129 897
Copyright, 1893, 1908
BY JABEZ THOMAS SUNDERLAND
Entered at Stationers* Hall
SIXTH EDITION
1924
ORIGIN AJ$D CHARACTER
OF
THE BIBLE
AND ITS PLACE AMONG SACRED BOOKS
BY
^
JABEZ THOMAS JSUNDERLAND
Author of
"THE SPARK IN THE CLOD" (RELIGION AND EVOLUTION)
" TRAVEL AND LIFE IN PALESTINE," ETC.
BEING A REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION OF "THE BIBLE
ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND CHARACTER,' 1 BROUGHT, UP
TO DATE IN EVERY PARTICULAR, WITH MUCH
FRESH MATTER ADDED, INCLUDING A NEW
INTRODUCTION, SEVERAL NEW CHAPTERS
ILLUSTRATIVE CHARTS AND TABLES
ETC.
BOSTON
THE BEACON PRESS
25 BEACON STREET
1924
" Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves, nor leaves of stone;
Each age> each kindred, adds a verse to it,
fexts of despair or hope or joy or moan :
Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit"
LOWELL.
INTRODUCTION.
A NEW view of the Bible, a distinctly " modern " view, is
making its appearance in Christendom, and tending slowly
to displace the " old view " which has been held so unques~
tioningly and sd long. The change has not been sought ot
planned by anybody ; it is simply coming about as the result
a result which nobody seems able to stop or hinder of
the greatly enlarged knowledge of the modern world.
The object of the present book is to set forth as clearly,
definitely, and comprehensively as possible it is hoped
also candidly and fairly this Modern View of the Bible,
what it is, reasons for it, and its results so far as they
can be traced or foreseen.
Let me be more specific. Perhaps there is no subject
of more living or more urgent interest now before the
religious world than that of the "Higher Biblical Criticism"
and its consequences.
What is the Bible? Is it such a book as for some
centuries Christian nations have believed it to be? Or is
it something very different? What has an honest, inde-
pendent, and competent biblical scholarship a scholarship
which investigates thoroughly so as to find out the facts,
and then speaks in the interest, not of any church or party
or any form of theological dogmatism, but of truth to
tell us about the Bible, as to its origin, its authorship, its
vi INTRODUCTION.
growth, the circumstances tinder which it arose, the causes
which produced it, its relation to God, its relation to men,
its inspiration, the changes which its various writings have
undergone, its reliability, its place among the sacred books
of mankind, its transitory elements, its enduring elements,
its permanent value?
The following pages are an endeavor to answer all these
questions, frankly, without evasion, reverently, and with as
much fullness and detail as the space at command will
permit.
This volume in its present form is in a sense an evolution.
The beginning of the evolution was a small book, less than
one half the size of the present work, entitled, What is
the Bible? published by the Putnams of New York. This
met with so much public favor that it soon seemed best
to rewrite and enlarge it, thus making it much wider in its
scope. The result was the first edition of The Bible: Its
Origin* Growth, and Character, and Its Place among the
Sacred Books of the World, published also by the Putnams.
The present volume is that work carefully revised through-
out and still further enlarged, and (as the author believes)
in every particular brought up to date, so as to embody the
results of the best and latest biblical scholarship. The
following important additions have been made :
1. A new Introduction.
2. A Table of Dates of Biblical Literature, showing the
Literary Evolution of the Bible.
3. A Table of Dates of important Historical Events,
biblical and contemporaneous.
4. A Chart, classifying the Literature of the Old Testa-
ment and showing the various Canons and the true
Chronological Order of the Books.
INTROD UCTION. V II
5. A Chart, classifying the Literature of the New Testa-
ment and showing the Chronological Order of the Books.
6. Many additions to the Text and Notes in various
parts of the body of the book.
/. Four New Chapters (Chapters 16, 20, 21, and 23)
on the following subjects:
(1) " The Old Testament Apocryphal Books/ 1
(2) "Translations, Giving the Bible to the People."
(3) " Our English Bible."
(4) " Religious Evolution : A Historical Summary."
Is there any subject regarding which men and women in
our day more need to make themselves intelligent than
regarding the Bible? Is there any other subject of impor-
tance concerning which so many persons, otherwise intelli-
gent, permit themselves to remain unintelligent? Is this as
it ought to be? Is not want of intelligence, regarding such
a book as the Bible a calamity, not only to the persons
immediately concerned, but to society at large and to the
cause of religion ?
The Bible is our greatest book. Knowledge of it and about
it is indispensable. Nothing can take its place or make up
for its loss. But it must be real knowledge. The supposed
knowledge of fifty years ago will not do. There has been
as much advance in biblical scholarship during the past two
generations as in physical science. To cling to the con-
ceptions of the Bible held by our fathers shows as much
ignorance and blindness as to cling to the geology or
chemistry of our fathers.
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth."
Vlii INTRODUCTION.
The work of the great biblical scholars of the past century,
and of the present day, can no more be ignored than can
the work of the great scholars in any other important
department of human knowledge. If we do not have a
" new Bible " we at least have the old Bible completely
transformed. Nor is the transformation for the worse, but
vastly for the better. We lose fictions, but we gain realities.
The Bible becomes a natural book, instead of an unnatural.
It becomes a book that we can understand, instead of an
enigma. It falls into relation now with all the rest of man's
knowledge and experience, instead of being an anomaly.
It becomes more than ever a world-book, because seen to
be so truly a human book. The religion it teaches becomes
larger and richer, as well as more ethical and infinitely more
reasonable. God's character is relieved of much which
under the old view marred and blackened it ; for now we
see that much which we had regarded as from God is only
from very imperfect men. Thus God is made more worthy
of our worship ; and at the same time he is brought nearer
to us, because he is seen to achieve his great ends by normal
not by abnormal methods.
Inspiration ceases to be a thing of the past alone, con-
fined to thirty or forty chosen men of ancient Palestine,
and is seen to be as continuous and as universal as the
influence of the Infinite Spirit of Truth ; as the speaking
of the Divine Voice through the reason and conscience of
man ; as the shining of that " Light which lighteth every
man coming into the world" Revelation is no longer a
little and local thing, or a thing dead, bound up and sealed
in a single ancient volume. Now it becomes something liv-
ing, perennial ; something growing with man's capacity to
understand and to reason ; something as large as all truth.
INTRODUCTION. &
" Out of the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
This heedless world hath never lost."
In the light of the new biblical scholarship we are learning
that God's real method of revelation is evolution ; that his
way of revealing the divine to man is through the evolution
or awakening of the divine in man. In other words, we
are finding out that the religion of the Hebrew people in
Palestine was quite the most remarkable religious and
ethical evolution of the ancient world, and that the Bible
is the literary product and record of that evolution. 1
This does not mean that either the Bible or its religion
is less divine than the past has believed ; rather it means
that the truly and really divine is larger, and its ways are
larger, than has been understood. As man and the world
are not less from God because they came by the path of
evolution, so the great truths of the Bible are not less from
God because they entered man's thought and life through
the development of his own powers, through his own deep
experiences and hence his own spiritual growth, through
centuries of moral struggle, of battling with his lower self,
of aspirations after that which was above and beyond him,
of gropings often blind and painful, but never wholly
fruitless after truth and right and God.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGB
THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE
WORLD i
CHAPTER II.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE BIBLE AND OTHER SACRED BOOKS 17
CHAPTER III.
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE 34
CHAPTER IV.
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 44
CHAPTER V.
THE PENTATEUCH : WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES ?...... 59
CHAPTER VI.
THE PENTATEUCH : ITS COMPOSITE CHARACTER AND REAL ORIGIN 69
CHAPTER VIL
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY : ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
HISTORICAL BOOKS So
CHAPTER VIII.
HEBREW PROPHECY: ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT PROPHET-
ICAL BOOKS 93
xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
PAGE
HEBREW POETRY: ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT POETICAL
BOOKS 106
CHAPTER X.
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER, i IIQ
CHAPTER XI.
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. n. 127
CHAPTER XII.
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS 136
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL 144
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NON-PAULINE EPISTLES AND THE REVELATION 154
CHAPTER XV.
EXCLUDED LITERATURE 164
CHAPTER XVI.
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS 173
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON : THE OLD TESTAMENT ; THE
NEW TESTAMENT 190
CHAPTER XVIH.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT: ITS FORMATION AND
PRESERVATION. i 202
CONTENTS. Xili
CHAPTER XIX.
PAGE
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT: ITS FORMATION AND
PRESERVATION. n 215
CHAPTER XX.
TRANSLATIONS: GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE 222
CHAPTER XXL
OUR ENGLISH BIBLE 231
CHAPTER XXIL
THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PROGRESS TRACEABLE IN THE BIBLE 239
CHAPTER XXIII.
RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION : A HISTORICAL SUMMARY 251
CHAPTER XXIV.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP. i. 258
CHAPTER XXV.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP. n. 273
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION 288
CHAPTER XXVH.
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE 297
INDEX 307
CONTENTS.
TABLES AND CHARTS
PAGE
A TABLE OF DATES OP IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENTS, BIBLICAL
AND OTHER 38
A TABLE OF DATES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, SHOWING THE
LITERARY EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE 58
A CHART, CLASSIFYING THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
AND SHOWING THE VARIOUS CANONS AND THE TRUE CHRONO-
LOGICAL ORDER OF THE BOOKS 68
A CHART, CLASSIFYING THE LITERATURE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
AND SHOWING THE TRUE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF THE
BOOKS 126
THE BIBLE
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF
THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG THE SACRED BOOKS
OF THE WORLD.
The Bible as a Sacred Book. To the question,
What is our Bible ? scholarship makes, among others, this
broad answer: It is one of the great sacred books or
Bibles of mankind. The general verdict of scholars of
widest knowledge is, that, taken all in all, it is superior
to any of the others. But, however much it may tower
above the rest, it is clearly one of a catalogue that includes
them as well as it.
What are the other great Bibles of mankind? The
most conspicuous are
1. The Vedas of the Brahmans;
2. The Tripitaka of the Buddhists ;
3. The Avesta (or Zend-Avesta) of the Parsees or Per-
sians ;
4. The Five Kings, or Chinese Sacred Books of Con-
fucius ;
5. The Tao-te-king, or Chinese Sacred Book of Lao-
tse;
6. The Mohammedan Koran.
There have been, and are, other sacred books in the
world besides these; these, however, are probably the
2 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
most important. Not to speak of the less notable sacred
literature now in existence, such as the Upanishads and
Laws of Manu among the Hindus, it is known that the
ancient Egyptians possessed sacred volumes; and one
of them the Book of the Dead has been brought to
light, if not entire, at least in considerable part. 1 In
Babylonia and Assyria, too, important fragments of what
possibly may be called a sacred literature have been dis-
covered. 2 The Greeks have not left us anything which
we can properly call a sacred book. The poems of
Homer are great national epics, but they have never
received that " general recognition or sanction, which
alone," as Max Miiller says, " can impart a sacred or
canonical character/' Whatever the Celts, the Germans,
and the Slavs may have possessed of sacred traditions
about their gods and heroes, having been handed down
by oral tradition chiefly, has perished beyond all hope of
recovery. Some portions of the Edda's alone give us an
idea of what the religious and heroic poetry of the Scan-
dinavians may have been. So that I speak with suf-
ficient accuracy, perhaps, when I name as the more
important sacred books or Bibles of the world the
Brahman Bible, the Buddhist Bible, the Persian or Zoro-
1 See Tide's '* History of the Egyptian Religion," chap. ii. ; Renouf's
"Religion of Egypt" (Hibbert Lectures for 1879), lee. v. ; Rawlinsott's
"Ancient Egypt," vol. i., pp. 140-144.
* The remarkable religious hymns of the ancient Assyrians (received by
them possibly from the still earlier Sumerians) present some striking resem-
blances to the Hebrew Psalms. They were gathered into a collection for
ritualistic purposes, and seem to have been regarded as inspired. Lenor-
mant compares them with the Hindu Rig- Veda. See Ency. Brit., vol. iii.,
art "Babylonia," p. 191. Also, for fuller information, see Sayce's
"Religion of the Ancient Babylonians" (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), and
"Records of the Past."
PLACE OF THJK BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. J
astrian Bible, the two Chinese Bibles, the Mohammedan
Bible ; and, added to these, the Jewish Bible (our Old
Testament), and the Christian Bible (our Old and New
Testaments).
Sacred books or Bibles come into being naturally. They
are a necessary and inevitable outgrowth of the religious
nature of man. They may be divided into two classes.
The first class embraces those sacred books which spring
out of the general life of a race or people, and which
therefore are likely to be of a more or less uncertain
authorship, and to rest upon a background of legend
and myth. The second class is made up of those books
which spring directly from some great religious leader or
prophet, and usually within historic time.
(i.) Sacred Books which grow out of the General
Life of a People. In the early times of a people, before
they have a literature, and even before they have writ-
ing, there always come into existence great numbers of
legends and stories, about wars, calamities, striking and
mysterious events (as floods, earthquakes, the supposed
creation of the world), about ancestors, kings, heroes,
persons supposed to enjoy great favor with the gods.
The more notable of these stories will be told from
family to family, from tribe to tribe, from generation
to generation, and hence in the course of ages will be-
come the heritage of a whole race. As rude instruments
of music are invented, and as the people gain the ability
to sing or chant, these legends and tales will tend more
or less to assume material forms.
When at length the people arrive at that condition of
civilization in which writing makes its appearance, it is,
of course, those hymns, ballads, and legends that are
usually embalmed in writing first these, and also sim-
4 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
pie magical formulas, directions for incantations, forms
of prayers to the gods, and regulations for religious rites,
all of which spring into being equally naturally, equally
gradually, and often equally early. All these, because
they come down from revered ancestors, and have the
halo of a shadowy past about them, are naturally looked
upon as peculiarly sacred. These become the germ of
the future sacred book or Bible. As ages go on, other
writings come into being, of one kind and another, some
of which are of necessity religious or semi-religious, and
some very likely ethical By a sort of natural selection,
the best of these, or such as meet with most popular
favor, or are most in harmony with the religious feeling
and sentiment of the people, are preserved, and grow in
honor; while the rest sink into obscurity or disappear
altogether. Those that have thus been preserved and
lifted up into honor, as time passes away grow venerable,
and by and by are added to the earlier sacred literature ;
and thus the Bible grows. These additions may be few
or many, according to circumstances. But at last there
comes a time, as a result of national disaster, or the stag-
nation of intellectual and religious life, or for some other
cause, when a line gets drawn, and the sacred book gets
sealed up. Anything written at any point of time on
this side the line is not true Bible. Such is in brief the
history of the origin of one class of sacred books or
Bibles. As prominent in this class we readily recognize
the Vedas, indeed nearly all the sacred literature of the
Hindus, and our own Old Testament.
(2.) Sacred Books which originate in a Man. The
second class of sacred books spring from a person. A
great religious teacher appears among a people, makes
a profound impression, inaugurates a new religious move-
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. 5
ment, or, if you please, a new religion. It is entirely
natural that a new Bible should come into being as a
result. His followers, of course, desire to preserve an
account of his life and a record of his teachings. If he
himself writes a book or a series of books, this or these
will constitute the Bible, or at least the leading and most
important part of the Bible. If, however, he does not
leave behind anything written by himself, then, naturally,
followers and admirers of him write out and preserve a
record of his deeds and words as best they can, and these
will constitute the Bible, or the beginning of it. As
Bibles that have thus had their origin in a man, we name
of course the two Bibles of China, which sprung from
Confucius and Lao-tse ; the Buddhist Bible, which sprung
from Sakya-muni, or Buddha ; the Koran, which came
from Mahomet ; and the New Testament, which is the
outcome of the life of Jesus. 1
With reference to the great Bibles of the world, in
whichever of these two ways they may have had their
origin, several things are to be said.
Time brings Sacredness. Most great sacred books,
1 The day of the rise of new religions and sacred books is not past. Says
Dr. J. H. Allen in his "Christian History " (vol. iii., p. 240): " Quite within
my own recollection, all the conditions have been found for the rise of an
historical religion in at least four cases, and I know not how many more :
that of the Mormons and Spiritists in America, the Bab in Persia, and the
Brahmo Somaj in India, to say nothing of Comte's 'Religion of Humanity/
or the revolutionary faith of Socialism. Probably all of these will soon be
crushed out (if they have not been already) by special circumstances, or
else absorbed in wider faiths. But under other circumstances either of
them might well grow to be historically as interesting, if not so important,
as Parseeism, Buddhism, or Islam." The Mormons have their sacred book
or Bible called the " Book of Mormon," written by Joseph Smith about 1830.
Also the new Christian Science faith has its sacred book, "Science and
Health," written by Mrs. Mary G. Baker Eddy.
6 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
so far as we are able to find out, have acquired their
peculiar sacredness mainly by age. The only excep-
tions are found in the second class among those orig-
inating in a great religious teacher. 1 The books might
have been much prized at first, or they might not ; but
all thought of putting them into a category by them-
selves, as sacred books, was, as a rule, absent at first, and
only arose in after times and by slow degrees. As they
grew old they grew sacred. As men passed on, away
from the times and circumstances of their origin, they
came by degrees to think of that origin as supernatural.
The reverence that began to surround them was the halo
of antiquity.
The tendency of the human mind is always and every-
where much the same ; the individual thinks of the years of
his childhood as golden years ; the, nation or race thinks
of the age of its childhood as a golden age. Most peoples
of the past have either worshipped their ancestors, or at
least have thought of their ancestors as in some way more
than human. Institutions, 6r customs, or traditions, or
writings, or heritages of any kind that have descended
through many generations, have invariably tended to
become sacred in the eyes of those to whom they have
fallen. 8 Particularly has this always been the case in the
1 The Koran, Book of Mormon and " Science and Health " are exceptions.
2 How age gives sacredness is well illustrated by the so-called Apostles'
Creed (a name most misleading, since the creed did not come into ex-
istence until centuries after the Apostles' death see Ency. Brit., art.
" Creeds ; >f also Schaffs "Creeds of Christendom," vol. i., pp. 14-23) and
by the Nicene Creed, both of which, on account of long use, have reached
a degree of sacredness in the eyes of certain sects of Christians, little, if any,
inferior to that of the Bible. It is a question whether the Breviary and the
Missal of the Roman Catholic Church and the Book of Common Prayer of
the Episcopal Church may not eventually reach the condition of sacred
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. J
more fixed and less progressive civilizations of the East,
where originated the great Bibles of the world. Hardly
one of these Bibles indeed, hardly one of the writings or
fragments of which any Bible is made up seems to have
been regarded as in any true sense sacred when it first
came into existence. What the fathers prized the chil-
dren venerated, and the children's children lifted up into-
the miraculous and the divine.
It would be interesting and instructive to take up, in
turn, several of the great sacred books mentioned, and
trace in detail the steps, as modern scholarship has been
able to discover them, by which they advanced from the
position of merely good and highly prized writings to the
position of sacred books. But our space will not allow
us to do this with reference to any except our own Bible.
Suffice it to say, that with some of the books this advance
was very slow, and took hundreds of years. In the case
of the Vedas and Zend-Avesta it appears to have taken
many hundreds of years as is also true with at least
some parts of our own Bible.
As regards our Old Testament, the idea of sacredness
was attached first to the Pentateuch, or the " Five Books
of Moses," or the "Law," as it was called. And the
sacredness of even this seems to have been something
very shadowy and intangible for a long time. The part
of the Old Testament called by the Jews " The Prophets "
came next to be regarded as sacred ; while all that part
then known as " The Writings," and including such books
books. They are already regarded by multitudes with a degree of reverence
that can be called scarcely less than superstitious a reverence certainly
quite as great as was felt in the days of Christ for important parts of the
Old Testament, and quite as great as was accorded at first to any of the
writings of the New Testament
8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
as the Psalms and Proverbs and Job, which are generally
held to-day in higher esteem than any other of the Old
Testament books, did not come to be regarded as really
sacred much before the time of Christ. Indeed, at the
time of Christ all this part of- the Old Testament was
ranked much lower in authority than the rest.
As to the New Testament, certain Epistles seem to
have come to be regarded as sacred, or authoritative,
considerably earlier than the Gospels or the Acts. But
.for a long time perhaps for two centuries the New
Testament writings were none of them looked upon by
the Christian Church as standing upon the same high
level with the Old Testament. And at least three or four
centuries passed away before it was decided, more than
in part, which particular ones, of the large number of
writings produced within a century or two after the death
of Jesus, should be included in the New Testament canon
that is to say, should be regarded as possessing divine
authority and which should be cast aside. But this
subject of the formation of our own Scripture canon will
come up for more extended notice further on. (See
Chapters XVIL and XVIII.)
Fictitious Perfection: Facing Backward. Another
thing which may be said of all the various sacred books
of the world is, that just as soon and just so far as a.
people have come to regard any book as sacred, they
have begun to be blind to its faults, to take it as an ulti-
matum, and to be unwilling to seek for, or even to receive,
anything as by any possibility better than it. Religion
is always an advancing and a growing thing until it pro-
duces for itself a sacred book and also during the years
or the centuries in which the sacred book is coming into
existence. But the Book once completed, as a rule reli-
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED, BOOKS. 9
gion straightway ceases to advance or grow* Thereafter
its eyes are not turned forward but backward. Every-
thing thenceforth must be estimated as good or bad,
according as it does or does not agree with the teaching
of the Book. The fact that the Book has grown to be re-
garded as sacred, petrifies the religion it teaches, makes
sacred every crudeness, every childish rite or ceremony,
as well as every false and immoral doctrine which it con-
tains, and which, but for the notion of a sacred and fault-
less book, the people would in due time outgrow and leave
behind.
Thus it is that in India a single text of the Vedas
(probably misinterpreted, at that) has resulted in the im-
molation of vast numbers of widows on the funeral piles
of their husbands. Thus, too, it is, that we see many a
religious rite practiced, and many an absurd doctrine be-
lieved to-day in Christendom, which long ago would have
been laid aside but for the notion of a Book that is sacred,
and whose every word, therefore, must be accepted, and
whose lightest injunction must be carried out to the letter,
as long as time lasts.
It has been estimated that the single Old Testament
text, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," has caused
the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent human
beings. Such Old Testament books as Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, full of the records of inhu-
man wars, said to have been commanded by Jehovah, have
been responsible, in no small degree, for the terrible war
spirit which has wrought such havoc in Christendom during
nearly every century since Christianity began.
Polygamy has always appealed to the Bible for support
Were not Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and Solomon
polygamists? Yet these men are represented as special
10 ORIGIN' AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
favorites of God. Tyranizers over women have gone to
the Bible for texts wherewith to justify their tyranny. So
have wine-drinkers for texts to justify their use of wine.
The biblical teaching that the insane are possessed of devils
caused insane men and women to be treated in the most
inhuman ways for centuries. Inquisitions, persecutions,
and oppressions of all kinds have made their constant ap-
peal to texts from the Bible to support their crimes against
humanity. 1
We have here an explanation of the very strange fact
that so many excellent Christian people in this country
only a little while ago defended slavery as something
good and right. It happened that the people from
whom the Old Testament part of our sacred book came,
held slaves, and, in common with most other nations in
that early age of the world, thought it right so to do.
The centuries that have passed since that time have
carried the world forward to the point where all the
leading nations now see plainly that slavery is wrong.
But the fact that the sacred book sanctioned slavery
blinded many eyes. Instead of asking what was right,
men and women asked what the sacred book taught;
which was only equivalent to asking what was supposed
to be right by a people of much lower civilization than
ours, two or three thousand years ago, }at the time
the Book crystallized into sacredness. Thigifwas a fearful
mistake, which resulted in arraying tens of thousands
of as conscientious and kind-hearted people as the world
ever saw, on the side of as dark and cruel, and in its
spirit unchristian, an institution as has" disgraced our
modern world. Such are specimens of the evils that
1 For a more full treatment of this subject, see chapters xxiii., xxiv., and xxv.
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. II
necessarily come from going back into the past, and tak-
ing a book written in an age long gone by, and for an
age long gone by, and setting it up as a standard for the
present age as the various peoples of the world have
set up their sacred books or Bibles as standards for all
time.
Sacred Books tolerate no Rivals. Another thing
seems to be common with nearly all the /great sacred
books of the world, or, rather, with the believers in nearly
all these books ; and this is, that, as soon as any one of
these books comes to be set up as sacred, or as a Bible,
it is from that time forward regarded by its adherents as
the only Bible, and all the other sacred books of the
world are cast out as false. In other words, the process
of canonization of a book, or of lifting it up from a
merely good book into a sacred book or Bible, seems to
be virtually a process of degradation or condemnation of
all other books and religions. And so the Buddhist has
ever been the bitter foe of the Brahman, and the Moham-
medan of the Buddhist, and the Christian of the Mo-
hammedan. Whereas, the evident truth is, each of the
world's Bibles contains a great deal that is good, with
more or less that is of no value, if not positively bad.
Each religion has divine elements in it, as well as ele-
ments that are very undivine ; and it is a great pity that
the eyes of men should be blinded to this fact. It is not
only a great pity that the adherents of other Bibles and
religions of the world should be blinded to this fact as
regards our Christian Scriptures and religion, but it is
also a pity that we should be blinded to the same fact as
regards scriptures and religions which are not Christian. -
False Methods of Interpretation. Vicious systems
of interpretation inevitably arise in connection with
12 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
sacred books. These books, by reason of the infallibility
claimed for them, become everywhere fetters upon men's
minds. But the human mind was made for freedom. It
may be brought to submit unresistingly to bonds for a
time, but not forever. It must think and inquire, or die ;
and that means it must make progress in knowledge, or
die. Hence we find that one of the most wide-spread
and continuous struggles of the race has been that which
it has made to escape from the bondage of the past and
the outgrown, which the rule of its so-called " infallible "
sacred books has always imposed upon it.
How can it do this? Generally it is unable to do it
directly, but it is driven to methods of indirection. The
means most often employed is that of new, and, it must
be confessed, more or less perverted and false, methods
of interpretation. Men kllow themselves conveniently
to drop into the background some of the more incredible
or objectionable things which the books contain ; they
develop a marvelous facility in explaining away contra-
dictions and inaccuracies and things which the increase
of knowledge has shown not to be true, and in reading
into the books in a thousand places all sorts of new mean-
ings and so-called " deeper interpretations," to make the
teachings of the books harmonize with the increase of
knowledge. That which really belongs to the mind of
the- reader is attributed to that of the writer. The
natural and simple meaning of the words is set aside.
Forced interpretations are put upon passages for the pur-
pose of compelling them to harmonize with that which
it is supposed they ought to mean. Statements, doc-
trines, and allusions are discovered in the books which not
only have no existence in their pages, but which are abso-
lutely foreign to the epoch at which they were written.
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. 13
This process of false interpretation is greatly favored
by distance of time. Says Prof. Benjamin Jowett : " All
nations who have ancient writings have endeavored to
read in them the riddle of the past. The Brahmin,
repeating his Vedic hymns, sees them pervaded by a
thousand meanings, which have been handed down by
tradition ; the one of which he is ignorant is that which
we perceive to be the true one." Says Max Muller:
" Greater violence is done by successive interpreters to
sacred writings than to any other relics of ancient liter-
ature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries
to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their
early prophets. Passages in the Veda and Zend-Avesta
which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines
are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the
latest of native commentators. But as soon as any word
or sentence can be so turned as to support a [religious]
doctrine, however modern, or a [religious] precept, how-
ever irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and
mangled till at last they are made to yield their assent to
ideas the most foreign to the minds of the authors of the
Veda and Zend-Avesta." This practice of interpreting
into sacred books what later ages think ought to be in
them, and out of them what later ages think ought not
to be there, is pointed out and illustrated with regard
to the Chinese, Brahmanic, and Buddhist sacred books,
by Dr. Legge, Dr. Muir, Burnouf, Max Muller, and others. 1
: The later Greeks regarded the writings of Homer with the same super-
stitious veneration, and interpreted into them all sorts of doctrines which
could have had no place in the mind of the writer. For example, " they
found therein the Neptunian and Vulcanian theory ; the sphericity of the
earth ; the doctrines of Democritus, Herodotus, and of Socrates and Plato
in their turn " (Parker's " Discourse of Religion ")
14 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Illustrations of the same with regard to our own Bible
are more numerous still. Indeed, the whole history of
Christianity is full of exhibitions of the most marvelous
and unflagging ingenuity in inventing new interpretations
of Scripture to keep pace with the growth of human
thought and the progress of knowledge and science.
Almost every scientific theory that comes into exist-
ence is found to conflict in some point or other with the
theological notions which an unscientific past has handed
down. But the theologians are ever on the alert ; and
war is at once declared against the scientific intruder. All
good men are summoned to the defence of the Bible.
The conflict rages fiercely, and shows no sign of abate-
ment until it is seen that the scientists are getting the day,
when lo ! it soon begins to be discovered by the theolo-
gians that, after all, the new theory is harmless, indeed,
there is no discrepancy between it and Scripture. The
discrepancy that had been supposed to exist grew out of
a wrong Scripture interpretation. In fact, instead of the
two being in conflict, the scientific theory is really taught
in the Bible. 1
1 " As soon as science has won the assent of public opinion to any of its
discoveries, or even established the preponderating probability of any of its
theories, the religious world has ever made haste to declare that former
interpretations of the Scripture have been mistaken, and that this new dis-
covery of science is just what the sacred record has always taught from the
earliest times down, if only it had been rightly understood. The six days of
the first chapter of Genesis never meant days of twenty-four hours, but
geological epochs. The Adam whose creation took place just four thousand
years before Christ, was not, of course, the first man, but the progenitor
merely of the chosen higher race. The Deluge was a local cataclysm or
geological subsidence in the neighborhood of the Caspian Sea, etc., etc. As
each past age read into the Bible its favorite theories in Tertullian's time
the materiality of the soul, and in Augustine's the flatness of the earth so
the interpreters and commentators of to-day with equal ingenuity can dove-
PLACE OF THE BIBLE AMONG SACRED BOOKS. IS
Thus we see a remarkable similarity in the methods ci
interpretation adopted generally by the adherents of the
various sacred books of the world. Everywhere we dis-
cover the same facility in " explaining away " whatever
proves itself troublesome in their pages, and in reading
into them whatever new meanings the changes of the
times and the growth of men's thought may seem to
make necessary.
In one aspect of it, of course, all this is humiliating.
Yet in another it is encouraging. It shows that the
tyranny of sacred books cannot last forever. Sooner or
later the right-thinking human mind revolts against it. To-
day that revolt is more deep and earnest than ever before.
Science, the printing press, the school, the spirit of free
tail the inspired record into every latest crinkle of scientific fact or fancy.
Spontaneous generation, they tell you, is plainly taught in Genesis ; evolu-
tion is anticipated by Moses ; and Darwin and Job evidently had the same
ideas. In the days of Garibaldi there was a popular story in England,
'ascribed to Disraeli, in which the objection made to a pleasant plan of mar-
rying the Italian patriot to a wealthy English lady viz., that Garibaldi
already had one wife was triumphantly met by the suggestion of Disraeli
that Gladstone could be easily got to explain her away. The e reconcilers '
of science and Scripture whom we have been speaking of, manifest a theo-
logical dissipating power of equal strength " (James T. Bixby).
Years ago John Weiss declared: "Soon it will be difficult to find an
orthodox thinker who will not claim to be a disciple of Darwin ; just as we
have lived to hear the old-fashioned Whigs assert that they always were
original Garrisonian Abolitionists."
" The doctrine of evolution is already almost triumphant. There scarcely
remains for the recalcitrants any other resources than to demonstrate its per-
fect agreement with the [theological] dogmas they are not willing to aban-
don. The thing is in process of execution. The interpreters are skilful,
the sacred texts obliging, the metaphysical theories ductile, malleable, flex-
ible. Courage I We must be very narrow-minded, indeed, not to recognize
in the first chapter of Genesis a succinct exposition of the Darwinian theory "
(Letourneau, " Biology," p. 303).
1 6" ORIGIN' AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
inquiry which is abroad in the modern world, are mighty
liberators. Sacred books will not be thrown away : they
contain truth of too much value, and they have too cen-
tral a place in the religious history and education of the
race for that. But everything indicates that, at least in
Christian lands, they will more and more be relegated to
their proper place as servants of man : they will not much
longer be permitted to fetter his intellect and dwarf his
life.
CHAPTER II.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE BIBLE AND OTHER SACRED
BOOKS.
THE place of our Bible among the great sacred books
of mankind cannot be adequately understood without at
least a brief study of the similarities that exist between
its teachings and those of other sacred books.
It is the tendency of dogmatists in every religion to
affirm that their faith alone is true, and that their sacred
scriptures are the only divine revelation. Christianity
has not been free from such affirmations. But such dog-
matism closes men's eyes against any possible broad and
adequate understanding of either the world's religions or
its sacred books. He who knows only one of the re-
ligions of the world knows none. He who knows only
one of the sacred books of the world knows none. All
sacred books are related. All the great historic religions
are sisters. This has been pointed out to some extent
in the preceding chapter. It will be the aim of the pres-
ent chapter to make it plainer still.
All sacred books have much in common. This is
true as regards the more superficial and less essential
parts of their teachings for example, their legends, their
mythological notions, their accounts of miraculous events,
their rites and ceremonies ; and it is true, also, as regards
the more deep and essential parts of their teachings for
example, their social and religious precepts, and the great
body of their ethical doctrine.
18 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
(I.) Similarities of Teaching in Matters Superficial
and Transient. Notice first the teachings of the
various sacred books with regard to the externalities of
religion, and those intellectual conceptions which change
with the growing intelligence of the race. Amidst- all
the variety, it is surprising how much of similarity, and
even of identity, there is found in these things.
Sacrifices and offerings to the gods are common to
nearly all religions, and laws and regulations therefor
occupy a large place in the world's sacred books. We
have been taught that the Jewish sacrificial system was
a special revelation of God to his chosen people. But a
study of the religions of mankind shows that that sys-
tem differed little from those of many heathen nations.
Not only did the sacrificial idea and the atonement idea
come into Christianity from Judaism, but it is certain that
both came into Judaism from heathenism.
Circumcision did not originate with the Jews, but was
practiced in Egypt long before the Jewish people had an
existence.
The rite of baptism is found to have existed long before
the time of Christ, and in many parts of the world be-
sides Palestine.
The cross as a sacred symbol is much older than Chris-
tianity, and common to many lands. The Sacrament, or
Eucharist, or Lord's Supper, is found in essence in other
religions.
The ideas of divine incarnations, immaculate concep-
tions, and virgin-born gods are found in many religions
and Bibles. Nothing is more common in the mytholo-
gies of Greece and Rome than stories of children of the
gods born of human mothers. The Egyptian Osiris
was regarded as a divine incarnation. Buddha is repre-
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. Ig
sented as born without a human father. Confucius and
Lao-tse both had miraculous births. Zoroaster is begot-
ten by a' ray from the Divine Reason. The later Hindu
sacred books represent the god Vishnu as having been
incarnated nine times. The seventh and eighth incarna-
tions were in the persons of the Hindu warriors Rama
and Krishna. The ninth took the form of the great
teacher Gautama, the Buddha. 1
The idea of Messiahs is found in other sacred books
besides our own. The Chinese and Hindu scriptures
contain prophecies of Messiahs to come.
Miracles are common to most of the Bibles, and even
the very same kinds of miracles, such as raising the dead
to life, healing the blind and lame, voices speaking out of
heaven to persons favored of God, the Holy Spirit com-
ing in the form of a dove, and so forth.
Thomas W. Higginson puts the whole case well, in his
admirable little monograph, "The Sympathy of Reli-
gions," when he says : " We constantly meet [in the differ-
ent religions of the world] the same leading features.
We find the same religious institutions monks, mission-
aries, priests, pilgrims ; the same ritual prayers, liturgies,
sacrifices; the same implements frankincense, candles,
holy water, relics, amulets, votive offerings; the same
symbols the cross, the serpent, the all-seeing eye, the
halo of rays; the same prophecies and miracles the dead
restored and evil spirits cast out ; the same holy days foi
Easter and Christmas were kept as spring and autumn
1 ** We meet again and again with the curious longing after a miraculous
birth, claimed for the founders or propounders of new religions by theu
devoted disciples and followers, as if there could be, or as if poor humar
reason could even imagine, anything more truly miraculous than a natura
birth and a natural death " (Mailer's " Natural Religion," p. 546).
20 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
festivals, centuries before our era, by Egyptians,
sians, Saxons, Romans ; the same artistic designs for the
mother and child stand depicted not only in the temples
of Europe, but in those of Arabia, Egypt, and Thibet/'
Many writers on Buddhism have called attention to the
curious similarity between the legends that have gathered
about Buddha and those that have gathered about Christ.
Both Buddha and Jesus are represented as of royal
lineage; both are born of virgin mothers; the birth of
each is announced by heavenly messengers ; princes and
wise men seek out the infants respectively, bringing
homage and costly gifts. Having arrived at manhood,
each passes through a season of supernatural temptation
before entering upon his public work as a teacher ; at the
death of each the earth trembles, etc.
Perhaps even more remarkable is the similarity that
exists between the rites, ceremonies, and ecclesiastical
system of Buddhism and those of Christianity at least,
Christianity in its Roman Catholic form. Says Rhys
Davids in his Hibbert Lectures : " Buddhism and Chris-
tianity have both developed in the course of fifteen
hundred years into sacerdotal and sacramental systems,
each with its bells and rosaries, and images and holy
water; each with its services in dead languages, with
choirs and processions, and creeds and incense, in which
the laity are spectators only ; each with its mystic rites
and ceremonies performed by shaven priests in gorgeous
robes ; each with its abbots and monks and nuns of many
grades; each with its worship of virgins, saints, and
angels ; its reverence to the Virgin and the Child ; its
confessions, fasts, and purgatory ; its idols, relics, sym-
bols, and sacred pictures; its shrines and pilgrimages;
each with its huge monasteries and gorgeous cathedrals :
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. 21
its powerful hierarchy and its wealthy cardinals; each,
even, ruled over by a pope, with a triple tiara on his
head and the sceptre of temporal power in his hand." 1
All this similarity is very astonishing. We are told
that when the first Christian missionaries went among
the Buddhists they were able to account for it in no way
except by supposing that the devil had forestalled them
by going there first and planting among the people a
counterfeit as much like Christianity as possible. In
more recent times the effort has been made repeatedly
to explain these resemblances by supposing that one
religion copied from the other. But the careful investi-
gations of scholars make it well-nigh certain that there
has been little, if any, such copying, but that each
religion has developed these features independently. It
is found that the similarities between the stories that
cluster about Buddha and Jesus extend also very largely
to those that have sprung up around Krishna, Confucius,
Lao-tse, Zoroaster, 'Osiris, Moses, Mahomet, and many
other religious characters, fabled and real ; and the
ceremonial and ecclesiastical resemblances that appear
between Buddhism and Roman Catholicism are scarcely
more striking than those that appear between many
other religions. 2 The truth seems to be that these are
J Hibbert Lectures, 1881, p. 193.
2 For example, similarities almost as great may be pointed out between
Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and the religion of ancient
Egypt on the other. Says Prof. J. P. Mahaffy in his " Prolegomena to
Ancient History " (p. 416) : " There is scarcely a great and fruitful idea in
the Jewish or Christian systems which has not its analogy in the Egyptian
faith. The development of the one God into a Trinity ; the incarnation of
the mediating Deity into a virgin, and without a father ; his conflict and his
momentary defeat by the powers of darkness ; his partial victory (for the
*nerny is not destroyed) ; his resurrection and reign over an eternal kingdom
22 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
all natural developments. Just as, under like circum-
stances, different peoples develop industrially and socially
along parallel lines, so under similar circumstances they
develop similar religious ideas, institutions, mythologies,
and observances. 1
(2.) Similarities of Teaching in Matters Essential
and Permanent. But it is not simply in regard to the
more external and unimportant things that there is a great
deal in common between the different Bibles and religions
of the world ; the same is even more emphatically true as
regards the deeper and more vital things, particularly the
ethical and spiritual teachings of the different Bibles.
Says Max Miiller : " There is no religion or if there is
I do not know it which does not say, ' Do good, avoid
evil.' I wish," he continues, "that I could read you
extracts I have collected from the sacred books of the
ancient world, grains of truth more precious to me than
grains of gold ; prayers so simple and so true that we
with his justified saints ; his distinction from, and yet identity with, the
uncreate, incomprehensible Father, whose form is unknown, and who
dwelleth not in temples made with hands all these theological conceptions
pervade the oldest religion of Egypt. So, too, the contrast, and even the
apparent inconsistencies between our moral and theological beliefs the
vacillating attribution of sin and guilt partly to moral weakness, partly to
the interference of evil spirits, and likewise of righteousness to moral worth,
and again to the help of good genii and angels ; the immortality of the soul
and its final judgment ; the purgatorial fire, the torture of the damned all
these things have met us in the Egyptian Ritual and moral treatises."
'For further information upon this subject see Pfleiderer's "Philosophy
of Religion," vols. iii. and iv. ; Reville's '* Prolegomena of the History of
Religions ;" Tylor's " Primitive Culture "; Brinton's " The Religious Senti-
ment"; " The Sacred Books of the East," translated under the supervision
of Max Muller, or other translations of sacred books ; and standard works,
generally, upon comparative religion, comparative mythology; and the
separate religions of mankind.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. 2$
could all join in them." After giving a translation of a
prayer of some length from the Vedas, he adds: " I am
not blind to the blemishes of this ancient prayer, but
I am not blind to its beauty either; and I think you
will admit that the discovery of even one such poem
among the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and the certainty
that such a poem was composed in India at least three
thousand years ago, without any inspiration but that
which all can find who seek for it if happily they may
find it, is well worth the labor of a life. It shows that
man was never (nor in any nation) forsaken of God/*
It would be easy to fill a volume with extracts from
the different great sacred books of the world, illustrating
the essential identity of their teachings regarding many
of the deep things of religion and life. But I must con-
tent myself with citing a very few.
The Sacred Books of the Hindus. Here is a hymn
from the Rig-Veda which cannot fail to call to mind
some of the most exalted portions of our own Job or
Isaiah :
" Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He who gives life ; He who gives strength ;
Whose command all the bright gods revere ;
Whose shadow is immortality.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who through his power is the one King of the breathing and awak-
ening world
Who governs all, man and beast.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness the sea
proclaims ;
He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm ;
He through whom the heaven was established, nay, the highest
heaven ;
He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up.
24 ORIGIN AND GROWTH Of- THE BIBLE.
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds
The clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ;
He who alone is God above all gods." 1
The following hymn, also from the Rig- Veda, needs
only to have the word " Varuna " changed to " Almighty "
to fit it for a place in almost any Christian liturgy :
" Let me not yet, O Varuna. enter into the house of clay ;
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind ;
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone to
the wrong shore ;
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offense against the heavenly
host;
Whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness,
Punish us not, O God, for our offense ! " *
Nearly every line of the following selections from two
Vedic hymns reminds us of some passage in the Hebrew
Psalms :
" The great Lord of these worlds sees as if he were near. If a man
thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it all.
If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or get up,
what two persons sitting together whisper, King Varuna knows it, for he is
there as a third.
This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the King, and this wide sky. He
who should flee far beyond the sky would not there escape from Varuna.
His messengers descending from heaven traverse this world. The thou-
sand-eyed Varuna looketh across the whole earth. The winking of men's
eyes are numbered by him.
Wide and mighty are the works of him who separated the firmaments.
He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven. He stretched apart the
starry sky and the earth.
Do I say this of my own self ? How can I approach Varuna? Will he
1 Rig-Veda, x. 121 (abridged). * Rig- Veda, vii. 89.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. 2$
be pleased to accept my offering? When shall I with a quiet mind see him
propitiated ?
free us from the sins of our fathers, and from those which we have
committed with our own bodies ! Protect us, O gods, always with your
blessings I " l
The Sacred Book of the Persians. Here are a few
passages from the Avesta, the Bible of the Persians, one
of the oldest and noblest of the world's sacred books:
" The will of the Lord is the law of holiness." 2
" Holiness is the best of all good." *
Zoroaster asked the All-knowing, "What is the one
recital of the praise of holiness which is worth all that is
between the earth and the heavens ? " And he answered,
" It is that one, O holy Zoroaster, which a man uttereth
when he would renounce evil thoughts, evil words, and
evil deeds/' 4
Here is an allegory that is worthy of the New Testa-
ment. It is designed to set forth the influence of the
conscience after death :
"At the end of the third night [after death], when the dawn appeareth, it
seemeth to the soul of the faithful one as if his own conscience were advanc-
ing toward him in the form of a maiden, fair, bright, white-armed, strong,
tall-formed, noble, of a glorious race, as fair as the fairest things in the
1 From the Atharva-Veda, iv, 16, and the Rig-Veda, vii. 86. The
penitential and ethical character of many of the Vedic hymns has often
been pointed out. Says Professor Tiele, " Some of the hymns [of the
Vedas], especially those addressed to Varuna, are marked by a deep sense
of guilt, and the mighty Indra must be approached in faith. The doctrine
of immortality, also, indicates the ethical character of the Vedic religion "
("History of Religion," p. 117).
* Yasht xxiii.
* Yasht xxiv. (Repeated in this Yasht eight times ; also found in others.)
4 Yasht xxi. 16, 17.
26 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
world. And as the soul of the faithful one spake unto her, saying, * What
maiden art thou, that art the fairest maid I have ever looked upon ?' she
answered him, * O thou youth of good thoughts, good words, works, and
religion, I am thine own conscience. Every one did love thee for that great-
ness, goodness, fairness, sweetness, victorious strength, and freedom from
sorrow in which I appear to thee. When thou sawest a man making deri-
sion [of holy things], and doing works of idolatry, or rejecting the poor, and
shutting the door to the poor, then thou didst sit, singing psalms and wor-
shipping the son of the Lord, and with alms rejoicing the faithful from near
and from far. I was lovely, and thou madest me still more lovely ; I was
fair, and thou madest me still fairer, through that good speech, good thought,
and good deed of thine. And so, henceforth, men worship me for having long
had converse with the Lord Omniscient. . . . The first step which the
soul of the faithful man made did place him in the Paradise of Good
Thoughts ; the second, in the Paradise of Good Words ; the third, in the
Paradise of Good Deeds ; the fourth, in the Paradise of Endless Light." l
We must confine ourselves to a single other quotation
from the Avesta. That shall be a prayer, as high and
pure as it is possible for the soul to breathe. Prays the
sacred writer :
" The reward which thou hast given to those of the same law as thyself,
O Lord, All-knowing, that give thou to us. May we attain to that, namely,
union with thy purity for all eternity." a
The Sacred Books of the Chinese. Lao-tse taught
his followers " to recompense injury with kindness," 3 in
this respect reaching the high-water mark of Christianity.
Confucius taught the Golden Rule centuries before
Christ. It is found repeatedly in the Analects, the Doc-
trine of the Mean, and the Great Learning. Tsze-Kung
once asked him the question, "Is there any one word
which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life ? "
1 Yashts xxii. and xxiv. (slightly abridged).
* Yazna xi. 8 Tao-te-king, chap. 63.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACR&D BOOKS. 2/
Confucius replied: "Is not reciprocity such a word?
What you do not want done to yourself,, do not do to
others." l It is often urged that this form of the Golden
Rule is negative, and therefore much lower than that of
Christ, which was positive. But is it true that there
is nothing positive in the word reciprocity ? Moreover,
Professor Douglas, in his " Confucianism and Taouism "
points out the fact (p. 103) that Confucius certainly gives
the Rule in one place in a positive form, where he says:
* * In the way of the superior man there are four things, to none of which
have I as yet attained : To serve my father as I voW require my son to
serve me ; to serve my prince as I would require my minister to serve me ;
to serve my elder brother as I would require my yotiager brother to serve
me ; and to offer first to friends what one requires of th&m." *
Other teachings of Confucius are such sis these :
*' Filial piety is the beginning of virtue, and brotherly love is the sequel
of virtue."
** Happy union with wife and children is like the music of lutes and harps.
And when there is concord among brethren the harmony is delightful and
enduring."
" No virtue is higher than love to all men, and mete 5s no loftier aim in
government than to profit all men." *
" Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles*" '* I do not know
how a man is to get on without faithfulness. How can a cart be made to
go without the cross-bar for yoking the oxen to ? " *
" Worship as though the Deity were present.' 1
" In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but Hie design of them
all may be embraced in that one sentence, * Have no depraved thoughts/ "
" Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light into a dark
chamber. We must conform ourselves to it until we are like two instru-
ments of music tuned to the same pitch. Our passions shut up the door of
our souls against God."
1 Lun-yu, xv. 23. 5 Chung-ynaog, xiii. 4.
3 Shu-king. 4 Luti-ya.
28 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
The Sacred Book of the Buddhists. The following
passages from the Bible of the Buddhists are not unworthy
of a place in our own Old or New Testament :
** If a man live a hundred years and spend the whole of his time in reli-
gious attention and offerings to the gods, sacrificing elephants and horses
[the most costly and valued offerings], all this is not equal to one act of pure
love in saving life."
"Not in the void of heaven, not in the depths of the sea, not by entering
the rocky cliffs of the mountains, not in any of these places, or by any
means, can a man escape the consequences of his evil deed."
" A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection
of my ungrudging love. The more evil cometh from him, the more good
shall go from me."
" Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time ; hatred ceases by love."
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded on
our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with
an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of him who
draws the cart."
** As the bee collects honey and departs without injuring the flower, so
let him who is wise dwell on the earth."
1 ' * These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me ! * with such
thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself ; how
much less sons and wealth ! "
"Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come
nigh me. Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It will not
benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled."
" He whose evil deeds are covered by good deeds, brightens up this
world like the moon when she rises from behind a cloud."
" Let a man overcome anger by love, evil by good, the greedy by liber-
ality, the liar by truth." 1
The five commandments of the Buddhist Bible are :
1. Thou shalt not kill.
2. Thou shalt not steal.
1 These selections are taken from the Dhammapada, one of the books of
the Tripitaka. The first three are from the version translated from the
Chinese by Samuel Beal, and the rest from the version of Max Muller,
translated from the Pali (" Sacred Books of the East," vol. x.).
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. %9
3. Thou shalt not commit adultery, or any impurity.
4. Thou shalt not lie,
5. Thou shalt not intoxicate thyself.
The " Eight Steps " which, according to Buddha, lead
to the highest happiness, are Right Views, Right
Thoughts, Right Speech, Right Actions, Right Mode of
Livelihood, Right Exertion, Right Recollection, Right
Meditation.
The Sacred Book of the Mohammedans. Says the
Koran, the Bible of the Mohammedans:
1 * None of you can be a true believer until he loves for his brother what
he loves for himself."
The following passage from the Koran is declared by
Emanuel Deutsch to be a good summary of that sacred
book:
" It is not righteousness to turn your faces toward the East, or West ; for
God's is the East as well as the West. But verily he is righteous who be-
lieves in God, in the day of judgment, in the angels, in the Book, and in
the prophets'; who bestows his wealth, for God's sake, upon kindred, and
orphans, and the poor, and the homeless, and all those who ask ; and also
upon delivering the captives ; who is steadfast in prayer, who giveth alms,
who standeth firmly by his covenants when he has once firmly entered into
them ; and who is patient in adversity, in hardship, and in times of trial.
These are the righteous and the God-fearing." l
Another passage of the Koran is this :
" Say there is one God alone-
God the eternal:
He begetteth not
And he is not begotten ;
And there is none like unto him." 9
Thus I might go on quoting from all these different
Bibles at great length ; and, judging from the sentiments
1 Sutra ii. 3 Sutra cxii.
3O OKIGfN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
expressed, no one could possibly tell which I was quoting
from the Bible of the Brahmans, the Bible of the Bud-
dhists, the Bible of the Persians, the Chinese Bible of Con-
fucius, the Chinese Bible of Lao-tse, the Mohammedan
Bible, the Jewish Bible, or the Christian Bible so nearly
alike are all in their great central ethical and spiritual
teachings.
In short, if we could carry our study far enough, we
should find what Mr. Higginson says essentially true,
that " neither faith, nor love, nor truth, nor disinterested-
ness, nor forgiveness, nor patience, nor peace, nor equal-
ity, nor education, nor missionary effort, nor prayer, nor
honesty, nor the sentiment of brotherhood, nor reverence
for woman, nor the spirit of humility, nor the fact of
martyrdom, nor any other good thing is monopolized by
any form of faith. All religions recognize, more or less
remotely, these principles ; all do something to exemplify,
something to dishonor them." *
1 " Sympathy of Religions," p. 25. For an extended comparison of the
various sacred books and religions of the world with respect to their moral
and spiritual teachings, see first of all, of course, the sacred books them-
selves, now mainly accessible in good translations (in the *' Sacred Books of
the East " series, and elsewhere) ; also the writings of the great specialists
upon each separate religion. The following books of a more general
character may also be mentioned as valuable : Tiele's " History of Religion ";
DelaSaussaye's " Manual of the Science of Religion"; Clarke's " Ten Great
Religions"; the Hibbert Lectures (particularly the series by Mtlller, Renouf,
Davids, Kuenen, and Sayce) ; the Gifford Lectures ; a series of brief and
inexpensive works entitled "Non-Christian Religious Systems," including
books on Buddhism by Davids, Buddhism in China by Beal, Confucianism
and Taouism by Douglas, Hinduism by Williams, Islam and its Founder
by Stobat, and The Koran by Muir; Johnson's " Oriental Religions "; Max
Mulleins writings ; Barth's "Religions of India"; Warren V Buddhism in
Translations " ; L. H. Jordan's " Comparative Religion " ; Carpenter's " The
Place of Christianity among the Religions of the World."
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACRED BOOKS. 31
The Difference one of Degree, not of Kind Of
course, I would not be understood as claiming that all
the great sacred books of the world stand on a level, or
that their teachings are identical. They do not stand on
a level, and in a thousand things their teachings are not
identical. It is only a candid statement of the judgment
of the scholarship and religious criticism of the world to
say that our own Bible, particularly our New Testament,
is greatly superior to any of the Bibles of so-called
heathen peoples. But the difference is one of degree,
not of kind.
It should be remembered that the passages quoted
above are select passages ethical and spiritual gems,
culled from vast expanses of literature, much of which is
barren and dreary to an extent which those persons whose
reading of sacred scriptures has been confined to our own
Bible can little understand. The contents of the world's
sacred books range in quality all the way from the pas-
sages which we have quoted, down to the basest supersti-
tions, the dreariest platitudes, the most childish follies,
In comparing non-Christian Bibles with our own, of course,
this needs to be borne in mind if we would make our com-
parison fair and candid. But just in the degree in which
we make our comparison fair and candid, in that degree
shall we see clearly two truths. One is this, that all the
great sacred books of mankind (our own included) contain
enough in common of things superficial, transient, and
unworthy, so that no sacred book can say to the rest,
" I am perfect, or wholly of God "; the other truth is,
that all contain enough in common of things deep and
high, and eternally true, so that no one can say to any
other, " You are worthless, or wholly of man or of the
devil."
32 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Well does Matthew Arnold write :
" Children of men ! the Unseen Power whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind,
Hath looked on no religion scornfully
That man did ever find.
Which hath not taught weak wills how much they can ?
Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain ?
Which has not cried to sunk, self -weary man,
1 Thou must be born again ' ? "
So, then, to the question with which this book sets
out, " What is our Bible ? " we have our first answer, to
wit : It is one beyond question it is on the whole the
highest and best, but it is one of the six or eight great
sacred books or Bibles of the world.
Consequences of this Discovery. Some would have
us believe that this conclusion is inimical to religion. The
truth is, it is very far from that. Rather does it help us
to see that religion is a vastly broader and therefore a
vastly richer thing than Jew or Christian or Pagan has
been willing to believe. 1 Nations and peoples have ever
1 " It gave men larger and grander views of God when they learnt that
the earth is one among many bodies circling round the sun, and that the sun
himself is one of the numberless suns that are strewn as star dust in the
heavens ; and (rightly viewed) it cannot fail to give each of us, whose na-
ture is made to trust, a larger trust in, and more loving thought of Him, to
learn that our religion is one among many religions, and that nowhere is
there an altogether godless race. To use a homely figure, the religions of
the world are like human faces, all of which have something in common
nose, eyes, mouth, and so on ; while all differ, some being more beautiful
than others. But wherever any religion exists which has struck its roots
deep down into the life of a people, there must be some truth in it which
has nurtured them, and which is worth the seeking ; for the hunger of the
soul of man can no more be satisfied with a lie, than the hunger of his
body can be appeased with stones" (Clodd's "Childhood of Religions/'
pp. 8, 9).
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SACKED BOOKS. 33
claimed to have monopolies in religion ; ever have they
denied that it had any fountains beyond their own proph-
ets, priests, and sacred books. But in the light of the
scholarship of to-day we see that all such ideas are narrow
and puerile. Religion is as universal as sunshine, or love,
or God. Its fountains are in every land ; its prophets
dwell under all skies. It has given mankind not one
sacred book, but many.
We may no longer believe that God chose out one
little, isolated people of the world to be the sole recip-
ients of his revelation and his salvation, leaving all the
other peoples and nations of the earth neglected and un-
cared for. 1 The study of the great religions of the world,
which is going forward so rapidly, is giving birth to the
worthier faith, that God is the God of the whole earth.
As Whittier sings :
" All souls that struggle and aspire,
All hearts of prayer, by Thee are lit ;
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire
On dusky tribes and centuries sit/*
Or, as Saint Peter declares : " God is no respecter of
persons [that is, does not have pets and favorites among
his human children] ; but in every land he that reverences
God and works righteousness is accepted with him."
1 See Kuenen's "Religion of Israel," vol. i., pp. 5-12; Samuel John-
son's " India " (in " Oriental Religions "), Introduction, pp. 1-34 ; Max Miil-
ler's " Origin and Growth of Religion" ; Carpenter's " Place of Christianity
among the Religions of the World," 1904 ; Pfleiderer's *' Religion and His-
toric Faiths," 1907.
CHAPTER III.
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE.
A SECOND answer that competent scholarship makes
to the question, What is the Bible? is this : It is not one
book, but many ; indeed, properly speaking, it is not a
book at all, but a collection of literature, or a library.
The word Bible comes from the Greek ra fiifiXia
(plural), which means the books > or the little books. Thus
in its very etymology it reveals the fact that it is com-
posed of many distinct writings.
As the Hindu sacred books are collections of the
early religious literature of the Hindus, and as the Zend-
Avesta or Persian sacred book is a collection of the early
religious literature of the Persians, so our Old Testament
is a collection of the early religious literature of the
Hebrew people, and our New Testament is a collection
of religious literature of the same people, springing from
a later age.
If we would get a proper knowledge of this double
collection of sacred writings, several things need to be
clearly understood.
The Hebrew Land. First a word of inquiry should
be made about the lan'd from which it came.
If there is anything in the theory that the physical
environment of a nation or race tends to influence its
intellectual and moral development (as doubtless there
is), we need not be surprised to find it illustrated in the
case of the ancient Hebrews.
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE. 35
The largest body of land in the world is that which
makes up the three continents of the eastern hemisphere.
