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[In 1850, the Jewish settlement at K'ae-fung-foo in China was visited on behalf of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews. An interesting account of this visit is found in a small work entitled, "The Jews at K'ae-fung-foo; being a Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jewish Synagogue at K'ae-fungfoo, &c.; with an Introduction by the Right Rev. G. Smith, D.D., Lord Bishop of Victoria, Shanghae, 1851." We learn from this that the synagogue was in a dilapidated condition, and the Jews themselves sunk in ignorance and poverty. Many of their MSS. have been purchased and brought to England. The text is the Masoretic. A description of one of these MSS. is given by Davidson.1

IX. Seventeen manuscripts of the SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH are known to be extant, which Dr. Kennicott has minutely described. Six of these manuscripts are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and one in the Cotton Library in the British Museum: concerning a few of the most valuable of these, the following particulars may be not unacceptable. They are numbered according to Dr. Kennicott's notation.

1. Cod. 127. is preserved in the British Museum (Bibl. Cotton. Claudius, B. 8.). It is one of the six MSS. procured by Archbishop Ussher, by whom it was presented to Sir Robert Cotton. This very valuable manuscript is complete, and was transcribed entirely by one hand, on two hundred and fifty-four pages of vellum. It is in an excellent state of preservation, a leaf of fine paper having been carefully placed between every two leaves of the vellum. This MS. was written A.D. 1362.

2. Cod. 62. is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and was also purchased by Archbishop Ussher; from whose heirs the curators of that library bought it, with many other MSS. This manuscript is in large quarto, and contains an Arabic version in Samaritan letters, placed in a column parallel to the Samaritan text. Unhappily there are many chasms in it. Dr. Kennicott attributes a high value to this manuscript, which was written about the middle of the thirteenth century. [There is, however, a subscription with the date 1524. Probably some later part was written in that year.]

3. Cod. 197. is a most valuable manuscript in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, which was collated for Dr. Kennicott by Dr. Branca, who is of opinion that it is certainly not later than the tenth century. It is imperfect in many places, and is very beautifully written on extremely thin vellum, in red characters.

4. Cod. 363. (No. 1. of the MSS. in the Library of the Oratoire in Paris) is the celebrated manuscript bought by Pietro della Valle of the Samaritans, in 1616, and printed by Morinus in 1631-33. It is written throughout by one hand; and, though no date is assigned to it, Dr. Kennicott thinks it was written towards the close

Bibl. Crit. vol. i. chap. xxv. p. 369.

of the eleventh century. It was collated for Dr. Kennicott by Dr Bruns, in some select passages.1

SECT. II.

ON THE ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES.

NEXT to manuscripts, VERSIONS afford the greatest assistance in ascertaining critically the sacred text, as well as in the interpretation of the Scriptures. "It is only by means of versions that they, who are ignorant of the original languages, can at all learn what the Scripture contains; and every version, so far as it is just, conveys the sense of Scripture to those who understand the language in which it is written."

Versions may be divided into two classes, ancient and modern: many of the former were made immediately from the original languages by persons to whom they were familiar; and who, it may be reasonably supposed, had better opportunities for ascertaining the force and meaning of words, than more recent translators can possibly have. Modern versions are those made in later times, and chiefly since the Reformation: they are useful for explaining the sense of the inspired writers; while ancient versions are of the utmost importance both for the criticism and interpretation of the Scriptures. The present section will therefore be appropriated to giving an account of those which are most esteemed for their antiquity and excellence.

The principal ANCIENT VERSIONS, which illustrate the Scriptures, are the Chaldee paraphrases, generally called Targums, the Septuagint, or Alexandrine Greek version, the translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and what are called the fifth, sixth, and seventh versions (of which latter translations fragments only are extant), together with the Syriac, and Latin or Vulgate versions. All the ancient versions are of great importance both in the criticism, as well as in the interpretation, of the sacred writings, but they are not all witnesses of equal value; for the authority of the different versions depends partly on the age and country of their respective authors, partly on the text whence their translations were made, and partly on the ability and fidelity with which they were executed. It will therefore be not irrelevant to offer a short historical notice of the principal versions above mentioned, as well as of some other ancient versions of less celebrity perhaps, but which have been beneficially consulted by biblical critics.

Kennicott, Diss. ii. pp. 538-540. Diss. Gen. pp. 81, 76, 88, 98. In the seventh and following volumes of the Classical Journal there is a catalogue of the biblical, biblicooriental, and classical manuscripts at present existing in the various public libraries in Great Britain.

