The Aramæan then received a strong Hebrew colouring, as seen in the Chaldee portions of the Old Testament, and in a less degree, in the Targums. On the contrary, the Hebrew language coloured with Aramæan constituted the so-called New-Hebrew, exhibited in the Talmud and Rabbinical writings. According to this view, the so-called Chaldee, as a living dialect distinct from the Syriac, had no known existence. It was nothing but a branch of the one Aramæan tongue mixed with Hebrew. Such is the opinion of Hupfeld', Fürst2, and De Wette3, who deny the difference of the two dialects. On the other hand, it has been argued that the Chaldee may be distinguished in many ways, both grammatically and lexically, from the Syriac, so that it must be regarded as the East Aramæan dialect once spoken in Babylonia. This is maintained by Hoffmann, Winer 5 Hävernick, and Dietrich." The Syriac language has been termed the West-Aramaan, in contradistinction from the Chaldee or Babylonian. To us now it is a New-Aramaan dialect, that of the Syrian Christians, who had a considerable literature of their own from the middle of the second century. Into it the Scriptures were translated; and in the theological schools at Edessa and Nisibis it was further developed. Ecclesiastical and theological subjects were the circle within which it moved. It has not remained pure in the course of centuries, but has admitted foreign elements, especially Greek. The Syriac dialect is not extinct. It is still used as the

,

church-language of the Maronites or Syrian Christians; and in a corrupted vulgar dialect it is spoken as their vernacular tongue, at the present day, by the Syrian Christians in Kurdistan and Mesopotamia.8

The Aramæan is closely allied to the Hebrew and serves to throw considerable light on it; but it is much poorer than the Arabic.

The principal remains of what is called the Chaldee are in the portions in Ezra and Daniel already indicated, and in the Targums or Chaldee paraphrases of the Old Testament.

The chief document extant in the Syriac language, is the Peshito version of the Old and New Testaments.

The Samaritan dialect is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaan, like the Chaldee. It exists in the translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and in some MS. poems in the British Museum, the most important of which have been published by Gesenius.

The Arabic language is the richest and most fully developed of all the Shemitic family. In vowels and consonants, in word-stems and grammatical forms, it is more copious than the Hebrew. Before Mohammed, it was confined to Arabia, and cultivated for the most part through poetry. But with Islamism, it spread over the greater portion of Asia and Africa, while its literature increased and extended

1 Beleuchtung, u. s. w., p. 45. et seqq.

2 Lehrgebäude der Aram. Idiome, p. 5. et seqq.

8 Einleit. pp. 53, 54.

4 Grammatica Syriaca, p. 4.

5 Grammatik d. Bibl. und Targum. Chald., p. 5. and Realwörterbuch, s. v. Chaldaer. • Einleit. i. p. 103. et seqq.

7 De Sermonis Chald. proprietate.

8 Roediger über d. Aramäische Vulgärsprache der Heutigen Syr. Christen in Zeitschrift f. d. Kunde des Morgenland, ii. p. 77. et seqq., 314. et seqq.

into all departments. On many accounts it is the most interesting of the Shemitic languages, next to Hebrew.

1

There are few or no memorials of its most ancient form. Probably it had at first simpler forms than now, more analogous to those of the Hebrew than we see in its fully developed state. But as far as it can be traced it is much richer than the Hebrew orthographically, grammatically, and lexically. Hence it is a fertile source of Hebrew etymology and lexicography. Among the numerous independent tribes who used it there must have been many dialects. We now know however of the existence of only two principal ones. The Himyaric in Yemen was different from the dialect of central Arabia, and bore a nearer affinity to the Hebrew. This was entirely supplanted by the Koreishite dialect, prevailing in north-western Arabia especially at Mecca; the latter being elevated by Mohammed, so as to become the language of books and the universal language of the people. It is this therefore that is called the Arabic language. All Arabic literature is in it. After the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the classical gave way to the vulgar Arabic as spoken by the people, into which latter many foreign and Turkish words were adopted. But it is less copious, having lost many forms and features of cultivation possessed by the more ancient language, and by that means has been made to approximate to the Hebrew more nearly. Its fewer and shorter forms render it so far simpler, and more analogous to the idioms of Hebrew and Aramæan.

