Were more of the historical parts of the Apoc- rypha preserved in their original language, it is srobable that it would chiefly differ from this New
ebrew in the introduction of Greek words, such as are found in great numbers in the Mishna, but the occurrence of which in the later Hebrew of the OT as a characteristic of lateness seems doubtful. If the Bk. of Ruth belongs to the early part of this period, its author has kept it free from the most characteristic phrases of the New Hebrew, while employing several expressions which, though isol- ated, appear to be antique.
It is certain that a considerable portion of the rest of the OT was already known to the writers of these works and constituted their classical literature; and of this collection the largest awnount that can be assigned to a single period with certainty consists of the Bks. of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and ΣΌΣ ΞΞ, the genuineness of the greater eda of the first two being ordinarily admitted, while there seem cogent reasons for assigning the fifth book of the Pentateuch to about the same epoch. This may therefore be called the ‘classical’ period of the language, though the ortions of Isaiah which belong to the close of the
xile seem to surpass them in brilliancy. All these books show signs of literary ambition: ‘Isaiah’ claims, with justice, the possession of a scholar’s tongue (50*); Jeremiah is conscious of the effects of his oratory (9359), and dictates for a reading public (36%) ; many chapters of Ezk reveal study and preparation ; the value which Dt claims for its ‘words’ could scarcely be more strongly
* o3n5 for 137 Est and Ec; ΠῚ for θυ Ezr and Est; ΠΝ (perhaps Assyrian rather than Persian) for 75D (2 K 55) Neh, Est, and Ch ; [3¢n5 or 1205 for 73y/D Ezr and Est.
+ j2} for ny Neh, Est, and Ec; 03> for Ox Ec, Est, Ch; Ἵν for Π Ὁ Ec. In Bab. Megillah, 9, attention is called to the occurrence of 03n5 and 4p’.
τ 15x (also in Est); 133, aj2y, and 123 9 "τ and yD on (also in Est); a:7u"A>.
83 sy (105) only in Ch besides, 47m (1117) only in Est benides, 733, nim*>o, 72y.
1 ] 75x (1145), 030 (1143), Ow" (1122).
np ny 2 Ch 8017 is the Mishnic nom. act.
** nyy7'2 2 Ch 1712 seems to be a Syriac diminutive.
expressed than in 6°". These writers inherited some prophetic phraseology from earlier prophets (Jer 23°, where a verb ‘to né’wm’ is coined, meaning to use the characteristic phrase of the prophets), and, indeed, some prphere commonplace (so Jer 25% seems to give the traditional proem to a pro-
heey, the words recurring from Am 1" and J] 416);
ut it is probable that in the main their language represents that of the ruling and official class at Jerusalem in its last century of independence. It is not unnatural that there should be a group of words and phrases which are peculiar to Dt and Jer, and another group peculiar to Jer and Ezk.
The greater portion of the OT, however, does not consist of works produced by single individuals, embodying their ideas in their own language, but of the work of schools or societies, who compiled, abridged, and edited. The main streams have nerhaps been separated by critics with success ; but each of these main streams is made up of a variety of smaller rills, so to speak, which cannot be localized. Owing to the variety of the docu- ments, written and oral, poetical and prose, which are utilized in one place or other of the series which extends from Gn to 2 K, we have a great variety of idioms exemplified, of which only in rare cases we can define wither the time or the locality. The only cases which deserve much attention are, of course, those for which the ordinary language has synonyms. In the Bk. of Leviticus a word (nny) is used eleven times for ‘neighbour’ which may be said to occur nowhere else ; this must clearly be indica- tive of dialect, but it is not known which. In the ‘law of the slave’ (Ex 211-13), a phrase (1533) for ‘by himself’ occurs three times which is not known elsewhere. In the episode of Esau (Gn 27) words occur for such common notions as ‘ to touch’ (x1), “ to plot’ (ansn2), a quiver’ (*9n), “ἃ deceiver’ (ynynd), ‘a superior’ (7723), which oceur nowhere else. All of these would seem to be dialectic; and the last, which is the masculine of a word that occurs frequently in the feminine, is certainly so. The story of Joseph (Gn 37-50) has a whole vocabulary of its own; as dialectic there may be characterized the words for ‘just’ (j3), ‘sack’ (nnnox), ‘restore to his place’ (123 ὃν aw2), ‘load’ (95). The word for ‘just,’ which occurs five times in this narrative, but for which in the same sense we have to go to Syriac authors, must certainly have met us elsewhere in the OT, if we possessed other documents of the same place and the same time as those to which the original story of Joseph belonged. Although many of the expressions which the documents employed by the compilers contain must have been as unintelligible to them as they are to us, the cases in which they en- deavour to interpret or toemend them are rare. A case of an emendation occurs in Jg 3°, but both alternatives are obscure to us. In 1 Καὶ 910 attention is called to the ancient import of a word, and iz Gn 14" a hard word is glossed, but in neither case is the ancient philology unequivocally confirmed by modern. Where we have parallel narratives (as in Gn 155: 8, Dt 1%, and Nu 14") we can sometimes trace the remains of ancient interpretations of difficulties. The reason that these glosses are so few is probably to be found in the fact that with the Hebrews as with the Arabs a book is rather the possession of an individual or a family (Dt 31*) than of the public; the skeleton writing almost necessitates an authorized exponent. A second reason is probably to be found in the tendency te abridge, which has reduced the Israelitish literature to so small a compass.