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TESTAMENT

perhaps for its courtyard, which has a well-propor- tioned Ionic colonnade. The Casa del Capitula, where the ecclesiastical chapter used to assemble, has an altar dedicated to the Immaculate Conception and to St. Emerentia, patroness of the city.

Among the distinguished citizens of Teruel must be mentioned Jer6nimo Ripalda, S.J.; the jurisconsult Gaspar de Castellot; Miguel Jer6nimo de Castellot, judge of the courts of Aragon, 166.5; Fray Juan Ce- brian de Perales, Bishop of Albarraclii, and Juan Mar- tinez Salafranca, Viceroy of Aragon, founder of the Academy of History.

CuADRADO, Espana, bus monumetttos: Aragdn (Barcelona, 1886); Prunedo, Crdnica general de Espafla; Crdnica de Teruel (Madrid, 1866).

Ram6n Ruiz Amado.

Test Act. See Oaths, English Post-Reforma- tion.

Testament, The Old. — I. Name. — The word "tes- tament", Hebrew berith, Greek BiaB-QKr), primarily signifies the covenant which God entered into first with Abraham, then with the people of Israel. The Prophets had knowledge of a new covenant to which the one concluded on Mount Sinai should give way. Accordingly Christ at the Last Supper speaks of the blood of the new testament. The Apostle St. Paul declares himself (II Cor., iii, 6) a minister "of the new testament", and calls (iii, 14) the covenant entered into on Mount Sinai "the old testament". The Greek expression 5m0-qKri is employed in the Septuagint for the Hebrew "berith". The later interpreters Aquila and Symmachus substituted for SiofliJKi; the more common (tvvB-^kt), which probably agreed more with their literary taste. The Latin term is "foedus" and oftener "testamentum", a word cor- responding more exactly to the Greek.

As regards Christian times, the expression at an early period came to signify the whole of God's Reve- lation as exhibited in the history of the Israelites, and because this old covenant was incorporated into the Canonical Books, it was but an easy step to make the term signify the Canonical Scri])tures. Even the text referred to above (II Cor., iii, 14) points to that. So, the Scriptures are called "books of the Old Testa- ment" by Melitoof Sardis and Clement of Alexandria (tA iraXaii /Si^Xfa; ra rijs iraXoiSs SiaSiiKTjs f)ip\la). It is not clear whether with these authors "Old Testament" and "Scriptures of the Old Testament" mean the same. Origen shows that in his time the transition was complete, although in his writings signs of the gradual fi.xing of the e.xpression may be still traced. For he repeatedly speaks of the "so-called" Old Testament, when meaning the Scriptures. With the Western writers this use of the term in the most ancient period cannot yet be proved. To the lawyer TertuUian the Sacred Books are, above all, documents and sources of argument, and he there- fore frequently calls them "vetus and novum in- Btrumentum". Cyprian once mentions the "scrip- turae veteres et nova;". Subsequently the Greek use of the term becomes established among the Latins as well, and through them it has been made common property of the Christian world. In this meaning, as signifying the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament, the expression "Old Testament" will be used in what follows.

II. History of the Text. — The canon of the Old Testament, its manuscripts, editions and ancient versions are treated in the articles Bible; Canon OF the Holy Scriptukes; Co»ex Alexandrinus, etc.; Hebrew Bibi-e; Ma.ssoraii; Manuscripts OP the Bible; Versions of the Bible. Questions concerning the origin and contents of the single books are projiosed and answered in articles on the rcspeclivc books. This article is confined to the general uitroduction on the text of the parts of the

Old Testament written in Hebrew; for the few books originally composed in Greek (Wisdom; II Macha- bees) and those of which the Semitic original has been lost (Judith; Tobias; Sirach, i. e. Ecclus.; 1 Macha- bees) call for no special treatment.

A. Text of the Manuscripts and Massoretes. — The sure starting-point for a correct estimation of the text of the Old Testament is the evidence obtained from the MSS. In this connexion, the first thing to observe is that however distant the oldest MSS. are — the earliest are of the ninth century a. d. — from the time when the books were composed, there is a uniform and homogeneous tradition concerning the text. The fact is all the more striking, as the history of the New Testament is quite different. We have New-Testament MSS. written not much more than 300 years after the composition of the books, and in them we find numerous differences, though but few of them are important. The textual variants in the MSS. of the Old Testament are limited to quite insignificant differences of vowels and more rarely of consonants. Even when we take into account the discrepancies between the Eastern, or Babylonian, and Western, or Palestinian schools, no essential differences are found. The proof for the agreement between the MSS. was established by B. Kennicott after comparing more than 600 MSS. ("Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum variis lec- tionibus", Oxford, 1776, 1780). De Rossi has added considerably to this material ("Varite lectiones veteris Testament!", Parma, 1784-88). It is obvious that this striking uniformity cannot be due to chance; it is unique in the history of text-tradition, and all the more remarkable as the imperfect Hebrew system of writing could not but occasion many and various errors and slips. Besides many peculiarities in the method of WTiting show themselves uniformly every- where. False readings are retained in the same manner, so that the text is clearly the result of arti- ficial equalization.

The question now arises: How far back can we trace this care in handing down the text to posterity? Philo, many authorities on the Talmud, and later Jewish rabbis and savants of the sixteenth and seventeenth century favoured the opinion that the Hebrew text, as it is now read in our MSS., was writ- ten down from the outset and bequeathed to us un- adulterated. The works of Elias Levita, Morinus, Cappellus have shown this view to be untenable; and later investigations have established the history of the text in its essential features. The uniformity of the MSS. is ultimately the outcome of the labours of the Massoretes, which were not concluded till after the writing of the oldest MSS. The work of the Massoretes chiefly consisted in the faithful pres- ervation of the transmitted text. This they accom- plished by maintaining accurate statistics on the entire state of the Sacred Books. Verses, words, letters were counted; lists were compiled of like words and of forms of words with full and defective spelling, and possibilities of easy mistakes were catalogued. The invention of the signs for vowels and accents — about the seventh century — facilitated a faithful preservation of the text. Incorrect separation and connexion of syllables and words wjis henceforth all but excluded.

Textual criticism was employed by the Massoretes very moderately, and even the little they did. shows th.at as much as possible they l(-ft untoiiched all that had been handed down. If a reading jircivcd un- tenable, they did not correct the text itself, but were satisfied with noting the proper reacUng on the mar- gin aa "Qerfe" (read), in opposition to "Kethibh" (written). Such corrections were of various kinds. They were first of all corrections of real mistakes, whether of letters or of entire words. A letter or a word in the text had, according to the note on the