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How WE QoT OUR Bible, An Answer to Questions Suggested bv the LATE Revision, WITH fiigbt pbotoflrapb illustrations. LONDON : SAMUEL BAGSTER & SONS, Limited. XLhc ©lb 2)ocument8 AND XLbc Bew Bible. AN EASY LESSON FOR THE PEOPLE IN I^IBLICAL CRITICISM. BY J. PATERSON SMYTH, LL.B., B.D., Senior Moderator and Gold Medallist, Primate's Hebreiv Prizeman, J.-c. JL-c, Trinity College, Dublin. AUTHOR OF "HOW WE GOT OUR BTBLE " THE OLD TESTAMENT. LONDON: SAMUEL BAGSTER AND SONS, Limited, 15, PATERNOSTER ROW. DUBLIN: EASON AND SON, Limitkd. 1890. i PKEFACE. In our grandfathers' days the custom was to regard the Bible as if, clasped and covered complete, it had dropped down from Heaven like the image of the goddess Diana. It was much too sacred a thing to be the subject of critical inquiry ; to admit the possi- bility of mistakes in its text would have been little short of heresy ; while as for making an investigation into the composition and genuineness of its books — why, a man would as soon have thought of " botanising upon his mother's grave ! " But " old times have changed." In this age of criti- cism nothing is too sacred to be questioned and inves- tigated, and the present generation is accustomed to see the most vital questions connected with the Bible discussed with the utmost freedom. Nor is the discussion confined, as in former days, to the circle of scholars and theologians. The sounds of attack and defence have reached the ears of " the VJ PREFACE. people " outside that circle, and excited a spirit of inquiry which, unsatisfied, may easily pass into one of doubt and uneasiness,^ but which, rightly directed, cannot fail to lead to a more intelligent belief in the Bible and its claims. People want to be told without reservation all that can be told them about this Bible of theirs ; on what foundation it rests ; why they should believe in its genuineness, its authenticity, its inspiration, its correctness of transmission through all the centuries. Never before perhaps was there as much of unsatisfied popular questionings (often un- spoken questionings) about these matters as at the present day. This book is one of a projected series in answer to 3se popular questionings. It covers only one part of the ground. It is not a book of ' ' Evidences " in favour of the Bible but an attempt at an impartial history of facts. It is not an erudite treatise for scholars and students, but a simple effort to " shift knowledge into a more convenient position " for plain ^ A striking confirmation of this comes to me even as I write. Before me lies an account of the Triennial Convention of the American Church, held last month, where one Report states of so simple a matter as the publication of the Revised Bible, " not all the assavlts of scep- ticism have so shaken the ancient reverence for the Scriptures in the minds of Christians at large ! " What an amount of ignorance about the Bible must be in the " minds of Christians at large " if that report be correct I Could we have a stronger proof of the need there is of telling people all that can be told them about their Bible ? PREFACE. vii people who Have little opportunity of studying such subjects for themselves. Therefore I have tried to write it as simply as I could. I have aimed at clearness rather than at com- pleteness. Therefore, too, I have as far as possible avoided cumbering its pages with references to learned authorities which would be quite out of the reach of such readers as I have in view. It may be well to state here the plan of the book which is fully explained later on. It consists of three parts. The first deals with the Old Hebrew Documents and the question of their correctness ; the second tells of other old documents and their use in testing and correcting the Hebrew ; while the third part is a series of easy illustrations to show how this testing and correcting is done. I have to thank Professor Westwood of Oxford for his kind permission to photograph three of the following plates from his Palmojraphia Sacra Pidoria. J. P. S. Christ Church Vicarage, Kingstown, February 1890. \\ List of Plates. 1. The Moabite Stone .... 2. Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts 3. Illuminated Manuscript Titles 4. A Page of the Samaritan Pentateuch 5. Manuscript with Curious Massoretic 6. The Samaritan Roll at Nablous 7. Ancient Copies op the Septuagint 8. The Septuagint op Mount Sinai 9. A "Palimpsest" Manuscript . 10. Striao Bible .... 11. Scrap of an "Old Latin" Manuscript . Tofaccpaye 2 28 34 49 Footnotes „ 91 » 120 M 149 157 » 163 .. 167 „ 170 I CONTENTS. 3B00F: if. THE OLD HEBREW DOCUMENTS AND THE QUESTION OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. CHAPTER I. HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER. PAGE I. Hebrew Whiting i II. The Ancient Characters 2 III. The Shapira Manuscripts 3 IV. The Handwriting op the Exiles 5 CHAPTER II. SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. I. Consonant-Writing 7 II. Curious Mistakes 8 III. How to Read without Vowels 10 IV. Grammar and Theology 13 V. Similar Letters 16 VI. The "Guardians of the Lines" ig i I CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM i PAOC I. Mistakes in the Manuscripts 20 II. Biblical Cuiticism 22 III. Its Axioms and Rules 24 IV. Its Working Material 26 CHAPTER IV. A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. I. Some Curious Old Manuscripts II. A Perplexing Discovery III. The Guardianship of the Bible IV. An Ancient Revision V. The Vanished Manuscripts . VI. Are our Manuscripts Correct? 28 30 31 32 34 35 CHAPTER Y. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE EARLY AGES. I. What can we Learn of the Vanished Manuscripts? 37 II. Call our First Witness — The Sacred Books . . 38 III. Summary op this Evidence 44 IV. A Search fob Further Evidence 47 V. Call oub Next Witness— The Samaritan Bible. . 49 VI. Cross-Examinb our First Witness .... 52 VII. The Verdict 59 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE MEN OF THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. I The Exiles' Return II. The Legend of the Great Synagogue . III. Ancient Criticism, Wise and C>r///;/ewisE . IV. A Famous Witness to the Great Synagogue Bible V. "The Abomination op Desolation" PAGE 6i 63 70 74 CHAPTER VII. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE TALMUD PEUIOD. I. The College of Tiberias II. The Makers of the Talmud III. Their "Biblical Criticism". IV. The Bible of the Academies V. The "Palestine Text" 77 79 80 83 85 CHAPTER VIII. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES I. Who were the Massoretes ? II. Contents op the Massorah . III. Its Two Classes op Notes . IV. What /s in tht Text? . V. What should be in the 'xi!,xt? VI. The Vowels and Accents VII. Manuscript Copying VIII. The Last op the Massoretes IX. A Myst.'jrious Document 88 90 91 92 97 lOI 103 104 105 CHAPTER IX. NOTES AND JOTTINGS 107 Xll CONTENTS. THE OTHER OLD DOCUMENTS, AND THKIB USE IN BIBLICAL CRITICISM. PAOB INTRODUCTION 117 DOCUMENT No. I. THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. I. The Holt Manuscript op Nablous . . . .118 II. "Decline and Fall" of the Samaritan Bible . .120 III. Its Use in Criticism 122 IV. A Roundabout Story-teller 124 DOCUMENTS No. 11. THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. THE TALMUD, I. What is the Talmud? II. Confiicting Opinions III. "Law and Legend" IV. Talmud Sayings V. Bible Commentary . VI. The Legend op Sandalphon VII. An Ancient "Rip Van Winkle" VIII. " The House that Jack Built " THE TARGUMS .... 126 128 130 131 134 137 139 141 145 DOCUMENT No. III. THE BIBLE OF "THE SEVENTY." I. The Apostles' Bible II. The Romance of Aristeas . III. Who made the Septuagint ? . IV. Its Critical Value V. Famous Septuagint Manuscripts 148 150 152 154 »S7 CONTENTS. xiii DOCUMENTS No. IV. A BUNDLE OF GREEK BIBLES. PAOK I. A Witness to the Bible of the Scribes and Pharisees 158 II. A Renegade and his Bible 158 DOCUMENT No. V. THE SYRIAC BIBLE. I. St. Ephbaem the Stbian 162 II. The Oldest Christian Bible 163 III. Letter from the Lord Jesus to a Syrian King . .164 lY. Biblical Criticism and the Syriac Bible . . .167 DOCUMENT No. VI. THE "VULGATE" OF ST. JEROME. I. The Monk of Bethlehem 170 II. The "Temper op a Saint" 172 III. Papal Infallibility and Biblical Criticism . . 175 IV. The Valob op the Vulgate 177 THE NEW BIBLE. A specimen of BIBLICAL CRITICISM. CHAPTER I. CRITICS AT WORK. I. Introductory i8i II. "The Old Testament Sitting" 182 III. Defects of our Specimen 183 IV. Nineteenth Century Massoretes 187 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER 11. SPECIMENS OF CRITICAL WORK. PAOE I. Cain's "Walk in the Field" i88 II. A Question op Vowels 190 III. The Gibeonitk Ambassadors 191 IV. Manasseh or Moses 192 V. An Infant King ^ . . . 193 VI. The Auk. and the Ephod 194 VII. David and Goliath 196 VIII. The Giant's Brother 198 IX. The Fords op the Wilderness 200 X. Keui and Kethibh 200 XI. The Old Prophet op Bethel 201 XII. A Son op Samuel who never was born . . . 202 XIII. "Like a Lion" 204 XIV. "Not Increased their Joy" 206 CHAPTER III. A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. I. The Plain op Moreh 208 II. Leah's "Troop" 209 III. The Asherim 209 IV. AzAZKL .211 V. Gideon's Return 211 VI. Ruler or Priest 212 VII. Ahab's Pool 213 INDEX 215 Book I. THE OLD HEBREW DOCUMENTS, AND THE QUESTION OF BIBLTCAT, CRITICISM. SPECIUEN PAQE OF AN ORDINARY HEBREW BIBLE. Gen. i. i-io. a\nn ^js-'?:^ "^mi irtin ^rtn nn^rr Y"ii?*m ' A : J" : - ' V c • T >T : IT '•..▼▼• "lohin 3 :D'an ^is'bi^ /isn-io a^^V^* mm •>• v; ;r- I • :i- A • : c> v: rn-1 nixn r^ U'hbi^ b^n^i i^d-^3 "li^<^■/^^* >•• c T >•• • ■■•: J" :— A • < T V » ... c - • T '• w t' : • - ' V I - 3 :in« Di^ ")pii"%Ti n"i:^"''n'''i rh'^b «")p b^i2r2 ^nn D^an 'JTini rpi ^■^^ D^^'?^* 1D^^''") « •••-- - '• TiT V • :•: J~ MIT 'c- >•• nm D'-an r:w J^'P"**? Jinno 'im □•'an i^2 D^'^^ rp"''? D'J^^i* i*"»P''i ^ :]3"'nn jrp-i^ "pj^o •AT T ^ 'c.TiT •>• • v; it':— ," • tr ~ A'tjt 3- •• . •,•; V J- p «• > ' r « • :r t>v • :r ,T Tl" • T V 'j T V '.- T - * ^- • .- - 't. • vv T T-- " <• v; t':«- 'J- • sr Ax t-- :niro""'3 D^rt'?« sin D'-a*' sip D-^an mpa^i CHAPTER I. HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER, I. Hebrew Writing. The reader is probably aware that the Old 1'estament, with some little exception,^ is written in Hebrew, the " holy tongue " of the Jews. It is a branch of the great Semitic family of language.^, so called because the nations to which they belonged were considered to be chiefly the descent! nts of Shem (Gen. x. 21). The Syriac and Arabic represent other branches of the same great family, and the increasing knowledge of them in recent times has thrown a good deal of light upon the language of the Old Testament. On the opposite page we give a specimen from the first chapter of Genesis as it appears in an ordinary printed Hebrew Bible. Here is the first verse with its corresponding English — .earth the anil heavens the Odd created bepinninj,' the In From this it will be seen that the language is ^ Portions of the Books of Ezra and Daniel, which are in Aramaic, the common dialect of Palestine after the Captivity. A "Hi 2 HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER. written hackivard, as we should say, i.e., from right to left. The pages are taken in the same order, the right hand before the left ; and therefore, in the reading of a Hebrew Bible (if it be not too Irish an expression to use), the beginning of the book is alw-iys at the end ! I n. The Ancient Characters. Now this specimen of our present Hebrew Bible belongs to the later or Assyrian writing. The char- acters differ from those in which the books were originally written, much as the clear Roman type of our present Bible differs from the old black letter of Wyclitf's and Tyudale's versions. The ancient Hebrew or PlKjenician writing does not exist in any manu- script that has come down to us, though it is rather like the writing of the Samaritan Pentateuch, of which we .shall hear farther on. We have some old coins of the time of Judas IMaccabeus which present specimens of it. There is also the famous Moabite Stone, dis- covered some twenty years since, the actual old slab on which Mesha " the sheepmaster," king of Moab. 3000 years ago had inscribed in these ancient char- acters his own version of the fighting with Israel.^ We insert here a photograph of this ancient inscrip- tion, probably the very form in which the finger of God traced the words long ago on the two tables of * See 2 Kings i. I, iii. 4 ; 2 Chion. xx., &c. ;i i ..1. j»N4,y^lU<^w«Vr>^> ,^mm.^-:t^*'^»'^'''''^f'^''^ ^^ \/^-r,^:{)'^y^'>-^-=--'-^'' " W .:.-'.:*...* ■¥ •Sl ??^1 stt ■'V '^*'^' v ■ •»i^ .'■,*,•<, ■-<^»^ ■^•T-*"^ 'T ,^'L.,,.--^V»i.^.'-'- . lK'*..-! ^^' ,^ ... ■,■■.¥■ i.. ■ '. ! : ^ .V' B;/. ^ '. .-smta .^^»v,..-- •i^-„,.>^ ■- ■.■••• -^.\.. ■■■' ■\' ^^/, V I. . ,-^V. '.?*■'''<*•■>' a:^5;:^';^^'^:^> r.^ "ii^ #»fc»^' ^:!*'s^i^'^^^^^^**^^ •• "F .■ ^ ...^,j»^.-'-»Jg»-<. •---V-^ ^■■y-^--^, i \ ."■■■^ y.. >."*'■" "vv;; St. ac in l{ of a th he tu: bo cai fcli( coi by He Th fair In can a r scri ''ol OSHO was iippe of D; HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER. 3 stone on Mount Sinai. A cast of it may be seen in any good library. And very recently, in a curious way, a new speci- men has come to light. One day, in the summer of 1880, a number of boys were playing about the Pool of Siloam near Je"*isalem. There is at the upper end a tunnel cut out of the solid rock, by means of which the Pool is fed ; and one of the boys, while wading here, slipped and fell forward into the waters of the tunnel. It was a fortunate fall for us, if not for the boy; for, as he was recovering himself, his eye was caught by some marks like letters on a smooth part of the rock ; and on a fuller investigation afterwards by competent scholars, this was found to be an inscription by the workmen of the tunnel, written in ancient Hebrew characters somewhere about the year 700 B.c.^ HI. The Shapira Manuscripts. A few years later, and it seemed as if even the fame of these discoveries was to be entirely eclipsed, [n the August of 1883, an immense sensation was caused in the learned world by the announcement of a most wonderful "find" of ancient Hcbi.ew manu- scripts in Palestine, — "the great climax," it was called, "' of Biblical discovery." ^ An interesting account of this inscription is given in the Bishop of Ossory's " Eclioes of Bible Hi.story," where it is shown that the tunnel was most probably that made by Hezekiah, when he "stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon and brought it straight down to the City of David." See 2 Chron. xxxii. 2-4, xxxii. 30. 4 HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER. It consisted of fifteen leather slips, black with age as it would seem, and impregnated with the faint odour of funereal spices. They presented to the casual observer only the appearance of a plain oih* surface, but on touching them with a brush dipped in spirits of wine, the strange old writing became visible, — forty columns of Deuteronomy in the ancient Hebrew characters, just like those on the Moabite Stone, and apparently dating from about the eighth or ninth century before Christ. These precious documents were brought to the British Museum by a Mr. Shapira, a dealer in old manuscripts, who had already procured through the Arabs many literary curiosities, and he estimated the value of this new-found treasure at one million pounds sterling ! A council of the greatest experts in the kingdom assembled to investigate the matter, and Biblical scholars almost held their breath awaiting the momentous decision, the importance of which was vastly augmented by recent controversies as to the date, composition, and authorship of the Pentateuch. On Tuesday, August 2 1 st, the decision was an- nounced in a leading paragraph of the Tima^. The particulars of the investigation are extremely in- teresting, but the result only concerns us here. The Shapira bubble had burst ! The much-talked of manuscript of the days of Jehosha^ .at was found to have been written in the days of Victoria, one of the cleverest literary swindles perhaps ever recorded. HEBREW W.UriNG, EARLIER AND LATER. 5 Thus ended the Shapira " discovery." Since that time nobody ventures to speak of the possibility of manuscripts yet existing in tlie ancient Hebrew writinsf. IV. The Handwriting of the Exiles. When did the change from these ancient characters to the present square writing take place ? That, reader, is not an easy question to answer. The Jews, of course, say in the days of Ezra. But the Jews have a trick of putting down to Ezra or to Moses every important event in the history of their Bible, so that this statement does not count for much. Probably the change was a gradual one, and began at or soon after the time of Ezra. The name of the new writing (Assyrian) would suggest that the Israel- ites brought it with them on their return from the exile, though, on the other hand, a tradition that they did so may have given rise to the name. But in any case, there is little doubt that it was in full possession in the days of our Lord. An interesting confirmation of this is His expression that even " one Yod or one tittle should in no wise pass from the law " (Matt. V. 1 8), implying that the Yod (the letter y) was the very smallest letter, as it is in the pre- sent writing, whereas in the old alphabet it was one of the largest. The Samaritans still retain the ancient form of 6 HEBREW WRITING, EARLIER AND LATER. writing, or rather a modification of it, and have always been inclined to plume themselves considerably on that fact. But the Jews do not care to be thus easily set down, and so the Babylonian Talmud cleverly turns the tables. " The law/' it says, " was given to Israel in the holy tongue and in the ancient Hebrew writing. And it was given to them again in Ezra's days in the square Assyrian wi-iting. The Israelites chose to themselves the holy tongue in the square writing, and left the old Hebrew writing to ignorant persons. But who are these idiots or ignorant persons? Rabbi Chasda informs us — the Samaritans ! " CHAPTER II. SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. II Consonant-Writing. There are some peculiarities about the Hebrew lan- guage which it is important the reader should know, that he may the bettor understand some of the ques- tions which are the subject of Old Testament Biblical criticism. The first is this, that the Hebrew alphabet, both in iin ancient and in its 'present form, consists of consonants only. In the specimen given already, the little dots and marks underneath the letters represent the vowel sounds. But these marks are of comparatively modern date, certainly not older than about 500 or 600 A.i). In olden times the reader had only the consonants before him, and had therefore to supply the right vowel sounds himself in reading. It is easy to see how in such a case the same word might be differently read according to the different vowels supplied. For example, in English, b R N might be read B^RN, b^rn, b„rn, BUiNy, B^R^Ny, &c. ; and if there were no vowel marks to indicate the 8 SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. sound, we should have to be taught, like the Jews, which word the writer intended. II. Curious Mistakes. We ha\^e many instances of this inconvenience after Hebrew had ceased to be a commonly spoken language. The great Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, of which we shall hear later on,^ is a case in point. It is full of discrepancies arising from this cause. Here, for example, are two Hebrew words in Deuteronomy, B z ii and p S G H, which in our Hebrew Bible read Bezer and Pisgah, but which the Septuagint translators render Bozor and Pasgah. St. Jerome (a.d. 400), commenting on Gen. xv. 11, says that his copy of the Septuagint, by supplying the wrong vowels, tells that Abram, instead of *' driving the fowls away," as our Bible has it (v.^Yj^SHeoB o^a^O' actually " sat down with them " (v.^YgeSH^jB {F.j,i) ! Or would the reader like a more sensational example, though we scarcely care to vouch for its truth. Here is a storv ^ in the Jewish Talmud, in a comment on I Kings xi. 15, 16, where " Joab had smitten every male in Edom." When he returned from the slaughter into th j 1 It is important that the reader should here impress this name on hia memory, that it may convey a clear idea when he meets it again. For this purpose it might be well to glance forward for a moment to its story in Book II. p. 148. - The story is told by Klias Levita in his "Massoreth Ham- massoreth," p. 128. SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING, g presence of King David, " Why hast thou smitten them all ? " asked the king. " Because," replied the warrior, " so it is written, Thou shalt destroy every male " (Zj^k^r). " z K II ! " exclaimed the king, " we read it z^k^r, every memory, every memorial of them." Joab was enraged. He went immediately to his Rabbi, and angrily demanded, " How teachest thou to read this word ? " " z^jKgR, memory," replied the Rabbi. Joab drew his sword. " Why ? " asked the terrified teacher. " Because it is written, ' Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully ' " ( Jer. xlviii. I O). The Rabbi does not seem to have been at all sur- prised at this feat of quoting from a prophet who was not born for many years after. He tried to argue his case, but all in vain. Joab was nothing if not scrip- tural. His quotations were as ready as those of Cromwell's Ironsides, and about as soothing too. " It is written also," he thundered, as he drew his flashing blade again, " Cursed is he that keepeth back his sword from blood ! " For the reader's comfort be it recorded that the historian leaves it an open question whether the un- fortunate tutor was let off, or whether his zealous pupil, by depriving him of his head, cured him for ever of false pronunciation. The story, in any case, will illustrate our point as to the possibility of error in Hebrew when written without vowels. o SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. III. How to Read without Vowels. To the English reader this consonant- writing would seem a very great danger to the purity of the Hebrew Scriptures, but the danger was really a very slight one after all. In the first place, Eastern nations depended on the memory much more than on writings. The Jewish scribes could repeat whole books of their Scriptures with perfect ease, just as the Mohammedans repeat their Koran to-day. And thus the true read- ing of the vowelless words was handed down from one generation to another. When a young Jewish pupil began to read the Scriptures, the page of consonant words was opened before him ; the scribe, his teacher, read over the words, and he repeated them after him, with their right pronunciation. His task, perhaps, might be expressed as a saying by heart with the help of the consonants. We Westerns have but little notion of the extraordinary powers in this respect possessed by the Eastern mind. To this day Oriental travellers express their wonder at the accu- racy with which the minutest details of a lesson can be reproduced long afterwards in the exact words of the teacher. But the great safeguard lay in the constitution of the language itself. In Hebrew, as in all Semitic dialects, the main root idea of a vjord was quite in- telligible from the consonants alone. For example, SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING, ii D B R represented the idea of speaking, and according' to the different vowels supplied d,,b,,r, d^v^m, d^b^^oR, &c.. would mean to speak, to say, to address, to converse with, to woo, to promise, to be promised ; also, as a noun, a speaker, a word, a commandment, a proposal, a chronicle, and so on. But it may be objected, even with this root-idea expressed, how was tlie reader without vowel points to know the exact meaning intended, when each word might be read in so many different ways ? I answer, that even apart from the wonderful memory of the scholars, the nmtcxt would, in almost ever// case, he a suffieicnt r/iiide to an// intelligent reader. No doubt it is possible to read a vowelless Hebrew word in different ways if it stand alone ; but in its proper context it is quite a different matter. Even in Eng- lish, with the great disadvantage of having no fixed root meaning expressed by the consonants, vowelless words are often quite intelligible when read in their proper context. A rapid shorthand writer seldom puts in a vowel, and he can read his notes with ease long after they have been made. Or, to give an easier instance, suppose you have before you the Twenty- third Psalm without vowels — TH LRD S M SHPHRD I SIILL NT WNT H MKTH M T L DN N GRN PSTRS H LDTH M RSD TH STLL WTKS. When you have once been taught the true reading, 12 SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. if you be ordinarily familiar with the passage, you will have little or no difficulty in reading it again. Nay more, though each single word in it is capable of being differently road, yet let the experiment be tried, and you will find it almost impossible to make sense of these three lines if you put the wrong vowels to even a single word in them. In Hebrew, owing to its fixed root meanings, this is much more the case. Of course this is not always so. Very often different readings of a word will make equally good sense, and this is where the reader is entirely dependent on the Jewish tradition as handed down to us in the present vowel points. There is a good illustration in Gen. xlvii. 