which existed between the Jews and Samaritans in Palestine, at the time when the version of the Seventy was made, extended in the same manner to the Jews and Samaritans in Egypt. Josephus tells us, that in the time of the Ptolemies (therefore at or near the time when the Septuagint version was made), the Jews and Samaritans disputed violently before the Egyptian king; and that the Samaritans, who were worsted in the dispute, were condemned to death, Antiquities, xiii. 6. But Hassencamp and others labor to show, that many of the departures in the Septuagint from the Hebrew text, can more easily be accounted for, by the supposition that they used a manuscript written in the Samaritan character; inasmuch as the similar letters in this character might easily lead them into the mistakes which they have made in their versions, while the Hebrew square character, which has different similar letters, would not thus mislead them. It is unnecessary now to relate what former critics have replied, in answer to these and all such arguments depending on the forms of Hebrew letters. Since Hassencamp and Eichhorn defended the above position, and since Gesenius replied to them, in the essay before us, Kopp has published his Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, which contains an essay on Shemitish palæography, that bids fair to end all disputes about the ancient forms of Hebrew letters. Instead of tracing back the square character to Ezra, and to Chaldea, as nearly all the writers before him, not excepting Gesenius himself, had done, he has shown by matter of fact, by appeal to actually existing monuments, that the square character had no existence until many years, probably two or three centuries, after the Christian era commenced; and that it was, like the altered forms in most other alphabets, a gradual work of time, of calligraphy, or tachygraphy. He has exhibited the gradual formation of it, from the earliest monuments found on the bricks at Babylon, down through the Phoenician, the old Hebrew and Samaritan incriptions enstamped on the Maccabæan coins, and the older and more recent Palmyrene or Syriac characters, to the modern Hebrew. The reasoning employed by him, and the facts exhibited, are so convincing, that Gesenius himself, in the last edition of his Hebrew Grammar, has yielded the point, and concedes that the square character of the Hebrew is descended from the Palmyrene, that is, such characters as are found in the inscriptions upon some of the ruins at Palmyra.

All argument from this source, then, is fairly put out of ques

tion, by the masterly performance of Kopp, to which we have just adverted.

As the Septuagint is well known, and universally acknowledged, to be a version made by Jews, for their own use at Alexandria, there cannot be even a remote probability, that this version was made from a copy in the hands of Samaritans, whom they abhorred as the perverters of the Jewish religion.

II. The Septuagint has been interpolated from the Samaritan Codex; or the Samaritan from the Septuagint.

Not the first; for the Jews certainly never loved the Samaritans sufficiently well, to alter their Greek Scriptures from the Samaritan codex, so as to make them at the same time discrepant from their Hebrew codex.

Not the second; for the Samaritans would have been as averse to amending their own codex from a Jewish Greek translation, as the Jews would have been to translate from the Samaritan codex. Besides, the greatest part of the discrepancies between the Samaritan and the Hebrew, are of such a nature as never could have proceeded from any design; inasmuch as they make no change at all in the sense of the passages where they are found. Although, then, critics of no less name than Grotius, Usher, and Ravius, have patronised this opinion, it is too improbable to meet with approbation.

III. Another supposition, in order to account for the agreement of the Septuagint and Samaritan, and their departures from the Hebrew text, has been made by Gesenius, in the essay before us. This is, that both the Samaritan and Septuagint flowed from a common recension of the Hebrew Scriptures; one older of course than either, and differing in many places from the recension of the Masorites, now in common use.

This is certainly a very ingenious supposition; and one which we cannot well avoid admitting as quite probable. It will account for the differences, and for the agreements, of the Septuagint and Samaritan. On the supposition that two different recensions had long been in circulation among the Jews, the one of which was substantially what the Samaritan now is, with the exception of a few more recent and designed alterations of the text, and the other substantially what our Masoretic codex now is; then the Seventy, using the former, would of course accord, in a multitude of cases, with the peculiar readings of it, as they have now done. If we suppose now, that the ancient copy from which the present Samaritan is descended, and that from which the Septua

gint was translated, were of the same genus, so to speak, or of the same class, and yet were of different species under that genus, and had early been divided off, and subjected to alterations in transcribing; then we may have a plausible reason, why the Septuagint, agreeing with the Samaritan in so many places, should differ from it in so many others. Add to this, that the Samaritan and Septuagint each, in the course being of transcribed for several centuries, would receive more or less changes, that might increase the discrepancies between them.

