Collated with parallel Passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 23 



Punic Phraseology respecting the Abduction collated with the Hebrew 



Scriptures. 



Of the cases of abduction, bereavement, or captivity recorded in Scripture, 

 those which I shall refer to are the following : — That of Lot, the first recorded 

 case of abduction into captivity, (a nephew too, as in the case before us.) That of 

 Joseph, the first recorded case of child-stealing. That «f the daughters of Shiloh, 

 the first case on record of the forcible abduction of females. The bereavement 

 of tJie monarchs of Israel by the taking away, or extinction, of their posterity ; 

 and, finally, the abduction into captivity of the Israelitish people.* 



AVith respect to the first, the nephew of Abraham is designated in Hebrew 

 as the nephew of Hanno is in Punic, Ben — ahh. With respect to the second, 

 the " Hebrew Boy,"f who says of himself that he was " stolen from the land of the 

 Hebrews," and who was " sold to be a bond servant," we find, in the account of 

 his abduction, the circumstance previously mentioned of the child straying in 

 the field ; the same root being used for straying that is used in the Punic, 

 with respect to the Boy of Carthage, the well-known root, nyn. With respect 

 to the third case, the daughters of Shiloh, their abduction, like that of Hanno's 

 daughters, was effected by ambush, or liers in wait ; the word for liers in wait 

 in the Hebrew passage in question, and in several others, being, as in the Punic, 

 the word arob, 2"l^4.| 



The remaining word in this clause to be collated with Scripture is by*r, nyi, 

 the word by which Hanno expresses the abduction of his daughter and his own 

 bereavement. With a view to collating it and the entire clause with the 

 Hebrew Scripture, we must bear in mind what the extent of that bereavement 

 was; and that the previous abduction of his nephew and that of his daughters left 

 him not only childless, but without hope of posterity. This condition is one 



• This case of abduction will be referred to as including passages illustrative of the imprecation 

 against the Andrapodist by parallel Scripture denunciations against those who were accessory to the 

 selling the children of the Israelites in the slave markets. 



■f See Sir \Vm. Jones's Translation of the Persian poem of Hafiz in his Grammar of that language. 



X See those several passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 



