Part 7

But the surpassing interest which the Moabite Stone possesses for the antiquarian is not its corroboration of remote Israelitish history or the substantial identity of its letters with the Hebrew forms, but, rather, its contribution to all alphabetic literature of all the past. This will appear in a quotation from the late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D.: "The essential features in the outline of each of our own letters may be detected easily in the characters of the Moabite Stone, written 2,900 years ago.... The primitive Semitic inscription of this stone contains the alphabet from which all existing alphabets have been derived. It exhibits the embryo forms of all the letters--2,000 or 3,000 in number--in every one of the alphabets which are now in use throughout the world. It might thus be termed the great mother alphabet of the world."[53] The Moabite Stone in itself would seem to indicate a more or less general as well as an understanding use of the alphabet in which it is inscribed throughout that region at an early date--perhaps at a much earlier date than that of the inscription--as the Code of Hammurabi, set up at Susa in Persia, indicates a more or less general acquaintance with the cuneiform characters in which the laws of that ancient monarch were promulgated. Supporting this conclusion, Mr. E. C. Richardson holds that there is "growing evidence of the prevailing use of handwriting all over Palestine, by not later than the ninth century."[54] Professor Sayce, referring to the criticism that would deny the pre-exilic origin of the larger part of the Old Testament literature on the ground that the early Israelites could not read or write, says: "This supposed late use of writing for literary purposes was merely an assumption, with nothing more solid to rest upon than the critic's own theories and prepossessions. And as soon as it could be tested by solid fact it crumbled into dust."[55]

Closely identified with the Moabite Stone, both in the time of its supposed production and in its alphabetic characteristics, is the Siloam Inscription at Jerusalem, laid bare to the world's gaze in 1881. The discovery of this valuable treasure of Palestinian records was due to fortuitous circumstances, as has been many another important "find." [A boy wading in the channel cut in the rock leading to the Pool first discovered the writing, partly concealed by water, on the southern wall of the channel.[56]] The Siloam Inscription, though brief--containing only six lines, with the writing partly destroyed--has great philological and historical value. According to the judgment of scholars this inscription was executed in the reign of King Hezekiah and may have been designed to celebrate and memorialize his distinguished achievement, recorded in scripture (II Chronicles 32:30). Its complete translation has been accomplished. The letters of this writing are held by some archæologists and philologists to exhibit, possibly, even older forms than those contained in the inscription of the Moabite Stone. The inscriptions are closely related. Of the Moabite Stone a Jewish writer holds that "the language, with slight deviation, is Hebrew, and reads almost like a chapter from the Book of Kings"; and, of the Siloam Inscription, that "it is pure Hebrew."[57]

(_4_) _Classic writing._ Each country and people has had a palæography, in some respects, of its own, and developed by its own individual history, although modified, often, by the adjacent countries and contemporaneous peoples. The palæography of a civilization is sometimes taken up by other civilizations and, in turn, may be transmitted as an inheritance to other generations. Almost every century has had its own specific "hand," and the "hand" throughout human history has constantly undergone change. Sometimes the change has been for the better; at other times the change has been for the worse; the change in handwriting going on at the present time can hardly be accredited for the worse, and for the reason that, speaking inclusively, it now seems to have attained unto the superlatively bad. "Handwriting, like every other art, has its different phases of growth, perfection, and decay. A particular form of writing is gradually developed, then takes the finished or calligraphic style and becomes the 'hand' of the period; then deteriorates, breaks up, and disappears, or drags out only an artificial existence--being superceded, meanwhile, by another 'hand' which, either developed from an older hand or introduced independently, runs the same course and, in its turn, is displaced by a younger rival."[58] The "Spencerian" and the "vertical" hands are well-known and present-day applications of this law of change or development in the form of written language.

(_5_) _The two great stages of classic writing._ Another fact concerning palæography merits more than a passing notice--it is the two great stages of the classical writing. The Greek handwriting, in which much of the best classic literature was written (in which the New Testament, with the possible exception of Matthew's gospel, and the Old Testament of the Septuagint Version were written; and in which, furthermore, a large proportion of the writings by the early Christian teachers and apologists and also those of the heathen and heretical controversialists of the early centuries were written), passed through two clearly defined and distinctly separated stages, known, respectively, as the _uncial_ and the _minuscule_ "hands." The "uncial" was the large letter hand, and the dominant style from the time of the earliest written productions in Greek down to the ninth century. The "minuscule" (called also the "cursive") was the small letter or the "running" hand and continued in use, comprehensively, from the ninth century A. D. (though known earlier), when it largely displaced the "uncial" style, on, until the invention of printing superceded handwriting as the treasuring and disseminating medium of literary productions.

