One who comes forth from heaven, followed by "the utmost propriety be said, after naming the resurrection armies which were in heaven," to his victory over the of the saints, "the rest of the dead lived not again beast, the false prophet, and their armies. On this until the thousand years were finished." Both form coming and victory there follows, as foretold in the one aggregate of dead ones, of which part after the much-controverted twentieth chapter, the reign of the abstraction of another part, can properly be termed saints with Christ. To your remarks on this chapter I" the rest of the dead." But if the risen and reigning would now turn. martyrs do but represent the triumph and ascendency Your first observation is, that in the Apocalypse of the church during the 1000 years, and the resur"life and death, and rising from the dead, stand for the rection of "the dead" the revival of wickedness at the enjoyment, the loss, and the recovery of corporate or close of that period, with what propriety, either as to political existence and power." It is thus you inter-language or facts, could this phrase, "the rest of the pret ch. xi. and other portions of the book; and you dead," be so used? As to language, I say for surely infer that these words are to be so understood in ch. xx. the pre-millennial non-existence of the righteous as a But with whatever weight this argument may apply to party-and the millennial non-existence of the wicked numerous pre-millenarian expositors of the Revelation, as such, cannot make the two at any time appear as one you are not unaware that there are those who look for aggregate of dead ones, of which it could be said, that the fulfilment of ch. xi. in the sackcloth testimony, part of the dead rise, and "the rest of the dead" rise martyr-death, and triumphant resurrection of two indi- not again for 1000 years. The very idea carries vidual men, yet to appear on God's behalf in the crisis absurdity on the face of it. Then the phrase is just as which is probably at hand. And should it even be inappropriate as to facts. Do you really mean that conceded that the terms life, death, and resurrection, prior to the millennium, truth and righteousness are to are in some parts of the Apocalypse used figuratively, be so extinguished from amongst men, that the saints, it would not follow that they are to be so understood "as a party," have "no corporate, acknowledged throughout the book. Much less can it be justly in-existence"? If not, from what state of death do they ferred from such premises that these terms are to be emerge, rendering it in any sense proper to term the understood figuratively in passages of ch. xx., which millennially non-existent wicked party, "the rest of certainly seem to be literal explanations of the symbolic scenes which the Prophet of Patmos beheld. "This is the first resurrection," and, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years," form no part of John's description of the vision which he beheld, but would appear to be a literal statement of what that vision was designed to represent. So that if life, and death, and living again, were to be understood figuratively in John's statement THIS name is given to that ancient Greek translation of what he saw, it would by no means follow that they of the Bible which was executed in Egypt sometime are to be understood thus in his explanatory state- before the advent of Christ, and which was called ments; and it is in these latter that the proof of the the Septuagint (that is, the seventy), because of the doctrine of a pre-millennial resurrection of the saints is tradition that it was performed by that number of found. translators.

You say "There is a very obvious reason for the distinctive epithet first, in the first resurrection which the world is to witness." It is, that "as the resurrection of an individual saint at the last day is, as it were, seminally contained in his spiritual life, in his being quickened in time; so it is with regard to the entire mass." "They have their part," you observe, "in the mystical body of Christ, which, when triumphant in every part of the world, has that triumph denominated by a resurrection, not of this or of that people, but generally by a first resurrection."

the dead"? No; the attempt to set aside the literal import of the words, "first resurrection" and "rest of the dead," involves all who make it in difficulties and confusion, with which, the alleged difficulties of premillennialism bear no comparison whatever.

THE SEPTUAGINT VERSION OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT.

This version had obtained so high a reputation-in many cases quite superseding the original Hebrewthat numberless incredible stories were once extant, as to its origin; these have been rejected by modern research: and the following is generally allowed to have been the true account.

