DURING the eighth century A.D. there originated in Mesopotamia a strange sect of the Jews known as the Karaites. These were men who rejected the Jewish traditions and studied the Old Testament, believing that it was the sole authority. Their study of the Old Testament was not at all superficial, but was thorough. Of the Hebrew language they were masters, and so from their hands came grammars and dictionaries of Hebrew as well as important commentaries on the various books of the Old Testament.
At the present day there is in Jerusalem an underground synagogue of the Karaite Jews. It was here that in 1830 an old and torn manuscript of a Hebrew dictionary was found. This dictionary was written by one of the Karaites, David ben Abraham al-Fasi, in the tenth century. Al-Fasi, as his name indicates, was born in Fez, Morocco, but lived some time in Jerusalem where he probably wrote his dictionary. In the work he shows an intimate acquaintance with Palestinian geography and with the political conditions of the Jews at that time.
The dictionary was written in Arabic, but Hebrew characters were used. So popular was the work, and such was its authority, that scholars referred to it simply as "the Book.” It will interest members of The Presbyterian Church of America to know that this work has been edited and published by a learned Arabic scholar, Dr. Solomon L. Skoss, of Dropsie College, Philadelphia. With the aid of this volume new light has been thrown on several difficult passages of the Old Testament.
Consider, for example, Exodus 32:4. In our English Bible we read, "And he received them [i.e., the earrings, etc.] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf." We are likely to ask ourselves how it was possible for Aaron to transform earrings into a molten calf by means of a graving tool. Al-Fasi suggests an answer which seems to remove the difficulty. He suggests that the word heret, which the English Bible translates "graving tool", really means a "mould". Thus, Aaron cast the earrings into a mould and made a golden calf.
Another interesting passage is Jeremiah 13:4-7. God commanded Jeremiah to take his girdle and "go to the Euphrates," there to hide it in a hole of the rock. Jeremiah carried out the command, although he was at the time in Jerusalem, several hundred miles from the Euphrates. Now the Bible does not say that Jeremiah was transported to the Euphrates miraculously, and hence many have been the attempts to explain this passage. Al-Fasi suggests that the reference in Jeremiah is not to the Euphrates River in Babylon but to a valley near Jerusalem which today is called Ain-Farah. If this is correct, the difficulty would seem to be greatly lessened.
These two illustrations will serve to show how valuable this dictionary will be for the study of many Old Testament passages. Dr. Skoss has done a real service for Bible students in the editing of the dictionary, and it is to be hoped that the work will shortly be translated into English that it may be available to all.