By slightly altering the vowel points of a sentence or a word, the whole sense may be entirely destroyed; and that this has been frequently enough done requires no proof here, for it has been abundantly shown elsewhere. Certain priests have attempted to prove that the vowel points and final letters were in use in Ezra’s time; but it is now generally admitted by scholars that they were inventions of the middle ages. Hear what the learned Christian Dupin, Doctor of the Sorbonne, says:—“The Hebrew alphabet is composed of twenty-two letters, like those of the Samaritans, Chaldeans, and Syrians. But, of these letters, none are vowels, and, in consequence, the pronunciation cannot be determined. The Hebrews have invented points, which, being put under the letters, answer the purpose of vowels. Those vowel-points serve not only to fix the pronunciation, but also the signification of a word, because, many times, the word being differently pointed and pronounced alters the meaning entirely. This is the consideration which has made the question as to the antiquity of the points of so much importance, and has, consequently, had such elaborate treatment. Some have pretended that these points are as ancient as the Hebrew tongue, and that Abraham made use of them. Others make Moses the author of them. But the most common opinion among the Jews is that, Moses having learnt of God the true pronunciation of Hebrew words, this science was preserved in the synagogue by oral tradition till the time of Ezra, who invented the points and accents to fix the meaning. Elias Levita, a German Jew of the last generation, and deeply learned in Hebrew grammar, has rejected this opinion, and contended that the invention of points took place in much more recent times. He ascribes the invention to the Jews of Tiberias and to the year 500 A.D., and alleges that the invention was not perfected till about the year 1040 A.D., by two famous Maserites, Ben-Ascher and Ben-Naphtali.”
Hear, also, what the learned and pious Dr. Prideaux says:—“The sacred books made use of among the Jews in their synagogues have ever been, and still are, without the vowel-points, which could not have happened had they been placed there by Ezra, and had, consequently, been of the same authority with the letters; for, had they been so, they would certainly have been preserved in the synagogues with the same care as the rest of the text.” He then goes on to say that no mention is made of the points in either the Mishna or Gemara, and continues: “Neither do we find the least hint of them in Philo-Judæus or Josephus, who are the oldest writers of the Jews, or in any of the ancient Christian writers for several hundred years after Christ. And, although among them Origen and Jerome were well skilled in the Hebrew language, yet in none of their writings do they speak the least of them. Origen flourished in the third, and Jerome in the fifth, century; and the latter, having lived a long while in Judæa, and there more especially applied himself to the study of the Hebrew learning, and much conversed with the Jewish rabbis for his improvement herein, it is not likely that he could have missed making some mention of them through all his voluminous works, if they had been either in being among the Jews in his time, or in any credit or authority with them, and that especially since, in his commentaries, there were so many necessary occasions for taking notice of them.” The Doctor then declares that after the Babylonish Captivity “the Hebrew language ceased to be the mother tongue of the Jews,” Aramæn, as we know, being the dialect of Judæa at the time of Herod.
We may, then, safely fix the date of our earliest Hebrew MS. at a later period than 1000 A.D., for there does not exist one single ante-Masoretic or unpointed Hebrew MS. of the Bible. The Greek Septuagint was also written in Greek capitals, without accents and breathings and without divisions between the words, and continued thus until the eighth century, when accents and breathings came into use, which were followed, in the tenth century, by small letters, as we have them now in our Greek Bibles. The very same may be said about the New Testament MSS., all of which are written in continuous Greek capitals.
The oldest MS. of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered by Tischendorf at the convent of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai, in 1859, and supposed to belong to the fourth century. The Codex Vaticanus is also supposed to belong to the fourth century, and was first published at Rome by Vercellone, in 1858. The Codex Alexandrinus, containing both Old and New Testaments, is supposed to belong to the fifth century, and was first published by Woide, in 1786, and afterwards by Cowper, in 1860. Of the Old Testament it contains, besides the canonical and most apocryphal books found in our editions, the third and fourth books of the Maccabees, Epistle of Athanasius to Marcellinus (prefixed to the Psalms), and fourteen hymns, the eleventh in honour of the Virgin. Ecclesiasticus, the Song of the Three Children, Susannah, and Bell and the Dragon do not appear. Of the New Testament there is, in addition to the received books, the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians and part of the Second. The Codex Ephraemi is supposed to belong to the fifth century, and was published by Tischendorf in 1843. The Codex Bezæ is a Græco-Latin MS., said to belong to the sixth century, and first published by Kipling, in 1793, and afterwards by Scrivener, in 1864. All these MSS. are written in continuous capitals, so badly formed, and so jumbled together, as to be almost illegible.
According to the showing of those most interested in proving the antiquity of sacred writings, the very earliest MS. cannot lay claim to an earlier date than the fourth century; and, if the authors to whom the Church has attributed the various writings in the Bible wrote the said records, it is clear that the latest originals must date from the first century. But the originals do not anywhere exist, and consequently it is utterly impossible for anybody to know who wrote any one of the books of the Bible, which is, therefore, a compilation of anonymous writings, and, as such, is of no authority whatever. So far from being a divinely-inspired record, it is, as we have seen, a product of the cunning and ingenuity of knaves and fanatics, who deserve credit for only one thing, and that is that they managed to make any sense whatever out of the wretched scribble and scrawl from which they derived their information.
THE
“ANNALS” OF TACITUS.
One of the darkest epochs in the history of Christianity is that period which commenced with the annihilation of the Saracen power in Europe and the establishment of the Inquisition by Pope Innocent IV. in 1243, and continued until about the end of the fifteenth century. The ghastly horrors perpetrated by the Christian Church at this time against unoffending people are too well known to need any reproduction here, and may be found fully detailed in Rule’s “History of the Inquisition,” Draper’s “Conflict,” and other similar works. My purpose just now is not to follow in detail these wicked and cruel abominations connected with the Christian superstition, but to study carefully the various circumstances surrounding the sudden appearance, in the early part of the fifteenth century, of so many MSS. purporting to have been written by the ancients. Among these manuscripts were the so-called “Annals of Tacitus,” which have since become so celebrated on account of the reference made by the author in his fifteenth book to the persecution of the early Christians by Nero. It has long been suspected by learned scholars that these “Annals,” and in particular the passage relating to Nero’s persecution of Christians, were never written by Tacitus; but, owing to the danger usually incurred in giving expression to opinions so detrimental to the interests of the Church, no one ventured until quite lately publicly to state his doubts as to the genuineness of these celebrated writings. It is now, however, pretty generally admitted among such scholars as do not make their honour subservient to their interests that the author of the “History” and the author of the “Annals” were not the same person, and that the latter, moreover, were not written until many centuries after the death of Tacitus.
To find out who was the real author of these “Annals,” and how they became associated with the name of Tacitus, it will be necessary to glance at the condition of the Christian Church during the period referred to above; and in doing so none but authors of the highest repute will be consulted.