THE BIBLE OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES. [To THE EDITOR
Or THE " SPECTATOR:1 Sra,—I have just seen in the Spectator of August 5th your notice of my book with the above title. Will you kindly allow me in a few words to correct a misstatement which the notice cOntains P You say rightly that I maintain there is no evidence of any written 'Aratntie version of the Old Testament having ever existed. Then these words follow,—" Though oral translation into the Aramaic was, no doubt, cOmmon enough from the time of the Captivity. But this translation, in our author's view, was based on the Septuagint." This statement as to the Septuagint having ever been the basis of a version in Palestine, is nowhere to be found in my book. On the contrary, I express surprise at p. 126 that any such opinion has ever been held. "The very learned Bishop Walton," I remark, "well aware that it would have been useless to read ancient Hebrew to those frequenting the Synagogues of Palestine in the days of our Lord, says, with a curious mixture of truth and error, that Christ made use of the Greek version in the synagogue at Nazareth, and then translated the passage read into the vernacular Syriac 1" What I hold, and havdtried.to prove, is that, for some time after the Return, an oral translation from the Hebrew into Aramaic was given when the Oa Testament was read in.the Synagogues, that this practice gradually died out as'G reek became more and more familiar throughout the land,' and that by the time of Christ the Septuagint was habitually made use of in the synagogue wor- ship. Of course, while maintaining these views, as I am humbly prepared to do against all corners, it would be absurd to imagine that the Greek version itself was ever made the basis of another tianslatiou.—I am, Sir., &c.,
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