First. Whether diabéuevos does mean a testator; and, if so, is it the meaning here?

Second. Does diabéμevos also mean a mediator; and, if so, is it the meaning here? i.e. we have to balance the claims of the

two meanings.

διατίθεμαι διαθήκην τινὶ This may be verified by

According to Liddell and Scott, means "to make a covenant with one." reference to Nos. 2, 13, and 15, only that the dative is not always found in two of these places πpòs with the accusative, and elsewhere . But that Siabéuevos means a testator seems to rest solely on the authority of our translators, and of those who side with them, with only topical sanction. It is true that SiaTibeμai does mean to appoint, dispose, as in Luke xxii. 29, “I appoint unto you a kingdom," but here only in the N. T. has it this meaning. In the other passages viz., Acts iii. 25; Heb. viii. 10; ix. 16, 17, and x. 16, the verb and the noun are in connexion. In all these, except the passage under consideration, the noun dialýŋ is rendered "covenant." Does the participle which occurs here, and not the verb, change its meaning? Of course, if διατίθεμαι is I appoint, then διαθέμενος may be the one who appoints, the testator. Still for this we want the positive evidence that the terms have ever been employed for a will.

Another term for diabéuevos has been proposed, viz., Pacifier, and one remarkable instance is cited from Arrian. See Parkhurst and Scapula, under diaτíleμai. This can be but an issue of the work of the peoírns: it is a valuable contribution to the inquiry presenting the issue of the interposition.

The objection that vexpòs is never applied to the dead bodies of the lower animals is thus of no moment; it is set aside by considering διαθέμενος = μεσίτης.

There has been no known difficulty shunned in the above inquiry, and the admission first made in favour of the rendering "testator" is scarcely worth anything, for no unchallenged instance of such a meaning can be adduced, whereas several instances occur in the Scriptures, perhaps admitted by all, where the meaning is, a covenant.

There are two other words to be noticed. "That by means of" as a rendering of oπws is scarcely authorized: it is clearly

introductory to, and must be construed with λáßwpev. The meaning given to pépeolau has the sanction of Rom. ix. 22; Heb. xii. 20.

"Ye are not come unto the mount that can be touched and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest..... But ye are come unto mount Zion, even unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels; . . . and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant."

W. HOWELL.

Clifton.

NOTE.-A JERUSALEM RUMOUR.

WE were favoured with the perusal of an extraordinary letter, dated "Jerusalem, September 14, 1876," written by one of the resident Rabbis in the Holy City to a wellknown Christian gentleman in London. The purport of the letter may be gathered by the following extract from it :

"A wise and godly man who for years was chief Rabbi over many thousand Jews, and left manuscripts, amongst which there was found a sealed packet, upon which was written that it should not be opened till ten years after his death. When the time was expired it was opened by his sons, who are Rabbis in the same position as their father It was found to contain several pages all relating to the MESSIAH who is to redeem the whole world. Copies of this manuscript were given by his sons to many learned men, one of whom came last year to Jerusalem with a copy, and this week I have succeeded in obtaining a copy from him for myself.

was.

Like

"Believe me, dear after I got this copy I could not sleep for many nights for studying the words of that learned man. Seeing that he had explained many passages in Daniel relating to the MESSIAH; also the vision of our father Jacob's wrestling with the Angel, who afterwards blessed him (Jacob); and the dream which Joseph explained to the chief butler of Pharaoh about the vine with three branches. wise many passages from the Talmud and other learned ancient books. He had also made a calculation of the different times mentioned in Daniel, reducing them all to one certain period. According to his estimate the MESSIAH is to come, according to our chronology, in the year 5638, at the time of the Passover, which according to our calculation will be 2300 years after the destruction of Solomon's Temple, which Daniel refers to in the eighth chapter and fourteenth verse: 'Unto two thousand three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,'" &c., &c.

