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The most important version of the Old Testament was the Septuagint, of which nothing more needs to be said. You will remember that the Hebrew was a dead language while our Lord was on the earth, the Jews of Palestine speaking the Aramaic. For their use, translations of the Hebrew into the Aramaic, called Targums, were made.

Their Talmud, their Mischna, their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them.

Their Talmud, their Mischna, their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them.

Enter the great empire of China, and, according to the best information we can obtain, their sacred books are the school-books of that vast and teeming population. Inquire among the Jews, wherever in their various dispersions they have established schools, and what will you find but the Law and the Prophets, the Targums and the Talmud.

But as there are folk-lorists and folk-lorists, and the schools of Rabbi Andrew and Rabbi Joseph write different targums, I have left each to make his own commentary without prejudice. One day, when King Khufu reigned over all the land, he said to his chancellor, who stood before him, "Go call me my sons and my councillors, that I may ask of them a thing."

This may be pronounced a remarkably free translation; and the Targums generally evince a similar liberality of sentiment and phraseology.

Very many nations felt it quite as strongly as the Israelites, who from early time awaited a mighty king, the Messiah, the Anointed, of whom the Targums say: “In his days shall peace be multiplied;” “He shall execute the judgment of truth and justice on the earth;” “He shall rule over all kingdoms.”

It is an appellation indifferently applied to kings, and priests, and prophets; to all who were anointed, as an induction into their office, and has nothing in it peculiar and exclusive; but the application of it to the expected deliverer of Israel, originated in and from the Targums. 3.

Another disturbing influence, which will affect especially the quotations in the Gospels, is the possibility, perhaps even probability, that many of these are made, not directly from either Hebrew or LXX, but from or through Targums. This would seem to be the case especially with the remarkable applications of prophecy in St. Matthew.

The metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book of "Wisdom," is neither seen in the Logia of Matthew, nor in general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common with Messianism.