*w. Hpfcji a* i r«< THE INCAPABLE OF DEFENCE, AND THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF BIBLICAL TRANSLATION VINDICATED : IN ANSWER TO PROFESSOR LEE'S "REMARKS DR. HENDERSON'S APPEAL TO THE BIBLE SOCIETY, ON THE SUBJECT OF THE TURKISH VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, PRINTED AT PARIS IN 1819." BY THE AUTHOR OF THE APPEAL. 'YITOTYIIQSIN EXE 'YHAINONTQN AOrQN. 2 Tim. i. 13. NON TALI AUXILIO, NEC DEFENSORIBUS ISTIS TEMPUS EGET. Virgil. LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. AND J. RIVINGTON, st. paul's church-yard, Waterloo-place, and 148, strand. MDCCCXXV, LONDON: PRINTED BY R. GILBERT, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. TO THE READER. Lest it should be supposed from the length of time which has elapsed since the appearance of Professor Lee's Remarks, that the author of the following reply has experienced some serious difficulties in meeting the arguments contained in that pamphlet, he considers it due, injustice to himself and his cause, to apprize the reader, that his MS. was forwarded from Russia a few days after the date affixed to the Preface ; but, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, its publication has been delayed till now. BRIGHTON, Sept, 19, 1825. a2 PREFACE, That the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society had been grossly imposed upon in regard to Ali Bey's Turkish Version of the New Testament, was evident to my mind soon after I commenced the perusal of it ; but I certainly had not the most distant conception that their adoption of it was so unqualified and irrevocable, as to induce them to resist an honest and direct attempt to place in a proper light the egregious errors and inconsistencies with which that volume abounds. Such, however, was found to be the case; and neither the remon- strances which were made in private, nor a public act of separation from the Society, pro- duced any efficient change in the measures resorted to for proceeding in the distribution vi PREFACE. of the copies. Under these circumstances, I conceived it to be my duty, as a last effort to arrest the progress of corruption, and provoke a keen and unslumbering jealousy over such ver- sions as might be recommended to the Society, to publish an Appeal to the Members of that Institution, in which, besides inserting the re- marks originally submitted to the Committee, I made several additional disclosures on the subject of the work, and endeavoured to bring the whole before the public in such a manner as to satisfy every candid mind, that it is alto- gether unworthy of those who published it, and who were afterwards advised to persist in circu- lating it among Mohammedan unbelievers. Considering the strong feeling which existed against the individual who had thus dared to impugn the Turkish version, and the marked determination that had been manifested to sup- port its character, it was impossible not to ex- pect that some public notice would be taken of the Appeal by which its errors were exposed, and that some attempt would be made to in- validate the arguments contained in it; but, I must confess, I had no anticipation that I was 13 PREFACE. vii to be attacked by the Arabic Professor at Cam- bridge, at the head of a regularly marshalled army of " learned Orientalists," part of which, according to the Eclectic Reviewer *, consisted of a phalanx of no less note than " the whole Asiatic Society of Paris." When first apprized of the fact, that so formidable a body was bear- ing down upon me, it was natural enough to be conscious of some momentary feelings of alarm ; but I no sooner obtained a view of its real strength, and the nature and disposition of its operations, than I perceived, that whatever abilities the different champions might indivi- dually possess, and however formidable it might be to meet them in any other field, they were, on the present occasion, enlisted in a combat for which they had not been previously disci- plined, and that there was, therefore, no serious cause of apprehension respecting the result, With the critical theories of Professor Lee, the public were previously acquainted ; his re- marks on my Appeal disclose to us the opinions which he holds on the subject of Biblical trans- * June 1824, p. 536. viii PREFACE. lation, many of them novel, and most of them having a direct tendency to cast the Word of God " in a mould accommodated to individual fancy and conceit/' than which nothing is more to be deprecated by all who feel a solicitude to preserve that word pure and incorrupt, and transmit it to our fellow-men in possession of as much of its native garb and energy, as the di- versity of languages will possibly allow. Indeed, so completely are the principles advanced in the Remarks at variance with sound Biblical criti- cism, enlightened Christian taste, and the prac- tice of the best translators in every age, that were it not for the glare of Oriental learning by which they are surrounded, I might safely have left them to be confronted with the naked and unsupported statements contained in the Appeal, in order to produce a satisfactory conviction in the mind of the reader, that they are equally insufficient to exculpate the particular version in question, as they are perfectly inadmissible in regard to any other translation of the Holy Scriptures. That the Author should have risked his reputation as a scholar, a theologian, and a critic, by the use of such arguments as have been selected in defence of Ali Bey, is really PREFACE. IX incomprehensible : that the futility and inepti- tude of these arguments should be detected, and the dangerous consequences pointed out, which are likely to result from an adoption of the Professor's principles by Biblical translators, or a blind deference to his advice on the part of those who are engaged in publishing new versions of the Scriptures, is a duty imperiously binding on those whose talents and responsibi- lities call them to the task. If any hints, con- tained in the following pages, should be the means of exciting greater attention to the sub- ject, and lead to an able discussion of its dif- ferent parts, by those who are thoroughly versed in Biblical criticism and interpretation, I shall consider one of their principal ends as gained ; whatever may be the result in regard to the Paris edition of the Turkish Testament, or what- ever opinion may be formed of my concern in the affair. Towards the Author of the Remarks, per- sonally, I am not conscious of entertaining any feelings of an unfriendly or unchristian nature. If I have made a liberal use of his name, it was because I could not avoid it; and even the words X PREFACE. " opponent" and " antagonist" (I do not recol- lect that I have used " adversary") which some- times occur, are employed merely to vary the mode of expression, not to indicate any thing like a feeling of rancour or spleen. In the dis- cussion, however, of questions like the present, it is of inferior consideration what may be thought of our individual attitude towards one another. In the course of a few years at most, we shall both have gone to give in our account to the Searcher of hearts, and Author of that Book to which the controversy has respect ; but the effects of this controversy in its influence on new versions, or the revision of old ones, will, I am persuaded, continue to operate, either in guarding the sacred diction of Scripture from desecration, or in surrendering it to the plastic hand of fancy and error, to the obscuration of Divine truth, and the beguilement of the pre- cious and immortal souls of men. I sincerely regret that my answer has been swelled to such an immoderate length, and that I should have been under the necessity of in- commoding the reader by the frequent introduc- tion of Oriental words ; but the former has been PREFACE. XI occasioned by the detail into which Professor Lee has gone in his Remarks, and the latter has unavoidably arisen out of the nature of the sub- ject. As the passage in Ali Bey's version in which the Lamb solemnly interdicts his own worship (Rev. xxii. 8, 9.) has been cancelled, and no attempt has been made in its vindication, it was considered unnecessary to say more respecting an error of such alarming magnitude. I may here be permitted, however, to observe, in reply to Professor Lee's pointed query, Whether I was or was not in possession of the fact of its cancelment at the time I published my Appeal ? that I certainly was acquainted with it ; but he cannot be ignorant, that the document which disclosed the error, was written as far back as the month of March, 1820, and he has shewn no good cause why I should have suppressed this part of the document when inserting it in the Appeal, especially as I there * explicitly refer to the cancelling of the sheet, as the only step which the Committee then deemed neces- sary in purification of the edition. * Pases 50, 51. Xll PREFACE. With regard to the culpability with which I am charged by the Professor for not making enquiries relative to the errata, or the further fate of Ali's version, I can only say, that I never met with any great encouragement to in- stitute them. The public are informed, indeed, by a Gentleman who appears not to be altoge- ther unacquainted with the arcana of the busi- ness, that " the cancels and errata were fully agreed upon at a meeting of the Sub Commit- tee held Sept. 9 5 1822 ; and they were then forwarded to Dr. Henderson * ;" but I can assure him, that no such documents ever reached me ; and, if it had not been that my worthy col- league, Dr. Paterson, was furnished with a copy of said errata and cancels on his visit to Paris in the spring of last year, I might have remained till this moment perfectly ignorant of their na- ture and extent. It is also stated in the list of Committee Meetings, inserted in Professor Lee's Appendix, that it was resolved by the Committee, Jan. 20, 1823, that " copies" of " the cancel leaves and Table of Errata/' " be sent to places whither # Eclectic Review, ut sup. p. 533, PREFACE. xiii Turkish Testaments have been forwarded/" Whether this resolution has been conscienti- ously carried into effect with regard to other places, I have not the opportunity of knowing ; but so much is certain, that no such cancels or Tables of Errata have ever been sent to Russia, nor have any steps been taken to liberate the copies of Ali Bey's New Testament which have been put under arrest in this country. With respect to the Table of Errata itself, which, we are informed, consisted originally of 219 faults, but was reduced, at the instance of Professor Lee and others, to the moderate num- ber of 49, I can only observe, that I have seen no reason to alter my opinion as stated in the Appeal (p. 57), that it must " amount, if any thing like justice be done to the text, to nearly a third part of the volume/' What I mean by doing justice to the text, is, to use the words of the Committee in that part of their resolution of Aug. 9, 1821, which relates to the Old Testa- ment, to "purify it of every thing extraneous or supplementary, as far as the genius of the Turkish language will admit." Until this be done, I must sustain my charge, that " there xiv PREFACE. IS NOT A PAGE, NOR SCARCELY A VERSE IN THE VOLUME THAT DOES NOT CONTAIN SOMETHING OR OTHER OF AN OBJECTION- ABLE NATURE." I now leave it with the candid reader, after perusing the following pages?, to say whether there be not serious cause for apprehension, that, if such versions or editions are sanctioned by the Bible Society, a just handle will be given to those who are hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues, to renew the language of the Rhemish translators : " To say nothing of their intolerable liberty and licence to change the accustomed callings of God, angels, men, places, and things, used by the Apostles, and all antiquity in Greek, Latin, ^and all other languages of Christian nations, into new names, sometimes falsely, and always ridiculously : to Jit and frame the phrase of Holy Scripture after the forme of prophane writers, sticking not for the same, to supply, adde, alter, or diminish, as freely as if they translated Livy, Virgil, or Terence. Having no religious respect to keep either the majesty, or sincere simplicity of that venerable style of PREFACE. XV Christ's Spirit, as S. Augustine speaketh; which kind the Holy Spirit did chuse of infinite wis- dom, to have the divine mysteries rather uttered in, than any other more delicate, much less in this meretricious manner of writing/' E. H. ST. PETERSBURG!*, Sept. 24, 1824. THE TURKISH TESTAMENT INCAPABLE OF DEFENCE. CHAPTER I. Bearing of the Controversy on modern Versions of the Scrip- tures. Classification of Versions. The Verbal condemned. Karaite Tatar Manuscript. Importance of literal Versions. Character of Castalio's Translation. The Authority of Jerome and Dathe improperly alleged by Professor Lee. The Design of Dathe? 's Version. Specimen of its Manner. Question not to be decided by the Practice of liberal Translators. In publishing my Appeal on the subject of the Turkish Scriptures, I had a twofold object in view : first, the suppression of an edition of the New Testament which I conceived to contain a representation of that invaluable portion of Divine Truth equally unworthy of its high and sacred character, and of the Society whose Committee had been advised to publish it; and, secondly, the excitement of public attention to the subject B of Biblical translations in general, the importance of their being conducted on properly matured principles, and the necessity of submitting such versions to a severe and thorough scrutiny as are adopted for circulation among those who have hitherto been destitute of the sacred oracles. Whatever may be the result as to the former of these points, — whether the remaining copies of the Paris edition of Ali Bey's Turkish New Tes- tament will still be put into the hands of the Infidels, or, whether the good sense, the correct taste, and the Christian principle of British divines, and a numerous body of British Chris- tians, will prove superior to the influence of a vague and superficial opinion obtained from gen- tlemen, skilled indeed in the Oriental languages, but who, there is reason to believe, are little habituated to the study of the Bible : — still, the less ostensible, but more important object will, I doubt not, be attained ; and should this anticipa- tion be realized, the circumstance will prove a source of satisfaction to my mind, far outweigh- ing the trouble occasioned by the controversy; or the odium attempted to be thrown on my character by those who may have espoused the more popular, but totally untenable side of the question. It was therefore with much pleasure that I found Professor Lee had allotted a considerable 13 part of the first chapter of his Remarks to the investigation of just principles of translation ; and, as the subject is confessedly of essential moment, especially in the present day, when so many new versions of the Bible are preparing, I hope I may claim the indulgence of the reader while I devote a few pages to it, in order more determinately to fix the real state of the question to be discussed in the following chapters, and furnish some ad- ditional hints to those who are engaged in the work of translation, or who may be charged with the highly responsible office of judging what ver- sions are proper to be adopted for general circu- lation. In the Remarks originally submitted to the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and afterwards embodied in the Appeal, I observed, that " the numerous translations of the Holy Scriptures which exist both in ancient and modern languages, have generally been di- vided into two kinds : such as are literal and closely adhere to the text ; and the free or liberal, in which greater attention is paid to elegance of style, than to an exact representation of the original *." The accuracy of this statement is questioned by Professor Lee f ; yet, instead of fairly meeting the argument, he proceeds to shift * Appeal, p. 15. f Remarks, p. 8. B 2 it, and involves the whole subject in obscurity, by confounding the very obvious distinction be- tween a literal and a servile or merely verbal trans- lation. In classifying the generality of Biblical versions, it never once entered my mind to advert to those which are of so servile a character as to consist merely of words inflexibly corresponding in number, and the order of their arrangement, to the words of the original. Such barbarous, pre- posterous, and contemptible metaphrases, alto- gether unworthy of any but a school-boy of the lowest class, can never, without a dereliction of every sound principle of association, be compre- hended under the name of literal translations. Of this kind of absurd and distorted representa- tions of the original, we possess abundant speci- mens in Aquila, the Philoxenian Syriac, the Latin version of Sanctes Pagninus, and that of his im- prover in the art, Arias Montanus. That the Committee of the Bible Society has not published one of the most complete and cu- rious specimens of the servile that ever emanated from the Synagogue, at all times famous for monstrous forms, is, I believe, chiefly owing to the same influence, which has been, and still is exerted, to prevent, if possible, the circulation of the Turkish New Testament. The production I refer to, is the Karaite Tatar manuscript, of which mention has repeatedly been made in the Reports of the Society. In this work, not only is the same order of the words retained which exists in the original, but every idiom and grammatical form ; and every particle of the Hebrew language is so rigidly expressed, that, with little trouble, the whole might be rendered back again into He- brew, so as to furnish an exact copy of the ex- emplar from which it was made. Indeed, its servility is such, that, besides now and then sug- gesting a proper word to a Tatar translator, it is of no practical use whatever; the Tatar and Hebrew languages differing so entirely in their structure and conformation: and, it can only be considered as valuable in a critical point of view, as exhibiting the readings of the Hebrew ma- nuscript from which it was derived, and as deve- loping the principles of interpretation obtaining in the Karaite school at the period of its compo- sition. The fact, however, that I did not include ver- sions of this description in the former class of my division, is admitted by Professor Lee*, who quotes a passage from the Appeal, to prove, that my opinion on the subject of translation, coincides with that of Jerome, Dathe, and himself. It is as follows : " While, on the one hand, a translator of the Scriptures is studiously to avoid such a * Remarks, p. 14. scrupulous adherence to the letter as would do violence to the genius of the language into which his version is made, and necessarily render the version harsh, obscure, or unintelligible ; he is, on the other hand, equally to guard against the adoption of any words, phrases, or modes of con- struction, that would, in any way, injure the spirit and manner of the original, or convey one shade of meaning, more or less, than what it was designed to express*." It is nevertheless evident from this, as well as other parts of the Remarks, that, much as we may be agreed in rejecting the verbal mode of translation, we are completely at variance with respect to the real character of the literal, as well as to the class of translators whose method ought to be recommended for adoption in all popular versions of the Scriptures ; for while the learned Professor joins issue with the free or liberal translator who does not consider himself to be tied down to the peculiar phraseology of the Bible, but is at liberty so to change and accommodate it as shall best suit the received forms of expression existing among the people for whose use he is preparing his version, I main- tain, that those translations only are entitled to the character of good and faithful, which not merely convey the precise ideas contained in the * Appeal, p. 16, original, but give them in language as nearly assimilated to that in which it was written, as the natural and grammatical idioms of the new dialect will allow. He avers, indeed, that " as far as his enquiries have gone, he knows of no instance, in which that class of translators" of which he ap- proves, " has professedly paid a greater attention to the elegance of style than to an exact repre- sentation of the precise force of the original * ;" and in this statement, I believe, he is not far from the truth. But the reader will perceive that the ground of the argument is here com- pletely changed; the point of debate not being <( an exact representation of the precise force ," but an exact representation of the precise manner of the original, as far as the idioms of the vernacular language will admit. The moment we concede to a translator the licence of merely giving what he may conceive to be the force of his author's expressions, and not the identical expressions themselves, to the utmost extent of the rules imposed upon him by a just system of philology, we surrender the sacred dictates of the Spirit to the whims of human caprice, and open the flood- gates of imposition and error. Hence the wisdom of that saying of Augustine: "we must speak according to a set rule, lest licence of words * Remarks, p, 8. 8 should generate some wicked opinion concerning the things contained under the words *." As I had adduced Castalio as an example of the class I condemned, on account of their sacri- ficing fidelity to elegance, Professor Lee gives us in a note f, a declaration made by that author in the dedication of his work to Edward the Sixth, in which he states fidelity to be one of the prin- cipal ends he had in view in preparing his trans- lation ; but it must be obvious to every one who is at all acquainted with the subject, that he only means fidelity in regard to the general bearing and sense, but not to the manner of the original. It is maintained by an able Scripture critic ;£, that it was confessedly, in a high degree, Cas- talio's object in translating, to express with ele- gance and in an oratorical manner, the sense of the text. And if this was the case, how unwilling soever we may be to accuse him of infidelity in representing the meaning, it is impossible to ab- * De Civit. Dei, Lib. X. Cap. 12. It was in reference to the abandonment of the Scripture phraseology, . and the adoption of native modes of expression, that Gilbert Wakefield says ; " I have followed my inclination here in anglicising the peculiar phrase- ology of the original, and would gladly have followed it on many other occasions, if prejudices could have borne it." Notes on Philemon. f Page 9. % Campbell on the Gospels, Dissert. X. Part iv. §. 2. solve him from the eharge of unfaithfully repre- senting the manner of the original. In a just exhibition of the character of the sacred writer's style, he not only failed entirely, but even inten- tionally; it being his professed design, to meet the literary prejudices of those whose classical taste was shocked by the Latinity of the Vulgate, but who, it was supposed, might be tempted to peruse the sacred volume, if put into their hands in a beautiful and ornamented dialect. Of the relevancy of these remarks to the version of Ali Bey, evidence, which the Professor has not been able to invalidate, has been furnished in the Appeal, and will receive still further corrobora- tion in the course of the following chapters. In producing the authority of Jerome relative to the best manner of translation, my opponent should not have omitted to notice, that the letter to Pammachius, containing the sentiments of that Father on the subject, was written in the heat of controversy, at a time when his mind was ruffled by the accusations of Ruffinus, and cannot, there- fore, be regarded as furnishing us with the cool and deliberate views of this learned man, on a subject with which he had rendered himself fa- miliar, in a degree unequalled by any of the other Fathers. The circumstances of the case are these : certain letters from the Pope Epiphanius to John, Bishop of Jerusalem,! having come into the hands 10 of Eusebius of Cremona, this monk, not under- standing the language in which they were written, requested Jerome to furnish him with a transla- tion of them. This task the Father performed in his usual hurried manner, " Accitoque notario, raptim celeriterque dictavi," not regarding the manner or style in which he made the translation, but merely executing it in such a manner as he thought sufficient to give Eusebius an idea of the contents of the original letters. It so happening, however, that Jerome's translation, which had been intended only to meet the eye of a private friend, came abroad ; and, having found its way into the hands of his adversaries, a great handle was made of the manner of its execution. To justify himself from the aspersions thus thrown on his character, he wrote the epistle above referred to, De optimo genere interpret andi , in which, whatever he may have affirmed relative to the absurdity of translating ad verbum, we find the following remarkable words, which Professor Lee should by no means have omitted in his quotations : " Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor, me in interpretatione Grae- COrum, ABSQUE SCRIPTURIS SACRIS UB1 ET VERBORUM ORDO MYSTERIUM EST, non VCfbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu. Habeoque hujus rei magistrum Tullium, qui Protagoram Pla- tonis, et (Economicon Xenophontis, et iEschynis 11 ac Demosthenis duas contra se orationes pulcher- rimas transtulit : quanta in illis prsetermisit, quanta addiderat, quanta mutaverit ut proprie- tates alterius linguae suis proprietatibus expli- caret, non est hujus tempore dicere." Is it not evident from this passage, that what Jerome pro- fessedly treats of, is not the best manner of ex- ecuting a Biblical translation, but that to be adopted in translating merely human writings; and that, although, in the latter case, he conceived himself fully justified by the illustrious example of Tully, in omitting, adding, or changing, what he did not find congenial with modes of expres- sion already established among the Latins; yet, he by no means considered himself authorized to take any such liberties with the word of God, in which he says the very order of the words is a mystery ? I grant that he appeals to Scripture in vindica- tion of the free mode of translation, and adduces numerous examples of the discrepancies existing between the quotation made by Christ and his Apostles in the New Testament, and the original words of the Old ; but I am yet to be informed, that he intends to infer from this circumstance, that a translator of the Holy Scriptures is not to be taxed with infidelity if he allow himself to introduce similar discrepancies into his version. The Professor employs it, indeed, as an argu- 12 ment to prove, that we need not be very nice in regard to uniformity * ; yet, I presume most readers will agree with me in maintaining, that what Christ himself, and his inspired Apostles did, in quoting, referring, or alluding to the words of the Old Testament, can never, with any pro- priety, be construed into an argument to warrant translators to perform their task, as if they did it from memory, or merely referred to the original, without any regard to scrupulous accuracy and close imitation. Jerome, even goes so far as to say, that St. Paul, in quoting Isa. Ixiv. 4. " non verbum expressit e verbo, sed wapcuhpaoTiKUQ, eun- dem sensum aliis sermonibus indicavit;" and with respect to the discrepancy between Zach. xiii. 7. and Matt. xxvi. 31. "In hoc, ut arbitror, loco, juxta quorundam prudentiam evangelista piaculi reus est, quod ausus est prophetse verba ad Dei referre personam." Would it, therefore, be lawful in a translator, thus to paraphrase, or, from any principles of prudence or accommodation to his peculiar views, to alter the original, and make it speak his own sentiments ? Against all such liber- ties, the Father himself protests in his Epist. ad Paulin. " Taceo," says he, " de mei similibus qui si forte ad scripturas sanctas, post seculares litteras venerint, et sermone composite* aurem populi * Page 61. 13 mulserint ; quidquid dixerint, hoc legem Dei pu~ tant, nee scire dignantur quid prophetce, quid Apos- toll senserint, sed ad sensum suum incongrua aptant testimonial It must also be observed, that when Jerome condemns Aquila for his KaKofoAia, it is not so much for his verbal manner, although this also met with his reprobation, as on account of the etymological nicety with which that Jewish translator attempted to render the words of the original : " Qui non solum," says he, " verba, sed etymologias quoque verborum transferre conatus est." That he did not always entertain so bad an opinion of him, appears from his Comment, in Hos. ii., where he calls him " curiosum et diligentem interpretem ;" and Epist. exxv. ad Da- masum, he writes ; " Aquila non contensiosus, ut quidam putant, sed studiosus verbum interpretatur ad verbum" Were this a proper place to examine minutely the manner in which this learned Father con- ducted his own translation from the Hebrew, considerable light might be thrown on his prac- tical views of the subject; but we shall not, perhaps, be wide of the mark, if we consider them as being in unison with his declaration in the Preface to Esther : " Librum Hesther variis trans- latoribus constat esse vitiatum, quern ego de ar- chivis Hebrseorum revelans, verbum e verbo ex- 14 pressius transtuli" taken together with that in his Preface to Job : " Haac autem translatio nullum de veteribus sequitur interpretem, sed ex ipso Hebraico Arabicoque sermone, et interdum Syro, nunc verba, nunc sensus, nunc simul utrumque re- sonabit" What he means exactly when he says that there is a mystery in the order of the words of Scripture, it is perhaps impossible to deter- mine. The word was much in vogue among ecclesiastical writers in the fourth, and some succeeding centuries, and it often occurs in con- nections in which those who used it scarcely seem to have affixed any meaning to it at all. We even find it employed in the same manner by so late a writer as the Jesuit Possevini, who is cited with approbation by Bishop Walton, in the Prolego- mena to his Polyglot, for saying, " Tot esse He- braica in Scriptura sacramenta, quot literae ; tot mysteria, quot puncta ; tot arcana, quot apices *." It may, however, be affirmed with certainty, that Jerome conceived some degree of sacred import- ance to attach to the method in which the words of Holy Scripture are disposed, which renders it unwarrantable in a translator to treat them as he might those of a human composition, omitting, adding to them, moulding, and transposing them at his pleasure. * Campbell ut sup. Dissert. IX. Part i. §. 1. 15 I will not accuse Professor Lee of unfairness, though I certainly cannot exculpate him from the charge of criminal inattention, in applying to our present subject the words of Dathe in his Preface to the minor Prophets. The direct ten- dency of the quotation introduced into the Re- marks *, from that able and judicious Scripture critic, is to impress the mind of the reader with an idea, that the principles of translation there laid down, were designed to bear upon popular versions of the Scriptures, and that his work was intended to serve as a model for the construction of such versions. Now this was by no means the case. Towards the conclusion of the very sentence preceding that with which the Professor's quota- tion commences, Dathe explicitly declares, " nee sine prsevia. admonitione Lectorem admittere ad lectionem interpretationis, quce a vulgari ratione haud parum recedit, et in qua conficienda leges mihi scripsi, quas nolim lectores ignorare, quos judices hujus versionis habere cupiam." And in his Preface to the Psalms, he says expressly; " Idem enim consilium sequendum fuit, quod in caeteris universal Veteris Testamenti versionis meae partibus mihi proposueram, scilicet ut verba He- braica clare et perspicue redder em > quo hujus Ungues studiosi quasi manu ducerentur ad tectum originalem * Page 13. 16 recte intelligendum et explicandum ;" which state- ment we find repeated in the Prefaces to the Pentateuch and Job. The fact is, as he himself informs us*, it was his object to furnish a version corresponding to the second kind of translation proposed by Griesbach f , as ranking next to what the great critic calls a public or Church version, namely, one which neither closely follows the letter of the text, nor swells out into paraphrase, but gives the ideas of the original, stripped of their Hebraistic forms, so as to be read with all the ease of original composition. It was designed, not for common readers, but for the learned, par- ticularly such as were engaged in the study of the Hebrew original ; consequently, the rules of translation, according to which it was conducted, and which are detailed in the Preface quoted by Professor Lee, cannot, with any degree of con- sistency, be urged as authority to determine the manner in which popular, or, as Griesbach calls them, public or Church versions, ought to be executed. Indeed, it is only necessary to glance at the otherwise highly valuable work of Dathe, to perceive its total unfitness to serve as a model of this kind of translation ; of this I shall ad- duce the following instances as a specimen. Hos. i. 2. m;r nrma x*wn nm ro? % which is pro- * Praefat. in Pentat. p. iv. f Repertory of Biblical and Oriental Literature, Part VI. p. 2. 