and Service, POPE 18-23. Letter to Church, RAMSAY 369–390. Septuagint and Hebrew Text, OTTLEY 45-56. Slaves, DOBSCHÜTZ 33 f., 115–120, 353 f., 383 ff. Smyrna, RAMSAY 251–267. Letter to Church, RAMSAY 268-280. Social Life in Early Church, KNOWLING (Index). Solemn League and Covenant, BEVERIDGE 43-54. Solidarity of Men, LEWIS 200-216. Solomon, ADENEY 1-12 (Greenhough). Specialism, BLACK 129-154. Speech, HANNAY 201-210. Spirit Culture, BLACK 235-262. Spiritual Independence, BEVERIDGE 116-121. Standards of Doctrine, MOBERLY 348-396. State and Church, RASHDALL 301-305. Recent Biblical and Oriental Archaeology. BY PROFESSOR A. H. SAYCE, D.D., LL.D., Oxford. For my own part I wish that the plan of the series had allowed Professor Hommel to be less exclusively philological in his point of view. Conclusions, whether ethnological or historical, which rest upon philological considerations, are not very convincing to the archæologist unless. they can be supported by the solid facts of PROFESSOR HOMMEL has just published the first volume of a new work—Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients (Munich: Oskar Beck, 1904)—which is a marvel of learning and scholarship. It is a new addition to the famous series of the 'Guide to Classical Antiquity,' edited by Professor Iwan von Müller, and is a welcome indication that the word 'classical' is being inter-archæological evidence. We can differ in our preted in a liberal sense. The volume, which consists of 400 large and closely printed pages, contains a general introduction to the ethnology of the ancient East, and an elaborate account of Babylonian geography,-so elaborate, indeed, that even the 400 pages of the volume have not given the author sufficient room in which to finish it. The knowledge Professor Hommel has displayed in it of the cuneiform texts is extraordinary ; nothing seems to have escaped him, and the names of deities, places, and persons brought together in his notes will be a mine of information for future workers. The volume, therefore, is hardly one for 'the general reader,' but the series. to which it belongs is intended, not for the general reader, but for the scholar who wants an exhaustive collection of the existing materials of his subject. Readers of THE EXPOSITORY TIMES, however, have no need to be told that Professor Hommel is not merely a collector of materials, but an ingenious combiner of them as well, who never shrinks from an original suggestion, however adventurous and novel it may be. In fact, it is probable that many of those who use the present volume will think that at times he has been too adventurous in his combinations and too ingenious in drawing conclusions from them. Much of the book seems to have been printed off before it was actually finished, and the consequence is that here and there the statements made in an earlier part of it are corrected or modified on a later page, which is a little confusing to the lay mind. this will doubtless be set right by an appendix of additions and corrections when the whole work is concluded. The necessity for such corrections is the inevitable drawback to writing about a progressive science, and Oriental archæology is to-day a very progressive one. But interpretation of a passage in an inscription or a book and in the end not be sure that the author of it was writing accurately: the testimony of strata and potsherds is one from which, when it is once given, there is no appeal. But on the philological side the Grundriss is as complete as it is possible to make a work of the kind to-day. Professor Hommel is not only an Assyriologist of that older school which believed that before claiming to be one it is necessary to be able to translate an Assyrian inscription, as well as to comment upon some of the words in it; he is also one of the few Semitic scholars who have made a profound study of the inscriptions of Arabia. What he has to say, therefore, in the ethnological introduction about Arabia and its inhabitants is particularly valuable. His remarks about comparative Semitic grammar and the new division he proposes for the Semitic languages are especially worthy of consideration, and his discovery of numerous Arabian' or West-Semitic loan-words in the literary language of Babylonia opens up a new vista to the student of Assyrian. As may be supposed, Semitic proper names, for the study of which he has done so much, come in for a large share of his attention, and the very considerable number of West-Semitic names which early Babylonian contracts are now yielding, have provided an abundance of material for working a most promising field of research. Every day it is becoming more and more evident that 'Ur of the Chaldees' was the centre of a population which was Arabian or West-Semitic rather than Babylonian, and that here, in what Professor Hommel calls Chaldæa, was the first home of the traditions which we find in the earlier chapters of Genesis. It is to this part of the world that the geographical and personal names point, as well as the stories connected with them.1 As the But if 'Chaldæa' was the cradle of the Hebrew, Midian was the nursery of the Israelite. earlier chapters of Genesis refer us to the one, the later books of the Pentateuch refer us to the other. It is in the Minæan inscriptions of Midian that the Israelitish 'Levite' finds its counterpart in Lawi'at, the Levites'; and Professor Hommel notes that we must also go to the Minæan inscriptions for other technical terms of the Mosaic cultmashlam, 'the place of the shelem-offering,' aḥlai (nn), the sacred cake,' and the like. 6 Professor Hommel has now definitely thrown over the 'critical analysis' of the Pentateuch, with its P's and Q's, its Elohist and Yahvist. He proposes a new theory to explain the varying use of Elohim and Yahveh in the books of Moses, which he holds to be ultimately little more than a geographical question, and he adopts-as it seems to me with justice-von Hummelauer's view that the book' in which Samuel wrote 'the manner of the kingdom' is our present