LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Class 
 
ESSAYS IN MODERN THEOLOGY 
 AND RELATED SUBJECTS 
 
 PAPERS IN HONOUR OF 
 
 CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS 
 JANUARY 15, 1911 
 
ESSAYS IN MODERN THEOLOGY 
 AND RELATED SUBJECTS 
 
 GATHERED AND PUBLISHED AS A TESTIMONIAL 
 TO 
 
 CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGaS, D.D., D.LITT. 
 
 GRADUATE PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA AtlD SYMBOLICS IN 
 THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 ON THE COMPLETION OF HIS SEVENTIETH TEAR 
 
 JANUARY 15, 1911 
 
 BY A FEW OF HIS PUPILS, COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1911 
 
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 CoPTRiaHT, 1911, BT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
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 ID noin^ Kin po 
 
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*fl ^ado^ TrkovTov teal (To^ia<s kuI yv(ll>aeco<i 
 Oeov' ft)? dve^epavvTjra ra Kpifiara avrov Kat, 
 dve^fX^viaaroL at 68ol avrov. 
 
 on ef avrov kuI St avrov Kal et? avrov ra 
 irdvra • avrat rj Bo^a et? rois aiwva^ • dfi-qv. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume is offered to Professor Charles Augustus Briggs 
 by a little group of his pupils and colleagues, with the addition of 
 only two or three other close friends. It is a testimonial of their 
 personal affection, as well as of their sense of obligation to the 
 veteran scholar and teacher, and they have chosen as its occasion 
 his completion of seventy years of life, not because they do not 
 hope for him many more years of fruitful work, but because this 
 anniversary recalls to them his long and notable service, and re- 
 minds them afresh of all they owe to the stimulus of his untiring 
 energy, his patient research, his fearlessness in proclaiming truth, 
 his warm personal sympathy and his quick response to every 
 demand made upon his stores of knowledge and the treasures — 
 often unsuspected — of his warm and valiant heart. They are 
 glad that he should have now, while his vigour is yet unabated, 
 this attestation of their regard. 
 
 Professor Briggs has been so versatile in his own work, and his 
 intellectual interests have been so many, that the range of topic 
 appropriate to this volume has not been confined to a single de- 
 partment of theological study, nor indeed limited at all to the 
 theological disciplines in the strict sense of the term. The foun- 
 dation of his varied learning, after school-boy days, was laid more 
 than fifty years ago, at the University of Virginia, where the sys- 
 tem of regulated liberty in the choice of studies and of high exac- 
 tion in scholarly standard gave room to his eagerness for acqui- 
 sition, and a noble measure to his estimates of attainment. This 
 theological bent was developed under original and inspiring 
 teachers, at the Union Theological Seminary and the University 
 
 ix 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 of Berlin, but his mind was independent by nature, and he 
 began, from persistent impulse, to investigate great problems 
 for himself in many fields of thought. Only paths which he had 
 trodden with his own feet brought him to satisfying conclusions. 
 At the same time he maintained the respect for the past, and the 
 reverence for truth vindicated long ago, with which, as one of 
 the guiding principles in study, he had entered upon the student's 
 career. His sense of historic continuity in the life of the Chris- 
 tian Church has always been strong. His controlling interest 
 has never been that of a radical, in the sense of an overturner, 
 or a neologian in any form. Those who know him well have 
 wondered that any should imagine so. The progress he has 
 sought has always been in the nature of a growth from the long- 
 established, and no small part of the sharp controversy which 
 has marked his life has been due to his ardent desire to go back 
 to fundamental principles of theological discussion and religious 
 life from which it appeared to him that the men of his own and 
 other recent times had largely and often unconsciously departed. 
 
 His Biblical scholarship is perhaps most familiar to the 
 public, and has been fundamental in his own thought. But in 
 Church History and in Dogmatics he is also at home, and no 
 one has considered with more alertness of interest the practical 
 problems of the Church and the religious life. If this were a 
 biographical sketch — and long may it be before such a sketch 
 can be completely written! — these sentences could be expanded 
 into paragraphs and chapters. It would be wrong, even within 
 the present limits, not to make especial mention of the irenic 
 studies of his later years, and his steadfast outlook toward the 
 union of Christians in things essential and a great charity in all 
 things else. 
 
 It is a large, strong man that has been engaged in these various 
 lines of thought and struggle, — various, yet all related and con- 
 verging, — and his influence has been wide, and his colleagues 
 
PREFACE XI 
 
 pay him high regard, and his pupils feel his power, and his 
 friends love him. One of the elders among us, who has been 
 long his fellow-teacher, the Rev. Thomas S. Hastings, D.D., 
 LL.D. — Professor here since 1881, and President of the Faculty 
 from 1887 to 1897 — has uttered more than his own feelings in 
 the following tribute: 
 
 " It gives me great pleasure to express my warm and high 
 appreciation of my colleague and friend. Dr. C. A. Briggs. It 
 is often said that those who have worked together know each 
 other; still more do they know each other who have suffered 
 together. I have learned by such experience to admire and to 
 love Dr. Briggs for his frankness and fidelity as a friend, while I 
 have been surprised again and again to see how versatile he is 
 and how comprehensive is his learning. He has gone from one 
 department to another in our curriculum, equally at home and 
 masterful in each. I have found him always calm and patient 
 under assault and misrepresentation, cherishing no ill feeling or 
 resentment. Indeed, I have been deeply impressed by the gentle 
 sweetness of his spirit even under provocation. He is strong and 
 brave and tender and true. I have met very few who have so 
 deep a reverence for the Scriptures and absolutely no one who 
 holds more fully, more simply, and more heartily to the stand- 
 ards of our Church. I shall always cherish him within the 
 inner circle of my loving friendships." 
 
 Many of Dr. Briggs' students have taken responsible positions 
 as instructors and productive scholars. Only a part of them 
 have been able to contribute to this book. Imperative circum- 
 stances have hindered some who had the right to appear in it, 
 and who regret, as we do, the absence of their names. 
 
 If the plan of the publication had admitted enlargement 
 beyond the closer circle, and especially if we had ventured over- 
 seas, the result would have been several volumes instead of one. 
 With reluctance we abandoned the idea of so unwieldy an enter- 
 prise. This simple testimonial is less imposing, but it is at least 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 serious in intention and sincere in spirit, and it bears with it an 
 affectionate regard not to be measured in pages, or expressed at 
 all in words. 
 
 Especial thanks are due to the publishers, Messrs. Charles 
 Scribner's Sons, who have generously undertaken to issue the 
 volume in recognition of an esteemed author and a valued 
 friend. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 
 New York, January 1, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 I. POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS AS A MARK OF 
 
 DATE 1 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Crawford Howell Toy, 
 D.D., LL.D., Harvard University. 
 
 II. THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON, 
 
 2 SAM. 2-^ 13 
 
 By the Rev. Professor William R. Arnold, Ph.D., 
 Andover Theological Seminary, Cambridge, Mass. 
 OJ. T. S., 1895). 
 
 III. EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH ... 23 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Julius August Bewer, 
 Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary (U. T. S., 1898). 
 
 IV. THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 33 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Edward Lewis Curtis, 
 Ph.D., D.D., Yale Divinity School (U. T. S., 1879). 
 
 V. THE SONS OF KORAH 41 
 
 By the Rev. John Punnett Peters, Ph.D., D.D., 
 Sc.D., St. Michael's Church, New York, N. Y. 
 
 VI. THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 49 
 
 By Professor Kemper Fullerton, Oberlin Theo- 
 logical Seminary, Ohio (U. T. S., 1891). 
 xiii 
 
XIV CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VII. THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 65 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Francis Brown, Ph.D., D.D., 
 D.Litt., LL.D., Union Theological Seminary, New 
 York (U. T. S., 1877). 
 
 VIII. MAN AND THE IMESSIANIC HOPE .... Sa 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Thomas Franklin Day, D.D., 
 
 San Francisco Theological Seminary, California 
 (U. T. S., 1880). 
 
 IX. NOTES ON TWO PASSAGES IN THE OLD 
 
 TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA 9a 
 
 By Professor A. V. Williams Jackson, Ph.D., 
 LL.D., Columbia University. 
 
 X. THE DEFINITION OF THE JEWISH CANON 
 AND THE REPUDIATION OF CHRIS- 
 TIAN SCRIPTURES 99 
 
 By the Rev. Professor George Foot Moore, D.D., 
 LL.D., Harvard University (U. T. S., 1877). 
 
 XL THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS . 127 
 
 By the Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., LL.D., 
 New York City. 
 
 XII. BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 141 
 
 By the Rev. Stephen Herbert Langdon, Ph.D., 
 INI.A. (Hon., Oxon.), Oxford University, England 
 (U. T. S., 1903). 
 
 XIII. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COM- 
 MON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA AND 
 PALESTINE 16a 
 
 By Frederick Jones Bliss, Ph.D., Beirut, Syria 
 (U. T. S., 1887). 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIV. THE PERSON OF JESUS IN THE DOUBLE 
 TRADITION OF MATTHEW AND 
 LUKE 173 
 
 By the Rev. George Holley Gilbert, Ph.D., 
 D.D., Northampton, Mass. (U. T. S., 1883). 
 
 XV. THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORIN- 
 THIANS 185 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Marvin Richardson Vin- 
 cent, D.D., Union Theological Seminary. 
 
 XVI. Oi "ATAKTOI, 1 THESS. 5" 191 
 
 By the Rev. Professor James Everett Frame, M.A., 
 Union Theological Seminary (U. T. S., 1895). 
 
 XVII. CALVIN'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH . . 207 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Arthur Cushman McGif- 
 fert, Ph.D., D.D., Union Theological Seminary 
 
 (U. T. S., 1885). 
 
 XVIII. THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 IN THE ANCIENT CHURCH .... 227 
 
 By the Rev. Professor John Winthrop Platner, 
 D.D., Andover Theological Seminary, Cambridge, 
 Mass. (U. T. S., 1893). 
 
 XIX. THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY: ITS 
 
 NATURE AND IMPLICATIONS ... 243 
 
 By the Rev. Professor William Adams Brown, 
 D.D., Union Theological Seminary (U. T. S., 1890). 
 
 XX. A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 261 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Thomas Cuming Hall, D.D., 
 Union Theological Seminary (U. T. S., 1882). 
 
XVI CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXI. ONE LAW OF THE INTERPRETATION OF 
 
 RELIGION 269 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, 
 Ph.D., D.D., Harvard University (U. T. S., 1884). 
 
 XXII. THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 289 
 
 By Professor Harry Norman Gardiner, A.M., 
 Smith College, Northampton, Mass. (U. T. S., 1882). 
 
 XXIII. NATURAL TELEOLOGY 307 
 
 By Professor Frederick James Eugene Wood- 
 bridge, LL.D., Columbia University (U. T. S., 
 
 1892). 
 
 XXIV. BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTAINING A LIST OF 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WRITINGS OF PRO- 
 FESSOR BRIGGS 327 
 
 By the Rev. Professor Charles Ripley Gillett, 
 D.D., L.H.D., Union Theological Seminary (U. T. S., 
 1880). 
 
ESSAYS IN MODERN THEOLOGY 
 AND RELATED SUBJECTS 
 
I 
 
 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS AS A MARK OF DATE 
 
 By Crawford H. Toy 
 
 In the Old Testament, omitting Genesis, the denunciations 
 of polytheism appear to be all directed against foreign cults. 
 Certain passages in Amos and Hosea may refer to worship at 
 shrines which, though nominally devoted to Yahweh, was, in the 
 opinion of these prophets, really treason to him; * and it may be 
 that Deut. 6* is a protest against a popular view that there were 
 many Yahwehs in the land.f In any case this polyyahwism was 
 probably regarded by the prophets as not essentially different 
 from the Canaanite polybaalism, as in fact the Yahweh at any 
 place was simply the local baal. But the people of a given com- 
 munity, in worshipping their local Yahweh, were not conscious 
 of devotion to more than one god — that is, polyyahwism was not 
 exactly polytheism. J The historical books, however, and the 
 prophets of the seventh and sixth centuries definitely charge the 
 people with polytheistic practices, Later books, secure in the 
 conviction of Yahweh's supremacy, ridicule idolatry and calmly 
 relegate foreign gods to a subordinate place in the world. § The 
 probability appears to be that down to the latter part of the sixth 
 century, and perhaps after this, the Israelites worshipped foreign 
 deities whenever they came into close contact with them; and 
 there is nowhere in the Old Testament doubt as to the real 
 existence of such deities. || The teraphim, apparently native 
 Israelite, form a class by themselves. 
 
 * Am. 8''; Hos. 5«, 8"". 
 
 fCf. W. F. Bade, Der Monojahwismus d. Dexd., in Zeitschr. alttest. Wiss., 1910. 
 X Cf. the various shrines and titles of Zeus and Jupiter and other deities. 
 § la. 40, 44; Ps. 96^ ' ', 97^ 115; cf. Briggs, Psalms. 
 
 \\ The "not-God" of Deut. 32", Jer. 5', al. means simply relative impotence; 
 cf. Hos. 1^ 
 
 1 
 
2 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 But, while thus there seems to be no recognition of native 
 polytheistic practices (except that every family or clan had its 
 teraphim) in the books referred to above, it has been supposed 
 that Genesis assumes a native polytheistic system which, as 
 antedating Yahwism, indicates a date for the composition of 
 this book. It is generally held that Genesis contains early 
 material, traditions, and ideas going back of the time of David, 
 and possibly, in some instances, back of the settlement of the 
 tribes in Canaan. The question of the historical value of the 
 traditions must be kept distinct from the question when our 
 Genesis was put into shape. The two questions doubtless are 
 closely connected with each other: one's estimate of the historical 
 worth of the stories of Abraham and Jacob will be affected by his 
 opinion as to the date of these stories in their present form. 
 Still, the two questions may be kept apart — or rather, so far as 
 polytheism is concerned, we may ask whether or how far its 
 occurrence in Genesis reveals a stratum of religious thought 
 different from and cruder than that which appears in clearly 
 historical times. For convenience the various supposed poly- 
 theistic statements and expressions may be considered under 
 different heads. 
 
 1. The plural predicates found in connection with Elohim in 
 6'^ 18'- ^ 20'^ 3P^ 35^ hardly throw light on the question under 
 discussion. The great majority of Septuagint MSS.* and of the 
 other ancient versions ignore the plural form in these passages; 
 this fact, however, is not important, for monotheistic translators 
 would naturally interpret such statements monotheistically. It 
 is more to the point that the pilural form is ignored in the Hebrew 
 context. In 6^^ the DflTI^'D may be read as plural participle, the 
 preceding '»iin being changed to liiPI, and then the flood will 
 have been sent by the " gods." But with this reading the varia- 
 tion of numbers becomes strange: "Elohim said. The end of 
 all flesh is come before me ... we are about to destroy. ... I 
 am about to bring the flood ... I will establish my covenant." 
 It seems more probable that the writer intended the participle 
 in V. " to be taken as singular. The following pKH HK then 
 makes a diflBculty; the nx may be understood as preposition (so 
 Sept. and most moderns), but the statement that man is to 
 * See the Cambridge text of Brooke and McLean. 
 
POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 6 
 
 be destroyed "with" the earth does not suit the general line of 
 thought of the paragraph, in which not the earth in itself but 
 man is the offending thing.* Comparison with vv. ^^- ' suggests 
 the reading ^j;d instead of nS (so Olshausen) — man is to be de- 
 stroyed from off the earth; the emendation requires a not too 
 violent change.f However the text may be dealt with, it does not 
 appear that we are warranted in seeing in it a polytheistic con- 
 ception. 
 
 In 18^' ^ the three men, Abraham's visitors, appear to speak as 
 if they were equals in dignity: together they accept or permit 
 his hospitality: " they said, so do." This is not unnatural, since 
 all three are guests; but in v. * the three call for Sarah with a 
 tone of authority: " they said, AVhere is Sarah thy wife ? " This 
 association of the two with the one will be considered below 
 (under division 4) — here only a word respecting the plural form 
 of the verb. Again the contextual use suggests doubt: "they 
 said. Where is Sarah ? . . . and he said, I will return." While, 
 as will be pointed out below, the use of plurals in the narrative 
 is intelligible, in this particular instance there seems to be no 
 propriety in the variation of number except on the supposition 
 of a monotheistic revision of the text. A scribal slip of the 
 pen is possible. Codex A of Sept. has the singular in v. ^- ^, 
 but in V. ^ not a few cursives and a couple of uncials have the 
 plural. 
 
 In 20^^ Abraham says to Abimelek: "when Elohim caused me 
 to wander" (ipnn); the versions have the divine name and the 
 verb singular, and elsewhere in the chapter the Hebrew has 
 singular verbs with Elohim. The plural in v.^^ seems to be a 
 scribal slip; it is hardly due to the fact that Abraham is speaking 
 to a polytheist (Dillmann), for in that case he would more prob- 
 ably have used the article with Elohim: "the gods," etc.; nor 
 does it seem likely that the plural is employed to secure agree- 
 ment between the subject and the verb — we should not look for 
 such grammatical nicety in a scribe, and besides, if here, why 
 not frequently elsewhere? In 35^ the article is prefixed to 
 Elohim and the verb is plural; but this passage will be considered. 
 
 * "Earth" is here the world as a mass of hiiraan beings, = "mankind." 
 t The D may have fallen out from preceding a; s and ;• are often interchanged;; 
 h and n are not very different. An emendation to p is less probable. 
 
4 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 below. In the other cases mentioned above it appears, for the 
 reasons given, improbable that polytheistic statements are in- 
 tended. The supposition of scribal error is supported by the 
 occurrence of a plural verb in Ps. 58^^ ^^^\ where there is nothing 
 in the rest of the psalm to suggest that the writer had in mind a 
 plurality of gods. In oV^ the plural verb is justified by the fact 
 that two deities, the god of Abraham and the god of Nahor, are 
 mentioned; the conception may be polytheistic — it is not clear 
 from Genesis what Nahor's cult was. Several cases of plural 
 predicates, besides that of Ps. 58, occur outside of Genesis, 
 particularly in Deuteronomic diction, Deut. 5'^ ^-^\ 1 Sam. 17^*- ^^ 
 Jer. 10^^ 23^^ Josh. 24^^ and so perhaps 2 Sam. 7^^; * the use of 
 such forms is not in itself a sign of early date.f 
 
 2. In regard to the form DTI^Nn it is sufficient to say that it is 
 used in Genesis alongside of the anarthrous form apparently at 
 random; see 20«- ", 27^«, 35^- '■ ^ 45^- «, 48^^ and for ^NH and 
 DTi^S 46^. The arthrous form may be significant in certain 
 connections — every occurrence must be examined separately. 
 
 3. Other gods besides Yahweh are mentioned by name in 
 Genesis: El Elyon 14^«--"- "; El Shaddai 17^; Teraphim 31^»- '*; 
 to these may be added Gad and Asher 30"- ^l The Teraphim 
 in this case are the gods of the Aramean Laban, carried off by 
 Rachel, apparently to secure the protection of her ancestral house- 
 hold divinities. They represent a very early cult, found now in 
 half-civilized communities (for example, in Samoa, and, till 
 lately, in Hawaii). They appear to be recognized as deities by 
 Jacob, though no such cult is attributed to him. J But, as they 
 continued to be worshipped by the Israelites, forming a recognized 
 part of the private and the public cults, till a late period (I Sam. 
 19^^ Hos. 3*, cf. Zech. 10"), the reference to them is not a definite 
 mark of date. 
 
 Elyon occurs in only one section of Genesis and there as 
 epithet of El. The name is found alone not earlier than the 
 seventh century (Num. 24^^ Deut. 32®), and all its occurrences 
 but the two just mentioned are still later. That the Melkisedek 
 
 * Cf. Ges.-Kautzsch, § 124^-', 145'. 
 t Ex. 22'(*> may show early polytheism. 
 
 X The putting away of foreign gods, 35", belongs to a late stratum of the 
 narrative. 
 
POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 5 
 
 story is very late* appears from the use of the late poetic name 
 Salem for Jerusalem (cf. Ps. 76^ ^"^). Elyon, if we may trust 
 the statement of Philo of Byblos (Elioun) was an ancient Phoeni- 
 cian deity, and not, improbably, therefore old Canaanitish also. 
 The combination El Elyon appears to represent not a coalescence 
 of two independent divine names, but rather, as is suggested 
 above, a reduction of the second name to an epithet — a natural 
 procedure. In the mind of the Old Testament writers El Elyon 
 (and also Elyon alone) is identical with Yahweh. 
 
 The origin and meaning of the name Shaddai (as it is pointed 
 in the Masoretic text) are uncertain.f In Genesis it is always 
 attached to the name El: 17^ 28^ 35", 43", 48^ 49='' (read bH for 
 ns). It is found in the Pentateuch outside of Genesis in Num. 
 244. 10^ £^ g3. Q^]^Qj. occurrences are of the sixth century or 
 later. The obscure poems in Num. 24 are certainly not earlier 
 than the regal period, and v. *^ appears to be much later than 
 this period. Gen. 49 appears to have been composed in the 
 regal period (so v. ^°). The name Shaddai does not suggest an 
 early date or a polytheistic point of view; in Ex. 6^ for example, 
 it is a designation of Yahweh. This latter passage leads us to 
 expect a more frequent use of the name in Genesis than is actu- 
 ally the case. Yahweh there says that he appeared to Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob under the name El Shaddai, and that he was 
 not known to them by his name Yahweh (or, as the Greek has 
 it, did not make his name Yahweh known to them). Yet 
 Shaddai occurs only once in the history of Abraham (17^), once 
 in that of Isaac (28^), and four times in that of Jacob. Possibly 
 in the course of various recensions some occurrences of the name 
 have disappeared. 
 
 Gad and Asher are divine names,J and the tribal names may 
 have been derived from the names of the deities, but there is no 
 consciousness of such relation in Genesis; the popular etymol- 
 ogies in ch. 30 proceed in a different direction. The deriva- 
 tion in question, if it be correct, was hardly in the minds of the 
 
 * It may be kept apart from the preceding portion of ch. 14; the crit'cal 
 considerations in the two sections are different. 
 
 t See Driver, Genesis, E.xcurs. I. 
 
 X For Gad see Is. 65". Asher probably appears in Phcen. n'^c-itr'N. Cf. 
 Ass. Ashur (see Jastrow, Rel. Bab. Ass., Enghsh and German editions). 
 
6 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 Old Testament writers. Worship of Gad appears only very 
 late (Is. 65"). 
 
 4. The deity is sometimes associated with other superhuman 
 beings. It is generally recognized that in Gen. V^ Elohim, an 
 individual figure, takes counsel with other beings respecting the 
 creation of man, and those beings are necessarily divine — they 
 belong to the Elohim class (the B'ne Elohim), or, what amounts 
 to the same thing, they are angels. The conception here is 
 definitely polytheistic, but, though Gen. 1 may contain very old 
 ideas, it does not appear that this particular polytheistic repre- 
 sentation can be taken to point to an early date for the chapter. 
 Substantially the same sort of conception of divine beings is 
 found in the Job prologue, where these Elohim beings are asso- 
 ciated with Yahweh in the administration of the affairs of the 
 world, and one of them, there called the Adversary, but not the 
 less a trusted agent of the supreme deity, is particularly con- 
 cerned with human life. The prologue is later than Zech. 3, 
 and, though it may rest on a popular story, it must embody a 
 conception current in the sixth century or later. If a divine 
 lieutenant of Yahweh could deal with the moral development of 
 men, similar beings might have a part in the original creation of 
 the race. The general conception of creation in Gen. 1 is a 
 noble one — it belongs to a period of reflection,* not to a crude stage 
 of national life. The polytheistic tinge, with headship for Yah- 
 weh, continues late in the history, and the conception in 3^^ 11' 
 would in all probability be not unnatural for an intelligent and 
 pious man of the eighth century. The same thing may be said 
 of the picture in ch. 18 — precedence for Yahweh, and a sub- 
 stantially divine role for his two companions. If it be supposed 
 that in the original form of the story there were three equal 
 gods, still the present form belongs after the establishment of 
 the primacy of Yahweh. 
 
