HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



663 



periods are to be distinguished: 1. from Abraham to 

 Moses, when the old Aramaean stock was changed 

 l.y the influx of the Egyptian and Arabic ; 2. from 

 Moses, or the composition of the Pentateuch, to 

 Solomon, when it attained its perfection, not without 

 being influenced by the Phoenician ; 3. from Solomon 

 to Ezra, when, although increasing in beauty and 

 richness, it became less pure, by the adoption of 

 foreign ideas and idioms ; 4. from Ezra to the end of 

 the age of the Maccabees, when it was gradually lost 

 in the modern Aramaean, and became a dead lan- 

 guage. Traces of different dialects appear about the 

 end of the third period; for after the captivity, the 

 old Hebrew, the language of the manuscripts of the 

 Old Testament that nave come down to us, was dis- 

 tinguished under the name of Jehudit, that is, the 

 Judaic language, from the Samaritan and Aramaean. 

 The Hebrews had characters or letters as early as 

 the beginning of the third period, until the captivity. 

 Their written characters were the same as the 

 Phoenician, to which the letters of the Samaritan 

 manuscripts approach the nearest. During the 

 Babylonish captivity, they received from the Chaldees 

 the square character in common use ; and in the time 

 of Ezra, the old Hebrew manuscripts were copied in 

 Chaldee characters. This character, according to 

 some, had originally three vowel-points ; but the 

 position that the written vowel signs are of recent 

 date, is now admitted by all critics of any note. The 

 punctuation was not settled before the seventh cen- 

 tury of the Christian era. (See Masora.) The intro- 

 duction of the accents, and the division of the words, 

 were also innovations of a late period. Thus the ex- 

 ternal form of the text had undergone many changes; 

 and, as some critics believe, the contents of the books 

 which now compose the Old Testament, cannot have 

 come down to us perfectly unchanged. Moses, they 

 say, wrote upon stone ; for a long time after him the 

 Hebrews appear to have engraved whatever they 

 wished to perpetuate, only upon stone, brass, or wood, 

 and not to have used, before the time of Samuel, 

 and the school of the prophets established by him, 

 any more convenient materials for writing, such as 

 linen or papyrus, which alone, according to our ideas, 

 could have made the origin of a literature possible. 

 And even at this time, writing was very rare among 

 all nations. Many books of the Old Testament, for 

 example, the books of Moses, the book of Job, and 

 some of the Psalms, evidently indicate an earlier ori- 

 gin. The supposition cannot therefore be avoided, 

 that only their principal points were in part written 

 by the authors to whom they are ascribed, and in 

 part handed down by oral tradition, and that they 

 were afterwards revised by later hands, comple- 

 ted from tradition, and collected into that form 

 in which they now exist. The same is true in re- 

 gard to the greatest part of the remaining books of the 

 Old Testament, the composition of which, according 

 to general opinion, belongs to the age before the 

 captivity. The genuineness of the form, in which we 

 possess them, can therefore be allowed only in a 

 limited sense, by the Orientalists of our times. In 

 this view, not only the arrangement, but much of the 

 contents of the old Hebrew writings, especially the 

 historical, must be considered as more or less the 

 work of a later period than they were formerly con- 

 sidered to belong to. But the genuineness of the 

 facts which they relate, and of the spirit which is pe- 

 culiar to these books, can by no means be rendered 

 doubtful by this circumstance. The scrupulous con- 

 scientiousness and veneration, with which the He- 

 brews regarded their sacred writings, even to the 

 minutest particulars, must free them from the slight- 

 est suspicion of any arbitrary additions or alterations, 

 t\en if it were not for the internal evidence derived 



from the peculiar character of each book, which is 

 abundantly decisive of their genuineness. That much 

 must have been lost from the treasures of Hebrew 

 literature, which was very rich, particularly in the 

 age of Solomon, is evident from passages in the Old 

 Testament itself. But whatever, in the small part 

 which we possess, has relation to the history of the 

 Hebrews and religion, belongs, as to its substantial, 

 historical, and religious contents, to the epochs to 

 which it relates. Hence the succession of the differ- 

 ent ages, into which the history of the Hebrews is 

 divided (I. patriarchal, the first covenant with God ; 

 2. Moses and the giving of laws (T/iorah); 3. heroic 

 ages under the judges, the theocratic republic ; 4. 

 the reign of David and Solomon, the theocratic mon- 

 archy; 5. the prophets, the contest of theocracy with 

 monarchy; 6. the Babylonish exile ; 7. the age after 

 the return from captivity), appears in the gradual 

 development of the spirit which breathes through 

 their writings. The supposition of these works hav- 

 ing been committed to writing at a comparatively 

 late period, still remains good in this view. When, 

 from the first period, the accounts contained in Gen- 

 esis (see Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), 

 from the second, the laws inscribed by Moses on 

 stone, the fuller rules for the worship of God and the 

 constitution of society, the historical accounts and 

 hymns delivered by oral tradition (see Moses), and 

 from the third, similar accounts (the contents of the 

 books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth) had come down to the 

 fourth period, the historical and poetical materials (the 

 Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses, Joshua, 

 Judges, the books of Samuel) were reduced to writing, 

 and new poetical creations arose. 



The Hebrew authors would find strong impulses to 

 poetry in the pastoral life of their patriarchs, the 

 beautiful and grand scenery of their country, in the 

 wonderful history of their nation (their deliverance 

 from Egyptian bondage, their struggles with nature 

 and with hostile hordes during the forty years' wan 

 dering in the desert, and the wars under the judges), 

 in the practice of singing at divine worship, in their 

 passion for music, strengthened hy this circumstance, 

 and in the existence of an order of prophets (teachers 

 and poets). (See Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, 

 translated into English, and Herder's Spirit of Heb 

 rew Poetry, 3d edition, by doctor Justi, in 2 volumes, 

 Leipsic, 1825, a work of greater originality.) Poe- 

 try was the foundation of their literature. Lyric 

 poetry prevailed under David, who was equally suc- 

 cessful in song and elegy ; didactic poetry under his 

 successor, when attempts were likewise made in 

 pastoral (Ruth) and the shorter epic. (See David, 

 Psalms, Solomon, Solomon's Song, Job.) Strong reli- 

 gious feeling distinguished the spirit and subject of 

 these poems. Never has the reverence for Jehovah's 

 laws been displayed in a more lively manner than in 

 the holy songs of David's time. On the contrary, 

 Solomon, in his actions as well as in the writings 

 which bear his name, inclines evidently to a philoso- 

 phic and even worldly indifference, very remote from 

 the Israelitish character. After the division of the 

 kingdom, religion and literature alone preserved a 

 residue of national vigour, and the prophets now 

 became the instructers and comforters of this morally 

 and politically degraded people, until the unfortunate 

 time of the Babylonish captivity; before which, under 

 | the kings, lived Jonas, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, 

 ! Micah, Obadiah, Nahum and Habakkuk. During 

 i the captivity flourished Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, 

 ; Zephaniah ; and at the time of the return, Haggai, 

 , Zachariah, and Malachi. (For the circumstances of 

 I their lives, and the peculiar spirit of the writings 

 1 which are known under their names, see Prophets, 

 and the separate articles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, &c_) 