3 I , where " Israel bowed himself on the hcd's head," though the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 2i), quoting this verse from the Septuagint (Greek) translation, makes him bow '"' upon the top of his staff." The original word is iimtth. By the Hebrews it was read li„MiTT.,ii, the bed ; bv tlie Greek trans- lators, Hj^Mg^TT^jii, the staff ; and it is very hard to say which is the correct reading. Both make equally good sense. Thus it will be seen how mistakes might occur through this method of consonant-writing, and the danger would, of course, -e much increased if the old Hebr<^w manuscripts were written, as they probably were, like the old Greek ones,i without any division ^ The mistakes of the Septuagint translation in dividing what ought to be a single word, or connecting into one words that ought to be separate, give several indications that this was so ; yet, on the other SOME riiCULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. 13 between the words. For example, as if we should write in English Gen. i. I : — ISTHRGNNNGGDCliTDTIIHVNSNDTiniTH. The difficulty, however, is not of much practical importance. Indeed, so little is it felt, that to this day not only the Synagogue- rolls, but most modern Jewish writings, books, and newspapers are without the vowel points, and a Hebrew scholar can read them with perfect ease. If, in addition to what has been now said, the reader will keep in mind (i.) the scrupulous care of the Jews about the accurate reading of their Scriptures; (2.) the fact that, being " people of one book," they were many of them as familiar with the words of their Bible as we are with those of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed ; (3.) and that, besides this, there was, as we shall see, a special guild of scribes, at least from the time of Ezra, to preserve and hand down the correct reading, it will be easily seen that the danger from Hebrew consonant-writing is by no means as great as it appears at first sight. IV. Grammar and Theology. It is worth a short digression to tell of the sharp theological contests in Reformation days on this hand, the Moabite Stone and the Siloani inscriptions, which are very ancient, have the words separated by little round dots cut in the stone, and the same division exists in the Pentateuch of the Samaritans. 14 SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. subject of the Hebrew vowels. Nothing less would suffice the Jewish commentators and grammarians of the time than that these vowel marks had been given, if not to Adam in Paradise, certainly to Moses on Mount Sinai, or, at the very utmost stretch of liberality, that they had been fixed by Ezra and " the men of the Great Synagogue."' " They were a revelation from God ; " " the consonant letters were the body, and the vowel points the soul, and they move together as an army moves with its leader." (Jliristian scholars knew little about the matter, and quite believed that the vowels were as ancient as the consonLi^ts. We can imagine then what a sensation was produced when Elias Levita, a very famous Hebrew scholar, about the year 154O5 proved to the world that these vowel marks were not in existence for hundreds of years after the time of our Lord ! ^ Here was a new apple of discord in the already sufiiciently discordaut field of controversy, whose noise was filling the world in those Reformation days. It is hard to seek the truth dispassionately at such times. Though Luther and Calvin held to the old opinion, the Protestants in general thought they saw a weapon for themselves in Le vita's discovery, and, carried away by their theological bias, they sided largely with the new doctrine, and disclaimed the antiquity of the vowel points. Thus they considered they were leaving them- selves freer in the interpretation of the Old Testa- ment, throwing off" the tradition of the Rabbis, as they > See footnote, chap. viii. p. 102. SOME PECULIARITIES or lUmREW WRITING. 15 had already thrown ort' the tradition of the Fathers of the Church. All very satisfactory no doubt to the Ueformcrs. It was rather suspicious, though, in the midst of their satisfaction, to find that the astute controversialists of Rome were quite as much delighted with the new theory as they were, though for a very different reason. " Why," said they, '' it is a conclusive proof of our position against you Protestants as to the use of private judgment in interpreting the J3ible. God gave His inspired Word in that form without vowel points, so that none but His appointed Church and its accredited teachers could rightly read or understand it ; thus were the vulgar people kept from reading it by the special providence of God, lest it should be trodden under foot of swine." '' It proves," said the Jesuit Morinus, " that without the infallible interpretation of the Church, the Bible is but a nose of wax, that may be turned any way by ignorant men." This was indeed turning the tables with a venge- ance. Henceforth, as may be supposed, the Reformers were not quite so eager in arguing against the antiquity and value of the vowel points. The reader will better understand the merits of the controversy after lie has read the chapters on the story of the Hebrew text, but it may be well to state here that the question is quite a settled one. Nobody now dreams of doubting the comparatively recent origin of the Hebrew vowel points. i6 SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBRiSW WRITING. V. Similar Letters. There is another peculiarity also to be noticed as a common cause of errors in the Old Testament. I mean the similaritj^ of certain pairs of Hebrew letters. Here are two ^ *) which differ only in the length of the tail. The first is the letter Yod, referred to in Matt. V. 8, and corresponds to our y. The other is the Hebrew w. Clearly, in copying a long difficult manuscript one of these letters might easily be written for the other. A good instance occurs in Ps. xxii. 1 6, " They pierced my hands and ray feet." where this mistake has been the subject of many a controversy (see specimen, p. 203). Another pair of these similar letters is ") and "7, dif- fering only in the rounding of the angle. They corre- spond to our R and D. They are responsible for a curi- ous little slip, which the lievisers seem not to have noticed, in Gen, x. 3, 4, and i Ohron. i. 6, 7. In the first we read Riphat and Dodarim, in the otlier Diphat and llodanim. But, indeed, they are responsible for a great many slips. I doubt if there is a more mischievous pair of letters in any alphabet in the world than this same pair. They are continually being mistaken one for the other. There is a disputed reading in 2 Sam. viii. 1 3, which interestingly exhibits this confusion. It tells of David " smiting of Syria in the Valley of Salt eighteen thousand men. And he put garri- SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. 17 sons in Edom." Now this is almost certainly a mistake, even though the Revisers have not corrected it. For the word "Syria "we should read "Edom." The Valley of Salt was in the neighbourhood of Edom, not Syria ; and if we turn to the parallel passage in I Chron. xviii. 1 2, we read that " Abishai the son of Zeruiah smote 0^ Edom in the Valley of Salt eighteen thousand men. And he put garrisons in Edom." The title also of Ps. Ix. tells that it was sung when Joab returned, and smote Edom in the Valley of Salt. Now how did this error arise ? The words Syria and Edom do not seem very likely to be mistaken one for the other. But here are the Hebrew forms — Q-)j^ = A R.,M = Syria. Dlj^ = AgDyM = Edom. It will be seen how easily " Edom " might lia>re become " Syria " by the scribe slightly rounding the angle of the T. The Septuagint version has a very curious instance of this error. In i Sam. xix. 13, where Michal, to facilitate her husband's escape, put an image in tho bed and at its head " a pillow of goats " (hair), the Septuagint translators have " Michal put at his head a liver of goats." This shows that they read Kdbhed, a liver, instead of Kehhir, a pillow, confusing the final d and i\ Curiously enough, Josephus^ follows them in this. " Michal," he says, " having let David down ^ Ant. vi. II, 4. B 1 8 SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. by a cord out of a window, fitted up a sick bed for him, and put under the led-clothes a goat's liver, and made them believe, by the leaping of the liver, which caused tlie bed-clothes to move also, that David breathed like an asthmatic man ! " There are also other similar pairs D 2 K B, J 3 - N, n n H CH, any of which might by a little carel\essness in writing lead to a good deal of confusion ; but there is no need of illustrating further. I have dealt here only with the more modern writing, but when it is added that in the ancient writing also this similarity existed between ce imi, pairs of letters, the reader will understand how, in the long course of ages, errors might easily occur, even with the most anxious care about the accuracy of the text. VI. The "Guardians of the Lines." The ancient scribes, too, had a peculiar trick in writing their manuscripts. In our writing, if a word near the end of the line is too long, we carry part on to the next line, with a hyphen connecting. They never did that. If they were near the end of the line, and the next word was a little too long, they took it down unbroken to the line below. But it would not do to leave the blank thus caused at the erd of the line. So they filled it up with some other letters, usually those at the beginning of the long V ? : I SOME PECULIARITIES OF HEBREW WRITING. 19 word that had been moved down. Tliese letters are called the " Guardians of the Lines." There was just a chance, of course, that a stupid copyist might some- times blunder over these, especially if the letters could by any p-^ssibility be mistaken for any part of the previous word, and so errors might arise in the manuscripts. Sometimes also a word of frequent occurrence was abbreviated by writing only the first letters, with a few small dashes after it to mark the abbreviation. As, for example, the word yehovah appeared some- times as Y'^ The Septuagint version was thus led into a mistake in translating Jer. vi. 11, where it found CHAMATH YEHOVAH, "the Wrath of Jehovah," contracted into chamath y''. This is very like the form cha^iathy, which means " my wrath," and they accordingly so translate it. CHAPTER III. WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? Mistake^ n the Manuscripts. The sources of error mentioned in the previous chapter are peculiar to the Old Testament manuscripts. But besides those, they were exposed to other sources of error, in common with all manuscripts that have been extensively copied. However careful the scribe may be, it is almost impossible in copying any long difficult manuscript to escape errors of various kinds. Sometimes he will mistake one word for another that looks very like it ; sometimes, if having the manuscript read to him, he will confound two words of similar sound • sometimes, after writing in the last word of a line or period, on looking up again, his eye will catch the same word at the end of the next line or period, and he will go on from that, omitting the whole pas- sage between. This last is a very frequent fault. Remarks and explanations, too, written in the margin, will sometimes in transcribing get inserted in the text. Again, in ancient manuscripts, where there is often no division between the words, each line presenting a WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM:^ 21 continuous row of letters, it might easily happen that one word would be wrongly divided into two, or two combined into one, as in the old story of the infidel who wrote over his bed " God is nowhere," which was read by his little boy as " God is now here." For example, in the end of Ps. xlviii. 15, "This God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our guide unto death," some Hebrew manuscripts have hl-mth = U7ito death, others iilmth =fo7- ever. There is no need of further pursuing this subject. The reader who remembers his own frequent slips and erasures, even in writing an ordinary short letter, will easily think of many ways besides in which errors may arise, and will see at once the improbability of the Old Testament manuscripts having escaped abso- lutely flawless through a transmission of thousands of years. If, even with all the advantages of the print- ing-press and its multitudes of trained proof-readers, many discrepancies exist between the different editions of our Authorised Version, how can we wonder that it should be so when every copy had to be made by the slow laborious process of writing it out letter by letter ? True, God might have quite obviated this danger. He might have miraculously preserved the original autographs of the inspired writers as a standard by which copies could be corrected for ever, or He might have directed the minds and fingers of Bible-copyists before printing was invented, and of printers and compositors in after days, so as to secure this perfect transmission. If He had seen fit thus to make fallible 22 WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? men infallible, of course He could have done so. But it does not seem to be God's way anywhere to work miracles for men where their own careful use of the abilities He has given would suffice for the purpose. And the Old Testament text is no exception to this rule. We shall find, as we go on, that never was a book guarded with such scrupulous awe and reverence ; never did any writing come down through the ages so pure as we have reason to believe did our Hebrew Bible ; but that it has come to us word for word as it left the hands of the inspired writers long ago, the evidence will by no means allow us to believe. 11. Biblical Criticism. Biblical criticism is the science which deals with the discovering and correcting of these errors in the text. To be accurate, it should rather be called Textual Criticism, for of course it deals equally with the text of any manuscript, whether Biblical or not, and I shall generally use this more accurate term in future.^ The reader must not be frightened at the hard name of this science, as if it meant something abstruse and difficult to understand. It may sometimes mean what is very simple indeed, and instances of it may occur even in the reading of the daily newspaper. For example, I remember somewhere reading of a naval pensioners' banquet, at which the toast was proposed, " That the ^ I retain the name Biblical Criticism on the title-pages and some other places, where the more technical expression would be inadvisable. WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM.^ 23 man who has lost one eye in the service of his country may never see with the other." Well, it did not require much cleverness to suspect a mistake here, and to think of examining another account, and find that the word " distress " or some such word had been omitted from the text. Yet this was an operation in textual criticism, though certainly an operation of the most simple kind.^ One rather like it in the Bible, but very much more difficult, occurred in the revision of the well-known First Lesson for Christmas Day (Isa. ix.). The old reading is (verse 3), " Thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy ; they joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest," &c. Now, in a jubilant passage of this kind, the " not increased their joy " rather jars on one, and this fact led to the examining of a great many old manuscripts and versions of Isaiah, when it was found by the Revisers that the word " not " was most probably a copyist's mistake (see specimen, Book iii. p. 206). But the operations of textual criticism are not ^ To give a more commonplace example still. The writer had a rather amusing experience in textual criticism a few days since, while travelling in a railway-carriage from Dublin to Kingstown. Right over the carriage- window was the printed direction, " AIT UNTIL TIIK PAIN STOPS !" It looked Irish to be sure, but somehow did not seem a very probable direction to have been issued by a solemn board of rail- way directors. A very slight examination showed that a letter, w, had been lost before the first word, and a T before the fourth ; and furthermore, it soon became evident that the p of this word pain was originally an R, whose tail had been erased by some mischievous school- boy for a tempting emendation of the reading. And so the extra- ordinary legend resolved itself into the very prosaic advice "wait UNTIL THE train STOPS ; " but the process of thus recovering the correct reading was a true process of textual criticism. 24 WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? always by any means so simple as this. Sometimes the highest skill of the most experienced critics is utterly at fault. And even in cases like those given above, simple as they seem, the making of such correc- tions is often a very dangerous experiment. For an expression may seem to the critic incongruous or im- probable through his misapprehending the thought that was in the writer's mind. If, then, he should find a number of ancient manuscripts which, owing to the same misapprehension, have ventured to so alter the passage that it agrees with his view, he is clearly in danger of being confirmed in his mistake. Thus it will be seen textual criticism needs to be wisely and cautiously used. It is an " edge tool," which, the proverb says, children and fools must not play with — many such have played with it to the sore disfiguring of their work — but which in the hands of the skilful workman may do much, and has done much, especially during the past century, in removing blemishes from the Bible text. In applying to the Bible, it requires a calm judicial mind, reverent towards God's Word, skilled in the accurate weighing- of evidence, and through long study of manuscripts v^ell acquainted with the many ways in which copyists' errors are likely to arise. III. Its Axioms and Rules. Its rules, even when they seem to the uninitiated difficult and unreasonable, are simply the conclusions ■i WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? 25 of common sense founded on a special knowledge of the subject. For example, that in certain cases where we have to decide between two different readings of a passage, " the more difficult rcadwg is to he 'preferred to the easier^ " merely means that experience of manu- scripts has taught the critic that copyists are more likely to try to simplify a difficult passage than to complicate one that already runs freely and easily, and therefore the more difficult reading is likely to be the correct one.^ So also the rule that " the shorter of tu-o readings is to he preferred to the more wordy,'' means only that experience has likewise taught that copyists are more inclined to expand a short terse reading than to condense a more wordy one. For our present inquiry it is only necessary to trouble the reader with three very simple and self- evident propositions of textual criticism : — (l.) If manuseripts were all of equcd value, the truth might he expected, of course, to he with the majority — e.g., if out of seventy manuscripts, sixty contained a certain reading and ten omitted it, that reading would probably be correct. (2.) But manuscripts are not all of the same value. For illustration, let o represent the original document, ^ For example, I am informed that in the hymn " Rock of Ages," the line "when mine eyelids close in death" reads in some copies '•when mine eyestrings burst in death." This is clearly the more "difficult" reading, but for that reason it is the most likely to be the original one, since nobody would be likely to alter the other for such an unpleasant reading, but any one might be tempted to change it for the other. i 26 WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? and A and B copies of equal value made from it. Now suppose three copies further to be made from B, and from these again any numbers of others. It is clear that the evidence of the one copy, A, would be worth that of the whole set, c, d, e, I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, copies descended from b. A I I I |c Td |e 12 34567 (3.) IVie earlier any manuscript, the more likely it is to he correct. For in the many ways we have referred to it is possible for errors to creep into the first copy of a manuscript. Any such errors would, of course, be repeated by the man that afterwards copied from this, who would also sometimes add other errors of his own. This would be equally true of the man who copied from him, and so on all the way down. So that clearly as copies increased errors would be likely to increase with them, and therefore, as a general rule, the earlier manuscripts would be the more correct ones.^ IV. Its Working Material. The evidence on which the textual criticism of the Old Testament chiefly bases its judgments I have roughly divided into two parts : — 1 Of course this is only a general rule. It is quite possible that a manuscript of the present year should be copied direct from one 1500 years old, and therefore be more correct than many which have existed for centuries. ! ^V WHAT IS BIBLICAL CRITICISM? 27 I. The Old Heiiuew Manuscripts, i.e., copies of the Sacred Books made in the original language. These are the foundation on which everything rests. II. The Other Old Documents to aid in the testing and correcting of these manuscripts. Under this head come — (i.) The Ancient Versions, i.e., the translations of the Hebrew books into other lancruajres long ago. (2.) The quotations from the Bible in ancient Jewish commentaries, to which we may add the earlier printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, made perhaps from older manuscripts than any that have survived. Accordingly this volume is divided into three parts — Book I. The " Old Hebrew Documents," and the ques- tion of Biblical Criticism. Book II. The " Other Old Documents," and their aid in Biblical Criticism. Book III. The New Bible a specimen of Biblical Criticism, to illustrate how the above materials are used in removing blem- ishes from the Bible text. .* CHAPTER IV. A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. i iili I. Some Curious Old Manuscripts. We are now in a position to glance at the old Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible at present available to scholars. There are very many of them — nearly two thousand have already been examined — strange and i- ous old documents, on rough cumbrous hides, on ^ a African skins, on rolls of the most delicate parchment, some of them mildewed and faded and torn, some almost as fresh as on the day when they were made. From all quarters of the earth they come, from Pales- tine and Babylon and the distant East, from Africa and the islands of the Indian Sea, from the great universities and libraries of the Gentiles, from the filthy Jewish Ghettos in Italy and Spain. There are the fine synagogue parchments, with their exquisite writing wrought out with continual fasting and prayer ; here the curious manuscripts of the Rabbis of China, and the rough red goatskin rolls from the black Jews of Malabar ; ^ piles of shrivelled fragments of only a ^ In the early times there were Jewish settlements in India and China, and Hebrew scholars often turned their attention in that direc- .-*• ..it- > ■if I ,eoG^c.>c^^oa^. ^*^*; t/^ r. ^ A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. 