At almost the exact centre of these three continents at
the very place where, if Europe and Africa were a little
projected, the three would meet lies the land of Pales-
tine. It is a mere dot on the map of the world, yet in.
the moral and religious life of mankind no other land has
been so influential. Has its location here, so literally at
the " centre of the world," had nothing to do with this ?
All the physical characteristics of ancient Palestine
were such as would naturally tend to make a vigorous and
independent people. It was a land of hills, valleys, swift
streams, fertile plains, picturesque and rugged mountains,
and rimmed on one side by a great sea. Such a land
should produce strong-minded, nature-loving men. In
mountain lands we expect to find lovers of freedom. Is
it strange that we should find here a race sturdily inde-
pendent ?
Palestine was a singularly shut-in land. On the north
were the Lebanon ranges of lofty mountains; on the
east the wide Syrian desert ; on the south another desert,
and on the west a great sea with scarcely a harbor. It
was just the kind of a country, therefore, to develop a
self-centred people a people capable of standing alone,,
and working out a great career. Yet, while it was thus
so remarkably isolated, and protected from forces that
might break down its strong individuality, it was to an
unusual degree in touch with great world-influences.
Just beyond the narrow southern wilderness was Egypt,
with its art and letters and learning, and its civilization
the most venerable and august in the ancient world. On
the other side of the eastern desert were mighty Babylon
and Assyria. Contiguous on the northwest was Phoeni-
36 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
cia, the leading commercial nation of antiquity. Across
the western sea were glorious Greece and all-conquering
Rome. Into quiet Palestine came influences from all
these. Indeed, many a time it was forced to succumb
to the armies of its mighty neighbors. And in times of
peace it was a highway for the great caravans which were
the bearers of the world's wealth between Mesopotamia,
Persia, and India, on the east, and Egypt, Tyre, and all
the Mediterranean cities and lands, on the west.
Thus it was near, indeed at the very focus of, all the
greatest empires and centres of civilization of the old
world. Yet it was not of them. It was touched in deep
and powerful ways by all, yet was enough apart from all
to have its own life not overpowered by them, but only
stimulated, broadened, quickened, deepened. Hence it
was exactly the land to develop the intensest, and in
one sense the narrowest, of religions yet a religion des-
tined to unfold into the broadest, nay, into the one really
universal, religion of the world.
So much for the stage, with its scenery and appoint-
ments, on which the drama recorded in the Bible was
played. Now a word about \htplayers.
The Hebrew People. Who were the people that
played the drama of the Old Testament and the New ?
Among the families of mankind two stand out pre-
eminent. These are the Aryan or Indo-European family,
and the Semitic. To the Aryan family belong the Hindus
and Persians of Asia, and the Greeks, Romans, Russians,
Germans, English, French, and some other less important
peoples of Europe. To the Semitic family belong the
Hebrews and their kinsfolk, such as the Babylonians,
Assyrians, Aramaeans or Syrians, Phoenicians, Canaan-
ites, and Arabs.
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE. 37
Where the Semitic family originated is not certainly
known. Most likely it was in the highlands of central
Arabia. From this region seem to have gone forth
migrations to the northeast, into the valleys of the
Euphrates and the Tigris, as early as two thousand five
hundred or three thousand years before Christ* 1 These
were the ancestors of the Babylonian and Assyrian peo-
ples. A little later another migration pushed northwest
to the shore of the Mediterranean, and founded Tyre and
Sidon and the Phoenician nation. About the same time
other Semitic tribes found their way to Palestine, driv-
ing out the preceding inhabitants and settling there.
These were the Canaanites, who were in the land when
the Hebrews entered. Other migrations pushed in other
directions. The immediate ancestors of the Hebrews
seem to have lived in Mesopotamia the land between
the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates.
The first Hebrew migration into Palestine may have
occurred as early as 2000-1700 B.C., a hint of which we
get in the tradition of Abraham. Later there seems to
have been a temporary sojourn of the Israelitish branch
of the Hebrew family in Egypt. From Egypt it returned
into Palestine for a permanent residence, about 1300 B.C.,
under the leadership of Moses. Here the history of the
Jewish people properly begins. Our study of the origin
and growth of the Bible will be a study of the career of
this people for nearly fifteen hundred years.
And a remarkable people we shall find the Jews to be.
In war, in politics, in art, in philosophy, in literature, other
than religious, they did not excel. Among their own
Semitic kinsmen, the Phoenicians far surpassed them in
ft i There are definite Babylonian dates as early as 3800 B.C.
38 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
commerce and industrial enterprise, and the Assyrians
and Babylonians as military conquerors and founders of
empires. But in religion their genius was supreme. It
appears not to be extravagant to say that in the ancient
world they attained, to an eminence as much above all
other peoples of the ra<?^-Mediterranean world in reli-
gion, as did Greece in art, philosophy, and science, or
Rome in war and government.
But it was something gradually attained grown to.
We shall never understand the Bible unless we first get
a clear idea of this. The Jews no more occupied their
high religious elevation at the outset than did the Greeks
and Romans theirs. All came up by long and slow pro-
cesses of growth and development from humble and rude
beginnings. Just as we can trace Greece back to the
time when she had no art, no science, and no philosophy ;
and Rome back to the time when her people were only a
handful of well-nigh lawless barbarians ; so we can trace
the Jewish people back to a stage of religious develop-
ment equally primitive and low, when they were not
monotheists, when their gods were nature-forces, when
bloody sacrifices formed the chief part of their worship,
when even human sacrifices were not unknown ; when, in
short, their religion was scarcely, if at all, to be distin-
guished from that of other Semitic tribes round about
them.
The Bible is the varied and many-sided record often
unconscious, but for that reason all the more wonderful
of Israel's progress from this low primitive condition up
to the splendid height of that ethical and spiritual religion
which we find in Jesus and Paul. It is the invaluable
achievement of the higher biblical criticism of the past
fifty years that it has made clear and indisputable botk
DATES OF IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENTS,
BIBLICAL AND OTHER.
Some of these dates are only approximate.
In Babylonia and Egypt powerful Kingdoms and ad- B. C.
vanced Civilization as early as 5000-4000
Sargon, King of Akkad, and his son Naram-Sin, unify
Babylonia and found a Semitic Empire, which in-
cludes Syria and Palestine about 3800
In Egypt the great pyramid at Gizeh built by King Khufu
or Cheops. The Book of the Dead written .... 4000-3500
Code of Hammurabi of Babylon 2250
Palestine under Babylonian rule. Much culture, largely
of Babylonian origin. Babylonian script in use . . 2000-1500
Migrations of Semitic Tribes, ancestors of the Hebrews,
giving rise to the Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph leg-
ends of Genesis, possibly 2000-1600, but more likely . 1700-1400
Palestine under Egyptian rule 1400
Moses, and Exodus of Israelitish tribes from Egypt about . 1300
Conquest of Canaan ; Government of tribes by Judges or
Chiefs (Period of the Judges) 1300-1030
Samuel (Judge and Prophet). Consolidation of tribes . . 1050
Monarchy established. Saul the first King ..... . 1030-1010
David King 1010-973
Solomon becomes King 973
Assyria, brilliant historical epoch. Extensive Assyrian
conquests in western Asia loth century
Homeric Age in Greece xoth to 9th century
Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem dedicated 963
Division of Kingdom into "Israel" in the North and
"Judah" in the South 930
Elijah, about 860
The "Moabite Stone," believed to come from about . . . 850
Elisha, about 820
Foundation of Rome (supposed) 753
Great Creative Age of Hebrew Prophecy (Amos, Hosea,
Isaiah, and Micah) 8th century
Kingdom of "Israel" overthrown by Assyria; many taken
away captives ("Lost Tribes") 7 2 *
Hezekiah's Reformation, about 7 I S
Sennacherib of Assyria devastates much of Judah. Jeru-
salem saved 7 01
Greece rising into importance ..... - 7^ n century
"Book of Law" discovered in Temple (followed by Jo- B. C.
siah's Reformation) 621
Jeremiah 626-580
Fall of Nineveh 606
Solon, in Greece . - 640-559
Lao-tse, in China, later part of 6th century
Buddha, in India, possibly 623-556
Nebuchadrezzar takes Jerusalem 597
Jersualem destroyed; Kingdom of Judah broken up;
many Jews carried into exile in Babylonia 586
Babylon Captured by Cyrus the Persian 539
Return of Jews from exile, led by Zerubbabel 536
Period of Persian Rule of Palestine 536-333
Confucius, in China 55-478
Dedication of Second Temple in Jerusalem 516
Ezra comes to Palestine with many more exiles 458
Influence of Priests and Scribes increases, and influence of
prophets declines 5th century and on
Synagogues multiply and grow in influence . . 4th century and on
Translation of Old Testament into Greek in Alexandria
(the Septuagint) 250-100
Desecration of Temple under Antiochus Epiphanes : Altar
of Zeus set up in Holy Place 168
Revolt of the Maccabees 167
Purification and Rededication of Temple 165
Maccabean Period: Jewish Independence 167-63
Rise of the Jewish Sects (Pharisees, Sadducees and Es-
senes) 2nd century
Cicero, in Rome 106-43
Pompey captures Jerusalem. Judea becomes a Roman
Province 63
Hillel, the great Jewish Doctor of the Law .... 70 B.C.-6 A.D.
Herod rules Palestine, subject to Rome 37-4 B. C.
Augustus Emperor at Rome 30 B. C.-I4 A. D.
Philo of Alexandria 20 B.C. -about 50 A.D.
Herod builds Temple (the third) in Jerusalem 19-10 B.C.
Jesus Born 5 B.C.
A.D.
Public ministry of Jesus : . . . , 28-30
Crucifixion of Jesus 30
Josephus 30-100
Paul's Conversion 35?
Paul's Missionary Journeys 1 .... 48-63 ?
Martyrdom of James in Jerusalem about 63
Paul's Death in Rome 63-66
Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans 70
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE. 39
the fact and the main steps of this remarkable develop-
ment.
The History of the Hebrew People in Bible Times.
The history of the Hebrew people in Bible times
divides naturally into six periods. These may be de-
scribed briefly, as follows :
(i.) The Formative Period. This begins with the
earliest records, and comes down to about the end of the
ninth century B.C. During this time the separate tribes
are slowly drawing together and becoming knitted into
one people, with one government, and a slowly improv-
ing religion. They discard various gods that they have
formerly worshiped, and adopt Jehovah as their national
deity. They are not yet monotheists ; they regard the
gods of other nations as real beings, and join much in
the worship of the deities of the Canaanites; and yet
they accept Jehovah as the God of Israel alone, and cling
to and worship him as such. They establish and main-
tain a priesthood, and build a temple. There is yet
much violence and cruelty, and moral ideas and practices
are low, but there is progress. They set up a monarchy
which, after a hundred years, divides into two the
northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of
Judah.
No book of the Bible comes from this period, though
fragments found in several books doubtless do.
(2.) The Prophetic Period. This extends from the end
of the ninth to the beginning of the sixth century B.C.
The Northern Kingdom lasts nearly two centuries and a
half, until 721 B.C., and then is overthrown, and many of
its people are carried away captives into Assyria. The
Southern Kingdom continues a century and a quarter
longer, when it is conquered, and its capital, Jerusalem,
40 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OP TffE BIBLE.
is destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and its leading inhab-
itants are removed to Babylon, 586 B.C. Thus this period
is one of political disaster.
But in the development of religion it is the most
important and glorious in the entire history of the
Hebrew people. Into this period falls most of that
remarkable work of the prophets which resulted in the
destruction of all other kinds of worship except that of
Jehovah, and at last lifted the religion of the people up
into true monotheism ethical monotheism. Well has
this been called the period of " fresh, creative youth of
Israel." Certainly the Hebrew religious genius never
manifested itself with greater spontaneity and power
than in these remarkable centuries. From this period
come the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, the first Isaiah,
Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah (in part),
Deuteronomy, a considerable number of lyrical religious
pieces, or Psalms, and a part of the Proverbs.
(3.) The Transitional Period of the Exile. This is
generally supposed to have been of seventy years' dura-
tion, but, strictly speaking, it lasted only about fifty or
fifty-one years; to wit, from the fall of Jerusalem, 587
B.C., to the return of the Jews into Canaan, 536 B.C. It
possesses some of the characteristics of the preceding
period, as is seen by the fact that it gives birth to such
important prophetical writings as those of Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Obadiah, and the second Isaiah. Yet the con-
ditions which produced prophecy are fast passing away.
Prophecy is dying. The eyes of the nation are begin-
ning to be turned from the future toward the past. We
are on the verge of an age whose supreme desire will
be to conserve, not to create. Reflection is taking the
place of spontaneity. Unconsciously men are turning
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE. 4*
from the living oracle in the soul and asking for written
oracles. Thus we see these Exile years produce not only
the prophecies just referred to, and many psalms, .but
Lamentations, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and the " Priestly
Document/' "P" (see following pp. 73-76).
(4.) The Priestly Period. This extends from the return
of the Jews from Babylon down to the second century
B.C., when the last Old Testament books were written.
As soon as the Jews return to their own land they eagerly
rebuild their temple in Jerusalem, and resume in a sense
their national life. And yet, from this time on, with the
exception of the one brief, shining interval of independ-
ence under the heroic Maccabees (second century), they
are a subject people, wearing successively the yoke, often
heavy and always terribly galling, of Persia, Greece, Syria,
Egypt, and Rome.
A little of the old prophetic spirit lingers on into this
period. Haggai and Malachi come forward to speak
their word. But, as a whole, the spirit that rules now is
priestly and legal. " Israel has sought the one God and
found him, and now feels that its task is to maintain his
service and secure his favor by following rules'' * The
priests are in the ascendant ; soon the scribes rise to great
power ; strong and growing emphasis is placed upon cere-
monial. In the preceding period of the Exile the priests
began to draw up ritual codes (as seen in the book of
Ezekiel). This work of code-making they continue right
on into this period, until the Levitical Law is completed,
perhaps a little before the year 400 B.C.
From this period come (besides Haggai and Malachi)
Ruth, Nehemiah, Ezra, Joshua, Job, Jonah, the Pentateuch
1 Toy's " History of the Religion of Israel/' p. 3.
42 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
(in its final form), Chronicles, Joel, Esther, Daniel, Psalms
and Proverbs (completed), Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon.
(5.) The Period of the Interval between the Two
Testaments. We pass from the Old Testament to the
New by a leap of one hundred and fifty years. This in-
terval is often thought of as a time of no importance,
almost a blank in Jewish history. But this is a mistake.
It was in this period that the Old Testament canon was
completed. It was at this time that those great schools
of Jewish learning were established out of whose labors
later grew the Talmud. Still more important, this was a
time when all Palestine was seething with social, political,
and religious thought as perhaps never before ; when
messianic and apocalyptic ideas, and ideas of religious
socialism, were everywhere in the air ; when there was
not only wide-spread . political discontent with subjection
to Rome, but a growing distrust of the ceremonial and
legal narrowness of the established Jewish religion, and an
eager expectancy of something better to come, and to
come speedily. We now see that all this was simply
premonitory. It was Christianity, the New Judaism,
growing within the womb of the Old Church, and waiting
uneasily to be born.
(6.) The New Testament Period. We may begin
this period with the birth of Christ, although no New
Testament book is written until about fifty years after,
when Paul writes the first of his Epistles. We may prop-
erly close it with the last New Testament book, the so-
called " Second Epistle of Peter/' whose date is probably
about ISOA.D. Thus its length is approximately a century
and a half.
Into the first thirty or thirty-five years falls the life of
Jesus, in whom the Hebrew prophetic spirit reappears, and
THE HEBREW LAND AND PEOPLE. 43
rises to its highest and crowning expression. After the
death of Jesus the new religion is taught wholly by word
of mouth for a generation ; then such recollections and
traditions of the Master as are best accredited begin to
be committed to writing ; meanwhile, letters and other
writings which seem valuable, from the pens of disciples
and others, make their appearance, and some of them are
preserved by the young Christian churches. By and by
the best of these writings are gathered together; little by
little sacredness attaches to them ; they come to be a new
sacred book the New Testament which the Jewish peo-
ple generally reject, but which the Christians place beside
the Old Testament as a second Book of God.
During this period Jerusalem is destroyed with a ter-
rible destruction, not only once, but again; and the Jews,
after incredible sufferings, are scattered abroad over the
earth, never again to have a secure abiding place in the
land of their fathers and of their sacred oracles. Yet, in
all the centuries since, nothing has ever been able to sep-
arate them from their faith. To-day they are as distinct
and remarkable a people as when they dwelt in Palestine
two thousand years ago, loving their religion with as pas-
sionate a devotion as in the days of their national glory.
Christianity has fared hardly better in Palestine than
did the parent religion. Long before the end of the
New Testament period its chief strength was in Gentile
lands. This tendency continued. Now Christianity is a
world religion ; but its greatest triumphs have been won
not among the people that gave it birth, not even among
any of the Semitic peoples, but among Greeks, Romans,
Franks, Germans, Slavs, Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxons
the peoples that make up the European branch of the
great Aryan family.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE.
WE have found the Bible to be a collection of litera-
ture. Let us inquire for some of its leading character-
istics as such.
Its Variety. Perhaps nothing about our sacred volume
is more striking than the variety of its contents. In this
it surpasses all other sacred books. This variety grows
out of the fact that it is so truly a literature^ and not a
theological or ecclesiastical treatise, or indeed a single
book of any kind. Springing not from any one mind,
but from scores and hundreds ; not from one age, but from
many ; and being an embodiment of the very life of the
Hebrew people, it could not fail to be as many-sided as
human life itself. Thus it is not strange that we find it
greatly varied not only in- form, in matter, and in excel-
lence of literary work, but also in ethical and spiritual
quality.
There is hardly a form of literature known that is not
represented here. At the beginning of the collection,
under the name of history, we have an extended group
of legends, traditions, accounts of persons and events in
the main imaginary. Farther on we come to real history,
yet even with parts of this we find intertwined a legend-
ary element which has to be Carefully separated. Then,
too, we find poetry of various kinds, as lyric, didactic,
dramatic ; fierce war songs, tender love songs, sublime
descriptions of nature, devout hymns of worship. We
THE BIBLE AS LI7ERATURE. 45
find biographies, some brief, some extended ; collections
of laws ; state documents ; chronologies and genealogies ;
collections of proverbs of wisdom ; accounts of religious
institutions and ceremonials ; romances ; parables ; specu-
lations about the past ; apocalyptic visions of the fu-
ture ; letters ; religious utterances of various kinds, as
of preacher, reformer, sage, and seer. Some of these
writings have little merit in themselves, and owe such
value as they possess mainly to the fact that they have
a place in the sacred collection, while others rank with
the very noblest literary and religious productions of the
world.
Its Composite Character. Perhaps the next most
striking characteristic of the literature of the Bible, after
its variety, is its composite structure. This, of course,
does not appear on the surface, but to the student it
reveals itself well-nigh everywhere. Alike in history, bi-
ography, prophecy, and poetry, he finds evidences of com-
pilation, redaction, revision. Few are the books in Old
Testament or New that do not show traces of more than
one hand. Says Matthew Arnold, speaking of the earlier
historical books : " To that collection many an old book
had given up its treasures, and then itself vanished for-
ever. Many voices were blended there unknown voices,
speaking out of the early dawn." Says Professor Driver,
of Oxford : " The authors of the Hebrew historical books
except the shortest, as Ruth and Esther do not, as a
modern historian would do, rewrite the matter in their
own language ; they excerpt from the sources at their
disposal such passages as are suitable to their purpose,
and incorporate them in their work, sometimes adding
matter of their own, but often (as it seems) introducing
only such modifications of form as are necessary for the
46 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF TffE BIBLE.
purpose of fitting them together, or accommodating them
to their plan. The Hebrew historiographer, as we know
him, is essentially a compiler or arranger of preexisting
documents ; he is not himself an original author/' 1
Says Prof. Robertson Smith : " A modern writer, mak-
ing a history with the aid of older records, masters their
contents and then writes a wholly new book. That is
not the way of Eastern historians. If we take up the
great Arabic historians say Tabary, Ibn el Athir, Ibn
Khaldun, and Abulfeda we often find passages occurring
almost word for word in each. All use directly or indi-
rectly the same sources, and copy these sources verbally
as far as is consistent with the scope and scale of their
several works. Thus a comparatively modern book has
often the freshness and full color of a contemporary nar-
rative, and we can still separate out the old sources from
their modern setting. So it is in the Bible. It is this
way of writing that makes the Bible history so vivid and
interesting, in spite of its extraordinary brevity in com-
parison with the vast periods of time that it covers." a
Again says Professor Smith : " The Semitic genius does
not lie at all in the direction of organic structure. In
architecture, in poetry, in history, the Hebrew adds part
to part, instead of developing a single notion. The tem-
ple was an aggregation of cells, the longest psalm is an
acrostic, and so the longest biblical history is a strati-
fication." " In poetical as well as in historical books,
anonymous writing is the rule ; and along with this we
observe great freedom on the part of the readers and the
copyists, who not only made verbal changes but com-
t
1 " Introduction, to the Literature of the Old Testament/ 1 p. 3.
9 " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," pp. 325-326.
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. 47
posed new poems out of fragments of others. In a large
part of the Book of Psalms a later hand has substituted
Elohim for Jehovah. Still more remarkable is the case
of the Book of Job, in which the speeches of Elihu quite
break the connection, and are almost universally assigned
to a later hand. " l
In some of the prophetical books the writings of as
many as three different authors are detected. All the
Old Testament histories are compilations ; some are com-
pilations of compilations. The Pentateuch, as we shall
see in another chapter, is made up of a number of different
documents which wind in and out all through it, like
strands in a cord.
The practice of compiling from earlier documents
appears also in parts of the New Testament. Says Pro-
fessor Smith regarding the Gospels : " All the earliest
external evidence points to the conclusion that the syn-
optic gospels are non-apostolic digests of spoken and
written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement
of the earlier material in orderly form took place only
gradually and by many essays." " If a man copied a
book, it was his to add to and modify as he pleased,
and he was not in the least bound to distinguish the
old from the new. If he had two books before him to
which he attached equal worth, he took large extracts
from both, and harmonized them by such additions or
modifications as he felt to be necessary." " On such
principles minor narratives were fused together, one after
the other." The word " stratification " hints the process
by which not a few books of both the Old Testament and
New came to be what they are. It has been said of the
1 Ency. Brit., art. " Bible."
48 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Pentateuch, with as much suggestiveness as wit, that it is
not Mosaic, but it is a mosaic.
Uncertainty of Dates and Authorship of Books.
Says Prof. Charles A. Briggs : " It may be regarded as the
certain result of the science of the Higher Criticism, that
Moses did not write the Pentateuch or Job ; Ezra did not
write the Chronicles, Ezra, or Nehemiah ; Jeremiah did
not write the Kings or Lamentations ; David did not write
the Psalter, but only a few of the Psalms ; Solomon did
not write the Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes, and only a
portion of the Proverbs ; Isaiah did not write half of the
book that bears his name. The great mass of the Old
Testament was written by authors whose names and con-
nection with their writings are lost in oblivion." *
Says Professor Smith : " A large proportion of the
books of the Old Testament are anonymous. All the
historical books are anonymous with a single exception. " a
Dr. Washington Gladden (and I quote from these men
because they are recognized as conservative and " ortho-
dox" scholars), writing of the Books of Samuel, says:
"These books are generally ascribed to Samuel as their
author. This is a fair sample of that lazy traditionalism
which Christian opinion has been constrained to follow.
There is not the slightest reason for believing that the
Books of Samuel were written by Samuel any more than
that the Odyssey was written by Ulysses, or the ^Eneid
by ^Eneas, or Bruce's Address by Bruce, or Paracelsus by
Paracelsus, or St. Simeon Stylites by Simeon himself.
Even in Bible books we do not hold that the Book of
Esther was written by Esther, or the Book of Ruth by
1 Inaugural Address of January 20, 1891. Also see his " Biblical Study,"
pp. 222 seq.
2 " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 107,
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. 49
Ruth, or the Book of Job by Job, or the Books of Timo-
thy by Timothy. The fact that Samuel's name is given
to the book proves nothing as to its authorship. It may
have been called Samuel because it begins with the story
of Samuel." 1
Now, what is the cause of all this uncertainty regard-
ing the authorship and dates of the books of the Bible ?
It is the result partly of the general literary carelessness
of the times, and partly of the composite character of so
much of the Bible literature, which has just been pointed
out. Of course, if a book comes into existence by de-
grees, it is hard to date it. If it is compiled from two or
three other works, it is a question whether it ought to be
given the date of the act of compilation or of one of the
original writings. If a book has passed through various
revisions, it is not strange that the exact dates of some
or all the revisions should be lost. 3
So, too, if a book has two or three authors, it is a ques-
tion which name ought to be attached to it ; and it would
be easy for both or all to be lost.
Nor does the difficulty stop here. Ancient Hebrew
authorship was generally anonymous ; nay, more serious
still, it was very often pseudonymous. Our modern
sense of literary proprietorship seems to have been
wholly wanting in those days. If a man wrote a book, it
was to have the book accomplish its object that he cared,
and not to have his name attached to the work. The
book would be likely to go forth unaccompanied by any
1 " Who Wrote the Bible ? " pp. 86-87.
8 It should be understood that the dates which stand in the margins of our
common English Bibles are wholly unreliable. The Revised Version dis-
cards them, as all scholars have long done. On Old Testament chronology,
see Kuenen's "Religion of Israel," vol. L, pp, 159-187.
4
50 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
name. If it had a name attached to it at all, it would be
likely to be that of some distinguished person of a pre-
ceding age. Such a practice to-day would be severely
condemned; but it does not seem to have been con-
demned by the literary ethics of ancient peoples, cer-
tainly not of the ancient Hebrew people. Thus, we have
writings in the Bible ascribed to various persons, as
Moses, David, Solomon, Daniel, and more than one of
the apostles, which could not possibly have been written
by these men, but are clearly the productions of later
ages. 1
Of course, this uncertainty as to dates and authors is
one of the very serious difficulties in the way of a correct
and trustwprthy understanding of the Bible and the reli-
gion which it teaches. And yet, let us not be unduly
discouraged here. Light is appearing ; indeed, much has
already come* It is one of the triumphs of modern bibli-
1 On the morality of thus writing under the names of others, J. W. Chad-
wick, in his " Bible of To-day," justly calls attention to the motive of the
writers, which, beyond question, was generally unselfish and high. He
says : " There is this at least to be said for those who, like the authors of
' Daniel ' and ' Deuteronomy,' put forth their own writings as the writings
of illustrious men who had lived long before : it was not for themselves they
desired the honor and authority which would accrue from such a course ;
no, but only for the word they had to speak, the cause they wished to serve.
If only this might prosper, they were willing to remain forever in obscurity.
And there they have remained until this day. The authors of Samuel,
Kings, Chronicles, are all unknown to us. The greatest, too, of all the
prophets is, and must ever be, the Great Unknown (Isaiah xl.-lvi.)- And
with the Pentateuch it is just the same. The Yahwehist, the Elohist, the
Deuteronomist men who created, or at least collected, a literature which
has had a more commanding influence than any other on the fortunes of the
world, the fountain-head of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all un-
known to us. They died to fame that Israel might live for righteousness,
and for the honor of her God " (pp. 94-95).
TffE BIBLE AS LITERATURE, 5 1
cal scholarship that so much knowledge, which seemed to
be lost forever, has been recovered, as we shall see when
we come to study the various books separately in the
following chapters. It is enough to say here that the
oldest books of the Bible date with almost absolute cer-
tainty from the eighth century before Christ, though
fragments go back much farther some possibly to the
time of Moses. From this date the stream of literary
production continues to flow, with only one important
check that between the Old Testament and the New
until the middle of the second century after Christ^
when the last book of the New Testament was written.
Thus, we see that some portions of this literature which
forms our volume of sacred Scriptures made their appear-
ance in the very morning of Hebrew civilization, while
other portions did not come into being until the nation
had passed through long and remarkable experiences of
prosperity and adversity, involving contact with some of
the richest civilizations of the ancient world
Non-Chronological Arrangement of the Books. If
we are to understand the Bible, one thing more should
be pointed out, quite as important as anything that we
have yet noticed. It is the fact that the books of both
the Old Testament and the New do not stand in the
order of their time of composition, or of the progress of
the religious history with which they have to do, but in
an order that is wholly arbitrary and seriously misleading.
Notice this first in the Old Testament. A few examples
will make it plain.
(a) At the very beginning of the Bible we find a book
called Genesis. Because it stands first, and because it
purports to give an account of the creation and of the
earliest ages of the world, we take for granted that it is
52 ORIGIN' AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
the earliest Old Testament book. But we are mistaken ;
it is one of the latest.
(b) Far on past the middle of the Bible, near the
end of the Old Testament, we find the short books of
prophecy called Micah, Hosea, and Amos. We think, of
course, that these books were written late, else why are
they given a place so far on toward the end of the vol-
time ? But we are mistaken again. As a fact, these are
our very oldest Scripture books ; they were written cen-
turies before the book of Genesis.
(c) About the middle of the Bible we find a book
called the Psalms. Accepting the common view, we sup-
pose we have here a body of writings, mainly from the
pen of David, dating from about the year 1000 B.C. But
again we are wrong. In fact, this is the Hebrew Psalter,
or Hymn Book, a collection, or, rather, a succession of
collections, of religious hymns, few or none of them writ-
ten by David, few or none as old as the time of David,
but really produced by writers whose names are generally
lost, living in the various centuries from David's day
down to within perhaps a hundred and fifty years of the
Christian Era.
(d) Immediately following the Psalms we come upon
three books called the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the
Song of Solomon. Accepting the traditional belief, we
take it that these writings are from King Solomon's pen.
But here again biblical scholarship says no ; the only one
of the books that Solomon can have had any connection
with (and that only slight) is Proverbs ; the other two
were composed long after his time, and by authors who
are unknown.
(e) Immediately following the so-called Song of Solo-
mon is a long book called Isaiah. The traditional view is
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. S3
that it was written by a great prophet of that name in
the eighth century before Christ. We try to read the
book with this understanding of it in mind. In the first
part of the book all goes well, but as we advance to the
latter part we find ourselves falling into utter confusion
as to dates and sequences of events. What is the
trouble? Simply that the book is not one, but two-
or more written at different dates. Scholars have found
out that the Isaiah of the eighth century wrote only the
first thirty-nine chapters of the book; the remaining
twenty-seven chapters were written by a prophet or
prophets who lived during the Babylonian exile. Indeed,,
portions may have a later date stilL
(/) A little farther on than Isaiah we find a propheti-
cal book called Daniel. Our common version gives its
date as between 607 and 534 B.C. But scholars find its
real date to be, almost beyond question, about 165 B.C.
(g) I will take only one more example, but that shall
be the most important of all. The first five books of the
Bible are callefl the Five Books of Moses, or the Penta-
teuch. They contain, among other things, an elaborate
code of laws for the organization of the Jewish nation
and the conduct of its worship. Unless we have looked
below the surface, we take for granted that Moses actu-
ally wrote this code, and that the Jewish government
and worship were actually organized and set in operation
on the plan here indicated. With this thought in mind
we read the rest of the Old Testament and try to under-
stand it. But we are baffled everywhere. As we proceed
in our reading we find everything confused there is no
order ; there is no natural sequence of events ; there is
no growth or progress. As soon as we get through these
so-called Five Books of Moses, in which this ecclesiastical
54 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
and civil government is described and represented as set
up, we come to the historical books of Joshua, Judges,
and Samuel. These purport to give us the history of the
people for three hundred years after this Mosaic govern-
ment begins. But, to our astonishment, there is no trace
of any such government. Throughout the long period of
the Judges there is little else but political and ecclesiasti-
cal chaos. There is no trace of a sacred constitution bind-
ing upon all. The " Law of the Lord " is not a written
document, but a living word in the breasts and on the
lips of men. The priests, instead of having all power,
have very little. Power is wielded by the heads of fami-
lies and tribes, who control the public worship and
appoint priests or depose them at their pleasure. The
idea of such a hierocracy as that described in Exodus and
Leviticus seems to have entered the mind of nobody.
As we read on, some traces of civil order begin gradually
to appear; the scattered tribes draw together, largely
for protection against common enemies ; civil law more
and more takes the place of the rule of the strongest.
By and by the people get unified enough to want a king ;
then a hereditary monarchy is established, which contin-
ues on, first in one line and then in two, for centuries.
But all this time there is no sign of that ecclesiastical
government which Moses is represented as having set up
no indication that anybody knows of the Levitical leg-
islation. Thus the idea that such a government has been
established continually confuses us.
When we get down to the time of the earlier prophets
'it is no better. We have the writings of a number of
these. But they make no references to the Levitical
code ; on the contrary, they write constantly as if there
were no such thing in existence.
THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. 55
We come on down to the period of Jewish history
which lies on this side the exile to Babylon, and all of a
sudden the Levitical system appears. From this time
forward it is the centre of everything. From this time
the written law of Moses is the authority to which all
appeal is made ; everything begins to revolve about the
priests and Levites ; the Jews, to borrow the language of
the Koran, are henceforward " the people of the Book ";
and "the cultus, with its burnt-offerings and sin-offer-
ings, its purifications and abstinences, its feasts and
Sabbaths, strictly observed as prescribed by the law, is
now the principal business of life."
Now, how is all this to be explained ? It can be ex-
plained only in one way. The Levitical Law cannot have
been given to the Jewish people by Moses ; the real time
of its origin is this later age, near the time of the Baby-
lonish exile.
This discovery, the most important made by biblical
scholarship last century, is found to be the key that
unlocks the Old Testament. Of course, an idea so revo-
lutionary was at first fought on all hands and in the
severest manner. But, slowly, leading scholars of Ger-
many, Holland, and France, and then of England and
America, have found themselves compelled to accept it,
until now hardly one of first rank dissents. The litera-
ture of Old Testament introduction and exegesis is be-
ing fast rewritten in the light of this luminous thought,
which is found to be scarcely less important in bringing
order into Old Testament studies than was Darwin's
thought of progress by survival of the fittest, or Newton's
of gravitation, in bringing order into studies of physical
nature. The confusion which reigned throughout all Old
Testament history, and made every book from Genesis
56 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE 3IBLE.
to Malachi a puzzle, so long as the traditional view was
maintained that the Levitical Law was written at the Ex-
odus and imposed upon the Jewish people at the begin-
ning of their history, now passes away. We now see
order ; we now see sequence : we now see growth and
progress; we now see that the elaborate ecclesiastical
system of later Judaism came into existence when the
people were ready for it, and through causes which can
be clearly traced. The Jewish religion now takes its
place among the other religions of the world as an evo-
lution ; the Old Testament we can now understand. 1
Passing on to the New Testament, we find that the
books here also, as well as in the older collection, are
placed in a wrong chronological order. Let me cite two
or three illustrations,
(a) In the present order of arrangement the Gospels
stand first. Chronologically, they belong well over in the
volume.
1 Professor Pfleiderer thus contrasts the old traditional view of Israelitish
nistory, which accepts the Levitical code as from Moses, and sets it up as
an authority over the Hebrew people at the beginning of their career in
Palestine, with the new view which makes that code a late development :
"There" [according to the old view], he says, "we had from beginning
to end [of Hebrew history] a series of riddles, of psychological and histori-
cal puzzles ; here [in the light of the new view] everything is comprehen-
sible ; we have a clear development, analogous to the rest of history ; the
external history of the nation and the internal history of its religious con-
sciousness in constant accord and fruitful intercourse ; and though not an
unbroken advance in a straight line of the whole people, still a laborious
struggle of the representatives of the higher truth with the stolid masses, a
struggle in which success and defeat succeed each other in dramatic alter-
nation, and even failure only serves to aid the evolution of the idea itself in
ever greater purity from its original integuments. This is human history,
full of marvels and of divine revelation, but nowhere interrupted by miracle
or by sudden, unaccountable transitions " (" Development of Theology/'
p. 274.)
THE BIBLE AS LITERA TURE. S7
(ff) Paul's Epistles now have places in the second half.
But they were written before any other New Testament
books, and therefore, in a true chronological order, they
would stand at the beginning.
(c) The Gospel which bears the name of John, at pres-
ent follows immediately after those of Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. It probably ought to stand nearly at the end
of the New Testament.
(d ) At the end, now, we find that strange book whose
place in the Bible has always been regarded as so ques-
tionable ; namely, the Revelation, or the Apocalypse. But
if this book is to be included at all, it should certainly
be removed from the place which it now occupies, for in
the judgment of no school of biblical scholars is it the
latest of the New Testament writings.
This lack alike of chronological and logical order (for it
is both) which extends to nearly or quite all the New
Testament books, is seriously confusing. Indeed, there
is no such thing possible as understanding the New Tes-
tament until we recognize it ; as there was no possibility
of understanding the Old Testament until the similar lack
of order there was understood. But, fortunately, here,
as there, scholarship has been at work with a persever-
ance and an insight which laugh at all obstacles. As a
result, it has not only torn down the false old, but has
gone far to build up a better new. We are given at last,
not indeed in all cases with perfect certainty yet, but
with strong and growing probability, the true order of
the production of most of the New Testament writings.
The importance of this knowledge can hardly be esti-
mated. It is a key everywhere applicable in the study
of the New Testament, and found able to unlock count-
less difficulties. With it in our hand, here, too, as well
$8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
as in the Old Testament, order and sequence begin at
last to appear. We find ourselves once more in a world
where laws of cause and effect are operative. Now we
are able to discover an orderly unfolding of events and
a logical growth of thought throughout these times and
these writings, which before were such a labyrinth of
confusion. Now the origin of the New Testament and
of Christianity begins for the first time to become intelli-
gible.
DATES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE,
SHOWING THE LITERARY EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE.
Many of these dates are only approximate.
The Song of the Well. Numbers xxi: 17, 18. Fragment B. C.
of an old popular song; probable date 1300-1100
The Song of Deborah. Judges v. An ancient war ballad
of striking poetical qualities. Date probably . . . 1200-1100
The Fable of Jotham. Judges ix: 7 sq 1200-1100
The Blessing of Jacob. Genesis xlix 1100-950
David's Lament over Jonathan. 2 Samuel i: 17 sq.
Almost certainly from David, and showing that the
writer was possessed of high poetical gifts 1000
The Parable of Nathan. 2 Samuel xii: 1-4 icoo
The Prophesies (or speeches) of Balaam. Numbers
xxiii, xxiv 1000-950
The Blessing of Moses. Deuteronomy xxxiii 800-750
(There are many more fragments of one kind or another
from earlier ages imbedded in the narrative books of
the Old Testament. The above are perhaps the most
important.)
The Prophetic Narrative or " Document " of the Hexa-
teuch known to scholars as " J," compiled about . 850-800
The Prophetic Narrative or ''Document" "E," compiled
about 800-750
(The first six books of the Old Testament the so-called
"Five Books of Moses," or Pentateuch, and Joshua
are made up of what are known as Documents " J,"
"E," "D," and "P" (not to mention others less im-
portant), compiled at different dates and finally
blended to form the Hexateuch as we now have it.)
Amos, the earliest prophetical book, indeed the earliest
written book of the Bible 750
Hosea 746-722
Isaiah (the main parts of chapters i-xxxix) 740-700
Micah 735~7 02
Documents "J" and "E" combined 650-625
Deuteronomy (Document "D") written 650-621
Nahum, about 630
Zephaniah 630
Discovery of the "Book of the Law " (Deuteronomy, Docu- B. C.
ment"D") in the Temple 621
Jeremiah 626-580
Proverbs, earliest collection (x: i-xxii: 16) perhaps . . . 621-600
Psalms. Many individual psalms doubtless written before
the Exile. (Probably no collection made until the
time of Ezra, in the fifth century).
Habakkuk 605
Ezekiel 593~57o
Obadiah, about 580
Lamentations 580
Priestly Document, lt P," main parts compiled, .... 560-500
The "Second Isaiah" (Isaiah xl-lv and perhaps Ivi-lxvi)
about 540
Zechariah (some parts late) earliest part, chapters i-viii. 520
Haggai 5 20
Judges 560-500
i and 2 Samuel (formerly one book) 560-500
i and 2 Kings (formerly one book) 560-500
Joshua 450-400
Job, possibly. written during the Exile; more likely . . 450-400
Priestly Document, "P," published to the people by Ezra
as the "Law of the Lord," the "Law of Moses," the
"Book of the Law" 444?
Ruth 430
Malachi 420
Jonah, written as a protest against the narrow spirit of
Ezra, probably about , 420
Joel 400
Completion of the Pentateuch by a union of "J," "E,"
"D," and "P" 400
Genesis, in its present form 400
Exodus, in its present form 400
Leviticus, in its present form 400
Numbers, in its present form . 400
Canon of "The Law" completed 400*300
Song of Solomon 300-200
Ezra in its present form (based on earlier "Memoirs of
Ezra") about ,. 300
Nehemiah in its present form (based on earlier "Me-
moirs of Nehemiah") about 300
i and 2 Chronicles (originally one book) 300
Canon of "The Prophets" completed 300-200
Ecclesiastes
Translation of the Old Testament into Greek by Jewish
Scholars in Alexandria (the Septuagint) 250-100
Esther 200
B.C.
Tobit (O. T. Apocrypha) 200
Proverbs, final collection 200-150
Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach
(0. T. Apocrypha) 190-170
Daniel 168-165
Enoch (0. T. Pseudepigrapha) 168-105
Psalms, date of final collection, about 150
Wisdom of Solomon (0. T. Apocrypha) 150-50 -
Judith (O. T. Apocrypha) . . .' 135-125
i Maccabees (O. T. Apocrypha), about 100
A.D.
1 Thessalonians S3~54
2 Thessalonians, if from Paul 54
(If not Paul's about 70)
Galatians 56
i and 2 Corinthians 57~5S
Romans , 58
Philemon 62-63
Philippians 62-63
Gospel according to the Hebrews (an early Gospel of
which only fragments are preserved. See p. 122).
According to Harnack about 65
Gospel of Mark 70-75
Hebrews 75~?8
Gospel of Matthew 75-90
i Peter 81-96
James 85-95
(If by James the brother of Jesus, not later than 50)
Gospel of Luke 85-100
Acts 85-100
Old Testament Canon, virtual final settlement of, by the
Jews at the Synod at Jamnia 90-100
First Epistle of Clement (regarded as true scripture by
many early churches) date (Harnack) 93~95
Colossians, if not Paul's, as late as 100
Ephesians, if not Paul's, as late as 100
(If Paul's 63)
i and 2 Timothy 700-110-
(There may be passages from Paul of much earlier date
in 2 Timothy).
Titus zoo-no-
i, 2, and 3 John, not earlier than 100-110
(Possibly as late as 130-140. If by John the Apostle,
95-98) . ...
Gospel of John 100-110
(Possibly much later; many high authorities think as A. D.
late as 140-150)
Jude 100-130
Preaching of Peter (N. T. Apocrypha) 100-130
The Seven Ignatian Epistles (much read in the early
churches) a little earlier than 117
The Epistle of Poly carp (much read in the early churches) 110-117
Apocalypse of Peter (N. T. Apocrypha) 120-140
The Epistle of Barnabas (regarded as true scripture by
many early churches) 130
The Didache (much read in the early churches) .... 131-160
Revelation, nucleus 66-70; final form 136
Shepherd of Hennas (regarded as true scripture by many
early churches) 115-140
2 Peter 150
Bible Canon. A Council of African Bishops (not a Uni-
versal Council), held at Hippo, agreed upon a Canon
which included all the books of our present Protestant
Bible, plus the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus,
Tobit, Judith, and two books of Maccabees .... 393
A Council held at Carthage reaffirmed the list of its prede-
cessor 397
The Vatican Manuscript (Greek) containing the Old
Testament nearly complete and most of the New
Testament; date early in the 4th century
The Sinaitic Manuscript (Greek) containing the New
Testament and twenty books of the Old Testament;
date the 4th century probably about 331
The -Alexandrian Manuscript (Greek) containing the Old
and New Testaments nearly complete, plus many
Apocryphal books; date middle of the 5th century
Earliest Hebrew Manuscript of any part of the Old Test-
tament (the Prophet Codex) - 916
Earliest Hebrew Manuscript of the entire Old Testament 1009
Vulgate (Authorized Bible of the Roman Catholic church) ;
translation into Latin, largely by Jerome 383-404
Division of the Bible into our present chapters, shortly
before 1228
Wycliffe's Translation of the Bible into English .... 1382
First Printed Bible (the Latin Vulgate) 1455
First Printed Hebrew Bible 1488
Canon of the Bible established for the Roman Catholic
Church by the Council of Trent 1545-1546
Division of the Bible into its present verses 1555
Authorized Version of the Bible in English (King James') 1611
The Revised Version 1885
The American Standard Revised Version 1901
CHAPTER V.
THE PENTATEUCH: WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES?
IF we turn to the beginning of our Bible we shall find
the Book of Genesis, with which the volume opens, called
"The First Book of Moses." Turn to the next four
books, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,
and we shall find these called respectively the " Sec-
ond," the "Third," the "Fourth," and the " Fifth Book
of Moses." If we could go back to the time of Christ,
we should find the Jews speaking of these five books
as one, and calling them the Law, or the Torah* Two
centuries or so before Christ, when a translation of them
had been made into Greek, another name came to be
attached to them ; namely, the Pentateuch. This name,
which means the five-fold book, is often given to them
to-day. But whatever may be the title by which we des-
ignate them, they are in popular thought, as well as in
our common version of the Bible, firmly associated with
the name of Moses.
And as they are thought to come from the pen of the
great Hebrew lawgiver, and deal with events going back
to the most ancient times indeed, to the very creation
of the world of course it is natural that they should be
regarded as the oldest of our Scripture books, and be
given a place at the very beginning of the Bible. But
in a preceding chapter it has been intimated that all
this is a mistake. I have spoken of these books as not
the productions of Moses at all, and as dating from an
60 ORIGW AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
age in Hebrew history many centuries after Moses 1
death. This claim is so contrary to the common thought,
so startling in its boldness, and so revolutionary in its
effects, that the ground on which it rests must be at least
briefly stated. As already intimated, this view has
come into general acceptance among the best biblical
scholars of the world ; not, however, because anybody
beforehand planned that it should be so, but because the
patient, reverent study of a century has brought to light,
slowly but steadily, such an overwhelming array of facts,
all looking in this direction, that at last the conclusions
which they suggest have become irresistible. To show
that I do not speak too strongly, let me quote a sen-
tence from Prof. George T. Ladd, a ripe scholar and a
careful and conservative writer, whom few will suspect
of extravagance of language. In his last work on the
Bible, Professor Ladd says: " With very few exceptions
anywhere, and with almost no exceptions in those places
where the Old Testament is studied with most freedom
and breadth of learning, the whole world of scholars has
abandoned the ancient tradition that the Pentateuch, in
such form as we now have it, was the work of Moses/' *
Of course there is a non-progressive, backward-looking " or-
thodoxy " that cries out in indignation and alarm against
any disturbance of the old view, and stoutly refuses to
move forward. But this is to be expected. It has been
the same in every advance made in the past ; it will prob-
ably always be so in the future. This need not trouble us.
A few of the more important facts upon which the new
view rests, very briefly stated, are the following : 3
1 " What is the Bible ? " pp. 299-300.
* Pentateuchal or Hexateuchal criticism (by many scholars the Pentateuch
and Joshua are classed together as one, under the name of the Hexateuch)
THE PENTATEUCH ': WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES? 6 1
(i.) An Unfounded Tradition. The idea that Moses
was the author of the Pentateuch is simply a tradition,
and a late one at that, having no historic basis. Prof.
Robertson Smith says it is " derived from the old Jewish
theory in Josephus that every leader of Israel wrote
down by divine authority the events of his own time,
so that the sacred history is like a day-book constantly
written up to date. No part of the Bible corresponds to
this description, and the Pentateuch as little as any." 1
has developed an extensive literature, and has become almost a science by
itself. The limits of this book permit only a brief glance at its most impor-
tant points and its main conclusions. For those who wish to pursue the
subject further a few valuable and easily accessible works may be men-
tioned. Among the most full and able of anything in English are Kuenen's
" Hexateuch," translated from the Dutch, and Wellhausen's " History of
Israel," from the German. Next to these, but covering wider ground, is
Kuenen's " Religion of Israel." The article " Pentateuch " in the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica (by Wellhausen) is unsurpassed among brief treatises.
Professor S. R. Driver's " Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa-
ment " devotes one hundred and fifty pages to the Hexateuch, and is judicial
and able. R. Heber Newton's " Book of Beginnings " is an intelligent and
interesting popular treatment of the subject. Pfleiderer's " Development
of Theology" (1890), Lichtenberger's " History of German Theology in the
Nineteenth Century " (1889), an(i c - EL H - Wright's " Introduction to the
Old Testament " ( 1890), all trace the history of Pentateuchal criticism. Ben-
jamin W. Bacon's " Genesis of Genesis " contains excellent chapters on docu-
mentary analysis, and prints in different kinds of type the three main
documents that run through Genesis, so as to enable the student to compare
them. "The Polychrome Bible " adopts a somewhat similar plan but carries
it still further, and represents the documents by different colors. Two valu-
able critical works covering the whole ground of Hexateuchal criticism are
** The Documents of the Hexateuch, Translated and Arranged in Chronologi-
cal Order, with Introductions and Notes," by W. E. Addis, and " The Hex-
ateuch according to the Revised Version, arranged in its Constituent
Documents, with Introductions and Notes," by J. Estlin Carpenter and G.
Harford-Battersby (1900).
1 ' The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 321. Of the declaration
in the Talmud (Bdba bathra 14), that "Moses wrote his own book, and
the section concerning Balaam, and Job/' Professor Driver says: "The
62 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
(2.) No Claim made by the Books Themselves to a
Mosaic Authorship. The fact that the name of Moses
appears in the titles to the books in our English Bibles
is not such a claim ; for, as is well known by scholars,
these titles are no part of the original text. Nowhere are
we told that the whole Pentateuch, or that any one of its
books, came from the pen of the great founder of the
Hebrew nation. Certain parts and passages here and
there that is to say, certain fragments incorporated into
the books when they were finally compiled are ascribed
to him. But these are all." No whole book is ascribed
to him ; much less all the books. 1 To be sure, in various
parts of the Bible there are references to the Law of
Moses, and the Book of the Law. But it is the opinion
entire passage is manifestly destitute of historical value. " Not only is it late
in date ; it is discredited by the character of its contents themselves "
(" Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament," p. xxix,) For
an examination of the tradition of Mosaic authorship, see Bacon's " Gene-
sis of Genesis," pp. 33-36.
1 Dr. Heber Newton, in his " Book of the Beginnings," makes a careful
study of this question, and sums it all up in the following words : " We
find that a brief record of a battle in Exodus (xvii. 8-13), a .memorandum
of camping stations in Numbers (xxxiii. 3-49), together with the Ten
Words (Ex. xxxiv. 28), and the Book of Deuteronomy, in whole or in part,
constitute all the narrative and legislation that is claimed to have been
written by Moses. The Pentateuch as a whole appears anonymous* This
fact of itself ought to settle the case. For, if these books were really
written by Moses, is it conceivable that he would have left them uncerti-
fied?" (pp. 34-35)- Says Prof. Robertson Smith : "The history does not
profess to be written by Moses, but only notes from time to time that he
wrote down certain special things (Ex. xvii. 14, xxiv. 4, xxxiv. 27 ; Num.
xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24)" ("Old Testament in Jewish Church,"
p. 320). Says Professor Driver : " There is no passage of the Old Testa-
ment which ascribes the composition of the Pentateuch to Moses, or even
to Moses* age" (" Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament"
p.
THE PENTATEUCH: WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES? 63
of our most learned and careful scholars that all we are
justified in concluding from these is that a nucleus of
that legislation found in the Pentateuch came originally
from Moses, though how extended or how definite a
nucleus nobody can with certainty tell. Moses was the
starting point of Israel's organic history. The original
law-giving which formed the beginning of Israel's distinct
religious and national life came undoubtedly from him.
What was so natural, therefore, as that all subsequent
legislation should seek to avail itself of his authority,
and to take his name, just as all psalms came to be
ascribed to David, and all proverbs to Solomon ? * But
1 In explanation of the custom of the Hebrews of ascribing all their laws
to Moses, which seems to us so strange, Prof. Robertson Smith says : " It
is a familiar fact that in the early law of all nations necessary modifications
on old law are habitually carried out by means of what lawyers call legal
fictions. This name is somewhat misleading ; for a legal fiction is no
deceit, but a convention which all parties understand. But it is found
more convenient to present the new law in a form which enables it to be
treated as an integral part of the old legislation. Thus in Roman jurispru-
dence all law was supposed to be derived from the Laws of the Twelve
Tables (Maine, 'Ancient Law/ p. 33 seq.\ just as in Israel all law was held
to be derived from the teaching of Moses. In neither case was any false-
hood meant or conveyed. The whole object of this way of treating the law-
was to maintain the continuity of the legal system. ... In our state
of society legal fictions are out of date ; in English law they have long been
mere antiquarian lumber. But Israel's law was given for the practical use of
an ancient people, and required to take the forms which we know as a matter
of fact to be those which primitive nations best understand. ... In
India, when the government brings a new water supply into a Village, the
village authorities make rules for its use and distribution ; but * these rules
do not purport to emanate from the personal authority of their author or
authors ; there is always a sort of fiction under which some customs as to
the distribution of water are supposed to have existed from all antiquity,
although, in fact, no artificia/supply had been so much as thought of.' In
the same way the new lawsf of the Levitical code are presented as ordi-
nances of Moses, though, ypien they were first promulgated, every one knew
64 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF Tff BIBLE.
we are not left with merely negative evidence in the mat-
ter.
Passages which Betray a Later Hand. Scattered all
through the Pentateuch are passages which betray other
and later authors than Moses* If we turn to Deuter-
onomy xxxiv. 5-6, we find an account given of Moses'
death and burial. That can hardly have been written
by Moses ; men do not write histories of their own death
and funeral obsequies. It has been claimed that Moses
was miraculously inspired to write it beforehand. But
this claim is cut off by the sentence with which the ac-
count ends, which is : " No man knoweth of his sepulchre
unto this day." Unto what day ? Would Moses writ-
ing beforehand of his burial say that " no man knoweth
of the sepulchre unto this day " ? Nothing can be plainer
than that the writer is some one living long after Moses,
and that by " this day " he means his own later time.
There are other passages in the Pentateuch where the
same expression, " unto this day," is used, showing that
they, too, were written late.
There are historical omissions in the account of the
journey through the wilderness which it is incredible
that the leader of that movement should have made.
For example, in one place we have thirty-eight years of
time dropped out as if it were nothing. Turning to
Numbers (xx. i) we read : " Then came the children of
Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of
Zin in the first month : and the people abode in Kadesh."
that they were not so, though Ezra himself speaks of some of them as ordi-
nances of the prophets " (" Old Testament in the Jewish Church," pp. 385-
387). Says Professor Toy : ** In those days it was the custom to refer wis-
dom and authority to ancient sages" (" History of the Religion of Israel/ 7
p. 67).
THE PENTATEUCH: WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES* 65
A few verses farther on, in the same chapter (after two
or three incidents that occurred at Kadesh have been
mentioned), we have this record (xx. 22) : " And the chil-
dren of Israel, even the whole congregation, journeyed
from Kadesh, and came unto Mount Hor." Nothing could
be more simple or straightforward ; seemingly nothing
could be more closely connected. But, as a matter of
fact, we are now thirty-eight years farther on. We have
made a leap from the first month of the third year after
the Exodus to the fifth month of the fortieth year. Thus
more than a third of a century is not only left an utter
blank, but is dropped out between two verses of the same
chapter, with not so much as a mention of the omission ;
and this after a careful enumeration of the stations in
the journey up to Kadesh. Would Moses have written
the history of his life in that way ? Would anyone have
written the history of the Exodus in that way who had
had a part in it ?
In Numbers xii. 3 we find the statement : " Now the
man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were
upon the face of the earth." Does this look like a pas-
sage written by Moses ? Do meek men write in this way
about themselves ?
In Genesis xxxvi. 31 appears this record: " And these
are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel" When
was this written ? Of course after there were Israelitish
kings, and by some one who knew of these kings. Cer-
tainly it could not have been written in Moses* day,
before such kings existed or were dreamed of. If .an
undated historical document were found to-day which
described some event as happening " before Abraham
Lincoln was President of the United States," could any-
5
66 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
body convince us that the document was of an earlier
century ? The mention of Lincoln's presidency fixes a
date before which it could not have been produced. In
the same way the mention of the kings over Israel fixes
a date (three centuries later than Moses' day) before
which the passage in Genesis could not have been
written.
We read in Genesis xii. 6, in connection with the ac-
count of Abraham's entering Palestine, that " the Ca-
jiaanite was then in the land/' Could this passage have
been written by any other than a person living after the
Canaanite had gone from the land that is to say, after
Moses' day ? If I find in a historical work the statement,
" and the British were then in possession of New Eng-
land," do I not see instantly that the work was written
at some time later than the beginning of the Revolu-
tionary War or after New England was lost to Great
Britain ?
A similar chronological tell-tale is the following pas-
sage. The story (given in Numbers xv. 32) of the man
who picked up sticks on the Sabbath, begins with the
words: "And while the children of Israel were in the
wilderness." Of course such a record could have been
written only after the wilderness days were past. I will
cite only a single other passage. In Deuteronomy xxxiv.
10 we read : " And there arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses." It need hardly be asked whether this
can be regarded as of Mosaic authorship.
These are only a few of the large number of passages
found in all the Pentateuchal books which betray a hand
later than that of Moses. But the great proof, rising in
magnitude and importance above all others, that the
books ascribed to Moses are not from him, is found in
THE PENTATEUCH: WAS IT WRITTEN BY MOSES* 6?
the evidences which have been accumulating for a cen-
tury, as biblical scholarship has improved and deepened,
showing that the Pentateuch is a compilation, or, rather,
a series of compilations, of late date, made up of docu-
ments of different ages, which scholars are able to sepa-
rate from each other, and to trace in and out, as warp and
woof, through the various books.
Scholars have always been puzzled over much that
they found in the Pentateuch. Jerome, the one great
biblical scholar of the early Church, was. Several of the
most learned of the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth
century were. Many Jewish scholars of different ages
have been. Later Christian scholars have been more
and more.
The idea of the work being composite a compilation
from earlier documents which might be separated from
each other was first suggested by Astruc, a distinguished
professor of medicine in Paris, in 1753. This has proved
the key to the puzzle.
The elements in the Pentateuch which have been so
troublesome, and out of which the discovery of its com-
posite character has come, are (in part) the following :
1. Duplicate and even triplicate accounts of the same
events, with no apparent reason for the repetitions.
These are of frequent occurrence.
2. Contradictions and historical discrepancies of vari-
ous kinds.
3. Abrupt transitions and breaks in the narrative
very noticeable in the English, but still more so in the
original Hebrew.
4. Sudden changes of style, as if different men were
speaking, but with no intimation of the departure of one
and the coming forward of another.
68 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
5. An unaccountable use of different names for God in
the Hebrew text here for a series of verses, or even
chapters, the name Elohim being exclusively used, and
then the name Jahveh (JehovaK) ; 1 and then, without any
warning, another change back to Elokim, and so on.
