cussion of the methods of Textual Criticism. Others, to whom all honour is due, have prepared the way by collecting the materials. Professors Westcott and Hort have taught us how to erect the building. Their work may not in some respects be final; but it is a vast advance on all that has been done before, and all future critics must be guided in the main by the principles which they have established. Laborious thoroughness, indefatigable patience, philosophic method, are conspicuous on every page, as all who know the habitual character of their work would expect. We could wish, indeed, that some paragraphs had been somewhat expanded for the sake of greater lucidity, and that more illustrations of the facts on which the reasonings are based had been given, especially in Part II., which discusses the methods of Textual Criticism generally. The Appendix of Notes on Select Readings no doubt to some extent supplies the want; but we could wish for more. Is it too much to hope that in the next edition an appendix may be added containing a large collection of examples, drawn from classical texts as well as from the New Testament? We strongly plead also for the addition of a full Index, which would greatly increase the usefulness of the work as a book of reference. The full Table of Contents, excellent and convenient as it is, does not make an index by any means superfluous.

Germany has already recognised the value of the Professors' text. The Tauchnitz press has lost no time in issuing an edition of Tischendorf's text with a collation of those of Dr. Tregelles and Professors Westcott and Hort appended, under the care of the well-known scholar Von Gebhardt. It is not often that English research receives such prompt acknowledgment on the Continent.

We should do our readers ill service if we failed to quote in full the 'golden words' with which the book concludeswords which deserve to be indelibly engraven on the heart, not only of every student of Theology, but of every student in every branch of science :

'An implicit confidence in all truth, a keen sense of its variety, and a deliberate dread of shutting out truth as yet unknown, are no security against some of the wandering lights that are apt to beguile a critic; but, in so far as they are obeyed, they at least quench every inclination to guide criticism into delivering such testimony as may be to the supposed advantage of truth already inherited or acquired. Critics of the Bible, if they have been taught by the Bible, are unable to forget that the duty of guileless workmanship is never superseded by any other. From Him who is at once the supreme Fountain of

truth and the all-wise Lord of its uses, they have received both the materials of knowledge and the means by which they are wrought into knowledge into His hands, and His alone, when the working is over, must they render back that which they have first and last received.' 1

SHORT NOTICES.

General Editor, J. J. S. PEROWNE, (For the Syndics of the Univer

The Cambridge Bible for Schools. D.D., Dean of Peterborough. sity Press, Cambridge.) The Second Book of Samuel, with Maps, Notes, and Introduction. By the Rev. A. F. KIRKPATRICK, M.A., Fellow and AssistantTutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. (London: Cambridge Warehouse. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co., 1881.) · WE are glad to see the companion volume to Mr. Kirkpatrick's First Book of Samuel, which we noticed in April last. We welcome especially the chapter on the 'Typical Significance of David's Reign and Life,' which, with another on the 'Relations of the Chronicles to the Book of Samuel,' and one on the 'Psalms illustrative' of that reign, forms the chief feature of the Introduction.

We can hardly commend too highly the tone in which the notes are written upon such points as the punishment of Uzzah, the sins and weaknesses of David, the numbering the people, the punishment of Saul's sons (in an Appendix, where a protest is made against the 'baseless calumny' on David's motives circulated by Mr. Twisleton in Smith's Dict. of the Bible). The closing sentence of the first of these is well worth quoting:-'If such reverence was due to the symbol, with how much greater reverence should the realities of the Christian Covenant be regarded? (See Heb. x. 28, 29.)' The story of Sir T. More singing as a parish clerk 'with a surplice on his backe' is quoted appositely on 2 Sam. vi. 21. To xxiii. 10 also, we find a historical parallel. The following speaks for itself :-'Shimei seems to have supplied Cromwell's army with the terms of its resolution' against 'Charles Stuart.'

Mr. Kirkpatrick takes independent ground in interpreting xiv. 1 to imply that David (at the period then referred to) was set against (A. V. toward') Absalom.

