much farther in showing its divine authority. Enough is said, both by them and the Apostles to show that it was practiced among them, and hence their almost entire silence shows that there was no opposition to it till after about the middle of the second century.

Whatever objection may have existed to infant baptism previous to the middle of the third century could at most have been only in the way of individual opinion, and not by any ecclesiastical authority. It is evident from the action of the council of Carthage in the year 246 that the subject of infant baptism as to its divine authority was no longer a question; and this council was held only about 140 years after the death of the last apostle. And the question at this meeting was not whether children should be baptized; but whether they should be baptized before they were eight days old. The question discussed before this council also brings to view another important fact on this subject. Their whole action is based upon the assumption that infant baptism in the Christian Church is the antitype of which circumcision in the Jewish Church was the type. And as this command was to be observed when the child was eight days old, it became a question with some, whether the age for baptism should not be the same.

Then there is also something very significant in our Lord's affection for little children, and in the rebuke He gave those who would debar them from the household of faith, by forbidding them to be brought to Him. When the Apostles disputed among themselves as to who should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, the Saviour called a little child and set it in the midst of them and said, "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." The Apostles still had an idea that Christ would establish an earthly kingdom, one, that like the heathen world, would need civil officers; and as they had already been selected to fill certain stations in the church, they expected that they would still be favored above the rest of their Jewish brethren. Hence their dispute as to who among them should be greatest in His kingdom.

The little child which Christ set in the midst of them was intended in the first place as a rebuke to the disciples; but it was also to serve more than a mere rebuke. The words of our Lord, "except ye become as little children," imply much more. Instead of little children becoming adults to fit them for the kingdom of heaven; as we are told; adults must again become little children, just as the child is entirely passive in the hands of the mother, and subject to her will, without having any authority of its own. So all adults, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven must divest themselves of everything that they may seem to claim as self; and become passive in the hand of God, and entirely subject to the authority of the church as their spiritual mother. Whether young or old in years therefore, in order to become proper subjects for baptism they must be little children. There is really no baptism acknowledged as valid by the Saviour but in the spirit of a little child.

It matters not therefore how much infant baptism may be ignored, Christ has so ordained, that as the natural life must begin by being born into the world as infants, so the new and 'spiritual life in the kingdom of heaven must begin by being born into it as infants, by water and the Spirit. As the spiritual life therefore only begins in baptism, and as there can be no new and spiritual birth without it, all who reject infant baptism and are baptized in adult years must go back again into childhood in order to be born into the kingdom of heaven by water and the Spirit. Because there is no other baptism than

that of infant baptism.

There is evidently, not only a great inconsistency; but also a great contradiction on the part of those who reject infant baptism. They claim, with us that baptism is a divinely instituted sacrament, and as such is essential to salvation, but also claim that an infant cannot be baptized, and yet admit that there is salvation in those churches whose members were baptized while yet infants. The very fact of their yielding this point frustrates their entire structure; to this dilemma they are driven by their own inconsistency. To be consistent with them

selves they must admit that infant baptism is valid, or that there is no salvation only in the anti-pedobaptist Church, and that consequently the millions of members of other churches who were baptized in their infancy, during the Christian dispensation, are all lost. This is the logical conclusion consequent upon their premises.

ART. VI.-THE P'SHITO VERSION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

BY PROF. F. A. GAST, D. D.

THE oldest and most important Syriac version of the Old Testament is that which is commonly called the P'shito.* When this name was first applied it is impossible to say. It was certainly not given originally by the translators themselves; for Ephraem Syrus, who died 378 A. D., when speaking. of this Syriac version which he is comparing with the Hebrew text, simply calls it "our version." The name most probably dates from a considerably later time, when other Syriac translations were in current use. Bar Hebræus, who died 1286, A. D., employs this name in the preface to his Horreum Mysteriorum; and it has been generally supposed that it originated with him. But this is a mistake; for it is found already in the Massoretic MSS. of the ninth or tenth century. †

The word P'shito signifies simple. It is the peal passive participle of P'shito, which in Aramaic means to unfold or spread out that which was folded up. The verb in a reflexive form occurs in this sense, for example, in the account of the woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, who "was bowed

More properly, P'shit' tho, fem, gender, emphatic state, agreeing with mapaq tho, version.

†Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, Band xxxii. p. 589.

together, and could in no wise lift up herself" (Syriac, "could not straighten herself at all "), but who, when Jesus laid His hands on her, was immediately "made straight" (Luke xiii. 11 and 13). P'shito, then, denotes what is simple as opposed to what is double or folded up; as when servants are enjoined to obey their masters "in singleness of heart" (Syriac, "with a simple heart"), Col. iii. 22. When employed, as it here is, to designate a version it can only mean that the version is simple in the sense of being literal and faithful.

Bertholdt, therefore, is certainly in error when he maintains that the word P'shito, as here used, is equivalent in signification to the Greek, zový, and the Latin vulgata, and denotes that the version was widely spread, and in general use among the Syrian Christians. Neither the Syriac word nor the corresponding Chaldee ever bears this sense. It is employed rather to describe the character of this version in distinction from certain others, either in the Syriac or in other languages.

Bar Hebræus seems in one place † to take the word in the sense of plain, unadorned, lacking rhetorical elegance; but he is given to disparaging this version because, for one thing, its language, which is not the classical Syriac to which he was accustomed in writers like Jacob of Edessa, offended his refined

taste.

There is more to be said in favor of Tregelles' opinion, t which is also the opinion of Nöldeke, § that the name P'shito was given to this version to distinguish it from the Syro-Hexaplar, which was made from Origen's revised text of the LXX. In the column of the Hexapla devoted to the LXX, Origen wrote down the current Greek text, while at the same time he indicated, by various signs, the difference between it and the He

* Einleitung, ii. p. 593.

† Hist. Dynast. p. 100, quoted by Arnold in Hertzog's Real Encyclopædie, Art, Syrische Bibel bersetzungen.

Smith's Dict. of Bible, Art. Versions Ancient (Syriac), p. 3383 f.

& Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band xxxii, p. 589.

brew text. When the LXX contained anything not found in the Hebrew, he retained it, indeed, but marked the addition by placing an obelus before and two points after; and when the LXX lacked what stood in the Hebrew, he supplied the omission from the other Greek versions of Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus, but pointed out the inserted words. by placing an asterisk before and two points after. This corrected Hexaplar Greek text was translated into Syriac in the beginning of the seventh century by Paul of Tela, a Monophysite, who not only followed the Greek word for word, but also retained the critical signs introduced by Origen and the references to the other Greek versions; so that every page was covered with asterisks, and obeli, and other marks. From all this the old Syriac version, made from the original Hebrew, was free; and such a bare text as it presented, in contrast to the Syro-Hexaplar version, might naturally be designated the simple.

It is more probable, however, that it was so named, because it is a literal translation, faithful to the orginal and free from allegorical and mystical explanations. So, according to Buxtorf,* signifies among the Rabbins, to explain or interpret in a simple, literal manner;, as a substantive, signifies the simple or literal explanation or sense; and which corresponds in Chaldee to the Syriac p'shit, denotes what is simple, as opposed to what is bent, double or composite; or as a substantive, simplicity, the simple, literal sense of Scripture, as distinguished from the 7, the allegorical and mystical sense.

It would seem from this that P'shito cannot signify anything

D, simpli

* Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum et Rabbinicum, Col. 1861: citer, literaliter, et proprie juxta literam scriptam explicare vel interpretari. Dș, simplicitas, simplex et literalis explicatio vel sensus alicujus loci, doctrinæ, vel textus. QVİŞ, extensum (rectum, æquum) simplex, cujus oppositum py curvum, tortuosum, sive ¶Ð‡, duplex, sive, compositum; substantive, simplicitas, simplex, literalis sensus Scripturæ, cui opponitur, allegoricus et mysticus

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