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ancient or modern times for the illustration of the antiquities of the Bible , systematically arranged under the heads of Political , Domestic , and Sacred . It was first published at intervals from 1796 to 1805 . At his death , in 1816 , he left large materials for a new edition of the earlier parts , which has since been published ; the Sacred Antiquities remain in their original state . Of the first edition the author himself published an abridgement in
Latin , under the title of Archaeologia Biblica in compendium redacta , 1805 , 2 d ed . 1814 . He also published an Introduction to the Old Testament , Enchiridion hermeneuticae , ( Vienna , 1812 , ) and an edition of the Hebrew Bible with various readings , ( Vienna , 1806 , 4 vols . 8 vo ., ) which enjoys a high reputation ; and in the former part of his life , while he was professor of the oriental languages , various works on Hebrew , Syriac , and Arabic Grammar *
There is a smaller work of Jahn ' s , published in one of the German periodical magazines , . { E . G . Bengel Archiv fiir Theologie , Vol . 2 . 3 , ) by which he has perhaps done more for biblical criticism than by his more voluminous productions . It is well known to every theological student what variety of opinions had prevailed respecting the time when the books of Moses were written , or at least assumed their actual form . It was natural
that their language , as compared with that of parts of the Old Testament avowedly of later origin , should be appealed to , in order to decide this question ; but the proposed test had proved very unsatisfactory : for while some thought they perceived in the style of the Pentateuch the strongest dissimi larity to Judges or Samuel , and even alleged that words and constructions occur in it which are not found in the later books , others professed to perceive no such dissimilarity in their language , but on the contrary an uniformity which proved their origin in nearly the same age . The latter
opinion , sanctioned by the authority of the great lexicographer Gesemus , had gained ground in Germany , when Jahn undertook the examination of the question , and by a most laborious comparison of the words and idiom of the Pentateuch with those of the later books , proved beyond doubt that they were written in very distant ages from each other . At present we shall enter no farther into this subject , as we hope ere long to furnish the readers of the Monthly Repository with such an abstract of Jahn ' s papers as will enable them to judge how satisfactorily he has decided this much controverted
question . To make the following extract from the Preface to Jahn ' s Biblical Archaeology intelligible , it may be necessary to remark , that after Heyne , by his paper m the Transactions of the Society of Sciences at Gottingen ( Vol . VIII . ) , by his preface and notes to Apollodorus , and still more by his lectures , had given popularity to the opinion that the basis of heathen mythology was physical truths clothed in symbolical and poetical language , theologians had
begun to apply the same principle to the Mosaic history . Such is the object of Gabler , in his republication of Eichhorn ' s Essay on Primaeval History fUryeschichte ); and the English reader will find in Geddes's Critical Remarks , an exposition of the histories of the Creation and the Fall , upon the hypothesis of their being mytkL It will be necessary to retain this word in
the following translation , for fable in English implies either a fiction , designed to be imposed as truth , an inetnuftifcion which was riot'meant ten-he conveyed by the authors of this'hypo thesis , or , as in the familiar case-of JEsop ' B Fables , something so obviouMy fictitious , that it could never be taken in a literal sense . Mythus , as used by these writers , denotes a narrative originally designed to convey some abstract truth in a more impressive
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On the Mythical Interpretation qfthe Bible . 635
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 635, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/3/
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