X.
A SOURCE OF GENERAL INFORMATION AND CULTURE.
Among the many interesting letters which St. Jerome has left us there is one to Laeta, a noble lady of Rome, regarding the education of her little daughter, Paula. An aunt of the child was at the time in Bethlehem, where, amid the very scenes where our Lord was born, she studied the Holy Scriptures in the Hebrew and Greek tongues, as was then the habit of educated Christian ladies. St. Jerome would have the child Paula trained in all the arts and sciences that could refine her mind and lead it to its highest exercise in that singularly gifted nature. To this end he bids Laeta cultivate in the child an early knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures. With a touching simplicity the aged Saint enters into minute details of the daily training,—how the childish hands are to form the ivory letters, which serve her as playthings, into the names of the prophets and saints of the Old Testament; how later she is to commit to memory, each day, choice sayings, flowers of wisdom culled from the sacred writers, and how, finally, he [Transcriber's note: she?] is to come to the Holy Land and learn from her aunt the lofty erudition and understanding of the Bible, a book which contains and unfolds to him who knows how to read it rightly all the wisdom of ages, practical and in principle, surpassing the classic beauty of those renowned Roman writers of whose works St. Jerome himself had been once so passionately fond that they haunted him in his dreams.
It must not be supposed, however, that the judgment of so erudite a man as St. Jerome in placing the study of the Sacred Scriptures above all other branches of a higher education was based upon a purely spiritual view. He realized what escapes the superficial reader of the inspired writings: that they are not only a library of religious thought, but, in every truest sense of the word, a compendium of general knowledge. The sacred volumes are a code and digest of law, of political, social, and domestic economy; a book of history the most comprehensive and best authenticated of all written records back to the remotest ages; a summary of practical lessons and maxims for every sphere of life; a treasury of beautiful thoughts and reflections, which instruct at once and elevate, and thus serve as a most effective means of education. That this is no exaggeration is attested by men like the pagans of old, who, becoming acquainted with the sacred books, valued them, though they saw in them nothing of that special divine revelation which the Jew and Christian recognize. We read in history how, nearly three hundred years before our Lord, Ptolemy Philadelphia, the most cultured of all the Egyptian kings, and founder of the famous Alexandrian University, which for centuries outshone every other institution of learning by the renown of its teachers, sent a magnificent embassy to the High-priest Eleazar at Jerusalem to ask him for a copy of the Sacred Law of the Jews. So greatly did he esteem its possession that he offered for the right of translating the Pentateuch alone six hundred talents of gold ($576,000), and liberty to all the Jewish captives in his dominion, to the number of about 150,000 (some historians give the number at 100,000, others at 200,000).
There exists a spurious account, ascribed to Aristeas, one of Ptolemy's ministers, who is said to have accompanied the royal embassy to Jerusalem for the purpose of urging the king's request. According to this story, which is in form of a letter written by Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, six rabbis, equally well versed in the Hebrew and Greek languages, were selected by the high-priest from each of the twelve tribes. The seventy-two rabbis were invited to the palace of the king, who, whilst entertaining them for some time, publicly asked them questions relating to civil government and moral philosophy, so that by this means he might test their knowledge and judgment. Many of these questions, curious and quaint, have been preserved, and are intended to show the wisdom of Ptolemy and his desire to raise his government to a high level of moral and political perfection. Among the guests who were present at the king's table we find Demetrius Phalereus, the famous librarian, Euclid, the mathematician, Theocritus, the Greek poet philosopher, and Manetho, the Egyptian historian, together with other equally learned and illustrious scholars and literary artists.
Later on the seventy-two translators, according to the same tradition, which has come to us through some of the old ecclesiastical writers, were brought to the island of Pharos, where they went to work in separate cells, undisturbed and living according to a uniform rule, until the entire work of translation had been accomplished. Then the results were compared, and it was found that the translations of all agreed in a wonderful manner, and the Jews accepted it as a work done under the special protection of Jehovah.
Whatever we may hold as to the accuracy of the above account and its pretended origin, it is certain that the story was current before the time of Christ, it being credited by Philo, who repeats it in his Life of Moses, and by Josephus, as well as by St. Justin Martyr and others of the early Christian Fathers. All agree that the Septuagint translation was made about the time of Ptolemy, and that the Jews of Alexandria and Palestine held it in equal veneration as a faithful copy of the Mosaic books, whilst the pagans regarded it in the light of a wonderfully complete code of laws—civil, domestic, and moral.
