"Ur of the Chasdim," in northern Mesopotamia. But Hebrew comes probably from Heber or y 'Eber, mentioned in Gen. 10. 21; to whom Abulfeda (Hist. Anteisl. iii. iv.) says God granted to speak Hebrew, as a reward for his having reproved the builders of the Tower of Babel, for their impious attempt to scale Heaven. He is said, in the "Seder 'Olam," to have been a great prophet; and some Arabic writers maintain that he was the same as Hud, an abbreviation for Yehud. This induces some learned men to think that ay and y are identical, and to consider the descendants of both as the same people. The Hebrew language, however, flourished during a comparatively short period; while the Arabic has continued to the present day, the richest, and most cultivated of all the Shemitic dialects.

1. PREDOMINANCE OF THE LANGUAGE.

But the Hebrew language, honoured by God as the first medium of written revelation, had in ancient times predominance over a far greater extent of territory than is commonly supposed. It may be inferred from various passages of Sacred History, that the Canaanites, or aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan, conversed freely in Hebrew, or in their own closely allied dialect the Phoenician, with Abraham, and, many years subsequently, with the tribes of Israel under Joshua. Thus, for instance, the spies sent by Joshua to survey the country, had not recourse to the aid of an interpreter in their intercourse with Rahab and others. Moreover, the Canaanitish names of places and persons, both in the time of Abraham and in that of Joshua, are pure Hebrew terms; Melchisedec, Abimelech, Salem, Jericho, and, in fact, all names of persons, cities, and towns in Canaan recorded in Scripture, might be cited as examples. (See Joshua, chapters 15 to 22.) It has been clearly proved by the ethnographical researches of Gesenius, and other German scholars, that the Canaanites formed part and portion of the people known in profane history by the name of Phoenicians; and in the Septuagint, the words Phoenicians and Canaanites, Phoenicia and Canaan, are indiscriminately used: (compare Exod. 6. 15 with Gen. 46. 10, and Exod. 16. 35 with Jos. 5. 12.) Hence the obvious inference that Hebrew, being very nearly allied to the vernacular of the Phoenicians, was spoken, with provincialisms and with characteristic accent, at Tyre and Sidon, at Carthage, and in all the numerous colonies established by that enterprising people. We may thus trace the use of Hebrew as a vernacular tongue, or as a medium of communication, all round the coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of Italy and (in part) of Greece. When the Old Testament was written, probably no language was so widely diffused as the Hebrew: it occupied just such a place as Greek did in the days of the Apostles. With the sole exception of the Jews, however, the nations by whom Hebrew was spoken have either passed away from the face of the earth, or have become amalgamated with other races.

The number of Jews now dispersed throughout the world is generally estimated at about 4,000,000; of these there are only 175,000 in Palestine and Syria. In England there are 30,000 Jews, of whom 20,000 reside in London; but they are still more numerous in some parts of continental Europe: at Warsaw, for instance, they form one-fourth part of the population. In the following graphical description of the present state of the Jews, by Professor Gaussen, it will be perceived that the statistical calculations are founded upon different data from those above adduced. "The restless feet of God's ancient people are pressing at this very hour the snows of Siberia, and the burning sands of the desert. Our friend Gobat found numbers of them in the elevated plains of Abyssinia, eighteen hundred miles to the south of Cairo; and when Denham and Clapperton, the first travellers that ventured across the great Sahara, arrived on the banks of the lake Tchad, they also found that the wandering Jew had preceded them there by many a long year. When the Portuguese settled in the Indian Peninsula, they found three distinct classes of Jews; and when the English lately took possession of Aden in the south of Arabia, the Jews were more in number there than the Gentiles. By a census taken within the last few months in Russia, they amount to 2,200,000; so that their population in that immense empire exceeds that of our twenty-two cantons. Morocco contains 300,000, and Tunis 150,000. In the one small town of Sana, the capital of Arabia Felix, they assemble together

in eighteen synagogues. Yemen counts 200,000; the Turkish empire 200,000, of which Constantinople alone contains 80,000. At Brody, where the Christians, who are 10,000 in number, have only three churches, the Jews, 20,000 in number, have 150 synagogues. Hungary has 300,000. Cracow, 22,000. In a word, it is imagined that, were all the Jews assembled together, they would form a population of 7,000,000; so that, could you transport them into the land of their fathers this very year, they would form a nation more powerful and more numerous than our Switzerland."

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE.

