are not understood by common readers to be the same name of the same person. Ai and Hai, Uz and Huz, are double forms, which if retained not only mislead, but chronicle an error.

The inconsistent treatment of forms like Jidlaph and Jimnah as compared with Iscah and Ishbak, or of Jethro and Ithran, is a matter of much less consequence; for here no confusion results. And yet whatever can be done quietly with inconspicuous names will justify itself to scholars with little disturbance to others. Linguistic or phonetic faithfulness is neither dishonor to the Word in its spirituality, nor excessive scrupulousness about its form. Yet such an endeavor should be cautious in its treatment of names conspicuous in the Biblical narratives; and all the more if from the Bible they have passed to any extent into our modern nomenclature.

There is, of course, no good reason why Ishmeelite should be conscientiously printed in Gen. xxxvii and xxxix, and in 1 Chron. ii, and the more correct Ishmaelite everywhere else; nor why Zebulunite should always be found in Num. xxvi, and Zebulonite in Judges xii.

In the New Testament there can be no advantage gained by perpetuating such double forms as Noah and Noe, Sinai and Sina, Sodom and Sodoma, Canaan and Chanaan, Jeremias and Jeremy, Phenicia and Phenice. (with the additional reason in this case that Phenice is used in Acts xxvii, 12, to translate inaccurately another name). The common reader does not need to be told in the very text of his Bible how the Greek and Hebrew forms of such names may differ. Much less does he need to be drawn aside to think of the contrast between old English forms and the Hebrew and Greek.

There may be room for

HARMONIZING OF NAMES. more divided judgment in respect to (2) changes that would harmonize the forms of proper names common to the two Testaments. These discrepancies are usually due to differences between the Hebrew forms and those of the LXX and the New Testament Greek. Our version of the New Testament generally conforms its proper names in such cases to the Greek type. This is not, however, always done; e. g., David, Reuben, Issachar, Samson, Sarah, and Sodom (except in Rom. ix, 29), are given in their familiar and not in their Greek form.

To the ends for which our version exists, what is contributed by disguising under a Grecian garb the names that have already become well known? Why introduce the patriarch Judah as Judas and Juda, or the prophet Jonah as Jonas? Abijah, Ahaz, and Asher, are well known; who are Abia, Achaz, and Aser? No help is given to "doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness," by confusing to common readers the identity of those whose words are quoted, or whose deeds and experiences are recorded. To preserve a more modern and unfamiliar form because it agrees better with the Greek, divides and weakens the unity and continuity of the impression which should be made by the two Testaments. The letter is honored at the expense of the substance. We would read still of Hagar and Boaz and Gideon, rather than of Agar and Booz and Gedeon; of Haran and Canaan and Midian, rather than of Charran and Chanaan and Madian; of Shem and Terah and Nahor, and not of Sem, Thara, and Nachor. If I read in the New Testament of Methusaleh, Jephthah, Kish, and Uzziah, instead of Mathusala, Jephthae, Cis, and Ozias, I should not be delayed in recalling what I know of them by the novelty of their

names. Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, I know; with Elias and Eliseus, Esaias, Jeremias, and Osee, I must become acquainted. The lessons to be learned from the story of Joshua and of Korah, are often put out of mind when hidden behind the names of Jesus (Acts vii, 45, and Heb. iv, 8) and Core (Jude 11). To lose from our Bibles the names, Ezekias, Jechonias, Josias, Urias, Zara, Sala, Saruch, Phalec, Phares, Roboam, Manasses, Joatham, Zabulon, Rachab, if these were replaced by the old forms that never detain us to look at them as mere forms, would bring no real loss. And when to this list we add Shechem, Zidon, and Zion, in place of Sychem, Sidon, and Sion, the names that are common to the two Testaments are (unless something has escaped notice) all brought into correspondence.

Of the far more extended list of names peculiar to one or the other Testament, this brief paper cannot assume to speak exhaustively. Our object is secured if attention has been called to some of the ends to be aimed at in a revision of the proper names of the Bible, and some of the principles that should guide the attempt.

THE USE OF ITALICS IN THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

BY THOMAS CHASE, LL.D.,

President of Haverford College, Pa.

Few need be told that the italics in the English Bible-with the notable exception of a single passage —are used to show that the words so designated do not actually occur in the original Hebrew or Greek, and have been inserted because thought necessary either for the clear or for the idiomatic expression of the sense in English. The one exception is in 1 John ii, 23, where the last half of the verse was printed in a different letter, to indicate that it was omitted by some editors and (inferior) manuscripts; its genuineness, however, has since been established beyond question.

ORIGIN OF THE USE OF ITALICS.-While our Authorized Version has made probably a fuller and more consistent use of distinctive forms to indicate supplementary words than any other, it was not the first to adopt such a device. When Origen revised the Septuagint, he collated it throughout with the Hebrew, and wherever he found any words in the Greek to which there was nothing correspondent in the original, he marked them with an obelos, to denote their absence from the latter. Jerome used the same mark, for the same purpose, in his revision of the Old Testament in Latin, from the Septuagint. Sebastian Münster, who translated the Old Testament into Latin in 1534-5, distinguished by brackets such words, supplementary to those of the original, as he thought it necessary to introduce. Arias Montanus, in his Latin version

founded on Pagninus, which was printed in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1569-72, marked all his variations from the Vulgate by italics. His course was followed by Beza, Tremellius and Junius, and other translators. The Spanish version of Cypriano de Valera (1602), and the Italian version of Diodati (1607), present supplementary words in a distinctive character.

Coverdale's Latin-English Testament (1538) shows intimations of distinguishing by brackets such words in the English as were in addition to the Latin; citing, in the epistle to the reader prefixed to the work, the authority of Jerome and Origen. In the "Great Bible" (1539) certain words are found in a type distinct from that of the main part of the volume, of which the Prologue gives the following explanation: "Whereas oftentimes ye shall find a small letter in the text, it signifieth that so much as is in the small letter doth abound, and is more in the common translation in Latin than is found either in the Hebrew or the Greek; which words and sentences we have added, not only to manifest the same unto you, but also to satisfy and content those that here before time have missed such sentences in the Bibles and New Testaments before set forth." The Geneva Bible was the first in English to use italics, which it employed on the same principles as our Authorized Version. The Bishops' Bible also distinguished supplementary words by a different character. Finally, in 1611, the first edition of our Authorized Version appeared, printed in black letter, with the supplementary words in Roman. When, in subsequent editions, Roman type was substituted for black letter, the additions were marked by italics, as they are printed at this day.