TWO SEMITIC PROBLEMS 



BY CRAWFORD HOWELL TOY 



[Crawford Howell Toy, Professor of Hebrew, Harvard University, since 1880. b. 

 Norfolk, Virginia, March 23, 1836. A.M. University of Virginia, 1856; Southern 

 Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-60; University of Berlin, 1866-68; LL.D. 

 Harvard University, 1904. Professor of Interpretation of the Old Testament, 

 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1869-79. Member of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Oriental Society, Archaeological Insti- 

 tute, Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, American Folk-Lore Society. 

 Author of The Religion of Israel; Quotations in the New Testament; Judaism 

 and Christianity; Hebrew Text of Ezekiel; English Translation of Ezekiel ; Com- 

 mentary on Proverbs.] 



THE Semitic questions now under discussion traverse the whole 

 field of Semitological science; they comprise phonological, morpho- 

 logical, syntactical, lexicographical, rhetorical, and historical pro- 

 blems. With every generation, it is true, some advance is made 

 some questions are more or less definitely settled ; for example, the 

 signification of the two verb-forms, the Perfect and the Imperfect. 

 But, as investigation becomes more and more minute, new questions 

 come to the front, there is greater demand for exactness, and old 

 conclusions have to be reviewed and old opinions modified. Out of 

 this mass of problems we may select two for our present inquiry : one 

 relating to the primitive seat of the Semites, and the other to the 

 genesis of the Perfect and the Imperfect. 



Primitive Seat of the Semites 



The state of this question somewhat over twenty years ago I pre- 

 sented in an article read before the American Philological Association 

 in 1881, and printed in vol. xn of the Transactions of the Association. 

 I there considered the arguments which had been employed up to 

 that time for the settlement of the question. These arguments were 

 partly geographical, partly linguistic. In favor of Arabia as the 

 primitive Semitic home it was urged that the central position of 

 this country fits it to be a centre of distribution and that it has 

 always been in historical times a point of emigration. To this it was 

 replied that the geographical situation of Arabia by no means settles 

 the question; for though it has been a centre of distribution in his- 

 torical times before Islam and for a century or two after Islam, 

 still this cannot prove the case for earlier times. The same thing 

 holds of the Aramean region and of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, 

 both of which have poured forth streams of emigrants there is 

 nothing in the geographical relations that could establish the 



