BATH KOL (sip re daughter of the voice).
Under this name the Talmud, the later Targums, and the Rabbinical writers, make frequent mention of a kind of oracular voice, constituting the fourth grade of revelation, which, although it was an in strument of divine communication throughout the early history of the Israelites, was the most promi nent, because the sole, prophetic manifestation which existed during (and even after) the period of the second Temple. The Afia'rashim and the Gemara, cited in Reland's Anti9. Sacr. pt. ii. ch. ix, severally affirm that the Bath Kol is the voice which spoke to Abraham, Moses, David, Nebu chadnezzar, and others ; and the Targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem make the Bath Kol. appear in Gen. xxxviii. 26; Num. xxi. 6 ; and in other places. The treatise Sanhedrin, cited in Vitringa's Obsee Sacr. ii. 338, uses the words : From the death of Haggai, Zechariah, and Mala• chi, the Holy Spirit [Jim nn, which, according to the Jewish distinction, is only the second degree of the prophetical gift] was withdrawn from Israel ; but they nevertheless enjoyed the use of the Bath Kol.' The Jewish authorities are not agreed as to what the Bath Kol was, nor as to the precise reason of its designation, It is disputed whether the persons hearing the Bath Kol heard the very voice from heaven, or only a daughter of it—an echo of it ; whether, as thunder is often mentioned as a sign of the Divine presence, and as the word yoke ap pears to be used for thunder in Exod. ix. 23; Jer. x. 13; Ps. xxik. 3, the Bath Kol may not signify an articulate voice proceeding out of the thunder ; or whether, according to the explanation of Mai monides, the Bath Kol is when a man has such a strong imagination that he believes he hears a voice, from without himself.' As to the meaning of the name itself, passages are cited in Buxtorf's Lex. Tam. s. v. nz, and in Reland's Antiq. Sacr. 1. c., which shew that the daughter of the voice some times means the echo of a sound, and sometimes merely a primary sound itself. It is certain that the Peshito has sometimes rendered the simple Greek by daughter of the voice,' as in Acts xii. 22 ; I Tim. vi. 2o; Heb. iii. 15. It is neces sary, however, to remark that, according to a fundamental law of all Syro - Arabian grammar, these two words must either stand to each other in the relation of apposition, or of the state construct. But as apposition can only take place between equivalent and convertible terms, which 'daughter' and voice' are not, accordingly the alternative rendering of daughter voice proposed by Prideaux (which Home also has adopted, introduct. iv. p. 149) violates that rule ; because, in such an Eng lish combination, the word `daughter' has the force of an adjective; and the Hebrew language, possessing but few adjectives, would have ex pressed the sense of daughter voice (if that had been the sense intended to be conveyed by Bath Kol) by making Bath the last word, depending as a genitive on the former. For instance, what we
render the Holy Spirit is literally the spirit of holiness' in Hebrew. Thus daughter voice' is not an apposition in English, nor is it the trans lation of a state construct according to the Hebrew order ; but of a state construct in which Prideaux has taken the liberty of transposing the dependent word, i.e., of making daughter of the voice' be come, in effect, voice of a daughter.' Jennings also, in his yew/sit Anti/. b. i. c. 6, when he ren ders Bath Kol by puce vox, seu filia vocis,' only commits, in the first case, the same error more palpably; and is guilty of quite as great a violation of the first principle of Hebrew Grammar, as he would be, in the case of Latin, were he to trans latefiLia vocis by voice of the daughter.' The occasions on which it is alleged that the Bath Kol was heard after the death of Malachi are of very various degrees of solemnity or significance. Supposing the instances mentioned in Josephus xiii. io. 3), of the voice which announced to Hyrcanus that his sons had conquered chus, and (De Bell. Jud. vi. 5. 3) of the awful voice which was heard in the Temple, just before the capture of Jerusalem, to exclaim, eprei3Oev !—not to belong to the Bath Kol (as it is to be observed that the pseudo-Josephus ben Gorion has, in these cases, merely used the Hebrew word for voice), most of the other recorded stances fall far short of these in dignity; and some appear irreconcilable to even very credulous notions of the limits of Divine interposition. Only a few of them, however, can be classed with quite as trivial a species of divination as the Sortes gilianie, which is done in the unfair statement of Prideaux (Convex. ii. p. 354). The fact is, that most Christian writers who have treated of the Bath Kol have not been able to divest themselves of an undue desire to discredit its pretensions, in consequence of their fearing any comparison which might be instituted between it and the voices from heaven mentioned in the New Testament. Indeed, Lightfoot (in his Hor. Hebr. ad Matth. iii. 17) con siders all cases of Bath Kol to be either Jewish fables or devices of the devil. Instances of voices from heaven, on occasions outwardly very analo gous to some among the Jews, are recorded in the history of the early Christian church ; as the voice which was instrumental in making Alexander bishop of Jerusalem, and that which exhorted Polycarp to be of good courage (Eusebii Hirt. Eccles. vi. ii; iv. 15).
Two very learned dissertations on the Bath Kol may be found in Vitringa's Obser. Sa r. ii. pp. 341-363 ; and (by Danz) in Meuschen's Nov. Test. ex Tat/nude ithistratuin, pp. 351-378.—J. N.