the state of their text as we possess it.  Other things being equal, the authority of a version is manifestly inferior to that of a manuscript of the original.  But a version may have been made from a more ancient form of the original text than any which we have in existing manuscripts; and thus it may be indirectly a witness of great value.  The extremely literal version of Aquila (Chap. 16, No. 9) was made in the second century.  Could we recover it, its testimony to the Hebrew text, as it then existed, would be of great value.  The Septuagint version was made (at least begun) in the third century before Christ.  But its free character diminishes, and the impure state of its text greatly injures its critical authority.  Of the Targums, those of Onkelos and Jonathan alone are capable of rendering any service in the line of sacred criticism, and this is not of much account.

4.  We have also primary-printed editions of the Hebrew Bible—­those printed from Hebrew manuscripts, which the reader may see noticed in Horne’s Bibliographical List, Appendix to vol. 4.  The critical authority of these depends on that of the manuscripts used, which were all of the Masoretic recension.

5. Parallel passages—­parallel in a critical and not simply in a historical respect—­are passages which profess not merely to give an account of the same transaction, but to repeat the same text.  Well known examples are:  the song of David recorded in the twenty-second chapter of the second book of Samuel, and repeated as the eighteenth psalm; the fourteenth and fifty-third psalms, etc.  Such repetitions possess for every biblical student a high interest.  But in the critical use of them great caution is necessary.  It must be ascertained, first of all, whether they proceed from the same, or from a different writer.  In the latter case they are only historical imitations.  If, as in the case of the above-named passages, they manifestly have the same author, the inquiry still remains how the differences arose.  They may be different recensions of the same writer (in this case, of David himself), or of another inspired writer, who thus sought to adapt them more perfectly—­the fifty-third psalm, for example—­to the circumstances of his own day.  The gift of inspiration made the later writer, in this respect, cooerdinate in authority with the earlier.

Historical parallelism, such as those in the books of Chronicles, as compared with the earlier historical books, do not properly belong here.  Yet these also sometimes furnish critical help, especially in respect to names and dates.

6.  The quotations from the Old Testament in the New have for every believer the highest authority; more, however, in a hermeneutical than a critical respect.  For, as already remarked (Chap. 16, No. 6), the New Testament writers quote mostly from the Septuagint, and in a very free way.  The whole subject of these quotations will come up hereafter under the head of Biblical Interpretation.