LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

WORKS IN THE PRESS.

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THE

BRITISH CRITIC,

FOR APRIL, 1823,

ART. I. Palæoromaica, or Historical and Philological Disquisitions, &c.

(Concluded.)

AFTER the treatment which the Greek text of the New Testament had experienced at the hands of this adventurous critic, it could hardly be expected that the Septuagint version of the Old Testament should escape untouched. Accordingly we have a conjecture in p. 305, "That several of the Books of what we term the Septuagint, are really a version from the Latin." He had not the courage to say all; yet it is a pity that he had not; for unless all of them are versions from the Latin, the whole of his argument drawn from the Septuagint, to prove that the Hellenistic Greek is Latin Greek, falls to the ground. Even if we give up the book of Daniel, the Psalms, the Chronicles, and Ecclesiastes, we have sufficient left of the older Greek versions for our purpose. But we see no reason for any such concession. It is acknowledged that there were three editions of the Septuagint version, current in the time of Origen: and that these three, together with the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion may have contributed to form the text which is now called the Septuagint version, is very probable: but that the old Alexandrian version is the basis, cannot be doubted. The passages which Philo quotes from the Old Testament he quotes according to the text of our present Greek version, with such differences only, as we may conceive to have arisen from different recensions of the same text; and Philo, we know, must have used the Alexandrian version. The quotations of Philo which we have compared with the text of the Septuagint, are from the Pentateuch, the Book of Judges, and the Proverbs. The quotations made by Clemens Romanus also agree with our text of the Septuagint. It is needless to accumulate arguments in opposition to an hypothesis, which Z

VOL. XIX. APRIL, 1823.

is almost too absurd to deserve a formal refutation. How is it, that the undoubted peculiarities of the Alexandrian dialect are frequent in the Greek version of the Old Testament? Why do we continually meet with the forms of the third plural in -av and -οσαν, as πέποιθαν, ἐκρίνοσαν, &c. for πεποίθασι and expivov? These are not the peculiarities which would have marked a version made by a Greek in the second or third century. That they were not introduced from the Latin, as the Disquisitor absurdly supposes, appears, amongst other reasons, from the circumstance of their being used by Lycophron. Again, we have the second aorist third plural in -av, both in the Old and New Testament, as λaßav, Quyav. "Istius modi forma in av, quæ vix reperientur in scriptis Græcorum, sunt ex dialecto Alexandrina," Valcke- naer, in Luc. xix. 14. One might as well dispute the existence of a Doric dialect, as of an Alexandrian, or the traces of it in the writings of the Græcising Jews. See how the case stands: the Greek literature of the Jews came from Alexandria: the people of Alexandria used a dialect in many respects different from that of the European and Asiatic Greeks; it was natural that they should do so; and they did: consequently the Greek usually spoken by Jews would be in the Alexandrian dialect, but probably to a certain degree in the Hebrew idiom. We have, in the first place, a Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, formed in great part from an ancient Greek version made by Jews residing at Alexandria. We have other Greek writings by Jews who possessed little or no literature. We find, in both instances, many traces of that dialect, which, we know from other sources, was spoken at Alexandria; and we find also many idiomatic phrases, which correspond with the Hebrew, rather than with the Greek language; what, then, can be more certain, than that the Greek, usually spoken and written by Jews, was Alexandrian Greek, and that the Alexandrian Greek, or as some have thought fit to call it, the Hellenistic Greek, was, as to its verbal peculiarities, Alexandrian, and as to its idiomatic, Hebrew? It is really quite idle to argue with our author on this subject; although we have abundance of arguments to urge; á μs πολλά μαι ὠκέα βέλη=ἔνδον ἔντι φαρέτρας.

Now if it be conceded, as we are confident it must, that the Septuagint version is not a translation from the Latin, but from the Hebrew; two consequences unavoidably follow; 1. that the version which we possess, is, in the main, more ancient than the time of the Apostles; and secondly, that the Apostles wrote in Greek; since they generally but not uniformly quote the Septuagint version.

