Collated with parallel Passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 51 



should be, not merely, " They say or report that his son is here," but " The 

 son has fixed his house or residence here." Accordingly on looking to the 

 Latin of this line with a view to elicit the Punic reading and its interpretation, 

 we recognhe filium in ben, hie In thin, and between them and the proper name 

 Agorastocles, "ncuthenno," his residence, one of the words which we have 

 already found the meaning of as duplicates ; and before thin another duplicate, 

 viz. bvth, or ibuth, equivalent to A' buth, cedes, house. And with the word buth 

 or nucthenno, or both, the remaining word, viz. ysd, {to found or establish,) 

 coheres, making the sense we anticipated as demonstrative of intended hospitality, 

 "and the son, moreover, has fixed his residence here, Agorastocles." 



Turning next to the Libyan of this verse, we find it confirm our interpretation 

 of the Punic. For the change from the Punic to Libyan is one generally 

 from the Hebrew to the Arabic form, e. g. verbs beginning with »i change that 

 initial to i, so ysd should become vosd. Accordingly, in the Libyan, vosod 

 immediately appears, being, as the Milan Palimpsest shews, the proper reading 

 of the word commonly read voso. And with it turns up also one of the syno- 

 nimes for house, viz. tna, {s^^ri.* We have thus the Libyan corresponding 

 with and confirming the Punic reading, tena im vosod duber beanth, " More- 

 over, the son, report is, has established his residence here, Agorastocles." 



As to the agreement of the phraseology of this verse with parallel passages 

 of Scripture, the conception seems clearly in the spirit of that demonstration 

 of divine bounty, under the emblem of hospitality, — " Wisdom hath builded 

 her house, and hewn out her seven pillars, — she hath furnished her table, &c." 

 " In my father's house are many mansions." And the latter Scripture reference, 

 be it observed, is coupled with the other, not merely as parallel to it in sense, but 

 because the two emphatic terms in it which (according to the Syriac version) 

 our Lord uses as indicative of the divine hospitality, are the very terms which, 

 in the Libyan, Hanno is made to use in reference to the hospitality of his old 

 host : viz. aono buth, or byth, Ji^l n31N» common to the third Libyan line, and 

 to John, xiv. 2, 22, (Syriac version.) 



* Our Libyan N3n, mansion, habitation, seems clearly to have been considered by the Seventy 

 Interpreters as the singular of nN3n, the word in the third verse of the first chapter of Malachi, 

 which they translate Jtu/AaTa, habitations. — See Pocock on Malachi. 



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