17 perly rendered, " For the land hath committed great whoredom against Jehovah :" Dathe trans- lates thus ; Sic enim populus iste pro casto mei amore, alios deos amore impuro prosequitur. II. 16. -man tfoHhTh rrtffefl oat ftift *pb *' Notwithstand- ing I will allure her, and lead her into the wil- derness :" Verum enim vero deinde earn ad saniorem mentem revocabo, atque in deserto, quo a me deducta est, &c. IV. 4. fro *an»D W) " And thy people are as they that strive with the priest :" Omnes enim capitalium criminum rei sunt. Habak. ii. 4. rWT V01»»n pnsn " But the just by his faith shall live:" Sed pius propter illam jidem suam ejus imple- mentum videbit. Having thus shewn, to the satisfaction, I trust, of the impartial reader, that the authorities of Jerome and Dathe, as alleged in the Remarks, are altogether inapplicable to the argument rela- tive to such versions of the sacred Scriptures as are designed for general use, it cannot be matter of surprise that I should hesitate to subscribe to the conclusion at which Professor Lee arrives, p. 15. " The principle, therefore, adopted by the second class of translators, is that by which we are agreed that the merits of the question before us shall be tried ; which is, indeed, the only one to which we can have recourse, whether we take the path which is obviously pointed out by the necessity of the case, or are guided by the prac- 18 tice of the best translators, both of ancient and modern times." How could it be expected that I should agree to decide the question by the prin- ciples or practice of liberal translators, when this was the very class which I so strongly con- demned ? And how can my rejection of the purely verbal manner, be fairly construed into an approval of the opposite extreme ? The neces- sity of the case will, I believe, be found to be of so pressing a nature as to require a perfect ac- commodation of the language of the Bible, to exactly the same forms of speech which pre- viously exist among mankind; to judge from the best popular versions, of which our own stands in the foremost rank, it does not appear to be at all impossible to retain much of the characteristic stamp of the original phraseology, and to follow the sacred writers, Kara tto&ic, while, at the same time, no violence is done to the genius of the ver- nacular tongue, but, on the contrary, it acquires, by this very means, no inconsiderable accessions of strength, beauty, dignity, and sublimity. CHAPTER II. Principles of Biblical Translation. Canons relative to the Matter of Versions. The Manner of Popular Versions. Lowth, Batteax, Griesbach, Huet, Cicero, Horace, and Denham, quoted in Support of the literal Mode of trans- lating. The Importance of literal Versions of the Scrip- tures. Authorities for Uniformity of rendering. AH Bey grossly culpable in the Breach of this Rule. How a Trans- lator is to accommodate the Differences between the Lan- guage of the Original and that of the Version. Sacred Taste defined. Its Influence on Biblical Translations. In fixing the principles according to which translations of the Holy Scriptures are to be conducted, both the matter and the manner re- quire to be taken into consideration. With respect to the matter, it will be allowed by all, that it ought to be laid down as a funda- mental and indispensable canon, — That the version must exhibit the genuine sense of the original. This rule, which applies to translation in general, and increases in force, in proportion to the importance of the subjects treated of in the original work, is presented in all the plenitude of its authority, when brought to bear upon a translation of the word of God, as containing a communication of his will, to our species, on subjects of the c 2 20 highest possible interest to every individual, Except the real and unsophisticated meaning, or that sense which was intended by the Divine inspirer, be transfused into the version, it be- comes nothing more than "the word of man;" and, as the sacred original is most significantly called " the Scripture of truth *," it may fear- lessly be asserted, that, in proportion as its genuine sense is altered, and human conceptions are substituted, for " the mind of the Spirit," the door will be thrown open to the introduction of every dangerous and destructive heresy. Another canon relating to the matter of a Biblical Translation is, — That it furnish a complete transcript of the ideas conveyed by the original. In translating human authors, it is sometimes allow- able, when the subject is of no importance, to retrench an accessory or secondary idea, in order to give a greater degree of ease or dignity to the manner in which the principal idea is expressed ; but to do so in a version of the Scriptures, would be an infraction of that reverence to which they justly possess the most paramount claims. A translator may give the general sense of a pas- sage, and yet omit some idea which it may not be unimportant to the reader to know. On this point, Professor Lee very justly remarks, in as * Daniel .x, 21. 21 far as it regards the fulness of a Biblical version ; <( The pure word of God, then, as found in a translation, is, according to our principle, that which comprehends every idea contained in the original Scriptures, fully and faithfully expressed in the translation*." Faults against this rule, however, are found in many parts of the version of All Bey. Among others, he excludes the eternity of future punishment, from Matt. xxv. 41.; the idea of preparation, expressed by the word Trapa2Jjz c-ta*. Ginabi Izzet, L e. as given in the Appeal, Glorious Majesty. " The literal meaning of the first of these words <-A>. Janab," says the Professor, " is, according to the Soorah, *l£^ dargah, place, court, or the like ; and of the second, lzjjs. izzat, strength, or victory. The phrase is literally, therefore, place, or court, of strength or victory," p. 24. Had I professed to give a definition of the radical import of each of the pe- riphrastic titles given to the Deity by Ali Bey, and other Oriental writers, justice would require, that I should here stand corrected ; but I have yet to learn, that in determining the signification of words, as practically applied, we are to be guided by their primary and etymological import, and not by the usage of language. Meninsky, to whom Professor Lee can also refer when it suits his purpose, gives substantially the same literal meaning of the words as that assigned them in the Soorah ; but then, as a Turkish Lexicographer, he adds under c_ ta>. Ginab, if usit. pro nostris vulgatis Do- minatio, Excellentia, Celsitudo, Majestas," and translates the phrase <-A« cJ&>. c-taf- genabi, gelalet, meab, by " Gloriosa, augusta, Mqjestas" And under the word tojss izzet, "usit. magnifi- centia, potentia, gloria, honor:" to which we may 47 add, that the word is used in the same significa- tion by AH Bey, 1 Cor. ii. 8. ^j>j iL&jc- izzetun Rabbi, " the Lord of Glory" and in upwards of thirty other places in the New Testament ; whereas it is never once used to denote strength or victory. Am I not then entitled to ask, what egregious blunder I have committed in rendering c^jz <— >L>* Ginabi Izzet by Glorious Majesty ? However, that I may not appear pertinacious, and to allow every possible advantage to the advocates of the Turkish New Testament, I shall in future translate the phrase, as used by Ali Bey, for 9e6g God, or Kvpiog Lord, by court of victory, or place of strength, which we are told (Remarks, p. 24.) is its " literal meaning," and its import, " mighty Godr In rendering ^Ij s-ta»* Ginabi Bari, the Divine Majesty, I was guided by the same general prin- ciple as in the above instance, it being my object to exhibit to the Committee of the Bible Society, the variety of epithets employed by the Turkish translator, rather than to furnish them with nice etymological definitions, which, if I had done, I should certainly have been taxed with the kuko- foXia of Aquila. ^b Bari does indeed signify Creator, but Professor Lee is just about as incor- rect as I was, when he affirms, that " the true translation of the whole phrase, therefore, is The 48 Creator, and not The Divine Majesty, p. 26. Ac- cording to his own determination of the word c->U*. Ginab, the real meaning must be the Court of the Creator; and the reader must not forget, that this is defended as a proper trans- lation of the simple word Qtog, God. On the two following criticisms, p. 26, it is only necessary to remark, that what I had ren- dered Supreme Divinity, might be rendered more literally Exalted Creator, as Professor Lee pro- poses ; but, according to his own shewing, tjs*. <-A*- Ginabi Hakk, cannot mean o aX^Oivo^ Otog, the true God, but the court of truth, or the True Place, — the dpD mdkom of the Rab- binical writers. In the Appeal, p. 24, I observed, that " one of the first things that must strike a Christian reader of this (Ali Bey's) translation, is the cir- cumstance, that the names Jesus and Christ sel- dom occur without the prefix c-yi>» Hdzret ; a title by which kings and great men are addressed, and which corresponds to our Majesty, Highness, Lordship, Ladyship, &c. Now," I further remarked, " not to insist on its being totally foreign to the simplicity of the sacred writers, to put into their mouth, His Majesty Jesus, or The Lllustrious Jesus, it certainly cannot appear, at least to us Chris- tians, to convey any peculiar degree of honour 49 on our Redeemer, to give him a title in common with Mohammed and the Koran. For the same reasons, I must object to its being applied to God as a title of respect. Instead of exalting, it is derogatory to his honour." In order to evade the force of these observations, Professor Lee first roundly denies that ci^2>- H&zrct means either majesty, highness, lordship, or ladyship; but adds, immediately : " We do not mean to argue, however, that this word has not been translated occasionally, as giving the sense laid down by Dr. Henderson ; or that these translations have not been sufficiently accurate for general readers. But we cannot, therefore, also allow, that we can hence determine the sense of the word sufficiently accurate for our present purpose :" p. 27, 28. Here tne paragraph ends, and we are left to guess what the " present purpose" is ; — a task, however, of no great difficulty, even to a superficial reader, Fault is found with my rendering the word by Illustrious, without having shown how it happens to have this meaning : but I must confess, I never dreamed that I should be put upon proving, what any person capable of investigating the subject, might discover on turning up a Lexicon, or attend- ing to the use of the word in common parlance, One of the illustrious predecessors of Professor Lee, in the Arabic chair at Cambridge, in ki$ 50 invaluable Lexicon Heptaglotton, assigns to one of the forms of the same root, the meaning of " Vir nobilis et illustris ;" and Meninsky, after giving the definition, " Prsesentia, et Dignitas, Majestas, Dominatio, &c. Nomen honoris quo de persona aliqua loquimur," and shewing how- it is applied, exhibits, among other instances, the phrases " U»b c^-3>. hcesreti pasha, et usit. ijpjao. Li>U pasha hcEzretleri. q. Dominus Bassa, aut Illustrissimus Bassa." The fact is, I selected the term Illustrious, as the least likely to associate burlesque ideas with the phraseology of sacred Scripture, and was the more inclined to use it, as I found it universally applicable in those instances in which ciy£>- Hcezret occurs as an adscititious ornament, or mark of respect. Let us now see how it is interpreted by the Professor, and how the meanings which he is pleased to affix to it, apply to the version of AH Bey. In the first place, we are told, p. 27, that " when applied to kings, this word may properly be rendered by the presence, which is its exact meaning." Abandoning, therefore, for a moment, my favourite, but, according to Professor Lee, improper term illustrious, let us substitute the presence, Matt. vi. 29. " And I say unto you, that ^UjU, cjja*. hcezreti Suleiman the presence of 16 51 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Again; we are informed, that "when applied to God, it is nearly equivalent to the Jewish She- kinah, but can by no principle of interpretation be made to signify illustrious, as its primary meaning." Fortunately, Ali Bey furnishes us with an ex- ample of this also, Rev. xiv. 4. "These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto *$\ cDj«a>. hcezreti Allah ie the shekinah of God, and to the Lamb." How this interpreta- tion of the passage is to be reconciled with the opinion of those divines, who hold that the Lamb of God, to whom John pointed, is the true Shekinah, I pretend not to say; but proceed to the third part of the definition which instructs us: — That " the word c^d^ Hazrat in Arabic is used precisely in the same way as Kvpiog in Greek, ^Htt in Hebrew, and Lord in English, being- applied to any person of rank, whether the rank be that of Lord, as a nobleman, a prophet, or of the most high God:" Remarks, p. 28. Had this assertion been supported by any attempt at proof, it might have been deserving of consideration, but as no examples are produced, and I will ven- ture to affirm, none can be produced, we may place it to the score of the other novel philologi- ■% 2 52 cal doctrines set forth by our author. I was aware, indeed, of the fact, that Sarah, in respect-' ful token of subjection to her husband, called him Lord, (/cvpiov, to which d^da. Hazzret is here said to be parallel,) but I certainly did not know that the Patriarch had also received this title from the Apostle Paul, till I read Ali Bey's version of Rom. xi. 1. " I also am of the seed of Lord Abraham, »+bijA cDjA^. Hcezreti Ibrahim!''' But why did Professor Lee forget to furnish us with the signification of the word as applied to ladies, as well as to men of rank, in the east ? He may reply, it was unnecessary, as we have no instance of its use in Ali Bey's version before the names either of Sarah, or Drusilla, or Herodias, or Candace, or the Queen of Sheba. Very true ; but if my eyes do not deceive me, we read, Matt. i. 16. " And Jacob begat Joseph ^j^j CSty c^o>- Hczzreti Miriamun zougi, the spouse of Hcezreti, Mary." How would my antagonist translate this ? For my part, denied as I am the use of the word illustrious, and loudly as he may declaim against the idea of majesty, lordship, ladyship, &c. being attached to the word, I know of no way of ren- dering it more properly into English than by Lady Mary *. * In Fulke's Rhemish and Protestant New Testament, we find the following note on the use of this epithet among Roman 53 Further; it is attempted to defend the applica- tion of this title to our blessed Saviour, because he "is called o Kvpiog 'I wove in Greek, which is, -in our translation, rendered by the Lord Jesus :" but, in order to give validity to this argument, it must be shewn, First, that aJ>ja&~ Hcezret is really parallel to kuoioc, Lord; and, Secondly, that Ali Bey uses it as a simple translation of KvpioQ, where this word occurs in the original. Were the parallelism complete, or did the two words nearly agree in the mode in which they are applied, I should consider it the most con- summate trifling to contend about their primary and etymological import, and should at once con- cede the point to my opponent. But that the agreement is by no means so great as he wishes to make the reader believe, must be evident from his own shewing, as exemplified in the above in- stances, and from the manner in which c^>. Catholics : — " Likewise when you call the blessed Virgin our Ladie, as you call God and Christ our Lord, what doe you but make her equal with God and Christ in power and redemption. In which respect God is called our Lord. For it is no term of civil and temporall dignitie and authoritie as when we say our soveraigne Ladie, the Queen, but a religious and divine honour that you ascribe unto her, calling her absolutely, Our Ladie, as blasphemously as the Frenchmen doe ridiculously call other saints Monsieur S. -Pierre, M. S. Peter, or my Lord S. Peter, and Madame S. Genofefeve, Mistresse S. Genofefa, or, my Ladie S, Genofefa." Page 5, u Hcezret is translated in the Appendix, by a Gen- tleman whose authority is quoted in the body of the Remarks, as that of " a very able Orientalist *." This Gentleman (M. Desgranges, Assistant Inter- preting Secretary to the King of France for the Oriental Languages, &c.) asserts, that " it would be as strange not to say in Turkish or Arabic, His Excellency Jesus, as it would be singular to use such an expression among us f." It will be seen from the Appeal, p. 24, that I came pretty near this rendering, only raising the title a degree higher, when I gave the words His Ma- jesty Jesus ; but we have another notable instance in which oj^ H. hsezretleri postponi solitum no- minibus Dei, Sanctorum et Magnatum, est pro Majestas ejus, sanctitas, celsitudo, &c. Polonis * Page 32. ^ — « il serait aussi extraordinaire de ne pas dire en Turc ou en Arabe> son Excellence Jesus, qu'il serait singulier de s'exprimer ainsi parmi nous," Appendix, p. 29. o5 pari fere ratione lego Mosc ut ^pj**- *UoU padishah hazzretleri, quod et *U>jb c^J^ hcezreti padishah. Rex ejus Majestas. quod nos Serenissi- mus Rex, vel sua Regia Majestas. Ihre Konigliche Mayestatt. £## 2taz/ Majesta, Sa Majeste, &c." According, therefore, to this interpretation, the verse just cited will read thus : " And Jacob begat Joseph, the spouse of Lady Mary, of whom was born His Majesty Jesus, who is called Messiah." I leave it with the reader to say, whether he could have supposed it possible, that any person, who really venerates the inspired records of Heaven, would attempt to vindicate the introduction into them of such phraseology as this ? — a phraseology no less repugnant to sound criticism, than it is to sober and en- lightened Christian feeling, I have only further to observe on this word c^a>. Hazzret, that it is scarcely ever, or, at least, very seldom, substituted by Ali Bey for Kupoc, in the combination o Kvpiog 'Irjaovg, " the Lord Jesus ;" this honour being reserved for the word l-jj Rabb, which literally and properly sig- nifies Lord. Professor Lee is therefore incorrect, in representing Lifya*. Hcezret as thus applied. When used, which is most frequently, it is prefixed 56 to Jesus after lj, Rabb, thus ; ^-c ci^a^ ycj Rabbimuz Haizreti Isa, " Our Lord, Zord Jesus " or, as I gave it, " Our Lord, the Illustrious Jesus." It is also prefixed to t->j Rabb, when there is no- thing but Kvpiog in the original, as Acts x. 48. <<*~>\ ££>j c-yac^ Hcezreii Rabbun is mi, " the name of the Lord Lord," the Illustrious Lord, His Ex- cellency Lord, or how it may best be rendered into English. Notwithstanding the summary manner in which the Professor dismisses the phrases ^JUj j^* Hakk taala, and ^ ul^o^ Hcezreti Hakk, p. 30, I must beg to retain my translations, Supreme Verity, and Illustrious Verity: neither the one nor the other signifying as he would have it, o aXrjOivog Otoe, The True God ; — a phrase which Ali Bey very correctly renders by 41! jpU sadik Allah, ] John v. 20, and elsewhere. Nor is he one whit more fortunate, when he says, p. 30, " 43! ^^-J? velisi Allah, is as he (the Author of the Appeal) has given it, The Good God." For in this instance the true proverb is verified: " If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." In assigning the signification good to L5 ~^j velisi, I was misled by the adjective form y-tkj velis, to which Meninsky, after Castell, 57 gives the meaning of bonus; but I am now con* vinced, that it is nothing else than the substantive ^ veli, Rector, Judge, Prefect, Patron, which oc- curring in construction with another noun pre* ceding it in the genitive case, takes the suffix m f ^ si, thus; Heb. xiii. 20. JU? 431 ^J 3 c^JL Selamun velisi Allah tadla, " The Prefect of peace, God Most High." It is the same with the com- bination, 2Thess. iii. 16. «V *." Will the Professor reject this evidence, and maintain, as he does of the Tatar and other Turkish ver- sions, that it possesses " no authority whatever ?" But it is said, that " certain it is, nine out of every ten of them (the Mohammedans), would not know what place was meant by f-^y, Je- rushalimt." What then, we may ask, will they make of Ali Bey's version, Matt, xxiii. 37. Rev. xxi. 2. where, as was noticed in the Appeal, this very word p^*)j> t Jerushalim is exhibited ? But granting that they will not know what place is meant by this name until they are taught, still they are in no worse predicament in this case * Je voudrois aussi qu'on conservat le nom de Jerusalem, au- quel le traducteur a substitue l'expression moderne «-JWj-£> /j* j£« Appendix, p. 13. f Remarks, p. 50. 61 ' than in regard to Lebanon (now h\\ J-^ The Snow Mountain), Jordan (now 4«j-*N The Passage), and a thousand other names of places altogether fo- reign to their present vocabulary. In order to be consistent, all such names should be commuted for those by which the places are designated in modern geography ; in which case, instead of Samaria, Ephesus, Colosse, Laodicea, Philadel- phia, Thyatira, &c, we shall read Neapolis or Naplous, Aiasalick, Denizli, Eski-hisar, Alah-shehr, and Ak-hisar. I had observed in the Appeal, that the word Je- rusalem is retained in the Arabic and Persic ver- sions, to which Professor Lee objects *, that " these versions were made for the use of Christians, with whom the word is familiar." At this distance of time, I do not recollect which were the precise versions I consulted ; but I may now be permitted to remark, that what is here objected is true only of those published in the Polyglott. The Arabic executed by Sabat, and the Persic by Henry Martyn, both of modern date, were principally designed for the use of Mohammedans ; yet, in neither of them do we meet with the term Kudsi Sherif. The same may be said of the Malay and Hindostanee versions ; the former of which has Jerusijaleim, and the latter fj-^i May it not, * Remarks, p. 50. 62 therefore, pertinently be asked, What good rea- son can be given that an exception should be made in favour of the Turks, which is not made in favour of other Mohammedans ? With respect to the theological reason alleged in the Appeal against " the Holy city," or " the noble Holy place," as a proper designation of Je- rusalem, I consider it to be little, if at all affected by the instance adduced from Matt. iv. 5. or even by xxvii. 53. At the time of the temptation, which the Evangelist describes, it was still " the holy city ;" and when the event referred to in the latter passage took place, its holiness was not actually, though it was virtually removed ; the actual desecration of the place being left to the influence of " the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet," by which an end was put to the temple-worship and polity of the Jews *. This, it must also be observed, took * It was objected to the appellation " Holy City," that Jeru^ salem no longer possesses a greater degree of sanctity than any Other place on earth; the glory having departed from it when Christ passed through its gate on his way to Calvary, and the hour having come, when neither at Jerusalem, nor in any other particular spot exclusively, were the true worshippers to worship the Father, but in every place, incense and a pure offering is offered to his name, from the rising of the sun to the going down of* the same ; John iv. 21—24. Mai. i. 11. — See Appeal, p. 27,28. All this Professor Lee brands with the character of " farinse ;" but the reader will find the same things stated by Dean Prideaux, 63 place several years after the composition of the Gospel by Matthew, so that there could be no impropriety in his still calling Jerusalem "the holy city," although this appellation, in its strict and literal sense, be not given to it by any of the other New Testament writers. The assertion * that I found Mecca called c^L« ^jo Kuds Mobarika, in a Mohammedan book, I am sorry it is not at present in my power to corroborate otherwise, than by assuring Pro- fessor Lee, of my perfect conviction that I did so find it. Upwards of four years have now elapsed who thus observes on the celebrated prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. " After which (the Seventy Weeks) the Jews were no more to be the peculiar people of God, nor Jerusalem his Holy City, because then the economy which had been established among them was to cease, and the worship which he had appointed at Jerusalem was wholly to be abolished. " All this was accomplished at the death of Christ. For then the Jewish Church and the Jewish worship at Jerusalem were wholly abolished, and the Christian Church and the Christian wor- ship succeeded in their stead ; then the time which was determined upon the Jews for their being God's peculiar people, and upon Jerusalem, for its being his holy city, being fully expired, thence- forth began the kingdom of the Messiah, and instead of the Jews, all the nations of the world were called thereunto, and instead of Jerusalem, every place through the whole earth, where God should be worshipped in spirit and in truth, was made holy unto him."— Connection, Part L Book V. p. 378. Ed, Lond. 1749. * Appeal, p. 28. 64 since I made the remark, and not having taken any note of the passage in which the phrase oc- curred, it is impossible for me to answer his queries ; but should I find, in the course of my future reading, that it was a mistake, I shall em- brace the first opportunity of acknowledging it. I cannot help observing, however, that the Pro- fessor might have shewn me a little more indul- gence on this point, as it is obvious, from his own proving, that Jerusalem is not the only place to which ^^3 Kuds is applied. In the text of the Remarks *, indeed, the author says, in reference to its application to Mecca; " I believe it means no such thing, the phrase being universally applied by Oriental writers to Jerusalem ;" but in the note, containing his authorities for the assertion, we are distinctly told by the great Firuzabadi, that tf * it is also the name of a great mountain in Najd." In regard to the other statements and insinuations, introduced in connection with this subject, I will only say, that they are as groundless as they are unkind. * Page 52. CHAPTER IV. Refutation of Professor Lee's Arguments in Defence of the Epithets given by Ali Bey to the Deity, Scripture Usage. The Practice of Mohammedans. Style of the Koran. Turkish Taste. Quotation from Michaelis on this Subject. The licentious Consequences to he apprehended from the Application of the Professors Pule. The Sacred Nature of Scripture Phraseology. Usage of Christians in Turkey. The Principle injurious to the Sense, and opposed to the Manner of the Original. Incapable of Vindication, proved by the Practice of Ali Bey himself. Farther proved by the Practice of Professor Lee. Rejected by Professor Kieffer in the present Edition of the Turkish Bible. On the Use of the Word " Effendi" as a Divine Title. Having in the preceding Chapter examined Pro- fessor Lee's criticisms on the manner in which I translated the various epithets given to the Divine Being in the Turkish New Testament, and shewn, that the meanings which he would affix to them, so far from rendering their use m versions of the Christian Scriptures less objectionable, pointedly go to strengthen my argument against their adop- tion, let us now proceed to review the principles on which their defence is undertaken, and con- sider the influence which these principles, if ap- proved, would have on Biblical translations in general. The first ground on which the Professor endea- vours to rest the defence of such epithets, and such a periphrastical mode of translation, is, the usage of Scripture, " In the Hebrew Scriptures/' says he, " God is occasionally styled \vby El-yon, The Most High, and \vby btf El El-yon, The Most High God, and tDT\0 'H 1 ?** Elohe Marom, The High God" p. 20. " The phrase, then, Jltf 4lH Allah tadla, is the Scriptural phrase, which occurs times innumerable, in our own Bibles," p. 21. It is not introduced " in a way unknown to the phrase- ology of Scripture," p. 22. " The import of the phrase is, therefore, Mighty God, — a phrase with which every reader of the Bible is well acquainted," p. 24. " The Heb? % ew Bible, we hnoio, abounds with similar phraseology : if, then, the idiomatical ex- pressions of the original Scriptures, can be ren- dered in the Old Testament, by others which are equivalent to them, I am at a loss to conceive by what principle of criticism it is, that an European is to step in and say, with respect to the New, This is an unholy mass, a desecrated meretricious jargon, because * some of the phraseology peculiar * The reader must observe, that the peculiar application of the word "because," in the above passage, is Professor Xee's, not mine. I never gave any such character to Ali Bey's version on the ground here stated. 67 to the Old Testament has been adopted," p. 25, " The Exalted Creator, being all that is meant by ^U; \jj\i Bari tadla. We have here, consequently, nothing unscriptural or unintelligible," p. 26. And, not to multiply quotations, " I believe we shall not be justified in condemning a version of the Scriptures, in every respect faithful to the ori- ginal," (Query?) " and conceived in phraseology common enough in the Hebrew Bible, because it is found to be a little at variance with the diction employed in our own," p. 35. That such phrases as the Most High, the Most High God, the High God, &c. do occur in the Old Testament, nobody ever doubted ; and the Professor might have added )vby DYrbi* Elohim El -yon, the Most High God; yiby mrv Jehovah El-yon, Jehovah Most High; £21 Ram, The High One; wby Ilaia, or Xtiby Ila-a, The Highest, and pv*?y El-yonin, the same, as the plural of jv6y El- yon. But what has all this to do with the argu- ment ? The question in debate does not refer to the use of Scripture phraseology, but to the in- troduction of this phraseology into a version, in passages where no corresponding terms occur in the original. This Ali Bey has done in instances almost innumerable ; and, strange to tell, his prac- tice is vindicated by Professor Lee ! But who does not perceive, that his argument by proving too much, proves nothing at all? According to the f 2 68 principle here laid down, we are at perfect liberty, not merely to introduce into versions of the New Testament words and phrases peculiar to the Old ; but, by parity of reasoning, such of those used in the New may be exhibited in a translation of the Old Testament, as do not express some idea pe- culiar to the Christian dispensation. Nor need we stop here : any periphrasis used for the name of God, or for any other name, in any one passage of Scripture, may, in this manner, be adopted, as the translator sees fit, in all, or any one of the other passages in which these names occur. Thus, by way of specimen, Gen. i. 1. " In the begin- ning the Lord God Omnipotent created the heavens and the earth ;" ver. 3. " And the Creator* said, Let there be light, and there was light;" chap, xli. 16. " The God of Peace shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace;" Exod. ii. 24. " And the Father of mercies heard their groaning, and the God of truth remembered his covenant," &c. Heb. i. I. " The Possessor of Heaven and Earth, who at sun- dry times, and in divers manners," &e. 2 Tim. i. 7. " For The Rock hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power," &c. Thus, also, Matt, viii. 10. " I have not found so great faith, no not in Jeshurun" xxiii. 