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our sin by the appeal of the cross. He wins us back to Himself as a mother woos her wayward child. The actual forgiveness of sin was not effected by Christ's suffering. It was only revealed by Him (p. 266). The cross is not a propitiation, or a substitution, or a ransom; it is merely a revelation of a way, of the way back to the great Heart of God, a way which we may travel ourselves; that is, if we have strength to walk it. Here Mr. Cohu is forced to abandon the great soteriological conceptions of the New Testament. Moralism is ever a diluted gospel. It has an ethic but not a dynamic. Its prescription is vain because its diagnosis is false. You cannot have a true soteriology and a false anthropology. Nor can you appeal to a dead man, and even appeals to the sick are commonly regarded as poor medicine. The humanitarian atonement is not a real atonement: it is simply an exhibition. New Testament soteriology never teaches that men are saved by "all that is highest and holiest in human experience" (p. 266).

4. Going further back, Mr. Cohu has a philosophy that comes perilously close to Berkeleyan idealism. The facts of science, he says, are not objective. "The only objective facts we know are our own sensations and thoughts" (p. 120). Color and sound have no real existence apart from our mental perceptions. "It is we who manufacture the color of a dahlia and the boom of a bell. . . . Our whole idea of the Universe, from a dewdrop to the Sun, is built up of mind-manufactured sensations, etc." (p. 111). The very existence of matter as an "independent entity" is "a gratuitous hypothesis" (p. 113). All of which shows the extreme to which Mr. Cohu is willing to go in his zealous opposition to materialism. It is "spiritualizing matter" rather violently.

Despite the above extremes, Mr. Cohu's book is comparatively free from the dogmatic extravagancies which so often characterize writers who hold similar views. To be specific: he never stoops to the petty dogmatism that makes science and religion foes equally irreconcilable and equally bigoted. He insists that each is supreme in its own sphere, and both deal with universal truth (pp. 95-97, 99). He has the correct idea of human personality as being the whole man (p. 141). In this chapter (V.) the study of the subconscious self is interesting, and might with value have been prolonged (pp. 150-154). He never rants against the legacies of Patristic theology (pp. 230-231). He does not encourage the fashionable dualism between the head and the heart, our religion must have its intellectual interpretation (pp. 222, 226). The criticism of Determinism, as in fact the whole discussion of Freedom (Ch. VI), is not so conclusive. Langhorne, Pa.

BENJAMIN F. PAIST, JR.

EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY

Der hebräische Pentateuch der Samaritaner, herausgegeben von AUGUST FREIHERRN VON GALL. Erster Teil. Prolegomena und Genesis

mit 4 Tafeln. Verlag von Alfred Töpelmann (vormals J. Ricker) Giessen. 1914. 4vo; lxx + 112 pp. 28 M.

The Samaritan-Hebrew Pentateuch has hitherto been accessible to scholars in three editions, the Paris Polyglot (1632), the London Polyglot (1657) and the separate edition by Blayney (1790). Since these three editions are all based on the same codex, a manuscript of the fourteenth century, purchased at Damascus by Pietro della Valle in 1616-Blayney's edition alone contains variant readings-a critical edition of the text of the Samaritan-Hebrew Pentateuch has long been desired by O. T. scholars. Consequently the announcement made eight years ago (Z A T W xxvi, 293-305) by the Freiherr von Gall of his intention to prepare such an edition was a very welcome one. The present volume is the first installment of this work-the balance is to follow within two years-and is especially interesting because it gives us a full account of the material used by the Freiherr in preparing his Text and of his method and conclusions.