8

In the beginning of last month a copy of the alleged "several pages relating to the MESSIAH"-consisting of fourteen large quarto pages--was sent to the same Christian gentleman, who kindly forwarded it to us for examination. We perused it most carefully, and found the lucubrations couched in the usual transcendental crude rhapsodies of later Kabbalists. We cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of pronouncing the farrago genuine. It is probably a pious fraud-the name of the "wise and godly man who for years was chief Rabbi " is not given-if so the author displayed considerable ingenuity in so craftily imitating the style of Jewish mystics of a bygone age. Any how, genuine or counterfeit, this document proves-if proof were required-that the mass of the Jewish people, unlike the handful of free-thinking politic Jews in this country, are looking out for a personal MESSIAH, and not for such a myth as political privileges personifies.

8 This will begin with Good Friday, 1878. A somewhat curious coincidence in the date of the calculator.-EDITOR.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE LORD'S PRAYER. NO ADAPTATION OF EXISTING PETITIONS. EXPLAINED BY THE LIGHT OF "THE DAY OF THE LORD:" IN A SERIES OF SIX ESSAYS. TO WHICH ARE ADDED THREE MORE, IN THE FORM OF APPENDICES, ON THE FIRST TWO PROPHECIES, AND ON THE CHERUBIM. By the REV. M. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., LL.D., Ph.D., &c. &c. Author of "The Poetry of the Hebrew Pentateuch," "The Oracles of God and their Vindication," &c. &c. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons.

THE most effective means that we can adopt, with a view to afford the readers of this QUARTERLY an idea of the Author's aims in this work, is to let the writer make his own statements respecting the same. He does so in his Preface; which is the following:

"It has often been asserted that the laconic, but comprehensive, petition which our Blessed Lord has taught His disciples, was substantially a prayer already in use, at His time on earth, in the Liturgical services of the Temple and synagogue; when "He came to visit us in great humility." I have been frequently asked, by clerical Brethren, whether it was so, and whether I could give a reference to its whereabout, either in modern Jewish Liturgies, or in ancient Jewish writings. The frequency with which the question was put to me made me at last abrupt in my reply :-'Nothing of the kind! The Jewish Liturgy has never contained anything so glorious, so august, so comprehensive as that wonderful supplication which our Saviour dictated to His disciples, and which is known as the LORD'S PRAYER.'

"About two years ago, however, I received a letter from a most estimable Brother Clergyman, one of the truest and most disinterested lovers of Israel, in which the question is mooted in the following words :-'Will you inform me where one may find, among pre-Hebrew Christian writings, any prayer closely resembling our 'LORD'S PRAYER'? I have read that such a prayer does (or did) exist in Jewish books: where?' In a private letter I informed my valued friend that nothing of the kind existed in 'preHebrew Christian writings,' but that subsequent to the promulgation of that Heaventaught orison the Jews borrowed certain sentences from it, and incorporated them in some of their later prayers.

"The idea, that a petition 'closely resembling the LORD'S PRAYER existed in preHebrew Christian writings,' originated with the tyro-expositors of the rudiments of Hebrew and Rabbinical Literature, such as Bartolocci, Carpzov, Poole, Lightfoot, etc., etc., etc., after their kind-long since discredited by bona fide Hebrew and Rabbinical scholars and critics. It is true that, in few instances, those quaint assertions form still part of the learning possessed by certain Christian divines, but those instances are very few now-a-days. They have been perpetuated by neological schoolmen, such as Spinoza and his followers; who imagined that the daring propagation of premature conceptions, and doing despite to ripe and well-tried truths, was the surest way to a reputation for profound and broad thinking.

"At the time that I received the letter which contained the inquiry anent the LORD'S PRAYER, I enjoyed the privilege of reading the sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, once a week, with a large class of Jewish inquirers, from some of the highest ranks amongst the dispersed of Judah in the English metropolis. I read that letter to my Hebrew friends, on the first occasion on which we met after I had received it ;— for the query was preceded by such sentiments as the following: You rightly judge that I have love to the House of Israel. Yes; God has, I trust, put into my heart great tenderness and great zeal for His people whom He hath chosen, and not cast away. It is a pleasure to me to commune with any Hebrew, especially with any of Abraham's seed having also Abraham's faith in the SEED of promise and blessing.' The anxious Jewish inquirers expressed a strong, unanimous, wish that the LORD'S PRAYER should form the staple subject of our readings then, and at our several subsequent meetings. I have, of course, acquiesced in the expressed wish. I had the Liturgies of both synagogues-namely, the Portuguese and German-as well as all the Rabbinical lore that could be found there and then, especially, however, copies of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, placed close at hand, whilst our readings on the LORD'S PRAYER lasted. My Jewish friends have long since received what they had asked for, and found that which they had sought. The following ESSAYS contain the substance