37. " O Ariel, Ariel, thou that killest the prophets," &c. Are not these " Scriptural phrases?" Have they not their "pa- rallels in other passages of Scripture ?" And 69 might they not be supposed, according to the taste of some, to improve the style of the pas- sages in which they occur? But the Professor's argument carries its own refutation along with it, and should have been permitted to pass altogether unnoticed, had it not been incessantly brought forward ; and that too, as it would seem, with a confident expectation, that it must necessarily se- cure the approbation of his readers. The next position that is taken in defence of the expression ,JUj 45J Allah tadla, is the practice of Mohammedans. It is laid down as a maxim, not to be controverted, that " the best Moham- medan writers alone can be relied on in questions of this kind ; and by their decisions must we be governed in this." " Now I will venture to affirm," adds Professor Lee, (and it may almost be deemed excusable in the public to regard his affirmations on " questions of this kind" as semi-oracular), " that in all the Mohammedan books of any value, whether written in the Arabic, Persic, Turkish, Hindostanee, or Malay languages, the word ^ Ginabi Izzet, ^jj\i <—>kf- Ginabi Bari, (j*- <-A^ Ginabi Hakk, <&)| cl^>. Hcezreti Allah, &c. &c. &c. ? These are all the progeny of a vitiated taste, sprung up like gaudy weeds, subsequent to the occupation of the fair fields of Arabic literature by the sons of Gog and Magog. But let us hear Michaelis : " The dominion of the Turks," says that learned writer, " which has been of longest duration, and is maintained even to the present day, has been most prejudicial to good taste; and it would be unjust to expect, that those Arabians, who live out of Arabia, among such an 72 ignorant people as the present race of Turks, should still be in possession of the same taste which their ancestors had upwards of twelve hundred years ago. Ignorance, barbarism, the form of government, and superstition, have all united to prove the bane of correct taste ; for I must observe, that the religion of the Turks is more superstitious than that of other Moham- medan sects, and is particularly defective in this, that they take those parts of the Koran literally, which ought to be explained figuratively. "I must also remind the reader, that the Turkish language is no dialect of the Arabic, but a complete foreign language ; consequently, no conclusions can be drawn from it, either with respect to Arabic or Hebrew taste : Farther, that the Bible, which agrees so closely with ancient Arabic taste, is sublime, indeed, in its poetry, but is in prose completely the reverse of what is called Oriental bombast. Its historical style is rather too simple, than too ornamented ; and the titles given to kings are as short and unpompous as possible; although, I must say, that we should do the Asiatics injustice, to conclude from their titles to the taste displayed in other parts of style. Even among ourselves, the style of the chancery of the Court is not exactly the best specimen of taste ; and I should conceive, that the European titles, High Potent, Most Illustrious, i 73 Alost Invincible, and sometimes Most Gracious, have sometimes as much of the hyperbolic and figurative as the Asiatic *." But to return to our more immediate subject : In the Appeal, p. 21, it was observed in the note, " that in the translation of our sacred books, the partizans of Ali Bey might learn a lesson from Mohammedans themselves ; for in the Persic interlineary version, the word - (Hcezret), or accom- panying it with the epithets ^JUS' (j*iiU CJLu ^>j (Merciful, Blessed, Sacred, Most High,) and a thousand others derived from the infinitude of the perfections which emanate from his Divine es- sence *." It is also affirmed by M. Caussin de Perceval, that " it would even be a species of ir- reverence to enunciate simply the name of Jesus, without adding to it eiya^ (Hcezret J, or saying *>wJI ^/^ (Jesus Christ) f ." The same thing is repeated by M. Bianchi and M. DesgrangesJ; yet Professor Lee tells us Ali Bey is "an Oriental translator of acknowledged talent and experience in * Appendix, No. V. p. (23). According to this Gentleman, the prefixing of the word Hcezret to the name of Jesus by the Orientals, is exactly similar to the removal of the cap by a certain class of preachers when they pronounce this name. The authority for both, Professor Lee will allow, is equally good. f II y aurait raeme une sorte d'irreverance a enoncer simple- ment le nom de Jesus, sans y joindre t * •> j.Jt~-, ou sans dire, ^A^*JI ^j-^c Appendix, No. VI. p. (25.) " X Appendix, Nos. VII. and VIII. 86 his language*," although, to judge from his prac- tice, these names may at least be written without any such prefix, whatever may be done with the calotte in pronouncing them. The same remark will apply to the use of the adjunct ^JUS* tadla, " Su- preme" or " Most High," about which the Pro- fessor has written so much, and which after all, he has himself no hesitation in allowing might have been left out, without injuring the sense, though he has his doubts whether the translation would have been improved by the omission f. I shall beg, however, to call to his recollection, a passage in the Appeal, which he seems to have forgotten, in his surprise at my stupidity, in citing one of the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to prove that Crispus was a Mohammedan ! It is as follows : " I shall only further add on the subject of these epithets, that a curious specimen of the arbitrary and unequal manner of the translation is exhibited in the fourth chapter of the first Epistle of John. In the first eight verses the word Oeog occurs thir- teen times ; and, except in the last instance, is uniformly rendered as it ought to be, by /&] Allah; but, having come to the declaration, o 0eoc aya^r* kariv, God is love, the simplicity formerly observed is abandoned, and ^Ui* li** Ginabi Izzet, Court of Victory,) " the word jj}\ ^Jj^j iS&>) d$}p ^4; ^H^P *^ 4?^ */**! -/# J s**3> ^^ JUS *ill j/jj r* u5*^J j?A* <-£**£* *&xd$j)\ \£JSya a&Jut) ^jI ^jjsJ^o Ks}y° &&y>^^ ^jl o jJuLmjI <*^*j£, \s}y* ^j ^y ^JUo 4 94 BERLIN EDITION. In the beginning the Ex- alted Creator created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was empty and vacuous : on the sur- face also of the abyss was darkness, and the Spirit of God (Tengri) moved tre- mulously on the surface of the waters. Then God Most High (Allah Tadla) said : let light be, and light was. The Court of the Creator also saw that the light was beautiful, and the Court of the Creator separated the light from the darknesses. And the Court of the Crea- tor named the light, day, and the darkness, night; and evening and morning having been, were the first day. And the Co uri of the Creator also said : let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, that it may separate the waters from the waters. The Supreme God ( Tengri Tadla) then formed an expanse, and se- parated the waters that were under the expanse, 10 PARIS EDITION. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was empty and vacuous ; over the abyss also was darkness ; and the Spirit of God moved tremulously over the waters. And God said : let light be, and light was. God also saw that the light was beautiful, and God separated the light from the darknesses. And God named the light day, and the darkness night ; and evening and morning hav- ing been, were the first day. And God also said : let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, that it may separate the waters from the waters. God then formed an expanse, and se- parated the waters that were under the expanse, from the waters which were above the expanse ; and it was so. And God gave to the expanse the name of Heaven; and evening and morning having been, were the second day. Then God from the waters that were above the expanse; and it was so. And the Supreme Verity gave to the expanse the name of Heaven; and evening and morning hav- ing been, were the second day. Then the Exalted Creator said : let the waters that are under heaven be collected to one place, and let the continent appear; and it was so. And the Supreme God ( Tengri Taala) called the name of the continent Earth, and the assemblage of waters he named Sea; and the Ex- alted Creator saw that it was good. said : let the waters that are under heaven be col- lected to one place, and let the continent appear; and it was so. And God called the name of the continent Earth, and the assemblage of waters he named Sea ; and God saw that it was good. And is it possible, the reader will ask, that Pro- fessor Kieffer should not only have ventured thus to act in direct opposition to the declared opinion of Professor Lee, and Dr. Pinkerton, and General Macauley, but that he should still persist in so acting notwithstanding the overpowering autho- rity of Baron Silvestre de Sacy, and Professor Jaubert, and Garcin de Tassy, and Langles, and Andrea de Nerciat, and Professor Caussin de Per-* ceval, jun. and M. Bianchi, and M. Desgranges, 96 and M. Petropolis, and M. Ermian, &c. &c. &c. ? Can he have been so infatuated as to depart from the general practice of the " churches of Turkey,'* with the Metropolitan of Angouri at their head ? Has he really had the arrogance to correct " an Oriental translator of acknowledged talent, and experience in his language ?" Has he committed himself by such an omission of words as " implies a high degree of disrespect in the estimation of every Turk, whether Mohammedan or Chris- tian* ?" And has all this been done, have all these authorities been slighted, and all these considera- tions set aside, merely to bring the style of the Turkish version into accordance with " the sacred taste of an European, not very profoundly skilled in these matters ?" It would be superfluous to say more on the sub- ject. Not only is the adoption of the objection- able epithets perfectly at variance with the practice of the most approved translators of ancient and modern times, but it is only partially and most inconsistently and arbitrarily used by Ali Bey himself; it is attempted to be vindicated in theory, but is rejected in practice by Professor Lee ; and Professor KiefFer has marked it with the broad seal of his reprobation. Will its defence be again undertaken ? * Remarks p. 15P. 97 In concluding this chapter I may be permitted to add, on the application of the word ^jJLJl Effendi to the Deity, which Professor Lee, sheltering himself under the authority of the Metropolitan of An- gouri, maintains to be proper, that, however his nervous system may remain unaffected by " the frightful contortions of the well-educated Persian," and his mind uninfluenced by " the fears expressed by a Persian of lower attainments*," the French Editor does not appear to possess any such unen- viable degree of insensibility : for in Gen. xv. 2, where, in the Berlin edition of Ali Bey, the patri- arch Abraham addresses Jehovah by $\ ^sXi) ^ I " O my Effendi God," that now printing in Paris exhibits the word f Cj llabb &\ J, ^j " O Lord God." * Remarks, p. 48. H CHAPTER V. Application of the Words d\\ Allah and u_>. Rabb to Christ, Groundless Assertion of Professor Lee relative to Cs*Jt El-Rabb. His Hypothesis respecting l^j. Rabb as exclu- sively applicable to God, equally without Foundation. Its Use with Respect to merely human Masters, proved from Classic Arabic Writers, Concession of Professor Lee. How the Argument affects the Subject of our Lord's Divinity. Passages adduced in Illustration from Ali Bey. It was observed in the Appeal, p. 25, that " the names God and Lord, and Jesus and Christ, are fre- quently interchanged in Ali Bey's version " with- out any thing like a scrupulous adherence to the order of the original." I also remarked, that " it is easy to be perceived, how much influence this must have on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ ;" and stated, in a note, that, " in the Acts of the Apostles alone, I had found not fewer than twenty-Jive passages in which t&\ God, ^J\jC j^ Supreme Verity, are substituted for l->j Lord; yet in almost all these passages the designation refers, not to God, absolutely considered, as when thus 99 changed it exclusively does, but to our blessed Saviour, who, as Mediator, is made both Lord and Christ, and, on this account, is called Kvpioe, /car hfyyfw, in the New Testament." Of that part of the charge which respects the interchange of the names Jesus and Christ, no par- ticular notice is taken in Professor Lee's Remarks; and we are left to infer, that it is perfectly allow- able in a translator of the New Testament to ren- der the word Jesus by Christ and Christ by Jesus, just as it may happen to strike his fancy. Nay, we are distinctly told, p. 36, " The scrupulous adherence to the order of the original, upon which he (the Author of the Appeal) lays so much stress, does not enter into our principle of interpretation ; we only expect to see the sense and bearing of the original accurately expressed in the language of the translation." The reader will perceive that the words here printed in Italics are taken from the Appeal, where they are used, not in relation to any grammatical construction of words, but to the very interchange in question; the marking with Italics is the Professor's own, and was, no doubt, designed to give an emphasis of reprobation to the canon, that wherever the words Jesus, Christ, &c. stand in the original, words exactly corresponding should appear in the translation. Whether this canon of translation, or his " principle of interpre- tation," will more commend itself to the impartial h 2 100 and judicious Scripture critic, and indeed to all who have any reverence for the word of God, I leave others to judge, and dismiss the subject for the present, in order to give due prominency to that part of the charge which affects the divinity of Christ. To such as are at all acquainted with the grand points at issue between Christians and Moham- medans, it is almost superfluous to point out the paramount importance of putting into the hands of the latter, a faithful and correct translation of the Christian Scriptures. For, whatever " can- dour" and "liberality" Professor Lee may have found in those of them with whom he has had in- tercourse, qualities diametrically the reverse are universally complained of by such as come into daily contact with them, as most conspicuously displaying themselves whenever the peculiar doc- trines of the Gospel are made the subjects of dis- course. Against those passages of the New Tes- tament in particular, which teach the Sonship and Divinity of the Lord Jesus, their cavillings and rancour are constantly directed ; and, if any dis- crepancies are found to obtain in the renderings of these passages, they are sure to seize on them, and turn them into the greatest handle against the Gospel of Christ. In what an awkward predica- ment then must a Missionary be placed, when disputing with a follower of the Arabian prophet, 101 who is enabled by a false version of the Scrip- tures, to repel one of his strongest arguments, drawn from the genuine and unsophisticated sense of these Scriptures, in support of the Divine na- ture of our Saviour ! The advocate of Christianity may attempt, as he pleases, to account for the diversity of reading ; it will all amount to nothing in the view of his unbelieving antagonist, who will, on no consideration, permit a weapon to be wrested out of his hands, which, he finds, he can wield to so much advantage against those, whom, after the example of his leader, he brands with the name of Associants. That the version of Ali Bey exhibits renderings of a description suited to aid the Mohammedan assailant in discussions of this nature, proofs were given in the Appeal, which have been deemed perfectly conclusive by all, as far as my know- ledge goes, excepting the Author of the Remarks, who, after devoting nearly twenty pages of his book to the investigation of the subject, leaves the reader in a state of bewilderment, from which, to say the least, he was perfectly free when he commenced the perusal of them. But, it will be asked, why this pertinacity in contending for that which, after all, makes nothing for the theory assumed in the Appeal? Why en- deavour to demonstrate, that by making use of 4JI Allah, or some word or periphrase descriptive 102 of absolute Deity, Ali Bey has excluded from the passages in question all idea of the one Mediator, when no attempt has previously been made to shew, that the word u^ Rabb, " Lord," will be understood by the Mohammedans as signifying our Lord and Saviour? Professor Lee boldly asserts, that if I had made any such attempt, I should have failed: "the fact," says he, p. 37, being, " that the Mohammedans understand it as applicable to none but God. To have rendered the word Kvpioe, therefore, by ^ would not have restricted the meaning in any one of the passages alluded to, to the person of our Lord ; but would have left it just as it now is, where the word afil &c. have been used. Dr. Henderson's expedient, would, therefore, have been ineffectual." It will be perceived, that it is here laid down as indis- putable, that M Allah, " God," and ^ Rabb, " Lord," are perfectly convertible terms, both applying to none but God alone. Upon this as- sumption, and upon the Professor's misconception of the real bearing of the question, proceeds the whole tenor of his Remarks, pp. 34 — 44, 86, 87, 109 — 112 ; and, perplexed, as he evidently appears to have been, by what he did not comprehend, we cannot wonder at his repeatedly assuring his readers, that I have argued entirely upon the other side of the question from that which my position 103 was intended to establish. Nor, for the same reason, is it possible to be in the least degree angry at the sarcastic manner in which he speaks of my qualifications, p. 38, or the abuse with which he loads me in thus concluding the subject: " I ask, can any translator, on any principles, expect to escape the lash of such a Homeromastix as this 1 Where is the society of men, who can satisfy the requirements of such an appellant, who bidding- defiance to every principle of criticism, feels, or thinks he feels, the ground firm under him, and then proceeds to arraign, condemn, and execute, for the pure love of truth ?" P. 43. Leaving the reader to ponder these queries, let us now revert to the point in dispute, and inquire, whether it really be a case so clearly made out as Professor Lee would have it be believed, that Cj>j Rabb, " Lord," can be used of none but God? And here it may not be amiss to examine what he has to say relative to Lj>JI Err abb, or as he pro- nounces it El Rabb, in the two notes at the foot of the 37th page. In the latter of these notes, we have the following lexicographical definition of the word by the celebrated author of the Kamoos ; J^ y. *U1 jA jib 1 f 1h ±jJ) " El Rabb, with the article El, is applied to none but God, (to whom) be power and glory." The question then, as far as it regards El Rabb, may be con- 13 104 sidered as for ever set at rest, for here is Oriental authority of the very highest order ; and to this authority I desire to bow with the most submis- sive reverence. But can it be deemed irrelevant to put the question to Professor Lee, why he made this quotation ? Did he suppose that any person could possibly doubt, that C-j. Rabb, " Lord," with the article J! El prefixed, making it CjA\ El Rabb, " The Lord," could be applied to none but God, just as all or ell] Ilah, " a god," with the article prefixed, making it aBl Allah, " God," never can be applied to any but the Supreme Being? The debate is not (and it is of essential import- ance that the reader should know it is not) about the application of el^Ji %l Rabb, " The Lord," /car Qoyjiv, but about £j. Rabb, without the article to give it this restrictive definiteness of signification. Yet, as if I had been so ab- surd as to maintain the contrary, we are told, p. 38, that " in the Arabic, Persic, and Turkish, aBl \tfjj vli^ 9-U ? J) El Rabb, which, we have the authority of the Kamoos for affirming, 106 is applied to none but God ; it necessarily follows, that his version exhibits such an overwhelming mass of evidence in support of that doctrine as must cover its enemies with eternal confusion. And, as we are positively informed by the Pro- fessor, that this version is ?.? in every respect faith- ful to the original* ," it as incontestably follows, that all other versions are chargeable with the blackest infidelity on this all-momentous and fun- damental point ; it being a fact, that in no other version in existence, as far as I know, does one half of these passages contain a word for Kvpiog, which " can be applied to none but God." Is it not to be regretted that this important discovery was not made at an earlier period? How many heart-sickening controversies it would have pre- vented! And what trouble it would have saved such men as the Bishop of St. David's, and Drs. Magee, Wardlaw, Pye Smith, and many others, whose distinguished talents might have been employed with so much advantage in the defence of some other important part of the Christian system ! Faithful to the Original ! every lover of sacred truth will exclaim, Where then is the in- valuable Greek manuscript preserved, from which AH Bey made his version, and which applies to our Lord in two hundred and forty three passages, * Remarks, p, 35. 107 — a word, the faithful rendering of which consists of one that " can be applied to none but God ?" Before indulging, however, in further specula- tion on this interesting topic, it may be proper to ascertain the accuracy of Professor Lee's compu- tation ; for, if he has committed any mistake in making the count, it will proportionally lessen the promised result. Now, what will the reader think, if it should turn out, that Cj>J\ El It abb does not occur exactly with so much frequency in Ali Bey's version as a translation of Kvpiog when applied to our Lord? The least he can say is, that the Professor was too hasty in estimating the number. But what if, instead of nine times out of every ten, at least, the word in question should not occur once out of every ten ? What, if it should not be found once in every hundred ? It will in this case be thought, that he was highly reprehensible in hazarding so bold and inconsiderate an assertion, and supporting it with all the weight of his pro- fessional character. How then must the reader be filled with astonishment, when, as the result of a careful collation of the passages, he is informed, that, instead of occurring two hundred and forty- three times, which it must, according to Professor Lee's statement, the word tL\ll El Rabb is, in Ali Bey's version, applied to our Lord only in one solitary instance ! This instance occurs, Acts i. 21. 108 H-^ % j^ c ul>j*»- HcBzreti Isa El Rabb, i. e. as I should originally have given it, " The Illustrious Jesus the Lord ;" but, according to my oppo- nent, " The Lord Jesus God." In what manner are we to account for this blunder ? But, it will be perceived, that it is not merely on the use of the emphatic form CjJ) El Rabb that Professor Lee rests his argument ; he assigns even to Cj. Rabb, without the article, the same restrictive signification. In proof of this, besides the passage already cited from page 37, we may refer to the following : " We have already seen, that by the word Cj. Rabb, the Mohammedans do not understand our Lord Jesus Christ, but God, to the exclusion of every other Being:" p. 86. And again ; " It has already been shewn, that whether the translator had used C-*. Rabb or AJjl Allah, the Mohammedan reader would have understood none but the Supreme God:" p. 110. Now, assuming for a moment that this statement is correct, let us enquire what are the conclusions to which it will conduct us ? The first and most obvious conclusion at which we must arrive is this ; that, as far as Moham- medans are concerned, the version of Ali Bey contains two hundred and seventy passages in which Jesus Christ receives a title which is applied to God, to the exclusion of every other being. But 109 no person acquainted with the Greek original will take it upon him to affirm, that it contains cor- responding proofs of the divinity of our Saviour, at all amounting to any thing like this. The Paris edition of the Turkish New Testament, therefore, if put into the hands of Mohammedans, will, in numerous passages, teach a doctrine which is not taught in the corresponding passages of the ori- ginal ; and, if so, it must be perfectly unwarrant- able in the Bible Society to distribute a single copy without note and comment, or, at least, without employing a living instructor to inform the Turks, that they are not to understand the name C->. Rabb, as we are told it has hitherto been universally and properly understood amongst them, as exclusively applicable to God; but, that they are merely to consider it as denoting au- thority or superiority in the person receiving it ; the context affording the only criterion by which to judge of the nature of the person, or whether that nature be human or divine. The second consequence resulting from Profes- sor Lee's premises, is the imperfect knowledge which Ali Bey possessed of the language into which he translated the Bible ; for, if he knew, that by the word Cj. Rabb, the Mohammedans would understand none but God, how did he come to apply that word to Jesus Christ in passages which alone refer to his human nature, or which, 110 from the circumstances of the context, necessarily exclude all idea of divinity from the minds of those who gave him this title ? Generally, through- out the Gospels, when our Saviour is addressed by Kvpie, where there is not the slightest reason to conclude, that those who made the address had any conception of his Divine nature, AH Bey renders it by Cjj b Ya Rabb, " O Lord'' Not to multiply instances, let us take the case of the woman of Samaria. On being told by Christ, who, she had every reason to believe, as an entire stranger, could not come by the knowledge of the fact in any ordinary way, that she had had five husbands, and that the person at present living with her was not her husband, she accosted him Z-*. b Ya Rabb, i. e. according to the construction which my opponent says a Mohammedan must put upon it, "OGod! I perceive thou art a pro- phet !" But let us try how this exclusive sense of \L>j Rabb will apply in other passages of Ali Bey's version. Matt, xxviii. 6. " Come see the place where God lay." John xx. 2. " They have taken away God out of the sepulchre." 1 Cor. vi. 14. " And God both raised up God, and will also raise up us by his own power." xi. 26. " For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the death of God till he come." Acts ix. 1. " And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and Ill slaughter against the disciples of God." John vi. 23. " After that God had given thanks." xi. 2. " It was that Mary who anointed God with oint- ment," &c. But, of all the passages in which it is used, none will, on the principle in question, more, effectually scandalize a follower of the false prophet, than Acts ii. 36. " Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that the Court of the Creator hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified, both God and Christ." .What ! he will exclaim, do you imagine I can be so in- fatuated, as to hesitate for a moment, whether or not I should believe in a made God? The argument of Marracci, that the supreme name of Lord, which is only proper to Christ as God, was also com- municated to his human nature on account of the hypostatic union by which the things properly belonging to the one nature are predicated of the other *, as it certainly will not satisfy a Moham- * Refutationes in Suram V. Alcorani, p. 202. The passage as thus explained by Marracci, as well as the others above quoted, might seem to admit of vindication from the text, Acts xx. 28. " The church of God which he hath purchased with Ms own bloody" but few are ignorant of the disputed nature of the reading Beoq ; and the remark of the great Athanasius pertinently applies to them all : Ov^ayuou £e cujia Qeov Bttfa aaptcoe TrapacJe^wfcaffiv ai ypcuftcu, rj Qeov dta crap/cog iradovra /cat avacrravra' 'Apeiaviov ra roiavra ToXfirjfjLara. " The Scriptures have no where given the expression, blood of God, as separate from the flesh [i. e. the human nature], or, that God through the flesh suffered and rose 112 e " medan, so, I believe, it will not be deemed con- clusive by any Christian who impartially weighs the import and bearing of the passage. The idea of making or constituting Christ what he really was and had been from eternity, is altogether a palpable absurdity ; but that, as Mediator, he was constituted in his one complex person, Lord, i. e. Possessor and Ruler of all things, is a doctrine plainly and distinctly taught in Scripture. But it is not merely to our Lord that the word lZj>. Rabb is applied by Ali Bey, and that as nearly synonymous with Master; e. g. John xiii. 13, 14. He also uses it of the angels ; thus, Acts x. 4. Cornelius, addressing the angel, whom he saw coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius, said, Cj. \i'X & " Ne war ya Rabb" " What is it Lord?" where the word is used in the same sense with the Greek Kvpu, merely as indicatory of a superior, without necessarily including the idea of divinity. Once more, if u_>. Rabb will not, and ought not to be understood of any but God absolutely con- sidered, it follows that Ali Bey's version, to the extent of its circulation, must terminate the long agitated question relative to the propriety of again: such expressions are the daring attempts of Arians." Contra Apollinarium. See Dr. Pye Smith's Script. Test. Vol. ii. pp. 493, 494. 113 giving to the virgin Mary the title of Oeoro/coc, Dei genetrix, Deipara, " Mother of God." Thus we read, Gal. L 19. " James, the brother of God," and 1 Cor. ix. 5. " the brothers of God ;" and, in translating Luke i. 43. AH actually appears to have had the disputed phrase in view ; for he does not render it ^Jj\ dJ, Rabbimun Anasi, " the mother of my Lord," which the words of the ori- ginal, rj ixr\Tr\p rov Kvpiov fiov, require, but ^jJj] CXij Rabbun Anasi, " the mother of the Lord" i. e. according to Professor Lee, " the mother of God!" But here, as in the former instance, relative to tl^ll El Rabb, it will be necessary, before we admit such important conclusions, to pause and examine the premises from which they are de- duced. "By the word lL>. Rabb, the Moham- medans do not understand our Lord Jesus Christ, but God, to the exclusion of every other being :" p. 86. " If Dr. Henderson here means by Ku^ioc Kar k l £oyj\v in the New Testament, that such pas- sages should have been translated by some word applicable to man, and not to God, surely i* r **sJ.* Sahib, jouj Sayyud, \sS Aghd, or the like, should have been proposed, and not lL^ in order to have restricted the meaning to our Lord considered as man :'! p. 38. I have not adduced this latter pas- sage in order to attempt a refutation of the argu- i 114 ment contained in it, because this argument is directed against a position which I never held; but to shew, that Professor Lee also adopts as his own, the opinion which he imputes to the Moham- medans, viz. that Cj. Rabb cannot be given to any created being, nor allied in any relation to man, for- asmuch as it is one of the exclusive and appropriate titles of Deity. That this hypothesis, however, is entirely destitute of foundation, will appear from the following considerations. First, cJj.I Erbab, the plural of C->j Rabb, " Lord," occurs times without number in Moham- medan writings, in the sense of Domini, posses- sores ; and nothing is more common than the com- binations J*s$\ 4->y Erbabit-tijan, " the Lords, or Possessors of Crowns," i. e. kings ; ^U\ l-Jj.] Erbabi-rai, " Masters of Opinion," i. e. counsel- lors ; ujUW! <-Jjj\ Erbabul-ibab, " Possessors of Hearts," i. e. prudent, intelligent ; J\^o <-Mj\ Erbabi Divan, " Lords of the Divan," i. e. Privy Counsellors ; c^*Ju> l-jM Erbabi Sendt, " Posses- sors of Art," i. e. artificers. Now, although the word should never occur in these forms in the singular number, yet, it is evidently implied, that each one of the persons here spoken of, taken singly, is £jj Rabb, " Lord, Master, or Possessor," of that which is predicated as belonging to them. 115 The same remark applies to the Scripture phrase, 1 Tim. vi. 15. o BacnXevg rwv fiacriXevovTOJV Kal Kvpiog nop KvpievovTojv, Rex regum et Dominus dominan- tium, which Ali Bey gives in the pure Arabic form ; u->b Jl u_^j CADI wiAU Melikul-mulk, Warab- bul-erbab, " The King of kings, and Lord of lords;" where, as each of the kings is a king, however limited his power, so each of the lords is a Rabb, i. e. Master, or possessor of the per- sons or things belonging to him. The word is also used in its plural feminine form, as J[^\ cl>L>. DomincB Thalamorum, " Ladies of the bedcham- bers." Secondly ; u^ Rabb, " Lord," in the singular, the very form in dispute, is used in a manner ex- actly resembling the above combinations, Matt. x. 25. in the Propaganda Arabic, cujuJI cl>, Rabbul- beit, " the Master of the House ;" in pure Arabic, .lil Cjj Rabbad-dar ; and in the Scholia, printed in the margin of the Petersburgh edition of the Koran, p. 414, besides the significations of Ja^ Seid, "Master," and v^Ju Malik, "Possessor," we also find *L«JI _«: Zewjil-marat, " the husband of the woman," assigned as the meaning of ^j>. Rabb. Thirdly ; The word Cj. Rabb is given as a title to man as well as to God, in Arabic writings of i 2 116 undoubted classical authority. Thus, we find in a quotation from Abulfeda, in the Monumenta Vetustiora Arabiae of Schultens, p. 48, it is said by that Author, of Nooman, who built the castle of Khawarnak, which is thus translated by Schultens : " Sane in meditationem venit Dominus Chawarnaki quum die quodam prospexisset exalto ; estque ductui recto meditatio." In the Journal des Savans for January, 1818, p. 25, we have the following rectification of the passage, and a new translation by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, from which it will be seen, that he affixes the same sense to the word in question, and applies it to Nooman, as Lord of Khawarnak : Recogita Dominum arcis Khaivarnaki quando e sublimi loco respexit quadam die; et utique in seria cogitatione est directio. The same combi- nation is found in one of the examples in Richard- son's Arabic Grammar : " When I drink freely, then indeed I am Lord (Rabb) of Khavarnak and the throne ; M But when I awake from ebriety, then I am only Master (Rabb) of sheep and of camels." 117 Another incontrovertible instance of this applica- tion of the word occurs in the Annals of Abulfeda, Reiske's edition, p. 238, where speaking of Hasan, the son of Gafana, he says, (< He forgot me not in Syria, when he was her Lord." To these examples I shall add five from the Koran itself, in which Pharaoh is called the C^j Rabb, or " Lord" of his servants : of these, three occur in the 41st and 42d verses of the Xllth Surah, thus ; £. {m ^*^ l*£&sA U) ^s^t ( _ s ^-lo k ^S^\ j*y] ^oi &J\. ^ JkLi) JiUi L~*.l&\» .