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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, where 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 effected. 
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 supplied is confirmed by the Samaritan Penta- 
teuch, in which, indeed, it is the same set of letters that are 