6. Legislation evidently intended for an early and
crude age, strangely mixed in with legislation as plainly
intended for a more advanced and enlightened age,
7. Religious and ethical teachings hardly above the
level of barbarism, and views of God plainly polytheistic,
and even fetichistic, standing side by side with ethical
and religious teachings and views of God of the loftiest
and purest character.
8. A strange mixing of older Hebrew idioms and lan-
guage with later Hebrew, and especially the extended
anachronism of the use on a large scale of Hebrew of the
fifth century B.C. in records of laws and events purport-
ing to date from the fourteenth or fifteenth.
All these difficulties, so puzzling, so wholly insoluble
on the old theory of the Mosaic authorship of the Penta-
teuch, are easily explained by the new view. They are
exactly what would be certain to appear in a work pro-
duced as we now know the Pentateuch was produced.
1 The spelling " Jehovah " is incorrect. The real name is probably Jah-
veh or Yahweh. (See Appendix, by Russell Martineau, at the end of
Ewald's " History of Israel," vol. ii.)- The true spelling became lost as
the result of long writing it by mere consonant outlines (ancient Hebrew
writing was all by consonant outlines), and thus forgetting in process of
time what vowels were to be supplied. Leading Old Testament scholars are
generally adopting the spelling Jahveh or Yahweh. See " Names," T 109*
in the " Encyclopaedia Biblica."
BOOKS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT
CLASSIFIED
BOOKS OF THE
IN THK ORDBR OF THE HEBREW BIBLE.
I. The Law (5 Books),
Genesis.
Exodus.
Leviticus.
Numbers.
Deuteronomy.
II. The Prophets (8 Books)
(The Former Prophets).
Joshua.
Judges.
Samuel (as one Book).
Kings (as one Book).
(The Latter Prophets).
Isaiah.
Jeremiah.
Ezekiel.
(The Twelve Minor Prophets
counted as one Book).
Hosea.
Joel.
Amos.
Obadiah.
Jonah.
Micah.
Nahum.
Habakkuk.
Zephaniah.
Haggai.
Zechariah.
Malachi.
III. The Writings^* Books).
Psalms.
Proverbs.
Job.
(The Five Rolls).
Song of Songs.
Ruth.
Lamentations.
Ecclesiastes.
Esther.
Daniel.
Ezra-Nehemiah (as one Book).
Chronicles (as one Book).
IN THE ORDER OF THE
SEPTUAGINT (INCLUD-
ING THE O. T. APOC-
RYPHA).
The Pentateuch.
I Genesis.
Exodus.
Leviticus.
Numbers.
Deuteronomy.
Joshua.
Judges.
Ruth.
4 Books of Kings (= i
and a Sam. and i and 2
Kings).
Chronicles (as one Book).
1 Esdras(=Ezra&Neh.).
2 Esdras.
Tobit.
Judith.
Esther.
Job.
Psalms.
Proverbs.
Ecclesiastes.
Canticles.
Wisdom of Solomon.
Ecclesiasticus.
The Twelve Minor Pro-
phets (in a different
order).
Isaiah.
Jeremiah.
Baruch.
Lamentations.
The Epistle of Jeremiah.
Ezekiel.
Daniel.
Three Books of Macca-
bees.
The Prayer of Manasseh.
OLD TESTAMENT.
IN THEIR (APPROXIMATELY)
TRUK ORDKR, ACCORniNG TC
C L A ssi P JED ACCORDING TO THBIR
NATURE AND LITBRARY FORM
HE ttlGHKR CRITICISM.
APOCRYPHAL BOOKSJ.
(See Table of "Dates ot
I. si ncestral Tradition* andl-aias
Biblical Literature " be-
(.5 Books).
tween pp. 58 and 59.)
Genesis.
Amos.
Exodus.
Hosea.
Leviticus.
Isaiah.
Numbers.
Micah.
Deuteronomy.
Deu teronomy.
II. History (rr Books).
Nahum.
Joshua.
Zephaniah.
Judges.
Jeremiah.
i and 3 Samuel.
Habakkuk.
i and 2 Kings.
EzekieL
i and 2 Chronicles.
Obadiah.
Ezra.
Lamentations.
Nehemiah.
Second Isaiah.
i Maccabees.
Zechariah-
III. Prophecy ( 14 Books).
Haggai.
Isaiah.
Judges.
Jeremiah.
i and 2 Samuel.
Ezekiel.
i and z Kings.
Eleven of the Minor Prophets
Joshua.
(all except Daniel).
Job.
IV. Poetry (4 Books).
Ruth.
Job.
Malachi.
Psalms.
Jonah.
Lamentations.
Joel.
Song of Solomon.
Genesis.
V. "Wisdom. Literature " (4
Exodus.
Books).
Leviticus.
Proverbs.
Numbers.
Ecclesiastes.
Song of Solomon.
Wisdom of Solomon.
Ezra.
Ecclesiasticus .
Nehemiah.
VI. Romance (5 Books).
i and 2 Chronicles
Ruth.
Ecclesiastes.
Jonah.
Esther.
Esther.
Proverbs (final collection).
Tobit.
Daniel.
Judith.
Psalms (final collection).
VI I. Apocalypse (z Books).
Daniel.
Enoch (Pseudepigrapha").
CHAPTER VI.
THE PENTATEUCH: ITS COMPOSITE CHARACTER ANB
REAL ORIGIN.
MUCH is now settled regarding the Pentateuch, but
not everything. What is settled? At least the follow-
ing important points:
1. That the work is composite.
2. That it is made up in large part of different " docu*
ments."
3. That these documents are traceable throughout
almost the entire Pentateuch.
4. That those most easily traced and of prime import-
ance are four in number.
5. That Deuteronomy was written earlier (not later, as
has been generally supposed) than any other of the five
books as we have them.
6. That the Pentateuchal legislation, at least in the
elaborate form in which it comes to us, was the last* writ-
ten part of the Pentateuch. 1
The principal discussion now is over the dates of the
four documents. What are these documents ?
There is hardly an original investigator of eminence
who does not think that he finds traces of others besides
the four ; some claim to discover as many as eight or ten
additional ones. But about these there is no agreement,
1 To all these points even so conservative scholars as Delitzsch and Din*
maun Assent*
70 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
except that, whatever they may be, they are relatively
unimportant. All agree that the four are pre-eminent. 1
To these four, different names are given by different
scholars. I choose the following as perhaps favored by
the latest and best authorities ; namely, the Jahvistic (or
Jehovistic), the Elohistic, the Deuteronomic, and the Priestly
documents, commonly designated respectively by the
letters "//' "," "A" and /V' A few words about
each must suffice.
I. The Jahvistic (or Jehovistic) document ("/") takes
its name from the*fact that in certain parts of it the Deity
is called almost exclusively by the name Jahveh ( Yah-
weK), or Jehovah. It has much in common with the EIo-
histic document, "E" so much, indeed, that some
scholars of eminence do not try to separate them. It is
better, however, to recognize the two as distinct, only
bearing in mind their striking similarities, and remember-
ing that the great contrasts that exist are between these
two and the Deuteronomic and Priestly documents, par-
ticularly the latter. The Jahvistic document is made up
almost wholly of narratives. It is full of persons and of
movement. Its style is graphic. It excels in delineating
life and character. It is the most interesting portion of
1 Says Prof. C. A. Briggs : " There are no Hebrew professors on the con-
tinent of Europe, so far as I know, who would deny the literary analysis of
the Pentateuch into the four great documents. The professors of Hebrew
in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and tutors in a
large number of theological colleges, hold to the same opinion. A very
considerable number of the Hebrew professors of America are in accord
with them. There are, indeed, a few professional scholars who hold to the
traditional opinion, but these are in a hopeless minority. I doubt whether
there is any question of scholarship whatever in which there is greater
agreement among scholars than in this question of the literary analysis of
the Hexateuch" {Presbyterian Review^ April, 1887, p. 340).
THE PENTATEUCH s ITS CHARACTER AND ORIGIN. ?l
the Pentateuch. It contains much ethical religious teach-
ing, but it is generally natural, simple, connected with
life, not dogmatic. It lingers fondly over sacred places.
The more extremely anthropomorphic representations
of God found in the Pentateuch are generally in this
document ; as, for example, his walking in the garden at
the cool of the day ; * his coming down to see the tower
built by men, and confounding their speech ; 2 his meeting
Moses in an inn and seeking to slay him ; s his swearing, 4
and repenting, 5 and getting angry. 6 The document is de-
cidedly " prophetical " in character as distinguished from
" priestly." As to its date, there is some difference of
judgment. It used to be placed later than that of the
Elohistic, but Kuenen and Wellhausen place it earlier,
and the tendency now is in that direction. The time
generally fixed for it is the century between 850 and
800 B.C., 7 and there is a growing disposition to make
the writer a prophet of the southern kingdom of
Judah.
2. The Elohistic document ("2f") derives its name
from the Hebrew word Elohim, which in some of its
parts is generally used for God. This document also,
as well as the Jahvistic, is made up largely of narratives. 8
It is clearly prophetical in its character, though, perhaps,
not as pre-eminently so as the other* Its style is vivid ;
it is full of life and interest; it is perhaps even more
1 Gen. iii. 8. * Gen. xi. 7. * Ex. iv. 24.
* Gen. xxiv. 7. * Gen. vi. 6. 6 Ex. iv. 14.
7 Reuss, H. Schulte, Billmann, Kittel, Riehm, Stade, Wellhausen, Kue-
nen, and many other critics of first rank agree upon this date.
8 Not wholly, however. The legislative element (found mainly in the
Priestly Code) is not entirely wanting in the Jahvistic and Elohistic docu-
ments. Indeed, the very earliest legislation of the Pentateuch is all found
in these. See Ex. xx., xxi.-xxiii., xxxiv.
72 ORIGItf AND GROWTH OF Tff BIBLE.
objective than the Jahvistic narrative. The two together
might well be called the story-book of the Pentateuch.
Nearly every one of the Genesis and Exodus stories
which children love are found in one or the other of
these two documents. The Elohist writer gives special
prominence to places and men of northern Palestine, and
hence is generally believed to have been a native of the
Northern Kingdom. The date of his narrative may be
set down as about 800-750 B.C. 1 .
3. The third document is essentially the Book of Den-
teronomy^ and is designated among critics as "Z?." It
differs from the other documents in being found in the
Pentateuch all in one place, and entire, while the others
have been broken up by later editors and compilers, and
interwoven with other matter throughout the several
books.
The date of Deuteronomy is probably between 650
and 621 B.C. 2 It is undoubtedly the book which Hilkiah
the priest is reported to have found in the Temple when
that edifice was being repaired, and which, being brought
to King Josiah and read to him, stirred him up to make
that great religious reform described in 2 Kings xxii.-
J Dillmann, Kittel, and Riehm say 900-850 B.C. ; Wellhausen, Kuenen,
and Stade say about 750 B.C.
9 Says Professor Driver : " Even though it were clear that the first four
books of the Pentateuch were written by Moses, it would be difficult to sus-
tain the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. For, to say nothing of the
remarkable difference of style, Deuteronomy conflicts with the legislation
of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers in a manner that would not be credible
were the legislator in both one and the same" ("Introduction to the Liter-
ature of the Old Testament," p. 77). The composition of Deuteronomy
is placed by Ewald, Kittel, Robertson Smith, and Driver in the reign of
Manasseh (697-642), and by Reuss, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Toy in that
of Josiah (639-609).
TffJS PENTATEUCH: ITS CHARACTER AND ORIGIN. 73
xxiil, which resulted in so nearly extirpating idolatry
from Judah. Thus the book clearly marks an epoch in
the history of the religion of Israel.
It is plain that the author makes use of older mate-
rial in his writing, 1 and yet his production is to be classed
distinctly as an original composition rather than as a com-
pilation. The main body of the work shows a single mind ;
but the opening and the concluding portions are prob-
ably later additions. Though the author is unknown, his
book shows that he was a man of a religious and progres-
sive spirit, who was warmly in sympathy with the proph-
ets of the eighth century and their work of religious
reform. He writes with skill and power, often rising
into eloquence. His ethical and religious teachings are
among the noblest in the Old Testament. The book is
particularly interesting from the fact that it stands at the
beginning of the movement which culminated in the Pen-
tateuchal legislation. While much more prophetic than
priestly in spirit, it nevertheless seems to have given the
initiative to that sacerdotal movement in Israel which
concentrated the national worship in Jerusalem, raised
the priests to unwonted power, turned the eyes of the
people to the past for revelations of God, and ended in
the fully elaborated Levitical Law.
4. The Priestly document ("P"), made up of what is
known as the Priestly Code, together with its historical
settings and various elaborations, is the largest and most
important of the documents, as it is undoubtedly the
1 We have seen that the Jahvistic and Elohistic documents were in exist-
ence a century and a half or two centuries before this time. It is also
probable that by about 800 or 750 B.c. a simple collection of civil and reli-
gious laws had been made. There are indications that the Deuteronomist
drew from each of these sources.
74 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE*
latest in date. 1 The great mass of this document con-
sists of the Levitical or ritual law, which is represented
as having been given at Sinai. All else in the document
is subordinate to this. But this could not stand alone ;
it must be properly introduced ; it must have its histori-
cal framework. Hence the document begins with a brief
outline history of the world, or, rather, of the ancestors
of the Hebrew people from Adam to Moses. It is here
that we have those long genealogical tables of the Penta-
teuch, which alike weary the reader and puzzle the chro-
nologist and historian. Into this introductory history we
have brought, at important epochs, certain special laws
or " covenants/* as the Sabbath (at creation), the Noachic
law of bloodshed (Gen. ix.), circumcision (Gen. xvii.), the
Passover (Ex. xiL) all looking in the general direction of
the great law and covenant to be revealed at Sinai as the
consummation of all. The introductory portion over,
then comes the long Sinaitic legislation, occupying the
last half of the Book of Exodus, the whole of Leviticus,
and most of Numbers; and finally, to complete the
whole, we have an account of the supposed distribu-
tion of the land of Canaan by lot among the various
tribes of Israel, and the conquest of the land, running
through the latter part of Numbers and the Book of
Joshua.*
1 Professor Driver pronounces it ** the latest of the sources of which the
Hexateuch is composed/* belonging '* approximately to the period of the
Babylonian captivity" (" Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa-
ment," p. 129).
9 The Book of Joshua is organically connected with the Pentateuch. The
three chief documents of the Pentateuch., "/," "J5," and "P," run right
on through Joshua, for which reason there is a growing tendency among
scholars to class the first six books of the Old Testament together under
the name of the "Hcxateuch?
THE PENTATEUCH; ITS CHARACTER AND ORIGIN. ?$
This elaborate and long-drawn-out Priestly document
(code and narrative) is mechanical and dry in" the ex-
treme. There is no poetry in it, and no life. It is ver-
bose, artificial, repetitious, tedious particularly the code
part. The historical portion draws constantly upon the
"J" and "E " documents for data ; but it so works over
its narratives as to destroy all picturesqueness, all natu-
ralness, all human interest. From first to last it is intent
upon one thing ; namely, the working out of a divine pur-
pose in Israel's history, and that divine purpose the es-
tablishment of the Jewish theocracy according to the
pattern revealed at Sinai. When and where did this
Priestly document originate? It was undoubtedly a
growth. There are plain evidences that many hands and
brains and hearts labored at the task of producing it
some directly, others indirectly. The impulse in a new
direction given to Israel's religious development by the
Deuteronomist was not suffered to die nor to stop where
he left it. In a generation came the exile to Babylon.
This was favorable to the priestly influence. The priests
were already in possession of many oral traditions (aim-
ing at the regulation of civil and religious life and private
and public worship) which they looked upon as sacred.
It was only a question of time when these would be em-
bodied in written form. Already there were many germs
of ritual in existence. The priests would be sure to make
the most of these. Moreover, there was real need for a
better organized worship, one that should more ade-
quately express the unifying faith and the deepening
religious life of the people ; and the new movement in its
motive and aim really meant this.
Babylon was undoubtedly the place where the new
Priestly document was formed mainly, if not wholly.
76 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
The priest-prophet Ezekiel may have had nothing to do
with it directly; but his glowing vision of a restored
Temple in Jerusalem, with its more elaborate worship, its
improved Torah or Law, and its new glories, which was
published about the fourteenth year of the Exile (572
B.C.), is strongly suggestive of the Priestly code, and
must have been influential in preparing the way for its
coming. The whole Priestly document (both the code
and its historical setting) was probably the work of a
school of literary priests (forerunners of the later scribes)
that sprung up in Babylon soon after Ezekiel. How long
it took them to perform their task we cannot tell. The
most we know is that it was undoubtedly completed by
the time of Ezra, the Babylonian priest and scribe who
came to Jerusalem from Babylon at the head of a large
company of zealous Jews, and in the year 444 introduced
to the people there, at a great gathering called for the
purpose, a new " Book of the Law," called the " Law of
God," and the " Law of Moses," which was publicly read
to the people day after day, and which Ezra bound them
all with a solemn covenant to obey. This Book of the
Law, thus for the first time publicly made known to the
Jews, was doubtless the Priestly document. 1
The Four Documents United. So much for the
origin and character of the different documents that
made up the Pentateuch. It remains now to add a word
1 For a full presentation of reasons for the assignment of the Priestly
document to the time of the Exile or later, see Wellhausen's " History of
Israel," chaps. i.-v. and viii. For a briefer treatment, see article " Penta-
teuch *' in Encyclopaedia Britannica (by Wellhausen); also see Prof. Robert-
son Smith's "Old Testament in the Jewish Church," chap. xii.
For a careful study of all four of the documents, see Professor Driver's
** Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," pp. 109-150.
THE PENTATEUCH: ITS CHARACTER AND ORIGIN. 77
as to how and when they were combined into the form
in which they come down to us.
It is believed that the two earliest documents, the
Jahvistic and the Elohistic^ circulated for a considerable
time (perhaps from one to two centuries) separately,
meanwhile passing through certain modifications. Then
they seem to have been united into one, not far from the
time of the origin of Deuteronomy (621 B.C.). A little
later, perhaps within a generation or two, this united
document and Deuteronomy 1 seem to have been joined
and put in circulation as " a well-rounded prophetic com-
pilation." This takes us down to the beginning of the
Exile, soon after which the codification of the Levitical
ritual begins.
During the exile and the century immediately follow-
ing it, the Priestly document (the full Levitical Code and
its historical setting) are formed by stages which can be
only dimly traced ; but by the year 444 it is completed
and given to the people by Ezra as the new Book of the
Law. 2
There remains now only one other thing to do to com-
plete the Pentateuch. That one thing is to combine this
new Book of the Law the Priestly document with the
older united prophetic compilation made up of the docu-
ments "/," " ," and " Dr The hand that does this is
very possibly Ezra's ; if not, it is one that follows soon
afterward. When this is done, and a little subsequent
editing has been added, the Pentateuch has- reached
essentially the form in which it comes down to us.
We thus see that the Pentateuch may almost be called
1 Deuteronomy had in the meantime received an introduction and an
appendix.
2 Neh.
78 ORIGIN AtfD GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
an epitome of the religion of ancient Israel. Moses did
not write it. Like so much else of the Old Testament
and the New, its authorship is unknown. Indeed, its
structure is so composite, and it came into being so
slowly, so gradually, through so many changes, and as
the result of so many hands and so diverse influences,
that we can hardly, with any propriety, speak of author,
ship, in our modern sense, in connection with it.
Dates of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. We may say with some assurance that
the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers
assumed their present form from four and a half to four
centuries, and Deuteronomy about six centuries, before
Christ But this, of itself, means little; indeed, it is
liable to mislead. For it must be remembered that all
the books draw from sources older, often many centuries
older, than themselves. The traditions of the Hebrew
people from the very earliest times times far earlier
than Moses are gathered here: idyllic tales of Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob ; accounts of the creation and of
the first fortunes of the human race, possibly learned
from the Babylonians during the Exile; stories one
quarter historic and three quarters legendary of the
wonderful wilderness journey from bondage in Egypt to
freedom in the Promised Land. Mingled with these are
several brief early collections of laws of great historical
importance, as the "Ten Words" (Ex. xx.), the "Book of
the Covenant" (Ex. xx.-xxiii:), and the "Little Book
of the Covenant" (Ex.xxxiv.), besides a great deal of later
legislation and other matter showing the religious devel-
opment of Israel for many hundreds of years. Many dif-
ferent men, working in different places and ages, had
part in writing all this out and gathering it together;
THE PEArTATEUClft JTS CHARACTER AtfJD ORIGIN. 79
and as Moses was looked upon as the great Lawgiver,
it was all ascribed to him. Well may Professor Toy say
of the Pentateuch : * c It is the Israelitish Thesaurus, or
Treasury of Traditions and Laws. Each narrative or
collection of laws bears the impress of the age in which
it originated ; the whole is a panorama of the religion of
Israel 99 *
1 " History of the Religion of Israel, 1 * pp. 91-9*.
CHAPTER VIL
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY: ORIGIN OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT HISTORICAL BOOKS.
BECAUSE the Pentateuch contains historical elements,
it is sometimes classed with the historical books of the
Bible. I have seen fit, however, to treat it by itself,
partly because it has a distinct unity of its own, partly
because even more important than its history is the leg-
islative or legal element which it contains, and partly
because its study involves questions the most difficult
and crucial of any connected with Old Testament criti-
cism, and which, therefore, require more space for their
treatment than it will be necessary to give to the other
historical books, or, indeed, to any of the remaining
books of the Old Testament. As has already been inti-
mated, we shall find that what we have discovered as to
the composite character of the Pentateuch and the late
origin of the priestly legislation, is a key that will go far
toward opening up the significance of all the rest of the
volume.
A Legendary Background to all Early History.
The history of all ancient peoples extends back until it
merges into a shadowy realm of tradition, legend, and
myth. We know how true this is of the early history of
Greece and Rome. Says Grote, in the preface to his
** History of Greece " : "I describe the earlier times by
themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the
first Greeks, and known only through their legends, with-
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 8 1
out presuming to measure how much or how little of
historical matter these legends may contain. If the
reader blame me for not assisting him to determine this
if he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain and dis-
close the picture I reply in the words of the painter
Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on
exhibiting his masterpiece of imitative art : ' The curtain
is the picture.' What we now read as poetry and legend
was once accredited history, and the only genuine history
which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their
past time."
This illustrates well the early condition, not simply of
the Greeks, but also of nearly all other ancient peoples,
the Hebrews included. It is only a little while since the
vast background of " shadowy times and persons " of
early Greek legend and myth was supposed to be, in
large part at least, real history. So, too, it is only since
Niebuhr that the legends of early Rome have been de-
tached from Roman history. A hundred years ago the
stories of Romulus and Remus, the elder Brutus, the Tar-
quins, the Horatius who
" kept the bridge
In the brave days of old,"
were all supposed to be reliable narratives of real persons
and events. . But now no respectable historian thinks of
treating them as anything else but legends.
The same change in the method of treating early He-
brew history is rapidly making its appearance. The best
writers are more and more distinguishing between the
earlier period of legend (and perhaps also myth), and the
later period of real history.
" It is most clearly evident," says Kuenen, " that the
6
82 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Old Testament narratives of Israel's earliest fortunes are
entirely upon a par with the accounts which other nations
have handed down to us concerning their early history.
That is to say, their principal element is legend. The
remembrance of the great men and of the important
events of antiquity was preserved by posterity. Trans-
mitted from mouth to mouth, it gradually lost its accuracy
and precision, and adopted all sorts of foreign elements.
The principal characteristics which legend shows among
other ancient nations are found also among the Israel-
ites/' 1
How far back can we find Reliable History among
the Hebrews ? Kuenen claims that the historical period
among the Hebrew people cannot be carried back with
any certainty beyond the eighth, or, at most, the ninth,
century B.C, Not but that there is much true history
earlier, but by that time we are at the end of any definite
authentic records. Now we launch out upon tradition ;
or, if we find other records, they are scrappy, and come
to us without credentials. Professor Toy thinks we have
reliable Bible narratives that go back to 1000 or 1200 B.C.
Elijah, Elisha, Solomon, and David are historical char-
acters. 2 Much that comes to us concerning them stands
all our tests of investigation. Yet much also does not.
A legendary element is apparent in our accounts of them.
The same is true of Saul and Samuel, as well as of most
or all of the Judges Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Sam-
son, and the rest ; though the story of Samson is so full
of legend and myth that it is pretty hard to find any his-
tory in it. Moses is historic ; Joshua may be ; but there is a
1 ** Religion of Israel," vol. i., p. 22.
2 Elijah began his public work about 870 B.C. Solomon became king
about 973, and David about 1010 B.C.
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 83
very large legendary element in the accounts that come to
us of the Conquest and the Exodus. 1 Scholars succeed
in separating, to some extent, between the legend and
the history, but after they have exhausted all their critical
resources there is much remaining in doubt.
Earlier than the Exodus all is shadow ; in the twilight
we catch glimpses of what are doubtless historic characters
and real events, but, strain our eyes much as we will, we
can make out little that is certain. 2
However, let us not conclude that because what comes
to us from the earlier ages of Israel's existence is so
largely legendary, it is therefore valueless. No conclu-
sion could be less warranted. True, it has little value as
history; but history is not the only valuable form of lit-
erature. In the poetry of a people, in the ballads and
songs of a people, in the legends and traditions of a people,
we often have a more precious legacy even than in its
chronicles. The poems of Homer reveal to us the Greek
people of his time their hopes and fears, loves and hates,
joys and sorrows, aspirations, yearnings, worship the
whole world, indeed, of their deepest thoughts and feel-
ings, as no mere historic narrative of facts could do. The
same is true of the legends of the Old Testament. They
are the products and the survivals of what was deepest
and most sacred in the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, wor-
ships of those important early ages when the Hebrew
1 The true date of the Exodus from Egypt under Moses is probably about
1300. Then follows the conquest of Canaan, a slow process lasting at least
one or two centuries, perhaps more. In the margin of our common English
Bibles the dates of these events are erroneously given as 1491 and 1451-1427.
2 See Kuenen's " Religion of Israel," vol. i., chap. ii. ; " Bible for Learners,'*
vol. i. ; particularly chap, xi ; Heilprin's " Historical Poetry of the Ancient
Hebrews,'* vol. i., pp. 11-17 seq.; H. P. Smith's "Old Testament History,"
chaps, i-iv.; Kent's "Heroes and Crises of Early Hebrew History."
84 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
people were laying the foundations of their national life,
and building up within themselves that strength and
quality of moral fibre which was later to revolutionize
the religion of the world. 1
Bible History subject to the same Canons of Criti-
cism as other History. The theory is widely held that
the history found in the Bible is radically different from
all other history that it arose under wholly different
conditions, that it is to be measured by different stand-
ards, and, above all, that it claims and possesses a free-
dom from error elsewhere unknown. But scholarship
gives no support to this theory. Says the conservative
Professor Ladd upon this subject : " We have no claim
to historic infallibility set up in the Bible, or even to un-
usual freedom from errors of an historical kind. Neither
does it appear that God has ever revealed to men the
exact character and order of past events where no record
of the events themselves has been kept. For their facts
the sacred authors of the biblical histories appear always
to have been dependent upon the ordinary resources.
Some things of their own time they witnessed for them-
selves, or learned from others who had witnessed them ;
1 For a collection of legends of Old Testament characters, gathered from
sources outside the Bible, see Baring-Gould's *' Book of Old Testament
Legends." For Greek legends, see Grote's " History of Greece," vol. i.
For a graphic account of the process by which legends have their birth, see
Macaulay*s Introduction to his " Lays of Ancient Rome." For a discussion
of the mythical element in the Bible, see Goldziher's '* Hebrew Mythology M ;
also chapter on " The Mythical Element in the New Testament," in Dr.
Hedge's "Ways of the Spirit." On the general subject of myths as con-
nected with religion, see Clodd's " Childhood of Religion " ; Mailer's
" Chips from a German Workshop,'* vol. ii.; Tyler's '* Primitive Culture,"
voL L; Fiske's "Myths and Myth-makers" ; Lang's " Myth, Ritual, and
Religion " ; Cox's and other works on mythology.
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 8$
other things they accepted as currently reported There
were traditions, oral and written, which claimed to give
an account of what had taken place in the more remote
past. The later writers had for use the documents and
books composed by the earlier ones. The biblical his-
torians possessed, in brief, just such kinds of sources of
information with respect to previous events, as ancient
historians generally possessed." 1
To sum up, then : The verdict of unbiassed scholarship
regarding the historical portion of the Old Testament is
that it contains a great deal of reliable and valuable his-
tory indeed, that among the historical works coming
down to us from the ancient world, few are, on the
whole, so trustworthy as the Bible; but, at the same
time, that it contains, under the name of history, much
that is only tradition and legend, and not infrequently
it makes mistakes as to fact ; so that, to ascertain what in
its pages is really reliable history and what is not, we
are compelled to resort to precisely the same methods
of critical research and verification which we apply to all
other books.
The Old Testament Historical Books. With so
much of introduction, let us proceed to make brief in-
quiry regarding the date and authorship of the several
Old Testament historical books, in the order in whick
they stand in our canon.
Aside from the Pentateuch they are twelve in number.
Classing them according to their contents, they fall into
two series, the first series being made up of the first seven
books Joshua, Judges, Ruth, i and 2 Samuel, and I
and 2 Kings ; and the second series being composed of
* " Wliat is the Bible ?" p. 227.
86 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
the last five books I and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehe-
miah, and Esther. The first series connects closely with
the Pentateuch, taking up the thread of Israel's history
where Numbers and Deuteronomy lay it down, and bring-
ing it straight on down to the destruction of Jerusalem
by Nebuchadnezzar, and the carrying away of the people
captive to Babylon thus, taken with the Pentateuch,
forming a continuous history of the world, or, rather, of
that part of the world represented by the Israelites and
their ancestors, from the Creation to the Exile. The
second series also begins its narrative with Adam, bridges
rapidly the long space from Adam to David with a series
of genealogical tables, and then continues the history,
with some fullness, but with a very decided bias in favor
of the priestly class, on down to a hundred years after
the close of the Exile that is, to the second visit of
Nehemiah to Jerusalem in the year 432 B.C. Thus we
have the whole period of Israel's history covered, as far
as the Exile, twice over, by these twelve historical
books.
The Book of Joshua. The sixth book of the Bible,
and the first after the Pentateuch, gives evidence, as has
been already said, of a close organic connection with the
preceding five books. The three Pentateuchal docu-
ments, "/." " -E," and " P," are plainly traceable through
it. It also shows marks of a revision by an editor who
does his work in the spirit of Deuteronomy. It is the
last book of the Hexateuch. It narrates the crossing of
the Jordan by the Israelites, their conquest of Palestine
west of the Jordan, the allotment of the country among
the tribes, and the closing events in the life of Joshua.
Its narratives have to be taken with much allowance, for
it is certain, from numerous evidences which appear later,
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 8/
that Palestine was not conquered by the Israelites at so
early a day in any such thorough manner as is here de-
scribed. In this connection it is gratifying to find reason
to believe that the terrible slaughters of women and
helpless children described in this book are largely fic-
tions. The book is a late production, based on earlier
traditions. It was composed about the same time with
Exodus and Numbers, after the Exile, perhaps between
450 and 400 B.C.
The Book of Judges. This book takes its name from
the local heroes (twelve or thirteen in number) whose
exploits form its main subject. It purports to take up
the history of Israel where the Book of Joshua leaves it,
carrying it on for four hundred and ten years. But it is
probable that some of its earlier narratives are really
duplicates of some in Joshua ; l and it is certain that its
time limit must be shortened, perhaps to about two hun-
dred years. The period it covers is one of great rude-
ness ; civilization as yet is very imperfect, government is
unsettled, civil wars abound, morals are low ; there is
much violence and cruelty ; ephods and images and the
gods of the Canaanites are worshiped by the Israelitish
people side by side with Jahveh, their own national
deity. The narratives of the book give a graphic picture
of society in this early period, but they are much mixed
with legend. Probably the main stories were gathered into
a single collection near the middle of the seventh century.
But, if so, the collection, or book, was revised and impor-
tant additions made to it quite in the prophetic spirit of
Deuteronomy, during or very soon after the Babylonian
Exile.
1 Compare Judg. i. 21 with Josh. xv. 63 ; Judg. i. 10-15 with Josh. xr.
14-19 ; Judg. i. 27-28 with Josh. xvii. 12-13 ; Judg. i. 29 with Josh. xvi. 10.
88 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
The Book of Ruth does not follow Judges in the
Hebrew canon, but stands far over toward the latter part
of the Old Testament, after Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
The only reason for placing it here seems to be that it
portrays a state of society such as that which we have
seen to have existed at the close of the Book of Judges.
It is a most charming idyl of domestic life, and forms
a pleasing contrast with the darker pictures of the pre-
ceding book. It was probably written about 430, as a pro-
test against the stern legalism of Ezra. 1
The Books of I and 2 Samuel were originally a
single book. The prophet Samuel is the most prominent
figure in the earlier part, hence the books are called by
his name. They take the history of Israel on through
the events that lead up to the monarchy, through the
reign of Saul, and nearly through that of David. Several
long sections give evidence of having been written by a
single hand, 2 but most of the books is a compilation. In
some parts the narrative is formed of two separate narra-
tives woven together, which sometimes conflict, and even
flatly contradict each other. 8 The books are probably
the work of a prophet writing during the period of the
Babylonian Exile, but with a few later additions.
The Books of I and 2 Kings, like the two Books of
Samuel, formed originally one book. They trace the his-
tory of the Israelitish people from David's nomination
of Solomon to be his successor, through the reign of
Solomon, the division of the kingdom, the varying for-
tunes of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, to the
1 Driver thinks before the Exile ; Ewald, Bertheau, Kuenen, Wellhausen,
and Toy think during or after.
* The most extended are x Sam. xv. to 2 Sam. v., and 2 Sam. ix.-
* Compare i Sam. xvL 17-23 with xvii. 1-18, 55-$8.
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 89
beginning of the captivity in Babylon. These books
differ from all of the preceding historical books in the
fact that they refer repeatedly to other authorities for
additional information upon points under treatment.
These authorities are, (i) for the reign of Solomon, the
" Book of the Acts of Solomon " ; (2) for the kingdom
of Israel, the " Books of the Chronicles of the Kings of
Israel " (referred to seventeen times) ; (3) for the kingdom
of Judah, the " Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Judah "
(referred to fifteen times). Again and again we read,
" And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he
did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the Book of
the Acts of Solomon ? " ; " And the rest of the acts of
Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the Book of the
Chronicles of the Kings of Judah ? " etc., etc. The books
thus referred to are lost. They were probably official
records of some kind, or works based upon such official
records. The compiler of the Books of Kings is not
known. He writes in the spirit of Deuteronomy, by
which work he has almost certainly been influenced.
Wellhausen and Kuenen think his work was substan-
tially completed before the Exile (making its date there-
fore between 620 and 600 B.C.); but there is a growing
consensus of judgment that this is too early by half a
century.
The Books of I and 2 Chronicles were also origi-
nally a single book. As previously stated, they form the
beginning of the second great group of Old Testament
histories the other three books of the group being Ezra,
Nehemiah, and Esther. Indeed, it is plain from many
unmistakable indications that these five books really form
a single, continuous work
The Books of Chronicles begin their narrative with
90 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Adam and end with the captivity in Babylon. Thus they
cover ground which has already been covered, particu-
larly duplicating (with changes and in a different spirit)
much that is found in Samuel and Kings. One naturally
wonders what is the need of these Books of Chronicles,
when in so many ways they run parallel to what has
been written before. The explanation is, they were
written late, and in the interest of the hierarchy, the
temple ritual, the Levitical legislation to give these
standing and a historic environment.
They take the old history of the nation, add to it
and subtract from it, and in various ways remold it, with
the constant aim of exalting the priests, the Law, and
the temple-worship. It is speaking moderately to say
that they are much less reliable as history than Samuel
or Kings. 1
As to the date of these books, I cannot do better than to
quote the words of Professor Driver : " They contain many
indications of being the compilation of an author living
long subsequently to the age of Ezra and Nehemiah
in fact, not before the close of the Persian rule. A
date shortly after 332 B.C. is thus the earliest to which
the composition of the Chronicles can be plausibly
a Says Professor Toy : " The difference between the Books of Kings and
Chronicles is this : Kings (which is a continuation of Judges and Samuel)
-was written by a prophet during the Babylonian Exile ; it gives the history
of both the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of
Israel, and its object is to show that the nation's prosperity was in propor-
tion to its obedience to Jahveh. Chronicles was written by a priest or a
Levite more than two hundred years later ; it gives the history of Judah
only, and its object is to show that the nation's prosperity was in propor-
tion to its observance of the temple-service. Much that Chronicles says of
the temple-service is not reliable" (" History of the Religion of Israel,* 1
\P- 39-40)*
HEBREW LEGEND AND HISTORY. 91
assigned, and it is that which is adopted by most modern
critics/' 1
The Book of Ezra is united in the Jewish canon with
Nehemiah. It takes up the thread of Jewish history at
the return of the exiles from Babylon under Zerubbabel,
536 B.C., and carries it forward intermittently for a hundred
years. The book naturally divides into two parts. The
first part tells the story of the rebuilding of the temple,
and the second part that of the effort made by Ezra to
get the Jews who had married foreign wives to divorce
them. It seems to contain certain '* memoirs " from the
pen of Ezra, but the book as a whole is a compilation
made long after Ezra's age, and seemingly by the same
man who compiled Chronicles and Nehemiah. The book
is written partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic the
language (closely related to the Hebrew) spoken by the
Jewish people after their return from the Exile.
The Book of Nehemiah is simply a continuation of
Ezra. It relates two important events the rebuilding
of the walls of Jerusalem, and the presentation to the
people by Ezra of the new Book of the Law, which was
undoubtedly the Levitical legislation essentially as we
have it in the Pentateuchal books of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Numbers. This latter event marks an epoch in the
history of Israel. When the people of Jerusalem listened
to the reading of this new book by Ezra, and bound
themselves by a solemn covenant to accept and obey it,
the old simple religion of the prophets was dead, and the
new Jewish Church, with its elaborate ceremonial, its
priestly hierarchy, its sacrificial system, and its temple
1 " Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," p. 486. Ewald,
Bertheau, Schrader, Dillmann, Ball, Oettli, Kuenen, and Toy fix the date as
late as this ; NSldeke puts it a hundred years later still (about 200 B.C.).
92 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
ritual, was born. The literature springing immediately
out of the great change, giving it its historical setting and
justification, was Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
The Book of Esther is rather a historical romance
than a history. It tells how Esther, a beautiful Jewess,
living in Susa, the Persian capital, rose to be the queen
of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes), and saved her countrymen
from a terrible plot which had been laid for their destruc-
tion by the king's favorite courtier, Haman. The object
of the story is to give an account of the Jewish Feast of
Purim, which is still celebrated the I4th and i$th of the
month Adar, the date of the supposed deliverance. 1 The
book is morally and religiously of a low order. It has
often been pointed out that it does not contain the name
of God ; but, worse than that, its spirit throughout is
narrow, secular, revengeful. Ewald says that in passing
to Esther from the other Old Testament books, we
" fall from heaven to earth." The only noble character
in the story is Vashti, the Persian queen, whose place is
given to the beautiful but cruel Esther. The majority
of critics believe the book to have been written not
earlier than 332 B.C. (the beginning of the Greek period)
and possibly as late as the year 2OO. 3
1 About the ist of March.
* Among them Ewald, Bleek, Neldeke, Dillmann, Bertheau, Oettli,
Driver, and Toy.
CHAPTER VIIL
HEBREW PROPHECY: ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
PROPHETICAL BOOKS.
The Prophetical Books as Histories. It is not gen-
erally understood how important are the prophetical
books as a basis for the historical study of the Bible. We
naturally think that for biblical history we must go to
the distinctly historical books. But it is now recognized
by scholars that the most reliable sources of historical
knowledge we have are the prophecies. These are origi-
nal documents to an extent to which the histories are not/
The histories, are composites ; we do not know who wrote
them. We do knbV^w&o wrote a large part of the
prophecies. As far as possible, therefore, a sound scholar-
ship will test the histories by the prophetical books.
The higher biblical criticism of to-day is doing this.
It is examining the whole Old Testament with the great-
est care in the light of the prophetical books testing
everything else by these most certainly authentic wit-
nesses. 1
The Rise and Character of Hebrew Prophecy. Be-
fore proceeding to 3, study of these books, a few words
should be said about the prophets as a class, and the gen-
eral subject of prophecy.
Though we have no prophetical writings of an earlier
1 Sec Kuenen's "Religion of Israel " as perhaps the best illustration of
this.
94 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OP THE BIBLE.
date than the eighth century before Christ, we must not
suppose that Hebrew prophecy began with that period.
It goes back at least to Samuel's day (1050 B. c.), and per-
haps earlier ; for we read both that Samuel was a prophet
himself, and that he organized schools or communities of
prophets.
This early prophetism, however, was of a low order ;
it was closely connected with soothsaying or fortune-
telling, and the manifestation of a kind of unintelligent
religious enthusiasm or frenzy. 1 Nevertheless, there was
in it a moral element, which steadily grew until the
prophets became a great moral power in the nation.
The prophets were leaders in the worship of Jahveh, as
distinguished from the worship of the Canaanitish gods
which widely prevailed for some centuries after the Con-
quest. At first they were not monotheists that is, they
did not teack that Jahveh was the only god, but only that
he was Israel's god, and more powerful than the gods of
other nations. But from this they rose, by degrees, to
the belief that he was the God of all the world.
There was a steady rise, too, in their conception of
Jahveh's character. It is true that they identified his will,
even from the first, with justice and righteousness ; but
their conception of these was so imperfect that they
were able to think of him as being pleased with, and even
demanding, what to us is morally shocking ; as, for exam-
ple, the " hewing of Agag in pieces before the Lord in
Gilgal " by Samuel, or the slaying of the four hundred
and fifty prophets of Baal, at the brook Kishon, by Elijah.
All this, however, is by degrees left behind ; and by the
1 Samuel himself seems to have taken money from persons for telling
them where to find lost things. See I Sam. ix.-x.
HEBREW PROPHECY. 95
time we reach the eighth century, we find the prophets o
Jahveh believing and teaching an ethical monotheism of
a very high order, from which they never afterward lapse
or recede.
The Predictive Element in Hebrew Prophecy. The
popular conception is that the main work of the Hebrew
prophets was that of predicting future events. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. 1 We must put this notion
wholly away before we can understand their real influence.
Above everything else, they were moral and religious
preachers and reformers. Their great word was " right-
eousness." " God is righteous, and demands righteous-
ness in his people. The righteous nation he will save ; the
unrighteous nation he will destroy " this was the burden
of 'their message. True, there was often in their prophecy
a predictive element. But it was never the main thing.
Always it grew directly out of the deeper moral message ;
it was the announcement of a penulty which would come
if the moral message was not heeded. Thus the prediction
was always conditional, 2 and always connected with the
times of the prophet who uttered it. 3
The prophet loved his nation with a passionate love.
With all his soul he desired for it safety, prosperity, and
peace. He believed the only way these could possibly
be secured was by righteous obedience to Jahveh. There-
1 " We have reason to doubt whether prophetic inspiration ever results
in the clear and definite knowledge of some single occurrence which is to
take place in the future." (Ladd's " Doctrine of Sacred Scripture," vol. i.,
P- 347-)
8 See Jer. xviii. 7-10.
1 " The prophet speaks always, in the first instance, of his own contem-
poraries : the message which he brings is intimately related with the circum-
stances of his time." (Driver's " Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament," p. 224.)
9^ ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
fore he urged such obedience, exhorted to it, promised
rewards to come from it, warned against neglect of it.
At one time he saw danger threatening from Assyria, at
another from Babylon, at another from Egypt, " Re-
pent," he cried; "turn from your idols: put away your
sins ; else the blow will fall, the destruction will come/
Thus he foretold the inevitable consequences which he
foresaw, as he believed, must follow the nation's obedience
or disobedience of Jahveh, its God.
One thing more the prophet did : he kept the nation
from despair. - In dark days, when calamity had fallen,
when the oppressor's heel was heavy on prostrate Israel,
hope lighted its fires in the prophet's soul. Jahveh
would not utterly forsake his people; he would repent
him of his severity; he would make bare his arm to
help ; he would raise up a deliverer* Thus it was that
the prophets prophesied for hundreds of years strength-
ening the nation's allegiance to Jahveh, quickening its
conscience, deepening its moral life, keeping alive its
hope in the darkest midnights of disaster and oppression.
The Prophets not Inerrant. But these prophets
were men, and hence were not inerrant. Not infre-
quently disasters which they threatened did not come,
1 The hope of a deliverer was what was known as the Messianic expecta-
tion. It took many different forms. Perhaps the most common was that
of a king like unto David (Messiah means " anointed " as kings were
consecrated to their office by anointing), whom it was hoped and believed
God would some time raise up and place on the throne of David, to break
the hated yoke of foreign dominion, and make Israel once more a power
and a glory on the earth. See Martineau's " Seat of Authority," pp. 326-
358 ; Keim's " Jesus of Nazara," vol. i, pp. 314-327 ; Toy's " Judaism and
Christianity" (Index, "Messiah"); James Drummond's "The Jewish
Messiah"; Briggs' "Messianic Prophecy"; Riehm's "Messianic Proph-
ecy" ; Kuenen's " Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. '*
HEBREW PROPHECY. 97
and deliverances which they promised did not appear.
Moreover, all the prophets had their individual charac-
teristics, which were not always ideal. Often they were
stern, unbending, and ascetic men, unnecessarily repelling
by the severity of their speech. Then there were false
prophets, whom it was hard to tell from the true. And
there were in those times, as now, prophets who " proph-
esied smooth things/' to curry public favor. However,
such were very likely then as now sooner or later to come
to grief; and certainly the utterances of few such have
been preserved. If there is anything upon which critics
agree, it is that the prophetical writings which come down
to us in the Old Testament are, in the main, honest and
earnest writings.
The Prophetical Books: Their Origin, Date, and
Authorship. We are now ready to take up the different
prophetical books in their order, to inquire briefly re-
garding the origin, date, and authorship of each.
There are two different orders in which these books
may be studied. One is the chronological order, or the
order of the dates of their composition. This order is
clearly the natural one. The other is the order in which
they stand in our Bible, which is about as far from chron-
ological, and therefore about as unnatural, as possible.
This order has in itself little or nothing to recommend it.
And yet, because it is the order of our Bible, perhaps it
will be on the whole the least confusing and the most
easily followed. I shall therefore conform to it.
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the prophetical
writings, as we arrange the canon. But the Jews did not
so reckon it. The division of the Bible which they called
the " Prophets " began with six books which we class as
histories, and which I have already considered as such ;
$8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
namely, Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, and
First and Second Kings. These they called the " Earlier
Prophets/' After these they placed Isaiah and the rest
of the prophetical books as we have them, except that
they left out Daniel and Lamentations, which we include,
giving these a place in the division of the Bible which
they called the Hagiography, or The Writings. 1
Isaiah is not the earliest of the prophetical books, and
there seems to be no reason for placing it first except its
length and importance. Two, and perhaps three, others
take precedence of it in age ; namely, Amos, Hosea, and
possibly Micah. It is a very long book, of sixty-six
chapters; but it is not all from one hand. Chapters I to
XXXIX, with the exception of a few passages, 2 are un-
doubtedly from the prophet Isaiah. Chapters XL to LV
are the production of an unknown author living nearly two
centuries later, probably in Babylon. For want of any
other name he is often called the Second Isaiah. Chapters
LVI to LXVI are probably later still, and their authorship
also is unknown.
Isaiah belonged to a distinguished family, and is one of
the greatest of the Old Testament characters. He came
forward as a prophet in Jerusalem about the year 740 B.C.,
and had a public career of forty years. He was a states-
man as well as a prophet. He witnessed the war of
Syria and Ephraim against Judah, the fall of Samaria,
and the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian Sennacherib.
The safety and welfare of the nation was the constant
burden of his thought and speech. The Bible has no
1 The Jews separated their Scriptures into the three general divisions, (l)
the Law, (2) the Prophets, and (3) the Hagiography.
* Chaps, xiii., xiv. 1-23, xv., xvi. I-I3, and probahly xxi., xxxiv., and
HEBREW PROPHECY. 99
more noble, eloquent, or powerful writer than Isaiah, unless
it be the Second Isaiah. When the anonymous portion of
the book came to be attached to that written by Isaiah is
not known. It could not have been until after the Exile,
and very likely it was by accident. Isaiah wrote between
740 and 700 B.C.
The Book of Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah en-
tered upon his work as a public religious teacher in Jeru-
salem during the reign of Josiah, in the year 626 B.C. He
was a man of lofty spirituality and ardent patriotism.
Like Isaiah, he lived in troubled times. He saw the fall
of the kingdom of Judah, the destruction of the Holy
City, and the deportation of, the people into captivity,
but he himself was not carried away. Later he went
with many of his countrymen to Egypt, where he
died. The aim of his prophecies was to save his nation
from the dangers that threatened. There was never a
more earnest preacher of righteousness. The various
prophecies that make up his book do not stand in chron-
ological order. Who gathered them together we do
not know, but it cannot have been Jeremiah himself.
The last three chapters are almost certainly from a later
writer. l Jeremiah's date is from 626 to 580 B.C., about a
century and a quarter after Isaiah.
The Book of Lamentations is made up of five beau-
tiful and very pathetic poems of mourning over the
destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings of the peo-
ple occasioned thereby. In our Bible it is ascribed to
Jeremiah, but the weight of scholarship is against this
judgment. It was probably written about the time of
1 Chap. x. 1-16 is also regarded by many scholars as spurious. See
especially the Aramaic verse, x. n.
100 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Jeremiah's death that is, near 580 B,C. Its author is
unknown,
The Book of Ezekiel follows closely in point of time
upon the Book of Jeremiah. Its author, a priest as well
as a prophet, was carried off to Babylonia with ten
thousand other captives in the year 597, eleven years be-
fore the destruction of Jerusalem. There he labored as a
prophet until about the year 570. His book contains mes-
sages of reproof, warning, and comfort to Israel ; proph-
ecies against various surrounding nations, and, most
notable of all, a great and striking vision of a temple to
be built in Jerusalem, an improved ritual of worship, and
a restored Israel In this vision he particularly manifests
the priestly spirit, and paves the way for that priestly leg-
islation which is coming in its fullness later. It is plain
that the code of Exodus and Numbers could not have
been in existence when this vision was written. Ezekiel's
style is marked by the boldness of its imagery. His
thought is ecclesiastically and perhaps theologically
dogmatic and narrow, but his ethical standards are high.
The date of his prophecies is 593-570 B.C.
The Book of Daniel. A book could hardly be more
out of place than is the Book of Daniel, standing here,
fifth in order among the prophetical books. It used to
be believed that it belonged with Ezekiel and Jeremiah in
point of time, since Daniel, its supposed author, lived in
Babylon during the Captivity. But now the best schol-
arship is agreed that it was written by a writer whose
name is unknown, living in the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes (about 165 B.C.), to encourage the Jews to
hold out against the oppressions of that monarch, and
to assure them of speedy deliverance. Daniel's name was
attached to it for the purpose of giving it added weight
HEBREW PROPHECY. IOI
and influence. Thus we see that it is really the latest of
all the prophetical books. Indeed, it is hardly to be called
prophetical. The Jews, as has already been said, did not
so class it. It was one of the last of the Old Testament
writings to be admitted into the canon, and many schol-
ars have always doubted whether its admission was justi-
fiable. It is_aa .apocalypse rather than a prophecy. Its
fanciful, high-colored visions of the future ally it with the
apocalyptical Book of Enoch and the Sibylline oracles,
which were written about this time, and which had much
influence upon the Jews and upon early Christianity.
One such book found its way (though with difficulty) into
the New Testament ; namely, the Revelation.
The Book of Hosea. This book is the first of the
twelve short prophetical writings commonly known as
the Minor Prophecies. By the Jews they were grouped
together as one book. We shall notice them separately,
but they do not need to detain us long.
In passing from Daniel to Hosea, we go back from the
latest to the next to the earliest of the Old Testament
prophecies. That is, we leap backward five hundred
years. Hosea lived in the northern kingdom of Israel,
and prophesied between the years 746 and 722 B.C.
The Book of Joel. We probably have here to make
a long leap forward, for though there is uncertainty as
to when the prophet Joel lived, scholarship inclines to
place him at least three hundred and fifty years later than
Hosea, or about the year 400 B.C., during the Persian
period.
The Book of Amos. And now we must take another
long leap backward, to the very beginning of written
prophecy, Amos being the earliest prophet of all those
whose writings have been preserved. He was an owner
IO2 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
and tender of sheep and cattle. He lived originally in
Judah, but seems to have spent his prophetical life in
the Northern Kingdom. His prophecies are of a high
order. They were directed against the idolatry and
wickedness of his time. It has already been pointed out
that Amos and his younger contemporary, Hosea, seem
to have been the first of the Hebrew prophets to teach
a pure ethical monotheism. This was probably about
750 B.C.
The Book of Obadiah is very short, and relatively
unimportant. Its single chapter consists of a prophecy
against Edom. The prophet Obadiah is unknown to us
save through this brief writing. His date is about 580
B.C., a little after the devastation of Jerusalem.
The Book of Jonah. In this book we have some-
thing unique, and of more than ordinary interest. The
prophet Jonah is a historical character, of whom we
have mention in 2 Kings xiv. 25. But this work can*
not be from him. It was probably written in the fifth
century, and is a work qfjgure^ fiction a religious apo-
logue. The age from which it came (that of Ezra and
Nehemiah) was one of intense legalism and narrowness,
which would fence in the Jews from all the rest of the
world, as the only people for whom God cares. The
book is a protest against this spirit. By means of the
story of the prophet sent to preach to Nineveh, a heathen
city, it shows God's love and mercy to be world-wide.
Regarded as history, the book contains absurdities which
no ingenuity can explain away. But as a work of fiction,
! written to teach a lesson of religious tolerance, it is one
of the noblest books in the Bible.
The Book of Micah. In Micah we have one of the
earlier prophets, living in the eighth century (735-702
HEBREW PROPHECY. 103
B.C.), contemporaneous with the prophet Isaiah. In spirit
he seems to have been somewhat gloomy ; one of his lead-
ing thoughts was that of retribution God's sure punish-
ment of 'the people for their sins. The Assyrians were
threatening: he predicts great devastations from them,
but eventual victory and deliverance for Israel. His
utterances often suggest Isaiah. There is no purer or
loftier religious teaching found in the Old Testament
than that of some of his passages.
The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah.
These prophecies all come from the seventh century B.C.
Nahum's and Zephaniah's from about the year 630, and
Habakkuk's from about 605. They are directed against
the surrounding nations, and have no characteristics that
demand especial mention.
The Book of Haggai dates from the year 520 B.C., a
few years after the return of the Jews from the Babylo-
nian captivity. It is an earnest exhortation to the gover-
nor and people to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
The Book of Zechariah is noticeable in the fact that
it contains writings from three different prophets. The
Zechariah (son of Berechia, son of Iddo) who wrote chap*
ters L to viii. was a contemporary of Haggai, whom he
aided in his efforts to bring about the rebuilding of the
temple. As to the time of the second author, who wrote
chapters ix. to xi., critics are much divided. Some
assign him to the seventh century B.C., and some to the
fourth. There is not much more certainty as to the date
of the third author, from whom came chapters xii. to
xiv. How the mistake came to be made of putting the
three different prophecies together as one, we cannot tell.
Possibly the writers may all have had the same name, or
names very similar, and this may have caused it.
104 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
The Book of Malachi stands in our canon as the last
of the prophecies, and the end of the Old Testament.
The date given to it there is 397 B.C., which is not far
from right, the best authorities assigning it to about the
year 420 B.C. It is permeated by the legal spirit, the
spirit of Ezra, from whose age it comes.
This completes our glance at the various prophetical
books of the Old Testament. The glance has been brief,
and yet sufficient to give us the main facts as to their
dates and authorship, as scholarship has brought these to
light ; and also sufficient to show that more earnest, more
honest, more intensely real, more intensely natural and
human utterances, or utterances of greater moral power,
or of more permanent religious significance to the world,
were never penned, than some of these prophecies of
ancient Israel. 1
The golden ag of Hebrew prophecy was the eighth and
seventh centuries that is, the two centuries immediately
preceding the Captivity in Babylon. The greatest name
in those centuries is Isaiah. The prophetic spirit blazed
up again with renewed splendor for a little while at the
time of the Captivity, in Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah ;
1 Readers who desire to make a more extended study of the Old Testa-
ment prophetical books are referred to the following works : Kuenen*s
" Religion of Israel," " Prophets and Prophecy in Israel," and " National
Religions and Universal Religions," lects. ii. and iii. ; Driver's, Davidson's,
and other Introductions to the Old Testament ; Robertson Smith's " Prophets
of Israel/' and *' Old Testament in the Jewish Church," chap, x. ; articles
" Prophet/' by W. R. Smith and A. Harnack, and " Israel/' by Wellhausen,
in Encyclopaedia Britannica ; Noyes' " Translations of the Prophets, with
Notes*' ; Ewald's " Prophets of the Old Testament" ; Renan's " History
of the People of Israel/' vols. ii. and iii. ; Stanley's " History of the Jewish
Church,** vol. L, lects. xviiL-xx.; Riehm's *' Messianic Prophecy"; Herford's
" Prophecies of the Captivity/'
HEBREW PROPHECY. IO$
and after the Captivity also there were prophets ; but a
decline had set in. Now a different power was rising to
the ascendant, the power of the priests. Men were more
and more turning their eyes to the past. Tradition was
growing in influence. Codes of law were drawn up ; and
more and more these usurped the place of the prophets 1
open vision. Here and there a fresh prophetic voice was
lifted up, but it seemed like an echo from the past.
Under the pressure of the legal system and the hierarchy
that rapidly developed after the Exile, prophecy waned
and died, not to appear again until it rose in that
splendid final re-birth which gave the world Christianity.
CHAPTER IX.
HEBREW POETRY: ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
POETICAL BOOKS.
HEBREW poetry is very ancient, going back far beyond
historic times. With the Hebrews, as with most other
peoples, the earliest form of literary expression of thought
and feeling was rhythmical. In the Pentateuch and the
historical books of the Old Testament there are preserved
many poetical pieces, some longer and some shorter,
which are doubtless much more ancient than their set-
ting; it seems likely that they were composed by un-
known bards, and repeated or sung from generation to
generation among the people, before they found a place
in the histories where they now are. 1
There are also in the prophetical writings of the Old
Testament many poetical passages.' Indeed, as the greater
1 Among the more important of these are the Blessing of Jacob, Gen.
xlix. ; the Songs of Moses and Miriam at the Red Sea, Ex. xv. ; several
brief poetical passages (taken from the u Book of the Wars of the Lord ") f
Nam. xxi. ; the Prophecy of Balaam, Num. xxiii.-aodv. ; the Song of Moses,
and the Blessing of Moses, Deut. xxxii.-xxxiii. ; some lines about the standing
still of the sun and moon at Gibeon and Ajalon (from the Book of Jasher),
Josh, x.; the Song of Deborah and Barak, Judg. v.; David's Lament over
Jonathan, 2 Sam. i. (from the Book of Jasher) ; the Song and the Last Words'
of David, 2 Sam. xxiL-xxiii. It should be noted that there is much differ-
ence of judgment about the dates of these passages. Some are doubtless
ancient ; others contain lines or longer fragments that are ancient ; others
give signs of being nearly or quite as late as the historical writings in which
they are imbedded.
ffBSJKE W POETR Y. IO/
prophets, like Isaiah and the Second Isaiah, rise to their
loftiest strains, their prose tends constantly to become
imaginative and emotional in its character, and to take on
rhythmic forms, and thus to pass over into poetry. Thus
the line between poetry and prose ia the Bible is not
always clearly drawn.