~JI Ulj L«o- " O my fellow prisoners, verily the one of you shall serve wine unto his lord, as formerly ; but the other shall be crucified, and the birds shall eat from off his head. The matter is decreed concerning which ye seek to be informed. And Joseph said unto him whom he judged to be the person who should escape of the two, Remember me in the presence of thy lord. But the Devil caused him to forget to make mention of Joseph unto his lord, wherefore he remained in the prison some years." The other two examples occur in the 50th verse of the same Surah : viXU) Jl*j 118 fAc ^sx^i J>j J\ fjb^} ijxks ijft) xyJU! " And the King said, bring him unto me. And when the messenger came unto Joseph he said, Return unto thy lord, and ask of him what was the intent of the women who cut their hands ; for my lord well knoweth the snare which they laid for me." From these instances, it is obvious, that Cj. Rabb is given to merely human lords, especially to kings ; and we are informed by Castell, that in the time of Paganism, the Arabs even gave to their kings the title of u^il El-Rabb, " The Lord" absolutely ; but this form came, after their conversion to Mo- hammedanism, to be exclusively appropriated by them to the Supreme Being. That it is sometimes used in the acceptation of Master in general, without regard to any particular dignity in the person sustaining the character, is clear from the proverb in Tabrisi ad Hamasa ; z&xz i-->*ty, 4-^ J£ " et ille ; Dominus servum suum mores docet." Schultens' Monum. Vetust. Arab. p. 41. Lastly, after all his efforts to establish his hypo- thesis, Professor Lee, himself, completely over- throws it, by admitting that the word in question may be applied as a dignified Arabic title, without connecting any ideas of divinity with the person to whom it is given. " But Dr. Henderson has also neglected the context. The disciples of John are the persons who here (John i. 39.) address 119 our Lord ; there is no probability, therefore, that they would give him any higher title than that of teacher or doctor*, as it is hardly to be supposed that they were acquainted with the divinity of his person ; and this inference will hold good, had they addressed him by the more dignified Arabic title of Cjj Rabb *." After this concession, we cannot be * Remarks, p. 102. In the paragraph preceding that from which this quotation is made, we have some remarks on my ob- jection to the rendering : \Zj \j "Lord! which, being interpreted, signifies teacher." Joh. i. 39. " Unfortunately for our Reviewer, he has not been aware that the word Q Rabbi, here used by Ali Bey, is the very word used in the original, just as it is in the English version." Of two things I was perfectly aware at the time I wrote : First, that the word in the original was pafifit ; and, Secondly, that the term used by Ali Bey to express it, JL> l> Ya Rabb, is the very form which he employs, Acts iv. 24, in translating the words, Lord! Thou art God, &c, and indeed, generally, where the word Kvpie occurs in the original. According to the Transla- tor's usage, therefore, a Turkish reader will consider the interpre- tation as designed to explain the Arabic, and not a foreign word, of which lL> Rabb cannot appear to him to bear any resem- blance. Is it not a little strange, that the Professor should have forgotten the manner in which the word is given in his own Propa- ganda Edition ? The translator of this work, sensible of the incon- gruity of giving .Jl^o \j Ya Moallim, " O Teacher" as a trans- lation of the Arabic Cj [j Ya Rabb, " O Lord," introduces the original word 'Pa/3/3t, completely in its exotic garb ; J\. Rabbi ; not only inserting the final ^ 9 but also the |, neither of which 120 surprised at the remark, p. 103; " It should be remembered, that the divinity of our Lord can- not be maintained by the words adopted in any translation;" but it will be impossible, on the other hand, for the Professor to exonerate him- self from the charge of self-contradiction in making such an assertion, after having gravely told us, that " in nine places out of every ten, at least, the word Kvpiog, when applied to our Lord, is ren- derered by tl>JI (El Rabb) in Ali Bey's version," — a word, which, " the Author of the Kamoos," says, " is applied to none but God :" p. 37. Ac- cording to this principle, the divinity of our Sa- viour may, at least on the evidence of the Turkish version, be maintained merely by the word adopted by the translator, as has already been shewn. The results of the process to which we have submitted the examination of the question, are these : First, That the word Cj>. Rabb, with the article, CjJ\ El Rabb, giving it emphasis, and ren- dering it exclusively applicable to God, as the Possessor and Lord of heaven and earth, is only once, and that improperly, used of our Saviour, is exhibited in the Arabic word CJ Rabb, Had my opponent attended to this, he would have found, that the Propaganda Ver- sion, and not that of Ali Bey, was what he calls " a faithful trans- cript of the original," in this case, and might have spared the observation, that my " remark savours of hypercriticism." 121 in the version of Ali Bey. Secondly; That this same word kZj. Rabb, which, taken absolutely, and in the highest sense, is a designation of Jehovah, is, nevertheless, according to the best and purest Arabic usage, applied to human lords, especially such as are high in dignity and authority. Lastly; That when used, therefore, by Ali Bey, to express Kvpiog, it is properly and legitimately employed; and the sense in which it is to be taken, is left to be determined by the circumstances of the con- text; which is precisely the situation in which we are placed in regard to the original. It must be obvious, however, to every person who reads the Appeal, that my objection did not lie against the use of this word in application to Christ, but against Ali Bey's not using it in pas- sages where we find the Greek word Kvpiog thus applied in the original. This objection was founded, partly on the confusion introduced into the sacred text by the interchange of the names God and Lord ; and partly, on the annihilation of a number of proofs of our Lord's divinity, which I maintained must necessarily follow, as a conse- quence of this confusion. Now, what is the amount of Professor Lee's re- marks in answer to this objection ? It is simply this : that I am, as he conceives, chargeable with a double inconsistency; first, in asserting, that, by substituting God for Lord, Ali Bey has de- 122 stroyed certain proofs of the divinity of our Saviour ; and, secondly, in proposing the use of a word which would inculcate his divinity exactly in the same way as the word Oeog does. Were the author of the Remarks able to prove the truth of his position, that lLj. Rabb is equiva- lent to Oeoc God, and is never used in a lower, or subordinate sense, I admit, that his latter charge would be well founded ; but, as its fallacy has been detected, to the satisfaction, I trust, of the reader, I may be allowed still to maintain, that by employing Cj. Rabb as a translation of Kvptog, when our Lord is the subject of discourse, he would not have restricted its meaning, but left it in possession of the same indefinite character which attaches to Kvpiog, the word used in the original. With respect to the other charge of inconsistency, I am free to confess, that to a superficial reader, or a person who has not thought closely on the subject, it may appear to be not altogether with- out foundation. Nor was I ignorant that this objection had been made to my assertion, long before I found it taken up in the Remarks. It was urged, and, abstractly considered, urged with reason, that if, instead of calling Christ Lord, a term which is often applied to merely human masters, the translator uses the words God, Supreme God, Divine Majesty, &c. he never can 123 be chargeable with weakening or annihilating the proofs of his divinity, but must, on the contrary, be considered as corroborating that doctrine in the most decisive manner. It must be observed, however, that it was not in an abstracted or more general point of view that I referred to the sub- ject, but, as occurring in certain specific passages, and affected by considerations necessarily arising out of the connection in which it thus occurred. What I had in contemplation was the fact, that in numerous passages of the New Testament, we find certain acts or attributes predicated of a Being there styled o Kvpiog, " The Lord," which cannot be predicated of any mere creature, but are confessedly the sole prerogatives of the Eternal God. But, according to the usual and familiar style of the New Testament writers, o Kvpiog is not employed to denote the Divine Nature absolutely, or the person of the Father in distinction from that of the Son, but our Saviour Christ as appearing and acting in his mediatorial capacity during his abode upon earth, or, as carrying into execution the great work of human redemption after his ascension to glory. Consequently those passages which connect with this title, as applied to him,, properties or acts peculiar to divinity, clearly prove him to be God. But let us substitute 6 Gcoc, or as Ali Bey has done, M Allah, ^L cJJb- Ginabi Bari, " The ' 13 124 Glorious Creator," or some such phrase, in these particular passages, and who does not perceive, that quite a different idea will be produced in the mind of the reader? Instead of conceiving that the attributes there described are the possession of Him who tabernacled as a man among men, was crucified, lay in the grave, rose from the dead, ascended up into heaven, where he now is, crowned with glory and honour, and whence he will come to judge the world at the last day, he will naturally think of God merely in a general point of view, as existing and acting, irrespective of the personal distinctions so clearly revealed in the mediatorial scheme. The direct and neces- sary tendency of the change of terms is, therefore, to suggest an idea of immediate acts of the Deity, or acts on the part of man terminating on the Divine Nature, without any regard to the econo- mical arrangement which constitutes the basis of the Christian faith. But it will be proper to produce a few passages for the sake of illustration, keeping in view the manner in which they have been rendered in the Turkish version. We read Acts ii. 47, that the first Christian church continued daily with one accord in the temple — " Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as were saved." Here, as in the original, an important nominal distinc- 125 tionis maintained between the object of worship, tov Otov, God, referred to in the preceding part of the verse, and o Kvpiog, " The Lord," as the author of that spiritual increase which was vouchsafed to the primitive church. It is well known, that, according to the general manner of Luke and Paul, the word Kvpiog, without the article, is used of God, without reference to any personal distinc- tion, but of our Lord Jesus Christ when it takes the article, as in the passage under consideration. In the version of Ali Bey, the words are thus rendered : " Praising the Most High God, &c. the Court of Truth (j.*- ^-Jj&> Ginabi Hakk) also added daily to the Church," &c. By destroying the distinction, the translator renders it impossible to resolve the effects, which are here stated to have been produced, into an exertion of the power of Christ as the Omnipotent Head of his church ; and they are consequently described as simple and immediate acts of the Father, or the Godhead absolutely. Chap. xi. 20, 21. " Preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them ; and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord* The impartial reader will naturally conclude that the Lord, whose agency was vouchsafed to the Apostles so as to effect the saving conversion of men by their ministry, a work exclusively the prerogative of God, is the same Lord who had just 120 been called Jesus, and to whom the converts are said to have turned. Not so in the Turkish version; V They preached His Excellency Jesus, and the hand of the Most High God (Jb£ *&1 Allah Taala) was with them." Can any tiling be more marked than the distinction here made, for which there is not the least foundation in the original ? Chap. xiv. 23. " They commended them to the Lord on whom they believed." According to the style of the New Testament, those whom the Apostles addressed, were called to " Repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," chap. xx. 21. in consequence of which, where any are said to have believed on the Lord, as in the passage before us, we are to understand by the term, the Lord Jesus. This construction, however, it is impossible to put upon the word as given in the Turkish version: "They commended them to God(&$\ Allahie) in whom they believed;" and, as the person to whom they commended the new disciples is supposed capable of affording them protection and every blessing, it is obvious, that by substituting God for Lord, the ascription of this Almighty Power to the Lord Jesus, is ex- cluded from this passage under review. But it would be doing injustice to my argument not to quote tkeexcellent remark of Dr. Pye Smith on this verse. " In the passage before us, the person to whose power and grace the Apostle and his 127 associate commended the converts, and their newly-established churches, was clearly the Lord Jesus ' on whom they had believed,' and on whom the inspired teachers directed all persons to be- lieve in order to salvation. It was an act of adoration ; and it manifestly recognized in Him who was its object, that invincible power which in the most hazardous circumstances could keep his followers from falling, and guarantee that they should never perish, nor should any snatch them out of his hand." It is also plain, that the just construction " leads us to refer the action of praying, and that of commending to the same object*." Chap. xvi. 10. 14, 15. "Assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the Gospel unto them. Whose heart the Lord opened. If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord" These, and the other passages above quoted, are adduced by the same able writer, from whose masterly work I have just given an extract, as proving not only that the appellation the Lord is currently given to the Redeemer, but that it is combined with a peculiar and exalted knowledge, authority, power, and influence for the advancement of his kingdom, and the protection of his servants ; and that both the appellation and the attributives are in the usual style and manner of Scripture, when * Scripture Testimony, Vol. II. pp. 482, 483. 128 it speaks of the Great Jehovah as the Protector, Guide, and Saviour of his people*. But all this is rejected, and no person would ever think of the Lord Jesus on reading these passages, accord- ing to the interpretation of Ali Bey : " For we concluded from this that the Most High God (Allah Tadla) called us thither to preach the Gospel. — Whose heart God Most High (Allah Tadla) opened. — If ye account me faithful to the Most High God." We next come to a passage which was in- stanced in the Appeal, p. 26, where I observed : '■' Thus Acts xviii. 8, when it is said, that Crispus believed & ^US afrl in the Supreme God, the reader will naturally conclude, that he had formerly been an Atheist or Idolater, but was now con- verted to the faith of the one true God. But we know that he professed this faith before, for he was a chief ruler of the Jewish synagogue ; and what Luke here affirms, is, that he embraced the Christian faith. He believed in the Lord, i. e. the Lord Jesus Christ." After spending the greater part of three pages in conjuring up ab- surdities and mistatements with which to clog my argument, but which, in fact, after all, only attach to the baseless fabric of his own miscon- ceptions, Professor Lee replies in the following style : " Very true, Dr. Henderson, there are many * Ut sup. p. 462. 129 false, though very natural conclusions, drawn from the text of Holy Writ. Crispus was, no doubt, a ruler of the synagogue ; he may, never- theless, have been an Atheist or an Idolater, in the strict sense of those terms, and still a ruler of the synagogue. And further, although professing a belief in the God of Israel, he may have virtu- ally denied him, in rejecting his Messiah; and now, for the first time, have been initiated in the true faith. There is not much stress, therefore, to be laid on the Doctor's dogmatic reasons; and his critical ones are absurd*." Passing the quibble relative to false and natural conclusions, may we not ask, who so much as conjectured before, that the sacred penman had the most dis- tant idea of affirming, that Crispus was, " an Atheist or Idolater, in the strict sense of those terms," or indeed in any sense whatsoever ; or, that " although professing a belief in the God of Israel, he may have virtually denied him, in re- jecting his Messiah VI Can any conclusion or in- terpretation be more false, and, at the same time, more unnatural than this ? It is in vain we con- sult the commentators on the subject : their re- marks are all founded on the common reading tw Kvpiy, in the Lord, without deriving any ad- vantage from the admirable discovery brought to light by the Turkish version. Kuinoel, one of the * Remarks, pp. 43, 44. K 130 latest, only remarks : " Ne autem omni prorsus fructo inter Judaeos Pauli laborem caruisse pute- mus, narratur Crispum archisynagogum, Christo nomen dedisse cum omni sua familia," which words I merely cite to shew the light in which he viewed the appellative in the text. Having attempted to defend the position, that it was the Most High God, and not the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom Crispus believed, the Professor proceeds to turn into ridicule the passage which I adduced from a Turkish book, to illustrate the manner in which the Turks express themselves when describing their God, and which was shewn exactly to coincide with what Ali Bey says of Crispus. " We are gravely told," says he, ff that a book of testimony, written by some Peer Ali, lias the following passage," &c. p. 44, on which I have only to remark, that the book, of which, from ignorance, he here affects to speak with contempt, has passed through several edi- tions, both at Scutari and Kazan, is to be found either printed, or in manuscript in almost every Turkish and Tatar house ; and was thought worthy of being translated into French a year or two ago by one of Professor Lee's own autho- rities in his Appendix. His next attempt is, to tax me with mistranslation. " Cj $yb Tengri," says he, " does not mean Divinity, as given by the Doctor, but God, or Lord, when applied to God. 12 131 The true translation, therefore, is, The Lord is our God; and the sentiment is just as proper for a Christian or a Jew, as it is for a Mohammedan." Leaving it to the reader to decide what mighty difference there is between Divinity and God in the popular acceptation of the word, I have only to say, that I used the word merely as a synonyme to vary the form of expression agreeably to the diversity obtaining between the phrases I was translating. The charge of mistranslation falls, in fact, entirely back again on the Professor him- self. The words to be rendered are, *d 'JJfco B¥j*)j& Tengrimuz Allah Tadla dur ; which, as the reader will see from chapter third of the present work, never can be given by " The Lord is our God," but strictly and literally, God Most High is our God. Though we were to concede the point that Tengri meant Lord, which, however, it does not, it would make nothing for my opponent's argu- ment, as the subject of the proposition is not Tengri, but Allah Tadla; and surely Professor Lee would never, knowingly, render this phrase by Lord as its proper translation ? That I cited 2 Thess.i. 11, to prove that Crispus was a Moham- medan, is more than he himself seriously believes ; but as he thought it worth while to refer to that passage, why did he not shew that I had mistrans- lated the words there also, and that ^JU) ^Ujf^S k 2 132 Tengrimuz Allah Tadla, " Our God, God Most High," is the proper rendering of o Os6g ripCov, our God ; the form exhibited in every other version ? It may be objected, however, that granting the point relative to Crispus, and allowing that the specific object of his faith was the Lord Jesus Christ, and not God absolutely considered, how does the rendering of AH Bey in the least affect the subject of our Lord's divinity ? To this I re- ply, that it certainly would not affect it were the passage before us perfectly isolated ; but this is by no means the case. It is stated in the very next verse, that " The Lord (o Kvpioc) spake to Paul in the night by a vision : Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace : For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people in this city." It must be evident, to every well-constituted mind, that such language as this can be used by no created being; and if so, then it follows, that the Lord, mentioned verse 9th, can be no other than the Lord God Almighty, whose peculiar prerogative it was of old to declare : " Fear not, I am with thee, and will bless thee. Fear not, for I am with thee : be not dismayed, for I am thy God." Gen. xxvi. 24. Isaiah xli. 10. Yet our blessed Saviour adopts the same style for the encouragement of his dis- ciples : ' ' Lo ! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Let not your heart be troubled : 133 ye believe in God, believe also in me." Matth. xxviii. 20. John xiv. 1. Now it must require the aid of a very violent and unnatural principle of interpretation to make it appear, that the Lord who gave this promise of Omnipotent aid to Paul, was not the same Lord in whom Crispus believed, as mentioned in the verse immediately preceding. Ali Bey himself had too much penetration not to discern that the same person was spoken of in both places ; and, therefore, he renders both in the same uniform manner: "Then Crispus the head of the synagogue believed in the Most High God, with all his house ; and many of the inhabi- tants of the city of Corinth, hearing Paul and be- lieving, were baptized. And the Most High God said to Paul/' &c. But, in no passage within the whole compass of the New Testament, is the ap- pellation Most High God given to our Lord Jesus Christ ; on the contrary, it is exclusively used of the Godhead in general, with the exception of Mark v. 7. Luke viii. 28, where it is applied to the Father in contradistinction from the Son. Is it not, therefore, incontrovertible, that the person- ality of Christ, and, at the same time, one of the strongest indirect proofs of his divinity, are en- tirely excluded, in the version of Ali Bey, from the passage under consideration ? The only other passage to which we shall further refer on this important subject, is Rom. x. 134 13. " For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved ;" respecting which it was observed in the Appeal, p. 41, that the change of " the name of the Lord" into " the name of God, seems also to have been done with the design of annihilating one of the proofs of the divinity of Christ, as also not only the lawfulness, but the necessity, of addressing divine worship to him." On this, Professor Lee remarks, p. 110, " It has already been shown, that whether the translator had used the word Cj.Rabb, or &\ Allah, the Mo- hammedan reader would have understood none but the Supreme God. What then was the trans- lator to do ? Was he to use the word T ^^\ the Messiah, ^*m Jesus, ^dSi\ Effendi, or the like? If he had done this, he would have been accused of having given a paraphrase instead of a transla- tion*." With respect to the manner in w r hich the word Cj. Rabb " Lord" is to be understood, and will be understood by every Mohammedan acquainted with the Arabic language, enough has already been said to prove the untenableness of the Professor's hypothesis, and to show that there exists precisely the same distinction between Cjj Rabb, "Lord," and *fi) Allah, "God," as there * What does Professor Lee think then of Sx^» Seid, a* applied by Ali Bey to Christ? Rev. xi. 8. 135 does between the corresponding words in other languages. His reasoning, relative to the use of Cj>j Rabb, by the oriental Christians, has also been shewn to apply equally to Ali Bey's version, in which it is applied to our Lord in passages in which there is no intimation whatever of his divinity in the original. '" No such sense, how- ever," adds Professor Lee, " has obtained among the Mohammedans ; and the conclusion must, therefore, be here, as on a former occasion, that Ali Bey has taken the safe side of the question ; leaving the reader to determine, whether the con- text relates or not to our blessed Lord." What, it may be allowed to ask, are we to understand by "The safe side of the question?" It would naturally be supposed, that the safest plan a translator can adopt, where a word is capable of being explained in two different ways, is, to lean to neither ; but to render it in the version, so as to admit either the one or the other interpreta- tion, just as it is in the original. Now this is not what Ali Bey has done in the disputed passages. He has not left the question undetermined ; but uses the word ^1 Allah, or some other word, or circumlocution expressive of Supreme Deity, and designed to represent Qeog, a word which is no where applied to Christ in the manner Kvpiog is ; and, consequently, excludes the application of the argument from the context, which, as in the 136 present instance, rests entirely on the identity of the word Lord. But I will quote the whole passage, and leave it with the reader to decide, whether the substitution of Qzog God for Kv/otoe Lord, in the 13th verse, does not break the con- nection, introduce a new subject of discourse, and thereby destroy one of the proofs of our Lord's divinity. " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness ; and with the mouth con- fession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek ; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whoso- ever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Those who wish to satisfy their minds respecting the direct bearing of this pas- sage on the divinity of Christ, are referred to Dr. Wardlaw's Discourses on the Principal Points of the Socinian Controversy, pp. 122, 123. Uni- tarianism Incapable of Vindication, by the same author, p. 255, and Dr. Pye Smith's Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, Vol. II. pp. 641—643. It only remains, before concluding this chapter, to exhibit a brief specimen of the arbitrary man- ner in which Ali Bey makes use of the names 137 Jesus and Christ ; now substituting them one for another, and now omitting them altogether. (1.) The word Jesus instead of Christ, Rom. xiv. 18. xv. 3. Gal. ii. 17. Eph. v. 23,24, 25,32. Phil. ii. 30. (2.) Jesus omitted. Rom. vi. 11. Eph. iii, 21. 2 Tim. i. 9. ii. 10. (3.) Jesus added. 1 Pet. v. 1. (4.) Christ omitted. Rom. xv. 8. 1 Cor. i 24. Eph. iii. 1. 1 Thess. v. 18. Titus iii. 6. Phiem. 1. 6. Heb. xiii. 21. 1 Pet. ii. 5. (5.) Christ added. 2 Thess. i. 7. Professor Lee may tell us, that all this is of no importance, as he does in regard to numerous other liberties, which Ali Bey has taken with the sacred text ; but they will not appear in this light to the critic, who is acquainted witi the peculiar manner in which these names are used and combined by the different writers of the New Testament, nor to the plain Christian who believes in the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, CHAPTER VI. Socman mode of translating Rom. ix. 5. The rendering of Alt Bty decidedly opposed to the Divinity of Christ, as proved by this passage. Important distinction between the words d\or oi\ Ilah, and . aXjjl ' He who is over all a god blessed for ever/ or, ' He who is over all an eternally blessed object of worship/ It is well known to all who have any knowledge of 140 Arabic, that A\ and «il) with a simple Lam, signify ' a god in general,' * any god ;' but, when the ra- dical Elif is made to coalesce with the Lam of the article, and its place is supplied by Teshdid, or the mark of corroboration, it then receives the determinate and exclusive signification of God — the only living and true God. This difference is strikingly marked in the Mohammedan confession : &\ 211 d) 51 La ilahi ill' Allah, * There is no God but God ;' i. e. there is no object of worship but the Adorable One; and, indeed the distinction is as plainly exhibited 2 Thess. ii. 4. ^jS oil! ojj&O) JX^a ' in the temple of God as a god. 9 From this it is evident what Ali Bey meant by using eili Ilah, and not *2l Allah of Christ. The one would, in the most unequivocal manner, have asserted his divinity: the other only admits that he is an in- ferior object of veneration." From this extract the reader will perceive, that the argument turns here entirely upon the distinction between the Arabic forms p9) Ilah and afil Allah, of which I have asserted, that the former signifies " a god, any god," whereas the latter is universally and necessarily restricted in its acceptation, belonging to none but God, the sole and ever-blessed Object of religious adora- tion. The propriety of this distinction, however, is disputed by Professor Lee. After quoting the 141 Mohammedan confession, given above, and para- phrasing it thus : there is no other true God, as the Christians suppose, but the (one) God, whom we acknowledge ; he says, page 107, " The word Hah ( sj>s^ doc All \djijb every thing taken as an object of worship, is (called) Hah by the person so taking 144 it*" It is added by Professor Lee, but the reader will hesitate before he adopt the conclusion : " According to these definitions, therefore,, the word *!] Ilah cesignates the object of worship." It does not designate the object of worship, if by this phrase be meant the true God, but an object of worship ; whatever any person pays divine honours to, whetier animate or inanimate, supe- rior or inferior. 'Vhat then is the legitimate con- sequence to be ceduced from these premises? That because - & )s^ Jj£ J ^yi^c. Here we have a)) //#/? three times; but in the two first instances it is nothing but 4J1 Allah in a state of construction, either with a pronominal suffix, or another noun, which, therefore, requires the rejection of the article : and in the third in- stance, the word is restricted by the numeral adjective one, in which case the phrase is equiva- lent to aSI Allah. Thus : " Were you witnesses, when death was present with Jacob, and when he said to his sons, What will you worship after me (my death) ? They said : We will worship thy God (OLvll) and the God of thy fathers (vSA^ *!!), Abra- // // ham, and Ismael, and Isaac, one God (!j^ lyJI) and to him will we be devoted." It is the same with the other passage quoted by the Professor, ver. 165 of tjie same Surah, y& Jll *JI 31 j^ a!) *Lfi 3 ****j>\ J^>J) " And your God is one God, there is 147 no god besides him ; he is the compassionate and merciful." In the first case, the article is rejected because &\ Allah is joined to a possessive pronoun; in the second the word is again restricted by "one" and the last is a mere negation : consequently not one of them is at all in point. It will now be proper to bring forward some additional authorities, in proof of this established distinction between *!l Hah and *fil Allah, in con- sequence of which, the former is never used in its separate form to denote the true God, but con- stantly signifies a god in general, or an inferior object of worship. These authorities shall be Castell, Golius, Meninsky, the Koran, Ali Bey, and one or two of the Christian versions. I. Castell. ail, et oil] x, pro *JU PI. LJT form 14. Ch. nbtt Quod colitur : Numen, Deus. Hinc jit 31 1 all J! afil God (Allah), There is no god (Ilah) besides him. By these declarations, the Mohammedans are not to be considered as absolutely asserting that there is no object of adoration in the world besides God, for they would admit with the Apostle Paul, that " there are gods many and lords many," 1 Cor. viii. 5. but what they mean is, that there exists no legitimate object of religious worship, He only excepted, who is called by way of eminence and exclusion, <$! Allah, Deus ille optimus max- imus, which name is appropriated to Him alone, and cannot, any more than the homage which it implies, be given to any other. Connected with these confessions is that, Surah xvi. 23. Jo-lj *J! JL^\ " Your God is one God." In Surah xxiii. 