SPREAD OF DELUSION. 165 deities whose images adorns the British Museum, pictorially illustrate the Semitic origin of the word nasar which terminates some Assyrian proper names, Shalma-nasar, Nebuchadnasar, Nebo-nasar, all contain the Arabic word nasar, a vulture. Details of this kind might be multiplied with ease: but this is not our object; at present we are satisfied if we can vindicate the true method of inscription-reading, detect the delusions by which the public are deceived, and enable every student to judge for himself, instead of resting upon the ipse dixit of leaders who have unconsciously deceived themselves before they impose upon others; for this imposture grows by what it feeds on. It has been announced in the most respectable journals, that Colonel Rawlinson has discovered a series of elaborate Assyrian treatises on history, ethnology, astronomy, and natural history, graven in the arrow-headed character during the flourishing period of the Babylonian monarchy. And the literary public readily believe this. There seems no end to the credulity of "the learned" as well as of the ignorant. When once we place ourselves on the inclined plane of an erroneous theory we are urged hurriedly forward with an increased momentum. Hence, we say frankly, to our readers, obsta principiis-do not take for granted the first step-that is, the erroneous one. The kings Darius, Xerxes, and Cyrus are all imaginary, there is not a tittle of evidence for a single proper name. Hence all the other names of persons, towns, rivers, and deities are imaginary; they are all adopted from the Scriptures and profane history, especially from Herodotus; and then, after reasoning in a circle, it is proclaimed that these Assyrian sculptures confirm the historical narrations of the Scriptures and of Herodotus. The Zend and the Sanscrit are then pressed into the service, and the public are deluded by a display of learning which gratifies the vanity of the conjurorsin-chief. We by no means object to the proper application of either the Zend or the Sanscrit to the decipherment of Assyrian inscriptions-all Asiatic dialects may be found useful-but we protest against the fallacies which have already been palmed upon us by means of a misapplication of those two important relics of Ancient Persia and India. Let future interpreters proceed in the path pointed out by Mr. Forster, and we confidently anticipate the time when every existing arrow-headed inscription will be rendered clearly intelligible, to all who will take the trouble to read for themselves, these singular monuments of an early and a wide-spread empire. ART. VI.-JASHAR. Fragmenta Archetypa Carminum Hebraicorum in Masorethico Veteris Testamenti Textu passim tessellata, collegit, ordinavit, restituit, in unum corpus redegit, Latine exhibuit, commentario instruxit, JOANNES GUILELMUS DONALDSON, S. Theologiæ Doctor, Collegii SS. Trinitatis apud Cantabrigienses quondam Socius. 8vo. London and Berlin. 1854. MOST of our readers are familiar with the very ingenious and highly instructive production of Archbishop Whately, entitled "Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte." This interesting essay had its origin in a desire to meet on their own ground the objections to Christianity propounded by that school of sceptical philosophy, of which Hume was the leading genius, and which in recent times has developed itself in the mythic theories of Strauss. New canons of historical criticism were laid down; these canons were applied to the writings for which they were prepared,—those, namely, of the Gospel history; contradictions were alleged to exist; events are narrated, which to the critics are "plainly impossible;" and on the ground of a supposed inconsistency of the gospel records with human reason, the entire account of Christ's life is resolved into a fabrication of designing men, or otherwise into a concatenation of myths. But the same principles of criticism, which, if accepted, were destructive to the truth of the Scripture record, needed but to be transferred to uninspired history to prove equally the falsity of the latter, and thus to strike at the root of all written testimony. That which deprives us of our Bible, deprives us no less of the historic existence of Greece, Rome, France, England,—the memorials of history's dawn and those of the last generation. Archbishop Whately seized this idea; and, to put a stop to a criticism which had already done much to rob all history of its value, he published the tractate above referred to, in which, by the light of the new principles of criticism, he disposes in sixty pages of every principal circumstance connected with a life so recent and so marked as that of Napoleon Buonaparte, and leaves the reader to wonder, as he shuts the book, whether such a man ever lived, or whether he, and the world with him, have not been for years the dupe of a credulous superstition. The work is not done yet, however. In our own country that form of scepticism has received a check, but in Germany Rationalism was not to be limited by the activity of a single exponent of its principles. In the hands of his master Baur, and in those of the younger disciples of the Tübingen school, Zeller and Schwegler, the principles of destructive criticism first applied by Strauss to the Gospel history, have been with equal determination applied to the other writings, inspired and uninspired, which belong to the history of the foundation of the Christian Church, until every record connected with primitive Christianity is, in all its main details, rejected in favour of the empty follies of Ebionitish fable, or distorted into the fantastic speculations of a revived Gnosticism. But this is not all. If history has suffered at the hands of those who should have been its defenders, philology has not less been twisted from its legitimate uses and abused to ignoble purposes, in order to sustain the hypotheses of those who have meditated the overthrow of all faith in Christian revelation. And what does the spectacle of dismantling now present? Canons of historical criticism which sap the foundation of every history, canons of interpretation which deprive a written medium of all verbal certainty, theory clashing with theory, and hypothesis contradicting hypothesis, till the wearied thought sinks beneath the impenetrable confusion in utter despair of again finding a solid resting-place whereon to repose its faith. One critic finds in the unadmitted portions (to wit, nine-tenths) of the inspired history, the fabrications of designing impostors; another