est, kprt = kapporet." Can there be any longer the least doubt? Kaтaπéтаoμa is translation of a misread

л, superliminare.

The very first principle of textual criticism is: Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua. That reading is believed to be true from which the change into the other is more easy; the rarer word is likely to change into the one more in use. The latter is in this case no doubt prkt, л, veil, instead Ask any student of divinity what is the Hebrew expression for the veil of the Temple and the Tabernacle, and he will say "paroket." Ask him what is iλaoτýplov in Hebrew, and he knows: kapporet. Ask what is superliminare, and few, if any, will without resort to the dictionary or concordance be certain about ɔɔ, kaftor.

.כפתר,of kptr

But what is most natural from the principle of textual criticism is supported in this instance by the context. "The earth did quake," says the very same verse. What are we to expect? that "a veil is rent"? No, that a lintel of a large door be broken, or that something like an ornament of it, a chapiter, tumble down, or whatever may be the exact meaning of sublatum, divisum et fractum, corruere, and of superliminare and its Hebrew original kaftor.1 It is really strange that an author writing as lately as 1889, and comparing these two versions said of the relation in the Hebrew Gospel, "It shows a decidedly apocryphal predilection for the miraculous in the crassest sense (das Wunderbare im grassesten Sinn). Instead of the tearing of a thin (!) veil, this unsound craving for legends demands the thundering (!) bursting of a massive lintel infinitae magnitudinis.” 2 The very opposite is true, and even in our present Greek

1 This is a philological and archæological question for itself, not to be treated here at length. It must suffice to say, that the etymology seems to show kaftor to be a pear-like ornament, some sort of chapiter, as the English Bible (R.V.) renders it in both places of the Old Testament, and that the Latin of Jerome gives freedom to think of superliminare with or without the definite article. 2 Resch, Agrapha, p. 341.

text there are little traces left testifying for the Hebrew original. If the veil were rent from the bottom to the top it would have had the same effect; but if something falls down-corruit-it cannot be otherwise than from above downwards. Again, our present Greek manuscripts have for the most part that the veil was rent in twain, εἰς δύο or εἰς δύο μέρη (Matt. xxvii. 51), or μέσον (in the midst) (Luke xxiii. 45). But if you refer to the critical apparatus of Tischendorf or any large edition of the Greek Testament, you will find that these intensive expressions are not quoted in Matthew, for instance, by Origen and Eusebius, in Luke by the most famous Codex Bezae, and are, probably, later additions. As to my judgment, there can be not the least doubt. Jerome has preserved to us in this passage the true reading of the original Hebrew Gospel, which clears away a very great difficulty.

But the insight gained for this passage has its consequences for others. Si haberemus hebraeum Matthaeum; facile expediremus, said Luther once. Here at least we have a bit of it, but we have one also for another passage of even greater importance.

From the second century there has been a questioning about the meaning of the word émiovσios in the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer: supersubstantialis, quotidianus, daily, needy, abundant, and I know not what other translations and explanations have been proposed. At last the question is settled by reference to the Hebrew Gospel. Of course the passage is long known and frequently spoken of, in which Jerome writes on Matthew vi. 11.

"In evangelio, quod appellatur secundum Hebraeos, pro supersubstantiali pane reperi mahar, quod dicitur crastinum ut sit sensus: panem nostrum crastinum, id est futurum, da nobis hodie."

