that the Canaanitish nations, among whom the Israelites settled, and whose language they gradually learnt in the place of the Egyptian language which they gradually forgot, worshipped a variety of gods, whom they expressed collectively under the name of Elohim 'the gods.' According to this view, the original documents of the early part of the Hebrew Scriptures contained the expression Jehovah Elohim "the Gods Jehovah," which was accurately copied by the later compiler, though it was sometimes, and particularly in more modern times, modified into the singular number, which was far more consistent with the peculiar monotheism of the Israelites.

Thus then the occurrence of the name of God in the singular number, at Deut. xxxii, 15. 17, and elsewhere, may be, as Gesenius supposes, a Chaldaism, introduced probably by the compiler. But Dr Lee himself shews that it is in many cases difficult to say whether the expression is a Chaldaism or a genuine Hebraism. In his Hebrew Grammar, art. 223, 6, [page 264 of the edition, 1827] he says of the expressions he hath called thee Isaiah, liv, 6, and thy being created, Ezek. xxviii, 15, “which are generally thought to be Chaldaisms." In this case however, the pauseaccent will be sufficient to account for the anomaly."

It is difficult, it would seem, to distinguish the Chaldee and Hebrew dialects. They are so similar that the Hebrew grammar, by the addition of a a few pages, becomes adapted to the Chaldee also, and one Dictionary does for both. Vitringa passes the same judgment in his OBSERV. SAC. lib. i, cap. 4 :

"Sane Chaldæam aut Syriacam linguam etiam nunc experimur omnium minime ab Hebræa lingua differre, ita ut dialectus potius et varia eloquutio, quam lingua ab Hebræa diversa, habenda sit.”

In truth we even now find that of all languages the Chaldee or Syrian differs the least from the Hebrew, so that it is rather to be esteemed a dialect or varied pronunciation than a different language.

This will also account for the remarkable fact that the language in which the Old Testament is written, and which we term Hebrew, is actually termed Chaldee by Philo Judæus, lib. II, de vita Mosis, vol. ii, pag. 138 edit. Lond. 1742.

Τὸ παλαιὸν ἐγράφησαν οἱ νόμοι γλώσσῃ Χαλδαϊκῇ, καὶ μέχρι πολλοῦ διέμειναν ἐν ὁμοίῳ, τὴν διάλεκτον οὐ μεταβάλλοντες, ἕως μήπω τὸ κάλλος εἰς τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ἀνέφηναν αὐτῶν.

The Laws were written formerly in the Chaldee tongue, and remained for a long time in the same state, not changing the dialect, so long as they did not reveal their beauty to other nations.

The inference which I would draw from these observations is this that the common Hebrew is the language spoken by the Israelites between the Captivity and the Christian era that we know nothing of the earlier dialect, because no writings, in which it occurs, have come down to us in their original state that the Chaldee dialect, as it is called, is no more than a modified form of the Hebrew, existing, first, concurrently with it, and afterwords, when the Jewish state was broken up by the Romans, superseding altogether the more pure Hebrew and like all other human dialects, perishing in due course of time, like the Hebrew which it had superseded.

CHAPTER. 31.

ALPHABET OF CADMUS-PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF LETTERS

CONCLUSION.

If it should then appear certain that the Egyptians did not possess an alphabetic mode of writing when the Israelites escaped from captivity, it is an obvious inference that the fugitives, who had all been born and bred in Egypt, could not convey with them into the desert the knowledge of an art, which was still, for many centuries, unknown in the country where they had so long sojourned. The only writing with which even Moses himself was at this time acquainted, was the hieroglyphical, such as prevailed in Egypt. But between the hieroglophical style of writing and the Hebrew mode, found in the books ascribed to Moses and other authors of the Old Testament, there is a wide interval, which hardly could have been passed, by either a nation or an individual, during the lifetime of one man. There is in fact, as we have seen in chapter 29, an intermediate stage-the symbolic mode, as still practised in China-between the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Hebrew consonants. Here then is the most important question connected with our subject. Where and by what means did the Hebrews acquire the art of writing, as exemplified by the particular letters or characters in which the books of Moses and their other Scriptures are composed? To answer this question we must institude an analysis into the Hebrew alphabet, and compare it with other ancient alphabets, and especially the Grecian, to which it bears a remarkable likeness: we must also examine the Grecian writers, through whom almost all our knowledge of the ancient world is desired, and see if any clue can be obtained from their works to

