THE NAME MACHABEE. Samuel Ives Curtiss, Jr., wrote a monograph on the name Machabee, which was published in 1876, in Leipzig, Germany. The following criticism contains much interesting information on the origin of the name, and germane to the subject, and we therefore insert it :

To elucidate the meaning of an ancient name may appear too insignificant a work to engage in ; and yet, if successfully done, it may be the means of shedding a bright light on whole periods of the past, for "names are crystallized history." Mr. Curtiss, the author of the dissertation, has furnished us with an excellent monograph upon a man brilliant in the annals of Jewish history; and this monograph, the work of a young American scholar, deserves to be welcomed with sincere appreciation. He undertakes to show that the original Hebrew name must have been "Machabee," with a Khaph, and not "Maccabee," with a Koph; and he brings sufficient proof that the Hebrew letter Khaph was often transcribed with a Kappa by the LXX and by other Greek writers. He next examines the various theories as to the significance of the name Machabee, all of which he rejects, even the hammer theory, which has been accepted as the correct one by the most eminent Hebrew scholars of the age, among them, by Gesenius, Ewald, Hitzig, Grimm, Keil, Frankel, Herzfeld, Kuenen, and others. He then proceeds to give his own derivation and expla nation of the surname which the Asmonean Judas bore, and concludes that "Machabee" is derived from the verb kabah, to extinguish, and that it signifies "the extinguisher." Dr. Curtiss's conjecture may appear doubtful to many scholars, but every one who pursues the dissertation will admit he has written in a scholarly style, applying a sound, scientific method of investigation, and that his treatment of the subject is thorough and exhaustive. The theories of De Rossi, Yahya, Zipser, etc., have as littled failed to be noticed by him as those of Reland, Kennicott, Michaelis, and others. On pages 23 and 24 of his brochure, he inserts a letter from his teacher, Professor Delitzsch, of Leipzig, in which this learned Hebraist proposes the novel theory that "Maccabee " is a contraction of the Hebrew Mahkeabi (What is like my father?") Fine a scholar as is Professor Delitzsch, we cannot refrain from saying that his theory is not a very happy one, and that, on the contrary, it is utterly untenable. An Israeite of old might have formed the name Mi keabi, contracted, Micabi ("Who is like my father?"), and to such a formation he would have had parallels in Michael, and Michaiah, but he never would have thought of such a monstrous word as Mah keabi. Furthermore, the two biblical names, "Machbanai" and "Machnadbai," which Professor Delitzsch compares, and by which he attempts to support his theory, are also more than questionable. "Thus stumbles the helper, and he that is helped falls down." How will he explain the word "Machbena," which appears in I Chronicles ii, 49, as the name of a city, and which is etymologically connected with "Machbanai?"

Prophetism in Israel.

BY ERNEST DE BUNSEN, LONDON, ENG.

Under the title Israelitic Prophetism' Dr. Cornill, Professor of Theology at Königsberg, has in 1894 given five lectures at Frankfort, printed in a pamphlet of only 177 pages for the benefit of educated laymen, who have a right to become acquainted with the scientifically established results of Old Testament criticism and Israelitic history.1 The traditional idea about Israel's history and religion has been replaced, since Wellhausen's history of Israel in 1878 and the works of his successors, by a strictly historical mode of contemplation, which sees in this historical proof an organic development, assigning to the separate manifestations their relative places in the whole, thus understanding and explaining them from the latter. Whilst according to the traditional conception prophets have only in single points enlarged and deepened the religion of Israel, which Moses is said to have proclaimed as a fully completed definite system, it now appears that they have totally transformed the religion of Israel, that through the prophets the popular religion, recorded to have been founded by Moses became a universal religion, that it is by them that the religion of Israel was prepared and rendered capable to become the cradle of Christianity. The resolution could not be easily formed to give up what for two thousand years had been regarded as true. But this organic conception of the Old Testamentt, hrough the convincing power of its inner truth has more and more made way for itself, and ensured a finally universal history.

