letter) that the strong words at the end of your editorial note on Clericus were "not meant for me."

H. J. ROSE.

QUESTIONS ON DEUT. XXXII. 8; PSALM XLIX. 1, 2, AND LXIII. 9.

I SHOULD be glad to lay before your readers two proposed corrections in our Authorized Version of the Hebrew Scriptures, for the consideration of those who may have more knowledge of the language than myself.

PSALM lxiii. 9.

"While they who seek to destroy my life

Will be thrown into pits in the earth;

They will be delivered into the power of the sword,

They will be the portion of jackals."

The pits or caverns here spoken of were the ordinary prisons of the country. For this remark I am indebted to my friend Mr. Bonomi. The Egyptian paintings and sculptures shew the use of pits as prisons in that country. Such was the pit in which Joseph was confined by his brethren till they had an opportunity of selling him for a slave.

My next passage is more important, and worth the attention of ethnologists, who very naturally compare the results of their own enquiries into the history of the several races of men, results based on language and physiology, with the express records of the Bible. The following words, if translated literally, would seem to shew that some at least of the Hebrew writers did not consider Adam as the father of the whole human race, but only of those families mentioned as his descendants in Genesis x.

PSALM xlix. 1, 2.

"Hear this, all ye peoples,

Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world;

Both sons of Adam and sons of men,

Rich and poor together."

This is not the only passage in the Bible which may be understood as limiting the sons of Adam to that portion of mankind with which the Jews were best acquainted, to the exclusion of those heathen nations which may have been living at a greater distance from Judæa. Let us compare it with

DEUTERONOMY xxxii. 8.

"When the Most High divided to the Nations their inheritance,
When he separated the sons of Adam,

He fixed the boundaries of the tribes

According to the number of the children of Israel."

This passage does not of necessity make a distinction between the sons of Adam and the other nations; but there are two other well-known verses which support this view of the case, and from

66

which all difficulty would be removed by it. One is Genesis iv. 15, where the Lord provides against Cain being slain by strangers whom he might meet with in his wanderings. The other is Genesis vi. 2, where the sons of the gods [or the "holy race, the sons of Adam"] saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took wives of them;' which was an act of intermarrying with pagans, which is again and again forbidden in the later books of the Bible. These several passages seem rather to join in supporting that distinction between the sons of Adam and the sons of men which is expressly made in the Hebrew of Psalm xlix. 2, if translated literally.

SAMUEL SHARPE.

WAS THE LAST SUPPER A PASCHAL SUPPER OR NO? It is well known that the Greek church differs from the Roman in making use of leavened bread in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but I was not aware that any very great stress had ever been laid upon the point by the Eastern theologians. However, I have just met with an extract in p. 354, Lecture ix., of Stanley's Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, from the old Russian Chronicler Nestor, which appears worthy of the attention of your readers. The Greek philosopher who was sent as the representative of the Byzantine church to Vladimir, the Grand Duke of Kiew, said: “We have also heard that messengers have come from Rome to teach you. Their belief somewhat differs from ours. They celebrate the mass with unleavened bread; therefore they have not the true religion." Now if any stress is laid upon the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, it can only be from a persuasion that the Last Supper was not a Paschal supper, but was eaten before the leaven was finally removed from the house, which it would be in the course of the day of the preparation. It is singular that the Church of England, by a simple revulsion from Popery, should have come into agreement with the early tradition of the Greek Church. A. H. WRATISLAW.

ARIOCH AND BELSHAZZAR.

THE paper on Arioch and Belshazzark by Dr. E. Hincks, manifests no common acuteness and persevering research.

In p. 412, § 28, he thinks that the cuneiform inscriptions may be brought into agreement with Daniel, if we suppose that through the carelessness of transcribers, Belshazzar (Dan. viii. 1) is a corrupt reading for Nergalshazzar, "which would be, according to analogy, the Biblical mode of writing the name of the king to whom the canon of Ptolemy assigns four years, 559 to 556 B.C." It is added, "this cor

* Journal of Sacred Literature, January, 1862, p. 398.

ruption does not appear impossible; and few will doubt that parallels to it are to be found in the historical books of the Bible."

