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I would not be understood to rest the chief weight of the argument on this list; it simply adds one more to a series of independent inferences. The present Article endeavors to prove that the scenery and allusions of Ezekiel, as also his vocabulary, are germane to the place and time assigned him in the Canon, and that the same is true of Isaiah B, as evinced by the contrast with the former prophet, and the agreement with Isaiah A, which he presents at every point of comparison. This appears in inorganic nature (pp. 526-529); in the vegetable and animal kingdoms (pp. 530-533); in the sphere of human activities, domestic, social, military, and religious (pp. 534-537); being strikingly manifest in the names for God (pp. 538-543). The same result is confirmed by the very grouping of the vocabularies in question. Both in respect to common and uncommon words (pp. 544-546), the agreement is close between A and B, while the disparity is wide between B and Ezekiel. Independent evidence results from the careful study of about twenty among the rarest words in B's vocabulary (pp. 547-552), and the nail is clinched by a list of seventy miscellaneous words found in B, but wanting in Ezekiel, who expresses the same ideas by eighty-three other words, foreign to B's vocabulary. Thus it will be seen that the evidence for the integrity of Isaiah is not a chain which must fall if any link be broken; it consists rather of a multitude of pillars, each and all supporting the conclusion that the second part of Isaiah is rightfully placed with the first.

In view of all this, it may not be presumptuous to express the hope that when Professor Kuenen revises his "Religion of Israel," he will not begin by asserting (p. 15 English translation), “we know for certain that the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah are the productions of a later prophet, who flourished in the second half of the sixth century B.C." Be it so that this is a result of the entire intellectual work of Europe during the last century" (p. 7), still the present century has something to say on that topic. Mr. Cheyne, for example, so far from knowing for certain any such facts, professes to know but in part.1

1 As these closing pages go to the press, I find that a new edition of Mr. Cheyne's Commentary on Isaiah has just appeared. I regret that I have had access only to Vol. i., in which I find nothing which would lead me to modify the views above expressed.

ARTICLE VI.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION.

No. X. THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES COGNATE WITH HEBREW.

AMONG the encouraging signs of religious vitality in our churches, not the least important are those which indicate that the true relation between careful labor in the study and the amount and quality of work done outside of it is more and more appreciated, and that proportionally larger demands are made upon ministers for a wide scholarship. It is also significant that so large a portion of a pastor's study-hours — in accordance not merely with his own scholarly and devout instincts, but also with the expectations of his people—is claimed by those branches of theological training which are directly concerned with the Scriptures themselves. But there is still, in the community at large, and even among those who are preparing for the ministry, and are all active ministers to be excluded from this statement? - - an imperfect notion of what is involved in a thorough familiarity with the Scriptures, and of the way in which such a familiarity is to be gained. In particular, since there are yet some who look with a degree of suspicion on scholarly attainments, and call for more study of the simple word of God as the one fundamental requisite for a preacher and pastor, it may be questioned whether such persons are at all aware what a superficial, inadequate, and in some directions dangerous, knowledge of the Bible that is which those teachers of the people would possess who did not base their teaching on very long and hard and conscientious study of many things whose spiritual advantages are not at once patent. Even those, however, who have a fair theoretical grasp of this truth are quite likely to underestimate the importance of studies which are remote from their own mental interests. So it comes about that excellent and intelligent persons, with a sincere desire for the the most thoroughly educated ministry, are often perfectly unmoved by the consideration that there exists a group of half a dozen or more closely related languages, to which the Hebrew-whose name at least they know might serve the theological student as an introduction. These persons will generally agree that no one should in these days undertake the responsibilities of biblical exposition who is not able to read in the original the Old Testament, as well as the New. Nothing need be said as to the importance of Hebrew in theological training, and yet a hearty protest is certainly in order against the neglect of their Hebrew grammar

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and lexicon- and this involves in most cases the hopeless neglect of the Hebrew Bible - which characterizes so many ministers almost from the time they leave the seminary. It is certainly nothing less than a duty for every minister, who is not prevented by unmistakably providential hinderances, to make and keep himself as familiar as the means at his disposal allow with the language in which more than three fourths of the divine revelation recorded by God's servants of old is handed down to us. It ought not to be regarded, as it so often is, in the light of a matter wholly within one's own liberty of choosing or refusing, whether the original tongue is to speak directly to us, or only through an interpreter. There is not likely to be any dispute as to the fact of such neglect. Is not this a point where the ministerial conscience needs to be quickened? And yet it must be said, in all fairness, that the individual ministers are not wholly to blame. This suggests at once the first reason to be urged for wider Shemitic studies in a theological course:

(1) For the appropriateness of the foregoing remarks in this Article will be evident, when we remember that one chief reason of the ministerial distaste for Hebrew, and of its discontinuance after student years, lies in the fact that in multitudes of cases it has never found its rightful place among the mental stores. Looked at from the first as something new and strange, and of only accidental interest, acquired, as far as it is acquired at all, by the efforts of bare memory, it has never made natural connections with other departments of knowledge; it has never struck root deep into the mind, and interwoven itself into that growth of scholarly thought, of which perhaps no graduate of our theological seminaries is wholly destitute. The difficulties in knowing Hebrew are greatest at the outset. It is foreign in habit and in its fundamental linguistic conceptions; possible attempts to strike acquaintance do not meet with instant success; it seems to defraud other studies of the rewarding fruits of toil; like the Chinaman on the Pacific coast, it is barely tolerated because the law so requires; it is quickly disposed of when protecting authority is removed. Now, as far as ministerial neglect of Hebrew is due to this cause, - and it is largely due to it, the study of the cognate languages will be of considerable service in diminishing the likelihood of that neglect. Hebrew will be relieved of its isolation. It will be seen that we have to do not with a mere solitary and lifeless monument, but with members of a family of languages, possessed of a long and varied history, interacting upon each other, influenced by currents from without. A human interest in these languages, and in the peoples who spoke and speak them, will give vividness and color to facts that before were dull or vague. Suggestive phenomena will be constantly met. Historical, archaeological, religious connections will be all the while made between the Shemitic and the Occidental civilizations; not only will the Shemitic field appear, as it so emphatically is, one intrinsically worth a thorough cultivation; but