Reference has already been made to the Sacred Scriptures as constituting the oldest and best-authenticated record of ancient history. From it we draw the main store of our information regarding the beginnings of human society in the Eastern countries of Mesopotamia, early Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, all of which are grouped around the common centre, Palestine, where the principal scenes of the Old and New Testament narrative are laid.
But it is not only in the departments of history and geography that the Bible represents the most extensive and reliable source of information hitherto open to the student of mental culture. The sacred books, although never intended to serve a purely scientific purpose, have within recent years become recognized indicators which throw light upon doubtful paths in the investigation of certain scientific facts. Sir William Dawson, one of the leading investigators of our day, has lately published his Lowell lectures, in which he shows how science at last confirms and illustrates the teaching of Holy Writ regarding geology and the creation of man.[[1]] Similar conclusions are being daily reached in different fields of scientific research, and the words of Jean Paul regarding the first page of the Mosaic record, as containing more real knowledge than all the folios of men of science and philosophy, are proving themselves true in other respects also. We may be allowed to cite here from Geikie's "Hours With the Bible" the testimony of the late Dr. McCaul, who gives us a legitimate view of the latest results of science as compared with the Mosaic record of the Bible.
"Moses," he says, "relates how God created the heavens and the earth at an indefinitely remote period, before the earth was the habitation of man: Geology has lately discovered the existence of a long prehuman period. A comparison with other Scriptures (i.e., those written after the Pentateuch, or Mosaic account) shows that the "heavens" of Moses include the abode of angels and the place of the fixed stars, which existed before the earth: Astronomy points out remote worlds, whose light began its journey long before the existence of man. Moses declares that the earth was or became covered with water, and was desolate and empty: Geology has found by investigation that the primitive globe was covered with a uniform ocean, and that there was a long azoic period, during which neither plant nor animal could live. Moses states that there was a time when the earth was not dependent on the sun for light or heat; when, therefore, there could be no climatic differences: Geology has lately verifed this statement by finding tropical plants and animals scattered over all places of the earth. Moses affirms that the sun, as well as the moon, is only a light holder: Astronomy declares that the sun is a non-luminous body, dependent for its light on a luminous atmosphere. Moses asserts that the earth existed before the sun was given as a luminary: Modern science proposes a theory which explains how this was possible. Moses asserts that there is an expanse extending from earth to distant heights, in which the heavenly bodies are placed: Recent discoveries lead to the supposition of some subtile fluid medium in which they move. Moses describes the process of creation as gradual, and mentions the order in which living things appeared: plants, fishes, fowls, land animals, man: By the study of nature, geology has arrived independently at the same conclusion. Whence did Moses get all this knowledge? How was it that he worded his rapid sketch with such scientific accuracy? If he in his day possessed the knowledge which genius and science have attained only recently, that knowledge is superhuman. If he did not possess the knowledge, then his pen must have been guided by superhuman wisdom" (Aids to Faith, p. 232).
Some years ago much ado was made by certain sceptics about the chronology of the Bible, as if the discrepancies of a few figures could undo the manifest authenticity of the vast store of facts vouched in the grand collection of Biblical books. These discrepancies are being gradually explained. It may be that we err in properly understanding the Oriental habits of counting genealogies, or that the method of the first transcribers led to inaccuracy, despite the care used in the copying and preservation of the text. When we remember that Hebrew signs, very closely resembling each other, denote often great differences, clear enough, no doubt, at first, but becoming indistinct in the course of time, we cannot wonder that some words and expressions present to the ordinary reader a mystery, or even seeming contradiction. It is not necessary to understand the ancient tongue in order to realize this fact. In the first place, the similarity of Hebrew characters which represent great numerical differences must have easily led to errors by the copyists, which caused difficulty to the later transcribers unless they had a reliable tradition to correct the mistake. Thus the letter ב (Beth) represents two, whilst כ (Kaph) represents twenty. By placing two small dots above either of these two characters you multiply them by a thousand, [Hebrew: Beth with two dots] representing two thousand and [Hebrew: Kaph with two dots] twenty thousand. The letter ו (Vav) is equivalent to six, another letter very like it in form, ז (Zayin), is seven, whilst both of these characters represent a variety of meanings: oftenest ו (Vav) is a copula, at other times it stands at the beginning of a discourse, or introduces the apodosis, or is simply an intensive, or adversative; sometimes it is prefixed to a future tense, and turns it into an imperfect, etc. Again, there are special reasons why certain combinations of letters stand for numerals, contrary to the ordinary rule. Thus fifteen is expressed by טו=9+6, instead of יח, because the name of God commences with the latter characters יחות (Jehovah), etc.
