus establishing the fact of a variability in
the rate of use made of those letters in different records, afford
fair ground for the expectation that, if any could be got suffi-
ciently old, or written by persons sufficiently remote from
intercourse with nations enjoying the benefit of an alphabet
of a superior description, they would present to us specimens
of this writing as completely destitute of vowel-letters as all of
them are of vocal-signs of every other kind. In the second

488 KESULT OF INQUIRIES OF GESENIUS [Chap. VI.

place, they actually do lay before us such specimens, — some
of them obviously thus circumstanced, and others which will
be dearly found to be so, upon correcting, by means of my
discovery, errors into which our author was led, partly through
the want of this assistance. But, as an introduction to the
discussion of this point, I shall commence with quoting a pre-
liminary section of this treatise, in which he gives a summary
account of the result of his researches in this branch of his
general subject of investigation.

§40.

" De defectiva scribendi ratione apud Phoenices usitata.,,a
" Signorum vocalium (quorum inventio recentioris quam
ipsa novissima monumentaphoenicia aetatis esse videtur) usum
quomodo a Phoenicibus expectes, qui ne eo quidem vocalium
indicandorum subsidio, quod in litteris quiescentibus T et ^
habebant Hebraei sine punctis scribentes, uti solebant, quam
paucissime certe utebantur, et litteraturam habebant meris
consonantibus constantem? Qui quidem locus quamvis ad
grammaticae partem orthographicam pertinere videatur,tamen
iam hoc loco mihi tractandus videtur, ut quaecunque ad Phoe-
nicia recte legenda faciant, hoc capite comprehendamus :
praesertim quurn in hac litterarum quiescentium omissione
praecipua quaedam ambiguitatis causa et haud minimum
Phoenicia recte legendi impedimentum situm sit.

" Sed agite, iam de singulis litteris ^liltf seorsum
videamus.

tw 1 . Ac primum . 1 hrph hi mediis vocibus omittitur, ubicunque
Llludquiescit ; servatur, ubicunque mobile est et consonam agit.
Ita constanter omittitur in tth, pro WX1, caput; "H2, n. pr.,pro

■ In the above extract I have got the Hebrew letters printed exactly in
the same way as in the original work, without distinguishing the matres
lectionis by exhibiting them in an open type; nor have I, as far as I am aware,
deviated in any respect from that original, except in removing such of the
contractions of words as might possibly confuse a reader not accustomed to
the autl

Chap. VI.] ABOUT PHCENICIAN VOWEL-LETTERS. 489

^Xljontanus (confer in V. T. D^"l, pro D^KI, Ps. xxii. 22;
tW&% pro If^ifT, Deut. xi. 12): seel ponitur in "IK3, fons
(hebr. ")N2, confer Tltf *1R3 in numis Syracusanis); in T\^f2
(n^P) centum; DNH (DiW^) gemellus, n. pr. ; "IKfi ("I^H) spe-
cies. Semel poni videtur ad vocalem graecam A exprimendam
in &3*T£s7 Laodicea, sed hoc potius pronunciandum ^57^:
Laodica, quanquam etiam Arabes scribunt *m31. Singnlare
quoddam exemplum est "^PO, in vita mea, Citiensi tertia,
lin. 1, ubi tf adeo pro A brevi ponitur, quod vix admittendum
esse censeres, nisi scriptura ibi ita esset perspicua, ut mutare
quicquam religio fuerit.

"In fine N quiescens apud Phoenices paullo usitatius est
quam apud Hebraeos, et etiam pro H fern. gen. ponitur (con-
fer No. 4).

"2. Vav praeter unicum quoddam exemplum constanter
omittitur, ubicunque quiescit :

"a. in mediis vocabulis, ut ulV aeternitas, D7tP pax, ]78
dominus, NH is? ]T£ Sidon, DpD locus, TVp voces, rQK
patres, EH3 Nahumus, T\i712 regnum, m spiritus, ne eius
generis exempla memorem, in quibus etiam Hebraei 1 saepe
omittunt, ut "1 2D scriba, l^figulus, £0£^ index, sufes.

" b. in extremis, p*JN7 (pro iri"T^7) domino nostro, in
Melitensi prima, lin. 1 ; )H j7Q imperium nostrum, in Sar-
dica, lin. 5, 6, et numis Iubae maioris B. C. ;b PTK33 (pro
in^23) quum intrasset, Tuggensi, lin. 5. Unicum illud
exemplum est n. pr. TIDIED (7j/3in$ vir Baalis), Numi-
dica septima, lin. 2.

" 3. Jod servatur, ubicunque mobile est, et propterea etiam
in suffixo V- , ut liac quoque re refellantur, qui veras dip-
thongos Hebraeis tribuunt. Sic ^rQ (^ri21) in vita mea, Citiensi

a Whoever has read carefully the third chapter of this essay must, I think,
be greatly struck with the appearance of the above group. For my own part,
I cannot express the gratification I felt, when this form of the pronoun of
the third person singular was first presented to my view.

b The above capitals serve to distinguish the coins referred to, among
those of the elder Juba of which drawings are exhibited in one of the plates
attached to the treatise of Gesenius.

490 RESULT OF INQUIRIES OF GESENIUS [Chap. VI.

secunda, lin. 2; W ("H?"?) verba mea, Melitensi tertia,
lin. 6. Confer etiam KTn («£H more arameo), Citiensi octava,
lin. 3.

" Praeterea ad Jod mobile quodammodo referri potest V

terminatio gentilicorum et patronymicorum (arab. t_£— )> m
feminino HJ— , apud Phoenices propterea constanter plene
scripta, ut "OIV Sidonius, Atheniensi prima, lin. 2 ; TO Citiensis,
Atheniensi secunda, lin. 2 ; T\n idem, Citiensi tricesima tertia,
lin. 5 ; "'ES/, Sardica, lin. 8 ; "Q/ Libys, Numidica quinta,
lin. 2 ; W\ Romanics, ibidem (dubium est 21J} pro ^21tf Arabs,
Citiensi duodecima, lin. 2); et eodem modo iudicandum ^ in-
sula in DID ^ (insula filiorum), y ruina, quae arabice scribe-

rentur ,J\, J^, ut ^

" Ubi Jod quiescit, sive i pronunciandum sive e (V» V),

vulgo omittitur, sed non eadem constantia atque Vav.

" a. in mediis vocibus omittitur, videndi causa ]TV (pTV)
Sidon; 122 (TJJ) jyrinceps Sardorum; BW vir persaepe (pro
£*K); T"0n Tanith, Tana'itis;3 fQ (pro HD) domus in statu
constructo ;b praecipue in plurali masculino D^H (pro D^H)
wfa; DDD12U7 (cultor equorum) n.pr. ; D21V Sidonii; DD *>8
(insula filiorum) Cossyra; jfD Citii; }T"I£> Sardl; etubi
Hebraei Jod compaginis inserunt, quod Phoenices etiam
pronunciando exprimunt, ut TpZlJn Hannibal. Contra
reperiuntur exempla, in quibus Jod quiescens scriptum
extat, neque solum in deterioris aetatis monumentis, v. c.
P^n^ .sinus, Erycina, lin. 4 ; T72W adamas, Tuggensi, lin.
C> ; 1WQ, l). pr. Tripolitana secunda, lin. 4 ; T)r2 in nu-
iii is Sigensibus ; sed etiam in antiquo quodam, velut ]V

" Tanaiitis, lliat is, an Amazon, or a female inhabiting the banks of the
river Tanais, where the Amazons formerly lived. HID, Tanith, is shown by
our author to be the proper name of the Persian Diana, in page 110 of his
treatise.

b The above example confirms the justness of the representation given in
pages 427-8 of the present essay, respecting the original mode of writing
this word in the singular construct state, which 1 derived from the manner
in which it is even yet exhibited for the plural number.

Chap. VI.] ABOUT PHOENICIAN VOWEL-LETTERS. 491

oculus statu constructo, in nurao Cilicio F. — Eadem in-
constantia est in verbis compositis, ubi ^ in fine prioris
partis mode- reticetur modo ponitur, lit "ffD^D It^K, pro
^JlD "H^K (beatum regnum tuum), Citiensi vicesima
quarta ; \nwyn pro JWBffflD ; sed tet^J/D, D^BflflD,

"b. in extremis vocibus diversae formae distinguendae
sunt. Ac primum

"a) Suffixum primae pers. sing, paene constanter plene
scribitur, TIK /rater mens, Melitensi prima, lin. 2 ; ^28 pater
mens, Citiensi tertia, lin. 2, et vicesima tertia lin. 3 ; ^DK
mater rnea, Tuggensi, lin. 6 ; *H?ft sw^ms meum, numo Cilicio
G. ; Vinj ^ws ??iea, Citiensi secunda, lin. 2. Contra tamen
TIN (pro \fli$) mecum, Citiensi secunda, lin. 2, et vicesima
nona lin. 2.

" j8) Eodem modo afformativum primae pers. sing, plene
scribitur, ^TW posui, Citiensi secunda, lin. 3.

" y) Defective scriptum ~\28 (pro "OJtf ) .%<?, Citiensi se-
cunda, lin. 1, et tertia lin. 1 ; T) pro Tl irrigation pluvia,
Citiensi vicesima secunda, lin. 2 ; D/ pro ^ul ei quae, Citi-
ensi secunda, lin. 2, et

" 8) constanter ita in plurali constructo in V, ut ]2 \W pro
"M W duo filii, Melitensi prima, lin. 3 ; b^2D pro ^JQQ a
civibus, in numis Gaditanis et Tingitanis ; fortasse 7JQ pro
vJQ ciw5, numis Tarsensibus.

" Vides aliquam in his inesse constantiam, et plerumque
servatum esse Jod finale, ubi ad formam indicandam necessa-
rium erat (confer a. j3.): sed neque ubique positum esse, ubi
eo opus fuisset, neque satis constanter in singulis formis, docent
exempla litteris a. 6. laudata.

" 4. Plane singularis ratio est He litterae, quam extremis
vocibus mobilem in Phoeniciis me usquam deprehendere non
memini, quum proH— , feminei sexus indice, vel fl scribant
(JW annus, n$D centum, JTK insula) vel N (K\\*, K^JD, X12V),
passim etiam feminei sexus notam plane omittant, ut T1K ]'&
pro Tltf KJC^ consuevit mecum, Citiensi secunda, lin. 2; "7D'1 pro

492 SOME REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING [Chap. VI.

H1D\ Citicnsi vicesima tertia, lin. 3. Eodeni moclo H— sub
finem vocabuloruin omissum, velut in spQ pro nSDQ remissio,
Melitensi secunda, lin. 3; adeoque H— mobile in tf niutatmn,
Aide 873 pro H^p omnls ea1 Citiensi secunda, lin. 2.

" Ex his autem, quae niodo exposuimus, facile intelligent
docti barum rerum arbitri, quomodo in utramque partem in
hoc argumento diiudicando peccatum sit ab 0. G. Tychsenio
et Koppio. Ille enim, etsi in universum veram de hac re sen-
tentiam tenens, in eo tamen er^avit, quod litteras 1 et ^ in
Phoeniciis unquam vocales esse negans, propterea scripturam
phoeniciam syllabarium esse affirmavit, quae appellatio huic
scripturae plane inepta est : quanquam non dixit Tychsenius,
quod ei tribuit adversarius, omnes et singulas litteras veri no-
minis syllabas fuisse. Sed magis etiam peccavit Koppius, qui
adversarium subsannans ad eum refutandum suamque senten-
tiam tuendam talia profert exempla, quae ne tironi quidem
ignoscas, veluti "J/DTJQ, nJlTID, #mD, ex quibus appareat
veteres Phoenices litteris vocalibus usos esse. Scilicet talis
erat Ain !"a

Gesenius, at the beginning of this extract, discards all con-
sideration of vowel-points, as of later origin than the very
latest of the extant Phoenician inscriptions. But he ought for
the same reason to have abstained from any reference to Ara-
bic vmting ; since the Arabians did not, according to the ad-
mi— ion of their own historians, as quoted by Pocock, begin to
make use of letters till less than a century before the Hegira ;b
nor do they date the introduction of the character now em-
ployed by them, earlier than three centuries after that epoch,
thai is, not sooner than about the commencement of the tenth
century of our era. I shall now proceed to a more particu-
lar consideration of the several paragraphs of this extract.

" " Scripturae Linguaeque 1'hocniciae Monum. r/uotquot mpermnt," pp. 56-9.

b Upon the above point some observations will be found in the first volume
of the second part of my work on the " Ancient Orthography of the Jews,"
pp. 154 7.

Chap. VI.] EXTKACT FROM WORK OF GESENIUS. 493

1. After stating that in the inscriptions examined by him
the Haleph is not to be met used as a vowel-letter in the
middle of words, or anywhere but at their end, he adduces six
exceptions, of which, I submit, the last alone can be justly con-
sidered as one. For, even if we were for a moment to assent
to the fiction of the Hebrew grammarians, that a letter pointed
with a Shewa denotes, not a syllable by itself, but merely part
of an adjoining syllable, still, this concession would not make
out a monosyllable of the group "INfl, which contains one of
his examples. This group then, at all events, represents two
syllables, and, consequently, the Haleph therein must be read
as a consonant, to prevent the anomaly of the second syllable
beginning with a vowel. But, in reality, the same reasoning
is equally applicable to the other four cases referred to : in each
of them, indeed, the sound of the letter pointed with a Shewa
is very imperfect, but still it has a syllabic value, and should be
treated accordingly in analyzing its nature. The words, then,
containing five of his exceptions should, according to his own
pointing, be exhibited through my notation B'HeR, M'HaTh,
T'HoM, ToHaR, L'HoD'KE,3 respectively, in each of the first four
of which the Haleph, and in the fifth the first Haleph, performs
the service, not of a vowel-letter, but of a consonant. In the
group containing his sixth exception, ^HD, B'KhAYyal, the
Haleph is really used in the way he states, as a vowel-letter ;
but he need not have felt any surprise at its being employed
in this instance to denote a close or short A (pattakh), since

a In the above examples 1 have, contrary to my usual practice, represented
the imperfect vowel Shewa by an apostrophe, for the purpose of placing in
the light most favourable to our author's view of the subject the nature of
the syllables therewith vocalized. Those syllables, I grant, are lost to the
ear in rapid enunciation, whereby the first three of the words whose pronun-
ciation is above given become scarcely distinguishable from monosyllables.
But, in order to examine their sounds accurately, we rnust consider the com-
ponent parts of those sounds separately ; and then we cannot get the second
part to commence regularly with a consonantal power, unless the Haleph be
treated as a consonant.

494 SOME REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING [Chap. VI.

he might have observed it, in many others, used in the sacred
text with a phonetic value still further from that of the
open or long A. Thus, for example, in the proper name
"TOnD'DS which occurs several times in the Hebrew Bible,
the Masorets have constantly substituted, for the Haleph they
have therein silenced, their close or short E (segol). It would
indeed have been really surprising if nations who employed
only three letters to denote all the vowels could have made
any nice distinction between open, or long, and close or short
ones. They appear to have in general confined their vowel-
signs to the former class of sounds, merely on account of the
latter class having less caught their attention.

2. Though our author above specifies a group containing
a vocal Waw in the examined inscriptions, he subsequently
in an appendix read it in another way, ' TJOJflft, Mattanbaal,
i.e. donum Baalis (page 449);' and thus he revoked the only
instance previously allowed by him of a Waw employed in
those inscriptions as a vowel-letter.

3. He was quite right in assigning to the Yod at the end
of national or patronymic names a consonantal power ; but,
in his eagerness to underrate the antiquity of the Hebrew or-
thographic system, by representing it as dependent on (and
consequently posterior to) that of the Arabians,* he was led

a Gesenius, in the Genealogical Table (given in the sixty- fourth page of his
treatise) of the several alphabets descended from the primitive Shemitic one,
derives the Nischi, or modern Arabic character, from the Ciific, and that from
the Estrangel or Nestorian, and that again from the Palmyrene, which cannot
be traced farther back than the second century. This view of the pedigree
of the C'ific, or the oldest character that is known to have been employed by
the Arabians, accords with the express testimony of their best historians
(quoted from Pocock in the third chapter of the second part of my work on the
" Ancient Orthography of the Jews") that they did not begin to make use of
any alphabet till shortly before the Ilegira, or about the end of the sixth cen-
tury of our era. It is, however, supposed by many, upon no valid ground, and
in direct opposition to this testimony, that the Himyarites, or principal tribe
of the Arabians, employed alphabetic writing at a far earlier period: and our
author, to give plausibility to this assumption, ascribes to the nation at large

Chap. VI.] EXTRACT FROM WORK OF GESEN1US. 495

to rest this determination on a ground that is utterly unten-
able. For, granting that a Tod at the end of such names is
now pronounced by Arabic readers in solemn recitation (ac-
cording to the notation ^ — he applies to this case) iyyon, and
so with a phonetic value which includes that of / consonant,
surely this is no reason for its having had in the specified
class of words the same power in ancient Hebrew, unless the
same mode of recitation prevailed among the Jews of old ; —
a supposition for which there is not the slightest authority,
but which, notwithstanding, he, without venturing expressly to
vouch for, certainly insinuates ; as, otherwise, his Arabic il-
lustration would have no bearing on the point referred to.
How he could reconcile this insinuation with the authority of
the Masoretic pointing, for which he was a strong advocate,
and which attaches to the Tod in the sites in question, not at
all the sound iyyon, but barely that of the vowel i, it would,
I suspect, be rather difficult to explain. The true ground,
however, for determining the nature of the phonetic value of
this letter at the end of gentilic or patronymic names is sup-
plied by the Greek transcriptions of those names in the Sep-
tuagint, — an authority on the subject which is immeasurably
higher than that of the Masoretic pointing, and which con-
stantly represents the sound under inquiry by the diphthong
ai, the combining of whose elements, in such a manner as not

the use of the Himyaritic, or Homeritic system, which he styles " Scriptura
vetus arabicaP But as this writing closely resembles the Ethiopic, to the
commencement of the extant form of which he does not assign an earlier date
than the fourth century, he stoutly asserts it to be the parent (though Sil-
vestre de Sacy thought it an offspring) of the latter species; by which means
he endeavoured to get rid of a limit to its age that would not have suited his
purpose. Thus availing himself of the uncertainty that prevails with regard
to the Himyaritic character, he, by the appropriation he made of it, attempted
to establish an indefinite antiquity for Arabic writing. His own ignorance of
the Himyaritic or Homeritic alphabet is virtually acknowledged in the follow-
ing part of his reference to it: — "Cuius accuratior notitia turn alias ab causas
turn ad aethiopicae litteraturae origines plenius enodandas magnopere optanda
est." — Scripturae Linyuacque Phoeniciae Monum., p. 85.

2 M

49f> SOME REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING [Chap. VI.

to alter the first, has the effect upon the second of impart-
ing to it a consonantal value. Thus ^2"1, a Roman, would be
pronounced, according to the later mode of reading which still
holds, RoMI, but according to the far older one of the Seventy
Jews, EoMaY. There are, moreover, some instances, one of
which shall be presently noticed, wherein Gesenius mistakes
quite a different letter for a Yod, and in which his inferences
from this mistake must of course be rejected.

4. I have already proved that a final He was at first
sometimes used to indicate that the preceding letter denoted a
syllable by itself, instead of being joined with the antepenul-
timate letter to represent one ; and that, after men had ar-
rived at distinct notions of the component parts of syllables, it
then served to point out that some vowel or other was to be
uttered after the preceding letter, without, however, indicat-
ing, directly or indirectly, what vowel in particular that one
was : so that it cannot at all be deemed a vowel-letter in the
modern sense of the term.a But I do not charge our author
with ignorance, on account of his having failed to detect this
fact, nor would I venture to hold him up to ridicule on this
account, in like manner as he ridiculed Koppius for sup-
posing that Hayin was at times used as a mater lectionis.
Jerome, misled by his rabbinical teachers, assigned to both H
and>T the occasional service of denoting vowels ; and, on his
authority, this service has since continued to be attributed to
each of them by many Hebraists. I am glad to find one of
those errors discarded by so distinguished a Hebrew gramma-
rian as Gesenius ; and I trust that the other will soon become
equally exploded.

At the close of the above extract, Avhile condemning, as
has been just stated, Koppius for assigning to the Phoenician
writing a greater Dumber of vowel-letters than really belong to

'Thegrounds on which Gesenius endeavoured to establish the occasional
employment <<■' We, in Shemitic writing, asamater lectionis, will be examined
in a subsequenl part of this ch

Chap. VI.] EXTRACT FROM WORK OF GESENIUS. 497

it, he, on the other hand, finds fault with 0. G. Tychsenius for
the opposite error of denying all vowel-signs whatever to this
writing, and maintaining it to be syllabic ; — a designation of its
nature which he pronounces to be ' plane inepta.' This ter-
mination of his critique is, I submit, too severe : undoubtedly,
Tychsenius was mistaken, if he held, without any qualification,
the opinion here attributed to him ; but there was nothing
silly or incongruous in his calling a certain species of alpha-
betic writing syllabic, upon the supposition of its having been
utterly devoid of vowel-signs ; on the contrary, the former of
these properties of such writing appears to follow from the lat-
ter as a necessary consequence. For vowel-signs are too use-
ful an ingredient of alphabetic writing to have been ever vo-
luntarily dispensed with, except perhaps in the particular
instance of statements expressed with designed obscurity.
Men, therefore, failing to insert any such signs in their ordi-
nary writing, could have formed no clear notion of vowels as
distinct from syllables, or consequently, a fortiori, of conso-
nants,— a class of letters whose phonetic values are conceived
with much more difficulty. They, therefore, could not have
decomposed their words farther than syllables ; of which they
must in consequence have employed their letters as signs. It
is true that, when they united two such signs to denote a com-
pound syllable, they must have virtually used the second as a
consonant ; but this circumstance did not of necessity prevent
them from looking on the character in the light in which they
had been habituated to view it, as the sign of an entire syllable :
and, from the same force of habit, they may be conceived to
have continued to employ the elements of their own writing
in the way to which they had been accustomed, even for some
time after they had learned to decompose syllables into con-
sonants and vowels in other kinds of writing. But — to return
to the last paragraph of the foregoing extract — both Gesenius,
and, as far as I can judge from his account of the matter, the
other two authors, appear to have laboured all of them under
a common error, that of taking for granted that the extant

2 m 2

EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL [Chap. VI.

I Phoenician inscriptions exhibit a permanent system of Shemitic
orthography ; whereas they in reality present to us this kind
of writing only in a state of transition and vocalized with
different degrees of imperfection, the several specimens being
more thinly supplied with vowel-letters according as they were
written at remoter dates, or in places farther removed from
Grecian intercourse.

It now remains to be inquired, whether any of the adduced
inscriptions exhibit the writing in question of such a nature
as Tychsenius described it to be in all of them, that is, wholly
destitute of vowel-signs, and, therefore, according to both his
and my view of the subject, consisting of letters invested with
syllabic values. But, for the purpose of making this inquiry,
I need go no further than the very first specimen of the entire
collection, one of those found in Malta, and that one twice in-
sculped, namely, on the pedestal of each of two large marble
candelabra which were, as it informs us, a votive offering
to a Phoenician deity. Respecting this specimen, Gesenius, in
stating his reason for placing it the first, expresses himself in
the following terms : — " — titulis Melitensibus iccirco prinium
in sylloge nostra locum assignavi, quod primus (No. 1 ) omni-
um qui supersunt nitidissimus est atque elegantissime scriptus
et certissimae explicationis, a quohorum monumentorum stu-
dium apte exordiri possis." — Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae
Monumenta, p. 92. As to the great elegance of the writing in
tlii-, titulus, I confess I have not enough of antiquarian taste
to be able to perceive it; but the characters are so plainly
drawn, and in such a high state of preservation, that they can
be easily distinguished from each other ;a— a merit which ren-
ders tin- lines composed of them a fitter as well as a more

a In the copy of the inscription above referred to, which is given at the
topofPlate I., the letters of I. and N powers are, I admit, scarcely distinguish-
able; but on comparing them with a little attention, this difference will be
found, that the Ion- line of the former letter stretches upwards, and that of
the latter downwards.

To face pag< w.

\'o. 1.

Maltese [nscbtptiok.

No. 12.

I'lUKN r< 1AX A I. I'll LBET.

The car/,; r Forms of the Letters.

77/f /ff/rr ff;ir/ £Ae Nitmid

KiSDkX;^^.*:^

X >C X"

3^39^

J? 9 )j i

j A A 4 1 -J 7

n A <\^ q 9 4

<? 1 \

»A^H^3

h ?/ j-c

17 7 7 7 1

t z 1 i

nftfiWhhUH H h

))) )n 9 9 ))

a @ is y

UT ^ ^ e

p 0 o o o &

<~r

* v: vi v- > \ v v

n v V> ^ /) /«- /, /■

C)

S ? /ft

Chap. VI.] INSCRIPTION IN HIS COLLECTION. 499

agreeable subject of examination. Those lines, indeed, are
probably not quite of the age fixed on by Gesenius, who held
them to have been written in the course of the third century
before the commencement of the Christian era, but still, they
must be very old ; and, consequently, there is a fair prospect
of their proving upon trial to be such as we are in search of.
In Plate I., here introduced, this part of the whole bilingual
dedication, placed over our author's list of Phoenician letters, is
exhibited on a reduced scale ; and a copy of the Grecian part is
added in No. 1 of Plate II. opposite to page 5H,a although its
elements differ so little from the Greek capitals of the present
day, that I should have considered it sufficient to get them
printed in the ordinary form, but that a more exact delinea-
tion of them is requisite, in consequence of my deducing from
their shapes a major limit to the age of the entire compound
legend. Gesenius has deciphered and grouped the Phoenician
characters, and then interpreted them, as follows : —

113 vx nv tyn mpbri? \:ivh

ie^idk tiki iDNiny fin;/

ynvi nDR-qp p id&hdk p \m

Domino nostro Mekarto, domino Tyri. Vir vovens (est)
servus tuus (i. e. sum ego) Abd-Osir cumfratre meo Osirschamar,
ambofilii Osirshamari,filii Abdosiri. JJbi audiverit
vocem eorum, benedicat Us

= The Greek lines, insculped immediately under the Phoenician ones on a
side of the pedestal of each candelabrum, may be literally thus rendered : —
Dionysius and Sarapion, the
sons of Sarapion, Tyrians,
to Hercules, founder of cities.

As these lines do not touch upon the difficulty with which I have to grapple,
I shall confine myself to a very short notice of their contents. The difference
between the names in one of the inscriptions, and those arrived at by decipher-
ing the other, is accounted for by a practice which formerly prevailed, on occa-

500 EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL [Chap. VI.

In the representation here given in modern Hebrew charac-
ters of the phonetic values of the several elements of the Phoe-
nician inscription, one of them is exhibited as a vowel-letter,
namely, that corresponding to the Fodattheend of the group
TIKI in the second line. But when the reader, with a view to
inquiring into the correctness of this decipherment, takes the
initiatory step of examining its effect upon the adduced inter-
pretation, he must, I think, be struck with the extreme awk-
wardness, amounting even to incoherency, which this inter-
pretation betrays in speaking of Abdosir, at the commence-
ment of the passage which follows the dedication, in the third
person, through the description applied to him, ' est servus
tuus [0 Melcarte],' then abruptly in the first person, through
the possessive pronoun ' meo,' and then again with equal
abruptness, of him and his brother, at the conclusion of a sen-

sion of giving a Grecian designation to a foreign god or man, and of which Gese-
nius has collected several examples attested by ancient authors ; that, I mean, of
selecting the new denomination, not from any similarity of sound to the old one,
but merely on account of its being well known, and in familiar use, among the
Pagan Greeks. Thus, for instance, the principal deity of Tyre, called Melikarth
(that is, king of the city) by the Phoenicians, is proved to have been also dis-
tinguished by the Grecian name of Hercules through the following extract from
a fragment preserved by Eusebius of a translation of the Phoenician historic
work ascribed to Sanchoniathon: — " tw ce ^/.lapouvri ^flverat Me\iKap0o<s, 6 icai
I [pan \ </v (but to Demaroon is born Melicarth, who also is called Hercules)." —
Eusebii Prcepar. Evang., liber i. cap. 10. The appearance of discrepance aris-
ing from diversity of nomenclature being thus removed, or rather indeed, in
the case of one pair of names, reversed, the Greek titulus will be found to bear
out the correctness of the above interpretation of the Phoenician one in some
farther particulars also: as for instance, it informs us, first, that there were
two dedicators (though one of them acted a more conspicuous part at the de-
dication than the other); secondly, that they were Tyrians (which accounts
for the circumstance of their offering having been made by them to the tu-
telary god of Tyre); thirdly, that they were brothers; and, fourthly, that the
younger of them bad the same name as their father. But, indeed, the letters
and meaning of the Phoenician inscription can be perfectly ascertained with-
out the help of its Grecian adjunct, to the purport of which I shall, there-
fore, make no further reference.

Chap. VI.] INSCRIPTION IN HIS COLLECTION. 501

tence which virtually forms part of the same passage, in the third
person, through the reference to them of the pronouns ' eorum'
and ' iis.' Nor does our author's interposition of sum ego, as
an equivalent to est servus tuus, remedy the evil : for, even
granting the equivalence he contends for, this concession
would remove the first enallage of person only in substance,
and not in the form of expression ; while it leaves the second
(which, by the way, he cautiously abstains from noticing) in
the full possession of all its awkwardness and incoherency, in
substance as well as in form. There must, then, to a certainty,
be a mistake somewhere among the parts of his deciphering
which produces the double enallage referred to ; and as, upon
a strict comparison of the corresponding elements of the two re-
presentations of this inscription in ancient and modern charac-
ters, there does not appear to be any error in the group "TO^,
translated by him servus tuus, or in the final Mem of the last
two groups, which he renders eorum and us, we are necessarily
led to a more careful examination of the original letter tran-
scribed by him a Yod, at the end of the group ^JINI which he
has translated cumfratre meo, but where, from the obvious in-
compatibility of this part of his interpretation with the portions
of it just previously mentioned, we should much rather expect
to meet with a He. On consulting, however, Plate I., No. 2,
which is a copy on a reduced scale of his Tabula I., and gives
on the left side his list of the older Phoenician characters, we do
not find the one in question among those of He power, nor any-
where else in this list except among the Yod's ; but it is inserted
among the He's, in the part of the same Tabula at the right side
which exhibits the more recent Phoenician and the Numidian
forms of the letters, where a reader examining one of the older
Phoenician inscriptions would not be at all likely to search for
it. This omission of the character in the list of the more an-
cient ones of He power may possibly have been accidental,
but as I found the author, in this same treatise of his, guilty
beyond all doubt of an intentional misrepresentation, which has
been exposed in the third chapter of Part in. of my work on

502 EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL [Chap. VI.

the '• Ancient Orthography of the Jews," I can hardly refrain
from suspecting some design of concealment pursued by him
here also, — a suspicion which is strengthened by observing the
difference in his mode of dealing with the above letter in this
place and elsewhere. Thus in the second Maltese inscription,
which was written in commemoration of a man named Han-
nibal, son of Barinelek, and probably at not a much later
period than the first, the character under examination occurs
three times in the second line, where Gesenius tells us that it
was held to be a Yod by one decipherer, and a He by others,
whose view of its phonetic value in that site he adopted ; while
on the contrary, on referring to it in the place before us, he
does not give the slightest intimation that it might perhaps be
equivalent to the latter Hebrew letter. But whatever may
have been the cause of the suspicious circumstances justnoticed,
and of the suppression therewith connected of what will turn
out to be the true power of the above character in this site,
one effect has been to make the most remarkable inscription
of the entire collection agree with our author's preconceived
notion of the unsyllabic nature of the ancient Phoenician writ-
ing, by exhibiting a Yod therein used as a mater lectionis.
There is, however, another effect with which, had he been
aware ofit, he certainly would not have been as well pleased,
and which may have resulted also in part from his want of the
aid afforded by the discovery unfolded in the foregoing pas-
sages ; — I mean, the concealment from himself of the true sig-
nification of the group terminated by the character in dispute.
For, on the supposition of this character being a He, and of the
writ i ng I n i Qg syllabic, the group under inquiry might be read,
1st, WeUaKhiR, 'with my brother ;' 2ndly, WellaKhiRu, 'with
his brother;' and 3rdly, WeHaKbiHa, 'with her brother.' The
first of these readings is liable to just the same objection as
that adopted by Gesenius, and the third is plainly at variance
with the context, the individual previously mentioned being a
man. But the second reading is perfectly consistent with the
tenor of the passage it occurs in; and when a correction con-

Chap. VI.] INSCRIPTION IN HIS COLLECTION. 503

formable thereto is introduced into our author's intepretation
of the inscription, by changing his expression cumfratre meo
into cumfratre suo, the whole of it conies out quite free from
both the instances of incoherency with which its meaning is at
present obscured. There can, then, I submit, be not the slightest
doubt but that the proper transcription of the analyzed group
into Hebrew letters of modern shape is HriNI, and that the
correct reading of this group is WeHaKhiHu.

Thus it turns out that the principal inscription of those
examined by Gesenius is one of the very nature we are in
search of, and does not contain a single vowel-letter ; since
the only character in this titulus for which a vocal value is
claimed has just been shown to have had that value erro-
neously ascribed to it. Here, then, is presented to us a very
striking illustration of the sort of writing of which (as has
been, I submit, abundantly proved in the foregoing pages
from quite different considerations) the text of the Hebrew
Bible consisted in its original state. A verse, indeed, is even
still to be occasionally therein seen quite devoid of vowel-let-
ters ; and once, I think, I found two verses together so writ-
ten, though I am unable now to point out their place ; but
certainly I never met in the sacred text with a passage utterly
unvocalized, which is of as great length as that before us.
The reading of our author's decipherment of this titulus, in
accordance with his interpretation thereof (after the correc-
tion above established has been applied to each), is expressed
through my system of notation as follows : —

LaHaDoNcNw, LeMeLQaRTh, BaHaL SuR. HtSh NoDeR
HaBDeKa HaBD'HoSz'R WeHaKhiUu HoSi'RiShaMaR,
SheNe BeNe HoSiRiShaMoR, BeN HaBD'HoSe'R; Kj'ShMoaH
QoLaM YeBaReKeM.

If the reader will take the trouble of comparing each group in
these lines with the corresponding one in the corrected deci-
pherment of the original writing, he will find illustrated seve-

504 EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL [Chap. VI.

ral of the points discussed in the preceding chapters. The
proposed titulus, I admit, is, in the representation here made
of it, reduced to a series of consonants, the requisite vowels
being supplied according to the demands of the context.
But, that the same titulus was not originally so treated or
viewed, lias been already shown ; and an additional reason for
the difference may be given in the present instance. This
inscription was evidently framed with the greatest care, and
in consequence exhibited as complete in its ingredients as it
could at the time be made ; whence it follows that the writer
was unconscious of the great deficiencies it labours under to a
modern eye ; and that he must, therefore, have looked upon
and dealt with its elements as syllabic signs.

