The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-04-07

Judah, in spite of captivity, clung
 to the sepher. though not under
 standing it. and took it to Babylon.
 The Babylonians, in order to
 strengthen Samaria against Jerusa-
 lem, sent a copy of the Sepher to the
 latter.
 When Esdras obtained the liberty
 of the Jews and brought them back
 from Babylon to Jerusalem, they were
 talking an Assyrian dialect and using
 Chaldic characters. The Hebrew
 tongue was entirely lost; Esdras did
 his best to revive it; he collected other writings and joined them to the Sepher; to make the Hebrew text leg Tble to the vulgar he added vowel points. The Samaritans anathema- tized Esdras and EsdraS eXcommunI- cated the Samaritans. The Sepher was henceforth paraphrased when read in the synagogues. each verse having to be interpreted.
 Among the Jews, only the sect of the Essenes preserved real knowl- edge of the sacred book and it's mean ing. If it be true. as seems probable, that Moses left an oral law as well as written it was preserved by the ESsenes. The Pharisees did not have 1t, nor did the Sadducees.
 Quite early the Samaritans had the Sepher translated into their vulgar tongue, and this version is still extant in its entirety, Its language resem-
 bles the ancient Hebrew more than does the Aramaic or Chaldaic of the Jews.
 There were many Jews in Egypt in the time of Ptolemy, son of Lagus,
 who founded the great library at Alexandria. Ptolemy, wishing to add to this library a copy of the Sepher translated into Greek. then the official language, sent to Essenes, living on Mount Moriah-the only Jews learn l ed enough to do the work-for a l translation.
 But the religious law forbade the communication of divine mysteries, yet the Essenes dared not refuse the request of the powerful king. There fore they translated the letter of the Sepher. carefully avoiding the spirit, thus humoring the prince and obeying their COnScienceS.
 of Moses, not concerning themselves at all with those added by Esdras. These latter were translated at sub | sequent period. This translation is | sent to Jerusalem to receive the inn primatur of the Sonhedrin, which con- sisted of seventy judges.
 | This version was in universal use | at the time of Christ. Even the most 1 learned of the Jews, such as Philo and ! Josephus, were completely ignorant 1 of Hebrew Only the few Essenes even knew of the existence of the
 ancient Sepher. The early fathers of ! the Christian Church used the Septua- i gint, although many of them, St. Augustine, for instance, recognized
 that 1t was a garbled paraphrase of l the original.
 Then came St. Jerome, and he tried | to get back to the real old Hebrew in
 order to make a more perfect transla- ton. He went to Bethlehem, won the confidence of the Essene monks and persuaded them to teach him Hebrew
 and its real meaning. He found, how
 ever that even they disa greed. But | he did his best, translating from the | Hebrew where he could. using the Greek version where he could not, and produced the Latin text known | as the Vulgate. This is closer to the
 original than the Septuagint but still l far from perfect.
 1 The rival versions existed side by
 side till the Council of Trent finally
 adopted the Nulgate as the authentic
 text of what we now call the Bible | Luther and Calvin and their follow
 CTS adopted the Septuagint All yer
 sions of the Bible used in Catholic l countries are translated from the ! Vulgate. This, of course. includes the Douai version in English. The King James version in English is Thus. according to d'Olivet. was the
 Hebrew tongue corrupted. lost lswamped under other dialects and languages, and thus have We versions of the writings of Moses which have | strayed very far from what he wrote
 and which give us most distorted idea of his story of the creation and
 To restore the Hebrew tongue d'Olivet went right back to origina sources He began studying the roots of words and letters in the mos ancient languages. Chinese. Sanskri
 and the hieroglyphics of Egypt By