29 few pages, and rough leatLeru rolls 150 feet long; beautiful book-shaped copies of the Law, and soiled and faded sheets of the Prophets and the Psalms, disinterred from the " Ghenizas," where the Jews had buried them. Many a romantic story doubtless belongs to the history of these silent sheets and the names of the forgotten writers, which some of them bear. Stories of battle and siege, as of the capture of Toledo by Edward the Black Prince, where the famous " Codex Ezras " ^ was found amongst the spoils ; stories of life in the old Jewish academies long ago ; stories of fierce persecution, of brave endurance ; of men fleeing with their scriptures from the " followers of Christ ; " of holocausts of ancient Jewish manuscripts of the Bible ; of blazing synagogues and ruined homes, *' And dead wliite faces upturned to the sky, Calling for vengeance to their fatliers' God." tion. In 1806 Dr. Buchanan obtained, among other manuscripta, a roll of the Pentateuch from the black Jews of Malabar. It is now in the Uni'.ersity Library at Cambridge. It consists of about thirty-fivv^ goatskins dyed red. It is the breadth of the Jewish sacred cubit, and when complete must have been nearly ninety feet long. ^ The Jews of Toledo, in the Middle Ages, had in their synagogues a roll called the Codex Ezroe, or the Codex Azaras. Some believed it to have belonged to Ezra ; others thought it was the copy deposited in the Azara or Hall of the Temple (sp^-" p. 81), and preserved in the siege and capture of Jerusalem. At the capture of Toledo by Edward the lilack Prince in 1367, it came int.) his possession as part of the spoils. The Jews redeemed it for a large sum, but it was afterwards destroyed by fire with the synagogue. So highly was it valued, that manuscripts were sent from all places to be compared with it, and some of our existing manuscripts have appended to them a certificate that they have been compared, not directly with the Codex Ezrse itself, but with manuscripts that had been verified by comparison with it. 30 A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. \ But the very existence itself of these manuscripts has sufficient in it of wonder and romance. They are the holy oracles of God written in the " holy tongue " of His people, faithfully handed down from generation to generation since the days of the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai. Who can look on them without reverence and awe and deep conviction of the truth of revelation ? Who can think without emotion of that poor, despised, hunted race, through all the ages pre- serving for their persecutors the message of Jehovah ? Surely enough of wonder and romance that those records should have come down to us from the days of Moses ; thut in this world of shortlived races, rapidly succeeding each other and passing away, there should remain one mysterious people existing to this day from the dawn of history, the guardians through thirty cen- turies of the words in those old Hebrew scrolls ! II. I : R; 1^ A Perplexing Discovery. • But what is the value to the textual critic of these venerable documents ? How many thousand years do they go back ? Have we amongst them the autograph of any inspired writer? Have we manuscripts at least of the time of our Lord ? How far do they enable us to fix with certainty the exact original of the Hebrew Old Testament ? To the reader who knows something of the New Testament writings, with their documents reaching up ■I i A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. 31 near the days of the Apostles, and the many variations nevertheless existing in the text, an acquaintance with these strange old manuscripts can scarcely fail to cause surprise. Not one of them, we shall see immediately, is written in the ancient writing. This, perhaps, he might have expected from what has been already said. But, as he inquires further, a very perplexing fact indeed reveals itself. He finds — I. That the oldest Hebrew manuscript in exist- 1-]NCE is of date little EARLIER THAN WiLLIAM THE Conqueror ! II. And that in all the Hebrew manuscripts THAT HAVE EVER BEEN EXAMINED, THE TEXT IS ALMOST WORD FOR WORD THE SAME ! Let us realise what this means, (i.) That of the early Old Testament books, written more than 3 000 years ago, we have not a single copy 1000 years old ; or, in other words, tbnt the earliest Old Testament manuscript in existence . us far from the time of the original writers as would be a New Testament manu- script written to-day. (2.) That amid all the copyists' errors and variations, which are the common fate of every ancient book — the New Testament included — this most ancient of all the books of th world has virtually no variations at all ! III. The Guardianship of the Bible. Now, how are these strange phenomena to be explained ? This question will be fully treated in n J- A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. the following story of the manuscripts, but a brief summary of the answer here will perhaps enable the reader to follow it more intelligently. The popular notion is that of an absolutely perfect guardianship of the Hebrew 'ext by the Jews. Their deep reverence for their Scriptures and the scrupulous care with which these Scriptures were handed down is considered quite suflBicient explanation for this marvellous agree- ment of manuscripts. Well, there is much truth in this, a good deal more, we venture to say, than is believed by many of those who question the accuracy of the Hebrew Old Testament. We shall see as we go on that for nearly 2000 years past at least this guardianship was almost perfect ; scarcely a single important slip of a transcriber could have occurred without detection in all the copying of manuscripts during that time. But we cannot speak thus con- fidently of the manuscripts of the earlier period. They certainly were not all uniform. The manuscripts used by the Palestine Jews varied, often considerably, from those of the " Jews of the Dispersion " in other lands. The Palestine manuscripts themselves had some varia- tions between them. Tlierefore some better explana- tion must be found for the uniformity in the existing Hebrew manuscripts. IV. An Ancient Revision. We must first clearly distinguish between the Pales- tine manuscripts and all others. The Palestine text A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. is that which has come down to us, n,nd, as will be seen, we have every reason to consider that it has come down to us substantially correct. We do not believe that it is entirely free from copyists' errors, but from what we know of the solemn reverence with which it has been always regarded from the beginning, and the scrupulous, almost superstitious care with which it has been transmitted for the past two thousand years, we have ample reason to believe that this Pales- tine Old Testament has come down to us veiy nearly as it left the hands of the original writers. This, however, does not sufficiently account for the almost word-for-word agreement between our existing manuscripts, since, as we have seen, even the Palestine manuscripts in ancient times were not without some variation. Unless by a continual miracle, no writings could have passed through the process of copying and recopying for thousands of years without many an error and variation arising. The explanation is by no means easy to find. The following chapters will tell of a long continual revision carried on through many centuries by the ablest J ewish scholars ; of a mysterious standard text set up, to which every manuscript conformed ; of the existence of all Hebrew Bibles in the famous " days of the Massoretes " in this uniform state in which they appear to-day. This uniform text was then fixed and stereotyped as the " Text LIS Keceptus " or standard text of the Old Testament. It is known as the " Massoretic " text, and our manuscripts are all " Massoretic " manuscripts. C 34 A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. It is well for the reader to remember this name. We have much to say of it afterwards in the " Story of the Manuscripts." . The Vanished Manuscripts. But what of the disappearance of the very ancient manuscripts ? Why have we none even a thousand years old ? If divergent copies once existed, why is there not one to be found to-day to break the uni- formity of the Massoretic text ? It is generally an- swered that the Jews destroyed all copies that varied from the standard Massoretic Bible. And this may well have been so. We know that in a like case, when the Caliph Othman adopted a standard text of the Koran, he destroyed every copy that differed from it. Tlie text of the Vedas, too, in India, appears to have been revised about five hundred years before Christ, and no divergent copy allowed afterwards to remain. This may have happened in the case of the ancient Jewish manuscripts. But there is really no need of postulating such a cause. Why should they not have vanished as Jewish manuscripts are continually vanishing now ? If the present Jewish customs existed long ago, they must have made the survival of any very ancient manuscript well nigh impossible. Even those which we possess to-day have onh^ escaped through having fallen into Gentile hands. It is a rigid rule to this day among «i To h »i ; ^. •■ ^^' ]-■■: -,-/.Vi V 3r-<:? nn:i ra^^ to^n I'AliT Ol- THK Jl.l.LMINAIi:l) TITI.KS OF TlIK UddKS (IK IH ( l.i:>l A>Ti;.S AM) M.MIiKIO. From ii FifteouUi Century Ilelnew .Mnmiscript. On till' reverse of the bist le.if is written tills deeil nf sale: — "'!'" testify fiiul make it apji ar Id HaUlii .laehiel. the snii nt I'ri. 1 aekiMiwleilire that I have delivered tn him this IV'iitat.ueli. lit' whieh I have reeeived the value in leady nmney, and the sale theri'dl' is an uverlastins,' sale. Dime this 4tli day, the jSth ul liio incntli l';jai-, a.m. jjjcj. Tne wmds oi Jacub the .sun of JlorUecai." Toj'wx iHiiu 34 ] A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. 35 the Jews that manuscripts condemned from any cause as unfit for use must be forthwith reverently destroyed lest they should fall into the hands of ;:he profane. Now, manuscripts were condemned for very slight defects ; a new sheet if there were found in it three errors of the scribe, a synagogue roll if inj ured through the wear and tear of rolling and unrolling for the daily lessons, or if letters were blurred or effaced through the custom of kissing the opening and closing words of the portion to be read. A " Gheniza " was usually attached to the synagogue, a place where these condemned manuscripts were reverently buried ; though, by the way, this did not always save them from defilement, for it appears from the Catalogues that at least two decayed old parchments in the library of the great Hebrew scholar, De llossi, were unearthed at Lucca from one of these Ghenizas. VI. Are our Manuscripts Correct? In any case, however we explain the disappearance of the ancient copies, one thing is clear, that, as far as Hebrew manuscripts are concerned, we are shut up to this Massoretic text. We have no other. The makers of the Authorised Version simply translate it, with rarely any question of its absolute correctness. The recent revisers, while expressing their doubts, think it " most prudent to adopt the Massoretic text as the basis of their work, and to depart from it, as the Authorised 36 A VIEW OF THE OLD MANUSCRIPTS. translators liad done, only in exceptional cases." There- fore it becomes a most important question, How far do these Massoretic manuscripts correctly reproduce the very words of the Old Testament writers, and where they fail in so doing is there any means of discovering and correcting their errors ? The answer to this ques- tion also, as far as it can be given, must be gathered from the following " Story of the Manuscripts." (o CHAPTEll V. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE EARLY AGES. I. What can we Learn of the Vanished Manuscripts? The first trace of the documents of the Old Testa- ment is found in Exod. xvii. 1 4, where, after the battle with Amalek, we are told that Moses was commanded to " write it in a book," either the original manuscript of part of the Pentateuch or one of the sources from which the Pentateuch was afterwards compiled.^ It is a " far cry " from that manuscript of Rephidim, three thousand years ago, to the Hebrew documents in our hands to-day. We have to learn now what is known ^ There is no doubt that many previously existing documents were used in the composition of the Old Testament books, the Genealogies, the " Book of the Wars of Jehovah," the " Book of Iddo," the "Book of Jasher," the " Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Israel," &c. But the discussion of this question, deeply interesting as it is, lies quite outside our present plan. The reader will clearly understand that this little book deals only with the external history of the Jewish Bible, i.e., the preservation and transmission of the books as they have come down to us. With their composition and internal history, and the whole fascinating but difficult question of what is called the " higher criti- cism," we have nothing to do here. 38 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. of the history of the text during all tho centuries between. It is but very little, reader, that there is to learn, especially of the earlier ages, and even that little can be but lightly touched on in a simple popular treatise such as the present. We may roughly divide tho history into four periods : — I. The Early Ages, from Moses to Ezra, i.e., to about n.c. 500. II. Ezra and the Scribes, to the destruction of Jerusalem, a.d. 70. III. The Talmud Period, to about a.d. 500. IV. The Days of the Massorets, to a.d. iooo. Let us try to investigate the subject by examining the text as far as we can at each period of its history. First, then, we inquire. At the close of the " Early Ages " did all the copies agree in every letter, and was the text absolutely correct as it left the hands of the in- spired writers ? 't I II. Call our First Witness — The Sacred Books. Of this first period little is known except what we can learn from the books themselves. There are no manuscripts of that period remaining, no history, no collateral sources of information, except perhaps the Samaritan Pentateuch, to be afterwards examined. What, then, we inquire, can be learned from the books themselves ? What of the text of these vanished THE EARLY AGES. 39 f J. manuscripts ? Did it airree exactly with that whicli has come down to us ? Was it carefully guarded from corruption of copyists ? And the little that wo can gather of an answer to our question is something to thia effect : — The manuscripts were written in the ancient Hebrew writing on rolls of linen or papyrus, or skins fastened together, much like the present parchment rolls of the synagogue. [We read, for example, of the lioll of the Book (Ps. xl. 7), Jeremiah's lioll (Jer. xxxvi. 14), and the Mying Eoll of Zechariah's vision (Zech. v. l).] They were guarded with the most reverent care, especially the Mosaic writings, the only Bible which the Jews possessed for centuries. Moses, we are told, committed his original manuscript " unto the priests, the sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant, and unto all the elders of Israel ; and he commanded the Levites to take the book, and to put it by (not m) the side of the Ark of the Covenant, to be there for a witness against the people of Israel " (Deut. xxxi. 9, 24, 26). It was preserved, therefore, in the Holy of Holies, guarded by the awful majesty of God's visible presence. Every seven years this " Book of the Law " was to be read before the people ; and in Joshua's days we learn (Joshua viii. 25) that "there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the congregation." Further, it was en- joined that every king of Israel, soon after his acces- sion, should write out with his own hands a copy from this manuscript, whicli was kept by the priests and 40 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. Levites (Deut. xvii. i8) ; and it seems to have become part of the coronation ceremonies that this original document, ot at least a copy of it, should be placed in the hands of the king when he was crowned (2 Kings xi. 12, and 2 Chron. xxiii. 11). The frequent mention of this " Book of the Law " as that which must be taught to men a-^ God's guide for their life will occur to every reader. We find the statement in the early Christian fathers, Tertulliau, Epiphanius, St. Augusdne, and others, that the other inspired books also vere plnced in the sanc- tuary, and what is of more consequence, Josephus, the Jewish historian, seems to confirm thi i assertion.^ The Bible also lends it some support. Wt read in Joshua xxiv. 26, that Joshua added on his own writing to the " Book of the Law ; " and in i Sam. :• 25, that Samuel " told the people the manner of the kingdom^ and wrote it in the book, nnd laid it jp Icfore the Lord." So that, altogether, there seems reason to believe that the Tabernacle and afterwards the Temple, was the regular depositary of the sacred manuscripts. In Samuel's days the original documents (i.e., the Law at least, and perhaps .ome of the other books) would naturally be kept with the Ark in Shiloh. the home of the priests and of sacred learning. ^ See "Antiquities," Book iii. I. 7, and Book v. I. 17. He speaks also ("Lifo of Josephus," § 75) of having, by the favour of Titus, saved the " Holy Writings " at tho destruction of Jerusalem (probably the Temple manuscripts of the other books) ; and in the " Jewish Wars " (vii. V. 5) he tells that the Law, taken from tho Te.nple, was borne aloft in the triumph of Titus and placed in the Pa ;\oe. THE EARLY AGES. 41 But it would seem as if the growing degeneracy of the priesthood and 'leir loss of influence in the nation necessitated now the calling forth of a new order to guard the Divine deposit and communicate its contents to the people. We find all Samuel's teaching based upon these Scripture records, and probably, that the knowledge of them might be preserved and dissemi- nated, ho founded his theological colleges or " Schools of the Prorthets," where picked young scholars were trained in the sacred learning at Naioth and Gilo-al and Bethel. We find Elijah visiting these schools in later days as he passed to his miraculous assumption, and after- wards his successor, Elisha, moving amongst them preparing and exhorting these young teachers of the future.'* The chief work of the students no doubt would be the study and expounding and copying of the Lav^r, though sacred poetry and music were also an impor- tant part of their course. And not only were they the expounders and guar- dians of the older Scripture, but also as God inspired them, the authors of the new. They were the national poets and annalists, the composers of psalms, the com- pilers of records such as the Books of Nathan and Gad and Iddo the seer, so valuable afterwards as materials for the Old Testament history. Two of the oldest of the prophetical books, Hosea and Jonah, were the work of men trained in the schools of Elijah, and ^ See I Sam. xix. 19, 20 ; 2 Kings ii, 3-5, iv. 38, vi. i, &c. 42 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. afterwards no writing was received as inspired unless it could claim a prophet for its author, though not necessarily one trained in prophetical schools. It is easy to see how this new order of trained students would be a further safeguard to the purity of the text originally committed to the priestly line, and after them, in the days of the Captivity, we find the regularly appointed Guild of the Scribes and the critical study of the manuscripts at least in its beginning. l! Before the Captivity, however, we have another glimpse of the guardianship of the " Books " — a reve- lation of gross neglect and of holy zeal. When Hezekiah began his reign he found the Temple shut up, and its worship and its sacred manuscripts quite disregarded ; and so we are told he gathered together in the East Street the priests and the Levites, and by his burning words he aroused their enthusiasm for restoring the " service of God and the Law and the commandm ents . " How far those men of Hezekiah went in examining and restoring the Hebrew manuscripts it is impossible to say. In the passing mentions of them, we gather that they devoted themselves in Jerusalem to the study of the Law ; ^ that they found and copied out a con- siderable part of the Proverbs of Solomon ; ^ that they examined the pile of copies of the Temple Psalms (how vast it must have been when the chief singers * 2 Chron. xxx. 22, xxxi. 4. ^ Prov. xxv. i. THE EARLY AGES. 43 numbered two hundred and eighty-eight !)/ and from them selected the genuine Psalms of David and Asaph the seer.^ Jewish tradition assigns to them also the copying out of the Books of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon's Song. However this may be, clearly the work of the royal reformer and his " men " must have had an important bearing on the fortunes of the Jewish Bible. And then comes a relapse almost to utter Paganism. The following reigns, with their idolatrous desecration, brought things to such a pass that a great sensa- tion was caused in the days of Josiali, when Hilkiah the priest ^ discovered, in some hiding-place, the lost and almost forgotten " Temple manuscript " of the Law, concealed probably to escape the rage of the idolatrous Manasseh. This certainly looks rather badly for the guardian- ship of the old manuscripts. And yet I doubt if even from this one should argue to the probability of their having become corrupted either by carelessness or design. The danger here would be rather their being totally lost. Indeed, at such times, the risk of cor- ruption through copyists' errors would probably be smaller than ever, since there would be very little likelihood of any copying at all. * I Chron. xxv. 7. - 2 Cliron. xxix. 30. ^ 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14, &c. 44 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. III. Summary of this Evidence. It may be well to present this evidence in a more condensed and systematic form, so as to show at a glance what reason we have for believing in the sub- stantial accuracy of the Hebrew manuscripts during this early period. 1 . The deep reverence of the Jews for their sacred writings and the care with which they were copied in all the known period of the history of the text may surely be assumed in this its comparatively un- known period as well. 2. With regard to the Mosaic writings at least, the Bible itself abundantly confirms this assumption. 3. The less any manuscript is copied, the less danger, of course, there is of errors in copying. The numerous variations of the New Testament documents are a result of the very extensive demand for copies. There would be but little of this in the early Old Testament days. 4. The preservation and transmission of the text was not left to chance or to untrained men. The early manuscripts were committed to the priestly order under peculiarly solemn circumstances. The trained teachers from the schools of the prophets must have done much in the guarding and copying as well as teaching of the Scripture, and after them in the next period arose the new Guild of the Scribes and the critical study of the Bible manuscripts. i / THE EARLY AGES. i ■} I 5. Tlie Temple manuscript of the Law brought to light by Hilkiah, B.C. 623, after its long concealment, would probably tend to correct any errors in existing copies and preserve future transcripts from corruption. 6. Though the other books were not regarded with as high a veneration as the Pentateuch, and therefore were not so safe from copyists' mistakes, yet, on the other hand, they were less often copied, not being used in worship or in teaching the people. Besides, the prophetic and historical books were not very long- in existence before the great collecting and revising of the Scriptures, of which we shall hear in the following chapter. Indeed, some were not written till after the Captivity, when the jealous guardianship of the text had already begun. ^ 7. It is worth notice that the inspired prophets, while sternly rebuking the people for their iniquities, and the priests for their shortcomings and neglect, never let fall a word charging them with mutilation or corruption of the Word of God ; though, of course, this argument only holds good against serious or wilful corruption. We may add, too, that the belief held by the Jews of our Lord's time on the subject should probably count for something. It is expressed in the Talmud " that Moses received the Book of the Law from Sinai, and ^ It is interesting to note that the Revised Version, restoring the definite article omitted by the Authorised in Dan. ix. 2, shows us that the prophetic writings were at that day reverently regarded as " the Books "or "the Scriptures." Daniel read in "the Books "the pro- phecy of Jeremiah about the Captivity. 