Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/783

J O 11 J O S 749 notary Jordanes, but is the translation of some thought which first found utterance through the lips of a Gothic minstrel. The fourth section (chaps, xlviii.-lx. ) traces the history of the East Goths from the same Hunnish invasion to the first overthrow of the Gothic monarchy in Italy (376-539). In this fourth section are inserted, somewhat out of their proper place, some valuable details as to the Gothi Minorcs, " an immense people dwelling in the region of Nicopolis, with their high priest and primate Vulfilas, who is said also to have taught them letters." The book closes with the allusion to Germanus and the panegyric on Justinian as the conqueror of the Goths referred to above. . As to the style and literary character of Jordanes, every author who has used him speaks in terms of severe censure. When he is left to himself and not merely transcribing, he is sometimes scarcely grammatical. There are awkward gaps in his narrative and statements inconsistent with each other. He quotes, as if he were familiarly acquainted with their writings, about twenty Greek and Roman writers, of whom it is almost certain that he had not read more than three or four. At the same time he does not quote the chronicler Marcellinus, from whom he has copied verbatim the his tory of the deposition of Augustulus. All these faults make him a peculiarly unsatisfactory authority to depend upon where we can not check his statements by those of other authors. It may, how ever, be pleaded in extenuation that he is professedly a transcriber, and, if his story be correct, a transcriber under peculiarly unfavour able circumstances. He has also himself suffered much from the inaccuracy of copyists. But nothing has really been more unfortu nate for the reputation of Jordanes as a writer than the extreme preciousness of the information which he has preserved to vis. The Teutonic tribes whose dim original he records have in the course of centuries attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Mauriac plains, of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had at least as important bearings on the destinies of the world as Marathon or Waterloo. And thus the hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced into prominence, almost into rivalry with the finished productions of the great writers of classical antiquity. No wonder that it stands the comparison badly ; but with all its faults the DC Rebus Getitis of Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the De Moribus Gcrmanorum of Tacitus, as a chief source of information respect ing the history, institutions, and modes of thought of our Teutonic forefathers. llfam/smpts.The chief MSS. of the De Reims Geticis are one at Heidelberg of the 8th century and one at the Vatican of the jlOth, one at Milan, two of the llth and l 2th centuries at Vienna, and one of the 12th century at Munich. Unfortunately the Heidelberg and Vienna MSS. perished in the fire at Prof. Mommsen s house, but not before he had accurately collated them. Editions. The editio princeps of the De Rebus Geticis was published by Peu- tinger, at Augsburg, 1515. Two of the best known editions are those in Muratori s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. i. (which gives Garet s text collated by J. A. Saxe with the Ambrosian MS., and which also contains the De liegnorum Successione), and in Grotius s Historia Gotthorum, VandaJorum, et Langobar- dorum, Amsterdam, 1655. A new edition is expected from Professor Mommscn. Literature. The foregoing article is chiefly founded on Von Sybel s essay, De fontibus Jordanis (1838), Schirren s De rations qux inter Jordanem et Cassio- dorum intercedat Commentatio, Dorpat, 1858; Kopke s Die Anfange des Konig- thums bei den Got hen, Berlin, 1859; Dahn s Die Konige der Germanen, vol. ii., Munich, 18C1; Kbert s Geschic/ite der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur, Leipsic, 1874 ; and Wuttenbach s Deittschland s GeschichtsqueUen im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1877. (T. H.) JOFtTIX, JOHN (1698-1770), a writer on theological subjects, was the son of a Protestant refugee from Brittany, and was born in London 23d October 1698. In his tenth year he entered Charterhouse school, and in 1715 he be came a pensioner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where his reputation as a Greek scholar led the classical tutor of his college to select him to translate certain passages from Eustathius for the use of Pope in his translation of Homer. He graduated B.A. in 1719 and M.A. in 1722. In the latter year he published a small volume of Latin verse entitled Lusus Foetid. Having received priest s orders in 1724, he was in 1726 presented by his college to the vicarage of Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, an appointment which he resigned in 1730 to become preacher of a