find a sensible adulteration of the purity of the tongue. When in the Babylonish conquest the national independence was overthrown, the prevailing opinion has been, that, during the exile, the national speech was lost; and that the families who returned brought with them only the Chaldee. But this can by no means be safely inferred from such a text as that in the eighth chapter, eighth verse, of Nehemiah; it is not, in itself, a probable thing, so short was the term of absence; and Malachi, who of course must have desired to be understood by those whom he reproved, and who reproved people as well as priests, wrote in Hebrew more than a hundred years later. The strong

Latin lines which follow, than as a free translation differs from its original. I give the first three lines for a specimen,

Reading of the editions.

Nythalonim uvalonuth si corathisima consith
Chim lach chunyth mumys tyalmictibari mischi
Lipho canet hyth bynithii ad ædin binuthii.

Bochart's restoration.

Na eth elionim veelionoth sechorath yismecun zoth
Chi melachai nitthemu; matslia middabarehem iski.
Liphurcanath eth beni eth jad adi ubenothai.

Hebrew-Syriac expressed by the latter.

The same literally rendered into Latin.

Rogo Deos et Deas qui hanc regionem tuentur,

Ut consilia mea compleantur, prosperum sit ex ductu eorum negotium

meum.

Ad liberationem filii mei a manu prædonis, et filiarum mearum.

Corresponding Latin lines in Plautus.

"Deos deasque veneror, qui hanc urbem colunt,

Ut, quod de meâ re huc veni, ritè venerim ;

Measque ut gnatas, et mei fratris filium,
Reperire me sîritis."

probability I conceive to be, that the returning exiles brought back both their own ancient language, and that of their conquerors among whom they had been sojourning; and that it was only by degrees, that the latter supplanted the former, both continuing for a time in use together, in a way of which examples exist in portions of this country, inhabited by other than English descendants. And I apprehend that the same is to be said concerning the introduction of the square Chaldee characters, in the writing of Hebrew, instead of the ancient letter; that is, if the opinion be true, generally held by the learned, but which it is not to my purpose to discuss, that what we now call the Samaritan alphabet, from its being used in the Samaritan writings, and in the Samaritan copy of the Hebrew Pentateuch, was, before the captivity, the alphabet of the Jews.

After the Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language, surviving only as the language of the Jewish schools, it became greatly corrupted by mixture with the Chaldee and Syriac, and by a large infusion of words from the Greek, the Latin, and other sources. In this state, exhibited to us in the ancient collections called the Talmuds, it goes by the name of the Talmudical dialect. The same process, continued further in later ages, through contributions from various modern tongues, has produced a language, used by the recent Jewish. writers, and called, from this cause, the Rabbinical. In a loose way of description, it might be said to bear a relation to the Hebrew, like that which the Romaic bears to the Greek, or the Italian to the Latin. Though called by one name, and having everywhere an essential uniformity, yet, as might be expected from the manner of its creation, it exhibits varieties, as employed in different parts of the world, even at the same period.

A question, once agitated with great warmth, is, whether the vowel points, as we now have them from the Jews, made part of the original written language. The question is evidently of material importance; since, if the vowels were not affixed by the authors, but were the addition of a much later age, they are of no further authority, than as they express the sense put upon words by persons skilled in the language, and in pos, session of a traditional interpretation. And, in this case, they may now be rejected by a critic, as reasons of interpretation may dictate, and others be substituted in their place, attaching a different meaning to words.*

By the Buxtorfs, father and son, and their successors, champions of the antiquity of the vowel punctuation, it was urged, that vowels, as much as consonants, are essential parts of words; that to omit the writing of them would be to make written language ambiguous and unintelligible; that, particularly after the Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language, it could not have been learned in books, not expressing the vowel sounds; and that, in fact, in the Jewish books "Bahir" and "Zohar," written both about the time of our Saviour, the vowel points are made the subject of express and frequent comment. On the other hand, by Capellus and others, it was maintained, 1. that the letters called the matres lectionis, viz. λ, 1, 1, ', V, were the vowels of the Hebrew, a theory, however, which can by no means be made out, and which has since been modified or relinquished; 2. that, for readers well acquainted with a language, writing which presented only the conso

* It is the vowel punctuation alone, which marks, for instance, the difference of signification between the following words; 7, a word; 7, a pestilence; 7, a pasture; 727, he spoke; 27, speaking; 12, spoken;, to speak; and six other forms of the verb, each with its appropriate meaning.

nants might be sufficient, the connexion of the passage naturally dictating to them the sense to be put upon words, and of course the vowels to be supplied in their pronunciation;* 3. that the supposition of points, as making part of the original written Hebrew, contradicts the analogy of the cognate languages, and of the Samaritan copy of the Hebrew Pentateuch; 4. that the manuscripts of scripture, used in the synagogues, are to this day destitute of a punctuation; 5. that, in Jewish observations upon various readings, we find none relating to the vowel points, though these could not have failed to be a copious source of such, had they been originally written; 6. that the Cabbalists never deduce their mysteries and allegories from the points, but always from the consonants alone; 7. that the authors of ancient versions certainly read the text, in numerous instances, in a manner different from what is indicated by the present points; 8. that no hint of their existence is given by the early Christian critics, (Origen and Jerome, for example,) though the latter often speaks of Hebrew words being differently pronounced by different readers; and, 9. that the books "Bahir" and "Zohar," instead of being contemporary with our Saviour, are not a thousand years old; a point which seems to be well established from internal evidence, and from the fact that they are never quoted by other writers, till a time far within this period.

This is confirmed by the actual practice of persons acquainted with Hebrew, when they read from an unpointed copy, and by every instance we may have known of reading, in any language, from a page full of abbreviations. Indeed, the system of vowel notation is, in no language, any thing more than a partial relief from the embarrassment supposed; our five English vowel characters, for instance, standing for no less, according to Walker's theory, than fifteen sounds, an enumeration which many would esteem altogether incomplete.

These reasons, and others like, have led to a general acquiescence of the learned, in the opinion, that the vowel punctuation, as we have it in our Hebrew, was elaborated in the Jewish schools, at some time between the fifth and tenth centuries of our era. It was probably not an invention completed at once, but grew up, by degrees, from a simple notation to its present complexity and fulness. And this conclusion leaves the critic at liberty to propose expositions of a sentence, such as the present punctuation would not admit. It is a liberty, however, which he should not so use, as if no respect, or little, was due to that reading of the Hebrew, which the points preserve. Whether or not the elements of the apparatus were drawn from a remote antiquity, which used a smaller number of points, and those perhaps only affixed at first to the more equivocal words (as is seen in some Arabic printing), it seems impossible to doubt that the Masoretic* invention perpetuates for us the reading, which, at the time of the invention, was received, by force of ancient tradition from the fathers, among the people by whom the writings were preserved, venerated, and studied. As such, they are, in the lowest estimate, an exceedingly valuable ancient commentary. They seem to be entitled even to be regarded as primâ facie evidence how a passage should be read, though reason may often appear, in a given case, for setting their evidence aside.t

Learners of the Hebrew language are very properly

Masora means tradition, from p, (Chaldee,) he offered or committed. The Masorites are the line of critics who have bequeathed to us these traditions. There will be occasion to treat at some length of their extraordinary labors, in the sequel.

"Jus fas non est, temerè projicere atque negligere ista interpretum publica ministeria; sed nec Judaico stupore et vanâ religione nostros implere decet." Semleri Apparatus ad Lib. V. T. Interpretationem, lib. 1, cap. 1, § 2.