MOABITE STONE;
A FAC-SIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL INSCRIPTION,
AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION,
A HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
Second Srition, Mebised and Gnlargen,
WITH A MAP OF THE LAND OF MOAB,
ay
CHRISTIAN D. GINSBURG, LLD.
LONDON:
REEVES AND TURNER 196, STRAND,
Mooectaxt.PREFACE.
As the First Edition of my Essay on the Moahite Stone was
ralated gratuitously by the
Proprietors among the Members of the British Association, and as there has been a demand for
purchasing it, I have been induced to iste a Second Edition, which should be accessible to the
Had T studied my own feelings, I should have deferred the publication of the Second
little longer, to see whether M. Gannean could at last be induced to publish Photographs,
or Casts of the squeeze of the entire Stone, and of the frugments after it was broken up, which he
possesses, so as to enable us to test his joining together of the shattered pieces, But the withdrawal
of my Essay from the market led many to bel
Edition a
ve that it was either owing to some literary
Viunders which bad escaped my notice, or that I had changed my mind on the genuineness of the
Stone, ‘The first whisper I can safely pass over without explanation, As to the second I ean only
remark, that the scholarship of the individual who should call the genuineness of the Inscription in
question is not worth a day's purchase.
In preparing the Second Edition for the Press I carefully perused both the important and
the unimportant ‘Treatises amd Notices which have appeared separately, and in Periodicals, upon the
Moabite Stone, as may be seen from alwost every line of the commentary.
‘Through the aid of the Coun
of the British Association, and the recent exploration of
Moab in connection with the Palestine Exploration Society, I am enabled to publish in this eilition
a new Map of Moab, embodying the investigations of Captain Warren and Mr, Palmer, which will
materially aid the understanding of the campaign described on the Stone.
As I greatly desire that my Treatise should be intelligible to every ordinary reader of the
Scriptures, I have tried to explain the very rudiments of Hebrew grammar, and have translated
nearly every foreign quotation, whether Oriental or Occidental, ‘This, I am sure, the more advanced
student will exeuse 5 since it is as important for educated people generally, who often wonder what
dialects the neighbouring people of the Jews spoke, as it is for the scholar, to know in what
Imguage Solomon, Omri, Jehoshaphat and Blisha, who are described as holding converse with the
different nations of Canaan, carried of their conversation,