There are, however, five books, not falling under the
head of history or prophecy, which may properly be
classed by themselves as Poetical Books. These are Job,
Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.
Let us inquire very briefly concerning the origin, author-
ship, and character of each of these.
The Book of Job stands first. By common consent
this is one of the greatest and most splendid poems of
the world. In structure it is essentially dramatic, whik
in aim it is didactic. It has a prose introduction, and a
very short prose conclusion, but the great body of the
work is highly poetical. That there was a real personage '
named Job, and that he was an eminent and a good man,
who passed through some such disasters as those depicted
in this book, is somewhat probable. And yet, that the
work as a whole is a creation of the imagination is be-
yond question.
The poem is a portion of what is known as the wis-
dom-literature of the ancient Hebrews. It is an attempt
on the part of the author to answer the question, Why
does God 'permit calamity and suffering to come upon
the righteous? Especially it is an effort to refute the
prevailing notion of the time that disasters are sent upon
men as punishments for their sins, so that it can be known
whether a man is good or bad by the outward prosperity
v or adversity that attends him. Against this idea the
whole nature of the writer protests, and in the form of a
108 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
story he constructs an elaborate argument to refute it.
The story is of a pious man named Job, supposed to live
in patriarchal times, and in the land of Uz. For a long
time he is prosperous in the highest degree : he has sons
and daughters, flocks and herds in great numbers, wealth
and honors. Suddenly great misfortunes befall him ; he
loses his possessions, he loses all his children ; to crown
his miseries, he is stricken with a terrible disease. Three
friends come to condole with him; in accordance with
the popular belief, they urge him to contrition, for it must
be on account of his great sins that all these calamities
have been sent upon him. But Job stoutly maintains
that he is not a great sinner, and never has been ; that he
has always walked in integrity and justice, and if he can
only see God he will plead his cause before him face
to face, and prove his innocence. Notwithstanding his
sufferings, he does not lose his confidence in God. An
explanation of suffering suggested by one of the charac-
ters of the book is that it is sent to make men better.
When Job and his friends are done speaking, Jahveh is
represented as appearing upon the scene and answering
them all, in one of the sublimest passages in literature ;
not deigning to explain, but in the most magnificent
imagery affirming his eternal power and wisdom, which
puny man may not presume to comprehend, but to which
it is his duty and highest wisdom reverently to bow.
The poem ends by representing Job as regaining his
prosperity and happiness.
As an answer to the profound question with which it
sets out, the book can be pronounced only partially suc-
cessful But as to its literary merits, and .especially as
to the splendor of many of its individual passages, it can
hardly be overpraised. It lacks, however, in unity, and
HEBREW POETRY, IOO,
scholars are almost unanimous in the judgment that it
contains matter which is from a later hand than that of
the original writer. The speech of Elihu (chaps, xxxii.-
xxxvii.) falls under this head, as possibly also does the
prose ending (xlii. 7-17), the discourse on Wisdom in
chapter xxviii., and several other less important passages.
There has been much conjecture as to the authorship
of the book In past ages, before the birth of criti-
cal Bible scholarship, it was common to look upon the
poem as a narrative of literal history, and then its com-
position was often assigned to the age of Moses, and even
to Moses himself. But all this has passed by. All that
can be said is that its authorship is unknown, and will
probably always remain so. So, too, we are in doubt as
to the place of abode of the author. Some critics have
said in Northern Palestine, some in Southern, some in
the extreme Southeastern, some in Arabia. The latest
and most competent judgment inclines toward Southern
Palestine. The same judgment also inclines strongly
toward a comparatively late date for the poem. Says
Prof. A. B. Davidson : " Only late, when the [Jewish]
state began to receive fatal blows from without, and
when through revolution and civil discord at home great
and unmerited sufferings befell the best citizens in the
state, would such problems [as those which form the bur-
den of the Book of Job] arise with an urgency that de-
manded some solution. . . . Job probably has behind
it some public calamity which forced the question of evil
on men's minds with an urgency that could not be re-
sisted. Such a calamity, wide and national, could be
nothing less than the dismemberment or subjugation of
the state. . . . Somewhere in the troubled period be-
tween the early part of the seventh and the early part
HO ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
of the fifth century the poem may have been writtea
Ewald and many distinguished writers on the book support
the earlier date, while on the part of living scholars there
is rather a growing feeling that the book is later than some
of the prophecies of Jeremiah." This would carry it into
the period of the Captivity. Kuenen thinks the calamity
referred to was the defeat and death of Josiah (609 B.C.),
half a generation before the Captivity. Much weighty
critical judgment inclines to the later and heavier calam-
ity of the fall of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah
(586 B.C.). Indeed, there are not wanting critics of high
rank who bring the authorship of the book down a hun-
dred years this side of the Captivity, to the period of
Ezra. Professor Toy, our highest American authority
on Old Testament criticism, is among these. 1
The Book of Psalms. Perhaps of no book in the
Bible is it easier to understand the origin and signifi-
cance, than of the Psalter, if we but bear in mind that
it is the Psalter, the hymn-book of the Jewish Church.
We know how hymn-books come into existence in our
day. Biblical scholarship shows with ever increasing
clearness that the Book of Psalms which we find in our
Old Testament came into existence in essentially the
same way. It grew as the needs of the Hebrew people
1 For a condensed statement of reasons for placing the date as late as the
Captivity, see Driver's " Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa-
ment." Among the best works on the Book of Job as a whole are T. K.
Cheyne's "Job and Solomon " ; A. B. Davidson's Book of Job, with notes,
in Cambridge Bible ; also his article on " Job " in the Encyclopaedia Bri-
tannica ; Ewald's " Book of Job " (translation published by Williams & Nor-
gate, London) ; Driver's and S. Davidson's Old Testament Introductions ;
article on " Job " in Froude's " Short Studies," vol. i. ; Momerie's " Modem
Christianity, and other Sermons " (a large part devoted to an analysis of Job);
Genung's " Epic of the Inner Life."
HEBRE W POETR F. Ill
grew ; it grew as the hymnology of the people developed,
enlarged, became richer. We call It one book, and so it
is. Yet it is made up of five smaller books. That is to
say, five distinct collections of psalms are traceable in it.
Book I. (or Collection I.) includes Psalms L to xli, and
ends with the doxology :
" Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
From everlasting and to everlasting.
Amen, and Amen."
Book II. includes Psalms xlii. to IxxiL, and ends with
the doxology :
" Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,
Who only doeth wondrous things :
And blessed be his glorious name forever ;
And let the whole earth be filled with his glory.
Amen, and Amen. 1 '
Book III. begins with Psalm IxxiiL and ends with
Psalm Ixxxix., concluding with the doxology :
" Blessed be the Lord for evermore.
Amen, and Amen."
Book IV. includes Psalms xc. to cvi., and ends with
the doxology :
" Blessed be the Lord, the God ot Israel,
From everlasting even to everlasting.
And let all the people say, Amen.
Praise ye the Lord."
Book V. includes Psalms cviL to cL (the end) and con-
cludes with a doxologicai psalm :
" Praise ye the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary:
Praise him in the firmament of his power," etc.
Says Prof. Robertson Smith : " The doxologies, with
the exception of that in Book IV., plainly form no part
112 ORIGIN AN1> GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
of the psalms to which they are attached, but mark the
end of each book> after the pious fashion, not uncommon in
Eastern literature, to close the composition or transcrip-
tion of a volume with a brief prayer or words of praise." l
These five books or collections of psalms were formed
at different times, probably most if not all of them for
use in the second temple. Finally all the collections
were gathered into one, thus forming the Book of Psalms
as we have it. This could not have been much if any
earlier than the year 150 B.C.
What is to be said as to the question of authorship ?
If we turn to our common English version, we find that a
large number of the individual psalms have titles. Some
of these titles purport to give the time when and the cir-
cumstances under which the psalms were composed, and
the names of the writers. Many of the titles are such
as these: "A Psalm of David"; "A Psalm of Asaph";
<f A Psalm of Solomon " ; "A Psalm of David when
Nathan the proph'et came to him after he had sinned
with Bathsheba " ; " A Psalm of David when Doeg the
Edomite came/' etc. If these titles are reliable, we
have here considerable information as to the authors
of the various psalms and the occasion of their compo-
sition. Are they reliable? It is the almost unanimous
verdict of scholarship that they are not. They are of
a late date, probably not in a single case coming from
the original writer of a psalm. Says Professor Driver :
"They contain no authentic tradition respecting the
authorship of the psalms, or the occasions on which they
were composed." 2
1 " Old Testament in Jewish Church/' p. 184.
* *' Introduction to Literature of Old Testament, 1 ' p. 352.
HEBREW POETRY. 113
It used to be the common belief that most of the
psalms were written by David. 1 Now no scholar of any
standing holds to the Davidic authorship of more than a
few. Ewald says eleven ; Hitzig, fourteen ; Delitzsch,
forty-four. Dr. Robertson Smith is able to point out only
two that he feels sure are David's. Kuenen and Reuss
think none are from David. Professor Toy thinks the
same. Professor Cheyne doubts whether any psalms are
even pre-exilic. Professor Driver gives up the problem
after a careful presentation of the arguments pro and
con, saying : " On the whole, a Non liquet must be our
verdict : it is possible that Ewald's list of Davidic psalms
is too large, but it is not clear that none of the psalms
contained in it are of David's composition." 2
Who, then, did write these precious hymns of the
ages? We can only answer, Many devout souls of
ancient Israel, living all the way along, possibly from
David's time (Professor Toy says from Hezekiah's, 700
B.C.) down to the time of the Maccabees, a century and
a half before the Christian era.
The Book of Proverbs. This work, besides being
poetical, belongs to that class of writings (already men-
tioned) which rose to considerable importance among the
Hebrews, known as "Wisdom Books/* We are apt to
think of the moral and religious life of Israel as wholly
molded by the prophets and the priests. But this is a
mistake. As early as the times of David and Solomon
there arose, side by side with the priests and prophets, a
third class of men known as " sages," who exerted con-
siderable influence, and in the later centuries, after the
1 The titles ascribe seventy-three to him.
* " Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," p. 358.
8
114 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
return from the Captivity, a very profound influence, upon
the thought of the people. From this class of men came
three of the books of the Old Testament ; namely, Job,
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and also two valuable works
(Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, and
the Wisdom of Solomon) which may be found in the
Old Testament Apocrypha, but which never gained ad-
mission to the Hebrew canon. While the prophets were
preachers and statesmen, and while the priests were reg-
ulators and conductors of public worship, the sages were
thinkers, philosophers, men who concerned themselves
with the problems, theoretical and practical, which for-
ever thrust themselves upon man's thought. Some of
these sages were not men of very distinctly religious
thinking, but employed themselves in making shrewd
observations on men and things wise sayings, proverbs,
as illustrated in the Book of Proverbs while others dealt
with the profoundest themes of religion, as seen in the
Book of Job.
The Book of Proverbs is not the work of any single
one of these sages, but represents the labors of many.
Indeed, it may be thought of as a sort of thesaurus of
the proverb literature of Israel for many centuries.
Scholars recognize in the book at least seven distinct
divisions, for the most part marked by separate titles or
introductions. The most important of these are chapters
L 8 to ix. 1 8, which consist, not of detached proverbs,
but of connected discourses in praise of wisdom ; chapters
x. i to xxii. 16, which consist of three hundred and
seventy-four verses, each of which contains a single prov-
erb or maxim in two antithetical lines (as " A wise son
maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness
of his mother ") ; and chapters xxv. to xxix., made up of
HEBRE W FOE TRY. 1 1 5
detached and simple proverbs, perhaps the oldest in the
book.
As to the claim made in the first verse of the first
chapter, that these proverbs are from Solomon, a word
should be said. A conservative scholar shall speak it.
Says Prof. A. B. Davidson : " A number of them (the
proverbs) may well be by Solomon, and a greater number
may belong to his age; but, though the stream of wisdom
began to flow in his day, its beginnings were then com-
paratively small ; as the centuries advanced it gathered
volume. In the book which now exists we find gathered
together the most precious fruits of the wisdom in Israel
during many hundred years, and undoubtedly the later
centuries were richer, or at all events fuller, in their con-
tributions than the earlier." * Doubtless it was the same
impulse in the Hebrew people which led them to ascribe
their proverbs generally to Solomon as that which caused
them to think of David as their chief psalmist/
What shall we say about dates ? Delitzsch thinks the
oldest collection (chaps, x. I to xxii. 16) was made about
the year 900 B.C. Ewald puts it a hundred years
later. Other collections were made at widely different
dates, probably some as late as post-exilic times, or
even the Greek period. The final gathering together of
all into the Book of Proverbs, as we now have it, can
hardly have been effected earlier than the second century
B.C.
The Book of Ecclesiastes. This book is poor poetry,
1 Ency. Brit., art. " Proverbs."
8 It seems to have been the same impulse among other peoples that
caused the Greeks to ascribe most of their sententious maxims to Pythagoras,
the Arabs theirs to Lokman and a few others, and the Scandinavian nations
theirs to Odin.
Il6 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
as it is also poor religion* It belongs to the " Wisdom
Books," but its philosophy is that of pessimism. The
writer has sought in all directions for happiness, but it is
not to be found. He has tried riches, fame, knowledge,
the gratification of all his desires, but it is vanity there
is nothing anywhere but vanity and vexation of spirit.
Everything passes away ; man himself passes away ; there
is no hereafter for man. The only redeeming feature
about the book is that the jaded and despairing author
would have men avoid excess, and keep the fear of God
before their eyes. It is one of the unaccountable things
about the Bible, that men could ever have received this
book into the canon as the inspired word of God, and at
the same time have kept out a book like the apocry-
phal " Wisdom of Solomon," with its broad and catholic
spirit and its high views of God and life and immor-
tality.
The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes is unknown.
The claim that the work is from Solomon has nothing
whatever to support it. It was probably written in the
second or third century before Christ. 1
The Song of Solomon. If the Higher Criticism had
done nothing else than to give us, as it has done, a
reasonable interpretation of this poem, our obligation to
it would be great. No other book of the Bible has been
so misunderstood, so travestied. On the one hand it has
been declared to be an erotic poem, breathing throughout
an impure and lustful spirit, and hence unfit to be read.
On the other hand, we have been told that it is a divine
1 Ewald, Delitzsch, and Cheyne fix its date at not earlier than the last years
of the Persian rule, which ended 332 B.C, ; and N6ldeke, Hitzig, Kuenen,
Driver, and Toy at about 200 B.C.
HEBREW POETRY.
allegory, setting forth the love of Christ for his Church,
and that every sensuous image in it is a symbol of some-
thing spiritual. Thus, turning to the English Bible that
lies on my table, I find such headings of chapters as these :
" The Church's love unto Christ " ; " Christ's love to the
Church " ; " The Church glorieth in Christ *' ; " A descrip-
tion of Christ by his graces " ; " Christ setteth forth the
graces of the Church " ; " Christ directeth her to the
shepherd's tents, and showeth his love to her." The
Higher Criticism tells us that both these interpretations
are without justification. The poem is not impure in
spirit or intent, though its imagery transcends the limits
of propriety according to our canons of literary expres-
sion. On the other hand, there is not a shadow of justi-
fication for turning it into an allegory ; it has no more
reference to Christ and his Church than to Adam and
Eve, or to Antony and Cleopatra. The book is not
religious, and one looks in vain for any justification for
its having a place in a sacred book. But it is not im-
moral. It is a little love-drama a simple story, in dra-
matic verse, of an ardent but pure love, that refuses all
blandishments, and remains true to its object. 1 As a
1 Professor Driver thus outlines the plot of the drama : "A beautiful
Shulamite maiden, surprised by the king and his train on a royal progress
in the north, has been brought to the palace at Jerusalem, where the king
hopes to win her affections, and to induce her to exchange her rustic home
for the honor and enjoyments which a court life could afford. She has,
however, already pledged her heart to a young shepherd, and the admiration
and blandishments which the king lavishes upon her are powerless to make
her forget him. In the end she is permitted to return to her mountain
home, where, at the close of the poem, the lovers appear hand in hand, and
express, in warm and glowing words, the superiority of genuine, spon-
taneous affection over that which may be purchased by wealth or rank *
(Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 410-411).
Il8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
poem it is exquisite. Its imagery of nature, and its
pictures of country life, are among the most beautiful in
literature. The old view that it was written by Solomon
is now almost wholly abandoned. Its date is probably
300-200 B.C.
It would be quite unfair to the poetry of the Bible if we
failed to point out how much it has suffered at the hands
of translators, editors, and printers in not being given to
English readers in proper literary form. The " Authorized
Version " and most other English Bibles of the past have
printed all the poetry of whatever kind all the poetical
books, and all the poetical fragments in other books as
prose. Could greater literary injustice be done to any
writings? Think of printing Tennyson's "Idyls of the
King," Milton's " Samson," Burns' love songs, and Wesley's
hymns, as prose ! That would not be worse than printing
" Job," " Canticles" and the " Psalms " as prose. Happily,
at last the Bible is beginning to receive treatment that is a
little more civilized. In the " Revised Version " all poetry
is printed under the literary forms of poetry. The same is
true of all other recent revisions and translations of any
value. The result will be a great new appreciation of the
beauty and worth of the poetry of the Bible in all its forms.
CHAPTER X.
THE GOSPELS : THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. I.
HAVING completed our study of the books of the Old
Testament, we pass now to those of the New.
What is the New Testament ? A little examination
shows us that it easily and naturally divides into two
pretty nearly equal parts. The first is made up of the
four Gospels ; the second of the books (twenty-three in
number) that follow the Gospels. In other words, the
first part gives us the literature of the life and teachings
of Jesus ; and the second, the literature of the disciples
and followers of Jesus, and of the planting of the Chris-
tian Church.
In the present chapter we shall deal with the first three
Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke asking about them
the same questions that have been asked about the Old
Testament books : Who wrote them ? When were they
written ? What are they ?
It is a very common impression in men's minds, that
the Gospels were the earliest composed of the New
Testament books. Both the fact that they stand first in
order in our canon, and also the fact that they treat of
Jesus, who was the beginning of the New Testament
movement, would seem to favot that impression. Never-
theless, the impression is untrue. The earliest written
books of the New Testament, as we shall see in another
chapter, were the Epistles of St. Paul.
The First Gospel Story Oral, not Written. For
I2O ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
nearly or quite a generation, knowledge of the life and
teachings of Jesus was spread abroad solely by the lips
of men first of disciples, and then of those who had
received the story from disciples before it was com-
mitted to the written page. Thus our Gospel records
rest upon a background of tradition. At the outset of
every study of the New Testament it is of the greatest
importance that this be clearly understood.
Jesus himself wrote nothing. Nor is it strange that so
long as he was living no one else should have thought
to write an account of his words and deeds. When his
followers after his death began to go about telling his
story, and preaching his gospel, everything was fresh in
their memory ; hence, what need was there yet for writ-
ten records? Moreover, they expected him soon to
return ; and when they had him, what would they care
for writings about him ?
How and why Written Records began to be
made. But time passed on, and Jesus did not return ;
moreover, the recollections, at first so distinct and vivid,
tended to grow dim as the years multiplied ; and, most
serious of all, one and another of those who had known
him best began to be taken away by death. Then arose
a feeling of need for written memorials.
But who should write them ? Jesus had commissioned
no one to do it. Who should assume the responsibil-
ity ? And if they wrote, in what form should it be ?
Meanwhile, oral traditions, more or less definite, were
springing up, based upon the preaching of the different
apostles ; and, side by side with these, as was inevitable,
fictitious stories, exaggerations, legends, seeking for in-
corporation with the traditions.
Such was the general condition of things out of which,
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. 121
possibly twenty-five or thirty years after the death of
Jesus, there began, in some way and by some hands, the
work of writing out memorials of the great life and the
great teachings.
We must not suppose, however, that those first me-
morials were our present Gospels. The biblical scholar-
ship of our century has settled it beyond a question that
at least three of our Gospels namely, the synoptics:
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are compilations, which
reached their present form only after several redac-
tions. 1
Have we any trace of those earlier memorials or docu-
ments which lie back of these Gospels ? Yes ; at least a
few.
The Earliest Documents. It happens that many
works of Christian writers of the first two or three cen-
turies have been preserved to our day. Through those
early writings we get traces of a number of Gospels or
fragments of Gospels, and other documents, longer or
shorter, which were early in circulation among the
churches all of them purporting to give information
about Jesus. It will be of interest to name some of
these. Perhaps the most important are the following :
I. A collection of Sayings of the Lord, ascribed to
Matthew ; not the same as our Gospel of Matthew, but
probably later embodied in Matthew's Gospel.
1 It should be noted that the titles of our Gospels are not " The Gospel
of Matthew," "of Mark," etc., but " The Gospel according to" Matthew,
Mark, and the others. This is significant. It would seem to intimate that
the Gospels do not intend to claim for themselves the actual authorship of
these men, but only a general conformity of their contents to some docu-
ment or well-known oral tradition coming from them. See "Protestant
Commentary on the New Testament," vol. i. t p. 34.
122 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
2. A collection of rather miscellaneous Memorabilia of
Events in the Life of Jesus, said to have been taken down
from the preaching of Peter, by Mark ; evidently shorter
and less orderly than our Gospel of Mark, but probably
forming the basis of this Gospel.
3. A Gospel according to the Hebrews, which seems to
have been used extensively in the first and second cen-
turies by the Ebionites, or Jewish Christians of Palestine.
It is sometimes referred to as the Gospel of the Ebionites,
or of the Nazarenes. Extensive fragments of it have been
preserved in the writings of St. Jerome.
4. A Gospel of the Egyptians, which seems to have had
an extensive circulation in Egypt. It seems to have
been much tinctured with Philonism.
5. A Gospel of the Lord, so-called; also sometimes
designated as Marcioifs Gospel, because it was the Gospel
used by the heretic Marcion and his sect in the second
century. It seems to have had much in common with
our Gospel of Luke.
Thus we see that our present New Testament Gospels
are not the only, or even the earliest, accounts that were
written of the life and teachings of Jesus.
Nor is this all. By the discovery of these primitive
Gospel documents we are able to take what seems to be a
sure step toward an analysis of at least two of our pres-
ent Gospels into their original component elements. How
much influence the ancient Gospels of the Hebrews, the
Egyptians, and of Marcion may have had upon our syn-
optics we cannot tell possibly not much ; but that the
Sayings (or the Logia) of Matthew, and the Memorabilia
of Mark are the most important documents entering into
the formation of our present Matthew and Mark, is the
widespread and growing judgment of New Testament
THE GOSPELS; THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. 123
scholarship. Indeed, it is believed that our first two
Gospels take their names from these two documents. 1
The Composition of the Synoptic Gospels. We may,
with considerable probability, regard the three Synoptics
as made up as follows :
The First Gospel, Matthew, has the Logia, or the Col-
lection of the Sayings of Jesus made by St. Matthew, as
its basis; hence the fact that it so much surpasses the
other Gospels in the number of the sayings of the Master
which it contains. To this basis document is added, as
second in importance, a framework of biographical nar-
rative borrowed from the Mark document Later, other
elements also are added, partly from current tradition,
and very likely partly from written documents now lost.
The Second Gospel, Mark, has as its basis the Mark
document the Memorabilia of Events in the Life of
Jesus, gathered by Mark from the preaching of Peter.
But to this there are added many sayings of Jesus, taken,
seemingly, from the Matthew document, and also matter
from sources which to us are unknown.
The Third Gospel, Luke, we cannot speak of with quite
so much certainty. That it is a compilation by one who
had before him various written documents is indicated in
its opening verses. What were those documents? We
can only say that they must have included some of the
most important original sources of both Matthew and
1 The so-called 4t Gospel of Peter," a fragment of which, in Greek, hat
recently been brought to light, does not date earlier than some distance
on in the second century, and hence belongs properly with the "Apocryphal
Gospels " mentioned in a later chapter of this book. It seems to throw
some little side light, possibly, upon two or three questions connected with
the origin and dates of our canonical Gospels. As yet, however, this is un-
certain ; and, in any event, the fragment discovered is not of great import*
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Mark, else there seems to be no way of accounting for
the remarkable similarities running through all three
Gospels.
The Oldest GospeL The question is of prime im-
portance, Which of our Gospels is the oldest? Many
scholars of very high standing hold to the view, generally
entertained by the Church in the past, that the priority
must be assigned to Matthew. 1 This view, however, can
no longer claim the best support. As far back as the
1 8th century, Herder, in Germany, put forth the theory of
the priority of Mark. The great influence of Schleier-
macher, who held the opposite opinion, crowded Herder's,
for a time, out of sight, and not until it was revived and
set forth anew by Hermann Weisse, in 1838, did it attract
the general attention of New Testament scholars. Since
Weisse, however, it has been steadily gaining ground, and
to-day may be said to have decidedly the weight of
scholarship in its favor. Besides Herder and Weisse, I
may name as its advocates on the continent of Europe,
Wilke, Schenkel, Volkmar, Weizsacker, Pfleiderer, Bern-
hard Weiss, and Holtzmann. It is also supported in this
country and England by such scholars as Martineau, in
his " Seat of Authority in Religion "; Dr. E. A. Abbott,
in his able article on the Gospels in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica; Prof. Estlin Carpenter, in his " Synoptic Gos-
pels," and Dn Cone, in his " Gospel-Criticism." In com-
pany with such authorities we need not shrink from the
judgment that Mark is probably our oldest Gospel.
As to the Gospel next in age, the weight of authority
is probably in favor of Matthew, with Luke following as
1 Among 1 them, such names as F. C. Battr, Hilgenfeld, Keim, and
Davidson.
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. 12$
third ; though Pfleiderer and Carpenter and other writers
of first rank put Luke second and Matthew third. But
the question is by no means so important whether Mat-
thew or Luke is second, as the question, Is Mark first ?
Mark's Priority Significant. If Mark is 'bur oldest
Gospel, it throws great new light upon the whole de-
velopment of New Testament thought. For Mark is
unquestionably the simplest Gospel, the one that repre-
sents Jesus as the most distinctly and simply human, and
enunciates his message in the most easily understood
form. While Matthew begins with a long and impossible
genealogical table, and a whole cycle of miraculous birth-
stories; while Luke devotes the most of its first two
chapters also to birth-stories filled with supernatural mar-
vels ; and while John begins its story in heaven, by repre-
senting the Eternal Word as becoming incarnate and
descending to earth, Mark begins with the simple and
plain words, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ." * Mark also omits those stories of the reappear-
ance of Jesus after his resurrection which have most the
appearance of legend. So, too, Mark's Gospel shows a
steady growth and progress in Jesus' mental and spiritual
history. While Matthew and Luke represent the idea of
his Messiahship as clear in his mind from the beginning,
Mark gives the impression that it grows in his thought
by degrees, the first clear recognition of it being given at
Caesarea Philippi, after his ministry was far advanced.
It is this greater simplicity of Mark's Gospel, its greater
naturalness in portraying Jesus, its comparative freedom
from legendary traces, from marks of elaboration, and
1 The words "the Son of God" are doubtful, being omitted by some
Ancient manuscripts.
126 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
from expressions and allusions of various kinds betraying
long intervals of time and later dates, that is causing the
leading scholars of the world more and more to accept
the view that this Gospel is the oldest.
Dates of the Synoptic Gospels. What dates must we
assign to Matthew, Mark, and Luke ?
There has undoubtedly been a tendency, within the
past twenty years, away from the extremely late dates
advocated by the early Tubingen critics. One of the
hopeful signs of the times in biblical criticism is the
manifest tendency of extreme parties to draw nearer to
each other, and to find common ground. There is still
much difference of view as to the dates of the Gospels,
but the best authorities now pretty generally agree at
least in this: that one of the synoptics, and that one
either Mark or Matthew, must have been written as early
as about the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in
the year 70 A.D, ; and that the other two synoptics were
probably produced within the next twenty or thirty years.
So, then, if we accept Mark as written first, and Matthew
second, we shall have the date of Mark falling between 70
and 75 ; that of Matthew somewhere between 75 and 90 ;
and Luke between 85 and 100.
It must be understood, however, that these dates refer
to the final compilation of each Gospel, the time when it
was put in essentially the form in which it comes down
to us, and not the time of origin of any of the subordi-
nate documents. Both the Logia> or Collection of Say-
ings of Matthew, and the Mark document, undoubtedly
go back a few years further, perhaps to the year 60, pos-
sibly to 55 that is, to within twenty-five or thirty years
of the death of Christ
BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THEIR NATURE
AND LITERARY FORM.
I. Biography (4 Books),
Matthew.
Mark.
Luke.
John (Philosophical Biography).
II. History (i Book).
Acts.
III. R^isOes or Letters (20 Books).
Romans.
i and t Corinthians.
Galatians.
Ephesians.
Philippians.
Colossians.
i and z Thessalonians.
i and 2 Timothy.
Titus.
Philemon.
Hebrews.
James,
i and 3 Peter,
i, 2, and 3 John.
Jade.
IV. Apocalypse (i Book).
Revelation.
IN THEIR (APPROXIMATELY) TRUE CHRON-
OLOGICAL ORDEK, ACCORDING TO THB
HIGHER CRITICISM.
(See Table of "Dates of Biblical Litera-
ture" between pp. 58 and 59.)
x Thessalonians.
z Thessalonians (if Paul's).
Galatians.
i and 2 Corinthians.
Romans.
Philemon.
Philippians.
Gospel of Mark.
Hebrews.
Gospel of Matthew,
i Peter.
James.
Gospel of Lnke.
Acts.
Colossians (if not Paul's),
Ephesians (if not Paul's).
1 and 2 Timothy.
Titus.
x, 2, and 3 John.
Gospel of John.
Jude.
Revelation (final form).
2 Peter.
CHAPTER XL
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. TL
The Fourth Gospel. I pass now from the synoptics
to the fourth Gospel, known as the Gospel according to
John.
We have seen that the synoptics are compilations.
The f9urth Gospel probably is not, or, at least, it is clear
that the main part of it was written by a single author.
Who was that author ?
We reach here one of the most hotly disputed ques-
tions in New Testament criticism. The common view
held by the Christian Church in the past has been that
the writer of this Gospel was John, the disciple of Jesus.
To-day, scholars who are committed to orthodoxy or
evangelicalism generally hold the same view, though all
such by no means do ; there are some very eminent ex-
ceptions. Some liberal and independent scholars, too
hold it. I think, however, that I shall be within the
truth if I say that, of the most eminent and trustworthy
authorities in New Testament criticism within recent
time, fully one half reject the authorship of John. 1 And
it is plain that this view is the steadily growing one.*
1 As a few among the number, I may name F, C. Baur, J. J. Tayler,
Keim, Holtzmann, Scholten, Pfleiderer, Schiirer, Davidson, Martineau,
Carpenter, E. A. Abbott, Cone, B. W. Bacon,
5 A mediating view, however, should be noticed. In addition to, and in
a sense mediating between, the two positions named above (i, that which
the full apostolic authorship of the fourth Gospel, and, 2, that
128 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
When was the fourth Gospel written ?
The answer which must be given to this question de-
pends upon what we decide as to the authorship. If we
go with those who say that John wrote the Gospel,
then we must hold that it was probably written a little
before the year 100 when John was a very old man
a thing which seems very difficult to believe, since its
characteristics are anything but those betraying senility.
If we go with those who say it could not have come from
John, then we shall find ourselves obliged to push its
date on into the second century, perhaps to the first
decade, perhaps much farther than that.
Contrasts between the Synoptics and the Fourth
Gospel. It is important to understand the very marked
and significant differences and even contrasts that exist
between the synoptics and the fourth Gospel, These
are particularly noticeable as regards the pictures they
paint for us of Jesus. Probably few persons who have
not had their attention called specifically to the subject
realize at all adequately how far apart are the Jesus of
John and the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. True,
there are differences in the representations of the synop-
tics. Each synoptic writer has his own standpoint, and
each employs his own emphasis and his own shading in
portraying Christ. Nevertheless, in the records of all
three the main events in Christ's life and the leading
which wholly denies it), there is a third, which finds favor with some
scholars of ability and candor as Wendt in Germany and Cone in America.
This view is that the fourth Gospel as it comes to us is the production not
of John but of a post-apostolic writer ; but that this writer possessed and
embodied in his Gospel a genuine Johannine writing, which bears essentially
the same relation to the completed fourth Gospel that the Logia of Mat-
thew does to the completed synoptic Gospels. There is considerable to be
said in favor of this view.
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AtfD CHARACTER. 129
elements of his character are the same. Not so when we
pass over into the fourth Gospel. Here nearly every-
thing is different. The synoptics represent Christ's pub-
lic ministry as only one year in length ; the fourth Gospel
as three years. According to the synoptics, his ministry
was carried on almost wholly in Galilee, and only once
did he visit Jerusalem, and that was near the close of his
life. According to the fourth Gospel, he visited Jerusalem
repeatedly, and a large part of his ministry was carried
on in Judea. In the synoptics his human birth is given.
In the fourth he is the pre-existent Logos or Word
co-existent with God and as such descended to earth,
and manifest in human form. In the synoptic Gospels
Jesus is a man ; he eats, sleeps, hungers, thirsts, grows
weary, is tempted, grows in knowledge, shrinks from
pain, is disappointed, prays, even loses temporarily his
vision of God, is limited in knowledge and power goes
through the world ever as a man among men. True, he
is represented as having had a miraculous birth. But
men in that age thought Plato and Alexander and
Augustus Caesar miraculously born. He is represented
as working miracles. But miracle-working was regarded
as common. He is represented as rising from the dead.
But so had Samuel and Moses and Elijah risen from the
dead, and they were only men.
But when we pass on to the fourth Gospel we are in a
wholly different atmosphere. Jesus is no longer a man-
He descends into the world from above, a mysterious
being, not quite God, but much more than man ; and he
walks through the world as a being from another sphere.
His whole manner of teaching is different. In the synop-
tic Gospels he everywhere teaches in parables, and in
brief and concise sentences. In the fourth Gospel there
o
130 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
is not a parable ; and in place of the crystal-clear short
sentences, each so brief and sharp and fresh and full of
meaning that nobody can ever forget them, he every-
where speaks in long sentences, and elaborate, mystical,
metaphysical discourses.
In short, the whole fourth Gospel shows that it was
composed with a doctrinal purpose in view. It is not a
mere narrative, written without bias, to tell simply what
Jesus did and said. It is a plea, an argument, a docu-
ment written to show that Jesus was the Incarnate Word
of God.
This great difference between the fourth Gospel and
the others is one of the strong reasons why so many
unbiased scholars find it impossible to believe that it
could have been written by an apostle, and are so gener-
ally disposed to regard it as the production of a later age,
when the simple humanity of Jesus had become exalted
into something superhuman. Indeed, one of the most
important achievements of biblical criticism is that of the
discovery of the order, approximate dates, and relations
to each other of the Gospels and other writings of the
New Testament, by means of which we are able to trace
the changing conception of Jesus from its simplest form
in Mark through the successive elaborations and exalta-
tions that it takes on, to some extent in Matthew and
Luke, but more still in the Epistles, to its climax in the
fourth Gospel. True, it has not yet reached the height
of deity; the journey of Jesus from man to God does
not end until the Council of Nicea in the year 325 ; but
by the time the fourth Gospel is written it is far ad-
vanced.
It must not, however, be understood that this view of
the origin of the fourth Gospel casts aside the Gospel as
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER* 13!
of little value. Far from that. It simply cJtanges its
value, making that value primarily ethical and spiritual
instead of historical. While it holds that the facts of
Jesus' life are so idealized in these pages as to lose much
of their reliability as history, it recognizes here a deeper
and richer appreciation of the spirit of his life and teach-
ings than perhaps in either of the synoptics, or probably,
indeed, than in any other New Testament book.
A Legendary Element in the Gospels. In the light
of the scholarship of our time, it has to be confessed that
there is a legendary element in the Gospels, just as we
have found that there are legends in various parts of the
Old Testament. Not a few of the Gospel miracle-stories
are undoubtedly legends. For example, that exception-
ally interesting group of wonder-stories which gathers
about the birth of Jesus, as similar tales have gathered
around the birth of so many other great characters of
history. Indeed, these birth-stories of our Evangelists
are almost precisely the same as those that we find
in Buddhistic literature haloing the birth of Gautama.
An interesting thing about our Gospel birth-stories
is that we are able to detect them in the very process,
as it were, of their legendary growth ; and by this means
we get proof that, instead of being a part of the real
events of the life of Jesus, they almost certainly attached
themselves to the Gospel records late, at a time which
we can approximately fix. To see this we have only to
open our Bibles. Turning to the beginning of Mark,
our earliest Gospel, we find not one of these birth-stories
of Jesus there. Passing on to the later records, Matthew
and Luke, we find them all. The inference seems inevit-
able that when Mark's Gospel was written they were not
yet in existence ; but by the time the two later Gospels
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
are compiled they have come into being and have found
general credence, as such wonder-stories easily do, and
hence the editors of these two Gospels incorporate them
into their narratives.
This well illustrates the growth of legends everywhere,
and the thing to be borne particularly in mind is that
everywhere, whether inside our Bible or outside, they go
hand in hand with miracle. Stories of miracles may not
always be legendary, but legends nearly or quite always
take the form of the miraculous. Hence, just as in read-
ing Buddhist or early Greek and Roman history, when we
find miraculous stories, we at once set them down as
legends, as historical criticism has taught us to do ; so, in
studying the Bible, New Testament or Old, when we find
accounts of miraculous events, a sound biblical criticism
teaches us always to ask the question, and with great
thoroughness and care, Are they not legendary ? It has
come to be an axiom of historical criticism that the
presence of a miraculous element in any story or record,
while it may not condemn the story or the record, at
least casts suspicion upon it. A narrative thus on its
face open to suspicion can be accepted as historic only
after the fullest investigation and upon the strongest
evidence.
We may hesitate to confess the presence of a legend-
ary element in the Gospels for fear it may impair their
credibility, and hence weaken the foundations of faith
in Christ. But such a position is unworthy of an honest
Investigator of truth. Indeed, to take it is virtually to
confess that truth may not be safe. Says Dr. Frederick
H. Hedge :
" Every historic religion that has won for itself a place
in the world's history has evolved from a core of fact a
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. 133
nimbus of legendary matter which criticism cannot
always separate, and which the popular faith does not
seek to separate. . . . Christianity, like every other
religion, has its mythology, a mythology so intertwined
with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided
and welded with its first beginnings, that history and
myth are not always distinguishable the one from the
other. . . . Yet the mythical interpretation of cer-
tain portions of the Gospels has no appreciable bearing
on the character of Christ. The impartial reader of the
record must see that the evangelists did not invent that
character; they did not make the Jesus of their story;
on the contrary, it was he that made them. It is a true
saying that only a Christ could invent a Christ." 3
The Reliability of the Gospel Records. The verdict
of competent scholarship is unequivocal and unanimous
that these Gospel records are human, and, as human, con-
tain human imperfections. They display no omniscience
on the part of their writers or their compilers ; how, then,
can they be free from errors ? And yet, while scholar-
ship denies their inerrancy, just as emphatically it affirms
their worth, their honesty, their general credibility. Many
lines of evidence converge to establish these. Gibbon and
Bancroft may be in error, not infrequently are in error, as
to individual statements of fact in their histories ; but as
to the general story of the fall of Rome and that of the
American Revolution, as set forth by them, there is no
room for question. So, in these Gospel records, there may
be and are errors as to fact legendary accretions, human
1 " Ways of the Spirit," pp. 319, 338. The whole chapter (" The Mythical
Element in the New Testament ") is full of thought, and will well repay
perusal by any who care to understand how independent is moral and spirit-
ual truth of its setting or form of expression.
134 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
imperfections of one kind and another but as to the great
central matters with which they have to do, the evidence
is strong and convincing that they are trustworthy. Re-
garding the miraculous voice speaking at the Jordan
baptism, or the words of the inscription upon the cross, the
records may err ; but they can hardly err about the exist-
ence of Jesus, or about the central facts of his life and
death. There may be ground for question whether this
or that particular utterance purporting to have come
from his lips is actually his, or only the creation of a
reporter's memory, dimmed by the lapse of a quarter or
third of a century since the Master spoke. But if histor-
ical and literary criticism are to be trusted at all, there
can be no reasonable question about the few great, simple,
central truths, which, according to all the records, formed
the burden of his teaching, and which he not only burned
into the very souls of all who heard him, but lifted as
eternal stars into the sky of the world's hope and faith
such truths as God's Fatherhood, man's brotherhood, the
Golden Rule as a practical guide for life, the duty of love
and forgiveness to enemies, the duty of sympathy and
pity for the poor, the suffering and the sinning, the cer-
tainty of retribution, the identity of the kingdom of God
with love and goodness, the divineness and immortality of
the human soul. 1 That these were his great central teach-
1 Persons desiring to investigate farther the important subjects considered
in this chapter, are referred to Keim's "Jesus of Nazara," vol. i.; David-
son's " Introduction to the New Testament" (Gospels) ; " Protestant Com-
mentary on the New Testament " (Introduction to the Gospels) ; Strauss'
*' New Life of Jesus," vol. i., pp. 47-*94 (Gospel Sources) ; Carpenter's
"Synoptic Gospels"; Barrow's "Regni Evangelium " ; Cone's " Gospel-
Criticism and Historical Christianity " ; Westcott's " Introduction to the
Study of the Gospels" ; Kenan's "Gospels"; Bemhard Weiss' " Manual of
Introduction to the New Testament"; Baring-Gould's '* Lost and Hostile
THE GOSPELS: THEIR ORIGIN AMD CHARACTER. 135
ings we are as certain as that he lived ; and of that no
competent scholar to-day has any doubt.
Gospels" ; Martineau's '* Seat of Authority " (chapters on the Gospels) ;
Crooker's "Jesus Brought Back," and " Different New Testament Views
of Jesus " ; E. A. Abbott's article " Gospels " in Encyclopaedia Brirannica ;
Schfirer on the fourth Gospel (Contemporary Review, September, 1891) ;
Ezra Abbot and J. F. Clarke on same ; Chadwick's " Bible of To-day,*
lee. viii.; Pfleiderer*s "Development of Theology in Germany," bk. iiL f
chap. i.
CHAPTER XII.
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS.
IN advancing from the Gospels to the other New
Testament books, we pass from a study of Jesus and
his teaching to a study of the teaching and work of his
followers. We have seen the foundations of the Chris-
tian edifice laid ; it is in order to inquire next how the
earliest builders proceeded to erect the walls.
We come first to a historical book called the Acts of
the Apostles, which takes up the Christian story where
the Gospels lay it down, and carries it on for about forty
years, until congregations of believers in Jesus and his
doctrine have been established not only all up and down
Palestine, but in many of the more important cities of
the surrounding countries. In addition to the old names
of the men and women associated with Jesus in the
Gospel narratives, we come now upon the names of new
workers, some of them very conspicuous. By far the
most important of these is Saul of Tarsus, called Paul.
Indeed, next to Jesus himself, Paul is the most promi-
nent and influential character connected with the estab-
lishment of Christianity and the production of the New
Testament, We shall understand better both the Book
of Acts, and the group of Epistles from his pen which
follow the Acts, if we pause here a moment to get a
connected view of his life.
The Apostle Paul. Paul seems never to have known
or even seen Jesus hi the flesh, though he could not have
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS. 137
been very much younger than Jesus, and was educated in
Jerusalem. He was of an ardent and impetuous nature,
and not long after the crucifixion (perhaps within two
years) began to be conspicuous as a persecutor of the
little companies of believers in Christ that were gather-
ing not only in Jerusalem but in many other places. The
same zeal which made him afterward such an efficient
missionary of Christianity now caused him to carry his
persecutions of the hated sect of the " Nazarenes " beyond
Jerusalem to the cities and villages of Judea, and finally
even beyond the bounds of Palestine. It was while he
was on his way to the city of Damascus, a little way out-
side of Palestine on the northeast, bent on extirpating
the new heresy there, that the remarkable event occurred
which changed his whole life. It is evident that he had
been greatly impressed by the steadfastness and piety
of the men and women whom he had been dragging to
torture and death ; nor could he get rid of the profound
impression which the life and teachings and heroic mar-
tyrdom of Jesus had made upon him, as he had learned
more and more about them. As the great city came into
view where his work of cruelty and death was so soon to
begin again, he was overpowered by what is described as
a vision a light brighter than the sun and a voice
speaking out of it, saying, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou me ? I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou perse-
cutest." The nature of this vision need not be discussed
here. It is enough that as the result of it Paul's whole
career was changed. . From the most zealous enemy he
became the most ardent advocate and propagandist of
the Christian faith.
He first became conspicuous among the Christians at
Antioch, the rich and populous capital of Syria, where a
138 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
mixed Christian community of Jews and Gentiles had
gradually been formed. Here he preached, and from this
city as his headquarters he went out on preaching tours
through various parts of Syria and Cilicia.
Division in the Church. It was here, at Antioch, that
arose the first great problem which agitated and divided
the early Christian Church. Was Christianity for the Jews
only, or was it for the Gentiles too ? And if it was for
the Gentiles, must they come into it through the door of
Judaism that is, through circumcision and obedience to
the Jewish ceremonial and moral law? These questions
became urgent first at Antioch, but soon in many other
places also, for not only there but elsewhere others be-
sides Jews were accepting the new faith ; and how were
they to be treated ? Paul from the beginning took the
broadest ground. He said the death of Jesus on the
cross inaugurated a new covenant between God and
man, taking the place of and doing away with the old
covenant established on Mount Sinai. In this new cove-
nant the Law was annulled ; faith was the only condition
of salvation, and the distinction between Jew and Gen-
tile was removed. To the Jewish Christians generally
this seemed very extreme and radical ground, and it was
not strange that a division arose. They saw in Jesus sim-
ply the Jewish Messiah ; but Paul proclaimed him to be
the Saviour of the whole world. They said to converts
that in order to obtain a place in the new Messianic
kingdom they must submit to circumcision, and obey
the command of the Jewish law regarding meats, the
Sabbath, etc. But Paul said no, the only requisite for
admission was faith in Christ, and hearts pure before
God. It was not long before the parent church in Jeru-
salem began to perceive the danger that was arising, and
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS. 139
sent messengers to Antioch with the demand that the
Gentile Christians should submit to the requirements of
the Law, raising the watchword " Circumcision/' The
contention grew serious. With the hope of finding some
way of settling the difficulty, Paul, taking with him Bar-
nabas and Titus as companions, set out for Jerusalem.
There he laid the whole matter before Peter, John, and
James, who were at the head of the Jerusalem church.
A settlement for the time being was reached, though
the Jerusalem apostles were not convinced. They would
devote themselves to missionary work among the Jews :
Paul might work among the Gentiles, and they would
not disturb him even if he did not insist upon the circum-
cision of his converts. On the basis of this understand-
ing they gave to Paul the hand of fellowship, and he
returned to Antioch, happy over the results of his
journey.
But the difficulty was not realty settled. Paul's view
of the new religious movement, and the view held by
James, Peter, and John, were far apart. All held in com-
mon that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, who would soon
return to establish his kingdom. But the Jerusalem
apostles saw in the new faith little more than an ad-
vanced Judaism (Judaism with its Messianic hope ful-
filled), while to Paul it was Judaism transformed into a
universal religion. This radical difference of view was
destined to continue and to produce serious divisions
among the churches for two or three generations. And
to Paul it was destined to bring opposition and enmity,
trouble and sorrow, all his life. To understand this is
to have a key to much that otherwise is inexplicable
both in the Book of Acts and in the Epistles of Paul
indeed, in all the last half of the New Testament, All
140 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
his life Paul devoted himself with tireless zeal to the
work of preaching Christ, and establishing and caring
for churches in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Macedonia, in
Greece, in Rome. The history of this activity is found
partly in the Acts and partly in his Epistles.
The Acts of the Apostles. This book claims, in its
opening verse, the same authorship as the Gospel of
Luke. This claim is supported by the style of the writer,
and by the general view which he takes of the Christian
movement, as well as by ancient ecclesiastical tradition.
The death of Jesus occurs in the year 3OA.D. The
Book of Acts takes up the Gospel narrative here, and
continues it on to the year 64, near the time of the death
of St. Paul at Rome. This is probably the reason why
the collectors of the New Testament writings placed the
book between the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul,
instead of far over toward the end of the canon, where it
would properly belong if put in the order of its composi-
tion.
The work naturally divides into two parts. The first,
extending from the beginning to chapter ix., verse 30,
gives an account of the spread of the Gospel and the
establishment of the Church in Palestine. The second
part, which is considerably longer than the first, extend-
ing from chapter ix. 30 to the end of the book, traces the
spread of the Christian movement through Western Asia,
then to Europe, and finally to the capital city of the
Roman Empire. In the first part, that dealing with the
extension of the Gospel in Palestine, the Apostle Peter
is the leading character ; in the second part, that which
has to do with the carrying of Christianity to the Gen-
tiles, St. Paul overshadows all others.
It is noticeable that, as a history, the book is far from
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS. 14*
complete. While some things of little or no importance
are given in great detail, other things of great importance
are sketched in the barest outline, or omitted altogether.
Can we in any way find out the motive which governs
the author in his inclusions and exclusions? In other
words, does the book have a purpose other than that of
simple narration ? And, if so, can we discover what it is ?
These questions have been the subject of a great deal
of controversy. The Tubingen school of critics, in Ger-
many, have written with great power in support of the
idea that the book was composed with the distinct pur-
pose of putting out of sight as fully as possible the
serious division which so long existed among the early
Christians, and bringing the Jewish Christian and Gentile
Christian parties together into one harmonious Catholic
Church. Thus, events showing the estrangement are
generally left unnoticed, and those looking in the direc-
tion of fraternity and co-operation are emphasized. It is
urged that this is carried so far sometimes as quite to
distort the real history. Thus Paul, who was the leader
of the Gentile Christian party, and, as such, was opposed
and bitterly persecuted all through his career by the
Jewish Christians, is in the Acts represented as working
in closest amity with Peter, the leader of the opposite
party. The two apostles are represented as of equal
rank, and as being held in equal esteem by all. Indeed,
from some of the narratives we should almost or quite
think that Paul and Peter had changed places and
characters. Peter, and not Paul, is represented as the
one who takes the first step in the conversion of the
Gentiles. Into Peter's mouth, not Paul's, is put that
remarkable utterance, as broad as anything in the New
Testament: "God is no respecter of persons; but in
I4 2 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteous-
ness is accepted with him." It is Peter, and not Paul,
that goes up from Joppa to Jerusalem to plead with the
apostles and brethren there in favor of throwing open all
the privileges of Christianity to the Gentiles on equal
terms with the Jews. On the other hand, Paul is repre-
sented as accepting a portion of the Jewish Law as bind-
ing upon the Gentile Christian communities ; he himself-
keeps the Mosaic law strictly; he circumcises the son of
a Greek because his mother was a Jewess; he considers
himself as bound to keep the Jewish festivals ; he takes
upon himself the Jewish vow of a Nazarite ; he represents
himself to the Jews as a believer in the Scriptures, in the
old sense, and as a Pharisee ; and he is represented always,
even to the very last, as preaching first to the Jews in
whatsoever place he was.
Now all this, say Baur and Zeller, is a very different
picture from that which Paul draws for us in his Epistles
so different, indeed, that the two cannot be reconciled.
What answer shall we make ? Scholarship to-day is not
fully sustaining the Tubingen critics; it is convicting
them of going too far, of exaggerating, of making diffi-
culties that do not exist. At the same time it has to be
confessed that much in their position stands firm against
every effort to overthrow it. The more thorough the
investigation, the more clear it becomes that the Book of
Acts is a " tendency-writing." It has another aim besides
that of simple narration. It has a case to make out. Its
pictures of the relations existing between Peter and Paul,
or between the Jewish Christians on the one side and
the Gentile Christians on the other, are not always the
same as those found in Paul's Epistles, nor even always
reconcilable therewith. The book has to be read with
PAUL AND THE BOOK OF ACTS. 143
these facts in view. This done, it takes its place as a
work of great historic as well as religious value. But if
the bias be unrecognized, the book becomes at many
points misleading.
It is of some importance to notice that this book, as
well as the earlier work from the same hand (Luke's Gos-
pel), is at least to some extent a compilation. It is
believed that there are traces of several documents to be
found in it. One is very clearly observable. At several
points in the second half of the book, as we read along,
we suddenly find our narrator, without any warning,
changing from the use of the third person to that of the
first person plural, " we." It is generally agreed by critics
that the portions in which this " we " is used are a docu-
ment, in the nature of a diary of travel, which the com-
piler has inserted into his narrative. 1
The date of the Book of Acts is not easy to ascer-
tain. Scholars differ much concerning it. Some whose
judgment is of much worth (as Meyer) name the year 80
A.D. Others would carry it on to 130, or later. But
these are extreme positions. The probability seems
strong that it was produced between 85 and IOO A.D.
Perhaps this is as much as can be said with safety. The
place of composition was very likely Rome.
1 Chaps, rvi, 10-17 > *x. 4-*S \ **L I ~ l8 5 xxvii. i-xxviii. 16.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 1
NEXT to the Gospels, the most important group of
writings in the New Testament consists of the Epistles
of St. Paul Just how many we ought to count as belong-
ing to this group cannot be told with certainty. Four-
teen Epistles are popularly connected with Paul's name,
but that this number is wrong all scholars agree. Nobody
disputes that four are his ; namely, Romans, First and
Second Corinthians, and Galatians ; and that to these,
three others First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Phile-
monought to be added, comparatively few scholars
doubt. Regarding Colossians, Ephesians, and Second
Thessalonians, critics are about evenly divided. That
First and Second Timothy and Titus are from a later
hand is well-nigh certain, while Hebrews no scholar to-
day thinks of mentioning in connection with Paul.
Paul's Epistles are particularly valuable for three
reasons. First, they are our earliest New Testament
writings, being all of them older than our oldest Gospel.
Secondly, we know their author (with the limitations
just named), while the authors of most of the New Tes-
tament books we do not know. Thirdly, their writer,
1 The headings of this chapter and the next are not strictly correct. Some
of the Epistles considered here are almost certainly non-Pauline. The
Pauline and the non-Pauline Epistles cannot be grouped separately, with
exactness, without departing from the order followed in the New Testa-
ment.
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 145
though not one of the Twelve, may properly be called
the greatest of the apostles.
Paul was the great missionary of the early Church.
Indeed, he wrote his Epistles as a part of his mission-
ary activity. Wishing to instruct or admonish or encour-
age or comfort a church of believers whom he had
gathered together in some distant place, whom he loved
but could not at present visit, he wrote them a letter
warm with the message that was in his heart. Thus, as
the years went on, the letters, written here and there, to
meet the urgent needs that arose, multiplied. Not all
that he wrote are preserved. But enough remain to give
us a very clear insight into the life, the religious views,
the motives and aims, as well as the joys and sorrows,
the conflicts and triumphs, the qualities some of them
peccable enough, but some in the highest degree splendid
and noble of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, the
man whose genius, profound spiritual insight, and daunt-
less courage prevented Christianity from narrowing and
hardening into a mere Jewish sect, and started it on its
great career as a world-religion.
Of the seven undoubtedly genuine Epistles of Paul
the true chronological order is probably as follows: First
Thessalonians, Galatians, First and Second Corinthians,
Romans, Philemon, Philippians. I shall consider them,
however, in the order in which they stand in the New
Testament.
The Epistle to the Romans, taken all in all, is the
most important of Paul's writings. Perhaps this is the
reason why it has been placed first in our canon. It was
written in Corinth, probably in the year 58 A.D. Paul has
not at this time been in Rome, but is about setting his
face in that direction. Accordingly he writes this letter
146 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
and sends it in advance to prepare the way for his coming.
Already a considerable Christian community has been
established in that great centre of the western world,
and it is natural that he should crave a friendly reception
among them. How may he insure it, since he has
reason to believe that many of the Jewish Christians
there are strictly attached to the Law, and are hostile to
that broader view which he preaches? He resolves upon
the frank and bold course of writing them a long letter,
stating fully his position and the reasons why he holds it,
and explaining and justifying his missionary work among
the Gentiles. This is what he does in this Epistle. We
have here not only the fullest statement of Paul's doc-
trinal views which he anywhere gives us, but it is written
out after his thought has reached a late and ripe stage.
The Epistle falls naturally into several divisions. But
these need not be pointed out. It is enough to notice
that there is some doubt among scholars about the
genuineness of the fifteenth chapter, and a good deal
about that of the sixteenth.
First and Second Corinthians. Corinth was a rich
and corrupt city. Paul labored a year and a half there,
and established an important church. But its members
did not wholly escape the temptations that surrounded
them. Various immoralities and serious religious dis-
sensions arose among them, which grieved the apostle
greatly. As a result, he writes two long and earnest
letters, exhorting them to put away from among them-
selves every kind of sin, and to heal their divisions, fol-
lowing neither him nor any other disciple but only Jesus.
Several chapters, particularly the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fifteenth in the first Epistle, on spiritual gifts, charity,
and the Resurrection, rank in ethical and spiritual
THE EPISTLE'S OF PAUL. 147
quality with the very best of Paul's writings. The sub
scriptions to the Epistles say that they were written
at Philippi. In the case of the second this may be
correct, though there are some doubts about it. But in
the case of the first it is almost certainly a mistake,
the place of authorship being probably Ephesus. As to
time, perhaps all that can be said is that the Epistles
were written about the year 57 or 58 A.D. They seem to
have been preceded by another Epistle to the Corinthians
which has not been preserved. The genuineness of the
two we have is undoubted.
The Epistle to the Galatians was probably written by
Paul from Ephesus, about the year 56 A.D. This was per-
haps two years and a half after his establishment of the
Christian communities among the Galatians, to whom
he writes. The occasion of the Epistle is the lapse of
these communities into a narrow, Judaistic form of
Christianity, caused by the coming among them of ad-
vocates of the narrower view. The Epistle is a stanch
defence of Paul's broader and more spiritual faith. Per-
haps no other New Testament writing reveals to us so
clearly the difference between Paul's conception of Chris-
tianity and that of the Jewish Christian party who fol-
lowed the leadership of James, Peter, and John and the
church at Jerusalem.