93. we read, c^aiJ til all ^ &** ^ Uj dJj ^ jb JS y& 311 *S) 51 ^1 * Neither shalt thou invoke any other gW (Ilah) together with God (Allah) ; there is no god (Ilah) besides him. Every thing shall perish except himself." And Surah lii. 42. &£jfy t Uc \ £sj; &jj)\ J$j\ **j*e^ k ij*** *y **1 (►*"' j* a^J "Who opposing himself, riseth superior to all that is called by the name god (Ilah), or that 151 is worshipped, to such a degree, that shewing himself as a god (Ilah), in the temple of God (Allah), as a god (Ilah) he sitteth." In keeping up this distinction, AH Bey has rigidly followed the Greek text : o avTiKUfxzvoq Kai virioaioo^voq em wavra Xeyofievov Qeov r) (Xcj3a(Tjua, wore avrov uq tov vaov tov Geou tog 0eov /caO/crcu, InroSuKvvvTa lavrov, on kan Qt6g. It is true, the late Bishop Middleton main- tains, that in the two last instances, in which the word Oeog occurs without the article, it is not to be taken in a lower sense, but signifies the true God ; but it is utterly incredible, that the Anti- christian power, that was to rise in the very midst of the professing Christian Church, how high soever he might carry his arrogance, could ever pretend to be the Deity himself. It is suf- ficiently impious to assume a place in the church which cannot legitimately belong to any human being, and to receive that homage which mankind in every age have considered to be due to none but an object invested with divine powers. Mac- knight therefore renders the passage in accord- ance with the manner of Ali Bey : "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above every one who is called a God, or an object of worship. So that he in the temple of God, as a god sitteth, openly shewing himself that he is a god." The same distinction is kept up in Air's translation of 1 Cor. viii. 4, 5, 6. *Jfl ^jyh ^d&».)y !&)) j&lfd ^j& ji *t>UJt> u^o t&)jp, y> 152 Jtx> A*ij| .!j ^^S&id oil] e ^ cj^£ &s- £| Jjj .J jy ^ ^1 ^ J^.| ^ ^ ^ jL^ JM\ o^ " We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that besides the one God (Allah), there is no god (Ilah). For, though there be in heaven and in earth those that are called god (Ilah), even as there are many gods (Ilahler) and Effendies ; yet, we have only one God (Allah)." Thus, also, Acts xvii. 23, where the Turkish translator ren- ders tlie words of the Heathen inscription, 'A-yvw- ariA) 0ew, 5I) ^U* U " To an unknown god (Ilah) ;" but he does not say in the 24th verse, that it was a god (Ilah) that made the world, &c. but afil Allah, God, the only living and true God. In this case, as in many others, he is more consistent than his defendant, who maintains, that ff even the ayvtoGToq Oeog, unknown God of Athens, was adopted by St. Paul, in his address to the members of the Areopagus *." If the Professor will take the trou- ble to look again into the passage, he may pro- bably find, that the Apostle no more adopted this designation, than he admitted that the true God had been really worshipped by those ignorant idolaters ; for his address commences thus : 6 Qboq o 7roirf(Tag rov Koofxov kcii iravra ra kv civtio, ovtoq ovpavov Kal yrjg Kvpios virapyjuv ; God that made the world * Remarks, p. Ill, 153 and all things therein, the same being Lord of hea- ven and earth," &c. He may also find from the context, that the Apostolic address was not de- livered to the members of the Areopagus, although one or more of them may have been present, but to an assembly consisting for the most part of very different characters. One example more from Ali Bey will suffice. It is Acts xxviii. 6, where we are informed, that the inhabitants of Melita, on perceiving that no injury had accrued to Paul from the viper, eXeyov, 6e6v avrov elvm, JjJuiJ .d ^\ " they said, he is a god''' (Ilah), not j A &] "he is God" (Allah). It may be objected, that those islanders were idolaters, and as they knew nothing of the true God, it would be, in the highest degree, incongruous to make them use his name. I grant the full force of the objection, and that Ali Bey has properly ren- dered the passage ; but does the same objection apply to Rom. ix. 5. ? The Apostle was neither an idolater himself, nor was he addressing idolaters ; why then, according to Ali Bey, does he merely call Christ $\ Ilah, and not *Bl Allah ? The words in both parts of the version are the same, and de- note a being inferior to the Supreme God; and after the marked difference in the manner in which Rom. ix. 5. and 2 Cor. xi. 31. are rendered, there cannot remain a doubt upon the subject in the 154 mind of any impartial reader. In the former, where our Lord Jesus Christ is the subject of discourse, he is only designated by the name of' o)\ Ilah ; but in the latter, when God the Father is spoken of, he is called ^JUS *3l Allah Tadla, <( God Most High, who is blessed for evermore." Why did Ali not employ his favourite Allah Tadla in the former instance, as well as in the latter, and as the Hindostanee translator has done ? Lastly, let us examine how the words ^ " God is the living one : blessed be the God of my salva- 155 tim" all Hah, on the other hand, in its separate and absolute state, is never once used of the true God, the rendering Ps. xiv. 1. ail ^^o! aJi' J Jals 1 ! Jtf being properly : " The fool saith in his heart there is no god" Not merely does he deny the ex- istence of the Supreme Being, but he inwardly rejects all religion of whatever form or description. A couple of passages from the Arabic version of Raphael Tuki, Bishop of Erzerum, and from the Polyglott, shall close the evidence. 1 Kings xviii. 21, he renders thus: a^oli atf! y& cuJI J& J\ " If the Lord be the God (El Hah, the original form of Allah) follow him," &c. ver. [24. ly^ «4juu i_s3Ji *M!j ^>j +J\ ^cj) Ulj f^H-H ^1 Jul atfl ys> jjh " And call ye on the names of your gods, and I will call on the name of my Lord, and the God (El Hah) that answereth by fire, he is the God (El llah)." Ver. 27. *3| &y y4 *&£■[> )j£y6\ %M Uij| a^J i^Sh^i (J& " And Elijah mocked them, saying : cry aloud, for he is a god (all Hah)" But ver. 39, after the people had beheld the manifest demonstration of the Supremacy of Jehovah, they fell on their faces, and said, aM y* <-^!i 4UI y> w^il " The Lord, he is the God (El llah): the Lord, he is the God (El llah)" In the Arabic version of the Story of Bel and the Dragon, inserted in the Polyglott, the same marked distinction is ob- 13 156 served* Thus ver. 3. " Daniel answered, and said, Because I may not worship Idols made with hands J I M ^ but the living God (El Ilah). Then said the king unto him, s j>- <*Jl Jju J\ Jai Ui Thinkest thou not that Bel is a living god (Ilah)" Again, ver. 23. " And the king said unto Daniel, wilt thou also say that this is of brass ? Lo, he liveth, he eateth, and drinketh : { j^ All y& ^^jj ^| Jjft ^1 £jda**J Uj Thou canst not say that he is not a living god (Ilah): therefore, worship him. Then said Daniel, ^\ M y& 4ft! &bJi ^1 u-^JJ I will wor- ship the Lord my God; for he is the living God (El Ilah)r To sum up the whole, therefore, it appears from the best lexicographical authority, both native and foreign, and from the usage of the language, that t^Ji, and frequently in the Koran. The Propaganda (at least Professor Lee's edition) certainly has «JJ| Ilah; but it gives the same word Acts xxviii. 6. where, it will scarcely be main- tained, that it can signify the true God. Let the reader compare the two passages, and then give his decision. If the Propaganda should in this instance be also found to be faulty, it is no concern of mine to defend it, any more than the Malay, in which the same distinctive use of Ilah otherwise occurs, as has just been noticed in re- gard to the Arabic. With respect to the Ethiopic, to which I re- ferred, as being subversive of, instead of favour- ing Gilbert Wakefield's lower sense ot'Qeog, Pro- fessor Lee asserts, that the word A9°AY1- Amldk, on which the stress of my remark rests, 158 has no such meaning as that which I had attached to it. He adds: "Ludolfsays in his Lexicon, (col. 60.) ' A9°/\31 : Deus PL h^lbJil^ \ Dii Ps. lxxx. 1. 6. pecul. Ethnicorum.' If indeed the word here used had happened to be"K°2H. A"ft rfbC '. then would the Doctor's remark have had some weight (Lud. Lex. col. 541.) but the case is other- wise*." Now, what is the impression left by this criticism on the mind of the reader ? Must he not conclude, that the word Amldk does not, in " the strongest and most appropriate" manner, express the idea of Supreme Divinity ? and that it really favours the lower sense of Wakefield ? Yet the very reverse of all this is the truth ; and, in order to give his readers a just conception of the force of the word, Ludolf, in the passage above quoted, caused the Latin to be printed in capitals, thus, Deus ; which the Professor very conveniently omits, and thereby leaves it to be inferred, that the word has no such distinguished signification. That K*F*l\5l : Amldk is equivalent to Beoc, and expressive of true and proper divinity is obvious from its use in the Abyssinian Catechism : (Do^ou : a9°/y3i : " Jesus Christus Dorainus noster estne homo an vero Detjs V * Remarks, p. 109. 159 *' Deus et homo simul in una persona*." Thus also in the Liturgy : A9°/V5l: -KD&E I ^qoXoo/YYl " B " God (Amldk) was born of God (AmUky Aqo/v 1 *!: HT^A^/tfi: HnAoq"?: « Very God (Amldk) of very God (Amldk):' fihP 1 * I A-n: axD&jf: (D^l^h: 4>&h: oa^/v^: " In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, one God (Amldk). 99 0^l*n Cj, of the Arabs, and the Rabbinical iD^biyn y\. The indiscriminate use of the two words by the Ethiopic translator does not affect my argument : it is only one of the numerous in- accuracies with which this ancient version is chargeable. It is scarcely necessary further to add on this passage, that in the Armenian Turkish version, and in the edition of the Turkish recently brought through the press by the Scotch Missionaries at Astrachan, the reading all] Allah is found, and not o3Jj Hah. In the earlier editions of the Turkish, printed in Russia, the Tatar word ^h Tengri " God," had been adopted from Seaman ; and in the Orenburgh Tatar version, the Persic word ^f |Jo- Chuda is used, which has the same signifi- cation. Finally, Professor KiefTer has cancelled the page of Ali Bey, in which *i\ Ilah occurs, Rom. ix. 5. and reprinted it with Birr, as a proper word by which to translate &aibm;H, I see no valid objec- tion that can be made to the use of it, especially as it " has long ago been adopted by the Chris- tians of the East *." This circumstance is perhaps of greater importance than the Professor may have imagined, as it tends to produce a degree of uniformity among the different versions brought into circulation in Oriental countries, by means of which, they would lend each other mutual countenance and support. Nor do I suppose that I shall be thought singular in the opinion, that it would be most desirable to have a standard Arabic version of the Bible, from which translators into the Persic and Turkish languages might adopt, without variation, all the principal words, except in those cases in which their place could be equally well supplied by native words in these languages. But not to insist on this : when I pro- * Remarks, p. 6 ( J. - 173 posed the other Arabic word c^Jl^ adalet, it was merely in lieu of the synonymic combination, and because z> birr might be thought by some not to be sufficiently expressive. We are told, indeed, in " rather a curious note," at the foot of page 75 of the Remarks, that " the word cuilo^ (adalet) does not mean righteousness in a religious sense ; but is the forensic term right or justice ;" but this is only another instance of the gratuitous ex cathedra asser- tions with which the Remarks so much abound. Supposing, however, that our Author were perfectly accurate here in reference to the forensic sense of cuil^ adalet, every one conversant with polemic di- vinity is aware that the word Si/ccuow is plainly a fo- rensic term, as used in relation to evangelical justifi- cation ; and Witsius does not hesitate to say, that " scarcely any who love to be called Christians have such a bold front or stubborn mind as to deny it. Certainly the Popish doctors themselves generally own it*." But the Professor says that this sense will not suit Matt. v. 6. Very true ; but where did he learn that the forensic was the only sense attaching to u^sJ1<\c adalet 7 . Certainly not from Ali Bey ; or, if we must consider him as uniformly using it with this exclusive significa- tion, and not also, at times, " in a religious sense," * Economy of the Covenants, Book III. Chap. iv. § 5. 174 what construction are we to put upon the follow- ing passages in which he uses it for Sucaioowri, righteousness I Rom. xiv. 17. " For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but justice (c^IIac adalet, " as executed in the courts of law*"), and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 2 Cor. iii. 9. " For if the administration of condemnation be glory, much more shall the administration of justice (c^JIjst. adalet, " as executed in courts of law") exceed in glory." vi. 7. " By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the arms of justice (u^J)j^ adalet, " as executed in the courts of law"), on the right hand and the left." What ideas must the Turks form of the Christian religion, if such be the genuine meaning of these passages as they stand in the Turkish New Testament ? With the exception of the Kadis, I fear we shall find but few among them disposed to give it unqualified reception. Whether it be " as good divinity as that proposed by our Doctor," and whether, upon Professor Lee's own shewing, it can be proper to circulate an edition of the New Testament con- taining such divinity, let the reader determine. To proceed: instead of uniformly employing the word .j Birr by itself, to express Sikcuogvvyi, which he does in nearly forty instances in the * Remarks, p. 75. 175 course of the New Testament, Ali Bey sometimes combines with it the word ^js takiva, which we now propose to consider. According to the Lexicons, it is derived from the root ^ waki, cavit, servavit, custodivit ; and under the eighth conjugation, timuit, coluitque Deum, pius fuit. Its signification is, therefore, caution or abstinence from evil, the fear of God, piety. If we examine the manner in which it is used separately by Ali Bey, we shall find that he attaches nearly the same idea to it. Thus, Luke ii. 25, and Acts ii. 5. he gives one of its forms ^al* mutteki as a transla- tion of evXatrjQ pious, religious ; and Acts x. 2. for ciKTcCrjc. The very word in question is, in fact, that by which he renders hwztua, godliness, piety, in all the passages in which it occurs in the New Testament. Is it not evident, therefore, that if on the one hand, L birr, " righteousness," be used to express the highest degree of moral rectitude as one of the divine attributes ; and is the root which, together with its derivatives, is employed to denote the act and consequences of justification, as it regards the sinner's state before God; and if, on the other hand, ^yu takiva, "piety" be re- stricted by its application to man only, and ex- press a quality, or a constellation of qualities, which are never represented in Scripture as 17G entering into the matter of our justification, but which, in fact, form a very important part of subsequent holiness or Gospel sanctification, it must incontrovertibly follow, that the two words are far from being synonymic or convertible terms, and that the latter cannot in any way be applied to the subject of our becoming righteous in the sight of Jehovah, without completely sub- verting the doctrine of the New Testament on this most important article. All who have pe- rused that volume with attention, must be aware, that we are nowhere said to be justified on ac- count of kvde^ia piety, but that, on the contrary, God is expressly styled " the Justifier of the un- godly," or impious, tov Sikoaovvtcl tov 'A2EBH, Rom. iv. 5. such being the character of every person who is justified up to the moment of his being constituted righteous at the bar of heaven. Ac- cording to the reasoning of the Apostle Paul in the chapter just quoted, as well as in other parts of his epistles, j> birr " righteousness," and ^^p takwa " piety" are, as far as it regards our justifi- cation, diametrically opposed to each other. In this view of the matter piety is another name for works, and we have only to substitute the one for the other, to perceive at once how perfectly anti- scriptural it is to ascribe to this moral quality any influence in effectuating the important blessing 177 we are here treating of. It is true, Professor Lee endeavours to evade the force of this argument, by asserting that the works to which God's righte- ousness is opposed, were those performed by the Jews in the observance of the law of Moses*; but the fact is, it is equally opposed to works performed in obedience to the Gospel, as a ground of acceptance with the Most High. The Sucatoavvt] or righteousness which alone constitutes the ground of this free and gracious act, on the part of the great Governor of the Universe, is not as was observed in the Appeal, p. 33. any inherent or implanted righteousness, or any works of righte- ousness done by man, but the meritorious righte- ousness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That such was the sentiment held in the pri- mitive church, is evident from the following striking passage in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians : YIclvtzq ovv £o\>£aC, Si* 7IQ TTCLVTaQ TOVQ aiT CLILOVOQ O TZaVTOKpaTtop 0£O£ fStfcatwcr£v, to tGTto So$a uq rovg aluyvaq twv aiwvtov. apivf. "These, therefore, all attained to glory and * Remarks, p. 71, f P. 41. Edit, Oxon, 178 greatness, not by themselves, or their works, or by the righteous actions which they performed, but by His will. We also being called by his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or piety, Or WORKS WHICH WE HAVE WROUGHT IN sanctity of heart, but by faith, by which Almighty God hath justified all from the begin- ning of the world. To Him be glory for ever. Amen." The same doctrine is thus explicitly taught in the Homilies of the Church of England : " The very true meaning of this proposition or saying, We be justified by faith in Christ only, (accord- ing to the meaning of the old ancient authors), is this : We put our faith in Christ, that we be justified by him only, that we be justified by God's free mercy, and the merits of our Saviour Christ only, and by no virtue or good work of our own that is in us, or that we can be able to have, or do, for to deserve the same ; Christ himself only being the cause meritorious thereof* " And again : " Be- cause all this (justification by faith) is brought to pass through the only merits and deserving s of our Saviour Christ, and not through our merits, or through the merit of any virtue that we have within us, or of any work that cometh from us ; therefore, in that respect of merit and deserving, we for- * Third Part of the Sermon of Salvation. i 179 sake as it were altogether again faith, works, and all other virtues *." The same doctrine is taught by- Hooker in his Discourse of Justification, in which, when opposing the Roman Catholics, he makes the very distinction which we maintain to exist between righteousness and piety : "Whether they speak of the first or second justification, they make it the essence of a divine quality inherent; they make it righteousness which is in us. If it be in us, then is it ours, as our souls are ours ; though we have them from God, and can hold them no longer than pleaseth him ; for if he withdraw the breath of our nostrils, we fall to dust : but the righteous- ness wherein we must he found, if we will be justified, is not our own ; therefore, we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. Christ hath merited righteous- ness for as many as are found in him. In him God findeth us, if we be faithful, for by faith we are incorporated into Christ. Then, although in our- selves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous* yet even the man which is impious in himself, full of iniquity, full of sin, him being found in Christ through faith, is justified f," &c. To these au- thorities, I shall add that of a Presbyterian divine : " Faith justifies, as it is the instrument or mean of justification. In this instrumentality, no other * Third Part of the Sermon of Salvation, f Works, London, 1670, fol. p. 495. N 2 180 ' grace of the Spirit, and no work of the law are to be associated with it. Nor is it for its own intrinsic worth, that a man is justified by the instrumen- tality of it ; for he is nowhere said in Scripture, to be justified for faith, but only to be justified by it*." According, therefore, to the Apostolic testi- mony, and the opinion of these theologians, piety cannot, in any point of view, or under any modi- fications, be taken into the account in the matter of our justification, either as forming part of our justifying righteousness, or as giving the righte- ousness of Christ any validity on our behalf; consequently, to translate SiKaioawt), " righteous- ness," in those passages which relate to justifica- tion, by "And that faith he counted instead of righteousness." On this I observed in the Appeal, p. 32. that " it substi- tutes faith, as a principle which God will accept in lieu of obedience, than which nothing can be more contrary to the whole scheme of revealed mercy." At this assertion, Professor Lee ex- presses himself in no small degree surprised, conceiving it to be a complete contradiction to affirm, that any person can insist upon good works the one moment, and the next broach a sentiment which goes to exclude their necessity; but it must be remembered, that this is a contra- diction for which I am not at all accountable. It is one which clogs the version of Ali Bey, and is found, more or less, to attach to every system which represent human deeds as a constituent part of our justifying righteousness. In fact, those who declaim most loudly against justifica- tion by faith alone, as a doctrine destructive of good works, are uniformly found to be the very persons who are most deficient in such works as the New Testament teaches to be well-pleasing to God : whereas those who reject all works of any kind, or degree, as influential in justification, are such as stand distinguished by a careful soli- citude to be foremost in the practice of every 185 thing which tends to the glory of God, or the good of man. The idea obviously conveyed by the words *J to count faith instead of righteousness," is one of the favourite dogmas of the Neonomian system, which is thus stated by Macknight, in his note (2) on Rom. iv. 3. " In judging Abraham/' says he, " God will place on the one side of the account his duties, and on the other his performances. And on the side of his performances he will place his faith, and by mere favour will value it as equal to a com- plete performance of his duties, and reward him as if he were a righteous person." But, surely, if by righteousness be meant conformity to the re- quirements of the Divine Law, and it be affirmed, that faith is imputed to me instead of my com- pliance with these requirements, or, at least, to make up for any defects in my obedience, am I not at liberty to conclude, nay, what other con- clusion can be drawn, but that God relaxes the obligations of his Law, and admits me to happi- ness in a way consistent with their annulment? The influence of such a principle, in weakening the bonds of morality, is too obvious to require any elucidation. " But, if we allow," says Professor Lee, " that the Turkish word is equivalent to his transla- tion instead (a translation which my opponent does not invalidate) as given in the first passage, 186 I am still unable to discover what sense different from that found in our authorised version is here discoverable." The word in the English version is "for? " Abraham believed in God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness ;" but, I con- fess, that of the different meanings of which this preposition is susceptible, and certainly ''instead" is one of them, it never once entered my mind, that such could be its signification in the passage under review. We are, indeed, further informed, p. 65, that " it is equivalent to the Greek uq and the Hebrew b of the original Scriptures, notwith- standing our appellant's opinions to the contrary;" but the reader must do justice to my opinion, though now for the first time expressed, when he finds from the first lexicographical authority, that in the whole Bible, neither the one preposition, nor the other, signifies in any instance " instead of," or " in the room of." Parkhurst assigns eighteen, and Schleusner not fewer than twenty -six different significations to ek, but the disputed sense of " instead" is not once taken into the ac- count. And with regard to the prepositive *7, no such meaning is given to it, either by Parkhurst or Gesenius ; but, indeed, if it had, it would have made nothing to the present argument ; for what- ever force Professor Lee may be disposed to ascribe to this preposition in other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, he will not contend that it 187 stands for «c, Gen. xv. 6. the passage from which the Apostolic quotation is made. He proceeds : " If the faith here evinced by Abraham was accounted to him instead of righte- ousness, in the words of Ali Bey, or for righte- ousness, as it stands in our version, I suppose the meaning in either case is, that Abraham was esteemed righteous, in consequence of the faith there spoken of." Ibid. But what authority has the Professor for supposing, that any such mean- ing can be logically deduced from either of these prepositions? In what language has the term instead, the sense cf in consequence? What cer- tainty can there be in the Scriptures, or indeed in any other book, if we may be permitted thus to explain particular words and phrases ad libitum ? To my mind it appears to be one thing to count faith for, or instead of righteousness, and something- altogether different to count a person righteous in consequence of that faith : the one is the imputation of a moral act or quality, in lieu of universal rec- titude : the other regards the subject of that ope- ration of the heart, as sustaining the character of righteous in virtue of the relation in which he has been placed by faith. With respect to the real meaning of the phrase Etc SucaioGwriv, I conceive it to be most satisfactorily given by Doddridge on the place, who renders it " in order to justification." It is thus also that 188 Christ is said to be the end of the law, ug &k.juma, or assembly-day, but was designated by that of h^\ ^ jeivmul-arubet, renders it more * Remarks, p. 84. 191 than probable, that the Arabs borrowed it from the Jews, by whom the "day of Preparation" was called in the Chaldee dialect tfrDYiy Aru- batha, either on account of its being the day before the Sabbath, or because it was that on which they made the necessary arrangements for the day of rest; — the very idea conveyed by the Greek Word TrapaaKwr). The further discussion, however, of this subject is very prudently waved by Professor Lee, who proceeds to ask ; " What can our Appellant mean, when he says, the translator is guilty of an anar chronism? Does he suppose that translators are not at liberty to use any words in their transla- tions but such as were in use when the original itself was composed?" pp. 84, 85. No; he neither meant nor supposed any such thing ; but he was, and still is of opinion, that it is perfectly incon- gruous to make the sacred writers speak of things which were not understood to exist in their day, as if they were already commonly known. The case before us is clearly in point, as is also that of the Apocalyptic Market-day, which we shall presently consider; and the circumstance, that the Apostle Paul introduces the Tatars to the notice of the Christian church at Colosse, five centuries before they were known either to the Greeks or Romans. Were we once to admit the principle advocated in the Remarks, I do not see why we 13 192 should not approve of Good Friday, Maundy Thursday, Matt. xxvi. 17; Parish Priests, Titus i. 5; Parish Clerks, 1 Tim. iii. 12; "now from the time the clock struck six, until it struck nine," &c. Matt, xxvii. 45. All these renderings (ex- cept the first) are found in translations of the New Testament, and most of them in one made by a person, no less skilled, perhaps, in the art of trans- lation, than those who made the Arabic versions alleged by Professor Lee as authorities to vindi- cate the use of &**»>• jumd, the Mohammedan Sabbath. But we come to a more serious fault, though I am sorry to say, it is one that Professor Lee treats with the same spirit of levity which charac- terizes too many of his Biblical criticisms. It is that which occurs Rev. i. 10. "I was in the Spirit, c&&£ j\k j> bir Bazar goninda, on a mar- ket day," instead of " the Lord's day." " A very alarming conclusion truly!" says the Pro- fessor*. It will be allowed, that it required no great stretch of foresight to predict, that the in- dividual capable of thus treating a glaring perver- sion of the language of Holy Scripture, would not scruple to undertake its defence; but that any person professing serious godliness, and a native of Britain too, the glory of whose country is the * Remarks, p. 86, 193 distinguishing respect there paid to the sacred day, compared with the manner in which it is spent in other parts of Europe, should undertake to advocate so gross a dereliction of Christian feeling, is to me, I confess, perfectly inexplicable ; and I trust, it will never be said, that such a ren- dering received the sanction of a Society esta- blished for the sole purpose of propagating the " word of God," whoever may be their advisers, or however strongly advice to this effect may have been urged upon them. The subject may not, indeed, affect those who reside in places where public marketing is prohibited on that day, to the same degree it must such as have weekly pre- sented to their view all the enormities attendant on its conversion into a day of merchandise ; but still, it cannot but appear utterly repugnant to every sacred association, to hear such a practice spoken of without reprobation by an inspired Apostle. Just as soon may it be affirmed, that Christ hath concord with Belial, or that he that believeth hath part with an infidel, or that the temple of God agreeth with idols, as that it is decorous and proper to translate the above pas- sage, "I was in the Spirit on a market-day /" Surely after reading such a version, the Christian could not but feel the incongruity of joining in the song: o 194 " Welcome sweet day of rest, That saw the Lord arise ; Welcome to this reviving breast, And these rejoicing eyes." But let us hear the reasons advanced by Pro- fessor Lee in defence of so notorious a breach of the principles of Biblical interpretation, and so revolting an offence against Christian taste. " Let us try to amend the translation in the way pro- posed by Dr. Henderson. It should have been translated, says he, by djJuj£ ^X. on the Lord's day. We have already seen, that by the word 'Cjj Rabb, the Mohammedans do not understand our Lord Jesus Christ, but God, to the exclusion of every other being. A Mohammedan wilL, there- fore, understand by oStiji CJ1 on God's day, an expression which will convey to him no precise meaning whatever:" pp. 86, 87. Having, in a former chapter fully shewn the futility of my op- ponent's reasoning, relative to the restrictive sense of the Arabic word C-ij Rabb, and proved, that, according to the best usage, it denotes any lord or master whatever, it is unnecessary to say more in refutation of his assertions on that subject; but it seems passing strange, that it should not have occurred to him, that the Mohammedans, after finding this identical word, iJ. Rabb, applied to 195 our Lord Jesus Christ by Ali Bey throughout his version, should not conclude, that the person here referred to is the same who is generally de- signated by the title of Cj. Rabb, by the penmen of the New Testament. Nor is it less surprising, that he should have been so forgetful as to permit himself to employ an objection against my pro- posed emendation, which militates with equal force against Ali Bey's own translation of the parallel phrase, Kvpiaicov Benrvov, 1 Cor. xi. 20. ^Jbj *Ux dshai Rabbani, "the Lord's Supper." Must not a Mohammedan, on Professor Lee's principle, understand by these words, God's Supper? And would he not be confirmed in his opinion by Ali's translation of the 23d verse; " For what I delivered unto you, I received of (JUJ aE) Allah Tadla) the Most High GodT Nor can it be urged against this mode of expression, that it is " unknown to the phraseology of Scrip- ture;" for we read, Rev. xix. 17. "Come and gather yourselves together to the supper of the great God" The devotee of Islamism would cer- tainly reason as consistently with fair principles of interpretation, in calling in the one passage to illustrate the other, as the Author of the Remarks does, in quoting 1 Cor. v. 5. 2 Cor. i. 14. Phil, i. 6. 1 Thess. v. 2. in application to the present subject. o 2 196 With respect to the unintelligibility of the phrase, " The Lord's Day," I cannot perceive how it should be greater to a Turkish Moham- medan than it is to the Mohammedans of Hin- dostan, or to the Malays. In the version destined for the use of the former, we read, ^d ^Jo^Ijo* Chudawendaki den ; and the Malay translators have rendered it, hdrij mahd Tuhan. We are told, how- ever, p. 90, that " it should be remembered, there are certain words or phrases, such as the Lord's Day, the Christian Sabbath, &c. in use in Chris- tian countries, which would either be unintelligible to a Mohammedan, or Heathen, or would give an idea totally different from the scope of the original, if literally translated." And what is the conclu- sion to which we are conducted by this argument ? " In a future edition, perhaps, the word might be altered with advantage, as it has been the case with the version of Luther; but I doubt whether a better word could be proposed now *." Is it not here distinctly avowed, that in preparing first versions of the Scriptures, or such as are destined for those nations or tribes that have been hitherto destitute of Christian instruction, translators ought to reject whatever phraseology they may conceive to be unintelligible, and substitute one of their own fabrication, how different soever the expres- * Remarks, p. 91. 