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1. The evidence on which the assumed fact rests is both deficient (1) Inconin amount and suspicious in character. Not more than two independent clusive witnesses, if they be independent, have, so far as I know, been produced.

evidence.

(i) Chrysostom at the close of the fourth century in his exposition of Chrysothis epistle writes somewhat obscurely; Hagar was the name of the stom. bondmaid; and Mount Sinai is so interpreted in their native tongue (rò δὲ Σινᾶ ὄρος οὕτω μεθερμηνεύεται τῇ ἐπιχωρίῳ αὐτῶν γλώττῃ) ;' and afterwards he speaks of the mountain as 'bearing the same name with the bondmaid (óμávvpov tŷ doúλn). To the same effect writes Theophylact, who is often a mere echo of Chrysostom, as do one or two anonymous commentators in the Ecumenian Catena, without doubt deriving their information from the same source1.

(ii) The Bohemian traveller Harant, who visited Sinai in the year Harant. 1598, says: "The Arabian and Mauritanian heathen call Mount Sinai Agar or Tur?' Though, for anything that is found in the context, this might have been written without a thought of the passage of St Paul, yet I think it hardly probable. Luther, following Erasmus, had maintained this inter- Their pretation; and from the enormous popularity of his commentaries on the stateGalatians, it is likely that they were known to Harant, who himself ulti- accounted mately became a protestant. If so, he did not necessarily derive his inform- for. ation from the Arabs on the spot, but may have accepted without question the popular statement, as more recent travellers have done.

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In later works of travel I have not found any direct personal testimony to this assumed fact. If there be any, it will from the nature of the case require careful sifting. The word Hagar' (Chagar) meaning 'a rock,' or 'a stone,' must be heard again and again from native lips in this wild region3; and a traveller, once possessed of the idea, might easily elicit the word from his Arab guide by a leading question, and on the strength of an

1 Chrysostom's interpretation of the passage in St Paul may perhaps underlie the account of the word 'Hagar' given in Bar Bahlul's Syriac Lexicon,

work was written in Bohemian, but
translated into German by his brother
and published by his nephew (see Bal-
binus Bohem. Doct. II. p. 104). [A
friend, who has consulted the Bohemian

P. 417: 1506 007 L; original, informs me that Weissenberg is

جبل : ست هاجر.

This

extract, which is taken from the мs in the Cambridge University Library, I owe to the kindness of R. L. Bensly, Esq., of Caius College.

2 Harant's authority is generally quoted at secondhand through Büsching's Erdbeschr. 1. 1. p. 603 (Hamb. 1792). In Harant's work itself, Der Christliche Ulysses (Nürnb. 1678), the passage runs: 'Den Berg Synai nennen die Arabische und Mauritanische Heyden Agar oder Tur: Weissenberg, wie auch Tucla, wie Odoardo Barbosa nel' summ. del' Ind. Orient. bezeuget.' The

a miswriting of the name of a traveller
whom Harant quotes, and that Tucla is
there written Turla.] I give the passage
of Barbosa to which Harant refers, as it
stands in the copies which I have con-
sulted. The title is Primo volume delle
Navigationi e Viaggi (Venet. 1550 and
1554); Libro di Odoardo Barbessa or
Barbosa, p. 313 (323), 'passato il detto
monte Sinai, il quale i Mori dimandano
Turla.'

8 The index to Ritter's Erdkunde,
Sinai etc. II. p. 1331, s.v. 'Hadschar,'
'Hadjar,' etc., names several 'stones'
on and about Sinai; 'Hadschar Elma,'
'Hadsjar räkkâbe,' 'Hadj Musa,' etc.

ments

(2) False etymology.

answer thus obtained unsuspiciously confirm the statement that it was a local name for the mountain.

