Greek chreftomathia, quæ in unius hiftoriæ Græca parte aliqua fubfifteret, quæ hujus partis res illuftriores et apte ex fe nexas et filo temporis adftrictas exhiberet, quæ hiftoricorum Græcorum narrationes Geographi Græci terrarum defcriptionibus jucunde variaret, &c. The felection, which to be followed by Notes, is made, with confiderable judgment, from Homer, the three fragments of Hellanicus, Hefiod, Herodotus, Euripides, Ariftophanes, Thutydides, Xenophon, Ariftotle, Apollodorus, Dionyfius, Diodorus, Conon, Strabo, Plutarch, Polyænus, Paufanias, Philoftratus, Clemens. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO CORRESPONDENTS. Mr. Ray, of Glasgow, will excufe us for faying, that we can neither comply with his requeft, nor accept his offer. We never give an account of a book from a partial view of it, nor ever accept any confideration for giving our opinion. We have the pleafure to inform Cantab, that there is a profeffed answer to Mr. Volney, published last year, by the Rev. Peter Roberts. As we have not yet reviewed the book, we can do no more in this place than announce our knowledge of it." He will find alfo fatisfactory answers to as much of it as concerns the Egyptian Zodiac, and matters connected with that, in the first volume of Mr. Maurice's Hiftory of Hindoftan, in quarto. The answer to Mr. G. mentioned to us by A Conftant Reader, has, by fome means, escaped us; though we have endeavoured to collect all that was written on that subject. By a letter from Mr. Wordsworth, we are informed that an omillion of fifteen lines, in printing his Poem of Michael, in the Lyrical Ballads, will be fupplied to the purchasers, on applying to Metfrs. Longman and Co. in Paternofter-Row. LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. The Bookfellers of London are preparing for a new and improved edition of the English Poets; which will be accompanied with Biographical Accounts and Critical Obfervations, on the plan of Johnfon's Lives, by a gentleman eminently qualified for the tafk. It is alfo in contemplation to reprint Hooke's Roman Hiftory, with a fupplementary account of the firft Emperors. THE BRITISH CRITIC, For APRIL, 1801. Αἰσχρὸν κρίνειν τὰ καλὰ τῷ πολλῷ ψόφω ARISTOPH Judge not of fair and good by common fame. ART. I. A Collation of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of the Pfaims in order to Account for the Variances between them, and thereby establish the Authenticity of the one, and the Fidelity of the other. By John Reeves, Efq. 8vo. 286 pp. 8s. Payne, &c. 1800. THE legal and political character of the author of the work before us has long been univerfally known, and juft'y appreciated by the public. He now appears advantageoufly in a new light and feems to have transferred all that foundness of principle, that folidity of judgment, and that undaunted fpirit which difdains to fupprefs its genuine fentiments, from fubjects of law and politics, to thofe of biblical criticifm. The work confifts of two parts; a long dedicatory Epiftle to Mr. Pitt, confifting of 64 pages, and the Collation itself, which extends from p. 64 to p. 286. The Epifle is replete with mafculine good fenfe, and found erudition; and we conceive that we cannot better confult the amusement and edification of our readers, than by quoting thofe paffages, by the perufal of which we ourfelves have been particularly gratified. The addrefs to Mr. Pitt opens thus: "The printing of the Holy Scriptures being one employment of the King's printer, I determined, as foon as I fhould have an intereft B b BRIT. CRIT. VOL. XVII, APRIL, 1801. in in that concern, to fet-forward fome Biblical works, that would be ufetul not only to English readers, but to scholars, and thus ferve at once the caufe of literature and religion. A fpecimen of one of these defigns, I had the honor of laying before you, fome months ago. Out of that defign has arifen this COLLATION of the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Pfalms; which I now beg leave to prefent you. You, Sir, are the perfon, by whofe advice His Majefty was pleased to confer upon me the fituation, where I thought fome fuch duty as this was incumbent upon me; and it is to you I wish to manifeft my endeavours, at leaft, to fulfil fuch duty in a fuitable manner." P. 3. Mr. Reeves then proceeds to state the object of his present undertaking, and to difcufs fome of thofe important questions with which it is connected; and we merely do him juftice, when we declare, that if he had devoted his whole life to Hebrew literature, he could not, according to our judgment, have written in a more fcholar-like manner, or treated his fubject with greater clearnefs, or more peculiar felicity of illustration. It is intended, in the following inquiry, to reconcile the Septuagint tranflation and the Hebrew text, by accounting for thofe variances, that appear fometimes fo confiderable, as to raise a doubt, whether the one could ever be meant as a verfion of the other: and the view propofed is, to vindicate the fidelity of thofe tranflators on the one hand; and on the other, no lefs to establish the authenticity of the Hebrew, on the credit of those very witnesses in its favour. "The Septuagint tranflation of the Pfalms feems to have been made with the moft fcrupulous attention to the Hebrew. The translators have not contented themfelves with transfufing the sense of a paffage, but have fhewn an anxiety to reprefent its very words and phrafeology, fo as to make the idiom of the Greek language fubmit to that of the Hebrew, and aflume a form that is hardly intelligible to the readers of other Greek hooks, who happen not to poffefs the key, which a knowledge of the Hebrew would furnish. This appears to me, after a careful comparison of it with the Hebrew, to be the true character of the Septuagint vernon of the Plalms. The fame may be faid of much the greater part of the Old Tellament. 