IX.III.2.  The study of the history of language is still at a very elementary stage in Hebrew.  In that which pertains to the lexicographer it would do well to include in its scope the proper names of the Old Testament; when it would probably appear that not only Parnach (Numbers xxxiv. 25) but also composite names such as Peda-zur, Peda-el, Nathana-el, Pazi-el, Eli-asaph, point less to the Mosaic than to the Persian period, and have their analogies in the Chronicles.  On the other hand, the prepositions and particles would have to be examined the use of the prepositions Beth and Lamed in the Priestly Code is very peculiar.  That would lead further, to syntax; or better still, to rhetoric and style—­a diffcult and little cultivated field of study, but one of great importance and lending itself readily to comparative treatment.  This treatment yields the most far-reaching results in the case of those parallels which have an undoubted and direct relation to each other.  The dependence of the Priestly Code on the Jehovist cannot be more strikingly demonstrated than by comparing its CDYQ, Genesis vi. 9, with the CDYQ BDWR HZH, of Genesis vii. 1 (JE.).  The plural DRWT is quite on a line with the MYNYM, and the (MY H)RC, of the Rabbis, and the SPERMATA of Galatians iii. 15; it does not denote the successive generations, but contemporaries, the contemporaneous individuals of one and the same generation.

From words we are brought back to things again by noting that the age of the word depends in many cases on the introduction of the thing.  The name BTR in the Song of Songs, for example, presupposes the cultivation of the malobathron in Syria and Palestine.  The Priestly Code enumerates colours, stuffs, goldsmiths’ work and jewels, which nowhere occur in the older literature:  along with the Book of Ezekiel it is the principal quarry in the Old Testament for the history of art; and this is the less likely to be due to chance, as the geographical horizon of the two works is also the same.  There is also some contact in this respect, though to a less degree, between the Priestly Code and Isaiah xl.-lxvi., and this must doubtless receive a historical explanation in the circumstances of the Babylonian age. l

********************************************* 1.  On Canticles cf.  Schuerer’s Theol.  Lit.  Z., 1879, p. 31.  It also, by the names of plants and similar details mentioned in it, is an important source for the history of external civilisation.  In Isaiah liv. 11, read with the Septuagint NPK:  instead of the meaningless PWK:, and )DNYK instead of )BNYK. ********************************************

CHAPTER X. THE ORAL AND THE WRITTEN TORAH.

What importance the written letter, the book of the law, possessed for the Jews, we all know from the New Testament.  Of ancient Israel, again, it is said in the introductory poem of Goethe’s West-Oestlicher Divan, that the word was so important there, because it was a spoken word.  The contrast which Goethe evidently perceived is really characteristic, and deserves some further attention.