Volume 1
Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.
- Date:
- 1908-1926
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.
103/932
![Acosta must be honoured, but his championship was fantastic rather than robust. Literature.—Whiston, The Remarkable Life of Uriel Acosta, an Eminent Freethinker (1740); Uriel Acosta’s Selbstbiographie (1847); I. da Costa, Israel en de Volke (1849); H. Jellinek, Acosta’s Leben und Lehre (1874); F. de Sola Mendes in JE i. 167 (1901). I. AbEAHAMS. ACROSTIC.—An acrostic(h) is -etymologically an extremity of a line or verse, lit. ‘ row ’ (arlxos). Apost. Const, ii. 57 prescribes an antiphonal chant- ing of psalms in which a single voice begins the verses, and the congregation sing the acrostics {to. dKpoarlxi-a,)- Epiphanius {Migne, xlii. 365) calls the numeral iota the ‘acrostic’ {aKpoartxis) of the name Jesus. But an acrostic is usually a poem in which the initials of lines or sections spell a word or words or an alphabet. An abecedary acrostic is sometimes called simply an alphabet. I. Bickell and others find fifteen complete alpha- bets or remains of them in the Heb. OT and Sirach, viz. in the following Psalms or chapters: (1-8) Pss 9-10. 25. 34. 37. 111. 112. 119. 145; (9) Pr 31; (10-13) La 1. 2. 3. 4; (14) Nah 1-2; (15) Sir (1) Pss 9-10 (LXX 9).—Remains of an alphabet spelt by the first letters of alternate verses (Ps 92.4.6. . . . lO . . . 14.15.17). With 1.1’S and VJ’Ji from 107.8 as Initial words we should have S before V, as in other cases noted below. The order spBD brings somewhat similar letters together. (2) Ps 25.—An alphabet minus p, with a letter from each verse, except that the 1 is included in the n verse. To restore the p, begin v.is with ‘Arise’ (Ps 1012). An appended 'l3 ms makes up the number of the verses to the alphabeti ' alphab s have that _ 3 (Bickell). a alphabetizantia,’ like Ps 33, La 6, etc., a (3) Ps 34.—An alphabet like (2), the added verse beginning mis. EV and LXX have in v.is ‘ The righteous cry (or cried),’ for Heb. ipjik. But with S before V (vv.H-16) there would be no need to repeat ‘ The righteous.’ (4) Ps 37.—An alphabet minus Ji, formed like (1). To com- plete it, read in v.28 tiam (D’il'lj;) with daleth for resh, the word in brackets for LXX A avopoi. In v.S9 njliwm minus 1 gives the h. (5. 6) Pss 111. 112.—Alphabets with their letters from the halves of the verses, of which three at the end are numbered as two (9.10). (7) Ps 119.—Known as Nn3T s'n, ‘the great alphabet’ (Buxtorf, Lex. s. a/ n'jM). Eight verses begin with aleph, eight with beth, and so on. The names of the letters are given in the English Bible, but not in the LXX. Note, however, that the Psalm is missing in B; and see the variants from the Psalters R and T (Swete). (8) Ps 146.—An alphabet minuis 3, with a letter from each verse, one beginning nw’ [DN] (LXX maris K.) having fallen out before 'l3 nin' IDID (v.i4). (9) Pr 3110-31.—An alphabet with a letter from each verse; but in LXX B the 3 verse precedes the y verse. (10) La 1.—An alphabet like (9), with the letters in the usual order. The LXX pves their names, some of them in B in strange forms. With TiaSi) for s of. Aquila’s Greek for ‘ Sion ’ in Ps 10217.22 (Cairo Geniz. Palimpsests, p. 81). (11. 12. 13) La 21-22 31-66 4l-22._Three alphabets, of which every verse gives a letter, that in (12) being of the form AAA, BBB, etc. Heb. 3 before y; but in the LXX, which here also names the letters, B gives ‘Aiv and wrongly as titles of the pe and ayin verses. (14) Nah If.—On the supposed traces here of an alphabet arranged ‘ exquisite artificio,’ see Bickell’s Carm. V.T., and art. ‘Nahum’ in Hastings’ DB and in EBi. (15) Sir 5113-29.