ARGUMENTS FOR THE NOVELTY OF HEBREW POINTS REFUTED. 897
the original that it is beyond all conjecture what should occasion it. I wish some would try their skill upon some part of Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets, to see if, by all their inquiries of extracting various lections, they can find out how they read in their books, if they ren- dered as they read, and we enjoy what they rendered. Simeon de Muis tells us a very pi-etty story of himself to this purpose, Assert. Verit. Heb, sect. 1 ; as also how ridiculous he was in his attempt. But I shall recall that desire. The Scripture, indeed, is not so to be dealt withal; we have had too much of that work already. The rabbinical N"ipn ba is not to be compared with some of our critics' Temura and Notarjecon.^ Of the Chaldee paraphrase I shall speak afterward. It seems not to be of the antiquity pretended. It is not mentioned by Josephus, nor Origen, nor Jerome ; — but this will not impeach its antiquity. But whereas it is most certain that it was in high esteem and reverence among all the Jews before the time assigned for the punctuation of the points, it seems strange that they should, in disposing of them, differ from it voluntarily in so many places. Besides, though these translators, or any of them, might use copies without vowels, as it is confessed that always some such there were, as still there are, yet it doth not follow at all that therefore the points were not found out nor in use. But more of this when we come to speak distinctly of these translations.
8. Of the same importance is that which is, in the last place, in- sisted on from the silence of Jerome and others of the ancients as to the use of the points among the Hebrews. But [as] Jerome saw not all things (he saw not the Chaldee paraphrase, which our authors suppose to have been extant at least four hundred years before him), so it cannot be made evident that he mentioned all that he saw. To speak expressly of the vowels he had no occasion ; there was then no controversy about them, nor were they then distinctly known by the names whereby they are now called. The whole current of his translation argues that he had the Bible as now pointed ; yea, learned men have manifested by instances that seem of irrefragable evidence that he had the use of them; or, it may be, he could not obtain a pointed copy, but was instructed by his Jew in the right pronuncia- tion of words. Copies were then scarce, and the Jews full of envy. All these things are uncertain. See Munster. Prasfat. ad Bib. The truth is, either I cannot understand his words, or he doth positively affirm that the Hebrew had the use of vowels, in his Epistle to Eva- grius, Epist. 126: "Nee refert utrum Salem an Salim nominetur,
' Cabalistic signs, — n-l^n and ■|'"p]'~'^3 , the former denoting a change either by trans- position of letters, or by altering the alphabetical order of the letters; the latter being applied to instances in which one letter written is held to be the sign for a whole word or object. — Ed.
898 INTEGRITY AND PURITY OF THE HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT.
cum vocalibus^ in medio litteris perraro utantur Hebrsei." If they did it yerraro, they did it, and then they had them, though in those days, to keep up their credit in teaching, they did not much use them. JSfor can this be spoken of the sound of the vowels, but of their figures; for surely they did not seldom use the sounds of vowels, if they spake often. And many other testimonies from him may be produced to the same purpose.
Morinus, in his late " Opuscula Hebrsea Samaritica," in his digres- sion against the Hebrew points and accents, the first part, p. 209, brings in a new argument to prove that the puncta vocalia were in- vented by the Jewish grammarians, however the distinction of sec- tions might be before. This he attempts out of a discourse of Aben Ezra concerning the successive means of the preservation of the Scripture ; first, by the men of the great synagogue, then by the Masoretes, then by the grammarians. As he assigns all these their several works, so to the grammarians the skill of knowing the pro- gresses of the holy tongue, the generation of the kingly points and of Sheva, as he is by him there cited at large. After, he labours to prove by sundry instances that the puncta vocalia are by him called reges, and not the accents, as is now the use; and in the addenda to his book, prefixed to it, he triumphs upon a discovery that the vowels are so called by Rabbi Jehuda Chiug, the most ancient of the Jewish grammarians. The business is now, it seems, quite finished, and he cries out, " Oculis aliorum non egemus amplius, auToVra/ nunc sumus"! A sacrifice is doubtless due to this drag of Morinus. But quid dignum tanto ?
The place insisted on by him out of Aben Ezra was some years before produced, weighed, and explained, by Buxtorf, out of his K'npn \wh ^JrxD or the Standard of the Holy Tongue, De Punct. Orig. par. i. p. 13, 14, cap. iii.; and it is not unlikely, from Morinus his preface to his consideration of that place, that he fixed on it some years ago, that he learned it from Buxtorfius, by the provision that he lays in against such thoughts; for what is it to the reader when Morinus made his observations? The manner of the men of that society in other things gives sufficient grounds for this suspicion. And Simeon de Muis intimates that he had dealt before with the father as he now deals with the son, Censur. in Exercitat. iv. cap. vii. p. 1 7; himself, with great and rare ingenuity, acknowledging what he re- ceived of him : Assert. Verit. Heb. cap. v., " Dicesve me haec omnia mutuatum a Buxtorfio? quidni vero mutuor, si necesse erit." But what is the great discovery here made ? 1. That the puncta vocalia are