Illustrations OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE. Introductory Remarks. Giving of the Law. Origin of DIVINE REVELATION is indispensably necessary to of the Deity; to acquaint him with the history of his own creation; to explain to him his moral duties, and to inform him of his future destiny: for without a revelation, the most vigorous mind, the most cultivated understanding must be incapable of apprehending the Infinite, of disco- vering the origin of man, or of deducing with certainty the acts of devotion and morality most acceptable to Him, who "DWELLETH IN THE LIGHT WHICH NO MAN CAN AP- During the early ages of the world, the extraordinary longevity of mankind rendered a written revelation unne- cessary. Tradition was sufficient to transmit, with accu- racy, the truths which were revealed to the patriarchal families. Adam and Noah were connected together by A Joseph; with whom Amram the father of Moses was contemporary. But, after the years of the life of man had been abridged to threescore and ten, the rapid succession of human generations required another mode of revelation, to prevent the obliteration of the records of the world, and to guard against the corruption of the divine precepts by the frequency of oral communication.' The infinitely wise and gracious God condescended to the necessities of man, and favoured him with a revelation suited to the brevity of his life. The first instance of this kind of revelation was that of the Two Tables of Stone, on which the DECALOGUE, or Ten Commandments,” was WRITTEN WITH the finger of God. (Exod. xxxi. 18.) To this period the Origin of Writing has been referred by many learned men, and Moses has been considered as instructed in the knowledge of ALPHABETICAL CHARACTERS, by divine revelation. Clemens Alexandrinus informs us, (Stromat Lib. i.) that Eupolemus states it as a correct opinion, "that Moses was the first Sophist, or Wise-Man; and that he first delivered Grammar or Letters to the Jews, from whom they were received by the Phenicians, and from the Phenicians by the Greeks." And Augustin (De Civit. Dei. Lib. xviii. ch. xxxix.) asserts, that "the Hebrew Letters began from the Law given by Moses." The same opinion has been defended by several modern writers of eminent learning and ability, especially by Gale in The Court of the Gentiles, pt. i. B. i. ch. x. Hartley in his Observations on Man, pt. i. ch. iii. prop. 83. The learned author of Conjectural Observations on the Origin and Progress of Alphabetic Writing; Winder in his History of Knowledge, vol. II. ch. i---iv. Clarke (Dr. A.) in Remarks on the Origin of Language inserted in his Bibliographical Miscellany, vol. I. and Succession of Sacred Literature, vol I. and Horne in his Introduction to the study of Bibliography, (1) Clarke's Bibliographical Miscellany, I, pp. 4—6. This opinion has been vol. I. pt. i. ch. ii. sec. 1. vigorously opposed by numerous and erudite writers, among whom Astle ranks foremost, for his elaborate defence of the human invention of Alphabetical Characters in his celebrated work on the Origin and Progress of Writing. The arguments of Mr. Astle were, however, powerfully combated by an able critic in the Monthly Review, (Old Series), vol. lxxi. p. 271. et seq. The invention of an ALPHABET, or of a limited number of arbitrary signs, which by their varied position should express all the variety of human sentiment and language, seems to be a discovery, of so sublime and complicated a nature, that if not absolutely beyond the possibility of the mental energy of man to elicit, it must necessarily demand the lapse of ages to complete its development, and to advance it to perfection. For the ideas of all the elements of language, or the very beginnings of every simple unarticulated sound from which these are produced, as lines are generated by the fluxion of a point, "must have previously existed in the mind of the first inventor of a complete Alphabet, or it would have been impossible to determine what number of elemental characters were requisite, to express the seeming infinite variety of complex sounds in every language upon earth, even in the most ordinary conversation."** But when, it may be inquired, was such a process actually contemplated; what were the various stages of its advancement towards perfection; and at what period was it completed? It is true the advocates of the mere human origin of letters, refer us to the Egyptian and Mexican hieroglyphics as to the rudiments of alphabets, and assure us that neces(2) Conjectural Observations on the Origin and Progress of Alphabetic Writing, p. 41. Lond. 1772. 8vo. * The able mathematician Tacquet (Arithmetical Theor. p. 517) calculates that the various combinations of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, without any repetition, will amount to 620,448,401,733,239, 439,360,000.-See Astle on the Origin and Progress of Writing, ch. ii. p. 20. Lond. 1803, fol. sity, convenience, or chance would produce abbreviated marks, and ultimately the alphabetic character and system; but in no instance do they show us a nation carrying hieroglyphic signs to their completion in an alphabet. The Egyptians and Mexicans never appear to have deduced letters from the symbolic figures which they were accustomed to describe, but to have continued the use of them with unvaried similarity, through the whole period of their history. The Greeks and other nations, on the contrary, who made use of alphabetical characters, never spoke of them as derived from hieroglyphical delineations, but as the invention of particular persons, or as communicated to them by their gods. The earliest account we have of the use of Alphabetical Characters is among the Jews, a people, certainly not remarkable for their inventive genius, however venerable in other respects; and the most ancient records in existence are those of Moses, their great legislator. Prior to his day we have no certain proofs of the practice of writing, and the most zealous supporters of the ante-mosaic origin of letters, can only offer plausible conjectures; but from the period of the giving of the Law, the graphic art was in constant use among the Jews wherever dispersed by conquest, persecution, or traffic. It is therefore not an improbable hypothesis, that the knowledge of Alphabetical Characters was one of the benefits conferred upon the Israelites by the Divine Being, by the instrumentality of Moses, to whom, at least the rudiments were divinely revealed. The advantages resulting from a knowledge of what has sometimes been called Epistolic Writing, to distinguish it from Symbolical, or Hieroglyphical, are so immense; and its "practice so peculiarly adapted to the state of the Jewish nation at the time of the Mosaic legislation, as to confirm the opinion that God communicated the knowledge of letters to Moses. "The usefulness of Alphabetical Characters," says a learned author, "cannot be sufficiently estimated. without writing, the histories of ancient times had never reached us; and the necessary intercourses of friendship and business must have been greatly retarded in general, and in many cases wholly obstructed. Without it, those living oracles which teach the science of salvation, and make known the God of truth, could never have existed. When God, therefore purposed to give a revelation of himself to mankind, is it not reasonable to suppose, that he graciously taught them the use of alphabetical characters, that these divine and interesting records, might be handed down from generation to generation ?" Of the insufficiency of hieroglyphic symbols to preserve and transmit the treasures of wisdom and science to posterity, there is demonstrative proof in the instance of Egypt. "We have remaining at this day," observes Michaelis, “an immense number of Egyptian hieroglyphics, partly on stones, walls, and obelisks, and partly too on copper plates, which have been submitted to all the literary world: but out of them all, no mortal has hitherto elicited one rational sentence, of the length of a single line; although from the work of Horapollo, we know many particulars relative to the meaning of the individual characters. The key having been once lost, it is seemingly impossible ever to find it again. The ancient learning of Egypt, which might include many things of supreme importance to mankind, could never have thus irrecoverably perished, had alphabetical characters been inscribed on these monuments. For such characters may always be decyphered; and it is a very singular phenomenon, that, when correct plates of the Palmyrene Inscriptions, which several learned men had before attempted unsuccessfully to decypher, were published in Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, explanations were at once given by two Literati, unknown to each other, namely, Mr. Swinton and the Abbe Barthelemy. But the Egyptian hieroglyphics, of which (3) Clarke's Bibliographical Miscellany, I. p. 6, Lond. 1806. 8vo. |