Whether Hebrew was or was not the primeval tongue of the human race has been the subject of much discussion, and is a question which, with our present means of knowledge, it is impossible to resolve satisfactorily. Certain it is, however, that the Hebrew language bears many internal marks of antiquity. The majority of Hebrew words, for instance, are descriptive; that is, they specify the prominent or distinguishing quality of the person, animal, place, or thing, which they designate: and the vocabulary, though comparatively poor in abstract and metaphysical terms, is rich in words having immediate reference to those objects of sense with which a nomadic people might be supposed to be most conversant. Thus, there are no less than 250 distinct botanical terms in the Old Testament; and synonymous forms of expression for the common actions and occurrences of life are numerous and varied. Among these synomymes have been counted no less than fourteen different words of which each signifies "to break;" there are ten words answering to the verb "to seek;" nine express "the act of dying," fourteen convey "the idea of trust in God," nine signify "remission of sins," and eight denote "darkness;" and to express "the observance of the laws of God" there are no less than twenty-five phrases.

The language appears to have attained its utmost possible development at a very early period, and to have remained subsequently for ages in the same stage, without progression or retrogression. This is seen by comparing the books of the Pentateuch with those of the latter prophets: the latter differ from the former only by the disuse of a few words, which in the course of centuries had become obsolete, and by the introduction of sundry terms which had been engrafted on the language by intercourse with the Assyrians and Babylonians: there are, however, 268 verses of pure Chaldee in the Old Testament. A certain stiffness of construction, joined to great energy and simplicity, appears to be the most prominent feature of Hebrew, and of the cognate Shemitic dialects in general. The fundamental structure of those dialects bears the impress, if we may so speak, of premeditation and design. Unlike all other idioms, the roots or elementary words are in general dissyllabic and triliteral, while many of them appear in a more ancient monosyllabic form. They are for the most part the third person. singular, preterite tense, active voice of the verb, and seem to have been originally framed for the express purpose of representing ideas in the simplest possible form; while the application of these ideas to denote the varied circumstances of life (such as time past, present, or future, personal agency, passion, or feeling), is effected generally by mere changes of the vowels placed above, within, or below, the letters of the root. For instance, expresses a simple fact-" he learned,” but ? denotes an additional circumstance, viz.: that he learned diligently: so he spake, by the simple change of a vowel sign comes to denote the thing spoken, that is, a word. Besides the vowels, a certain set of consonants, set aside for the office of sometimes modifying the meaning of the roots, are called Serviles; and, in common with the Arabic only, of all the Shemitic dialects, the Hebrew has the definite article for the better determining of nouns. With respect to the alphabetical system of the Hebrews, it has generally been the custom to attribute the introduction of the square character to Ezra; and the vowel-points, which were added gradually, as the Hebrew language ceased to be generally spoken and well known, were finally determined towards the sixth century after Christ, by the school of Tiberias. This was a timely interposition of God's providence, to rescue the Hebrew text from much misinterpretation,—if it had been handed down without points,-when its language was dead and little known. It has lately, however, been shown that the square characters were not brought to perfection till probably two or three centuries after the Christian era. Kopp (in his Bilder

und Schriften der Vorzeit) traces the gradual formation of these characters from the inscriptions on the bricks at Babylon, down through the Phoenician or Samaritan letters on the Maccabean coins, and thence to the Palmyrene inscriptions found among the ruins of Palmyra; and Gesenius, in the last edition of his Grammar, admits that the square, or modern Hebrew character, is descended from the Palmyrene. This opinion seems corroborated by the late discoveries of Mr. Layard in Babylonia; from whence he brought bowls of terra-cotta, probably dating from the captivity, and covered with Syriac and Chaldee inscriptions. Some of these characters are identical with the square ones now in use. The rabbinical style of writing now in use among the Jews is merely a cursive modification of the square character, adopted for ease and expedition.

III.-HISTORY OF THE HEBREW TEXT OF SCRIPTURE.

