THE LATE REV ROBERT DICK WILSON
A Scientific Investigation
of the Old Testament
By
ROBERT DICK WILSON
PH.D., D.D ,
Profuror of Semitic Philology m
Princeton Theokgtcal Seminary
PHILADELPHIA
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY
PREFACE
IT IS the purpose of the present volume to show
that intelligent Christians have a reasonable
ground, for concluding that the text of the Old
Testament which we have is substantially correct,
and that, In its true and obvious meaning, it has a
right to be considered a part of the "infallible rule of
faith and practice" that we have in the Holy Scrip-
tures.
I have not gone into a discussion of miracles and
prophecy, either as to their possibility or as to their
actuality. All believers in the incarnation and the
resurrection must accept this possibility and this ac-
tuality. I seek rather to show that, so far as anyone
knows j the Old Testament can be and is just what
the authors claimed it to be, and what the Christ and
the New Testament writers thought it to be. The
theory of kenasis^so far as it affects the Lord's knowl-
edge of the Old Testament, is, I hope, shown to be
unnecessary, because the facts and the evidence bear-
ing upon the Old Testament support the testimony of
Jesus.
I have not said much about the chronology and the
geography of the Old Testament, because in neither
of these two departments of history are the facts and
the evidence sufficiently well established to give us re-
[5]
liable testimony upon the details of the Biblical rec-
ords as they bear upon these two important subjects.
As to the first chapters of Genesis, the extra-
Biblical sources now known show that before the time
of Abraham the minds of men were much occupied
with the origin of the universe; and also, that the
account in Genesis is the only one which is clearly
monotheistic, and that it is incomparably superior in
rationality to the ten or more accounts from Egypt
and Babylonia. The Babylonian account of the flood
confirms the probability that the Biblical records de-
scribe a real historical occurrence and, as Professor
Sayce said long ago, shows by its similar combination
of the so-called J and P documents of the Pentateuch
that the radical hypothesis of the post-captivity com-
position of the Biblical record of the deluge is abso-
lutely contrary to the facts. The time, the extent,
and many of the circumstances of the flood are still
debatable; but that there was a flood before the time
of Abraham and that the Genesis account of it is cor-
rect is abundantly supported in substance by the evi-
dence of the eleventh tablet of the Babylonian record*
The method followed may be called the evidential
method; because I have sought to follow the Laws
of Evidence as applied to documents admitted in our
courts of law. I presume that the prinia facie evi-
dence of the documents of the Old Testament is to be
received as true until it shall have been proved false.
I hold, further, that the evidence of manuscripts and
[6]
versions and of the Egyptian, Babylonian and other
documents outside the Bible confirms the pnma facie
evidence of the Biblical documents in general both as
to text and meaning; and that this text and meaning
cannot be corrected or changed simply in order to be
brought into harmony with the opinions of men of
our generation. To demand that we should verify
every statement of any ancient document (or modern
for that matter) before we can reasonably believe it,
is demanding the impossible. The most that we can
reasonably require is that the author of the document
and the document itself shall stand the test of veracity
wherever their statements can be examined in the light
of other testimony of the same age and provenance
and of equal veracity Examined in this way, I con-
tend that our text of the Old Testament is presump-
tively correct, that its meaning is on the whole clear and
trustworthy, and that we can as theists and Christians
conscientiously and reasonably believe that the Old
Testament as we have it is what it purports to be and
what Christ and the apostles thought it to be, and what
all churches have always declared it to be the Word
of God and the infallible rule of faith and practice.
In the title I use the phrase "Scientific Investigation/ 1
because I am trying to judge the Old Testament docu-
ments in the light of the facts made known in the
documents of the nations who surrounded and in-
fluenced the people of Israel through all its history
from Abraham to Ezra. Again, I have ventured to
[7]
use the term scientific, not merely because these con-
clusions are based on knowledge, but because, after the
introductory pages, I have presented the evidence in an
orderly manner, treating of text, grammar, vocabulary,
and history in what I consider to be a logical sequence.
The results of some of my investigations, such as those
of the foreign words in the Hebrew of the Old Testa-
ment, and of the religion of Israel, have not yet been
fully published. If it please the Lord to spare my life
and grant me health I hope in the future to publish the
results of my labors on these and other subjects.
It may help the less learned of my readers if I ex-
plain why I have given so much space to the discus-
sion of text, grammar, and vocabulary.
As to the text, or written form, of the documents
of the Old Testament, as they issued from their au-
thors, it is obvious that, if we do not have exact copies
of the original writings, it will be impossible for us to
be sure that we Have the very words of the prophets
who wrote or approved these writings. In my dis-
cussion of the text, therefore, it is my endeavor to
show from the evidence of manuscripts, versions, and
the inscriptions, that we are scientifically certain that
we have substantially the same text that was in the
possession of Christ and the apostles and, so far as
anybody knows, the same as that written by the origi-
nal composers of the Old Testament documents*
[8]
As to grammar, since the critics date the documents
of the Old Testament largely by the forms and syntac-
tical constructions of the language, it is necessary to
show that these forms and constructions are irrelevant
as evidence of the time at which a document was writ-
ten.
As to vocabulary, since all the commentaries and in-
troductions to the Old Testament in general, or to
particular books or documents of the Old Testament,
are full of conclusions based upon the origin, or mean-
ing of the Hebrew words, both as to the time, place,
authorship and meaning of these books and docu-
ments, it is necessary to investigate the history of the
Hebrew language and of the particular words pro-
duced in evidence, in order to see whether these words
really prove what they are alleged to prove, with re-
gard to the origin and contents of the books and docu-
ments.
Perhaps at this point it will be well also to give a
statement of the conservative and radical views as to
the time of the composition of the books of the Old
Testament.
The radicals claim, in general, that the Canon was
not completed till about 100 B. C, and in particular:
1, That the first six books, that is, the Pentateuch
and Joshua, were composed by at least a dozen re-
dactors out of five or more other books ( J, E, D, H,
and P), which were written from 900 to 450 B. C.;
although, with the exception of Ezra, the authors and
[9]
redactors of these five books are alike unknown to
history, either as to name, time or provenance. The
sources of their information are also unknown to his-
tory, and consequently no one can rely upon the ve-
racity of any statement in the Hexateuch. The books
of Moses are simply a mythical and confused account
of the origin of the people and institutions of Israel.
2. That the book of Judges is "hardly strictly his-
tory/' but "probably traditions preserved among the
individual tribes" ; and that it was put in its present
form "by a hand dependent on P," i. e., after 450
B. C. Most of the critics now admit that the larger
part of the books of Samuel and Kings is from origi-
nal sources written at the time of, or shortly after, the
events recorded in them. Ruth and Esther are ro-
mances, idylls, or historical novels. Chronicles, Ezra,
and Nehemiah have some historical matter; the rest
was invented for one purpose or another, mostly to
exalt the priestly caste.
3. As to Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Nahum, Habak-
kuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi, Ezekiel, and most
of Jeremiah, the conclusions of the radical critics as
to authorship and date are not very different from
those of the conservatives. Jonah and Joel are placed
after the captivity; Micah and Zechariah are divided
into three parts and scattered over three or more cen-
turies. Isaiah has a dozen or more authors, scattered
over four centuries. In all the books anything looking
like a prediction is ruthlessly cut out and attributed to
[10]
some unknown redactor of an age at, or after, the
event. Daniel, because of its apocalypses, is placed
about the middle of the second century B. C.
4. As to the other books, the radical critics are
united in declaring that the Lamentations was not
written by Jeremiah, nor the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes
and the Song of Songs by Solomon. Some parts of
Proverbs and all of Ecclesiastes are by many assigned
to Persian or Greek times. As to the Psalms, most of
the critics now deny that David wrote any of them,
and many critics put the Psalms after the captivity and
assign many of them to Maccabean times. Job is gen-
erally assigned to the sixth century B. C.
On the other hand, the conservative position is, in
general, that the Canon of the books of the Old Tes-
tament was completed in the fifth century B. C., before
the succession of the prophets ceased. As to the par-
ticular portions of the Old Testament, their view is :
1. That the Pentateuch as it stands is historical and
from the time of Moses; and that Moses was its real
author, though it may have been revised and edited by
later redactors, the additions being just as much in-
spired and as true as the rest.
2. That Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings
were composed from original and trustworthy sources;
though, in the case at least of Kings, they were not
completed till about 575 B. C.
3. That the prophets Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah,
Micah, and Isaiah were all written about or before
[11]
700 B. C.; Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zeph-
aniah before 600 B. C. ; Jeremiah, Lamentations, and
Ezekiel, between 650 and 550 B. C.; Daniel, Haggai
and Zechariah between 550 and 500 B. C.; and Mala-
chi in the fifth century B. C.
4. That there is good and sufficient reason for con-
cluding that the headings of the Psalms are as a whole
correct; that it is probable that all of the Psalms were
written before 400 B. C.; that Ecclesiastes and the
Song of Songs and most of the book of Proverbs
may, for all we know, have been written by Solomon;
that Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles were
written before 400 B. C; and Job at 550 B. C., or
earlier.
In conclusion, let me reiterate my conviction that
no one knows enough to show that the true text of the
Old Testament in its true interpretation is not true.
The evidence in our possession has convinced me that
at "sundry times and in divers manners God spake
unto our fathers through the prophets," that the Old
Testament in Hebrew '^being immediately inspired by
God" has "by his singular care and providence been,
kept pure in all ages"; and that, when the wisdom of
men and the law of God had alike failed to save hu-
manity, in the fullness of time, when all the prepara-
tion was complete, God sent forth His Son to confound
[12]
the wisdom of man and to redeem those who come
under the Law. Thank God for the Holy Oracles.
Thank Him yet more for "the unspeakable gift" of
His love, who brought life and immortality to light in
His gospel
These studies originally appeared in The Princeton Theological
Review for 1919, and after thorough revision, with the addition of
much new matcnal t are now published in this permanent form.
[13]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION , . 19
II. THE EVIDENCE : TEXT 65
III. THE EVIDENCE : GRAMMAR 105
IV. THE EVIDENCE . VOCABULARY 125
V. THE EVIDENCE HISTORY 167
VI. THE EVIDENCE : RELIGION 207
VII. CONCLUSION 213
GLOSSARY AND LIST o# ABBREVIATIONS . 217
[15]
I
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
IN THE common law of England, which is fol-
lowed in most of our American commonwealths,
the presumption is that the accused is innocent of
an alleged crime until he shall have been proven guilty.
It may be called the evidential system of jurisprudence.
In contradistinction to this is the inquisitorial system
in which the accused is supposed to be guilty unless he
can establish his innocence. These two systems have
their followers when we leave the forum of legal
combat and enter that of Biblical literature and his-
tory. Those who pursue the inquisitorial method
accuse the authors of the Old Testament books of
anachronisms, inconsistencies, frauds, forgeries, and
false statements, and boldly defy anyone to disprove
their accusations. The would-be defenders of the
authors are very much in, the position of a man who
would have defended a friend in the clutches of the
Spanish inquisition. 1 He could not gain access to the
accused and th6 accused had no means ,of communicat-
ing with him, except through the inquisitors them-
selves. So, Moses and Isaiah and Jonah are unable
to communicate with us who would defend them;
1 See Emil Reich: The Failure of the Higher Criticism of the
Bible.
[19]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
and those who accuse them, or their works, of mis-
statements and falsehoods wrest their words, stigma-
tize their motives, assume that their own opinions are
testimony, and declare a verdict of guilty. They de-
nounce as unscientific any attempt on the part of the
defenders to establish the truthfulness and harmoni-
ousness of the documents. They set themselves up
as accusers, witnesses, jury and judges, and call un-
scholarly and traditional (word of scorn!) all who
refuse to accept their verdict They cry aloud: To
the auto da fe with the book and with all the defend-
ers thereof 1
EXAMPLES OF CRITICAL METHODS
GENESIS XIV
One of the most outstanding examples of the in-
quisitorial method of criticism is Gen. xiv, where we
have the account of the expedition of Chedorlaomer
against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Of this
expedition and of the defeat of it by Abraham, Well-
hausen says, that they "are simply impossibilities/'
When it is shown that the kings of Babylonia had
made similar expeditions as far as the Mediterranean,
in the time of Lugal-zaggizi and Sargon the First (cir*
3000 B. C.), 2 and in the time of Hammurabi (2000
B. C.), 8 and that in the time of Hammurabi, there
2 King, A History of Sumer and Akkad, 197, 360.
sjeremias: The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient
East, I. 317, 322
[20]
THE METHOD o# THE INVESTIGATION
were kings with the names of Arioch, Tidal, and with
at least the first part of the name Chedorlaomer,*
that a man with the name of Abram is mentioned as
early as 1950 B. C., 5 the critics reply that some un-
known Jewish archaeologist of some time between 900
and 300 B. C., who happened to be in Babylon, con-
cocted this little story in glorification of Abraham and
succeeded in inducing Ezra and Nehemiah, or some
later Jewish authorities before 280 B. C. (when the
Septuagint translation was made),* to accept the
fabrication as fact and to embody it among the
archives of the Jewish people, by whom it has ever
since been considered to be authoritative history.
In favor of the historical character of this narra-
tive we have the evidence that it suits the time and
the place, that the names of some of the principal
actors are known to be names of persons living in the
time of Hammurabi, that the names of the three
kings confederated with Chedorlaomer have been
identified as kings of the time of Hammurabi, that
Elam had at that time and never afterwards the
hegemony of Western Asia, that expeditions of the
Kudur-Mabug, and Kudur-Nahundu See King: The
Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, I LV.
5 See able discussions of Gen xiv in Clay Light on the Old
Testament from Babel, 125-143, and Pinches. The Old Testa-
ment in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and
Babylonia, p. 148.
Or, probably, before 400 B C , the latest date at which the
Samaritans could have acquired their copy of the Pentateuch.
[21]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THS OLD TESTAMENT
kind were common from 4000 B C. to the time of
the Persians and that oriental armies have again and
again been put to flight by a sudden attack of
inferior forces/
Against the historical character of this narrative
we have the assertion of Wellhausen and other critics
of our times (only about 4,000 years after the sup-
posed expedition!) that the expedition was "simply
impossible/' and that it is probable that the account
may have been fabricated (or forged) by some per-
son unknown, at some time unknown, in some way
unknown, and accepted as true history by some per-
sons unknown, at some time unknown, for reasons
unknown. Not one item of evidence in the way of
time, place, logic, psychology, language, or customs,
has been produced against the truthworthiness of the
document. The prima facie evidence is supported by
the circumstantial evidence. But a German professor
says it is "simply impossible"; English followers
echo "simply impossible," and the Americans echo
again "simply impossible," And this assertion of
simply impossible is called an "assured result of scien-
tific criticism" ! 8
7 See Reich: Loc cit. f p. 81, Sayce PSBA, 1918, and Filter
PSBA, XXXV. 205-216.
8 The evidence on Gen. xiv will be found in Hommel : The
Ancient Hebrew Tradition, pp. 146-200; Albert T. Clay: Light
on the Old Testament from Babel, pp. 125-143 ; Alfred Jeremias :
The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Host, pp. 314-
324; Pinches: The Old Testament, etc.; King: The Letters and
[22]
METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
THE LAW OF HOLINESS
In contradistinction to the inquisitorial method is
that which presumes a man to be innocent until he
is proven guilty. As applied to documents it proceeds
on the presumption that a document is to be pre-
sumed to be what it purports to be until it shall be
proven that it is not. Thus the presumption is that
the so-called Law of Holiness (Lev. xvii-xxvi) was
the work of Moses, because seventeen times in these
chapters it is said that Jehovah spake unto Moses say-
ing what is in the following section, and because the
Law begins with the statement "Jehovah spake unto
Moses saying: Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons
and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them :
This is the thing which Jehovah hath commanded,"
and ends with the subscription (xxvi. 46) : "These
are the statutes and ordinances and laws, which Je-
hovah made between him and the children of Israel
in Mount Sinai by Moses/' The superscription and the
subscription mention the place, subject-matter, orig-
inal speaker, mediators, and persons addressed. The,
contents of the chapters seem to substantiate the
claim of the superscription and subscription.
The issue, then, is clearly drawn. Anyone who
Inscriptions of Hammurabi, I. pp 49 ff., III. 68 ff., 6-11, 237,
Schorr: Urkunden des Alt-babyhnischen Zivil-und J Prosesrechts,
pp. 589, 591, 595, 612; Filter: Proceedings of the Society^ of
Biblical Archeology, for 1913 and 1914; and many discussions
by Professor Sayce.
[23]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
successfully assails the veracity of this document
must prove either that there is no Jehovah, or that
He cannot address or speak to man, or that there was
no Moses or Aaron, or that Jehovah did not speak
to Moses, or that there were no children of Israel at
that time, or that the laws were not given at Sinai.
Its veracity cannot be directly assailed by an attack
on its language for the document does not say that
it was originally written in Hebrew. Nor would it
prove its non-existence to show that it was not men-
tioned, 9 nor observed for four hundred or a thou-
sand years after it was written; nor even to show
that before the time of Ezra its injunctions were
broken and the very opposite of them obeyed. Nor
would it show that the document as a whole was not
from Moses, if it could be demonstrated that certain
parts of it were not from him, the critics themselves
being witnesses; for they all claim that there are
interpolations in Amos and Jeremiah while uphold-
ing their genuineness as a whole. 10 Nor would it show
that the Law of Holiness was not given by Moses, if
it could be proven that he did not write it with his
own hand* 11 Nor would it prove that Moses was not
9 The code of Hammurabi is not mentioned in any known docu-
ment, except in the code itself. Outside of the Z ado kite Frag~
ments, there is no evidence for the existence of the Zadokite sect,
nor for the practice of their laws
10 Compare the last section of the Gospel of Mark.
11 The critics reiterate the statement that it is not said In the
Pentateuch that Moses wrote any of it except the curse on
[24]
THE METHOD otf THS INVESTIGATION
the author of the Law of Holiness to affirm that the
same kind of argument which has been used with
regard to it would prove also that Moses was the
author of the Law of the Covenant in Ex. xx-xxiv,
and of Deuteronomy and of the other documents of
the Pentateuch, and that they could not have had the
Araalek, the Ten Commandments and certain other portions, as
if this were an unanswerable argument against the Mosaic author-
ship of the Law. Is one to allege, then, that Hammurabi cannot
be called the author of the code named after him, unless, for-
sooth, he inscribed it with his own hand? And yet the monu-
ment expressly ascribes itself to Hammurabi in the words of the
epilogue (Col. xh. 59-67) . "In the days that are yet to come,
for all future times, may the king who is in the land observe the
words of righteousness which I have written upon my monu-
ment." Or, is Sennacherib not to be called the author of
Cylinder No. 103,000, unless he himself inscribed it? Yet it
begins with his name and titles and is full of his words and deeds
recorded in the first person, singular number. "I fashioned a
memorial tablet," "I set it up," "I flayed Kirua," "I sent my
troops." It is all I, I, I, my, my, my, from beginning to end;
and yet, it is certain that he never wrote a word of it with his
own hand Or, is Darius Hystaspis not the author of the Behi-
stun Inscription, whose sentences are largely in the third person
and of which nearly every section begins with "Thus saith Darius
the king"? What a subject for the painter's brush! Darius, the
Persian Achawnenid, king of Babylon and of the lands, king of
Upper and Lower Egypt, sitting on a scaffolding, his chisel in
his left hand and his mallet in his right, cutting into the imperish-
able rock the record of his achievements by the grace of Ahura-
mazda! And how about Thothmes I and III, and Rameses II,
III and XIII, and Shishak, and Tiglath-Pileser I and III, and
Nebuchadnezzar I and II, and others, whose numerous and
lengthy records have been preserved? Are we to suppose that
Moses cannot have recorded his thoughts and words and deeds
just in the same way that his predecessors, contemporaries, and
successors, did?
[25]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THS OLD TESTAMENT
same author. For if Jehovah was really the source
of all the laws as the documents state, then any ap-
parent inconsistencies between the codes must be
possible to harmonize or must be due to errors of
transmission, or, at least, will be no more against the
consistency of the laws, if they were all written dur-
ing Moses' lifetime than if they were uttered at
widely separated periods of time. And if they were
all the production of Moses, and he merely attributed
them to Jehovah, this would simply remove the onus
of the alleged inconsistencies from the shoulders of
Ezra and the later Jews and place it upon the back
of Moses. Why must we suppose that Moses would
have avoided all inconsistencies, but that Ezra and all
the numerous unknown but cunning redactors who
are alleged to have composed the Pentateuch should
have retained or inserted them? It is passing
strange, also, that the Pharisees and Rabbis who tried
to observe fully all the laws of the Pentateuch and
actually thought they were doing so, should have
failed to find in them those inconsistencies which to
the modern critic seem so numerous and incompre-
hensible and irreconcilable.
Nor is there anything in The Law of Holiness that
may not have been written 1,500 years before Christ
as well as 500 years before. Indeed, we can scarcely
conceive of a human society so ignorant as not to
have understood all of its injunctions. No lawyer is
needed to explain its simple, clear, and concise Ian-
[26]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
guage; and it is concerned with every day matters,
such as the shedding of blood, the relation of the
sexes, and duties to parents, strangers, and God. 12
Nor can it be shown that there are any geograph-
ical or archaeological references in the Law of Holi-
ness that are unsuitable to the age of Moses. Nor
can it be shown that the ideas of Holiness are such
as could not have been known to Moses, or that they
are so Different from the ideas of JE, D and P as
that they could not all have proceeded from the fer-
tile brain of one man and age. 13 Where the ideas of
12 The following" is an analysis of the Law of Holiness: xvi,
the day of atonement, xvu, laws concerning blood; xvni, laws
of incest and lust, xix, xx, laws of holy living such as fearing
parents (xix. 3), rejecting idols (vs. 4), offering acceptable peace
offerings (5-8), helping the poor (9, 10), forbidding stealing
and lying and profanity (11, 12), defrauding the workingman
(13), injuring the deformed (14), perverting judgment (15),
being a talebearer or hater of neighbors (16, 17), vengeance
(18), mingling of cattle, seed or textiles (19), fornication (20-
22), eating of holy fruit (23-25), or blood (26), practising magic
(26), or mutilation (27, 28), or prostitution (29), profaning the
Sabbath or the sanctuary (30), defiling themselves with familiar
spirits, etc (31), dishonoring the aged and stranger (32), and
falsifying the weights and measures (35, 36), giving seed to
Moloch (xx. 1-5), wizards (6), cursing parents (9), adultery
(10-21); xxi and xxn, laws concerning holiness of priests;
xxiii, the feasts; xxiv, xxv, various laws such as that concern-
ing the oil and the lamp (1-4), the shew-bread (5-9), blasphemy
(10-16), and the lex tahoms (17-22) ; xxvi, epilogue
18 The reader will understand that the critics divide the first
six books of the Bible (called the Hexateuch) into five principal
documents; the Deuteronomyst document is denoted by D, the
one using Jehovah as the name of God, by J; the one using
Elohim by E; the priestly document by P; and the Law of
Holiness by H, JE is employed for the portions where J and E
are inextricably intertwined.
[27]
AN INVESTIGATION off THE OLD TESTAMENT
the different documents are the same and are ex-
pressed in the same language, they may of course have
been by the same author. Where the ideas differ in
phraseology but are substantially the same, this is
also no indication of different authorship. 14 Where
the subjects are the same and the ideas expressed
differ, the author may have changed his mind, or he
may have had different circumstances and conditions
in view. Mohammed changed his views on marriage
and other subjects and he changed the laws to suit
his changing views. The condition of the Muslim
changed after he went to Medina and especially after
he set out to conquer the world; so, he began to make
new laws for his anticipated empire.
Nor, finally, is the language such as would indicate
a time inconsistent with that of Moses. To be sure,
there are in this particular document words and
phrases which occur seldom, or never, elsewhere. But
this is no proof of age or authorship but simply of
subject, aim, and method. Nowhere else in the Old
Testament is this subject of holiness treated of fully.
The aim of the writer is to secure the holiness of the
people and he bases this holiness upon the holiness of
God. Hence the frequent use of the phrases : "I Je-
hovah am holy," "I am Jehovah/* and "I am Jeho-
vah which sanctify you." Since this holiness was to
14 Thus in the Koran, Mohammed refers five different times to
the means by which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. In
two cases only is the language the same.
[28]
METHOD otf THE INVESTIGATION
be secured by obeying Jehovah's law, we have the
frequent injunction to walk in, or to observe and do,
the statutes and judgments of Jehovah; and the
threats of God's setting his face against them and of
their even bearing their own sins and being excom-
municated if they profaned his name, sanctuary, or
sabbaths. As to words occurring in this passage
alone, or infrequently elsewhere, this is characteristic
of every document and almost of every chapter of
the Old Testament. 15 As to the claim that certain
technical expressions 10 indicate a different author or
age from that of the other documents of the Penta-
teuch, it is an assertion entirely unsupported by direct
evidence and contrary to analogy. 17 That in the Law
of Holiness the word for man should be repeated in
the protasis in the sense of "whoever" 1S and that
this phrase should occur eleven times in H and three
times in P but not at all in JE or D is to be accounted
for partly by the fact that JE and D are mostly in
the second person and H and P in the third. Fur-
ther, it is not clear that the idea of "whoever" as ex-
pressed by the repetition of the word for man is
See page 134 f.
i Such as 1B>, nar and May (LOT, 49)
1T Thus the omen texts (or laws) published by Dennefeld
(Babylonisch-Assyrtsche Geburts-Omina, Leipzig, 1914), have
eleven words not found elsewhere to denote parts of the human
body and about twenty other new words, or new meanings of
words.
[29]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI<D TESTAMENT
exactly the same as that expressed by other words and
combinations. And lastly analogy shows that such
variations are no necessary indication of different
author or date. 19
We have thus shown that in the peculiarities of H
there is nothing opposed to its Mosaic authorship.
But how about its authorship by another than Moses?
Is it likely that a forger of a document would, scores
of times, use phrases that occurred seldom, if ever,
in the documents recognized as having been written
by the author whose works he was imitating? Would
not the perpetrator of a pseudepigraph, intended to be
accredited as a genuine work of the author whose
name was falsely attached to it, have had the prudence
or common sense to avoid as far as possible all in-
dications of recognizable variations from the acknowl-
edged originals of the man whose name he had at-
tached ? To attempt to prove a forgery by showing
the alleged writer never existed, or that the dates of
18 Thus in Dennef eld's Geburts-Omina there are five different
ways of expressing the idea of "the one" and "the other.'* See
his introduction, pages 22, 23, The above remarks are based on
the peculiarities of H as given in Dr. Driver's Literature of the
Old Testament, pp. 49, 50. The same arguments which I/OT
uses to disprove the unity of the Pentateuch would disprove the
unity of the Koran. We have in Mohammed's great work the
same variety in the use of the names for God, duplicates, syno-
nyms, contradictions, hapox legomena, and peculiar or favorite
expressions. And yet all admit the unity of authorship of the
Koran! See my article in PTR for 1919 on The Use of "God"
and "Lord" in the Koran,
[30]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
events, and peculiarities of language are wrong, is
fair and according to the law of evidence; 20 but to
expect us to believe that the forger of a document
which was designed to be accepted as genuine should
have made its language differ repeatedly, obtrusively
and unnecessarily from that of another document by
the author whom he is trying to imitate or personate,
is contrary to common sense as well as to common
law,
LAWS IN THE PENTATEUCH
ASCRIPTIONS
With regard to the remaining portions of the
Pentateuch there is a stronge presumption that they
are the work of Moses; for we find that the collec-
tions of laws, however great or small these collections
may be and whatever their subject-matter, are in the
E document attributed invariably to Moses. The so-
called Code of the Covenant in Ex. xix-xxiv says in
the prologue that Moses went up unto God in Mount
Sinai and that the Lord said unto him: "These are
the words which thou shalt speak unto the Children
of Israel" (xix. 2-6). So "Moses went down unto
the people and spake unto them" (xix. 25) the words
of chapter xx and the judgments of xxi-xxiii. Then
in chapter xxiv we are told that Moses told the people
20 Compare Bentley's great argument against the genuineness
of the Epistles of Phalaris in his Dissertations Upon the Epistles
of Phalaris.
131]
AN INVESTIGATION OF TH$ OLD TESTAMENT
all the words of the Lord and all the judgments (vs.
3) and Moses wrote all the words of the Lord (vs.
4) and afterwards read the book of the covenant in
the audience of the people; and they said, "All that
the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient"
(vs. 7).
Tn like manner the book of Deuteronomy is again
and again ascribed to Moses. Thus it begins : These
be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on
the banks of Jordan in the wilderness of the Arabah
in the land of Moab (vs. 1-5). Again, in the epilogue
in xxix. 1, it is said: These are the words of the
covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make
with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, be-
sides (i. e,, apart from, or in addition to) the cove-
nants which he made with them in Horeb. 21
In P also the larger portions and the individual laws
claim Moses as their author. Thus, the offering for
the tabernacle and its plan were commanded by God
to the people through Moses (Ex. xxv. 1, 9 f., xxix.
42, 43). So also with the laws of offering, Lev. i. 1,
2, vii. 37, 38; of the consecration of the priests, Lev.
viii. 1, 5, 25, 36; of unclean food, Lev. xi. 1, 46, 47;
21 In Deut iv 1, we read : "Hear O Israel," where Moses is
represented as the speaker In v, 1, Moses "called all Israel and
said unto them." In xxvii. 1, 11, Moses "commanded the
people" In xxxi 1, Moses "went and spake to the people. 1 ' In
xxxi 24, it is said that "Moses made an end of writing the words
of the law upon a book." Compare also, xxxii. 44, 45, and
xxxin. 1.
[32]
THE METHOD o# THE INVESTIGATION
of leprosy, Lev. xiii. 1, xiv. 54-57; and, in short, of
all the other laws of the Pentateuch.
Now, with regard to any one in particular of these
codes and laws, we do not see how any living man
can have the assurance, the assumption of an impos-
sible knowledge, to assert that it may not have been,
as it claims to be, the work of Moses. Language,
subject-matter, and circumstances, all favor the claim
of each particular section to have been what it pro-
fesses to be. It is only by resorting to what we deem
an unjustifiable method of procedure that any case
can be made out on behalf of the deniers of Mosaic
authorship. This method in based on the presump-
tion that the documents are forgeries and that the
writers were guilty of false statements as to the time
and place and authors of the documents. Being
utterly unable to substantiate these charges by direct
evidence bearing on the separate documents, these
deniers of Mosaic authorship resort to two expedients.
They charge, first, that some of the documents con-
tain numerous unnecessary repetitions, and that these
repetitions are often incongruous; secondly, that
these incongruities result from the fact that the docu-
ments represent widely different periods of develop-
ment in the history of Israel.
REPETITIONS
Taking up these charges in order, it is admitted
that there 'are numerous repetitions of laws bearing
3 [33]
_** INVESTIGATION 0$ THE OLD TESTAMENT
on the same subject, but it is denied that the repeti-
tions prove that Moses was not the author. Every
great teacher repeats. Every great reformer repeats.
Witness Paul on the resurrection and on salvation by
faith. Witness Mohammed on the unity of God and
the condemnation of unbelievers. 22 The duality, or
multiplicity, of authors cannot, then, be proven by the
mere fact of repetitions 2S Nor can it be argued from
the fact that we cannot see the sense, or the reason,
for the repetitions. Nor can it be argued from the
fact that the repetitions are exactly alike, nor from
the fact that they differ. Nor can diversity of author-
ship be argued from the fact that similar events are
recorded as having occurred in the life of the same
or different persons. 2 *
To be sure, the critics make much of their inability
to account satisfactorily to themselves for many of the
differences and even adduce their ignorance of the
reasons for them as if it were evidence against Mosaic
authorship. And yet, good and sufficient reasons for
most persons are evident in some of the repetitions.
For example, take the laws with regard to the altar.
22 Every sura of the Koran begins with the words: "in the
name of the merciful and gracious God' 1 ; out of 114 suras 77
condemn the unbelievers by name and most of the others by
implication,
28 In the Koran, there are scores of parallels.
2 *A11 history and romance are full of such repetitions. He-
rodotus records several similar attacks on Athens by the Pisis-
tratidae and two or more expeditions of the Persians against Greece.
iCsesar twice says that he built a bridge over the Rhine and that
[34]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
Might not Moses (or at least Jehovah) have foreseen
that it would be several hundred years before the wor-
ship at the central sanctuary could be established and
that even afterward the union of the tribes might be
disrupted, so that men like Elijah might not be able to
go to the central altar to sacrifice even when they
would? Could a God, or a law-giver, who provided
for a second passover for those who could not attend
the first, and permitted a pair of turtle doves, or even
a handful of flour (a bloodless offering) to be given
by those who were too poor to present a kid, not be
expected to authorize an altar for special cases and
circumstances ? 25
INCONGRUITIES
The second charge is that there are in the Penta-
teuch at least five principal documents representing
different periods of time and different points of view;
and that these differences of aim and time account
for the alleged incongruities of the works attributed
to Moses and exclude the possibility of Mosaic author-
ship. This charge is based upon the assumptions:
(a) that Deuteronomy (D) was written in, or shortly
before, 621 B. C; (b) that the real, or alleged, incon-
gruities between the parts of the Pentateuch can be
explained only by assuming a wide difference of date
he sailed twice against Britain. Don Quixote and Don Caesar
are full of repetitions. Everyone's life is full of them. So was
that of Abraham ; so was that of Moses.
as Cf. IKiii. 2, 3.
[35]
AN INVESTIGATION ox THE OLD
in the time of their composition and a series of for-
geries on the part Q their authors.
