Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/632

Rh 598 writing this usage was far less extensive than in our Heb rew MSS., and hardly applied except to diphthongs and to a, or less often i, u at the end of words. 1 This old char acter with its scanty indications of vowels continued to be used by the Hebrews throughout the nourishing period of their literature and for some time after the Exile, till at length they gradually adopted a newer form of letters (the square or, as the Talmud calls it, the Assyrian character) which was developed among the Aramaeans and spread with the increase of Aramaic influence. Jewish tradition ascribes the introduction of the square character to Ezra (Sy&amp;gt;t/t. 21b 22a; Jerome, Prol. Gal.}; but the Samaritans, who did not receive the Pentateuch from the Jews till about 400 B.C., must have got it in the old letter which they still retain in a corrupted form. The square letter probably did not prevail till a good deal later, the earliest Jewish inscription in which it appears being of the date 176 B.C. (published by De Vogue, Rev. Arch., 1864), while the coins of Judea retain the old character still later. The transformation was complete before the time of Christ, for Mat. v. 16 alludes to the new form of Yod (jot). 2 By this time too the use of matres lectionis must have become more ample. The later introduction of vowel points and accents belongs to the history of the study of Hebrew as a dead language. The forms of the old Semitic alphabet are most suitable to be cut on stone, and indicate a special adapta tion for monumental inscriptions (cf. the two tables of the Decalogue). Between the beginnings of such inscriptions and the general use of writing for literary purposes a con siderable period might intervene. The earliest products of Hebrew authorship seem to have been lyrics and laws, which would circulate in the first instance from mouth to mouth without the use of written copies. We have notice of early written collections of lyrics prior to our present historical books the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14) and the Book of Jashar (Josh, x., 2 Sam. i). We have no clue to the age of the former book, but the lines quoted from it are plainly of great antiquity. The Book of Jashar is not earlier than the time of Solomon ; for a fragment from it referring to the building of the temple has been recovered from the Septuagint of 1 Kings viii. (Wellhausen in Bleek, ut supra, p. 236). The earliest date of written law books is uncertain. It may fairly be made a question whether Moses left in writing any other laws than the commandments on the tables of stone, Even Ex. xxiv. 4 and xxx iv. 27 may in the original context have referred to the ten words alone. And it is certain that ancient law was handed down by oral tradition and local custom to a much later date. The prophets frequently allude to the oral decisions of the priests as a source of law, and the practice of appealing to the local customs of certain towns is alluded to in 2 Sam. xx. 18 (as restored by Ewald from the LXX.) &quot;Ask at Abel and at Dan whether the genuine old statutes of Israel have lost their force.&quot; In like manner the story of the early fortunes of the nation down to the time of David often presents characteristics which point to oral tradition as its original source. Yet written history began comparatively early. A scribe was attached to the royal court from the reign of David downwards; and the older parts of the books of Samuel, which must have been written not long after the time of that king (see 1 The stono of Mesha is the earliest evidence. Lagarde, Griech. Uebers. d. Proverlien (1863), p. 4, observed that the LXX. translated from a Hebrew copy without matres lectionis. This is put rather too barely, but is very near the truth. Compare Wellhausen, ut supra, and Text der BB. Samuelis (1871); Noldeke, Z. f. Wissensch. Theol. (1873), p. 120 ; Chwolson in Travaux de la 3 &quot;* section du Congrts international des Orientalistes, pt. ii. a A papyrus of the British Museum, showing the square letter as it was written in Egypt a little before the time of Christ, has been fac similed by the Palaeographical Society (Or. Ser., 1877). DAVID), are framed in a masterly style, which shows that the art of composition in prose was already thoroughly understood. So too the best written and most brilliant part of the narrative of the Pentateuch the combined history of the Jehovist and the non-Levitical Elohist appears to be unquestionably earlier than the rise of pro phetic literature in the 8th century B.C. In this narrative itself the product of more than one writer are included several collections of old laws, so that we have between the time of David and the age of Amos and Hosea a flourish ing historical and legal literature, in which and in lyrical collections like the Book of Jashar were embodied many poems, legends, and other remains, transmitted, whether orally or by writing, from a much earlier date. To the same period may be assigned the most interesting and graphic histories in the book of Kings, the splendid episode of Elijah, and other remains of Ephraitic history; and to these must probably be added the main stock of the Song of Solomon, though this lyric drama has suffered much from interpolation, and presumably was not written down till a comparatively late date and from imperfect recollection, so that its original shape is very much lost. It is mainly from the admirable prose narratives, to which nothing in later books can be compared, that we must judge of the first bloom of Hebrew literature under the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Ephraim, before the convulsions that accom panied the advance of Assyria and prior to the influence of written prophecy. It is a literature eminently fresh and vivacious, full of exact observation of nature and of men, always drawing directly from life, and working on the reader not by elaborate description but by dramatic pre- sentation of character and action. The authors are too in tent iipon the story to interpose their own comments or point a moral, but they tell their tale with sympathy and ! often with an undercurrent of dry humour. It can hardly be said that the writings of this period have a specifically religious purpose. Reflecting with admirable veracity the actual life of the nation they are full of the relation be tween Israel and Jehovah, because that relation was con stantly present to the people as a very real fact without which the history could not be told. It is to this circum stance that we owe the preservation of so large a mass of early prose, which was taken over and incorporated in their works by later historians who wrote with a distinctly religious purpose ; while on the other hand the early lyric collections have disappeared, all but a few fragments, pre sumably because their tone was prevailingly secular. That the Hebrews once possessed a poetry of high merit drawn from the themes of ordinary life appears, not only from the book of Canticles and such relics as the Song of the Well (Num. xxi. 17, 18), but from the names of popular airs pre served in the titles of the Psalms. Thus we learn from Isa. Ixv. 8 that the title Al-Taschith (Ps. Ivii.) is taken from a vintage song of which the first line was &quot; Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it.&quot; These popular songs, then, sur vived the Exile and long continued to live in the mouths of the people. But they were without interest to the later guardians of Israel s literature, and fell into oblivion when Hebrew ceased to be the vernacular of the nation. A last echo of the festal songs of the Jewish maidens in the Talmud (Mishna Ta anit, iv. 8, and the corresponding Gemara) shows only the total decay of the popular muse. In this earliest period the age of popular literature, as we may call it, modelled upon the songs and histories that circulated orally through the country there is a remark able preponderance of writings connected with the northern kingdom, and these include the narratives that are fullest of human interest and the poetry richest in colour and imagination, such as the loves of Jacob and Rachel, the history of Joseph, the life of Elijah, the pictures of nature