The difference in size and style of the letters was not the only nor, perhaps, the chief demarcation between these "hands"; there was a broad distinction also in the relation of the letters to one another. In the uncial hand each letter was separated from the other letters as in printing; but in the minuscule style the letters of words were joined together in a "running" hand as in modern writing, thus facilitating rapidity in the use of the pen. Capitalization was little regarded in the early centuries; and punctuation as a system was not known. These two distinctions of the uncial and the minuscule hands were applied also to the productions written in Latin, though the uncial characters gave place to the small letter or "current" hand at an earlier date among the Roman than among the Greek copyists. This was probably owing to the decadence of the Greek language and the consequent ascendency of the Latin.

The most important systems of writing, for many centuries--from a time long previous to the Christian Era and on throughout the Middle Ages--were those which employed the classic Greek and Latin alphabets, and in which the great body of the world's best literature was written. At least this was true within the bounds of Europe. With the declining literary importance of Alexandria came the growing prominence of the region north of the Mediterranean. The Greek alphabet and language held preëminence for centuries, beginning with Alexander's conquest and extending into the early Christian centuries when they were displaced, early in the Middle Ages, under the Latin ascendency. During the increasing domination of the Latin alphabet and literature, national and provincial "hands" were developed and came into active competition in the centuries previous to the invention of printing. The handwriting which was of specifically Roman lineage was gradually modified by environing conditions in the different sections of Europe and resulted in various "hands," as the "Lombardic" hand of Italy, the "Visigothic" hand of Spain, and the "Merovingian" and (later) the "Carolingian" hand of the Frankish Empire.

(_6_) _The Anglo-Saxon writing._ The Anglo-Saxon handwriting is an inheritance from the Latin national hand. In this "descent" (or, is it "ascent"?) of our modern English "hand," in the long process of its genealogy, the Latin displaced the earlier Greek, as the Greek had won its way over the still earlier Phœnician and Hebrew. In our modern English literature we employ the Roman alphabet (as other nationalities are coming more and more to do). The Roman characters, being descended immediately from the Latin, though modified more or less by the Norman domination and other factors, constitute what may be called the cosmopolitan alphabet of modern times. The characters used in our Anglo-Saxon writing have come to their present ascendency and increasing supremacy from two reasons in particular: First, because the Latin on which it was based was the language of the educated classes of all nations during the Middle Ages; and second--and probably chiefly--because the Roman characters are better adapted for rapid writing than were the severe though elegant letters of the Greek language. The shape of the Roman characters greatly facilitated the adoption of the "running" hand in the Latin literature.

Many changes other than those already alluded to have come about in the transmission of literature from age to age: Men at first wrote from right to left as the orientals still do. The peoples of early Greece first wrote, as the Chinese still do, perpendicularly to the page, and then from right to left; later, backward and forward from right to left and left to right as in case of furrows made by a side-hill plow; and lastly, from left to right as moderns do. We look for the beginning of the Hebrew Bible where our English Bible ends; and we read it from right to left and turn its pages from left to right. It is much the same with the Chinese books, except that the columns of reading matter extend downwards on the page from top to bottom and not crosswise to the page as in other languages.

