98 



letters having been decomposed, in consequence of which 

 they are now used as consonants. The remaining portion 

 of the text at present, indeed, exhibits signs for the vowel 

 as well as the consonantal ingredients of the syllables, three 

 of the letters, namely, haleph^ yod, and waw, being occasion- 

 ally diverted from their original use to the purpose of vocal 

 designation, the first of them with the power of A ; the se- 

 cond, as E or I ; and the third, as O or U ; but where they 

 are now, or rather where they formerly were so employed, 

 (for in many places of the Hebrew text, characters are at 

 present considered as vowel-letters, \vhere the Greek ren- 

 dering of the proper names clearly shows that they could not 

 have been read as such at the time when the Septuagint 

 translation was framed,) they constitute no part of the origi- 

 nal writing, and were introduced into it by the Jews, after 

 the Greek version had made them but very slightly ac- 

 quainted with the value of such signs. Had they previously 

 become more familiar with the subject, they would of course 

 have adopted at least five vowel-letters instead of three, and 

 they would have vocalized the whole of the text, instead of 

 only about one-fifth part of it. But however imperfectly and 

 irregularly this vocalization was made, — and the very im- 

 perfection and irregularity which are observable in it, now 

 contribute to the proof of its human origin ; — still at the time 

 of its insertion it was a most providential addition to the sa- 

 cred text, to preserve the true meaning of the word of God ; 

 an object which in most, though by no means in all instances, 

 it has certainly eiFected. 



The correctness of this statement respecting the adven- 

 titious nature of the Hebrew vowel-letters, is proved by the 

 very large proportion of the discrepancies between the He- 

 brew text and Septuagint version, which can be removed by 

 a different insertion of those letters in the original : and the 

 proof thus suppHed is confirmed by the Samaritan Penta- 

 teuch, in which, indeed, it is the same set of letters that are 