The Epistle to the Ephesians is a battle-field of New
Testament scholarship. The genuineness of this Epistle
began a to be doubted only in recent times, but the doubt
has extended to such scholars as Schleiermacher, De
Wette, F. C. Baur, Schwegler, Ewald, Hilgenfeld, David-
son, Holtzmann, and many others authorities whose
judgment cannot be ignored. Professor Holtzmann gives
the following reasons for believing the Epistle not to be
148 ORIGIN AND GROWTH: OF THE BIBLE.
Paul's: (i) The Epistle addresses itself to a purely Gen-
tile Christian public. Paul would not have made such a
mistake, for he had preached much and spent much time
in Ephesus, and knew that there was an important Jew-
ish Christian element there. (2) The Epistle betrays no
acquaintance between the writer and the readers, whereas
Paul's acquaintance among the Ephesian Christians was
intimate. "' (3) The writer sends no greetings ; but if Paul
had been writing to friends and brethren he would have
sent many, as he does in all his Epistles. (4) The Epistle
is entirely devoted to the promotion of the unity of the
Christian Church, on the ground of the unity of God's
plan of salvation, which embraces the whole human
world, and which is contrasted with the previous division
of humanity into Jews and Gentiles. But this is not the
language of one who is engaged in the very heat of a
battle to gain a place for the Gentiles in the Church.
(5) The writer of this Epistle refers to " the apostles " as
a third party to which he does not belong something
which Paul would not have done. (6) The language and
style of this Epistle are not those of Paul. The Epistle
is smooth and redundant ; Paul is terse. Above all, it
employs many peculiar terms, words, and figures of
speech which are foreign to Paul as we judge of him by
his well-known writings. (7) Some of its leading ideas
are not in harmony with those of Paul. For example,
the doctrine of the residence of evil spirits in the air,
and the fundamental idea of the Epistle itself that
Christianity is a mystery concealed in God from eternity.
(8) The Epistle reveals all through it the atmosphere of
Gnostic thought, in the frequent use of such words and
expressions as "all wisdom and prudence," "making
known," " revealing," " hearing," " learning," " knowl-
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL.
edge/' "mystery," "fullness," "aeons," "generations,"
" lords of creation " expressions which the Gnostic lit-
erature of the second century is full of. This Gnostic
thought obtrudes itself into the Christology of the Epis-
tle, carrying it far beyond the Pauline limits. In the
place of the " second Adam," who exists for the sake
of the human world, it puts a being existing before
the world, who is at the same time the central point
and end of the whole created world, and in whom, there-
fore, the earthly and the heavenly spheres alike first
reach their articulate yet harmonious unity. This is not
Paul, but the Gnosticism of the century after his death.
Such is a brief summary of Holtzmann's reasons for
attributing this Epistle to a later hand than Paul's. Cer-
tainly the Christology which we find here is very far
removed from that of the synoptic Gospels, as it is also
far removed from that of the early and certainly genu-
ine Epistles of Paul. We are here approaching the
Logos doctrine of the fourth Gospel. Christ is yet dis-
tinctly subordinate to God, but he is lifted far above
humanity.
Perhaps all we can do is to leave the Epistle in the list
of those whose genuineness is simply doubtful. If we
cannot be sure (as perhaps we cannot) that Paul did not
write it, we certainly cannot be sure that he did write it.
If he wrote it, it was doubtless while he was at Rome,
near or during the year 63 A.D. But if he wrote it he
was much changed from the Paul of earlier years. If it
came from some other hand than Paul's its date is prob-
ably late 100 A.D. or after. Davidson thinks it was writ-
ten between 130 and 140 A.D. But he does not for this
reason esteem the Epistle lightly. He says: "It was
evidently the work of a thoughtful Christian, far-seeing;
ISO ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
comprehensive in the range of his ideas, possessed of a
high inspiration. Compared with the Epistle to the Colos-
sians, it is certainly inferior ; viewed by itself it claims a
leading place among the canonical Epistles. The school
of Paul produced none equal to himself, but it gave rise
to men of large sympathies some choice spirits on
whom the mantle of the departed may be said to have
fallen. . . . The writer's object [in this Epistle] was
to hold up to the view of the Ephesians a universal
Church of which they were a part a Church constituting
the fullness of Christ, and one with him." l
The Epistle to the Philippians is probably the latest
of Paul's writings. It appears to have been written while
he was in Rome as a prisoner, A.D. 62 or 63. Its genuine-
ness has been questioned, principally on the ground that
some of its passages seem to have a Gnostic flavor. Still,
the weight of scholarship is undoubtedly in favor of its
Pauline authorship. It is the shortest Epistle addressed
to any church, except the doubtful Second Thessalonians.
As to matter, it is partly doctrinal and partly practical-
but the doctrinal and the practical portions are not kept
separate.
The Epistle to the Colossians is of doubtful author-
ship. If it is Paul's, it was probably written at Rome,
in the year 62 A.D. The principal reasons for doubting
Paul's connection with it are three : (i) The similarity
which exists between this Epistle and that to the Ephe-
sians, causing many scholars to believe that one is de-
rived from the other ; (2) the fact that it contains senti-
ments which savor of heresies (as Gnosticism and Mon-
tanism) which did not arise until after Paul's death ; (3)
1 "Introduction to the New Testament," vol. ii. t p. 225, 2d ed.
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 15 1
peculiarities of style and use of unusual words not found
in Paul's undoubted writings. 1
If the Epistle is not from Paul it is probably late.
Davidson thinks it originated in Asia Minor, about 120
A.D. A conservative date is 100 A.D.
It may be divided into two parts, the first (chapters i.
and iL) chiefly doctrinal, and the second (chapters iii.
and iv.) practical.
First and Second Thessalonians. Of the first of
these Epistles the genuineness is clear. It is the earliest
production that we have from the hand of Paul; and
that means that it is the oldest written document of
Christianity. It was composed, probably, during the
year 53 or 54 A.D., and most likely at Corinth, not at
Athens as the subscription in our common version says.
Its contents are not particularly remarkable: the first
part is- a defence against the apostle's opponents; the
second is affectionately personal; the third and last is
hortatory and didactic.
The genuineness of the second Epistle is very widely
doubted. Its style is distinctly different from that of the
first; its contents seem in part to imitate and in part
to contradict those of the genuine Epistle. If from Paul
it was written about 54 A.D. ; if not from Paul its date
may be the year 70 A.D.
First and Second Timothy, and Titus. These are
commonly known as the Pastoral Epistles, because they
consist mainly of instructions for pastoral work. Though
popularly associated with Paul's name, much very careful
scholarship is agreed in denying Paul's authorship, and
1 The reasons given on a preceding page for doubting the Pauline author*
ship of the Epistle to the Ephesians apply in almost every particular to the
Epistle to the Colossians.
152 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
in assigning them to the early part of the second century,
say to the decade zoo-no A.D., or later. There are good
reasons for believing that the Epistle known as Second
Timothy is really the oldest, and that the one known as
First Timothy is the latest, while that to Titus falls be-
tween the other two; though the difference between the
ages of the three is not great. Probably all were written
by the same person. That called Second Timothy is
believed by Weiss, Hausrath, Pfleiderer, Ewald, Davidson,
and others to contain brief genuine fragments from Paul.
The reasons for holding that these Epistles are, in the
main, post-Pauline are too numerous, intricate, and tech-
nical for statement here. Suffice it to say that they are
believed to be valid by a large number of very eminent
New Testament scholars, including not only those just
named, but such others as De Wette, Meyer, Hilgenfeld,
Holtzmann, Lucke, Neander, and Bleek.
As to the authorship and aim of the three Epistles,
Davidson says: "We rest in the conclusion that the
author was a Pauline Christian who lived at Rome in the
first part of the second century, and wished to confirm
the incipient Catholic Church in the old paths, by exhor-
tations to piety, and warnings against error. His view
was polemical only in part. To the growing dangers of
the time he opposed the orthodox doctrine of the Church,
and a well-ordered ecclesiastical organization. . . . Like
many others of his day, the author chose the name of an
apostle to give currency to his sentiments. In all this
there was no dishonesty. The device was a harmless
one/*
The Epistle to Philemon was probably written by
Paul, though a few critics of candor and standing think
THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 153
to the contrary. Its date we may pretty confidently set
down as the year 62 A,D., and its place of composition as
Rome. As it is the shortest, so it is the least important
of the extant Epistles of the great apostle. It has often
been called the slaveholder's Epistle. Whether or not
we ought to condemn Paul's conduct in sending back a
slave to his master under the very peculiar circumstances,
certain it is that the Epistle has been largely used in
justification of the terrible sin of slavery. 1
1 Perhaps our study of Paul and the writings ascribed to him ought not to
conclude without mention of a very radical and revolutionary theory which
is attracting attention in some quarters. One of its leading exponents is
Prof. W. C. Van Manen of the University of Leyden, Holland. It has
been given some currency in this country and England by Professor Van
Manen's advocacy of it in his articles on ** Paul," " Philemon," " Philippians "
and " Romans " in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, The theory, stated in a few
words, is, that none of the Epistles of the New Testament usually ascribed
to Paul are really from Paul, but were written by others in his name some-
time during the second century, in other words, that these Epistles instead
of being the earliest writings of the New Testament produced before any of
the Gospels, are actually late productions, originating half a century or more
after the Gospels, and portraying a distinctly later stage in the development
of Christian thought. A number of reasons are given for this view, of which
the strongest are perhaps these two: (i) that in the Book of Acts the
principal theme of Paul's preaching is represented as being *' the things con-
cerning Jesus," whereas in these Epistles hardly an event in the life of
Jesus except his death, and scarcely a word of his teaching, is ever
mentioned; and (2) that the theological questions which form the main
subject-matter of the Epistles were all questions which did not arise for
consideration and discussion until the second century. For a more full
presentation of Van Manen's view, see the above mentioned articles in the
Encyclopaedia Biblica; also chapter xiiL in Kewton Mann's "The Evolution
of a Great Literature,'* 1905.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NON-PAULINE EPISTLES AND THE REVELATION.
The Epistle to the Hebrews. The later Greek and
Latin manuscripts ascribe this Epistle to St. Paul, as
does our Authorized Version ; but the older manuscripts
do not. The Western Church of the early centuries did
not accept it as Pauline, and it had difficulty in getting
into the New Testament Canon. Says Luther : " That the
Epistle to the Hebrews is neither from the hand of St.
Paul, nor of any other apostle, is proved by ii. 3. ... It
is evident that it is the work of an excellent and learned
man, who was a disciple of the apostles and had learnt
much of them, and who also had experience in the faith,
and skill in the Scriptures.*' Scholarship since Luther
has confirmed his judgment and that of the early Church.
Davidson says : " The Pauline authorship has been given
up by every scholar except Hofmann." Who the author
was can only be conjectured. Some have thought Bar-
nabas, some Luke, some Silas, some Clement of Rome,
some Apollos. The last name is the suggestion of
Luther, -..and the tendency among scholars now is to
accept it as the most probable of any.
As to the date of the Epistle, there has been a wide
agreement that it must be fixed as anterior to the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem and the Temple. But this view is losing
ground. Perhaps the consensus of scholarship now favors
the decade 75-85 A.D. Harnack says 81-96.
NON-PA ULINE EPISTLES AND THE RE VELA TION. 1 5 5
To whom was the Epistle written ? Many have
thought, to the Hebrews of Palestine ; but to this view
there are insuperable objections. Hilgenfeld says, to
the Hebrews of Alexandria, in Egypt, where there was
a large Jewish population, among whom Christianity
was introduced very early. Many considerations favor
this view, among them the fact that Apollos was an
Alexandrian Jew. Perhaps this view has best sup-
port.
The Epistle is a powerful one, hardly falling below
any production of Paul in strength of logic, earnestness,
or eloquence ; but its leading characteristics of style and
thought are far removed from those of Paul. Up to the
nineteenth verse of the tenth chapter, the Epistle is
doctrinal ; the rest is hortatory. The object of the
writer is to conciliate the Jewish Christians and lead
them to a larger view of the new faith. To do this he
argues that the Old Covenant was but a shadow of the
New; Judaism, with its law and its temple, was but a
prototype of Christianity; the Jewish priesthood was
only a type and prophecy of Christ, the eternal high
priest. The Christology of the Epistle is elaborate and
advanced.
The Epistle of James. If this book was written by
any one of the three James's mentioned in the New
Testament, it was probably the one spoken of as u the
Lord's brother." 1 Did it come from him ? There seem
to be strong reasons for answering yes. And yet it must
be confessed that there seem also to be some reasons
for answering no. On the whole, the authorship of the
Epistle may be set down as uncertain. It was not until
1 GaL L 19. See Josephus's " Antiquities," bk. xx. chap. ix.
1 56 ORIGIN* AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
the last half of the fourth century that it was given a
place in the Canon; and there has hardly been an age
since, that has been free from deniers of its right to be
there. Luther wrote of it : " It is an Epistle of straw in
comparison with them (the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and
John), for it has nothing evangelical about it." " Methinks
it must have been some good, pious man that took some
sayings of the disciples of the apostles and put them down
on paper." It is certain that its teaching departs widely
from Paul's; whether it contradicts it or only supple-
ments it, is a question which different New Testament
students answer in different ways. Davidson says : " It
breathes a healthy spirit, and presents views of life that
are eminently Christian. Its practical tone is a preserva-
tive against the Pauline element in excess. ... It
contradicts the apostle of the Gentiles in relation to the
doctrine of justification. But it is a valuable letter, not-
withstanding, because dogmatic does not constitute the
essence of Christianity, which has an ethical side as im-
portant as the speculative." Perhaps the most remark-
able thing about it is the fact that it says so little about
Christ, not even mentioning his death or resurrection.
Yet its teachings remind one forcibly of those of Jesus,
being rich in that ethical quality which we find every-
where in his sayings and parables.
As a literary production the Epistle is of a high
order. It language is vivid, choice, rhetorical, often po-
etical.
If this letter was not written by James, the brother of
Jesus, its date is probably 85-95 A- 1 *- (Harnack surprises us
by saying 120-140). If it is from Jesus\ brother, it can
hardly have been written later than 50 A.D.
The First and Second Epistles of Peter. Many New
NON-PAULINE EPISTLES AND THE REVELATION. 157
Testament scholars of eminence believe the first of these
Epistles to be the production of the Apostle Peter, in
accordance with ancient tradition, and with the claim
of the Epistle itself. This view is now much doubted,
however; indeed the weight of present scholarship is
probably against it. The Epistle purports to have been
written in Babylon ; but this name is doubtless used here,
as in the Book of Revelation, as a mystical designation
for Rome. Everything indicates that Rome was the real
place of its composition. If Peter was the writer, then its
date must be fixed at about the year 64 A.D., during the
Neronian persecution. But there is a growing feeling
that this date cannot be reconciled with the contents of
the 'Epistle itself. In the first place, the Epistle seems
at many points to betray, on the part of its author, a
familiarity with, if not a dependence upon, the Pauline
Epistles, the Epistle of James, that to the Hebrews,
and the Book of Revelation. This would necessitate for
it a date subsequent to the composition of these works.
Still more decisive is the fact that the Epistle assumes a
universal persecution of the Christians throughout the
Roman Empire, if not throughout the world a condition
of things which carries us on far beyond the persecution
instigated by Nero (which was only local, and confined to
Rome), to the reign of Trajan. Scholars who adopt this
view fix the date of the Epistle at about the year 113 A.D.
Says Hilgenfeld: "We must conclude that the Epistle
was written by a Roman Christian, in the time of Trajan,
in the name of the Apostle Peter, whose name was so
celebrated in Rome, and that it was intended to strengthen
all Christendom, but especially the most oppressed com-
munities of Asia." He also points out, as do other
writers, how few of the peculiar views and characteristics
158 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
of Peter appear in the Epistle. Harnack places its date
between 81 and 96 A.D.
Passing to the Second Epistle of Peter we find still
fewer evidences of genuineness. There was much doubt
concerning it in the ancient Church. Distinguished men
like Origen and Eusebius did not believe the letter was
from Peter. There is also strong internal evidence against
it. If we turn to the third chapter (verses 15 and 16), we
find it speaking of the Epistles of Paul as scriptures on
a par with "the other scriptures" (iii. 15, 16). This
passage alone makes it clear that the Epistle was written
long after Peter's death, for not until post-apostolic times
did Paul's writings come to be regarded as scriptures.
Moreover, the Epistle strongly condemns certain false
doctrines, which, as we examine them, we discover to
be the free-thinking Gnosticism of the second century.
These are a few of the many indications of the late date
of this Epistle. There is a very wide agreement among
the best scholars that we have here the latest New Testa
ment writing. Its date cannot be earlier than 150 A.D. ;
Harnack thinks it 160. The place of composition was
probably Rome.
Says Davidson : " The leading ideas of both Petrine
Epistles are Pauline. . . . Paulinism and Petrinism
meet. Faith and works together are the keynote, with-
out one-sided prominence of either. The spirit of both
Epistles is eclectic, mediating, catholic."
The First, Second, and Third Epistles of John. The
first of these Epistles is in every way superior to the
other two. It has all the characteristics of the fourth
Gospel, and was almost certainly written by the same
author. The date that we must assign to it (which can-
not be far removed from that of the Gospel) depends
NON-PA ULINE EPISTLES AND THE RE VELA TION. 1 59
upon whether we accept or reject the theory that it was
written by the Apostle John. If we accept that theory,
we must date our Epistle about 95 or 98 A.D.; or, if,
with the growing tendency of scholarship, we reject it,
we must carry the production of the Epistle forward to
100 or no A.D., or later still. Most of the arguments
that bear upon the authorship or date of the one book
hold good when applied to the other. The place of
writing was probably Asia Minor. For purposes of
spiritual edification, the Epistle, as well as the Gospel,
stands at the very head of the New Testament litera*
ture.
Passing to the Second and Third Epistles, we make
a perceptible descent. It is a question whether these
writings are from the same hand as the First. They seem
quite as much like compilations from the First, or feeble
imitations of it, as like original compositions. The ancient
Church was undecided as to whether they ought to have
a place in the Canon, perhaps because their contents did
not seem of sufficient importance, and perhaps because
they had the appearance of being merely private letters.
They were probably written in Asia Minor, and not long
after the First Epistle.
The Epistle of Jude. This book is one of the least
important in the Bible. We cannot be quite certain
which of the two Judes, or Judases, mentioned in the
New Testament is here referred to. He is called the
brother of James. But of which James ? The probabili*
ties are that it was the James who was a brother of Jesus,
which would make this Jude Jesus' brother. There are
strong reasons, however, for believing that the book was
not actually written by Jude (by either Jude) or by any
one of their generation, but by an unknown writer as late
1 60 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
as 100 or even 130 (Harnack), who, in accordance with a
wide-spread practice of the time, sent out this production
under a better known name than his own, in order to give
it greater authority. The place of composition is un-
known. It may have been Palestine. The right of the
Epistle to a place in the Canon has been much questioned ;
it was admitted in the fourth century among other dis-
puted works.
The Book of Revelation. This book is often called,
from its name in Greek, the Apocalypse, which means a
revelation, or an uncovering. The title given it in our
common English version is, " The Revelation of St. John
the Divine ; " but the words " the Divine " are not found
in any old manuscript. The early Church generally re-
garded the book as the production of John, the disciple
and companion of Christ. A few, however, doubted, and
there have been many important doubters since. Erasmus,
the great scholar of the Reformation, was one. Luther
thought the book " neither apostolic nor prophetic," and
declared that he " could find no reason for believing that
it was set forth by the Holy Spirit/' * Zwingli pro-
nounced it "not a biblical book," that is, not properly
belonging in the Canon. Many eminent modern scholars
have taken the same ground. Upon one point scholars
have come to be essentially agreed; namely, that if
the Apostle John wrote the fourth Gospel, he did not
write the Revelation: both cannot be from the same
author*
It has been generally maintained that the date of the
Revelation can be easily and accurately fixed. From
chap* xi., verses 1-14, we learn that the Temple was still
1 Preface to the Revelation, 1522.
tfON-PAULINE EPISTLES AND THE REVELATION. l6l
standing at the time when the author wrote ; hence he
must have written as early as 70 A.D., which was the year
in which that edifice was destroyed. Still further, in chap,
xvii., verse 10, we read : " And there are seven kings : five
are fallen, and one &, and the other is not yet come;*'
which is taken to mean that when the writer lived, five
emperors of Rome had fallen, the sixth was reigning, and
the other had not yet come on the stage. Now the sixth
emperor of Rome, it is affirmed, was Galba, who reigned
only seven months, from June, 68 A.D., to January, 69.
Hence the date of the book must fall within that short
space of time.
All this seems very clear and conclusive, and the date
68 or 69 A.D. is the one that is generally adopted. And
yet, when we look into matters closely, we find some very
serious difficulties standing in the way of this date, if not
of any single date. Indeed, with increasing study of the
book, the evidence grows that it is a compilation, or at
least that it underwent several revisions, the last one far
on in the second century.
The theory which now seems likely to supersede all
others is one given to the world in 1886 by Professor
Harnack and Eberhard Vischer of Germany, which claims
that the work is a Jewish apocalypse with Christian inter-
polations, set in a Christian frame. It is believed that no
other theory removes so many difficulties as this, or makes
the interpretation of the book so simple and intelligible.
It accounts for the conflicting Judaic and Christian ele-
ments in the book, which hitherto have been so puzzling ;
as it does also for the fact that the different parts give so
plain evidence of different dates. Says Dr. Martineau :
" The Judaic groundwork owes part of its text to the
zealot period of the first Jewish war, A.D. 66-70, and
ii
162 ORIGIN AtfD GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
part to a time about eight years later. The Christianized
recension shows the hand of two editors one, in Domi-
tian's time, responsible for all the twenty-nine passages
speaking about "the Lamb;" the other, belonging to
Hadrian's reign, answerable for the letters to the churches,
as well as for the introduction and conclusion of the
whole work It cannot, therefore, have been issued before
136 A.D., and is altogether post-apostolic."
Certain it is, the Book of Revelation is only one of a
great number of apocalypses that were produced during
the two centuries before and the two after Christ. One
Jewish apocalypse, in many respects similar to this,
we have in the Old Testament ; namely, the Book of
Daniel, written about 165 B.C. Others knocked for ad-
mission, some to the Old Testament and some to the
New, but none were allowed to enter except these.
It is probably not too strong to say that nothing in the
Bible, not even the imprecatory Psalms, or the cruelties
of Joshua or the Judges, is further from the teachings of
Jesus than some things found in this strange book. The
portrait of the unpitying, destroying, vengeance-taking
Christ drawn here, far better suits a Nero or a Satan.
Writes Martineau : " How strange that we should ever
have thought it possible for a personal attendant on the
ministry of Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce
Messianic conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory
garment, the blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his em-
blems, he leads the war-march, and treads the wine-press
of the wrath of God till the deluge of blood rises to
the horses' bits, with the speculative Christology of the
second century, without a memory of his life, a feature
of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back
at the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the
NON-PA ULINE EPISTLES ANI> THE REVELA TION. 163
road to Bethany, on which his image must be forever
1 " Seat of Authority in Religion,** p. 227. For further information
regarding the New Testament books considered in this chapter and the pie*
ceding, see Davidson's, Bleek's, and Bernhard Weiss* '* New Testament
Introductions "; Introductions to the various books, in the Protestant Com-
mentary ; articles in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " on Paul and the
different New Testament books ; Martineau's " Seat of Authority in Reli-
gion," pp. 217-285 ; Pfleiderer's "Paulinism," and his Hibbert ** Lectures
(1885) on the Influence of Paul"; Renan 5 s"The Apostles" and "SL
Paul"; "Bible for Learners," vol. iii.; Chadwick's "Bible of To-day,"
lees. vi. and vii. ; Matthew Arnold's '* St. Paul and Protestantism " ; Bacon's
"Introduction to the New Testament," 1900; "A Biblical Introduction:
The New Testament," by W. F. Adeney, 1899; articles on the various
N. T. books in Hastings' " Dictionary of the Bible " and the " Encyclopaedia
Biblica"; "Die Chronologic der Altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius;
Van Adolph Harnack. Erster Band, die Chronologic der Litteratur bis
Irenaeus." Leipzig, 1897.
CHAPTER XV.
EXCLUDED LITERATURE.
WE have seen how the various books of the Bible came
to be written. We must now inquire how and when they
were first thought of as writings of supernatural wisdom,
and as such were gathered together to form sacred books
first the Old Testament, and then the New.
It is natural to ask, Why were just these writings and
no others included in our Canon? Were not others pro-
duced by the Jewish people during the thousand years of
the Bible's growth? And if so, why do we have none of
them in our sacred volume ?
Old Testament Lost Books, We find, on examina-
,tion, that no fewer than sixteen books are wanting from
the Old Testament which seemingly ought to be there ;
at least which are referred to in various places in the
Bible as if they were equally authoritative with books
which are included in the Canon. So far as we know,
all of these sixteen books, with one exception, are lost.
Their names are as follows:
1. The Book of the Wars of the Lord (referred to in
Num. xxL 14)*
2. The Book of Jasher (Josh. x. 13, and 2 Sam. L 18).
3. The Book of the Manner of the Kingdom, written
by Samuel (i Sam. x. 25). ^
4. The Books of Nathan and Gad concerning King
David (i Chron. xxix. 29).
EXCLUDED LITERATURE. 165
5. The Book of the Acts of Solomon (i Kings xL 41).
6. The Book of Enoch 1 (referred to In Jude 14, 15).
7. The Books of Nathan, Ahijah, and Iddo concerning
King Solomon (2 Chron. ix. 29).
8. Solomon's Songs, Parables, and Treatises on Natural
History (i Kings iv. 32, sey.).
g. The Book of Shemaiah concerning King Rehoboam
(2 Chron. xii. 15).
10. The Book of Jehu concerning Jehoshaphat (2
Chron. xx. 34).
11. The Book of Isaiah concerning King Uzziah (2
Chron. xxvi. 22).
12. The Words of the Seers to King Manasseh (2
Chron. xxxiii. 18, 19).
13. The Book of Lamentations over King Josiah (2
Chron. xxxv. 25).
14. The Volume of Jeremiah burned by Jehudi (Jer*
xxxvi. 2, 6, 23).
15. The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (mentioned
repeatedly in Kings).
16. The Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (mentioned
repeatedly in Kings).
Why were these books allowed to perish ? Why were
they left out from the Old Testament? If scripture
writers themselves referred to them as of equal authority
with their own writings, how can a line be drawn between
them and genuine scripture ? Indeed, what is it that
constitutes genuine scripture ?
But these sixteen books are not all that we get traces of.
Extant Books* A second list of eighteen writings,
1 This Book of Enoch is extant entire in an Ethiopic version, and in part
in a Greek version.
1 66 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
now extant, generally known as the Old Testament
" pseudepigraphal " books, must also be noticed. I give
their names (the list is a growing one), together with the
language in which each is preserved :
1. The Testament of Solomon (Greek).
2. The History of Asenath, Joseph's wife (Latin).
3. The Apocalypse of Baruch (Syriac).
4. The Book of Elias the Prophet. 1
5. The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Sclavonic). 2
6. The Third Book of Esdras (Greek and Latin).
7. The Fourth Book of Esdras (Latin, Arabic, and
Ethiopic).
8. The Ascension of Isaiah (Ethiopic).
9. The Book Jubilees, " Little Genesis," (Ethiopic).
10. The Testament of Job (Greek).
n and 12. The Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees
(Greek).
13. The Fifth Book of Maccabees (Arabic and Syriac).
14. The Assumption of Moses. 8
15. The Preaching of Noah to the Antediluvians,
according to the Sibylline Oracles. 4
1 6. The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (Greek).
17. The Psalter of Solomon (Greek).
, 1 8. The Testament of Adam (Greek, Syriac, and Latin).
According to our standards to-day, the value of these
books is not great Some of them, however, we know
exerted a good deal of influence upon early Christian
1 See Fabricius, Codex Pseudepigr. Veteris Testament!, I. 1070.
* First made known to Western Europe in 1896 through a translation by
W. K Merrill, edited with Notes and Introduction by R. H. Charles.
Though in some respects similar to the Book of Enoch mentioned on the
preceding page, it is not the same work.
* Sec Fabricius, Cod. PsewUpigr. V. 71, 1. 825. * /, L 230.
EXCLUDED LITERATURE. l6j
thought, and were held in high esteem even by scholars
like Origen.
The Old Testament Apocrypha. Of much higher
value is a third list, of fourteen books, known as the Old
Testament Apocrypha. These are ;
1. I Esdras.
2. 2 Esdras.
3. Tobit.
4. Judith.
5. The rest of the chapters of the Book of Esther,
which are found neither in the Hebrew nor the Chaldee.
6. The Wisdom of Solomon.
7. Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of
Sirach.
8. Baruch.
9. The Song of the Three Holy Children.
10. The History of Susanna.
11. The History of the Destruction of Bel and the
Dragon.
12. The Prayer of Manasseh, King of Judah.
13. i Maccabees.
14. 2 Maccabees.
These Old Testament apocryphal books are all extant,
and are more or less familiar to the public. They are
found in the Septuagint, the translation of the Old
Testament into Greek, made a century or two before
Christ. 1 The Roman Catholic Church claims that they
are true scripture, and prints them as a part of her Bible.
Protestants, however, take the responsibility of casting
1 The early Christians used them as true scripture. Says Emil Schurer :
"The church of the first three centuries made no essential difference
between the writings of the Hebrew Canon and the so-called Apocrypha**
(Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, art " Apocrypha'*),
168 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
them out ; though now and then a Protestant Bible
(generally a large one for family or pulpit use) falls into
our hands which contains them. Whether these fourteen
apocryphal books ought to be in the Bible or not is a
question upon which scholars have never been agreed,
and upon which the Christian world to-day is about
evenly divided. That some of them are superior not
only as literature, but in respect to their moral and reli-
gious teachings, to several of the books that are now in
the Bible, is certain. For example, no unprejudiced mind
can hesitate for a moment to place the religious value of
the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon or Ecclesiasticus
above that of the canonical Esther or Ecclesiastes.
Scriptures Outside of the New Testament Canon.
Passing now from the Old Testament to the New, what
do we find? Are the books that appear in our New
Testament Canon all that were written in connection with
the origin of the Christian movement ? Or, if others were
written, how many others ? And was there any clear line
by which the two classes were separated ?
The number of New Testament apocryphal books or
fragments that we know to have existed during the early
centuries is very large. The names of not fewer than
one hundred and nine such works (forty-one extant and
sixty-eight lost) are in our possession.
The Forty-one Extant Books. A translation into
English of the whole or a part of the forty-one New
Testament apocryphal writings that are extant is often
seen printed in a volume, and circulated under the title
of the New Testament Apocrypha. A partial list of
these writings (with the languages in which they are pre-
served) is as follows:
The Protevangelium of James (Greek and Latin).
EXCLUDED LITERATURE. l6$
The Gospel of Thomas (Greek and Latin).
The Gospel of the Infancy (Arabic and Latin).
The Gospel of Nicodemus (Greek and Latin).
The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathaea (Greek)*
The Acts of Pilate (Greek and Latin).
The General Epistle of Barnabas (Greek).
The First and Second Epistles of Clement (Greek).
The Apostolic Constitutions (Greek, Ethiopic, and
Coptic).
The First and Second Books of Hermas (Greek and
Latin).
The Sixty-eight Lost Books. We have knowledge
of these lost writings through quotations from them, or
references to them, found in Christian authors of the
first four centuries. The names of a few of these, with
the writers who mention them, are as follows :
The Acts of Andrew (mentioned by Eusebius, Epi*
phanius, and Gelasius).
The Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles (Origen,
Ambrose, and Jerome).
The Gospel of Barnabas (Gelasius).
The Gospel of Basilides (Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome).
The Gospel according to the Egyptians (Origen,
Jerome, Epiphanius, and Clement of Alexandria).
The Gospel according to the Hebrews (Hegesippus,
Eusebius, Origen, Jerome, and Clement of Alexandria).
The Gospel of Matthias (Origen, Ambrose, Eusebius,
and Jerome).
The Preaching of Peter (Clement of Alexandria, Euse-
bius, Jerome, */. #/.)
The Acts of John (Eusebius, Athanasius, Augustine).
The Gospel of Peter (Eusebius, Tertullian, Origen,
Jerome).
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
The Revelation of Peter (Clement of Alexandria, Euse-
bius, Jerome, et. al.). 1
These one hundred and nine apocryphal books (lost and
extant) may be divided into two classes. One class con-
sists of works that have never been regarded as inspired
by any sect or part of the Christian Church. These were
generally written late in most cases after the second
century. The other class consists of books which were
looked upon by larger or smaller groups of churches and
religious teachers as inspired, and were employed by them
as sacred Scripture. Many of these date at least as far
back as the second century ; that is to say, nearly or quite
as early as a number of the books which are included in
our New Testament Canon. Many of them, too, were
read extensively in the churches for two or three cen-
turies, and were looked upon by elders, bishops, and emi-
nent Church fathers as inspired. In a preceding chapter
I have mentioned at least three Gospels which were thus
widely employed as scripture among the early churches ;
namely, the Gospel according to the Hebrews (called also
the Gospel of the Ebionites or of the Nazarenes), the
Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Gospel of the Lord (or
Marcion's Gospel). But not one of these has a place
to-day in our Christian Scriptures, though they probably
date earlier than most, if not all, of our present New
Testament Gospels. Other writings were held in equally
high esteem. The first Epistle of Clement was among
the number. This Epistle was read in many churches ;
it is quoted in the same manner as scriptures by Ire-
naeus, and it is found in the Codex Alexandrinus. The
1 Fragments of this work and the preceding, in Greek, have very recently
been discovered, in connection with a Greek MS. of the Book of Enoch.
EXCLUDED LITERATURE. I /I
Shepherd of Hermas was also read in the churches very
generally ; it is mentioned as inspired by Irenaeus, Clem-
ent of Alexandria, and Origen, and it is found in the
Codex Sinaiticus. Similar respect was paid to the Epis-
tles of Polycarp and Barnabas, the Apostolic Canons, the
Apostolic Constitutions; and various liturgies ascribed
to St. Peter, St. Mark, etc. (published by Fabricius in his
Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti) are considered by
such scholars as Whiston and Grabe as of equal authority
with any of the genuine apostolic compositions. 1
Now why have all these books been left out of our
New Testament? Who was authorized to 'omit them?
If the clear stamp of the Divine was upon the books
which found a place in the Canon, but not upon these, it
seems strange that so many churches and eminent Chris-
tian teachers were unable to distinguish the difference.
Is it said that these were omitted because they were not
written by apostles? Some of our New Testament
books also were not written by apostles. Is it said they
were left out because they were seen to be wanting in re-
ligious value ? This test would doubtless exclude some,
but it would hardly shut out others. In ethical and
spiritual quality the excluded Marcion's Gospel or Shep-
1 See "Whislon's " Primitive Christianity " and Grabe's " Spidlegium."
On the apocryphal and psendepigraphal literature connected with the Old
and New Testaments, see articles '* Apocrypha" and " Apocalyptic Litera-
ture" in the Encylopaedia Britannica ; "Apocrypha" in McClintock and
Strong's Cyclopaedia ; *' Apocrypha " and " Pseudepigrapha " in the Schaff-
Herzog Encylopaedia ; Bissell's " The Apocrypha of the Old Testament ; f *
Fabricius* " Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti," and "Codex
Apocryphus Novi Testamenti ; " Tischendorfs ** Acta Apostolorum Apoc-
rypha," and ** Evangelia Apocrypha ; " translations of New Testament
Apocrypha into English, by B. Harris Cowper, and by Walker, in the
*< Ante-Nicene Library.'*
ORIGIN 1 AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
herd of Hermas is certainly superior to the included
Epistle of Jude, or even the Revelation.
Here, then, is the answer that we find to our question,
Are the writings which we have bound together in our
Old and New Testaments all that were produced by the
Jewish people during the thousand years of the Bible's
growth? We find coming into existence, side by side
with the groups of books which form both of our Testa-
ments, other groups which have been left outside. Nor
does there appear any clear line of division between those
excluded and those included. If the non-canonical books
came into existence naturally, so did the canonical. If
the non-canonical books do not claim to be miraculously
inspired, the same is true of most, if not all, of the canon-
ical. If when the non-canonical books were written they
were not regarded as sacred Scripture, it is also true that
when the canonical books were written they were gener-
ally not regarded as sacred Scripture : the idea of their
sacredness grew up later, and in most cases much later.
Nor is the ethical or the religious test one that is more
than in part applicable, for the superior ethics and the
superior religion are sometimes on the side of the non-
canonical or excluded books.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS.
ALL the classes of writings named in the preceding
chapter, which came into being in connection with later
Judaism and early Christianity, and which knocked for
entrance into the Bible but were refused, are full of inter-
est and significance. All have light to throw upon the
times which produced them, upon the thoughts which were
uppermost in the minds of men during those ages, and
especially upon the causes which conspired to create the
Christian movement It would be interesting, if space per-
mitted, to take up each class in turn, and find out the
nature and character of the various books that it contains.
There is one class, however, which must not be passed by.
It is that which I nave called the "Old Testament
Apocrypha." (See p. 167.)
The word Apocrypha means " hidden things." Probably
its earliest use was in connection with religious books
which were supposed to contain hidden mysteries. Later
it was applied to books whose origin was hidden or un-
known. From this it came in time to be degraded and
given the bad meaning of spurious. This is unfortunate,
for it tends to create a prejudice against the whole body
of literature known as Apocryphal, when as a fact some of
that literature is of a high type and quite worthy the
attention of all thoughtful minds.
The Historic Gap between the Two Testaments.
Without the Old Testament Apocryphal books there would
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
be a wide historic gap or blank between the Old and New
Testaments, which we could not bridge or fill.
The old idea has been that Malachi, the prophecy which
stands last in the Old Testament, was the latest written
book of that Testament, and that its date is 397 B.C. If
this were the case, and if we possessed none of the writings
called Apocryphal, there would be an interval or gap of
four and a half centuries " silent centuries" they have
been called between the close of one Testament and the
beginning of the other. As a fact, the date which has been
ascribed to Malachi, is probably not very far wrong (scholars
now are disposed to regard the true date as about
420 B.c.) ; but we now know that Malachi was by no means
the latest Old Testament writing. Probably for more than
250 years after Malachi's day the production of Old Testa-
ment literature continued. Within these 250 years fall the
Book of Joel, the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers (in their present completed form), the Song of
Solomon, Nehemiah in part, I and 2 Chronicles, Ecclesias-
tes, Esther, Daniel, and the Books of Proverbs and Psalms
as finally compiled. Daniel almost certainly dates as late
as 165 B.C.; while the Psalter probably was not closed
earlier than 150 B.C. Thus we find that the gap of
" silent centuries " is really reduced more than one half by
the Old Testament literature itself, when we come to
understand the true time of origin of that literature. Nor
is this all As soon as the door of the Old Testament
closes, that of the Apocryphal literature opens; indeed
this opens even before the other is shut ; and through it
there comes a long succession of other writings appearing
at uncertain intervals right on down to New Testament
times. By means of knowledge gained from these, the
supposed gap or blank is entirely removed ; and it is pro-
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS.
bably quite within the truth to say that there are no
centuries of Jewish history about which we know more
than those which immediately precede the birth of
Christianity.
A Great Age. It has been supposed that this " period
between the Testaments " was one of slight historic impor-
tance, a stagnant time, when little or nothing of moment
was transpiring in the world, or at least in Palestine. But
nothing could be farther from the truth. The period was
one of the great ages of the world. Hardly any in history
has witnessed more important events. In the career of
the Jewish people it was a crisis time. As has been truly
said, during this period "the empire of the world was
changed from East to West, and the whole face of Jewish
society was revolutionized. How marvellously different
from the Persian ascendency which pervades the latest
pages of the Old Testament is the scene presented when
we open the first pages of the New Testament ! By some
means nothing less than a universal transformation has
ensued. Judea is a province of an empire of which Daniel
did not so much as dream. Palestine is studded through-
out with Greek cities bearing Greek names. The Greek
language has come into wide-spread use on every hand.
Instead of the age-long tendency of the Jews to idolatry,
monotheism has become the passionate faith of all Jewry.
There is a universal belief among them that the Messiah
will come, and the most religious part of the nation is
firmly convinced of a continuance of human life beyond
the grave. Jewish traders are settled in all the important
cities of the Roman world around the Mediterranean Sea,
and in such numbers that there are as many Jews outside
as inside the limits of the Holy Land. In every Jewish
city there is a synagogue, an institution of which the Old
1/6 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Testament is ignorant, an institution which is the centre of
the social and religious life of the people, having become
more important than the temple itself. Pharisees and
Sadducees, Essenes and Herodians move on the narrow
stage of Judaism; and of the origin of these sects we glean
no hint in the pages of the Old Testament How did all
this come to be? Is there no light to be thrown on the
screen of history, by which students may be enabled to
answer the questions which are naturally aroused by these
changes?"
The Value of the Apocryphal Writings. The truth
is that but for the Apocrypha these centuries would remain
for us almost blank ; but in these neglected books we have
pictures of the inner life of the Jews during this transitional
period. Some of these books originated under the Persian
ascendency and portray life in exile ; some of them were
produced in Palestine, and give the life and thought of
the home-country; some were written in Egypt, and show
the influence of Greek thought upon Jewish minds there.
Thus in the Apocryphal writings we hear the voice not
alone of the Judaism of Palestine but perhaps even more
still of that wider Judaism which was penetrating all the
countries round about, through the Jews of the " Disper-
sion." These Jews outside of Palestine for the most part
clung tenaciously to their own faith, kept in sympathetic
relations with the home-land, and as often as possible re-
visited it. As time went on their influence came to be
strong upon Palestinian Judaism itself; and of course that
influence was for breadth, for an ever-widening liberality
of spirit, for greater sympathy toward the religious ideas
of other peoples. To some extent the Apocryphal books
were the product of these non-Palestinian Jews, and to a
very large degree they reflect their spirit and views.
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 177
All these influences were silently preparing the way for
the rise of a movement in Palestine like that inaugurated
by Jesus and Paul, a movement, which, when it came,
would have for its object the breaking down of the walls
between Jew and Gentile, and the establishment .of a uni-
versal faith founded upon those ethical and spiritual
elements which know no bounds of nation or race.
The Close Relation of Christianity to Judaism.
Thus we discover that the Christian movement when it
arose was not a strange or unaccountable or unrelated thing.
It was simply Judaism carried forward to another stage of
its development, a stage of development induced and
necessitated by its new and broader outlook, its world
relations. Instead of being a mystery or a miracle, the
new Christianity was an effect springing from fully ade-
quate and plainly discoverable causes. Its rise was as
natural as the rise of Stoicism in Greece, or Buddhism in
India, or of the Papacy in the middle ages, or of Liberal
Christianity in our day. Jesus was as much a child of his
age as was Isaiah, or Socrates, or Augustine, or John
Wesley. The Christian movement came from God, but it
came not like lightning out of a clear sky, but through
those divine forces which had long been working among
the Jewish people (shall we not say the Greek also ?) and
which at last culminated and found a voice in Jesus. All
this the Apocryphal books help us to understand, as with-
out them would be impossible.
Such being the significance and value of this Apocry-
phal literature, we cannot wonder that the Jewish people in
Palestine prized and made much use of it; nor that the
Jews outside of Palestine virtually adopted it as a part of
their sacred scriptures, as we see by the fact that when a
century or two before Christ the Old Testament was trans-
J/8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
lated into Greek for the use of these outside Jews, the
translation (the Septtiagint) was made to include the Apo-
cryphal books. 1 Nor can we wonder that these Apocryphal
writings were widely read by the early Christian Church,
and quoted by the early Christian Theologians as if they
were of equal authority with the Old Testament; that they
continued to be virtually a part of the Christian biblical
canon down to modern times ; that in the Roman Catholic
scripture canon they still have a place; that Luther's Bible
contained a majority of them; that the leading translations
and revisions of our Protestant English Bible from Cover-
dale's down to the Authorized Version all included them ;
and that the scholars who gave us our Revised Version re-
vised these Apocryphal writings with the rest, although
they published them in a separate volume. 2
The Old Testament Apocryphal books are fourteen in
number, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. It will
be worth our while to take them up one by one and give a
brief glance at each. Let us not make the mistake, how-
ever, of supposing that we are going to find all of equal
value. As a fact they vary greatly in quality and worth.
The order in which they have been given (and in which
they usually appear) is not chronological, nor does there
1 The Septuagint, including the Apocrypha, may very truly be called the
Bible of the Jews of the Dispersion. Part of the books of the Apocrypha
were written in Hebrew and part in Greek. None of them were ever really
admitted to the Hebrew Old Testament Canon. Probably this was because
the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. closed the door of that
canon against any further entrances. Many, if not all of them were clearly
on the way to canonization, and almost certainly would have reached it at no
distant day ercept for the catastrophe to the Jewish Capital, which spread
consternation everywhere, arrested progress, and turned the eyes of every-
body toward the past.
* The Revised Old Testament Apocrypha appeared in the year 1895.
TffE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 179
seem to be any reason for it; but since it is the common
order it will be best for us to follow it
First Esdras. This book is hardly more than another
form of the Old Testament canonical books of Ezra and
Nehemiah combined into one. Those books were origi-
nally written in Hebrew. In this work we have the main
story which they tell re-told by a later writer in Greek,
with certain transpositions and inversions and legendary-
additions. The work does not add anything to the histori-
cal material which the older books give us. One short epi-
sode, however, is very interesting, if not as history, at least
as literature. It is an account of a supposed contest of wit
in the presence of King Darius of Persia. The King has
made a great feast. After the guests have departed, three
young men connected with the royal household agree each
to write a sentence naming what he believes to be the
strongest thing in the world, and place the result under
the King's pillow, to be read by him when he rises
in the morning. They carry out their agreement. In the
morning the King discovers the three pieces of writing and
commands that they shall be read before an assembly of
his courtiers summoned for the purpose. The first writing
maintains that wine is the strongest thing in the world, the
second that the King is strongest, and the third that women
are stronger than the other two, but that truth is strongest
of all Each writer states his reasons for his claim, and
they are all very apt The verdict of those who listen, is
that the third writer is victor, and that truth is stronger
than all else. It is here that we find that magnificent
sentence, quite worthy of a place beside the noblest
utterances in the Bible: "Truth abideth, and is strong
forever; she liveth and conquereth forevermore."
We are told that when the company heard this, they
ISO ORIGIN" AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
shouted and said, "Great is Truth and strong above all
things."
Second Esdras. This book is of much later date than
the first, indeed, it was probably written after the birth of
Jesus, and may be regarded as representing ideas that were
widely prevalent in Palestine during his lifetime. It be-
longs to that large class of writings known as Apocalyptic.
We have already obtained glimpses of these but they de-
mand still further attention.
During the two centuries preceding and the two following
the birth of Christ no writings were more popular among the
Jewish people than Apocalypses, and none exerted a greater
influence upon late Palestinian Judaism and upon early
Christianity. Quite a dozen are still in existence, while the
titles are known of others that have been lost (see pp. 166,
168-169)* As we have seen (p. 162), one of these Apoc-
alyptic writings found a place in the Old Testament (the
Book of Daniel), and one in the New Testament (Revela-
tion). A third appears here among the Apocrypha in the
form of this book of 2 Esdras. A fourth, a work of great
influence in its day (the Book of Enoch) is quoted in the
Epistle of Jude, but it did not succeed in obtaining admis-
sion to either Testament, or to the Old Testament Apocry-
^ , *
The general characteristics of all these Apocalyptic writ-
ings are much the same, whether the writings were pro-
duced before the Christian movement began or afterward,
by Jews who knew nothing of Christianity, or by Jews
who had become Christians. They are a kind of prophecy
in which the imagination of the writer usually finds wide
scope. They indulge much in symbolic visions of the
future. Their main theme is the final triumph of good
over evil and of the people of God over their enemies.
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. l8l
They are often fanatical and fantastical, and yet they com-
mand our respect by their sincerity and passionate earnest-
ness. To a greater or less degree they are utterances of
pain, of anxiety, of faith struggling with despair. They
are cries of an oppressed and suffering people longing and
waiting and praying for deliverance from their foes, dis-
appointed and baffled a hundred times over, yet hoping
against hope, and keeping their faith alive by painting for
themselves pictures of miraculous and wonderful ways in
which they dream their God may send them deliverance at
last. Very naturally the thought of a great Leader in the
deliverance, to be specially raised up by God for the pur-
pose, a Messiah, has a large place in these Apocalyptic
writings. It is from these writings that the Messianic idea
comes into Christianity. The Jewish Apocalypses make
no reference to Jesus ; but the Christian Apocalypses por-
tray Jesus as the Messiah ; and the deliverance which they
seek is that of the Christian Church from its enemies.
It is enough to say of this Second Book of Esdras that
it is a good representative of these Apocalypses. Though
written so late it is thoroughly Jewish, showing no sign of
being influenced by Christianity. " It is a wail of bitter
disappointment over the hard fate of Judea ; but the per-
suasion finally prevails that, however dark the present, the
L-ord cannot withhold his mercy forever, and the appear-
ance of his anointed one cannot be long delayed."
Tobit and Judith. The Old Testament contains two
books which very properly have been called romances,
namely, Ruth and Esther. Among the Old Testament
Apocrypha there are also two romances, which are quite
worthy to rank with the earlier productions. They are
Tobit and Judith.
The Book of Tobit is a story of the Captivity. It is a
182 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
charming idyl of Hebrew life in exile. It is full of simple
piety, and also full of a tender spirit of humanity. Among
the captives taken away from Palestine to Nineveh is an
honest Israelite, Tobit by name, who, as the years go by,
gets for himself a comfortable and happy home in the new
land, and accumulates a competency, a part of which he
intrusts to a Jewish banker in distant Media. By and by
misfortunes befall Tobit; he and his Hebrew brethren are
persecuted; his possessions are confiscated, and by a
sudden misfortune he loses his sight. He has no resource
left him except to send away and get the money which he
has placed in the keeping of his far-away friend. Who
shall go? It must be his son Tobias, who, however, is so
young that a traveling companion is needed for him. One
is found in another young man named Azarias. The two
set out on the long journey together. Before they reach
the end they come to the city of Ecbatana where relations
of Tobias live. So the two resolve to stop for a visit. In
the home where they are entertained is a very winsome
young lady named Sara, with whom Tobias very naturally
falls in love. The accommodating Azarias volunteers to
make the rest of the journey alone, leaving Tobias to do
his courting. When Azarias comes back bringing the
money the lovers are married ; and the happy three return
home to Nineveh. Azarias turns out to be an angel, who by
his superhuman wisdom and kindness has brought all this
good fortune. He restores sight to the happy old man,
and then disappears.
The details of the story are quaint and curious, including
impossibilities and supernaturalisms that remind one of
the Arabian Nights, and with all the rest, not a little bad
geography. But a more delightful picture of the simple,
kindly, God-fearing life of an old time Hebrew family in
the Orient it would be hard to conceive.
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 183
Very different is the story of Judith. This is not a
romance of domestic piety and love, but of intense patriot-
ism and the most heroic daring. Judith is one of the strik-
ing characters of fiction. She is a second Jael, a woman
Brutus, a Hebrew Charlotte Corday. Many are the artists
who have essayed to paint her, splendidly arrayed, com-
manding in figure, of rare beauty, holding in her hand the
head of Holofernes, the Assyrian General, whom by her
cunning she has brought under her power, and slain, to
save her city from the destruction which he was bringing
upon it. The story of her deed is powerfully told, the
reasons for it, the results that came from it, and the con-
summate skill and bravery with which she accomplished
her terrible task. There will always be difference of opin-
ion about the ethics involved in this story. But as to the
strength and literary quality of the narrative, as well as the
courage and patriotism of the heroine, there does not seem
room for difference of view.
The Rest of the Chapters of the Book of Esther.
All scholars agree that the Book of Esther is not history,
but fiction. This group of brief Apocryphal writings con-
sists of certain additions which some unknown author has
seen fit to make to the original book. Naturally, the addi-
tions are as much fiction as the book itself; nor do they
add much, if anything, to its literary value. Probably they
were written by some one who wanted to make the book
seem more religious. Esther has been much criticized by
certain writers because it does not contain anywhere the
name of God. The author of these additions (seemingly
some pious Jew) seeks to remove that defect by adding a
section in which there is plentiful use made of the divine
name. All the craft and hate and cruelty of the original
book are left, and indeed more still are added ; but since
1 84 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
references to God are often brought in, the religious char-
acter of the book is supposed to be much improved. Alas,
how much was this old Apocryphal writer like so many men
in all the ages since, who have imagined that evil can
somehow be made into good if only it be associated with a
sufficient array of pious words.
The Wisdom of Solomon. This is a great book.
Although much shorter than several of the other Apocry-
phal writings, in literary excellence and in ethical and
spiritual quality it is clearly entitled to a first place among
them.
It ought not to be associated with the name of Solomon,
for it was not written until a thousand years after Solo-
mon's time. It belongs to the " Wisdom Literature " of
Israel, and hence is to be classed, in a way, with the Old
Testament Books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs ; but it
is much more philosophical, and we may say religious,
than any of these except Job. Probably its author lived
in Alexandria, which in a measure would account for the
Greek element in its thought, and especially for the fact
that its conception of Wisdom is quite, as much Greek as
Hebrew. This conception approaches near to the " Logos
Doctrine " of the Alexandrian Philo, and to the echo or
reflection of that doctrine found in the New Testament in
the prologue to the Fourth Gospel. The following sen-
tences show how exalted is the conception of Wisdom
found in this Apocryphal book :
" She (Wisdom) is a breath of the power of God and a
clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty." " She is an
effluence from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of
the working of God, and an image of his goodness." " She
reneweth all things ; passing into holy souls she maketh
them friends of God and prophets." " She is fairer than
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 1 8$
the sun and above all the constellations of the stars ; being
compared with light she is found to be before it ; for to
the light of day succeedeth night, but against Wisdom evil
doth not prevail." These sentences illustrate at once the
high literary quality of the book and the subtlety and
depth of its religious thought
It is worthy of note that the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul is much more clearly taught in this Apocryphal
work than in any part of the Old Testament Here are
some of its strong statements : " The souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God ; in the eyes of the unwise they
seem to perish, but they are in happiness. . . . Their hope
is full of immortality." " God created man for immortal-
ity and made, him an image of his own eternity."
Even the teaching of the New Testament is not so un-
equivocal as this. Nearly everywhere the immortality that
it teaches is associated with, if not conditioned upon, the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body. But here we
have the clear thought that the soul itself is immortal
without reference to the physical body.
This noble book would not be out of place in either the
Old Testament or the New.
Ecclesiasticus. This is the only book of the Apocry-
pha of whose authorship we are sure. The book itself
tells us that it was written by Jesus (the Greek form of the
Hebrew name Joshua), son of Sirach Eleazer, of Jerusa-
lem. Hence the name often given to it, " The Wisdom of
Jesus, the Son of Sirach." Its time of writing was prob-
ably nearly two centuries before Christ; hence we may set
it down with considerable certainty as the oldest of the
Apocryphal writings. As to its nature, it is a sort of
Hebrew text-book in morals. Indeed, it has been declared
to be the most complete text-book of practical morals that
1 86 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE
the religion of ancient Israel produced. In common with
the preceding work it belongs to the Efebrew WisdpmJUt-
erature. Its kinship to the Book of Proverbs is so close
that one can easily imagine it to be a continuation of that
production. It opens with the praise of Wisdom, which it
personifies ; it would have men love her, whose ways lead
always to safety and peace.
In form, much of the book is poetry ; some translations
give it a poetical form throughout In Professor Moulton's
arrangement it is a mixture of prose and poetry, that is,
of short prose essays, on a great variety of subjects con-
nected with the practical conduct of life, and of short poet-
ical pieces sonnets, epigrams, and others upon similar
practical themes. It shows much keen observation and
much wise reflection. Many proverbs are scattered
throughout its pages ; some whole chapters are made up
of proverbs. Some of its passages are perhaps the near-
est approach to humor that we find in ancient Hebrew
literature. The spirit of the book is human, manly, stim-
ulating to right living, encouraging to a well ordered and
earnest religious life. It is a thoroughly good book to
read privately ; and it contains many valuable lessons for
reading in churches.
Baruch. There was a man, a real historical personage,
named Baruch. He was the associate and secretary of the
prophet Jeremiah, who lived at the beginning of the cap-
tivity in Babylon, six centuries before Christ. This Apo-
cryphal book is written in his name ; but of course it was
not actually written by him, for it did not come into exist-
ence until some hundreds of years after his death. This is
a case similar to many which we have both in the Apocry-
phal writings and in the Old Testament, of associating
with a book the name of some distinguished character of
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 187
the past, perhaps with the thought of thereby adding a
little to the dignity and standing of the work ; or, possibly
with the idea of doing honor to the character named, as we
to-day erect statues to great men of past time.
This Book of Baruch is a sort of combined history and
prophecy, associated both with Babylon and Jerusalem.
But its supposed history is mainly legend ; and its proph-
ecy, though interesting and earnest and containing noble
passages, is not of so much importance that it need detain
us.
Song of the Three Holy Children. History of
Susanna. Bel and the Dragon. These three Apocry-
phal writings are often grouped together, under the title of
"Additions to Daniel." With two of them the name of
the prophet Daniel is directly associated. Bel and the
Dragon is a story of the same type as that of Daniel in the
Lion's Den, which means that children always like it when
it is read or told to them. ^The history of Susanna tells
how Daniel rescued an innocent woman from two men who
had plotted her ruin. The Song of the Three Holy Chil-
dren is a hymn of thanksgiving which the three Hebrew
young men, who were cast into the fiery furnace, are said
to have sung in the midst of the flames.
The Prayer of Manasseh, King of Judah. Of all the
Kings of Judah, perhaps Manasseh (or Manasses) was the
worst. This prayer of repentance and contrition is sup-
posed to have been offered by him on his death bed. As a
prayer it is somewhat impressive. But the association of
any such religious utterance with King Manasseh, either
in life or death, is without historic warrant
First and Second Maccabees. These two books, with
which the list of the Old Testament Apocryphal writings
closes, are histories. But the second is not of much worth,
1 88 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
partly because it is only a compilation covering the same
ground (or a portion of the same ground) as the first, and
partly because it contains so much that is legendary, ex-
aggerated, miraculous, and historically unreliable. We may,
therefore, pass the second book by, and confine ourselves
to the earlier and more important work.
First Maccabees is a book of great historical value,
simple, sober, and straight-forward in its narratives, well-
written, and in a high degree trustworthy. Indeed, it is no
exaggeration to say, that as regards these qualities, it is
quite the equal, if not the superior, of any of the historical
books of the Old Testament And it covers one of the
most important periods in the history of Israel, that of the
heroic the almost superhumanly heroic struggle for
liberty made by the Jewish people under the leadership of
the famous Maccabean family, from the year 175 to the
year 135 B.C.
Palestine was under the sway of Antiochus Epiphanes,
the Syrian Greek King who, in addition to other tyrannies,
undertook to crush out the Jewish religion, and to plant the
Greek in its place. The public worship of the Jews was
everywhere forbidden. Their sacred books were burned.
Every village in the land was required to erect an altar to
the Greek gods and to offer sacrifices thereon each day.
