קבֵּל

Eccles. iv. 2, viii. 15: P, "to overpower," Eccles. iv. 12, vi. 10 (earlier only Job xiv. 20, xv. 24); whence ph, Esth. ix. 29, x. 2, Dan. xi. 17, and P, Eccles. vi. 10, Dan. ii. 40, etc.: Sap [Piel], "to accept what is offered," Prov. xix. 20, Job ii. 10; afterwards= "to take," 2 Chron. xxix. 16, 22, Ezra viii. 30, Esth. iv. 4, etc., like the Chaldeep, Dan. ii. 6, etc.: [Piel], in the general sense "to oversee," 2 Chron. ii. 1, 17, xxxiv. 12, 13 (comp. Häv. Einl. iii. p. 111): i, 2 Chron. xxxii. 15 (in the mouth of the Assyrian): Wi 2 Chron. xiv. 10 (in a prayer); and many other words which occur earlier only as poetical Chaldaisms, but pass over into the ordinary popular language in the period of the exile.

=

=

(6) Besides those adduced in § 15, Note 4, add 1, "species," Ezek. xlvii. 10 (taken from the Pentateuch); , "a measure," 1 Chron. xxiii. 29, Ezek. iv. 11, 16, etc., from Lev. xix. 35; 2, "to act cunningly," Mal. i. 14, Ps. cv. 25, from Gen. xxxvii. 18 or Num. xxv. 18; 5pp - pby, "image," 2 Chron. xxxiii. 7, 15, and Ezek. viii. 3, 5, from Deut. iv. 16; 27, "to shine like gold," Ezra viii. 27, probably formed from in, "gold-yellow," Lev. xiii. 30, 32, 36; 727, "a necklace," Ezek. xvi. 11, from Gen. xli. 42; na, "that which has been mingled or soaked," 1 Chron. xxiii. 29, from Lev. vi. 14 and vii. 12; 27, “lying down," Ps. cxxxix. 3, formed upon Lev. xviii. 23, xix. 19, xx. 16, since elsewhere only occurs; y for (comp. § 15, Note 7); the archaisms, which at the same time are Chaldaizing forms, 77, Neh. vi. 6, Eccles. ii. 22, and No17, Eccles. xi. 3.

§ 18. How the Hebrew died out as the National Language.

TT:

The Aramaic (Chaldee) language had already come to be widely known in Palestine among the Jews by means of the Chaldean invasions (Jer. x. 11); but in their state of exile it attained to such a preponderance over the Hebrew, that on their return to their mother country only the more educated (in addition to the old people who came back, Ezra iii. 12) still understood this their mother tongue. On the contrary, the generation which had grown up in exile spoke Aramaic (Chaldee), and the Hebrew ceased to be the living language of the people (1).

The opposite opinion, that the Jewish nation in Nehemiah's time still spoke Hebrew, and that the old Hebrew language maintained its position alongside of the Aramaic in individual districts, as also among the upper classes and the better educated, as the living language of

the people, till a much later time, perhaps till that of Alexander the Great (2), is not only destitute of historical evidence (3), but is also distinctly refuted by Neh. viii. 8, according to which it was necessary to add a translation of the Law which was read to the people, in order that it might be intelligible to them (4).

(1) So the Talmudists in Gemar. tr. Megilla, f. 3, col. 1; Nedarim, f. 37, col. 2: the Jewish grammarians, Kimchi, Ephodæus, Elias Levita: the older Christian theologians, J. H. Hottinger, Smegm. orient. p. 33; Joh. Buxtorf, dissertatt. phil. theol. p. 156 sqq. (where may be seen the opinions pronounced by learned Jews), Walton, Proleg. iii. 24, etc.; finally, Hengstb. Beitr. i. p. 299 ff.; Häv. Einl. i. § 35.

p.

(2) Comp. Barthol. Mayer, philol. s. ii. p. 95; Löscher, de causis ling. Hebr. p. 67; Alting, Opera, v. p. 195; Aug. Pfeiffer, Opera, ii 864 sqq.; Carpzov, critic. sac. p. 214 sq.; Gesenius, Geschichte, p. 44 ff., etc. According to J. Olshausen, ü. d. Ursprung des Alphab. p. 29, the Jews in certain parts of Persia, especially in Schuster [in the ancient Susia], to this day speak Hebrew as their mother tongue.

