ter, and religious usages of the other. Subsequent events deprived the Samaritans of their city, (PRIDEAUX, P. I. B. viii. Anno 331, p. 499, 500,) and increased this odium, and in the time of Christ it prevailed so far, that no term of reproach in use among the Jews was more contemptuous than that of a Samaritan. See John viii. 48.

After the Samaritan Pentateuch had lain concealed for upwards of a thousand years, it began to be doubted whether such a work had ever existed. It had been mentioned by the fathers, Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Jerome, but learned men began to be disposed to give a forced explanation of their words. See BAUER, loc. cit. At last in the year 1616, Peter a Valle procured a complete copy, which Achilles Harlay de Sancy sent to the library of the priests of the Oratory at Paris, in 1623. It was first described by John Morin in the preface to his new edition of the Roman text of the Septuagint, printed at Paris, 1628, and more particularly in his Exercitationes Ecclesiasticæ in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateuchum, Paris, 1631, and afterwards printed in the Paris Polyglot. Usher received six copies from the East, and several others were obtained by some of the learned. Walton introduced the Samaritan Pentateuch into his Polyglot, with emendations of it as published in the Paris edition.

At what time and from what source the Samaritans received their Pentateuch is a very important inquiry, on which critics have entertained various opinions. Even at the present time it can hardly be considered as settled. It was the opinion of Usher that Dositheus, the founder of a sect in the first century, who pretended to be the Messiah, made up the Samaritan Pentateuch from the Hebrew edition of the Palestine and Babylonian Jews, and from the Greek in use among the Hellenists, adding, and expunging, and altering according to his pleasure.— But Origen and Photius, to whom he appeals, afford no support to his allegations, and it is incredible that Dositheus could have compiled the work in question without having been opposed by the Alexandrine Samaritans. Le Clerc considered the Samaritan Pentateuch as the work of the Israelitish priest who was sent to instruct the new inhabitants in the religion of the country, as we read in II Kings xvii. 27, 28. This is mere hypothesis, destitute of any historical evidence. Nor is there any probability that it will ever be adopted by learned men, because the priest could only have found it necessary to instruct the people from the law which he took with him, and not to have formed a whole new system. Thus Bauer; in addition to which it is well remarked by CARPZOV, (Crit. Sac. p. 602,) that this hypothesis is contradicted by Christ and his apostles, who repeatedly ascribe the Pentateuch to Moses; and also by the historical books of the Old Testament themselves, which frequently refer to it as his work.

Some derive this Pentateuch from copies existing among the Israelites before the Assyrian captivity, or even before the separation of the kingdoms under Jeroboam. This opinion, which was advanced by Morin, has been adopted by Houbigant, Kennicott, John David Michaelis, Eichhorn, Bertholdt and others. Bauer also accedes to it. He remarks, that the Israelites when they revolted with Jeroboam had copies of the law as well as the Jews, which is evident from the exhortations in the prophets, and from the fact that they are never accused of wanting them; that when the body of the people were removed by the Assyrian monarch, the remainder with whom the new settlers mingled, were in all probability not destitute of some copies of the Pentateuch; that if this should be asserted, although it is altogether unlikely, the priest before mentioned would doubtless take a copy with him, as he went to instruct the people in the law. Hence he concludes, that the Samaritan Pentateuch as well as the Jewish is thus to be traced to the autograph of Moses.

Gesenius, in his Commentatio Philologico-critica above referred to, examines this subject. After mentioning the opinion originally proposed by Morin, he proceeds to state the principal arguments urged in its defence, which he reduces to the four following. 1) After the establishment of the idolatry of the calves, so deadly a hatred arose between the two kingdoms, as to make it altogether improbable that after that event copies of the law should pass from one to the other.-2) The hypothesis accounts for the fact, that the Samaritans receive no other books of the Old Testament but the Pentateuch, as they would have done, had they obtained this from the Jews at a late period.3) It is said to be inexplicable, that after the captivity the Samaritans should wish to cooperate with the Jews in rebuilding the temple, unless they had possess ed the Pentateuch.-4) The difference of the writing, it is argued, can best be explained on this hypothesis, the Samaritans having preserved the law in the ancient character.

To these arguments, which undoubtedly afford a very imperfect view of the evidence in favour of the Israelitish origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the learned author replies as follows. 1) It has been proved by Vater and De Wette, that the dissension was by no means sufficient to destroy all intercourse between the kingdoms, and that it did not become a settled hatred until the building of the temple on Mount Gerizim. And that the prophets should not have communicated the law to the kingdom of Samaria, where they very often gave instructions, is utterly incredible. -2) If the Samaritans obtained their Pentateuch from the Jews at a late period, it is by no means certain that they would have received the other books, as it is not uncommon in the history of religions for sects to admit some sacred documents and to reject others; as has

been the case in the Christian church in relation to St. Paul's epistles, and to the Old Testament. And so great was the virulence of the Samaritans, that they despised the worship offered at Jerusalem, and traduced David and Solomon and the prophets of a more recent age than Moses and Joshua. So that it was not to be expected, that such a sect would have received the later Hebrew writings.- -3) From the fact stated in the third argument, it would rather seem, according to the author, that the Samaritans were destitute of some definite and authorized worship, and of priests of any distinction. Comp. II Kings xvii.—4) The last proof he considers of little or no weight. The supposition that a change of the letters was introduced by Ezra, if it be admitted, does not assume that the present Samaritan character was in use before the captivity, but some other allied to the Phoenician, the same perhaps as is now to be seen on Jewish coins.