(a) DATE OF DEUTERONOMY
For the assumption that Deuteronomy was written:
in, or shortly before, 621 B. C. there is absolutely
no direct evidence. The testimony of Deuteronomy
itself is that it was given by Moses in the plains of
Moab. The passage in 2 Kings xxii-xxiii ascribes it
to Moses (xxiii. 25 ), Josiah attributes the wrath of
Jehovah to the fact that the fathers had not hearkened
to the words of the book that had just been found
and read before him (xxii. 8-13). Huldah, the
prophetess, represents Jehovah as saying, I will bring
upon this place all the words of the book which the
king of Judah hath read (xxii. 16). The elders of
Judah and of Jerusalem, and the king, and all the men
of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and
the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both
small and great heard the words of the book of the
covenant which was found in the house of the Lord
and covenanted to perform the words of the covenant
that were written in this book (xxiii. 1-3). Although
the book of Deuteronomy contains laws affecting the
king (xvii, 14 f.) and the prophets (xviii. 15 f.) and
the priests (xviii. 1 f.), and although it must be
admitted that kings and prophets and priests had
existed in unbroken succession from the time of
Samuel down to the time of Josiah, and that the
[36]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
kings and prophets and priests must have had thel
customary laws and regulations, yet no protest against
the genuineness and authenticity of the newly-dis^
covered book was made by king, or prophet, or priest.
All accepted it as authoritative, and proceeded to carry
its injunctions into execution (xxiii. 1-25).
Against this evidence of the documents themselves,
the critics make the charge that the writers of the
sources of 2 Kings xxii-xxiii (that is "the book of
the Chronicles of the kings of Judah," cf. xxiii. 28),
the composers of the books of Kings and Chronicles,
and Hilkiah the high priest, Shaphan the scribe,
Huldah the prophetess, and Jeremiah the prophet,
were either forgers or dupes; and that Deuteronomy
was not a work of Moses at all, but a composite work
of an unknown author put together or at least pro-
mulgated for the purpose of deceiving the people into
the acceptance of a great reform in worship. The
kernel of this reform is affirmed to be the confining
of the worship to the central sanctuary at Jerusalem.
To be sure the book of Deuteronomy says nothing
expressly about Jerusalem. Huldah, also, does not
mention it as a central sanctuary (2 Kings xxii. 15-
20). The king and people, including prophets, priests,
and scribes, do not specifically mention a central
sanctuary in their covenant with Jehovah (xxiii. 3),
Jerusalem itself is mentioned, it is true, in xxiii, 23,
as the place where the passover was held; but ac-
cording to the books of Kings, the temple at Jerusalem
[37J
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
was to be the dwelling place of Jehovah ( 1 Kings viii.
29, ix. 3), in accordance with the promise made by
God through Nathan to David (2 Sam. vii. 13).
Jeremiah, who prophesied in the days of Josiah,
speaks not merely of the fact that Jehovah had chosen
Jerusalem to put His name there (vii. 11, 14, xxxii,
34) , but also says that at the first Shiloh had been the
place where the Lord had set His name (xix, 12),
Not merely in the Pentateuch, but also thirty times in
Joshua, once in Judges (xx. 17), sixty times in
Samuel, and thirteen times in Kings, the ark is named
as the center of the worship of the people of Israel.
When this ark was removed to Jerusalem by David,
and not till then, did the city become the place where
men ought to worship (Jer. iii. 16, 17). Moreover,
that Jerusalem was recognized as the place of the cen-
tral sanctuary in the time of Solomon is clear from
the fact that one of the first acts of Jeroboam, son of
Nebat, was to appoint Bethel and Dan as rival centers,
so as permanently to remove the people of Israel from
the influence of the cult at Jerusalem (1 Kings xii.
28-33).
Thus neither for their general charge nor for their
principal specification do the critics find any direct
evidence in Deuteronomy or Kings nor in any other
Old Testament document. Jeremiah, whose genuine-
ness they acknowledge, is silent as to the general
charge, but absolutely clear in his evidence against the
specification with regard to the time of the organiza-
[38]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
tion of the central sanctuary. It is time for the body
of intelligent Christian believers, who are deemed
capable of sitting on juries in a court of common
law, to assert themselves against these self-styled
scholars who would wrest from them the right of
private judgment. For in the settlement of this ques-
tion no special scholarship is involved no knowledge
of Hebrew or philosophy. The English version
affords all the facts. The evidence is clear. On the
face of it, it is all against the critics. Only by throw-
ing out the evidence of the very document on which
they rely for the proof of their own theory and by
placing a childish confidence in what remains, can
they find any support for their destructive views. 26
(b) THE FOUR CODES OF LAW
The critics charge that the incongruities which they
allege are to be found between the code of the cove-
nant (E) and Deuteronomy (D), and the Law of
Holiness (H), and the priestly codex (P), are due
to the fact that E represents the law as it existed prior
to 700 B. C, D a law written about 621 B. C., H a
law written about 600 B. C., and P a law written
mostly before the events recorded in Neh. viii-x.
Since the direct evidence of the documents themselves
26 For good discussions of the origin of Deuteronomy, see
Moller: Are the Critics Right?, Finn: The Unity of the
Pentateuch; McKim: The Problem of the Pentateuch; Orr:
The Problem of the Old Testament; and Green: The Higher
Criticism of the Pentateuch
[39]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THS OLD TESTAMENT
is against this fourfold date and ascribes all four
documents to Moses, the critics have undertaken the
difficult task of proving that these laws constitute a
series of forgeries, extending over a period of about
500 years, committed by more than seventeen differ-
ent persons, all reformers of the highest ethical
standards and all devoted to the service of Jehovah,
the God of truth. Besides mirabile dictu, the for-
geries were all successful in that prophets, priests,
Levites, kings, and people, were all alike induced to
receive them as genuine and to adopt them as obliga-
tory, as soon as they were made known to them. The
Jews and the Samaritans, the Pharisees and the
Sadducees, the Rabbis, Aristeas, Josephus, Philo,
Christ and the Apostles, all accepted the combined
work as of real Mosaic authorship. But no amount
of camouflage could deceive the critical eyes of the
German professors and their scholars (all of whom
agree with them; hence the phrase, "All scholars are
agreed"). To them the imperfections of the codes
and their disagreements, yes, even the particular half
century in which each law was promulgated, are as
clear as the spots on the sun, if only you will look
through their glasses, and are not blinded by prejudice
occasioned by faith in Jehovah, or Christ, or by the
ntles of evidence. Now, whether those who believe
in Jehovah and Christ are blinded by prejudice, or
not, it seems obvious that they who profess to believe
in both cannot be expected without stultification to
[40]
THE METHOD 02 THE INVESTIGATION
ignore the testimony of all the documents that Jeho-
vah Himself was the real author of the laws, Moses
being merely his mouthpiece, or prophet. This testi-
mony cannot be set aside in the case of the laws with-
out being set aside also in the case of the prophets.
There is no more ground for calling it a form of
speech in the one case than in the other. And if Je-
hovah did speak the laws and command the people to
obey them, it must seem reasonable to suppose that
He at least thought that they were harmonious.
Christians, also, and professedly Christian professors
need make no excuse for the prejudice that this testi-
mony of the documents themselves is confirmed for
them (however it may be with infidels) by the at-
testation of the New Testament writers and of the
Lord Jesus Christ. But whether Christians or infidels,
we should all be bound strictly by a prejudice in favor
of the rules of evidence. Binding ourselves, then, to
abide by the evidence, let us proceed to state the evi-
dence for the defense in the case of the critics against
Moses.
First, we find that in every one of the legal docu-
ments of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuter-
onomy, the superscription as in Num. xv, xix, xxxv,
and in the case of all the longer collections such as
Ex. xx-xxiv, xxv-xxxi, Lev. i-vii, xvii-xxvi, and
Deuteronomy, and many of the smaller collections
such as Ex, xii. 1-28, xxxiv, Lev. viii, xiii, xvi, xxvii,
[41]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Num. i, ii, iv, vi. 1-21, viii. 1-4, 5-22, xxvii. 6-23,
xxviii-xxix, xxx, the subscriptions also expressly at-
tribute their authorship to Moses. In many cases the
locality and the time m which these codes, or special
laws, were given are specified. Thus, Ex. xii was
given in Egypt in the first part of the first month (vs.
1, 3); Ex. xix-xxiv, at Smai in the third month of
the first year of the Exodus (Ex. xix. 1, 11) ; Num.
i. 1, at Sinai in the first day of the second month of
the second year after they came out of the land of
Egypt; Deuteronomy, in the land of Moab, on the
first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year
(i. 1, 3, 5). In other cases as in Lev. xvii-xxvi and
Ex. xxv-xxxi, the place at least is expressly stated.
Here, then, are twenty separate documents all
ascribed to Moses in the proper place and manner
with dates and places affixed.
Secondly, we find that the variations in the form,
treatment and subject-matter of the laws support the
claim that Moses was the author. Some of the laws,
as Lev. xi-xiii, treat of but one subject; others as
Ex. xxxiv treat of several subjects; and others as
Lev. xvii-xxvi and Deuteronomy may be dignified
with the name of code. Some of them as Lev. xvi
are so constructed that scarcely a verse could be
omitted without marring the effect of the whole,
whereas, others are composed of many parts, each dis-
tinct in its purpose, but all necessary to the carrying
[42]
METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
out of the laws of its remaining parts. 27 Moreover,
the laws of the covenant of JE in Ex. xx-xxiv and
the epitome in xxxiv. 1-26, and the codes of H and
D are mostly a collection of short injunctions more
or less disconnected and without specification as to
how they are to be carried out, whereas the laws in,
P are generally entirely separated from other laws,
are detailed in their regulations and embrace many
matters not discussed, or barely mentioned in the
codes of JE, D and H. To this difference in treat-
ment and details corresponds also a difference in
literary form. The laws of JE, D and H are codal
in form and resemble the prototype set by the code
of Hammurabi in that they have lengthy prologues or
epilogues; D and H containing at the end, just like
the Babylonian code, a large number of curses upon,
those who should disobey their injunctions. The laws
of leprosy vary from the other laws in accordance
with the subject of which they treat. As to the laws
of P there is an analogy to the laws of leprosy in the
birth-omens, 28 and we may infer from the frequent
references of Nabunaid to the necessity of discovering
the corner-stone of the temples originally built by
Naram-Sin, Hammurabi, and others of his predeces-
27 Again, the persons addressed differ. In the codes it is the
whole people who are enjoined, whereas the laws of P affect
ordinarily only certain classes of individuals, such as priests,
lepers, and Nazantes.
28 See the Babylonisch-Assynsche Geburts-Omwa, t>> kudwig
Dennefeld, Leipzig, 1914.
L43J
AJNT INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
sors, that these temens or corner-stones contained
detailed plans for the construction of the houses of
the gods, corresponding to the plan of the tabernacle
in Ex. xxv-xxx. 29 The narrative in Ex. xxxvi-xl of
the manner in which this plan was carried out under
the direction of Bezaleel is paralleled, also, in many
respects by the account in the autobiography of the
Erpa Tehuti, the director of the artificers of the
temples, and shrines of Hatshepsut, who according
to most Egyptologists was queen of Egypt two cen-
turies before the times of Moses. 30 The form of the
numeration of Num. i-iv bears many resemblances to
those of the Annals of Tahutmes IIL 3X The bound-
aries of the land given in Num. xxxiv resemble
closely similar forms in Babylon. 82 The form of the
ceremonies of the day of atonement in Lev. xvi may
be compared with the Ritual of the Divine Cult, 88 and
the laws of issues, jealousy, and the red heifer (Lev.
38 In King's Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi II, pi. 242,
No. 107, we have the plan of the temple of Sippar at Jahrusum
made during the period of the first dynasty of Babylon.
80 Budge: The Literature of the Egyptians, London, 1914, p.
145
31 Petrie: History of Egypt, II, 103 f.
si Hinke : A New Boundary Stone of Nebuchadnezzar I, and
the tablet from the time of Hammurabi in KB, IV, 17. The
Egyptians had boundaries for countries, nomes, and farms. See
Breasted's Ancient Records of Bgypt, V 109, and Hinke's note in
A New Boundary Stone of Nebuchadnezzar I f p. 9. See, also,
King's Babylonian Boundary Stones.
8 * Budge, op. at., p. 248.
[44]
METHOD o* THS INVESTIGATION
xv, Num. v, xix) with the Ritual of Embalmment. 8 *
That minute directions for the conduct of sacrifices,
similar to those in Lev. i-vii, must have been in use
among the Egyptians is evident from the Liturgy of
Funerary Offerings found in the Pyramid Texts; 85
as also from the Liturgy of the Opening of the
Mouth. 8 ' rThat detailed directions for the selection
and clothing of priests like those in Leviticus must
have existed among the Egyptians is to be seen in the
Liturgy of the Opening of the Mouth, 87 and the form
of the regulations of Leviticus has a parallel in the
inscription of Agum-Kakrimi (1350 B. C.) which
describes the dress of Merodach and Sarpanit (KB,
III, I, 135 f.) ; and especially in the dedication
cylinder of Nabonidus containing the account of the
consecration of his daughter as a votary of Nannar. 88
We thus see that the various forms in which the
sections of the law are preserved to us in the Penta-
teuch are paralleled in almost every instance by the
forms of laws to be found in known documents of
ancient Babylon and Egypt dating from 1000 to 4000
(?) B, C. And what in general is true of the form
is true also of the contents of the laws. The civil
and criminal laws of E, D, and H, bear a striking
**Id. 247.
85 Budge: op. at, 16.
86 Id. 13.
*ild. p. 14.
88 See Miscellaneous Inscriptions in the Yale Babylonian Col-
lection, by Albert T. Clay, Vol I, pp. 66-75.
[45]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE Ou> TESTAMENT
resemblance to those found in the Code of Ham-
murabi. 39 The moral precepts find their prototype
and often their parallels in the maxims of Ptah-hotep
(3000 B. C.), and in the moral precepts of the 125th
chapter of the Book of the Dead. 40 As to the cere-
monial laws it can be claimed that the elaborate,
lengthy, and intricate, systems of worship centering
around the numerous temples of the polytheistic
Babylonians and Egyptians make the system of wor-
ship and religious observances enjoined in H and P
seem in comparison models of clearness, simplicity,
and ease in execution.
In the third place, the laws of Moses, as Emil
Reich has so well argued, 41 demand a single great
originator. Granting a great man like Moses, the pro-
phetic mediator of God's ideas, and the fabric of the
tabernacle, with the priesthood, and the sacrifices,
and the sacred seasons, and the laws of holiness, and
the covenants between the holy people and their
unique God, rises before us as naturally as the con-
stitution of the imperial Caesars from the mind of
Augustus, or the religion of Islam from the life of
the Arabian prophet, or the Christian Church from
the life and death and precepts of its Founder. It
was the idea of God which Moses had that was the
89 See especially Muller : Die Gesetee Hamtnurabis and Kohler :
Hammurabi's Gesete.
40 18th dynasty or earlier. Budge Egyptian Literature, 52, 22.
41 The Failure of the Higher Criticism of the Bible. See, also,
Naville's The Higher Criticism m Relation to the Pentateuch.
[46]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
spring of his activities, the source and unifier of his
thoughts and laws. No one can deny that the idea
of a unique God was first obtained from the Israel-
ites nor that their literature always ascribes the first
clear and full apprehension of this idea to Moses.
How much of it he got from his meditations beneath
the desert skies and how much by the direct revela-
tion of the all-wise and all-powerful Jehovah, may be
questioned; but that he had it, is the concurrent testi-
mony of J and E and D and H and P and of all
Jewish literature in legislation, history, and song.
Prophets, priests, kings, poets, and people, all had
this great idea, and all unite in saying that they de-
rived it from Moses. And whatever Israelites were
the first to be possessed with the Old Testament idea
of an only God, let us remember that some Israelite
certainly must have been thus possessed, seeing that
the idea is to be found in ancient literature in the Old
Testament and there alone. What more natural, then,
than that the great thinker who first grasped the idea
in its fulness should have found a revolution wrought
in the whole system of his thinking. The universe with
all its rolling years, the sun, the moon, the stars, the
earth with its seas and islands, its plants and living
creatures, must all be correlated to the great I AM,
who made them all. And a greater than he has said
that the law was ordained by angels through the hand
of a mediator.
But the most engrossing subject of his thought
[47]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI,D TESTAMENT
must have been man in his relation to the earth and
God and sin and death and redemption. And so he
gathers up the history and the traditions of the past
and centers the whole about the idea of a promise
and the covenants, the covenant with Adam, the
covenant with Noah, and the covenant with Abraham.
And when God makes a covenant with the people of
Israel through him as mediator he sets all his mind
and energies to work to enable the people to observe
their part of the covenant until the star should arise
out of Jacob and he whose right it is, that prophet
like unto himself, should come, whom Israel should
hear, and to whom should be the obedience of the
nations. And with this great thought in mind he sets
himself to work to separate the Israelites from all
the surrounding nations and from the polytheistic
nations which had ruled them in the past. He takes
the two great conceptions of natural religion, holiness
and righteousness, 42 and seeks to separate them from
their idolatrous associations and to raise them to a
higher ethical and religious plane in the service of
the one, ever-living, and true God.
As for a language and a literary form in which to
express his thoughts, he did not have to invent them.
They were already there. 48 All he had to do was to
42 vnp and p*tt
43 We have shown this already for the form. As to the exist-
ence of the Hebrew language before the time of Moses, it is abun-
dantly shown ui the proper names of the inscriptions of the times
[48]
TH$ METHOD o# THE INVESTIGATION
infuse new meaning into the old vehicles of thought,
as in later times the New Testament writers did with
the vocables of Greece, and Mohammed with those of
the Arabs."
As for the festivals, there were already plenty of
them in use among the Babylonians and Egyptians
and doubtless among the Israelites themselves, New
Year, and New Moons, and Sabbaths. He simply
had to take the old seasons and sanctify them to
better purposes. 45 Sacrifices there also were and
altars and priests. He brings them all into ordered
harmony with his idea of holiness and righteousness
in the service of Jehovah. Ethics there were. He
gives them the sanction of the divine command, and
approval. Customs there were, laws of clean and un-
clean food, laws of jealousy, and revenge and disease
and personal uncleanness, and fringes on garments,
and tattooing, and vows and inheritances, and slavery
and marriage. He brings all into his all embracing
scheme and makes them all subserve the one great
purpose of bringing and keeping the people in obedi-
ence to their covenant God. Requirements and
observances were multiplied until it was impossible
of Hammurabi, Tahutmes III and Amenophis IV, and in the 111
common terms of the Amarna letters. See Knudtzon: Die l&l-
Amarna-Tateto, p. 1545 f, and W. Max Mueller: Die Palastina-
liste Thutmosis III.
44 E, g. in the case of hanif.
45 It is not meant that some entirely new festivals may not
have been added.
4 [49]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OWD TESTAMENT
for the people not to sin; but for the sins there was
atonement and for the sinners, substitution, redemp-
tion and forgiveness, of a God that was long-suffer-
ing and gracious, plenteous in mercy, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin, though he would
by no means spare the guilty.* 6
Fourthly, against this prima facie case in favor of
the Mosaic origin of the laws and against the life of
Moses and the history of Israel as recorded in the
books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuter-
onomy, the critics bring a general charge and a num-
ber of specifications. The general charge is that the
Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, but that it,
together with the book of Joshua, is a compilation of
the works of seventeen, or more, authors and of laws
and traditions of little historic value gathered to-
gether during a period of five or sbc hundred years
from 800 or 900 B. C. to 300 B. C. Inasmuch as no
claim is made in Genesis or Joshua that they are the
works of Moses, we claim the privilege (without pre-
cluding or prejudicing the right of Moses to be con-
sidered the author of Genesis) of confining for the
present discussion the defense of Mosaic authorship
to the four last books of the Pentateuch. And, as
the charge involves the question of the authorship, as
well as the much more important question of the his-
"That is, those who refused the means of grace or wilfully
disobeyed his commands, like the man who gathered sticks on
the Sabbath day, or Korah, Dathan and Abiram.
[SO]
METHOD OF THS INVESTIGATION
toricity of the books we shall discuss first of all this
fundamental question of authorship.
AUTHORSHIP. It must then, clearly be defined what
exactly is meant by Mosaic authorship. Certainly, it
cannot mean that to be the author Moses must have
written his literary works with his own hand. Else,
would Prescott not be the author of the Conquest of
Mexico, nor Milton of Paradise Lost, nor the kings
of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, of their in-
scriptions, nor Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount.
Lest this statement should seem too naive, let us re-
call that a favorite and reiterated traditional argu-
ment of the critics against Mosaic authorship is based
on the fact that it is not expressly said that he was
charged by God to write anything but the curse
against Amalek and an account of the wanderings in,
the wilderness (Ex. xvii. 14, Num. xxxiii. 2). Be-
sides these small portions of the narrative, he is said
to have written the code of the covenant in Ex. xx-
xxiv, and a portion at least of Deuteronomy. 41 In
fact it may reasonably be inferred from Deut. xxxi.
9, 24-26, iv. 44, 1, 5, xxviii. 58, 61, xxix. 20, 26, and
other passages, that the whole Pentateuch, or at least
all of the legal portions, was intended by the writers
of these passages to have been designated as having
been written by, or for, Moses.
But even if he did not write a word with his own
* 7 See Dr. Green: On the Pentateuch, p. 37.
[51]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE Ow> TESTAMENT
hand, it is evident that whoever wrote the book
meant to imply that the authorship of Moses extends
to the laws and visions and commands which God
gave to him in the same manner that the Code of
Hammurabi was the work of the king whose name it
bears. That is, the laws came through him and from
him. This is the fundamental authorship for which
we contend, and which we claim to have been unim-
peached by all the testimony that has been produced,
in the endeavor to impair our belief that as John says :
The law was given by Moses.
The case then, as it stands, is as follows. The docu-
ments of the Tetrateuch state that Moses at expressly
stated places and times wrote, or caused to be writ-
ten, 48 certain parts of them. The critics charge that
these statements of the documents are all false. What
proof have they to substantiate this charge?
MOSES WROTE
First, they allege that "Moses wrote" in these pas-
sages is not a forgery, but simply a technical expres-
sion, or form of speech. But what evidence have they
for this allegation? None whatever; but on the con-
trary, the evidence of the profane literature and of the
other books of the Old Testament is all against it.
As early as the fourth dynasty of Egypt, documents
48 The verbs may be pointed as Hiphil,
[52]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
are dated and the name of the authors given/ 9 and in
Babylon, as early as the dynasty of Hammurabi, docu-
ments are dated as to month, day, and year, and the
names of the scribes and the principal persons engaged
in the transactions recorded are given. 60
In the Biblical documents also, it is the custom to
giye the author of the legislation. Thus in the book
of Joshua, the earlier legislation is invariably attrib-
uted to Moses, 51 and the new regulations are ascribed
to Joshua himself. 52 So in Samuel, the old laws are
ascribed to Moses and the new ones to Samuel. 53 So
in Kings, Solomon regulates his kingdom and Jero-
boam the son of Nebat regulates the worship of
Israel with laws that are never ascribed to Moses,
but to the kings themselves, who are represented as
departing in large measure from the law of God
already known (1 Ki. viii-xi; xii. 25-33; xiv. 7-16).
So in Chronicles David divides the priests and L/evites
and writes out the pattern of the tempte. Jehoshaphat
himself gives laws, and sets judges in the land, and
gives them charge as to their duties (2 Chron. xix.
5-11), and proclaims a fast without reference to the
laws of Moses; and Hezekiah sets the Levites ac-
cording to the commandment of David (2 Chron.
49 See Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt, I, 891.
50 See Schorr : Urkunden des altbabylomschen Zvtil- und
Prozess-rechts.
51 i. 7, xx. 2, xxiii. 6.
82 xxiv. 26.
1 Sam. viiL 6-22.
[S3]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE: OI,D TESTAMENT
xxix. 25-27). In Nehemiah, the singers and the
porters keep the word of their God according to the
commandment of David and of Solomon his son
(Neh xii. 45) 64 Moreover, is it not marvelous that
no example has been found in pre-Christian litera-
ture of the ascription to Moses of a law not found
in the Pentateuch? You may be sure that if one
such were known it would have been proclaimed by
the traducers of the unity of the Pentateuch with a
blare of trumpets, for it would be the unique speci-
men of direct evidence bearing on their alleged com-
mon use of the phrase to denote non-Mosaic author-
ship But no. Tobit has his hero burn the fish's
liver at the command of an angel, not according
to a law of Moses. The Zadokite fragments never
ascribe their additions to the Pentateuchal laws to
Moses. Therefore, let those who allege that the
phrase "the Lord said to Moses" is a legal fiction pro-
duce some evidence or let the indictment o the claim
of the laws of the Pentateuch to Mosaic authorship
be dropped. Some later writer by mistake or inten-
tion surely might have ascribed one law at least not
found in the Pentateuch to Moses. But no such
ascription has been found. No, not one.
Again, we find that no law of the four books from
Exodus to Deuteronomy inclusive is in the Penta-
M Whenever Chronicles and Nehemiah were written, their testi-
mony shows that the writer did not know anything about a legal
fiction ascribing all laws to Moses.
[54]
THE METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
teuch, or anywhere else in the pre-Christian Jewish
literature, attributed to anyone but Moses. The
modern critic asserts that the laws called Mosaic were
not given by him but that they were written by at
least seventeen different authors and redactors; and
yet not one of these critics can mention the name of
even one of these seventeen. To be sure, some of
them have assumed that Hilkiah forged the portion
of Deuteronomy which, according to the accounts in
Kings and Chronicles (the only sources of our in-
formation on the subject) Hilkiah himself attributed
to Moses. And we find that some have alleged that
Ezekiel may have written the Code of Holiness in
Lev. xvii-xxvi, but unfortunately for the critics,
Ezekiel who is never backward about affixing his
name to his other works, abstained from doing so to
the work under consideration.
Again some have asserted that Ezra may have
written P or even have composed the whole Penta-
teuch ; but here again they draw on their imagination
for their facts, since the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
both state clearly that Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehe-
miah established in Jerusalem the laws and institu-
tions that had been given by God to Israel through
Moses. 55
55 Thus, according to Ezra iii. 3, Jeshua and Zerubbabel built
the altar, "as it is written in the law of Moses/ 1 and offered sac-
rifices and set the priests and the Levites in their offices "as it
is written in the book of Moses" (vi. 18). According to Neh.
[55]
AN INVESTIGATION off THE OLD TESTAMENT
MOSES WROTE
In the next place, all the laws of the Pentateuch at-
tributed to Moses are either expressly, or impliedly,
said in the record to have been given at certain places,
that is, either in Egypt, or somewhere on the way
from Egypt to the Jordan. This evidence, as to the
localities in which the documents were written, so im-
portant in establishing the genuineness of any docu-
ment, is almost absolutely ignored 'by the assailants
of Mosaic authorship. What kind of lawyer would
he be who attacked or defended the genuineness of a
letter without considering whether the locality where
it was written was mentioned and whether paper, ink,
language, and contents, harmonized with the alleged
place of its production? Now it is said that the fol-
lowing sections of the law were commanded in the
localities cited, to wit: Ex. xii in Egypt (Ex. xii.
1 ) , Ex. xix-xxiv, xxv-xxxi, and xxxiv, at the moun-
tain; Lev. i-vii, in the wilderness of Sinai; Ex. xix,
via. 1, 3, Ezra the scnbe brought and read the book of the law
of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. And in vs.
14, we are told that they "found written in the law which the
Lord had commanded by Moses" certain laws with regard to the
feast of Tabernacles. In ix. 3, it is said that the book of the law
of God was read and it is acknowledged in vs. 34 that the kings
and princes and fathers had not kept the law. But the people
covenanted (x. 29) to walk in God's law which was given by
Moses the servant of God Again, in xm. 1, we are told that
"they read in the book of Moses" On the other hand, the serv-
ice of song is said to have been reinstituted after the ordinance
of David, king of Israel (Ezra m 10).
[56]
THE METHOD o* TH# INVESTIGATION
1, 2, 3, 20, xxiv. 12, 13, 16, xxxi. 18, xxxiv. 2, 29,
Lev. vii. 38, xxv. 1, xxvi. 46, xxvii. 34, Num. i. 1,
iii. 1, ix. 1, out of the tabernacle of the congregation
(Lev. i. 1). Others are preceded by the phrases:
after they had left Egypt (Lev. xi. 45, xxii. 33, xxiii.
43, xxv. 55, Num. xxv. 41); from the camp (Lev.
xxiv. 23, Num. v. 2; when ye come into the land
(Num. xv. 2, 18, xxxiii. 51, xxxiv. 2, Deut. xxvi. 1,
xxvii. 2) ; while they were in the wilderness (Num.
xv. 32) ; in the plains of Moab (Num. xxvi. 3, 63,
xxvii. 3 [by implication], xxxi. 1, xxxvi. 13, Deut. i.
5, xxix. 1).
Now, the critics adverse to Mosaic authorship of
the Pentateuch have been sharp enough to see that if
they can throw doubt upon the accuracy of the docu-
ments with regard to these places, they will impugn
the veracity of the accounts. So, after a hundred
and fifty years of diligent search they find one ap-
parent flaw. It seems that E and D use Horeb in
place of the Sinai of J and P as the locality of the giv-
ing of the law. Horeb is said to be the designation
of the mountain of God used in the northern part of
Palestine where E is assumed to have been written
and Sinai that used in Judah, where J and P were
written. But the critics fail to attempt even to show
why D, a document of the southern kingdom, should
have followed E instead of J, and why P should have
failed to harmonize this alleged discrepancy, or even
to have remarked upon it. Perhaps, the simplest and
[57]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI,D TESTAMENT
most obvious explanation is the best. Horeb and
Sinai were in a sense the same, just as the Appa-
lachian chain and the Alleghany Mountains and
Chestnut Ridge are the same. I was born near the
Chestnut Ridge of the Alleghany Mountains of the
Appalachian chain. In Europe I might speak of the
Appalachian Mountains as my birthplace; in Cali-
fornia, of the Alleghanies; in Western Pennsylvania,
of the Chestnut Ridge. But I was born in only one
place. So, as Hengstenberg long ago said, 56 "at a
distance the mountain of God was called Horeb; near
at hand, it was called Sinai, or once possibly
Horeb/' ST The use of mountain before Horeb is no
proof that it was a single eminence and not a ridge;
for Mount Ephraim was "the hill country of
Ephraim" or as Hastings Dictionary says, 58 "the
mountain ridge in Central Palestine stretching N. to
S. from the Great Plain to the neighborhood of Je-
rusalem."
56 On the Genuineness of the Pentateuch, II, 327.
57 Ex. xxxhi 6, m a passage of which Dr. Driver said: "No
satisfactory analysis has been effected," LOT, 38. In his work
entitled Prom the Garden of Bden to the Crossing of the Jordan,
Sir William Wiloox claims that Horeb and Smai were both in
the northern part of the peninsula and that the law was given
from both Prof. Sayce, also, puts both of them in the north-
eastern part of the peninsula. If Sinai is a part of Horeb the
whole argument of the critics falls.
"Vol. I, p, 727.
[58]
METHOD OF THE INVESTIGATION
WHEN MOSES WROTE
But lastly, not merely are all of the documents of
the Tetrateuch (with the exception of a few ascribed
to Aaron) ascribed to Moses, and the place where
most of them originated indicated, many of them are
dated as to year, month, and day. The critics quietly
ignore these dates. They would possibly attribute
them to the cunning of the forger, and assert that
they were inserted with the express purpose of giv-
ing to the documents in which they occur, the appear-
ance of verisimilitude. Think of a counsel arguing
before a court that the fact that a document a will,
a contract, a letter, a cheque was correctly dated
was prima facie evidence, not that it was genuine, but
that it was a forgery! Let the critics show at least
that the dates are not in the form of dates used in the
time of Moses, But this they cannot do. But, on
the other hand, it can be shown that in every par-
ticular the dates are of the same form as those that
were used before 1500 B. C. There are two full
forms of dates in the Pentateuch. The first gives the
order of day, month, year, as in Num. i. 1 : "the first
day of the second month of the second year after
their going out from Egypt"; and the second, the
order of year, month, day, as in Num. x. 11, "in the
second year, in the second month, in the twentieth day
of the month," and Deut i. 3, "in the fortieth year
in the eleventh month on the first day of the month,"
[59]
INVESTIGATION o* THS Ou> TESTAMENT
and Num. xxxiii. 38, "in the fortieth year of the go-
ing out of the children of Israel from the land of
Egypt in the fifth month on the first day of the
month." The distinguishing feature of these two
systems of dating is that the former puts the year last
and the latter the year first. The first system was used
in Babylon and Nineveh from the earliest documents
down to the latest, and the second system was used
in Egypt in like manner from the earliest dynasties
down to the time of the Ptolomies. Thus "in the
month Ab, the 22d day, in the year after king Rim-
Sin had conquered Isin"; 59 "In the month Ayar, day
20, of the year after king Samsuiluna, etc/'; 60 "in
the month Shebat the 14th day, the second year after
the destruction of Kis." 61 62 It will be noted that in
every particular but one the dating of Num. i. 1 is
like the datings from the time of Abraham. This par-
ticular is that Numbers puts the day before the month.
This, however, was a usual departure of the Hebrew
writers in using the Babylonian system. Jeremiah Ui.
12 is the only place in the Old Testament where we
find the order month, day, year. In Hag. i. IS, iL
10, Zech. i. 7, and Ezra vi. 15, all from post-cap-
tivity times, we find the order day, month, year, as
59 Schorr : Urkunden des altbabylonischen ZM- und Prozess-
rechts, p 53.
o/d. 153.
i/d 214
62 These kings lived in or about the time of Hammurabi. See,
also, Schorr, p. 279, 328, 416, for other examples.
[60]
THE METHOD otf THE INVESTIGATION
in Num. i. I. In all o these post-captivity writings
the name of the king is given exactly as we find it on
the Babylonian documents from the time of Nebu-
chadnezzar II; whereas in Num. i. 1, the dating is
"after the going out of Egypt" just as in the earliest
Babylonian documents.
