But though their ritual and religious manners were in most respects conformed to the Judean, they rejected considerable portions of the Hebrew scriptures, but seem to have yielded full acquiescence to the canonical authority of the Pentateuch alone. They have survived, though in an enfeebled and dwindling state, the vicissitudes of ages; their principal, and indeed only, settlement is at Naplous, the ancient Sichem; and, on certain days in their ecclesiastical year, may they yet be seen in their white vestments ascending the heights of Gerizim to pray to the God of Israel, where their fathers worshipped two thousand years ago.

The Samaritan VERSION of the Pentateuch must not be confounded with the Hebræo-Samaritan PENTATEUCH itself. The latter is one of the most precious treasures of Old-Testament inspiration. They came into possession of it probably not long after the time of their conversion from idolatry, and they have fulfilled a charge assigned them by Providence in watching over this record so as to keep in existence a text which would be a counterpart to the Judean copy, and a guarantee for the integrity of the Mosaic writings.*

[In their letter to Ludolf, the Samaritans of Sichem affirm their possession of a copy written in "the days of favour," yemey haratson, that is, the happy years which immediately followed the victories of Joshua, and the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan: the subscription at the end of this copy stating that it was "written by me, Abisa son of Phineas, son of Eleazar, son of

* "Let the variations on each side be carefully collected, and then critically examined by the context and the ancient versions. If the Samaritan copy be found in some places to correct the Hebrew, yet will the Hebrew in other places correct the Samaritan. Each copy, therefore, is invaluable; each demands our pious veneration, and attentive study. The Pentateuch will never be understood perfectly till we admit the authority of both."-KENNICOTT, Diss. 2.

Aaron the priest. I have written it in the vestibule of the tabernacle of convocation, the thirteenth year after the entry of the sons of Israel into Canaan."]

Of this ancient text there have been, strictly speaking, three versions; that into Greek, already noticed, and now inextant; another into Arabic, which will be enumerated in its own place; and a third, that properly called the Samaritan version, because made for the use of that people in their own vernacular, a dialect which with an Aramaic basis comprised a multitude of exotic words, Cuthite, Arabic, and Hebrew; and such substantially has it continued, as appears by the epistles written by them in it, to Scaliger in 1582, and to Ludolf in 1686.

The Samaritan version is therefore a Targum, made after the same manner and in imitation of those in use among the Jews. It exhibits the five books of Moses in the national language. The style of the translator is free, yet not errant. He is explicative, and not parsimonious of glosses. He reduces tropical expressions to common ones, and, in imitation of the Meimra de Yeya, the personal "word of the Lord," so continually found in the Chaldee paraphrasts, he often employs the designation of Malak Alhah, "the angel of God," for the divine names of Jehovah and Elohim. If the version be so old as some critics would argue, who assign it as remote a day as the time of Esarhaddon, the text has been interpolated from the Jewish Targums; but the greater probability seems on the side of those who, as Eichhorn, consider it to be a later production than that of Onkelos. In the Polyglots the Samaritan version, like the Pentateuch, is printed in the older Hebrew character, that which was derived from the pen of Moses. The Pentateuch has a Latin translation, but the version none; but this defect is sufficiently supplied by the notification in the margin of those expressions in which the version departs from the biblical text.

If, as we have seen in the existence of the Septuagint, as well as the popular Targums, the Judaic church had even in our Lord's time proved itself to be friendly to the beneficent idea of vernacular translations of the inspired writings, it may be easily presumed that the Christian church, whose commission extended to the evangelization of the whole world, would speedily apply its energies to this department of enterprise. Accordingly we find

Eusebius so early as the fourth century (A.D. 315) affirming, that the scriptures were then "translated into all languages, both of Greeks and barbarians, throughout the world, and studied by all nations as the oracles of God:" while Chrysostom (A.D. 398) reminds his hearers that "the Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Ethiopians, and a multitude of other nations, had translated them into their own tongues, by which barbarians learned to be philosophers, and women and children were enabled to imbibe with ease the doctrine of the gospel." + So also Theodoret, (A.D. 423,) that “ every nation under heaven had the scripture in their own tongue: the Hebrew books were not only rendered into Greek, but into the Roman, Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Armenian, Scythian, and Sauromatic languages; and, in a word, into all tongues used by all nations in his time." And to the same effect St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others.§ We proceed to offer an outline of the principal facts relating to these primitive Christian versions.

