can be reduced to a system and the terms sharply and clearly defined; the differences are like those of the peculiar gutturals of the Shemitic tongues, so delicate and subtle that they can hardly be mastered by the Western tongue or ear.

This wealth of synonym is connected with a corresponding richness of expression in the synonymous clauses that play such an important part in Hebrew poetry, and indeed are the reason of its wonderful richness and majesty of thought. Thus the sacred poet or prophet plays upon his theme as upon a manystringed instrument, bringing out a great variety of tone and melody, advancing in graceful steppings or stately marchings to the climax, or dwelling upon the theme with an inexhaustible variety of expression and colouring. The Hebrew language is like the rich and glorious verdure of Lebanon, or as the lovely face of the Shulamite, dark as the tents of Kedar, yet rich in colour as the curtains of Solomon, or her graceful form, which is so rapturously described as she discloses its beauties in the dance of the hosts.2 It is true that Hebrew literature is not as extensive as the Greek; it is confined to history, poetry, fiction, oratory, and ethical wisdom; 3 but in these departments it presents the grandest productions of the human soul. Its history gives us the origin and destiny of our race, unfolds the story of redemption, dealing now with the individual, then with the family and nation, and at times widening so as to take into its field of representation the most distant nations of earth; it is a history in which God is the great actor, in which sin and holiness are the chief factors. Its poetry stirs the heart of mankind with hymns and prayers, and sentences of wisdom; and in the heroic struggles of a Job and the conquering virtue of a Shulamite, there is imparted strength to the soul and vigour to the character of man and woman transcending the influence of the godlike Achilles or the chaste Lucretia. The great prophet of the exile presents the sublimest aspirations of man. Where shall we find such images of beauty, such wealth of illustration, such grandeur of delineation, such majestic representations? It seems as if the prophet grasped in his tremen3 See Chap. XIII. and XVII. 4 Is. 40-66.

1 See pp. 366 seq.

2 Song of Songs, 16; 71-7.

dous soul the movements of the ages, and saw the very future mirrored in the mind of God.

4. The Hebrew language is remarkable for its life and fervour. This is owing to the emotional and hearty character of the people. There is an artlessness, self-abandonment, and earnestness in the Hebrew tongue; it is transparent as a glass, so that we see through it as into the very souls of the people. There is none of that reserve, that cool and calm deliberation, that self-consciousness that characterize the Greek.1 The Hebrew language is distinguished by the strength of its consonants and the weakness of its vowels; so that the consonants give the word a stability of form in which the vowels have the greatest freedom of movement. The vowels circulate in the speech as the blood of the language. Hence the freedom in the varying expressions of the same root and the fervour of its full-toned forms. And if we can trust the Massoretic system of accentuation and vocalization, the inflection of the language depends upon the dislike of the recurrence of two vowelless consonants; 2 and on the power of the accent over the vocalization not only of the accented syllable, but also of the entire word. This gives the language a wonderful flexibility and elasticity. In the Hebrew tongue the emotions overpower the thoughts and carry them on in the rushing stream to the expression. Hence the literature has a power over the souls of mankind. The language is as expressive of emotion as the face of a modest and untutored child, and the literature is but the speaking face of the heart of the Hebrew people. The Psalms touch a chord in every soul, and interpret the experience of all the world. The sentences of wisdom come to us as the home-truths, as the social and political maxims that sway our minds and direct our lives. The prophets present to us the objective omnipotent truth, which, according to the beautiful story of Zerubba

1 Ewald, in l.c., p. 33; Böttcher, in l.c., p. 9. Bertheau, in Herzog, Real Encyklopädie, I. Aufl. Bd. v. p. 613.

2 Hence the remarkable use of the Shewas and the law of the half-open syllable. In the oldest language doubtless every consonant had a full vowel as in Arabic.

3 Hence the use of the pretonic Qāmetz. It is doubtful whether this belongs to the ancient language. The principle is, however, independent of this question.

bel,1 is the mightiest of all, flashing conviction like the sun and cutting to the heart as by a sharp two-edged sword. The history presents us the simple facts of the lives of individuals and of nations in the light of the divine countenance, speaking to our hearts and photographing upon us pictures of real life.