I now proceed to examine our author's defence of the part
of his interpretation of the titulus which results from the
phonetic value he assigned to the character in dispute : it is
conveyed by him in the following terms : — " — primae per-
sonae pronomen in ^>18 f rater metis refertur ad ID^lDi^ "pm?,
ubi tertiam cxpectes ; neque satis expedit difficultatem, quod
Lindbergius ad vulgarem enallagen personarum provocat. Sed
plane similis est locus Gen. xliv. 32, ubi Juda Josepho :
^3K DJ7 "Ijttn r\N 3"ttf "pm<\ servus tuus vadem se dedit pro

puero apud patrem meum, pro : ego vadem me dedi apud

I >atrem meum. In utroque loco "p^ti? ita vicem tenet pronomi-
nis "03N, ut cum primae personae pronomine construi possit.
Similis transitus a tertia persona ad primam est in Melitense
tertia et quarta. Quod Bayerus ^HK scriptum esse existima-
bat pro "PnK f rater ejus, ferri non potest, quandoquidem 1
consonans abjici non poterat. Pro THK Phoenices scripsissent
"ins aon *ns." — Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monumenta,
p. 99. In spite of all that is here urged to the contrary, a two-
Cold enallage of person is produced, in the titulus, according to
our author's interpretation of it, by the representation of the
elder of two brothers speaking of himself in the first person,
strangely obtruded into the middle of a passage which, with
i his Bingle exception, refers to one or both of them, all through,

Chap. VI.] IN SCEIPTION IN HIS COLLECTION. 505

from beginning to end, in no other form but that of the third
person ; and, according to the same interpretation, this viola-
tion of sense is committed without the slightest appearance of
any reason for the interruption thus given to the continuity of
the reference and the coherency of its parts. Nor is the verse of
Scripture appealed to in defence of the interpretation in ques-
tion of any avail for that purpose ; since the enallage of person
therein exhibited belongs not to the sacred text in its original
state, but is due to a misreading, and consequent misvocaliza-
tion, of the group H3K, by the Jewish scribes of the second
century, which was corrected by the Samaritan vocalizers, as
has been shown in pages 324-6 of this essay, in discussing the
very sentence here quoted by Gesenius. It may, however, be
admitted that, in the speech from which this sentence has been
extracted, there actually do occur instances of enallage of
person which cannot be accounted for by any mistakes of the
old vocalizers, and must be attributed to the original writing
of the Hebrew text. But when Judah addressed this speech
to Joseph, he was agitated by the most heart-rending thoughts ;
so that the incoherencies of style to be found therein are per-
fectly in keeping with the distraction of mind under which he
then laboured : while, on the other hand, whatever may have
been the dangers which induced the Tyrian brothers to bind
themselves by a vow to the imaginary god of their native city,
it was not till after they had escaped from those dangers that
they could have made the promised offering ; the inscription
on which must consequently be supposed to have been framed
with deliberation, and it was evidently insculped with care.
The cases, therefore, which have been just compared are not
at all parallel ; and the inaccuracies of expression which occur
in one of the compositions alluded to afford no excuse what-
ever for those found in our author's interpretation of the
other.

The assertion hazarded at the close of the above extract,
that the Phoenicians would, to denote the expression 'his
brother,' have written IPItf (HaKhO), appears hardly reconcila-

506 EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL [Chap. VI.

ble with the statement previously made by Gesenius in his
preliminary section on the use of vowel-letters in the Phoeni-
cian inscriptions, that he had never met but one instance of
Waw employed with a vocal power in any of them ; which
instance, it should be added, was not supplied by the group
inx, and was, besides, subsequently retracted by him. It is,
however, of more importance to notice two mistakes into which
he appears to have fallen in the same place, while opposing
the opinion of Bayer, who, by the way, approached much
nearer than he did to a correct determination of the affix
employed in the site referred to.a In the first place, he ex-
pressly asserts that the Waw at the end of the group Vnx is
a consonant ; whereas it is clearly shown to be a vowel-letter
by the fuller manner of writing the same group IPPntf, whether
with or without a prefix, in Job, xli. 8; Jer. xxxiv. 9; Mic.
vii. 2; and 2 Chron. xxxi. 12; in all of which verses the
letter in question is pointed by the Masorets for the sound U.
No doubt, in the great majority of the places of occurrence of
this group in the sacred text it is exhibited in the briefer form
YV1K, which can be accounted for by the circumstance of the
earlier set of vocalizers having been compelled frequently to
erase the last of its original elements in order to make room
for the two letters introduced by them. Afterwards, when the
anomaly of a syllable not commencing with a consonant came
to be perceived, it was remedied by changing the pronuncia-
tion of the whole group from HaKhl-U into HaKhlW, and even-
tually into HaKhl V ; —a change which, with whomsover it may
have originated, the Masorets adopted, by avoiding to insert
their point for the vowel U in the final element of the voca-
lized group, when written in the curtailed form. But, although
the Waw at the end of this form is now read as a consonant,
we should bear in mind that it was introduced into this site
as a vowel-letter, and still continues to be therein read as one,

Bayer gave the signification of the affix in question correctly, but failed
t< detect tin- letter with which it is written.

Chap. VL] INSCRIPTION IN HIS COLLECTION. 507

whenever an anomaly arising from such reading is prevented
by a fuller exhibition of the ingredients of the group. In the
second place, his assertion that the Waw of the group •Vntf
could not be omitted, because it is a consonant, implies that it
might be left out, if a vowel-letter, and consequently that the
non-appearance of letters of the latter description in sites
where they are wanted was occasioned by the removal of them
from those sites, after they had been previously therein fixed
in older legends : a view of the matter which is more directly
conveyed in a passage of his wherein he is comparing the group
' Osiris,' as written in the inscription before us without any
vowel-letters, to its representation in another inscription :
" In lapide quidein Carpentoractensi Osiris scribitur "HD1N et
apud Aegyptios cnrcipi ; sed Jod extremum abiectum in scrip-
tura linguave Phoenicia neminem morabitur." — ScripturaeLin-
guaeque Phoen. Hon., p. 98. How could the Phoenician writer
be here said to have thrown off the Tool from the end of the
group referred to, unless he had previously found it written
in that site? This notion, however, did not originate with
our author, but was also held by some of the commentators
on the Talmud of Babylon, from the writings of two of whom,
R. Jarhi and R. Nissim, passages in support of it are quoted
by Cappellus, who then proceeds to give us the substance of his
quotations as follows : — " Inde liquet primum scribendi He-
braice institutum hoc fuisse secundum illos Rabbinos, ut
nempe Aleph pro A, Jod pro / et E, atque pari ratione Vau
pro 0 et U, scriberentur ; casterum usu et consuetudine fac-
tum esse, ut srepe literas illae omitterentur, ubi ex illo primo
institute adscribi debuerant. Nempe, ad vitandam nimis
molestam literarum illarum repetitionem, iis in locis omissa?
sunt, ubi facile subintelligi et divinari poterant, ab iis uibus
lingua ista erat familiaris." — Arcanum punctationis revelatum,
lib. i. cap. xviii. sec. 15. I hesitate to impute to Gesenius
the gross ignorance here betrayed of the course actually taken
in the progress of vocalization, which was that of a gradual
increase (instead of diminution) in the proportion of matres

508 GENERAL LIMITATIONS OF AGE TO [Chap. VI.

lectionis to the other elements employed in each kind of She-
mitic writing, according as men became more familiar with
their, use. It is possible that he may not have fully considered
the consequence of the assumption of his, above referred to, or
that he may have been there looking only to the contraction
of the name ' Osiris,' in the composition of a longer denomi-
nation, though in that case he could hardly have supposed the
Tod elided where this name is placed at the beginning of the
compound word, as it would there have served the office of a
union-vowel to join together the compound ingredients.

But whatever may have been the extent of our author's
ignorance with regard to the point in question, he at all events
failed to avail himself of an important aid in examining the
ages of the tituli he had to deal with, which a more correct
view of this subject would have placed within his reach. Thus
he fixed the date of the principal inscription of his collection,
as I have already stated, within the third century before the
commencement of the Christian era, which is, perhaps, not
very far from the truth ; but let us look to the grounds on
which he came to this determination of its age : — "Denique ut
deaetate nobilissimae inscriptionis paucis agamus, primum illud
ante omnia positum, earn (utrecte observavit Koppius) Alex-
andri Magni aetate inferiorem esse, quum post Alexandrum,
et Ptolemaeorum demum tempore, Serapidis cultum inductum
esse constet, in nostro titulo autem compareat nomen pro-
prium 'Sapamtav ex illo formatum. Praeterea ex litterarum
figuris colligi potest, optimae illam aetatis esse, quum elementa
ad unum omnia plenas et legitimas habeant formas, nihilque
in iis reperiatur quod posterioris aetatis negligentiam nimi-
umve tachygraphiae studium sapiat. Haud procul igitur a
vero abfuerit, qui seculo fere ante Christum tertio illud monu-
ment uni insculptum esse cheat," — Scripturae Linguaeque Phoen.
.1/"//., ]>. 1 0 1 . ( )f the two grounds here given for the writer's
conclusion, the first, besides that it is applicable to only one
of the inscriptions li<' examined, rests upon a very obscure and
disputed ]><>int. the time when the worship of the Pagan god

Chap. VI.] TWO KINDS OF PHCENICIAN TITULI. 509

Serapis commenced; and the second involves a principle just
as questionable, that the better shaped and more distinct let-
ters are, the older must be the writing composed of them. On
the other hand, the conquest of the Persian empire by Alex-
ander the Great, which forced a knowledge of the Greek lan-
guage and alphabet on the subjects of that empire, and so led
eventually to the introduction of matres lectionis into all the
Asiatic kinds of Shemitic writings furnishes an extreme limit
to the age of the samples of this writing containing such let-
ters, which is marked out by a well-known epoch, and also is
applicable to every vocalized specimen of each of those diffe-
rent kinds. But, although the conquered nations were com-
pelled to learn Greek, for the purpose of enabling them to read
the proclamations and decrees of a Grecian government, yet
it was not compulsory on them, in consequence, to make any
changes in respectively their several national modes of writing ;
and, when we take into account how slowly the generality of
readers in any nation could acquire a thorough acquaintance
with the use of an alphabet of quite a different nature from

a All the various kinds of Shemitic writing now or at any former period
employed in Asia, however different they may be in other respects, exhibit
exactly the same imperfect system of vocalization by means of the three ma-
tres lectionis, Haleph, Yod, and Waiv, — a degree of correspondence which
has not arisen from any necessity, but merely from the accidental circumstance
of some intercourse, more or less slight, having subsisted between the several
nations employing them, while they were receiving respectively this rude
improvement. Hence, it follows that, in whichever of those kinds the speci-
fied set of vowel-letters was first adopted, it spread from that source by means
of successive imitations through all the rest. But the species of Shemitic
writing employed in Africa, namely, the Ethiopic species, having derived its
vocalic structure from the same remote cause, but at a period when its em-
ployers had no opportunity of communicating with any of the nations of Asia
that made use of writing of the same general nature (with the Arabians,
indeed, they may have had intercourse, but that people are proved by their
own historians not to have learned any sort of alphabetic writing till many
centuries after the period referred to, neither were they ever reduced to sub-
jection by the Greeks), the consequence is, that the vocalization of this kind
is entirely different from that common to all the Asiatic kinds.

510 GENERAL LIMITATIONS OF AGE TO [Chap. VI.

that to which they had been previously accustomed, and how
reluctantlv. even after having become sensible of its value,
they would tolerate the admission into their own alphabetic sys-
tem of any improvement thence derived: it will I think, be seen
that, in all probability, more than a century elapsed after the

. -mentioned Grecian conquest, before the effect of it here
contemplated came into actual operation. The hundreth

. then, after the end of the reign oi Alexander, or the

B. < J. '22 4. may be fixed on as a probable limit to the age

of any Shemitie inscription of which even a single element is

tound employ. - vowel-letter. But. when an inscription

- - .-. . ' ntaining any matres lectionis. nor located
within Greece, is found accompanied with Grecian lines, this
drcm - shows that it was not inscnlped till after Greek
writing began to be generally understood by persons of edu-
cation throughout the civilized portion of the earth, that is.
not till after a period which preceded by no great interval the
commencement of the Christian era. On this account the date
of the principal inscription examined by Gesenius should. I
submit, be placed in the second or even in the first, rather
than in the third century before the birth of our Lord ; and

may perhaps be disposed to lower its antiquity still more,
on taking into consideration that the natives of the island in
which it was set to public view were ignorant of Gi

- the time when St. Luke wrote 'the Acts of the Apostles:'
in the last chapter of which history he twice styles them Bap
(Sapo .. — agnation in his time given to those who could not
speak

res] -. r, to the second kind of inscriptions

brought under consideration, or such Phoenician le_
as contain no matres lectionis. but are accompanied with
cian counterparts, a more definite though Less se limit to
their ant: a 8 inetimes afforded by means of the alphabe-

• the triple inscription on the Rosetta stone, self
a -tandard because it is the oldest document of ascertained
tea ially differ in shape or pho-

Tofamaagt 511.

No. 1.

AlONYIIOSKAIJAPAPI^NOt
SAPAPiaNOETYPIO!

HPAKAEtAPXHTETEl

No. 2.

THHAirYnTONKATAlTHXAMENOYKAlTA
ANT\nAAn.W_AHOPnnn.N — KAOAnE?

No. 3.

No. 4.

APT EMIAQP0{
HA I 0 &.O.P 0 Y

(IAI1NI0(

Xo. 5.

NOYMHNlOi
UTI E Y

No. 0.

EPHNH BTZANTIA

No. 7. No. s. Xo. 9.

Chap. VI.] TWO KINDS OF PHONETIC TITULL 511

netic value from the Greek capitals of the present day ; it beino-
expressly dated in the ninth year of Ptolemy Epiphanes, that is,
according to the most generally received computation, in the
year B. C. 192.a But of several of the bilingual inscriptions
in question, the Greek portion can be shown of less age than
the writing of the same kind insculped upon this stone. Thus,
upon an immediate comparison of the equivalent elements of
the lines in Nos. 1 and 2 of Plate II. facing this page, the former
lines, which constitute the Grecian part of the principal Maltese
inscription, are found to be of more recent structure than the lat-
ter, which are an extract from the proposed standard ; and in
this way a major limit to the age of the Maltese inscription will
be obtained 108 years lower than that fixed upon by Gesenius.
But here a difficulty comes in our way ; as the results of the
required comparison are, at first sight, inconsistent. On the
one hand, the lines under examination are shown to be those
of lesser antiquity by the perfect preservation of the cross-bar
in every one of the seven Alpha's they contain, which is either
entirely obliterated, or left in a very indistinct state in most of
the specimens of this letter upon the Rosetta stone ; on the

a For the convenience of readers who may not have an opportunity of in-
specting the Rosetta record in the British Museum, or the engraving of it pub-
lished by the Antiquarian Society in London, I have got copied in Plate II.
No. 2, immediately under the Greek portion of the bilingual inscription of
Malta, a few words from the first and second Greek lines of the above record,
which would at present be written with capitals as follows: —

THN AirrilTON KATA2TH2AMEN0T KAI TA . . . .
ANTinAAHN .... ANQPminN . . . . KA0AIIEP ....

In the delineation given of these words in the Plate referred to, it may be
observed that, notwithstanding the extraordinary hardness of the marble on
which their originals are insculped, nearly all the cross-bars of the Alpha's
and the dots inside the ThetcCs are worn out; so that it requires consideration
of the surrounding letters to distinguish the former characters from the
Lambda's, or the latter ones from the Omikrorfs of the inscription. But, with
the exception of these obliterations, all the letters are, in essential points, the
same as their modern equivalents.

2n

512 NO MATRES LECTIONIS EARLIER [Chap. VI.

other hand, it makes for the greater antiquity of the same lines,
that the Pi in both places of its occurrence in them is exhibited
in mi older shape than it is on that monument ; and that their
last word, APXHrETEI, is inflected after an older fashion
than it would have been on the standard referred to.a But on
due consideration it will be found that both peculiarities are
to be attributed, not to the greater age of these lines, but to a
want of familiarity with Greek on the part of their Maltese
insculptor ; as it is only through the latter supposition that
the apparent incoherency of the case can be removed. The
dedication, therefore, in Malta to Hercules by the Tyrian
mariners must be concluded to have been a later production
than the decree of the Egyptian priests recorded at Rosetta.
The only minor limit I can suggest to the age of this dedica-
tion is, I admit, not a very definite or close one, namely, that
it must have been insculped before the introduction of matres
lectionis into Phoenician legends.

As the inquiry, when vowel-letters were first introduced
into Shemitic writing, is interesting in itself, independently of
the aid its determination contributes to fixing a major limit to
the ages of the inscriptions containing them, I shall here add
a few more observations on this subject. If it should be ob-
jected to the limitation to their antiquity in Shemitic legends
arrived at in the preceding paragraph, that Cilician pieces have
been found with Phoenician epigraphs exhibiting such letters,
which yet were coined before the reign of Alexander the Great,

1 Thus, for example, in the expression ENT0IB0Y2IPITHI, which occurs
in the twenty-second of the Greek lines on the Rosetta stone, Bovtripirrj'}, the
Grecian name of a nome or district in Egypt, is found inflected for the.
dative case exactly as it would in capitals at the present day; although the
-aim' expression would now be written in small letters with the Iota subscrip-
tum, iv tiv Bovaipi'iii, but still with Eta instead of the Epsilon employed in
the corresponding inflexion of the final word of the Greek portion of the
Maltese inscription; wherein the irregular insertion of this latter vowel-let-
ter would at first view appear to indicate that, when this inscription was framed,
the Eta had not yet come into its full use.

Chap. VI.] INSERTED IN PHCENICIAN WRITING. 513

I reply that the ages claimed for those coins are quite inadmis-
sible. It has already been shown in the third chapter of Partm.
of my work on the Ancient " Orthography of the Jews," that
the genuine coins of the Achgemenian race of sovereigns of
Persia had no epigraphs ; and it is utterly improbable that
the pieces issued in one of the provinces of that empire should
have had any superiority over those stamped at the principal
seat of government. Hence it must, I submit, be concluded
that legends upon Asiatic coins commenced only under the
sway of Grecian rulers. How, then, it may be here further
urged, is the circumstance to be accounted for, that all the
earlier of those legends are not found written in the Greek
character ? To this I reply, that most of them are so ; but it
accorded with the policy of the generals who seized upon the
several kingdoms into which the conquests of Alexander were
divided, and also with that of their successors, to gratify the
subjects of those kingdoms, in some instances, with the use of
their respective national systems of writing. Thus, the Ptole-
mies of Egypt allowed their names and titles to be recorded,
and placed before the public, in hieroglyphic designations ;
and one of the race of the Antiochi on the throne of Syria
permitted the Jews to stamp coins with Hebrew epigraphs
(1 Mac. xv. 6). It would, therefore, be no cause for wonder,
if another prince of that race had granted a similar privilege to
some favoured cities of Cilicia.

To the foregoing considerations is to be added the futility
of the grounds put forward to support the claim of greater an-
tiquity for the coins in question. Thus, for instance, the most
remarkable among the very few epigraphs upon those coins
which include, or are assumed to include, vowel-letters,a is given

The plan upon which the meaning of the extant Phoenician legends has
in general been investigated, and which is fully warranted by the degree of
success that has attended its adoption, is the dealing with them as if they
were written in the ancient Hebrew. But, consistently with this plan,
no other ancient language should be resorted to, till the occurrence of some

2 n2

514 ANALYSIS OF THE EPIGRAPH [Chap. VI.

in Plate II. No. 3, copied from that marked F in the thirty-
sixth Tabula of our author's treatise, and is deciphered by him
as follows : — . - .

This reading of the epigraph I believe to be perfectly correct ;
but I cannot say as much for his interpretation of it and de-
fence thereof, which are stated by him thus : — " Oculus regis
magni, i. e. regis Persiae, cujus haec appellatio est propria et
solennis— fiaoiAevs 6 /meya^ Persicum igitur Cili-

difficulty which could not be cleared up by means of Hebrew; and then, it is
plain that Syriac should next be tried, as the tongue of the nearest neighbours
to the Phoenicians, and of a people with whom they must have had frequent
intercourse. But Arabic is the very last of all the Shemitic dialects from
which any assistance could in such a case be expected, as spoken in former
times by barbarians who held no peaceable communication with any other
nation. In the particular instance, however, of the above legend, Gesenius
took the particle bs at the commencement of the second group for the Arabic
definite article, though it nowhere throughout the whole Hebrew Bible occurs
in that sense, but, on the contrary, is in several passages of the sacred text
used as the preposition ' to' is in English ; and, moreover, its contraction, the
prefix b, is very frequently therein employed with a signification which may
be translated ' belonging to,' or rendered by the possessive ' of,' the English
sign of the genitive case. Now I admit that, if it were justifiable to interpret
the particle btf in the legend before us, as the definite article, its initial group
■pV should then be read in the construct state HEN, ' eye of,' with the middle
letter employed as a mater lectionis. But Gesenius was, I submit, bound in
consistency to treat bs in this place, not as an Arabic, but as a Hebrew par-
ticle; and if we allow it here the same force as its contraction, the prefix b,
has, namely, that of the possessive ' of,' then we are no longer under any ne-
cessity of translating the first group ' eye of,' but may render it simply ' eye;'
for which signification it is not to be contracted in reading, as if in regimen,
but to be pronounced full BaTtN, with its Yod used as a consonant. As a proof
of this effect being at any rate sometimes produced by the prefix b, I refer to
the expression in the sacred text, V|Nw^b D^BSn (' the watchmen of Saul'),-r-
1 Sam. xiv. 16, — where, but for the interposition of the prefix in question,
the first group must have been written in the construct state, without its final
letter. I have not, however, deemed it necessary to advert to this point in
my text; because, even supposing vowel-letters to be found in the epigraphs
of Cilician coins, it, would by no means thence follow that such letters were
introduced into Shemitic writing before the reign of Alexander the Great.

Chap. VI.] AND AGE OF A CILICIAN COIN. 515

ciae Satrapam ilia formula indicari numumque nostrum eius
iussu cusum esse existimo, quod ad universam horum numo-
rum rationem bene accommodatum esse nemo facile negabit."
— Scripturae Linquaeque Phoen. Monum., p. 283. That the
reasoning here employed to make out an antiquity reaching
farther back than the reign of Alexander for the coin in ques-
tion is just as fitly adapted to this purpose, as are any of the
arguments adduced to establish a like result for the other coins
of the same class, I am by no means inclined to deny ; but still
I must beg to offer two remarks upon its soundness. In the
first place, with respect to the entire epigraph, it might be quite
as well translated fons regis magni, through which rendering
it would appear to be the figurative designation, not of a per-
son, but of a place ;a and a determination of age which is made
to rest on a sentence of such very uncertain meaning, it is
obvious, cannot be depended on. In the second place, with
regard to the last two words of this epigraph, of whose signi-
fication we are not so ignorant as of that of the whole legend,
what is known of them tells positively against their application
to any of the sovereigns who preceded Alexander on the im-
perial throne of Persia. For, although the Greeks called those
sovereigns respectively ' the great king,' they chose for them-
selves the title of ' king of kings,' which no Persian satrap, or
city under his government, would have dared to change. On
the other hand, the same words may be easily conceived to have
been applied to any of the race of Grecian princes who suc-

a Several towns are mentioned in the Book of Joshua with names into
which y>V (a fountain) enters as an ingredient, — as, for example, D^33-^3>
(fountain of gardens), Jos. xv. 34; ^lD-^. (fountain of kid), Jos. xv. 62;
— "fn-^2 (fountain of habitation), Jos. xvii. 11; and "fi2n-^3> (fountain
of enclosure), Jos. xix. 37, — which are transcribed in our version, respec-
tively, En-gannim, En-gedi, En-dor, and En-hazor. But as it appears from
the epigraphs of the class of coins above referred to, that the same, or very
nearly the same, Shemitic dialect was spoken in Cilicia as in Palestine, it
would be no wonder if the same peculiar kind of local designations prevailed
there also.

516 MY VIEWS NO WAY INCONSISTENT [Chap. VI.

ceeded to the comparatively small portion of the Persian em-
pire that constituted the kingdom of Syria, and who could not
have felt it the least disparagement to be styled by a title which
their countrymen had been at a former period in the habit of
o-iving to potentates of a higher rank and more extensive do-
minions. But Gesenius having, it seems, thus established most
conclusively the ante- Alexandrian age of the coin under exa-
mination, proceeds still further to determine its exact date as
follows. From the figure of a trireme on its obverse he draws
the inference, which is probably true, that it was stamped to
commemorate some naval engagement. But although many
such actions occurred before the reign of Alexander, he thinks
that one peculiarly suited for commemoration which was fought
off the coast of Cnidus, in the year before the birth of our Lord,
394. This medal, therefore (he does not indeed positively assert,
but only suspects), was issued from the Cilician mint just about
seven years after that very date ! This notable argument,
which is rendered ludicrous by the air of precision thrown over
it, is gravely stated by our author in the following terms : —
"Triremis imago in ad versa, quae saepe comparet in Phoenico-
Persicis (Mionnet vi. 644, sqq.), ad victoriam quandam nava-
lem a Persis in Asia minore reportatam respicere videtur.
Quarum licet plures sint, nulla tamen aetate Alexandrum
Magnum proxime praecedente nobilior et illustrior, quam ilia,
qua Spartanorum classis, duce Pisandro, ab Artaxerxis II. et
Persarum classe, duce Conone, ad Cnidum deleta est Olymp.
xcvi. 3 (a. Chr. 394), quaque factum est ut, in pace ab Antal-
cida composita Olymp. xcviii. 2 (a. Chr. 387 ),a Asiae minoris
urbes cum Clazomenis et Cypro in Persarum potestatem transi-
ent (Xenoph. Ilellen. iv. 3, § 10-12. v. 1, § 31). Ad hanc
i'/i/nr respici equidem suspicor. Atque ad eandem victoriam
navalem pertinere videtur hie numus (Ibide?n)" Nothing,

a The above number is made 397 in our author's treatise; but the error
is, I conceive, not his, but the printer's, in consequence of which I have taken
the liberty of correcting it.

Chap. VI.] WITH RECENT DISCOVERIES. 517

surely, could tell more powerfully against the antiquity claimed
for certain Cilician coins than the necessity of resorting to such
arguments in its support. Upon the whole, then, it must, I
apprehend, be concluded that even the real employment of
matres lectionis in the epigraphs of some of those coins would
only supply an additional reason for placing their dates after
the time of the Grecian conquest of Persia, but afford none
whatever for admitting that vowel-letters were introduced be-
fore that epoch into any species of Shemitic writing.

Some of the views put forward in the course of this discus-
sion may perhaps appear to be at variance with recent dis-
coveries, but they in reality thence derive considerable support.
Thus, in reference to my position that no people, after having
become long attached to any sort of writing, ever adopt a dif-
ferent kind, except compelled to do so through subjugation to
foreign invaders, it must be admitted, that an alphabetic ap-
plication of cuneiform characters was introduced into Persia
about two centuries before the age of Alexander, not through
foreign compulsion, but under the auspices of a native
prince. Whether that prince was Cyrus or the first Darius,
need not here be inquired (though I think it has been shown,
in the third chapter of Part in. of my work on the " Ancient
Orthography of the Jews," most probable that he was the lat-
ter man) ; all that is material in respect to the point before us
to observe, concerning this species of writing, is, that although
backed by the authority of an absolute government, it yet, as far
as can be judged by its extant remains, never got into popular
use, but was confined to state records ; in which, too, the em-
ployment of it lasted only for about two reigns, and then,
after a further lapse of time of no great length, entirely ceased.
Moreover, in Lycia also traces have been recently discovered
of a species of alphabetic writing older than the reign of Alex-
ander, which, however, appears to have got in that country
into general use. But so little is known of the early history
of the establishment of Grecian colonies on the western and
southern coast of Asia Minor, that it is impossible now to dis-

518 ANALYSIS OF THREE BILINGUAL [Chap. VI.

prove the conquest of the Lycians in remote times by some
one or more of those colonies, which may have held them in
subjection quite long enough to account for their eventual
adoption of a modification of the Greek alphabet. Again,
with regard to the length of time I have supposed to have for-
merly elapsed after the knowledge of a foreign method of
writing had been forced upon a people, before they could, in
the ordinary course of events, be induced voluntarily to trans-
fer an improvement thence derived into their national system,
a direct support of the justness of my computation is furnished
by three bilingual inscriptions found upon sepulchral monu-
ments not many years since disinterred in Attica, and which
have been deciphered by Gesenius. From the trade carried
on by the Phoenicians with Greece long before the overthrow
of the Persian empire by Alexander, no other Shemitic people
are likely to have sooner after that event borrowed from Greek
writing the use of vowel-letters, yet in two out of the three
inscriptions in question not a single mater lectionis is found
in their Phoenician portions, although it can be shown by means
of their Grecian lines that they must have been written since
the time of the insculption of the Rosetta stone, or more than
139 (i.e. 331-192) years after the same above-mentioned
event. In the third inscription, indeed, a vowel-letter occurs
in the Shemitic part, but it is employed only in the Phoenician
representation of the sound of a Greek proper name.

The three inscriptions are copied in Plate II. from their
delineations in the treatise of Gesenius, with the Greek part
over the Phoenician lines in the first inscription (No. 4), and
under them in the second (No. 5) ; while the relative sites of
the two parts in the third (No. 6) is left undetermined in that
treatise, ami we are merely informed that they are found upon
the monument that bears them, written across different figures
of the same female, one of which represents her as sitting, and
the other as standing, with an infant in her arms. Here,
however, I arrange the materials relating to each inscription
in the same order, [tutting first our author's transcription of the

Chap.VL] INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN ATTICA. 519

Phoenician part into modern Hebrew characters grouped into
separate words ; then his interpretation thereof ; and in the
third place the Greek part printed in modern capitals ; which,
indeed, differ so very little from the delineations of the same
letters in Plate II., that I should not have deemed it requisite
thus to adduce them a second time, but for the convenience of
the reader ; as he can with less trouble compare the deci-
phered Shemitic names with the corresponding Greek ones, by
having them brought under his eye more nearly together : —

in rornn;^ ora -od navQ

Cippus memoriae inter vivos Abd-tanitho (Artemidoro),^^)
Abdschemesch (Heliodori), Sidonio.

APTEMIAOP02 HAIOAOPOY, SIAHNIOS.

to vx p:n p cmdbhzb? p

Ben-chodscho (Numemo), Jilio Abdmekarti (Heraclii),

filii Abdschemesch (Heliodori), filii Tagginez (Stephani), viro Citiensi

N0YMHNI02 KITIEY2.

Ton nSjD Knn

Erene, civis Byzantii
EPHNH BYZANTIA

With regard to the deciphering of the Shemitic characters
of these inscriptions, as exhibited in Plate II., — upon compar-
ing the Samek in the first Phoenician line of the first inscrip-
tion with its various Phoenician forms in the list of Gesenius
given in Plate I., it will be found to have lost its upper part,
from age, or some other cause, perhaps from a flaw in the

520 ANALYSIS OF THREE BILINGUAL [Chap. VI.

marble ; and the Hebrew scholar will further perceive that
it has been substituted for a Zayin, through an interchange
of sibilants which sometimes occur in Shemitic writing.
Moreover, the Haleph in the Phoenician line of the third in-
scription appears to have lost one of its cross-lines ; so that,
if viewed by itself, it might equally be taken for a Taw ; but
it is confined to the former phonetic value both by a compari-
son with the corresponding letter of the Greek name of which
the group it belongs to is obviously a transcription, and also
by the consideration that it is of quite a different form from
the unquestionable Taw which is twice inserted in this line.
With respect to the Greek portions of the same inscriptions, —
the last letter of the second portion has been lost through a
fracture of the stone ; but it being obvious what that letter
was, I have taken the liberty of replacing it in my printed
representation of this portion. From the general appear-
ance of these portions, even without entering into any parti-
culars, it is perfectly evident that they must, all of them,
have been insculped later than the inscription on the Rosetta
stone, that is, after the year B. C. 192. In the case, indeed,
of the third portion, the circumstance of the proper name
Elpi'ivrj being written with simply an E, instead of the dip-
thong EI, at its commencement, is an indication of antiquity,
but by no means as strong a one as that bearing in the op-
posite direction, which is afforded by the regular shapes of
the letters in this portion ; on which account, I may add, it
appears to be not only of later date than the Rosetta monu-
ment, but also less ancient than the Greek portions of the first
and second of these two inscriptions, with which it has been
hen; conjoined, if the delineation of their elements in the plates
of ( resenius can be depended on as exact. On the other hand,
the contents of this latest of the three inscriptions yield a
minor limit to its age : — the town thereby suggested is referred
to through its ancient name, ' Byzantium,' which was changed
to the modern one, * Constantinople,' early in the fourth cen-
tury of our era. This limit, however, is by no means offered

Chap. VI.] INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN ATTICA. 521

as a close one ; since, from the syllabic powers of the charac-
ters (notwithstanding the insertion among them of a mater
lectionis to assist in the expression of a foreign name), the
Phoenician part of the third inscription would appear to have
been written long before the commencement of the specified
century.

With regard to matres lectionis in the Shemitic portion of
these inscriptions, — the only elements of the first two por-
tions which could by any possibility be mistaken for such let-
ters, are the Yod in the group D^PQ of the first portion, and
that inserted at the end of the final group of each portion.
But the first of these groups, translated by Gesenius inter
vivos, is elsewhere admitted by him to be read with a sound
which would be in my method of notation written BeKbaYyz'M,
with the letter in question used as a consonant doubled in its
utterance ; and he also held this letter to be employed as a con-
sonant at the end of the other two groups, translated by him
Sidonio and Citiensi, although he, very inconsistently with this
admission, read those groups, in accordance with the Masore-
tic system, SiDoNI and Ki'Ttl. But it has been already shown,
upon the far higher authority of the Seventy Jews, that the
above groups would formerly have been read SiDoNaY and
KtTtaY, in which pronunciation the Yod is clearly treated,
without any contradiction or inconsistency, as a consonant.
In justice to the Masorets, however, I should here observe,
that I have not the slightest doubt of their having transmitted
to us with scrupulous honesty the mode of reading which pre-
vailed in their days. But that which I have to deal with in
the present investigations belonged to a much earlier period.
So far I agree with Gesenius in results, though arriving at them,
without any inconsistency, in a different way. But, with re-
spect to the Shemitic portion of the third inscription, I almost
entirely dissent from him.

