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pretations , however doubtful , or even in our estimation decidedly false , which mi ^ ht be received by a Unitarian consistently with his general views of Christian truth , we do not undertake now to examine , but we shall endeavour to neglect no passage among thirty-two ( exclusive of the sections on the " angel of Jehovah , " and on the pkiral names ) which Dr . Smith produces , in which we could not , as Unitarians , receive his interpretation , without our characteristic opinions beinsc in any degree affected We may safely presume that Dr . Smith has not omitted any thing : of much importance . We shall endeavour to assist the intelligent and candid reader in
estimating the value of what he has produced . Sect . ii . Gen . iv . I : t € I have obtained a man Jehovah . " " From the special record of this exclamation of Eve on the birth of her first son , and from the very marked importance which is given to it , " [ it is preserved merely as an explanation of the name Cain , acquisition , and the signs of any very peculiar importance being attached to it are not obvious , ] " it may reasonably be considered as the expression of her eager and pious , though mistaken , expectation that the promise , < ch . iii . 15 . ) which could not but have created the strongest feelings of interest and hope , " \\ X . is a matter ,
nevertheless , of very great doubt whether the words referred to imply any promise at all , ] was now beginning to be accomplished . The pr imary , proper , and usual Torce of the particle ( n ** ) placed here before Jehovah , is to designate an object in the most demonstrative and emphatical manner . " " It is true , that in subsequent periods of the language , this particle came to be used as a preposition , to denote with or by the instumentnlity of ; but this was but a secondary idiom , and many of its supposed instances , on a closer consideration , fall into the ordinary construction . There seems , therefore , no option to an interpreter who is resolved to follow faithfully the fair and strict grammatical signification of the words before him , but to translate the passage as it is given above . "—Scrip . Test . Vol . I . p . 235 .
What can Dr . S . mean by saying that the primary and proper sense of the particle [ ns ] is to designate an object " in the most demonstrative and emphatical manner" ? For this purpose it is most usually employed : but it has , without doubt , originally been a noun independently significant , and all its uses as a particle , whether as the sign of a case , or mere emphatic accompaniment of a noun , or as a preposition , are but certain applications of the original and proper sense , of which , though one may have become much more common , we have no right on that account merely to say that it
is either older or better established . It appears to be sufficiently proved , that J" ) M , i ° least two passages besides the one under consideration , bears the sense of from , and in several others by means qf 9 either of which would remove all difficulty from this passage—in one of these ways too it has been understood by most of the ancient translators . Yet , because the particle is of much more frequent occurrence as an emphatic ascompaniment of nouns , ( an argument which , if consistently followed up , would never allow us to give to any word more than one sense , ) we are called upon to admit a translation which , understood literally , is in the highest degree revolting and
absurd , and from which no rational and probable meaning can be extracted . That the applications of the particle as a preposition are secondary and of a later age , is a mere arbitrary assumption ; and , after all , how is it to be proved to us that the documents employed by Moses had not their expression in any degree altered by him , or even , as their antiquity must have been so extraordinary , that they had not previously to his time existed only in hieroglyphics ? It is enough for us , however , that there is not the slightest foundation for Dr . S . ' s assertion as to the necessity of the extraordinary
Untitled Article
108 Dr . J . A Smith ' s Scripture Testimony to the Messiah .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 108, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/36/
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