Language not studied in the best method. 24. Upon this subject, I can only assert what I collect to be the verdict of judicious critics.[660] It seems that the Hebrew language was not yet sufficiently studied in the method most likely to give an insight into its principles, by comparing it with all the cognate tongues, latterly called Semitic, spoken in the neighbouring parts of Asia, and manifestly springing from a common source. Postel, indeed, had made some attempts at this in the last century, but his learning was very slight; and Schindler published in 1612 a Lexicon Pentaglottum, in which the Arabic, as well as Syriac and Chaldaic, were placed in apposition with the Hebrew text. Louis De Dieu, whose “Remarks on all the Books of the Old Testament,” were published at Leyden in 1648, has frequently recourse to some of the kindred languages, in order to explain the Hebrew.[661] But the first instructors in the latter had been Jewish rabbis; and the Hebraists of the sixteenth age had imbibed a prejudice, not unnatural though unfounded, that their teachers were best conversant with the language of their forefathers.[662] They had derived from the same source an extravagant notion of the beauty, antiquity, and capacity of the Hebrew; and, combining this with still more chimerical dreams of a mystical philosophy, lost sight of all real principles of criticism.
[660] The fifth volume of Eichhorn’s Geschichte der Cultur is devoted to the progress of Oriental literature in Europe, not very full in characterising the various productions it mentions, but analytically arranged, and highly useful for reference. Jenisch, in his preface to Meninski’s Thesaurus (Vienna, 1780), has traced a sketch of the same subject. We may have trusted in some respects to Simon, Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament. The biographical dictionaries, English and French, have, of course, been resorted to.
[661] Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 494.
[662] This was not the case with Luther, who rejected the authority of the rabbis, and thought none but Christians could understand the Old Testament. Simon, p. 375. But Munster, Fagius, and several others, who are found in the Critici Sacri, gave way to the prejudice in favour of rabbinical opinions, and their commentaries are consequently too Judaical, p. 496.
The Buxtorfs. 25. The most eminent Hebrew scholars of this age were the two Buxtorfs of Basle, father and son, both devoted to the rabbinical school. The elder, who had become distinguished before the end of the preceding century, published a grammar in 1609, which long continued to be reckoned the best, and a lexicon of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, in 1623, which was not superseded for more than a hundred years. Many other works relating to these three dialects, as well as to that of the later Jews, do honour to the erudition of the elder Buxtorf; but he is considered as representing a class of Hebraists which, in the more comprehensive Orientalism of the eighteenth century, has lost much of its credit. The son trod closely in his father’s footsteps, whom he succeeded as professor of Hebrew at Basle. They held this chair between them more than seventy years. The younger Buxtorf was engaged in controversies which had not begun in his father’s lifetime. Morin, one of those learned protestants who had gone over to the church of Rome, systematically laboured to establish the authority of those versions which the church had approved, by weakening that of the text which passed for original.[663] Hence, he endeavoured to show, though this could not logically do much for his object, that the Samaritan Pentateuch, lately brought to Europe, which is not in a different language, but merely the Hebrew written in Samaritan characters, is deserving of preference above what is called the Masoretic text, from which the protestant versions are taken. The variations between these are sufficiently numerous to affect a favourite hypothesis, borrowed from the rabbis, but strenuously maintained by the generality of protestants, that the Hebrew text of the Masoretic recension is perfectly incorrupt.[664] Morin’s opinion was opposed by Buxtorf and Hottinger, and by other writers even of the Romish church. It has, however, been countenanced by Simon and Kennicott. The integrity, at least, of the Hebrew copyist, was gradually given up, and it has since been shown that they differ greatly among themselves. The Samaritan Pentateuch was first published in 1645, several years after this controversy began, by Sionita, editor of the Parisian Polyglott. This edition, sometimes called by the name of Le Jay, contains most that is in the Polyglott of Antwerp, with the addition of the Syriac and Arabic versions of the Old Testament.
[663] Simon, p. 522.
[664] Id. p. 522. Eichhorn, v., 464.
Vowel points rejected by Cappel. 26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of Louis Cappel, professor of that language at Saumur, the Arcanum Punctuationis Revelatum, in 1624. He maintained in this an opinion promulgated by Elias Levita, and held by the first reformers and many other protestants of the highest authority, though contrary to that vulgar orthodoxy which is always omnivorous, that the vowel points of Hebrew were invented by certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. They had been generally deemed coeval with the language, or at least brought in by Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprising that such an hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind, and Cappel was obliged to publish his work in Holland. The protestants looked upon it as too great a concession in favour of the Vulgate; which having been translated before the Masoretic punctuation, on Cappel’s hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim to stand on higher ground, and was not to be judged by these innovations. After twenty years, the younger Buxtorf endeavoured to vindicate the antiquity of vowel-points; but it is now confessed that the victory remained with Cappel, who has been styled the father of Hebrew criticism. His principal work is the Critica Sacra, published at Paris in 1650, wherein he still farther discredits the existing manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures, as well as the Masoretic punctuation.[665]
[665] Simon, Eichhorn, &c. A detailed account of this controversy about vowel-points between Cappel and the Buxtorfs will be found in the 12th volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle; and a shorter précis in Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i., p. 242.
Hebrew scholars. 27. The rabbinical literature, meaning as well the Talmud and other ancient books, as those of the later ages since the revival of intellectual pursuits among the Jews of Spain and the East, gave occupation to a considerable class of scholars. Several of these belong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Lightfoot, Selden, and Pococke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by Cunæus in Jus Regium Hebræorum, 1623, and especially by Selden, both in the Uxor Hebraica, and in the treatise De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Hebræos. But no one has left a more durable reputation in this literature than Bochart, a protestant minister at Caen. His Geographia Sacra, published in 1646, is not the most famous of his works, but the only one which falls within this period. It displays great learning and sagacity; but it was impossible, as has been justly observed, that he could thoroughly elucidate this subject at a time when we knew comparatively little of modern Asia, and had few good books of travels. A similar observation might of course be applied to his Hierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture. Both these works, however, were much extolled in the seventeenth century.