19U 



EEV. J. IVERACH MrXEO^ M.A.^ ON 



these three elements met and mixed for the short time neces- 

 sary to produce the exact precipitate of language which we tind 

 in the Samaritan dialect. 



That period was the one which we can identify by the historic 

 account preserved in ii Kings xvii, where we have the introduc- 

 tion of the Samaritan colonists among the Hebrew remnant in 

 Samaria. The inrush of the surrounding Aramaic inhabitants 

 into the depopulated country is also certain. At no other time 

 do we have these elements meeting in the living intercourse 

 which could have produced this dialect. 



Another most remarkable circumstance is that any book at 

 all should have been written or translated into a language which 

 was in such a crude state. So heterogeneous a population would 

 naturally have other work than the production of literature. 



Here again we have the reason given us in the recorded 

 urgency of the fear excited by the lions making these Samaritans 

 translate the newly-received revised Pentateuch into the 

 common speech that everyone might know how to avoid the 

 anger of the God of the land. 



Xow a critic may laugh at the fear of these Samaritans, as to 

 that I say nothing ; though I have my own thoughts as to what 

 he would do in the presence of a few lions, perhaps even of one. 

 But if he ignores that fear as a factor in explaining the pheno- 

 mena of the Samaritan Pentateuch and its Samaritan transla- 

 tion, then I have this to say, that a man who can so regard the 

 realities in life would be much better employed in a calling 

 more suited to his capacities than in sitting in the chair of the 

 critic, for he shows that he is simply blind to what moved men 

 in that far-otf time, and is therefore siu'e to err. 



From the Samaritans themselves we have no evidence that is 

 of any weight as to the date of the translation, therefore the 

 philological and other evidence which we find embedded in their 

 works is the more valuable. 



The assertion that it was composed in the century before 

 Christ by a priest named Xathanael is simply absurd in face of 

 the testimony of the language itself. 



Here a reference may be made to the general value of this 

 translation to Bibhcal science. 



An example of the light which this translation throws on the 

 use and non-use of one word in Ezekiel will better indicate its 

 great general value to Bibhcal science than any mere expression 

 of opinion. 



Take the word ip^ to " visit,'* often used in the sense of to 

 visit with punishment. 



