296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thorities, some earnest men ventured to think them no part of the 

 original revelation to Adam. Zwingli, so much before most of 

 the Reformers in other respects, was equally so in this. While 

 not doubting the divine origin and preservation of the Hebrew 

 language as a whole, he denied the antiquity of the vocal points, 

 demonstrated their unessential character, and pointed out the fact 

 that St. Jerome makes no mention of them. His denial was long 

 the refuge of those who shared this heresy. 



But the full orthodox theory remained established among the 

 vast majority both of Catholics and Protestants. Illustrative of 

 the attitude of the former is the imposing work of the canon Ma- 

 rini, which appeared at Venice in 1593, under the title of Noah's 

 Ark : A New Treasury of the Sacred Tongue. The huge folios 

 begin with the declaration that the Hebrew tongue was " divinely 

 inspired at the very beginning of the world," and the doctrine is 

 steadily maintained that this divine inspiration extended not only 

 to the letters but to the vocal punctuation. 



Not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we 

 find a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous 

 doctrine. This new assailant was Capellus, Professor of Hebrew 

 at Saumur ; but even he dared not put forth his argument in 

 France. He was obliged to publish it in Holland, and even there 

 such obstacles were thrown in his way that it was ten years before 

 he published another treatise of importance. 



The work of Capellus was received by very many open-minded 

 scholars as settling the question, and among these was Hugo 

 Grotius. But many theologians felt this view to be a blow at 

 the sanctity and integrity of the sacred text; and in 1648 the 

 great scholar, John Buxtorf, rose to defend the orthodox citadel : 

 in his Anticritica he brought all his stores of knowledge to defend 

 the doctrine that the rabbinical points and accents had been jotted 

 down by the right hand of God. 



The controversy waxed hot ; scholars like Voss and Brian 

 Walton supported Capellus. Wasmuth and many others of note 

 were as fierce against him. The Swiss Protestants were espe- 

 cially violent on the orthodox side. The Calvinists of Geneva, 

 in 1678, by a special canon, forbade that any minister should be 

 received into their jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that 

 the Hebrew text, as it to-day exists in the Masoretic copies, is, 

 both as to the consonants and vowel points, divine and authentic. 



While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported 

 the view of Capellus, and while in France the eminent Catholic 

 scholar Richard Simon, and many others, Catholic and Protestant, 

 took similar ground against this divine origin of the Hebrew 

 punctuation, there was arrayed against them a body apparently 

 overwhelming. In France, Bossuet, the greatest theologian that 



