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THE OLD TESTAMENT
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THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY
JOHN HENRY BURN, B.D.
Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Aberdeen.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. By W. E.
COLLINS, M.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, King's College,
London. Crown Svo, 3.5. fid. [Ready.
THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE PRAYER BOOK. By JOHN
DOWDEN, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. Crown Svo, 3$. 6d. [Ready.
SOME NEW TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By ARTHUR WRIGHT,
M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Queens' College, Cambridge. Crown
Svo, 6s. [Ready.
EVOLUTION. By FRANK B. JEVONS, M.A., D.Litt., Principal of Bishop
Hatfield's Hall, Durham. Crown Svo, 3^. fid. [Ready.
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND HEREAFTER. By
Canon WINTERBOTHAM, M.A., B.Sc., LL.B. Cr. 8vo, $s. 6d. [Ready.
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP. By
JOHN P. PETERS, PH.D., Sc.D., D.D. Crown Svo, 6s.
THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS. By E. T. GREEN, M.A.,
Professor of Hebrew and Theology at St. David's College, Lampeter.
THE CHURCHMAN'S PRIMER. By G. HARFORD-BATTERSBY, M.A.
THE CHURCHMAN'S DAY BOOK. By J. H. BURN, B.D.
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN THE COLONIES AND MISSION
FIELD. By ALLAN B. WEBB, D.D.
HISTORY OF THE PAPACY. By J. P. WHITNEY, M.A.
OUR CONTROVERSY WITH ROME. By J. M. DANSON, D.D.
A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By ANGUS M. MACKAY, B.A.
A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By J. H. SHEPHERD, M.A.
THE HEBREW PROPHET. By L. W. BATTEN, Ph.D.
AN INTRODUCTION TO TEXTUAL CRITICISM. By A. M.
KNIGHT, M. A., Fellow and Dean of Gonville and Caius College, Camb.
BIBLE REVISION. By J. J. S. PEROWNE, D.D., Bishop of Worcester.
DEVOTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PAULINE EPISTLES. By
JOHN GOTT, D.D., Bishop of Truro.
PREACHING. By FREDERIC RELTON, A.K.C.
THE WITNESS OF ARCH/EOLOGY. By C. J. BALL, M.A.
ENGLISH ECCLESIOLOGY. By J. N. COMPER.
CONFIRMATION. By H. T. KINGDON, D.D., Bishop of Fredericton.
INSPIRATION. By Canon BENHAM, D.D.
MIRACLES. By THOMAS B. STRONG, B.D., Student of Christ Church,
Oxford.
PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. By V. H. STANTON, D.D., Ely Pro-
fessor of Divinity, Cambridge.
THE ATONEMENT. By R. M. BENSON, M.A., Student of Christ
Church, Oxford.
THE GREAT WORLD RELIGIONS FROM A CHRISTIAN STAND.
POINT. By H. E. J. BEVAN, M.A., Gresham Professor of Divinity.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By J. A. MACCULLOCH.
ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. By W. DIGBY THURNAM.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
AND
THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP
BY
JOHN P. PETERS, PH.D., Sc.D., D.D.
RECTOR OF ST. MJCHAEL's CHURCH, NEW YORK
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1901
THIS VOLUME
IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF HIM
WHO WAS ALIKE
MY FLESHLY AND MY SPIRITUAL
FATHER
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO consider all the Old Testament problems which
are, at the present moment, calling for solution
would be far too large a field for one small volume.
My effort has been to set before the reader first of all
the fundamental problems involved in the acceptance
of the Old Testament as Sacred Scripture, and in this
part of the work I have been obliged to consider to
some extent the New Testament also, since New and
Old are inextricably bound together. To these funda-
mental problems — how the Bible has been and should
be treated, what is to be understood by the inspiration
of the Sacred Scriptures, the teaching of the Church
with regard to those Scriptures, and the application of
the doctrine of the Incarnation to the study of the
written Word — I have devoted the first of the four
parts of which this volume is composed.
In the second part I have endeavoured to trace briefly
the history of that thought-development which has re-
sulted in the modern methods of Bible study, commonly,
but erroneously, called "Higher Criticism," and to show
more particularly how the application of the principles
of evolution and comparison has affected our view of
the history of the religion of Israel.
In the third part I have attempted to give an illustra-
tion of modern methods of Bible study in general by a
particular application in the case of one book — Psalms.
x PREFACE
Finally, I have devoted the fourth and last part to a
survey of archaeological discoveries bearing on the Old
Testament, and the treatment of a few points in which
the history of the religious, political, and literary history
of Israel has been illuminated by archaeological re-
search, concluding, as in the former part, by a more
particular illustration in the treatment of one book-
Daniel.
I have chosen the problems of the books of Psalms
and Daniel for more especial consideration, partly
because in recent writings on the Old Testament —
Introductions, Commentaries, and the like — these two
books seem to me to have received the least satisfactory
treatment, but chiefly because, having made a more
special study of these books, I am more at home in
them and better able to contribute something new to
their discussion.
Some of the chapters of this volume have already
appeared in substance in various publications, and one,
the chapter on "The Bible, the Church, and Reason,"
was read before the American Church Congress in New
York, in 1893. All these have been revised or entirely
rewritten for the present volume, so that, while it seems
proper to make this acknowledgment of former use, it
is only fair to my readers and myself to say that all
such material has been subjected to a new and careful
study in the light of more recent discoveries and in-
vestigations.
With these words of explanation, I commend the
volume to the kind consideration of my readers, trusting
that it may help some who are perplexed over Old
Testament problems.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE BIBLE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ENGLISH BIBLE .... 3
II. THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON . . 24
III. THE INCARNATION AND THE NEWER CRITICISM . . 39
IV. OUR LORD'S TREATMENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT . 55
PART II
EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE
V. MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE . . 81
VI. THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL . 99
VII. THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MESSIANIC HOPE 135
PART III
THE BOOK OF PSALMS
VIII. THE GROWTH OF THE JEWISH PSALTER . . .155
IX. PSALM HEADINGS . . ... 184
X. THE STORY OF THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER . 194
PART IV
ARCH/EOLOGY AND THE BIBLE
XL A REVIEW OF RESULTS . . . . 237
XII. How THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN . . 256
XIII. STONE WORSHIP . . . 276
XIV. THE ARK ... .284
XV. THE BOOK OF DANIEL . . ... 293
APPENDIX ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH . 317
INDEX .... . 323
ERRATA
Page 149, line 13, delete "and modified"
i, !57, .' 15, for "for" read "from"
,, 260, „ 23, for "and" read ","
» 3°9. .. 1S> f°r "three" read "these"
PART I
THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE
OF THE BIBLE
B
THE OLD TESTAMENT
AND THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP
CHAPTER I
THE ENGLISH BIBLE
I. THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE books of the Hebrew Bible are arranged in three
great divisions, called, respectively, The Law, The
Prophets, and The Writings. The first of these great sections,
the Law, comprises the five books which we commonly call
the Pentateuch. These five books are treated in the Hebrew
as one whole, and called not " the five books," but " the five
parts of the Law." These five parts are named, respectively,
after the words with which they commence : " In the begin-
ning," "And these are the names," "And he called," "In the
wilderness" (not the first but almost the first word of Numbers
in the Hebrew original), and "These are the words."
The second great division, called the Prophets, is divided
into two sections, called, respectively, the Former Prophets and
the Latter Prophets, each of which consists of four books : the
Former Prophets being Joshua, Judges, Samuel (in two parts),
and Kings (also in two parts); and the Latter Prophets consisting
of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, that is the twelve
minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,
which are regarded as one book, and are arranged among
themselves in a purely haphazard manner, as it would seem,
and not according to any system that has yet been discovered.
The third great division, the Writings, consists of Psalms,
4 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Preacher,
Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (in two parts),
in the order and under the titles given.
The significance of this arrangement is not hard to find,
and its historical value is very considerable in determining the
date and the mutual relations of the books which compose
the canon. The great divisions which we have observed mark
three stages in the growth of the Old Testament canon, or
perhaps we might say three canons of the Old Testament. The
original Bible of the Hebrews was the Law. This was adopted
as the canon of Holy Scripture about B.C. 440. Other books
existed at that time, some of which were held in great rever-
ence and ultimately accepted as Holy Scripture ; but at the
outset the Law alone was canonised, and to this day it has
never lost the position of primacy thus given to it. In our
Lord's time it was regarded as possessing a sanctity above
the books of the later canon of the Prophets, a fact em-
phasised in the synagogue reading, as well as in the greater
attention paid to the study of the Law by the schoolmen.
The Law having been adopted as canon at an earlier date
than the other books, became the Bible of the Samaritan as
well as of the Jew, while the Prophets and the Writings,
adopted by the latter after the hatred between the two
churches had become intense, were not accepted by the
former. It is owing to this fact that there have come down
to us two independent Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch, the
text of the Jewish and the text of the Samaritan Church,
whereas we have but one Hebrew text of the remainder of
the Old Testament. We are thus enabled to control the
text of the Pentateuch from a critical standpoint, as we cannot
in the Prophets and the Writings, where, besides the one
official Jewish text, we have only translations into other
languages. It ought to be added that, owing to the greater
antiquity of the canon of the Law, the greater veneration in
which it was always held, and the greater attention paid to its
study, the text has come down to us in a better and purer
condition than the text of any other part of the Old Testament.
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 5
The second canon of Holy Scripture adopted by the Jews,
and added to the canon of the Law, was the canon of the
Prophets. These were canonised officially, it is commonly
supposed, about B.C. 200. This does not mean that the
writings of the prophets, or most of them, had not been in
existence long before this date, or that these writings or the
greater part of them had not been held in respect or even
counted sacred before this date, but that this is the date at
which that canon was officially determined and the limit of
the Prophets fixed. But although thus canonised, the Prophets
were never regarded, as already pointed out, as quite so sacred
as the Law. In the service of the synagogues the readings
from the Prophets held an inferior position. For this reason
also, as stated above, the text of the Prophets was not studied
and handed down with so great care, so that while the text
of the Pentateuch has come down to us in a practically
perfect form, that of the Prophets presents many difficulties,
owing to corruption of the original. But there is another
reason also for the comparatively corrupt condition in which
the text of some of the prophetical books has come down to
us, namely, the long period which elapsed between the period
of their composition and the period of their canonisation. It
is now generally recognised that a great part of the writings
known to the Jews as " The Prophets " was composed at an
earlier date than that at which the Law was put into its final
shape. Some of the prophetical books were composed before
B.C. 700. A period of five hundred years, therefore, elapsed
between the date of their composition and the date at which they
were definitely accepted as sacred canon. During this long
period they were not guarded and preserved with that careful
conservatism with which we are familiar in the history of later
Judaism, and the opportunity was afforded for many curious
corruptions and changes of the text. What took place can
be seen by anyone who will compare the Septuagint, or Greek
translation, used by the Jews of Alexandria, with the Hebrew
text which has come down to us, and which was the Bible of
the Jews of Palestine. In the Law the two are identical, with
6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the exception of some altogether insignificant minutiae, but
in some of the books of the canon of the Prophets the diver-
gencies between the two are quite startling to those whose
ideas of the quality of inspiration depend on the letter rather
than on the spirit. So, for instance, in the First Book of
Samuel parts of the story of David's encounter with Goliath
are lacking in the Septuagint, namely, the part which tells of
the way in which David chanced to come to the camp of
Israel, and his meeting with his brothers (i Sam. xvii.
12-31), and the part which tells of his interview with Saul
and Jonathan after he had slain Goliath (chaps, xvii. 55 to
xviii. 5). Indeed, as a general rule, in the canon of the
Prophets, the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew by the
omission of material which the latter contains. The most
striking instance of this in the whole canon is in the Book
of Jeremiah, which is about one-eighth shorter in the Alex-
andrine Greek Bible than in the Palestinian Hebrew. More-
over, the arrangement of the contents of the book is quite
different in the two versions. It is evident on examination
that the translators of the Septuagint had a different Hebrew
text before them from that which has come down to us.
Which is the more correct? and which stands nearer to the
original? On that point opinions differ, and it is not my
intention to go into the matter here. I have called attention
to the difference merely to show the careless manner in which
the text of the Prophets was treated during the period before
those books were canonised, in comparison with the care be-
stowed on the accurate preservation of the text of the Law.
The third and last canon of sacred Scripture adopted by the
Jewish Church was that of the Writings, and it is in this that
we find those disputed books about which a battle was waged
very like the battle in the Christian Church about some of the
Catholic Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apoca-
lypse. Even in the age of the Apostles the limit of the
Writings was still in dispute, and we find St. Jude referring to
the Book of Enoch as canonical Scripture. In this he may be
said to represent the party of inclusion as over against that of
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 7
exclusion. It was the latter party, the especially anti-Christian
party, which finally prevailed, when about 100 A.D. the limits
of the Writings were fixed by the Palestinian Jews as we now
have them. The books in our present canon about which the
battle raged the hottest were the Song of Songs and the
Preacher or Ecclesiastes.
This last canon, as a whole, naturally took a position of
authority inferior to that of the Prophets, just as the Prophets
were inferior to the Law. This distinction is clearly marked
in synagogue use, no lessons from the Writings being appointed
for the regular Sabbath lessons. On certain festivals, however,
five of these books, the so-called Rolls, were appointed to be
read, namely, the Song of Songs at Passover ; Ruth at Pente-
cost ; Lamentations at the commemoration of the destruction
of Jerusalem ; Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles ; and
Esther at Purim. It must not be understood, however, that
none of the books constituting the canon of the Writings were
regarded as sacred by the Jews before 100 A.D. It was not
canonisation of these books which made them sacred : canon-
isation was rather the official recognition of what had already
become the belief of the Church. Its main effect was to
define the limit of the Palestinian canon by cutting off some
of the books which the Alexandrian Jews had accepted.
In a general way, as may be seen from this resume of the
history of the growth of the Old Testament canon, we should
look for the older books in the older canon, and especially is
this the case as between the two later canons, the Prophets
and the Writings. In the case of the Law there is a question
of difference in kind, the books of that canon having been set
off from those that follow, not so much on the ground of age
as on the ground of their difference of contents. But as be-
tween the Prophets and the Writings no such difference of
contents exists. That which has placed Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, and Kings in the Prophets, while Ezra, Nehemiah,
Chronicles, and Esther are in the Writings, is the difference of
date. At the time when the canon of the Prophets was fixed the
first-mentioned books had been already hallowed by age, whereas
8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the latter were either unwritten or comparatively new. A
similar argument would seem to hold good with regard to the
exclusion of the prophecies of Daniel from the canon of the
Prophets ; that at the time when the Prophets were canonised
Daniel was either not in existence, or else not yet sufficiently
hallowed by the very important test of antiquity to be admitted
to that canon. In a general way the division between the
Prophets and the Writings is due to difference in age, or at
least this is true as between books of the same general char-
acter appearing in the two different canons. It will be evident,
then, I think, from this brief sketch, that the arrangement of
the Hebrew Bible possesses a considerable historical value, and
may be used in helping us to determine the mutual relation of
the books of the Old Testament.
At the time when the Old Testament was translated into
Greek the first canon of the Hebrew Bible, the canon of the
Law, had become so sacred that it was taken over as it stood,
with no change in the order of the books. But this was not
the case with the remainder of the Old Testament, and indeed
the Old Testament as we now have it was not in existence
at the time that the Septuagint translation began to be made.
The Law, and the Law only, was the Bible of the Jews. The
canon of the Prophets was still in flux, and the canon of the
Writings was scarcely yet in sight, although most of the books
composing those two canons were already in existence very
much in their present form. The Septuagint translation began,
as is evident, with the Law, which is supposed to have been
translated by learned Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria for
the great library founded by the Ptolemies, somewhere in the
first half of the third century B.C. The remaining books of
the Old Testament, together with some other sacred literature,
which, although it won high approval, at least for a time, was
never adopted into the stricter canon of the Jews of Palestine,
were translated from time to time to be added to the same
royal library, the translation of the entire Septuagint Old Testa-
ment occupying in all probability more than a hundred years.
We have seen how, in the Palestinian canon, the Bible grew
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 9
by a process of accretion, in such manner that the books of
the Bible outside of the Law were arranged in general in the
order of their composition. A very different plan was pursued
by the Alexandrian Jews, who used as their Bible the transla-
tions into Greek made for the library of the Ptolemies, in-
cluding that considerable mass of material which we ordinarily
designate as Apocrypha. Influenced by contact with the
logical and critical -minded Greeks, they sought to arrange
these books according to some scientific and critical method,
as men counted scientific and critical in those days. The
Law was treated as a whole, and left untouched, so far as
the arrangement of the books was concerned, but the books
were furnished with new titles, descriptive of their contents,
and the supposed authorship was noted in the further titles
—first, second, etc., book of Moses.
The Prophets and Writings were combined and rearranged
in what was regarded as a rational manner. The method
adopted was in general this : Those books which were regarded
as historical were placed first in what was supposed to be their
chronological order, so as to give a continuous history of the
Jews. After these followed the non-historical books, arranged
partly according to their subjects, partly according to the dates
of their supposed authors. It ought to be said, however, that,
so far as we know, no arrangement achieved such general
agreement as to be accepted in all its details. The famous
Vatican Codex, known as B, which is regarded as representing
the best text, has this arrangement of the books : From Genesis
to Second Esdras, which latter includes, along with much that
we count apocryphal, our Book of Nehemiah, are in the
order to which we are accustomed in the English Bibles ; then
follow Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Job, Wisdom
of Solomon, Wisdom of the son of Sirach, Esther, Judith,
Tobit, the Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamenta-
tions, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The Codex
Alexandrinus, in the British Museum, arranges the books in
three volumes, as follows : In the first volume Genesis to
Chronicles inclusive, in the order to which we are accustomed
io THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
in our English Bibles. In the second volume the Minor
Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, the Epistle
of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, Tobit, Judith, First and
Second Esdras, and the four books of the Maccabees. The
third volume contains the Psalter, together with the canticles
used in the services of the Church — such as Exodus xv., the
Magnificat, etc. — Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
Wisdom of Solomon, and Wisdom of the son of Sirach. The
Psalter of Solomon is added after the New Testament at the
end of the fourth volume. But these are not the only arrange-
ments of the books of the Old Testament which we can trace
to the scholars of the Alexandrian school. Another arrange-
ment, which is represented by Tischendorf, in his edition of
the Septuagint, is as follows : Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges,
Ruth, four books of Kings (two of them being what we know
as First and Second Samuel), two books of Chronicles, two
books of Esdras (the second including our Nehemiah), Tobit,
Judith, Esther, in which, as it is found in the Septuagint, there
is a considerable portion which we count apocryphal. At this
point end the books counted as historical. Then follow Job,
supposed to have been written by Moses ; Psalms, ascribed
to David; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, and Wisdom of
Solomon, supposed to have been written by Solomon ; Ecclesi-
asticus, placed immediately after the writings of Solomon, not
because of its antiquity, but because of the similarity of style
and subject; the twelve Minor Prophets, the date of the earliest
of which was earlier than the date of Isaiah ; Isaiah ; Jeremiah ;
Lamentations, called in the Septuagint Lamentations of Jere-
miah, and attributed to that prophet as their author ; the Epistle
of Jeremiah ; Ezekiel ; Daniel, including of course the apocry-
phal portions ; and the books of the Maccabees, which seem to
have received their position apart from all the other historical
books at the close of the entire canon on account of their late
date. Another interesting and curious arrangement, which grew
out of the methods of the Alexandrian school, is found in the
Syriac Bible, viz. Pentateuch, Job, as written by Moses, Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesi-
THE ENGLISH BIBLE n
astes, Ruth, Canticles, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Isaiah, the twelve
Minor Prophets, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel.
All these various arrangements are meant, as will be seen, to
be scientific, as over against the haphazard chronological order
of the Hebrew. In certain points, also, all agree, as for instance
in the arrangement of a section of historical books in such a
manner as to carry the history of the Jews along in an orderly
manner. But that I may not become tedious, I pass on to an
arrangement adopted or adapted from the Alexandrian schools,
which we find in the Latin Vulgate, and which is of especial
interest to us and deserving of special study, because it is the
arrangement adopted by the translators of the English Bible.
This arrangement, as we find it in the Vulgate, is as follows :
Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings,
Chronicles, four books of Esdras, the second of which is our
Book of Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther. Here ended the
historical section. The remaining books were arranged in the
supposed order of their composition : Job, supposed to have
been written by Moses, the Psalter, ascribed to David, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Wisdom of Solomon, attri-
buted to Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, placed here because of the
similarity of its subject and treatment to the books immediately
preceding, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel,
Daniel, and the twelve Minor Prophets in the usual order,
which is that of the Hebrew, and which remained unchanged
in the Greek translations, because the Twelve were considered
as comprising together one book, and were therefore treated
as inseparable. The three books of the Maccabees were
placed at the end of the whole collection and not after the
historical books, to which they would seem naturally to have
belonged, because the consciousness of their late date was
still strong. It will be observed that the Latin Vulgate
followed the Alexandrian school, not only in arranging the
books in a critical and scientific manner, but also in adopting
into the canon a considerable number of books which were
not found in the canon of the Palestinian Jews.
It is, as already stated, the arrangement of the Latin Vulgate
12 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
which was adopted by our translators, and has now become to
the mass of our people part of the Bible itself. For, while at
the time of the Reformation a sharp distinction was drawn
between those books which were to be found in the original
Hebrew and those which existed only in the Greek transla-
tions, the Hebrew being appealed to as the original Old
Testament, the order of arrangement of the Latin Bible was
accepted practically without question both by the continental
reformers and by the English. Those books and portions of
books which were not to be found in the original Hebrew
were culled out and placed by themselves as the Apocrypha,
forming in our Bibles a collection intervening between the
Old and the New Testaments, but further than this no attempt
was made to change the order of the books adopted in the
Latin Vulgate, much less to return to the original arrangement
of the Hebrew Bible. It should be noticed, by the way, that
the additions to the canon in the Alexandrian school belong
entirely to that section of the canon which in Hebrew was
known as the Writings. To several of the books of this canon,
notably Esther and Daniel, large sections were added which
are not to be found in the Hebrew. Besides this, entire
books were added, such as Tobit and Judith, which, like
Esther, naturally belong to the canon known to the Hebrews
as the Writings. On the other hand, it should be noticed that
the Prophets, particularly Jeremiah, are shorter in the Greek
translation than in the Hebrew, a fact which bears upon the
date of the composition of the canon of the Prophets.
The English Bible, then, is a translation of the original
Hebrew grafted upon the form of the Latin Vulgate. It is,
in other words, neither a translation of the original Hebrew,
nor of the Latin Vulgate, but a compromise between the two.
It has taken its words, with some exceptions, from the one,
and its arrangement of the books and doctrine about those
books from the other. The English Bible has distinctly in-
corporated into itself, as though they were part of the inspired
record, the critical theories regarding the date and authorship
of the books which were meant to be expressed in the
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 13
arrangement of the Latin Vulgate, the result of the higher
criticism of the Alexandrian schools. Further than this, it
has adopted certain titles of books, also intended to express
critical views. We have seen that the Hebrew Bible designated
the first five books of the Old Testament as the Law, regard-
ing the five as one, and designating each of the five sections
merely by the first word of that section. Alexandrian scholars
gave to the Law the title of Pentateuch, or "five parts,"
and to each part a Greek name, setting it apart as a separate
book, namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. The Jewish tradition regarding the authorship
of these books, that they were written by Moses, which had,
however, in the stricter Palestinian treatment of the Bible
been treated as tradition and not permitted to invade the
sacredly guarded realm of the text, became in the Alexandrian
schools an inherent part of the books themselves, so that they
were designated as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth
books of Moses, and these titles were adopted into the Vulgate.
The same titles and the same statement of authorship are
embodied with the books in our English translations, although
not found in the original Hebrew from which our English
Bibles profess to be translated. Similarly the Song of Songs
received the title Song of Solomon, which is not in the original
Hebrew. In other words, in these regards, as in the question
of the arrangement of the books of the Old Testament, the
higher criticism of the ancient Alexandrian schools has actually
been incorporated in the text of the Bible of English-speaking
Christians. It is a curious illustration of the manner in which
the liberalism and even free-thinking of one age become the
stiffest orthodoxy of some succeeding age.
It is not my intention to discuss the unfortunate results
which have flowed from this confusion of critical views with
the actual text of the Bible. The same sort of thing was done
when Archbishop Usher's chronology was printed as a part of
the Bible at the head of the pages. Every one is familiar
with the mental confusion which resulted from this well-meant
attempt to elucidate the Bible, and you will still find godly
14 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and pious people, who ought to know better, telling you that
the world was created 4,004 years before Christ, and appealing
to their Bible in confirmation of the statement, quite unaware
that their authority is in reality not the Bible, but Archbishop
Usher's interpretation of the Bible. A similar result followed
the attempt to make the Song of Solomon intelligible by pre-
fixing interpretations to the chapters. People accepted these
as authoritative portions of the Bible, and resented any other
interpretation as heresy, because it was against the Word of
God. The same result precisely has flowed from the attempt
to teach doctrine about the books of the Bible by changing
their order and prefixing headings not found in the original.
It was done in good faith, with the honest intent to assist the
understanding of the sacred book, and it represented the best
scholarship of the day. It worked well as long as that scholar-
ship held its own, just as Archbishop Usher's dates did, but
the day came when that scholarship was superseded, and the
scholars have found themselves ever since in conflict with
the mass of the plain readers of the Bible, who naturally,
not being able to refer to the original, do not distinguish
between what is actually Bible and what has been put in by
the critics of an earlier period in order to make the Bible
more intelligible. It is all one more illustration of the fact
that the Bible outlasts the traditions and the critical views of
all generations.
We should emancipate the Bible from the dates of Arch-
bishop Usher, from mystical interpretations woven into the
text in the form of chapter headings, and from the critical
views of Alexandrian scholars or Jewish scribes regarding the
date and authorship of books as represented in the arrange-
ment or headings of those books. Such views may be right
or they may be wrong; that does not affect the question.
They should not be incorporated in the text of the Bible. If
they had not been so incorporated, if the text of the Bible
had not been tampered with, albeit with the best and most
innocent of motives, it is probable that some of those ques-
tions which now distress many Christians would not have
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 15
come to the front at all, certainly not in the present aggravated
shape.
How, then, should we arrange the books of the Old Testa-
ment ? Two ways are possible. The one is to endeavour to
arrange the Bible as much as possible like a modern book,
making it intelligible by all the devices with which we are
acquainted. This would almost necessarily involve the placing
of dates on the pages, the arrangement of the books according
to their natural and scientific order, the putting of notices of
authorship and date at the beginning of the books, and the
prefixing to chapters or sections of explanatory headings. This
I hold to be a desirable and legitimate method of editing the
Bible, provided always it be made clear that dates, headings,
etc., are not component parts of the Bible itself, of equal
authority with the text. To avoid this I hold it better for the
official or standard Bible to pursue the second method, which
is to print just what is found in the original without comment
and without rearrangement. Inasmuch as we claim in all our
translations to recognise the Hebrew Old Testament as the
original, the Hebrew Old Testament translated as it stands
should be put into the hands of our people as the official
standard Old Testament, and not the Old Testament modified
by the critical theories of the Alexandrian schools, which is
what we now have.
The King James translation was a great improvement on
the earlier English translations which preceded it. The Canter-
bury Revision was in its turn an improvement on the King
James version, and has brought us still nearer to the original
Hebrew. In this Revision the mediaeval chapter divisions
have been relegated to the margin, and the verse divisions
also, so that to read the Revised Version is not quite so much
like reading a dictionary consecutively, as the reading of the
standard King James version always has been. In other
respects also, such as the heading " Song of Songs " instead of
"Song of Solomon," the division of the Psalter into five books,
and the recognition of poetry as poetry, translation from the
Hebrew has taken the place of the former translation from
16 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the Vulgate. But the revisers were on the whole very timid
and conventional, and a great part of the objectionable depar-
tures from the original in favour of the Latin Vulgate contained
in the King James still remain in the Canterbury Revision.
So in famous doctrinal passages, like Isaiah vii. 14, the revisers
still adhere to the Latin translation, in the face in this case of
both the Greek and the Hebrew. The same timidity and
dread of change shows itself in their treatment of the Penta-
teuch headings and the arrangement of the books. They
profess to translate from the Hebrew, but in these regards
they have been false to their professions, innocently but un-
fortunately incorporating with their Hebrew text the doctrines
of the Latin Vulgate and the critical schools of ancient
Alexandria. It is to be hoped that in the not far distant
future we shall have an English translation that will conform
in these points also to the Hebrew original. Such a translation
would be an immense gain.
But I should not wish to be understood as depreciating the
work of the Alexandrian scholars. They did a valuable work,
and we are peculiarly indebted to them for rescuing for us the
books called apocryphal, which I would like to see bound up
in all Bibles between the Old and the New Testaments, and
read by all men. My objection is not to the scholarship of
the Alexandrian scholars, which was admirable for their age
and of great service to the Church, both Jewish and Christian.
That to which I object is the incorporation of the views of
those uninspired men with the text of the Bible in a manner
which is exceedingly misleading to the great mass of Bible
readers. I wish to see the Old Testament placed in the
hands of the Church as it existed among the Hebrews, with
the interesting and valuable tide-marks of its growth upon it,
and not as re-made according to the views of the higher critics
who lived in Alexandria about two thousand years ago.
II. THE NEW TESTAMENT
Turning to the New Testament, we find in our English
Bible this arrangement : First, four Gospels, then the book of
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 17
the Acts of the Apostles, then nine Epistles from St. Paul
to various churches, then four Epistles from him to individuals,
then an Epistle to the Hebrews ascribed to him, then seven
general Epistles ascribed to James, Peter, John, and Jude, and
then, last of all, the Revelation of St. John the Divine. Why
are these books arranged in that order? Is it mere chance,
or has it some significance ? and if so, what ?
If you turn to the Epistles ascribed to St. Paul, you will
note that the Epistles to churches or communities of Christians,
with the exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews, are placed
together first. Examining these you will find that they are
not arranged according to subject or date, but, odd as such a
system seems to us, according to their size. Chronologically
and according to topics, the present arrangement should be
quite revolutionised, as anyone will have perceived who has
ever undertaken to make even the most rudimentary study of
the Epistles of St. Paul. The Epistles to the Thessalonians,
which now stand at the end of this group, should probably
stand first ; then the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Romans,
the Philippians, the Ephesians, the Colossians. But if these
Epistles to churches and communities of Christians are arranged
according to size, how is it that the Epistle to the Hebrews,
which is one of the larger Epistles, stands, not only after the
other Epistles to communities, but even after all the Epistles
to individuals ? This arrangement reflects the doubt existing
regarding this Epistle from the beginning until now. The
best critics of the present day do not believe that it was
written by St. Paul, in which they agree with the critics of the
early Church and of the Reformation period. The position of
the book in our Bibles reflects the belief that it was not
written by St. Paul, and therefore has no title to be placed
among the Epistles written by him. But indeed the criticism
of the early Church — and it was the West which particularly
objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews— went even farther
than this ; the inspired character of the book was for a long
time freely doubted, so that it was one of the last books to be
admitted in the canon of the Western Church. The ground
i8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of doubt was the question of authorship, for in early times the
general opinion seems to have been that no book not written
by an apostle, or under the immediate direction of an apostle,
should be admitted to the canon of Holy Scripture.-
A similar question was raised regarding the authorship
of Second Peter and Second and Third John, and these,
together with the Epistles of James and Jude, which were not
written by apostles, were rejected altogether by some churches,
and slowly accepted by others. It was, apparently, this
question with regard to the canonicity of five out of seven
of the Catholic Epistles which caused all these letters to be
placed toward the end of the book, in the canon of the
Western Church, after all the Epistles of St. Paul, and even
after the Epistle to the Hebrews. A similar, but still more
pronounced and long-continued doubt with regard to the
authenticity of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, resulted
in the present position of that book at the close of the whole
canon.
In a general way, then, the arrangement of the books of the
New Testament in our English Bibles represents the growth of
the canon. The first canon to be adopted was the four Gospels,
probably in the order in which they now stand. These were
universally adopted, for while there were other gospels that
were regarded as inspired by individual churches or by some of
the fathers, these four only had from the outset the suffrages
of all. About them there was never any dispute. The Acts
of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul, both those to the
churches and those to individuals, were likewise accepted by
all from a very early period. These writings, together with the
First Epistle of St. Peter and the First Epistle of St. John,
were the writings of the New Testament which were received
practically from the outset by all everywhere ; the remaining
writings of the New Testament were long in dispute.
The latter half of the fourth century after Christ is the time
which students of the canon fix as the date at which for prac-
tical purposes the canon of the New Testament may be said to
have become fixed ; but that does not mean that in that day
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 19
the same hard and fast lines of canonicity were drawn as at
present. Indeed, for a couple of centuries after this the Greek
churches rejected the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and
the Syrian churches not only the Revelation, but also the Epistles
of St. Jude, Second Peter, and Second and Third John, while
individuals everywhere held many divergent views regarding
individual books. The early Christians seem to have made
freer with the Bible in many ways than we of the present day.
Even as late as the middle of the sixth century Junilius, an
orthodox African bishop, marks the Apocalypse, and the
Epistles of James, Jude, Second Peter, and Second and Third
John as books of doubtful authority.
The early reformers also showed a tendency towards a treat-
ment of the Bible which goes beyond anything which we are
ready to accept as admissible ; and especially is this true of
Luther. If you turn to a German Bible you will find an
arrangement of the books of the New Testament which differs
from our arrangement in this way : The Epistle to the Hebrews,
and the Epistles of SS. James and Jude are taken out of their
regular position and placed together after the Third Epistle and
before the Revelation of St. John. In the original Lutheran
Bibles a gap between the Third Epistle of St. John and the
Epistle to the Hebrews further emphasised the meaning of this
arrangement, which was thus explained by Luther in the Intro-
duction to the Epistle to the Hebrews : " Thus far we have
had before us the well-established and main books of the New
Testament. The four which here follow have long since held
a lower rank." Of the Epistle to the Hebrews he further said :
" There is a mixture in it of wood, hay, stubble, and it cannot
be ranked side by side with the Apostolic Epistles." Of the
Epistle of St. Jude he says that the ancient Church rejected it
because the writer was not an apostle, and because he appealed
to proverbs and stories not to be found in Holy Scripture. Of
the Epistle of St. James he speaks vehemently as "an epistle
of straw, which has nothing of the Bible in it." With regard
to the Revelation of St. John, he says that it is not inspired by
the Holy Ghost, his reasons for denying its inspiration being
20 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
because it is pervaded " through and through with visions and
images, and does not prophesy with clear, plain words, like
Paul and Peter and Christ Himself; because Christ is neither
taught nor known in the book, and we should keep to the
books wherein Christ is clearly and simply set before us."
Some of the later Lutheran fathers added to these four books
Second Peter and Second and Third John, regarding the whole
seven as constituting an apocrypha to the New Testament,
useful for reading and edification, but not to be admitted as
standards of Christian doctrine. Zwingli held a somewhat
similar position, rejecting the Apocalypse absolutely, and
claiming that those books which were not universally received
in the early Church were not to be regarded as authoritative in
matters of faith, which is, indeed, the statement of our own
Articles of Religion. We have no need, however, of accepting
the opinion of Luther or Zwingli regarding the books at some
time doubted by the Church. Nor need we follow the rule
that only a book written by an apostle, or under the immediate
direction of an apostle, is to be admitted into the full canon.
We receive the books rather because of their contents than
their authors ; and the fact that there is now such a long period
during which there has been a practical unanimity with regard
to all the books contained in our present canon of the New
Testament will justify us in asserting that the doctrine of the
Catholic Church is that the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
Epistles of James and Jude, Second Peter, Second and Third
John, and the Revelation of St. John, are all inspired of the
Holy Ghost and do properly belong to the canon of the in-
spired books of the New Testament.
I have alluded to the fact of a difference between the
arrangement of the books in the Greek and in the Latin
canons. I ought to add that the Latin canon is a well-fixed
and definite quantity, while among the Greek churches there
was considerable diversity. This is represented in the diversity
of arrangement in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testa-
ment. The best known of these arrangements is that of the
Alexandrian Church. Now the Alexandrian Church, in both
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 21
the New and Old Testament canons, shows a tendency to
take in the greatest possible number of books, differing in
this quite distinctly from the Greek churches in Palestine,
Asia Minor, and elsewhere. Tischendorf's edition of the
Greek New Testament, which reflects the Alexandrian arrange-
ment, orders the books thus : Four Gospels, Acts, Catholic
Epistles (James, First and Second Peter, First, Second, and
Third John, Jude), Epistles of St. Paul to the churches,
Hebrews, Epistles to individuals, and Apocalypse. This
arrangement reflects the scientific or would-be scientific
character of Alexandrian Bible scholars. They were in their
way the " higher critics " of the early Church. They were not
content to have the books of the New Testament arranged
according to the order in which they were adopted, which
is practically the plan pursued in the Latin arrangement and,
following that, in our English translations of the Bible, but
sought to adopt a scientific scheme which should exhibit the
relation of the books to one another, their authorship, etc.
Accordingly, accepting the Epistle to the Hebrews as Pauline,
they incorporated it among the Pauline Epistles and placed
it along with the Epistles of St. Paul to the churches. (There
are even indications that it was sometimes placed in Alex-
andrian manuscripts after the Epistle to the Galatians.)
Similarly the Catholic Epistles received a position directly
after the Acts, on the theory that they antedate the Pauline
Epistles, and therefore, for purposes of reading and study,
should precede those Epistles.
In making a scientific arrangement of the books of the
New Testament at the present day, we should scarcely be
willing to accept this Alexandrian arrangement ; for the higher
criticism of the present day, while having in view the same
object as that of the old Alexandrian scholars, to understand
the Bible better and make it more intelligible to the world,
has learned much which they did not know. If we must
choose between the Vulgate arrangement and that of the
Alexandrian critics, probably the former is to be preferred,
since it gives us in a manner the history of the growth of the
22 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
canon. But it should be understood that the arrangement
of the books of the New Testament is not a part of the
inspired record, and no particular arrangement can be regarded
as obligatory on any Church. Why should we not, therefore,
have for the purposes of our ordinary use an arrangement
which shall, as far as possible, help to make the books in-
telligible? Why did not the Canterbury Revisers attempt
something of this sort ? Those good, and in many cases wise
men, were very curious combinations of thorough scholarship
and timid adherence to what had been, because it had been.
They did away with the dictionary plan of printing the Bible,
which is a serious hindrance to its intelligent reading, substi-
tuting the principle of paragraph divisions according to the
sense, for the old method of division into verses on no
principles of sense, but for convenience of reference of scribes.
Now if they could venture to use common sense in such a
matter as this, why did they feel it necessary to continue to
arrange St. Paul's Epistles according to size? Is there any
special virtue in such an arrangement ? Was the scribe who
first fixed them in that order an inspired man ? To my mind
he was very much the opposite, and there is no reason why
we should perpetuate such confusion for all time, and make
common, plain people think that it is inspired because it is
in the Bible. The special object of a translation of the Bible
for ordinary use should be to make that Bible thoroughly
plain to the people. I should be very sorry to see the
Canterbury revision accepted as it stands, as the Bible of the
Church, not because it is not a great improvement on the
King James version, for it is that, but because to adopt it now
would be to stereotype a considerable number of sins, not
merely against scholarship, but against common sense, by
which the reading and understanding of the Bible would be
hindered for a long time to come. It is better to keep the
matter in a state of flux until we can get something better
than either the King James or the Canterbury translations.
What sort of an arrangement of the books of the New
Testament would best serve the purpose of making that
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 23
inspired volume most intelligible ? I have made special
mention of the Pauline Epistles because the present arrange-
ment of those Epistles is the most objectionable part of the
arrangement of the whole New Testament. Think of
arranging a series of letters merely according to their size,
without any reference either to date or subject-matter ! The
rearrangement of these letters in general according to their
date would accomplish the end desired. Outside of this the
difficulties to be overcome are somewhat greater, and the
limits of this chapter will scarcely permit me to go into any
detailed explanations and suggestions.
The points to emphasise are these : No properly prescribed
order of arrangement of the books of the New Testament
has come down to us; our present arrangement is that of
the Latin Church, which, while historically interesting on
account of its testimony concerning the growth of the canon,
is, after all, a sort of chance concurrence of atoms, priority
in order depending within certain limits on priority of
undisputed admission to the canon; the arrangement of the
Alexandrian Church, which is that in use in our ordinary
Greek New Testaments, is the result of an attempt on the
part of the Alexandrian critics to arrange the books of the
Bible according to scientific principles which we no longer
recognise as scientific, and is not, therefore, an arrangement
which we should do well to imitate ; the arrangement of
Luther, on the other hand, is based on certain private
interpretations of that great man which we should scarcely
be prepared to accept and embalm in the arrangement of
our canon. What we need is a conservative, common-sense
arrangement, which shall help people to understand what
they read, and which shall represent what is generally
admitted, but shall not attempt under the guise of the Bible
to foist private opinions of any individuals or schools on
the Church with authority. It ought not to be impossible
to make such an arrangement of the books of the New
Testament.
CHAPTER II
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON
A RTICLE VI. of the Articles of Religion is headed, "Of
_/\. the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation."
The body of the Article defines this sufficiency thus : " Holy
Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation : so
that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved
thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should
be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite
or necessary to salvation." In other words, the object of the
Article is to confute the Roman position, which placed the
unwritten on a par with the written tradition of the Church
as contained in Holy Scripture, exacting as a condition of
salvation belief in things which were not contained in
Holy Scripture. The definition is exclusive and not
inclusive. It excludes from the things necessary to be
believed "whatsoever is not read" in Holy Scripture, "nor
may be proved thereby," but does not state what things
contained therein must be believed. By inference this is
done to some extent in the eighth Article, " Of the Creeds " :
"The Nicene Creed, and that which is commonly called
the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and
believed : for they may be proved by most certain warrants
of Holy Scripture." And yet it would be erroneous to say
that the authors of these Articles intended to limit belief to
the statements of the Creeds. The object of the eighth Article
was not to state a minimum of belief, beyond which no one
was bound to go, but to assert the credibility of the Creeds,
because they have " certain warrants of Holy Scripture."
The inspiration and the credibility of Holy Scripture are
24
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 25
assumed as an axiom, as a foundation on which everything
else must rest. Holy Scripture is the constitution from
which all propositions derive their validity and by which
they must be tested. That is the attitude of the Articles
of Religion toward the Bible.
But on the other hand, the Articles of Religion, while
not attempting to give any formal definition of inspiration,
evidently do not regard all Scripture as of equal validity,
nor even as "an infallible rule of faith and practice." The
seventh Article distinctly states, in the form of a conditional
sentence, as something recognised by all, that the Law was
defective, temporary, and fallible, so that Christian men are
no longer bound by the ceremonies and rites ordained in
that law, nor need the civil precepts thereof be received
in any community. That Article closes with these words :
"Yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free
from the obedience of the Commandments which are called
Moral." In other words, according to this Article, part of
the Old Testament is temporary and fallible, and part is
eternal and infallible. There are two elements in com-
bination in the Old Testament : the one has an historical
value ; it has been serviceable ; it has been of use in bringing
men to the truth; but it is outgrown now — men have got
beyond it ; it is no longer true ; the other is true in its
very nature — it can never be outgrown, and it is as binding
on us to-day as it was on the Hebrews in the remotest
antiquity. According to the doctrine not only of our own
Church, but substantially of all Christians, the ceremonial
and ritual law of the Old Testament has no more validity
for us than the ceremonial and ritual laws of the Phoenicians,
and the civil precepts of the Hebrew codes are no more
binding upon us than the laws of Solon. The reason
assigned for this in the Articles of Religion is, as shown
by the last clause of the seventh Article, that they are not
moral in their character. That which is essentially true,
and therefore binding at all times on all men of all nations,
is "the Commandments which are called Moral."
26 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
But what are these moral commandments, and on what
principles are they to be determined? Are they moral be-
cause of the external authority by which they are ordained,
or are they moral because of something inherent in themselves?
And if the latter, how is that something to be determined?
There is a tendency on the part of many Christian theologians,
born of the profound belief in the absolute depravity of the
human race, the utter incapacity of the child to be taken into
the counsels of its parent and be governed by reason and love,
the belief that it must be held aloof and governed by un-
explained commands enforced by the rod of discipline, to
determine the moral commands on the basis of external
authority. The Decalogue is set off by itself as given in a
special sense by God, written by His own finger on tables of
stone. But if the basis on which it is determined that the
commandments of the Decalogue are the moral command-
ments be merely the basis of external authority, an external
command from God, then it would seem that we cannot stop
with the Decalogue, and that the great bulk of the civil,
ceremonial, and ritual precepts of the Pentateuch could claim
a similar authority as the dicta of God Himself, which could
not be disregarded without discrediting the Almighty; for
these laws also are declared to be spoken by God, and there
is no indication in the context that they are temporary in their
application any more than the laws of the Decalogue. In
point of practice, moreover, all Christians, with the exception
of one infinitesimally small sect, have recognised that the
commandments of the Decalogue are not exclusively moral,
and are consequently not binding throughout. The Fourth
Commandment was thrown out at an early date by the Chris-
tian Church as a provision of Jewish ritual, not binding on
the Christian. And to this day, with the exception of the
Seventh Day Baptists, no body of Christians keeps the seventh
day as a Sabbath day of rest to the Lord. They may attempt
to posit their observance of the first day on a moral obligation
to rest unto God one-seventh of the time, implied in the
Fourth Commandment ; nevertheless, the fact remains that
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 27
they do not observe the Fourth Commandment, and that
they treat it as a commandment of ritual not obligatory on
them to keep the "seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God." Neither do they abstain from all manner of work
on the first day of the week, even when they call that day the
Sabbath day, they " nor their sons nor their daughters," much
less "their menservants nor their maidservants," and very
often not their cattle. The Fourth Commandment is not
placed in practice on a plane with the other commandments ;
it is treated as a ritual commandment, in which may lurk a
moral obligation, but which is, nevertheless, in itself ritual
and ceremonial. But the Jews regarded this commandment
as of equal obligation with the others ; and in the period after
the Exile it assumed an importance, if possible, above the
others as a fundamental principle of religion, the breach of
which was far worse than theft, for instance, and to be punished
more severely both here and hereafter.
Turning to the words of our Lord in the New Testament,
we do not find Him taking the position that the command-
ments of the Decalogue had a special character derived from
authority, placing them on a different plane from the re-
mainder of the Old Testament. Indeed, when He is asked
what is God's highest revelation of Himself in the Law, He
does not refer to these commandments as a whole, or to any
one of them separately, but quotes from Deuteronomy vi. 5 :
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," asserting that this
is "the first and great commandment." "And the second
commandment," which "is like unto it," He quotes from
Leviticus xix. 18, where, — mixed in with civil, ritual, and
ceremonial laws, so that the laws which immediately follow
it read : " Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse
kind : thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed :
neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds
of stuff mingled together," — stand the words: "Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself." As over against authority our Lord
appeals in His answer to the lawyer to the moral sense of the
28 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
man himself. The sweet reasonableness of His statement is
its proof. It is not because He says it, it is not because it
rests on some external authority that it is convincing — it is
because it is true. The morality of it is recognised by the
moral sense of the man ; the divine in the man recognises the
divinely inspired truth when it is presented to him. The
statement in the seventh Article brings us, then, logically to
this, that the commandments which are moral, and to which
every Christian man owes obedience, are to be recognised by
their morality appealing to the moral nature within us, or in
other words, to our reason. Mere external authority cannot
settle the question, for even in the Decalogue itself there are,
combined with the immutable and infallible moral elements,
other elements which the practically unanimous voice of the
Christian Church has declared to be ritual and ceremonial,
and therefore not binding on Christians, mutable and fallible.
On the other hand, embedded in the midst of laws principally
of a ceremonial character, stand those utterances which, as
our Lord pointed out, are eternally true, and constitute the
highest verbal revelation which we have received from God.
Now this seventh Article, as stated in its heading, deals only
with the Old Testament, but the principle which it establishes
cannot be confined to the Old Testament. It is a general
principle, applicable to the New Testament as well. If, with
our Lord, we base our determination of what is eternal and
binding in the Old Testament not on external authority,
but on the inherent truthfulness of the thing itself — and He
did so, not merely in the instance above cited, but whereso-
ever in His teaching there was occasion to do so, so that,
for example, He deliberately rejected the law of divorce as
contained in the Mosaic codes, pronouncing it to be not
consonant to the law of God, and appealing against the
authority of the law of Moses to the answer of the enlightened
consciences of men ; He rejected the Pentateuchal law of
retaliation as contrary to the divine law of love as witnessed
by the consciences of men ; and where He cites the Scriptures
in proof of His words, as He loves to do, He appeals through
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 29
and beyond them to the truth of God as witnessed in the
consciences of the sons of God, so that it was said of Him
that He "taught as one having authority and not as the
scribes " — if, with Him, we base our determination of what
is eternal, true, and binding in the Old Testament not on
external authority, but on the inherent truth of the thing
itself, we have established a general principle which is applic-
able to the New Testament also, and even to the words and
deeds of our Lord Himself. We have laid down the principle
of the appeal to reason. Facts of history and truths of religion
in the Bible, as elsewhere, must be settled finally by the
appeal to the reasons and consciences of men. Now in practice
this is universally recognised. No one thinks he is going
to convert anyone to Christianity except by an appeal to his
reason and his conscience. We translate the Bible, and
spread it abroad, that the reasonableness and the inherent
truth of it may appeal to the hearts and minds of men. We
write apologies to show the truth of Christ, to prove to the
reasons and consciences of men that He had the very truth of
God. It is a premise on which our whole practice is founded,
that reason and conscience are the ultimate judges of the
truth.
But in theory this is not always recognised, and we are told
that the Bible or the Church, and not reason, must be the
ultimate judge of the truth of any proposition. What should be
the position of the Bible and the Church in relation to reason ?
Does not the statement that reason is the ultimate judge
of the truth deny the inspiration, and hence divine authority
of the Bible, and place it on a par with other books?
And does it not, on the other hand, destroy the authority
of the Church, setting up private judgment in the place of
Catholic truth, and putting a premium on the multiplication
of sects ? Let us see what are the relations to one another of
private judgment and the judgment of the Church in this
matter. The Church antedates the Bible; the Church gave
the Bible to the world. It did not do this, however, by
appointing a commission to write a Bible, or even to decide
30 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
what books should form the Bible. This book appealed to
the hearts and minds of Christian men in this place, and was
recognised by them as bringing them a message from God ;
that book appealed to men in another place. There were
many histories of our Lord's life written. Little by little the
general consensus of Christian opinion selected four Lives
(if the Gospel of St. John can properly be called a Life of
Christ Jesus) from all these as worthy of a special place in the
use and worship of the Church. St. Paul wrote many letters ;
of which in course of time a few came to be held in special
reverence as possessing a permanent message of God to the
Church. At first the same books were not held in honour
in all the churches. But little by little, as the result of the
experience, not of one age nor one nation, but of many
generations through all the world, a reasonable consensus
of opinion was reached as to the books which constitute Holy
Scripture, which are inspired of God for the guidance and
instruction of man. Men found that these books had a special
message to their hearts and reasons from their Father in
Heaven which no other books had. These books exercised
a peculiar influence on the minds and lives of men. Now
there were books quite outside of the Bible that exercised this
influence on particular individuals or groups of individuals, or
even on particular ages, as witness the influence of the Book
of Enoch, quoted as Holy Scripture in the Epistle of St. Jude,
and adopted into the canon of at least one national Church as
inspired ; or the position of the Pastor of Hermas in the
second century. Think of the influence of Thomas a Kempis'
Imitation; of the Te Deum, the Gloria in Excelsis, etc.
And there are, in the experience of us all, books outside of
the Bible which exercise such an influence on individuals or
groups of individuals at the present day. Those books do
not come into the Bible for the reason that experience has not
shown that they have those qualties which enable them to
exercise this influence, not merely on a few individuals or
on the individuals of one generation, but on all sorts and
conditions of men through generation after generation. The
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 31
judgment of the Church is nothing more than the consensus
of the private judgments of those that constitute the Church-
Christian believers now as well as in the earlier centuries, and
then as well as now. It is the eternal truth of the books of
the Bible, as testified to by the universal consent of the
Church throughout the ages, which leads us to set them aside
from other books. As we have found that they have uplifted
and inspired men through all these ages, so we conclude that
they will continue to do the same through the ages that are
yet to come. But this does not mean to say that each book
has had a message for each individual soul, nor even for each
age. Probably no one individual finds each book inspired to
him. Possibly he finds some book not in the Bible inspired
to him above anything that is in the Bible. If his individual
experiences in this matter were to become the universal
experience of Christian men through a series of ages, then
that book would be added to the Bible, because the Church
would have proved by experience that it was inspired. With
regard to the Bible, the Church simply testifies to a fact
of experience, when it testifies that these books are holy
writings. It has collected together those books of which it
has made this experience. It hands them to the individual
Christian to study for proof of the truth which it teaches. So
far as he himself is concerned, he cannot help using his
private judgment in the study of these books, if he would.
The Church Catholic knows from experience that this collection
of books is inspired; and therefore it knows that, all things
being as they ought to be, a man of well-balanced heart and
mind, exercising his private judgment in its study, will recognise
this inspiration, and that the more deeply and thoroughly
he studies the Bible the more profoundly will he believe in
its inspiration. It challenges the critical study of these books
as other books are studied, the investigation of their testi-
mony for themselves and for the doctrine inculcated, as all
other testimony is investigated. It does not suppose that
each book will appeal in the same way or the same degree to
the life of each individual ; it does not claim that each book
32 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
will be found infallible in all its parts ; but it does know that
these books are and will always be found to be holy writings,
inspired of God. In actual practice there is no conflict in
this matter between the true idea of the authority of the Holy
Catholic Church and the right of private judgment. The
judgment of the Church is the consensus of the private
judgments of the individuals who compose that Church — of all
the saints. It is a composite photograph in which each
Christian is included, but it is not a private photograph of
each individual Christian.
And now as to the multiplication of sects. It is true that
the multiplication of sects is due to the abuse of private judg-
ment, but in quite a different direction. It is due to the
abuse of private judgment on the part of individuals, groups
of individuals, and generations, who have undertaken to saddle
Holy Scripture with a talmud, or interpretation, representing
their own private judgment of what that Scripture ought to
mean.
This brief notice of the testimony of the Church to the
Holy Scriptures would be incomplete if we did not also say
a word about the testimony of the Church to the different
value or holiness of the different parts of Holy Scripture.
Every intelligent reader finds that there is a great difference in
the amount of divine truth contained in the different books of
the Bible, and the Church as a whole testifies to the same
fact as the result of the experience of its individual members.
The Jewish Church did not place all parts of the Old Testa-
ment on the same plane, and the Christian Church has made
the same experience. The Christian Church regards the Old
Testament as distinctly inferior in its inspiration to the New,
and so strongly has this been felt to be the case, so wide does
the moral gap between parts of the Old Testament and the
doctrine of Jesus Christ seem to be, that at times there has
been on the part of some an inclination to throw the Old
Testament aside altogether as contrary to the New, or as
transitory in its character ; opinions to which reference is
made in the seventh Article of the Articles of Religion. Again,
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 33
there are some books in the New Testament which have been
seriously questioned at one time or another. The book of
Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and some of the
Catholic Epistles were long refused admission to the Holy
Scripture in various parts of the ancient Church. There are,
furthermore, books which were at one time received as Holy
Scripture by some part of the Catholic Church, but which are
now rejected, and there are books which are now accepted as
Holy Scripture by one part of the Church and rejected by
another. The limits of the canon, at its lower end, are some-
what ill denned. But while this is intensely annoying to those
theorists who have some private doctrine about the inspiration
of Holy Scripture and the origin of the Bible, it is not in fact
confusing to the person who realises what Holy Scripture is,
and goes to it for what it contains. About the bulk of the
books there has never been any real doubt, because their
spiritual eminence is so clear. They would give us, if by any
misfortune we were ever deprived of the other books, all the
historical and doctrinal facts which are essential. There are
other books in which the human element, if I may so express
myself, the temporary and mutable, is more prominent. For
along with the eternal and immutable in each book there is
a temporal and mutable element. These elements are com-
bined in different proportions ; and as the proportion of the
eternal and immutable diminishes, so the claim of the book
to what we call inspiration, to be regarded as a Holy Writing,
diminishes. But at what point shall we say that inspiration
ceases ? that the proportion of the mutable to the immutable
is so large that we can no longer call the book holy? That
is a question to be decided by the experience of the
Church rather than by theory. In practice it is pertinent
with regard to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, which
is placed by the Roman Church in the Bible, thrown out
of the Bible altogether by the extreme Protestants, and
placed half in it half out of it by the Greek Church, as
well as by our own Church, as being, as our sixth Article
has it, good to read "for example of life and instruction
D
34 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of manners," but not to be applied "to establish any
doctrine."
Now there are some to whom such statements as these,
although founded on the Bible itself, on the history of the
Church, and on those doctrinal statements which possess
most authority among us, will seem to be subversive in some
way of the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, and to
place that book on a par with other books. These men seek
to safeguard the sanctity of the Bible by such statements as
this : The books of Scripture " are one and all, in thought
and verbal expression, in substance and form, wholly the
Word of God, conveying with absolute accuracy and divine
authority, all that God meant them to convey, without human
additions or admixtures." Or, again, "All written under it
[the Divine influence called inspiration] is the very Word of
God, of infallible truth and of divine authority ; and this
infallibility and authority attach as well to the verbal expres-
sion in which the revelation is conveyed as to the matter of
the revelation itself." Again, we are told that "the Scriptures
contain no errors," and that if it could be proved that there
are any errors in matters of physical science, or any " erroneous
statements and contradictory accounts in the Holy Scriptures,
their plenary inspiration must be renounced." I have been
quoting from the Presbyterian talmud, written by the learned
scribes of the law who sit among the Presbyterians in Moses'
seat. And they have done just what the scribes of our Lord's
day did ; they have so overlaid the law with their interpretation
of it that the law itself is lost. Now the conception of Divinity
has been a conception of something remote from the human,
surrounded with clouds and thick darkness, revealed in thun-
derings, lightnings, and portents. It is this conception of
Divinity which is represented in every heathen religion, and
even in official Judaism, although there were those among
the prophets who had a vision of something truer and better.
The same false conception of God, followed out in another
direction, has led men to seek to make their sacred books
sacred by wrapping them about with awe and wonder, with
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 35
theories of their divinity, and with talmuds, or teachings,
through which only men should be allowed to approach them.
They must not be handled like other books ; the same canons
of criticism must not be applied to them which are applied to
other books. If you would learn to know the Veda, you must
go to the Brahmins, and ask them to interpret it according to
their traditions and doctrines. It is profanation to study it as
you study other books. The very language in which it is
written is holy. It is itself, not merely the Word of God, but
the very brain of God. The Moslems say almost the same
thing of the Koran ; the scribes of our Lord's day said the
same thing of the Law of Moses ; and, unfortunately, some
Christians have undertaken to teach the same thing about our
Scriptures of both Old and New Testaments. Now if the
Bible is no better than the Veda or the Koran, well and
good ; let us treat it in the same way in which Brahmins and
Moslems treat their sacred books, and shield it and guard it,
and hedge about its divinity, for fear men should examine it
too closely and find that there is none there. On the other
hand, if we believe that the Bible is really different from these
other books of the nations ; that it stands on a far higher
plane; unique, needing no concealment and no bolstering up
with traditions and doctrines, as those other books do, let us
lay it down open before the world, and challenge men to read,
study, and examine it with all the critical apparatus which they
use in the study of other books.
As a practical fact we cannot do anything else unless we
would stultify ourselves, for we have said to the adherents
of every other religion — to Brahmins and Buddhists, and
Moslems and Confucianists and whatever else besides — give
us your proofs, and let us test them in the light of reason,
according to the reasonable methods by which we examine
other books, whether professing to be records of historical
fact, statements of scientific truth, philosophical specula-
tions, or ethical teaching. You say these books are divine;
prove it. Give your books open to the jury of the world.
Let the critics scrutinise them, analyse them, criticise them
36 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
according to the canons of modern criticism, by which they
criticise all books. And so we must lay the Bible open
before the jury of the world, and bid it scrutinise, analyse,
criticise the Bible according to the same canons of criticism
which it applies to the Veda, the Koran, and other so-called
holy books. The man who really believes in the inspiration
of the Bible ought not to be afraid of such a test.
But, furthermore, this method of treating the Bible is in
fact the Divine method, as over against the heathen method
pursued by the Brahmins, Moslems, and the like, and un-
fortunately also by some Christians, who would hide their
Scriptures in the thick clouds of foreign tongues and traditional
interpretations, and protect their sanctity by the fulmination of
doctrinal anathemas. As over against the false ideas of God
presented by other religions, Christianity presents the idea
of a present and loving God, Who reveals Himself to man in
man. This is the very foundation-stone of the Christian
religion — that God revealed Himself to man in a Man made
like men, cast down to struggle side by side with men. This
God-Man did not strike little children dead when they offended
Him in their play ; nor did the water in which His swaddling
clothes were washed work miracles. That is the nonsense of
apocryphal gospels, in which men not inspired by the Spirit
of God vainly sought to magnify the Divinity of Jesus Christ,
but, as the Church recognised, did really profane and debase
that Divinity in the attempt, so that all such tales were soon
relegated to the lumber-room of silly and godless fables. He
did not come turning the stones to bread to feed Himself;
He did not come a king to whom all the kingdoms of the
earth were given and the riches thereof; He did not come
descending in clouds, upborne by angels. Those were the
suggestions of the devil with regard to the nature of God,
the ideas of the lower, bestial, devilish nature concerning
Divinity and the manifestation of Divinity. The real Divinity
was manifested in quite a contrary manner, in the helpless
Babe of Bethlehem ; in the lowly Carpenter of Nazareth ; in
the poor, wandering, loving, suffering Teacher that had not
THE BIBLE, THE CHURCH, AND REASON 37
where to lay His head; in the blameless Convict, despised,
outcast, executed on Calvary. His Divinity was not mani-
fested by a nimbus about His head, by external phenomena,
by place and power, but by something inherent in Himself,
by perfect love and truth. And there is the keynote of
the whole system — Divinity in humanity. Dehumanise Jesus
of Nazareth, and you profane His Divinity. Dehumanise
the Bible, which tells about Him, and you profane its
divinity.
But I do not mean to put the Bible on a par with Jesus
of Nazareth. It is the written witness which the Church lays
before the world to substantiate its claim that He is the
Saviour of the world. But there are certain definitions of
the Bible which have been current at one time or another,
or are even now current among some groups of Christians,
which in their anxiety to emphasise the sacred character of
the Holy Scriptures have put those Scriptures in the place
of Christ. In a loose, general way we may say that the Bible
is the Word of God, as we do say, for instance, in several
places in our Prayer Book ; but to say in theological definition,
as the second Helvetic Confession does, that "the Holy
Scriptures are the very Word of God," or that "all written
under it [the Divine influence called inspiration] is the very
Word of God, of infallible truth and of divine authority," as
do those Presbyterian divines whom I have quoted, is rank
heresy, for it degrades Jesus Christ, placing a written book
in His place. The doctrine of the New Testament, and the
doctrine of the Catholic Church is that Jesus Christ, and
He only, is the very Word of God, the only full, perfect,
and complete utterance of Himself to man by God. The
Bible is the written evidence of the fact that Jesus Christ is
the very Word of God, true, perfect, and infallible. But the
Bible is not itself that Word. If the infallible Word of God
could have been revealed through imperfect and fallible men,
like Moses and the prophets, it would have been so revealed.
As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it (viii. 7),
" For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would
38 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
no place have been sought for a second." The infallible
Word of God could be revealed only through the perfect
Man, Jesus the Christ, who is the very Word of God. The
Bible is the written evidence which the Church presents to
the world to prove that He is in fact that Word, and it is
sufficient for that purpose, and is inspired for that purpose.
The Church, inspired by the Spirit of the living God, is itself
the living witness to the truth of that Word.
CHAPTER III
THE INCARNATION AND THE NEWER
CRITICISM
THERE is at present a somewhat panicky attitude with
regard to the supposed hostility of the newer criticism
to the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is natural that when
anything new is introduced it should be watched with much
suspicion, and it is certain that in theological circles this will
always be the case. Doctors and lawyers and scientists look
with more or less distrust on all new theories, because the new
involves the removal of a part at least of the old and the up-
setting of ideas and practices and customs. Theology is much
more conservative than even medicine, or law, or science, be-
cause the theologian feels that he is dealing with things
infinitely more important than astronomy, or geology, or botany,
or medicine, or law. Now, whenever a new theory is presented
with regard to anything, it is difficult at first to determine
exactly what its ultimate effects will be, and consequently the
most singular mistakes are often made in dealing with new
theories, those who should be their natural friends sometimes
becoming, through misunderstanding, their deadliest foes, and
vice versa. In point of fact, the newer criticism lays its special
emphasis on the Incarnation ; you might almost say that it is
a protest against a prevalent but ancient disbelief in the
Incarnation.
Men of that school or tendency of thought, often called
the Newer Criticism, or the Higher Criticism, if they were
to define their position as over against the position of the
traditionalists, might well take as their text our Lord's declara-
39
40 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
tion of the method of God's revelation of Himself to man
in answer to the temptations in the wilderness. The common
human conception of God is of something awful and miracu-
lous, bursting out in lightning and thunder, manifesting itself
in startling breaches of the law of nature. God should show
Himself as God by turning the stones into bread, by casting
Himself down from a pinnacle in the temple, and floating
into the gaping crowd beneath in glory, surrounded by hosts
of angels. That is the common human conception of the
incarnation of God. To this Jesus opposes the conception
of the Son of Man. The Son of God is equally the Son
of Man — perfect Man. He lives the life of ordinary men ;
He eats and drinks as they do ; He suffers as they do ; He
is subject to the natural human desires and passions; He is
made in all respects such as we are, the only exception being
that He does not fail to live up to the standard of His being.
He realises the full possibilities of His Manhood, and is with-
out sin. Now, this conception of a revelation of God was
opposed to the commonly received ideas among the Jews at
that time, and opposed to the common ideas of men in
general. The Jews regarded Sinai as the representative of
the highest revelation of God to man. God is hidden away
in clouds and darkness ; the thunder and lightning reveal His
presence; the mountain on which His glory rests is so holy
that if one do but touch it he shall die. So awful is God that
the sight of Him, or even the near approach to His presence,
must produce death. The Pharisees demanded of our Lord
some sign, some manifestation of miraculous power as an
evidence of His Divinity. He always and invariably refused
to give such a sign. It is a temptation of the devil. That
is not the true and highest revelation of God to man. The
highest revelation of God to man must be made in man
himself, developed to the perfection of his manhood, sinless
and holy.
The same problem which perplexed the Pharisees with
regard to this Man who claimed to be divine perplexed the
Christians of a later day. In the docetic Gospel of St. Peter,
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 41
a partial text of which was so strangely recovered from an
Egyptian tomb not long since, we find these ideas expressing
themselves in an anti-human representation of Christ. His
human form was a mere appearance, the divine was the
reality ; and the divine is so opposed to and so different from
the human, that it must be the case that it manifested itself
in wonderful and startling phenomena. This was the line
of reasoning which produced the docetic Gospel of St. Peter,
and many other writings of a far more extravagant character.
There was no intention of telling that which is untrue,
there was a most sincere desire to tell the truth ; but doctrine,
preconceived notions, colour everything that such writers tell
about our Lord. They start with a fundamental doctrine of
divinity as something anti-human, and whenever they come
to anything in the narrative of our Lord's life which represents
Him simply as a man, they modify it in accordance with that
doctrine which they believe to be true.