Our author's objection, that the Evangelists and Apostles

were not Alexandrians is quite childish. They "caught the Alexandrian dialect" not only by perusing the Septuagint, but by finding it the common language of those Jews who spoke Greek. Philo was an Alexandrian, yet wrote in a purer style; and why? Because he had diligently studied. the best Greek writers, as Aristobulus and Josephus did, and as the Jews in general did not. The very exceptions prove the rule. Our author confounds the coinage of new words by the translators, which in many compound words may have been the case, with the peculiarities of dialect. Will the reader believe us, when we tell him that our modern Hardouin suspects the word ἐνωτίζεσθαι (for εἰς τὰ ὦτα δέχεσθαι) of the LXX. to have been formed from the Latin annotare? and ἀκουτίσθητι (for ἀκοῦσαι ποίει) from excute? although the sense of annotare is widely different from that in which the LXX use εvwTileoba (the author seems to think annotare synonymous with notare), and excute means precisely the reverse of axourionTi. This gentleman's knowledge of Latin seems to be upon a par with his proficiency in Greek. His misconception and misconstruction of a line in Ovid (p. 140.) is quite laughable. We recommend the whole of his speculations upon Greek words corrupted from the Latin, as matter for amusement; and will content ourselves with giving an instance or two as a sample of the cargo. In 1 Cor. viii. 10. we read ἐὰν γάρ τίς σε ἴδῃ τὸν ἔχοντα γνῶσιν, ἐν εἴδωλείῳ κατακείμενον, οὐχὶ ἡ συνείδησις αὐτοῦ, ἀσθενοῦς ὄντος, οἰκοδομηθήσεται εἰς τὸ τὰ εἰδωλόθυτα ἐσθίειν ; For οἰκοδομηθήσεται some critics would read ὁδοποιηθήσεται, and others οἰκονομοθήσεται. But says the Author, "I shall now apply my canon." He proceeds thus : "the translator of the Epistles, is not merely a literal, but an "etymological translator-finding domabitur in the Latin text "of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and looking out for a Greek "word beginning with oixos a house, as domabitur seems to "begin with domus a house, he fixed on oixodonta as an equivalent to domabitur." And so we have a person undertaking to translate the Latin of the New Testament into Greek, who did not know enough of the former language to recognize one of the most common of its verbs. Upon this supposition he had never seen the word before; and in that case it is reasonable to imagine that he would have made some little inquiry into its meaning before he rendered it conjecturally by οἰκοδομηθήσεται. In the first verse of the same chapter we have й dyan oixodoe, which, we suppose, was in the Latin original domat. It is astonishing that a person who has read so much, as our author seems to have done, should have committed such nonsense, to paper. "1 Cor.

xi. 10. ὀφείλει ἡ γυνὴ ΕΞΟΥΣΙΑΝ ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς. The Latin original of our present text had been HABITUM, a dress; and this was etymologically translated ovoíav.” ! ! !Now if the translator knew habitum to signify a head-dress, he would have translated literally and intelligibly, not 66 etymologically" and nonsensically: but if he did not know it, he would have rendered it by ἕξιν or σχῆμα, not by ἐξουσιάν. 1 Cor. v. 1. καὶ τοιαύτη πόρνεια, ἥτις οὐδὲ ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ΟΝΟ. ΜΑΖΕΤΑΙ, ὥςτε γυναῖκά τινα τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχειν. Our author objects to this assertion, that worse things were not only named, but practised, amongst the Gentiles. Therefore, says he, ovde ovoμalera is a translation from nefandum or nefas. Here we have our friend the translator, who did not know so common a word as domabitur, dividing nefandum into its constituent parts and giving a critical version of it. And how is the passage mended? The expression of St. Paul as it stands, is equivalent to quod vel Gentiles nefandum putant ; Sophocles calls an atrocious crime äßpnr' å¿¡ýtwv. (Oed. T. 470.) and Euripides, äppnt', ävwvóμαoтa. (Hec. 711.)

We are gravely told that nummos caducos being "a phrase not familiar to the translator, he converted it, by a kind of chime, into μαμμωνᾶς τῆς ἀδικίας.” Το γέενα is formed from ignis, which was so very uncommon a word, that the translator, not knowing what to make of it, metamorphosed it into yéɛva. But as yeɛva is not a Greek word, why did he not put us at once? it was mighty squeamish, surely, to scruple at taking a good Latin word in a Greek dress, and to employ a word which is neither Latin nor Greek. "Aßßa i Tarp is Ave! Pater. "Aunv äun is Tamen tamen, (pretty Latin.) ανάθεμα μαράναθα is Anathema Maria nati! Οσαννα, Occane. auaρría from a and merita, and thus it corresponds with the Latin immerita! Iλaorpiov is a hybridous Greek word from the Latin LUSTRO to purify! We remember somewhere to have seen Baiòs, small, derived from bay horse, because bay horses are usually large; but we know of no etymology which quite equals those of our author, in ingenuity, except Dean Swift's, of, All eggs under the grate, (Alexander the Great.)

At p. 229 is given a list of "words apparently formed from the Latin" which displays an incredible ignorance of the Greek language on the part of its compiler. But one conjecture is so exceedingly elegant and probable, that we cannot withhold it from our readers. Cicero says, Ad Attic. 1. 11. "Ego autem ipse, Dii boni, quomodo èveπepπEPEVOάμNY novo auditori Pompeio!" Our author suspects that Cicero wrote ἐνεπεπερευσάμην, from πεπέρι or piper: Good God! how I pepper'd Pompey!" Considering that Cicero was