Crown 8vo, pp. 452. 7s. 6d.) Christlieb is only known in this country by his Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, but he is well known by that. By that book he was best known in his own land also, for it was his greatest writing. But his life was greater than his writings—a most consistent and even lovely life as it is here told by his widow. The sermons are German, evangelical German sermons; not quite as ours in tone and touch; yet sympathetic and at times surprising in the closeness of their appeal.

THIS DO. BY R. F. HORTON, M.A. (Clarke. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 153. 2s.) "Six Essays in Practice," somewhat reluctantly published. But it is just the ethical discourse that finds most favour to-day, and it is well it should be so, within bounds. Mr. Horton has a clear sense of what he would say, and he never fails to say it. His counsels enter even into the detail of our most common life, and they are almost always said right. Sometimes they are surprisingly well said, the surprise being that we find we needed to have that said to us.

THINGS OLD AND NEW. BY THE REV. G. H. FOWLER. (Percival. Crown Svo, pp. xi, 207. 5s.) The value of this volume of sermons by the late Principal of the Leeds Clergy School lies in its spirit. The subjects chosen are the very highest -Faith and Reason, Law and Liberty, Love and Wrath-subjects which pass speedily beyond our outmost vision, and the author has no discovery to announce. He has not found the formula which will finally embrace them, and he does not think he has found it. Yet neither does he recommend the paralysis of agnosticism. But he would have our thought on such matters, as well as the expression of it, unhurried while unafraid. Dr. Talbot writes a brief preface to the work, from which the reader may learn that the spirit of the book is the spirit of the man.

matter to be able to stand by the side of literary giants like Hales and Skeat and Aldis Wright. But this new editor, although a woman, and the first woman chosen, has justified her choice. Her introduction of forty pages gives a sketch of Bunyan's life sympathetic and true, for once in no way blurred by patches of excuse and condescension, from which Bunyan has suffered more than from all his imprisonments. The notes, literary for the most part, are the selection of a scholar, and they are expressed with scholarship and grace.

TWO PRESENT-DAY QUESTIONS. BY W. SANDAY, M. A., D.D., LL.D. (Longmans. Crown Svo, pp. 72. 2s. 6d.) It is with much interest one sees the Oxford Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the University pulpit of Cambridge. making choice of such questions as Biblical Criticism and the Social Movement. For one of these questions is much identified to-day with Oxford, and the other has close associations with Cambridge. What has Professor Sanday to say about them? Just such things as from a pulpit. ought alone to be said-principles not processes; the temper in which the truth should be sought, not ex cathedra decisions as to where the truth in such perplexed and unsettled questions lies. It is the more thankless gift. But Dr. Sanday has earned the right to give it.

PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES. By R. S. STORRS, D.D., LL.D. (Dickinson. Crown 8vo, pp. 182. 2s.) This is the second edition of a wellknown book. It is a most systematic and serious effort to set out reasons for a thing which needs no reasons at all if we could only do it, all of us. But it will help us to do it, and to do it better than before.

BY J. CAMERON

LIFE AND CONDUCT. LEES, D.D., LL.D. (A. & C. Black. 12mo, pp. 114. 6d. net.) Life and Conduct is the fourth volume of the series entitled "Guild and Bible Class Text-Books." The editors are resolved to leave the beaten track, and here is a manual of ethic of the simplest and most practical daily purpose. It is a charming little book. The same care is spent upon its printing as if it had been one of Messrs. A. & C. Black's costliest volumes-as if it had been a volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica itself. And that is a hint for future editions of the Encyclopædia. At present, Ethic is an abstract science; but it is of most value when made homely and simple as this.

SERMONS

AND ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN AMERICA. BY F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. (Macmillan. Crown 8vo, pp. 364. 3s. 6d.) Proceeding with their new and cheap edition of Archdeacon Farrar's Sermons, Messrs. Macmillan have reached the American Sermons and Addresses the last, if we are not mistaken, in the series. We have compared this edition with the other (1886), which cost us 6s., did it not? and we can find no difference without or within. In some of the other volumes the type is a little worn, here it seems as sharp as ever. It is one of the very best volumes of sermons in the English language.

