the hundreds or thousands are left out of the date; only the name of the copyist is given; he gives the date in an enigmatical manner, and clothes his fact in a dress so cunning that only a lucky accident can take it off. The possessor of a manuscript sometimes affixed to it an ancient date, or the name of some famous rabbin, to increase its value. The Talmudical law makes it the duty of every Jew to make, or cause to be made, a copy of the Law. A man who inherited such a copy sometimes erased the old and affixed a more modern date.]"

Besides the subscriptions, other signs of antiquity have been pointed out by critics; such are the simplicity of the writing character, the omission of the Masora, the unusual letters, the vowel points, &c. But all these signs are wholly uncertain.'

§ 113.

The Writers of the Manuscripts.

Most of the manuscripts have passed through several hands-those of the writer of the consonants, (,) those of the writer of the vowel points, (,) of the corrector, of the writer of the Masora and scholia,

a

of(,

[Eichhorn, § 363. A Jew offered a MS. for sale, at Amsterdam, with the date 300 B. C.; yet it was furnished with the Masora, and had all the marks of youth. See more respecting the subscriptions of MSS., their condition, &c., in Kennicott, Dissertations, vol. i. p. 309, sqq., vol. ii. p. 515, sqq., and the authorities in Eichhorn, 1. c.]

Jablonsky, 1. c. § 37. Wolf, l. c. vol. ii. p. 326. Houbigant, Prol. p. 195. Kennicott, Dissertations, vol. i. p. 308, sqq. De Rossi, Prol. p. xiv., sqq. On the other hand, Carpzov, Crit. sac. p. 376. Tychsen, Tent. p. 260, sqq. Schnurrer, p. 21, sqq.- Eichhorn, § 371, has shown that it is not easy to determine, with certainty, the country of the MSS. But see Bruns, Præf. ad Kennicott, Diss. Gen. p. ix. De Rossi, l. c. p. xx. sqq.

and of the freshener, although sometimes the duties of all these were performed by one man. The text and the points, however, were always written at different times, as it appears from the fact that ink of different color is used for each, and that the vowels do not always agree with the text. The Keri in the margin proceeded properly from the punctuator. He likewise frequently corrected the text, although many manuscripts have passed under the hands of a different corrector; and the writer of the Masora has sometimes allowed himself to make corrections. The accuracy of the corrections is commonly sacrificed to the beauty of the manuscripts. The writer of the Masora is likewise often a different person; but this cannot certainly be inferred from the variations between the Masora and the text. Sometimes there are critical remarks in the margin, which confirm what the writer of consonants, and the punctuator, have written; there are likewise scholia. Finally, many passages have been subsequently written over again."

Tychsen supposes that many manuscripts were written by Christians; but none are found in which this is claimed in the subscription."

[Bruns finds some passages proceeding from a second corrector of the MS., but Kennicott takes no notice of them.] Eichhorn, § 364, 366–370. Michaelis's description of the Cassel MS. in Or. Bib. vol. i. p. 219, sqq. Jablonski, 1. c. § 36. [Eichhorn, § 365, thinks it probable women and children sometimes copied MSS.]

See Tychsen's opinion refuted by Eichhorn, §365. The passage of the Talmud, Bab. Gittim, fol. 45, col. 2, which speaks of Christian transcribers, is of a merely casuistic character.

[The oldest MSS. are not necessarily the best. The Spanish MSS. are generally esteemed the most accurate; the French and Italian hold the next place. Such is the decision of the rabbins themselves. "This is a Spanish MS.; so the reading must stand," said R. Abraham Ben David. But to this rule there are exceptions. Each MS. must be examined without

§ 114, a.

C. Private Manuscripts in the Rabbinical Character.

These are, for the greatest part, written in the cursive rabbinical character, or one which approaches it very nearly." They are written without points, with numerous abbreviations, and are generally of very recent date.

§ 114, b.

Manuscripts of the Chinese Jews.