The same general conception of Divinity lies at the bottom
of the gnostic heresies. The idea of Divinity which found
expression in the Indian cosmogonies represents God as some-
thing infinitely removed from man and the world, and even
from all action. Creation itself is a process which cannot
proceed directly from the Almighty, because He has no needs,
no wants, and exercises no activities ; and the effort of such
systems is to account for creation and the world with as little
contradiction of this fundamental and fundamentally false
conception of God as possible. As the next best thing to
denying absolutely all connexion between God and creation,
they separate the two by unending seons, and remove Him
from direct contact with the world by the supposition of
emanation upon emanation. This Indian theory is also, in
so far, the gnostic theory. Almighty God is infinitely removed
from the world and all concern in the activities of man. The
direct manifestation of Himself to man in human form is
inconceivable. Divinity is manifested, it is true, but this
Divinity is infinitely removed from the Eternal All.
Although these docetic and gnostic views were pronounced
42 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
heretical by the Church, yet because they contained a con-
ception of Divinity which is, one might say, common to the
race, therefore we find the condemned heresies exercising
a very great modifying influence upon the thought of the
Christian Church. Unconsciously, popular theology first,
and afterwards the theology of theologians, adopted into
itself a certain portion of that docetic conception which,
theologically interpreted, denies the complete Humanity of
our Lord. The Bible itself states that He was born of a
pure virgin, conceived of the Holy Ghost and not of man.
Not content with this statement of the division of our
Lord's nature, by which He was equally God and Man,
born of both alike, a tendency soon manifested itself to
exalt and magnify the mother of Jesus into Divinity, thus
denying in fact, if not in formal doctrine, the perfect
Humanity of the nature of our Lord.
The various heathen worships which were absorbed into
Christianity at one place or another tended to help forward
the deification of the Virgin. Everywhere there had been
an inclination, especially everywhere in the East, to worship
the Divinity in a bi-sexual way ; where there was a god, there
was also a goddess. The half-converted heathen who entered
the Christian Church found in the worship of the Virgin that
worship of the female half of Divinity to which they were
used in their own religions. This, as I have said, had its
effect, and a very great effect, upon the theology of the
Christian Church, until at last you find in the dark and
middle ages, in popular theology at least, the Virgin Mary
exalted into heaven itself. Jesus is no longer the Son of the
pure Virgin of Nazareth, but the Son of the great goddess,
queen of heaven. The final theological assertion of this
doctrine on the part of the Roman Catholic Church did not
take place, it is true, until the latter half of the nineteenth
century, when the Pope promulgated as a doctrine of the
Church the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin, thus removing our Lord's connexion with humanity
one step back ; in gnostic language placing another aeon or
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 43
emanation between God and man. But in promulgating
this doctrine the Pope only put into theological form the
actual popular belief of the Church of the Middle Ages,
which is in most particulars the belief of the Church of Rome
of to-day.
The Reformers of the sixteenth century resisted this Romish
doctrine of the divinity of the Virgin Mary ; nevertheless, a
large element of the docetic conception which lay behind
the deification of the Virgin embodied itself in the ordinarily
received Protestant theology. This showed itself particularly
in the treatment of the Bible. It has been exceedingly
difficult for the theologians to grasp the full significance
of the revelation of God's Word in Jesus of Nazareth.
There is no doubt in their minds of His Divinity, the doubt
is about the human side of His nature; and if they have
not fully realised this, much less have they realised the
human side in the written and imperfect word, which in
their theology has been put in the place of the incarnate
Word of God.
To turn back to our Lord's temptations, to which I have
referred before, we find that He asserts that that idea of the
manifestation of the Divinity, which is represented in the Old
Testament by the story of the theophany at Sinai, where the
Law was given in the midst of clouds and darkness and dread,
is not the highest, perhaps I should rather say is not the
correct idea of the manifestation of God. He who is very
God shall not be manifested by casting Himself from the
pinnacle of the temple upborne by clouds of angels ; neither
shall all kingdoms of the earth see in Him a temporal master
before whom they shall bow themselves in submission; neither
shall His touch turn the stones about Him into bread; but
He, the very God, shall be manifested in very man, and
the evidence of His Divinity, the outshining of His glory, shall
be the perfection of the divine attributes in man, the attributes
of love and truth. According to our Lord's teaching, and
as the necessary outcome of His example in the revelation
of Himself to man, we are forced to the conclusion of the
44 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
imperfection, the inadequateness, and the humanness of all
former manifestations ; that is, that these manifestations of
God, being represented to us through human agencies, have
been coloured with the lower and human ideas. No man
ever saw God except the Son of Man in whom God was
revealed, and when men thought that they saw or knew Him
they saw Him after all only through their own human im-
perfections; their understanding of God was biased by their
own human imaginings.
Our Lord represents the perfect Man ; all that had gone
before was but the child growing to the man. The relation
of the Old Testament history and of the life of Israel to our
Lord was the relation of the child to the full-grown man.
The same consciousness, the same personality is there from
birth until it reaches its maturity in perfect Israel, the divine
Son of Man ; but, unless we are prepared to deny the perfect
Divinity of our Lord in fact, if not in name, we must admit
that the relation of this growing divine personality throughout
the old dispensation to the completed Divine Personality in
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ was that of the child
to the man. There were not two complete men. You cannot
take the Law or the Prophets and interpret them as divine
in the sense in which you interpret the words and acts of our
Lord as divine, without belittling and denying the uniqueness
of His Divinity. But this is precisely what Protestant theology
practically did in placing the Old Testament on an equality
with the New, and in placing the words of the followers of
our Lord, as handed down to us in the Acts and Epistles,
upon an equality with His words, or even in placing anything
that has come down to us through the agency of other men,
as the interpreters or exponents of His teaching, upon an
equality with Himself.
Israel of the Old Testament stood related to Christ of the
New Testament as you and I as children stand related to our-
selves as men, and we must interpret the history of the Old
Testament, its statements about God and the Word of God,
as we, looking back over our own lives, would now interpret
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 45
our own earlier conceptions of God and of things in the
spiritual world. Let me illustrate what I mean by a very
simple example of my own childish imaginings. The North
Pole, when I was a little boy, was a pole on an observatory at
Fort Lee on the Hudson River. This pole was as nearly as
possible north from the point at which I usually saw it.
I suppose my father had indicated it to me sometime as an
object by which I could tell the direction of north ; but,
however that may be, having come to know that that did
indicate the direction of north, I had very naturally con-
nected the word "pole," which I had heard in statements
about the North Pole, with the pole on this observatory, which
appeared to be due north from me, and during my early boy-
hood I supposed in consequence that that was the North Pole.
Here is a connexion of spiritual or intangible fact with an
outward material phenomenon of a merely accidental nature.
If I had written down as a boy that the North Pole was
visible from the river bank just below my house, and that the
North Pole stood on the bluff above Fort Lee, anyone reading
it would say, " Why, that is a childish conception of a real
fact. He has grasped the fundamental truth that that direc-
tion is north, but his horizon is not sufficiently large to enable
him to understand that the North Pole is more than a thou-
sand miles away from that pole ; nor has he the development
of abstract reasoning which enables him to conceive of the
pole as merely a theoretical point instead of an actual outward
and visible fact." Now, just as you have noted great differ-
ences in the conceptions of the Old Testament, just so are
there differences of conception of spiritual things according to
the growth and development of the man. When I became a
big boy the pole on the Fort Lee Observatory had ceased to be
the North Pole ; so also Israel grew in its perceptions of truth
from infancy to youth.
I have tried to state certain fundamental principles which
lie behind the whole movement which has often been desig-
nated as the Newer Criticism. I do not mean that every one
who dabbles in higher criticism is always conscious of these
46 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
basal ideas or aware that he is affected by them ; and I admit,
on the other hand, that a great many persons who hold up
their hands in holy horror at the mention of higher criticism
have grasped in reality this underlying doctrine of Incarnation,
although they have not followed it out to its logical conse-
quences in the interpretation of the Bible. The application
of higher criticism in the study of the scriptures of both the
Old and the New Testaments is a logical outcome of a true
conception of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. Higher
criticism means nothing more than literary and historical
criticism in distinction from textual criticism, which is techni-
cally called lower criticism. Higher criticism must be made
use of in the study of any ancient work, and no one thinks of
objecting to literary and historical criticism as applied to
Homer, or the Veda, or the Koran, or Thucydides, or Livy,
or Dante, or Shakespeare. In each case we must first study
the text in order to obtain a correct reproduction of that
which was written, and then we must study what was written
as literature, in relation to the history of the times in which it
was written, the history of thought, the history of the nation,
and the history of the individual. We must determine whether
the person whose name has been connected with it actually
wrote it, how he wrote it, for what purpose he wrote it, etc.
We must determine whether it has been modified at a later
time, and, if so, how and for what reason. All these, and all
questions of this sort, belong to the realm of what is known as
Higher Criticism. If we believe in the humanity of all of God's
revelation to man, we shall, of course, believe in the humanity
of the Scriptures, and consequently must apply to the study of
those Scriptures human methods. Without the application of
these human methods it is impossible to get at the divine,
because the divine is inclosed in a human body. This is an
application of the doctrine of the Incarnation in the perfect
Word of God, Jesus the Christ, to the imperfect word, the
Bible, and I think it must be admitted that it is an absolutely
necessary sequence of the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Now in dealing with scriptures among all nations and in all
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 47
religions, we find that there has been the same tendency
to attempt to magnify the divine by removing it absolutely
out of the sphere of the human which there has been, as I
have already pointed out, in dealing with the thought of the
divine in every other relation. This is truer in regard to
the scriptures of some of the Ethnic religions than in the case
of the Christian Scriptures. As a consequence of these
tendencies the Brahmins came ultimately to regard the Veda
as self-created. In proportion as, owing to the lapse of time
and change of language, thought, and customs, the language
of the Veda became unintelligible, in that proportion was the
Veda theoretically exalted and glorified. A religion developed
which had absolutely nothing to do with the Veda, except
that it was remotely descended from it, and the adherents
of this religion professed themselves followers of the book of
the religion which it had superseded ; and not only followers
of it, but worshippers also, regarding the book itself as a
manifestation of God, or as God, self-created and self-creative.
This was rendered possible by the method of interpretation
which was applied to the Veda, by which the Veda itself was
completely explained away, and the explanation put in place of
the original. Of course, at first the explanation was not too
remote from the original sense, but as explanation was put
upon explanation, and the explanations became in their turn
the subject of explanation and comment, so that men no
longer referred to the book itself, surrounding it with a halo of
glory and treating it as divine, according to their conception
of divine, the condition was reached of which I have spoken,
where no one read the Veda or knew anything about the
Veda, although professedly accepting it as a revelation of
Divinity. A similar course was pursued with regard to the
Zoroastrian and Moslem scriptures. It is a common thing to
find Moslems who have been educated to read the words of
the Koran, and who learn whole chapters to recite for ritual
purposes, without knowing the meaning of a single sentence.
They have learned it by rote : the language is different from
their language; they have never learned that language, and
48 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
consequently they do not know the meaning of what they
read or recite. The mere recitation of those sacred words
possesses a power for good ; there is a divinity inherent in the
outward form of the Koran, the touch of which can strengthen
their souls. For the doctrines of their religion they depend
upon the explanations of the theologians. And here explanation
has been heaped upon explanation, until the original sense is
buried out of sight. This is the same thing which the Jews
also did with their Scriptures, and our Lord rebuked them for
their quibbling explanations, by which the sense and spirit
of the original had been lost. Rabbinical and scribal interpre-
tation is a byword to us at the present day, and when by
chance we pick up and read passages from the Talmud, what
impresses us most of all is the absurd remoteness of those
interpretations from the sense of the passages which they
pretend to interpret. The Jews proceeded on the theory that
all knowledge was revealed in the Bible. To him who under-
stood the interpretation, geography, astronomy, and ethnology
were taught in the sacred text. Permit me to cite a sober
instance of this method of interpretation pursued by a noted
Jewish interpreter of the best post-Talmudic period, viz. Rashi.
Commenting upon the first chapter of Genesis, he notes that
mention is twice made of fowl. In the twentieth verse it
is said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth
in the open firmament of heaven." And again, in the
twenty-second verse, it is said, " Be fruitful, and multiply, and
fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."
Therefore God said both to the waters and to the earth to
bring forth fowl. Why has He said to both the water and the
earth that they should bring forth fowl, while He said to the
waters only to bring forth fish, and to the earth only to bring
forth the beasts of the earth ? Why has He said to both earth
and water, "Bring forth fowl"? Because the fowl is made
out of mud. It is earth and water mixed from which the
fowl is brought forth, but the fishes from the water only, and
quadrupeds from dry earth. This was understood by men of
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 49
the Middle Ages as scientific and even rationalistic interpreta-
tion of the Bible.
The Christians were from the outset deeply affected in their
interpretation of the Bible, especially, of course, of the Old
Testament, by Jewish interpretation. Indeed, you may say
that they were dependent upon the Jews for their system
of interpretation, and in the case of the Old Testament, for
the most part, for the details of that interpretation also. There
were very few Christian fathers who really knew anything
whatever about the Old Testament. St. Augustine founded
mountains of theology on texts of the Old Testament, of
whose meaning he had no proper conception. He was one
of those who objected not merely to the higher criticism, but
even to the lower or textual criticism of the Bible. He was
shocked at the efforts of St. Jerome to obtain a correct Latin
translation of the Old Testament Scriptures. He had taken
the current and corrupt Latin translation, which we know
as the Itala, and based his theological propositions upon
interpretations of that corrupt text. The substitution of a
correct text seemed to him likely to shake the whole system
of theology. In reality, there was too much common sense
and pure godliness in much of what St. Augustine had
formulated to cause the removal of his textual substructure
to precipitate a downfall. He really had not founded his
theology on those scripture texts which he quoted, but on
philosophical speculation, and his scriptural texts were, so to
speak, an accident. He had made the Scriptures through
those texts say what he conceived they ought to say.
In exact proportion as the Church allowed the Bible to
fall into disuse did it profess to exalt it by regarding it as
infallible and inerrant. I do not mean that there was any
formal statement of the Church to this effect, any doctrinal
declaration by the Church as such by which we are bound,
but I mean that the current thought of the Church and of
its theologians was in this direction. The Reformation was a
recall to the Bible as against the theological interpretations
and doctrines which, professing to start originally from texts
E
50 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of the Bible, had come at last to be directly contradictory
of those texts, so that the Church authorities were unwilling
that the Bible should be put into the hands of those who
would interpret it on principles of common sense, and not
according to the system of the schools, with their curious
combinations of rabbinical methods, Greek philosophy, and
scholasticism. It would be amusing, did space permit, to
trace the steps by which the Reformers, in their efforts to
exalt the Bible, as over against Church authority and Church
tradition, removed it from the sphere of men, and surrounded
it once more with a new nebula of fanciful interpretation.
Men like to put their Bible in the heavens, like the sun, but
when they have done so they are too apt to light the furnace
of their petty thinkings and make the air so dense with the
smoke of their theological speculations, like the fogs of London,
that the sun ceases to be visible.
You will observe, by the way, that, precisely as in St.
Augustine's day, it is to-day the men who are not students
of the Bible itself, who are not familiar with the languages
in which it is written, that object most to the new methods
of interpretation. The most conservative of Bible students, in
the technical sense of the term, is generally radical in com-
parison with the scholastic theologians who tell him out of
the dark and mysterious pages of the Middle Ages, or out
of the dry and repellent theology of the Protestant Reformers
of a later period, what the Bible ought to mean.
The proper method of dealing with the Scriptures is to
apply in their study the same critical methods which one
would apply in the study of other books. The humanity
that is in them requires the application of human methods,
and without those human methods it is impossible to
obtain from the Scriptures their real sense. It is fair to
say also that the objection to the application of those
methods comes from lack of faith. He who has absolute
and complete faith in God, and in His revelation to man
through man, is not afraid to have every possible light of
human wisdom turned upon the Holy Scriptures, believing
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 51
that the more their humanity is understood and appreciated
the better we shall perceive the divine which is incarnate
in that humanity.
I have already said that it is precisely those who are not
technical students of the Bible who are most distressed at
the application of such methods in Bible study and the
results which the critics obtain. This is entirely natural.
The man who is not thoroughly familiar with a subject in
all its bearings is afraid of any change, because he is apt
to confuse the temporary and the permanent, the accidental
and the necessary, and, not being certain which is which,
is afraid when anything is touched lest the whole may be
destroyed. The skilful sculptor does not hesitate to cut
deep into the marble with his chisel, because he knows
precisely what parts of the marble may be removed and
what not. He who is not a sculptor is afraid of the use
of the chisel, for he fears that if anything is cut away all
may be destroyed. My own experience in dealing with the
Bible has been this: I did not thoroughly appreciate the
divinity of the Scriptures, and I did not appreciate the Divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ, until I learned to appreciate the
humanity of both. I always believed in the divinity of both,
but my belief became a new thing when I began to study
both from the human side. When I was able to picture
our Lord Himself thoroughly and completely as a Man,
living as a Man in Judea and Galilee, when I understood
His surroundings as a Man, and viewed Him as a Man,
hungering and thirsting, tempted and tried, with real human
passions and pains, then I learned to know Him as God
as I had never done before. God had come down out
of Heaven in very deed, and stood close to me and gave
all life a new meaning. In the same way, when I learned
to read the books of the Bible as I read other books, when
I criticised, analysed, questioned as to authorship, assigned
parts of books to different influences ; when I learned to
know the writer through his style, as I learned to know
English writers through their style, then the Bible had a
52 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
new meaning for me, a new force, and, above all, a divinity
which it had never had before. From my own individual
experience I argue naturally to the general experience. I
believe that this method of study, and this only, will bring
out fully the Divinity of our Lord and the divinity of the
Scriptures; not a divinity so far removed from man that
its magnitude is diminished to a point, like the stars, but
a divinity so close that it can be felt, and that its rays warm,
cheer, and cherish like the sun.
It is, of course, possible to press the study of the humanity
so far or in such a manner that the divinity is completely
lost sight of. Scientists in studying Nature sometimes do
the same thing; but I do not think that anyone on that
account will object to the scientific study of Nature. I
suppose we should all agree that, although individuals have
in the study of Nature lost sight of God and become un-
believers, nevertheless, for the Church and the world at
large the increased knowledge of Nature has meant also
an increased knowledge of God. You would not propose
to remedy the evils of unbelief resulting from the study of
Nature by forbidding that study, or by denying that there
is such a thing as a physical universe. No more is it prac-
ticable to remedy the evils which result from the correct
method of studying the Scriptures by forbidding that study,
or denying the humanity that is in those Scriptures.
Some uneasiness has been felt because of the idea, most
assiduously promulgated by that extreme class of immovables
who always seek to arrogate to themselves the title of orthodox,
that this method of study involves the denial of the virgin birth
of our Lord, and, consequently, of the Incarnation. Now, what
I have been endeavouring to show is that the whole trend of
this line of thought is to affirm the Incarnation with especial
emphasis, as over against the tendency which has prevailed to
belittle or minimise the Incarnation in the endeavour to exalt
the Divinity. There may, and probably will be, excesses on
the part of individuals ; and in opposition to that school which
has denied the human birth of our Lord by exalting the Virgin
INCARNATION AND NEWER CRITICISM 53
out of humanity into divinity, there may be an inclination to
lay improper stress on the naturalness of our Lord's life. The
answer to this error of excess on one side is not to be found
in the error of excess on the other. It does not lie in the
deification of the Virgin, nor in magnifying the miraculous
side of our Lord to an extent which turns the miracles into
meaningless magic ; nor in the exaltation of the Scriptures as
the inerrant Word of God, infallible and inhuman in every
part. It is precisely these positions which have driven men
to excess on the other side, which have made them unbelievers,
or Unitarians. It may be laid down as a general truth that
every heresy is caused by heterodox doctrines of an opposite
character within the Church; and that heresy can be con-
quered only by recognising the truth at which it aims, and
expressing it in a reasonable and orthodox manner. The
Church itself has asserted in its Creed that Jesus was con-
ceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. The
purpose of this article of the Creed is to assert in the clearest
and most unmistakable language that He is perfect God and
perfect Man. Any belittling of the Humanity with the idea of
exalting the Divinity must result ultimately in belittling the
Divinity. To belittle the Humanity is as much of a heresy as
to belittle the Divinity, and this heresy must result in producing
heretical sects, which, in their endeavours to assert what they
see has been forgotten, will distort and exaggerate that one
thing, and make it the whole of their creed, to the exclusion
of all other truth. Belittle the Humanity of our Lord by trying
to take the Virgin Mary out of the common rank of woman,
and the result will be, as it has been, polytheism, such as is
practised in some parts of the Christian Church to-day, where
the worship of Christ the Saviour of mankind is nominal ;
because, having dehumanised Him, it became necessary to
put in His place more human divinities whom man can
approach in the ordinary needs of life. Belittle the Divinity
of our Lord by asserting that the Scriptures which were written
through men are complete, infallible, the Word of God, and
you have practically denied the unique Divinity of our Lord
54 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and the necessity of the Incarnation ; and this in the effort to
magnify the divine by minimising the human.
When we are told in the first chapter of Genesis that the
Spirit of God brooded over the face of chaos, we have the
prophecy of the virgin birth. The virgin universe conceived
through the Spirit of God Almighty, and the Old Testament
is the story of the pre-natal growth, if I may so speak, of the
Divine Child, which, in the fulness of time, is to be born in
the form of Jesus Christ, of the Virgin Mary by the Holy
Ghost.
Below the statement that Christ was conceived by the Holy
Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary lies a depth of truth which
is altogether lost if the mind is allowed to dwell exclusively on
the external side of that statement, and to imagine that that is
all that it covers. Rather, it is a statement of the whole plan
of God's dealing with man, of the perfect union of divinity
and humanity which is to be found in the whole course of His
dealing with the world from the creation onward.
CHAPTER IV
OUR LORD'S TREATMENT OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT
PERHAPS the easiest way to obtain a correct view of our
Lord's treatment of the Old Testament is to take up the
Gospel of St. Matthew, and, following it from beginning to
end, to note those passages in which reference is made by our
Lord to the Old Testament, comparing them with parallel
passages in other Gospels, so far as such parallels exist. It
is true that this will not cover every single use of the Old
Testament made, nor will it present to us Christ's use in a
systematic manner; but it will, I think, give us a good and
sufficiently complete picture for the purposes of argument
from His use to the proper use to be made by ourselves.
The story of the Temptations, contained both in Matthew
iv. and Luke iv., may be regarded as a summary of Christ's
attitude toward earlier views of divine revelation, held both by
the Jews and also by other peoples. In Exodus xix. we have
a description of the theophany at Sinai. The mountain is to
be guarded with bounds round about, because "whosoever
toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death." The pre-
sence of God upon the mount is indicated by " thunders and
lightnings, and a thick cloud," and the mount was " altogether
on smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and
the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and
the whole mount quaked greatly." And the Lord bids Moses
to " go down and charge the people, lest they break through
unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. And let
55
56 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the priests also, who come near to the Lord, sanctify them-
selves, lest the Lord break forth upon them."
At the time of our Lord this was commonly regarded among
Jewish theologians as the highest revelation of Himself by
God to man. To be sure, we have in the Prophets indications
of a higher and better conception, as when in the story of
Elijah we are told that the Lord is not in the earthquake, nor
in the fire, nor in the thunder, but in the still small voice;
or, as in Jeremiah, when we are told that it is not on tables
of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart that God
really writes His highest law. Nevertheless, among Jewish
theologians of our Lord's time, the manifestation on Sinai
was considered to be a typical and the highest revelation of
God's nature made to man. Now the general conception of
a divine revelation which we find here was not peculiar to the
Jews. It is the view of the way in which God must manifest
Himself to man common in its general features to many
religions, and you can parallel the essential features of this
theophany out of the theology or mythology of many nations.
This being regarded as the highest method of the manifesta-
tion of God to man, the expectation of the manner of the
coming of the Messiah was naturally based among Jewish
theologians upon this general conception of the method of
manifestation of Divinity, rather than upon those really higher
views of Divine manifestation referred to above, which are
represented in many prophetical passages, and especially in
Isaiah liii.
In His attitude toward the Temptations our Lord expressly
and flatly contradicts this conception of the Jewish theologians
based upon Exodus xix. and similar passages. The devil that
comes to Him in the theology of the Jews would bid Him
cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple and descend
upborne by angels. That theology demands of Him the
same general method of manifestation which is narrated in
Exodus xix. To this He opposed the conception of the Son
of Man, of God in man. He will not turn the stones to
bread, He will not cast Himself down from the pinnacle of
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 57
the temple, He will not seek to make Himself king of the
nations of the earth, the most powerful ruler of His time, as
David had been. The highest manifestation of God to man
is, according to our Lord, the manifestation of Himself in
man. It must be thoroughly human, and the Divine must
be exhibited, not in clouds and thunder and outward mani-
festations of might and terror, but in the perfection in man
of the divine attributes of love and truth. The Temptations
are a mystical setting forth of our Lord's position in this
matter, and of the conflict between that position and the
conceptions of Jewish theologians. It may be said that in
a broad way, not merely our Lord's attitude as described in
the Temptations, but His attitude as a whole as described
in the four Gospels, contradicts the conception of the highest
manifestation of the Divine contained in Exodus xix. God
in nature is what Exodus xix. sets forth ; God in man is what
our Lord in the New Testament sets forth. Not that God
does not cause the portents of nature, but He is not in those
in the sense in which He is in the still small voice, speak-
ing within the hearts of men. Comparatively speaking, the
theophany at Sinai is a low conception of God. The presence
of God is to be sought not in the lightning and the thunder-
storm, where the Hebrews in common with other peoples had
sought for it, but in the perfection of the moral attributes
in God's highest creation — man.
To turn from the general to the more particular. We find
in the story of the Temptations our Lord answering the
tempter by quotations from the Old Testament, introduced
by the words, "It is written." I wish to call attention to
the fact that this is a phrase which may be used not only of
the Old Testament, but practically of any writing, and that
the attitude of the Jewish mind towards the Old Testament as
an ancient written document was in part at least the same as
that existing everywhere among ancient peoples regarding
written documents, and which you will find at the present
time among most Orientals. For instance, if in speaking to
an ordinary Oriental of the Turkish Empire with reference
58 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
to any fact, I am able to take any book in his own language,
or in Arabic if he is a Moslem — it really matters very little
what — and show him that what I have stated is written in this
book, it will have upon his mind almost the effect of proof.
So St. Paul, wishing to confirm what he says to the Athenians,
is reported as quoting from a Stoic poet (Acts xvii. 28, "As
certain also of your own poets have said "), as though it were
Scripture, because that for which he could refer to a written
document had a double force to the minds of his hearers,
or in fact was regarded by most of them as proved if docu-
mentary evidence could be cited for it. In the same way,
in the Epistle of St. Jude (v. 14), we find the quotation from
the apocryphal book of Enoch, in the words, "And Enoch
also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of this," etc. One
of our Lord's expressions as quoted in the Gospels is, " It is
said or written by the ancients."
This general attitude of the mind towards written documents
must be carefully borne in mind in studying the quotations
from the Old Testament in the New. In regard to our Lord's
own quotations I really do not need to enter this caveat ; but
in the consideration of the use which St. Matthew and other
New Testament writers make of the Old Testament it should
be very carefully borne in mind.
The next passage to which I wish to call attention is the
Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew v. 1 7 our Lord is repre-
sented as saying, "Think not that I am come to destroy
the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but
to fulfil." And in verse 18 it is added, "For verily I say
unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." This
is frequently quoted as an assertion of what is ordinarily known
as literal, or verbal, inspiration ; as though every jot and tittle
of the words of the Law were sacred and eternal. But our
Lord's treatment of the Pentateuch in His expositions of the
Law, as recorded in that same document of discourses which
we know as the Sermon on the Mount, should show the
most casual reader that, so far from maintaining any such
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 59
literal inspiration, our Lord unhesitatingly condemns and
abolishes those portions of the Law and of the Old Testa-
ment as a whole which contradict what we now know as the
moral law, the law of love. His exposition of the sixth and
seventh commandments shows that the jots and tittles of the
law to which He refers are of a moral, not a formal nature.
The law must be obeyed in the extremest minutiae of its moral
application ; but the moral law, and that only, is sacred and
eternal. Whatever was written by Moses or by those of olden
times which is not consistent with that moral law is to be con-
demned and rejected.
So in Matthew v. 31 He quotes from Deuteronomy xxiv. i
the words (which are also contained in substance in Jer. iii. i),
" Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing
of divorcement," and affirms unhesitatingly that this is not the
word of God, but in contradiction to that word : " But I say
unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for
the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery."
That is, such divorce is a breach, or involves a breach, of the
seventh commandment when interpreted according to its spirit
and not merely its letter. There is no question as to our
Lord's position in this matter, for not only is the passage
contained in the Gospel according to St. Matthew ; it appears
also in the other two synoptic gospels, and is again taken up
more at length in Matthew xix., where our Lord, going further
still, lays down monogamy as the law of God, deducing it
spiritually from the story of the creation, and asserting it as
a part of the Divine plan, and thereby tacitly passing a con-
demnation on Law and Prophets, saints and seers of the past.
They did not have the word of God in this matter; they
were in error. This is expressed in His statement that the
commandment of Deuteronomy in the matter of divorce was
given because of the hardness of their hearts ; that is to say,
that man's knowledge of God's will depends upon the con-
dition of his own heart. If the heart of man is hard — that
is, ignorant, wilful, dark, barbarous — his conception of God
must be accordingly. What He is reported as saying in
60 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Matthew xix. 8, " Moses because of the hardness of your
hearts suffered you to put away your wives," when transferred
into our phraseology means nothing more nor less than,
" In the times of your barbarity, when your conceptions of
God were low and imperfect, the Law, which was leading you
up to something higher, was of necessity of itself low and im-
perfect." Their conception of God was imperfect, and hence
their conception of the moral law was imperfect.
As to the use of the name of Moses which we find in that
nineteenth chapter — I would say in passing that it is nothing
more than a technical designation by which the Pentateuch
was known, precisely as the plays, sonnets, etc., of Shakespeare
are known to us by the term " Shakespeare." The name was
given, it is true, because of the belief, generally held, that
Moses was the author of the Pentateuch ; but the use of the
term by any given individual may be a mere means of identi-
fication of a given passage, and does not in itself imply the
acceptance by that individual of such authorship, any more
than the use of "Samuel" as the designation of the books
of Samuel means that Samuel was their author. If I wish
to quote from Shakespeare, I quote, "Shakespeare says," with-
out anyone's supposing that I commit myself to the theory
of Shakesperian authorship for that particular place or passage.
The matter of authorship is not in mind. The object in view
is identification of the passage quoted. If the line of argu-
ment which treats the use of Moses in such passages as an
assertion on our Lord's part of the Mosaic authorship were
to be accepted, then logically in Matthew v. 33, where our
Lord quotes one of the commandments of the Decalogue,
with the introduction, " It was said by them of old time,"
it is fair to argue that He did not believe that this was by
Moses.
Continuing our Lord's exposition of the Law as recorded
in Matthew v. and following chapters, we find in chapter v.
38, 39, these words : " Ye have heard that it was said, An
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you,
That ye resist not him that is evil," etc. The same passage
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 61
appears in Luke vi. 29. Here, again, so far from preserving
the jots and tittles of the Law in the verbal sense, our Lord
reverses and repudiates the Law. It is worth while to observe
that what is true of the manner of the theophany at Sinai is
also true of the lex talionis. It is in no sense peculiar to the
Hebrews. We find the same law in actual practice among
all ancient nations, and in written form it occurs in all the
early systems of law ; such as the Laws of the Ten Tables,
the Laws of Solon, the Laws of Lycurgus, the Law of Manu,
etc. In the Old Testament it appears in every stratum of the
legislation : in the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxi. 24) ; in
Deuteronomy (xix. 21); and in Leviticus (xxiv. 20).
In Matthew v. 43 we find a further similar passage. Our
Lord says : " Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto
you, Love your enemies," etc. Here the words, "Ye have
heard that it was said," do not introduce the quotation of any
individual passage of the Old Testament. Our Lord is con-
tradicting the general spirit of many passages and the inferences
that had been drawn from them ; and also reflecting on certain
acts of Israel and its leaders which are recorded without
apparent condemnation in the Old Testament. In Deutero-
nomy xxiii. 6 the commandment with regard to the Ammonite
and the Moabite is, "Thou shalt not seek their peace nor
their prosperity all thy days for ever"; and Psalms Ixix., cix.,
etc., contain imprecations in the spirit of that verse of Deutero-
nomy. All such parts of the Old Testament are rejected by
our Lord as not of God in the sense in which He is of God.
A similar rejection of the Old Testament Law by our Lord
is found in Matthew xv. n ff., a passage which occurs also in
Mark vii. 15-19. The Pharisees and scribes have complained
because our Lord's disciples do not follow the school rules in
regard to clean and unclean, failing to wash their hands before
they eat. Our Lord, starting from this as a basis, goes on to
lay down the spiritual law of clean and unclean, and in doing
so demolishes completely not only the structure that the
scribes had built upon the Old Testament, but also the Old
62 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Testament law of clean and unclean. The apostles are very
much astonished, and cannot believe that He means what He
says in a literal sense, so that " Peter answered and said unto
Him, Declare unto us this parable."
Indeed, even after our Lord's Ascension His meaning was
not grasped for many years. St. Peter was the first to realise
His meaning in the vision at Joppa, but even then his Jewish
prejudices were too strong for him to put the teaching into
practice with any degree of consistency. Nevertheless, our
Lord's statement, as quoted both by St. Matthew and St. Mark,
is sufficiently explicit: "Not that which entereth into the
mouth defileth a man, but that which proceedeth out of the
mouth." Deuteronomy xiv. and Leviticus xi. both go by the
board. The peculiar holiness of Daniel for not eating the
food of the Chaldeans (Dan. i.) ceases to exist. In point of
fact, the notion of clean and unclean, as contained in Deutero-
nomy xiv. and Leviticus xi. and glorified in Daniel i., was
common to the Hebrews with the nations about them. Every
one of these had its law of clean and unclean, and every
nation ascribed these laws of clean and unclean to its god.
Our Lord seizes on the spirit of the law behind the letter.
There is a clean and unclean ; but such laws as these that
have been promulgated in the name of My Father, "Thou
shall not eat oysters, or swine's flesh, or camels, or the like,
because they are unclean," are not the law of My Father
which is in heaven; "For not that which entereth into the
mouth defileth a man, but that which proceedeth out of the
mouth, this defileth a man." Not one jot or one tittle of the
Law of God shall, or can, pass away, but the notions of the
Jews, as much as those of the Greeks and Arabs and Syrians
and Babylonians, were all alike overturned by Him Who came
to reveal the perfect will of a spiritual God. Compare with
this treatment of divorce, lex talionis, clean and unclean, etc.,
our Lord's treatment of the question of place of worship, in
the conversation with the woman of Samaria, as recorded
in John iv. He refutes and repudiates Law and Prophets
alike in His denial of the special sanctity of the Temple
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 63
at Jerusalem and in His assertion that " neither in this
mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father."
Turning back to Matthew xi. 10, we find our Lord quoting
as a prophecy of John the Baptist, Malachi iii. i, and at
the same time denying the literal truth of the words of the
prophet as contained in iv. 5. Malachi had said, "Behold,
I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and
terrible day of the Lord come " ; and the Jews, holding the
Old Testament to be literally and verbally inspired, expected
to see Elijah come. Our Lord, in asserting that St. John was
Elijah, practically affirmed that the prophets were not inspired
literally and verbally, that their inspiration was of a spiritual
nature. What Malachi looked for in the way of a preparation
for the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord was
fulfilled in the work of John the Baptist. No more literal fulfil-
ment of Malachi's words was to be expected. Literally, Malachi's
prophecy was untrue ; spiritually interpreted, it was true.
Turning to Matthew xii. 38 ff., we come to the famous
passage of the sign of Jonah, which is so often claimed as
an assertion on our Lord's part of the historical fact of the
swallowing and vomiting up alive of Jonah by a great fish,
as told in that noble parable of the Book of Jonah. To
begin with, the principle on which such a meaning is drawn
from our Lord's words is in itself false. I have never found
occasion to make any argument from what is known as the
kenosis. The question of the limitation of our Lord's under-
standing as a man has never seemed to me to be really in-
volved in any of the critical questions with regard to His
use of the Old Testament. He is compelled by the conditions
of those to whom He speaks to speak to them in their own
language. He cannot speak Greek to Hebrews, nor can
He speak in a twentieth-century tongue to people of the
first century. He cannot use the language of the Copernican
system to those whose whole idea of the universe is based
on the Ptolemaic theory; nor can He speak with the tongue
of the higher critics to men who have not the slightest con-
ception of the ideas of the higher criticism.
64 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Without touching the question of kenosis, we find a limita-
tion outside of Himself in the conditions in which He is
labouring. If He wishes to quote the Pentateuch, He must
quote it as Moses ; if He wishes to speak about the changes
of day and night consequent upon the movement of the earth
on its axis, He must speak, in order to be understood, of
the " rising and setting of the sun " ; and if He wishes to draw
a moral lesson out of the stories of the Old Testament, He
cannot enter into the question of their literal, historical
accuracy, but, without opening that question at all, He must
refer to them as though they were facts, precisely as everyone
else did. No teaching could be derived from our Lord's
words in such matters, unless He were to state explicitly,
which He does not, that an object of His citation is to
affirm the historical character of the fact alluded to. To
base an argument as to His belief in a given case solely on
the fact that He uses the ordinary language of His time and
country is to build upon false principles. But in this particular
case a comparative study of the Gospels seems to make it
probable that our Lord never uttered the words in question.
In Luke xi. 29 ff. we are told that when the multitude
were gathered together, our Lord began to say, " This genera-
tion is an evil generation ; it seeketh after a sign, and there
shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonah; for even
as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so also shall
the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the
south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this
generation, and shall condemn them : for she came from the
ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; and, behold,
a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall
stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall
condemn it : for they repented at the preaching of Jonah ;
and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here." This passage is
perfectly clear. "The sign of Jonah," to which our Lord
refers, is not the sign of his being swallowed by a great fish,
and vomited up alive after three days, but that in regard to
which he was a sign to the Ninevites. According to the
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 65
narrative in the Book of Jonah, the Ninevites heard nothing
of Jonah's adventures. He came to them to declare against
them the judgment of God. They accepted the sign that God
was wroth with them for their evil doings, and repented and
were saved, heathen though they were. He, Christ, has come
to the Jews with a similar message from God. He is a similar
sign, but they have rejected Him. That this is the meaning
of the passage is shown by the further reference to Solomon
and the queen of Sheba. The whole tone of the passage
reminds one of the comparison by our Lord of Capernaum,
Chorazin, and Bethsaida with Sodom and Gomorrah ; of
unbelieving, self-satisfied Jews with the Gentiles whom they
despised.
The passage in St. Matthew's Gospel is not equally clear.
There we are told that certain of the scribes and Pharisees
answered Him, saying, " Master, we would see a sign from
Thee. But He answered and said unto them, An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no
sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. (For as
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the
whale, so must the Son of Man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth.) The men of Nineveh shall stand
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn
it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a
greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south shall rise
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn
it : for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom
of Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here."
It will be observed that in a slightly different order the
Gospel according to St. Matthew has three verses identical
with those in St. Luke, namely, the statement that an evil and
adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and shall have no sign
given it but the sign of the prophet Jonah ; the statement that
the men of Nineveh shall stand up in judgment, and condemn
it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and the state-
ment that the queen of the south shall rise up in judgment
with this generation, and condemn it, because she came from
66 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the most distant part of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon.
But there is a fourth verse in the Gospel according to
St. Matthew which is not in the Gospel according to St. Luke,
and that is the statement, " For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man
be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
Comparing the two passages, and considering what the con-
nexion of thought is, it seems to me quite clear that this
verse is an addition of St. Matthew's. A comparison of
St. Matthew's reports of our Lord's sayings and doings with the
treatment of St. Mark or St. Luke will show that St. Matthew
always seeks to find a Bible verse appropriate to the occasion,
which he introduces into the narrative. For an instance of
this compare the accounts of the parable of the Sower, as
given in the two Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke.
In Luke viii. 10 we read, "And He said, Unto you it is given
to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God : but to others
in parables ; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they
might not understand " — words in which our Lord clearly
quotes the sense of Isaiah vii. 9. With this agrees sub-
stantially Mark iv. n, 12. Turning to Matthew xiii. 13 we
read, " Therefore speak I to them in parables : because they
seeing see not ; and hearing hear not ; neither do they under-
stand"; and then there is added, in verse 14, these words,
"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says,
By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; and seeing
ye shall see, and not perceive." Does St. Matthew mean to
put these words into the mouth of our Lord? It seems
to me that his method of reporting our Lord is this : that
where our Lord referred to the Old Testament he seeks to
give the quotation, and — which is perfectly proper according
to the ancient idea of an historian in recording the words of
a speaker — he sometimes puts the passage which he himself
has taken from the Old Testament into the mouth of our
Lord.
Where he is dealing with the acts of our Lord the Old
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 67
Testament verses cannot be put into His mouth, but they are
introduced into the narrative with the statement that whatever
was done, was done " in order that it might be fulfilled which
was written, saying," etc. In Matthew xxi. 2 ff., where our
Lord has told the disciples to go into the village over against
them, and to take a she-ass which they will find there, He says
to them, " If any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The
Lord hath need of them ; and he shall send them. Now this
is come to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy
King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and
upon a colt the foal of an ass." The quotation from Zechariah
ix. 9 might be supposed to be put, according to the Revised
Version, into our Lord's mouth. When we turn to Mark xi.
and to Luke xix., and read the same narrative, we do not find
the quotation used at all. The Authorised Version gives the
verse in question as from St. Matthew, and not from our Lord
— " Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by the prophet." There is, in fact, a certain ambiguity
in the phraseology of St. Matthew, for he would not feel the
necessity for making the distinction which we make between
a quotation inserted by himself and one actually used by our
Lord.
So, in the passage with regard to the sign of the prophet
Jonah, St. Matthew has simply introduced a statement of his
own which summarises that which is to all readers, at first
sight at least, the most striking thing in the story of Jonah,
and this statement is put in the midst of our Lord's words, so
that it seems to the modern reader to be put into the mouth
of our Lord in the same way as in the other cases to which I
have referred. This verse, therefore, as the comparison of
passages shows, is not to be taken as the words of our Lord,
but as the explanatory comment of St. Matthew, who sees in
the story of Jonah a sign of our Lord's Resurrection. Use a
modern device, bracket the verse, and the difficulty vanishes
at once.
The designation of the sources of our Lord's quotations
68 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
from the Old Testament in the different Gospels is an interest-
ing and rather curious study. In Matthew xv. 4 our Lord is
quoted as saying, " For God said, Honour thy father and thy
mother : and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him
die the death." The same passage is quoted in Mark vii. 10
in this form : " For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy
mother : and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let
him die the death." The intention is to quote the passage as
of divine authority. In the Gospel according to St. Mark it is
quoted with the technical designation of "the Law," that is,
Moses. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, it is quoted
with reference to the source of inspiration of the Law, namely,
God. But what were the words our Lord used? Did He
say, "God said," or "Moses said"? I do not suppose we
know, and it is a matter of complete indifference. He might
with perfect propriety have used either form. There is a
similar case in Matthew xxii. 23-33, where, in our Lord's
answer to the argument of the Sadducees, Exodus iii. 6 is
quoted. St. Matthew represents our Lord as citing it with
the introduction, " Have ye not read that which was spoken
unto you by God, saying, . . . ? " In the parallel passage in
Mark xii. 18 ff. our Lord is represented as saying, "Have ye
not read in the book of Moses, in the Bush, how God
spake?" and in the same passage in the Gospel according
to St. Luke (xx. 27 ff.) our Lord's words are represented to
be, "But that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed in
the Bush."
The important truth in these cases is the Divine authority of
the statement, and those who report the words of our Lord
agree substantially in that, although they differ so markedly in
the manner in which they introduce the quotations. These
passages confirm my previous assertion that we cannot lay any
stress on the use of such formulae as " Moses said," etc.
With regard to the difference between St. Matthew and the
other Gospels in the matter of Old Testament quotations, I
may here refer to Matthew xxiii. 35, "That upon you may
come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 69
blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of
Barachias, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar."
Now in 2 Chronicles xxiv. 20, 21 we are told that a certain
Zacharias son of Jehoiada the priest was stoned with stones
at the command of the king, in the court of the house of the
Lord. If this is a quotation from Chronicles, it is incorrect,
and either he that quoted it or the chronicler is in error. If
it refers, as some of the best commentators suppose, not to
the event recorded in Chronicles, but to the murder in the
midst of the Temple, by two of the most daring of the zealots
during the Jewish war, of " Zachariah son of Baruch," recorded
by Josephus (Bell. iv. 6, 4), then it occurred a generation
after our Lord's time. Did our Lord use these words ? It
is noteworthy that this whole twenty-third chapter, the chapter
of the denunciations, is wanting in St. Mark and St. Luke. It
looks as though, in the same way that St. Matthew gathered a
great amount of similar material together in the Sermon on the
Mount, so he had gathered together here all the scattered
words of denunciation spoken at one time or another, and
edited them after his manner as one discourse, with such
references to the Old Testament (and possibly even to recent
contemporary history) as he could make. Such passages as
this thirty-fifth verse, I should suppose, are not to be taken
as words of our Lord, but are due rather to St. Matthew's
manner of supporting what he reports of our Lord's words by
Old Testament citations and the like, which he weaves in as
though they were part of the discourse.
In Matthew xxiv. 15 we read, "When therefore ye see the
abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel
the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him
understand)," etc. In the same chapter (v. 36 f.) we are told
that no one knows of the day of the second coming, not even
the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only; and
as were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son
of Man. In Mark xiii. 14, the parallel passage, we do not
find any formal citation of the prophet Daniel, although we
find the reference to the abomination of desolation, and the
70 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
whole of the reference to the days of Noah is omitted. In
St. Luke's account of the same (xxi.) we find neither the refer-
ence to Daniel nor the reference to Noah. The argument
would seem to be that the quotation of Daniel and the
citation of the story of Noah are part of St. Matthew's regular
method of reinforcing or explaining our Lord's words by
references connecting them with the Old Testament.
In Matthew xix. 16-22 we find the story of the man who
came to ask the Master what good thing he should do to have
eternal life. Our Lord quotes to him the sixth, seventh,
eighth, ninth, and fifth commandments from the Decalogue,
following this with a citation and application of Leviticus xix.
18, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," which citation
is put along with the commandments of the Decalogue, as
though it were itself one of them. The parallel passages,
in the Gospels according to St. Mark and St. Luke, omit the
citation from Leviticus xix. 18. (St. Luke differs from the
other Gospels in quoting the commandments after the order of
the Septuagint, instead of the Hebrew order, that is, placing
the seventh commandment before the sixth.) Now Leviticus
xix. 1 8 is a favourite passage with our Lord, and it seems
probable that in this case St. Matthew has introduced, along
with the commandments which our Lord quotes, that summary
of those commandments which our Lord used on other
occasions.
In Matthew xxii. 36-40 one of the Pharisees asks our Lord,
"Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" and
our Lord is quoted as answering him by a citation, not from
the Decalogue, but from Deuteronomy vi. 5, "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart," etc, and Leviticus xix.
1 8, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." He turns to
the spirit behind the Decalogue, not to the Decalogue. In
the parallel passage in the Gospel according to St. Mark
Deuteronomy vi. 4, " Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one
Lord," is quoted, as well as Deuteronomy vi. 5 ; and this
is one of the few passages where there is more of the Old
Testament put into our Lord's mouth in the Gospel of
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 71
St. Mark than in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Strictly
speaking, there is no parallel passage in the Gospel according
to St. Luke, but in Luke x. 25 we find on another occasion
a certain lawyer represented as tempting our Lord, saying,
" Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " whereupon
our Lord quotes Deuteronomy vi. 5 and Leviticus xix. 18,
just as He is represented as doing upon this occasion in
St. Matthew and St. Mark.
It is worthy of note that our Lord, in His quotation of
Leviticus xix. 18, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,"
gives a very different sense to those words from that which
they have in the connexion in which they appear in the Book
of Leviticus. The commandment there concerns the Israelite
only ; that is, the neighbour referred to is the Israelite. It is
part of a series which directs a different treatment of the
Israelite from that of the foreigner. Our Lord takes the spirit
of these commandments and expands their force by changing
the conception of God's relations to man, and hence of man's
relations to his fellow-men. What in the school of the Law
they learned to do and to feel toward their Israelitish brothers
they are now ordered to do and to feel toward all men,
because all men are brothers, children of one Father which is
in Heaven. It is a spiritual, not a literal interpretation of the
Law. Indeed, it rejects and repudiates the letter.
I have noticed the method in which St. Matthew uses the
Old Testament and his efforts to connect everything with the
Old Testament. It may be remarked in passing that this
is more noticeable where he is recording the events of our
Lord's life than where he is recording His words, and in
the introductory chapters of his Gospel we are almost amazed
at the method of treating the Old Testament which we find.
He endeavours to connect everything in our Lord's life in
one way or another with some particular passage in the Old
Testament ; accordingly a passage must be found which shall
connect our Lord in some way with the town of Nazareth.
Now in Isaiah xi. i we read, "And there cometh forth a shoot
from the stock of Jesse, and a Branch (nezer) from his roots
72 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
beareth fruit." Here the Messiah is called a nezer (branch),
therefore, St. Matthew says, it was prophesied that " He shall be
a Nazarene." It must be understood that there is absolutely
no connexion between nezer > meaning branch, and the word
Nazarene. The similarity in outward form is a pure accident.
I might call attention at this point to the tendency which
showed itself very early in the handling of the Scriptures to
introduce modifications or explanations into the text on the
part of those who transcribed it. So, in Matthew v. 22, the
received text reads, " But I say unto you that whosoever shall
be angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger
of the judgment." The correct text has no " without a cause,"
but simply says, " Whosoever is angry with his brother is in
danger of the judgment." The person who wrote in the words
"without a cause" did not appreciate the whole meaning
of our Lord's words. But evidently the body of the Church
was in sympathy with him in feeling the need of a modification
of our Lord's very radical statement, and consequently his
correction, or marginal note, crept into the text in ordinary
use. A better-known example of text corruption is i John
v. 7, where the doctrine of the Trinity is asserted in the
famous passage of the three that bear record in heaven.
Another instance is the doxology to the Lord's Prayer, which
appears in the received text in St. Matthew's version of the
prayer. It is now traced back, I believe, to the North of
Africa. It was a doxology added to the prayer in liturgical
use, and from that it crept into the text.
A consideration of the methods of early writers in the
handling of the text should make us extremely cautious in
regard to the treatment of mere words in the Bible, as though
the form in which they have come down to us were literally
accurate. The whole literary conception of the writers and
transcribers of Bible texts was very different from our own — so
different that we cannot seek from Bible writers verbal accuracy
of the sort which we demand at the present day, as I think is
brought out very fully the instant we compare one gospel
narrative with another.
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 73
In one case a quotation from the Gospel according to
St. Mark differs from a quotation in St. Matthew and St. Luke
in such a manner as to suggest a bias on the part of St. Mark.
Matthew (xxi. 13) and Luke (xix. 46), in narrating our Lord's
purification of the Temple, when He drove out them that
bought and sold therein, report Him as quoting from Isaiah Ivi. 7
the words, " Mine house shall be called an house of prayer."
St. Mark (xi. 17) gives the quotation in a fuller form, " house of
prayer for all peoples." I am inclined to suppose the quotation
as reported by St. Matthew and St. Luke more likely to have
been that used by our Lord, and that St. Mark, knowing of the
additional words which belonged to the passage in the original,
and being interested in precisely that aspect of the gospel
which made it a gospel for all peoples, gave the quotation in
this fuller form as spoken by our Lord.
In Matthew xxi. 42, Psalm cxviii. 22, 23 is quoted under the
designation "scriptures": "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye
never read in the scriptures," etc. St. Mark (xii. 10) quotes
the same passage under the same title ; but St. Luke (xx. 17)
quotes verse 22 only, with the preface, "What then is this that
is written ? " It is a written thing, a thing that is handed down
in writing; that is the thought which lies in the designation
" scripture," to an extent which we do not always recognise.
" It is written " — anything that was written in times long gone
by has a value and a sanction which sets it aside from the
things of to-day.
I have already referred to our Lord's quotation of Exodus iii. 6
and the discussion with the Sadducees concerning the resurrec-
tion of the dead, reported in Matthew xxii., Mark xii., and
Luke xx. It will be observed that in the discussions reported in
these chapters our Lord meets, one after the other, different
opponents, accepts their own basis of argument, applies their
own method, and defeats them. Our Lord's object here is the
same as that in the discussion with the Pharisees, recorded in
the same chapter (Matt. xxii. 41-46). In the latter place He
undertakes to show the Pharisees, according to their own
methods, from what they accept, that their view of the Messiah
74 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
is incorrect. Here He treats the Sadducees in the same way.
In neither place, surely, can our Lord be understood as saying
that this is the proper interpretation of the Old Testament.
What He does say is, "You accept this, now observe the
logical results; your position is untenable on your own
showing."
When He quotes, " I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob," to the Sadducees as an argument to them that God is
a God of the living, not of the dead, and that therefore the
dead rise again; or when He quotes Psalm ex. as an
argument to the Pharisees that because David in the spirit
called the Messiah Lord, therefore the Messiah could not be
inferior to David, He is presenting to each class an argumentum
ad hominem. It is not the sort of reasoning which He adopts
in general, and on which He relies to establish the truth of
His mission and to convince men of His Divinity. Every pass-
age must be interpreted in connexion with its surroundings,
and all words in connexion with their use. It might be added,
with regard to the quotation from Psalm ex. i, that whereas the
Psalm, as a whole, is of very late date, and could not possibly
be ascribed to David, or the period of David, it is not im-
possible that the first two verses are of earlier origin. There
is even a bare possibility that they belonged to some old poem
going back as far as the days of David. I am not prepared to
assert, therefore, that it is absolutely impossible that these
words might have been, in substantially their present form,
composed by David himself, although it is extremely improb-
able. As far as our Lord's utterances are concerned, however,
I consider it a matter of complete indifference whether they
were composed by David or Simon Maccabaeus. Our Lord is
simply quoting them as what the Pharisees themselves would
say. If we were to translate it into our idiom, we should
introduce it by some passage such as, "You say so and so,
and, on the basis of your argument, so and so follows." But
that is not the method of the gospel writers, and I can give an
admirable example of misinterpretation of a very important
text for the simple reason that people have expected the
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 75
gospellers to write after the manner and method of our own
Deriod, and have misinterpreted them because they did not do
;o. Thus in Matthew v. 21 ff., in our Lord's interpretation of
;he sixth commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," He says, " Ye
iave heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
lot kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the
udgment. But I say unto you, That every one who is angry
vith his brother shall be in danger of the judgment : and who-
soever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the
:ouncil : and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger
}f the hell of fire." Now commentators generally have attri-
3uted to our Lord as His own the words, "and whosoever
shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the
council," which destroys the force of the passage in very large
part. The meaning is really this : " It was said by them of
aid time, Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever did kill was in
danger of being tried and condemned by the courts appointed
to execute the law. I say unto you, That whosoever is angry
with his brother is in danger of the judgment of God. You
have made an application of that commandment, ' Thou shalt
not kill,' to the use of libellous and abusive terms, and accord-
ing to your legal code, whosoever calls his brother by the term
' Raca,' is in danger of punishment by the Sanhedrim ; but I
say unto you, That whosoever shall call his brother any name of
opprobrium — the most general possible — is in danger of the
hell of fire." The introductory phrase, which our methods of
editing would require, is not introduced, and therefore the
literal interpreter is apt to make up, as he has done, a new
commandment, issued by our Lord, that nobody must call any
other person Raca.
To sum up briefly the results of this investigation : I should
say that our Lord regarded the Old Testament as scripture,
and as containing a divine revelation to man through man,
but He does not treat that revelation as complete and perfect,
nor does He treat the individual men through whom the
revelation has come as infallible. The revelation of the Old
Testament is incomplete and imperfect, and consequently
76 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
there are things in the Old Testament which are untrue, and
teaching which is contrary to the absolute divine truth. Our
Lord taught that the whole of the Old Testament prophesies
of Him, and was preparing the way for Him, but He does not
anywhere teach that individual prophets prophesied of the
details of His life, or that their words are to be taken literally
as utterances concerning facts in His life. He accepts the
Old Testament spiritually and not literally. In the Law He
accepts as divine that which also commends itself to our
consciences as in itself true. The proof of the truth of any
given passage is not its authorship nor its external claim to
be the word of God, but itself. There is a moral law, of
which He is the highest revelation, and we, enlightened by
that revelation and guided by the Spirit, are quite capable
of judging of the truth of any passage in the Old Testament.
We are to do what He did. He judged of the truth of Scrip-
ture by the final moral law, and in doing so taught us to do
the same thing. We are to accept or reject it according to its
truth, and the truth is to be determined by the law of God as
revealed in the character and teaching of Jesus Christ.
With regard to prophetic utterances, He has pointed out
the same general method. The prophets prophesied of Him,
but it does not follow that when a writer said, " He shall make
His grave with the rich in His death," if he ever did say it, he
is prophesying of the circumstance of our Lord's burial in the
tomb of the rich Joseph of Arimathea. The inspiration of
the prophets is of a moral character, just as is the inspiration
of the Law, and their power of predicting that which is to
come is based on the moral character of their mission. They
perceive moral features, the necessary victory of right over
wrong, the victory of God ; they understand better than others
the nature of God's dealings with men, and of His methods of
revealing Himself. It is with this side of their work that our
Lord is naturally concerned. It is the morality of their pre-
dictions which He claims as foretelling Him.
The writers of the New Testament are influenced to a
greater or less degree by the traditional Jewish treatment of
OUR LORD AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 77
the Old Testament, and this is particularly true of such
writers as the authors of the Gospel according to St. Matthew
and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. We have to make allow-
ance for this in considering their use of the Old Testament.
The way in which we are to interpret the use which St. Matthew,
or the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, makes of the Old
Testament is to be determined by comparison with our Lord's
use. He is the norm, not they. They are human and fallible ;
but behind their method lies the reality, which our Lord had
Himself declared and accepted, of the inspiration of the Old
Testament scriptures.
It is sometimes said, " Will not this method of interpreting
the Bible destroy the connexion between the Old Testament
and the New, and will it not rob such texts as, ' They pierced
His hands and His feet,' or a ' woman shall compass a man,'
of their meaning in regard to Christ ? " The method of in-
terpreting the Bible which I have here proposed cannot rob
any text of its meaning, nor can it destroy the connexion
between the Old and the New, nor does it deny the prophecies
of the New in the Old. It is nothing but the application of
Christ's method, rather than the method of some of the Jewish
disciples of Christ. No doubt a great many individual texts,
in the way in which they are ordinarily interpreted, must be
relegated sooner or later to the attic ; but a great many more
texts, interpreted in a better and higher way, will take the
place of these, and the Old Testament, as a whole, will be
more clearly seen to prepare the way for Christ, and to pro-
claim His coming, His nature, and His mission. The whole
Old Testament will become a prophecy of Christ, rather than
single and individual passages ; and everything will rest on a
moral basis, appealing to the conscience and the reason, rather
than on a basis which must seem to any but the very credulous
one of chance and caprice.
PART II
EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE
CHAPTER V
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE
IT is customary in certain quarters to call students of the
Bible, according to modern methods, "higher critics,"
and to designate the present-day methods of Bible study in
general "Higher Criticism," which Higher Criticism is sup-
posed to indicate a dangerous laxity regarding the fundamental
tenets of Christianity, if not absolute infidelity. How many
who thus use the term have any knowledge of its origin and
true meaning, or of the history of the development of the
present science (for such it may fairly be called) of Bible
study ? Who to-day would dispute Le Clerc's statement in
his criticism (1685) of Simon's Critical History of the Old
Testament, that in writing the history of a book it is not
enough to say "when and by whom it was written, what
copyists transcribed it, and what faults they committed in
transcribing it. It is not sufficient to tell us who translated
it, and to call our attention to defects in his version; nor
even to teach us who commented upon it, and what there
is that is faulty in those comments. We must discover, if
that is possible, with what purpose the author composed it,
what occasion caused him to take up his pen, and to what
opinions or to what events he may make allusion in that
work." And yet this is " Higher Criticism."
It was Eichhorn, of Gottingen, who first, a little more
than a hundred years later, applied to the method of Bible
study thus defined by the Dutch scholar the term "Higher
Criticism," "a new name," as he says, "to no humanist."
Hear how he expounds the value of this Higher Criticism
G 81
82 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
for the interpretation of the Book of Genesis. "The credi-
bility of the book obviously gains by it. The historian is
no longer obliged to rely on one reporter in the history of
the most distant past ; and in the duplicated narratives of the
same event he is not obliged to force into harmony the
unessential differences in accessory circumstances by artificial
devices. He sees in such divergences the marks of indepen-
dent origin, and finds in their agreement in the main important
confirmation. The interpreter, when the Higher Criticism
has separated his documents for him, need no longer wrestle
with difficulties which are insoluble. He will no longer ex-
plain the second chapter of Genesis by the first, or the first
by the second, and the world will cease to lay on Moses the
burden of the sins of his younger expositors. Finally, when
the Higher Criticism has distinguished between the writers,
and characterised each of them by his general method, his
diction, his favourite expressions, and other peculiarities, her
lower sister (textual, or lower criticism), who occupies herself
only with words and spies out false readings, lays down her
own rules and principles for determining the text, discovering
glosses, and detecting interpolations and transpositions."
Devout believer in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
as Eichhorn was, he was as sharply attacked by the tradi-
tionalists of his day as the higher critics of the present
generation have been by the present-day traditionalists, —
which latter, by the way, unknown to themselves, perhaps,
stand in general where the " Higher Critic," Eichhorn, stood
a hundred and twenty years ago — so that he wrote : " Party
spirit will, perhaps, for a couple of decades snort at the Higher
Criticism, instead of rewarding it with the thanks which are
really due it."
But to trace the history of the modern method of Bible
study we must go much further back than the times of
Eichhorn or Le Clerc. Higher Criticism may fairly be said
to have its beginnings in the translation of the Old Testament
out of the Hebrew into Greek. The tendency in the sacred
literature of all languages is towards the doctrine of literal
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 83
inspiration : that the very language in which the Sacred Book
is written is sacred, and that every word and even every
letter of the Sacred Script has value and importance. To-day
the orthodox Moslem protests against any translation of the
Koran, and whatever his own tongue, and however unin-
telligible to him the original text of the Koran may be, he
persists in the repetition of its words in Arabic only. The
same is true in an even more extreme degree of the Veda
and Avesta. The Jew, likewise, in all lands reads in the
synagogue his Sacred Book in the original Hebrew, and old-
fashioned rabbins still claim that Hebrew is the sacred
language, given by God to man, and spoken in the Garden
of Eden, a view which many Christians held not many
decades since. As a curiosity of scholarship, I may mention
an American rabbi, born in Hungary, who studied Sanscrit
and comparative philology with me under the late Professor
Whitney, of Yale, a quarter of a century since. His object
in so doing was to obtain the material to prove what he
firmly believed : that Sanscrit and all other languages were
derived from Hebrew, the tongue given of God to men.
I have already, in a former chapter, pointed out the result
of the translation of the Old Testament into Hebrew in
Alexandria. By the fact of that translation the books of the
Old Testament were brought into the arena of Greek scientific
investigation. The same methods were applied to them
which were applied to the study of Homer, the Greek
tragedians, philosophers, etc., what we may fairly call the
Higher Criticism of that day. An effort was made to
determine the authorship of the various books, and they
were rearranged on a new scheme, according to their authors
and their contents, and supplied with headings accordingly.
In spite of the opposition of the orthodox Jews of Palestine,
this translation and rearrangement of the books of the Old
Testament became the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews
of Egypt, and from them it was adopted by the Christian
Church.
The early Christians did not hold to literal inspiration in
I
84 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the orthodox Jewish sense. It was not the language, but
the sense with which they were concerned. Accordingly
the Bible was translated into the language of each Church,
so that there have come down to us not one, but several
Greek translations, besides the numerous Syriac, Latin,
Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, and Arabic translations
of the Scriptures. But as the Dark Ages set in the Christian
point of view began to change, and each Church came to
consider its own translation of the Bible as a finality, applying
to it with curious logical inconsistency that doctrine of literal
inspiration, which, as we have seen, has affected the sacred
literature of all lands. The Ethiopians changed their
language, but the old, unintelligible Ethiopic Scriptures re-
mained untranslated and were regarded as sacred in their
letter. The same was true in the Greek Church and the
Armenian Church. Throughout the West the Latin transla-
tion came to be regarded everywhere as the sacred letter
of Scripture. For a time men had ceased to reason.
Authority had usurped the place of reason in all departments
of knowledge. For centuries the philosophy, mathematics,
medicine, astrology, and the like, which the West had
borrowed from the Greeks in the days when the Greeks
were the scientific and progressive thinkers of the world,
were accepted as a finality on the authority of antiquity.
They were discussed and commentated ; hair - splitting
speculations were based upon them, but no effort was made
to go behind what had been handed down or to examine
the foundations upon which it rested.
A companion doctrine to the doctrine of literal inspiration
is the doctrine that all knowledge is contained in sacred
scripture, that scripture is not only an instruction in religion,
but also a revelation for science, for geography, for history.
This doctrine, common to all peoples who have maintained
a literal inspiration of their sacred scriptures, was adopted in
the Dark Ages by the Christian Church, and it was with this
doctrine that the thinkers of the Renaissance first came in
conflict.
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 85
With the fall of Constantinople and the invention of
Drinting a new era dawned in the West. There was a new
Dirth of literature and of knowledge. Men began to think
md to explore for themselves, and authority was compelled
;o yield place to reason. But it was a slow process. The
prejudices of ages, and the organised opposition of a Church
md society entrenched in those prejudices, had to be over-
come. Astronomers, physicists, geographers, physicians were
3ne after another confronted with the charge of heresy,
Decause they contradicted the views derived from the ancient
Greeks, and supposed to be revealed in the Bible. We are
ill familiar with the religious objections with which Columbus
ivas confronted when he propounded the theory of a Western
Hemisphere, and the condemnation and persecution of Coper-
:iicus, Galileo, and other great discoverers. Where the bulk
3f the Chinese stand to-day, there the Church and the great
mass of the people of the West stood at the close of the
fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth centuries.
And even to-day the battle is scarcely won. Old men will
remember the prejudice with which comparative philology was
regarded, as contradicting what was supposed to be the Bible
teaching, that Hebrew was the original language, given by God
to men ; or the storm raised by the geologists and astronomers
who declared that the world must have been created earlier
than B.C. 4004; and men who have not yet reached middle
age have heard from the pulpit or read in religious books
and journals denunciations of Darwin and his epoch-making
doctrine of Evolution, on the ground that that doctrine con-
tradicted the Bible.
What was achieved in the world of natural science by the
discoveries of Columbus, Galileo, Copernicus, and others
affected the world of literature also. Men commenced to
question the writings of the past, their traditional claims to
authorship and to authority. But here progress was even
slower than in the field of natural science. It was the famous
battle of the books between Bentley and Boyle in the closing
year of the seventeenth century which first established modern
86 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
literary criticism on a firm foundation. Up to that time it
was generally supposed that the questions of authorship, date,
and composition of ancient books had been settled by com-
petent scholars of the past, better fitted to decide the question
than modern critics, and their authority was supposed to have
placed these questions beyond cavil.