§ 1. On the Targums, or Chaldee Paraphrases of the Old Testament. I. Targum of Onkelos ;-II. Of the Pseudo-Jonathan ;-III. The Jerusalem Targum;-IV. The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel; -V. The Targum on the Hagiographa;-VI. The Targum on the Megilloth;-VII. VIII. IX. Three Targums on the book of Esther;-X. A Targum on the books of Chronicles;-XI. Real value of the different Targums. THE Chaldee word D, TARGUM, signifies, in general, any version or explanation; but this appellation is more particularly restricted to the versions or paraphrases of the Old Testament, executed in the East-Aramæan or Chaldee dialect, as it is usually called. These Targums are termed paraphrases or expositions, because they are rather comments and explications, than literal translations of the text: they are written in the Chaldee tongue, which became familiar to the Jews after the time of their captivity in Babylon, and was more known to them than the Hebrew itself: so that, when the law was "read in the synagogue every sabbath-day," in pure biblical Hebrew, an explanation was subjoined to it in Chaldee; in order to render it intelligible to the people, who had but an imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew language. This practice, as already observed, originated with Ezra1: as there are no traces of any written Targums prior to those of Onkelos and Jonathan, who are supposed to have lived about the time of our Saviour, it is highly probable that these paraphrases were at first merely oral; that, subsequently, the ordinary glosses on the more difficult passages were committed to writing; and that, as the Jews were bound by an ordinance of their elders to possess a copy of the law, these glosses were either afterwards collected together and deficiencies in them supplied, or new and connected paraphrases were formed.

There are at present extant ten paraphrases on different parts of the Old Testament, three of which comprise the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses:-1. The Targum of Onkelos; 2. That falsely ascribed to Jonathan, and usually cited as the Targum of the PseudoJonathan; and, 3. The Jerusalem Targum; 4. The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel (i. e. the son of Uzziel), on the Prophets; 5. The Targum of Rabbi Joseph the blind, or one-eyed, on the Hagiographa; 6. An anonymous Targum on the five Megilloth, or books of Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah; 7, 8, 9. Three Targums on the book of Esther; and, 10. A Targum or paraphrase on the two books of Chronicles. These Targums, taken together, form a continued paraphrase on the Old

1 See p. 8. supra. Our account of the Chaldee paraphrases is drawn up from a careful consideration of what has been written on them, by Carpzov, in his Critica Sacra, pars ii. cap. i. pp. 430-481.; Bishop Walton, Proleg. xii. sect. ii. pp. 568-592.; Leusden, Philolog. Hebræo-Mixt. Diss. v. vi. and vii. pp. 36-59.; Dr. Prideaux, Connection, Part ii. book viii. sub anno 37. B. C. vol. iii. pp. 531-555. (edit. 1718.); Kortholt, De variis Scripturæ Editionibus, cap. iii. pp. 34-40.; Pfeiffer, Critica Sacra, cap. viii. sect. ii. Op. tom. ii. pp. 753-771. and in his Treatise de Theologia Judaicâ, &c. Exercit. ii. Ibid. tom. ii. pp. 862-889.; Bauer, Critica Sacra, Tract. iii. §§ 59-81., pp. 288-308.; Rambach, Inst. Herm. Sacræ, lib. iii. cap. viii. § 3., pp. 605-611.; Pictet, Théologie Chrétienne, tom. i. pp. 145. et seq.; Jahn, Introductio ad Libros Veteris Foederis, §§ 4650; and Waehner's Antiquitates Ebræorum, sect. i. cap. xxxix.-xlii. tom. i. pp. 156–171.

Testament, with the exception of the books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah (anciently reputed to be part of Ezra); which being for the most part written in Chaldee, it has been conjectured that no paraphrases were written on them, as being unnecessary; though Dr. Prideaux is of opinion that Targums were composed on these books also, which have perished in the lapse of ages.

The language, in which these paraphrases are composed, varies in purity according to the time when they were respectively written. Thus, the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan are much purer than the others, approximating very nearly to the Aramæan dialect in which some parts of Daniel and Ezra are written, except, indeed, that the orthography does not always correspond; while the language of the later Targums whence the rabbinical dialect derives. its source is far more impure, and is intermixed with barbarous and foreign words. Originally, all the Chaldee paraphrases were written without vowel-points, like all other Oriental manuscripts; but at length some persons ventured to add points to them, though very erroneously; and this irregular punctuation was retained in the Venice and other early editions of the Hebrew Bible. Some further imperfect attempts towards regular pointing were made both in the Complutensian and in the Antwerp Polyglotts, until at length the elder Buxtorf, in his edition of the Hebrew Bible published at Basil, undertook the thankless task of improving the punctuation of the Targums, according to such rules as he had formed from the pointing which he had found in the Chaldee parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra; and his method of punctuation is followed in Bishop Walton's Polyglott.

