HEBREW LANGUAGE
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HEBREW LANGUAGE
invention of the alphabet they may likewise lay claim to the honor of having laid the foundation of the world's literature. The Shemitic alphabet, as is well known, has no signs for the pure vowel sounds. All the letters are consonants ; some, however, are so weak as easily to pass into vowels, and these letters we accordingly find in use, especially in the later Scriptures, as vowel marks. Two interesting questions here present themselves : 1. As to tiie age and origin of the characters or letters which appear in all extant Hebrew INISS. and in our printed Hebrew Bibles; and, 2. As to the origin and au- thority of the punctuation by which the vowel sounds are indicated.
1. On the former of these questions there are two con- dusi(i;is wluL-li may be relied on as certain: (1.) That the present square characters were not in use among the Jews previous to tlie Babylonian Captivity. The Jew- ish tradition is tliat they were introduced or reintro- duced by Ezra {Qei>emns, Geschkhte, p. 150; Lightfoot, Ilorce Ilebraicw, Matt, v, 18). (2.) That the square char- acters have been in use since the beginning of oiu: jera (Hupfeld in Stinl iind Krit. for 1830, p. 288). But be- tween these two limits several centuries intervene ; is it not possible to approximate more closely to the date of their introduction ? The only fact to which appeal can be made ^vith this view is this, that on the coins of the iMaccabees the square characters do not appear; but whether we are entitled to conclude from this that these characters had not then come into use in Judrea is ver\^ doubtful (Gesenius, Geschichte, sect, xliii, 3). The prob- ability is that the introduction of these characters, called by tlie Jewish doctors Assyrian, and generally admitted to be of Araina-an origin, had some connection with the introduction of the Aramajan language, and that the cliange from the ancient written characters, like that from the ancient language, was not accomplished at once, but gradually. It is possible that in the intensity of national feeling awakened during the JMaccabsean struggle, there was a reaction in favor of the ancient language and writing.
The earliest monuments of Hebrew writing which we possess are these genuine, coins of the Maccabees, Avhich date from the year B.C. 143. The character in which tlieir inscriptions are expressed bears a very near resem- blance to the Samaritan alphabet, and both are evident- ly derived from the Phoenician alphabet. The Talmud also, and Origen and Jerome, both attest the fact that an ancient Hebrew character had fallen into disuse; and by stating that the Samaritans employed it, and by giving some descriptions of its form, they distinctly pro\e that the ancient character spoken of was essen- tially the same as that on the Asmoufean coins. It is th>?refore considered to be estaWished beyond a doubt that, before the exile, the Hebrews used tliis ancient character (the Talmud even calls it the "Hebrew"). The Talmud, and Origen, and Jerome ascribe the change to Ezra; and those who, like Gesenius, admit this tra- dition to be true in a limited sense, reconcile it with the late use of the ancient letters on the coins, by appealing to the parallel use of the Kutic characters on the jMo- hammedan coins, for several centuries after the Nishi was employed for writing, or by supposing tliat the Maccabees had a mercantile interest in imitating the coinage of the Phoenicians. The other opinion is'that, as the square Hebrew character has not, to all appear- ance, been developed directly out of the ancient stiff Phoenician t%qie, but out of an alphabet bearing near af- finity to that found in the Palmj-rene inscriptions, a combination of this palajographical fact with the inter- coiurse which took place between the Jews and the S\t- ians under the Seleucidre, renders it probable that the square character was first adopted at some inconsider- able but undefinable time before the Christian fera. Either of these theories is compatible with the supposi- tion that the square character underwent many succes- sive modifications in the next centuries, before it at- tained its full calligraphical perfection. The passage in
Matt. V, 18 is considered to prove that the copies of the law were already written in the square character, as the yod of the ancient alphabet is as large a letter as the alcj^h ; and the Talmud and Jerome speak as if the He- brew MSS. of the Old Testament were, in their time, already provided with the final letters, the Tatjgin, the point on the broken horizontal stroke of n, and other calligraphical minutiie.
The characters in use before the Babylonian exile have been preserved by the Samaritans even to the present day without material change (Gesenius, Monum. Fhccn. sect, li, 1 ; comp. on this subject also Kopp, Bilder und Schriften, ii, sect. 1G5-1C7; Ewald, Lehrbuch, sect. Ixxvii ; Gesenius, Geschichte der Ilebi-dischen Sprache u. Schrift, sect. 41-43).
2. A s to the orifjin and authority of the punctuation, the controversy which raged so fiercely in the 17th cen- tury may be said now to have ceased; and the views of Ludovicus Cappellus, from the adoption of wliich the Buxtorfs anticipated the most dangerous consequences, now meet with almost universal acquiescence. The two following conclusions may now be regarded as estab- lished : (1.) That the present punctuation did not form an original part of the inspired record, but was intro- duced by the Jewish doctors long after that record had been closed, for the purpose of preserving, as far as pos- sible, the true pronunciation of the language ; and (2.) That the present pointed text, notwithstanding its com- parative recency, presents us with the closest possible approximation to the language which the sacred writers actually used. It would be tedious to go over the evi- dence by which these positions are established. Those who wish to do so will find the fidlest information in the great work of Ludovicus Cappellus, entitled A rca- num Punctationis Revelatum, with the reply of the youn- ger Buxtorf. Keeping these conclusions in view iii in- terpreting the Hebrew Scriptures, we shall be careful neither, on the one hand, to neglect the traditional text, nor, on the other hand, servilely to adhere to it when a change of the points woidd give a better sense to any passage.