Without venturing to express assent or dissent with regard to this solution-and Dr. Hincks prefers another mode of removing the difficulty, which he had previously given-I would merely refer to the first verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of Jeremiah, where Jehoiakim seems to be put for his brother Zedekiah—a far greater difference than that between Nergalshazzar and Belshazzar.

The passage will of course bear to stand as it is at present found. We may suppose that in the first year of Jehoiakim, cir. 609, Jeremiah was commanded to make bonds and yokes, and send them to the neighbouring Gentile kings, and that ten or eleven years after, he delivered to Zedekiah a similar message, which begins in the twelfth verse of the same chapter. Yet there is this objection to the received reading, that Jeremiah does not elsewhere seem to name Nebuchadnezzar earlier than Jehoiakim's fourth year, when this Chaldean king' began to reign.

As Jehoiachin reigned three months, and was the immediate predecessor of Zedekiah, it is of course possible that there may be only the slight transcriber's error of Jehoiakim for Jehoiachin. perhaps, this is not very probable.

But,

Is it not to be regretted that the assailants of the authenticity of the Book of Daniel should not have pursued the method of Dr. Hincks? According to which, instead of hastily rejecting the writings of the venerable Jew as untrustworthy, we should first patiently and conscientiously seek if there may not be some honestly admissible method of reconciling him with those from whom he appears to differ.

Sir H. Rawlinson believes that he has discovered in the cuneiform tablets of the son of Esarhaddon, a record of a Lydian embassy to Nineveh so early as cir. B.C. 660. As the Lydians were even then familiar with their neighbours the Asiatic Greeks, it becomes, at the least, possible that some time before the fall of Nineveh, Greek musical instruments" with Greek names may have become known there, and even probable that this was the case at Babylon many years before B.C. 580, when Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iii. 5, 7) set up the golden image in the plain of Shinar. G.

April 30, 1862.

PRIMITIVE AUTHORITY IN FAVOUR OF THE VIEW, THAT THE LAST SUPPER WAS NOT A PASSOVER.

I HAVE just obtained a copy of Dindorf's edition of the Chronicon Paschale, and hasten to translate for you the principal portion of what

In the April number of this Journal is a letter from Mr. Franke Parker, shewing that the first year of Nebuchadnezzar coincided with the latter part of Jehoiakim's fourth and the former part of his fifth year.

m See on this subject Journal of Sacred Literature, October 1859, p. 153, on "Remarks on Assyrian and Median History."

bears upon the controversy, as to whether the last supper was or was not Paschal meal, which is being carried on in your pages.

In page 10 of Dindorf, and 5 of the Paris edition, I find a long quotation from Peter, bishop of Alexandria, who wrote a work on the passover addressed to a certain Tricentius. Whether the quotation is taken directly from Peter, or from a lost work of Athanasius, is not quite clear.

Peter says, "Our Lord himself with the people, in the years before his preaching and those during his preaching, performed the legal and shadowy passover, eating the typical lamb." For the Saviour hath said himself in the gospels, "I came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to complete them." But when he had preached, he ate not the lamb, but suffered himself as the real lamb on the feast of the passover, as the theologian and evangelist John teaches us in his gospel, saying thus, "They bring Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the prætorium; and it was early, and they did not enter into the prætorium themselves, lest they should be polluted, but that they might eat the passover." And after these words, "Pilate, therefore, hearing this saying, brought Jesus outside, and sate upon a tribunal in a place called the pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover; it was about the third hour;" as the accurate books contain, and the autograph of the evangelist itself, which has till now by the grace of God been preserved in the most holy church of the Ephesians, and is reverenced there by the prostrations of the faithful. And again the same evangelist says, "The Jews therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross during the sabbath, for it was the preparation, for the day of that sabbath was great, asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and they removed." On the very day, therefore, on which the Jews were about to eat the passover at even, was our Lord and Saviour Christ crucified, becoming a sacrifice for those who should participate in the faith of his mystery, according to what has been written by the blessed Paul, "For Christ our passover was sacrificed for us:" and not as some carried away by ignorance affirm, that he was betrayed after eating the passover; a thing which we have neither learnt from the holy gospels, nor has any of the blessed apostles delivered anything of the kind to us. At the time then, when our Lord and God, Jesus the Christ, suffered for us according to the flesh, he did not eat the legal passover, but, as I said, was himself sacrificed for us as a true lamb at the feast of the passover on the preparation day, the 14th of the first month of the moon. The typical passover therefore has received its end, the real passover having come; for "Christ our passover was sacrificed for us,' as has been before laid down, and the vessel of election, the apostle Paul, teaches.

