Fuste manus, cultroque, et lævi è cortice parmâ, Bacchantur, partosque canunt ante arma triumphos. 2 Tempore non alio maria Atlanta Colonus Sic geminum, Carolina, tibi, Rege auspice, regnum Id verò intereà, quòd parvas Anglicus hospes 1 Robertson's Hist. America, Post. Vol. p. 204. ? The emigration of William Penn, Quippe obversa oculos quoties simulacra lacessunt, Felix! sub patriò firmans tutamine vires, At verò scelerum tantorum exquirere causas E Coll. En. Nas. Junii 10. 1812. HENRICUS LATHAM. 1 On the Hebrew Numerals, and different Modes of Notation. Extracted from Mr. Hewlett's Bible. NO. II. "Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.”—[Numbers, Chap. i. v. 46. Ir has been remarked, that all the sums, as they stand in this chapter, (except one) end in even hundreds, or with two ciphers. This is next to an impossibility, and commentators have said, that Moses only gave round numbers; but if there was really a numbering of the people, (which will not be denied) it was as easy to express the right number as the wrong. It should be remembered, also, that accuracy was in a great measure required, in order to the just administration of certain laws respecting the Levites, the first-born, the offering to the Lord,' &c. Exod. xxx. 14.; but to talk of this, and to omit, in the summation of a series of numbers, all that were under 100, will be deemed preposterous. Such a notation does not at all agree with the exactness observed in Gen. v. nor with the numbers in Ezra, ch. ii. and Nehemiah, ch. vii. where the reader will not find sums ending with a cipher oftener than with any other figure. A more general cause of the alteration and confusion of the numbers in the Bible was the adoption of numerals, instead of writing sums in words at length. This practice, we know, was very ancient; and many of those numeral letters were so similar, that they might easily have been mistaken for each other.-See Dr. Kennicott, vol. ii. p. 209. 212. 215. Thus, the (2) may be easily taken for the (20), the (3) for (50), the 7 (4) for (200), or for the (500), the (60) for the (600), the (8) for the (400), &c. Besides, as Buxtorf observes (Thesaur. Gram.) in the notation used by the Masoretes, "N, the aleph, with two small dashes over it, instead of an unit, stood for a thousand, and y', which in the ordinary mode of numeration, is 71, they thus made 1070. Farther, by placing a dot, or a virgule, over any common numeral, they increased it in a ten-fold proportion. Now, we know that a propensity to the marvellous is natural to man; and no one can open any of the Talmudic writings, without being convinced that it was never indulged by any people to greater excess than by the Jews. Whenever the Rabbins were in the least doubt, therefore, or whenever they might suppose there was a dot, or a dash over a letter, which would multiply it by ten, they were likely to insert the larger number in preference to the less. Besides, the ancient Hebrew MSS. were written in characters that very much resembled the old Samaritan; and there were some of these which were easily confounded, though, from inspecting our printed copies of the Bible, we should not now perceive any resemblance. Indeed, so very different are the characters of some of the MSS. now in existence from those in the printed copies, that Dr. Kennicott says, there is in the Bodleian library a MS. of the book of Job, which few Hebrew scholars can read, though written in the Hebrew character. But it deserves particular notice, that there was a mode of notation used in Palestine, about the time of Christ, the knowledge of which had been lost for many ages. It was at last restored by the labors of the late learned Mr. Swinton, from an attentive examination of the Palmyrene inscriptions, and some old Sidonian coins. From the valuable communications which he made to the Royal Society (see vols. 48 and 50.) we learn some important facts: 1. That the Palmyrene dialect was, in almost every respect, like the Syriac. 2. That there is a surprising affinity between the Chaldee letters and the Palmyrene. 3. That the Chaldee characters were used at Tadmor, and in all the neighbouring parts of Syria, during the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian Era. And 4. That the Palmyrene inscriptions may be considered as manuscripts in the Chaldee, or Hebrew character, from fifteen to seventeen hundred years old. But, in comparing the Palmyrene alphabet with the present Hebrew, it appears that the gimel is extremely different. The vau, that im, portant numeral, has, at least, four distinct forms; and so likewise has the yod. One form of the samech is precisely the same as the final mem. The pe is exactly one form of the vau. The resch is, in general, either like the oin, or the tzad. One form of the oin is very like one of the samech; and the thau and nun are extremely similar. Now, though the sense may, in general language, serve to determine which letter is intended, yet what sagacity could discriminate them with any certainty, when used, above a thousand years after, merely as numerals ? . The tables of numerals, which Mr. Swinton was enabled to form, are extremely curious, and intimately connected with the present subject. It appears that unity was expressed by the Pelasgic, or Attic character 1. which for four was repeated as many times. For five, they used a character very much like our small printed (y), from which the Romans, by cutting off the tail, may be supposed to have borrowed their numeral, (v), and by joining another to it at the angular point, their x, or mark for ten. Their ten was represented by a character something like the Hebrew caph, or inverted, in the Roman numerals, and 1 on the right hand made it 100, thus; The Palmyrene pe, which resembles our written figure 3, stood for 20, though