which will materially aid us in the acquisition of the Arabic has a value which words cannot express.

What, then, are the relations between the Hebrew and the Arabic? Most intimate and fundamental. The Arabs have a common ancestry with the Jews, partly from Abraham through Ishmael, and partly from Heber through his son Joktan. Some of the Arab tribes most clearly spoke the same language with the Israelites, while Moses was leading the latter through the wilderness. At what time there was a divergence, we are not informed. But in numerous and in important points, the two languages yet remain identical.

The affinity of languages is sought by one class of philologists in their words; in their grammar, by another class. According to the former, words are the matter of language, and grammar its form or fashioning; according to the latter, grammar is an essential, inborn element of a language, so that a new grammar cannot be separately imposed upon a people. But whichever of these methods is adopted, in order to determine the affinity of two languages, the result in the case before us is the same. The Hebrew and Arabic are kindred both in words and in grammar, both lexically and grammatically. In an Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, about one half of the words are Hebrew, with the same radical letters. One writer enumerates more than three hundred names of the most common objects in nature which are the same in both, without by any means exhausting the list. The roots in both languages are generally dissyllabic, lying in the verb rather than in the noun. The two languages abound in guttural sounds. The oblique cases of pronouns are appended to the verb, the noun, and to particles. The verb has but two tenses. The gender is only twofold. The cases are designated by means of prepositions. The genitive is expressed by a change in the first noun, not in the second. The noun and the verb do not admit of being compounded. There is a certain simplicity in the syntax, and Egypt, in Nubia along the whole course of the Nile from Egypt to Sennaar, by the Arabs and Moors in all the towns of the Barbary States and by the wandering Bedouins, in a part of Biledulgerid, in Fezzan, in Sahara, in part of the kingdoms of Kordofan, Darfour, and of Bornou Proper, in different States on the coast of Zanguebar, in Socotra, in a great part of Madagascar, in Malta, and in some of the islands of the Indian archipelago. There are various dialects of the vulgar Arabic, but they do not differ greatly from one another. See Balbi's Allas Ethnographique du Globe, Paris, 1826.

the diction is, in the highest degree, unperiodic. In the Hebrew Lexicon which we here daily use, almost every Hebrew root has a corresponding Arabic one, with the same radicals, and generally with the same signification.

In promoting, therefore, the study of Hebrew in this country, we are taking a most direct means to spread the glorious gospel of Christ, not only where the Arabic is the dominant language, but wherever Islamism has penetrated, that is, from Calcutta to Constantinople, and from the Caspian sea to our American colony in Liberia. A thorough knowledge of Hebrew will remove at least one half the difficulty of acquiring the Arabic. It will introduce us to the same modes of writing and of thought, to the same poetic diction, and in part to the same material objects, the same countries-and the same historical associations. In this sense, the Hebrew is not a dead language. By its most intimate connection with the Arabic, and, I may add, with the Syriac, it is still spoken at the foot of Mount Ararat, on the site of old Nineveh, at Carthage, in the ancient Berytus, and where Paul was shipwrecked. It is reviving in Egypt, and the Bible and the Tract Societies are spreading its literature on the wings of every wind.

There are two other points upon which, did the time admit, some remarks might be offered, viz. the light which a critical examination of the Hebrew Scriptures might be expected to throw on the systems of christian theology; and on the pressent increasing tendency in some portions of the church to undervalue the Old Testament and to degrade it from any connection with the New-thus in effect subverting the authority of both; but I forbear.

It is with unfeigned diffidence, and not without fear and trembling, that I enter upon the duties before me. My associations in this place are those of a learner in the presence of venerated teachers both among the living and the dead. The course of study is, indeed, delightful-and fond and ardent hopes might be indulged by one just entering upon it, yet the experience of almost every day warns us that the fairest earthly hopes bloom only for the grave. The work too is one where presumption and ignorance have no place-interpreting the thoughts of Heaven-endeavoring to explain the mind of the Holy Spirit. Yet that Spirit, humbly sought, giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, increaseth strength.

ARTICLE VII.

INQUIRY RESPECTING THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF MATTHEW'S GOSPEL, AND THE GENUINENESS OF THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THE SAME; WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO MR. NORTON'S VIEW OF THESE SUBJECTS AS EXHIBITED IN HIS TREATISE ON THE GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPELS.

By M. Stuart, Prof. Sac. Lit. Theol. Sem. Andover.

1. Introductory Remarks.

MR. NORTON has so connected these two subjects, in his Treatise, that it is difficult to separate the one from the other, and yet preserve a special regard to what he has advanced respecting them. He supposes that the first two chapters of our present Gospel of Matthew are an interpolation. He admits, indeed, that they have always made a part of our Greek Translation (as he names it) of Matthew; but he supposes 'the original Hebrew copy of Matthew to have been augmented, by the addition of the chapters in question before it was translated. These chapters,' he thinks, may have been a separate document at first; and this being small, and apparently constituting a natural introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, (which originally omitted the genealogy and the history of Jesus' infancy), they were transcribed by some copyist into one or more Mss. of the Hebrew Original, and thus came at length to be blended with it, and to be written in more or less of future copies as belonging to it.' Some one or more of these copies, thus interpolated, came, as he supposes, into the hands of the Greek Translator of Matthew, who gave to this Gospel the form which it now presents; Addit. Notes, p. liii.

