brochure on The Pauline Doctrine of the Law (Freiburg i. Br.: Mohr), which seems to contain a really helpful contribution towards settling the vexed question as to the identity or distinction of vóμoc and ó vóμos. Dr. Dickson's Baird Lecture on S. Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit (Glasgow: Maclehose) is complacently recognized by Wendt as a commendatory representation, for the benefit of English readers, of his (Wendt's) own views on the subject in preference to those of all other modern German writers. Klostermann's Probleme im Aposteltexte (Gotha: Perthes) is shown by Sieffert to be a series of violent distortions of passages in the Acts and Pauline Epistles: a conclusive refutation of the author's singular opinion that philological interpretations by a scholar untrained in theology are preferable to the commentaries of a professional exegete. A yet more wretched specimen of the absurdities a man may write when he goes outside his proper sphere is the physician Küchenmeister's monograph on Luther's hymn Ein' feste Burg (Dresden: Pierson). Inter alia it contains a list of the sources of the hymn, beginning with the Hebrew Bible and ending with a book published in A.D. 1877! Well does Achelis (437) remind him of the proverb 'ne sutor supra crepidam.' The introduction to Prof. Wordsworth's Old Latin Biblical Texts, No. I. (Oxford: Clarendon Press) is held up to admiration by Gebhardt as a model of what such things ought to be; and the same competent reviewer has sympathetically criticized the first part of Gregory's Prolegomena to Tischendorf (Leipzig: Hinrichs). The Abbé Martin's Description Technique (Paris: Maissonneuve) is eulogized by Nestle as a very full account of 369 MSS. of the N. T. preserved in the libraries of Paris, seventy-five being therein described for the first time; from it we learn that folio 138 of C (Ephræmi), of which Tischendorf gave a facsimile, is now missing. Rade severely handles the somewhat heterodox work on The Incarnation (Vienna: Faesy) by Böhl, who seems to think that the doctrine has never before been correctly explained. K. Müller summarizes vol. ii. of Nitzsch's (posthumous) History of the German People (Leipzig: Duncker), embracing the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in a charming essay which shows a complete mastery both of details and of principles. The four hundredth anniversary of Zwingli's birthday called forth last year a host of pamphlets on his life and work and relation to Luther: these are characterized in a long article by Staehelin ; to us perhaps the most interesting would be Finsler's Ulrich Zwingli (Zürich : Meyer), of which 63,000 copies were sold within a few months. Kölling's History of Arianism (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann) is pronounced by Harnack to be prejudiced, uncritical, and feeble; whereas Förster's Life of S. Ambrose (Halle a. S.: Strien) is declared good in its beginning, better in the middle, and better still in its concluding portion, and all the more admirable because its author is a clergyman in full pastoral work. Very interesting information on the recentlyformed Judæo-Christian community under Joseph Rabinowitz in Bessarabia (S. Russia) is given in Harnack's review of Franz Delitzsch's Documente (Erlangen: Deichert). Achelis highly praises Krauss's work on Homiletics (Gotha: Perthes), and rightly rebukes

the ignorant irreverence of Letters from Heaven (Bremen: Müller), the author of which he believes to be a German lady that has lived under English influences and been chiefly engaged in teaching little girls. Among the 127 books that are reviewed in the papers before us there are only seven written in English, and of these only one was published in England; yet we think that in a much larger proportion of instances our theological publishers might do well to send copies of new books to the 'Redaction' of the Theologische Literaturzeitung.

NEW EDITIONS, SERMONS, &c.

MR. THEODORE WIRGMAN'S Prayer Book, with Scripture Proofs and Historical Notes (London: Bemrose), has most deservedly reached a third edition. It is a most valuable treatise, and has been carefully revised, and in parts rewritten. We strongly recommend it as a school-prize book.

Dr. Cheyne's Prophecies of Isaiah (Kegan Paul and Co.) has already been reviewed in these pages, and we need do no more than call attention to the appearance of the third edition, the call for which is a pleasing evidence that the value of the book is widely recognized. It has been revised throughout; account is taken of works which have appeared in the interval since the last edition; and one new essay, on 'The Suffering Messiah,' has been substituted for that on The Royal Messiah in Genesis.'

