COMPRISING CONCISE NOTICES OF THE ARAMEAN DIALECTS IN GENERAL, AND OF THE VERSIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR: STATIONERS'-HALL-COURT; AND JOHN MASON, 66, PATERNOSTER-ROW. MDCCCXLIII. 1052.5. f. 1. -BODI Hanc (Syriacam) versionem omnes eruditi præ aliis versionibus maximè purissimam esse statuunt et pronunciant, absque dubio ideò tam tenaciter et fideliter exceptam a sanctis hominibus, quòd in hac linguâ Christus locutus et concionatus fuerit, adeò, ut dubium non sit apostolos et apostolicos studiosissimè inquisivisse, et conservâsse formalia Christi verba, et ea in istâ versione ponere sacrosancto quodam labore studuisse. Quin et per eosdem epistolas apostolorum in sacram linguam transfusas fuisse ideò felicius, quòd cum apostolis Syri doctores consuetudinem habuerint absque dubio crebriorem. WOLFG. FRANZIUS, De Interp. Scrip., 46. ON THE SYRIAC LANGUAGE, AND THE VERSIONS OF SCRIPTURE EXTANT IN IT. I. SHEMETIC LANGUAGES. THE region extending from the range of the Taurus to the coasts of the Red Sea, and between the course of the river Halys on the west and the Tigris on the east, was once inhabited by nations whose languages gave the plainest evidences of a common derivation. Thus the people of Cappadocia, Pontus, Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Phenicia, and Arabia, may have been regarded, so far as speech was concerned, as one great community. Their several dialects were, strictly speaking, but variations of one ancestral tongue, and have been grouped by philologists under the general name of SHEMETIC, (from Shem, the son of Noah,) and classified, for the sake of order, into the Northern or Aramean, the Middle or Canaanitish, and the Southern or Arabic. The first class, or Aramean, (from Aram, son of Shem,) is subdivided into the B |