 Under this head we may consider the serpent of Gen. 3. The 
 story in Gen. 2, 3 is an jetiological myth — it accounts for the loss 
 of paradise and other things. Ch. 3 appears, however, to be com- 
 posite; there is the story of the temptation and the story of the 
 
 * So the explanation of the sacredness of the Sabbath is superior in dignity 
 to that given elsewhere in the Pentateuch; omitting national experiences and 
 ritual details, it bases the law on the method of the divine creative work. 
 
POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 7 
 
 curse. In the latter the serpent is a mere beast, in the former 
 he belongs in the Elohim circle, he knows what will be the con- 
 sequence for the human pair of eating the forbidden fruit. So 
 far as regards the conception of a serpent god we have the state- 
 ment of 2 Kg. 18* that a bronze image of a serpent was wor- 
 shipped in Jerusalem down to the end of the eighth century.* 
 But the serpent of Genesis is apparently hostile to Yahweh. 
 The element of hostility may be an echo of the old cosmogonic 
 dragon myth, here reduced in proportions and socialized: the 
 supreme deity has become the owner of a private garden, and the 
 serpent god is a plotter in anthropomorphic style, appealing to 
 the woman in terms of human logic; such humanizing of deities 
 was not uncommon in the ancient world. The whole story 
 shows interest in sociological philosophy, while the conception 
 of supernatural agencies is not out of keeping with the ideas of 
 the regal period.f 
 
 5. A certain polytheistic coloring appears in passages in which 
 Yahweh or Elohim is spoken of as a god of limited relations, 
 seeming thus to be one of many. Yahweh is the god of Shem 
 (9-^) or of Abraham and Isaac (28^^) ; J Jacob calls him " the 
 God of my father" (31^), the father being sometimes Abra- 
 ham, sometimes Isaac (in 3V^ the "Fear of Isaac"). Laban 
 invokes the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, as if they 
 were different deities (31^^), and he is represented as being 
 acquainted with Yahweh by name (24^°); throughout ch. 24 
 Abraham's servant styles Yahweh "the God of my master"; 
 Elohim in a vision announces himself to Jacob as "the God 
 of thy father" (46'), or (in Sept.) "the God of thy fathers." 
 In 33^° we should read, with Septuagint, "he called on the 
 God of Israel" (an altar could not be called, as the Hebrew 
 has it. El Elohe Israel). The larger title "the God of heaven 
 and earth" occurs in 24' (and v. '' in the Greek). Similarly 
 Jacob cites Yahweh as calling himself the God of Bethel (3P'). 
 More definitely a deity is described as the one who appeared to 
 a man at a certain time: "the Elohim who appeared to thee" 
 
 * The seraphim of Is. 6 perhaps represent original serpent gods elevated or 
 subordinated to the rank of attendants on Yahweh. 
 t Cf. the crude ideas in 1 Kg. W\ 2 Kg. 3'^ Is. 8'^ 
 t Omit, with Sept., the second Yahweh. 
 
8 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 (35*), " the Elohim who answered me" (35^); Jacob built an altar 
 and called the place Bethel,* because there the Elohim revealed 
 themselves (plural verb), apparently with reference to the angels 
 (ch. 28), here called gods, but perhaps the plural of the Hebrew 
 is scribal error (Sept. has singular). f There are, further, epithets: 
 El roi (16*^), perhaps "the god who is seen" (theophany) and El 
 olam (2V^) "the god of olden times" (the god handed down by 
 tradition). 
 
 These designations of deities reveal an atmosphere of poly- 
 theistic thought. Such descriptions are found abundantly out- 
 side of Israel, in Babylonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Greece, and 
 Rome. In ancient society every clan was an independent unit, 
 and had its own god or gods, and any place in which a deity was 
 supposed to reveal himself might furnish a name for him. A 
 man inherited his god from his fathers, and cherished him as a 
 part of the family possessions; and he valued any spot where he 
 became aware of a divine presence. These conceptions survived 
 outside of Israel into comparatively enlightened times — are there 
 traces of them in the Old Testament in the historical books and 
 other records of opinion? The naturalness of the titles God 
 of Shem, God of Israel, is obvious: according to Deut. 32^^-, 
 Yahweh, having divided the world out among the peoples, chose 
 Israel as his portion, thus leaving other nations to other gods; 
 he was specifically the God of Israel, and hence, in the later 
 genealogical construction, the God of the ancestor Shem, who is 
 marked off from other early ancestors. The value of the tradi- 
 tion of the fathers is expressed in Deut. 32". The nearer great 
 ancestor, Abraham, is naturally prominent — throughout the Old 
 Testament times his name is employed to describe the relation 
 of Yahweh to his people: so in Ex. 3^ Deut. 9", 1 Kg. 18'^ 
 1 Ch. 29*«, 2 Ch. 30^ Ps. 47*» ^'\ cf. Is. 5P. 
 
 Designations of a deity by a shrine are rare in the Old Testa- 
 ment; some of these may have disappeared in the course of the 
 revision of the text. Am. 8** speaks of the gods of Samaria, 
 Dan, and Beersheba, and Samaria may here include Bethel — 
 cf. Hos. 10^: "for the calf [so Sept.] of Bethaven [probably = 
 
 * So Sept.; El Bethel, as in the Hebrew, is an impossible name for a place. 
 t In 27^' '• there seems no ground for seeing a distinction between Yahweh 
 who blesses a field and Elohim who bestows fatness. 
 
POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 9 
 
 Bethel] the inhabitants of Samaria shall tremble." Bethel is the 
 only place from which an Elohim is named in Genesis. It was 
 a prominent shrine down to the destruction of Samaria (1 Sam. 
 7^", 2 Kg. 2^^), but was denounced by Amos and Hosea as hostile 
 to the Yahweh cult (Am. 4*, Hos. 4^'*) ; after the fall of Samaria 
 the worship of Yahweh was resumed at Bethel (2 Kg. 17^^), but 
 the place, according to 2 Kg. 23^^ was destroyed by Josiah — it 
 reappears, however, in Nehemiah's time (Neh. 7^^), though, natu- 
 rally, it is not then spoken of as a shrine. Down to the middle 
 of the eighth century, then, it was esteemed a sacred place, and 
 the traditions of that time connected it with Jacob (Hos. 12^); 
 there is no reason why the story of his relation to the place might 
 not have been redacted in the ninth or eighth century — as a matter 
 of course God would appear to him on this sacred spot. The 
 theophanies appear to be legendary traditions that grew up as 
 explanation of the name Bethel.* The place, it is said, was 
 originally called Luz. The date of the change of name is un- 
 certain; it may have been at the conquest of the city, as is sug- 
 gested in Jd. V^ ^- — the conquerors might desire to stamp it with 
 a name of their own devising, in this case a name expressing its 
 character as an old shrine, and legend would then connect it 
 with the tribal ancestor. 
 
 Of the precise origin and significance of the epithets in El roi 
 and El olam we have no information beyond the statements in 
 Genesis. The latter name appears to refer to the ancestral 
 deity. The former name would be appropriate for any theoph- 
 any. It here belongs to a shrine or sacred place in the Arabian 
 desert, and its mention, it may be supposed, springs from the 
 local interest that led the narrator to give so much space to the 
 story of Hagar.f 
 
 6. In certain passages in Genesis the term Elohim appears to 
 denote "divine being" in general, and thus to belong to the poly- 
 theistic circle of ideas. Abraham is declared by Yahweh to be 
 a "fearer of Elohim" (22*'), a God-fearing man, and Joseph 
 refuses to "sin against Elohim" (39^). No particular deity is 
 mentioned — the word Elohim expresses a standard of conduct 
 
 * There are two accounts of the origin of the name, in Gen. 28 and 35. 
 t The name Hagar appears to represent a desert tribe to which the border 
 Israelites felt themselves to be akin; cf. art. "Hagar," in Encijcl. Bibl. 
 
10 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 resident in a superhuman person.* Whatever the precise force 
 of the term in such cases, the usage is not confined to Genesis: 
 the expression " man of God," of frequent occurrence in the Old 
 Testament (Deut. 33S 1 Sam. 2^^ 2 Kg. 1-8 al.) means a man 
 devoted to God, standing in intimate relation with him, and the 
 Elohim may be any god to whom the man is devoted. Since an 
 abstract expression for deity is out of the question for this early 
 time, it is possible that Elohim in such cases as those just men- 
 tioned meant originally the local god or the god of the individual 
 man concerned; but if so, the persistence of the usage makes it 
 impossible to regard it as a mark of date.f 
 
 In this connection may be mentioned the statement in 19^^ — the 
 destruction of the cities of the plain by Elohim. As the destruc- 
 tion is described at length in the preceding part of the chapter, this 
 verse is generally regarded as belonging to a separate document, 
 Elohim here doing what Yahweh does above. The statement of 
 the verse is introduced in a peculiar w^ay in Am. 4": Yahweh says: 
 "I have overthrown among you like Elohim's overthrowing of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah." It is strange that Yahweh does not say 
 "like my overthrowing" — he seems to distinguish between himself 
 and Elohim. The text may be in disorder; or the scribe, for- 
 getting for the moment that it is Yahweh that he represents as 
 speaking, simply puts down the account familiar to him, and 
 fails to perceive any inconcinnity. The Elohim in Gen. 19^® 
 may be the local god, later identified with Yahweh, or may be 
 the God of Israel, whom the writer, for whatever reason, chooses 
 so to call. 
 
 7. We have, finally, to consider the role played by angels in 
 Genesis. The familiar fact is that the angel sometimes speaks 
 as if he were an independent god, and there is sometimes a quiet 
 identification of the angel of Yahweh with Yahweh (16^"- ^^, 
 22" ^■), or of the angel of Elohim with Elohim (31"- ''). The 
 Elohim of 35^ (if the verb be taken as plural) are the angels of 
 28'^ and the "man" of 32-^ (called "angel" in Hos. 12*) is later 
 revealed as Elohim. The natural inference from these repre- 
 sentations is that the angels are old gods. We are thus intro- 
 duced to a period in Israelite history when the land was full of 
 
 * Cf. the use of Elohim as a superlative, as in 1 Sam. 14>'. 
 
 t It is employed by writers who habitually use the name Yahweh. 
 
POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 11 
 
 native gods, as was the case with other ancient lands. Probably 
 every shrine had its local deity or deities, around whom stories 
 would grow up. Such a shrine was Peniel ("face of God"), the 
 origin of which name is given in the story in ch. 28, and there is 
 added the explanation of why the Israelites did not eat a certain 
 sinew.* In the course of time these figures were subordinated to 
 Yahweh or to the supreme Elohim, and the two systems were 
 sometimes mingled in the later narratives, a given act being 
 attributed now to the angel, now to the supreme god. 
 
 The "angel of Yahweh" is a distinct figure from Yahweh — a 
 god cannot be his own messenger or agent — but his procedure is 
 sometimes of the same character as that of Yahweh. Nor is 
 the role of the angel of Yahweh different in nature from that of 
 any other angel — the "man" of ch. 28 acts with the same inde- 
 pendent masterfulness as the angel of ch. 16; the "angel of 
 Yahweh" is merely the angel who happens to act for his divine 
 principal on any particular occasion. The nominal interchange 
 between the two in a narrative is probably not due to a desire on 
 the part of the narrator to indicate their functional identity; this 
 identity he assumes — what is said by the angel he means to be 
 taken as the word of Yahweh — but the fact was understood and 
 no demonstration was needed. Possibly the explanation of the 
 interchange is to be sought in the supposition that in the original 
 story the actor was a local god who later became an angel, and 
 that the divine name was introduced in the course of redaction; 
 in such a case the redactor would not be conscious of inconcinnity, 
 holding, as he did, that the act of the angel was virtually the act 
 of Yahweh. 
 
 If this view of the origin of the angel as an old native god be 
 correct, the question arises as to when the new name arose, when, 
 that is, the old god was converted into a maVak, a messenger or 
 agent of Yahweh or Elohim. The paucity of data for the early 
 history makes it difficult to give a definite answer to this question. 
 In the earlier Old Testament documents angels are a part of the 
 popular scheme of supernatural beings: Jd. 6" ^-y 13^- ^ Num. 
 22'^ 2 Sam. 24^«, 1 Sam. 29' (the Philistine Akish), 2 Sam. 14" 
 (the woman of Tekoa), 1 Kg. 13^® — they belong to folk-lore. 
 They are kept distinct from spirits (which have not the form of 
 * Cf. J. G. Frazer, in Anthrop. Essays Presented to Tylor. 
 
12 POLYTHEISM IN GENESIS 
 
 gods proper) and from baals (who are non-Israelite deities). 
 The employment of the term "angels" tells nothing about the 
 date of its introduction; once adopted, it would be used generally 
 by the editors of the documents. The process of transformation 
 would naturally go hand in hand with the elevation of Yahweh 
 to supremacy, of which one effect would be to reject or subordi- 
 nate the inferior gods. The prophets of the eighth and seventh 
 centuries, engaged in a struggle for the sole worship of Yahweh, 
 appear to have ignored these latter. The only occurrence of the 
 word angel in those prophetic writings, in Hos. 12*, is in a folk- 
 story, and its employment perhaps indicates the path of trans- 
 formation: the "man" of Gen. 32^* becomes an "angel." Local 
 gods have always had a peculiarly strong hold on the affections 
 of the people. If that was the case in Israel, the religious leaders 
 would wisely seek not to banish but to incorporate these figures 
 — a method that has prevailed in all religions. The term " mes- 
 senger" was a natural name for them — they were the agents of 
 the supreme deity.* How soon this process began we have no 
 means of determining with exactness, but it seems to have been 
 virtually completed by the eighth century. The later history of 
 angels does not belong to the present inquiry. 
 
 The preceding investigation appears to show that, while the 
 Book of Genesis contains conceptions that may go back to a very 
 early period, the present form of the book points to a time near 
 the eighth century, or later, for its redaction. The subject is 
 confessedly obscure (as is true of all attempts at the reconstruc- 
 tion of remote times), and proposed explanations are to be under- 
 stood as hypotheses that must be constantly tested. The out- 
 come of the Israelite theistic development is clear, the history of 
 its growth is full of difficulties. It is particularly hard to decide 
 what part of the development is common Semitic and what 
 part is specifically Israelite, and in this latter how much is to be 
 attributed to outside influence. On these points future discov- 
 eries may throw light. 
 
 Harvard University, 
 May, 1910. 
 
 * So the Assyrian Nusku and the Greek Iris. 
 
II 
 
 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 (2 Samuel 2=9) 
 By William R. Arnold 
 
 The word \T\r\2 occurs only once in the Old Testament (2 
 Sam. 2^®), in the account of Abner's retreat to Mahanaim after 
 his disastrous trial of strength with David's army at the pool of 
 Gibeon. The Masoretic text is: ^3 niinya ID^n VtTJHI n:n«1 
 
 The King James Version renders this verse, "And Abner and 
 his men walked all that night through the plain, and passed over 
 Jordan, and went through all Bithron, and they came to Ma- 
 hanaim." Except for the correct substitution of the proper 
 name "the Arabah" for "the plain," and the incorrect substitu- 
 tion of "went" for "walked," the Revised Version retains sub- 
 stantially the rendering of the Authorized. 
 
 In the view that p"in3n — whether descriptive, appellative, or 
 proper name — stands for some geographical or topographical 
 quantity, some route, district, or region lying east of Jordan, 
 between the ford which was crossed by Abner and the city of 
 Mahanaim, our English versions follow the prevailing tradition of 
 translators and exegetes, both ancient and modern. But a con- 
 siderable degree of uncertainty, as to the more exact character of 
 this term, seems to have existed, nevertheless, from the earliest 
 times. 
 
 The Alexandrian Greek texts have: Kal hie^atvov tov 
 *lopBdvT]v Kai eiropevO-qaav okrjv rrjv irapareivovaav , Kal ep')(pvTat 
 m TTjv Trape/x^oXijv, There are no variants worth mentioning.* 
 Wellhausen, forty years ago, wrote: "jlin^n wird auch der 
 
 * See Holmes and Parsons, ad loc. *Etj irape^iSoXdj Ma5ta/« of the " Lucianic'* 
 manuscripts is both conflate and corrupt. 
 
 13 
 
14 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 LXX vorgelegen haben als jnnn = TrapareCvovtra, Bei Ortsnamen 
 ist dergleichen am ehesten begreiflich, vgl. Chaifa Kaiphas, 
 Milano Mailand, Mars la Tour Marsch retour u. a.";* that is, 
 the Greek construes the word as a proper name and renders 
 by a punning Greek equivalent. That such fanciful phonetic 
 equations were not foreign to the Alexandrian translators, Well- 
 hausen has sufficiently well shown.f But the assumption of a 
 reading jJl^^ is far-fetched, and would perhaps not be main- 
 tained by Wellhausen himself at the present time. Trapareiva) 
 occurs in the Greek texts of the Old Testament some half-dozen 
 times,t always with the meaning to extend, to stretch out, to be 
 outlying, and prevailingly in topographical contexts.§ The 
 Greek rendered our passage, Aiid they crossed the Jordan, and 
 traversed the entire outlying region, and arrived at the camp 
 (Mahanaim). Whether the translator construed jlin^ as a 
 proper name or as an appellative remains, to be sure, uncertain. 
 But it is apparent that no derivative of Hebrew *in3 will support 
 his rendering. The interpretation v Trapareivovaa is, in my 
 judgment, obviously based on Aramaic IJli, after, or some deriv- 
 ative thereof, such as ni<"in3 or ^<n''"ini, posterior, postremu^; 
 
 cf. Syriac lla-iLs, posterioritas.]\ ^n^ (or inx^) occurs already 
 
 in Daniel 2^®, 7^^ Possibly the translator supposed the word to 
 have been the Aramaic proper name of a trans- Jordanic territory; 
 or he may have adopted the rendering as a counsel of despair, 
 though construing the word as a Hebrew appellative. At all 
 events, since Aramaic ^r\2 is itself compounded of the preposi- 
 tion 2 and *inx spot, place, track, to account for the Greek inter- 
 pretation is to reject it. 
 
 Of the later Greek versions, we know only that Aquila ren- 
 dered jnnnn as a proper name, ^edcopwv.^ The usual Greek 
 spelling of Hebrew pmn n''i being ^aidcopmv, it is extremely 
 
 * Der Text der Bilcher Samuelis, p. 156. 
 
 t L. c, pp. 10 f., note. 
 
 X See Hatch and Redpath, Concordance to the Septuagint, p. 1065. 
 
 § With rb iraparetvov in rrjv eprjfwv the Greek correctly renders 'JO V '\pv:n 
 IDit^vn of Numbers 23^*, against the current and misleading "that looks down 
 upon " of modern interpreters. Balak took Balaam to the head of a ravine 
 (nWfl) that extended to (or looked out upon) the IC>B'\ 
 
 II See Payne Smith, Thesaurus, ad voc. jLs. 
 
 ^ Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt, I, p. 550. 
 
THE MEANING OP HEBREW BITHRON 15 
 
 improbable that Aquila had a different reading from our \T\r\2. 
 In construing it as a proper name, he merely followed the rab- 
 binical exegesis of his day. 
 
 The text of Aquila evidently suggested to Jerome the pro- 
 nunciation Bethoron for the word which he, too, understood as a 
 proper name: et transicrunt Jordanem et lustrata omni Bethoron 
 (some manuscripts and the official Vulgate have Beth horon) 
 vcnerunt ad castra; for there is no trace of a Hebrew jmn IV2 
 in any text of this passage. Vercellone * quotes the opinion of 
 Clericus to the effect that later scribes, and not Jerome, should be 
 held responsible for the Vulgate reading Beth horon instead of 
 Bithron. But Jerome's Onomasticon contains, under the rubric 
 Interpretaiiones secundi libri regum, the definition Bethoron 
 domus z>£P,t showing that, whether Jerome wrote Bethoron or 
 Beth horon — more probably the former — he identified the word 
 with the Hebrew proper name plin H*"^. Evidently he, too, was 
 more confused than informed upon the subject. 
 
 The Peshlta seems to have taken the bull by the horns, avoid- 
 ing the difficulties of translation by means of a bold paraphrase: 
 
 >->tf mViS oZ]o 'a-'-a > 'H^ °^l)o tt'?'^-* oi>a^o 
 
 And they crossed the Jordan, and marched in the direction of 
 Geshur, and reached Mahanaim.X The only light this version 
 sheds upon our problem is that the translator admittedly did not 
 quite understand his Hebrew, and had manifestly never heard 
 of such a locality as " the Bithron." 
 
 Jewish rabbinical tradition has followed the most comfortable 
 course by explaining pin^H as a geographical proper name. 
 So the Targum of Jonathan: inS"! ]inn:i h'2 I^TXI mnn*" ]!•• 'n:ij?"'1 
 Cino^. Similarly the mediaeval commentators, § who do not 
 linger upon the subject. Rashi contents himself with two 
 words, TiriD Qil', name of a localitrj. David Qimhi: ^i^iT TinfS Dty 
 rh'^\^ yn^ i''"':y ^y p Snp: jll''^ nnya, name of a toivn and terrltonj 
 lying beyond the Jordan, and named accordingly, after the familiar 
 
 * Varice lediones vulgatce Latino; Bibliorum editionis, II, p. 326. 
 t Lagarde, Onomastica sacra,^ p. 68. 
 
 I I cite from the London polyglot; the Uriimiah edition has the same 
 text. 
 
 § See the Rabbinical Bibles. 
 
16 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 meaning of the word [having reference not to Hebrew, but to 
 Aramaic in^, and understanding the name as designating the 
 country behind or beyond Jordan]. 
 
 The sohtary non-topographical explanation of jlin^n which 
 I have found is that of the mediaeval lexicographer, Ibn Parhon 
 whose dictionary (a.d. 1160)* has this definition: pin^n b'D Iw'"'* 
 
 \^2n p3 j''«-ina cinnx miin ^•'nn tno 's : The meaning of \r\n2r. 
 
 is the rear guard, j*"X"in3 being Aramaic for CJIinS, (the last) of 
 the retreating troops. Ibn Parhon obviously construed the word 
 as subject of l^^"*, and, like the Alexandrian Greek version be- 
 fore him and David Qimhi after him, took it for a derivative of 
 Aramaic "in^. The interpretation is nothing more than a curi- 
 osity. But it is interesting to find one scholar to whom the con- 
 struction of jl^n^n bD as object of l^b** was not the most natural 
 one. 
 
 Coming to more modern authorities, Gesenius f interpreted 
 piil^n as an appellative: "regio montibus vallibusque dissecta, 
 vel vallis montes dissecans'^ ; rendering, et peragrata tota valle 
 venerunt Machanaim. He held that it makes little difference 
 whether the word be construed as a proper name or as an appel- 
 lative, since even the proper name will have originated from the 
 character of the place; the trans- Jordanic country being exceed- 
 ingly mountainous. 
 