"The personal and continued perusal of Arabic writers," says Gesenius, "will be indispensable to the truly learned interpreter of the Old Testament; and will always be to him a rich source of parallels and comparisons for language in the broadest sense of the word, as also for ideas, poetical figures, &c." 2

From the Himyaric or dialect of southern Arabia, which was wholly supplanted by the present written Arabic, proceeded the Ethiopic. This is less rich and cultivated than the Arabic, yet it comes nearer the Hebrew and Aramæan. It is known by a translation of the Scriptures existing in it, and by various ecclesiastical works. In Abyssinia it continued to be spoken till the fourteenth century, when it was supplanted by the Amharic, which is still spoken. The Geez dialect is employed only in writing. Ludolf has primary merit in handling the Ethiopic; while in recent times, Hupfeld and Drechsler have investigated parts of it.

3. To the philosophical means for acquiring a fundamental knowledge of Hebrew belongs an examination of the analogy of language generally. Here abstract speculations respecting the nature of languages will be of little use, without a thorough study of other primitive dialects especially the Indo-Germanic or Japhetic. In this field much remains to be done; for the path has as yet been but partially indicated and trodden.

1 See Gesenius in the Allgem. Litt. Zeit. of Halle for 1841, No. 123., and Roediger's Excurs. über Himjar. Inschriften in Wellsted's Reisen in Arabien, vol. ii. p. 352. et seqq. 2 In the Bib. Repos. for 1833, p. 31.

CHAP. VII.

CRITICISM OF THE TEXT.

THE criticism of the text has to do with every thing that the authors themselves of the Old Testament put down in writing or that is now written. It includes, therefore, the characters they used, and every thing palæographical. The dividing and interpunction also, though not proceeding from the original writers, may be brought into the present topic. Under the external form of the text, we may place what relates to the characters employed by the sacred authors; the diacritic signs, vowels, and accents afterwards added; the various divisions greater or less which the text has had, or has now. After sketching the history of the external form of the text, we shall proceed to handle the text itself and its history, including the changes made in it, as well as the means employed by criticism to purify and restore it to its original condition.

HISTORY OF THE EXTERNAL FORM OF THE TEXT.

We have already considered the nature of the characters employed by the Hebrews at different times, the vowel-system appended to the consonants at a later period, together with the accentuation. The various divisions, marks of distinction, and interpunction occurring in the text must now be touched upon.

The ancient Hebrews, like most other people of antiquity, wrote continuously without an intervening space between one word and another. Yet not always nor exclusively so. Most of the Phenician inscriptions indeed have no division of words; but others have it indicated by a point. Words closely connected with one another were not so separated. It is impossible to ascertain whether the Hebrews formerly used this point to indicate the separation of words; or whether they had small open spaces between words, without the points. It is all but certain that they did employ small intervals for dividing both words and sentences, though they did not follow that practice with consistency or uniformity. Perhaps the points were not used everywhere along with these intervening spaces, but only occasionally. With the introduction of the square character, the separation of words by small interstices became general, though in later times the practice was not always strictly followed in MSS., perhaps from negligence. On comparing the Septuagint version with our present Hebrew text, we see that the translators have deviated in many instances from the modern division of words; but the departures are commonly found in cases where words are closely connected, and prove no more than the fact that there was no regular uniform division in the MSS. employed by the translators.

In the Talmud, it is strictly prescribed how much space should be between words in sacred MSS. designed for the synagogue.

1 Gesenius, Geschichte d. Heb. u. s. w., p. 171.

Divisions in the sense-larger or smaller sections were early marked in prose by open spaces of different kinds and magnitudes. Such spaces formed in the Pentateuch those divisions of the text known by the name, plural ni, perashioth; and were distinguished either as open, ninin, or as closed, niin, according as they stood before sections beginning a line or in the middle of lines. In Masoretic MSS. and editions they have the initial letters and D. The open divisions, or such as begin with in an open space, were intended to denote a distinction of topics or change in the subject-matter, though sometimes they served also to indicate logical or rhythmical alterations in the same subject, as a change of speakers or the members in a genealogy. The closed divisions, or those beginning with in an open space, mark small separations in the sense. There are 669 of these perashioth in the Pentateuch. Similar divisions of the text are also found in the Prophets and Hagiographa, and are carefully observed in the more accurate MSS. and editions, in conformity with very ancient tradition. Their existence can be carried up to a time anterior to the Talmud. Several of them are expressly referred to in the Mishna; while in the Gemara, the distinction of open and closed perashioth is placed among the inviolable requirements of sacred orthography, and its origin traced up to Moses. Hence the commencement of these sections or paragraphs belongs to the earliest times of the public reading of the Scriptures. Keil goes too far in thinking that they may have proceeded from the writers themselves of the divine books.2