We have sometimes thought that a reference to Matt. xxi. 14 might be introduced with advantage in a commentary on 2 Sam. v. 8. The archaic text of the English Version has been restored here, as in other volumes of this series, in such words as mo, fet, and strake. We venture to take this opportunity of suggesting (without any reference to Mr. Kirkpatrick's work, which, so far as we have seen,

1 Westcott and Hort, ii. 323.

is carefully executed) that editors of such commentaries as these should get a friend to verify the references while the revises are in the course of correction. We were disappointed to notice in Dean Plumptre's Ecclesiastes (xii. 1) three misprinted references in three consecutive lines.

The Prophecies of Isaiah. RODWELL, M.A. We are not a little disappointed with this book. An accurate translation of Isaiah, arranged, as this is, so as to display the parallelistic structure of the original Hebrew, and carefully broken up into paragraphs, with brief headings to guide the reader through the abrupt transitions of thought which form one of the great obstacles to a ready understanding of the prophetical books of the Old Testament, might have been a substantial help towards the elucidation of this difficult but fascinating prophet, and would have been especially welcome to those who have no leisure for studying elaborate commentaries. It might also have done good service as a preparation for the forthcoming Revised Version of the Old Testament.

Translated from the Hebrew by J. M. (London: F. Norgate, 1881.)

Mr. Rodwell's object is 'to present the utterances of the Prophet Isaiah in a form as nearly as possible identical with that in which they met the eye of those to whom they were originally addressed. He has therefore aimed, on the one hand, to be strictly literal and faithful to the Hebrew text, even at the cost of occasional roughness and boldness of expression, while, on the other, he has retained the parallelisms which are a distinguishing feature of Hebrew poetry.'

The apology for 'boldness and roughness of expression' is not unneeded; but while the harmonious rhythm of the English Version is sacrificed, a compensating accuracy is not attained. We are quite unable to understand what Mr. Rodwell's ideal of a 'literal and faithful' representation of the original can be. We had thought that it was an accepted principle that an accurate translation should not 'obliterate distinctions in the original by the same rendering of different words,' nor 'create artificial distinctions by different renderings of the same word.' But we find 'tyrant' doing duty as the equivalent of three quite distinct Hebrew words in two consecutive chapters-chap. xiii. 11, y, English Version, terrible; chap. xiv. 4,

1

, English Version, oppressor; chap. xiv. 5, Den, English Version, rulers-not on the whole badly translated in the English Version. Mr. Cheyne, we observe, retains the English Version in the first and third cases, and substitutes tyrant for oppressor in the second. Conversely we find the same Hebrew word (noun) rẹndered 'misdoings' in chap. lviii. 1, and 'sins' in chap. lix. 2. The latter is right: why the needless variation in the former case? In chap. lix. 12, the parallelism is altogether destroyed by the translation of the same word (y), meaning literally rebellions,' by 'rebellions' in the first clause and 'transgressions' in the third clause. The identity of the words is rightly preserved in the English Version. 1 See the Bishop of Durham On a Fresh Revision of the New Testament, pp. 33, 60.

These are by no means solitary instances: and this want of true principle destroys much of the value of the translation; and this being so, it is useless to criticize details of scholarship, though in several instances the translator seems to us to have mistaken the true force of the original, and we note that we can claim Mr. Cheyne's support for our own view. And is it not misleading to give no alternative renderings? In translating Hebrew, far more than in translating Greek, cases repeatedly occur in which the translator cannot be sure that he has caught the precise force of the original, and the entire omission of alternative renderings gives the English reader a false impression of the amount of certainty attainable.

Of course, Mr. Rodwell's translation not seldom clears up the meaning of passages hopelessly obscure or even meaningless in the English Version; but we regret to say that we cannot pronounce a favourable verdict on the work as a whole. By its almost simultaneous appearance, it challenges comparison with Mr. Cheyne's revised translation; and the English reader who wants to know what Isaiah means will do much the best by availing himself of Mr. Cheyne's help.

Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament. By the late Dr. GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON EWALD, Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Göttingen. Translated by J. FREDERICK SMITH. Vol. IV. Hézeqiél, Yesaya xl.-lxvi. ; Vol. V. and last, Haggái, Zakharya, Malaki, Yona, Barukh, Daniel. (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1881.)