In the discussion of the questions before us, I shall begin with that which respects the language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written, and then make some remarks on the alleged interpolation of the first two chapters.

Mr. Norton, like Campbell, Olshausen, and some other writers, seems to consider the question so clear in respect to the Hebrew original of Matthew, that he declines even going into

any extended argument respecting it. He simply refers to several of the Christian fathers, who have expressed an opinion in favour of such an original; and then adds, that as there is no intrinsic improbability against this, we must believe it, unless we reject the testimony of all Christian antiquity.' He moreover alleges, that nothing has been objected to this testimony, which he regards as of sufficient force to justify a protracted discussion;' Add. Notes, p. xlv.

In terms scarcely less confident than these, does Olshausen express himself, in his work on the Genuineness of the four canonical Gospels, p. 28. He even goes so far as to say: "We have scarcely a testimony for the existence of Matthew, if we deny that his Gospel was written in Hebrew." All this is said too, by a writer who has laboured abundantly, and much to the purpose also, to shew that Matthew's Greek Gospel is quoted from the very earliest times. He even lays it down (p. 93) as incontrovertible, that in the time of Papias,' i. e. very little after the close of the first century, the Greek translation of Matthew was every where current in the church, and constituted a part of the canonical four Gospels.'

Another German critic, J. E. C. Schmidt, Professor of. Theology, etc., at Giessen, in his Historico-critical Introduction to the New Testament (Giessen, 1818), in a style appropriate to a certain class of Neologists in Germany, declares, that if we do not admit the Hebrew original of Matthew, he knows not how to prove at all that this publican ever wrote a Gospel;' Pref. p. iv.

If assurance of being in the right could make a cause good, we might regard it, then, as quite beyond the reach of probability, that any doubts which are of serious moment can be raised respecting the views which these authors, and others of the like sentiment, have defended. After all, however, we may with propriety say, that any question ought surely to be made very clear, before critics should venture to assert so categorically as has been done in the present case.

It is not a fact, at any rate, that all who have studied this subject, and written upon it, have come to the same result as the authors just named. If there are critics entitled to high respect, (which I readily concede), on the list of those who have adopted such views as Mr. Norton, yet there are others deserving of equal deference, who are found on an opposite

Omitting the ancient writers, we find among modern critics who have declared in favour of a Hebrew original, Corrodi, Michaelis, Weber, Bolten, Adler, Storr, Haenlein, Eichhorn, Bertholdt, Kuinoel, Schmidt, Harwood, Owen, Campbell, A. Clarke, and Olshausen, authors comparatively recent; also Simon, Mill, Cave, Grotius, Bellarmin, Casaubon, Walton, Tillemont, Elsner, and others, of preceding times. But on the other hand, as being in favour of a Greek original, we can appeal to Erasmus, Paraeus, Calvin, Le Clerc, Fabricius, Pfeiffer, Lightfoot, Beausobre, Basnage, Wetstein, Rumpaeus, Hoffman, Leusden, Masch, Vogel, C. F. Schmid, Lardner, Jortin, Hey, Jones, Gabler, Paulus, and others. Besides these, the leading works which have recently been written on the literature of the New Testament, I mean the Introductions of Hug, De Wette, and Schott, defend a Greek original.

One would be naturally prone to think, on looking at this second list of names, that something worthy of notice may be or has been said, in favour of an opinion adopted by men of such a cast as these. However, as it is no part of my design. to make an appeal to authorities, in respect to a question of such a nature as that before us, I shall endeavour to exhibit the real state of facts in regard to it, so far as I have been able to form an acquaintance with them.

2. Testimony of the Christian Fathers.

First of all, let us attend to the testimonies of the ancient Christian Fathers, with respect to the language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written. On these, great stress has often been laid; or rather, as I might truly say, the question has been oftentimes assumed as decided, or frequently been declared to be decided beyond the reach of any appeal, by the testimonies which the ancients have bequeathed to us.

The first and most important testimony is that of PAPIAS ; who was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia of Asia Minor, and flourished at the close of the first century and the beginning of the second. None of his works are now extant, excepting a few fragments preserved in quotations. Eusebius has given a particular account of him, in his Hist. Ecc. III. 39, and Jerome in his Lib. de Viris Illust. c. 18. It appears that he wrote five books, entitled Λογίων Κυριακῶν ̓Εξηγήσεις, i. e. explanations or interpretations of divine oracles or sayings. Irenaeus