 Recent lexicographers and commentators invariably explain 
 piriDn as a geographical term, some construing it as an appella- 
 tive, but most as a proper name. Gesenius-Buhl : " N. pr. einer 
 Schlucht an d. Ostseite d. Jordans." Brown-Driver-Briggs, mort' 
 cautiously: "prob. n. pr. terr. (cleft, ravine) E. of Jordan." 
 Siegfried and Stade: "n. pr., Ort am Jordan." Of commen- 
 taries and critical translations, Wellhausen has already been 
 cited. Kittel J renders: " durchschritten die ganze Schlucht 
 und gelangten so nach Mahanaim." Lohr § : " Ein Ort des 
 Namens findet sich sonst nicht; es muss (sie setzen iiber den 
 Jordan) eine Oertlichkeit jenseits des Jordans sein; eine be- 
 stimmte Bergschlucht welche vom Jordansufer nach Mahanaim 
 
 * Mahbereth ha'arUch, edited by S. G. Stern, Pressburg, 1844, p. 11 o. 
 
 t Thesaurus, s. v. 
 
 X In Kautzsch's Heilige Schrift des Alien Testaments. 
 
 § Die Bucher Samuelis, p. 130. 
 
THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 17 
 
 gerade emporfiihrt." Henry Preserved Smith *: "Abnerandhis 
 men marched in the Arahah all that night and crossed the Jordan 
 and went through the whole Bithron or Ravine, doubtless the 
 proper name of one of the side valleys up which Mahanaim was 
 situated." Nowack f renders: "zog durch die ganze Schlucht, 
 und kam nach Mahanaim," and remarks, " jliriin b'2 ist fraglich, 
 nur so viel ist klar, es muss eine Oertlichkeit jenseits des Jordans 
 sein, seiner Bedeutung nach ware es 'Kluft, Schlucht.'" Finally, 
 Budde t: "jliriin, nur hier, die Kluft, Schlucht, Klamm, muss 
 das Seitenthal sein, au dessen oberem Ende Mahanajim liegt, 
 also nach unserer Annahme . . . der heutige W. el-himar." § 
 
 The works on the geography of Palestine naturally conform 
 to the current interpretation of pljli. George Adam Smith 1]: 
 "Abner, after crossing Jordan, came through the Bithron or 
 Gorge, a name which suits the narrow central portion of the 
 Jordan Valley, to Mahanaim." Incidentally, it may be observed 
 that Smith fails to follow the narrative; the northward portion 
 of Abner's journey, which lay through that gorge (n^iyn), had 
 been accomplished before crossing the Jordan — unless we are 
 to maintain that HilJ^n and pin^n were two mutually exclusive 
 sections of the Ghor, with Mahanaim situated immediately on 
 the eastern edge of the latter. Buhl Tf is more in accord with 
 recent commentators, " Das 2 Sam. 2^^ genannte Bitron (entweder 
 nom. propr. od. appelL, etwa 'Kluft'), durch welches Abner auf 
 dem Wege nach Mahanaim hinaufging, kann man wohl am besten 
 mit W. 'aglun zusammenstellen; jedenfalls lief spater, wie es 
 scheint, ein Romerweg von aglun nach Mahanaim." 
 
 Now it can be shown that all the interpretations and opinions 
 cited above are fundamentally mistaken. The expression ITirOn 
 is not a geographical or topographical term, whether descriptive, 
 appellative, or proper name. The words pnn^n b^ are not the 
 direct object of the preceding *13^*"1, but constitute an adverbial 
 clause indicative of the time during which the march continued. 
 
 * Commentary on the Books of Samuel, p. 273. 
 t Handkommentar zum A. T., p.. 159. 
 I Kurzer Handkommentar zum A. T., p. 207. 
 
 § Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel, passes over the 
 troublesome passage without comment. 
 
 li Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 586, note 2. 
 If Geographic des alten Paldstina, p. 121. 
 
18 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 p^n^n bz cannot be the direct object of ^'2b*'^. It is true that 
 an accusative — without preposition — is sometimes used with "J^n 
 in the Hebrew of the Old Testament; but such accusative is 
 almost invariably an adverbial modifier, and not the direct ob- 
 ject of the verb. That such is the construction in the case of 
 accusatives of time will be readily conceded. So rh'hT] h'2 "ID^n, 
 in the verse we are discussing and in the following v. ^". But 
 the construction of "J^n in 13^n ntTK "jmn (Gn. 35^) differs in 
 no respect from that in "i^^n n'yTN D^tt"'" (Dt. 2"). A demon- 
 stration, perhaps superfluous, is furnished by the text of Je. 
 
 52^: nnn^n "[m '\:h^\ D"'nDnn']^n nyir "[m in':;*'!; as "]m cannot 
 
 be the direct object of fc^^** in the first case, it is not the direct 
 object of ^T\ in the second; they "go out by" such a road, 
 and they "travel by" such a road. In the same way presum- 
 ably must we construe such expressions as 11" "j^H of Is. 35^ 
 mni^ l^^** and even Jll^Tli "'^^n of Judges 5", although, since the 
 accusatives are indeterminate, one case would not be prejudiced 
 by admitting them to be direct objects. The passages in which 
 "]f?n must be given the transitive meaning traverse, march thro7igh, 
 are, as far as I can discover, only two: Dt. V^, l^il i"in!3 yD2T 
 
 Dn-'Ni ntrs* i^inn «mim ^n^n nmian bz nx, and we left Horeh 
 
 and traversed the whole of this great and terrible wilderness 
 ivhich ye have seen; Dt. 2^ HTH bl^T] "iniDn n« "jH^^ ^n"" mn'' 
 Yahwe was aivare of thy march through this great wilderness.* 
 These two passages are adduced by H. P. Smith in support of 
 the current interpretation of pnnDn b!D 'I3^'» of 2 Sam. 2^^t But 
 a closer study would have convinced him that they refute rather 
 than support his conclusion. The accusative is determinate in 
 the one case (imDH bz, na"II3n) as in the other (p"in:in ^D). 
 But in the Deuteronomy passages the particle ns shows we 
 are dealing with a direct object, whereas in the other, jTinisr! bz 
 being determinate, the absence of HN proves that we are not deal- 
 ing with a direct object. 
 
 * Driver, in Brown-Driver-Briggs, s.v. hn, holds that in these passages we 
 have a peculiar use of pn rather than a transitive use of n*?""!; but it is easier 
 to assume the latter than the former in so transparent a context. The case 
 is diiTerent in Dt. 9'^ (accusative of time). On the other hand, nin'> nn pni 
 -\hn ijN of Jud. 19'^ is imintelligible and certainly corrupt; see Moore's Com- 
 mentary, pp. 415 f. 
 
 t L. c, note. 
 
THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 19 
 
 But if ]Tin;in h'2 is an adverbial accusative and nevertheless 
 determinate, it can have reference only to time, and not to space; 
 for while jTiriin as an adverbial accusative, indicative of the 
 route taken, would perhaps be possible,* p'lnin b'D would be 
 entirely impossible. The expression pin^sn b'2 l^^"*"! of 2^^ is 
 exactly parallel to Th'hr\ h^ ^'2h'''\ of 2^" in the narrative of our 
 author. In v. -^ Abner and his men travel all the hithrbn and 
 arrive at Mahanaim; in v. ^^ Joab and his men travel all the 
 night and arrive at Hebron. |1"in2n is the name of a certain 
 fart of the twenty-four-hour day. 
 
 On the question as to what part of the day it designates, 
 etymology and the narrative of the author we are interpreting 
 combine to leave no doubt whatever. After the battle (2^^) 
 between the forces of Abner and those of Joab at the pool of 
 Gibeon (2^^), the Israelites fled before the pursuing Judeans 
 eastward toward the Arabah or Gorge of the Jordan Valley. 
 The course of this flight naturally led through the pyi)l 121D 
 (v. ^), that is, that part of The Wilderness ("12^I^^, stretching all 
 along the cultivated and inhabited country and separating the 
 latter from the Arabah) which lay parallel with the city of Gibeon. f 
 At sunset, the fugitive Israelites reach a site in the "liSlD called 
 "iSX rij?;33, so little known to his readers that the author locates 
 it as lying opposite rT'i on the road through the pyii *12'TD 
 (v.^).t There they effect a rally of all their forces, and take their 
 
 * Note, however, that our author says na-ijja 13*^^, not ^a-tyn. 
 
 t pj?3J i3nD is not "the pasture land of Gibeon," which, the commentators 
 in their bewilderment correctly point out, could hardly be the rallying-point for 
 the Israelites at sunset, after their long flight away from the pool of Gibeon; 
 but that part of the common wilderness, nancn, which lies alongside of 
 Gibeon. So ^n lano |ij;d -(3id> SNn> i3i3> j?ipn nann refer to those sections of 
 the great wilderness lying between civilization and the Arabah which faced 
 these several towns respectively. The expression is in all respects analogous 
 to inT" j-n'', the Jordan at Jericho. And naicn, par excellence, is as much of 
 a proper name as na^yn. 
 
 X It is not at all to the point that to us nu is as little known as ncN rjraj 
 itself. The author was not writing for us, but for his contemporaries; and 
 defeated troops are frequently content with a very insignificant village in 
 sight of which to come to terms with their pursuers. For the rest, it would 
 be hard to find a passage in the Old Testament where learning has done more 
 to make confusion worse confounded. The most nearly correct rendering of 
 2 Sam. 2-* which I can find is that of the English Authorized Version. The 
 Septuagint, Vulgate, and Luther all misconstrue at one or more points; but 
 
20 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 stand upon a single knoll (v.^^), while Abner implores Joab to 
 call a halt to the baneful slaughter (v.^^). Whereupon Joab 
 withdraws his followers from the pursuit, and the two armies 
 march back to their respective headquarters, Abner to Mahanaim, 
 and Joab to Hebron. The author tells how long it took each 
 army to reach home. Leaving n!2X D])2^ (east, or perhaps east 
 by north, of Gibeon) at sunset (v.^^), and stopping first on the 
 route of the pursuit to recover his brother's body, then, late at 
 night, at Bethlehem to inter the body in the tomb of his fathers 
 (v.^^), Joab continues his march through the night and reaches 
 Hebron at sunrise of the next day (v.^"). Abner, on the other 
 hand, marches northward through the Arabah, along the west 
 bank of the Jordan, all through the night, crosses the Jordan in 
 the morning, and, marching all the |l"in3, arrives at Mahanaim. 
 It is clear from this narrative that pir^n is less than twelve 
 hours, for there is no mention of sunset or evening of the ensuing 
 day. jl"inj3n is therefore a fraction of the (twelve-hour) day. 
 
 If now we turn to the following chapter 4, we may see how 
 much time, in the estimation of this our author, the journey be- 
 tween the Jordan and Mahanaim ordinarily consumed. There 
 the two assassins of Ishbaal travel in the reverse direction. They 
 commit the murder in the palace at Mahanaim at noon (DITI DHI^), 
 while Ishbaal is enjoying his noon siesta {^y^'Ci nX y2'^ i<im 
 D''"in*.iri).* Then, carrying with them the head of Ishbaal, they 
 hasten to David at Hebron, spending the whole night in travel- 
 ling southward through the Arabah {rh'^bn b'2 riDnyn '^'11 ^'2h^'\). 
 The character of their burden would admit of no delay. The 
 author does not tell us at what point of time on the ensuing day 
 
 all come nearer to a correct understanding of the Hebrew than do modern 
 scholars, who, following Wellhausen in one of the moments when he nodded, 
 have continued to wrestle vigorously with difficulties of their own creation. 
 If we but perceive that tm is adverbial accusative and construct to the com- 
 pound PJ73J nam, we have no difficulty whatever with the Masoretic text, 
 which there is no reason to believe the Septuagint's Hebrew differed from 
 materially. There was a well-known road running through the i3id, where 
 the latter was known as the pj?3j nanc, do-siTi to the Arabah, and called •]-\•^ 
 |ij;3J i3i?D. Along this road lay the town or village of nu, and across the road 
 from it, perhaps some distance back, the height called J^cn njjaj^ on one of 
 whose knolls or foot-hills Abner rallied his men for a final stand. 
 
 * 2 Sam. 4*; the authentic text is continued with the word mon of v. ''; 
 V. ° and V. '' to laaa'D are palpable marginal annotations. 
 
THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 21 
 
 they reached Hebron; but it is clear that he wishes us to under- 
 stand that the time from noon of the first day, when the assassina- 
 tion took place, to evening, when they began their all-night journey 
 through the Ghor, was spent in traversing the distance between 
 Mahanaim and the Ghor, where they would presumably cross 
 the Jordan by the same ford that Abner used on his retreat. 
 The time consumed in covering the distance from the Jordan to 
 Mahanaim was, therefore, in the opinion of our author, half a 
 day. 
 
 Judging from the context of the narrative, then, pinnn is the 
 half-day, and, in this particular context, the forenoon. 
 
 The root of the word ]T\r\2 would of itself have led to the same 
 conclusion. For the verb "in^ does not mean to cleave asunder, 
 as is assumed in the interpretation cleft, ravine,* valley, but very 
 distinctly to cut into two symmetrical halves: Gn. 15^^ Abram 
 cuts 0^^*!) the various animals straight through the middle and 
 lays each half ("inzi) over against its mate (inyi); Je. 34^^^-, the 
 calf which they divided into two {U^y^h ^TT\'2) and 'passed between 
 its halves ('l'»"in3) . . . all the 'people of the land that passed 
 between the halves of the calf (iin^ |"'3 □"•"l^yn pxn DJ? ^D 
 ^jyn). This covers all the occurrences of the root *in2 in the 
 Old Testament but one, which will be mentioned below. Ety- 
 mologically, therefore, jTin^n will be a period of time charac- 
 terized as the symmetrical half of something. But forenoon and 
 afternoon were the only two such periods known to the calen- 
 dar of the age, which lacked our artificial midnight. 
 
 As regards the form ji^t^p, I need but point out that it is pre- 
 cisely that which we should expect, by analogy, for such a deriv- 
 ative with specific connotation. Compare ji"lDn deficit, from 
 ipn lack; pin*' surplus, from "IH^ remainder; pi*"'n exterior, from 
 |*in outside; |i;D''n interior, from ^^'H inside; (i"ini< last, from "in^? 
 hinder part; |iiyK"l first, from ITNI head. ]T\r\2 is accordingly 
 essentially an adjectival denominative, derived from in2 (sym- 
 metrical) half. With the article it becomes idiomatic for the 
 half-day. 
 
 * The exact Hebrew for cleft, ravine, is njO£3. That njosn, whenever it 
 occurs in the Old Testament, is a ravine and not a mountain, I hope to show 
 in a future paper. 
 
22 THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRON 
 
 As an appellative with this sense \T\T\2 should accordingly 
 be added to our Hebrew lexicography. And 2 Sam. 2^^ should 
 be rendered: And Ahner and his men marched through the 
 Arabah all that night, then crossed the Jordan, and, marching all 
 the forenoon, arrived at Mahanaim. 
 
 It should be noted, in passing, that the Hebrew has no other 
 means of expressing the idea of forenoon or half-day. As is cor- 
 rectly emphasized in Brown-Driver-Briggs, 1p3 is never equiva- 
 lent to our English morning in the sense of a period of time. 
 
 With this result achieved, some light may perhaps be thrown 
 on the only remaining Old Testament passage that contains the 
 root *in2, Song of Songs 2^^, which, in spite of some fanciful 
 conjectures, has remained completely enigmatical. "iri3 '•"in of 
 this passage is seen to be exactly analogous to t^l """in of Je. 
 13*'. If in the latter case we have mountains of turilight, in 
 the former we probably have mountains of the (completed) half 
 = mountains of noon day = mountains at noon time. The lover 
 is besought not to hurry away, but to linger motionless like the 
 hart upon the mountains in the noonday heat. 
 
 Finally, if our conclusions have been correct, we have one 
 important datum toward determining the site of Mahanaim. 
 We know for a certainty that it was a half-day's journey from 
 the Jordan. If Joab took about twelve hours to journey from 
 niSS nj?;n;i, in the I^ID facing Gibeon, to Hebron, a distance 
 of some twenty-five to thirty miles, Mahanaim was situated 
 some twelve to fifteen miles on the other side of Jordan, probably 
 in a north-easterly direction from the ford commonly crossed by 
 those journeying thither. The ruins of Mahne, as far as I can 
 judge of their location from Briinnow's map,* would comport 
 very well with this conclusion; for, if Abner travelled all night 
 up the Arabah before crossing the Jordan, Mahanaim certainly 
 lay north of the Jabbok.f 
 
 Andover Theological Seminary, 
 August, 1910. 
 
 * In Brunnow and Domascewski, Die Provincia Arabia. 
 t Cf. Gn. 32'. =^3. 
 
Ill 
 
 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 By Juuus a. Bewer 
 
 1. The Date of the Vision of the Almond Tree, !"• *^ 
 
 The genuineness of chap. 1, which was denied by Duhm, has 
 been so successfully defended by Stade and Cornill that it need 
 not again be proved. Its authenticity may therefore be assumed 
 without further argument. In regard, however, to the date of 
 w."' *^ a reconsideration appears to the present writer to be in 
 order. 
 
 The verses are usually taken together with the immediately 
 preceding inaugural vision and with the following vision of the 
 boiling caldron and dated from the same time. Yet it is clear, 
 as soon as the attempt is made to interpret them psychologically, 
 that they cannot come from the same time as vv.* ^- or vv.^' *^-, 
 for they presuppose a period of doubt and disappointment. The 
 essential point in the vision is that Yahweh is waking, watching 
 to fulfil his word, though all appearances may be against it. 
 Was there any reason why Jeremiah should doubt this at the 
 very outset? Did he need this kind of encouragement then? 
 Hardly! The kind of doubt and scruple he really had at that 
 time is described in v.*. Moreover, what is the content of the 
 word that Yahweh is to fulfil? How could Jeremiah know it? 
 So far it had not yet been given, up to this time he had received 
 nothing more than vv. ^"^^^"M Must we suppose that he divined 
 it all? But even if he did divine it, what reason can be given 
 why he should need this kind of a message at this time ? It was 
 surely not customary for prophets to doubt that Yahweh would 
 carry out his word, at the beginning of their prophetic career! 
 
 23 
 
24 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 No, the vision presupposes a time of disappointment and must 
 be the result of great and bitter soul-struggles. Jeremiah had 
 proclaimed Yahweh's word for some time, but it had not come 
 to pass. The Scythian storm had passed by without harming 
 Jerusalem. Things had settled down quietly; there seemed to 
 be no reason for Jeremiah's dark prophecies. He appears dis- 
 credited, and yet he knows himself to be a true prophet of 
 Yahweh. He cannot doubt the reality and genuineness of his 
 prophetic experiences. But how can it be that Yahweh's pre- 
 dictions remain unfulfilled ? The problem grows ever darker, 
 the stress ever greater, until at last he suddenly sees the solution 
 clearly in his soul in an ever memorable vision : Yahweh had not 
 forgotten his word, he was waking, watching to fulfil his purpoee. 
 
 Now, is it possible to suggest when Jeremiah had this vision ? 
 Erbt,* who is the only one besides the present writer f to per- 
 ceive that w. "• ^^ presuppose a period of activity on the part 
 of the prophet, places them "perhaps shortly before Josiah's 
 reformation." To the present writer the year 605 B.C. seems 
 the most probable date for such an experience. Not indeed for 
 the time of doubt but for the time of vision. We know how 
 memorable that year was for Jeremiah. It was then that he 
 felt constrained to write down his oracles. In chap. 36 we have 
 Baruch's report of it. Here in the narrative of this vision, !"• ", 
 Jeremiah himself tells us of the underlying spiritual experience 
 that made him so certain that the long proclaimed word of 
 Yahweh whose fulfilment men had doubted and denied was yet 
 to be fulfilled. Yahweh was watching after all. As the almond 
 tree wakes when other trees are still asleep in their deep winter's 
 sleep, so Yahweh was waking when others could not discern the 
 great movements of history, watching to fulfil his word. The 
 Scythian danger may have passed by without doing any harm: 
 Yahweh's word is nevertheless true, and will certainly be fulfilled. 
 The enemy from the north is coming: the Babylonian King 
 Nebuchadrezzar ! 
 
 It is clear now why Jeremiah put this little section before 
 w. *^ ^- in which he narrates the vision that announces the coming 
 
 * Jeremia und seine Zeit. Die Geschichte der letzten funfzig Jahre des vor- 
 exilischen Juda, 1902. The Preface is dated September 25th. 
 t Cf. A. J. Th., July, 1902, p. 516. 
 
EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 25 
 
 of the enemy from the north. This first chapter is an apologia 
 pro prophctia sua intended to present the credentials of his 
 prophethood, and so when he dictated in 605 B.C. the story of 
 his divine call and commission, he wrote directly after the in- 
 augural vision this later vision, in order to make it quite clear 
 that he was sure that Yahweh's word would be fulfilled. The 
 King and princes and people may not yet see it, Jeremiah knows 
 that Yahweh is watching over his word. And he wrote it before 
 the vision of the announcement of the northern enemy, in order 
 to anticipate the objection that the Scythians had, after all, not 
 come. The enemy from the north is coming, not the Scythian, 
 indeed, but the Chaldean army. Thus the insertion here at 
 this point is justified, and goes back to Jeremiah himself.* 
 Cornill is quite right when he says that there exists in any case 
 an inner connection between Jeremiah's call and the two follow- 
 ing visions. But as regards the first, it is not a connection in 
 time but in inner experience. 
 
 2. Interpretation and Date of 2'*-'^- ^'- " 
 
 The problems connected with Je. 2"'^^ are well known. But 
 though much thought has been spent on the interpretation of this 
 most difficult passage, no altogether satisfactory solution has 
 been arrived at. 
 
 One point, however, seems to be reasonably well established. 
 It was first seen by Ewald that vv. ""^^ do not originally belong 
 to the present context, which they interrupt. With this point we 
 may start. The whole chapter deals with the religious apostasy 
 of the people, except in vv.^^"^^ and in vv. ^^- ^^, for in these verses 
 Israelitish politics are treated. Elsewhere the lovers who are 
 causing the people to forsake Yahweh are the local deities, in 
 these latter verses the lovers are the nations on the banks of the 
 Euphrates and of the Nile. In subject-matter therefore vv. ""^* 
 and w.^*'- ^^ belong together and they must originally have stood 
 together, so that besides vv. ""^^ (Ewald, Cornill) also vv. ^^- ^^- ^^ 
 are not original in their present connection. They owe their 
 
 * Erbt believes its insertion here was due to an editor who placed the two 
 visions, vv. '^ '^ and vv. '^ », together because they have the same literary 
 form "What seest thou?" (Stichwort theory). 
 
26 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 present position to a redactor, but not their composition, for they 
 are doubtless of Jeremian authorship. As Hosea and Isaiah 
 before, so Jeremiah saw in foreign alliances a defection from 
 Yahweh. 
 
 It is apparent that w. ^®- ^^ do not continue the immediately 
 preceding verses, for they treat of something different. It is 
 equally apparent that v. ^^ belongs with vv. """, however difficult 
 and enigmatical the passage may seem to become by this con- 
 nection. Indeed, here is the crux inter pretum. Yet if it is 
 recognized that w. ""^® and vv. ^^- " belong together and that 
 vv. ^®- ^^ continue the thought of vv. ""^^, the difficulties will to 
 a large extent, if not altogether, disappear. This can best be 
 demonstrated by reproducing the original passage and elucidat- 
 ing it by a brief paraphrase. 
 
 ** Is Israel a servant ? is he a home-bom (slave) ? 
 Why then is he become a prey ? 
 
 *^ Against him the young lions roared,* 
 they uttered their voice; 
 And they made his land a desolation, f 
 without inhabitant. 
 
