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words. The separation into words, the punctuation, and accentuation, belong to the department of exegesis and philology. Yet, at the same time, the traditionary division, punctuation, and accentuation, which the Jews observed in their treatment of the text, have great authority, and consequently the critical marks are to be consulted in this matter.

An exegetical and philological use may be made of the various readings.

§ 100.

GENERAL THEORY OF THE OFFICE OF CRITICISM.

The design of criticism is to determine what was originally written by the author, consequently to ascertain facts.

Now, facts may be ascertained directly, by inspection. But in the criticism of the Old Testament, this direct source of information fails us; for the original documents that came from the author's hand are the only proper object of inspection, and these are lost.

Then, again, facts may be ascertained indirectly, through the probable statements of history, which derives its materials from inspection; that is, through

Lud. Cappellus, Critica sac. de variis quæ in Vet. Test. Libris, occurrunt Lectt. lib. vi. ed. Stud. et Op. J. Cappelli, fil.; Par. 1650, fol., rec. multisque Animadvv. auxit G. J. L. Vogel, tom. i.; Hal. 1775. Animadv. auxit J. G. Scharfenberg; tom. ii. 1778, tom. iii. 1786, 8vo. The following are much more moderate: R. Simon, Hist. crit. du V. T. vol. i. p. 16, sqq. Walton, Proleg. vii. viii. Kennicott, Diss. i. ii. super Ratione Textus Hebr. V. T. Lat. vert. Guil. Abr. Teller; Lips. 1756, 1765, 8vo. Diss. Gen. ed. Bruns; Brunsv. 1783, 8vo. De Rossi, Prolegg. ad varr. Lectt. Houbigant exaggerates the matter again in his Prolegg. in Scripturam sac., (Par. 1746, 4to.,) and Rau, 1. c., refutes his charges.

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history which must rest on documentary evidence. This evidence, in the criticism of any particular text, consists in the documentary proofs of its various conditions at different times, such as the recensions and various readings,-which the critic is to inquire into and decide upon.

Two things, then, belong to criticism, namely:

1. To have an acquaintance with the documentary means of ascertaining the original text; and,

2. To pass judgment upon the testimony they offer. When there is no such testimony respecting the critical questions, or when the testimony is obviously insufficient, a third office is imposed upon the critic, namely, critical conjecture."

CHAPTER I.

THE DOCUMENTARY MEANS TO AID IN THE CRITICISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

§ 101.

GENERAL VIEW AND DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

PURSUING the course of history, we can distinguish the following various forms of the text of the Old Testament, namely:

G

[I have given a paraphrase, more than a translation, of this section. But I trust the author's meaning is made as clear in the English, at least, as it is in the German.]

See Paulus, Com. über N. T. vol. i. p. 27, sqq.

I. The text before the canon was collected and

closed.

II. The text before the time of the Masorites.

III. The Samaritan-Alexandrian text of the Pentateuch.

IV. The masoretic text.

The witnesses or documentary means of proving the text may be arranged in the same order; but since the documents which relate to the first and second of the above divisions are so scanty and uncertain, this arrangement of them serves scarce any other purpose than to give a convenient view of the subject.

[The following are the means of proof to be relied on, namely:

I. The parallel passages in the Bible; the Alphabetic Psalms; for the books of Moses, the Samaritan Pentateuch. These disclose the variations and faults of the text in the earliest times.

II. The old versions of the Bible; perhaps the Jewish writers Philo and Josephus; the Christian Fathers, Ephraim the Syrian, Origen, and Jerome; the Talmud and the Masora. These sources disclose the later variations, before the masoretic recension was completed.

III. The modern rabbins; manuscripts and editions. These contain the various readings of the masoretic recension.

When these means are not adequate to restore a corrupt passage, here, as in all other ancient writings, the only resort is to critical conjecture, which is at all times uncertain.]"

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Bauer, Crit. sac. § 35, sqq. Einleit. § 97. Eichhorn, § 139.

§ 102.

1. MEANS OF ASCERTAINING THE TEXT BEFORE CLOSING THE CANON.

a

These are found only in the parallel passages, and the use even of them is much limited by the fact that later writers intended to recast and work over the earlier passages they inserted, rather than to preserve them in their original form. Besides, the alterations which these later writers allowed themselves to make, and the faults they themselves fell into, belong to the peculiar text of these writers, and so are not to be used by the critic.

§ 103.

II. MEANS OF ASCERTAINING THE TEXT BEFORE THE TIME OF THE MASORITES.

1. THE VERSIONS.

There is no doubt that from a direct, accurate, just, and unfalsified version, we can ascertain the original text, which was its basis, at least in its main features. But the translators of the Old Testament, especially the more ancient of them, sometimes had not sufficient knowledge of the Hebrew language; sometimes they had not the requisite helps; and, in particular, they had no text furnished with the vowel points; besides, their works are, for the greater part, extensively interpolated;

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b Cappellus, ed. Vogel, lib. i. ch. 3-14. Bauer, Crit. sac. § 132, (§ 20.) J. H. Owen, Crit. sac., [or A Short Introduction to Hebrew Criticism, originally published without the author's name, in 1774,] in the German collection Brit. Theol. vol. i. p. 77. [See Appendix, H., and Eichhorn, § 139.]

so that, for all these reasons, the critical use of them is exceedingly insecure, and is attended with the danger of mistaking exegetical errors and interpolations of the translator for the true readings of the text he had before him."

The chief rule to be given in this case is, to avoid this danger by getting an accurate acquaintance with the spirit and the critical condition of the versions to be used, and by a circumspect attention to all possible methods of reconciling them with the present text, and by supposing the translators made mistakes and conjectures.

[The ancient versions are very valuable, since they follow the ante-masoretic text, and are, indeed, often its only representatives. But it is not always possible from the version to determine what its author read in his manuscripts; for sometimes his word may be translated back into Hebrew by one of several synonymes; he may have added words of little importance, or even important words, for the sake of greater clearness. Sometimes he altered to suit the idiom of his own tongue, or to be more perspicuous; sometimes he did not understand an obscure or difficult word, or sentence, and omitted it, or gave a conjectural translation, and sometimes expressed the sense without rendering the words. But where we can ascertain the reading, the version is of the same value as the original text.]

Buxtorf, Anticrit. p. 66, sqq. See above, § 98, p. 375, note a. Hensler, Bemerkungen über Jeremias, p. 26. Winer, De Onkeloso, p. 23. b Bauer, Crit. sac. p. 426, sqq. Jahn, vol. i. p. 438, sqq. [J. C. Knapp, Diss. ii. de Vers. Alex. in emendanda Lectione Exempli Hebraici, caute adhibenda; Hal. 1775, 1776.]

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