Progresc—Armed with all these and many i.)ther helps,* and embarrassed by so many men tioned and unmentioned difficulties, the textual critic strives with the question, What was the earliest written form of the Hebrew Bible? He is very far yet from being able to give an entirely satisfactory answer; at the same time it cannot be denied that he has made mem orable advances along a path where he will hardly have need to retrace his steps. Knot after knot has been untangled, obscurity after obscurity cleared up, and a broad light diffused over the sacred page. True, the solution of one problem is often found to open up a still pro founder problem, and doubtless many surprises are yet in store for the student; but enough has been securely fixed to malce the need for a new version of the Old Testament as impera tive now as it was before the revision of 1885. To convince oneself, it should be enough to compare the successive editions of the noble work of Kautzsch and his co-workers, 'Die Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments,' first issued in 1890, then in 1894, of which — so rapid was the encroachment of new knowledge in this ancient detnesne — it was found neces sary in 1909-10 to issue a third cvollig neugear beiteteo edition.
At the very best, however, when all the doctnnentary aids have been ex ploited to the utmost, there will still be a con siderable residuum of dissatisfaction. Often enough the critic must feel that the text before him, in none of its attested forms, can be the original, that some primitive error lies still farther back, disturbing or hiding the sense first intended. His plight is that of the phy sician who divines some deep organic malfor mation or perversion, which nothing but the knife can relieve. In such a case the textual critk is driven in Last resort to conjectural emendation, °not only a right but a duty of the exegete* (Dillmann, 'Bibeltext.,> in P R E). His own spirit thoroughly saturated with his author's modes of thought and expression, he must divine vvhat the latter would have said in the context, under the ascertained conditions of language and feeling. Of course, conjectures will almost surely go astray,— there is only_one way to be right, many ways to be wrong. How ever, there will be a thousand of the critic's peers, all eager to detect and expose any error he may commit. Hence, his mistakes, though many, will be harmless, while his guesses, though few, that command acceptance, will be so many points of vantage gained in the slow campaign of science. Conjectuml emendation must tn be reconciled to frequent failure and rare success, but the latter tnay be like the lucky number in a lottery, of priceless value.
Text-emenders.— Such textual reconstruc tion has been plied by Bickel! and Duhm and others under guidance of metrical considera tions, and by the pioneer Cheyne in the interest of his North-Arabian theory (adopted from Winckler), as the majority believe, to an ex cessive extent. To what lengths a sober editor may find himself led to go may be seen in Karl Budde's booklet,
Illustrations.— A striking example of the false vocalization of the consonantal text is the following: In Jer. xvii, 9, occurs the familiar pronouncement, °The heart is deceit ful above all (things) and desperately wiciced; who can know it?" The word rendered °des perately wicked° is in consonants ' - n - sh, vocalized by the Masorites, 'a-n-u-sh; but the Septuagint evidently vocalized it 'e-n-o-sh (man) and accordingly translated thus: • °Deep is the heart beyond all things, and is man, and who shall know him?° Strange as it may sound, it was accepted, and when Irenzus was challenged by the Gnostics to prove the hurnan ity of Jesus, he appealed (IV, 55) to this pas sage: °Again there are those [prophets] who say, He is a man, and who shall know him? 'Homo est, et quis cognoscet eum?J° Again in Hos. vii, 6, we read: °Their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire.° Here the letters '-p-h-m have been pointed to read 'Ophthens, but on reading 'opp'hem (with Targum and Syriac) we obtain the couplet: All the night smoulders their anger, Mornings it burneth like flame of fire.
The change of °anger° into ubalcer* (in Hebrew) is like turning °ripple° into °rifle° in English. Once more, the consonant-group rn-z-r-y-m, as vocalized in the MT, is pro nounced Mizroim and translated Egypt, the apparent dual ending being referred incorrectly to Upper and Lower Egypt. In Assyria on the monuments it appears often, in various forms, as Mizir, Mizri, Muzri, Muzur, Muzuru, with many cognates, and means apparently border, frontier. As early as 1834, Dr. C. T. Beke deduced from Exodus that Mizraim was not always Egypt, but like so many Anglo-Saxon seeds of thought, this fell among thorns and was choked, though noted by Ewald. In 1874, Schrader renewed the observation, but not till about 1890, in a series of memoirs, did Winck ler make clear from the inscriptions the exist ence of both a North-Syrian and a North Arabian Muzri, which required the frequent change of the Masoretic vocalization from Misraim to Mizrim, and draws along with it a series of revisions both of the Hebrew text and of our whole conception of Israel's history. In particular, Winckler, followed by Cheyne, would find in this confusion of the two Muzris the single and simple origin of the legend of Israel's sojourn on the banks of the Nile. Still further, to understand what Cheyne's gen eral text-revision eCritica Biblica)) may ac complish, consider, not indeed the mere jumble of words in the Authorized Version, but the much improved American Standard Version of Is. vi, 3. °And if there be yet a tenth in it, it also shall in turn be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled; SO the holy seed is the stock thereof." But the amended text yields this quatrain: And should there yet be a remnant therein, It shall again lie destroyed.
For consumption shall be on its plants, And failure cif fruit on its sprouts.
A few among countl6s such examples may show at once the importance, the difficultY and the necessity of a reconstruction of the Hebrew text.