FORTHCOMING BOOKS.

For the most part the Publishers' announcements are not ready when we write. But we have received some appetising items, which may be mentioned at

once.

Messrs. Longman have the second volume of Dr. Boyd's REMINISCENCES nearly ready; and another volume by the author of Problems of Christianity and Scepticism, of which the title is THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO SCEPTICS. They also announce two volumes of Sermons, the one

by Canon Scott Holland, the other by Bishop Oxenden.

Messrs. Isbister have in the press a volume of studies on the Canon of Scripture, which they will issue under the title of BOOK BY BOOK. The studies originally appeared as introductions to the various books of Scripture in Virtue's New Illustrated Bible. Their reproduction in a single volume will be heartily welcomed. The authors are the Bishops of Ripon and of Worcester, the Dean of Gloucester, Archdeacon Farrar, Canon Maclear, and Professors Davidson, Dods, Elmslie, Stanley Leathes, Milligan, Robertson, Salmon, and Sanday.

If it is true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, most of us should eschew all contact with scientific books. But abundant repetition does not prove it true; and it cannot be denied that, when properly regulated, even a little knowledge of what modern science is doing is both a pleasant and a profitable thing. The difficulty is to find the books that are at once intelligible and reliable.

Messrs. Macmillan announce a series on the Natural History of Vertebrate and Invertebrate Animals, which should be the thing sought after While intended, in the first instance, for those who have had no special training, the volumes will, as far as possible, present the modern results of scientific research. Care will be taken to avoid technical language as far as possible, and to exclude abstruse details. The series will be written for the most part by Cambridge men, and will go by the name of "The Cambridge Natural History."

Messrs. T. & T. Clark's announcements are (1) Dr. Newman Smyth's CHRISTIAN ETHICS, and (2) Professor Bruce's APOLOGETICS. Those are the second and third volumes of the "International Theological Library." Dr. Smyth will be ready by the time this is published, and Professor Bruce may be expected in November. Early in October the same Publishers promise (3) THE GOSPEL OF THE RISEN SAVIOUR, by the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, the Rev. R. M'Cheyne Edgar, M.A. First, the fact of the resurrection is established on historical and critical grounds, and then the theological and spiritual significance of the Risen Saviour is described. It should prove helpful, as it is certainly timely enough. The second volume by Wendt is also announced; and about the end of November is the date given for one of the best works we shall

Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. announce a new edition of George Eliot's translation of STRAUSS'S LIFE OF CHRIST, to which an introduction has been written by Professor Pfleiderer. They also promise THE SCEPTICS OF THE ITALIAN AND FRENCH RENAISSANCE in two volumes, by the Rev. John Owen. And to their "Social Science Series" forthcoming additions are — SOCIALISM, SCIENTIFIC AND EUTOPIAN, by Frederick Engels; and THE ETHIC OF USURY AND INTEREST, by W. Blissard.

A work of importance for the textual study of the Apocalypse is about to be published. The Rev. John Gwynn, D.D., Archbishop King's Lecturer in

discovered a new Syriac version of the Apocalypse, and is about to publish it in the "Dublin University Press Series." "In a Syriac MS. of the New Testament belonging to the Earl of Crawford (for my knowledge of its existence, I am indebted to the Rev. G. H. Gwilliam, B.D., of Hertford College, Oxford) I have found the complete text of a version of the Apocalypse hitherto unknown, or rather, doubtfully surmised to have possibly existed as a whole, and known only by a fragment (chap. vii. 1-8) preserved in the MS. Add. 17193, British Museum." Of this interesting "find" Dr. Gwynn promises a line for line reprint, accompanied by a Greek text, "which is, as nearly as I can make it, a restoration of that which underlies the Syriac."

to determine these points, it will be advisable to

feet.”

PSALM Xxii. 16.

