and Amos, there are more than EIGHT HUNDRED traces of the existence of the Pentateuch in its present form.* One cannot read even four or five chapters of these prophets, with any degree of attention, without being struck with the great number of allusions to the facts of the Pentateuch. This would often involve, of course, the quotation of the precise language employed in describing those events. There is no fact exactly parallel to this in the whole circle of literature. Luther's German version of the Bible and King James's English version have done much to fix the character of the German and English languages. Not a little of the best literature of the two nations is deeply tinctured with the spirit of these translations, where the exact style and language are not copied. Yet there are many circumstances that counteract this influence, which did not exist in respect to the Pentateuch. They are regarded as mere versions, no one feeling for them the reverence which is entertained for the original. They are not the fountain of civil and national law, as the Pentateuch was to the Jews. The two versions principally affect the religious and devotional literature. The case most analogous to the Pentateuch is the Koran. Its effect on Arabic literature, as will be mentioned below, has been great for many centuries. Yet, perhaps, it has never had that marked and all-pervading influence which the five books of Moses have exerted on Hebrew literature.

3. The unchangeable character of Hebrew literature would be naturally inferred from the character of the people and the circumstances in which they were placed.

They lived in the midst of nations who spoke the same language, or dialects closely cognate. Their own language was indigenous in Canaan. Their numerous wars were almost exclusively carried on against tribes who used the same or related languages. Of course there would be no room for any intermixtures of foreign speech from this source.

The Hebrews were strictly a religious people, connected together by the strongest ties, forbidden to engage in foreign commerce, taught to look upon the religious usages and many of the common customs of other nations with abhorrence, never inclined to travel abroad, and utterly indisposed, often in contravention to the spirit of the Mosaic law, to admit foreigners into their society. Up to the time of David, they had but little access to the Mediterranean Sea, the coast being lined by their inveterate enemies, the Philistines. They had but one large city. Nearly all the literature originated in Jerusalem. Almost all the writers, of whom mention is made, seem to have lived in the metropolis. There was no rival city, no Italian or Asiatic colony, to use and glory in a different dia

* See Tuch, Kommentar über die Genesis, Vorrede, p. 98.

lect from that of the proud Athenian city. All the tribes. were, in an important sense, residents of Jerusalem. Three times in a year, and for days together, a great proportion of the male population mingled together in the most unreserved intercourse, a circumstance which would strongly tend to preserve the unity and purity of the language. There were scarcely any arts or sciences to corrupt with their nomenclature the old forms of the language. No system of philosophy ever crept into the country. None could have been introduced without injuring the religious spirit of the people. With the exception of the priests and Levites, the nation were almost wholly employed in the agricultural or pastoral life,—a condition which, perhaps, least of all, admits of changes in idioms or in the forms of words.

We may add to these considerations, the unchangeableness which has always characterised oriental life throughout. The same permanence which attaches to manners and customs would of course extend, more or less, to the forms of speech. Progress is the law in the West, stability in the East. The occidental languages are subject to the ceaseless change which characterises all other things. * The oriental delights to rehearse the same allegories and apothegms, expressed in the same terms, which gratified his earliest progenitors.

The structure itself of the Semitic dialects would lead us to the same general conclusion. This is manifest, e. g., in the law of triliterals, in the relation of compound nouns and derivatives to their roots, and in the perfect regularity with which the forms of the verb are developed.

4. We have, however, in direct opposition to the objection advanced, the perfect analogy of other Semitic languages. The Syriac and Arabic underwent, for many centuries, comparatively little change. The oldest remains of the Syrian, the Peshito version of the New Testament, which was prepared in the second century, agrees throughout, in all essential things, with the Syriac of Bar Hebraeus, who lived in the thirteenth century, notwithstanding the tendency of the latter, in its language and syntactical forms, to the Arabic. "That no more changes happened to the Syriac," says Hoffmann, † "in this long interval of time, is not strange; for as manners, customs, usages, &c., are altered less among orientals than Europeans, so it is with a language; if it makes any progress, it is still more likely to remain long stationary, than to advance. As the Koran has imposed a restricted and fixed character on the

*This is entirely consistent with the position of the degeneracy of the orientals in knowledge and virtue. Manners, customs, languages, might be permanent, while acquaintance with the character of God and the perception of human duty were becoming obscure.

Syriac Grammar, p. 15.

Arabic language, so the most ancient monument of Syriac letters-the version of the sacred books-has effected the same in the Syriac language." It should also be recollected, that this permanence in the language was maintained while the Syrians were under subjection to a foreign power. Of course, the language was more liable to corruption than could have been the case with the Hebrew before the Babylonish captivity. A still stronger proof may be drawn from the Arabic. Professor Kosegarten of Greifswald, one of the most distinguished living orientalists, in a review of Eichhorn's Introduction to the Old Testament, in the Jena Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, July 1825, has shown, by a clear and fundamental examination, that the fact of the stability, or continued unchanging character of the Arabic language, can be established by the most unquestionable proofs from the language itself, not only during a period of six hundred years but of a thousand years, yea, for fifteen hundred years. The grammatical structure of the Arabic language remains the same in all the writers which fall within these three widely separated periods. Declensions, conjugations, constructions, are the same. The smaller, incidental deviations are no more considerable, by any means, than the difference which appears between the language of the Pentateuch and that of the older Hebrew prophets. No greater difference is to be noted, in a lexical respect, in these Arabic writers, than that which occurs between the Pentateuch, the books of Samuel and Isaiah. We may hence conclude, that in the Arabic language, during the fifteen hundred years in which we can examine its form, no such changes at all have taken place as appear in the German dialects and in those derived from the Latin in the course of a few centuries, and which have happened to the Greek language down to its present form in modern Greek. Consequently, the Mosaic writings might have been separated from some other books of the Old Testament by an interval of a thousand years, and at the same time exhibit but few variations in language and idiom.