 " The children also of Noph and Tahpanhes 
 shaved off % the crown of thy head. 
 
 " Has X not procured this to thee 
 
 thy forsaking of Yahweh thy God? 
 
 *^ And now, § — what is the use of going to Egypt 
 to drink the waters of the Shihor? 
 Or what is the use of going to Assyria 
 to drink the waters of the River? 
 
 '* How exceedingly easy it is for thee 
 to change thy way ! 
 Thou shalt be put to shame by Egypt also, 
 as thou wast put to shame by Assyria. 
 
 * The perfect is to be read here. 
 
 t The Hebrew text adds here "his cities are burnt up." Duhm places this 
 at the end of v. 14. % The perfect is to be restored here also. 
 
 § Not temporal but logical use of "and now," of. Ps. 2'°. 
 
EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 27 
 
 ^' Thou shalt go forth from him also, 
 with thy hands upon thy head: 
 For Yahweh has rejected thy confidences 
 and thou shalt not prosper in them. 
 
 Is not Israel Yahweh's son? Of course he is! How is it then 
 possible that he should be in slavery ? (v. "). And yet it is so. 
 The Assyrians attacked him and devastated his land (v. ^^). 
 And the Egyptians have subjected him also (v. ^*').* Do you not 
 know that these ignominious experiences were due to your de- 
 fection from Yahweh (v. ^^) ? Since this is so, what is or has been 
 the use of your political policy of turning to Egypt or to Assyria 
 for help (v. ^^) ? Ha ! how vacillating that policy of yours is ! 
 How quickly and easily you change it ! Only a little while ago 
 you trusted in Assyria to help you (against Egypt). The folly 
 of it ! And now you trust in Egypt to help you (against Baby- 
 lonia) — with any better result, do you think? No, you will see, 
 your present alliance with Egypt will end in humiliation and 
 despair just as your friendship with Assyria did before. They 
 cannot help you, because Yahweh has rejected them (vv. ^^- ^^). 
 
 There is nothing forced in this interpretation. Everything 
 has its full and natural significance. Vv. ^*- *^ refer to the 
 Assyrians, as is generally recognized. V. ^'^ refers to the defeat 
 of Josiah by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo in 608 B.C., and is 
 a past experience just as v. ^^, not a present or future. V. ^^ 
 is general; it speaks of the whole political policy of the nation, 
 not of a particular episode. And vv. ^^- " draw the conclusion. 
 Bitterly Jeremiah ridicules their quick and easy changing from 
 one to the other of the great powers. Before it w^as Assyria, just 
 now it is Egypt. But soon they will learn by bitter experience 
 the folly of relying on human powers. 
 
 The date of the verses is plainly indicated by this. It is the 
 time of alliance with Egypt for the final rebellion against Babylon 
 which ended in Jerusalem's destruction in 586 B.C. 
 
 The reason why the redactor connected these verses with chap. 
 2 appears to be that to him the two sets of lovers, the one the 
 nature gods, the other the Assyrian and Egyptian empires, seemed 
 to belong together. 
 
 * Shaving off the crown of the head was a sign of slavery. 
 
28 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 How vv. ""^^ and vv. ^^- ^^ became separated we cannot telL 
 Perhaps accidentally by being written in the space between the 
 columns, vv. "'^^ in one row, vv. ^®- ^^ in the following.* 
 
 3. The Two Lamentations in 9^^'^^ 
 
 These verses contain not only one but two lamentations. 
 They were originally not connected but independent of each 
 other, and even seem to come from different periods in Jeremiah's 
 ministry. The first section, vv. ^^'^^ (E. V. vv. ^^■"), is not an 
 introduction to the second, w. ^^"^^ (E. V. vv. 20-22^^ ^^ jg usually 
 thought, but an independent piece, complete in itself. Vv. ^^"^^ 
 (E. V. vv. ^°'^^) is a different piece, also independent and com- 
 plete in itself. 
 
 In vv. ^""^^ Jeremiah summons the professional mourning 
 women to come and sing a moving dirge. Let them hasten and 
 sing ! In his imagination he sees them coming, and so he calls 
 out: "Harkjf wailing is heard out of Zion!" Then follows 
 directly the song of the women: 
 
 " How are we spoiled ! we are put greatly to shame ! — 
 for we have forsaken the land, 
 for we are flung out of our dwellings ! J 
 
 Here the song ends. Dirges are usually brief. 
 
 In the following verse something new begins. It is not con- 
 nected with the preceding, though an editor joined both together 
 by "for" which must be omitted with Duhm and Giesebrecht. 
 Jeremiah calls the Jewish women and teaches them a lamenta- 
 tion, which they in turn are to teach their daughters, so that all 
 Jewish women may know how to sing it. It is not the profes- 
 
 * This was written before the writer knew that Erbt also separates w. " '* 
 and vv. ^e. 37 from their present context and that he also connects vv. ^- " 
 with V. >8. But Erbt makes two oracles of them, vv. "'«, omitting v. >' as 
 secondary, and vv. "• ^e 37_ He tries thus to evade the difficulty of v. »' in 
 connection with v. •« by regarding v. '^ as belonging to a different piece. 
 His dating no less than his interpretation differs from the one given above. 
 But the point that vv. ". 37 are connected with v. >« reached independently 
 by both of us heightens its probability. 
 
 t Omit ''-. at the beginning of v. '*. Rothstein omits ^^P ''^ for metrical 
 reasons. 
 
 X M. T. has "for they have flung down our dwellings." Better read with 
 Comill, SBOT, irnur^-cD iJ3!?'f n, cf. <&. 
 
EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 29 
 
 sional mourners who are called and instructed here, but the 
 women in general.* After this brief introduction (v. ^^, E. V, v. ^*') 
 Jeremiah sings to them that mournful song of aw^esome beauty, 
 the song of the harvester Death, vv. ^^- ^' (E. V. vv. ^*- ^^). 
 
 It is only when it is realized that there are two independent 
 pieces, vv. ^"'^^ and vv. ^^''^, that the whole passage can be inter- 
 preted easily and naturally. Cornill has felt the difficulty of the 
 usual interpretation, for to his mind " this TiJ [in v. *^] weak- 
 ens, yea destroys even, the impression of the wonderful r\y''p 
 w. ^°- ^\" And so he takes the radical step of omitting v. ^ 
 (E. V. V. ^^) as secondary. But surely this is going too far. 
 Giesebrecht tries to obviate the difficulty by transposing v. ^^. 
 He clearly sees that this extra introduction coming in between 
 the tw^o parts of the one lamentation which he assumes is awkward 
 and impossible. Rothstein, in the third edition of Kau., Heilige 
 Schrift des A. T., 1910, is the only one who seems to have seen 
 the way of the true solution, for he says concerning vv. ^^- ^^• 
 "perhaps they give a separate little dirge." But he does not 
 follow out his suggestion. 
 
 One other point may be noticed. The situation of these two 
 lamentations does not appear to be the same. At first it may 
 seem as if it were, and that was evidently the reason why the 
 editor joined them together. In reality the first anticipates — 
 not presupposes, since both are prophetic — the fall and ruin of 
 Jerusalem, and also the exile, " for we have forsaken the land."t 
 This excludes the Scythian period and shows that it belongs to 
 the Babylonian, though precisely at what particular date it is 
 to be placed we cannot tell. The second lamentation, on the 
 
 * Duhm has noticed this, without however perceiving its full significance. 
 The other commentators think that the professional mourning women are 
 still meant. 
 
 t Duhm omits this clause somewhat arbitrarily as a later addition. He 
 says: "The sentence, for we have forsaken the land, is an uncommonly stupid 
 insertion; he who has forsaken can no longer lament in Zion; our present or 
 future would surely not have been expressed by the perfect. And anyhow 
 one does not call mourning women when one goes into exile." But the song 
 is, of course, prophetic and the sentence, Hark, wailing is heard out of Zion! 
 does not belong to the lamentation itself, but is introductory to it. The 
 mourning women are singing now. Jeremiah hears them singing in Zion 
 where his imagination places them. He calls attention to their song which 
 speaks of what the fate of the Juda'ans will soon be. 
 
30 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 Other hand, would fit the Scythian period very well, though it 
 must be admitted that there is nothing in it that would militate 
 against the Babylonian period. But even if both come from the 
 same time — the date is not a very important point in our argu- 
 ment — we may and must insist that they are two different 
 lamentations. 
 
 4. The Parable of the Rotten Girdle, 13^'" 
 
 The story is told in such a way that we think at once of it as 
 a description of an actual event. But it is very doubtful whether 
 any of his hearers took Jeremiah literally. The difference be- 
 tween our Western mind and the picture-loving Eastern mind 
 must not be overlooked so as to deny the parabolic character of 
 the story. The arguments against the interpretation which takes 
 it as the story of an actual double journey to the Euphrates are, 
 to the mind of the present writer, convincing. 
 
 The main point of the parable is that the girdle was corrupted 
 by the influence of the Euphrates. Jeremiah desired to illustrate 
 the corrupting effects of the power of the Euphrates valley on 
 Judah. It is evident that it is not the Babylonian exile which is 
 referred to here, but the moral and religious influences which had 
 such a debasing effect on Judah. 
 
 Cornill has rightly seen all this, but has then drawn the con- 
 clusion that the interpretation which is appended in w. ^"" is 
 not genuine because it misunderstands the parable of w. ^"^. 
 There is an element of truth in Cornill's argument. But the 
 solution of the difficulty may be attempted in another, less radical, 
 manner. It will probably be admitted that after reading vv. ^"^ 
 we expect an interpretation of the parable by the prophet himself. 
 The explanation which is given in vv. *'" does indeed, as Cornill 
 rightly says, not bring out the essential point of the symbolism 
 correctly. But this can be remedied by a small textual emenda- 
 tion which makes vv. ^- ^^ read as follows: " After this manner have 
 the excellence of Judah and the excellence of Jerusalem become 
 marred * and have become t as this girdle which is profitable for 
 
 * Read nnu-j for hn n-'na'N. n.s is due to dittography and was then repeated 
 before the second P^J to bring it into conformity with the first, 
 t Punctuate '■"'V- for "'''^''^- 
 
EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 31 
 
 nothing." V, ^°* from "this evil people" to "worship them" 
 is an editorial expansion* which explains not incorrectly the 
 meaning of the corruption. The Greek Version did not yet have 
 the clause " that walk in the stubbornness of their heart." 
 
 If this suggestion is adopted, we can retain with good con- 
 science not only v\. ^"' as Jeremian — thanks to Erbt's and Cor- 
 nill's valiant defense — but also vv. ^"", which Cornill feels com- 
 pelled to give up as secondary. And it will be noticed that vv. 
 ^^ ^- follow with much appropriateness and force, bringing out 
 the thought of the punishment that was so sure to come as the 
 result of this corruption. 
 
 5. The Lesson from the Potter, 18*'^^ 
 
 The lesson which Jeremiah learned from the potter is this: 
 As a potter who moulds and fashions the clay into a vessel on 
 the wheel does not throw the clay away when the vessel for some 
 reason or other is marred, but tries again to mould and fashion 
 it until it becomes a vessel such as he wants, so does Yahweh 
 deal with his people Israel. Israel has indeed thwarted Yahweh's 
 plan and has become spoiled, but Yahweh does not therefore 
 throw it away as utterly useless, but takes it again and tries to 
 mould and fashion it once more, according to his plan. — It is not 
 the sovereignty of the creator and ruler of the world which is 
 illustrated by the work of the potter, but the persistency of his 
 purpose. The potter may be unsuccessful for a while, but he 
 does not give up his endeavor. He tries again until his purpose 
 is accomplished. 
 
 It is impossible to miss this point, when one reads only vv. ^■^, 
 And it is a very beautiful truth indeed. But unfortunately, 
 vv. '''^^ which immediately follow are usually taken as the inter- 
 pretation and application of vv. i-'(*'^, and thus one of the finest 
 passages of Jeremiah has usually been misinterpreted. For 
 vv. ^'*^ are not Jeremiah's interpretation of vv. ^'^ they speak 
 of something entirely different, their theme is the moral condition 
 of every prediction, and they do not belong to the story of the 
 potter's vessel at all. If they did not happen to stand directly 
 after vv. ^''^ nobody would ever have thought of regarding them 
 
 * So also Erbt. 
 
32 EXEGETICAL NOTES ON JEREMIAH 
 
 as the explanation of the story. The editor put them there 
 probably because they have the element of hopefulness in com- 
 mon with vv. ^"^. Originally they had no connection whatever. 
 Cornill, who of modern writers has brought out best the real 
 meaning of the lesson, unfortunately takes vv. ^"^^ as the in- 
 tended explanation, but is consistent enough to declare that this 
 explanation misses the essential meaning of vv. ^"*, and so re- 
 jects them as well as vv. ^- * as secondary. But he has to admit 
 that there is no other reason for regarding them as secondary 
 but that they interpret vv. *"* wrongly.* When it is once seen 
 that vv. ^"^ and vv. '"^^ are independent of one another, there is 
 no reason for rejecting either vv. ^"^ or vv. '"^^ f, or both, as Duhm 
 does, as non-Jeremian. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 July, 1910. 
 
 * CorniU's treatment of this passage is similar to that of 11' ". 
 t Erbt regards vv.*® as genuine but interprets them as referring to Israel's 
 rejection by Yahweh. Vv. '"" he assigns to the redactor. 
 
IV 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 
 
 By Edward L. Curtis 
 
 The true course of events, when data concerning the past are 
 both meagre and unreliable, is very difficult to determine. This 
 is the situation in regard to the question of the return of the 
 Jews under Cyrus. This return has usually been received as 
 an unquestioned fact of history. The first doubts of an impres- 
 sive character cast upon the event were those of Kosters.* He 
 argued very strongly, especially from the silence of the books of 
 Haggai and Zechariah, that there was no such return of the 
 Jews. But his conclusion has met with no general acceptance. 
 Wellhausen, Edward Meyer, George Adam Smith, not to men- 
 tion others, have been unconvinced, and have written strongly in 
 favor of the return.f But now more recently Prof. C, C. Torrey 
 has not only come forward maintaining the position of Kosters, 
 but also proposes a far more radical reconstruction of Jewish 
 history. He says: "There was no return of the exiles, no scribe 
 potentate Ezra, no wholesale expulsion of Gentile wives and 
 children," and maintains that the Jewish community in the 
 
 * Het Herstel van Israel in het Perzische Tijdvak. 1894. Translated by 
 Basedow, Die Wiederherstellung Israels in der Persischen Periode. 1895. 
 
 t Wellhausen, Die Riickkehr der Juden aus detn Babylonischen Exil, in 
 Nachrichten von der Konigl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen. 1895. 
 Meyer, Die Entstehung des Judenthums. 1896. G. A. Smith, The Book of the 
 Twelve Prophets, ii, 1898, chap. xv. Bertholet, Kurzer Hand Commentar (Mart.), 
 Die Biicher Esra und Nehemia. 1902. Siegfried, Handkommentar (Nowack), 
 Die Biicher Esra-Nehemiah. 1902. Guthe, Israel, Encyclopedia Bihlica. 
 1901. Driver, Century Bible, Haggai, 1906, and scholars generally. H. P. 
 Smith, Old Testament History, 1903, and Torrey, Ezra Studies, 1910, reject 
 the return. 
 
 33 
 
34 THE KETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 
 
 Persian period was no narrow and legalistic one, but endowed 
 with the spirit of the eariier prophets, their religious life being a 
 continual development of that of the monarchy.* 
 
 The account of the return of the Jews under Cyrus is given 
 only in the combined books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the 
 latter it is only mentioned incidentally (Ne. 7'' ^•), while in the 
 former (chapters 1-6) the subject is treated somewhat in detail: 
 We have the decree of Cyrus whereby the movement was inaugu- 
 rated, the list of the restored furniture of the Temple, the list of 
 the people who returned, and an account of the setting up of the 
 altar at Jerusalem, of the laying the foundation of the Temple, 
 and of the frustration of the work of the building through the 
 opposition of the people of the land until under the impulse of 
 the prophets Haggai and Zechariah the work was renewed and 
 in spite of renewed opposition, under royal patronage caused by 
 the discovery of a decree of Cyrus, the Temple was finally com- 
 pleted in the sixth year of the reign of Darius. 
 
 The appearance of this narrative with all these details in the 
 Books of Ezra and Nehemiah compels at once careful scrutiny, 
 because these books are a composition of the Chronicler, and the 
 Chronicler, judged from the Books of Chronicles, is a thoroughly 
 untrustworthy historian. Indeed, he is scarcely worthy of being 
 called a historian, because while making use of ancient narratives 
 he did not hesitate to modify them, and he drew upon his own 
 imagination very largely for his pictures of the past. The Books 
 of Chronicles, taken as a whole, are an ecclesiastical romance. 
 Thus the Chronicler glorified David's career by creating for him 
 at Ziglag an army of most surprising warriors, and making him 
 the provider of an immense mass of costly material for the build- 
 ing of Solomon's Temple, and the organizer of the personnel of 
 its service. The Chronicler fabricated numbers and lists of 
 names, letters and speeches. His narratives, when especially 
 concerned with the worship of Yahweh, are always open to sus- 
 picion, and for acceptance need the confirmation of other testi- 
 mony. From this point of view, then, the record of the return of 
 the Jews must be examined.f 
 
 * Op. cit., pp. ix, 311 ff. 
 
 t For the Chronicler as a writer of history see International Critical Com- 
 mentary on the Books of Chronicles, pp. 7 ff. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 35 
 
 The account opens with the decree of Cyrus in which he is 
 called the king of Persia (Ezr, 1^"*), but in the authentic decrees 
 of Cyrus the term king of Persia is not used *; and there is also 
 no reason to believe that Cyrus ever revered Yahweh after the 
 words of this decree, saying: "All the kingdoms of the earth 
 hath Yahweh the God of Heaven given me." Cyrus might, 
 however, have had an interest in the rebuilding of the Temple. 
 According to his inscriptions he took an interest in restoring 
 heathen deities.f But this decree is clearly the composition of 
 the Chronicler. J 
 
 The list of gifts of Cyrus which follows (Ezr, 1^"") likewise 
 bears no marks of historicity. Such an enumeration, "thirty 
 platters of gold, a thousand platters of silver, nine and twenty 
 knives, etc.," is characteristic of Old Testament legend. An 
 interesting parallel may be seen in the offerings for the tabernacle 
 by the princes of Israel in Nu. 7. This list, then, has every 
 mark of the Chronicler's imagination. 
 
 Next in the narrative is the roll of persons and families who are 
 said to have returned with Zerubbabel (Ezr. 2). This list, if 
 genuine, w^ould confirm the return. It appears also in Ne. 7^ ^•, 
 where it is said to have been found by Nehemiah when he was 
 searching for the genealogies of the people. Its connection there 
 with the memoirs of Nehemiah (Ne. 1-6) suggests authenticity. 
 In favor of this also may be mentioned the enumeration of beasts 
 of burden (Ezr. 2"^ ^•), and the disallowment of the claim of 
 Hakkoz for the priesthood (Ezr. 2^^^); a claim apparently later 
 recognized (Ne. 3*- ^^). On the other hand it bears far more the 
 stamp of a list of settlers in the land than of immigrants entering. 
 The places mentioned are clearly those of the Jewish province. 
 Some of the persons or families mentioned seem to have Persian 
 names, which only could have been acquired later. § One family 
 is expressly called the house of Jeshua (Ezr. 2^^), and since 
 Jeshua flourished in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, his house, 
 numbering nine hundred and seventy-three, must have belonged 
 
 * Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, New York, 
 1908, p. 546. 
 
 t Bertholet, op. cit., p. 25. 
 
 X As far as I am aware this is disputed by no one. 
 
 § Marquart, Fundamente israelitischer und jiidischer Geschichte, p. 35. Well- 
 hausen, Israelitische und jiidische Geschichte, Vierte Ausgabe, p. 1G7. 
 
36 THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 
 
 to a later period. This list, then, is one in all probability of the 
 period of Nehemiah, taken from his memoirs, and in his memoirs 
 labelled by the Chronicler as a list of the returning exiles, and 
 glossed with an enumeration of beasts of burden. Such an ap- 
 propriation by the Chronicler would not have been strange. In 
 his history of David he constructed monthly captains of David's 
 army out of David's mighty men recorded in the Books of 
 Samuel (I Ch. 2V^-). Hence the Chronicler, finding this list at 
 hand, might readily have used it for a roll of the returned. No 
 proper evidence then can be drawn from this list for the return 
 under Cyrus.* 
 
 The narrative of the laying of the foundation of the Temple 
 in the second year of the return, i. e., the third year of Cyrus 
 (Ezr. 3), is wholly from the pen of the Chronicler, and may well 
 in all its detail, be a product of his imagination; a supposition 
 which is confirmed by the testimony of the books of Haggai 
 and Zechariah, for according to them, the founding of the 
 second Temple took place in the reign of Darius (Hag. 1** ^-f 2*^, 
 Zee. 4^). 
 
 The episode of the opposition to the work of rebuilding the 
 Temple, with the letter of complaint and the decree which caused 
 its cessation, together with the story of its renewal, under the 
 prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and of the renewed opposition 
 with another letter of complaint, resulting in the discovery of the 
 decree of Cyrus, and thus leading to a decree by Darius favoring 
 the building of the Temple, which is said to have been completed 
 in the sixth year of his reign, is written, with the exception of the 
 introductory verses, in Aramaic (Ezr. 4-6^^), and this Aramaic 
 material, especially in the letters and decrees, is universally rec- 
 ognized as taken by the Chronicler from some source. These 
 letters and decrees, if genuine, would confirm in large measure the 
 
 * The Chronicler may indeed have fabricated this Hst. This would be in 
 line with artificial enumerations of Nu. 2-". The twelve leaders (Ezr. 2^, 
 Ne. 3"), the combination of names of men and of places, and the introduction 
 of priests, Levites, singers, and gatekeepers all suggest the composition of the 
 Chronicler. The text also abounds with many of his expressions. Hence it 
 has been inferred that "we have here (and in Ne. 11, which is the immediate 
 and necessary sequel) tables compiled by the Chronicler according to his 
 usual purpose and method, with the aim of giving the exact statistical basis 
 of the restored community." Torrey, The Composition and Historical Value 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah, pp. 39-42. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 37 
 
 story of the return. But, whether they are genuine or not, in this 
 connection is given a glaring illustration of the Chronicler's utter 
 ignorance or unconcern of the actual course of events of which he 
 is treating. Having written that the Jews returned and laid the 
 foundation of the Temple in the reign of Cyrus, he speaks of the 
 opposition to them continuing during all the days of Cyrus even 
 until the reign of Darius, and of an accusation written in the reign 
 of Xerxes, and then again in the reign of Artaxerxes (Ezr. 4*^). 
 He thus confused Darius I., Hystaspis, in whose reign the second 
 Temple was built with Darius II., Nothus, of a century later, 
 whose predecessors were Xerxes and Artaxerxes. 
 
 The authenticity of these letters and decrees has been especially 
 defended by the historian Eduard Meyer, and through the weight 
 of his authority has been widely accepted.* His argument is 
 derived from internal evidence, but is far from convincing. The 
 language, he thinks, from the occurrence of Persian words, points 
 to an original Persian document here rendered into Aramaic, 
 but as Wellhausen has well pointed out, in this manner one could 
 prove that half of Daniel, and a great part of the Syrian literature, 
 were originally written in Persian. f 
 
 A striking evidence for genuineness in the decree of Cyrus, 
 Meyer finds in the fact that the decree is said to have been dis- 
 covered in Ecbatana instead of Babylon (Ezr. 6^). A fabricator 
 he thinks would surely have placed it in the latter city. But 
 why so? A fabricator might well have imagined the roll in 
 Ecbatana as well as in Babylon. If in Babylon, why so easily 
 forgotten ? 
 
