niah's prophecy was written after the event had happened, which, according to Dr Henderson, is predicted by Isaiah. And, in the second place, it is not Ethiopia that brings the present, but my suppliants, the daughter of my dispersed We believe, however, that Horsley's translation is the true one. 'My worshippers beyond the rivers of Cush shall conduct as an offering to me, the daughter of my dispersed nation.' And, thus rendered, the passage exactly harmonizes with that of Isaiah, and plainly foretells the restoration of the Jews by the hand of another nation. With all our efforts at condensation, our remarks have extended to too great length to enable us to perform what would otherwise have been a grateful task, namely, the filling up from other prophecies the outline which this chapter affords. We are persuaded that the principle on which the prophetical parts of Scripture are constructed, is the same as that on which the narratives of the gospels are conducted; that is, they are supplementary the one of the other. And the true method of obtaining a connected history of the future, is the same that must be employed in forming a harmony of the Gospels. One inspired prophet passes in a single sentence over a period to which another will devote whole chapters; yet the order of events is in every case observed. If, then, our students of prophecy would devote the same patient and assiduous labour to the formation of a harmony of prophecy, as Greswell has done to the arrangement of the harmony of the Gospels, we might expect that the result would be the clearing away of much which at present serves to perplex and discourage the inquirer. There is one fact which, as it appears to us, has not been sufficiently attended to in such investigations. From Zechariah we learn, that there is yet a siege of Jerusalem to take place; that it is in the very moment of her enemies' victory that Christ shall be revealed for their defence; and that then, and then only, shall Israel turn to Him whom they have pierced. It would appear then that part of Israel will be restored unconverted, and that against that portion of the nation shall their last effort be directed. The enemies of Israel, or the hosts of antichrist, are said to be all nations. May not this account for the fact, which has been remarked by all commentators, but satisfactorily explained by none, that every one of Israel's former enemies, Assyria, Babylon, Tyre, Egypt and Edom, are in their turn types of antichrist;-that the prophecies concerning none of them can receive their full accomplishment till antichrist has run his course? These nations are not extinct; and what more likely than that, when the unclean spirits of the last days shall go forth to gather them to the battle of God Almighty, they shall shake off the lethargy of ages, rouse themselves at the call of Satan, and in one combined host make a last and desperate effort to frus trate the purposes of the Almighty. When this mad attempt shall fail, crushed in the very moment of apparent victory, then shall the way be open for Messiah's reign. The land shadowing with wings shall then send forth her messengers to the people scattered and peeled, and bring them as a present to the Lord of Hosts, to mount Zion. ART. V.-Dominici Diodati, de Christo Græce Loquente Exercitatio, &c. Edited, with a preface, by ORLANDO DOBBIN, LL.D. London: John Gladding. 1843. THE history of the vicissitudes to which the language of ancient Palestine was subjected, especially during the interval between the deportation of the Jews to Babylon and the final subversion of Jerusa lem, is one which even the cosmopolitan philologist, who subjects to impartial review such phenomena in whatever countries they are presented, approaches with a peculiar interest. But the theologian, while likewise sensible of its intrinsic importance, finds a much stronger, though an adventitious, claim upon his attention, in the fact of its forming an indispensable preliminary to the adjustment of many vexed questions, respecting not the internal criticism and interpretation alone, but also the authenticity and genuineness, as well of many documents that have been received into the canon of Scripture as of others that are excluded from it. Thus it is requisite, before these, or indeed any, writings are submitted to definite laws of exegesis, that some conclusion be come to regarding the language or languages current in the age and country to which they are referred; that, if they be found to exist in a speech different from the vernacular, it be ascertained, to what extent and in what mode the terms of expression were likely to be coloured by the genius of the tongue in which the authors were wont to think; that the process by which the less familiar idiom was acquired,—whether imperceptibly, through early and continued intercourse with aliens, or by more painful efforts made at some late stage of life and under peculiar