In Jerusalem the Temple was desecrated, and in it an altar
was set up for the worship of the Olympian Zeus. This
drove the Jews to frenzy. The consequence was a fierce
revolt led by Judas Maccabeus, his father and four brothers,
who, flying to the mountains, gathered around them there
bands of men so devoted and desperate in their determi-
nation to protect their religious faith from destruction, that
they defeated every army that Antiochus could send against
them. The struggle was long and terrible. Never was
THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 189
there seen more fiery religious zeal, sterner patriotism or
more heroic valor, than on the part of these men who were
fighting for all that was dear to them. As a result, their
religion was saved, the old worship was everywhere re-
stored, the Temple was purified, and once more dedicated
to Jehovah. Even political freedom was won, and, for a
brief period, a native Jewish government was set up again
in Palestine.
Judas Maccabeus is not only a great name in Jewish his-
tory, but it is one which will never cease to occupy an
honored place among the patriots and religious heroes of
the world.
One wonders that a work of such historical and religious
value as the First Book of Maccabees, and narrating events
so honorable to the Jewish race, should not have been
given a place in their recognized Scriptures. Indeed, it is
one of the paradoxes of ecclesiastical history that a sacred
volume, which contains such writings as the Books of
Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther,
should all these centuries have remained closed against
not only First Maccabees, but Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and
the Wisdom of Solomon.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON: THE OLD TESTAMENT;
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
THE construction of a definite and authorized list of
sacred writings is something not peculiar to any one
religion. The followers of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Maho-
met formed such canons. It could not be otherwise than
that a people so intensely religious as the Jews, and so
deeply feeling themselves to be the chosen people of God
and under his guidance, should do the same.
The Old Testament Canon. The Canon of the Old
Testament was made up of three different collections of
books, called by the Jews the Law, the Prophets, and the
Hagiographa. Says Wellhausen : " It was the Law that
first became canonical through the influence of Ezra and
Nehemiah ; the Prophets became so considerably later,
and the Hagiographa last of all/' This really epitomizes
the whole story ; but it will be more intelligible if a few
details are added.
The formation of the Hebrew Canon was comparatively
late in time, and it was a slow and gradual process. For
some centuries after the people had come into possession
of the earlier Old Testament writings the eighth and
seventh century prophecies, the earlier collections of
Psalms and Proverbs, the historical works now woven into
the Pentateuch, and known to us as the Elohistic and
Jehovistic documents, etc. they had no sacred Canon. As
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON. igi
yet all these books existed separately and were circulated
separately. Some were known better than others ; some
were held in higher esteem than others ; but none were
yet elevated to the rank of sacred writings.
The Law. The first step pointing in the direction of
a Canon seems to have been taken in the reign of King
Josiah, a little more than 600 years before Christ, when
that monarch accepted the mysterious " book of the law,"
said to have been found in the Temple by Hilkiah the
priest (probably the Book of Deuteronomy), and pro-
claimed it as the law of the land, instituting a general
national reformation in harmony with its teachings.
That this book, however, did not come into general
acceptance at that time, or for a century and a half after-
wards, is plain from the numerous prophetical and other
writings of that period. Not until we reach the time of
Ezra and Nehemiah, almost a century after the captivity,
do we find a second step (and this time an effectual one)
taken toward a Canon. Ezra and Nehemiah come from
Babylon to Jerusalem filled with zeal for the service of
the Lord. They bring with them an important book
which they call the book of the law of Moses, contain-
ing an elaborate code for the regulation of the temple
worship and the religious life of the people. As soon as
they can prepare the way for its favorable reception, they
call the people together in a great assembly, read it to
them, and bind them with a solemn covenant to accept
and henceforth obey it. This is in the year 444 B.C.
The book was almost beyond question essentially, not
indeed, our complete Pentateuch, or five so-called " Books
of Moses," but the Priestly Document" ("P") which
was soon after combined with " 3V' " E," and "D" (see
preceding pp. 77-78) and thus became our Pentateuch,
192 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
or Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy known among the Jews as "The Law."
The Prophets. With the law thus lifted up into sa-
credness, and with the eyes of the people turned more
and more to the past, as from this time on they were, it
was only a question of time when the writings of the old
prophets also, of whom the nation was so proud, would
be lifted up into sacredness and added to the Canon.
This is precisely what we see going on during the next
two centuries. The prophetical writings are gradually
gathered together, are subjected to those revisions and
editings of which we discover so many traces, 1 are read
more and more among the people, and are lifted up into
ever increasing honor, until by about the year 250 B.c.
the second part of the Canon is formed that part known
among the Jews as the Prophets, containing the Books
of Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and
Second Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve
minor prophets.
The Hagiographa. But the Canon cannot stop here.
Other writings, some of them of much importance, are
in existence, and the work of production is still going
forward. Out of these a third collection is gathered
together by about the year 100 B.C. We find this collec-
tion called the Hagiographa. It was composed of those
books of our Old Testament not included in the Law or
the Prophets ; namely, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Song
of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther,
Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and First and Second Chrofticles.
And yet there continued long to be doubt about some of
1 For example, in the Book of Isaiah, which joins together the productions
of two writers, and the Book of Zechariah which mixes those of three.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON. 193
the books. As late as the death of Paul there was much
dispute whether Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon
ought to be included. Indeed, none of the books of this
collection were ever put by the Jewish people, even up
to the time of Christ, on the same level of authority with
the writings of the two older collections. Highest of all
ranked the Law; somewhat below this, the Prophets;
distinctly below both, the Hagiographa. Indeed, it was
only with some hesitancy, and a little license of speech,
that the books of the Hagiographa were spoken of as
real scripture at all.
Such, in brief, is the story of the formation of the Old
Testament Canon, according to the best information we
are able to obtain. Is it a story that excludes the possi-
bility of error ? Only a prejudiced mind can claim that.
Unquestionably the result which it chronicles is one
whose excellence, on the whole, we may well be appreci-
ative of. Yet competent scholarship makes for it no
claim of inerrancy.
The New Testament Canon. We come now to the
New Testament. What do we find here as to the forma-
tion of the Canon ? In important respects the Old Testa-
ment story is repeated. Within a hundred and fifty
years from the time of the birth of Christianity the
young religion created for itself an extensive and varied
literature. It was as natural and inevitable that, sooner
or later, out of this literature it would form a sacred
book, as it had been that Judaism should form a sacred
book out of the literature of its religious experience and
life. This was what actually happened. Up to the
beginning of the second century none of the Christians
seemingly conceived it possible that there could be any
other sacred Scriptures except those of the Old Testa-
194 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
ment. After the Gospels and various Epistles came into
existence, they were for a long time much less esteemed
than the old scriptures. Indeed, up to about the middle
of the second century they were not so highly esteemed
as the oral traditions of the churches in which any of
the apostles had preached. But by the close of the sec-
ond century a change appears. Certain New Testament
books have come into more general favor than the rest,
and are beginning to be classed to a certain extent by
themselves as a new sacred collection. As time goes
on, these grow more and more into use among the
churches. Yet for centuries the various churches con-
tinued to use, side by side with the writings which make
up our New Testament to-day, various books which we
call spurious. It is curious to note that hardly one of
the great writers and " Fathers " of the early Church
draws the line of canonicity of New Testament books
just where we draw it. In almost every case they either
include some books that we reject, or else reject some
books that we include. For example, Irenaeus, one of
the earliest and most authoritative, rejects five books
which we have now in the New Testament; viz., Hebrews,
Jude, James, Second Peter, Third John ; while he puts
great value upon the Shepherd of Hermas, one of the
so-called apocryphal books which we reject, and calls it
scripture. Again, Clement of Alexandria classes three
apocryphal books to wit, the Apocalypse of Peter, the
Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas as of
equal value and authority with our three New Testament
books, Hebrews, Second John, and Jude. The celebrated
Tertullian cast out all the books of the New Testament,
except the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul,
the Revelation, and First John. Even Athanasius quotes
TffJS FORMATION OF THE CANQtf. 195
a number of the apocryphal books as of equal value and
inspiration with those which are included in our present
Canon.
The Age which Produced the New Testament
Canon. One fact alone, when we come duly to consider
it, makes it impossible for us to think of the age which
gives us our New Testament Canon as one capable of
any other than imperfect work in such a direction. That
fact is, the universal credulity and want of critical scholar-
ship which prevailed. We, in our age of science, which
investigates and tests everything, can have no adequate
conception of the ease with which men accepted what-
ever they desired to accept, upon the smallest modi-
cum of evidence, or even with no real evidence at all.
In the weighty and carefully considered words of Dr.
Hedge: "After all that Biblical critics and antiquarian
research have raked from the dust of antiquity in proof
of the genuineness and authenticity of the books of the
New Testament, credibility still labors with the fact
that the age in which these books were received and put
in circulation was one in which the science of criticism
as developed by the moderns the science which scruti-
nizes statements, balances evidence for and against, and
sifts the true from the false did not exist ; an age when
a boundless credulity disposed men to believe in wonders
as readily as in ordinary events, requiring no stronger
proof in the case of the former than sufficed to establish
the latter, viz., hearsay and vulgar report ; an age when
literary honesty was a virtue almost unknown, and when,
consequently, literary forgeries were as common as genu-
ine productions, and transcribers of sacred books did not
scruple to alter the text in the interest of personal views
and doctrinal prepossessions. The newly discovered Sina-
ig6 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
itic code, the earliest known manuscript of the New Tes-
tament, dates from the fourth century. Tischendorf the
discoverer, a very orthodox critic, speaks without reserve
of the license in the treatment of the text apparent in
this manuscript a license, he says, especially character-
istic of the first three centuries." 1
We must bear in mind that it was from such an age as
this that our New Testament Canon comes. *
Says Davidson : " The exact principles that guided the
formation of a Canon cannot be discovered. Definite
grounds for the reception or rejection of books were not
very clearly apprehended. The choice was determined
by various circumstances. The development was per-
vaded by no critical or definite principle. No member of
the synod [that might be at any time engaged in consid-
ering the subject of what books ought to be regarded as
canonical] exercised his critical faculty ; a number would
decide such matters summarily. Bishops proceeded in
the track of tradition or authority." Moreover, a great
deal of bigotry and partisanship and bad blood was
manifested from first to last. Bishops freely accused
bishops of forgery of sacred writings and of alteration of
the oldest texts; and, altogether, the debates and proceed-
ings of the synods and councils that had part in settling
the Canon remind one very much of some of the worst
political conventions of our day. 2
1 '* Ways of the Spirit," p. 325. For an excellent picture of the intellect-
ual condition of Christendom during the ages in which the Canon of the New
Testament was being settled, see Lecky's " History of European Morals,"
voL ii. pp. 108-211.
* On the spirit that pervaded the councils, see Lecky's " European Morals,*"
voL . pp. 207-210. Says Dean Milman : " Nowhere is Christianity less
attractive than in the councils of the Church. . , . Intrigue, injustice,
violence, decisions on authority alone, and that the authority of a turbulent
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON. 197
The Canon Never Settled Definite and final results
were never reached. It is claimed by some that the
Council of Laodicea (363 A.D.) settled the Canon finally ;
but this, Davidson, as high an authority on the subject as
we have, denies. These are his words : " Notwithstand-
ing the numerous endeavors both in the East and West
to settle the Canon during the fourth and fifth centuries,
it was not finally closed. The doubts of individuals were
still expressed, and succeeding ages testify to the want of
universal agreement respecting several books." Indeed,
if that council did settle what books properly belong in
the Old and New Testaments, then we are wrong to-day
in not including Baruch in our Old Testament, and in
retaining Revelation in our New. Moreover, if, as is
sometimes claimed, the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397 ?)
settled the Canon, then we are wrong in not including
Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, Tobit, Judith, and First and
Second Maccabees in our present Bible.
Indeed, the Romanists allow that the Canon was not
settled until the modern Council of Trent, held from 1545
to 1563, in the midst of the German Reformation. This
council proceeded to pass a formal decree declaring what
books properly belong in the Bible. The list is that of
our present Protestant Bible, with the addition of the
fourteen books of the Old Testament Apocrypha. The
Romanists, therefore, with their theory that their church
majority . . . detract from the reverence and impugn the judgments of
at least the later councils. The close is almost invariably a terrible anath-
ema, in which it is impossible not to discern the tones of human hatred, of
arrogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damnation imprecated against the
humiliated adversary." " History of Latin Christianity," vol. i. p. 227.
See also Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap, xlvii ;
and Mflman's " History of Latin Christianity/' book L chap, ii, and book
ii. chaps, i.-iv. passim.
198 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE,
is infallible in its decisions, may well claim to have an
authoritative scripture Canon. But there can be no
ground for such claim on the part of Protestants.
The Canon Imperfect. Luther was decidedly of the
opinion that our present Canon is imperfect. He thought
that the Old Testament Book of Esther did not belong
in the Bible. On the other hand, in translating the Old
Testament, he translated the apocryphal books of Judith,
Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Macca-
bees, and the Prayer of Manasseh. In his prefaces he
gives his judgment concerning these books. With regard
to First Maccabees, he thinks it almost equal to the other
books of Holy Scripture, and not unworthy to be reck-
oned among them. Of Wisdom, he says he was long in
doubt whether it should be numbered among the canoni-
cal books ; and of Sirach he says that it is a right good
book, proceeding from a wise man. He had judgments
equally decided regarding certain New Testament books.
He thought the Epistle to the Hebrews came neither
from Paul nor any of the apostles, and was not to be put
on an equality with Epistles written by apostles them-
selves. The Apocalypse (or Revelation) he considered
neither apostolic nor prophetic, and of little or no worth.
He did not believe the Epistle of Jude proceeded from
an apostle. James* Epistle he pronounced unapostolic,
and " an epistle of straw."
The great Swiss reformer Zwingli maintained that the
Apocalypse is not properly a biblical book. Even Calvin
did not think that Paul was the author of Hebrews, or
Peter of the book called Second Peter; while as to the
Book of Revelation, he denounced it as unintelligible,
and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempts
at interpreting it.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON. 199
Such, then, are some of the more important facts re-
garding the formation of our Old and New Testament
Canons, as the most candid and scholarly criticism of our
generation has brought them to view. In the light of
these facts it is easy to see that the men who are responsi-
ble for our Bible being what it is, made many and even
grave mistakes.
And yet, let us not allow ourselves to judge narrowly
or unjustly. Could we understand all the circumstances,
we should probably be surprised, and certainly we should*
see that we have reason to be grateful, that those mistakes
were not more and graver still. That the books which
have been declared canonical, and handed down as such
to us, are on the whole of so high a type, morally and
spiritually, argues much for the trustworthiness of the
moral and spiritual intuitions of the race. Moreover, it
argues that a great and wonderful law, like that which
the scientists call " natural selection," or " the survival of
the fittest," exists and works powerfully and perpetually
not only in the physically organic world, but also quite
as really in the intellectual, moral, and religious worlds.
Or, to put essentially the same thing in the form in which
Christianity would put it, it argues that there is abroad
in the world an infinite " Spirit of Truth " working every-
where, and " leaving himself not without witness " in any
age. 1
1 For further information regarding the Canon of the Old and New Tes-
taments, see Davidson's " Canon of the Bible," or the article " Canon" in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica (which is an abridgment of Davidson's boolc) ;
Buhl's "Canon and Text of the Old Testament " ; Kyle's "Canon of the
Old Testament;'* Robertson Smith's * 6 Old Testament in the Jewish
Church," lects. v. and vi. ; Toy's " Judaism and Christianity," pp. 68-76 ;
Knappert's Religion of Israel," chap. xari. ; Westcott's " Canon of the New
Testament."
2OO ORIGIN 1 AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Analogy between the Formation of the Christian and
Buddhist Canons. No little light is thrown upon the
origin and collection of the New Testament writings by
the account given by Max Miiller of the origin of the
Buddhist Sacred Writings and their formation into a
canon, which I could scarcely forgive myself if I did not
quote before leaving this part of my subject.
" During the life of Buddha," says Miiller, " no record
of events, no sacred code containing the sayings of the
master, was wanted. His presence was enough, and
thoughts of the future seldom entered the minds of
those who followed him. It was only after Buddha had
left the world to enter into Nirvana that his disciples
attempted to recall the sayings and doings of their de-
parted friend and master. Then everything that seemed
to redound to the glory of Buddha, however extraor-
dinary and incredible, was eagerly welcomed, while wit-
nesses who would have ventured to criticise or reject
unsupported statements, or detract in any way from the
holy character of Buddha, had no chance of being listened
to. And when, in spite of all this, differences of opinion
arose, they were not brought to the test of a careful
weighing of evidence, but the names of ' unbeliever* and
* heretic* were quickly invented in India as elsewhere,
and bandied backwards and forwards between contending
parties, till at last, when the doctors disagreed, the help
of the secular power had to be invoked, and kings and
emperors convoked councils for the suppression of schism,
for the settlement of an orthodox creed, and for the com-
pletion of the sacred Canon. We know of King Asoka,
the contemporary of Seleucus, sending his royal missive
to the assembled elders, and telling them what to do and
what to avoid, warning them also in his own name of the
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON. ,2OI
apocryphal or heretical character of certain books which,
as he thinks, ought not to be admitted into the sacred
Canon."
" We here," continues Muller, " learn a lesson, which is
confirmed by the study of other religions, that canonical
books, though they furnish in most cases the most authen-
tic information within the reach of the student of reli-
gion, are not to be trusted implicitly ; nay, that they must
be submitted to a more searching criticism and to more
stringent tests than any other historical books/'
In reading the above, one can hardly believe that it is
not the history of the origin of our own New Testament
writings and the formation of our own New Testament
Canon that Professor Muller is tracing, instead of the
origin of the Buddhist Sacred Writings and the formation
of the Buddhist Canon. For if we substitute " Jesus " in
the place of " Buddha," " the countries around the Medi-
terranean Sea " in the place of " India," and the " Em-
peror Constantine " with one or two other Christian
emperors in the place of " King Asoka," we shall have an
almost exact record of the origin of a large part of the
literature which came into being as the result of Jesus'
life and teachings, and the manner in which a portion of
this became singled out from the rest, and by degrees
united into essentially what is now our New Testament.
CHAPTER XVIIL
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT: ITS FORMATION
AND PRESERVATION. I.
WE have seen how the different books of the Bible
originated, and how they were gathered together into a
sacred Canon ; we must now inquire how they have been
preserved and brought down to our day.
There is a popular impression existing, not quite indeed
that the Bible authors wrote in English, but at least that
we can trace our Hebrew and Greek Old and New Testa-
ments straight back to the manuscripts of the inspired
penmen, so that there can be scarcely more doubt about
our having their precise words than there is about our
having the exact words of the Declaration of American
Independence, or of a book printed from an author's
manuscripts yesterday. Whether this impression is cor-
rect or not, and what the facts in the case really are, it
will be the aim of this chapter and the next concisely
to show.
The Languages of the Bible. In what tongues were
the Old Testament books written? Mainly in the
Hebrew; sections of two of the books, however, Ezra
and Daniel, were written in Aramaic. 1
What were these languages ? Both were of the Sem-
itic stock ; they were about as closely related as are Eng-
1 Ezraiv. 8-vi. 18, and vii. 12-26 ; Dan. ii. 4-vii. 28 ; also the interpolated
Terse, Jer. x. u.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 2O3
lish and German. The Hebrew was, of course, the native
tongue of the Hebrew people ; but it passed out of pop-
ular use three or four centuries before Christ (after the
return from the exile), and was replaced by the Aramaic,
which had come to be widely used as the language of
travel and commerce throughout Western Asia. Most
of the books of the Old Testament were written while
the Hebrew was yet the spoken tongue of the people.
After it had been crowded out from popular speech by
the Aramaic, it still remained the literary and sacred
language ; hence it is not strange that essentially all the
books preserved in the Canon were written in Hebrew,
even those composed after the arrival of the Aramaic.
Coming to the New Testament, we find that to be
written in Greek. At the first look this seems somewhat
strange. Jesus and his disciples were all Jews, They
unquestionably spoke Aramaic, in common with the Jews
of Palestine generally. Why then was not the New Testa-
ment written in Hebrew the Jews' sacred language, and
the language of the Old Testament ? Or, if not in Hebrew,
then why not in Aramaic, the popular tongue ?
Some of the earlier writings of Christianity undoubtedly
were written in Aramaic, but these have been mainly
lost. The reasons why Greek became the New Testament
language are not hard to discover. They are the follow-
ing :
1. Christianity soon came to be regarded, and to regard
itself, as a new religion, and not simply as a sect of
Judaism. Hence it is not strange that it should not have
cared greatly to cling to the old sacred language.
2. It began early to push out beyond the Jews, and to
find its greatest successes and strength among Gentile
peoples. Hence it could hardly be willing to weight
2O4 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
itself with a dead language like the Hebrew, which so
large a part of its adherents could not understand.
3. Most important of all, Greek had by this time be-
come the great language of literature, of international
intercourse, and largely of commerce. In Palestine it was
tending to supersede Aramaic, at least among the more
intelligent and wealthy classes ; while throughout most of
the Roman Empire it was the dominant tongue. Even
the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament had been
translated into Greek for the use of Greek-speaking Jews.
It was these Greek-speaking Jews, and especially the
great Greek-speaking Gentile world, that gave chief wel-
come to Christianity. It could not be otherwise, there-
fore, than that Greek should become the language of the
new religion and its new sacred Scriptures.
So much for the languages in which the Old and New
Testaments were originally written. Thus we see at the
outset not only that all the teachings of the Bible have
to come to us in English through a translation, but that
the words of Jesus, the most important of the Bible
teachers, having been spoken in Aramaic, and given to
the world in Greek, can come to us in any modern lan-
guage only through two translations.
What do we really know about the original Hebrew
and Greek scriptures ? Let us try to work our way back
to those originals, beginning with the Old Testament.
Old Testament Manuscripts. We are to-day in pos-
session of an Old Testament text printed in Hebrew.
How far back does this go ? It can go only a little way,
for all printing is modern. But do we not have Old Tes-
tament manuscripts ? And are not these very ancient ?
The oldest Hebrew manuscript of the entire Old Testa-
ment that we possess goes back to the year 1009 A.D. ;
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 205
and the oldest of any part of the Bible (the Prophet
codex) goes back to 916 A.D. 1 Is this far? In a sense,
yes. And yet how small a part is it of the whole journey
back to those ancient times when the old prophets and
psalmists and law-makers wrote! What of the twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen hundred years that lie still back
before we reach the birth of the Old Testament books?
How do we know that these relatively modern manu-
scripts (yet oldest that we possess) are faithful transcripts
of those written so many centuries earlier by Isaiah and
Jeremiah and Ezra?
Hebrew Written without Vowels. As soon as we
begin making inquiries about the original language of the
Old Testament, one fact comes to light which is of
immense and even startling significance. It is the fact
that the Hebrew written language originally contained no
vowels or vowel-marks. This, of course, means nothing
less than that the Old Testament books were written
simply in consonant outline, and in this form were pre-
served for many centuries.
True, if we take up a Hebrew Bible or manuscript
now, we shall find this consonant outline filled out with
dots and other marks above and below, to indicate the
vowels that should be understood. But these vowel
marks are no part of the original Hebrew Bible, Then
men read the various books as best they could from the
consonants alone, supplying the vowels according to the
seeming requirement of the sense, or the oral instructions
which they had received from tradition.
Uncertainty of Consonant Writing. Try to imagine
how much accuracy could be preserved to-day in writings
1 Both are preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg.
206 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
made up solely of consonants which simply put, let us say,
bk for book, or back, or beck ; ppr for paper, or piper, or
pepper ; pn for pun, or pain, or pin, or pan ; and so on.
That I may not convey a false impression, let me cite
a word or two from the ancient Hebrew. The Hebrew
word (or consonant outline of a word) qtl may be a noun,
a verb, or a participle ; and, if a verb, it may be active,
passive, or reflexive; and it may have nine different
meanings, according to the vowels that the reader sup-
plies in connection with it. The Hebrew word dbhr may
have five different meanings, to wit : "a word," " he hath
spoken/' " to speak," " speaking," " it has been spoken,"
and " a pestilence," according to the vowels we supply.
This, then, is the kind of written language in which the
larger part of our Bible finds itself originally recorded.
As Gesenius says: " How imperfect and indefinite such a
mode of writing was, is easily seen."
Prof. T. F. Curtis compares this consonant outline to
the stenographic shorthand of reporters. He says : " So
long as the Hebrew language was a spoken tongue, "it
was written without vowels or any letters being doubled.
This is just the way our shorthand writers now take
down speeches, and is generally sufficient to remind the
reporter of a speech, the ideas of which have been dis-
tinctly and recently understood. Some years ago a friend
undertook to learn shorthand. Hessian boots were worn
in those days with little tassels, one in front of each.
Going out hastily, this gentleman discovered that a tassel
was torn off one of his boots, and to show his proficiency
in the new art, he wrote his teacher, in another room, to
ask: ' Have you an old boot tassel ? * The vowels being
all omitted, and also the doubling of the letters, signs
were made for the following letters : ' Hv y n Id bt tsl,*
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 2O/
which his friend not unnaturally read thus : * Have you
an old boot to sell f ' Why his pupil could want to buy
an old boot from him required more explanation than
shorthand could well give. Now the difficulty of the
ancient Hebrew without points is just this : that, although
where people were very familiar with the subject and
language, this style of writing was ordinarily sufficient at
least to guide the priests, and remind them of the law, so
that they could explain it to the people ; yet there would
always be many cases where the meaning was left ex-
tremely doubtful, without the aid and authority of tra-
dition." 1
Says Prof. Robertson Smith on this point: "Let
me ask you to realize precisely how the scribes, at and
before the time of Christ, proceeded in dealing with the
Bible. They had nothing before them but the bare text
denuded of its vowels, so that the same words might
often be read and interpreted in two different ways. A
familiar example of this is given in Heb. xi. 21, where
we read of Jacob leaning upon the top of his ' staff ' ; but
when we turn to our Hebrew Bible, as it is now printed
(Gen. xlvii. 31), we there find nothing about the 'staff';
we find the ' bed/ Well, the Hebrew for ' the bed ' is
hammittah, while the Hebrew for * the staff * is kammatteh.
The consonants in these two words are the same, the vow-
els are different. But the consonants only were written,
and therefore it was quite possible for one person to read
the word as * bed/ as is now the case in our English Bible,
following the reading of the Hebrew scribes ; and for the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the other hand,
1 "Human Element in Inspiration," pp. 170-174. See also Davidson's
' Introduction to the Old Testament," vol. i. p, 107.
208 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
to understand it as a ' staff,' following the interpretation
of the Greek Septuagint. Beyond the bare text, which
in this way was often ambiguous, the scribes had no guide
but oral teaching. They had no rules of grammar to go
by; the kind of Hebrew which they themselves wrote
often admitted grammatical constructions which the old
language forbade, and when they came to an obsolete
word or idiom they had no guide to its meaning, unless
their masters had told them that the pronunciation and
the sense were so and so/' 1
Adding the Vowel Points. This was the condition in
which the Hebrew written language not only was at first,
but remained for many centuries. Indeed, this serious
defect of the Hebrew Bible was not remedied until the
seventh or eighth century after Christ, when the school
of Jewish scholars known as the Massorites revised the
Old Testament text with great patience, and added the
vowel points according to their best ability ; but they had
nothing to guide them except their own judgment and
very imperfect tradition, and that they made numberless
mistakes every Hebrew scholar knows. Says Professor
Driver : " It is true, since the rise of the school called the
Massorites in the seventh and eighth centuries (and prob-
ably for parts of the Old Testament, especially the Law,
from a considerably earlier date), the Jews displayed a
scrupulous fidelity in the preservation and correct trans-
mission of their sacred books ; but nothing is more cer-
tain than that the period during which this care was
exercised was preceded by one of no small laxity, in the
course of which corruptions of different kinds found their
way into the text of the Old Testament. The Jews,
'"Old Testament in the Jewish Church," pp. 50, 51.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT.
when it was too late to repair by this means the mischief
that had been done, proceeded to guard their sacred
books with extraordinary care, with the result that cor-
rupt readings were simply perpetuated, being placed by
them (of course, unconsciously) on precisely the same
footing as the genuine text, and invested with a fictitious
semblance of originality." *
It used to be held that the vowel points were added to
the Hebrew text by Ezra, in the fifth century before Christ,
and that he was specially inspired of God for the work,
so that he could make no mistakes. When, in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, this view was shown
by Levita and Cappellus, in France, to be without founda-
tion, and when it was proved that the vowel points were
introduced by the Massorites more than a thousand years
after Ezra, there was great excitement throughout all
Protestant Europe. To many it seemed as if the new
theory meant the utter subversion of religion ; for if the
vowel points were not given by divine revelation, but
were only men's invention, and at so late a date, what
dependence was there to be put upon the scripture text ?
The discussion kindled was one of the hottest in the his-
tory of modern biblical criticism, and lasted more than
1 " Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel," p. 37.
Says C. H. H. Wright: "Although the main contents of the sacred
Scriptures have been well preserved, these scriptures have not come down
to us in the exact shape in which they were at first written, or even as
finally edited by their pre-Christian revisers. The Massorites did their best
to establish a uniform text, and in doing so stereotyped not a few corrup-
tions. And the Hebrew MSS-, though substantially following the text as
settled by those scholars, were, when duly examined by Kennicott, De
Rossi, and others, proved to abound in mistakes." "Introduction to the
Old Testament," pp. 14, 15. See chaps, iii. and iv. entire. Also see
Smith's "Old Testament in the Jewish Church," lees, ii., iii., iv., and v.
2IO ORIGIN* AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
a century. But finally it ceased ; the new view was
accepted, and men found, many of them greatly to their
astonishment, that religion was in no way injured. They
had simply made again the mistake, which has been
made by backward-looking men ten thousand times and
in every age, of supposing that texts and sacred writ-
ings are the tree whose fruit is religion so that to
change the words is to endanger religion ; when in fact
religion in the living, divine soul of man is itself the
tree, and texts and scriptures are simply its fruits and
flowers and leaves, which may be changed or shed, and
yet the tree live on and prosper, bearing other foli-
age and flowers and fruit, and even in increasing abund-
ance.
Errors of Copyists. But the inaccuracies that are
found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are by
no means all due to the want of vowel points. Many are
due to the fact that it had to be copied for so many cen-
turies by hand. We, in our age of printing, little realize
what that means. It is hard enough to be accurate now ;
what must it have been then ? Says Professor Smith :
"The Bible had to be copied by the pen. Let us
suppose, then, that the copyist, without any special
instruction or guide, simply sat down to make a
transcript, probably writing from dictation, of the
MS, which he had bought or borrowed. In the first
place, he was almost certain to make some slips, either
of the pen or of the ear; but, besides this, in all
probability the volume before him would contain slips
of the previous copyist. Was he to copy these mis-
takes exactly as they stood, and so perpetuate the
error, or would he not in very many cases think himself
able to detect and correct the slips of his predecessor ?
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 211
If he took the latter course, it was very possible for him
to overrate his own capacity and make a new mistake.
And so, bit by bit, if there were no control, if each scribe
acted independently, and without the assistance of a reg-
ular school, errors were sure to be multiplied, and the text
would be certain to present many variations." 1 Nor is
this alf. " Manuscripts were copied and recopied by
scribes who not only sometimes made errors in letters
and words, but permitted themselves to introduce new
material into the text, or to combine in one manuscript,
without mark or division, writings composed by different
men." 2 It was a widespread practice to make on the
edges of manuscripts notes of other matter, perhaps
found in other manuscripts, that seemed relevant and
important. A subsequent copyist was not unlikely to
embody these in the text. And so variations and corrup-
tions of the original text multiplied. 8
No Early "Received Text" It should be remem-
bered that until after the time of Christ the Jews had no
received text. Every collector and every scribe had a text
of his own. How a common or received text was finally
formed is not certainly known ; but that it was by no
adequate critical process is certain. Instead of collecting
1 "Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 53.
2 Toy's " Judaism and Christianity," p. 72.
9 " The man who had bought or copied a book, ... if he could
make it more convenient for use by adding a note here, putting in a word
there, or incorporating additional matter derived from another source, had
no hesitation in doing so. In short, every ancient scholar who copied or
annotated a book for his own use was very much in the position of a mod-
ern editor, with the difference that at that time there was no system of foot-
notes, brackets, and explanatory prefaces, by which the insertions could be
distinguished from the original text." Robertson Smith's "Old Testament
in the Jewish Church," p. 107.
212 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
all possible texts, and compiling one from these, according
to sound critical rules, it is probable that the scribes
chose some single manuscript as a standard, that all sub-
sequent copies were made from this, and that all other
existing texts were as far as possible destroyed. Thus,
instead of giving us a text that we can rely upon, by
cutting off sources of comparison they made it impossi-
ble ever to get such a text. 1
Corruptions of the Present Hebrew Text. As soon
as we understand all these things we are no longer sur-
prised to find, as we do find, that the text of Micah and
Hosea is so corrupt as in many places to be absolutely
unintelligible ; or that the text of the Books of Samuel is
1 " We can be sure that in the earlier centuries copies of the Bible circu-
lated and were freely read even by learned men like the author of the Book
of Jubilees, which had great and notable variations of text, not inferior in
extent to those still existing in the New Testament MSS. In later times
every trace of these varying copies disappears. They must have been sup-
pressed, or gradually superseded by a deliberate effort, which has been
happily compared by the German scholar Noldeke to the action of the
Caliph Othman in destroying all copies of the Koran which diverged from
the standard text that he adopted. . . . This, then, was what the scribes
did : They chose for us the Hebrew text which we have now got. [Of
course, it is the consonant outline that is here referred to ; that was chosen by
the scribes soon after the time of Christ, as here described ; the insertion of
the vowel points, as we have seen, came later.] Were they in a position
to choose the very best text, to produce a critical edition which could justly
be accepted as the standard, so that we lose nothing by the suppression of
all the divergent copies ? . . . There can be no doubt that the standard
copy which they ultimately selected, to the exclusion of all others, owed this
distinction not to any critical labor which had been spent 'upon it, but to
some external circumstance that gave it a special reputation. . . . The
very errors and corrections and accidental peculiarities of the MS. were
kept just as they stood . . . when it was chosen to be the archetype of
all future copies." Robertson Smith's "Old Testament in the Jewish
Church," pp. 74, 76, 80.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 213
scarcely better; 1 or that that of other books is bad,
though perhaps not quite so bad.
Fortunately, two centuries or so before Christ the
translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into
Greek, known as the Septuagint, was made in Alexandria,
This has enabled us to correct many errors, and will
enable us to correct more still, as it is studied more
carefully such errors, of course, as have crept into the
Hebrew text since that translation was made. By com-
paring our Hebrew text with the Samaritan Pentateuch,
too, some errors have been discovered and emended.
And yet, all this is really very little, and promises little.
We are still in doubt about great numbers of passages
all through the Old Testament, and probably we must
always remain so, for want of any means of ascertaining
what was the original text. Dr. Samuel Davidson, a
most competent critic, in his " Revision of the Hebrew
Text," cites between seven and eight thousand places
where manuscripts and versions differ from our text ; and
in the book entitled " Anglo-American Bible Revision,"
written by members of the American Revision Committee
in 1879, Dr. Howard Osgood, professor of Hebrew in the
Rochester Baptist Theological Seminary, suggests ten
thousand as the probable number of diversities of reading
in the Old Testament ; moreover, adding at the end the
significant sentence : " It should be remembered that if
for the criticism of the Old Testament we possessed a
critical apparatus as full as that for the New, the number
of diversities might be largely increased."
To be sure, a large part of these variations are, in
themselves, of little importance, making only slight
1 See Driver's " Notes on the Hebrew Text of Samuel."
214 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
changes in the sense, and often none at all. And yet
many are important; some are very important. But,
whether the importance be great or small, one thing at
least these variations do they show beyond a possibility
of doubt or question that we have, and in the nature of
the case can have, no perfect or infallible Old Testament
Hebrew text.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT : ITS FORMATION
AND PRESERVATION. II.
Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament. We
pass now from the Hebrew of the Old Testament to the
Greek of the New. What do we find here? Any greater
evidences of inerrancy ? Let us see.
We have a very much larger number of manuscripts
of the New Testament than of the Old, and many of
these go back much farther. Our five oldest and most
valuable Greek manuscripts are the Codex Sinaiticus and
the Codex Vaticanus^ both dating from the fourth cen-
tury A. D. ; the Codex Alexandrinus, and the Codex Eph*
raemi, dating from the fifth century ; and the Codex
Bez&, of the sixth century.
Imperfections. These manuscripts are all written in
what are known as uncial letters ; that is, in large capitals.
They are without division of words or punctuation, and
in part without accents or breathings. These absences,
of course, introduce something of an element of uncer-
tainty into the meaning of many passages. The use of
the uncial letters continued for some centuries, being
gradually displaced by what is known as the cursive, or
running hand, about the ninth or tenth century.
Rude and imperfect attempts at punctuation, by the
use of occasional simple points or small blank spaces left
in the line, began to be made in the fourth and fifth cen-
turies. But such full punctuation as we have now was
216 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
not introduced until modern times, after the invention
of printing. Breathings and accents (so necessary to a
perfect Greek text) were not in general use until the
seventh century.
We are likely to think of our present divisions into
chapters and verses as being found in the original New
Testament. But this is a mistake ; the chapter divisions
as we now have them were made by Cardinal Hugo in
the thirteenth century, and our present verse divisions
first appeared in an edition of the Latin Bible (the Vul-
gate) printed by Robert Stephens in 1555.
Another point is worth mentioning here. We are apt
to think of the titles and subscriptions of the New Testa-
ment books as coming from the writers of the books, and
hence as a part of the books themselves. But as a rule,
the titles and subscriptions in the New Testament are
as unreliable as those in the Old. The oldest Greek
manuscripts have much shorter titles than the later, and
" the subscriptions, with their would-be historical infor-
mation, are not only late, but worthless." 1 Those ap-
pended to the Epistles of St. Paul, are attributed to
Euthalius of Alexandria, who lived in the last half of
the fifth century.
In this connection it is instructive to notice what Dr.
Philip Schaff of Union Theological Seminary, New York,
says, in his "Companion to the Greek Testament and
the English Version," which he wrote as president of the
American Bible Revision Committee. Surely here, if
anywhere, we shall get a careful, thoroughly reliable, and
conservative statement. Speaking of the Greek text as
we have it, Dr. Schaff says : " Even if we had the apos-
1 Robertson Smith in Encyclopaedia Britannica ; art. "Bible."
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 21 7
tolic autographs, there would be room for verbal criticism
and difference in interpretation, since they, like other
ancient books, were probably written as a continuous
whole, without accents, with little or no punctuation,
without divisions of sentences or words (except to indi-
cate paragraphs), without titles or subscriptions, without
even the name of the author unless it was part of the
text itself. * Spirit * may be the human spirit or the
divine Spirit (the Holy Ghost), and the distinction which
we mark by capitalizing the first letter cannot be decided
from an uncial manuscript where all letters are capitals.
The punctuation, likewise, can be determined not by
manuscript authority, but only by the meaning of the
context, and is often subject to doctrinal considerations,
as notably so in the famous passage affecting the divin-
ity of Christ (Rom. ix. 5), which admits of three, if not
seven, different punctuations and constructions/' 1
How Other Errors Crept in. We found in the last
chapter, that many errors crept into the Old Testament
manuscripts in connection with the work of copying.
The same is true here also. Indeed, as soon as there
began to be New Testament manuscripts at all, there
began to be variations of texts. Irenaeus, as early as the
second century, alludes to the variations already appear-
ing. Origen in the third century declares that matters
are growing worse. " From this time on," says Professor
Ezra Abbot, " we have the manuscript text of each cen-
tury, the writings of the Fathers, the various Oriental
and Occidental versions, all testifying to varieties of
reading for almost every verse." How were these varie-
ties caused ? Let Professor Abbot answer : " The early
1 Pp. 88, 89.
2lS ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
church did not know anything of that anxious clinging
to the letter which characterizes the scientific rigor and
the piety of modern times, and therefore was not so
bent on preserving the exact words. Moreover, the first
copies were made rather for private than for public use.
Copyists were careless, often wrote from dictation, and
were liable to misunderstand." 1
Nor was this all. Here a manuscript would contain
abbreviations ; the next copyist in attempting to write
them out would be very likely to make mistakes. Here
a copyist had before him a page that was blotted, or else
was dimmed by age and wear ; he guessed at the doubt-
ful words as best he could, but sometimes guessed wrong.
Not infrequently copyists made what they regarded as
corrections in the text, in the interest of grammar or of
style ; or to remove what they thought to be historical
or geographical or other errors ; or for the purpose of
harmonizing the Gospels ; or to make quotations in the
New Testament agree with the Greek of the Septuagint.
It was common for owners to write on the wide mar-
gins of their manuscripts, notes of one kind or another,
or matter from some other part of the Bible, or even
from outside the Bible, that they thought would throw
light on the text. Of course these marginal writings
were liable to get copied later into the text. It is prob-
ably in this way that we must account for the first eleven
verses of the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, and the
last twelve verses of Mark's Gospel, neither of which
passages is found in the oldest manuscripts.
So, too, the use of the various New Testament writings
in churches caused additions sometimes to be made. For
1 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia ; art. " Bible Text."
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 219
example, if a passage were habitually used for liturgical
purposes, it would be not unnatural for an appropriate
ending to be attached to it. It was in this way, undoubt-
edly, that the doxology to the Lord's Prayer came into
being, for it is not found in the oldest Greek manuscripts.
Or if a passage torn from its context were used for an
ecclesiastical lesson, it might seem necessary to preface it
with a few words of explanation, and it would be easy
and natural for these explanatory words by and by to get
copied into the text.
Occasionally, too, interpolations were made for doc-
trinal purposes. Here a zealous copyist, in transcribing
a passage, thinks it would be a great advantage if its doc-
trinal teaching were a little more explicit. He is very
sure he knows what it was meant to teach. Why should
not he add a few words that will make its meaning clearer?
In his pious zeal he does so. It is in some such way as
this, doubtless, that we must account for that famous pas-
sage in I John v., called the text of the three heavenly
witnesses, which for centuries was regarded as the leading
New Testament proof-text in support of the doctrine of
the Trinity, but which the Revised Version throws out,
as scholars have long known it ought to be thrown out.
Various Readings: One Hundred and Fifty Thou-
sand. Such, then, are some of the ways in which the
vast number of different readings, which, in the early cen-
turies, crept into the Greek text of the New Testament
writings, had their origin.
How many such different readings have been discov-
ered ? The answer is startling. It is quite within bounds
to say one hundred and fifty thousand. Some authorities
put it higher than that ; but that is the number announced
to the world by the American Bible Revision Committee.
220 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Of course, a large proportion of these are very slight,
hardly worth noticing ; and yet very many are not slight,
as every Greek New Testament scholar knows, and as
even one who is not a Greek scholar can see for himself
by simply comparing an English Revised New Testament
with the common version.
A New and Improved Greek Text. One of the ex-
cellent results of modern scholarship has been the prepara-
tion of a Greek New Testament text greatly superior to
that which was in the hands of King James* translators
when they made our common English version in 1611.
Since that date all our oldest and most valuable manu-
scripts have been discovered. An almost incredible
amount of toil has been spent in examining these, and
comparing them with one another and with early quota-
tions from the Fathers. In this way a vast number of
errors have been corrected, and little by little a Greek
text has been built up which is a credit to modern learn-
ing. It is on the basis of this improved text that our
English Revised Version has been made ; and from this
source, in the main, arises its great superiority over our
common version.
Conclusion, It must not be supposed, however, that
we now have a Greek text that is perfect. No one knows
so well as New Testament scholars themselves how very
far from perfection it is. There still remain thousands of
uncertainties, thousands of conflicting readings. Nor is
there any ground for hope that it can evfer be otherwise.
With the still further advance of scholarship, of course,
other errors will be corrected and further improvements
will be made. But in the nature of the case this can go
but a little way. There is no possible basis on which to
build a perfect text. Go back as far as we can in any
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT TEXT. 221
direction, and we come not to certainties, but to uncer-
tainties ; not to readings that agree, but to those which
conflict in numberless ways. If anywhere we may expect
to find harmony and certainty, it is in our oldest and best
manuscripts. But is there certainty here? Do these
agree ? It takes only a very little investigation to find
out. But let the learned and careful Dr. F. H. A. Scriv-
ener, than whom there is no higher or more conservative
authority, answer. In his " Introduction to the Criticism
of the New Testament "* he writes: "The evidence of
ancient manuscripts is anything but unanimous ; they are
perpetually at variance with each other, even if we limit
the term ancient within the narrowest bounds to the
five oldest copies. 2 The reader has but to open the first
recent critical work he shall meet with, to see them
scarcely ever in unison ; perpetually divided two against
three, or perhaps four against one. All the readings
these venerable monuments contain must, of course, be
ancient, or they would not be found where they are ; but
they cannot be all true. So, again, if our search be ex-
tended to the versions and primitive Fathers, the same
phenomenon unfolds itself, to our grievous perplexity and
disappointment."
Thus, while we have a Greek New Testament text of
whose general excellence we may well be appreciative a
text much purer and more reliable than our Hebrew text
of the Old Testament we do not have here, any more
than there, either freedom from errors and uncertainties,
or the possibility of ever attaining such freedom.
1 Second Edition, London, p. 464.
a Those mentioned above the Codifes Sinaiticus^ Alexandrinus, Vati*
canus, Ephraemi, and JSeza.
CHAPTER XX.
TRANSLATIONS: GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE.
WE have now found out how we obtained our Hebrew
Old Testament and our Greek New Testament. The
question remains, How did we get our Bible in English?
The answer to this is an interesting and a many-sided story,
which our space, however, will permit us to trace only in
the briefest way.
If the different languages of the world are walls that tend
to separate nations and races from one another, they are
wt walls that cannot be scaled or broken down.
Fortunately, literature leaps over these walls easily and
goes where it wilL It is able to do this by means of trans-
lations. Most of the great literature of the world is trans-
lated from language to language and thus becomes the
heritage of all civilized peoples. It has been pre-eminently
so with the Bible.
We have already gotten a glimpse of the Septuagint,
that remarkable translation of the Old Testament into
Greek a century or two before Christ, which for many
centuries largely took the place of the Hebrew Bible even
for the Jews themselves, and which, strange as it may seem,
we find the New Testament writers generally quoting
instead of the original Hebrew. Of course this wide use
of the Septuagint grew out of the fact that for some cen-
turies before and after the birth of Christianity the Greek
tongue was the prevailing literary language of the circum-
Mediterranean world.
By degrees, however, Latin began to take the place of
GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE. 22$
Greek. Since Rome held all the peoples of southern
Europe, western Asia and northern Africa under her sway,
it was inevitable that her language should come into wider
and wider use. At first this use was confined mainly to
civil and military affairs ; from these it extended into com-
merce and trade ; and then, as a Latin literature of im-
portance was created by such eminent writers as Virgil,
Horace, Cicero, and Livy, it began to be employed more
and more for literary ends. As the new Christian move-
ment spread throughout the Roman Empire, in many parts
it came under strong Latin influence ; indeed, the churches
of the West seem from the first to have used the Latin
tongue mainly, if not wholly. Early in the fourth century
the Roman Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity
to be the official religion of his Empire. The result of this
was to make Latin once for all the Christian ecclesiastical
language. Of course under these circumstances it became
of the greatest importance to have the Bible translated into
Latin.
The Vulgate. The earliest Latin translation that was
complete and that rose into historic importance, was that
known as the Vulgate. The great historic personage con-
nected with the Vulgate is Jerome, a distinguished scholar
living in the fourth century (340 or 342 to 420 A.D.) who
at the desire of Pope Damasus devoted a large part of his
life to critical studies and labors in connection with the
Bible, making his home for many years in Palestine.
There were already Latin versions of the New Testament
and of many parts of the Old, but they were very im-
perfect Jerome revised the New Testament critically and
began upon the Old Testament But he soon saw that
what was wanted in connection with the latter was a new
translation from the original Hebrew, and not merely a
224 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
revision of translations from the Greek Septuagint To
such a new translation he devoted the later years of his
life. The Vulgate, which is largely his work, slowly sup-
planted the earlier Latin versions, and by the beginning of
the seventh century it had come into general use. At the
Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, it was made the
authorized or official Latin Bible of the Roman Catholic
Church.
The historical importance of the Vulgate is very great.
Since the sixth century it has been the biblical standard in
all Catholic Christendom. The monks of the middle ages
made hundreds and thousands of copies of it, some of them
of great beauty ; and great numbers of these manuscripts
are to-day found in private and public libraries in all parts
of Europe and in the Orient. The Vulgate was early
carried to England, and became the basis of Christian
teaching there, and the first English Bible, that of Wycliffe
(1382) was translated from it The Vulgate was the basis
of the Douai translation (1582 to 1610) which is to-day the
official English Bible of the Catholic Church.
But if in the days when Latin was a living tongue, and
the prevailing language of the Roman Empire, there was
need for the Bible to be translated into Latin, not less, in a
later age, when Latin had become a dead language, was
there need for other and new translations of the Bible to
be made into the tongues which had taken the place of
Latin.
A number of such translations were made during the
middle ages, and even earlier. In the fourth century
Ulfilas translated nearly the entire scriptures into the lan-
guage of the Goths. Near the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury an Armenian version of the Bible was prepared for the
use of Christians in Asia-Minor; and in the eighth or ninth
GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE. 22$
century a Sclavonic version for the use of the Bulgarian
Slavs. No fewer than sixteen translations of the Bible
into European vernaculars are known to have been made
between the fourth and the end of the fifteenth century.
The Reformation. However, it was not until nearly
the time of the great Protestant Reformation of the six-
teenth century that the work of translating the Bible into
the languages of the people began in earnest in Europe.
The Protestant Reformation may well be called the Child
of the Bible. Many influences united to create the Refor-
mation ; but probably the most important was the revival
of Greek learning, which set great numbers of scholars
in central and western Europe to the double task of
studying the Bible anew, and of creating better transla-
tions of it into the vernaculars.
During the middle ages there was great darkness in
Europe. There was little knowledge of any kind among
the people. The Bible was shut up in monasteries and
churches. The Roman Catholic Church made herself its
guardian and keeper, and such knowledge of its contents
as the people possessed they were compelled to receive
through her priesthood. By this means she was able to
preserve and to increase her influence.
Luther and his co-workers saw that if the power of Rome
was to be broken, and if the reform of Christianity was to
be effected, an indispensable agency in bringing about
these results must be the Bible. The Bible must be un-
chained. It must be given to the people. Perhaps the
most important of all the labors of Luther was his transla-
tion of the scriptures into the German tongue, thus open-
ing the door for the Bible to enter every German home.
This made the Reformation a popular movement as other-
wise it could never have been.
15
226 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Wycliffe. The first translation of the whole Bible
into English was made more than a hundred years before
Luther's day, by John Wycliffe, who has been very truly
called the " Morning Star of the Reformation. 1 ' This early
translation was a great event in the history of England,
partly because it was the precursor of a long line of splen-
did biblical work which was to result in giving the Bible to
the English people in ever more and more perfect forms
as time went on, even down to our day, and partly be-
cause, even at that early date, it dealt a heavy blow to
Roman Catholicism in England.
Not only was Wycliffe's Bible read widely, considering
the general intellectual condition of the time, but knowl-
edge of its contents was carried more widely still by the
travelling preachers whom Wycliffe sent out to all parts
of the land, to read and explain its contents to the people.
In this way hundreds of thousands of men and women be-
came acquainted with the Bible as they had never been
before, and thus were made able to see for themselves how
far the Church of Rome, with its hierarchy and its pomp
and show, had wandered from the simplicity and purity of
the gospel.
In still another way Wycliffe's English Bible was very '
influential. It fixed, we may almost say it created, the
English language. Previous to its appearance there was a
great number of English dialects but hardly an .English
tongue. But, from Wycliffe's day on, the language of his
English Bible, the one great book of the people, came to
be recognized as the language of England. " It practically
unified the variously related tongues and dialects of the
land, and made them one for the future use of the English
Speaking world." This was a service of the very highest
value rendered by Wycliffe and his Bible to England.
GIVING THE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE. 22^
Wycliffe's translation was a splendid beginning, but it
was only a beginning. In the first place it was a transla-
tion from the Vulgate, that is to say, it was at best only a
translation of a translation ; but it was certain that, sooner
or later, translations made from the original sources from
the Hebrew and the Greek would be demanded by the -
English people. In the second place, Wycliffe's Bible was -
limited in its circulation as compared with later transla- "
tions, because of the fact that it came into existence before "
the age of printing. It could be multiplied only by the
slow, tedious, and expensive work of the pen, and hence
could reach comparatively only a few.
Tyndale. From Wycliffe we pass on to William Tyn-
dale, born in the year 1484. During the hundred years
intervening between the two men, wonderful things have
happened in Europe. Mediaeval civilization was broken
up and is disappearing. The intellectual world has suf-
fered such an upheaval as was never known. Everywhere
men are beginning to think and to inquire. The clois-
tered, antiquated, and fettered learning of the monasteries
is yielding to the fresh, new knowledge of the schools and
universities. Perhaps most important of all for the cause
of religion, the printing press has been invented, and is
beginning to be put to use everywhere for the multiplica-
tion of copies of the scriptures. One of the very first tasks
performed by Gutenberg, after his new invention was com-
pleted, was the printing of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate,
entire. This was followed soon by the Hebrew Bible.
Erasmus, the great scholar of the Reformation, prepared a
critical edition of the Greek New Testament, and this the
printing press quickly gave to the world.
Tyndale in England took up Wycliffe's Bible work
where the latter had laid it down ; but he did so with the
228 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
great advantage of the use of the printing press. He saw,
too, that the time had come when a better version of the
Bible was needed than that of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's was a
translation from the Latin Vulgate, as has been already
said ; but there ought to be one made directly from the
original Greek and Hebrew. Such an improved transla-
tion Tyndale determined to make. Being a highly accom-
plished classical scholar, and at the same time being
master of a singularly concise, graphic, and picturesque
English style, he was remarkably well fitted for his task.
But the task was one of enormous difficulty. Besides
the labor involved, which was great, there was the opposi-
tion which conservatism always places in the path of relig-
ious advance. Many said then, as many say now, " What
was good enough for our fathers is good enough for us " ;
or, " If we give men a new translation of the Bible differing
from the old it will shake their faith in the book as the
Divine word of God."
The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church for the most
part went further, and opposed Tyndale because they did
not want the Bible given to the people in any form.
We, In these days of religious toleration, little realize the
state of things in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries. On the continent of Europe, Charles V. and
Philip II. decreed death by burning to any one who pre-
sumed even to read the Bible in a language which he could
understand. 1 In England, in the year 1414, a law was en-
acted making it a crime punishable with forfeiture of prop-
erty and life to read the scriptures in the mother tongue
(English). As late as 1543, Parliament decreed that no
laboring man or woman " should read to themselves or to
* Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic," Vol. I. pp. 73, 228.
GIVING TffE BIBLE TO THE PEOPLE. 22$
others, publicly or privately, any part of the Bible, under
pain of imprisonment." It was under such conditions as
these that Tyndale went forth to his self-imposed task of
giving to the people an improved English Bible, a task
which in a few years was to cost him his life. He well
knew his danger, but he did not falter. First he translated
the New Testament, producing a work of great critical and
literary merit for that early time. But in order to accom-
plish it he was obliged to leave England, and carry on his
labor wheresoever he could find shelter in Holland and
Germany. His translation, completed in the year 1523,
was printed in Germany, whence a large edition was
shipped secretly into England, hidden by friendly mer-
chants in cases of goods.
Having finished the New Testament, Tyndale undertook
the translation of the rest of the Bible. In 1530 he pub-
lished a translation of the Pentateuch, and the year follow-
ing another of the Book of Jonah. This was as far as he
was allowed to go. His enemies caused his arrest and im-
prisonment. Being brought to trial, he was condemned as
a heretic, and soon after burned. His last words were,
" Lord, open the eyes of the King of England." His books
were gathered together in quantities and burned also.
But his influence could not be burned, nor could the im-
pulse which he had given to biblical scholarship in England
be arrested.
One thing for which Tyndale will forever be remem-
bered, is the fact that his translation of the New Testament
has formed the literary basis, so to speak, of all the more
important translations that have followed. Thus our New
Testament to-day is scarcely more than a revision of that
of Tyndale. Its style, its choice of words, its noble
English, in the main are Tyndale's. As a historian of the
230 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
subject has well said : " Such an influence as this upon
the English Bible cannot be attributed to any other man in
all -the past." Nor is this all. To influence the English
Bible as Tyndale did was to influence powerfully the whole
literature of England. " Tyndale set a standard for the
English language that moulded in part the character and
style of that tongue during the Elizabethan era and all sub-
sequent time. He gave the language fixity, volubleness,
grace, beauty, simplicity, and directness," (thus adding his
own to the influence of Wycliffe, and carrying to complete-
ness the work which Wycliffe had begun). Tyndale's in-
fluence, as a man of letters, was permanent on the style
and literary taste of the English people.
CHAPTER XXI.
OUR ENGLISH BIBLE.
FROM Tyndale's day the work of giving the Bible to the
English people in their own tongue went forward with in-
creased power. To be sure there were periods of great
opposition. Scholars were imprisoned or compelled to
fly to other lands. Editions of the scriptures were seized
and committed to the flames. But these set-backs were
only temporary. The mighty forces at the heart of the
Protestant Reformation on the continent were operative
also in England.
During the three-quarters of a century following Tyn-
dale's death, a number of English versions of the Bible of
very different value were prepared and placed before the
public. Among them were those known as " Coverdale's
Bible " which, strange as it may seem, was printed and dis-
tributed with the royal approval ; " Matthew's Bible,"
which was really the translation begun by Tyndale, com-
pleted by John Rogers and others ; " The Great Bible," a
revision of the preceding and its issue in a new form ;
" The Geneva Bible," an excellent revision of " The Great
Bible," made by English scholars who had been obliged to
fly to Geneva in Switzerland to escape from persecution by
Queen Mary; "The Bishops' Bible," another revis.ion of
" The Great Bible," made by a considerable number of
English scholars, nine of whom were Bishops of the Estab-
lished Church (hence its name) ; and, finally, " The Douai
Bible," an English version of the Vulgate prepared and
232 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
printed at Douai, Flanders, for the use of Roman Catho-
lics in England, by English Catholics who had migrated
to the Continent after the accession of Queen Elizabeth.
The "Authorized Version/' This brings us to the
year 1611, when the "Authorized Version" was issued,
the Bible which has been the standard of all English speak-
ing Protestant peoples for almost three centuries.
The reason for the preparation of this version was that
none of those that preceded it were generally satisfactory
to English scholars. Scholarship was advancing, and it
was believed that a more perfect English Bible could be
prepared than any as yet existing. To insure this desirable
result, King James I, who was himself something of a Bible
student, summoned a company of fifty-four (perhaps more
correctly forty-seven) biblical scholars, Anglicans and
Puritans, some of them laymen, and gave them instruc-
tions to prepare the most perfect translation (or rather
revision) of the Bible possible. The competency of the
revisers was undoubted. They took ample time for their
task nearly six ..years. The excellence of the result is
known by the whole English speaking world. When the
new version was completed, of course the influence of the
King's name and the eminence of the scholars who had
produced the revision brought to it much public favor.
