servations on the effect produced on the style of the New Testament, 1st, by the Hellenistic idiom of the writers; 2dly, by the Rabbinical doctrines, current in Judæa, at the time of Christ's appearance, and by the controversies among the sects, into which the learned were then divided; 3dly, by the literary pursuits of the Jews, being confined to their religious tenets and observances; 4thly, by the political subserviency of the Jews to the Romans; 5thly, by their connections and intercourse with the neighbouring nations; and 6thly, by the difference of the dialects, which prevailed among the Jews themselves: IV. Some account, Ist, of the biblical literature of the middle ages; 2dly, of the industry of the Monks; and 3dly, of the industry of the Jews, in copying Hebrew manuscripts: V. Some notion of the Masorah, and the Keri and Ketibh: VI. Some notion of the controversy respecting the nature, antiquity, and utility of the vowel points: VII. Some general remarks, Ist, on the history of the Jews after their return from the Babylonish captivity to the birth of Christ; 2dly, on the persecutions suffered by the Jews; 3dly, on their present state; 4thly, on their religious tenets; 5thly, on the appellations of their doctors and teachers; 6thly, on the Cabala; 7thly, on their writers against the Christian religion; and 8thly, on their principles respecting religious toleration: VIII. Some observations on the nature of the Hebrew manuscripts, and the principal printed editions of the Hebrew Bible: IX. Some account of the principal Greek manuscripts of the New Testament: X. Of the biblical labours of Origen: XI. Of the polyglottic editions of the New Testament: XII. Of the principal Greek editions of the New Testament: XIII. Of the Oriental versions of the New Testament: XIV. Of the Latin Vulgate: XV. Of the English translations of the Bible: XVI. Of the division of the Bible into chapters and verses: XVII. Some general observations on the nature of the various readings of the sacred text, so far as they may be supposed to influence the questions respecting its purity, authenticity, or divine inspiration.'

The merit of this convenient and comprehensive miscellany has recommended it, we hear, to the Clarendon press. We shall however offer a few remarks on the leading subdivisions. I. 1. The claim of the Hebrew language to the highest antiquity (says our author) cannot be denied: its pretensions to be the original language of mankind, and to have been the only language in existence before the confusion at Babel, are not inconsiderable.' We deem them very inconsiderable, and are surprised that Mr. B. should have admitted such an unfounded assumption. Had he attentively perused the remarks of Schultens. De Guignes, Michaëlis, &c. on this subject, we think that he would not have hazarded an assertion of this kind: but the Rabbins and Buxtorfs seem to be his chief guides.

III. 2. The author professes to enumerate the religious sects among the Jews, at the time of the birth of our Saviour; and he he sufficiently notices the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes, and the Herodians, but passes over the Essenes and the Gaulonites, both of whom are very interesting to the student of Christianity. We shall throw together a few particulars of each, chiefly condensed from the "Moses and Aaron" of Godwin.

The Essenes, according to some authors, were so named from the word אסא to heal diseases, an art which they are said to have studied scarcely less than the Bible. They were divided into "practic and theoric;" the former labouring for the profit of a common purse with their hands, the latter with their minds. They exercised gratuitous hospitality towards each other, and at the common expence towards strangers. They shunned perfumes, wore white garments, forbad oaths, venerated the old, drank only water, avoided animal food and sacrifice, and taught fatalism. During an apprenticeship of five years, their youth were trained to modesty and decency. They were commanded to speak little, to bathe in drawers, not to touch their seniors, to observe the Sabbath, to worship towards the east, to preserve the names of angels, and to marry not for the sake of having a wife but of having children. In number, they were reputed about four thousand. The practic Essenes were mostly occupied in keeping sheep, fishing, tending bees, tilling, and other handicraft occupations: to these were allowed a dinner and a supper; to the theorics, or instructors, a supper only.