In the first place, I maintain that this portion ends, exactly
as the corresponding lines of the two preceding inscriptions,
with a national designation, TOD, ' Byzantian ;' which should

522 ANALYSIS OF THliEE BILINGUAL [Chap. VI.

be read B«ZaNT«Y, or BuZaNTaYo, according as it is referred to
a male or female. The difference between the two readings
was in general marked in Shemitic writing by a paragogic He,
to suggest the additional syllable required in the latter case.
But this suggestion appears to have been deemed unnecessary
in the line before us, in consequence of the feminine form of
the immediately preceding word rv?^2, which rendered it
quite obvious that the gentilic designation was here applied to
;i woman. I have already pointed out in the course of the
present essay instances in the sacred text of the omission, for
like reasons, of a written sign of the feminine gender, — in-
stances which have been hitherto left utterly unaccounted for.
But, in the present case, my reading of the above word
B«Z«NT«Ya is further sustained by the corresponding word of
the Greek line BYZANTIA, a gentilic adjective expressly in-
flected in a feminine form. This mode of writing the last group
of the line, with its final letter employed, not as a consonant,
but as a sign of the syllable YA, indicates, notwithstanding
the appearance of a vowel-letter in the first group, consider-
able age of the legend ; as it must have been thus written
while the Phoenicians were yet in the habit of reading their
letters with syllabic powers. In reality, indeed, they so read,
in the example before us, all the elements of TOD except the
third ; though a modern, reading them all as consonants, and
mentally inserting, after the first, second, and fourth, the
vowels which the necessity of the case would then require,
might possibly be inclined, at first view of the matter, to ima-
gine that the ancients dealt with the group in the same man-
ner. But he could hardly extend this erroneous supposition
to the last letter, which there is no apparent necessity of ut-
tering with a vowel after it when it is taken for a consonant,
d ace it might, just as well as the third letter, be uttered by the
help of the vocal part of the preceding syllable ; and of course
it would be so uttered in this place, if the context did not ab-
solutely require it to be read with a syllabic value. But
Gesenius, not perceiving this mode of conforming to the de-

Chap. VI.] INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN ATTICA. 523

mands of the context, and in consequence unable to read the
group as a word in the feminine gender, was reduced to the
necessity of treating it as the curtailed representation of a
foreign name, though the very circumstance of this name's
belonging to a different language from that of the Phoenician
readers to whom it was intended to be communicated, would
require the group denoting it to be written without any
curtailment. Let it, however, be conceded that this precau-
tion is sometimes found neglected in slovenly writing ; yet,
surely, no instance of such heedlessness could be expected to
occur in a line inscribed upon a monument which appears,
from the description, though brief, which Gesenius gives of its
sculptural ornaments, to have been a highly finished work.
But it may, perhaps, be here objected : is not the gentilic
derivative from }TOn a combination of letters that must have
been as foreign and unusual in reference to the apprehensions
of the great majority of Phoenician readers as the Shemitic
group here adduced, from which it is immediately derived ? —
and must not, therefore, the Phoenician writer have been
obliged by plain common sense to exhibit this combination,
just as much as he would the original group, full, and without
any curtailment of its elements ? This is quite true. But
TOD, which supplies only a mutilated representation of the pro-
per name referred to, is notwithstanding, in accordance with
the notions which formerly prevailed upon the subject, a com-
plete exponent of the gentilic adjective thence derived, even
when it is to be read in the feminine gender BwZaNTaYa, pro-
vided its final element Yod be pronounced, not as a conso-
nant closing the preceding syllable, but as a syllabic sign.
The latter mode, indeed, of reading this element was, in gene-
ral, indicated by the addition of a paragogic He ; but as this
letter, which forms no part of the Shemitic expression of the
above foreign name, would have served here only to suggest a
Shemitic termination with which Phoenician readers must
have been perfectly familiar, and which was, without its aid,

524 EXPOSURE OF OUR AUTHOR'S ERROR IN [Chap. VI.

suggested by the feminine form of the preceding word, its
non-insertion in this place was productive of no indistinctness
or confusion.

In the second place, I admit that the final element of the
first group ^""IPT is employed as a mater lectionis to denote
the sound of the open E at the termination of the Greek pro-
per name 'Epijvy. But I altogether deny that the initial ele-
ment of the same group was likewise intended to express a
vowel or diphthong. This latter point our author endeavours
to make out as follows: — "Quod graecum E in Phoeniciis ex-
primitur P! littera, id nemo miretur. Namque E Graecorum ex
H Phoenicum ortum est, eique respondet turn figura turn loco
quern in litterarum ordine occupat, quanquam potestas eius
paullulum mutata est : solentqueHebraei, Syri, Chaldaei graeca
vocabula scribentes, A, E, H litteras ineunte vocabulo nun-
quam non K vel PI litteris exprimere, non solum ubi spiritu
aspero, sed etiam ubi leni munitae sunt, videndi causa evyev})? in
Talmude PD3J1PJ, Ivoxv PP33PJ, aTe\*js DvLDH, — " — Scripturae
Linguaeque Phoeniciae Mm., pp. 120-1. This extract requires
some observations. First, it is quite true that the Greek E
is derived from the Phoenician P! in respect to some subordinate
qualities, but not at all in the sense which Gesenius wished to
convey, namely, in regard to phonetic power. The PT had
formerly the same shape as E, and they still occupy the same
places respectively in the Grecian and Shemitic alphabets, in
consequence of which they both are employed in common to
denote the number five. It may, therefore, be readily admitted
that E is sprung from PI, in shape, in place, and in numeric
value ; but it by no means hence follows that the former must
})c derived from the latter in phonetic value also : and, in
point of fact, the vowel-sound of the Greek letter in question
is not derived from, but substituted for, the consonantal power
of the Shemitic one. For the Greeks, having no use for more
than one of the four Shemitic aspirates or gutturals (ft PN Hi
and V), at some very remote period changed all but the third

Chap. VI.] ACCOUNTING HE A MATER LECTIONIS. 525

from consonants to vowel-letters, and made a like change of
the third also soon after the year B. C. 450 ;a so that thence-
forward all aspirates were banished from the Greek collection
of letters, and we find in their places Alpha, E (^ikov) close,
Eta, and 0 (ixiKpov) close, identical with the displaced elements,
either at first, or even yet, in various other respects, but totally
different from them in phonetic value. Secondly, from the
assertion of our author ("quamquam potestas eius paullulum
mutata est") that in the transition from H to E, the power of H
was but little changed, it is evident that he confounded the
consonantal power with one of the values of the syllabic
power of the latter element. The former power of this letter
may be represented by the consonant H, while the most com-
monly used of the values of the latter power, and that from
which it derived its name, is denoted by the syllable HE: but
the vocal sound E is totally different from the breathing, by
itself inaudible, which H expresses, though at the same time

a In an inscription found near two centuries ago at Athens on a marble
tablet, which formed part of a monument erected to the memory of the soldiers
of a certain tribe who fell in campaigns that ended with the death of Cimon,
about the year B. C. 450, — and of which a particular description is given in
the fourth chapter of the second book of the Palceogr aphid Grceca of Mont-
faucon, — the sentence, ol'ce iv tw 7ro\efiw aireOavov ev Kinrpiv, ev Atryv7rrw, ev
<£>oiviKrj, iv 'AXievaiv, iv Ai^ivrj, is to be seen written as follows: —

HOIAE i ENTOI i IIOAEMOI • AFIE0ANON = ENKTFIPOI • ENAir

rrrroi ; en<doinikei • enaaietzin i ENAiriNEi ;

Some of the letters are very differently shaped from what they are in these
lines, but not the H or E. The point, therefore, which I want to establish is
hereby sufficiently illustrated ; namely, that the H was, as late as the specified
date, still used as a consonant, and no distinction yet made between the open
and close E, in Greek writing. The same lines also serve to show that the
distinction between the open and close 0 was not then as yet introduced into
the Greek alphabet. Hence it would appear that the account of the invention
of the letters Eta and Omega by Simonides the poet, who flourished about
the year B. C. 550, must be erroneous. The improvement produced by the
use of these letters, surely, cannot be supposed to have been adopted any-
where else earlier than at Athens, the great seat of Grecian learning in
ancient times.

526 EXPOSURE OF OUR AUTHOR'S ERROR IN [Chap. VI.

the very same sound E bears a close similarity to, and is easily
derivable from, the syllabic sound HE: it, however, I should
add, is thence deduced, not (as Gesenius, in accordance with
the prevalent error on the subject, supposed) by softening this
value of the syllabic power of H, but by resolving it into its
component parts, and dropping the consonantal ingredient.

Thirdly, from the concluding part of the above extract it
would appear that the author intended to insinuate, though
he did not venture expressly to make the assertion, that the
initial H of each of the groups therein contained was to be
read without any aspiration, whence it would immediately fol-
low that it was in those instances employed as a vowel-letter.
Thus, for example, in the case of one of those groups, as the
initial sound of utcX^ is marked with a spiritus lenis, the first
element of DvLDH, which is employed to express that sound,
must, it seems, be destitute of aspiration, and therefore has
nothing to denote but the vowel A ; and, for the same reason,
the first element of ITOjn, being used to convey the initial
sound of evoxy, must also be uttered without aspiration ; and
consequently, there is nothing left for it to represent but barely
the vowel E; and so on. Unless he meant his examples to be
so applied, I really cannot imagine for what purpose he selected
them, or why he should have otherwise dwelt on the want
of aspirations at the commencement of the adduced Greek
groups. But, unfortunately for the bearing of this argu-
ment, the ground on which it rests is quite fallacious, as
the letter H is always used at the beginning of syllables
with an aspiration. In fact, the peculiarity of Shemitic pro-
nunciation in ancient times which these examples, when fairly
discussed, serve to illustrate, still adheres to the Jews, who up
to this day are remarkable for introducing more aspirations
than they ought into their utterance of European terms; the
readings, therefore, HaTeLES and HeNoKEH, though incorrect
representations of the pronunciation of the Greek words to
which tiny ultimately refer, give the true sounds of the She-
mitic groups to which they are immediately applied: and

Chap. VI] ACCOUNTING HE A MATER LECTIONIS. 527

when the syllabic value of the initial H (in the one case HA,
and in the other HE) is resolved, as it always is by a modern
reader, into its component parts, the vocal part is thence de-
tached and left to be mentally supplied through a knowledge
of the vowels of the Greek word ultimately represented ; so
that when this letter is viewed as a consonant, nothing remains
to be thereby expressed but an aspiration or rough breathing.
This is still more evident in the adduced example which I
have yet to notice, that, I mean, of evyevy? transcribed into
the Chaldee group (when its termination for the plural num-
ber is removed) D3J1H (HUGeNeS), whereof the initial sound is
found actually decomposed by the Shemitic writer himself;
and the vocal part of that sound being expressly, though very
imperfectly, denoted by the mater lectionis \ nothing is left
for the H to signify but an aspiration. Lastly, supposing for
a moment the H to have lost its aspiration in the cases adduced
by Gesenius, it would denote, in the first of the three here
last considered, the vowel A ; in the second, the vowel E ; in
the third, the vowel U or diphthong EU; and in the primary
one of ISJin, the vowel E or diphthong EI: moreover, upon
the same fallacious supposition applied to other cases it might
be shown to denote a variety of other vocal-sounds also,
through the aid of examples drawn from the Hebrew text of
the Bible ; as, for instance, in the case of IDTT, 1 Chron. vi. .33,
which is pointed by the Masorets for the sound HEMaN, it
would, according to this pointing, dealt with in the same
ingenious manner, denote an open E ; in that of D3H, Josh.
xv. 8, which is pointed for the sound Hz'NnoM, it would, upon
the same Masoretic authority, treated in the very same way,
denote an i"; and in that of PPVTIPI, 1 Chron. v. 24, tran-
scribed by the Seventy Qhovta, it would denote an open 0.
Thus, through the very supposition by means of which Ge-
senius endeavoured to prove the character H sometimes equi-
valent to the vowel-letter E, it might be shown to have an
indefinite number of vocal values ; so that it would thereby
be made out, not at all a distinctive sign of one vowel in par-

9 n

528 ANALYSIS CONCLUDED OF THE [Chap. VI.

ticular, but merely a vague indication of some vowel or other,
— a piece of information utterly useless, except in the case,
here not brought under consideration, of this letter being
placed at the end of a group. I have thought it worth while
to dwell at some length on the weakness of the argument
employed upon this subject by our author ; as the position
which he thus tried to establish constitutes a fundamental
error in his treatise. He himself, we have already seen, de-
rided Koppius for imagining V to be a vowel-sign. But the
notion that H is a letter of that sort is pressed by the very
same difficulties, and can be proved fallacious in the very
same manner.

It remains that I should make a few remarks upon the
proper names in the first two inscriptions, but they must, from
the little space left me, be very brief : they are taken entirely
from the treatise of Gesenius. With respect to ron, T«Ni'Th,
the principal element of the first Shemitic name in the first
inscription, our author gives abundant ancient authorities to
show that a foreign goddess called by the Greeks TaiW™,a
was also styled by them"A/rre/x<9 TlepoiKi). The denomination,
therefore, Abd-tanith, that is, 'a servant of Diana,' sufficiently
corresponds in meaning with the first name in the Greek por-
tion of the same inscription Artemidorus, which signifies lite-
rally ';l gilt to Diana,' or 'one dedicated to the service of
1 >iana.' The second Shemitic name, Abd-shemesh, ' servant of
the sun,' is obviously equivalent to the name in the Greek
part of the same inscription, Heliodorus, 'one dedicated to the
service of the sun.' In the second inscription, the first She-
mitic name, Ben-khodesh, 'son of the new moon,' or 'one born
;it the time of new moon,' obviously corresponds in meaning
with the Greek designation Numenius, which is derived from
Noi>/x»7Wo, ' the new moon: With regard to the second She-
mitic name, it has been already shown that the Phoenician god

-l The above name was formerly given to the Amazons on account of their
living on the banke of the fovefe, the river which is now called the Don.

Chap. VI.] THREE BILINGUAL INSCRIPTIONS. 529

Melkarth, 'king of the city,' was called by the Greeks Hercules.
The name, therefore, Abd-melkarth, ' servant of Melkarth,' is
equivalent to the Greek denomination Heraclius, ' a follower
of Hercules.' The third Shemitic name, Abd-shemesh, has been
above explained in the preceding inscription. With regard to
the fourth name, pjfi, TaGiNeS, no word answering to the first
part of this group is to be found in the remains of the ancient
Hebrew preserved in the sacred text, but in Chaldee JTl, TaG,
signifies ' a crown,' and in Syriac l^Z, TaGaH, or }-uU, TAGaH,
has the same meaning ; while the remainder of the combina-
tion p, NeS, occurs in Hebrew, and signifies ' a flower :' so that
the entire group denotes ' one wearing a chaplet of flowers,'
and so corresponds with the Greek name 2Te'0ayo?, which is
derived from ST€0ai/)/, 'a crown.' I have here only to add that,
if the Abd-shemesh mentioned in each inscription was the same
individual, it would follow that, as Abd-tanith was his son, and
Ben-khodesh his grandson through another son, the person to
whom the first monument was erected was uncle of the man
commemorated in the second.

I regret that I cannot spare time to give more examples
from this treatise, which is a very interesting book, and well
worth perusal to those who will take the trouble of guarding
against the erroneous views it occasionally advocates, and sepa-
rating them from the main body of the work. I shall devote
the remainder of the present chapter to discussing the ques-
tions, by what people the use of vowel-signs was discovered,
and by what process they arrived at this invention. Here it
may possibly occur to the reader that, since vowels are uttered
with at least as much facility as articulate sounds, written
signs might be as readily devised for the former, as for the
latter elements of speech. No doubt, they might ; but the
signs so devised would be of no avail to an employer of the
primitive alphabet (or any other immediately thence derived,
while yet in its original state), until he had traced some con-
nexion between the vowels they were made to denote, and the
syllabic sounds of his phonetic system : till then they would,
2 o 2

530 INVENTION OF VOWEL-SIGNS [Chap. VI.

to his apprehension, have no more to do, than notes of musical
tones could, with his writing. Such connexions, indeed, are
by modern readers instantaneously perceived ; because the very
way in which syllables are now written with two letters points
out at once the relation that subsists between syllabic and vocal
sounds. But a primitive reader enjoyed no such assistance,
as more than a single letter was never presented to his notice
for any pure syllabic sound ; and he was, in consequence,
forced to go through some analytic process in his mind, before
he could detect any composition in that sound, and thereby
arrive at its separate vocal ingredient. The difficulty, there-
fore, of introducing a set of vowel-letters, or vowel-signs of
any other kind, into a system of characters previously invested
with syllabic powers, was far greater than it would at first
sight appear to have been. This problem, however, I am now
enabled to show, was actually solved by the Greeks ; and to
their ingenuity is due the most important improvement of
alphabetic writing that was ever achieved by man.

In the course of the investigations pursued in this essay it
will, I trust, be found abundantly proved that the Hebrew al-
phabet, though fitted all along for a far better mode of using
it, was originally employed only as a syllabary; and from the
adduced parts of the treatise of Gesenius combined with their
corrections, as given in the present chapter, it may be collected
that the very same alphabet was at first dealt with just in the
same manner by the Phoenicians, and continued to be thus
treated by them till long after the period of its introduction
into Greece; so that its elements must a fortiori have been in-
vested solely with syllabic powers at that period. But at what
date the decomposition of those powers took place, whereby
this alphabet was advanced to the very superior condition" of
;i series of vowel-letters and consonants, can now no longer be
determined : all that we know with certainty in reference to
this point is, thai the change was effected while the system was
in Grecian hands.

With the conclusion to which we have been just led, that

Chap. VI.] ;^ DUE TO GRECIAN SAGACITY. 531

vowel-letters were first employed in Grecian writing, accords
all that is known of the use of such signs in other phonetic
systems. The Roman alphabet is obviously derived entirely
from the Greek one, in its vocal as well as its consonantal in-
gredients. The oldest known Asiatic method of vocalization
is that effected by the matres lectionis detected in the cunei-
form alphabet of the first Persian Darius. But the monarch
here named did Dot make use of this alphabet till after he had
availed himself of the services of Grecian scribes in recording
the names of the nations that supplied the troops with which
he invaded Scythia ; as has been collected with, I submit, a high
degree of probability in the third chapter of Part in. of my
treatise on the " Ancient Orthography of the Jews," from the
account of that invasion transmitted to us by Herodotus, as
well as from other ancient testimonies. Besides, what bears
more conclusively on the point before us, the employment of
one of the cuneiform matres lectionis with the very discrepant
phonetic values of H and A, marks an imitation of the Gre-
cian system, in which a letter, known by the correspondence
between the names Alpha and Haleph to have originally
denoted a syllable commencing with a H power of a certain
species, is applied to the designation of A. With respect to
the second kind of vocalization used in the cuneiform alphabet
concurrently with the first, and which is less ambiguous, inas-
much as its elements are employed in no other way than
as vowel-letters, it must, as containing only the same very
limited number (3) of signs, be looked upon as merely an im-
provement of the first, and consequently as derived from the
same Grecian model. The next oldest method of Asiatic
vocalization is that exhibited in the inscriptions recently
discovered in Lycia, of which some account has been given
in the fourth chapter of the Part of a former treatise of
mine above referred to ; but the shapes of the vocal as well
as consonantal elements of this writing manifestly point
out their Grecian parentage ; while the employment among
them of distinct characters for the open and close 0, as also

532 INVENTION OF VOWEL-SIGNS [Chap. VI.

for the open and closed, shows the use of this method to have
commenced less than four centuries and a half before the birth
of our Lord. Several of the Asiatic systems of Shemitic writ-
ing, are older than either of the alphabets just considered ; yet
in all probability, as we have already seen, they were not, any
of them, vocalized till a much later period, namely, till after
the age of Alexander the Great. To every one of those sys-
tems the very same method of vocalization, by means of matres
lectionis, as has been detected in the alphabetic species of cu-
neiform writing, is common ; and, therefore, each of them must
likewise owe its set of vowel-letters to observation of the Gre-
cian alphabet. But Avhether the matres lectionis were a second
time derived immediately from this source, — the same results
following from the same causes, — or the Shemitic set of those
letters were obtained from the cuneiform set, and so but medi-
ately from their Grecian model, can no longer be determined.
Neither can it now be ascertained in which of the Asiatic kinds
of Shemitic writing this very imperfect mode of vocalization
began ;a but in whichever of them it commenced, it seems to
have been thence successively communicated to all the rest
through mere passive imitation.

The oldest traces of vocal designation in African writing
are to be found in the hieroglyphs diverted from their original
ideagraphic use to a secondary phonetic one in the cartouches
exhibiting the names of the Egyptian kings beginning with
Amasis, who reigned about the middle of the sixth century

• When first I directed my attention to the above point, I was disposed
to think it probable (and expressed an opinion to that effect in the sixth
chapter of the second Part of my former work), that the use of the matres
lectionis commenced with the Jews; because there is a smaller proportion of
those letters in the ancient Hebrew than in any other kind of Shemitic writ-
ing with which I was then acquainted. But Phoenician inscriptions, since
inspected by me, having removed the ground of this opinion, I now admit it
to be very unlikely that the people here referred to were the foremost of the
Shemitic cations of Asia to adopt an improvement derived from a Pagan
source.

Chap. VI.] DUE TO GRECIAN SAGACITY. 533

before the commencement of the Christian era. That the vo-
cal as well as the consonantal application of the hieroglyphic
characters referred to was derived from the alphabetic system
of the Greeks, and that, too, not earlier than at the period just
specified, has been proved in the first Part of my former work
by a great variety of arguments grounded on both internal
and external evidence, of which I shall here merely observe,
that, as far as I can learn, they have not yet been answered,
though twenty-one years have elapsed since they were submit-
ted to the judgment of the public. The next oldest system
of African vocalization is presented to us in the Coptic alpha-
bet, which did not come into use till the Egyptians were con-
verted to Christianity, about the second century of our era.
But all the vowels of this alphabet (and, indeed, all the con-
sonants, except a few at the bottom of the series) are obviously
of Grecian descent. The last of the ancient African methods
of vocalization I have to notice is that displayed in the Ethi-
opic syllabary, the elements of which are proved by their
names as well as by their syllabic powers to be of Shemitic
origin ; while the Grecian parentage of the vocal parts of the
same powers is just as plainly evinced by the number and ar-
rangement of those parts. The modifier of this system who
reduced it to its present state appears to have attained to a
clearer conception than the introducer of the matres lectionis
into the alphabets of the same Shemitic class in Asia did, of the
diversities of vocal sounds, and yet to have made less progress
towards the disengaging of consonantal from syllabic powers.
The people who employ this syllabary, namely, the Abyssinians,
could not, from the situation of their country, have had any
intercourse with the Greeks till after Egypt came under the
dominion of the Ptolemies ; and it does not appear that they
ever were so completely subjugated by that race of sovereigns
as to be compelled in consequence to acquire a familiarity with
the Grecian system of writing. Hence the probability arises
that the vocalization of their syllabary which indicates their
attainment of this familiarity was not effected, till they were

534 NATURE OF PROCESS THROUGH WHICH [Chap. VI.

converted to Christianity by Frumentius, who was consecrated
Bishop of Axum in the year of our era 335. Upon both the
origin of this vocalization and the limit here affixed to its age,
I find my views supported by Gesenius in the following pas-
sage of his treatise : — "Ceterum quod verba [Scripturae Aethi-
opicae] divisa sunt binisque punctis distincta, quod litterae
more Graecorum a laeva ad dextram currunt, denique quod
consonis vocales affixae sunt ad graecarum vocalium exemplar
conformatae, id postConstantini demum tempore aGraecisrepe-
titum esse videtur." — Scripturae Linguaeque Phoen. Mon., p. 85.

In fine, with regard to the Asiatic alphabets of lesser anti-
quity, they can, all of them, even to the remotest extremities of
Asia, be shown to be derived either from the Syriac or the San-
scrit system, or from both. But the vocalization of Asiatico-
Shemitic writing, and consequently of Syriac, which is a pro-
minent species thereof, we have above seen brought home to a
Grecian origin ; while, in the sixth chapter of the second Part
of my former work, that of the Sanscrit alphabet has, through
the intermediate series of vocal designations belonging to the
Ethiopic syllabary, been traced to the very same origin. •

To turn our attention next to the process by which the
Greeks arrived at the use of vowel-signs — the vast improvement
thereby introduced into the alphabet they received from the
Phoenicians they must evidently have attained to, through some
mode or other of decomposing the syllabic powers of its ele-
ments into vowels, and articulations not soundable by them-
selves, but sounded by means of the vowels, and denoted by
signs which were in consequence termed con-sonants. In the
conducting of this operation to a successful result, no assistance,
I have already remarked, was afforded by the separate consi-
deration of the several values of the syllabic power of any of
the Shemitic letters; for, each of those values having been
denoted by only one letter, the singleness of the sign was not
at all calculated to suggest the composite nature of the thing
signified. But a joint view of such of them compared toge-
ther as belonged to any one and the same syllabic power,

Chap. VI.] THIS INVENTION WAS ARRIVED AT. 535

served in a most striking manner to point out their composition,
and there was a property of the system itself which naturally
led an observer to make this comparison ; — a circumstance
which, I may here by the way remark, shows it to have been
all along intended by our beneficent Creator, that man should
advance from the ruder to a more perfect employment of the
alphabet originally granted to him ; the requisite aid for which
purpose having been supplied, he was afterwards left to avail
himself thereof through the exertion of his natural talents.
The feature of the primitive alphabet I allude to, as aifording
this aid, consisted in the application of each letter to denot-
ing a set of syllabic sounds, all of which began with the same
articulation, — a property which was obviously fitted to induce
the mind to notice what was common to those sounds ; namely,
their consonantal modification, after the separation of which
from the entire sounds there remained only the vowels with
which the utterance of that common consonant had been pre-
viously blended. But, striking as this property was, it not-
withstanding failed to arrest observation, till the primitive
system came under the penetrating glance of the ancient Greeks.
This ingenious people, or rather some individual among them,
having been taught to read specimens of his own language
written after the Shemitic fashion, and therein finding the
syllabic sound DA, for instance, in one of his words, to be
denoted by a certain character, and the sound DE, in another
word, to be expressed likewise by this character ; also the seve-
ral sounds DI, DO, DU, to be in like manner signified, all of
them in common, by the very same letter, — he was in conse-
quence led to compare together those sounds, in order to detect
what was that common part which warranted the application
to them of a common sign ; and having through this investi-
gation discovered their constituent ingredients, he was enabled
to represent them far more distinctly than before, by convert-
ing the previous syllabic sign into a consonant, and adding
thereto, for the expression of the remaining part of each syl-
labic sound a second letter, which of course was different for the

536 Ni f URE OF PROCESS THROUGH WHICH [Chap.VI.

different vowels belonging to this set of sounds. I do not
mean to assert that Delta or Daleili (for the original name,
phi, might be read in either way) was of necessity the letter
on which he first operated in this manner, or that he at first
extended the operation to all his vowels. He may possibly
have begun with some other letter, as for example, with Lambda
or Lamed (in either of which ways the original name ID?,
might be read, and as the Greek way is the older, it is more
likely to be the correct one), and with only two or three of
his vowels. Thus, for instance, if it had struck him that the
three articulate sounds LA, LE, LO, or even any two of them,
were denoted by one and the same Phoenician letter, this ob-
servation would have naturally led him to decompose the
compared sounds in the manner above described ; and he might
afterwards have extended the same operation, by analogy, to
the other letters of this alphabet, and the other vowels of his
language. But through some such analysis he unquestion-
ably must have decomposed his syllabic sounds ; for, to a cer-
tainty, he got from the Phoenicians no more than a syllabary,
and he transmitted to us this syllabary improved into a system
of consonants and vowels.

But the superior sagacity of the ancient Greek is evinced
not only by his having been the first, or rather the only one
who detected the composite nature of syllabic sounds (for
others arrived at the alphabetic improvements resulting from
the decomposition of those sounds only through imitation), but
also by the more accurate use he made of this discovery.1'

■ Though, for the sake of simplifying my explanation, I speak of the Gre-
cian and subsequent Shemitic improvements of the primitive Hebrew alpha-
bet, as effected respectively by single scribes, yet I do not mean thereby to
deny the possibility of each set of alterations having been accomplished by a
number of persons, working either at the same time or in succession.

In the ensuing discussion the shapes of the first Greek and contemporary
Phoenician letters of corresponding names and places are assumed to have been
the same; — a view of the subject which is warranted by historic evidence,
more especially that of Herodotus, recorded in chapters 58-61 of his fifth

Chap. VI.] THIS INVENTION WAS ARRIVED AT. 537

Here it will suffice to bring into the field of view, along with
his set of vowel-letters, on the one side, the three matres lec-
tionis that were common to all the Asiatico-Shemitic deriva-
tives of the original Hebrew system, and, on the other, the
seven variations of shape of the syllabic letters of the Africano-
Shemitic derivative of the same system, whereby the at first
single series of those letters was distributed into seven columns.
The latter of these Shemitic modes of vocalization, though it
shoAved a better conception of the varieties of vowels than the
former, was far inferior to the Grecian method ; since it failed
to disengage the consonantal powers from syllabic sounds, be-
sides that it imposed upon readers the necessity of committing
to memory 182 characters, instead of only 26 consonants and
7 vowel-letters. The former method was also very inferior to
the Grecian one, not only from the deficiency in the number
of the matres lectionis, but also from their ambiguity. For,
while the ancient Greek confined his vowel-letters to the sole
expression of vowels, the Asiatico-Shemitic writer, in order to
avoid the introduction of new letters, which might have be-

book, and may in a great measure be verified by actual observation, or by in-
ference thence fairly drawn. For, in some instances, the compared charac-
ters are found to be, in their oldest extant states, exactly identical; and, in
others, they approach the nearer to identity in proportion as they are got
older. In Nos. 7, 8, and 9 of Plate II. are given, from the drawings annexed
to the treatise of Gesenius, copies of the oldest extant Hebrew, Phoenician,
and Greek forms of letters that will presently come under consideration,
namely, of Haleph, Halpha, or Alpha, — of He, He, or E psilon, — and of Waw,
Vaw, or Digamma. The identity of the second set of characters is actually
complete, the only difference between the Greek and the two Shemitic ones
being, that they are turned opposite ways, on account of the different direc-
tions of the kinds of writing in which they occur. The resemblance is least
in the third set; but even in these the identity of the Phoenician and Greek
characters is prevented only by the want of a second cross-line in the former
letter ; and that such a line has dropped therefrom is rendered highly pro-
bable by a comparison of the first character of this set with its modern shape,
which serves to show that a line of this description has been obliterated from
the Hebrew letter, and, therefore, it may be easily conceived to have been like-
wise effaced from the Phoenician one.

538 NATURE OF PROCESS THROUGH WHICH [Chap.VI.

trayed the novel or the foreign origin of this part of his alpha-
bet, applied three of his old letters, which had thenceforward
become consonants, to the secondary designation of his vowels.
The evils of this arrangement are illustrated by the uncer-
tainty it has produced with regard to the true sounds of
names of rare occurrence in the Hebrew text of the Bible.
The ancient Greek, indeed, also applied some of the old Phoe-
nician letters to the designation of vowels ; but he avoided
employing the same letters as consonants, and in consequence
selected for the purpose only those whose consonantal powers
he had no occasion for, in expressing the sounds of his own
lanfma^e. As to the vowels / and U, he was enabled to
arrive at them not only through the mode of decomposition
more generally applicable which has been already described,
but also by means of the particular species of this operation
which is called diaeresis, and is confined to the case of syllables
commencing with Y and W powers, which are in fact but
semi-consonantal, and have a close affinity with the specified
vowels. But he had no use for the Y power, and, therefore,
transferred to the vowel /the name and the place (viz. the
tenth) of the letter to which that power, on the reduction of
syllabic to consonantal values, had belonged ; only altering
the sound of the name T (which, when signifying a letter,
might be read YoD or YoDa) by diaeresis into Lota. The W
power, on the contrary, he continued for some time to employ,
and in consequence left to it, 1st, the name 11, WoW (which
was afterwards changed, sometimes to Vau, but more com-
monly to Digamma) ;a 2ndly, the shape of the Phoenician

' Though the power of the Digamma was in the main identical with that
of the Shemitic Waiv, it included in addition some aspiration, in consequence
of which it might be represented by Wh; so that, when the power of the She-
mitic letter was changed from W to F, that of the Greek element was altered
from Wh to Vh or F. With the former power the letter in question passed,
before the extinction of its use in Greek writing, into the Roman system;
wherein it has all along preserved the F shape, but now conveys the altered
Vh power of the ancient Digamma. As to the Grecian name of this letter,

Chap. VI.] THIS INVENTION WAS ARRIVED AT. 539

letter referred toa but altered in its direction (F) ; and, 3rdly,
its place, viz. the sixth in the alphabet. But as he derived
from the same IF power the vowel U, he gave this additional
element of his system, 1st, a new name (to wit, the sound of
this vowel with the epithet yjnXov, expressive of 'closeness'
subjoined, to distinguish it from the open U, which he denoted
by a combination of two vowel-letters) ; 2ndly, a new charac-
ter (Y) ; and, 3rdly, a new place, viz. that next after the last
letter of the Shemitic alphabet. He had no motive for con-
cealing the novelty of the introduced element, as it was ob-
viously his own invention, no vowel-letter existing at the
time in any other system ; and by distinguishing it in name,
shape, and place, from its fellow-derivative, he avoided all
risk of confusion between them. The remaining vowels, A, E,
and 0, he connected with the old syllabic powers of the pri-
mitive alphabet through the more general mode of decompo-
sition above described, after which operation the names of
two of the three Shemitic aspirates Haleph, He, and Hayin,
which he discarded from his system (he at first retained for
some time the use of Heth as an aspirate), served to point out
which of them he should select for the designation of the first
two of those vowels. Thus the initial syllable of the name
Haleph or Halpha (viz. Ha, which is one of the series of values
of the old syllabic power of this aspirate), after he had rejected

— At'^afi/ua (a designation derived from its shape (f), which has some resem-
blance to one Gamma (T) placed on another) was applied to it only when
used as a phonetic sign, which employment of it in Greek writing has long
ago ceased. The other name, Bat), was given to the character when viewed
either as a phonetic or numeric figure; but for its latter use, which is still
continued, it is denominated ewi'aijfiov Bad (to distinguish it as a mere cipher
or a sign of the number 6), and is written r, — a shape which appears to be
derived from 1 turned the opposite way, only somewhat further altered from
that character through the mistake of the printers confounding it with the
Greek contraction of the combination of letters s and t.

a See the second and third characters in Plate II. No. 9- The probability
of their original identity of shape has been shown in the note preceding the
last one.

540 NATURE OF PROCESS THROUGH WHICH [Chap.VI.

the consonantal part of its composition, gave him the vowel
A, as that to which he should assign, 1st, the above name
without the initial aspiration ; 2ndly, the shape of the Phoe-
nician letter referred to ;a and, 3rdly, its place at the head of
the alphabet. In like manner, the name He, which is itself
one of the series of values constituting the old syllabic power
of the second of the above aspirates, pointed out to him, after
its decomposition, the vowel E as that to which he should as-
sign, 1st, this name without its aspiration (to wit, the sound of
this vowel, to which was subjoined the epithet yjnXov, expres-
sive of ' closeness,' at a later period, when a sign for the open
E was added to the system) ; 2ndly, the shape of the Phoeni-
cian letter referred to ;b and, 3rdly, its place, the fifth, in the
alphabet. But he could not in the like way connect the vowel
0 with the name Hayin ; because by similarly operating on
this name, he would only arrive a second time at the vowel
A.c He must, therefore, quite independently of the names
of the aspirates or gutturals, through some mental analysis or
methodical arrangement (such as has been already described)
of the syllabic sounds of his language, have found that he had
one more vowel to designate, to which he in consequence as-
signed the remaining guttural he had to spare, appropriating
to it, 1st, the old Shemitic character for that guttural (a little
circle or oval), and, 2ndly, the place thereof, the sixteenth in
the alphabet ; but changing the old name, which had no con-
nexion whatever with the vowel in question, into an entirely

8 See the second and third characters in Plate II. No. 7.

b See the second and third characters in Plate II. No. 8.

c According to the Polish pronunciation of Hebrew, or the Western pro-
nunciation of Syriac, the name )^V (HaYtN) would be read IIoYi'N, and conse-
quently, if treated in the manner above described, would conduct to the vowel
0. But according to the same mode of reading, the name F)bH is sounded
IIoLaPh, so would likewise yield 0. By this peculiar pronunciation, there-
fore, the ancient Greek could not increase the number of vowels connected
with his system through the prescribed analysis, but would merely change
tin iii from A and /'.' t<> 0 and E.

