300 Rev. Dr. Watt on the different Kinds of Cuneiform Writing 
most probably, was invented for the purpose of accounting for that very differ- 
ence. The device is just such as might be expected from men regardless of 
truth, who had failed to take into consideration the tendency of all writing, be- 
fore the use of printing commenced, to undergo a gradual change in the form of 
its ingredients, as well as the likelihood that the same writing would, in the 
course of time, change differently in the hands of two nations which had long 
abstained from all intercourse with each other. 
But, with respect to the statement involved in this account of the matter, and 
with which I am here more immediately concerned,—that the Babylonians had 
alphabetic writing as early as the days of Ezra,—Ishall beg to offer some further 
remarks. In the first place, then, I would request attention to the utter impro- 
bability of the Jews having ever designedly forsaken the letters transmitted to 
them from their great lawgiver, and preferred to write their Scriptures with others 
derived from a Pagan source. In the second place, not one of the passages in the 
works of the early Christian fathers, which are appealed to in support of the 
entire story, affords the slightest confirmation of this part of it; but, on the con- 
trary, all of them, when duly considered, will be found to contribute more or less 
to its refutation. The passages referred to are as follows. Origen, on occasion 
of stating that the four-lettered name ('717") was written, in the more accurate 
copies of the Jews, in the ancient Hebrew character, and not in that of his own 
day, subjoins this assertion. “For it is said that Ezra gave them, during the 
captivity, another set of letters in preference to their former ones.”* Eusebius, 
after specifying the number of years that the first Artaxerxes reigned, tells us,— 
in a sentence of which the original Greek is lost, but whose purport is preserved 
in an Armenian version,—that, in the time of that monarch, Ezra was accounted 
a learned scribe of the Hebrew Scriptures ; who is said to have corrected all the 
faults of transcription that had crept into those Scriptures, and to have delivered 
them afresh to the Jews, in letters of a new shape.’ And Hieronymus, upon 
speaking of the Samaritan letters, proceeds thus : ‘ and it is certain that Ezra, a 
* Kai ty Trois axes Berrégoss 0: tay eytiyed ay eBectors yaeuntnecs KEITH TO ovoLeGL [rereceyectpepecroy |, 
2Bgasxols Oi, ov Tois vOv, BAAR Tors apyesroraross. Paci yee Toy Ecdecy éy 7H aly pccracte eregous avTols 
wmeantneas Tote ce ToUs meor:gous ra eededantves._—Origenis Opera, Ed. Benedictina, tom. ii. p- 539. 
} Artaxerxis anni xli. Hujus tempore Esdras, sacrze Scripturee Hebreorum scriba litteratus 
agnoscebatur ; quem aiunt omnes divinas Scripturas recoluisse, Judeisque de integro tradidisse 