Examples of the Egyptian system of dating are to
be found in numerous places in Petrie's History of
Bffypt in Breasted's Ancient Records, 9 * and in the
Oxyrynchus Papyri?* It is worthy of note, also, that
the phrase "after the going out from Egypt" is
paralleled in many cases in the earliest Egyptian rec-
ords. ett The Egyptian system is the one psed com-
monly in the Old Testament by the writers who
wrote before the return from Babylonia, and occa-
sionally by those who wrote after 550 B. C. Thus
we find the order year, month, day in Jer. xxxix. 2;
xii. 4, 31; Ezek. i. 1; viii. 1; xxiv. 1; xxix. 1, 11;
xxx. 20; xxxi. 1; xxxii. 1; xxxiii. 21; and Hag. i.
1; and the order year, day, month in Ezek. xx. 1;
xxvi. 1; xxxii. 17; xl. 1; Zech. vii. 1.
We see, therefore, from the above evidence that of
the four full datings in the Pentateuch three follow
the Egyptian system and one the old Babylonian. Of
the three following the Egyptian system one is in the
* E. *. II, 67, 100-103.
<*E. g. I, 137, 139, 140, 145, 160.
E. g. I, 170, 178, etc.
Breasted loc. cit. I, 54.
[61]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE OI,D TESTAMENT
prologue to D 8r and two are in P. 08 The one in Num.
i. 1 follows the Babylonian order and belongs also to
P But the clause affixed (i. e., after the going out
from Egypt) resembles the dates from the Ham-
murabi dynasty and not those from the time of
Nebuchadnezzar or later. So that in respect to dates,
as well as in respect to names and places, we find that
the genuineness of the documents of the Pentateuch
cannot be successfully assailed.
CONCLUSION
In regard to no one of these great prima facie
marks of genuineness in documents names, places,
dates have the destructive critics been able to show
that the statements of the Pentateuch are false. As
to these three specifications of the indictment, the as-
sured result of scientific criticism, in strict adherence
to the law of evidence, is that Moses gave the laws
which have his name at the times and places indicated
in the documents attributed to him as the mouthpiece
of Jehovah.
"i. 3.
w Num. ad, 11; xxxiii. 38; both assigned in LOT to P.
[62]
n
THE EVIDENCE
TEXT
II
THE EVIDENCE:
HAVING thus shown by three examples taken
from the documents of the Pentateuch that
from a prima facie point of view these docu-
ments are substantiated by the evidence from the
forms of contemporary documents and by the evi-
dence as to their author and as to the times, places,
and contents of their composition, we shall proceed
to consider the attacks of the critics upon the text, the
grammar, vocabulary and contents of the documents
of the Old Testament, on the basis of whose "assured
results" they seek to establish their reconstruction of
the literature and history of the people of Israel.
In the remainder of this chapter and in the imme-
diately following pages, I shall confine myself to the
text, and shall endeavor to show that in view of the
evidence bearing upon its origin and transmission
the Hebrew text of the Massoritic Bible now in our
possession is substantially reliable. In this and the
succeeding discussions, I shall seek to follow without
prejudice the laws of evidence as laid down in Sir
James Fitzjames Stephen's Digest of the Law of
Evidence in so far as these laws relate to documents.
Where the evidence is already published and acces-
sible to all, I shall merely refer my readers to the
5 [65]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
works containing the evidence. In cases where new
evidence bearing on the subject can be produced I
shall go more largely into particulars in order to show
the grounds for my statements As it will be impos-
sible within the limits of a work such as this to
give all the items of evidence, numerous citations
of the sources of the testimony will be given; since
it is the purpose of the writer to remove the discus-
sion as far as possible from the field of subjective
opinion to that of objective reality.
In the space at my disposal, it will be impossible
to do more than suggest the reasons why I think that
the charges against the general reliability of the Mas-
soritic text cannot be supported by the documentary
evidence, that is, by the "documents produced for the
inspection of the Judges," 69 and by the opinion of
experts which may be called evidence as to what the
evidence of the documents really is 70
69 See for this definition of "evidence," Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen's work A Digest of the Law of Evidence, p. 3. He de-
fines evidence as "documents produced for the inspection of the
Court or Judge" In this case of the critics against Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, eve*y intelligent reader may con-
sider himself the Court and judge and jury.
70 The fact that a person is of the opinion that a fact in issue,
or relevant or deemed to be relevant to the issue, does or does
not exist is deemed to be irrelevant to the existence of such fact,
except when "there is a question as to any point of science or
art " When such a question arises, "the opinions upon that point
of persons especially skilled in any such matter are deemed to
be relevant facts."
[66]
THE EVIDENCE:
TESTIMONY OF EXPERTS NECESSARY
The testimony of experts as to what the evidence
really is, is especially necessary as to all subjects re-
quiring special study or experience, such as all matters
of science and art. 71 "It is a general rule of evidence
that witnesses must give evidence of facts, not of
opinions" But "facts, not otherwise relevant, are
deemed to be relevant if they support or are incon-
sistent with the opinions of experts, when such
opinions are deemed to be relevant" "Whenever the
opinion of any living person is deemed to be rele-
vant, the grounds on which such opinion is based are
also deemed to be relevant/' and "an expert may give
an account of experiments performed by him for the
purpose of forming his opinions." 73
In fact, in questions of philology and history it is
71 Science and art "include all subjects on which a course of
special study or experience is necessary to the formation of an
opinion" Persons thus qualified are called "experts." "The
opinion as to the existence of the facts on which his [Le., the
expert's] opinion is to be given is irrelevant unless he perceived
them himself "
72 Italics in Stephen He says further: "An expert may not
only testify to opinions, but may state general facts which are
the result of scientific knowledge" "The unwritten or common
law of other states or countries may be proved by expert testi-
mony." Genuine writings "may be used for comparison by the
jury" or "by experts to aid the jury." "Experts in handwriting
may also testify to other matters, as e.g., whether a writing is
forged or altered, when a writing was probably made, etc."
73 See Stephen's Digest, 100-112. The words not in quotation
marks and the italicizing are due to the present writer.
[67]
AN INVESTIGATION 0* THE Ou> TESTAMENT
the experiments, i e., the investigations of the orig-
inal sources, which afford the grounds for the
opinions of the expert, that are the most important
part of his evidence; for they give the facts on which
his conclusions are based. If the experiments or in-
vestigations have been faulty, either from an incom-
plete induction of the facts, or from a wrong inter-
pretation of them, the grounds, or reasons, or
opinions, based on the facts will also be faulty,
IMPORTANCE OF A CORRECT TEXT
In the case, therefore, of a literary document the
first fact to investigate and establish is the original
text of the document, and the second is the meaning
of that text. When the original text can be pro-
duced the correct interpretation of it is the principal
matter, unless charges of interpolation are made. If,
however, the original document cannot be produced,
certified copies of the original, or copies approximat-
ing as nearly as possible to the original, may be intro-
duced as evidence, and will have value for all parties
to a controversy in proportion as they are recognized
as genuine copies of the original. It is this fact that
makes the question of the transmission of the text
of the Old Testament fundamental to all discussions
based upon the evidence of that text. Only in so far
as we can establish a true copy of the original text
shall we have before us reliable evidence for our in-
spection and interpretation. In regard to the Old
,[68]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
Testament therefore, the first question to determine is
whether we have a reliable copy of the original text.
It is my purpose to convince my readers that the
answer of experts to this question must be an un-
hesitating admission that in the text of our common
Hebrew Bibles, corrected here and there, especially
by the evidence of the ancient versions and through
the evidence from palaeography, we have presumptively
the original text. That is, we have it with sufficient
accuracy to be reliable as evidence on all great ques-
tions of doctrine, law, and history. In support of
this opinion, we shall in accordance with Sec. 54 of
Stephen's Digest, give the following grounds, with
the statement of the investigations on which they are
based.
I. DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR TEXT
1. An examination of the Hebrew manuscripts now
in existence shows that in the whole Old Testament
there are scarcely any variants supported by more
than one manuscript out of 200 to 400, in which each
book is found, except in the use of the full and de-
fective writing of the vowels. 74 This full, or defec-
tive, writing of the vowels has no effect either on the
sound or the sense of the words. These manuscripts
carry us back at least to the year 916 A. D., the date
of what is probably the oldest MS. of any large part
of the Hebrew Bible.
7 * See the collections of variants by Kennicott and DeRossi.
[69]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THS Ou>
2. The Massorites have left to us the variants
which they gathered and we find that they amount al-
together to about 1,200, less than one for each page
of the printed Hebrew Bible. 75
3. The various Aramaic versions (or Targums),
the Syriac Peshitto, the Samaritan version, and the
Latin Vulgate support with slight variations the pres-
ent text. 76
4. The numerous citations in the New Testament,
75 These variants are to be found on the bottom margin of the
Hebrew printed Bible.
76 See my comparisons of the Hebrew and Peshitto texts of
Chronicles in Hebraica, Vol XIV, 282-284 A comparison of
the proper names of the Hebrew original and the Syriac version
shows hundreds of variations of sight, largely between r and d t
n and y, and k and b; hundreds more of variations due to sound,
as sh and s^z and s, d and t, d and , b and m, b and p t m and n,
I and r, n and /, n and r (very uncommon), a f y f m f or r, or k,
with gutturals, and palatals, interchanging in almost every pos-
sible way. One great peculiarity of the Peshitto is the frequency
with which the proper names are translated and the large num-
ber of cases of the transposition of letters. This statement is
based on a collection of the variation of the proper names of
the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles,
Ezra, and Nehemiah, made and possessed by myself in manu-
script There are ovei two thousand variants in this collection.
The Samaritan Targum scarcely varies at all in sense from the
Samaritan-Hebrew original. Its variants are mostly in the gut-
turals which are used almost indiscriminately. This statement
is based upon a concordance made by myself with the assistance
of Prof. Jesse I,. Cotton, D D , Rev. Robert Robinson, and Rev.
C. D. Brokenshire The variations of Jerome's version arose
mostly from a vowel pointing different from the Massontic The
textual variations of the Targums are similar to those of the
Hebrew manuscripts and of the Massontic readings. See Cap-
pelus : Crtttca Sacra II, 858-892
[70]
THE EVIDENCE.
Josephus, Philo, and the Zadokite Fragments carry
us back to the year 40 to 100 A. D. These citations
show that those who used them had our present text
with but slight variations. The numerous citations
in the Hebrew of the Zadokite Fragments are espe-
cially valuable as a confirmation of the Hebrew text
of Amos and other books cited. 77
5. The Septuagint version, the citations of
Ecclesiasticus, the Book of Jubilees, and other pre-
Christian literature, carry us back to about 300 B. C. 78
77 Thus we find that the Zadokite Fragments cite the canon-
ical books 226 times; 13 times from Genesis, 7 Ex., 29 Lev, 20
Num , 23 Deut. (92 Pentateuch) ; 3 Joshua, 3 Judges, 6 Samuel,
2 Kings, 30 Is, 9 Jer., 16 Ezek, 9 Hos., 2 Amos, 1 Ob, 7 Mi,
1 Na, 3 Zech., 4 Mai. (Minor Prophets 27); 13 Ps, 1 Ru, 10
Prov., 3 Job, 1 Lam., 1 Est, 4 Dan., 2 Ezra, 1 Neh., 3 Chron.
(That is, all the O T. books except Ecclesiastes and the Song
of Songs ) Some of these citations agree exactly with the con-
sonants of our textus receptus, some differ slightly, some con-
siderably; but they all indicate that the present text is sub-
stantially the same as that which was in existence when the book
of Zadok was written. That Philo had tne text of our Old
Testament before him will be manifest to anyone who reads a
page or two of Ryle's Philo and Holy Scripture, which gives
Philo's citations from the canonical books of the Jews. For the
New Testament, Toy's work on New Testament Quotations,
shows plainly the same thing. As for Josephus, he himself claims
that his Antiquities is based on the sacred writings of the Israel-
ites and the writings demonstrate the tiuth of his statement.
78 The differences between the Hebrew Massontic text and the
Greek Septuagint are often grossly exaggerated The vast major-
ity of them arise merely from a difference of pointing of the
same consonantal text. The real variants arose from errors of
sight such as those between r and d f k and b, y and w f or from
errors of sound such as between gutturals, labials, palatals, sibi-
lants, and dentals, or from different interpretations of abbrevia-
[71]
AN INVESTIGATION off THE Ou>
6. For the Pentateuch, the present Samaritan-
Hebrew text (which has been transmitted for 2,300
years or more, by copyists adverse to Rabbinical and
Massoritic influences) agrees substantially with the
received text of our Hebrew Bibles. Most of the
variants are the same in character as those which we
find in the transmission of all originals and especially
in the transmission of our Hebrew text itself. 79 This
carries the text back at the latest to about 400 B. C.
7. The Hebrew Scriptures contain the names of 26
tions There is a goodly number of transpositions, some dittog-
raphies, many additions or omissions, sometimes of significant
consonants, but almost all in unimportant words and phrases
Most of the additions seem to have been for elucidation of the
original. In the case of Jeremiah we have m the Greek a recen-
sion which excludes many recurrent phrases It may be com-
pared with the Babylonian and Aramaic recension of the Behistun
inscription as contrasted with the Persian and Susian. While
substantially the same, they vary in many particulars. For the
Old Testament citations and allusions of Ben-Sira, see my article
on "The Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus" in the Pres. and Ref. Re-
view for 1900 For the Book of Jubilees, see the collection of
variants by R H. Charles in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
of the Old Testament, II 5, 6. Prof. Charles has gathered only
25 variants, 8 of single consonants, I of transposition of words,
9 of omission of a word and 1 of a phrase, 2 cases of change
of gender, 1 of number, and 3 inexplicable corruptions. The
result of his investigation is a wonderful corroboration of the
substantial correctness of our present Hebrew text.
79 See Gesenius', De Pentateuchi Samaritam origine, the stand-
ard work on this subject; and, also, the able criticism of the
work of Gesenius by J. Iverach Munro, entitled, The Samaritan
Pentateuch See also a review of Petermann's Pentateuchus
Samaritanus by R. D. Wilson in Pres and Ref. Review, III, 199,
and J. E H Thomson, D D., The Samaritans: their Testimony
to the Religion of Israel, and J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans.
[72]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
or more foreign kings whose names have been found
on documents contemporary with the kings. The
names of most of these kings are found to be spelled
on their own monuments, or in documents from the
time in which they reigned in the same manner that
they are spelled in the documents of the Old Testa-
ment. The changes in the spelling of others are in
accordance with the laws of phonetic change as those
laws were in operation at the time when the Hebrew
documents claim to have been written. In the case
of two or three names only are there letters, or spell-
ings, that cannot as yet be explained with certainty;
but even in these few cases it cannot be shown that
the spelling in the Hebrew text is wrong. Contrari-
wise, the names of many of the kings of Judah and
Israel are found on the Assyrian contemporary docu-
ments with the same spelling as that which we find
in the present Hebrew text.
The names of Chedorlaomer and his confederates
are written in the Hebrew as follows: Amraphel
tffinDK), Chedorlaomer ("iDJ^Ttt), Arioch (tJTnK),
and Tidal tf>jnn). The first name is undoubtedly
meant to denote Hammurabi, king of Babylon, and
is to be divided into 'ammu, rapi and Hi. The first
syllable is usually written in Babylonian ha but there
are cases where it is written 'a. 80 The / at the end
80 See notes in King's Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi,
LXVI and 253.
[73]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OI,D TESTAMENT
stands for ilu "god." 81 This word ilu is found at
the end of the names of other kings of the same
dynasty as Hammurabi, such as Sumula-ilu, Samsu-
ilu-na, and also of persons not kings as $umman-la-
ilu* 2 The omission of the Aleph from ^ ('el) is
found also in the Hebrew of the HK ('ah) of Sen-
nacherib and Esarhaddon. As to the names of the
other kings, no one can deny that they are spelled cor-
rectly. For Kudur occurs in names of the time of
Hammurabi 83 and Laomer occurs in Ashurbanipal's
list of the gods of Elam. 8 * The Kudur-Lakhgumal
of Pinches inscription 85 is certainly the same as the
IXVI In British Museum Document No. 33212, ilu
occurs before the name.
82 King: Letters, etc., Ill, pp. 21, 215, 241.
ss King. Id I LV.
84 See Streck. Assurbawpal II, 52 La-go-ma-ru (Annals VI.
33).
85 KB II 205. In an article on the gods of Elam by M. H. de
Genouillac in the Receutl de Travaux, xxvn, 94 f, we learn that
the Elamite way of spelling the name was La-ga-mar, M
Francois Martin in his Textes Religieux gives the spellings as
La-ga-wta-al (for which he cites two cases) and La-ga-mar (for
which he cites two cases). Ashurbanipal spells the name Larga-
ma-ru (V. R 6a, 33). The LXX gives it as Xo5oX\o7o/*6p, hav-
ing assimilated the first r to the following /. The name appears
already in the time of Kutur-Nahhunti and again in an inscrip-
tion of his brother, Shilhak-in-Shushinak A son of Kutur-
Nahhunti was called Shilhma-hamru-I,agamar (in three different
texts), and Shutruru speaks of him as "the great" King in his
History of Babylon, p 113, gives 2282 B C as the date of Kutur-
Nahhunti (whose name he spells Kutur-Nankhumdi) and about
2080 B. C as that of Hammurabi (id 111). See also Scheil in
the Memoires of the Delegation en Perse, Tome III, Textes
Slamites-Anzcmites, p 49; and Deimel in the Pantheon, Baby-
Nomina Deorum, etc., Romae 1914, p. 16*0 f.
[74]
THE EVIDENCE TEXT
Kudur-Laomer of Gen. xiv. The changes of the gut-
turals and palatals and of I and r are common ones
in the transliterations of languages. Thus Babylonian
/ equals Persian r, Hebrew / equals Egyptian r, 88
Hebrew JJ (') often equals Egyptian and Greek g,
and Babylonian h. 87 In Tidal the JJ (') is regular for n
(h), as m the first letter of Omri. In Arioch the
consonants are exact equivalents of the like word in
Sumerian. No one can doubt therefore, that the
Hebrew text of the proper names may have been
written in the time of Hammurabi; and that, when-
ever it was written, it has been handed down correctly
to our times. The very disputes about these names
are the very strongest corroborations of the general
belief of all critics in the accurate transmission of
the Hebrew text. In the twenty consonants of these
four names we have, therefore, twenty witnesses to
the correctness of the Hebrew textus receptus.
The five kings of Egypt are: Shishak (ptfff), So
(KID), Tirhakah (npmfi), Necho (IM), and Hophra
(jnan), reigning at intervals from 1000 to 600 B. C.
There are here 18 consonants in the Hebrew text
and they represent 18 consonants in the cartouches of
the kings named. Here we have one of the most re-
86 In the case of Laomer the changes of / and r are found on
the documents of Elam, Babylon, and Assyria.
87 Thus TO = Gaza in Greek and Gadatu in Egyptian. See
Breasted: Egypt II. 179, Schrader in Die Keilmschriftm und
das Alte Testament, 1073, 161.27, 2563, and Knudtzon's Die El~
AmarnoTafeln, 289.17, 33, 40 (but also, Azzoti in 1 296.32).
[75]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE Ow> TESTAMENT
markable instances of exact transmission of proper
names on record. For first, the guttural consonants,
X, n, n, and j?, the palatals and r all represent the
same letters in the original. The only changes from
the original are the assimilation of the n in Sheshank,
the adding of the vowel letter H at the end of Tirha-
kah, the changing of sh to s and of b to w in So, and
the change of b to p in Hophra, all changes in har-
mony with the general laws of variations in sounds
in the passing from one language to another. 87 *
87 * These statements about the names of the kings of Egypt
mentioned in the Old Testament are based especially upon a
study of the comparative values of the consonantal signs as ex-
hibited in the inscriptions of Thothmes III on the gates of his
temple at Thebes (Karnak). There exist still three lists of the
cities of Palestine and Syria which Thothmes conquered. They
have been edited and compared with the original Hebrew names,
which they purport to render, by Prof. W. Max Muller of the
University of Pennsylvania in his work entitled Die Palastinal-
iste Thutmosis IIL From these lists we gather the Egyptian
way of expressing the Hebrew h, q (k), n, and r. Budge in his
First Steps in Egyptian gives us on pages 9-11 the signs for ta f
ka, sha(s), ab, raf. Using the signs in the cartouches of the
kings and comparing them with the letters used in our Hebrew
Bible for spelling the same names we find that they are exactly
equivalent except that the Hebrews according to their custom
assimilate the n in Shishak, add the vowel letter h at the end of
Torhakah, change the labials in Hophra and So and drop the ka
in So Taking up these variations according to the apparent dif-
ficulty of explanation, we find that ka occurs in fifteen of the
names of kings of Ethiopia (Petrie, History of Egypt III. 280-
311). According to Brugsch, this ka is in Ethiopic the post-fixed
article. If so, it would not be used in proper names in either
Assyrian or Hebrew. The w in Swf is changed from 6 as in
Bath-Shu'a for Bath-Sheba. Sargon in Khorsabad inscription I.
[76]
EVIDENCE: TEXT
The kings of Assyria are Tiglath-pileser
Shalmaneser (intttfi^), Sargon
Sennacherib (i^inffi), and Esarhaddon
and the kings of Babylon Merodachbaladan
Nebuchadrezzar (TOTBiaa), Evil-Merodach
W) and Belshazzar (nxt^). These words
contain 63 letters of which 59 are consonants. Com-
paring these consonants with those of the originals
we find that the only changes in the Hebrew text
contrary to general rules consist in the spelling Shal-
maneser instead of Salmanezer and the assimilation or
dropping of r in the sha(r) of Belshazzar. 88 As to the
rendering of the Assyrian sh by sh it is to be noted
25, 26 calls him Sib T ' .-c. The ' ( H) at the end in Hebrew is
the proper vowel letter for the Egyptian vowel in ba.
In Hophra we have a p where -die Egyptian has b. But the
Greek of Herodotus has p and Manetho has ph. It is noteworthy
that the Hebrew alone renders correctly the gutturals ft and y
While the Hebrew text correctly keeps the n m the beginning the
Targum has changed it to n the article and translated the word
as the unfortunate; the Syriac agrees with the Targum and
renders by "the lame." The Hebrew kah at the end of Tishakah
is certainly better than the Babylonian ku, the Hebrews having read
the sign as ka and heightened the # to a at the end of the word
and then written the vowel letter as usual.
88 For the latter compare the confusion of ? and ia by
the Septuagmt translators and the falling out or assimilation of
r in the examples given in Lidzbarski's Epigraphik, p. 393 Com-
pare also, the assimilation of the r to I in the Greek Chodollogo-
mar; and also, the dropping of the r in the Assyrian translitera-
tions of Egyptian names given in Assurbampal's Annals I, 90-
109, e. g, Mimpi for Mn-nfr, Pisaptu for Pr-spd, Punubu for
Pr-ub; and the not infrequent change of r to /, or / to r, in the
LXX, or the change of Egyptian b to p.
[77]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE Ou> TESTAMENT
that this is the way in which this particular root
is always written in both the Aramaic and Canaanitish
dialects. 89 The writing in Daniel of Nebuchadnezzar
for Nebuchadrezzar, involving the change of r to n,
may be explained either by assuming that the former
is the Aramaic form of the latter, or that the r is
changed to n as in the example given in Lidbarski. 90
The four names of Achsemenid kings found in
the Scriptures are Cyrus (BH3), Darius (tSWr) 9
Ahasuerus (BTlWrW), and Artaxerxes (KfiDBWVW),
of which the last part is written also f\w and KfiftP.
The Aleph in Xerxes is prosthetic as in the word
satrap (JBYIHWttO and the final Aleph as found in cer-
89 This appears from numerous examples in Lidzbarski's
Epigraphik, pp. 376, 377, for Phenician, Punic, Hebrew, Naba-
tean, Palmyrene, and Egypto-Aramaic. For the eser the Assy-
nan has asandu. Assyrian proper names were frequently short-
ened even to only one part out of three or more. See Tallquist:
Neubabylonisches Namenbuch xiv-xxxni Compare, also, the
Shalman of Hos. x 14 and the Jareb of Hos v 13, x 6, and
the Nadinu of the Babylonian Chronicle (K B II 274) for
Nabu-nadin-zir. (Winckler: History of Babylonia and Assyria,
p. 110.) If the full form of the name was Shalman-asandu-
Asur, the forms used in the Assyrian documents and in the Hebrew
text would both be accounted for.
90 Eptgraphik, pp. 329, 393. See also my Studies on the Book
of Daniel, p 167, note Since in Babylonia both kuduru and
kidinu mean servant, it is possible that the latter was used by
Jeremiah and Daniel to show that they interpreted kuduru as
meaning servant rather than boundary. Again, both names might
be shorter forms of Nabu-kudur-kidmi-usur O Nebo, protect the
boundary of the servant Or, the n may be the Hebrew and old
Aramaic (Nerab) form of the Imperative with the r assimilated.
Compare Note 88.
[78]
THE EVIDENCE.
tain spellings of the name Artaxerxes is otiant.
The Wau in Xerxes is a contraction of yama. In the
case of Artaxerxes the dental and sibilant are trans-
posed in accordance with general Semitic laws of
dental and sibilants. In the Sachau Papyri from the
fifth century B. C. the names are written
rprr (or rwYi, nwYT), r-wn, and
In Babylonian the Wau in Darius is commonly writ-
ten m, Xerxes has often a prosthetic vowel, and
Artaxerxes is written in the Babylonian recension of
the original inscription Artaksatsu (or with an h in-
stead of &). 91 Thus we see that every one of the 22
consonants composing the names of the kings of
Persia mentioned in the Bible has been transmitted
correctly to us over a space 23 or 24 hundred years.
It may be added that in no other non-Persian docu-
ment are they so accurately transliterated. 914
81 See Weissbach's Keitinschiften der Achaemeniden, and
Strassmaier's Inschiften von Danus and numerous tablets in CT
and VASD
9:1 * Critics who hold that Esther and Ezra were not composed till
after 300 B C and that both authors gained largely from Greek
sources their information about the times which they describe will
have a hard time explaining the way in which Xerxes is spelled in
Ezra iv 6, and in the book of Esther throughout According to all
known cases of transliteration, BnjtPTiK cannot possibly be a trans-
literation of Xerxes. The X of the Greek is commonly trans-
literated in Hebrew, Aramaic and Synac by ks (w) and infre-
quently by ks (Dp) ; h (n) and sh (ff) being never used Thus
Xerx (for es is the Greek ending) could never become 'jjfwr
[In Dalman's Aramaisch-Neuhebratsches Wortesbuch there are
nouns with DD and with DDK and with Dp and with Dp corre-
sponding to the Greek X or I, but not one with Ofy DHj Vft or VHK*
[79]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OI,D TESTAMENT
Other kings of foreign countries mentioned in the
Bible and also on contemporary documents outside
the Bible are Hazael (tottim), and Rezin (pxn), of
Damascus, Hiram (DVn), and Ethbaal (^JJsnK) of
The same is true of the Syraic words in Brockelmann's Lexicon
Syriacum. On the other hand, if the writers of these lived in
the fifth century B. C in the Persian court, they could not have
transliterated better than they have done. For Xerxes in Persian
is ksayarsa, the exact equivalent of tPWH, to which the Hebrew
adds a prosthetic Aleph, as is done in the case of the Aramaic
fipBTW, satrap (Daniel vi. 4) and ptwrw camel (?) (Esther
viii, 10, 14) and most commonly in Babylonian and also in the
Syriac BHWW (Peshitto of Esther 1.1), and Bar Hebraeus:
Chronicon Syriacum p 31 (Pans edition of 1890, sold by Mais-
sonneuve). If we accept the Massontic vowel pointing in Dan.
ix. 1 a Xerxes or Ahasuerus is referred to there also If, how-
ever, we point as 'Ohsarus, we would have the Hebrew of the
king of Media whom the Greeks called Cyaxares, and the Per-
sians uuakstra. The name occurs in Persian only twice and both
times in the genitive uuakstrahya (Behistun 24, 33)]
Artaxerxes, also, is in the Bible as exact a transliteration of the
Persian way of writing the name, as is possible. The first part
of the name is written in the Persian inscription arda once
(vase a), and arta nine times. The Elamitic follows the Persian
even in the change of d and t; but Hebrew, Aramaic, Babylonian
and Greek always write t. The Persian k is always rendered
by k in Elamitic and Greek (the first part of ks); in Babylonian
it is represented by a k except in vase a where we have '&; in-
Hebrew and Aramaic we always have fc. The letter following k
is in Persian on vase a but everywhere else s; in Elamitic,
Babylonian, Egypto and biblical Aramaic and Hebrew, always
s; in Greek the $ part of The last syllable is in Persian
sd or the sign denoted by an r with an s over it and a following
it Elamitic denotes this syllable by $sa t Babylonian by ssu (vases
a, b, c) or tsu ; Egypto- Aramaic by PQ, biblical Aramaic by KftBf
(Ezra iv. 7 bis, 8, 11, 23, vi. 14) and biblical Hebrew by KflO
(Ezra vii 1, 7, 11, 12, 21; viii. 1; Neh. ii. 1; xhi, 6), the s
and t being transposed in accordance with the general rule that
[80]
THE EVIDENCE. TEXT
Tyre, JJj^D o Moab, and Hadadezer (ITJPttn).
These names contain at least 24 consonants, and every
one of them has the proper writing in our Hebrew
Bibles. In fact, Hadad (Tin), and Ethbaal (fyafiK)
are spelled more correctly in the Hebrew text than
they are in the Assyrian records. 92
Again, there are at least six kings of Israel and
four of Judah whose names are found in the Assyrian,
records, to wit: Omri (*1DJJ), Ahab (2Kn), Jehu
(KW), Menahem (DIUD), Pekah (npB), Hoshea
(JWW), Azariah OmtJJ), Ahaz (ffW), Hezekiah
Cin*ptn),and Manasseh (nWfi). By comparing the
Assyrian renditions of the letters it will be found
that the whole 40 are written in our Hebrew Bibles
in a manner corresponding to the proper translitera-
tion of the Assyrian texts.
Thus we find that in 143 cases of transliteration
where a dental comes before a sibilant the two consonants change
places. Ezra iv 7 gives the whole syllable as sta' The Greek
gives the syllable as &J$, transposing the letters sk into ks and
adding the Greek ending es; but the r of the syllable Xer has no
equivalent in Persian, or any other contemporaneous language.
That yama should contract to wait (or 6) seems clear when we
remember that yama is equivalent to yawa and that the m of Baby-
lonian may change to w in West Semitic, as m Saos for Shamash
in the name of the king Shamash-sum-ukin as given in Ptolemy's
Canon. It appears from the above evidence that the Bible, espe-
cially in the whole writing of Ezra iv. 7, presents the best trans-
literation possible of the original Persian name as spelled in the
native inscription of the monarch himself.
92 For a detailed discussion of the evidence see KA.T and
barski's Epigfaphik.
6 [81]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE Ou> TESTAMENT
from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Moabite
into Hebrew and in 40 cases of the opposite, or 184
in all, the evidence shows that for 2300 to 3900
years the text of the proper names in the Hebrew
Bible has been transmitted with the most minute ac-
curacy. That the original scribes should have writ-
ten them with such close conformity to correct philo-
logical principles is a wonderful proof of their thor-
ough care and scholarship; further, that the Hebrew
text should have been transmitted by copyists through
so many centuries is a phenomenon unequalled in the
history of literature.
For neither the assailants nor the defenders of the
biblical text should assume for one moment that
either this accurate rendition or this correct trans-
mission of proper names is an easy or usual thing.
And as some of my readers may not have experience
in investigating such matters, attention may be called
to the names of the kings of Egypt as given in
Manetho and on the Egyptian monuments. Manetho
was a high priest of the idol-temples in Egypt in the
time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, i. e , about 280 B. C.
He wrote a work on the dynasties of Egyptian kings,
of which fragments have been preserved in the works
of Josephus, Eusebius, and others Of the kings of
the 31 dynasties, he gives 140 names from 22
dynasties. Of these, 49 appear on the monuments in
a form in which every consonant of Manetho's spell-
ing may possibly be recognized, and 28 more may be
[82]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
recognized in part. The other 63 are unrecognizable
in any single syllable. If it be true that Manetho
himself copied these lists from the original records
and the fact that he is substantially correct in 49
cases corroborates the supposition that he did, the
hundreds of variations and corruptions in the fifty or
more unrecognizable names must be due either to his
fault in copying or to the mistakes of the transmitters
of his text. 95 But, perhaps, the most striking example
of the difficulty of transmitting accurately the proper
names of kings, as well as the precariousness of using
these lists as evidence against the Scriptures, is to be
found in the lists of kings given by the astronomer
Ptolemy in his Canon. Of the twenty-two kings that
reigned over Babylon from Nabonassar to Nabunaid
inclusive, Ptolemy mentions but eighteen; and of the
eighteen kings from Cyrus to Darius Codomannus,
the names of eight are omitted.
This deficiency in the Ptolemaic Canon will be the
more apparent when we observe that between the
death of Nergal-shar-usur in 556 B. C. and the ac-
cession of Darius II in 424 B. C, i. e., in 132 years,
the Canon gives the names and length of reigns of
only six kings of Babylon, whereas the classics and
93 Of the 27 kings of Egypt named by Josephus, only seven
are spelled the same as in Manetho Of the 41 kings of Assyria
in the lists of Afncanus, only one name is recognizable and it
is misspelled. In Ptolemy's list of 18 kings of Babylon, only
one is spelled exactly right. See my article on Darius the Mede
in PTR for 1922.
[83]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI,D TESTAMENT
monuments give the names, and in most cases, the
approximate lengths of the reigns of nine others.
Now, Ptolemy and those who copied his Canon
have been very careful in copying the notation of the
number of years. It is different, however, when we
look at the proper names. Thus, of the eighteen
names of the kings of Babylon from Nabonassar to
Nabunaid, only the first and last, and that of Esar-
haddon are written with approximate correctness.
