the oracles of God;' and, indeed, that they were composed after the closing of the sacred catalogue; though some writers without a shadow of authority have pretended that some of them, as Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and perhaps others, were received by the Jews into a second canon, said to be made by a council assembled at Jerusalem in the time of Eleazer the highpriest, upon the occasion of sending the seventy-two interpreters to Ptolemy, king of Egypt; and that the rest were canonized by a third council, assembled in the time of Sammai and Hillel; but of these councils, the Jews, tenacious as they are of traditions, have no account or memorial; and the books in question were composed after the cessation of the prophetic spirit, by persons who displayed no characters of inspiration; and some of whom seem to have disclaimed its pretensions; and therefore they were ranged by the Jews among the writings which they termed Hagiographa, in an inferior sense of that word.

"Tobit and Judith were, indeed, supposed by the rabbinical conceits, to have been derived from that lower kind of inspiration which was called Bath Col filia vocis. But this was an absurd fancy, and none of the books are cited either as prophetic or doctrinal by our Saviour or his apostles; and though some writers have pretended to discover a coincidence between certain passages contained in them, and others in the New Testament, it will be found that the evangelical writers on these occasions only accidently concur in sentiment or expression with the authors of the apocryphal books; or that the resemblance results from an imitation of passages in the sacred writings of the Old Testament, which the evangelical and the apocryphal writers might equally have had in view. But indeed, if any occasional allusion, or borrowed ex

pressions could be proved, they would by no means es tablish the authority of the apocryphal books; which might be referred to, as were other books by the sacred writers, without any design to confer on them a character of divine authority.

"It is certain, that long after the time of our Saviour, the Hebrew canon consisted but of twenty-two books; and that at this day the Jews adhere to the same list, though by separating books formerly united they increase the number; and it is not probable, or consistent with any authentic accounts, to suppose, that at any time before or after Christ, the canon which the Jews so religiously respected should have been altered by them. It is not probable that they should have admitted any addition after the death of Simon the just, who was the last of the great synagogue; or that, if such addition had been allowed, they should have expunged these writings which contain nothing so favourable to Christianity as the prophetic books which they have suffered to continue inviolate. Had the books been erased before the time of Christ, the sacrilege must have excited his censures; and since the establishment of the gospel any endeavor to deface the canon must have been detected and exposed."

It would be a mere waste of time to pursue this argument further. Whether Gehenna is, or is not, a place of future eternal punishment, no argument can be derived from the Apocrypha, to prove that it was considered a 'place of punishment by those writers; for they do not once use this word.

Let us now attend to the Targums. For the information of some it may be necessary to quote the following account of them from Prideaux's Connections, vol. iv. p. 560-585.

"Hillel bred up above 1000 scholars in the knowledge of the law, of which 80 were reckoned to be of greater eminency above the rest. For of them, say the Jewish writers, 30 were worthy on whom the divine glory should rest, as it did upon Moses; and 30 for whom the sun should stand still, as it did for Joshua ; and the 20 others were of a middling size. The eminentest of them all was Jonathan Ben Uzziel, the author of the Chaldee paraphrase upon the prophets; with whom was contemporary Onkelos, who was author of the Chaldee paraphrase upon the law. But whether he was a scholar of Hillel's or no, is not said. There are other Chaldee paraphrases besides these two; but what, or how many they were, or for what use they served, not being as yet any where mentioned in this work, it is proper I here give the reader an account of them.

"The Chaldee paraphrases are translations of the scriptures of the Old Testament made directly from the Hebrew text into the language of the Chaldeans; which language was anciently used through all Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine; and is still the language of the churches of the Nestorian and Maronite. Christians in those eastern parts, in the same manner as the Latin is the language of the Popish churches here in the west. And therefore these paraphrases were called Targums, because they were versions or translations of the Hebrew text into this language; for the word targum signifieth, in Chaldee, an interpretation or version of one language into another, and may properly be said of any such version or translation: but it is most commonly by the Jews appropriated to these Chaldee paraphrases; for being among them what were most eminently such, they therefore had this name by way of eminency especially given to them.

"These Targums were made for the use and instruction of the vulgar Jews after their return from the Babylonish captivity; for, although many of the better sort still retained the knowledge of the Hebrew language during that captivity, and taught it their children, and the holy scriptures that were delivered after that time, excepting only some parts of Daniel and Ezra, and one verse in Jeremiah, were all written therein; yet the common people, by having so long conversed with the Babylonians, learned their language, and forgot their own. It happened indeed otherwise to the children of Israel in Egypt; for, although they lived there above three times as long as the Babylonish captivity lasted, yet they still preserved the Hebrew language among them, and brought it back entire with them into Canaan. The reason of this was, in Egypt they all lived together in the land of Goshen; but on their being carried captive by the Babylonians, they were dispersed all over Chaldea and Assyria, and, being there intermixed with the people of the land, had their main converse with them, and therefore were forced to learn their language; and this soon induced a disuse of their own among them; by which means it came to pass, that, after their return, the common people, especially those of them who had been bred up in that captivity, understood not the holy scriptures in the Hebrew language, nor their posterity after them. And therefore, when Ezra read the law to the people, he had several persons standing by him well skilled in both the Chaldee and Hebrew languages, who interpreted to the people in Chaldee what he first read to them in Hebrew. And afterwards, when the method was established of dividing the law into 54 sections, and of reading one of them every week in their synagogues, the same course of reading to the people the Hebrew text first, and then in

terpreting it to them in Chaldee, was still continued. For, when the reader had read one verse in Hebrew, an interpreter standing by did render it into Chaldee; and then the next verse being read in Hebrew, it was in like manner interpreted in the same language as before; and so on from verse to verse was every verse alternately read first in the Hebrew, and then interpreted in Chaldee to the end of the section; and this first gave occasion for the making of Chaldee versions for the help of these interpreters. And they thenceforth became necessary not only for their help in the public synagogues, but also for the help of the people at home in their families, that they might there have the scriptures for their private reading in a language which they understood.

"For, first, as synagogues multiplied among the Jews beyond the number of able interpreters, it became necessary that such versions should be made for the help of the less able. This was done at first only for the law, because at first the law only was publicly read in their synagogues, till the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes; but, after that time, lessons being read out of the prophets in those religious assemblies, as well as out of the law, the same reason rendered it necessary, that Chaldee versions should be made of these scriptures also. And, 2dly, the use of the people (which was the other reason for the composing of those versions) made this necessary for all the scripture, as well as for the law and the prophets. For all scripture being given for our edification, all ought for this end, to have them in a language which they understood. For when God gave his law unto Israel, he enjoined that they should have his commandments, statutes, and judgments, always in their hearts, that they should meditate on them day and night, teach them their children, and talk of them, when they