From the first promulgation of the written Word, special provision seems to have been made for its careful preservation. (See Exod. 25. 21; 40. 20). A distinct command had reference to the place in which the book of the law was to be deposited; namely, in the side of the Ark of the Covenant. (Deut. 31. 26.) The multiplication of copies also was provided for by a Divine decree, (see Deut. 17. 18); and a copy of the law of Moses was made by Joshua. (See Jos. 8. 32.) On the erection of the Temple, Solomon caused the Ark to be brought "into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, under the wings of the Cherubim;" and from that period the books of Holy Writ were guarded within the walls of the sacred edifice, as is evident from such passages as 2 Kings 22. 8; 2 Chron. 34. 14, &c. That these divine records did not fall into the hands of the enemy when the Jews were led away captive to Babylon, may be inferred from the fact that in the list of the spoils carried away from the temple, detailed as that list is (see 2 Ki. 25, 2 Chron. 36, and Jer. 52), there is no mention whatever of the Sacred books. The captives, at the very moment that they were compelled to abandon the gold and silver of their temple, must have concealed and carried with them these most valued treasures; for Daniel, who wrote during the captivity, made distinct reference to two different parts of Scripture as documents well known to his countrymen (see Dan. 9); Ezra, when he went up from Babylon to Jerusalem, was "a ready scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel had given" (Ezra 7. 6); and immediately on the return from captivity, the people called for the book of the law of Moses, which was opened and read to them. (Neh. 8. 1.) The completion of the Canon of the Old Testament is referred to about the time of the finishing of the Second Temple; and there can be no doubt but that the inspired men who lived at that period, namely Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah, collected all the books that had been given by inspiration of God, and deposited them in the Temple. When the Temple and the city of Jerusalem were destroyed by the Romans, the characteristic faithfulness of the Jews to the sacred charge originally committed to them, remained the same. Some of the learned Jews opened schools in various parts of the East for the cultivation of Sacred literature; one of these schools, established at Tiberias, at Sepphoris, and in other towns of Galilee, is mentioned by Jerome as existing in the early part of the fifth century; another school of almost equal note was established at Babylon, and at both frequent transcriptions of the Scriptures were made. And the hand of Providence is to be traced in this multiplication of copies at different places and by distinct institutions, for the comparison of copies afterwards formed a ready mode for the correction of such errors as had crept in through the negligence of copyists. The most stringent laws, however, were in force among the Jews to ensure accuracy in their copies of the Scriptures; the preparation of the parchment, of the ink, and even of the state of mind of the copyist, were all prescribed by rule; and such has ever been their reverence for antiquity, that when in an ancient copy they have met with the accidental inversion or misplacing of a letter, or when one letter has been made larger than the rest or suspended above the line, they have scrupulously refrained from rectifying even what was so manifestly erroneous, under the superstitious notion that in the original formation and location of every letter some mystery is involved. Still further to ensure the perfect integrity of the text, the Jews at some period between the fourth and sixth century

carefully collected into one book all the grammatical and critical remarks on the letter of Scripture that had been current at different times and places since the time of Ezra. To the volume thus formed, which in process of time became larger than the Bible itself, they gave the name of Masora, that is, tradition, because the criticisms it contained had been handed down by tradition from father to son. But besides being a collection of grammatical annotations, the Masora really was, as the Jews emphatically styled it," the hedge of the law," for it contains a multitude of the most minute calculations concerning the number of verses, lines, words, and letters, in the Sacred volume; so that the number of letters in every verse, and even the middle letter of every verse having been ascertained with some exactness, it was anticipated that no interpolation or omission in the text could for the future pass undetected. The further influence of the Septuagint and other ancient versions in securing the early copies of the Hebrew Scriptures from the possibility of corruption will be subsequently noticed.

Eight particular copies seem to have been especially honoured among the Jews on account of their strict fidelity and accuracy, and to have been regularly used as standard texts from which all other copies were made. These eight copies were

1. The Codex of Hillel, an ancient MS. no longer in existence, but which was seen at Toledo in the twelfth century by the Rabbi Kimchi. Rabbi Zacuti, who lived about the end of the fifteenth century, declared that part of the MS. had been sold and sent to Africa. This copy contained the vowel points invented by the Masorites.

2. The Babylonian Codex, supposed to contain the text as revised under the care of Rabbi Ben Naphtali, President of the Academy at Babylon.

3. The Codex of Israel, supposed to exhibit the text as corrected by Rabbi Ben Asher, President of the above mentioned Academy at Tiberias; this MS. is imagined to have been the same as that of Jerusalem.

Lastly, the remaining five Codices were, the Egyptian Codex, the MS. of Sinai containing only the Pentateuch, the Pentateuch of Jericho, the Codex of Sanbuki, and the book of Taygim. All the MSS. now in existence can be traced to one or other of these exemplars. The MSS. executed by the Jews in Spain follow the Codex of Hillel, and are more valued than those made in any other country, on account of their accuracy and the elegance with which they are written, the letters being perfectly square, and having the appearance of print. German MSS., on the contrary, are not elegantly written, and the characters are rudely formed, but they are valued on account of their containing readings coinciding with the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient versions. The Italian MSS. are neither so beautiful as the Spanish, nor so rude in appearance as the German, and they do not follow the Masora so closely as the former, nor deviate from it so frequently as the latter.

