Page images
PDF
EPUB

Enoch walked with God," in which Eth is translated "with" is not to be rejected because it is not a case of apposition like the one before us, for this is begging the question, since that the case before us is a case of apposition is the thing to be proved. Nor do we think the attempt successful, to show that the vert translated, "walked," "governs its object directly and active ly, requiring no preposition," i. e., including in itself the idea expressed in English by the two words "walked with," and that therefore Eth is in this case also the sign of the accusative. But if this opinion could be maintained, the principle involved would be just as applicable to the case in hand, and the verb translated "have gotten," might be said to contain in itself a reference to the source of the acquisition, or the power of the preposition "with," "by the aid of," and so govern two accusatives, leaving Eth to mark one of them. This is not our opinion, nor do we consider it even specious, but it is as fair to claim it for the one case as for the other. We have no doubt that Eth has the force of a preposition, as it has, in a precisely similar situation, between two nouns, or which is the same thing, between a pronoun and a noun, in Genesis vi. 13, "I will destroy them with the earth;" and in Genesis xiv. 9, "four kings with five;" Genesis xv. 18, "The Lord made a covenant with Abraham;" and in Micah iii. 8, "Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord;" and in this last passage Eth is not only a preposition, but it is used in almost the same sense in which we believe it to be used in Genesis iv. 1, "I have gotten a man by the aid of the Lord." The very structure of the whole passage is a sufficient demonstration of this rendering. It is an elliptical passage, but the ellipsis is easily supplied from a multitude of similar passages, and it would read in full, not, "And she bare Cain," but, "And she bare a son and called his name Cain," i. e., an acquisition, “and said, I had acquired a man from (or through the help of) the Lord." The acquisition, the first accession to her family, was the prominent thought in her mind, and she piously and gratefully acknowledged her indebtedness to God for it; as in the same spirit she afterwards named her third son, "Seth," one appointed, saying, "For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew."

VOL. VI.-7

But to say that Eve acknowledged her first-born to be the gift of "Jehovah" is an anachronism. This is considered another insuperable objection to the usual interpretation of the language of our common mother upon the birth of Cain. She knew God only by the name "Elohim." By the name "Jehovah" he was not known till the days of Enos, when men began, for the first time, to "invoke with the name of Yahveh," as we are told in "Yahveh Christ." We want evidence of Eve's ignorance on this subject, however; but, if it were proved that she could not have called God "Jehovah," we see no difficulty in supposing that Moses, to whom God made himself known by this name, used it in reporting Eve's expression in order to tell us that, to that same Being whom he was accustomed to call "Jehovah," she thankfully ascribed her first child; joyfully recognized it as his handiwork and as the gift of his love. With this object in view it was not at all important for Moses-or for the preceding writer from whom Mr. MacWhorter thinks that Moses compiled this part of the Pentateuch-to tell us precisely which name of God, Eve selected. It was sufficient to let us know that it was God indeed to whom she looked with a grateful heart, in the hour in which her maternal affection first went forth to rest, and lavish all its wealth upon its proper object. The Evangelists themselves are not careful to use the same divine name in reporting our Saviour's exclamation on the cross. That his exclamation was addressed to God was plainly enough recorded, but whether he said, "Eli, Eli," or "Eloi, Eloi," never can be known, is not important to be known, and none but a cabalist, accustomed to look for-not to find a world of meaning in a single word and even a single letter, would ever inquire.

We are here reminded-by observing that the inspired Evangelists not only quote the word "Theos" from the Septuagint, but themselves translate the Hebrew "Eli," or Chaldee, "Eloi," by this word,-that Mr. MacWhorter tells us that "the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, falling into the hands of philosophers rather than faithful students of history, give us not the historical "Yahveh" or "Jehovah," God of the Scriptures, but the philosophical "Theos," or "God" of "Plato;" and that this philosophical conception, beginning with the Septua

gint, and endorsed by the Latin Vulgate, although departed from by Luther in his translation, has hitherto controlled the Theology of the World." Luther broke loose from the chains of this philosophical conception, but inspiration itself could not deliver the writers of the New Testament!

To resume; if Eve had intended to derive a name for her first-born from the first promise, we cannot doubt that, according to every analogy of the language and her own subsequent practice, she would have called him "Jesooph," "He who will bruise;" for she would have said, "He shall bruise the serpent's head as the Lord hath spoken." In other words, she would have made the name from the leading verb in the sentence which suggested the name, on the same principle on which she herself subsequently named Seth, and Lamech named Noah, and the daughter of Pharaoh named Moses. Instead of this, she is represented as acting the part of the first abstractionist-if, while on the subject of inventing significant names, we may be permitted to invent one for the occasion. She is said to have derived "Yahveh" for Cain. from the first promise; but "Havah," of which "Yahveh" is the future, is not there. It has no synonyme there. She must have reflected and refined upon that first promise, until, like a modern German philosopher, she eliminated from it a "pure idea," as barren as modern German philosophy has ever produced, before it would have yielded to her "Yahveh" in the sense of "He who will be," or "He who will become," emptied of every trace of the design of the coming, whether to bruise the serpent's head or not, whether to save or to destroy.