 " If fabricated, the fabrication," says Meyer, " is wonderfully 
 skilful and entirely different from the patent inventions of the 
 Chronicler and like-minded writers." The Chronicler's inven- 
 tions are often patent, but yet often not more seemingly so than 
 these letters. The correspondence between Hiram and Solomon, 
 derived, it is true, in part from I. Kings, is well done (II. Chr. 2^'^*). 
 But we are not confined to the Books of Chronicles for such in- 
 ventions; they appear in other Jewish literature — the Books of 
 Maccabees and the works of Josephus. And, moreover, Meyer's 
 skilful fabrication does not appear in these letters and decrees as 
 they now stand. He only finds it by removing the plain marks 
 
 * Op. cit., pp. 8-70. t GoUingische gelehrte Ameigen, 1897, p. 90. 
 
38 THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 
 
 of fabrication. He says they have been tampered with and are no 
 longer in their original form. The date, for example, is lacking in 
 the letter of Darius. "It is called 'a roll in which was written.'" 
 "It may," says Meyer, "have been more or less abbreviated." 
 Meyer brackets 6^"*^, saying " those words are of a later hand of 
 Jewish zeal." (Why not then a mark of the entire decree coming 
 from such a source ?) And the letter written for Ezra (Ezr. 7^^'^"), 
 which he also considers authentic, is of such Jewish coloring that 
 Meyer is forced to the explanation that Ezra and his friends pre- 
 pared the original draft for the king.* These concessions greatly 
 weaken his arguments for authenticity. 
 
 Meyer also says he cannot comprehend for what purpose any 
 one would take the trouble to fabricate such documents.f But 
 the purpose is close at hand — to teach a lesson of providential 
 care, and to magnify the Jews. This appears in the dramatic 
 force and unity of the letters and decrees. A letter of complaint 
 is written against the Jews, with a call for a search of royal 
 records to determine whether the city had not been rebellious, 
 and therefore its rebuilding should cease. Such search is made, 
 such records are found, and the rebuilding is prohibited. This 
 is the first act. The adversaries, or the wicked, triumph (Ezr. 4). 
 
 Then comes the second act when, under the inspiration of the 
 prophets, the work is renewed, and a second letter of complaint 
 is written, with another call for search of records to determine 
 whether Cyrus had ever decreed the rebuilding of the Temple. 
 This search is made and such a decree is found, and as a result 
 great favor, by royal decree, is shown to the Jews, while their 
 adversaries are completely discomfited and commanded even to 
 assist them (Ezr. S-e^*'). Thus the righteous triumphed. This 
 story with its letters and royal decrees and climax resembles 
 those of Esther and Daniel, and suggests a similar origin. J And 
 finally, through the recently discovered Assuan-Elephantine 
 
 * Op. cit., pp. 49, 51, 65. t Op. cit., p. 43. 
 
 X Dramatic unity, however, is not found in the actual events if the docu- 
 ments are genuine, because in that case the first letter, since addressed to 
 Artaxerxes, referred not at all to the building of the Temple, but to an assumed 
 attempt to rebuild the walls one hundred years later, and has its present 
 position and reference through the misunderstanding of the Chronicler. In 
 favor of this interpretation is the fact that the Temple is not specifically men- 
 tioned in the first correspondence (Ezr. 4""--) but only the city and its walls. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 39 
 
 papyri linguistic evidence seems to be at hand proving con- 
 clusively that this Aramaic section was written near the period 
 of the Chronicler.* The genuineness then of these letters and 
 decrees is certainly so doubtful that they have little or no place 
 as evidence for the return of the Jews under Cyrus. 
 
 We turn now from the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, whose testi- 
 mony is so unsatisfactory, to those of Haggai and Zechariah, writ- 
 ten some twenty years after the beginning of the reign of Cyrus. 
 These speak clearly of the building of the Temple under Jeshua and 
 Zerubbabel in the reign of Darius, and thus confirm the Chron- 
 icler's statement of that event (Ezr. 1^ *•, 6"; indeed probably 
 from these books the Chronicler or his Aramaic source obtained 
 the information), but in no other particular do they confirm the 
 Chronicler's story. The books are entirely silent concerning any 
 return some seventeen years or more previous. The people are 
 addressed, not as though they had lately entered the land, but as 
 though they were a remnant left in the land. They are called " the 
 remnant of the people," "the people of the land." This is in sharp 
 contrast to the language of Ezra and Nehemiah, where the com- 
 munity who built the Temple are called "the children of the 
 captivity," and are put in contrast to "the people of the land." 
 Not a word also is said of any previous laying of the corner-stone 
 of the Temple, or of any opposition which hindered its construc- 
 tion, or of any royal patronage favoring the work. This silence 
 is certainly very remarkable if these events happened. 
 
 The story of the return of the Jews under Cyrus, then, may be 
 pure fiction ; a tale which early grew out of the feeling of gratitude 
 for Cyrus's conquest of Babylon, and was especially provoked by 
 the allusions in II. Isaiah to Cyrus as a Messiah and builder of 
 the city (Is. 44^^, 45*- "). The form of the story, remembering 
 that it was written two centuries after the events w^hich it de- 
 scribes, when there was bitter hostility between the Jews and 
 Samaritans, has a ready explanation. The one fixed fact of 
 history incorporated into it, drawn from the Books of Haggai 
 and Zechariah, is the building of the Temple in the reign of 
 Darius. This Darius, as already mentioned, was held to have 
 been Darius II., Nothus, who reigned more than a century after 
 * Torrey, Ezra Studies, pp. 161 ff. 
 
40 THE RETURN OF THE JEWS UNDER CYRUS 
 
 Cyrus.* Hence if the Jews started the Temple, as in the Chron- 
 icler's conception they surely would have, immediately on their 
 return, how did it happen that the building was so long delayed ? 
 The answer is at hand. It was through the hostility of the 
 Samaritans. Thus the tale took its appropriate dramatic form. 
 Yet in spite of all these facts certain things suggest the reality 
 of a return. The preservation of prophecies mentioned con- 
 cerning Cyrus, suggest that they had been fulfilled in some such 
 way.f The poverty-stricken remnant left in the land would 
 seem to require an impulse from without for the revival of in- 
 terest in the Temple culminating in the movement inaugurated 
 by Haggai and Zechariah.J The return need not have been 
 mentioned in the short discourses of those prophets. The spir- 
 ituality of their appeal may have caused silence in reference to 
 royal patronage and hostile efforts. § What also was more inevi- 
 table than a return if, according to the Books of Jeremiah and 
 Ezekiel, the choicest portion of Israel was in captivity? Could 
 the men whose passion for Jerusalem was that of Ps. 137 have 
 been restrained from returning to Jerusalem ? Cyrus, from all 
 that is known of Persian policy, would not only have permitted, 
 but probably have favored, such a return. Thus it is not impos- 
 sible that there was some sort of a return of the Jews under 
 Cyrus, but the evidence for it is very slight, and we have no 
 reason to believe that the Chronicler's account is anything else 
 than imaginary. 
 
 Yale Divinity School, 
 July 26, 1910. 
 
 * Darius I. Hystaspis probably had been confused with or transformed into 
 Darius the Mede, mentioned in Daniel and placed before Cyrus. 
 
 t Kuenen. J Wellhausen. § George Adam Smith. 
 
THE SONS OF KORAH 
 By John P. Peters 
 
 In dedicating this brief Biblical essay to him who has reached 
 the Biblical age, I have taken as my theme a topic suggested by 
 the study of a book on which he has been the last great commen- 
 tator, the Book of Psalms. 
 
 The Psalter of the sons of Korah is " on the whole the choicest 
 collection in the Psalter from a literary point of view." * Who 
 are the sons of Korah? 
 
 According to the genealogy of the Priest Code,t Korah was a 
 descendant (grandson) of Kohath. According to this genealogy, 
 further, while Kohath was the second son of Levi (Gershon or 
 Gershom being the eldest son), yet the Kohathites were the im- 
 portant gens of the Levites, to which both Moses and Aaron, and 
 consequently the priesthoods of both the temple of Dan and the 
 temple at Jerusalem, belonged. It is to be noted, further, that 
 in the genealogy Korah is the father of Abiasaph, i. e., the great 
 ancestor of Asaph. If this Asaph is to be connected with the 
 singing guild of Asaph, as is, I think, intended, the Korahites 
 would then be the ancestors or prototypes of the Asaphites. 
 
 Turning now to the later lists of Chronicles, we find first in the 
 brief general list of the priestly genealogy (I Ch. 5^' ^•) the 
 Kohathites recorded as the gens from which Moses and Aaron, 
 and through the latter the Zadokite priesthood of the Jerusalem 
 temple from Solomon on, were descended. In the more detailed 
 list (1 Ch. 6'^) Samuel the prophet appears as a Kohathite. In 
 the list of the singers, contained in the same chapter (v. ^^ ^•), 
 where the object is to show that all the original Levitical gentes 
 
 * Briggs, The Book of Psalms, p. Ixvi. 
 t Ex. 6"^ 'f-. Also in the second numbering, Num. 2Q'-''": 
 41 
 
42 THE SONS OF KOKAH 
 
 were represented in the service of the Temple, Heman, a descend- 
 ant, through Samuel, Elkanah and Abiasaph, of Korah, represents 
 the Kohathites; Asaph the Gershonites; and Ethan* the gens 
 of Merari. Similarly in I Ch. 26^"^®, supposed to represent the 
 organization of the Temple service in David's time, the three 
 gentes are represented as guardians of different parts of the 
 Temple, the Korahites (Kohathites) and the sons of Merari being 
 doorkeepers, and the Gershonites in charge of the treasury. 
 (But here there is a curious confusion in that Korah is the son 
 of Asaph, and Gershom the son of Moses.) With this list agrees 
 the list of the first inhabitants, in I Ch. 9, in so far that the 
 Korahites (v. ^^) are keepers of the gates of the tabernacle, their 
 fathers having been keepers of the entry of the camp. But in this 
 list the Korahites (v. ^^) are also included among the singers. 
 In I Ch. 16, Asaph is prominent among the musicians, when 
 David brings in the Ark, and the leader in the song then sung 
 (v. ^). But in II Ch. 20^^ when the good Jehoshaphat organizes 
 his army on a Levitical basis, it is the Korahites, of the Kohath- 
 ites, who are the singers, singing the self-same thing (v. -^). 
 
 Turning to what may be regarded as more nearly contempo- 
 raneous documents, representing the organization of the second 
 temple, the identical lists in Ezra (2") and Nehemiah (7*^) of 
 those who returned with Zerubbabel, the singers (128 or 148 in 
 number) were sons of Asaph, and there are no Korahites at all. 
 
 Through the more or less conflicting statements of these lists 
 it is apparent that in the later period the name of Asaph was 
 particularly connected with the temple music, but that the tra- 
 dition persisted of an earlier Korahitic guild of singers, ante- 
 dating Asaph, and from whom Asaph was in fact descended, 
 belonging to the great Kohathite gens of the Levites. 
 
 The Korahites are further mentioned in the Priest Code in two 
 curious stories, now combined with one another, and with the 
 story of Dathan and Abiram the Reubenites, contained in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Numbers. According to 
 
 * An interesting comment on this is the headings of Psalms 88 and 89, in 
 which these Psalms are ascribed respectively to Heman and to Ethan the 
 Ezrahites. With this cf. I K. 5", and II Ch. 2", from which it would appear 
 that Heman and Ethan are the names of traditional wise men, afterwards 
 incorporated in the genealogies of Chronicles. Elsewhere Ezrahite signifies 
 aboriginal, and the title Ezrahite is therefore a designation of antiquity. 
 
THE SONS OF KORAH 43 
 
 one of these stories, which is regarded as belonging to the original 
 Priest Code, the Korahites rebel against the whole system of 
 Levitical caste ; * according to the other, which belongs to the 
 later additions to the Priest Code,t they rebel against the special 
 privileges of the Zadokite or Aaronic priesthood, claiming equal 
 privileges for Levite with Aaronite. For this they are consumed 
 with fire. But that this destruction by fire is theoretical, not 
 actual, is stated later in the same book.J The obvious connec- 
 tion of these two stories is (a) with the statement (1 K. 12^^) that 
 Jeroboam " made priests from the whole of the people which were 
 not of the sons of Levi"; and (b) with the efforts of the reformers 
 of Josiah's time to associate the Levites of the high places with 
 the priesthood of the Jerusalem temple on an equal footing. 
 These two stories, later combined in one, represent two moments 
 in the struggle of the priesthood of the Jerusalem temple to assert 
 and maintain its claim to exclusive privilege. They are the 
 anathema directed primarily against the priests of the rival 
 temples of Bethel and Dan, and secondly against the Levites of 
 the high places, and cast in the form of a story of a rebellion 
 against Moses and Aaron, and a condign and terrible punish- 
 ment from God therefor. 
 
 But one naturally asks: Why should the Korahites be singled 
 out from all the other Levites as the forefront of the offence? 
 
 We have in the Psalter a collection of Psalms ascribed to the 
 Sons of Korah, to which reference has already been made, con- 
 sisting of Psalms 42-49, and a supplementary collection, of some- 
 what later origin, and differing from the former in several im- 
 portant particulars, consisting of Psalms 84-89. Indeed all of 
 the Psalms of this supplementary collection are not ascribed in 
 their headings to the Sons of Korah. Psalm 86 is connected by 
 its heading, "Prayer of David," with the collection 51-72. 
 Psalm 88 is ascribed both to the Sons of Korah and to Heman 
 the Ezrahite, and Psalm 89 to Ethan the Ezrahite, named in the 
 lists of Chronicles as heads of the singers of the Kohath (Korahite) 
 
 * Nu. 16''' ^^■'"'- '^-2*- "*• '^''' ", also vv. ♦'■'^o (Heb. IT"'*). 
 
 t Nu. le^"-"- '^' '', also vv. ^^-*° (Heb. 17' ■'). 
 
 J Nu. 26'': "The sons of Korah died not." Later in the same chapter, 
 in the second numbering, the Koraljites are mentioned as one of the great 
 families of the Levites, Nu. 26" «• 
 
44 THE SONS OF KORAH 
 
 and Merari gentes of the Levites. Exactly speaking this collec- 
 tion is a supplement to the three preceding collections of the 
 2nd and 3rd books, but as its special connection is with the 
 Korahite collection, we may regard it for our present purpose as 
 supplementary to that collection. 
 
 Professor Briggs has shown in his commentary that Psalm 89 
 is composite. To one of the hymns out of which it was com- 
 posed belong, according to him, vv. ^- ^- *'^^, which contain the 
 semi-mythological references to the " sons of gods," and the vic- 
 tory over Rahab the monster of the deep or underworld. In this 
 section of the Psalm we find the words (v. ^^): 
 
 "North and South, Thou didst create them, 
 Tabor and Hermon in Thy name ring out joy," 
 
 where Tabor and Hermon are manifestly the synonyms of south 
 and north. This is one of those incidental topographical allu- 
 sions which cannot be imitated and which fix definitely the 
 place of composition of the Psalm. It was evidently composed 
 at some place from which Tabor and Hermon were respectively 
 the landmarks of south and north, i. e., in eastern Galilee. To 
 every one who has travelled in that region and oriented himself by 
 these two striking landmarks, it bears the unmistakable earmarks 
 of its origin. But if it originated in this region, it is also unques- 
 tionably pre-exilic, an old song, justifying the heading " of Heman, 
 the aboriginal"; for that title, I take it, belongs properly to this 
 part of the composite psalm. 
 
 Turning from the supplementary collection to the original col- 
 lection of Psalms of the Sons of Ivorah, we find there at least two 
 Psalms with topographical allusions which unmistakably connect 
 them with a definite locality. All commentators, I believe, agree 
 in locating the 42nd Psalm by the sources of the Jordan, at the 
 foot of Hermon. So Professor Briggs: "Description of the con- 
 dition of the exiles looking back to Jerusalem from the region 
 of the upper Jordan." Verse ' leaves no doubt as to the lo- 
 cality of its composition: "from the land of Jordan, and Her- 
 mons, from Mount Mizar"; and the following verse (v. ®) is a 
 vivid description of the impression made on the mind by the 
 rushing torrents, with their roaring sound, which overflow at 
 
THE SONS OF KORAH 45 
 
 times the whole surrounding region.* At both Banias and Tel 
 Kadi you hear what seems at first to be the roar of a cataract, 
 but is in reality the sound of the fountains of the Jordan springing 
 out of the deep beneath. But most impressive of all is the great 
 fountain Leddan at Tel Kadi, the ancient Dan, where, with a 
 mighty roaring as of a distant cataract, a river springs full born 
 from the ground. 
 
 But if the place of origin of this Psalm is unmistakable, so I 
 think is its ritual purpose. In somewhat strange technical or 
 archaic phraseology the 5th verse tells us of a temple procession- 
 dance, with its song and sacrifice, and the throngs of pilgrims 
 making festival (haj) at some great shrine.f Why, having recog- 
 nized that the place of composition of this Psalm was Dan or its 
 neighborhood, commentators should have then proceeded to 
 connect it with some supposed exile from the Jerusalem temple, 
 making a supposititious sojourn in that region, and longing for 
 the temple services at Jerusalem, instead of connecting it with 
 the singers of the Temple at Dan, I do not comprehend. It 
 would seem to me that as it is clearly connected in locality with 
 Dan, so also it is connected with Dan in purpose, having been 
 originally a festival hymn of that Temple, served by a Kohathite 
 priesthood as we learn from Judges 18^", for one of the haj festi- 
 vals, presumably the great haj of Tabernacles. 
 
 Psalm 46 also contains in its first stanza a vivid description of 
 
 * On my first visit to this region, in July, we floundered for an hour through 
 a flood which often rose to the horse's belly. The words of this Psalm (v. "") 
 were a most exact description of our situation. The great deep beneath 
 seemed to have poured itself forth upon us. 
 
 t If the precise translation is uncertain, the general meaning of the verse 
 is clear. I would suggest some such reading as this: "This let me celebrate 
 (mjTN^ indicating the commemoration or celebration of a festival day or 
 time) and pour out my soul; for I pass on (over) in the ID (something to do 
 with the feast of Tabernacles, the booths or boughs then used, or perhaps the 
 Tabernacle, meaning the Temple itself, parallel with the following ^^^), I 
 lead them in procession (or dance, unless we read with LXX. ai''N instead 
 of D"\nN) to the house of God, with the voice of merry-making and thank- 
 offering, a multitude making pilgrim-feast (haj)." The seventh and eighth 
 verses I would read: "My soul is bowed down, therefore I make memorial to 
 Thee, from the land of Jordan and Hermon, from Mount Mizar (or small). 
 Deep calleth unto deep with the thunder voice of Thy water floods; all thy 
 waves and billows have passed by (or over) me." Is this Mount Miz'ar, or 
 little mountain, possibly the hill now known as Tel Isadi, on which the foun- 
 tain and shrine were located? 
 
46 THE SONS OF KORAH 
 
 the conditions of the country about Dan, where, owing to the 
 peculiar configuration, an immense mountain area draining into 
 a relatively small basin, you appear to be standing in that basin 
 immediately over a great deep. The earth bogs and shakes be- 
 neath, fountains well and springs ooze everyw^here, the waters 
 roar and are troubled, and the very mountains round about seem 
 to rest upon a great unstable sea beneath, and to shake with the 
 swelling thereof. And as though to make the allusion to the 
 sanctuary of Dan more certain, the second stanza proceeds: 
 
 "(A river) Its streams make glad the city of God, 
 The shrine of the dwelling of the Highest." 
 
 Surely this does not describe nor apply to the Temple at Jeru- 
 salem, nor to any other sanctuary in Palestine except Dan, which 
 it fits exactly. 
 
 While no other of the Korah Psalms, either in the main collec- 
 tion, or the supplement, demand Dan or its neighborhood or 
 even eastern Galilee as their necessary setting to explain their 
 allusions, there are, nevertheless, allusions in several of the other 
 Psalms of these collections which are best satisfied by such a 
 reference, as for instance "sides of the north" (48^), and perhaps 
 also such phrases as "place of springs" (84^); "all my places of 
 springs in thee" (87''). It is worthy of note, further, that it is 
 the God of Jacob who is the especial God of the Korah Psalter,* 
 and the land of these Psalms is the "Heritage of Jacob." The 
 Korah Psalter, proper, moreover, is Elohistic, just as the Penta- 
 teuchal narrative of Israel (E) is Elohistic in contrast with the 
 Yahawistic narrative (J) of Judah. 
 
 It is not meant, of course, to suggest that the Korahitic Psalms 
 in their present form were sung at the Temple of Dan, but these 
 glimpses through the present form of those Psalms into what lies 
 behind, justify, I think, the conclusion that the Korahitic psalms 
 had their origin in northern Israel, and more specifically at the 
 temple of Dan, at an early period, before the captivity. The 
 Korahites, a great Levitical family of the gens Kohath, serving 
 at Dan, gave their name to these Psalms. When they were, at a 
 
 * Cf . the fact, noted by Professor Briggs, that the Psalms of Asaph make 
 prominent especially the land of Joseph. 
 
THE SONS OF KORAH 47 
 
 later date, adopted and adapted for use in the Jerusalem temple, 
 the tradition of their origin was preserved in the intitulation 'of 
 the Sons of Korah." The genealogical lists of Chronicles are 
 dependent for their information regarding the Sons of Korah, so 
 far as that information was not derived from the lists of the Priest 
 Code, upon the preservation of the name of Korah in connection 
 with these Psalms, traditionally of ancient origin, and yet not 
 ascribed to David. 
 
 It is the prominence of the Korahites as an important, pre- 
 sumably in that time the dominant, family of the Kohathite gens 
 of the Levites, as represented at the temple of Dan, which led to 
 the direction against them of the anathema on the part of the 
 Jerusalem priesthood, contained in the original Korah story of 
 the Priest Code (Numbers 16, 17), because, as claimed, they ad- 
 mitted to priestly service in their temple those not of the tribe of 
 Levi.* By natural accretion, when the real Korahites had actu- 
 ally passed away, the same name was used in the addition to the 
 .original anathema by which, with increasing claims of exclusive 
 rights, the Jerusalem priests opposed the admission into their 
 number of the Levites of the high places. 
 
 St. Michael's Church, New York, 
 May 7, 1910. 
 
 * Cf. on Korah's ancestry also I Ch. 2", and Gray's comments thereon, 
 Numbers, pp. 193 f. The late gloss of the suspended 7iun in Judges 18^", by 
 which Moses is turned into Manasseh, the founder of the Samaritan schism, 
 as first high priest of the temple on Gerizzim, seems to point in the same 
 direction. 
 
VI 
 
 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 By Kemper Fullerton 
 
 Is the Psalter primarily a Temple hymn-book or a religious 
 anthology for private devotion ? Is the speaker who appears in 
 so many of the Psalms an individual, or the community personi- 
 fied? 
 