We are happy to subjoin in further corroboration of the views here presented, some more exact statements in regard to the history of the Arabic, from a friend who has long made that language his particular study :—

"You are aware that the oldest specimens of Arabic literature which we possess, are not more ancient than the century before Mahomet. These exhibit a highly cultivated language; the syntax is regular, the inflections are richly varied, and the vocabulary is abundant; they also show a refined musical art. It is evident that this perfection can have been attained only by degrees; it is probably to be ascribed to the * Hartmann's Forschungen, p. 649.

rival efforts of lyric bards of different Arab tribes. One result of these poetic efforts seems to have been to make the peculiar expressions of each tribe a part of the authorised language of the other; a common language of literature being thus, to some extent, created, while at the same time dialectical differences distinguished the ordinary spoken language of the tribes. It thus appears that the Arabic language, prior to Mahomet's time, was already tending to a fixed form for use in literary productions. The Koran, as you well know, was finally written out by order of the Khalif Öthman in the dialect of the Koreishites, who were the dominant tribe in Mahomet's day, and that to which he himself belonged; their dialect also had, it is probable, become the literary standard, by appropriating to itself a larger measure than other tribes of that culture which poetic rivalry put within the reach of all. But it is quite plain that the promulgation of the Koran rather depressed and restricted literary effort among the Arabs. In style, it is far from being as rich and varied as the productions of the earlier poets; and yet it would have been presumption to think of surpassing it in language or manner, since the superexcellence of its composition was claimed by Mahomet as an argument for its inspiration. Now came in, also, the influence of the grammarians, who, though they refer to the earlier poets, yet prove every thing by the Koran; all sorts of pretences are resorted to by them to make out, in every case, that the language of their Sacred Book is without fault. To this is to be added, that all the learning of the Arabs is based in some respects upon the Koran; this book became the First Class Book, so to speak, in all schools. The Arab mind having moved in a sphere so circumscribed, since the promulgation of the Koran, ever turning to that as in prayer the Mahometan ever faces the Kebla, it is true that the written Arabic has been very little changed from that time to this. Even the preservation of the ancient pronunciation has been provided for in the reading of the Koran, by the perpetuation of the rules of early Koran-readers, in a special department of the schools. There would seem to be a strong presumption, that, whenever a body of sacred literature exists, which has been transmitted down from a turning period in the progress of a nation's civilization, and a class of men devoted to its study, the literary language will not deviate from the model of the sacred book. This might be illustrated by the case of the Sanscrit, which, until within a few years, was even spoken by the Brahmins in its classic form; and which, as written, has changed very little, except in certain works where caprice seems to have driven the fancy mad since its classic age. May it not also be true, that the separation of a written from a

spoken language favours the preservation generally of the ancient purity of the former?

"The ordinary language of social intercourse with the Arabs must have been affected already as soon as it came to be used by foreign nations, upon whom it was forced, or who adopted it with the religion of the Prophet; though in the palmy days of Islamism the Moslem schools would tend to check this foreign influence. But it received still greater modifications in consequence of the less general diffusion of instruction, and the diminished stimulus to learning, and the irruptions of barbarians into Mahometan countries after the decline of the Khalifate. The peculiarities of the spoken Arabic consist chiefly in the intermixture of foreign words, and in abbreviations of pronunciation, by which some of the more delicate distinctions of grammatical form in the written Arabic are lost. Yet I suppose it to be a fact that the Koran is equally intelligible to all who speak the Arabic."

It may be added, that the circumstances of the Syrians and Arabians were very different from those of the Hebrews. The former passed through many stages of cultivation. They appropriated to themselves Greek science, and were compelled to borrow many scientific terms, and thus endanger the purity of their language. The Arabians, too, entered on a career of conquest, subjugating the nations from Spain almost to China. How different was the condition of the Hebrews from the days of Joshua to Josiah, and how almost infinitely less exposed to change was the Hebrew language than its sister dialect!

ART. IV. God in Christ: Three Discourses delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover; with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. By HORACE BUSHNELL. Hartford: Brown and Parsons. 1849. Pp. 356.

[Dr BUSHNELL is a Congregationalist minister in Connecticut, of distinguished ability, and (hitherto) of considerable influence. His "Three Discourses" have excited no small attention in America, and are at present the source of much trouble to the New England Churches.]

The doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, are the common property of Christians. They belong to no sect and to no country. Any assault upon them, any explanation or defence of them, is matter of general interest. These doctrines are discussed in the volume now before us. It is addressed, therefore, to the whole Christian public, and not exclusively to New England. On this account we are disposed