CHAPTER VIII.[1]
Our Earliest Hebrew Text more than 1,000 Years more Recent than the Time of Moses—800 Years to Decipher God's Book—"In Toby" or '"On Tabby"—"Bet, Cheat"—In what language did Moses Write?
It will be right to premise that the date usually given of Moses is B.C. 1567–1447; but the very commencement of our knowledge of the history of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament does not run further back than B.C. 300, some 1,150 years after the Pentateuch is said to have been written. This date, from the present time, would carry us back into the Heptarchy, for it was a century after such a period (within a year or two) that Egbert began his reign (A.D. 827).
We are, therefore, to suppose that several books written during the Heptarchy have now for the first time come to light, and that scholars for the next 800 years are to study these books in order to make them out; and that will give the reader an idea of the first period of our knowledge of the Biblical Hebrew (B.C. 300 to A.D. 500). Before that period our knowledge about the Hebrew language is a dead blank. The next period is from A.D. 500 to the eleventh century, when efforts were made by the "Lords of the Masora" to vivify the dry bones of the previous period by the introduction of sonants, or vowel points, written under the consonantal words, whereby
NTBGNGDCRTDTHVNSNDTRT[2]
became
N
iT
eB
eG
iN
iG
oD
C
R
eaT
eD
T
eH
eaV
eN
S
N
aD
T
eR
eaT