Thus the independent testimony to this supposed fact is confined to Chrysostom and Harant, or, if my supposition with regard to Harant be correct, to Chrysostom alone. To Chrysostom then, if I mistake not, or to some earlier writer whom he copied, this statement is due. Nor should we be doing any injustice to one who makes St Paul speak of Sinai as 'contiguous to Jerusalem,' were we to suppose that having heard of some place bearing the name 'Hagar' whether in Arabia Petræa or in some district bordering upon the Sinaitic mountains, (for the name seems to have been not uncommon1,) he compressed the geography of the whole region and assigned this name to Mount Sinai itself, imagining that he had thus found the key to St Paul's meaning. It is at least worthy of notice that no mention whatever of this assumed fact, or the interpretation based on it, is made either by his friend Theodore of Mopsuestia, or by Theodoret the pupil of Theodore, both natives of Antioch, and both acquainted with his work. Probably they were better informed on the subject, and for this reason tacitly abandoned Chrysostom's explanation.

2. But supposing it were proved that Sinai were so called by the Arabs, this word 'Chagar' is not written or pronounced in the same way as the proper name 'Hagar,' and etymologically the two are entirely distinct. The proper name 'Hagar,' with the simple aspirate (737, in Arabic), signifies 'a wanderer or fugitive,' being connected with the Arabic 'Hegira

the desert on the way to Egypt. In Gen. xvi. 7 it occurs in connexion with the flight of Hagar.

1 Older critics, as Bochart and others (le Moyne Var. Sacr. p. 834, Pfeiffer Op. I. p. 504), assert that Petra itself bears the name Hagar (Chagar) in Arabic writers, just as in Greek it is called Пérpa, and in Hebrew yo, words having the same meaning 'rock.or) in Belka, and that the

I venture to conjecture that there was also a place Hagar' (whether

appearance of 'Belka' in the Arabic version of Gal. i. 17 and iv. 25 (see above, p. 87) is to be explained by this fact.

This atatement however is founded on
a twofold error; (1) The vocalisation of
the proper name referred to is not
'Chagar,' but Chigr'; and (2) The
place which bears this name 'El Chigr'
in Arabic writers is not Petra itself,
but a station several days south of
Petra on the pilgrims' route between
Damascus and Mecca. See Ewald
Paulus p. 493 sq, Robinson's Palestine
etc. II. p. 522. There is no evidence, and to this identity of meaning
that Petra itself was so called.

There is a place , 'Chagra,' mentioned four times in the Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xvi. 7, 14, XX. 1, Exod. XV. 22. In the second passage it is substituted for 'Bered,' in the remaining three for 'Shur,' of the original text. It must therefore have lain somewhere at the south of Palestine in

2 Wieseler explains Chrysostom's meaning in a different way, insisting on the strict sense of μεθερμηνεύεται. Αεcording to Fürst Concord. and Hebr. Handb. s. v., D signifies 'rocky,' so that interpreted in Arabic it would be

in 'Sinai' and 'Hagar' he supposes Chrysostom to allude. But even if the account which Fürst gives of the word "'D were altogether satisfactory, it would still remain in the highest degree improbable that Chrysostom should be acquainted with an etymology so abstruse.

the familiar term for the flight of Mahomet (compare also the Hebrew and ). Thus it has nothing in common with 'Chagar,' 'a stone' (), which if it occurred in Hebrew would be written. It is true that the gutturals are closely allied, and were sometimes confounded1; and this circumstance would deserve to be considered, if the supposed name for Sinai were supported by sufficient testimony: but where this is wanting, the false etymology throws an additional obstacle, to say the least, in the way of our accepting the explanation in question. Nor will it appear very probable that St Paul should have set aside the true derivation, when it is given and allegorized by his contemporary Philo?.

It seems much more probable indeed, if St Paul is alluding to any local name of Sinai, that he should have regarded the true etymology, and that the name in question was not n'rock,' but wanderer.' This latter name was at least not uncommon among the Arab tribes; and it is far from unlikely, though direct evidence is wanting, that a settlement of these 'wanderers,' these children of 'Hagar,' occupied the country about Sinai in St Paul's day and gave it their name for the time.