—From the Versions, before the discovery of the Cairene Hebrew, Bickell saw that Ben Sira’s poem on Wisdom was an alphabet, but he did not satisfactorily de- termine aU the letters. In the LXX B (ed. Swete) supplies materials for the beginnings of all but the yod verse in their right order. In v.l8 begin 'ODDI (Sisvoijeriv); in v.l9 'nnSQ (efeireVao-a); and supply the yod line from the Hebrew- The other letters may then be found without difficulty. Comparing (2) and (3), Bickell retranslated v.30 as an added pe line, but in the Heb. it begins rightly or wrongly with mem. 2. Evidently the alphabeticism of a composition is not without critical importance : it enables us • Some find the names Pedahel, Pedaiah, Simon in Pss 2522 3423 1101-4. Pesikt. Rob. detects Moses in Ps 92i, and so from Ps. 9611 we may speU out in’ nin’. The Midrash knows also of in places to detect and emend errors, or to supply deficiencies. Sometimes at least it connotes com- pleteness, as in Pr where the praises of the virtuous woman exhaust the alphabet. In the NT compare ‘ I am the Alpha and the O.’ 3- Alphabets and other acrostics are found in Jewish Prayer Books and secular ivritings. Famous names were shortened acrostically, as in EaMBaM for Rabbi Moses Maimonides (ben Maim.). A name given by acrostic verses may settle a question of authorship, as in the case of R. Jacob Ben Shim- shon’s commentary on Aboth, often found ascribed to a better known writer. The mistake may have arisen partly from his name having been written 17’3 for Babbi Jacob Shimshoni, and then read 'en Rashi. 4- Syriac acrostics abound in Service Books and other early writings. Aphraates prefixed the letters of the alphabet to his twenty-two Homilies. Ephraim wrote alphabetic hymns, two of which may be seen transliterated at the end of Bickell’s Carm. V.T. 5- That acrostics were used in oracles is thought to be indicated by their occurrence in the pretended oracles of the Sihyl. These make the name ’A5d/i an acrostic of east, west, north, south in the line ’AvTo\lr]V re Aiiaiv re MecrripiPpiriv re KaCApKTOv (iii. 26, viii. 321; cf. ii. 195, xi. 3). Romulus and Remus are alluded to by the word iKarbv (xi. 114), the Greek R standing for a hundred. The initials of the lines viii. 217-250 give the Greek for ‘Jesus Christ God’s Son Saviour Cross,’ whence, without Cross, as an acrostic of an acrostic, comes IX9XS, ‘fish,’ a mystic name of Christ (Aug. Civ. Dei, xviii. 23). 6. Otfried’s metrical rendering of a form of the Diatessaron into Old High German (9th cent.) is preceded by the acrostics, ‘ Ludovico (Luthowico) Orientalium Regnorum Regi sit Salus setema,’ ‘Salomoni Episcopo Otfridus,' and followed by a longer one to the effect, ‘ Otfr. W. monachus H. et W. Sancti Galli monast. monachis.’ Thus again acrostics testify to authorship. 7- Professor H. A. Giles, of Cambridge, informs the writer that ‘ the Chinese have several forms of the acrostic. The simplest is that in which the hidden sentence is revealed by taking the first word in each line of a short poem. This form is often still further elaborated by using, not the actual words required to make sense, but homo- phones of a more or less misleading character; Anglicd, “Boughs are made,” etc., where Bows is required for the sense. Other kinds of acrostic are produced by the dissection of words, to which the Chinese script readily lends itself, much as we form charades.’ Literature.—Gustav BickeU, Carmina Vet. Test. Metrics (1882), and art. ‘ Ein alphabetisches Lied Jesus Sirachs ’ (1882) in ZKT; art. ‘Acrostic’ in Oxford Mew Eng. Diet.; I. Abra- hams, art. ‘Acrostics’ in JE; Lagarde, Symmicta, i. 107 (1877); Bingham, Works, Bk. xiv. i. 12 (vol. v. 17, Oxford, 1855); Driver, LOT, ch. vii.; Karl Krumbacher, Gesch. der Byzant. Litteratur, § 287 (1897), and Index, s.vv. ‘ Akrostichis,’ ‘Alphabete’; Orac. Sibyll. ed. Rzach (1891), Geffcken (1902); JPh, No. lix. art. ‘The Alphabet of Ben Sira’ (1906); Appendix (1900) to C. Taylor’s Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 93 f.; Otfrids von Weissenburg Evangelienbuch, ed. Johann Kelle, vol. i. (1856), see, after the Introduction, pp. 3f., 12 f., 389-394; Tir.„ . r. 'LeseoucA4 (1897), pp. 40f., C. Taylor. raune, Althochdeutsches ACT, ACTION.—The English word ‘action’ is used very widely. We speak of the ‘ action’ of one body upon another as readily as of a man’s action, and we have no word like the Greek irpafis or the German Handlung, das Handeln, to desig- nate human agency as such, both in general and in the particular instance. In the word ‘ conduct ’ we have a general term for human action as such, when we speak of it in a more or less comprehen- sive way, but in speaking of the particular instance](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29001225_0001_0103.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