The Text is based upon a comparison of 80 manuscripts, of which the majority are only fragments. In the Prolegomena the editor gives a brief account of this material. Of the 40 manuscripts which he groups under the caption 'complete manuscripts' he has made use of 24 for this work. Only a very few of these manuscripts are strictly speaking complete. Most of them are more or less mutilated, such mutilation being most likely to occur at the beginning or end of the manuscript and some of the mutilated codices have had their deficiencies supplied by portions which are of much more recent date. The age of the manuscripts ranges from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The editor believes that there are practically no Samaritan Manuscripts which date from the first millenium A.D. It may be noted here, that he assigns the manuscript described in JAOS xx, 1, p. 173-9, which has been supposed to bear the date 655/6 A.D. (A. H. 35) to 1334/5 A.D. and the Nablus Roll he thinks should probably be dated 1218/9 A.D. The dates of these manuscripts are determined insofar as this can be done with any certainty by the so-called 'cryptograms' which they contain and which furnish us with more or less meagre information, as the case may be, with regard to the history of the manuscript, the name of the original scribe, the date of its completion and the history of its transmission. All the dates are given according to the Mohammedan era.

The Text given us by von Gall is, as he tells us, not the text of any one manuscript, or of any group of manuscripts, nor has he been able to formulate a theory of families or groups analogous to that which has been developed for the New Testament by Westcott & Hort and others. In choosing between different readings he has given the preference to those which contain the defective writing of the vowels, to those which strictly comply with the laws of Hebrew grammar, to those which contain the older or more archaic etymological form and to those which are favored by the Massoretic Text and by the LXX. That this method involves a certain amount of subjectivity, he readily admits. He feels however that it cannot be avoided under

the circumstances and that the fact that he gives all the variants, places the reader in a position to study the text for himself and accept or reject the editor's text as he sees fit.

The arrangement of the material is very convenient. The text occupies about the upper third of the page. It is written in Hebrew characters for convenience sake, and chapters and verses are given in correspondence with Ginsburg's Biblia Hebraica, ed. 2. Immediately below is given a list of the signatures of the manuscripts which contain it. The critical notes follow in three groups: the first contains variants in the consonantal text, the second gives data regarding critical and vowel signs, insofar as used in the manuscripts, the third deals with the interpunction. The text itself is purely consonantal. The only interpunction which is retained is the division into the p or sections, which correspond with the 'open' and 'closed sections' of the Massoretic Text and which are carefully noted in the Samaritan manuscripts.

One has but to glance at the Plates, which contain facsimile reproductions of parts of six different manuscripts to realize what an arduous labor the collation of such material must have been and we may be thankful to the Freiherr von Gall that he was willing to devote ten years of his life to so difficult and at the same time so necessary a task.

OSWALD T. ALLIS.

Root-Determinatives in Semitic Speech. A contribution to Semitic

Philology. By SOLOMON THEODORE HALÉVY HURWITZ, PH.D. [Contributions to Oriental History and Philology, No. vi.] New York: Columbia University Press. 1913. 8vo; cloth, pp. xxii + 113. $1.50 net.

This monograph is an amplification of a thesis submitted in 1910 to the Faculty of Columbia University. In it Dr. Hurwitz discusses an important aspect of the 'biliteral theory' of the origin of Semitic roots.

Dr. Hurwitz accepts the view that "the triliteral root was developed from the biliteral in a manner analogous to that by which the pluriliteral was evolved from the triliteral" (p. 37) viz. by the addition of a determinative, i.e. of a pre-, in-, or sufformative, and consequently devotes a considerable part of the monograph (Chap. 2) to a consideration of the function of this determinative in the formation of pluriliterals. As a result of this investigation he concludes that "the consonants most active as formatives were the liquids, the gutterals, and the semi-vowels y or w, any one of which occurs either as a prefix or a suffix to the root, or as an infix after either of the first two radicals. The labials b and p, the dental d, and the occassional palatal q are found only as sufformatives to the triliteral stem. The sibilants and s are constantly used as preformatives or sufformatives. The dental t is also used commonly as a preformative and occasionally as an infix; while in the later language it became also a sufformative, this use being developed from the former sub

stantive function of t as the abstract ending" (p. 54). Applying the results obtained from the study of the pluriliterals he classifies the determinatives, which were used to form triliterals from biliterals under the following "six classes of stems":

[blocks in formation]

VI. Unclassified stems: a) With liquid suffixes, 4, p. 2, 7.

b) With guttural suffixes, &, 17, п or y.

c) With sibilant suffixes, or D.

d) With labial suffixes,

9 or 3.

e) With occasional dental suffixes, 7 or A.

f) With occasional palatal suffix, P (rare

ly 5), (p. 70-71).