(_7_) _Palæography and the date of literary productions._ The style and character of the handwriting is of great practical importance to literary criticism and has large historical value. A knowledge as to the history of the individual letters (and each individual letter of the alphabet has a history of its own, as to its genesis and development) and of the arrangement and the appearance of literary productions is of the utmost significance in ascertaining the age, meaning, and value of ancient documents. The style of handwriting, also, has a large place in determining the time or period when a manuscript was written, even when the date is not affixed, just as the spelling of words in our English tongue and the fashion of our typography--ever fluctuating at the demand of artistic taste or attractive appearance--helps to determine, in absence of the date of publication, the approximate time when a book was printed. Illustrative of this, the author once placed on his library shelves an attractive set of books which were represented at the time of purchase as "just from the press" but which he knew at the time were printed from plates made more than a dozen years before although they may have been "fresh from the press";--he knew it from the kind of type employed in their printing, or, more accurately speaking, he knew it from the peculiar quotation-marks used with that particular type, inasmuch as the style of quotation-marks used in those volumes had passed out of current use by printers and publishers some years previously, having had but a feeble tenure of existence. To realize at a glance the ever-changing style of type in modern printing, one needs but to turn the pages of type-manufacturing catalogues. In like manner, the style of handwriting in any language constitutes a kind of verisimilitude for the age of the written literature. Dr. Isaac Taylor has said, "The architecture of different periods is not more characteristic of the age to which it belongs, than is the style of writing in manuscripts, nor is there less of certainty in determining questions of antiquity in the one case than in the other."[59] As the periods of the "Doric," "Ionic," and "Corinthian" architectures are determinable approximately by their respective characteristics--so the time of a literary production is largely determined by the characteristics of the handwriting in which it is written. We quote the words of Professor Mahaffy: "The task of palæography is now changed. We have ample evidence of antiquity; we rather seek to distinguish the small peculiarities of ancient handwriting as to tell their age approximately when the writer has affixed no note of his own time. And this we do with wonderful certainty, because almost every century has its own hand so distinctly that even the man who attempts to copy older fashions can easily be detected by his want of freedom. Years ago I was shown, in the great library at Naples, a manuscript of this kind, apparently of the tenth century. After a few minutes' examination, though I had never before seen such a thing, I told the librarian that it seemed to me a careful copy of an old hand by a laborious scribe of later date. He was surprised, but then showed me, what he had intended to conceal, a note at the end dated 1450, showing that my guess was correct. This anecdote is quoted to show that the freedom of the hand, as well as the shape of the letters, must be carefully estimated and considered by the palæographer. By using a good microscope, un-steadiness of lines which escape the naked eye will become apparent; and this is now well known to those who have studied the detection of forgeries in criminal cases."[60]

XV

MECHANICAL AND ARTIFICIAL DEVICES OF LITERATURE

The universal divisions of modern literary productions into books, chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, and members of sentences, together with capitalization and the system of punctuation, are so important and so enthralled with modern composition and rhetoric that we could hardly appreciate or understand literature apart from them. Apropos to this observation, Professor Dobschütz says: "If we look at the earliest manuscripts of the Bible which have come down to us, we shall almost think that supernatural assistance was necessary for reading them; no punctuation, no accent, no space between the words, no breaking off at the end of a sentence. The reader has to know his text almost entirely by heart to do it well."[61]

These distinctions of literature are mechanical and artificial devices for clarifying and making emphatic a writer's thoughts as expressed in written or printed language and they are comparatively modern devices. Punctuation marks are indispensable in legal documents and in all the commercial operations of the times. The altered position of a comma gives a changed meaning to scripture texts and to legal documents. (As an illustration of the changed position of a comma, note the varying punctuation of Hebrews 10:12 as contained in different editions of our Authorized Version. In all pulpit Bibles which we have examined, the comma is placed after the word "sins," while in the various teachers' Bibles the comma follows the word "forever." By the former punctuation an important New Testament doctrine is negatived.)

Imagine yourself trying to read a philosophical treatise, a technical or abstruse discussion, a scholarly or scientific essay, a thrilling romance, or a legal document, in which there were no distinctions of paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or even individual words--no capitalization and no punctuation-marks of any kind to assist in determining a writer's thoughts or the exact meaning of his composition--and you must recognize the obstacles which confront the researchers of ancient literary documents. The difficulties encountered in the literature of the Bible are in no wise diminished when we recall the fact that the originals of our sacred writings, both Hebrew and Greek, were written, for the most part, in solid blocks of letters analogous to our capitals, without any of the distinguishing limits or relief which come from chapters, verses, pause-marks, or words. It was only by degrees and at slow stages that individual words were separated from one another by a spacing between them; then, later, came the grouping of words into sentences by means of pause-marks and other mechanical devices of literature.

The division of the books of the Bible into chapters and verses is of comparatively modern origin. The chapters of the Bible are associated with the name of Cardinal Hugo who, at about the middle of the thirteenth century, divided the Latin Bible into chapters in order to facilitate reference, for comparison of scripture with scripture, and to make available a commentary which he had prepared. The system of verses, so useful for reference in Bible study, is associated with the work of Robert Stephens, a printer of Geneva who divided the chapters of Cardinal Hugo's Latin Bible into verses and affixed a numerical notation to them. This numbering of the verses first appeared in a Greek New Testament which Stephens printed at Geneva in 1531. The same volume contained also the Vulgate and a Latin version by Erasmus.