The battle of the books was fought over the Epistles of
Phalaris. Bentley proved that these epistles were not, as had
been supposed, written by Phalaris. The main points of his
argument were: (i) that there is conclusive internal evidence
of later authorship, in the mention of places and things which
did not exist at the time of Phalaris; (2) by the argument
of language they are shown to have been later than the time
of Phalaris, since they employ a dialect not used until after
his time ; (3) they presuppose different conditions of thought
and different customs from those prevailing in the time of
Phalaris; (4) the famous argument of silence — that there is
no reference anywhere to the Epistles of Phalaris for a
thousand years after his time.
As a result of this battle of the books, men began to
question in all literary fields the authority on which traditions
of authorship rested, and to apply everywhere the principles
which Bentley had laid down. But this involved much more
than the mere question of authorship. It involved, ulti-
mately, historical traditions, as well as the traditions of literary
composition ; for the two are inevitably linked together, and
scholars had accepted the statements of ancient writers with
regard to historical facts on the same authority on which they
had accepted the traditional authorship of ancient books.
But the process of investigation was slow, and men continued
to accept the stories of William Tell, Romulus and Remus,
and the like on the authority of the past, long after they had
refused to accept traditions of literary authorship on similar
authority. It was not until the present century that Niebuhr
subjected the traditions of Roman history to a searching,
critical examination, as epoch-making in its line as Bentley's
investigation of the authorship of the Epistles of Phalaris had
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 87
been in the line of literature. It was Niebuhr's work which
led Ewald to his famous reconstruction of Hebrew history,
the foundation on which all later work in the study of the
history of Israel is founded.
It was inevitable that the awakening of thought and the
substitution of reason for authority in science, secular litera-
ture, and secular history, should ultimately affect sacred
literature and sacred history as well. But these latter in-
vestigations have a history of their own. It was the Spanish
Jews among whom, chronologically, the work of Old Testa-
ment criticism began, even before the time of the Renaissance;
for we may pass over altogether the uncritical speculations of
the first and following Christian centuries with regard to
Ezra's authorship of the Pentateuch and other books of the
Hebrew Bible, which theory did, however, later exert an
influence on Spinoza. The advanced thinkers of their day
in all departments of knowledge, we are still indebted to
the Spanish Jews for much of the form and phraseology of
our modern Hebrew grammars. Inspired by the example
of the Arabic scholars, they sought to apply scientific prin-
ciples to the study of their own language and to formulate
its laws. The verbal examination of the Hebrew Scriptures,
resulting from these attempts, led some of them, in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, to observe that certain passages
in Genesis are inconsistent with a belief in the authorship of
Moses. But this Jewish criticism did not, at the time, affect
the Christian world. Taken up and expanded later by
Spinoza, it played its part, but for the moment it passed
unnoticed.
The Reformation aroused men's interest in religion, as the
Renaissance had aroused their interest in literature and
science ; and as in the Renaissance men had begun to think
for themselves and investigate for themselves in scientific
matters, so now in the Reformation they began to think and
investigate for themselves in matters of religion. Carlstadt,
in 1520, published at Wittenberg an essay, in which, on the
ground that the style of narration after the death of Moses
88 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
remained the same as before, he argued that it might be held
that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Luther,
like all great religious leaders, was careless of the form in
comparison of the substance. Noting the reference in
Genesis xxxvi. 3 1 to the . kings who had reigned in Edom
before there were any kings in Israel, he asks what it
matters whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch or not, and
does not investigate the question further. It was not the
man who wrote the book, nor the date of its writing, but
the religious content with which he was concerned. Later
in the same century, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish scholars,
like Du Maes, Bonfrere, Episcopius, Pereira, and the Jesuits,
took up the critical study of the Old Testament, and went
much further than Carlstadt had done in pointing out
evidences of additions to or editions of the Pentateuch,
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings at dates later than their
traditional authorship. These critics, be it observed, were
all pious Churchmen.
Then came the free-thinking Hobbes in England, who,
in his Leviathan (1651), noting the same passages which had
seemed to Spanish Jews and Christian scholars inconsistent
with Mosaic authorship, concluded that " Moses wrote all that
he is said to have written, as, for example, the volume of the
Law which is contained, as it seemeth, in the eleventh of
Deuteronomy and following chapters to the twenty-seventh."
He identifies this law with the law " which, having been lost,
was long after found again by Hilkiah and sent to King
Josiah" (2 Kings xxii. 8), following in part St. Jerome, who
was the first critic to identify the law book of Josiah with
Deuteronomy, but sets aside the title, " Five Books of Moses,"
as of no authority, and concludes that the Pentateuch, as
a whole, was not his work.
Next follows De la Peyrere (1654), a French Calvinist, with
his curious theory of pre-Adamite men, from whom the
greater part of mankind were descended, and his literary
study of the Pentateuch with this idea in mind. Using the
passages which had been already used by others, and adding
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 89
i few more, he reached the conclusion that Genesis was
:omposed out of different documents, compiled and arranged
3y another than Moses.
A little later (1671) Spinoza with trenchant pen discussed
:he chronological difficulties of the Pentateuch and the
listorical books. Both in his drastic method of treating the
iubject, and also in his conclusions, he went much further
han any of his predecessors. Moses, according to him, had
composed a book of commentaries on the Law, but that book
vas no longer extant. Deuteronomy was the law book pro-
nulgated by Ezra, as narrated in Nehemiah viii. 9, and it was
izra who had written the "history of the Hebrew nation, from
he creation of the world to the destruction of Jerusalem."
In his Critical History of the Old Testament (1682), Father
Simon, of the Congregation of the Oratory, undertook to
^indicate ecclesiastical tradition and the authority of Scripture
igainst the speculations of philosophers like Spinoza. Never-
heless, he agrees with the latter in recognising the diversities
)f style, the confusions of order, and the chronological incon-
iistencies of the narrative of Genesis. Much after the manner
)f some of his Roman Catholic predecessors, and especially
3u Maes, whose work he freely used, " he framed a theory of
he composition of the Pentateuch out of documents drawn
ip from time to time by recorders or keepers of public
irchives under the direction of Moses."1
Three years later the Dutch scholar, Le Clerc, published
i criticism on Simon's history, in which, as already noticed,
ic propounded the principles of the Higher Criticism. He
)laced the study of the Old Testament on the same plane
vith all historical inquiry, demanding that the conditions
inder which any work was produced should be considered,
he author's purpose in writing it discovered, and the events or
)pinions to which he alludes taken into consideration.
1 The Hexaleuch. By J. ESTLIN CARPENTER and G. HARFORD
BATTERSBY, vol. i. p. 25. I wish lo acknowledge my indebtedness to
.his valuable work, not merely for the above quotation, but also for many
suggestions and some facts utilised in this chapter.
90 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Up to this point we have a succession of investigators recog-
nising differences of style, inconsistencies, and contradictions
of statements, chronological difficulties, and the like, incom-
patible with the composition of the Pentateuch in the age
of Moses. We also find a general inclination to explain these
phenomena by the supposition of the compilation of the
Pentateuch from different documents ; but no one had as
yet proposed a method of distinguishing the documents. It
was a French Roman Catholic physician, Jean Astruc, who
furnished the first clue to the analysis of the documents in
an anonymous work, published at Brussels in 1753. He
observed that in the Book of Genesis the name Elohim was
used for God in one set of narratives and Yahaweh in another,
and that the difference in the use of the name of God
corresponded with a difference in style. Accordingly, on
the basis primarily of the differences of the Divine Name,
he divided Genesis into two main narratives, A and B.
Besides these two main narratives he found a small number
of passages, apparently not belonging to either narrative,
which he designated by the letters C to M. Valuable as
his discovery was, for the moment his work produced no
effect, and it is even doubtful whether Eichhorn, who pub-
lished a somewhat similar analysis in his Introduction to the
Old Testament ', in 1780, was acquainted with his work. It
is on the latter's analysis that the subsequent work of criticism
is really based, and with him the investigation of the Old
Testament was transferred to the schools of Germany, where
it found a fertile soil and progressed rapidly. Astruc had
applied his analysis only to Genesis. Eichhorn suggested
that a similar method of analysis was applicable to the re-
mainder of the Pentateuch, but did not make a successful
application of his method. That was done first by an English
Roman Catholic priest, Geddes (1792), who, as a result of
his investigation, reached the conclusion that the Pentateuch
in its present form was not written by Moses ; but that it was
written, probably in Jerusalem, after the the time of David
and not later than the reign of Hezekiah. Geddes's work
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 91
influenced very strongly Vater, of Halle, who incorporated
it in his Commentary on the Pentateuch (1802). Vater, how-
ever, went further than Geddes in regard to date, holding
that the Pentateuch as a whole was not in existence before
the Exile. Then follows De Wette, inspired in his turn by
Vater, with his Contributions to the Introduction of the Old
Testament (1806). Leaving the mere literary questions which
had attracted the attention of his predecessors, De Wette
undertook an examination of the institutions underlying the
Pentateuchal codes, and in doing this brought the whole
literature of Israel under consideration. Beginning his investi-
gations with a comparative study of the books of Chronicles
and Kings, he reached the conclusion that Chronicles could
not be accepted as evidence for the religious practices of
Israel in the earlier periods, and that the only reliable evidence
regarding those conditions was to be found in the unconscious
testimony supplied in the allusions and references in Judges,
Samuel, and Kings. Arguing from this basis of historical
fact, he found the requirements of the Pentateuch continually
ignored or violated by the people at large and their responsible
leaders ; and finally, as a result of this comparison of the laws
with the evidence of the historical statements and allusions,
he reached the conclusion that the Pentateuch contained a
successive development of legislation, in which the Book of
Deuteronomy could be clearly assigned to the seventh century
B.C. ; results which, after a generation of dormancy, as it were,
are now generally accepted.
The man who first attempted a reconstruction of the history
of Israel on the basis of a critical study of its literature was
Heinrich Ewald (1843). Inspired, as already stated, by the
work of Niebuhr in reconstructing the history of Rome, he
undertook a similar reconstruction of the history of Israel.
The necessary basis of his work was a critical analysis of the
entire literature of Israel, for the purpose of sifting out the
historical facts, arranging them in their true sequence, and
determining the actual relation to one another of the events
recorded or referred to. In the same spirit he undertook an
92 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
investigation of the language of Israel. He wrote a new
Hebrew grammar and retranslated and rearranged, with a
critical study of the text, the prophets and the poets of
Israel. His work, but especially his History of Israel, gave
a vast impulse to the critical study of the Bible everywhere.
He presented that positive reconstructive element which was
necessary to give life and interest to the apparently negative
work of the critical investigation of the Old Testament
writings. Men arose from the reading of his works with a
new sense of the reality of the events narrated and a feeling
of personal acquaintance with the ancient prophets and poets,
whose words echoed in their ears with a meaning applicable
to their own times. He had filled Hebrew history with
throbbing life, and kindled everywhere a new interest in the
Bible and an enthusiasm for the critical study of the Old
Testament. Since his time progress has been rapid. To-day
his history and many of his results are antiquated; but the
ideas for which he stood in the treatment of the literature and
the history of Israel now prevail among scholars everywhere.
Time would not suffice to mention the names of the
scholars who have so brilliantly prosecuted the critical study
of the Old Testament literature, or explored the development
of the religion and institutions of the Jews in the almost half-
century since Ewald's time. Within that period, moreover,
the successful prosecution of such studies has been vastly
promoted by the archaeological discoveries which have so
greatly increased our knowledge of the ancient world, and
especially the ancient Semitic world, of which Israel formed
a part. Since Ewald's time, also, the general application of
the two principles of comparison and evolution has profoundly
influenced and mightily quickened literary, historical, and
religious study.
We no longer study anything by itself, but compare it with
correlated experiences and phenomena. In the sphere of
language-study we have the science of comparative philology.
Language is compared with language. By means of this
comparison we have found that there are groups of languages
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 93
closely related to one another, and comparing these groups
with one another, we have discovered certain universal laws
of language. Comparing further the languages within each
group, we ascertain the laws common to that group. By such
comparison a flood of light has been thrown on language.
We know Greek and Latin and Hebrew to-day as our pre-
decessors did not know them. Where such a comparison has
been made, we are able, to some extent, to write the history
of a people on the basis of its language, to determine its
origin, its connexions, its experiences, habits, and civilisation ;
and much more, we are able to detect dialectical differences
and their significance. The same principle of comparison is
now applied to the study of history, of literature, of philo-
sophy, of ethics, of religion. Recognising the kinship of men,
and their subjection to the same general laws, we realise that
under similar conditions they will think and act similarly.
We can compare them with one another, establish certain
categories and certain laws, and thus the fragmentary records
of one people may be explained and expanded by a com-
parison of the records of another. Why did men sacrifice?
What is the meaning of sacrifice ? We are no longer content
to draw our conclusions from the laws concerning sacrifice in
the Bible, or the allusions to sacrifice and the ideas connected
with it in the historical books of the Old Testament, the
Psalms, and the Prophets, or to confine our studies to those
documents. We ask ourselves whether the sacrificial rites
of the Jews were the same as or different from those of other
people. We compare them one with another, seeking the
general underlying laws of sacrifice, and its fundamental
meaning, casting in the process light on much that was
formerly dark in the Jewish record. But just as comparative
philology has proved that Hebrew was not the primal language,
given of God in Eden ; just as it has shown that Hebrew is
one among many tongues and subject to the same laws as
other tongues ; so the comparative study of history and
religion must inevitably lay Hebrew history and the religion
of Israel side by side with the history and the religion of
94 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
other peoples, test them by the same methods, and apply to
them the same rules. This men are doing to-day.
The other great principle is evolution. Evolution, dis-
covered by Darwin, in the world of natural phenomena, has
within the last quarter of a century become an axiom of
modern thought. It is impossible to-day to write a history of
any sort without taking into account the doctrine of evolution ;
or rather unconsciously we posit evolution in the treatment of
our theme. We observe everywhere an evolution taking place.
Nothing occurs of itself. Every event, every opinion, every
achievement is dependent upon what has preceded, and in
its turn becomes the source out of which something further
is evolved. This principle has given a reasonableness and
a connectedness to history which it did not possess before.
Viewing history thus as an evolution, we have a working
hypothesis which helps us to fit events, institutions, laws,
thoughts, beliefs, customs, rites, and ceremonies into their
place in a great progressive series ; not that the progress is
always absolutely forward, but that nothing appears uncon-
nected or unrelated. Each rite, each opinion, each belief is
developed out of something which preceded it. It is the
application to the study of the intellectual and moral history
of the world of that which was first discerned to be God's
method in the world of physical nature.
Space would not permit me to set forth in detail the results
obtained by the application of modern methods of study to
the investigation of the Old Testament. Be it noted that in
applying such methods, in treating the Bible in that regard
like other books, in applying to its exposition and elucidation
the best science of the day, precisely as in the exposition of
Homer, or Herodotus, or Froissart, or Shakespeare, and refusing
to be bound by the interpretations or theories of the past, we
are imitating the attitude of the early Church, as over against
Jewish traditionalism and the Jewish doctrine of the inspiration
of the letter. And be it noted further, that the present views
of Bible scholars are not a mere passing fancy, nor in any
sense an invention of enemies of the faith. They are the
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 95
esult of a long series of development, affecting all science
.nd all thought ; they are on all fours with the results obtained
n other fields by the application of the same methods ; they
.re results obtained by the labours of men who love the Bible,
.nd who have toiled to make it more intelligible and more
>recious to their fellow-men.
In general modern scholars have reached the conclusion
hat the Old Testament, in its laws and institutions, its his-
orical narratives, and its prophetical and poetical writings,
epresents a gradual development. First they found four
nain documents in the Pentateuch and Joshua, combined by
ome editor into one work. Then they ascertained that these
locuments represented not so much individual authors as
chools of thought and periods of time, and that in a general
/ay the whole historical literature of the Hebrews was a
ombination of materials from different sources, handled by
lifferent schools of thought at different periods, with differing
heories and differing interests. About David or Solomon's
ime the first Jewish chroniclers commenced their work, re-
ording the stories and the history of their own time. They
.nd their successors and continuators sought to gather up also
he poetical fragments, the records, and the stories which had
ome down from the past, and combine them with their
larrative. So these Jewish chronicles grew backward and
orward, until they comprised the whole period, from the
reation of the world to the narrator's own time. Moreover,
he narrative assumed different forms under different hands,
n different places with different interests. Legislation grew
i a somewhat similar way from Moses' time onward. A law
leveloped in practice, through legal decisions, adaptations to
iew conditions, compromises and codifications, into codes of
aws, and those again into ever new codes, until in Ezra's time
ire have the great mass of legislation known as the Priest's
:ode, all descended from Moses, and consequently all referred
o him as its author. The Psalms grew in the same way from
David's time, or even earlier, onward. To a large extent what
first found to be true of Hebrew legislation and Hebrew
96 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
historical writing is now seen to be true of Hebrew psalmody,
the writings of the prophets, and the wisdom literature. The
literary conventions of ancient Israel were very unlike those of
the present day, and scholars now recognise that practically
all the literature of Israel which has come down to us is a
growth, a result of re-writing and re-editing from age to age,
and especially during the centuries succeeding the Exile, with
the inevitable working in of the views of the editor and his
age. The problem of modern scholarship is to separate the
old from the new, and to trace as accurately as may be the
process of development.
Nor is this growth of Hebrew literature a thing unique.
We find a similar growth among other peoples. A comparison
is often made between the Pentateuch, with its four main docu-
ments, as determined by critical scholars, with the Diatessaron
of Tatian, at one time in common use in the Syrian Church.
Tatian made a harmony of the four Gospels, forming a con-
secutive story of the Life of Christ. This met with such
popular approval that at one time it threatened to supplant
the individual Gospels altogether in the Syrian Church. The
process by which Tatian united the four Gospels is almost
identical with the process by which the four great documents
of the Pentateuch have been united into one ; only in the
former case the individual documents still continued to exist
as such, and ultimately resumed their place in the Church,
while in the case of the Pentateuch the individual documents
were lost and the harmony alone preserved.
Valuable for the light which it throws on the growth of
Hebrew legislation and the conceptions which permitted the
frequent modification and enlargement of codes of laws which
still continued to be ascribed to one original law -maker,
Moses, is a comparison of the laws of the Pentateuch with
the collections of early English laws, the dooms or judg-
ments, put forth by the kings of Kent or Wessex. King
Alfred tells us that he collected such dooms together, and
" commanded many of those to be written which our fore-
fathers held, those which to me seemed good; and many
MODERN STUDY OF THE BIBLE 97
of those which seemed to me not good I rejected them, —
and in otherwise commanded them to be holden." Alfred's
dooms begin with the Ten Commandments and the legislation
of what is now known as the Book of the Covenant, Exodus
xxi.-xxiii. ; but the Hebrew laws are handled with the
greatest freedom, and adapted to the conditions of the time
without the slightest hint that any change has been made.
The dooms of Alfred are, in fact, a growth, based upon the
Bible legislation, but with additions and changes, representing
many ages and many hands. If we had those dooms alone,
without the Bible with which to compare them, we should be
sorely at a loss to determine what was taken from the Hebrew
and what is of later date ; and even now it is impossible to
decide what is to be ascribed to Alfred and what to his prede-
cessors. He played in the formation of those dooms much
the same part which Ezra played in the formation of the Law.
Somewhat similar to the story of Alfred's dooms is the
story of the growth of the Saxon Chronicle. This was
originally a series of annals, written in Latin, dealing, for
the most part, with local events. Alfred undertook to make
it accessible to the unlearned by a translation into the
English tongue, and in the translation fresh material was
added to the original Chronicle drawn from other sources.
Just as the Hebrew story was carried back ultimately to the
Creation, and Hebrew history made to start with that event,
so this Saxon Chronicle was carried back to the Incarnation,
and the history of England brought into connexion with
that new Creation of the world. Neither did the Chronicle
stop with Alfred's time. Copies were deposited in different
monasteries, and continuators carried forward the record.
Special events were noted in different places, and we have
schools of chroniclers, belonging clearly to different localities,
although we are quite unable to determine the individual
hands by whom the different histories were written. The
historical books of Israel were written in precisely the same
way, except that only one compilation ultimately came down
to us. The rest are lost.
H
98 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Nor is it only England which, in its early laws and early
history, furnishes a parallel to the growth of Hebrew laws
and Hebrew historical writing. The literature of India, as
we now know, was composed in a somewhat similar way,
and the more extensive our knowledge of the laws and
history and literature of early peoples becomes, the more
examples we find of that very method of literary growth,
which critical scholars of the Old Testament have ascertained
to be the method of the formation of Hebrew literature.
Much work remains to be done, and the opposition to
this method of treating the Old Testament is not yet entirely
overcome. The ideas and the prejudices of an earlier period
still remain powerful ; but it may be fairly said that in the
methods of study and the main results of critical analysis
and historical reconstruction Bible scholars are agreed. On
the other hand, it must be admitted that many questions
of detail are still unsettled, and that there is a tendency
among critical students of the Old Testament at the present
moment to subdivide too minutely, to depend too much
on speculative, subjective criteria, to discard tradition without
sufficient cause, and to assign everything to a later date
without discrimination.
CHAPTER VI
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL
HOW you and I as children pored over the tales of the
patriarchs and heroes of the Bible — Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob ! Ah, the tricks and cunning of Jacob ! How
we admired and disapproved, became unconscious partisans
for or against him, the wily Odysseus of Hebrew story ! And
again, the tale of Joseph. Most of us were with him from
beginning to end ; but I am afraid that on some of us, when
we were children, he made the same impression which the
good heroes of Sunday-school books seem to have made on
Mark Twain. We rebelled against him; he was too good.
His robe of many colours and his dreams were a personal
affront, and we did want to take him down a peg, because we
knew that he was setting himself up as better than ourselves.
And then the heroes of Israel. Oh, what a charming passage
that used to be about Gideon's victory over the Midianites !
I am sure some of us tried to " lap water with his tongue, as a
dog lappeth." We had an idea that it would be a sort of test
of energy and courage. We would have liked, too, to break
one of our mother's earthen pots in the night, and swing
a light, and blow a horn, and shout to scare the Midianites.
That was fine ! And when we read about Jephthah's vow, to
sacrifice what met him when he came home, and how it fell
out that his daughter met him, you remember well the in-
voluntary comparison you made, feeling as though it must
be wrong to do so, with the story of Beauty and the Beast.
When you had read the story of Elisha, you felt despite
yourself a sympathy with the boys who were torn to pieces by
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102 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
name existed before the Hebrew period, it is manifest that
it was a sanctuary in the pre-Israelitic times. Qishon was
a sacred river before the time of the Israelites, bearing the
name of an obscure divinity, Qish, or Qaish, which also
appears in the name of the father of Saul, and which we
meet among the heathen Arabs; and from the song of
Deborah we find that this river retained some sort of reputa-
tion for sanctity among the Israelites of her day. Indeed,
in a land where fountains and perennial streams are rare, all
such tend to be held sacred and regarded as special mani-
festations of a divine force. So the Jordan was sacred, and
more particularly its fountain-sources at the foot of Hermon,
from the most remote antiquity. This sanctity was taken
over by the Hebrews, and this it was which led to the erection
at Dan, the sacred sources of Jordan, of one of the two great
temples of northern Israel. Long after that temple had
vanished, under a different cult, the sources of Jordan were
sacred to Pan, and the remnants of a shrine of that god exist
there to this day, while the place itself is still called Banias,
after the name of Pan. A curious and interesting reference to
the sanctity of the spot and its fountains is contained in
Psalm xlii. Compare with this that ancient song of a well in
the Book of Numbers (xxi. 17, 18), beginning, "Spring up,
well ; sing ye to it." Hermon itself was an ancient sacred
mountain (its name means "devoted," or "separated"), as was
also Carmel, and, in general, every isolated, high hill. It is
interesting to find two mountains sacred from the earliest
time, one of them certainly from pre-Israelitic times, namely
Nebo and Sinai, bearing names familiar in Babylonia. Nebo
is the name of the god Nebo, or Nabu, the god of prophecy,
whose name forms a component part of the royal names,
Nebuchadrezzar, Nabonidus, etc. The other, Sinai, bears the
name of the ancient moon-god, Sin, the especial god of Ur,
the birthplace of Abraham.
The permanence of locality in connexion with worship
is a well-established fact. A place or object once regarded
as holy will retain its sanctity, even though the religion
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 103
which sanctified it and the ceremonies of its cult change
entirely.
And now, having considered places of worship, let us note
some points connected with the manner of worship of God.
All flesh-eating was sacrifice in early times. We have an
example of the primitive Hebrew idea regarding this in the
case of Saul after the victory over the Philistines near Mich-
mash (i Sam. xiv. 31 ff.). His men were very hungry, and
began to kill and eat without any recognition of God. Saul
was horrified, and setting up a stone as the representation
of Deity, caused them to bring and kill the beasts there,
the blood being poured out upon or before the stone, which
thus received it for God. This conception of all flesh-eating
as sacrifice still survives among the Arabs, even town Arabs,
in language, and, to some extent, in fact. My workmen often
asked me to "sacrifice" an ox or a sheep for them. And
if I went to a chief's camp a sheep was " sacrificed " for me.
So also people, both Christians and Moslems, sacrifice a sheep
at some ziara^ inviting all to eat of the flesh; and the flesh
eaten on such occasions is practically the only flesh that the
common people eat. Leviticus xvii. shows a similar condition
among the ancient Hebrews. The Hebrew name for altar,
it will be noticed, is "place of killing," and this, together
with the fact that the words for kill and sacrifice are the
same, is in itself sufficient evidence of the early Hebrew idea.
But as early as the Book of Deuteronomy these primitive
conditions change, giving place to a higher and more luxurious
method of life.
The early idea of God as connected by blood with the
worshipper lends itself to the idea of God as the head of the
family, or family gods ; of which we see a trace in Jonathan's
excuse for David's absence from Saul's table, viz. that he had
to go to take part in a family sacrifice. A little higher in the
scale of advancing civilisation is a tribal god, then a national,
and from this one advances a further step to true monotheism.
The popular religion of Israel up to the time of the written
prophets had not advanced beyond the national stage, and we
io4 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
find abundant traces of the family, clan, and tribal stages.
Some of the Divine names which we find in use may connect
themselves with such tribal and family uses. I have already
pointed out that Kish is a Divine name; so also are David
and Solomon. Again, we find appellatives used as the names
of Divinity, thus Ab, "father" as in Abram; Melech, "king"
(written in late Hebrew usage, "Moloch" when used of a
separate Deity, by way of differentiation), as Melchizedek; Baal,
Adonis, etc.
Again, we find a localisation of the Divinity. We find this
in one form in the idea that Yahaweh, or Yehu, was specially
connected with the soil of Palestine, as when David says that
if Saul drive him out of the land, he drives him away from
the face of Yahaweh, and forces him to worship the gods ol
the land to which he shall flee (i Sam. xxvi. 19). Or when
Naaman begs some of the soil of Israel, that he may worship
the God of Israel in Damascus (2 Kings v. 17). Another
form of localisation is the attaching to certain places of a
peculiar sanctity as dwelling-places, or haunts, or places of
special manifestation of the Divinity. So Bethel is the house
of God, the gate of the heavens (Gen. xxviii. 17). Fountains
are peculiarly sacred as places where God comes forth from
the earth to men, like Beersheba and Dan. High places,
as places where He comes down from the heavenly to the
earthly heights. All are familiar with the high places, the
bamoth of pre-prophetic times in Israel and Judah, and I
have already pointed out how many of these holy places were
inherited from pre-Israelitic times. But not only the places,
the cults also were inherited. All this naturally resulted in
a practical polytheism. Indeed, the conditions were in many
respects comparable with those in Spain, Italy, Russia, Greece,
and Turkey at the present day. The virgin of this place and
the virgin of that, the white virgin and the black virgin, are
exactly paralleled by the Assyrian Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of
Nineveh, Ishtar of Erech, etc. In Spain a common man
holds more holy in practice the local saint at whose shrine
he offers prayer in all his need, and whose relics have wrought
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 105
those miracles of which he often hears and whose evidence
he sees, than the Christ by whose name he calls himself. He
might swear falsely by Christ, but scarcely by the relics of his
local saint, or virgin. So it is in Islam. Some of our men
stole antiquities. They were examined by the oath on the
Koran, and the chief culprit, a specially holy man, who bore
the title Hajji, as one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca,
swore falsely. Then they were all taken to the local shrine
of a dead saint, unknown except in that region ; but of that
oath the culprit was afraid. So it was among the Hebrews.
Remember, for example, the oath of Beersheba. In other
words, there was practical polytheism. And yet in the same
way in which a Spanish or a Mesopotamian peasant would
to-day tell you that he is a monotheist, the average Hebrew
would and could have told you the same thing. He had,
in a vague and inconsistent way, an idea of a divine some-
thing underlying everything. He would tell you of the heroes
who were sons of the gods and the daughters of men ; but
the gods of his thought were superhuman beings, rather than
the Deity itself. He was at once a monotheist and a poly-
theist. Of course, when brought into direct contact with/"
foreign polytheisms, he was in danger of accepting polytheism
outright, as we find it adopted in the days especially of Amon
and Manasseh. And yet it must be admitted that even a
gross polytheism, like that of India, or that of Assyria, shows
a monotheistic thought prevailing in the more spiritual and
mystic interpretations of its forms and doctrines.
Every early religion shows the worship of nature, and
naturally. It is the simplest development of the animistic
idea which underlies all primitive religious thought. The
various processes of nature seem to involve a life behind
them. The bubbling fountain, the flowing stream, the tree
that grows as a man grows, and puts forth twigs and leaves
and fruit, and dies and rises again — do not these show a
life as real as the life of man ? And if separate from his body
there exists a soul, a life principle, must there not be such
a spiritual existence to explain their life, inhabiting them as
io6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
its body, and perhaps perishing with their death? Here, of
course, you have the Greek dryads, nymphs, etc. Again, the
motions of the heavenly bodies, and their relation to the
world and the affairs of men, gave rise to the belief in mighty
spiritual powers inhabiting and informing those bodies. In
late Hebrew writings, of the period beginning with the close
of the Exile, you see a conception of spirits of the heavenly
bodies, which correspond to certain earthly existences. But
this seems to be drawn from Babylonian and Persian ideas,
and not to be a native Hebrew development. Similarly the
worship of the heavenly bodies seems to be borrowed from
without. In their treatment of the spirits of trees, fountains,
and the like, the Hebrews, and indeed the Semites in general,
differ from the Greeks. The sacred tree, the fountain, the
sacred stone, the cherubim, and the like are inhabited by
Divinity, but underlying this polytheism there is a monotheistic
idea. Again, there are spiritual existences — satyrs, shedtm,
azazel, spirits whom Yahaweh sends out, angels; but all is
vague and unformulated, and by that very fact we escape
definite, theological polytheism, mythology, or even de-
monology. The latter grows up later under foreign influences
grafted on the original Hebrew thought-stock. But nature-
worship is strongly felt. Pictures like those of Psalms xviii.
and xxix. are not mere poetic figures. Yahaweh especially
manifests Himself in the thunderstorm. The thunder is His
voice. He inhabits a central place in the midst of the dark-
ness of the storm-clouds. The lightning is the glimpse of the
brightness of His presence. He rides in the storm. The
clouds are the heavenly cherubim, containers of His presence.
In the Temple this idea was represented by the mysterious
dark chamber, the Holy of Holies, where He dwelt. Ezekiel,
even, distinctly recognises this meaning, and this connexion
between thunder-cloud and Holy of Holies.
But Semitic nature-worship particularly took the form of
worship of the reproductive powers of nature, and developed
in directions which we regard as obscene. The dualism of
sex is very prominent in Semitic polytheism. We know
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 107
;his for the Babylonian from Greek writers, and also from
:he numberless obscene symbols and figures unearthed on
;very old Babylonian site. Phoenician and Aramaean practices
ive know from Greek writers and from the Bible to have been
Dbscene. What about the Hebrews? We find among them,
iccording to the testimony of the Bible, practices which we
snow were connected with obscenity among other nations, like
:he lamentation for Tammuz. Again, we find that in the
lemple at Jerusalem the same abominations were practised
in Josiah's day which we find among the Phoenicians and
Syrians in Astarte or Ashteroth worship, and it is possible
that the narrative must be interpreted as meaning that these
abominations had been practised ever since Solomon's time,
i.e. during the whole period of the existence of the first Temple,
with a brief intermission in Hezekiah's day. It is ordinarily
supposed that these abominations were directly borrowed from
other religions. The mazzebah and asherah, conventionalised
symbols, must, however, be recognised as part of the common
Semitic inheritance. The asherah is a tree, or else a con-
ventionalised representation of a tree, a mere pole. The
mazzebah was a stone object. They were finally expelled
from Yahaweh worship in the prophetic period.
Circumcision belongs in origin to the same general cate-
gory; but it is difficult to tell how much, if any, of its
original significance existed for even the very earliest Hebrew
times. It appears as a sacred national mark, and assumes
the form of a blood covenant. It is not apparently an original
Semitic practice, but something derived from Egypt.
The great feasts of the Hebrews are in so far akin to
nature-worship as that they are connected with events of
nature, the yield of the earth. In a general way they can be
paralleled by the feasts of other peoples. With these natural
events are combined, in the case of the Passover and Taber-
nacles, certain historical reminiscences. The new moon, a
very popular feast, but not equally recognised in legislation,
is more distinctly a nature-feast. It is, however, of universal
observance, and not merely Semitic. The sanctity of seven,
io8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and apparently also of the Sabbath, appears in Babylonia as
well as among the Jews.
The idea of clean and unclean is a universal primitive idea,
and in many of the details of their laws of clean and unclean
we find the Hebrews in close accord with other Semitic
peoples. It would, in reality, be better described as a custom
of taboo than of clean or unclean. The touching of a holy
thing made a man unclean as much as the touching of an un-
holy or anti-holy thing. What we call unclean was a thing seti
apart from man's use, not necessarily unclean in the ordinary!
sense of that word. Both the connexion of Hebrew use with
that of other Semitic peoples, and also the peculiarities of the
Hebrew use itself, are well illustrated in the matter of unclean,
or taboo articles of food. The swine was in general taboo
among the Semites, but that taboo was in its origin due to the
sanctity, not the uncleanness of the creature. Sayce, in his
Hibbert lectures on Babylonian religion, has pointed out
from the inscriptions the peculiar sanctity or taboo of the
swine at Nippur. This was corroborated by our excavations ;
for we found the boar a favourite object of votive tablets for
the Temple of Bel. It enjoyed a peculiar sanctity, and there-
fore was forbidden to be eaten as ordinary food of men. In
the list of forbidden animals among the Hebrews occurs the ,
coney, or rock badger (shaphari). This creature we find to
have been sacred in the neighbourhood of Sinai. The hare,
forbidden to the Hebrews, we find as a sacred animal among
some at least of the other Semitic peoples. The origin of
this sanctity in the case of the swine and hare may have
been fecundity, which, with the tendency among the Semites
to the worship of the reproductive powers of nature, would
naturally lead to their sanctification or taboo. Among the
Hebrews, with their tendency away from nature-worship, the
fact of taboo remained after the cause had disappeared, and
the animals became unclean in our sense of the word unclean,
unholy and polluting. The taboo on other creatures in the
Hebrew lists was due to various causes : sometimes to old
religious uses, sometimes to dirty habits, sometimes to frightful
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 109
)r disgusting appearance, sometimes to the great value of
;he creatures for other purposes, or to their rarity. Such
aws of clean and unclean all nations and localities possess,
>nly in an unformulated condition. Compare the common
eeling among English and Americans about frogs, snails,
lorseflesh, and the like. The Hebrew put everything on
he basis of religion, and indeed all primitive societies do
0 now. The words of a Turkish provincial governor to me
urnish a good example of this. I was dining with him in
ds so-called palace. He gave me a spoon, but was himself
•bliged by his "religion," as he said, to eat with his fingers.
Ve should have said custom, habit, or training where he said
eligion.
The question of the taboo, or the clean and unclean, brings
is to the relations of God and man and the conception of sin.
rhe common conception of sin in the mind of the ordinary
irimitive Hebrew, much like that in the mind of any primitive,
incivilised or semi-civilised man, was that of offending God
iy breaking some of those rules which we should regard as
xternal and arbitrary. The prophetic writings show us very
listinctly that such was the popular idea of sin. It was the
ireach of such laws which aroused the anger of God. You
nd the same conception in the Babylonian penitential psalms,
liere is a bitter, heart-rending cry of sin ; but when you ask
rhat is the sin, you find it to be the breach of what we should
all ceremonial laws. It is a sin against moral standards only
1 a secondary degree, as they may be regarded as involved in
tiat ceremonial law. The God whose laws of clean and un-
lean, or the like, have been broken is wroth, and inflicts sick-
ess, trouble, distress. Such distress is itself an evidence of
ic wrath of God, and hence of sin. In Hebrew, the same
rord, rendered sometimes in our Bible "guilt," is used for sin
nd calamity. A man may have sinned, as he knows by the
ict that calamity has come upon him, and yet not know his
in. So the Babylonian psalmist cries —
" O God, the sin that I know not forgive !
O Goddess, the sin that I know not, forgive ! "
no THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
The Book of Job shows us in its argument a prevalence
among the Hebrews of this same conception, against which
the writer argues. The same idea also underlies the references
to "secret sins," in Psalms; and in Leviticus iv. we find a
special ritual (the guilt offering) for appeasing God when
calamity shows that a sin has been committed, because of
which God is wroth, and yet the sufferer does not know
wherein he has sinned.
Among the Hebrews the punishments and rewards of sin
must be given in this life. There is no proper immortality.
Their idea of the condition after death is derived from the
bloodless, sad appearance of the corpse, just as among the
early Greeks and among the kindred Semitic peoples ; a con-
ception which appears among many primitive peoples. You
will remember the consultation of the shades in the Odyssey,
and the necessity of giving them blood to drink before they
could speak. There was not annihilation, but a bloodless,
gloomy existence, such as is described in the Babylonian poem
of the descent of Ishtar into Hades. The spirits of the dead
might be consulted, as in the story of Saul and the Witch of
Endor. Great honour, amounting in some cases almost to
worship, was paid to the tombs of the dead, as, for instance,
the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, and Rachel, in the same
way and to the same extent as among the Moslem Arabs of
to-day. This never, however, reached a worship of ancestors,
or even approximated to it. The honour of a man hereafter,
and his comfort also, to some extent certainly, depended upon
his tomb. It was the greatest misfortune to be cast out
unburied. Compare the story of Rizpah and her sons
(2 Sam. xxi.), and the dirge of Jehoiakim in the book of
Jeremiah (xxii. 18). Such immortality as there was depended
roughly on the preservation of the integrity of the corpse.
Presumably the same methods of burying food and other
objects with the dead prevailed among the Hebrews as among
the Babylonians.
And now a word about the methods and media of com-
munication with God and the spirit world. Ritual is the code
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL in
•egulating the relations between man and the spiritual exist-
:nces. The animistic conception is, as I have already said,
undamental in primitive religions. Now when man has
cached the point of belief in the existence of spiritual
:xistences lying behind material things, he must inevitably
eek the means of communicating with those existences. The
nysterious occurrences of nature are connected with the good
.nd evil which befall him and traced to these unseen, but
;vidently powerful agencies. It becomes a matter of supreme
noment, therefore, to enter into friendly relations with these
.gencies, and to find the means of controlling, or at least
iropitiating them. Here, as elsewhere, man reasons about what
5 outside of himself from his own analogy. What he likes
he spirit will like, and vice versa. (Sometimes, however, he
easons by an inverse process, ascribing to the spiritual
.gencies a nature the opposite of his own. In any case, he
easons and must reason from his own analogy.) All things
re full of latent meanings, revealing the spiritual agencies
rithin, or behind them. Anything unusual is a portent. More-
iver, as each mishap proceeds in some way from these
piritual agencies, each mishap presumably has its portent
nd warning. A man sets out on an expedition, and meets
dth ill luck. Why ? A hare had run across his path. That
3 the only incident he has noticed, because it had never
lefallen him before. He at once concludes that this was a
iortent of ill luck. The idea once started is accepted as a fact
nd handed on through indefinite ages ; not reasoned about,
ait accepted as a fact.
A modern illustration of this acceptance of a custom as
fact without investigation is well supplied by the famous
tory of Bismarck and the guard on the grass plot at
it. Petersburg. When visiting St. Petersburg Bismarck
iQticed a guard stationed on a grass plot near nothing, and
pparently guarding nothing. Finally he asked the Czar
rhy the guard was stationed there. The Czar, when his
ttention was called to the position of the guard, whom,
r he had noticed, he must have seen hundreds of times
112 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
before, was unable to explain it, and found himself on
consideration equally surprised with Bismarck. He sum-
moned an officer, and asked of him an explanation of the
guard, with much the same result. No one knew why the
guard stood on the grass plot. The Czar becoming interested
to fathom this mystery, after considerable investigation it
was discovered that during the reign of some previous Czar
the Czarina had discovered the first violet in the middle
of that grass plot. The then Czar had stationed a guard
there to prevent people from trampling on the violet, and
the guard once established had continued by force of custom
ever since, although there were no longer any violets to
guard. The fact that something is a custom, or that it
is established by tradition, or that it is ordered by authority,
is far more potent with the immense majority of men than
reason. They do not reason ; they accept what has come
to them on authority, through tradition, or by custom.
Ritual, as already stated, is in its origin the etiquette
of man in dealing with spiritual agencies. Now since the
spiritual agencies are merely spiritualised men, or men
projected in fancy into spiritual existence, the etiquette of
primitive man with the spiritual agencies is naturally based
on his etiquette with his fellow -men. By religious con-
servatism this etiquette, which was that in use among
primitive men, and the customs contingent upon this eti-
quette, are continued in dealings with the spiritual agencies
long after they have ceased to be observed among men.
This is well illustrated by the continued use of flint knives
for religious purposes long after metal had come into existence
for every other use, a continuance observed in Hebrew ritual,
where we find flint knives used for circumcision long after
metal had come into use for the daily purposes of life. An
excellent modern example of this religious conservatism was
furnished me in an experience with a Russian priest. Acting
as interpreter for one of our bishops, I went into the Holy
of Holies, where the priest exhibited to us the method in
which everything was done, as also the vestments used for
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 113
special occasions, some of which were of extraordinary
beauty and richness. The Bishop noticed that these garments
were fastened by cords and tapes, and that even the cuffs
were put on in what seemed to us a very awkward manner
by twisting a cord around the arm. He requested me to
isk the priest why they did not use buttons. "Oh," said
.he priest, " all we have has come down from apostolic
:imes; the apostles did not use buttons." Modern clerical
iress is in its way a survival of the same sort, except that
t does not come down from the apostolic times. The
;ame high vests and collarless coats of black which constitute
:he so-called clerical dress of our clergy of to-day are the
•egular costume of the higher Turkish officials in Con-
stantinople. European dress was adopted in official circles
n Constantinople during the time of Mahmoud, at which
ime clothes of this cut were in fashion. The fashions have
changed since then, but the Turkish officials and our clergy
lave not changed. A still more pronounced case of the
;ame sort is the knee-breeches and gaiters worn by our
ligher dignitaries, which come down from a somewhat more
emote period. Our ecclesiastical vestments are a survival
)f the same kind, but still more ancient.
But, to turn from modern examples to the study of the
itual of older periods, it should be noticed that ritual
intedates mythological tales and theological explanations.
Phis is a familiar fact in all religions, and no student of
eligion hesitates to understand certain tales and certain
heological explanations which he meets with in those
eligions as due to ritual practices, which some later-thinking
ige has endeavoured to explain. The same phenomenon
s to be met with in Hebrew history. The brazen serpent
s older than the story of the brazen serpent, and many
ncidents in the lives of the patriarchs are but the explanations
)f ritual facts connected with certain localities in Palestine,
ifou find in Hebrew ritual, as in the ritual of every other
primitive people, survivals which have come down from
jrehistoric times, examples of the appendix vermiformis, as
i
H4 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
it were, as well as ancient practices entirely inconsistent
with the general principles of the ritual in which they are
embedded. As examples of such survivals and manifest
inconsistencies in Hebrew ritual I may mention the scape-
goat and Azazel. A phenomenon of much interest in the
study of ritual and the primitive law connected with ritual
is the resemblances existing between the practices of regions
which can have no possible connexion one with another.
The practice of levirate marriage, laws for which we find
in the Book of Deuteronomy, seems to be so peculiar in
its nature that the student naturally supposes it to be a
Hebrew development dissimilar to anything else; but we
find precisely the same provisions in the laws of Manu in
India. Similarly there are a number of most curious and
close coincidences between the provisions of the code of the
Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.) and the oldest
Greek and Roman laws. Anyone who will take up a good
modern commentary will be surprised to find how many
of the provisions of that old code are identical with the
provisions of the Ten Tables at Rome, the old Solonic
code of Athens, or the laws of Lycurgus at Sparta. It will
be observed that the resemblance is always closest in the
oldest strata, and this is due not to any primitive contact
between the different peoples, but to the similar development
of ideas which are natural to the human race.
Animism, the idea that there is a spirit in everything which
exists, is universal, because man of necessity begins to study
the universe from himself. He measures outside objects by
his own body, in feet and fingers and ells. He counts by his
body, making a decimal system out of the number of fingers
on his hands and toes on his feet. So also, when he has
realised the existence of a vital principle within himself, in
some sort distinct from his body, an anima, he attributes to
everything which he sees a similar spirit, through which it
lives and acts. It is by a similar natural process of reasoning
that he arrives at similar ritual results and propounds similar
laws. But as he develops further he tends to differentiate,
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 115
and so in the higher strata of religious development the
differences become more marked than the resemblances. The
laws of Manu, the early Hebrew, Roman, and Greek laws
resemble one another, or are in many cases identical, because
in the earlier stages of development the minds of the Indians,
the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans worked in the
same way, and according to the same fundamental principles.
But to return to Hebrew ritual, we find upon analysing that
ritual that besides the general primitive and universal rites and
laws, there are certain practices which are best paralleled by
Arabic use, because they are a survival from the nomadic
period of Hebrew history. There is, again, a great body of
ritual which is identical with, or very similar to that of the
Phoenicians, because it was taken over from the Canaanites
along with the holy places at which it was observed, which, as
we have already seen, were inherited by the Hebrews from
their predecessors. The Marseilles sacrificial tables show us
that a number of the sacrificial terms and rites in use among
the Hebrews were identical with those in use among the
Phoenicians. In the name for priest there is a curious
evidence of a struggle between Syrian and Phoenician in-
fluences. The Phoenician name for the priests was Kohanim,
the Syrian name Kemarim. Both names were in use among
the Hebrews, but the name of Kohanim finally prevailed, and
that of Kemarim came to be applied to the priests of the high
places, until at length it was used as a term of reproach and
opprobrium indicating false worshipping. Still another stratum
of the law shows a close connexion with Babylonia. In the
matter of the construction of the Temple we find a striking
resemblance between Hebrew, Phoenician, and Syrian uses,
and the excavation of Babylonian temples shows us that all
these are modifications of a more primitive type existing there
and in Southern Arabia. The Holy of Holies was not
peculiar to the Hebrews, and the pillars of Jachin and Boaz,
which stood before the Hebrew Temple, also stood before
Phoenician and Syrian temples, and may be found in a some-
what more primitive form in Arabia. The arrangement of the
n6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Hebrew Temple, by which one progressed inward and upward
from court to court until the mysterious Holy of Holies was
reached, was common to it with the temples of the Phoenicians
and Syrians, and was derived apparently from Babylonian
sources. The altar standing in the court in front of the holy
place is the common usage of the Semitic world. The priests
and prophets of Israel have sometimes been spoken of as
characteristic features of the religious life of the Hebrews,
liut they are the same, in outer form at least, as the priests
and soothsayers of the Phoenicians and the Syrians.
It may be asked, If in all these respects Hebrew religion is
identical with the religion of the nations round about, if it
has rites which may still be found among the nomadic Arabs,
if it has such a body of ritual which it has taken over from
the Phoenicians or the Babylonians, what is there that is
national, what is there that is peculiar to the Hebrews, and
what part did that Moses play to whom we have been accus-
tomed to ascribe the foundation of Israel ? Moses was, in
fact, as the Bible states, the author of both the national life
and the national religion of Israel. In European vine regions
they take the American wild vine stock, and when it has taken
root and grown strong and healthy, they graft upon it some
line variety of cultivated grape. The life and vigour are the
life and vigour of the primitive American wild vine, but the
fruit is derived from the new graft which dominates the wild
stock upon which it has been grafted. Something like that
took place in Israel. On the wild stock of its prehistoricf-
ritual was grafted a new and nobler element. This is Moses.
Later, others, following the example and working in the spirit
of Moses, took grafts from him and grafted them on the
Canaanite stock as he had been grafted on the stock of the
prehistoric ritual. In this way and in this sense the whole
body of Hebrew ritual became Mosaic ; the Mosaic principle
was grafted on the stock of common forms. To illustrate
how this was done, let me use one example only. We read
much of the ark in Hebrew story, but the ark is not peculiar
to the Hebrews. It was used in Egypt and in Babylonia also.
Tff.. . .:Gior;s P.VOLUTI .EL 117
It waa th . . for the trans;. : '. -
syr. .-. . ;x:ing SL .. Moses placed in it, ins",
of an image ... y divinity, two tables of sto.'.
ing th--: .. Jr. ritual ;. . at least until the t: i
-. its cap', nc .- . ." .^iistines, t;. . by
the Jr.- in the '-ay in > - -..es car- -
: his sy:. but the s> ne n-ed, the two
tab . the ten w, - . -/ from
images of God in the form of rn,: . ard
God M law, and His service that law.
I'. -..-.'/.!d be i . . --ay, that ritual code.
not in antiquity . ft. call moral, civil, s .
social laws. So in ' -.tateuch we have ritual, moral, a
social laws r/. ascribed f.
:.- and .'•' 1 author. He is t:. red
author in I ... I ha it; but when ;.
;.il what was the ritual p.- ' what r.
: trace back to him, what laws and what institutions can
to him, you ask a question that probably never can
be answered. He bound a quantity of families and tribes
:ther into : '<al life by a certain h - I
brotherhood : h<: took their ancient rites, usages, and laws, and
unified them. : a mystical spirituality upon them, and
left them to develop unto fruitage. In studying the ritual
r . .. ,'lus, Leviticus, ar/. ,re met ev.-
where by representations of the wilderness. The whole
temple ritual is schemed out as though originating in the
wilderness. The ritual ordinances are presented in the form
of a story connected with the wandering in the wilderness.
Very little study is needed to show anyone the impossibility
of this in a literal sense, but it must not be lost sight of that
this tradition is founded on fact. The foundations which
Moses laid were laid while Israel was still a wanderer. It was
in the days of their wandering that Moses established a
monotheistic worship, with one central symbol and one
central place of worship. But one central place of worship
was not laid down as a law : it was a mere ritual fact
n8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
arising out of the conditions under which Israel existed in
that day.
Other practices which we can probably trace back to Moses
would involve — in a settled community covering any consider-
able extent of country — numerous places of worship ; for
instance, the order to bring every beast that was to be slain
for eating and kill it before the tabernacle. The natural
result of this was that when Israel became a settled com-
munity, sacrifices were offered at many shrines. Israel sought
to be close to its God, and the pious Hebrews brought their
animals and slew them before the shrine of their own neigh-
bourhood in accordance with the provisions of the ancient
law of the wilderness. At a later date, when stress was laid
on the other idea of having one sanctuary, it was necessary to
modify this law, or rather to substitute for it a new law, in
accordance with which it was permitted to kill animals to eat
anywhere, and the people were told that they might eat them
without offering any part unto God. The very conflict which
we find in the history of Israel is in itself an evidence of the
Mosaic origin of the two institutions, or rather that Moses
laid down certain principles which in the conditions of the
wilderness naturally involved both institutions, and that in
the period after the wilderness, the people following the
external side of the law rather than its spirit, the conflict
ensued which we have seen. Again, Moses established the
principle of monotheism, but he did not lay the stress upon
one special name for God which should be a peculiar mark of
Israel. This left the way open to polytheism at a later date,
through the use of many names for God; but on the other
hand, prepared the way for the foundation of a universal, as
over against a national and local religion. We must also
attribute the foundation of the Hebrew priesthood to Moses.
Aaron was an historical character, and his priestly functions as
a contemporary of Moses are historical ; but the later attribu-
tion of Aaronic descent to all the priests cannot be accepted
literally, and the Bible itself is the best evidence that it is not
to be accepted literally. Priests are in all nations a pre-
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 119
historic institution, for the office of priest is the necessary
outcome of the attempt to provide media of communication
with spiritual agencies, which attempt, as we have seen, began
before the dawn of history. But a priesthood once established
tends to become a caste ; the office becomes hereditary, and
little by little the priesthood assumes to itself ever new powers.
This, which is the common history of the priesthood in all
religions, is the history of the priesthood in Israel also.
One of the most perplexing points in the study of the
Hebrew priesthood is the origin and position of the tribe
of Levi. The word Levi apparently means "bound," or
"attached to." There is, however, much uncertainty as to
the true explanation of the term. Some have supposed that
it means bound, or attached to the sanctuary, and that Levi
was not properly a tribe, but merely a designation for those
who were bound, or attached to the sanctuary. There are
apparently contradictions in the Bible narrative. In Genesis
xlix. Levi is mentioned as a tribe, but in other passages
we hear of Levites from the tribe of Judah and from
Ephraim. From the earliest times special sanctity was attri-
buted to Levites, although members of other tribes could
officiate as priests, as we see from the story of Micah
(Judges xvii.). In the Book of Deuteronomy all priests are
designated as Levites and all Levites as priests. After the
Exile we find priests and Levites distinguished the one from
the other. In the post-Exilic period Levites are confused
with Nethinim, "those who were given," ttoat is, slaves, or
descendants of the slaves of the sanctuary. This confusion
suggests to us that what happened at this time might have
happened before, and that the tribe of Levi in the bulk may
very well have been descended from those who had been
in one way or another given to the service of the sanctuary.
It ought to be added that in the period immediately succeed-
ing the Exile the distinction between Levites and Nethinim is
carefully observed. At that period also we find temple singers
constituting guilds, apparently outside of the Levites. At
a later date all distinction is lost ; the Nethinim and the
120 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
various guilds of singers and porters are merged in the
Levites.
In the early times of all peoples the priesthood is important,
not only on its ritual side, but also in social and civil life.
The priests are the depositaries and interpreters of traditions,
customs, rites, etc. In all early codes, in all countries, the
appeal for decision is to God. If there is no precedent which
determines in a given case what shall be done, then God must
be appealed to to establish one. If there be a question of
veracity between two persons, God must be appealed to to
decide. What we find among all other nations we find also
among the Hebrews. In the early Hebrew codes questions
not capable of other decision are referred to God. The word
God is used in the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxi.-xxiii.)
in a sense which we are practically compelled to translate
as "judge"; but God was a judge through the medium of the
priest, and the shrine at which the priest officiated was the
court of justice. Out of the fact that the appeal was made
to God through the priest the priest became the law-maker.
First he interpreted God to man in his decisions, then he
became the depositary of tradition and custom and of the
decisions of the past, and then he became the codifier of these
customs and traditions in the form of laws. And because
priests were what I have described, they became also the
conservers of knowledge to the people, the writers and
recorders of the nation.
In the earliest times the priest was not especially the
sacrificer; his function was to act as the regular interpreter
of God. Ritual functions were, however, increasingly as-
sumed by the priests as time went on. In early times
among the Hebrews, as among practically all nations, any
man could sacrifice. It was the function of the head of the
family, of the chief of the tribe, of the king of the nation. So
we find Gideon and Manoah sacrificing in the Book of Judges,
Saul officiating as chief priest when his men sacrificed for eating
after the slaughter of the Philistines, David sacrificing as the
head of the nation, Elijah, the prophet, sacrificing for the
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 121
people, Uzziah, the king, sacrificing in the Temple at Jerusalem.
There is also in the usage of the Passover an interesting and
instructive survival of the custom by which the head of the
household was the sacrificer for the household. We find the same
thing in Moslem sacrifices. In course of time, as the priests
assumed ritual functions, the right of sacrifice was limited
among the Hebrews, as elsewhere. We find traces of this
progress in the historical books, where the original facts
and later stories of the theologians are sometimes curiously
combined, as in the case of Samuel's rebuke of Saul (i Sam.
xiii. 9 ff.), which everyone who has read the passage must
have felt to be peculiarly illogical and unjust under the
circumstances described, although it becomes perfectly clear
when we analyse the document critically. On the same plane
stands the story of Dathan and Abiram, in Numbers xvi.
With this, in the form in which we have it, has been combined
the story of Korah, in which we have pictured the struggle
between the priests and the Levites. But the best known
of all the notices in the Bible, and that which is put at
the latest date, is the story of Uzziah, who was smitten with
leprosy for executing the office of a priest in the Temple
(2 Chron. xxvi. 21-23). The most naive picture of all the
accounts of assumption of power on the part of the priest
which we find is that contained in the account of the priests
of Shiloh, in i Samuel ii. This story, in the form in which we
have it, is in itself very early. Here we are told that in
the older time it had been the custom when a man sacrificed,
after the blood had been poured out and perhaps some
portion of the sacrifice had been actually burned by fire
to God, for him to cut up the animal and put it in the pot
to cook, in order that he and his family or friends might feast
upon it before God. While it was still in the pot, the priest or
his servant would come and thrust a fork into the pot, and
whatever was secured by that thrust became the property of
the priest. It is a cause of bitter complaint that the sons
of Eli are violating this ancient and immemorial practice, and
insisting upon taking a definite and probably larger portion
122 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of the animal sacrificed before it had been put in the pot
at all.
The variety of places of worship among the Hebrews was a
necessary result of the application of the ritual practices of the
nomadic period to the changed conditions of the settled life
in Palestine and the more extended territory which was occu-
pied ; so that, for example, in Leviticus xvii., which I regard
as containing in principle legislation of the earliest stratum, it
is forbidden to kill any creature to eat, except before the
sanctuary, for all eating is sacrifice, and every creature which
is slain must be slain before God. To carry out this principle
when the camp had turned into a nation occupying a large
territory involved the establishment of innumerable sanctuaries,
and we find the Jews throughout the historical period until the
time of Josiah worshipping and sacrificing at innumerable
sanctuaries.
The necessary result of the establishment of the kingdom
was a tendency toward the centralisation of worship. The
great number of small shrines, acting as so many rival local
centres, tended on the whole to disintegrate the nation. If
the nation was to be centralised under one individual, its
worship must be centered also, either in his person or under
his control, at the place of his residence. David, according to
the account given in the books of Samuel, was head of the
Jewish Church in a far more absolute sense than to-day the
Czar of Russia is the head of the Russian Church, or the Sultan
the head of Islam. David himself was a sacrificer, and not
only did he sacrifice as head of his family and head of the
nation, but he appointed his sons priests (2 Sam. viii. 18), just
as in the Book of Judges we are told that Micah appointed his
son a priest (Judges xvii. 5). Both for the purpose of restoring
that which was ancient and holy in Israel, and also for the
purpose of obtaining special sanctity for the sacred place that
was near his person, David restored the Ark which had for
many years been resting in desuetude and oblivion. Two
chief priests are mentioned in the history of David as officiat-
ing at the same time, Abiathar and Zadok. In reading the
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 123
account in the books of Samuel of the activities of Abiathar
it will be observed that there is little or nothing about sacrifice,
but very much about the casting of the lots. At the time of
David the primitive conception of the priest still prevailed ; his
special function was not to sacrifice, but to interpret the oracles
of God and cast the sacred lots. A survival of this ancient
function of the priesthood is found in the Urim and Thummim,
which are special marks of the high priest in the later periods
of Judaism. After the casting of the lots had ceased to be his
special work, the lots themselves remained as a sort of insignia
of office, indicating what the origin of the priest had been.
But David had in his immediate surroundings not merely
priests, but also prophets, and in this regard he differed in no
respect from kings of the surrounding nations, Phoenicians, and
Syrians. Among these peoples also you find both priests and
soothsayers, and this duplicity of the interpretation of God to
men has survived in the Orient until this day, so that in Islam
you find the division into the Ulema, the representatives of the
priesthood of earlier times and other peoples, and the Der-
vishes, who are the soothsayers and prophets. As between
priest and prophet we might define the former as the regular,
the latter as the extraordinary medium of communication
between God and man.
Solomon carried the centralisation of worship much further
than his father, and the erection of his great Temple at Jerusa-
lem marks a most important step in the development of the
religion of Israel. That Temple had the most far-reaching
results in relation not merely to the ritual, but also to more
fundamental parts of the religion. The Temple itself, in its
architecture and symbolism, may be called identical with the
temples of the nations round about. The Hittite temple de-
scribed in one of the inscriptions of Sargon of Assyria, and the
famous Hittite-Syrian temple at Hierapolis, near Carchemish,
so far as we can judge, were of the same general character as
the Temple of Solomon. What little we know about Phoenician
temples shows the most striking analogies between them and
the Temple of Solomon, and the excavation of ancient Baby-
124 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Ionian temples shows us, as already pointed out, the same
fundamental principles in use in Babylonia and at Jerusalem.
The Holy of Holies, the succession of courts one above the
other, leading up ultimately to the mysterious inner place
where the invisible God dwelt in darkness, the form and place
of the altar, the strange columns before the Temple, called by
the Jews Jachin and Boaz — all these are features common to
the Jewish Temple, with the temples of Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria,
and Babylonia.
The Temple of Solomon was a great cathedral for the worship
of the Jews, and very much like the Roman Catholic cathedral
of the present day, which, besides its high altar, has innumer-
able side-altars dedicated to its various saints and especially to
the Virgin ; and like the great temples of Babylon, which,
besides the central Holy of Holies dedicated to the great god
of the country, had innumerable other shrines consecrated to
various other divinities, prominent among which was always
the female half of the great god, the Beltis of the Bel — so
until the time of Josiah the temple of Yahaweh at Jerusalem
was a sort of pantheon where the shrines of numerous other
divinities, but especially of Ashtaroth, were grouped about the
Holy of Holies dedicated to Yahaweh. The high priest of
the Yahaweh shrine of this great cathedral of Solomon was
Zadok, and in his family the priesthood of Yahaweh became
hereditary, and was ultimately limited to that family only.
The great national schism under Solomon's son found itself
confronted, when it would have restored the ancient condition
of things — for this was really the object of the rebels — with the
religious influence of this Temple; and the new kingdom, in
order to counteract that influence, was forced itself to establish
cathedrals of a similar nature, to the detriment of the local
shrines which were the representatives of the ancient religion,
in the popular view at least. In the northern kingdom two
cathedrals were established instead of one : the one at the
ancient prehistoric shrine of Bethel, which was a place
rendered peculiarly sacred to the Israelites through the stories
of the patriarchs, and the other at Dan, one of those natural
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 125
entres of worship the sanctity of which continued unimpaired
tirough the periods of many beliefs, because at that point the
reat springs of the Jordan gush out from the under world,
"he priesthood of the northern kingdom was apparently a
sstoration of somewhat more primitive times. They do not
ppear in the northern kingdom to have recognised the
,evitical right to the same extent to which it was recognised
i the south, but to have permitted persons of other tribes
D officiate as well as Levites.
The priesthood of the Yahaweh Temple at Jerusalem was
Laronic. We are told incidentally that the priests of the
athedral at Dan were descended from Moses. If I under-
tand the history of the north, the name Yahaweh did not
sceive the emphasis there which was given to it in the south,
f the name was, in the earlier days of the northern kingdom,
.sed at all, it apparently took a secondary place, the special
,ame for God which was used being the broader and more
eneric title El.
At the time of Ahab, who made alliances of a very inti-
nate nature with the Phoenicians in order to strengthen him
n his contest with Damascus, Phoenician worship as such
ra.s introduced. It was in so many of its outward forms
nd names similar to the worship of Israel, that it may have
eemed to Ahab as though it would be merely an adoption
»f something more complete and higher to substitute this
worship for that of his own people. Jezebel, his wife, was,
.s we are led to suppose, an almost fanatical adherent of
he national worship of her city. Her name itself means
'woman of Bel," a name which has been handed down
o us from the Phoenicians through the Spaniards in the
orm of Isabella. We see in other particulars the great in-
luence which Jezebel exerted over her husband and over
he court at large. It was the endeavour to substitute this
tpparently similar Phoenician cult for the native religion which
wrought about the fight against Baal headed by the prophet
ilijah. His name (God is Yah) indicates the basis of the
:onflict. It is necessary that one characteristic Hebrew name
126 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
shall be taken for God, and he takes that name which has
prevailed in the south and which is identified with the Temple
at Jerusalem. His mission is to declare that God is Yah — or
Yahaweh, as it appears in the full form. His mission was
successful ; and the Jehu dynasty, which was established in
place of that of Ahab, is the Yahaweh dynasty. Jehu, as
written in our Bible, is nothing but the word Yahaweh. It
will be observed also that whereas until the time of Elijah we
find in northern Israel no proper names containing the name
Yah in composition, from that time on it begins to be as regu-
lar a component part of royal names as it had been in the
southern kingdom since the days of David.
Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, becoming queen at
Jerusalem during the minority of her son, usurped the throne
for herself, and undertook to introduce Baal worship into
Jerusalem also. The defeat of her project was due to the
activity of the priests of the Temple of Yahaweh at Jerusalem ;
and the fact that these priests succeeded in preserving the
Davidic dynasty from destruction and re-establishing it
upon the throne, as well as the fact that they embodied
national and popular sentiment in battling against Athaliah
for the preservation of the cult of Yahaweh, naturally greatly
increased their power.
The fall of Samaria is an event the literary and historical
significance of which has generally been underestimated. Up
to that time culture and civilisation had had their home in the
north. The relative positions of Samaria and Judah were
somewhat the same as those of Constantinople and Rome
during the Middle Ages. The theologians of the West to-day
claim that Rome represents the direct ecclesiastical line, the
true Church, the true priesthood, whereas Constantinople
represented a secondary development, and was guilty of heresy
and schism. This is precisely the view which the writer of
Chronicles takes with regard to the Church of Judah and the
Church of Israel. But if in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
the true Church and the genuine deposit of religion were
at Rome, even the Roman Catholic historians must allow
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 127
hat culture and civilisation were at Constantinople. It was
he fall of Constantinople which drove this culture from the
Eastern empire to the Western, brought about the Renaissance,
.nd did its part, and that a great part, in effecting the religious
eformation of the sixteenth century. Similarly the fall of
Samaria resulted in sending the scholars and the literature
,nd the civilisation of Samaria to Jerusalem, producing there
he Renaissance of the time of Hezekiah, and preparing the
ray for the great religious reformation of the succeeding
:entury under King Josiah. Hezekiah undertook to establish
. library in Jerusalem (Prov. xxv. i), and it is to this library
iresumably that we owe the preservation of so much of the
iterature of northern Israel, which is now embodied in our
Sible. It was under Hezekiah that the prophets of Jerusalem
irst began to write and we encounter the written as over
gainst the spoken prophecies. Presumably at the same time
he earlier codifications of ritual and social laws began to
ssume a written form. There was discovered not long since
t a temple in Crete a tablet containing directions for the
acrificers and worshippers at the temple. We were already
amiliar with the Phoenician tablet of Marseilles, containing
' O
sort of tariff for the worshippers. I think we may fairly
ssume that long before the period of Hezekiah similar tablets
nd directions had been in existence for the convenience of the
acrificers and the benefit of the priests at Jerusalem. So,
3r example, the sacrificial provisions contained in the first
hapters of Leviticus, which are of very ancient date, may
rell be supposed to have been handed down from an early
icriod inscribed upon such tablets. But in the time of
lezekiah, I suppose, the codification of the laws and ritual
nd also of traditions and customs progressed much farther,
inder the stimulus of the literary atmosphere which then
>egan to prevail.