As every Hebrew scholar knows, and as every English reader may learn, by referring to the margin in the Revised Version, "They pierced" is no translation of the original. Neither can any process of textual emendation, however ingenious -conjectural it must always be-make this form yield a signification more than approximate to the words "They pierced." By altering the vowel points an attempt has been made on the part of various expositors to convert the form "789, ka’arî, into one bearing a sense identical with that of the words found in the ancient versions. But the results are by no means satisfactory. Had the writer of the Psalm intended to express the act of piercing, there were lying at hand several words appropriate to the purpose. On other grounds, moreover, antiquarian as well as linguistic, the rendering "They pierced" is objectionable.

Is the text then hopelessly corrupt; or, without varying the points, is capable of a suitable Can we assign to the passage interpretation? such a meaning as is consistent with the retention of this form unaltered; and if so, is there a reasonable degree of probability that such meaning is the one originally intended by the writer? In order

doubtful form occurs. The passage is tristichic, and thus appears in the Hebrew

(c) Like a lion my hands and my feet.

Now it is obvious that (c) if it is to convey to the mind any intelligible idea, requires completion. Severed from its connection, "Like a lion my hands and my feet" means nothing. But (b) and (c) read together furnish an example of the sense(σχημα πρὸς τὸ σημαινόμενον) figure (σxa pòs To σnpaióμevov) called by grammarians ellipsis. In other words, the verb in (b) serves not only its own clause, but likewise the one following. So that supplying the omission in (c) we have

For have compassed me dogs:

A crowd of evil-doers have surrounded me: Like a lion have they surrounded my hands and my feet.

If this treatment of the passage be admissible, the words "my hands and my feet," will be accusatives of closer specification (accusativi partis). The writer refers, first of all, to his whole person, and then more specifically to the extremities of his body-his "hands" and his "feet." His person was surrounded by the canaille of the city, who made his hands and his feet objects of special insult. What induced them to vent their spleen upon these rather than any other parts of the sufferer's frame? This requires some explanation.

It is tolerably manifest that in Psalm xxii. we have the description of some cruel and ignominious punishment of which the writer had recently been the subject. The poem sounds like the loud lament, the piercing cry of one whom inhuman and malicious foes had tortured to the very verge of death. Who this sufferer was we cannot now precisely determine. But if the authorship of the poem be assigned to Jeremiah, we may consider it as descriptive of his condition while confined in the stocks into which, after chastisement, he had been thrust by "Pashur, the son of Immer the priest." Of the nature of this punishment it is difficult to form a very definite conception. would appear that the construction of the Jewish stocks can only be conjectured from the Hebrew word employed to designate them. This word (mahpekheth) from the root

It

=

(haphak = to turn), is thus defined by Gesenius." "Properly twisting, distortion, i.e. the stocks in which the hands and feet of a prisoner were so fixed that his body was distorted." To this description the article ("Stocks") in Smith's Dictionary adds but little. A brief extract or two will be sufficient for our purpose. "The term stocks is applied, A.V., to two different articles, one of which ne pillory, inasmuch as its name implies that the body was placed in a bent position by the confinement of the neck and arms as well as the legs." "It may be compared with the Greek kúpwv." "It appears to have been a common mode of punishment in his (Jeremiah's) day." These authorities, it will be noted, give us very little aid in our endeavour to discover the exact construction of this Jewish instrument of torture. If, however, they are to be relied upon, thus much seems manifest. The hands and feet of the sufferer were 1 Jer. xx. 1 et seqq.

1

2 Sub voce.

parts of the body materially affected. Probably the stocks consisted of a wooden frame in which the body of the criminal was confined, while his head, hands, and feet protruded through apertures designed for that purpose. Hence we can readily understand why, after alluding to the environment of his person by the street rabble, the Psalmist should make special mention of his hands and feet. These members were precisely in that position which would be likely to invite ferocious attention on the part of the abandoned characters who gathered round the seat of his disgrace. He shudders, as it were, at the recollection of the fiendish cruelty with which his hands and feet were surrounded and assailed; and so vivid is the remembrance, that he expresses his feelings in a sharp, short, elliptical phrase. In accordance with this view of the passage in question, the meaning of the writer of the Psalm, converted into prose, will be: "A crowd of profligates gathered round" me; with lion-like ferocity, utterly helpless as I was, they gathered round and assaulted my hands and my feet." J. W. SOUTHERN.