The Ptolemies-especially Ptolemy Philadelphusnot only patronised Greek learning, and strove to make their metropolis Alexandria the literary, as well as the commercial, centre of the world; but they were also very anxious to cultivate the friendship of the Jews, But if this be so, how can "the rest of the dead" whose country, consisting of a succession of natural consist, as you represent, of "the rest of the wicked, fastnesses, has ever formed an important outpost of slain as a party, having no corporate, acknowledged Egypt. Both literary curiosity, therefore, and political existence" till Satan is loosed, when "they do live" prudence, conspired in making those kings desirous to again, in Gog and Magog's rebellion? Let the prophecy possess, in the vulgar tongue, the venerable law of the be understood as treating of a literal, bodily resurrection Jews. Hence Ptolemy Philadelphus (or his father-and the language is intelligible and appropriate. it is uncertain which) requested of the high priest at Righteous and wicked are both alike dead in the sense Jerusalem, to procure competent scribes for him, who of bodily dissolution; and it might, therefore, with the might translate the laws of Moses from the Hebrew

into the Greek. The translation, thus effected, became except this venerable translation, now more than 2,000 one of the valuable treasures he had collected in his years old. library at Alexandria. Its composition must have been somewhere about the year 280 B. c. It seems to have been gradually followed, at different times, by translations of other parts of the Jewish Scriptures; and the whole, executed indeed by various hands, was completed sometime before the advent of Christ.

This is the simple account, in substance quoted by one Aristobulus, who is cited by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History; and it is corroborated in the Prologue to the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, written, as the author there tells us, in the time of Ptolemy Physcon, rather more than 100 years before Christ. From 280 B. C. to 120 B. c. may therefore be safely taken as the period of its execution. And we may be satisfied that the law of Moses was translated by royal command, to which the rest of the book was gradually added.

It must be remembered that the Hebrew original, and the Greek translation, have come to us through two absolutely independent, and even hostile channels. The Hebrew we owe entirely to the Jews; our copies are simply what they have given to us. Whereas the Septuagint has reached us through the hands of the Christian church. These two guardians of the Scriptures had no intercourse whatever with each other. And their united testimony is of the strongest possible description. Where they differ, as they occasionally do, in unimportant details, we have only the firmer confidence that these two venerable recensions have descended to us by quite separate streams. And it may be observed that these differences, however embarassing they may be to the critic, are really of no consequence to the Christian. We may hesitate in pronouncing sentence upon those points where the two versions are at variance; but every item of our faith is unaffected by them. We might cast out every passage where they do not agree, without shaking a single article out of the Creed.

This Alexandrian or Septuagint version, being thus made in the common speech of the East, was read even in Palestine, where Greek had become the ordinary language of intercourse. It alone is quoted by the philosopher Philo, and the historian Josephus: and Looking upon the matter, however, with the eye of (which is of more interest to us), the writers of the the critic, opinions are divided as to which of these is New Testament almost constantly refer to it: for at to be preferred. Till the reformation, there was no that epoch it stood in the same relation to the Hebrew doubt at all about this subject. The Latin church as our common English version does, and was there- knew and recognized only the Vulgate; the Greek fore used by all who wrote books for universal perusal. church only the Septuagint; the reformers, with one On account of its celebrity, the most extravagant voice, preferred the Jewish Old Testament, to what stories were current as to its source. Josephus says was only a translation of a translation from it. They that seventy-two elders were chosen for the work, six have been followed by most modern scholars. Of late, from each tribe, and that their labours occupied exactly however, some among ourselves have seen reason for seventy-two days. Philo even asserts that these seventy-giving precedence to the Septuagint over the Hebrew; two men were shut up in separate cells; that each and they ground their judgment mainly upon the cirof them translated the entire Bible, apart from all in- cumstance, that our Lord and his apostles quoted, almost tercourse with his coadjutors; and that these seventy-uniformly, from the Greek version.

two independent translations were found to agree ex- But, in reality, no conclusion ought to be drawn from actly, in every particular, with each other. These this. The founders of Christianity, as a thing of course, marvellous fables seem to have been invented, for the purpose of giving to this version the authority of the high priest, and of the council at Jerusalem. They obtained nearly universal credit, as is evident from the fact that the name of Septuagint (i.e., seventy), arose from the fiction of the seventy-two elders. There is no doubt that these stories are fictitious, for there is positive internal evidence that the several books were executed at different times, and by different hands; and indeed there are strong reasons for believing that the translators were natives of Alexandria, and not of Palestine.

quoted from the Bible in common use, which was the Septuagint at that time. And whenever this Septuagint differs from the Hebrew in an important respect (as when some point of doctrine is concerned), then it will be found that the quotation comes from the Hebrew. Thus, in the beginning of St. Matthew's Gospel, the names in our Lord's genealogy are spelled as the Septuagint spells them; for it was of no importance which way they were written. Whereas, in the second chapter, the quotation from Hosea, "Out of Egypt I have called my son," is from the Hebrew, and not from the Septuagint, which has "Out of Egypt I have called his children," and which does not convey a sense applicable to Christ.