Poor Eve! if she did extract and apply this name, according to the theory we are considering, it proved as sad an equivoque to her, as any heathen oracle ever proved to its superstitious dupe. Now it is conceivable that God should have early announced himself to our fallen race, or that they should have found some name to describe Him, as the self-existent, eternal and immutable One, upon whom, amid all their vacillations and vicissitudes, they might lean, and in whom they might trust with unwavering confidence. But for Eve to have approached such an abstraction, as is we believe for the first time-attributed to her in "Yahveh Christ," when searching for a name

to distinguish her first-born, seems to us utterly inconceivable. On this absurd hypothesis, she was not only the first abstractionist, but the first humanitarian, the very inventor of what afterwards became the incommunicable name of God; and, having invented it with express reference to His promise of salvation, she was the first to apply it to one whom she took to be at once the bringer of that salvation and yet nothing more than her offspring.

Another fact in this connection ought not to be passed over, and it is that, if the name "Jehovah" was originally bestowed upon Cain by his mother with no thought of his being anything more than human, it is a solitary instance of such a use of this Memorial Name. It is thus used in this solitary instance without explanation. And immediately after Eve called Cain "Jehovah," it is said that Cain and Abel brought their offerings unto "Jehovah!" Nor is it added, that the name "Jehovah" came in process of time to be taken from Cain and applied to God; although the Bible is by no means wanting in such explanatory clauses on subjects far less important, in which confusion and mistake would be far less injurious.

But all these considerations must go for nothing since they go to sustain the Septuagint and our translators, and it is notorious that "the Septuagint on metaphysical grounds of its own, translated the particle Eth, Genesis iv. 1, as a preposition equivalent to "through," or "by the aid of," and our translators, being theologians as well as critics, following the example of their Greek predecessors, also abandon the Hebrew, and insert, "from," before the term "Yahveh" or "Jehovah.' "From want of critical knowledge," our translators could do no better than to adopt the "construction" of the Septuagint "in dark or doubtful" cases. Yet in this case, with what consistency the reader must judge, Mr. MacWhorter immediately adds, that Luther did do better, and translated Eve's exclamation, as Mr. MacWhorter with all the aids of modern scholarship thinks it ought to be translated, i. e., as a case of apposition; although the great Reformer was still deep enough in the shadow of the medieval period to suppose "Jehovah" to mean "Lord," and that Eve thought the Lord had come. But we cannot imagine that Mr. MacWhorter intends soberly to

intimate that Luther alone, at the dawn of the Reformation, was, in point of scholarship, in advance of the combined learning of more than fifty of the ripest scholars of England and of Europe, in the reign of King James. We have yet to find the passage indicated by Mr. MacWhorter-although we do not assert that no such passage is to be found-in which modern scholarship itself has exposed the ignorance of our translators or detected them in a blunder. In the passage in question, as we have just seen, Luther agrees with Mr. MacWhorter in part. So does Michaelis, A. D. 1720, to the same extent. That is, Luther and Michaelis both regard this passage as a case of apposition. But Van Ess, forsaking Luther and Michaelis, translates, "mit Jehovah;" and De Wette, "mit hülfe Jehovah's." Gesenius, "at once the founder and the master of Hebrew criticism," in his Thesaurus, translates, "juvante Jehovah." Then, too, Rev. Samuel Davidson, D. D. LL. D., to whom "Yahveh Christ" is dedicated, in his, "Hermeneutics," after declaring his preference for the translation, "by the help of God," refers to the translation, "I have gotten a man, viz. Jehovah," with the remark, "It may be questioned, however, whether this be not a later refinement upon the language arising from doctrinal views, rather than from the words themselves." Is it possible that modern scholars, too, like our translators, are "theologians as well as critics!" We have no certain knowledge what changes of opinion on critical questions, under the influence of theological opinions, Doctor Davidson may have undergone. Common fame begins to attribute. to him great and sad changes of this sort; but be they what they may, as far as they are for the worse, he has written his own condemnation in the judicious words cited above. Thus, on Genesis iv. 1, as well as on Exodus iii. 14, modern scholarship sustains our translators in servilely and helplessly reproducing the construction of the incompetent and metaphysically prejudiced Septuagint, while Mr. MacWhorter is once more obliged to fall back upon the valiant Luther, this time sustained by the certainly distinguished, and in the main, most exact and reliable commentator, Michaelis.

There are many other things in this little volume to which we can by no means subscribe, but they are of minor impor

« PreviousContinue »