46 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. delivered it to Joshua ; Joshua delivered it to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the great synagogue, from whom it passed to the heads of the families of the Scribes." And Josephus, about the same period, insists, " We have not an innumerable multitude of books, as the Greeks, but only twenty-two, which contain the record of all past times, and which are justly believed to be divine. . . . During so many ages as have already passed, no one has hcen so hold as to add anything to them or to take anythincf from them, or to make any change in them ; but it becomes natural to all Jews from their birth to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them." ^ t Such facts as these should go far to prove the reverence with which the manuscripts were regarded and the care exercised in their transmission. From them we gather that God's watchful providence, by the use of ordinary human means, preserved for us at least the general purity of the Hebrew text, and the fullest confirmation of this will meet us as we go on. But in the case of the New Testament, we know that, with this general purity of the text, there existed some minor slips and inaccuracies of copyists, such as have been spoken of in a previous chapter as incidental to all manuscript-copying, and therefore the question naturally arises, Did such exist also in the case of the Old Testament of the " Early Ages ? " ^ Discourse against Apion, § 8 f tt THE EARLY AGES. IV. 47 A Search for further Evidence. The reader will naturally ask, How on earth could sucli a question be answered ? How can we ascertain anything further about the condition of the early text if every early manuscript has perished centuries and centuries ago ? Well, reader, it is not a very easy task, but yet it is not quite impossible either. Suppose that at the close of what we have here called the Early Ages one copy of the existing Hebrew Bible should have been entirely separated off from the rest, carried away to a far-distant land where there was no possibility of contact luith the Palestine copies, and there become the parent of a long line of manuscripts. Suppose some traveller should find for us to-day a number of manu- script descendants of this solitary Bible which had thus branched off 2500 years ago. Would not the comparing of these with our present manuscripts be a valuable study, and help us much in our inquiry about the early text ? If we found them absolutely agreeing with ours, should we not be right in saying that our Bible is word for word the same as that of Palestine in the Early Ages, and that all the manuscripts of these Early Ages most probably agreed in every letter. If we found them agreeing substantially with ours, but differing a little here and there iu words and 48 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. turns of expression, perhaps sometimes in adding or omitting a few words in a verse, should we not con- clude that certainly our Bible is at least substantially the Bible of the Early Ages, even if it does not corre- spond in every word and letter. For all in which these two sets of manuscripts agree must infallibly have belonged to the ancient text from which they have both sprung. There is no other possible explana- tion of their agreement, since, according to our supposi- tion, they could have had no contact with each other. So that the reader will see we might be quite able thus to reproduce with certainty a large part of the ancient text. But what of the discrepancies between the two ? What should we say of them ? Surely this, that one or both of the sets of manuscripts had got some copyists' errors, but at first we could not tell which. Suppose then, lastly, that, while knowing of the jealous care with which our Scriptures had been guarded, we found from the history of this foreign country that its manuscripts had been very carelessly kept, that at one period at least there had been designedly introduced for political purposes certain of these differences which we had noticed. Should we not be inclined to say that where their readings differed from ours the strange manuscripts were pro- bably corrupt all the way through ; though, of course, we could not say that in all these differences our own copies were certainly right ? Thus it will be evident — and this is very important U f or jon- ally rre- lich Lbly hev tna- osi- iier. ible the one )me the een lign ssly leen :ain .uld ngs 3ro- rs8, )W11 ;ant a 1 * * V •* • , .^ .> # THE EARLY AGES. 49 to remembfT — that tlie bad character of tlie strange manuscripts would not weaken their evidence as to the nn'revtnesa of ours in places where both agree, though it would very decidedly weaken their evidence as to the incorrecincHs of oui*s in places where they differ. V. Call our Next Witness, the Samaritan Bible. Now, in our search for evidence about the ancient text, we come upon one document which satisfies all the above conditions. We discover that there exists a Pentateuch among the Samaritans, a book which was separated from the Jewish Pentateuch manuscripts at the close of the "Early Ages," though only discovered by European scholars in comparatively recent times. This document is fully dealt with later on (Book ii. p. 1 1 8), but it is necessary to refer to" it slightly here. Its importance, of course, consists in the fact that it is Samaritan ; that its text has existed separate from that of the Jews since about five hundred years before Christ — at latest, since the time when the renegade, Manasseh, in his passion for his young Samaritan wife, fled from the anger of Nehemiah to be priest in the schismatic temple of the Samaritans at Gerizuj,^ probably carry- ing with him a copy of the Law. The bitter enmity existing between the two races is ample security that ^ Neh. xiii, 28. Josephus, Antiquities, Book xi. chap?, vii. and viii., where, however, the story is transferred to a later period. 1) o A. •' 4? E STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. its text has never since been influenced by that of the Jewish Pentateuch; there- fore the whole portion in which it and our Jewish manuscripts of tlio I'en- tateuch agree, and that means substantially al- most the entire contents, must certainl}' belong to the "Early Ages" Bible. There is no other way pos- sible of explaining their agreement. So that, it will be seen, this Samari- tan Pentateuch is a most important witness to the substantial purity of otir present text. But then the Samari- tan, in certain particulars, is found to differ from our text. The ages of the patriarchs do not agree ; the name Ebal, in Deut. xxvii. 4, appears as Gerizim — though this is of little moment, it is so evidently a corruption in favour of the Samaritan temple there ; the narrative is fuller in many particulars, and there are expansions and explanations of passages which seem condensed and difficult in the Jewish Bible. Now, it has been argued by some that these dis- THE EARLY AGES. crepancies go far to show that ' at the close of the Early Ages, when the Samaritan branched off, similar discrepancies must have existed between the early manuscripts ; that the Samaritan was copied from one set of manuscripts, the Jewish from another and dif- ferent set. If wo were as sure of accurate transmission in the case of the Samaritan as we are in that of the Jewish Scriptures, this would be a good argument. When the manuscripts of this Samaritan Pentateuch were Hrst imported into Europe in the seventeenth cen- tury, much surprise was felt at its variations from the Hebrew, and scholars were at first inclined to give it a high position. But, on fuller acquaintance, it quite lost its character, as the reader will see for himself later on. Suffice it to say here, that it now stands convicted of having been freely tampered with, not only for contro- versial purposes, as in the case of Ebal and Gerizim, but also in many places to remove what seemed difficulties, and to make the narrative flow more freely and easily. Therefore we conclude that our Samaritan witness is not of sufficiently good character ; and that, while its substantial agreement with the Massoretic manu- scripts is a strong confirmation of their correctness, its charge of minor inaccuracies in these Hebrew manu- scripts, or of discrepancies existing in the Early Ages, is, as the Scotch lawyers would say, " not proven." At the same time, some of its variations are sup- ported by the authority of the Septuagint and other versions of the following period, and it would be a k ] 53 THE STORY 01' THE MANUSCRIPTS. bold thing to say that in every little discrepancy between them the Jewisli Bible is certainly right and the Samaritan certainly wrong. There are soMie few instances at least where we may well doubt this. For example, we give amongst the "Specimens" in Book iii. p. 189 a Samaritan addition to the text of Gen. iv. 8 which is strongly supported by other authority, and is admitted by the recent revisers into their margin : " Cair said to Abel his brother, Lcf h,s (JO info fhr Jicid!' We have sIioami in that place that the Samaritan is very probably right, and that the words may have at some time fallen out of the Hebrew text. In Gen. xlvii. 2 1 it is almost certainly right in telling that Joseph made, hotuJmcu of the Egyptians for Pharaoh (see Revised Version, margin), instead of merely "removing" them, as we have it. But we only listen to it here because other autho- rities strongly support it. We repeat again that its \'ariations from the Hebrew carry little or no weight with them. Ijike all other such witnesses, it has to sutler for its general bad character e\'en where it may be in the right. No scholar would now think of using its unsupported testimony to call in (piestiou tiie accuracv of the Hebrew text. I VI. Cross-Examine our First Witness. There seems just one other possible way of learning anything as to the manuscripts of the Early Ages, «-i»M^J**Mfahf «*>'»^'* ■ ■MSaitii run EARLY AGES. 53 and that is by cross-oxaniining, as it were, our first witness, the existing Old Testament itself. There is a certain class cf evidence found within its covers which is sometines brought forward as a proof that in the Early Ages, before the separate books were collected into one Jewish "Bible," and the Canon of the Old Testament closed, tlie manuscripts must have suffered from eareles.^ transcription. It is that of "repeated passages." What seem to be copies of the same writings are found in two or more different places, and these passages, when closely compared, are found to exhibit variations of more or less importance. Compare, for example : — 2 Sam. xxii. Ps. xiv. ,, I Chr. xvi. 8-2 2 ., 1 Chr. xvi. 23-33 „ 2 Kings xix., xx. ,, 2 Kings XXV. ,, Isa. XV., xvi. ,, with l^s. xviii. Ps. liii. Ps. cv. I- 1 5. Ps. xcvi. Isa. xxxvii., xxxviii. Jer. lii. Jer. xlviii. I Tiiere are nearly a hundred such instances of parallelism in the Old Testament, easily discovered by means of a good Iteference Bible ; and to understand aright the value of their tnidence, the reader should examine a few of them for himself before going on. However, as one cannot trust all readers to take this trouble, perha])s we had better print one oi* two illus- 'I f. 1 54 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. trations. Let us take at random the first two pairs ill the above list : — 2 Sam. XXII. P.SAI.M XVIII. O Lord, my I lovo Thee, strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and deliverer ; My God, iny strong rock ; in Him will 1 trust : Mv shield, and the horn of my The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and deliverer ; The God of my rock ; in Him will I trust : My shield, and the horn of my salvation, my liiuh tower, and my salvation, my high tower refuge, my Saviour ; Thou savest me from violence. I will call upon the Lord, who i.-< worthy to be i)raised : So shall I lie saved from mine enemies. When the waves of death com- passed me, The rtood.s of ungodliness made me afraid ; The cords of Hheol were round about me ; The snares of death came upon me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, Yea, I called unto my God. And He rc^de upon a cherub and did Hy ; Yea, He was seen upon the wings of the wind. And He made darkness pavilions round about Him. P.SALir XIV. The fool liath said in his lieart, There is no God. Thej- are corrupt ; they have done abominable works ; There is none that doeth good. Tlie LoHi) looked down from heaven ujion the children of men, To see if there were any that did understand, That did seek after God. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge '! Who eat up my people as they eat bread. And call not upon the Lonn. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised : So shall I be saved from mine enemies. The cords of death compassed me. And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. The cords of Shcol were round about me ; The pains of death came upon me. In my distress 1 called upon the Lord, And cried unto my God. And He rode upon a cheinib and did Hy ; Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His hiding- place, His pavilion round al)out Him. I'SALM LIII. The fool hath said in his heart. There is no God. ('orrupt are they, and have doric abominable ini(iuity. '{'here is none tliat doeth good. (Jod looked down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there were any that did understand. That did seek after God. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge f Who eat uji my people as they eat bread. And call not upon God. 1 THE EARLY AGES. 33 In the first of these cases the existence of two separate editions of the same poem is easily under- stood. A couple of thousand years ago the compilers of the Book of Psalms, the Jewish Church Hymnal, extracted the poem for their collection out of 2 Samuel, or perhaps the author of 2 Samuel copied it from the hymn-book to insert in his story. In after - days this history and this hymn-book were bound between the same covers, and thus we find two separate copies of the poem, and what concerns us most, we find that these two copies do not exactly correspond. Now, it has been argued that the differences between them point to a corruption of either or both the copies, and as the Bible copyists of later days had grown so extremely scrupulous about the accuracy of the text, therefore the corruption probablj' belongs to the Early Ages. But do the discrepancies point to corruption at all ? Not necessarily, I think. In all our present Church Hymnals there are poems selected out of the works of certain authors, and designedly shortened or modified in some expression to make them suitable for singing in church. Surely this may easily have happened in the instances before us without an}' corruption or carelessness at all. Again, in the other pair of parallels, Ps. xiv. and liii., we have an earlier and later edition of the same hymn, What was to prevent the author from improving his poem, or slightly altering an expression to make 56 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. it more suitable for the purpose for which it was afterwards used ? Such is a. very common case. Only recently the magazines have been dealing with some manuscript copies of Lord Tennyson's poems which tell a curious story as to the many little variations which the author had made between the first wiiting of them and their appearance in print. Why should not David or Solomon, or any other inspired writer, take as much trouble as Lord Tennyson about a manu- script poem, especially with the solemn feeling that he was writing for the worship of the Temple of God. And similarly may be explained, perhaps, many of the discrepancies in the other passages referred to. The reader will see that they are cases where the author or compiler of a book transfers bodily into his text a previous composition, either his own or another's, as it suits his purpose. Now, in such a case he is not necessarily bound to adhere strictly to the letter of the borrowed passage. The author jf the Book of Kings, for example, transfers a long passage out of Isaiah's writings, and in so doing varies it to suit his purpose, making the history more minute and circumstantial. "J'here is no reason whj^ he should not, just as in the Psalter there is no reason why the compiler of a hymn-book or the original writer of a hymn should not insert or omit verses or slightly alter an expression unsuitable to the occasion for which the hvmn was afterwards used. This should cause no difficulty to us. There is much in the Bible of compiling and editing of older writings, which THE EARLY AGES. 57 surely was as much under God's guidance as were the original writings themselves. The inspired writers had as nmch freedom as any other writers in express- ing the same thing differently at different times or in adapting the words of earlier documents to suit their present purposes. Therefore we are not to assume tliat any two of these similar passages must necessarily have agreed originally word for word. In some cases the changes seem clearly designed. At the same time, there can be little doubt that many of the smaller verbal varia- tions detected by this comparison of passages are the result of inaccuracy on the part of some transcriber. Let us take one example for illustration from each of our specimens : — (i.) 2 Sam. xxii. ii, "He luas seen upon the wings of the wind " is rendered in the parallel, Ps. xviii. 10, " He did Jiy upon the wings of the wind." It might seem at first sight probable that this was an intentional change originally made. But when it is pointed out that the Hebrew words are in the one case hJT'T ('* He was seen "), and in the other ^<^^•) ("He did fly"), no unbiassed reader can avoid sus- pecting a copyist's slip between that old pair of eternal mischief-makers 1 and "T (/' and d)} m ^ These letters closely resembled each other both in the earlier und later alphabets, so this error may belong to later times. It is not easy to give an example of copyist's error from similar Utters that we can with certainty assign to the Early Ages. Probably we shall find one by comparing 2 Chron. xxii. I2, giving forty-two years as the age of Ahaziah at his accession, with the pa'allel passage 2 Kings viii. 26, >- ^ THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. V I I (2.) Ps. xiv. 2, " The Lord {Hebrew, Jehovah) looked down from heaven upon the children of men," &c., is rendered in the parallel, Ps. liii. 2, " God looked down from heaven," &c. This is a different class of variation altogether. It points to a time early in Jewish history, when the "unspeakable name" Jehovah began to be regarded with such extreme reverence that there was the greatest reluctance to pronounce it, even in reading the Bible. So strong did this feeling become at one period, that it was publicly declared that, " Whosoever uttereth the Sacred Name shall have no part in the world to come." Therefore various expedients were devised. AVhen they met the word they read instead of it " The Name," or " God," or " Adonai." AVe shall hear more of this afterwards in the notes of the Afassoretes. Here is evidently a case where, in making copies of the Psalm for the Temple-singers, the word God was not merely read, but actually substituted in the manu- script for Jehovah ; and it is done, the reader will see, everywhere that it occurs throughout this Psalm. CU^arly Ps. xiv. is the original poem, and the other is a later copy of it. It is well for the render, however, whicli makes hiui only twenty-two. Similarity of letters might easily cause this discrepanc}", as the .lews, like ourselves, used letters to express numbers, and the ancitnt letters for twenty and forty might easily be mistaken one for the other. This may perhaps be the source of errt)r also in other very improbable numbers, such as the 50,070 men of the little village of Betlishemesli (i Sam. vi. 19), slain for irreverence toward the Ark of God, which, if it be an error, must belong to these Early Ag( s. since it is copied in the .Septuagint version of the follow- ing period. THE EARLY AGES. 59 to remember that this rare case of a copyist actually altering a word intentionally proceeds, not from care- lessness or controversial bias, but from the uttermost extreme of reverence, and therefore gives no grounds for suspicion cf inaccurate copying in general. Even this could only have occurred in early times. A later copyist would cut off his right hand rather than make even such a trifling alteration. VII. The Verdict. Space will not permit of our entering more fully here into this subject, or pointing out the passages in which a copyist's error may probably exist. ■^ The revisers' margin may be investigated for some ' ' various read- ings " which they mention with approval, especially in the historical books from Sauuiel to Chronicles. With others we shall have to deal in the latter part of this book. We are at present inquiring only as to the con- dition of the text in its earliest period. The evidence, it will be seen, is quite insufficient for anj^ positive decision on the matter ; but we are warranted at least in saying that there is reason to believe that all the copies of that period did not correspond minutely in every little word and letter. Besides the considera- ^ For example, that Saul was one year old when he began to reign (see p. 193) ; the mistake about the name Vashni among the sons of Samuel (i Chron. vi. 28 ; see spechnen, p. 202) ; the defect in the verse, " They pierced my hands and my feet " (Ps. xxii. 16), where the Hebrew manuscripts make no sense at all (see specimen, p. 204). 6o THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. tions already presented there is this also to be taken into account. Scholars are all agreed that some superficial flaws exist in the Hebrew Bible of to-day. If so, this early period must have had at least its full share in producing them, partly because some of them are repeated by the Septuagint version in the follow- ing period, and therefore must belong to an earlier date, partly because the continually increasing care in the guardianship of the text made their occurrence less probable after the days of Ezra. I ' CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. THE MEN OF THE (JREAT SYNAGOGUE. I. The Exiles' Return. The second period in the " Story of the J\rann- scripts " extends from the time of Ezra to that of our Lord, or more accurately perhaps to the destruction of Jerusalem, a.d. 70. It is introduced by the touchinj^ scene in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah. the thousands of re- turned exiles that September morning bowing in wor- ship in the '■' broad place that was before the Water Gate " in Jerusalem, and Ezra the scribe, from the pulpit of wood, reading to them out of his Hebrew manuscript the almost forgotten words of Moses. But the glory is departed of the ancient days ; the holy tongue sounds strangely in ears accustomed so long to the speech of their Chaldean masters — did this feeling help to cause that sobbing through the crowd ? — for we are told that the Scribes had to give the sense with an interpretation so that the people 62 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. . 1 ■ s might understand the reading. Tliis is an important fact in the history of the text. From this time forth the classic Hebrew of the Bible became almost exclu- sively the property of the educated. The Jews for- got their ancient language for the kindred Aramaic of business life, just as the Scotch Highlanders and the Irish to-day are forgetting their poetical mother- tongue for the more useful English. A few weeks afterwards there is another solemn gathering, " when the children of Israel being as- sembled with fasting and sackcloth and earth upon them, separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquity of their fathers." Who can read unmoved their pathetic pleading? -'Thou art a gracious and a merciful God. Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty and terrible God, let not all the trouble seem little before Thee that hath come upon us since the time of the kings of Assyria to this day. Howbeit Thou art just in all that is brought ui^on us, for Thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly." ^ And at last, at the close of their pleading, comes that simple, beautiful ceremony so expressive of their genuine repentance and resolve — what an inspiration for a powerful picture ! — the rough roll of skin produced before the people inscribed with a solemn covenant of service to Jehovah, the leaders standing forth in their order ; first the priests, then the Levites, then the ^ Nell. ix. 32 ; x. 27. THE MEN OF THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE. 63 chieftains of the tribes, (jiie by one signing it in Israel's name — Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, son of llachaliah ; Zede- kiah ; Seraiah ; Azariah ; Jeremiah ; Pashur ; and so on through the long roll. It is a scene worth dwelling upon. Fourscore aud four men solemnly- binding upon themselves and the ])eople for whom they signed ''to do justly and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God " — the Church of the Restoration unconsciously fitting itself for the hero- days of the Maccabees. The true glory of Israel was surely not past while such things were still possible in the land. The Legend of the Great Synagogue. That list of names, says Jewish tradition, is the lirst muster-roll of the " men of the Great Synagogue," the men chosen as God's instruments for selecting and revising and preserving for the world the books of the Hebrew Bible. The tradition at least ex- presses a perception of the fitness of such men for this lofty work. For it was as true then as it was in the days of the Wycliffe Bible in England, that he who meddleth in such studies "hath nade to live a clene life and be full devout in preiers that the Holy Spirit author of wisdom and cunnynge dresse him for his work and suffer him not to err." IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 2.5 ■M 1,2. us 1^ lllllio 1.8 1.4 III 1.6 Ta 7 > ^W' '> .