DR. HINCKS ON MANETHO.

WILL you kindly permit me to correct a vexatious mistake in my article on "The Egyptian Dynasties of Manetho," page 367. The expression there quoted as Ptolemy's is not his. He used the equivalent expression, Kar avτò To μesovÚKTION, “at the very middle of the night" at Babylon, and he adds that this was five-sixths of an hour before the midnight of Alexandria, that being according to him the difference of time between the two cities. Some years ago, I procured extracts from the Almagest, containing Ptolemy's statements respecting the principal eclipses to which he refers. I could not find the paper containing these extracts when I was preparing my article in last November. I was sure, however, that I recollected the substance of the statement which Ptolemy makes concerning this (Halma, vol. i., p. 245); and I fancied that I recollected his precise words. I have since found the I lose no time in making the necessary correction.

Killyleagh, county Down,

21st February, 1863.

paper, and

EDW. HINCKS.

DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE.

ALLOW me to notice two slight errors in my paper on the "Date of the Apocalypse," in the January number of the J. S. L.

In p. 455, for “if Irenæus had prefixed a chronological heading to his MS. of the Apocalypse in A.D. 105,” read a.d. 175.

In the note to p. 464, for "in studying the Apocalypse, it is perhaps necessary to avow both a Protestant and Romish bias," for avow read avoid. I am not quite certain that my memory may not have deceived me, in my supposition that the Athenæum was the journal in which I had met with the unfavourable review referred to there.

Anecdota Syriaca. Collegit edidit explicuit J. P. N. LAND, Theol. Doc. Tom. I. Insunt Tabula xxviii. Lithographicæ. Lugduni Batavorum. 1862.

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WE hail with pleasure the arrival of this handsome volume. Its editor, a young orientalist of great promise, and already favourably known by his Dissertation upon the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, in which he was the first to call attention to the great value of the contents of that contemporaneous record, was sent to London in the autumn of 1857, at the expense of the Dutch government, and continued there nearly a year, occupied in examining the treasures of Syriac literature stored up in the British Museum, and in transcribing such manuscripts as seemed to him most worthy of his pains. The three intervening years seem to have been chiefly spent in studying the works with which he was thus enabled to enrich the library of the University of Leyden, and the liberality of the Warner trustees there has now enabled him to give to the world the first instalment of the rich harvest which he gathered.

As Dr. Land remarks, it is to the general advantage that the noble collections which have gradually accumulated at the British Museum should be examined by students of different nations; for as national character differs, that which is highly attractive to the learned of one country, is in danger of being thought of minor interest in another. While, therefore, English scholars have been chiefly interested in theological writings, he claims for the Germans broader views, and a philosophical preference for whatever tends to throw light upon the history of civilization in general. But while we allow that there is a certain amount of theoretical truth in Dr. Land's canon, we do not find it borne out by the facts. We owe to Dr. Cureton the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus, and from a Syriac palimpsest he deciphered the oldest known text, by several centuries, of a considerable portion of the Iliad of Homer. On the other hand we know of no theological publication of modern times which can compete in interest or value with the treatise of Titus, Bishop of Bostra, or the Didascalia Apostolorum, edited by Dr. De Lagarde. But what is more curious, Dr. Land himself has not struck out into new ground, but followed in the tracks already marked out by others. Attention had already been called to the Leges Sæculares-the most valuable treatise in his present volume-by Mr. B. H. Cowper, who in his Analecta Nicæna, copied from this very manuscript, called attention to it as a "curious document." In the same author's Syrian Miscellanies, a translation may be found of the chronological extracts from Ad. MS. 14,643, of which Dr. Land bas now given us the Syriac: while the volume which is to follow next in

order will contain such remains of John of Ephesus as have not yet been published, and will therefore only complete Dr. Cureton's labours.

Among the vast wealth however of the British Museum, Dr Land's view of the tendencies of the German mind settled at least his own choice and thus his Anecdota consist chiefly of works of historical interest, and such especially as throw light upon the fortunes of the Syrians themselves. Besides fragments, therefore, of other parts of John of Ephesus' history, he has transcribed a volume by the same author containing the lives of oriental saints, the title of which Dr. Cureton had previously given in the preface to his edition of the History. Next follows a Historia Miscellanea, to the publication of which we look forward with interest for it contains the Syriac version of the once famous work of Zacharias, Bishop of Mitylene, of which we have more than once heard mention as existing among the Nitrian manuscripts the short chronological records styled the History of the Chaliphs," but to us most interesting from the notices it contains of the early councils, follows then the secular laws; the maxims of the sage Menander; and, finally, a few leaves written in the Syro-Palestinian character, and containing portions of a Psalter More than a hundred leaves, in all, written in the same character, were brought from Egypt by Dr. Tischendorf in his last two journeys to the East, and have been lent to Dr. Land by the liberality of the Russian Government. They contain two books of Gospels, and some Homilies, and their publication would be of value, not so much from their contents as from the light they might throw upon the dialect spoken in Palestine: the classical Syriac being that of the regions eastward, and Edessa its headquarters. ist of begildo 918 97 5997 off to sem od malt

In the present volume we have the Syriac text, and a Latin transla tion of the book of the Chaliphs, the secular laws, the maxims of Menander, and also a brief history of the St. Thomas Christians of Malabar, from a manuscript in the library of the University of Leyden. There is, further, a short excursus upon the "Laws of various nations," ascribed by Dr. Cureton in his Spicilegium to Bardesanes, but which Dr. Land considers, from internal evidence, was written by his disciple Philip.. In a second excursus he agrees that the extract from Melito was not taken from the Apology of the venerable Bishop of Sardes, but from his treatise De Veritate. For ourselves we own to the greatest doubt as to its being the work of the Bishop at all. Cara praises Melito as "doctrina clarus," and Tertullian says sayo at all the Christians regarded him as a prophet. But after hearing the extract in question, we own to a feeling of great relief on finding him called, in the heading, "Melito the Philosopher;" whereas in the three extracts. expressly ascribed in the titles to the Bishop of Sardes, we think we can discern that elegans et declamatorium ingenium," for which him, and we find no trace in this frigid, oration. We Christians wer famous for their knowledge of the Old Testament, and that Melito especially was remarkable for a work in six volumes, containing extracts from the

