that they may be nearer, the first to the Latin, or perhaps the German, and the second and third to the French originals?

9. Besides, in translating Hebrew names, the attempt was the more vain, as little or nothing was known about their pronunciation. The manner of pronouncing the consonants is judged of very differently by the critics; and as to the vowels, who has not heard what contests they have occasioned among the learned? But what rendered this attempt at giving the exact pronunciation completely ridiculous, is, that it was made in Latin, a dead language, of whose pronunciation also we have no standard, and in the speaking or reading of which every different nation follows a different rule. Harmony among themselves, therefore, was not to be expected in men who had taken this whim. Accordingly, when they once began to innovate, every one innovated after his own fashion, and had a list of names peculiar to himself. This, with reasonable people, has sufficiently exposed the folly of the conceit.

10. Now, though our translators have not made the violent stretches made by Pagnin and others, for the sake of adjusting the names to the original sounds, and have not distressed our organs of speech with a collision of letters hardly utterable; there is one article on which I do not think them entirely without blame. The names of the same persons, and in effect the same names, are sometimes rendered differently by them in the New Testament from what they had been rendered in the Old; and that, on account of a very inconsiderable difference in the spelling, or perhaps only in the termination in Hebrew and in Greek. By this the sense has been injured to ordinary readers, who are more generally ignorant than we are apt to imagine, of the persons in the Old Testament meant by the names in the New. Now this is a species of Kaкoŋλia, from which the authors of the Vulgate were free.

The old Italic had been made from the Greek of the Seventy. The names by consequence were more accommodated to the Greek orthography than to the Hebrew. But as that was a matter of no consequence when Jerom undertook to translate from the Hebrew, he did not think it expedient to make any changes in the proper names to which the people had been habituated from their infancy. He knew that this might have led some readers into mistakes, and as appearing awkward and affected, would be disagreeable to others; at the same time there was no conceivable advantage from it to compensate these inconveniences. For, to tell the Latin reader more exactly how the Hebrew proper names sounded, (if that could have been done,) was of no more significance to him than to acquaint him with the sound of their appellatives. He therefore judged rightly in preserving in the Old Testament, though he translated from the Hebrew, the names to which the people were accustomed, as Elias, and Eli

seus, and Esdras, and Nebuchodonosor, which were formed immediately from the Greek. By this means there was an uniformity in the manner of translating both Testaments. The prophets, and other eminent ancients, were not distinguished by one name in one part of the sacred text, and by another in the other: Whereas, the attempt at tracing servilely the letter in each part, has given us two sets of names for the same persons, of which the inconveniences are glaring, but the advantages invisible.

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11. It may be thought indeed a matter of little consequence, and that the names, if not the same, do at least so closely resemble, that they can hardly be mistaken for the names of different persons. But I have had occasion to discover that many the unlearned, though neither ignorant nor deficient in understanding, know not that Elias, so often mentioned in the New Testament, is the Elijah of the Old, that Eliseus is Elisha, that Osee is Hosea, and that the Jesus mentioned once in the Acts (vii. 45,) and once in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 8,) is Joshua. Had the names been totally different in the original, there might have been some reason for adopting this method. The old oriental names are often of use for pointing out the founders of nations, families, and tribes, and the more recent Greek names serve to connect those early notices with the later accounts of Greek and Roman historians. If they had, therefore, in the translation of the Old Testament, given, as in the original, the name Mizraim to Egypt, Aram, to Syria, and Javan to Greece, much might have been urged in defence of this manner. But when all the difference in the words results from an insignificant alteration in the spelling, in order to accommodate the Hebrew name to Grecian ears; to consider them on that account as different names, and to translate them differently, does not appear susceptible of a rational apology.

What should we think of a translator of Polybius, for example, who should always call Carthage Karchedon, and Hannibal Annibas, because the words of his author are Καρχηδων and Αννίβας; or, to come nearer home, should, in translating into English from the French, call London Londres, and the Hague La Haye. It can be ascribed solely to the almost irresistible influence of example, that our translators, who were eminent for their discernment as well as their learning, have been drawn into this frivolous innovation. At the same time, their want of uniformity in using this method, seems to betray a consciousness of some impropriety in it, and that it tended unnecessarily to darken what in itself is perfectly clear. Accordingly, they have not thought it advisable to exhibit the names in most frequent use differently in different parts of Scripture, or even differently from the names by which the persons are known in profane history. Thus he whom they have called Moses in the New Testament, is not

in the Old Testament made Mosheh, nor Solomon Shelomeh ; nor is Artaxerxes rendered Artachshasta, nor Cyrus Choresh, agreeably to the Hebrew orthography, though the names of the two last mentioned are not derived to us from the New Testament, but from Pagan historians.

12. Not that I think it of any moment whether the names be derived from the Greek or from the Hebrew, or from any other language. The matters of consequence here are only these two; first, to take the name in the most current use, whether it be formed from the Hebrew, from the Greek, or from the Latin; secondly, to use the same name in both Testaments, when the difference made on it in the two languages is merely such a change in the spelling and termination as commonly takes place in transplanting a word from one tongue into another. Nothing can be more vain than the attempt to bring us, in pronouncing names, to a stronger resemblance to the original sounds. Were this, as it is not, an object deserving the attention of an interpreter, it were easy to show that the methods employed for this purpose have often had the contrary effect. We have in this mostly followed German and Dutch linguists.

