his commentaries, there were so many necessary occasions for taking notice of them." Dr. Prideaux concedes that, after the Babylonish captivity, "the Hebrew language ceased to be the mother tongue of the Jews," observing that this "is agreed on all hands."
Now, what is the true significance of the foregoing specimen statements, not hostile conjectures of semi-literate Infidels, but deliberate admissions of erudite and eminent Christians? A pretty language Hebrew was, to be sure, to be used by Almighty God in the revealing of his will to men. He used, it seems, a language which had twenty-two consonants and no vowels, thereby leaving his meaning utterly unfixed and uncertain, and yet making the comprehension of his book so obligatory that on it hung the destiny for beatitude or malediction of the human race. Let my reader picture to himself a language so rude and primitive that it bungled away with its twenty-two consonants, and without a single vowel, and he will have some idea of how clearly intelligible God made himself! "It is true," admits Dr. Giles,[1] "that it might be difficult to know what vowel-sound should, in every case, be inserted among the written consonants; this was left for the reader to supply by his knowledge of the language. Thus the first word in the Hebrew Bible, being composed of the consonants b r s t, might be pronounced Barasat, Bereset, Birisit, Borosot, Burusut, and in twenty other ways, according to the combinations of the letters a, e, i, o, and u." In short, God wrote his book in such wise that the very first word in it was one uncertain thing out of twenty-five, and by this word you are to be saved or damned.
Those who know Pitman's system of phonetic stenography are aware that reporters, in taking a verbatim report of the speech of a rapid speaker, simply dash off the consonants, having no time to put in the points which, by a curious coincidence, designate the vowels with Pitman, even as they do with Jehovah. Now, any practised stenographist will tell you that he experiences less difficulty in "taking down" the speech of the orator than in deciphering the said speech after it is taken down.
- ↑ "Hebrew Records."