3. But lastly, is it probable, supposing this to have been St Paul's (3) St meaning, that he would have expressed himself as he has done? If in Paul's writing to a half-Greek, half-Celtic people he ventured to argue from an language. Arabic word at all, he would at all events be careful to make his drift intelligible. But how could his readers be expected to put the right interpretation on the words 'this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia'? How could they

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Petra; Ptolemaeo Agra, unde Agraei
populi Arabiae juxta sinum Persicum,
etc.' But is there not a misprint or an
error here? Was this place ever written
in Arabic otherwise than with a simple
aspirate as in Syriac? At all events
Winer (Realw. 8.v. Hagariter) is wrong
in understanding Assemani's remark
of the station between Damascus and
Mecca (see p. 196, note 1), and has been
blindly followed by others.

2 Tapоiкnois, Leg. Alleg. 1. p. 135 M,
Sacr. Ab. et Ca. 1. p. 170 (жαроikeî σopią,
οὐ κατοικεῖ). Another derivation of
Hagar, or rather a play upon the word,
was N, 'here is thy wages'; see
Beer Leben Abraham's p. 148.

possibly understand, knowing nothing of Arabic, that he meant to say, 'this word Hagar in the Arabic tongue stands for Mount Sinai'? Even if it be granted that his readers were acquainted with the fact which was the key to his meaning, is ἐν τῇ ̓Αραβίᾳ at all a likely expression to be used by any writer for ἐν τῇ ̓Αραβικῇ γλώσσῃ or ̓Αραβιστί, unless it were made intelligible by the context? Yet this is the meaning generally assigned to év Tŷ 'Apaßia by those commentators, ancient or modern, who adopt the interpretation in question, and indeed seems to be required to justify that interpretation.

In the face of these difficulties, it seems at least improbable that the point of the passage is the identity of 'Hagar' and 'Sinai' as different names of the same mountain, and the reading which retains' Hagar' in the text loses any support which it may seem to draw from this identity, assumed as a fact.

Philo's

Philo's allegory of Hagar and Sarah'.

In giving an allegorical meaning to this passage of the Old Testament narrative St Paul did not stand alone. It might be inferred indeed from his own language that such applications of the history of Hagar and Sarah were not uncommon in the schools of his day. But, however this may be, it is more than once so applied in the extant works of Philo. I have already pointed out the contrast presented by his treatment of the history of Abraham in general to the lessons which it suggests to the Apostle of the Gentiles. This contrast extends to the application of the allegorical method to this portion of the sacred narrative. Philo's allegory is as follows.

Abraham-the human soul progressing towards the knowledge of God allegory, unites himself first with Sarah and then with Hagar. These two alliances stand in direct opposition the one to the other3. Sarah, the princess-for such is the interpretation of the word—is divine wisdom. To her therefore Abraham is bidden to listen in all that she says. On the other hand Hagar, whose name signifies 'sojourning' (πapoíkŋσis), and points therefore to something transient and unsatisfying, is a preparatory or intermediate

1 For Philo's allegory of Hagar and Sarah, see esp. de Congr. Quaer. Erud. Gr. 1. p. 519 sq, esp. pp. 521, 522, 530, 592, and Quaest. in Gen. p. 189 8q, 233 8q (Aucher). Compare also Leg. Alleg. 1. p. 135, de Cherub. 1. p. 139 sq, de Prof. 1. p. 546, de Abr. II. p. 52, de Somn. 1. p. 656.

3 See the notes on συνστοιχεί and ἀλληγορούμενα.

3 de Abr. II. p. 15 ἐναντιώτατοι δὲ ἀλλήλοις εἰσὶν οἱ λεχθέντες γάμοι.