I. The TARGUM OF ONKELOS.-It is not known, with certainty, at what time Onkelos flourished, nor of what nation he was: [some have imagined him the same with Aquila, the Greek translator: the version, however, ascribed to this last does not in many passages agree with Onkelos.] Professor Eichhorn conjectures that he was a native of Babylon, first, because he is mentioned in the Babylonish Talmud; secondly, because his dialect is not the Chaldee spoken in Palestine, but much purer, and more closely resembling the style of Daniel and Ezra; and, lastly, because he has not interwoven any of those fabulous narratives to which the Jews of Palestine were so much attached, and from which they could with difficulty refrain. The generally-received opinion is, that he was a proselyte to Judaism, and a disciple of the celebrated Rabbi Hillel, who flourished about fifty years before the Christian era; and consequently that Onkelos was contemporary with our Saviour: Bauer and Jahn, however, place him in the second century. [According to the oldest accounts he was a disciple of Gamaliel, St. Paul's master. Anger has collected all the notices of him.] The Targum of Onkelos comprises the Pentateuch or five books of Moses, and is justly pre

Père Simon, Hist. Crit. du Vieux Test. liv. ii. c. xviii., has censured Buxtorf's mode of pointing the Chaldee paraphrases with great severity; observing, that he would have done much better if he had more diligently examined manuscripts that were more correctly pointed.

* De Onkelo Chaldaico quem ferunt Pentateuchi Paraphraste, &c. Partic. ii. Lips. 1846.

ferred to all the others both by Jews and Christians, on account of the purity of its style, and its general freedom from idle legends. It is rather a version than a paraphrase, and renders the Hebrew text word for word, with so much accuracy and exactness, that, being set to the same musical notes, with the original Hebrew, it could be read or cantillated in the same tone as the latter in the public assemblies of the Jews. And this we find was the practice of the Jews up to the time of Rabbi Elias Levita; who flourished in the early part of the sixteenth century, and expressly states that the Jews read the law in their synagogues, first in Hebrew and then in the Targum of Onkelos. [Onkelos refers only two places, Gen. xlix. 10. Numb. xxiv. 17. to the Messiah; while the later Targums make seventeen Messianic passages in the Pentateuch']. This Targum has been translated into Latin by Alfonso de Zamora, Paulus Fagius, Bernardinus Baldus, and Andrea de Leon of Zamora.2

II. The second Targum, which is a more liberal paraphrase of the Pentateuch than the preceding, is usually called the TARGUM OF THE PSEUDO-JONATHAN, being ascribed by many to Jonathan Ben Uzziel, who wrote the much-esteemed paraphrase on the Prophets. But the difference in the style and diction of this Targum, which is very impure, as well as in the method of paraphrasing adopted in it, clearly proves that it could not have been written by Jonathan Ben Uzziel, who indeed sometimes indulges in allegories, and has introduced a few barbarisms; but this Targum on the law abounds with the most idle Jewish legends that can well be conceived: which, together with the barbarous and foreign words it contains, render it of very little utility. From its mentioning the six parts of the Talmud (on Exod. xxvi. 9.), which compilation was not made till more than two centuries after the birth of Christ; Constantinople (on Numb. xxiv. 19.), which city was always called Byzantium until it received its name from Constantine the Great, in the beginning of the fourth century; the Lombards (on Numb. xxiv. 24.), whose first irruption into Italy did not take place until the year 570; and the Turks (on Gen. x. 2.), who did not become conspicuous till the middle of the sixth century, learned men are unanimously of opinion that this Targum of the Pseudo-Jonathan could not have been written before the seventh, or even the eighth century. It was probably compiled from older interpretations. This Chaldee paraphrase was translated into Latin by Anthony Ralph de Chevalier, an eminent French Protestant divine, in the sixteenth century.

III. The JERUSALEM TARGUM, which also paraphrases the five books of Moses, derives its name from the dialect in which it is composed. It is by no means a connected paraphrase, sometimes omitting whole verses, or even chapters; at other times explaining only a single word of a verse, of which it sometimes gives a twofold

'Buxtorf. Lex. Talm. pp. 1268., &c.

The fullest information, concerning the Targum of Onkelos, is to be found in the disquisition of G. B. Winer, entitled De Onkeloso ejusque Paraphrasi Chaldaica Dissertatio, 4to. Lipsia, 1820. See also Luzzatus, Philoxenus, s. De Onkelosi Chald. Pent. Vers. &c. Vienn. 1830.

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