197 sions may be from those used in the original ? If this principle be just, it will certainly very much facilitate the labours of Missionaries and others engaged in a work of this nature ; and every pos- sible means ought to be adopted, to put them in possession of it, that they may be relieved from those fetters by which they have hitherto felt themselves shackled in the execution of their im- portant undertaking. They have only to carry it to the full and legitimate extent of its application, and the Mohammedans and Heathen will be fur- nished with translations of our sacred books, com- pletely purged from every expression peculiar either to the Jewish or Christian economy, and so intelligible, as to supersede the necessity of the living instructor. " For my part," remarks Pro- fessor Lee*, "I had always supposed that ver- sions of the Scriptures should be so made as to be intelligible, at least to those for whom they had been intended ; and that, how unbending soever the phraseology of the originals might be, they must be rendered, in a translation, by the phrase- ology in use among the people, for whom such trans- lation is made, in order that they may understand them, however different their style and taste might be from that of the original Hebrew and Greek texts." It may seem ignominious to advocate the cause of unintelligibility ; but no reader of any re- * Remarks, p. 151. 198 flection will contend, that the Scriptures can be universally understood by such as peruse them for the first time in any translation : numerous words and phrases must be perfectly new to them ; while with others they will never be able to connect any proper ideas, unless they be taught by such as are previously acquainted with their meaning. Before the religious public delegate full powers to any man or body of men to new-model the sacred diction of the Spirit of God, by commuting it for the phraseology in use among Infidels and Idolaters, it becomes them seriously to reflect on the consequences to be apprehended from such practice: for, if what the Baron Silvestre de Sacy asserts in the Appendix (p. 13) be true, that * every intelligible translation is necessarily a hind of commentary" must not such versions as those made, or to be made, agreeably to the canon laid down by Professor Lee, be complete commentaries ? And if so, what guarantee have we that they will not contain the mind of the trans- lators, instead of the mind of the Spirit, and that the most absurd and dangerous errors will not be circulated under the sacred character of the word of God? The adoption of such a principle, how- ever, is totally at variance with the fundamental rule of the Bible Society, which ordains, that the copies to be circulated by it, be " without note and comment;" and, if I am not much mistaken, 15 199 the great majority of the friends of that institu- tion will be disposed to question the propriety of constituting the individual, who professes this principle, the sole guardian and editor of any one version of the inspired oracles of God. For, after so explicitly and unblushingly avowing his appro- bation of the unhallowed rendering market day instead of the Lord's day, what security have we that he will not take equal, if not still more daring, liberties with the sacred text ? Leaving the reader to examine the remarks of Professor Lee, on the encouragement given by the above rendering to the desecration of the Christian Sabbath, it is only necessary to add, on this passage, that when I said the Russian name of the day, Voskresenie, " Resurrection," was most appropriate, I never meant to affirm that it was at all appropriate as a Biblical render- ing, but merely referred to it as the common designation of the day in the popular language of the Russians, and as strikingly descriptive of that glorious event which the first day of the week was instituted to celebrate. The next point to which we must advert, is that respecting the Sweetmeats of Omnipotence. It was shewn (Appeal, p. 44), that in this bombastic style, Ali Bey has translated the simple word fxawa, Manna, John vi. 31. and the authority of Golius and Meninsky was produced in proof of 200 the accurate interpretation of the Turkish words. Now, does Professor Lee so much as attempt to fix upon me the charge of inaccuracy, in making the statement contained in the note ? Or does he endeavour to invalidate the testimony of these two celebrated Orientalists ? No ; he only doubts " whether what I cited were done in a way suf- ficiently impartial to entitle me to the meed of praise, to which he says I aspired *-.*' In reply to this, I can only assure the reader, that if I did not insert the whole of what stands in the Lexicons under the phrase in dispute, it was not done with any fraudulent intent, but merely to save room ; as all that the Lexicographer adds, goes merely to shew, what every reader of Ali Bey's version, or of my note, must at once conclude, that by " Sweetmeats of Omnipotence/' the Turks mean " The Manna of the Hebrews." But let us ex- amine, for a moment, what the Professor has to say in defence of this delectable phraseology. 1. His first argument is German usage, which, of course, we may pass. 2. " The phrase used by Ali Bey is not without a parallel in Scripture, however paraphrastical it may be thought to be f-" Here we have the same hackneyed remark obtruded upon us, which was so often employed in respect to the Divine Names, * Remarks, p. 125 ( f Ibid. p. 126. 201 and is deemed universally applicable, but which no person of an enlightened and impartial mind can ever admit as available in Biblical translation. It will also be questioned, whether the phrases, " bread of heaven," and " food of the mighty ones," be exactly parallel to Sweetmeats, or Pastry of Omnipotence. In Psalm lxxviii. 25, the word \Q Man does not occur, but in the preceding verse, where Luther retains it, and does not give it by Himmelbrod, or Heaven-bread, as the reader would conclude, from the manner in which this German phrase is referred to in the Remarks. The compound, Himmelbrod, " Bread of Heaven," is given by the Reformer as a translation of CDtypi degan shamaim, which is, however, more literally rendered by " Corn of Heaven," in our authorized version. 3. " But why," the Doctor will repeat, " did he not use the word ^o Mann? I answer, if he will look again into his Meninski and Golius, he will probably find, that this word is used to designate a medicine, just as the word Manna does among ourselves. And, in order to avoid this, Ali Bey preferred the phrase under consi- deration*." If Professor Lee be serious in assign- ing the medicinal sense, which, it seems, also attaches to the word, as the cause why our '* Remarks, p. 126. 202 Turkish translator preferred, in the present in- stance, the periphrase" Sweetmeats of Omnipotence,' 1 I hope he will not be offended if I ask him, what he conceives to be the reason that induced Ali Bey to use the word ^ Mann? Heb. ix. 4. This circumstance, as well as the use of the word in the Koran, I noticed in the Appeal; but both seem to have escaped the obversation of my opponent. It is not, however, in these passages alone, that it has been adopted. It is also used, Rev. ii* 17. And, if any reliance can be placed on the Berlin and Paris Pentateuchs, it occurs, Exod. xvi. 15. 31. 33. 35. in all which places, unfortunately for the Professor's hypothesis, it cannot be understood as signifying " a medicine," but, with the exception of that in the Revela- tions, designates the manna which descended from heaven for the nourishment of the children of Israel. 4. The last, and we may suppose, the strongest ground for the use of the phrase " Sweetmeats of Omnipotence," is, its adoption by the Metropolitan of Angouri in his edition of the Turkish Psalter, where we have both the word, and its interpreta- tion: Kovrptr x£X€a<"7 fiawarj. " The Metropolitan," says Professor Lee, " must be left to answer for himself and Ali Bey ; and I have no doubt his answer will be satisfactory*." For himself this * Remarks, p. 127. 203 prelate may be left to answer ; but I incline to think it rather betokens a sense of weakness to devolve upon him the onus proband!, relative to Ali Bey, which the Professor had taken so man- fully upon himself. As to the satisfactory nature of the answer to be expected from his Eminence, I will not forestall the judgment of the reader by any anticipatory remarks. Having expended his critical reasons, the author of the Remarks thus proceeds : " Whether such phraseology is scrupulously to be avoided, may be determined from the consideration of the word Gospel, adopted by our own translators ; a word compounded of God and spel, as the best transla- tion of the Greek EvayyeXiov. If we try Dr. Hender- son's principle, then, upon this word, will it not appear, that our Lord came to preach the spel (history, account, or speech) of Omnipotence, or of God, to the poor*?" Some readers will rather be disposed to doubt the aptness of the example here adduced ; but the etymology here assigned to the word Gospel, and consequently the reason- ing founded upon it, falls to the ground, the moment we introduce an Anglo-Saxon scholar into the arena. " Godspel," says the learned Dr. Marshall, of Lincoln College, Oxford, " Lat. Evangelium; Anglis hodiernis Go spell. InMlfrici, ut creditur, Glossario nondum edito legitur, Evan- * Remarks, p. 127= 204 gelium vel bonum nuncium, Godspel. Hoc itaque tantundem valet ac Gr tecum 'EvayytXiov. Vox est composita ex God ei spel, quorum prius significat tarn Deus, quam Bonus : ut, Nys nan man g6d buton God ana. Lat. Nemo bonus, nisi solus Deus. Luc. xviii. 19. Qua? quidem God et god nulla sazpissimk. gaudent distinctione orthographicd, in codicibus saltern manu exaratis" Observ. in vers. Anglo-Sax. p. 509. And again, p. 510. " Nihil aliud ergo significat Francorum Cuatchundida quam Bonum indicium, sive nuncium ; quod Sax- onico Godspel aptissime conformatur. Ex hac linguarum cognatarum harmonid non obscure evin- citur, nostrum Godspel potius 'EvayyeXiov signifi- catu exprimere, quam Dei historia; quod iamen doctis quibusdam magis placuisse video." " Gospel," •therefore, does not signify "the spel (history, account, or speech) of God," but " the good his- tory or account;" admirably corresponding in its etymology to the Greek ev good, and ayytXia a message. But the reader may further consult Junius in his Etymol. Anglican, in Gospel, and Dr. Adam Clarke's Preface to the Gospel of Matthew. In the Appeal, p. 43, in the note, I adduced as another instance of improper translation : Luke xxiii. 43. " This day shalt thou be with me c&XX*. Jennetda, in (the Mohammedan) Para- dise. Is it asked : what other word could Ali 205 Bey have employed 1 I have only to reply, that the Arabic of the Polyglott, the Propaganda and Sabat; Martyn's Persic; Seaman and Brunton's Turkish; and Frazer's Tatar versions, have all W)y)Giv aWrivncrjv, wg Kai aWa iroWa rwv TitpcriKtov* ix. 13. I will only add, that if any person is dis- posed to question the Persic origin of the word, we may, perhaps, not be far from the mark, if we trace it to the Armenian, in which it is still found, and is the common word for garden. The Professor adds : " In the next place, the word ij»jjf ewret, in its separate form, signified woman, in the sense of ywrj, it would have been an undisputed truth ; but in the case before us, it happens to be in alliance with the suffix Dedjial is restricted in its application to the Mo- hammedan Antichrist exclusively ; consequently, by adopting it into any part of the Christian Scriptures, we give a sense to the passage which it was never intended to convey. Nor can the plea of necessity be urged; it having been already shewn in the Appeal, that in the Arabic, the older Turkish and the Persic versions, a phrase has been adopted, which strictly signifies " The opponent or adversary of the Messiah." CHAPTER IX. Cases of Eunuchism. Matt. xix. 12. " Hell" for " Everlast- ing.^ Signification of the Phrase, (t To be in Christ" Futility of Professor Lees Reasoning in Defence of the Omission of the Pronoun ovtoi, Rev. xix. 9. and the Ima- ginary Reading iv r<*> /3t/3Xe&>, xx. 12. His Exclusion of the Worship of the Lamb from Rev. vii. 10. Shouldering the Cross, al ypaajum,Ucet mihi, decet, oportet me. Wahl's Clavis Nov. Test.) to lead an unmarried life, let him do it without grudging. Such, I conceive, to be the natural import and bearing of the passage, and its connexion. By " the eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake," I am not the first to suppose, that our Lord means the Therapeutse or contemplative Essenes, of whom great numbers abounded at that time in Judaea ; and whoever con- siders the excessive austerities to which, we are informed, they otherwise submitted, and the un- sparing manner in which they treated their bodies, (uuha (twjuutoc, Coloss. ii. 23.) in order to repress every impure desire, will not deem it in any de- gree improbable, that among other modes of corporeal discipline obtaining among the mem- bers of this sect, that of eviration was not omitted. Nor was the practice confined to them. Ecclesi- astical history exhibits numerous instances of persons who have thus done violence to nature from the same mistaken principle; and, even at the present day, there exists in Europe a sect of this description, whose growing numbers^are by no means inconsiderable, who ground their war- rant on this very passage, conceiving, not only that the words are to be taken literally, but 226 that " emasculation is here recommended as pro- fitable." Professor Lee may easily imagine, that pos- sessed as I was of the knowledge of this fact, I must have been strongly inclined to embrace his metaphorical view of the subject ; but I am free to confess, that though I had consulted the com- mentators on this passage, not one of them afforded me the least satisfaction. And even my opponent himself, after having rather sarcastically stated, that " the Doctor is the first orthodox divine, as far as my knowledge gt>es, who has discovered these cases of emasculation in this passage," and affirmed, that " no one, I believe, has proved either from the etymology, or the use of the word Ewov^oq, that it must necessarily mean an emascu- lated person; nor, if it did, that some translated or metaphorical sense ought not to be attached to it in this place *," proceeds gravely to say, that he thinks u the commentators are unanimous in supposing, that the word Ewovyog Eunuchs, here means nothing more than persons addicted to celibacy, either from some natural defect, the cir- cumstances in which they have been placed, or from the desire of devoting themselves more entirely, than they otherwise could, to the ser- vice of God." Is it not evident, from the words * Remarks, p, 80. 227 marked in Italics, that however desirous Professor Lee is of getting rid of literal emasculation, he is under the necessity of admitting it in the first of the cases here specified ? And, if the word must be taken literally in the first instance, why not in the second? The practice of castrating slaves was not uncommon in the East then, any more than it is at the present day ; and, indeed, most expositors seem to go thus far in explaining the word literally. Thus Kuinoel translates the two instances : " Qui nati sunt sine extis obscoenis, quibus naturaipsa virilitatem ademit;" and "qui- bus testiculi demessi sunt aut compressi et con- tusi, vel de industria ab aliis, vel casu, ut rebus venereis uti nequeant." And to the same pur- pose the Professor's own oracle Schleusner; " 1. cui ante pubertatem membra virilis exsecta sunt, &c. 2. sunt eunuchi ab hominibus exsecti." With respect to the second class, I believe few will admit, in the present day, that justice is done to it by Gregory Naziazen and Theophylact, who interpret it of the effect produced upon the minds of men by the doctrines of their teachers, or that any reference can be had to the forcible act of confining young people in monasteries, that they may addict themselves to a single life. To con- tend that it means, " prevented from matri- mony by the circumstances in which they are placed," is certainly, to say the least, a very i'2 228 lame interpretation of the words, " to be made eunuchs of men :" for this will apply to the first class as well as to the second. But if we must interpret the word Ewov^oi Eunuchs in the literal sense, in the two first instances, by what rule of criticism are we to explain the third metaphori- cally ? The thing cannot be thought impossible any more than in the other cases; for it has been, and still is practised. It may be said, indeed, that the custom is so barbarous, and so unnatural, that it would be altogether derogatory to the character of our Lord to suppose, for a moment, that he gave it his sanction. I grant it ; but by whom has it been established, that he either sanctions it, or recommends it as profitable ? This must first be proved, before the conclusion here drawn can be fairly charged upon my hypo- thesis. The truth is, Christ no more taught that men should make themselves eunuchs, than he taught that they should be made eunuchs by others ; or that it was profitable for them that they should be born eunuchs : he merely stated the fact, that such instances existed, in order to set the minds of his disciples at rest respecting the hardship of a case, which seemed to them to arise out of the manner in which he had treated the subject of divorce. In giving the manner in which Seaman has rendered the concluding part of the passage, 229 which is precisely that of our English version, I am charged with not noticing the circumstance, that this translator has employed a word in rendering Ewou^oe, which never signifies any but a castrated person*; but the fact is, this word did not occur in the sentence which I adduced from that author, and was in no wise connected with my argument. But now, that the word ^-a*. Khasi " a castrate" is brought forward, it may not be impertinent to our present question, to ask, why the Professor did not inform us, that it is the very word used in the Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions of the Polyglott; in the Arabic N. T. published in London, 1727; and in the Arabic of the Propaganda, with the Bible Society's edition, of which he tells us, p. 91, he had something to do ? Words of precisely the same meaning are found in the Vulgate (seipsos castraverunt), Armenian, Slavonic, Russian, Polish, Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish versions. In Wiclif, we find the verse thus trans- lated : ' ' For ther ben geldyngis, whiche ben thus born of the modirs wombe, and ther ben geldyngis that ben maad of men, and ther ben geldyngis that han geldid hemself for the rewme of hevenes ; He that may take ; take he." In a small English quarto Testament in my possession, without title-page or date, I find the following translation: " For * Remarks, p. 82. 230 there are some eunuchs which were so born of their mother's belly ; and there be some eunuchs which be gelded by men; and there be some eunuchs which have gelded themselves for the kingdom of heaven. He that is able to receive this, let him receive it." In one of Barker's black- lettered Bibles, on the other hand, we find the words rendered pretty nearly in accordance with the sense assigned to the passage by Professor Lee : " For there are some chaste, which were so borne of their mother's bellie ; and there be some chaste which be made chaste by men ; and there be some chaste which have made themselves chaste for the kingdom of heaven. He that is able to receive this, let him receive it." Whatever may be the etymological meaning of the Greek word EwovyoQ, it will not be denied, that the Hebrew )m \D Sa?is from the Chaldee root vip castravit y evulsit, e.vtirpavit, signifies an emasculated person. This is indeed evident from Isaiah lvi. 3. " Let not the eunuch say: Behold, I am a dry tree,"" And Br. Castell observes under the word: Solis, h. e. tDNH J93P Matth. xix. 11. vel tDHK ab homine factus (castratus) Zabin. c. 2. 1. Jevam. 79. 2. Majm. H. DWtt c. 2. invisus hie Hebrseis, Deut. xxiii. 1. et Romanis maxime: hunc arcebant Leges Jud. a Sacerdotio et Syne- drio, Sanhed. 30. 2. et ab Ordinatione Ecclesias- tica jus Canonicum tarn Or. quam Occidentalis 16 231 Ecclesise. Attamen apud iEgyptios, Medos, Persas, Babylonios, imo Asiaticos fere omnes, et Graecos, Barbaras, Afrieanos, Turcasque magno in honore habitus ; tandem et apud principes Hebr. a Gen- tibus acceptus, s. alio casu ita effectus, Is. 56. 3. It is also well known, that it was from the circum- stance of castrates being selected to be keepers of the royal harems in the East, that the word came to be applied to courtiers, or officers of high rank in general, without its being necessarily implied, that such was literally their condition. In the passage before us, it is obvious our Saviour does not speak of such officers ; on which account nothing can be more ridiculous than the rendering of the Syriac version according to the strict etymological import of the words : L]o .]inci 0,1*21 _ooiS>o|? |cb;o ^So? ^SaioiSo ^L. 2&\ x 7 • .. x •"> V..J ^\ * UkL»aiiD IjJ\o .Jiioiaiio oooi Ikriiin ji? .U^oik) . x . x r ,]lSQ*> IZoTi^O ^5^iO V»^2L*0Ti0 _00l*£U 0^1 ^Q-iOl* o . .... . . ■* " For there are some accredited persons who have been thus born from their mother's womb ; and there are some accredited persons that have been accredited by men ; and there are accredited persons who have made themselves accredited fox the kingdom of heaven." Nor is the translation of Ali Bey, ac- cording to Professor Lee, much better. For if Ali has " used a word to which no such meaning (as that of castration) can properly be attached," but 232 which designates " an officer," who either may or may not be an emasculated person, it is evident the passage must read somewhat as follows : " For there are office?^ ( Khadims) who were thus born of their mother's womb ; and there are officers (Khadims) who have been made officers (Khadims) by men ; there are also officers (Khadims) who, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, have made themselves officers (Khadims). Let him be thus who is disposed for such things." Will the reader join the Professor in affirming, that " Ali Bey has, therefore, translated the text in such a way, as to give the sense found in the original, and no more ?" Or will he not rather conclude, that if the sense given to the word in Ali's version by his advocate be just and unexceptionable, it must speak as complete nonsense in reality, as the Syriac does etymologically ? It is difficult to conceive for what purpose Professor Lee could allow himself to make the following remarks, p. 81. except it was to throw odium upon the Appeal. " Dr. Henderson," says he, " gives the following translation of the passage of Ali Bey, on which we shall only remark, in his own language, that there is nothing in it like ' a scrupulous adherence to the order of the original :' for what Ali Bey expresses first, he expresses last, and vice versa, The Doctor's practice, therefore, is in this, as in other places, perfectly at variance 233 with his own principles. The translation is this i Let him be thus who is disposed for such things'' If the reader will turn to page 25 of the Appeal, to which reference is here made, he will find, that the subject treated of is the unwarrantable inter- change of the names God and Lord, and Jesus and Christ, in the use of which, AH Bey has not scru- pulously adhered to the order of the original, but changed, adopted, or omitted them at pleasure ; and not the simple construction of words in a sentence ; a thing which I have nowhere main- tained ought to be followed by a translator. Surely my opponent would not have me to give the words in the Turkish order : These things for disposed being, thus let him be. But it is time to take our leave of this passage, which I shall do with the observation, that in whatever light we view it : whether we consider the Ewou^oi to be Eunuchs strictly so called, or merely certain officers of high rank and trust, the version of Ali Bey is false ; for by adding the words " these things" at the end of the verse, the attention of the reader is directed to the cases mentioned in the preceding part of the verse, whether of emasculation or high official trust, in- stead of tov \6yov tovtov, the state of celibacy mentioned in the 10th verse. I stated in the Appeal, p. 35. that Ali Bey had rendered to irvp to aiwviov, Matt. xxv. 41. by 234 ^^T +\s* Gihennem-dteshi, " Hell-jire" instead of CfiR iS^ e bdi dtesh, " everlasting-jire" This statement was unaccompanied by any remark, as I considered the error to be sufficiently glaring to carry its own condemnation along with it. Now, how does my opponent dispose of it? Condemn it outright he could not ; for that would have been inconsistent with the character of fidelity, which he had given to the Turkish version ; but although he cannot deny, that there is some difference of meaning between the words hell and everlasting, taken separately, and has no hesitation in allowing, that " everlasting fire" would be " the better and more literal translation of the two," he, nevertheless, argues, that "the general sense afforded by the context is precisely the same;" that " the difference in words is un- important;" and that, " as the word used by the Turkish translator is not unscriptural, no good reason can be assigned why the book should on this account be suppressed*." I leave it to those who have any just sense of the importance of ac- curate translation, and such as are acquainted with the Universalist Controversy, to pronounce upon the satisfactoriness of these reasons, and to say, whether they are equalled by any thing in the shape of argument in the Notes to the Soci- nian New Testament. * Remarks, pp. 83, 81. 152. 235 " The next critique," says Professor Lee x " is on Rom. viii. !. tjftty iJLXsfr*** ^j**^ 'those who are Jesus Christ's/ for kv Xp^rt? Ii? e they believed in Christ/ instead of * were in Christ/ than which, I will venture to assert, a better translation cannot be given *." I have been at the trouble of transcribing the whole of this passage, in order to furnish the reader who may not have seen the Professor's pamphlet, with a specimen of his general mode of argumentation, as well as the character of his theological creed. A great proportion of his pages is filled with similar interrogatories, suppositious cases, and arbitrary conclusions ; yet this is a small matter compared with the sentiments occasionally developed in the course of the work. We have already seen what are his views on the article of "justification/* and * Remarks, pp. 95, 96. 236 heard his opinion respecting the proper accepta- tion of the word " saints :" he here lets us into his ideas relative to the meaning* of another of those New Testament phrases which have ever been regarded as principal pillars in the Christian edifice. According to the above induction to be in Christ, to be in the faith of Christ, to be of his Church or people, and to profess faith in him, are one and the same thing. And what is the result of this identification of terms ? Why, nothing less than this, that to be a genuine Christian, it is only- necessary to ie profess faith" in Christ. According to the doctrine of Scripture, however, and the confessions of all the Reformed Churches, no per- son is warranted to consider himself to be one of those who are in Christ Jesus, except he be a new creature ; old things having passed away, and all things having become new. All who are in him are freed from condemnation, and give evi- dence of a change of state, by walking, not ac- cording to the flesh but according to the spirit. 2 Cor. v. 17. Rom. viii. 1. But can this be af- firmed of all who prof ess faith in Christ, and that they are of his Church or people ? Again, when the same Apostle is enumerating the glorious and peculiar privileges of real Christians, he writes, " And of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption ;" 1 Cor. i. 30. 237 And, when giving an account of his own expe- rience, he states it to be his highest ambition and aim to " win Christ, and be found in him, not having," says he, " mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Phil. iii. 9. To be in Christ, therefore, is to be in that state of happy and secure union with him, in virtue of which we become interested in his merits, are reconciled to God, and enjoy a title to all the blessings of redemption, as wrought out by, and freely communicated unto us through him. But this is obviously something essentially different from a mere profession of the Christian faith ; and we cannot, in my opinion, entertain a more destructive error than to imagine that, because we profess to believe in Christ, and are numbered with his Church or people, we are, therefore, really in him, in the New Testament sense of the phrase. Nor can it be said with accuracy, that to be in the faith of Christ, and to be in Christ are identically the same. Faith is the instrument by which the soul is united to the Redeemer ; not the state of union itself; and the profession of this faith, although necessary to constitute us mem- bers of Christ's visible Church, in the eye of man, is of itself altogether insufficient to procure for us admission into the favour and presence of God. Must we not, therefore, consider the interpreta- 238 tion given of the term by Professor Lee, as another instance of what Dr. Jebb so emphatically and justly calls, " a fatal habit of explaining away the most pregnant truths of Christianity *?" While the critic smiles at the assertion that " a better trans- lation cannot be given" of the words ytyovaaev kv XpiGTtj), than " they believed in Christ" the Chris- tian will mourn at the perversion of Divine truth exhibited in the above instance, and be more than ever convinced of the necessity of subjecting to strict scrutiny the means employed for communi- cating that truth to our fellow-men. Another palpable instance of the laxity of Pro- fessor Lee's principles of Biblical criticism, is dis- covered by the manner in which he treats the im- portant omission, Rev. xix. 9. instead of the words, Qvtoi ot Xoyot aXnSivoi uGi rov Gfou, " These are the true sayings of God," the Turkish simply reads, j<&>~ W eJ ^/ " To Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb." Will his de- fendant say, that he was here guilty of an in- fringement of the just principles of criticism ? or, that this passage will be scarcely intelligible to an Oriental reader ? But to proceed. Ali Bey renders Luke ix. 23. " Let him take his cross (*JU^I umuzine) on his shoulder, and follow me." Now, would it be sup- 246 posed, that any person could seriously undertake the defence of this translation ? Yet upon it also Professor Lee expatiates to the length of a page and a half, and concludes, by observing: " Ali Bey has done nothing more than simply supply the ellipse, which the reader must supply in his own mind, even in consulting the original*." How very convenient a thing the ellipse is we shall see in the following chapter ; but I would here simply put the question : Reader, have you ever been accustomed to supply the word shoulder, when you read of taking up the cross ? And why, it may farther be asked, did Ali Bey not supply it in the parallel passages, Matth. x. 38. xvi. 24. Mark viii. 34. x. 21. ? Was it because uniformity did not enter into his prin- ciple of interpretation? Or did he anticipate, that in these instances the reader would perform, " in his own mind," what he omitted to do in the version? But, perhaps, the Professor will say, that these questions are " trifling and puerile," as he does of my remark respecting the carnality of Ali's translation. Another instance in which the erroneous ren- derings of the Turkish version are vindicated, is that in which al ypa\jf Tewrat, the Law or Pentateuch. On this Professor Lee remarks, that Tewret means the Bible among the Turks, and considers the fact to be sufficiently proved by the authority of Meninsky. But he should have given that au- thority in full, which the reader, on turning to the Lexicon, will find to stand thus : " *%S et tsjtaS Tewrat. Lex Mosaica, Biblia, genesis." From this it is evident, that Bible is not its primary, nor, we may add, is it its customary meaning among the Turks, any more than it is the common signification of the Hebrew min Tbrah in the Old, or the Greek word vofioq in the New Testa- ment. The circumstance, that both words are sometimes used in a general sense for all the Books of the Old Testament, is of no weight at all in the argument ; it would only then have been valid if I had objected to Ali Bey's use of the word <£J\j£ Tewrat, John x, 34. or any similar passage where the original has vofxog in this sense. But even the partial use of the word in the sense of Bible among the Turks, will not justify its adoption in this passage, unless Professor Lee be prepared to shew, that it would have been warrantable in our translator to employ ,^\ Zebur, a word which, although among Mohammedans it customarily signifies " The Psalms" yet is also used in a general sense for the whole of the 10 248 Sacred Volume*. The question before us is simply this : Whether Ali Bey had a right to employ, in this particular instance, a word, which, although it might be used in its more compre- hensive sense in other parts of the New Testa- ment, does not give, in the present case, an exact representation of the original ? Is it asked, how could Ali Bey have otherwise translated the words al ypacj>ai ? I answer : By the word^LUi' Kitabler, just as he has done Matth. xxvi. 54. Luke xxiv. 32. John v. 39. and elsewhere. An objection was also made to the substitution of the phrase " divine books" for al ypaai, Acts xviii. 