Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/309

Rh earth originated from it at the dispersion attending the destruction of the Tower of Babel.

This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so developed ever into new and strong forms. As all scholars now know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted until at some period between the second and tenth centuries; but in the early Church they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle—as the work of the right hand of the Almighty; and never until the eighteenth century was there any doubt allowed about the divine origin of these rabbinical additions to the text. To hesitate in believing that these points were dotted by the very hand of God himself came to be considered a fearful heresy.

The series of battles between Theology and Science in the field of comparative philology opened just on this little point, apparently so insignificant—the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation. The first to impugn the divine origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk, Raymundus Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. But he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and apparently left no trace. For nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory held its ground; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to have had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive.

The Reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the Scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the Church and the Papacy to the letter of the sacred books, did not abate but rather intensified for a time the devotion of Christendom to this sacred theory of language. Only on this one question—the origin of the Hebrew points—was there any controversy, and this waxed hot. It began to be especially noted that these vowel points in the Hebrew Bible seemed unknown to St. Jerome and his compeers; and on this ground, supported by a few other