We have to notice in these volumes, the former of which we referred to some time since, the completion of Dr. von Ewald's work on the prophetical literature of the Old Testament in its English version; and this seems to afford us the opportunity to make some remarks on the work considered as a whole, or rather upon the principles of interpretation by which it is penetrated. Whatever may be thought of these, and of the specific conclusions at which the writer has arrived, the character of learning and originality cannot justly be denied to the dissertations it contains.

We cannot indeed call it trustworthy, or advise any reader to pin his faith to its conclusions, since its method is characteristically arbitrary, and its fundamental assumptions (as we have before pointed out) are such as would eliminate from the Biblical literature the very idea of any dynamic or causal force to be attributed to Divine inspiration in them. The author has to fall back, therefore, on the merely human elements which they contain, and, guided by these alone, to assign to each composition its date, author, and rank; while ignoring, if he does not expressly contradict, the traditional account of each. It is manifest how profoundly unsatisfactory is such a procedure, and how plainly it neglects material elements in the problem. The writer's remarkable erudition must undoubtedly be regarded with very high respect, but assuredly we must consider the conclusions at which he arrives as vitiated in a greater or less degree by this faulty method; not to say that the higher criticism is essentially and neces

sarily arbitrary and dependent upon the intuitions of the individual critic, in the final stage; and therefore by no means the exact science it vaunts itself.

Of the volumes before us Vol. IV. contains Dr. von Ewald's version of the prophecies of Ezekiel (Hézeqiél), at the end of which are collected what the author styles the works of Anonymous Prophets.' At the head of these figures, as might be expected, the 'great Anonymous Prophet' (Deutero-Isaiah, viz. Is. xl.-lxvi.), with two other brief excerpts from the text of the prophet as commonly received (xxi. 1-10, xiii. 2-xiv. 23), which Dr. von Ewald has, in the exercise of his critical faculty, summarily rejected as having been written by some other person.

With regard to the prophecy of Ezekiel, there is little scope for difference of opinion on external points, such as date, place, and author. It is quite an exceptional thing to find Dr. von Ewald accepting the book in its entirety: 'the least attention shows that the whole of it is from his hand.' Though he regards Ezekiel as one of the great prophets, and indeed as the last of them, yet his active conception of this prophet is a strange one and hard to harmonize with the facts. Ezekiel, according to him, is the type of culture. His prophecies were written, and not adapted for oral delivery; they conform to literary models, and borrow extensively from the stores of the prophet's learning, which supplied him with materials for his vivid and powerful sketches, particularly of other countries. Many of the incidents, he is of opinion, are of a purely imaginative kind.

Such an hypothesis, it is clear, reduces the prophecy to the level of a work of fiction, and could only be held as a consequence of the most thoroughgoing naturalistic view. Not less arbitrary is the procedure that meets us in the fifth and concluding volume. Chapters 1. and li. of Jeremiah are taken from their context and ascribed to an anonymous writer who had imitated Jeremiah's style; and he also attributes to the same writer Is. xxxiv. xxxv. xxvi. 14-xxvii. The arguments he adduces, though not without a certain weight, cannot be called conclusive. Then follow the prophets of the Return— Haggai, Zachariah, Malachi. The latter name he regards as merely a pseudonym, and points out (what had often been noticed before) that may signify not only 'my messenger,' or 'God's messenger,' but also the Latin angelicus. He regards it, however, as closing the line of authentic prophecies. The Book of Jonah he styles a 'legend,' and conjectures that it is but one from a multitude of similar pieces which existed in a popular unwritten form among the Hebrews.

The author throws into an appendix the prophecy of Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah (which is extant only in the Greek), and the Book of Daniel. We imagine some error of the translation on p. 137, where, after assuming that [the Epistle of Jeremiah] 'must have been much read in the times immediately preceding the birth of Christ and in those immediately following it,' he continues, "It owes its origin, like all these pieces, simply to the Greek Bible when it had become Christian,' the contradiction being obvious and neither statement being at all tenable.