218 



♦ KNOM^LEDGE ♦ 



[May 1, 1886. 



Nehemiah seems to have been unwilling to discard any of 

 these documents absolutely. Antiquity doubtless gave them 

 a sacred character in his eyes, which had been wanting 

 when Hilkiah, for example, two centuries before, had gone 

 through the collection. Hilkiah must have examined and 

 rejected many of the documents which Nebemiah and Ezra 

 accepted as sacred. But besides the old documents relating 

 to early Jewish historj- and to Egyptian thought. Nehemiah 

 liad access to other materials of great antiquit}' unknown to 

 HUkiah. Among these may be included Babylonian records 

 of various sorts, in which he seems so far to have placed 

 trust that be thought it neces.sary to work them into the 

 record of the earliest ages to which his collection of docu- 

 ments referred. So can we understand not only the diverse 

 cosmogonies, but also the diverse accounts of the Flood in 

 the early chapters of Genesis. 



More perplexing perhaps are the contradictions, and 

 especially tlie repetitions with changed names, in the 

 accounts of patriaichal times. The story of a patriarch 

 travelling with his wife and calling her, for his own safety's 

 sake, his sister, must have been especially a favourite in the 

 folk-loi'e of pre-Mosaic Semites ; for not only is it told 

 twice of Abraham and Sarah, with alterations of detail, but 

 it is related also of Isaac and Rebecca, or of Yiee'hilq and 

 Eibqab, as our old friends appear in the newer translations. 



A good featui'e in the volume before us is the separate 

 appearance of the Elohistic and Jehovistic passages, as well 

 as the usual form of the Book of Genesis with these accounts 

 and others mixed up together. The quotations from the 

 Targums of Onkelos, Jonathan ben Uzziel, and others, are 

 also full of interest. The Targum of Onkelos is held to be 

 of equal authority with the Mosaic text ; and although some 

 of the passages in it may appear, on account of their novelty, 

 more surprising than those in the Book of Gene.sis as read 

 in our churches, they could be quite as readily " reconciled " 

 either with modern science or with other versions. 



The introduction by the author of " Mankind, their Origin 

 and Destiny," contains much interesting matter, not alto- 

 gether well arranged — in fact, we fail to recognise any 

 arrangement at all. The following extracts serve to show 

 the view taken of the Jewish i-ace, and of their fitness to 

 teach the world reUgion. It is not altogether the view 

 maintained by Mr. Matthew Arnold in " Literature and 

 Dogma " :— 



"The Jewish conception of the Universe is that it was 

 created expressly for them. . . . The seed of Abraham, ' the 

 chosen ones ' (Ps. cv. 6), were under tlie special care of 

 Jahveh. ' As for the other people which also come of 

 Adam, Thou hast said that they are nothing, but be like 

 unto spittle ' (cheerful for xoics ai(tre-i), ' and bast likened 

 the abundance of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel ' 

 (2 Esd. vi. 56). 'Anthropology,' says M. Burnouf, 'places 

 the Semites between the Aryans and the yellow races. . . . 

 While eminently superior to the yellow races, they manifest 

 as regards ourselves differences which do not admit of their 

 being classed with the Indo-European race. The true Semite 

 h.as flat hair, in consequence of which the hair of his head 

 presents a crisped appearance ; his nose is extremely hooked, 

 his lips ai-e projecting and fleshy, his extremities are large, 

 his calf small, and be is flat footed. AVbat is of more con- 

 fequence Ls that he belongs to the occipital races — that is, to 

 those races in which the posterior part of the bead is more 

 developed than the anterior or frontal portion. His growth 

 is very I'apid. At fifteen or sixteen years of age it has 

 ceased. At the latter age the anterior portions of his skull, 

 which contain the organs of intellect, are firmly brought 

 together, and frequently even cemented to one another. 

 The result is that there can be no further development of the 

 brain, and especially none of the grey matter.' The Semites 



are unknown to history till a period between .3000 and 

 2000 B.C., when they gradually conquered the primitive and 

 highly civilised populations of Babylonia." 



It is strange to think how this people has conquered the 

 average intellect of the Indo-European races — how widely 

 they have caused to prevail their innate idea that " the 

 universe was created expressly " for the Jews. Yet there is 

 promise of freedom ; the dawn of a clearei' and purer day 

 seems to have begun. 



EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



By Ada S. Ballix. 



lY.-LOSSES AND GAINS IN LANGUAGE. 



SPOKE in my last of the various changes 

 which the meanings of words may undergo in 

 the course of time, and showed how the 

 original meanings very frequently beaime 

 obscured or forgotten. When the real mean- 

 ings of words are unknown, and no reliable 

 data are attainable as to their origin, the 

 most plausible meanings that can bs found are tacked on to 

 them on the most flimsy pretexts. Prof. Sayce* has given 

 an amusing instance of this. An old housekeeper, in a 

 lai-ge mansion in the noith of England, was in the habit of 

 pointing out a Canaletto to visitors, with the remark that 

 it was " a candle-light picture, so called because it could 

 not be seen to best advantage during the day." Of like 

 character may be the origin of many erroneous derivations 

 as well as myths, and this tendency to make a meaning 

 where none can be found has played its part in the develop- 

 ment of language. For example, pramant/nis, the name of the 

 fire-machine anciently used in India, where two sticks were 

 rubbed together, gave rise to the Greek myth of Prometheus, 

 who stole fire from the gods. The Greek goddess Athenfi 

 takes her name from the Sanscrit Ahand, the dawn, of which 

 a Yedic hymn says : — " Ahana comes near to every house, 

 she who makes every d,ay to be known." So that the origin 

 of the Greek myth of the birth of Athene from the 

 head of Zeus is simply that the dawn springs from the 

 f;ice of the sky. Similarly Kronos, time, is said to devour 

 his own children, the days and hours; similarly, also, the 

 constellation which we know as the Bear got this name 

 through a confusion in the Greek mind between arktos, 

 from a root meaning to shine, and another arktos, from a 

 root meaning to destroy, which signified bear. Hence the 

 myth of Kalisto, who was changed by Zeus first into a 

 bear and then into the star of that name. To return to 

 modern times. Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland, the name of 

 which literally means cloud-capped, has caused the Swiss to 

 invent a story connecting it with the death of Pontius 

 Pilate ; and, to come from the sublime to the ridiculous, I 

 may inform my readers that the Colorado is the coloured 

 beetle, and has nothing to do with the place Colorado, 

 whence it does not come. Ordinary persons would say 

 that a walnut-tree was a tree so called because it is 

 trained against a wall. Yet the word u-all in this name 

 has nothing to do with bricks and mortar, but simply 

 meanii /orei!j7i : Danish, walnoot ; Saxon, rwrZ/; =foreign ; 

 German, wjilscbe nuss (Welsh nut), that is, foreign or 

 Celtic nut. An itinerant vendor of vegetables, if asked 

 why asparagus was so called, would probably say : " Spar- 

 rergrass is sparrergrass cos the sparrers eat that kind 

 o' gras--." In old "cookery -books, and in some counties, 

 "grass" or "gress" is the market-gardener's name for 



' Introduction to the Science of Language," Vol. I. p. 2ti. 