 These two nearly-related questions have been much discussed 
 in recent years. In thjs discussion the Fifty-first Psalm has 
 played a prominent part. The title, of course, has been re- 
 sponsible for the popular interpretation of the "I" of this psalm 
 as an individual, though as early as Theodore of Mopsuestia it 
 was interpreted collectively. Theodore referred it to the people 
 in the Babylonian Exile. But when once the authority of the 
 titles of the Psalms was broken down, a new impetus was given 
 to the interpretation of the "I" as a collective. The defenders 
 of this interpretation pointed triumphantly to vv. ^''' ^^ with their 
 pronounced community interest in proof of their view. In these 
 verses, they claimed, the personification is dropped and the true 
 ^ nature of the "I" is revealed. On the other hand the champions 
 of the individualistic interpretation of the "I" pointed to the 
 apparent discrepancy between vv. ^"' ^^ and vv. ^^' ^^ as evidence 
 that vv. ^"^ ^^ are a later accretion to the psalm and hence are not 
 to be utilized to determine the original meaning of the "I.'* 
 Further, they ask, how could vv. ^^' ^^ be incorporated in a psalm 
 which was originally designed for the Temple worship ? Would a 
 Temple choir use a song that deliberately undermined the sacri- 
 ficial ritual for the conduct of which the Temple was built? 
 Manifestly not. But if vv. *^' ^^ are inconsistent with the use of 
 the psalm in the public worship of the Temple, it would naturally 
 
 49 
 
50 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 follow that we are not dealing in this case with a community 
 psalm, but with a psalm of personal experience, and the "I" 
 would accordingly represent an individual. 
 
 "But do y\. ^^' ^^ really repudiate the sacrificial system?" ask 
 the advocates of the collective theory in reply. Are they incon- 
 sistent with vv. ^°' ^S and must the latter verses be rejected as a 
 gloss? Upon the answer to these questions no consensus of 
 opinion has as yet been attained, and hence a renewed discussion 
 of them does not seem to be superfluous. 
 
 At first sight these two pairs of verses seem to be in irreconcil- 
 able antagonism. Is this first impression due to superficial ob- 
 servation, or is it the natural impression which the words would 
 make upon an unbiased mind ? According to vv. ^^' ^^ God takes 
 no pleasure in material sacrifices; what He desires is the spiritual 
 worship of the heart. According to vv. -"- ^^ God will take pleas- 
 ure in material sacrifices. Are not these two statements abso- 
 lutely contradictory ? No, it is claimed, for there are two qualifi- 
 cations which must be taken into the account, namely, the phrase 
 "sacrifices of righteousness," and the temporal particle "then." 
 
 But as far as the first qualification is concerned, it distinctly 
 suggests difference of authorship. According to \^. ^^' ^® God 
 will not accept material sacrifices; what he desires is heart- 
 religion. These words do not really mean what they seem to 
 mean, says the first qualification. They must be taken cum 
 grano salis. God does not unconditionally reject all outward 
 forms of worship. He only insists that the outward form should 
 be the expression of the inward spirit. Sacrifices must be 
 "sacrifices of righteousness," that is, not only formally correct, 
 but the expression of the religious life within. The phrase 
 "Sacrifices of righteousness" is thus clearly seen to be a dog- 
 matic qualification of the absolutely expressed statement in 
 vv. ^^' ^^. This qualification is, no doubt, theologically correct. 
 It is even probable that the author of vv. ^^' ^^ would have sub- 
 scribed to it himself.* But the question is whether the author 
 
 * It is doubtful whether even an Isaiah ever imagined a national religion 
 apart from all forms. Such an idea would hardly have been intelligible to 
 antiquity. This must be remembered in interpreting those statements of 
 the prophets which seem to repudiate all sacrifice. It is just possible that 
 the estimation of these statements by German criticism has been somewhat 
 influenced by the peculiar character of German Protestantism. 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 51 
 
 of these verses which are spoken with all the emotional absolute- 
 ness of the older prophecy, would have felt called upon in the 
 present connection to file down the grandly unconventional char- 
 acter of his thought to the precise and scientific accuracy de- 
 manded by theology. In other words, the phrase "sacrifices of 
 righteousness" has every indication of being a dogmatic gloss, 
 whose timid correctness stands in strong contrast to the daring 
 paradox of the preceding verses. This conclusion is confirmed 
 by the demands of the meter. V. ^^ is metrically too long by just 
 these words. 
 
 It is the second (historical) qualification suggested by the tem- 
 poral particle "then" which is mainly relied upon to defend the 
 unity of the two pairs of verses. Let us give the argument in the 
 words of two of its ablest exponents. "At present," says the 
 Psalmist, according to Robertson Smith,* " God desires no ma- 
 terial sacrifices. But does the Psalmist mean to say absolutely 
 and in general that sacrifice is a superseded thing? No; for he 
 adds that when Jerusalem is rebuilt, the sacrifices of Israel will 
 be pleasing to God. He lives, therefore, in a time when the fall 
 of Jerusalem has temporarily suspended the sacrificial ordinances 
 . . . but has not closed the door of forgiveness to the penitent 
 heart." The exact implications of this statement come out more 
 clearly in Matthes' formulation. f Matthes expressly amplifies the 
 argument of Jacob. | " It is certain," says Matthes, " as Jacob 
 saw, that it was the situation in which sacrifice was impossible, 
 in no case a disinclination toward sacrifice, which was the occa- 
 sion of the singer expressing himself as he does in this passage. 
 God has, no doubt, pleasure in sacrifices when they are possible, 
 but now when one is not in position to bring them, Jahwe does 
 not demand (fordcrt) them. Sorrow, repentance, fulfilment of 
 the remaining laws now suffice. For so long as misfortune lasts 
 Jahwe will content himself with what is attainable." 
 
 This explanation of the difference between vv. *^' ^^ and 
 vv. ^''' ^* cannot be regarded as satisfactory. 1. In the first place 
 the meaning of the passage educed by these expositors is barren 
 and unfruitful. Expressed very baldly, it is simply this: that 
 God will make a virtue of necessity and content himself with a 
 purely spiritual worship so long as any other kind is impossible. 
 
 * OTJC=, 440. t ZAT, 1902, p. 78. J ZAT, 1897, p. 278. 
 
52 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 (Cf. especially Matthes' formulation of the argument.) 2. Again 
 the phraseology of xx. ^*' ^^ does not bear the interpretation 
 which Robertson Smith and Matthes put upon it. According to 
 these writers, God does not demand sacrifices at the present time 
 in concession to the situation. But what is really said is that 
 God does not delight in (|*£ri) or accept (n";>l) sacrifices, which 
 is a very different proposition. To secure the meaning pro- 
 posed by these writers, some such word as wTT (cf. Mi. 6*), or 
 n'i' (cf. Jer. 7"), or ^^s*w• (cf. Ps. 40") would be necessary. 
 
 3. In the next place the situation of the singer is not clearly in- 
 dicated until we reach ^w. -'*• -\ Vv. ^^' ^^, when read in the 
 light of the preceding context, do not suggest at all that the 
 reason why God did not demand (accept) sacrifices was because 
 of the inability on the part of the people to offer them. We can 
 only infer this from the verses that follow. But if obscurity is 
 to be avoided, w. ^^' ^^ in themselves or by reason of the pre- 
 ceding context ought to suggest a situation in which sacrifices 
 were impossible. 4. On the contrary, and finally, the phrase- 
 ology of V. ^^ in its most natural interpretation implies that sacri- 
 fice is possible. This view is suggested by the verbs " delight in," 
 "accept," which would have little sense if sacrifices were impos- 
 sible. It is necessitated by the verb "j^^fV This verb is 
 usually construed as the apodosis to v. ^*^.* This is metrically 
 bad. It is really the protasis to what follows: "and if I give it, 
 thou wouldst not accept it." (Cf. Duhm ad loc.) The pre- 
 ceding context (v. "^) also suggests that the speaker is in the 
 Holy Land,t and therefore presumably able to oft'er sacrifices. 
 
 Smend long ago saw clearly J that vv. ^^' ^^ could not refer to a 
 situation (e. g., the Exile) in which it was impossible to offer 
 sacrifices. Yet he still maintains that there is a contrast between 
 the present and the future. But it is a contrast not between the 
 present exile and the future Restoration to the Holy Land, but 
 between the sinful community of the present in the Holy Land, 
 and the justified community of the Messianic Future. God will 
 
 * So LXX, cf. A.V. and R.V. text. R.V."^ follows Jerome's translation, but 
 this implies an unnecessarily harsh construction. 
 
 t This phrase is regularly employed of banishment from the Holy Land, 
 cf. 2 K. 1323, 1720^ 24=0, etc. 
 
 X ZAT. 1888, p. 112. 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 53 
 
 not accept the jirajntiaiory sacrifices of the present because of the 
 sinful condition of the people. \Miat he desires is true repent- 
 ance. This is not inconsistent with his acceptance of thank- 
 offerings from the purified community of the Messianic future. 
 Thus the contrast is not only between the present and the future, 
 but between the different spiritual condition of the people in the 
 present and the future, and between the propitiatory sacrifices of 
 the present and the thank-offerings of the future. But where 
 such entirely different things are referred to in vv. ^*' ^^ and 
 vv. ^^' ^^, it is improper to speak of a contradiction. 
 
 This view of Smend avoids the main objections to Smith's and 
 Matthes' explanation, but it creates new difiiculties. 1. It is 
 assumed that the reason why God does not accept sacrifices at 
 present is because the people is sinful. If the "I" of this 
 Psalm is a collective, as Smend maintains, the people is indeed 
 sinful, but it is as certainly penitent, and it is hard to see why 
 God would refuse propitiatory sacrifices of a truly penitent 
 people if he was willing to receive thank-offerings from a com- 
 pletely purified people. 2. Again, Smend's view requires that a 
 figurative sense be given to \^'. ^"' ^^ (they must refer to an ideal 
 restoration) for which there is absolutely no warrant except the 
 exigencies of Smend's defense of the unity of the passage. 3. 
 Further, while this view would resolve the contradiction into a 
 harmless antithesis, it would still fail to save the original unity 
 of these verses. Smend must admit that the absoluteness of the 
 old prophetic proclamation as expressed in \-v. ^*' ^^ would be 
 toned down (abgeschwdcht) in w. ^^' ^\ But we have already seen 
 in the case of the phrase "sacrifices of righteousness" that such 
 a qualification would almost certainly imply in this connection 
 a different MTiter. The conclusion seems to be inevitable. 
 Vv. ^®' ^® and v\. "*'' "^ cannot have originated from the same pen. 
 The first impression made by these verses has been shown to be 
 correct. 
 
 But which of the two pairs of verses is original ? It has been 
 assumed as a matter of course by those who deny the common 
 authorship of these verses, that w. ^"' -^ are secondary. At first 
 sight this seems to be the natural conclusion. The motives 
 which would lead to such an addition are at once intelligible. 
 The gloss would be due partly to the desire to qualify the very 
 
54 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 strong statement in vv. "• ^*, which might give offense to a scru- 
 pulous conscience, partly to a wish to adapt an original, individu- 
 alistic psalm to use in the Temple worship. Is our first impression 
 again to be trusted ? In the present case, simple and attractive 
 as the explanation of vv. ^^' ^^ is, there are weighty objections to 
 it. 1. It is a singular fact that in the three other cases in the 
 Psalter where we meet with statements parallel to 51**' ^®, viz. 
 40^ '^ 69^^ and Ps. 50, there is no evidence of any such redactional 
 qualification as is assumed in the present case. But if it was 
 thought to be necessary in Ps. 51, why not in these other psalms? 
 2. The abruptness of the ending of the psalm, if vv. ^°' ^^ are 
 omitted, has often been felt and even urged with considerable 
 force in defense of the originality of the disputed verses. 3. Of 
 still greater moment is the observation that vv. ^^' ^^ are really 
 inappropriate in their present connection. What is the force of 
 the "for" at v. ^^^? How are vv. ^^' ^^ an explanation of or 
 reason for the statement in v. "? It is difficult to say. After 
 V. *^ we expect an expression of gratitude, not of the inadequacy 
 of sacrifice as contrasted with true sorrow for sin. This inappro- 
 priateness of vv. *^' " in their present context has been felt at 
 times by others, though no sufficient attention has heretofore 
 been paid to it. Baethgen, for example, construes v. ^^ as a refer- 
 ence to thank-offerings, admittedly because of the demands of 
 the preceding context. But v. ^® must take its coloring from v. ^®, 
 and that clearly demands a reference to propitiatory offerings 
 (cf. Smend supra). Baethgen himself does not seem to feel quite 
 easy in his interpretation, for he cites Hupfeld to the effect that, 
 after all, it is possible " that no strictly logical sequence of thought 
 is to be found here, and the poet, in silently taking DTIDT in 
 its general sense (i. e. of sacrifices rather than of peace-offerings 
 specifically) returned to the means of the forgiveness of sins.'* 
 The sharp eye of Duhm has also observed the non-sequitur. 
 " One could think," he says, " that the poet had got off the track 
 a bit and had considered the sacrifices, not as an antithesis to 
 the praise of God in which he could express his gratitude, but as 
 a means of salvation which would stand in antithesis to peni- 
 tence and sorrow, since a broken heart does not seem to harmonize 
 with expressions of joy, but rather describes the present mood 
 before the deliverance." In order to meet this difficulty, Duhm 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 55 
 
 makes the suggestion that the poet, mindful of Is. 57*^, regarded 
 the broken spirit " as the mark of the truly pious man which still 
 remains even when he has personally experienced salvation and 
 is singing songs of praise." This explanation is not convincing. 
 It is no doubt true that penitence is not banished even when 
 gratitude and praise are aglow, but the logical sequence between 
 vv. ^^' ^^ and vv. ^^' ^^ indicated by the "for" does not at all favor 
 so subtle a thought. What we expect is: My mouth will de- 
 clare thy praise for Thou dost not delight in sacrifices but in a 
 grateful heart {cL Q9^'). What we get is: My mouth will declare 
 thy praise for Thou dost not delight in sacrifices but in a penitent 
 heart ! 4. If, now, we ask ourselves which of the two pairs of 
 verses fits into the thought of the Psalm as a whole more exactly, 
 it will be found that the doubts of the originality of w. ^^* ^® are 
 greatly increased, and the claims of vv. ^"' ^^ to be regarded a^ 
 original proportionately strengthened. At first sight again, 
 vv. ^^' ^^ seem to have the stronger claim. Do not they supply, 
 it may be asked, the last perfecting touch which would turn this 
 Psalm into one of the most classical expressions of spiritual re- 
 ligious experience ? It must be admitted that the appeal which 
 these verses make to our religious sympathy is very forcible. 
 But in deciding such a question the emotional appeal which a 
 passage may make to us is not necessarily the controlling factor. 
 At this point the course of thought and the nature of the "I" in 
 vv. ^'" must be examined: 
 
 The Psalm may be divided into the following clearly marked 
 paragraphs: (a) In vv. ^"^ after an opening appeal to God's 
 mercy, there is an all-inclusive confession of sin; (6) In w. ^"^^ 
 there is a prayer for pardon and for spiritual renewal, (c) In 
 vv. "■" there is a prayer for deliverance from the present mis- 
 fortunes, which must be regarded in this connection as the con- 
 sequences of sin, together with vows of service and gratitude. 
 Observe that while the thought of deliverance (]!U'*) so character- 
 istic of vv. ^*-" is probably anticipated at v. ^^ the thought 
 of sin and pardon which dominates vv. ^'^ does not recur in 
 vv. **-".* 
 
 * It is not permissible, as Dr. Briggs points out, to translate o'O"' v. " by 
 "blood-guiltiness." Ezek. 18'^ and I Sam., 25=''- '^ are not sufficient to justify 
 this translation. It is interesting to notice that, though the word frequently 
 
56 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 Let US next inquire as to the nature of the "I" in vv. ^■". 
 The following arguments, when taken together, seem conclusive 
 for the collective " I." (a) V. " is much more easily interpreted 
 of the nation than of the individual. When the speaker ex- 
 claims: "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned," he seems to 
 be unconscious of any wrong done to man. This is more easily 
 understood of the nation than of the individual. The nation 
 recognized the justice of its sufferings as due to its religious 
 apostasy, its sin against God, but maintained its innocence as 
 against its enemies who were immediately responsible for its 
 sufferings. This simultaneous consciousness of guilt and inno- 
 cence, guilt toward God and innocence toward man, of which 
 Ps. 38 is a classical illustration, can be best explained on the 
 nationalistic interpretation of the "I." 51^ read in the light of 
 Ps. 38 becomes clear at once.* (b) Similarly, v. ' lends itself 
 far more readily to the collective than to the individualistic inter- 
 pretation of the " I." On the individualistic interpretation v. ^ 
 naturally suggests either the sinfulness of the marriage relation- 
 ship in itself, or the illegitimacy of the speaker's birth. The 
 phrasing is too strong to express only the general sinful origin 
 of man. The verb '»iri!2n"' is found again only at Gn. 30^^ 
 and 31^", and it suggests the animal origin of man. If the 
 speaker w^ere an individual the coarse expression could hardly 
 fail to deflect the attention from the sin of the speaker, which is 
 the thought to be emphasized, to his mother. On the collective 
 
 occurs, it is never translated in A.V. by blood-guiltiness except in this one 
 place. The translators seem to have been led to so translate it in Ps. 51 by 
 the title. Incidentally the above analysis of the psalm furnishes new evi- 
 dence that vv. '^' ^^ and vv. ^"^ -' cannot both be original. The logical analysis 
 is in all probability the strophical analysis as well. Vv. ^'^ and vv. ^"" each 
 give a twelve-line stanza. In vv. "" we have eight lines. This suggests that 
 there were but four lines in the remainder of the psalm. Hence one of these 
 final pairs of verses is to be rejected. This strophical analysis is based on 
 the view that the two ]U at vv. ''■ * do not justify the combination of these 
 two verses into the same stanza. V. ^ certainly goes with the preceding con- 
 fession of sin. V. *, whatever else it may mean, is as certainly not a part of 
 this confession. As a matter of fact v. ^ has been corrupted probably beyond 
 the possibility of recovery. 
 
 * Cf . Smend's article cited above for this argument. It is not maintained 
 that this argument alone is conclusive for a collective "I." In the case of a 
 profoundly religious nature the ethical conception of sin is sometimes absorbed 
 by the religious conception of sin. Hence, if 5P stood by itself, theoretically, 
 it might be interpreted of an individual. 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 57 
 
 theory the mother is the nation and in pointing to the sin of the 
 nation ("mother Israel," cf. Dr. Briggs) the collective "I" em- 
 phasizes in a striking way its own sin and the very strong ex- 
 pression used is entirely appropriate. 
 
 (c) Lastly v.^^'' makes very strongly in favor of the nationalistic 
 interpretation of the "I." The reference to the Holy Spirit is 
 found again in the Old Testament only at Is. 63'''' ", where it is 
 used of the providential guidance of the nation. As enduement 
 by the Spirit is not ascribed to individuals in the Old Testament 
 except for the exercise of some theocratic function, and there is 
 no hint of the speaker of this psalm exercising such a function, 
 the individualistic interpretation at this point is in great straits. 
 Witness Duhm's conjecture here. * 
 
 If we have been correct in our view of the course of thought in 
 vv. ^^"^^ and of the collective nature of the " I," it will be seen at 
 once that vv. ^*'' ^^ make a very strong claim to be the original 
 conclusion of the psalm. Vv. ^°' ^^ which contain a prayer for 
 the community, give the appropriate logical conclusion to the 
 psalm if the "I" is a collective. It is not necessary, yet very 
 natural, that at the end the personification should be dropped. 
 
 (b) These verses explain the exact nature of the misfortunes 
 alluded to in the preceding part of the psalm. If the "I" is col- 
 lective, the misfortunes must be national, but without vv. ^*'' ^^ it 
 would be impossible to say specifically what they are. On the 
 individualistic theory there is no indication whatever of the real 
 nature of the misfortune. V. ""^ by itself furnishes no clue. 
 
 (c) Further, vv. ^"' ^^ supply just the conclusion which we are 
 led to anticipate from the general movement of the poem. The 
 thoughts of sin, penitence and pardon have been dropped since 
 V. ^^ Vv. " "^^ lead us to expect a reference to gratitude. And 
 this is what we get in vv. ^^- ^^ but not in vv. ^^' ^^ (d) Finally, 
 vv. ^"' ^^ correspond to and admirably elucidate vv. "• ^^. V. '■" 
 is the interpretation of the "violence" from which the speaker 
 prays to be delivered in v. ^^ and v. ^S which must refer to thank- 
 offerings, is the fulfilment in deed of the promise of praise in v.^^ 
 
 Thus far I have tried to show two things: first, that the first 
 impression of the incompatibility of vv. **• *^ and vv. ^°' ^* is, on 
 
 * In the above I have given only those arguments which seem to me to be 
 really decisive. 
 
58 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 closer examination, found to be justified; secondly, that the 
 first impression, that, as between these two pairs of verses, vv/^- ^^ 
 have the greater claim to originality, is not justified. It is 
 vv, ^"' ^^ which stand in organic relationship with the rest of the 
 psalm. Vv. ^^' ^^ do not do so. 
 
 But has not the course of our argument led us into a cul de sac f 
 While an intelligible reason can be found {yid. supra) for the 
 later addition of vv. ^*'' ^^ on the supposition of their secondary 
 character, can an equally convincing reason be given for the 
 addition of vv. ^^' ^^, if they are regarded as secondary ? Here 
 lies the real crux of the situation. If a probable explanation of 
 vv. ^^' ^^ considered as a gloss, cannot be given, the argument 
 which we have followed must be considered to be a blind trail. 
 
