But this system of punctuation has unavoidably the effect of a version or comment. Its office is essentially that of an exponent of the constructions and opinions of its authors, and as such it can be no further correct and reliable than their theological, exegetical, and religious doctrines, theories and sentiments were in accordance with the real meaning of the original text. It may often, and perhaps generally where no doctrine or doubtful construction is concerned, have the effect to express that real meaning, and to that extent it might be harmless, and, if not wholly useless, might be of equal value with a paraphrase to the same effect. But if the student adopts this system as a guide, he naturally relies on it as equally applicable to every portion of the sacred oracles, and, with as much confidence in one case as in another, adopts the construction which it indicates. An attempt to reform the reigning fashion of Hebrew study in relation to this subject would probably be as hopeful a task as an attempt to disabuse the minds of theologians and religious teachers of the empirical, fanciful, and puerile system of figurative exposition which was rendered popular by Origen, and has reigned triumphant from his to the present time; being propagated from age to age by education, and by the example and influence of the learned. But, regarded in a merely historical point of view, there appears to be no room for doubt but that the Hebrew vowel points--closely and even bigotedly adhered to, as they are understood to have been, by the translators of the Scriptures into our own and other modern languages--had, extensively, a very ill effect upon the versions which they furnished. And to whatever extent this was true, it would naturally prevail, especially in relation to those passages concerning which the authors held erroneous opinions, and as to which, under the more than hereditary Jewish prejudices occasioned by the persecutions and proscriptions to which they were subjected, they aimed to counteract the tendency of the Chaldee versions, as well as "to root out," in the language of McCaul, the Christian interpretations of the Hebrew text. "The violent persecutions of the Crusaders," says that writer, "the jealousy excited by the Christian attempt upon the Holy Land, and the influence of the doctrine of the Mahometans, amongst whom they lived, produced a sensible change in Jewish opinions and interpretations, which is plainly marked in Kimchi and other writers of the day, and without a knowledge of which the phenomena of modern Judaism cannot be fully understood. Rashi, Aben-Ezra, and Kimchi endeavored to get rid of the Christian interpretations, and Maimonides to root out the Christian doctrines _which had descended from the ancient Jewish Church_." (_Introduction to Kimchi._) Yet this laborious student of those authors and of the Talmud adhered as pertinaciously as they to the Masoretic points, and apparently without over suspecting