28. on the ground that it is purely Moham- medan. Not only does it not occur in the passage just referred to, but it is a phrase altogether un- known in Scripture ; and this I do think ought to have some weight with my opponent, who con- stantly insists on Scripture usage as a sufficient warrant for any particular mode in which any particular passage may happen to be rendered. It was shewn in the Appeal f, that the phrase in question is that under which Mohammedans com- prise all the books which they believe to have been sent down from heaven, and of these, the * " Vox Arabica .y J] accipitur generatim pro omnibus sacris libris" Marraccii Refut. in Sur. xxi. Alcor. Not. cv. f P. 45, 249 first place is always allotted to the Koran, which they believe to have superseded all the rest. Until such time as the Professor shall have proved the necessity of adopting such phraseo- logy into translations of the Christian Scriptures, his remarks relative to the ideas which Moham- medans may attach to words actually occuring in these Scriptures, may be dismissed as altogether irrelevant to the subject. A few words will be sufficient to dispossess the Tatars of Colossians iii. 1 1 . which place I believe they never occupied till they were introduced into it by Ali Bey about the year 1666. The Professor thinks, indeed, that they may be tole- rated, because Schleusner says: " Scythia autem latissima olim erat regio, magnam Europae Asiae- que partem, hodiernam nimirum Tartariam cum regionibus quibusdam finitimis complectens. A Scythian, therefore, of ancient times, is supposed to have been of the same nation as a Tartar or Tatar of the present*." If he will turn to the Hermes Scythicus of Dr. Jamieson, or Dr. Murray's History of the European Languages, he may find reason to adopt a very different opinion on this subject ; but, not to insist on this: Does not also Schleusner say, under the word EAaprrjc : " Olim universa Persia Elam vocabi- tur." And does he not moreover say, under * Remarks, p. 131, 250 MijSoe, " Media autem est provincia Asiss — hodie Schirvan vulgo appellator;" Ua^vXia Paraphilia, " Hodie vocoXur Menteseli;'" and of Mesopotamia : "Metropolis ejus fuit Amida, quae hodie Amed dicitur, et regio ipsa Diarbecha vocatur ?" Would it, therefore, be proper to render Acts ii. 9, 10. thus : Parthians and Shirvanese and Persians, and those who dwell in Diarbekir, &c. ? Or, shall we justify Saadias for introducing the Franks and Sclavonians into the Arabic version of the 10th chapter of Genesis 1 But it is urged *, that if Ali Bey " had intro- duced the word Scythian into his translation, it is probable, that no Turk or Tatar, now in existence, would have understood him. The translation is, therefore, in this place, both correct and intelligi- ble, neither of which would have been the case, had the Translator adopted Dr. Henderson's rules of Biblical interpretation." The impartial reader will, I doubt not, be disposed to give what are here called my rules of Biblical interpretation, a retrospective influence of no very limited extent ; for they have, in fact, been acted upon by the best translators in every age. With respect to the in- telligibility of the word Scythian, I leave it to the hundreds of thousands, or, to speak more correctly, the millions now in existence, into whose lan- guages this word has been introduced through the * Remarks, p. 132. 251 medium of Biblical translations, to say, whether they do not understand it just as well as many other ethnical names which occur in Scripture: its correctness will not likely be called in question by any but the Author of the Remarks. The next passage which claims our attention is James v. 4. where the phrase Kvpiog 2aj3ao>0, " Lord of Sabaoth," is rendered by the Koranic form ^jJ^JWl tl^ " Lord of the worlds;' by which latter word, the Mohammedans, according to Marracci, understand the three species of rational creatures, in which they believe, angels, genii, and men. That the phrase itself was originally bor- rowed by Mohammed from the Jews, I have no doubt ; O'toViyn 2") Rab-ha-olamim occurring fre- quently in their ancient prayers ; but still, this is not exactly equivalent to the original Hebrew phrase, JDtflS miT Jehovah Tzebaoth, part of which is retained in this passage in the Greek. The phrase is allowed on all hands to be figurative, and the latter word is derived from the verb Nltt tzaba, to go out to war, to assemble in military array. The first time the substantive occurs is in Gen. ii. 1. " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished fDNl^ ^D1 vecol Tzebdam) and all their host," where it is evidently used figuratively ; and this figurative sense it retains, when used in the plural number, of the angels, stars, &c. Now I cannot discover any good reason, why this 252 translated sense should not be admissable in the Turkish as well as in any other language. Profes- sor Lee affects to ridicule the use of the word Ljy>- cheri, which I had proposed, because it hap- pens, when combined with ^Jo leni, to signify a Janisary; but he has himself given exercitus as one of the meanings affixed to it by Meninsky (and he is not ashamed to be found quoting Me- ninsky any more than the Author of the Appeal) ; and as Ali Bey has used a similar word, y^*c esker, Gen. ii. 1. it may reasonably be allowed to make use either of the one or the other in trans- lating the phrase under consideration. That the Arabic and Syriac translators have rendered alwvag, Heb. i. 2. by words signifying worlds, is not to the point; their versions being made for the use of Christians, and not for Mo- hammedans; but the reference to the Malay of this passage, and that under review, is an impo- sition on the reader, the word in the Malay ver- sion of both passages being As. alam, " world," and not ^^ alamin, worlds, under which plural form alone it is objectionable. But I hesitate not to declare, that my principal objection lay against the introduction of the Eastern genii into our Scriptures, of which, how- ever, this is only one, and that an indirect in- stance, out of the many producible from the pages 253 of Ali Bey. Whoever wishes to form a complete idea of the opinions prevalent in the East, respect- ing these imaginary beings, is referred to D'Her- belot's Bibliotheque Orientale, Article Gian, and Richardson's Dissertation on the Languages, Lite- rature, and Manners of the Eastern Nations, pp. 165 — 175. I shall only quote here the defini- tion given of the word ~ ^ Ginn, by two Oriental writers, from which it will be seen, how incongru- ous it is to employ any such word in a translation of the New Testament. The first is Al Jannabi, who writes, ^L ^ j^ ^j*Jb* ^ uM^ *^W ^ u^- d$3 uV J* u«5 J^ *f *&& iaT°J ^^ & ^ jfi y^ Creavit Deus Angelos et Genios ex eodem genere, ex ipsis qui mundus (vel sanctus est) An- gelus dicitur, qui malignus Diabolus, qui medii stat as Genius, The other writer, Al Demiri, de- scribes them thus : Jl£*Jtf! ^U s^li' *U^I ^1 <&UJI JUciil ^J.c Zj&Sj *i$j Jj&c L^J aalisr* Jj^Jj Genii (inquit) sunt corpora aerea, quae varias in- duere formas pro libitu possunt, ratione, intellectu et ardua quselibet praestandi potentia praedita *. I shall conclude my review of the false ren- derings in Ali Bey's version, and Professor Lee's defence of them, by adverting to 1 John ii. 7. where the word cvroXrj, commandment, injunction, * Pococki Porta Mosis. 254 is translated, by the Arabic word j^c iht, fee- dus, testamentum, promissum, pactum. That this word is sometimes used in the sense of precept, was granted in the Appeal * ; but it was affirmed, that according to its usage by AH Bey, it must be taken in the sense of Covenant, and I instanced the title of the book on which my criticisms were made ! 4*3^-1 'j^l i^JjS " The Book of the New Covenant/ 9 It is, in fact, the word in established use to express the Greek SiaO^. How then can it, with any propriety, be introduced into this passage, where there is not the most remote re- ference to any federal transaction? If Professor Lee will only take the trouble to compare the passages of the New Testament in which the two words cvroXi?, commandment, and SiaOnicri, covenant, occur, he will find that he might have spared his suppositious query relative to the possibility of a difference between them f. * P. 4*6. f Remarks, p. 136. CHAPTER X. Omissions and Additions in the Version of Ali Bey, Professor Lees dextrous Use of the Ellipse. His References to Greek MSS. inaccurate or entirely unfounded. Certain Words and Phrases of Scripture he deems unimportant. Confounds the Province of the Lexicographer and the Commentator with that of the Translator. His Vindication of the Com- binations, " Sacred Will" " Sacred Name" " Precious Blood" fyc. examined. It now only remains to examine the strictures contained in the Vlth and VHth chapters of Pro- fessor Lee's Remarks, which may be done with greater brevity than was found to be necessary in going through the preceding divisions of his work. These strictures relate exclusively to the Omis- sions and Additions specified in the Appeal, in noting down which, I merely took such as struck me in the course of my first perusal of the three books which formed the basis of the Remarks I submitted to the Committee of the Bible Society. Since that time, numerous faults of a similar stamp, many of them much more aggravated in their nature, have been detected ; but, consider- ing the developments which had been made, relative to the other delinquencies of the version, 256 fully adequate to require the suppression of the edition containing them, it was deemed unneces- sary, at the time I drew up the Appeal, to swell the list by an enumeration of them. The first three instances of omission are more immediately of a critical nature. That occurring Matt. viii. 5. is certainly so far obviated by a re- ference to Griesbach ; but the appeal made to that critic, in the other two cases, is certainly the strangest that ever was exhibited, subsequent to the period of his being constituted an umpire in regard to the various readings of the Greek New Testament. It was shewn * that the words, ra ira- pa7rTh)fxaTaviuLwvy "your trespasses," Matt. vi. 15. had been omitted by Ali Bey. Now as these words form an acknowledged and integral part of the Greek original, every other person must have imagined, that nothing was to be done in this case, but simply to acknowledge that there was such an omission, and, agreeably to the plan adopted by the Committee, to direct that the page should be cancelled and reprinted, or that, at least, the words should be supplied in the table of errata. But no such course is pursued. Professor Lee, on the contrary, contends, that " in this omission Ali Bey has done nothing contrary to the laws of Biblical interpretation, or to the practice of for- * Appeal, p. 44. 257 ¥wer translators." Nay, he even asserts, that " in his opinion the translator has preserved both the sense and spirit of the original, much better than he would have done, if he had given a translation of the words in question *," Of this assertion I shall not attempt any refutation ; but I cannot help express- ing my apprehensions, that dreadful havock will be made of the word of God, if a principle of such boundless licence were once conceded to transla- tors or editors of the Sacred Text. But what are " the laws of Biblical interpretation" which au- thorize so bold a liberty on the part of a translator ? " The fact is, the omission complained of, every reader will supply in his own mind, by the ellipse f!" That there exists such a figure of syntax as the ellipse, is what I had some knowledge of before perusing the Remarks ; but I certainly never imagined that it was possessed of contrary powers, now operating on what is contained in the text of an author, and now upon what he has omitted. According to the light in which Professor Lee views it, whenever a translator (and why not an editor ?) finds what he supposes is an ellipsis, he is at liberty to insert the word or words in his version, although the language of the version may bear the ellipse as well as the original ; see pp. 123. 145. 147, 148 : and if, on the other hand, he * Remarks, p, 140. t Ibid. s 258 find that he can render his version elliptical by retrenching certain words or ideas which are fully expressed in the original text, he is perfectly warranted so to do ; " every reader will supply the omission in his own mind, by the ellipse;" p. 140. Guardians of the oracles of God ! Weigh this principle well, and view it in all its bearings, before you give it your sanction. The other reason produced by the Professor in justification of the omission is, I venture to say, the most ridiculous and absurd that ever was ad- vanced in the field of critical research. It is neither more nor less than this, " the practice of former copyists and translators" in also omitting some words, though not the words in question ! Because " some of the manuscripts, and several of the Oriental versions omit the preceding ra wa~ pcnrTtofiaTa avTwv" their trespasses, therefore, a translator may omit, if he pleases, the words to. TrapaTTTWfiaTa vfxtov, your trespasses, in the latter clause of the verse ! What is there to be found in the pages of John Bellamy to be compared to this ? The next omission, the vindication of which is attempted, is that of the words fura rov naTpog pov, " with my Father," Rev. iii. 21. "the effect of which/' I remarked *, " is to leave the Moham- * Appeal, p. 47. 259 medan in the dark as to the throne on which the Faithful and True Witness declares he was seated after his victory." Professor Lee does not call this an ellipse* but in his mind it amounts to the same thing ; for he takes " it for granted, that every considerate reader (and such no doubt abound among the Turks) will come to the same conclusion with himself, namely, that a very cur- sory perusal of the chapter, will shew the reader, whether he be Turk or Englishman, that the word God is the antecedent *." It may, on the contrary, be affirmed with confidence, that few readers will think of going back not fewer than six verses to find the supposed antecedent ; and that they will conclude from the words, " To him that over- cometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I overcame, and am set down with him on his throne," that some interchange of thrones is meant, though they must be sensible that no very distinct idea is conveyed by the passage. The conclusion, however, at which the Profes- sor arrived by this expedient, does not, after all, appear to have proved very satisfactory to his own mind, whatever he may have anticipated respecting its weight with others ; and he accord- ingly proceeds to justify the omission on critical grounds. Let us next " enquire," says he, i( whe- * Remarks, p, 142,. s 2 260 ther Ali Bey had any authority or not for the omission with which he is here charged. If the reader will turn to the passage in Griesbach's Greek Testament, he will see, that these words are not found in several valuable Greek Manuscripts; that the Editio Princeps of the Greek Testament, as well as that of Arethas, omits them ; and that some others read the passage differently. Now can Dr. Henderson suppose that all this has been done in order * to leave the Mohammedans in the dark ? Would it not be more just to suppose, that Ali Bey followed one or other of these copies -\!" Doubtless, all this sounds well, and is very much calculated to deceive the unwary ; though, I believe, I shall not be singular in the opinion, that even the authorities here adduced are inadequate to support so important an omission, or, indeed, any omission, in opposition to the great majority of the best manuscripts and editions, all of which exhibit the reading of the Textus Receptus, and our own authorized version. Still, it will be granted, they were entitled to some degree of con- sideration. But instead of giving ourselves fur- ther trouble about the question, Whether Ali Bey had any authority or not for the omission ? Let us propose another: What authority had Professor Lee for making the above assertions ? I have no * I only said the effect was that here described, f Remarks, p. 143. 261 doubt that many of his readers who are in posses- sion of Griesbach, have not been at the pains to follow the advice so gravely given them, to turn to the passage, but have taken the authority of the great critic simply on the Professor's word ; while such as have no access to any edition of Griesbach's Testament, have been obliged, nolens volens, to give him credit for the accuracy of his quotations. But how then, it will be asked, does the passage really stand in Griesbach ? Can Professor Lee have totally misrepresented him, and made him say, what he neither has said, nor ever intended to say ? The text and note of the London Edition of 1818, are as follow: Kcu £KaOiaa h fxtTa rov irarpoQ fxov kv t<£ Opovoj avrov. h 'Ev t£ Qpovf rov TrarpoQ fiov Arm. Moyses in Epist. ad Cypf . kv raj Qpovui avrov == lips. 6, Nothing, as far as my perception goes, can be deduced from this, more than the simple circum- stances, which do not at all affect the words in question, that the Armenian version, according to Moses, in his Epistle to Cyprian, instead of the words, " with my Father on his throne," reads, " on the throne of my Father;'' and that, in a Latin manuscript preserved at Leipsic, the words, " in his throne," are omitted, and the passage reads only, " and am seated with my Father." Where then are the several valuable Greek Manu- scripts, and the Editio Princeps of the Greek Testa- 262 ment, and that of Arethas, and the others that omit the words fxzra rov Trarpog (xov, " with my Father ?" Griesbaeh is entirely silent on the subject of these authorities, which is the more remarkable, as he happens to refer to them in the following note, which relates, however, not to this verse, but to a various reading in the first verse of the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse. Perhaps the reader will pardon my now adopting the concluding sen- tence of the Remarks on this passage, only sub- stituting the Professor's name for my own. " Pro- fessor Lee, however, seems to disdain making inquiry on any part of this subject, which may seem to militate against his feelings ; and, what is more strange, he is careless as to his assertions, should his criticisms be true in other respects *." From the reasoning in the Remarks, pp. 141, 142. it will be seen, that in the Professor's esti- mation, it is " of no importance," or "of little importance," whether the reading of certain pas- sages of the New Testament be " God," or " my God;" or, indeed, whether "God" be entirely omitted; as he conceives that the ingenuity of the reader, the bearing of the context, and the knowledge of Mohammedans, will furnish a suffi- cient safeguard against any misrepresentation of the passages in which the omission occurs. But * Remarks, p. 143. 263 lest I should be suspected of distorting his words, I shall here allow him to speak for himself: " The next omission is in John i. 52. of the words row Ocou ' of God ;' but here the word AxU Malaklar, Angels, necessarily includes of God, the Moham- medans knowing of no angels, but the angels of God ; the insertion of the words would be unnecessary in the translation ; the omission is, therefore, of no importance* '." The latter part of this extract re- quires no comment. On the former I may be permitted to observe, that whatever may be the ideas of a Mohammedan previous to his reading the New Testament, he will be taught by it, that there exist angels, who are not " angels of God," but " angels of the devil" See Matt. xxv. 4L Rev. xii. 7. 9. Is it not of importance, that this distinction should be known to Mohammedans as well as to Christians ? With respect to the reading " God" instead of " my God," I believe few besides Ali Bey and Professor Lee would deem the difference unim- portant. " Faith/' says an eminent Scotch divine, " will not quit its my's, though all the world should say against it. The marrow of the Gospel, as Luther observes, is in these words, my and our; he bids us read these with great emphasis. Says another, take away property, and you take away * Remarks, p. 141. 264 God, take away Christ. It is the common dialect of faith in Scripture, to vent itself in words of appropriation; it has a peculiar pleasure and satisfaction in these words, my and our, and rolls them in its mouth like a sweet morsel. See how sweetly David sings upon the string. Ps. xviii. 1, 2. No less than eight times in a breath doth he repeat his appropriating my; yea, so tenacious is faith in this matter, that it will maintain its my's in the face of a hiding and frowning God. Ps. xxii. 1. My God, my God, why hast thou for- saken me*?" Although in some points of view I may not agree with this author on the subject of appropriation, yet I deem it of no less importance than he did, and should consider it no ordinary act of sacrilege to erase one of its possessive pronouns from the Covenant of God. To the above extract, I shall only beg to add one from Dr. Jebb, when expatiating on that most in- teresting instance of cognate parallelism, Isaiah lv. 6, 7. He concludes his remarks thus : " In the last line, the appropriative and encouraging title our God, is substituted for the awful name of Jehovah|." Professor Lee remarks on the addition to the words of the Apostle, Rom. iii. 21. "Being witnessed by the law and the books of the pro- * The Rev. E, Erskine in Brown's Gospel Truth, pp. 269, 270. f Sacred Literature, p. 38. 265 phets, that by the law he must mean the written law, and by the prophets their written testimony. As it would be absurd to appeal to that of which no one had any knowledge, AH Bey has, there- fore, very properly supplied the ellipse of the original *." The reader will at once perceive, that this rule, in order to be valid, ought to have been extended to the law also, and that AH should have written the book of the law, as well as the books of the prophets ; nor can it escape his notice, that if the conclusion here drawn be right, then are not only our own translators, but translators in general (I might have said, univer- sally) chargeable with a culpable omission in not having supplied the word, and thereby done what was " very proper" to be done. Nor will Ali Bey himself escape the general censure ; for though it suited his whim, to insert the word books before " the prophets" in this particular in- stance, he either forgot, or did not consider it necessary, to supply any such ellipse, Matt. v. 17. vii. 13. xxii. 40. Luke xvi. 29. But the fact is, whatever ideas the Professor may entertain of its impropriety, the sacred penmen, in this in* stance, only make use of a metonymy common in all languages, by which the name or official cha- racter of an author is substituted for his writings. * Remarks, p. 145. 266 By the same figure Jacob is put for the Jewish people, because they were his descendants. Rom. xi. 26. which passage, however, Ali Bey renders, " And shall turn away ungodliness from the sons of Jacob;" thereby destroying the figure which he might have preserved in this veTse equally well as in the 2nd and 7th verses of this same chapter, and in many other passages where he designates a people by the name of their progenitor. Yet, here again the Professor vindicates Ali, and stig- matizes my remark as absurd*! In giving the singular for the plural number in the words ^^w.y and c^UaLj Rom. x. 5. and xiv. 14. I was certainly guilty of an oversight; but it does not in the least affect the question in de- bate, excepting, perhaps, that in the former of these instances it was accompanied by a partial representation of the offence committed by Ali Bey, which I thank Professor Lee for exhibiting in its full enormity. The original is very pro- perly rendered in our common version : " For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law. That the man which doeth these things (abra) shall live by them." The Turkish version, on the other hand, reads thus : " For Moses writeth thus respecting the righteousness obtain- able from the law, namely, the man who per- * Remarks, p. 147. 267 formeth the precepts of the law, shall live by them." Whether, as my opponent asserts, " Ali Bey has in this instance done nothing more than it was his duty to do," let the reader give verdict : only recollecting, that if he acquits him, he will, by that act, condemn every good translator, and fail after all in bringing Ali in innocent, as numerous instances may be 'produced from his translation, in which he has translated the pronoun aura simply by Jj^ bunlar, or .Ui ^ bu shellar, " these things" without " fully expressing the sense of the preceding declaration," which every impartial person must suppose the Apostle himself could have done, had it been judged necessary. One of the novel canons of Biblical translation, broached by Professor Lee, is the principle, that instead of simply giving the plain and easy phraseology of Sacred Writ, translators may ex- press the sense of such phraseology in those terms which they may happen to find in lexico- graphers and commentators. Thus, p. 147. be- because Schleusner explains TrpovXafifidvzvOe, Rom, xiv. 1. by benigne et humaniter quoquo modo tractate, the translation i^JUy Jja* &i>) <— akl lutfile kabul eilun "receive courteously is therefore cor- rect," as if the Greek word were not sufficiently expressed by " receive" or take, which terms are, of course, susceptible of a stronger or weaker de~ 268 gree of acceptation, according to the connexion? in which they stand. Perhaps neither Schleusner nor the Professor would maintain, that the verb is to be taken " precisely" in the sense of courteous treatment, Matt. xvi. 22. Then Peter took him, (7rpo\ ' His sacred name.' 1 John i. 7. «— ^ *i> 'precious blood/ &c>" The reader must judge, whether the reasons set up in defence of this liberty, be in any measure satisfactory. They are briefly these : First, "The taste of the Orientals differs very widely in this, as well as many other respects, from that of Dr. Henderson." Secondly : The objectionable word, and even the phrase IvtIiX azppify the sacred Gospel is found * in the Preface to the Turkish Psalter," published " by the Metropolitan of Angouri him- self;" from which it is concluded, that the practice of adding this word Sheriff, " is not con- fined to the Mohammedans, but is used by the highest authorities in the churches of Turkey." Remarks, p. 149. On all this I have simply to remark, that I believe, no very great difference of taste will be found to exist between Asiatics and Europeans, relative to the use of such phrases ; for I find our own translators making use of similar combinations, such as " God's sacred word," and " God's holy truth ;" but as they were merely combinations of their own, and not SiSciktoi TlvEVfiaTOQ, they only employ them in the Preface, not daring to introduce them within the thresh- hold of the divine text, In this they have the 10 271 suffrage of all other Biblical translators, Ali Bey alone excepted ; and I feel rather confident, that mew strenuously soever Professor Lee has exerted himself to justify the innovation here reprobated, his cause will find but few abettors, and must indeed be held in abhorrence by all who would lay any claim to an influential reverence for the Word of God. CHAPTER XL Authorities in the Appendix. Neither British nor German Orientalists consulted. French Orientalists incompetent to give a Decision on Questions of this Nature. The Absurdity and total Inconclusiveness of their Opinions. The Opinion and Specimen of the Rev. Mr. Renouard noticed. Disingenuousness of Professor Lee in Regard to Ali Beys Version of the Old Testament. On turning to the Appendix subjoined to Pro- fessor Lee's Remarks, the first thing that must strike the reader, is the list it contains of not fewer than thirty -one Meetings of the General Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the Sub-Committee for Printing and General Purposes, in which the subject of the Turkish Testament is stated to have been brought under consideration. The effect designed to be produced by this list, and the exhibition of the names, some of them of great celebrity and respectability, of the persons to whose judgment the business was submitted, is the conviction, that it was proceeded in with that delay and caution which the nature of the case seemed to require ; and, that after so grave an inquiry had been instituted, and such numerous testimonies obtained in favour of the version of Ali Bey, the 273 Committee were fully justified in coming to the ultimate resolution, December 29, 1823, of re- moving the suspension which had partially arrested the circulation of the copies. All this is certainly exceedingly specious, and greatly calculated to soothe the mind of the public in general ; but to such as are more intimately ac- quainted with the real nature of the proceedings, or to those who have perused the preceding chapters of the present publication, it must ap- pear a most melancholy and mortifying considera- tion, that after so many meetings held, so many judges consulted, and so many inquiries insti- tuted, and after obtaining " the best information in their power," a result should be brought out so directly at variance with the real merits of the case. If, after all this investigation, and all this overwhelming mass of authorities, it appear, that the New Testament in question is still totally unfit for circulation by the Society, the fact must convince the public, at least, that the Committee ought no longer to put that exuberant faith in great names by which they have been misguided on the present occasion, and that measures of a very different nature must be resorted to, if they would secure the word of God against that cor- ruption to which it is exposed, in passing into new languages through the hands of erring and sinful men. 274 In consequence of a letter received from me in the spring of last year, " strongly censuring and condemning the Paris edition/' it is stated*, that a series of queries was drawn up and forwarded to " the learned Orientalists in France and else- where/' in order to obtain their opinion upon the subject. The reader will, perhaps, wonder why these queries were not particularly submitted to British Orientalists, and also to the Orientalists of Ger- many, the latter of whom have, more than any other scholars in this department in the present day, successfully applied Eastern learning to the illustration of the Sacred Volume, and are, there- fore, peculiarly qualified to give verdict in a question so purely theological as that under con- sideration. That these gentlemen have not been consulted, I conclude from the circumstance, that no documents from them appear among the authorities cited in the Appendix. When I stated in the Appeal, p. 65, that " to suppose Great Britain to be destitute of scholars capable of taking up the question, and fairly deciding upon its merits, would be to derogate from the honour of my country," I little imagined, that at that very moment steps were taking in regard to it, which tacitly implied, that no com- * Appendix, B and C. 275 petent British scholars were to be found, to whom reference could be made on the subject, And is it actually at last come to this? Is it possible that England which once could boast of a Walton, a Castell, an Usher, a Pocock, a Lightfoot, a Greaves, a Hyde, a Wheelock, a Clarke, a Loftus, and a Heath, who all flourished contemporane- ously, and are of universal and established repu- tation for their skill in Oriental literature, should not now possess one son, the solidity and extent of whose knowledge in Biblical and dialectical learning, can be depended on in such a case as the present ? Those were indeed the golden days of Oriental literature in England, in which there was no lack of men to employ in editing with due care and circumspection impressions of the Holy Scriptures, in any of the Eastern languages, or to whom an ultimate appeal might confidently be made on the subject of any new translation. But why should there be such a paucity in the present day? Is it impossible any longer to af- ford encouragement to men who devote their talents, and a great portion of their time, to the cultivation of such studies ? Or has a fatal apathy seized our schools and Universities? Do those who fill the situation of public teachers of religion no longer care to drink deep at the fountain of sacred lore, or excel in elucidating the sacred pages from the numerous and invalu- t 2 276 able Oriental sources, preserved in our public libraries ? Must foreigners (long may they be welcome) discover and publish to the world what lies within a step of our own salaried Professors ? I may be told, that British Scholars have been consulted on the subject of the Turkish Testa- ment; and the query has been put: "If Professor Lee and Mr. Renouard are bunglers, where, in Britain, are learned Orientalists to be found # ?" It appears, however, from the Appendix, that, much as the skill of these Gentlemen in such matters has been boasted of, their judgment was deemed insufficient to decide the point at issue, and accordingly its ultimate determination was made to rest upon the opinion of the French and some other foreign Orientalists, of inferior note. These authorities are : — M. le Baron Silvestre de Sacy. M. Jaubert, Second Interpreting Secretary to the King of France for the Oriental Lan- guages, Professor of the Turkish Language at the Royal Library of Paris, Author of a Turkish Grammar, and formerly in the ser- vice of the French Government in Turkey, Egypt, and Persia. M. Garcin De Tassy, Author of several Orien- tal Works, who has for some years devoted * Eclectic Review, June 1824, p. 535. 