Furthermore, many of the signs used as numerals had fixed symbolical significations, and were not meant to be taken as literal quantities.
Moreover, in all the old Hebrew writings the consonants only are expressed. Thus it happens that the same written characters may denote different things, sometimes contradictory, unless living tradition could supply the true signification. Thus the word כר means son (Ps. ii. 12), or it may be an adjective signifying chosen (Cant. vi. 9), or, again, clear (Cant. vi. 10), or empty (Prov. xiv. 4). Besides these primary meanings it stands for corn or grain, for open fields or country, for a pit, for salt of lye (vegetable salt), and for pureness. The true signification in each passage is not always clear from the context, and critics are frequently at a loss to divine the sense intended by the writer.
But whilst these discrepancies and obscurities are a momentary source of distraction, they arouse not only zeal for the study of the sacred languages, by which means philological mysteries are frequently cleared up, but they give us often an insight into the wonderful genius of the Semitic languages, with their peculiar imagery, which associates ideas and feelings apparently wholly distinct from each other according to the use of modern terms.
The last-made reflection suggests another advantage, in an educational point of view, which the study of the Sacred Scriptures opens to those who possess sufficient talent and opportunity for its pursuit. I mean the power of thought and reflection which comes with the study of a foreign language. There are portions of the Old Testament which we cannot rightly read and understand without some knowledge of the tongue in which they were originally written. This is one of the several reasons which the Church has for not sanctioning, without certain cautions, the indiscriminate reading of the Sacred Scriptures in the form of translation. Let me give you a very good authority for this.
About the very time when Ptolemy Philadelphus, of whom I have spoken in the beginning, sent to Jerusalem in order to procure the Greek translation of the Thorah, or Hebrew law (Pentateuch), a holy Jewish scribe was inspired to write one of the later Scriptural books. It appears that He was among the seventy learned scribes who had been sent by the High-priest to Alexandria for the purpose of making the translation for the king, and that afterwards, whilst still there, he composed the sacred book known as Ecclesiasticus. This book he wrote in the Hebrew tongue. Many years after, a grandson of this inspired writer, who is called Jesus son of Sirach, came upon the book and resolved to translate it into Greek, in order that it might be read by many of his brethren in the foreign land, who no longer spoke the Hebrew language, though they believed in the law of their forefathers. To this translation he wrote a short preface which, though it does not belong to the inspired portions of the text, has been preserved and is found in our Bibles. Let me read it to you, because it demonstrates the truth of what I have just said, namely, that our understanding of the Bible is rendered difficult when we are obliged to depart from the original language in which it was written. The younger Jesus Sirach, who spoke both the Hebrew and Greek tongues equally well, at a time when they were still living languages, writes as follows about the translation of his grandfather's work:
"The knowledge of many and great things hath been shown us by the Law and the Prophets, and others that have followed them, for which things Israel is to be commended for doctrine and wisdom; because not only they that speak must needs be skilful, but strangers also, both speaking and writing, may by their means become most learned.
My grandfather Jesus, after he had much given himself to a diligent reading of the Law and the Prophets, and other books that were delivered to us from our fathers, had a mind also to write something himself pertaining to doctrine and wisdom; that such as are desirous to learn and are made knowing in these things may be more and more attentive in mind, and be strengthened to live according to the Law. I entreat you, therefore, to come with benevolence, and to read with attention, and to pardon us for those things wherein we may seem, while we follow the image of wisdom, to come short in the composition of words: for the Hebrew words have not the same force in them when translated into another tongue. And not only these, but the Law also itself, and the Prophets and the rest of the books, have no small difference when they are spoken in their own language. For in the eighth and thirtieth year coming into Egypt, when Ptolemy Euergetes was king, and continuing there a long time, I found these books left, of no small and contemptible learning. Therefore I thought it good and necessary for me to bestow some diligence and labor to interpret this book; and with much watching and study, in some space of time, I brought the book to an end, and set it forth for the service of them that are willing to apply their mind, and to learn how they ought to conduct themselves, who purpose to lead their life according to the Law of the Lord" (Prologue to Ecclesiasticus).
[[1]] "Meeting-place of Geology and History," 1894. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York.