In like manner in the poetical books and pieces, single sentences or rhythmical members were marked off line-wise from the earliest times of sacred calligraphy, into D'PIDE, σrixo, verses, or into kwλa kai κоμμатa, i. e. larger and smaller members of verses. The high probability of this ancient practice found among the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians, being followed in the Old Testament text, is deducible from the fact that it constantly appears in the poetical pieces inserted in the Pentateuch and historical books; that the poetical books in many of the oldest MSS. are still so divided; that MSS. of the LXX. and the old Latin versions were so written; that Josephus and Philo compare the oτixo or verses with the classical verses; and that the fathers treat them as old or original. In our post-Masoretic MSS. the division has been laid aside.

Corresponding to the rhythmical division into sentences in the poetical books, there was introduced into the prose writings, or at least the reading-books, a logical period-division called DPD. This is mentioned so early as in the Mishna, as a division to be observed in reading the law and the prophets. Probably it was introduced for the purpose of contributing to the easier reading and interpretation of Scripture in the synagogues. The Gemara refers it to Moses. Our present division into verses arose out of these DPD, and nearly coincides with them, as has been inferred from old lists of them given in the Talmud, which agree substantially with the modern verses.

1 Hupfeld, Grammatik, p. 85. et seqq.

2 Einleit., pp. 579, 580.

?

Whether these period- or verse-divisions were at first marked by outward signs, or handed down orally, is a question more curious than important. The former is maintained by Prideaux, with considerable ingenuity.' The latter is advocated by Hupfeld, because the Talmud never mentions any external notation of them, often as it speaks of verses; the synagogue rolls ignore them; the observance of them is represented as an art learned in schools; and because the ancient translators vary in dividing verses. Had a notation of them been practised, it is probable that it would have been made merely by small intervening spaces. It was not till after the Talmudic period that this verse-division was externally marked by two points (:) termed Soph-Pasuk. The same outward designation was introduced even into the poetical books, where it supplanted for the most part the ancient separation into orixou or stichs. Soph-Pasuk is older than our modern vowel points and accents; for it is earlier mentioned than they. It is found in unpointed MSS. and editions, and always distinguished from the corresponding accent silluk.3

2

The traces of chapters in the Hebrew text which have sometimes been found in Jerome because he speaks of capitula, do not at all justify the idea that either the Hebrew perashioth, or something analogous to the modern chapters, were intended; they are mere arbitrary divisions, equivalent in signification to loci. 4

It has been thought that the 77 found in a MS. of R. Jacob ben Chayim and adopted in his edition of the Bible, furnished the first attempted division into chapters. There are 447 of these in the Old Testament. The present division into chapters is of Christian origin in the thirteenth century, some assigning it to Cardinal Hugo, others to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. In either case it was first adopted in a concordance to the Vulgate, whence it was borrowed by R. Nathan in the fifteenth century, who undertook a similar concordance for the Hebrew Bible. The divisions of R. Nathan are found in Bomberg's Hebrew Bible of 1518. The introduction of verses into editions of the Hebrew Bible proceeded from Athias, a Jew of Amsterdam, in the first edition 1661. They had been previously in the Vulgate so early as 1558.

Very different from the perashioth, or small sections characterised by open spaces, are the large perashioth or sections. These are of later origin than the small ones, and were intended to serve another purpose. They are reading-lessons for every Sabbath in the year, extending through the Pentateuch and 54 in number, to suit the Jewish intercalary year within which all are read. From their not being mentioned in the Mishna, but for the first time in the Masorah, and their being also ignored in the synagogue rolls, their late origin has been justly inferred. In places where these Sabbath-day sections coincide with the smaller perashioth, there are in the case of open sections, or DDD in the case of closed ones.

1 Connection of the Old and New Testament, vol. i. p. 335. ed. 1719.
2 Hupfeld, Grammatik, p. 99. et seqq.

4 Ibid. p. 95.

3 Ibid. p. 112.