(Isa. xi.) it certainly cannot be taken in a wider sense, as Shinar and Elam, &c., are mentioned with it as distinct countries.*

If the view we have taken of these prophecies be correct; with our knowledge of the present population of Assyria, the inference is unavoidable, that the ten tribes must be identical with the Nestorian Christians. Let us see how it appears. The ten tribes were carried into Assyria. The time of their return is still future. They are therefore in Assyria at the present time. Now the Nestorians are the only people in Assyria who can be identified with the ten tribes, and consequently they must be their descendants.

Leaving the subject of their conversion to Christianity for future consideration, we will now examine the internal evidence, or the proof existing among themselves of their Israelitish origin.

* This prophecy was uttered after the captivity of the ten tribes, and, consequently, subsequent to the division of the ancient Assyrian empire, which occurred B.c. 747.-Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii. ; Athenæus, lib. xii.; Herodotus, lib. i.; Justin, lib. i. c. 3.

CHAPTER XIV.

Their Language-The same as that spoken by the Jews in their Region -Evidence derived from it that they came from Palestine or Syria -That they are Descendants of Israel, and not of Judah.

I HAVE already remarked that a small portion of the descendants of the ten tribes, by a special Providence, appeared to have been reserved, unconverted from Judaism, as witnesses to the identity of their converted brethren. We have heard their direct testimony that the Nestorians have a common ancestry with themselves. They have also a common language. Not that the Nestorians speak a dialect of the Hebrew ; for they do not. The Jews living in the places to which the ten tribes were transplanted, speak a different language from their brethren in other parts of the world. It is a dialect of the Syriac, which indicates for them a different ancestry. This is also the language spoken by the Nestorians. They are radically the same. The Nestorians themselves testify to this, and say there is little or no more difference between the language of their Jewish neighbours and their own, than there is between the several dialects spoken among themselves. Of this I am satisfied, after extensive observation in all parts of their country. I have seen Nestorians from Ooroomiah converse with Jews at Amâdieh, without knowing from their language that they were Jews; and I can now converse with the Jews of Ooroomiah in their own

dialect with about the same ease that I can with some of the mountain tribes of Nestorians in theirs. Other members of this mission have noticed the striking similarity of the dialects spoken by the Jews and Nestorians of Ooroomiah; and it is worthy of remark,'' that one of them, on first conversing with a Jew in his own native Syriac, supposed that the Jew had been learning the language of the Nestorians for the sake of obtaining their custom in trade. The following testimony to the identity of the language spoken by the Nestorians and Jews of Ooroomiah is given by the Rev. A. L. Holladay, whose judgment in the case no one will question, when it is known that, after being for some time a professor of languages in one of the American colleges, he has prepared a grammar of the modern Syriac, the medium of communication which he has used in his intercourse with both Jews and Nestorians. "The language of the Nestorians of Ooroomiah differs so little," he remarks, "from that of the Jews in the same city, that I can consider it only as a dialect of the same. This language, and the dialects which I have heard spoken by individuals belonging to several of the mountain tribes of Nestorians, have evidently a common origin."

Mr. Stocking, who has also become familiar with the vulgar Syriac spoken by the Nestorians, and has aided in reducing it to system, likewise testifies to its common origin with that of the Jews of this province. "I have repeatedly conversed with the Jews of Ooroomiah in the language of the Nestorians, which is so similar to their own that they both naturally use their

respective languages as the common medium of communication with each other. It is evident that they are only different dialects of the same language." Some of the learned Jews acquire a sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to converse in it; and they also learn to read their Chaldee Targums. But the common people understand neither of these languages. The vulgar Syriac is their vernacular tongue, and is spoken as exclusively in their families as it is in the domestic circle of the Nestorians.

The one cannot have learned it from the other, for the Nestorians and Jews hold little or no social intercourse with each other, except for the casual transaction of business. A Nestorian will not eat with a Jew, and they rarely enter each other's dwelling. And, moreover, they have no motive for learning each other's language, as they have here a common medium of communication in Turkish, while the Koordish and Arabic afford facilities for all necessary intercourse in those parts of Assyria where there are Jews. How came the Nestorians and Jews of this region by this common Syriac language? Neither of them could have acquired it here, as it was never vernacular east of the Euphrates.

That the language used by the Nestorians is derived from the Syriac, and not from the Chaldee, any scholar will be satisfied by comparing them. The following testimony on this point is from the Rev. A. L. Holladay, of this mission:-" Mr. Perkins and I, after some consultation and thought, gave our opinion, that

the modern Nestorian spoken here is immediately derived from the ancient Syriac. This opinion was sent to Professor Robinson long ago, and his answer concurs with it." More recently, the learned Professor Rödiger, of Germany, has written an article. upon the subject which strongly confirms this view. Says the Rev. J. Perkins, "The body of the language comes as directly from the venerable Syriac as clearly as the modern Greek does from the ancient."

The use of the Syriac language by both the Nestorians and Jews of this region is an important fact, evincing that they are both alike aliens from the same country. In support of this opinion, we may adduce the tradition of the Nestorians which we have mentioned, that their forefathers came from the land of Palestine, as did the Jews of course.

But was Syriac the language of the ten tribes in the land of their fathers? Did all the Jews speak Syriac, or had Israel a different language from Judah? These are questions which I would gladly leave for the learned to settle. But they are so intimately connected with my subject that I cannot well avoid them, unless I were to take the less satisfactory course of throwing the burden of proof upon the objector, by challenging an explanation of the fact that the Jews of this region do speak Syriac, and the means by which they and the Nestorians came by this language in this region, so remote from that in which it was vernacular. But, though the lapse of ages has involved the subject in much obscurity, we may, per