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hi lei, and hi lái, A.-S. læg; perfect tense of ik lizz,' hi leit, A.-S. licge, lið; smarre, and smære, A.-S. smerian; warre, and wære, warge and wærge, A.-S. weran, werian tueri, resistere. On this matter I can produce a very striking example in the centre of Friesian nationality. It is now, I believe, sixteen years since I spoke to an old woman at Molquerum, a village now almost lying in ruins, but still divided into seven little islands, called Pollen, joined to each other by (breggen A.-S. bricgas) little bridges. Now the good woman told me in her homely style, that, when she was a child, every island had its peculiar way of pronouncing, and that when an inhabitant of any of the villages entered her mother's house, she could easily ascertain to which Pol the person belonged, merely by some peculiarity of speech. Dependence may be placed on this fact, as I have ascertained its truth by strict enquiry. I have no doubt the same peculiarity was observable in almost every village of the Anglo-Saxons. Every Englishman who notices the diversity of dialects to be found in Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, or Lancashire, and by these judges of the rest, and considers what they have formerly been, will perhaps enter, in some measure, into my views."

CHAPTER 24.

THAT THE CHALDEE LANGUAGE WAS THE RESULT OF THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF JUDEA, AND NOT OF THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITYPROVED 1ST FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT.

It has been remarked at the beginning of our second chapter that the Hebrew Scriptures are "written mostly in the Hebrew, but partly in a different language, called Chaldee;" and I propose now to examine this point a little more minutely. To determine the nature of this second language, called Chaldee, is of the utmost importance to our argument, because it is affirmed, but without any evidence of fact to support the affirmation, that this Chaldee was, from the time of Ezra to that of Christ, the common language of the Jews, who had forgotten the old Hebrew language during the Babylonish Captivity.

In the first place it must be observed that the portions of the Old Testament, written in this Chaldee dialect, consist of only 283 verses altogether.

These are: Jeremiah, chap. x, verse 11. Daniel, chap. ii, verse 4 to the end of chapter vii. Ezra, chap. iv, verse 8, to chap. vii, verse 27.

1. Ezra and others after the captivity still wrote in Hebrew

and not in Chaldee.

If

A serious difficulty here immediately presents itself. the Israelites during the Babylonish Captivity had forgotten the old Hebrew language, why did not Ezra, who wrote nearly 100 years after the Jews had returned from Babylon, write all his books in the Chaldee language, which the people, according to this theory, could have understood, rather than in the old Hebrew, which they had forgotten?

Again, it is admitted that Ezra wrote the books of Chronicles: why did he not write them also in Chaldee? As regards Daniel and Jeremiah, it may be said that being among those who were carried captives to Babylon, they had not forgotten the old Hebrew, in which language they accordingly wrote their books. But this solution proves too much, for the Babylonish Captivity was not effected at once it took place at different times, as may be seen by the chronological table given in page 31, and those who were carried captive the last time, B. C. 588, may-at least some of them-have been alive when the decree of Cyrus permitted them to return. But this point shall be more fully developped hereafter. Let us return at present to the consideration of the extraordinary fact that Ezra, who professedly wrote books for popular use, is supposed to have used a language which the people, for whom he wrote them, had entirely forgotten. And not only Ezra; but Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, all of whom wrote after the Captivity, are supposed to have used a language, which their countrymen no longer understood. This circumstance did not fail to arrest the attention of Dean Prideaux, and he has, in his learned "Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament," taken notice of the fact, but not of its inconsistency. Following the received opinions, and not appearing to think that it was a difficulty, he has given the following account of the matter:

The common people, by having so long conversed with the Babylonians, learned their language, and forgot their own. It happened indeed otherwise to the children of Israel in Egypt. For, although they lived there above three times as long as the Babylonish Captivity lasted, yet they still preserved the Hebrew language among them, and brought it back entire with them into Canaan. The reason of this was, in Egypt they all lived together in the land of Goshen; but on their being carried captive by the Babylonions, they were dispersed all over Chaldea and

Assyria, and being there intermixed with the people of the land had their converse with them, and therefore were forced to learn their language; and this soon induced a disuse of their own among them; by which means it came to pass, that after their return, the common people, especially those of them who had been bred up in that captivity, understood not the Holy Scriptures in the Hebrew language, nor their posterity after them. And, therefore, when Ezra read the law to the people, he had several persons standing by him, well skilled in both the Chaldee and Hebrew languages, who interpreted to the people in Chaldee what he first read to them in Hebrew.

The rest of the account may be seen in the Appendix to this volume. Sufficient has been extracted to shew the nature of the explanation which the author means to give, of the remarkable fact before us. This explanation would no doubt be admissible, if Ezra had confined himself to reading the Scriptures for the benefit of the people, but, as he wrote a large quantity of new Scriptures and revised the old ones, adding so they say-many explanatory interpretations of his own, it seems preposterous that he should adopt the language which had been forgotten, and reject that, in which alone the people could understand him, a plan no less toilsome to himself-for he also had never spoken the Hebrew-than pernicious to the best interests of the people.

But we are told that, notwithstanding this inconsistency, it is a fact that Ezra did, out of reverence perhaps to the old Law, adopt the Hebrew language for his own compositions, and that the interpretations of the whole book of the Law, which he caused to be read along with the Hebrew text, in order that the people might understand him, are those very Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases, which are still in existence, and have often been published in the Polyglott and other editions of the Hebrew Bible. This then is the case of those who argue that the Jews spoke the Chaldee language after the Babylonish captivity.

It remains to see what may be said on the opposite side of the question; and I shall endeavour to shew, on evidence which cannot be gainsaid, that the Jews as a nation did not forget the Hebrew tongue in consequence of the Babylonish Captivity, but continued to speak it down to the time of the Christian era-or, more correctly speaking, that the Hebrew, such as we now have it, was the language spoken by the Jews, not before but after the return of that people from Babylon. It is not however denied that it was also very similar to the language spoken before the captivity, but less and less similar the nearer we approach to the time of Moses and the Exodus. In short the language of the Israelites, like that of every people upon earth, was a flowing and changing stream of words and thoughts, gathering from all sides as it went, until the Egyptian which they spoke in Egypt, became, a thousand years after, the Hebrew, the last form of the language spoken by the Jews before the Romans subverted their commonwealth neve r to be restored.

1. In the first place then the use of the Hebrew tongue by Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi who lived between 606 and 456, during or after the captivity, in a continuous and contemporary series, shows, if these books were written by the supposed authors, and at the periods of time here assigned to them, that the Hebrew was then a living tongue and the purity of style in their writings is not surpassed by that of the books of Moses, Joshua or Samuel.

2. The introduction of 283 verses in the Chaldee dialect, may be otherwise explained. The single verse in Jeremiah; x, 11: is as follows:

Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.

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