! appears in the later books of the Old Testament, which belong to the post-exile times; where the so-called scriptio plena has always been recognised as a feature distinguishing those books from the more ancient ones. The same expedient is found in a much greater degree in the Samaritan Pentateuch, as well as in the Talmudic and Rabbinic dialect.1 At the time when the Septuagint version was made, the Hebrew Vocalisation had not attained to its latest form; and, therefore it deviates in many instances from the present. In the TarIn the Talmud gums it appears much more fixed and definite. and Jerome it is still more settled, agreeing in the main with what it became afterwards. But neither the Talmud nor Jerome recognise the vowel-points. They were of later origin, as has been proved by Hupfeld. Hence they must be put later than the sixth century of the Christian era. The ambiguity arising from the want of vowel-signs must have been acceptable to the Talmudists. So far from their exhibiting any feeling of the want of them, their principle that the traditional word must not be written repressed such feeling; for the appending of vowel-points would have prevented very many of those plays on terms and applications to didactic purposes founded on an ambiguous because unpointed text, in which they loved to indulge. The Talmudic period must have elapsed and a new one of literary activity commenced, before the vowel-point system began. This is confirmed by the fact that, in MSS. of the law intended for synagogue use, the vowel-points are not put, because the form of such MSS. is accurately prescribed in the Talmud, in contrast with the usage of the Syrians and Arabians who furnish their copies with a complete vocalisation and interpunction, contenting themselves with unvowelled ones for common use. After the completion of the Talmud, the Jews oppressed and scattered, felt the necessity of fixing their oral traditions by writing, so that they might not be lost. This led to the development of the present Masoretic system-a complicated and artificial apparatuswhich could not have proceeded from one person, or have been the work of a single century. It was made by successive steps. This indeed cannot be proved, yet it has been rendered highly probable from various circumstances. The historical relations of the Jews of that time to the Syrians and Arabians, a philological comparison of the vowel-systems belonging to the latter with the Masoretic one, and other historical circumstances combine to show that it was unfolded gradually and successively from simpler rudiments. In the seventh century, the Syrians and Arabians had a vowel-designation, which, setting out with simple diacritic signs and points, was developed by degrees into a complete phonetic representation of vowelsounds. The vocalisation-system, already existing among the Syrians and Arabians, gave rise to the Masoretic and furnished the basis of it. To what minuteness these learned Jews who were employed in fixing the Masorah in writing carried out the vowel-system, is apparent to 1 Sec Hupfeld, Grammatik, p. 54. et seq. all. 1 The finest and most delicate distinctions of sound were intended to be preserved by it. The Syro-Arabian influence which originated and affected the Masoretic vowel-system has been minutely investigated and maintained by Hupfeld. But Ewald denies the Arabian influence', attributing the vocalisation merely to a Syrian source. It is hard however to resist the proofs of Arabian origin and influence. Jewish grammarians reduce all the vowels to three fundamental ones; and the Arabic names of them in the book Kosri coincide with the Hebrew vowels. We may place the development of the vowel-system from the seventh till the tenth centuries, at Tiberias, where there was a famous Jewish academy. At the beginning of the eleventh century, R. Juda Chiug mentions all the seven vowels; and the Spanish Rabbins of the eleventh and twelfth centuries know nothing of their modern origin. A MS. at Odessa, examined and described by Pinner, reveals the existence of another vowel-system, different from the Masoretic one. In it the points, with one exception, are all above the letters, and their forms are unlike those of the usual vowels. It represents the vocalisation developed by the Jews in Babylon; and has therefore been called by Ewald the Assyrian-Hebrew. But Roediger, with more propriety, calls it Persian-Jewish. Yet though differing from the Palestinian, it may be traced back to the same simple basis. Both were evolved out of the same rudiments, as is thought by Ewald, to whose essay, as well as to that of Roediger, we refer for a particular account of these strange vowels. Hupfeld thinks otherwise. 