The Gaulonites or Galilæans were so called from their original leader, who was of Galilee, and named Judas. This was a seditious confederacy first formed in the time of Cyrepius, to resist the payment of tribute to Cæsar. Judas taught his followers to call no man on earth master, but only the Lord of lords; and he was probably protected by Archelaus, a son of Herod, the seizure of whose goods he resisted. These Gaulonites were peculiarly hostile to the Herodians; and they forbad sacrificing for the emperor, and were in consequence attacked by Pilate, who slew many of them for contumacy. To this sect those ruffians are supposed to have belonged, who are mentioned in the Acts (xxi. 38.) as in number about four thousand.

The Protestants have objected to Popery, and the infidels to Christianity, that the most dismal period of human history extends from the establishment of this religion under Constantine, to the dis establishment of it under Leo X. Our author's remarks on this period merit selection, on account of their apologetic tendency:

IV. 1. The comparatively low state of literature, and of the arts and

of the

sciences, during this middle age, must be acknowledged; but justice claims our gratitude to the venerable body of men, who strove against the barbarism of the times, and to whose exertions we entirely owe all the precious remains of sacred or profane antiquity, that survived that calamitous æra. For whatever has been preserved to us writers of Greece or Rome; for all we know of the language of those invaluable writers; for all the monuments of our holy religion; for the sacred writings which contain the word of God; and for the traditions of the wise and the good respecting it, we are solely, under providence, indebted to the zeal and exertions of the priests and monks of the church of Rome, during this middle age *. If, during this period, there were a decay of taste and learning, it is wholly to be ascribed to the general ruin and devastation, brought on the christian world, by the inroads and conquests of the barbarians, and the other events, which were the causes, or the consequences of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Besides, while we admit and lament, we should not exaggerate, the literary degradation, of the times, we speak of. Biblical literature, the immediate subject of the present inquiry, was by no means entirely neglected. Doctor Hody, in his most learned Historia Scholastica Hebraici Textus Versionumque Grace et Latine Vulgate, places this circumstance beyond the reach of controversy. He proves, that, there never was a time, even in the darkest ages, when the study of the original language of the Holy Writings was wholly neglected. In England alone, the works of the venerable Bede, of Holy Robert of Lincoln, and of Roger Bacon, shew how greatly it was prized and pursued there.'

VII. 1. In this section occurs a pontifical genealogy, or the pedigree of the Jewish high-priests, from the captivity to the time of Christ. The list begins with Josedek, who was carried into captivity at the first siege (1 Chronicles, vi. 15.) of Jerusalem, and who was the elder brother of Ezra. Now our author maintains (p. 32.) that this Josedek was high-priest at the time of the return of the Jews from captivity; which he supposes to have taken place under Zerubbabel, in virtue of an edict of Cyrus. The first edict of Cyrus was issued in the fifth year of the Conquest (Baruch I. 2.), or in the second year of Zedekiah's reign; and this return was superintended by Shesbazzar. The second edict of Cyrus is of unknown date; unless it may be inferred from the book of Ezra (ch. iii. v. 1.) that it took place in the seventh month after the second siege, in which Nebuzaradan burned the temple. Whether Josedek was killed in this second siege does not appear: but it is evident that Joshua, son of Josedek, was already priest within two years of that event (Ezra,

* We think that this is too bold an opinion, and not sufficiently

warranted by fact. Rev.

ch. iii.

ch. iii v. 8.); and that to him was intrusted, under the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the consecration of an enter prise, of which the civil conduct was allotted to Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel survived Cyrus, and continued (Ezra, iv. 3-5.) under Darius to govern the Jews, whose temple he finished (1 Esdras, vii. 5.) in the sixth year of that king. Xerxes or Artaxerxes (1 Esdras, viii. 1-7.) soon transferred the superintendance of Jerusalem to Ezra; who, in the seventh year of this prince, conducted to Jerusalem the third and last colony of returning Jews; and thus terminated, long after the death of Josedek, a captivity which, if it endured seventy years, must have begun twenty-seven years before the accession of the first Darius. By the first year of Cyrus, the scriptures often appear to mean the first year of the subjection of Jerusalem to his authority. We apprehend that Mr. Butler will find it impossible to reconcile these particulars with the dates which he has adopted.