About Moses we know little or nothing. The popular religion founded or rather reformed by him we can only with difficulty, and incompletely, reconstruct from the form of Israelitic consciousness as it meets us about the year 800 on the appearance of prophetism, for the so-called books of Moses, in the form transmitted to us, without considering a few inserted more ancient parts, are of a more recent date. The most ancient notices about Moses preserved to us are 500 years younger than his own time. Nevertheless even this relatively late tradition still contains single traits which are important and must be well considered for the solution of the subject which occupies us. These are the following: The work of Moses appears throughout not as something absolutely new but as a connection with what already existed among the people; it is 'the God of the Fathers' 1 Der Israelitische Prophetismus (Strassburg); reviewed by Theobald Ziegler in the Nation' (Berlin, No. 16, 1895), both of which documents have been freely used in this Essay.

whom Moses proclaims. But equally firmly established is the tradition that the name of this God, whom we are in the habit of calling Jehovah, and which name in the Hebrew language was expressed by Jahveh, was first brought by Moses; that a priest from Sinai, whom tradition makes the father-in-law of Moses, that Jethro has had a not inconsiderable part in his son-in-law's work. Already before the time of Moses Israel possessed a clearly moulded religious peculiarity, with which he could connect himself. Originally the name of Jahveh seems to have belonged to a God worshipped on the holy mountain of Sinai. Moses applied this name to the God of the Fathers, though to them this name had not been known, as is testified by Scripture.

The Book of Deuteronomy is a product of the prophetic time, said to have been found 'in the Temple by a priest ia the year 621, under the reign of Josiah; it was intended to form the introduction to a great religious reform. The legal parts of the first four books, attributed wrongly to Moses, are the real source for the earlier traditional conception of Mosaism. They have now been proved to be of still later origin, having been certainly composed in Babylon, about the year 500, under the influence of Ezechiel, among the Israelites of the return, and for them they were raised to the authorised book of the law by Ezra and Nehemiah in 444. The Mosaic law is younger than prophetism; it isdirectly its product and result. Deuteronomy is an attempt to realise the prophetic ideas by outward means; it thus signifies the emphasizing of the ancient popular religion, and at the same time the outward exposition of these ideas. Much greater was the practical application of them by the work of 444. Deerutonomy has created the specific Judaism with its separatism and self-righteous legalism, but it has also given Israel the power to withstand Hellenism. The latter we have directly connected with a Buddhism introduced into Alexandria and other places more than two centuries before the Christian era. It is the work of Ezra and Nehemiah which has prevented the introduction into Israel of a so-called deeper knowledge or Gnosis, which was first applied by Philo to Judaism, then by Stephen and Paul to the doctrines of Jesus. Deuteronomy formed an absolute contrast to this innovation from the East, which led to the formation of the order of Essenes or Jewish dissenters, about B. C. 150.

In spite of the opposition by orthodox Judaism and by aboriginal Christianity, to the prechristian and Buddhist gnosis, by which nonrecognition the noble germ of prophecy has been preserved and safely transmitted to gnostic or Pauline christianity as we believed to have proved.

The Hebrew language calls the prophet 'nabî,' a word which has not a clear Hebrew etymology. The root naba'a is also found in the Assyro-Babylonian and in the Arabic. In Assyrian it