Chap. VI.] THIS INVENTION WAS ARRIVED AT. 541

new one, consisting merely of the sound of this vowel, to which
at a subsequent period the epithet (xiKpov, expressive of ' close-
ness,' was added, after the introduction of a second letter for
the same general sound, which rendered it necessary to dis-
tinguish between them by the qualities of ' open' and ' close.'

On the other hand, whether the introducer of the matres
lectionis into Shemitic writing took them without any altera-
tion of their phonetic significations from the cuneiform alpha-
bet, or derived them in the same manner as the framer of that
alphabet had done, immediately from the Grecian one, he ar-
rived at his conception of their vocalic office, and of the con-
sonantal part of the powers of the original elements of his
system, by no independent exertion of thought or analytic
process of comparing and thereby decomposing the syllabic
values of those elements, but merely through very imperfect
observation of a foreign method of designation ; for, other-
wise, he surely must have detected more vowels than three
connected with the syllabic sounds of his language, and con-
sequently have perceived the want of a greater number than
that of letters to denote them. The inaptitude, indeed, of the
Asiatico-Shemitic nations to avail themselves of the full im-
provement which vowel-signs were calculated to produce in
their several syllabic systems, is rendered evident, not only
by their adopting all of them in common, no more than three
out of the seven signs of this kind which they might have ob-
tained through mere observation, but also by the very sparing
use they at first made of even that small number, by the slow-
ness with which they extended that use, and by the great
length of time that elapsed after they had become acquainted
with the Greek mode of writing before they admitted any signs
of this nature into their respective systems ; as may be clearly
ascertained with regard to such of those systems as yield a
sufficient supply of extant ancient specimens to enable an in-
vestigator to inquire into those points respecting them.

As the Grecian origin, whether immediate or remote, of the
vocalic use of the Shemitic matres lectionis was less exposed

542 WHY THE CREDIT OF THIS INVENTION [Chap. VI.

to view in the case of the Tod and Waw than in that of the
Haleph, this circumstance accounts for the preference at first
given to such use of the two former letters. The like employ-
ment of the Haleph seems to have been in the beginning con-
fined solely to the assistance it afforded in expressing the sounds
of Grecian proper names. Thus national vanity appears to
have formerly interfered with a freer insertion of the vocal
Haleph in other Shemitic writings ; but in the Hebrew record
the Jewish priests were impelled to a sparing use of it by an ad-
ditional motive of a far stronger nature, namely, their anxiety
to avoid as much as possible whatever might lead to the de-
tection of the adventitious nature therein of the matres lec-
tionis, — an exposure which would have divested their mis-
readings of the original elements of the sacred text of all
authority. In after times, when the foreign origin of the
Shemitic matres lectionis was totally lost sight of, the use of
Haleph as a vowel-sign gradually increased to such an extent
in every kind of Shemitic writing employed in Asia, that its
phonetic value is at present represented in the modern Arabic
and Persian grammars solely by the vowel A. In the case of
the cuneiform alphabet no preference was given to any of its
matres lectionis above the rest, but all of them were after a
short interval abandoned for the less ambiguous but still very
defective set of three letters applied solely to the designation
of vowels. The quick transition to the latter set of vocal-
signs accords with the circumstance already noticed respecting
this alphabet, that it was forced upon the Persian public by
the absolute authority of Darius, the son of Hystaspes ; in con-
sequence of which its variation depended not on the slow pro-
gress of national tastes and opinions, but on the judgment of
a single individual,— the able man and powerful monarch
under whose auspices it was brought into use.

It may appear strange that the Greeks, though a vain, os-
tentatious people, yet never laid claim to the credit of having
invented the use of vowel-signs. But we should recollect t hat
grammar was not formed into a regular art, nor did men

Chap. VI.] WAS NOT CLAIMED BY THE GREEKS. 543

begin to speculate upon the subject of letters till about a thou-
sand years after they had been introduced into Greece ;a by
which time all the particulars respecting the alterations effected
in the Phoenician alphabet to adapt it to the Grecian language
were entirely forgotten. It was not till then that the gram-
marians, who undertook to treat de omni scibili, pretended to
give exact accounts, as well of the number of letters imported
by Cadmus, as of the time when, the persons by whom, and
the manner in which additions were made to that number ; —
accounts, however, which were varied by different authors, and
whose fallacy is proved not only by their mutual contradic-
tions, but also by an immediate comparison of the Greek and
Phoenician alphabets in the oldest extant states of their respec-
tive elements, which serves to show that the letters of the pri-
mitive system were introduced into Greece all of them at
the same time. So far I am supported by Gesenius, as may be
seen in the following extract from his Treatise : — " Quo tempore
et a quo litterae Phoeniciae ad Graecos delatae sint, qua de re
apud ipsos veteres variae erant sive traditiones, sive doctorum
hominum opiniones, nobis nunc quidem disputare non vacat,
unumque probasse sufficiat, id a Phoenicibus factum esse,neque
vero sensim pedetentimque primum sedecim, dein reliquas
litteras,'sed omnes alphabeti orientalis litteras simul ex Phoe-
nicia esse allatas, postea aliis ex Graecorum ingenio auctas." —
Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monum., p. 65. In no respect,
indeed, except with regard to the statement of letters having
been first brought to Greece by the Phoenicians, are the ac-
counts transmitted to us concerning this subject to be depended
on ; and some of them betray their fallacy upon the slightest
consideration : as, for instance, that of Palamedes having in-

a In fixing the length of time above specified, the computation of Sir
Isaac Newton is followed, which represents Cadmus as contemporary to King
David. According to the vulgar system of chronology, he lived in the same
age as Joshua, — a view of the subject which would leave no interval for the
gradual spreading of the use of letters from the Jews to the Phoenicians.

2 r

544 WHY THE CREDIT, Etc. [Chap. VI.

vented the letters 6, H, 4>, X, at the siege of Troy, — where,
in the midst of battles, he was of course at leisure to pursue
such investigations quite at his ease, — and of his having been
led to this discovery by observing the flight of cranes, — which
has, no doubt, a mighty great resemblance to those characters,
whether they be viewed separately or collectively. For the
refutation of this story it is scarcely requisite to observe, that
the first of the specified letters belonged to the Phoenician al-
phabet, and, therefore, could not have been an addition made
thereto by any Greek. Thus, while the grammarians resorted
to the silliest fables with a view to extol the services performed
by their countrymen in the improvement of the primitive
alphabet, they passed over in total silence the invention of
vowel-letters, which is really due to the sagacity of the Greeks,
and reflects the most brilliant lustre on the genius of that
people. Of the value of this invention one can scarcely speak
too highly : it is, in fact, the primary foundation of the vast
superiority of European over Asiatic learning ; and its effects
upon the general progress of human information are analogous
to those splendid results to which good methods of notation
lane conducted in the particular department of mathematical
investigations. Against this representation of the matter, the
following objection may, perhaps, be urged. The Arabic
plan of vocalization is the same very clumsy and imperfect
one that belongs, in common, to every other kind of Shemitic
writing now or formerly employed in Asia ; and yet, were not
the Arabians, during the middle ages, the great revivers of
Learning ? All this I admit to be true ; but still, it should be
observed, they earned the credit here given to them only by
translating the works of Greek authors, and never raised the
standard of erudition above the level at which those authors
had Left it. When Science sprung forward from that level, to
take a higher flight, it was through the instrumentality of no
other than European writing that she ascended to her present
elevated position.

APPENDIX

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS.

1. INDICATIONS OF UNFAIR DESIGN WHICH THE FIRST VOCALIZATION
OF THE SACRED TEXT BETRAYS — 2. THE CHRISTIANS UTTERLY
IGNORANT OF HEBREW DURING BY FAR THE GREATER PART OF THE
SECOND CENTURY — 3- INVESTIGATION OF THE DATE OF THE FIRST

VOCALIZATION OF THE HEBREW TEXT 4. OF THE SPURIOUS GREEK

VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT THAT WERE WRITTEN, MOST OF
THEM, IN THE SECOND CENTURY — 5. A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE CON-
DUCT OF THE JEWISH RULERS DURING THE SECOND CENTURY, AND
A FEW OF THOSE NEXT ENSUING — 6- OF THE PESHITAH, OR FIRST

SYRIAC VERSION — 7. OF THE SAMARITAN TEXT AND VERSION 8. OF

THE CHALDEE VERSIONS, STRICTLY SO CALLED, THAT IS, THE OLDER

TARGUMS 9. VALUE OF THE PRESENT DISCOVERY ILLUSTRATED

BY ONE MORE EXAMPLE.

THE following chapter is but an imperfect substitute for a
volume I had intended to write upon points omitted or
not sufficiently discussed in the course of the treatise just
ended. I regret this alteration of my plan, and can only
plead in excuse the fast increasing infirmities of age, which
warn me not to miss the present opportunity — the last, per-
haps, that may be afforded me — of submitting to public in-
spection a few additional remarks. For, however incomplete
some of them may be, still, if they in any degree contribute to
the elucidation of my subject, it is better to put them forward
even in an unfinished state, than altogether suppress them.

1. In the second chapter I have sufficiently exposed the
artifice with which the earlier set of vocalizers contrived to
assail the accuracy of the Septuagint, by altering the vowel-
sounds of names of rare occurrence in Scripture, — sounds
which had been, before that version was written, but imper-

2 r 2

546 APPENDIX.

fectly preserved, and which could, in consequence, with the less
risk of detection, be tampered with. But it was chiefly by
unfair management of the matres lectionis in the parts of the
Hebrew text outside the groups denoting proper names, that
those scribes endeavoured to lower the credit of the same ver-
sion. The assaults so conducted may be distinguished into
two classes. In the first class the employment of the letters
in question for the above purpose was extremely rash, and
constituted a more immediate attack on Christianity itself;
where the party referred to were tempted by the virulence of
their prejudices — in the case of passages of the Old Testament
supporting such of the Christian tenets as they most detested
— to resort to the desperate expedient of misvocalizing sen-
tences in opposition, not only to the authority, which they did
not admit, of the Septuagint, though backed by that of the
inspired writers of the New Testament, but also to even
the very bearing of the context. An example of this sort has
been already examined in my analysis of the original state of
a prophecy of Amos, of which a group denoting ' mankind'
is transformed, by a wrong insertion of a mater lectionis, into
the proper name ' Edom ;' where, however, the effort to avoid
the violation of the context, thus produced, has occasioned the
necessity of introducing additional corruptions affecting origi-
nal elements of the sacred writing. Another example more
strictly agreeing with the above description of the class, inas-
much as it betrays a misuse of solely a mater lectionis, is sup-
plied through the fraudulent treatment of the remarkable pro-
phecy of King David in the sixteenth Psalm, — ' Thou Avilt not
leave my soul in Hades [the receptacle of the dead], neither wilt
thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption,7 — a prophecy
which is recorded in 'the Acts of the Apostles' to have been
appealed to by both St, Peter and St. Paul, as pointing to the
resurrection of our Lord and the shortness of the time that his
body would he allowed to remain in the grave. To overturn
this interpretation (which exactly agrees with the rendering
given in the Septnagint) of the original passage, the first voca-

APPENDIX. 547

lizers altered in the Hebrew text "pD!"!, KhaSiD'Ka, ' thy Holy
One,' into "f TDH, KhaSIDEKa, ' thy holy ones ;' in which state
the combination of the noun and its affix remains to this day,
in the unpointed text, with the meaning of the prophet-}'
thereby entirely changed. In the insertion, indeed, of the
first Yod they were perfectly justified ; as it excludes the
principal ingredient of the compound from a reading which
conveys an abstract sense, KheSeD, ' sanctity,' and confines it to
one that yields a concrete meaning, KhaSID, ' saint,' in accord-
ance with the demands of the context.8 But, that the second
Yod is incorrectly introduced is conceded even by the Maso-
rets, or later set of vocalizers, whose labours did not commence
till long after the secret of the earlier vocalization had been
wholly lost among even the best informed of the Jews, and the
disputes of their forefathers with the Christians on the passage
before us had become quite forgotten ; and who, in conse-
quence, having been here left to their unbiassed judgment,
stigmatized this Yod with their circular mark of censure ; and,
although they did not venture to erase it, yet pointed the
penultimate syllable of the group as if it had been thence
removed ; whereby they virtually acknowledged it to be a
spurious interpolation.15

Hebrew grammarians, indeed, have attempted to evade the
foregoing admission, by styling the Yod in the site referred to
an otiant, or useless letter ; and undoubtedly it is deprived of

a Of course the above renderings are only for one meaning of KheSeD,
which might equally be used to signify 'mercy,' or 'benevolence;' while, for
these latter meanings, the corresponding concrete, KhaSiD, should be trans-
lated ' merciful,' or 'benevolent.' From such variations in the signification
of words no language is exempt, in either its written or oral state.

b While the retention of the Yod in the site above specified strongly marks
the editorial honesty of the Masorets, gross ignorance is at the same time be-
trayed on their part by this mode of dealing with it; for, had they been aware
of the controversy which the priests of their nation sustained in former times
by means of the letter so placed, they could hardly have denied its significance
in this site without actually becoming Christians.

548 APPENDIX

all significance by the Masoretic treatment of it and of the
syllable in which it occurs. But, before this mode of prevent-
ing its ill effects was adopted, it was much worse than merely
useless, and was even positively injurious, by exhibiting the
noun it follows in a wrong number : it could not, therefore,
have been inserted by the inspired authors of the Hebrew
Bible, who, it is now on all sides agreed, did not make use of
the Masoretic marks. The act, then, of calling this Yod an
4 otiant' is, in reality, an acknowledgment that it is an inter-
polated letter, constituting no part of the writing of the origi-
nal record. Instances, however, of this sort could not be very
numerous ; because, if they were, they must almost inevitably
have led to the detection of the vocalization of the sacred text
with matres lectionis, as soon as that text was brought by
Origen, in the course of the third century, under the inspec-
tion of the Christians. But there is a much larger fund of
other instances, in which the first vocalizers can be shown to
have endeavoured in a very insidious manner to bring the
Septuagint into disrepute, and to have thereby attempted in-
directly to weaken the force of its testimony in reference to
the former class of passages, whose true signification they were
extremely anxious to get rid of. I shall now proceed to give
a brief illustration of this, their principal and by far most
artful mode of trying to undermine the authority of that ver-
sion.

Where a sentence of the Hebrew text, considered at first
without its vowel-letters, admits of being read in more ways
than one consistently with the context, those letters will in
general be found inserted so as to convey the right meaning,
indeed, but still in a form different from that in which it is
expressed in the Septuagint ; — a contrivance which evidently
tended to give that work the appearance of a very loose,
though not absolutely erroneous translation, as soon as the
Christians came to have an opportunity of comparing it with
the vocalized text, which was imposed upon them, as if ex-
actly in the state in which it was written by its inspired au-

APPENDIX. 549

thors. Thus the last group of the sixth verse of the third
chapter of Genesis, /^"l, admitted of being read, before the
text was vocalized, either WaYyoHKaL, ' and he did eat,' or
WaYyoHKeLw, ' and they did eat ;' but, after the text was vo-
calized, it could have been read and construed in the latter
way only by means of a Waw added at the end of it to express
the vowel U ; and it was actually confined to the former read-
ing and signification by leaving it without this addition. Now
this group might be taken in either sense consistently with the
circumstances of the narrative ; though the latter will perhaps,
upon consideration, be found more strictly conformable to
them : for it appears more likely that the woman did not wait
to finish her repast in solitude, but first brought of the fruit a
portion to her husband, and then continued to eat along with
him. But, however that may be, the group in question ad-
mits of either of the above readings without any violation of
the context ; and the vocalizers took advantage of this ambi-
guity'1 to change what had been the received reading of it up
to their time, as indicated by its old Greek translation teal
etyayov, ' and they did eat ;' so dealing with it as that it should
thenceforward be confined to the reading which signifies, ' and
he did eat.' I do not maintain that this trick has been prac-
tised in every instance in which it might, — such constancy
could hardly be expected in the course of an operation which
betrays the plainest marks of precipitation, — but still it has
been adhered to with a degree of uniformity quite sufficient
to prove design ; so that it now reacts upon the work at large
of its contrivers, and, instead of lowering, as they intended it
should, the credit of the Septuagint, actually assists to establish
the spuriousness of the matres lectionis in the mind of every
reader competent to make the inquiry, who will take the
trouble of comparing this version and the original record in

■ The ambiguity above noticed exists only in form, not in substance.
For, as soon as Adam tasted of the fruit, whether he only ate after his wife
or in company with her, it could be stated that the// did eat.

550 APPENDIX.

its present state, with a view to ascertaining the reality of the
Btratagem here pointed out. The passages, indeed, that belong
to the class first described furnish a more prominent proof of
interpolation ; and it serves strongly to mark the providential
interference of the Almighty for the protection of his ^Yord,
that it should have been placed, during the darkness of the
mediaeval ages, in the custody of a succession of scribes who
carried their fidelity of transcription to such an extreme length
as to retain, in those passages, letters virtually acknowledged
by themselves to have been wrongly inserted therein. This
superstitious degree of scrupulousness, which no other series
of copyists, as far as I can find, ever showed, and which it is
wonderful how any set of men could have been induced to
observe, was evidently calculated to lead, sooner or later, to
the discovery now unfolded, by preserving the passages in
question in the very condition in which they were left by the
first vocalizers, with all the inconsistencies which precipitation
occasioned, — inconsistencies which certainly cannot be as-
cribed to the inspired authors of the books of the Old Testa-
ment. The same remark, indeed, applies generally to the
entire vocalization of the sacred text, but more especially to
the parts of it above referred to, which most conspicuously be-
tray design. But, with regard to the class of passages at pre- .
sent under consideration, the evidence of fraud, though not
so obvious, is more convincing in one respect ; namely, the
greater amount of materials by which the justness of my re-
presentation of its existence and tendency can be tested. Many
of the differences of style or form of expression to be noticed in
the course of this part of the investigation are, no doubt, trivial
in themselves, but by no means so in reference to the point to
which attention is now directed : and the great artfulness of
the contrivance here brought to light lies in this circumstance,
that in general its unfairness cannot be detected by the se-
parate comparison of any one of the vocalized words or sen-
tences in question with its Greek rendering in the Septuagint,
bul only by making a large number of these comparisons, and

APPENDIX. 551

so arriving at the drift of the vocalization of the Hebrew por-
tion of the compared expressions. It will thus be seen that
a use of the matres lectionis, which is fair in the meaning it
attaches to a word or sentence, is yet frequently very unfair
in the motive which led to its selection.

Sometimes, however, the consideration of even a single
sentence of the vocalized text, viewed in connexion with its
oldest Greek rendering, is sufficient to expose the design of the
vocalizers : namely, when that sentence, as originally written,
contains several ambiguous groups. Let us, for instance, com-
pare the following Hebrew verse (Gen. xli. 14), interpreted
according to its primary vocalization, with the corresponding-
verse of the Septuagint, literally translated : —

*f?m °rbw «mn p imm ; pp^ na *npn ,nin3 rhun

\ntnD bx XT') imbnv o

' Then Pharahoh sent, and called Yoseph; and one brought him with speed
[literally, made him run] from the dungeon, and shaved him, and changed
his garments; and he came unto Pharahoh.'

A7roaTel\a? he <Papa<o, cuaXecre top Iwaycp' teal ej-qyayov avrou
a7ro tov o^fpw/xaTo?, teal i^vpyaau aUTOJ/, kul <>/AAa£ai/ Tt)v
OTo\i}v avrou' ical y\6e npos <$>apaw.

'ButPharao, having sent messengers, called Ioseph; and they brought him
away from the dungeon, and shaved him, and changed his garment; and
he came unto Pharao.'

The three verbs in the middle clause of the Hebrew verse,
together with the affixes of two of them, and the noun after

a In my representation of the above Hebrew verse, the first circular mark
of something wrong is put over a blank space immediately after the verb
nbn'O, where the Seventy, by the word uvtov subjoined to their rendering of
that verb, attest that the pronominal affix !7 originally stood. The second
little circle has a reference merely to orthography, and is intended to point
out that, as the Shin, over which it is placed, is uttered as a Samek, it ought
likewise to be so written, to indicate which a Samek is inserted in the oppo-
site part of the margin.

552 APPENDIX.

the third, accompanied also by its affix, were written, before
the text was vocalized, or the second verb lost its affix, as fol-
lows : —

Each of these groups admitted of being read and construed in
t \v< > different ways ; and, consequently, the four viewed togc-
ther furnish us with sixteen different sets of readings and sio-.
nifications.8 Of these, however, it will be necessary here to
consider only two sets : first, that in which the specified
groups, taken in the order in which they have just been
placed, are read, WaYePu'SuH?/, 'and they made him run;'
WaYeGaLleKhiiUu, ' and they shaved him ;' WaYeKhaLlePhw, ' and
the)r changed ;' SiMLaThoH, ' his garment ;' and secondly, that
in which, adhering to the same arrangement, we read them,
WaYeRiSeHw, ' and one made him run ;' WaYeGaLleKheHw, ' and
one shaved him ;' WaYeKhaLlePh, ' and one [or he, that is, Yo-
seph] changed ;' SiMLoTheHw, ' his garments.' But from the
Greek translation of the verse it will be seen that the Seventy
Jews chose the first of these sets of readings, construing the
three verbs in the plural number (with a natural and obvious
reference to the messengers impliedly mentioned in the first
clause), and the noun in the singular ; while, on the other
hand, the old vocalizers adopted the second set, wherein the
very opposite selection is made, as to the grammatic numbers
in which the leading words are respectively inflected, and the
original of each word is limited to its selected number, by the

The above number would be increased to thirty-two, if the second group
could be read, in addition to the ways specified in my text (as it might without
violating the context), WaYeGwLktKh, 'and he was shaved,' or WaYiThGaLlcKh,
'and he shaved himself;' but both those renderings must be rejected, as
directly at variance with the fact attested by the Seventy, that originally this
group had an affix subjoined to it. Moreover the latter reading is liable to
the additional objection, that it requires the insertion of a Taw between the
Yod and Gimel of the original group, for which alteration no ancient autho-
rity whatever has been discovered.

APPENDIX. 553

manner in which those scribes dealt with it. For, since the
time of the insertion of matres lectionis in the sacred text, the
omission of a Waw immediately after each verb, whether fol-
lowed by an affix or not, has confined all three, as far as de-
pends on their vocalization by means of letters, to the singular
number ; while, at the same time, the Yod interposed between
the noun and its affix has restricted it to the plural. Now,
even if the principal ingredient of each of the four groups
could be put with equal propriety in either number, it still
would afford some reason for suspecting design on the part of
the vocalizers to see them choose, out of sixteen sets of read-
ings, that one precisely in which the four ingredients in ques-
tion are exhibited in the opposite numbers to those in which
their Greek renderings show they were respectively read by
the Seventy. But when we find this series adopted at the
sacrifice of all distinctness with regard to the performers of the
action denoted by the three verbs, or at any rate by the first
two of them, — for which verbs the preceding part of the pas-
sage supplies no notice, expressed or implied, of any single
agents to whom they could, when taken in the singular num-
ber, be separately referred ; — the suspicion that would arise in
the former state of the case is, in the present one, changed
almost unavoidably into certainty. It is quite inconceivable
that the vocalizers should, without any necessity for so doing,
represent the inspired author of Genesis as employing the
above verbs in such a forced, indefinite manner, unless they
were strongly influenced by some unfair motive ; and that
motive could be no other than an eager desire to disparage
the accuracy of the Septuagint ; as may be clearly perceived
from the effect of the selection of readings to which it has in
this instance conducted : namely, four apparent discrepancies
between that version and its original, within the range of only
a small portion of a single verse.

Although the two modes which have been now compared
of reading the examined clause differ rather in form than in
substance, so as virtually to yield very nearly the same mean-

554 APPENDIX.

ing, yet the expression of that meaning is far plainer and more
natural in the former mode. Hence the Masorets — among
whom the secret of the vocalization of the Hebrew text with
matrcs lectionis, as well as of the motives which influenced
the inserters of these letters, was not preserved — being left
to their own unbiassed judgment upon the subject, freely
condemned the treatment by earlier scribes of the first verb
in this clause ; as they pointed it for the plural number, by
supplying through their Qibbus the want of a Waw at its ter-
mination ;a and no doubt they would have applied the same
correction to the second verb also, which just equally stands
in need of it, if they had not been prevented by the defective
nature of their vocalic notation, which does not regularly
admit the insertion of this mark at the very end of a group,
nor consequently at the end of the second verb, which lost its
affix before their time. Thus they were precluded from the
requisite correction of the latter group by a limitation to the
employment of the Qibbus, which has no solid ground to rest
on ; since the number in which a verb should be taken is evi-
dently quite independent of the circumstance whether it be
followed, or not, by an affix.

The framers of the present and three preceding Authorized
English Versions of the Hebrew Bible availed themselves with
perfect propriety of the above described correction of the first
of the analyzed groups ; whereby they in fact concurred with
the Masorets in unconsciously bearing testimony to the unfair-
ness of the attack made by the earlier set of vocalizers on the

° The above correction serves to illustrate my position, that originally a I le-
brew verb, written in the third person of the preterite, admitted of being read
in either the singular or plural number, according to the demands of the con-
text. For therein an instance is presented to us of a verb which, without
any alteration of its letters, was read in different numbers by the two sets of
vocalizers, even after a restriction had been placed upon its number by the
earlier set; and of course it was & fortiori open to the ancient reader, before
any such restriction was introduced, to take this inflexion in whichever num-
ber he conceived the circumstances of the case to require.

APPENDIX. 555

rendering of the verb of this group in the plural number by
the Seventy Jews. But all the four sets of English translators
read the verb belonging to the second group in the singular,
and yet endeavoured to avoid the vagueness of construction
connected with that reading by, I must say, a very unwar-
rantable expedient : namely, by attaching to this verb a re-
ciprocal sense, as if it were written in the Hithpahel form f —
a way of translating it which requires an alteration to be in-
troduced into the body of the Hebrew word with respect to,
not a mater lectionis, but an original element, Taw, which,
notwithstanding, has not been found in it in this site in, I be-
lieve, any extant copy of the sacred text, and certainly not in
any of the numerous copies that were collected by Kennicott
and De Rossi. Nor did the editors of subsequent editions of the
last Authorized Version remedy the evil of the extraordinary
liberty thus taken with the original, by exhibiting in Italics
the pronoun ' himself,' which constitutes part of the translation
in question ; but have only altered the nature of the misre-
presentation resorted to ; which is thereby made to bear on
the structure of the language, and calculated to give an
English reader the notion, that a Hebrew verb, not in a re-
flective form, might still acquire a reflective modification of
its sense, by being combined with some Hebrew word for

' himself,' not even written, but only understood after it ; a

mode of conveying the force of a verb reciprocal which has no
existence in the sacred language. In fine, with regard to the
fourth group, the noun therein contained may be read in either
number, as far as depends upon the general meaning of the sen-

a The second, third, and last Authorized English Versions, namely, those
called respectively Cranmer's, Parker's, and King James's, all give the same
translation of the group in question, — "and he shaved himself;" while the
first Authorized Version, that is, Coverdale's, combines a reciprocal form
with the passive voice in the rendering of this group, — "and he let himself
be shaven ;" to which no alteration whatever of the Hebrew verb therein
contained could make the entire group exactly correspond.

556 APPENDIX.

tence ; but is limited to the singular number by the authority
i )f the Seventy Jews, which is of far more weight than that of
the old vocalizers, as they lived between three and four hun-
dred years nearer to the time of the recorded transaction.

According to the remarks upon this example which have
now been submitted to the judgment of the reader, the four
groups referred to should, in an amended edition of the sacred
text, be exhibited as follows : —

and the English rendering of the entire verse would stand
thus : —

' Then Pharahoh sent messengers to call Yoseph ; and they

"brought him with speed from the dungeon, and shaved n Heb — made him
hhim, and changed his garment ; and he came unto Pha- h gept
rahoh.'

It would be superfluous to pursue this subject any further,
as the learned reader may easily detect abundance of examples
to the like effect in almost every page of the sacred record. I
do not, however, promise him, nor do I wish to be considered
as asserting, that he will very often find either design so mani-
festly exposed by means of single examples, or the reading-
indicated by the Hebrew vocalization of a passage of the text
so inferior to that suggested by the oldest Greek translation of
the same passage, as in the case of the sentence just analyzed.

2. Vowel-letters are shown to have been employed in the
text of the Hebrew Bible in the time of Jerome by his obser-
vations respecting them ;a and there was no opportunity for

■ The following passage in the writings of Jerome, which has been fre-
quently appealed to for the purpose of showing that the Masoretic points
were not applied to the sacred text till after his time, as well as for that of
illustrating the disadvantage resulting from their absence in the case of pro-
per names, — serves also to attest the presence of the matres lectionis in that
text as early as the age in which he lived: — "Nee refert, utrum Salem an
Salim nominator, cum vocalibus in medio litteris perraro utantur Ilebrcci, etpro
voluntate lectorum, ac varietate regionum, eadem verba diversis sonis atquc

APPENDIX. 557

their secret insertion between the age in which he lived and
that of Origen, this text having been during the entire inter-
val subject to Christian inspection. They must, therefore,
have existed therein at any rate as far back as the days of the
earlier of those Fathers of the Church, that is, as far back as
the beginning of the third century. On the other hand, several
passages of the Old Testament which are quoted in the New,
with meanings quite irreconcilable with those attached to
them in the vocalized text, prove beyond a doubt that the let-
ters in question were not in that text at the dates when the
Gospels and other compositions of the inspired followers of
our Lord were written ; nor could they have been subse-
quently introduced without detection, till after the early
Christians had lost the protection from fraud afforded by
living instructors gifted with inspiration, which lasted, at all
events, to the end of the first century.a The matres lectionis,
consequently, must have been interpolated in the Hebrew text
at some period or other in the course of the second century ;
and the tendency of the passages thereby perverted indicates
very clearly the party by whom they were inserted.

accentibus proferantur." — Hieronymi Opera, Ed0. Benedict, torn. ii. col. 574.
But, as Jerome mistook for vowel-letters some elements of the Hebrew alpha-
bet which are not of this nature, it may be right to add, as a more unques-
tionable proof to the same effect, that matres lectionis are actually included
among the collections of letters with which he occasionally describes words
of the Hebrew text to be written. Thus, in a letter to Pope Damasus, in-
serted in the second volume of the Benedictine edition of his works, while
commenting on a word in Exod. xiii. 18, which he pronounces amusim, and
interprets munitos, he states respecting it, — ' quod his litteris scribitur, heth,
mem, sin, iod, mem.' Hence it is evident that the mater lectionis Yod, which
at present is found in this word [DTODn, BaMuShIM], was there as far back
at any rate as the period when he flourished.

a Eusebius, in the twenty- third chapter of the third book of his " Eccle-
siastical History," cites the testimonies of Irenams and Clement of Alexan-
dria, to prove that St. John lived till the time of Trajan. But the reign of
this emperor commenced less than three years before the termination of the
first century.

558 APPENDIX.

In objection to the charge thus brought home to the Jewish
priesthood, of having corrupted the original text of their Scrip-
tures, it is in vain asked, when had they an opportunity for
the secret commission of this crime ? Even if no such time
could be pointed out, that circumstance would not disprove
the fact already established against them, but merely leave it
in part unexplained, — a degree of imperfection which obscures
human knowledge with regard to many other facts also, of
whose reality there yet exists not the slightest doubt. As the
case stands, however, the proposed objection can be easily an-
swered. It is on all sides admitted that, during the whole of
the second century, or at any rate during by far the greater
portion of it, namely, that which remained after the death of
the last of the inspired Christians, the ancient Hebrew tongue
was known solely to the priests of the Jews and the agents in
their employment. a They consequently had full opportunity
for secretly making the interpolations alluded to in the course
of the specified century, that is, during the very interval in
which it has been just proved to a certainty, by the internal
evidence of the case, that those interpolations were actually
made. A few exceptions, indeed, are attempted to be drawn
to the state of gross ignorance of the subject in question which
is acknowledged to have prevailed generally among the Chris-
tions of that period. But not only may it be shown that no
valid grounds are adduced for those exceptions ; but also po-
sitive proofs can be given of this ignorance having been ex-
t< -in Led to the individuals of their creed who then were most
distinguished for ability and learning.

First, then, — to enter upon the negative branch of this dis-
cussion,— I must deny to the Nazarenes and Ebionites the cre-

a Under the general head of the Jewish priesthood is, in the above point
of view, included that of the Samaritans, though but an illegitimate branch of
the order. In no other instance, perhaps, could the two sets of men be
found to have ever agreed; but in this one they were united by a common
interest.

APPENDIX. 559

dit of that knowledge of ancient Hebrew which has been in-
considerately attributed to them. For, surely, those Judaizing
sects of the second century cannot be supposed to have known
more of the sacred language than did the Jews of the same
period. But, during that century (and, indeed, for nearly
the four next ensuing, as will under a subsequent head be
shown), the great body of the Jewish laity were acquainted
solely with Greek ; and the comparatively small portion of
their number that still continued to make use of a Shemitic
tongue understood not the original language of the Bible, but
only a very corrupt dialect sprung from it and Chaldee. The
individuals, indeed, of the above-mentioned or other sects, who
within the interval referred to composed Greek versions, to
supplant the Septuagint, must have attained to some acquaint-
ance with pure Hebrew ; but writing, as they did, in the in-
terest of the priests and scribes of the Jews, they come not
within the range of cases here to be examined ; nor can any
information secretly communicated to them, through means
voluntarily furnished by the sacerdotal class, be considered as
an obstruction to the plans and contrivances of their instruc-
tors. With the exception of the extant remains of their ver-
sions, no work, or fragment of a work, as far as I can find, of
any Christian writer of the second century has reached our
times, which affords the slightest indication of its author hav-
ing understood pure Hebrew, or even of his having ever seen
a copy of the Hebrew Bible. Nor does historic evidence tell
more in favour of either advantage having been enjoyed by the
orthodox Christians of that century. The only extant eccle-
siastical history which was written near the early times to
which it relates, namely, that of Eusebius, occasionally alludes,
indeed, to Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, as translators
of the original Scriptures of the Old Testament ; but these
were proselytes or Judaizing heretics who obviously acted
under Jewish influence. Amid the great number of other
writers of the period referred to, of whom this work presents
some account, it does not give reason to suppose that any one

2q

560 APPENDIX.

of them was acquainted with the ancient Hebrew tongue, or
ever had access to a copy of the Hebrew text. The author's
silence on these points is the more expressive, because he is
loud in the praises of Origen for having succeeded in the at-
tainment of both aids to the study of Scripture, soon after the
commencement of the third century ; whence it is evident that
if he had heard of either acquisition having been made in the
previous century by any Christian not belonging to a Judaiz-
inn; sect, he would have recorded the circumstance ; and it is
not at all likely that such an achievement could have been
effected so near his own time without his having heard of it.
The passage of his writings which has been just alluded to may
be rendered as follows : — " So great a spirit of inquiry, with
the most perfect degree of extreme accuracy, into the word of
God was infused into Origen, that he even learned completely
the Hebrew tongue, and obtained for his own private property
a copy of the Scriptures that are in the hands of the Jews, in
the original letters themselves of Hebrew writings, &c."a Other
feats of Origen are also mentioned in the same place ; but
these two are put forward in the foreground as supplying the
strongest proofs of his extraordinary zeal and ability, as well
as the chief grounds for astonishment at what he accom-
plished.

