136 



IVom these, and ' many other inherent defects, the learned 

 Le Clerc, himself a professor of the Hebrew language, de-^ 

 Clares, that perhaps no language is fuller of ambiguity and 

 obscurity.* Can such be the language polished and im- 

 proved for twenty centuries? 



To this our late pious and learned PriiViate, Newcomc, 

 answer^, that the ' difficulties, respecting these and other 

 modifications of the Hebrew verb, are considerable, but 

 not invincible; that it is true[ that the substitutions of one 

 gender, number or person, for others, are bold and fi'e- 

 quent, but not inexplicable.'-f- As much 'm^y be said of 

 the jargon, spoken by the English in the days of Hen- 

 ry HI. ; or in France, during the reign of Lems IX. 

 *''*The advocates of the Hebrew found' its claim chiefly on 

 the two following gronnds. 



1***' That many or all the antediluvian names are signifi- 

 cant, in the Hebrew language, and derivable from it. But 

 the learned Mr. Lanigan, lately Scriptural Professor in the 

 University of Pavia, in the first volume of his Biblical 

 Institutions, observes, that these names are as easily deri- 

 vable from the Chaldaic or S>'riac, and still more easil}'^ 

 from the Arabic. Grotius, Huet, and Le Clerc think, that 

 the real antediluvian names were translated into the He- 

 breXv; and they give many instances of similar translations: 

 thus the tianslator of Sanchoniatho into Greek, calls Adam, 

 Protogon. Mr. Lanigan, indeed, thinks, that many of them 



cannot 



* Preliminary Discourse to the Pentat. §. 6. 

 t Preface to Ezechiel, p. xxsiv. ami xxxv. 