At a period when even some of the arbitrary + sovereigns of Europe are waging with each other a contest of liberality, and are said to be hastening to add Jewish emancipation to that which they have already vouchsafed to all the Christian sects, it is with interest and with approbation that we meet with any account of this people, which tends to conciliate in their behalf that good-will which has too long been withholden:

• VII. 2. With respect to the present state of the Jews, their history, from the death of Christ to the present century, has been ably written by Monsieur Basnage. It presents a scene of suffering and persecution unparalleled in the annals of the world. Wherever the Jew's have been established, they necessarily have borne their share of the evils of the age, in which they lived, and the country, in which they resided. But, besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men have experienced in any other age or any other country. Brotier computes the number of those, who perished by the sword between the year 66 and the year 70, at two millions. When we reflect on them, we may address the Jews, as the Rabbi Jochanan is said to have addressed the temple, at the time of the siege of Jerusalem, when he felt it shaking, and observed the gates opening of their own accord,

* If the vith and viith chapters of Zechariah be both of one date, it should seem that Joshua was still a minor branch of the holy family in the 4th year of Darius.

+ On the petition of a Jew, who has gone through his examination before the academy of surgery with distinction, his Danish majesty has recently declared that the religion of the petitioner shall be no obstacle to his employment in the public service. The Prussians have long since given similar examples.

"O temple,

"O temple, temple, why dost thou shake! and art thus moved! We know thou art to be destroyed." But while we reverence, in their suf ferings and calamities, the prophecies which foretold them, so long before they happened; while, in humble silence and submission, we adore the inscrutable and unsearchable decrees of God, who thus terribly visits the sins of fathers on their children, we shall find, that, in judging between them and their persecutors, it is a justice due to them from us, to acknowledge, that, if on some occasions, they may be thought to have deserved their misfortunes by their private vices or public crimes, it has oftener happened, that they have been the innocent victims of avarice, rage or mistaken zeal. Res est sacra, miser. Their sufferings alone intitled them to some compassion; and our compassion for them rises to an higher feeling, when, to use the language of St. Paul, (ix. Rom. 4, 5, and 6,) we consider " that, their's was the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promise, and the fathers, and that from them descended the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for ever;" and (xi. Rom. 26,28) " that the hour approaches, when all Israel shall be saved, when the deliverer shall come out of Zion, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob," and that, even in their present state of rejection, " they are beloved of God, for their father's sake." To the honour of the See of Rome, it must be said, that, the Roman pontiffs, with some few exceptions, have treated them with lenity, defended them against their persecutors, and often checked the mistaken zeal of those, who sought to convert them by force. Thus, St. Gregory the Great always exhorted his clergy, and the other parts of his flock, to behave to them with candour and tenderness. He repeatedly declared, that, they should be brought into, the unity of faith, by gentle means, by fair persuasions, by charitable advice, not by force: and, that, as the law of the state did not allow their building new synagogues, they ought to be allowed the free use of their own places of worship. His successors, in general, pursued the same line of conduct. The persecutions excited by the Emperor Heraclius against the Jews, were blamed at the fourth council of Toledo, which declared "that, it was unlawful and unchristianlike to force people to believe, seeing it is God alone who hardens and shews mercy to whom he will." St. Isidore of Seville was an advocate for the mild treatment of them. There is extant a letter from St. Bernard, to the Archbishop of Mentz, in which he strongly condemns the violence shewn them by the crusaders. At a latter period, Pope Gregory the IXth, a zealous promoter of the crusade itself, observing, that, the crusaders, in many places began their expedition, with massacres of the Jews, not only loudly reprehended it, but took all proper methods of preventing such barbarity. Pope Nicholas the IId protected them, in his own dominions, even against the inquisition; and sent letters into Spain, to prevent force being used to compel them to abjure their religion. Pope Alexander the VIth received, with kindness, and recommended to the protection of the other Italian states, the Jews who came to Rome or other parts of Italy, on their banishment from Spain and Portugal. Paul the IIId shewed them so much kindness, that Cardinal Sadolet thought