3 The value of the Masoretic vowel-system, awkward and complicated as it is, cannot be lightly estimated. It is indeed the representation of a tradition, but of the best and oldest tradition we can obtain. The great Hebrew vowel controversy, which formerly excited such interest among Biblical scholars, is now matter of history. We can only refer to it in the briefest terms. The different critics who took part in it may be thus arranged: 1. The Buxtorfs, father and son, following most Rabbins of the middle-age period, with Loescher and almost all orthodox theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, contended for the originality or divine origin of the points. 2. Their late origin was intimated by Abenezra, expressly asserted by Elias Levita, and became current among the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and others. Buxtorf, in his Tiberias, attempted a refutation of this view. It was defended by Cappellus in his celebrated work Arcanum Punctationis Revelatum (1624), which was answered by Buxtorf junior. Cappellus and John Morin replied. 3. An intermediate view was adopted by others. They assumed the existence of an older and simpler vowel-system, consisting either 1 Beleuchtung, u. s. w., p. 99. et seqq. 2 Lehrbuch der Hebräischen Sprache, p. 115. 3 See the Hallisch. Allgem. Lit. Zeit. Aug. 1848, No. 169. ↑ Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft for 1848, p. 160. et seqq, of three primitive vowels or of diacritic points. The oldest advocates of this hypothesis were Rivetus and Hottinger. It also was held by many able scholars of a more recent age, such as J. D. Michaelis, Eichhorn, Jahn, Bertholdt.1 CHAP. V. HEBREW ACCENTS. THE Masoretic accentuation-system is closely connected with the vowels. The origin of both must have been contemporaneous. Like the vowel-system, the accentuation cannot be the work of one man or one century. It has been gradually evolved out of simple elements to its present state of minute and complicated signs. It is highly probable that the simpler Syriac accentuation furnished a starting-point for its further development and extension. The Hebrew accents are of a rhythmical nature. They are the exponents of rhythmical relations in their manifold gradations. The rhythmical swell of the voice, its rising and sinking, is necessarily regulated by the sense, while it is outwardly expressed in the alternation of the tones with relation to height, and the intensity of the tone itself or the accent. Hence the pauses or members of this movement must be at once members of the sense and of the tone. They are both logical and musical, i. e., they point out the relations existing between one word with another, and also one sentence with another ; while they serve as musical notes to regulate the cantillation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the former view they bear an analogy to the marks of punctuation employed by occidentals. In the latter they bear an analogy to musical notation. Thus they are the exponents both of logical or grammatical, and musical relations. They express a regulated, solemn kind of declamation, which was regarded by the Hebrews as suited to the sacred Scriptures, not the pronunciation or intonations of common discourse. This view of the nature and uses of the accents is confirmed by the twofold name appropriated to them, D'py, tastes, with obvious reference to their hermeneutical significance as punctuation marks; and ni, music-notes.2 Like the vowel-points, the accents also furnished ground for controversy in former times. The prevailing view in the seventeenth century was, that their design was musical. But after the middle of that century, another opinion began to be advanced, viz., that they were intended to point out the degree of connection existing between the different members of a sentence. They were thus supposed to have a logical or grammatical significance. When either of these views was held up as the proper, original design of the accents, objections could not fail to be adduced against it. The true theory is that which unites both. In assigning to them a 1 See Gesenius, Geschichte, der Heb. u. s. w., p. 182. et seqq. Hävernick, Einleit., i. 1. p. 304. et seqq. Keil's Einleit., §§ 168, 169., and Davidson's Bib. Crit., vol. i. chap. iv. * See Hupfeld, Grammatik, p. 115. et seqq. rhythmical import, both are necessarily included. The whole system of accentuation was first scientifically unfolded and explained by Ewald and Hupfeld, each after his own manner. Before they wrote, discussions were little less than empirical.' Instead of speaking now of the cognate languages separately, which should be done perhaps because of their relation to the Hebrew, we shall introduce a very brief notice of them into the following chapter where they will naturally belong. CHAP. VI. MEANS BY WHICH A KNOWLEDGE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE MAY BE ACQUIRED. THERE are various sources whence a fundamental knowledge of Hebrew may be obtained. A language which has been dead for more than two thousand years, and is preserved but imperfectly in the limited remains of Old Testament literature, needs a variety of helps towards its thorough elucidation. Happily these are not scanty or insufficient, when all the circumstances of the case are fairly considered. The means of obtaining a sure acquaintance with Hebrew are of three kinds, viz., historical, philological, and philosophical. 