28 



tically significant, we ought to be able clearly to determine, 

 from the very outset, the powers of several of their elements, 

 by the aid of the proper names they contain. Considering, 

 then, the great advantages thus afforded to an analyser of the 

 legends in the third kind of cuneiform writing, the length of 

 time elapsed since that kind was first subjected to examina- 

 tion, as well as the industry, the ingenuity, and the skill that 

 have been devoted to the investigation, it surely must have 

 been long ago brought to a successful issue, if the writing em- 

 ployed in those legends were really alphabetic. But, not- 

 withstanding all this, there has not as yet been published a 

 single sentence of this writing translated into Chaldee, or 

 any other language whatever. 



16. The Hebrew square character certainly received not 

 its denomination of " Chaldee" from having been derived by 

 Ezra from Babylonian writing (a representation of the case 

 which is fully refuted by the evidence of the coins dug out of 

 the ruins of Jerusalem, and advocated only by the Talmuds, 

 and that, too, with contradictory statements), but was most 

 probably so called from having been improved in the Rabbi- 

 nical school of greatest celebrity, which was held, after the de- 

 struction of Jerusalem, for a long time, in Babylonia, down to 

 about the beginning of the eleventh century, when the Jews 

 were driven thence by the persecutions of the Arabians. More- 

 over, the passages of the early Christian fathers, which have 

 been quoted by modern divines in support of the Talmudic 

 fiction, are shewn to have quite a different meaning from that 

 attributed to them, and to have been strained to a sense they 

 do not properly bear, in consequence of too great a deference 

 having been paid at first, after the revival of learning, to the 

 authority of the Talmuds. 



17. Reference made to the copy of a specimen of Babylo- 

 nian writing exhibited in the second volume of Sir Robert Ker 

 Porter's Travels, in which the names are expressed by sym- 

 bols in cartouches, not placed like seals at the beginning or 



