470 



SEQUOIA. 



of the canon in Hebrew when I). "ucd 



Hellenists were quite well aware ol' the limits of the 

 a. and rcpvctcd them." One cannot logically 

 ay tbJ> Without admitting thai llir .VpUia^n. 



, its evidence in favor ol the MMpted 

 Hebrew canon. 



But what does tlie evidence of the Septuagmt 

 mount to in re-ar.1 to Hie Old Testament canon 

 U. c. ami earlier? 



vu- have airmail v seen, it is not a witness 

 in favor of tin- proposition that canonicity was 

 then limited to tlif Pentateuch. On tin- contrary, 

 tho whole Ixwlv of tin- external testimony is to the 

 clfeet that there was then a clearly KCOgniiad body 

 dt Jewish sacred law, having its own limits, and 

 inneh wider than the Pentateuch. There is nothing 

 in the internal phenomena to contradict this. To 

 what extent certain parts of the translation were 

 later than others is a matter yet to be determined ; 

 precisely what plans were tinned in the times of 

 i'liiladelphns in regard to the Jewish Scriptures, nnd 

 how far these plans were carried out. may be mat- 

 ter of doubt ; but in this there is. nothing to contra- 

 dict the testimony that attributes to the men of 

 tho-c times the holding of a distinct idea of this 

 body of writings concerning which it was possible 

 for them to form their plans. They knew of a body 

 of Jewish sacred writings descrilH'd as the law. This 

 law was not the Pentateuch, but a larger body of 

 writings, including the Pentateuch. If our present 

 Old Testament was then in existence as a Collection 

 of books, the term law is a natural term for them to 

 npplytoit. What they proposed to translate was 

 the law and a few Other Jewish books ; from about 

 the time when the letter of Arista-ns was written, 

 the translated part of the Septua-jint has consisted 

 of the Old Testament and a lew other books. 

 These facts an' of some weight as indicating that 

 our present Old Testament canon was rccogni/.ed 

 nt the iM-uinn'm-; of the third century 15. C. If they 

 are compared with facts drawn, fr.m other sources, 

 they will gain force, instead of weakening. 



"The remaining <|iic-tion is as to the value of 

 theSeptuagint for testing or correcting the Masoretic 

 text of the Old Testament. In reaching conclusions 

 upon this, a few undisputed facts should be kept 

 Hcadily in mind. From a date earlier than the cnr- 

 xistini: copies of the Seplnagint. the Mnsoretic 

 text has been handed down with a scrupulous care 

 n-'t )iar:illeled in the history of other writing's. It is 

 traditionally claimed that this care in transmission 

 goes back to the times when the books were written 

 and collected. There is considerable evidence that 

 iniuht be gathered in support of this claim. Apart 

 from the ScptnaL'int variants, there is no strong 

 proof against it. The variants in the duplicated pas- 

 in tin- Old Testament are not proof of Ibis 

 t...rt. for they arc ordinarily to IK- regarded as edito- 

 rial, nnd no't as tnnaciiptknmL i'rof. Wellhausen 

 in the KN< M Mii'.v.niA BHITANXICA urges the 

 occasional infelicities of the Hebrew text as proof. 

 With commendable piety, he speaks of "the design 

 of Providence, which Ml permitted the Old Testa- 

 ment text to reach us in a form that is often so cor- 

 rupt as to sin against both the laws of logic and of 

 grammar of rhetorical and poetical form." But 

 ly, the instances of a false use of language in the 

 Old Testament nre relatively very few ; they are not 

 more numerous or more important than are to be 

 ex|M-elcd in such a literature ; there is no need of 

 regarding most of them as transcripiional errors, for 

 they are snllicicntly accounted for by the state of 

 literary culture existing among their authors. If 

 a collection of writings like these, written bv many 

 dillercnt men. 1110-1 of tin m men wlm-c peculiar!) ies 

 nnd native vi^'or have not IM-CII |>olishcd away by 

 h|M--ial training, presented no dillicnllics to one who 

 would parse or translate them, that very circum- 



stance would justify a suspicion that some one had 

 correct! d the text, and edited out the original pecu- 

 liarities of it. 



