“Well, as time went on, extending the course of my reading, I happened to pick up in Flaccus’s shop a Greek translation of the Hebrew book of Job. It was a chaos, with occasional lucidities—some of them magnificent. On my shewing it to a learned Jew (whom Josephus had recommended to me) he explained to me that the Greek translators had often been misled by similarities of Hebrew words. Hebrew is a queer language. It has vowels but does not write them. I saw at once what an abundant source of error this might be. Even in Latin, where vowels are written, I have known Greeks go wrong by rendering amnis as though it were omnis. How much more, if there were no vowels! My rabbi—that is their name for ‘teacher’—informed me that even the Greek-speaking Jews were now beginning to be dissatisfied wi