Of the Hebrew MSS. now known to be in existence, the most ancient of which the date has been duly attested, is not much above seven hundred years old. It formerly belonged to Reuchlin, and is now preserved in the Library at Carlsruhe, whence it is familiarly known as the Codex Carlsruhensis: it is in square folio, its date is A.D. 1106, and its country is Spain. It contains the Prophets, with the Targum. There are two or three MSS. to which an earlier origin is assigned, but the date of their execution is very doubtful. There are only five or six MSS. extant which were made so early as the twelfth century; we have about fifty MSS. written in the thirteenth century, eighty in the fourteenth, and 110 in the fifteenth. The Jews who have been located for several centuries in the interior of China do not possess any MSS. of earlier date than the fifteenth century. The black Jews on the coast of Malabar, who are supposed to have emigrated to India about the time of the Jewish captivity, possessed a Hebrew MS. which was brought to England by Buchanan in 1806, and is now carefully preserved at Cambridge. It is a roll of goats' skins dyed red, and measures forty-eight feet long by twenty-two inches wide. It only contains part of the Pentateuch; Leviticus and a portion of Deuteronomy are wanting. The text, with a few slight variations, accords with the Masoretic. As is the case with all the more ancient MSS., there is no division of words; an old rabbinical tradition says that the law was formerly one verse and one word. The division into verses is generally attributed to

the compilers of the Masora. The division into chapters is more recent, and was first adopted in the Latin Testament. A more ancient division of the Pentateuch was into parashioth, or greater and less sections for the regular reading in the synagogue; a division still retained by the Jews in the rolls of the Pentateuch.

IV. PRINTED EDITIONS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE.

The first portion of the Hebrew Scriptures committed to the press was the Psalter, with the Commentary of Rabbi Kimchi; it appeared in 1477, but it is not certain at what place it was printed. In 1482 the Pentateuch was published at Bologna, and other parts of Scripture were subsequently printed at various places. But the first complete Bible that issued from the press was that printed in 1488 at Soncino, a small town of Lombardy, between Cremona and Brescia. Copies of this edition are now so scarce that only nine are known to exist, one of which is in the Library of Exeter College, Oxford. It has points and accents, but from what MSS. it was printed is unknown. It formed the text of another edition, printed, with a few corrections, at Brescia in 1494. The printers of both these editions were of a family of German Jews who had settled at Soncino; they are noted for having been, in point of time, the first Hebrew printers. The Brescia edition is famous for having been that from which Luther made his translation of the Old Testament, and the identical volume used by him is still preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. This edition forms one of the three standard texts from which all subsequent editions have been executed; the other two being the Hebrew text of the Complutensian Polyglot (published 1514-17, and for which seven MSS. were consulted), and the second edition of Bomberg's Bible. Bomberg printed in all five editions, of which the first appeared at Venice in 1518; but the second edition, published at Venice 1525-26, is the most valued on account of its superior correctness, and its text still forms the basis of modern printed Bibles. It is pointed according to the Masoretic system, and was printed from the text of the Brescia edition, corrected by reference to some Spanish MSS., under the care of Rabbi Ben Chajim, a Jew of profound acquaintance with the Masora and rabbinical erudition.

All the editions above mentioned were executed by Jews or Jewish converts. The first Hebrew Bible published by a Gentile, was that printed in 1534-35 at Basle, with a Latin translation in a parallel column, by Munster, a learned German; in a second edition, published 1536, he introduced critical annotations and portions of the Masora: he used the Brescia edition of 1494 as his text, but seems to have consulted Bomberg's Bible and several MSS. In 1569-72 the Hebrew text of the Antwerp Polyglot was published; it is compounded of the Complutensian text, and that of the second edition of Bomberg's Bible. The next most celebrated editions, in point of time, of the Hebrew Bible were those of Buxtorf: he published an 8vo. edition at Basle in 1619, and his great Rabbinical Bible (so called because accompanied by the Masora and the Commentaries of five Jewish rabbis) appeared in 1618-20.

About this period the Samaritan Pentateuch was first introduced into Europe, and a new era commenced in the history of Hebrew criticism. Hitherto both Jews and Christians had rested secure in the supposed uniformity of Hebrew MSS. Origen, who, as will hereafter be shown, had certainly attempted to collate the Hebrew text with the Septuagint version, seems to have taken little or no pains in the comparison of Hebrew MSS.; and though in some of the editions of the Bible, as above mentioned, several MSS. had been consulted, a general and systematic collation of all the MSS. of the Old Testament had never been deemed requisite. Now, however, the attention of the learned was drawn to the variations between the Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint version; the controversies thence arising happily led to the examination of the MSS. themselves, and the various readings there discovered were discussed by the same laws of criticism that had long been in force with respect to profane writings. Two most important critical editions of the Bible, published in 1661 and 1667 at Amsterdam, by Athias, a learned rabbi, were among the first fruits of these researches: the text was founded on MSS. as well as on a collation of previous printed editions,