There can be little doubt that our Lord and his apostles referred to this version, when they quoted the ancient Scriptures. It was for many ages the only In all probability, the Hebrew text represents the Bible known in the church. Very few Christians, indeed, Recension used in the synagogues everywhere except before the Reformation era, knew anything of the in Egypt; while the Septuagint was another edition, in Hebrew language, or suspected the existence of a private use, also read in the synagogues by the HelleHebrew Bible. All old translations of the Bible were nists of Alexandria. This supposition is corroborated made (with the exception of the Syriac) from this. by the fact, that the existing Targums, or Aramaic The Vulgate, for centuries the authorized text in the paraphrases, which arose from the custom of interpretLatin church, was made from the Septuagint, and not ing the Hebrew into the vulgar tongue of Palestine, directly from the Hebrew. And from the first, the during the synagogue service, agree not with the SepGreek church has never acknowledged any other version | tuagint, but with the Hebrew.

It seems to follow necessarily that the synagogue the same Psalm in the other version, we shall be able edition must have been the authorised copy. The Sep-very easily to see one instance where the Hebrew and tuagint must have occupied the same place as our own the Septuagint are at variance. In the Prayer-book, English version now does; very good and excellent, this 14th Psalm has eleven verses; in the Bible it has doubtless, but yet containing some faults, which at but seven; the former following the Septuagint, the once prevent its being put into the same rank with the latter the Hebrew. And we shall also find that St. original. We have, moreover, positive assurance that Paul, when he quotes this Psalm in the 3rd chapter of the Jews have taken the most scrupulous, and even the Epistle to the Romans, agrees with our Prayer-book superstitious, care of their text; so that accidental version, i. e., with the Septuagint. mistakes in transcription are hardly supposable; and we are as sure that the Greek text has never been so carefully preserved, and is faulty in many places.

In some other respects we may readily perceive the influence of the old Greek edition on our modern editions. The names we give to the five books of There are two parts of the New Testament which Moses are unknown in the Hebrew Bible, which calls follow the Septuagint exactly, even where this differs the books by the first words in each. They appeared decidedly from the Hebrew. These two parts are the first in the Septuagint, then they were transferred to speech of Stephen, recorded in the 7th chapter of the the Vulgate, and from that to our modern Bibles. Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is another trace of the Septuagint, which is In both of these documents we are certain that we are much more serious, and productive indeed of considerreading the words of men who had the Septuagint able misunderstanding. The Jews, from time imtranslation, and not the Hebrew original, in their hands. memorial, never pronounce the word Jehovah, or write Stephen, we know, was a deacon of the Grecians, i. e. it in any but in the Hebrew characters. Now the of the Hellenists-the very community which pro- translators of the Septuagint were Jews, imbued with duced this version. And there are unmistakeable the common prejudice of their nation. In consequence marks, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, of its having the word Jehovah does not once appear in the Septuagint; been written by a native of Alexandria, the birth-place it is invariably rendered by Kupios, or Lord, which was of the Septuagint. Now, in each of these two docu- a common title of respect between man and man. This ments, the name Jesus occurs in rather an embarassing peculiarity passed into the Vulgate, where Dominus is manner. In Stephen's speech, we are told of the the equivalent term for Jehovah; and, for some unex"tabernacle of witness, which our fathers brought in plained reason-probably on account of the influence with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles." And exercised by learned Jews over the reformers—it has in the 4th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we been almost always retained in our common English read, "If Jesus had given them rest." In both of these Bibles. From this circumstance, à great deal of the places it is Joshua that is meant, of which name Jesus meaning of the Bible is sometimes neglected; and the is only the Greek form, and is the form always used in proper name of the visible God does not appear where the Septuagint. it ought to be. In our printed Bibles, it will be seen that when Lord stands for Jehovah, it consists of four capital letters, thus:-LORD.