-^ om. '/ J y^ Photographic Sdences Corporation 73 'IVZST MAIN STRSET VtfEBSTER.N.Y. 14S80 ^ ^ \ :\ \ ^ interpretation of the Scriptures. They invented thet vowel ])oints and accents to stereotype the correct reading. Thus slowly and gradually the Massorah ^ grew. It belongs not to any one age or any one set of scholars. It began probably with a few short technical notes to guard against copyists' blunders in places liable to error, and gradually grew during many ages into a commentary on the whole text, a great " critical apparatus " for the amending and preserving of the Old Testament Scriptures. Therefore, though we apply the term to the men of the period who completed and wrote the Massorah, the Massoretes, in truth, might be said to have existed ^ The reader must keep clearly in mind that the MaisMorah was not the text itself, but the mass of critical and other notes concurning thu text. .ilL \ \ ■I H if H it. 90 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. almost from the days of Ezra. " Indeed," says Elias Levita, " there were hundreds and thousands of Mas- soretes, and they continued, generation after generation, for very many years." Dr. Ginsburg, the highest living authority, puts the beginning of the Massorah about three centuries before Christ, and it was not completed for 1 300 years. What we have here designated as the " days of the Masso- retes," i.e., the period when the Massorah was com- pleted and written out, may be roughly set down at from 500 to 1000 A.D. II. Contents of the Massorah. A merely general notion of the contents of the Massorah is all that cftn be given here. It deals minutely with the books, sections, verses, words, letters, vowel points, accents, and such matters. It gives conjectures, or, where possible, definite correc- tions, of anything apparently wrong in the text. It indicates where anything was supposed to have been added or left out or altered, or whether certain words were written with or without the vowel letters (see p. 68). It puts particular marks on words about which there was anything in the least unusual. It records the "various readings." It counts up the verses, the words, even the letters of the separate books, and invents mnemonic signs by which to remember them i fi K i f ^513)^^ s c U r- /;: f; ( r- ?-^ n ^ r I V , ■ • - „ J . iJSr s V 4f. ^«Hlf'^ ■ ■■.^,'' i'-C* »-5 C C - < - o r.^ £ ^ THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 91 O V iZ -^ "? ± 5 ^: >^- i; :/. ~ i) r ^ ti .2 — y - C r:; - c ■- • r. I. easily. It tells how often the same word occurs at the beginning, middle, or end of a verse. It gives the middle verse, the middle word, the middle letter, of each book of the Law, &c., &c. But to continue a long enumeration of this kind will probably but confuse the reader. Clearness is more important to aim at than completeness. There- fore it will be best rather to try by means of a few examples in simple form to leave in the reader's mind a distinct, even if a very partial, notion of what the Massorah contains. III. Its Two Classes of Notes. At first the Massorah notes existed only in separate books and sheets, which were used in the public lectures of the Scribes. Afterwards, for convenience' sake, they were transferred to the margin of the Old Testament manuscripts. But this was very clumsily done. The remarks were not always placed on the same page with the verse to which they belonged. The writers had a fashion, too, of making them up into all sorts of fancy shapes, of men and fishes and flowers and birds, as shown in the opposite photograph. If there was too much matter for the figure, they did not hesitate to transfer the overplus to the end of the book ; if too little, they calmly inserted bits from other places to fill up the gap. Thus it became a 5 92 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. Herculean task to reduce the Massorali into anything like order. The notes, for the most part, might be brought under two separate heads referring to : — (l.) What IS in the text. An elaborate system of rules and annotations intended to secure the exact transmission of the text before them in the smallest particulars, to preserve from corruption every jot and. tittle of the Scriptures. (2.) What SHOULD BE in the text. Corrections of mistakes and guesses about doubtful readings, which, however, they did not venture to meddle with in the text itself, but only recorded in the margin of the manuscript. IV. What is In the Text. (i.) As the first illustration of the notes con- cerning WHAT IS IN THE TEXT, I take an extract from the " Massoreth - Hammassoreth " of Elias Levita, a mediasval writer on the Massorah, whom I have referred to already — " The Massoretes by their diligence have learned and marked that the 1 in ^nj (Lev. xi. 42) is the middle of all the letters of the Pentateuch ; that ' Moses diligently sought * (Lev. x. 1 6) is the middle of all the words ; that ' the breastplate ' verse (Lev. viii. 8) is the middle of all the verses. This they have done in I THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETLS. 93 all the sacred books. Moreover, they have counted the verses, words, and letters of each section in the Pentateuch, and made marks accordingly. Thus the section ' Bereshith ' (the first section in Genesis) has 146 verses, the sign is amaziah.'' He means that the Hebrew letters having regular numerical values like our Roman numerals, the Hebrew letters AMAZIAH, like the Roman letters CXLVI., denote 146, and thus make a mnemonic for the number of the verses. (2.) " They have also counted each separate letter in the Scriptures, and have noted that — " l>i (A) occurs 42,377 times. "2(B) ,. 35,218 „ &c., &c. IS in I "Indeed," continues Levita, "a beautiful poem was written long ago on this subject, beginning ' The Tabernacle, the place of my buildings,' " &c. Well, it is an ingenious poem anyhow, and a useful poem for its purpose of enabling one to remember the number of the letters. As to its beauty, there is no accounting for tastes. I fear, though, its claim can only be based on the philosophical principle that "the useful is the truly beautiful," on which principle we have an exquisitely beautiful poem in English, begin- ning— " Tliirty days hath September, April, June, and November," &c. , 94 THE STORY OF THE iMANUSCRIPTS. Here is the first stanza of this " beautiful poem " on the letter h) (A). I represent the Hebrew by English letters : — " AcHKL Mekon Benyanai, SHesham Halo Zkkei:nai." •' The Tabernacle is my court, Whither my elders do resort." "The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore " (Neh. vii. 66^. " For a sacrifice of peace offering, two oxen, Ave rams, five he goats, five lambs" (Numb. vii. 17). I Now for the explanation of this *' poem." In the above Hebrew words the " A." marks the letter dis- cussed, the other initial letters, M., B., SH., H., Z., represent numbers whose total value is 42,377, the number of A's in the Old Testament. To make assur- ance doubly sure, the two verses underneath are added as a further mnemonic : the number of the congi'e- gation in one verse (42,360), and the number of animals in the other (17), when . dded together, make the same number, 42,377. Thus every letLer in the alphabet is laboriously gone through, with the pious object of preventing the insertion or omission of a single letter in the deposit committed to them by God. I dare say these precautions were not always effectual. It would require a high faith in human nature to believe that every scribe took the trouble of counting and checking the separate letters in his manuscript. Yet it must have been in some degree L. .-.ourity against errors, and in any case it shows the THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 95 care with which the appointed record-keepers of God guarded their sacred charge. (3.) Again, they would put asterisks, or rather little circles, over certain words in a verse, calling attention to a footnote. If the word occurs only in that place the note says, " None other ; " if more than once, it announces, " three, four, six, &c., times," giving the places where it occurs, something after the style of Cruden's Concordance, only that the old Mas- soretes had not the convenience of numbered chapters and verses. These were usually words about which a copyist m'ght easily err; for example, under the phrase " The Spirit of God " (ELOiiiM) the note says " It occurs 8 times." In all other cases but these eight it is " The Spirit of The Lord " (Jehovah), and the note keeps the copyist from dropping into this easy mistake of writing the more common phrase. They write also such notes as these : — " There are two verses in the Torah (Law) beginning with M : eleven verses in which the first and last letter is N : there are forty verses in which Lo is read three times," &c. They explain that such a verb is connected with such a noun, such a word should be so construed, and so on. (4.) Here is a curious illustration of another class of notes. I give it to show the marvellous carefulness of these men, and how they considered no detail too minute or insignificant to be attended to in their sacred guardianship of the Word of God. 96 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. ' i In Joshua ix. i we read : " When all the kings that were on this side Jordan, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof." Here are six kings mentioned, and the conjunction " and " occurs only twice, before the second and before the sixth. What possible safe- guard can there be to preserve that insignificant little word in its proper position ? Would not a copyist, if not especially on his guard, almost inevitably get it into the wrong places ? See how the Massoretes guard against this danger. Underneath this verse about the kings they put, in a footnote, a little catch-word, "The gold fok THE KINGS, " and refer us to a certain section in the Book of Numbers. There we find the word Gold in Numb. xxxi. 22, which reads as follows: " Only the Gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead." Here again we have six nouns, and we find that the conjunction "and" is before the second and sixth. Thus we learn that these are the right positions for the conjunction in the verse from which we have been referred. These two verses are thus a check on each other — a check which, though it seem slight to the English reader, was effective enough for the Hebrew Scribes, with their intimate knowledge of and scrupulous care for every letter of the text. But whatever be the reader's estimate of its value, in any case it illustrates the laborious and accurate care- fulness of the Massoretes. THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 97 in What should be in the text. The above are examples of their care to preserve uncorrupt what is in the text. But sometimes they had reason to believe that the manuscripts before them had become corrupted already in some places, and this necessitated another set of marginal com- ments to indicate in their opinion what should he in the text, for their reverence for the sacred letters {i.v., the consonants) of the text itself was carried so far that they would not dare to meddle with them, even to correct an obvious mistake. The reader must learn the two Hebrew words continually used in this class of notes : — np = Keri = what must be read. 2*/1D = Kethibh = what is written. (i.) Suppose, now, the Massoretes, in making a new copy, found in the manuscript before them a word which they had reason to believe was incorrect. Their superstitious reverence for the text would not allow them to correct it boldly. What then did they do ? They wrote down in their new copy the consonants of this incorrect word just as they found them. Then they wrote in the margin the consonants of what they believed to be the correct word, and put its voivels under the consonants of the wrong word which they had just transcribed, with an asterisk calling attention to the margin. This incorrect word in the text then with these vowels could not be read without making G 1) i I 98 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. nonsense, so the reader had to turn to the consonants of the right word in the margin. It was as if we should print in our English Bible : — Bless the Lord, my soul, and , _ , ' '' * Read B N K T s. forget not all His c,MM,NDMiNTS.* i.e., " benefits " is the word that should be read instead of " commandments." The right word in the margin was called the " Keri " (what should be read). The wrong word in the text was the " Ketliibh " (that which is written). There is a good example in Ps. xvi. 10, where the text has "Thy holy ones," while the " Keri " correctly gives the singular in the margin, " Suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." The most frequent example of a '' Keri " is the unutterable name Jhvh, which, owing to the " Keri," we have learned to mispronounce as Jehovah. No one can tell now with any certainty what are its true vowels ; probably it should be read as Yahveh. With such awe was the word regarded that it was forbidden to be uttered by any except the high priest, and by him only once a year in the Holy of Holies.^ On all other occasions the word 1 One old legend tells that whenever the high priest pronounced the name it was heard as far as to Jericho, but all the hearers immediately forgot it. Later stories attribute the miracles of Jesus to His utter- ance of the Sacred Name, the true pronunciation of which He had learned in some mysterious way. But the most curious thing about this old superstition is the way in which its results remain to us still. In consequence of it the Septuagint version ; lys used the word Lord for Jhvh, and through the Septuagint the habit has crept not only into the works of the New Testament writers, who all used the Septuagint, but even into our English Old Testament of to-day, often very much spoiling the force and meaning in passages where Jehovah is contrasted with other gods. THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETJiS. 99 Adonai (Lord) was usually directed to be read instead, and to indicate this the vowels of A^UoN^l were put under the letters of the " most holy word," thus J^H„VaH. (2.) One class of the marginal " Keris " was, I should think, rather a danger than a protection to the text, though, at the same time, one could wish that some of them were retained to-day in our English Bibles for reading the Old Testament Lessons in church. They are called euphemistic " Keris." Where a coarse, inde- corous expression occurs in the text, the Scribes, while not daring to meddle with the expression itself, put in the margin words that wero^ more fitted for reading in public, and the ' ' Keri " directed that the reader should use them instead of the others. kd lot Ihe [en 3. Sometimes a word or phrase is in the text that shoidd he omitted — a usual case is where the copyist has carelessly repeated a word. The reader will pro- bably find examples often in his own letter-writing of such redundancy ; it is a very common slip of writers. In such a case we should just score out the word. The Massoretes dared not do this, so they left its con- sonants in the text, but called attention to the error by leaving it without vowels, and writing in the mar- gin, '' Ketliihh, not Keri^' i.e., "Written, but not to be read;"^ as, for example, Jer. li. 3 : "Against the bender let the archer bend his bow," where the word 1 The Massorah gives eight instances : Ruth iii. 12 ; 2 Sam. xiii. 33, XV. 21; 2 Kings V. 18; Jer. xxxviii. 16, xxxix. I2, li. 3; Ezek. xlviil. i6. If Hi I It m saH lOO THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. "bender" lias been repeated by a slip of Honie early copyist, or, for anght we know, of the original writer himself. This is how it appears in the Massoretic manuscripts : — Aa,^iNST TH^ KoNI)^,H Til JJNDK *" * Kethibh, not Keri L„T TII<3 ARCII^.U HjjND IIjS 1!„\V (wiitten ; not to be read). 4. The converse of this case occurs very frequently. The context clearly shows that one or more words have been omitted. The Massoretes, of course, would not supply the words, but leave a blank wherein they insert the vouw/s required by the missing word or words, and put the consonants of them in the margin with a note, " Keri, not Kethibh," i.e., " Should be read, though not written."^ Take, as an example. 2 Sam. viii. 3 : — H^ m;nt t„ R^c^v^ji HiS jyin^R AT THg RiVgU c\i • • • a • • • * PHKTS, Keri, not Kethibh (to be read, though not written). i.e., in the opinion of the Massoretes, the word gj,rHR,/rs (Euphrates) should be read after " river." It may be well to remark here that these notes, while showing the extreme care of the Massoretes, must not always be regarded as infallible. We have to use our judgment and the ancient versions in deciding. Our English Authorised Version follows sometimes the " Keri" (marginal correction), sometimes the "Kethibh" (what is written in text). The Revised Version seems usually to prefer keeping the " Kethibh " in the text 1 The Massorah gives ten instances, some of wliich are questioned in the Revised Version : Judges x. 13 ; Ruth ill. 5, 17 ; 2 Sam. viii. 3, xvi. 23, xviii. 20 ; 2 Kings xix. 31, 37 ; Jer. xxxi. 38, 1. 29. THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 101 and Icaviiij^ the '* Keri " in the margin, witli the not*', " Another reading ia," ^ iStc. This is one of tlio great advantages of t]u> !Massorotic reverence for the hotter of the text. We not only get their opinion in the margin as to the right reading, bnt we have preserved for us also in the text the! ohl reading, wliich tliey rightly or wrongly regarded as incorrect. If thev, with their defectivt' knowledj»'e of textual eriticism, had ventured to correct the text aa they thought best, they would probably have done na ranch harm as good, and the (jld, and in many cases true, readings would have been cutirely lost. VI. The Vowels and Accents. The invention of the vowel-points is another very irajDortant part of the work of the Massoretes. This subject has been already dealt with in an earlier chapter. It is scarcely necessjiry to add anything further here, except, perhaps, to emphasise the fact that the -Massoretic vowel-system did not iutroduci^ any change in the old traditional reading, but only fixed and stereotyped it. The Massoretes found certain vowel-sounds supplied in the reading of the consonant text. They merely invented signs to repri»sent these sounds, so that there should be no possibility after- wards of any variation in the reading, 'i'hcsc* vowel- ^ There are cases, however, such as Ps. c. 3 ; Iso. ix. 3, whoro tlie revisers have made a great improvement by substituting the '* Keri '* of the Massoretes for the " Kethibh," which has been retained in the Authorised Version (see specimen, p. 206). ISi 41 I ' >< I'! M^ 102 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. signs they regarded as a mere human unconsecrated thing, quite external to the lioly text itself, and only used for convenience' sake.^ They never admitted them into the sacred rolls of the Synagogue. It is, therefore, scarcely necessary to add that we are not bound to accept the JNIassoretic vowels as in- fallible. They represent the highest tradition as to the correct reading. They are gv^nerally the only pos- sible reading. But we must remember that the original authors of the Bible wrote only the consonants. There- fore, if in any particular place we are able to make sense by reading the vowels differently, it is quite possible that our reading may be right. See, for ex- ample, " Jacob's bed " and " Jacob's staff" in page 12. We owe to them also the Hebrew accents, those curious marks that may be noticed in our specimen (p. i), dotted about over the text. I despair of arousing my readers' enthusiasm about these accents, more technical marks, as they have grown to be to the English reader of Hebrew now, or, at most, signs for recording the true chanting tones of the Synagogue. Only the living voice — only, I think, the Jewish voice can convey any idea of this beautiful contrivance for recording the modulations and inflections of the speaker's tones. They almost placed upon the paper the spoken words. They marked the sense and logical connection. They represented pause, emphasis, emo- ^ The story in Chapter II. of the controversy about the vo\vel-point.s in Reformation times refers, of course, to a half-educated body of Jews six hundred years after tlJs period. THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 103 tion, whisper, tremulousness — everything that we im- perfectly try to denote by italics, and capitals, and dashes, and punctuation marks. Get a refined, educated Jew, an enthusiastic man, capable of flashing eyes and trembling excitement over his subject ; let him read for you a touching passage in the Prophets according to these accents by which the Massoretes tried to re- produce the original utterance, and you will — well at least you will probably be very much dissatisfied with the reading of the First Lesson in church the next Sunday. VII. Manuscript Copying. Their rules for copying Synagogue manuscripts will help to emphasise what has been said as to the pre- cautions against transcribers' errors. They must be transcribed from an ancient and approved manuscript solely with pure black ink made of soot, charcoal, and honey, upon the skin of a " clean " animal prepared expressly for the purpose by 0. Jew. The sheets or skins are to be fastened together with strings made from the sinews of a clean animal. The scribe must not write a single word from memory; he must attentively look upon each individual word in his exemplar, and orally pronounce it before writing it down. In writing any of the sacred names of God, he must solemnise his mind by devotion and reverence ; before writing any of them he must wash his pen ; before writing the Ineffable ^ 104 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. Name (Jhvh) he must wasli his whole body. The copy must be examined within thirteen clays. Some writers assert that the mistake of a single letter vitiates the entire codex ; others assert that it is per- mitted to correct three in any one sheet ; if more are found the copy is to be condemned as profane. Probably many of the Synagogue rolls in Gentile libraries to-day are only these discarded copies.^ VIII. The Last of the Massoretes. Foremost in the great work of the Massorah was the College of Tiberias, and away on the Euphrates the Babylon schools, now rivalling their ancient mother in repute. The two sets of scholars worked indepen- dently of each other, and did not always entirely agree in their result. The points of difference, how- ever, are of very minor importance, and the Western or Palestine school ultimately prevailed, though not to the entire exclusion of the other. I wish, reader, it were allowed me, in closing this chapter, to write for you the story of " The Last of the Massoretes ; " to tell of the Massorah completed ; of the academies broken up and rude Arab tribes holding revel in the halls ; of outcast Jewish scholars wander- ag through the land to seek precarious shelter in Germany and Spain. About the year when William the Conqueror was born Aaron ben-Asher w\is I^rin- > Set Scott Porter, Text Crit., p. 72, note. I! THE DAYS OF THE MASSORETES. 