the same letter in Hebrew represents 80. The thousand was expressed by the two characters resembling inverted C's, and unity added, thus; Two thousand was. Ten thousand, &c. For this character, the inverted 3, in time, became a substitute; and, at last, when united with the I, it formed the D, or mark for 500. In an inscription containing Palmyrene numerals, published by Gruter, the five was a prostrate >, which, when set upright, is precisely the Roman character. Indeed, it is easy to perceive, that this mode of notation resembles the Roman in many respects; but yet the latter has some peculiarities of its own. We know that a less numeral standing before a greater, is to be subtracted from it; and when put after, is to be added to it. Thus, XC is 90, and CX 110; but how should we alter and pervert such numbers as these, CCIDƆƆCDXLIX, IƆƆ, LX, IƆXCIV, X and M, unless we had a clue to solve the difficulty? Now, it is extremely probable, that something like both these modes of notation, among other contrivances for abbreviation, was introduced into the copies of the Holy Scriptures; and, in those dark and dreary ages, when the transcripts were made, and all Europe was immersed in ignorance and barbarism, it would have been almost miraculous, if the Jewish Rabbins, to whom, as well as to the rest of the world, the Hebrew had for many ages been a dead language, could have understood what no one else did; or, IN CONVERTING THOSE COMPLEX NUMERALS INTO WORDS AT LENGTH, could have avoided such mistakes, as seem to have been inevitable. To render the subject of notation in general more intricate and perplexing, it was not unusual for the Greeks, when subject to the Romans, to mix Latin letters with their own, particularly on their coins, and in their inscriptions: but if they ever mixed their numerals, we know that the same character (X), which, with the Romans, expressed ten, with the Greeks represented a thousand. "The learned Vignoles," says Dr. Kennicott, vol. i. p. 531. “has offered a conjecture, which well deserves to be considered. It is, that the numbers in the Hebrew Bible were at some former period expressed by marks analogous to our common figures, 1, 2, 3, &c. and that these marks for numbers, having perhaps been communicated by the Arabians, together with their vowel points, were used by some, if not all, the Jewish transcribers, before the Doctors of Tiberias published their particular copy of the Hebrew Bible, in which all contractions were discontinued, and the numbers were consequently expressed by words at full length." This conjecture, however new, is countenanced by some numbers, the mistakes in which are most easily accounted for, by admitting the addition, omission, or transposition, of a cipher. In 1 Sam. vi. 19. we read, that the Lord smote 50070 Philistines, for looking into the ark; but in the Syriac and Arabic versions, the sum is only 5070. In 1 Kings, iv. 26. we read, that Solomon had 40,000 stalls for horses; but in 2 Chron. ix. 25. only 4000. And in 2 Chron. xiii. 3. 17. we read, that Abijah took the field with an army of 400,000 chosen men' of Judah, and was opposed by Jeroboam at the head of 800,000 chosen men' of Israel; and that there were slain of the men of Israel 500,000. The preceding author's conjecture seems here very probable, that a cipher has been improperly inserted in each of these three sums; the subtraction of which will reduce them to 40,000, 80,000, and 50,000, the very numbers contained in the old Latin translation of Josephus, and doubtless expressed originally in the Greek, which has been altered to corroborate the numbers in Chronicles. It should have been remarked here, that the cipher with the Arabians was a mere point, (.) easily inserted where it was not, and easily omitted where it really was. The Greeks, in all probability, borrowed the use of their point, or short dash, from them; and its power, when put under any of their numerals, it is well known, is a multiplication by a thousand. This might serve, perhaps, to account for the final ciphers in the numbers of the tribes, and also for the remarkable circumstance, that in all numbers above a thousand, in the books of the Old Testament, before the time of Ezra, there are but about six that end with one C, and not half that number which end with any other figure. All the rest end with two or three O's; and the instances, as they appear from the Concordances, are nearly three hundred. An ingenious author has lately attempted to reconcile, with some more probable accounts, the enormous numbers mentioned in the Hindoo Chronology, by omitting two or three of the ciphers; and the experiment has succeeded better than could have been expected. The same mode of correction has been applied with success to two or three passages of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. See A Companion to the Holy Bible, p. 63. 64. 182. where the reader will find much curious information and conjectural criticism on the present subject. If any one should be disposed to doubt the incorrectness of the numbers in the Bible, as they now stand, it may be only necessary for him to refer to the learned Dr. Kennicott's Dissertations on the State of the Hebrew Text, where this subject is frequently mentioned; or, particularly to the three copies of the catalogue of those who returned from the captivity, in consequence of the decree of Cyrus. These three copies, taken from Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esdras, notwithstanding the many variations that are to be found in them at present, must have originally agreed, being evidently meant to record the very same names, with the very same numbers. The numbers, though varying much in several of the particular sums, are yet added up, in all the three printed catalogues, and form the same total, |