These are some of the most striking features of the Hebrew language, which have made it the most suitable of all languages to give to mankind the elementary religious truths and facts of divine revelation. The great body of the Bible, four-fifths of the sum total of God's Word, is in this tongue. It is no credit to the American people that the Hebrew language has no place at all in many of our colleges and universities; that its study has been confined to so great an extent to theological seminaries and to the students for the ministry. It is not strange that the Old Testament has been neglected in the pulpit, the Sabbath school, and the family, so that many, even of the ministry, have doubted whether it was any longer to be regarded as the Word of God. It is not strange that Christian scholars, prejudiced by their training in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome, should be unable to enter into the spirit, and appreciate the peculiar features of the Hebrew language and literature, and so fail to understand the elements of a divine revelation. Separating the New Testament and the words and work of Jesus and His apostles from their foundation and their historical preparation, students have not caught the true spirit of the Gospel, nor apprehended it in its unity and variety as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. But this is not all, for we shall now attempt to show that the other languages of the Bible, the Aramaic and the Greek, have been moulded and transformed by the theological conceptions and moral ideas that had been developing in the Hebrew Scriptures, and which, having been ripened under the potent influence of the Divine Spirit, were about to burst forth into bloom and eternal fruitfulness in these tongues prepared by Divine Provi

1 I. Esdras 433-41.

2 Heb. 412.

3 It is becoming more evident now than ever that it is impossible rightly to interpret the New Testament without a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, in which indeed the words of Jesus and the primary sources of the New Testament writings were given. See pp. 190, 244.

dence for the purpose. The Hebrew language is, as we have seen, the language of religion, and moulded entirely by religious and moral ideas and emotions. The Greek and the Aramaic are of an entirely different character; they were not, as the Hebrew, cradled and nursed, trained from infancy to childhood, armed and equipped in their heroic youth with divine revelation, but they were moulded outside of the realm of divine revelation, and only subsequently adapted for the declaration of sacred truth. And first this was the case with the Aramaic.

III. THE ARAMAIC LANGUAGE

goes back in its history to the most primitive times. It is the farthest developed of the Shemitic family, showing a decline, a decrepitude, in its poverty of forms and vocalization, in its brevity and abruptness, in its pleonasm, and in its incorporation of a multitude of foreign words. It was the language of those races of Syria and Mesopotamia that warred with the Egyptians and Assyrians, and possibly, as Gladstone suggests, took part in the Trojan War, who were the agents through whom both the Hebrew and the Greek alphabets were conveyed to those peoples. At all events the Aramaic became the language of commerce and intercourse between the nations. during the Persian period,2 taking the place of the Phoenician, as it was in turn supplanted by the Greek. The children of Judah having been carried into captivity and violently separated from their sacred places and the scenes of their history, gradually acquired this commercial and common language of intercourse, so that ere long it became the language of the Hebrew people, the knowledge of the ancient Hebrew being confined to the learned and the higher ranks of society. Hence, even in the books of Ezra and Daniel, considerable portions were written in Aramaic.3

The Aramaic continued to be the language of the Jews during the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods, and was the

1 Gladstone's Homeric Synchronism, New York, 1876, p. 173.

2 It must also have been widely spoken in the Assyrian period, as we see from 2 Kg. 1811; see also Fried. Delitzsch, Wo Lag das Paradies. Leipzig, 1881, p. 258. 8 See pp. 172, 351.

common speech of Palestine in the times of our Lord,1 although it had long ceased to be the language of commerce and intercourse, the Greek having taken its place. And so the Greek gradually penetrated from the commercial and official circles even to the lowest ranks of society. Thus there was a mingling of a Greek population with the Shemitic races, not only in the Greek colonies of the Decapolis and the cities of the seacoast of Palestine, but also in the great centres of Tiberias, Samaria, and even in Jerusalem itself. Greek manners and customs were, under the influence of the Herodians and the Sadducees, pressing upon the older Aramaic and Hebrew, not without the stout resistance of the Pharisees. The language of our Saviour, however, in which He delivered His discourses. and instructions, was undoubtedly the Aramaic. For not only do the Aramaic terms that He used, which are retained at times by the evangelists, and the proper names of His disciples, but also the very structure and style of His discourses, show the Aramaic characteristics. Our Saviour's methods of delivery and style of instruction were also essentially the same as those of the rabbins of His time. Hence we should not think it strange that from the Hebrew and Aramaic literature alone we can bring forward parallels to the wise sentences and moral maxims of the Sermon on the Mount, the rich and beautiful parables, by which He illustrated His discourses, and the fiery zeal of His denunciation of hypocrisy, together with the profound depths of His esoteric instruction. Our Saviour used the Aramaic language and methods, in order thereby to reach the people of His times, and place in the prepared Aramaic soil the precious seeds of heavenly truth. It is the providential significance of the Aramaic language that it thus prepared the body for the thought of our Saviour. It is a language admirably adapted by its simplicity, perspicuity, precision, and definiteness, with all its awkwardness, for the associations of every-day life. It is the language for the lawyer and the scribe, the pedagogue and the pupil; indeed, the English language of the Shemitic family.2 Thus the earlier Aramaic

1 Schürer, Neutestament. Zeitgesch., Leipzig, 1874, p. 372. See pp. 172 seq. 2 Volck in Herzog's Real Encyklopädie, II. Aufl. 1, p. 603.