CHAPTER III.

ACCORDING to the method of recital exposed in the preceding chapter, the historian thus delivers the First Article of his sacred history:

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"In the BEGINNING, GOD created the HEAVEN and the EARTH.

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BUT, the EARTH WAS INVISIBLE, and UNFURNISHED, and DARKNESS was upon the face of the deep: THEREFORE the Spirit of God went forth upon the face of the waters, and God said, LET THERE BE LIGHT! and there wAS LIGHT! "And God saw the light, that it was good; and "God divided the light from the darkness; and God "called the light DAY, and the darkness He called

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"And the evening and the morning were the FIRST DAY."

Such was the primitive interpretation of this great opening article of the Record; which uniformly maintained its authority, not only throughout the ages of the ancient Hebrew church, but also, during the first and most learned ages of the Christian. In considering this first article, and others of the following articles of the history, it will be advisable that we should proceed, 1. by

establishing the interpretation of the passage; 2. by deducing its true import; and 3. by considering the particular errors which have resulted from a defective interpretation of the text.

And I. 1. This sublime article, immediately presents to our attention a very important grammatical and critical question; which appears to have been entirely overlooked by all modern commentators, but on which nevertheless, as will presently be seen, the correct interpretation of the context essentially depends. This question, regards the true signification of the Hebrew conjunction, vau, at the beginning of the second clause; which particle is employed no less than fourteen times, in the original of this first article.

This conjunction, to which the elder Michaelis assigns thirty-seven different significations, and Noldius upwards of seventy, is a particle which discharges in the Hebrew language the functions of all the conjunctions, both copulative and disjunctive; its sense being determinable, in each particular case, only by the relation of the context, and the practice and genius of the language. On which account it has been acutely remarked, that "since we are not exercised, as the Hebrews were, immediately to adapt our thoughts, upon the occur"rence of this simple particle, to the different respects which the discourse requires; he who "should always interpret by et, and, would not place us in the same position with the Hebrews; "for, we need a further guidance to fix its actual

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significations, which they did not need'." Now, almost all the modern versions have uniformly rendered that particle, in this place, by the copulative conjunction et—and, in all the fourteen places where it occurs. Hence it is, that our English version renders it: "God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was with"out form," &c.

But, if we look to the most ancient Hebrews, who were well exercised in, and familiarly conversant with, all the peculiarities of their own native language; we shall find, that they all interpreted it by the disjunctive particle, but; none of them, by the copulative, and. Thus it was rendered by the first interpreters of the text, the Jews of Alexandria, nearly three hundred years before the Christian era: εν αρχή εποιησεν ὁ θεος τον ουρανον και την γην' ἡ ΔΕ γη ην αορατος, &c.-“ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth:

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1

"Præfixum 1, procul dubio ex 11, quod in Exodo frequens instrumentum est aliquid alteri jungens, est desumtum. (BUXTORF, MICHAELIS, CASTELL.)- Digna sunt de vero præfixæ literæ usu verba " GUSSETII quæ hic ex Comment. Ling. Ebr. 218. legantur:

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1 copulativa, inquit, varias significationes habere traditur, quia et eæ " augentur pene in infinitum ; quo vel solo refutatur illa sententia. Di'cendum potius fuit, 1 grammatice nihil magis per se significare quam ET; Ebræosque audientes eo tantum moneri conjungenda esse sequentia cum præcedentibus, at modo conjunctionis eorum non designato. Modus autem ille quisnam esset, intelligi debuit ex serie sermonis, rerumque antecedentium et posteriorum naturis ac relatione ad se invicem, quatenus ex aliunde quam ab hac particula innotuerant; ita ut qui aliter quam per ET exponit, suam interpretationem probare debeat.-Quapropter particulæ hujus varios usus tradere non est gram

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"but, the earth was invisible," &c. In the same sense it was apprehended by the learned Jew, Josephus, who thus paraphrased the passage: εν αρχή εκτισεν ὁ Θεος τον ουρανον και την γην ταυτης ΔΕ ὑπ ̓ οψιν ουκ ερχομενης, αλλα βαθει μεν κρυπτομerns oxoTEI, &c.1 "In the beginning God created "the heaven and the earth; but, the latter not coming into view, but being hidden in profound darkness," &c. In the same manner we find it in the Chaldee paraphrase; which, in the Latin, is rendered thus: "In principio creavit Deus "cœlum et terram: terra autem erat," &c. The old Latin version renders the conjunction in the same manner: "Terra autem, &c. ;" and so likewise does the Vulgate, translated by St. Jerom on the Hebrew original, with the aid of the most learned Rabbin of his time. And of modern commentators, the eminently learned Vatablus, Dru

matici Ebraici, sed ad rhetoricam artem potius spectat. Traduntur ergo illi usus per accidens tantum, et respectu quodam externo, nempe in ordine ad alias linguas, et ad interpretes juvandos, ut pro 1 eam parti'culam substituant, quam quis lingua ista extera sermonem faciens tali 'loco positurus fuisset. Cumque hoc pacto simplicimæ vi conjunctivæ ipsius aliqua alia notio superaddatur, agnoscendum est non sic meram ' versionem fieri, sed paraphrasin veluti aut commentarium compendiosum. Id tamen facere necessarium, quia versiones traduntur populis non ita ' exercitatis, ac erant Ebræi ad inflectandam occurrente copulativa simplici 'cogitationem in eos respectus, quos requirit sermonis series. Itaque, qui • redderet ubique ▾ simpliciter ET, nos non poneret in eodem statu quo erant Ebrai. Egentibus enim auxilio illud non dare, non idem est ac illud non dare non egentibus.' Hæc GUSSETI optime.". Not. Tympii, ad Noldii Concord. Partic. Heb. p. 283.

1 1 Ant. Jud. lib. i. cap. 1.

sius, Fagius, and Grotius, understand it with the sense of autem-but, as in the Vulgate; with which same signification, this particle occurs above five hundred times in the Hebrew Scriptures1. We thus learn, how it was understood in this particular place by those who knew how to connect it, "ex serie sermonis, rerumque antecedentium et

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posteriorum naturis, ac relatione ad se invicem." This, then, it is evident, was the interpretation collected by the rule of the language in the ancient Jewish church. And, it must be evident to every scholarly mind, that this particle, repeated fourteen times in this short paragraph, could not be limited each time to the unvarying sense which pertains to our English conjunction, and; or, even to the senses of the Latin et, and the Greek xa, which have somewhat a wider latitude of signification. But, the truth is, that the Hebrew language did not possess, and therefore could not command, the diversity of particles which those languages enjoyed; and, therefore, it was constrained always to repeat the same particle, the proper actual sense of which was impressed in the mind of the auditor, or reader, by the purport of the discourse and the tendency of the argument.

I NOLDIUS, p. 301.

2 We meet with a notable illustration of the various powers and relations of the Hebrew particle 1, in a passage of St. Stephen's speech addressed to the Hebrews in Acts, vii. 4, 5; where the sacred Hellenistic reporter, adhering to the idiom of the original oration, renders it uniformly throughout by the Greek ka,- KAI