circumstances,-be investigated, and rendered a criterion of the fluency and correctness to be expected in the style. Again our readers are aware, that the antiquity of the books of Job and Solomon, and of the final section of Isaiah's prophecies, is often challenged on the ground of their Chaldaisms; that, in the recent discussions on the book of Daniel, a large space is devoted to its obvious Persisms, its alleged Hellenisms, and its ambiguous singularities in both the formation and the usage of words; that the existing Gospels are here affirmed and there denied to be either versions or compilations from certain archetypes, which have been described as minutely as if they lay on the desk of the writers who deplore their loss; that, in literally all the books of the New Testament, a criticism, still neither defunct nor impotent, though shorn of its former confidence, has professed to identify and even to correct verbal incongruities, which are construed as proofs that Aramaic originals are represented in our Greek copies, with general fidelity indeed, yet not without occasional misapprehension. It is unnecessary, though it would be easy, to mention other points of late or present controversy, which, like these, require, in such as would appreciate them aright, and especially such as would themselves be champions of the truth, a familiarity with the arsenal from which the weapons of the antagonists have been drawn. There must pass under a vigilant scrutiny, first of all, the circumstances of the transit from the primitive Canaanitish or 'Hebraic' to the more euphonious Aramaan,-next, the modes in which the subdialects of the latter acted upon each other, and were all affected from without, then, the stages and degrees of currency which the successive conquerors of the Holy Land secured for their respective idioms,-lastly, the means by which the native tongue, cherished as it was by all patriots under the severest discouragements, maintained itself, through storm and through sunshine, not only till the Jewish nation ceased to be, but till the exiled communities conveyed it to their remotest refuge-cities, even there to be perpetuated in oral and written prelections. On the grounds thus suggested, we should be disposed to hail the republication of Diodati's Exercitatio de Christo Græce Loquente, announced, as it is, to have become so scarce as to elude the search alike of students and collectors, and yet to form a distinguished landmark in the course of Palestinian and Hellenistic criticism. Its importance, however, may appear to have been overestimated by the Editor, when we shall have surveyed its bearings upon preceding and subsequent treatises of its class; and perhaps it will be as fair and convenient a method as any other of taking such a survey, to sketch-but to do no more than sketch-the literary history of the controversy to which this work and its fellows have been devoted. It has always been the prevalent opinion, that the Asiatic and Egyptian conquests of Alexander and his successors, and the influence that was long exercised by the splendid courts of Seleucia, Antioch, and Alexandria, while they induced, in the leading cities almost completely, in the others to a limited extent, the adoption of the Grecian language and alphabet, as well as of Grecian laws, usages, and rites, yet failed to revolutionize the sentiments, to alter the settled habits, or permanently to enstamp the speech, of the great body of the people. As for the Romans,-whose vaunted destiny was, to link all nations with the golden bands of brotherhood and mutual sympathy,t-whose profound policy was, to amalgamate the provinces which the empire successively embraced,‡ -it has been admitted, that, throughout Western Europe and Libya, they prosecuted this object with constancy and success; as all ancient records and inscriptions concur, that the wildest hordes, when totally subjugated, were enfranchised, adopting the name, the garb, the arms, the arts of their beneficent victors; while the texture of our modern languages of itself attests the once universal diffusion of Latinity. But it has been understood also, that, when they entered Greece and Grecian colonies, they there, recognising a refinement superior, as well as prior, to their own, adopted the speech which they found in vogue among both the settlers and the higher class of natives; § abating merely whatever penal measures might previously have been in operation for drilling into Hellenism the refractory, and asserting for the Latin tongue an use, more or less exclusive, as the organ of government. Nor has this current belief been disturbed by theories founded on a contrary presumption:-such theories, almost as soon as started, have been put down by arguments that have generally passed for irrefragable. Thus-the notion, that the Macedonian domination, for two centuries, in Bactria, have left indelible traces on all the languages of Hindustan that have sprung from, or been affected by, the Sanskrita,—that that venerable tongue is an elabora Dupin, Bibl. Eccles, t. xix. pt. 1, c. 8, takes the lead among those who have illustrated this remark. Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5: Deus est mortali juvare mortalem, et haec ad æternam gloriam via. Hac proceres iere Romani, &c. Rutil. Numat.; Iter i. 63-66, v.v. ap. Burm. Poet. Lat. Min., t. 2. pp. 26, 27, addressing Rome:- Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam; Profuit injustis, te dominante, capi. Dumque offers victis proprii consortia juris, August. Cir. Dei, 19, 7: At enim opera data est, ut imperiosa civitas non solum jugum, verum etiam linguam suam, domitis gentibus per pacem societatis imponeret, &c. Compare, or rather contrast, the glowing picture drawn by Pliny, L. c.; also Plutarch, Quest. Plat. 9. Strabo, (fol. Paris, 1620,) c. 4, 195. Tacit. V. Agric., c. 21. Juven. Sat. 7, 148-9; 15, 110-2. Martial. Epigr. 11, 4, vv. 3-5. Vell. Paterc. 2, 111-2. Vopisc. V. Aurel. c. 24. Apuleius, Apol. (ed. Flor.) p. 556. Augustin. Serm. 24. Hieron. Epist. 4, ad Rustic. t. i. p. 28. § Cic. pro Archia, c. 3; de Orat. 2. 15; Acad. 1, 2. Seneca, Cons. ad Helv. c. 6. Juv. Sat. 6, 185–195. Martial. Epigr. 10, 68, vv. 1-6. ¶ Valer. Max. 2, 2, §§ 2, 3. Cp. Id. 7, 7, § 6. Cic. in Verr. 4, § 66. T. Liv. 45, cc. 8, 29. A. Gell. 7, 14. Plut. V. Cat. Maj. Dio Cass. (ed. Wechel.), 51, p. 454; 57, p. 612; 60, p. 676; coll. Sueton, 2, 89; 3, 71; 5, 16, 42. Seneca, Controv. (ed. Bip.) 4, p. 291; coll. Sueton. 6, 7. Tacit. Hist. 2, 8. Suidas, v. Tiros, coll. Sueton. 11, 3. Euseb. V. Constant. 3, cc. 11, 12, 13; 4, c. 32. Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 1, c. 19. * tion from the Greek type, consecrated from its origin to literary and priestly purposes, has been on all sides rejected as almost too grossly absurd for serious refutation, and, probably, after the recent strides made in comparative grammar, will never find another advocate. The assertion hazarded by Isaac Voss and Père Hardouin, to which Diodati stated his adherence,—that, long before the accession of the Khalifahs, the sway of the Achæmenides and the Ptolemies had obliterated the native speech of Egypt, was immediately condemned, by Simon and others, as arguing little short of delirium. And, though, even towards the close of last century, the Coptic vocabulary was often represented as a medley of Greek, Persic, and Arabic, the more recent researches of Zoega, Münter, Quatremère, and their coadjutors, have established the traditionary belief upon a basis quite unassailable; as we have now in our hands not only bilingual inscriptions and papyrus-rolls dated under the Greek dynasty, but books of Scripture and other ecclesiastical documents, composed within the first centuries of our era, in three (if not in four) dialects all manifest off-shoots from the language in which the legends of the Pharaohs are preserved. The same notable triumvirate, who originated the above paradox, very naturally agreed in maintaining a parallel one respecting the dialects of the Aramæan family-the Western or Syriac,' and the Eastern or Chaldaic,' which latter, slightly modified perhaps, was, after the great captivity, vernacular in Judea. These, too, it seems, were swept away by the tide of European invasion; and, as for their so-called descendants, if the one be traced in Maronite, Nestorian, and Zabian works, the other in the Babylonian Talmud and Rabbinical tracts or commentaries, they are found to be huddled up from the contributions of many languages unharmonized by a predominating Semitic element. Thus far these good friends were agreed; but a difference ensued, when they came to arbitrate between the rival claims of Greek and Latin to be pronounced the paramount language of Palestine in the Augustan age. Hardouin, fresh from his demonstration of the spuriousness of almost all the books and inscriptions which are re 6 * British Critic, No. ix. p. 107; Edinburgh Review, No. lxvi. p. 435; Quarterly Review, No. cviii. p. 299, where it is attributed to the Scotch school,' because defended by Professors Stewart and Dunbar of our University. But we have no exclusive claim to an opinion started by Meiners, Hist. Doctr. de Vero Deo, p. 134 (12mo, Lemgov., 1780), and professed by G. Forster, Notes to German version of the Sakontala, pp. 333-4, (8vo, Frankf. M., 1791); Col. Dow, also History of Hindostan, Prel. Diss., p. 30, (4to, London, 1768), having anticipated its most objectionable feature. See, too, For. Quar. Review, No. xxxvii. p. 200. † Hardouin, Chronol. Vet. Test. p. 33; Voss, Resp. ad iter. P. Sim. Objectt., p. 350; Simon, Hist. Crit. des Versions du Nouv. Test., ch. xvi. pp. 189, 190: Diodati, 1. 1. pp. 6-16; De Rossi, 1. mox. 1., pp. 41-48. Besides the Memphitic, Sahidic, and Bashmuric, a specimen of a fourth dialect is exhibited by Zoega, Catal. Codd. Sahidd., n. 172. |