That their difference may be patent to the eye of our
readers, I shall give the names in interlinear trans-
literation, the first line as given in the Canon, the
second as we find the name on the Babylonian monu-
ments :
1 Nabonassarou 2 Nadiou 3 Chinzirou kai Porou
1 Nabunasir 2 Nabu-nadin-zir 3 Ukinzir and Pulu
4 lougaiou 5 Mardokempadou 6 Arkianou
4 Ululai 5 Marduk-aplu-iddin 6 Shar-ukiu
7 Belibou 8 Apronadiou 9 Rigebelou
7 Belibni 8 Ashur-nadin-shum 9 Nergal-ushezib
10 Mesessimordakou 11 Assaradinou 12 Saosdoucheou
10 Mushezib-Marduk 11 Ashur-ahi-iddin 12 Shamash-shum-ukin
13 Xuniladanou 14 Nabokolassarou 15 Nabokolassarou
13 Kandalanu 14 Nabu-aplu-tisur IS Nabu-kudur-usur
16 Ilouarodamou 17 Ninkassolassarou 18 Nabonadiou
16 Amel-Marduk 17 Nergal-shar-usur 18 Nabu-na'id
Another example of the difficulty of transmitting
proper names is to be found in the life of Alexander
by the Pseudo-Callisthenes. Concerning this work
the late President Woolsey of Yale College has truly
said, that in the Greek manuscripts and in the ver-
sions "proper names assume different forms at will,"
[84]
EVIDENCE: TEXT
and there is "an amazing difference in the proper
names." "A daughter-in-law of Queen Candace is
called Harpussa by B and C, Matersa by A, and
Margie by V." "In the list o combatants in the
games the Syriac has nine names like the Greek and
Latin authorities, but they are all so much altered
that two or three only have any resemblance. 9 *
Thus we see not merely analogical evidence but the
direct evidence of the documents forces us to the con-
clusion that the spelling of the proper names of the
kings as given in the Old Testament must go back to
original sources; and if the original sources were in
the hands of the composers of the documents, the
probability is that since the composers are correct in
the spelling of the names of the kings they are cor-
rect also in the sayings and deeds which they record
concerning these kings. And this we find in general
to be true where the Hebrew documents and the
monuments both record the great deeds of the kings.
Thus the Hebrew Scriptures mention the expedition
of Shishak against Judah, and the Egyptian records
at Thebes record the conquest of Judah by the same
king. The Assyrian monuments speak of the wars
of Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, and Sen-
fl * See for the evidence in full the article of President Woolsey
entitled: Notice of a Life of Alexander the Great translated
from the Synac by Rev. Dr. Justin Perkins, New Haven, 1854,
in Reprint from the Journal of the American Oriental Society,
Vol. IV, 359-440.
[85]
INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
nacherib; the Hebrew documents record the same
events generally in the same order and with the like
results. Mesha says that he asserted his independ-
ence of Ahab; the Scriptures say that he rebelled
against Israel. From the mouths of many witnesses
for in this case every consonant gives out a voice
of testimony the Hebrew documents are corrobo-
rated. The great kings come up from the south and
the greater kings come down from the north, and the
little kings of Tyre and Damascus and Moab and
Israel and Judah meet them in the slash and clash of
battle and the kings record their victories on the pyla
of Thebes, on the cliffs of Behistun, on the stones of
Moab, on the high built walls of their palaces and
tombs; and the great kings and the small go alike
the inevitable way of all flesh. But they did not live
in vain. For their deeds and their very names speak
out to-day in confirmation of the history of that
little, oft conquered, nation whose God was Jehovah
and whose oracles were the oracles of God.
8. The names of these kings about forty in all
are the names of men who lived from about 2000 to
about 400 B. C., and yet they each and all appear in
proper chronological order both with reference to the
kings of the same country and with respect to the
kings of other countries contemporary with them
No stronger evidence for the substantial accuracy of
the Old Testament records could possibly be imagined
than this collection of names of kings. It means that
[86]
EVIDENCE- TEXT
out of 56 kings of Egypt from Shishak to Darius II,
and out of the numerous kings of Assyria, Babylon,
Persia, Tyre, Damascus, Moab, Israel, and Judah,
that ruled from 2000 to 400 B. C., the writers of the
Old Testament have put the names of the 40 or
more that are mentioned in records of two or more
of the nations, in their proper absolute and relative
order of time and in their proper place. Any expert
mathematician will tell you, that to do such a thing
is practically impossible without a knowledge of the
facts such as could be drawn alone from contempo-
rary and reliable records. When we consider that
there are nine distinct lines of kings in the countries
mentioned, and that there are several hundred kings
in all, and that the length of the reigns of the kings
could be determined only from the most accurate rec-
ords, the chance of anyone who did not have access
to reliable sources to get a record as exact as that
preserved for us in the Hebrew Scriptures would be
so small that no mathematician on earth could calcu-
late it. 94a
9. The proper names and laws and customs of the
94a lf there were 300 names of kings, each reigning 20 years,
and 40 to be taken by chance, then, according to the algebraic
rule that n (vr1) (n2) , , (V r+i; equals the number of per-
mutations, there would be one chance in about 75 x 1,000,000 to the
16th power of getting the names in the correct order. Even this
chance would be made more impossible from the fact that the
kings did not all reign an equal and synchronous period, but for
periods of from one month to 66 years See Wells' Higher Al-
gebra, page 362.
[87]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OI,D TESTAMENT
time of Abraham are such as are met with in the
extra-biblical records from the time of Hammurabi,
of whom Abraham, according to Gen. xiv was a
contemporary. 95
10. The proper names and customs of the story of
Joseph harmonize with the time when Joseph is said
to have been in Egypt. 88
11. The proper names of the Samaria ostraka and
the names and events recorded on the Moabite stone
agree with the biblical records of the time of Ahab. 97
12. Moreover, the kinds of foreign words em-
bedded in the different documents of the Old Testa-
ment argue strongly for the genuineness and for the
accurate transmission of this original text.
In order that the force of this kind of evidence may
be fully appreciated, let me here say that the time at
which any document of length, and often even of
small compass, was written can generally be deter-
mined by the character of its vocabulary, and espe-
cially by the foreign words which are embedded in it.
Take, for example, the various Aramaic documents.
The inscriptions from Northern Syria having been
written in Assyrian times bear evident marks of As-
syrian, Phoenician, and even Hebrew words. The
Egyptian papyri from Persian times have numerous
95 See my article in the Bible Student for 1904. In reading
the article please bear in mind that the proof was never revised
by the author
"See Pinches- The Old Testament, etc., pp 249-267.
97 See I/yon in Harvard Review for 1911, p. 136.
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
words of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian origin,
as have also the Aramaic parts of Ezra and Daniel.
The Nabatean Aramaic having been written probably
by Arabs is strongly marked, especially in its proper
names, by Arab words. The Palmyrene, Syriac, and
Rabbinical Aramaic, from the time of the Grseco-
Roman domination, have hundreds of terms intro-
duced from Greek and Latin. Bar Hebraeus and other
writings after the Mohammedan conquest have numer-
ous Arabic expressions, and the modern Syriac of
Ouroumiah has many words of Persian, Kurdish, and
Turkish origin.
Now, if the Biblical history be true, we shall expect
to find Babylonian words in the early chapters of
Genesis and Egyptian in the later; and so on down,
an ever-changing influx of new words from the lan-
guages of the ever-changing dominating powers.
And, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what we find.
Thus, the first chapters of Genesis contain proper and
common names of Sumerian or Babylonian origin, 93
and the Pentateuch has many Egyptian words." In
the time of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife
of Uriah the Hittite and whose commerce included
products from all countries, and whose empire ex-
tended from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt,
8 E.g., Adam, Abel, Abraham, Arioch; and , DWi, ma
(= Sumerian ba-ru (?)), *w, fi (in sense of "form").
89 E g. Ramases, Pithom, On, Potiphar, Asenath,
mr, epa.
[89]
INVESTIGATION o# THE Cto TESTAMENT
we find in the narrative, words of Hittite, Indian and
Assyrian origin. 100 In the documents from the
eighth to the sixth century we find predominantly
foreign words of Syrian, Assyrian and Babylonian
character. 101 And in the records from the sixth cen-
tury to the end we find Babylonian, Persian, and a
few Greek words. 102
13. The Old Testament documents claim that rec-
ords were written by Moses, 108 by Joshua, 10 * by
Deborah, 105 by a young man of Succoth, 106 by
Samuel, 107 by David, 108 and either by, or in the days
100 Thus, ttffifi and DTifi have their nearest analogies in
Armenian, the closest of the Indo-Europeans to the ancient Hit-
tites (see Meyer in Encyclopedia Bnttanica, art "Persia"). The
names for apes and elephants (1 Kings xi 22) are of Indian
origin in = iba (Burnouf Sanskrit Diet, p 89), 'flp = Kapi,
(id. p. 140). And h^ and Mns> po and fen came from the
Assyro-Babyloman (or from the Sumenan through the Baby-
lonian).
101 E.g Hazael, Benhadad, Tiglath-Pileser, Merodach-Baladan,
Bel, Nebo, Tartan, Rabshakeh
102 E.g Zerubbabbel, Sheshbazzar, Sanballat, and many names
of officers, offices, and things are Babylonian, and the names of
musical instruments in the Aramaic of Daniel are Greek (See
my article in Biblical and Theological Studies by the Faculty of
Princeton Theological Seminary, p. 261 (1912) ) On the
Persian words, see Tisdale, "The Book of Daniel; Some Lin-
guistic Evidence Regarding Its Date"
108 Thus, JE in Ex xvu. 14, xxxn. 82, xxiv. 12, xxxiv 17;
p m Deut x. 4, iv. 13, v. 19, x. 2, xxviii. 61, xxxi. 9, 22; P
in Num xxxm. 2, Ex xxxix 30.
104 Josh vm 32, xvni. 4, xxiv 26
" 5 Judg v 14.
10 Judg vih 14.
IOT i Sam. x. 25.
1082 Sam. XL 14, 15.
[90]
EVIDENCE
of, all the kings of Israel and Judah from Solomon
to Zedekiah. For thousands of years before the time
of Moses, the Egyptians on the southward of
Palestine and the Babylonians on the east had been
writing documents similar in form and content to
those found in the Pentateuch. For thousands of
years before Moses, the Babylonians had been mak-
ing expeditions and carrying their culture to the
coasts of the Mediterranean For hundreds of years
before his time, kings of Egypt had been raiding
Palestine, and her merchants and travelers had been
frequenting her ports and inland cities and leaving
the records of their transactions in their tales and
autobiographies. The Tel-el-Amarna letters, written
to the kings of Egypt from every part of Palestine
and Syria, show that writing in cuneiform was prac-
tised everywhere in these countries 200 years before
the time of Moses. 109 And the tablets from Taanach,
Gezer, and elsewhere show that such writings were
109 That the Hebrew of the text may have been written as early
as the time of Exodus is proven, (1) by the Hebrew words
embedded in the Tel-el-Amarna letters; (2) by the proper names
in the Egyptian lists of places conquered in Palestine; and (3)
by the proper names of the Hammurabi period. This evidence
shows also that the forms of the noun and verb as found in
Biblical Hebrew were already in existence. See Bohl, Die
Sprache der Amurnabriefe; W. Max Muller, Die Pafastinaliste
Thutmosis III; Clay, Light on the T. from Babylon, p. 147;
Ranke, Early Babylonian Personal Names; and Knudtzon: Die
El-Amarna Tafeln, 1545-1549.
[91]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
still made as late as 600 B. C. Various documents
in Phenician, Aramaic, Hittite, Cypriote, Cretan,
Moabite, Minsean, Sabean, and Hebrew, from 1000
B. C. to 400 B. C., show that during all this period
documents of various kinds were in use among the
nations of western Asia in, and on every side, of
Palestine. The character of the documents shows
also that there must have been a general diffusion
among the people of the ability to read and write. In
view of all these facts, the sang froid with which
these modern critics and their followers affirm that
writings could not have been produced among the
Hebrews till 800 or 900 B. C. passes belief. Against
the express and reiterated statements of the biblical
records that writing was in use among the Hebrews
from Moses downward, supported as these state-
ments are by all the direct evidence of the documents
of all the surrounding nations, they set up their
opinion an opinion that receives no support from
the documents, until they have been arbitrarily
amended and interpreted in order to bring them into
harmony with the a priori opinions which on the face
of them the documents themselves clearly condemn.
II. EVIDENCE FROM ANALOGY
The testimony supplied by the history of the trans-
mission of the text of other ancient documents, sup-
ported as it is by what we know of the transmission
[92]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
of the text of the Old Testament for the last 2,000
years, justifies the presumption that the copies of the
Old Testament text existent 2,000 years ago had in
like manner been transmitted from their originals.
Thus
1. The fragments of classical writers found in the
papyri of Egypt when compared with modern printed
editions based on manuscripts, many of which are
not a thousand years old show that, with few im-
portant variations, the classical authors have been
correctly transmitted for 2,000 to 2,500 years. In
the fragments of 150 lines from Homer in the papyri
from Oxyrynchus, the Fayum and Hibeh, edited by
Grenfell, Hunt, and others, many lines are exactly
the same as in the edition of Munro Allen. Most of
the variants are merely slight such as adding n, or
putting e for ei In the two fragments of Herodotus,
from the end of the third century A. D., published
in the Oxyrynchus Papyri, there is no variant from
Dietsch's edition, though there are a few minor varia-
tions from Stein's edition.
2. The building inscriptions of Nabunaid refer to
the fact that certain temples had been built by Ham-
murabi, who reigned over Babylon 1,500 years be-
fore his time, saying that he had found the temens
or foundation stones of Hammurabi. In the copies
of records of Hammurabi which were made about 650
B. C. for the library of Ashurbanipal, king of
[93]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
Assyria, and preserved in Nineveh, mention is made
of the founding of these temples. 110
3. The library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh had
thousands of documents that were copies of originals
going back hundreds, and in some cases thousands,
of years before his time. 111
4. Some parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
were in use in the same form for nearly 4,000
years. 112
" See the Keilinschnftliche Bibliothek III, 11, 91, and King's
Letters of Hammurabi, pp 181-3. An inscription of Hammurabi
in Sumenan says among other things: "When Shamash gave
unto him Shumer and Accad to rule and entrusted their sceptre
to his hands, then did (Hammurabi) build for Shamash, the lord
who is the protector of his life, the temple Ebabbar, his beloved
temple, in I^arsam, the city of his rule." (King: Inscriptions
of Hammurabi, p 182 ) In another inscription we read : "Ham-
murabi, the mighty king-, the king of Babylon, king of the four
quarters of the world, hath built Ebabbar, the temple of Shamash
in the city of Larsam" (id. 183). Referring to this temple
Nabunaid says, that in his tenth year Shamash commanded him
to restore Ebarra. He says that he found the temen and plan
of the temple inscribed with the name of Hammurabi, "the old-
time king who, 700 years before Burnaburiash, Ebarra and its
Zikurat upon tie old temen had built to Shamash. (KB. III.
II. 0. Col. I. 54. II. 1-60, 1-32.) An inscription of Burna-
buriash states that he restored the same temple of Ebarra. KB.
III. II. 153.
111 See Dennef eld : Babylonisch-Assyrische Geburts-omina, p. 9.
3, on the Entstehungszeit, Entstehungs-und Ueberlieferungsart
des Onginalwerkes ; also, Hunger: Beckenwahrsagung bei den
Babylonlern und Assyriern, II. 503 f*
112 A tradition as old as the twelfth dynasty says that chapter
XXX B of the Book of the Dead was discovered by Herutataf
the son of Khufu in the reign of Menkaura, a king of the fourth
dynasty. It was cut in hieroglyphics and set under the feet of
Thoth. This prayer was still recited by the Egyptians in the
[94]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
5. Scores of duplicates and triplicates among the
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian documents show
that from 2000 B. C. down to the year 400 B. C.
copies of documents were often made with absolute
exactness and generally with substantial accuracy. 118
6. The variants in these duplicates show clearly,
however, that differences in spelling, enumeration,
and even omissions and additions, etc., are no proof
in themselves of a difference in either age or author-
ship. 11 * Examples of the different ways of spelling
will be seen in the lists of Thothmes III at Karnak.
Thirty-five variants occur in 119 names. 115 In the 17
lines of tablet No. 321 of Strassmaier's Inschriften
von Cyrus the duplicate copy gives eight variants;
Ptolemaic period and so must have been in use for about four
thousand years. See Budge: The Literature of the Egyptians,
p. 50.
118 Three of these duplicates may be seen in Strassmaier's
Inschriften von Cyrus and 14 m his Inschnften von Nebuchad-
onosor. See also VASD. The five quadrililingual inscriptions of
Darius on steles placed along the Suez canal were duplicates, as
were also his Egyptian inscriptions at El Khergeh (See TSBA.
V. 293 and Recueil de Travaux VII. 1, IX. 131, XL 160 )
114 This appears most clearly and frequently from the various
originals of the Behistun inscriptions as they appear in the four
recensions or editions, of which we possess one each in whole or
in part m the Persian, Susian, Babylonian, and Aramaic. These
differences will be discussed more fully when we come to consider
the book of Chronicles. Here attention is called merely to the
fact that the Babylonian copy of the Aramaic varies frequently
from its original in the enumerations, and that the Babylonian and
Aramaic recensions are much shorter than the Persian and
Susian.
115 See plates in W. Max Muller's Die Palastindliste Thotkmes
III.
[95]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
one supplies an erosion, one an omission, one an ex-
planation, three are corrections, and two fuller writ-
ings. One of the best exhibitions of duplicates and
triplicates will be found in Dennefeld's Geburts-
Omina. An intelligent study of this masterly work
might well be made a propaedeutic to the study of
textual criticism, illustrating as it does from numer-
ous contemporary documents all kinds of copyists'
mistakes due to sight and sound.
7. Hundreds of bilingual inscriptions containing
the original Sumerian with its Assyrian translations,
some made in the time of Hammurabi and some in
the time of Ashurbanipal, as well as the four recen-
sions of the Behistun inscriptions, known to us, show
that the kinds of variations that we find between the
Hebrew text and its versions are to be found in them.
As these variations do not impair the general veracity
of these extra-biblical documents nor militate against
their antiquity or genuineness, so neither do the
variations of the Hebrew text destroy their general
and essential trustworthiness. 116
116 More than 2,000 interlinear texts are mentioned in Bezold's
Catalogue of the Cuneiform Texts in the Kouyunjik Collection
of "the British Museum. Good examples are published in. The
Seven Tablets of Creation by Prof L W King-, pp 130-139,
180 On page 217 of this same work will be found an example
of a work in Sumerian containing word for word explanations
in Assyrian. Hundreds of such texts have been found in the
library of Kttyunjik (see Bezold's Catalogue, pp. 2010, 2092-
2103), One of the most interesting of these bilingual inscriptions
is by SamsuMuna, successor of Hammurabi, of which there are
[96]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
8. If the original documents of the duplicates of
the Old Testament (making about one-fifth of the
whole) were written in cuneiform script, most of the
variations between them could be paralleled by the
variations in the translations of the Assyrian from
the Sumerian. 117
HI. THE) AD HOMINEM ARGUMENT
But the strongest argument against the critics from
the textual point of view is the childlike simplicity
with which they appeal to that part of the text which
happens to suit their particular theory of Old Testa-
ment history, literature or religion. After having,
in order to prove this theory, cast out, without one
item of evidence to support them, hundreds of words
from the prima facie text of the documents, they
proceed to point and interpret what remains with as
much assurance as if they had really proven beyond
all controversy that what they had arbitrarily cast
out was false and with as much presumption as if
two copies of the Sumerian original and two copies of the Baby-
lonian version, with slight variants in both originals and ver-
sions (see King: The Letters of Hammurabi, p. 198 f).
117 E g the numerous synonyms in the parallel passages of
Kings and Chronicles may be compared to the rendering of DIM,
in the creation tablets, by ba-ni, ba-na-at, ip-se-*t f and e-pu-u$,
and BA-RU by e-pu-us, and ib-tani. See the Creation of the
World by Marduk in King's Seven Tablets of Creation, I. 130-
139. On this subject the author of this article read a paper at
the International Congress of Orientalists in St Louis in 1904.
He hopes to be able to publish this paper at an early date.
7 [97]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OI<D TESTAMENT
they had actually proven that what they have retained
is true. What would a court do with a plaintiff that
desired to have a document admitted as evidence in
support of his side of the case, after the same plain-
tiff had charged that the document was neither
genuine, authentic, nor historical, and after the docu-
ment had been amended to suit the contention of the
plaintiff? Would the court not demand at least that
the plaintiff should prove beyond controversy that
the parts of the documents that the plaintiff desired
to introduce as evidence were reliable, as claimed?
And since in almost every instance of such claim the
critics are unable to produce any proof simply be-
cause no such proof exists, is it not obvious that
they must be debarred from introducing as evidence
the parts that support their side, as long at least as
they insist on denying the evidence of the parts that
support the defense ? In short, no argument can be
made against that part of the text of the Old Testa-
ment which upholds the prima facie evidence of the
documents, which will not overthrow in a much
greater degree the text that the critics attempt to
establish.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In view of this mass of evidence, analogy and
admission, the following conclusions seem to be
justified :
1. The traditional text has in its favor in the case
of the most important of the documents the claim
[98]
THE EVIDENCE: TEXT
to have been in its original form written by, or for,
certain definite persons and to have been written in
the places and at the times mentioned; and the pos-
sibility of their having been written as claimed is
supported by the outside evidence that writing was
then in vogue, that the literary forms in which the text
is written were then known, that the Hebrew language
was then in use, that scribes and copyists were then
existent, that the contents are in harmony with what
is known of the times when they claim to have been
written.
2. The proof that the copies of the original docu-
ments have been handed down with substantial cor-
rectness for more than 2,000 years cannot be denied.
That the copies in existence 2,000 years ago had been
in like manner handed down from the originals is not
merely possible, but, as we have shown, is rendered
probable by the analogies of Babylonian documents
now existing of which we have both originals and
copies, thousands of years apart, and of scores of
papyri which show when compared with our modern
editions of the classics that only minor changes of the
text have taken place in more than 2,000 years and
especially by the scientific and demonstrable ac-
curacy with which the proper spelling of the names
of kings and of the numerous foreign terms embedded
in the Hebrew text has been transmitted to us. 118
us By substantial as used in the above statements we mean that
the text of the Old Testament and of the other documents have
[99]
AN INVESTIGATION o? THE OLD TESTAMENT
3. From the above given array of evidence and
especially from the fact that the destructive critics
themselves make use of the traditional text in sup-
port of every theory which they have broached, the
conclusion is irresistible that the textus receptus must
be accepted in its prima facie consonantal form as
correct and reliable in all cases where there is no irre-
fragable weight of outside evidence, or at least of
general analogy, against it.
4. In view of the thoroughly established fact that
the vowel signs were not added to the consonantal
text till about 600 A. D., and that the vowel letters
were subject to change as late as the latest manu-
scripts, it results that all arguments based on specific
vowel pointings must be abandoned, unless the point-
ings can be proven from outside evidence to be cor-
rect 119
been changed only in respect to those accidental matters which
necessarily accompany the transmission of all texts where origi-
nals have not been preserved and which consequently exist merely
in copies or copies of copies Such changes may be called minor
in that they do not seriously affect the doctrines of the documents
nor the general impression and evident veracity of their state-
ments as to geography, chronology, and other historical matters
119 Thus, Wellhausen's view in his History of Israel, p 389,
that xakar "male" was m earlier times zakur and that sakur must
be substituted for zakar in Ex xxxiv 9, Deut xv. 19, and 1 1C
xi 15 seq., and zakar read in all so-called later documents, is
purely subjective and without any possible objective evidence in
its favor. So, also, the pointing of in Ecc. ni 6 represents
merely the exegesis of the Massontes and not necessarily the
intention of the original writer (LOT, 474). Objection to the
[100]
5. In view of the exactness with which the proper
names of persons and places have been transmitted
for 4,000 years and their general agreement in the
parallel passages, the presumption is, that the names
for God, also, have been rightly transmitted. This
presumption lays the burden of proof upon the
critics, who, in order to establish their theory, arbi-
trarily and without any direct evidence in their favor,
throw out Hlohim from every place where it occurs
in Gen. ii. 3-iv, and Jehovah from many passages in
other parts. 120
Finally, the analogy of the transmission of texts as
shown among the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Persians, Greeks, and Arabs, shows that there is a
presumption against the theory of the critics that the
Hexateuch is the result of the work of seventeen or
more authors and redactors, combining in an inex-
plicable and inextricable confusion, three or four
parallel accounts and four, or more, recensions of
arguments for the late date of Deuteronomy based on the use of
nathan and 'asa in 11. 12, would be sufficiently met by pointing
nothen and f ose.
120 The unjustifiable procedure of the critics with regard to
the names of God is further shown by the analogy of the Koran,
where we find the same variety in the use of the words for Lord
and God that we meet with in the Pentateuch. This statement
is based on a comparative concordance of Allaha and Tab, which
was prepared by me and published in the PTR for 1921. It shows
that some Suras use neither, some one or the other, and some both ;
and this in all kinds of variations that are found in the Pentateuch.
[101]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
laws representing widely different periods of time
and development 121
121 The analogy of the great historical work of Herodotus and
of great works of fiction like Don Quixote, or Victor Hugo's
Don Cesar, is convincing that duplicates such as are found in
the Pentateuch are true to life The biographies, also, of
Thothmes III and Tiglath Pileser I and Alexander and Caesar
are as full of similar events as are those of Abraham and Moses.
Csssar's accounts of his two voyages to Britain and of his two
bridges over the Rhine are beautiful examples of tfiem. Alex-
ander was always consulting his mantis. "Lives of great men
all remind us/'
[102]
Ill
THE EVIDENCE
GRAMMAR
P
Ill
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
IASSING from the text to the grammar we find
that in this line of attack upon the Scriptures,
the latest evidence is also against the critics.
THE ABSTRACT FORMATIONS IN uth, on AND an
In one of the standard introductions to the Old
Testament 122 the assertion is made that the use of
"the frequent abstract formations in uth, on and an"
in the book of Ecclesiastes is among the proofs "so
absolutely convincing and irrefutable" of the late date
of the work, "that as Delitzsch exclaims: 'If the
book of Koheleth be as old as Solomon, then there
can be no history of the Hebrew language/ " Since
Prof. Cornill here cites Delitzsch as his authority, let
us rule Cornill out of court as giving hearsay evidence
and address ourselves to what Delitzsch says. 123 He
was one of the greatest Hebrew scholars of his gen-
eration, and fifty years ago his testimony on a matter
concerning the history of the Hebrew language was
as good as possible. But a history of the Hebrew
language was in his time not possible. Gesenius,
Ewald, Delitzsch, Keil, and all those brilliant scholars
122 Cornill, Introduction to the Canonical Books <of the O. T. f
p. 449.
12* In his Commentary to Ecclesiastes.
[105]
AN INVESTIGATION 02 THS Ou> TESTAMENT
of the nineteenth century are as much behind the
times today as expert witnesses to the history of the
Hebrew language as Professor Langley would be in
Aeronautics, or a surgeon of the Civil War in com-
parison with a professor in Johns Hopkins. For since
Delitzsch wrote the above, the Tel-el-Amarna Letters,
the works of Hammurabi, the Hebrew of Ecclesiasti-
cus, of the Zadokite Fragments, and of the Samaria
Ostraka, the Sendschirli inscriptions, the Aramaic
papyri and endorsements, and thousands of Egyptian,
Babylonian, Assyrian, Phemcian, Aramaic, Palmy-
rene, Nabatean, Hebrew, and other documents throw-
ing light on the Old Testament and its language have
been discovered. These documents prove that the
old-time alleged histories of the Hebrew language
were largely subjective and fallacious; and that the
presence of words with endings uth, on, and an, is no
indication of the age in which a document was
written.
Thus as to uth, or ut, we have abundant evidence
to show that it was common in every one of the four
great Semitic families of languages except Arabic,
where the unborrowed form is seldom found. 12 *
For example, in Assyrio-Babylonian, there are
124 Wright in his Arabic Grammar gives four examples of
forms of words with this ending. See Vol I, p 166 These four
and four others, rahabut, rahamut, subrut, and tarbut, are cer-
tainly derived from the Aramaic. In a few cases, such as ragra-
buth f salabut, and darbut, no Aramaic, Hebrew, or Babylonian
equivalent has been found.
[106]
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
three of them in the seven creation tablets, 125 six in
the letters and inscriptions of Hammurabi, 126 thirteen
in the Code of Hammurabi, 127 thirteen in DennefekTs
omen tablets, 128 fifteen in the Amarna letters, 12 *
eighteen to twenty in the inscriptions of Tiglath-
Pileser I, 180 two in the incantations published by
Thompson, 131 and ten in the astrological tablets of the
same editor. 182 These inscriptions were written from
2000 B. C. to about 625 B. C.
In the pre-Christian Aramaic we have five words
with this ending in the Sendschirli inscriptions from
north Syria of about the year 725. 133 The Aramaic
portions of Daniel and Ezra each have four and the
Sachau Papyri four or five.
In the Old Testament we find from 41 to 55 words
of this form. 18 * These forms are found in every one
of the twenty-four books of the Hebrew canon except
the Song of Songs, Ruth and Lamentations. Unfor-
tunately for the argument that the ending denotes
lateness, nine of these words occur in Isaiah, eighteen
5 Kin, The Seven Tablets of Creation, pp. 252, 254, 262.
126 King, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, 259-296.
"TR. F. Harper, The Code of Hammurabi, 147-191.
128 Babylonisch-Assyrische Geburts-Owma, 220-232.
129 Winckler, Tel-el-Amarna Letters, 1-34.
180 Lotz, Die Inschrift Tiglatk-pileser's, I, pp. 204-218.
isi The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, II, 165-179.
182 The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh
and Babylon, II, 113-152.
is* ro 5 into, ravna, iste.
is* Fifty-five, if we count the forms in uth from verbs whose
third radical was wow or yodh.
[107]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
in Jeremiah, seven in Proverbs, seven in Samuel-
Kings, one in Hosea and one in Amos, two in Ezekiel,
two in Deuteronomy, two in H and four in JE. Of
the documents that some or all critics place after the
captivity, Ezra has two words ending in uih, Nehe-
miah three, Chronicles three, Haggai one, Daniel one,
Job one, Psalms five, P two, Esther one, and Ecclesi-
astes five or six. 135 Joel, Jonah, Malachi, Ruth, the
Song of Songs, Lamentations, and the parts of
Zechariah, Proverbs and Isaiah, placed by the critics
in post-captivity times have no words with this end-
ing. 136
In all the biblical documents claimed as post-exilic
by the critics, the only words with this ending, not
occurring in exilic or pre-exilic documents, and found
in documents alleged by anyone to be from the
Maccabean times are tfffy^ youth (Ps. ex. 3), 18T
las of these words the only ones not found in the documents
which the critics place before the exile are fittSp (Ezra and Nehe-
miah), mwnn (Dan, xi. 23), mrAn (Job vi. 6), ftA (Ps. ex.
3; Ecc xi 9, 10), navhB (Ps. Ixxhi. 28, and Haggai i. 3), and
fcAhn, tvbtt 9 filing and ft^W in Ecclesiastes.
136 The words ending in ttth in Is. xl-lx occur in xli. 12, xlix.
19, L 1, 3 and liv. 4. All of these passages are put by Duhm and
Cheyne in the original work of Deutero-Isaiah. (LOT, p 245.)
Proverbs xxx and xxxi, according to Dr. Driver, "doubtless of
post-exilic origin," have no words ending in uth.
187 Cheyne puts this psalm in Maccabean times. Christ accord-
ing to Matthew xx. 44, Mark xii. 36 and Luke xx. 42 and Peter
according to Acts ii. 34, ascribe it to David in terms as explicit
as language can employ. Matthew xxii. 44 introduces the cita-
tion from Psalm ex. 1 by saying: How then doth David in spirit
call him Lord? Mark xii. 36 says: For David himself said by
[108]
EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
league (Dan. xi. 23), and four words in
Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiasticus (180 B.C.) has four words in uth
not occurring in Biblical Hebrew 138 and the Zadokite
Fragments (40 A. D.) have two. 189
It is evident, therefore, that this ending is no proof
of the date of a Hebrew document, nor in fact of a
document in Babylonian, Assyrian, or Aramaic. The
ending simply denotes abstract terms. In the account
which Bar Hebraeus gives of the life of Mohammed,
he has but one abstract ending in the account of his
active career and seven in the account of his doc-
trine. 140
So in the Bible the books treating of concrete
events, whether early or late, have but one or two of
these words; 1 * 1 whereas those treating of more
abstract ideas have more words with this ending what-
ever the date. 1 * 2 JE, the earliest part of the Penta-
the Holy Ghost. Luke xx. 42 says: David himself saith in the
Book of Psalms. Lastly, in Acts ii. 34 Peter, in his great ser-
mon on the day of Pentecost says: For David is not ascended
into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my
Lord, etc. Reader, what think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?
What think ye of the Holy Ghost? Was Peter filled with Him?
(Acts ii. 4.) See further in my articles on the Headings of the
Psalms in the PTR for 1926
"a fax, ftAna, tvfOA and mron.
180 ftvny and nntpy.
See the Chromcon Syriacum, Paris, 1890, pp 97-99.
141 Josh two, Jud one, 1 Sa. two, 2 Sa. two, 1 K. two, 2 K.
two, 1 Ch. two, 2 Ch. three, Ezra two, Neh. three, Dan. one.
142 Thus, Prov. has seven, Is. nine, Jer. eight, Ecc. six (Ecclus.
eleven)*
[109J
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
teuch, according to the critics, has four words ending
in th* M whereas P, the latest part, has only two. 1 "
That Hebrew nouns ending in n (nun), i. e., the
forms in on and an, should be considered late is even
less justifiable than in the case of uth. For there are
about 140 of such nouns in Hebrew occurring in all
ages of the literature; and they are found, also, in
Babylonian, Assyrian and Arabic, as well as in New
Hebrew and Aramaic. Besides in many cases, as in
]Tf?tif 9 the nouns cannot have been derived from the
Aramaic, simply because they have been found in no
Aramaic dialect of any age. 145
THE USE Otf THE HEBREW TENSES
Leaving the morphology and coming to the syntax,
we find that here also the critics of the Old Testa-
ment cannot support their charges by the evidence.