The next paragraph appears to be a kind of summing up by the anonymous author of the Chronicon. It runs as follows:

"Now that, when the Saviour suffered, he did not eat the legal and shadowy lamb, has also become manifest through the aforesaid gospel and patristic teachings. For if the people in those days, correctly arranging the 14th of the first month, used to perform the legal passover, and on the very day of the passover, viz., the 14th of the

first month, the Jews crucified the Lord, and then ate the passover according to the doctrine of the gospels and the God-inspired fathers, it is evident, that the Lord did not eat the legal lamb on that day, but suffered himself as the true lamb. But since on this subject the evidence, with proof, of the holy teachers of the church is abundant, we will insert here a few of their words, in which they say distinctly, that when the Lord suffered he did not eat the legal lamb."

The author continues:

"Hippolytus then, the martyr of piety, being bishop of what is called Portus near Rome, in his treatise against all heresies wrote word for word thus: I see then that the matter is one of disputatiousness. For he (i. e., the Quartodeciman of whom he is speaking) says thus: The Lord performed the passover on this day and suffered; wherefore I ought also to do as the Lord did.' But he is astray, not understanding that when the Lord suffered he did not eat the legal passover. For he was the passover that was proclaimed beforehand, and that was perfected on the appointed day.

"And again the same person in the first book of his treatise on the holy passover has said thus: Neither in the first nor in the last is it manifest, that he has not spoken wrongly, because he who of old said beforehand, "I shall no more eat the passover," probably supped the supper before the passover, but the passover he ate not, but suffered; for neither was it the time of the eating thereof.'

"And Apollinarius, the most holy bishop of Hierapolis in Asia, who lived near the apostolic times, taught similar views in his treatise on the passover, saying thus: 'Some people then dispute about these things, suffering a pardonable matter; for ignorance does not admit of accusation, but requires instruction; and they say, that on the 14th the Lord ate the sheep with his disciples, and suffered on the great day of unleavened bread, and declare that Matthew says as they opine; whence their opinion is both discrepant from the law, and according to them the gospels seem to be at variance.'

"Nay also the most holy Clement, who was a priest of the church of the Alexandrians, a most ancient man, and one who was not far from the apostolic times, teaches similar views in his treatise on the passover, writing thus: In the past years, therefore, the Lord used to observe the festival of, and eat the passover that was sacrificed by, the Jews; but when he had preached, being himself the passover, the Lamb of God, led as a sheep to the slaughter, he immediately taught his disciples the mystery of the type on the 13th, on which they ask him, "Where wilt thou that we prepare the passover for thee to eat?" On this day, therefore, both the sanctification of the unleavened bread, and the previous preparation of the feast used to take place. Whence John probably writes that on this day the disciples, as already undergoing previous preparation, had their feet washed by the Lord; but our Saviour suffered on the next day, being himself the passover, being sacrificed by the Jews.' And after other things: Consequently therefore on the 14th, when he suffered, the chief priests and the scribes, on leading him in the morning to Pilate, did not enter into the prætorium, that they might not be polluted, but might eat the passover without hindrance in the evening. With this exact account of the days both all the Scriptures agree, and the gospels are in harmony. And the resurrection bears additional testimony; at any rate he rose on the third day, which was the first [day] of the weeks of the harvest, on which it was the law that the priest should offer the sheaf.""

In page 409 of Dindorf, 218 of the Paris edition, the author of the Chronicon Paschale returns to the charge, saying, "And in proof that he did not perform the passover on the 14th but concluded the typical (model, TUTTIKOV) supper before it, when both the sanctification of the unleavened bread and the previous preparation of the feast were taking place, he is found distributing to his disciples not portions of a victim (Ovμa), nor of unleavened cakes, but of a loaf and a cup."

The difficulty which Clement here presents by calling the day "on