ORIENTAL SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 691 



prophecies is corrupt aud must be corrected from the aucieut versions. 

 He also discussed the value of the Targum to Jeremiah : in seventy pas- 

 sages, the Targum helps us to determine the text of the book of Jere- 

 miah. In fixing our Old Testament text we must not ignore this version. 



W. O. Sproull holds that the native language of Abraham was 

 Aramaic, since he emigrated from Ur of the Chaldees to the laud of 

 Canaan (Genesis, xi,31). It is probable, however, that he knew Hebrew 

 before he came into the land of Can-aan, for there is no indication that 

 he had any difficulty in conversing with its inhabitants. 



A. W. Thayer calls attention to the fact that Professor Graetz, of 

 Breslau, has prepared a revised text of the Massoretic Bible, which is 

 now awaiting publication. 



PEDAGOGICS. 



At the fall meeting of the American Oriental Society, Francis Brown 

 A. L. Frothingham, jr., W. H. Green, W. R. Harper, Paul Haupt, 

 Morris Jastrow, jr., D. G. Lyon, C. H. Toy, and W. H. Ward discussed 

 the history of Semitic studies in this country, and offered suggestions 

 for the future. The remarks were collected and published in Hebraica 

 with an introduction by Morris Jastrow, jr. 



PERSIA. 



Morris Jastrow discussed the plan of the Palace of Artaxerxes 

 Mnemon, compared it with the description of the Palace of Ahasuerus 

 in the book of Esther, and accepts M. Dieluafoy's conclusion, that the 

 palace he discovered ai Susa is the one described in the book of Esther. 



SAMARITAN. 



G. F. Moore described a fraguient of a manuscript of the Samaritan 

 Pentateuch deposited by Grant-Bey in the Librarj' of Andover Sem- 

 inary. The fragment contains Ex. viii, 16 — xxx, 28; it is of the thirteenth 

 century, and apparently a part of the codex described by Rosen, Zeit- 

 schrift cler Deutschen Morgenldndischen gesellschaff, xviii, oS6. 



SEMITIC PHILOLOGY. 



E. P. Allen answered G. F. Moore's objections to his former paper on 

 Semitic sounds and their transliteration. Allen's theory is that the so- 

 called Semitic emphatic consonants are distinguished by a combination 

 of mouth position with the glottal catch. 



G. F. Moore questions the theory that the distinctive characteristic 

 of the emphatic consonants is a combination of glottal catch with mouth 

 articulation. 