This seems to be the only probable way, in which the actual state of the Samaritan and Septuagint texts, compared with each other, and with the Hebrew, can be critically accounted for. Admitting this, therefore, with Gesenius, to be a highly probable account of this matter, we should say further, that the admission of it requires a different view of the antiquity of the Samaritan codex, from that which he has taken. If the Pentateuch was first reduced to writing about the time of the Babylonish exile, then there remains not sufficient time for the numerous changes to have taken place, by which the various recensions in question should come to differ so much from each other. Gesenius fixes upon the time, when Manasseh the son of the high priest at Jerusalem went over to the Samaritans and built a temple on Gerizim, as the most probable date for the origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch. This time, he seems to admit, was during the life of Darius Codomannus (as Josephus states, Antiq. xi. 7, § 2, 3, 4, 6), and of Alexander the Great, that is, near three hundred and thirty years before Christ. Now the version of the Septuagint was made about two hundred and eighty years before Christ, so that only half a century, according to him, elapsed between the two events in question; a time not sufficient to produce much change in manuscripts. Even if we go back to the beginning of the exile, as the time when the Hebrew codex of the Pentateuch first originated (about five hundred and eightyeight years before Christ,) we shall find it to be only two hundred and fiftyeight years from that period down to the time when the Samaritan copy, according to Gesenius, was probably made. If we suppose, with Prideaux and Jahn, that the apostasy of Manasseh took place a century earlier (a supposition, which Jahn has nearly demonstrated to be true, Archæol. Theil ii. § 63), then only one hundred and fifty years are left for all the changes in question to have taken place, by which the Samaritan codex is made so often to differ from the Hebrew. In any way of calculation, the origin of the

Pentateuch must be placed higher than Gesenius has placed it; for the history of manuscripts will not justify the supposition, that changes so numerous, and undesigned (as he admits most of them to be), could have taken place in so short a period; or that the various recensions of the Hebrew text could have differed so much, in so short a time, by the ordinary process of copying for circulation.

But we are aware, that we are now treading on sacred ground. If our suggestions are well founded, then must it follow, that in the time of Ezra, and previously to his time, there existed recensions of the Jewish Scriptures, which differed, in some respects, very considerably from each other. From this conclusion many will spontaneously revolt. All, who have not made sacred criticism a study, will be agitated with some unnecessary and ill grounded fears. For ourselves, we are fully convinced, first, that the position can be rendered highly probable; and next, that it is no more dangerous than many other positions, which all enlightened critics of the present day admit.

It is probable; because, as we have already endeavored to show, the actual state of the Septuagint and Samaritan Codices renders it necessary to admit the position. Moreover, the Jews have, from the most ancient times, uniformly held a tradition, that Ezra with his associates, whom they style the great Synagogue, restored the law and the prophets, that is, renewed and corrected the copies of them, which had become erroneous during the captivity. Certainly there is nothing at all improbable in this tradition. The corrected copies were the originals, probably, of our present Masoretic recension, which has in every age been in the keeping and under the inspection of the most learned Jews. The Samaritan copy, and that from which the Septuagint was translated, most probably belonged to the recension in common use among the Jews, and which, having been often copied and by unskilful hands, had come to differ in very many places from the corrected recension of Ezra.

How far back some of the errors in this common recension may be dated, it is difficult to say; but in all probability more or less of them must be traced even to the very first copies taken from the original autographs. Such we know to have been the case, as is now universally admitted, in respect to the carly copies of the New Testament. Is the Old Testament under a more watchful and efficient Providence than the New? Or has it ever been so? Nothing but the belief of a miraculous aid, VOL. XXII.-NO. 51. 40

imparted to every copyist of the Hebrew Scriptures, can stand in the way of admitting the fact as we have stated it; and with such a belief, after several hundred thousand different readings have been actually selected from the manuscripts of the Old Testament, it would not be worth our while to expostulate.

In justice, however, to this subject, and to allay the fears of well meaning men, who are not experienced in matters of criticism, and therefore often exposed to be agitated with groundless fears, we must say a few words with respect to the dangers of the position that has been now discussed.

A great part of it is evidently imaginary. For out of some eight hundred thousand various readings, about seven hundred and ninetynine thousand are of just about as much importance to the sense of the Hebrew Scriptures, as the question in English orthography is, whether the word honour shall be spelled with u or without it. Of the remainder, some change the sense of particular passages or expressions; or omit particular words and phrases; or insert them; but not one doctrine of religion is changed; not one precept is taken away; not one important fact is altered, by the whole of the various readings collectively taken. This is clearly the case, in respect to the various readings which are found in the Samaritan and Septuagint, if we except the very few cases of alterations in them, which plainly are the result of design, and which belong to more modern times. There is no ground then to fear for the safety of the Scriptures, on account of any legitimate criticism to which the text may be subjected. The common law has a maxim, which is the result of common sense, and must ever be approved by it; which is, De minimis non curat lex. Another maxim too it has, equally applicable to the subject before us, namely, Qui hæret in litera, hæret in cortice. All those, who suppose that the Scripture depends on a word or a letter, so essentially that it is not Scripture if either be changed or omitted, must, if they will be consistent, abandon the whole Bible, in which many changes of this kind, it is past all question, have actually taken place. The critic wonders not that so many have taken place, but that no more have been experienced.

It is sometimes said, that he who knows nothing, fears nothing.' We believe this is occasionally true. But we apprehend the proverb would have come much nearer to a true statement of what usually happens, if it had been thus; he who knows nothing, fears every thing.' In innumerable cases do we see