4 In some passages Philo still further refines on the change in her name (Gen. xvii. 15): e.g. de Mut. Nom. I. p. 590, Quaest. in Gen. p. 229 (Aucher), de Cherub. I. p. 139. Her first name Zápa () is ȧpxý μov, her after-name Záppa () is apxovoa (see Hieron. Quaest. in Gen., III. p. 331). Thus they are related to each other as the special to the general, as the finite and perishable to the infinite and imperishable.

training the instruction of the schools-secular learning, as it might be termed in modern phrase1. Hence she is fitly described as an Egyptian, as Sarah's handmaid. Abraham's alliance with Sarah is at first premature. He is not sufficiently advanced in his moral and spiritual development to profit thereby. As yet he begets no son by her. She therefore directs him to go in to her handmaid, to apply himself to the learning of the schools. This inferior alliance proves fruitful at once. At a later date and after this preliminary training he again unites himself to Sarah; and this time his union with divine wisdom is fertile. Not only does Sarah bear him a son, but she is pointed out as the mother of a countless offspring. Thus is realised the strange paradox that 'the barren woman is most fruitful.' Thus in the progress of the human soul are verified the words of the prophet, spoken in an allegory, that 'the desolate hath many children3.'

But the allegory does not end here. The contrast between the mothers is reproduced in the contrast between the sons. Isaac represents the wisdom of the wise man, Ishmael the sophistry of the sophist. Sophistry must in the end give place to wisdom. The son of the bondwoman must be cast out and flee before the son of the princess".

Paul's.

Such is the ingenious application of Philo-most like and yet most compared unlike that of St Paul. They both allegorize, and in so doing they touch with St upon the same points in the narrative, they use the same text by way of illustration. Yet in their whole tone and method they stand in direct contrast, and their results have nothing in common. Philo is, as usual, wholly unhistorical. With St Paul on the other hand Hagar's career is an allegory, because it is a history. The symbol and the thing symbolized are the same in kind. The simple passage of patriarchal life represents in miniature the workings of God's providence hereafter to be exhibited in grander proportions in the history of the Christian Church. The Christian

1 ἡ μέση καὶ ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία is Philo's favourite phrase, e.g. de Cherub. I. p. 139.

2 de Congr. Quaer. Erud. Gr. 1. p. 519 ταύτην Μωϋσῆς, τὸ παραδοξότατον, καὶ στείραν ἀποφαίνει καὶ πολυγονωτάτην : comp. de Mut. Nom. 1. pp. 599, 600, where he adds κατὰ τὸ ἀδόμενον ᾆσμα ὑπὸ τῆς χάριτος "Αννης ἢ φησιν, Στείρα ἔτεκεν ἑπτὰ ἡ δὲ πολλὴ ἐν τέκνοις ἠσθέ vŋσe (1 Sam. ii. 5).

3 de Execr. I. p. 434 ἡ γὰρ ἔρημος, ᾗ φησὶν ὁ προφήτης, ευτεκνός τε καὶ που λύπαις, ὅπερ λόγιον καὶ ἐπὶ ψυχῆς ἀλλη Yopeira (Is. liv. 1). The coincidence with St Paul is the more striking inasmuch as Philo very rarely goes beyond the Pentateuch in seeking subjects for allegorical interpretation. There is indeed no mention of Sarah and Hagar here, but it appears, both from the context and from parallel passages, that

they are present to his mind.

The

4 de Sobr. I. p. 394 σοφίαν μὲν Ισαάκ,
σοφιστείαν δὲ Ισμαὴλ κεκλήρωται : comp.
de Cherub. 1. p. 140, and other passages
referred to in p. 198, note 1.
names give Philo some trouble. Isaac
of course signifies 'laughter,' betoken-
ing the joy which comes of divine wis-
dom; see, besides the passages just re-
ferred to, Leg. Alleg. 1. p. 131, Quod
Det. Pot. 1. pp. 203, 215. Ishmael he
contrasts with Israel, the one signifying
the hearing God, the other the seeing
God ( N, ‘vir videns deum';
comp. Hieron. in Gen. III. p. 357).
Thus they are opposed to each other,
Ως ἀκοὴ to δρασις, as the fallacious to
the infallible, as the copiorns to the
oopós, de Prof. I. p. 577, de Mut. Nom.
L. p. 609.

de Cherub. 1. p. 140.

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