Either process

explain the obscure subject now before us. is sufficient to form the subject of a separate work, and it is the author's earnest hope that he may have health and strength hereafter to pursue minutely the subject which he is compelled at present to dismiss with a hasty notice.

The common letters of the alphabet are said to have been introduced into Greece by Cadmus, as some say about 1300, but according to Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Fynes Clinton, not more than 900 years before the Christian era.

That letters were at that time unknown to every other European nation, is a point which has always been considered as certain, until the opposite opinion was taken up by the Celtic antiquaries, some of whom advanced the plausible conjecture that the Phoenicians, with their merchandize, may have introduced their letters also into Ireland and the other north-western countries of Europe to which they traded. Other Celtic scholars have contended for the antiquity of the northern Runic characters; others again for an early Pelasgic alphabet in Greece; but neither of these systems has yet acquired so much stability as to supersede and extinguish the current opinion that Greece first, and through her the rest of Europe owe letters, as well as civilization generally, to Phoenicia. We need not now enquire from what other, more easterly, people the Phoenicians themselves acquired their alphabet; for it is sufficient to shew that letters were transmitted by them to Greece, 200, if not 500,* years after the time of Moses. Pursuing the train of Grecian history downwards from the time of Cadmus, we find that even then four hundred years passed away before Homer lived and composed his poems on the Trojan war. It is also said that these poems were preserved by oral tradition alone

*

According as an earlier or later date is assigued to Cadmus.

two hundred years longer, until Pisistratus, or as some say Solon, and others Lycurgus, collected them in writing and introduced them into Greece. Whatever may be the age at which Homer lived, and composed those celebrated poems, it is admitted by all that they did not come to the knowledge of the Greeks until about the year 600 before Christ, and were not, in fact, until that time, reduced into the form of separate and perfect poems.

It is well known that the alphabet of Cadmus consisted of sixteen or seventeen letters only: but the Hebrew alphabet has two and twenty. This seems to shew that the alphabet of Cadmus is the more ancient of the two. Languages become more varied, and their alphabets more extensive, as time advances. The English language contained 24 letters only until a very recent period, when I and J, U and V, from having been originally identical, have become distinct letters. If Cadmus If Cadmus migrated from Palestine, as is said, so long after the time of Moses, why did he take only 16 or 17 letters with him, and not all the 22 that had been so long used, according to received opinions, in the country which he left behind him? The natural inference from this fact is that the 22 Hebrew

*

* I am not ignorant that opinions are divided concerning the age of Cadmus : some chronologers make him contemporary or almost contemporary with Moses, others make him to have lived more than 200 years later. I prefer the latter opinion, on the general principle of not taking every thing for truth which is told us by historians, for the purpose of exalting the antiquity of their nation. No books existed in Greece until many hundred years after the time of Cadmus, and I look with extreme suspicion on all narratives, handed down by tradition before books were invented. Mr Fynes Clinton, in his Fasti Hellenici, vol. i, page 86, observes; "We cannot assign more than a century to the period which elapsed from the coming of Cadmus to the death of Eteocles; which will place Cadmus at about 130 years before the fall of Troy." But the war of Troy is placed by the common chronology in 1180, and by Sir Isaac Newton as late as 900 before Christ. This calculation makes the age of Cadmus vary from B. C. 1310 down to B. C. 1030.---consequently from two to five hundred years after the time of Moses.