Hull

as a profe ional geologist, inform us that the Jordan valley is an immense fault, formed in the Miocene period ages before man existed on earth. The remains of salt marshes and raised beaches in this valley, show that the three lakes —the Hiileh, the Sea of Galilee, and the Dead Sea—are the remains of a great chain of lakes, which once filled the whole area of the great depre ion, from near the foot of Hermon, and 150 miles S, ‘Thus in Abraham’s days the Dead Sea certainly existed, and was— if anything—probably larger than it now is, The cities however are said (Gen. xix) to have been destroyed by fire, not overwhelmed by Water; and the legend may be due to the presence of volcanic Temains, and bituminous rocks, north of the Dead Sea, As regards the MSS. now available for the Old Testament, those of the Greek Septuagint translation are 600 years older than the Hebrew; but neither in Hebrew nor in Greek have we any originals of the “Word of God” (see our article in the Asiatic Quarterly Review, Oct. 1893). Sir H. H. Howarth (Academy, 16th Sept. 1893) says: “The Hebrew text of the Bible, before which so much incense has been burnt... and which was the sheet anchor of the last Revision, ought to be discarded in favour of the Septuagint. It ought to be discarded not because the Septuagint was the Bible of Christ [which it was not.—Ep,], and of the early Christians, but because the Masoretes have not preserved the original text, but one prepared, and edited, by Jews as lately as the 2nd century a.n., for polemical purposes; and because instead of being reliable the Hebrew text has been disarranged, and otherwise tampered with by MS promulgators. The appeal is not from Greek translation to the original text of the Bible, but from honest Greek translation (of unknown Hebrew MSS.) to a Bible mutilated by Rabbi Akiba, and his men, for various reasons, some uncritical, others probably sinister.” [This however is rather a one-sided view. The “Septuagint ” means the Greek text of the great Uncials of 4th and 5th centuries; and there are considerable differences between the Vatican and the Alexandrian MSS. 337