Of these the two which most properly answer to the idea of versions of scripture are those of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel. The first is confined to the Pentateuch. Its author, Onkelos, ps, according to good tradition,* lived in the time of Hillel the elder, that is, about forty years before Christ, under Hyrcanus. His work is deservedly valued as a piece of faithful and sound Bible translation.

The same praise may also be accorded in general to the other, on the prophets, by Jonathan the son of Uzziel. He is considered to have been contemporary with Onkelos; and, writing before the subject had been obscured to the Jewish mind by the fatal prejudices of after-days, his interpretations of many of the passages which relate to the Messiah harmonize entirely with the theology of the Christian church. In the former prophets the character of the translation is simple and sufficiently literal; but in the latter ones he indulges in the more free and allegorical tone of the rabbinical schools. The prophet Daniel is not translated, or at least not extant.

There are eight other Targums on different parts of the Old Testament; but they are of later dates, and inferior to the two now noticed. They were either unworthily executed at first, or their text has been greatly debased. These are, that on the Pentateuch, by the Pseudo-Jonathan; the Targum Yerushlemey, of which only detached portions on the Pentateuch remain; on the Ketubim, or Hagiographa, by R. Jose, surnamed the Blind; on the Megilloth, or Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Lamentations, Ruth, and Esther; three others on the history of Esther, and one on the Books of Chronicles. The Targums have been printed, both separately by vari*R. ASAR, in Meor Enajim, cap. xlv. apud WALTON. Prol. xii. 9.

ous editors, and also embodied with Latin translations in the London, Antwerp, and Paris Polyglots.

II. SAMARITAN VERSION of the Pentateuch.-The history of the Samaritan people is too well known to detain us. They were originally a colony "from Babylon and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," which settled at Shomeron or Samaria, after the deportation of the native Israelites by Shalmaneser, as related in 2 Kings xvii. Idolaters at the time of their establishment in the country, they were afterwards, and, as their perseverance evinced, sincerely, converted to the Hebrew monotheism. Yet their intercourse with the inhabitants of Judea, never cordial from the first, was soon broken up altogether; while their opposition to the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, and the subsequent erection of one of their own on Mount Gerizim, as a rival shrine to that on Moriah, ripened the growing dislike into confirmed and perpetual enmity. From that period the Samaritans, as if ashamed of their Heathenish extraction, seem to have cherished the ambition of being regarded as the genuine and only worthy descendants of the patriarchs, boasted of a high priesthood of the purest Aaronic descent, and of an adherence to the institutions of Moses more close than that of their neighbours of Jerusalem itself.

[So even in modern times when Ludolf, in the inscription of his letter to the Samaritans of Sichem, had called them Beni Schomron, sons or inhabitants of Schomeron, or Samaria, which had taken its name from Schemer, (1 Kings xvi. 24,) they disclaimed the name, affirming in their reply, that they knew nothing of Schomeron; and that they themselves were Beni Israel Schamerim, that is, Israelites, observers of the holy law.*]

* From schamar, "to keep, observe."

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.

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. I. + Hom. ii. in Joan. THEOD. Opp. tom. iv. p. 555. Ed. Paris, 1642.

§ BINGHAM, "Antiq." vol. iv. cap. 4.