The charge that the Hebrew perfect forms of the
verb employed in Ex. xv and Deut i, show that these
chapters were written after the conquest of Canaan,
breaks down when we learn that Hebrew perfects are
often equivalent to English future perfects, or even
to an emphatic future. 146
fin?, nnaa,
found also in JE. and tttett in Jos. xiii. 21, 27, 30, 31
a word found also in Hos i. 4, 1 Sam. xv 28, 2 Sam xvi. 3,
and Jer. xxvL 1. The opinion of Delitzsch was probably founded
on the numerous occurrences of this ending in the version of
Onkelos, where there are sixty, or sixty-one nouns with this end-
ing (see Bredenck's Konkordanz)
145 For a further discussion of these endings, see p. 147 f.
146 Called in Hebrew grammars the perfect of certainty.
[110]
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
Again it is charged that the frequent use of wait
conjunctive 1 *** with the perfect in Ecclesiastes is a
proof that the book is one of the latest in the Old
Testament. The discovery of the Hebrew of Ben
Sira has broken the force of this argument; for we
find that in it the wau conversing is used with the im-
perfect 120 times and 33 times with the perfect as
against only 5 examples of wau conjunctive with the
perfect. Moreover, the Zadokite Fragments have wau
conversive with the imperfect 85 times and with the
perfect 35 times, as against wau conjunctive 16 times
with the imperfect and only 3 times with the perfect.
Again the critics have failed to explain how the use
of this construction in Ecclesiastes can be due to the
time when the work was written in view of the fact
that Daniel which they put at about the same time as
Ecclesiastes has about 200 cases of wau conversive
with the imperfect and 75 with the perfect, and only
about 5 of wau conjunctive with the perfect. Again,
if the use is due to the time, why is it that it is found
only in Ecclesiastes and not in the so-called Mac-
cabean psalms and the numerous other documents
which the critics assert to be late? Again, how ex-
plain its presence twice in Judges v which many
146a The Hebrew forms Perfect and Imperfect refer to the
character of the action as regards completeness and not as to
time. The Hebrew conjunction Wau or w, usually with a change
of accent and vocalization, has the power of changing the sense
of a Perfect to that of an Imperfect, or the sense of an Imper-
fect to that of a Perfect
[111]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE Ou> TESTAMENT
critics consider to be the earliest document in the Old
Testament; or that the perfect occurs with wau con-
junctive in Num. xxiii, xxiv seven times, to two times
with wau conversvve? It will not do to attempt to in-
validate this explicit testimony of Ben Sira, the
Zadokite Fragments, Daniel, and the writings alleged
by the critics themselves to be from definite periods
by saying that it is impossible otherwise to bring some
of the uses of Ecclesiastes within the period of some
critic's definition of what were the limits of use in
good Hebrew for the perfect with wau conjunctive;
for the probability certainly is that whoever wrote
Ecclesiastes knew more about those limits than any
of our modern professors. Shades of Jean Paul,
Carlyle, and Walt Whitman! Ye could not have
written in the 19th century, for no other mortals
wrote like you.
THE SYNTAX OF THE NUMERALS
Whatever may be the explanation of the Priestly
Document's use of the phrase "a hundred of" instead
of "a hundred/' 14T it is certainly no indication of the
age of the document nor of an authorship different
from that of J, E, D, and H.
Starting out with the thesis that "statistical data
besides genealogies are a conspicuous feature" in the
narrative of P, 148 the critics in order to sustain their
147 1. e., of the use of the construct, (nB) instead of the abso-
lute (rwo).
, 127.
[H2]
EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
thesis violently and without any evidence ascribe
nearly all of the passages containing the word for
"hundred" to P, with the result that the word occurs
according to their claims 50 times in P, and only 5
times in E, twice each in J and D and once in H. Of
these 60 cases, one in J, three in E, one in D and one
in P occur before wau, where the use of the construct
state would be of course impossible. Ruling these out
as having no bearing on the discussion, we have re-
maining 49 cases in P, two in E, and one each in D,
H, and J. The example in H where the construct
me'ath is found before mikkem is accounted for by
the fact that the genitival relationship might have
meant "your hundred" instead of "a hundred of
you." The case in J (Gen. xxvi. 12) cannot indicate
the age of the document, since the same phrase occurs
nowhere else in the Old Testament. 149 Of the two
cases assigned to E, the one in Josh. xxiv. 32 is a cita-
tion from Gen. xxxiii. 19. This verse is one of four
(Gen. xxxiii. 18, 19, 20 and xxxiv. 1) which the
critics, without any support from manuscripts or ver-
sions, or elsewhere, arbitrarily divide up into six dif-
ferent portions. The word keshita which occurs here
and in the citation in Josh. xxiv. 32 is found nowhere
else except in Job xhi. 11. In combination with the
149 That is, followed by a^pffy the phrase meaning * e a hundred
fold." The only analogy to this is in 2 Sa. xxiv. 3 (parallel to 2
Ch. xxi. 3) "a hundred tunes"; but in these passages D'Qj?B is
used.
8 [113]
AN INVESTIGATION 02 THE OLD TESTAMENT
word for hundred it occurs only in Gen. xxxiii, 19
and in the citation of it in Josh. xxiv. 32. The only
instance remaining outside of P is that in Deut xxiL
19 where it speaks of "one hundred (pieces of)
silver." This is paralleled exactly only in Jud. xvi.
5 15
Of the forty-nine cases where the word "hundred'*
is used in P, 22 are in apposition or the absolute state,
as in "a hundred sheep/' while 27 are followed by
the genitive, as in "a score of sheep." Of the former,
four may be ruled out (Ex. xxvii. 9, 18, xxxviii. 9,
11) because they are followed by the preposition 3
(b), one (Ex. xxvii. 11) because it is followed by an
accusative of specification, one, (Num. vii. 86) be-
cause it stands at the end of the sentence, and one in
Num. ii. 24- because it stands absolutely for "a hun-
dred." Of the remaining fifteen, thirteen stand abso-
lutely, the term for shekels having been omitted; so
that only two cases are left where the common genitival
construction (with fiKD) might have been used. These
occur in Gen. xvii. 17 and xxiii. 1, places in P where
"hundred of" could possibly have been used instead
of "hundred." In both of these cases it is used before
the noun for year, which is remarkable, because P
150 In Jud. xvii. 2 we have an example similar to that in Deut.
xxii 19 except that the definite article is used before the word
for silver. In Neh. v. 11 the word no is used before the noun
for silver accompanied by the definite article.
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
usually (17 times in all) 151 employs "hundred of."
P also has "hundred of" three times before talent** 2
four times before the word for thousand* twice be-
fore day** and once before base.*
Outside of P, hundred before the noun is found in
Josh, one time, Jud. four, J one, E two, D one, 1
Sam. two, 2 Sam. four, 1 Ki. five, 2 Ki. four, Isa.
two, Ezk. ten, I Chron. six, 2 Chron. four, Ezra two,
Esth. three, i.e., twenty-four times in the literature
preceding the exile, twelve in Isaiah xl-lxvi and
Ezekiel, and fifteen in the post-exilic books. 155
* Gen, v. 3, 6, 18, 25, 28, xi 10, 25, xxi. 5, xxv. 7, 17, xxxv.
28, xlvu. 9, 28, Ex. vi. 16, 18, 20, and Num. xxxiii. 39.
152 Ex. xxxvm 25, 27* (twice with the article). As to the
use of *D3 we find it as early as 2 Sam. xii. 30, 1 Kings ix. 14,
28, x. 10, 14, xvi. 24, xx. 39, 2 Kings v. 5, 22, 23 2 , xv. 19, xviii.
14 2 , xxiii 33 2 , and as late as 1 Chron. xix. 6, xx. 2, xxii. 14 2 ,
xxix. 4 s , 7*. 2 Chron. iii. 8, iv. 17, viii. 18, ix. 9, 13, xxv. 6, 9,
xxvii. 5, xxxvi. 3, Ezra viii. 26 2 , Es. in. 9. With fiQ it is used
in 1 Kings ix. 14, x. 10, 2 Kings xxiii. 33, 2 Chron. xxvii. 5,
xxxvL 3.
153 Num. ii. 9, 16, 24, 31. Before P^K we find nD 1 Kings xx.
29, 2 Kings iii. 4 2 , 1 Chron. v. 21, xxi. 5, xxii. 14, xxix. 7, 2
Chron. xxv. 6.
10 a Gen. vii. 24, viii. 3.
15 *Ex. xxxviii. 27.
185 two is used elsewhere as follows : before aan (2 Sam. viii.
4, 1 Chron. xviii. 4), O'Dyfij (2 Sam. xxiv. 3, 1 Chron. xxi. 3),
fiD, (1 Kings vii. 2, Ek. ad. 19, 23, 27, 47 2 , xli. 13 2 , 14, 15, xlii.
8), D'D3 (1 Kings xviii. 4), W* (1 Kings, xviii. 13, 2 Kings
iv. 43, Jud. vii. 19, xx. 35), W# (Isaiah Ixv. 20 2 ), p3 (Jud.
xvi. 5, xvii. 2 [with article]), De. xxii. 19 D'p'D* (1 Sam. xxv.
18, 2 Sam. xvi. 1), ]* (1 Kings v. 3), nano Es. i 1, viii. 9,
ix. 30), tvtrv (1 Sam. xvni. 25, 2 Sam. iii. 14), nnyw Gen.
xxvl 12 (J), and rttt'ffp Gen. xxxiii. 19, Jos. xxix. 32 (E).
[115]
AN INVESTIGATION off THE OLD TESTAMENT
"Hundred of" is used only three times in the post-
exilic books 156
The extra-biblical evidence is as follows:
The Mesha inscription in Moabitic, which is a form
of Hebrew, has the phrase, "a hundred of cattle" (]*lpj
AMD). The date of this inscription is the early part of
the ninth century B. C. The Siloah inscription from
about 700 B. C. has the phrase "a hundred of
cubit." 15T Unfortunately neither construction is
found in Ben Sir a, nor in the Z ado kite Fragments. In
the Egyptian Pyramid Texts the numeral preceded
the noun; but in the records of about 1530 to 1050
B. C. the numeral is put before the noun in the
genitival construction. 158 In the Tel-el-Amarna
Letters, me-at (= DKD) occurs twice; once in 25.10
before eru "copper" and once in 19.39 before Urn
"thousand." 159 We thus see that the earliest Hebrew
records and the Egyptian and Babylonian documents
nearest to the time of the Exodus support the prev-
alent use of "hundred of" as we find it in P.
But neither do the critics have support in the later
Semitic documents for their theory that the use of
"hundred of" before the noun indicates lateness for
the document in which it occurs. In Syriac the
"Nefau v. 11, 2 Chr xxv 9, Es. i. 4.
i 5 ^ See Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, pp. 106, 114,
416, 439.
15 Erman, Aegypten, 63, and Aegyptische Grammatik, 142.
122-126
Windder, Tel-el-Amarna Letters, pp. 48, 80,
[116]
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
numeral stands in apposition either before or after
that which is numbered. 160 The Biblical Aramaic
and the inscriptions and papyri afford no examples
affecting the question. 161 The New Hebrew follows
the biblical usages. 162
From all the above testimony it is evident that
there is no basis in the use of the word for "hundred"
for concluding that P may not have been written by
Moses.
EXPRESSION : X THE KING
The charge is made that the Hebrew of Daniel
"resembles not the Hebrew of Ezekiel or even of
Haggai or Zechariah but that of the age subsequent
to Nehemiah" One of the alleged proofs of the
charge is that in Dan. i. 21 and viii. 1 the name of
the king precedes the title. That this order is a proof
of lateness in Daniel is affirmed in the words: "So
often in post-exilic writings, the older Hebrew has
nearly always the order (Yft) I^Bn, "the king
David." 188 The following tables will give the num-
ber of times the orders "the king X" and "X the
king" are used in the books written before or after
550 B. C.
" See examples in Noldeke, Syriac Grammar, 237.
161 nD is used three times in the Sachau Papyrus, but always
as a noun in the sense of the Roman "century," or company of a
hundred men
1 62 Siegfried u. Strack, Neuhebr'dische Grammatik, 73.
506.
[117]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THS Ou>
Before 550 B. C. After 550 B. C,
The king X X the king The king X X the king
1 Sam. Ill Chron. 4 9
2 Sam. 10 2 2 Chron 15 9
1 Kings 29 2 Ezra 2 2
2 Kings 14 2 Neh 02
Isaiah 6 Hag. 2
Jeremiah 10 2 Zech 1
Ezekiel 1 Est 90
Dan. 2
Total 61 9
Total 30 27
Since 12 of the citations from Chronicles are in
parallel passages in Samuel-Kings, the 30 instances
of the phrase "the king X" in the later writings may
be reduced to 18; so that the proportion will be:
"The king X" 61 to 18, "X the king" 9 to 27. The
evidence, therefore, that the order "X the king" is
often used in post-exilic writings and that the order
"the king X" is "nearly always used in the older
Hebrew" amounts to a mathematical demonstration.
But a demonstration of what? Why, of the minute
historical accuracy of Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah,
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and of the unassail-
able character of the sacred scriptures. For mark
you, the early writings before 550 B. C. follow the
Egyptian order "the king X," m and the later writ-
ings follow the Babylonian and Persian order "X the
164 See the scores of examples in my article on "The Titles of
Kings in Antiquity" in the PTR for October, 1904, and Jan-
uary, 1905.
[118]
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
king." 165 In Hag i 1, IS, Zech. vii 1, Ezra vii. 7,
viii. 1, Neh. h. 1, v. 14, and Dan i. 21, viii. 1, we
have exact copies of the Persian and Babylonian
order.
Again, it is a matter of wonder that the author of
the "Literature of the Old Testament" should have
used this particular testimony to prove that Daniel
did not resemble Haggai and Zechanah but was "sub-
sequent to Nehemiah"; for the books of Haggai,
Zechariah, Ezra and Nehemiah all use the exact
phrase which is produced as evidence that Daniel is
later than they. Besides, the critics have not pro-
duced a single example from the Hebrew literature
which they place in the age subsequent to Nehemiah
to show that the form "X the king" was used by the
Jews subsequently to Nehemiah. Neither Ben Sira
nor the Zadokite Fragments have it; 106 nor does it
occur in Isaiah xxiv-xxvii, Jonah, Joel, Ecclesiastes,
nor in any of the psalms, nor in the book of Proverbs.
Nor in this case can the critics resort to the subter-
fuge of asserting that Daniel is late because the pas-
sages in Ezra and Nehemiah in which the phrase
occurs are insertions into the genuine works of Nehe-
miah; for unfortunately for them, the phrase in every
ie5 See the numerous examples given in the articles just re-
ferred to. For the Persian Kings cf. especially my articles in the
Sachau Denkschnft (Berlin 1912) and the PTR for January, 1917.
166 The nearest to it is the phrase "Nebuchadnezzar the king 1
of Babylon" in the Zadokite Fragments, pp. 1, 6,
[119]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE Ou> TESTAMENT
case appears in the parts of Ezra and Nehemiah which
they themselves admit to be genuine. 167
Reader, if the most plausible, and probably the
most scholarly, of all that school of modern critics
that delight to assail the integrity of the scriptural
narratives and to use so frequently the modest appella-
tion, "all scholars are agreed," will make such
palpable blunders in a matter as to which there is
abundant evidence to show that the Scriptures are
right, what dependence will you place on him when
he steps beyond the bounds of knowledge into the
dim regions of conjecture and fancy? If, when we
can get abundant evidence, the documents of the Bible
stand the test of genuineness and veracity, and the
charges of the critics are proven false, upon what
ground of common sense or law of evidence, are we
to be induced to believe that these documents are false
or forged when charges absolutely unsupported by
evidence are made against them?
THE INFINITIVE WITH THE PREPOSITIONS 6 AND k
One more charge of the critics in the sphere of
syntax will be considered because it covers several
167 Thus Ezra viL 7, viii. 1 are in the so-called second section
of Ezra embracing chapters vii-x as to which Dr. Driver says-
"There is no reason to doubt" that it "is throughout either writ-
ten by Ezra or based upon materials left by him?' (I<OT, 549).
The phrase occurs in Neh. 11 1, v. 14. Dr. Driver says "Neh
i. 1-vii. 73 a is an excerpt to all appearances unaltered, from the
memoirs of Nehemiah" (LOT, 550).
[120]
THE EVIDENCE: GRAMMAR
books and because it is reiterated in LOT. 168 It is
that Daniel's and the Chronicler's use of the infinitive
with the prepositions b "in" and k "as" indicates a
date subsequent to Nehemiah. Two specifications
are made; first, that this type of sentence is rare in
the earlier books, and secondly, that the earlier books
place the infinitive clause later in the sentence. Two
witnesses only need to be called to answer these asser-
tions. First, Ezekiel. He wrote between 592 and
570 B. C. 169 and his prophecies were "arranged evi-
dently by his own hands/' 17 His book is the one
document of the Old Testament that the critics accept
in its entirety, their theories being built largely upon
it. Now, in this book there are 49 instances where
b alone is used with the infinitive in the early part
of the sentence, just as in Daniel and Chronicles, let
alone those where k is used. 171 Since Ezekiel was
written before 570 B. C., thirty-five years before
we claim that Daniel was written, why is the use of
the phrase seven times 172 by Daniel a sign of a date
subsequent to Nehemiah 440 B. C. ? The second wit-
168 E.g. pp. 506, 538.
"9 LOT, 278.
"ojtf. 296.
"i To wit, i. 172, 18, 192, 21, 24, 25, iii 18, 20, 27, v. 16, x.
16 2 , 17 2 , xii. 15, xv. 5, xvi. 34, xnii. 24, 26, xx 31 2 , xxi 34,
xxiii. 37, xxiv 24, xxvi. 15, 19, 27, 33, xxviii. 25, xxix 7, xxxii.
15, xxxiii. 8, 13, 14, 18, 19, 33, xxxviii. 14, xlii. 14, xhiL 8, xliv.
19, xlvi. 102, xl. 3, 7.
172 To wit, viii. 8, 23, x. 9, XL 4 and xii. 7.
[121]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI<D TESTAMENT
ness we shall call is Ben Sira, who wrote about 180
B. C, just about sixteen years before the month of
June 164 B. C., when some critics assume that Daniel
was written. In the 62 pages of the Hebrew as it is
found in Smend's edition (57 in Strack's) we have
but six sure examples of this usage, as compared
with seven in the 10 pages of the Hebrew of Daniel,
and forty-nine in the 85 pages of EzekieL That is,
Ben Sira has about 10 per cent of one example per
page as against 60 for Ezekiel and 70 for Daniel. 173
173 These two witnesses should be sufficient to convince anyone
that the charges in LOT about the infinitive with k and b are false.
However, if anyone is yet unconvinced, I have made a complete
concordance of all the examples of the use of the infinitive with
b and k that are found in the Old Testament. There are more
than 400 with b and 250 with k.
[122]
IV
THE EVIDENCE
VOCABULARY
IV
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
EA.VING the region of what we call grammar,
and coming into the sphere of rhetoric, we find
that the critics of the Old Testament are in the
habit of determining the date of documents and the
sources and divisions and evolutions of literary works
on the basis of diction, style, ideas, and aim. To this
method no objection can justly be made, provided that
we put the four items together and do not divorce them
as is too often done. Besides, we must place them in
the proper logical order of aim, ideas, style, and dic-
tion. For it is manifest that an author's aim or pur-
pose in writing a given document will determine for
him the ideas, reasons, and illustrations, which he
uses to attain his purpose. It is no less evident that
his style and diction will be influenced largely by the
aim and ideas. In criticizing a literary work, there-
fore, the aim of the writer is to be considered first of
all; then, the ideas, or reasons that he gives to reach
his aim; and lastly, the method, style, and diction
which he uses. When the author clearly announces
his purpose as Thucydides does in his History, or
Luke in his Gospel, or Milton in Paradise Lost, we
are relieved of the labor of discovering this purpose
for ourselves and are left free to discuss the method,
[125]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
reasons, and illustrations by which he attempts to f ul-
fil his purpose; and also, the style, the diction and
phraseology, which he employs.
This long excursus has been deemed necessary be-
cause in the literary criticism of the Old Testament
the discussion has too often become confined to one
or the other of the above points, instead of consider-
ing them all together; and especially because it is
frequently argued that a difference of style and dic-
tion implies a difference of authorship and date,
whereas it may imply simply a difference of aim and
ideas. The diction and style of some of Milton's
poerns and letters and of his Christian Doctrine are
so different from those of Paradise Lost and the
Areopagitica, that, if his aim is left out of considera-
tion, we might infer a difference of authorship. Walt
Whitman and Longfellow differ so much in style that
we might infer a different age. In doing so, we
would be following the method of the destructive
literary critics of the Old Testament For, as we
shall proceed to show, they often infer a difference
of authorship or age, from a difference of diction or
style, without due consideration of the fact that these
differences may be due to difference of aim and ideas.
In confirmation of this statement, attention is called
to the long list of words and phrases given in LOT m
to show that the Pentateuch was written by many dif-
* Pp. 99-102, 131-135.
[126]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
ferent authors and at many different times; and to
the lists 176 given to show that Jonah, Daniel, and
Chronicles were written at a much later date than the
apparent aim of the books would imply, or the ideas
demand.
Before leaving generalities and coming to particu-
lars, it may be well to make a few remarks about the
aims and ideas of a literary work. First, as to aim,
it must be kept in mind that an author may have a
general aim including his whole work and a partic-
ular aim for each part of the general work; just as
in an army the purpose of the whole is to defeat the
enemy and the general staff makes out a plan of cam-
paign and coordinates all the parts of the service to
this end, while each branch of the service, infantry,
artillery, aeroplane, engineers, and commissary, has
its particular staff and purpose. Thus, the main pur-
pose of Milton's works was to maintain the sover-
eignty of God and the liberty of man; "to justify
the ways of God to man," and to defend "the liberty
to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to
conscience."
So the purpose of the Old Testament is to teach
the uniqueness, sovereignty, justice and holiness of
God, his gracious intention to redeem mankind, and
the holiness of his people to be attained through faith
and obedience, repentance, atonement, and love; and
i LOT, 322, 506-7, 535-540
[127]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THS OLD TESTAMENT
the aim of every part of the Old Testament is to sub-
serve the purpose of the whole. Keeping this great
purpose in view, we can see how every part of every
book conduces to the purpose of the whole; and how
the different ideas of the prophets and historians and
poets and wise men, expressed in various styles and
dictions, all illumine and concenter to the attainment
of the one great end.
Secondly, let it be remembered that while the pur-
pose of every part of a work should conduce to the
purpose of the whole, it is not true that the special
purpose of every part should be the same as that of
every other part. Paradise Lost has a different pur-
pose from the Areopagitica; The Christian Doctrine
from The State Papers; the sonnets on the
Waldenses and on his own blindness from those on
Cromwell and on those
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
So, also, in the books of Scripture, the purpose of the
Psalter is to afford us a book of prayers and
praises; 178 but each psalm has a special purpose of
its own, and that purpose is attained by an appro-
priate array of ideas clothed in a suitable style and
verbiage. I/ike the gardens of Versailles, the general
plan is one, but the plans of the different beds are
many and the gorgeous effect of the whole is pro-
175 In the Mishna, the Psalter is called teMhm, "Praises"
(comp. Psa. 72:20).
[128]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
duced by the harmonious arrangement of the various
flowers, the mingling and blending of the colors, the
contrasts of light and shadow, the long allees, the
pendant branches of the trees, the fountains and
statues, the palaces of man and the atmosphere and
vaulted heavens and glaring sun,
Thirdly, the ideas and reasons given to attain the
end in view will be as varied as the imagination of
the author can suggest This seems so obvious that
it will surprise some of our readers to know that
critics actually allege against the genuineness of parts
of the Bible that they contain new ideas and reveal a
tone different from what we find elsewhere in the
author's works. Thus : "modern critics agree gener-
ally in the opinion that this prophecy [i. e., Is. xxiv-
xxvii] is not Isaiah's; and chiefly for the following
reasons: L It lacks a suitable occasion in Isaiah's
age" a reason which means simply that the critics
know of none. 2. "The literary treatment is in many
respects unlike Isaiah's." 3. "There are features in
the representation and contents of the prophecy which
seem to spring out of a different (and later) vein of
thought from Isaiah's." 17T So, also, Micah vi, vii
are assigned to a different author from chs. i-v be-
cause they are said to have "a different tone and man-
ner," and because, as Kuenen remarks, "the author
does not carry on, or develop lines of thought con-
, 219, 220.
[129]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OI,D TESTAMENT
tained in chs. i-v. 178 Parts of Zephaniah are doubted
because they are thought to express the ideas and
hopes of a later age/' 179 Several passages in Hosea
are held to be a later addition because they are
"thought to express ideas alien to Hosea's historical
or theological position/' 18 Now, these and all such
opinions are absolutely worthless as evidence. In
fact they are not evidence at all in a legal or scientific
sense; for they have in their favor no reasons result-
ing from investigations. For the fifty-five years of
Manasseh in whose reign Ewald would place Micah
vi, vii we have a record of but eighteen verses. For
the life and circumstances of Isaiah, we have but a
few chapters in Kings. Of Hosea's life we know
only what he tells us and of Zephaniah's we know
nothing, except that he lived "in the days of Josiah
the son of Ammon king of Judah." 181 And so for
critics who deny even the additional information sup-
plied by the book of Chronicles and the reliability of
the headings to express opinions as to what the
prophets may have thought or as to what the events
and circumstances of their lives may have been, is
simply absurd. It is not even as good as hearsay evi-
dence. It is pure imaginings The critic who puts such
opinions forth as evidence is no better than a witness
" Id. 333.
Id. 342.
306.
L 1.
[130]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABUI^RY
who would testify that an accused was guilty because
of his race, or religion, or looks. It involves, also,
on his part a presumptuousness, or self-conceit, which
borders on megalomania, a disease from which
Caesars and Kaisers do not alone suffer.
The reader will please pardon the indefiniteness of
the above discussion Witnesses we can cross-ex-
amine, documents we can investigate; but when a
critic, or alleged expert, gives opinions based on
opinions and not on reasons derived from experiments
and investigation of objective facts, we can only have
him ruled out of court, and request the judge to
quash the indictment. Leaving, therefore, these
aerial heights of speculation, in which one man is as
much of an expert as another, or in his own estima-
tion a little better, let us come down to the objective,
obvious facts of earth and let us consider and test the
testimony of the documents involved in the words
and phrases contained in them.
WORDS ALLEGED TO BE LATE
We are prepared to maintain that a large part of
the words that are produced as evidence of the late
date of documents containing them cannot them-
selves be proved to be late. For, first, no one can
maintain that because a word occurs only in a late
document the word itself is therefore late; 182 for in
182 See the discussion and proof of this statement in "Studies in
the Book of Darnel," p. 320f.
[131]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI,D TESTAMENT
this case, if a late document was the only survival of
a once numerous body of literature, every word in it
would be late; which is absurd. Nor, secondly, can
one maintain that a document is late merely because
it contains words which do not occur in earlier ones,
which are known to us. Every new find of Egyptian
Aramaic papyri gives us words not known before
except, if at all, in documents written hundreds of
years later. Nor, thirdly, is a word to be considered
as evidence of the lateness of a document in which
it occurs simply because it occurs again in documents
known to be late, such as the Hebrew parts of the
Talmud. And yet, this is frequently affirmed by the
critics. Thus LOT mentions about twenty of such
words to prove that Daniel and Jonah are later by
centuries than the times of which they treat. 183 In
this Dr. Driver was simply following in the footsteps
of the German scholars who preceded him. It may
be considered a sufficient answer to such alleged
proofs to affirm (what anyone with a Hebrew con-
cordance can confirm for himself) that Daniel, Jonah,
Joel, and the Psalter, and other documents of the Old
Testament have no larger percentage of such words
than those which the critics assign to an early date,
and that Is. xxiv-xxvii and Psalm Ixxxix, which they
consider to be among the latest parts of their respec-
tive books are distinguished from most of the other
322, 504-8.
[132]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
parts of the Old Testament by having no such words
at all. Finally, it is obvious that a kind of proof that
will prove almost everything to be late, and especially
the parts considered late to be early, is absurd and in-
admissible as evidence in a case designed to prove that
some documents are later than others because they
contain words of this kind. For it is certain that if
all are late, then none are early a conclusion which
would overthrow the position of all critics, radical as
well as conservative; and since this conclusion is de-
sired and maintained by none, it must be dismissed as
absurd.
In proof, however, that such words are found in
every book, and in almost every part of every book,
of the Old Testament we subjoin the following tables.
These tables are based: on special concordances of every
book and of every part of every book of the Old Testa-
ment, prepared by and now in the possession of the
writer of this article. In accordance with the laws of
evidence, that "witnesses must give evidence of facts,"
that "an expert may state general facts which are the
result of scientific knowledge, and that an expert may
give an account of experiments [hence, also, of in-
vestigations] performed by him for the purpose of
forming his opinion," 1M it may add force and clear-
ness to the evidence about to be presented, if an
account is first given of the way in which the facts
1M Stephen, The Law of Evidence, pp. 100, 103, 111
[133]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
upon which the tables are based were collected. One
whole summer was spent in gathering from a Hebrew
concordance all the words in the Old Testament that
occur there five times or less, giving also the places
where the words occur. A second summer sufficed
for making from this general concordance a special
concordance for each book. In the third summer,
special concordances were made for J, E, D, H, and
P, for each of the five books of the Psalter and for
each of the psalms; for each of the parts of Proverbs,
and of the alleged parts of Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah,
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah; and for such parts as
Gen. xiv and the poems contained in Gen. xlix, Ex.
xv, Deut. xxxii, xxxiii and Judges v. Then, each of
the words of this kind was sought for in the Aramaic
and in the Hebrew of the post-biblical Jewish writers.
The evidence of the facts collected is manifest, and
we think, conclusive,
A study of these percentages should convince every-
one that the presence of such words in a document is
no proof of its relative lateness, 185
185 In explanation of these tables it may be said that they are
prepared with special reference to the critical analysis of the
O. T. Thus the Pentateuch is arranged according to the docu-
ments, J, E, D, H and P; and the Proverbs are divided into
seven portions (following LOT). The first column of the tables
gives for each book or part of a book the number of words oc-
curring five times or less in the Old Testament that are found
in it; and the second column the percentage of these words that
are to be found in the same sense in the Hebrew of the Talmud
[134]
THE
: VOCABULARY
Number
of words
occurring
Per-
centage
Number
of words
occurring
Per-
centage
i " "
nO T
of these
inO T.
of these
five
wonls
five
words
times
in
times
in
or less
Talmud
or less
Talmud
Psalms Ixxix
3
000
Book IV 61
31.1
Prov xxxi 1-9
000
Book V 118
34.7
Isaiah xxiv-xxvii
000
Micah iii 15
33.3
Obadiah
7
14.3
Prov. x-xxii 16 80
33.8
Isaiah xxxvi-ix
7
143
Proverbs xxil 17-
Judges-Ruth
107
15.8
xxiv 30
367
Nahum
36
16.7
Sam.-Kings 356
372
Ezra i-vi
6
16.7
Habakkuk 34
382
Micah ii
11
182
Joel 28
393
Isaiah xxxiv-v
5
200
Jonah 15
40.0
Isaiah xm-xiv
10
20.0
Hosea 65
415
Isaiah (1st pt.)
121
223
Jehovist (J) 162
444
Malachi
13
231
Zephaniah 31
452
Ezekid
335
249
Amos 50
460
Lamentation
56
250
Elohist (E) 119
487
Haggai
4
25.0
Prov. xxxi 10-31 6
500
Ezra vii-x
8
250
Holiness Code
Zechariah ii
16
25.0
(H) 48
50.0
Isaiah xl-lxvi
62
25.8
Chronicles 144
515
Proverbs i-ix
69
27.5
Prov. xxv-xxix 52
51.9
Daniel
47
29.8
Esther 57
526
Zecharia i
22
308
Priest Code (P) 192
53.1
Zecharia iii
12
308
Deuteronomist
Micah i
22
31.8
(D) 154
532
Job
374
310
Proverbs xxx 15
53.5
Jeremiah
278
321
Song of Songs 99
54.6
Psalms
514
33.1
Nehemiah 48
56.3
Book I
123
358
Ecclesiastes 77
57.1
Book II
135
31.1
Memoirs of Nehe-
Book III
76
303
miah 27
59.3
A careful reading of this table will justify the state-
ment made above that a "kind of proof that will prove
almost everything to be late, and especially the parts
considered late to be early, is absurd and inadmissible
[135]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE OLD TESTAMENT
as evidence in a case designed to prove that some docu-
ments are later than others because they contain words
of this kind/' This kind of evidence would simply
prove almost all the documents of the Old Testament
to be late. If admitted as valid, it would militate as
much against the views of the radicals as it would
against those of the conservatives.
Take, for example, the number of these words oc-
curring in the alleged documents of the Pentateuch.
J and E together have 281 words in about 2,170 verses
(one in less than every 7 7/10 verses) and about 46
per cent of these words are found in the Talmud; D
has 154 words in about 1,000 verses (or one in every
6 5/10 verses) and about 53 per cent of them in the
Talmud, and PH 201 words in 2,340 verses (or one
in every 8 6/10 verses) and about 52 per cent of the
words in the Talmud. Surely, no unbiased judge of
literature would attempt to settle the dates of docu-
ments on such slight variations as these from one
word in 6 5/10 to one in 8 6/10 and from 46 to 53
per cent in the Talmud ! Besides, in regard to the rela-
tive proportion in verses the order is PH, JE, D and
in percentages in the Talmud JE, PH, D; but accord-
ing to the Wellhausians, it should in both cases be JE,
D, PH. The slight variations in both cases point to
unity of authorship and likeness of date.