And yet, there was no lack of opposition from the conser-
vatism of the time. The Geneva Bible long maintained
a not unsuccessful rivalry with it. More than half a
century elapsed before the new work came into general
use.
For almost three centuries the Authorized, or King
James' Version, of 1611, has been an English classic as
well as a book of religion. " Its simple, majestic Anglo-
Saxon tongue, its clear, sparkling style, its directness and
OUR ENGLISH BIBLE. 233
force of utterance, have made it the model in language,
style, and dignity of some of the choicest writers of the last
two centuries. Added to the above characteristics, its
reverential and spiritual tone and attitude have made it the
idol of the Christian Church, and endeared it to the hearts
of millions of men and women.' 1
Why should not this noble version remain the satisfactory
and all sufficient English Bible for all time to come? Why
should we hear of further translations and revisions? Why
should we actually have in our hands to-day a Revised
Version, prepared only a few years ago, at great expense
of time and labor and money, by a large body of English
and American scholars? And why should this Revised
Version be seeking to supplant the older version in all our
Churches, Sunday Schools and homes ?
The answer is, the world moves. There has been a great
advance in biblical scholarship since 1611. The patient
and arduous labors of scholars have resulted in giving us a
far better text, both of the Hebrew Old Testament and of
the Greek New Testament, than King James 1 revisers knew
anything about. Indeed, not one of the oldest and best
Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, which all
scholars now rely upon as our highest authorities, was in
the hands of the men who created the Authorized Version ;
every one has been discovered since that version was com-
pleted. Hence, of course, it is easily within our power
to-day to prepare a version of the Bible far more true to
the original, and therefore far more correct, than was pos-
sible in the days of King James. These facts, even if there
were no others, would abundantly justify the creation of
the Revised Version.
But there are others. Important changes have taken
place in the English language since 1611. All living
234 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
languages grow. Growth and decay are as much the law
of speech as of trees. Great numbers of words have taken
on new and different meanings since King James* day.
Many other words, and not a few forms of expression,
have become entirely obsolete. Thus we see that there
was abundant need for a revision, to correct these imper-
fections of language caused by time, and to bring the
Bible abreast of the English of to-day. Nor is this revi-
sion the last that will be required. Throughout all the
future, so far as we can see, other revisions will be needed
from time to time, if the Bible is to continue a really
living book.
The Revised Version. The movement to produce
our present Revised Version was inaugurated in England
in the year 1870, by officials of the Established Church.
First a committee of fifty-four eminent and widely repre-
sentative English scholars, and, later, another committee
of thirty equally eminent and equally representative Amer-
ican scholars, were appointed to perform the great task.
They devoted to it nearly fourteen years of careful, consci-
entious labor, completing and publishing the revised New
Testament in 1881 and the Old Testament in 1885.
It should be added that the American Committee con-
tinued its work for several years longer, and in 1901
published under the name of the "Standard American
Edition of the Revised Version," a work which embodies
the fullest results of the labors of both committees, plus
emendations and improvements which the American com-
mittee deemed important, but which the more conservative
and less free British committee were unwilling to sanction.
While the English Edition is and will continue, to be prized
by conservative scholars, the American Edition seems likely
to become more and more the standard English Bible for
OUR ENGLISH BIBLE. 235
progressive and free minds, not only in America, but in all
English speaking lands.
It will take time, probably a long time, for the Revised
Version to come into general use ; for religious progress is
always slow. But the superiority of the Revised over the
Authorized is so great that sooner or later the former
must supplant the latter. Let us notice some respects in
which it is superior.
1. As we have already seen, the Revised Version is
based upon a much better original text, especially in the
case of the New Testament. The Revised Version of the
New Testament differs from the New Testament in the Au-^
thorized Version in more than 36,000 places. Of course
this means that in nearly or quite 36,000 instances the
Greek text upon which the Authorized Version was based
was faulty, and that the Revised Version is able to correct
these errors because, in the larger number of places, its
Greek text is superior. To be sure, great numbers of
these corrections are of only slight importance because the
errors are trivial, as of the spelling of a word or the wrong
use of a Greek accent But if this is true, it is also true
that others are of great importance.
2. The Revised Version omits passages which are
known to be spurious but which the Authorized Version
retains. There is a considerable number of such. That
they are late interpolations is seen by the fact that our
earliest and best manuscripts do not contain them. In
some cases their omission or retention considerably affects
the doctrinal teaching of the Bible.
3. The Revised Version is much better paragraphed
than the Authorized. The old mechanical chopping up
of the scriptures into chapters and verses of proximately
equal length, without reference to the sense, thus breaking
236 OXIGIN AND GROWTH OF TffE BIBLE.
in pieces sentences and paragraphs which ought to be one,
is about as effective a means of preventing a right under-
standing of the Bible as could be devised. The Revised
Version removes or pushes quite into the back-ground
these mechanical, arbitrary, and misleading disruptions,
and introduces in their stead such natural divisions as the
subject-matter requires to make its meaning plain.
4. The Revised Version is clear from those misleading
dates which so long have disfigured the margins of the
Authorized Version. It is now possible for us to read the
Book of Genesis without being informed that the world
was created in the year 4004 B.C., and drowned by a
universal Flood in the year 2349 B.C.
5. The Revised Version is also free from the old
chapter-headings, many of which were equally false and
misleading. In some editions of the Revised Version,
chapter-headings are provided, but they are new, and
descriptive of what the chapters really contain.
6. Quotations made by New Testament writers from the
Old Testament, are indicated in the Revised Version as
quotations. This makes many passages much more
intelligible.
7. The Revised Version (at least the American Revised
Version) leaves out all obsolete words, giving in their
place words in current use to-day, which everybody can
understand. The number of improvements of this kind
which it introduces into the Bible is very large.
8. In literary form, the Revised Version is vastly supe-
rior to the Authorized. For example, all those books and
parts of books of the Bible which are poetry, the Revised
Version prints as poetry, as it ought; whereas in the
Authorized Version they always have been and still are
printed as prose. This change is a very great improve-
OUR ENGLISH BIBLE. 237
ment in literary form. It makes the Bible more attractive,
and it helps us to understand what it really is as literature.
One wonders that the world has so long endured thfc old
disfigurement and degradation of all the Bible's poetical
books and portions.
These illustrations show how greatly superior is the
Revised Version to that which it is designed to supersede,
and how many and strong are the reasons why all lovers
of the Bible and of truth should give it their support
And yet we must not suppose that the Revised Version
is a finality. Great as is its excellence, no scholar claims
that it is perfect. As has already been said, there will be
other revisions. There will be other translations. The
motto must still be, Forward ! Indeed, several revisions
and translations have already been made of the whole
Bible or of parts, which, in some of their features, are supe-
rior to the Revised Version, and which may well be used
as supplementary to that.
In 1869, Prof. George R. Noyes, of Harvard University,
published a translation of the New Testament and much of
the Old, which was of great excellence and permanent
value.
Much more recent is the unique " Polychrome Bible,"
so called because the eminent scholars who projected it
have sought by means of different color to represent the
different component elements, or literary "strata," so to
speak, of the various books. No other translation, indeed,
no other work of any kind, gives the student so clear and
vivid an idea of the extent to which the biblical writings
are composites, mosaics, collections of literary and historic
material, which grew by repeated compilations, editings,
and additions of part to part, as this notable production.
Another translation that is quite worthy of notice is the
338 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
" Twentieth Century New Testament," a work which, by
rendering the New Testament writings into the language
of to-day, imparts to them new vividness, and, to many
minds, new interest and power.
In this connection, Professor Moulton's " Bible for Mod-
ern Readers " may be mentioned. This work is not a new
translation (it employs the English Revised Version), but
it is a new arrangement of the sacred writings, prepared
with great skill and literary insight, and of a character to
make the Bible intelligible and attractive to many to whom
in its old form it has been unattractive, if not unintelligible.
Possibly the literary rearranging and editing are sometimes
carried so far as to seem overdone and artificial, but at
least they are remarkably suggestive. Matthew Arnold
wrote with much learning and intelligence to convince us
that the Bible is " literature, not dogma." Professor Moul-
ton edits its various books with such literary skill and
charm, and places them before us in such attractive literary
form, as to make us see as we have never seen before, that
they are primarily literature, many of them beautiful,
noble and great literature. Perhaps no other scholar has
done so much to give the English Bible a worthy literary
form, and to lift it up to its proper place as a great literary
classic.
Such are some of the signs, appearing in many quarters,
which indicate that a greater day than it has yet known is
dawning for the English Bible. 1
1 For further information regarding Bible texts, manuscripts, transla-
tions, revisions, and versions, see "The Ancestry of Our English Bible*"
by Prof. Ira A. Price, 1907.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PROGRESS TRACEABLE IN
THE BIBLE.
IT is common to think of the religion of the Bible as
being all one and the same, from Genesis to Malachi, and
from Matthew to Revelation. The various scripture
writers are commonly read, accepted, and quoted as if
all were equally wise, as if all held and taught the same
views of truth, as if all were on a level as to reliability
and authority. Nothing in the Bible itself justifies this
conception, the influence of which is confusing and harm-
ful in the highest degree. The religion taught in the
Bible is all " one and the same " only in the sense that
the acorn and the oak are one and the same, or that the
immaturity of the child and the wisdom of the man are
one and the same. There is a veil over the eyes of every
theory of biblical interpretation which does not see in
the religion which the Bible portrays a flowing stream,
broadening and deepening as it advances. The Bible is
a panorama of religious progress. It deals with life, not
death; therefore it is a record of growth, for life never
stands still. It is the history of a moral and religious
development, the most remarkable of which we have any
knowledge, carried on on the scale of a whole nation, ex-
tending not through a single generation only, but through
forty generations a period of time as long as from
Charlemagne to the present day and presenting with
photographic exactness every phase of individual and
240 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
national progress from the crude child-state to a rich
maturity. It is this that makes the Bible so living, so
fresh, so inexhaustible, so full of interest and power a
book for all times and all peoples ; a world-book as no
other volume, sacred or profane, is.
This religious and moral growth which appears in the
Bible reveals itself in many different forms of manifesta-
tion. Let us glance at some of the more important of
these.
Progress in the Conception of God. The Old Testa-
ment portrays the growth of a people from polytheism
to monotheism; from the worship of gods, cruel and
vengeful, represented by various images, up to a very
pure and lofty spiritual worship. This growth is harder
to trace, because the books do not stand in the Bible in
the order of their dates, and some that deal with very
early times were written late. Still, with care, we are
able to get at the facts. Little in the Pentateuch is his-
toric. That the Ten Commandments, however, in some
form, longer or shorter, came from Moses, may be asserted
as possible. But even in these we find an intimation that
other gods were believed in and recognized besides Jah-
veh. The Decalogue does not begin, "I, the Lord, am
the only God." It begins, "I am the Lord thy God."
And the command that Jahveh lays upon the people
seems to be simply, that they shall worship him, not the
others. He is their God; he has done much for them,
brought them out of the land of Egypt, etc. ; hence
they shall be true to him, and "have no other gods be-
fore" him.
All through the Pentateuch, and in many other parts
of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word Elohim (a plural
form) is much used for God. Why a plural ? It seems
PKOGKESS TXACEABLE IN THE BIBLE. 241
to be a reminiscence of a time when it was common for
men to think and speak of "gods," not of a single deity.
And such passages in the Book of Genesis as, " Let us
make man/' " Behold, the man is become as one of us?
" Ye shall be as gods" have a polytheistic sound. Even
as late as Elijah, we find the thought of that prophet to
be, not that Jahveh is the god of the whole world, or the
only god, but that he is " God in Israel" * And, later
still, we find the writer of the eighty-sixth Psalm declar-
ing : " Among the gods there is none like unto thee> O
Jahveh/' 2
Polytheism and idolatry are deeply rooted in the
thought and sentiment of the early Hebrew people. To
eradicate them, and to educate the nation up to the
higher religion which will come by and by, the seed of
which has been planted by Moses, will take many cen-
turies.
The Book of Judges tells us that when the Israelites
entered the land of Canaan, they proceeded almost at
once to engage in the worship of the peoples who lived
there the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites 3
probably in addition to their worship of their own God
Jahveh. The same book also tells us that at that time
graven and molten images, ephods and teraphim, were
part of an equipment of a priest of Jahveh. 4 Even King
Solomon offered sacrifices unto " Ashtoreth the goddess
of the Zidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the
Ammonites," and "built a high place for Chemosh the
abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination
of the children of Ammon." 5 Indeed, of thirty-seven
J I Kings xviii. 36. 9 Verse 8. * Judg. iii. 5, 6.
4 Judg. xvii. 3-5, 13. * I Kings xi. 5, 7.
16
242 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
kings of Israel and Judah, beginning with Saul and end-
ing with Josiah, thirty-one were open worshippers of other
gods than Jahveh. When we read of the worship of the
golden calf in the wilderness, in the time of Aaron, we are
apt to think of that as a solitary instance in Hebrew his-
tory ; but the truth seems to be, that this form of worship
was practiced even as late as the time of Jeroboam II. 1
Kuenen argues with great force, that for several centu-
ries, indeed until near the time of the captivity, Jahveh
was extensively worshipped under the form of a bull. 2
And on the general subject of the early religion of
the Jews, he says: "At first the religion of Israel was
polytheism. During the eighth century before Christ
the great majority of the people still acknowledged the
existence of many gods, and, what is more, they wor-
shipped them. And we can add that during the seventh
century and down to the beginning of the Babylonish
exile (586 B.C.) this state of things remained unaltered.
Jeremiah could say to his contemporaries without fear of
contradiction : * According to the number of thy cities
are thy gods, O Judah ! '" 8
The truth seems to be that polytheism, idolatry, and
the use of images were not finally put away, and the
popular religion of Israel did not become really and
permanently monotheistic, until the period of the Exile.
So great was the task, and so long an education did it
require, to make over the religious conceptions and sen-
timents of a people.
Nor was the development simply up to monotheism. 'What
was even more important, it was up to ethical monotheism.
1 See i Kings xii. 26-33.
* " Religion of Israel," vol. i., pp. 235-6, 345-6.
"Idem. voL i., p. 223.
PROGRESS TRACEABLE IN THE BIBLE. 243
It is difficult for us to-day to understand all that this
means difficult because we so little realize how low was
the popular conception of the character of God enter-
tained by the Hebrew people at the beginning of their
national career. In those parts of the Old Testament
which portray the earlier thought and life, God is not
only represented as walking, talking, having bodily form ;
coming down from the sky to see what men are doing ;
" wrestling with one patriarch, eating veal and cakes with
another ; " contending, and for a while in vain, with the
magic of other gods; but he is portrayed as getting angry,
being jealous, repenting, deceiving, sanctioning fraud,
commanding shocking cruelties, exhibiting almost every
passion and imperfection of man. Not only are vast
numbers of cruel and bloody animal sacrifices offered to
him, but there are distinct traces of human sacrifice.
The story of Abraham, commanded by Jahveh to offer
up his son Isaac, is familiar to all. True, in this case we
are told that the sacrifice was not actually made, but we
have a definite command from Jahveh to make it, and
we see Abraham attempting in earnest to carry out the
command. 1
A case in which the victim was actually slain is that
of Jephthah's daughter. Jephthah promises Jahveh a
human sacrifice, and fulfils that promise in the immola-
tion of his own child. 2 Says Kuenen : " Human sacrifice
occurs not unfrequently in the worship of Jahveh. When
Micah introduces one of his contemporaries, a worship-
per of Jahveh, speaking thus :
. * Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?'
1 Gen. xxil * Judg. xi. 30-40.
244 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
it is undoubtedly implied that in his day such a sacri-
fice was not looked upon as at all unreasonable. Human
sacrifice appears as an element of the bull-worship in the
kingdom of the ten tribes ; David seeks to avert Jahveh's
anger, by the death of Saul's progeny ; * Samuel hews
Agag the king of the Amalekites in pieces before the
face ofjahveh at Gilgal." 2
It was from such conceptions of God and worship as
are portrayed here, that the development of the He-
brew religion proceeded. Are we shocked when we thus
discover pictures of a God who is almost without moral
character, and who is pleased with the sacrifice of human
life ? Let us not forget that we are here at the begin-
ning of the Bible's religion, not at its end. It is the glory
of the Bible that it gives us the record of a people's
progress from all this, up to the God of the Prophets,
whose law is righteousness, and whose service is doing
justly and loving mercy ; indeed, from all this up to the
God of Jesus, whose name is Our Father, and whose wor-
ship is love.
Growth of the Belief in Immortality. We find in the
Bible, as we advance from the earlier to the later writings,
great progress of thought regarding the doctrine of im-
mortality. The New Testament is full of this doctrine.
As to the Old Testament, it is a question among scholars
whether it can be said to be taught there or not. Most
of the books, particularly the older ones, are silent on the
1 2 Sam. xxi. 1-14.
3 z Sam. xv. 33. On the general subject of the offering of human sacri-
fices among the ancient Hebrews, see Kuenen's " Religion of Israel," vol.
i. pp. 237, 250-252 ; Kalisch's "Commentary on Leviticus," Part I., pp.
248-253 ; " Bible for Learners," vol. L pp. 26, 146-149, 319, 320, 410 ; vol.
fi. 16, 17, 299, 300, 402, 509-
PROGRESS TRACEABLE IN THE BIBLE. 245
subject. The religion of ancient Israel was pre-eminently
a religion of this world. Its interests were here; it
looked for its rewards and its penalties here. In some
quarters there appears to have been thorough-going dis-
belief in any hereafter for man. Says the skeptical ,
author of the Book of Ecclesiastes : "The dead know?
not anything, neither have they any reward." " That "
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even
one thing befalleth them: as one dieth, so dieth the
other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath
no pre-eminence above a beast." Dean Stanley thinks
the doctrine of a future life is not taught in any except
the later books; in these, however, he is sure that he
finds it. Professor Toy examines the principal passages
in the Old Testament which are claimed as teaching the
doctrine, and decides that if we mean by immortality a
conscious, intelligent, active life of hopes and interests,
rewards and punishments, then none of these passages
teach it. 1 What he finds taught in the Old Testament,
and believed in generally among the ancient Jews, is an
existence for man beyond the grave, but so shadowy,
unsubstantial, and devoid of pleasure, that it ought not
to be called immortality. He finds what he calls " the
old Semitic conception of a colorless existence in Sheol
a gloomy underworld with gates and bars, tenanted by
joyless shades, whose existence runs a gray, uncheckered
course, unillumined by the ordinary emotions of men,
unstimulated by their ordinary aims and hopes, severed
from the life of the great world above, and cut off from
living communion with God." 1 He believes that the
first Jewish book that teaches the doctrine of immor-
1 " Judaism and Christianity," pp. 379-382.
246 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
tality in any adequate sense is the apocryphal Wisdom
of Solomon, 1 written about 100 B.C., a book which, by
what seems a strange and unaccountable unwisdom, was
not allowed a place in the Canon. The Book of Daniel,
written about 165 B.C., seems to teach the doctrine in a
way; and most scholars hold that certain passages in the
Psalms teach it somewhat clearly.
But, whatever our decision may be about the Old Tes-
tament, when we pass on to the New all doubt is removed.
Here we find the doctrine of a life to come, shining from
almost every page. Perhaps no single New Testament
teaching is more conspicuous, as certainly none is more
inspiring.
Rise of the Belief in Satan. It is not to be wondered
at if change, or the coming of what is new into the Bible,
does not always indicate progress. The advent of the
doctrine of the existence of Satan is a conspicuous case
in point. This doctrine is absent from those books of
the Old Testament which we know to be the oldest;
namely, the eighth and seventh century prophecies. In-
deed, it appears only in the books written during or after
the Captivity. Even if we admit that the serpent in the
Genesis paradise story ought to be identified with Satan,
we have here no exception, for it should be borne in mind
that the Book of Genesis was probably not completed be-
fore about the beginning of the fifth century before Christ,
a century after the Captivity closed. Satan appears in
the Books of Job, Zechariah, and Chronicles; but these
are all late writings. Belief in the existence of such a
bad being the foe of God, the accuser of the good, the
tempter of men to evil seems to have come into Judaism
1 "Judaism and Christianity/' p. 378, * Idem, p. 386.
PJtOGJRESS TRACEABLE IN THE BIBLE. 24?
from the religion of the Persians, through contact with that
people during or after the Exile.
In the appearance of this new belief we find an in-
structive explanation of that strange contradiction which
appears between the two accounts of the numbering of
Israel found in the Books of Samuel and Chronicles. 1
The record in Samuel tells us that it was the Lord who
tempted David to do the numbering ; that in Chronicles
says it was Satan. The explanation is evidently this :
Samuel is the older book by two or three centuries. At
the time it was written the belief in such a being as Satan
was unknown, and evil, as well as good, was referred to
God as its author. But by the time Chronicles was com-
piled, belief in Satan had come in, and he, not God, was
now held to be the instigator of evil. Hence an event
which in the earlier book was naturally ascribed to God,
was now as naturally ascribed to Satan.
Belief in the existence of Satan appears in many of the
New Testament books ; in some, like the Apocalypse, it
is prominent.
Thus we see that change in thought found in the Bible
does not always mean advance in truth; it may mean
temporary retrogression, or the coming in of a supersti-
tion. The main movement, however, in both the Old
Testament and the New, is undoubtedly progressive, in
the direction of larger and higher truth and life.
Moral Progress. Perhaps no form of advance seen in
the Bible is more striking than that which appears in its
moral teachings. To be sure, we are very likely to be
blinded to this, by seeing at the beginning of the volume,
as we read it, the tale of a paradise garden and of a sup-
1 2 Sam. xxiv. I, and I Chron. xxi. I.
248 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
posed perfect man and woman, and such idyllic pictures
of life as those of the patriarchs. But as soon as we put
all this apart by itself, as we must, as legend and poetry,
and not historic fact, and remember that our earliest
reliable picture of Hebrew life is that which we have in
the Books of Judges and Samuel, then we are prepared
to discover the moral progress which comes so clearly to
view in the career of Israel.
The Israelitish people when they emerge from the
shadow of the pre-historic time say in the eleventh or
twelfth century before Christ have advanced as yet
hardly beyond a half-civilized state. They have no set-
tled government; lawlessness and cruelty abound. We
have only to read the accounts that come down to us
from those times, of assassinations like those committed
by Ehud 1 and Jael ; 2 brutalities like those practiced upon
Adoni-bezek and the seventy kings ; 3 debaucheries like
those of Samson; 4 Samuel's words to ' ul ^ he went
away to battle: "Spare no Amalekite, slay man and
woman, infant and suckling;" 5 and the wholesale massa-
cres of women and innocent children reported in connec-
tion with the conquest of Canaan, 6 to see what a long
road Israel had to travel before reaching the noble ethics
of the Prophets and Job and Ecclesiasticus, not to say of
Paul and Jesus.
Perhaps no one ever pictured that long and splendid
advance more vividly than Jesus himself, when, in the
Sermon on the Mount, he said : " Ye have heard that it
hath been declared [by them of old time], Thou shalt
love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto
1 Judg. iiL 21. * Judg. iv. 21. Judg. i. 6, 7.
* Judg. xvi. * r Sam. xv. 3.
* Dent. xx. 16, 17 ; Josh. viii. 18-29 ; x. 28-41 ; Num. xxi. 35 ; xxxi. 17, 18.
PROGRESS TRACEABLE ftf THE BIBLE. 249
you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you." " Ye have heard that it
hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth : but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil." If
we turn to the Book of Exodus, where this last passage
quoted by Jesus stands, we find it reading, in its fuller
form, " Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot
for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe
for stripe ; " l or if we turn to Deuteronomy, we find a
similar passage : " Thine eye shall not pity ; but life shall
go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot." * From such teachings as these, to Christ's
" Love your enemies, bless them that curse you ; " or to
Paul's " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; overcome evil
with good," is about as long an ethical journey as it is
possible for us to conceive.
No intelligent and honest man can deny that sanction
is to be found in parts of the Old Testament for slavery,
for polygamy, for revenge, for deceit, for the putting to
death of witches, for war, for the indiscriminate slaughter
of captives taken in war, and for other evils. Are these
evils good, then ? Certainly not. Then must we throw
the Bible away as an untrustworthy 'guide ? An untrust-
worthy guide it most certainly is if we see in it no growth,
and accept all parts of it as of equal value and authority.
It is this kind of interpretation that has in all ages turned
it into an armory from which to draw texts for the de-
1 Exod. xxi. 24, 25. It is, perhaps, worthy of notice that this is part of
what is known to scholars as the " Book of the Covenant " (Exod. xx.-xxiii.)*
which is undoubtedly an ancient code, going back, perhaps, nearly or quite
to the time of Moses, which, has been preserved and inserted into the Penta-
teuch at this point.
* Deut, xix. 21,
250 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
fence of every kind of cruelty, superstition, and wrong.
It is only as we recognize it as a book of growth and
progress, and take as our guide its best and highest
teachings, not its lowest and worst, what it has grown to,
not what it has grown from, that it becomes a safe and
valuable guide.
CHAPTER XXIII.
RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION: A HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
PERHAPS the whole subject of the moral and religious
progress traceable in the Bible, or, to put it in other words,
of the evolution of the religion of Israel, may be best shown
by a brief historical summary. For such a summary a few
introductory words will prepare the way.
Under the old views of the Bible, that is, under the
views which prevailed before the advent of modern bib-
lical scholarship, or what is known as the higher criticism,
it was not possible to find in the Bible, or at least in the
Old Testament, anything which could properly be called
moral and religious progress on any considerable scale;
there was no evidence that the religion of Israel was an
evolution.
This was because we were under the delusion of radi-
cally false ideas as to the origin and age of man} of the
biblical books, and consequently fundamentally err meous
views of Israel's national and religious history. Much that
was really earliest we thought latest, and much that was
really latest we thought earliest. Of course this created
confusion everywhere. The old view of the Bible, founded
on tradition and imagination, which regarded the world
as created six thousand years ago (instead of millions of
years, as we now know), and Genesis as the earliest book
of the Qld Testament (instead of one of the latest), and the
so-called Mosaic laws as written by Moses (instead of seven
or eight centuries after Moses* death), distorted and re-
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
versed the history of the Hebrew people in much the same
way that the history of a man would be distorted and re-
versed if we had the doings of his childhood presented to
us as those of his mature years, and the events of his old
age represented as those of his youth.
Not until the new biblical scholarship came on the scene
was there any light. But the patient researches of a hun-
dred years, carried on in many lands, has at last brought
order out of chaos. It has given us the essential facts as
to the origin of the various biblical writings. As a result,
we now know which are history and which are not. We
know which are earlier and which later in date. We can
now trace the real history of the Hebrew religion and the
Hebrew people, not indeed from Adam and a Paradise
garden, or from Noah, or even from Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob; for all the far-off region represented by these
names we now understand is one of legend, tradition,
and dream, but we can trace it with a considerable de-
gree of certainty from Moses, and with much clearness
from David and Solomon, on and down to the age of the
New Testament.
And what does that history show? Confusion, deca-
dence, retrogression ? No. It shows order, sequence,
continuity, the operation of the laws of historic cause and
effect, and a remarkable progress. The progress was not
uniform, it was not uninterrupted, no human progress
ever is, but it was real, persistent, never long checked,
and in its results extraordinary. We now see that the
religion of the Hebrew people in Palestine was a growth
as natural as the growth of a tree ; a development which
at last we are able to trace almost as clearly as we can
trace the development of the Papacy in the middle ages,
or of Protestantism in modern times ; an evolution of un-
A HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 253
surpassed interest which has exerted an influence upon the
world probably greater than any other religious evolution
known.
We are now ready for our historic epitome or summary.
If we find it taking us to some slight extent over ground
already trodden, at least it will be by a somewhat different
path, and with somewhat different ends in view.
In the preceding chapter we found moral and religious
evolution in the Bible to be a fact, in the light of the
new biblical knowledge, a conspicuous fact. In the brief
epitome which follows, the aim will be to trace the various
steps of that evolution in their order, and to obtain a con-
nected view of the whole.
Earliest Beginnings before Moses. Conditions
from which the Evolution Arose. The earliest an-
cestors of Israel of whom we are able to get any trace
are Semitic tribes, seemingly some of them held in
temporary bondage in Egypt, perhaps others wandering
nomads in Arabia. Their civilization is low, their morals
are crude, they are polygamists, their worship is fetichistic
and polytheistic, their gods are fierce nature forces. Hu-
man sacrifices are not unknown among them.
From Moses to David (1300 to 1000 B.C.). Under
the leadership of Moses, Jehovah (Yahveh) becomes Is-
rael's tribal god, the tribes swearing allegiance to him at
Sinai. He is cruel and vindictive, but certain moral ele-
ments come early to be associated with his character. He
is represented by no image; the "Ark" is his home.
While it is thought proper for other nations and peoples
to worship their own tribal or national gods, the people of
Israel are forbidden to worship any god but their own.
The tribes invade Canaan, which they regard as their
"Promised Land," promised them by Jehovah. The
254 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF TffE BIBLE.
conquest of the country proceeds slowly. The wars car*
ried on are brutal. There is much massacring of con-
quered enemies, women and children as well as men, at
the reputed command of Jehovah. By degrees the no-
madic gives place to the settled agricultural life. Gradu-
ally the tribes draw nearer together. Social life and moral
conditions somewhat improve. But there is still much
worship of idols and of Canaanitish gods. Jehovah him-
self is worshipped under the form of a bull.
From David Onward (1000-586 B.C.). Under Saul
and David the tribes are consolidated and become really a
nation. David and Solomon build in Jerusalem a Temple
to Jehovah; yet the worship of other gods flourishes.
There are even horrid rites (including the offering of
children) to Molech. The prophets arise, Elijah and
Elisha (9th century B.C.), Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah,
and others (8th century), leading in a fierce war against
idolatry. It is " Jehovah against Baal ! " The prophets
more and more emphasize the moral element in religion, and
declare Jehovah to be a stern and holy god, demanding
Justice and Truth. There is a partial reformation under
King Hezekiah (about 710 B.C.), and a more effectual one
under King Josiah (621) ; and yet the old evils tenaciously
persist.
The Captivity in Babylon (586-536). The hard and
bitter experiences of the Captivity, like purifying fires,
finally destroy idolatry; and from this time on Jehovah is
the sole object of worship. The influence of the priests
increases. Priestly laws are elaborated. The prophets,
particularly the " Great Unknown," the so-called " Second
Isaiah," comfort the people and keep alive their hope of
return to their own land. The character of Jehovah is
elevated and more fully endowed with ethical elements.
A HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 25$
He begins to be thought of as not confined to Israel, but
as the God of the whole earth. He is becoming a God of
love. Worship grows more pure and spiritual.
From the Captivity to Jesus (536-5 B. C.). A com-
pany of zealous Jews return from Babylon to Jerusalem;
they rebuild the Temple and then the walls of the city.
Under the influence of Ezra legalism becomes dominant.
Priestly regulations multiply. The authority of Moses is
exalted. The canon of " The Law " is established ; thus
Bible-making begins. The Temple-worship is greatly elab-
orated ; rites and forms increase ; at the same time many
noble religious hymns (preserved in our Book of Psalms)
are composed. The Church absorbs the State. Prophet
religion gives way to priest religion. The eyes of the
people are more and more turned to the past The reli-
gion of Israel becomes " Judaism/' founded on a Book.
Yet synagogues multiply, and their influence is liberal-
izing. Noble protests against the growing ecclesiasticism
and pleas for freedom and breadth are written, like the
Books of Ruth and Jonah. " Other-world " ideas come in
from Persia. The broadening influence of Greek culture
is felt Under the stimulus of Greek thought there is a
rich development of " Wisdom Literature," as seen in the
Books of Proverbs and Job, and the apocryphal Ecclesias-
ticus and Wisdom of Solomon. The Jewish Sects (Phari-
sees, Sadducees and Essenes) arise and become influential.
A second sacred canon, that of " The Prophets," is formed.
The fires of patriotism, love of freedom, and 2eal for the
national religion blaze high under the heroic Maccabees.
The " Messianic Hope " is kindled in many quarters.
Apocalyptic books, like Daniel and Enoch, are written,
adding to the flame of that hope. Many psalms, some of
them breathing a spirit of universality and of deep spirit-
256 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE,
uality are written. The tallest souls are coming to think
of Jehovah as a " Father." While in some quarters there
are intense fanaticism and intolerance, in others there is
a growing spirit of cosmopolitanism such as no previous
age has known. The thought is arising in many minds
that Israel has a mission to the world ; that Israel's God is
also the God of the Gentiles, and that Israel's faith should
be given to all nations. Lofty, ethical, and spiritual ideas,
much like those which soon will be preached by Jesus, are
being taught by Rabbi Hillel and others, and they find
a wide welcome. Many influences are preparing the way
for a movement like that which Jesus will inaugurate.
Jesus and the New Testament Culmination of
the Evolution. It is plain that the men who received the
message of Jesus and gave it to the world were much
inferior to their Master in their religious insight. Only
imperfectly did they understand him (the fate of all
greatest teachers). His utterances as transmitted to us
are fragmentary, more or less distorted, and mixed with
much that cannot have come from him. And yet much
is clear. In him the prophetic spirit of the Old Testament
finds a glorious rebirth. He is in the line of Amos,
Hosea, and the Second Isaiah, and he surpasses, overtops
his predecessors. His religion is the best religion of his
people carried to a still more complete development. He
is not free from the limitations of his time, as is seen in his
belief in demon-possession, the speedy approach of the
" end of the world/' and much else. But he is a spiritual
seer, a great prophet soul, a religious reformer with a
burning message, a mighty lover of men, truly a " teacher
sent from God."
His all-overmastering thought is love. His central
gospel is, God is the universal Father and all men are
A HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
brothers. His aim, from which he never swerves, is the
establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven (the reign of
love and purity and peace) in the hearts of men. His
mountain-summit teachings are the Beatitudes, the Lord's
Prayer, " love your enemies," the Golden Rule (indeed the
whole Sermon on the Mount), " I was hungry and ye gave
me meat," " whoso would be great let him be a servant/'
the two Great Commandments, the parables of the Good
Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and his own prayer in
Gethsemane, "Father, not my will but thine be done."
In Jesus the splendid line of Israel's prophets culmin-
ates. In his teaching and life the religion of the Bible finds
its finest efflorescence. His gospel of God's Fatherhood
and Man's Brotherhood is the climax and consummation of
Israel's ethical and spiritual evolution of more than twelve
centuries.
We shall never understand the religion of the Bible
until we learn to conceive of it as an evolution, and the
Old and New Testaments as the many-sided and many-
voiced literature in which all phases and stages of that
evolution from lowest to highest are portrayed.
Where, then, in the Bible shall we go for ethical stand-
ards, for true views of God, for just rules of life and con-
duct? To all parts alike? Certainly not. To the lowest?
Never. Where then? To the best, and to these alone.
Always to those parts which show the evolution most
advanced, highest, nearest its completion. In the Old
Testament to the greatest of the Prophets, and to the
loftiest and purest of the Psalms. In the New Testament
to the highest utterances of Paul and John and James, but
above all, to Jesus. And even in Jesus there are better
and best We must go to the best even in the Gospels,
17
CHAPTER XXIV.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN
SCHOLARSHIP. I.
Is the Bible infallible? Or, to use a word that is pre-
ferred in some quarters, Is the Bible inerrant ?
Hardly any questions of our day are being asked by so
many persons as these. Hardly any are being asked so
earnestly. What answer has scholarship to make ?
Happily, so far as biblical scholarship is independent,
honest, and competent (and no other is worth consider-
ing), its answer to these questions is at last becoming
clear, even if it has not been clear in the past.
Such scholarship no longer hesitates to subscribe to
the language of Professor Briggs when he says : " So far
as I can see, there are errors in the scriptures that no
one has been able to explain away ; and the theory that
they were not in the original text is sheer assumption,
upon which no mind can rest with certainty. If such
errors destroy the authority of the Bible, it is already
destroyed for historians. Men cannot shut their eyes to
truth and fact. But on what authority do these theolo-
gians drive men from the Bible by this theory of iner-
rancy ? The Bible itself nowhere makes this claim.
. . . It is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten
children." 1
Let us see exactly the grounds upon which scholars
1 Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 1891), p. 35.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 2$<}
make such declarations as this of Dr. Briggs. To some
extent these grounds have been set forth already; for
if a tithe of what has been said in the preceding pages
is true, there is not even a possibility that the Bible is
infallible or inerrant. Yet the long array of facts that
has already passed before us is but a small part of the
evidence that quickly accumulates as soon as we are
wil^gg- really to think and inquire.
We have taken up the subject of the origin of the
various books of the Old Testament and the New. We
have inquired when they were written, how they were
written, who wrote them ? Have we found our answers
such as to give us ground for believing in the infallibility
of their origin? We have inquired how the various
books were gathered together into a sacred Canon. Did
we find no evidences of human imperfection here? We
have inquired about the original text how it was pro-
duced, and how it has been preserved and handed down.
Has the text been guarded against the possibility of error ?
Then come the translations. Have these been governed
by supernatural wisdom ? Yet all this is necessary to
insure us an infallible Bible to-day. If a single link
breaks in all this two-thousand-years'-long chain of infal-
lible production and transmission, then, whatever our
theories may be, as a fact the Bible which we hold in
our hand to-day is not infallible.
Sixty-six Infallible Books? We must not forget
that even if we could prove the infallibility of one, or a
score, of the books of the Bible, that would not establish
the infallibility of the rest. For, as we have seen, origin-
ally the books were not together. There is no way of
establishing the infallibility of the Bible as a whole, only
by establishing the infallibility of each and every one of
260 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
the books that make it up. If I have in my library sixty-
six miscellaneous volumes of prose and poetry, history,
biography, letters, etc., written in three or four different
countries, and by men of all grades of character and
culture, some of them living ten centuries apart, will the
fact that I may be able to prove a certain thing about
one or more of the volumes justify me in claiming that I
have proved it concerning all ? Very well, we have found
the Bible to be such a library of sixty-six miscellaneous
books, of various and, for the most part, utterly uncon-
nected origin. Every book, therefore, which has a place
in it, stands or falls by itself. The various books are not
a whit more related to each other than they would be if
they were printed and bound as sixty-six different and
distinct volumes, each under its own separate name. The
real question then is not as to one infallibility, but as to
sixty-six infallibilities.
But a large number of the most serious difficulties in
the way of believing in the infallibility of the Bible I
have not yet mentioned at all. I should be inexcusable
if -I did not point out some of the more prominent of
these, so that it may be seen as plainly as possible how
increasingly hopeless a task candid men, who think and
investigate, are finding they have before them, in this
age of growing knowledge, when they undertake to keep
their belief that the Bible is a book which contains no
mistakes and no imperfections. The following points I
mention without stopping to elaborate them' more than
in the briefest manner.
1. The Doctrine of Infallibility not Found in the Bible.
The Bible itself does not claim to be free from error.
While in places certain claims of superior inspiration and
guidance of God are doubtless put forth, there is no
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 26 1
place in which the claim is made that the Bible as a
whole, or even any considerable part of it, is infallible.
Among the scripture passages that are quoted in sup-
port of the infallibility theory, the following is conceded
by every writer, so far as I know, to be the strongest ; to
wit : " All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness/' 1 But as soon as we begin
to look at this passage carefully, two or three things
appear, which rob it wholly of value as proof that the
Bible is infallible, (i) It says nothing about infallibility:
it speaks only of inspiration. Nor are the two necessa-
rily connected. For Peter and Paul, who are regarded
as inspired men, confess that they make mistakes. If,
then, inspired men may err, why not an inspired book ?
(2) At the time this Epistle to Timothy was written, there
was no New Testament. The collection of writings
which we know by that name was not made until long
after. The only sacred Scripture known to the Chris-
tians at that time was the Old Testament. The u all
scripture" referred to, therefore, of course meant Old
Testament scripture. So, then, even if this passage
proved infallibility at all, it would be only of the Old
Testament. (3) But that it does not prove that, or any-
thing looking in that direction, is seen as soon as we get
a correct translation. It has long been known to scholars
that the rendering in our common version is wrong. The
Revised Version gives it correctly, as follows : " Every
scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for intsruction," etc. That
this teaches Bible infallibility, nobody can claim.
1 2 Tim. Hi. 16.
262 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Another passage sometimes quoted to prove the Bible
infallible is this from Second Peter : " Holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.*' It should
be borne in mind that this Epistle (as has been shown in a
preceding chapter) is almost certainly not from Peter at
all, but is a non-apostolic writing of the middle of the
second century. Its claim, therefore, to be in the New
Testament is of the poorest. But even if we admit it to
be genuine scripture, what then ? It says nothing about
Bible infallibility. It makes no claim concerning the
Bible of any kind. In affirming that " holy men spake as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit," it simply affirms
the great truth of the living inspiration of God in the
soul of man, something as true of our time as of any time
in the past, and having no necessary connection with any
book 1
1 "The frequent use in the Old Testament of such solemn phrases as
* Thus saith the Lord ; ' * And God said ; ' ' And God spake these words and
said ; ' and verses which tell us that * All scripture is given by inspiration of
God ; ' that ' holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost/
form one of the chief foundations on which the claim (that the Bible is
infallible) is rested. Upon the use of the phrases quoted, some very instruct-
ive facts are given by Sir Samuel Baker in his book on the ' Nile Tributaries. 1
He says (pp. 129-131) : ' The conversation of the Arabs is in the exact style
of the Old Testament. The name of God is coupled with every trifling
incident in life. Should a famine araict the country, it is expressed in the
stern language of the Old Testament : " The Lord hath sent a grievous
famine upon the land." Should their cattle fall sick, it is considered to be
an affliction by divine command ; or should the flocks prosper and multiply,
the prosperity is attributed to divine interference. . . . Thus there is
great light thrown upon many Old Testament passages by the experience of
the present customs and figures of speech of the Arabs. . . . With the
Bible in one hand and these unchanged tribes before the eyes, there is a
thrilling illustration of the sacred records. . . . Should the present his-
tory of the country fce written by an Arab scribe, the style of description
would be purely that of the Old Testament, and the various calamities, or
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 263
In the saying of Christ that " Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my words shall not pass away " (Mark xiii.
31), many suppose they see a claim of Bible infallibility.
But all the words of Christ together constitute only an
infinitesimal portion of the Bible; they form simply a
part of four out of the sixty-six books. It is probable,
too, that he was not thinking of written words at all, for
at that time none of his words had been written ; only a
few ever were written, and those not until a generation
after his death. He seems to have been simply thinking
of his spoken words as true, and therefore eternal.
Others cite the somewhat similar utterance of Christ
found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 18) as prov-
ing that the Bible is infallible : " Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law, till all be fulfilled." But what was then understood
by the law was not identical with the Bible as we have it
to-day. Then there was no New Testament, and no part
of one. By the law was meant simply a part (the first
five books) of the Old Testament. Indeed, it is likely
that Jesus meant something even more limited than that ;
namely, the moral teaching of those books. And this'
he taught was fulfilled (filled full) in his Gospel. Thus
we see there is nothing in this passage about Bible infal-
libility.
the good fortunes that have, in the course of nature, befallen both the tribes
and individuals would be recounted either as special visitations ot divine
wrath, or blessings for good deeds performed. If in a dream a particular
course of action is suggested, the Arab believes that God has spoken and
directed him. The Arab scribe or historian would describe the event as the
" voice of the Lord" having spoken unto the person ; or that God appeared
to him in a dream and " said," etc. Thus much allowance would be neces-
sary on the part of a European reader for the figurative ideas and expressions
of the people* " (Clcdd's " Childhood of Religion," pp. 236-238).
264 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
There is only one other passage that need be referred
to. It is that strange and terrible one found at the close
of the Apocalypse, or Revelation: " Ltestify unto every
man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book : and
if any man shall take away from the words of the book of
this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the
book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things
which are written in this book.'- Of this passage two
things are to be said : (i) It is found in one of the most
doubtful of the books of the Bible a book which had
difficulty in gaining admission into the Canon, and which
has been distrusted by many learned and devout scholars
of both ancient and modern times. . (2) A very little
consideration shows that the passage makes no reference
whatever to the subject of whether the Bible is infallible
or not. It says nothing about the Bible. Indeed, there
was no Bible at that time, except the Old Testament, and
to that it makes no allusion. It simply refers to the
"book of thi^^rojbhecy ;" that is, the book in which the
passage is found the Apocalypse. The writer resorts
to the very questionable expedient of undertaking to
protect his production from mutilation or change, by
launching a threat or curse against any one who should
presume to tamper with it.
Thus we see how groundless is the belief that the Bible
claims to be infallible. Indeed, there is much in it that
teaches the opposite. Jesus says to the people : " Why
even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ? " Both
Old Testament and New are full of appeals from external
authorities of all kinds to the reason, the heart, and the
conscience of men. The Bible points out freely the im-
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 26$
perfections of its leading characters and writers. Nathan
could hardly have regarded David as infallible when he
confronted him with a terrible murder, saying : " Thou
art the man." Paul could not have known of Peter's in-
fallibility when, long after both had become eminent
preachers and teachers of the Gospel, he said of Peter :
"I withstood him to the face, because he was to be
blamed/* Jesus could not have known of the infallibility
of the Old Testament when he cited passage after pas-
sage from it, to contradict it and to command the oppo-
site. 1
The truth is, the doctrine of Bible infallibility, or in-
errancy, as taught in the modern world, was unknown
to the ancient Jews, unknown to Christ, and unknown to
the early Christian Church. It did not come into exist-
ence until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
was not held by the earliest and greatest of the Reform-
ers Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their associates. The
Roman Catholic Church has never adopted it.
But nothing is necessary to show how utterly ground-
less the doctrine is, except to examine the Bible itself.
Contradictions in the Bible. Both Testaments con-
tain numerous contradictions. These furnish evidence so
incontrovertible on the question before us, that I shall
cite a considerable number, though only a small part of
all there are.
Attention is called in another chapter to the contradic-
tion between 2 Sam. xxiv. I, and I Chron. xxi. I. In
one of these passages we are told that it was the Lord 9
and in the other that it was Satan, who prompted David
to do a certain thing , namely, to number, or take a cen-
1 Matt. v. 21-48.
266 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
sus of Israel. Of course both statements cannot be true
unless the Lord and Satan are the same being.
I place a few passages side by side :
"And David's heart smote him "David did that which was right
after that he had numbered the peo- in the eyes of the Lord, and turned
pie. And David said unto the Lord, not aside from any thing that he
I have sinned greatly in that I have commanded him all the days of his
done." 2 Sam. xxiv. 10. life, save only in the matter of Uriah
the Hittite." I Kings xv. 5.
In one of these passages we find David represented
as having sinned in the matter of numbering Israel ; in
the other, as never having sinned in anything except in
robbing Uriah the Hittite of his wife.
Compare these passages :
" And it came to pass after these " Let no man say when he is
things, that God did tempt Abra- tempted, I am tempted of God : for
ham.'* Gen. xxii. I. God cannot be tempted with evil,
" O Lord, thou hast deceived me, neither tempteth he any man."
and I was deceived." Jer. xx. 7. Jas. i. 13.
Here we are told, on the. one hand, that God tempts
certain men ; and, on the other, that he tempts nobody.
In the case of Jeremiah we are told that he goes even
farther than tempting, he deceives.
Compare these passages :
"The earth abideth forever." "The earth also, and the works
Eccl. i. 4. that are therein, shall be burned
" Who laid the foundations of the up." 2 Pet. in. 10.
earth that it should not be removed " They shall perish, but thou re-
forever." Ps. civ. 5. mainest." Heb. i. II.
And these :
" Elijah went up by a whirlwind "No man hath ascended up to
into heaven." 2 Kings ii. II. heaven but be that came down from
heaven, even the Son of man."
John iii. 13.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY.
267
And these :
" Whosoever is born of God doth " There is no man that sinneth
not commit sin ; he cannot sin be- not." i Kings viii. 46.
cause he is born of God." i John " There is not a just man upon
iii. 9. earth, that doetb good and sinneth
not." Eccl. vii. 20.
And these :
** Noah offered burnt offerings on
the altar. And the Lord smelled a
sweet savor; and the Lord said in
his heart, I will not again curse the
ground any more for man's sake."
Gen. viii. 20, 21.
" Ye shall offer the burnt offering
for a sweet savor unto the Lord."
Num. xxviii. 27.
" Ye shall offer a burnt offering, a
sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet
savor unto the Lord, thirteen young
bullocks, two rams, and fourteen
lambs." Num. xxix. 13.
" Thou desirest not sacrifice, else
would I give it ; thou delightest not
in burnt offering." Ps. li. 16.
" I delight not in the blood of bul-
locks, or of lambs, or of he-goats."
Isa. i. ii.
"Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord r Will the Lord be pleased
with thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil? What
doth Jehovah require of thee but to do
justly, to love mercy, and to humbly
walk with thy God ?" Mic. vi. 6-8.
Compare also the following:
"There is no darkness nor shadow
of death where the workers of in-
iquity may hide themselves." Job
xxxiv. 22.
"And David took from him a
"Adam and his wife hid them-
selves from the presence of the Lord,
among the trees of the garden."
Gen. iii. 8.
"And David took from him a
thousand chariots and seven hundred thousand chariots and seven thousand
horsemen." 2 Sam. viii. 4.
"Michal, the daughter of Saul,
had no child unto the day of her
death." 2 Sam. vi. 23.
"And the men which journeyed
with him [Paul] stood speechless,
horsemen." i Chron. xviii. 4.
"The five sons of Michal, the
daughter of Saul." 2 Sam. XXL 8.
"They that were with me saw
indeed the light and were afraid:
hearing a voice, but seeing no man." but they heard not the voice of him
Acts ix. 7.
that spake to me." Acts xxii.
1 Of the three accounts of Paul's conversion, found in Acts ix. 3-19,
xxii. 6-16, and xxvi. 12-18, Dr. Edwin Hatch says : " The differences are
268
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
" I have seen God face to face." " No man hath seen God at any
Gen. xxxii. 30. time." I John iv. 12.
And the following :
"I am the Lord, I change not.'*
Mai. iii. 6.
"With whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning/ -Jas. i. 17.
" I will not go back, neither will I
repent." Ezek. xxiv. 14.
" There is no respect of persons
[partiality] with God." Rom. ii. II.
" He that goeth down to the grave
shall come up no more. " Job vii. 9.
" And God repented of the evil that
he had said he would do unto them,
and he did it not" Jonah iii. 10.
[There are no fewer than fourteen
places in the Bible where God is
spoken of as repenting.]
"Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated." Rom. ix. 13. (See
vs. 10-18.)
"The trumpet shall sound and the
dead shall be raised." r Cor. xv. 52.
Different Forms of the Ten Commandments. Every
careful student of the Bible knows that the Ten Com-
mandments are given not only in three different places
in the Old Testament, but in two different forms so dif-
ferent, that one cannot possibly be identified with the
other. I place the two forms side by side for compari-
son, only abridging each to save space :
1. ' * Thou shalt have no other gods
before me,
2. "Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image.
3. ** Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.
4. "Remember the Sabbath day,
to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou
1. " Thou shalt worship no other
god : for the Lord, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God.
2. "Thou shalt make thee no
molten gods.
3. " The feast of unleavened bread
shalt thou keep.
4. "Six days shalt thou work,
but on the seventh day thou shalt
fatal to the stricter theories of verbal inspiration, but they do not consti-
tute a valid argument against the general truth of the narrative." (En-
cyclopaedia Britannica, art. " Paul. 1 ') The same is true of most of the con-
tradictions found in the narrative portions of the Bible.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY.
269
labor, and do all thy work : but the
seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord
thy God : in it thou shalt not do any
work.
5. "Honor thy father and thy
mother.
6, "Thou shalt not kill.
7. " Thou shalt not commit adul-
tery.
8. " Thou shalt not steal.
9. " Thou shalt not bear false, wit-
ness against thy neighbor.
10. "Thou shalt not covet."
(Ex. xx. and Deut. v.)
rest : in earing time and in harrest
thou shalt rest.
5. " Thou shalt observe the feast
of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat
harvest, and of ingathering.
6. "Thrice in the year shall all
your men-children appear before the
Lord.
7. "Thou shalt not offer the blood
of my sacrifice with leaven.
8. "Neither shall the sacrifice of
the feast of the passover be left unto
the morning.
9. "The first of the firstfruits of
thy land thou shalt bring unto the
house of the Lord thy God.
10. "Thou shalt not boil a kid in
its mother's milk." (Ex. xxxiv.)
While in the accounts found in Ex. xx. and Deut. v.
we have the Ten Commandments given in the first of
these forms (the form in which we are accustomed to
make use of them), in Ex. xxxiv. we are told explicitly
that the second form is the one in which they were
given to Moses from God, and written by Moses at
God's command on the tables of stone, as the words of
"the covenant, the ten commandments."
Contradictions in the Gospels. There are many con-
tradictions connected with the accounts we have of the
life of Jesus. I can refer to only a few of them, and in
the briefest way.
First of all there is a difficulty in accounting for the
childhood of Jesus. According to Luke he was born in
Bethlehem, after which (ii. 22) his parents took him to
Jerusalem to perform some religious ceremony in the
2/0 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
temple, when he was forty days old, and then at. once
departed (ii. 39) into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth ;
and from there they went up every year to Jerusalem to
the feast of the passover (ii. 41). Thus we have the child-
hood of Jesus accounted for up to twelve years of age.
But now turning to Matthew (chap, ii.) we find a differ-
ent and conflicting account, Matthew tells us that imme-
diately after the birth of Jesus and the visit of the Magi,
his parents took him (not back to Nazareth, but) down
into Egypt and the return to Nazareth was not until
after a residence of some time in Egypt, and the death of
Archelaus, Herod's son and successor. How are these
two accounts to be harmonized ?
Again, there are irreconcilable difficulties in connection
with the genealogies of Jesus given by Matthew and
Luke. Both these genealogies trace the ancestry of
Jesus through Joseph. Biut having done this, both Mat-
thew and Luke tell us that Joseph was not the father of
Jesus at all. Thus Jesus is claimed to have descended
from David, because a man who is not his father descended
from David. A most extraordinary claim ! Moreover,
Matthew says the number of generations from Abraham
to David is fourteen, and from David to the Captivity
fourteen, and from the Captivity to Christ fourteen.
But if we look carefully at the genealogy, as he himself
gives it, the number from Abraham to David is only
thirteen, and the number from the Captivity to Christ is
only thirteen. Furthermore, the genealogies of Joseph,
the husband of Mary (called the genealogies of Jesus, but
not the genealogy of Jesus at all unless Joseph was Jesus*
father), as given by Matthew and Luke, are radically dif-
ferent, agreeing in only fifteen names in the whole list,
and differing in forty names. Now, when we bear in
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY.
mind that these genealogies both run back in the male
line, from son to father, and then grandfather, and then
great-grandfather, and so on, we see that divergence can
mean nothing else but error in one or the other of the
authorities, or both. Nor may we suppose that one
genealogy is that of Mary. Such a supposition rests on
not a shadow of evidence, while it is positively contra-
dicted by the language of the text.
Passing on from the birth and childhood to the minis-
try of Jesus, there are many more discrepancies and con-
tradictions. For example, in the Gospel of Mark Jesus
is represented as going to the wilderness immediately after
his baptism, and remaining there forty days. But when
we turn to John, he tells us that on the third day after
the baptism Jesus is in Cana of Galilee at a wedding, and
not a word is said about any wilderness or temptation.
Of course both these accounts cannot be true, unless
Jesus can have been in two places, one in the northern
part of Palestine and the other in the southern, at the
same time.
The inscription on the cross is given differently by each
of the Gospel writers, as follows :
" This is Jesus, the King of the Jews " (Matt, xxvii. 37).
"The King of the Jews " (Mark xv. 26).
" This is the King of the Jews " (Luke xxiii. 38).
"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (John
xix. 19).
Of course only one of the four can be correct. Or, if
it be claimed that, as the inscription was written in He-
brew, Greek, and Latin, the form may possibly have varied
in these different languages, and one Gospel writer may
have reported one form and another another, even then
the difficulty is only slightly lessened ; for this would give
2J2 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
us only three varieties of form, whereas we have coming
down to us four. So that still we are obliged to confess
that at least one of the Gospel narrators has made a mis-
take.
One case more. Paul tells us (i Cor. xv. 5) that Christ
was seen of the twelve apostles after his resurrection.
But there were not twelve apostles to see him; there
were only eleven : since we are told that Judas had
hanged himself, and the twelfth apostle, Matthias, was
not elected until after Christ's ascension.
There are several very plain contradictions in the ac-
counts given of the resurrection, and of the events occur-
ring between the resurrection and ascension ; but I pass
by these, as well as many others in various parts of both
the Old Testament and the New.
Of course I am aware of the reply which is but too
often made to citations like these; namely, the reply of
anger and denunciation, that any one should presume to
let these contradictions be known, coupled with the dec-
laration that they are only " the invention of infidels/'
which " have been answered a thousand times." To all
this I need only say they are not the invention of any-
body ; they are simply plain, straightforward facts, which
refuse to accommodate themselves to the wish of either
"infidel" or Christian. As to their having been "an-
swered a thousand times," it is enough to say they have
been replied to a thousand times ; they have never been
answered at all. The dogmatist may deny them ; the in-
vestigator who loves truth confesses them. Confession is
the only answer that can be made to them. Few of them
are of a character to invalidate the general historic fidelity
aad value of the Bible, but they overturn utterly the
doctrine of its inerrancy.
CHAPTER XXV.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN
SCHOLARSHIP. II.
I PASS on now to notice other things in the Bible
which it is impossible to reconcile with the theory of
infallibility. Concerning these I shall be as brief as pos-
sible, citing only illustrations enough to make my mean-
ing clear.
(i.) Things Absurd. The Bible contains many things
intrinsically absurd. For example, the statement that
the first woman was made of a rib taken out of the first
man's side; the accounts of a serpent, and of an ass,
talking; the stories of Jonah living three days within a
fish (Matt. xii. 40, common version, says a wkale), and of
Nebuchadnezzar eating grass like an ox for seven years/
When we find such stories as these in any of the sacred
books of the world except our own, we do not for a
1 In this connection it is in place to notice also discrepancies like the
following: "Sarah, at the time of her visit to Gerar, where her beauty
exposed her, as in Egypt, to such grave peril, is found to be over ninety
years old (Gen. xx.; xvii. 17); Ishmael, on being led away by his mother's
hand, and cast away by her under a bush to die (Gen. xxL 14, 15), proves
to be between fourteen and twenty (Gen. xvi. 16 ; xvii. 25 ; xxi. 5, 8) ;
Jacob, who went to Padan-aram at about forty (Gen. xxvi. 34 ; xxvii. 46 ;
xxviii. i), and lived there twenty years (Gen. xxxi. 38, 41), during which
time Joseph was born (Gen. xxx. 24), is yet said to have been over ninety
at Joseph's birth (Gen. xli. 46 ; xlvii. 9) ; and Benjamin, the little lad whom
his father cannot spare out of his presence (Gen. xliii. 8 ; xliv. 20, 22, 30),
proves to be at that very time the father of ten children (Gen. xlvi 21) *
(E- H. Hall, in Unitarian Review, November, 1880, p. 435).