finds in them the myths engendered by a process of natural or accidental growth; a third, uncertain of their origin, thinks only to cut them clear away, thus to rid divine truth of human alloy; of the latter class, one uses the secret of a new refinement of criticism for the important purpose of discriminating between the human and the divine; another employs the more exalted faculty of spiritual perception; all agree in one thing alone, namely, the rejection of the volume of inspiration in favour of the dismembered and mutilated fragments of their endlessly varying speculations. But why introduce this sad picture of the sorrows of modern criticism, this mournful story of the rejection of truth and the apotheosis of human error? It is that whilst we call to mind the healthy and well-timed irony of Archbishop Whately's pamphlet, we may invite a renewal of gratitude on the appearance of this work by Dr. Donaldson, which bids so fair to fulfil towards other manifestations of the mistaken tendencies of modern criticism, the same office which Dr. Whately's tract so ably fulfilled towards the earlier aberrations of sceptical philosophy. Whately gave full play and scope to the principles he covertly attacked, till their own absurdity became their overthrow, and they lay vanquished through a power they had themselves evoked. It was the old method,-as old as Euclid's mathematics,-of supposing a fact, seeing what it leads to, entangling it in its own meshes, and then concluding with a triumphant " Quod est absurdum." In Whately's hands the new canons of historic criticism committed suicide, and can never rise again except shorn of their vital strength. Dr. Donaldson has done the same. Intentionally or unintentionally-(we sincerely hope the former)-he has seized some of the more glaring errors with which the critical science of modern times has to reproach itself, and by pushing them to an extreme, giving them to run the whole length of their chain, he has left the reader to gaze upon the hopeless desolation which surrounds him, and to gather the instructive lesson of the consummation of extravagance and folly, in which such speculations legitimately terminate. For ourselves we are much instructed. We now know, or know better that ever before, where the principles of the new criticism naturally land us. And as the reduction of Archbishop Whately leads us to the rejection of the principle, thus shown to be radically fallacious, so the work of Dr. Donaldson naturally suggests a reconsideration of those methods of critical and philological investigation which serve as weapons of warfare, to certain Scripture interpreters, of whom his work is in effect a most withering satire. Let us indicate, with all consistent brevity, the field attacked, and the successes of the encounter. The later exponents of the criticism of Rationalism have, as as is well known, devoted special attention to the Acts of the Apostles and the epistolary writings of the New Testament. According to their view, Christianity rightly dates only from the middle of the second century. The book of the Acts was not written till that period, and its writers had in view an object more apologetic than historical. The Pauline Epistles are reduced to three, those addressed to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Corinthians being alone genuine. The remaining epistles and the gospel erroneously ascribed to John, are identified with the second century; they are no exponents of the religion of Christ and his Apostles, but are the germ of that system of teaching which the dissensions of the first two centuries gave birth to, called Christianity. View all this in its best light, it is nothing else than a fancy theory, based on an erroneous criticism, by which to divest Christianity of the dignity of its birth-right, and to exhibit it as the production of a later age, having its rise in the weak A RAPID CONSUMPTION. 169 nesses, the mistakes, and the dissensions of erring men. Let, now, this critical method of Baur and his followers be transferred from the New Testament to the Old. Let the same principles be applied to the interpretation of the latter, which have been so fruitful of result as applied to the former. And let us prepare ourselves to follow wheresoever theory may lead us for a hypothesis of the origin and history of the sacred books. We confess, Dr. Whately has the advantage in asking our assent to the non-existence of Napoleon, because the recentness of the events renders the exposure the more complete; but with all the disadvantage of dealing with a remote period, Dr. Donaldson has written enough, sufficiently to expose, on Old Testament ground, the inconsistency and absurdity of a system of criticism so radically opposed to all sound and philosophical interpretation. A few particulars will illustrate our meaning. In strict parallel with the dealings of Baur, Dr. Donaldson finds little difficulty in subjecting the Old Testament to a process we might fitly term a rapid consumption. Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, book after book disappear. The antiquity of all that men have been accustomed to hold most ancient is ingeniously exhibited as a prevailing error. The genuineness of the text and the integrity of the separate books, fall before the severe criticism of the new philosophy. The old walls, hoary with age, and which have already withstood the shock of a thousand assaults, crumble to powder at the application of this newly-discovered process. It takes but a few strokes of the pen to strip the venerable records of the ancient dispensation of all that is most characteristic of them, and to reduce the whole into a few scattered fragments which the skill of our supposed "new light" is able to put together for our benefit. And what is the theory, to correspond with Dr. Baur's construction of Christianity in the second century? Why, that the books of Scripture, which we are accustomed to regard as most ancient, far from being genuine in the form in which they have come down to us, and far from being the production of the authors to whom they are commonly ascribed, are a compilation of the Masoretic scribes, in which they have pieced together, as in a rude patchwork, all kinds of matter, true and false, of which the only authentic portions are a few fragments of an earlier date which reached their hands under the title of the Book of Jashar. Next, that this Book of Jashar, to the narrow dimensions of which the Bible is thus at a stroke reduced, "the back-bone," " the very marrow," "the foundation,” "the |