Aramaic language, place this assertion beyond a doubt. But how could Jesus, the teacher of the common people, have made use of the Aramaic, unless it had been the universally prevailing national language?

6. The few writings which were composed

That

ed to observe the peculiarity of circumstances under which these few Aramaic words were uttered; they were certainly not directly addressed to the common people, and whether they had understood them or not was of no moment. these words are not retained untranslated by inadvertence, appears to the translator to be manifest; here seems to be a design to make us acquainted with the very words-the very sounds uttered by the Saviour when performing a miracle; and, after all, Dr. Pfannkuche here only presupposes and has not proved, that the Greek Gospels are only translations, a position which, however, the Translator is not prepared to deny, but, on the contrary, is inclined to think susceptible of demonstration.]

* Acts ix. 5; xxii. 7; xxvi. 14. In the last quoted verse it is expressly stated, that the voice spoke to the Apostle in the Hebrew dialect 'Elga'di diaλixrq,-[by which the author no doubt means that we are to understand modern Hebrew or Aramaic ; the translator cannot, however, help observing that Paul, being a learned Jew, would have understood ancient Hebrew as well; and if Jesus had spoken to him in the language of the country, there seemed little occasion for the narrator to specify that he had addressed him in that language. All his hearers would expect nothing else than that the language of the country had been used, unless the Apostle had told them something to the contrary, from which it seems to follow, that Paul, on this occasion, was addressed in ancient Hebrew.]

in the first centuries after Christ by native Palestinians for the use of their countrymen, or Jews dwelling near the Euphrates, were altogether written in the Aramaic, and sometimes also in the Hebrew language, which always was preserved among the Jews as a learned tongue. Authors rarely appeared among them, because the study of the law, and the tradition connected with it, was the centre of all learning, and it was not customary to write much on these subjects, from fear that such writings might fall into profane hands; but those few who wrote, whenever they intended their works for the use of Palestinian Jews, or such as lived in the interior of Asia, always made use of the language of the country. Thus Matthew, a Palestinian Christian Jew, in the language of the country, wrote for his countrymen the History of Jesus; and Flavius Josephus, made use of this same language in the first edition of his History of the Jewish War-the only authors writing for Palestinians and other Aramaic Jews, of whom we know with certainty that they published their treatises in the first century; yet it is possible that many fragments of ancient commentaries on the law, which afterwards have,

y De Bello Jud. Proem. 1.

word for word, been incorporated in the Mishna and Gemara, may belong to this same period. The Talmud of Jerusalem, which was destined for Palestine, the Pesikta, Mechilta, Siphra, Siphre, and other Aramaic and Hebrew writings, whose age cannot be accurately determined, which appeared in Palestine, prove, at least, so much, that the Greek language, even several centuries after the destruction of Jerusalem, met not with much favour among the Palestinians, and could, accordingly, not expatriate the ancient language of the country, nor its learned language. This position is farther confirmed by the Apocrypha really or supposedly written in Palestine, by the very ancient gospels of the Nazarenes and Hebrews, by the more modern gospels of Barnabas, Bartholomew, and the Nativity of Mary; by Christ's Letter to Abgar, by Mary's Letter to the women of Messina, by Abdias' History of the Apostles, &c.; all of which works either really existed in the Aramaic or Hebrew tongue, or at least, according to the pretence of those who put them in circulation, were translated from one or other of these languages.

* J. A. Fabricii Codex Apocryphus N. T. vol. i. edit. 2. Hamb. 1719. 8vo. p. 7, 317, 340, 341, 367, 390, 844, and in other passages.

E

Moreover, the Jews of Palestine, in the fourth century, possessed translations in their own language, of several writings of the New Testament; for example, of the Gospel of St. John, and of the Acts of the Apostles," and these translations were undoubtedly prepared because they did not understand these works in the Greek language. All this sufficiently proves, in my opinion, that the Palestinian Jews, in the first centuries after Christ, still tenaciously preserved the old language of their country.

7. Finally, when we consider the unexampled constancy with which the Palestinian Jews, after their return from the Babylonian exile, adhered to their ancient manners and customs, although thereby subjecting themselves to the contempt of other nations, as uncultivated oddities, the extraordinary perseverance with which Palestinian Jews, far removed from their original country, which they eft many centuries ago, have retained their language, even unto our time, the complete

Epiphanii Oper. edit. Petavii, Tom. ii. p. 127.

The Jews who dwell in the Mogul Empire, and merely in outward appearance have adopted the religion of the heathens, are said to speak the Hebrew language fluently, even unto this day. [???] See Eichhorn's Allgemeine Bibliothek der vib. lit. vol. ii. p. 581. But my opinion is,

difference of the Greek and Roman languages from the Aramaic, the difficulty with which Palestinians could learn any western language in which every word was foreign to them,—and the long lasting dominion of the Aramaic in Palestine and the neighbouring countries, it having only been in very late times expelled by the cognate Arabic dialect, and havving, indeed, in some parts of the country subsisted as a living language even to our time,* we can hardly hesitate to admit that the position, that the Palestinian Jews, at the time of Christ and his Apostles, preserved the language of their country, even if it could not be proved by express historical testimony, possesses a verisimilitude nearly approaching to historical evidence.

§ 10. The DIRECT proofs for our proposition, under which head we classify the express statements of authors well acquainted with the affairs of Palestine in the first hundred and fifty years of the Roman dominion, as well as cer

that he who communicated this information, from ignorance of the Hebrew language, mistook the Babylonian Aramaic dialect, which these Jews probably speak, for pure Hebrew. [AYE, MY OPINION Is," but there is room for a hundred thousand other opinions equally probable.]

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J. D. Michaelis Abhundlung von der Syrischen Sprache. Goett. 1786. 8vo. p. 9. sqq.