The art of writing practised by the Hebrews at a very remote period. In primitive times, records of important events cut in stone; the letters sometimes filled with plaster or melted lead. Engraving also practised with the stylus on rough tablets of boxwood, earthenware, or bone. Leather early employed; the Law written on skins (of “clean animals or birds”) in golden characters. The skins rolled round one or two wooden cylinders, the scroll then tied with a thread and sealed. Parchment written on with reed pens, which, together with a knife for sharpening them and an ink of lampblack dissolved in gall-juice, were carried in an inkhorn suspended from the girdle. Letter-writing in vogue from the time of David.
Many ancient Jewish cities far advanced in art and literature. Reading and writing from the first not confined to the learned, for the people were required to write precepts of the Law upon their door-posts, and on crossing the Jordan were commanded to place certain inscriptions on great stones very plainly, that they might be read by all. Scribes in readiness to serve those who could not write. Schools established in different localities in the prophetical age, in which “the sons of the prophets” lived a kind of monastic life, studying their laws and institutions along with poetry and music.
After the Captivity, education recognized as all-important, and at length made compulsory. The Jews in consequence soon noted for learning and scholarship. $2,500,000 paid by Ptolemy Philadelphus (260 B.C.) to seventy Jewish doctors for translating the Old Testament into Greek, at Alexandria; hence the Septuagint, as it is called, or version of the Seventy. By 80 B.C., Palestine filled with flourishing schools. Jerusalem was destroyed because the instruction of the young was neglected—Revere a teacher even more than your father—A scholar is greater than a prophet—common sayings among the Jews. Colleges maintained where lectures were delivered, and the Socratic method of debate was pursued. Every student trained to some trade, the ripest scholars working with their own hands as tent-makers, weavers, carpenters, bakers, cooks, etc. A large library at Jerusalem composed of volumes in history, royal letters, and various works of the prophets. The most learned of the later Platonists the Jew Phi’lo (20 B.C.-50 A.D.), who tried to reconcile the Platonic philosophy with the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Riddles, enigmas, and play upon words, the chief sources of amusement among the Hebrews. Dice mentioned in the Talmud. Public games unknown. Fishing with nets and hooks, favorite sports. Dancing practised as a religious rite; the stage on which it was performed in the temples styled the choir: each Psalm perhaps accompanied by a suitable dance.
CHAPTER V.
CHALDEAN, ASSYRIAN, ARABIC, AND PHŒNICIAN LITERATURES.
Cuneiform Letters.—North of the Persian Gulf, and drained by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, lay Chalde’a, or Babylonia, the “Land of Shi’nar” (country of the two rivers). Here arose the earliest cities, amid a population principally Turanian and Semitic, with a limited intermixture of the Aryan element. A Semitic dialect prevailed among the people at large; but the Turanian (Non-Semitic or Ural-Altaic) Chaldees, to whom Babylonia was indebted for its aboriginal civilization, through the centuries of their ascendency, political and intellectual, not only kept alive their native tongue in conversation with each other, but, inscribing it on imperishable monuments, caused it to endure through all time.
ASSYRIA and the ADJACENT COUNTRIES
To these Turanians the honor of having invented cuneiform letters must be conceded; an honor, indeed, when we remember that theirs was possibly the most ancient device for embodying human thought. The characters, called wedge-formed or arrow-headed, they appear to have brought with them into the Euphrates valley from the more northerly country which they previously occupied; and their Semitic co-residents in Babylonia were not slow in adopting the ingenious system which they had elaborated. (Consult Budge’s “Babylonian Life,” By-Paths of Bible Knowledge Series, p. 100.)
The cuneiform characters, like the hieroglyphics, were at first rude representations of objects, but in most cases the resemblance to the original was soon lost. In some archaic forms, however, it may be readily detected; as in the character for fish,