of those especial readings which were prompted by my friend's letter. May God's blessing rest upon the reading of the same!

"I am desirous, however, that the readers of the following Essays may bear in mind that my object was not to sermonize, or to write Homilies on THE LORD'S PRAYER. Were such my intention I might easily have contrived to double or treble the number of Essays on the sacred theme. Those who look for sermons and homilies on THE LORD'S PRAYER will find them in the thousand and one different volumes, which as many diverse homilists have, from time to time, published. They will look in vain for homiletical discourses in this volume, and look equally in vain in sermon volumes for the information furnished in this opusculum.

"I have given, for the benefit of the learned, the quotations from Jewish Liturgies, in the original Hebrew. To avoid, however, the possible distraction of the ordinary reader I have placed the original quotations as foot-notes, whilst I embodied their translations in the texts of the different Essays themselves. I should not be surprised to learn that this small unpretending work may yet yield some suggestive ideas even to so learned a company of Hebrew Scholars as the modern revisers of the English Version of the OLD TESTAMENT, or to the explanatory and the critical commentators of the so-called SPEAKER'S BIBLE, who may yet deign to adopt some of the new renderings offered in the following Essays, and their foot-notes."

66

'Experience has taught me that mere references to chapters and verses of Biblical passages, in illustration of certain expositions, are not only insufficient, but perplexing to the generality of readers; I have therefore given those passages of Scripture in extenso. Especially as I had often to suggest a different rendering of the original text from that of the Authorized Version.

"The three Essays, in the form of Appendices, contain the mature thoughts of nearly thirty years' study. I venture to trust that the readers will not think them unworthy of consideration; notwithstanding that they, now and then, come into collision with preconceived notions respecting the two FIRST PROPHECIES and the CHERUBIM. I have not hastily adopted the views which I propound in those Essays. Frequently and prayerfully have I meditated upon the themes, ere I committed the result of my studies to paper. entreat my readers not to reject the same hastily without meditating upon the respective subjects, seriously and prayerfully."

.בן קהלת

Ben Koheleth, nach Chr. Aug. Tiedge's URANIA. Vien. 1876.

THIS is a translation, or rather an adaptation into the sacred tongue, of the first five books of Tiedge's brilliant, though eccentric German poem Urania. The accomplished translator tells us, on the title-page of his poetic version, that the reason why he surnamed his performance BEN KOHELETH is the following:-Just as KOHELETH put certain orthodox sentiments into the mouths of the right-minded, and certain heterodox sentiments into the mouths of the free-thinker, whilst his aim and end was all the time to promote the fear of God; so the author of this book treads in his steps, and therefore should it share in the honourable title of KOHELEth.

The translator's name is withheld from the title-page, but we have no difficulty in supplying it. We recognize in the poem before us the same master-mind, the same skilful versifier, the same exquisite Hebrew scholarship which characterized

64

Milton's

9 Since the MS. of this work had been committed into the hands of the printers the sixth volume of the SPEAKER'S BIBLE has been published, which completes the annotations on the OLD TESTAMENT. After a careful study of the voluminous work, the Author feels compelled to maintain that the SACRED ORACLES annotated upon had but scant justice done them at the hands of the learned galaxy of expounders engaged upon commenting on the writings of Moses and the Prophets.

ور

1 KOHELETH is the original name given to the book of ECCLESIASTES, because of the opening words of that compilation, namely "The words of KOHELETH. The name was an assumed one, descriptive of the writer as compiler of the laconic sayings contained in that interesting Miscellany. As many of the sentiments may have been the oracular utterances of Solomon, the compiler supplemented the title of his collection by the words of "the Son of David, King of Jerusalem.” Theoris no doubt elliptical.