I have already pointed out that this Renaissance led to a
eform in the following century ; indeed, the religious reforma-
ion had begun already at the time of Hezekiah, but was
lot completed and did not take its ultimate shape until the
128 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
succeeding century. At the time of Hezekiah, and still also
at the time of Josiah, the Temple was, as has been said
before, a Pantheon. A brazen serpent was worshipped there,
the worship of which was justified by the story that during
the wanderings in the wilderness it had been put up upon
a pole at a time when poisonous serpents invaded the camp,
and whosoever looked upon it had been healed. This is
generally regarded by students of religions as a relic of totem
worship. The Asherah was the symbol of a very foul cult,
but that also, with all its disgusting surroundings and its
lust, licensed under the name of religion, was housed in the
courts of the Temple of Yahaweh at the time of Hezekiah.
The religious reformation drove out all such impure worship
and all foreign worship.
We find the prophet Isaiah denouncing mere ritual; we find
him also a friend of and fellow-worker with the chief priest
of the Temple of Yahaweh at Jerusalem. Isaiah's call to
prophecy, according to his own account, was based on the
ritual of the Temple. He receives the call through the form^
and in the language of that ritual as he is worshipping there.
The sacred and mysterious Holy of Holies lies open before
his eyes, and you see that in his thought God is localised
there. That is the particular holy place through which he
is able to conceive of the mystery, and the glory, and the
holiness of God. Even that holiness doctrine which is so
marked a characteristic of Isaiah is taken from the technical
phraseology of the Jewish ritual. If the whole priesthood
of the Temple was not awake to the spiritual meanings lying
behind the ritual, at least the chief priest seems to have been,
and a man so spiritually minded as Isaiah was able to find his
religious home and his spiritual inspiration in the Temple of
Jehovah. This being the case, we can see how it was that
the reformation, which aimed at overthrowing the shrines of the
false gods which were to be found in the Temple, originated
with and was carried through chiefly by means of the priests of
that Temple working in harmony with the prophets.
It is worth while to notice that the deliverance from
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 129
Sennacherib in this reign, connected as it was with the pro-
)hecies of Isaiah, played a most important part in directing
ind formulating the Messianic hope. In fact, the Messianic
ind prophetic interpretation of that deliverance became the
:ause of the downfall of good King Josiah in the following
:entury. For, having this mighty deliverance before his eyes,
lue to the goodness and the reforms of Hezekiah, he supposed
hat he also, because of his reforms and because he had kept
he Law of Yahaweh, would be given victory over superior
lumbers; and relying on this faith, he ventured to oppose
the overwhelming superior forces of the King of Egypt, and
)erished in the attempt.
Following Hezekiah came a period of reaction under Amon
ind Manasseh, and the introduction of various heathen cults,
10 longer apparently under the claim that they were national,
jut distinctly as foreign. The introduction of foreign cults
)f this nature naturally involved the interests of the priests
jven more than those of the prophets. The priests of
^ahaweh's Temple were directly assailed by such attempts
o establish other cults. It was during the reign of Josiah
hat the Book of Deuteronomy was found in the Temple — that
)Ook which claimed that the Temple of Yahaweh at Jerusalem
vas the only legitimate place of worship for Israelites, which
aid down the law of unity of worship and prescribed this
)lace as the God-ordained centre of the national religion. It
vill be observed that this was a revival of the ancient practice
)f the prehistoric, nomadic period of Israel's life, of sacri-
icing at one place, the one central shrine of the camp of the
vandering Israelites ; and I have already pointed out that the
;tudy of the religious development of Israel seems to make
t clear that unity of worship in this form originated with
Moses as a ritual fact during the period when he was uniting
:he wandering tribes of Israel into one loose band of brothers.
Fhis ritual fact now assumes a new meaning ; it becomes a
•itual necessity if the worship of one God is to be preserved ;
ind Deuteronomy is an attempt to call back the people by
;he prescription of one central place of worship to the
K
130 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
primitive Mosaic practice in this respect. Deuteronomy was
properly and legitimately put forward as the Law of Moses.
The reforms of Josiah which ensued upon the publication
of Deuteronomy resulted in the permanent overthrow of all
shrines to other gods and all the high places at which
Yahaweh was worshipped, and in the centralisation of worship
absolutely at the Temple of Yahaweh in Jerusalem. From
this Temple also was banished every other shrine, the worship
of Yahaweh alone being allowed there ; and the ritual of the
priesthood of the Temple of Yahaweh at Jerusalem was made
the ritual of the nation. An attempt of a statesmanlike
description was made to provide for the priests of Yahaweh
who had been officiating at the various high places throughout
the land. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, they were
to be given places in the Temple at Jerusalem and put on an
equality, upon complying with certain easy conditions, with
the Aaronic priests of the Jerusalem Temple. It will be
noticed that Jeremiah the prophet, himself of priestly origin,
and the chief priest worked together in this reform. The
opposition of the Aaronic priesthood of the Jerusalem Temple
to the admission of the Levitical priests of the high places to
equal privileges with themselves was, however, too strong to
be overcome ; and we shall see that in the succeeding century
those Levitical priests who formerly officiated at the high
places are relegated to a lower position, becoming Levites, as
we generally understand that term.
Jeremiah's younger contemporary, Ezekiel, was also priest
and prophet. From the reference which Jeremiah makes to
the prophets at this period we are inclined to think that as
a body their influence was not altogether for good. In the
Exile prophets were burned by Nebuchadrezzar in the fire
as those who were exciting the exiles to revolt. Compare
also in Zechariah (xiii. 3 ff.) the reference to the bad
repute of prophets at that time. It is fair to suppose that
the conservatism of the priesthood needed to be combined
with the radicalism of the prophetic spirit in order to produce
prophets of the better type. At all events, both Jeremiah
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 131
nd Ezekiel were at once priest and prophet. We have seen
iat Isaiah depended upon the ritual for the outward form
f his inspiration. There is little or none of this in Jeremiah,
•ut he, on the other hand, lays great stress on the Law.
Ezekiel, however, is dependent for his symbolism and for
is thought upon Jewish ritual to an extent many times ex-
eeding the dependence of Isaiah. The symbolism of the
loly of Holies and the cherubim is the medium through
he receives his vision and his call to prophecy. But
e also makes great use of the Law. His Utopia, as described
i the last eleven chapters of his book, is an ideal Garden
f Eden. He takes the story of the Garden of Eden, but
lakes his Eden on the pattern of priestly legislation and
riestly ritual. Jerusalem is the centre of the universe, the
loly Land is the new Eden. There has been much con-
•oversy as to the relation of Ezekiel's Utopia to the priestly
jgislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch, and it
as been argued that that legislation was dependent upon
Ezekiel's idea, and not his ideas dependent upon earlier
jgislation and practice. It seems to me that Ezekiel the
riest did little more than take the theory of the Aaronic
riests of the Jerusalem Temple, and, with a certain admixture
f his own personal fancies, present a picture of the Holy
and administered upon that system. The legislation of the
liddle books seems to me, speaking roughly, to be a complete
edification of the Aaronic idea as held by the priests of the
erusalem Temple, of whom Ezekiel was one, rather than a
evelopment from Ezekiel's Utopia. The difference between
lis legislation and that of Deuteronomy is largely due to
ie fact that Deuteronomy represented a compromise, the
ttempt being made to bring the Levites into an equality with
tie Aaronic priests, which the latter, who regarded themselves
s alone legitimate, refused to accept. They recognised the
^evitical priests of the high places as descendants of the tribe
f Levi, but had built up a theory in accordance with which
he Levites in general were distinguished from the priests in
(articular ; those who officiated in the Temple of Yahaweh at
132 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Jerusalem being, according to this theory, the priests and the
only priests. I suppose this theory received its complete
formulation as the consequence of the struggle of which we
have a record at the time of Josiah, but I do not suppose
that it was an invention of Ezekiel; and what is true with
regard to this question of the priesthood is, I think, true with
regard to other matters of ritual in which we find a difference
between the earlier codes or the Deuteronomic code and the
final priest codes of the middle books.
During the E_xile there was probably some theoretical de-
velopment of older principles, or rather a definite codification
and statement of theories which had not hitherto found
definite expression in legislation, but on the whole the period
7 of the Exile was a period of codification rather than creation.
This is very distinctly marked in the matter of sacrifice. In
general the animals which may be sacrificed are those domestic
animals which are ordinary articles of food. Now the Hebrew
codes (compare Leviticus i.) allowed the sacrifice of the
bull, the sheep, the goat, and two varieties of doves. This
represented the entire extent of the domestic animals used
for food at the time when the laws of sacrifice took their
definite form. But even in these laws we can see a develop-
ment. The original law mentioned only the bull, the sheep,
and the goat. The two varieties of doves are mentioned
in a sort of codicil. This codicil belongs to the period
when Israel, becoming a settled people, began to domesticate
fowl. But why should we not have the cock mentioned as a
sacrificial animal ? The Jews came in contact with the cock
first during the Captivity. The cock had not been introduced
to the west before that as a domestic fowl ; he was brought
west with the Persian conquest. The Jews of to-day sacrifice
the cock, and apparently this practice began with the period
of the Exile ; but the law of sacrifice was at the time of the
Exile already so definitely completed that, although in popular
practice the sacrifice was introduced, legally and officially no
attention was paid to it, and there is no mention of it in
the codes.
THE RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL 133
The priest code as such originated in the Jerusalem Temple.
)uring and after the Exile the code of the Temple, popular
•aditions, and various other laws which had been handed
own in various ways were worked up and combined into one
rhole, not without Babylonian influence. The collection of
iis material in one book of itself led to a certain amount of
evelopment. It lacked completeness. In one place the
imple primitive statement was there, but the necessary de-
uctions had not been drawn. In another place something
ras wanted to harmonise those things which conflicted. In
nother something was needed to define certain points — ex-
lanations possibly in the form of a story were needed. The
rork of bringing together all this material began during the
Exilic period, and developed a scribal school among the Jews
f the Exile, the business of which was to codify and unify
radition and law. Of creative action there was, in my judg-
icnt, comparatively little, and that little of the kind which I
ave described already. The priests, as a natural outcome of
icir history, as I have described it, furnished the scribes who
id this work, and until the time of Ezra the priest we may
sgard this as the special line of development of the priest-
ood. The priests in Babylonia had become, through force of
ircumstances, interpreters of the oracles of God once more
ither than sacrificers. Prophet and priest, soothsayer and
iterpreter of oracles had always stood side by side in the
istory of Israel, as in that of all the surrounding nations. I
ave already pointed out that from the time of Isaiah to the
me of Ezra there was an inclination to unite the two functions
i one person. That unity, however, was by no means com-
lete, and we see from what we gather of the history of this
icriod through its literature that from the time of the Exile
nward, if priest and prophet did not diverge the one from the
ther, at least the two streams did not become one, but ran
arallel until both were ultimately merged in the scribal school
rhich became dominant after the time of Ezra.
The priestly school, as represented in the study and codifica-
lon of the Law, became, after the Exile, distinctly particularistic.
134 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Its object was to hedge Israel off from the nations among
whom it was ; to find what was peculiar to Israel, and to lay
the stress upon this. Some of the prophets of this period, on
the other hand, carried out to a still further extent than the
earlier prophets had done that universal conception of which
we find so large an element in the prophecies of Amos and
the first Isaiah. It is the second Isaiah who presents to us in
this period the picture of Israel suffering for the salvation of all
mankind. But the highest limit of the universal conception is
reached in the post-Exilic Book of Jonah, which is a parable of
the love of God towards the Gentiles equally with the Jews.
With the adoption of the law under Ezra and Nehemiah the
particularistic school may be said to have triumphed, but
triumphed not at the expense of prophecy only, but also of
the priesthood. Gradually, as a result of the dominance of
the scribal theory, both priest and prophet were merged in
the scribe. The Law took the place of both sacrifice and
prophecy, and the entire thought of the nation was concen-
trated upon the interpretation of that Law and its application
to the life of man. The sanctification of the ancient Law led
in its turn to the sanctification of the ancient History, and the
writings of the ancient Prophets, until the first canon of the
Law was supplemented by the second canon of the Prophets,
and that in course of time by the third canon, the Hagio-
grapha; and these three canons being established, the same
methods of interpretation and enlargement by interpretation
were applied to the Prophets and the Hagiographa which had
been applied to the Law.
With the time of the Maccabees there comes a revival of
prophecy in a new form, looking to the future only; for the
apocalyptic literature which was developed at that period, and
at the head of which stands the Book of Daniel, was a true
descendant of the ancient prophets. Prophetic in its nature
also was the Messianic hope, which was re-created at this
period ; but both the Messianic hope and the Book of Daniel
are discussed in later chapters of this work.
CHAPTER VII
THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE
MESSIANIC HOPE
IT must be borne in mind that nowhere in the Old Testa-
ment is "Messiah" the technical term which it became
in the post-Maccabaean, scribal period of Jewish history. In
Leviticus it is applied to the High Priest; in the historical
books to Saul, to David, to the patriarchs ; in Lamentations to
King Hezekiah ; in Habakkuk to the people of Israel as a
whole ; in the Psalms to kings of the Davidic dynasty (and
perhaps also to Israelitish kings) indiscriminately ; in Deutero-
Isaiah to Cyrus; and in the Book of Daniel both to Cyrus
and to one of the Seleucids. This variety of use of the word
in the Old Testament corresponds in some degree to the
variety of simple motives ultimately combined in the grand,
many-sided harmony of the Messianic hope realised. In
general the word " Messiah " of the Hebrew text has been
translated "anointed" in our Bible,1 but in Daniel ix. 25, 26,
where the word is used once in reference to Cyrus and once
in reference to a Seleucid, the Hebrew "Messiah" is retained.
The Messianic passages of the Old Testament stand in no
necessary connexion with the use of the word "Messiah."
Broadly speaking, those passages are Messianic which promise
a delivery from present distress, either through the direct inter-
vention of Yahaweh, the God and King of Israel, or through
a Davidic sovereign (or David himself), the vicegerent of
Yahaweh and the representative of His divinity upon earth,
1 Corrected in the Canterbury Revision.
135
136 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
or through a human agent, outside of the Davidic dynasty,
anointed by Yahaweh for that purpose; those passages are
Messianic which foretell a millennial kingdom over which
Yahaweh will reign either mediately or immediately, or which
describe the preparation for this millennial kingdom through a
Davidic sovereign, or through the people of Israel as specially
appointed to that mission by Yahaweh; those passages are
Messianic which describe the experiences of the ideally perfect
" Servant of Yahaweh."
The prophetic concept of the relation of God, as Yahaweh,
to Israel, inherited from Moses, was that of the direct govern-
ment by God of His people. Moses did not unify the people
into a nation, because of his conception of a theocratic empire.
God must directly rule over His people. This concept was
ideal, impracticable, as the history of Israel proves; but it
contained a fruitful germ of heavenward progress, which was
the divine essence of the Mosaic concept. After the practical
needs of their situation had forced upon the Hebrews centrali-
sation and regal authority, the prophets still adhered to this
Mosaic concept, modified and further idealised by the new
conditions. It is this which enables them steadfastly to look
forward to the Messianic Kingdom of God's rule upon earth.
But in order that a conception so ideal and exalted might be
effective for the education and development of the people at
large, it must operate upon lower and more worldly sentiments.
The lower instrument through which it was to act was found in
the royal form of government, or perhaps we might say in the
person of one of the kings of Israel.
Anyone who has considered those Messianic passages
which are concerned with a personal, human Messiah must,
I think, have observed this phenomenon — that this phase
of the Messianic hope emanates from the person of David.
He is the great Messiah of God in the past to whom the
people longingly look back. It is his glory, like the glory
of the Roman Caesar, which in each new age is reflected
over his descendants. It is a return of the Davidic greatness
which is looked for in the future. An idealised David is the
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 13?
pe of the royal human Messiah. In seeking a human basis
r the Messianic hope we must begin here. This basis is one
immon to the Israelites with other people. It is that longing
r the glory of the past, which is driven by the utter lack of
; realisation in the present first into hope, and then into
:lief, in its restoration in the future. The British belief in
e return of an Arthur, or the German hope of the reappearance
a Charlemagne or Frederick Barbarossa, were in origin the
me as the Israelitish expectation of the second David, a
nging for the glory of the past, metamorphosed through much
editation on its happiness in time of present distress into the
>pe of its restoration in the future.
Anyone who has studied, with any sort of appreciation,
ipular beliefs and myths and legends, realises that such a
:lief as this is neither quite literal nor altogether ideal. It
mnects itself literally with the name, the place, the family of
avid, and yet what it looks for is not David, but the kingdom
id glory of David ; so that at times it even seems ready,
ider peculiar circumstances, to loose its hold on the Davidic
:rsonality, and to look for the royal deliverer in a Cyrus or a
accabaeus. It is the popular mind, in distinction from
e thoughtful leaders, to which the Davidic idea is most
sential ; which connects its hopes most closely with a literal
:scendant of David, in whom he shall be repersonified in
I his ideal glory. Of course, this hope of a Davidic Messiah
10 shall restore the Davidic glory must result in the ideal-
ition of its hero in the past as well as in the future, and
:nce we have the phenomenon of a double David in the Bible
-the historical, actual David, and the mythical, ideal David.
his idealisation the prophets make a fulcrum for their lever,
eir function being to lift the Messianic hope of a second
ngdom of David into spiritual realms. The part which this
avidic hope played in moulding the history and character of
e Jewish people and maintaining their nationality intact was
lormous. The strength of that hope in Old Testament
nes is evidenced by psalmody and prophecy, and in a later
;e both by the apocalyptic literature which it called forth and
138 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
by the insurrections to which it gave rise. Even the hatred
which the oppression, immorality, and idolatry of Solomon
and his son aroused in the hearts of the Israelites of the
northern kingdom did not quench the pride in David and his
glory, so that Amos could say to them (ix. u), "In that
day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen,
and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his
ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old " ; while Hosea,
one of their number, prophesies (iii. 4, 5), " For the children
of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without
a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and
without an ephod, and without teraphim : afterward shall
the children of Israel return, and seek Yahaweh their God,
and David their king; and shall fear Yahaweh and His
goodness in the latter days."
Psychologically we are led to expect, from the origin and
nature of this hope, that which we also find to be true regarding
it — that it is most vividly pictured in the times of greatest
distress. Passing over such passages as 2 Samuel vii. 16,
where David is told, " Thine house and thy kingdom shall be
established for ever before thee ; thy throne shall be set up
for ever," and the numerous similar passages in the Psalms
concerning the glory and perpetuity of his kingdom, let us
take up the still more minute and definite passages in the
Prophets; as when Isaiah, crying out of the deepest
humiliation of the kingdom of Judah, yet promises the people
deliverance at the hand of a Davidic ruler, who shall restore a
spiritualised kingdom of David. Such is that famous prophecy
(ix. 1-7) which ends, " For increase of the government and for
peace without end, upon David's throne, and upon his kingdom,
to establish it, and to order it with judgment and with right-
eousness from henceforth and for ever. The zeal of Yahaweh
Zebaoth will perform this"; or that prophecy which begins
(xi. i), "And there cometh forth a rod from Jesse's stem,
and a Branch groweth from his roots." Micah sees in the
sore misery of Jerusalem the deep darkness that heralds
the glorious morn. The woes of Judah are the birth-pangs
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 139
of the Messiah. The nation sinks so low that she is
even led forth out of Jerusalem ; but this exile is the pangs
of travail with the glorious future. The capital may be
lost ; " but thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be
little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall
he come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel,
whose goings out have been from of old, from everlasting " ;
which is distinctively Davidic prophecy, although by a poetic
device the name of David is not mentioned. The rise of
a better king, Hezekiah, renders Isaiah's later Messianic
prophecies less definite and personal, and he even seems half
ready to accept Hezekiah himself as the restorer of the Davidic
kingdom. Again, under a bad king, in times of great distress,
Jeremiah (xxiii. 5) foretells a righteous branch to David, and
(xxx. 9) that the people freed from bondage shall serve " David
their king." In the time of the Exile Ezekiel is almost prosaic
in the literalness with which he uses the Davidic personality,
as where he says (xxxiv. 23), "And I will set over them one
shepherd, and he shall herd them, even My servant David ; he
shall herd them, and he shall be to them a shepherd"; or
(xxxvii. 24, 25), "And My servant David king over them; for
one shepherd shall be for them all : and in My religion shall
they walk, and My statutes shall they hear and do them ; and
they shall dwell in the land which I gave to My servant, to
Jacob, in which their fathers dwelt ; yea they shall dwell in it,
they and their sons, and their sons' sons, for ever, and David
My servant prince over them for ever."
After the Exile Haggai sees in Zerubbabel, as the descen-
dant of David, him who is to fulfil the hope of a Davidic
restoration, and the book of his prophecies closes with a
distinct expression of that view (ii. 23) ; " In that day, saith
Yahaweh Zebaoth, will I take thee Zerubbabel, son of
Shealtiel, My servant, saith Yahawe'h, and will make thee as
a signet, for thee I have chosen, saith Yahaweh Zebaoth."
Zechariah seems at first to entertain the same hope (iv. 7 ff.),
but Zerubbabel is not the man to restore Davidic glory; he
can only shine in the borrowed lustre of his ancestors. Then
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Joshua, the High Priest, is declared to be the Branch (vi. 12),
and you have the same combination of priest and king in the
Messianic concept, which appears in Psalm ex. Joshua, the
Branch, is placed upon a theocratic throne (vi. 13). It is the
failure of the worthless successors of David to fulfil the ex-
pectation of the people which causes the Davidic element to
vanish for a time, supplanted by the priestly.
It must not be supposed, however, that the people altogether
abandoned their idea of a Davidic restoration. Events show
that it still lingered on. The history of the people to the time
of the Maccabaean revolt is one of insignificance and failure,
but not oppression, and we find, accordingly, no vivid expres-
sion of the expectation of a personal, Davidic Messiah. The
line of David has sunk into obscurity and oblivion. Malachi
speaks only of a millennial kingdom, and of Elijah as the
herald of its coming. After the story of the assumption of
Elijah into heaven (2 Kings ii. n) it seemed a moral certainty
that a belief in his return would spring up. The Book of
Malachi contains the first definite expression of this belief,
which plays so important a part in the Christological scheme
of the Pharisees. The Seleucid oppression and the Macca-
baean revolt again fanned into a flame the smouldering fires of
the Messianic hope in the restoration of national greatness,
as is proven as well from the history of the period as from the
Book of Daniel. The lack of a prominent representative or
descendant of David prevents the author of Daniel from
representing the new kingdom as Davidic. It is pictured as
an earthly rule of Yahaweh through an undesignated, semi-
divine hero, under whom the saints shall possess the earth.
The popular mind, finding Judas Maccabaeus to be a hero,
seems to have been inclined to see in him and his house,
despite non-Davidic origin, the returned David. But this
delusion soon passed away, and the apocalyptic literature of
the immediately following period shows us the Davidic hope
stronger and more definite than ever before. The Psalter of
Solomon, for example, gives us an excellent idea of the way
in which the temporary belief in the Asmonaean dynasty
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 141
served, after the delusion was realised, to revive and strengthen
the Davidic hope ; and from this period until Kokba and the
final revolt against Hadrian the air was full of the expectation
of the Messiah of David's line.
I have thus endeavoured to describe the rise of the hope of
a Davidic Messiah — that is, of a ruler of David's line who
should restore the glory of the idealised kingdom of David —
and to point out that in its origin this hope was one common
to Israel with other nations — a hope conceived by desire, and
born of adversity. This hope I have briefly sought to trace
through the uncertain stages of its incipiency until it assumed
fixed form in the latter days of the Asmonaean dynasty.
This is the popular element which constitutes the warp of
the ultimate, realised hope. The woof which was woven into
this warp was the grand teaching that Yahaweh Himself is
King of Israel, and Israel His chosen, His anointed. The
rule of an earthly king is possible only on the theory that he
is the representative and vicegerent of Yahaweh, the embodi-
ment of His righteousness on earth. Notwithstanding the
unrighteousness of each successive Davidic sovereign, the
perfect, unhistorical David of their ideal enables the prophets
to look forward to an ultimate righteous king of David's line,
the true representative of Divinity on earth, under whom and
in whom is realised the ideal Israel.
Anyone reading carefully the vision of Isaiah (vi.), the
record of his call to prophecy, must see how deeply the
prophet was impressed with a sense of his people's wicked-
ness. Yahaweh, the pure and righteous Divinity, cannot
accept the people in its present condition, and yet it is utterly
impossible that He should destroy or abandon His people;
therefore He will purge them with a great calamity, " until the
cities are desolate without inhabitant, and the houses without
man, and the field lieth waste," until it seems as though no
remnant could escape; but "as the terebinth and oak when
cut down grow again from the stock that remains in the
ground, so shall Israel grow again, for a holy seed shall be
its stock." Here stands out clearly the doctrine of the identi-
142 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
fication of Yahaweh with Israel, so that He cannot forsake
nor destroy His people, and, on the other hand, as a necessary
correlative, the doctrine of the perfect essence of the people
of Israel, which is purified from the dross of common and
unrighteous Israel by the fire of affliction. In Joel and
Zephaniah, in some of the Psalms, and here and there in
Isaiah and the other prophets, the Davidic king is ignored
and, in Mosaic manner, Yahaweh is represented as the direct
ruler of the millennial kingdom. On the other side, the
doctrine of the perfect essence leads to the doctrine of the
"Servant of Yahaweh " in Deutero-Isaiah and some of the
Psalms. The teaching that Yahaweh is King of Israel, and
that Israel is His chosen people, is developed, therefore, in
two directions ; and with the fundamental belief in the restora-
tion of David's glory we must combine the doctrine of
Yahaweh's immediate action in the millennial kingdom, and
the teaching of the perfect essence suffering for the imperfect
people at large. Such doctrines they were which, woven
together by scribal study, produced the systematic, but ap-
parently inconsistent Christology of the Pharisees.
Between the utterance of the Messianic prophecies and the
ministry of Jesus there intervened a period which had a very
considerable part to play in the preparation for the Messiah.
In the first place, it was sufficiently long to allow the varied
conceptions of the prophets to crystallise into dogma and
acquire an undisputed claim to validity as inspired utterances.
The change of language was also a factor in this process,
putting the ancient writings under seal, as it were. In the
second place, the full execution of the Law of Moses during
this period united the people among themselves, and secured
them from external interference during the process of dogma-
tisation; further, it removed sacrifice altogether out of the
sphere of the common life of the people, idealising and
refining it. The festal side of sacrifice was suppressed, and
the expiatory notion emphasised. The Law laid great stress
on the sinfulness of the people and the necessity of making
atonement for sin, and post-legal developments emphasised
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 143
this even more strongly. But while one tendency of this
period was to impress upon the people their sinfulness and
the necessity of expiation, at the same time the expiatory
sacrifice was removed out of the popular sphere, idealised,
and surrounded with a mystic halo of awe and glory. On
another side the exaltation of the Law led to the synagogical
system, with its development of personal religion. In the
third place, during this period was developed the Pharisaic
and popular doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Not
to attempt too many details of the preparation of this period,
the external history also played its part. The partially success-
ful revolt of the Maccabees revived the national pride of the
Jews and confirmed their belief in Yahaweh's special favour.
That revolt quickened the Messianic hope, and the deep and
ever -increasing humiliation of the Roman epoch, following
the nation's brief dream of glory, brought it to birth. From
about the time of Jesus until the time of Kokba, the nation
was in a condition of unrest, hourly expecting what the rabbins
called "the birth-pangs of the Messiah."
Our knowledge of what Jews of Jesus' time expected the
Messiah to be is derived from Jewish apocalyptic literature, the
Targums, the Talmud, and the New Testament. The Targums
give us what we may call official knowledge of those Old
Testament passages which were universally held to be Messi-
anic, and were constantly read as such in the synagogues.
The date of the Targums is uncertain. Jewish tradition refers
the oldest of them to the first century, but critics seem to have
discredited this tradition. It is, however, allowed that at the
time of Jesus a Targum, or popular and explanatory transla-
tion of a large part or the whole of the Old Testament, was in
use. Whether it had already assumed written form, or was
merely handed down by oral tradition, is uncertain. For all
our purposes the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan may be
regarded as identical with the Targum of the time of Jesus ;
for whatever changes, if any, were made in the Messianic pas-
sages would have told against and not in favour of the Christian
view. Reckoning our Messianic passages, then, according to
144 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the Targum, we find represented the three Messianic concep-
tions mentioned above. The Messiah of the tribe of Judah
and family of David is the most fully represented of all. In
the Targum of Onkelos (Gen. xlix. 10) we read, instead of
"until Shiloh come," "until the Messiah come, whose is the
kingdom." In Numbers xxiv. 17, in the prophecy of Balaam,
" the sceptre out of Israel " becomes " the Messiah out of
Israel." The Targum of Jonathan makes Micah say (v. 2)
with reference to Bethlehem Ephratah, " From thee before Me
shall arise the Messiah, who shall be the bearer of power over
Israel, whose name was spoken from old time, from days of
everlasting." In Isaiah xi. i "the rod out of the stem of
Jesse, the Branch out of his roots " is explained as " the king,
the Messiah." In Jeremiah xxiii. 5 " the righteous Branch of
David" is "the Messiah of righteousness" whom God will
raise up unto David. Of passages of the second class, those
which represent God as an immediate deliverer, Habakkuk iii. 18
may serve as an example. In the original we read, " And I,
in Yahaweh will I rejoice ; I will exult in the God of my salva-
tion." In explanation of this the Targum of Jonathan has,
"On account of the wonder and salvation which Thou hast
wrought for Thy Messiah and for the remnant of Thy people
which is left, said the prophet : and I, in the word of Yahaweh
will I rejoice, and I will exult in God, the worker of my salva-
tion." The third class, which represents the Messiah as the
perfect essence suffering for the imperfect people at large, is
also recognised in the Targum. The " Servant of Yahaweh "
of Deutero-Isaiah is explained as the Messiah in the Targum
of Jonathan. Accordingly that famous passage (Hi. i3~liii. 12)
was in the time of Jesus authoritatively explained to the people
as Messianic. Those parts of this passage, however, which
represent Messiah as making an atonement were, at least in
part, explained away. " Surely our griefs He bore, and our
pains He carried them " (liii. 4) becomes in the Targum " For
our debts will He pray, and our misdeeds for His sake shall
be forgiven." " All of us like sheep have gone astray, each
after his own way have we turned, and Yahaweh hath laid on
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 145
Him the iniquity of us all " (v. 6) is rendered " It was the
good pleasure (of Yahaweh) to forgive the sins of us all for His
sake." Weber,1 commenting on this passage, says, "Every-
where, even in the last verse (' He bare the sin of many, and
for the transgressors made He intercession '), the Targum finds
no representative suffering and death of the Messiah to expiate
the sins of the people."
I use the Targum on the last cited passages merely to
establish the fact that at the time of Jesus such passages,
which represent the ideally perfect "Servant of Yahaweh"
as making atonement for imperfect, sinful Israel, were in-
terpreted as Messianic, not to show that the Jews accepted
the doctrine of the Messiah as making atonement by suffering
and death. Whatever part, however, tradition might play
among the Jews, it always rested ultimately on Scripture,
rendering possible an appeal to the latter against itself. The
Targumic explanation of these passages as Messianic gave
authority for their application in the case of Jesus, while
against the non-expiatory interpretation put upon them in
the Targum it was quite in order to make appeal to the
original Scripture. The position of tradition, as over against
the Scriptures, at the time of Jesus was much the same as
at the Reformation.
The early apocalyptic literature, such as the Psalter of
Solomon, part of the Book of Enoch, and part of the
Sibylline prophecies, is a valuable witness against a few
writers who have imagined the Messianic hope to have been
dead at the time of Jesus, and have tried to represent the
testimony of the Gospels to an existing Messianic expectation
as fanciful and false, and Talmudic doctrine and post-Christian
revolt and turbulence among the Jews as alike a side product
of Christianity.
The Talmud and New Testament must be studied together.
By combining incidental allusions in the New Testament with
passages of the Talmud a pretty fair picture may be painted
of Jewish belief and expectation at the time of Jesus. It
1 Altsynagog. Theol., p. 345.
L
146 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
is impossible to date in any way such a heterogeneous mass
of speculation and tradition as the Talmud. Some of it is
very old, some not. In some cases the kernel of a tradition
may be old, while the tradition in the form given in the
Talmud is comparatively new. The New Testament serves
in some sort as a measuring-scale to the Talmud, and by
a comparison of the two some valuable results are obtained.
Comparing, then, the Talmud and the New Testament, we
find a great resemblance as to principle in their method of
using the Prophets. New Testament writers frequently tell
us that this thing or that thing was done "that it might
be fulfilled which was written," or "said." The Haggada uses
the same phrase repeatedly, telling this or that trivial story, it
may be, to illustrate the fulfilment of various prophecies. The
principle in both cases is that each word of prophecy must
find its fulfilment. The New Testament claim that Moses
and all the prophets testified concerning Jesus is the Talmudic
doctrine that all the Prophets testified only of the days of the
Messiah. The Talmudic idea that all events, destinies, hopes,
and wishes which connect themselves with the Holy Land or
its inhabitants have been already announced by the Prophets
and may be found by the exercise of sufficient ingenuity,
is manifestly at the bottom of some New Testament references
to the Old Testament (such as Matt. ii. 23). But besides
these agreements of principle, there is also agreement as to
certain points of detail regarding the Messiah. Edersheim,
in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, p. 164, mentions
the following doctrines concerning the Messiah as supported
by the Talmud : " Premundane existence, elevation above
Moses and the angels, representative character, sufferings,
violent death for his people,1 work on behalf of living, re-
demption and restoration of Israel." These can all be sup-
ported from the Talmud, and yet it can hardly be said, I
1 This may be a later development consequent upon the death of Kokba,
whom Rabbi Akiba had formally declared to be the Messiah, and it may
have been in the same connexion that the idea arose of a suffering Messiah
of the tribe of Ephraim.
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 147
think, that all of them are really taught there. The great
popular belief at the time of Jesus, as we gather from a
comparison of New Testament and Talmud, was in a con-
quering, human, but almost superhuman king of David's
line. Preceding him would come Elijah to preach a great
repentance; perhaps, also, Moses and Jeremiah, or yet others
of the prophets.
Having discussed the Jewish hope of a Messiah, it remains
to make a few suggestions regarding the bearing of what has
been presented on some parts of the New Testament. In
considering the statements of New Testament writers with
reference to Old Testament prophecies, we must recognise
two opposite possibilities : of inventing or colouring facts to
make the actuality correspond with prediction ; of perverting
or altering a prophecy to show that the event had been
predicted. The first possibility must be considered in those
cases where we learn from the New Testament itself or from
other sources that a strong expectation existed, that is, in
the test points of the Messiahship as conceived by the Jews.
The Davidic descent is one of these points. Was the Davidic
descent of Jesus invented, consciously or unconsciously, in
order to connect Him with the Messianic predictions? The
genealogies given in St. Matthew and St. Luke go for little
with the critics in answering this question. It is the incidental
passages in the Gospels which are strong. They seem to
show, without doubt, that He was admitted by all, His
enemies included, to be a descendant of David through
Joseph. There is no sign in the whole body of New Testa-
ment literature, nor, so far as I am aware, in Talmudic
literature, that this claim was seriously contested. We know,
moreover, that the family of David was not extinct even a
century after Jesus, so that the possibility of testing the claim
existed. Under these circumstances the existence of the
expectation is not evidence against the fact.
A minor question, a side issue of the Davidic descent,
is the birth in Bethlehem. Here the decision is not so
absolute. Leaving aside the story of the birth as given in
148 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
St. Matthew and St. Luke, there is no further notice of any
connexion which Jesus had with Bethlehem. He is, on the
contrary, constantly referred to as coming from Nazareth, and
that in cases where His birth in Bethlehem, had it been
known, ought certainly, we should think, to have been men-
tioned. So His Nazarene origin was objected to His
Messianic claims, and we do not learn that the objection
was answered. On the other hand, it is claimed, there are
peculiarities in the account of the birth in Bethlehem which
render it improbable that it was invented to satisfy the terms
of prophecy. It tends to dishonour, so far as its main fact
goes, and not to honour. It is too accurate and circumstantial.
The argument from Jewish expectation may work here in two
ways. Primarily it militates against the fact. If the fact that
Jesus was the Messiah be first firmly established, a secondary
favourable argument may be constructed. In following the
development of the Messianic hope, we find the expectation
of the restoration of the Davidic kingdom the fulcrum on
which the prophets rest their lever in lifting up and spiritualis-
ing the conceptions of the people and preparing them for the
divine revelation. It is, then, scarcely conceivable that when
God makes that revelation He should throw aside all that
had been accomplished by the prophets, by failing to build
on the foundation which had been so long and carefully
prepared. It was, in point of fact, impossible to make a
firm attachment to the Messianic hopes of Israel without
Davidic birth. With reference to this secondary argument it
must, however, be observed that its chief strength applies to
the fact of Davidic birth, and that it is not strong with reference
to such a side issue as the birth in Bethlehem, until it be first
proven that that is a necessary part of the Davidic concept.
The question regarding the position of John the Baptist
may be referred to this category, inasmuch as the expectation
of his coming formed an important introductory part of the
Messianic hope. The testimony of Josephus, compared with
that of the New Testament, gives in this case indubitable
proof of the historical character of the Baptist and his work.
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 149
His activity, as represented from both sources, was such as
fully to justify Jesus in pointing to him, as He is reported to
have done, as fulfilling the expectation comprehended under
the name Elijah, and, therefore, as an additional proof of His
own Messiahship. The question as to John's views regarding
both his own mission and the Messiah is more difficult to
answer. In view of the whole condition of Messianic belief
in his time, it seems impossible to hold that he expected an
immediate revelation of Yahaweh rather than a revelation
through a personal Messiah. He must be attached to the
thought of his own time, not torn out of his connexion and
attached to a certain line of thought in the past. In face of
any direct and modified evidence to the contrary, it must be
assumed that his thought was moulded and modified by the
thought and conditions of his time, and hence, in relation to
the Messianic hope, that he looked for a personal Messiah.
There is no reason, furthermore, to discredit the story of the
three synoptical Gospels, that John sent to inquire of Jesus
whether He were the Messiah. This would point to a position
of friendliness towards Him, with an inclination, perhaps, to
regard Him as the Messiah, and yet an uncertainty as to
whether He were really so. The synoptical account of the
baptism of Jesus does not, so far as the Baptist is concerned,
conflict with this view. As to himself, his attitude, as there
related, shows both his greatness and his littleness. He was
certain of a divine mission to prepare the way of the Messiah
by preaching repentance; on the other hand, he is not con-
scious of being literally Elijah. Bound by the letter, he is
unable to spiritualise the conception of the return of Elijah,
as Jesus did ; hence he attached himself to another passage of
Scripture, where Isaiah speaks of the voice crying in the
wilderness (the very passage which Malachi had developed
into his prophecy of the coming of Elijah).
The expectation that the Messiah would show signs and
work wonders cannot reasonably be supposed to have given
rise to all the stories of the miracles of Jesus, and need not be
further discussed here.
ISO THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
The virgin birth of Jesus and His resurrection from the
dead belong to the second category. The birth of the
Messiah from a virgin was no part of the Messianic concep-
tion of the Jews. If we find such a belief existing with
reference to Jesus, we cannot, therefore, suppose that it was
a reflex of the Messianic expectation, since that expectation
involved nothing of the sort. The prophetic passage by which
the virgin birth is substantiated in the New Testament is
nowhere explained as Messianic, and the form in which it is
quoted is found neither in the Hebrew text nor in the Targum.1
As far as it goes this is, then, an argument in favour of the
fact. Without entering into the question of fact, it may be
said that the argument against it from silence being a very
strong one, makes it advisable that apologists should avoid in-
volving this question with the question of the Incarnation,
basing the latter upon the virgin birth. In this St. Paul can be
quoted as an example.
The story of the resurrection from the dead, like the story
of the divine conception, cannot be derived from the Jewish
expectation of the Messiah. Jesus seems to have told His
disciples that the Scriptures prophesied His death and resur-
rection,2 but it requires considerable ingenuity to pick out and
piece together Scripture texts which may be thought to prove
such a death and resurrection from the dead. Certainly it
constituted no part of the Jewish doctrine or expectation
regarding the Messiah, as is abundantly proved by the con-
current testimony of the Talmud and the New Testament.
This is in so far an argument for the fact. There is in this
case no argument of silence against the fact. It was the
corner-stone of St. Paul's preaching, as proved by his unim-
1 See Appendix, p. 317.
2 They even said His resurrection on the third day, with which compare
a rabbinic comment of uncertain date on Hosea vi. 2, quoted by WUNSCHE,
Beiirage, p. 197, "All inhabitants of the earth must taste of death, but
God will renew them on the third day, i.e. restore them to life and set
them before Him."
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 151
peached letters, within twenty-five years of the event. It is
narrated in all the Gospels. It is repeatedly mentioned or
referred to by the other New Testament writers.
It may not be amiss to add a few words regarding the
attitude which Jesus assumed towards the Messiahship, and
regarding the citation of the Old Testament in the New for
the purpose of showing that Jesus was the fulfilment in detail
of Messianic prophecies. As to the latter point, I apprehend
that there is a by no means contemptible argument for the
propriety of the use, within reasonable limits, of such citation
of the Old Testament for details of the life of Jesus, and
also that Jesus is the fulfilment of such predictions. The
use of the Old Testament in the New must be studied in
connexion with the theological development and thought of
the period. Such and such passages were at that time re-
garded as Messianic. Would it not be reasonable that God
should cause His Messiah to fulfil, to some extent at least,
these expectations of the Jews ? and was it not even necessary
to do so in order to attach Him to the thought of the times ?
If such a course was reasonable and necessary, it may afford
some clue to the use which Jesus Himself makes of certain
Old Testament passages.
As to the former matter. Until the very end of His life
Jesus asserted His Messiahship only to a trusted few, strictly
forbidding them to publish it. Towards the people He main-
tained an attitude of reserve. While by many of His acts
tacitly claiming the Messiahship, He yet did not at first
formally and publicly proclaim Himself the Messiah. Indeed,
He could not have done so without exciting a revolt or
causing His own premature death. This position enabled
Him to establish a Messianic record, and to prepare His
disciples for the work of proclaiming Him as the true Messiah
on the ground of that record. When He did at last openly
proclaim Himself to be the Messiah, which He did very
clearly — first by deeds and then in words — it was so done
that a revolt was avoided, and His death ensued in a manner
according with the Old Testament prophecies authoritatively
152 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
set forth as Messianic. The object of His course in these
particulars seems to have been to enable His followers to
preach Him as the true Messiah on the ground of the record
which He made.
Studying the life and teaching of Jesus in connexion with
the life and thought of His times, we find Him attaching
Himself thoroughly to that life and thought, and, at the same
time, we find Him revolutionising them — revolutionising them,
however, to some extent in the same way in which the
Reformers revolutionised their times, namely, by going back
to that which was more primitive. Through and over the
teachings and traditions of the rabbins and the peculiarly
Jewish conception of His compeers, He appeals to the
prophets. The intervening period had done its work of
preparation, and must now be carried back to union with
the past. Jesus is the manifestation of Yahaweh. He is the
ideal Israel; or, more catholic than prophecy in His fulfil-
ment of its concept, He is ideal humanity, the heaven-throned
apex of that pyramid whose base is mankind at large and its
middle point the church of the saints. The careful prepara-
tion for the manifestation of a Messiah, the gradual elevation
of a common human longing to a glorious aspiration, the
fulfilment of which could be found only in some manifestation
of the Deity, seems to argue most strongly a Divine purpose,
and to confirm our belief that He whose life both fulfilled
and elevated that aspiration was Messiah and was Divine.
Jesus, if His claims be allowed, was Messiah in this threefold
manner — the human descendant of David ; ideally perfect
humanity suffering for the imperfect ; the Divinity manifested.
The first and lowest of these was an instrumentality for the
revelation of the other two. The belief in the Davidic
sovereign played the important part it did, in order that there
might be a point of attachment to the natural human longing
of the people, to lift their thoughts and hopes to a higher
truth.
PART III
THE BOOK OF PSALMS
CHAPTER VIII
THE GROWTH OF THE JEWISH PSALTER
OLD Testament criticism has established by analysis of
the Law, the Prophets, and those historical documents
which have come down to us, the fact of a growth or evolu-
tion in the religion of Israel. An attempt is now being made
to determine the relation of the Psalter to this religious
evolution, and thus to fix the dates both of the Psalter and
of the individual psalms which compose it.
The Psalter was, admittedly, a church hymnal. Now it is
certainly true of the hymns contained in modern collections
of hymns for Church use that few or none of those more than
a century old are sung as they issued from the author's hand.
The more popular a hymn, moreover, the more liable it is
to change, and the great hymns of the Church have been
gradually moulded into their present shape by a long process
of manipulation. In fact, an excellent introduction to the
study of the Psalter is the Te Deum. An ancient hymn of
uncertain origin and gradual growth, in later ages confidently
ascribed to those famous fathers of the Church, Ambrose and
Augustine, and to a particular occasion in the life of the
latter, it has a history instructively parallel to that of more
than one of the Psalms of David. We may lay it down as
a principle universally applicable in criticism of hymns and
songs long in popular use, that they change and grow in the
mouth of the people. If this is true of the West, even down
to our own time, much more was it true of the days of
primitive antiquity, and among the Oriental Hebrews, careless
155
156 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
as we know them to have been, until a comparatively late
date, about any text but that of the Law.
We are not confined to an argument from principle and
analogy. There are not a few psalms in which both change
and growth are patent to the most casual observer. Such are
Psalms ix. and x., which together originally constituted an
alphabetic acrostic, every second verse commencing with a
different letter in the order of the alphabet. Of the original
poem, so easily traceable owing to this alphabetic arrange-
ment, the first eighteen verses of the ninth and the last seven
verses of the tenth Psalm, representing the first ten (D has
dropped out) and the last four letters of the alphabet, are
preserved almost unchanged. But instead of sixteen inter-
vening verses, representing the other eight letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, we now have thirteen verses entirely without
acrostic arrangement. In other words, for some reason, this
originally alphabetic psalm was afterwards modified by the
removal of more than a third of the original number of verses
and the substitution of others, in which no attempt was made
to preserve the alphabetically acrostic arrangement. More-
over, the inserted verses (which, by the way, present a corrupt
and ill-preserved text in striking contrast to the rest of the
psalm) are quite opposite in tone to the original portion.
This is hopeful and almost triumphant, while the newer part
is mournful and complaining.
Another example of the addition of mournful verses to a
joyful hymn is furnished in Psalm xliv. Here the first eight
verses, closed with a Selah in the Hebrew, constitute an
original triumph-song, to which a later poet added a much
longer dirge of lamentation. This method of growth, by
addition at the end rather than insertion in the middle, is
naturally the more common. Still another example is Psalms
xlii. and xliii. These two are one psalm, consisting of three
strophes, each strophe closing with the same refrain. The
last strophe is of later origin than the others, and was com-
posed upon the second strophe as a basis. Similarly in
Psalm iv. the last four verses are a later composition, made
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 157
up of citations from or allusions to other writings, after the
manner of Psalm Ixxxvi. It can be shown that Psalms iii.,
xlvi., Ixxx., and not a few others, have grown in a similar way
by the addition of new stanzas, sometimes as long as the
original poem, or longer. In other cases two or more separate
psalms have been welded into one, as in xix., xl., and Ixxvii.
This seems to have been a common method of composition
in the later period. An excellent example of its use is fur-
nished in i Chronicles xvi., where a psalm of David is
composed, as if on purpose for our instruction, out of Psalms
cv., xcvi., and cvi. Similarly Psalm cviii. was composed out
of Psalms Ivii. and Ix.
There are also a few psalms in which we can show the
composition of a longer liturgical hymn, or part of a hymn,
for a more ancient, shorter liturgical formula as a theme or
motive. Psalm Ixviii., in its original form, was composed on
the theme of the ancient formulae of the ark contained in
Numbers x. 35, 36. Psalm cxviii. is founded on the ancient
sacrificial chant : " Give thanks to Yahaweh Zebaoth, for
Yahaweh is good, for His mercy endureth for ever" (Jer.
xxxiii. n). Psalms cvi. and cvii. make free use of the same
theme ; Psalm cxxxvi. reborrows it from cxviii. and develops it
still further. More common is the addition of a refrain to
mark the close of a stanza musically, the insertion of single
verses of an explanatory or parenthetical character, or the
addition of what might be called a postscript at the end of a
psalm. A good example of the addition of a refrain may be
found in Psalm xlii., or still better in Psalm xlvi., where it is
rendered more apparent by the fact that the refrain (vv. 7 and
1 1) is Yahawistic, while the psalm is Elohistic. In Psalm xlii.
a later Yahawistic recension is evidently responsible for the in-
sertion of verse 8, which destroys the symmetry of the strophes
and interrupts the movement of thought. Verses 20 and 21
of Psalm li. may be taken as a specimen of the postscript.
The object of these verses, according to nearly all the critics,
was to give a sacrificial character to an anti-sacrificial psalm.
Their relation to the remainder of the psalm in regard of
158 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
their content may be compared with the relation of the
speech of Elihu (chaps, xxxii.-xxxvii.) to the remainder of the
Book of Job. In several cases these postscripts are marked
by the use of Adonai (Lord), where the psalm itself has
consistently employed either Yahaweh (LORD), or Elohim
(God). This would seem to indicate an Adonistic recension
of the Psalter, or some parts of it. Such an Adonistic post-
script has been added, for example, at the close of the already
composite Psalm xliv.
This brief statement gives a very inadequate view of the
amount and nature of the changes which have taken place in
the growth of individual psalms and which render necessary the
greatest caution in any attempt to date them by their contents.
Again, if the Psalter was the hymn-book of the Jewish
Church, it follows from all analogies that it represents largely
the popular side of religion. Now the spiritual leaders are
in advance of the people, and even after they are canonised
the general belief of the Church still lags behind them. More-
over, popular belief, or the belief of the Church at large, is
inconsistent. It accepts the prophets on the one side, and
inherited forms and even superstitions on the other; sub-
scribes to the one, and practises in large measure the other.
The popular belief of the Church can never be measured by
the strict canons of the theologians. So it comes to pass that
people will profess orthodoxy in their creeds and sing heresy
in their favourite hymns with the most naive unconsciousness
of any inconsistency between them. All this must be care-
fully taken into account in a critical study of the Psalter. I
do not mean to deny that there are not a few psalms which are
quite abreast of the thought of the spiritual leaders, having,
indeed, been composed by them. I also recognise the fact
that the whole Psalter received a certain priestly tinge or bias
from its use in the Temple, and that a considerable portion of
the last two books was actually composed in the Temple itself,
or under the immediate influence of the Temple service. But,
as a whole, the Psalter represents, like all hymnals, what we
may roughly call the popular theology, inconsistent and un-
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 159
theological, if I may be permitted the paradox, not to be com-
pared too closely with the ritual of the priests, the canons of
the lawgiver, or the sermons of the prophet.
The Psalter, as we have it, is divided into five books, as
follows : i.-xli., xlii.-lxxii., Ixxiii.-lxxxix., xc.-cvi., cvii.-cl.
This division is indicated in the text by the directions,
"second book," "third book," etc. Each book, except the
last, is also provided with a doxology. Thus verse 13 of
Psalm xli. reads : —
" Blessed be Yahaweh, God of Israel,
From everlasting to everlasting.
Amen and amen."
In Psalm Ixxii., verses 18 and 19 constitute the doxology;
in Psalm Ixxxix., verse 52; in Psalm cvi., verse 48. At the
end of the fifth book there is no separate doxology; but
Psalm cl. is ordinarily regarded as taking its place, both for
that book and also for the whole collection.
This division into five books is found in the Septuagint
Greek translation as well as in the Hebrew original; this
would seem to show that the division existed before this trans-
lation was made — probably some time in the second century
B.C. This fivefold division makes the Psalter singularly
symmetrical with the five books of the Law; it is generally
supposed to have been made for that express purpose, as it is
an artificial division — at least in part — and clearly not original.
An examination of the Psalms themselves shows us an earlier
division into three books instead of five. The division
between Psalms cvi. and cvii. corresponds to no natural
division in the Psalter. Beginning with Psalm ciii., we have a
series of five psalms dealing with the wonderful works of God
in creation and in the history of Israel, evidently placed
together because of their contents. Especially is this true of
Psalms cv., cvi., and cvii., which all begin with the same
Formula, "O give thanks unto Yahaweh!" Moreover, while
Psalm ciii. bears the heading, " A Psalm of David," and cviii.
the similar heading, "A Song, a Psalm of David," Psalms
:iv.-cvii. have no headings. The heading of Psalm ciii.
160 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
belongs to Psalms ciii.-cvii. as constituting one piece. They
formed a whole by themselves, and the division was made
after they had been collected into one. This shows that
Psalms xc.-cl., or a portion of those psalms in which both
cvi. and cviii. were included, once formed one collection or
book of psalms, which was later divided into two parts, and a
doxology inserted after Psalm cvi. to mark the division. The
division itself was probably made in order to raise the number
of books to five, after the analogy of the Pentateuch. But
why divide at precisely this point ? The reason seems to me
not hard to find. The first three books of the Psalter had
already been divided as at present, and the last of those books
happened to contain seventeen psalms. The same number
was counted off from the last collection to constitute Book iv.,
and so it chanced that the division fell thus inappropriately
between Psalms cvi. and cvii., which properly belong to one
and the same series.
The division between Psalms Ixxii. and Ixxiii., while older
than that between cvi. and cvii., is itself not original. Between
Psalms xli. and xlii., on the other hand, there is a natural and
original division ; for, in the psalms of the first book, Yahaweh
is regularly used as the name of God; but in the second,
Elohim. Analysing the contents of the second and third
books according to the headings, we find Psalms xlii.-xlix.
ascribed to the " Sons of Korah " ; Psalm 1. is a " Psalm of
Asaph"; Psalms li.-lxxii. form a collection described by a
colophon attached to the end of Psalm Ixxii., as the " Prayers
of David, son of Jesse." Psalms Ixxiii.-lxxxiii., like Psalm 1.,
are described as Psalms of Asaph. All of these psalms up to
this point are characterised by the use of Elohim as the name
of the Deity. Then follow six psalms of a composite nature,
in which the name Yahaweh is used. Of these, Psalms Ixxxiv.,
Ixxxv., Ixxxvii., and Ixxxviii. are ascribed to the sons of
Korah, Ixxxviii. being also ascribed by a second heading to
Heman the Ezrahite ; Psalm Ixxxix. is ascribed to Ethan the
Ezrahite ; and Psalm Ixxxvi. is described as a " Hymn of
David."
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 161
Evidently there is some confusion and a good deal of
editing in these two books, which, it is safe to say, were
originally one. We have four collections before us, which have
Deen edited and joined together. Psalms xlii.-xlix. constituted
i collection of songs of the sons of Korah, Psalms 1. and
xxiii.-lxxxiii. a collection of songs of Asaph, Psalms li.-lxxii.
i collection called " Prayers of David, son of Jesse." These
:hree collections were all Elohistic. I am inclined to think
:hat they originally followed one another in the order given,
Dut by some accident a dislocation took place, and the
' Prayers of David, son of Jesse " were inserted between the
irst and following songs of the Asaph collection, as at present.
\ Yahawistic editor added to these three collections a small
collection of six largely composite psalms, and re-edited the
;ongs of the other collections, inserting a few verses here and
here, and adding several Yahawistic refrains. In this way the
collection was made which now constitutes the second and
:hird books of the Psalter. The existence at the close of
Psalm Ixii. of the colophon, "The Prayers of David, son of
[esse are ended," led later to a division of the collection
it that point into two books, as we now have them.
Without stopping for the moment to exhibit the evidence
hat the collection of the first book antedates the collection
)f the second book, but assuming it temporarily as a fact,
ve may present the stages of the growth of the Psalter as
bllows : —
1. First collection, Psalms iii.-xli., to which were ultimately
)refixed — at what stage I do not know — the anonymous
Dsalm ii., and also an introductory ode, Psalm i., out of the
ichool of the proverb writers.
2. Three Elohistic collections, the Psalter of the sons of
£orah, the Psalter of Asaph, and the " Prayers of David, son
)f Jesse."
3. These three Elohistic collections were re-edited and
combined by a Yahawistic editor, and Psalms Ixxxiv.-lxxxix.
idded.
4. This collection was divided into two books after
M
1 62 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Psalm Ixxii., thus making the Psalter to consist of three
books.
5. A fourth book or collection was added.
6. The fourth book was divided into two to make the
Psalter consist, like the Pentateuch, of five books, the
division being made after Psalm cvi. for the reason already
assigned.
The above analysis shows that the second and third books
rest on earlier small collections, and suggests that the same
may be true of the other books of the Psalter. Examining
the psalm-headings as before, we find that in the first book
all but four psalms are ascribed to David. These four are
anonymous, i., ii., x., and xxxiii. As already stated, i. and ii.
are later prefixes to the collection. Psalm x. is really a part
of an alphabetic acrostic of which ix. is the first part ; and in
the Septuagint translation the two are still treated as one.
They were evidently regarded as one when the present
headings of the Hebrew text were prefixed, and the division
into two psalms is of very late origin. For critical purposes
the heading of Psalm ix. must be understood to refer to
Psalm x. also. In the same way we may conclude that, at
the time the headings were prefixed, Psalm xxxiii. was regarded
as part of Psalm xxxii. The latter ends : —
" Be glad in Yahaweh, and rejoice, ye righteous :
And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart " ;
and the former begins : —
" Rejoice in Yahaweh, O ye righteous :
Praise is comely for the upright."
Owing to this similarity a connexion was made between
these two hymns, with different metres and on different
topics, analogous to that between the two parts of Psalm xix.,
Psalm xxxiii. being also of much later origin than xxxii., just
as xix. 7-14 is later than xix. 1-6. In that editing of the first
book of psalms which gave us the headings of the Hebrew
text Psalms xxxii. and xxxiii. were treated as one psalm ; later
they were divided. Psalms iii.-xli., therefore, constituted a
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 163
collection which was known as " Of David," i.e. the Psalter
of David, and which on the evidence of the headings is
homogeneous.1
Turning to the fourth and fifth books, we find, still on the
evidence of the headings, that Psalms ciii.-cvii. and cviii.-cx.
are ascribed to David, and their consecutive arrangement
suggests that all of them were taken from the same collection,
a so-called David Psalter. Psalms cxi.-cxvii. form an anony-
mous hallelujah collection, with cxvii. as doxology; and the
arrangement points to a collection composed or arranged
primarily for liturgical use in the Temple. Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv.,
the "Songs of Degrees," are a pilgrim Psalter, a collection
of popular, non-liturgical origin, composed and used first by
pilgrims from Babylonia and Persia to the Temple at Jerusalem.
Psalms cxxxviii.-cxliv. form a collection, each psalm of which,
as in Book I., is headed, " Of David." Psalms cxlv.-cl. are a
hallelujah chorus, composed or collected for liturgical purposes
and headed by the title, " Praise-song of David."
By the testimony of the headings our Psalter is, then, largely
a compilation from a number of smaller collections. I have
already tried to show, in a general way, from the arrangement
of the Psalter, that the collections of the second and third
books are earlier than those of the fourth and fifth, and by
analogy we should expect the collection of the first book to
be earlier than those of the second and third. This general
argument from arrangement finds confirmation in a com-
parison of psalms repeated in different collections, and by an
examination of the relation of psalms to other psalms from
which they quote. There are two cases of psalms appearing
in both the first and second books. Psalm xiv. of the Yaha-
wistic Psalter of David, constituting the first book of Psalms,
appears in an Elohistic recension as Psalm liii. in the collection
called "Prayers of David, son of Jesse," included in the second
book of Psalms. By general consent, the Yahawistic recension
of this psalm is the more original. The same is true of
1 The musical notes suggest at least one earlier smaller collection,
Psalms iii.-x.
164 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Psalm xl. 13-17 of the Yahawistic first book, which appears in
an Elohistic recension as Psalm Ixx., also one of the " Prayers
of David, son of Jesse." In neither of these cases can we
assert that one was borrowed from the other, but merely that
the form in the first book seems to be more original than that
in the second. But in the case of Psalm cviii., in the fifth
book, we find unquestionably direct borrowing from Psalms
Ivii. and Ix. of the second book.
In the matter of citation the argument is similar. Psalms
Ixxxiv.-lxxxix. are composed largely of citations from para-
phrases of or enlargements upon other Scriptures, including
psalms which have preceded them in the order of arrangement.
Psalm xcvi. cites xxiv., xlvii., and xlviii. ; Psalm xcvii. cites
xxx. and xxii. ; Psalm cii. cites Ixix. ; Psalm cxxxv. uses cxv.
and cxxxiv. ; Psalm cxliii. is a mosaic of other earlier psalms —
xxvii., xxviii., Ixix., and Ixxxiv. ; and, not to extend the list
unduly, Psalm cxlvii. makes use of xxxiii., civ., and others.
These psalms all quote only psalms of books preceding them
in the order of arrangement, with the possible exception of
Ixxxvi., which, it is claimed by some, also shows acquaintance
with one or two psalms of the next collection — a claim which
I do not regard as proved. The argument from repetitions,
quotations, and references, therefore, supports the general
argument from arrangement already presented ; and we may
lay it down as a general proposition, our working hypothesis,
that the earlier psalms are to be found in the first part of the
Psalter, particularly in the first book, and that the later psalms
are in general to be sought in the last books.
Let us now take another step in our analysis. We have
seen that our present five books of the Psalter were originally
three in number, and that of two of these we are able to say
positively, "This book, according to its own clear testimony,
is made up of a number of minor collections." We have
seen also that there is a very distinct mark of division between
the first and the second of these original books, in that the
first consistently uses Yahaweh as well as the name of God,
and the second, except in six appended psalms, Elohim.
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 165
The last part of the Psalter, Psalms xc.-cl., like the first, uses
the name of Yahaweh for God, except in Psalm cviii., which
was borrowed from Psalms Ivii. and Ix. without change
of the Divine name. On the other hand, it has one marked
peculiarity of editing which distinguishes it sharply from both
the first and second great collections. The psalms of those
collections are not only provided with such headings as " Of
David," " Of the sons of Korah," and " Of Asaph," they also
have headings and notes which have reference to their
musical execution. Many are headed, "Of the Director";
others have the names of the tunes to which they are to
be sung; others are annotated with "Selah"; others have
notices about the instruments to be used ; and most of them
are designated by some specific name, as "mizmor," "maschil,"
and " michtam." In the last part of the Psalter there are very
few editorial notes of any sort, and the musical and liturgical
notices cease altogether, with the exception of a very faint
reflection of the former use in Psalm cix., and in the small
collection cxxxviii.-cxliv., where it seems to be a mere imitation
of the notes attached to the earlier collections which the
authors of these psalms used so freely. The meaning of this
fact has been pointed out by others. The collection xc.-cl. was
edited as a part of the Psalter after those musical and liturgical
notes in which the other collections abound had become a
dead language. They were no longer in use, and apparently
not even intelligible. It seems evident, therefore, that the
first three books of the Psalter as a whole had been collected
and edited not only before, but a considerable time before, the
editing of the collections of the last two books. For it is only
by the supposition of the lapse of a considerable interval of
time that we can account for such a striking change of musical
customs and musical language.
Having obtained a comparative date for the various books
of the Psalter, let us examine the further question of absolute
date. In i Chronicles xvi. 8-36 we find a psalm ascribed
to David, and said to have been given by him on that day
for the first time " to give thanks to Yahaweh by the hand of
166 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Asaph and his brethren." But this psalm is composed from
three psalms of the fourth book. Verses 8-22 are the first
fifteen verses of Psalm cv., verses 23-33 are Psalm xcvi., and
verse 34 is the old liturgical formula used in the sacrificial
ritual, which was later used, as has already been pointed out,
as the text of Psalms cvi., cvii., cxviii., and cxxxvi.
" Give thanks to Yahaweh, for He is good,
For His love endureth for ever."
The immediately succeeding verse, which quotes verse
47 of Psalm cvi., with the preface, "And say," serves to
show that this is here to be regarded as a quotation from
this psalm. Moreover, the following verse contains the
doxology which is appended to this psalm in the Psalter.
The same doxology marks the close of both the first and
fourth books ; but following it, as it appears at the close of
the fourth book, is a rubric directing that "All the people shall
say, Amen, praise Yah." This rubric is reproduced at the
close of the hymn in Chronicles in the statement immediately
after the doxology, "And all the people said, Amen, and
Praise Yahaweh."
In view of this evidence I do not see how we can refuse
to admit that the Chronicler had before him not merely a
collection of psalms containing Psalms xcvi. and cv., but also
the fourth book of psalms, already set off as a book by the
addition of the doxology at the close of Psalm cvi. The
evidence of the Book of Chronicles seems, therefore, to
establish the fact that the fourth book of psalms had been
set off as such as early as the year B.C. 330. If my former
argument is correct, this would show that the third book
already existed with the same number of psalms as the fourth
book; that the second and first books in some shape, pre-
sumably much as at present, were already in existence ; and
that there was a fifth book of some sort, from which the
fourth book had been arbitrarily set off, as already pointed
out.
What were the limits of this fifth book in B.C. 330 ? It will
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 167
be observed, in examining the composite psalms and those
that contain allusions to other psalms, that the quotations and
allusions are from psalms in earlier collections. Now, begin-
ning with Psalm cxxxv., we find three series of psalms, many
of which are composite, and which use not merely psalms of
the first three books of the Psalter, but also psalms of the
fourth book, and of that part of the fifth book which precedes
them in order. So Psalm cxxxv. is based on cxxxiv. ; cxxxvi.,
which rearranges and reuses part of cxxxv., is also acquainted
with cxviii. and civ. Psalm cxlvii. makes use of civ. ; and
several of the composite psalms of this and the immediately
preceding group, if not directly quoting, are yet ordinarily
regarded by commentators as evincing an acquaintance with
various psalms of the fourth and the earlier part of the fifth
books.
First Chronicles xvi. 8-36 makes use, as has been shown, of
Psalms xcvi., cv., and cvi. ; and 2 Chronicles vi. 40-42 cites
cxxx. and cxxxii., members of that collection of pilgrim psalms
which closes with cxxxiv. There is no evidence that the
Chronicler was acquainted with any of the last sixteen psalms
of the Psalter. I venture therefore to affirm, in the first
place, that the fifth book once closed, not as at present with
Psalm cl., but with Psalm cxxxiv., which will be seen to have
been an appropriate doxology ; and that the addition of the
last sixteen psalms was of later date. The language of some
of these psalms, like cxxxix., which is almost a patois, and
could have been accepted for Temple use only at a time when
Hebrew was a dead or dying language, suggests a very late
date. A study of the contents of the group to which this
psalm belongs, cxxxviii.-cxliv., suggests further that it can be
most appropriately assigned to the period of the Antiochian
oppression and the beginning of the Maccabsean uprising.
The contents of the " Praise Song of David," cxlv.-cl., on the
other hand, and more particularly of Psalm cxlix., almost
compel us to assign this group to the time of the Maccabsean
triumph. We may perhaps assume with Professor Cheyne a
final revision of the Psalter under the direction of Simon
1 68 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Maccabaeus, and the formal addition at that period of Psalms
cxxxv.-cxxxvii., and the two collections cxxxviii.-cxliv. and
cxlv.-cl. With this the Psalter was definitely closed.
