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EEV. CANON HAMMOND, LL.B., ON 



thank them for responding to my invitation to prepare these papers 

 for the Institute. 



A Member. — I should like to say with regard to what Mrs. Finn 

 has just said about the origin of the Hebrew square characters, that 

 I have, for some time, studied them as a member of the Society of 

 Biblical Archaeology. While the Samaritan is almost identical with 

 the old Phoenician letters, it seems to me that the square character 

 is not at all like it and could never have been derived from it. 



I have a strong impression that what Mrs. Finn has just suggested 

 may be true, that while the square character was used for sacred 

 purposes, the Phoenician, or Samaritan character, was used for 

 secular purposes, such as inscriptions on coins and monuments. 



Mr. Martin Kouse. — I do not think we should close the 

 proceedings without saying that we are immensely indebted to both 

 readers of the papers. Canon Hammond has pointed to the 

 beautifully solemn and typical aspect of that great Passover 

 sacrifice instituted by the Lord Himself 1,500 years before Christ 

 came into the world as the one sacrifice made for sin for ever. 



To the useful emendations that the writer has mentioned as 

 capable of being made from the Samaritan version is one in Exodus 



xxxiii, 7, where in the Masoretic Hebrew text we find : " And 

 Moses took the tent and pitched it without the camp . . . and 

 called it the ' Tent of Meeting,' " whereas the Samaritan text has : 

 " Moses took his own tent," etc. This is evidently the correct 

 reading, inasmuch as the Tabernacle or tent of meeting proper did 

 not begin to be made until Moses had once more ascended to the 

 mountain-top and had spent another forty days with God (t/. chap. 



xxxiv, 2, 4, 28). The number of the Samaritans, all told, says 

 Canon Hammond, was in 1861 about 145. At his visit in 1873 to 

 witness the same ceremony, Dr. Samuel Manning (author of Tliose 

 Holy Fields) found the number further reduced to 120. Is it not a 

 striking phenomenon in the growth of peoples that the Israelites, 

 who by successive conquerors, down to 1,800 years ago, were driven 

 from their land in poverty and hardship should, since then, have 

 multiplied to many millions, while the Samaritans, who have 

 remained as peasant owners in their province of Canaan ever since, 

 have dwindled down to little more than a hundred persons % 

 What purpose could the Almighty One have had in bringing so 

 strange a contrast about except this, that the Samaritans, who were 



