[In concluding the first article in this work on the botany of the Bible, the author thinks it desir able to state the mode in which he has studied the subject, and the grounds upon which he has formed his opinions, whether they agree with or differ from those of previous writers. He has already related, in his 'Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine,' that his attention was first directed, to the identifi cation of the natural products mentioned in ancient authors, in consequence of being requested by the Medical Board of Bengal to investigate the medi cinal plants and drugs of India, for the purpose of ascertaining how far the public service might be supplied with medicines grown in India, instead of importing them nearly all from foreign countries. In effecting this important object, his first endea vour was to make himself acquainted with the different drugs which the natives of India are them selves in the habit of employing as medicines. For this purpose he had to examine the things them selves, as well as to ascertain the names by which they were known. He therefore directed specimens of every article in the bazars to be brought to him, whether found wild in the country or the produce of culture—whether the result of home manufacture or of foreign commerce—whether of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom—whether useful as food or as medicine, or employed in any of the numerous arts which minister to the wants or com forts of man. In order to acquire a knowledge of their names, he caused the native works on Materia Medica to be collated by competent hakeems and moonshees, and the several articles arranged under the three heads of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. The works collated were chiefly the 4 Mukhzun -al - Udwieh,' Tohfat-al Moomeneen," Ihtiarut Buddie,' and She reef,' all of them in Persian, but consisting princi pally of translations from Arabic authors. These were themselves indebted for much of their infor mation respecting drugs to Dioscorides; but to his descriptions the Persians have fortunately appended the Asiatic synonymes, and references to some Indian products not mentioned in the works of the Arabs. The author himself made a catalogue of the whole, in which, after the most usually received, that is, the Arabic name, the several synonymes in Persian, Hindee, &c., as well as in metamor phosed Greek, were inserted. He traced the articles as much as possible to the plants, animals, and countries whence they were derived; and at tached to them their natural history names, when ever he was successful in ascertaining them.
Being without any suitable library for such in vestigations, and being only able to obtain a small copy of Dioscoride5, he was in most cases obliged to depend upon himself for the identification of the several substances. The results of several of these investigations are briefly recorded in his observa tions on the history and uses of the different natural families of plants, in his Illustrations of the Botany of the Himalayan Mountains.' The author also made use of these materials in his Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo medicine,' in tracing different Indian products from the works of the Arabs into those of the Greeks, even up to the time of Hippo crates. He inferred that tropical products cquld only travel from south to north, and that the Hindoos must have ascertained their properties, and used them as medicines, before they became sufficiently famous to be observed and recorded by the Greeks. Having thus traced many of these Eastern products to the works of almost contem porary authors, he was led to conclude that many of them must be the same as those mentioned in the Bible, especially as there is often considerable resemblance between their Arabic and Hebrew names (Essay, p. 138).
Although, like Hasselquist, Alpinus, Forskal, and others, the author studied these subjects in Eastern countries, yet he differs from them all in the circumstances under which he pursued his in quiries. His investigations were carried on while he was resident in the remotest of the Eastern nations known in early times, who were probably among the first civilized, and who are still not only acquainted with the various drugs and their names, but possess an ancient literature, in which many of these very substances are named and arranged.
Having obtained the drugs, heard their names applied by the natives, read their descriptions, and traced them to their plants, he formed many of his opinions from independent sources. It may, there fore, be considered a strong confirmation of the correctness of his results when they agree with those of previous inquirers; when they differ, it must be ascribed to the peculiar process by which they have been obtained.—J. E. R.] I sonally acquainted with Bayle, Basnage, and Jurieu in Holland, and Sir L Newton in this country. William HI. sought to detain him in England, but he preferred to return to Geneva, where he spent the rest of his life as honorary librarian to the public library. He died in 1767. His contributions to biblical science, besides the share he had, which was considerable, in the French translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1726, consist in some exegetical essays of no great moment, and an Essai sur Apocalypse, in which he throws doubts on the claim of that I book to be the work of the Apostle John, suggests that it was written during the reign of Nero, and advances the hypothesis, that it is to be viewed as an expansion of our Lord's prediction concerning the destruction of the Jewish state. This essay is considered as forming a sort of epoch in the history of Apocalyptic interpretation (Stuart on the Ape., P• 371: Edin. 1847). It was translated into Eng lish, and was published in 1730 under the title of A Discourse, Historical and Critical, on the Revela tion. [TwELLs.] A volume of treatises, part polemical and part exegetical, from his pen ap peared also in English, translated by Dr. E. Har wood, under the title, Reflections on the Eucharist, on Idolatry, etc., 8vo, 177o. Its critical infor mation is not very profound, and the opinions it expresses on some theological subjects abundantly free' (Orme). This was followed in 1774 by another volume, also translated by Dr. Harwood, entitled Miscellanies on Historical, Theological, and Critical Subjects. Two volames of his Oeuvres Posthumes were published in London in 1773. Herzog (Real. Ency. s. v.) calls him a geistreicher dilettant ' in theology.—W. L. A.
ABBA ('Apia" Kati) is the Hebrew word ZN, father, under a form peculiar to the Chaldee idiom. The Aramaic dialects do not possess the definite article in the form in which it is found in Hebrew. They compensate for it by adding a syllable to the end of the simple noun, and thereby produce a distinct form, called by grammarians the emphatic, or definitive, which is equivalent (but with much less strictness in its use, especially in Syraic) to a noun with the article in Hebrew. This emphatic form is also commonly used to express the vocative case of our language—the context alone determining when it is to be taken in that sense (just as the noun with the article is sometimes similarly used in Hebrew). Hence this form is appropriately employed in all the passages in which it occurs in the New Testament (Mark xiv. 36; Rom. viii. is; Gal. iv. 6): in all of which it is an invocation, Why Abba is, in all these passages, immediately rendered by b rartjp, instead of alrep, may perhaps be in part accounted for on the supposition that, although the Hellenic (as well as the classical) Greek allows the use of the nominative with the article for the vocative (Winer, Gram. des Neatest. Sprach. g 29), the writers of the New Testament preferred the former, because the article more adequately represented the force of the emphatic form.
It is also to be observed that, in the usage of the Targums, t41t4, even when it is the subject of au ordinary proposition, may mean my father; and that it is for this reason the word is not used with the suffix of the first person singular. Lightfoot has endeavoured (Hone Hebr. ad Marc. xiv. 361 to