If the character of the Masoretic text as a standard 

 text scrupulously transmitted has actually come 

 down to us from the ceiilurict before Christ," then it 

 is of the highest possible order of trustworthiness ; 

 and amon^ those who deny it this preeminence. i>o 

 one would hesitate to say UMw it is a text ol hi;;h 

 character, as compared with other texts. When 

 men apply to it such terms as had and corrupt, they 

 use language relatively ; as a text it is not to be 

 classed somewhere Irom low to medium, nor evi n 

 from medium to high, but somewhere lutwien hivh 

 and highest. On the other hand, the different << } 

 of the Septuagint. by universal admission. ha\c 

 nither a low value for trustworthiness. Whcihir 

 we inquire into the Hebrew scholarship of the trans- 

 lators, or their (ireck scholarship, or their probable 

 faithfulness in following whatever text they had, 

 the best that can be said of them is that they did 

 as well as could be expected. Their work is partly 

 translation, partly paraphrase, partly comment*, 

 partly abridgment. Doubtless it was originally of 

 this character, and these original variations have 

 been augmented by copyists. The existing copies 

 dill'er greatly among themselves. 



Provided these admitted facts be kept in mind, 

 and allowed their due weight in every process, no 

 one need hesitate to regard the Sept'uagint ns nn 

 important aid in the study of Old Testament textual 

 criticism. One need not even hesitate to use the 

 extreme rule laid down by Prof. Wcllhanscn in tl.e 

 BKITAXXICA, that in looking up variants for the 

 Masoretic text, " we must not confine ourselves to 

 one recension, lint use all recensions that our MSS. 

 ] ofler." Rut when we come to estimate the value of 

 | one of these variants, ns compared with the reading 

 of the Hebrew, and ask the question whether we 

 should substitute the variant for the Mason tic read- 

 ing, we have no right to forget the immense dilh r- 

 encc in trustworthiness between the two witncssi s ; 

 and if we remember this, the cases will be very fi w 

 indeed in which any Sepluagint variant is prelemd 

 to the Masoretic reading. 



The fact that a Greek phrase in the Septuaaint 

 can be translated into a Hebrew phrase by no 

 means proves that the Greek translator found that 

 particular Hebrew phrase in his copy. The rule 

 that "the proof that a reading is jjood is simply 

 that it necessarily carries us imck to the Hebn w 

 variant, and cannot be explained by looseness of 

 translation" is a good enough rule lor these <:is. ', 

 provided it be strictly construed; but the cases in 

 which it is .strictly necessary to suppose n false read- 

 ing in the Hebrew, in order to explain the jiliinn- 

 mena of the iScplnagint, are not numerous. 



ilurt. The artlclpp on the Srptuiplnt In the Iroilii c 

 Bilile Dictionaries arc full, and give the literature <>! il" 

 KUhjrct. That In Smith's .BfMe IHctivnart/ ie i f | i inliy 

 elaborate. The Old Tettammt in Gnek aefonlitiff to the 

 >. /'1'iaifiiit, by Dr. Hrnry Ban-lay twete. Cinbridn 1'i.i- 

 iiV I'ri-ss, is a |i:irlieiil:nl\ valuable edition ol Die l< \t 

 | (Vol. I., (icnesit to 2 KIJUJI, 1887). 



(W. J. B.) 



SEQUOIA, a penus of coniferous trees, of the 



"f or cypress family, tin ir 

 ' ;.~ nearest alliance being the TaaaXMan, the 

 rpTTOB " lmld yP r ' lvs "'' " 1L1 Southern rnited 

 Aiii.' lii'p.). Slates and Mexico. They differ from 

 the cypresses proper in ha vine the scales 

 of the cones arranged in spirals, like those of the 

 pines, instead of in pairs, or whorls of three. There 

 are two species only, l>lh remarkable lor 

 their size, and Imth mainly confined to Cali- 

 fornia. >S'. n in ja ri-iniiit. commonly called Kedwood, 

 is fiiiind only on the Coast HaiiL-cs. e.vtendinu' from 

 Monterey Hay into Oregon, but is most abundant 