Toward the middle of the second century B.C., then, the
final revision of the Psalter was completed and the last sixteen
psalms were added ; but as early as B.C. 330 five books of
psalms, ending with Psalm cxxxiv., were in the hands of the
Levitical singers, and used in the service of the Temple. This
does not, of course, show us how long before B.C. 330 the
collection consisting of Psalms xc.-cxxxiv. was made. But
from the contents and the general character of this collection
as a whole, we can say that it was made in a period of com-
parative prosperity and peace, and long enough after the
adoption of the Law to allow for the growth of the legal idea,
some time probably between B.C. 400 and 350.
We have seen that there was a considerable interval of time
and growth between this collection and the collection of Psalms
xlii.-lxxxix., constituting Books II. and III. We have also seen
that the Yahawistic collection, Ixxiv.-lxxxix., represents the
latest elements in those books, and belongs, as a collection, to
the editor and reviser of the three Elohistic collections which
precede it. Two of these psalms are peculiarly composite.
One of these two, Ixxxix., is historical, and treats of a period
covered by both Samuel and Chronicles. As was to be ex-
pected from what has been already said, the author uses
Samuel only, and shows no knowledge of Chronicles. The
other, Ixxxvi., quotes twice directly from the Pentateuch, both
times from the ancient Yahawistic document. This might, of
course, be accidental, but it supports the argument suggested
by the necessity of placing between the third and fourth books
a considerable interval, and an interval involving considerable
change, that this collection was made before the promulgation
of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah. Analysing the contents
of these six psalms, I think we must say that as a collection
they are post-Exilic, but that they represent also a period of
distress and humiliation. So Psalm Ixxxiv. is a pilgrim psalm.
Psalm Ixxxv. speaks of the return from Exile as an accomplished
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 169
fact, but complains that God's indignation against His people
is still felt. It represents the general feeling of the first post-
Exilic century, with which we are familiar from Ezra, Nehemiah,
and the post-Exilic prophets. Psalms Ixxxvi., Ixxxviii., and
Ixxxix., would, perhaps, have applied equally well to the Exilic
period ; but in consideration of Nehemiah's prayer (Neh. i.
5-11) and the general representations of the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah, they certainly may be regarded as not inapplicable
to the period of relapse succeeding the rebuilding of the
Temple and preceding the coming of Nehemiah as governor.
Roughly we might date them as a collection between B.C. 500
and 450, and in dating them we date the collection of psalms
now forming Books II. and III.
But each of the other three collections in those books was
collected by itself before they were all collected together and
re-edited by the compilers of the collection Ixxxiv. -Ixxxix.,
and each of these collections was itself earlier than the final
collection, which I have dated B.C. 500-450. These three
collections are all distinguished, as previously noticed, by a
peculiar use of Elohim as the personal name of God. It has
aften been assumed that this is due to the editors, and that
the appearance of " Yahaweh " in a few cases represents the
Driginal use which a later editor sought somewhat care-
.essly to obliterate. I think that it is susceptible of demon-
stration that in most cases Yahaweh is a later addition, due
:o a Yahawistic revision of Elohistic psalms. While there may
DC a couple of cases in which our present Elohistic are re-
:ensions of earlier Yahawistic psalms, there seems to be no
nore ground for regarding these three collections as a whole
is an Elohistic revision of Yahawistic psalms than for regarding
:he Elohistic portions of the Hexateuch as recensions of earlier
Yahawistic documents.
It has also been assumed that the use of Elohim as the
Dersonal name of God is late. This assumption has absolutely
10 ground on which to stand. Elohim instead of Yahaweh
vas used in the early-north-Israelite Elohistic code in the
Hexateuch. It was used in the priest code in Genesis and
i;o THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the first chapters of Exodus to represent the primitive,
patriarchal belief as opposed to the Mosaic revelation. Out-
side of this it is almost never used. But in the later books,
and noticeably in Ecclesiastes, we do encounter a very different
use — that of ha-Elohim, " the God," which should not be con-
fused with the use of Elohim as a proper name. The Elohistic
psalms and the Elohistic document of the Hexateuch stand
together in this latter use, which evidently never became
prevalent. It may be compared, perhaps, with the pre-
Mohammedan movement towards monotheism at Mecca by
the use of Allah as the name of Deity. But among the
Hebrews the monotheistic movement ultimately assumed
another form, emphasising Yahaweh as Israel's God, and
then as the only God, until the name became too sacred for
utterance, and Adonai was substituted in its stead. We have
in the use of Elohim in the middle books of the Psalter, as in
the Elohistic document of the Hexateuch, interesting evidence
of a movement towards monotheism on what at first sight
look like more universal lines, by the elimination of national
or peculiar names for the Deity; and the treatment of the
name in the priest code might suggest that this movement
could or did make a claim of primitive use. But however
that may be, so far from the use of Elohim being a mark of
late date, the opposite could more readily be maintained. For
our purposes we may regard it as a neutral fact. In many in-
teresting particulars we might compare the first book of the
Psalter with the ancient Yahawistic document of the Pentateuch,
the Elohistic portions of the second and third books with the
Elohistic document, and the fourth and fifth books with the
later priest code.
Turning to the general contents of the collections, one cannot
but be impressed with the fact that the " Prayers of David " is,
above all the collections of the Psalter (except possibly that
collection cxxxviii.-cxliv., which we have referred to the period
of the Antiochian oppression), the Psalter of agony and struggle.
Psalms li.-lx. are one great cry of pain and affliction, and,
though Ixi.-lxiv. show a slight relief, they also represent a con-
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 171
dition of national calamity. One of these psalms, Ixi., refers
to a king as the national ruler; more of them, like the close
of li., refer distinctly to Exilic conditions ; Ixv.-lxviii. are litur-
gical hymns of a joyous character ; and Ixvi. and Ixviii. seem
to celebrate the deliverance from Babylonian exile in some-
what the strain suggested in Isaiah xi. and xii., and applied so
freely in Deutero-Isaiah, namely, as a repetition of the deliver-
ance from Egypt.1 Psalms Ixix.-lxxi. are of the same general
nature as li.-lx. Psalm Ixxii. is an ideal picture of the
Messianic reign. This examination of the contents seems to
show that Psalms li.-lxiv. were collected during the Exile,
although one or two may have been composed in the troub-
lous times immediately preceding. To this first collection
were added, shortly after the Exile, seven more hymns, four of
which were composed at the close of the Exile in that same
triumphant spirit which marks Deutero-Isaiah.
Turning to the Psalter of the sons of Korah, xlii.-xlix., we
find very different conditions. Parts only of two psalms indi-
cate a period of national distress, the last stanza and the
refrains of Psalms xlii. and xliii., and the second part of
Psalm xliv. ; these, as we have already seen, were the work
of later editors and adapters, and not part of the original
poems. Psalm xlv., the only secular poem in the Psalter, is
a royal marriage hymn, and, therefore, naturally joyful ; and
Psalms xlvi.-xlviii., like the first part of xliv., are triumph
songs. Psalm xlix. is a contemplation of the riddle of life,
in thought and language akin to the Wisdom literature. It
is worthy of note that linguistically the Psalter of Korah stands
by itself, finding its closest affinities probably with the psalms
of Asaph. This must have been noticed, I think, by every one
who has undertaken to analyse and tabulate the use of words
1 Psalm Ixviii. seems to me to be composed of two parts. The earlier,
which begins with the raising of the ark (Num. x. 35) and closes with its
resting (Num. x. 36), consists of verses 2-19, to which was given as a
doxology verse 20. At a very much later date the remainder of the present
psalm was added. It is to the original psalm that the above statement
has reference. The text of both parts is corrupt.
i?2 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
in the Psalter. From the standpoint of art this collection
represents the most finished lyric poetry of the Bible, although
not the most forceful. From the standpoint of spiritual ex-
perience it falls below other collections which are poetically
its inferiors.
Psalm xlii. of this collection has ordinarily been supposed
to be the lament in exile of a Levite, who mourned his de-
privation of the Temple ceremonies. Others have referred it
to some exile of a later date. All have recognised the unmis-
takable reference of the words (v. 7), "from the land of
Jordan, and Hermonim, from Mount Mizar," or "from the
little mountain," to the place of the sources of the Jordan,
the modern Banias, where once stood the Hebrew temple of
Dan ; many, curious, and improbable, are the hypotheses in-
vented to account for the presence of an exile at this spot.
In fact, there is nothing to compel us to assume a condition
of exile, and verse 5 would naturally suggest a very different
idea. Accepting our present Masoretic Hebrew text, this verse
reads literally : " These things I would call to mind, and pour
out upon me my life, that I am wont to pass over in the
throng, I lead (?) them to the house of God, with the sound
of chant and praise-song, a multitude making haj" — that is,
a feast of the nature of Tabernacles or Passover, involving
a pilgrimage to a shrine. Now it seems to me that the
natural interpretation of this passage, considering the allusion
to the locality of the Dan temple in verse 7, and to the
gushing forth of waters from the abyss beneath the earth
in verse 8, is that it refers to the worship of the old
temple of Dan. If in verse 7 we correct the Masoretic
pointing from the Septuagint Greek text, we have part of
a song appropriate to the great festival of Tabernacles
as celebrated at that shrine. There is, of course, nothing
unlikely in such borrowing by Jewish poets from Israelitic
sources, as is shown by the numerous writings of the northern
kingdom which have found their way into the Bible. Indeed,
we know that Israel had developed a true literature while
Judah still lingered in literary barbarism, and that it was the
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 173
fall of Samaria in the last half of the eighth century B.C.,
which, working on Judah as the fall of Constantinople in the
fifteenth century A.D. worked on Italy, brought about a literary
renaissance, a religious revival, and a reformation. In the
literature of the northern kingdom which was thus inherited
md appropriated by the Jews, we should naturally expect to
ind some of the psalmody which is referred to in Amos v. 23.
[ feel little hesitation in affirming that at the base of Psalm xlii.
fie have a specimen of that poetry. Psalm xlv. has been
•eferred by many, perhaps a majority of modern critics, to
[sraelitic sources, and with justice. The first two stanzas of
Psalm xlvi. (2-7), which appear to constitute the more original
jart of that poem, would also gain in force if they could be re-
erred to the temple at Dan rather than to that at Jerusalem.
Further than this, in the Asaph psalms, which, as noticed,
ire more closely allied to the Korah collection than any other
collection in the Psalter, we find a curious exaltation of
[oseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh. This has been explained
)y Professor Cheyne as a mark of late date and of reflection
>n the past. It certainly seems more natural to refer such
illusions as those contained in Psalm Ixxx. to an Israelite
han to suppose a late Jew hypothetising himself into the
)osition of one of the apostate people of the past, and,
gnoring Judah utterly, crying out to God as the Shepherd of
Israel, Who had led Joseph like a flock. While it is clear
hat the concluding stanzas of Psalm Ixxx. are later than the
all of Samaria, it certainly seems more natural to refer the
irst stanza to an Israelitic origin. So, also, Ixxxi. seems to
lave been originally a festival hymn from the same source, and
he latter part of Ixxvii. would bear similar treatment. If we
lave referred Psalms xlii. and xlvi. to the temple of Dan,
VQ should naturally refer these psalms to the great Josephite
emple at Bethel.1 Such an origin of psalms lying at the
1 Psalm Ixxxix. contains a passage which must have been written in
jalilee, namely, verse 13, where Hermon and Tabor are used as synonyms
)f north and south, a use which I think anyone who has visited the
:ountry will recognise as characteristically Galilean, and psychologically
174 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
base of these two collections might also, in view of the use
of Elohim found in the north-Israelite Elohistic document of
the Hexateuch, give some clue to the origin of the school in
which this use was handed down.
It must be understood, however, that, as we now have
them, these old Israelitic hymns have been worked over into
Jewish Temple psalms, and that not all the hymns of either
the Korah or Asaph collections are based on Israelitic
originals. Indeed, Psalm Ixxviii. is especially concerned to
prove that God has cast off Joseph and chosen Judah.
From the fact that this psalm apparently makes use only
of the Yahawistic, Elohistic, and Deuteronomistic portions of
the Hexateuch, as well as from the point at which it closes
its historical retrospect, it would seem to be pre-Exilic. That
the Psalter of Asaph, as a collection, is not pre-Exilic is mani-
fest from the number of psalms which are prayers for deliver-
ance from national calamity, six out of thirteen in our present
arrangement.1
Even the first book, although earlier than the second and
third books, and probably earlier in the main than the indi-
vidual collections which compose those books, is not, as a
collection, earlier than the Exile, as is shown by the number of
psalms which presuppose Exilic conditions. Out of forty-one
impossible for anyone but a Galilean. If written by a Galilean, it must
have been written before the fall of Samaria. The psalm as we have it is
evidently not pre-Exilic, but, as already stated, it is to a considerable extent
a compilation, and this verse, with others immediately before and after
it, the compiler seems to have borrowed or adapted from an old song
of Israel.
1 Psalms Ixxiv. and Ixxix., both of which occur in the Psalter of Asaph,
present a difficult problem. On the ground of their position in the
Psalter it seems, as Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, almost
impossible to refer them to the Maccaboean period, and on the ground of
their contents it seems almost impossible to refer them to any other time.
Is the difficulty to be solved by supposing them to be older psalms, which
were remodelled and adapted to the circumstances of the Maccabasan
revolt? It is difficult, also, to refer verses 6-9 of Psalm Ixxxiii. to any
other than the Maccabsean period, whereas the rest of the psalm, which is
complete without verses 6-9, could equally well belong to an earlier date.
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 175
psalms, which constitute the book in its present shape, fifteen
whole and two half psalms are songs of affliction. While
national calamity is not so clearly stamped upon this book
as it is upon the "Prayers of David" in the second book,
there are yet a number of psalms which clearly indicate
Exilic conditions, such as xiv., xxii., xxxv., the later portions of
ix. and x., xxxviii., xxxix., and xl., the first part of which
recalls forcibly the tone and language of Deutero - Isaiah.
There are also later elements, like xix. 8-15, which clearly
belongs to the post-Ezra legal period, and xxxiii., which
might have been a psalm of the fourth or fifth book ; but
these seem to be of the nature of additions or insertions,
and not to belong to that editing which gave this book its
form as a collection. This book also contains earlier
elements, like the royal hymns xx. and xxi., and perhaps
the greater part of its bulk is pre-Exilic. In it are to be
found probably the most forceful poems of the Psalter, and
those containing the most primitive pictures of nature.
Indeed, I should say that the first part of Psalm xviii. had
scarcely emancipated itself from the worship of God in the
phenomena of nature ; while Psalm xxix., the " Song of Seven
Thunders," certainly conveys a vivid impression of a God of
the storm.
Space forbids me to enter into the discussion of the date at
which Hebrew psalmody began, or of the relation of David to
that psalmody. But I may say that in my judgment the
evidence of tradition forces us to assign to David an im-
portant part in the development not merely of secular, but
also of religious lyric poetry, between which the line that we
now draw did not exist in the earlier times.1 On the other
hand, I think it not improbable that Davidic psalms have been
so edited, adapted, added to, and subtracted from in the
course of the centuries, that it is doubtful whether we can
hope ever certainly to identify his handiwork.
That Hebrew psalmody began at an early age is also rather
1 Compare, for instance, the contents of the hymns of the
176 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
indicated by what we know of Babylonian psalmody, both as
to form and content. There is sometimes a curious identity
of technical phraseology, as in the use of "how long"
in both Babylonian and Hebrew penitential psalms. The
conception of sin, including "secret sins," is strikingly alike
in both ; and it has seemed to me that, in the very ancient
Babylonian psalms, we sometimes find precisely those ideas
which have been subjectively ascribed in the Hebrew Psalter
to the later period. But this is a subject which yet awaits
treatment, and my statements are perhaps little more than
guesses.1
The failure of the prophets to show a knowledge of the
psalms, which has been urged as an argument for the non-
existence of psalmody before the Exile, seems to me to have
been much exaggerated. Jeremiah was evidently familiar with
a body of psalmody, both penitential and liturgical, which
in general character was similar to that which has come down
to us. I do not mean that he quotes certainly from any
psalms which we now possess; but in the psalms which he
himself composes, as for instance in chapter xx., he is evidently
using a familiar model, which in form and method of thought
and expression is identical with our psalmody. In other
places he uses language evidently suggested by some psalm
which in tone and language was of the same nature as many
which we now possess. So also the earlier prophets, from
Amos onward, in their treatment of the religious lyric make
use of models evidently familiar, and by doing so testify
1 The following fragment of a votive psalm, discovered by Professor
Hilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania on a glass axe made in
imitation of lapis lazuli and dedicated to Bel of Nippur by Nazi-Maruttash,
King of Babylon in the fourteenth pre-Christian century "for his life
(soul)," might have been addressed to Yahaweh by a pious Hebrew at any
period covered by our Psalms : —
' ' That He may hear his prayer ;
Hearken unto his desire ;
Accept his prayer ;
Preserve his life ;
Make long his days."
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 177
D the previous existence of lyrical religious poetry used for
urposes of psalmody. That no collections of pre-Exilic
salmody have come down to us, at least in their original
Drm, is probably true ; for psalmody seems to have had much
ic same history as ritual legislation. Antique in fact, it was
^modelled in and after the Exile, and has not been preserved
) us as a whole. The current method of criticism of the
'salter, which fails to recognise the older elements in the
salms because it dates them entire by their latest elements
nly, is as unscientific as it would be to date every portion
f the Hexateuch on the evidence of the latest additions to
le priest code.
This statement of the general problem of the Psalter is,
aturally, very imperfect, and much which it would be desirable
) consider has been of necessity passed over. My object has
een to suggest a line of analysis which shall depend, in the
rst instance, on objective data rather than on subjective
•iteria, which all men see differently. Commencing from the
id and going backward, I have outlined an evolution which
>llows in general the present arrangement of the Psalter,
om the first book, of Exilic date, but resting on earlier
re-Exilic material, down to the final Maccabaean additions
) the fifth book of the Psalter. According to this analysis
e may, roughly speaking, look for the earliest psalms in the
rst collection of the first book, and for the latest in the last
Election.
A study of the language, the form of the poetry, the
gures, and the subjects of thought will, I think, support this
ypothesis, but all these criteria except the first are danger-
usly subjective ; and the test of language is beset with certain
ifficulties which make its application here doubtful. In their
ead I would offer the results of a few analyses of the Psalter
f a different nature, furnishing tests of a somewhat more
bjective character, which strikingly confirm the evidence,
om heading, arrangement, etc., presented above. First let
ie reiterate the evidence from the general tone and contents
F each collection. The contents of the first book are more
N
17* THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
:d than those of any book sug: -: ic a greater range
in time, and a broader, less ecck> - . life. A ma;.
of the psalms of this book are joyful or indifferent ; but a luge
minority, including re-edited for:: - : iginally joyful psalms,
ess • sense . unity, whether personal or national.
and some of these make spe* nc allusion to condition .
exile.
The conte- .- I . Korah Psalter are in general h.v/-\ M
triumphant in tone : but re-edited forms two of the psalms
indicate a period of national distress, and the closing psalm
of the colk .ieals with the genera'.
Almost one-h.. - .:: of thirteen psal;- s . - :.:
of Asaph is composed of psalms of distress, of which
ncally mention the Exile, while two represent a cone I
of religiou? ::tion. The other psalms of this collet
are either philosophical discussions of the problem of li:\
! triumphant judgments of God.
the ::....:? of David.' seventeen out of twenty-:
-e-sent a condition of distress, opy. 5S ::. and conflict, and
some allude specifically to exile. The remaining five psalms
at the close of the collection are joyful, and four of thes^. - :"
a liturgical character, contain allusions to the Exile as a thing
Psalms Ixxxiv.-lxxxix., largely unoriginal or compiled, c
tain four psalms of distress : and one of them (Ixxxviii.) is
the only utterly hopeless psalm of the Psalter. Of these
psalms, one describes the conditions of the Exile: another
refers to the Exile as past, but depicts a condition of hope
unfulfilled. Of the remaining psalms of this collection, one
is a sweet Temple song, and the other a prean of the triumph
of Jerusalem over the nations through Divine power.
The psalms of Books IV. and V., as far as cxxxiv., are,
almost without exception, joyful. They are, to a considerable
extent, liturgical ; they display comparatively little variety of
circumstance : and they have an ecclesiastical tone quite in
contrast to the first book.
In the small collection, cxxxviii.-cxliv., five psalms, all but
'. -. . . -.
the first and the last, a/ : i :liverance from enemies
on every side, and even CXJCT ; id odrv. are hymns of
conflict. There is miifii compilation in some of these psunM*
V - : .--;.:.-.-,-. . - - "I -. • - - -. ...'..I''.
!.'"._ ".". ', ".
'..-''.. '. :.'.•'.'. \ '.' " '. : • . '. : "^..:..:.'i
to sacrifice in the Psalter, we find in the first book sacrif. :
5.-.-. ."--;-; -.:.-.....-..-.- -; .:-.. :. .-.:,-:.: . . : " -. •:,
joyful side presented Here, also, we fir. : !
sacrificer of die nation, and his sacrifices (rx. f nc .
on Yahaweh as a ground for giving die nation help ; :
v -.-.-.--. .:; . ; . -. > .:. ". •_'_. •-.-_-. -.-. : ' : -.-..-;: ;.-..:
against the childish, sacrificial view of religion. This view is
--:.V.;..-..i . . :-; :-•--: •-"-'-^; --- "•'-'- -:'--.': '.'/.•-. ';-; '. ' : .
the Asaphite psalms (L> anc ..'.--. .-' Dorid"
(li and Ldz. , as~ert most strongly die anti-sacrracial views of
the prophetic school r^ a the other hand, li is rinnish&c
a sacrificial appendix; and lame collection (Ivi. 13)
find die most anthropomorphic reference to sacrifice, as some-
thing pleasing God by its savour, in the whole Psalter. In
the fourth and fifth books there is almost no mention of
sacrifice (in ocv. ; - . .e sacrifice9 is a robri
direction, and not a part c: : a m 0 a die other bar .
Aaron, die priests, and die Levires, who had not be
mentioned in th: bee booia BOOK , at in the
fifth book. Judging from these references, we might say that
die first book represents die more prumtrre conception of
religion, and regards sacrifice as a thtmr jn frfyff plf^yify to
J . 1 Jc e dose of dns book we fine .ao of :
prophetic reformation ; while Books IL and III. u i whole,
but more particularly die "Prayers of David," represent die
period of storm and stress, containing bodi die most
denunciations of die sacrificial idea, and also die most
pomorphic picture of sacrifice. Now this battle, as we learn
from die prophets, began with Isaiah, reached its fufl develop-
ment with Jeremiah, and en . .a die dose of the Exilic
period. The final edition of the " Prayers of David " repre-
i8o THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
sents the outcome of this struggle, not the abolition of
sacrifice, but that mystical treatment of it which rendered
possible the addition of those closing verses to Psalm li.
But this spiritualisation of sacrifice reached a further develop-
ment, which is shown in the last books of the Psalter, where
we find it clearly not banished, but removed, as it were, from
the everyday life of the people into an inner court, and where
this side of religion has become the function of a holy priest-
hood carefully organised and set apart, who are the leaders
and representatives of the congregation.
Similarly it is in the fourth and fifth books only, leaving out
of consideration the late first psalm and the second half of
Psalm xix., that we find that exaltation and glorification of the
Law which became so marked a feature in the Jewish religion
after the time of Ezra.
An analysis of mythological references in the Psalter, an-
thropomorphisms in the representations of the nature and
dealings of God, allusions to angels, survivals of polytheism,
and the like, gives the same result of a development according
to the arrangement of the Psalter as we now have it, and
particularly of a distinct cleavage between the fourth and fifth
books and the remainder of the Psalter. It is in Psalm Ixxxvi.
that we first find the clear statement, " Thou art God alone "
(v. 10); while in the last books we find the expression of that
idea represented much earlier by the prophets, that the gods
of the heathen are "not gods" (xcvi. 4, 5; cvi. 28). In the
earlier books, on the other hand (and there are survivals of
this belief, in statement at least, in the last books), while
Yahaweh or Elohim is recognised as the God of Israel, the
true God, and the great God, the psalmist is never able
entirely to rid himself of the idea that the other gods have
an actual existence. It is not until the fourth and fifth books,
also, that we find those exalted conceptions of creation,
God's relation to nature and His omniscience, which in the
Hexateuch characterise the priest code in distinction from the
Yahawistic and Elohistic writers (compare, for instance, Psalms
civ. and cxxxix. with xviii., xxix., Ixxvii. 17-30, Ixxx. 2-4).
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 181
In the first book we find the "angel of Yahaweh" (xxxiv. 7 ;
cxxv. 6, 7), as in the Yahawistic document of the Hexateuch ;
n the last books of the Psalter we find something of that
icavenly hierarchy which was developed so fully in later
Judaism, the angels, hosts, and ministers (xci. n ; ciii. 19-21 ;
:xlviii. 2, etc.). With the growing perception of the infinite-
less and superhumanity of God, He was removed farther and
arther from contact with the human. Such primitive ideas
ind expressions as "see the face of God" (xlii. 3), "sons
>f God" (xxix. 2 ; Ixxxix. 7), and the like, became impossible,
jod was represented as acting, in the more common and
nechanical view, through superhuman beings — the hosts of
leaven, angels, and ministers ; in the more spiritual view,
>y a breath, a word, a command (Genesis i. ; Psalm civ. 7).
rhis led ultimately to the hypostasising of the commandment
ir word of God, of which we find a trace in a late Maccabaean
isalm (cxlvii. 15).
The treatment of the question of the future life in the
isalms seems at first sight to contradict what I have said
bout a development in the Psalter from beginning to end.
L considerable number of psalms in the first book, fifteen out
'f the thirty-seven Davidic psalms, treat of or refer to death
nd the after-state ; and of these, three — xvi., xvii., and xxxvi.
-are regarded by Professor Cheyne as showing a hope of, if
iOt a belief in, personal immortality. In the Korahite Psalter
.e finds future hope in xlix., in the "Prayers of David" in Ixiii.
why not also in Ixix. ?), and in the Psalter of Asaph in Ixxiii.
..ater than this in the Psalter even he finds no glimmer of
uch a hope. The theory of the fourth and fifth books is very
istinctly that with death existence ceases, and that the bless-
igs of God and the rewards of good and evil are to be
xpected here. In the earlier books, even including the
rahawistic collection which closes the third book, there seems
D be ever and anon a restlessness under these conditions, a
omplaint against them, and a desperate search for a way out
f death. But in the fourth and fifth books they are accepted
nd acquiesced in, and the theory of the satisfaction and
1 82 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
reward of religion and righteousness in this life appears to
be regarded as sufficient. Only, possibly, in the collection
cxxxviii.-cxliv. do we see some faint revival of the protests of
the earlier collections. This looks at first sight like a re-
trogression, and in the line of spiritual development I suppose
we must so regard it. Historically considered, however, it
accords with the known history of religious thought among
the Jews. The last two books of the Psalter, as already
pointed out, belong to the Temple and the priesthood in a
sense in which the other books do not. They are peculiarly
tinged with priestly views. Now when in the second century
B.C. we find the division between Pharisee and Sadducee an
accomplished fact, it is the priestly aristocracy which con-
stitutes the essence of the Sadducean party. The Sadducees
were the conservatives, who maintained the older views —
views which had been expressed by the authors of Job
xxxii.-xxxvii., of Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus. It is to
them, also, that we owe the first Book of Maccabees. The
evidence of the Psalter is only what we might have expected
from a consideration of the history of the times. The last
two books of the Psalter belong to the period of the spiritual
predominance of a priestly aristocracy, which, when the
Pharisees developed into a party, became the Sadducees.
The development of the Pharisees as a party, and with them
the revival of discredited (cf. Zechariah xiii. 3-6) prophetic
tendencies in the apocalyptic literature beginning with Daniel,
was a result of the Antiochian oppression and the Maccabaean
revolt. The idea of personal immortality springs into life in
this literature.
Professor Cheyne has argued that the Jewish hope of im-
mortality was due to Persian influences. An analysis of the
references to death and the after-state, in the Psalter and in
the Book of Job also, suggests the development of the hope
of personal immortality out of the belief in family and national
immortality. The discussion of the question of death belongs
especially to periods of national calamity ; and the glimmer of
personal hope in the Psalms referred to, if it exists at all,
GROWTH OF THE PSALTER 183
which I hardly believe, comes from the application to the
individual of the consoling hope of national revival or con-
tinuance of life by posterity, which we find animating the
prophets in the midst of apparent national death (cf. Ezekiel
xxxvii., Isaiah liii. 10), and which clearly appears in the
Psalms in such passages as xxii. 30-32, ix. 13, 14, 17, and
others. It was the Antiochian oppression, followed by the
successful national uprising under the Maccabees, falling
at a time when, thanks to the Law and the synagogues,
individual ideas of religion had begun to be developed, which
finally converted a national into a personal belief. Persian
influence, if it existed and helped to quicken this belief, did
so through that discredited prophetic line which, after a
period of dormancy, developed in a new form in Daniel and
the Apocalypse, rather than through the psalmists.
Other analyses of a similar character seem to me to support
that general view of the growth of the Psalter which I have
already presented, and to confirm the dates which I have
suggested for the various books and collections of the Psalter.
As far as dates are concerned, the psalms should be grouped
according to the evidence of the headings and their arrange-
ment in the Psalter. Each individual psalm should be analysed
to show its growth and editing, and the distinction carefully
made between late psalms and early psalms re-edited by later
hands.
CHAPTER IX
PSALM HEADINGS
ALL who read the Psalms in the Bible, whether in the
King James or the Canterbury Version, are impressed
and mystified by the curious headings. Turn, for instance, to
Psalm Ivii. in the King James Version, and you find this
heading : " To the chief Musician, Al-taschith, Michtam of
David." In the marginal note you find the Hebrew words
Al-taschith and Michtam rendered, the former, Destroy not, and
the latter, A golden Psalm. At first sight the words Destroy not
seem to make no sense, and you are inclined to say that the
translator must be mistaken ; but if you will turn to Isaiah
Ixv. 8, you will find such an explanation of the words as proves
that there is no mistake, and that the words possess an
intelligible sense. There a reference is made to the popular
vintage song that is sung regularly by the people when they
pick the clusters of the grapes ; when the new wine is found
in the cluster, then they sing, " Destroy it not, for a blessing is
in it."
The words Al-taschith, or " Destroy it not," which are placed
at the head of this psalm are a liturgical direction, specifying
a particular use for the psalm, namely, that it is to be sung at
vintage. There are four psalms in all specified for this use
by the same heading, Al-taschith^ " Destroy not," namely,
Psalms Ivii., Iviii., lix., and Ixxv. Not that these psalms
were written originally as vintage songs, but that they were
designated at a certain period, in the arrangement of the
Psalter for liturgical purposes, to be sung at the vintage.
Three other Psalms, viii.; Ixxxi., and Ixxxiv., are designated
184
PSALM HEADINGS 185
by their heading ("upon Gittith"') to be sung at the treading out
of the grapes — wine-press songs, as the Greeks called their
similar hymns. One of these Greek wine-press songs, by
Anacreon, which lies before me as I write, reads as follows : —
' ' Only men tread the vine, setting free the wine,
Loudly praising God with wine-press songs."
That it was customary for the Jews to sing such songs we
learn from the writings of contemporary prophets. So in
Isaiah xvi. 10 we read : "In the vineyards there shall be no
singing, neither joyful noise ; no treaders shall tread out wine
in the presses; the shout I have made to cease." And
Jeremiah xxv. 30 reads, "Yahaweh shall roar from on high,
and utter His voice from His holy habitation ; He shall
mightily roar against His foes ; He shall give a shout as they
that tread the grapes."
Reading these seven psalms, which are designated as
psalms for the vintage and for the treading of the grapes, we find
that there is not the slightest reference in the psalms them-
selves either to the vintage or to the treading of the presses.
We do not know at what time these headings were prefixed to
the psalms, but the style of them should be sufficient to
convince anyone that it was done at an intensely pietistic
period, when the life of the people was becoming more and
more absorbed in its religion. The religious leaders of the
people were even endeavouring to drive out profane, that is
secular, songs and hymns, providing the people with spiritual
songs and hymns to sing on all occasions. Study the four
psalms which are appointed for the vintage psalms, that is,
the four "Destroy not" psalms, and you will be puzzled to
ascertain any principle on which the director of the liturgy
assigned these particular hymns for this purpose. They are
not even joyous in character. The three hymns headed
"For the pressing of the Grapes" — for I suppose that we
should translate in this manner the words " set to Gittith," or
"upon Gittith," which are the translations given in the
Revised and King James Versions, respectively — are, however,
i86 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
joyful songs. The first of them, Psalm viii., is one of the
beautiful nature hymns of the Psalter; Psalm Ixxxi. com-
mences joyfully and ends with a beautiful promise; and
Psalm Ixxxiv. is beautiful and amiable throughout. Neverthe-
less, there is nothing in any of them which has any reference
to the treading of grapes. They were not composed with the
vintage in mind, and were merely assigned to that use by the
liturgical directors, when they undertook out of the Temple
Psalm Book to provide the people with hymns for all
occasions.
Two psalms (xxxviii. and Ixx.) are designated by their head-
ings for a particular sacrificial rite. In our Authorised Bibles
these psalms are headed, " to bring to remembrance." In the
Revised Version there is a note, " to make memorial." The
translation should be, "to make the azkara" or memorial
offering, which is described in Leviticus xxiv. 7, 8 : "And thou
shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be
on the bread for a memorial (azkara), even an offering made
by fire unto Yahaweh. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order
before Yahaweh continually." Every Sabbath the shewbread
was renewed, and every Sabbath the azkara, or memorial, was
offered. In the liturgical arrangement of the Psalter, as
indicated by the headings which have come down to us,
it was directed that one or the other of these two psalms,
xxxviii. or Ixx., should be sung. If you will turn to them, you
will notice that Psalm xxxviii. is distinctly of a penitential
character; Psalm Ixx. is briefer and more joyful. It seems
as though the intention were to allow the use of one or the
other, according to the different seasons or the different
circumstances, just as alternative chants are provided in our
ritual, one being used where a more penitential tone was
required, and the other under ordinary circumstances.
Psalm c., which is very familiar to every Churchman, from
its constant use in our services, was also appointed to be
used for a special liturgical purpose. In the King James
Version it is designated as "A Psalm of praise," and in the
Revised Version as "A Psalm of thanksgiving"; but in the
PSALM HEADINGS 187
Revised Version you find a note, giving an alternative reading,
;'for the thank offering." This is the correct rendering of
the words. The thank offering referred to is the one described
in the provisions of the ritual code in Leviticus vii. n, 12 :
" The law of the sacrifice of peace offerings . . . when a man
offers them for a thanksgiving."
It is possible that Psalm xxii. was also appointed for use
in connexion with a sacrifice, namely, the morning whole
burnt sacrifice. The heading of the Psalm is, as it is translated
in our King James Version, in the marginal note, "The
hind of the morning"; and it is ordinarily supposed that "To
the hind of the morning " means " This is to be sung to the
tune known as the Hind of the Morning." It is, however,
possible, and some of the very earliest interpretations of this
heading give this rendering, that the words mean, "To be
sung at the time of the morning sacrifice." This use of
psalms in connexion with sacrifice was a very early one. In
old Arabian sacrificial usage the tahlil, or praise cry, uttered
when the blood was poured out, was an essential feature of the
sacrificial ritual. Similarly in early Hebrew use the sacrifice
was accompanied by a tahillah (the same root as the Arabic
tahlil), or praise cry. Later these tehilloth, or praise cries,
were developed into psalms.
Psalm xxx. was appointed to be sung at the Feast of the
Dedication. The translation of this heading in the King
James Version is misleading, namely, "A Psalm and Song at
the dedication of the house of David." Properly, the words
"of David" form a sentence by themselves. It is the same
heading which we find in all the Psalms, xxx.-xli. They
belong to the so-called Davidic Psalter, or Psalm Book, and
each Psalm is headed "of David." It should read, "A
Psalm. A Song for the Temple Dedication. Of David."
We learn in i Maccabees iv. 52 and following verses that in the
year B.C. 165, after the Temple had been purified, a new altar
was dedicated, and we know that later this occasion was
observed as the Feast of the Dedication, which is referred
to in St. John's Gospel x. 22. Was it for this festival
iSS THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
that this psalm was prescribed ? It is peculiarly appro-
priate for such a purpose, but it is difficult to suppose
that a liturgical psalm-heading of this character could have
been composed so late.
Psalm xcii. is another of those which had a special use
in the ritual. It is appointed to be used on the Sabbath
day, and it is certainly beautifully adapted to that purpose.
One asks, If there were a psalm appointed for the Sabbath,
were there not also psalms appointed for the other days of the
week ? The headings of the Psalter, as they have come down
to us in the Hebrew, show no such appointment, but on
consulting the Greek and Latin translations, and the notes
of the Talmud on the use of the Psalter, we find such
appointments. Psalm xxiv. was appointed for Sunday, the
first day. If you will turn to this psalm you will see at
once why it was chosen ; the first part of the psalm makes
you think of the beginning of creation. Psalm xlviii. for
Monday and Ixxxii. for Tuesday do not have any such evident
appropriateness, neither do xciv. for Wednesday, Ixxxi. for
Thursday, or xciii. for Friday.
The Greek translation also tells us that Psalm xxix. was
appointed to be sung on the last day of the Feast of Taber-
nacles. This psalm, if we were to give it a heading in English
fashion, we should probably designate as "The Song of the
Seven Thunders." It describes a thunderstorm. You will
remember that in Hebrew use thunder is designated by the
words, " Voice of Yahaweh." Read over this psalm, with its
sevenfold repetition of "The Voice of Yahaweh," thinking
each time you read them of the thunder peal, and the
thunderstorm will be brought very vividly and realistically
before you, breaking over Palestine from the north, sweeping
southward, and finally disappearing in the desert. And after
the destruction and violence of the storm comes the calm and
peace that make you think of the gentleness of the presence
of God. (Another well-known description of the thunderstorm
as the manifestation of the God of Israel is contained in the
first part of Psalm xviii., where the hailstones and the coals
PSALM HEADINGS 189
: fire are the flashes of lightning that reveal the presence
God hidden in the blackness of the thunder clouds.)
salm xxix. was not, however, written for the purpose of being
ing on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. That was
e use to which it was finally assigned.
In addition to such liturgical designations as those to which
have already referred, there are a number of others, some of
.em older and some of them later, and many of them quite
intelligible to us of the present day, as they were also to
.ose who translated the Psalter out of the Hebrew into
reek, long before the time of Christ. In connexion with
salms Ivii., Iviii., and lix., I have called attention to the word
Tichtani) which is translated in a margin note of the King
imes Version, " The golden Psalm." This heading appears
Psalms Ivi. and lx., but no one knows what it means. The
jading Lammenazzeah occurs in the superscriptions of fifty-
?e psalms. It is ordinarily rendered "To the chief Musician."
he new Polychrome Bible renders it "For the Liturgy." In
)int of fact, we do not know what it means.
Psalms iv., vi., liv., lv., Ixvii., and Ixxvi. are described in
e King James Version as being "on Neginoth." Appar-
itly this means "with string music," and refers to the
icompaniment to be used with the psalm when used in the
emple service. (Mizmor, a heading frequent in the Psalms,
ay also indicate an accompaniment of stringed instruments,
nee zammer, the verb from which it is derived, means to
dtch or play the strings). The reverse of this is found in
e case of Psalm v., which is described in the King James
ersion as being "upon Nehiloth," which appears to mean
with wind instruments." "Upon Alamoth," which we find
the superscription of Psalm xlvi., has often been supposed
mean with high-pitched tenor or soprano voices only; but
e Polychrome Bible renders " with Elamite instruments."
salm xii. bears the superscription "upon Sheminith," which
cans literally "on the eighth," and is supposed to mean
on the octave," or, according to the Polychrome Bible, " in
te eighth mode." The Selah, which we find frequently, not
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
as a heading, but in or at the close of psalms, indicates a
gloria or refrain.
It is ordinarily supposed that the heading, " to the Lilies,"
or "to the Lily," or "to the Lilies, a testimony," which
appears in the superscriptions of Psalms xlv., lx., Ixix., and
Ixxx., are the names of a tune or tunes to which these psalms
are to be sung. Similarly the superscription of Psalm Ivi.,
"To the dove of the distant terebinths," if the words may
be so translated (they are not translated in the King James
Version, and the Polychrome Bible translates them, "to the
tune of the dove of the far-off islands"), is also the name of
a tune. According to the Polychrome Bible, the heading of
Psalm liii., "upon Mahalath," also gives the catchword of a
tune, "to the tune of Sickness," etc.
There are, as already said, a number of liturgical headings
which either are not yet satisfactorily explained, or for which
no explanation is offered. You will find these for the most
part untranslated, merely transliterated from the Hebrew in
the King James Version. So in Psalm ix. you will find the
heading, "To the chief Musician upon Muth-labben."
Psalm vii. is called a " Shiggaion " ; Psalm xxxii. a " Mas-
chil"; Psalm xxxix. is "to Jeduthun." (In verse 16 of
Psalm ix. also we have a musical term, higgaion, the sense of
which is unknown).
If you will study your Psalter carefully, you will observe
that musical headings of the sort above described are practi-
cally confined to the first three books of the Psalter. After
Psalm Ixxxix. they cease. This shows, as pointed out in a
previous chapter, that the psalms contained in the first three
books of the Psalter — i. to Ixxxix. — had been worked over
and arranged for liturgical purposes, set to their music and
accompaniments, and the like, before the last two books of
the Psalter were added. The first three books form a collec-
tion in this respect quite separate and distinct from the last
two books of the Psalter ; at the time when the last two books
were added these liturgical terms had ceased to be used, and
were presumably unintelligible. We know from the Greek
PSALM HEADINGS 191
translation of the Psalter that they were no longer intelligible
when that was made, for in it they are not translated, but for
the most part transliterated.
In a previous chapter I have dealt with the heading, "A
Song of Degrees," and with the collection bearing that title,
namely Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv. It is now generally agreed that
the proper translation is "A Pilgrim Song," and this little
collection was, therefore, a pilgrim Psalter, collected for the
use of, and sung by the pilgrims who came up year by year
to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.
There are a number of psalms bearing historical headings.
These are especially frequent in the first half of the collection
designated "Prayers of David," li.-lxxiii. An examination of
these headings will show that they were taken from the
historical books, and that the psalms bear on the whole no
relation to the events referred to in the headings. Apparently
the title "Prayers of David" suggested to some Jewish scholar,
who understood the title literally, to connect them with
David's history as related in the books of Samuel. He did
not go all through the " Prayers of David " in this manner,
but only through the first half, Psalms li.-lxiii. Afterwards
his unfinished work found admirers, and his proposed identi-
fications were placed at the heads of the psalms he had
annotated. In the first book of Psalms, the Psalter of David,
there are also three psalms, iii., vii., xviii., with historical
headings. Psalm xviii. appears again in the Book of Samuel,
and its position there explains its title. Given the belief that
David wrote Psalm iii., the reason of the present heading
is apparent. Whence the heading of Psalm vii. is derived,
or what is the event or the individual referred to, has not
yet been made out.
There are, further, one or two psalms near the close of the
whole collection of Psalms, namely, the cxxxix., cxl., and
cxlii., which have liturgical directions like those in the first
part of the Psalter. These belong to a small collection of
late date, entitled "Psalms of David," consisting of Psalms
cxxxviii.-cxlv., which appear to have been modelled after
IQ2 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and to have borrowed their headings, already unintelligible,
from the "Psalms of David" in the older Psalter.
It may be that some day we shall make discoveries with
regard to the ancient Hebrew music, similar to, or even more
important than, the discoveries about Greek music made by
the French at Delphi. In the meantime, speculative and
philological study seem to have reached their utmost limit in
the interpretation of these psalm headings.
I have already pointed out that the psalms which are
designated by their headings for certain particular purposes,
such as vintage songs and the like, were not originally written
for that purpose. In the case of a great part of the Psalms
we are unable to say that they were written for any specific
purpose; they are quite indefinite and general in their form,
and whatever may have been the occasion of their composition,
they have been so modified in the liturgical use that we can
no longer determine when or why they were composed.
There are, however, in the last two books of the Psalter,
quite a number of psalms which were written just as they
stand for liturgical use. We have, also, several hymns
composed as processionals, like Ixviii. and cviii. Psalm
xlv., which is, by the way, the least religious hymn of the
Psalter, is a marriage hymn, and is, in fact, so designated
in the heading ; there are also several harvest hymns, of which
Ixv. is the most beautiful.
In conclusion, let me cite a part of this last-mentioned
psalm, which is, as it seems to me, one of the most ex-
quisite descriptions of the country, rich to the harvest,
that has ever been written.
"Thou didst visit the earth and water it,
Greatly enriching it
(God's river is full of water),
Preparing their corn,
For thus Thou prepares! it :
Her furrows watering, her ridges smoothing,
With showers Thou softenest her, her sprouting
Thou blessest.
PSALM HEADINGS 193
"Thou hast crowned the year with Thy goodness,
Whose chariot wheels drop fatness.
Wilderness pastures run over,
And the hills are girt with joy.
The meadows are clad with flocks,
And the valleys clothed with grain."
You will appreciate still more the beauty of this, if you will
recollect the character of the hills of Palestine, and how the
fields were terraced one above another up the steep mountain
slopes, so that the wilderness pastures did very literally run
over the one into the other, and the hills were girt about in
great bands with girdles of different harvests.
o
CHAPTER X
THE STORY OF THE PRAYER BOOK
PSALTER
I PRESUME that every intelligent Churchman has noticed
the difference between the psalms as we have them in the
Prayer Book and as we have them in the Bible, but I imagine
that there are many who, although they have noticed the
difference, have not reflected upon the meaning and the cause
of that difference. There are still more, I fancy, who do not
know why we sing or say the Psalms through once a month,
theoretically at least, nor when and why that peculiarly
Anglican method of using the Psalms was adopted.
Now of course every one knows that the Psalms were
originally written in Hebrew, and that they constituted what
we may call the authorised hymn-book of the Jewish Church.
Together with the rest of the Hebrew Old Testament they
were translated into Greek for the use of the Greek-speaking
Jews of Alexandria, a translation which is ordinarily known
as the Septuagint. Later other translations into Greek were
made, some more literal and some less so, some better and some
worse. These translations were used quite indiscriminately,
as it would appear, in the early Christian Church, the members
of which spoke Greek, and not Hebrew. Indeed, there were
in the early Church, after the Apostolic age, almost none who
understood Hebrew at all. As there was no authorised or
official translation, occupying a place like that which the King
James or Authorised Version holds with us, these various
Greek versions not only became very much mixed up with one
another, but a great many corruptions crept into the text. As
194
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 195
the Church spread over the West, where Latin was the
language of the people, the Greek versions of the Scriptures
were in their turn translated into Latin, with the natural result
that the Latin translations from the Greek were still more
corrupt, inaccurate, and farther removed from the original
Hebrew than the Greek translations from which they were
made. The Latin translation best known to us, and indeed
the only one of which we have any real knowledge before the
time of Jerome, is the so-called Itala, a translation supposed
to have been made in the Church of Northern Africa.
Some time in the first half of the second century after
Christ, Origen, the greatest Christian scholar of his day,
disturbed by the many and serious inaccuracies of the Greek
translations then in vogue, undertook to collate the various Greek
translations and compare them with the Hebrew original for the
purpose of obtaining a more correct text ; a work which
brought him into much disfavour at the time, although it won
him fame and honour at a later date. More than a hundred
years later St. Jerome, secretary to Pope Damasus of Rome,
undertook to do for the Latin Bible much the same thing
which Origen had done for the Greek. At first, however, his
idea seems to have been merely to make the Latin Bible
a more correct translation of the Greek, for at that time he
had no knowledge of Hebrew. Indeed, the Greek translations
appear to have been regarded as inspired equally with the
original Hebrew, so that it probably seemed to him quite
enough to correct the Latin and bring it into harmony with
the Greek. His first work was done on the Psalter, which
was the part of the Old Testament most freely used in the
services of the Church, being the hymn-book of the Christian
just as it had been of the Jewish Church. His aim was to
bring the Itala, the Latin translation of which we have already
spoken, more into harmony with the Greek. This revision of
the Itala version of the Psalms was adopted as the Roman
Psalter. It was not a thorough work, as Jerome only attempted
to correct the most glaring errors of the old translation, and
he himself was not satisfied with it. Accordingly, a little later
196 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
he made a new translation from the Greek, for he had not yet,
I believe, conceived the idea of translating directly from the
original Hebrew. Indeed, it was a very unpopular thing then,
as it is now, to propose to correct any errors in Bible transla-
tions, no matter how patent they might be, and Jerome was
roundly abused for his pains, and accused of upsetting the
faith and tampering with the truths of Holy Scripture; very
much such accusations as are sometimes brought against Bible
scholars nowadays, when they venture to propose any correction
of the received text of the Bible. People regarded him as an
enemy of the Bible, who was attacking it, and not as a lover of
the truth, who was trying to remove error and let the Church
see exactly what the Bible really said. Even the famous
St. Augustine wrote against Jerome's work, believing that he
was upsetting the whole system of theology by showing people
through his correction of the received translation of the Bible
that there were errors in that translation, and in some cases
errors which had been used as proof-texts.
Fortunately, however, Jerome, in spite of all abuse and
opposition, kept on with his work. He soon saw that a
translation from the Greek into Latin was not sufficient, and
decided to attempt to translate the Old Testament directly
from the Hebrew into Latin. But this was no easy task. No
Christian knew Hebrew, and it was necessary to find some
Jew who, in spite of the prejudices on both sides, should be
willing to teach him that language. Then it was a most
difficult matter to obtain a Hebrew text, since these were very
carefully guarded by the Jews, that they might not fall into
the hands of those whom they counted as unbelievers. Bad
as Jerome's temper was, and outrageous as was his conduct in
some respects, he yet certainly earned from the Church the
title of saint by the persistence and courage with which he
overcame all obstacles until he finally succeeded in actually
translating the Old Testament into Latin directly from the
Hebrew. He did not, to be sure, obtain recognition for his
work at once, and it was not until long after his death that
through its manifest merits his translation forced its way into
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 197
use as the Bible of the Western Church. It is this translation
which, with some change and corruptions, has come down to
us as the Vulgate, except only in the case of the Psalter, the
translation of which in the Latin Vulgate is not St. Jerome's
translation from the Hebrew.
The Psalter was the hymn-book of the Church, familiar
from childhood to every Christian. The old Latin translation
had, in the mouth of the Church, sung itself into a real hymn
form, and at the same time it had sung itself into the affec-
tions of the people, and could not readily be displaced.
Jerome's translation from the Hebrew was undoubtedly more
correct as a translation, but it deviated too much from the
familiar form of the old Latin translation so long used in the
Church, and was not, moreover, so well adapted to singing.
Nevertheless the old translation was so glaringly incorrect that
it was manifest to the more scholarly men in the Church that
some sort of a change must be made. Jerome's correction of
that translation by a comparison with the Greek was, as we
have seen, adopted at Rome, and came to be known as the
Roman Psalter. But this also was too clearly incorrect, and
so at last, more than a century and a half after Jerome's death,
and two hundred years after the completion of the work itself,
his second Psalter, the translation from the Greek, which was
nearer to the old Latin Psalter in its phraseology than his
translation from the Hebrew, and which was also better
adapted than that for use as a hymn-book, was adopted for
Church use in Gaul by the famous Gregory of Tours, it is
said, and from Gaul spread over the whole Western Church,
until it was finally incorporated in the Vulgate, or Latin Bible.
From the place of its adoption it came to be known as the
Gallican Psalter.
At the time of the Reformation, then, the Psalter in use in
the Western Church was a Latin translation made by St.
Jerome from previous Greek translations, and not directly
from the original Hebrew. Now before the Reformation
many of the Psalms of this Gallican Psalter had already been
translated into English and made known to the people through
198 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the so-called primers which preceded the Prayer Book, so that
when the Reformation came the people were already familiar
with some portions of the Gallican Psalter in an English
dress. This seriously influenced translators of the Bible,
and when finally the Bible of 1539, Coverdale's translation,
emended by Cranmer and others, the Great Bible, as it was
called, was adopted by the English Church for use in public
readings, it was the Latin Psalter, translated by St. Jerome
from the Greek, and not the Hebrew, which was adopted as
the basis of the Psalter translation. This translation was,
to be sure, corrected somewhat after the Hebrew, and the
Hebrew numbering of the Psalms was adopted instead of the
Greek numbering used in the Gallican Psalter of St. Jercme ;
but after all, it was really the Latin Psalter, and not the
Hebrew, which was translated into English and adopted as
the Psalm Book of the English Church. This translation was
beautifully adapted to singing, and soon sang itself into popular
favour, as the old Latin Psalter had done before it.
In 1611 the King James, or Westminster Revision of the
Bible appeared. It was a much more correct rendering of
the Bible from the original languages than any which had
previously been published, and was adopted as the authorised
version. But Prayer Book changes are hard to make, and it
was not until 1662, fifty years later, that this translation was
adopted for the Epistles and Gospels instead of the translation
of 1539, which had been used up to that time. It was the
intention in this revision of the Prayer Book in 1662 to
change all the passages of Scripture used in the Prayer Book
from the translation of the Great Bible to that of the
Authorised, or King James Version; but the same thing
happened in the case of the Psalter which had happened
before in the Latin-speaking churches of the West. The
Psalter had so sung itself into the affections of the people
that it could not be changed. Moreover, the old Psalter, the
one translated from the Latin, was much better adapted to
singing than the newer and more literally accurate translation
from the Hebrew, which was stiff and prosaic in comparison.
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 199
o it came to pass that the old translation of the Psalter was
stained, and has come down as the Psalter of the Church.
)ur Psalter is, then, a translation from the Latin of St. Jerome,
rhich is in its turn a translation from the Greek, which in its
irn was translated from the original Hebrew. Such is the
istory of the translation of the Psalms contained in our
'rayer Book Psalter. It may be added that although this
•anslation, viewed from the standpoint of literalness, is in-
irior to that contained in the King James Version of the
>ible, it is, nevertheless, far superior to it in that it has caught
Dmething of the swing and spirit of Hebrew poetry, and it
;, therefore, much to be preferred for liturgical use, where
edantic accuracy is a matter of secondary importance.
So much for our Prayer Book translation of the Psalter.
Jow let us consider the use of the Psalms in the services of
tie Church, and first of all, of the Jewish Church. If you
rill turn to Psalms xxxviii. and Ixx., in the Canterbury or
Revised Version of the Bible, you will find in the headings of
hose psalms these words, " to bring to remembrance," and in
be margin you will find an alternative reading, "to make
nemorial."
Now the word translated "bring to remembrance," or
;make memorial," means literally "to make azkara" The
•zkara was that part of the meal or vegetable offering called
;meat offering," in the Authorised translation of the Bible,
fhich was cast into the sacrificial fire as God's portion,
rhese psalms were appointed to be used in the Temple in
:onnexion with the sacrifice or office of the azkara.
Turning to Psalm xcii. in the Canterbury Revision, you will
ee that this is headed, "A Psalm, a Song for the sabbath
lay." That is to say, this psalm was appointed to be sung in
he sacrificial service in the Temple on the Sabbath day. But
f there was a psalm which was appointed to be sung on the
sabbath day, it would seem probable that there were stated
asalms for other days also, since there were sacrifices on those
lays ; and from a study of the Jewish traditions preserved to
is by the rabbis, we find that this was actually the case.
200 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Psalm xxiv., we are told in the Talmud, was appointed for
Sunday, xlviii. for Monday, Ixxxii. for Tuesday, xciv. for
Wednesday, Ixxxi. for Thursday, and xciii. for Friday.
These constituted the psalters for the respective days in the
service of the daily morning sacrifice in the Jewish Temple,
and were sung week in and week out. But we also learn
from Jewish tradition that on certain special occasions special
psalms were used in place of the psalter for the day, as, for
instance, Psalm Ixxxi. at morning sacrifice, on the new moon
of the seventh month. We also learn that there were psalms
appointed for the service of evening sacrifice in the Temple.
So, on the same new moon of the seventh month, Psalm xxix.
was to be used at the evening sacrifice. These selections
were, it will be observed, very short in comparison with our
present use, rather resembling in that regard what we now
know as anthems. So when in the Jewish service Deuter-
onomy xxxii. was appointed to be used — the Song of Moses
— it was divided into six sections, one of which was considered
enough for a service. But there were also occasions on which
an entire group of psalms was appointed to be sung, the most
famous of these groups being the Hallel, Psalms cxi.-cxviii.,
which was sung at the feasts of the Passover and Dedication,
and the fifteen Psalms of Degrees, sung at the Feast of Taber-
nacles.
The Jews were in the habit of treating the psalms quite
freely for liturgical purposes, abbreviating them, as we have
already seen, in the case of the Song of Moses, or combining
psalms or portions of psalms to make new psalms for special
occasions. This is well shown in the case of the composite
psalms in the Psalter, like Psalm cviii., which is composed of
verses 8-12 of Psalm Ivii. and 6-12 of Psalm Ix. It is still
better shown by the psalm of dedication contained in i Chron-
icles xvi., which is composed from Psalms cv., xcvi., and cvi.,
containing not a single original verse.
The Jews were also in the habit of singing a doxology, or
ascription of praise after each chant or selection of psalms.
So the chant just alluded to in i Chronicles xvi. concludes with
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 201
he doxology, " Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from
iverlasting even to everlasting." Each book of the psalms in
he Hebrew Psalter concluded with such a doxology, which
va.s intended to be sung after the various psalms or groups of
)salms used in the worship of the Temple. These doxologies
.re unfortunately printed in our Bibles as though they were
:omponent parts of the psalms immediately preceding, but
rou can readily distinguish them by turning to the Canterbury
levision. They are verse 13 of Psalm xli., verses 18 and 19
if Psalm Ixxii., verse 52 of Psalm Ixxxix., and verse 48 of
^salm cvi., which latter is the same as verse 13 of Psalm xli.,
he doxology of the first book, except that it contains a rubric
lirecting all the people to say "Amen," and that it has a
lallelujah added at the end. There are also two doxologies
n the Psalter which are printed as separate psalms, namely,
3salm cxvii., which was originally the doxology to a Halle-
ujah collection consisting of Psalms cxi.-cxvii., and cxxxiv.,
i^hich, from the position in which it is placed, looks as
hough it might have been the doxology of the collection
if Psalms of Degrees when they were used in the services
if the Feast of Tabernacles. Psalm cl., which is a still longer
loxology than either of these, forms the close of another
;roup of psalms intended for liturgical use in the Temple
ervice, beginning with Psalm cxlv. These three doxologies
/ould seem to have been intended for use at the close of the
>articular groups of psalms after which they are printed, very
nuch as in America in some churches the Gloria in Excelsis
*> sung at the close of the entire evening Psalter. The lesser
loxologies at the close of the first four books of psalms
esemble rather our Gloria Patri, and were intended to be
ised after any psalms taken from those books which might be
ung in the Temple service. It must be remembered, more-
>ver, that when those doxologies were put there, these various
>ooks were so many separate collections or hymn-books, as
hough it were Hymns Ancient and Modern, The Hymnal,
:tc. At the close of each of these collections or hymnals was
>rinted a doxology in the same way in which is printed at the
202 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
close of the American hymnals a selection of doxologies to be
used after the various hymns therein contained. But whereas
our method of hymn - singing requires us to use different
doxologies for different metres, and hence to print a number
of variant forms of the doxology at the close of our hymnals,
their metres and their method of singing rendered it possible
to sing the same doxology to every psalm, and hence only
one doxology had to be provided at the close of their hymn-
books.
But not only did the Jewish Church have the same method
of using doxologies which we now have, and which indeed we
borrowed from them, it had also the same method of using
the amen and the hallelujah. So at the close of the chant
to which I have already referred in i Chronicles xvi., we are
told that " all the people said, Amen, and Hallelujah " ; and
at the close of Psalm cvi. there is a rubric, unfortunately
printed in both our Bibles and Prayer Books as part of the
psalm itself, to this effect, " And let all the people say, Amen,
Hallelujah." It was the practice, in other words, at the close
of the doxology to respond, "Amen." This was also the
practice after prayers, as we know, and the Christians adopted
that practice from the Jews. It was also, as the cases just
cited and others show, the practice after doxologies, and, there-
fore, in placing an amen at the end of the Gloria Pafri, the
Christians were but copying the old Hebrew use. So also
when after some of our praise hymns, especially in the Easter
season, we sing "Hallelujah," we are but copying the old Jewish
use again. In fact, the amens and hallelujahs in the Psalter are
not original parts of the psalms with which they are connected,
but liturgical directions, if I may so express it, like the amens
which we sing at the close of our hymns.
To sum up, the Jews had a daily Psalter, arranged according
to the week, not the month. They had special psalms for
special festivals. They composed anthems by divisions and
combinations of the psalms, as well as by new compositions.
They sang a doxology at the close of each selection of psalms
used in a service and at the close of anthems. They made
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 203
se at the close of the doxology of the response, Amen. They
sed liturgically, sometimes at the close of their hymns
nd sometimes at the beginning, the ascription of praise,
lallelujah.
When the Christian Church was founded the Psalter became
ic hymn-book of the Christians as it had been of the Jews,
nd the early Christians not only continued to use the ancient
'salter, but also adopted its spirit and began to compose new
salms, as the Jews had done before them. For while the
'salter as we have it was closed about one hundred and fifty
ears before Christ, the Jews after this date still continued to
ompose psalms on the ancient models, which, if they were
ot adopted into the canonical hymn-book, that is, the Psalter,
•ere, nevertheless, used by pious Jews for purposes of sacred
Dng. One considerable collection of this sort, composed by
'harisees some forty years or so before the birth of our Lord,
; still extant, being generally known as the "Psalms of
olomon." These Psalms, as we have them, are written in
Ireek, but are supposed to be translated from a Hebrew
riginal. They illustrate the development of Jewish thought
nd belief, particularly with regard to the coming of the
xpected Messiah, between the close of the Old Testament
anon and the birth of Jesus. As an example of the contents
f these psalms, let me quote a part of the second psalm, in
rhich allusion is made to the death of Pompey. After
icturing the misery and degradation of Jerusalem through
le wickedness of her own children, culminating in the
ccupation of the city by Pompey the Great and the Romans
nd the profanation of the Temple itself, the psalm passes
ito a prayer to God for deliverance and vengeance, followed
y a triumphant description, if we may call it a description, of
'ompey's death and the lesson taught by it. Commencing
rith the prayer, the psalm reads thus —
" And I saw and entreated the face of the Lord, and said :
Enough, O Lord, hath Thine hand been heavy upon
erusalem in bringing in the heathen ;
204 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
For they mocked and spared not, in wrath and anger with
vengeance ;
And they will make an end, if Thou, Lord, rebuke them
not in Thy wrath.
For not in zeal have they done it, but in their own lust,
To pour out their wrath upon us in rapine.
Tarry not, O God, to requite upon their heads,
To turn the pride of the dragon to dishonour.
And whiles I prayed God showed me that proud one
(Pompey), pierced on the coasts of Egypt, abased below the
least on earth and sea ; his body, corrupted on the waves, in
great contempt, and none burying. For He abased him in
dishonour.
He considered not that he was man, and his latter end he
observed not.
He said : I will be lord of earth and sea ;
And perceived not that God is great ;
He is king upon the heavens, and judgeth kings and rulers ;
Lifting me unto glory, but laying low the proud in everlast-
ing destruction in dishonour, because they knew Him not.
And now see, ye grandees of earth, the judgment of the
Lord, that He is a great and righteous King, judging all that
is under heaven. Bless God, ye that fear the Lord with
understanding. For the mercy of the Lord is on them that
fear Him, with judgment to divide between the righteous and
the sinner, to recompense sinners for ever according to their
works, and to show mercy to the righteous for the oppression
of the sinner, and to recompense to the sinner what he did
to the righteous. For the Lord is gracious to them that call
upon Him in patience, to deal according to His mercy with
His own, that they may stand for ever before Him in strength.
Blessed be the Lord for ever in the presence of His servants."
I am not at all sure, by the way, that this psalm does not
give us an example among the Jews of something which we
find in existence among the Christians from a very early
period, certainly, if not from the beginning, namely, of inter-
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 205
spersing verses of prose and psalmody, the same thing in the
small which is done in the large in our Order for Morning and
Evening Prayer, where we have lessons, psalms, and chants
combined, which is a modification of the use existing at the
Reformation.
And now to pass on from the psalmody of the Jews to that
of the Christians, the Gospel according to St. Luke gives us
several specimens of psalms composed by the early Christians
on ancient models : the beautiful Magnificat, " My soul doth
magnify the Lord"; the Nunc Dimittis, "Lord, now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace"; the angelic hymn, "Glory
to God in the highest"; and the Benedictus, "Blessed be the
Lord God of Israel." We have also outside of the Bible
fragments of early Christian psalms and odes, some gnostic,
some orthodox, composed on psalm models. Here is one
example from some odes preserved to us in Coptic sources —
" I will confess to Thee, O Lord, that Thou art my God.
Desert me not, O Lord, for Thou art my hope.
Thou hast given me Thy judgment freely, and I am guarded
by Thee.
Let them that pursue me fall and see me not.
Let black clouds and mists of the air cover their eyes.
Let them be darkened, and not see the light, nor ever seize
me.
Let their device be turned to weakness, and what they
devised return upon their own head.
They planned a plan, and let it not happen unto them.
The mighty have conquered them, and what they prepared
has fallen out ill for them.
But my hope is on the Lord, and I will not fear, for Thou
art my God and my saviour."
It is evident that in the first Christian centuries the Psalter
was a living force, and the spirit of psalmody not yet extinct,
even though all the psalms of that date preserved to us are
not of the highest poetical order.
We have no liturgies from these earliest Christian centuries
2o6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
to show us in detail how the Psalter was used in the churches
at that time, but only occasional hints, from which we learn
something of the way in which the liturgies that we find in
existence at a later date must have been built up. In the
Jewish synagogue services there had been Scripture readings,
psalms, prayers, and versicles, or litanies, taken largely from
the Bible. Among these latter was a synagogue litany, or
responsive prayer, adapted from Psalm li. Out of this Jewish
litany the Christians made that universal and most ancient
litany of the Christian Church, the Kyrie Eleison —
" Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us."
Similarly, we have reason to believe, the whole Christian
liturgy and ritual grew out of the Jewish. In the use of the
Psalter this is pre-eminently true. At the earliest date of
which we have knowledge we find that the Psalter was ap-
pointed to be sung in the Christian churches very much as
it had been sung by the Jews. There was a special psalm
appointed for each day of the week, a song of gladness for
the first day, and a song of sorrow and mourning for the sixth
day. This followed naturally from the adoption of the seven
days' week from the Jews. The first day was set apart for
special religious services, as the seventh day had been among
the Jews ; at the same time, the seventh day preserved its
name and to some extent its character as the Sabbath, being
observed as a day of rest. As the Jews had observed two
days of fasting in the week, the second and the fifth, so the
Christians also appointed two days of fasting, the fourth and
the sixth. Of these two days the sixth, Friday, was chosen
because it was the day on which the Lord was crucified ; the
fourth, Wednesday, was chosen largely, if not altogether, so
that the Christians might fast on a different day from the
Jews, as we learn from various early references. Having thus
the Jewish system of the week, with its special feasts and
fasts for special days, it was natural to adopt the Jewish
system of special psalms for each day of the week. The
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 207
swish practice of appointing special psalms for the great
istivals was also followed, it would appear ; for the Christians
irly commenced to celebrate the great events of Christian
fe and work by annual fasts and feasts, in this respect also
atterning, especially at the outset, upon Jewish practice.