Take another example from Micah. Micah I-III
was written, according to some critics, about 700
B. C.; IV, V about 550 B. C.; and VI, VII about
[136]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
650 B. C. Yet the first part has 22 words with about
32 per cent in the Talmud ; the second part 1 1 words
with 18 per cent in the Talmud; and the third part 15
words with 33 per cent in the Talmud. The latest
part has the fewest words and the smallest per cent.
In the parts of Isaiah ascribed by the critics to Isa-
iah there are 121 words occurring five times or under
in the Old Testament of which 22.3 per cent are found
also in the Talmud; whereas, in the parts ascribed to
the exile or later there are 84 words of which 23 8 per
cent are found in the Talmud. Chapters 24-27 have no
such words, but are the latest of all according to most
of the radical critics.
Chronicles has 144 of these words; but 68 occur
in the parts not parallel with Kings, and 84 in the par-
allel parts. (The seeming discrepancy in the numbers
here is because four of the words occur in both parts
of Chronicles.) As there are about 950 verses in the
original part and only about 700 verses in the parallel
portions, it will be seen that in the original parts of
Chronicles there is one of these words in about every
fourteen verses and in the parallel parts in every eight.
It is incumbent in those who make use of this al-
leged evidence from New Hebrew words, to show,
also, how Malachi, the latest of the prophets, has only
23.1 per cent of words of this kind occurring in the
Talmud; whereas, Hosea has 41.5 and Amos 46, Joel
39.3 and Jonah 40. Also, while they are at it, will
they please show how Chapter xxx. 1-9 of Proverbs
[137]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
has none of these words, although they all place it
among the post-exilic literature.
The extraordinary number of words occurring only
in Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs is no indica-
tion of date but rather of authorship and subject.
Solomon being the wisest man of his time and a poet,
an observer of nature and of man, would like Shake-
speare, Milton, and Carlyle have a vocabulary much
beyond the average. Besides the subject of the Song
of Songs is not treated elsewhere in the Old Testa-
ment and it is not fair to take the use of words in an
idyll of bucolic love, such as ointment, washing,
espousal, powder, kid, roe and locks of hair, as an in-
dication of date. And again the author of Ecclesi-
astes, as a philosopher, may well have indulged in ab-
stract terms; and as a moralist who better than Solo-
mon may have spoken of youth, and poverty and
weariness and vanity.
Of the 16 words of this kind in the Memoirs of
Nehemiah, six are found in works admitted by the
critics to antedate 550 B. C., one is in New Aramaic
but not in New Hebrew, four or five are Babylonian,
three refer to the walls and buildings of Nehemiah,
and one to the genealogies. The only one left is found
in Daniel also. Thus we see that the apparently alarm-
ing number and percentage of late words even in Ne-
hemiah reduces itself to a matter of subject. All the
words suit the time and the man, and his deeds.
[138]
EVIDENCE;. VOCABULARY
The small number of these words in Ezra is one of
the most noteworthy facts in evidence. Surely, a book
written, as the critics allege, at about 300 B. C. (LOT
540 f.) should have had a large number of these
words ! But not one word is found in the two docu-
ments into which the critics divide the book. Out of
the 14 words m Ezra found five times or less in the
Old Testament, 7 are certainly and two probably de-
rived from the Persian or Babylonian, one ('ashem
x. 19) is found also in E and 2 Sam., and does not
occur in New Hebrew; the root of Yesud is used in
all ages of Hebrew literature and besides the argu-
ment depends on a vowel pointing, and again, the root
is used in Babylonian; one abeduth ix. 8, 9 may be
Aramaic, but Ezra wrote about half his book in the
Aramaic of the fifth century; one rafad x. 9 is found
in Dan. x. 11 and Psa. civ. 12 and its derivatives in
Exod. xv. 15, Isa. xxxiii. 14, Job xli. 4, and Psa. ii.
11, xlviii. 7, Iv. 6; and the last mahalaf may be con-
nected with the Assyrian word meaning an instrument
of wood or stone (Muss-Arnolt p. 316) or with the
word meaning garment or harness (id).
We conclude, therefore, that this appeal of the crit-
ics to New Hebrew as an evidence of lateness for cer-
tain documents of the Old Testament is unwarranted
by the facts in evidence. Tested in the light of
present-day dictionaries and concordances of the He-
brew and cognate languages, it shrinks into absurdity.
[139]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE ALLEGED ARAMAISMS
Exception is to be taken to the way in which the
critics use the presence of Aramaisms in a document
as a proof of its age; and also to their habit of as-
suming that words are Aramaisms, without present-
ing any proof in favor of their assumption. Now,
an Aramaism in a Hebrew document must be defined
as an Aramaic word which the writer of the Hebrew
document has used to denote a thing, or to express a
thought, either because there was no Hebrew word
that he could equally well employ, or because he was
himself strongly under Aramaic influence, or because
he wanted to show off his acquaintance with foreign
tongues; just as recent English writers use hinter-
land in describing the part of Africa lying back of
the coast, or as Mr. Rider Haggard uses trek and
laager in his novels whose scene is in South Africa;
or as Carlyle uses many German words and phrases
in his writings and even copies the style of Jean Paul
Friedrich Richter; or as the debaters in the British
Parliament used to interlard their speeches, or
Montaigne and the writers in the Spectator their
essays, with Latin* With such analogies before
them, it is easy to see how the commentators of the
eighteenth century fell into the habit of calling every
infrequent word in the Hebrew Bible, whose root and
form are common in Aramaic, by the name of
Aramaism. It was simply their naive way of camou-
[140]
THE EVIDENCE- VOCABULARY
flaging their ignorance with the appearance of knowl-
edge. If they had said merely that this word which
occurs only here in the Hebrew of the Old Testa-
ment is found frequently in Aramaic, they would in
most cases have been exactly right But when they
inferred that because it was frequent in Aramaic and
infrequent in Hebrew it was of Aramaic origin and
a loan-word in Hebrew, they indulged in a non~
seqmtur, as we shall now attempt to show.
The Consonantal Changes. In the Semitic group
of languages there are three great families, which
may be designated as the Hebrew, the Arabic and
the Aramaic. In these great families the radical
sounds, * , h, b, m, p, g, k, q, I, n and r are usually
written uniformly with corresponding signs, i. e.,
Hebrew V corresponds to Arabic b, and both to
Aramaic b, and h (ch), w y and y, correspond com-
monly in Hebrew and Aramaic. In preformatives
and sufformatives Hebrew h is * in the others; and
in sufformatives Hebrew m is n. In the other eight
(or nine, counting sin) radical sounds, however, cer-
tain regular changes occur, and seem to differentiate
the three families. These changes may be illustrated
by the following table which is based upon a collec-
tion of all the roots in the Hebrew Old Testament
containing one or more of these eight radicals and
upon a comparison of their roots in Arabic and
Aramaic. There are 721 such roots in Hebrew which
have corresponding roots in both Arabic and Aramaic.
[141]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
The numbers to the right show how often each cor-
respondence is found in the roots of the Old Testa-
ment Hebrew. 186
He-
brew
d
d
d
Ara-
bic
d
d
dh
Ara-
maic
d
t
d
Number
of Roots
100
1
10
He-
brew
s
s
s
Ara-
bic
sh
s
Ara-
maic
s
s
s
Number
of Roots
5
45
7
t
t
t
*
3
t
c* *. **.
71
2
2
s
$
$
z
d
4
t
f
s
t
t
i
36
1
1
3
10
11
1
9
t
t
t
th
t
t
42
sh
sh
sh
sh
sh
th
t
sh
t
t
sh
sh
s
18
4
88
5or6(?)
1
& /
2
dh
2
d
54 '
18
1
sh
s
s
s
29
5
t
9
e
t
110
26
These three families have obviously, according to
the above table, certain laws of consonantal change
resembling Grimm's law in the Indo-European lan-
guages. Thus, when a Hebrew root has the radical
consonant sh (s) it is generally s in Arabic; and in
this case should be sh in Aramaic. Sometimes, how-
ever, the Hebrew sh corresponds to an Arabic th;
and in this case the Aramaic is t. At in Hebrew
would be represented by a t in Arabic and by a t in
18 For the Hebrew and Aramaic s = D, r r= y 9 $ = , sh = tr,
^ = H% For the Arabic, the English equivalents as given in
Wright's Arabic Grammar have been used.
[142]
THE: EVIDENCE- VOCABULARY
Aramaic. These three series of changes are all com-
mon or regular and no proof of borrowing can be
derived from the consonants themselves where these
series exist. If, however, we have t in Hebrew, th
in Arabic and t in Aramaic, the Hebrew word would
probably be derived from the Aramaic, since the
Hebrew form should according to rule have sh. Or,
if we had sh in Hebrew, t in Arabic and t in Aramaic,
the Arabic has probably been derived from the
Aramaic.
Observing, then, the exceptions to the regular
changes, we find that there are four or five roots or
words in the Old Testament Hebrew that may pos-
sibly have been derived from the Aramaic, to wit,
nadar, "to vow," athar, "to abound," tillel, "to cover"
(Neh. iii. 15), beroth (Cant i. 17), and medibath
(Lev. xxvi. 26).
1. As far as nadar, "to vow," is concerned, the
fact that its root and its derivative noun for "vow"
are found in Isaiah twice, Proverbs three times,
Judges four times, Samuel seven times, eleven times
in Deuteronomy, and sixty-four times elsewhere in
the Old Testament Hebrew, shows that if this irregu-
larity indicates an Aramaic origin, it indicates also
that Aramaic words were taken over into Hebrew as
early as the time of the composition of Proverbs,
Isaiah, Deuteronomy and the sources of Judges and
Samuel.
2. Athar, "to abound," occurs only in Proverbs
[143]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THS OLD TESTAMENT
and one derivative in Jen xxxiii. 6, 187 and Ezekiel
xxxv. 13.
3. Tillel which is found only in Neh. iii. 15 is ad-
mitted to be to all appearances an Aramaism, Since,
according to the critics, it is in the Memoirs of Nehe-
miah, it must have been used by the author as early
as the fifth century B. C. 188
4. Beroth for the more usual birosh, "fir tree,"
may not be an Aramaism, but a peculiarity of the
Hebrew dialect of North Israel, where, to quote Dr.
Driver (LOT, 449), "there is reason to suppose that
the language spoken differed dialectically from that
of Judah," and "approximated to the neighboring
dialect of Phoenicia." 189190
5. As to the medibath, in Lev. xxvi. 16, it is the
wont of the critics to assume that it is the Hiphil par-
187 Prov. 27 : 6 is in the part of Proverbs which Dr. Driver
considers to have been rightly reputed to have been ancient in
Hezikiah's age. (LOT, p 407) The 35th chapter of Ezekiel
is put by Dr. Driver at about 586 B C. (LOT, 291, 262), [and
the 33d of Jeremiah in 587 B. C. (LOT, 262)].
"SLOT, 542, 552
189 The best discussions of the characteristics of the different
Semitic families will be found in Wright's Comparative Grammar
of the Semitic Languages, Zimmern, Vergleichende Grammatik
der Semitischen Sprachen; Brockelmann, Grammatik der Scmi-
tischen Sprachen, and Driver, in an appendix to his work On the
Tenses in Hebrew.
190 Besides, it is possible there may have been two words of
similar but different meaning m Hebrew, just as in the Babylonian
burasu and berutu If we take Jensen's meaning of "selected
woods" for the latter the meaning of the last clause of Cant I. 17,
would be "our water troughs are selected woods."
[144]
THE EVIDENCE VOCABULARY
ticiple of a verb dub which occurs in Aramaic, as the
equivalent of the Hebrew zub, "to flow." In our
opinion, however, it is better to take it to be the
Hiphil participle of ddab, "to be weak/' and for the
following reasons:
(1) Zub is used in Z,ev. xx. 24, xxii. 4, both pas-
sages as well as xxvi. 16 belonging to what the critics
call the Law of Holiness. The verb and its deriva-
tives are found also in P thirty-four or more times,
in Deuteronomy six times, in J in Ex. iii. 8, xiii. 5,
in E in Ex. iii. 17, and in JE in Ex. xxxiii. 3. Why
should the writers of H, or the various later redactors
have used two methods of spelling?
(2) Zub is used of the flowing of various issues
and of milk and honey, but is never employed with
soul, nor in any but a physical sense except perhaps
in Lam. iv. 9; but even there it probably refers to
the flowing of the blood of the slain.
(3) None of the Aramaic versions, except pos-
sibly the Syriac, render Lev. xxvi. 16 as if they con-
sidered the participle to come from a verb "to
flow." 191
(4) De'dbon in Deut xxviii. 65 is rendered by
Onkelos and Jonathan as well as in the Samaritan
and Syriac by words showing that the Hebrew
scholars who made these versions considered the
191 Onkelos has ftHUD, Jonathan WDD, the Samaritan ]WB, the
Peshitto H3HQ. In this word which is of infrequent occurrence
in Syriac, it is probable that the has been changed to % Com-
pare Noldeke's Syriac Grammar, 33B.
10 [145]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE Ou> TESTAMENT
Hebrew word in Deut xxviii. 65 to have the same
root as the word in Lev. xxvi. 16. 192
(5) Da'ab in Jer. xxxi. 12, 25, is rendered in the
Targum by yescrf, "to be vexed," and a derivative in
Job xli. 14 by de'abon.
(6) The Aramaic of the Talmud confuses the two
verbs dub and de'db.*
(7) The Aleph is frequently omitted in the Hebrew
and Aramaic forms and manuscripts. 19 *
For these reasons we feel justified in refusing to
admit that the nedibath of Lev. xxvi. 16 can be used
as proof that there is an Aramaism in H. 195 The critics
are at liberty to make the most out of the presence of
tillel, "to cover/' 186 in the memoirs of Nehemiah
(Neh. iii. 15), which was written at a time when the
Jews of Elephantine, Samaria, Jerusalem, Susa, and
Ecbatana, all used the Aramaic as the language of
business and correspondence. The wonder is that
there should be only one sure instance of an Aramaism
in the Hebrew Bible, to be proven by the variations
of the consonants out of a total of 721 possibilities. 197
192 Onkelos and Jonathan have the same as Onkelos in I^v.
xxvi. 15, Samaritan has fiNOT or pn, and Syriac has tta'rt.
188 Dalman, Aram-Neu-Heb. Worterbuch, p. 84.
lw Ndldeke, Syriac Grammar, 32, 33, 35; Gesenius, Hebrew
Grammar, 7 g; Siegfried, Lehrbuch der neuheb. Sprache, 14;
Wright, Comparative Grammar, pp. 44-47.
"3ZATW. L, 177-276.
* Page 144.
197 Out of the 352 words treated of in Katrtzch's Die Ara-
maismen im Alien Testament, flTO and Wo are the only ones
that can be proven by the phonetic test
[146]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
The Noun Formations. But not only in the region
of consonantal changes does the attempt of the critics
to prove their theories as to Aramaisms utterly break
down, when a scientific investigation of the alleged
evidence is made; it fails as certainly in the attempt
to prove them by an appeal to the evidence of the
forms of the words. We have already said that the
noun forms ending in n 8 are found in all of the
Semitic languages at all stages of their development
and that the forms ending with uth are numerous in
Assyrian and Hebrew as well as in Aramaic. 199 The
forms in uth have already been sufficiently discussed
above. 200
The Nouns in on and an* As to the forms in n,
the following remarks may be added to what has
been said. 201 Exclusive of proper names, about one
hundred and forty nouns ending in n are found in
Biblical Hebrew. 202 Sixty-three of these are met with
in the Pentateuch. Of the sixty-three, the Targum
of Onkelos renders twelve by the same nouns ending
" 8 Page 110.
199 p a ge 106.
200 Pages 106-110.
201 Page 110.
202 The lists of Thotmes III have seventeen nouns ending in
out of 119 all told. The Sendscherli Inscriptions have no nouns
in n but the Sachau papyri have scores. They are found also in
the Sabaean and Minean Inscriptions and are common in Arabic
and Syriac. There are 14 in the code of Hammurabi alone and
26 in the Babylonian of the Amarna letters.
[147]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
in n, and fifty-one by other nouns, most of them not
ending in n. Onkelos, however, contains sixty-three
nouns ending in n. It will thus be seen that where
the subject-matter is exactly the same, the Hebrew
original and the Aramaic version have exactly the
same number of words ending in n. Judging from this
fact, it is left to our readers to determine, if they can,
whether the ending n is more characteristic of
Aramaic than of Hebrew.
Again, in the case of the twelve words out of the
sixty-three where they agree, is it more likely that
the original Hebrew borrowed from, or was influenced
by the Aramaic version, or vice versa, especially in
view of the fact that according to the critics them-
selves, the version was not written for from 500 to
1,000 years after the original?
As might be inferred from the example of the usage
of words with the ending n in the Pentateuch, it will
be found that in the best specimens of Aramaic
literature the number of nouns with this ending
varies with the kind of literature. Thus in Joshua
the Stylite, we find that in the first four chapters,
where the dedication occurs, there are nineteen words
of this kind; whereas in certain chapters of the
purely narrative parts, such as xix, Ixiv and Ixv, no
word with this ending is found, and even long
chapters like xxi and xxii have but one each, and xxiii
and Ixvi but three each. In Bar Hebrseus, also, we
[148]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
find but two nouns of this kind in the narrative of
the crusaders' first conquest of Jerusalem, one of
them a word similar to one found in the Hebrew
glosses of the Tel-el- Amarna Letters. 208
Notwithstanding these general considerations and
this common use of nouns with the ending n in
Hebrew documents, the critics are wont to argue that
certain parts of the Old Testament are late because
they contain nouns of this kind. The most glaring
example of the argument is that the presence of a
number of such words in Ecclesiastes is due to
Aramaic influence, the assumptions being made that
many of the words in Ecclesiastes with this ending
are Aramaisms, and that the mere use of Armaisms
indicates a late date. In answer to these assumptions
three statements of fact and evidence may be made.
1. In general, it may be said that the number of
different words of this kind in Ecclesiastes is small
compared with what we find in Aramaic documents
of a like character. For in twelve chapters, or ten
pages, of Ecclesiastes, there are but seventeen words
all told of this class, whereas in the first four pages
of Joshua the Stylite there are nineteen. Yet in the
ten pages of Joshua the Stylite from 63 to 73 in-
clusive, there are but twelve as against thirty-four
in the first ten pages, showing that the number of
203 1 e., pin*. Cp. ahruna in the letter of Biridiya to the King
of Egypt (Windder, 196, line 10).
[149]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
such words varies in Aramaic as well as in Hebrew in
accordance with the subject treated of. It seems clear
that the relatively large number of these words in n
in Ecclesiastes as compared with other Old Testa-
ment books is due to the character of the subject-
matter rather than to the lateness of the time of
composition. Further, it is a noteworthy fact, not
mentioned by the critics, that of the 140 words in the
Old Testament ending in n, only 26 are found in
Syriac. Of these 26, six are said in Brockelmann's
Lexicon to have been derived by the Syrians from the
Hebrew, and eight more are found in either Baby-
lonian or Arabic, or both; thus reducing to twelve
the number of words which could possibly be derived
by the Hebrews from the Syriac, But
2. Of the twelve words remaining, seven occur in
Ecclesiastes. As to these, the following facts rule out
the supposition that the Hebrew could have derived
them from the Aramaic :
(1) Not one of them is found in any Aramaic
document written before 200 A. D. The latest date
given by any critic for Ecclesiastes is about 100 B. C.
(2) Since the Aramaic literature in which any of
the words occur was written by Jews who had
adopted Aramaic, it is more reasonable to suppose
that the Jewish writers of Aramaic documents bor-
rowed from their own literary and native language,
than that early Hebrew writers borrowed from the
[150]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
Aramaic. At least, there is no evidence that these
words existed in early Aramaic. 204
(3) The forms of yuthron and husron have an u in
the first syllable in Aramaic and an i in Hebrew.
(4) Shilton, it is true, is found only in Ecclesiastes
viii. 4, 8; but its root occurs in Babylonian as well
as in Hebrew and Arabic, and the form occurs in
Arabic as well as Syriac.
(5) Kinyan is found in Onkelos and Syriac; but
in Hebrew it occurs in Prov. iv. 7 in a passage which
the critics put among the earliest parts of the Old
Testament. Besides, to call it late in the Hebrew lan-
guage, we would have to prove that Gen. xxxi. 18,
xxxiv. 23, xxxvi. 6, Lev. xxii. 11, Jos. xiv. 4 and
Ezek. xxxvni. 12, 13, where it occurs also, are late.
(6) Ra'yon is found only in Eccles. i. 17, ii. 22, iv.
16, but it is singular that, if it meant the same here
as in Aramaic, the Syriac version should render it by
sibyan in ii. 22 and by turofo in i. 17 and iv. 16 and
the Aramaic Targum in all these cases by tebiruth.
The corresponding word in Syriac is rendered by
Brockelmann by cogitatio, fictio, consilium and
voluntas; in Dalman by Gesmwmg, Gedanke. Must
the writer of Ecclesiastes have borrowed the Aramaic
20 *This Jewish Aramaic literature to which the critics appeal
was written from 200 to 700 AD. Of course, these words may
have existed in Aramaic a thousand or more years before they
were written in any document we now possess ; but in like manner,
they may have existed in Hebrew 1,000 years before they were
written in any document now known
[151]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THE Ou> TESTAMENT
form and have given it a different meaning? Why
not rather suppose that he found the word already
in Hebrew, formed regularly from the good old
Hebrew root ra f a, as pidyon from pada and gafyon
from ga'af
(7) Finally kisron is the worst specimen of evi-
dence of all. To be sure, it happens that in the
Hebrew of the Old Testament it is used in Ecclesi-
astes alone; but how it can be said to have been de-
rived by the writer from the Aramaic passes belief
when we observe that the word has not been found in
any Aramaic document of any dialect or time. 204a
3. Even if it could be proven that certain words in
a Hebrew document had been derived from the
Aramaic, it would not determine the date of the
Hebrew document; because the latest evidence from
the extra-biblical inscriptions, as well as the Old
Testament itself, goes to show that the Hebrews and
Arameans were closely associated from a time long
precedent to that at which the critics claim that the
oldest documents of the Old Testament were writ-
ten. 205
20*a On the other hand, the form kit-sir in the sense of "success"
is found in Babylonian of the tame of Abraham. (See Denne-
f eld's Babylonisch-Assyrische Gebur ts-Omina ) The root is not
found in Aramaic till 137 A. D.
205 Thus the Ahlcww, a tribe of Arameans, are mentioned in
one of the Amarna Letters (Winckler, 291, lines 6, 8) ; and
Nahanna, the Aramaic form of Naharayim,, occurs in Egyptian
as early as the time of Thotmes I (Breasted, Ancient Records,
II, 81.) See my article in the April number of the PTR for
1925.
[152]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
THE MEANINGS 0$ WORDS
Lastly, when we leave the region of sounds and
forms and enter that of sense and meaning, we find
that here also the critics make assertions with regard
to the derivation and borrowing of words which are
demonstrably contrary to the facts. In cases such as
^>I3 (tillel, "covered," Neh. iii. 15), it is easy to show
the probability that the word is an Aramaism, because
the proper letter for the first radical should have been
, not f, if the word had the probable original Hebrew
form of writing and sound. In cases such as
hithhdbberuth (Dan. xi. 23), it is easy to suppose an
Aramaism, because the form is common in Aramaic
and is met with but once besides in the Old Testa-
ment Hebrew. But when we come to words which,
have no indication (indicia) either in sound or form
that they are of Aramaic origin, we often find the
critics simply asserting as a fact that a word is am
Aramaism without producing any proofs whatever
to support the assertion.
Thus DeWette-Schrader ** speak of pashar, fatal,
tanaf and kotel as Aramaic, and a proof of the late
date of Ecclesiastes and of the Song of Songs. They
give no proof except the fact that the words are
found in Aramaic. The evidence from this fact is
nullified by the discovery that all four words are
found in Babylonian, and all but the last one, in
*Einleitung, pp. 543, 561.
[153]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE Ou> TESTAMENT
Arabic with exactly the same sound, form, and mean-
ing which is characteristic of the Hebrew.
Again, Dr. Driver in LOT mentions among the
words in Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs "having
usually affinities with the Aramaic nine that are" 207
found with appropriate sound, form and meaning, in
the Babylonian language and in documents long ante-
dating the time of the captivity. Of these words, sha
is not found in any pure Aramaic dialect, is the
ordinary relative in Babylonian from the earliest to
the latest documents, and is found in all periods of
Hebrew literature; 208 and 'umman (master-work-
man) and shalheveth (flame) are so distinctively
Babylonian in form and sense that there can be no
doubt that Aramaic as well as Hebrew derived them
from the Babylonian.
Cornill (Introduction to the Canonical Books of
the Old Testament, 449) calls (1) badal, (2) 'bad,
(3) zeman, (4) pithgam, (5) ra'yon, (6) gumats,
and (7) takktf purely Aramaic. The first of these is
found in Babylonian and Arabic as well as in Hebrew
and Aramaic. The classing of the second as an
Aramaism depends upon the pointing. The Targum
gave it the pointing of the word for slave or work-
man and renders by "their scholars who were subject
to them " The third is found in Arabic in the verb
forms as well as in many derivatives; whereas in
207 Op. cfr,pp 440,474
*os See my article on Tmn in PTR for 1919.
[154]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
Syriac there is no verb form and the nouns all have
6 instead of m. The fourth word is probably Hittite
or Armenian; the fifth is not found in any Aramaic
dialect in the sense it has in Ecclesiastes; and the
sixth is not found in Syriac till the third century and
then only in the Bible and in commentaries on the
Bible. Besides, the usual form in Syriac has an
Ayin for the third radical, showing that the form with
Tsadhe was most probably derived from the Hebrew.
We leave it to our readers to decide whether it is
more probable that the Hebrews derived these, and
all such, words from the Babylonian (if indeed most
of them are not primitive Semitic) documents, which
at least antedated the Hebrew documents, rather than
from the Aramaic, whose earliest use of the words so
far as shown in writing, is in general from 300 to
1,000 years later than the time of the compilation
of the Hebrew, even if with the critics we put
Ecclesiastes as late as 100 B. C.
Finally, the late Prof. Kautzsch in his work on
Aramaisms in the Old Testament (Die Aramaismen
im Alien Testamente) gives about 350 words as being
certainly, probably, or possibly, of Aramaic origin.
Of these about ISO do not occur in form and sense
in any Aramaic dialect. Two hundred and thirty-
five are found in Hebrew or Hebrew and New
Hebrew alone or in Hebrew and Babylonian, Arabic,
or Ethiopic, or Phenician. Only about 115 of the
words, or roots, are found in Aramaic documents
[155]
INVESTIGATION o* TEE OLD TESTAMENT
antedating the second century A. D., and only about
40 of these are not found in Babylonian, Arabic,
Phenician, or Ethiopic. Of the 350 words, the roots
of about 25 are found in Phenician or Punic; of 17,
in Sabean and Mmean; of 50, in Ethiopic; of 150,
in Arabic; and of more than 100 in Babylonian.
Of these 350 words 50 are found in the Pentateuch.
If these 50 were really Aramaic words, we would
expect the Aramaic versions to render them by some
form from the same root. We find, however, that
the Samaritan renders only 23 in this manner; the
version of Onkelos 24; the Pseudo- Jonathan 14, and
the Syriac Peshitto 17. That is, the translators of
the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Aramaic, all of
them excellent scholars, as their work shows, and all
of them thoroughly acquainted with Hebrew and
Aramaic, thought it necessary to translate from one-
half to two-thirds of these 50 words in order to
render them intelligible to the Aramaean readers!
Besides the majority of the words rendered by words
from the same root, are found to have the same roots
in Arabic, Ethiopic, or Babylonian. For example,
the roots of sixteen out of twenty-four such words in
Onkelos are found also in Babylonian or Arabic.
Finally, of these 350 words, only 115 are found in
Biblical Aramaic, together with the Aramaic inscrip-
tions and papyri preceding 200 B. C.; and 80 of
these 115 are found in root or form in Arabic or
Babylonian. Of the remaining 235 words not more
[156]
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
than 15 occur in any or all Aramaic documents ante-
dating the time when the Peshitto Syriac version was
made; that is, about 200 A. D.
In conclusion, then, it is evident that of these 350
words, about 100 have not been found in any Aramaic
document, and that, according to the dates affixed to
the O. T. documents by the critics themselves, about
120 more of these words were used by the writers of
the Old Testament from 350 to 700 years earlier than
they have been found in any Aramaic document. We
can easily understand how these translators of the
Bible into the Aramaic dialects should have borrowed
many words from the original, and how the Jews who
wrote in Aramaic should have employed many
Hebraisms; but how writers can have borrowed
words from documents written 700 years after they
were dead is a mystery for the critics to explain. If
it is said that these Aramaic words may have existed
and have been known to the Hebrew critics 700 years
before they were written in Aramaic documents, we
reply: so also can they have existed and have been
known in Hebrew 700 years before they are found
in Hebrew documents. Let us stick to the written
documents. Assertion and conjecture are not evi-
dence. And yet, it is on such alleged evidence as these
so-called Aramaisms that the critics conclude that
about 1,500 verses of the Old Testament, and often
the sections and books in which they occur, must
have been written after the exile, or even after the
[157]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
numerous variations in the numerical statements.
Since these variations can hardly have been inten-
tional, they show how easy it was to originate varia-
tions in manuscripts when there was no special
purpose in being accurate. It made little difference
to anyone whether the army of Darius killed or took
alive a few more or less in a given battle. And cer-
tainly, these variations afford no proof of late date or
of lack of genuineness or authenticity on the part of
the various recensions of Darius 5 great inscription.
So, also, with the variations in the texts and manu-
scripts of the Old Testament, we must not exaggerate
the importance of the difference in numerical state-
ments, as if such difference argued in general against
the veracity or genuineness of the original documents.
In view of the numerous variations in the contempo-
raneous, or almost contemporaneous, recensions of
the Behistun inscription, we should rather be aston-
ished that the numerical statements of the Old Testa-
ment have been handed down with such marvelous
comparative accuracy, as that we can reconstruct
from the chronological data a framework of chro-
nology which harmonizes so closely with that revealed
by the monuments,
THE GEOGRAPHY
The geographical statements of the Old Testament
are also marvelously in harmony with the evidence
presented by the documents of Egypt and Babylon.
THE EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
In some passages of the Pentateuch, as well as of
the prophets, it is difficult for its to see why one
should be used rather than the other; but generally
it may be said that the next of kin (go' el) performs
his duty toward his captive kinsman (ga'ul) by buy-
ing him back (?tTB), i. e., paying the ransom money.
Either verb might rightly be used, therefore, in speak-
ing of the redemption. Any author of any age might
have used either verb to denote this act of redeeming
on the part of a kinsman, and there is no passage in
the Pentateuch where either verb is used which could
not as well have been written by the same author as
all the other passages containing either.
DISTINCTIONS IN USAGE
We object to a word being considered as an evi-
dence of age when no other word in the language
could have expressed the exact meaning as well as
the one employed. Thus gil in Dan. i. 10, is said to
indicate a date in the second century B. C rather than
the sixth. The only reason for this given in LOT 210
is that in the use of this word the Hebrew of Daniel
resembles the Hebrew "of the age subsequent to
Nehemiah" since it is used "also in Samaritan and
Talmudic." We have already shown 211 that such re-
semblances for hapax legomena are found in every
book of the Old Testament and not specifically in
21 Page 506, 10.
211 Page 131 f.
[159]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THS Ou> TESTAMENT
Daniel. It might be asked, also, why if it character-
izes the age subsequent to Nehemiah, it is not found
in Ecclesiasticus or the Zadokite Fragments. Or, if
we press the argument, why then does it not prove
that Daniel was written after the Zadokite Frag-
ments, i e., after 40 A. D.? Of course, the critics
will say that the writers of these books had no occa-
sion to use the word, since they do not refer to any
such band, or company of men as Daniel and his three
companions. And they are right; but the same is
true of all the writers of the other Old Testament
books, and Daniel shows his linguistic ability in that
to express a new idea, or a conception different from
that employed by others, he has made use of a dif-
ferent word. For, we would like to ask the critics,
what word is there in Hebrew that would so well
convey the exact thought represented by gU? The
words for generation 212 would hardly suit, nor would
the ordinary words for band or company. 213 For the
author means to say just what he does say, that Daniel
and his companions were brought up, or reared, with
other youths of about the same age. Of course, they
were of the same generation and perhaps of the same
race and company and station in society, but the par-
212 rrfyto and in.
213 ^an in 1 Sam. x. 5, ID, used of the company of prophets and
in Ps cxix. 61 of the wicked; or 12rt as used in Hos vi. 9 of
the priests, are the best possible words But these could not be
translated by age. in such phrases as "about your age."
[160]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
ticular statement made in Dan. i. 10 is that they were
of about the same number of years of age. How
else could the critics have said it better and more
clearly ? And how do we know that Moses, or David,
or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, would not have used the same?
word, if they had wanted to express the same idea?
Let the critics tell us how they would have done it, if
they had been writing in the sixth century B. C. Let
them cease to cite the traditional authority (sic') of
DeWette-Schrader and other scholars and think out
some way of bettering this "rotten" (verderbte)
Hebrew. 21 * As an interested onlooker, we expect to
see them confounded in all their attempts to beat
Daniel at writing Hebrew. In fact, with all his diffi-
cult passages, we think him excellent much better in
fact than anything in the Hebrew line of literature
that either his German or English detractors can them-
selves produce.
OTHER PECULIARITIES OF STYLE OR DICTION
We object to considering a word or phrase recur-
rent in one document as being in itself a proof of a
particular age. Kipling's "that is another story"
might have been written any time in the last five hun-
dred years. So "I am Jehovah" might have been
written at any time from Abraham to Christ.
21 *Der verderbte Charakter des Idiomes in den hebraisch con-
cipirten Abschnttten is cited by De Wette-Schrader (Einleitung,
p. 499) in favor of the late date of Daniel.
