sition of error in the text, and has all the critical evidence on his side.

Nor is the translator to make his text. There are some who are capable of the double work of accurate textual criticism and translating the text obtained, but they are very few. The translator is to keep with all faithfulness to the text the best scholarship brings to him, and he will find all his energies tasked to the utmost to represent t at most exactly and acceptably in his own tongue. Where there can be no doubt of an error in the text, then the text and margin of the translation must tell the story.

HEBREW PHILOLOGY AND BIBLICAL

SCIENCE.

SHALL THE AUTHORIZED VERSION KEEP PACE WITH THE ADVANCES MADE IN HEBREW PHILOLOGY AND

BIBLICAL SCIENCE?

BY THE REV. W. HENRY GREEN, D.D.,

Professor of Oriental and Old Testament Literature in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J.

ADVANCES IN PHILOLOGY AND BIBLICAL SCIENCE.Moses strictly charged the people, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it" (Deut. iv, 2; xii, 32). And almost the last utterance of Holy Scripture-Rev. xxii, 18, 19—is a like solemn admonition, neither to add unto, nor to take away from, the words which God had revealed. If, then, it is the imperative duty of the Church to give the heavenly oracles to men, each in his own language, it is equally her duty to give them to men in a pure and unadulterated form. The millions in both hemispheres who speak the English tongue are entitled to receive the Bible in a form which represents the inspired original with the utmost accuracy that it is possible to attain. This has always been recognized in the history of our English version thus far, which, as at present authorized, is the result of several successive revisions, each being an advance upon its predecessor. When the question is raised whether the time has now arrived for a fresh revision of the English Bible, one important consideration affecting the answer to be given is to be found in the immense strides taken in Biblical scholarship since the

reign of King James. The object of this brief paper is to indicate this in a few particulars relating to the Old Testament.

HEBREW PHILOLOGY IN 1611.-Hebrew studies were then in their infancy, and the entire science of Semitic philology has been developed since. When the first edition of the Authorized Version appeared, in 1611, the elder Buxtorf had just issued his larger Hebrew grammar, in 1609, his smaller grammar having been published in 1605, and his Hebrew lexicon in 1607. Buxtorf's Hebrew Concordance first saw the light in 1632. The two Buxtorfs, father and son, though men of immense learning and indefatigable industry, represent the first stage of investigation into the structure and meaning of the Hebrew language. They brought together all that could be gathered from Rabbinical lore and from traditional interpretations. But there their work ended. Since their time the knowledge of Hebrew has been greatly increased by the comparative study of the kindred dialects, the Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic; the meanings of many of its words have been more satisfactorily established, and its various constructions have been elucidated. A long list of able lexicographers, from Castellus to Gesenius and Fuerst, and of distinguished grammarians, from Schultens to Ewald, have been pushing their researches more and more thoroughly into this venerable and sacred tongue. And commentators without end, approaching the subject from every different point of view, and of widely dissimilar opinions, have minutely discussed every word and sentence of the sacred text, and labored with various success to bring out the fullness of its meaning. The great polyglotts, particularly

that of Paris in 1645, and that of London in 1657, set the old Syriac and Arabic versions alongside of the Hebrew text, with a view to ready comparison and aid to interpretation, as Buxtorf's Rabbinical Bible, in 1618, had done with the Chaldee targums and the comments of the Rabbins.

MASORETIC TEXT.-The extensive and laborious collections of Hebrew manuscripts by Houbigant, Kennicott, and De Rossi have done little more than establish the substantial correctness of the received Masoretic text. And the long and earnest discussion relative to the Hebrew vowels has resulted in proving, if not their originality, at least their accuracy. We stand upon precisely the same text, therefore, as King James's translators used, only with a better knowledge of its value.

NEED OF IMPROVEMENT IN THE VERSION OF 1611.But the helps to a better understanding of this text have accumulated immensely. Besides the philological aids already referred to, there is the increased knowledge of sacred localities, and of the natural history and archæology of the Bible, derived from travels and explorations in the Holy Land, and from the monuments exhumed in Assyria, Egypt and elsewhere. This, of course, assists us in the comprehension of passages in which such objects are referred to, and consequently enables us to translate them with greater accuracy and precision.

GEOGRAPHICAL ERRORS.-It would be clearly impossible, in a popular article of a few columns, to give an accurate conception of what has been accomplished, in

66

these various lines of scholarship, toward the elucidation of the Old Testament, and of the extent to which this renders it possible now to improve a translation made more than two hundred and fifty years ago. Only a few illustrations can now be attempted, taken very much at random. Thus, many geographical terms require correction. For example," the river of Egypt," Numbers xxxiv, 5, and elsewhere, would naturally lead one to think of the Nile; it is not this, however, which is intended, but an insignificant stream that bounds Egypt on the east, "the brook of Egypt." The "Palestina" of Isaiah xiv, 29–31, and the " Palestine" of Joel iii, 4, is simply "Philistia," the territory occupied by the Philistines. The second river of the garden of Eden did not compass the "land of Ethiopia," but that of "Cush," settled by a people so called from their progenitor. Ezekiel xxix, 10; xxx, 6, does not speak of desolating Egypt "from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia," for Syene was itself on that border, but "from Migdol unto Syene," i.e., from the extreme north to the extreme south of Egypt, "even unto the border of Ethiopia." The "mount Ephraim" of Josh. xxiv, 33, and elsewhere, is not a single summit, but an elevated tract, "the hill country of Ephraim." "The valley" of Josh. xi, 16, should be "the lowland;""the south," Gen. xii, 9, and elsewhere, is not simply the general designation of a point of the compass, but the name of a definite tract of country, and as such should begin with a capital letter" the South." The "rough valley" of Deut. xxi, 4, should be "a valley with an everflowing stream." The "nation scattered and peeled," "whose land the rivers have spoiled," Isa. xviii, 2, should be the "nation tall and shaven," "whose land the rivers