Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/587

 TESTAMENT

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TESTAMENT

the M. T. In Job the textual problem is quite similar. The Greek text is considerably shorter than the M. T. The Greek rendering of Proverbs diverges still more from the Hebrew. L;istly, the Greek Ecclesiasticus, a translation which we must consider to have been made by the author's grandson, is altogether different from the Hebrew recension lately found. These facts prove that duiing the third-second century B. c. texts were circulated which manifest traces of careless treatment. But it must be remembered t hat translators, sometimes, maj' have treated the text more freely, and that even our Greek Version has not come down to us in its orig- inal form. It is hard to determine how far we may recognize the official text of the period in the present form of the Greek text. The legend of the solemn mission to Jerusalem and the deputation of the trans- lators to EgjTJt cannot be treated as historical. On the other hand it is arbitrary to assume that the orig- inal of the Greek Version represents a corrupted text every time it differs from M. T. We have to distin- guish various forms of the text, whether we call them recensions or not.

For a judgment on the Sept. and its original, the knowledge of the Hebrew wTiting then in vogue is indispensable. In the csise of the Minor Prophets attempts have been made by \'ollers to discover the characters employed. The Books of .Samuel have been investigated by W'ellhausen and Driver; Jeremias by Kohler; Ezechicl bv Cornill; Job by Beer; Eccle- siasticus by Peters. Full certainty as tothe characters of the Hebrew scrolls of the third-second century b. c. hasnot as yet been obtained. According fo Jewish tra- dition, Esdras brought over the new (Ass>Tian ) writing when returning from t he Exile.in which script t he S;uTed Books were thereafter transcribed. .\ suildcn change is improbable. It is not possible that the writing of the fourth century was quite similar to that of the Nash Papyi'us or of the first-century inscriptions. The Aramaic wTiting of the fifth century shows an unmistakable tendency towards the latter forms, yet many letters are still clo.sely related to the ancient alphabet: as Beth. Cnph, Mctn, Sarnech, Ayin, Tsade. How did this change take place? Did it pass through the .Samaritan alphabet, which dearly betrays its con- nexion with the Phccnician? We know the .Samaritan letters only after the time of Chri.st. The oldest in- scription belongs, perhaps, to (he fourth century .\. d.; another, that of Xablus, to the sixth. But this writing is undoubtedly decorative, displaying care and art, and offers, therefore, no sure basis for a decision. .St ill there wxs jiresumably a time in which the .Sacred Scriptures were written in an ancient form of the Samaritan characters which are closely related with those of the Hasmona-an coin inscription.

Others suggest the Palmyrian alphabet. Some let- ters, indeed, agree with the square characters; but Ghimel, Hi, Pi, Tsade, and Qdph differ so much that a direct relation is inadmissible. In short, considering the local nature of this artificial writing, it is hardly credible that it exerted a wider influence towards the west. The Hebrew square characters come nearer to the Nabata^an, the sphere of which is more extended and is immediately adjacent to Palestine.

As the change of the alphabet probably took place step by step, we must reckon with transition writings, the form and relation of which can perhaps be ap- proximately determined by comparison. The Greek Version offers excellent material; its very mistakes are an inestimable help to us. For the errors in read- ing or writing, occasioned, or already supposed, by the original, will often find their rea.son and explana- tion in the form of the characters. A group of letters repeatedly read erroneously is a clue as to the form of the alphabet of the original. For the well-known possibilities in the square writing of confounding Dalelh with Resh, Y6dh with Waw, Bdth with Caph do not exist in the same way in the transition writ- XIV.— 34

ings. The interchanging of He and Heth, of Yddh and Waio, so e.asy with the new characters, is scarcely conceivable with the old ones; and the mistaking of Belh for Caph is altogether excluded. Aleph and Tau on the other hand can easily be mixed up. Now in Paralipomenon, in itself recent and translated into Greek long after the Pentateuch, Waw and Tau, Yddh and He, Caph and Resh have been mistaken for each other. This can be accounted for only if an older form of writing were employed. Hence we are compelled to suppose that the old alphabet, or a transition form like it, was in use up to the second or first century B. c. From Christ's words about the jot (Matt., v, 18) it has been concluded that Yddh must have been regarded as the smallest letter; this holds good with the square characters. We know otherwise that, at the time of Christ, the new writing was all but developed; at least the inscriptions of the Bene Chezir and of many ossuaries sufficiently testify to this. But in these inscriptions Zayin and Waw are as small as or even smaller than Yodh.

In addition to the form of the characters, orthog- raphy is of importance. The unpointed consonant- text can be made essentially clearer by writing "plene", i. e. by using the so-called quiescent letters (matres lectionis). This means w;is often absent in the original of the Sept. In the text of the Minor Prophets Aleph seems not to have been written as a vowel-letter. Thus it came about that the translators and the M. T. diverge, according as they suppose the Aleph or not. If the vowel-letter was WTitten, only one interpretation was possible. The same applies to the use of Waw and Yodh. Their omission occasions mistakes on the one or other side. The liberty pre- vailing in this regard is expressly testified even for a much later period. But it is going too far to consider the omission of the vowel-letters as the rule commonly observed. The oldest inscriptions (Mesha, .Siloah) and the whole history of .Semitic writing prove that this practical device was known.

In particular cases the possibility of connecting or separating the letters differently must be considered as another source of di\'ers interpretations. Whether the division of the words was expressed in the ancient MSS. or not cannot be shown by direct testimonies. The Mesha and .Siloah inscriptions and some of the oldest Aramaic and Phcrnician divide the words by a dot. The later monuments do not abide by this usage, but m.ark the division here and there by a lit tie interval. This custom is universal in the Aramaic jjapyri from the fifth century downwards. The Hebrew fragments make no exception, and the .Syriac writing .applies the word-division in the earliest MSS. Therefore the conjecture that word-division was used in the old scrolls is not to be rejected at the outset. Still the intervals must have been so small that wrong con- nexions easily came about. Instances are not wanting, and both the Massorah and the Greek \'ersion testify to that. Thus Gen., xlix, 19-20, is correctly divided in the Greek and in the Vulgate, whilst the M. T. erroneously carries the Mem, that belongs to the end of verse 19, over to the following word " .\sher ". The p.assage, moreover, is poetical and a new stanza begins with ver.se 20. Hence in the archet^-pe of our M. T. the stichic writing, known perhaps at an earlier period and used in the later M8.S., was not applied. The mistakes occurring in consequence of inter- changing of letters, of wrong vocalization or connexion, show how )exl-<orruption originated, and thus sug- gest ways of repairing the damaged pa,ssag(\s. Other slips which always occur in the handing down of MSS., such .as haplogr.aphy. ditlography, in.sertion of glosses, transposition, even of entire columns, must .also be taken into consideration whilst estimating the text of the .Sacred Books. In books or jja-ssages of poetical nature, metre, alphabetical order of verses and stanzas, and their structure, supply a means of