11 [161]
AN INVESTIGATION otf THS Ow> TESTAMENT
Nor is the fact that certain words occur in one
document and certain other words in another to be
taken as constituting proof of different authors for
the two documents. Milton uses scores of words in
his Areopagitica which are never found in any of his
poetical works. He employs hundreds of words and
phrases in some of his works that are not found in
others of his works. 215 Why may Moses and Isaiah
not have done the same? The fact of the variations
of words and idioms is one thing, the reasons for the
variations are another thing. That certain words for
"create" and "make" are used in Gen. i and certain
others in Gen. ii is a fact; but if this proves different
authors, how about the thirty-two words which are
found in the Koran to express the same idea? Are
we to conjure up a dozen or more authors of the
Koran to account for the variations in the vocabulary?
We promise as Christians to nurture or train our
children; but we speak of rearing, raising, educating,
teaching, or bringing them up. In some churches,
they "take up a collection" ; in others, they "make an
offering." Differences of word and idiom are not so
215 Thus on pages 94-97 of The Areopagtfica (Bohn's edition
of the Prose Works of Milton, Vol. II) he uses 73 words not
found at all in his poetical works. There are 584 hapax legomena
in Milton's poetical works beginning with the letter a alone. See
the Lexicon to the English Poetical Works of John Mtlton, by
Laura E Lockwood, Ph.D, a work much to be commended for
study to those who would engage in the Higher Criticism of the
Old Testament.
[162]
EVIDENCE: VOCABULARY
much indications of difference in age and author as
they are of difference in subject-matter, fecundity of
conception, and fertility of expression. 216 One great
writer will use a larger vocabulary and more idioms
than twenty men with small knowledge and less lan-
guage.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we claim that the assaults upon the
integrity and trustworthiness of the Old Testament
along the line of language have utterly failed. The
critics have not succeeded in a single line of attack in
showing that the diction and style of any part of the
Old Testament are not in harmony with the ideas and
aims of writers who lived at, or near, the time when
the events occurred that are recorded in the various
documents. In every case, it seems clear that the
language suits the age at which the prima facie evi-
dence of the document indicates that it was written.
We boldly challenge these Goliaths of ex-cathedra
theories to come down into the field of ordinary con-
cordances, dictionaries, and literature, and fight a
fight to the finish on the level ground of the facts and
the evidence.
216 See my article on The Authenticity of Jonah in PTR for
1918.
[163]
V
THE EVIDENCE
HISTORY
V
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
FINALLY, let us review the framework of Old
Testament history as a whole and see how it
stands the tests which modern scientific research
has brought to bear upon it. Can a man of scientific
attainments still place any reliance upon the chrono-
logical, geographical and other historical statements
of the books of the Old Testament canon? Or, has
the light from Egypt and Babylon dispelled as a base-
less fabric of a vision of the night that which was
formerly considered to be a real structure of historic
fact?
THE CHRONOLOGY
Let us look at the chronology of the Bible, begin-
ning with the time of Abraham.
1. In the four great systems of biblical chronology
prepared from the biblical statements alone, before
anything definite was known in the fields of Egyptian
and Babylonian archaeology, HaJes puts the time of
Abram's leaving Haran at 2078 B. C., Jackson at
2023, Petavius at 1961, and Ussher at 1921. Since
Gen. xiv places Abraham in the time of Hammurabi,
it is fair to ask when the Assyriologists date the reign
of the latter. Jeremias puts him at about 2000 B.
C, 217 Clay at about 2100 B. C 218 It will thus be seen
217 The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Jfort, I, 322.
2" Light on the Old Testament from Babel, 130,
[167]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE Ou> TESTAMENT
that the date of Abraham as deduced from the facts
provided by the biblical text alone has been confirmed
in a wonderful way by the evidence derived from
Babylonian sources.
2. The relative date of Shishak, king of Egypt,
corresponds to that of Rehoboam and is certainly to
be placed somewhere in the tenth century B. C. 219
3. The relative dates of the kings of Israel and
Judah between the division of the kingdom and the
fall of Samaria, as given in the Bible, correspond in
general with what we find on the Assyrian monu-
ments.
4. The relative dates of the kings of Assyria and
Egypt as given on the monuments of their respective
countries correspond with what we find in the Old
Testament books.
5. The relative dates of the Babylonian kings
Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach and Belshazzar
agree in biblical and monumental accounts. The order
is correct in whatever sense Belshazzar may have been
king.
6. The relative dates of the Cyrus of Ezra, the
Darius of Haggai and Zechariah, and the Xerxes and
Artaxerxes of Ezra are certainly correct; notwith-
standing the difficulties in explaining the passage in
Ezra iv.
It is thus apparent that the general scheme of
21 * See Jeremias, op. cit. II, 204 f .
[168]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
chronology which underlies the history recorded in
the Old Testament is abundantly justified by the evi-
dence disclosed by the extra-biblical records of an-
tiquity. As to the apparently conflicting statements
of the present Hebrew text, it must be remembered
that many of them are doubtless occasioned by the in-
evitable corruptions in the text, arising from the prac-
tical impossibility of transcribing numerical data with
accuracy. No one knows how numbers were denoted
in the original Hebrew documents. It is known that
the Egyptians, Babylonians, Phenicians, Arameans,
Nabateans and Palmyrenes, denoted numbers by a
system of notation signs. The earliest example of the
use of a letter of the alphabet in a Semitic document
to denote a number is in the Egypto-Aramaic inscrip-
tions where b seems to be used for two and t for
nine* 20 A double system of numerical signs and let-
ters seems to have existed among the Syrians till the
ninth century A. D. 221 Sometimes the signs were
given and the number written also in full as in the
Sendschirli inscriptions. 222 In the Mesha and Siloah
inscriptions the numbers are written in full. 228 In the
Sachau papyri they are commonly denoted by signs.
A comparison of the Aramaic recension of the
Behistun inscription with the Babylonian shows
220 Sachau, Aramaische Papyrus u. Ostraka, p. 276, and Sayce-
Cowley in loco.
221 Sachau, id.
222 Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, p. 198.
* Id.
1169]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
numerous variations in the numerical statements.
Since these variations can hardly have been inten-
tional, they show how easy it was to originate varia-
tions in manuscripts when there was no special
purpose in being accurate. It made little difference
to anyone whether the army of Darius killed or took
alive a few more or less in a given battle. And cer-
tainly, these variations afford no proof of late date or
of lack of genuineness or authenticity on the part of
the various recensions of Darius' great inscription.
So, also, with the variations in the texts and manu-
scripts of the Old Testament, we must not exaggerate
the importance of the difference in numerical state-
ments, as if such difference argued in general against
the veracity or genuineness of the original documents.
In view of the numerous variations in the contempo-
raneous, or almost contemporaneous, recensions of
the Behistun inscription, we should rather be aston-
ished that the numerical statements of the Old Testa-
ment have been handed down with such marvelous
comparative accuracy, as that we can reconstruct
from the chronological data a framework of chro-
nology which harmonizes so closely with that revealed
by the monuments,
THE GEOGRAPHY
The geographical statements of the Old Testament
are also marvelously in harmony with the evidence
presented by the documents of Egypt and Babylon.
[170]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
1. Thus, the names of nations and cities mentioned
in the history of Abraham are in general such as are
known from the inscriptions to have been existent at
the time of Hammurabi, 22 * or such as may have
existed in his time, 225 or whose existence in his time
cannot be denied on the ground of any evidence we
possess, 226 or such as may well have been substituted
for older names in order to make the narration intel-
ligible to the readers of later times. 227 This last
alternative, which affords the only real or supposed
difficulty with regard to the possibility of the his-
torical character of the narrative, would be obviated
if we suppose that the account of Abraham's life was
originally written in cuneiform; because in that
system of writing the signs might be read in different
ways. For example, the name of the city of Babylon
was written in Sumerian Ka-dingir-ra-ki or H-'kl, or
Din-tir-ki, or it was written in Babylonian as mahasu
Ba-bi-li. In all four cases the Babylonian scribes of
the time of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus must have
pronounced the name as Babili, though an ignorant
reader might have spelled out the three first groups
of signs as Rardingir-rarki or B-ki or Din-tir-ki, re-
spectively, these being doubtless the earlier designa-
tions of the place in Sumerian, before the Semitic
224 Such as Egypt, Elam, Larsa, Babylon and Ur.
225 Such as Harran, Damaskus, and Beer-shebau
22 Such as Hebron.
m Such as Dan and Philistia.
[171]
ANT INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
conquerors appeared on the scene. So Laish may
have been written with the signs la and ish in cunei-
form and might be read as Laish, or after the con-
quest by the Danites as Dan, 228 As for Pelishtim
(Philistines), we may compare the Sumerian nim-ma-
ki f the equivalent m the Babylonian recension of the
Behistun inscription of the Persian uvaga and of the
Susian haltamti (or hutamti) and of the more usual
Babylonian B-lam-mat? 29 Weissbach correctly trans-
literates the Sumerian signs nim-ma by the Baby-
lonian word elamtu. So the signs rendered by
Pelishtim in our Hebrew Bibles may originally have
denoted another name. That is, the sign for the land
or city often remained the same, but the denotation
of the signs changed. The examples of this in the
cuneiform documents are so numerous that, if it
could be proven that the names Dan and Pelishtim did
not exist in the time of Abraham, we would be amply
justified in supposing that in the documents written
in that time they were denoted by signs that could
afterwards be properly read by the Hebrews in two
different ways.
2. That the names of cities and nations mentioned
in Gen. x suit the time of Moses better than any other
time was fully discussed in an article of the present
228 The same Chinese sign is read Seoul in Corean and Heijo
in Japanese. Another sign is read Pyeng-yang in Corean and
Heiko in Japanese.
229 See Weissbach, Die Ketlenschriften der Achaemeniden, p.
143.
.[172]
EVIDENCE. HISTORY
writer in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review for
1884. If we add to what was then written the fact
of the probable double reading of the cuneiform signs
in certain cases, the conclusions of that article will be
corroborated and no reasonable doubt can longer be
entertained that~the genealogies of Genesis x harmon-
ize with the state of geographical science in the time of
Rameses II. This well-known method of double read-
ing might explain also such difficult words as Casluhim
and Naphtuhim 2 * words that have hitherto baffled
the interpreters of all schools at whatever time they
place the date of the composition of Genesis x.
3. The discovery of Pithom and Rameses 2304 has
established forever the firm foundation of the account
of the Exodus. 231
4. The appropriate manner, both as to time and
place, with which the proper names of cities and coun-
tries are used in the Old Testament defies all hostile
criticism directed against the genuineness of the nar-
ratives. The marvelous way in which such countries,
nations, and cities as Elam, the Hittites, the old
Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and
Ethiopians, the Moabites, and the Edomites; Tyre,
Sidon, Damascus, Hamath, Separad, and scores of
280 Knight in The Nile and the Jordan (pp. 168, 169) identifies
Casluhim with the Kasluhtt of the Kom Ombo list
230a See Naville: The Store-City of Ptthom and the Route of
the Exodus. Egypt Expl. Fund, 1885 (4th Edition, 1903) and
Goshen, 1887.
281 See Naville, The Store Cities of the Exodus.
F1731
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OLD TESTAMENT
other names of places, are brought into the biblical
narrative, each in its proper place and time, and
generally with the very spelling as accurate as could
be expected, is beyond comparison in any ancient
document. In view of the fact that the biblical rec-
ords have stood the test of extra-biblical evidence in,
scores of cases where its testimony is clear and in-
disputable, it is inadmissible to claim that the biblical
documents are wrong, either when there is no evi-
dence on the monuments, 232 or whenever we with our
limited knowledge of the facts and circumstances
cannot explain satisfactorily the location and colloca-
tion of the name. 283
5. Another fact that must always be kept in mind
in discussing the Old Testament is this : It was from
the beginning according to its own testimony meant
to be a book for the people and not for antiquarians
and scholars merely. 284 Hence, we can well believe
that as the designation of certain places changed, the
text of the Bible was often changed accordingly.
This would account for such possible changes as Dan
and Pelishtim; just as we might and do speak of
Constantinople as having been from the time of the
glory of Greece the busy center of commercial activity
282 As in the case of the Hivites, Girgashites, Magog, etc.
283 As in the case of Tiras, Ashkenaz, Sabtah, and a few other
names in Gen. x.
284 The law was to be read to the people (Deut xxxi. 11) and
according to Nek viii. 8 it was explained (ttnao) to them.
[174]
THE: EVIDENCE. HISTORY
and of New York Bay as having been entered by
Henry Hudson, 235 or of Columbus or Cabot as hav-
ing discovered America (a name probably not given
to the continent till 1507). 236 That we are not with-
out warrant for this supposition is shown by the fol-
lowing facts:
(1) The bilingual Babylonian inscriptions are full
of these twofold designations of the same place or
country.
(2) The triple-inscription of Behistun and the
Aramaic translation of the same often give us four
different names for the same country. 237
(3) The Elephantine of the Greeks was 8&* aMa in
Egyptian, and Yeb in our Aramaic text.
(4) In the Old Testament itself two names are
sometimes used for the same city or country. 288
(5) The Jewish translators of the Old Testament
did not hesitate to render the proper names of places
235 Scnbner's History of the United States, I, p. xxx.
***Id. I, 127 f,
237 Thus the Persian gives Armenia as Armina, the Susian as
Harminuya, the Babylonian as Urastu and the Aramaic as BYIM*
The name for Babylon is given as Babirush in the Persian,
Ba-pi-li in the Susian, and in the Babylonian is written in two
different ways, while on other inscriptions it is written in at least
four additional ways.
287 See the inscription from the tomb of Her-Khuf at Assouan
Abu in Egyptian means elephant, the Greek Elephantine being
simply a translation.
238 Thus, oma and on (for Egypt), Hebron and Kirjath-Arba,
Salem and Jerusalem.
[175]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OI^D TESTAMENT
by terms which conveyed the proper location to the
people for whose benefit the translation was made.
Thus, the authors of the Greek Septuagint frequently
render Philistines by Allophuloi; Misraim and Ham
by Mgyptos. The Targum of Onkelos gives dif-
ferent terms to more than twenty names of places
mentioned in the Pentateuch, besides giving transla-
tions of the names of more than twenty others. 289
The Samaritan Targum has about one hundred and
twenty proper names, mostly names of places and
nations, that are given differently from what we find
them in the Hebrew Massoritic text. 240 The Peshitto
translation, also, used all of these liberties with the
proper- names. 241
From these analogies we are justified in concluding
that the mere presence in documents of the Old Testa-
ment of certain geographical terms of later origin,
than the rest of the documents is not conclusive proof
that the mass of the documents is as late as the terms
so used. It may be simply an evidence of editing for
29 gee Bredenk's Konkordanz sum Targum Onkelos.
240 So, according to the concordance in my possession ; some
of these names are translations from Hebrew into Aramaic;
some are the Greek equivalents of the Hebrew which have been
taken over into the Aramaic.
241 This is evident in a comparison of the proper names of
Gen. x and xxi. Here we find Cappadocia for Caphtor, Sephar-
vaim for Sippar, Ain d' ebrroye for 'yye na'banm, Rametha for
Pisgah.
[176]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
the sake of making the documents intelligible to the
persons for whom they were designed. 2
I 242
THE) HISTORICAL DATA
As to the historic character of the Old Testament
records in general there are no reasonable grounds
for doubting it. For,
1. The language in which the different documents
are written corresponds with the claim of the docu-
ments as to the time and place in which they were
written. The first chapters of Genesis and Daniel are
fullest of words derived from the Babylonian, as
would be expected in records derived from Ur of the
Chaldees and Babylon. The records concerning the
patriarchs who are said to have lived in Egypt are the
ones containing the most words of Egyptian origin.
The Assyrian and Babylonian words occurring in the
documents from the eighth century downwards are
mostly governmental terms and are such as would
naturally be borrowed from the dominating races of
the time. The Indo-European terms, whether
Indian, Hittite, Medo-Persian, or Greek, appear in,
documents which were written in the times from
Solomon onward, when the commercial and military
relations of the Hebrews with the peoples speaking
242 A good example of such editing is to be found in certain
changes made in the King James* version in the Tercentenary
Edition of the Oxford Press, where, for example, the word "pre-
vent" of the 1611 editions has been changed to "anticipate," "go
before," etc.
12 [177]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THE OI,D TESTAMENT
the languages from which the terms are borrowed
would lead us to expect the influx of the new and
foreign words to express the new ideas which they
connote.
As to the Aramaic loan words, not one can be
proven to be present in the Pentateuch, except in Gen.
xxxi. 47, where the Hebrew Gal'eed (Gilead) is
stated to have been called by Laban Yegar-sa'adutha,
of which compound the second word is certainly
Aramaic. The existence of tribes speaking Aramaic
can be proven from the monuments as far back as the
Tel-el-Amarna letters. 243 The fact that there are
more than one hundred explanations in Hebrew of
Babylonian words in the Amarna Letters shows that
Hebrew was understood at the court of the Egyptian
kings, Amenophis III and IV. This confirms the
biblical account of the residence of Israelites in Egypt
before the time of Moses.
2. As we have seen above, 24 * the names, the order,
and the time of reigning of the different kings of the
countries mentioned in the Old Testament harmon-
izes with what we find in the documents of Egypt,
Babylon, Assyria, and other countries. 245 A harmony
is found, also, in the statements made as to the rela-
2AS See Kraeling, Aram and Israel
2 Page 72 f
2 s ee f or Damaskus, the article by Professor John D. Davis
in the April number of the PTR for 1919 on "Hadadezer or
Ben-Hadad."
[178]
EVIDENCE: HISTORY
tive power of these kings and the extent of their
dominions.
3. We have already shown that the language,
grammar and literary forms are suitable to the re-
spective ages in which the documents claim to have
been written.
4. The civil, criminal and constitutional laws also,
both in their general character and in their literary
forms, are in agreement with the times and circum-
stances when they are said to have been enunciated,
or in use. 246 As to the ceremonial and ethical laws
of the Old Testament, they are distinguished from
those of all ancient peoples, especially by the fact
that they are monotheistic and unicentral. That the
ceremonial laws cannot have been derived from the
other Semites is shown by the almost absolutely dif-
ferent vocabulary employed to express the acts and
forms of religious service. 247 The vocabulary cor-
roborates the statements of the records by showing
that the Hebrew religion was of unique origin and of
internal development
5. That the Hebrew records which the critics assign
2 * 6 This statement is based on comparisons derived from the
Code of Hammurabi and the laws of the Egyptians as gathered
together in Revilloux's Lots et Droits des Egyptiens.
247 gee the author's articles on "Babylon and the Bible" in the
Pres. and Ref* Review for 1902, and in The Bible Student for
1904. The dissimilarity in religious vocabulary which character-
izes the Hebrew as compared with the Babylonian is apparent^
also, as between the Hebrew on the one hand and the Phenician
and various Aramaic dialects on the other.
[179]
AN INVESTIGATION o# THIS Ou> TESTAMENT
to the post-Nehemiah period were written long before
(as they purport to have been) is shown by the fact
that the meanings of many of the terms in them were
unknown when the earliest translations were made.
Even at the time when the Septuagint was made,
many meanings of Hebrew roots seem to have been
unknown to them. 248 This is shown by the frequent
transliterations found in that version. It seems in-
explicable, also, that the different translators of the
Pentateuch should have varied so much as they do
in the rendition of many of the terms to denote ani-
mals, articles of clothing, drugs, implements, etc., if
these parts had been written in post-captivity times,
when Aramaic was spoken by many of the Jews and
understood by all the educated among them. 2 * 9
6. That some of the headings of the Psalms are not
rendered in the I/XX would indicate that the songs,
instruments, times or circumstances to which they
248 See my article on "Lost Meanings of Hebrew Roots," in
Pres. and Ref Review, for 1892.
240 That some of the headings of the Psalms are not rendered
in the kXX would indicate that the songs, instruments, times or
circumstances to which they refer had passed out of the memory
and tradition of the Jews. If the headings had been inserted
after the Greek version was made, it is hard to see how the later
Jews, who made the Targums and Talmuds, should not have
understood their sense. That Psalms from the times of Moses
and David may have been dated as we find them in the Bible is
evident from the subscriptions of the Sumerian psalms from the
time of Hammurabi. These subscriptions give at times the author,
purpose, god addressed, tune, musical instruments and other notes
similar to those found in the Psalter. See my articles in the
PTR for 1926.
[180]
THE EVIDENCE* HISTORY
refer had passed out of the memory and tradition of
the Jews. If the headings had been inserted after
the Greek version was made/ it is hard to see how
the later Jews, who made the Targums and Talmuds,
should not have understood their sense.
7. Many undesigned coincidences support the his-
toricity of the Old Testament One of the most re-
markable of these is the mention of the horse first in
the history of Joseph, coincident with the appearance
of the animal in the history of Western Asia and
Egypt. Another is the failure to mention the ele-
phant. If a large part of the Old Testament was
written in the Greek period, it is noteworthy that this
animal, which constituted the main arm of the mili-
tary service from the time of Alexander down to the
time of the Romans should never be noticed even in
the psalms which are alleged to be from Maccabean
times. Especially is it noteworthy, when we find the
elephant playing so prominent a part in the wars of
the Maccabees.
8. As to the appropriateness of the proper names
of persons with the times in which they are said to
have lived, the following may be said :
(1) The names of persons in Genesis from Abra-
ham to Joseph inclusive are in general such as the
documents from the time of Hammurabi and from
Egypt would lead us to expect. Some of them have
not as yet been found outside of the Scriptures, but
in every case these exceptions have their parallels in
[181]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OI,D TESTAMENT
form or sense in the documents of the pre-Mosaic
age. 250
(2) The names of persons from David to Ezra
are entirely in harmony with the names to be ex-
pected and such as are found m the documents from
Samaria, Moab, Assyria, and elsewhere.
(3) For the times between Joseph and David too
little is known from extra-biblical documents to
enable anyone to make a successful attack on the ap-
propriateness of the names of persons mentioned in
the Old Testament records.
9. Attacks upon the genuineness and authority of
the history because it contains accounts of miracles
will be made by those only who are unacquainted with
ancient historic records. Whether what they thought
to be miracles were really miracles, and wherein the
miracles consisted, are proper subjects of investiga-
tion, but no one can successfully dispute that all
ancient peoples believed in them and that all ancient
records are full of accounts of them. 251 In fact, so
much is this the case that a historic record claiming
to be ancient which contained no account of supposed
miracles might justly be suspected of being a forgery
of later times.
10. In like manner, he who rejects a document
merely because it contains what purport to be apoca-
lypses, or predictions, ignores the spirit, beliefs and
250 See Langdon's Sttmerian and Babylonian Psalms.
251 See my article in the Bible Student for 1903.
[182]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
practices of pre-Christian times. 252 Whether a docu-
ment is, ( or contains, a prediction and what the pre-
diction means and whether and how it was fulfilled,
are all proper subjects of investigation. But all
ancient history reveals clearly that the nations be-
lieved sincerely in the possibility and in the fact of
the revelation of the will of the God or gods whom
they worshipped. None but a deist, or an atheist,
will deny their possibility. Theists must admit that
they may have occurred. Christians will believe that
the probability of their occurrence is involved in the
mission of Jesus, the Word made flesh, through
whom God in these latter days hath spoken unto us
as in old times He spake through the prophets.
Attacks upon Isaiah, Daniel and other books, because
they abound in wonderful predictions, will have
weight only with those who deny the fundamentals
of Christianity. To one who believes in the Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in the
preparation of the world for His coming, the predic-
tions of the Old Testament are but the glimmerings
of rosy-fingered dawn before the full-orbed sun bursts
forth as the light of a darkened world.
11. The objections made to the genuineness of cer-
tain parts of the Old Testament upon the ground that
they contain ideas found in extra-biblical literature
252 See my article on "Jonah" and on "What does 'the stm stood
still 1 mean?" in the PTR for 1918.
[183]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THB OLD TESTAMENT
only in documents from an age later than the sup-
posed date of the biblical document might be taken
with seriousness if they were made by an atheist or
deist, but when made by one who claims to be a theist
and to believe in a revelation, and when they occur
in what purports to be a revelation, they seem too
puerile to be even considered with patience and equa-
nimity. What! Must Jehovah have derived His
ideas of the resurrection from the Persians ? Whence
then did they derive them? And what care I for
their ideas more than for those of Plato or other wise
men of the past and present? I know nothing. They
know nothing. Things that are equal to the same
thing, etc. And yet, the critics deny the authorship
of Is. xxiv-xxvii by Isaiah, and assert that Daniel is
later than the fifth century B. C., on the ground
among others, that the future resurrection is pre-
dicted in these documents on the authority of God.
Oh, mortal man, canst thou bind the cords of Orion,
or set a bound to the wisdom and foreknowledge of
the Almighty? 383
12. The most specious objection made to the
Mosaic date and historical character of the Pentateuch
is based upon the infrequent references to the laws,
especially those of H and P, found in the books of
Judges, Samuel and Kings; and further, upon the
fact that the observances noted are often contrary to
2133 See my article on Apocalypses and the Date of Daniel in
PTR for 1921.
[184]
EVIDENCE: HISTORY
the requirements of the law. The force of this objec-
tion is broken by the following considerations, to
wit: that the purpose of the books of Judges,
Samuel and Kings, the critics themselves being wit-
nesses, was not to give us a history of the religious
institutions of Israel. "The stories of the deliverance
of Israel represent only certain glorious moments in
the history of these centuries." 2W "The subject of
the book of Samuel is the creation of a united Israel
by Samuel, Saul, and David." 255 With this purpose
in mind the authors generally make allusions to the
law and the religious institutions and observances
only in so far as they affect the history of the kings
and nations whose fortunes it is the aim of the author
to describe and moralize upon. The rule of conduct
for the people they rightly find in the codes of E and
D and in the words of the prophets. On the other
hand, the book of Chronicles was a history meant to
confine itself "to matters still interesting to the theo-
cracy of Zion, keeping Jerusalem and the temple in
the foreground, and developing the divine pragma-
tism of the history, with reference, not so much to
the prophetic word as to the fixed legislation of the
Pentateuch (especially the Priests' Code), so that the
whole narrative might be made to teach that Israel's
glory lies in the observance of the divine law and
25 * Reader I Stop here and read Job xxxviii-xli.
258 C. F. Moore in Hnc. Bib., p. 2641.
[185]
AN INVESTIGATION o? TH OI,D TESTAMENT
ritual." 250 Keeping in mind the difference in pur-
pose on the part of the writer of Chronicles it is easy
to understand his frequent references to the laws of
H and P as well as to those of E and D. Judges,
Samuel, and Kings give an epitome of the history of
Israel primarily from the political and moral side;
Chronicles, primarily from the legal and religious
side. 257 The conquest, the wars, the erection of the
temple as the symbol of the unity of Israel, the divi-
sion of the kingdom and the history of the two parts
of it, and the final destruction of both kingdoms with
the causes and manner thereof, constituted the sub-
ject-matter of the prophetic history; the priestly
writer on the other hand, gives the history of the
kings and of the nations only as a background to his
picture of the ecclesiastical and liturgical development
of Israel based upon the prescriptions of the law of
Moses. The prophetical writers dwell more upon the
breaches of the laws, the priestly writer more upon
the observance of them. In order to maintain their
assertion that the laws of H and P are not mentioned
in the history, the critics must and do deny the re-
liability of the history recorded in Chronicles. The
force of their objection, therefore, depends upon the
ability of the critics to establish the unhistorical char-
acter of the material facts recorded in the works of
Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles in so far as they give
***W. Robertson Smith and Ed Komg in Enc. Bib, p. 2664.
257 W. R. Smith and S R Driver in Enc. Bib, p. 765.
[186]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
information additional to, or in apparent conflict with
what we find in the older books. The precarious
character of the evidences for the date of a document
to be used from the use of the names and designa-
tions of God is to be seen in the collections of such
names gathered from the Koran, the New Testament
and the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical literature
of the Jews. 258
13. The evidence derived from recent extra-bibli-
cal studies shows that there is no sufficient ground for
holding that the book of Daniel was not written at
or near Babylon in the latter part of the sixth cen-
tury B. C., as the prima facie evidence of the book
itself indicates. 259
14. A thorough study of the language of the book
of Jonah shows that it was most probably written in
the eighth century B. C. Since the mission of the
prophet was to the people of Nineveh, there is no
reason why he should have given the name of the
king of Assyria. The king of Nineveh may have
been simply the mayor of the city. There are two
good reasons why we should not expect to find the
repentance of the Ninevites recorded on the monu-
ments of Assyria. First, there are very meager
documents of any kind from the time when Jonah is
See PTR for 1919-21.
259 See my article on The Aramaic of Darnel in Biblical and
Theological Studies by the Members of the Faculty of Princeton
Theological Seminary (Scribner's 1912), my Studies in the Book
of Darnel (Putnam's 1916) ; and the PTR for 1917-1924.
[187]
Ak INVESTIGATION 02 THE OLD
said to have lived. Secondly, the Assyrian monarchs
scarcely ever record anything prejudicial to their own
dignity or glory. Lastly, the Psalm in chapter ii is
not made up of excerpts from late Psalms; but
on the contrary is one of the most original and
unique pieces of literature in existence, both as to
subject and vocabulary. 260
15. As, to the conclusion of the radical critics that
the books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah are un-
reliable, the following may be said:
(1) It is based upon the assumption that the
writers had as sources nothing but the present books
of the Old Testament from Genesis to Kings in-
clusive, supplemented by certain post-exilic works
which have long since perished. Since it is admitted
by all that the earlier documents of the Old Testa-
ment, such as J, E, D, Samuel, Hosea, Amos and the
sources of Kings, passed unscathed through the fire
and destruction accompanying the fall of Samaria
and Jerusalem, it cannot be assumed that other rec-
ords also may not have been preserved. The
Chronicler himself asserts that he had access to such
sources, or at least to works derived from such
sources. No other writer of the Old Testament cites
his authorities so frequently and so explicitly. That
he recasts his material in his own style and language
and with remarks and comments of his own, no more
260 See articles on Jonah in PTR for 1917.
[188]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
invalidates the reliability of his facts than do similar
methods in the case of Gibbon, Prescott, and
Mommsen. That he inserts his own notes and com-
ments no more throws doubt on his citation of facts
than is true in the case of the books of Kings.
Against the express statements of authorities given
by the Chronicler, what evidence have the critics to
produce? Nothing but conjectures. Nothing but sur-
mises and opinions based on their own ignorance and
the silence of other records. Are the critics going to
maintain that many works of pre-captivity times did
not survive the destruction of Jerusalem and after-
wards perish? How then about the sources of Kings?
Are they going to maintain that all the works ever
written have been cited in the books older than
Chronicles, that the Book of Jashar and the Book of
the Wars of Jehovah are the only ones that have
disappeared? How about the three thousand prov-
erbs of Solomon and his songs a thousand and five ? 260a
How about the records of the kings of Israel and
Judah as to which it is said so often in Kings that
the rest of the deeds of the kings were written in
them? If, as Dr. Driver says, 261 "it was not the
Chronicler's intention to pervert the history/' why
2eoa There are only 915 verses in our whole book of Proverbs.
The men of Hezekiah extracted chapters xxv-xxix (138 verses)
from these 3,000 proverbs of Solomon What became of the
others?
*I,OT, 533.
[189]
Ak INVESTIGATION OF THS Ou> TESTAMENT
should he have invented or perverted the sources
from which he claims to get his information? The
present-day critics, living just about 2,300 years after
the Chronicler wrote his books, may dispute about
his statements and deny his facts, and even the
existence of the documents which he cites; but most
sensible men without preconceived opinions will prob-
ably agree with me that the Chronicler is more likely
to have been right and to have told the truth, espe-
cially about the records which he used, than any man
to-day. The testimony of the Chronicler cannot be
overthrown by the opinion of anyone now living.
(2) It is not fair to reject one or both of two ap-
parently irreconcilable statements because we cannot
explain them. Sometimes apparent difficulties can be
removed by a change of the pointing or interpretation
of the original Hebrew. 262 Sometimes the objections
are based on an interpretation of the original which
creates a discrepancy where none really exists. 208
282 Thus atr? in 1 Kings xu. 2 may be pointed and read as "and
he returned" or as "and he dwelt." no in 2 Kings xxiii. 30
may be rendered "dying" rather than ''dead" and so be made to
harmonize with 2 Chron. xxxv. 24, where it is said that Josiah
died in Jerusalem.
268 Thus, it is said that there is an inexplicable disagreement
between the account of Athaliah's overthrow as given in 2 Kings
xi. 4 f . and that given in 2 Chron. xxni. 1 f . This assumed dis-
agreement is based primarily upon the assumption that the K&ri
(ns) and runners of Kings could not have been Levites as
Chronicles would seem to demand. Doubt, however, as to the
meaning of K&ri is manifest, when we see that Gesenius, in his
Thesaurus (671 b), gives four meanings as being upheld by va-
[190]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
(3) One of the most serious charges made against
the Chronicler is that he exaggerates in his numerical
statements. Thus, he makes the army of Jeroboam
I to be 800,000 and that of Abijah 400,000; Zera
with 1,000,000 men meets Asa with 580,000; and
Jehoshaphat has an army of 1,160,000. If, however,
this is an argument against the historicity of Chron-
icles, it may be used also against Samuel and Kings;
for the Philistines have 30,000 chariots ( 1 Sam. xiii.
5), David slew 40,000 horsemen of the Syrians in
one battle (2 Sam. x. 18), Joab numbered 800,000
men of Israel and 500,000 of Judah (2 Sam. xxiv.
9), Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses (1 Kings v.
6 [iv. 24]), Rehoboam had 180,000 chosen men
which were warriors (1 Kings xii. 21), and the chil-
dren of Israel slew 100,000 Syrians in one day (1
Kings xx. 29). And it cannot be maintained that the
Chronicler exaggerated regularly the numbers as
rious scholars, to which may be added several from the versions
and one or two from recent scholars. If we connect it with the
Assyrian karu "to cut," a synonym of karafy it will be a synonym
of rna and mean "executioner" like tabbah in Gen. xxxix. 1 If
we connect it with the Assyrian kararu, a synonym of eteru and
susubu "to surround, either for protection or capture" (Muss-
Arnolt 25 5), it might well mean "body-guard." The *rfto 9 so
frequently useVI with W3, may be connected with the Assyrian
pultu, pastu "sword." Compare Syriac pusta "ascia, secuns."
