RELATIONS OF OLD TESTAMENT SCIENCE 559 



gain a foundation for the real mastery of his peculiar linguistic 

 domain. This task alone is very comprehensive and difficult, and 

 has become increasingly so since to the Arabic and Aramaic linguistic 

 stock, with their ramifications, the magnificent discoveries on the 

 Euphrates and the Tigris have added the Assyro-Babylonian. 

 The majority of us older men, whose period of growth coincided with 

 the beginnings of these new studies, must, in our relation to them, 

 content ourselves with the role of outsiders. But even for the younger 

 generation one may be permitted to ask the question whether it is 

 necessary yes, whether it is salutary to strive for citizenship in 

 the whole domain, now so expanded, of the Semitic languages. The 

 almost invariable result will be that one of the principal fields will 

 be decidedly favored. In fact, those representatives of the Old 

 Testament who are linguistically well prepared for their task are 

 already separating into those grounded in the Arabic and those 

 grounded in the Assyro-Babylonian language. And thus it must 

 remain, if liriguistic preparation is not to flatten out into an ency- 

 clopedic polymathy an unfortunate condition which is already too 

 frequently noticeable. To-day it may not be superfluous to emphasize 

 two points in particular: first, that the Semitic language of the 

 cuneiform inscriptions is not called to supplant the other dialects as 

 a foundation for Hebrew; second, that in the study of the dialects the 

 unique quality of the Hebrew is never to be forgotten or neglected. 

 Because the bulk of the writings is but slight, and the vocabulary and 

 constructions correspondingly meagre, Hebrew is by no means to 

 be acquired incidentally, and as it were in leisure hours. Often 

 enough a miserable failure has resulted when capable Semitists 

 of reputation, knowing themselves thoroughly at home in Arabic, 

 Syriac, or Assyrian, thought that as Hebraists also they could speak 

 a decisive word. It is and always will be a life-work to acquire a liv- 

 ing sense of the genius of the Hebrew language, and it will be better, 

 if the choice must be made, after once a solid linguistic foundation 

 has been laid, to neglect the outposts rather than to reject the full 

 mastery of the Hebrew. 



Moreover, our linguistic equipment is not completed even with 

 the inclusion of the Semitic languages; the old versions already men- 

 tioned as the vehicles of tradition, as the transmitters of the content 

 of the Old Testament to different periods and to different civilized 

 countries, are our indispensable aids to the philological discovery 

 of its original text. To-day an Old Testament worker without 

 a thorough familiarity with the idiom of the Septuagint is incon- 

 ceivable, and the identification and purification of the text of the 

 Septuagint require a knowledge of nearly all languages of the Roman 

 orbis terrarum, at least of its larger eastern portion and of its neigh- 

 boring countries. Especially since Lagarde^s telling work a special 