Then again Stephen speaks of 75 people going down to Egypt with Jacob; whereas our copies of the Book of Genesis distinctly assert that there were but 70. The truth is, that our English Bible here follows the Hebrew, whereas Stephen quoted the Septuagint. Then in the 5th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we find the following quotation from the 40th Psalm: "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared me"; and yet on turning to the 40th Psalm itself in our Bibles, we find the expression to be, "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened"; which is a literal translation from the Hebrew of the Psalm in question, and different from what we read in the Epistle. But if we refer to the Septuagint version of the 40th Psalm, we at once see that the passage, as it stands in the Epistle to the Hebrews, was taken directly from it.

The Psalms in our English Prayer Books are taken from an older translation than the Psalms are which appear in our English Bibles; and as all modern translations started from the Septuagint (through the Vulgate), and by degrees were brought nearer and nearer to the Hebrew; so the Prayer-book Psalms, taken from Archbishop Parker's translation of 1568, lean much more towards the Septuagint than do the Bible Psalms, which were not translated till 1611. If we compare the 14th Psalm in one of these English versions with

And the most memorable effect of this Jewish peculiarity remains to be told. We have already spoken of the traces of the Septuagint in the New Testament. The writers of the latter were all Jews, and therefore never wrote the word Jehovah with Greek letters. The word Jehovah never once occurs in the entire New Testament. There is no kind of doubt that they used the title Kupios, or the LORD, just as the Septuagint translators had done-as a well-understood equivalent for Jehovah. And when this title of LORD became, in an emphatic manner, fixed upon the Redeemer, he was thereby proclaimed to be Jehovah.

As might have been expected, the text of the Septuagint was never so carefully preserved as that of the Hebrew. From an early epoch, it seems to have been in an imperfect condition. At the beginning of the 3rd century of the Christian era, the illustrious Origen devoted a large portion of his life to the amendment of this text; and, for this purpose, he published his celebrated work, The Hexapla, or Six-fold; containing six parallel columns of different editions of the Bible. By comparing these together, he produced an improved text, known as the Hexaplarian. It would have been of the utmost interest to have preserved this work: but, from its great size (it is said to have been in fifty

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans. (London.
We cordially recommend to our readers this specimen
Gregg.)
of an amended version of Romans. It seems that the whole

New Testament is intended to follow, if the Lord will, with a
full explanation of the course pursued by the translator, which
was not thought necessary in so short a specimen. The reader,
however, is apprised that this version is directly and exclusive.

volumes) transcription was, in a manner, impossible. After lying for many years in the library of Cæsarea, it is believed to have perished when the Arabs took that city in the 7th century. But the amended text was preserved; and has been almost universally adopted as the text of the Septuagint, since the days of Origen. There are two principal MSS. of the Septuagint inly from the Greek, following the text wherein the body of the existence. The one, called the Alexandrian, is in the British Museum. It was sent over, as a present to Charles I. by the Patriarch of Alexandria. It is written on parchment, in four volumes: mutilated in some parts; and so old, that the ink of the letters has, in some places, eaten right through the page; it is believed to belong to the 5th or 6th century; and represents the Hexaplarian text, or the text amended by Origen. The other is called the Vatican, because it is in the library of that name in Rome. Its history is unknown, but is thought to be rather older than the Alexandrian; and it represents the text as it existed before Origen.

There is one circumstance connected with the Septuagint that must not be passed over. It was here that first appeared the books called Apocrypha; and from it were transferred to the Vulgate, where the church of Rome decided that they are to remain. The reformers rejected them from the Canon, because they had never been in the Hebrew; and did not therefore form part of the Jewish Bible, when our Saviour fixed the seal of his authority upon it.

and Lachmann) agree. It is evident that the translator's object best critical editors (such as Griesbach, Scholz, Tischendorf, was not to present the sense of the apostle in a smooth, readable form (which we think can not be better done, as a whole, than in the English authorized version), but to give his very manner and exact turn of thought and phrase, for spiritual men who are capable of judging and profiting. In some future num. ber we may direct attention to some of the more striking improvements which this little tract furnishes.

Notes of the Month.