 Here I would hazard the conjecture that as there are un- 
 doubtedly some originally individualistic psalms which have 
 been revised for the public service of the temple, so there may 
 be some originally temple psalms which have been revised for a 
 collection for private devotion. If Ps. 51 stood alone this con- 
 jecture would have nothing to support it except the inherent 
 difficulties of the psalm itself in its present form. But happily 
 Ps. 51 does not stand alone. As a matter of fact it immediately 
 follows a psalm (Ps. 50) which expresses practically the same 
 attitude toward the ritual as is found in Ps. 5V^' ^^. In the case 
 of Ps. 50, it is true, we cannot speak of a temple psalm revised 
 for private use. It was rather designed from the start for private 
 devotion. Even if the favorite theory of the present time be 
 adopted which understands nl^^\ in vv. " and v. ^^ of the thank- 
 offering, and if, accordingly, no absolute rejection of sacrifices 
 can be inferred from this Psalm (cf. also v. ^ and v. ^), it still re- 
 mains inconceivable that the language employed in vv. '"^^ could 
 ever have been employed in a psalm originally designed for the 
 Temple worship. * The writer of Ps. 50 may tolerate the sacri- 
 
 * Cf. Kittel, PRE, Bd. 16, 192. The fact that Ps. 50 is an Asaph psalm 
 and therefore belonged at one time in its history to the temple choir cannot 
 alter the deduction drawn from its forcible language but only serves to sug- 
 gest the long and obscure history of the individual psalms that lies back of 
 our present collection. As Kittel observes, the theories of Matthes and Jacob 
 cannot demonstrate the original temple character of these psalms but at most 
 they illustrate the process by which these psalms may have been interpreted 
 as temple psalms when they were adopted into the present collection. 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 59 
 
 ficial system as a long-established custom, but he has lost all 
 vital religious interest in it. It might be thought that 51^^- ^' 
 were due to a glossator who was much impressed by Ps. 50 and 
 who accctt-dingly retouched the next following psalm in accord- 
 ance with the teachings of Ps. 50. But another theory, less 
 simple, but critically sounder, is to be preferred. The position 
 of Ps. 50 is anomalous. It is an Asaph psalm, but separated 
 from all the other Asaph psalms. How did this happen ? Ewald 
 conjectured that the Davidic psalms of the Second Book (Pss. 
 51-72) originally stood at the beginning of the Book, With these 
 removed Ps. 50 would come immediately before the other Asaph 
 psalms (Pss. 73-83). This conjecture does not help matters 
 much. Apart from the difficulty of accounting for the supposed 
 transfer of Ps. 51-72 to the general position which they now 
 occupy between the Korah and Asaph psalms, no reason is forth- 
 coming to explain why the Davidic psalms were awkwardly 
 thrust into the Asaph group. The Davidic psalms could have 
 been interpolated between the Korah and Asaph psalms without 
 the necessity of disturbing the latter collection. It is the anom- 
 alous position of Ps. 50, not of the group of Davidic psalms 
 (Pss. 51-72) which demands explanation. It would seem prob- 
 able that the peculiar position of Ps. 50 is due to the fact that it 
 had a different history from its companion Asaph psalms. If 
 we suppose that Ps. 50 and Ps. 51 both belonged at one time to 
 a collection of psalms for private use, we may be able to account 
 for the present position of Ps. 50, and at the same time derive 
 confirmation for our conjecture that 51^^- *^ is a gloss. The 
 reason why Ps. 50 is in its present position is because it was 
 attached to Ps. 51 in a previous collection. This collection was 
 presumably a collection for private devotion, for Ps. 50 is not 
 adapted to the worship of the Temple. But Ps. 51 was a Temple 
 psalm. When it was adopted into the supposed private collec- 
 tion, w. ^^' ^^ were added. On the theory of a private psalter in 
 which Ps. 50 and Ps. 51 once stood together, the present anom- 
 alous position of Ps. 50 and the gloss at 5P^' " can both be 
 accounted for.* 
 
 * It may be asked why vv.^' ^' were not dropped when vv. '^^ '® were added? 
 Probably because the reviser did not wish to omit the devout and patriotic 
 prayer in v. ^. A later glossator, however, was more sensitive to the conflict 
 
60 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 But our evidence is not yet exhausted for this thesis. If we 
 turn to Ps. 40, we find in vv. ^' ^ a quatrain remarkably similar to 
 5J18, 19 jg ^.jjjg quatrain original in Ps. 40? It is notorious 
 that this psalm has come down to us with various accretions. 
 Vv. "'^^j in which the singer prays for deliverance, are the 
 duplicate of Ps. 70. They cannot be original in Ps. 40 as they 
 are incompatible with vv. ^-^ in which the singer is already de- 
 livered. V. ^^ must be a "seam" (cf, Cheyne, Duhm, Briggs), 
 as it can hardly belong to what follows (cf. its omission at Ps, 70) 
 and it has no force as a conclusion to what precedes. Vv, ""^^ 
 are full of needless repetitions and vv. "• " are metrically out of 
 order, all of which suggests the presence of further accretions. 
 In view of these generally admitted facts it would not be aston- 
 ishing to discover that vv. '• ® may also be due to revision. If 
 the connection between vv. *"® and w. "'< ^ be examined, it will 
 be found to be very suspicious. Vv. ^"^ are an expression of 
 thanks-giving for deliverance out of misfortune. The singer, 
 however, is overcome at the thought of the wonderful works of 
 God which are too numerous for his grateful tongue to proclaim. 
 Then, suddenly, we have the great prophetic utterance vv, ^' *, 
 It is usually assumed that the gap between vv, ^"* and vv. ^' ^ is 
 bridged by an implied question: "How can I properly express 
 my gratitude?" to which vv. '• ® give the answer: "Not by 
 sacrifice but by service." But v. ' cannot be the answer to such 
 an implied question, for the simple reason that the reference to 
 the sin-offering (nt^tsn) forbids us to take these sacrifices as 
 representative of thank-offerings. To imply a question with 
 which the phraseology of the sentence supposed to furnish the 
 answer is inconsistent is a more than doubtful proceeding, * 
 
 between the two pairs of verses, and it was he who inserted the most recent 
 element in the text, the dogmatic clause, "sacrifices of righteousness, " in 
 order to blunt the edge of the contrast, 
 
 * Duhm feels this difficulty and attempts to delete the last clause of v. '', 
 with resulting reconstructions of the most violent and unconvincing descrip- 
 tion, Jacob (ZAT, 1897, p. 279) and Dr. Briggs urge that -iNtsn cannot 
 mean sin-offering. They point to the fact that in the seven places in which 
 the word is found again, it means sin, not sin-offering, and that the regular 
 word for sin-offering (nNon) jg not found in the Psalter at all. Hence, they 
 claim, the ordinary meaning of "s^t^n must be adhered to and v. ''^ be trans- 
 lated "Burnt-offering with sin thou didst not desire." In support of this 
 construction Is. 1" and 61* are adduced. Strong as these arguments are, I 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 61 
 
 There is thus strong evidence that 40'* ° are also secondary. 
 As these verses embody the same sentiment as 51*^' ^®, the 
 thought is at once suggested that these glosses came from the 
 same hand in connection with the adoption of these psalms into 
 a psalter for private devotion.* This theory would imply that 
 Ps. 40 was originally a temple Psalm, as was Ps. 51. It must be 
 admitted that the proof for a collective "I" in Ps. 40 is not so 
 clear as in the case of Ps. 51, and w. "' " might be thought to 
 require a differentiation of the speaker from the community (the 
 great congregation). This last consideration is of little impor- 
 tance. If once the existence of a personified "I" is granted in 
 the Psalter, w. ^*'' " would refer to the community in its formal 
 public worship. That we are dealing with an originally temple 
 psalm in the present instance is probable from the following 
 
 cannot consider them convincing. As far as the Isaiah passages are concerned, 
 the latter is certainly corrupt (LXX, Syr. and Targ give a different reading, 
 which even the R. V. follows), and the former is probably corrupt (cf . LXX and 
 Duhm ad loc). But even granting the possibility of this translation, it is 
 improbable in this connection, as it violates the parallelism, and gives a sense 
 inappropriate to the context. Isaiah might appropriately preach against the 
 hypocrisy of his hearers who combined "folly with festivals" (Is. 1", if M.T. 
 is retained) but a man full of devout gratitude to God and desirous of praising 
 him in an acceptable manner would hardly feel called upon to say that God 
 takes no pleasure in sacrifices accompanied with sin. ^Ntsn cannot be elimi- 
 nated from the present context, and in this context can only have the 
 meaning of sin-offering (cf. LXX). That this meaning is linguistically possible 
 is clear from the use of rutisn for sin and sin-offering (cf. also the analogous 
 double use of f^'in). 
 
 * I have purposely refrained from taking v. * into accoimt. The interpreta- 
 tion of this verse is only guess-work at best. Yet may I add one more guess 
 to the long list of conjectures? If vv. "• ® are cut out, v. '" does not attach 
 very well to v. ^. In v. ^ God's works are too many for the poet to describe. 
 But in V. '" he proposes to proclaim them anyway. An indication of an- 
 tithesis is needed. Read l^ for the unintelligible '*<, and understand ■'•"f^^ 
 of entering the Temple courts (cf. 100*). Possibly ^''ixn or T'^V^' has been 
 omitted. V. "^ will then be a late gloss, alluding, not to the Pentateuch, or 
 Deuteronomy, or to the Prophets generally, as has been variously supposed, 
 but to an earlier collection of psalms in which possibly Ps. 100 stood (cf. 
 especially 100*). Thus understood v. * furnishes a connecting link between 
 V. * and V. *", and also a basis to which the gloss in vv. ''• ^ could become at- 
 tached. For when the original poet proposed to praise God in the Temple, 
 the anti-sacrificial glossator could easily add that sacrifices of any description 
 were out of place as compared with a life of thankful service. The glossator 
 could naturally include a reference to the sin-offering in order to express his 
 slighting appreciation of the ritual system generally, where such a reference 
 would have been entirely inappropriate in the original psalm. 
 
62 THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 
 
 consideration when viewed in the Hght of other similar psalms 
 where the data are more pronounced. In w. ^"^ " the righteous- 
 ness of God as well as his mercy is referred to. In view of the 
 preceding context this righteousness must have been displayed 
 in the deliverance of the speaker from his distress. But could 
 an individual feel so sure that God was righteous in espousing 
 his cause ? The silent implication of vv. ^^' " is that it is again 
 the community which is speaking, and which feels conscious of 
 its innocence as contrasted with its enemies. This view is borne 
 out by the accretions which follow, which were evidently attached 
 by some one who understood the "I" of the original psalm as a 
 collective. Only so can the alternation of the consciousness of 
 sin (as against God, v. ^^) and of innocence as against the speaker's 
 enemies be understood.* 
 
 Finally, there remains to be considered Ps. 69^^ Ps. 69, as 
 has long been recognized, shows the closest affinity with Ps. 40. 
 It is noteworthy also that it is followed by Ps. 70, which is the 
 same as 40 ^*'^^. It can hardly be doubted that Pss. 40 and 69 
 (70) were exposed to the same influences, and lived at least a 
 part of their literary life in common. But further, the close of 
 Ps. 69 offers a remarkable parallel to the close of Ps. 51. In 
 both there is a repudiation of sacrifice. In both there is a refer- 
 ence to restoration (Jerusalem, the cities of Judah).t Is Ps. 69 
 a temple Psalm, and is v. ^- a gloss ? Space forbids an adequate 
 discussion of the first point, as it involves the discussion of a 
 whole group of psalms, notably Pss. 22 and 38. I can only ex- 
 press my own belief that in spite of the strongly individualizing 
 traits in this Psalm (cf. especially v. ^) the proof that the "I" is 
 collective is conclusive. But is v. ^^ a gloss ? The contextual 
 proof in the present case is not so strong as at 5P^' ^^ and 40^- ^, 
 for the reason that Ps. 69 is so loosely put together that it is difla- 
 cult to discriminate the glosses from the original elements. Yet 
 any one can feel the abruptness of w. ^^' ^" in their present 
 context. 
 
 The data bearing upon our subject have now been reviewed. 
 
 * Cf. Smend and especially Ps. 38 
 
 t Cf. 69^- with 51i«. l^ and'ee^'' with 51=°. The phrase n'cm 313 ig also found 
 only in these two psalms (cf. 51^ and 69'^) though little weight need be at- 
 tached to this fact. 
 
THE ANTI-SACRIFICIAL PSALMS 63 
 
 Pss. 51"' ^®, 40^' ' and 69'*' ^^ contain expressions highly inappro- 
 priate in psalms originally written for use in the temple service. 
 To these must be added Ps. 50 in its entirety. The first three 
 passages are, however, found in psalms in which the "I" is 
 almost certainly a collective, in other words in psalms that were 
 after all intended for the temple worship. This incongruity 
 cannot be explained away by exegetical devices. What is to be 
 done? If these passages are examined in relation to their con- 
 texts they are found to stand in no organic relationship to their 
 contexts. The question at once presses: Are they not glosses? 
 But how then did they come to be intruded into these temple 
 psalms ? At this point the curious position of Ps. 50, which was 
 not originally a temple psalm, and its intimate relationship to 
 51^^' ^® suggest that these psalms, and therefore also in all prob- 
 ability the allied psalms, Pss. 40 and 69, were taken from a 
 psalter which was collected for private devotions, and these 
 verses which are so hostile to the temple ritual may, therefore, 
 be best explained as additions which were made to these originally 
 temple psalms at the time when they were incorporated in this 
 private song-book. One further remark must be made. Ps. 69 
 is not only intimately connected with Ps. 40^"* ^^ but also with 
 Ps. 44. This latter psalm is one of the surest Maccabsean 
 psalms. If Ps. 69 were dependent upon Ps. 44, and if the theory 
 advanced in these pages were adopted, it would mean that a 
 considerable literary history would have to be interjected between 
 the Maccabsean period and the present form of the Psalter. 
 This at once opens up the whole vast, unsettled question of the 
 relationship of the Psalter to the history of the Canon, into which 
 it is impossible to enter in the present connection. I would only 
 add that the priority of Ps. 44 to Ps. 69 is by no means a settled 
 question. Ps. 40 is probably pre-Maccabsean as Ben Sira seems 
 to be dependent upon it (cf. the occurrence of the "tt. Xey '•pti' 
 ^T3 40^ at Ben Sira 51^"). But Ps. 69 is even more closely allied 
 to Ps. 40 than it is to Ps. 44. 
 
 Oberlin Theological Seminary, 
 June 17, 1910. 
 
VII 
 
 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 By Francis Brown 
 
 The prophetic writings of the Old Testament mark one of the 
 great religious movements of the human race,— probably the most 
 significant of all, with one single exception. They also present a 
 literary phenomenon which it is by no means easy to explain or 
 understand. The rise and decline of any literature we can 
 observe, as a matter of history, but we are seldom able to account 
 for it any more than we should be to predict it. Antecedents and 
 concomitants shew themselves; sometimes they look like causes, 
 sometimes like occasions, sometimes like secondary influences. 
 Who shall analyze a literary situation, — especially one of the 
 rare, creative periods, — and tabulate its forces ? Genius refuses 
 to be analyzed. The essences whose combination gives the deli- 
 cate flavour of a masterpiece, the insight and the unconstrained 
 ardour that command the spirit, cannot be followed back to the 
 lurking-places they emerge from, nor is the formula of combina- 
 tion to be set down by chemical symbols. And if we cannot tell 
 how genius awakes, neither can we give adequate reasons for its 
 decline into slumber. We can do hardly more than gather 
 more phenomena and establish a series, which, in a given case, 
 attends the process at one end or the other, offering hypotheses, 
 if we like, as to possible effects produced by what seem to have 
 the efficiency of causes. When the literature is religious litera- 
 ture, and its substance is the life of the soul in its highest rela- 
 tions, we are least of all in a position to deal with its phases by 
 scientific process, for there is always mystery in religion. 
 
 The prophetic literature of the Hebrews, which the Old 
 Testament has preserved to us, emerges suddenly, runs a long 
 course, and gradually dies away. Its most brilliant period 
 
 65 
 
66 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 stretches over three centuries, and it appears at intervals, with 
 diminishing splendour, for two or three centuries more. If we 
 compare it, for duration, with the Greek drama, or philosophy, or 
 the whole classic literature of the Romans, it is the persistence of 
 it, and not the final disappearance of it, that challenges inquiry. 
 Of itself, this is also a more interesting question, since the prob- 
 lems of life have a fascination beyond the problems of death. 
 And yet the long continuance of prophecy adds force to the in- 
 quiry why it was not longer, and as a study in Hebrew religious 
 history, this does not lack significance. And although the effec- 
 tive causes may elude the investigations of the student, a survey 
 of the circumstances and fundamental conditions will perhaps 
 be rewarding. 
 
 For our purposes it will be assumed that the prophetical writings 
 of the Old Testament Canon arrange themselves chronologically 
 and for substance, — leaving out of account the more debateable 
 matters, — as follows: In the eighth century B. c. Amos (without 
 P, 9^"-^^ and some other passages), Hosea, Isaiah (as far as 
 genuine) and Micah 1-3; in the seventh century, and down to 
 586, additions to Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Nahum, Habak- 
 kuk, early Ezekiel; in the sixth century, after 586, late chapters 
 of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah 40-55, 13-14^^, with Jeremiah 
 50, 51, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8; in the fifth century, Obadiah, 
 Malachi, Isaiah 56-66; in the fourth century, Joel, Jonah, 
 Isaiah 24-27, Zechariah 9-14. 
 
 This leaves the third century bare of any prophetic writing 
 that can with confidence be assigned to it, and exhibits Daniel, 
 a late-comer, born of the Antiochian anguish, for the first half of 
 the second century, — born after such an interval that expectation 
 of fresh offspring in the prophetic family had ceased, and the 
 prophetic canon had been closed. 
 
 A different aspect would be given to this picture if we could 
 believe, with Duhm and Marti (often Duhm's echo here), that the 
 second century, to the very end of it, and even the beginning of the 
 first century, must be looked to for a large number of prophetic 
 utterances, fragmentary or supplementary and some even of con- 
 siderable extent, which have been incorporated into our Old 
 Testament. Among these passages are: Is. ig^^-^^ (c, g. c. 160), 
 24-27 (not earlier than John Hyrcanus, c. b. c. 128), 33 (b. c. 162, 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 67 
 
 Duhm, 163, Marti), 34, 35 (late in second century, before 128); 
 Je. 23i«ff- (second century), 30, 31 (id.), 32^«-", 33"-^« (end of 
 second century; hence the whole, Je. 32, 33, cannot have reached 
 its present form before about 100 B. c), 46^"^^ (apparently depends 
 on Is. 34, and must therefore fall in the second half of the second 
 century); Zee. 9-14 (Maccabean). This list is not at all ex- 
 haustive, but if the case is made out as to these passages there 
 can be no serious objection to increasing their number. And in 
 that case "the decline of prophecy" has a somewhat different 
 significance from that usually ascribed to it. These critics ad- 
 mit, — and indeed make it one of their criteria, — a less original, 
 less ethical, less intelligible and effective prophecy in these late 
 passages, so that there is a real decline in quality, as well as in 
 sustained force, but there is no entire cessation; — the interval be- 
 tween Je. 32, 33 and John the Baptist is no greater than that 
 between Joel and Daniel, and perhaps less. Our problem would 
 still exist, but its form would be changed. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of this extension of Old Testament 
 prophecy are, however, serious enough to preclude haste in ac- 
 cepting it. 
 
 It is a necessary condition of these dates that there should still 
 have been, as late as B. c. 100, great freedom in adding to the 
 older prophecies, and modifying them. But attention has been 
 repeatedly called to the barrier erected against this hypothesis 
 by the history of the Old Testament Canon. The testimony of 
 Ben Sira is very clear. Not only do we have specific mention of 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and The Twelve (Sir. 48^«-2^ 49«- «• ''), 
 shewing the existence of a collection of these books in the order 
 and limits of our prophetical canon as early as the beginning of 
 the second century B. c, but the Prologue of the Greek Ben Sira 
 uses the term "Prophets" of an authoritative collection parallel 
 with "The Law," and distinguished from "the other writings." 
 Duhm and Marti do not squarely meet the issue raised by these 
 facts. Duhm, by a side remark,* casts suspicion on the evidence 
 of Ben Sira, but without any apparent reason except the exigencies 
 of his own theory, and both he and Marti endeavour to break the 
 
 * " Indessen beweist sie (i. e., the passage Sir. 48-'"-*) nicht allzu viel, weil es 
 keineswegs sicher ist, dass der Siracide sie verfasst habe." Duhm, Jesaia, 
 Einl. vii. 
 
68 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 force of it by claiming that whatever canonicity attached to the 
 prophetic writings in the second century was not such as to pre- 
 vent later modification. It is true that we do not know precisely 
 what degree of significance should be ascribed to canonicity at 
 its beginning. A certain amount of fluidity in the material may 
 be admitted. But it is not permissible to deny all significance 
 to canonicity even in its early stages. Paragraphs might be 
 added, here and there, to a canonical work, but that editors had 
 a free hand with it, incorporated what they pleased, carried on, 
 indeed, the whole work of compilation, so as to constitute books 
 that did not exist before, is too violent a supposition. If this 
 were possible, what reason is there why the Book of Daniel 
 should not have found a place in the canon of the prophets ? 
 
 Nor is there any such complete proof of the connection between 
 any one of the prophecies under discussion and the historical 
 conditions of the second century b. c. as to justify such a dictum 
 as this of Marti's: " Wenn es sich namlich zeigt, dass das Buch 
 Jesaja Stiicke enthalt, die erst um 100 v. Chr. entstanden sein 
 konnen, so hat dasselbe eben seine jetzige Gestalt erst nachher 
 erhalten" (Marti, Jesaja, Einl. xiv). It is sounder argument to 
 say: "If it appears that the Book of Isaiah was included in a 
 collection of prophets, having canonical value, as early as B. c. 
 200, it cannot have been put together at a later date, nor contain 
 long passages from the year 100 b. c." 
 
 There is, no doubt, in certain cases, a weakening of style, and 
 an absence of precision and vigour of thought in the passages in 
 question, which mark them as probably late, but the problem 
 is as to the range of time within which such additions are likely 
 to have been made. The most plausible ground for the second 
 century as a field for these additions is afforded in the cases 
 where an historical situation seems to offer a suitable occasion, 
 as when Zee. 12^ ^- is connected with the murder of Onias in 170 
 (v. "), or Is. 33 fitted into the year b. c. 163, or Is. 24-27 made 
 to reflect the attack of John Hyrcanus on Samaria in 12S. But 
 we do not know the history of these centuries well enough to 
 allow ourselves to be shut up to these identifications in the face 
 of the obstacles already named. 
 
 Besides, in no one of the passages in question is there any- 
 thing approaching the Hebrew of the Book of Daniel, to say 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 69 
 
 nothing of Ben Sira. The decline in style is such as one observes 
 in other literatures. "When a new vein is struck the first workers 
 in it are fresh, vigorous, and often compact in style. They are 
 impelled by a force within them. They have no models; they 
 themselves establish the standard. There is no suggestion of 
 imitation in them, for they have none to imitate. They may be 
 abrupt, daring, lacking finish, but they are themselves, and their 
 own strength carries them, without self-assertion or display. 
 The late-comers, even when equally sincere, and of dimensions 
 as large, are of necessity somewhat dominated by the standard 
 already set. Their style has something secondary in it. It 
 grows diffuse. It may grow weak, or, if its thought is still too 
 noble to lose power of expression, it may lose restraint and take 
 on exaggeration. The prophetic style suffers in these ways in 
 the later centuries. 
 
 It will be freely allowed that, but for the evidence of the exist- 
 ence of the prophetic canon, including books bearing these names, 
 before the occurrences of the second century, these occurrences 
 would fairly demand consideration as possible settings for some 
 of the prophecies. But it is not clear, at all, that they should 
 then be preferred to other settings. Even if they were more 
 plausible than any others, the history of interpretation as illus- 
 trated by the titles of the Psalms ought to warn us against attach- 
 ing too much weight to any set of ingenious combinations, when 
 we are so ignorant as to long periods of time in the last four hun- 
 dred years of Israel's life before the birth of Christ. There was 
 much more reason, from the postulate that the Psalms were com- 
 posed by David, for ascribing Ps. 51 to the time " when Nathan 
 the prophet came unto him" than, from the postulate that cer- 
 tain portions of the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah were not 
 written by the prophets whose names they bear, for fixing their 
 date by certain historical situations in the second century. 
 We may look at some specimens of the alleged evidence: 
 Zee. 9-14 belong to late prophecy, and 11*'" is a passage 
 among the most striking in the prophetic books. Marti under- 
 stands the ruthless shepherd of vv. ^®- " to be Alkimus (161 or 
 160), and the three shepherds cut off "in one month" (11^) to be 
 earlier high-priests, Lysimachus (c. 171), Jason (170), and 
 Menclaus (170) — this after Rubinkam. The interpretation re- 
 
70 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 quires a liberal stretching of the "month," but this is not really 
 diflBcult. One would expect, however, a more substantial appre- 
 ciation of Stade's work on Zee. 9-14 (ZATW, 1881-82), in which 
 the date is given as between 306 and 278 (ZATW, 1882, pp. 
 293 f ., 305). On the various theories of the " three shepherds," 
 11^ see (infer al.) Driver, Minor Proph., ii: New Century 
 Bible, 254. 
 
 As to the reference of Zee. 12^" to the murder of Onias III in 
 170 B. c. (Rubinkam, Marti), this is only one among many theoret- 
 ical possibilities. Most recognize that the attempt to identify the 
 person originally referred to here is hopeless. Was Onias the 
 only public man unjustly killed in Jerusalem, from b. c. 400 to 
 100? No process of exclusion can force us to the event of b. c. 
 170, when we are wholly ignorant of what we may be excluding. 
 