274 O&IGItf AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
moment think of believing them. We say they are so
absurd that of course we cannot believe them. But do
they become any less absurd by being found in our own
sacred book ? *
(2.) Historical Mistakes. The Bible contains accounts
and statements not historically correct. For example :
We read in Luke that Augustus Caesar, the Roman
emperor, issued a decree that " all the world should be
taxed " : that is, enrolled or registered for the purposes
of a census ; and that it was in connection with the carry-
ing into effect of this decree, when Cyrenius was governor
of Syria, that Joseph and Mary went, as the decree re-
quired them to do, to Bethlehem, Joseph's native city,
to be taxed (registered) ; and while they ".vere there Jesus
was born. (See Luke, second chapter.)
Now, in connection with this account there are no less
than three or four distinct mistakes. In the first place,
history is silent as to a census of the whole (Roman)
world ever having been made at all. In the second
place, it is true that Cyrenius (Quirinius) did make an
enrollment in Palestine, but it was confined to Judea and
Samaria, and did not extend to Galilee, and hence
Joseph's household (in Nazareth) could not have been
affected by it. In the third place, it did not take place
until ten years after the death of Herod, instead of dur-
ing the reign of Herod, as the account of Luke states.
Finally, at the time of the birth of Jesus the governor
of Syria was not Cyrenius (Quirinius) butQuintus Sentius
Saturninus.
1 1 mean, these stories are absurd when we look at them as accounts of
actual events. When looked at as we look at similar stories in other sacred
books viz., as kgends and myths they are all interesting, and some of
them are even beautiful and instructive.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 2?$
Take another example. In Matt, xxiii. 35, it is stated
that the Jews " slew Zacharias, son of Barachias, between
the temple and the altar/* This is an error. It was
Zechariah, son of Jekoiada, quite a different man, who
was thus murdered. (See 2 Chron. xxiv. 20-22.) Zach-
arias, son of Barackias, lived some 230 years later*
There are a considerable number of as plain cases of
historical error as these.
I do not point out these errors because of their great
importance in themselves, or because they greatly dimin-
ish the general reliability of the Bible history, but only
because of their bearing upon the subject of infallibility.
It is not enough for an inerrant book to be generally
reliable: it must be accurate in everything. If it errs
in anything its infallibility is gone.
(3.) Scientific Errors. In the Book of Leviticus we
find the Israelites forbidden to eat the flesh of the hare,
" because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof."
Here the writer is mistaken as to a scientific fact : the
hare does not chew the cud. Numerous statements may
be found which are opposed to science, particularly in
the Old Testament. The accounts given in Genesis of
the creation and of the deluge are illustrations. The
story of the standing still of the sun at the command of
Joshua is another. Attempts are made to harmonize
these with science ; but the distorting of language that
has to be resorted to in order to accomplish even a
semblance of reconciliation is such as would be tolerated
nowhere outside of theological discussion ; indeed, it is
such as destroys the signification of human speech, mak-
ing it mean anything or nothing. l
1 See pp. 14, 15. Compare the disingenuous subtleties, distortions of
language, and special pleadings of the majority of " hannonizers " of
2/6 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
(4.) Exaggerations. The Bible contains evident ex-
aggerations. For example, the statements that Methu-
selah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and Enos
nine hundred and five years; and that Lamech was a
hundred and eighty-two years old when his first son was
born. Also, the account given in 2 Chron. xiii. of the
number of soldiers in the Jewish armies to wit, under
Abijah 400,000, and under Jeroboam 800,000 picked men;
of the latter, 500,000 fell in a single battle. That this
must be an enormous exaggeration utterly beyond pos-
sible truth will appear when we remember that the
whole country of Palestine from which these 1,200,600
" chosen, mighty men of valor" were raised at one time,
was not as large as the little country of Wales. Napo-
leon's largest army that with which he invaded Russia
consisted of only 500,000 men, the exact number here
said to have fallen on one side in a single fight.
Again, we have an account given (see I Sam. vL 19) of
50,070 men of the village of Beth-Shemesh being on a
certain occasion slaughtered by the Lord because they
science and Scripture, with the manly frankness and fidelity to truth of
such a man as Bean Stanley, who does not hesitate to say : " It is now
clear to all students of the Bible that the first and second chapters of
Genesis contain two narratives of the creation, side by side, differing from
each other in almost every particular of time, place, and order " (Memorial
sermon at the funeral of Sir Charles Lyell). See Bishop Colenso's Works ;
Curtis's "Human Element in Inspiration," chap. iv. ; "The Irreconcilable
Records; or, Genesis and Geology," by Wm. Denton ; "The Deluge in
the Light of Modern Science," by the same author ; " The Conflict Be-
tween. Religion and Science," by J. W. Draper ; " The Warfare of
Science, "by A. D. White; "New Chapters in the Warfare of Science,"
same author; "The Method of Creation," by H. W. Crosskey; "Order
of Creation" (essays by Gladstone, Huxley, Muller, ReVUle, and
Linton).
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY.
looked into the ark. Not to say anything about the
enormity of punishing in so terrible a manner so trivial
an offence, notice the number of the slain. In no com-
munity is it ever estimated that more than one in five of
the population can be men. So then we see that Beth-
Shemesh (which we know to have been only an insignifi-
cant town) must have contained, to make the account
true, not less than 250,000 population. Does this look
like infallibility ?
A little reflection shows us that the numbers men-
tioned in connection with the Exodus must be enormous
exaggerations. We are told that among those who left
Egypt were 600,000 men. Adding anything like the
usual proportion for women and children would give
us a company of from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 persons.
Imagine such a multitude equal to the population of a
great state crossing the Red Sea, marching, encamp-
ing, dwelling in tents, wandering in the desert, and keep-
ing together as one company for forty years. Dropping
out of the account the whole enormous matter of sub-
sistence, think what the mere organization and moving
of such a host means. We read of their getting ready
for their journey in a single night, and crossing the sea
in a single night. But neither event is within the range
of possibility. " In 1812, when Napoleon crossed the
river Niemen, it took his army of about 230,000 men
three days and nights to cross the river, by three bridges,
in close file." But that army of Napoleon's was less
than one-half as numerous as the fighting men of the
Israelites, and perhaps one-tenth as numerous as the
whole multitude, to say nothing about their flocks which
they had with them. Thus we see that in this Exodus
story we are dealing with figures that are simply incred*
2/8 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
ible. 1 But such exaggerations are numerous in all the
older historical parts of the Bible.
(5.) Childish Representations of God. The Bible
contains representations of God which, in the light of
such teachings as those of Jesus, we cannot do other-
wise than regard as childish. For example, in Ex. xxx.
34-38 we have an account of God giving Moses very
minute directions for making perfumery, of a kind that
would be "holy for the Lord/' to be used in the taber-
nacle when God came to meet with Moses ; and if any
other person made the same he should be put to death.
So, then, we have the Creator of the universe engaged in
the very dignified business of giving instructions as to
what kind of perfumery is agreeable to him ; moreover,
making sure that he shall have it alone, and no one else
shall have it with him, by attaching the death penalty to
all rival manufacture of the perfume.
(6.) Morally Degrading Representations of God.
Some things which naturally fall under this head will be
found in the chapter on the " Moral and Religious Prog-
ress Traceable in the Bible," to which readers are re-
ferred. But a few facts must be cited here.
No candid reader of the Bible can deny that it contains
representations of God according to which he is not a
morally perfect being. For example, we are told that
God hardened Pharaoh's heart that he should not let the
children of Israel go out of the land of Egypt (Ex. vii. 13,
and xi. 10), and then punished him in the most terrible
manner for not letting them go. Would this have been
right on the part of God? Certainly not; unless mor-
ality is an altogether lower and poorer thing with God
* See "Bible for Learners," vol. i. pp. 284, 285.
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 279
than it is with us. Again, in the second commandment,
the reason urged by God against idolatry is that he is a
"jealous God." 1 Thus a trait of character is ascribed
to him which is degrading even to a human being.
Again, we read that God ordered Moses to say unto
the king of Egypt, " Let us go, we beseech thee, three
days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice
unto the Lord our God," when the object of their going
was not that at all, but to escape altogether out of the
land, not to come back. Thus we are told that God com-
manded Moses to lie. In harmony with this, we are told
that God ordered the Jewish people, when they were ready
to start on their journey, to borrow every valuable thing
they could of their Egyptian neighbors, and carry it off.
Thus they are commanded to rob as well as lie.
Again, while the Israelites are in the wilderness a revolt
breaks out, headed by three men, Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram. God commands Moses and Aaron at once to
separate themselves from the rest of the people, that he
may consume the others with fire. But Moses and Aaron
beg God not to be angry with the whole congregation for
one man's sin. In spite of this plea, however, fourteen
thousand seven hundred persons died of the plague, be-
sides the two hundred and fifty insurrectionists who were
swallowed up by an earthquake. And the plague would
have gone on until all were dead, innocent and guilty
alike, had not Aaron rushed in with a censer full of in-
cense, which made an atonement for the people, and the
plague was stayed (Num. xvi. 20-50). Thus Aaron and
Moses are represented as not only more merciful, but
more just, than God.
1 Ex. xx. 5 ; xxxiv* 14 ; Deut v. 9.
280 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
Again, we find it recorded that God commanded Joshua
to massacre the people of a certain list of cities all the
men and women and innocent children ; the only reason
being so that he (Joshua) and his followers might possess
their cities and their rich lands (Josh, x, 28-41). Now,
if the Koran contained records of such commands, said to
have been given by the God of the Mohammedans to a
Mohammedan general, Christian men would never make
an end of pointing to them as illustrations of the low and
degraded ideas about God taught by Mohammedanism.
But if such ideas of God would be low and imperfect as
taught in the Koran, are they less low and imperfect when
taught in our Old Testament ?
Again, to mention only one more case, we read in the
career of Jehu of as horrible crimes as it is possible for
man to commit, all done under the command of God
and with his approval. (See 2 Kings, chaps, ix. and x.)
First Jehu shoots King Joram, and then orders the as-
sassination of King Ahaziah ; then by craft he obtains
the heads of seventy of Ahab's children, which are packed
in baskets and sent to him at Jezreel ; pretending to have
had nothing to do with this massacre, he follows it up by
slaying all the rest of Ahab's relations and friends, and
great men and priests, until " he left him none remaining."
It seems, however, that forty-two brethren of Ahaziah
and a temple full of priests still live ; these he murders
without a word of warning. " It is easy enough to see
that Jehu only acted like an unscrupulous usurper, who
finds the safety of his throne dependent upon the exter-
mination of the late dynasty, while his slaughter of the
worshipers of Baal was done partly as a sop to the
priests of Jehovah, who had been instrumental in urging
his pretensions, and partly to crush all lingering sympathy
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 28 1
with the house of Ahab in the minds of the people. He
was a consummate dissembler, hypocrite, and murderer ;
and yet the Bible tells us that he did according to * all
that was in God's heart/ all that was 'right in God's
eyes/ and received for so doing God's approval and
reward."
What shall we say to all this ? Shall we to-day, in the
light of civilization and of Christianity, accept such low
and unworthy views of God ? Can we for one moment
maintain the moral inerrancy of the book that contains
them ?
(7.) Inculcation of what is Wrong, There are many
places where the Old Testament both directly and indi-
rectly not only sanctions but inculcates what is wrong.
For example, in Ex. xxii. 18 we read the command,
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This command
to put witches to death, it is probably safe to say, has
resulted in the hanging, burning, drowning, and killing,
in one way and another, of hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of innocent persons ; just as a somewhat similar
text in the Vedas (previously mentioned) has caused mul-
titudes of Hindu widows to perform the dreadful rite of
Suttee. So tremendous is the power for evil of a false
precept or bad command laid upon men in the name of
an infallible book !
In Deuteronomy (xxi. 18-21) we have the command to
stone to death unruly and disobedient children ; and that,
too, on the simple accusation of their parents, without
trial. Think of the enactment of such a law to-day, by
one of our legislatures, and its attempted enforcement
by the civil authorities ! How long before the public con-
science would condemn it as not only unjust and cruel,
but horrible? In Deut. xiv. 21 we read: " Ye shall not
282 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it
unto the stranger that is in the gates, that he may eat it ;
or thou mayest sell it unto an alien." How does such a
way of disposing of bad meat harmonize with the Golden
Rule? In Psalm cix. we have a prayer, in which the psalm-
ist implores that the most terrible calamities may be vis-
ited upon his enemy, and not only upon him but upon his
children. He prays that his enemy's " days may be few " ;
that his " children may be fatherless, and his wife a widow ";
that his children "may be continually vagabonds and
beg, 1 * and that there may be " none to show them mercy."
In another psalm (cxxxvii.) the writer exclaims regarding
his enemy, " Happy shall he be who taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones ! " Were the psalmists
inspired who wrote these words? If so, then it becomes
a serious question Was it by God, or by the Devil ?
In Leviticus (xxv. 44-46) we have slavery inculcated,
and that too not as a temporary institution, but as some-
thing which was to be perpetual. " Of the heathen that
are round about you, shall ye buy bondmen and bond-
women, . . . and they shall be your bondmen for-
ever." But enough !
Now what are we to say of such flagrant wrongs, sanc-
tioned and taught in the holy name of religion ? There is
only one answer : they must be condemned, no matter
where found. Of course, if such were the dominant
teachings of the Bible, the book would be not only reli-
giously worthless : it would be a curse to the world. But,
fortunately, every intelligent reader of its pages knows
that such are not its dominant teachings. They are a
fart of its teachings, however. This fact no man can
evade. How, then, can we rob them of their evil effect ?
Certainly not by denying them ; still less by defending
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 283
them, and trying to make out that they are right. That
is to perpetuate and cherish their moral poison. The
only way to render them harmless is to confess them, to
confess them frankly, but, at the same time, to point out
what is true that they mark but the beginning of the
Bible's religion, not its end ; they are the product of its
child stage, not of its maturity; they are its sour and
bitter yes, and poisonous green fruit, not its rich and
healthful ripe fruit. The latter comes in due time. Up
from that earlier low level the religion of the Bible rises
rises to the lofty elevation of the greater prophets and
of Jesus. These are the teachers who give the Bible'its
dominant note, who represent its true religion, who have
given it its place at the head of the world's ethical and
religious literature.
Summing up. I have now caused to pass in very brief
review before the reader, some of the most obvious diffi-
culties that rise in the path of thoughtful men, who, in
the light of the scholarship and general intelligence of
the time, try to believe that the Bible is a book of perfect
and infallible truth.
It is very common for preachers and religious teachers
to charge upon men who disbelieve the infallibility of
the Bible, that their disbelief is something which they
choose^ and choose from bad motives in other words, that
it is something willful and wicked. I trust I have shown
that this is not necessarily true. Men are obliged to
believe that two and two make four ; they cannot believe
differently, no matter how much they may wish it. So,
when they set about the study of the Bible, with their
eyes open and with honest hearts, and find that the
book contains limitations corresponding to the limita-
tions of the people and the times from which it comes,
284 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
the mere fact that they may wish still to regard it as
perfect and infallible does not by any means enable them
to do so. Such numerous and manifest imperfections as
have passed before us in the preceding pages rise up
before their vision, and, in spite of all their efforts to see
them as perfections, persist in appearing as imperfec-
tions. This being the case, the continued insistence of
the church that they must see them to be perfections
would seem a great and strange folly.
Driving Men into Infidelity. Nothing can be more
clear than that the result must be sooner or later to
drive this class of men into hostility to the church and
the Bible. Indeed, the fact, so much lamented by the
clergy and the religious press, that many of the most
intelligent minds of the country are already turning their
backs upon Christianity, clearly finds an explanation to
no s'mall extent in the blind folly of Christianity in con-
tinuing to demand that men must subscribe to the belief
in an infallible book, or else stay outside the Christian
fold. Why does this folly continue ?
Something Wiser and Better. How is it that intelli-
gent Christian men fail to see that there is no necessary
connection whatever between belief in the correctness
of all the statements of every kind contained in the Bible,
and belief in the great moral and spiritual teachings of
Isaiah and Paul and Jesus? Surely, then, the part of
wisdom would seem to be, for the churches and those
who care for Christianity, to take an entirely new depar-
ture with regard to this matter of Bible infallibility.
Let them not persist in the useless, foolish, and in-
evitably losing effort of trying longer to bolster it up.
There is something better for them. Freely and without
hesitancy admitting all the errors and imperfections that
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 28$
fair and honest criticism finds in the Bible, let them
confidently rest their claim for it upon the transcendent
merits that the same criticism freely confesses it to pos-
sess. Let them say, " We want no one to believe what
there is not ground for believing. We are interested, as
much as any can be, to find out errors and imperfections,
that men may be warned against them. It is truth that
we care for ; especially do we care for moral and spiritual
truth, the truth of the conscience and the heart, which is
self-witnessing," The moment the Christian churches
and Christian people generally take this position (and
not a few of the wisest among them are taking it already),
this crushing burden of carrying the imperfections of
the Bible this hopeless Sisyphus-task of apologizing for
these imperfections, and trying, by hook or by crook, to
convince the intelligence of the age that they are perfec-
tions is gone, and the mental energies of Christendom
are left free to be expended in better and more worthy
directions.
The Bible Improved as a Book of Worship and of
Practical Religion, by giving up the Idea of its lafklli-
bility. Nor could the surrender of the dogma of the
infallibility of the Bible hurt the volume, as some fear,
as a book of devotional and practical -religion. Rather,
in important respects, it would help it as such* For, as
already intimated, the loss of the idea of infallibility
would affect not in the least its higher and more spiritual
teachings those portions that are "profitable for doc-
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in right-
eousness." It would be simply the letting in of a healthy
wiiid to blow away as chaff a multitude of things which,
so far from having in them any food for pious souls, or spir-
itual edification for anybody, are, on the contrary, found
286 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
universally to be a hindrance to piety, and a detraction
from edification.
The Doctrine of Infallibility an Enemy to Virtue,
especially among the Young. It is the growing feeling
of many of our wisest and soberest minds, that virtue
has few greater obstacles to contend with in our age than
the wide-spread insistence on the part of the church that
Old Testament morality is perfect morality. We have
seen that much of it is not perfect. No one coming
to the study of it with a mind unbiassed would for a
moment think of calling it perfect. Even the men who
contend most earnestly for its perfection, should they
find precisely the same in one of the other great Bibles
of the world, would, without the slightest hesitation,
pronounce it defective. Why, then, is such morality set
up in this day and age as a standard? Can it fail to
do grave harm especially among the young? Think of
millions of Sunday-school children, with their young and
plastic minds, being systematically taught from Sunday
to Sunday, for years, such things as that it was right for
Joshua to perpetrate his massacres of men, women, and
babes ; for Jehu to murder all the house of Ahab ; for
Moses and Aaron to falsify to Pharaoh ; and for the Jew-
ish people to put witches to death, and hold slaves, and
the like (things, all of them, which we are told God com-
manded) ; and then reflect what a foundation all this lays,
in these millions of children, upon which to build virtu-
ous characters and sensitive consciences, and pure and
high manhood and womanhood! Can anything ever
compensate for or make good such an utter confusion
and perversion of moral ideas in the minds of the young?
No Room for Indifference. Thus it will be seen that
the doctrine of Bible infallibility is not something which
BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 2$7
.we may any of us be indifferent to ; it is not something
with reference to which the truth may be known or not
known, and all will be the same. There is a weighty
and solemn religious obligation resting on us to deny
the truth of a dogma which aims so cruel a blow at the
character of the Being we worship, and the validity of
our moral intuitions. The highest and holiest things
of religion and life are very deeply at stake. As we
care for religion, we must not shrink. When we come
upon representations of God in the Bible that are degrad-
ing and immoral, we must say : " They are wrong ; the
men who wrote them had the low and imperfect ideas of
their age ; we, to-day, standing in the light that shines
from Jesus, and from the eighteen centuries since, wor-
ship a God vastly higher and better than the God of
those imperfect old-time pictures."
While we continue to hold earnestly to the Bible,
we must discriminate. While we cannot appreciate too
highly the rich legacy of moral and religious truth and
sentiment that comes down to us in its revered pages,
let us not be guilty of the fatal folly of consecrating
error because it happens to be associated with truth.
While, if we understand it intelligently and use it ration-
ally, we may well keep the Bible in our Sunday-schools
and churches and homes, as our great and, in a true
sense, our sacred book of religion, we must beware that
we do not make it a curse instead of a blessing to our-
selves, and especially to our children, by accepting it,
and teaching them to accept it, as what it is not viz., an
infallible book.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION.
As we draw near the end of our study, several ques-
tions press for answers-
Inspiration. In the light of the facts which we have
discovered, may we say that the Bible is a work of divine
inspiration ?
I reply : That evidently must depend upon what we
mean by inspiration. If by the word we understand
that barren, mechanical, unspiritual signification which
has too often been given to it in the past, which makes
the inspired writers mere passive tools or instruments
flutes played on by an almighty player; penmen with
hands miraculously guided to write a message in the in-
ception and giving of which they have no responsibility
then we must answer, as with ever-increasing clearness
and unanimity modern biblical scholarship is everywhere
answering : No ; the Sacred Scriptures give no evidence
of such an inspired origin. But if by inspiration we mean
something vital instead of mechanical; an inspiration
human as well as divine, and divine because so nobly
human ; an inspiration in which men are not passive, but
active, intense, alive, quickened by touch with the Infinite
Mind, illuminated by " that Light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world," open to the incoming
of the tides of the Infinite Life, and so are made seers and
prophets, guides and leaders of their fellows in the things
of the spirit in a word, if by inspiration we mean
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION. 289
something sufficiently large, noble, spiritual, then we are
compelled to reply : The Bible is rich in inspiration in-
spiration which the growing scholarship of our time is
not dimming, but making more clear.
Of course, no intelligent scholar thinks of affirming
equal inspiration in all its parts ; indeed, some portions,
as we have seen, bear no marks of inspiration whatever.
But when we come to other parts, words are too poor
adequately to express the depth and richness of the
moral and spiritual power which they reveal. From
what source but that which is eternal in God could have
come the truth of those great passages, in the Old Testa-
ment and the New, which instantly flash on our minds
when we think of what is loftiest in religion ? At what
fountain but that of the world's divinest inspiration
could those men have drunk, whose words have sounded
down the ages, thrilling and inspiring the hearts of un-
told millions as otherwise they have never been thrilled
and inspired?
Revelation. Is the Bible revelation from God? Or,
better, Does it contain revelation from God ?
Here, again, the answer which competent scholarship
gives is Yes, or No, according as we mean by revelation
something large or small, adequate or inadequate, spiritual
and vital, or formal and mechanical. Says Channing:
" Jesus came to reveal the Father. But is God, the In-
finite and Universal Father, made known only by a single
voice heard ages ago on the banks of the Jordan or by
the Sea of Tiberias ? Is it an unknown tongue that the
heavens and earth forever utter? Is nature's page a
blank? Does the human soul report nothing of its Cre-
ator? Does conscience announce no Authority higher
than its own ? Does reason discern no trace of an Intel-
19
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
ligence, that it cannot comprehend, and yet of which it is
itself a ray? Does the heart find in the circuits of crea-
tion no Friend worthy of trust and love?"
Says Heber Newton : *' Within the spirit of man is the
true mount of God, where the Eternal One comes down
to reveal himself. Revelation is light. Wherever there
is a flash of light, spiritual or ethical ; wherever the dark
problems of man's origin and nature and destiny grow
luminous ; wherever the being and personality and char-
acter of God come forth from the darkness, thrilling us
with a fresh sense of worship, with higher hope and faith
and love, there is a real revelation to our spirits."
These words of two eminent modern religious teachers
at least hint the larger view of revelation which biblical
scholarship is doing so much to give us in place of the
old, smaller, and more mechanical view. With this mean-
ing of the word, there can be no question about our
Scriptures containing revelation of God and from God.
Yet, not God's only revelation. On the whole the
highest and best, doubtless, that the ancient world pro-
duced, but not all that the world has seen. For, dare we
push aside all the other sacred books of mankind the
Hindu and Persian Bibles, older than our own ; the Bud-
dhist Bible, containing some of the loftiest ethical teach-
ings of the world, and held to be sacred and full of divine
truth by hundreds of millions of men; the Chinese
Bibles, ancient and venerable books ; and the Koran, the
Bible of some of the noblest peoples of the past shall we
push aside all these sacred books, and declare that there
is no voice of God in them ? For one, I dare not do that.
Nor dare I deny that God has revealed himself through
thousands of great and pure souls whose thoughts fill the
books of all our libraries ; and that he is revealing him-
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION. 2QI
self still, and ever more and more fully revealing himself
as the ages go by, in nature, from flower up to star ; in
science, through all its domain ; in art, in poetry, in music,
in history, in the mind and conscience and heart of man.
I dare not say that any valuable knowledge, or any help-
ful truth, or any noble aspiration or inspiration or Impulse,
ever comes to man, but it comes from God, and is in just
so far God revealing himself. God's revelation confined
to a single book or set of books? All the books in
the world are too small to hold God's revelation. And
if book-writing goes on for ten thousand years, until
libraries vast as the old library of Alexandria are multi-
plied as the stars, still the fountain of God's revelation
will be as far as ever from running dry.
The Bible as the Producer of Religion and Morals,
versus Religion and Morals as the Producer of the
Bible. Is the Bible the source of religion and of morals ?
If there had nev.er come into existence any such Bible
as ours, would there have been any religion, that is, any
true religion among men, or any morality ?
Of course, in the light of the preceding discussion these
questions seem scarcely less than superfluous; and yet
they are so often asked among certain classes of sincere
and earnest persons, that they ought perhaps to be defi-
nitely met here. It will be a sufficient answer, however,
if I simply point out in a word the bearing of what we
have discovered in preceding chapters upon these ques-
tions.
Both religion and morals had an existence among men
long before our Bible or any part of our Bible was born.
In parts of the world where our Bible has never been
heard of, they have both flourished and borne beautiful
fruits for thousands of years. In the earlier pages of this
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
book it has been shown that many of the purest and
loftiest moral and religious teachings of both our Old
Testament and New are found, in greater or less promi-
nence, in other sacred books of mankind some of those
sacred books being of earlier date than our own. And
when we search the literature and history even of peoples
that did not have any sacred book as, for example, the
Greeks and Romans we find there numerous exhibitions
of noble virtues; while as to piety, we find there much of
that also, and of such kind as gives evidence of being per-
vaded with the spirit of true and pure worship.
Thus we see that instead of our Bible having been the
creator of morals in the world, the very opposite is true.
It was morals and religion in the world ever growing
and developing, ever struggling from dimness, confusion,
and weakness in men's minds, toward greater definiteness
and strength that produced our Bible and all other
sacred books of mankind. And if our Bible and all
others now existing were destroyed, religion and morality
would produce others, and others, so long as others were
needed. The foundations of virtue and religion are not
in any book, but in God, in the Nature of Things > in the
Soul of Man.
Not but that the Bible, once produced, has helped very
efficiently to carry forward the moral and religious devel-
opment of the nations among whom it has come ; so that,
as a rule, these nations owe much to it, and would have
had very different histories if it had not made its appear-
ance. Indeed, we may call our Bible, in a certain true
sense, the fountain from which the particular form of
religion know,n as Christianity has come, just as we may
call the Vedas the fountain from which Brahmanism came.
Nevertheless, we cannot too clearly understand that it
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION. 293
was not the Bible that created religion ; it was religion
and righteousness that created the Bible.
Distinguishing the True from the False, the Inspired
from the Uninspired, in the Bible. If there are errors
and imperfections in the Bible that is to say, if the .
Bible is not all infallible inspiration how are we to know
what parts are true and inspired, and what parts are
untrue and uninspired ; in other words, what parts we
should accept and what parts we should reject? This
question often causes real trouble to earnest and consci-
entious minds ; and yet it seems strange that it should,
for the answer is surely very simple and plain.
With reference to all scientific and historical questions,
and all questions of fact, connected with the Bible, we are
to find out what is truth and what is not truth in exactly
the same way that we find out truth and falsehood any-
where else ; viz., by inquiry. By honest inquiry and can-
did investigation the more important of these questions
of fact can easily be solved.
As to the way we are to find out what we should accept
and what reject in the direction of the moral teachings of
the Bible, the matter is, if possible, simpler still. Indeed,
there is not and never has been any serious difficulty on
this score, certainly not to persons who study the Bible
earnestly and rationally. The great leading doctrines of
morality are clear and unmistakable. They are written
in the very nature of man, and as the race advances to
higher and more perfect civilization these come out into
greater and greater distinctness ; and that, too, even where
men have never known anything of our Bible. Certainly,
then, it is a strange thing if we, in the midst of the high-
est civilization that the world has ever seen, require to
have a Bible that is supernaturally infallible in order to
294 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
know virtue from vice, and the noble from the base in
human conduct. When we read other books we find no
difficulty, as a rule, in forming a judgment as to what in
them is excellent and admirable, and what is degrading
and wrong. Why, then, should we find it difficult, in
reading the Bible, to decide between the morally good
and the morally bad in it? Indeed, we are all constantly
thus deciding, whatever our theories about the Bible may
be. This is seen in the fact that all Christian people
to-day, whether orthodox or heterodox, reject such of its
teachings as those about slavery, polygamy, and the put-
ting to death of witches, and yet accept its Ten Com-
mandments, its Golden Rule, its doctrine of the suprem-
acy of love.
And so, too, with regard to the great spiritual teach-
ings of the Bible; these all carry their credentials and
authority in themselves. Such utterances as the Beati-
tudes and Paul's chapter on Love, it is impossible that
men should mistake about. The whole matter reduces
just to this, and nothing could be simpler : Whatever in
the Bible, as men read it, helps them, strengthens them,
gives them nobler conceptions of God, increases their
faith in humanity, widens their sympathies, purifies their
desires, deepens their earnestness, brightens their hope,
sends them forth with a more abiding consecration to the
true, the beautiful, and the good, is to be received with
as much assurance as if it were spoken to every one by
an audible voice from the skies. On the other hand,
whatever in the Bible, or anywhere else, tends to degrade
men's conceptions of God, or confuse moral distinctions,
or lower theif ideals of life or standards of duty, or dim
their spiritual vision, is certainly not from God, if God is
a being of truth and moral perfection, worthy of men's
THE BIBLE AND INSPIRATION.
worship ; and therefore no ecclesiastical consecration or
sanction, and no alleged attestation of miracles, or any-
thing else, can make it their duty to do anything else
than reject it.
Place the Beatitudes side by side with the imprecations
of the icxpth Psalm; or the story of treacherous Jael
secretly murdering one whom she ought to have be-
friended, beside the parable of the good Samaritan ; or
the declaration in Ecclesiastes, " Man has no pre-eminence
above a beast," beside John's declaration, " Beloved, now
are we the sons of God " ; and is there any difficulty in
understanding which is from above and which is not?
The simple truth is, when men take up the Bible to read
it as they would any other book, without artificial infalli-
bility theories to disturb their common sense or introduce
confusion into their judgments, the trouble we are con-
sidering almost or altogether disappears: the practical
difficulty of knowing what in the Bible to accept and
what to reject, which, viewed from a distance, seems to
some so great a difficulty, melts away into thin air, and
is found to have been really little more than a theologi-
cal dream.
The Bible as Compared with other Books. Is the
Bible, then, to be placed on the same level with other
books? To this question I reply, in accord with what
has more than once been said in the preceding pages:
The most authoritative criticism and judgment seem,
with almost perfect unanimity, to answer, No ! Though
there are in the world many cataracts, there is only one
Niagara ; though there are many countries that have pro-
duced noble art, yet is there only one Greece ; though all
nations and ages have had their poets, yet the world has
produced but one Shakespeare. So, though there are
296 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
many lands that have given birth to great and noble reli-
gions, it seems not invidious to say that there is only one
Palestine; and though in connection with these various
religions have appeared many great and pure religious
teachers, yet has the race produced but one Jesus.
Nature is always sparing of her very best products,
whether in the world of matter or of mind. Evidently
her best moral and spiritual product of that old world
from which all our great religions and the deepest streams
of our moral and spiritual life have come, appeared in
Judea and Galilee, and is represented in this collection of
Hebrew religious literature which we call our Bible.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE.
INCIDENTALLY much has been said already regarding
the value of the Bible. More, however, remains to be
said. Let us inquire definitely in what that value con-
sists.
(i.) The Bible as a Literary Production. Portions of
the Bible, at least, have confessedly a high literary value.
It seems to be the judgment of the most competent crit-
ics that certain books of both the Old Testament and the
New are not out of place side by side with the best liter-
ary productions of any age or country. There is no lack
of authorities who rank some of the Psalms with the lyrics
of Pindar and Wordsworth ; the Book of Job with the
tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare ; the Prophecy
of Isaiah and the Epistle to the Romans with any reli-
gious or ethical writing in the world. Probably few per-
sons will dispute with me when I call the Bible, as a whole,
as it exists in the hands of the people to-day, our greatest
and noblest English classic. The first translation of the
Bible into the vernacular was made so early, and so soon
thereafter it became so emphatically the one great book
of the people, that it has exerted an influence in mould-
ing the English language, and indeed English literature,
vastly greater than any other book. We may almost say
that the English language of to-day is formed on the basis
of King James's translation of 161 1. Probably quite nine
scholars out of ten, of those best qualified to judge, if
298 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
called upon to select the best model in the language, of
simple, terse, vigorous, and at the same time elegant
English, would choose the Bible, in our common trans-
lation.
(2.) The Bible interwoven indissolubly with every
Phase and Department of our Civilization.: The Bible
occupies a far more central and important place in Euro-
pean and American civilization than any other book. In-
deed it is doubtful if a man, voyaging through our modern
Christendom as a student of its history, its literature, its
philosophy, its art, its politics, its institutions, would find
himself so much inconvenienced by being unacquainted
with Homer, Plato, Virgil, Cicero, Dante, and enough
others to make a good dozen of the greatest writers of
the world, outside of the Bible, as he would by being un-
acquainted with the single volume of our Sacred Script-
ures.
In nothing, perhaps, does this more plainly appear than
in art. Going through the great art galleries of Christen-
dom, one finds that the art of whole ages, and some of
these the most productive since classic Rome and Athens,
is well-nigh exclusively occupied with Bible themes. So
closely was the art of Europe, from the conversion of
Rome until very recent times, allied with the Christian
religion, that a knowledge of gravitation is scarcely more
essential to an understanding of astronomy or physics,
than is a knowledge of the Bible to an understanding of
European art as a whole.
But a careful student of European literature, history,
philosophy, politics, and institutions will hardly be willing
to say that the Bible has a less close connection with any
of these than with art. Its connection with these may
not be so direct and easy to trace as with art, but as we
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE. 299
look deeply into the heart of things, we discover that it is
really scarcely less intimate.
(3.) The Bible as a History of the Evolution of
Religion. We have in the Bible a far more vivid and
impressive picture than can be found anywhere else in
literature, of what I may call the evolution of religion and
morals on a large scale. The Bible presents us with the
literary memorials of the growth of the people of Israel,
through ten or twelve centuries of varied and wonderful
history, from ideas of God and worship and morality little
above those of the heathen peoples about them, up into
such ideas as those taught by Jesus, which are confessed
to stand in the front rank of the loftiest religious and
ethical teachings of the world. But this point needs only
the briefest mention here, as it has been considered with
some fulness in two preceding chapters. We speak of the
growth of the English constitution as something marvel-
ous, and the history of it which comes down to us as
perhaps the most valuable political bequest that the past
has made to the English-speaking world. Somewhat such
a bequest as this, only far more valuable, does the religious
world have in the history of the growth of religion as por-
trayed in our Old and New Testaments.
(4.) The Bible and Monotheism. The Bible is the
parent of Monotheism in the world, so far as a book can
be. It is worthy of note that the three great monotheistic
religions all send back their roots directly or indirectly
into our Scriptures Judaism and Christianity directly,
and Mohammedanism indirectly. We are apt to give the
Bible credit for nothing only what allies itself with Chris-
tianity. This is wrong. Judaism is a noble religion, and
has exerted, not only before the Christian era but since,
a great influence in the world. When all is known that
300 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
history has to tell us, it will probably appear that our
modern civilization is more indebted to Israel than we
have been willing to confess, not only as regards religion,
but as regards commerce, education, science, and letters. 1
So, too, Mohammedanism is, in some respects at least,
a noble religion ; and certainly its influence, not only
. upon the world's religious history, but also upon its
intellectual and political, has been very powerful and far-
reaching ; and if we may trust the accounts that come to
us from Asia and Africa, it is to-day spreading in the
world with great rapidity.
But Mohammedanism can be understood only very
imperfectly without a knowledge of the Bible so truly
the child of the Bible as well as of the Koran is it ; while
Judaism cannot be understood at all without a knowledge
of the Old Testament.
It is most remarkable that one book should thus be
so closely related to the three great monotheistic relig-
ions of the world. This fact alone may justly be claimed
as giving our Bible a pre-eminence over all the other
sacred books of mankind.
(5.) The Bible as a Book of Practical Religion. But
it is not until we come to study the Bible as a book of
practical religion, or conduct, that, after all, we approach
its highest value. With all its imperfections, it must still
be confessed to be, on the whole, a book of unequaled
1 For an account of the great influence exercised by the Jews in Rome
and throughout the Roman Empire during the early Christian centuries, see
Professor Huidekoper*s " Judaism in Rome."
For a suggestive epitome of the work they did in the middle ages in
founding and endowing universities, and promoting science, especially
medical science, see Draper's "Intellectual Development of Europe," pp.
414, 417 (Harpers* edition). For a fuller account see Graetz's ' History of
the Jews." Also see " The Jewish Encyclopaedia/' numerous articles.
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE. 301
moral earnestness, incitement, inspiration. With an itera-
tion and reiteration that is untiring, and with an emphasis
that is sometimes fairly tremendous, do all the greater
writers of the Bible impress upon us the grandeur of
the moral side of life the importance of justice, truth,
mercy, but especially righteousness, in human conduct.
A body of men of deeper moral earnestness, or more
brave and loyal to what they believed to be true and
right in religion, perhaps the world never saw, than were
the Old Testament prophets. Bigoted sometimes ; coarse
and cruel sometimes ; true children of a rude age, some
of them ; occupying very different planes, morally and
spiritually, as well as intellectually and socially they
yet, as a whole, were grand men, whose words are even
to-day moral bugle-calls to the race.
Matthew Arnold has well said : " So long as the world
lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will
come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have
had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strong-
est ; and in hearing and reading the words which Israel
has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow
and a force which they could find nowhere else. As well
imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating
it by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with
a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of
Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for con-
duct [that is, righteousness or virtue] not cultivating it
by the help of the Bible."
(6.) The Bible as a Book of Spiritual Consolation
and Quickening. So, too, with regard to all that which
we commonly call the spiritual side of life that side of
life which includes love, gratitude, reverence, prayer,
hope, faith, aspiration, worship it is not too much to
J02 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
say that the world has produced no book which has
proved itself equally powerful, as a help and inspirer of
men here. Such passages as the Sermon on the Mount,
the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the four-
teenth, fifteenth, sixteenth^ and seventeenth chapters of
John, the fifteenth chapter of Luke, the eighth chapter
of Romans, the fifth and sixth chapters of Ephesians,
the twenty-third, twenty-seventh, thirty-seventh, one
hundred and third, one hundred and thirty-ninth, and a
score more Psalms, and selections from the last sixteen
chapters of Isaiah, are spiritual food than which the voice
of the ages declares there has been no richer given to
the race. They are fountains which never run dry, but
which, repair to them often as they would, untold mil-
lions have found always full of water for the soul's deep-
est thirst.
" We search the world for truth, we cull
The good, the pure, the beautiful
From graven stone and written scroll,
From the old flower-fields of the soul ;
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said
Is in the book our mothers read.**
These words of Whittier, as applied to the moral, but
especially to what I have called the more purely spiritual^
teachings of the Bible, are scarcely too strong.
They suggest, too, one other thing about the Bible
perhaps not often enough thought of which to multi-
tudes gives it, and always will, if not a higher, at least a
more tender and heart-felt value than it could ever other-
wise have. I refer to the fact that it is the book " our
mothers read" in other words, that it is a book which
has come down to us all, as the one great sacred volume
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE. 303
of the Christian centuries, hallowed by the dearest and
grandest of associations and memories. It is not only
our book of religion, but it is a book rich with the very
life-blood of all that was highest and holiest in the hopes
and fears, the joys and sorrows, the faiths, the prayers,
the aspirations and yearnings of our fathers, and our
fathers' fathers, and nearly all the noblest men and saint-
liest women of all the Christian ages. How much that
means, let human hearts answer!
Concluding Words Friends and Enemies of the
Bible" All the Bible or None." The Higher Criticism
of the Bible is at present under fire. Against the new
light which scholarship has brought and is bringing to
the interpretation of the Scriptures, many warning voices
are raised. The brave, strong, true men who are lead-
ing this advance are often called hard names, denounced
as destroyers, tried by ecclesiastical councils as heretics.
From many quarters we are told that they are trying
to destroy the Bible. But the exact opposite is true.
They are trying to save the Bible. The Higher Criticism
is constructive constructive along the only lines on which
real and permanent construction is possible. We hear
much about " friends " and " enemies " of the Bible.
There are no such enemies of anything as short-sighted
friends. They who are laboring, as the friends of rever-
ent and sound biblical learning are, to place the Bible
upon a basis that is rational and true, and hence that
cannot be moved, are the Bible's real friends. They who
insist on keeping it on a perishable basis, which tends
ever to melt away before free thought and candid inves-
tigation, as ice before fire, are the Bible's real enemies.
They, too, are enemies of the Bible who say such
Utterly senseless things as the word heard often on shalr
304 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
low lips : " The Bible is either all true or all false ! "
" We must either believe all or reject all."
Believe all or reject all ? Indeed ! This is a strange
rule. Then must I also believe all my Shakespeare, or
reject it all? Must I throw away my Homer if it con-
tains errors? May I say to the astronomer who tells me
there are spots on the sun : " Thank you ; no, sir ; my
motto is, accept all or reject all ; unless I can be assured
that the solar face is all bright I shall affirm that no part
is bright"? Shall we say to men about us: "You must
give up the use of corn as food, or else eat it, husks and
all ; and wheat, or else consume that, chaff and all " ?
Have discrimination and judgment no longer any place
in the world ? Or, if we may use these excellent quali-
ties still in other matters, may we not also in religion ?
Is there any good reason why I should treat my Bible
less fairly than my Shakespeare, or Homer, or Plato ?
This strange rule, "all or none," seems usually to be
insisted on, as regards the Scriptures, with the thought
that of course men will shrink from giving up all the
Bible, and hence, by pressing the alternative, they may
be driven to accept it all It is a sort of thumb-screw
arrangement, by means of which it is supposed men can
be driven to adopt the theory of Bible infallibility. But
what really is the result ? Melancholy enough. It tends
to make men hypocrites ; under this pressure many will
profess to believe it all, who do not, and cannot. It tends
to kill thought and inquiry, and to make men bigots ; for
the only way that men who have once opened their eyes
and seen the imperfections of the Bible can ever again
accept those imperfections as perfections is to intellectu-
ally stultify themselves. It tends to produce utter reject-
ers of the Bible and all religion; for many, too honest to
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF THE BIBLE. 305
pretend to believe what they cannot, take the preachers
and religious teachers at their word, and say: "Very
well ; if it is accept all or reject all, then we reject all.
Think, we will ; reason, we will ; if the Bible and religion
require us to fetter our intellects and believe falsehood
is truth, we prefer to turn our backs upon both." Thus
does this foolish, this baseless alternative, urged by well-
meaning but short-sighted and ignorant believers in an
out-grown dogma, drive men unto unbelief and rejection
of all religion.
It was Goethe, who could not admit for a moment that
the Bible is without imperfections, who penned these
words: "The great veneration which the Bible has
received from so many peoples and generations of earth
is due to its intrinsic worth. . . . The higher the
centuries rise in culture the more will the Bible be made
use of by all who are not wise in their own conceits, but
truly wise."
No, the Bible is not all true ; but neither is it all false.
It cannot all be accepted, unless one is willing to shut
his eyes, and not only trample upon his own reason and
intelligence, but also upon the biblical scholarship of the
world. But much of it can be accepted, and must be
accepted, unless we are willing to violate every principle
of correct literary and moral judgment, and deeply injure
ourselves and mankind.
Probably there is no truer conception of the Bible than
as a gold mine a gold mine inestimably rich yet a
mine still There are quartz and earth in no small meas-
ure mixed with the gold, as in all mines ; but there is also
gold true gold of God, very precious mixed plentifully
with the quartz and the earth. Evidently, then, the part
of rational men and women is, neither to resort to the
306 ORIGIN- AND GROWTH OF THE BIBLE.
folly on the one hand of declaring that the quartz and
earth are gold, nor yet the equal folly on the other hand
of throwing away all, and declaring there is no gold,
because they can. plainly see quartz and earth with the
gold ; but the part of rational men and women surely is to
delve earnestly in the mine, casting out, without hesita-
tion, what plainly is not gold, but saving and treasuring
up, with glad appreciation and thankfulness, rich stores of
what clearly is gold.
INDEX.
Acts, Paul and the Book of, 136-143
American Revised Version, 234236
Amos, the Book of, 101
Anonymous character of many bib-
lical books, 48-50
Antiochus Epiphanes, 188
Apocalypse. See Revelation.
Apocrypha, meaning of word, 173
Apocrypha, the Old Testament, 167,
168, 173-189; the New Testament,
168-172
Apocryphal writings, value of the,
176-178
Aramaic language, 202-^04
Armenian Version of Bible, 224
Arnold Matthew, quoted, 32
Authorized Version of Bible, 232236
Authorship of Bible books, uncer-
tainty as to, 48-51
Avesta, or Zend-Avesta, the, i, 25,
26
B
Babylon, the captivity in, as related
to the religious evolution of Israel,
2 54, 255
Babylon, the place where the Priestly
Document was formed, 75
Baptism, the rite of, 18
Baruch, the Book of, 186, 187
Bel and the Dragon, 187
Bible, the, as a sacred book, i ; con-
flict of science with, 14, 13; and
other sacred books, similarity be-
tween, 17-33; as literature, 44 58 ;
as the creator of religion and
morals, 291-293; compared with
other books, 295, 296; permanent
value of, 297-306; as a book of
practical religion, 300; as a book
of spiritual consolation and quick-
ening, 301-301; "all or none,"
303306 ; translations and revisions
of, 222-238
"Bishops'" Bible, the, 231
Bixby, James T., quoted, i4, 15
Books of the Bible, non-chronological
arrangement of, 51-57
Briggs, Chas. A., quoted, 48, 70, 258
Buddha and Christ, similarity of
legends concerning, 20, 21
Buddhism and Christianity, similari-
ties between, 20, 21
Buddhist and Christian canons, simi-
larities as regards their formation,
200, 201
Buddhists, Sacred Book of the, 28, 29
Canons of the Old and New Testa-
ments, formation of, 164-172, 190-
201
Captivity, the, as related to the re-
ligious evolution of Israel, 254,
Chadwick, J. W., cited, 50
Childish representations of God
found in the Bible, 278
Chinese sacred books, I, 26, 27
Christ and Buddha, similarity of
legends concerning, 20, 21
Christianity, close relation of, to
Judaism, 175-178
Christianity, preparation for, in the
308
INDEX.
apocalyptic and other apocryphal
literature, 174-178, 180, 181
Chronicles, the Books of, 89
Chronological order of the Bible
books, 51-57
' ., divisic
tian, 138
Church,
ion in the early Chris-
Circumcision, 1 8
Civilization as related to the Bible,
298, 299
Clodd, Edward, cited, 32
Colossians, Epistle to the, 150, 151
Compilations, many books of the
Bible are, 45-50
Composite character of many of the
biblical books, 45-48
Confucius, the Chinese sacred books
of, I ; teachings of, 26, 27
Contradictions in the Bible, 248-272
Corinthians, First and Second Epis-
tles to the, 146, 147
Cross, the, 18
Curtis, T. E., cited, 206, 207
Daniel, the Book of, ico, 180
Daniel, additions to, 187
Dates, uncertainty of, in the Bible,
4&-5I
David, as related to the religious
progress of Israel, 253, 254
David, Rhys, cited, 20, 21
Deuteronomy, the Book of, as docu-
ment "D," 72, 73. See Penta-
teuch.
Dispersion, Jews, of the, 176, 178
(note).
Documents of the Pentateuch, de-
scribed, 70-79
Documents, the earliest in the syn-
optic Gospels, 121
Douai translation of the Bible, the,
224, 231, 232
Dragon, Bel and the, 187
Driver, S. R., cited, 45, 72, 117
Ecclesiastes, the Book of, 115, 116
Ecclesiasticus, the Book of, 185, 186
Egyptian Religion, Christianity and
Judaism, 21, 22
Elohistic document of the Penta-
teuch, 71, 72
Enemies and friends of the Bible,
33
English translations of the Bible,
226-238
Enoch, the Book of, 180 -
Ephesians, Epistle to the, 147, 150
Epistles of Paul, 144-153
Epistles, the non-Pauline, 154-160
Errors of copyists of Scripture manu-
scripts, 210, 211, 215-219
Errors, scientific, in the Bible, 275
Esdras, the First and Second Books,
179-181
Essenes, 176
Esther, the Book of, 92
Esther, the rest of the chapters of r
183
Evolution, religious, traceable in the
Bible, 239-257, 299
Exaggerations in the Bible, 276-278
Excluded Books (excluded from the
Old and New Testaments), 163-
172
Exile, the period of the, 40, 41
Exodus. See Pentateuch.
Ezekiel, the Book of, 100
Ezra, the Book of, 91
Fourth Gospel. See John.
Galatians, Epistle to the, 147
Genesis. See Pentateuch.
"Geneva" Bible, the, 231
3-ladden, Washington, cited, 48
God, Progress in the conception of,
240; childish representations of,
278; morally degrading represen-
tations of, 278-282
ospels, contrasts between the Syn-
optics and the Fourth, 128 ; contra-
dictions in, 269-272; legendary
element in, 131-133; origin and
character of, 117-135
INDEX.
309
"Great" Bible, the, 231
Greek text of the New Testament,
202-204, 215-221
Greek manuscripts of the New Testa-
ment, 215-221
H
Habakkuk, the Book of, 103
Haggai, the Book of, 103
Hagiographa, the, 192, 19$
Hebrew land, 34-36
Hebrew people, origin and history
of, 36-43
Hebrew people, early low condition
of their civilization and religion,
240-250, 253
Hebrew language, 202-214
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 154, 155
Hexateuch, the, 74 (note 2). See
Pentateuch.
Higginson, T. W., cited, 19, 30
Hindus, sacred books of the, 23-25
Historical books of the Old Testa-
ment, 85
Historical mistakes in the Bible, 274,
275
History and legend, Hebrew, 80-92
Hosea, the Book of, 101
Human sacrifices among the He-
brews, 243, 244
Immortality, growth of belief in, 244-
246
Incarnations, divine, 18
Inculcation of what is wrong in the
Bible, 281-283
Infallibility of the Bible, 258-287
doctrine of, not found in Bible
260-265 ; doctrine of, an enemy to
virtue, 286
Infidelity, how men are driven into,
284
Inspiration of the Bible, 288-296
Interpretation Bible, false methods
of, 11-16
Isaiah, the Book of, 97
James, Epistle of, 155, 156
Jehovah, spelling of word, 68 (note)
Jehovistic document of the Penta-
teuch, the, 70,71
Jeremiah, the Book of, 99
Jerome, Saint, 223
Jesus as the greatest of the Hebrew
- prophets, 256, 257 m _ , ,_.. -
Jesus as a child of his age, 175-178
Jesus and his Gospel, 119-135
Jesus the Son of Sirach, the Wisdom
of, 185, 186 ' " '" "
Jews, the, Origin and History of, 36-
Job, the Book of, 107-110
Joel, the Book of, 101
John (the Fourth Gospel), 127-131
John, First, Second, and Third Epis-
tles of, 158, 159
Jonah, the Book of, 102
Joshua, the Book of, 74 (note 2), 86
Judaism, close relation of, to Chris-
tianity, 175-178
Jude, Epistle of, 159, 160, 180
Judges, the Book of, 87
Judith, the Book of, 182
King James* Version, 232-236
Kings, the Books of, 88
Koran, the, i, 29
Lamentations, the Book of, 99
Languages of the Bible, 202-204
Lao-tse, the Chinese Sacred Book
of, i
Latin, the Bible in, 222-224
Law, the, 191
Legend and History, Hebrew, 80-92
Legendary element in the Gospels,
I 3 I-I 33
Letourneau on Science and the Bible,
15
Levitical law, the, not given by
Moses, 53-56
Leviticus. See Pentateuch.
3io
INDEX.
Literary value of the Bible, 297, 298
Lost books of the Old Testament,
164, 165
Lost books of the New Testament,
169
Luther and the Bible, 225
M
Maccabees, the First and Second
Books of, 187-189
Maccabeus, Judas, 188, 189
Malachi, the Book of, 104, 174
Manen, W. C. van. His claim that
no New Testament Epistles were
written by Paul, 153
Manuscripts, Old Testament, 204, 205
Mark, the Gospel of, 121-126
Martineau, James, cited, 161, 162
Massorites, the, 208, 209
Matthew, the Gospel of, 121-126.
"Matthew's" Bible, 231
Messiahs found in other sacred books,
Micah, the Book of, 103
Middle Ages, the Bible during, 225
Miracles, common to most sacred
books, IQ
Mistakes, historic, in the Bible, 274-
275
Modern Reader's Bible, Moulton's,
238
Mohammedans, Sacred Book of the,
1,29
Monotheism, progress of Israel to,
from polytheism, 240-244; the
Bible the parent of, 299, 300
Moral and religious evolution trace-
able in- the Bible, 239-257
Moses, not the author of the Penta-
teuch, 59-79
Moses: Progress of Religion from
Moses to David, 253, 254
Moulton's Bible for Modern Readers,
Miiller, F. Max, cited, 13, 19, 22, 23
N
Nahum, the Book of, 103
Nehemiah, the Book of, 91
New .Testament,, how its books at-
tained their .sacredness, 8; non-
chronological arrangement of its
books, 50-58; what is it? 119, 120;
lost books of, 169-172
New Testament canon, scriptures
outside of the, 1 68
New Testament period of Jejwish
history, the, 42, 43, 256
Newton, Heber, cited, 62
Noyes, Geo. R., translation of the
Bible by, 237
Numbers, the Book of, See Penta-
teuch.
Obadiah, the Book of, 102
Old Testament, how it attained its
sacredness, 7, 8; origin and char-
acter of its books, 44-118; lost
books, 164, 165
Palestine, description of, 34-36
Paul, the Apostle, a sketch, 136-140
Paul and the Book of Acts, 136-143
Paul, the Epistles of, 144-153
Pentateuch, the, dates of books, 78 ;
was it written by Moses ? 59-68 ;
evidences of a later hand, 64; its
composite nature and origin, 69-79 ;
the four documents of, united, 76
Permanent value "of the Bible, 297-
306
Persians, Sacred Book of the, 25, 26
Peter, First and Second Epistles of,
156-158
Pfleiderer, Otto, cited, 56
Pharisees, 176
Philemon, Epistle to, 152, 153
Philippians, Epistle to the, 150
Poetical Books of the Old Testament,
106-118
Poetry, Hebrew, 106-118
Polychrome Bible, the, 237
Polygamy sanctioned in the Bible, 9
Polytheism among the Hebrews, 240-
Predictive element in Old Testament
prophecy, 95, 96
INDEX.
T, 93-
Price, Ira A. "The. Ancestry of Our
English Bible," 238
Priestly document of the 'Pentateuch,
73-76 '
Priestly period in Jewish history, 41,
42/254-256 .
Progress, moral ana religious, trace-
able* in the Bible, 239-257
Prophecy, Hebrew, 93-105
Prophetical books of the O.
105
Prophetic period in Jewish history,
39, 40, 254
" Prophets, The," when added to the
Canon, 192
Protestant Reformation, the, and the
Bible, 225
Proverbs, the Book of, 113-115
Psalms, the Book of, 110-113
Pseudonymous character of some of
the Bible books, 49, 50
R
Readings, various, of the Greek Text,
219-221
Reformation, the Protestant, and the
Bible, 225
Religious evolution traceable in the
Bible, 239-257
Revelation, the Book of, 160-163,
180
Revelation, 289-291
Revised Version, the, 233-237
Revisions of the Bible, 222-238
Rig- Veda, hymns from the, 23-24
Romans, Epistle to the, 145, 146
Ruth, the Book of, 88
Sacred books of the world, 1-33
Sacred books which grow out of the
life of a people, 3 ; which originate
in a man, 4, 5 ; origin of, 1-8 ; tol-
erate no rivals, 1 1 ; similarities be-
tween the Bible and others, 17-33 J
differences between, 31
Sacrifice, animal and human, among
the Hebrews, 241-244
Sacrifices, 18
Sadducees, 176
Samuel, the Books of, 88
Satan, rise of belief in, 246, 247
Science, conflict of, with the Bible,
14, 15
Scientific errors in the Bible, 275
Sclavonic Version of Bible, 225
Semitic Tribes from which the He-
brews Spning, 253
Septuagint, the, 178, 222
Slavery sanctioned in the Bible, 10
Smith, W. Robertson, cited, 46, 48,
63, 207, 208
Solomon, the Song of, 116-118
Solomon, the Wisdom of, 184, 185
Song of the Three Holy Children,
187
Susanna, the History of, 187
Synoptic Gospels, the, 119-126
Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel,
compared, 128-131
Ten Commandments, different forms
of, 268, 269
Testaments, The Historical Gap be-
tween the Two, 173, 174
Text of the Old Testament, its for-
. mation and preservation, 202-214
Text of the New Testament, its for-
mation and preservation, 202-264,
21 5-221
Thessalonians, First and Second
Epistles to the, 151
Theile, C. P., cited, 25
Timothy, First and Second Epistles
to, 151, 152
Titus, Epistle to, 152
Tobit, the Book of, 181, 182
Translations of the Bible, 222-238
Tripitaka, the, I A 28
Twentieth Century New Testament,
the, 238
Tyndale and his translation of the
Bible, 227-231
Value of the Bible, the permanent,
297-306
312
INDEX.
Van Manen. See Marten
Vedas, the, I ; hymns from the, 23, 24
Version, the Authorized, 232-230
Version, the Revised, 233-237
Vowels, the Hebrew language written
without, 205-208
Vulgate, the, 223, 224
W
Weiss, John, cited, 15
Widows burned on the funeral pile
of their husbands, as result of text
of Vedas, 9
Wisdom literature of the Hebrews
184, 255
Wisdom of Jesus the. Son of Siraco,
the, 185, 186
Wisdom of Solomon, Book of the,
184, 185
Wycliffe and his translation of the
Bible, 226, 227, 230
Zechariah, the Book of, 103
Zend-Avesta. See Avesta
Zephaniah, the Book of, 103
Zoroaster, religion of, 25, 20
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