That runners might be Levites, and even priests, is shown by the
fact that Ahimaaz, David's runner, was a son of Zadok the priest
(2 Sam. xviii. 19 f.). tjntil the meaning of these terms has been
fixed, we are justified merely in saying that some of the details
of the account are not clear to us. This does not mean that they
are not true.
[191]
Atf INVESTIGATION otf THE Oi,r TESTAMENT
given in Kings, since in the seventeen cases where
the numbers differ as between the two books, the text
of Kings is greater in five and that of the Chronicler
in twelve. 264
In view, then, of the fact that the prophetical his-
tory, as well as the priestly, contains these large
enumerations, it seems best to maintain either that
the enumerations are correct, or that they have been
corrupted in the course of transmission. We are not
so sure as some seem to be that they are not correct.
We are not to look upon the armies of those days as
composed of drilled troops like the Macedonian
phalanxes, or the Roman legions, but as levies en
masse., embracing all the people from about fourteen
to twenty years of age and upward, a whole nation in
arms. Every man was interested in the wars, because
defeat meant death or captivity to all alike. Besides,
they were fighting at their own doorsteps and for
their hearths and homes. When we think of the
enormous disciplined armies which single cities such
as Nineveh, Damascus, Tyre, Ekron, Gaza, Sparta,
and Rome, used to put into the field, we may well
pause before affirming with such assurance as some
do that the figures of the books of Kings and Chroni-
284 In Sennacherib's Prism Inscription I, 34-50, there are eight
numerical statements In six of these the numbers vary in the
different versions. In the Babylonian and Aramaic versions of
the Behistun inscription of Darius the numbers differ in almost
every case. Yet these versions are contemporaneous. See PTR
for 1914.
[192]
: HISTORY
cles are incredible. But, if some think they are in-
credible, let them remember that numbers, especially
when denoted by a system of notation, are the hardest
of all facts to transmit correctly. There is usually
nothing in the context to preserve them from corrup-
tion. They may have been misread in the original
sources or changed in the course of copying; but only
those who have never engaged in the study of manu-
scripts will indict a whole document simply because
some of the numerical notations are beyond the pos-
sibility of being read with certainty or accepted as
original.
(4) In order to prove the untrustworthiness of the
Chronicler, an attempt is made to show that his work
was not written till about 300 B. C. The first proof
of this is said to be found in 1 Chron. lii. The text
of this passage is admitted to vary so much that com-
mentators are not sure whether six or thirteen genera-
tions are meant. According to Dr. Driver, the
Hebrew text gives six generations from Zerubbabel
onward. If we place him at 520 B. C. and count
twenty years to a generation, this will bring us to 400
B. C., as the date of the book. Twenty years to a
generation is a good Oriental average. 265
(5) It is an absurd argument against the his-
toricity of the books of Chronicles, that they give in-
formation not found in the books of Samuel and
265 See Assayuti's History of the Califs, where generations are
often only for 16 or 18 years.
13 [193]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Kings. Why should the author have written the
Chronicles at all, if he had had the same design and
gave the same information as the authors of Samuel
and Kings ? It is perfectly proper and natural, also,
that he should have written especially about Levites,
singers and festivals; since, as the critics rightly
affirm, he was looking at things from a priestly stand-
point.
No one can deny that the temple was built by
Solomon, and that the plans and, in large measure,
the materials for the structure were prepared by
David. This temple was intended for the worship of
the God of Israel. This worship consisted in sacri-
fices, prayers and praises. The service required large
numbers of priests, servants and singers; and they
must have been organized, so that everything should
be conducted in decency and order. The Chronicles
say that David organized these services of the
temple. Why deny that he did this most sensible and
fitting thing?
Now, when this temple was first built, all that
would be necessary would be to take over the priests
and the ritual already in existence and vary them
only in so far as was required to meet the new con-
ditions of an enlarged and more dignified place of
worship. The old priesthood of the temple at Shiloh
and the old laws of the tabernacle with reference to
sacrifices and festivals would be found sufficient;
but to make the service more efficient and suitable
[194]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
to the great glory o the magnificent house that had
been erected for the God of Israel, certain new-
regulations as to the time and manner of the services
were instituted by David. Whatever is not referred
to as having originated with him must be presumed
to have been already in existence.
Since David and Solomon built the temple, it is
common sense to suppose that they organized the
priests into regular orders for the orderly service of
the sanctuary. These priests had already had their
clothing prescribed by Moses after the analogy of
the Egyptian and all other orders of priesthood the
world over. He also had prescribed the kinds and
times of offerings and the purpose for which they
were offered. The Israelites, also, like the Egyptians
and Babylonians, had for their festive occasions such
regulations as are attributed to David for the observ-
ance of these festivals, so as to avoid confusion and
to preserve decency in the house of God.
AN INCONSISTENT THEORY MADE TO
Is it to be supposed that on these festive occasions
no music was to be employed and no hymns of praise
to God to be sung? Even the most savage tribes
have music at their festivals and we know that the
ancient Egyptians had numerous hymns to Amon and
other gods, and that the Assyrians and Babylonians,
and even the Sumerians before them, delighted in
singing psalms of praise and penitence as a part of
[195]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
their ritual of worship. 266 These hymns in all cases
were accompanied by instrumental music. Some of
the Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian hymns were
current in writing for hundreds, or even thousands,
of years before the time of Solomon; and some
musical instruments had existed for the same length
of time. Are we to suppose that the Hebrews alone
among the nations of antiquity had no vocal and in-
strumental music in their temple services? The
critics maintain that poetry is the earliest form of
expression of a people's thoughts and history. Many
of them assert that the song of Deborah antedates
all other literary productions in the Bible. Most of
them will admit that David composed the lament over
Saul and Jonathan.
But they draw the line at his Psalms of praise and
penitence. 267 Why? Because it suits their theory
that the Psalms were prepared for use in the second
temple. They hold at the same time that certain
poems, like the songs of Deborah and Miriam and
2fle See the long list of hymns to Amon and Aton given in
Breasted's Egypt, V, 133. The authors of some of these hymns
are given. Id. Thotmes III and Merenptah, kings of Egypt, both
wrote hymns. Id. Assurbampal, king of Assyria, also wrote hymns.
See Streck's Assurbanipal III, 342 f . That the ancient Sumerians
at, or before, the time of Abraham sometimes gave the name of
the author of a psalm may be seen in Langdon's Sumerian and
Babylonian Psalms, pp 287, 317.
267 See pages 229-239 of Frank's Studien sur Babylonischen
Religion, Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms; Erman's
Aegypten vnd Aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, II, 350-412;
Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians, I, 431-500.
[196]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
the blessings of Jacob and Moses, antedate by cen-
turies the historical narratives in which they are
found, but that the Psalms were all, or nearly all,
composed after the captivity. What grounds have
they for holding such seemingly inconsistent theories ?
Absolutely none that is based on any evidence, unless
the wish to have it so, in order to bolster up their
conception of the history of Israel's religion, be
called evidence.
PSALM WRITERS WOULD NOT HAVE ABSURDLY
ATTRIBUTED THEIR WORK TO PRE-
CAPTWITY AUTHORS
Of course, it is obvious that music is mentioned in
the books of Kings; but it is made prominent in
Chronicles, and the headings of many of the Psalms
attribute them to David and in three cases to Moses
or Solomon. It is hardly to be supposed that the
writer of these headings would have made his work
absurd by making statements that his contemporaries
would have known to be untrue. Whether the head-
ings are all trustworthy, or not, it is absurd to sup-
pose that the writers of them would have attributed
so many of the Psalms to pre-captivity authors, when
their contemporaries must have known that the whole
body of Psalms had arisen after the fall of the first
temple, had such been actually the case. The most
natural supposition would be that David either made
or collected a sufficient number of Psalms to meet the
[197]
AN INVESTIGATION os THS OLD TESTAMENT
requirements of worship in the temple which Solo-
mon was about to build.
As to the text of the headings of the Psalms, the
evidence of the manuscripts and versions goes to
show that they are not merely substantially the same
as they were in the third century B. C., but that most
of them must even then have been hoary with age.
Even when the Septuagint version was made, the
meanings of many of the terms used in the headings
were already unknown, and the significance of many
words and phrases had passed out of mind. A large
proportion of the names is not to be found in later
Hebrew and in no Aramaic dialect Besides the
roots of many of these words have closer analogies
in Babylonian than in any other language.
All this would suggest that their origin must go
back to the times of Ezra and Nehemiah or to the
captivity; and that they, in whole or in part, came
down from the usages and administration of Solo-
mon's temple. There is no reason for supposing that
the Psalms and their headings may not have been
present intact through all the confusion and destruc-
tion of the fall of Jerusalem, inasmuch as the sources
of Samuel and Kings (and the works of most of the
prophets) were admittedly so present Besides, the
Hebrew manuscripts and all of the great ancient
primary versions agree almost absolutely with the
text of our ordinary Hebrew bibles and their Eng-
lish versions in attributing seventy-three of the
[198]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
Psalms to David as the author or subject of the re-
spective Psalms. The Greek edition of Swete agrees
in attributing to David every one of the seventy-three.
The edition of the Latin Gallican version of
Harden 268 (Psalterium juxta Hebraeos Hieronymi,
edited with introduction and Apparatus Criticus by
J. M. Harden, D.D., LL-D., Trinity College, Dublin;
London, The Macmillan Co., 1922) agrees in all but
the twenty-second; where, however, E and H, two
of the best manuscripts, do agree. The Syriac-
Peshitto version of Walton's Polyglot agrees in re-
gard to all, except the 13th, 39th and the 124th. 268a
And the Aramaic of Walton's Polyglot ascribes to
David every one of the seventy-three, except the 122d,
the 131st, and the 133d.
It will be noted that all the five texts, the Hebrew
and its four great ancient versions, agree that sixty-
six out of the seventy-three psalms were either writ-
268 Temples imply both singers and songs. In 2 Sam. xxii. 1,
David is said to have spoken the words of the eighteenth psalm.
In 2 Sam xxiii. 1, he is called the sweet psalmist of Israel.
Critics generally admit that he wrote the lament over Saul and
Jonathan. Why then may he not have written the psalms at-
tributed to him in the headings of the psalms? And why may not
he, like Watts and Cooper and Wesley and Havergal, have him-
self produced, or at least collected, a whole psalm book? The
temple requires singers; singers require songs; David supplies
songs. Chronicles and the headings of the psalms state that the
Israelites had in the Psalms of David and the singers of the temple
just what common sense demands that they must have had.
aesajn the case of Psalms 55 and 62 David occurs in the
headings, though he is not specifically stated to have been the
author.
[199]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THS OI,D TESTAMENT
ten by, or for, or concerning David 268b (the Hebrew
preposition / may mean "by," "for/' or "concern-
ing"), and that four out of five of these agree in
regard to all the seventy-three.
Finally, a striking and almost convincing testimony
for the early date of most of the psalms lies in the
fact that, except in a very few cases, we find no defi-
nite allusions in them to events or persons later than
the time of Solomon.
Thus, common sense and universal analogy compel
us to believe that an orderly worship conducted by
priests in accordance with prescribed regulations and
a service of song commensurate with the dignity and
decency becoming the house of God must have
existed among the Hebrews, certainly from the time
that the first temple was constructed and probably
from the time that the tabernacle was erected and
the annual festivals established. Historians of royal
courts, of diplomacy and war, like the author of the
books of Kings, may not mention such things; but
we may be sure that they existed. The temple itself
proves this. Universal experience proves it The
weeping stone at the foundation of the temple, where
the Jews of to-day congregate to bewail the long de-
268b The detailed evidence as to the headings of the Psalms
has appeared in the PTR for January and July, 1926, where the
secondary versions of the Septuagint the Memphitic and the
Sahidic Coptic, the Harklensian Synac and the Syro-Palestinian,
the Ethiopic, the Arabic, the Armenian, and the I^itra Vulgate have
also been considered.
[200]
THE EVIDENCE: HISTORY
parted glories of Mount Zion and the glorious house
of Israel's God, testifies that the traditions about the
sweet Psalmist of Israel were not all figments of the
imagination, nor mythical creations of later times.
(6) Another proof of the lateness of the Chroni-
cler is said to be the mention of Jaddua as High
Priest in Neh. xii. 11, 22. It is assumed that this
Jaddua is the same as the one mentioned by
Josephus 209 as the High Priest who went out to meet
Alexander when he went up to Jerusalem. Inasmuch
as this expedition of Alexander is recorded by Jose-
phus alone and said by the critics never to have oc-
curred, and as the particular Jaddua who is said by
Josephus to have met Alexander is mentioned no-
where else either by Josephus or by any other ancient
writer, we fail to see the force of this argument.
For, if Josephus invented the story about Alexander,
he may have invented his Jaddua, too. But granting
that there was a Jaddua at 336 B. C., or thereabout,
we fail to see why he may not have been High Priest
for seventy or even eighty years. Having had a
great-grandfather who lived to be hale and hearty at
105, and a great-grandmother to be 99, and three
great-uncles to be 94, 96 and 101 respectively, with
about a dozen other relatives, no farther away than
a great-uncle, who lived to be from 75 to 92, and all
compos mentis, and most active in body till almost
*** Antiquities, XI. viii, 4.
[201]
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
the end, the writer of this article can see nothing im-
probable in the Jaddua of Josephus having been the
same as the Jaddua of Ezra.
(7) The newest weapon of proof, however, that
has been forged against the historicity of the Chroni-
cler is that which has been produced in the arsenal
of Oxford by Drs. Driver and Gray. The great
German critic Ewald asserted that it was both un-
necessary and contrary to contemporary usage for the
kings of Persia to be given the title, king of Persia,
while as yet there were kings of Persia; and that
consequently the Hebrew documents employing this
title must have been written after kings of Persia had
ceased to exist. If this were absolutely true, it would
bring down to Greek times the composition of
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel, since they
all contain the title. It is a sufficient answer to this
assertion to say tHat eighteen different authors in
nineteen different documents from Persian times use
this title altogether thirty-eight different times, and
of at least six different Persian kings; that it is used
of Cyrus seven years before the conquest of Babylon
in 539 B. C. and of Artaxerxes III about 365 B. C;
that it is used in Persian, Susian, Babylonian, Greek,
Aramaic and Hebrew; that it was used in Media,
Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Palestine, and
according to Herodotus in Ethiopia; and that it is
used in letters, dates and other like documents of the
Scriptures just as it is used in the extra-biblical docu-
[202]
EVIDENCE. HISTORY
ments. Further, it has been shown that it was not
common for authors of the Greek period to use the
title. 270
270 See my articles in the PTR for 1904-5 and for 1917, and
in the Sachau Denkschnft, Berlin, 1912.
I203T
VI
THE EVIDENCE
RELIGION
VI
THE EVIDENCE: RELIGION
BEFORE closing this succinct review o the
lines of defense of the Old Testament Scrip-
tures, we must emphasize briefly the strongest
bulwark of them all, the undeniable uniqueness and
superlative clearness and importance of the religious
ideas contained in them.
A study of the religious systems of the Egyptians,
Babylonians, and other ancient peoples, has revealed
to us a groping after God, if haply they might find
him; but nowhere among all the nations is it re-
corded that a clear apprehension of one living and
true God the creator and preserver, the guide, the
judge, the saviour, and the sanctifier of His people
was attained. Other religions are outward, con-
cerned with words and deeds. Their sins are offenses
or delinquencies, their substitutions are material
equivalents, their atonements are physical purifica-
tions, their resurrection is a groundless expectation,
their judgment is without mercy, their immortality
consigns to darkness and dust, and a future life of
joy is at best for the few and great. The Old Testa-
ment religion is essentially inward. It is the religion
of the mind and heart, of love, joy, -faith, hope, and
salvation through the grace of God alone. How ac-
[207]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
count for this religion? It must have come either by
derivation, evolution or revelation. The prophets
say it came from God. No other theory of its origin
can account for its uniqueness and its results, its
superiority and its influence. The prophets and their
ideas are facts in evidence, which all the quibbling of
the critics cannot impugn. The prophets say they
had their ideas from God. If not, whence? It can-
not have come by derivation; for none of the other
nations had the same ideas of God, creation, sin and
redemption. 271 If it came by revelation, the greatest
of all miracles has happened involving all the rest.
For if God spake through the prophets, His revela-
tions of His will could not have been bound by the
shackles of time and circumstance. The prophets
who spake for Him spake not merely as the men of
their own time, but as men of all time, as men who
were spokesmen of Him who knows the end from
the beginning, and has all power in heaven and on
earth. The canon of the modern critical school that
treats the prophets as the creatures of their time is
antagonistic to this fundamental conception of the
prophets' mission as it was enunciated by the prophets
themselves. They say God spake to them and they
spake for God. The critics say that they gave utter-
ance to the spirit of the times (the Zeitgeist) and
271 That it could not have been derived from the Babylonians*
see my articles in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review for
1902 and the Btble Student for 1904.
[208]
EVIDENCE: RELIGION
that they were limited by the time and place of their
birth. But, if this were all the source of their in-
formation, how then did it come, that not from the
oracles of Thebes and Memphis, nor from the temples
of Babylon, nor from the sacred precincts of Delphi,
nor from the Sibyls and augurs of Rome, but from
the deserts of Midian, and from the sheepfolds of
Tekoa, and from the dungeons of Zedekiah, and
from the lowly cots of captives on the banks of the
Chebar and the Euphrates, came forth those magic
words of hope and salvation and glory for a sm-
cursed world that have made the desert hearts of all
who heard them to rejoice and blossom like the rose
in the sunlight of God's favor, in the revivifying
atmosphere of His presence? God with us! This
is the key to unlock the mysterious chambers of the
Old Testament.
14 [209]
VII
CONCLUSION
VII
CONCLUSION
BUT the time has come to conclude this sum-
mary of evidence for the defense in the case
of the critics against the Old Testament. We
hope that the evidence adduced will be sufficient to
show that the general reliability of the Old Testa-
ment documents has not been impaired by recent dis-
coveries outside the Old Testament. The literary
forms are in harmony with what comparative litera-.
ture would lead us to expect. The civil, criminal and
constitutional laws agree with what the civilization
of the ancient nations surrounding Palestine would
presuppose; while the ceremonial, moral, and reli-
gious laws are differentiated from those of others by
their genesis in a monotheistic belief and a divine
revelation. The use of writing in the age of Moses
and Abraham is admitted by all and the existence of
the Hebrew language in the time of the Exodus is
assured by the glosses of the Amarna letters, as well
as by the proper names on the Egyptian and Baby-
lonian monuments The general correctness of the
Hebrew text that has been transmitted to us is estab-
lished beyond just grounds of controversy. The
morphology, syntax, and meaning of the language
of the various books conform with what the face of
the documents demands. The chronological and
[213]
AN INVESTIGATION o* THE OLD TESTAMENT
geographical statements are more accurate and re-
liable than those afforded by any other ancient docu-
ments; and the biographical and other historical
narratives harmonize marvelously with the evidence
afforded by extra-biblical documents.
We therefore send this volume forth with the
prayer that it may strengthen the faith of those who
still believe in God and in Jesus Christ His Son. We
need not and do not fear the truth about the Bible.
We welcome all sincere and honest study of its
origin, purpose and meaning. But is it too much to
ask and hope that more of those who have been ap-
pointed by the Church to teach its history and its
doctrines should devote their time and energies to the
defense of its great and fundamental, unique and out-
standing, facts and implications, rather than to the
picking of flaws in the garments of the prophets and
to the punching of holes in the robe of Christ's per-
fection? It may not be ours to remove all the diffi-
culties, to harmonize all the apparent inconsistencies,
to explain all the mysteries, and to solve all the
problems of the Old Testament; but we can show
at least, that we believe that Christ and the Apostles
are more likely to be right than we, that the age-long
judgment of the Church with respect to the Bible
may after all be right, and that our business is to
defend with all lawful means the citadel of faith
rather than to join the hosts of the infidel in the
assaults upon its walls.
[214]
GLOSSARY
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
GLOSSARY
To make this work of greater help to the average reader
not acquainted with the technical terms of Biblical criti-
cism and philology, this glossary has been prepared in ex-
planation of some of the more important of these terms.
Acliaemenid. Achaemenes was the great-grandfather
of Darius the Great, king of Persia in the days of
Marathon, 522 to 486 B C. The Persian kings of
this dynasty are called Achaemenids.
Ashurbanipal. Ashurbanipal was the last great king of
Assyria and reigned from 666 to 626 B. C. The best
work on him is in three volumes by Streck.
Bar Hebraeus. Bar-Hebraeus, or Abu'l-Faraj Gregory,
was a Jewish convert to Christianity and "one of the
most learned and versatile men that Syria ever pro-
duced." (See Wright: Syriac Literature, 265-281 )
The account of the conquest of Jerusalem will be
found in the Chronicon Syriacum (263-266), sold by
Maissoneuve, Paris.
Behistun. Behistun, the ancient Bagistana, is the name
of a village on the highway between Babylonia and
Ecbatana (Hamadan), the capital of Media. On the
face of a rock 500 feet above the plain are inscrip-
tions of Darius the Great in Persian, Klamitic and
Babylonian. (See Eduard Meyer in Encyclopedia
Brittanica, III, 656; Weissbach arid Bang: Die
altpersischen Keilinschriften, 1893 ; King and Thomp-
son : The Inscription of Darius the Great at Behistun,
1907; and works by Prof A. V. Williams Jackson.)
'An Aramaic recension of this inscription was found
in Egypt and published by Edouard Sachau in his
Aramaische Papyrus und Ostraka, 1911. [Reviewed
[217]
GLOSSARY
by the writer in the PTR for 1914 ] It is to be found
also in Cowley's Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century
B. C.
Ben Sira. Name of the writer of the apocryphal book
of Ecclesiasticus.
Cartouches. A cartouche is an oval or oblong figure in
an Egyptian document, containing the name of a sov-
ereign.
Consonantal Text. Only the consonants and, in some
cases, the vowel letters w to denote 6 and u and 3; to
denote e and i, were used in the Old Testament text
before about A. D. 600, at which time vowel signs
were added.
Dim. Sumerian word for create and make. (See De-
litzsch: Sumerisches Glossar, p. 138)
Elephantine. Elephantine was the name of a city on
an island at the first cataract of the Nile. Its name
denotes elephant in the Egyptian abu, as well as in the
Greek from which the English is merely a translitera-
tion Opposite the island was the city of Syene or
Assouan. It is about 551 miles by rail from Cairo.
Gloss. An explanatory word or phrase. In the Amarna
Letters the Hebrew glosses explain the Babylonian
words.
Grimm's Law. Grimm's law is the name for the regular
interchange of certain consonants in the so-called
Indo-European family of languages. See Max Mul-
ler's Lectures on the Science of Language, II. Lec-
ture V, Skeat's Principles of English Etymology, p.
104, and Whitney's Language and the Study of Lan-
guage.
Hammurabi. Hammurabi (or pi) "the mighty king,
the king of Babylon, the king of the four quarters/'
as he calls himself (see King: The Letters and In-
scriptions of Hammurabi, p. 179), seems at first to
have been subject to Elam, whose king he overthrew
in his thirty-first year (id 23).
[218]
GLOSSARY
Hapax Legomena. Words occurring once only in a
document.
Hexateuch. First six books of the Bible. Writers on
the first six books of the Old Testament commonly
employ the letters H, P, J, E, D, to denote the five
sources of these books as claimed by the critics,
P denotes the so-called priest-codex, which is sup-
posed to have been written after the time of Eze-
kiel. Broadly, it embraces all of Leviticus, except
chapters xvii-xxvi, nearly all of Numbers, a large
part especially of the latter part of Exodus, parts
of Genesis (especially the first chapter), and about
a third of Joshua.
H is named from holiness (HeiUgkeit) and gets its
name from the fact that it emphasizes the laws of
holiness. It is found in Leviticus xvii-xxvi. It is
supposed to have been written during the captivity.
D stands for Deuteronomy, and embraces most of
Deuteronomy and about a third of Joshua.
J comes from the word Jehovah, and embraces a
large part of Genesis and Exodus i-xix, character-
ized by having the name Jehovah in it.
E comes from Elohim the Hebrew name for God,
arid includes the parts of the Hexateuch which
contain the name Elohim for God and which do
not belong to P.
JE stands for the parts in which J and E cannot be
distinguished.
Hiphil. Name of a Hebrew verbal form which usually
has a causative sense.
Jonathan. Name given the version of the pseudony-
mous author of a second Aramaic version of the
books of Moses.
Joshua the Stylite. Joshua the Stylite was a Mono-
physite Stylite monk who lived at Edessa in the early
part of the 6th century and wrote a history of the
war between the Byzantine and Persian empires which
[219]
GIXDSSARY
took place from 502 to 506 A. D. See Wright's
Syriac Literature, pp. 77, 78, and his work called The
Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite.
Mantis. A sort of prophet-priest of the Greeks.
Massorites (or Massoretes). Jewish scribes and learned
men who edited the text of the Old Testament Scrip-
tures.
Mesha Inscription. The Mesha inscription, also called
the Moabite stone, contains an inscription by Mesha,
King of Moab, and was found by a missionary named
Klein among the ruins of the city of Dibon in the
land of Moab in the year 1868. It has been treated in
monographs by Smend, Clermont-Ganneau, Noldeke,
Nordlander, and others. The text will be found in
Lidzbarski's Nordsemitische Epigraphik.
Moabite Stone. See Mesha Inscription above.
Morphology. The science of the forms of wofds.
Nabunaid (or Nabonidus). Name of the last de facto
and de jure king of Babylon according to the monu-
ments ; Belshazzar according to the Scriptures being
the last de facto king.
Onkelos. Name of the author of the best Aramaic ver-
sion of ^ the books of Moses. The version is named
after him.
Ostraka. Fragments of pottery on which are Hebrew,
Greek, or Coptic inscriptions.
Paleography. Ancient ways of indicating words in
writing, and the study or art of deciphering them.
Peshitto. See Versions.
Pointings, Signs adde'd to the original consonantal text
in order to indicate the sound or the sense of the
original according to the view of the exegete or
pointer.
Preformatives and Sufformatives. Semitic roots have
commonly three consonantal letters. Many nouns and
forms of the verb are formed from these roots by
putting a consonant before or after. When placed be-
[220]
GLOSSARY
fore, the consonant is called a pref ormative ; when
af ter^ a stiff ormative.
Prosthetic. A letter, commonly Aleph, prefixed to
another with e or a to aid in the pronunciation. Thus
in Ashtpra for Shtora and in Ahasuerus the A is
prosthetic.
Protasis. The clause introduced by "if," "when," "who-
ever," etc., upon which the main proposition depends.
Thus "if you love me" is the protasis of which "ye
will keep my commandments" is the apodosis.
Provenance. The locality at which any antique is
found or document was written.
Pseudepigraph. A writing ascribed to one who 'did not
write it. In works on the Canon it is commonly re-
stricted to documents which are not in the canon of
the Roman Catholics. Apocryphal are the books ac-
knowledged by the Roman Catholics, but not by Prot-
estants.
Pyramid Texts. Die Pyramidentexte is the name given
to a series of Egyptian inscriptions found in the pyra-
mids. They have been published in the "Recueil de
travaux relatifs a la philologie et d I'arcMologie
egyptienne <et assyrienne" The first of these texts
were those found in the pyramid of King Ounas the
last king of the Sth dynasty. They were edited by
Maspero and published in 1882.
Radical Sounds. The three consonants used in a root
are called radicals.
Recension. A text established by revision and editing,
either by the author or by another. Thus, there is a
longer recension of Jeremiah preserved in the Hebrew
Bible and a shorter in the Greek ; and there are two
recensions of the ten commandments, one in Exodus
xx and one in Deuteronomy v. So, there are at least
two recensions of the inscription of Darius at Be-
histun, the longer being that contained in the Persian,
of which the Elamite is apparently a translation, and
[221]
the shorter in the Babylonian which is fairly equiva-
lent to the Aramaic. The first three are certainly and
the Aramaic probably from the same time and have
the same authority. Sometimes we speak of the whole
four as recensions.
Redactors. Editors who put together and supplemented
the original parts of the Pentateuch.
Sachau Papyri. The Sachau Papyri (or Papyrus) are
Aramaic documents (mostly letters and contracts, but
containing also a short edition of the Behistun inscrip-
tion of Darius the Great, king of Persia, and part of
a story of a man called Achikar) edited by Prof.
Edouard Sachau of the University of Berlin. (See
my review in the PTR for 1911.)
Samaritan. Here used for the version of the books of
Moses into the Samaritan dialect of the Aramaic.
This version is still used by a small number of per-
sons residing in the modern city of Nabkms.
Samaritan Version. See Versions.
Sendschirli Inscriptions. Six inscriptions in the Send-
schirli dialect are published in Lidzbarski's Nordse-
mitische Hpigraphik. The first of these, embracing 34
lines, is by Panammu, king of Jadi and Sam'al, and
the second, third and fourth by his son Barrekeb. The
others are small fragments.
Siloah Inscription. The Siloah inscription in Hebrew
was found in 1880 on a wall of the conduit built by
Hezekiah (Isa. xxii. 11). It is the oldest inscription
of ^ any length in the Hebrew language. See Lidzbar-
ski: Nordsemitische Inschriften.
Sumerian. Name of the people who preceded the Sem-
ites in Babylon and apparently invented the system
of writing afterward used by the Assyrians, Baby-
lonians, Hittites and others.
Suras. Name for the chapters of the Koran.
Syriac. The name given to the dialect of Aramaic
spoken in Mesopotamia at Edessa. The common ver-
[222]
GLOSSARY
sion is called the Syriac Peshitto, and is cite'd either
as Peshitto, or Syriac.
Targum. There is only one targum, or translation, to
the prophets in Aramaic, called the targum of Jona-
than Ben Uzziel. See Stennmg in Encyclopedia Brit-
tanica XXVI, 421. See also Versions.
Tel-el-Amarna Letters. The Tel-el-Amarna or El-
Amarna Letters were discovered in 1888 at Tel-el
Amarna in Egypt and date from the reigns of Amen-
hotep III and IV. They were written in cuneiform,
mostly in the Babylonian language, from Babylon,
Assyria, Syria, Palestine, and other countries, to the
kings of Egypt, and some of them from the kings of
Egypt in reply.
Tetrateuch. Teuch is from a word which in post-
Alexandrine Greek means "book." Penta means
"five," hem "six/' and tetra "four." It is used on
page 52 for the books from Exodus to Deuteronomy
inclusive.
Textus Receptus. The "received text"; the text pub-
lished in our ordinary Hebrew Bibles.
Tidal. Tidal, king of nations (Gen. xiv 1). If the He-
brew goyim, "nations," is a rendering of kissati, it is
found as a title of Shalmanassar I of Assyria about
1300 B. C. an'd of Ramman-Nirari his father and was
probably used of his ancestors back as far at least as
Asuruballit. See Schrader in The Cuneiform Li-
brary (KAT I. 9). It is used at Babylon also, of
Merodach-Baladan I about 1200 B. C. (id IIP 162).
If we assume that the Hebrew text comes from
Kutim, the phrase "king of Kutim" is found as early
as Naram-Sm, long before Hammurabi and Abraham
(See Thureau-Dangin : Sumerische und Akkadische
Koniginschriften, p. 225) where we read that Shar-
lak, king of the Kuti, was taken by Sargani-shar-ali,
an'd (p. 226) where something was done to the land
[223]
GLOSSARY
of the Kuti. See also p. 171, where a tablet of Las-
irab king of Gutim is given.)
Translate. To give the sense, as in "praise Jehovah."
Transliterate. To give the letters of the original, as in
Alleluia.
Versions. There are three versions of the books of Moses
from the Hebrew language in which they were origi-
nally written into the Aramaic which many of the
Israelites learned and spoke from some time before
the time of Christ and for many centuries after. Tar-
gum is the Aramaic word for version
Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate is the transla-
tion made by Jerome from Hebrew into Latin
about A. D. 400. It is the Bible used today by
the Roman Catholic church. See Kaulen:
Geschichte der Vidgata, and Berger: La Bible
Francaise au Moyen-age.
Samaritan Version. The Samaritan version is the
translation of the Samaritan Hebrew recension
of the books of Moses. It is still used by the
small Samaritan synagogue in Nablous in Pales-
tine.
Syriac Peshitto. The Syriac Peshitto is the name
of the version commonly used in the Syrian
churches. Peshitto means simple or explained.
Vowel Signs. See Consonantal text.
Vocable. A word, or vocal sound.
Vulgate. See Versions,
Wau Conjunctive. The Hebrew conjunction w, mean-
ing "and."
Wau Conversive. The Hebrew conjunction w "and"
when used before the perfect, or imperfect form of
the verb, with the power of converting the perfect
into the sense of the imperfect or the imperfect into
the sense of the perfect.
Zadokite Fragments, The Zadokite Fragments are the
portions of a work in Hebrew supposed to have been
[224]
GLOSSARY
written about the time of Christ. See Charles:
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testa-
ment, II. 785-854, and Schechter's Documents of Jew-
ish Sectaries.
ABBREVIATIONS FREQUENTLY USED
CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, etc., in
the British Museum.
H.P.J.E.D. See Hextieuch, above.
KAT Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, by
Eberhard Schrader.
KB Die Keilinschnftliche Bibliothek or Cuneiform Li-
brary (contains translations into German of the lead-
ing historical, poetical, and contractual inscriptions of
the Assyrians and Babylonians).
LOT An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Tes-
tament, by S R Driver
LXX An abbreviation for The Seventy or The Sep-
tuagint.
O. T. Old Testament.
PSBA Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arche-
ology.
PTR Princeton Theological Review}.
TSBA Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archae-
ology
VASD Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmaler
ZATWZeitschrift fur die Alttestamenthche Wissen-
schaft.
15 [225]
