Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and - Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and - Productions, Volume 1 (of 2) by James Emerson Tennent
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page 44 of 1031 (04%)
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adduced, that the Hebrew terms for "ivory, apes, and peacocks"[3] (the
articles imported in the ships of Solomon) are identical with the Tamil names, by which these objects are known in Ceylon to the present day; and, to strengthen my argument on this point, he adds that, "these terms were so entirely foreign and alien from the common Hebrew language as to have driven the Ptolemaist authors of the Septuagint version into a blunder, by which the ivory, apes, and peacocks come out as '_hewn and carven stones_.'" The circumstance adverted to had not escaped my notice; but I forebore to avail myself of it; for, although the fact is accurately stated by the reviewer, so far as regards the Vatican MS., in which the translators have slurred over the passage and converted "_ibha, kapi_, and _tukeyim_" into [Greek: "lithôn toreutôn kai pelekêtôn"] (literally, "stones hammered and carved in relief"); still, in the other great MS. of the Septuagint, the _Codex Alexandrinus_, which is of equal antiquity, the passage is correctly rendered by "[Greek: odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai taônôn]." The editor of the Aldine edition[4] compromised the matter by inserting "the ivory and apes," and excluding the "peacocks," in order to introduce the Vatican reading of "stones."[5] I have not compared the Complutensian and other later versions. [Footnote 1: Novemb. 19, 1859, p. 612.] [Footnote 2: _See_ Vol. II. Pt. VII., c. i. p. 102.] [Footnote 3: 1 _Kings_, x. 22.] [Footnote 4: Venice, 1518.] [Footnote 5: [Greek: Kai odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai lithôn]. |
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