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 of six lines (probably of the eighth century B.C. ) discovered in June, 1880, in the tunnel between the Virgin’s Spring and the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem; (3) about forty engraved seal-stones, some of them pre-exilic but bearing little except proper names﻿﻿﻿ ﻿; (4) coins of the Maccabaean prince Simon (from ‘the 2nd year of deliverance’, 140 and 139 B.C.) and his successors, ﻿ and the coinage of the revolts in the times of Vespasian and Hadrian.

3. In the whole series of the ancient Hebrew writings, as found in the Old Testament and also in non-biblical monuments (see above, ), the language (to judge from its consonantal formation) remains, as regards its general character, and apart from slight changes in form and differences of style (see to ), at about the same stage of development. In this form, it may at an early time have been fixed as a literary language, and the fact that the books contained in the Old Testament were handed down as sacred writings, must have contributed to this constant uniformity.

To this old Hebrew, the language of the Canaanitish or Phoenician stocks came the nearest of all the Semitic languages, as is evident partly from the many Canaanitish names of persons and places with a Hebrew form and meaning which occur in the Old Testament (e.g., , &c.;