1. Under the historical may be placed, Jewish tradition. This is preserved in the writings of the Rabbins, especially those of the Jewish grammarians, lexicographers, and commentators of the middle ages, such as R. Saadias Gaon, R. Juda ben Karish, R. Menahem ben Saruk, R. Salomon Parchon, R. Juda Chiug, R. Jona or Abulwalid, R. Salomon Jarchi, David Kimchi, R. ben Moses or Ephodaeus, Aben Ezra, Tanchum of Jerusalem. The majority of these wrote in the Arabic language, and their works are for the most part unprinted. Jewish tradition is also preserved in the different ancient versions of the Old Testament, especially the Chaldee Paraphrases, the Alexandrine version, the Syriac Peshito, the Vulgate of Jerome, and the Arabic of R. Saadias Gaon. The value of these depends in part on their antiquity and their literality. They often lead to the determination of the usage of a particular word where other helps fail; but they must be used with discrimination, since the Jews mixed up their own conjectures with the traditional, and did not always understand the original text, or render it faithfully into other languages.2 2. To the philological means belong a comparison of the individual phenomena of the language, which mutually supply and illustrate one 1 See Hupfeld, Grammatik, p. 115. et seqq. Ewald, Lehrbuch, p. 132. et seqq. 2 See Gesenius, on the sources of Hebrew Philology and Lexicography, translated in the American Biblical Repository for January 1833, article I. De Wette's Einleitung, part i. §§ 35, 36, sixth edition; and Keil's Einleit., p. 365. et seqq. another. Thus, in a grammatical view, those existing forms should be searched out which contain in them the traces of an older formation, and so furnish an index to the origin of the present forms, viz. the anomalous forms, which generally belong to the oldest those c'thibs or textual readings generally changed for ordinary forms by the Masoretes; proper names, in which several things that would be otherwise lost may be discovered; and a comparison of older and younger forms in the different parts of the Old Testament. In a lexical respect, the context and parallel places should be compared, as serving to show that the signification of a word may be discovered from the connection and can be confirmed by parallels; besides etymology, which may deduce the signification of derivatives from still existing roots. To this head also belongs a comparison of other Shemitic dialects, a procedure quite necessary not only for the purpose of explaining words, but also for penetrating into the entire grammatical structure of the Hebrew language. By such comparison, lost roots may be restored; significations uncertain, because they are of rare occurrence in Hebrew, and analogies explanatory of the usus loquendi, may be ascertained. But here the comparison should not be partial. It ought not to be confined to one dialect only but extended alike to all, and that, not in a superficial way, but fundamentally, so as to comprehend the internal structure and peculiar characteristics of each. A brief historical notice of these kindred dialects is now subjoined. The principal of them are the Aramæan and Arabic, with their respective secondary branches. The Aramæan language was anciently vernacular in the extensive region included under Aram, i. e. Syria and Mesopotamia. No remains of it, as spoken by the people themselves, now exist. Some inscriptions in the dialect of Palmyra, belonging to the first three centuries of the Christian era, have been found; but they throw little light on the old Aramæan. From the Aramæan come the Chaldee and Syriac. These two have been usually distinguished from one another, both dialectically and geographically. The one is called East Aramaan, the other West Aramaan, because the Chaldee was supposed to be spoken in Babylonia and Chaldea, the Syriac in Syria and northern Mesopotamia. But the distinction has been denied by some cminent scholars. The Chaldee and Babylonian we know only from Jewish memorials. They are wholly of Palestinian origin. It is also asserted that the so-called Chaldee wants the peculiar impress of a dialect. Its derivations from the Syriac are either imaginary, such as the pronunciation of the vowels, or mere Hebraisms. Hence it has been inferred that the two are identical, without denying however the early existence of a proper AramæanBabylonian dialect. What is asserted is, that we have no historical proof of the existence of the two dialects Chaldee and Syriac. It is said that after the Hebrew ceased to be vernacular, we know of the existence of but one language current from the Mediterranean Sea to the river Tigris, whose development and cultivation took place chiefly at Edessa and Nisibis, and that no dialects can be traced in it. When it passed over to the Jews, it was mixed with Hebrew. |