Tertullian again pra add that to an

Bible, in the preface of which is that list of its contents which gives us the earliest knowledge of the sacred canon. Let any one remembering this read the account of Elisha in p. 44, and we think he will grant that the Melito who wrote the extract had but a very shallow and second-hand knowledge of the Scriptures: and so of the account of the deluge,—the flood of Noah is put in p. 51 on just the same level with a previous flood and wind, when the chosen men were destroyed by a mighty north wind, and the just were left for a demonstration of the truth." No Christian wrote this, but some eclectic philosopher, who had at most a very slight knowledge of the Bible, and who might very well hold a place in the same volume as the Gnostic Bardesanes. For we must call attention to the fact that the extracts which really belong to the Bishop of Sardes are taken from a very different manuscript.

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Next in order we have a most valuable dissertation upon Syriac Palæography; containing an account of their manner of writing, the materials they employed, their ink, pens, parchment, paper, etc.; and in which Dr. Land makes it appear probable that the Syrians occasionally made use of quills. We have ourselves seen a copy of the Gospels brought from Malabar, in which are rough drawings of the four evange lists, each with his ink-horn hanging from the mouth of some animal, while in his hand he holds a veritable pen, with the feathered part so clearly drawn that mistake is impossible. The manuscript is not ancient, but these things are so often copied from generation to generation, that they may be taken from something of greater antiquity.ev to od pozr

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We think it just possible then that the Syrians did sometimes perhaps write with quills; but when Dr. Land goes a step farther, and denies them the use of the reed, we are obliged to halt. His words are: Nec vidéo qua ratione calami usum, dum huic homini abjudicamus, ejus collegis tribuere cogamur. We turn therefore to the Nomenclator of Elias Barsinæus, fraudulently published under the name of Thomasa Novaria. In p. 165 we have a list of the imple ments used by the scribe. Among them we have 100 10 calamus scribe, the scribe's reed, but not a word about quills. We next turn to our own private collections from the Bibliotheca Orientalis, and find nothing under the Syriac equivalent for pens, but two passages proving the use of the reed. The first is taken from a Homily upon the Lord's Supper by S. Isaac the Great, a writer of the fifth century, quiod alt olen adn b and will be found in Bib. Or. 1, 220, col. b, as follows; 420121 4042 Aloo :11 Bollo Lois Lo * "(Faith) held out to me the reed of the spirit, and bade me sign; and I took it and wrote and confessed, "This is the body of God. The second belongs to the ninth century, being taken from the Monastic History of Thomas of Marga (Ib., iii., i, 490, c. a.), where speaking of a monk who shortly before his death saw a wonderful vision, he proceeds:+14001400 Llo.

upon the wall of his cell an account of the vision which had appeared unto him."

We have also been told that the Nestorian priest from Oroomiah, who spent a portion of last year in London, very much disliked the use of the quill, and wrote with the reed. Nor did he approve of our ink, but preferred lampblack mixed with a solution of gum. Our own eyes also convince us that Syriac manuscripts were written with the reed. No quill could continue page after page writing with the same exactness, and with every letter so truly formed, that no printing could be more easy to read wherever time has spared its ravages. But even more conclusive are the rapid scrawls often found in the fly-leaves of manuscripts, and recording the, no doubt, interesting fact to the writer that he once saw, and occasionally that he had even read, the "blessed book." The lines of those could only have been made with the reed. And, in short, the interesting, and we may add surprising, fact which Dr. Land has discovered is that the Syrians ever used quills at all. ****

It is a notion of grammarians that though the Syrians read from right to left, yet that they wrote from the top of the page to the bottom, turning the parchment sideways. In proof of this Hoffinann gives a very respectable list of authorities in p. 72, of his Grammar; and Dr. Land has found a curious confirmation of the idea in a manuscript of the sixth century. One or two Greek words which occur in the Syriac, are there written vertically instead of horizontally, as if the scribe were too lazy to turn his parchment round. Upon this subject we should like to know whether the custom was general, or confined to one school of caligraphers. Certainly the priest referred to above, from Oroomiah, wrote like an ordinary mortal. But the writing of Syriac, especially in the older characters, was a very slow and laborious process, and probably no manuscripts exist in the world more beautifully and carefully executed than Syriac: and though we should require strong proof to convince us of the general prevalence of this vertical method of writing, yet we readily allow that some families of scribes may have adopted some such practice. In the colophons we frequently find testimony to the difficulty of the scribe's office; often they speak as if borne down by a sense of utter weariness, and declare that the sight of the last line fills them with the same delight as the sight of land gives to the storm-tost sailor. And we remember one copyist who says, "It was a wise man who said that it is easier to write with stones upon men's backs, than to transcribe the lines of a book."Y) USA

Of the manuscript in which these vertical specimens of writing occur Dr. Land gives us a lithographed specimen, and we can safely affirm that nothing can be much more beautiful or interesting to a palæographer than the lithographs with which this book is adorned. Besides the frontispiece, in which are facsimiles of four Syriac manuscripts belonging to Dr. Lee, of Hartwell House, there are twentyseven plates executed with great skill, and containing extracts from more than one hundred and twenty codices in the British Museum.