(3) The statement in Neh. xiii. 24, that the children of those Jews who had married Philistine, Ammonite, and Moabite wives, could not speak П, but spoke in the language of Ashdod or of the several nations respectively, is no proof of this: for the Jews' language here is the designation of the language then spoken by the Jews, that is, the Aramaic, in opposition to those of these nations; and this is the meaning of ̔Εβραϊστί or τῇ ̔Εβράϊδι διαλέκτῳ in the Apocrypha and in the New Testament: comp. Gesenius, Geschichte, pp. 9 and 231; Winer, Chald. grammat. p. 3. Also the fact that the writers of the Old Testament posterior to the exile made use of the Hebrew language does not presuppose the continued existence of the Hebrew as the language of the people; but the reason of it is, that these latest sacred writers scrupled to abandon that language which was hallowed by the older Scriptures, on which they leant for support. "Cum scriberent historiam aut prophetias ad Judæos pertinentes, voluerunt uti eadem lingua, qua priscæ eorum historiæ et prophetiæ jam fuerant conscriptæ, si excipias pauca quædam loca ad res Chaldæorum aut Persarum pertinentia" (Clericus ad Neh. xiii. 24). [Bleek, pp. 72-3 and p. 93, considers the language of Ashdod to have been only a broader and less pure pronunciation, in accordance with his view of the substantial oneness of the Hebrew and the Canaanite languages.]

(4) Neh. viii. 8. The priests and Levites "read in the book, in the law of God, p, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading;" where the word means "with an explanation subjoined," that is, with an interpretation added, with an explanation in Chaldee, the vulgar tongue, as appears from the context and by a comparison of Ezra iv. 18 and ver. 7. Long ago this right view was given by the Talmudists, on; and so still Clericus, Rambach, and Dathe. On the contrary, the interpretation, "faithfully, word for word, truly, exactly" (by Gesenius and others), is in itself without foundation, and is quite unsuitable in Ezra iv. 18. [The renderings of the English version, "plainly," "distinctly," are rather in favour of the latter opinion; though even so the verse as a whole might be held to suggest, at least, that there was translation into another language which was better understood. Bleek, pp. 96-7, takes the view of Gesenius, etc., and thinks it incredible that the people could have forgotten their own language during the short duration of the exile, especially as they lived in masses in Babylon, and as not a few who had been carried away lived to return, and others lived on in Palestine the whole time of the exile; but were these statements less open to exception than they are, his argument might be met by the instance of the Waldenses changing from the Italian to the French language, which they carried back with them after their exile ended. It is indeed impossible to fix on any time at which the transition from Hebrew to Aramaic could so easily have taken place. If the Hebrew had vitality in itself, and strength of hold on the affections of the people at the time of the exile (including the preparatory period along with the exile strictly so called), it is difficult to understand what influences under the Persian and early Macedonian empires could be at work so powerfully as to produce this social revolution among the Jewish colonists, living in seclusion as they did, and animated as they were by a revived national and religious feeling which attached them to everything that had come down to them from their forefathers. Bleek, pp. 50-1 and 97-8, does certainly say that they became subject to a people who spoke Aramaic, and he appeals to the parallel case of the Phoenicians and their language. Then, on his own showing, why did not this change take place earlier, when they were not only subject to a people who spoke Aramaic, but carried captive by them to a country where they heard Aramaic continually? Or how should Aramaic be the language to which they were attracted by dynasties whose official languages were the Persic and the Greek respectively?]

In reference to the vernacular of Palestine in the time of Christ, comp. Pfannkuche in Eichhorn, allg. Biblioth. viii. 360 ff.; Wiseman,

horæ Syr. i. p. 69 sqq.; and Renan, l.c. p. 210. [Bleek, p. 51, adds De Rossi's treastise on the language of Christ, and the language which prevailed in Palestine from the time of the Maccabees, Parma 1772, pp. 244, 4to, being a reply to Diodati, de Christo Græce loquente, Naples 1767, 8vo; while he adds that both in Pfannkuche and in De Rossi there is much that is erroneous and exaggerated as to the relations of the Aramaic and the Greek. The opinion of Diodati has recently been presented to the English public with much learning and acuteness by Alexander Roberts, D.D., Discussions on the Gospels, London 1862.]

SECOND SECTION.

ORIGIN AND GENUINENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

罪

§ 19. General Classification of these Books.

HE individual books in the Hebrew Bible are arranged neither according to their date of composition, nor yet according to their formal contents, but according to their relations to the economy of the revelation of the Old Testament. They are divided into three classes :-I. The Scriptures which lie at the foundation-the Law, or the Five Books of Moses. II. The Scriptures which carry forward the divine revelation by means of the history and prophetic testimonies of the Spirit-the propheticohistorical and the [predictive, or in the narrower sense] prophetic books. III. The Scriptures which present the subjective appropriation of the truths of revelation and the religious life of the covenant people according to its internal and external configuration-the Hagiographa; whether these be poetical, prophetical, or historical. [Keil and others sometimes use the Hebrew names of these three divisions of the Old Testament: they are-I. The Torah; II. The Nebiyim; III. The Kethubîm.]

FIRST DIVISION.

THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES, OR THE LAW (min).

Commentaries :-Bonfrerius, Brentius, Chytræus, J. A. Osiander, Clericus, J. Marckius, Rosenmüller, Maurer; see § 224 sq. Henry Ainsworth, Annotations upon the five books of Moses, the booke of the Palmes, and the Canticles, London 1627, 1639, fol. [reprinted,

71