Hamilton scientific aSvSociation 75 



Chaldaic and Aramaic are used as synonymous words ; or, 

 more precisely, Aramaic is made to include Chaldaic and 

 Syriac, the two leading languages of northern Semitic speech. 

 The Aramaic language evidently possessed great vitalit)^, as 

 it became the mother tongue of the Jews for a thousand 

 years, Hebrew being reserved for purposes of learning and 

 religion. It was the common speech of the Jews in the time 

 of our Saviour, and ceased to be so only when gradually 

 superseded by Arabic, after the Mohammedan conquests in 

 the East. 



Veneration for their scriptures was always a marked 

 trait in the character of the Jews. They are pre-eminently 

 " the people of the book." For their " Book of the lyaw," 

 used in the synagogue, the skin of no unclean animal could 

 defile the parchment scroll on which the sacred text was 

 written ; and if by mischance the transcriber made four 

 errors in any column, so soon as such defect was discovered, 

 the copy, deemed unfit for use, was destroyed by burial in the 

 earth, as destruction by fire might savor of irreverence. 

 Such profound regard accounts for the numerous copies of 

 the Hebrew scriptures found in all important collections of 

 ancient manuscripts. But it is somewhat surprising that 

 none of these manuscripts is remarkable for extreme age. 

 In the British Museum there is a copy of the Pentateuch that 

 dates from the ninth century A.D. That is claimed to be 

 one of the oldest known fragments of a manuscript Hebrew 

 Bible. Still inscriptions of far greater age, recording 

 incidents of Jewish history, are sculptured in Phoenician, a 

 language akin to Hebrew. Of these the " Moabite Stone" 

 in the lyouvre is one of the most famous. It is a Phoenician 

 record of a victory by Mesha, King of Moab, over the 

 Israelites in the days of Ahab, and its accredited date goes 

 back to 890 B.C. 



Tyndale perhaps excepted, the earliest translators of the 

 English Bible were but indifferent Hebraists. Roger Bacon 

 and one or two others who lived before the close of the six- 

 teenth century, are the only Englishmen of that date recorded 



