guished in that dark age, as Hieronymus de S. Fide, Paulus Burgensis, Alphonsus de Spina, Paulus de Heredia, and Libertas Cominetus, celebrated for his knowledge of fourteen languages. It must be owned, however, that the Christians of that age pushed their Hebrew studies no further than as they might subserve the purposes of controversy. Their studies were entirely of a polemical character; that is, they were undertaken for the sake of defending and propagating the doctrines of the Church; and very rarely was an acquaintance cultivated with the Hebrew for its own sake, or for the elucidation of Holy Writ. The Synagogue, on the other hand, had labored since the times of Origen and Jerome, with the profoundest learning and most admirable industry, in the investigation of its language; and had produced such an abundance of grammatical treatises, as might have well supplied all the wants of the Church. The older grammarians had been followed by a number of eminent men, who amplified and in many respects completed, according to the principles of the Spanish or Italian school, what their predecessors had so happily begun. To the older works were added in this age, the lexicons of Solomon Parchon* (commonly called Machberet, Aruk, or Sepher Shorashim), of Nathan Jehiel, a native of Rome, of David Kimchi, and Josef Caspe (about 1300), who made use of all the Shemitish dialects. Hebrew-Arabic, Hebrew-French,† Hebrew-German, and HebrewItalian glossaries, arranged either alphabetically or according to the books of Scripture, besides works on grammar, were composed by Samuel Benvenasti (about 1300), Peripot Duran Efodi, Imanuel Romi, Salomo ben-Aba Mare Jarchi, Messer Leon, David Ibn-Yahya, and many others, whose very names are to this day unknown to the Church. The rising sun of grammatical learning which appeared in Persia, passed over in its course to Africa and to Spain, and, illuminating with its radiance the remotest countries of the earth, penetrated even to Germany, where the Nakdani,‡ awak Born in the maritime town of Calatayud (Bilbilis Nova); he wrote at Salerno 1161, Cod. de Rossi 764, 1038. † Pococke, Porta Mosis, p. 18. Cod. Paul. Lips. 102., fol. Ross. 1109. Among these was Simson ha-Nakdan, whose grammatical work is preserved entire in the Bibl. Paulina at Leipsic, in a MS. written on parchment (No. 102a). It is composed en ing from the sleep of former ages, and disregarding the adverse state of the times, gave themselves up to grammatical and critical studies. The Church, however, remained wrapped in deep slumber, resting content with her slender borrowed stock of Hebrew knowledge, with which she considered herself sufficiently furnished for combat with her enemies. The Sacred Scriptures, whose guardian and interpreter she ought to have been, she did not hold in sufficient estimation to strive on their account for the acquisition of a profounder knowledge of the holy tongue. Is it not indeed wonderful that Nicolas de Lyra, of Normandy, who, moreover, is considered by some to have been a converted Jew (d. 1341), was the first among Christian authors since the time of Origen and Jerome, who, in imitation of the Jews, especially of Solomon Isaaki, made use of a knowledge of the Hebrew for the interpretation of Scripture? Is it not a reproach and disgrace to the Church, that nearly five hundred years after the golden age of grammatical science among the Jews, Johannes Reuchlin should have compiled the first dictionary and grammar at all worthy of the name (1506),* and by which he fancied he had erected to himself a "monumentum ære perennius"? Reuchlin studied at Vienna under Jakob Jehiel Loans, physician to the Emperor, and at Rome under Obadia Sforno; he was also liberally assisted by Joh. Beham, a minister of Ulm, who had obtained several grammatical works from the Jews of that place, before they were expelled from it, and had caused them to be translated. He borrowed from the Jews every thing taught by him, even to their terminology, and not excepting at tirely on the principles of the Spanish school, and is a carefully digested performance, exhibiting a skilful use of the most distinguished grammarians of Spain and France, (among others of a fol. 1 a., and Josef Chazan of Troyes, fol. 69 b.); the latter part of the work is truly excellent, expounding masoretically the doctrine of the vowels and accents, which is founded on the Masora and the best MSS. * It is unnecessary to notice particularly the attempts in this line of Petrus Niger, a Dominican Monk (Rudimenta Linguæ Hebraicæ c. 1450 ms. Paris), and of Conrad Pellican, who is said, in the Chronicles of Neustadt, to have studied under Elias Levita (De modo legendi et intelligendi Hebræa, Basileæ 1503). them. Reuchlin either did not know or would not notice little of the Cabala! I wish not to remark on the indolence of the Church, shown in the fact that Santes Pagninus, an Italian Dominican who flourished shortly after Reuchlin, was the first since Jerome that translated the whole Hebrew Bible into Latin (1527), assisted by Kimchi's Liber Radicum, which however he badly understood throughout. It is much more pleasing to dwell on the circumstance, that the study of the Hebrew was somewhat promoted in this age also, and that the Church, instead of retrogading in this respect, continued, although only tardily and by degrees, to make some steps in advance. For she not only began to make use of the grammatical aud lexicographical knowledge of the Synagogue, but, desirous of convincing the Jews out of their own books, felt compelled also to examine the writings of the Rabbins, which had been incredibly increased since the times of the Fathers, who maintain a profound silence respecting them. This will be made sufficiently obvious by a comparison of the Dialogus of Justin Martyr with the Pugio Fidei, which exhibits an excellent and rare knowledge of Jewish literature. We thus perceive how the Hebrew language, until the Reformation, was confined within the walls of the Synagogue, and how very few there were, in the meantime, that endeavored by their private studies to bring it into the possession of the Church. Fifteen centuries had