Disestablishment and Disendowment: what are they? (Macmillan), by Professor E. A. Freeman, appears most opportunely in a second edition. It should be read by all who wish to understand the rights of the questions raised by the Liberationists.

Too great circulation could not be given to the pamphlet entitled Is there a God? considered (Stanford), written by a Cambridge professor for distribution among working men who are exposed to the teaching of the Secularist societies. Equally good, for another class, is Mr. R. C. Moberley's Light of the Revelation of God upon the Question of Marriage with a Sister-in-Law (Chester: Phillipson).

A sermon by the Rev. J. H. Thomas, preached at Fulham on the day after the funeral of the late Bishop of London, has been published at the request of the Bishop's family.

Vaticanism as seen from the Banks of the Tiber (London: Bosworth), by S. I. M., with a preface by Dean Plumptre, is an abstract of Curci's Vaticano Regio, which will be useful to those who have no access to the original work.

The second volume of Mr. Leslie Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography (Smith, Elder, and Co.), comprising the names from Annesley to Baird, has made its welcome appearance. The articles are of unequal merit, and often disproportionate in length to the claims of the subject. But it is a very useful work. Prebendary Stephens has given an excellent life of S. Anselm, and Canon Overton, a most competent authority, undertakes such Anglican worthies of the past as Atterbury and Mrs. Astell (who endeavoured, in 1694, to found a religious house for women), with some who belong to the present generation, such as Bishop Armstrong and Canon Ashwell, a former editor of the Church Quarterly Review.

THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NO XL. JULY 1885.

ART. I.—THE NEW HIEROGLYPHS OF WESTERN

ASIA.

I. On a New Hamathite Inscription at Ibreez. By the Rev. E. J. DAVIS, M.A. Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. IV. ii. (London, 1876.) 2. On the Hamathite Inscriptions. By the Rev. A. H. SAYCE, M.A. Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. V. i. (London, 1876.) 3. The Monuments of the Hittites, with Sketch Map, three Plates, and Cuts. By the Rev. A. H. SAYCE.—The Bilingual Hittite and Cuneiform Inscription of Tarkondémos. By the Rev. A. H. SAYCE. Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. VII. ii. (London, 1881.)

4. The Inscribed Stones from Ferabis, Hamath, Aleppo, &c. By W. H. RYLANDS, F.S.A. Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. VII. iii. (London, 1882.)

5. Die Kultur der Hethiter (Die Semit. Völk. u. Sprach.). By FRITZ HOMMEL. (Leipzig, 1883.)

6. The Ancient Empires of the East: App. iv. Lydia. By A. H. SAYCE. (London, 1883.)

7. The Empire of the Hittites. By W. WRIGHT, B.A., D.D. (London, 1884.)

As long ago as 1812 the well-known Burckhardt saw at Hamah, in Syria, the ancient Hamath, a stone inscribed with strange hieroglyphics, as he mentions in his Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (London, 1822, pp. 146-7). His statement attracted no great attention at the time, and it was not until 1870 that Mr. J. A. Johnson gave an account of 'Inscriptions discovered at Hamath in Northern Syria,' which was reproduced in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund from that of the American Society, in which it first

VOL. XX.-NO. XL.

