Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/659

Rh could not arise by accident. The Greek text of Jeremiah is vastly different from that of the Hebrew Bible, and it is not certain that the latter is always best. In the books of Samuel the Greek enables us to correct many blunders of the Hebrew text, but shows at the same time that copyists used great freedom with details of the text. For the Pentateuch we have, in the copies of the Samaritans, a third recension, often but not always closely allied to the Greek. The three recensions show important variations in the chronology of Genesis ; and it is remarkable that the Book of Jubilees, a Jewish treatise, which cannot be much older than the Christian era, perhaps not much older than the destruction of the Jewish state, sometimes agrees with the Samaritan or with the Alexandrian recension. Up to this time, then, there was no absolutely received text. But soon after the Christian era all this was changed, and by a process which we cannot follow in detail, a single recension became supreme. The change was, no doubt, connected with the rise of an overdrawn and fantastic system of interpretation, which found lessons in the smallest peculiarity of the text ; but Lagarde has made it probable that no critical process was used to fix the standard re cension, and that all existing MSS. are derived from a single archetype, which was followed even in its marks of deletion and other accidental peculiarities. (Lagfirde, Anmerkn. zur yriech. Uebersetzung der Prov., 1863, p. 1 ; ,-f. Noldeke in Hilgenfeld s Zeitschr., 1873, p. 445.) Then the received text became the object of farther care, and the Massorets, or &quot; possessors of tradition&quot; with regard to the text, handed down a body of careful directions as to the true orthography and pronunciation. The latter was fixed by the gradual invention of subsidiary murks for the vowels, tfcc., an invention developed in slightly divergent forms in the Babylonian and Palestinian schools of Jewish scholarship. The vowel points were not known to Jerome, but the system was complete before the 9th century, presumably several hundred years before that time. All printed Bibles follow the Western punctuation, but old Karaite MSS. with the Babylonian vowels exist, and are now in course of publication. It is from the Massoretic text, with Massoretic punctuation, that the English version and most Protestant translations are derived. Older Chris tian versions, so far as they are based on the Hebrew at all (Jerome s Latin, Syriac), at least follow pretty closely the received consonantal text.

Jewish Versions.—Versions of the Old Testament became necessary partly because the Jews of the Western Dispersion adopted the Greek language, partly because even in Pales tine the Old Hebrew was gradually supplanted by Aramaic. int. The chief seat of the Hellenistic Jews was ki Egypt, and here arose the Alexandrian version, commonly kiu,. n as the Septuagint or Version of the LXX., from a fable that it was composed, with miraculous circumstances, by seventy- two Palestinian scholars summoned to Egypt by Ptolemy Philadelphus. In reality there can be no doubt that the version was gradually completed by several authors and at different times. The whole is probably older than the middle of the 2d century B.C. We have already seen that the text that lay before the translators was in many parts not that of the present Hebrew. The execution is by no means uniform ; and, though there are many good render ings, the defects are so numerous that the Greek-speaking Jews, as well as the large section of the Christian church which long depended directly or indirectly on this version, were in many places quite shut out from a right understand ing of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, the authority of the version was very great, its inspiration was often asserted, arid its interpretations exercised a great influence un Jewish and Christian thought, though among the Jews it was to a certain extent displaced by the version of the proselyte Aquila (2d century of our era), vliich followed with slavish exactness the letter of the Hebrew text.

Among the Jews who spoke Aramaic, translations into the vernacular accompanied, instead of supplanting the use of the original text, which was read and then orally paraphrased in the synagogues by interpreters or Methur- gernanim, who used great freedom of embellishment and application. This practice naturally led to the formation of written Targums, or Aramaic translations, which have not, however, reached us in at all their earliest form. It used, indeed, to be supposed that the simple and literal Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch was earlier than the time of Christ. But recent inquirers have been led to see in it, and in the linguistically cognate Targum on the Prophets (Targum of Jonathan), products of the Babylonian schools, in which the freedom of the early paraphrastic method was carefully avoided. Upon this view the date of these Targums is some centuries after the Christian era. On the other hand, an older style of paraphrase is pre served in the Palestinian Targums, which nevertheless contain in their present form elements later than the Baby lonian versions. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on the Pentateuch is apparently the latest form of the free Pales tinian version, full of legendary adornments and other additions to the text. Other fragments of Palestinian translation, known as the Jerusalem Targum, and referring to individual passages of the Pentateuch and Prophets, probably represent an curlier stage in the growth of the Aramaic versions. There are also Targums on the Hagio- grapha, which, however, have less importance, and do not seem to have had so changeful a history. The Targums as a whole do not offer much to the textual critic. They are important, partly from the insight they give into an early and in part pre-Christian exegesis, partly from their influence on later Jewish expositors, and through them on Christian versions and expositions. In some cases the literal or Babylonian Targums have a text differing from the Massoretic. But it is not unlikely that if we had a satisfactory text of the Targums (towards which almost nothing has hitherto been done), these variations would find their explanation in the Eastern text and the Assyrian punctuation.

.—Relation of the Earliest Christianity to the Literary and Intellectual Activity of the Age.—In the literature of Palestine at tho time of Christ we distinguish scribes. a learned and a popular element. The learned class or scribes were busy on their twofold structure of Halacha, or legal tradition and inference, supplementing and &quot; hedg ing in &quot; the Pentoteuclril law, and Haggada, or fantastic exegesis, legendary, ethical, or theosophic, under which the religious directness of the Old Testament almost wholly disappeared. The popular religious literature of the day Popular seems again to have been mainly apocalyptic. (See .) The people never wearied of these mysterious revelations couched in strange symbolic and enigmatic forms, and placed in the mouths of ancient patriarchs and worthies, which held forth golden visions of deliverance and vengeance in a shape which, because crasser and earthlier, was also more palpable than the spiritual hopes of the old prophets. Beyond the limits of Palestine thought took a wider range. In adopting the Greek Hellenisn language the Hellenistic Jews had also become open to the influences of foreign speculation, and the schools of Alex andria, whose greatest teacher, Philo, was contemporary with the foundation of Christianity, had in great measure exchanged the faith of the Old Testament for a complicated system of metaphysico-theological speculations upon the Absolute Being, the Divine Wisdom, the Logos, and the like, which by the aid of allegorical interpretation were made to appear as the true teaching of Hebrew antiquity. 