Deuteronomy 12-2616. As he says, the suggestion 'hits the nail on the head,' the statement in the Books of Samuel demanding that 'this royal code should be found somewhere in the Old Testament, and most naturally as an appendix or insertion attached to the Pentateuch.' A volume so crammed with fact, combination, and suggestion would require another volume to do it full justice. A review can do no more than describe its general character and indicate one or 1 Professor Hommel very ingeniously explains the name of Methuselah, who represents the Babylonian Amil-Sin 'the man of the moon-god' in the list of the antediluvian patriarchs, as standing for Mutu-Sarrakhi-Sarrakhu being a Babylonian title of the moon-god. Considering, however, that we have Methusael—that is, the Babylonian Mutu-sa-iliin the parallel list of Adam's descendants, it seems to me more probable that Methuselah has originated through a process of 'conflation' from Mutu-sa-Arkhi, the man of the moon-god.' The evidence of cuneiform documents which these names afford is a question into which I cannot enter here. But I believe that Lamech, for which a Semitic (or Sumerian) etymology has hitherto been sought in vain, is another instance of the change of Babylonian into 7, as I see in it the borrowed Babylonian Ramiku or Ramku, 'priest.' The change of the initial letter may have been influenced by the West-Semitic name of Lemuel (Lama-ilu in an early Babylonian contract), though among the mixed population of Babylonia it seems to have been not uncommon ; thus we have Illag for Uruk, Lagamal for Lagamar, the Alorus of Berossus for Aruru, and the like. two of its chief features. But I cannot part from it without calling attention to the long and detailed account given in it of the city of Babylon, or the scrupulousness with which every notice relating to the temples of Babylonia has been brought together. Nor can I refrain from adding what I think will interest the author. He suggests, I know not on what grounds, that north was the Etruscan word for 'ten.' An inscription copied by Professor Torp at Toscanella last spring has just shown us that the actual word was nars. A New Help to Learning Assyrian. A MOST useful little book-or rather the first part of it has just been published by Dr. G. Howardy, under the title of Clavis Cuneorum (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1904), which ought to be in the hands of every Assyrian teacher and pupil. It gives them in a handy and inexpensive form just what has so long been wanted, the Assyrian syllabary brought up to date and put into a practical shape. The work is thoroughly scientific, and at the same time is a model of lucid arrangement. The pupil will find in it everything that he ought to know. There is, first of all, a list of the Assyrian characters, arranged and numbered according to their forms; then the Neo-Babylonian characters corresponding to them; next the characters are given with their various phonetic values; this is followed by a table of the more commonly-used Assyrian characters and phonetic values-a very important matter for the learner; and, finally, the characters are given once more, with the ideographic values which are explained in Latin, English, and German. The book does for the present generation what I endeavoured to do for a former generation rather more than thirty years ago-enable the student to learn Assyrian without the aid of a teacher. It cannot be long before a second edition is called for. Hence it is desirable that the list of ideographic significations should be carefully revised by the author, as there are a good many misprints in it. I have noted, for example, 'whirlbelwind,' 'peasan,' 'luxurous,' 'corniche,' 'vowen,' 'ochard,' 'roaf,' 'weat,' 'roaf,' 'weat,' 'neaclace,' 'furnage,' 'Teuer' for 'Feuer,' and '11' for '12' on p. 85. Urra was the more usual name of the demon given under No. 15; kisallu is rather 'the anointed place' than 'the paved place,' and zaqiqu is 'a dust-storm.' Sabrû is undoubtedly a 'seer,' but akharru (p. 79) should be amurru, and tertu (pp. 65, 91) is not 'sending' or 'portent,' but 'instruction,' 'revelation' (the Hebrew thôrah, which seems to have been borrowed from it). I have found no misprints, however, in either the Assyrian or the Latin. Contributions and Can you recommend any German theological Ency- Although specially designed for German readers, Comments. 'the angel of Jahweh,' 'the angel of His Face' (pânîm), and in general with the Manifester of God in the Old Testament, as well as with the Messiah and the Christ of the New Testament, strike me as already accepted by biblical students. I find in an unpublished sermon of mine (29th September 1883) that I developed all these points, and in the notes I ground the statements advanced on the Talmud, Midrashim, John Lightfoot, Witsius, Gill, Patrick, Thomas Adams, Horsley, Kalisch, Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Pusey, Trench, and Edersheim, who share this view with more or less difference of detail. Michael, accordingly, is a departmental or official title given to Christ as the Lord of Angels. See also the Medieval Chronicle of Jeraḥmeel, i. 9, vi. 3, lii. 13, etc. Much more interesting and novel is the rapprochement of Michael to Marduk the benign Babylonian god of light and deliverance, which will open out many new and suggestive paths of exegesis. Here again I find in my notebook many references under the heading Marduk Michael.'1 To the same effect, no doubt, is Radau's article, ' Bel [Marduk], the Christ of Ancient Times' in the Monist, xiv. 81, seq., which I have not seen. It may be noted that the chapter which tells of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Peniel (Gn 32) being appointed to be read as a lesson on the Feast of St. Michael, shows an early recognition of the connexion maintained by Professor Cheyne. For references to other literature on the subject Professor Charles' instructive article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, s.v., should be consulted. |