III. THE SCRIPTURES IN THE LATIN LANGUAGE.

وو

MOSHEIM, in his "Commentaries on the affairs of the church in the second century, says that "the anxious desire felt by the Christians of that age to inform the * De Præpar. Evang. lib. xii. cap. 1. Hom. ii. in Joan. THEOD. Opp. tom. iv. p. 555. Ed. Paris, 1642. § BINGHAM, "Antiq." vol. iv. cap. 4.

minds of the multitude, and to lead them to Christ, by furnishing them with those writings in which the plan of salvation through him is laid open, and the industry with which this object was pursued by men of every description, cannot be better understood than from the great number of Latin translations of the sacred volume which were set forth even in the very infancy of Christianity. For, as the Latin language had been rendered familiar to a great part of the world, and was not entirely unknown even to what were called the barbarous nations, the Christians conceived that, by their translating the books of the New Testament into it, the way of truth would at once be laid open to an innumerable portion of mankind." But these primæval translations cannot now be identified; indeed the existence of any so early as the first century, in which it is thought such attempts were probably made by Christians at Rome, of Jewish extraction, is not capable of demonstration. But, unless the scripture texts in Tertullian, who wrote in the last decade of the second century, were renderings of his own from the Greek, we are certain there must have been a Latin version in current use so early as A. D. 190. In the time of Augustine, however, who was born in 354, we have evidence of the circulation of several versions in that language. In his treatise Of Christian Doctrine, a discourse expressly intended to serve as an introduction to the reading and interpretation of the holy scriptures, after advising that, in addition to the attainment of a knowledge of the original languages, recourse should be had to the different versions of the Bible, inasmuch as one serves to illustrate another, he takes occasion to refer to the multitude of Latin translations then in current use; but in such a way as to caution his readers against the greater number of them, as having been made by persons who were not sufficiently qualified for the under

taking. Qui scripturas ex Hebræa lingua in Græcam verterunt numerari possunt, Latini autem interpretes nullo modo. Ut enim cuique primis fidei temporibus in manus venit codex Græcus, et aliquantulum facultatis sibi utriusque linguæ habere videbatur, ausus est interpretari.* But in the same work he speaks in terms of great commendation of one among these many versions, for the closeness of its renderings, and the perspicuity of its style. This version he distinguishes by the name of the ITALA. In ipsis autem interpretationibus, Itala ceteris præferatur; nam est verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate

sententiæ.

As this sentence is the only place among all the writings of the fathers in which mention is made of the Italic version, it is evident that the custom of modern critics in applying the name of "the Itala to the whole mass of Latin biblical text prior to the time of St. Jerome, is injudicious; since it invests a large class of productions, of very different degrees of merit, with a character which is affirmed by Augustine respecting one of them only. And whether, indeed, among the ancient Latin translations which have come down to us, this particular one is yet extant, is a question that cannot be determined with certainty. The African bishop gives no extracts from it, no specimen of the work whatever, and only mentions its existence in a solitary sentence. How, then, is it to be identified? Nevertheless there is a strong opinion in favour of the text exhibited in the Codex Brixianus, as being that referred to by Augustine. This celebrated manuscript of the Gospels was written eleven hundred years ago on purple vellum, the characters traced in ink, and subsequently silvered, and the initial letters tinged with gold; the work itself, from this latter circumstance, being commonly known as the Codex

* AUGUSTINUS De Doct. Christ. lib. ii. cap. 11.