As far as we can learn, then, the Christians at first followed
le Jewish method of using the Psalter almost, if not quite, in
s entirety. Regular psalms or selections of psalms were
ppointed for the days of the week and the great feasts. In
le service one psalm, or a portion of a psalm, or an anthem
mde out of sections of psalms, was sung, or, perhaps, on
Dme special occasion, several psalms were united to form a
election and sung over one doxology. At the end of each
election, whether composed of one psalm, a portion of a
salm, or a. group of psalms, a doxology was sung, after the
ewish custom. So universal did this use of doxologies soon
ecome that at a very early date a doxology was added even to
ic Lord's Prayer, and many of the manuscripts of St. Matthew's
rospel give that doxology as though it were a part of the prayer
self. The words of our Lord really end with "deliver us
•om evil," as we use the prayer in the Litany, before the
lommunion service, and in the Baptismal office ; the remainder
f the prayer, as we frequently use it, " for Thine is the kingdom,
le power, and the glory, for ever and ever," is the doxology, to
rhich is added an " Amen," according to the liturgical use with
11 forms of prayer and praise.
It is in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ that we
nd liturgies beginning to assume definite and fixed forms,
n the Western Church St. Ambrose, in the Eastern St. Basil,
rere great liturgy makers. By this time the Bible had ceased
o be the live book which it had been to the earlier Christians,
nd was beginning to receive that mechanical treatment which
haracterised the dark and middle ages, and in consequence
»f which it finally became for a time almost a lost writing. But
nth the lack of comprehension of the sense of Scriptures
here went hand in hand an increased reverence for the name
ind form, so that the recitation of Bible words came to be
208 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
regarded as in itself meritorious. This showed itself most of
all in the treatment of the Psalter, which was best adapted of
all parts of Scripture to memorising, and had from the begin-
ning been memorised more freely than other portions of the
Bible. Indeed, we are told that not only at this time, but
even earlier, it was not uncommon to find devout laymen
who could recite the Psalter through from the beginning to the
end, and that children began their study of the Bible with the
Psalter. As used in the Church, we find already some slight
distinctions between Eastern and Western use. The Eastern
Church had, on the whole, clung more closely than the Western
to the Jewish and earlier Christian method of singing the
Psalter. Doxologies were used only at the end of each selection
of psalms, and not at the end of each individual psalm. In
the Western Church, on the other hand, it had already become
the custom to put a doxology after everything, and accordingly
almost every individual psalm used in the service was followed
by a doxology, no matter how many psalms might follow one
another. In the Eastern Church the early practice of selections,
adaptations, the use of parts of psalms, and the like, was still
to some extent retained. In the Western Church the psalms,
as is indicated, among other things, by the use of the doxology
just referred to, had come to be treated as individual wholes,
which it was not allowable to modify. The Western Church
had also developed more fully, it would appear, the idea of
using the psalms consecutively in the order in which they
chance to stand in the Psalter.
In both Eastern and Western churches there had grown up
the practice of interspersing antiphons or anthems through
the psalm and Scripture readings. The intention of this was
to glorify the Word of God. The effect of it was to render
that Word unintelligible. The practice increased with the
increasing ignorance of the true contents of the Bible, until at
last in the Latin Church, at the period of its densest ignorance,
it was the custom to sing an antiphon after each verse of each
psalm. This naturally increased enormously the length of the
services, and as the number of psalms used in each service
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 209
is continually on the increase, owing to the idea that there
is a merit in saying as much of the Psalter as possible, the
actice finally cut its own throat. Imagine eighteen psalms
pointed for one service, and then more than doubled in length
• the insertion of an antiphon after each several psalm verse,
,d a Gloria after each psalm ! When this point was reached
iman endurance was taxed beyond its possibilities, and a
form took place, one part of which was the omission of the
tiphons.
But I am forestalling myself. It is, of course, with the use
the Latin Church that we are particularly concerned, since
is from this that the Anglican use was derived. It was the
edominance of monasticism and the development of the
iur services which brought about the use of the Psalter
lich we have just noticed. In those services it finally be-
me the rule to sing the whole Psalter through each week,
d sometimes more frequently. About twelve psalms, in-
sasing at one time to eighteen, as noted above, were
pointed for one selection, with antiphons interspersed and
e Gloria after each psalm. In the recitation of the Psalter,
in the use of prayer, the mechanical idea prevailed. There
is a virtue in the mere repetition of the words, and to sing
e whole Psalter through each week had a value in itself
lite apart from any intelligent comprehension of the service
ndered, or any intelligent participation in that service,
svertheless, the old practice of selections for special festivals
far prevailed that the psalms were not rearranged altogether
cording to the order of their position in the Psalter. So the
urth psalm, for instance, which is an evening hymn, was
cognised as such, and appointed to be used at evening
rvice, while the third psalm, which is the corresponding
orning hymn, was appointed for the morning. So also the
nety-fifth psalm was removed altogether from the regular
•urse and treated as an introduction to the entire service of
ialmody for the day, a use which seems to have descended
Dm the earliest days of the Church. Again, psalms like the
ty-first were appointed for the fasting-days and seasons. As
p
2io THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the number of saints' days and the observance of those days
increased, so the system of selections was developed, until at
last it practically took the place of the regular daily Psalter in
the monastic services. We have seen the inordinate length
of the Psalter as appointed for daily use; the selections ap-
pointed for special days were much shorter, and there was
therefore a practical advantage in substituting these selections
for the daily use.
It would be impossible in the space of this chapter to point
out the various uses of the Latin Church at various times and
in various places, and the somewhat conflicting commands
of various popes regarding those uses. Suffice it to say that
at the time of the Reformation in England the Psalter was
theoretically sung through each week in order, except only
such psalms of special use as the fourth, fifty-first, ninety-fifth,
etc., which were used many times over; but practically this
arrangement according to the days of the week had given way
to the selections appointed for special days. Actually the
psalms were not sung through each week, but only about
two-thirds of them were in use, selected and arranged in
services according to their supposed appropriateness to the
occasions to be celebrated.
It was the services of the hours which formed the basis on
which the Morning and Evening Prayer of the English Prayer
Book were modelled. We have already seen the conservatism
with which the Psalms were treated in the matter of transla-
tion, namely, that the Psalter was practically translated from
the Latin and not from the Hebrew, and that the Latin
translation from which it was translated was in its turn not
a translation from the Hebrew, but from the Greek. The
same conservatism showed itself in a slightly different form
in the arrangement of the Psalms for service use. The
Reformers adopted the theory of the mediaeval Roman use,
that the whole Psalter should be sung through in order within
a stated time, and seem to have regarded all deviations from
the regular order through the use of selections for holy days,
which, as we have seen, had practically taken the place of the
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER
2 I
ise according to the day, as an abuse which must be corrected.
\.t first sight it is hard to understand how they could have
idopted as something essential an idea so mechanical and
o alien to the practice of the early Church. Partly, doubtless,
heir attitude was due to inherited prejudice and the face
>f custom, for the most independent and even the most
adical of men are, after all, swayed in the general conduct
>f their lives and even in the opinions which they hold nore
)y custom and inheritance than by pure reason. The use
>f the whole Psalter, and not merely a part of it, as in the use
)f the selections, had been the cry of the reformers within the
ioman Church against those who looked only for that which
pas the more convenient and the easier, and the English
Reformers inherited those views by virtue of being reformers.
But further than this, the Reformers stood for the study and
ise by the people of the whole Bible, and not merely of
elected portions, and in the matter of the Psalms it doubtless
eemed to them desirable that the whole book should in some
vay be put in the mouth of the people. No other way was
;o well adapted to make them familiar with the whole Psalter
is to order it to be read through in order.
But in actual practice it was impossible to sing the Psalter
hrough once a week, unless people gave up their business,
hut themselves up in monasteries, and devoted themselves
o that sort of thing. Consequently, in order to carry out the
:omparatively recent theory of saying through the whole
3salter in order from beginning to end, they were compelled
0 abandon the ancient and universal plan of the arrangement
)f psalms according to a weekly cycle. For the ancient and
ime-honoured weekly cycle which the Christian Church had
nherited from the Jews, and which prevailed in every branch
)f the Christian Church, east and west alike, they substituted
1 brand-new monthly arrangement, a thing hitherto unknown
n Christendom. This monthly arrangement, moreover,
issumed a form far stiffer in its adherence to the order of the
)salms in the Psalter — which is in the main a haphazard
irrangement as far as subjects are concerned, depending
2:2 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
cHefly on the date of composition of the psalm or its adoption
in:o the Psalter — than any arrangement heretofore adopted.
It is true that selections were retained for a few of the
greatest feasts of the Church, but for all the other days of
the year, Sundays and week-days alike, they ordered that the
psalms should be said in rotation, with no reference what-
soever to the Church seasons or the teaching of the day.
Friday psalms might fall on Sunday, and Sunday psalms on
Friday ; henceforth all was to be determined by chance. The
important thing was to have the Psalter said ; the sense of the
psalms was a very secondary matter. Accordingly the Psalter
was divided into sixty sections, as nearly equal as they could
be made without dividing individual psalms other than Psalm
cxix. These divisions were allotted in the order in which
they came to the days of the month, two consecutive divisions
being assigned to each day, one for the morning and one for
the evening. And so important did the matter of the division
of the psalms into exactly equal portions and their arrange-
ment for consecutive use according to the days of the month
appear, that the Reformers could not even consider the
possibility of assigning an evening hymn to the evening rather
than to the morning. Psalm iv. chanced to fall in the equal
portion which had been cut off for the first morning, and,
therefore, in the morning it must be sung. Similarly the fact
that certain psalms had long been appropriated to special use
as chants, like the Venite, Psalm xcv., did not prevent them
from ordering that those chants should also be sung as psalms
in the regular sections of the Psalter appointed for the thirty
mornings and the thirty evenings of the month. Ruthless
uniformity was to be henceforth the rule.
The English Reformers, moreover, had small conception of
the Psalms as hymns or songs ; to them they were a certain
section of the Bible, the same as every other section, being, so
to speak, neither prose nor verse, but Bible. In the first
Prayer Book, of 1549, we read this complaint: "Notwith-
standing that the ancient fathers had divided the Psalms
into seven portions, whereof every one was called a nocturne,
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 21;
low of late time a few have been daily said, and the rest daib
>mitted." And so, as said, they provided that the wholt
3salter should be recited in the daily services in the course
)f the month. By this arrangement five or six psalms on
.n average were to be recited daily, and as the Sundays fall
>n different days each month, so the Sunday churchgoer,
irovided always that he went to church twice each Sunday,
vould in course of time recite the whole Psalter. The only
nodification of this system of monthly repetition according
o the days of the month was, as already noted, the appoint-
nent of special psalms for Christmas, Easter, Ascension Day,
,nd Whit Sunday. The Psalter was not printed in this
5rayer Book, but a calendar for the reading of the Psalms
ras placed immediately before the calendar for the reading
•f the rest of the Scriptures. It was intended that the whole
Sible should be read through in the churches, and the Psalter
fas ordered to be read likewise. Apparently it was not
egarded as a hymn-book in this use. On the other hand,
a the Prayer Book of 1549 there are printed along with the
Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, Introits, differing for each
Sunday or feast day, each introit consisting of one psalm,
n this use the psalms are treated as hymns, and in reality
bis use of psalms as introits in the Prayer Book of 1549
3 much more in keeping with the original intention and
iurpose of the Psalter, and with its use in the early Church,
tian is the calendar use, formulated for the first time in
tie same Prayer Book, by which the Psalter is ordered to
ie read through once in each month.
The second Prayer Book of Edward VI., the Prayer Book
f 1552, omitted the introits, and left nothing behind but the
alendar use. It may be said that this method of using the
'salter is characteristic of the tendency manifested at this
ieriod, to exalt the Bible, not by a study and use of its
ontents in the spirit in which it was composed, but mechanic-
lly, as though it were a thing divine in its outward form, in
:s letter. In keeping with this general method of treatment
?e may also observe that where psalms are to be used as
:i4 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
chants a whole psalm is invariably used ; never mind how
11 adapted individual verses of the psalms may be, they are
lever omitted; nor are portions of one psalm added to
mother, practices common in the early Church, when both
of these methods were freely used for the purpose of obtaining
chants and anthems thoroughly adapted to the occasion. The
inviolability and separateness of the individual psalms was also
further emphasised by the adoption of the later Western use of
singing the Gloria after each psalm, as over against the earlier
Eastern use of a doxology only after each selection or group
of psalms. In the Prayer Book of 1559 three psalms for
chant use are added as alternates in Morning and Evening
Prayer. The succeeding editions of the Prayer Book retain
the calendar use of the Psalter unchanged, and in general
the use of the same psalms as chants, with, however, some
slight variations. So, for example, in the Prayer Book of 1637,
that of Laud and Charles I., the beautiful twenty-third psalm
is substituted for the Benedicitt as the alternate to the Te Deum
in Morning Prayer. It was in 1662 that the English Prayer
Book assumed its final form. At that time Psalms xxxix.
and xc. were added to the burial service, which had been
without any psalmody whatever since the first Prayer Book
of Edward VI., which appointed for the burial service Psalms
cxvi., cxlvi., and cxxxix. In the Prayer Book of 1662 we find
also special psalms provided for Ash Wednesday and Good
Friday, making six days instead of four on which the regular
monthly order has to be broken. It is in this Prayer Book
also that the Psalter first appears within the covers. It be-
came necessary at this time to print it as a part of the Prayer
I^ook, because while heretofore the translation of the Great
Bible had been in use for all reading of the Scriptures in
church services, from this time forward it was provided that
the King James Version should be substituted, except only
in the Psalter, where the old version was to be retained for
reasons already noticed. The King James Bible accordingly
became the Church Bible, and the Great Jiible passed out
of use, becoming speedily obsolete. As a mere matter of
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER ;i;
practical convenience, therefore, it was necessary to print
he Psalter in the Prayer Book, in order that it might be
iccessible to the people, who could no longer find it in their
Bibles.
And now, having traced the arrangement of the Psalter in
he Anglican use down to its final appearance in the Prayer
3ook of 1662, let us examine briefly the method in which
he psalms are arranged for daily use in the English Prayer
3ook and some of the most glaring of the incongruities
•esulting therefrom. It has already been pointed out that
he Psalter was divided by the English Reformers into equal
sections for use in Morning and Evening Prayer. As there
ire thirty days to a month, these sections consequently number
sixty, and as there are one hundred and fifty psalms, on
in average two and a half psalms would be appointed for
.:se each morning and the same number each evening ; but,
is the psalms are very uneven in length and the object
ivas to make the appointed portions as nearly as possible
?qual, actually as many as five or six short psalms were some-
:imes allotted to one portion, whereas, on the other hand, Psalm
:xix., on account of its length, was divided up and distributed
Dver several days.
The only effort that was made in the arrangement of the
Anglican Psalter was to have the appointed portions as nc.
squal as might be without dividing any psalm other than
:xix. Accordingly, in the morning Psalter for the first day. we
have five psalms appointed to be used, which, as anyone will
see who reads them, have no connexion in thought or outward
form with one another, except only that they are psalms. The
effect to one who sings the psalms with some conception of
their sense and purpose is much the same as if one were to
make a selection of the first five hymns in the Hymnal (Ar.:
can) according to the index of first lines, namely. "A civ.
to keep I have,'1 "A few more years shall roll." "A tower of
strength our God," "Abide with me. fast falls the eventide,"
"Above the clear blue sky," and sing them through in this
chance order, with only a doxe'.ogy between, as the p:.. K
216 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
service in Morning Prayer. This illustration is all the more
pertinent, because the fourth of the five psalms appointed for
the Morning Prayer of the first day is an evening hymn, the
use of which in Morning Prayer is precisely as intelligent as
would be the use of "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide"
in the same place. The Psalter for that evening is likewise
infelicitous in arrangement. Psalms vi. and vii., with which it
begins, are supplicatory, trustful petitions. These two would
in themselves form an excellent selection, but Psalm viii.
ruins the harmony of thought. It is a grand hymn of praise
to the Creator of Heaven; and to sing these three together
as a single act of praise, is, to illustrate once more from the
American Hymnal, as though " Blest be the tie that binds,"
"Father, whate'er of earthly bliss," and "All hail the power
of Jesus' Name," were made into one selection and ordered to
be sung together.
Turn now to the Psalter for the fourth day, Morning Prayer.
This begins with a beautiful composite psalm, the nineteenth.
Now, Psalm xix. is a selection in itself, and well illustrates the
method of composing selections of psalms or anthems for
worship among the Jews. The first part, earlier in date by
some centuries than the second, is a short metre psalm, prais-
ing God the Creator as He manifests Himself in the daily
course of the sun. The second part is a later psalm, which
has been added to the first. It is in long metre, of the so-
called kinah or lament verse, like the metre of Lamentations,
and is a hymn of praise to God the Law Giver as He manifests
Himself in His wonderful and glorious Law. The connexion
of thought between the two parts is manifest and most sugges-
tive, and the marked difference of metre adds to the grandeur
of the composition by preserving and emphasising the integrity
of each part. The whole forms one of the noblest anthems of
the Psalter, and is a complete and well-rounded act of worship
in itself. But in the Psalter for the fourth day, Morning
Prayer, this magnificent anthem has hung on to it two battle
hymns, the one, Psalm xx., a petition for the triumph of the
king in war, the other, Psalm xxi., a Te Deum after victory.
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 217
The two psalms are fine in themselves, but sung together with
the nineteenth as one selection or anthem, for that is about
what a selection of psalms amounts to when sung, each de-
stroys the effect of the other, because there is absolutely no
connexion in thought between them. They should form two
separate selections. The Psalter for the same evening is equally
unhappy, Psalm xxii. being an anguished cry out of suffering,
appropriate to such a day as Good Friday, for which it was
the introit in the Prayer Book of 1549, while Psalm xxiii. is a
gentle, sweet, peaceful song of the man at rest in the bosom
af God. They go together in precisely the same way that
" Weary of earth, and laden with my sin," and " Jesus, tender
shepherd, hear me," go together.
The Psalter for the fifth morning is equally objectionable
From an artistic and liturgical point of view. Psalm xxiv. is a
noble processional hymn, adapted to services of dedication.
Psalm xxvi. is an introit prepared for the approach to the
iltar, and might, therefore, be associated with Psalm xxiv. in
Dne selection. But the two are separated by Psalm xxv.,
which is a deeply penitential hymn of the nation, or com-
munity, or individual in distress, calling on God to be mindful
}f His tender mercies and loving-kindnesses of old and turn
igain and be gracious. How would it sound to combine into
Dne anthem the three hymns, " Onward, Christian soldiers,"
'Saviour, when in dust to Thee," and "The Church's one
"oundation"? It is substantially the same thing which has
Deen done in the Psalter for the fifth morning.
In the Psalter for the eighth evening Psalm xli. is used,
with the doxology of the first book attached to it, as though
t were a component part of the psalm. I have already
pointed out that verse 13 of this psalm as printed in our
Prayer Books : " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; world
without end. Amen," is no part of the psalm whatever, but
i doxology written after all hymns in the first book, to be
sung with any of them, or with any selection of them in
worship. Following Psalm xli., the closing psalm of the first
Dook, in the Psalter for the eighth evening are Psalms xlii.
2i8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and xliii. I have already pointed out what is universally
acknowledged, that these two psalms constitute together one
song. This song consists of three stanzas, each stanza ending
with the same refrain (curiously differentiated in our Prayer
Book translation) : "Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? And
why art thou so disquieted within me ? O put thy trust in
God : For I will yet give Him thanks, which is the help of
my countenance and my God." These three stanzas, com-
posing as they do one poem, should be treated either as
three psalms or as one, and not as two, that arrangement in
the Hebrew Psalter being a mere accident. Moreover, this
psalm, " Like as the hart," consisting of Psalms xlii. and xliii.,
has no connexion in thought whatsoever with Psalm xli., and
should rather constitute a selection by itself.
The Psalter for the ninth morning is singularly infelicitous.
Psalm xliv., the first in the Psalter appointed for that day, is
itself a composite psalm. The first part, verses 1-9, is a
psalm of victory, describing what great things God has done
for His people. The end of this original poem is marked in
the Hebrew by a Selah. To this earlier triumph-song was
added later, in a period of sore distress, a piteous cry to God
to wake out of sleep and deliver His people. The whole is a
grand anthem, and would make a sufficient selection in itself,
consisting as it does of two songs combined in one. The next
psalm in the section appointed for the Psalter for the ninth
morning is a marriage hymn, about as inappropriate a com-
panion for Psalm xliv. as could be found. Psalm xlvi., again,
is a psalm of triumph, celebrating God's might in overthrowing
the heathen and subduing the earth. It has no appropriate-
ness, in connexion with either Psalm xliv. or xlv. To
illustrate once more from the hymn-book, the Psalter for the
ninth morning is in connexion of thought as though one were
to combine together the hymns, " In the hour of trial, Jesus,
plead for me," "To Thee, O Father, throned on high, Our
marriage hymn we duly sing," and "Thou, God, all glory,
honour, power." The Psalter for the ninth evening, if not
quite so infelicitous as that for the morning, is, nevertheless,
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 219
iistinctly incongruous. Psalms xlvii. and xlviii., with which it
Degins, go well together, both of them being songs of triumph.
Psalm xlvi., which, as we have seen, is sadly out of place in
:he Psalter for the morning, would go admirably with these
:wo psalms. On the other hand, Psalm xlix., which is joined
.vith them in the present arrangement of the Psalter for the
linth evening, is most unfortunately placed. Psalms xlvii.
md xlviii. are triumph songs to God as king and conqueror,
;vhile Psalm xlix. is a meditative, rather melancholy discussion
)f the problem of evil. To realise the effect of this try in its
jlace a selection composed of the three hymns, " Hark ! the
sound of holy voices," "Ten thousand times ten thousand,"
md " Whate'er my God ordains is right."
Turning to the fourteenth day, you will find that the two
Dsalms which compose the Psalter appointed for that morning,
xxi. and Ixxii., go together about as well as the two hymns,
' Saviour, when in dust to Thee " and " All hail the power of
fesus' Name." One is a litany-like lament, and the other a
:riumphant outburst, a prophetic picture of the Messiah and
His kingdom. What are printed as the last two verses of the
atter of these psalms might, by the way, be with equal appro-
priateness attached to the end of any of the psalms from xlii.
:o Ixxii., or to any selections made from these psalms. Those
/erses are not part of Psalm Ixxii., but a doxology meant to be
sung after any psalm of the second book.
In the Psalter for the sixteenth morning we have
Psalm Ixxix., which is an almost despairing cry for help out
3f the bitterest distress of persecution, a companion-piece to
Psalm Ixxiv. This is followed by Psalm Ixxx., the song of the
ruined vineyard, a prayer for the deliverance of Israel, wasted,
devoured, burnt with fire and cut down. While the proper
companion-piece of Psalm Ixxix. is Ixxiv., nevertheless
there is no incongruity in the juxtaposition of Ixxix. and
Ixxx. But Psalm Ixxxi., which has been joined with these two
to compose the Psalter for the sixteenth morning, strikes an
entirely different note, quite out of tune with that of those
two psalms. It is a " merry song," a " cheerful noise " unto
220 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the " God of our strength." The Psalter for the evening of
the same day is equally incongruous, consisting as it does
of two psalms, Ixxxii. and Ixxxiii., telling of God's judgment
of the heathen, and two psalms, Ixxxiv. and Ixxxv., of a
totally opposite nature, gentle and peaceful in tone. Of these
latter Ixxxiv. is a sweet Temple song, "O, how amiable are
Thy dwellings," and Ixxxv. a soft- toned hymn of thanks-
giving to God for deliverance out of captivity. The Psalter
for the sixteenth evening should surely have been divided into
two sections.
In the Psalter for the seventeenth morning we have three
psalms, the first of which is a petition for deliverance out of
affliction, and the third, the one utterly despairing song of the
Psalter, a cry out of distress, through which glimmers not a
single ray of hope. If the first and last of these psalms,
Ixxxvi. and Ixxxviii., might fitly be joined together, certainly
Psalm Ixxxvii. intervening destroys the connexion of thought
and utters an inharmonious note, for it is glad and triumphant.
The Psalter for that evening consists of Psalm Ixxxix., at the
end of which, as though it were part of verse 50 of the psalm,
is printed the doxology of the third book : " Praised be the
Lord for evermore. Amen, and Amen," which, as already
pointed out in the case of the doxologies for the first and
second books, belongs as much to any of the psalms preceding
it, from Ixxiii. onward, as to this psalm.
The Psalter for the twenty-fourth morning consists of Psalms
cxvi., cxvii., and cxviii. Psalm cxvii. is in reality a doxology,
and consists of but two verses. Everyone must have felt the
awkwardness of singing a Gloria Patri both before and after
this short psalm, which is itself a doxology. On the other
hand, if Psalms cxvi. and cxvii. alone constituted this Psalter,
what a grand close Psalm cxvii. would make, provided the
Gloria Patri were not sung between the two, but only at the
close of both ! This psalm might also be used after several of
the preceding psalms, after the manner in which it seems
to have been used among the Hebrews. Psalm cxviii., which
is part of this Psalter, would be far more effective as a selection
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 221
by itself. It is probably, on the whole, the most effective
processional in the whole Book of Psalms.
The Psalter for the twenty-eighth evening is one of those
offensively incongruous arrangements which force themselves
on the attention. Psalms cxxxvi. and cxxxviii. are glad
triumphant hymns ; Psalm cxxxvii., which intervenes between
the two, is a very sad and very beautiful lamentation of the
captives sitting down and weeping by the waters of Babylon.
The effect of the combination on the mind of anyone who
considers at all what are the words which he is singing is the
same as it would be if he were to hear sung together as one
whole the hymns, " Hark ! the herald angels sing," " Forty
days and forty nights," and " Holy, Holy, Holy ! Lord God
Almighty."
These notes on the infelicities of the Anglican arrangement
of singing the psalms in equal portions, according as they
happen to come, are very incomplete, only a few of the most
glaring cases having been selected for comment ; but these
are probably enough to show that this arrangement is capable
of improvement.
Another incongruity often results from this arrangement;
namely, a want of harmony between the Psalter and the
remainder of the service. The Anglican Psalter is arranged
according to the days of the month, and almost entirely
ignores the ecclesiastical year, recognising by separate selections
Dnly Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Day,
Ascension Day, and Whit Sunday. But the services of the
Church in every other particular are arranged according to the
Church Year. We have a special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel
for each Sunday, and the Lessons from both Old and New
Testament are very carefully chosen on the same system, with
a view to enforcing from as many sides as possible the lesson
of the day. That lesson may be of the most joyful and
triumphant character, as in the Easter season, or in the octave
of Christmas, or on Trinity Sunday, in which case the Epistle
and Gospel, the Lessons for the day, and even the hymns and
anthems chosen to be sung, are of the same character ; but
222 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the day of the month may be the fourth, in which case,
according to the Anglican arrangement, the Good Friday
psalm, " My God, my God, look Thou upon me," must be
sung in the Psalter; or the tenth, and the Miserere must
be used. Or, vice versa, you may be in the midst of Passion
week, where the whole tone of the services is meant to be
that of the Miserere, and lo and behold ! it is the thirtieth day
of the month, and the Psalter bursts out in a veritable paean
of mirth and gladness.
There is another class of incongruities, which is the result
of the failure to appreciate the meaning of the psalms and of
a worship of the letter, which compelled the use of each psalm
just as it stood without the change of one jot or tittle. It
is that spirit which shows itself in the treatment of Psalm xcv.,
the Venite, which is sung every day of the year. It might be
supposed that this was quite enough use for this psalm, and it
was held to be enough in all uses before the Anglican ; but,
apparently on the theory that there is some virtue in its repeti-
tion in course immediately after Psalm xciv. and immediately
before Psalm xcvi., the Anglican Reformers directed that, after
being used as a chant every other day, on the nineteenth
day it should be said in course with the other psalms. The
same was done with the other canticles. Never mind how
frequently they may be used as canticles, they must also be
used in course in the Psalter, as though there were some
special virtue in repeating them in their order of number as
they happen to stand in the Psalter. This curious double use
is, I believe, exclusively Anglican. Similarly, psalms which
appear twice in the Psalter are sung twice over during the
month, Psalm xiv. being sung in the Psalter for the second
morning, and then again as Psalm liii. in the Psalter for the
tenth evening; while Psalm Ixx., which has already appeared
as verses 16-21 of Psalm xl. and been sung in the Psalter for
the eighth morning, is sung a second time in the Psalter for
the thirteenth evening. Psalm cviii., which forms part of the
Psalter for the twenty-second evening, is an anthem composed
of verses 8-12 of Psalm Ivii., and verses 5-12 of Psalm lx.,
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 223
ind had, therefore, been already sung in the Psalters for the
:leventh morning and evening respectively. It may be added,
lowever, that in the case of all these duplicates the two
ranslations in the Anglican Psalter are so different that they
nay well pass for different psalms.
A more serious result of the failure to understand the
Dsalter on the part of the English Reformers is the treatment
>f rubrics and the like as parts of the psalms in which they
>ccur. We have already seen the manner in which the
loxologies of the first, second, and third books have been
Attached to the individual psalms which they happen to follow,
.s though they were a component part of those psalms. The
loxology of the fourth book will be found at the close of
3salm cvi. It is identical with the doxology at the close of
he first book, although in the Prayer Book Psalter that
dentity is obscured by a difference of translation. It seems
o have been the commonest form of doxology, and we find it
ised again at the close of the dedicatory psalm in i Chronicles
:vi. 36, where we are also told that "all the people said,
4men" As written at the close of Psalm xli., the Amen is
>rinted immediately after the doxology. As written at the
:lose of Psalm cvi., the Amen is preceded by the rubric, " and
et all the people say." In the Psalter as arranged for the
3rayer Book the doxology is printed as part of Psalm cvi.,
ind the rubric is incorporated with the doxology, so that we
ing psalm, doxology, rubric, and Amen all in one breath as it
vere. It seems scarcely desirable to chant the rubrics in our
:hurches. Certainly we should never think of commencing
he Venite by singing, " Then shall be said or sung this Psalm
bllowing"; and there is no more reason for prefacing the
4.men at the close of this doxology with the rubric, " Let all
:he people say."
There is a somewhat similar rubric in Psalm cxviii., which
brms part of the Psalter for the twenty -fourth morning,
iccording to the Anglican arrangement. As already pointed
jut, this is a processional hymn, intended for use at some
emple service and sacrifice. In the second half of verse 27,
224 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
after the altar has been reached and the priest is ready to
proceed to the sacrifice, following the words, "God is the
Lord Who hath showed us light," comes a rubric, directing
that at this point the sacrifice should be bound with cords
to the horns of the altar. In the original this rubric is the
barest prose. In the Prayer Book version it has been trans-
lated so as to have some resemblance to poetry, and its true
nature being thus obscured, it was printed and sung as part of
the psalm. To one who follows the sense the effect is much
as though the rubrics by the side of the prayer of Consecration
in the Communion service were to be recited as component
parts of that prayer.
But perhaps the most curious case of printing the rubrics
and similar directions as part of the psalm occurs in Psalm
Ixviii., which forms the Psalter for the thirteenth morning.
It is a grand psalm, taken as a whole, but I think that every-
one must have felt that there are verses in it which are quite
unintelligible to him. Especially is this true with verses 12,
13, and 14, which appear to have no connexion with one
another or with the remainder of the psalm. Verse 1 1 reads :
"The Lord gave the word : great was the company of the
preachers." The verses following this read : " Kings with
their armies did flee, and were discomfited : and they of the
household divided the spoil. Though ye have lien among
the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove : that is
covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold. When
the Almighty scattered kings for their sake : then were they as
white as snow in Salmon." Now while the individual clauses
in these three verses make sense, each for itself as far as it
goes, they do not make sense taken together, and quite
manifestly have no connexion with one another in thought.
In point of fact, they are the headlines of hymns. The action
of the psalm is dramatic. It is a processional, and the first
part, the first ten verses, is a description of God's victorious
procession out of Egypt through the wilderness, full of mira-
culous mercies toward His people, ending with the grant to
them of the land of Canaan as their inheritance. Then He
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 225
bids the company of women, or, as the Prayer Book version
has it, " preachers," to celebrate in song what He has done.
The verses following are the first lines of the songs which they
sing, and to sing them as the consecutive and connected
verses of a psalm is precisely as it would be to make such
a hymn verse as this —
" My God, permit me not to be."
" Nearer, my God, to Thee."
" Hail the day that sees Him rise."
" From all that dwell below the skies."
I think it must be clear to every one that the Anglican
Reformers were unfortunately mechanical in their treatment of
the Psalter. If they had not been bound by the false idea
of preserving for service use, as well as in the Bible, each
psalm in its integrity, they might have adopted the plan of
omitting verses not intelligible, which would have been a
natural sequence to their own principle that the services
should be in "a tongue understanded of the people." This
certainly would have been in accordance with ancient and
Catholic use, which they sought to substitute in other matters
for the mediseval use of Rome. Indeed, had they been guided
in this regard by primitive use, they might have modified the
Venite, the Benedicite, and other chants by the omission of
local and distinctively Jewish references, as was done later in
the American Church, thus adapting them more fully to use
as Christian hymns. Similarly, they might have modified a
few of the psalms of the Psalter in the same manner. So, for
example, the Miserere (Psalm li.) would gain by the omission
of the last two verses, just as the Venite of the American
Prayer Book has gained by the omission of the last five verses.
Still greater would be the gain to Psalm cxxxvii. by the
omission of the last three verses, which would indeed restore
that psalm to its original and most ancient form.
But in the case of the last three verses of Psalm cxxxvii.
there is another question involved in their omission besides
the question of unintelligibility or merely local and Jewish
allusions. These verses, like verses 23-29 of Psalm Ixix.,
Q
226 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
verses 1-19 of Psalm cix., and a few other verses scattered
here and there through other psalms, are incompatible in their
plain sense with the teaching of Christ. There is a certain
traditional interpretation of these passages proposed by some
of the Church fathers, which explains away the imprecations
in a mystical manner. But even granting that this explanation
is correct and the plain sense of the words incorrect, it remains
a fact that as the words themselves, and not the mystical inter-
pretation of those words, are chanted or recited by the people,
they are not adapted to use in the service. It is a poor plan
to sing hymns which are unintelligible, and a still poorer
plan to sing hymns which must inevitably teach false doctrine
to the ordinary man. Our Lord said, "Ye have heard that
it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate
thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." If
we read this to the people once in three months, and every
week or two call upon them to sing or recite, without any
explanation, such passages as these : " Let them fall from one
wickedness to another : and not come into Thy righteousness.
Let them be wiped out of the book of the living : and not
be written among the righteous " ;
" Let him be condemned : and let his prayer be turned
into sin.
Let his children be fatherless : and his wife a widow.
Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread.
Let there be no man to pity him : nor to have compassion
upon his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be destroyed : and in the next generation
let his name be clean put out.
Let the wickedness of his fathers be had in remembrance
in the sight of the Lord : and let not the sin of his mother
be done away.
Let it thus happen from the Lord unto mine enemies " ;
" O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy
shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us " ;
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 227
" Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and throweth
them against the stones" — we shall appear to the average
mind to give the preference to the old Jewish doctrine, as the
Jews understood and to their misfortune still understand it,
following the plain sense of the words of such psalms. In
arranging psalms for use in the Church service the rule should
have been to omit all passages not evidently in harmony with
the morality of the Gospels. The Psalms in their entirety
should be printed in the Bible and used as Bible, but when
they are to be used as hymns of the Church they should be
used in a proper and appropriate form and manner. The
Anglican Reformers confounded the two uses in their arrange-
ment of the Psalter.
Having discussed the Anglican Psalter, let us study the
development out of that of the American use, and the various
changes and proposed changes in the use of the Psalms in
that Church. The first practical attempt at a reform of the
Anglican Psalter was made by John Wesley, who prepared for
his followers, in 1784, a version of "Select Psalms," arranged,
after the pattern of the Anglican Psalter, for a month of thirty
days. He did not emancipate himself from the mechanical
arrangement according to the order of the psalms in the
Psalter, neither did he always display a thorough compre-
hension of the sense of the individual psalms, so that, for ex-
ample, he assigns the third Psalm, which is a morning hymn,
to the evening ; but his " Select Psalms " are an improvement
over the Anglican arrangement, in that a selection was made
of those psalms best adapted for the purposes of worship in
the Christian Church, the selections were shortened, the
primitive practice of adapting the Psalms for use by omissions,
and the like, was followed, instead of the stiff Anglican
method of singing each psalm precisely as it stands, and
particularly all passages objectionable from the standpoint of
Christian morality were carefully omitted.
The makers of the American Prayer Book seem to have felt
the influence of Wesley's "Select Psalms." The Proposed Book,
which appeared a couple of years after Wesley's work, treated
228 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the Psalter in much the same manner as he had done, still
clinging to the division into sixty parts, two for each of the
thirty days of the month, and arranging the Psalms according
to the order in which they happen in the Psalter, but reducing
the size of the daily portions, eliminating passages incompatible
with the morality of Christ, and asserting the principle of
selection. On the whole, the Psalter of the Proposed Book
is a slight improvement on the "Select Psalms" of Wesley.
Like most of the other novelties of the Proposed Book, this
arrangement of the Psalter was not adopted in the American
Prayer Book of 1789 and 1792 ; but certain important changes
were made in the line of the reforms proposed by the compilers
of that book. The Anglican Psalter was retained just as it
stood, so that whoever wished might use it ; but it was pre-
faced by ten selections of psalms. These selections were
shorter than the regular Psalter for the day, and were selected
with a view to furnishing for all seasons of the Church Year
appropriate psalmody in harmony with the other parts of the
service, and consistent with itself. By their position before
the Psalter, arranged according to the days, these selections
were recommended for use in preference to the Psalter for
the day. In these selections, following primitive use, the
American Church fathers did not hesitate to use portions of
psalms as well as entire psalms. They also reverted to primi-
tive use in recommending the use of the Gloria Patri only
after each selection or group of psalms, allowing, however, as
an alternative the later Western practice of singing the Gloria
after each individual psalm. The former use, it may be said
once more, emphasises the idea of the selection of psalms as
the unit, each selection being treated as an anthem, while the
latter use treats the individual psalm as the unit, and insists,
as it were, on its integrity. Further than this, several new
canticles were prefixed to the Psalter for optional use on the
great feast days, composed after the manner of various primi-
tive models by putting together verses from several psalms.
Following the same primitive freedom of treatment, the Venite
was vastly improved by dropping verses 8-n of Psalm xcv.
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 229
and substituting therefor a few verses of Psalm xcvi. Similarly
the Benedicite was improved by the omission of the last verse,
which is too local and particularistic for use in a general hymn
sung in Christian churches : " O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael,
bless ye the Lord ; praise Him, and magnify Him for ever."
Two new canticles were also added to Evening Prayer, com-
posed out of psalms, but not consisting in either case of the
entire psalm : the Bonum Est, consisting of the first four
verses of Psalm xcii., and the Benedic Anima Mea, consisting
of the first four and the last three verses of Psalm ciii. (Un-
fortunately, at the same time, the two Gospel hymns, Magnificat
and Nunc Dimittis, were omitted from Evening Prayer.) A
change was also made in the psalmody for the burial service
on the same primitive model. The English Prayer Book
provided two psalms, xxxix. and xc., each of which, after the
Anglican manner, was to be used entire, and each to be
followed by the Gloria. The American revisers omitted
several somewhat irrelevant or inappropriate verses from each
psalm, making of the two one anthem, and emphasised the
unity of this, as over against the Anglican idea of separate
psalms, by placing one Gloria at the end of the whole.
I have already consumed so much space that I shall not
dare to enter here into the history of the use of the Psalms of
David in metre, as appointed to be used from time to time in
the American Church. At first a translation of the whole
Book of Psalms into metre, Tate and Brady's, was bound
up with the Prayer Book and "allowed to be sung in all
congregations of the said Church before and after Morning
and Evening Prayer, and also before and after sermons, at
the discretion of the Minister"; and it was "the duty of
every Minister of any Church, either by standing directions,
or from time to time, to appoint the portions of Psalms which
are to be sung." In 1808 a rubric was adopted providing that
one of the metrical psalms should be sung at each service.
In 1832 a selection of psalms was substituted for the full
translation of the Psalter, and this selection of psalms in
metre remained in the Prayer Book until 1871. This use of
230 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
metrical psalms in addition to the psalms of the Psalter
receives elucidation, if any were wanted, from the authority
given in 1785 to the committee appointed to publish the
Proposed Book. They were " authorised to publish with the
Book of Common Prayer such of the reading and singing
Psalms" as they should think proper. The Psalter did not
appear to our fathers to be real poetry, adapted to the purpose
of singing, and so they felt it necessary to have it translated
into poetry for musical use. They meant to read it responsively
for edification, because it was the inspired Word of God, but
for musical purposes they thought it desirable to have it trans-
lated into poetry. They did not appreciate the Psalter, which
was precisely the trouble with the English Reformers, and they
did not know that it was poetry. I am reminded of the horror
with which an American poet, Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, once
narrated to me a proposition which her publishers had made
to her to translate the Book of Ruth into poetry. They were
about to issue an illustrated edition of Ruth, and for that
purpose wished her to translate it into poetry. "As though
my poor doggerel could begin to compare with the magnificent
poetry of that book," said she. The trouble with her pub-
lishers was that they did not know that it was poetry. The
English Reformers were in much the same condition regarding
the Psalter, and the American fathers also were somewhat
slow to find out that psalms are hymns even if they do
not rhyme, and if there are not the same number of syllables
in each line.
In 1826 a wise and progressive move was made in General
Convention, which, had it been successful, would have done
much for the Psalter in bringing us back to a more primitive
use. On motion of Bishop Hobart, of New York, the
House of Bishops proposed certain resolutions for a per-
missive shortening of the service, which were adopted by the
House of Clerical and Lay Deputies. The first of these
resolutions dealt with the Psalter, and gave the following
discretion in regard to its use : " The Minister, instead of
reading from the Psalter, as divided for daily morning and
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 231
evening prayers, may read one of the selections set out by
this Church, or any other Psalm or Psalms, except on those
days on which Proper Psalms are appointed." Bishop Moore,
of Virginia, opposed this and all the proposed changes, on
the ground that one innovation would be followed by another,
and finally all uniformity of worship be destroyed. This view
ultimately prevailed, and the next General Convention dis-
missed the further consideration of the resolutions passed by
its predecessor as inexpedient.
But the need for some changes in the Prayer Book was
a real one, and changes could not be staved off for ever
by an overtimid conservatism. To be sure, these changes,
when they finally came, were not radical, and were extremely
small in proportion to the amount of fuss made over them ;
nevertheless they went in general much further than the
changes so earnestly deprecated by Bishop Moore. In the
matter of the Psalter, and chants taken from the Psalter,
however, the changes in the new American Prayer Book of
1892 are less radical than those proposed by Bishop Hobart,
and, indeed, in some respects the changes are rather reactionary
than progressive. This is shown in the directions for the use
of the Gloria. It has been pointed out that in the first
American Prayer Book not only was permission given to use
the Gloria after each selection or group of psalms only,
according to the early Eastern use, but that this was given
the preference over the later Latin use, adhered to in the
Anglican Psalter, of singing the Gloria after each individual
psalm. In the new American Prayer Book this is reversed,
and while permission is still given to use the Gloria after the
primitive method, preference is given by the rubric to the
Latin use of singing it after each several psalm. The prin-
ciple at stake is well illustrated in the treatment of the Burial
Chant in the same Prayer Book. In the old American Prayer
Book it was treated as a unit, as one anthem, although com-
posed out of portions of two psalms, and accordingly the
Gloria was sung only at the close of the whole anthem. In
the new Prayer Book it is separated into two parts, according
232 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
to the psalms from which it is composed, and the Gloria is
ordered to be sung after each part, to the serious detriment
of its unity as an anthem, but with the result of emphasising
the fact that it is not a single psalm in the Bible. The
omission of the alternative anthems for special days, com-
posed out of several psalms, points perhaps in the same
direction.
In the matter of the use of the Psalter as a whole, the
preference given in the old book to the selections of psalms
over the Psalter for the day is reversed, and the selections
themselves are no longer printed separately, a most efficient
and practical way of discouraging their use and bringing them
into desuetude, without actually prohibiting them altogether.
On the other hand, the number of selections was increased
from ten to twenty, and the additional ten selections are on
the whole admirable. But the failure to print the selections
separately, and the substitution for the separate selections of
a calendar by which anyone wishing to use selections may
hunt up the proper psalms for himself, much more than
counterbalances the increase in the number of the selections
from ten to twenty. If the twenty selections were printed
separately before the daily Psalter, as the old selections were,
the gain for the use of the Psalter would be very considerable.
As it is, the practical inconvenience of using them is such
that it would have been much better to have left the old
ten selections untouched, and the result of the increase in
the number of the selections is apt to be the disuse of
selections altogether and the complete reversion to the
haphazard Anglican method of using the Psalter. The
increase of the number of days for which special psalms
are appointed from six to sixteen is a decided advance over
the old book.
As the new American book stands, then, there is in some
particulars an advance over the old book in the use of the
Psalms, and in other cases the old book was superior to
the new; practically, however, the new book is inferior to
the old, owing to the omission of the separate selections.
THE PRAYER BOOK PSALTER 233
This was the great practical blunder of the revisers of the
American Prayer Book, and this omission more than neutral-
ised all the good that they did in the way of increasing the
number of the selections provided for use. Far better have
ten selections, and print them before the Psalter, than
have twenty selections, indicated only by their numbers, so
that it is inconvenient to use them, and so that it shall appear
that the recommendation of the Church is to use the Psalter
of the day. Further revision of the American book is still
needed in the matter of the use of the Psalter. The first
and practically the most important thing to do is to have the
twenty selections printed out in full before the Psalter as
arranged for daily use.
The second step should be, though they might well both be
taken together, to pass Bishop Hobart's rubric, mentioned
above, which succeeded in passing the General Convention
of 1826, only to be defeated in 1829, permitting the minister,
where he thinks it desirable, to read instead of the Psalter
for the day or one of the appointed selections, "any other
Psalm or Psalms, except on those days on which proper
Psalms are appointed."
Our object should be to make the Psalter a true hymnal.
If it is desirable to have it read in course, that all of it may
surely be brought to the ears of the faithful and regular
attendants at our Church services some time or other, let
it be added to the calendar of Scriptures to be read in church.
We already read in that calendar several songs and poems
which, among the Jews and in the early Church, and even
in the mediaeval Church, were treated as psalmody and sung
with or in the place of psalms. There is no reason why
psalms should not be read from the lectern as well as such
poems as Deuteronomy xxxiii. But when we use the Psalms
as psalmody in the Church they should be treated as hymns.
They are in reality the grandest collection of hymns ever
brought together, the inspired hymn-book of the Jewish
Church, and deserve an intelligent use, which shall bring
out more fully to the ordinary man their marvellous beauty
234 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and comprehensiveness. The mechanical prayer-wheel system,
by which semi-daily mathematically measured sections are
turned off without the slightest regard to sense, is a fatal
obstacle to their intelligent comprehension. They should be
treated with some of that freedom and realisation of their
living sense which characterise the Jewish and the early
Christian use.
PART IV
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE
CHAPTER X
A REVIEW OF RESULTS
IN a former chapter I have spoken of archaeological dis-
coveries as one of the great factors in the development
)f Biblical Criticism within the last half-century. In this and
he succeeding chapters I propose to treat (i) the general
esults of archaeological research, and (2) some special applica-
ions of archaeology to the solution of Bible problems.
There is an inclination on the part of some to set archae-
)logy over against Higher Criticism, as though it were a
icparate discipline, and not only separate from, but also
>pposed to the Higher Criticism. In reality Higher Criticism
ncludes in itself the use of archaeology. Given a text de-
ermined by the Lower Criticism, it is the business of Higher
Criticism to interpret that text upon its literary side; to
letermine, that is, questions of date, authorship, method of
:omposition, and the like. To determine these questions
t draws upon all accessible material, and consequently upon
irchasological material.
But it is true that there has been a tendency on the part of
Did Testament students to develop, not Higher Criticism, but
:lose criticism of the Old Testament to an extreme degree,
lepending unduly on subjective data, that is, on the im-
)ression made upon the mind of the critic by the style,
he thought, the doctrine, and the like. While the study
)f style and the study of the development of thought are
iccessary parts of the historical and literary criticism of any
vork, and while there is a science of the study of these, so
hat it is quite possible to say that such and such a thing
237
238 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
could not have been written in such and such a period,
because its style and language belong clearly to such and
such another period, or because its conceptions in regard
to certain matters are such as do not appear before or after
such and such a period, nevertheless, it is also true that there
is a large subjective element in this discipline, and it is
necessary to check the results obtained through it by data
of a more objective character.
Comparing the present position of Old Testament criticism
with the criticism of the Roman, Greek, Indian, and Persian
literary remains, we find that there has been a reaction in
those fields against the use of such subjective evidence alone
and an inclination to return, in regard to questions of date
and of authorship, to a more conservative position, as a result
largely of archaeological discoveries. It is not so long since
the divisive theory of the Homeric poems was quite generally
accepted by critical scholars, the Iliad and Odyssey being
divided into a great number of smaller poems, which were
supposed to have been worked together at a later time.
Almost as a corollary of this belief in the composite and
late authorship of these poems, their testimony both as to
historical incidents and also in regard to the conditions of
life and the civilisation of the period which they professed
to represent was rejected as incorrect. There was even an
inclination to resolve the Homeric poems as a whole into
sun myths. Discoveries at Hissarlik, Mycenae, Tiryns, the
Argive Herseum, Cnossos, and elsewhere have shown us
that the historical conditions of the Greek world at the time
supposed to be represented by the poems of Homer corre-
sponded in general to the representations of the Homeric
poems. We have ascertained that some at least of the de-
scriptions of ancient cities in the Homeric poems are his-
torically correct and rest upon contemporary information or
personal knowledge, and that certain incidents, such as the
destruction of Troy, are historical. The argument against
the early composition and continued transmission of the
poems on the ground that the art of writing was not known
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 239
so early a period, and even at a much later time was
'ailable only for comparatively brief monumental inscriptions,
fective thirty years ago, has been discredited first by the
scovery of elaborate systems of writing and the preservation
' long literary works in regions in communication with the
reek world before Homer's time, and finally by the discovery
.thin the bounds of the Greek world itself of at least two
stems of writing antedating Homer, and of the use as
•iting material of clay tablets of the same character as those
1 which the Babylonian and Assyrian books and records
jre written.
The result of these archaeological discoveries, showing us
e historical trustworthiness of certain facts and descriptions
ade use of in the poems, has been to alter the opinions of
itics regarding the composition and the date of the Homeric
>ems. In consequence the antiquity and unity of those
>ems are now generally acknowledged. It is also recognised
at the poems are of great importance from the historical
mdpoint, that they represent fairly the general civilisation of
e Greek world, and the customs and ideas of that world at a
xiod not far removed from the time of the events narrated,
d that some certainly of the events narrated are based on
storical facts. On the other hand, no one supposes that
e Homeric poems are sober history. Myths and legends
2 woven in, gods play a part which is manifestly unhistorical,
ere is a childlike representation of the relations of gods to
gn and of men to one another.
Traditional Roman history has passed through a somewhat
nilar course. Not long since it was held that Roman history
:gan a little later than the end of the period of the kings,
jfore that there were only myths, fables, and traditions, out of
lich it was impossible to obtain anything of the character of
liable history. Partly through study of the monuments,
.rtly through a more careful investigation of material by
ommsen and his school, we now have Roman history
constructed almost from the time of Romulus and Remus,
e have not returned to the position of that earlier age which
240 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
accepted literally the old stories of Romulus and Remus
suckled by the wolf, but we recognise the historical facts
underlying these stories, and with proper caution utilise them
for purposes of history.
The history of the study of the ancient Indian and Persian
sacred literature and historical traditions has run a similar
course. One of our leading Persian scholars writes, " To-
day the best scholars have outlived the age of radicalism,
with its tendencies to push dates down to a comparatively
late period, to deny reputed authorship, or everywhere
to find composite authorship, and to reconstruct texts
with minute subdivision. At least a more conservative
tendency has set in, and Indian and Persian traditions receive
more respect than they have for many a day. The support
which the traditions of Buddhism, for instance, have received
from recent archaeological finds forms a striking illustration.
With reference to dates, as a second point, there is a present
inclination to push the Veda back a millennium or two earlier,
rather than to make its time later. Although this cannot be
said altogether with regard to the date of the Avesta, a state-
ment to the like effect may be made with regard to its text,
with which such liberties formerly were taken." The inclina-
tion in general among Indian and Persian scholars to-day
is to push back the dates of the sacred books, to accept the
traditional views in a modified form, and to maintain unity
of authorship.
Somewhat similar has been the movement in the field of
New Testament criticism. The result of investigation has
been to establish the general accuracy and reliability, as well
as the early date of the Gospels, the Acts, and many, if not all,
of the Epistles attributed to St. Paul, as over against the views
presented in the first half of last century. I do not mean
that the old so-called orthodox views with regard to these
books are now accepted ; but the point to which critical study
has returned is at least very far removed from the extreme
radical positions of Baur and the Tubingen school.
But while in Homeric study, in the field of Roman history,
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 241
}f the Veda, the Avesta, Buddhistic literature, and the Books
}f the New Testament the tendency has been toward a
rehabilitation in a modified form of the older views regarding
late, unity of composition, and general historical credibility,
:he tendency among Old Testament critics has seemed to be
:nore and more in the opposite direction. The Hexateuch
is divided by each new critic more minutely than by his
predecessors, and the inclination is to refer its composition, or
it least its final composition, to an always later date. There
s the same tendency in the treatment of the prophetical and
Dther literature of the Old Testament. The latest works on
:he Book of Isaiah, for instance, divide that book, partly on
:he ground of style, partly on the ground of thought, into
i very large number of sections, some of which are ascribed
:o Isaiah, some to later unknown prophets, and some to
•edactors who have worked over earlier material of Isaiah
limself.
Hand in hand with this tendency to divide and subdivide
*oes the inclination to assign both the completed products
ind also the constituent parts out of which those products
were composed to ever later dates. The redaction of the
Hexateuch was not completed before the third century B.C.,
if then. Portions of the Book of Isaiah are referred to a time
is late as the Maccabees, the whole of the Wisdom literature
is carried down into the post-Exilic period, and the entire
Book of Psalms is relegated to the same epoch, some of the
psalms being dated as late as Herod. This treatment of the
Old Testament books in regard to date, authorship, and com-
position, has, of course, affected the whole conception of
Hebrew history. Everything before the time of Jeremiah, or
even before the Persian period, following the Exile, would
seem to be involved in uncertainty, because all writings of an
earlier date have been so much worked over that it is question-
able what dependence can be placed upon them as representing
the actual thought of earlier times. Against this inclination
of Old Testament critics a protest is now being raised. It is
claimed that archaeological evidence has not been sufficiently
R
242 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
utilised by them, and that the evidence of archaeology tends
to substantiate, in a general way, the credibility of the historical
' traditions of Israel, and by doing so indirectly to lend strength
to the older traditional views of the date and authorship of
books.
It is pointed out that the result of archaeological discovery
in every other field has been to carry dates backward ; that the
antiquity of civilisation and of the use of writing has been
pushed back some thousands of years; that many of the
peoples about Palestine, or with whom the Hebrews are
supposed to have been in contact, possessed a highly de-
veloped civilisation, and at least in some cases a literature at
a period even earlier than that to which tradition would ascribe
the Hebrew historical narratives, laws, poems, and the like.
From this they argue that the early Hebrews must have
possessed a similar civilisation, have been acquainted with
writings, and have composed and handed down historical
records, laws, poems, and the like.
Let us examine briefly what has been proved in the Old
Testament field by archaeological discoveries, and the problems
which still face us, partly as a result of those discoveries them-
selves. Sixty years ago, when Ewald's History of Israel was
written, we were in the period of scepticism with regard to
everything ancient. Babylonia had not yet begun to yield
its ancient remains to the explorer, and what little had been
found and examined in Egypt was not yet understood. The
remains of ancient secular histories which had come down to
us, such as the fragments of Berosus and Sanchoniathon, were
not regarded as possessing any authority. The legendary
stories of the early days of Rome had been discredited, as
had been also the traditions of Greek antiquity. Our real
knowledge of secular antiquity was supposed to commence
about B.C. 500. Everything before that time was shadowy,
and the wisest attitude for the scientific historian, with regard
to conditions before that date, was one of agnosticism. Real
history began about B.C. 500, and even then the field of that
history was extremely limited. It included Greece and Rome,
ARCH/EOLOGICAL RESULTS 243
and in a vague and imperfect way Egypt and parts of hither
Asia as far as Persia. From the further East, from India and
from China, literary remains claiming a great antiquity had
been brought to Europe and deciphered and interpreted by
European scholars; but while these remains claimed a great
antiquity, they did not furnish the material for a definite and
certain chronology, and whatever the opinions of individual
scholars, there was no general agreement which rendered it
possible to use this material for the earlier history of the
human race. Geologists had reached the conclusion that the
world was almost incredibly old, but the question of the date
of the appearance of man upon the earth was still unsettled.
Some held to a very early, and some to a later date ; but for
all practical purposes there was an agreement that civilisation
could not be said to have begun much earlier than the millen-
nium before Christ. Writing was supposed to have been
invented, or at least to have become practically useful, not
earlier than about B.C. 600, but no definite and detailed know-
ledge of man in a state of higher civilisation was available, as
already stated, before about B.C. 500. That being the point of
view of the scientific historians with regard to ancient literature
and ancient civilisation, it was inevitable that the Old Testa-
ment record and the Old Testament literature should be viewed
with suspicion. The Old Testament claimed to present the
history of a high civilisation, advanced religious development,
and literary activities, commencing somewhere in the latter
half of the second millennium B.C. Critical students were
naturally inclined to discredit this testimony as exceptional,
and apparently in contradiction to everything else that was
known. How, for instance, was it possible that these things
should have been written down and preserved, as was claimed,
in view of the fact that writing did not seem to have been
available for practical purposes earlier than about B.C. 600 ?
Without going into the details of the wonderful story of
archaeological discoveries and the decipherment of ancient
inscriptions during the last sixty years, I may say that at the
present day we have, from one source and another, a pretty
244 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
fair picture of an advanced stage of civilisation prevailing
through parts at least of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Meso-
potamia, in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates from the
sources to the mouths of those rivers, in Persia and adjacent
regions, in Southern Arabia, in Egypt, and apparently also in
Syria, including Palestine and the neighbouring islands, in the
latter half of the third millennium B.C. At or about this time
also civilisation spread to China, and shortly after this India
was occupied by a civilised race. At the close of the third
millennium B.C. the civilised portion of the Eastern hemisphere
comprised, as far as we now know, hither Asia, with the
adjacent islands and coast lands of Europe, Egypt, Nubia in
Africa, China, and a part of India. There are two parts of
this larger territory in which recent researches have shown a
civilisation still much more ancient, namely, Egypt and the
lower part of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates,
commonly called Babylonia. In both of these inscribed
records carry history back, as is ordinarily claimed, to a
period about B.C. 4,000 to 5,000; while from Babylonia we
have evidence of civilised peoples dwelling in cities and
organised states, making pottery and building temples and
houses still a thousand years earlier.
An immense mass of inscribed material has been secured
from Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia. The earliest
monuments from Babylonia and Egypt, to which reference
has already been made, going back to B.C. 4,000 or 5,000,
give us the names of kings and cities and temples, notices
of expeditions and conquests, showing us that at that early
time the extent of the civilised world with which those
countries were in contact was not inconsiderable. Detailed
records of the life of the people begin somewhere in the third
millennium B.C. From that time on we are able to draw an
accurate picture of the life which the people lived. Writing
was common and freely practised. For purposes of political
history these inscriptions are not so directly valuable as those
of a somewhat later date from Assyria. Assyrian history
commences in the second millennium B.C., but official records
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 245
systematically dated, recording the succession of events,
expeditions, eclipses, etc., do not occur until the first part
Df the following millennium, when Assyria became the great
conquering world-power. From the middle of the ninth
:entury B.C., when Israel first came in contact with Assyria,
onward to the latter part of the seventh century, when Nineveh
svas destroyed and the Assyrian power annihilated, we have
i series of records, in which Israel and Judah are mentioned
"rom time to time, constituting a general political history of
lither Asia. By means of these records we have been able
:o reconstruct Hebrew chronology for that period, and to
:heck and confirm the Hebrew historical records. These
Assyrian records have been especially valuable in giving us
i broader survey than we find in the Bible, making known
:he names of kings and nations, showing us their relations to
Dne another, their hostilities and alliances, their relative
strength, etc. This has thrown much light on the political
conditions of Israel's world and the political career of the
seople of Israel from David's time onward, and has enabled
is to understand the causes of some of the events recorded
n the Bible, and the meaning of not a few references formerly
nisunderstood, or not understood at all. The general pro-
;ress of events has been elucidated, and the part which Israel
>layed in the greater scheme of history made apparent. Late
Babylonian and Persian records are not so systematic in their
listorical survey, and do not contain the same direct notices
)f Israel and Judah. They do, however, give us a general
dew of the political history of Israel's world during the period
bllowing the fall of Nineveh. In general the historical
•ecords so far discovered confirm the statements and the
listorical representations of Samuel, Kings, and the Prophets.
Hebrew history as recorded in those books is proved by the
comparison to be honest and trustworthy, but not infallible,
is, for instance, in the matter of chronology, nor altogether
vithout bias, and a natural inclination toward a patriotic
colouring of the story. Chronicles, on the other hand, is
ihown to be of little or no value for purposes of political
246 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
history, while Esther, Daniel, and Jonah, once supposed to
be historical, are made to appear fictitious.
With regard to the period preceding David, the conditions
are different. Up to the middle of the second millennium
B.C. our knowledge of Syria and Palestine is indirect and
very fragmentary and meagre, derived from allusions to
campaigns in Babylonian and Egyptian inscriptions. To the
beginning of the second half of that millennium belong the
Tel el-Amarna tablets, found in Egypt, containing letters from
numerous kings and governors throughout Palestine, Syria,
and Mesopotamia, addressed to their Egyptian suzerain or
ally. These letters show us the condition of Palestine shortly
before the Israelite invasion and conquest. These conditions
accord with what we are told in Numbers, Joshua, and Judges
of the period of the conquest, and indeed make clear to us
why that conquest was possible. They show us also peoples
kindred to the Hebrews pressing into the country from the
east and north, and incidentally throw light on the meaning
of the race stories contained in the legends of the patriarchs
in Genesis. They show too that the language of Jerusalem
and of Canaan in general was Hebrew, and confirm the
tradition of the Israelites, contained in the Old Testament,
but formerly misunderstood, that their ancestors were
Aramaeans or Syrians, speaking originally an Aramaic tongue,
and adopting the Hebrew language from the natives of
Canaan whom they finally dispossessed, or from whom they
inherited (the Hebrew word used for taking possession of the
country has both of these meanings).
The Tel el-Amarna letters show that in the fourteenth
century B.C. the Babylonian script and the Babylonian
language were lingua franca for the whole region from
Babylonia westward and northward to the Mediterranean.
Apparently a condition existed similar to that in Europe in
the middle ages, when Latin was the language of written
communication and the monks were the scribes. The ver-
nacular was not used for writing, and on the other hand, Latin
was understood by few besides the scribes who wrote it. As
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 247
it was with Latin in Europe in the fourteenth century A.D., so
it was with Babylonian in Asia in the fourteenth century B.C.
But the Babylonian script was not the only writing in use in
the world at that time. Egypt had had for ages an inde-
pendent hieroglyphic script of its own. The Hittites, also, in
central Asia Minor and Armenia, stretching down into Syria,
had a peculiar writing of their own, many monuments in
which have been discovered, but not yet deciphered. In
Crete, and perhaps also on the neighbouring shores of Asia
Minor, if not in Greece, another system of writing, apparently
of independent origin, was in use at the same period. In
these regions there existed a highly developed civilisation,
pottery decoration had attained a high grade of excellence, and
painting and sculpture were freely used.
It was at this period, the second half of the second millen-
nium B.C. that, according to its own tradition, the people of
Israel came into being. Under the guidance of Moses, the
tribes of Israel, who had been enslaved in Egypt, were welded
into a nation, which, marching out of the Sinaitic Desert, took
possession of the country east of the Jordan. Under Moses'
successor, Joshua, they entered Palestine, but did not finally
become real masters of the entire country until the time of
David, about B.C. 1000. Before the time of Moses, according
to the traditions gathered together in the books of Genesis
and Exodus, the ancestors of the Hebrews had been bedawin
Syrians, who had wandered gradually downward from Meso-
potamia through Syria and Palestine and so on to Egypt,
where they had been enslaved.
Besides the accounts of the ancestors of the Hebrews,
Genesis also contains other legends and traditions, about the
creation of the world, the origin of evil, the inventions of
civilisation, the division of languages, etc. We were already
familiar from Phoenician fragments with the Phoenician forms
of some of these stories. Babylonian and Assyrian dis-
coveries have given us the Babylonian forms of others, and
especially of the Flood legend. The material at present at
our disposal does not enable us to determine to what extent
248 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
we have here race traditions common to a number of peoples
and belonging to the ancestors of Babylonians, Phoenicians,
and Hebrews alike, and to what extent these stories are due to
the direct or indirect influences of Babylonia on Phcenicia and
Canaan (for the Canaanites, from what we know, may be
supposed to have been substantially one with the Phoenicians
in their religion, mythology, etc.). As to the historical
character of such material as cosmogonies, civilisation myths,
and the like, archaeology will presumably never have anything
to say, except in a negative manner. The race traditions,
however, are so far substantiated by archseological discoveries
that we now have reason to suppose that in the second millen-
nium B.C. the Aramaeans were pressing, or being pressed
southward into southern Syria and were roaming among the
settled population of Palestine, or in organised bands seeking
to obtain permanent foothold there. The Moabites, Ammon-
ites, and Edomites, kindred peoples with the Hebrews, were
parts of this Aramsean invasion, which developed a national
life and acquired settled habitations before the Hebrews. Like
the latter, they adopted the language of Canaan in place of
their native Aramsean. So far as our information goes it is
consistent with the Hebrew representation of the ancestors of
the race as Syrian nomads (Deut. xxvi. 5), wandering down
from Mesopotamia through Palestine and into Egypt. One
strange chapter of the Book of Genesis (xiv.) tells of a
conquering expedition of Elamite and Babylonian kings
against the kings of the Jordan valley, and of the surprise
and discomfiture of the conquerors by Abraham the Hebrew.
Babylonian records show us that such an expedition might
well have been undertaken in the latter part of the third
millennium B.C., under the king of Elam as overlord. The
relations of Elam and the Babylonian cities mentioned are
correct for that period, and the names used have either been
found or are probable and correctly formed names. We have,
however, found no record of this invasion, or of such a defeat
of Elamites and Babylonians, or of the name of Abraham, or
of the names of the kings and cities of the Jordan valley
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 249
nentioned in Genesis xiv. It has been suggested that we
lave here an historical incident, borrowed by a Jewish writer
rom a Babylonian tablet and woven into the history of the
HTebrew patriarch Abraham. For the full solution of the
)roblem of Genesis xiv. we must apparently await further
liscoveries.