Gesenius allows that the Pentateuch might have passed from the Jews to the Samaritans before the captivity, provided it existed in the form in which we now have it among the Jews themselves. But this he undertakes to deny, and thinks he can discover in Gen. xlix. Ex. xv. 13, 17. Levit. xxvi. Num. xxiv. 22. and particularly in Deut. xxxii. xxxiii. sufficient evidence that even the Jewish Pentateuch as now subsisting cannot be allowed a higher date than that of the Babylonian captivity. As the weight of his arguments depends chiefly on those loose views of prophecy which he is known to entertain, they will not occasion much difficulty to the man who believes that Moses and others were divinely inspired to predict future events and circumstances. He thinks that the books of Moses were reduced to their present form a short time after the end of the captivity, and passed over to the Samaritans when they built the temple on mount Gerizim; and therefore that the origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch is to be placed in the period between the end of the captivity and the erection of this temple. This conclusion coincides with the opinion of Prideaux, although it is maintained on different grounds. But, as it has been well remarked in reference to this hypothesis of Gesenius, "if the Pentateuch was first reduced to writing about the time of the Babylonian exile, then there remains not sufficient time for the numerous changes to have taken place, by which the various recensions in question should come to differ so much from each other."

They who are opposed to this view of the subject, says Gesenius, argue from the silence of Josephus. But this is hardly worthy of notice, as a writer might readily omit such a circumstance, knowing that his reader would suppose of course, that priests would have the law of Moses and make use of it in instituting religious rites.-They argue also from Ex. xxxiv. 16. Deut. vii. 3., where foreign marriages are prohibited. But it may easily be supposed, that if any one should have ventured to at

tack the high priest on that point some plausible excuse would not be wanting; and as the priests were the depositories of the law, there was no cause of apprehension from the laity.

Eichhorn, in the edition of his Einleitung above referred to, (4th. 1823,) examines the hypothesis of Gesenius, and maintains the opinion which he had advanced in his former edition, remarking, that before a new solution of the phenomenon that the Samaritans have only the Pentateuch and a false book of Joshua, can be found, it is necessary to refute that which deduces the Samaritan Pentateuch from the kingdom of the ten tribes, which has never yet been done, and to show that the Samaritans did not possess the Pentateuch until a late period, in support of which nothing has been alleged which is sanctioned by historical facts.

This Pentateuch therefore may be considered as having descended from some Israelitish copy, and this with the Jewish or Hebrew text constitute two recensions or editions of the work of Moses.

Of these two recensions Morin and his followers give a decided preference to the Samaritan, while Buxtorf and his adherents maintain the exclusive authority of the Jewish. Time and patient investigation have cooled the ardour of both parties, and the opinion at present most generally adopted is, that both are to be regarded as sources of the truth, and that sometimes the one and sometimes the other contains the genuine reading. The truth in any particular case must be ascertained by the testimony of the most ancient and valuable of the versions. As a whole the Jewish Pentateuch is preferable to the Samaritan, the various readings of which are frequently "the effect of design, or of want of grammatical, exegetical, or critical knowledge; or of studious conformity to the Samaritan dialect; or of effort to remove supposed obscurities, or to restore harmony to passages apparently discrepant." North American Review, as above referred to, p. 278. Tr. T.]

44

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE CRITICISM OF THE TEXT.

§ 115. Necessity of the Criticism of the Text.

Since the editions very often differ from each other, and many contain also spurious readings, and other readings of great number are extant; the exhibition of a correct text should be the first object of the careful attention of those who desire to understand the sacred scriptures; in other words, the interpreter and divine stand in need of the art of criticism, by the aid of which, a proper judgment may be formed of various readings, the spurious may be discerned, and the genuine, or at least the most probable, may be restored. This subject, which involves an inquiry respecting fact, namely, what the author wrote, may be compared to a judicial procedure, in which the critic. sits on the bench, and the charge of corruption in the reading is brought against the text. The witnesses, from whom evidence is to be obtained respecting what the author wrote, are manuscript copies, ancient editions, old versions, and other books of antiquity, the authors of which quoted the text from manuscripts. But since these witnesses are often at variance with one another, and very frequently it is impossible to ascertain the truth from their evidence; it is necessary, as is usual in judicial causes, to call in also the aid of arguments, drawn from the very nature of the cause, or internal. Such are, the facility or the difficulty of a more modern origin, the absence of any sense, or at least of one that is suitable, the agreement or disagreement of a reading with the series and scope of the discourse, the

[Codicibus emendandis primitus debet invigilare solertia eorum, qui scripturas divinas nosse desiderant. AUGUSTIN. de doct. Christ. L. II.]