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Untitled Article
in Fiilesttae , communicates vety important information respecting the geography , natural history , and customs of the country . Heathen authors can scarcely be trusted here for any thing beyond geography and the details connected with it .
The Rabbinical writings of the Jews contain a mass of intelligence respecting civil and religious usages , especially the ritual of the second temple . But the Mishna and the Gemaras are very delusive guides as to the times of the Old Testament :
and even as to the taanners of a somewhat later age , tlie authority of the Rabbins is to be received with the utmost caution . * We agree with the editor that the descriptions by travellers ia the East furnish a less fallacious means of
completing the picture of Jewish life : f on these we rely , in general , with great confidence ; and we are persuaded that ia this department of Sacred Literature much remains to be accomplished . Our readers will be gratified by the following remarks of Strauss ' s translator :
The Arab Sheikh , among his flocks and herds , recalls the very image of patriarchal times ; J allowing for the changes which religion has made , the mourning and the festivity , the diet , dress , and habitation of the present natives of these regions , wilt be found nearly what they
were two thousand years ago . It is true that we advance a step further , when , from the present state of the East , we describe what it was at this distant period , than when we merely illustrate Scriptural allusions from modern Oriental manners : put among the various
descriptions which might be given , that will be nearest to the truth which is most accordant with the known usages of Eastern nations ; and though this presumption can never amount to a positive proof of its accuracy , the reader is not misled provided he is iuforined on what he relies . "
* Translator ' s Pref . xvi . —xx . f Pp . xx ., xxi . X In Mr . Wellbeloved ' s note on Gen . xxi . 30 , and in his appropriate and happy extract from Brucc ' s Travels , 4 to .
\ y >\ . I . p . 148 , we see a striking illustration of the justness of this statement . Nor can we open Niebuhr ' s excellent and well-known work without perceiving many similar examples .
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Such are the main sources 5 vhen < a knowledge of Jewish antiquities : ie to be s 6 i % ht- ^ ttic Seriftfur ^; tfcfc writings of Josephus , of Jerome , and of the Rabbins , and oriental voyages and travels * In this article of review
we have not tune or room for saying much either on the importance of the 8 tudy , especially to theological scholars , or on the numerous volumes , by means of which -the prosecution of it may be aided . We nnist be permitted , nevertheless , to lament , that a
branch of learning , without which no man can be a competent interpreter of the Sacred Books , is so much " neglected among us : and we shall avail ourselves of the present opportunity of speaking of a set of lectures on the antiquities of the Jews , which , though it has been long since perused , irt manuscript , within a circle of some extent , is not yet given to the world in the form that so valuable a compilation richly merits .
With this branch of theological literature the English divines of tlie two last centuries were far more intimately acquainted than their successors in the present age * After we have made every reasonable allowance for human prejudices and attachments , still we cannot notice the
contrast without some degree of paw * To the original researches , to the assiduous labours of the Lightfodts , the Spencers , the Pococks , of a former generation we now witness no
approaches : nor are the authors of illarranged collections of the remarks of those who have gone before them to be enumerated together with the eminent scholars front whose works
they borrow a part of their materials . Among the truly learned though less voluminous productions of its class , the Antiquitates Sacra Feterum Hebrteorum , by Reland , will particularly deserve the attention ot
the student for accuracy , conciseness , judgment and method " : and we believe that the third edition [ 17171 will be found more correct , and therefore more useful , than the preceding impressions . Under publications ot the same description must be ranke " Lectures on the Three First Books of Godwin ' s Moses and Aaron , l > y the late Rev . Dr . David Jenvmg * - A work edited ami recommended l > y
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Mb Ret&ul—The Mt&l $ & > W tt&i&s f ^ HgHfhti ^
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1826, page 540, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2552/page/32/
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