300 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



with the Samaritan or with the Alexandrian re- 

 cension. Up to this time, then, there was no ab- 

 solutely received text. But soon after the Chris- 

 tian era all this was changed, and, by a process 

 which we cannot follow in detail, a single recen- 

 cion became supreme. The change was, no doubt, 

 connected with the rise of an overdrawn and fan- 

 tastic system of interpretation, which found les- 

 sons in the smallest peculiarity of the text ; but 

 Lagarde has made it probable that no critical pro- 

 cess was used to fix the standard recension, and 

 that all existing MSS. are derived from a single 

 archetype, which was followed even in its marks 

 of deletion and other accidental peculiarities (La- 

 garde, Anmerkitngen zur griech. Uebersdzung der 

 Prov., 1863, p. 1; cf. Noldeke in Hilgenfeld's 

 Zeifschr., 1873, p. 445). Then the received text 

 became the object of further care, and the Mas- 

 orets, or "possessors of tradition," with regard 

 to the text, handed down a body of careful direc- 

 tions as to the true orthography and pronuncia- 

 tion. The latter was fixed by the gradual inven- 

 tion of subsidiary marks for the vowels, etc., an 

 invention developed in slightly divergent forms in 

 the Babylonian and Palestinian schools of Jewish 

 scholarship. The vowel-points were not known to 

 Jerome, but the" system was complete before the 

 ninth century, presumably several hundred years 

 before that time. All printed Bibles follow the 

 Western punctuation, but old Karaite MSS., with 

 the Babylonian vowels, exist, and are now in 

 course of publication. It is from the Masoretic 

 text, with Masoretic punctuation, that the Eng- 

 lish version and most Protestant translations are 

 derived. Older Christian versions, so far as they 

 are based on the Hebrew at all (Jerome's Latin, 

 Syriac), at least follow pretty closely the received 

 consonantal text. 



Jewish Versions. — Versions of the Old Testa- 

 ment became necessary partly because the Jews 

 of the Western Dispersion adopted the Greek 

 language, partly because even in Palestine the 

 Old Hebrew was gradually supplanted by Ara- 

 maic. The chief seat of the Hellenistic Jews 

 was in Egypt, and here arose the Alexandrian 

 version, commonly known as the Septuagint or 

 version of the LXX., from a fable that it wns 

 composed, with miraculous circumstances, by 

 seventy-two Palestinian scholars summoned to 

 Egypt by Ptolemy Philadelphia. In reality there 

 can be no doubt that the version was gradually 

 completed by several authors and at different 

 times. The whole is probably older than the 

 middle of the second century b. c. We have al- 

 ready seen that the text that lay before the trans- 



lators was in many parts not that of the present 

 Hebrew. The execution is by no means uniform, 

 and, though there are many good renderings, the 

 defects are so numerous that the Greek-speaking 

 Jews, as well as the large section of the Christian 

 Church which long depended directly or indirect- 

 ly on this version, were in many places quite shut 

 out from a right understanding of the Old Testa- 

 ment. Nevertheless, the authority of the version 

 was very great, its inspiration was often asserted, 

 and its interpretations exercised a great influence 

 on Jewish and Christian thought, though among 

 the Jews it was to a certain extent displaced by 

 the version of the proselyte Aquila (second cen- 

 tury of our era), which followed with slavish ex- 

 actness the letter of the Hebrew text. 



Among the Jews who spoke Aramaic, trans- 

 lations into the vernacular accompanied, instead 

 of supplanting, the use of the original text, which 

 was read and then orally paraphrased in the 

 synagogues by interpreters or Methurgemanim, 

 who used great freedom of embellishment and 

 application. This practice naturally led to the 

 formation of written Targums, or Aramaic trans- 

 lations, which have not, however, reached us in 

 at all their earliest form. It used, indeed, to be 

 supposed that the simple and literal Targum of 

 Onkelos on the Pentateuch was earlier than the 

 time of Christ. But recent inquirers have been 

 led to see in it, and in the linguistically cognate 

 Targum on the Prophets (Targum of Jonathan), 

 products of the Babylonian schools, in which the 

 freedom of the early paraphrastic method was 

 carefully avoided. Upon this view the date of 

 these Targums is some centuries after the Chris- 

 tian era. On the other hand, an older style of 

 paraphrase is preserved in the Palestinian Tar- 

 gums, which nevertheless contain in their present 

 form elements later than the Babylonian versions. 

 The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on the Penta- 

 teuch is apparently the latest form of the free 

 Palestinian version, full of legendary adornments 

 and other additions to the text. Other frag- 

 ments of Palestinian translation, known as the 

 Jerusalem Targum, and referring to individual 

 passages of the Pentateuch and Prophets, prob- 

 ably represent an earlier stage in the growth of 

 the Aramric versions. There are also Targums 

 on the Hagiographa, which, however, have less 

 importance, and do not seem to have had so 

 changeful a history. The Targums as a whole do 

 not offer much to the textual critic. They are 

 important, partly from the insight they give into 

 an early and in part pre-Christian exegesis, partly 

 from their influence on later Jewish expositors, 



