can, and vulgate or zown; the Alexandrian is evidently derived from Origen's; the Vatican from that of Hefychius, and the Vulgate from that of Lucian.

Befides these there are two other editions, but of much inferior note. The Complutenfian and the Aldine; the Complutenfian, printed in the year 1515, adheres to no particular copy, but is taken out of all the readings that came nearest to the Hebrew text; and may therefore be looked upon rather as a new tranflation, than the ancient Greek verfion of the feventy. The Aldine, published at Venice in 1518, chiefly follows the Alexandrian, but contains many and frequent gloffes, together with mixtures from the other verfions, and therefore is of no great value.

The Syriac verfion was made not long after the time of the Apostles, according, as Walton tells us, to the conftant tradition of the Eastern churches; and is of great value; not only on account of its antiquity, but likewife because of the fcrupulous exactnefs with which it follows the Hebrew text.

Rabbi Saadias tranflated the Pentateuch into Arabic about the year 900; he was master of a Jewish academy at Sora, near Babylon, and was furnamed Gaon, or the Illuftrious, on account of his great erudition. But the Arabic verfion in the Polyglot of Paris is of much greater antiquity and value, b

according to Starck, and was made by Said Faiunen, a Coptic Monk. The very close agreement beween this verfion and the Greek fhews ftrongly that it could not have arifen from any reformation or fubfequent adapting of the one to the other; but that the Arabic interpreter had actually made his tranflation from the Greek verfion. It is true that this version does in fome places defert the lxx. to follow the Hebrew; but it will be found that these differences fubfift chiefly between it and the Vatican, whilst with the Alexandrian it preferves a very clofe coincidence. This laft circumftance is accounted for by confidering that Christianity passed from Egypt into Arabia; and that there was always the stricteft connection kept up between the Alexandrian and Arabian Bishops.

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The period affigned to the Ethiopic verfion is, according to moft critics, the Apoftolic age; and appears alfo to have been made from the Greek. The Chaldee paraphrafe of the Hagiographa, containing the Pfalms, was not made earlier than the year of Chrift 600, as Buxtorf thinks, who fays that, from the diverfity of ftyle, it appears to be the work of various authors. But the Talmudical traditions which are introduced or alluded to in this paraphrase, evidently prove its modern date: as for instance, the Ox facrificed by Adam, Pfalm Ixix. 32. The ox that feeds every day upon a thousand

mountains, Pfalm 1. 10. The cock which stands on the earth while his head touches the Heavens, Pfalm 1. II. The Rabbinical defcent of the tribes into the Red Sea, mentioned by Bartenora and Maimonides, Pfalm lxviii. 28. This paraphrase also seems to be a kind of cento, compofed of different interpretations made by different authors; for fometimes it adheres closely to the original, following it tamely word for word; at other times it deviates from it in a vague and wild commentary; and we often meet with two different explanations of the fame paffage combined together,

All the verfions are of great authority; even the Chaldee paraphrafe is of very confiderable value; and they furnish us with a variety of readings, from which the facred text may be corrected. For the diverfities of these translations must have arifen from diverfities in the original, produced either by the fimilarity of fome of the Hebrew letters; or from the copyists having transposed sometimes fingle letters, fometimes parts of words, and fometimes whole words, and even fentences; from their having injudiciously supplied, by conjecture, words or letters which the injuries of time or accident had effaced from the original, or their not fupplying them at all. There is likewife reafon to believe, that fome copies were made by an amanuenfis, who wrote down the words as they were given him by a reader without feeing the prototype; and that thus letters, and

even words, fomewhat alike in found, but very different in appearance, have been erroneously written for each other. See Kennicott's State of Heb. Text, page 24, 56, 341; and Prelim. Difc. to Lowth's Ifaiah, page 57, 58.

Doctor Owen indeed, in his enquiry into the. present state of the Septuagint verfion, adds another fource of various readings, to wit, the wilful corruption of the facred text by the Jews. However he may be thought to have established this charge in other parts of the Old Testament, it certainly does not feem to me to apply to the Book of Pfalms; from which though there are forty-nine quotations in the New Teftament, there is not one of them except Pfalm xl. 7. that does not agree in fense with the Hebrew and Greek, and most of them in the very words. Doctor Randolph, it is true, feems inclined to think that the falfe reading in Pfalm xvi. 10. is a wilful corruption by the Jews; but we can scarcely subscribe to this opinion, when we confider that the reading TTD thy holy one, in the fingular number, is not only fupported by 180 copies of Dr. Kennicott, and 96 of De Roffi's, but by the Targum alfo. And Mr. Street remarks that the following obfervation, made by De Roffi on this word, appears to him very curious; more efpecially as it tends to fhew the corruption to be a mere error of the transcribers. "The common reading

"itself has the points of the fingular number; and "many copies and editions, as well as Hooght's, ob"ferve in the margin that fod is redundant; but maother manuscripts and editions have as a Keri 770 thy boly one; very few copies have the points "of the plural reading."

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With refpect to Pfalm xl. 7. on which the greatest stress is laid, and the most direct charge, as far as relates to the Pfalms, of wilful corruption made against the Jews; it will appear that they are entirely innocent of the charge, and that in fact, the error lies in the Greek verfion, as it now stands. The Latin verfion of the Pfalter called the Vulgata Antiqua, or the Verfio Itala, was that which was in ufe in the Church until the time of St. Jerom; this version had been made from the Greek, but feveral errors having crept into it, St. Jerom corrected it from the lxx. at the inftance of Damafus, Bishop of the Roman Church, about the year 372. This is the Roman Pfalter, and is used to this day in the Vatican and Mediolanenfian Churches, and at St. Mark's Venice. Many errors having infinuated themselves into this edition likewife, he gave a new one about the year 384, while he lived at Bethlehem.

This latter edition of St. Jerom is called the Gal lican Pfalter, because used in the Gallican Church, having been introduced by Gregory of Tours, as