Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/615

Rh racters of this Jewish nation, they will not easily believe that they did ever willingly "receive the Old Testament from a people who were the avowed champions of the New."

have, indeed, no knowledge of the New Testament but from conversation; and do not curse it, but treat it as a folly where it supposes the Messiah come, who, they seem to think, is to be a temporal prince, prophet, priest, and conqueror.

, it is not probable that a Jew would receive the law and the prophets from a Christian, without absolute necessity, though they might very well receive such a copy from a brother Jew, which all the Abyssinians were, when this translation was made. Nor would this, as I say, hinder them from following a copy really made by Jews from the text itself, such as the Septuagint actually was. But, I confess, great difficulties occur on every side, and I despair of having them solved, unless by an able, deliberate analysis of the specimen of the Falasha language which I have preserved, in which I earnestly request the concurrence of the learned. A book of the length of the Canticles contains words enough to judge upon the question, Whence the Falasha came, and what is the probable cause they had not a translation in their own tongue, since a version became necessary?

less doubt that Frumentius translated the New Testament, as he must have had assistance from those of his own communion in Egypt; and this is a further reason why I believe that, at his coming, he found the Old Testament already translated into the Ethiopic language and character, because Bagla, or Geez, was an unknown letter, and Rh