Two other passages of the historic work of Eusebius should
be here noticed. The first relates to Clement of Rome, and
runs to the following effect : — " Whereas Paul had addressed
a homily in writing to the Hebrews in the language of their
forefathers, some say that the Evangelist Luke, and others that
this very Clement, translated the written composition [into
Greek]. "b Whether there be truth or not in the first part of

Toffod-nj < « i m ,'/■■/< in Tip 'Qpifivei rwv Oei'tvv Xo^wv airyKpifJuifUvrj c^eraai^.
wk kui njv 'Efipafoa yXiorrav h/cfiaQeiv' -rds- re vupa t<hs 'loveaiois ip,<f>epopAva.9,
TrptOTOTviron avrois 'Eftpaiwv tnoixeion yptxpas, K-rijp.a !'Zioi> iroiyoaaOat' — Eu-
sebii Hist. Eccles., lib. vi. cap. If!.

! 'Efipaiois 7«/j '< i.) 7,/v ir'tnpi'ov 7\i.'t7^ iy<ypa<j)u)$ uifuXrjKOTOi -ov Uavkov

APPENDIX. 561

this statement combined with either of the reports thereon
founded, one of them serves at any rate to show that, in the
age in which Eusebius wrote, or in the earlier portion of the
fourth century, the opinion prevailed among many, that Cle-
ment of Rome understood the language of the Jews as spoken
by them before their Babylonian captivity. But the circum-
stance of our author's alluding to this opinion is in no respect
at variance with my representation of his silence as to a know-
ledge of pure Hebrew having been enjoyed by any orthodox
Christian of the second century : for he attests in the same
History (lib. hi. cap. 34) the death of this Father of the Church
to have taken place in the third year of the reign of the Em-
peror Trajan, that is, in the last year of the previous century.
The second passage relates to Hegesippus, an ecclesiastical
writer who came to Rome about the year of our era 160, and
might be supposed at first blush to intimate that he understood
the sacred language ; it runs thus : — " Pie also adduces some
things from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Syriac
record, and especially from the Hebrew dialect, thereby show-
ing himself to have become a believer from having been origi-
nally one of the Hebrews."a But a little consideration will
suffice to render it evident that the dialect here mentioned
could not be the ancient language of the Jews : for, surely, it
was not by skill in a tongue that had long become unknown
to the nation at large, but by familiarity with a dialect at the
time spoken by a portion of his countrymen, that the Jewish
origin of Hegesippus could have been indicated. That Euse-
bius meant to distinguish the corrupt Hebrew he here alludes
to, from the pure original language of the Bible to which he
applies the same epithet ('E/fyu'A-) in the sentence quoted from

oi fiev -rov eva^^/eXiOTyjv AovicaV oi be. rov K\i')p,ev7a toutov civjov, ep/iujvetKrai

\e<*jovoi T)jv <~{pa<pi)v. — Eusebii Hist. Eccles., lib. iii. cap. 38.

a "Etc re too icaO' 'EPpatovs eva^fyeXt'ov ical too 'S.vpiaicou, kcii icc'u)<s ck t^9
'Efipa'l'cos SiaXeieTov nvu n'Oijocv, eu<fiatvwv eg 'Efipui'wi' eavrov ireiriaTevicevat.
— Eusebii Hist. Eccles., lib. iv. cap. 22.

2 Q 2

562 APPENDIX.

him in the preceding paragraph, by calling the later subject
of this epithet a dialect (ha'AeA-ro?), and the earlier one a
tongue (yXwrry), might, I conceive, be maintained with some
degree of probability ; but at all events the context makes it
perfectly clear that, in the place before us, he speaks only of
the mongrel offspring of Hebrew and Chaldee which at the
time referred to was vernacular to such of the Jews as had not
passed over to the use of Greek as their native language. The
very same expression (t?/ 'Eftpdthi 8mAeVr«;) is employed in
this sense by St, Luke also, in Acts, xxi. 40, and xxii. 2, and
is in like manner proved by the context to be there so used.
For, when the Jerusalem populace kept silence, on hearing
St. Paul speak ' in the Hebrew dialect,' it was obviously be-
cause they found him to address them in words which they
understood.

From the mass of individuals to whom the result of the
foregoing observations is applicable, one has been incidentally
noticed in modern times as excepted, whose exclusion from
the general class is entitled to attention on account of the ex-
cluder's learning. It occurs in a part of the writings of Mi-
chaelis (John David), where, arguing from the Shemitic style
of the language of the New Testament against the possibility
of its having been forged by any of the Christian fathers in the
second or third century, on account of their total ignorance of
Hebrew, he excepts three authors from this state of ignorance,
one of whom nourished about the middle of the second cen-
tury. "... had the Fathers," he observes, " of those ages been
inclined to impose, they were mostly devoid of the means ;
since those who are ignorant of Hebrew and Syriac could
hardly introduce Hebraisms and Syriasms into their writings,

if the New Testament be a forgery, the Christians of

the second and third centuries must be supposed capable of an
imitation which cannot be distinguished from an original. On
the contrary, the language of the early Fathers, though not
always the purest classic Greek, has no resemblance to that of
the New Testament, not excepting the works of the few who

APPENDIX. 563

had a knowledge of the Hebrew, Origenes, Epiphanius, or
Justin Martyr, from whom, as a native of Palestine, it might
with some reason be expected."3 Before discussing the sound-
ness of the last of the exceptions made in this extract, I take
the present opportunity of noticing, by the way, a fallacy in
its main drift which is also to be found in the reasoning of the
late Archdeacon Paley on the same point, and was expressed
by him in very nearly the same words.b It is quite true that
the Fathers of the Church in the second and third centuries
were unable to write in the style employed in the New Testa-
ment ; but their inability to do so was not at all occasioned
by their ignorance of pure Hebrew, as was imagined by the
able modern authors to whom I here allude. Upon a due con-
sideration of the subject, it will, I think, be found that, when
a man writes in a foreign tongue, his deviations from the cus-
tomary forms of expression used in that tongue are not caused
by a knowledge of any dead language, but by an inability to
keep clear of the peculiarities of his native dialect. The He-
braisms, therefore, of the Greek Testament are not to be ac-
counted for by the circumstance of its authors having under-
stood the ancient Hebrew, but by the influence upon their style
of the idioms of their mother- tongue, which were just of the
same description as those to be met in pure Hebrew, and un-
distinguishable therefrom, as soon as the corresponding phrases
of each kind are translated into Greek.c Upon the same ground
also it will be seen, that the Asiatic Christians of the second
and third centuries were precluded from the employment of a
similar idiomatic style, not by their ignorance of the ancient

a Introduction to the New Testament by Michaelis (Marsh's translation),
vol. I. part i., chap. ii. sect. 10.

b Evidences of Christianity, part i., chap. ix. sect. 2.

c The idioms to be found in the Hebrew of the Bible, or the earlier He-
brew,— in the Hebrew of the Targums, or the later Hebrew, — and in the
Syriac — are all of the same general nature; and, when they are in common
transferred to one and the same foreign language, whereby they are divested

564 APPENDIX.

J [ebrew, but by the spread of Greek during tbose centuries in
western Asia, whereby it gradually took the place of several
of the various Shemitic dialects there previously spoken, and
so became for some centuries to a large portion of each of the
different nations inhabiting that extensive region, no longer a
foreign, but their native dialect. Hence it may be inferred
that, if a Grecian treatise were extant of any Asiatic Christian
of the period referred to, who then still continued to use a
Shemitic dialect as his mother-tongue, it would display a greater
or less share of Hebraisms, in proportion as the author's fami-
liarity with the dialect he employed more or less exceeded his
familiarity with Greek. It accords with this conclusion that,
in the passage last cited from Eusebius, he states that Hegesip-
pus is shown to have been originally a Jew, not only by two
other criteria which need not here be repeated, but also by
that of his " adducing some things from the Hebrew dialect,"
that is, if I understand the expression rightly, ' by infusing
into his Greek some phrases borrowed from the later Hebrew :'
and this explanation of the words in question, which yields
the only intelligible meaning I can assign to them, is sustained
by the few fragments of his work transmitted by Eusebius,
which exhibit some of the very idioms employed by the Evan-
gelists and Apostles, though not as thickly interspersed through
his writings as through theirs.

To return now to my subject, and examine the bearing
upon it of the passage above quoted from Marsh's translation
of Michaelis, in which it is asserted that a knowledge of Hebrew
might be expected in Justin Martyr, because he was a native
of Palestine. In making this assertion the German author
appears to have quite overlooked the difference between the

of much of their separate peculiarities, as well as of the differences produced
by the variations of roots and inflexions of roots in cognate dialects, they
come out entirely, or at any rate very nearly, identical. As far, then, as con-
cerns the argument above examined, there is no occasion for distinguishing
between the idioms of the earlier and the later Hebrew, or between the He-
brew and the Syriac idioms.

APPENDIX. 565

original language of the Old Testament and the corrupt dia-
lects of it, which came into use after the Babylonian Captivity.
For, the reason here assigned by him has no validity whatever,
except on the supposition of Hebrew having been known in the
age of Justin among a considerable portion of the natives of
Palestine, — a supposition which, whether it be true or not, with
regard to any of the dialects in question, is at all events utterly
unfounded in reference to the parent tongue, or that one to
which alone the present inquiry relates. Nor is the adduced
reason in the least strengthened by circumscribing the place of
this Martyr's birth within narrower bounds, as, for instance,
within the part of Palestine occupied in his time by the Sama-
ritans,— a people from whom he is thought by some to have
been descended. By this limitation of his country the propor-
tion of its natives who then continued to speak a Shemitic
dialect might possibly come out greater than when it was
deemed coextensive with the entire region of Phoenicia, and
so the likelihood might be increased of his having known such
a dialect ; but the improbability of his having been acquainted
with the original tongue would remain just as great as before.
Whether he understood Samaritan, or not, can now no longer
be determined to a certainty ; but idiomatic expressions thence
borrowed do not pervade his writings ; and consequently it is
certain that he was not more familiar with that dialect than
with Greek. Still, let us for a moment suppose that he was
perfect master of Samaritan, and yet it would not thence fol-
low that he had any knowledge of pure Hebrew. For, surely,
the Samaritans of his day must have been at any rate as igno-
rant of the sacred language as the Jews themselves then were :
even the bare circumstance of their employing a Samaritan
version of the Pentateuch is sufficient to establish the igno-
rance in question against them ; as they would have had no
occasion for this version if they could have read the original
record, or have understood it when read to them by their
priests. It is, however, unnecessary to dwell longer on the

566 APPENDIX.

fallacious nature of the ground upon which a knowledge of the
i friginal language of the Old Testament has been attributed to
Justin Martyr ; as more direct evidence of his utter deficiency
in this respect still remains to be adduced.

In the second place, positive proofs of the total ignorance
of the text of the Hebrew Bible, under which the Christian
writers of the second century laboured, may be derived from
such of their productions as have reached our times with any
bearing upon this point. Through want, however, of time and
room, I am precluded from submitting to the reader's judg-
ment a full illustration of this subject, and must confine my-
self to briefly noticing some passages in the writings of two of
the most remarkable men of that century, — one of them, the
very individual whose right to the credit of Hebrew learning
has been shown in the preceding paragraph not to have been
hitherto by any means established ; and the other, Clement of
Alexandria. From the works of the former author I select for
consideration the account he has transmitted to us of his con-
troversial dialogue with Trypho the Jew, as affording more
than a mere negative proof of his ignorance of the Old Testa-
ment in its original language. For not only does he, in the
case of disputed points that could scarcely be decided without
an appeal to the Hebrew text, fail to make this appeal, but
also shows, by his manner of expressing himself on those occa-
sions, that such a mode of treating the subject was quite be-
yond his reach. Thus, when he had, in sect. 66 of the above-
mentioned dialogue, repeated the remarkable prophecy, Isaiah,
vii. 14, according to the form in which it is rendered in the
Septuagint, — ' Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and
bear a son,' — and Trypho, in sect. 67, contended that this pro-
] >heey related not to a virgin (TTapOevos), but to a young woman
( vcavi^) ; surely, the most natural way of deciding the ques-
tion at issue, and that which obviously must have first occurred
to any one acquainted with the sacred text, would have been
to search therein for the original term referred to, viz., HD1^,

APPENDIX. 567

HaLM«H,a which, as far as depends upon its etymology, D1^,
' to conceal,' denotes ' a female concealed from public view,'
and so, in conformity to eastern customs, more appropriately
' a virgin' than ' a young woman.' I grant, however, that while
this term is restricted to the former sense in Gen. xxiv. 43, it
admits of being rendered in the latter in one or two other
passages of Scripture ; in order, therefore, to fix its meaning
in the place before us, the consideration of it by itself is not
sufficient, and we must further look to the way in which it is
affected by the context. But the words immediately preced-
ing announce a miracle, and there would evidently be nothing
miraculous in the case, if it was predicted merely of a young
woman (and not of one after pregnancy still remaining a vir-
gin) that she should bring forth a son. Our author, however,
instead of resorting to any reasoning of this kind, comes out
at last in sect. 71 — after fencing with the question and using
the Socratic method of disputation respecting it for some, time,
— with an observation, — the only one, as appears to me, that
he makes directly to the point, — of which the following is a

a In support of the above remark, it may be observed that Jerome, in dis-
cussing the meaning of the same passage, refers directly to the original of the
term in dispute; and, while he admits that original not to be the appropriate
Hebrew for ' a virgin,' but a word which is, in general, of more extensive
signification ("virgo Hebraice Bethula appellatur, qua? in praesenti loco
non scribitur ; sed pro hoc verbo positum est Alma, quod praater lxx. omnes
adolescentidam transtulerunt." — Hieron. Opera, Ed°. Benedict., torn. iii. col.
70), he gives an instance from Genesis of this word being confined by the
context to the designation of a virgin (" Et in Genesi legimus ubi Rebecca
dicitur Alma''' — Ibid.), and he very justly decides that it is also limited by
the context to this sense in the place under discussion (" Quando autem di-
citur : Dalit Dominns ipse vobis signum, novum debet esse atque mirabile. Sin
autem juvencula vel puella, ut Judan volunt, et non virgo pariat, quale sig-
num poterit apellari?" — Ibid.). Here I have to add, by the way, that if
Jerome, though greatly fettered in his judgment by Jewish teachers, did not-
withstanding come to a right decision on this subject, every unprejudiced
reader of Hebrew who does not lie under the same disadvantage may a for-
tiori be expected to do so.

568 APPENDIX.

literal translation : — " But I disbelieve your teachers who are
not agreed that the icritings by the Seventy seniors, who were
with Ptolemy that was King of Egyptians, afford a correct in-
terpretation ; but attempt themselves to interpret.'"1 When
tli is general remark of our author is applied to the particular
passage under discussion, we find that his defence of the
rendering given of it in the Septuagint rests merely on his
belief, and not upon the knowledge which a reference to the
original text would have supplied ; so that he here virtually
admits his ignorance of that text.

In like manner, his antagonist, as described by him, betrays
the very same ignorance. . Thus, when Justin Martyr had, in
sections 72 and 73, charged the teachers of the Jews with
1 laving made certain erasures from Scripture, that is, from- the
Septuagint,1' the natural mode of tr}dng the justness of this
charge would evidently have been, to see whether there existed
in the original text any Hebrew for the words or sentences
stated to have been erased ; but, instead of a defence founded
on such an investigation, the following is the only one pre-
sented to us : — " And Trypho replied, whether, indeed, the
teachers of the people have, as you assert, expunged something

a AXV ov^i Tots otSaff/caXots v^iwu ireiOopiai, firj ovvTedeifievoi<s Ka\u)9 eg)/-
'/ilrjOai ra vtto twv 7rapu Hto\6/ih/w tu3 Airjv7rTi'wu ^/evo/nevw fiaaiXci t/Bco/ni'j-
KovTa 7rpeaftvJtpwv a\\' avroi i^ijf/ecaOai weipwTai. — Justini Martjjris Opera,
Ed°. Benedict., p. 169. We have here an allusion — perhaps the oldest extant
— to the first efforts of the Jewish priesthood to supplant the Septuagint, by
means of oral translation, or of a Greek version founded thereon; which
would appear to have been written by their scribes in order to effect this ob-
ject, before recourse was had for the same purpose to any of the other spu-
rious versions of the second century.

\'>y (he Scriptures (a* ^pnfjxu) Justin Martyr means everywhere the
Septuagint, the only form of them with which he appears to have been ac-
quainted. This is admitted by the learned framers of the Benedictine edition
of his works in the instance of the passage above noticed ; as may be seen from
the following remark, at the bottom of the page of that edition from which
the sentence contained in my last note is extracted: — " Cum his qui contex-
tum Ilebraicum manibus Juda;orum violatum fuisse volunt, non faeit Justi-

APPENDIX. 569

from the Scriptures, God alone is able to know ; but such a
charge is like an incredibility."8 An express confession could
hardly have proved with greater force Trypho's ignorance of
the Hebrew text than the admission of it implied in this obser-
vation : and yet he is styled by Eusebius ' the most distin-
guished of the Hebrews [that is, of the Hebrew laity] of his
day.'b In fact, none of the Jews, except the priests and their
immediate agents, had then the slightest knowledge of their
Bible in its original language.

To conclude this critique, it is to be observed that most of
Justin Martyr's charges of erasure, made by him against the
Jews in the sections last specified, were unfounded, and can,
in consequence, be brought forward as positive proofs of his
ignorance of the ancient Hebrew. Let us, for instance, turn
to the commencement of the tenth verse of the ninety-sixth
(numbered by him ninety-fifth) Psalm, which, according to
his mode of reading it, runs to this effect : ' Say among the
heathen, The Lord reigneth/rora off the cross.' Whether the
words introduced by him [utto tov %i>\ov], corresponding to
those here printed in Italics, constituted at first a marginal

mis, quem luce clarius est (ut Simonius, Hist. Crit., lib. 2, cap. 18, et
Martianaaus noster, in Defens. text. Hebr., p. 168, observarunt), de sola in-
terpretatione Septuaginta interpretum contendere, nihil prorsus de Hebraico
contextu cogitare." But, while I agree with those learned editors in the
position here maintained by them to be perfectly evident, I totally dissent
from the use made of it in this annotation. They derive an argument for the
genuine state of the Hebrew text, in the time of Justin Martyr, from the
fact of his making no reference to it (and consequently no attack upon it),
combined with the tacit assumption that he was perfectly acquainted there-
with ; whereas the fair inference from this fact is, that he was totally igno-
rant of that text.

a Kal o Tprj(pwv, el fieu, ws e(j)rps, etVe, Trapc^pa'^rav Tt tnrb twv ^paCpuv c.i
apXOVTes tov \aoo, Geo? crjvajai iTrioTuaOai' airlo~rw £e eoiice to toioutov. —

Just. Mart. Opera, Ed0. Benedict., p. 171.

h Kul Cid\o"joi> ce w/jos 'lovtiai'oi? (tw/to^c, ov eiri t7j<s 'E0cff<a>i> woXews
7rpo9 Tpvrfxvva Twv ToVf 'Efipa/wv Giria^poia-rov TTevoltjTai. — Euscb. Hist. Ke-
cks., lib. iv. cap. 18.

570 APPENDIX.

note which was afterwards, through the fault of some tran-
scriber, shifted to the body of the Psalm, or through whatever
other means they came to be therein placed in the copies of
the Septuagint to which he had access, there cannot be any
doubt but that they are an erroneous interpolation ; as will
at once be perceived by a reference to the original text. Our
author, therefore, was quite mistaken, not only in adopting the
words in question as a genuine portion of the above-mentioned
Psalm, but also in thence charging the Jewish priests with the
crime of expunging them from Scripture ; and this example
affords a negative proof of ignorance of the Hebrew Bible
against Trypho, as well as a positive one to the same effect
against Justin Martyr. One of the disputants did not make,
in this instance, the reference which a knowledge of the origi-
nal text would have obviously suggested ; and the other did
commit here a twofold mistake, from each part of which the
same knowledge, had he possessed it, would have saved him.
It is unnecessary to go through such of the other examples as
bear the same way in the sections referred to, both negatively
against Trypho's, and positively against Justin Martyr's ac-
quaintance with the Hebrew text.

But the strongest evidence of ignorance of Scriptural
Hebrew, on the part of the Christians of the second century,
is that afforded by the writings of Clement of Alexandria, who
was pre-eminently the most learned Father of the Church in
that century, in like manner as his pupil, Origen, was among
those who flourished during the following one. Now, as he
takes upon him, occasionally, in those writings, to give the
correct pronunciation and strict meaning of Hebrew words,
this practice of his suggests a ready mode of testing his know-
ledge of the sacred language ; for the more obvious the true
sound or sense of a word may be, the more forcibly and clearly
does his ignorance of it in either respect bear upon the point
under inquiry. The two following examples, then, selected
from a large number, will be quite sufficient for my purpose.
I commence wit]) his pronunciation and interpretation of "Em,

APPENDIX. 571

the Greek transcription by the Seventy seniors of [mn, HeWaH,
' life'] the proper name of the first female of the human race.
After strangely identifying the sound of this name with Evdv,
an exclamation of Bacchanals crowned with wreaths of ser-
pents (in consequence of which he tacitly assumes that the
notion of a serpent is included in its meaning), he next con-
founds it with Ema [Win, HeWYaH], the Chaldee for a < a ser-
pent/ and through the combination of those two steps inter-
prets it to signify ' a female serpent' ! The original passage,
omitting an irrelevant part of his description of the votaries of
Bacchus, may be translated literally as follows : — " The raging

Bacchus do Bacchanals in orgies celebrate, crowned

with serpents, uttering with shouts Eu-an, — namely, that Eu-a
by whom sin was introduced, which death accompanied.11 But
the serpent is consecrated a sign of Bacchanalian orgies. Im-
mediately hence, therefore, according to the accurate significa-
tion of the word in question of the Hebrews, the name Eu-i-a,
pronounced with a rough breathing of its initial element [i. e.
Heu-i-a] is interpreted a serpent, viz., the female one."b Al-
though the eloquence of Clement would, perhaps, appear to
better advantage if this passage were quoted in full, yet the
weakness of the reasoning employed in it is rendered more
evident by the naked state in which it is here presented to
view, divested of part of its ornament. On the unsoundness,
however, of his argument, I need not dwell, as the falsehood
of the conclusion to which it led him with respect to the mean-

a Something has evidently dropped from the above place, which I have
ventured to supply from the account of the transaction referred to which is
given in the Bible. As there can be no doubt to what the author here points,
his argument is not affected by making the reference to that subject more
explicit.

b kiovvaov fiatvoXrjv opyid^ovoi BaKX01 iveorefifievofroin b(j)caiv,

eTToXoAt'g'o^Tc? Evdv Evdv eiceivrjv, £i' yi> y 7r\durj Trapy-

KoKovOyae. Kal aypelov opiytwv /So/r^t/aDi', o'0ts earl TeTe\e<r«c'i'os. Ain/ica
'•jovv Kind T?yi^ cikptfiTj twv 'Efipaiwv (pwvijv, to Ewa caovvopcvuv, ipinji'Lvnut

o0<v >/ OrjXcia. — Clementis Alexandrini Opera, Ed". Potteri, p. 11.

572 APPENDIX.

ing of Eve's name is too obvious to require any proof. It only
then remains that I should take some further notice of the
very gross mistakes committed by him with regard to the pro-
nunciation of this word, with a view to bringing more promi-
nently under observation an inference which may be thence
deduced. First, in consequence of the above proper name
being written by our author in the accusative case with the
same combination of Greek letters [Euai/J as the Bacchanalian
cry alluded to, he rashly assumed them to be pronounced in
the same way ; although this combination conveys for the
former meaning the trisyllabic sound He-u-an, and for the
latter the dissyllabic one, Eu-an. He, indeed, attempted to
remove part of the difference by reducing the former sound to
two syllables ; but, instead of making this reduction by joining
the second vowel with the syllable commencing with the third,
to produce the sound wan (which would have been expressed
in the Greek writing of his day by a Digamma before the
letters Alpha and Nun), he did so by combining it with the
first, to form the dipthong eu, and so pronounced the entire
word Eu-an, — an error into which he could not by any possi-
bility have fallen if he had known how this name was exhi-
bited in the original writing of the Bible. From his con-
founding, then, sounds so different, as well as from the manner
in which he endeavoured to lessen their difference, it is plain
that he was unacquainted with the proper name in question
as recorded in the Hebrew text, and, consequently, that he
had not read that text even as far as the third chapter of Ge-
nesis. But, by the second step of his reasoning (in which he
arrived at a sound more correct, indeed, in the particular of
commencing with an aspiration, but yet, upon the whole, still
further from the true one), we are conducted to precisely the
same result, though not with the same degree of certainty as
before. For he could not connect the sought name with Evia,
through the circumstance of this group's yielding the sound of
a Six 'initio term fur a serpent, unless the word so represented
had that signification in the ancient Hebrew. From his adopt-

APPENDIX. 573

ing this connexion, therefore, it would appear that he assumed
Evia to denote the sound of the term for a serpent, employed
in the account to which he alludes of the interview of that
reptile with Eve, as given in the original text : whereas the
term actually used with this sense in the place referred to is
quite a different one ; nor is that whose sound he expressed
found to occur in any sense whatever in the extant remains of
the ancient Hebrew, but only in a corrupt dialect of it spoken
in later times. From both steps of his exposition, then, it fol-
lows (though, I admit, more strongly from the first), that he
was quite ignorant of the part of the sacred text which con-
tains the third chapter of Genesis. But had Clement been
restricted by a Jewish teacher to learning a single chapter of
the Hebrew Bible, this is in all likelihood the very one he would
have pitched upon, from the natural desire of a scrutinizing
mind to examine the account of the Fall of man as conveyed in
the original record. As, then, he certainly was not instructed
in this portion of the sacred text, it is utterly improbable that
he ever learned to read even a single line of that text.

For my second example I choose one which betrays our
author's ignorance of the Hebrew dialect spoken in his own
time, just as well as of the original tongue ; namely, his expla-
nation of Hosannah \$2 H^^IH, HOShlHaH NoH, 'save pray,'
— Ps. cxviii. 25, — contracted into the single Avord frOJ^in
HOShaHNaH], an ejaculation common to the earlier and later
stages of this language, to which he expressly assigns the fol-
lowing signification : — " Light and glory and praise with sup-
plication to the Lord/'1 Assuredly the Jewish instructor of
Clement must have laughed heartily in his sleeve when he
succeeded in imposing on this erudite scholar — by far the most

a <£>W9 Kal toga Kal alvo<s /xc6' </ceT»//>/as tiT- Kvp/uo- tovtc ^ap ep.(fra/vei ipfiy-

vevop.evov 'EWucc {fiwvi} to 'Qaawd Clementis Alex. Opera, Potteri Ed".,

pp. 104-5. The last word of this passage is written, in the edition from
which it is extracted, Q? avva\ in consequence, I presume, of the learned
Bishop's here following, without due consideration, the example set to him

ykA APPENDIX.

learned Christian of his day — such an interpretation. Hosan-
nah, indeed, came eventually to be used in acclamations of
praise and thanksgiving ; but, in its primary and literal sense,
it is a prayer, to the purport of which not the slightest allusion
is made in the meaning here appropriated to it, — a meaning
which, notwithstanding, is put forward with professional au-
thority, and with all the parade of a formal definition.

3. The epoch of the introduction of matres lectionis into
the sacred text can now, I am in hopes, be satisfactorily made
out with a very near approach to exactness. It has already been
shown, under the head of the previous discussion, that, to a cer-
tainty, those letters found their way, into the spelling of the
words of the Hebrew Bible, before the publication, about the
year of our era 230, of the Hexapla of Origen ; not, indeed,
by means of the first or Hebrew column of that work, of which
no part whatever has survived the ravages of time ; nor by
the aid of the extant remains of the second column (which
convey through combinations of Greek letters the sounds for-
merly attached to the Hebrew words, without the slightest
intimation how those sounds were denoted in the older species
of writing, or whether it contained separate signs, or not, for
their vocalic ingredients) ; but through the express mention
incidentally made by Jerome of the existence of vowel-letters
in the Hebrew Scriptures in his day, combined with the cir-
cumstance that there was no opportunity for their secret in-
sertion therein during the interval of time that elapsed between
him and the earlier author above mentioned ; since the sacred
text was in the hands of the orthodox Christians, and under
their inspection, for the entire of that interval.

But the date of the first vocalization of the sacred record
can be carried a century farther back by comparing the sense

by previous editors. It is very possible that, if Clemens had written his words
distinctly separate from each other, he might have misdivided the above one
in this manner. But as the ingredients of Greek lines were not. so written
in his time, the additional blunder in question ought not, in fairness, to be
imputed to him.

APPENDIX. 575

of the text thus altered with that of the fragments still pre-
served of the spurious Greek versions of the second century,
and combining the result with evidence supplied by Epipha-
nius which can be brought to bear upon the subject. On the
one hand, it is quite plain, from the numerous instances of
agreement between the above fragments and the correspond-
ing parts of the vocalized text, in places where they in common
differ from the Septuagint, that, either the framers of the ver-
sions to which those fragments respectively belonged were fur-
nished with copies of the Hebrew Bible vocalized as at present,
which were imposed upon them, in like manner as one after-
wards was upon Origen, as wholly genuine ; or were taught
by agents of the Jewish priesthood to read the text in its
original state as if it had been so vocalized. But the latter
side of this alternative must be rejected, as involving the ob-
viously absurd supposition that the priests would unneces-
sarily intrust the secret whose concealment they had most at
heart to men who were apostates, or adherents but in part to
the doctrines of the Jews. It only remains, then, to be inferred
that the authors of the versions alluded to performed their
respective tasks under the guidance of vocalized copies, — a
guidance which they followed more or less closely through
diversities of taste, — or from other causes by which they may
have been variously influenced. On the other hand, it is equally
clear, from very gross though undesigned inconsistencies in
other parts of the same vocalization, that it must, besides being-
executed hastily within a small compass of time, have been
finished but very shortly before the earliest of those versions,
namely, that of Aquila, was written : for otherwise the Jewish
priests would have had leisure enough to detect the blunders
committed in this vocalization, while yet it wras confined to their
own keeping, and then would most unquestionably have re-
moved those indications of its spuriousness, before they suf-
fered it to get into other hands. From the junction, thcivf< »re,
of both considerations it unavoidably follows, that the intro-
duction of matres lectionis into the sacred text preceded the

2 R

576 APPENDIX.

publication of Aquila's version, and did so by only a very short
interval of time. But this version, according to the express
testimony of Epiphanius, was brought out in the twelfth year
of the reign of the Emperor Hadrian,3 which synchronizes with
A. D. 128-9. I admit that the learned author here appealed
to was very far from being an accurate reasoner, and that con-
sequently his calculations cannot be always implicitly relied
on ; yet still he may have correctly stated the facts on which
many of those calculations are grounded ; and when they are,
like the one just adduced, neither improbable in themselves nor
contradicted by any other ancient author, I confess I do not
see how our assent can be rationally denied to them. Allow-
ing, then, between two and three years for the formation of
Aquila's version, I feel warranted in concluding that the first
vocalization of the Hebrew text was effected in the course of
the 126th year of the Christian era.

4. The spurious Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible, most
of which were written in the second century, and the rest not
long after, may be distinguished by the bearing of their extant
remains into two classes, according as they tended to support
Jewish or Christian views. To the former class belonged
those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, together with
one of three versions composed by unknown writers, which
was designated, from the relative place of the column in
which it was inserted by Origen, the seventh ; while the lat-
ter class included another of the same set reckoned in like
manner, from the site of its column, the sixth, and also those
denominated from their respective authors, 6 2u/jo9, 6 'Efipaios,
and 6 'SafxapeiTip. The versions of the first class are justly
styled spurious ; as they in many instances, for the purpose of
giving the Septnagint an appearance of incorrectness, exhibited
the sound of names of rare occurrence and the sense of obscure
passages in accordance with no genuine readings of the Hebrew
text ; and those of the second class, though far more honestly
written, were not entirely exempt from faults subjecting them

' Epiphanii lib. de Mensuris et Pondcribus, cap. xii.

APPENDIX. 577

to the same discreditable title. For they, at least in some in-
stances, represented the Old Testament as describing names
and events of the New more explicitly than it really does, and
so far transgressed the bounds of genuine interpretation. In
palliation of the faults here alluded to, it is but right to observe
that, during the second century the Christians were utterly
ignorant of the ancient Hebrew tongue, and even in the third
century, after they had got the aid of the Hexapla of Origen
(of which the two initial columns conveyed the sounds of the
original words, the first in Hebrew, and the second in Greek
characters), they were by no means furnished with sufficient
knowledge of that language to enable them to cope with the
Jews in the interpretation of the sacred text. While, then, they
were convinced, by their reliance ontheSeptuagint, that certain
passages of that text were unfairly translated by their oppo-
nents, they were tempted, in the heat of controversy, to insert
in their own versions, as the only counterpoise they had in
their power to oppose to this unfairness, names and descriptions
which they by the light of the New Testament knew to be cor-
rect, but which they still violated the strictness of truth in re-
presenting as expressly mentioned in the Old Testaments A
farther distinction between the two classes lies in the circum-
stance that the versions of the Jewish class were primary ;
while, on the other hand, those of the Christian class, as writ-
ten, some of them in total ignorance, and the rest with a very

a The first clause of the verse, Hab. iii. 13,— MM 37BP1? tySS 3?ttT»b JTNSi
r*7n^tE>fr — which is rendered in our Authorized Version, — " Thou wentest
forth for the salvation of thy people, even for [their] salvation, with thine
anointed," — presents to us an example of the practice above described, through
the translation given of it in the version numbered the sixth: — ef//\0e? rou
cwaai tov \aov aov cia, \r)(jovv tov yjpiaiov aov (Thou wentest forth to save
thy people by means of Yesus thine Anointed). Whether the word lijaoov
was first introduced into this rendering of the clause, or taken immediately
from an older rendering no longer extant, it is clearly the right name of
the personage here described as concurring with the Father Almighty in
the salvation of his people; but still the original affords no warrant for its
insertion in this place.

