1823.] 
had a kind of precedent in the conduct 
of Elijah (1 Kings, xviii. 40), it is not 
announced as having a religious mo- 
live; and when it is stated, that many 
people of the land became Jews, the 
reason assigned is simply (c. viii. v. 17), 
that the fear of the Jews fell upon 
them. Michaelis thinks that the chro- 
nicle whence this fragment concerning 
Esther has been extracted, extended 
only to the nineteenth verse of the 
ninth chapter ; and that the remaining 
sixteen verses of the book were added 
at Jerusalem, ina Hebrew less pure 
and more approaching the Syriac. 
The language of this book deserves 
to be considered: it is Hebrew, the 
tongue of those Abrahamites living 
beyond tlie Euphrates, the East Aramic. 
This, therefore, was the speech of the 
court of Shushan, the metropolitan 
dialect, in which were issued the edicts 
of the Persian government, and in 
which were composed the liturgic 
books of the Persian church. The 
West Aramic, or the Syriac, which 
we improperly term Chaldee, was 
spoken on this side the Euphrates, and 
was at all times the vernacular lan- 
guage of Jerusalem: hence those frag- 
ments of the books of Ezra, of Nehe- 
miah, and of Daniel, which were added 
at Jerusalem, occur in West Aramic. 
Now the entire Hebrew Bible, which 
we possess, is drawn up in the East 
Aramic, not in the West Aramic, dia- 
lect; in the language of Shushan, not 
in the language of Jerusalem. It is 
consequently tke canon provided for 
the Jewish church of Persia, a trans- 
lation made by Ezra and his coadju- 
tors of the sacred books previously in 
use at the temple of Jerusalem, which 
Jeremiah is stated to have saved from 
the burning of the temple. The fol- 
lowing considerations render this indu- 
bitable. If the family of Abraham 
brought with them into Goshen a pure 
Hebrew, they must there have ac- 
quired, during so long a sojourn, a 
great many Coptie words and ideas, 
and have quitted the country with a 
specch resembling the Egyptian. If 
Joseph drew up the memoir of his 
family contained in the Book of Gene- 
sis, if Moses wrote his Numbers and 
Leviticus, and if Josliua detailed his 
conquests, in this Coptic Hebrew; yet, 
after the shepherd-kings had removed 
with their clans into Canaan, they 
must have adopted from the wives 
which they took, and the subjects 
whom they spured, a vast mass of 
Oriental Accounts of the Ancient History of Persia. 
19 
Phoenician phraseology, which by de- 
grees amalgamated with their own, 
and may have been refined in the time 
of the kings to a polite language; but 
it must have differed widely from the 
idiom in which Moses wrote. Let us 
suppose the separation of Israel from 
Judah not to have affected the lane 
guage of Jerusalem, and that this en- 
dured as long as royalty, still a 
captivity of seventy years at Babylon 
must have produced a third great 
innovation. ‘To suppose that the Cop- 
tic Hebrew of Moses, the Judahite 
Hebrew of David and Solomon, and 
the Babylonish Hebrew of Daniel and 
Ezra, can be the same language, or 
even so much alike as to be all at any 
one period intelligible to the Jews, is 
an untenable doctrine. Yet the Bible 
is written from beginning to end in 
one of these three dialects. ‘‘ In Veteré 
Testamento, (says Leusden, in his Phi- 
lologus Hebreus, ) tanta est constantia, 
tanta est convenientia, in copulatione 
literarum, et constructione vocum, ut 
Sere quis putare posset omnes illos libros, 
eodem tempore, iisdem in locis, a diversis 
tamen auctoribus, esse conscriptos.” 
This phenomenon can only be solved 
by the hypothesis, which every sort of 
evidence conspires to corroborate, 
that, by command of the céurt at 
Shushan, Ezra translated the sacred 
books of his country into the official 
language of Persia, and that our 
Hebrew Bible is that translation. The 
names of his assistants are, with some 
corruptions, preserved in the 24th 
verse of the fourteenth chapter of the 
Apocryphal Esdras; whence it may be 
gathered, that tradition ascribed the 
translation of the Persian canon to 
Ezra, Daniel, Jeremiah, Haggai, -and 
Ezekiel. 
One great inference more, and I 
conclude. Ifit be certain that Darius 
1. established pure Judaism in Persia, 
if it be certain that Ezra was employed 
to compile the canon of this Persian 
church, it follows that there never was 
any other Zoroaster than Ezra. The 
twenty-one nosks of Zertusht are the 
twenty-one books of our Hebrew Bi- 
ble, with the exceptions, indeed, that 
the canon of Ezra could not include 
Nehemiah, who flourished after the 
death of Ezra, or the extant book of 
Daniel, which dates from Judas 
Maccabeeus, or the Ecclesiastes, which 
is posterior ‘to Philo; and that it did 
include the Book of Enoch, now re- 
tained only in the Abyssinian panees 
