OCR Text |
Show 6U4 THE MONOGENISTS AND and tho bewilderment of the minds of others, 1600 years later, as well in Old England as in New. Thirdly. IIowever learned, however venerable, may be the sc?olars whoso words I have cited with no disrespect, none of them w1ll lay claim to proficiency in Etlmolo,qy, nor have any of them spent half a lifetime in the Levant. If they had, they wonlJ have known that there at this very hour, the same old repugnance (which their classical s~holarship makes them perfectly well cognizant of, in ancient Alexand1·ia particularly) is still rife now with evils to human welfare that have always rendered Jews and the Greelcs antagonistic to each other. I remember (and have I not shuddered over its blackened ruins?) how, at Tripolitza, on the first flash of Greek indeponden~e, when, capitulating on the faith of the "honors of war," the ~urktsh garrison and Ottoman community were massacred, that, whtlst the Mainiot palikarics spared a few of the Muslim girls and boys, they did not leave a man, woman, or child, of tho Israelites alive. Eyewitnesses afterwards confirmed to me such atrocity during 10 months (1829) that, "for my sins," I waited at Napoli di Romania in the vain hope of obtaining, from Capodistrias, a tribunal whence to obtain back, in part, the value (only $800,000) of 36 cargoes in which my father was concerned, robbed by Greek pirates between 1824 and 1828. I remember too, that it was this soul-harrowing outragefirst of hundreds perpetrated by Moreot Christian serfs-that caused Mussulman reverberation at the butcheries of Smyrna, Scio, and Jia'ivali; and, although Mohammed Ali's iron :firmness joined to a numerous and tolerably armed European population alone spared us (1822) from witnessing similar abominations in Egypt, I recollect that, wherever, at Smyrna especially, some hapless Greek fugitive dodged the tophaik or yatagan, his hiding-place was invariably betrayed if known to any Jew; who, after Tripolitza and Missolonghi, naturally felt- " And if yo wrong us, shall we not revenge 1" So true is this, that tho lie brow serrdfs (money-changers- not seraphs) evacuated Grecco exactly in the ratio that the Ottoman lords of the manor wore forced to strike their tents and flee. No Hebrew lives willingly whore Greeks rule; any more than (and partly for the same reason) he likes residence in Scotland or in Connecticut: and, even in their commercial relations everywhere, Grecian and Israelitish instincts are invariably in antagonism. Now, classical history on the one band, the New Testament and the '£almudic books on the other, demonstrate precisely the same hostile and repulsive feelings, between tho Sbemites of Hierosolyma and THE POLYGENISTS. 5U5 the" Andres Athonaioi," much farther back than the day when St. Paul and St. Luke were jibed by Indo-European mobility at the Areopagus. I need not dwell on the context of Acts XVIL to establish the non-success of two Jews-one a "Hebrew of IIebre~s" -who in cacophonious Hellenistic-idiom057 addressed the orthoepic and satirical men of Athens; but, I maintain, and if necessary hereafter will historically prove, that tho speaker (whether St. Paul himself, or St. Luke, or the "reporter") in making usc,-amid t the knot of hanl-hearted, if not soft-beaded, Athenian "gamins" collected on Mars' Hill-of the phrase "hath made of one" all mankind, intended thereby to deprecate that (by tho Jewish speaker strongly felt) Hellenic instinctive xenolasia toward llobrows, which led the former (boasters that themselves were Autoclttltones) to repudiate the notion that a particle of J ewisb "blood" flowed in their own veins. If this fact be disagreeable, I cannot help it. In anthropology the maxim must be- "Tros Tyrusquo mlhl nullo dlscrlmlno ngotur." The question, of the existence of AIMA1'0X in the or1ginal manuscript of St. Luke, "me paralt," as Mariette says of that of the Apia-cycle (supra, p. 404), "definitivement cntcnee." With it, also, its imagined corollary, that St. Paul ever meant that all the races of mankind, within the Roman limit of gcogmphy in his time, were "made of ono blood." Polygenists, therefore,- so far as Acts xvii, 26, be concerned- are henceforward exempt from suspi- MT 'EX>-~••ar~r, d<aXwor (E•~, !Ielleni•mu1, Lingua Hellmi8tica, &o.- Consult SAMu•n DAVID LuzzATO (Professor in tho Ro.bbinioal College of Po.duo.), Prolegomcni ad una Orammatica Ragionata della Lingua Ebraica; Po.dovn, 8vo, 1886, pp. 11, 67, 78-95:- 0IAMDERNARDO DE Ross1 (Della Lingua propria di Ollri8to e degti Ebrei nazionali della Palwina da' tempi dt' .Afaccabei di8&ertazione, Po.rma, 8vo, 1772, pp. 7, 16, 87-9, 8&-129, 14&-8). From the latter I present merely a few nbstro.cts. The Po.lestinio Jews nlwo.ys repudiated Greek translations. So po.rticular were their lineal descendants in Spain, that RAOUl lm!ANUEr. AnnAn says (in his ro.ro Nomotogy, or Legal Di8couru), "uno. solo. letr·o., que tengn de mas ode monos (o.un que no vn,ric cl scntido) qucdo. sicndo profo.no, y no nos cs Iccito leer en el. * * * En Io. biblias griegas intitoludo.s de los Scnte11ta Interpretet, ho.Jio uno. vaJ·icdo.d y differencio. to.n gro.nde en los esto.mpas que no o.y po.sso conforme." i'l1c 1.'almud (tract Sabbat) gives the iujunction of RADJJAN GAMAr.n:t, how tran8latiOtl8 should be thrown into ")uoghi cenosi c sporchi, o.cciocchll eglino imputridi sco.no do. loro mcdcsimi." In another of his prodigious labors on the Text (Oompendio di Oritica Sacra, Parma, 8vo, 1811, p. 88), Dill Ross.l victoriously exonerates the Council of Trent from o.ccuso.tions of tolero.ting no Dible but the Vulgate. II ere is his Italian version of the text of their decree,- the Latin of which is in his other work (Pr<£cipui8 C'au88i8, Turin, 4to, 1769, pp. 79- 80). "Considernndo che non piccol vo.nto.ggio no verrebbe ln. Chiesa, quo.Joro. si oonosce, di tuttc Je Jo.tine edizioni che giro.no de' so.cri libri, qualc s'abbia n. tenere per o.utcntico., (the Council] sto.biliscc e diohitm~, che questa stesso. edizionc o.ntioa o volgato., Ia qualll do. un Jungo uso di to.nti secoli e sto.to. nella Chiesa medesimo. o.pprovo.to., sia tenuto. per o.utcntica." |