The importance of punctuation-marks as an artificial aid for conveying a writer's thoughts and in giving emphasis to written or printed language can scarcely be appreciated by the present generation, for it has always been accustomed to their use. In the Greek manuscripts there was, at the first, nothing corresponding to "stops" or pause-marks as in modern literature. In the modern Hebrew literature there are vowels or vowel "pointings" to facilitate reading; but these were not expressed in the ancient Hebrew writing, inasmuch as the Hebrew written language was made up exclusively of consonant letters (commonly three letters to a word) without vowels or vowel "pointings." The idiomatic use of the respective languages occasioned a further difficulty: In English composition, _e. g._, the logical order is subject, predicate, object with their modifiers in order; and emphasis is indicated by _italic_ and CAPITAL letters, and by pause-marks without varying the order of composition; but with the Greek and Latin literatures emphasis was denoted by the position of words in the sentence, by the relation of a word to other words, or in the use of words with reference to their modifiers.

The development of a system of "pointings" in order to bring out more clearly the meaning of a writer and so facilitate the reading of manuscript literature, began at Alexandria, being first employed in poetical writing. A slight open space at the left of a line, analogous to modern indentation in the margin at the beginning of a paragraph, made its appearance first on the papyri at Alexandria. In the manuscripts of the New Testament the earliest attempts in the direction of punctuation go back to the fourth century A. D., and consisted of an occasional simple point or a small blank space in the writing, which, to that extent, broke up somewhat the otherwise monotonous lines of letters. _Stichometry_, introduced in the fifth century by a scholar named Euthalius, was an arrangement of the Gospels, the Acts, and the epistles of Paul in lines--regulated according to the sense--each line terminating where some pause should be made in the reading; and so had the force of a system of punctuation, but, owing to the waste of costly parchment, it was not generally or extensively adopted.

Concerning the history of punctuation-marks it is claimed that Jerome, the celebrated scholar of the fourth and fifth centuries (died 420 A. D.) used points similar to our "comma" and "colon." These points, while not in universal use by the writers, were inserted in many old manuscripts. In the ninth century, the stroke called the "comma" came into more common use, and a dot above the line indicated a pause equivalent to the "colon" or the "semicolon," while a full stop was denoted by a large dot or "period" or a double dot, and by a space. The interrogation point, identical in form with our semicolon, occasionally appears. The "breathings" and "accents" with which the Greek literature has come down to us, while traces of them appear in the early centuries, were not common at the end of the seventh century A. D.,--those found in the Vatican manuscript of the fourth century and in the Alexandrian manuscript of the fifth were supplied by a later hand than the writers of these copies. The Latins, in the wake of the Greeks, adopted their system of punctuation, meager as it was, and continued its use in the transcription of the Latin literature throughout the Middle Ages.

The system of punctuation employed in all modern literature, and which is so essential a part of the finished rhetoric, is of recent development as compared with the course of literature, and dates from the time of a Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, late in the fifteenth century. It was largely consequent upon the invention of printing, though some of the punctuation-marks of the modern system were used before the division of the sacred literature into chapters and verses. It is to be noted that the present tendency by the best writers is to simplify punctuation as much as possible.

The system of notation--as with many of the good things of life and much of our wisdom--like the wise men in the days of Herod, came from the East,--from India by way of Arabia. The origin of the completed system of notation as now in universal use, at once simple and complete, is comparatively recent and obscure. Its origin and development had both a practical and a philosophical side. Its beginnings antedate the earliest art, literature, and science. It began in _counting_ and in some sort of tally of separate units,--perhaps upon the fingers. Probably the ten digits of the two hands suggested the widely-extended and ever-available scale of ten for comparison and estimate. Other scales than ten for counting and calculation have been employed by tribes and nations:--scales of twos, and threes, and fives, and sevens, and twelves, and twenties. The ancient Hebrews employed two or more of these scales.

The Hebrews and Greeks as well as the Romans used letters of the alphabet instead of figures for counting and calculations. The system of notation as we now have it was of gradual development. Under Theoderic the Great (454-526 A. D.), Boethius made use of certain marks or signs which were in part similar to our nine digits. This was improved upon by a pupil of Gerbeet, who used signs still more like our nine digits. But all methods of notation preceding the Arabic were unwieldly, complex, and incomplete. The system did not originate with the Arabs. As the Arabs had appropriated the Chinese discovery and use of paper, so they appropriated the Hindu system of notation. The system at first was without a _zero_: that character was added probably in the seventh century. The decimal character was used to give positional or place value to the nine digits,--the cipher having no value except in combination with the digits; it thus completed the system of notation.

XVI

SOURCES OF THE BOOK-MAKING INDUSTRY