elapsed, and scarcely a beginning was made towards introducing into it a knowledge of the Hebrew; but on the revival of the study of the Sacred Scriptures, which took place at the period of the Reformation, it began in consequence to be studied with great diligence both by Protestants and Romanists, as appears in the instance of Thomas Cajetanus (d. 1535), who, after an unsuccessful controversy with Luther, applied himself to the study of the language, assisted by a learned Jew whom he supported and rewarded in various ways. The question then arises, in what way did the Hebrew language, in this its third stage, obtain a footing in the Church, and by what means was the latter enabled to acquire and to propagate this knowledge? The Church, it must be answered, seems by no means to have selected the most appropriate mode for the attainment of this object. It trusted to the teaching partly of those who had not themselves studied under Jews, or of illiterate converts, such as Johannes Böschenstein, Antonius Margarita, and others, whom I hesitate not to pronounce rude and ignorant men, without judgment and without taste ;* and partly to that of Jews, whose knowledge of their language was as slender as it was profitable to them in a pecuniary point of view, as for instance Elias Levita (b. 1472, d. 1549), who, from a mediocre and slightly esteemed grammarian among his own people,t became a distinguished oracle of the Church, of such weighty authority that his groundless conjecture respecting the origin of the Masoretic and Tiberian punctuation, (entirely opposed as it is to the genius of the learning of Palestine, to the pronunciation of the school of Tiberias, and to the character of the Masorites,) was sufficient to lead Lud. Capellus, Joh. Morinus, and others, into the most futile opinions. Moreover, hardly had the Church been able to convert to its own use a little of the tradition and instruction of the Synagogue, and to understand Kimchi's Michlol well enough to employ it for the purpose of compilation,-hardly had the Buxtorfs planted those trees which, if sedulously watered, might have borne fruit to a succeeding age, -when there arose some who rejected the authority of their Jewish masters, and substituted absurdities concocted from their own brains instead. Among these were Joh. Forster (d.1556), a pupil, strange to say, of Reuchlin, Samuel Bohle (d. 1639), and one Bibliander, who all seized upon the over-bold opinions expressed by Luther, as to the recent invention of the points, the corrupt state of the text, and the worthlessness and even injurious tendency of the Jewish writings; but who seemed to have forgotten his opinion in the case of Pfefferkorn, and with how much modesty he owned that the Kimchis had solved the difficulty for him. Among the more learned of the converts who taught Hebrew in the Romish Church, about the time of the Reformation, are to be reckoned Alfonsus Zamora (Vocabularium 1514, 1526), Paulus Paradisi, a Venitian, who was invited into France by Francis 1. (De modo legendi Hebraice, Paris 1534), and Gulielmus Franchi (pnb Sole della Lingua Santa, Bergam. 1591, 99,1603. Alphabetum Hebraicum, Rom. 1596.) + Elias Levita's reputation appears to have arisen from the fact of his writing in a style easier to be understood, and more adapted to the occidental taste. But I confess I do not comprehend on what grounds it is affirmed that this Elias brought the grammatical system of the Jews to perfection, and that the more distinguished grammarians who followed him are of no account. (Gesenius, Geschichte der heb. Sprache § 32.) The Church was still an infant in the knowledge of Hebrew, when, on account of the errors she considered herself to have imbibed with her nurse's milk, she came to the conclusion that she needed no further nutriment or support from that quarter; and although hitherto her whole knowledge of the Hebrew had been derived from the tradition of the Synagogue, she conceived that she had now obtained possession of the language in her own right, and consequently set about the composing of grammars and the interpretation of Scripture for herself. Into what and how many errors, and into what vain and fruitless labors our grammarians were led, by this haughty boasting, it would be painful to recount. The ignorance that accompanied this early stage of the study caused them to mangle the Hebrew like a subject long since dead, and to fancy that any further instruction was superfluous. Hence arose a multitude of ridiculous systems and hypotheses, into which they would never have fallen had they esteemed more highly the teachings of the Synagogue, and examined its grammatical productions with greater care. Hence there crept into their lexicography that sort of superstitious divination and logical subtlety in the definition and derivation of words, over which the reigning philosophical and dogmatical systems had such influence, that the lexicon of Santes Pagninus is preferable to Stockius's Clavis; hence, too, originated those obscure and perplexing arcana that gave during whole centuries such trouble and disgust to learners, the Cubus et Quadratum Grammaticum of Elias Hutter (1590), and that Systema Morarum invented by Jac. Alting (d. 1699), and completed by J. A. Danz (d. 1727), on which many down to our own times have fruitlessly expended so much time and labor. To this source, also, are to be attributed those vain lucubrations respecting the rhythm and metre of Scripture, and that almost incredible number of treatises on the accents, all and every one of which were equally laborious in the undertaking and bootless in the execution. But that I may no further transgress the bounds of this third stage of the language, suffice it to say, once for all, that whatever is sound and historically proven in the grammatical exegesis of this orthodox age, is owing to the Synagogue, while the rest is to be attributed to their own presumption. Yet it is certainly the case, that Hebrew studies made some progress even during this slight use of the teachings of the Synagogue. For although Jewish literature was attended to for the most part only for polemical purposes, and their, |