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Updated: June 2, 2025
John must have been familiar with the teaching of traditional interpretation respecting the Meymera as contained in the Chaldee paraphrases; indeed, the more "unlearned" and "ignorant" he was, the more he must have relied upon the Chaldee paraphrases for the knowledge of the Old Testament, the Hebrew having been for centuries a dead language.
All Assyriologists agree that in everything connected with the intellect, the Assyrians invented nothing; they did nothing but adapt and imitate, translate and copy from the more prolific Chaldæans, who furnished as it were the bread upon which their minds were nourished. It is the Chaldee intellect that we study when we question the texts from the library of Assurbanipal.
The Chaldee argument thus falls to the ground: but in refuting it an admission has been made which may be thought to furnish fully as good proof of early Babylonian Semitism as the rejected theory. It has been said that the Babylonian language in the time of Nebuchadnezzar is found to be far nearer to Hebrew than to Chaldee. It is, in fact, very close indeed to the Hebrew.
But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow?
It was to embrace Ethics, Economics, Politics, Jurisprudence, Theology, Church History and General History, together with Italian, Hebrew, and possibly Chaldee and Syriac, varied throughout by such carefully-arranged readings in Latin and Greek classics as would harmonize with those studies while they relieved them.
The Septuagint reads: “As faces are not like faces, so neither are the hearts of men alike.” The Chaldee paraphrase thus: “As waters and as countenances, which are not like one another, so the hearts of the sons of men are not alike.” Thus doth Mr Cartwright, in his judicious commentary, give the sense: “As in the water face doth not answer fully to face, but in some sort, so there may be a conjecture, but no certain knowledge of the heart of man.” But let the text be read affirmatively, not negatively, what shall be the sense?
Most of them know no more of the economic theory of Socialism than they know of Chaldee; but they no longer fear or condemn its name. Oh, I assure you that much can be done in that way by men who are not afraid of women, and who are not in too great a hurry to see the harvest they have sown for." "Take care. Some of your lady proselytes may get the better of you some day.
Now, it may readily be believed, that all this, and many more of her ladyship's allusions, were a "Chaldee manuscript" to me; that she knew certain facts of my family and relations, was certain; but that she had interwoven in the humble web of my history, a very pretty embroidery of fiction was equally so; and while she thus ran on, with innumerable allusions to Lady Marys and Lord Johns, who she pretended to suppose were dying to hear from me, I could not help muttering to myself with good Christopher Sly, "And all this be true then Lord be thanked for my good amends;" for up to that moment I was an ungrateful man for all this high and noble solicitude.
On examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances, were traced with written characters. What appeared to us more astonishing, was that these writings were expressed in various languages: some unknown to my companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, old as the Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern dialects, English and Italian.
In this number appeared the first really distinctive article of the magazine, the celebrated "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript," an allegorical account, in quaint Scripture phrase, of Blackwood's quarrel with his editors, and a savage onslaught on the leading Whigs of Edinburgh.
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