NEW VERSION OF THE BIBLE.

THE Rev. Dr. Cumming still continues his opposition to the
proposal of a new version of the Bible. This opposition is un-
wise, and it is unwisely argued by the Dr. The history of the
authorized version has, in our opinion, nothing to do with the
question of a new version. The simple question is, Can this
version be improved? can it be brought nearer to the exact
meaning of the original? If so, why not? All the Dr.'s argu-
ments and speeches about the various Greek MSS. and the
tions, Have we the Holy Scriptures in our own tongue as
various readings in these MSS. have no bearing on the ques-
accurately translated as the state of the MSS. will allow, or
have we not? Are we in a condition to give a better rendering
to a number of awkward and disputed passages, than we were
two and a half centuries ago? and if so, why not?
ample of the failure of Dr. Conquest's attempt to improve
the Bible with his 30,000 emendations, is no argument at all.
Many, very many of these were merely verbal, and not doctri-

The ex

It ought to be mentioned that the book of Daniel, as it appears in all extant editions of the Septuagint, is not the original book of Daniel of the Septuagint. A Greek translation of this book by Theodotion was put in its place, soon after Christ, on account of its acknow-nal; and we believe that many were injudicious; but this ledged imperfections. The proper Septuagint translation of Daniel was lost until the end of the last century; when it was discovered in the library of Cardinal Chigi

at Rome.

Our Study.

W. H. J.

proves nothing against the necessity and propriety of an there are only three disputed passages in the Bible, which at amended translation. The statement of Dr. Cumming that all affect questions of doctrine, is not true; there are many,

and the sooner they are settled the better, for the sake of the truth, and its dissemination among the people.

Another opponent of the revision of the authorized version has appeared in the Bishop of Manchester, who, at a meeting of the Bible Society in that town, stated that he believed, Notes on Original Words; or, Philological Arguments, ad-"taking it altogether, we should never improve the authorize i dressed to Bible Students especially T version of the Church of England." This is a very singular statement to come from a man who must know that we were chiefly indebted to a Puritan for the proposal of the present version, and the scheme for carrying it into execution; that this version is as much the authorized version of the Dissenters as it is of the Church of England; and that the authorized version of the Psalms, which is adopted in the Book of Common Prayer, is considerably different, in many places, from the authorized version of the Psalms in the Bible. Let him tell us which of these two authorized versions is the most correct; for if both are equally so, then we fasten him on the horns of a dilemma from which he cannot easily escape.

(London: D. F. Oakey, 1856.) The object of the tract before us is once more to revive attention to the etymological meanings of original words. Naturally the author begins with rendered in our Bible "In the beginning." "The initiatory word of creation and of time, is that by which the inspired historian announces the manifestation of the invisible glory, and the affinity of the Creator with his intelligent creatures, of whom he is relatively the first and ultimate; (the root of the preliminary word) signifying FIRST, CHIEF, LEADER, HEAD: nay more-(the 'restitution' of all things requiring the interposition of the Word in flesh,) also HIGH PRIEST, REDEEMER, REGENERATOR, HEIR OF ALL." (p. 5.)

Our readers will agree with us, that such an extract is enough to show the imaginative character of the system. If all this is conveyed in one word, further revelation would seem to us quite, or almost quite uncalled for: for according to this Cabalistic theory, the Bible is nearly all revealed in the initiatory word. Hutchinson did his best, in his own ingenious fashion, to commend it, his great basis being that every passage, if not every word, of the Old Testament looks backward and forward and every way, like light from the sun, and nothing is hid from it. Parkhurst followed it up in his Hebrew Lexicon; but it has long slept in obscurity, out of which we regret to see such extravagance attempting to emerge.

Postscript to Contributors and Correspondents.

The continuation of the article on "The Pre-millennial Advent in Relstion to the Agencies of Salvation" will appear in our next.

All communications and books for review to be sent to the EDITOR OF THE BIBLE TREASURY, care of Daniel F. Oakey, 10, Paternoster-row. The name and address of the writer must accompany all contributions, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarentee of good faith. No notice will be taken of anonymous communications.

We cannot undertake to return MSS., unless accompanied by a special request to that effect, and postage stamps to cover carriage.