Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 296, 7 ʻOkakopa 1891 — Three Critics Criticised. [ARTICLE]

Three Critics Criticised.

A "Laymen } " writes in the P. C. Advertiser, under the fceading 4 :Two Critics Criticised, n in whieh he criticises Brothers Hammond and Burgess in a friendly way. Mr. Layjman. we presume, affcer forty years of attendarice upon public worshiD, is of theiaity of sorae Christian.Church. But strange to say he shows by his writings, tbat after fbrty years of Christian profession. a wonderful laek of the very first prinuiples |of a Christian, viz: faith, unplicit, undoubting faith in the Word of God as given by inspiration througn holy men of old. This doubt has been due either to tlie inabilitv of those whom he has listened to in the last forty years to expbin the of ! tlie Holy Scripture to his sausfaction or to his own doubting disposition or want offa&h. kV Layman" is on!y an example of, ninē-tenths of professing Christians, who have heeome doubters through the preaching of the doctrines. men. iv ln vain ye do worship me, preaching for doctrines the commandments of men." There are pwo requisites necessary in writings wißch elaim to command bclief from the world, i, e M 1. gcnvinenem and 2. integrity, that they are the works and the unaltered writings of the persons whose names they b<jar. Its GKNri\K.\Kss. Eīienwl EviThe Jews, to wliom t!ieso books were entrusted, hnvo been in j all ages iuianinious in their testimony that the Pentateuch r?as written by Moses; tbe Pealmn by 3)avid, atu : iose whose are atlixed theni ; the Proverbs by 8olomon; and thnt others were the work of those whose names they bear; and, with equal unanimitv, teBtify to the authority of those books whose wriUre namea are lost.

They are accrt>dited by successive generations, till tre eome to tfee m«ntioa o£ theto in the "3?rologne" to Ēcclesiagticus, the trcatise of Josephus j?gainst Apion, and thē wijtings of the Kew Testament There are also frequently quofced by one another as authoritative andgenuine: and the Pentateuch, Psalms, ana Prophets, as well as the historical books, are so quoted by our Lord Himself. They were -āll admitted to be genuine by. successive councils of th<; Christian Church. Lntehkal Evidence. (1) The Na-tiomUly:of-the'%oriter».-' 4, They all (with the possible exceptions of the ,uuthors of Job aitd Esther) profess to be Jews of Palestine, a peoble peculiarly separated fmm the rest of mankind by religion, by unique customs, and by physical position. These peculiarties are iīnplicitly m§,intained throughout the whole lK>oks, whieh sho# no evidence of contact with the literature of any other countries except Ihoee m whieh the wtiters profess to have been in temporary exile (2) " The Langnage. exccpt m Daniel and Ezra, is uniformly Hebrew, whieh ceased to be a living speech soon after the Babylonish Captivitv. Some parts of Paniel and also of Ezra are written in Hebrew, others in the form of Aramaic whieh is transitional, ftnd presents various pointsof difference from the later Chaldee. This curious phenomenon finds its exp!anation in the residence of Daniel and E«:ra at Babylon, and their' relation to Baby]onian and Peisian rulers who successively held sway over that city and the surrounding countries. (3) Circumstantiality. The records contain historieb, frequent genealogies, and biographie's, all of whieh are eapahle of more or less verification from other records, but no material discrepancy has b«en proved. (4) Tke UndesigneA Coinci(leness (see Blunt's work on ' subject) are numerous and deserve attention. Then, again, the physical al-' lusions are exclusivcly applicable to Palestine, whose geographical and geo!ogical conform«'ttion is uu-j paralleled; while the fiora anāfav-1 na, as gathered from tho work it-i iself, have been proved by modern ! iexplorers to correspond exactlyi with the phenomena of that eoun- i try. ■-| Its IvfEOKiTY. The scrupulous| care taken by Ezra, and those whoi followed him. to preser\\; thetexti of the Old Testament, afber its Canon was completed, is sufficiently evident from the zealous aeeuracy with whieh the discrepancies in the text of various copies have heen preserved. This is perhaps most conspicuoiis in cerlain Psalms, of whiek two distinet arc ex-tan-tj containing in some instances as manv as sixty variations in the text. of the two copies. The ancient Hebo>w. in whieh it was written, k was, after the Cnptivity, supcrsedbv the Aramaic (a mixture of Chald-3e with llebrew). For a time the former wr.s retained as the sacrcd. while the latter was the vernacular, language; but, before the Christian era, almost all the Scriptures were translateil into Aramaie. In the ti:ne of Ezra, it is evident that an Aramaic version. foJlowed the reauing of the Hebrew original in the synagogucs (Neb. viii. 8). These Aramaio interpretations, called "Targnms,' > are valualue, as affording prvofs of the oorrect reatīings ot ancient MSS. of the Okl Testamer>t, #»nd als«> of tbe nrecise meaning of obscure wordt?. Of these Targume ten have eome down to ug v giving between them a ooniplelo interprecation ofthe whole of the hooks v Ezra and Nehemiah. The Targum to Daniel is not fully known. The earfiest are those of Jonathan <on the Prophets) and Onkelos (on the Pentateuch); thc former is a paraphrase. the latter a literal tralislation, word for u ord. from the llebrew; the former was written shovtly befbre the Christian era, while OnWos was

cotttemporary wiih and a pupil of 6ramaliel. : The Hēhrew congiSi"of ihe Synageg«e RdLb } eopie» for private reading. The ionrier are the more important, and were written, as Josephas tellfi us, on fine skins (sonae of whieh, found in thē Crimea, ana therefore possibly belonging to the Jews of tlae Dispersion, are still $reseryed in the īm perial Lihrary; ■at |Bt Petersbiirg). The care with whieh they were transcribed ia evident from the rūles laid down in the Talm«d* One scribe copied the consonants, and accents inj a fainter ink, a third revised the copy, and a fourth wrote in the M£tsorah. These rolls consisted of, (1) the Pentateaeh {qt Law): (2) MegUloth {"roils"); and (3) thell\aphataroth ('Hliamiasals"). It is from these and ihe Greek translationc, made T>y the Alexandrian Jews, , corapared together, that a copy of thc Scriptures must be derived, and the English Authorised Version was formed from the best» recensions bnown at thc timc of its preparation." i - (jT° ,be^Contin\ied).