The manuscripts of the Chinese Jews are entirely masoretic. [They have rolls containing the Law, called Ta-King, in Chinese, and also a book of extracts from the rolls, with a supplement in two parts. The rolls are written without points or accents; but corona

prejudice, and judged by its own merits. Eichhorn, § 373. Bruns, Præf. ad Kennicott, p. iv., sqq., thinks Kennicott has taken various readings from very bad MSS. "I cannot but confess," says he, "I think differently of the value of the Heb. MSS., and the various readings derived from them, from Kennicott and some others, who follow his footsteps too closely. They are not sufficiently anxious to investigate the goodness of the MSS., and whatever reading they find, in any sort of a MS., if it agree with ancient versions, they seize it up greedily, and oppose it to the masoretic text. But in passing judgment upon variants, antiquity is not so much to be considered as the goodness of the MS., and its freedom from mistakes in writing. One such MS. is worth twenty others written negligently and carelessly. Bibles written for the instruction of youth sometimes confound the Keri and Kethib, and so might lead a critic into errors, if he were not aware of the fact." See Jahn, vol. i. p. 422-436.]

a

On the different rabbinical writing characters, the Raschi characters, &c., see Tychsen, Tent. p. 267, 313, sqq. Bellermann, Palæog. Heb. p. 44, sqq.

Kennicott, Diss. Gen. Cod. 9, 13, 15, 22, 32, 34, 346, and others, are in this character.

menta, it appears, are placed over some of the letters. Eichhorn thinks these manuscripts were written in the twelfth century.

The extracts from the Law are divided into fifty-three books. The supplement contains a part of Joshua and Judges, the whole books of Samuel, part of Kings, and the Psalms. They have also some of the other books of the Old Testament, in a form more or less perfect, namely: parts of Chronicles, Nehemiah, Esther, Isaiah, and Jeremiah; a few verses from Daniel; some passages from Jonah, Micah, and Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah; but nothing from the other Prophets, from Job, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or Canticles. The manuscripts which do not contain the Law are furnished with our present vowels and accents, and greater and lesser letters, but not with the Keri. The form of the consonants is the same as with the European Jews.]"

§ 114, c.

The Manuscripts of the Malabar Jews.

[Doctor Buchanan procured a copy of the Pentateuch from the black Jews at Malabar. It is written on a roll of goat-skin dyed red; is forty-eight feet in length, and a little less than two feet in breadth. It contains the Pentateuch, with the exception of the whole of Leviticus and the greater part of Deuteronomy. It is clearly and legibly written, in the square letter, without the

• Von Murr, Versuch einer Gesch. der Juden in China, nebst Kogler's Beschreib. ihrer heilige Bücher; 1806, 8vo. Michaelis, Or. Bib. vol. v. p. 79, sqq., ix. p. 40, xv. p. 15, sqq. Eichhorn, § 376. [Lettres edifiantes, ...... de la Compagnie de Jesus, Recueil 31; Par. 1774.]

accents or points. It contains not more than forty variants from Van der Hooght's edition, and still less from that of Athias; but it has four readings not found in Kennicott's Bible. With these With these exceptions, it differs from common synagogue rolls only in the material on which it is written.]"

a

§ 115.

2. ORIGINAL EDITIONS.

Editions taken directly from manuscripts possess all the value of the originals themselves, and are still more valuable if they are accurate copies of the manuscripts, and have not been corrected by the Masora. The editions are divided into masoretic and unmasoretic. But after the collation of so many copies, some readings are still found in the printed editions, says De Rossi, and even in Rabbi Chajim's edition, which have not as yet been found in any manuscripts."

a Yeates's collation of an Indian copy of the Heb. Pent. with preliminary remarks, containing an exact description of the MS., and a notice of some others (Heb. and Syriac) collected by Buchanan in the year 1806, and now deposited in the public library at Cambridge; also, a collation and description of a MS. roll of the book of Esther, and the Megillah of Ahasuerus, &c.; Cambridge, 1812, 4to. [See Kennicott, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 532, and Wolf, Bib. Heb. vol. iv. p. 97. Horne, 1. c. pt. i. ch. iii. sect. i., gives a fac simile of the MS. Marsh (Lectures, &c.) considers it of value; but Lee (Proleg. in Bib. Polyg. Londinensia minora, prol. v. sect. xiv. p. 23, cited in Horne) thinks it is the work of an ignorant scribe, copied from a masoretic MS., and of little value. On this subject, see Paulus's Account of the Hebrew Chronicles of the Malabar Jews, in Eichhorn, Allg. Bib. vol. i. p. 925, sqq.; the essay of Rüss, on the same subject, ibid. vol. ii. p. 567 sqq., also vol. iii. p. 182, and v. 399, sqq.]

De Rossi, Prolegg. p. xxiv.