277 himself especially to the study of the Turkish Language. M. Langles, Conservator of Oriental MSS. in the Royal Library of Paris. M. Andrea de Nerciat, late Interpreter at Con- stantinople, and formerly in Syria and Persia. M. Caussin de Perceval the Younger, late In- terpreter at Constantinople, and in Syria, and now Professor of Modern Arabic at the Royal Library of Paris. M. Bianchi, one of the two Assistant Inter- preting Secretaries to the King of France for the Oriental Languages, and late Inter- preter at Smyrna. M. Desgranges, Assistant Interpreting Secretary to the King of France for the Oriental Lan- guages, Colleague of M. Bianchi. M. Petropolis, late Turkish Secretary to the Greek Patriarch. M. Eremian, Interpreter to the Danish Lega- tion at Constantinople. If high-sounding names and imposing profes- sional titles were adequate to command acqui- escence in the sentiments expressed on any literary topic, we have, certainly, in the present case, a superabundance of authority. And, per- haps, not a few will be disposed to give the Eclectic Reviewer* due credit for the following * Ut sup. 278 strong and pointed query in relation to it: "What but the intoxication of spleen or arrogance could lead a man to speak with contempt of the follow- ing individuals, to all of whom a series of ques- tions was submitted on the subject of the alleged errors in this version?" But how, it may be asked, in reply, could I possibly speak contemp- tuously of persons, most of whom I never knew to be in existence ; and with respect to the rest, I had no information before it was supplied by Professor Lee's Appendix, that they had had any such series of queries proposed for their consi- deration ? The charge proceeds upon the assump- tion of my perfect knowledge of what was going on relative to the whole affair ; whereas, in fact, I was kept completely in the dark ; nor did I ex- pect, after what had taken place, that any further communications would be made to me upon the subject. But why drag these individuals into public view, and expose their character by constituting them judges of what does not lie within their province; or supposing it did, whose daily official and multiform avocations prevent them from de- voting to it that share of their time and attention which a subject of such grave importance de- mands? Bring before their tribunal a question purely grammatical, or one relating to the history, the geography, the numismatology, the politics, 279 the diplomacy, or the poetry of the Orientals, and of Silvestre de Sacy, at least, it may con- fidently be affirmed, that he will give a decision worthy of such an accomplished scholar and so experienced a veteran in the field of Asiatic re- search. But to appeal to men of totally different habits of study, as umpires on the subject of Biblical translation; to call in the aid of their taste, which has been formed on totally different models, to fix the manner in which the esta- blished phraseology of Sacred Scripture should be expressed in the desecrated jargon of Moham- medan unbelievers; and to leave it to French Orientalists to determine points of theological inquiry, is just about as preposterous as it would have been, about fifty years ago, to solicit the advice of as many of the leading men in the British dependencies in the East, relative to the practicability, and the best mode of translating the Scriptures into the languages of India. Anticipating something like the result here re- ferred to, I observed in the Appeal *, that, ■* in order to qualify any man for passing a critical decision on the subject, it is requisite, not merely that he be versed in what may be termed the profane departments of Oriental literature, but that he be more or less disciplined in the established prin- ciples of Biblical science. His acquirements may * Pp. 64, 65. 280 have been amply sufficient to carry him through all the philological difficulties connected with a diplomatic or military career, and to procure for him a distinguished reputation in the field of Asiatic research, while, after all, he may be la- bouring under a complete destitution of the prin- ciples of sacred taste, and a most lamentable ignorance on subjects intimately connected with the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. I have heard of an Oriental scholar, who found fault with a translator of the New Testament, for rendering the word publican by ' tax-gatherer/ because, forsooth ! in colloquial English it signifies, an f inn-keeper /' To commit the decision of such points to gentlemen of purely secular habits, is just as preposterous as it would be to rest the merits of a question relative to naval or military tactics on the opinion of those who are simply addicted to objects of theological pursuit." But what is the amount of the evidence pro- duced from these Oriental authorities in the Appendix ? It was very judicious in Professor Lee not to lay them before the reader in an English translation ; but we shall presently fur- nish him with a few passages by way of speci- men, from which he will be able to form some idea of the spirit and tendency of the whole. The first document, and deservedly the most worthy of regard, is that from ML le Baron Sil- 281 vestre de Sacy. According to his own statement, however, the examination to which he submitted the version, was extremely limited; a circum- stance naturally to be expected from the vast multiplicity of business with which that distin- guished scholar is overloaded, partly by the offices of high trust and responsibility with which he is invested by his Royal Master, partly by an extensive correspondence carried on with literary societies and individuals in all parts of the world, and partly by his own private and favourite studies. The greater part of his communication is taken up with criticisms on certain passages in Ali Bey's version, some of which go to corroborate the objections which we made to particular ren- derings, and only prove what we might have ex- pected from M. le Baron, had he entered fully into the subject, and furnished us with a decision formed upqn proper rules of Biblical interpre- tation. The next authority is that of Professor Jaubert, who enters pretty fully into the question relative to the predominance of Arabic and Persic words in the version, but, like all the other individuals here referred to, avoids entering on any of the main points, with the exception of that relative to the circumlocutory and diversified manner in which the divine name is expressed. In addition to the quotation formerly given from his letter, 282 recommendatory of the adoption of the received forms of speech, as the most natural and proper by which to express the phraseology of Scripture, we shall only adduce here the following observa- tion : " Far from having incurred any censure, the author seems to deserve praise for having employed these forms (Court of Victory, Most High, &c.) ; without them his version would have appeared cold, monotonous, removed from the usual style of language, and consequently less proper to answer the end to be attained*" That the commu- tation of the established diction of the Spirit for the gaudy and varied combinations of the Otto- man style, is rather to be praised than condemned, is a sentiment in which I believe few will coincide; and I am also inclined to think, that those who relish the simple truth, and are acquainted with the sovereign energy with which it affects what the most elegant and finished specimens of human eloquence have never been able to accomplish, will be far from agreeing with M. Jaubert, when he affirms, that a version done in close imitation of the original, and rejecting these high-sounding epithets, would be cold and monotonous, and little fitted to answer the end to be attained. To * " Loin d'avoir encouru aucun blame, l'auteur parait meriter des eloges pour avoir employe ces formules ; sans elles sa version eut paru froide, monotone, eloignee du style usuel et par consequent peu propre a remplir le but qu'on voulait at- teindre." Appendix, p. (17). 283 unbelievers of all nations, the Scriptures must ever be expected to appear, more or less, in this light ; and it has been the constant endeavour of human wisdom to hide this supposed deformity, and render them palatable to the carnal mind. But the effect of all such attempts has only been to " daub the wall with untempered mortar," and adulterate the Word of God with the meretrici- ous embellishments of human folly. On this, as well as every other point connected with the Gospel of Christ, the declarations of Paul will be found to hold true : " The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are ; that no flesh should glory in his presence." 1 Cor. i. 25 — 29. The same remarks apply to the paper furnished by M. Garcin de Tassy. " The usage of the Orientals," says he, "is always to join to the name of God and of the prophets a form of benediction ; Ali Bey could not depart from it ; and, in my opinion, 284 he would have been greatly to blame, if he had lopped off these forms. It is said that they give to the Turkish New Testament a Mohammedan teint. So much the better. It would have been desirable that the teint had been still stronger: his version being destined for the special use of Mohammedans who are unhappily prejudiced against our sacred books, from the persuasion that we have al- tered them *." Such, reader, is the judgment of another of our French Orientalists on the subject of what he is pleased to call " slight additions," but which consist of words and phrases never be- fore introduced into the Holy Scriptures by any translator, either ancient or modern. From what is here stated, it is clear, that if the Turkish ver- sion had been put into the hands of this Gentle- man to prepare it for the Turks, we should have been favoured with it in the most perfect state of Musulman colouring, and dressed out in all the tawdriness of Ottoman bombast, instead of being put off with the mincing manner in which, after * " L'usage des Orientaux est de joindre toujours au nom de Dieu et des prophetes, une formule de benediction ; Ali Bey ne pouvait s'en ecarter et Ton aurait en grand tort, ce me semble, de retrancher ces formules. On dit qu'elles donnent au N. T. Turc une teinte Musulmane. Tant mieux. II serait a desirer que la teinte fut encore plus forte, cette traduction etant destinee specialement aux Musulmans qui malheureusement sont prevenus contre nos saints livres, persuades que nous les avons alteres." Append. (20). 285 all, it would seem poor Ali has executed his task* If the Oriental usage be to affix always a form of benediction to the name of God and the prophets, then certainly our translator has frequently been " guilty of a gross infraction of the laws of his language;" for, he has actually departed from that usage ; he has, in numberless instances, lopped off the objectionable forms ; and, in no instance, as far as I have found, does he join any form of bene- diction to the names of the prophets, understanding by that name Adam, Noah, Job, and others, to whom the Mohammedans give this character. What then does M. Garcin de Tassy mean, when he says that Ali Bey could not depart from such a practice? After perusing the present controversy, the religious public of Great Britain will doubt- less be of opinion, that a sufficiently strong teint of Mohammedanism has already been given to this ill-fated version, and few I believe will join the learned foreigner in the wish that the teint had been deeper and more conspicuous. We next come to a document from the late M. Langles, which chiefly relates to the use of Arabic and Persic words, and with which, therefore, I shall not detain the reader longer than while I place before him a Persian fact, adduced in justi- fication of the use of ei^-a*- Hcezret, " Illustrious." " In regard," he says, " to the epithet Hazret ciya^ which is given to Jesus Christ, ,5^ ui>.*o>. 286 it is so consecrated, that a Persian Ambassador or Envoy, Myr Daoud Khan, to whom I gave the title of Hazret, replied, ' that word is never used of any but Jesus' **' It may safely be affirmed, that a more barefaced falsehood never issued from the lips of any of the Persian race. ; Yet, 3VL Langles writes, and Professor Lee publishes this hollow piece of flattery as evidence in favour of Ali Bey's Testament, although this same Testa- ment convicts the witness of untruth ; the word Hcezret being, as we have seen, applied in the very first chapter to the Virgin Mary, and after- wards to Abraham and Solomon ! An extract from the communication of M. An- drea de Nerciat has already been laid before the reader. I shall here insert the passage more at length : " I cannot by any means regard as a fault the variety of expressions employed to render the Divinity, because this variety is not so great as to become a fatigue, even to the grossest intellect. With respect to the honorific epithets which ac- company the name of our Lord, nothing but ig- norance of the religious spirit of the Orientals in general, can render it possible for us, not to feel * " Quant a l'epithete de Hazret L2J y Ju>. qu'il donne a Jesus Christ, -wjJ^c OJ>, elle est tellement consacree, qu'un am- bassadeur ou envoy ee Persan, Myr Daoud Khan, a qui je donnais le titre de Hazret, me repondit, ' On n'emploie ce mot-la que pour Jesus.'" Append. (22). 287 the enormous want of decency of which we should be guilty, in pronouncing this sacred name in a cold dry manner ; and as our preachers never ex- press it without taking off their cap, in like manner the Orientals cannot write or articulate it, without prefixing the word cuyb* (Hcezret), or accom- panying it with the epithets ^iiU >viJ,lju i { j*>-j JUS (Merciful, Blessed, Sacred, Most High) and a thousand others, derived from the infinitude of the perfections which emanate from his Divine Essence. In this respect, usage has removed every difficulty in the East. It is the style of the p? % iests when they instruct the people from the pulpit *." • " Je ne saurais non plus regarder comme une vice la variete d'expressions employees pour rendre la Divinite, parceque cette variete n'est tellement grande, qu'elle devienne une fatigue meme pour l'mtelligence la plus materielle. Quant aux epithetes hono- rifiques qui accompagnent le nom de Notre Seigneur, il faudrait ne point connaitre l'esprit religieux des peuples Orientaux en general, pour ne point sentir l'enormite de l'inconvenance que Ton commettrait, en prononcant tout sechement ce nom sacre ^ et ainsi que nos predicateurs ne le prof erent jamais sans oter jusqu' a leur calotte, de meme les Orientaux ne sauraient Fecrire ou l'articuler, sans le fair preceder du mot CJ-^os^, ou sans le faire suivre des epithetes de JU? j-^jJU 5 CJ.U^o 9 ii /^i et milles autres, qui naissent de l'infinite de perfections qui emanent de sa Divine Essence. Et cet egard, l'usage a leve toute difficulte dans l'Orient. C'est le style des pretres qui enseignent le peuple du haut de la chaire evangelique " Append, p. (23). 13 288 The testimonies of M. Caussin de Perceval and M. Bianchi are to the same effect, all agreeing most unanimously in their avowal, that these epi- thets cannot be omitted without irreverence ; and the evidence is concluded by M. Desgranges in the following style : " It is further complained, that the names of God and Christ are embellished by different epithets, and rendered by several circumlocutions. I avow that the charge is well- founded, and that these epithets, and these circumlo- cutions are not found in the original: but the author of the translation wished thereby to conform to the custom of all the Oriental Christians, for it would be as extraordinary not to say in Turkish or Arabic, his excellency Jesus, as it would be singular to use such an expression among us. " To conclude, I am of opinion, that the greater part of the faults charged upon Ali Bey's Turkish version of the New Testament, do not exist, and if they did, the work would not, on this account, be less worthy of high recommendation, and fit to spread the knowledge of sacred Scripture in the East*." * " On se plaint encore de voir les noms de Dieu et de Jesus ornes de differentes epithetes et rendus par plusieurs circonlocu- tions. J'avoue que le reproche est fonde, et que ces epithetes, et ces circonlocutions ne se trouvent pas dans l'original : mais par la l'auteur de la traduction a voulu se conformer a la coutume de tous les Chretiens Orientaux, car il serait aussi extraordinaire de 289 Not to advert to the criticisms of Messrs, Eremian and Petropolis, which appear to have been altogether unfit to meet the eye of the pub- lic, and of which, therefore, only some garbled notice is given in the Appendix, I would now simply ask the judicious Scripture critic, and all who are sensible of the importance of " holding fast the form of sound words," whether any con- fidence can be placed in the judgment of men who can avow such sentiments as the above on the subject of Biblical translation ? If they admit of, and defend such liberties with " the oracles of God/' of what avail is their testimony to the version of Ali Bey, as possessing " scrupulous fidelity," being done with " exactitude ;" that it is " an excellent translation ;" " a production equally serviceable to literature and religion," &c, &c. These expressions are all merely relative, and must be interpreted agreeably to the capa- bilities of those who use them, and their acquaint- ance with the subject to which they are applied. On the letters of the Rev. G. C. Renouard, I ne pas dire en Turc ou en Arabe, son Excellence Jesus, qu'il serait singulier de s'exprimer ainsi parmi nous. " En dernier resultat, je pense qui la pluspart des fautes re- proches a la version Turque d'Ali Bey du Nouveau Testament, n'existent pas, et que si elles existaient, cet ouvrage n'en serait pas moins tres recommandable et propre a repandre dans l'Orient la connaissance de l'Ecriture Sainte," Append, p. (29). U 290 would only remark, that some of the statements they contain have already been refuted in pre- ceding parts of this work. With respect to the rest, it is unnecessary to offer any comment upon them, as they clearly go to support my side of the question, and shew what developements would have been made by the learned Rector, if he had only entered sufficiently into the subject. He admits the use of the objectionable epithets, and acknowledges, that " the objections grounded on the introduction of unusual words, when more common ones might have been used, are not entirely unfounded;" that " Persian words are, per- haps, too often introduced, but that was the fashion in All Bey's time, and the Insha's or Formularies for letters, &c. of that age, are now considered as improper models of style, solely because they abound in phrases borrowed from the Persian ; and that it also appears true, that a greater variety of words to express the same idea, has been used by the translator than by the original writers V : On the specimens of translation, extracted from Ali Bey by that gentleman, I shall only observe, that any person who will take the trouble to com- pare them, either with the original Greek, or our own authorised version, must at once perceive the numerous discrepancies and the absolutely false * Appendix, pp. (30, 31.) 291 renderings with which they abound. Of these, the following are adduced in proof: Matt.xi.6. " How blessed is he who doublet h not in me." Mark viii. 33. " Thou hast not perceived the things which pertain to God, but perceivest the things which pertain to man." xii. 32. " Thou hast well said that God is one' 1 34. " Kingdom of heaven." xvi. 6. " Ye are seeking Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified but hath been brought to life; he is not here." Ver. 7. Go, " tell Peter and his dis- ciples" Rom. iv. 20, 21, 22. " Gave praise and glory to Almighty God" " And he knew certainly that the Lord of Truth is able to perform the pro- mise which he hath made. Therefore was his faith counted in the place of righteousness." ix. 11. " The fore-ordained decree of Almighty God" Gal. ii. 19. " For by the law, I was dead unto the law, until I lived unto the Most High God" 20. 1 was crucified, and am living with Christ. And now / am living that life which / have lived in the body." 21. " If it be by the righteousness and strength of the law/' &c. Ephes. i. 4. " As he elected us (in him omitted) before the foundation of the world." I now leave it with the reader to form his own opinion respecting Mr. Renouard's prefatory remarks. " I hope the short extracts which I now add, will serve at least to shew that Ali Bey was tolerably faithful. I scarcely ever looked at the Greek, because my object was u2 292 to ascertain the meaning of the Turkish, but when I did, I had occasion to admire Ali Bey's exactness*." At the close of his Appendix, Professor Lee in- troduces a specimen of the manner in which he wishes to make the reader believe Ali Bey exe- cuted his translation of the Old Testament ; but I am sorry in being obliged to say, that in so doing- he is not only guilty of a gross misrepresentation of the real state of the case, but of an act of great injustice towards me, and the most shameful im- position on the public. " As Dr. Henderson," says he, " has thought proper to throw out some insinuations, (p. 19.) prejudicial to the character of Ali Bey's translation of the Old Testament, I have thought it might not be amiss to give, in this place, a literal translation of a very important part of the Book of Genesis, which may, in some de- gree, enable the reader to form an opinion on that part of the translation." Would it not be supposed from this advertise- ment, that what follows is a literal translation of the Turkish version as it came from the hands of Ali Bey, and, consequently, that it was a manifest calumny in me to insinuate, that a translation so simple, and, on the whole, so accurate as that exhibited by the Professor, could possibly contain * Appendix, p. (33.) 293 any such faults as those imputed to it ? But what will the reader say, when he is informed, that this specimen is not done either from Ali Bey's MS. or the edition of the Pentateuch, printed at Berlin, but from the text as corrected by Professor Kieffer, agreeably to the following resolution of the Sub-Committee for Printing and General Purposes, held August 9, 1821. " That in preparing the copy for the press, he (Professor KiefFer) begin with the Old Testament, and purify the text of every thing extrane- ous or supplementary, as far as the genius of the Turkish language will admit." What influence my insinuations, as Professor Lee is pleased to call them, had in bringing about this resolution, I pretend not to determine ; but it must appear, to every candid and impartial mind, to be in the highest degree unfair, to pro- duce as evidence against me, not the text on which I animadverted, but one to the purity of which these very animadversions, made in 1820, materially contributed. Neither is it equitable to transfer to Ali Bey the meed of praise which is due to Professor KiefFer by whom the version has been at last brought into some degree of con- sistency with other translations of the Word of God. That the reader may be able to form some idea of the difference between the style of the third chapter of Genesis, as exhibited by Pro- fessor Lee, and that of Ali Bey as he appears 294 in the Berlin Pentateuch, I subjoin the following collation of the manner in which the Divine Names are given. The Version of All Bey as The Text as corrected by contained in the Berlin Professor Kieffer, and Pentateuch. exhibited by Prof. Lee* 1. Tengri God Most High. 1. Lord God. Supreme Creator. God. 3. Court of the Creator. 3. God. 5. Supreme Creator. 5. God. Like Angels. Like gods. 8. The Creator God Most High . 8. Lord God. Tengri God Most High. Lord God. 9. Tengri God Most High. 9. Lord God. II. The Court of Victory. 11. God. 13. Tengri God Most High. 13. Lord God. Prof. Lee, Lord. 24. Tengri God Most High. 14. Lord God. If the renderings " Court of the Creator" and " Court of Victory" should be called in question by any Oriental scholar, I must beg him to re- collect, that they are those contended for by Professor Lee, but for which circumstance, I should have translated the original words by " Glorious Creator," and "Glorious Majesty," as I have already, in part, done in the Appeal. CONCLUSION. If we take a review of the points discussed in the preceding chapters, it will appear, that the question at issue is not, whether the version of Ali Bey may not be corrected, nor whether a diversity of opinion may not obtain respecting the rendering of particular passages, such as may exist relative to every other version ; neither is it contended, that the Paris edition of the New Testament should be suppressed on account of each blunder it contains, taken singly, as Pro- fessor Lee perpetually insinuates : but it is this, whether it be warrantable in the Bible Society to give circulation to a work exhibiting a manifest relinquishment of those forms of Jewish and Chris- tian phraseology, which have acquired an esta- blished and classical authority in all public translations besides, and whether the critical principles, on which its defence is undertaken, be entitled to admission not merely in reference to this individual version, but in their application 296 to Biblical translations in general, and more especially to such as are prepared for the first time in the languages of Mohammedan and Pagan nations ? While Professor Lee maintains, that, in trans- lations of the Sacred Scriptures, the phraseology of the originals must be rendered by that in use among the people for whom they are designed, it has, on the contrary, been shewn, that such a principle would completely mould the forms of divine speech in accommodation to individual fancy and conceit, and bring it into accordance with such prevailing phraseology as has origi- nated in, and is expressive of, the different ideas of idolatry, superstition, or unbelief, which obtain in the unevangelized world. It must, therefore, be pernicious in the extreme, to recommend the free or liberal mode of translation, which, although it professedly furnishes a faithful representation of the sense, gives an uncontrollable licence to the translator, and departs widely, and, in num- berless instances, entirely, from the style and manner of the original. The authorities of Jerome and Dathe, produced in support of the free hypo- thesis, have been proved to be totally irrelative to the subject ; and some rules have been laid down with a view to determine the manner in which every version of the Holy Scriptures, de- signed for popular use, ought to be executed. 207 The different charges of mistakes, respecting the meaning of Oriental words preferred against me by the Professor, have been repelled by an appeal to unexceptionable lexicographical au- thorities, to the usage of Ali Bey, and to the manner in which the words have been rendered by himself and the French Orientalists in his Appendix. In defending the translations found in the Appeal, it has been shewn, that the accepta- tions given to the words by my opponent, so far from rendering their use less objectionable, tends most forcibly to prove their total inadmissability into versions of the Sacred Scriptures. The arguments adduced by Professor Lee, in defence of the varied and high-sounding adsciti- tious epithets given by Ali Bey to the Deity, have been demonstrated to be absurd in them- selves, and fraught with consequences to be de- precated by all who entertain a sacred reverence for the Word of God. His reference to Scripture usage, the style of Mohammedan books, and the practice of the Christians in Turkey, is shewn to be false or inconclusive; and the use of these circumlocutory titles is proved to be incapable of vindication, from the inconsistencies of Ali Bey's own practice, from that of the Professor in editing versions in other languages for the use of Moham- medans, and, especially, from the fact, that, in preparing the text of the Old Testament for the 298 press, Professor Kieffer is purifying it from this foreign gibberish, in direct opposition to the opinions avowed in the Remarks. Nor must it be forgotten, that although Professor Lee finds it convenient to advocate the use of these titles in the New Testament, because its publication "has been attended with so much labour and expense */' he was, nevertheless, one of those who assisted the Sub-Committee of the Bible Society with his advice on the memorable 9th of August, 1821, in consequence of which it was resolved to "purify the text of the Old Testament of every thing extrane- ous or supplementary, as far as the genius of the Turkish language would admit." Could any thing be more perfectly inconsistent than seriously to undertake the defence of what he had thus pointedly assisted in condemning ? And was it not highly disingenuous to endeavour to turn my ob- jections into ridicule, at the very moment it must have been known to himself and the Committee, that these objections had attained their end in so far as the Old Testament was concerned, and that this portion, at least, of Sacred Writ, was now printing in a style agreeable to the principles laid down in my Appeal ? The charges relative to the annihilation of cer- tain proofs of the Divinity of Christ, have been * Remarks, p. 23. 299 fully substantiated in opposition to the assump- tions and reasonings by which Professor Lee has attempted to invalidate them. I have here proved that his assertions are entirely destitute of foun- dation, and shewn, by reference to acknowledged native authorities, that the Arabic word Cj. Rabb, " Lord," is not exclusively applied to God, as he contends, but is also used in application to merely human masters. I have also pointed out in what manner the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity is affected by the interchange of the words God and Lord, a fault of serious import and of frequent occurrence in the version of Ali Bey. The important distinction between all or c)\ Halt " a god," and 3, read quotations will raoZ as 139, 152, 26, 1, represents observation Mevelation translators' Brunton. 184, 202, 219, 222, 19, 8, 17, 6, • 4, BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 1. AN EXPOSITION of such of the PROPHECIES of DANIEL, as receive their Accomplishment under the New Testament ; together with a Comparison between them and the Apocalypse, as explained by the late Dr. Bengelius. By the late Rev. Magnus Fred. Roos, A. M. Superintendent and Pre- late in Lustnau and Anhausen. Translated from the German. 8vo. Edinburgh. 1811. 2. A DISSERTATION on HANS MIKKELSEN'S (or the first Danish) TRANSLATION of the NEW TESTA- MENT. 4to. Copenhagen. 1813. 3. ICELAND ; or the Journal of a Residence in that Island during the Years 1814 and 1815; containing Observations on the Natural Phenomena, History, Literature, and Antiquities of the Island ; and the Religion, Character, Manners, and Cus- toms of its Inhabitants. With an Introduction and Appendix. Illustrated with a Map and Engravings. Second Edition. Edinburgh : Printed for Waugh and Innes, Hunter Square ; and T. Hamilton, J. Hatchard, and L. B. Seeley, London. Price 16s. boards. 1819. 4. An APPEAL to the MEMBERS of the BRITISH and FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY, on the Subject of the Turkish New Testament, printed at Paris in 1819 : containing a View of its History, an Exposure of its Errors, and palpable Proofs of the Necessity of its Suppression. London: Printed for B. J. Holdsworth, 18, St. Paul's Church-Yard. Price 3s. 1824. PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION. 1. THE INSTITUTES of BIBLICAL TRANSLATION. In Three Parts. Part I. On the Qualifications of Translators. Part II. Helps for facilitating the Translation of the Sacred Scriptures. Part III. Canons of Biblical Translation. The whole illustrated by numerous examples from the Ancient Ver- sions and Modern Translations, and interspersed with Remarks, Critical, Philological, and Bibliographical. 2. BIBLICAL RESEARCHES and TRAVELS in RUSSIA, including a Tour in the Crimea, and the Passage of the Caucasus. 13 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: June 2005 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township. PA 16066 (724)779-2111 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 396 803 #%§ ~j***m- M ■ -.^iP" *£*■