In spite of the important part which Egypt plays in early
Hebrew tradition, Egyptian discoveries have yielded little of
mportance for the elucidation of the Old Testament. We
ind Semitic nomads in the borderland of Egypt, and Semites
,t one period (the reigns of Amenophis III. and IV.) possess-
ng great influence at the Egyptian court; then a change of
lynasty takes place, the Semitic influence is overthrown, and
he Semites in Egypt are oppressed. This would agree with
he representations in Genesis and Exodus of the favour en-
Dyed by Joseph, if we can place him under Amenophis IV.,
nd the oppression of Israel if we may ascribe that to the
Dllowing Ramesside dynasty. The discovery of the store-city
f Pithom, in Goshen, built under Rameses, seems to sub-
tantiate the historical accuracy of the statement in Genesis
hat such places were built by the Hebrew captives, and to
>oint out the Ramessides as the Pharaoh of the oppression,
"he Pharaoh of the Exodus, according to this scheme, would
ten be Merenphtah or Mernephtah. The only direct mention
f Israel on an Egyptian monument occurs in an inscription
f this monarch, and appears at first sight to overthrow the
fieory set forth above. He is recording his victories, and
i the list of the peoples of Syria and Palestine vanquished
y him he mentions Israel, saying, "The people of Israel
> spoiled ; it hath no seed." This is not an absolute proof
lat the people of Israel were settled inhabitants of Canaan
t that period, but it certainly looks in that direction. As
i the case of the Abraham story of Genesis xiv. above re-
ared to, the question arises whether later Jewish writers
ave not made use of their knowledge of Egyptian history
D attempt to fit into that history Israelite tradition. In the
ase of the story of Joseph, in Genesis, for instance, where
250 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
we have a great deal of local Egyptian colouring, it is notice-
able that, so far as our present knowledge enables us to deter-
mine, the proper names belong, not to the supposed period of
Joseph, but to about the tenth century B.C., the time of
Solomon, when Egypt and Palestine were in close communica-
tion, and the Hebrews were beginning to write down their
history and the traditions of their past. The suggestion is
strong that, whatever tradition may lie behind it, the story
of Joseph was written at that time. Moreover, the story of
Joseph's temptation, his continence in the face of trial, and
his imprisonment under the false accusation of his employer's
wife, are singularly reminiscent of the Egyptian story of the
two brothers. The light thrown by Egyptian discovery on
the residence of Israel in Egypt and its exodus from Egypt is
so far only sufficient to make us aware of serious problems,
which we cannot yet solve.
Egyptian discoveries seem, as I shall endeavour to show in
another chapter, to have elucidated the origin of the Ark and
of the Decalogue. For the references to Egyptian alliances,
matrimonial connexions, invasions, etc., contained in the
books of Kings, Chronicles, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, we have
found no confirmation from the Egyptian monuments, and
indeed no allusions of any description to Israel or Judah, nor,
in fact, anything which throws light, except in the most in-
direct manner, on the external relations of Egypt during
that period.
For the customs and culture of the Israelites we have been
enabled, on the principle of the " unchanging East," to obtain
much light from modern Oriental customs, both in and out of
Palestine, and from Babylonian, Egyptian, and Arabian monu-
ments, inscriptions, and writings, both ancient and modern.
In the history of the religious development of Israel we have
been able, through the assistance largely of archaeology, to
derive much information from the kindred and neighbouring
nations. For the earliest period the pre-Islamic remains of
Arabia furnish the counterparts to early Hebrew uses and
ideas. For later periods many suggestions have come to the
.ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 251
Bible student from discoveries in various fields, such as the
Marseilles sacrificial tablet, which shows a kinship in ritual
prescriptions and ritual names with the Hebrew. Babylonian
ceremonial laws also show a striking resemblance in certain
particulars to the Hebrew Levitical legislation. Egyptian and
Babylonian poems have revealed to us an identity of poetical
construction in Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hebrew, while we
find both Babylonians and Israelites making use in their
religious poetry of identical or similar technical expressions,
like the "how long," and some of the same religious ideas
appear in both Babylonian and Hebrew psalms, like the " secret
faults," referred to in another chapter.
Now and then archasological discoveries instead of re-
solving difficulties present fresh problems, like the discovery
in Egyptian inscriptions of the names Joseph-el and Jacob-el
in Palestine in the third millennium B.C., or the discovery of
the existence of Jerusalem under that name in the fourteenth
century B.C. (which may, however, fall in with the story of
Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem, in Genesis xiv.). Some of
these discoveries raise rather than answer questions with
regard both to the literary and religious development of
Israel. We find the Babylonians having, from the very earliest
period, penitential psalms, strikingly similar, not merely in
metre, but also in conception and sometimes phraseology to
some of the Hebrew psalms. Are we to suppose that the
Hebrews were influenced at a late date by the Babylonians
in the matter of psalmody ? or are these resemblances due to
development from a common source, or to earlier Babylonian
influence? — since we know that Babylon was the dominant
influence in Palestine from B.C. 4000 to a period shortly before
the Hebrew invasion and conquest.
It will be observed that the archaeological material which
the Old Testament critic has at his disposal is almost altogether
the result of researches in other countries than Palestine.
Palestine has been admirably mapped and surveyed west of
the Jordan, and in part east of that stream. The surface
remains have been noted and the evidence of names made
252 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
use of with remarkable success for the identification of ancient
sites. As a result we know the location of the larger part
of the places mentioned in the Old Testament, and of almost
all of those which possessed historical importance. It has
become possible to write a historical geography of Palestine,
and Professor G. A. Smith has pointed out that our geogra-
phical knowledge of the country may be successfully used for
critical purposes, and that so far as the Hexateuch is con-
cerned the geographical identifications support in general the
position of the literary critics. Little, however, has been
done in the way of excavation, and the results of the ex-
cavations which have been undertaken have been disappoint-
ingly meagre. The excavations which have been conducted
at Lachish, Jerusalem, Azekah, Gath, and a couple of
unidentified sites show us that fortified towns existed in
Palestine from about the eighteenth century onward, and that
the country was, in those earlier days, in close connexion with
Egypt, which corresponds with the information obtained
from the Egyptian monuments. We find, also, fortifications
and reconstructions of those cities which may be supposed
to correspond with certain periods of Bible history. A few
inscribed seals and pottery handles have been discovered in
these excavations, indicating conditions of civilisation which
would correspond in a general way with the Bible account;
but no inscriptions have been found bearing directly on the
Bible narrative (unless the pottery handles with royal inscrip-
tions found at some of the sites excavated elucidate and confirm
the obscure passage, i Chron. iv. 23), except the inscribed
stele found on the surface of the ground at Dhiban in Moab,
of Mesha, a contemporary of Ahab, which confirms and
throws further light on the Bible account of the relations of
Israel to Moab, giving us the history of those relations, how-
ever, from quite a different point of view. The Siloah in-
scription, from the water-tunnel under the hill of Ophel, a
private inscription made by the workmen who cut the tunnel,
is interesting palaeographically, and as showing a fairly com-
mon use of writing, but is absolutely without reference,
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 253
historical or religious, and is of somewhat uncertain date.
From the New Testament times we have only the important
Barrier inscription from the Temple. From Palestine itself,
:hen, we have practically nothing in the way of inscribed
•ecords. Until such records are obtained — and it may be
issumed with a reasonable degree of confidence that such
•ecords will be found, for the period before the Exile, by
excavations in Palestine, and for the period following the
ixile, in part, at least, by excavations in Babylonia — we have
ittle or no documentary or monumental material with which
o check the literary results of the critics. A few dated
ecords — a couple of hymns, a few laws, a letter such as
feremiah wrote to the people in Babylonia or the people in
Babylonia wrote to Jeremiah — would give us a definite fixed
)asis from which to work, something by which to check the
inclusions as to date which are now based and must, in our
)resent knowledge, be based largely on subjective data.
To sum up the position at the present moment, our archaeo-
ogical light on the Old Testament has come from foreign
ands and foreign hands, and we have practically nothing
rom Palestine.
From Egypt what we have obtained is perplexing in the
:xtreme. The monuments do not necessarily contradict the
Hebrew records as to the earlier periods, but neither can we
ay with any certainty that they support the Bible narrative,
fhis I say in deprecation of the statements, published from
ime to time, that archaeology has proved the truth of the
3ible story. Such statements are misleading.
Somewhat the same caution is needed with regard to the
liscoveries from Babylonian sources, as they bear on the early
Hebrew narrative. We have gained from those inscriptions
nost important information with regard to the early relations
)f Babylonia, and even of Elam to the West-land, but to say
hat, for example, the truth of the narrative in Genesis xiv.
Abraham's pursuit and defeat of the four allied kings) is
)roved by Babylonian records is dangerously misleading.
iVe have, as the result of Assyrian excavations, Babylonian
254 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
cosmogonies, civilisation myths, a Flood legend, and the like,
which are in many respects strikingly similar to the accounts
of the Creation, the Flood, etc., in the first part of Genesis.
We had already literary fragments containing similar material
from Phrenicia, still more strikingly similar, as far as it went,
to the Bible. Assyriologists point out singular resemblances
in fact and phraseology between the Babylonian ceremonial
laws and the Levitical legislation of the Hebrews, while the
discovery of a few Phoenician antiquities and inscriptions has
revealed an even more singular resemblance between certain
Hebrew and Phoenician rites and rules. Were these things
part of a common inheritance ? Are the resemblances due to
early Babylonian domination in the West-land? Are they
due to later contact with and influence of Phoenicians and
Canaanites or Assyrians and Babylonians on Israelites and
Jews ? Are they due partly to one and partly to another of
these causes ?
With the matter of writing I deal in another chapter. The
problem of the language, the script and the material in or on
which the Old Testament was written is a most interesting
one, and important both as to the date of the writings and
the preservation of the contents.
In conclusion, let me add that some well-meaning apologists
for the Bible, in laying before the religious public the story
of the marvellous increase of our knowledge of antiquity as
a result of the discoveries of the last sixty years, have pre-
sented a picture of the conditions of the early Hebrews not
borne out by the facts and quite contrary to the statements of
the Bible. Because Egypt and Syria and Babylonia were
civilised, it does not follow that the Hebrews of Moses' time
and their ancestors of the patriarchal period, although living
by and in those countries, were familiar with their culture and
their arts. They are represented in the Bible as like the
bedawin Arabs, who wander through or live in those countries
to-day, and are yet absolutely untouched by their civilisation.
The Hebrews dwelt in Egypt for generations, and there is no
trace of Egyptian influence in their customs, laws, rites, or
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESULTS 255
religion, except possibly in the Ark and the Decalogue, both
attributed to Moses, who alone of the Hebrews is represented
in the Bible story as entering into any intimate relation with
the Egyptians. As bedawin the Hebrews entered Egypt, as
bedawin they came out. As bedawin they invaded Canaan.
There first they acquired their civilisation, but not their
religion. Such is the Bible representation. To give us
pictures of Babylonian or Egyptian civilisation in those early
days is beside the point. Our best analogy at present for
the conditions of the Hebrews before the invasion of Canaan
is what little we have been able to learn of pre-Islamic Arabia.
Probably we shall never find archaeological remains or in-
scriptions from, or bearing primarily upon this earliest period.
For the period after the invasion of Canaan it would seem
that we ought, as a result of sufficient excavating, to find
remains, monuments, and inscriptions in Palestine which will
illustrate and expand the Bible narrative in the same way that
excavations in Greece and Italy have illustrated Greek and
Roman literature and expanded our knowledge of the history
of those countries.
CHAPTER XI
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS
WRITTEN
II. ON WHAT?
IN Jeremiah xxxii. n and following verses we have an
account of the use of clay tablets for contract purposes
among the Jews in the time immediately preceding the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, that is, the
beginning of the sixth century B.C. To be sure neither
the translation in the King James nor yet that in the
Revised Version gives any hint of this. The former renders
the eleventh verse, "So I took the evidence of the pur-
chase, both that which was sealed according to the law and
custom, and that which was open." The latter thus, "So
I took the deed of the purchase," etc., almost exactly as in
the earlier version. Literally, word for word, the Hebrew
reads, "And I took the deed (book) of purchase the closed
the commandment and the statutes and the open." This
manifestly makes no sense ; nor, for that matter, do the
translations of the King James and Revised Versions.
The Greek text of this verse reads, according to Swete's
text, " And I took the deed of purchase, the sealed " ; to
which the Sinaitic and Alexandrine texts add, " and the pub-
lished," or "read aloud," which was, I think, part of the
original Septuagint translation, omitted in the Vatican text
because of its unintelligibility to the scribe. The Septuagint
did not have "the commandment and the statutes," and "the
256
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 257
open " or " revealed," which are added in some of the inferior
later texts, manifestly out of our Masoretic Hebrew text.
A comparison of the Septuagint Greek with our Masoretic
Hebrew suggests, then, that the words, "the commandment
and the statutes," were not part of the original text. This
suggestion becomes practically a certainty when we compare,
in the Hebrew original, verse 14, which repeats verse n
without the words in question, thus, "Take these writings,
this deed of purchase, both the closed and this open record,
and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may endure
many days." The Greek reads, " Take this deed of purchase
and the deed that is published (or read aloud)," etc.
The direction to "put them in an earthen vessel" first
gave me the clue to the meaning of the whole. Hanameel
ben Shallum, Jeremiah's cousin, came to Jeremiah while
the latter was imprisoned in the Temple, during the siege
of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and called upon the latter
to buy his property without the walls, at Anathoth, in accord-
ance with the law of redemption. The deed of sale,
described as above, and subscribed by a number of witnesses,
Jeremiah caused to be buried in an earthen jar. Now this
is precisely what the Babylonians used to do not infrequently
with their deeds and records, where they wished to preserve
them with great care. I have found at Nippur deeds buried
in the earth in earthenware jars, as here described ; but those
deeds were on clay tablets. Ordinarily a deed or a record
on a clay tablet was single. The clay tablet, anywhere from
one to twelve inches or even more in length, was inscribed
with the terms of the contract or deed, to which were attached
the names of a number of witnesses and seals. These clay
tablet contracts were ordinarily baked in the sun ; sometimes
they were burned in a kiln. Where particular care was
desired the tablet was inclosed in an envelope of clay, on
which envelope the terms of the contract were again recorded,
and the names of witnesses and seals attached.
The outer and inner records do not, in any case with which
I am familiar, correspond word for word, but for the substance
258 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
one is a repetition of the other. A comparison of the
Hebrew and Greek accounts of the transaction between
Jeremiah and Hanameel will, I think, convince the reader
that the similarity to Babylonian methods extends further
than the burial of the deed in a clay jar. Assume that the
material on which the record of purchase was written was
clay — a clay tablet — and the passage as it stands, or at least
as it stood in the original text before it received the addition
which we now have in the Hebrew in verse n, that is, the
words, "the commandment and the statutes," becomes plain
at once. Because the record was to be preserved with especial
care, therefore it was recorded not on a single tablet, but on
what is known, in the parlance of Assyriology, as a case
tablet, that is, as described above, a clay tablet covered with
an envelope of clay, on which envelope the substance of the
deed within, the names of witnesses, and the like were
recorded. "The open and the closed" are two parts of
the same thing, the one the duplicate of the other.
We have here, then, a notice of the use of clay tablets for
the purpose of contracts, deeds, and the like among the
Hebrews in the time of Jeremiah. The passage became
unintelligible to the later scribes, after the use of clay tablets
was given up. Apparently it was already unintelligible at the
time when the Greek translation was made. Nevertheless,
that translation preserved literally what was found in the
Hebrew, although translating with evident lack of apprecia-
tion of the meaning of the Hebrew words.
At a later date the Hebrew text in verse 1 1 was corrupted
by the insertion of a pietistic gloss, which some scribe had
written on the margin. This scribe was apparently seeking
to find the hidden religious meaning in the words, so dark
to him, "the open and the closed." The same word for
" closed " occurs, so far at least as the consonants are con-
cerned, in Isaiah viii. 16, where Isaiah is directed to "seal
(or close) the law " in his disciples. This suggested to the
scribe a reference in the dark passage to " the law," that
is, " the commandment and the statutes," and he wrote on
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 259
he margin, or above the line, those words, which later crept
ito the text. Such pietistic glosses, be it said, are not
ncommon in the Hebrew text of the Prophets.
While this passage gives evidence of the use of clay tablets
)r contracts, it also shows that at the time when the Hebrew
2xt assumed its final shape, such a use of clay tablets as
rriting material was no longer known, the unintelligible form
i which the passage appears in our Bible being due to the
ict that the scribes were not acquainted with the method
f writing and preserving contracts referred to. In the
riginal the contract was described as written on a tablet
f clay. This was covered with an envelope of clay, also
iscribed, and the whole was buried in the earth in a clay
IT. The same use of clay tablets for documentary purposes
>ems to be referred to in Job xiv. 17, the correct translation
f which is, I think, " Shut up in a packet is my transgression,
tid Thou smearest (clay) over mine iniquity." That is, God
as written the record of Job's transgressions, and inclosed it
i an envelope of clay. He has put it in what Assyriologists
now as a "case tablet."
The Tel el-Amarna tablets, found in Egypt a dozen years L<*-
yo, are evidence of the use of clay tablets for purposes of
fficial correspondence in Palestine and Syria, as well as
abylonia, in the fourteenth century B.C. The discovery
f one clay tablet in the Mound of Tel Hesy, presum-
:>ly the ancient Lachish, by Dr. Bliss, excavating for the
alestine Exploration Fund, a half-dozen years later, con-
rmed this evidence for Palestine. We have, then, clay
.blets in use in Palestine for purposes of official correspon-
snce in the fourteenth century B.C., before the Hebrews
itered Palestine ; and we have clay tablets in use among the
iws for the purpose of contracts at the beginning of the sixth
mtury B.C.
Now this use of clay tablets was the use common in
abylonia and Assyria and the countries under Babylonian
: Assyrian influence. We find clay tablets in use north-
ard in Armenia, and as far to the north-west certainly as
260 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Cappadocia in Asia Minor, not to speak of their use in Syria
and Palestine, as attested by the discoveries at Tel el-Amarna.
Recent excavations at Cnossos, in Crete, reveal a similar use
in the islands of the .^Egean. In Babylonia and Assyria
these tablets were used for all purposes involving writing,
that is, not only for contracts, letters, and archives, but also
for books. A book might consist of one tablet or of a con-
siderable number of tablets. In the latter case the tablets
were arranged with headings and numbers, and the last words
of one tablet were repeated at the beginning of the next,
so as to secure the proper arrangement and to show what
tablets belonged together to constitute one composition. No
direct evidence has yet been given that clay tablets were used
as books, that is, compositions of a literary character, outside
of Babylonia and Assyria, unless the Cretan tablets above
referred to should furnish that evidence. The clay tablets
found in Cappadocia, Syria, and Egypt are letters, contracts,
and the like. It is merely an inference from the use of clay
tablets for books in Babylonia and Assyria that they may have
been so used also in the other countries which borrowed from
them the custom of writing on clay tablets.
While we find this use of clay tablets as writing material in
Babylonia and in Egypt, on the other hand, except for the
Tel el-Amarna records above noted, we find the use of
papyrus and other similar substances, which were inscribed
with ink by means of a pen. This method of writing Egypt
finally taught the world, even Babylon ultimately abandoning
the use of clay tablets to accept in their stead the parchment,
or papyrus, and ink, which had become universal everywhere.
But until a late period Babylonia stood for the use of clay
tablets incised by a stylus, and Egypt for the use of pen and
ink.
There is still one other material that was used for writing
both in Babylonia and Egypt, namely, stone ; but for practical
purposes books cannot be written on stone. Inscriptions
giving the records of victories, or containing codes of laws,
may be written on stone or metal, however, and have been so
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 261
ritten in various lands and countries. Hebrew tradition says
lat the most ancient Hebrew laws, those of the Decalogue,
ere inscribed on stone tablets (Exod. xxxi. 18; Deut. ix. 9).
>ne need not think of large stones of a monumental shape,
ich as are represented in the paintings in our churches and
illeries. Such large tables containing laws or ritual regula-
ons have existed at various places, it is true. Tables of this
laracter were discovered at Marseilles and in Crete, and we
ive reason to suppose that both the Romans and the Greeks
iade use of similar tables. Perhaps there may have been
,bles of that sort erected at some time or another in the
Hebrew temples; but so far as the Ten Commandments are
mcerned, the accounts contained in Exodus and Deuter-
lomy suggest that they were originally written on small
blets, eight, ten, or twelve inches in length, which could be
adily contained in a box, and carried from place to place, as
e are told was the earlier custom in Israel. Such small
blets of stone have been found from time to time in Baby-
nia. I recall one beautiful specimen found by us at Nippur,
>ntaining a list of garments dedicated in the temple of Bel,
contained in the temple treasury.
The same word which is used to describe the stone tablets
the Decalogue in Exodus xxxi. 18 and Deuteronomy ix. 9
used in reference to wooden tablets, panels, or planks, in
her passages in the Bible. In i Kings vii. 36 the word is
ed for the plates or panels on the top of the bases of the
olten sea or bath constructed for the Temple at Jerusalem,
1 which were engraved cherubim, lions, or palm trees,
iccording to the space of each." In Canticles viii. 9 the
)rd is used to mean the panels or planks of a door, and in
sekiel xxvii. 5 it is the planks of a ship. In Habakkuk ii. 2
e same word is used to describe the " tables " on which the
ophet is to write his vision, in such a manner that " he may
n that readeth it." The word for " write," used in this last
ssage, seems to have meant primarily, " to dig " or " cut into."
is only used here and in Deuteronomy i. 5 and xxvii. 8. In
2 latter passage it means clearly to engrave, or cut in stone,
262 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
but in Deuteronomy i. 5 its sense would seem to be more
general. It is usually rendered to " declare," or " set forth " ;
but I am inclined to think that in the original it meant
"write." The word, as stated above, should mean, from its
derivation, "cut into," that is, inscribe with a chisel or a
stylus, rather than write with a pen. The thought in the mind
of the writer of Habakkuk ii. 2 was clearly engraving, or in-
scribing on tablets of stone, metal, or clay. It seems to me
that the writer of Deuteronomy i. 5 was led to his choice of
words by the recollection of the stone tablets of the Deca-
logue, and so he wrote (rendering the passage literally) :
" Moses began to inscribe this law."
In the famous passage, Isaiah viii. i, the prophet is told by
the Lord to take " a large tablet, and write upon it with a
chisel of a man." The tool named here as a writing imple-
ment is the same which is made use of to fashion the molten
calf (Exod. xxxii. 4), while the word used here for tablet
appears to mean a piece of smooth, polished metal. The
same word is used once again in the Old Testament, in the
song about women's vanities, in Isaiah iii. 23, where it is
supposed to mean " mirrors," which were made of metal.
In Job xix. 24 reference is made to an iron stylus to be
used for cutting letters in the rock. This passage is some-
what complicated by the mention of lead in connexion with
the iron pen, so that the writer speaks of the characters as
"graven in the rock with an iron stylus and lead." In Jere-
miah xvii. i we have the same iron stylus, but with a diamond
point. This word for stylus is used in two other places in the
Bible, Psalm xlv. 2 and Jeremiah viii. 8. In both of these
places it is ordinarily rendered "pen." I am not sure that
there is any proper ground for that rendering. Certainly the
root means to " cut into," and the word primarily indicates a
stylus, not a pen.
So much we have which shows us the practice of inscribing
on stone and metal for purposes of permanent record in the
earliest periods of Hebrew history and for the use of clay
tablets for documentary purposes. If we turn to the books of
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 263
eremiah and Ezekiel, we find in use as books papyrus and
larchment rolls, written in ink by pens. So in Jeremiah
:xxvi. 1 8 we read that Baruch wrote with ink in a book at the
lictation of Jeremiah. Jehudi brings this book to the King,
rho, after he has heard three or four columns read, cuts it
nth a penknife and throws it into the fire in the brasier,
sphere it is burned up. Evidently it was written on something
ike parchment or papyrus.
Turning to Jeremiah's contemporary prophet, Ezekiel, we
;et further light on the precise form of the books of that day.
Ezekiel ii. 10 and the following verses tell us of a book-roll
vhich could be unrolled from its staves and spread out. In
Lzekiel ix. 2 we find scribes wearing ink-horns in their girdles.
1 is clear that at the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel book-
oils, such as are used in Jewish synagogues to this day, were
n familiar use, and that there was a class of scribes whose
>usiness it was to write upon parchment, papyrus, etc., and
vho carried ink-horns in their girdles as the utensils and
nsignia of their trade, as do the Oriental scribes of the present
lay. All the paraphernalia of the scribes' art, including the
)enknife (Jer. xxxvi. 23), were then in existence.
But books are referred to in passages earlier than the times
)f Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Were they rolls, written on papyrus
)r parchment ? There are two passages which would seem to
iuggest a different meaning for the word " book " in the earlier
imes. One of these passages is Isaiah xxx. 8, written perhaps
ibout B.C. 702. Here tablet and book are put together as
synonymous. Isaiah is to write on a tablet, and on a book he
s to inscribe it. Following the Hebrew use the same thing is
said twice. The Greek, by the way, renders the Hebrew word
meaning tablet by " tablet of boxwood," and a passage in one of
:he Apocryphal books (second Esdras) refers to the same use
Df boxwood. The Greeks used boxwood tablets for certain
purposes, as the Babylonians used clay tablets. Such wooden
writing tablets have been found in Pompeii. They may
have been used in Palestine also in the Greek period, but I
think it extremely unlikely that they should have been so used
264 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
in the time of Isaiah. The book tablet referred to in Isaiah
xxx. 8 was presumably a tablet of clay, like the book tablets
of the Assyrians.
The other passage of a still earlier date is Exodus xxiv. 7.
Here also the context seems to show that the book which
Moses read was on tablets, but in this case probably of stone.
From these two passages it appears clear that in the earlier
days, until the time of Isaiah certainly, the word "book,"
as used by the writers of the Old Testament, does not
necessarily mean a roll of parchment or papyrus, but may
mean a tablet, or several tablets, of stone or clay. A " book "
was, in fact, anything written. So in the Hebrew use the
same word is used for the law book (Josh. i. 8), the Scriptures
(Dan. ix. 2), a letter (2 Kings v. 5), a deed of sale (Jer. xxxii. 1 2),
an "indictment" (Job xxxi. 35), and a "bill of divorcement"
(Deut. xxiv. i). All these things were equally "books," just
as among the Assyrians and Babylonians. Later the word
came to be restricted to what we know as books, as in Joshua
i. 8 and Daniel ix. 2. It is, perhaps, worth noting that with
Ahaz the kings of Judah, and in the time of Hezekiah the
whole population of Judah, began to come into very close
contact with Assyria. Ahaz copied the fashion of the Assyrian
altar, and, removing the ancient altar, put this new Assyrian
altar in its place (2 Kings xvi. 10 ff.). Proverbs xxv. i suggests
the possibility that Hezekiah copied the Assyrian kings in a
more laudable manner. They collected — and especially the
kings of the last, Sargonid, dynasty, which ascended the
Assyrian throne early in the reign of Hezekiah — clay books in
a great library at Nineveh. Hezekiah seems to have under-
taken something of the same sort at Jerusalem. Were the
books which he collected in the form of clay tablets ? I think
it probable that they were.
But in the century following Hezekiah a great change
took place. The first three-quarters of that century, the
seventh B.C., are almost a blank. We know certainly of
no writings of that period, but immediately afterwards occurs
a notable religious reform, and we enter upon a period of
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 265
eat religious and literary activity, about which we are more
lly informed than about any other period of Hebrew or
wish history. One thing, however, we do know about this
ank three-quarters of a century, namely, that it was a period
icn foreign influences were dominant in Judah. The worship
foreign gods was freely practised, and one of the kings
this period, Amon, bore the name of an Egyptian god.
as the use of papyrus or of skins written upon with ink
troduced at this time? It seems to me at least not im-
obable.
To sum up our rather fragmentary information as to the
iterial on which the Hebrews wrote. It is clear from the
ierences which have been given that at an early time they
:re in the habit of writing records of one sort and another,
:luding laws, on stone ; that at the time of Isaiah they used
3tal in the same manner ; that before the Hebrews entered
ilestine, as early as the fourteenth century B.C., the people
the country made use of clay tablets for documentary
rposes, and that the Hebrews at the time of Jeremiah made
similar use of clay tablets ; that the books mentioned in the
rlier writings of the Hebrews, up to B.C. 700, in the only
o passages where there is any allusion to the material or
ape of the books, appear to have been tablets, and that the
ly writing implement mentioned is a stylus. On the other
nd, we find that while clay tablets were still in use for deeds
d records in the beginning of the sixth century, yet at that
tie books were written with pen and ink on rolls. From
is time onward this was the regular method of book-making.
may be added that with this period, when pen and ink
gan to be used, a great literary activity developed among
2 Jews. They began to collect and preserve everything that
d been written, and to form the laws and histories which
d come down to them into continuous books.
266 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
II. IN WHAT LETTERS?
The earliest writings of which we have information in Pales-
tine were in the Babylonian cuneiform script. The letters
from the Egyptian governors and subject kings in Palestine
to their suzerain, contained on the clay tablets found at
Tel el-Amarna, as also the letter found at Tel Hesy, in Pales-
tine, were written in the Babylonian cuneiform characters, and
almost all were in the Babylonian tongue. It was formerly
supposed that the Phoenician alphabet was invented somewhere
between B.C. 1500 and 2000, but the discovery of these letters
written from Phoenician cities — Sidon, Tyre, Byblus, Beirut,
etc. — to the Egyptian kings about B.C. 1400, not in the com-
paratively convenient Phoenician alphabet, but in the extremely
cumbersome Babylonian cuneiform script, renders it probable
that the Phoenician alphabet had not been invented at that
time.
From about 1400 to the middle of the ninth century B.C.
we have no inscriptions or written material of any description
from Palestine or its neighbourhood. Then we begin to
meet with inscriptions, in diverse places, in an alphabetic
script. What the origin of that alphabetic script was and
when it was invented are as yet unknown. Three theories
of its origin prevail: (i) That it was derived from Egypt, the
most commonly accepted opinion at the present moment,
although I, personally, think it to be erroneous; (2) that it
was derived from the Babylonian cuneiform script, which
seems to me more probable ; (3) that it was derived from the
Hittites. Ancient tradition ascribes the invention of this
alphabet to the Phoenicians, and presumably we may accept
this tradition as correct. So far as our present knowledge goes,
it would seem that it must have been perfected later than the
fourteenth century B.C. and earlier than the ninth. In the
fourteenth century we find the Babylonian script and the
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 267
abylonian language in use; in the ninth the Phoenician
:ript meets us in a completed form,1 and the inscriptions
:e in the various vernacular.
One of the earliest inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet
hich we possess is the famous Moabite stone — an inscription
f King Mesha of Moab (2 Kings iii. 4 ff.), found at Dhiban,
>ibon of the Bible (Num. xxi. 30; Isa. xv. 2), in 1868, in
hich Mesha relates how he threw off the yoke of the king of
srael, recovered and rebuilt the cities which had been taken
r destroyed by the Israelites, expelled the worship of Yahaweh,
id erected altars to Chemosh and Ashtor Chemosh, and
edicated to them the spoils and altars taken from Yahaweh.
'he language of the inscription is Moabite, a language sub-
;antially identical with Hebrew.
To about the same period, a little earlier or a little later,
elongs the Baal Lebanon inscription, on eight fragments of
ronze, found in Cyprus. These fragments were part of the
m of a bowl which had been consecrated to Baal Lebanon
y a servant of Hiram, king of Sidon. How the bowl came
3 Cyprus we do not surely know, but Assyrian inscriptions of
later date record the fact that at least one Sidonian king
Dok refuge in Cyprus to avoid the Assyrian wrath. The
haracters on this bowl are similar to those on the Moabite
tone.
Later Phoenician inscriptions have been discovered in con-
iderable numbers, like the longer Tabnith and Eshmunazar
iscriptions on sarcophagi, found at Sidon, belonging to about
1 The recent discovery of inscribed clay tablets in Crete may substitute
new theory of the origin of the alphabet for those above mentioned. At
resent all we know is that about B.C. 1400, or possibly even earlier, two
ystems of writing existed in Crete ; the one, apparently the earlier,
'elonging chiefly or altogether to eastern Crete, was mainly hieroglyphic
i character, and may have been suggested by the Egyptian hieroglyphics ;
he other, the later and more highly developed form, was entirely linear,
taring no resemblance to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and apparently a
lative development or invention. Both of these scripts were used for
ascribing records of some kind on clay tablets, as well as for the briefer
eal inscriptions.
268 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the fourth century B.C., and other shorter inscriptions of
various dates. These inscriptions have been found through-
out the whole Phoenician world, including also the world of
Carthage. One of the longest inscriptions from the Cartha-
ginian dominions is the tariff of temple dues found at Marseilles,
and belonging, perhaps, to the close of the fifth century B.C.
All these inscriptions, from the fourth century onward, are
written in substantially the same characters, that variety of the
Phoenician alphabet which we call, in the narrower sense, the
Phoenician script.
From the Hebrews themselves we have the Siloah inscrip-
tion, found in the Siloah tunnel under the Ophel hill at
Jerusalem, and now in the Imperial Museum at Constanti-
nople. This inscription was cut in the side of the tunnel by
the workmen at the completion of the work. The characters
on it are practically identical with those on the Moabite stone.
The date of the inscription is still uncertain. It is generally
supposed to belong to the times of Ahaz or Hezekiah, kings
of Judah, at the close of the eighth century B.C. ; but some
scholars would ascribe it to a period as late as the first
century B.C.
Besides the Siloah inscription we have some twenty old
Hebrew seals, and a number of pieces of inscribed pottery
found recently by Dr. Bliss. The dates of these gems and
sherds are not yet well established. The oldest of them may
belong to the ninth century B.C., the same period as the
Moabite stone ; the latest of them may probably be ascribed
to the first or second century B.C. They show a form of the
Phoenician alphabet midway between the Phoenician script and
the script of the Moabite stone, but the differences between
all three are such as to be apparent only to a specialist. This
is the old Hebrew script.
German explorations at Zinjirli, in the extreme north of
Syria on the boundary of Asia Minor, or in the extreme south
of Asia Minor on the boundaries of Syria, according as one
estimates those boundaries, a little more than ten years ago,
brought to light Aramaean inscriptions of the eighth century
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 269
B.C. The earliest of these is on a basalt statue which
Panammu of Jaidi erected to his god Hadad. From about
the same period as these Aramaean inscriptions from Zinjirli
we have inscriptions on Assyrian stone weights from Nineveh,
bilingual clay tablets in Aramaean and cuneiform characters,
and Aramaean inscribed seals. From the eighth century on-
ward Aramaean inscriptions are found in considerable numbers.
We have numerous dockets in the Aramaean script and tongue
on the edges of clay tablets of all dates in Assyria and Baby-
lonia. Of the sixth century B.C. we have a stela from Tema,
in Arabia, about two hundred and fifty miles south-east of
Edom. In the following century we find Aramaean inscrip-
tions in Egypt.
The earliest Aramaean, Phoenician, and Moabite inscriptions
are all strikingly similar, and are called by some the old
Semitic script. By the sixth century B.C. the Aramaean had
developed a character of its own, readily distinguished by
specialists. By the fourth century the classical Phoenician
script had developed among the Phoenicians. The Hebrew
gems show a particular form for certain characters, which
specialists call the old Hebrew script. It was presumably in
this last-mentioned script that the earliest writings of the Old
Testament were written, and this script maintained itself
among the Jews until the second century B.C., or even later.
But no parts of the Old Testament have been preserved
among the Jews in that script. The Samaritan Pentateuch,
however — that is, not the Pentateuch written in the Samaritan
language, but the Pentateuch preserved by the Samaritan
Church, which is nothing more nor less than our Hebrew
Pentateuch — is preserved in a form of this Hebrew writing.
The Samaritan Church grew out of the Jewish Church
about B.C. 400. We are told (Nehemiah xiii. 28) that a
grandson of Eliashib the high priest had married the
daughter of Sanballat, the leader of the Samaritans. When
Nehemiah called upon the Jews to put away their foreign
wives, Eliashib's grandson refused to do so and was expelled
from Jerusalem with his wife. He took refuge with his
270 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
father-in-law, Sanballat, in Samaria, and established the
Samaritan Church. He took with him a copy of the
Pentateuch, which became the Bible of the Samaritan Church.
More conservative than their southern neighbours, the Jews,
the Samaritans never added to this Bible, and have retained
it to the present time, not only in its original language, the
Hebrew, but also in the original ancient writing. The
Samaritan script deviates from the ancient Hebrew only in
its caligraphical character, that is, the effort was made to
render the script as beautiful as possible. It is an ornate
type of the old Hebrew script.
The Samaritan Pentateuch is thus an evidence to us that
at the close of the fifth century B.C. the Jewish Scriptures
were written in the old Hebrew script. The Greek trans-
lation of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the Septuagint,
made for the Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, from the
third century B.C. onwards, shows us that at that period,
also, the Jewish Scriptures were written in the old Hebrew
characters, for there are certain errors in the Septuagint trans-
lation, due to confusion of letters, which could not have
occurred had the script from which the translation was made
been the square character in which the Hebrew Bibles are
written to-day.
Coins struck in the Maccabsean period, circa B.C. 150
onward, also bear inscriptions in the old Hebrew characters,
and even the coins of the revolt of the Jews under Kokba,
135 A.D., have inscriptions essentially in the same character.
But, as we shall see presently, for purposes of ordinary writing,
at least, the old Hebrew was probably giving way to the
modern square script at the close of the Maccabsean
period, and had completely yielded to the square script
for manuscript purposes long before the time of Kokba.
Matthew v. 18 shows us that at the time of Christ the
later Jewish square script was fully established for the writing
of the Law and, presumably, also for the Scriptures in general.
The passage referred to reads : " Till heaven and earth
pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 271
)m the law." The jot is the letter yod, and is referred to as
e smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That is true in
e case of the later square script, but in the old Hebrew
ript the yod is one of the larger and rather more compli-
ted letters.
The later square script was developed from the Aramaean
•iting. Between the fourth and first centuries B.C. we find
e Aramaean script developing in the direction of greater
3gance and greater distinctness. Two side developments
this Aramaean script, which have come down to us, are the
ilmyrene, used in Palmyra, and the Nabataean, found in
scriptions in the territory of Edom, Moab, and Ammon,
id further southward and south-eastward in Arabia, in the
st century B.C. and the first century A.D. One of these
abataean inscriptions found in Arabia dates from the ninth
ar of Harithat ("lover of his people"), who is the Aretas
entioned in 2 Corinthians xi. 32. This Nabataean script
a very elegant and beautiful development from the old
ramaean, but not so clear and legible as the late Hebrew
uare script, which is, on the whole, the best script for
irposes of ordinary use derived from that source.
Specialists think that they find the first traces of the later
uare script over a rock-hewn chamber at Arak el-Emir, in
uthern Gilead, east of the Jordan. Unfortunately, this in-
ription consists of only five letters, which no one has as yet
:en able to read satisfactorily. They are ascribed to the
ar B.C. 176. I have examined these letters on the spot and
ipied them and photographed them, but they did not seem
me to show this change from the old to the later square
ript. Moreover, historical notices of the construction of
rak el-Emir seem to me to render it probable that the
scription belongs to the end rather than to the beginning
the second century B.C.
The first inscription in actual square script which we possess
from the so-called tomb of St. James, in the Kedron Valley
7 Jerusalem. Here there is no mistaking the fact that we
ive the late square script and not the early Hebrew script,
272 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
or any allied form. The date of this inscription is some time
in the first century B.C. Somewhere in that century, it seems
to me the evidence shows us, the change was made in copies
of the Scriptures from the old Hebrew script to the modern
square script. This was, presumably, done for the sake of
beauty and clearness, both of which the square script possessed
in a degree far exceeding the old Hebrew script. The motives
of the change were, therefore, the same which induced the
Samaritans to beautify the old Hebrew script, in which they
have continued to this day to write their Bible. The old
Hebrew script was peculiarly liable to error in this — that a
number of the letters so closely resembled one another that
it was not always possible to distinguish them. This is true
in all the older varieties of the Phoenician alphabet — the
Moabite stone, the old Phoenician inscriptions, the old
Aramasan inscriptions, and the old Hebrew inscriptions — and
it will be observed that diverse transliterations of these inscrip-
tions are always presented by different scholars for the simple
reason that, as before said, certain letters are indistinguishable
one from another. Some mistakes arising from this similarity
of letters in the old Hebrew script appear in our Bibles to-
day; that is, in transliterating from the old Hebrew to the
later square script the scribes, owing to the similarity of
certain letters, made mistakes. In doubtful or difficult passages
errors have, in not a few cases, been corrected by scholars by
retransliterating into the old Hebrew, when it becomes plain
to the eye what the mistake is which was made by the scribes.
But the scribes of the Old Testament did not stop at this
point. In the alphabet of the later square script there is the
same number of letters as in the older alphabet, namely,
twenty-two. There are no vowels in this alphabet, but only
consonants. Certain letters, the smooth and rough breathings
andjv and w were capable of being used to indicate that an a,
an /, or an u vowel was to be pronounced. In general, how-
ever, no indication of the vowel to be pronounced was given
in the text, but only the consonants of the word were written.
This was, of necessity, a very incomplete mode of writing, and
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 273
ve rise to many errors. One can judge, in part, what the
fficulties of reading accurately a script written in this manner
;re if one will take a passage of ordinary English, eliminate
e vowels, and then try to read it by the consonants. To be
re, the English and the Hebrew languages are different in
aracter, and the confusion arising in English, were the
wels to be omitted, would be much greater than the confu-
m resulting from this method of writing in the Hebrew ; but
ie will at least obtain an idea, from such a process, of the
fficulty of accurate reading in the old unpointed texts. In
e case of proper names, for instance, it was impossible to
termine how to pronounce them, without some knowledge
itside of the mere text.
The tradition of the proper pronunciation of the Hebrew
ft, and its correct vocalisation, was maintained orally in the
hools ; that is to say, the consonant text was supplemented
• an oral tradition ; but the more remote that tradition
came from the date of the original text the more liable
became to error. This is well illustrated in the case of
•eek and Latin. Latin was preserved as the Church and
hool language throughout the middle ages, and the tradi-
>n of its correct pronunciation passed down from generation
generation. This tradition was supplemented by an alphabet
uch more developed than the old Hebrew, possessing vowels
well as consonants, and yet to-day we do not know certainly
>w to pronounce Latin. It is a matter of dispute among
holars, and still more is this the case with Greek. Among
e Hebrews there are to-day two very distinct pronunciations
-that of the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, and that of the
shkenazim, or Polish Jews, and yet the differences of pro-
inciation between these two have grown up since vowel
>ints were introduced in the Hebrew text. Even with those
:lps to a correct pronunciation, it has been impossible to
aintain a fixed standard ; much more was this the case before
ose helps were introduced.
The Greeks early felt the need of vowels in the alphabet,
lich they had adopted from the Phoenicians, and the earliest
274 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Greek inscriptions which have come down to us show that they
had already then added or developed vowels. It was Greek
influence which finally led to the development of an apology
for vowels, a system of points, among the Syrians. It was in
the schools of Edessa that this system of pointing, as it was
called, was introduced. First, diacritical signs were used to
distinguish certain letters, indicating whether a letter was to be
pronounced single or double, soft or hard (in the case of
mutes), as vowel or consonant (in the case of semi-vowels), etc.
Then this gave place to a system of vowel points, that is,
points placed by a letter above or below, to indicate the vowel
to be pronounced after that letter, or that no vowel at all was
to be pronounced. This system reached its full development
among the Hebrews not earlier than the seventh century
probably, in Babylonia, and the eighth century in Palestine.
More closely we cannot date it. We know that about 600 A.D.
such points were not used in Hebrew Bible manuscripts, and
that about 900 A.D. systems of pointing were fully developed.
The earliest pointed manuscript which has come down to us
is the St. Petersburg codex of the prophets, dated 916 A.D. ;
but the pointing in this is quite different from the system
which ultimately prevailed among the Jews everywhere, and
which is commonly called the Palestinian system. The earliest
manuscripts having the latter system of pointing which we
now possess are probably not earlier than the eleventh century
A.D. ; but we have information of the existence of such pointed
manuscripts as early as the middle of the preceding century.
By that date, that is, the tenth century A.D., the Hebrew
script had definitely assumed the form with which we are
familiar in our printed Hebrew Bibles, written, as to the con-
sonants, in a square character, the vocalisation indicated by
certain marks above and below the line, and certain points
indicating whether letters are to be doubled or not, whether
mutes are hard or soft, etc. Of course, errors were made in
this pointing or vocalisation of the text, most of them of little
importance, a few materially changing the sense. Many of
these latter can be corrected by a critical process, and often
HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN 275
57 comparison of the Greek translation made while the old
:ript was in use and before any system of pointing had been
itroduced.
To sum up, the Hebrew Scriptures were written originally
i the old Hebrew script, a special Hebrew development of
le Phoenician alphabet. Somewhere, probably in the first
sntury B.C., they were transliterated out of these early
haracters into the later square characters — a script of a very
ifferent description. Originally, the Scriptures were written
i consonants only, and without division of words. Several
snturies after Christ points of various descriptions began
) be introduced to assist the readers in a correct reading
f the text. These points at first were simply diacritical,
'hen they were developed so as to indicate, in a rough way
"or, at the best, the Hebrew system of vowel punctuation
; an extremely rough one, indicating a very small range of
owel sounds actually used), the vowels to be pronounced
fter the respective consonants. Gradually also words were
sparated. At least two complete systems of pointing were
eveloped among the Hebrews. One of these systems we
nd in use in a manuscript of the ninth century. The other,
rhich ultimately prevailed, was in use at the same time, but
.as not come down to us in any manuscript earlier than
he eleventh century A.D. From that century dates our first
omplete manuscript of the Old Testament.
CHAPTER XIII
STONE WORSHIP
A FORM of worship not uncommon among primitive
peoples is the worship of stones. This worship of
stones was peculiarly characteristic of the religion of the
heathen Arabians before the time of Mohammed. At every
sanctuary one or more stones were set up. Generally these
stones were unworked, like the caaba at Mecca. Sometimes
they were rudely hewn. By preference they were oblong
or cone-shaped. These stones served a double purpose.
They represented the god of the sanctuary, and at the same
time they served as altars. The stone was not regarded as
an image of the god, but the god was supposed to have
his regular dwelling in the stone, or to be in some way con-
nected with it, so that through the stone one might come
into peculiar relation with the god. Sacrifice consisted in
pouring the blood of the creature killed upon this stone,
or smearing the stone with blood and pouring out the
rest of the blood in a hole at the bottom of the stone.
Then the sacrificer and his friends ate the flesh of the creature
offered. The blood had been given to God through the stone,
and the people ate the flesh. In case of a covenant or treaty,
seven stones were sometimes set up. The hands of the con-
tracting parties were cut with a sharp stone, the blood from
their hands was put upon the stones that had been set up, and
the god was invoked to witness the treaty or contract between
the parties.
These sacred stones, used for purposes of worship, were
called among the Arabs manzab, and an individual stone was
276
STONE WORSHIP 277
died nuzub, the former being the collective of the latter,
ast of the Jordan and in the Jordan valley not a few evidences
• this stone worship have been found, and occasionally a
'Igal, or rude circle of stones. Some remains of this particular
>rm of stone worship have been found also west of the Jordan
illey, in Palestine proper. Such was the group of stones
/er or about which a temple was built at Tel es-Safi, supposed
i be the ancient Gath, excavated by Dr. Bliss for the Palestine
xploration Fund. Here, in a temple, and partly embedded
i its walls, were found some six conical stones, an ancient
'Igal, a shrine of the primitive inhabitants. One is tempted
• think that there may have been originally seven stones
istead of six, as we find to have been the case at times with
ic Arabs, and as was apparently the case at the well of Beer-
leba, so sacred in the earlier Hebrew times. This rude
irine at Gath was, like the primitive Arabian shrines, a few
icred stones under the open heaven not covered by any
.lilding. At a later date, it would seem, a temple took the
lace of the earlier rude open-air shrine or sanctuary, and
>me of the stones of the gilgal were built into the walls
~ the temple. We find a somewhat similar method employed
i the case of at least one Babylonian temple, where a sacred
one, or baitylion was built into the temple wall. Such stones
presented a ruder and more primitive type of worship. This
ider type of stone worship had, in general, given way in
abylonia at a very early date to a more ornate religion, with
nages of gods and goddesses and highly decorated shrines,
et the sanctity of the ancient stones was such that here and
tere they survived, inclosed within walls, or even embedded
i the wall, but too ancient and too sacred to be entirely done
,vay with. One is reminded of the persistence of the ancient
one worship among the Mohammedan Arabians in the
ipreme sanctity of the caaba at Mecca. Mohammed either
id not feel himself strong enough to abolish the worship
f this stone, or else he was himself in regard to it under the
)ell of ancestral custom, so that while he did away with other
lolatrous practices of the same sort, he yet preserved the
-;8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
caaba, and allowed it to remain as the central sanctuary and
most sacred object of Islam.
The Bible shows us that in the earlier times stone pillars,
stone circles, etc., used in connexion with the worship and
religious rites, both of Canaanites and Israelites, were common
all over the land. Taking up the Book of Joshua, we find that
the first headquarters established by the Israelites west of the
Jordan were at a place called Gilgal, that is, a circle of stones.
According to the account in Joshua iv., this circle was erected
by the Israelites themselves, who took twelve stones out of the
Jordan and set them up there ; and in chapter v. we have an
interpretation of the name gilgal (circle) given as the rolling
away of the reproach of the Egyptians from off the Israelites
by the circumcision at that place. The prophets tell us that
this gilgal, or circle of stones, was in their day regarded as
a sanctuary of peculiar holiness, to which people made
pilgrimages. But this was not the only gilgal west of Jordan.
There is at least one other place of this name mentioned in
the Old Testament, and probably two. One of these gilgals
was in the neighbourhood of Bethel, in the mountains of
central Israel, where we find a place called Gilgiliya existing
to-day. Another, mentioned in Joshua xii. 23, as in the
neighbourhood of Dor, is called to-day Gilgulie. Besides
these two gilgals on the west side of Jordan, the Bible mentions
a gilgal, called also a mazzebah, or collection of stones, in
Gilead. This gilgal, or mazzebah, was erected, according to
Genesis xxxi. 45-54, by Jacob. He sacrificed at it, and made
there a covenant with Laban. It will be seen that this was
precisely the same sort of thing which the ancient Arabs made
use of in connexion with their covenants, as described above,
and the word mazzebah, which we find here and frequently
in the Old Testament, is the same word as the Arabic manzab,
which, as we have seen, was used as the name for these stones.
Not only that ; the Bible also tells us that in the earlier days
the Hebrews did actually sacrifice at such stones, pouring the
blood upon them or at their feet in precisely the same way as
the Arabs did.
STONE WORSHIP 279
It must be said, first of all, that among the Arabs any
tilling of animals for food was sacrifice. The blood must be
*iven to God, after which the flesh might be eaten by the
worshippers. To-day, among the Moslem Arabs, the word
:or killing an animal is zebach, sacrifice. Even when a gazelle
s shot it may not be eaten until the blood has first been care-
:ully poured out — a survival of the old custom of giving the
Dlood to God, the flesh alone belonging to the worshippers,
rhe same word zebach was used by the Hebrews to denote
milling, or sacrifice, and in Leviticus xvii., for example, we find
.t specially provided that the blood of any animal which is
;lain must be given to God before the animal may be eaten,
while in the case of wild animals killed far from the altar the
Dlood must be poured out and covered with earth, very much
is among the Arabs.
In i Samuel xiv. 32-35 we have the account of something
which might have taken place, except for the name of God
there used, among any tribe of Arabians before the time of
Mohammed. The people, an hungered after their victory
aver the Philistines, commenced to slay and eat. Saul was
horrified because they were killing and eating without recog-
nition of God. That was sacrilege, an invasion of the Divine
prerogative. Accordingly he set up a stone, and made them
kill the animals at the stone, pouring out their blood on or by
it, and of this stone it is said : " It was the first altar that
he built unto Yahaweh." Here we have an example of
sacrificing at a rude stone, after the same fashion as the Arabs
used. When the Hebrews entered Canaan they were already
familiar with this use of sacred stones in connexion with
worship, and on the other hand they found the people every-
where through the land of Canaan making use of stones to
indicate the presence of the god. No shrine was complete
unless by it there stood a stone. This practice, we learn
from the Bible, the Israelites were not slow to adopt, and
indeed, as already said, it was something with which they
were familiar from the time of their wandering ancestors.
When at Bethel (Gen. xxxi.) there was vouchsafed to Jacob a
280 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
vision of the angels of God ascending and descending upon a
ladder (as our ordinary translation gives it, perhaps rather
a terrace tower, like the Babylonian ziggurats), he set up
there a stone and anointed it with oil. Oil and fat, be it
said, came to take the place for anointing or pouring upon
these stones which was taken, among the Arabs, by blood.
The very name, Bethel, is suggestive of a sacred stone, or a
baitylion, and the later narrative of the Bible shows us a very
sacred shrine, with a sacred stone, or stones, existing at that
place. Other especially sacred stones are described in the
Bible as existing at Shechem, Mizpah, Gibeon, and Enrogel.
We find in the Bible, especially in the Prophets, constant
mention of the pillars which were set up by the altars at which
the Canaanites and Israelites sacrificed throughout the land.
Now the word " pillar " in our English Bible is the translation
of the Hebrew mazzebah. This, as we have seen, was the
sacred stone which, in the most primitive times, was the
representative of God, and as such received the blood of
the sacrifice. But at a later time we find prophets denouncing
these pillars and demanding their destruction, and finally, in
the time of Josiah, when the high places all over the country
are done away with, these stones also are destroyed. But
long before the days of the prophets, even among the
Canaanites, the mazzebah had ceased to play the role which
it played among the Arabs, as both the representative of God
and also, in a sense, the altar on which the blood was poured.
At the Canaanite and Israelite high places there was, in addi-
tion to the mazzebah, an altar. Sacrifice no longer consisted
in merely pouring out the blood on the stone which stood for
God, and eating the flesh. Fire had come to be used in the
sacrifice, and a part of the flesh belonged to the Deity or His
representatives, in addition to the blood. Nevertheless, the
stones or pillars continued to be, in a sense, the representa-
tives of the Deity, and at the sacrifice blood was always
smeared upon them.
Now it is not surprising to find that, in the course of their
religious development, the Israelites adopted a certain number
STONE WORSHIP 281
' heathen forms and symbols, some of which, in the process
the spiritualisation of religion, they afterwards discarded,
jmetimes such forms dropped out almost unnoticed ; some-
ines there was a fierce struggle. So it has been in the later
story of the development of the Christian religion. We
id in the story of the conversion of the heathen to Christianity
uch strange commingling of heathen feasts, and rites, and
iliefs with Christian. Sometimes these heathen uses were
Dughed off as Christianity matured. Sometimes they formed
e centre of struggle, and gave rise to cruel wars and bloody
;rsecutions. In particular localities, among Christians, a
cred stone has assumed a place of supreme importance as
e representation of God or the power of God, precisely as
e ancient black stone of Mecca, the caaba, became such
sacred representation to Islam. In pre-Reformation times
ere was such a stone at Dresden, enshrined in a church, and
ceiving the worship and adoration of numerous Christian
Igrims in that so-called Christian land. At the Reforma-
jn this black stone of Dresden, with many other heathen
irvivals of the same description, was abolished. In Hebrew
story we find, at the time of Josiah, a reformation strikingly
milar to our own Reformation of the sixteenth century ; and
carry the parallel further, in the reign of Hezekiah, some
venty-five years earlier, began an intellectual and religious
wakening, preparing the way for Josiah's movement, similar
the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, which, in the
story of Europe, prepared the way for the Reformation of
e sixteenth century.
A little before the time of Hezekiah, in the time of Amos,
3 find Gilgal and Beersheba, both of them places where
cred stones had been set up, referred to as shrines held
high honour by the people ; and Amos and the prophets
10 followed him testify that sacred stones stood at all the
tars where Yahaweh was worshipped throughout the country,
ideed, when Isaiah wishes to speak of the glorious days to
>me, when the worship of the Lord shall extend beyond the
Hinds of Israel, so that a place of worship to Him shall be
282 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
found in Egypt also, he speaks of setting up a pillar, or
mazzebah, there. "In that day shall there be an altar to
Yahaweh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a mazzebah
at the border thereof to Yahaweh" (Isa. xix. 19). He cannot
think of the worship of Yahaweh without the accompaniment
of the sacred stone or pillar.
With King Josiah comes the recognition by the religious
leaders of the people that such things are gross and material,
and hindrances to the true spiritual worship of God. Prophets
denounce them, and reformers break them in pieces. One
might show how this spiritualising process goes on, still further
helped by the Exile, so that finally not only pillars and other
similar representations of God disappear, but even the sacred
Ark and the Urim and Thummim, the lots which the priests
used to cast, in the days of Saul and David, before the ephod
or before the Ark, to determine the will of God.
With Christ we come to a still more advanced spirituality,
where the Temple itself is robbed of its sanctity, the veil is
rent in twain, and the spiritual indwelling of God in man
takes the place of the material Temple, with its dark Holy
of Holies, the representation of the abiding-place of God
among men. It is a slow process of education, from the rude
stones, such as stood on the hill at es-Safi, where a primitive
people worshipped its God, up through the Philistine or
Canaanite temple, with its altar and its pillars sacred to the
Baal, or master of the land ; through the Israelite adoption
of this shrine as its place of worship and the identification
of its Lord, Yahaweh, with the Baal, or master of that region,
and its use in His worship of many of the terms and practices
with which the Canaanite Baal had been worshipped there;
on through the period of reformation, when such shrines,
with their altars and their pillars, were destroyed, and their
priests gathered together, so far as might be, at Jerusalem,
to worship Yahaweh there in the one great Temple, where
His presence was represented in the dark Holy of Holies
by the Ark, and by the cherubim ; on through the destruction
of that Temple and the disappearance of Ark and cherubim ;
STONE WORSHIP 283
irough the exile in Babylonia, where the people were com-
elled to worship God without outward symbol or indication
f His presence, and even without sacrifice ; on, once more,
irough the period of the new Temple, where God was
orshipped again with the sacrifice of bulls and oxen, and
here the place of His special presence was indicated by
dark inner chamber, but without Ark or cherubim ; up to
le culmination of this development from materialism into
Diritualism, when the veil was rent in twain, and God declared
) reside in no temple made by hands, neither in Jerusalem,
or yet in Samaria, and the sacrifice of bulls, and goats, and
tieep, and doves was done away with for ever, spiritual sacrifice
nd spiritual service being substituted therefor.
CHAPTER XIV
THE ARK
IN Acts vii. 22, in the speech of Stephen, it is said that
" Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians."
This is not derived from the Old Testament account of Moses,
but from later Jewish tradition. From the statement that
Moses was rescued by an Egyptian princess and brought up
under her direction, and from the further statement that he
contended with the Egyptian sorcerers before Pharaoh, Jewish
tradition developed the idea that Moses was instructed in all
the wisdom of Egypt.
The story of Moses, as we find it in the Book of Exodus,
represents him as the son of a Levite woman. Strangely
rescued from death, he was placed in a papyrus box smeared
with bitumen, and laid among the flags on the brink of the
Nile. A royal princess found him, and conjecturing that he
was a Hebrew child, gave him to a Hebrew woman to nurse,
the Hebrew woman selected for that purpose being his own
mother. Reared among his own people, his sympathies were
with the oppressed Hebrews, and finally, having slain a brutal
taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew, he fled into the eastern
desert. There by marriage he became a member of the
family or clan of a certain Hobab, or Reuel, a priest in the
mountain regions southward or south-westward from Edom.
The shrine which this Hobab, or Reuel, served was not, of
course, a temple, but merely a sacred place, a stone, or stones,
presumably regarded from time immemorial as holy, and a
place of pilgrimage for the tribes round about. At least such
284
THE ARK 285
is in general the character of those holy places which were
rved by priests.
A priest among the Arabs was not a sacrificer, but rather
e interpreter of the oracles of God at some sacred place,
ic who knew its traditions and expounded to the people its
lys. The gods were localised. A god dwelt at some given
iot, generally in a sacred stone, and was sought there by
ose who would worship him. His circle of worshippers
insisted ordinarily of the inhabitants of the immediate
cality. Sometimes, however, his worship was more ex-
nded, tribes from a distance making pilgrimages to his
irine. Holy places which were sufficiently important to be
sited by distant tribes had, ordinarily, a priest or priests,
it that was not the case with more insignificant holy
aces. The priestly family in charge of a holy place did
)t necessarily belong to the tribe within whose boundaries
at holy place was situated; but where the priest did not
ilong to the tribe it may be assumed that another tribe
iginally occupied that territory, and that the priestly family
longed to the tribe of those former occupants.
The family to which Moses attached himself was, if we
ay judge from the scant references in the Bible, a priestly
mily, officiating at a holy place, not belonging originally
i the people of that locality, but handed down from an
irlier time and possessing a considerable degree of sanctity,
i that its god was worshipped by others besides the denizens
' the immediate neighbourhood.
The Bible further tells us that Moses, by the command of
od, went back to his own people, to bring them out of Egypt
• worship Him in the wilderness ; that he was aided in this
y his brother, Aaron ; what wonders they wrought, and how,
iving started to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, they were
liraculously saved from the pursuing Egyptians. Arrived
i the wilderness, we find the old priest, Moses' father-in-law,
.ving him advice and instruction. The Bible narrative thus
iggests to us the close connexion between the religion of
>rael and the religion of the wandering bedawin, who wor-
286 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
shipped God at the holy place where Moses' father-in-law
was priest. In point of fact, the religious ideas of the
Hebrews, before the time of Moses, were substantially the
same as those of the Arabians before the time of Mohammed,
as is shown by a comparison of the Bible references to ancient
Hebrew customs and practices with the customs and practices
of the pre-Mohammedan Arabians.
But with all this I am not concerned at present, except
only to say that the Bible constantly indicates the methods
of God to be of this nature : He teaches man through that
which man has learned from his own experience and the
experience of those who went before him ; teaches him in
the beginning through forms and methods which seem to us
of a later age strange and barbarous, because we have
advanced so far; teaches him through things which shall
afterwards be laid aside when they have served their purpose.
And so the revelation through Moses is not an entirely new
thing, any more than the revelation through Christ. It
attaches itself to what had gone before, but puts into it a
new spirit and a new life. Many of the forms and practices
of the religion of Moses' time were destined to drop away
at a later date, just as in the case of Christianity it was found
necessary, in course of time, to drop the Jewish rites and
ceremonies which were at first made use of in the Christian
Church.
This story of Moses, as we find it in the Bible, shows us
a certain connexion with Egypt, but not necessarily an
intimate acquaintance with Egyptian religion or with Egyptian
civilisation. The Hebrews, according to the Old Testament
account, lived in Egypt, separate from the Egyptians, main-
taining their own customs and rites, and rejecting everything
Egyptian. In the later civilisation of Israel we find nothing
that can be referred to Egypt. Outside of the deliverance
from Egyptian bondage, the remembrance of which played
a great part in the making of the people of Israel, there is
nothing in their culture which attaches itself to Egypt until
long after the Babylonian exile. For a long time, therefore,
THE ARK 287
seemed to me improbable that Moses or the Israelites had
irived anything of their religion from Egypt. But there is
ie thing, and that of the first importance, which I have at
st been forced to conclude may be, and seemingly must
*, connected with the influence of Egyptian religion upon
[oses.
I have already said that the gods of the Arabians were
calised, and a study of Hebrew literature shows that this
icient idea of the god as inhabiting a locality was strong in
irael also. So when Elijah would seek the presence of
ahaweh, the God of Israel, he travels to Horeb (i Kings
x. 8). Deborah sings (Judges v. 4) that Yahaweh's habitation
in Seir, which is the same as Horeb, and that He comes
tence to lead the armies of Israel to victory against their
sathen foes. So also Habakkuk (iii. 3) sings that Yahaweh's
welling is in Paran or Teman, which is again the same place
; Seir or Horeb.
Now it was necessary that the Israelites should advance
syond this stage of localising God in Horeb, or else,
itering Palestine, they would gradually cease to be wor-
lippers of God — Yahaweh, Whose dwelling was at Sinai
r at Horeb — and would become worshippers of the gods
F the land into which they had entered. However much
icy might think of Horeb or Sinai as the original home
f their God, in some form He must go with them into
alestine. In the new religion given by Moses this
Dntinuing presence of Yahaweh was provided for through
ie Ark.
The Ark is unlike anything which we find among the
.rabians, and indeed there are only two analogies which seem
lirly available for comparison. In Egypt representations of
ie gods were carried about in ships. Originally capable of
avigating the Nile and its canals, these ships were finally
3 reduced in size that they could be carried on the shoulders
f men. In the cabin or box occupying the central part of
ie ship was some representation of the Deity, but precisely
hat in any given case we do not know, as the cabin or
288 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
box was kept carefully covered up and its contents concealed
from view.
In Babylonia there were god-ships of a similar character.
These also seem to have been carried on the shoulders of ,,
men, but we have no representations of them. At a later date ^
the ship developed into a box, carried by poles passed through
rings on the sides. On the Assyrian bas-reliefs these boxes
are represented as without covers, and small figures of the
gods stand in them looking out over the sides. It is possible
that this is a mere artistic convention to show what were the
contents of the box, and that in reality the box was covered
and the images of the gods invisible. But at least it shows
that the Assyrian did not exercise that extreme care to prevent
the interior from being seen which we find in the case of the
Egyptian god-ships. Finally we find a litter substituted for the
box, and the god seated upon a throne on this litter, which is
carried by poles on the shoulders of men.
Was the Hebrew Ark suggested by the ships or boxes used
in Egypt or in Babylonia to carry the gods in procession ? It
seems to me that such was the case, and until recently I had
supposed that the suggestion came from Babylonia; that the
Ark was a tradition from the ancient times when the ancestors
of the Hebrews were in close connexion with Babylonia. But
the difficulties connected with this view are very great, and
I am now inclined to suggest that the idea came from Egypt,
and that in the Ark we have an evidence of information pos-
sessed by Moses with regard at least to certain of the salient
features of Egyptian religious practices.
The name Moses is of doubtful origin. No altogether
satisfactory etymology of it has been given. Sayce supposed
that he had found the word in Assyrian. Some of the best
scholars to-day consider it Egyptian, and compare with it such
Egyptian names as Thutmosis, Ahmosis, and the like. The
Septuagint Greek translators of the Old Testament were of the
same opinion as to its Egyptian origin. Aaron and Miriam
also are claimed by some as Egyptian, and the name of
Phinehas, the high priest, the son of Aaron, does actually
THE ARK 289
seem to be Egyptian. I should not like, however, to base
anything upon these Egyptian etymologies, but only to call
attention to the possibility that these names are Egyptian.
Another point seems to me of much greater importance.
The contents of the ship or box in Egypt and Babylonia were
representations of the Deity, in one case certainly by images
and in the other probably. But the contents of the Hebrew
Ark were two tables of stone containing the Decalogue. The
direct narratives of Exodus and Deuteronomy with regard to
the contents of the Ark are confirmed by the indirect evidence
contained in its name, for from the very earliest time onward,
as we learn from the Books of Samuel, one designation of the
Ark was "Ark of the Covenant."
