For the character of Jeffreys not even the most impartial historian can say a good word. Of strong intelligence and clear legal head, and, according to Roger North, when he was in temper and matters indifferent came before him, becoming his seat of justice better than any other that author had seen in his place, he might have risen to a high position among the learned luminaries of the bench, had he not prostituted his talents to unworthy ends, and swamped his faculties in the most brutal intemperance. He treated all from whom he had nothing to expect with coarse insolence, taking an especially malicious delight in giving, as he phrased it, “a lick with the rough side of his tongue” to those whom his maudlin caresses of the night before had encouraged to presume. No less was he pleased to revile at dissenters; “Show me,” be said, “a Presbyterian, and I will engage to show a lying knave.” He is remarkable as the only politically prominent lawyer of his century who never sat in the House of Commons, nor left a single publication behind him. In the House of Lords he once attempted to use the insolent abuse of his court habits, but was compelled humbly to apologize, in tears of maudlin chagrin, to all whom he had attacked.
The chief sources for particulars about Jeffreys are the State Trials and North’s Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, together with contemporary pamphlets and squibs. These materials have been skilfully used by Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, and by Macaulay in his History. See also Woolrych’s Memoirs of Judge Jeffreys, 1827.
JEHOL, or Cheng-te-fu, a city of Mongolia, famous as the seat of the summer palace of the emperor of China, is situated near 118° E. long. and 41° N. lat., about 140 miles north-east of Peking, with which it is connected by an excellent line of road. Though not enclosed by walls, the town, which is about 2 miles long, bears the stamp of a flourishing Chinese town of the same rank. The population is stated at 10,000. The palace, called Pi-shu-shan-chuang, or “mountain lodge for avoiding heat,” was built in 1703 on the plan of the palace of Yuan-ming-yuan near Peking. A substantial brick wall 6 miles in circuit encloses several well-wooded heights and extensive gardens, rockeries, pavilions, temples, &c., after the usual Chinese style. In the vicinity of Jehol are numerous Lama monasteries and temples, the most remarkable being Putala-su, built on the model of the palace of the grand lama of Tibet at Putala. It is thus described by Mr Bushell (Journ. R. Geog. Soc., Lond., 1874): “The principal building of this temple is a huge square erection with eleven rows of windows, the stories coloured alternately red, green, and yellow, surmounted by a row of five dagobas, and with the roof covered with enamelled tiles of a bright torquoise blue. The general effect is inexpressibly bizarre.”
JEHOVAH is the current European transcription of the sacred tetragrammaton יהוה. This was punctuated by the Massorets with the vowels ĕ (for ă), ō, ā of the word Adonai which the later Jews habitually substituted in reading the ineffable name. It is now generally agreed that Jahwé (Yahwé) is the true pronunciation, a conclusion which is supported not only by the linguistic argument derived from the fact that the various contracted forms in which the name appears, either separately (Jah) or in compound proper names (Jô, Jĕho, Jāhu) are all reducible to Jahw, but also by the testimony of ancient tradition (thus Theodoret ascribes the pronunciation Ἰαβέ to the Samaritans, Epiphanius gives Ἰαβέ or Ἰαυέ, and Clement apparently Ἰαουέ. Etymologically, Jahwe may be regarded as the imperfect either of Qal or Hiphil of הוה; the former view seems to be that taken in the Pentateuch, but many critics now incline to the other, according to which the name may be translated as meaning “He who causes to be.” It seems to have come to be invested with new and richer meanings as the religion of Israel developed in spirituality and depth; but as the name of the national deity it must have been older than the time of Moses; at least the name of the mother of Moses is compounded with it. It is conceivable that in the earliest period of its history the word was not associated with any idea so high even as that of “creator”; the Hiphil of הוה in the Aramaic sense of “fall” would give “he who causes (rain or lightning) to fall” as the nearest approach to the original meaning. For the later sense of the name Exod. iii. 14 is the locus classicus. The Palestinian tradition finds in this verse the assertion of God’s eternity (comp. Rev. i. 8); the Alexandrian exegesis refers it to his absolute existence. More probably the vague “I will be what I will be” (the emphasis lying on the first verb as in Exod. xxxiii. 19) is used to convey the idea of that all-sufficiency of God’s grace which is wider than the widest faith (comp. Hos. i. 6, 7).
The literature of the subject is immense. Of older books it is enough to refer to the Decas Exercitationum collected by Reland (Utrecht, 1707); for the latest aspects of the questions involved, see Gesenius, Thes., s.v.; Ewald, Gesch., ii. 121 sq.; Lagarde, Psalt. Hieron., (1874), p. 153 sq., and Orientalia, ii. 27 sq.; Schrader in Schenkel’s Bib. Lex., s.v. “Jahve”; W. Aldis Wright in Journ. of Philol., iv. p. 70. Against recent proposals to identify Jahwe with non-Israelite deities, see Baudissin, Studien, i. (Leipsic, 1876); and in favour of derivation from an Assyrian form of the Divine name ia-u (Accadian i), see Delitzsch, Wo lag das Parodies, p. 158 sq., Leipsic, 1881. A summary of recent discussion is given by W. Robertson Smith in Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., January, 1876.
JEJEEBHOY, Sir Jamsetjee (1783–1859), a Parsee merchant and great public benefactor, was born of poor parents in Bombay, July 15, 1783. Left an orphan while still very young, he had many difficulties to overcome at the outset of the mercantile career he chose for himself. On one occasion the ship in which he and all his goods were was captured by the French, and the young merchant was landed penniless at the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he procured a passage to Bombay through the charity of some Dutch ladies; and, resolutely beginning life afresh, he rose to be one of the most opulent Parsee merchants in India. His lavish benevolence, which recognized no difference of nation, sect, or class, and extended even to the brute creation, has won him enduring honour. In 1822 he paid the debts of all the poor debtors in Bombay jail; he enriched his native city with a hospital and an educational establishment for Parsee children, a school of art and other benevolent institutions, and contributed largely to the Grant Medical College, while to the public works at Bombay, Nowsaree, and elsewhere he gave large grants, as well as to the patriotic fund and the Indian sufferers fund after the mutiny. Eleven schools owe their foundation to his munificence, in which 2710 Parsee children are educated. It is estimated that he gave away upwards of 26 lakhs of rupees. Knighted in 1842, he was promoted to a baronetcy in 1857; a statue was voted to him in 1856, and was unveiled in Bombay town-hall on August 1, 1859. At his death on April 15, 1859, his property was estimated at 8,550,000 rupees. According to an act of the legislative council of India, the name Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy must be assumed by all his successors in the baronetcy. His son (1811–1877) was prominent as the head of the Parsee community in Bombay, and exercised a considerable influence among the Europeans. He was a member of the legislative council of Bombay.
