_The Ethiopic and Latin Versions: Translations from the Greek._--The Ethiopic Version is translated from the Greek, for Greek words such as [Greek: drys, balanos, lips], &c., are transliterated in the Greek. Secondly, many passages must be retranslated into Greek before we can discover the source of the various corruptions. And finally, proper names are transliterated as they appear in Greek and not in Hebrew. That the Latin is also a translation from the Greek is no less obvious. Thus in xxxix. 12 _timoris_ = [Greek: deilias], corrupt for [Greek: douleias]; in xxxviii. 13 _honorem_ = [Greek: timên], but [Greek: timên] should here have been rendered by _tributum_, as the Ethiopic and the context require; in xxxii. 26, _celavit_ = [Greek: ekrypse], corrupt for [Greek: egrapse] (so Ethiopic). _The Greek a Translation from the Hebrew._--The early date of our book--the 2nd century B.C.--and its place of composition speak for a Semitic original, and the evidence bearing on this subject is conclusive. But the question at once arises, was the original Aramaic or Hebrew? Certain proper names in the Latin Version ending in -_in_ seem to bespeak an Aramaic original, as Cettin, Filistin, &c. But since in all these cases the Ethiopic transliterations end in -_m_ and not in -_n_, it is not improbable that the Aramaism in the Latin Version is due to the translator, who, it has been concluded on other grounds, was a Palestinian Jew.[1] The grounds, on the other hand, for a Hebrew original are weighty and numerous. (1) A work which claims to be from the hand of Moses would naturally be in Hebrew, for Hebrew according to our author was the sacred and national language. (2) The revival of the national spirit of a nation is universally, so far as we know, accompanied by a revival of the national language. (3) The text must be retranslated into Hebrew in order to explain unintelligible expressions and restore the true text. One instance will sufficiently illustrate this statement. In xliii. 11 a certain Ethiopic expression = [Greek: en emoi], which is a mistranslation of [Hebrew: bi]; for [Hebrew: bi] in this context, as we know from the parallel passage in Gen. xliv. 18, which our text reproduces almost verbally, = [Greek: deomai]. We might observe here that our text attests the presence of dittographies already existing in the Hebrew text. (4) Hebraisms survive in the Ethiopic and Latin Versions. In the former nûha in iv. 4, is a corrupt transliteration of [Hebrew: na]. In the Latin eligere in te in xxii. 10 is a reproduction of [Hebrew: behar be] and _in qua ... in ipsa_ in xix. 8 = [Hebrew: ba ... asher]. This idiom could, of course, be explained on the hypothesis of an Aramaic original. (5) Many paronomasiae discover themselves on retranslation into Hebrew.