105 cipal of the (Jollem'e of Tiberias, and Jacob ben- Naphthali of the Babylon schools, and no man was enrolled after them in the number of the Massorah Scribes. Two famous llabbis were they, worthy to close the long illustrious list of the scholarly " men of the Massorah." Each of them exerted his powers to the utmost that his academy should produce an immaculate copy of the Scriptures, and in such reputa- tion were their manuscripts held that they became the standards for the Alassoretic text. But history affords no materials for the story. No h'storian of their day recognised their importance. No chronicler was touched by the romantic nobleness of the task, to picture the last days of the rival academies and the end of the great work thirteen centuries long. Silent and signless the jVfassoretes disappeared. Let us not forget what we owe to their labours. Let us not be unmindful of His good hand upon us who sent them to preserve for us the " Oracles of God." IX. *. iViysterious Document. liOAv that we have gone through the " Story of the Manuscripts, " we cannot help feeling that an important question still remains unsolved. What was the docu- ment from which the Massoretic manuscripts were copied ? No one can look over a number of these manuscripts, or even examine the printed text of an ordinary Hebrew Bible, noticing how every peculiarly io6 THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS. shaped letter, every correction, nay, even every little irregularity and error, is exactly reproduced in all of them alike, without feeling convinced that thcix must have heen some one document with these 2^ceidiaritics which was made the archetype or standard of the Mas- sorctic text. Where did this mysterious document come from ? Was it a manuscript made by the men of the Great Synagogue as the result of revision ? Was it one of the "Temple copies" referred to in p. 8 1 ? Was ' " " Codex of Ezra," such as tradi- tion tells of, or a dard selected in conclave by the Scribes ? Or had it another and more tragic story — some dread crisis in the history of the nation — in the struggle with Antiochus — in the massacre at Bethur ? Is there a lost picture somewhere in the ancient story — the hunted patriots hiding in the mountains ; the soiled and torn fragments of the Hebrew manuscripts gathered together from their places of concealment, of some of the books only two or three, of some per- haps but a single copy, stained with blood, shrivelled by fire, all that remains to them of their sacred records ? What wonder ii. it were so in tlic.ie awful days when the Bible so nearly perished altogether ! What won- der if from these few manuscripts came the " Standard Bible," the ancestor of this mysteriously uniform text ? These are all but guesses, reader. We can only guess. The dim past holds its secret still as to the orisrin of this " Standard Bible." i CHAPTER IX. • NOTES AND JOTTINGS. After the dispersion of the Jewish academies many Hebrew scholars fled to Europe, especially to Spain where the critical study of the Bible and tradition was still carried on The result of their work, however is not to us of much importance, since the text was lorn, before this time completely fixed. Their writings are chiefly of value on account of the manuscripts which they had before them, many of which have since been lost to the world. Amongst the famous names of this period" often met with m Commentaries on the Bible are those of Aben-Ezra, Rashi/ David Kimchi, and the great Maimonides, the Jewish Luther, of whom it is written "From Moses of Sinai to Moses Maimonides, no man like him lived." The first printed portion of the Hebrew Scripture was the Book of Psalms, published a.d. 1477. PBiHBi 1\ 1 08 NOTES AND JOTTINGS. The most important of all the earlier Hebrew Bibles was issued in the sixteenth century by Daniel Bom- berg of Antwerp, whose editor-in-chief was a very famous scholar, the Kabbi Jacob - ben - Chajim, an African Jew. It is most refreshing to watch this old Hebrew's enthusiasm over his work, and to note, even in so dry a docuuient as an " Introduction to the Rab- l)inical Bible," the little touches revealing his character and his moral fitness for so important a task. He is greatly delighted with liis employer's zeal. " Seignior Daniel Bomberg," he writes, ' ' did all in his power to send into all countries ir. order to search what may be found of the Massorah. He was not backward, nor did he draw back his right hand from producing gold out of his purse to defray the expenses of books and messengers. . . . Like a bear bereft of her young ones, he hastened to this work, for he loved the daughter of Jacob." A beautiful trait in his character is his simple modesty so indicative of a superior mind. When Bomberg proposed to him this great work, '' I told him," ho says, "that I did not know as much as he thought, in accordance with what we read at the end of chap. ii. of the Jerusalem Maccoth, ' A man who knows only one book when he is in a place where he is respected for knowing two is in duty bound to say, ' I know only one book.' " It is rather amusing to compare the modesty of ben Chajim with that of another great contemporary worker at the Massorah notes, Elias Levita, whose NOTES AND JOTTINGS. 109 name has already occurred in the preceding pages. "I have seen," he says, "that it is not good for this my book to be alone. I will therefore make it an helpmeet for it." And so he writes a poetical intro- duction in which he tells how people could not under- stand the Massoretic notes : — "Till the day it was said to me by my estimable friends, ' What doest thou here, Elias ? Tlirow li^c,'ht upon the Massorali. For the glory of God and Holy "Writ explain to us the Massnrah.' When the Prince heard me, then he kissed me with the kisses of his mouth. Saying, ' Art thou that my lord Elias whose books aie over all countries ? ' " After Bomberg's Bible comes a long series of edi- tions reaching down to the present century. Much time and money and labour were expended in collect- ing and comparing Hebrew manuscripts for the pre- paration of the Bibles, but the result was very dis- appointing. No discoveries of any importance were made ; nothing earlier than the ]\Iassoretic manuscripts could anywhere be found, and these were almost word for word the same. Would you care to be shown, reader, an ancient picture of the making of the " Standard Hebrew Bible," ^ whose origin is enveloped in mystery, whose manuscripts have been copied with such scrupulous care that even its little flaws have come down to 1 See Chap. VIII. p. 106. n no NOTES AND JOTTINGS. us untouched ? The picture rises irresistibly before mc^ from a page of my English Bible. There is the old copyist seated at his desk patiently transcribing letter by letter the wearisome list of names in I Cliron. viii., ix. — name after name — name after name — in monotonous succession. At last he stops and lays down his pen. He has just written the words, " These davelt at Jerusalem." This will do nicely for a catch-word to find his place again when he returns, and so repeating the words to him- self the old man retires to rest. I see him next day resuming his task. He arranges his parchments, he looks at the catch-word, the last he has written, and raising his eyes to the manuscript before him, they light on the words, hut at the to^i of the preceding pcif/e, " These davelt at Jerusalem," and calmly he goes on from that, in blissful uncon- sciousness that he is writing over again his yesterday's work. You can find that little picture for yourself, my reader, if you open your English Bible at i Chron. ix. 34. This is the verse where the old scribe stopped at " These dwelt at Jerusalem ; " and if you look up to the 28th verse of the preceding chapter, you will find the same words in the line that caught his eye when he returned, and you will see he has written over again after ix. 34 a good deal of the passage that follows viii. 28. Compared with the vast amount of labour expended NOTES AND JOTTINGS. Ill 1^11 re on the textual criticism of the New Testament, very little indeed has been done for the Old. Unfortunately, when the question of the perfect accuracy of the Old Testament text was first started in the Keformation days, it became at once, like that of the vowel-points, a party contest instead of an unbiassed search for the truth. The good fatliers of the Council of Trent, in- nocent of any knowledge of Hebrew themselves, and desirous to laud up the authority of the (Latin) Vul- gate, the Authorised Version of the Western Church of that day, threw doubts upon the correct transmission of the Hebrew manuscripts in the hands of the " unbe- lieving Jews." This, of course, was quite enough to rouse the Protestants to the defence of it, so that the accuracy of the Hebrew Old Testament soon became with them almost an article of faith, and, like many of the party shibboleths of to-day, was most violently in- sisted on by those who were least capable of forming a judgment about it. His " views were unsound," he was " tending to Popery," who openly expressed his doubts upon the question, and so the odium thcoloyicum, as so often before and since, muzzled the honest seeking for the truth, and the unbiassed scholarly study of the subject was thrown back for centuries. • ••••• Though much has been already done we have still great need of a good critical edition of the Old Testa- ment, embodying the chief results of modern scholar- ship. There is, of course, in the absence of all manu- scripts of earlier than Massoretic times, a great drawback 112 NOTES AND JOTTINGS. to tlie critical study of the Old Testament, as comparecl with the New. lint much more might be done with the material at hand, especially with the ancient ver- sions, which, if thoroughly investigated, are capable of throwing much light upon the Hebrew text. There is reason to hope that our own generation will not be entirely unfruitful in this direction. We are promised very soon Dr. Ginsburg's critical edition of the Masso- retic text ; the lUshop of Salisbury is busy with the Vulgate of the New Testament, which we trust will soon be followed by that of the Old. Swete's scholarly edition of the Septuagint is in course of completion, and students are already busying themselves with the great treasury of Syriac manuscripts stored up in the library of the liritish Museum and elsewhere. But many years must elapse before any important results are attained in the investigation of the Hebrew Scrip- tures. The recent revision of the Old Testament was undertaken at least half-a-century too soon. • • • • • • As to the right attitude to adopt with regard to the present Hebrew text, we may say that the best scholars receive it without hesitation as substantially accurate, at the same time leaving themselves open to accept any really well-authenticated corrections by means of the ancient versions. • • • • • • In speaking thus plainly about the probability of errors in the Scriptures, there is great danger that an exaggerated impression should be caused as to the NOTES AND JOTTINGS. •'3 extent of these errors. The reader should be reminded that the great majority are of the most trivial kind, misspelling or transposing of words, omitting or in- serting of insignificant particles, and such like. The New Testament variations are enormously more in number than those which probably will ever be dis- covered in the Old, and yet two of our greatest textual critics have asserted in a recent famous book^ that the New Testament variations of any importance, if all put together, would not exceed the one-thousandth part of the whole text. Some readers will perhaps be disturbed at finding that the Old Testament has not been transmitted to us absolutely word for word correct. Well, such is the case anyhow ; and whether we like it or no, there is no use in quarrelling with facts. We know with certainty that we have the substance of God's revelation exactly as the original writers had it ; that we cannot say the same of every letter and syllable is surely not of so very much account. And perhaps it may not be altogether an unmixed evil either. It may help men to broader and truer notions of what inspiration really means. It may teach that not the ignorant worship of the letter, but the honest learning and obeying of the spirit of His revelation is what God values, oince He has left the words of the Bible in some degree to run the same risks as the words of other books, while taking care that its substance should come down to us ^ Westcott and Hoit's Introduction to the Greek New Testament. II >\ 114 NOTES AND JOTTINGS. as originally given. It is suivly instructive to see our Lord and His apostles content to use a Bible (the Septuagint) wliicli, while giving faithfully the sub- stance of God's Word, was often very inrccnrate in minor details. We have a lunch more accurate Bible than they. But whatever our feeling about the matter, we should remember that we have it as God has thought Jit to let us have it. Had it been necessary to His pur- poses that the text should have been miraculously preserved from the slightest flaw, we need liave no doubt but that this would have been accomplished. I BooIR M. THE OTHER OLD DOCUMENTS, AND THKIR USE IN BIBLICAL CRITICISM. (I INTRODUCTION. Having now learned something of the history and present condition of the '* Old Hebrew Documents," we have next to examine some of the " Other Old Documents," i.e., the various ancient Bibles which are used by critics in the investigation of the Hebrew text. The reader will easily understand from the previous history the importance of these Bibles. All the old Hebrew manuscripts before A.D. 900 have vanished from the earth ; unless in the very improbable event of some future romantic discovery in tombs or buried ( ities, we shall never be able to examine one of them. But these ancient Bibles vvere translated from those old vanished manuscripts ages and ages ago. Therefore the interrogating of them is like going back a thousand years behind our existing manuscripts and asking the men of our Lord's day, and even of long before, " How did that vanished old Hebrew Bible of yours read this or that disputed passage ? " Unfortunately, the value of their evidence also is lessened, as might be expected, by the same slips and eiTors of copyists whose existence in the Hebrew Bible have sent us to seek their aid. In the following pages we shall deal with the more important of these ancient Bibles. -;1 DOCUMENT No. I. THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. I. The Holy Manuscript of Nablous. It had ofteu been noticed with some curiosity, especially at the Reformation times, in the disputes about the Hebrew Bible, that in the works of certain old fathers, Origen, and St. Jerome, and Eusebius the historian, and others, there were references to " the ancient Hebrew according to the Saiuaritans" as dis- tinguished from the " Hebrew according to the Jews," and notes made of certain discrepancies existing be- tween them. What could these references mean ? No one in Europe knew anything about a " Samaritan Hebrew." Was it merely an error of these ancient fathers, or did there somewhere exist a Hebrew Bible differing from that which had come down to us through the Jews ? . As time went on and nothing was discovered about it, it gradually began to be forgotten or relegated to the region of ancient fiction ; until one day, early in the seventeenth century, when Biblical students were startled by the announcement that a copy of this THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. 119 mysterious document had arrived in Europe, having been discovered by a traveller among the Samaritans of Damascus. It was a ve^y venerable-looking manuscript, written in the unfamiliar ancient Hebrew letters, and for that reason at first very difficult to read. Soon afterwards another copy was found in Egypt, but was captured by pirates, with the ship that was bringing it to Europe. Before 1630 Archbishop Ussher had obtained six others, and now there are altogether about sixteen Samaritan manuscripts in the European libraries. The most famous copy in existence is the Synagogue Roll at Nablous, where the Samaritans, now but a few hundred in number, still cling to the ancient seat of their race.^ It is guarded with the most sacred care, and never exhibited even to their own people, except on the Great Day of Atonement. A few Europeans have, however, managed to get sight of it, and from their accounts we learn that tho writing, wliich seems very old, is on the hair-side of skins twenf -five inches by fifteen — according to the Samaritan account, the skljs of rams offered in sacrifice. The manuscript is worn very thin, even into holes in many places, ami it is a good deal messed, as if with ink spilled over it , so that a large part is almost illegible. It is kept in a cylindrical silver case, ornamented with engravings of the Tabernacle and its furniture, and the whoi* is ^ Nablous, a corrtiption of Neapolis, i3 almost on the site of ancient Shechem. juHi 1 20 THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITANS. wrapped in a gorgeously embroidered cover of red satin and gold. The Samaritans assert that it is nearly as old as the days of Moses. They say — and one Russian traveller asserts that they are right — that an inscription runs through the middle of the text of the Ten Commandmen"' s : — I Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar son OF Aaron the priest — upon them be the grace OF Jehovah ! To His honour ha' 'e I written THIS HOLY Law at the entrance of the Tabernacle OF Testimony on Mount Gerizim, Beth El, in THE thirteenth YEAR OF THE TAKING POSSESSION OF THE LAND OF CaNAAN. PrAISE JeHOVAH ! The inscription, however, has been looked for since, but in vain. Without entering too minutely into the question, all that we need say here is, that if it is or ever was in the manuscript, it does not deserve the slightest credit. Nobody who knows anything of the subject would believe that this manuscript has been in existence three thousand years. II. "Decline and Fall" of the Samaritan Bible. Of course, these very ancient-looking manuscripts, when they first appeared, created u considerable sen- sation. Men talked of their use among scholars of Origen's days, of their strange ancient writing dating back beyond Ezra the Scribe, and with the usual tendency of human nature under such circumstances, many jumped at once to the conclusion that they had THK .SAM A HIT AN l((»l.l, AT .NAIil.OlS. {Hy Lliul iiermUsion of lid I'nU.iliiW /i.ri>l'iivli the Egyptians shall loathe to DRINK of the water OP THE RIVER. And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, &c. — ExoD. vii. 14-19. SAMARITAN. And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is haiJ- DENED, he REFUSETH TO LET THE PEOPLE GO. Get thek unto Pha- raoh IN the morning ; LO, HE GOETH UNTO THE WATER; AND THOU SHALT STAND BY THE RIVER'm BRINK AGAINST HK COME ; AND THK ROD WHICH WAS TURNED TO A SER- PENT SHALT THOU TAKK IN THINK HANI). And THOU shalt say unto HIM, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee, SAYING, Let my people GO, THAT THEY MAY SERVE ME IN THK WILDERNESS : AND, BEHOLD, HITHERTO THOU WOULDEST NOT HEAR. Thus saith the Lord, In this thou shalt know that I am the Lord : behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are IN THE RIVER, AND THEY SHALL BE TURNED INTO BLOOD. And the fish that is in THE KIVER SHALL DIE, AND THK RIVER SHALL STINK ; AND THE Egyptians SHALL LOATHETODRiNK of the water of the river. And Moses and Aaron went TO Pharaoh, and said unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent us to thee, saying. Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilder- ness : and, behold, hitherto THOU WOULDEST NOT HEAR. ThUS SAITH THE Lord, In this thou SHALT KNOW THAT I AM THE LoRD : BEHOLD, I WILL SMITE WITH THE ROD THAT IS IN MINE HAND UPON THE WATERS WHICH ARE IN THE RIVER, AND THEY SHALL BE TURNED INTO BLOOD. And THE FISH THAT IS IN THE RIVER SHALL DIE, AND THE RIVER SHALL STINK ; AND THK Egyptians SHALL loatheto drink OF THE water OF THE RIVER. And THE Lord spake onto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine HAND UPON the WATERS OF Egypt, &c. V ' I \ DOCUMENTS No. II. THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. Here we bring togetlier a group of documents not of sufficient importance to be separately treated. THE TALMUD. I I What is the Talmud? "We have already seen (Bk. i. p. 79) that from time immemorial there existed amongst the Jews certain oral traditions about the Scriptures and their inter- pretation ; that these, handed down through many generations, were at length, in the early centuries of Christianity, collected and systematised in the colleges of the Scribes into a book called the MiSHNA ; that in course of time a "Gemara," or Commentary, was written on this book ; and that the Mishna, together with its Ciemara, make up what is called the Talmud. We may add here that the writing down of the Mishna occurred about the second century a.d., and that of the Oemara about the fourth or fifth. ^ It is evident that 1 The Gemara, or Commentary of Jerusalem, dates about 370 a.d., and that of the Babylon schools about 500 a.d. According as the Jerusalem or Babylon Gemara was attached to the Mishna, so the whole was called the Jerusalem or Babvlon Talmud. 4 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 127 «uch a book as this must necessarily coutaiu a j^rrat. TPany quotations from Scripture, often involving minute reference to the exact words of the text, and therefore that it ought to be one of the most valuable aids in testing the accuracy of the exi;4ing manuscri])ts. Unfortunately, however, owing to the extreme re- verence of the Jews for the !Massoretic text, the succes- sive editors of the Talmud seem to have altered its f (notations to correspond with the Hebrew manuscripts before them, so that the most careful examinaUon of the existing Talmud copies have led to no discoveries of ranch importance. True, there are recorded about a thousand variations from the existing Bible, but very few of them are of any consequence. Therefore, it will be seen that the Talmud cannot be i»xpected t^o count for much in the aids to Bible criticism. This is all that is absolutely necessary to be said about the Talmud for the purpose of this present work, but it is impossible here to lay down the pen. Indeed, it would be scarcely justifiable to dismiss in a few pages a book that stands out so prominently in the history of Judaism — nay, I should rather say in the history of the world. Who has not heard of the "Tahnud," and formed some puzzled notion as to what the word means ? Continually it meets us in all classes of reading. In science, in literature, in theology, in law, in ethics, in metaphysics, in ancient fairy-lore, the old-world name arises to us again and again, making us wonder what the curious treatise can be that touches in so many points such varied subjects. I 128 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. , It is, therefore, worth while writing a little further about the Talmud. One is sorely tempted to wander off into whole chapters on its fascinating lore. So if we promise to reasonably restrain our vagrant im- pulses, the reader, we hope, will pardon a few pages more, even if not absolutely necessary to our '• Lesson in Biblical Criticism." 11. Convicting Opinions. Very varied arc the opinions d,bout the Talmud. Christian writers, with whom it has been too mich the custom to read non-Christian books with the object of refuting them, have given us many treatises branding it as the very curse of Judaism and of religion. They have dwelt upon our Lord's condemning its tr. ditions. They have collected from, it samples torn out of their context, silly and grotesq-ie Ljtories, Cv^nflicting state- ments, and specimens of the ignorant and narrow pre- j udices of the natior.. They have declaimed against its legendary colouring of Bible narratives — its profane and degrading representations of God, the Almighty and His angels taking part in fool.'sh discussions of the Rabbis. They have held up their hands in horror at indelicate allusions such as they could not dare to transfer to their pages. And all these charges can be fully proved against the Talmud. In its vast and tangled mass of ancient lore many such evil things as these can be found. Indeed, at times, the reader, wandering throu^-rh the THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 129 ])ages of nonsense that these wise sages wrote, will feel £*imost a sympathy witl« Jie belief of Carlyle, that " nine out of every ten men are foob, and he would not like to say too much about the tenth." But to dwell only on these faults would be to give a very false impression of this wonderful old book which has come down to us from almost the dawn of antiquity. It should be remembered that our Lord Himself, like all other Jewish boys, must have been, in His childhood, taught from the Talmud ; that many of our household words in theology have come to ug, through Him, from the Talmud teaching. Kedemption, Bap- tism, Grace, Salvation, Faith, Sou of Man, &c., are words of old Judaism, to which He only gave a higher meaning. His rebukes, too, were directed only against its faults, not against its whole substance. The Talmud itself speaks almost as strongly as He against the " plftgue of Pharisaism ;" the " dyed ones who do evil deeds like Zimri, and require a goodly reward like Phinehas ; " " who preach beautifully, but do not act beautifully." The Talmud points to the Scriptures as the source of all teaching. " Turn them, and turn them again," it says, for " everything is in them." Six hundred and thirteen injunctions, says the Talmud, was Moses directed to give to the people. David reduced them to eleven in the 15th Psalm : " He that walketh uprightly," &c. The prophet Micah reduced them to three : *' What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " (vi. 8). Amos 136 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. HI reduced them to one : " Seek ye Me and ye shall live " (v. 4). Therefore it is that the Jews indignantly chal- lenge the Cliristian accounts of this their greatest literary treasure next to the Bible. They point to its enforcing and explaining the Scriptures ; to its mighty influence in preserving their nationality ; to its wholesome directions about purity and cleanli- ness ; to its result in many a social excellence in the character of their nation. " Nothing," say they, " can absolve the Jews from the debt of gratitude whicli they owe to the Talmud, the book which in so great measure has helped to make them what they are." III. ' " Law and Legend." To understand these conflicting testimonies, it is important to keep in mind, what has been too often overlooked, that the Talmud consists of two elements, Law and Legend, Halachah and Hagadah, as they are called by the Jews. The former is an attempt to bring the Mosaic legislation into practical operation — that is, to bring under its great principles the little ordinary cases of everyday life. This is often done in a foolish and quibbling manner ; it often goes into indelicate de- tails in order to be thoroughly practical ; it often, too, must be charged with making void the Word of God THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 131 by its refinements of fanciful exposition. Yet no man who studies the history of the Jews can doubt, on the whole, its important influence for good upon the nation. The other or Legendary element consists of a series of anecdotes and sayings of the scribes, a kind of ornamental addition illustrating and enforcing the principles of the Law, or affectionately commemorating the great sages of the past. To us stolid children of the West it must seem often