Admitting that they came near the truth according to their rule of pronouncing, which is the utmost they can ask, the powers of the same nominal letters are different in the different languages spoken at present in Europe; and we, by following their spelling, even when they were in the right, have departed farther from the original sound than we were before. The consonant j sounds in German like our y in the word year; sch with them sounds like our sh, like the French ch, and like the Italian sc when it immediately precedes i or e; whereas sch with us has generally the same sound with sk, and the consonant j the same with g before i or e. Besides, the letters which with us have different sounds in different situations, we have reason to believe were sounded uniformly in ancient languages, or at least did not undergo alterations correspondent to ours. Thus the brook called Kidron in the common version in the Old Testament, is, for the sake I suppose of a closer conformity to the Greek, called Cedron in the New. Yet the c in our language in this situation is sounded exactly as the s, a sound which we have good ground to think that the corresponding letter in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, never had.

13. The rules, therefore, which I have followed in expressing proper names are these: First, When the name of the same person or thing is, in the common translation, both in the Old Testament and in the New, expressed in the same manner, whether it be derived from the Hebrew or from the Greek, I uniformly employ it, because in that case it has always the sanction of good use. Thus Moses and Aaron, David and Solomon, Jerusalem and Jericho, Bethlehem and Jordan, and many others,

remain in the places of which they have had immemorial possession, though of these Moses and Solomon are directly from the Greek, the rest from the Hebrew. Secondly, When the name of the same person or thing is expressed in the common translation differently in the Old Testament and in the New, (the difference being such as results from adapting words of one language to the articulation of another,) I have, except in a very few cases, preferred the word used in the Old Testament. This does not proceed from the desire of coming nearer the pronunciation of the Hebrew root, for that is a matter of no consequence; but from the desire of preventing as far as possible all mistakes in regard to the persons or things spoken of. It is from the Old Testament that we have commonly what is known of the individuals mentioned in it, and referred to in the New. By naming them differently, there is a danger lest the person or thing alluded to be mistaken.

For this reason, I say, Elijah, not Elias; Elisha, not Eliseus; Isaiah, not Esaias; Kidron, not Cedron. For this reason also, in the catalogues of our Lord's progenitors, both in Matthew and in Luke, I have given the names as they are spelt in the common version of the Old Testament. From this rule I admit some exceptions. In a few instances the thing mentioned is better known, either by what is said of it in the New Testament or by the information we derive from Pagan authors, than by what we find in the Old. In this case the name in the New Testament has a greater currency than that used in the Old, and consequently, according to my notion of what ought to regulate our choice, is entitled to the preference. For this reason I say Sarepta and Sidon, not Zarephath and Zidon, as the former names are rendered by classical use, as well as that of the New Testament, more familiar than the latter. Thirdly, When the same name is given by the sacred writers in their own language to different persons, which the English translators have rendered differently in the different applications, I have judged it reasonable to adopt this distinction made by our old interpreters as conducing to perspicuity. The name of Jacob's fourth son is the same with that of two of the apostles. But as the first rule obliges me to give the Old Testament name Judah to the patriarch, I have reserved the term Judas, as used in the New, for the two apostles. This also suits universal and present use, for we never call the patriarch Judas nor any of the apostles Judah. The proper name of our Lord is the same with that of Joshua, who is, in the Septuagint, always called Inoovs, and is twice so named in the New Testament. Every body must be sensible of the expediency of confining the Old Testament name to the captain of the host of Israel, and the other to the Messiah. There can be no doubt that the name of Aaron's sister, and that of our Lord's mother, were originally the same. The former is called in the

Septuagint Mapiau, the name also given to the latter by the evangelist Luke. The other evangelists commonly say Magia. But as use with us has appropriated Miriam to the first and Mary to the second, it could answer no valuable purpose to confound them. The name of the father of the twelve tribes is, in the oriental dialects, the same with that of one of the sons of Zebedee, and that of the son of Alpheus. A small distinction is indeed made by the evangelists, who add a Greek termination to the Hebrew name when they apply it to the apostles, which, when they apply it to the patriarch, they never do. If our translators had copied as minutely in this instance as they have done in some others, the patriarch they would indeed have named Jacob, and each of the two apostles Jacobus. However, as in naming the two last they have thought fit to substitute James, which use also has confirmed, I have preserved this distinction.

14. Upon the whole, in all that concerns proper names, I have conformed to the judicious rule of King James the First more strictly, I suppose, than those translators to whom it was recommended: "The names of the Prophets and the holy writers, with the other names in the text, are to be retained, as near as may be, according as they are vulgarly used."

PART IV.

THE OUTWARD FORM OF THE VERSION.

I AM now to offer a few things on the form in which this translation is exhibited. It is well known, that the division of the books of holy writ into chapters and verses does not proceed from the inspired writers, but is a contrivance of a much later date. Even the punctuation, for distinguishing the sentences from one another, and dividing every sentence into its constituent members and clauses, though a more ancient invention, was, for many ages, except by grammarians and rhetoricians, hardly ever used in transcribing; insomuch, that whatever depends merely on the division of sentences, on points, aspirations, and accents, cannot be said to rest ultimately, as the words themselves do, upon the authority of the sacred penmen. These particulars give free scope for the sagacity of criticism, and unrestrained exercise to the talent of investigating, inasmuch as in none of these points is there any ground for the plea of inspiration.

2. As to the division into chapters and verses, we know that the present is not that which obtained in primitive ages, and that even the earliest division is not derived from the apostles, but from some of their first commentators, who, for the conveniency of readers, contrived this method. The division into