2 r 2

578 APPENDIX.

imperfect knowledge of the language of the original record,
were secondary, that is, not immediate translations of that
record, but only translations of translations. Hence it is most
likely that the sixth version, which belongs to the latter class,
was a secondary one, though we can no longer ascertain from
what primary version it was immediately taken. But with
respect to the three denominated, from the native languages of
their several authors, ' the Syriac,' ' the Hebraic,' and the ' Sa-
maritan,' they were confessedly secondary Greek versions.
Their respective primaries, arranged in the same order, appear
to have been, — the Peshitah, the only Syriac one old enough
for the use here assigned to it,a — some translation, no longer
extant, of the original text into the later Hebrew tongue, that

a To the above determination of the immediate original of the secondary-
version written by o Si'/so? has been objected the following note upon Gen.
xxii. 13, found in several ancient Greek MSS. (indeed, according to Mont-
faucon, in all of them, the expression employed by him in his remarks upon
this note being, sic omnes MSS. et Combefisius ex Eusebio Emiseno). 6 'S.vpo?
/cat o 'E/3/)oios Kpe/na/nevos (pyoiv, u>§ acKpcarepov Tvirouv iov atavpov, that is,
" the versions of o 'Svpos and o E/3/>«?09 use the participle Kpepdjuevos, ' sus-
pended' [instead of that employed in the Septuagint, Karexopevos, ' detained'],
in order the more obviously to typify the cross." But Kpefiafievo<i is not the
proper rendering of the corresponding word of the Peshitah, , - -<■}, HaKhID,
which signifies ' caught,' or ' detained.' This objection entirely fails, from
being grounded on the assumption that each secondary adhered throughout
strictly to the primary one which was its immediate original, — an assumption
which is shown to be erroneous by a comparison of versions. The only effect,
therefore, of bringing under consideration the note here adduced is to give us
an additional example of the practice described in my text, which is supplied
from two of the secondary versions referred to. Here it may be of use to
warn the reader that the versions of o 2^/jos and 6 'Efipaios, having been evi-
dently written on the Christian side, are not to be confounded with the
works winch were formerly styled respectively to *2.vpiaic6v and to 'EjipaUov.
Of these titles, the former, employed in a passage already quoted in this Ap-
pendix from the " Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius," lib. iv. cap. 22, is
Bhownj by the context of the place where it occurs, to have denoted a book,
advocating tenets peculiar to converts who had been originally Jews; and the
latter is the name given to the Jewish edition of the Septuagint by Origen in
the Benedictine Collection of his writings, torn. iv. p. 141.

APPENDIX. 579

was made by the Jews before they began to corrupt the Sep-
tuagint, — and the Samaritan version still extant, the only one
known to have been ever in the possession of the Samaritans.
These three secondaries appear to have been composed after
the age of Origen, as no mention of any of them occurs in his
acknowledged writings. But at any rate they were frequently
consulted for many subsequent ages, — a circumstance which
seems to indicate that, even after the Christians were allowed
access to the sacred text and instructed in its language, their
knowledge of that language still continued, for a considerable
length of time, very defective and imperfect. For, on the sup-
position that men of learning became well acquainted with the
contents of the Bible in its original tongue, they would seldom
have occasion for versions of any kind ; and their employment
of mere versions of versions would probably cease altogether.
Yet the Christian writers of the fourth and fifth centuries re-
sorted to and depended on the secondaries in question to a
great extext ; as is plainly shown by the vast number of quo-
tations from them which are to be seen in the controversial
works of those authors.3

The spurious Greek versions of the first class having never
gained the confidence of the Christians (who, though unable
to detect the cause of their apparent accuracy, always dis-
trusted them on account of the suspicious character of the in-
dividuals by whom they were written), and, on the other hand,
having been found by the Jewish rulers unavailing for the
purpose for which they chiefly had been fabricated, namely,
that of supplanting the Septuagint, were eventually abandoned
by both parties ; and then the versions of the second class,

a Respecting the above-mentioned fact Montfaucon gives the following
information : — " Syri porro lectiones adferuntur ab Eusebio Ca?sariensi, a Dio-
doro Tarsensi frequentius; ab Eusebio Emiseno, Hieronymo, Theodorcto et
aliis. Quodque notandum est, iidem, maximeque Diodorus, Syrian cum
Hebrao ssepe conjungunt hoc pacto, 6 2*5/jos ical o 'E/Bpao?os; vel, o 'Efipcuov
mat o 'Ziipo?, quando scilicet aniborum interpretationes conveniunt, quod s»pe
contingit." — Prceliminaria in Hexapla Origenis, p. 19-

580 APPENDIX.

which were composed only in opposition to them, shared the
same fate. Hence no part of the works of either class has
survived the ravages of time, except some fragments which
have heen transmitted in the form of quotations in the writ-
ings of early Christian authors, or are to be seen inserted as
notes in the margins of very ancient manuscript copies of the
Septuagint, extracted in an isolated state chiefly from the co-
lumns of the Tetrapla or Hexapla of Origen.a Of the frag-
ments of each kind I shall confine myself to noticing those
which belong to the first class, as being the specimens which
have a more immediate connexion with my subject. A greater
number of the quotations (not, however, in the original Greek,
but translated into Latin) are preserved in the works of Je-
rome than in those taken together of all the other early Fa-
thers. They form a very interesting portion of his comments
upon Scripture, on which account I would willingly, if room
permitted me, have given an illustration of their nature much
fuller than the following one. The observations made by this
writer on Deut. xxvii. 26, while expounding the parallel pas-
sage of the New Testament, Gal. hi. 10, commence thus : —
" Hunc morem habeo ; ut quotiesquumque ab Apostolis de
veteri Instrumento aliquid sumitur, recurram ad originales

a To the above exceptions is to be added Theodotion's translation of the
Book of Daniel, which has been preserved through its adoption by the Church
at a very remote period, and consequent substitution for that of the Seventy,
in nearly all such copies of the Septuagint as were subsequently written. This
fact is recorded by Jerome, in the preface to his translation of Daniel, as fol-
lows:— "Danielem prophetam juxta Septuaginta interpretes Domini Salva-
toris nostri ecclesiae non legunt, utentes Theodotionis editione; et hoc, cur
acciderit, nescio." — Hieron. Opera, Ed0. Benedict., torn. i. col. 988. In con-
sequence of this alteration, the assistance to be derived from the Greek Bible,
in correcting the present vocalization with letters of the Hebrew text, cannot
be depended on as well in this, as in other parts of that record. Nor is this
evil remedied by the discovery in the Chisian Library at Rome of an ancient
MS. copy of the Septuagintal rendering of the Book of Daniel, which was
printed in that city in the year 1772: as the translation thus recovered is
unfortunately in too corrupt a state to answer the above use.

APPENDIX. 581

libros, et diligentur inspiciam, quomodo in suis locis scripta
sunt. Inveni itaque in Deuteronomio hoc ipsum apud Sep-
tuaginta Interpretes ita positum : Maledictus omnis homo qui
non permanserit in omnibus sermonibus Legis hujus, ut faciat
illos ; et dicet omnis populus, fiat. Apud Aquilam vero sic:
Maledictus qui non statuerit verba Legis hujus, ut faciat ea ; et
dicet omnis populus, verd. Symmachus : Maledictus qui non
fcrmaverit sermones Legis istius, ut faciat eos ; et dicet omnis
populus, amen. Porro Theodotio sic transtulit : Maledictus
qui non suscitaverit sermones Legis hujus, facer e eos ; et dicet
omnis populus, amen." — Hieron. Opera, Ed0. Benedict., torn. iv.
col. 255-7.a The Judaizing tendency of the more remark-
able spurious versions of the second century is exemplified, in
the fragments of them here adduced, by the non-appearance
in each fragment of any word signifying ' all' immediately
after the first verb of the sentence, such as is placed in the
corresponding part of the rendering given in the Septuagint
of the same passage of the original text. The very same ten-
dency of the versions in question is indicated more briefly in
Jerome's annotations upon the disputed term of the Hebrew-
verse, Isaiah, vii. 14, which the Seventy interpreted 'a virgin,'
but all the other translators he alludes to, namely, Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion, are attested by him to have re-
presented as denoting ' a young woman,' — ' quod prceter LXX.
omnes adolescentulam transtulerunt."b — Hieron. Opera, Ed0.
Benedict., torn. iii. col. 70. These examples have been se-
lected, not as more forcibly bearing on the subject to which
they are applied than others, but because some of the remarks

a The remarks of Jerome on Deut. xxvii. 26, next following those above
adduced, have been already quoted near the end of the first chapter.

b The hostility of Gesenius to the Christian religion is in like manner
betrayed by his treatment of the same Hebrew word; respecting the mean-
ing of which in the place above referred to, he asserts in his Lexicon Mannale,
— " LXX. male reddunt 7r«^e'i/os," in utter disregard of the inspired authority
of St. Matthew, as well as in direct opposition to the bearing of the context.

582 APPENDIX.

of this Father serving to explain them have been already
quoted in the present volume.

The fragments of the other kind, which are to be met in
the form of marginal notes in ancient Greek MSS. serve, in
like manner as those transmitted in quotations, to display the
Judaizing tendency of the class of spurious versions under
examination ; but are more effective in exposing the fallacy
of the ground on which superior accuracy of translation is
claimed for those versions, and in showing that, where they
differ from the Septuagint, they agree more closely, not at all
with the written words of the Hebrew text in their original
state, but only with those words, as altered in sound or sense
by means of an unfair vocalization. From Montfaucon's col-
lection of the fragments of both kinds I here adduce a few spe-
cimens of those of the second kind ; and regret that I have
not room left for a more copious illustration of their bearing
on my subject. The Hebrew portion of each example has
been taken by this author from modern books ; as no part of
the first column of the Hexapla, which contained the Hebrew
text in an ancient form of the letters, has reached us through
any channel whatever. The pronunciation in each instance
subjoined to the Hebrew is placed within brackets, to show
that it does not belong to the quoted line, but has been added
by me for the convenience of such readers as are not familiar
with unpointed writing in this language : —

Gen. xxxvii. 36,— "12WS [PhUTIPhaR], A. 2. <$>ovT«pap.

O. Ylere(ppij.
Josh. xvii. 7, — *Qtt^ [YoSheBE], A. 2. rom KaTotKowrav.
AAAov, \aay<p. AAA. laopijo. O. laoaifi.
Judg. ii. 7 — J/fcMIT nntf [HaHaRE YeHOShuaH], Ilai/Ter.

/xe-ra I ijgov.
„ ii. 14,— Tn [BeYaD], 2. 9. kv x«/>*. O. ets Tas

ye? pas.
xviii. 28,— 3im [RellOB], 6( Aowrot, Pew/3. O. Paa/3.

In these compendious notes, as well as in the specimen of the

APPENDIX. 583

Hexapla preserved in the Barberini MS. which has been ad-
duced in the first chapter, O denotes the Seventy Interpre-
ters ; and A, 2, 6, respectively, Aquila, Symmachus, and
Theodotion, the authors of the more important of the later
versions which Origen compared with the Septuagint. In the
same notes 61 Xonroi is substituted for A, S,and 9, taken collec-
tively ; and aAAos, or a\\ is employed to signify the writer
of some one of three other later versions of which Origen got
only parts copied out, and did not specify by whom they were
written ; ncti/res means the entire collection of Greek transla-
tors, the framers of the oldest Greek version as well as those of
all the later ones. With the help of this preliminary explana-
tion, the contents of the adduced notes can be easily under-
stood. Thus, for instance, it is stated in the first of them that
the name of the ofiicer of Pharaoh's court, mentioned in Gen.
xxxvii. 36, was transcribed in the versions of Aquila and Sym-
machus Ooi>T/0a|O, but in the Septuagint YIerecf)prj, or rather
YleTecppi)*;* In their respective modes of dealing with this
name it may be perceived that the two specified later transla-

a A sigma is obviously omitted at the end of the above name in the quoted
line; but whether through mistake of the scholiast or of some copyist, it is
immaterial to determine. The similar name, indeed, of the priest of On
would be rightly exhibited without this letter at its termination ; because,
being in each of the two places of its occurrence in Scripture (Gen. xli. 45,
50), written in the genitive case fleT60p>/, without a Greek ending for that
case, it is correctly put in the same form for the nominative also. But the
name above considered is terminated by an Eta with an Iota subscriptum ; that
is, it has got a regular Greek ending for the case in which it is employed (the
dative) : and, therefore, it should be inflected with a Grecian termination for
the nominative also. Accordingly, this word in Gen. xxxix. 1, where it oc-
curs in the nominative case, is to be seen actually written Tie-recpprj^. The two
Egyptian names appear to have been essentially the same, and to have differed
solely in the degree of strength with which their final syllable was uttered,
in consequence of which the transcript of only the one of feebler termination
received a Grecian inflexion at the time when the Septuagint was written ;
but in the age of Josephus, when men had become more habituated to Greek,
both transcripts were inflected in the Grecian manner, and written with ex-
actly the same letters.

584 APPENDIX.

tors followed exactly its Hebrew vocalization, in consequence
of which its sound has been hitherto deemed more correctly
represented by them than by the Seventy Interpreters. But
now that the vocalization in question is found to be no genuine
part of the original record, but an addition made to it by falli-
ble scribes in the second century, far greater weight must be
attached to its oldest Greek transcription, which is besides
supported by very strong internal evidence ; as it is shown,
through the extant remains of the Coptic dialects, to have been
in the ancient Egyptian language a characteristic denomina-
tion, such as all names formerly were, and to have conveyed in
that language a most appropriate description of one of the two
persons to whom it is in Scripture applied. Hence, notwith-
standing the rare occurrence of this name in the Bible, which
encouraged the vocalizers to tamper with it, their misrepre-
sentation of its sound can be proved by the sole consideration
of its Egyptian original, independently of the conclusion to be
derived respecting it from the more general proofs of the spu-
riousness of the matres lectionis in the sacred text.

In the second example the original group 2W is so voca-
lized (by means of a subjoined Yod) as to yield the meaning,
' the inhabitants of,' and is translated in exact accordance with
this vocalization in the versions of Aquila and Symmachus ;
while it is transcribed in one of the unnamed later Greek ver-
sions Iaa^/0, and in another laaprjh, but in the Septuagint
laaaip. In this instance the rendering in common of the group
in question in the two first mentioned of the later versions,
having no ground to rest on but its Hebrew vocalization, is
proved erroneous by the far higher authority of the Septua-
gint, which is directly at variance with that vocalization ; and
its transcriptions in the other pair of later versions are refuted,
not only by the adverse testimony of the Septuagint, but even
by that of the Hebrew text in its present state. But as the
translation of this group in the former pair of versions bears
upon the sense of the clause it occurs in, it can be shown in-
correct in a second way also by means of the context, even in-

APPENDIX. 585

depenclently of the discovery by means of which the spurious-
ness of the Yod at its termination is ascertained ; and it is
worth while to examine it in this way, in order to clear up the
meaning of a sentence which at present is utterly unintelligi-
ble. The whole of the passage containing the group under
inquiry is rendered in our Authorized Version as follows : —
" And the coast of Manasseh was from Asher to Michmethah,
that lieth before Shechem ; and the border went along on the
right hand unto the inhabitants of En-tappuah. Now Manas-
seh had the land of Tappuah ; but Tappuah, on the border of
Manasseh belonged to the children of Ephraim." — Josh.xvii. 7,8.
The part of this passage to which attention is here more espe-
cially directed, namely, the latter part of the first of these
verses, stands in the Hebrew text, after certain alterations
(indicated in the mode of printing it) in this form : —

mafi \y hut* bxrii \*zPri bx Vojh ■ftrn

Although the three groups with initials of a larger size are
transcribed in the Septuagint as proper names, the first two
of them are treated as appellative words, and the third made
only the final part of a name, by the framers of our Authorized
Version, who, I may by the way observe, could not have ob-
jected to the first being a proper name on account of the em-
phatic H prefixed to it ; as the group transcribed by them, in
the earlier portion of the same verse, Michmethah, has also
that prefix. The 1 placed before the second 7N is marked as
an introduced letter, because it is not exhibited in this site in
the more generally received editions of the text. It may, how-
ever, be stated in support of this correction, not only that the
additional letter is required by the context, and sustained by
the authority of the Septuagint, but also that Kennicott found
it here preserved in the MS. which he distinguished by the
number 84. The correctness of the mark of censure placed
over the final letter of the second of the groups commencing
with a large initial will be established in the course of the en-
suing investigation.

586 APPENDIX.

As the Septuagint has evidently suffered some corruption
in the place under examination, I shall quote this portion of
it from each of the two principal MSS.

Vtlt. — kuI 7rof)eveTai iirl ra opia lid lajxlv nal laoa)fi lirl TDjyiju

Oa(f)6w6.
Alex. — h-al 7ropeverai ra opia enl lajj.li/ h-al laat)(fyl enl rr/v <yi/v

ea(p6w6.

A comparison of these extracts with the corresponding Hebrew
clause given in the last paragraph serves to show that the
first em in the Vatican line is rightly omitted in the Alexan-
drian one, and that the third eni of the former line is misplaced
in both, and ought to stand just before, instead of after, the
proper name with which it is immediately connected. The
same authority decides also in favour both of the final conso-
nant of this name as written in the Vatican line, and of the
penultimate word of that line Tnjytjv, of which njv yiji> in the
other line is besides clearly shown by the context to be a cor-
ruption. For it would be nonsense to represent the whole
land of Thaphthoth (or Tappuah) as one of the places by
reaching to which the position of the boundary of this very
land (or a line dividing it between the tribes of Manasseh and
Ephraim) was to be determined. After the application of
these corrections to the Greek extract, each of them may be
translated as follows : ' and the boundaries go along unto
Iamin and unto Iassib, a fountain of Thaphthoth.' Here, sup-
posing the boundaries, or boundary (for the word of this
meaning is singular in the Hebrew, and it is evidently imma-

a The manner in which the second name in the lower Greek line is exhi-
bited, considerably reduces the authority of the Alexandrian version in this
instance, by showing that it was here altered so as to accord with one of the
spurious versions of the second century, in which this name was also written
r«n/0; and a similar observation may be applied to it in other cases also. On
the other hand, the Vatican MS., though it appears in the form of a copy less
corrected, does not, as far as I can find, lie under the great disadvantage of
having been adulterated by a collation with any of the spurious versions.

APPENDIX. 587

terial to the sense in which number it is taken) to lie in nearly
a straight line, the position of this line is sufficiently marked
by the mention of two places to which it reaches, or through
which it passes ; and the tenor of the sentence is perfectly
clear, though the actual division thereby indicated can be no
longer made out, in consequence of our ignorance of the sites
of the specified places. But the Hebrew clause will be found to
yield in substance the very same meaning, pkovided the Yod
of the group "Ott^ be rejected ; while, on the contrary, if that
letter be retained, this clause must remain utterly senseless,
from its describing certain human beings as inhabitants of a
fountain. For the expedient whereby it is attempted to evade
this gross absurdity — by depriving the Hebrew term W of all
signification, and converting it into part of a proper name — is
quite inadmissible in itself; and is besides directly opposed, not
only to the testimony of the Septuagint, which renders this
term by one signifying ' a fountain,' but also to that of the
Hebrew text, which exhibits twice in the next verse the very
same proper name ffiSfi, TaPpUaH^ without any collection of
letters immediately preceding it that could be taken to repre-
sent its initial syllable. Other considerations might also be
added ex abundantly bearing with great force against any in-
terpretation of the clause containing 2W which depends on
the received vocalization of this group. For instance, how is
a place indicated by calling it a fountain of Tappuah, without
specifying any name of that fountain? or what meaning can
be assigned to the statement that " the border went along on
the right hand," without mentioning any point through which
it proceeded, or any object to the right of which it might,
when viewed from that point, be said to go ? The combina-
tion, indeed, of grounds against the retention of the Yod at
the end of the group in question is quite strong enough to
warrant its rejection, even if we had not the means of distin-
guishing it by its phonetic use from the genuine elements of
the sacred text; but, now that it is discovered to belong to a class
of letters interpolated in that text by fallible scribes, there

588 APPENDIX.

surely cannot be any hesitation about either removing it or
marking it as otiant. I admit that the group referred to is
rendered intheSyriac version *^z>L>, YoTheBal, ' inhabitants of.'
But the testimony of the oldest Greek version on the subject,
which is so powerfully corroborated by the internal evidence
of the case, cannot be set aside for the opposite attestation of
any later translation ; and the only effect of this attestation is
to show that the Syriac translators, in the instance of a pas-
sage made very obscure by containing two names that had be-
come obsolete and admitted in the abstract (though not in
this place duly considered) of being read by other words, con-
tented themselves with following the then received reading of
those groups ; and that the Jews, in their effort to disparage
the Septuagint, had introduced this reading before it was ren-
dered permanent by means of an incorrect vocalization. In
fine, I request the reader to observe the very striking illustra-
tion, this example affords of the injurious consequences that
have followed from the circumstance of proper names not hav-
ing been pointed out to the eye in the sacred text by any pe-
culiarity in the mode of writing them.

The third example attests the remarkable fact that the
name of the immediate successor of Moses was transcribed in
all the later Greek versions, as well as in the Septuagint,
\)jaov^ answering to the Hebrew sound of it, Yeshuak ; — a fact
which serves to prove that the name of this leader of the Jews
was, even as late as the second and beginning of the third cen-
tury, too strongly impressed upon the public mind to admit
of its being tampered with in works then open to the inspection
of the public.

The fourth example informs us that the group TD, Judg.
ii. 14, was translated by Symmachus and Theodotion iv %eiPh
i in the hand,' but by the Seventy els ra? xe^Pa^ ' mto tne
hands.' a With regard to the Hebrew group in this example,

* The above Greek rendering is given in only the Vatican copy of the
Septusigint. In the Alexandrian copy the translation is iv xeiP'\ which

APPENDIX. 589

the following portion of the Authorized English Translation of
the verse containing it will be sufficient to show its bearing
in the specified place : — " And the anger of the Lord was hot
against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of
spoilers, — " The group in question might have been read, be-
fore the Hebrew text was vocalized, either BeYaD, ' into the
hand of,' or BeY«De,a ' into the hands of;' but after the vocali-
zation was effected, it was confined to the latter or former
reading and sense, according as a Tod was or was not sub-
joined to it, The Seventy, we may perceive by the render-
ing they adopted, very properly read the name of this group
in the plural number ; and consequently the vocalizers, in con-
formity with their usual plan of attack, treated it so as that
it should thenceforward be restricted to the singular. But
Symmachus and Theodotion went in some degree farther in
their opposition to the Septuagint, by availing themselves of
the ambiguity of the prefix 2 to give it a sense here that can
hardly be reconciled with that of the preceding verb; and, in-
deed, even the choice they made, in common with the voca-
lizers of the singular number, for the word expressive of 'hand,'
when referred to a plurality of persons, is rather awkward,
though, I admit, there are precedents for this incongruity.
The foregoing extract from the Authorized English Version
shows that its learned framers decided in favour of the render-
ing by the Seventy of the group here brought under examina-
tion, notwithstanding the apparently closer translation given
of it by the two specified later Greek interpreters.

In the last of the notes quoted from Montfaucon's Collec-

affords another instance, in addition to that presented in the second example,
of this manuscript having been adulterated through collation with some of
the spurious versions of the second century.

■ The group above referred to would, according to the rules of pronun-
ciation now in force, be read for its second acceptation BIDe; but the sort of
use thus made of its second element could not have commenced till after the
introduction of the matres lectionis into the sacred text.

590 APPENDIX.

tion, 21m is stated to be transcribed in the Septuagint Paa/3,
but in all the other Greek Versions Pewj3. The latter trans-
cription has apparently the advantage of a closer agreement
with the Hebrew group ; but what it really approaches nearer
to is that group, not as originally written, but as subsequently
altered by means of an interpolated letter.

This research might be continued to a much greater extent ;
but circumstances, I regret to say, deprive me of the power of
now completing it in the manner I had at first intended: the
number, however, of examples here analyzed will, I hope, be
sufficient to convince the reader of the fallacy of the ground
on which superior accuracy has been hitherto attributed to the
spurious Greek versions of the second century. The fourth
example affords an instance of the framers of some of those
versions surpassing the old vocalizers in hostility to the Sep-
tuagint ; while in the third they, on the contrary, are all to be
seen, not merely less opposed to that record, but even actually
supporting it ; and in their efforts to bring it into disrepute
they are in general found to have acted with more caution
than the Hebrew scribes here compared with them, for which
a cause can easily be assigned. For their several translations
were, as soon as written, at once submitted to the scrutiny of
both Christians and Jews ; and they had reason to fear that
they would offend the judgment of the public, and in conse-
quence fail in their attempt to supplant the Septuagint, if they
ventured on too violent and abrupt an attack on a work which,
up to a period not long antecedent to their respective times,
had met with universal approbation ; while, on the other hand,
the vocalized copies of the sacred text were at first intended
for the sole use of the Jewish priests and their agents, — men
who had recently become much prejudiced against the above
version. Under these circumstances, it is no way surprising that
the vocalization referred to should have gone to greater lengths
than any of the Greek versions of the second century, in the
attempt to lower the credit of the Septuagint. The striking
subject, indeed, for wonder is that, notwithstanding this diffe-

APPENDIX. 591

rence between the two modes of operating, the more violent
and less guarded one should be that alone which was attended
with any degree of success. But, however strange this result
may appear, still, several considerations can be adduced, con-
curring to account for its production.

In the first place, the Hebrew text — which appears to have
become, through increasing ignorance of the sacred language, a
sealed book to even the most learned of the Jewish laity as
early, at any rate, as the age of Philo Judyeus, or before the
middle of the first century, and to the whole body of the Chris-
tians soon after the commencement of the second — was not
restored to the inspection of the latter party, nor did they in
any degree recover the power of reading it, till Origen pub-
lished the celebrated Hexapla about the year of our era 230,
or fully a hundred years after the oldest of the spurious ver-
sions referred to, namely that of Aquila, had been written. But
during the whole of the specified interval, those versions, though
they did not succeed in the primary object for which they were
intended of supplanting the Septuagint, were gradually pre-
paring the minds of men for the acknowledgment of discrepan-
cies between it and the Hebrew Bible, as soon as the opportu-
nity should be renewed to them of comparing those works.
This opportunity, indeed, the Jewish priests had at first no in-
tention of conceding, and were driven to try the effect of, only
as a last resource, after every other attempt to undermine the
credit of the Septuagint had failed. Yet this alteration of
their plan, though due to an after-thought, proved in a high
degree favourable to their views ; since the accustoming of the
public mind to continual charges against the correct preserva-
tion of the translation, while no similar accusations were
brought against the original, had a tendency to prevent the
Christians from searching for the source of the above discre-
pancies where it might have been most naturally looked for,
in an altered state of that one of the compared records which
alone had been at any previous time out of their sight. As
a second impediment to their detecting on which side the

2 s

APPENDIX.

blame of those discrepancies should fall, may be mentioned
their ignorance of the language of the Hebrew Bible at the
epoch when a copy of it was placed within their reach, and
Their recovery of that language only through the aid of
teachers whose interest it was to conceal from them the changes
which the sacred text had undergone while out of their keep-
ing. Three more obstructions to their penetrating the true
state of the case are to be found respectively, — in the high cha-
racter which the Jews always enjoyed, and, at every period
except that in question, justly deserved, of strictly faithful
guardians of the HebreAv record, — in the great difficulty which
persons accustomed to the very superior alphabetic system of
the Greeks, then the one in most general use throughout the civil-
ized portion of the world, must have experienced to conceive
how the text of the Old Testament could have been originally
written without any signs whatever for vowels considered apart
from consonants ; — and in the naturalization, as it were, of the
matres lectionis for an antecedent period of considerable
length in the systems of writing employed by most of the She-
niitic nations, and even in that of the Jews as far as it was ap-
plied to ordinary uses. Hence the consequence arose that,
although the old vocalizers went to more daring lengths in their
attacks upon the Septuagint than any of their abettors in this
fraud, yet their work never incurred the slightest suspicion of
constituting a spurious addition to the original spelling of the
words of the sacred text : while, on the contrary, the Greek
versions made to accord with this vocalization in the second
and third centuries were suspected of unfairness from their
very first publication, though the Christians could not discover
wherein that unfairness lay, and even admitted them to be
stricter translations than the Septuagint. At least they con-
ceded this ground of superiority to the versions of Aquila and
Symmachus, as may be perceived by Origen's arrangement of
them in the Hexapla, lie having therein placed those versions
in columns nearer than that of the Septuagint to the Hebrew
oiM', as if they approached more closely to what is expressed
in the original record.

APPENDIX. 593

5. When the Jewish priesthood turned from eulogizing to
calumniating the Septuagint, they did so, not by asserting that
it was from the first an erroneous version (for then they might
have been refuted by their own former praises of the work),
but by accusing the Christians of having intentionally cor-
rupted it in numerous passages, more especially in the prophe-
cies relating to our Saviour. This charge was obviously un-
founded. Some alterations, indeed, which escaped notice from
being of minor importance, crept into this book in the course of
time ; but, even if the Christians had harboured the wish, they
could not have found an opportunity, for committing the crime
of which they were thus accused ; as various heresies arose
among them from a very early period, the respective adhe-
rents of which, as well as the orthodox members of the Church,
watched each other with a jealous eye ; so that, if any corrup-
tion of this version had been designedly introduced by any of
the conflicting parties, it would have been at once detected
and exposed by the rest. Hence the Christians never lost
their confidence in the correctness of the first Greek version,
and they were further protected from the tendency of the earlier
attempts to bring it into disrepute by their distrust in the
agents engaged in those attempts. The primary attack of
the Jews on this venerable record was perpetrated at first by
orally interpreting certain passages at variance with their ren-
derings therein, and afterwards by producing a spurious ver-
sion written in conformity with those erroneous interpretations,
which they, notwithstanding, endeavoured to pass off as the
genuine Septuagint, and in consequence maintained the one
in Christian keeping to be corrupt, wherever it differed from
theirs. But this version did not long hold its ground, and so
completely failed of the object for which it was fabricated that
not a vestige of it now remains. The second attack on the
Septuagint was made by means of later Greek versions suc-
cessively written by persons secretly under the direction of
the Jewish priests, or at least to some extent favouring their
views, in the second and earlier part of the third century ; and

2 s 2

594 APPENDIX.

chiefly through the aid of three composed in the former century
by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion respectively, of whom
the first, apostatizing from Christianity, became a Jew, and the
other two were Judaizing heretics. But those versions never
met with a general reception, and failed of bringing the Septua-
gint into disrepute for a like reason, though not quite so strong,
as did that employed in the first attack. Although the Fathers
of the Church were unable to detect in what their fallacies con-
sisted, yet, from the suspicious characters of their authors, the
Christian public distrusted them nearly as much as the ficti-
tious Septuagint, which was at an early period universally re-
jected as a fabrication of the Jewish priests or their acknow-
ledged agents. One part at least (if not the whole) of the first
attack on the credit of the Septuagint is alluded to in a pas-
sage of Justin Martyr's controversy with Trypho which has
been already quoted in page 568.a The works employed in the
second attack and remaining part of the first are mentioned,
though in a light by much too favourable, in the following
passage of Origen's commentary on the Gospel of St. John,
where, after adverting to a proper name which he held to have
been corrupted, he proceeds thus : — " The like fault of names
may be seen in many places throughout the Law and the
Prophets ; as we have accurately ascertained, having been in-
structed by Hebrews, and having compared our copies [of the
Septuagint] with theirs, which are attested to be correct by
the editions, as yet uncorrupted, of Aquila, Theodotion, and
Symmachus."b

The third and principal attack was made through the vo-
calization of the Hebrew text. The traces of erroneous infor-

» In the passage above referred to, the reader may perceive that Justin
in general terms of the attempt of the instructors of the Jews to inter-
pret the Hebrew Scriptures differently from the way in which the Seventy Se-
niors did, without specifying whether he viewed it only in its primary state
when it was made in oral expositions, or also as it was afterwards conveyed in
writing.

h To £' ouoiov irqn 7a ovOflwra o(f)a\/ia 7ro\\axov too No'^ow icai -t&v Ilpo-

0//Tl?T IrTllV U,"lV lis tlKfllfiwo-tlfKVf'lTro E/)fHl,'w,' fUtOoVTCV, KCLt 701? «*>T<7/3«0O<?

APPENDIX. 595

mation communicated to the translators by the vocalized re-
cord, which are to be found in even the few specimens of
extant remains of the Greek versions of the second century
exhibited in the course of the last discussion, show very plainly
that the Jewish priesthood must have prepared this work for
the use of their agents before the second attack upon the Sep-
tuagint ; though they did not venture to let it come under
public inspection till after all the other means they tried for
lowering the credit of that version had proved abortive. As
the chief cause of the previous failures lay in the suspicious
characters of the persons successively engaged in this opera-
tion, it was obviously of the utmost importance to the success
of the hitherto foiled enterprise of the rulers of the Jews, that
they should obtain the services, unconsciously given in the
cause they had so much at heart, of some agent who was quite
above the suspicion of designedly seconding their views ; and
Origen was of all men the very fittest for their purpose, both
from the great inquisitiveness as well as uncommon energy of
his mind, and also from the very high degree of estimation in
which he was held by the Christians of his day. Accordingly,
the bait was laid for this author : a copy of the vocalized text
was placed within his reach, of which he eagerly obtained
possession, and as eagerly availed himself of Jewish instruction
with regard to the language in which it was written ; — instruc-
tion which was then, for the first time since the commencement
of the second century, given correctly to a Christian. The
success of the contrivance just described is placed in a very
striking light by the circumstance already noticed — and for
which I have endeavoured to account — that while the princi-
pal spurious Greek versions were from the first distrusted by
the Christian authorities, and at last totally rejected, the vocal-

ainwv to ijfteiepa avvKptvavTes, fiap-rvpr]Oetaiv viro twv nificirw $iarnpa(f)ei<Twi>
eichoaewv AkvXou, kui QeoSoTiwvos, Kal Su/i/tnxov. — Origenis Opera, Ed°. Bene-
dict,, torn. iv. p. 141. A few lines lower down in the same page this author
culls the Jewish edition, here referred to, of the Septuagint, to 'Eppaifav.

596 APPENDIX.

ized text, though conveying grosser corruptions of sound, in
respect to certain names, and of sense, with regard to certain
passages, than did any of those versions, was at once univer-
sally received, and is still even up to the present day consi-
dered genuine in its vocal as well as consonantal ingredients.
In the instance, indeed, of a transaction managed with so much
art, and to the success of which secrecy in certain respects was
so essential, no direct exposure by means of external testi-
monies can be expected. But the view just given of the conduct
of the parties therein engaged is powerfully supported by in-
ternal evidence, indirectly derived from some ascertained cir-
cumstances of the case, as well as from an examination, under
the last head very briefly noticed, of the extant fragments of
the spurious Greek versions ; and it is further strengthened
by the consideration that it affords a satisfactory solution of
difficulties which appear to be otherwise quite inexplicable.
The writing of the Hebrew text is of such a description that,
even after it received its first vocalization, the power of read-
ing it, and understanding the language in which its purport is
conveyed, could not be acquired without the aid of oral in-
struction ; and at the period in question that instruction could
not be obtained without the connivance of the Jewish priests,
as the information requisite for the purpose was then confined
to themselves and the scribes under their immediate control.
By what motive, then, different from that just assigned, could
these men have been led to the abrupt and violent change of
policy indicated by their treating, in reference to this subject,
Clement of Alexandria and his pupil Origen in ways so directly
opposite ? or how else can the apparent inconsistency be ex-
plained, of their allowing instruction most highly prized by
them to be given to a leading adversary, which they, up to the
same period, withheld from their friends — from even the most
learned laymen of their nation — from all, indeed, who did not
belong to their own order, or that of their scribes, except a few
agents connected with them through some secret tie ? Why
did they selecl for such exceptions men who could not be fully

APPENDIX. 597

trusted ? Aquila, the most remarkable of those agents, was a
renegade. Why did they prefer his version to that made by
themselves ? Though it be matter of some doubt whether
Commodus preceded or followed Theodotion in the order of
succession, yet it is on all sides agreed that they both wrote
later than Aquila, and that each of their versions was, upon
the whole, less adverse than his to the Septuagint. Why then
did the priests, while Aquila's version was in high favour with
them, notwithstanding, get others composed less suited to their
own taste ?