but a wild play of fancy and fable and humour not very much in keeping with the solemnity of its purpose ; but to the Jews, who know it best, it is a store of wise and tender and touching sayings ; its allegories and parables and fairy-lore, even where they seem to us the most foolish, being credited with a lofty and beautiful secret meaning. And even our duller vision can perceive that many of its stories and moral precepts are exqui- sitely beautiful, and cannot fail to be helpful to the Jewish children, who are taught them from their earliest days. rv. Talmud Sayings. In the following section I give some specimens from the Talmud. But it is necessary to guard the reader against forming from them too favourable an impression. He must remember that they are speci- mens of the Talmud at its best, and that often a con- siderable mass of rubbish has to be waded through to find them : — I."i2 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. I Jerusalem was destroyed because the instruction of the young was neglected. The world is saved by the breath of the school-children. Even fcr the rebuilding of the Temple, schools must not be interrupted. A sage, walking in the crowded market-place, suddenly en- countered the prophet Elijah. " Who out of that crowd shall be saved ?" he asked ; and Elijah pointed to a poor turnkey, " Because he was merciful to his prisoners ; " and next to two common workmen pleasantly talking as they passed. The sage rushed up to them and asked, " I pray you, what are your saving works 1 " But the puzzled workmen replied, "We are poor men who live by our trade. We know not of any good works in us. We try to be cheerful and good-natured. We talk to the sad, and cheer them to forget their grief. If we know of two who have quarrelled, we talk to them, and persuade them to be friends. This is our whole life." Life is a passing shadow, says the Scripture. Is it the shadow of a tower or of a tree 1 A shadow that prevails for a while ? Kay, it is the shadow of a bird in his flight ; away flies the bird, and there is neither bird nor shadow. • • • • • • • • He who has more learning than good works is like a tree with many branches but few roots, which the first wind throws on its face ; while he whose good works are greater than his knowledge is like a tree with many roots and few branches, which all the winds of heaven cannot uproot. Teach ihy tongue to say, " 1 do not know." Prayer is Israel's only weapon, a weapon inherited from its fathers and tried in a thousand battles. Moses made a serpent of brass and put it on a pole ; and it came to pass, if a serpent had bitten any man, Avhen he beheld that serpent of brass he lived. Dost think that a serpent killeth THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. ^33 or givetli life ? But as long as Israel are looking up to their Father in Heaven they will not die. We read that while, in the contest with Anialek, Moses lifted up his arms Israel prevailed. Did Moses' hands make war or break war? But this is to tell you that as long as Israel are looking upwards and humbling their hearts before the Father in Heaven they will prevail ; if not, they fall. " If your God hates idolatry," asked a heathen, " why does He not destroy it ? " And they answered him, " Behold, men worship the sun, the moon, the stars. AVould you have Him destroy tliis beautiful world for the sake of the foolish ? " If there is anything bad to say of you, say it yourself, • ••••••• Commit a sin twice and you will think it quite allowable. Think of three things, whence thou comest, whither thou goest, and to whom thou shalt have to give account, even the All Holy, praised be He ! Four shall not enter into Paradise : the scoffer, the liar, the hypocrite, and the slanderer. To slander is to murder. Love your wife like yourself ; honour her more than yourself. Whoever lives unmarried lives without joy, without comfort, without blessing. Descend a step in choosing a wife. If she be small, bend down to her and whisper in her ear. He who for- sakes the love of his youth, God's altar weeps for him. He who sees his wife die before him has, as it were, been present at the destruction of the sanctuary itself — the world grows dark arouml him. It is woman alone through which God's blessings are vouch- safed to a house. She teaches the children, speeds the hus- band to the place of worship, and welcomes him when he 134 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. returns ; she keeps the house godly and pure, and God's blessing rests on all these things. He who marries for money, his children shall be a curse to him. • ••••••• The house that does not open to the poor shall open to the jihysician. i The day is short and the work is heavy, but the labourers are idle, though the reward be great. It is not incumbent on thee to complete the work, but thou must not therefore cease from it. If thou hast worked much great shall be thy reward, for the Master who employed thee is faithful in His payment. But know that the true reward is not of this world. A man stands at the door of his patron's house. He dare not ask for the patron himself, but for his favourite slave or his son, who then goes in and tells the master inside, " This man, N. N., is standing at the gate ; shall he come in or not ? " Not so the Holy ; praised be He ! If misfortune come upon a man, let him not cry to Michael or to (iabriel, but unto Me let him cry, and I will answer him right speedily, as it is written, Every one who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. i! ' V. Bible Commentary. Here are a few specimens of its Bible commentary : — Cain was ploughing his fields. Abel, leading his flocks to pasture, crossed the ground which his brother was tilling. In a wrathful spirit, Cain approached Abel, saying, "Where- fore comest thou with thy Hocks to dwell in and to feed upon the hind which belongs to me ? " And Abel answered, " Wherefore eatest thou of the flesh of my sheep] Wherefore clothe thyself in garments fashioned from their wool ? Pay me for the flesh which thou hast eaten, for the THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 135 garments in which thou art clothed, for they are mine, even .as this ground is thine." Then said Cain to his brother, " Behold, thou art in my power. If I should see fit to slay thee now, to-day, who would avenge thy death?" '• God, who has placed us upon this earth," replied Abel. " He is the judge who rewardeth the pious man according to his deeds and the wicked according to his wickedness. Thou canst not slay me and hide from Him the action. He will surely punish thee; ay, even for the evil words which thou hast spoken to nie but » now. This answer increased Cain's wrathful feelings, and raising the implement of his labour which he was holding in his hand, he struck his brother suddenly therewith and killed him. And it came to pass after this rash action that Cain grieved and wept bitterly. Then arising, he dug a hole in the ground and buried tlierein his brother's body from the light of day. And alter this, the L.ord appeared to Cain and said to him — " Where is Abel thy brother, w ho was with thee ? " And Cain replied unto the Lord — " I know not. Am I my brother's keeper ? " Then said the Lord — '' What hast thou done ? Thy brother's blood cries to Me from the ground." 'I Abrani, when c^uiie a child, beholding the brilliant splendour of the noonday sun and the reflected glory which it cast upon all objects around, he said, " Surely this brilliant light must be a god ; to him will I render worship." And he worshipped the sun and prayed to it. But as the day lengthened the sun's bright- ness faded, the radiance which it cast upon the earth was lost in t he lowering clouds of night, and as the twilight deepened the youth ceased his supplication, saying, " No, this cannot be a god. "Where then can 1 find the Creator, He who made the heavens and the earth ? " He looked towards the west, the south, the north, and to the east. The sun disappeared from his view ; nature became enveloped in the pall of a past day. Then the moon arose, and when Abram saw it shining in the heavens 136 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. b1 ; I surrounded by its myriads of stars, he said, "Perhaps these are the gods who have created all things," and he uttered prayers to them. But when the morning dawned and the stars paled, and the moon faded into silvery whiteness and was lost in the returning glory of the sun, Abrani knew God, and said, " There is a higher power, a Supreme Being, and these luminaries are but His servants, the work of His hands." From that day, even until the day of his death, Abram knew the Lord, and walked in all His ways. And Abram sought his father when he was sur- rounded by his officers, and he spoke to him, saying — "Father tell me, I pray, where I may find the God who created the heavens and the earth, thee, and me, and all the people ill the world." And Terah answered, "My son, the creator of all things is here with us in the house." Then said Abram, " Show him to me, my father." And Terah led Abram into an inner apartment, and pointing to the twelve large idols and the many smaller ones around, he said, " These are the gods who created the heavens and the earth, thee, me, and all the people of the workl." Abram then sought his mother, saying, " My mother, behold, my father has shown to me the gods who created the earth and all that it contains ; therefore prepare for me, I pray thee, a kid for a sacrifice, that the gods of my father may partake of the same and receive it favourably." Abram's mother did as her son had requested her, and Abraiu placed the food which she prepared before the idols, but none stretched forth a hand to eat. Then Abram jested, and said, "Perchance 'tis not exactly to their tastes, or mayhap the qiiantity appears stinted. I will prepare a larger offering, and strive to make it still more savoury." Next day Abram requested his mother to prepare two kids, and with her greatest skill, and placing them before the idols, he watched, with the same result as on the previous day. Then Abram exclaimed, " Woe to my father and to this evil generation ; woe to those who incline their hearts to vanity and worship senseless images without the power to smell or eat, to THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 137 see or hear. Mouths they have, but sounds they cannot utter ; eyes they have, but lack all power to see ; they have ears that cannot hear, hands that cannot move, and feet that cannot walk. Senseless they are as the men who wrought them ; senseless all who trust in them and bow before them." And seizing an iron implement, he destroyed and broke with it all the images save one, into the liands of which he placed the iron which he had used. The noise of this proceeding reached the ears of Terah, who hurried to the apartment, where he found the broken idols and the food which Abram had placed before them. In wrath and indignation he cried out uuto his son, saying, " What is this that thou hast done unto my gods ? " And Abram answered, "I brought them savoury food, and behold, they all grasped for it with eagerness at the same time, all save the largest one, who, annoyed and displeased with their greed, seized that iron which lie holds and destroyed them." " False are thy words," answered Terah in anger. " Had these images the breath of life, that they should move and act as thou hast said ] Did I not fashion them with my own hands 1 How, then, could the larger destroy the smaller ones ? " " Then why serve senseless, powerless gods ? " replied Abram ; " gods who can neither help thee in thy need nor hear thy sup- plications ? " VI. The Legend of Sandalphon. Some of our readers will remember Longfellow's exquisite presentation of the ancient Talmud legend : — SANDALPHON. " Have you heard in the Talmud of old, In the legends the Rabbins have told. Of the limitless realms of the air, — Have you read it, — the marvellous story Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer ? i I I i 138 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. I low erect at the outermost gates Of the City Ct-lestial he waits, With his leut on the ladder of light, That, crowded witli angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen as he slumbered Alone in the desert by night ? The Angels of Wind and of Fire Chant only one liymn and expire With tlie song's irresistible stress ; Expire in their rapture and wonder, As harp-strings are broken asunder By music they throb to express I But serene in the rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of tho song, With eyes unimpassiono> .nd slow, Among the dead angels, the deathless Sandalphon stands listening breathless To sounds that ascend from below ; — From the spirits on earth that adore ; From the souls that entreat and implore In the fervour and passion of prayer ; From the hearts that are broken with losses, And weary from dragging the crosses Too heavy for mortals to bear. And he gathers the prayers as he stands, And they change into flowers in his hands. Into garlands of purple and red ; And beneath the great arch of the portal, Through the streets of the City Immortal, Is wafted the fragrance they shed. It is but a legend, I know — A fable, a phantom, a show Of the ancient Eabbinical lore ; THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. Yet the old mediceval tradition, Tlie beautirul, strange superstition, But haunts me and liolds me the more. When 1 look from my window at ni<,dil, And tlie welkin above is all white. All throbbing and panting with stars, Among them majestic is standing Sandalphou the angel, expanding His pinions in nebulous bars. And the legend, I feel, is a part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart ; The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eilen, To quiet its fever and pain." ' 139 VII. An Ancient " Rip Van Winkle. " The following illustration from the Babylonian Talmud {Taanith, fol. 23 « and h) will show (i) how Bible quotations occur which may be used for textual criticism; (2) the Rabbis' fanciful method of Bible ^ Longfellow seem 8 to Have been a good deal attracted by the Talmud. There are few more beautiful things in his works than the Legend of the Rabbi ben Levi, who sprang over the walls of Heaven with the sword of the Angel of Death in his hand, and thus obtained for man the boon that the dread Angel must " walk on earth unseen for ever- more." The reader may remember in the " Golden Legend " the scene of the Rabbi and the school-children : — " Come hither, Judas Iscariot, Say if thy lesson thou hast got From the Rabbinical Book or not ? '' and how, after Judas has glibly answered in the great Talmud mys- teries, the old pedagogue proceeds to call up " little Jesus, the car- penter's son." 140 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. interpretation; and, perliaps, (3) the origin of the favourite fairy-tale, " The Sleeping Beauty," who slept for seventy years, and of Washington Irving's famous story of " Hip Van Winkle : " — *•' Clioiii lia-M.ia,!4ol wtvs till his life unable to understaml the Biblical piissnge, ' When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream ' Q\ cxxvi. i). ' Can seventy years be regarded as a dream / How is it possible,' he asked, ' for a man to remain for seventy years asleep ? * One day, whilst on a joixrney, he saw a man planting a carob-tree, and asked him how long a period he expected would elapse before the tree became fruitful. ' Seventy years,' was the reply. ' Do you then expect to live seventy years and to eat of the fruit ? ' * When I entered the world,' was the answer, ' I found carob- trees in abundance. Even as my fathers planted for me, in like manner shall I also plant for those that are to come after me.' " Choni sat down to his meal, and a deep sleep fell upon him, and he slumbered. The rock closed up around him, and he was hidden from the sight of men. And thus he lay for seventy years. When he awoke and rose to his feet, lo! he beheld a man eating of the fruit of the very carob-tree that he had seen planted. Choni asked, ' Dost thou know who it was that planted this tree?' 'My grandfather.' Then Choni knew that he had slept on for seventy years. He went to his house and asked where the son of Choni ha-Maagol was. * His son,' they told him, ' is dead. His grandson you can see if you will.' ' I am Choni ha-Maagol!' he exclaimed; but no one believed him. " He thence turned his steps to the House of Learning, and he heard the Rabbis saying, * We have resolved this difficulty as we used to do when Choni ha-Maagol was alive ; ' for in times past, when Choni went to the meeting, he was able to expound every subject under discussion. * I am Choni ha- Maagol ! ' he cried for the second time. But again none would believe him, neither did they treat him with honour. Broken- hearted, he left the haunts of men, and prayed for death, and his prayer was answered. ' This,' says Ravah, * is the meaning of the saying : To the friendless man Death coraeth as a blessing.' " THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUSfS. 141 Vlll. "The House that Jack Built." It may seem strange to bo lookin holy books of the Jews for the origin of fairy-tales ; but what would you say, my reader, if you found in them the source of '* The House that Jack Built ; " and. moreover, if you were told that this queer old nursery rhyme is but au adaptation of a solemn Passover hymn of ancient days, by means of which the Jewish child nni h^arned in parable the history of their nation ? Tiio ])oem is found in the Seder Hagadah (Passover Service-l^ook), fol. 23, 183 1. It is translated from the Chnldee. I take the interpretation from the small edition pub- lished by Vallentyne, Bedford Square, London : — I. A kid, a kid, my fatlKV bouj^ht For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. icr, and [fticulty for in lable to \m ha- would {roken- md his ling of ssing. J » Tiien came tliQ cat, and ato the liid, That mv father bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. Then came the dog, and bit the cat, That ate the kid. That my father bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. I *-' i \ 142 THE TALMUD AND THE TAKGUMS. Then came the staff, and beat the dog, Tliat bit the cat, That ate the kid, That my lather bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. 5- Tlien came the fire, and burned the staff, That beat the dog, Tliat bit the cat. That ate the kid, That my father bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. Then came the water, and quenched the fire, That burned the staff, 'I'hat beat the dog, That bit the cat. That ate the kid. That mv fiither bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. Then came the ox, and drank the water. That quenched the fire, Tliat burned the staff", That beat the dog. That bit the cat. That ate the kid, That my father bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 143 8. Then came the butcher, That drank the water, That quenched the hre, That burned the s.aff, That beat the dog, That bit the cat, That ate the kid. That my father bought For two pieces of men '/ and slew the ox, A kic', a kid. Then came the Angel of Death, and killed the butcher, That slew the ox, Tliat drank tlie water. That quenched the fire, That burned the staff, That beat the dog, That bit the cat. That ate the kid. That my fatlier bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid. 10. Then came the Holy One, blessed be He ! And killed the Angel of Death, That killed the butcher, That slew the ox, That drank the water, That quenched the fire, That burned the staff. That beat the dog, That bit the cat. That ate the kid. That my father bought For two pieces of money : A kid, a kid.' ^ It would seem as if from this anjestry came nut only " The House ' mm ..ii^ni-it^Min.. ,if.aL>.^,m 144 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. This is the interpretation : — The kid, a clean animal, refers to Israel, " the one peculiar people upon earth," which God purchaser! (Exod. XV. 16) for Himself by means of the two pre- cious tables of the Law. The mt refers to Babylon. " Devoured the kid " is descriptive of the Babylonian captivity, v/hicli swal- lowed up Jewish nationality, a.m. 3338. The dog means Persia, by whose power Babylon was overthrown. The sfaf is Greece, which put an end to the Persian domination. The Jive refers to Rome. The water refers to the Turks, descendants of Ishmael, who wrested the Holy Land from the power of Rome. The ox means Edom (the European nations), who will in the latter days rescue the H0I3' Land from the possession of Ishmael. (See Abarbanel on Ezek. xxxix.) The butcher refers to the fearful war which will then succeed, when the confederated armies of Gog and Magog, l^ersia, Gush, and Pul will come up " like the tempest " to drive the sons of Edom from Palestine (Ezek. xxxviii., xxxix.). The Angel of Death is a great pestilence, in which all the foes of Israel shall perish. that Jack Built," but also that other ((ueer doggerel of the old woman and the kid, " Butcher, butcher, kill Ox, Ox will not drink Water, Water will not quench Fire, Fire will not burn Stick, Stick will not beat Kid, and I cannot get home till midnight." THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. 145 The last verse describes the establishment of Ood's kingdom on earth, when Israel shall be restored under Messiah, the son of David. will Gog up from *4iicli Ihe oia drink , Stick THE TAIUJUMS. The Talmud has tempted us so far beyond our limits that very little space is left for dealing with the Targums, the Ohaldee paraphrases of Scripture in use for the teaching of the people. The reader will remember the scene at p. 6 1, where Ezra read to the returned exiles from his manuscript of the Law, and the Scribes had to " give the sense and cause them to understand the reading." This is the first instance we have of a Targum or paraphrase. It afterwards became a regular custom in the synagogue, for the sake of the common people who had lost all know- ledge of the holy tongue, that, when the words of the Law were read, an interpreter should translate into vernacular Aramaic, and that he should expand his translation into a free paraphrase of the meaning, that all the people might easily understand. This inter- preter, or " meturgeman " (our English word " drago- man," which occurs so frequently in stories of modern Eastern travel), was bound by certain rules : he must wait till the reader had finished his verso or pas- sage ; neither reader nor meturgeman is to raise his voice one above the other ; the meturgeman must not lean against a pillar or beam, but stand erect with fear and reverence ; he must never use a written K I!; fl 146 THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS, U II i " Targum," but must deliver his interpretation " ex- tempore," lest it might seem that he was reading out of the Law itself, and thus the Scriptures be held accountable for his teaching. In course of time, however, the same causes which led to the writing of the Talmud led also to the per- mission that Targuras might be written, and thus these paraphrases have come down to us to help in testing the accuracy of the text. Their value for this purpose, however, is but small, not only on account of the loose and fanciful nature of their comments, but also because the oldest dates no farther back than the early Christian centuries, when the present Massoretic text was already pretty well established. Their freedom in dealing with the Scrip- tures makes it difficult to tell what were the exact words of the text which was being interpreted, but it is clear that the sacred manuscripts before them must have corresponded verj'- closely with those in our hands to-day. The Targum of Onkelos on the Penta- teuch is the most valuable, owing to its keeping so literally to its text. There are, besides, the Targum of Jonathan, the Jerusalem Targum, and others, but it is not necessary to enter more fully into details. Perhaps the following little specimen may interest the reader, and give him a clearer idea of the use of the Targums for the purpose of textual criticism : — THE TALMUD AND THE TARGUMS. '47 but our inta- ke so rum but bails, berest BIBLE. Gen. m. 22. And thk Louu God said, Behold, the man is become as one op us, to know good and evil : and now, lest he put i'okth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for liVElt. TARGUM OF ONKELOS. And the Lord God SAID, Be- hold, Adam is the only one in the wo .LD KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL : PERCHANCE NOW HE MIGHT STRETCH FORTH HIS HAND, AND TAKE ALSO FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, AND EAT, AND LIVE FOR EVEH- JIORE. TARGUM OF JONATHAN. And THE Lord God said TO THE ANGELS THAT WERE MINISTERING BEFORE HlM, Lo, THERE IS Adam alone on the EARTH, AS I AM ALONE IN THE HrGHEST HEAVEN, AND THERE WILL SPRING FROM HIM THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO DISTIN- GUISH BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL. If HE HAD KEPT THE COMMAND.MENT THAT I COM- MANDED HE WOULD HAVE BEEN LIVING AND LASTING, LIKE THE TREE OF LIFE, FOR EVERMORE. NoW, SINCE HE HAS NOT KEPT WHAT I COM- MANDED, WE DECREE AGAINST HIM, AND EXPEL HIM FROM THE Garukn of Eden, be- fore HE MAY STRETCH OUT HIS HAND AND TAKE FROM THE FRUITS OF THE TREE OF LIFE, FOR IF HE ATE THERE- FROM HE WOULD LIVE AND REMAIN FOR EVER, M i I t|i use "— ■"tTn-IBBM DOCUMENT No. III. THE BIBLE OF "THE SEVENTY. I. The Apostles' Bible. We have now to tell of a very wonderful book, the most imjDortant as well as the most famous version of the Bible that the world has ever seen. It was the first translation of Holy Scripture in existence. It, and not the original Hebrew, was the Bible chiefly used by our Lord, the Bible used by the Apostles ^ and Evangelists, the Bible used by Jews and Gentiles alike in the early days of Christianity. It is the source of most of the ancient versions of the Old 'l^estament. It supplies the chief theological terms of the New. It is to-day in the Eastern Church the standard, the sacred text, fully installed in the place of the original Hebrew. This rival of the Hebrew Bible text was llic cele- brated (xreek version of the Old Testament known as " The Skptuagint,"' or Bible of the Seventy, which in tli(^ two centuries before Christ was the recognised ' Out of thirty-seven quutatioiis inadt; by our Lord, thirty-thrtt- aj,n()e almost vf rbatim with this version. " What saith the Scripture ? " .sayrt St. I'aul, and inin.ediately he proceeds to (juotc the Septuagint. ANCIENT COPIES OF THE SEPTUAGINT. VOCTtUMAM i^Ti Kl T lU KIM© Camimci^h NOrKGNKp roYCi<.