content to accept, as true, those statements respecting the meaning of single words, and the meaning of the forms of inflexion and combination of words, which in the one case the lexicons contain, in the other the grammars. But they will scarcely fail to ask themselves the question, upon what evidence the truth of those representations rests. Whence comes that knowledge of the Hebrew language, which such works profess to convey? For we have them not, as we have for the study of Greek and Latin, proceeding from the time when the language to which they relate was spoken. Our first resource for the purpose of constructing Hebrew grammars and lexicons, with which we may be satisfied, is in the unbroken tradition in the schools and the families of the Jewish race. Hebrew has never ceased to be taught, from generation to generation, from father to son, from learned rabbi to disciples who aspired to succeed him. And, though the instruction thus transmitted should be found to be often imperfect, and sometimes erroneous, still it affords the desirable basis for more exact and extended investigation. The knowledge so preserved is also incorporated, in parcels, into the grammatical and critical observations of the Jewish doctors from the age of the Talmuds down. But, as far as we know, it was first digested into the form of á lexicon by Menahem ben Saruk, in the eleventh century.* This work remains in manuscript. It was followed by the much more considerable collection of Rabbi ben Jonah, a Spanish physician; and this again by the Lexicon of Rabbi Kimchi, first published at Naples in 1490, to which a grammar from * There was an earlier essay of the glossary kind, by Saadia Gaon, at Babylon, in the tenth century; but it embraced only seventy words, interpreted in Arabic. He is said to have also composed a Grammar. the same hand succeeded. Pagninus, a Dominican of Lucca, in his Hebrew Lexicon and Grammar, published early in the sixteenth century, furnished, I believe, the first considerable contribution to these studies which was made from a Christian source. A new era was opened by the labors of Schultens, of Leyden, who died in 1741. Of him presently I am to speak further in a different connexion. Another source of information respecting the meaning of Hebrew terms and forms, is found in observation and comparison of them in the different connexions, in which they occur in different passages and books. This has of course been resorted to by all lexicographers and grammarians, in proportion to the extent of their investigations, and the good judgment with which these have been conducted. A third and exceedingly valuable source of such information is afforded by the ancient versions. Of these, the Alexandrine version, commonly called, from a Jewish fable respecting its origin, "The Septuagint" or Seventy, has the greatest worth; because of its antiquity, -being referred to a time, between one hundred and three hundred years before the Christian era, when Hebrew had hardly ceased to be a spoken language; because of its being made by Jews, who may be presumed to have well understood the words and forms they were translating; and because of their work being more available to critics of the present day, than other ancient versions into languages less understood than the Greek. But, in order to derive all the benefit from this version, which at first view it seems to promise, we need a purer text of it than is yet possessed, and more complete lexicons of the Hellenistic dialect of Greek, into which it was made. Nor is it safe to ascribe to its authors, without qualification, a competent 1 knowledge of the language from which they were translating. When we are sure that we have their sense, we cannot, merely on that ground, be sure that we have a correct representation of the original, which lay before them. The fragments of Greek versions by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, referred to the first two Christian centuries, have a similar, though less important use. The Peshito (or Accurate) Syriac, commonly dated from the first or second century, is an instrument yielding in importance, for the use in question, only to the Greek of the Seventy. It has the further advantage, that, being in a language cognate to the Hebrew, it is able to convey a peculiarly exact representation of its sense; but, on the other hand, a less complete knowledge of it is possessed by modern scholars, than of the Greek or Latin. The old Samaritan version of the Pentateuch, though reckoned very ancient, loses part of its value from the same circumstance. Among other aids of the same kind, more or less considerable, are the Chaldee Targums, particularly those of Onkelos and Jonathan, generally supposed to have been prepared either before, or not long subsequent to the Christian era, and the Vulgate Latin, dating from about the year 400. The Greek history of Josephus, though never representing the Old Testament more closely than in the way of a paraphrase, yet is not without its use in this connexion. It was Schultens, whom I have already mentioned, who first began to enrich the lexicons through researches in the cognate dialects.* The family of lan * This course of investigation was proposed and defended by him in his works entitled, "Origines Hebrææ," "Vindicia Originum," "De Defectibus Hodiernis Linguæ Hebrææ," and "Institutiones ad Fundamenta Linguæ Hebrææ." guages to which the Hebrew belongs, improperly called by modern critics the Shemitic, since part of them were spoken by descendants of Ham, appears to be divided into three main branches; 1. What may be called the Canaanitish, that is, the Hebrew, with the Phoenician, afterwards the Punic; 2. the Aramean, embracing the East Aramean, or Chaldee, and the West Aramean, or Syriac, to which may be added, as less important subdivisions, the Samaritan, and the Palmyrene, exhibited in inscriptions on the ruins of Palmyra; 3. the Arabic, to which are closely related the Maltese and the Ethiopic, though this last, unlike the rest, is read from the left hand to the right. It was to be presumed that these languages (part of them preserved in a much more copious literature than the Hebrew) would, if diligently searched and judiciously used, be able to throw much light upon its etymology; that, for instance, if the meaning of a Hebrew word remained doubtful or obscure in consequence of infrequent use in scripture, or of insufficient or conflicting authority of the versions, it might be traced and ascertained by means of the established use of corresponding words in the sister dialects. Proceeding in researches founded on this assumption, Schultens, by his own labors, made important contributions to Hebrew lexicography. They have been still further successfully pursued by Simon, the learned Professor of Sacred History and Antiquities at Halle, whose work is the basis of those of Winer and Eichhorn, well known as containing further collections of the same authority; and by Gesenius, whose Thesaurus, now in process of publication, will perhaps leave little, that is attainable, to be still desired. But it is clear that conclusions, sustained only or chiefly by facts obtained in this way of research, are not to be received without extreme caution. It is not only that the meanings of that (far the largest) class of terms, which stand for complex ideas, are of the most evanescent character; but, also, all that exceedingly numerous description of words, which, in a secondary sense, bear some figurative relation to the primitive, are likely to receive altogether different applications, according as the different mental associations of different races have dictated the selection of one or another sort of analogy in fixing the metaphorical use. For an instance of the former kind, who does not see how different is the significance of the word virtus, as used by a Roman, from that of the same word, retained with one or another trifling change of form in the languages of modern Christendom, and how unsafe it would be to attempt, by interpreting the one, to fix an exposition of the other? An example of the other description is furnished by a common root, subsisting with scarcely any variation of form in the English and Low Dutch.* In the former speech, "to understand," means, in a very familiar, but a figurative use, to comprehend. In the latter, it denotes, with more close adherence to the primitive acceptation, to sustain; and the corresponding substantive, in like manner, signifies in the one case intelligence, in the other assistance; and the adjective, in the one case sagacious, and in the other helpful. Were we disposed to argue from the force of the Dutch word to that of the English, we might in many instances be repelled, as no good sense would be produced. But, in others, where the mistake would be equally great, there would be nothing in the context to expose it. For instance, in the hundred and nineteenth Psalm, thirty-fourth verse, ("Give me understanding, and I shall * I take this illustration from Le Clerc's "Ars Critica," Part. 1, cap. 4, § 10. |