Now we have as yet found no traces in Babylonia of the
existence of a sacred law. In Egypt, on the other hand, such
a law did exist. We have not, it is true, found the law itself,
but we have found sufficient evidence of its existence. Chapter
cxxv. of the Book of the Dead contains the justification of the
dead in the lower world. The dead states —
"I have not done so and so,
I have not done so and so,
I have not done so and so,"
through a long and varying number of negations. But these
negations suppose the existence of a law forbidding the things
enumerated. It is not necessary to suppose that that law was
written out in all its details. Possibly it may have been
an oral instruction throughout, but, as the different copies
of chapter cxxv. of the Book of the Dead show, it was certainly
a constant quantity in its main prescriptions. Moreover, it
was recognised as a sacred, God-given law, which it was
incumbent upon every one to keep. This law contains, as we '
know from the negations in the Book of the Dead, substanti-
ally the entire second part of our Decalogue — "Thou shalt
not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery," etc. It had, there-
fore, a high ethical character ; but, on the other hand, these
ethical prescriptions were mixed in with matter of a ritual,
u
290 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
non-ethical, and often trivial character, the great moral com-
mandments and the most insignificant ritual prescriptions
being placed on the same footing side by side.
The relation between this sacred religious law of the
Egyptians and the Hebrew Decalogue may be described as
something the same as the relation of the Lord's Prayer to the
teachings of the rabbins. It has often been pointed out that
the petitions of the Lord's Prayer may all be found here and
there among the teachings of the Jewish rabbins. What
makes that prayer so wonderful is that it takes just the great
and high things, leaving out all that is insignificant and
trivial. It is its inspiration to do this which places it above
any prayer that man has ever uttered.
My suggestion, then, is that Moses was acquainted with the
wisdom of Egypt, in so far that he knew the practice of carry-
ing the god in a ship-box, and was acquainted with at least the
main features of the sacred religious law, on the observance of
which the future happiness of the Egyptian was supposed to
depend.
And now a word about the use of the Ark among the
Hebrews. It differed from the use of the ship or box among
the Egyptians and Babylonians, as their conditions differed.
In the case of both these nations the gods had settled abodes
— temples, and the ships were used merely to transport them
about the country, that they might see and bless it, or to
convey them from temple to temple in connexion with certain
feasts. But the Ark of the Israelites had at first no temple in
which to dwell. Its covering was a tent, and where the Ark
and its tent were, there was God. So when the Ark was
taken out they said (Num. x. 35), "Rise up, Yahaweh, and
let Thine enemies be scattered ; and let them that hate Thee
flee before Thee." And when it came back they said (36),
" Return, Yahaweh, unto the ten thousand thousands of
Israel." In the Book of Samuel we read that the Ark was
carried out to battle, in order that Yahaweh might fight with
and for His people. This use continued certainly until and
during the time of David. After David's time the Ark passes
THE ARK 291
out of sight. We are told that it was placed in the Holy of
Holies of Solomon's Temple, which was the especial abode
of Yahaweh. Whether or not it was ever brought out for
any purpose we do not know. The Bible is silent, and it is
generally assumed that the Ark was henceforward stationary.
God, Yahaweh, was now localised in the Temple at Jerusalem,
and especially in the Holy of Holies in that Temple. That
the Ark continued to play an important part in the religion of
the people of Jerusalem up to the Exile we may conjecture,
however, from a reference in the Book of Jeremiah (Jer. iii. 1 6),
"They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Yahaweh:
neither shall it come to mind : neither shall they remember it;
neither shall they visit it." It is clear from this that the Ark
of the Covenant of Yahaweh was considered an especial
representative of the presence of Yahaweh and a guarantee
of His protection, and that in the time of Jeremiah it played
some part in the ritual. Jeremiah, after his fashion with
regard to all externals, holds it light, and declares that the
time shall come when it will be done away with, and no one
will think of it any more. That time came with the Exile.
The Ark was destroyed. It had done its work, and that
a very important work. Its use and purpose had been to
carry God for the Israelites from Sinai and Horeb into
Palestine. Without the Ark, Israel entering Palestine would
soon have forsaken Yahaweh its God, and become a worshipper
of the gods of the land. It preserved among the people a
consciousness of the presence of Yahaweh. By means of
the two tables of the commandments which were in it, it
held up to the Israelites the thought of a God of ethical law.
But the time came when the tables of stone on which the
Law was written, with the Ark which contained them, might
have become a mere fetich, reverenced for their antiquity and
regarded as being themselves practically God. This outward
must be done away with, the Law of God must be graven, as
Jeremiah said, on the hearts of men, and God known as
residing not in the Ark or by the Ark, but with His people
everywhere.
292 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Moses made an immense step forward in religion when,
by the inspiration of God, he gave the Israelites the Ark and
its tables of stone. But the day came when, if the Israelites
were to advance further Godward, the Ark must be destroyed.
Its destruction was another step on the Godward path which
was to bring man at last face to face with the omnipresent
God, without temple, without ark, and without tables of
stone.
CHAPTER XV
THE BOOK OF DANIEL
ON grounds of internal evidence the Book of Daniel was
ascribed to the time of Antiochus IV. (B.C. 173-164),
even before archaeological discoveries in Babylonia and Persia
had placed in our hands contemporary records of the kings
of Babylon and Persia mentioned in that book. Those dis-
coveries have, however, played so great a part in confirming
the literary and historical evidence that I have placed this
discussion of the problems of the Book of Daniel in the section
devoted more particularly to Archaeology and the Bible.
It is now generally admitted that the Book of Daniel was
composed somewhere in the period B.C. 168-164. In general
the arguments for this date are as follows : —
1. In the Jewish canon Daniel stands, not among the
Prophets, but in the Writings or Hagiographa, and toward the
very end of those Writings, immediately after Esther and
before the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The
force of this argument will be appreciated by reference to the
first chapter of this volume, on the English Bible.
2. While Jesus Ben-Sirach, who wrote somewhere between
B.C. 290 and 190, mentions Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
twelve Prophets, he does not refer to Daniel.
3. In Daniel ix. 2 reference is made to a collection of sacred
books in which, from the context, it is clear that the Book of
Jeremiah was included. As the Prophets were not collected
as sacred books before, at the earliest, the third century B.C.,
293
294 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
this reference would imply a time of composition as late as or
later than that date.
4. The evidence of language shows that the book must have
been written after the commencement of the Greek period.
The Hebrew, in which part of the book is composed, is of
a corrupted and late form. The Aramaic, in which the other
half of the book is composed, is a Western Aramaic dialect,
akin to that spoken in and about Palestine, and late, not early.
There are a number of Persian words used in the book, in-
dicating corruption of the language by contact with the
Persians, and a few Greek names for musical instruments,
one of which, psanterin, is clearly the Greek psalterion> with
the substitution of n for /, a Macedonian dialect peculiarity,
indicating that the word was borrowed from the Macedonian
conquerors.
5. The use of the name Chaldean to signify not a people
or a nation, but a caste of wise men.
6. Historical inaccuracies and peculiarities, as (a) the use
of Nebuchadnezzar for Nebuchadrezzar ; (b] the story of the
seven years' insanity of Nebuchadnezzar ; (<:) the statement
that this Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and carried away
some of the sacred vessels in the third year of Jehoiakim
(Daniel i. i, 2); (d) the statement that Belshazzar was the
last king of Babylonia and Nebuchadrezzar his father, whereas
we know from the records that Nabonidus, a man in no wise
related to Nebuchadrezzar, was the last king of Babylonia (he
had a son, Belsarusur, who had apparently become the king
Belshazzar of Daniel) ; (e) the statement that Darius the Mede,
son of Ahasuerus, became, after the death of Belshazzar,
"king over the realm of the Chaldeans," whereas we know
from the records that Cyrus succeeded Nabonidus, and was in
turn succeeded by Cambyses, he by Pseudo-Smerdis, and he
by Darius Hystaspis, a Persian ; (/) there are further histori-
cal inaccuracies, which I shall not endeavour to point out here
in detail, with regard to the Median, Babylonian, and Persian
kingdoms, the order of succession of which is confused, and
the names and succession of the Persian kings.
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 295
7. The above arguments would go to show that the book
was not written during the Captivity and the beginning of the
Persian period immediately succeeding the Captivity, but at
a period following the conquest of Persia by Alexander the
Great. But within this period we are able to fix the date still
more exactly from historical allusions in the book. The
various visions contained in the Book of Daniel deal with a
period closing some time in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.
So, in the second chapter, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and the
seventh chapter, Daniel's dream, in the first year of Belshazzar,
we have a view of history from the Chaldean or Babylonian
empire of Nebuchadnezzar on to the time of the Seleucidae.
First we have the Chaldean empire ; then, according to the
peculiar history of the Book of Daniel, the Median, then the
Persian, and then the Macedonian. In the second chapter,
Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue, there proceeds out of
the Macedonian kingdom a divided kingdom, part of iron
and part of clay, representing the divisions of Alexander's
Macedonian empire between the Seleucidse and the Ptolemies.
The seventh chapter, the dream of the four great beasts,
carries this history down somewhat further. Out of the
Macedonian empire arise ten new kingdoms, represented by
ten horns, among which comes up another little horn that
roots out three kingdoms, etc. Here we have clearly an
allusion to Antiochus IV.
In the eighth chapter the Medes and Persians are repre-
sented as a sort of dual empire under the figure of the two-
horned ram, one horn representing the Medes and the other
the Persians. The ram is overturned by a he-goat from the
West, with a horn between his eyes, representing Alexander
the Great. Out of this horn came in time four horns toward
the four winds of heaven, and out of them a little horn,
which took away the continual burnt offering and cast down
the place of the sanctuary. The reference is clearly to the
profanation of the sanctuary at Jerusalem by Antiochus
Epiphanes in B.C. 168.
The twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses of the ninth
296 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
chapter give us somewhat further details. They contain refer-
ences to the deposition of the high priest Onias, in B.C. 175,
his assassination, in B.C. 172, the profanation of the sanctuary,
in B.C. 1 68, with the cessation of sacrifice and oblation, and
apparently, also, the purification of the altar, in B.C. 165.
The tenth and following chapters enter much further into
historical details covering the same general period. For the
earlier part of that period the references are vague and in-
correct. The writer knows of only four Persian kings, suc-
cessors of Darius the Mede (xi. 2). As we proceed, however,
the history becomes more accurate and detailed, until at last,
at the close of the first or the beginning of the second century
B.C., it becomes a chronological record of great historical
value, recounting the relations of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid
kings and their wars for the possession of Palestine. In xi. 18
there is an allusion to the victory of the Roman Consul,
Lucius Scipio, over Antiochus III., at Magnesia, in B.C. 190;
in verse 30 to the order of Popilius Ltenas, speaking in
behalf of the Roman Senate to Antiochus Epiphanes, to leave
Egypt, in B.C. 168. Then follow a number of verses giving
an account of the persecution of the Jewish religion by
Antiochus and the actions and views of the latter, which
agree, in general, with the representations of the First Book
of Maccabees, ending with a notice of Antiochus' death, in
verse 45. But the notice of his death is not in accordance
with historical fact. He is here represented as pitching his
tents in Palestine, between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean
Sea, and, apparently, dying there, whereas we know that he
died in an expedition against Labae, in the East. The fur-
ther representations of this particular prophecy, contained in
chapter xii., are cast in vague and general terms. The natural
conclusion would seem to be that the writer was unfamiliar,
except from vague and inaccurate tradition, with the history of
the period preceding the Alexandrian conquest; and that, on
the other hand, he had a personal and accurate acquaintance
with the history of the times of Antiochus III. and IV. up
to about B.C. 165 ; that at that point his knowledge ceased.
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 297
Accordingly, the composition of the book, or at least of the
final apocalypse of the book, may be assigned to the year
B.C. 165 or the beginning of the year 164 — that is, very
shortly before the time of the death of Antiochus IV.
8. Further arguments might be presented from the theology
of the book and from its relation to the books preceding and
following it. It is the first book in which we have an ex-
pression of the belief in the resurrection of the dead. It
represents a comparatively developed angelology, which we
do not find in any preceding book, but the beginnings of
which we may observe in the visions of the post-Exilic prophet
Zechanah. It is in the prophecies of this latter prophet, also,
that we find the beginnings of the apocalyptic method, which
meets us fully developed in the books of Daniel and Enoch,
the earlier portion of which last-named book is commonly
ascribed to the commencement of the second century B.C.
From this time onward, well into the Christian era, we have
an abundance of apocalypses, and apocalyptic writing takes
the place vacated by the cessation of prophecy.
But as the object of this chapter is rather to deal with the
Book of Daniel in the light of modern archaeological dis-
coveries, I shall pass on to a consideration of some of the
historical peculiarities of the book in comparison with the
Persian inscriptions.
As already indicated, history is strangely turned about and
confused in the Book of Daniel. A curious example of this
confusion we find in the relation of the conquest of Belshazzar
by Darius. According to the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadrezzar
was succeeded by his son Belshazzar, and Belshazzar was
conquered and slain by " Darius the Mede." Now no
Belshazzar son of Nebuchadrezzar ever reigned in Babylon,
and the only Darius who can possibly be intended by the
designation " Darius the Mede " is Darius Hystaspis, who
was not an almost immediate successor of Nebuchadrezzar,
but was separated from him by several reigns; neither was
it he who overthrew the Babylonian empire and established
298 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the rule of the " Medes and Persians." Nebuchadrezzar was
succeeded by Evil-Merodach, he by Neriglissar, he by
Labashi-Marduk, and he by Nabonidus, who was overthrown
by Cyrus. Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses, he by Pseudo-
Smerdis, and he by Darius. It is difficult, at first sight
certainly, to understand how in the stories contained in the
Book of Daniel history can have become so confused as to
bring Darius into such close proximity to Nebuchadrezzar,
and to make him the conqueror of Babylon in the time of
Nebuchadrezzar's son. Some light is thrown upon this
difficulty by Darius' Behistun inscription. In that inscription
(1. 31 ff.) we read this account of a revolt against Darius in
Babylon : —
" Further there was a Babylonian, Nidintubel his name, son
of Aniri, who rebelled in Babylon, lying to the people, and
saying, ' I am Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus.' Then all
the Babylonians went over to that Nidintubel, Babylon
rebelled, he made himself king over Babylon. . . . Thus
saith Darius the king : Then I marched to Babylon and
against that Nidintubel who called himself Nebuchadrezzar.
The army of Nidintubel was placed upon ships; the shores
of the Tigris they occupied."
The next two lines are not altogether intelligible in detail,
but state in general that Darius forced the passage of the
Tigris and defeated the army of Nidintubel.
" On the 26th day of the month Kisleu we delivered battle.
Thus saith Darius the king : Then I marched toward Babylon.
I had not yet reached Babylon when Nidintubel, who had
said, ' I am Nebuchadrezzar,' marched against me with an
army to deliver battle, to a city named Zazanu on the shore
of the Euphrates. There we joined battle. Ormuzd was my
strong helper; by the grace of Ormuzd I smote the army
of Nidintubel. One part was driven into the water, and the
water swept them away. We joined battle on the second day
of the month Anamaka. Thus saith Darius the king : Then
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 299
this Nidintubel with a few mounted soldiers came to Babylon.
Then I came to Babylon. By the help of Ormuzd I took
Babylon and captured Nidintubel ; and I slew Nidintubel in
Babylon."
Further on in the same inscription (1. 84 ff.) Darius
describes another revolt against himself of the Babylonians,
in which again the pretender to the throne claimed to be
Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus.
" Thus saith Darius the king : While I was in Persia and
Media the Babylonians revolted against me for a second time.
A. man named Arakhu, an Armenian, son of Haldita, arose
igainst me. There is in Babylonia a district named Dubala.
From this place he arose against me. He deceived the people
Df Babylon, saying, ' I am Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus.'
Thereupon the people of Babylon rebelled against me and
went over to this Arakhu. He took Babylon : he became
dng in Babylon. Thus saith Darius the king: Then I sent
in army to Babylon. Vindafra, a Mede, my servant, I made
:ommander ; I sent him out, saying, ' Go thither and smite
:he army of the rebels.' Ormuzd brought me help; by the
^race of Ormuzd Vindafra took Babylon and smote the army
3f Babylon, the rebels, and took them captive."
In 1. 90 ff. he mentions in succession the various pretenders
ivho rebelled against him at one time or another. Gomates,
i Magian, who claimed to be Bardes son of Cyrus; Ashina,
ivho raised a revolt in Elam; Nidintubel, a Babylonian, who
:laimed to be Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus, and who
made himself king of Babylon ; Martes, a Persian, who led
i rebellion in Elam ; Phraortes, a Median, who claimed to
be Xathrites, of the race of Cyaxares, and who raised Media
igainst Darius ; Sitrantachmes, a Sagartian, who also claimed
:o be a descendant of Cyaxares and raised part of the same
:ountry on much the same grounds as the preceding ; Parada,
i Margian, who led a rebellion in Margu ; Veisdates, a
Persian, who claimed to be Bardes son of Cyrus and raised
300 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
a rebellion in Persia ; and Arakhu, an Armenian, who claimed
to be Nebuchadrezzar son of Nabonidus and raised a revolt
in Babylon. It is worthy of note that both pretenders to
the throne in Babylon make use of the name Nebuchadrezzar,
although according to Darius each claimed also to be the son
of Nabonidus. It is clear that Nebuchadrezzar was the name
to conjure by in Babylonia, so that when a man sought to
raise a revolt he laid claim to this name as a sure means
of arousing popular sentiment in his favour. This may serve
to show us that that confusion of Babylonian history in the
Book of Daniel which sets chronology at nought and gathers
everything about the name of Nebuchadrezzar was not
altogether an invention of later Jewish legends, but that
it had its origin in the popular ideas of the Babylonians
themselves.
In addition to the record of the two pretenders named
Nebuchadrezzar contained in the Behistun inscription, we
have also some contract tablets from the reign of one or the
other of these two pretenders, presumably the first. In the
fourth volume of Schrader's Sammlung von assyrischen und
babylonischen Texten are given three of these documents from
the reign of " Nebuchadrezzar III.," of which two are dated in
"the accession year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon,"
and one in " the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of
Babylon." The names of the members of the Egibi family
mentioned in these tablets are the evidence that they do not
belong to the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II., but to that of
Nebuchadrezzar III.
It may be worth noting in connexion with the dates of
these tablets, which give us for the duration of the reign of
this Nebuchadrezzar III. portions at least of two years, that
at the close of the third book of his history Herodotus
describes the revolt of Babylon and its siege by Darius for a
period of a little more than twenty months. After he had
taken the city he treated it, according to Herodotus, with
great severity, in striking contrast with the treatment it had
received from Cyrus, dismantling its fortifications, and
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 301
ndeavouring to destroy for ever its capacity to do mischief,
'his siege naturally impressed itself upon the popular imagi-
ation more strongly than the almost friendly capture of the
ity by Cyrus, and hence in folk-history Darius, and not Cyrus,
ecame the conqueror of Babylon. It is this folk-history which
; perpetuated in the Book of Daniel.
Precisely why Belshazzar should play such an important
art in the story I cannot conjecture. All the information
hich we possess regarding him up to the present is very
ttle. We know that Nabonidus had a son of this name, and
e seems to have played a role of importance, otherwise his
ame would not have been substituted in the tradition repre-
inted in the Book of Daniel for that of Nabonidus, as it
ridently has been, adding one more element of confusion to
lose already existing. In the folk-history of the Book of
)aniel, then, Belshazzar has taken the place of Nabonidus,
>r reasons which we do not know. He is made the son of
[ebuchadrezzar, because Nebuchadrezzar was the great king
f Babylon, whose name every one knew, and about whom
very one was grouped in the thought of the people. Darius
lystaspis takes the place of Cyrus as conqueror of Babylon,
ecause of his capture of the city in the war against
febuchadrezzar III., a siege and capture which impressed
le popular mind much more forcibly than that of Cyrus.
Vhy he is called the Mede I do not know.
Another instance of folk-history in the Book of Daniel is
ic story of the three children in the fiery furnace, recounted
i Daniel iii. It is a matter of surprise to me that I have
ever seen this story brought into conjunction with Jeremiah
xix. 22. Turning to the latter passage, we read that Jeremiah
ddressed a letter to the captive Jews in Babylonia, bidding
tiem to build houses and dwell in them ; and to plant gardens
nd eat the fruits thereof; to take wives and beget sons and
laughters ; and to take wives and husbands for their sons and
laughters, so that they might also have sons and daughters,
ie bids them to seek the peace of the land where they are,
nd not to listen to the prophets and diviners among them,
302 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
and tells them, "After seventy years be accomplished for
Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward
you, in causing you to return to this place." Then he mentions
by name Ahab, son of Kolaiah, and Zedekiah, son of Maaseiah,
who have evidently been stirring up the Jews in Babylonia to
revolt against Nebuchadrezzar, saying that they are prophesy-
ing a lie, and that Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, shall
slay them, and that they shall become a byword to all the
captives of Judah who there are in Babylon, saying, "the Lord
make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king ot
Babylon roasted in the fire."
What put into Jeremiah's head the idea that these men
would be punished in such a manner? The fact that
Nebuchadrezzar was known to have made use before of this
form of punishment? Giesebrecht, in his commentary on
Jeremiah, refers to " similar Persian customs," and I suppose
it probable that this barbarous method of punishment by
burning can be established as practised in that and sur-
rounding countries at various times. But, however that may
be, the fact that this statement in Jeremiah's letter was pre-
served and has been handed down to us may fairly be regarded
as evidence that this was no idle wish of Jeremiah, but that
this punishment was actually inflicted upon these two prophets,
Ahab and Zedekiah.
Now it must be remembered that the position which these
two men represented was the so-called patriotic position of
that day, while that of Jeremiah was the so-called unpatriotic
position. He was often in a minority of one or two in advo-
cating the policy of submission. He was regarded by the
bulk of his compatriots as a Babylonian sympathiser, if not
as an actual traitor ; and the Babylonians, on their part, seem
to have regarded him as a sort of secret ally, so that after the
capture of Jerusalem he was treated by them with marked
honour.
The Book of Daniel made over again for a special purpose
traditions which had come down, sometimes in a very con-
fused form, from an earlier period. It seems to me that in
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 303
:he story contained in the third chapter of Daniel, of the
;hree children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who were
:ast into the fiery furnace and miraculously saved, we have
:he legendary account of Nebuchadrezzar's treatment of
<\hab and Zedekiah, or some of their compeers. It has
:ome down to us through the medium of the popular,
Datriotic party, the party opposed by Jeremiah, but the
Darty which was both the most numerous and the most
nfluential in his time.
One of the problems which meets us in the Book of
Daniel, on which it has been supposed that Assyriology
night throw some light, is the interpretation of the Mene,
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, of Daniel v. 25. Noldeke, Hof-
:nann, Ganneau, and Prince have endeavoured to explain
:hese words from the Assyrian. It should be clear, from the
mistakes in Babylonian names and in the interpretation of
:hose names in the Book of Daniel, that the writer of that
Dook had no acquaintance with the Babylonian language or
;he cuneiform script. Attention has already been called to
:he incorrect form Nebuchadnezzar instead of Nebiichadrezzar.
[n Daniel iv. 8 the name Belteshazzar is incorrectly inter-
preted as containing in composition the name of the god Bel.
[t is clearly the Babylonian Belatsu-Usur, which means, " May
lis life be preserved," the word Belatsu, "his life," having
lothing whatever to do with the name Bel. The outward
similarity has misled the writer, who was evidently unfamiliar
svith Babylonian. More curious is the name Abed-nego,
tvhich is clearly an error for Abed-nebo, "servant of Nebo."
[n its present distorted form it makes no sense.
It is not a comparison with the Babylonian which gives us
the clue to the meaning of Daniel v. 25, but the text itself.
[n the explanation of these words, given in verses 26-28, we
find simply Mene, Tekel, Peres. Turning to the Greek text,
we find that in verse 25 we have not Mene, Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin, but as in the Hebrew of verses 26-28, Mene,
Tekel, Peres. The combined evidence of the Hebrew of
verses 26-28 and the Greek version of verse 25 would
304 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
seem to render it almost self-evident that the Hebrew text of
verse 25 is incorrect. The Mem in the Hebrew text seems
to have been repeated by accident, and the Peres has either
been inflected, or else we have the conjunction with the plural
form of the word <ID"IS, "Persian." If the Greek text be
adopted and the pointing of the words be omitted entirely,
which is what the story itself requires, the whole passage
becomes plain. We have two roots, meaning simply, member
and weigh, and a third which may equally well mean divide,
or Persian, an ambiguity that gives opportunity for the word
play contained in the explanation. The problem given to
Daniel is to explain what is meant by the three words on the
wall, number, weigh, divide, or Persian. His skill or his
inspiration is shown in the finding of a meaning which pre-
cisely fitted these three enigmatic roots to the circumstances.
Remembering that the writing must have been without vowels,
the conditions are very much the same as if we should have
put before us the letters N-M-BR-W-G-H-D-V-D, except that
in this case there is not in the last root the same opportunity
for a play upon words as the Hebrew affords. The language
used is, of course, Aramaic. Daniel interprets the meaning
of the root number as, " God hath numbered thy kingdom,
and brought it to an end." The root weigh he interprets to
mean, " Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting."
The third root, which might mean equally well divide or
Persian, he interprets thus: "Thy kingdom is divided, and
given to the Medes and Persians."
It may be asked, Why could not the Chaldeans, sooth-
sayers, and so forth read these letters ? I do not understand
that the text implies that they could not read the individual
characters, but merely that they could not so read them as to
make any sense out of them. "To read the writing and to
make known its interpretation" (v. 8) are not two altogether
different things, but either parts of the same thing, or at least
most closely connected one with the other. This duplicate
method of expression is characteristic of the style of the Book
of Daniel throughout. The Chaldeans could not read the
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 305
etters in the sense that they could not read them so as to
nake any sense.
The untenability of Noldeke's interpretation, and with it of
he interpretation of Hofmann,1 Prince, and Ganneau is set
orth in a very few words and very effectively in Behrmann's
:ommentary on the Book of Daniel.
One point which Noldeke makes in his discussion of the
ubject is the use of the word D")3, in what he regards as an
inreal sense; He says : " With the first two words the simple
ense 'number' and 'weigh' may do, but D"iD, 'divide,' is
10 longer in actual use, while the substantive D1Q, in the
icnse 'half-mina,' was still common among the later Jews."
rhe context (v. 28) is the best evidence of the sense intended
o be attached, and capable of being attached to the root
etters D~iQ. The word is used in the same sense in the
Pargum to 2 Kings iv. 39. It is true that this is not the
:ommon root for "divide," but its choice in this place is for
he purpose of a play on words, since the same letters also
nean " Persian." Noldeke is driven to conjecture to account
or the pointing in the forms ?i?.fl and D!?>, words which we
lo not actually find pointed in this manner in any Semitic
anguage in any sense. N.3P, on the other hand, is properly
jointed as a participle passive of the Pe'al form of the verb
W», "number." Noldeke says that this would be the
:orrect absolute form for the Syriac word for mina ; but how-
;ver that may be, we do not actually find the word so pointed
n the sense of mina, which he and the others above mentioned
vould give it. It is tempting to add to the possibilities of the
icnse of the words on the wall the further meaning mina,
•hekel, half-shekel, and the letters used are certainly capable of
his further sense. On the other hand, the reading and ex-
planation of the words in verses 26-28 make no allusion to
;uch a sense, which would have been done, I think, had such
in additional sense been intended. I am inclined to think,
;herefore, with Behrmann, that the tempting resemblance of
1 Zeitschrift fitr Assyriologie, ii. 45-48.
306 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
these words to the words for mtna, shekel, and half-shekel is
due to accident.
The real difficulty in the passage is one of text corruption
and of an erroneous late pointing. The correct text of verse
25 is, as I have already pointed out, simply DID bpn N3ft.
In the individual text from which our present Hebrew text
is descended a scribe doubled the NJE, presumably by acci-
dent. He attached D"iB to the preceding words by the
conjunction 1, an alteration of text which is very common, as
can be seen by a comparison of parallel passages in our
Hebrew text of the Bible. Conscious of the play on the
word " Persian " contained in D"1D, he further changed that
word, accidentally or intentionally, to ''DIS (cf. Dan. vi. 29;
Neh. xii. 22). A } was added to it, either to put it in the
plural or purely by accident.
The pointing of the words is very perplexing. No explana-
tion of any sort which has yet been offered seems satisfactory.
Now the Hebrew and the Greek do not altogether agree in
regard to the pointing. The former has a uniform point-
ing— D"i§ 7j?.J;l K2P. The latter has a different pointing for
each word — parf, OfKeX, </>apes, which would correspond to
D13 7i?fl N?.P. I am inclined to think that the pointing of
the Hebrew text is the more original, and that it is intention-
ally artificial. The words were without pointing, not intended
to be spoken. They represented merely the three radicals of
the three roots without vowels. But in reading the text aloud
it was necessary to pronounce these three words in some
manner. They were for this purpose pointed, and inten-
tionally so pointed that they should not be identical with any
of the inflected forms from those roots, and they were pointed
in a uniform manner. The pointing of N3P in such a manner
that it can be read as a passive participle is an accident due
to the fact that that participle is regularly V?P and not N/3P.
The changes in the Greek are due in the case of the e in the
final syllables of OeKtX and <£apes to the fact that those were
closed, not open, syllables as in pavf).
But the most perplexing problem of the Book of Daniel
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 307
has been its composition in two languages instead of one.
Chapter i.-ii. 3 is written in Hebrew. The fourth verse of the
second chapter begins thus: "Then spake the Chaldseans to the
king in Aramaic." From that point to the end of the seventh
chapter Aramaic is used. The eighth and following chapters,
like the first chapter, are written in Hebrew. Following Jerome
it was formerly supposed that Aramaic was here used, because
it was the language of the Chaldseans. The discoveries of
the last half-century have shown conclusively, however, that
this was not the case; that the Aramaic here used was not
only not the language of the Chaldseans, but not even the
form of Aramaic which was used in Babylonia and the East.
It is a Western Aramaic dialect, akin to the Palmyrene, and
almost identical with the Aramaic of the Targum of Onkelos.
It is, in fact, the vernacular of Palestine, the language spoken
by the Jewish people, which supplanted Hebrew, the latter
being retained only as a sacred language.
After this fact was clearly established, the theory was ad-
vanced that the whole book was originally written in Hebrew,
but a portion of it having been lost, there has come down
to us in place of this an Aramaic translation, or Targum. This
theory was proved on literary grounds to be untenable, and it
is now generally admitted that part of the book was written in
the vernacular Aramaic and part in the sacred Hebrew, as we
now have it.
It will be observed that the last verse of the seventh chapter,
concluding the Aramaic part of the book, is the closing
formula for a book or writing — " Here is the end of the
matter," etc. Again, at the commencement of the Aramaic
section, we have the separation from the preceding Hebrew
carefully marked by the insertion at the close of the Hebrew
section, which is of the nature of an introduction, of the words
"in Aramaic." But the Aramaic section as it now stands,
while complete at the end and rounded off with a formula
which indicates the close of a writing, is incomplete at the
commencement. The method of junction with it of the
present introduction seems, however, to support the evidence
3o8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of the difference of language in indicating that the Hebrew
first chapter and the Aramaic second chapter were not written
together. But if this be the case, then the Aramaic section
must have had another introduction, now lost, telling in sub-
stance that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream. For this has
been substituted a statement to that effect in Hebrew, probably
a summary of the lost Aramaic introduction. This statement
is part of a longer Hebrew section, now constituting the intro-
duction to the entire Book of Daniel, in which we are told
who Daniel was and his high character for wisdom, resulting
from his minute adherence to the ritual prescriptions of the
Law with regard to clean, unclean, etc.
The Aramaic section of the Book of Daniel contains a
series of folk stories about the wonderful wisdom and the
wonderful deliverances of Daniel and his three friends,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the times of Nebu-
chadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius, prefaced by a dream of
Nebuchadnezzar, and concluded by a vision or apocalypse of
Daniel, the two covering substantially the same ground. The
scene of action is Babylon.
The succeeding Hebrew section of the book, like the pre-
ceding introduction to chapter i., contains no folk stories.
It is more of the nature of a learned work referring, as in
the ninth chapter, to the sacred writings of the Jews and
showing a careful study and a fairly advanced mystical inter-
pretation of those writings. The scene of action appears to
be Shushan, or Susa, the Persian capital. It deals with
mystical figures — " 2000 and 300 evenings and mornings,"
(viii. 14), "weeks and half-weeks," etc. The first chapter
of this section is, as to its meaning, largely a repetition of
chapter viii., and indeed it might be called a variant of
that chapter, carrying the vision forward, however, a little
beyond the point at which that vision closed. Chapter ix.
is a confession of sin and a prayer for deliverance, followed by
a brief vision, the end of which is the pollution of the altar in
B.C. 1 68. The remaining chapters, x.-xii., are, under the form
of a vision, an historical survey of the period succeeding the
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 309
leath of Alexander, becoming more and more minute until
he year B.C. 165. The whole closes with a beautiful picture
>f the Messianic kingdom, and the resurrection of the dead
Israelites, those who had been faithful, to share in the joy
md triumph, and those who had proved faithless, to ever-
asting shame and contempt. It is in this part that the doc-
rines of angels and of the resurrection of the body appear.
Outside of the Book of Daniel the only mention in the Old
restament of a person of that name occurs in the Book of
izekiel. In Ezekiel xiv. 14, 20 Noah, Daniel, and Job
ire mentioned as men of extreme righteousness, who might
)ossibly be supposed by their righteousness to save sinners
rom destruction, and in Ezekiel xxviii. 3 we have Daniel
nentioned as famous for wisdom. In the time of Ezekiel
hree men were evidently famous in folklore for their righteous-
icss, and Daniel also for his wisdom. Of the character of the
blklore which connected itself with Noah we know something
rom the earlier chapters of Genesis. The folk story of Job is
;ubstantially contained in the first two and the last chapters
>f that book as we at present have it. That folk story was
nade use of later by philosophical writers as the theme for the
;reat dramatic poem of Job, dealing with the question of evil
md calamity, which constitutes the bulk of our present Book
)f Job, set in between the prose narrative at the commence-
nent and the close. The folklore about Daniel lies, we may
airly conclude, at the bottom of the stories in our Book of
Daniel. All the stories that have come down to us connect
;his Daniel with the period of the Babylonian captivity. In
>ome of those stories Daniel's deeds are singularly combined
vith old Babylonian myths, just as in Wendish folklore
Frederick the Great appears as the hero of some stories, which
ire otherwise identical with fairy tales collected by Grimm
Tom various parts of Germany, and which we know to be part
}f the ancient Teutonic heritage. (Similarly, in a Burgundian
"orm of the Nibelungenlied, Burgundian historical events and
:haracters of the fourteenth century are strangely commingled
with the old Teutonic myth.)
310 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Turning to the apocryphal additions to the Book of Daniel,
which have come down to us only in a Greek form, we find
probably in the story of Susanna a Babylonian legend of the
seduction of two old men by the goddess of love. In this old
Babylonian legend Jewish folklore made its hero, Daniel,
play a part as the wise judge (cf. Ezek. xxviii. 3). In the
contest of Daniel with the dragon, in which " Daniel took
pitch and fat and hair, and did seethe them together, and
made lumps thereof," we have the old Babylonian myth of the
war between the god Bel and the monster Tiamat, which on
the bas-reliefs is represented as a dragon. Growing out of this
same myth of Bel and Tiamat, we find a variant story of
Daniel's contest with the dragon, in which Daniel by a wise
device is able to convict the priests of Bel of fraud. This
shows more reflection and elaboration than the other. We
have also, in the apocryphal additions, a variant of the story in
the canonical book of Daniel in the lion's den. I am inclined
to think that on the whole the stories in the apocryphal addition
stand nearer than the stories in our canonical book to the
original folklore about Daniel.
A considerable amount of folklore sprang up in the Exilic
period and afterwards, and began to assume that peculiar
moralistic tone with which we are familiar in the later Haggadic
literature. Even in the Book of Kings we have an Haggadic
story (i Kings xiii.). From a later period we have some
specimens of folk stories developed into what we to-day should
call novels and novelettes, like the apocryphal books of Judith
and Tobit, and in our canonical literature, the books of Esther
and Jonah.
Daniel was the central figure of a number of folk tales of a
somewhat similar character. There was what we may fairly call
a cycle of stories of which he was the hero. Among these, be-
sides the stories in which Daniel was the hero, there were also
stories with other heroes. The Book of Daniel itself contains
one story — that of the three children in the fiery furnace — in
which Daniel is not the hero; and in the third chapter of
the apocryphal book of First Esdras we have another similar
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 311
story of the Three Pages. This mass of stories, beginning in
Babylonia, was passed down from mouth to mouth, and at the
time of the Maccabsean revolt was familiar to the people in the
vernacular Aramaic. Some of these stories a patriotic writer
of that period used, recasting them as we now have them in
the Aramaic portion of our canonical Book of Daniel. They
dealt especially with the wisdom and the piety of the old folk hero,
Daniel, and, after the manner of such patriotic tales, told how
he was delivered in an extraordinary manner from great perils,
and how he discomfited his foes, the conquerors and oppressors
of the Jews. What was necessary to stir the Jews to resistance
to Antiochus, to inspire them with a firm belief in the power
and willingness of their God to intervene on behalf of His
pious and oppressed people, and to fill their minds with the
hope of deliverance out of tribulation and victory over their
heathen foes, was to give the old folk stories, or rather a selec-
tion of them, a somewhat more distinctly religious character,
and to touch and sharpen the details so that they should be
more clearly applicable to present conditions. This was done
by some unknown writer, who, making use of the apocalyptic
method, prefaced and closed his little collection of pious and
patriotic tales with two visions — the dream of Nebuchadnezzar
and the dream of Daniel — both foretelling the final destruc-
tion of the oppressing Syrian, and thus giving a present
application to the stories of Daniel's deliverance from the
machinations of his foes and his victory over the power of the
heathen in the times of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and
Darius. This little work was written shortly after B.C. 168. To
understand its full force and the mighty influence which it
exercised upon the people, one must read it in connexion with
the First Book of Maccabees. One result of the patriotic up-
rising of the Maccabees was to revive, along with the religious
patriotic hopes and feelings of the Hebrew people, the sacred
language also. So we find in the Book of Psalms an outburst
of patriotic and religious poetry from this period in the Hebrew
tongue. The small Book of Daniel, ending, as already pointed
out, with the words, " Here is the end of the matter," etc., at
312 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
the close of the seventh chapter, gave rise to further apocalypses,
following the line of the Aramaic apocalypses of the second
and seventh chapters of our present book, but written in
Hebrew. These later apocalypses, as we have seen, are
somewhat different from their Aramaic predecessors, more
learned in style and making greater use of mystical inter-
pretations, mystical numbers, and the like. The detailed
history which they contain suggests also a composition slightly
later in date, namely towards the close of B.C. 165 or the com-
mencement of B.C. 164. The original Aramaic work and its
Hebrew continuation seem to have been brought together
shortly in one book, perhaps by the writer of these later
apocalypses. To this larger work was prefixed an introduction,
also written in the Hebrew tongue, which undertook to give
some account of Daniel and the other pious heroes mentioned
in the volume, and to explain from/the standpoint of advanced
legalism the reason of their great favour with God. In attach-
ing this introduction to the volume, the Aramaic introduction
to the dream of Nebuchadnezzer was cut out.
Later, in Alexandria, some of the other stories floating
among the people with regard, to Daniel were naturally enough
incorporated with the book which bore the name of Daniel.
A hymn and prayer which were composed in the name of the
three children in the fiery furnace are also among the additions
which we owe to the Alexandrian Jews.
That the apocalypse of Daniel exerted an immense influence
on the thought of the Hebrew people is clear from the large
amount of apocalyptic literature which was developed in the
period immediately succeeding, which, as already pointed out
in a former chapter, played a very important part in the
development of the Messianic hope. While the Book of
Daniel is not classed among the Prophets of the Hebrew
canon, on account, as already mentioned, of its late origin,
we cannot but count it a prophetical book. It was the suc-
cessor of the older school of prophecy and is at one with
the older prophetical writings in the belief in the eternal
victory of the right and the glorious coming of the Kingdom
THE BOOK OF DANIEL 313
of God. By its use of folklore for prophetic purposes it took
hold, in a very peculiar way, of the hearts of the people, and
in the midst of desperate trials and perils inspired them with a
belief and trust in God such as no academic statement of
God's purpose, God's justice, God's might, and God's right
could have achieved. It was divinely fitted for the time at
which it appeared, and not for that time only. The history
of its use in the Jewish and the Christian Church has proved
its right to the claim of inspiration. It has strengthened
untold thousands in trial and filled them with belief in
deliverance and in the ultimate victory of God's cause.
\
\
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
ON
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
THE fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter of Isaiah is
one of those passages in which the Septuagint Greek
version represents the original reading. In the Hebrew this
verse reads, literally translated : " Therefore, the Lord, He
giveth you a sign. The young woman is pregnant, and
beareth a son, and calleth his name God with us." Parallel
passages for the words following ncfa;n, " the young woman,"
are Genesis xvi. 1 1 : " Behold, thou art pregnant, and bearest
a son, and callest his name Ishmael," and Judges xiii. 5 :
" Behold, thou art pregnant, and bearest a son." For the
word mn, as an adjective meaning, not "she shall con-
ceive," but "pregnant," compare Genesis xxxviii. 24, 25;
Exodus xxi. 22 ; i Samuel iv. 19; 2 Samuel xi. 5; Isaiah
xxvi. 17 ; Jeremiah xxxi. 8. No other meaning can be given
to this word than "pregnant," "with child"; and without some
other word to denote future time it must indicate a present
condition.
But it is the word nD71?n, "the young woman," which
constitutes the real difficulty of the passage. Professors
Cheyne, G. A. Smith, and Dillmann all translate it literally as
"the young woman." But what young woman? Having the
article prefixed, it must be either some specific young woman,
well known or previously referred to, or young women as a
class distinguished from other classes. But it is manifestly
neither of these ; in fact, commentators have practically dis-
regarded the article or explained it away, treating " the young
woman " as being some indefinite young woman. Professor
3i8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Briggs1 points out the impossibility of this treatment of the
article. He proposes to regard n as the sign of the vocative,
and translates : " Lo, young woman, thou art pregnant, and
about to bear a son, and call his name Immanuel." But
this treatment of n alone, with no further indication of the
vocative, is grammatically untenable (Dillmann). Furthermore,
putting the grammatical question aside, the meanings obtained
by Briggs, Dillmann, Smith, and Cheyne all alike seem very
weak, to say the least, and the sign ill-chosen and clumsily
presented. Smith 2 comments upon the passage thus : " A
child," he says, "shall shortly be born, to whom his mother
shall give the name Im-manu-El — God with us. By the time
this child comes to years of discretion, he shall eat butter and
honey. Isaiah then explains the riddle. He does not, how-
ever, explain who the mother is, having described her vaguely
as a, or the young woman of marriageable age ; for that is not
necessary to the sign, which is to consist in the Child's own
experience. To this latter he limits his explanation." He
throws aside as irrelevant and unimportant a part of the verse
on which the prophet lays much stress, converts "the young
woman" into "a young woman, "and then drops her altogether
as insignificant and unmeaning. That the mother is both
necessary and important in this sign of the birth of Immanuel
is evinced by the emphasis laid upon her in the verse, the
space allotted to her, and the article attached to her name as
one well known. The Septuagint reads the virgin, which is
the translation of nbimn. A comparison of the Septuagint
with the Hebrew consonant text shows us in every other word
in the verse a complete agreement, evidence of a conscientious
translation, and a correct transmission. This is well brought
out by the treatment in the Septuagint of the word which
the Masoretes point n^^, qarath, she called, apparently in-
tending thereby the third person, singular, feminine. The
Septuagint read the same consonants, but translated thou shalt
call, pronouncing the word r>N"3i2, qaratha, thou calledst.
1 Messianic Prophecy, p. 195, note. * The Book of haiah, i. p. 115.
APPENDIX 319
Now, when we asked the question, Which change would
have been more readily made, from the young woman to the
virgin, or vice versa ? I think it must be admitted that, suppos-
ing an original the young woman, it would be very difficult to
find any reason for a change to the virgin ; whereas, on the
other hand, the statement that a virgin should become a
mother, might very well have offended some stupid literalist,
even if there were nothing else involved, and led to the
substitution of ntS^tf, young woman, for nbira, virgin. The
presumption in favour of the Septuagint text, which is very
strong, and would be regarded as sufficient evidence in a less
important verse, is greatly strengthened by the testimony of
the New Testament, and of the Peshitto Syriac version. The
latter agrees with the Septuagint in reading the virgin. The
New Testament gives independent evidence of the same read-
ing in the received Hebrew text of the second half of the
first century of our era. Neither Matthew i. 23 nor Luke
i. 3 1 is a citation from the Septuagint ; nor are they, probably,
taken directly from the Hebrew. They seem, and more
particularly is this true of the passage in St. Matthew's Gospel,
to be translations from a secondary source, probably a tradi-
tional Aramaic rendering of the Hebrew, an oral Targum,
current among the Jews at that time. They transmit to us
the virgin, and not the young woman, as the current translation
of the passage at the period of the composition of both the
Gospel of St. Matthew and the Gospel of St. Luke, and thus
testify that r6imn and not ntsbrn was read in the received
texts of that day.
But, substituting nbinnn for niDWn, and translating, "Be-
hold, the virgin is with child, and is about to bear a son, and
shall call (or ' thou shalt call ') his name Emmanuel," what is
the reference in nbimn, the virgin ? Who is this virgin ?
Micah iv. 8-10 is an excellent commentary on our passage.
There we see the daughter of Zion in the pangs, as it were, of
childbirth : " Writhe and twist, O daughter of Zion, like a
woman in travail." The afflictions which befall the land, in-
cluding the capture of Jerusalem itself, are the travail pangs
320 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
of the daughter of Zion, through which only can deliverance
come. But not only is the daughter of Zion likened to one
that is in travail; in the next chapter the figure is dropped,
and she is spoken of as actually bringing forth a child. So
the prophet says (v. 3), " Therefore He giveth them over until
she that travaileth hath brought forth." Then follows the
picture of the glorious reign of the Messiah, born of the
daughter of Zion out of the travail of her affliction at the hand
of the Assyrians. The whole passage is exactly parallel with
our passage. Here also we have the virgin pregnant with a
child, who shall be " God with us." The following verses
narrate the desolation of the land, but through this " God-
with-us" child of the virgin the kingdom shall be restored
more glorious than before. Chapter viii. takes up this same
"God with us." When the Assyrians shall appear to have
destroyed all, there shall still remain this " God with us," by
which the redemption and restoration shall be brought about.
This " God with us " is the child of the virgin in Isaiah vii. 14 ;
and it is the same child, we see by comparing the passages,
who shall be the child of the travailing daughter of Zion
depicted in Micah v. 2. The virgin of Isaiah vii. 14 is, then,
none other than the virgin daughter of Zion, and the con-
temporary prophets, Isaiah and Micah, are found to be making
use of the same figure, influenced by the same spirit.
Our next consideration is the use of the word "virgin" in
reference to a city or people, and more particularly in re-
ference to Jerusalem and Judah. Isaiah xxxvii. 22 and
Lamentations ii. 13 use the full phrase, "virgin daughter of
Zion"; while Jeremiah xiv. 17 has "virgin daughter of my
people," and Lamentations i. 15, "virgin daughter of Judah."
Micah uses both " daughter of Zion " and " daughter of
Jerusalem." Amos v. 2 and Jeremiah xxxi. 4, 21 use
"virgin of Israel," which is, perhaps, the closest to our pass-
age. We also find foreign nations personified in a similar
manner, as "virgin daughter of Zidon" (Isa. xxiii. 12),
"virgin daughter of Babylon" (Isa. xlvii. i), and "virgin
daughter of Egypt" (Jer. xlvi. n).
APPENDIX 321
The Targum on Isaiah agrees with the Hebrew text in
writing nD^im, the young woman, in place of r6imn, the
virgin, in this verse, and Jerome found the same word in the
Hebrew texts of his day. The evidence seems to show that
originally, and as late as the second half of the first century
after Christ, the Hebrew texts read nVinnn, the virgin. Was
the change to nobun, the young woman, deliberately meant
to exclude the Christian interpretation of the passage, or was
it a mere blunder, the adoption into the text of the emenda-
tion of a stupid literalist ?
INDEX
Alamoth, 189
Alexandrian Jews, 5, 7 ff., 20 f., 23,
83, 194
Alexandrinus, Codex, 9, 256
Alfred's dooms, 96 f.
Al-taschith, 184
American use of the Psalter, 227 ff.
Analysis of the contents of the
Psalter, 177 ff.
Angelology of the Psalter, 1 80
Anglican use of the Psalter,
215 ff.
Animism, 114
Apocalyptic literature, 145, 312
Apocrypha, The Old Testament, 9,
33
Apocryphal additions to Daniel, 310
Gospels, 36
Arab worship and sacrifice, 276 ff.,
285
Arak el-Emir inscription, 271
Aramaean inscriptions, 268 f.
Aramaic in Daniel, 307
Archaeology and the Bible, 237 ff.
Ark, The, n6f., 122, 284 ff.
Arrangement of the Old Testament,
3, IS
Articles of Religion, The XXXIX.,
24 ff.
Asaph Psalms, 165 ff., 178 f.
Asherah, The, 128
Asmonaean dynasty, The, 140 f.
Assyrian records, 245, 253 f.
Astruc, 90
Augustine, St., 49 f., 196
Authorised (or King James) Version,
15, 198
Authority and Reason, 28 ff.
Avesta, The, 240 f.
Azazel, 114
Azkara, 1 86, 199
Baal Lebanon inscription, 267
worship, 125 f.
Babylonian inscriptions, 246 ff., 253,
266 f.
psalmody, 176
Barrier inscription, 253
Baur, 240
Behistun inscription, 298 ff.
Behrmann, 305
Benedicite, The, 225
Bentley, 85 f.
Bible Study, 51, Si ff.
Bliss, Dr., 259, 268, 277
Book of the Covenant, 114, 120
Dead, 289
Books in early times, 263 ff.
Briggs, Prof., 318
Canaan, Language of, 248
Canon of Old Testament, 4
Carlstadt, 87
Casting of lots, 123
Centralisation of Hebrew worship,
122 ff.
Ceremonial Law, The, 25
Cheyne, Prof., 167, 173, i8if.,3i7f.
Christ and Messianic prophecy, 15 if.
the Decalogue, 27 f. , 70 f.
Messiahship, 151
Old Testament, 55 ff.
, Davidic descent of, 147
, Divinity and Manhood of,
40 ff., 51
Christ's birth in Bethlehem, 147 f.
resurrection, 150
temptations, 56 ff.
323
324 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Christ's virgin birth, 150
Chronicles and the Psalter, i66f.
Chronology, Usher's, I3f.
Circumcision, 107
Clay tablets, Use of, 256 ff.
Clean and unclean, 108 ff.
Commandments, Moral and cere-
monial, 25 ff.
Comparative philology, 92 ff.
Corruptions in the Hebrew text,
172, 258 f., 304, 306, 319
Creeds, The, 24
Cretan tablets, 260, 267
Criticism, The Newer, 39 ff., Si ff.,
237 f-
Daniel, The Book of, 293 ff.
Darwin, 94
David and Hebrew Psalmody, 175
— Messianic expectation,
135 ff-
Decalogue, The, 26 ff. , 289 f.
written on stone tablets,
261
Dedication, Feast of the, 187
Deification of the Virgin, 42 f., 53
De la Peyrere, 88
Deuteronomy, The Book of, 129 f.
Dillmann, Prof., 317 f.
Docetic Gospel of St. Peter, 40 f.
Doxologies, 200 ff.
Du Maes, 88 f.
Early Christian Psalmody, 205 ff.
Edersheim, Dr., 146
Egyptian discoveries, 249 ff. , 253 ff.
Eichhorn, 81 f., 90
Enoch, The Book of, 30, 58, 145
Epistles of Phalaris, The, 86
Evolution, 94
- of Israel, 99 ff.
Ewald, 87, 91 f., 242
Exile, The, I32f., 174
Ezekiel, I3off.
Fall of Samaria, The, 126 f.
Flood legend, The, 247 f.
Folklore in Daniel, 301, 308 f.
Foreign worship in Israel, 125 ff. 129
Fourth Commandment, The, 27
Gallican Psalter, The, 197
Geddes, 90
Giesebrecht, 302
Gilgal, 277 f.
Gittith, 185
God, The names of, 169 f.
Gospel of St. Peter, Docetic, 40 f.
Greek canon of New Testament,
20 f.
words in Daniel, 294
Hallel, The, 200
Hebrew Bible, Divisions of the, 3
Priesthood, The, iigff.
, Pronunciation of, 273 ff.
ritual, 113 ff.
- script (early), 268 ff.
(modern), 270 ff.
Hebrews, Religious development of
the, 280 ff.
— , The, in Egypt, 286 f.
Hexateuch, The, 169 f., 174, 177,
241, 252
Higgaion, 190
Higher Criticism, The, 39 ff., 8 1 ff.,
237 f-
Hilprecht, Prof., 176
Hind of the morning, 187
Historical inaccuracies in Daniel,
294
Hobbes, 88
Immortality among the Hebrews,
no, 181 ff.
Imprecations in the Psalms, 226 f.
Incarnation, The, and Newer Criti-
cism, 39 ff., 52 ff.
Inspiration of Scripture, 24 f. , 34
Isaiah, The Book of, 241
, The call of, 128
, Virgin birth in, 317 ff.
Isaiahs, The two, 134
Itala version, The, 195
Jeduthun, 190
Jerome, St., 49, 195 ff.
John Baptist and Elijah, 63, 148 f.
Jonah, The Book of, 134
, The sign of, 63 ff.
Judas Maccaboeus, 140
Kinah verse, 216
Korah Psalter, I7lff., 178
Lammenazzeah, 189
INDEX
325
itin canon of New Testament, 20,
23
aw, The Mosaic, 4
eClerc, 81 f., 89
evi and the Levites, 119 f., I3off.
evirate marriage, 1 14
iturgies, Early Christian, 207 ff.
ocalisation of Divinity, 104, 285,
287
uther, igf., 88
Maccabees, The, 134, 140
Mahalath, 190
Marseilles sacrificial tables, 115,
261, 268
Maschil, 165, 190
Matthew's, St., quotation of Old
Testament, 66 ff.
'azzebah, 278
Memorial psalms, 186
Messianic hope, The, 135 ff-
ichtam, 165, 184, 189
Miserere, The, 225
Mizmor, 165, 189
Moabite Stone, The, 267
Modem study of Bible, 8 1 ff.
Monotheistic worship, U7f.
Moses, 116 ff, 136, 284 ff.
Muth-labben, 190
abatsean inscriptions, 271
ature worship, 105 ff.
azareth and nezer, 71 f.
eginoth, 189
ehiloth, 189
ethinim, 119
ew Testament, Arrangement of
books, 1 6 ff.
ewer Criticism, The, 39 ff, 81 ff,
237 f-
iebuhr, 86 f.
ippur, Discoveries at, 257, 261
b'ldeke, 305
Id Testament, Arrangement of
books, 3, 15
, Canon of the, 4,
134
, Development of
the, 95 ff.
"gen, 195
Palestine, Geography of, 251 ff.
- , Inscriptions in, 266 ff.
Pentateuch, The Jewish, 4, 13, 16
— , The Samaritan, 4, 269 f.
Persian words in Daniel, 294
Pharisees, The, 182
Phoenician script, 266 ff.
Pietistic glosses, 258 f.
Praise Song of David, The, 163,
179
Prayers of David, The, loi, 170,
178 f., 191
Presbyterian views of Inspiration,
34
Priest Code, The, 133, 169 f., 177
Priesthood, The, ngff, 125, 133,
179
Prophets, The, 5, 9
— , The, and Psalmody, I76f.
Psalm headings, 184 ff.
Psalms for Sabbath and other days,
1 88, I99f.
- , Imprecations in the, 226 f.
Psalter, Growth of the Jewish, i55ff.
- , Mechanical use of the,2O9ff.
- of Solomon, 140 f., 203 f.
- of the sons of Korah, 171 ft-,
178
- ,The books of the, 159 f.
- ,The, and personal immor-
tality, 181
- ,The, and popular theology,
,The Gallican, 197
,The Prayer Book, 194 ff,
215 ff.
Quotation of Old Testament in New
Testament, 58, 66 ff., 150 f.
Rashi, 48
Reason and Authority, 28 ff.
Reformation, The, and the Bible,
49f.,87ff.
Religious conservatism, H2ff.
- evolution of Israel, 99 ff.,
280 ff.
Renaissance, The, and the Bible,
84 ff.
Revised (or Canterbury) Version,
15 f., 22
Ritual, 113 ff.
Rolls, The, 7
326 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Sacred places, 101 f. , 124 f.
Sacrifice, 93, 103 f., 132, 278 ff.
among the Arabs, 285
in the Psalter, 179 f.
Sadducees, The, 182
Samaria, The fall of, 126 f.
Samaritan Bible, The, 4, 269 f.
Saxon Chronicle, The, 97
Sayce, Prof., 288
Schrader, 300
Scripture and tradition, 24
, Inspiration of, 24 f. , 34
Selah, 189 f.
Septuagint, The, 5 f., 8, 318 f.
Sermon on the Mount, 58 ff.
Sheminith, 189
Shiggaion, 190
Siloah inscription, 252, 268
Simon, Father, 89
Sin and expiation, 109, 142 f.
Sinaiticus, Codex, 256
Smith, Prof. G. A., 252, 317 f.
, Prof. Robertson, 174
Songs of Degrees, 163, 191
Spinoza, 87, 89
Spirit world, The, liof.
Stone worship, 276 ff.
Syriac Version, The, IO, 319
Taboo, 101 f.
Talmud, The, 145 ff.
Targums, 143 ff., 321
Tatian's Diatessaron, 96
Tel el-Amarna tablets, 246, 259, 266
Tel es-Safi temple, 277, 282
Tel Hesy tablet, 259, 266
Temple, The, 115, 123 f.
Temptations, Christ's, 56 ff.
Tischendorf, 10, 21
Urim and Thummim, 123, 282
Usher's Chronology, I3f.
Vater, 91
Vaticanus, Codex, 9, 256
Veda, The, 47, 240 f.
Venite, The, 222
Vintage psalms, 184 ff.
Virgin birth in Isaiah, The, 317 ff.
, Christ's, 150
, Deification of the, 42 f., 53
Vowel points in Hebrew, 274, 304,
306
Vulgate, The Latin, 11 f., 197
Weber, 145
Writings (or Hagiographa), The, 7>
9, 12
Wiinsche, 150
Zinjirli, Discoveries at, 268
Zwingli, 20
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE.
Genesis i., pp. 48, 181; xiv., pp. 248 f., 253; xvi. n, p. 317; xxviii. 17,
p. 104; xxxi. 45 ff., p. 278; xxxvi. 31, p. 88; xxxviii. 24 f., p. 317;
xlix. 10, p. 144
Exodus iii. 6, pp. 68, 73; xix., pp. 55 ff . ; xxi.-xxiii., pp. 114, 120; xxi.
22, p. 317; xxi. 24, p. 6i; xxiv. 7, p. 264; xxxi. 18, p. 261 ; xxxii.
4, p. 262
Leviticus i., p. 132; iv., p. no; vii. n f., p. 187; xi., p. 62; xvii., p. 122;
xix. 18, pp. 27, 70 f.; xxiv. 7f., p. 186; xxiv. 20, p. 61
Numbers x. 35 f., p. 171 ; xvi., p. 121 ; xxi. 17 f., p. 102; xxi. 30, p. 267
Deuteronomy i. 5, pp. 261 f. ; vi. 4., p. 70: vi. 5, pp. 27, 70 f.; ix. 9, p. 261 ;
x- 35 f-> P- '57; xiv., p. 62; xix. 21, p. 61 ; xxiii. 6, p. 61 ; xxiv. I,
pp. 59, 264; xxvi. 5, p. 248; xxvii. 8, p. 261
Joshua i. 8, p. 264; iv. f., p. 278; xii. 23, p. 278
judges v. 4, p. 287; xiii. 5, p. 317; xvii., pp. 119, 122
i Samuel, ii. p. 121 ; iv. 19, p. 317 ; xiii. 9ff., p. 121 ; xiv. 31 ff., pp.
103, 279 ; xxvi. 19, p. 104
INDEX 327
Samuel vii. 16, p. 138 ; viii. 18, p. 122 ; xi. 5, p. 317 ; xxi., p. no
Kings vii. 36, p. 261 ; xiii., p. 310; xix. 8, p. 287
Kings ii. II, p. 140; iii. 4ff., p. 267 ; iv. 39, p. 305; v. 5, p. 264;
v. 17, p. 104 ; xvi. 10 ff., p. 264 ; xxii. 8, p. 88
Chronicles iv. 23, p. 252; xvi. 8 ff., p. 167; xvi., pp. 157, 165, 167,
20O
Chronicles vi. 40 ff., p. 167 ; xxiv. 20 f., p. 69; xxvi. 21 ff., p. 121
ehemiah i. 5ff., p. 169; viii. 9, p. 89; xii. 22, p. 306; xiii. 28, p. 269
b xiv. 17, p. 259; xix. 24, p. 262; xxxi. 35, p. 264; xxxii.-xxxvii., pp.
158, 182
ialms i., p. 161; ii., p. 161 ; iii.-xli. p. 161 ; iii. p. 157; iv., pp. 156,
212 ;ix. f., pp. 156, 162, 175; ix., p. 157; xiv., p. 163; xviii., p. 188;
xix. 8ff, p. 175; xxii. f., p. 217; xxix., pp. 175, i88f.; xxx., p. 187;
xxxviii., p. 186; xl., pp. 157, 164; xli. 13, pp. 159, 201; xiii. f.,
PP- I56» 217 f.; xiii., pp. 102, 157, 172; xliv., pp. 156, 218; xiv.,
pp. 171, 173, 192; xiv. 2, p. 262; xlvi., pp. 157, 173, 218; xlix.,
p. 171; Ii. 20 f., p. 157; liii., p. 163; Ivi. 13, p. 179; Ivii., p. 157;
Ix., pp. 157, 189; Ixi., p. 171; Ixv. ff, p. 171; Ixviii., pp. 157, 171;
Ixviii. 12 ff., p. 224; Ixix. 23 ff, pp. 2255.; Ixx., pp. 164, 186 ;
Ixxii. f., p. 160; Ixxii. i8f., pp. 159, 201; Ixxiv., p. 174; Ixxviii. f.,
p. 174; Ixxx. pp. 157, 173; Ixxxi., p. 173; Ixxxiii. 6 ff, p. 174;
Ixxxiv. ff, p. 161 ; Ixxxvi., pp. 157, 168; Ixxxvi. 10. p. 180; Ixxxix.,
p. 168; Ixxxix. 52, pp. 159, 201; xcii., pp. 188, 199; xcv., pp. 212,
222; xcvi., p. 157; xcvi. 4f., p. 180; c., p. 186; ciii., p. 159; civ. 7,
p. 181; cv. ff, p. 157; cvi. 28, p. 180; cvi. 48, pp. 159, 201; cviii.,
pp. 164 f. 200; cix. pp. 61, 165, 226; ex. pp. 74, 140; cxi. ff,
pp. 163, 201; cxviii., p. 157; cxviii. 22 f., p. 73; cxviii. 27, pp. 179,
223 f.; cxx. ff, p. 163; cxxxiv., p. 201; cxxxvi., p. 157; cxxxvii.,
pp. 225 f. ; cxxxviii., pp. 163, 167; cxxxix., p. 167; cxlv. ff., pp. 163,
167; cxlvii. 15, p. 181; cl., pp. 159, 201
overbs xxv. I, pp. 127, 264
inticles viii. 9, p. 261
liah iii. 23, p. 262; vi., p. 141; vii. 9, p. 66; vii. 14, pp. 16, 317;
viii., p. 320; viii. I, p. 262; viii. 16, p. 258; ix. I ff, p. 138; xi. i,
pp. 71, 138, 144; xv. 2, p. 267; xvi. 10, p. 185; xix. 19, p. 282;
xxiii. 12, p. 320; xxvi. 17, p. 317; xxx. 8, p. 264 ; xxxvii. 22, p. 320;
xlvii. 17, p. 320; Ivi. 7, p. 73; Ixv. 8, p. 184
remiah iii. i, p. 59; iii. 16, p. 291; viii. 8, p. 262; xiv. 17, p. 320;
xvii. i, p. 262; xx. p. 176; xxii. 18, p. no; xxiii. 5, pp. 139, 144;
xxix. 22, p. 301; xxx. 9, p. 139; xxxi. 4, p. 320; xxxi. 8, p. 317;
xxxii. ii ; p. 256; xxxii. 12, p. 264; xxxii. 14, p. 257; xxxiii. ii,
p. 157; xxxvi. 23, p. 263; xlvi. ii, p. 320
[mentations i. 15, p. 320; ii. 13, p. 320
:ekiel ii. 10, p. 263; x. 2, p. 263; xiv. 14, p. 309; xxvii. 5, p. 261;
xxviii. 3, p. 309: xxxiv. 23, p. 139; xxxvii. 24 f., p. 139
iniel i., pp. 62, 307 ; iv. 8, p. 303; v. 8, p. 304; v. 25 ff, pp. 303 ff. ;
vi. 29, p. 306; viii. 14, p. 308; ix. 2, pp. 264, 293; ix. 25 f., p. 135;
xi. 2, p. 296; xii. p. 296
osea iii. 4f., p. 138
nosv. 2, p. 320; v. 23, p. 173; ix. ii, p. 138
icah iv. 8ff, p. 319; v. 2, pp. 139, 144; v. 3, p. 320
abakkuk ii. 2, pp. 261 f. ; iii. 3, p. 287; iii. 18, p. 144
aggai ii. 23, p. 139
328 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW SCHOLARSHIP
Zechariah iv. jff., p. 139; vi. 12 f., p. 140; ix. 9, p. 67; xiii. 3ff., p. 130
Malachi iii. I, p. 63; iv. 5, p. 63
i Maccabees iv. 52 ff., p. 187
Matthew i. 23, p. 319; ii. 23, p. 146; iv., p. 55; v. 17, 18, pp. 58, 270;
v. 21 ff., p. 75; v. 22, p. 72; v. 31, p. 59; v. 33, p. 60; v. 38, 39,
p. 60; v. 43, p. 61; xi. 10, p. 63; xii. 38 ff., p. 63; xiii. 13 f., p. 66;
xv. 4, p. 68; xv. n ff., p. 6l; xix., pp. 59, 70; xxi. 2 ff., p. 67;
xxi. 13, p. 73; xxi. 42, p. 73; xxii. 23 ff., p. 68; xxii. 36 ff., p. 70;
xxii. 41 ff. , p. 73; xxiii. 35, p. 68; xxiv. 15, p. 69; xxiv. 36 f., p. 69
Mark iv. n f , p. 66; vii. 10, p. 68; vii. 15 ff., p. 61 ; xi., pp. 67, 73;
xii. 10, p. 73; xii. 18 ff, p. 68; xiii. 14, p. 69
Luke i. 31, p. 319; iv., p. 55; vi. 29, p. 61; viii. 10, p. 66; x. 25, p. 71;
xi. 29 ff., p. 64; xix., pp. 67, 73; xx. 17, p. 73; xx. 27, p. 68;
xxi., p. 70
John iv., p. 62; x. 22, p. 187
Acts vii. 22, p. 284; xvii. 28, p. 58
i John v. 7, P- 72
Jude 14, p. 58
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21
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22
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trations. Third Edition. Crown
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tions. Crown 8vo. 6s.
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Howard C. Hillegas. WITH THE
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HOME. By S. BARING GOULD.
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Demy 8vo. ios. 6d.
'Beckford's "Thoughts on Hunting" has
26
MESSRS. METHUEN'S CATALOGUE
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L. T. Hobhouse. THE THEORY OF
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