46 Imprefed with this general character of the version of the Pfalms, it appeared to me, that the variances muft, upon a clofer examination, be afcribable to fome other caufe, than the want either of fidelity or of ability in the tranflators. I fet myself to make this examination; and, in doing it, I attended to the following confiderations. "As this was a competition between two languages, to determine which fhould give law to the other, in the inftance of any fuch variances as I have mentioned, I confidered the form and genius of both, and I endeavoured to trace the probable account of their formation, and their progrefs towards improvement. With refpect to the Hebrew, I think it must be allowed that, as a written language, it is extremely imperfect. Imagine, Sir, to yourself, any written language with half, I may fay all the vowels, taken out of it, and that you are left to make out the fenfe of the words from the confonants only, impofing upon them think them fuch founds, as you, from your knowledge of the language, Thefe tranflators knew the language, it is true; but they knew it from ftudy, and as a dead language, affifted by the traditions of their fucceffive doctors and feribes. The Hebrew had ceafed at that period to be vernacular; another language had rifen up in its place, during the captivity at Babylon, and had obtained more generally amongst the nation, as the generation of the firft captives paffed away. This was probably not pure Chaldee, but a mixture of that and of H. brew. This mixture of languages, no doubt, increafed when they returned to Judea; in the neighbourhood of which was spoken a dialect of the Chaldee, called in after times the Syriac. As the common language of the Jews, by these foreign acceffions, departed more and more from the language of their forefathers, a knowledge of the facred text became more difficult to be preferved. "The difficulty confifted principally in determining, what vowel founds fhould be added to the written confonants of the text: this fupply was needed, not only to diftinguish one word from another, where the confonants were the fame, and the difference only in the vowel founds, but also for the much more general purposes of language: for what is a mere language of confonants? It is only the ikeleton, which wants the vowels to make the flesh, the nerves, and very form of language; to give it motion, and endue it with gramma➡ tical utterance. For thefe neceffary aids towards understanding the facred text, the tranflators depended upon their memory, and the habitual knowledge, which all Jews must have poffeffed, derived from tradition, without any written marks to determine their judgment. In the fame imperfect manner, were these aids handed down by the fucceffive doctors and fcribes, whofe office it was to preferve a knowledge of the facred volume, for the ufe of the nation; and fo continued this fpecies of traditionary reading, more or less, for feveral centuries. Whatever difference of opinion there may be, as to the time when the contrivance of vowel points was introduced, in order to fix and preferve this knowledge with more precision, it is generally agreed among all thofe, who have written upon this fubject (with very few exceptions), that they were not brought to perfection, and to the ftate in which they now are, till five or fix hundred years after Christ, by the MASORITES, the learned men of the famous fchool at Tiberias; and fome place the era of this final improvement, fo low down as eight hundred years after Chrift. We have little of history in this queftion, and we are left to fupply it, as we can, from probability and the nature of the thing. I own, it seems to me probable, that fo great a work as that of adding vowel points to the whole of the facred volume, and thereby fixing the grammar of the language, was not performed at once, and by one fet of men. It is only after the concurrent labours of many others, and a B b 2 general general acquiefcence in certain leading principles, and in a courfe of reafonable ufage, that a body of academicians can obtain credit with a whole people. They are, I think, more fuccefsful in procuring uniformity in old things, than in devising new ones. I believe, it will be found, that such a feal from eftablished authority, is rather to close fome debated quetion, and give currency to what was tolerably well known before, than to impofe upon the public at once, a contrivance wholly their own, however ingenious, ufeful, and praife-worthy it may happen to be. Many have been the debates upon this learned labour of " The Men of Tiberias," as the Jewish writers fometimes emphatically call them. The vowel points, and the whole fyftem of grammar that has arifen out of them, have been drawn into queftion: they became matter of great and ardent controverfy among learned men in the feventeenth century. In our times it has grown more fashionable to think, that the Hebrew language is in a better ftate for ftudy, when ftripped of all the appendage of vowel points: it is thought to be then clear of every bias, which has been given to the fenfe by the Jewish contrivers of thofe marks, and, in this form, to be laid more fairly before the Christian reader: an opinion which has recommended itfelf by its plaufibility; but much more by the eafe it procures to the learner, who thereby finds a Imoother cutrance into the language, than if he had to matter the difficulties occafioned by the vowel points, whether in the mere reading, or in the grammar. In arguing on that fide of the queftion, it has been too much the habit to afperfe the inventors of vov cl points, as if the whole defign was a plan for making obfcure what was plain, and rendering difficult what was eafy; in order to raife a mystery, and a fort of Jewifh property, out of the Scriptures'; which were intended by the Divine Author of revelation for the inftruction of all the world." P. 4. The following pages are pregnant with judicious obfervation. In them the Jewifh and Greek methods of alphabetical writing are well defcribed, and contrafled with fingular felicity. "But many years before the Jewish Rabbies and Scribes had completed their ufeful labours in the fchool of Tiberias; perhaps, indeed, many years before their predeceffors had begun the method of fixing the interpretation of Hebrew by vowel points; another interpretation of this ancient volume had been made by a fet of learned Jews, under the patronage of royal authority: I mean, the tranflation into the Greek language, made, as is reported, by certain Jews at the command of PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS, about 277 years before Chrift; which, from the number of perfons fuppofed, according to fome relations, to have been employed, is called the SEPTUAGINT TRANSLATION, or Tranflation of the SLVENTY. "The Greeks, who are fuppofed, and not without femblance of probability, to have derived the art of alphabetical writing, either mediately or immediately from the Jews, had, long before the time of this tranflation, improved that valuable invention, in a manner which their matters, for certain reafons, could not, or would not, permit them. |