MANASSES, PRAYER OF, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. This writing, which since the Council of Trent has been relegated by the Church of Rome to the position of an appendix to the Vulgate, was placed by Luther and the translators of the English Bible among the apocryphal books. In some MSS. of the Septuagint it is the eighth among the canticles appended to the Psalter, though in many Greek psalters, which include the canticles, it is not found at all. In Swete’s Old Testament in Greek, iii. 802 sqq., A is printed with the variants of T (Psalterium turicense).[1] From the statements in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13, 18, 19, it follows that the Old Testament chronicler found a prayer attributed to Manasseh in his Hebrew sources, The History of the Kings of Israel and The History of the Seers. Naturally the question arose, had the existing Prayer of Manasses any direct connexion with the prayer referred to by the chronicler? Ewald was of opinion that the Greek was an actual translation of the lost Hebrew; but Ball more wisely takes it as a free rendering of a lost Haggadic narrative founded on the older document from which the chronicler drew his information. This view he supports by showing that there was once a considerable literature in circulation regarding Manasseh’s later history. On the other hand most scholars take the Prayer to have been written in Greek, e.g. Fritzsche, Schürer and Ryssel (Kautzsch, Apok. u. Pseud. i. 165-168).
This fine penitential prayer seems to have been modelled after the penitential psalms. It exhibits considerable unity of thought, and the style is, in the main, dignified and simple.
As regards the date, Fritzsche, Ball and Ryssel agree in assigning this psalm to the Maccabean period. Its eschatology and doctrine of “divine forgiveness” may point to an earlier date.
The best short account of the book is given by Ball (Speaker’s Apocrypha, ii. 361-371); see also Porter in Hastings’s Dict. Bible, iii. 232-233.
(R. H. C.)
[1] Nestle (Septuaginta Studien III.) contends that the text of A and T is derived from the Apost. Const. ii. 22, or from its original, and not from a MS. of the Septuagint.
MANATI (often anglicized as “manatee”), the name, adapted from the Carib manattouï, given by the Spanish colonists of the West Indies to the American representative of a small group of herbivorous aquatic mammals, constituting, with their allies the dugong and the now extinct Rhytina, the order Sirenia. The name, though possibly of Mandingo origin (see [Mandingo]), was latinized as manatus, furnished with hands, thus referring the etymology to the somewhat hand-like form, or hand-like use, of the fore-flippers, which alone serve these creatures for limbs. Manatis, as shown in the illustration in the article [Sirenia], are somewhat whale-like in shape, having a similar horizontally expanded tail-fin; but here the resemblance to the Cetacea ceases, the whole organization of these animals being constructed on entirely different lines. The American manati, Manatus (or, as some would have it, Trichechus latirostris), inhabits the rivers of Florida, Mexico, Central America and the West Indies, and measures from 9 to 13 feet in length. The body is somewhat fish-like, but depressed and ending posteriorly in a broad, flat, shovel-like horizontal tail, with rounded edges. The head is of moderate size, oblong, with a blunt, truncated muzzle, and divided from the body by a slight constriction or neck. The fore limbs are flattened oval paddles, placed rather low on the sides of the body, and showing externally no signs of division into fingers, but with three diminutive flat nails near their extremities. No traces of hind limbs are discernible either externally or internally; and there is no dorsal fin. The mouth is peculiar, the tumid upper lip being cleft in the middle line into two lobes, each of which is separately movable. The nostrils are two semilunar valve-like slits at the apex of the muzzle. The eyes are very minute, placed at the sides of the head, and with a nearly circular aperture with wrinkled margins; and external ears are wanting. The skin generally is of a dark greyish colour, not smooth or glistening like that of whale or dolphin, but finely wrinkled. At a little distance it appears naked, but close inspection, at all events in young animals, shows a scanty covering of delicate hairs, and both upper and under lips are supplied with short, stiff bristles.
| (From Murie.) |
| Front view of head of American Manati, showing the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. A, with the lobes of the upper lip divaricated; B, with the lip contracted. |