simply means 'to speak' or 'announce' and thus is explained the Babylonian God Nebo, Nabu, which forms the first of so many personal names in Babylonia. This God Nebu is the God of Wisdom and Science, of the word or utterance, whom for this reason the Greeks identify with their Hermes, and after which up to our days the planet Mercury derives its name. But this Assyro-Babylonian etymology of the word naba'a omits the essential point, the indication of the characteristic specialty of the prophetic speech. This is given us by the Arabic in which the aboriginal Semitic type has preserved itself in its greatest purity. In Arabic the root naba'a has the special sense of announcing, the naba'a or anba'a is he who announces something definite, or who has a mission to perform. This root indicates in Arabic that the speaker does not speakl from himself, anything of his own, but speaks on a special occasion or for some one else. Accordingly the nabî is the commissioned speaker, who has to make a definite communication, to convey a message. Of this fundamental meaning also in Hebrew a trace has preserved itself, which is proved by a very characteristic passage in Exodus. Moses had refused the mission to stand before Pharaoh because he was not eloquent, being slow of speech and of a heavy tongue. And God said unto him that Aaron his brother can speak well, and he shall be his spokesman. The correct text is the following: Behold, I make thee a God for Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.' Therefore Aaron is the prophet of Moses because the former speaks the word for the latter. Herewith agree in a most remarkable manner the technical meaning of the Greek word prophētēs, though literally the foreteller. With the Grecians the prophētēs is he who interprets the unintelligible revelations of the Deity, at Dodona the rustling of the holy Zeus oak, at Delphi the inarticulate sounds of Pythia's ecstatic exclamations, translating them into clear generally understood speech. We have therefore in the Hebrew nabî a man who speaks to Israel not from himself but by a higher mission, and in the Greek prophētēs we have the man who is the mediator or interpreter for his contemporaries of the Divine revelations that are intelligible to him only.. Israel's prophets feel themselves to be the mouth of God,' as Jeremiah expresses it, and yet they know that all neighbouring peoples have prophets.

Putting aside Moses, we have in Samuel the first prophet - figure in Israel, yet he is never called prophet but seer. A later writer has added the invaluable explanatory statement that in times of old Israelites called seers those who were later called prophets. What in those days prophets were understood to be is shown by the narrative about Saul. It was foretold to Saul, that on his coming to Gibeah, he would meet a band of prophets coming down from the holy high place with a psaltery, a timbrel, pipe and harp, and that

they would be prophesying, and the spirit of the Lord would come mightily upon Saul, so that he would prophesy with them. And as these foretold events did happen, the people of his native city are astonished and ask, how comes Saul among the prophets? We submit that the people of Gibeah did not mean, how comes so noble a man 'into such bad company,' but that they did not know Saul to possess that peculiar spiritual gift which those who prophesy must possess. Saul was told that by a Divine intervention his latent or inborn spiritual power would be called into action. He was to form a contrast to the false prophets who could not prophesy without ecstatic practices, like the prophets of Baal at the time of Elijah, or the later Mahomedan fakirs. It cannot be even assumed that such degraders of the prophetic office had been brought up in the colleges of prophets which Samuel had formed; as a rule the inspired prophet had come from these institutions and belonged to the prophet order. And yet not only Saul but his messengers when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying and Samuel standing as head over them, the spirit of God came upon the messengers and they also prophesied.' Since the time of Moses, who wished that all people might prophesy, music and sacred poetry were connected with prophecy, and even Elijah called a minstrel to evoke the prophetic gift in himself.

From the fact that originally not a prophet but a seer was known in Israel, we may come to the conclusion that a seer whose visions turned out to be true must have been very rare indeed.

Such a confirmation of prophetic utterance by the clear fulfilment of predicted events was unquestionably a communication of the Divine to the human spirit. However the connection between the two might be explained, such communication was believed to be conveyed either by vision or by the word of the Lord, unconsciously written. down by man. What is in our days called mediumistic writing, such as the letter from Elijah must have been which came and was accepted as such after his death (II Chron. xxi, 12), we may assume to have been a form of recorded communication from the unseen world, which was well known and eventually highly prized in Israel, perhaps from its earliest times. For obvious reasons it would never be referred to in Hebrew Scriptures. We return to this subject farther on when explaining the meaning of the new word telepathy. A long time might have to elapse between the announcement of a future event and what was understood to be the fulfilment of this prophecy. Seldom would a seer's utterances be verified during his lifetime, and without this confirmation his words might not be believed. It is therefore not surprising that such fulfilled predictions of future events have in very rare instances been recorded in the writings of those sixteen men who were styled prophets. Very nearly correct with re