\ioi MOM .>f^>L«, ■.■it. «« ■ No. 1. A tinlf-lmrnt fr;iv,'Uiuiit of tlie Codux ( ic'iK;sulu SuptiiMuint .Mauiisuript alxnit 1400 yours old. No. 2. — Kacsiiuilo of its writiiiL;', full sizo. No. 6. — lk\niiinini;- of the Si»tli l'~aliii, froii of Su]itnauiiit in tin' Hriti-ii .Mit-taiii. I>iij)ynis inamisoriijt (Vhi>iiiiji''i}^fv'j^ hi) /, iii'l p' rmi.isinii III /'ro/i .«()/' ]i'i Hf »-i)i)(l , :).(l' ut tliu Oul liiMi tliat li:nl I'CTi: miiil't ■! oil'. ) .'*' ■■^'l''^''"'?P'm!l: ■ *ifc. &' /IT '■ ' y#M ,J«'i I *; 3 *0 jf, io . .., 12 ? i • J -t: r * i 10^ <>***. "^ ,-! Wli t. ^r .1* ^,f^ J* /'/. ■,,,/,i7, ■.-,./..--' '■,"„. //■■ /i.i'./.'.' r,i;,-n-f:i" /'"''■"?«>•)? ILAJi.^ jocn joOT ocn jj . on;^)^ ^.j^uctui t. |J) . j»OnQJ . ^ iV^x »cnjL>D» .• )»;-*» )?onQj ;.-A„^joq[i OTN>rN . <3\^Ji p |vi\no . )6o^-s ^^ja^Q^(7i:a;>9 r^M • ^'^ocn-i )(ti_SS9 . Ilca^jj Ulrs^ ^ yo . |.:b» ^ oisj ,-^n^) . Oj^L) JCTi:^ ^i U) )l^ Ul^^ ^ iJo ^uo . ^£s r^^ '°^ li-^-? J^^-^^o 7V> /('I'r /"'f'i^c l'37 ) THE SYRIAC BIBLE. 167 tongue, of the fulfilment of our Lord's promise after His Ascension, and the proclamation to Syria of the Christian faith. For many centuries it was believed that Edessa had a charmed existence, being imper- vious to all assaults of besiegers through its possession of this divine epistle. IV. Biblical Criticism and the Syrjac Bible. At any rate, leaving these old traditions altogether out of account, there is, as we have seen, clear proof of the existence of this Syriac version soon after the year 150. It is, therefore, the earliest of all Chris- tian versions. St. Ephraem teaches us by the words and phrases quoted in his commentary that the Syriac text in our hands to-day is substantially the same as that which he had before him. We find the very same words in our existing Syriac manuscripts. And we have further evidence of this from the fact that soon after his day the Syrian Church split into three hostile sects, hating each other as heartily as did the Jews and Samaritans, but all three nevertheless using to this day the same version of the Scriptures. This indicates clearly that the present Syriac Bible must have been in use before the schisms in the Church, since we cannot believe that after it any one of the three hostile parties would have accepted its Bible from another. 1 68 THE SYRIAC BIBLE. The great value of this Syriac version consists in the fact that it is a translation direct from the Hebrew, many of the other early versions being second hand, made from the Septuagint translation. And its value is increased owing to its excellence. It comes nearest to our ideal of what a version ought to be. It re- produces its original faithfully, and as far as possible literally, seldom or never relaxing into free paraphrase. Of course, the Hebrew manuscripts underlying it are many centuries earlier than Massoretic days ; many centuries earlier, it may be, even than the days of our Lord.^ It has several small variations from the existing Hebrew Bible, sometimes evidently arising from confusion of the " similar letters" or from read- ing the vowels differently from the Massoretes, but in some cases exhibiting quite different and at times apparently better readings than those of the Masso- retic text. Its chief defect for purposes of criticism is due to traces of the influence of the Septuagint upon it. It was almost inevitable that this should be so. The Septuagint was the People's Bible, the Bible used by our Lord and His Apostles, and circulated all over the Christian Church. It would, therefore, be very likely in process of time to tinge more or less all the Eastern versions of the Old Testament. ^ Christians have sometimes unfairly suspected that the Jews, in their opposition to Christianity, may have tampered with the text of Messianic prophecies. Therefore the importance of the Syriac Bible is increased by the fact that it was made from a Hebrew Bible which existed before any disputes between Jews and Christians. THE SYRIAC BIBLE. 169 The Syriac, like all the other ancient Bibles, still needs a great deal of revision before it can become a satisfactory instrument in the work of Biblical criticism. But there is ample store of material for the purpose. The Vatican and other great Cor.tinental libraries possess several important co^^ies ; and nearer hand, in the galleries of the British Museum is a richer collec- tion than any, including the famous library treasures of the Monastery of St. ^^lary, Mother of God, from the Nitrian deserts in Egypt. So there is only want- ing — and they are already coming forward — a band of earnest scholars to work at these old manuscripts, and give to the world a Syriac Bible worthy of its ancient history. DOCUMENT No. VI. THE ''VULGATE'' OF ST. JEROME. I. The Monk of Bethlehem. Towards the end of the fourth century so many variations had crept into the Old Latin Bibles that the need of some kind of revision began to be very keenly felt by every one who had the opportunity of comparing two of them together. There were almost as many different " editions," it was said, " as there were copies." Just at this crisis, when the leaders of the Latin- speaking Churches were casting about for some one to help them, there returned to Rome from his Beth- lehem monastery one of the greatest Biblical scholars of his day, Eusebius Hieronyraus, better known to us as St. Jerome, and his high reputation pointed him out at once as the very man for this important work. Jerome was not very willing at first to undertake it. It is a thankless task, he said, and will only arouse bitter prejudice amongst those " who think that igno- rance and holiness are one and the same." However, he was persuaded to attempt it, amid much advice to be very tender of the prejudices of the " weak ">' iiAl' ni' AN "(»|J» LATIN" M \\r>i iiil'T, iili: vkinihn WIIOSi; MISTAKi;-. I.I.D Tci mi: ,\|\KIM, hi ^t, .l|.|;ciMI , ^ n.'i \Ti. th< I.t'jrcrr, (,'■ Tri.ilt,' Volh,,.:^ li,'i,l,,i. To fill'' i'" at the end be lengthened to 1, it becomes the Hebrew verb k^aru (HMD), "they pierced." Therefore, of course, there can be no doubt that this is the right reading, and SPECIMENS OF CRITICAL WORK. 205 that a mistake has arisen owing to cc^ fusion of two similar letters. However, to make assurance doubly sure the Ancient Versions were consulted. The Septuagint reads, " They pierced ; " the Syriac and the Vulgate read the same ; and the other versions all practically confirm it, though some of them read a slightly different word. This being one of the prominent Messianic texts, the charge of wilfully corrupting it was brough'; against the Jews, and largely believed, too, in those days, when anything evil was but too readily believed of them. But the charge is utterly unfounded. Though they kept this form of the word in the text, they always read it '' they pierced," and it would seem that their reason for not correcting it even in the margin was because they held that the form k^ari w^as gramma- tically consistent with the correct reading. The woid occurs only cnce more in the Bible, Isa. xxxviii. 13, " Like a lion, so icill He break all my hones," and there is an interesting note in the Massorah stating that it occurs only in these two places, and that it has a dif- ferent signification in each, thus clearly showing that in this verse of the Psalms they did not read it " like a lion." The fact, too, that all the versions read it as a verb, even those of Aquila and Symmachus, who were so deeply imbued with the teaching of the Pales- tine Jews, points to the same conclusion. 206 SPECIMENS OF CRITICAL WORK. XIV. " Authorised " Reading. IsA. ix. 3 : Thou hast multi- plied the nation, and not increased the joy ; they joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, fee. Revisers' Reading. Thou hast multiplied the nation ; Thou hast increased to it the joy ; ^ they joy before Thee, &c. The new reading is so much more in keeping with tlie whole jubilant tone of this Lesson for Christmas Day, that it will commend itself to many who know nothing at all about the reasons for changing it. The " not increased their joy " always sounded so like a discord in the Christmas music. Yet, when we examine the Hebrew manuscripts, we find that all, except about ten or eleven, contain the objectionable reading. What right, then, had the revisers to change it ? There are two little Hebrew words of similar sound, rather like each other, too, in appearance, but very different in meaning. They are — >^^ = Lo = not, i^ = l'o = to it ; and the question is which of these ought to be in the text. If the first be right, we must read, "not increased the joy ; " if the other, " increased to it the joy." Now, though the first is in the text of the manu- ' Freely translated, " Thou hast increased their joy," Revised Version. SPECIMENS OF CRITICAL WORK. 207 scripts, there is an asterisk placed over it by the Massoretic scribes, indicating what seemed to them an error, and directing us to a footnote, which says, " Keri l'o," that is, " l'o should be read." True, we have sometimes to reject these Massoretic corrections as erroneous ; but here the context seems so obviously to require this reading, that the revisers felt themselves compelled to accept it, more especially when, on ex- amining the Targum and the Syriac and other ancient versions, they found them, for the most part, in agree- ment with it. In Ps. c. 3 is a similar correction, and on the same grounds, '-It is He that hath made us, and NOT we ourselves," reads in the Kevised Version, " It is He that hath made us, and we are his." Here, however, the old reading seems just as likely to be right as the new one. CHAPTER III. ! A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. I WANT here to illustrate very briefly a further use of the " Other Old Documents " in producing a rorre'ct Bible. Where a word occurs only once or twice in the Hebrew Bible, or where, from any other cause, its meaning is doubtful, these Old Versions are very use- ful in settling its correct translation. True, we cannot always entirely depend on them. One of them will sometimes contradict another. But it is evident that it must be a considerable help in deciding the meaning if we know how men two thousand years ago under- stood the word. Here are a few specimens and illus- trations : — I. " Authorised " Reading. Gev. xii. 6: Abram passed through the land . . . unto the plain of Moreh. Revisers' Reading. Unto the oak of Moreh. The meaning of the Hebrew word is doubtful. St. Jerome had to translate it in making his Vulgate 1 5 00 years ago, and he rendered it the plain, and so do also the chief Jewish authorities. But the old Septuagint, 6oo years earlier, always translates the A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. 209 word oak, showing that that was the meaning it conveyed to them ; and the Syriac gives the same rendering. II. " Authorised " Reading. Gen, XXX. 1 1 : Leah said, A troop ! and she called his name Gad. Rkviskrs' Reading. Leah said Fortunate! and she called his name Gad. The word cried out by Leah was Gad ! It might possibly mean a troop, but it is not easy to fix its derivation. In our difficulty we turn to the Ancient Versions. The Septuagint has, "In good fortune!" The Vulgate has, " Fortunately ! " The Syriac reads, "My fortune cometh ! " The Targum of Onkelos, "Fortune cometh!" the Targum of Jonathan, "My good star cometh ! " so that evidently the whole weight of ancient testimony favours the new in- terpretation. III. " Authorised " Reading. Ex. xxxiv. 13 : Ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves. Revisers' Reading. And cut down their Asherim. Margin. Probably the wooden symbols of tho goddess Asherah. . Here is a case where the English versions sought in the Ancient Versions the meaning of a word, and were set wrong by them. The Hebrew word is ', 2IO A FURTHER CSE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. ASHERIM, and the old English translators could not tell what the strange word meant to its original readers ; but they found that St. Jerome's Vulgate translated it " groves.' St. Jerome had probably gone to the Septuagint for the meaning, for we find it thus ren- dered by the old scholars of King Ptolemy. Evidently they were as much puzzled by the word as was St. Jerome, or the English translators who followed his lead. Thus the word " groves" got into the English Bible, and thus it remains to the present day. But any one who will carefully examine the different passages where it occurs will see at once that it cannot mean "groves." To "make," "set up," "break," are not terms generally used of a grove of trees. It most probably denoted some movable object of worship ; perhaps a figure of the goddess Ashtoreth, or, at any rate, some rude wooden image used in connection with heathen worship. See, for example, 2 Kings xxiii. 6, where Josiah brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, and burnt it, and stamped it to powder ; 2 Chron. xvii. 6 : Jehoshaphat took away the groves, &c., &c. The revisers, in their difficulty, cut the knot by simply printing the Hebrew word in English letters, and letting the reader make what he could of it ; so now the time-honoured " groves " are in future to be known as the " Asherim." iLES. A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. 211 not tell eaders ; mslated to the us ren- iridently was St. followed nto the present different t cannot !ak," are It most f^orship ; ', at any bion with xxiii. 6, house of powder ; e groves, the knot sh letters, of it; so ire to be IV. Revisers' Reading. The other lot for Azazel. " Authorised " Reading. Lev, xvi. 8, 10, 26 : , The other lot for the acapegoat. This is the only place where the Hebrew word AZAZEL occurs in the Old Testament, and the question of its meaning is a long-standing difBculty. The English versions, from the " Great Bible " down, have taken the interpretation from St. Jerome's Vulgate. He renders it " caper emissarius " — " the goat that was sent out." Probably this was a guess from the con- text, or perhaps he got it from the old Bible of Symmachus (see Book ii. p. i 5 8), who gives a similar meaning. The Septuagint translates it vaguely, as if at a loss what to make of it. Some other early writers think it means the devil. The Jews of the Middle Ages tell us that it meant some evil spirit. Where all was so hazy, doubtless the revisers acted wisely in leaving it as they found it, simply, as in the previous case of the Asherim, expressing the Hebrew pronuncia- tion in English letters, and so not committing them- selves to any theory on the subject. V. "Authorised" Reading. Revisers' Reading. Judges viii. 13: Gideon re- Gideon returned from the battle turned from the battle before the from the ascent of Heres. Bun was up. The word heres does mean the sun, but it may also 212 A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. be a proper name; see i. 35, ii. 9. What is the true meaning ? Did Gideon return " before the rising of the sun," or " from the height of Heres ? " The Vulgate says the former, and most Jewish com- mentators agree with it. The Septuagint says " from the ascent of Ares." Where doctors differ who shall decide ? f ' n VI. " Authorised " Reading. 2 Sam. viii. 18: David's sons were chief rulers. Reviskbs' Reading. David's 8uns were priests. This is a very startling translation, if it be correct. If David's sons were priests, there must have been a serious neglect of the law which restricted the priest hood to the family of Levi. The Hebrew word used is the same that in v. 17 is applied to Zadok and Ahimelech the priests. It is also used of Ira the Jairite in ch. xx. 26, and later, in the list of Solomon's officers, of Zabud the son of Nathan, who was " a KOHEN, and the king's friend." But surely it is pos- sible that it may mean a chief minister either of Church or State. The Vulgate renders the word "priests," and is followed by Luther and by Cover- dale's Bible ; but the Septuagint has " courtiers," and both the Syriac Bible and the Targums have "princes." So, as far as the guidance of the Old Versions will take us in fixing the translation, we cannot go along with the recent revisers. The question, however, is a ': LBS. le true ing of The cora- " from .0 shall iests. correct, been a priebl :d used ok and Lra the lemon's iwas " a is pos- ther of e word Cover- rs," and jrinces." (rill take ng with is a AlFURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. 213 very difficult one, and important issues concerning what is called the higher criticism (see footnote, p. 37) are affected by it. VIT. "Authorised" Reahing. I Kings xxii. 38: And' one washed the chariot in the pool of Sa- maria, and the dogs licked up his blood, and they washed his armoiir, Rkvihkhh' Rkadino. And they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood : now the har* lots washed themselves there. The Hebrew word whose meaning is in question is ZONOTH. Now, in Hebrew, of course, as in English, it may happen that entirely different meanings may grow on to the same word.^ The Hebrew word zonoth has not only the signification armour, but also, and much more frequently, the very different meaning, harlots. Which does it mean in the passage before us ? It is possible, to be sure, that the writer meant to inform us of the washing of Ahab's blood-stained armour. But considering the commoner signification of the word, does it not seem more probable that he meant to give an additional touch of ignominy to Ahab's wretched fate, by telling us that it was the pool where the harlots washed themselves in which the blood of the dead king was washed from the chariot ? We turn to the Ancient Versions to aid us in the inquiry, and find that the Syriac Bible eighteen cen- ^ Take, for example, the English word post. Vv ^ 214 A FURTHER USE OF THE ANCIENT BIBLES. turies ago rendered the word '^ armour." The Targum gives the same s'gnification. But the old Septuagint translators, four hundred years earlier, give it its commoner Hebrew meaning, " The harlots washed themselves ; " and we see the revisers have thought fit to follow their lead. I have nothing to do with the question as to which is the better translation, as my object is but to illus- trate this use of the Ancient Versions. I :i ! And now. reader, our " Lesson in Biblical Criti- cism " is over. Wo have inquired into the accuracy of the Hebrew Writings, we have made the acquaint- ance of the chief Ancient Bibles ot the world, wo have learned some rudiments of Biblical Criticism, and, like schoolboys, worked out iv.r ourselves little problems in our newly-acquired science. I trust all this may have been worth the doing, and may result in a more intelligent interest in the Bible. If the " Lesson bring half as much interest and instruction to its learner as the preparation for it has brought to the teacher, it certainly will not have been learned in vain. INDEX. i Aaron ben-Asher. 104 Abgarus' letter to our Lord, 165 Abomination of Desolation, 74 Abram and the fowls, 8 Accents, 102 Ancient language forgotten, 62 Ancient revision, 33 Antiochus, 75, 106 Aquila and Symmachus, 78-83, 158 Aristeas' romance, 150 Assyrian writing, 2 Babylon schools, 104 Bethshemesli, 58 n. Bible, narrow escape of, 76 Biblical criticism, 22 Book of tlic, Lr,w, 39 Breastplate verse, 92 Buchanan's manuscript, 29 Cain and Abel, 123, 188 Church Hymnal, Jewish, 55 Codex of Ephraem, 163 Codex of Ezra, 29 College of Tiberias, 76 Consonant writing, 6 Controversies, textual, 15, 11.:, 121 Copying manuscripts, 103 Criticism in Talmud, 8r. Curious mistakes. 7 David and Joab, 9 Defects of the late revision, 183 Dotted words, 68 Eastern memory, 10 Edward the Black Prince, 29 Elias Levita, 8 n., 14, 90, 92, 109 Ephraem the Syrian, 162 Epistle of our Lord, 165 Errors, insignificant, 113 Esau's teeth, 68 Ezra, 5, 29, 60, 64, 65 Fancy shapes of Massorah, 91 Gemaea, 80, 126 Glieniza?, 29, 35 " Gold for the Kings," 96 Great Synagogue, 63, &c. Guardians of the Lines, 18 Guild of tScr'.bes, 13, 42, 44 Halachah and Hagadah, 130 Hebrew writing, 13 Hezekiah, men of, 42 Higher criticism, 37 n. Hilkiah's discovery, 43, 45 " House that Jack built," 143 How to read without vowels, 10 Iddo, book of, 37, 41 Infallibility, 175 Ivy and the gourd, 173 Jacob kissing Esau, 68 Jacob ben-Naphthali, 104 Jacob's bed or Jacob's staff, 12 Jahveh, 98, 103 Jaslier, book of, 37 Jerome, 8, 84, 172 Jerusalem chamber, 18 1 Jews of Malabar, 28 Joab, 9, 17 Josephus, 40, 46, 75, 76 Jot and tittle, 5 Judas the Maccabee, 2, 75 Keri and Kethibh, 97, 200 Last of the I\[assoretes, 104 "Let us go into the field," 52, 189 Liver of goats, 17 Longfellow, 139 2l6 INDEX. Manahskh the renegade, 49 Manuscripts, all of late date, 31 Manuscripts, curious old, 28 Massorah, 88, &c. Massorotes, 33-88 Massoretic nianuscripts, 33 Massoretb Ham-massoreth, 8 «., 92 Mistakes of copyists, 16-21 Michal, 17 Moabite stone, 2, 13 n. Nablous manuscript, 119 Nehemiah's library, 66 n, Nitrian manuscripts, 169 " Not increased the joy," 23, 205 Origen, 84, 164 Othman's Koran, 34 Palestine text, 32, 86 PhcBnician writing, 2 "Pierced my hands and my feet," 16, 59, 204 Pillow of goat's hair, 17 Poem on the alphabet, 93 Pope Sixtus, 17s Repeated passages, 53 Revision, ancient, 33 Rip Van Winkle, 139 Rock of ages, 25 n. Romance of Aristeas, 150 Rules of criticism, 25 Samahitan Peiitateuch, '2, 38, 49, 118 Sandalphon, 137 Saul one year old, 59, 193 Schools of the Propliets, 41 Scribes, 13, 42, 44, 66, 80 " Seen on the wings of the wind," 54. 57 Septuagint, 71-74, 148 Shapira manuscrii)ts, 3 Signing of the Roll, 63 Siloam inscription, 3, 13 n. Similar letters, 16 Standard Bible, 106, 109 Symmachus, 158 Syriac, 83, 162 " Syria " mistake for Edom, i6 Swine broth on the Bible, 75 Talmud, 79, 126 Targums, 145 Temple manuscripts, 40, 43, 106 Textual criticism, 22-27 Tiberias, 78, 104 Tittle, 5, 81 Toledo, its famous MS., 29 n. Usshkr's manuscripts, 119 Vashni, 59, 202 Vowel letters, 68 Vowel points, 7, 15, 101 Vulgate, 171 Yahveh, 98, 103 Yod, 5, 16 THE END. /- PRINTED BY BALLANTVNE, HANSON ANU.CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON. SAMUEL BAGSTER & SONS, LIMITED, 15, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE GREEK SCRIPTURES. THE GREEK STUDENT'S MANUAL. A Practical Guide to the Greek Testament, designed for those who have no knowledge of the Greek language; also the New Testament, Greek and English; and a Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament. Foolscap octavo, cloth, (js. THE ANALYTICAL GREEK LEXICON TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. The words of the Greek Text, however inflected, are placed in alpha- betical order, analysed, and referi'ed to their roots, which are copiously explained, bo that the precise grammatical force and English meaning of every word in the Creek New Testament can be ascertained with very little trouble. Quarto, cloth, 7s. 6d. 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Under each Root is given a summary of the whole of its derivatives. The Grammatical Introduction contaius a complete series of Paradigms, which are referred to constantly throughout the work. Quarto, cloth, 123. " It is the ultimatum of Hebrew Lexicography, and will leave'the TheologiiQ who still remains ignorant of the sacred tcugue, absolutely without excuse." ^ SCRIPTURES. SB CONCORDANCE English Translation ; unencea, etc. Third lebrew and Ohaldee ocoarrenoes in fall. MAR: .' .'-* ; with a Series of olscap octavo, cloth, AR. 31868 to every rnle j Post octavo, cloth, acoN. 3 words in the Old and combining the i. Foolscap octavo, PSALTER. tingnish the servile mslation under each CON. sorrect parsing and !nt Scriptures. All ate three-fourths of place in Scriptare. 3 derivatives. The ' Paradigms, which , cloth, 123. leave'the Theologian "thout excuse."