Charing Heath, Kent.

Joshua and Jesus.

A STRIKING illustration of the truism that the familiar is the least understood, is supplied by a controversy which is still going on in the Studien und Kritiken. It has long been admitted that the 'Ingous of the Septuagint and the New Testament is derived from the yawn of the Hebrew Bible; but the vowel change, the transition of the o into e, has never been explained in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. In a recent number of the abovementioned periodical, August Müller suggests the effort to avoid similarity of sound as the reason for the mutation. He hints that careful examination of the Lexicon might lead to the discovery of more examples which would probably confirm the belief that and become i in the neighbourhood of o, whilst becomes e if it stands by the side of u. In the last issue this suggestion is controverted by L. Nestle, who adduces several instances of similar letter change which cannot be accounted for in this way. The name of the king, for instance, who erected the Moabite stone is given in the Massoretic text as y, but in the Septuagint as Mood. The name represented in the former as 77 appears in

Notes on Siegfried and Stade's New Hebrew Lericon.

III.

AMOS iii. II. In the article on 2 we are directed to compare with the Hebrew of this passage the LXX and Peshitta, and are informed that Steiner corrects a to aby. When we follow this direction we find that the LXX had the consonants of the MT. before them, but were at a loss how to deal with their text. A and B render Τύρος [ for 3] κυκλόθεν ἡ γῆ σου ἐρημωθήσεται: the Arabic and many Cursives come even nearer to the Massoretic text, Τύρος καὶ K.T.A. With regard to pnp. we may either follow Jerome in believing that the Greek translators supplied what they deemed the suitable verb, or, more probably, may take it to be a rendering of

which והורד a mistaken reduplication of the ,יחרב

A WORK is coming out in Germany under the editorship of Dr. Winter and the well-known Rabbinic scholar Dr. Wuensche, supported by Dr. Hamburger, Dr. Fuerst, and several other scholars, which deserves encouragement from English students as well as from those for whom it is primarily designed. It is entitled Jewish Literature since the Close of the Canon, a Poetic and Prose Anthology, with Biographical and Literary Introductions. The first selections are from the First Book of the Maccabees, and the series will close with examples from the writings of Mendelssohn and his school, and the Jewish writers of the present century. The three numbers which have already appeared warrant the belief that this will be a useful and valuable work. The first and second include translations from the Apocrypha, Philo, Josephus, the Letter of Aristeas, the socalled Sibylline Oracles, the Targums, the Mishnah, the Tosephta, and the Jerusalem Talmud. The Mishnic passages are usually taken from the rendering of Jost. The numerous translations from the Tosephta, extending over more than thirty pages, seem to have been executed partly by one of the editors and partly by Dr. Fuerst. As this curious collection of ancient Jewish opinions and anecdotes is comparatively little known, this part of the compilation is especially deserving of favourable mention. The introductory notices concerning the books represented, give in a small compass much valuable information which could not easily be obtained elsewhere by those who have not given special attention to the study of later Jewish literature.

Manchester.

W. TAYLOR SMITH.

follows. The Pesh. is more helpful, and it is its suggestiveness which has led to Steiner's emendation.

ܐܡܢܢܐ ܢܣܕܪܝܗ ܠܪܥܐ :Its version runs thus

(Angustia circumdabit terram). And this is Steiner's note: "Seeing that the simple 2D (in the sing. form and without) does not elsewhere stand before the noun, and that the Pesh. instead of this gives an imperfect, ad appears to have sprung originally from 20', that is, " To these considerations let it be added, that the Vulgate, although in other respects incorrect, saw that a verb was required: Tribulabitur, et circuietur terra that if y, in the concrete sense "enemy," is the subject to the verb 22, a very natural and suitable subject is thus provided for the

of