it will be seen to open on all hands into those regions where earlier studies have made the mind at home, and the soil of both will yield all the richer fruit. In answer, then, to one who cries out that Hebrew is burden enough, without a new load of Arabic and Assyrian and the rest, it is enough to utter the paradox, that the more knowledge of Shemitic languages one carries, the less will it be regarded as a burden.

(2) In the second place, and as an additional argument for wider Shemitic studies, it must be clearly borne in mind that without at least one of the languages cognate with the Hebrew a part of the Old Testament remains sealed even to the Hebrew scholar. It may be a small part, a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel, a verse in Jeremiah, a word or two in Genesis, but the smallness of the amount ought to make very much less difference in our thought than it actually does. If we had to decide whether we would be able to read Hebrew or Chaldee, we should of course choose that knowledge which would open to us the larger part of the Old Testament; but the question is, whether we shall not have both. If it is worth anything to have access to most of the Old Testament in the original, then it is worth something to have access to it all. It is not necessary to enlarge on the argument which the relation of the preacher and pastor to the word of God supplies in favor of acquiring the biblical Aramaic. Here, again, making all due allowances for providential hinderances, it ought to be matter of shame to a minister or student for the ministry that the opportunity was within his reach to become able to read the entire Old Testament in the language in which it has come down to us, and he merely let it slip.

(3) But another consideration is this. No one can lay claim to a thorough knowledge even of Hebrew, without acquaintance with its sister languages. The system of Hebrew forms is comparatively simple; but this can be understood only as one is able to compare it with the more elaborate systems which meet one, e.g. in the Arabic. Moreover, it is coming to be widely admitted that the simplicity of the Hebrew form-system is the result of a long development. For the earlier stages, for the richness and variety of forms, for the generation of form by form, as well as for the explanation of countless details, we must get back to Assyrian, to Arabic, to Ethiopic. In the same way, investigations in Hebrew lexicography drive us if not always to the elder, certainly to the other branches of the family. The amount of Hebrew literature in our possession is comparatively small. That of the Arabic, Assyrian, and Syriac is enormous. It is therefore not to be wondered at that we are obliged constantly to resort to these other languages for the explanation of a Hebrew word. This applies especially to the Assyrian, which has not only preserved many old Shemitic roots, but has also enriched the Shemitic vocabulary by copious borrowing from the non-Shemitic Akkadian, and has passed over numbers of such words to the Hebrew. It is hardly necessary to add that the

characteristics of Hebrew syntax, both when they are common to the Shemitic family and when they are peculiar to the Hebrew, require for their full comprehension, an acquaintance with the family at large. There is not room even to sketch what has been done in these lines of study. Much yet remains to do, and some particulars will be mentioned farther on. But whether for appreciating the results of the past, or for advancing toward the fuller knowledge of the future, it is a sine qua non of Hebrew attainment to have taken long strides outside of strict Hebrew limits.

(4) Worthy of a separate place, while we are concerned with the purely philological aspects of the subject, is the relation of a knowledge of Aramaic, as well as Hebrew, to an understanding of New Testament Greek; but this is probably too familiar to need more than the briefest mention. It ought, however, not to be forgotten that Shemitic influence in the New Testament is not evident merely in borrowed words, in the change of meanings and of usage, in the transference of idioms, but also in the more general characteristics of style, and in the mode of dealing with the new ideas introduced by Christ. But this last point grazes closely on another to be noted hereafter.

(5) To return to the Old Testament. The languages cognate with Hebrew provide us with invaluable aids in interpreting the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures. Nothing else can be named, under this head, that is comparable with the knowledge gained from Babylonian and Assyrian sources. The storehouse of Shemitic mythology opened up in the cuneiform records; the archaeological, geographical, historical details which are multiplying every day; the supplementing and explaining of Scripture passages which had seemed incomplete or obscure, expressions like these sum up in brief a mass of information which has not begun to be fully known or exhaustively applied. And if it be asked here, — as it may be and is asked at other points, Can we not then take the results of specialists and use them, without ourselves becoming specialists in these things? the answer is: We must, of course, largely do this; but the man of intelligence, who at the same time feels his responsibility as a teacher of the people, will take as little as possible on trust, in a field where such magical results are proclaimed by the decipherer, without at least understanding the grounds of the decipherer's certainty. Nothing, it may be added, will so surely convince an inquirer of the essential soundness of the scientific methods applied to Assyriology, as some practice, even if it be but little, in doing decipherers' work. And besides this, it may be always rejoined to questions of the sort supposed: The life which personal investigation gives to the knowledge a student gains, the depth of the impression it will make on him, and the enduring presence of such knowledge with him cannot be produced or replaced by anything else.

(6) We all know that the old Shemitic versions of the Bible have a part to play in the critical study of both Testaments, and yet the number

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