Paradise Lost," in "Hebrew Blank Verse," Translator, I. E. Salkinson: Trübner and Co. The work is inscribed in a dedicatory Hebrew Epistle of marvellous beauty, to a certain eminent Continental Rabbi, whose name is also withheld. Neither are we at a loss to identify that great scholar, though we think it expedient, in this case, to imitate the learned Translator. The letter itself we shall translate into English in our next issue, when we shall make some critical observations on the Hebrew Poem before us. At present we furnish a translation of a Hebrew letter, which is printed at the end of the brochure. It was addressed by the Rev. I. E. Salkinson to the late venerable Chief Rabbi of all the Karaite Jews, Abraham Firkowitz. We saw the letter itself in 1872, when the reverend Karaite was about eighty-five years of age. His name is at present of some interest to Oriental scholars, by reason of Dr. Neubauer's examination of the deceased's library, at St. Petersburg, by the direction of the Oxford University.

It may interest our readers to know that Rabbi Abraham Firkowitz was a man of varied acccomplishments and extensive erudition; he was the author of divers works in prose and poetry. He has been surnamed, both by Rabbinical Jews and Karaites, ABEN RESHEPH, or the son of RESHEPH, of fiery fervour. The epithet is obviously a formation from the Hebrew initials of his name and those of his father. It may sound strange in the ears of some of our readers when they will be told that the venerable master in Israel" had married in 1871, when he was eighty-four years of age, for the fourth time, a young girl. We must ask our readers to bear in mind that the Karaite Jews consider themselves as the representatives of the Levitical priesthood, and their Chief Rabbi as the successor of the high priest. That functionary must needs be a married man, so that he may be able to fulfil the condition of making "an atonement for himself and for his house (Lev. xvi. 6, 11). It was prescribed that the high priest marry a virgin (Lev. xxi. 13, 14).

It is just possible that the letter which Mr. Isaac E. Salkinson addressed to Rabbi Abraham Firkowitz was lost; or probable, from some cause or other, that Dr. Neubauer had overlooked it; the learned will therefore consider its appearance at the conclusion of his last work, under present notice, as a valuable addition to that volume. We have published a translation of that remarkable letter in 1872, but as the volume in which it appeared has long since been out of print, the readers of our NEW SERIES will be glad of a reprint of that very interesting epistle.

“To the honour of the Chief Rabbi—experienced in the Law and Science, a Prince amongst his people, and principal instructor of the community of the Karaim, Abraham Firkowitz.

"From the day on which I beheld your honoured face at Vienna, and was paternally embraced by you, your name was always present to me, and my soul longs to remember you. For from the days of my youth-that is, ever since I began to take shelter under the shadow of the wings of the Messiah, the Son of David, who is all my salvation and all my desire-the children of my people and my own kindred hate me because of my following the Good Thing; and their great and wise ones excommunicate me, and are unable to speak peaceably to me. But as for me, my daily prayer ascends for Israel's salvation; their curses do not affect me. Verily, if they utter reproaches and blasphemies against my King and my Holy One, why should I fret the reproaches of them that reproach Him have fallen upon me. Does not my soul cleave to Him, so that I may bear both His ignominy and His honour? And this is all my glory and my ornament.

"Of a truth, it is a long time since I greatly desired to see my brethren, the sons of my people who hold fast to the Scriptures, who, like myself, have broken the yoke of the Talmud from off their necks; and the Word of the Lord only is a lamp unto their feet, and a light unto their paths. But you, sir, are the first of your brethren and community that I have seen face to face; and I rejoiced to see you as at the sight of the face of an angel.

"Yet the sight enjoyed by the physical eye does not suffice me, but I desire to understand your vital spirit-even that divine, celestial portion which God bestowed upon you. I will ask you, therefore, one question; it is a very important one to me: I beseech you, sir, pray tell me, What think you of Jesus of Nazareth? Is He to

2 See our Memorandum, pp. 44-47.