chapel in New Street, London. In 1731, along with some friends, he began a publication entitled Miscellaneous Observa tions on Authors Ancient and Modern, which appeared at intervals during two years. In 1737 he was presented to the vicarage of Eastwell in Kent, and in 1751 he became rector of St Dunstan s-in-the-East. Shortly after becoming chaplain to the bishop of London in 1762, he was appointed to a prebendal stall of St Paul s, and to the vicarage of Kensington, and in 1764 he was made archdeacon of London. He died at Kensington, September 5, 1770. The principal works of Jortin are Discussions Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion, 1746 ; Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, 1751 ; Life of Erasmus, 2 vols., 1750, 1760, founded on the life by Le Clerc, but con taining a large amount of new matter ; and Tracts Philolo gical, Critical, and Miscellaneous, 1790. All his works dis play great learning and some acuteness both of research and criticism, but though written in a livelystyle they do not bear that stamp of originality which confers permanent interest. See Disney s Life of Jortin, 1792; and the "Account of his Life and Writings " prefixed to an edition of the Remarks on Ecclesiastical History published in 1816. JOSEPH, the most powerful tribe of northern Israel, occupied the centre of the land from the plain of Esdraelon to the mountain country of Benjamin and threw out colonies to Bash an and northern Gilead (see ISRAEL, p. 397). Unlike the other sons of Jacob, Joseph is usually reckoned as two tribes, the younger but more numerous tribe of Ephraim, to which Joshua belonged, having the pre eminence over the other Manasseh. In Ephraim lay the city of Shechem with the tomb of the tribal ancestor, and the great sanctuary of Shiloh where the ark stood till the battle of Ebenezer destroyed for a time the hegemony of Joseph, till after the division of the kingdoms he again became " the crowned one of his brethren " (Gen. xlix. 26 ; Deut. xxxiii. 16). Along with the small tribe of Benjamin, which as its name indicates lay immediately to the south, the house of Joseph constituted the group known as sons of Rachel (the ewe), which with the sons of Leah (the antelope) claimed a higher ancestry than the other Hebrews (the sons of Jacob s concubines). The name of Joseph, the tribal ancestor, is explained in Gen. xxx. 24, in accordance with the usual spelling ^pi 1 *, as meaning " he addeth" (hence in Ps. Ixxxi. 6 [E. V. 5] the resolved form ^Dtir.). Another hand in Gen. xxx. 23 takes the word from ^IPN, " he taketh away." The history of Joseph, Gen. xxxvii.-l., belongs almost wholly to the earliest strata of the Pentateuch, the narratives of the Jehovist and non-Levitical Elohist, the larger share belonging to the latter author, himself probably a member of the house of Joseph. The history of Joseph in Egypt displays remarkable familiarity with the circumstances and usages of that country (see Ebers, Aegyptenund die Eucher Mosis, Leipsic, 1868), but presents no data which enable us with certainty to combine the Biblical record with known events in Egyptian history. It is still disputed whether Joseph came to Egypt before, under, or after the Hyksos. The first opinion, which is supported by Bunsen and others, involves a considerable re duction in the period of five hundred and eleven years assigned to the Hyksos by Manetho, while on the other hand a date subsequent to the expulsion of the Semitic invaders (e.g. , under Sethi I. as Lepsius suggests) demands a great shortening of the four hundred and thirty years of Exod. xii. 40, if the Pharaoh of the oppression was Sethi s successor, Rameses II. That the Israelites entered Egypt under the Hyksos is already mentioned as the current opinion of his time by George Syncellus, and is followed by many moderns, who observe that the promotion of a Hebrew appears most natural under a Semitic dynasty. See EGYPT, vol. vii. p. 741, and for Brugsch s supposed monumental reference to the seven years famine, ibid., p. 736. The Egyptian tale of " The Two Brothers," which presents a remarkable parallel to the story of Joseph, is given in Records of the Past, vol. ii. The name of Joseph was common among the later Jews ; of the Biblical personages by whom it was borne the best known are Joseph the husband of Mary, Joseph of Ari- mathaia, Joseph Barnabas, and Joseph Barsabas. JOSEPH, the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, was a descendant of the house of David, and followed the trade of a carpenter in the village of Nazareth. Of his personal history practically nothing is recorded in Scripture. It is probable that he had died before the beginning of the public ministry of Christ ; at least this seems a fair inference from the fact that no mention of him is made in passages relating to this period where the mother and brethren of Jesus are introduced. From John xix. 26 it is clear