And the closing chapter contains a series of lists of triliterals in the different Semitic languages, which in the opinion of Dr. Hurwitz indicate most clearly their common origin in a primitive biliteral.

Even if the general correctness of the theory be admitted, it must be clear to anyone that the analysis of forms must be very difficult in view of the number of different possibilities with regard to the nature and position of the determinative, which are involved in the above classification and also because of the frequent uncertainty as to the original meanings of words. This Dr. Hurwitz willingly admits. Thus to cite a couple of examples the referring in accordance with Vc. of the root von Ni = 'to fight' to the primitive root on to be hot, and of "king to 'to go', cf. Ethiop. and Arab. la'aka and Heb: () is to say the least highly problematical. And we are very doubtful whether his explanation of the forms with infixed liquid is correct or whether some at least of these forms e.g. 'sceptre' should not rather be explained merely as examples of consonantal dissimilation. In a form such as iltarpar iltappar in Babylonian the latter explanation is undoubtedly correct. It must be observed however in justice to Dr. Hurwitz that his work seems to be as he claims conservative, when we consider the intricate and highly theoretical character of the subject, much more

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conservative than much which has been written upon it. This is shown in several ways. Thus he disregards "Indo-Germanic phenomena in the main body of the discussion" with a view to avoiding eirors into which earlier advocates of the theory have frequently fallen, believing that a kinship between these languages "though often postulated and theoretically possible is yet entirely unproved" (p. 7). He also narrows the scope of the discussion by carefully distinguishing between "root-determination" and "root-differentiation" two processes which are and should be treated as distinct and confines himself almost solely to a discussion of the former. With reference to the latter he lays down the principle "that in the process of rootdifferentiation at most, only two consonants of the first root can shift to form a new root, while the third remains constant; and this principle affords an additional proof of an original biliteral element" (pp. 33-4). Still more indicative of his conservative viewpoint is his contention that "when the proto-Semites were divided into the stocks known in history, the verb-roots had already become wholly or partly triliteralized, while at least some roots had even then been made pluriliteral" (p. 4). He does not believe that in the so-called 'weak stems' we have survivals of the original biliteral stem, holding rather with Lambert "that 20 and n are later than *sababa and *mawt and their biliteral character is, biologically speaking a reversion to type" (p. 17). This position is as he points out the reverse of that held by the 'biliteral school'.

Such considerations as these will tend to induce the thoughtful reader to give a careful scrutiny to Dr. Hurwitz' theory of the 'subconscious biliteral root'. "Briefly to summarize the situation", he argues "it can scarcely be denied that a comparison of such kindred forms as: 7 7, 8 and 7, 'to beat down, trample', Din,

דָמָה and דָמַם דוֹם ,to be turbulent, roar נָהֵם and הָמָה הָמַם

'to be silent', and b, л, and D, to be hot', legitimately leads to the postulation of a common biliteral base for these various interrelated forms" (p. 13). The further fact that in some forms of the weak verb the weak element is dropped e.g. (perf.), , a, and that this also takes place in the formation of denominatives from weak verbs (p. 19 f.) indicates according to the writer that the weak element was regarded as subordinate and as an addition to the primitive biliterate.

Whether we are ready to accept the statement of Dr. Hurwitz that 'the existence of such a prehistoric biliteral can no longer be doubted' or not, it must be admitted, as Professor Gottheil remarks at the conclusion of his brief introductory note that Dr. Hurwitz "has offered a solution that deserves the careful attention and scrutiny of his fellow-workers in the same field".

OSWALD T. ALLIS.

Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan, edited by ALBERT T. CLAY. New York: Privately printed. 1912.

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