To unravel the difficulties suggested by these and various
other questions of like nature, an easy clue is afforded by the
foregoing representation of the subject; but there is one point
connected with it which requires a fuller explanation. The
Jewish priests, while endeavouring to gain currency for certain
corruptions of Scripture, had it not in their power to employ
the agents on whose fidelity they could best depend : they were
forced to select such as were less objectionable to, and, there-
fore, more likely to impose upon the Christians. But in their
eagerness and haste to prepare for the first of those agents, who
appears to have been Aquila, a vocalized copy of the Hebrew
Bible, they suffered to slip into its vocalization, besides their
intentional perversions of the sense, a great number of mis-
takes which in no way contributed to the promotion of their
design, but, on the contrary, were calculated eventually to ex-
pose the spurious nature of the matres lectionis ; while a full
century intervened between the finishing of the work thus
executed, and the days of Origen. How then came it to pass
that they did not avail themselves of this long interval to re-
move such untoward errors from the altered spelling of the
sacred record, before they allowed it to be submitted to the
inspection of the orthodox Christians ? The answer to this
question is supplied through a consideration of the character of
the individual employed by them on the occasion here referred
to. He had deserted the cause of the Christians, and might
equally forsake that of the Jews, if he found a way of again
ingratiating himself with his former friends by means of a very

598 APPENDIX.

important communication. It would, therefore, have been
to the Jewish priesthood a most dangerous step to intrust
Aquila with the secret of their vocalization of the original
text, — a secret which they could not prevent a man of his sa-
gacityfrom penetrating, if they had attempted to correct the nu-
merous undesigned errors of this operation, after they had placed
a copy of the work in his hands, and had got him sufficiently in-
structed in its language to enable him to peruse it. They in con-
sequence left the errors in question uncorrected, and preferred,
as the lesser of two evils between which they were compelled
to make choice, the liability to a remote exposure of their
fraud, by means of those errors, rather than run the risk of an
immediate one through an agent on whose fidelity they could
not depend. The oversight which made it impossible to avoid
both dangers, and appears to have been destined by Providence
to effect at last the defeat of their project, was their failing
carefully to revise the vocalized text, before they suffered a
copy of it to get into the possession of any stranger. But to
render this omission subservient to the eventual exposure of
their fraudulent contrivance, it was requisite (exclusively of
the perpetuation of the above errors throughout the succes-
sive transcriptions of the sacred text) that a knowledge of
the ancient Hebrew should be diffused among men not
belonging to, or dependent on, the sacerdotal class. Now
a provision for the fulfilment of this condition may, I sub-
mit, be traced in the sudden change of policy of the Jewish
priests, by which, after getting Origen to a certain extent in-
structed in the tongue in question, they proceeded to confer
the same benefit on their own countrymen, from whom it had
for a long previous interval been withheld. In thus altering
their treatment of the laity, they probably had an eye merely
to preparing the way for urging their people to abandon the
Greek versions which had turned out such unsuccessful in-
struments of deception, and qualifying them to return to the
use of the sacred record in its original language. But the
change had a tendency to another effect also which they seem
i" have overlooked, namely, that of extending the knowledge

APPENDIX. 599

of this language beyond the persons under their immediate
control, and of thereby facilitating to their adversaries its ac-
quisition to an extent greater than was consistent with the
secure preservation of their secret. The progress, however,
of this result was but slow ; as we find Jerome, nearly two
centuries after the age of Origen, complaining occasionally in
his writings of the great difficulty of meeting with competent
instructors in Hebrew, as also of the large sums he had to pay
for their assistance. In fact, it was only from an exertion of
extraordinary abilities and industry that either he or Origen
arrived at any proficiency in this study : the instruction af-
forded them for the purpose was quite insufficient to enable
ordinary capacities to master the subject ;a and accordingly,
it may be observed that, after the lapse of a few more centu-
ries, the Christians sunk a second time into total ignorance of
the original language of the Bible. On the other hand, the
knowledge of this language, which appears to have been com-
municated with less reserve to the Jewish laity, gradually
spread among them till at length it reached a considerable

* The inadequacy of the Hebrew information afforded to Origen might
easily be evinced by examples taken from his writings. But, having no longer
room left for this species of proof, I must now confine myself to quoting a
censure passed on him by Huetius, for allowing himself to be guided in the
interpretation of Scriptural names by such an authority as that of Philo Ju-
daeus, — an error from which an accurate knowledge of Hebrew would cer-
tainly have guarded him. The following are the words of Huetius here
referred to: — " Qui vero non offendisset Origenes Philonem sequens ducem,
qui Judseus licet, Judaeis prognatus, ne mediocri quidem litterarum Hebrai-
carum aura, uti neque Hellenistae fere reliqui, fuerat afflatus?" — Origeniana,
lib. ii. cap. i. sect. 2. It may be worth while to observe upon this extract,
that Huetius here imputes utter ignorance of Hebrew generally to all the
Greek authors who flourished after the age of Philo, — an imputation which
is strictly true with respect to all of them (except, indeed, such as were in-
spired, or belonged to the Jewish priesthood), until we come down to the age
of Origen himself; and afterwards became again applicable to them, in a gra-
dually increasing degree, till we arrive at the period when the patriarch
Photius lived, whose writings prove that the Christians were then a second
time sunk into total ignorance of the original language of the Bible.

600 APPENDIX.

number of their body ; so that, when the Christians began,
upon the revival of learning in Europe, to direct their atten-
tion again to the study of Hebrew, they experienced no diffi-
culty to procure the aid of an abundant supply of rabbinical
teachers.

The abruptness of the change of language to which the
Jewish priests resorted in the performance of divine service,
before the bulk of the laity were prepared for this innovation
by adequate instruction in the ancient Hebrew, is evinced by
the vehement opposition of the Jews to this measure, and the
tumults it occasioned, which rose to such a pitch as to render
necessary the interference of the Roman Government. In re-
ference to this subject, there is still extant in the original
Greek a decree of the Emperor Justinian, which is numbered
the 146th in the collection of his later ordinances (veapal hta-
Ta£e<?) printed by Henry Stephens in the year 1558. The
entire decree is worth attentive perusal ; but here I must con-
fine myself to a single passage near its commencement, in
which, after alluding to the violent dissensions of the Jews, and
the disputes among them whether their Scriptures should be
read in the synagogues in Hebrew alone, or also in Greek, this
Emperor proceeds as follows : — " We, therefore, having been
informed of the circumstances relating to this controversy,
have judged those to be more equitable who wish to make
use of the Greek tongue also [that is, in conjunction with the
ancient Hebrew] in the reading out of their sacred books, and
of absolutely every tongue, whichever each locality causes to
be better suited and more familiar to the hearers."a From
this extract it is plain that the Jewish priests did not succeed
in the attempt to confine the public service of the synagogues
to the ancient Hebrew tongue till after the reign of Justinian,

a H/tet? Tolvvv ia irepi -rovrov /uaOovTcs, KaXXi'ovs iicpt'va/xev elvai tovs koi
TijvEWrjvt'ca (j)(vvi)v tt/jos rijv r&v lepwv fitftXi'iov avdyvwaiu irapaXa/.ifidveiv HOcX-
oi/T6?, Kal (pwvtjv Traoav air\S)1 ijv o toVos eTrn^leio-repaw Kai /.uiXXov ryvu<pt/iiov

Toia&Kovovatp e7vat ttoh.7 — Impp. Jurtiniani, Justini, Leonis Novella Constitu-
(loncs, p. 372,

APPENDIX. 601

which ended about the middle of the sixth century of our era.
But the power of expelling the disobedient from their com-
munity was too formidable to be long resisted ; whence it is
likely that they carried their point soon after the epoch just
specified. The act, however, of compelling their congrega-
tions to hear the Word of God read solely in a dead language,
that was unknown to the great majority of the nation, must at
first have considerably reduced for a time their popularity ;
and most probably during that interval were written such of
the earlier Jewish works as exhibit traces of an independent
spirit, on the part of the authors, to the extent of rendering
passages of Scripture according to the translations given of
them by the Seventy Interpreters, in some of the instances
in which this conformity to the Septuagint is strongly sup-
ported and strictly required by the context.

6. How and when the Peshitah was framed, are questions
hitherto undecided ;a but now at last we shall, I am in hopes,
be conducted to their final settlement by the aid of the disco-
very unfolded in this volume. "With regard to the first point,
the writers of the seventeenth century held that this version
was taken entirely from the text of the Hebrew Bible ; while,
on the other hand, those of the present day, judging this view
of its origin irreconcilable with the fact that it differs from
that text in a great many places in which it agrees with the
Septuagint, maintain it to be in part derived from the latter
work also, though they are at variance with each other as to
the exact nature of this mixed derivation. The Greek record
is assumed, by some of them, to have been made use of contem-
poraneously with the Hebrew one in the first formation of the
version under discussion, and by others, to have been resorted
to only long afterwards, in order to its correction and improve-

a In the discussion of the first of the above questions the Old Testament
of the Peshitah is of course the only part of it taken into consideration, as the
difficulties therein examined have no connexion with the remainder of this

602 APPENDIX.

merit. But neither of these assumptions can stand the test of
examination. For, in reference to the former, how can it be
admitted that translators who had the advantage of consulting
the original record would in numerous instances allow greater
weight to any version, and more especially to one in a foreign
language ? Or if, according to the latter assumption, the blame
of the seeming deviations from the Hebrew text be shifted from
the Syriac translators to a set of men imagined to have lived
at a later period, when the Christians had lost the power of read-
ing that text, the difficulty of the case is hereby altered indeed,
but scarcely diminished. For we are thus required to concede
that an imaginary set of correctors of the Peshitah, of whom
not even the slightest tradition has reached us, were some way
or other induced, in a considerable number of instances, to rely
more on a foreign than on their own version ; and that, too,
after their attachment to the latter work had been increased
by time, and they had been long accustomed to regard it with
a high degree of veneration. It is true, that about the seventh
century, at a period when the Christians were a second time
immersed in total ignorance of the ancient Hebrew, another
Syriac version was written, wholly derived from the Septuagint.
But this work never superseded the Peshitah as the Authorized
Version of the main body of the Syriac Christians, although it
was erroneously supposed to be a closer translation ; and,
surely, the very same feeling which excluded it from such an
advancement of authority would have equally interfered with
the employment of any Grecian document, in either the pri-
mary formation or subsequent correction of the national Sy-
riac version. Let us now try what light the discovery before
us throws upon this subject. The Septuagint and Peshitah,
though written quite independently of each other, agree in a
great number of places in which they disagree with the vocal-
ized Hebrew Bible ; because they are in common immediate
translations of one and the same record, taken from it when it
was in a, different state from that in which it is at present exhi-
bited, and while it was asyel unvocalized. On the other hand,

APPENDIX. 603

they disagree upon a lesser, though by no means inconsider-
able number of passages of that record, but chiefly with regard
to such as contain names of rare occurrence, or are involved in
some obscurity of meaning ; because the framers of the later
version, being unable to surmount the difficulties of those pas-
sages by mere knowledge of the ancient Hebrew, and not hav-
ing the aid of the earlier one, were forced to consult the
persons reputed to be the best informed upon the subject in
their day. But the passages in question belong to the very
class of sentences with misreadings of which the Jewish priest-
hood ventured to make their attack on the Septuagint ; and,
supposing them to have commenced those misreadings before
they got the Hebrew text surreptitiously vocalized, some of
the resulting perversions of sound or sense might be old enough
to find their way, in the manner just described, into the Pe-
shitah. Thus the application of a single principle serves to
account for, not only the agreements of two independent ver-
sions in a great variety of instances in which they might be
expected to differ, but also for the exceptions to those agree-
ments,— what it certainly could not in any conceivable man-
ner effect, if it were not founded in truth.

To the foregoing discussion it may be worth while to sub-
join two remarks. First, the derivation of the Peshitah in part
from the Septuagint, which seems to be indicated by the class
of passages first referred to, having been now disproved, this
circumstance greatly strengthens the force of the evidence of
the two versions in those passages in which they agree ; because
that evidence is the concordant testimony of two records that
were framed quite independently of each other. Secondly,
however valuable the Peshitah may be, its authority is shown
by the second class of passages to be very inferior to that of
the Septuagint ; as indeed might be deduced from other con-
siderations also, as, for instance, from its having been written
(as will be presently shown) nearly four centuries farther than
the oldest part of the Septuagint from the time when the He-
brew of the Bible was spoken as a living language.

004 APPENDIX.

To turn next to the second question, the age of the Peshi-
tah, — from the complete identity of the language employed
in the two parts of this version it has been very generally in-
ferred that they were composed by the same persons, or at any
rate about the same time ; and in corroboration of this infer-
ence it may be observed that some passages of the rendering
therein given of the Old Testament yield strong indications of
their having been written by Christians. As then the year in
which the Gospel of St. John was framed, or the sixty-ninth
year of the first century of our era, affords a major limit to
the antiquity of the New Testament of the Peshitah, it does
so likewise to that of the Old Testament of the same version ;
— a limitation which might probably be brought, upon the
same principle, a few years lower down, only that the exact
date is unknown of the first Epistle of St. John, which appears
to be the latest work of which a translation was included among
the original contents of this version.3 So far most of those who
have studied the subject seem to be agreed ; but much greater
difficulty has been found in attempting to fix a minor limit to
the age of this record. Since the publication at Rome of a
complete edition of the works of Ephraim the Syrian, which
was finished in the year 1747, it has been ascertained that he
quoted several passages of Scripture exactly as they are'trans-
lated in the Peshitah ; which, consequently, must have been
composed before the middle of the fourth century, the period

a Although the Peshitah now presents to the reader a translation of the
entire New Testament, it did not, as originally compiled, contain renderings
of the second Epistle of St. Peter, of the second or third of St. John, of that
of St. Jude, or of the Apocalypse. The vision which forms the subject of the
last-mentioned work is expressly attested by Eusebius, in the eighteenth chap-
ter of the third book of his Ecclesiastical History, to have been impressed on
the mind of St. John near the close of the reign of Domitian; so that, if a
translation of that work had been included among the original contents of the
Peshitah, the major limit to the age of this version might have been brought
down to the 9Gth year of the first century of our era, as synchronizing with
the last year of Domitian's reign.

APPENDIX. 605

when this author flourished. Hitherto no greater antiquity
has been made out for the above version upon any satisfac-
tory ground, though it has long been supposed by a consi-
derable portion of the learned to be above two centuries older.8
But now the justness of their opinion on this point can be
established by means of the present discovery, and the date of
the Peshitah be thereby thrown back to a period very little
distant from the end of the first century. There are two ways
of arriving at this result. In the first place, the Christians were
utterly ignorant of the original language of the Old Testament,
and consequently incapable of writing any translation of the
Hebrew Scriptures, from shortly after the beginning of the se-
cond century till the age of Origen ; if, then, they composed the
Peshitah before the end of this interval, they must have done so
before its commencement, that is, before more than a very few
years of the second century had elapsed. In the second place,
it is rendered manifest, through the internal evidence afforded
by a comparison of the Old Testament of this version with the
Hebrew text, that it must have been framed by translators who
made use of unvocalized copies of that text. But, until after

B Bishop Walton supposed the Peshitah to have been written by apostolic
men (Proleg. xiii. 15), that is, I presume, by immediate disciples of the Apos-
tles; and although this opinion is not likely to be well founded (as the persons
alluded to were too much occupied with missionary labours to have leisure for
undertaking a work which affords very clear indications of great care bestowed
upon its formation, besides that there is no reason to imagine them all to have
been acquainted with the ancient Hebrew), it yet appears to have led him to
a just conclusion with regard to the age of this version. For, if we take the
middle point of time between the earliest and the latest dates that could be
assigned to the Peshitah on this supposition, the period so determined would
come out not very distant from the end of the first century. The martyrdom
of Polycarp, the last of the individuals in question of whom accounts have
been transmitted to us, and probably, from his great age, the very last of their
number, is dated at the latest (for authors differ on this point) A. D. 168;
while, on the other hand, the deaths of some of those men may be conceived
to have taken place as early as the persecution of the Christians which imme-
diately followed the martyrdom of St. Stephen, A. D. 34. But the middle
date between these two is A. D. 101.

606 APPENDIX.

such copies had become extinct among the public, the Jewish
priests could not have ventured to place a vocalized copy in the
hands of Aquila ; because if they had, they would have sub-
jected themselves to imminent danger of his discovering,
through a comparison of it with one of the older kind, the fact
of its vowel-letters being interpolated elements, — a fact which
they have been shown in a preceding article of this Appendix
most anxious to keep concealed from him. Moreover, the ex-
tinction of the unvocalized copies proceeded of necessity at a
slow pace, according as they fell into the possession of indivi-
duals unable to make any use of them, after the deaths of all
owners (whether Christians or Jewish laymen) who had been
acquainted with their language. So that at least twenty years
may be deemed to have elapsed after the Peshitah was written,
before Aquila obtained a vocalized copy of the sacred text ; to
which about three more may be reckoned to have been added,
before he completed, with the help of that copy, the Greek
version he is attested to have published in the year of our era
128-9. According to this calculation the Peshitah was writ-
ten before a period five years subsequent to the commence-
ment of the second century. But if the amount of the two
requisite deductions from A. D. 128—9 be judged greater than
I have made it by any number of years, the minor limit to the
age of this version may be pushed farther back to the extent
of that difference.

7. The Samaritan Pentateuch was brought under notice
and referred to by a series of Christian writers extending from
Eusebius in the beginning of the fourth century to Georgius
Syncellus about the end of the eighth ;a after which it was lost
sight of in Christendom till the year 1631, when Father Morin

* Georgius Syncellus quoted the above work only at second-hand from
the Chronicon of Eusebius. Most of the intervening writers referred to ap-
pear to have consulted only a secondary version of it, formed by translating
its Samaritan version into Greek, — a work which has been briefly noticed
under the head of a previous discussion. Jerome, however, is to be excepted
from the number of those who arc likelv to have so acted.

APPENDIX. 607

of the Oratory in Paris, published an account of two copies
then recently brought from the East, which were purchased,
one of them at Constantinople, by M. De Sancy, the French
ambassador there, and afterwards Archbishop of St. Maloes,and
the other at Damascus, by Pietro della Valle, a Roman knight.8
I should add that several valuable copies were procured about
the same time from Aleppo by Archbishop Ussher, Vice-Chan-
cellor of the University of Dublin ; and although the work
was first printed from the former MSS. in the Paris Polyglot,
in 1645, its second edition came from the press corrected and
improved by the aid of the latter set in the London Polyglot,
in 1657. During the space of above eight hundred years that
this record disappeared, it was in the sole keeping of the Sa-
maritans ; but the care and fidelity Avith which they preserved
it for that long interval may be judged of by the circumstance,
that there are several passages of Scripture in which ancient
authors during the five preceding centuries, especially Jerome,
remarked agreements or disagreements between it and the
Jewish edition of the Pentateuch, or between it and the cor-
responding portion of the Septuagint ; which same agreements
and disagreements may be observed to hold between the three
compared documents even up to the present day.

When, after the publication of Morin's account, the text
itself was exhibited in the Parisian and London Polyglots, it
excited much attention among the learned ; but the numerous

a Exercitationes in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateuchum, pp. 7-10,
370-1. According to the commonly received representation of Morin's ac-
count of the matter, which I incautiously followed in a note at the bottom of
page 106 of this volume, the two copies above mentioned are confounded to-
gether ; but, on reference to the pages just specified of Morin's own work upon
the subject, it will be seen that they are quite distinct MSS. ; and on further
consulting the final pages of his account, it will be perceived that the first
printed specimens of both the text and version in question were taken from
the copy which belonged to Della Valle, whose name (transcribed in Latin, by
Morin, a Valle) appears to be the same as that written in old Norman
French Du Val, which has been long since, in the English use of it, altered
into Wall.

2 T

608 APPENDIX.

discrepancies they found between it and the Jewish edition of
the same text caused it again to sink into oblivion ; and in this
state of neglect it has been permitted to lie for much the
greater part of the time which has elapsed since it was first
printed. Now, however, that the vast majority of those in-
stances of disagreement can be accounted for, and shown not to
affect at all the integrity of the original ingredients of either
edition of the text, the very feature of the case that up to the
present time has thrown a shade over the work before us will, I
expect, henceforward constitute its highest interest. For the
true explication of the apparent discrepancies between the two
records, which has at last been arrived at, serves powerfully to
corroborate the proofs derived from other sources of the adven-
titious nature of the matres lectionis in each record. Bishop
Walton in vain endeavoured to account for the greater scar-
city of those letters in the Jewish than in the Samaritan Pen-
tateuch, by assuming that the Masoretic points, which were
introduced only into one of those works, occasioned the remo-
val of a large portion of the characters in question from that
one, while their number was left undiminished in the other.
This view of the subject is given in his learned treatise on the
Samaritan Pentateuch, as follows : — " .... in vocibus quas
plene vel defective scriptas notant Judasi, non sunt accurati
Samaritani, sicut nee erant Judrei ante Masorethas punctorum
autores ; unde observatur literas quae post punctationem
abesse debent, plerumque in codicibus Samaritanis relictas
esse, quia scilicet ita scribebant ante punctorum inventio-
iK'in." — Proler/om., xi. 10. But this explanation is directly
refuted by the fact that Hebrew words are often to be seen
written with fewer vowel-letters in the Samaritan than in the
Jewish edition : and, besides, it does not at all meet the prin-
cipal difficulty of the case : namely, the circumstance that cor-
responding syllables, instead of being vocalized in one edition
and unvocalized in the other, frequently exhibit different
vowel-letters in the two editions ; whence arise differences
nliidi go to the extent of altering, not only the inflexions of

APPENDIX. 609

the words and forms of expression, but sometimes even the
very meaning of the passages they occur in. What uneasiness
the discrepancies of the latter kind excited, as long as atten-
tion was directed to a comparison of the two editions, may be
estimated by the vast importance which the Bishop attached,
not to the general removal of those discrepancies, — a result
never even contemplated, much less hoped for, by the learned
of his day, — but to the very subordinate service of reducing
them to distinct classes. Upon this point his opinion is ex-
pressed in the same treatise in the following manner : — " Quod
enim de editione Grreca rwv 6 diximus, idem de exemplari Sa-
maritano optandum, ut doctus aliquis judicio et linguarum
cognitione pollens, et partium studio non abreptus, cui otium
et ingenium ad rem tantam aggrediendum suppetit, accurate
discrepantias has examinaret, et quamam ex scribarum errore,
qusenam ex codicum Hebrseorum varietate ortse sint, qusenam
de industria mutationes factae, distingueret. Certe qui hoc
opus perficeret, magnam a grata posteritate laudem reporta-
ret." — Prolegom., xi. 16.

It is not my intention in this place to enter into a general
examination of the contents of the two editions of the Hebrew
Pentateuch : that may be found already done in the second
Dissertation of Kennicott and in the writings of other authors.
There is but one peculiarity of the Samaritan record which I
wish here to bring under notice, and even of that one I can spare
room for no more than a single example. For the most part
the two editions, as far as they present the same sentences,
show no difference of any kind except in their vowel-letters ;
— a circumstance, I may by the way observe, which had an
obvious tendency to lead to the discovery of the interpolation
of those letters in each edition. Where, however, the conso-
nants of corresponding sentences do not entirely agree, those
employed in the Samaritan copies appear to be connected with
a more ancient pronunciation of the sacred language. Thus
the pure Hebrew termination in the M articulation is fre-
quently preserved in this edition of the Pentateuch, where it

2 t 2

(510 APPENDIX.

has been changed in the Jewish copies into the corresponding
ChaLdaic ending in A7" ; this variation marking the effect pro-
duced upon the Jewish scribes by their long residence, during
the Babylonian Captivity, among a people who used Chaldee as
their vernacular dialect, A remarkable instance of the corrup-
tion in question, as far as respects proper names, is exhibited
in that of the youngest son of Jacob, which is at present found
written everywhere in the Jewish edition of the Bible pM3,
BeNYtfMIN, but in the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch
D^J3, BeNYaMlM. The latter compound is pure Hebrew for
' son of days,' while the former is its Chaldaic corruption. The
Rabbins, indeed, from an anxiety to sustain the correctness of
the language of the edition of the text in their keeping, insist
upon ' son of right hand' as the meaning of the recorded name ;
for which latter signification the Jewish mode of writing the
compound would, I allow, be the correct one. But the parti-
culars of the case tell most decisively both for the first of those
etymologies, and against the second. The name under discus-
sion was chosen for his infant by Jacob, at a period when he
was suffering under the deepest affliction ; and the subsequent
fortunes were not very distinguished of either the boy who
then received it, or the tribe which was called after him. Now
' son of days,' or ' child of old age,' is a mournful denomina-
tion, which might very naturally occur to the patriarch when
he was reminded of his own mortality by the death of a wife
whom he loved with the tenclerest affection ; while, on the
other hand, his giving the new-born child at such a time the
triumphant designation of 'son of right hand' would have
suited neither his feelings as a man nor his prescience as a
prophet. Thus it would appear, as far as a valid inference
can be drawn from a single example, that, as the Samaritan
characters approach nearer than the Jewish ones to the oldest
known shapes of the Hebrew letters, so likewise, in the few
instances in which the terminations of corresponding words in
the two editions differ, the Samaritan endings are. those of
greater antiquity. This result accords with a remark made by

APPENDIX. 611

Morin in the publication of his which has been already re-
ferred to, that the Samaritans formerly spoke a less corrupt
dialect of Hebrew than the Jews :a for it is evident that the
copyists whose vernacular tongue came nearer to pure He-
brew would be those less likely to let slip into their tran-
scriptions any combinations of letters incorrectly representing
the ancient forms of the original words.

With respect to the particular name which has been just
examined, I rather question whether its older pronunciation
should now be reverted to. The N termination of this word
is at present received by, I believe, every nation looking on the
Pentateuch as an inspired work, except the small existing rem-
nant of the Samaritans ; it was adopted at a very remote pe-
riod, even before the oldest part of the Septuagint was com-
posed ; and it is sanctioned by the practice of the writers of
the Greek Testament. It is true that, although the quotations
of the Evangelists and Apostles afford decisive authority for
the meaning of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures, they by no
means do so for the primitive pronunciation of the names
therein occurring ; their testimony on the latter point reach-
ing solely to the pronunciation which prevailed at the time
when they lived, as we have already seen in the case of the
name of the royal Psalmist. But still we surely are war-
ranted in following the example of inspired men upon this
point ; and as a freedom of choice is thus left open to us, it
would, perhaps, upon the whole, be the course attended with
least evil to adhere to the now almost universal practice of
writing the word in question Benjamin ;b notwithstanding the

a The above remark of Morin is conveyed in the following terms : — " Praj-
terea Samaritanorum plebem IIebraica3 linguae idioma sincerius Judaica con-
servasse. Ab Hebrseo enim proprius abest, magisque phrasim et genium
Hebraicse lingua? sapit Samaritiea versio quae nobis est pra3 manibus, quiim
ChaldaicK periphrases, Juda:orumque alii libri Chaldaici, ut ex speciminibus
nostris manifestum erit."— Exercilationes inutrumqiie Samaritanorum Pcntalcu-
chum, p. 371.

>> The above form is that in which the name in question should be written
in German or Italian; but, to avoid an additional corruption not long since in-
troduced into this countrv, it should be written in English Benyamin.

612 APPENDIX.

circumstance that this form of it conveys a corrupt pronun-
ciation of the original name.

With regard to the language of the Samaritan version,
which has been transmitted to us only through a single work
not in common use or easily procured, a brief specimen of it
may perhaps be acceptable to the reader ; which, to save him
trouble, is exhibited in Hebrew letters of the Jewish rather
than of the Samaritan form. The verse selected for the illus-
tration of this subject is Gen. ii. 24, as exhibited in the parent
tongue and some of the cognate dialects, preceded by its Au-
thorized English rendering ; which, after the insertion of a
word within brackets corresponding to one lost from the
original passage, serves to convey its meaning in each of the
Shemitic tongues it is quoted in, except the Chaldee verse, in
the rendering of which the supplemental expression, 'the dor-
mitory of,' should be introduced between the words ' leave,'
and ' his father.'

Authorized Eng. " Therefore shall a man leave his father and
his mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife ; and they [two] shall be one flesh."

Jewish Text, ,iq« fiKI TOK ntf B«K lUT p h$

. .nr»K ihib — - ivn ;int£>*u pcm d

Samar. Text, DiTatMD nVTI

Samar. Vers. , HEN m HiHtf tV "DJ p2W p ^"D

Chaldee Par. tiTD«l ^TOK *22V?2 JTO 12) p^B* p by

.in ^iD2b - - y\m ; mnn*a psv)

Syriac Vers. .aiLo)]o ^.aiao}] ^r^-a toaruj jjai ^^Ji^Id
.^mr> r^ ^pcTLjjZ ^ooauo .oiZAj]] .°)nio

From the Samaritan edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch no more
of this verse is given than the portion in which these two edi-
tions differ, by means of which portion a word lost from the
Jewish copies can be restored to its proper site ; where, how-
ever it should be replaced within brackets and with the note
in the opposite part of the margin, " Codex Samaritanus." On
the other hand, the word 'two' should be inserted in the cor-

APPENDIX. 613

responding part of the English Translation in Italics, and with
the marginal note thereon, "Mat. xix. 5, Mark x. 7, 1 Corin.
vi. 16, Eph. v. 31, put likewise in Italics, in order, not only to
point out the parallel passages of the New Testament, but also
to sustain its insertion in the specified place by the inspired
authority of those passages. When there are such vouchers for
the justness of this correction, there is scarcely any occasion
for adding, that it is moreover supported by the joint and mu-
tually independent testimonies of the Septuagint and Peshitah.
The only other difference between the two copies of the Hebrew
verse is occasioned by the circumstance of the verb immediately
before the dropped group having been vocalized by the one
set of scribes, and passed over without any vocalization by the
other ; in consequence of which its inflexion, which is clearly
in the plural number, must be read in the Samaritan edition
WeUaYellu (that is, if strictly rendered, ' and they shall have
been,' i. e., shall immediately be), while in the Jewish edition
it is contracted into WeHaYU. With respect to the Samaritan
translation, its first and ninth groups differ from the correspond-
ing ingredients of any of the other Shemitic representations of
the same verse : but still the former occurs in the Chaldee
dialect with the very meaning that is here wanted for it ;
while the verb of the latter group, not being found in either
Syriac or Chaldee, is rendered by Morin and Walton " adha3re-
bit" (shall cleave unto), on the assumption of a perfect agree-
ment between the Samaritan version and Hebrew text. But, as
such an agreement can in some instances be positively shown
not to hold, it would perhaps be safer to translate the group in
question according to the well-known signification of its verb
in Hebrew, ' to rejoice ;' which verb being here put in a pas-
sive form, the compound might be rendered, ' and shall be
delighted with,' — a rendering which accords, though but
loosely, I admit, with the sense required by the context in
this place. Of the remaining words of this translation, all are
the same in their roots, and several of them entirely the same,
as the corresponding ingredients of the Hebrew, Syriac, or

r,u APPENDIX.

Chaldee verses. But where the inflexions differ, one instance
is presented to us of the Samaritan dialect approaching in
orammatical structure nearer than either of the others to the

o

parent Hebrew tongue. The verb substantive, which is in the
original verse exhibited in the form of a tense compounded of
the future and a subordinate preterite, retains this compound
form in the Samaritan translation, while it is rendered by a
simple future in the Syriac and Chaldee verses. But a second
verb of the Hebrew verse in the same compound form is ren-
dered by a simple future in all the three translations ; so that
the nearer approach, in the particular just noticed, of the Sa-
maritan, than of either of the other dialects, to the structure
of the ancient Hebrew has been only in part preserved. In
this dialect the pronominal affixes differ from the equivalent
Hebrew ones, just as much, though not in quite the same
manner, as they do in the Syriac and Chaldee dialects ; while,
on the other hand, those employed in the same places respec-
tively of the two editions of the text are completely identical.
As the fact last mentioned supplies a more decisive limit to
the antiquity of the Samaritan vocalization of the Hebrew
Pentateuch than that previously given, I shall here bring it
prominently under observation by an immediate comparison
of some equivalent affixes in the different Shemitic languages
referred to, which are taken from the various representations
of the verse above quoted, and those of two other verses, the
several exponents of the same pronouns being arranged in the
same columns respectively, as follows : —

Gen. ii. 24. Exod. iii. 22. Deut. xii. 31.

his father, and upon your daughters, their sons.

Jewish Text, TOK n** Derail ^1 DlTEl flK

Samaritan Text, T^K MN D^fOn ^1 DiT03 flK

Samar. Version, .TON tV pron Vl 1^3 TV

Chaldee Paraph., ^iTOK p^roil bjn ]in^2 TV

^

oaiiin

Syriac Version, ^ctiq.^]] vaoAj_cAo

Here the pronominal affixes in the same places respectively of

the two editions of the text are exhibited exactly the same, and

APPENDIX. 015

are so presented to us in the vast majority of instances, except
where a different treatment of them by the two sets of vocal-
izers has been occasioned by their having been entirely over-
looked, or their nature mistaken, by one set;a in consequence
of which an affix correctly vocalized in one of the editions
is sometimes to be met either not vocalized at all, or erro-
neously vocalized, in the other. But with such exceptions,
which are comparatively few, the affixes under considera-
tion are constantly treated in the same manner in the two
editions. To account for the identity of their vocalization to
this extent, it cannot be alleged that the pronunciation of
those affixes by two nations, long debarred from any mutual
intercourse, continued always the same ; and even if it had
done so, an identity of their vocalization would not of neces-
sity have thence resulted ; as an affix, which must be supposed
pronounced in the same way in every part of the same edition,
is yet to be found therein variously vocalized to the extent of
greater or less fulness, and likewise corresponding affixes in
the same places respectively of different versions may be seen
in the above examples vocalized with some degree of variety.
The exact identity, therefore, of vocalization here brought
under notice is utterly inexplicable, except on the supposition
of the insertion of vowel-letters in one edition of the text
having been copied from the other. But the Jews, besides
hating the Samaritans, despised them too much to borrow
from them any improvement. Hence it follows that the Sa-
maritans must have been the borrowers, and consequently that
the original record was vocalized later by them than by the
Jews. The interval, however, between the two operations
could not have been of any great length ; for the Samaritan
scribes evidently participated with the Jewish vocalizers (not-
withstanding their mutual hatred) in the wish of keeping the
introduction of the matres lectionis into the Hebrew text a
secret. But the comparison of an unvocalized copy with .1

' Thus, for example, in each edition of the text., the pronominal He i? in
some places mistreated as a paragogie /A.

