PHILOLOGY TO THE TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 203 



favourite device of cutting off the heads of opponents does not 

 succeed when these opponents are facts written in a book. They 

 arise and face scholars in unbroken array. 



I may mention that the feminine form of ^in, h'f^', occurs in 

 the Pentateuch eleven times in all. I have found that in every 

 instance it could be explained, either by its having been inserted 

 from the margin as a gloss, for example, Genesis xiv, 2, " Which 

 is Zoar " ; or ^^in, hv\ may have been omitted by a copyist, sup- 

 plied in the margin by a later hand as t^Tf,%', and then transferred 

 to the text, This may have been the case with Genesis xx, 5, 

 where the Samaritan Pentateuch omits one b^lH, hv\ and, as its 

 invariable custom is for the feminine, changes another ^IPf, hv\ 

 into, t^^Tf hy\ Great weight must be attached to these excep- 

 tions, because they show that there was no xDrejudice against 

 writing b^^Tl, hy\ wherever it might occur. 



The evidence shows, then, that when Jacob and his family 

 w^ent down into Egypt the old sounds of the pronoun were still 

 used in Canaan, hau-iua for the masculine, Inai-vxt for the 

 feminine. During the sojourn in Egypt, by a well-known 

 phonetic law the change in ^^IH, A'?^', had taken place in Canaan 

 of the Ti or %o into y after the -i-sound. Israel in its detached 

 position in Goshen had kept the old pronunciation. On their 

 coming into contact with the highly civilized though morally 

 corrupt Canaanites, the old-fashioned pronunciation was given 

 up. 



Then the structure of the Hebrew language itself confirms 

 the Mosaic date of the Pentateuch, as well as the original unity 

 of Semitic-Indo-European. This is a far-reaching argument. 

 Its force can only be appreciated when the analogous case of the 

 Koran is considered. What has rejuvenated, developed, and 

 unified Arabic ? Without a doubt the Koran. It is the religious 

 book of the Mohammedan world. It is accepted universally 

 among Mohammedans both for religion and as the standard of 

 Arabic. Now ^yhat the Koran did philologically for Arabic, 

 preserving the language of the Koraish tribe of a particular date 

 for use and comparison, the Pentateuch did for Hebrew. It fixed 

 the language. The archaisms which undoubtedly exist are as 

 nothing to the established grammatical uniformity which the 

 influence of some standard work accepted by JSTorthern Israel as 

 well as Judah could alone have secured. There exists no other 

 work that could have done this but the Pentateuch. JS'ow^ the 

 kind of Semitic which is used in that book is indeed in an 

 advanced stage of, what may be called for want of better terms, 

 philological decay. But it bears the marks of being a very 