S

appeared (July 1871). In June of the same year Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake took squeezes of the inscriptions, but failed in an attempt to photograph them. Lastly, in 1872, the Rev. W. Wright, then a missionary stationed at Damascus, and now the secretary of the Bible Society, succeeded, with the potent assistance of Subhi Pasha, the Governor of Syria, in taking duplicate casts of four1 stones, one set of which was sent to the Palestine Exploration Fund, and the other to the British Museum. The stones themselves were forwarded to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. Great credit is due to Mr. Wright for the characteristic energy and perseverance displayed in the execution of a task which was rendered unusually anxious and arduous by Moslem fanaticism. A spirited account of how it was done may be read in the opening chapter of his book. The interest of archæologists was now thoroughly awakened, and public curiosity was increased by the sketches and descriptions given in Messrs. R. F. Burton and C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake's Unexplored Syria, which appeared in 1872, and gave also a copy of a similar inscription found at Aleppo and since destroyed by the natives. In 1873 the Rev. W. Hayes Ward, D.D., published a paper upon 'The Hamath Inscriptions' in the Second Statement of the American Palestine Exploration Society, with plates, and a 'List of Hamathite Hieroglyphics,' which, in 1876, was reproduced by Professor Sayce, and compared with certain 'Kypriote characters' in the second of the papers prefixed to the present review. Attempts had already been made by the Rev. Dunbar I. Heath, Mr. Hyde Clarke, and others, to solve the enigma of the inscriptions; but the results of their labours can hardly be taken seriously by the scientific philologist. Indeed, Mr. Sayce began his paper with a frank confession that it would be a paper rather of conjectures than of facts,' and an admission that we have no clue to the interpretation of the inscriptions known as Hamathite.' His list of Hamathite and Cypriote characters, comprising in all fifty-six of the former and thirty

1 There are five casts, two of which belong to one stone. The lithographs published by Mr. Rylands in the Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., and again in the appendix to Mr. Wright's book, imply great care and skill in the execution of a very difficult task. Comparing them with the casts, line by line and symbol by symbol, we met with a few apparent errors in the earlier copies, most, though not all, of which we found corrected in the later. But in some instances, especially in the worn inscription H.V., Mr. Rylands seems to have dealt too freely in conjectural emendation. Moreover, the roundness and fulness of outline, characteristic of the figures of the casts in their present condition, are hardly suggested by the somewhat stiff and formal precision of the copies. Photographs would probably give a truer impression.

eight of the latter, supplies a forcible illustration of the fact. In most of the instances it is exceedingly difficult to see any real resemblance between these characters; while the 'Hamathite' of the list differs considerably from that of the monuments. The identification of the objects represented is equally uncertain. The 'beetle,' the bee,' the boat,' the water flowing from a vase,' find no place in the inscriptions, and were obviously suggested by Egyptian analogies. We need not linger over Mr. Sayce's guesses at the significance of particular characters, most of which are contradicted in his later articles, and some of which are self-contradictory. As he tells us himself in his more elaborate essay, the only inscribed monuments known at the time when this paper was written were (1) five short inscriptions from Hamah, three of which were almost identical; (2) eight clay impressions of seals,' found by Mr. Layard in the palace at Kouyunjik; (3) a half-obliterated inscription from Aleppo, consisting of two short lines; (4) a rock-inscription at Ibreez, in what was anciently Lycaonia, copied first by Major Fischer in 1838, and subsequently by the Rev. E. J. Davis, in which, however, only a character here and there could be recognized. This paucity of materials did not hinder Mr. Sayce from proceeding with his heroic attempts at decipherment; but almost the only assertions of this first paper which are beyond challenge are (1) the remark, after Dr. Hayes Ward, that the inscriptions are to be read boustrophedon, starting from the direction towards which the heads are facing, and then proceeding from right to left, and from left to right, in alternate lines (a method exemplified in some of the old Greek inscriptions); (2) the statement that the writing is not alphabetical, and that it is probably 'a mixed system like that which meets us in the inscriptions of Egypt or Assyria'—a fact which is, however, pretty evident upon a first inspection of the documents; (3) the statement that some of the characters, while possessing their own peculiarities, present a marked resemblance to signs familiar to the Egyptologist, eg. the oval character which in this paper Mr. Sayce supposed might be 'the determinative of cities or countries,' but which he afterwards explained as the prefix of divinity. But Mr. Sayce is anxious to determine the

1 It is incorrect to say that four of these are identical. Two are wrongly copied in the lithographs.

2 The British Museum now possesses, besides a number of mere fragments, three considerable, though incomplete, inscriptions, in a similar but not identical script, which were brought from Girbās, or Gerābīs, on the Euphrates, the ancient Oropus or Agropus, identified by Friedrich Delitzsch, Sayce, and others, with Carchemish.