616 APPENDIX.

vocalized one would have at once exposed this secret. Both
parties, therefore, must have concurred in the effort to put the
earliest possible termination to the danger of their common
adversaries ever obtaining an opportunity to make such a
comparison ; and for this purpose they must have proceeded
as expeditiously as they could, the former party to get con-
veyed to the latter a vocalized copy, and the latter to write
new copies or vocalize their old ones after this model, and not
suffer a single copy to remain unvocalized. Thus it turns out
that the Samaritan vocalization of the Pentateuch could not
have taken place till after the year of our era 126, but that it
was effected very soon after that epoch.

It remains that I should offer a few remarks upon the age
of the Samaritan version, which will, I think, be found, upon
investigation, bounded by the date, to which a close approxi-
mation has been above obtained, of the Samaritan vocalization
of the text. This version was supposed by Dr. Kennicott to
be older than the Septuagint ; but its juniority to that record
can be clearly made out by the circumstance of its agreeing
in purport with the Samaritan text in several places in which
the vocalization thereof is erroneous ; whence the consequence
appears inevitable that it must have been composed after the
Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch had been vocalized. A
curious instance of this adaptation of the Samaritan transla-
tion to an erroneous vocalization of the Hebrew text occurs
in the first clause of the verse, Gen. xlix. 11, which, notwith-
standing its brevity, betrays no less than two mistakes of the
Jewish vocalizers ; but of these the Samaritan scribes availed
themselves, for the purpose of transforming a prediction of the
subsequent fertility in vines of Judea into an accusation of
drunkenness against the posterity of Judah. The whole verse
is first quoted from the Authorized English Translation, after
which arc placed the part of it here to be examined, as trans-
mitted in the Jewish and Samaritan editions of the text, and
in the Samaritan, the Syriac, the Greek, the Latin, and the
Chald.ee versions, with a literal interpretation subjoined to
each representation of its purport : —

APPENDIX.

617

Authorized \
Eng. Vers. )
V
Jewish Text,

Samar. Text,

Samar. Vers.

Peshitah

Septuagint,

Vulgate,

Targum of

Onkelos,

" Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's
colt unto the choice vine ; he washed his
garments in wine, and his clothes in the
blood of grapes."

' He will surely bind his young ass unto the vine, even
the foal of his she-ass unto the fruitful vine ; he will
surely wash,' &c.

— D2D ; WK ^3 nplti/b*) X^y ]%& *"fiDK

' Bound [i. e. enslaved] are the men of his city unto the
vine, even the sons of his strength unto what is vile; he
will surely wash,' &c.

—ym ;npw <on np^ tnmp roaA *tdk

' Bound are the men of 'his city unto the vine, even the sons
of his strength unto vileness; he will surely wash,' &c.
&c.

1 He will bind his young ass unto the vine, even the foal
of his she-ass unto the shoot of the vine; he will wash,'
&c. &c.

— Aeo/uevwv 7rp6s ujATieXov tov 7rw\ov avrov, ical
ry e\iKi tov ttwXov T>y? ovov avrov' T:\vvel
k. t. A.

• Binding his young ass unto the vine, even the foal of

his she-ass unto the tendril of the vine; he will wash,'
&c. &c.

Ligans ad vineam pullum suum, et ad vitem,
0 fili mi, asinam suam ; lavabit, &e. &c.

' Binding his young ass unto the vineyard, and his she-ass,
0 my son, unto the vine; he will wash,' &c. &c.

* Yisrahel shall dwell around his [Yudah's] city, the Gen-

tiles shall build his temple, there shall be the just around
him and the servants of the law in doctrine along with
him; — '

618 APPENDIX.

The Chaldee rendering of the Hebrew line is here placed
the farthest from it, as being totally unconnected with its lite-
ral interpretation, — a charge which can but very seldom be
brought against the Targum of Onkelos. In this instance,
however, national prejudices appear to have made the Jewish
writer deviate, on one side, even more, in point of form at
least, than the Samaritan scribe did on the other, from strict
accuracy of translation. Of the little circular marks of censure
put over three letters of the above line, as exhibited in the
Jewish edition of the Hebrew text, the second has a reference
merely to orthography, and is inserted on the authority of the
Masorets, who have pointed the subjacent character to be read
with S power ; and, accordingly, the letter of that power has
been substituted for it in the margin. The justness of the two
remaining censures is established by the joint and independent
testimonies of the Septuagint and Peshitah : as the writers of
the former version show by their translation of the first and
penultimate words of the first clause that they read them
HoSeR, ' binding,' and BeN, ' foal of,' without any vowel that
could be denoted by Yod at the end of either ; and the framers
of the latter version in like manner show that they read the
same words respectively HaSaR, ' hath bound,' that is (as they
make use of a future tense), 'will surely bind,' and BeN, 'foal
of,' without an E or / at the end of either word. The writer
of the Vulgate also attests the spuriousness of the first of those
Yods by following the Seventy Jews in their interpretation,
and consequently in their reading of the word to which it is
annexed ; but for the purpose of making out the second Yod
genuine, was reduced to the absurdity of representing Jacob as
speaking to, and of, his son Judah at the same time. To decide
between the Greek and Syriac renderings of the initial word,
it is necessary to look to the second clause of the verse, as there
i s ; m < )bvious parallelism between the two clauses. But the verb
of the second clause, which is written in the form of a pre-
terite, has a future signification attached to it in both of the
versions referred to ; that is, it is rendered in each of them
as a prophetic future, and consequently the parallel verb of

APPENDIX. G19

the first clause should also be thus rendered ; so that the
Syriac construction of this word appears to be more strictly
accurate than the Greek one. On the other hand, though
the meaning of ' the tendril of a vine,' given by the Seventy to
the noun of the fourth group, can hardly be reconciled with
the context, yet the signification of (ufx-neXo? KapTio<p6po<>) ' a
fruitful vine' attached to it by them elsewhere (Jer. ii. 21)
would make good sense in this place ; and, as this testimony
is the highest uninspired authority within our reach for the
several meanings of a Hebrew term of rare occurrence, that
one of these which is here applicable should, I submit, be pre-
ferred to ' the shoot of a vine,' the signification of the Syriac
rendering of the same word. In every other respect the two
compared renderings of the clause in question fully agree ;
and the united authority of the versions from which they are
taken, with regard to the meanings to be chosen for the two
ambiguous terms, T# and ]HN, is so much the weightier, be-
cause neither set of translators could have mistaken the sense
of the first of those terms ; it not having been ambiguous in
their time, but written T#, HaYiR, in the same manner as it
now is for the meaning they assigned to it of ' a young ass,'
whereas for that of ' a city' it would then have been written
")#, H«'R ;a but the signification of this word determines which
of the two belonging to ]TM& is here to be selected. Thus it
will be found that the first clause predicted in figurative lan-
guage, indeed, butwith certain assurance ofthe fulfilment ofthe
prophecy, a great abundance of vines, and the second a great

a The above nouns are still preserved distinct in the plural number, that
denoting 'young asses' being written D^")^, and that expressing 'cities,'
D*H37, in every instance but one, namely in Judg. x. 4. But the exception
is not here to be taken into consideration ; for the two nouns, both of which
occur in that verse, are by a play upon the words there written in exactly
the same way, tm^, — a sort of joke whose appearance in the specified place
has hitherto perplexed the learned. But it now turns out that the levity
thus indicated is to be attributed not at all to the inspired author, but merely
to a subsequent vocalizei of this part of the sacred text.

620 APPENDIX.

abundance of wine, in the land to be afterwards inherited by
the descendants of Judah.

To turn our attention next to the mode of perverting the
sense of the above clause which the Samaritan scribes em-
ployed,— they made significant the first of the faulty Yods
by reading the group it closes, neither HoSeR, ' binding,' nor
HaSaR, ' hath bound,' i. e. ' will surely bind,' but HaSURE,
1 bound,' in the Hebrew form of the participle pahul in the
masculine plural construct state ; and, by translating it
in their own form (which thus appears to be identical with
the equivalent Chaldee one) for the same inflexion, HaSIRE.
Accordingly, they vocalized this wrord in their edition of the
text, *H1DK ; and, retaining it in their version, they there vo-
calized it ^DN. Of the second group, j£07, 'to the vine,'
they made no alteration whatever in the text, and merely
subjoined to it a fl in their version, to give the noun which
constitutes the principal part of this group a feminine termi-
nation. Of the third group JTVy, ' his young ass,' they intro-
duced no variation into their text, farther than by vocalizing
its affix, which they thereby changed from PI into 1 ; but they
quite altered its meaning, by translating it in their version
nrop, which exactly agrees (except in being quite unvocal-
ized) with PPmp, the Chaldee for ' his city.' With regard to
the fourth group of the clause, Father Morin, and after him
Bishop Walton, rendered the noun belonging to the Samari-
tan translation of this group, though different from the cor-
responding portion of it in the text, by the very same Latin
word (palmes) as they applied to that portion, on the gratui-
tous assumption of a perfect and complete agreement between
the Samaritan text and version ; and even Castel, in his Hep-
taglot Lexicon, adopted their translation of this noun. But,
as appears to me, where a Hebrew term and the Samaritan
translation thereof, if a word of rare occurrence in this version,
do radically differ, a more secure plan of ascertaining the sense
of the latter term is, to try whether there be identical with it
in root n word of known meaning, in any of the ancient cog-

x\PPENDIX. 621

nate dialects, which is reconcilable with the tenor of the pre-
viously analyzed part of the Samaritan passage ; and, if so,
to assign to it that meaning, even though not correctly agree-
ing with the sense of the former term. Now pi, the radical
part of np"H, which is the Samaritan rendering of the Hebrew
np"l^, is significant in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, denoting
in the two former languages ' empty, worthless, or vile,' and
in the latter ' spit upon, contemptible, or vile,' and is actually
here vocalized by the Samaritans in the same way as it is in
both Hebrew and Chaldee. According, then, to the rule just
laid down, the signification attached by the Samaritan scribes
to part of nplV is the epithet 'vile ;' whence it follows that
they represented the whole word as composite, the meaning
of the other part (£') being well-known, as that of the ordi-
nary substitute in Hebrew compounds for the relative pro-
noun ")£>tf . But the circumstance of their having thus dealt
with the Hebrew term shows that its initial element had
been changed from Samek to Shin before their time. To the
faulty Yod of the fifth group they gave significance by reading
that group in their text, and translating it in their version,
BeNE, ' the sons of.' In the case of the last group of the clause,
IJHtf, HoThoNO, ' his she-ass,' which the Jewish vocalizers ne-
glected to confine, by the insertion of a vocal Waw in its
second syllable, to the sense it here bears, the Samaritan scribes
took advantage of this omission to transform it into HEThaNO
4 his strength,' by slipping a vocal Yod into its first syllable in
their text ; in consequence of which they were enabled to
translate it in their version np^QI/, HaMUQeH, 'his strength,'
— a compound, indeed, of which the principal ingredient sig-
nifies only ' depth,' or ' deep,' in Hebrew and Chaldee, but is a
term of frequent occurrence in the Samaritan version, and the
meaning ' strength,' or ' strong,' agrees in common with the
context of several places in which it is therein found. The
first word, ^nt, of the Samaritan translation of the second
clause is perfectly identical with a Hebrew veil) of the same
meaning as that in the corresponding site of the Hebrew text

622 APPENDIX.

I have only here further to remark, with respect to the trans-
lation given in common by Morin and Walton of the first
clause in both the Samaritan text and version, that, although
its initial expression ' ligata est (inflected so as to agree with
' civitas ejus') might possibly be excusable when applied to the
first group of the Samaritan translation, on account of our
want of complete knowledge of all the inflexions of the Sama-
ritan dialect, it cannot be tolerated as the rendering of the
corresponding group of the Hebrew text, which ought here to
be construed, according to a similar use of the employed words,
1 ligati sunt," the Latin expression in each instance being used,
not as a preterite tense, but as a participle or participial adjec-
tive, with the verb substantive understood after it in the pre-
sent tense. Besides, those very learned men appear to have
overlooked the circumstance that this participle is applied in
both text and version to two subjects which are in each trans-
lated respectively ' civitas ejus' and ' filii roboris ejus :' but as
it is referred to nouns in different numbers and genders, it
should, according to ordinary practice, be made to agree with
that in the plural number and masculine gender. At any rate,
all appearance of irregularity in this case would be removed, by
substituting for the Latin representative of the former subject,
' habitatores civitatis ejus.' The circumstance of the epithet in
question being applied in each record to two subjects, one of
which is actually expressed in the plural masculine construct
state, and the other capable of being understood in the same
state, may, perhaps, afford some ground for its being itself also
in both of them put in that form. The substitution, however,
of the construct for the absolute state of this epithet in the Sa-
maritan lines is, I admit, a grammatic irregularity ; still, it is
one which violates not sense, but merely form, and for which
precedents might be adduced from several parts of the Jewish
edition of the sacred text.

From this analysis it will, I think, be perceived, as far as
the fact can be proved by a single example, that the Samari-
um version is not at all as strictly faithful a translation as it

APPENDIX. 623

has been hitherto supposed ; but that the Samaritans were
just as ready to calumniate the Jews, when they had an oppor-
tunity of doing so without tampering with the original letters
of the Hebrew text, as the Jews were to vilify the work of the
Seventy Interpreters. My principal object, however, in ad-
ducing this example, is to give an instance of part of their
translation being grounded upon two very gross inaccura-
cies in the vocalization of the text, and, therefore, composed
after the time of that vocalization. The very same cir-
cumstance, besides thus affording a limit of age to the for-
mation of their version, affixes one also to the vocalization of
their text agreeing with that already determined. For the
inaccuracies referred to are common to both editions of the
vocalized text, and are of so strange a nature that they could
hardly have been adopted by two parties independently of each
other ; but it is far more likely that the Samaritans borrowed
them from the Jews than that the Jews took them from the
Samaritans. The adduced example serves also to prove the
Samaritan version to have been written after the vocaliza-
tion of the Samaritan text through a second particular,
in addition to that above relied on. For it has been shown
that the framers of this version read fTVJ/, in the line referred
to, HIRoH, ' his city,' instead of HaYt'RoH, ' his young ass ;'a — a
mistake which they could not have made till after the text

a The above group m^ is actually, in the place referred to, pointed by
the Masorets for the sound HIRoH, although the context of the remainder of
the clause, as pointed by them, shows that they understood it there to sig-
nify « his young ass.' But this alteration of the sound of the group for such
signification could not have been adopted till after the introduction of matres
lectionis into the original text of the Bible. This confusion of the sounds
of two perfectly distinct words is not to be imputed to men who have shown
themselves so strictly honest as the Masorets have in every instance, but to
those who previously had the exclusive custody of the sacred volume; and
who seem to have, even at the sacrifice of the distinctness of its language,
taken several opportunities of confounding the consonantal with the vocal
Yod, for the purpose of making it appear as if the latter Tod had been, from
the first, an element of the Hebrew text.

2 u

624 APPENDIX.

they consulted was vocalized. Onkelos, I may here add, can
be shown by his translation of this line to have committed the
very same mistake, — a circumstance which in like manner con-
tributes strongly to the proof that his version also was posterior
in ao-e to the introduction of vowel-letters into the sacred text.
8. The Targums, or Chaldee translations, of the greatest
age and highest repute among the Jews are those respectively
of the Pentateuch by Onkelos, and of the next ensuing histo-
ric books of the Bible (except that of Ruth) down to the end
of the second Book of Kings by Jonathan Ben Uziel. The
latter author is supposed to have translated not only the
portion of the sacred text just specified, which is, according
to rabbinical classification, appropriated to the earlier pro-
phets, but also that comprising the writings more usually
styled prophetic, which are, upon the same authority, confined
to the more limited designation of the books of the later pro-
phets. But the second part of the work attributed to him is
so very inferior to the first in accuracy and closeness of inter-
pretation, that it most probably is due to the pen of a different
writer. Even the part which is on all sides admitted to be his
production is not so exact a translation as the Targum of On-
kelos, which very seldom exhibits any paraphrastic or sup-
plementary words. Both these Targums, however (the second
being understood in the sense to which it has been just re-
stricted), are quite literal enough to be entitled to the name
of versions, though they are usually called para/phrases, in com-
mon with all the remaining Targums, which are composed in
a much looser style. Onkelos and Jonathan are assumed by
the Rabbins to have flourished about the time of the birth of
our Saviour ; and it must be allowed that they lived before
the Talmud was completed, both of them being therein men-
tioned.3 A boundary, however, which considerably reduces

" " Prophetas priores et posteriores explicasse [Jonathanem] testatur Tal-
mud, tract. Megilla, cap. 1, ubi legitur targum Legis Onkelum proselytum
composuisse, targum prophetarum Jonathanem filium Uaielis." — Wqltoni
Proleg., xii. sect. 1<».

APPENDIX. 625

the imagined age of their respective works, has been already
suggested to the learned by the utter silence respecting all
the Targums observable throughout the writings of Jerome.
From the great industry and zeal of this Father of the Church,
combined with his scrutinizing habits, it has been justly in-
ferred that he would have consulted, at any rate, the best of
them, if they had been in existence as early as the period when
he wrote : his failing, then, to take notice of any of them
shows that the most valuable of their number, which happen
to be the oldest two, could hardly have been composed till
after his death in the year of our era 420. And now, at last,
this limitation to the antiquity of the entire set is confirmed
by the internal evidence of the case furnished through the aid
of the present discovery. For all the Targums adhere to the
bearing of the sacred text in by far the greater portion of in-
stances in which its passages, or the names therein occurring,
betray an erroneous vocalization ; and, consequently, they
could not, any of them, have been framed till after that text
was vocalized, that is, till after A. D. 126. But during the
whole of the interval between this date and A. D. 420, the
main bulk of the Jewish nation, it is well known, spoke Greek
as their mother tongue ; and, until they abandoned this lan-
guage and returned to the vernacular use of a Shemitic dia-
lect, versions or paraphrases in that dialect would obviously
have been of no service to them.

The remark last made enables me to carry the reduction
of the antiquity of these works a step further, by applying it
to one of the later decrees of Justinian, of which a passage has
been quoted in a preceding article of this Appendix. The
decree referred to, which was passed about the middle of the
sixth century, shows very plainly that Greek was, at that time,
still the language in common use among the great majority of
the Jews ; and consequently, that they had not then as yet
recovered such a degree of familiarity with Chaldee as would
qualify them to derive any benefit from Targums. But this
decree, besides thus supplying a closer limit to the age of the

626 APPENDIX.

oldest of the works under consideration, serves also to extri-
cate the investigation from an appearance of discrepancy with
which it would be otherwise embarrassed. Those works, in
several instances, fairly interpret prophecies relating to the
Messiah, which the Jewish priesthood have for a great length
of time past constantly misconstrued ; whence it would seem
to follow that they must have been composed before the pre-
judices of the Jews against our Lord commenced ; — an infer-
ence directly at variance with that already drawn from another
aspect of the very same case, that they were not written till
after the sacred text was vocalized in the year of our era 126.
This difficulty the above decree clears up, by directing atten-
tention to a period long subsequent to the date just specified,
when the sacerdotal class had, from despotic treatment of their
congregations, become exceedingly unpopular. For, while
their influence on the minds of the Jews was thus weakened,
it is not at all surprising that interpretations of the prophe-
cies in question derived from the Septuagint and supported in
each instance by the context, though strenuously discounte-
nanced by those men, should yet have been then confidently
propounded by Rabbins free from their control, and favourably
received by the nation. In this way it can, without any in-
consistency, be deduced from historic information of unques-
tionable authority, combined with the internal evidence of the
case, that none of the Targums were framed till after the mid-
dle of the sixth century. The older ones, however, were most
probably written soon after ; as the interpretations they exhi-
bit at variance with the tenor of the vocalized text could
scarcely have been adopted without the counter-sanction of
the Septuagint. I >ut the Rabbins lost the power of consulting
that work, after the language in familiar use among them
was changed from Greek to a Shemitic dialect; — an event
which appears to have taken place not long after the epoch
just mentioned.

i). I shall close this Appendix with an application of the
discovery now unfolded to the analysis of a \q\j important

APPENDIX. 627

correction recommended by Dr. Kennicott in his treatise " On
the State of the printed Hebrew text of the Old Testament,"
but which he failed to sustain upon sufficient grounds. His
argument on the subject is contained in the following passage :

— "In Josh. xxiv. 19, we read And Joshua said unto

the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord, — this is the proper trans-
lation of the present Hebrew. But can anything be more asto-
nishing than — first, to find Joshua exhorting, entreating, press-
ing the people, by every motive of gratitude and of interest,
to serve the Lord and him only — and then, after the people had
j^romised obedience, to find Joshua telling them, Ye cannot
serve the Lord ! What ! could he possibly dissuade them,
could he try to discourage them from the very thing which
he was labouring, with all possible energy of soul, to induce
them to vow most religiously ? This surely may be pro-
nounced impossible. Behold how great afire a little spark kin-
dleth ! See, what absurdity becomes chargeable upon the
venerable speaker in the text ; what perplexity, what contra-
diction arises, and spreads its unkindly influence in this part
of Scripture, only from the improper insertion of one small
letter — and of that particular letter which is put in, and left out,
in a thousand other ivords, at the transcriber's pleasure I I speak
thus positively, because I make not the least doubt of the
learned reader's agreeing, that the present word Y?y\ft
[TUKeLU], poteritis [or potestis], was originally TOT"I [T^KaLlU],
cessabitis : and I may venture to recommend this criticism as
worthy of real honour, because it is not my own, but the re-
mark of the late Mr. Hallett, in his Notes on Texts of Scripture ;
vol. iii. p. 2. It may be necessary to observe that, H72 [Ke'LlaH]
signifying cessavit, the words of the text TOn N7 [Loll TeKoLlU]
signify non cessabitis, or ne cessetis — ye shall not cease, or
cease not, to serve the Lord : and then, the reason is most
forcible and conclusive — Cease not to serve the Lord (continue
and persevere in his service) ; for he is an holy God ; he is a
jealous God ;" — Dissertation the Second, pp. 3.75-6.

The argument here urged for the removal of the first Waw
in the examined group is, on the one hand, strengthened by

628 APPENDIX.

the consideration, that no satisfactory explanation of the pro-
posed clause has ever yet been made out, on the supposition of
this group in its present state being uncorrupted. There is
some plausibility, indeed, in the view of the bearing of the
prophet's appeal to his countrymen which is held in accord-
ance with this supposition by a large portion, perhaps the
majority, of the members of the Established Church ; namely,
that Joshua does not here speak of an absolute impossibility
of serving the Lord, but only of its extreme difficulty ; and
that he directs the attention of the Israelites to this difficulty,
not with any intention of deterring them from the service of
God, but rather for the purpose of inducing them to make the
greater and more strenuous efforts to surmount the obstacles
impeding their adherence to that line of conduct.3 If the con-
struction thus put upon the clause before us were admissible,
it would, I grant, clear the prophet's speech of all appearance
of inconsistency ; but, unfortunately, it is directly at variance
with the obvious tenor of the original line as at present writ-
ten, as well as with that of the Authorized English Translation
thereof, and also with those of all the more ancient renderings
except one ; and that one we shall find upon examination to
be utterly unwarranted. The Hebrew clause in its present

a Thus, for example, the critique on the above clause of a distinguished
divine of the Church of England is expressed in the following terms: — " Verse
19, Ye cannot serve the Lord]. This is far from signifying an utter impos-
sibility of it (for that would have contradicted his exhortation in verse 14),
but that they were so very prone to idolatry, that they would not be able to
persevere stedfast in their resolution, unless they took care constantly to re-
flect upon and lay to heart what they now acknowledged (vv. 17, 18), which
he was afraid they would not do." — Bishoj) Patrick's Commentary, in loco. I
quite agree with this learned divine in the principle, that there can be no real
discrepance between two genuine passages of Scripture; but I question whe-
ther writers may not have been sometimes mistaken in the application of this
principle; and I submit that the safest mode of trying to remove an appear-
ance of such a disagreement is, not by attempting to draw an inference op-
>l to the plain, obvious meaning of what is expressly written, but by
searching whether there may not be one or more words corrupted or mistrans-
lated in the original of either or both of two passages that are seemingly
conflicting.

APPENDIX. G29

state and the several more important renderings of it, arranged
in the order of their dates, with a literal interpretation sub-
joined to each of them except the last, are as follows : —

Hebrew, tn^ na nyh fern rf?

' Ye cannot serve the Lord,'
Septliagint, Ov fir} ZvvyaOe Xarpeveiv Kvplw,

Ye cannot at all serve the Lord,4
PesMtah, : ]-,;V)\ . ..\^^\ ^tS\ ^ » ^o-Vn }] ]Vn\^ t? r^,~

See, however, lest perchance unable ye may be to serve the
Lord,1"

a The Greek interpreters appear, by their translation of the original clause,
to have read its first verb with emphasis, such as would be expressed in the
modern way of writing Hebrew by subjoining a Nun to the group represent-
ing it ; and in this manner we may perceive the corresponding word is ac-
tually written in the Chaldee line; but there the addition has no bearing on
the sense, as the final Nun uniformly constitutes in that dialect a part of the
employed inflexion in every instance without exception, and consequently
without any resulting distinction.

b The exposition of the clause under examination which is at present
maintained by a considerable portion of the divines of the Established Church
was advocated nearly three hundred years ago by Andrew Masius, who ap-
pears to have derived it from the interpretation given of this clause in the
Peshitah; as, I conceive, is proved by the following extract from his learned
commentary : — " . . . existimo Imperatorem, illis verbis, ' Non poteritis ser-
vire Domino,' et qua? sequuntur, occulte tecteque perstringere inconstantiam
mutabilitatemque animorum, qua ab Jehovse cultu ad aliorum deorum sacra
semper illos fuisse propensissimos testatissima sacris historiis res est: et si-
mul ista tanta difficultate proposiia, id ejficere velle, ut ipsorum hcec susceptio atque
professio religionis sit quam deliberatissima. Quasi hrec sit Imperatoris oratio:
Audio quidem vos promptos animo, paratosque ad serviendum Deo nostro Je-

hovae esse; sed vereor ut heec vestra alacritas sit diuturna Proinde

etiam atque etiam vidctote quid agatis." — Masii Commentaria in Josuam, p. 338.
From the striking correspondence between the remarks in this extract upon
the above clause and the translation of it in the Peshitah, more especially be-
tween the last sentence of the extract and the beginning or extra-supplemen-
tary portion of the translation, — a correspondence which extends even to the
very form of expression used on each side, — there is, I conceive, reason to in-
fer that it was part of the Peshitah which Masius had in his possession, though
he is shown, by the age assigned to it in the dedication of his work, to haw
deemed it part of a later Syriac version.

630 APPENDIX.

Vulgate, Non poteritis servire Domino,

Ye shall not be able to serve the Lord,»
Ye cannot serve before the Lord,

Authorized) „^T . T ,„

„ T^ > " Ye cannot serve the Lord,

In all the lines here adduced, except the Syriac one, an im-
possibility is plainly and unequivocally insisted on, unquali-
fied by any consideration that could fairly leave room for our
looking upon it as a mere difficulty ; and in the Greek line,
besides the absence of all qualification, the negation of the pos-
sibility of the service alluded to is further strengthened by the
addition of a second negative particle. It only remains, there-
fore, to be inquired, whether the Syriac rendering affords any
just ground for explaining away the alleged impossibility.
The first three groups of this rendering are overlined, to indi-
cate that they do not correspond to any of the ingredients of
the Hebrew clause ; and the first four words of its English in-
terpretation are similarly marked, instead of being exhibited
in Italics ; because they are supplemental only with respect
to their remote Hebrew, and not in reference to their im-
mediate Syriac original. Now, it is obvious that, in translat-
ing sentences elliptically worded, the legitimate use of supple-
ments is to fill up the chasms in accordance with the part of
the sense which is in each instance actually expressed, so as
not to alter that sense, but merely render the expression of it
more complete. But, according to this rule, the only admis-
sible supplement in the case before us is that of the verb sub-
stantive, introduced for the purpose of completing the sense
and rendering the Syriac participle equivalent to the Hebrew

a The Hebrew inflexion of the verb under examination is employed to
convey a reference to either the future or the present, — a circumstance
which accounts for the difference in point of tense between the translations
of this verb in the Vulgate and in the other versions.

APPENDIX. 631

verb to which it is made to answer ; while the overlined words
of this rendering, as well as of its English interpretation, must
be rejected, as quite altering the sense of the original clause,
and converting the impossibility therein expressed positively,
and without any qualification, into a mere difficulty that might
be surmounted by caution and strenuous exertion. But when
the marked words are left out of account, and the supplied verb
substantive no longer subject to their influence is put in the
indicative form, the meaning of the Syriac line comes out per-
fectly agreeing with that common to all the other lines, 'unable
are ye to serve the Lord.' As long, then, as the first Waw of
the Hebrew group under examination is admitted to be one
of its genuine elements, there is no justifiable mode of extri-
cating the original clause from an expression of impossibility
to serve the Lord, which can hardly be reconciled with the ex-
hortations to serve him conveyed in other parts of the same
speech. So that, were this the only circumstance to be taken
into consideration, it would, I submit, render the spuriousness
of the letter in question, if not absolutely certain, at least pro-
bable in a very high degree.

On the other hand, two facts, from the notification of
which Dr. Kennicott cautiously abstained in his quoted argu-
ment, bear very powerfully against the reading and interpre-
tation recommended by him of the group v^fl. The first is,
that not a single extant copy of the sacred text exhibits this
group without the Waw in its initial syllable ; at least, among
all the numerous varies lectiones inserted in his own edition of
the Hebrew Bible and those afterwards collected by De Rossi,
not one presents the verb so written in this place. The second
fact is, that not a single ancient version warrants our render-
ing this verb along with the preceding negative particle, ' cease
not,' or ' ye shall not cease ;? even the Peshitah, which, as we
have seen, puts so very forced a construction on the clause
containing it, still does not deviate from the general bearing of
the sense attached to it in all the other versions. It is, then,
no wonder that the expectation expressed by Dr. Kennicott on

2x

632 APPENDIX.

this subject has been disappointed ; and that the learned have
not hitherto agreed to the proposed correction of the group
referred to. The circumstance of the letter Waw being er-
roneously inserted in a thousand other sites affords no proof
that it is so in a place in which its appearance is supported
directly by every extant copy of the Hebrew text, and indi-
rectly by every known version : and as long as the presence
of this letter in any group of the sacred record is so supported,
and no distinction found out between it, when used to denote
a vowel, and other elements of the Hebrew text, its retention
must be acquiesced in, however objectionable the resulting
context of an entire passage may appear. For we cannot be
as certain of the validity of an inference on which our objec-
tion rests, as of the direct meaning, if expressed without ob-
scurity, of any clause of such passage ; nor can we venture to
set up our judgment against that meaning or evade its force?
where no ground has been detected for questioning the per-
fect genuineness of the writing in which it is conveyed.

In this way I conceive a conscientious reader of the Bible
to have been, before the present discovery, situated with re-
spect to the passage under consideration, and others of the
same kind ; with whose bearing, even supposing him able in
some degree to suspend his judgment, he must have felt him-
self sorely perplexed. But when once it is established that the
matres lectionis constitute no part of the Hebrew text as ori-
ginally written, but only an uninspired addition subsequently
introduced into it, he will, indeed, respect this addition for the
valuable assistance it affords towards the perusal of the ori-
ginal writing ; but still he will find himself at liberty to treat
it as he would any other merely human commentary on the
Bible, and reject every application of it that is at variance with
the general tenor of Scripture, or in any other respect unsound.
In fine, he will thus, in the case of the passage selected for my
example, get relieved from a very gloomy picture of God's
mode of dealing with the Israelites, in requiring from them an
obedience beyond their strength, and which can hardly be re-

APPENDIX. (J33

conciled with the gracious and authoritative assurance else-
where given, that ' God is faithful, and will not suffer us to be
tempted above that we are able to bear ;' and he will arrive at
this gratifying result without any disrespect offered to the
genuine portion of the sacred text, and without any attempt
to alter a single letter of its original ingredients.

The foregoing observations serve to place the very inge-
nious emendation of i?3in suggested by Hallet on a firmer
basis than that upon which it has hitherto rested, and to vin-
dicate Kennicott's adoption of it, notwithstanding the defect I
have noticed in the argument by which he was led to take this
step, and the circumstance of his being mistaken as to the
original state of the specified group, in which he supposed it
to have contained the second, though not the first, of the
vowel-letters it at present displays. But to complete my ana-
lysis of this example, I have one more difficulty to clear up,
which is likely here to occur to an inquiring mind. It may
very naturally be asked, — If the group in question was ori-
ginally, through want of vowel-letters, open to two modes of
reading, and two translatians, how can it be imagined that the
Seventy Jews and the Syriac interpreters (each of which sets
of translators must have been far more familiar with the lan-
guage and writing of the sacred text than any modern He-
braist) should have failed to perceive the option within their
reach ; or that, perceiving it, and acting, as they certainly did,
quite independently of each other, they yet should have, both
of them, made the wrong choice ? More especially, how is it
to be supposed that the Syriac interpreters could have done
so, when they have plainly shown, by their forced construc-
tion of the clause containing this group, that they would have
eagerly resorted to any other sense of it than the one they
adopted, if such had been known to them ? To prepare the
reader for my answer to these questions, I must request him to
turn his attention to the first article of the fifth chapter of this
volume, in which he will find it proved (by a comparison of 1 1 h ■
Jewish and Samaritan editions of the sacred text, in the case < ,t

634 APPENDIX.

words that have been vocalized in either edition, and passed
over without any vocalization in the other), that Hebrew
verbs ending in He did not formerly, as at present, drop that
letter for certain plural inflexions ; and he can test the sound-
ness of the proof there adduced by the application of it to a
great number of cases. He will thus be enabled to perceive
that, although the un vocalized group, 73fi, is now open to the
two readings TuKeLu (ye can), and TeKaLlu (ye shall cease),
yet it was not so originally, but was written 73fi solely for
the former reading and sense, and fTOfi, TeKaLleHw, for the
latter. But, though the final letter of ITDJl was not, before
the vocalization of the text, omitted on account of the transi-
tion of this inflexion from the singular to the plural number,
yet it might have been lost through the oversight of a tran-
scriber or his mistaking it for a paragogic He that he was at
liberty to omit, of which mistake some instances have been
given in the foregoing pages : and the circumstance of two
sets of interpreters well skilled in the written language of the
text adopting, both of them independently of each other, an
erroneous meaning of the group in question shows, to a cer-
tainty, that its terminating element actually was lost before
the days of the older set, in consequence of which both parties
were confined to that meaning. I should add that, subse-
quently, the inserters of the matres lectionis in the Hebrew
Bible were by the same cause placed under the very same re-
striction ; for though they would, in the process of vocalizing
this group, have erased the He if then contained in it, they could
not have understood the verb thereby represented in the sense
of ceasing,' unless they found that letter at its termination.

In fine, the faulty group should, I submit, be written 17Din,
with a mark of censure over the vowel-letter erroneously in-
serted ; and the analyzed clause should be translated, in an
amended edition of our English version, —

" Ye shall not cease to serve the Lord."

THE END.

DATE DUE

•turn

MM

GAYLORD

PRIN-EOINU S A.