But up to the present time the opposite views were possi

ble. Such a good Hebrew scholar as Delitzsch declared that mahar was quite out of place as a translation of the Greek Toúotos, and considered this very passage as a proof that the Gospel of the Hebrews was dependent from the Greek and did not deserve belief. Other scholars, on the contrary, did take the opposite view; one of the strongest advocates that eπiovoios must be our bread for the coming day was Paul de Lagarde. Theodore Zahn, too, in the work to which we alluded at the commencement of this article, took the same view. His reasoning was quite sound. He said, if anywhere, we must expect that among the Hebrews (Acts vi. 1) the real form of the prayer was propagated which Jesus taught His disciples. Now let us suppose for the moment the evangelium secundum Hebraeos was a translation from the Greek. "Is it likely," Zahn asks, "that the Hebrew translator left the form of prayer which he was accustomed to, and cared for, and followed the etymological explanation of a very rare Greek word? Impossible! Even Jerome," says Zahn, “and Luther left the quotidianus and daily-the former at all events in Luke xi. 3, the latter at both places, though they knew that Lovσios did not mean daily. Why? because the praxis of prayer in the Occident was too strong for them. The same is the case with the Revised Version. Therefore crastinum must be considered to be the true meaning if in the supposed case the Gospel according to the Hebrews be a translation." But from other grounds Zahn stated that it was no translation, and that at all events in this passage the originality was on its side. After the light that has fallen on Matthew xxvii. I believe that also for Matthew vi. 11 Jerome's note is a beacon for the true understanding of the Gospel. Distingue linguas et concordabit Scriptura. What the Revised Version put in the margin-“ Give us this day," or, as we read in Luke, "Give us day by day our bread": "for the coming day"-we are now even with

more right entitled to include in our daily prayer. By the same method of going back to the Hebrew original, which must be presupposed to lie at the bottom of our present Greek Gospels, another variation disappears, which has greatly vexed as well the pious as the learned Bible reader. In the history of the Passion it is said by Matthew (xxvii. 34) that they gave Jesus vinegar to drink mingled with gall, by Mark (xv. 23) wine mingled with myrrh. Now vinegar may be like wine, or rather wine like vinegar (cf. R.V.), but at all events gall is not myrrh; but in Hebrew gall and myrrh are written by exactly the same letters, varying only in the vowel dots. In the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum, which shows a dialect most like to that which Jesus must be supposed to have spoken, the word is in both cases written quite alike, namely mira.

Jerome was not in every respect the man we could have wished him to be; but the thanks of all who are interested in an historical understanding of Christendom are due to him that he enabled us fifteen hundred years after his time to recover these bits of the original Gospel.

EBERHARD NESTLE.

316

THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN THE TALMUD: A

CRITICISM.

PROFESSOR RENDEL HARRIS has done well to draw attention to the curious passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, Chagiga, 77d, which is supposed to contain a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The passage has been quoted so often in discussions and commentaries on the genealogy in St. Luke1 that it is worth while to examine it with some care. The commentators have no doubt derived their knowledge of the passage from Lightfoot's Hora Hebraica, on St. Luke iii. 23, which seems to be the first book of the kind to quote it; one and all they have taken his rendering on trust, and handed down the application he makes

; וחמא מרים ברת עלי בצלים of it. The text of the passage is

and Lightfoot renders: "And he saw Miriam, the daughter of Eli, among the shades," vocalising the last two words,

baby. Here, he says, we have a key to the puzzling Heli in the genealogy; and the revolting words in the sequel of the passage show how Jewish hostility regarded the Mother of our Lord. But the rendering which Lightfoot gives is quite impossible, as any Hebraist will see at once. The word is used by Jewish writers, as it is in the Old Testament, for a shadow, e.g., of a wall, a tree, an animal, a rock, etc., but the plural s never means shades, in the sense of "inhabitants of the under-world." The proper word for the latter in the Old Testament is, of course, ', the Refaim,3 a word which does not occur in the Talmud in this sense. Lightfoot's rendering, then, upon which the application of the passage depends, cannot be permitted.

2

1 To mention only two popular commentaries on St. Luke, Godet, Saint Luc, i., p. 251, Engl. edn., i., p. 202; Farrar, St. Luke, Camb. Bible, p. 373.

2 Aboda Zara, 48b; Pesachim, 50a; Isa. xxxii. 2, etc.

3 E.g. Isa. xiv. 9, xxvi. 14; Job xxvi. 5, etc,