gainly scrawls, intended to assist the memory of a rude and all but illiterate people?
And it is, perhaps, doubtful whether Hebrew, as written, tended more to lead than to mislead. It was never pretended that the language (by courtesy), in its literary form, indicated anything special and in particular. No MS. was of any use apart from the traditional reading. In other words, the MS. contained only signs intended to assist the memory of the reader. Where the traditional reading was forgotten, and the meaning of any particular word or sentence was sought to be extracted from the writing itself, the most inextricable contradiction and confusion were likely to ensue. As is well known, one set of translators opined that a certain word meant locusts, while another set, equally learned, contended that it meant chimneys! True, the Masoretic points to some extent fix the meanings of particular word-signs; but, then, these points, as I have indicated, are comparatively modern, and were arbitrarily fixed long after Hebrew had ceased to be a living language, and after the traditional reading of its ancient Scriptures had been to a great extent, or altogether, forgotten.
And, mark you, even granted that the original consonant characters of the Hebrew Scriptures were "inspired," the wildest bibliolater has never urged that the Masoretic points were "inspired," and without these points you may just as well try to read logarithms off the sea sands, scrawled over by the toes of sea-gulls, as read any one thing in particular out of the ancient un-vowelled Hebrew. Even with the Masorah the text is notoriously unsatisfactory. Sir William Drummond writes: "I have wholly discarded the Masoretic points. I believe there are few Hebraists who will think of undertaking to defend the Masorah." And again: "I have seldom seen two Hebraists who read and who translated two chapters alike throughout the whole Scriptures."[1] The learned Christian apologist, Professor Moses Stuart, avows: "In the Hebrew MSS. that have been examined some eight hundred thousand various readings actually occur as to the Hebrew consonants. How many as to the vowel-points and accents no man knows."
- ↑ "Œdipus Judaicus," xvii., xviii.