 Consider Isaiah 33, of which Duhm speaks as follows: "Dem 
 apokalyptischen Character der in Vierzeilern abgefassten Dich- 
 tung entspricht der zerhackte, kiinstliche Stil; die Sprache ist 
 die der spatesten Psalmen. Der Feind, der noch vergewaltigen 
 darf, das freche Volk, das * zahlte und wog,' kann nur das Heer 
 der Seleuciden sein, dessen Soldner, aus aller Welt zusammen- 
 geweht (vgl. 1 Mak. 6^^) eine unverstandliche Sprache reden. 
 Wie es scheint, ist Jerusalem vom Feinde eingenommen und 
 verratherisch behandelt worden. Der Eroberer scheint Antio- 
 chus Eupator gewesen zu sein und demnach unser Gedicht etwa 
 in das Jahr 162 a. Chr. zu fallen" (Duhm, Jesaia, ad loc). 
 
 Of the arguments contained in this passage from Duhm it is 
 enough to say: 
 
 1. The apocalyptic character of the chapter is not strongly 
 pronounced. The author does not hide his thought under ob- 
 scure symbols, nor dwell on distant outcomes. The apocalyptic 
 touches are of the earlier kind. A comparison with Daniel 
 proves this. 
 
 2. The disconnected and artificial style is peculiar to no post- 
 exilic century, as far as we know, and may be a personal idio- 
 syncrasy. 
 
 3. The language shews many post-exilic relationships, but, 
 again, is fixed by nothing as late as the second century. The 
 most careful examination of the language has been exhibited by 
 Cheyne, Intr. to the Book of Isaiah (1895), who, in view of it. 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 71 
 
 says (p. 171): "On the ground of the vocabulary alone, one 
 could not venture to claim chap, xxxiii as post-exilic,— it might 
 conceivably belong to the last century of the kingdom of Judah.'* 
 
 4. Why must the foe be the mercenary army of the Seleucids, 
 on account of their unintelligible language ? Does Is. 28" refer 
 to the mercenary army of the Seleucids ? 
 
 On the other hand there is a possible indication in Is. 33"'^° 
 that its date is a good deal earlier than the second century. 
 There is a strong suggestion in these verses of Ps. 15, and even 
 if a large part of Is. 33'^ be a late amplification, — too detailed and 
 precise to be likely in the impassioned context (which is the 
 opinion of Duhm and Marti, and considered, as an hypothesis, 
 by Cheyne, Intr., but by no means certain), — still the suggestion 
 remains, although less definite. But if literary dependence ex- 
 ists, it is surely not a dependence of the vigorous, poetic outburst 
 of Is. 33^* ^- on the sober, moralistic Ps. 15. Now Ps. 15 belonged 
 to the relatively early collection of Psalms known by the name of 
 "David," made certainly not later than the third century, b. c, 
 and perhaps in the fourth. If, then, Ps. 15 depends on Is. 33, 
 the latter might fall naturally into the fourth century. 
 
 The arguments for placing Is. 34, 35 late in the second century 
 (but before 128 B. c.) are of a vague character, and make the 
 impression of being largely subjective. In fact Is. 34 suggests 
 Joel, Malachi, and, notably, Zephaniah, although less concrete 
 than these, especially the last two. It is probably later than 
 Zephaniah, and post-exilic. It may be later than Malachi, or 
 even than Joel, but need not be much later. The evidences of 
 dependence "on very late passages of Isaiah" (Marti) either are 
 imaginary, or raise more questions than they answer. The 
 phrase nin'» '^SD, 34*^ (" einer der sonderbarsten Satze in alien 
 Prophetenschriften," Duhm) does not lose its strangeness by 
 being placed in the second century, if it be a designation of the 
 writer's own work, as Duhm's own explanation on this theory 
 should convince any reader. WTiy, however, may not the refer- 
 ence be to Je. 50^^ ^* (not Jeremian, but from the middle third of 
 the sixth century), with a reference to "^SSn 7j?ip of Je. 36", or 
 even, possibly, to Is. 13"°"^^ and the sense be that all the desola- 
 tion usually predicted by the writings of Yahwe's servants for 
 presumptuous nations shall befall Edom? O. C. Whitehouse, 
 
72 THE DECLINE OF PKOPHECY 
 
 Isaiah: New Century Bible, has still another theory, comparing 
 Ps. 139^^ 
 
 Isaiah 35, again, has striking resemblances with chaps. 40-55, 
 but is probably late^ than this writing; a few generations, how- 
 ever, will answer all the requirements of the case. 
 
 Isaiah 24-27 is ascribed by Duhm and Marti to the times of 
 John Hyrcanus (135-105) and Alexander Jannseus (104-78); 
 this latter date applies to 25^'", whose exultation over Moab is 
 connected with Alexander's reign by the slender thread of a line 
 of Josephus, Aiit. xiii, 13. 5: "He also overcame the Moabites 
 and Gileadites, who were Arabians, and made them pay tribute" 
 (Marti assigns this with less confidence than Duhm to Alexander's 
 time, and gives the later years of John Hyrcanus as an alternative). 
 The symbolic designations of hostile peoples, 27\ are identified 
 with the Parthians, the Syrians and the Egyptians — the Par- 
 thians appearing on the scene as a plundering horde, about 129. 
 Jerusalem had already been besieged by Antiochus Sidetes, who 
 insisted on severe terms (Jos., Ant. xiii, 8. 2-4), and this is re- 
 flected in 24^""^^ The city destroyed, in 25^- ^ is Samaria, re- 
 duced by John Hyrcanus; the "strong nation, city of peoples" 
 (25^) is Rome. All this is ingenious and plausible, but in no 
 detail compelling — as it ought to be, to overcome the mighty 
 presumption of the completed canon of the Prophets, — and the 
 combination of plausible but not conclusive details does not 
 make a convincing whole. 
 
 The deeper reason for looking into the second century for 
 these chapters arises from the apocalyptic character of them, 
 which suggests the influences that produced the Book of Daniel, 
 and from such an advanced theological idea as that of resurrection 
 (26^''). But even this proves, on examination, not to be decisive 
 — if this kind of argument could ever be decisive;— it rather leads 
 to an opposite conclusion, because the apocalyptic of Daniel is 
 much more developed and sustained, probably therefore later, 
 and the teaching of resurrection in Dn. 12^ including bad as well 
 as good, is a distinct advance on Is. 26^^ We should be led thus 
 to the third century, and might go back as far as the fourth, where 
 also historical settings have been found for our chapters. 
 Whether we can settle upon any one with confidence is, in the 
 present, still meagre, condition of our historical knowledge of 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 73 
 
 these centuries, not important (on particular theories v. Cheyne, 
 Intr. to Isaiah, cf. Stade, ZATW, 1882, pp. 298-306). 
 
 Space will not permit even so brief a summary as the foregoing 
 of the arguments concerning the other passages which are ascribed 
 by Duhm and Marti to the second century. But it is worth 
 while to illustrate the defective method of argument by which 
 the claim is sometimes propped up. 
 
 Duhm grants that Je. 30'^ *^- imitates Jeremiah, but argues for its 
 very late date on the ground that 1^\ v. ", means " bear a child," 
 while the same word in the older literature means also " beget." 
 This would be absurd here, and the ambiguity would forbid its 
 use, according to Duhm. l?"* does, of course, mean "beget," 
 sometimes, in the older literature, although this meaning is rela- 
 tively uncommon; but it has the same meaning occasionally in 
 the later language, as well. The passages are: 1 Ch. I**'- "• 
 13. 18. 20 Ql Qn ;^o), Pr. 17^ 23==' ^ Dn. 11'— quite enough to 
 shew that this sense of the word was familiar in the third and 
 second centuries. Ambiguity then did not forbid its use, and in 
 Pr. 17^^ we have the pt. 1^% as here. In each case it is the con- 
 text that relieves the ambiguity. The author of Je. 30" passes 
 rapidly from nJT 1^^ to the phrase nibv^ 'l'':f'?n-^y l^"* ^22 b::, 
 which interprets the preceding. Absolutely nothing is gained 
 by making this late. 
 
 Again, in v. ^, Duhm makes 2pV.\ a mark of late date: — " Jakob 
 . . . wie die spateren Schriftsteller gern die ganze Judenheit in 
 und ausser Palastina nennen (vgl. zu Ps. 59^*)." 
 
 In Ps. 59'* we have: p.S*- •'£DS^ 2pV'.^ bpQ D^-^«-''r) Ip"!, 
 
 on which Duhm (Marti, Kurzer ITandkomm.) says: "Die Enden 
 
 der Erde kommen desshalb in Betracht, weil 'Jakob,' oft ein 
 
 Ausdruck fiir die ganze Judenheit, iiber die ganze Erde zerstreut 
 
 ist." This makes no progress, for it does not prove that " Jacob," 
 
 as national name, is peculiar to the time when Jewry was scattered 
 
 over the earth, and is therefore a sign of late date. 
 
 In fact, who does not recall Is. 40", 41«- », 42^*, 43'- "• '\ 
 441. 5. 21^ 454^ 4(33^ 4gi2^ 495. 6 Qj^ j^ii of ^^.j^i(,i^ ^pj,, js II t,^»-i-,); 
 
 "King of Jacob," 4PS "Mighty One of Jacob," 49=^^, "seed of 
 Jacob," 45'^ (but possibly personal here), "house of Jacob," 
 48S Ez. 20' ( II "Israel"), "Jacob" Ez. 39"' ( || "house of 
 Israel"), La. 1'^ 2*- ^; but also earlier still: "house of Jacob," 
 
74 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 Is. 2\ cf. 8" and (all || "Israel"), Dt. 33^^ Nu. 24^- ^^ 23% 
 Mi. 3^- *• '. — ipy therefore appears to be no mark of date at 
 all; it could be used of the people compact in their own land or 
 of the same people widely dispersed, as the case required. 
 
 Once more, on Je. 30^\ Duhm remarks: "Es fallt auf, dass 
 der Verfasser den Herrscher mit dem Ausdruck bezeichnet 
 ["T'n!f<, ^tt'D], der in den spateren Schriften (Neh. Chr. Psalmen) 
 fiir die Notablen der Gemeinden gebraucht wird, aber das Wort 
 Konig vermeidet. Veilleicht erwartet er die Aufrichtung des 
 Konigthums noch nicht fiir die nachste Zeit. ... Er hat 
 wohl die zeit eines Alexander Janneeus noch nicht erlebt." 
 
 — But D''"!''^^ is used of the "notables" as early as Ju. 5^^- ". 
 And did Ezekiel write in Hasmonean times because he avoided 
 the word "king" and spoke of the future "prince" (^^''^3, Ez. 
 34=^, 37", 44^- ' + 16t.) ? S-'bi, U'^^t} are used much more 
 often than *l''^t< for the "notables of the congregation" in the 
 later literature: Ex. 16^% Lv. 4^% Nu. 1^^- ^^ and often (more 
 than 70t.) in P; also 1 Ch. 2^°, ^\ h\ T\ 2 Ch. P, 51 As for 
 7U^D, this is a good Isaian word for " notables " of the people. 
 Is. 28". And why might not Jeremiah use "1"'^^;^ and /^JS, as 
 well as Ezekiel t*''^^, or Deutero-Isaiah IJ?, T'-SJ and n*l^p 
 D'^ps?? Duhm himself (Nowack, Handkomm.) gives a Messi- 
 anic interpretation to Is. 55*, and T'Ji, also, has abundant 
 early attestations in the required sense. — Moreover, 7Nlt'i3 /B'iD 
 is said of the future deliverer in Mi. 5% which Marti places no 
 later than b. c. 500. 
 
 One of the most attractive arguments for the Hasmonean 
 date of Je. 30^^ is based on the clause: ^^^-ns' nij; Txrf^^T, ""D 
 "• Di<J ""^S T\'0'h, v.'^; the whole sentence reads: "And I will 
 bring him [the ruler] near and he shall approach unto me; 
 for who is he who hath pledged his heart to approach unto me? 
 saith "»." "Pledged his heart" means "given his heart in 
 pledge," a figure equivalent to "taken his life in his hand"; 
 " who hath ventured, at the risk of his life, to approach unto me ?" 
 The conception of great peril in approaching deity is not a token 
 of late date in itself (Gn. 32'", Ex. 33'°, Ju. 6'% 13^ Is. 6^; in all 
 these seeing God is spoken of). But the ritualistic interpretation 
 is suggested here, as (also + ~7S') Ex. 19^'. This, however, does 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 75 
 
 not necessarily prove a late date, for Ex. 19^^ is from J. In fact 
 Ex. 19^^ is the only passage where """^N '^'^^ is used with jHi 
 as its subject, so that this clause in Je. does not suggest Hasmonean 
 times. Vri3"lpn, preceding, is more characteristic of priestly 
 documents; ^^"^pn occurs with Aaron, or other priests or Levites, 
 as its object, Ex. 29*- ^ 40^'- ", Lv. 7'^ 8"- ''• '\ Nu. 8'- ", 
 16^- ^- *• ^^ In Nu. 16, and only here, does it appear with "» as 
 subject, or followed by "'"^S.* Thus there is no recurrence of 
 this construction later than P, in the fifth century. If it proceeds 
 from the second century in Je. 30^^ it stands alone there. The 
 only reason for thinking of the second century at all lies in a 
 supposed reference in this passage to a ruler who was at the same 
 time, like the Hasmoneans, the high-priest. The sense would 
 then be: I have given him access to me, as true high-priest, and 
 woe to the man who assumes to be high-priest without my per- 
 mission! Various usurping claimants of the high-priesthood 
 might be in mind. 
 
 It may perhaps be worth observing that the phrase is never 
 used elsewhere with reference to specifically high-priestly func- 
 tions. Nu. 16^- ^'^ it is employed of Yahweh's allowing non- 
 priestly Levites to approach him for their subordinate duties. 
 This somewhat reduces the probability of a reference to the 
 high-priesthood in Je. 30-^ Moreover, it is doubtful whether 
 an author who was greatly concerned with the high-priesthood 
 of the Hasmoneans would emphasize also the fact that the ruler 
 was one of the people themselves (^30p, iU'lpD). He would 
 have been likely to think this too suggestive of Jeroboam, who 
 made Israel sin, and appointed priests C>n niifpp (1 K. 12^S 
 13^^), "from the ends (= whole) of the people," from the people 
 at large. 
 
 The position of Messianic ruler was of itself a sacred one with- 
 out his being a priest, (cf. Ps. 2, and Hg. 2^^ Zc. 6^^- ^^ where rd. 
 iJ-'O^O ]nD [yttnn"»] n^m with We Now GASm, C. F. Kent, v. 
 LXX.) cf. Giesebrecht, Jeremiah. And of course, if the Messiah 
 
 * In Lv. 7^^ no subj. is expressed. Baentsch proposes '■- as subject here 
 also, but the presumption is strongly against it, both from the fact that l[??i 
 nin>> follows, and because of the presence of ntr'c as subject in Ex. and in 
 Lv. 8«"-2*. 
 
76 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 was sometimes conceived as a militant priest, it might be after 
 the order of Melchisedek (Ps. 110*). 
 
 An argument for the very late date of Je. 31^^ is found by 
 Duhm in the clause "l"l2n "Dn Itl'K. He queries whether "ilTK 
 refers to "day" or "covenant," "oder ob es, wie die LXX 
 annimmt, so viel wie ^pi^, ]V'[, weil, sein soil. Die letztere An- 
 nahme ist wohl die natiirlichste, fiihrt dann aber auf die Sprache 
 der spateren Zeit." How ^tTS = "because" can be a token 
 of post-Jeremian, to say nothing of Hasmonean, date is not clear. 
 It occurs Gn. 30^^ 31*^ 34''- ", Dt. 3^ Jos. 4^- ^, 22^S Ju. 9^^ 
 1 S. 2^, 15*^ 20'^ and many other passages. Even niTS \V\ 
 with which Duhm compares it, is not a sign of so late a date 
 (Ju. 2'\ 1 S. 30'^ Dt. l'« +). 
 
 In discussing Je. 3P* Duhm says: "Mit der Erkenntniss 
 Jahves kann nur die Kenntniss seiner Thora v. ^^ gemeint sein, 
 die lehrt, was in Jahves Augen recht ist, und die kliiger macht, 
 als alles andere in der Welt (vgl. Ps. 119®^*)." But this is only 
 a part of Duhm's endeavour to belittle the spiritual value of the 
 "new covenant" of Je. 3P^^-, and exegetically is a begging of 
 the question. Furthermore, the usage of the term "know '"*" is 
 against him: Ex. 5' (J), Ju. 2'\ 1 S. 2'\ 3^ Ho. 2^ 5\ 8^ Jb. 
 18^ Ps. 79"; so with the noun nyn Ho. 4^- «• «, 6^ Is. IP, 58^ 
 Je. 22^«, Jb. 21", Pr. 2' ( || "• n«n''). The purely ethical sense of 
 " knowing "»" appears distinctly in Ho. 4^; 2^^'' ^^ is worth quoting: 
 ". . . I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in 
 justice and in kindness and in mercies; I will even betroth thee 
 unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know '\" Ho. 6* 
 teaches precisely the reverse of that which Duhm understands 
 in Je. : " For I desire kindness, and not sacrifice, and the knowl- 
 edge of God rather than burnt offerings." 
 
 The ceremonial law and all scribal pedantry are excluded here. 
 "To know Yahweh" has had a long and noble history in the 
 mouth of the prophets. A determination to empty this prophecy 
 of its heart and its spiritual life may disregard this, but the 
 process is not exegesis. 
 
 Every Old Testament scholar must recognize his enormous 
 debt to Duhm, whose independence and vigour have done so 
 much to re-vitalize Old Testament exegesis and criticism, but his 
 opinions on the points under discussion are certainly misleading. 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 77 
 
 It may be understood, then, that our prophetic canon was, in 
 all probability, complete about b. c. 200, in such a sense that no 
 substantial additions and no radical reconstruction took place 
 after that time. Nor was any prophetic work issued after that 
 date which later collectors thought worthy of receiving normative 
 authority, except the Book of Daniel. Before 200 the prophetic 
 force had been long dwindling, the prophetic personality reced- 
 ing, and the prophetic style shewing artificiality and decay. 
 The decline and the cessation of prophecy are, then, actual 
 phenomena. 
 
 This being so, how far can we assign specific reasons for the 
 fact? What, at least, are the chief coincident phenomena 
 which may have tended to produce it? 
 
 1. The coincidence of a long period of national enfeeblement 
 and subjection with the period during which the decline of 
 prophecy went on is obvious enough. The aim of the faithful 
 prophets had been the moral life of the nation, and the result of 
 moral awakening was, or was to be, national strength and pros- 
 perity. The political depression of the people, involving loss of 
 independence and, for many, of national ambition, did not corre- 
 spond with the conditions under which prophecy had grown up. 
 The hopes of the greater prophets had not been primarily mate- 
 rial, but they had been distinctly national. The contrast between 
 this and the post-exilic situation tended to increase, as the de- 
 pendence of Israel on Persia and Greece grew into a habit. 
 Deutero-Isaiah, Haggai and Zechariah could expect national re- 
 vival more readily than a prophet of the fourth or third century 
 could do. What was statesmanlike in the prophet found little 
 scope, and expectation of radical change grew dim. National 
 aspiration had little nourishment to share with religion. The 
 Maccabean revolt, with its associated national spirit, vigorous 
 for a time, was needed to evoke even the one prophetic book of 
 Daniel. 
 
 The situation must not be exaggerated. There was, of course, 
 a communal life without interruption after the exile. There 
 was genuine religious power in Malachi and Jonah and Zecha- 
 riah 9-14, although national independence was in a past increas- 
 ingly distant. And when prophecy at length revived, in John 
 the Baptizer and in Jesus, the national life was a petty affair. 
 
78 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 And if it be said that it was the individualistic note in the 
 preaching of John and of Jesus that stirred the conscience, and 
 the thought of individual need that impelled the speakers them- 
 selves — and we need not for the moment stop to inquire how 
 far this statement needs to be qualified — one may ask why the 
 prophets had not drawn from individualism, centuries before, a 
 like inspiration? 
 
 2. We are thus led to consider the growth of individualism. 
 The increasing prominence of the individual in prophetic eyes 
 was natural, and necessary. To assail the moral corruptions 
 of their nation was long their principal message, and these cor- 
 ruptions inhered in individuals. The nation was corrupt by 
 reason of its corrupt members. The prophets were therefore, 
 in fact, working, at least from the beginning of their literary 
 period, for the actual promotion of individualism. In the sev- 
 enth century and the sixth, in Micah 6, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 
 a conscious individualism appears, alongside the national point 
 of view, and independent of it. After the exile, as we know, 
 individualism had a large development, especially in the mor- 
 alists. 
 
 But while prophecy could regard the individual as a constituent 
 part of the nation, and subsidiary or injurious thereto, and even, 
 occasionally, consider the individual by himself, there were rea- 
 sons why, as a movement, it could not readily adapt itself to 
 the new individualism, — the outgrowth largely of its own rebukes 
 and exhortations. There is, of course, no intrinsic difficulty in 
 preaching God's will to individuals, as such, when you see them 
 in their large relations. But the prophets were not at once in a 
 position to see the individual in his large relations, when the con- 
 ception of nationality was dwarfed. You must consider the 
 large relations of an individual either in space or in time. You 
 may conceive him as a member of a great, and important, com- 
 munity, present in reality or in thought, and as getting his im- 
 portance from that membership. Or. you may conceive of him 
 as a being with seeds of immortality in him, working out his long 
 destiny, and getting his importance from his immeasurable 
 duration. Now the personal hereafter was a shadowy and in- 
 effective idea to most of the prophets of the Old Testament. 
 Therefore, when the communal importance of the individual 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 79 
 
 dwindled, with the community itself, there was no conviction of 
 his endless existence to take the place of his communal impor- 
 tance in the prophet's mind. There might still be kindly interest 
 and a desire to do good, but nothing to stir deep convictions and 
 arouse passionate enthusiasm such as was needed to sustain the 
 prophetic vocation. Reflection, moralizing, ethical precept — 
 shrewd, sagacious, epigrammatic — took the place of fiery denun- 
 ciation and impassioned appeal. The prophet gave place — not 
 wholly, but largely — to the sage, the living message to the in- 
 genious aphorism, and the wise utterance of the careful preceptor 
 became the main resource in the training of personal life. The 
 era of the moralists gave place to the personal messages of John 
 the Baptizer, and Jesus, only when the life of the individual was 
 seen continuing into a new dispensation in the realized kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 3. The rise of the moralists was in itself an influence unfavour- 
 able to any revival of prophecy. They reasoned out the prin- 
 ciples that should govern human conduct. Calmness was a 
 mark of them, quiet rationality as opposed to impetuous fervour. 
 It was the reign of careful judgment and not a rush of scorching 
 fire. Their teaching of righteousness was in large measure a 
 thing of rules and maxims. An atmosphere of temperate wisdom 
 was created, in which prophetic ardour perhaps found difficulty 
 in breathing. Thus, notwithstanding many evidences of various 
 and contrary schools of thought and qualities of temper in the 
 Jewish people in Palestine, the wide spread of the moralizing 
 temper formed a natural, though partial, barrier against the re- 
 adjustment of prophecy to the new conditions. The moral 
 precept was more at home than the prophetic appeal, at a time 
 when the individual was simply a human unit, whose life was of 
 a few years only. 
 
 4. A kind of cosmopolitanism, also, was growing up, which was, 
 to some extent, an enemy of zeal, and tended toward indifference 
 in religious matters. How strong this was appears from the 
 importance of the Hellenizing party under Antiochus Epiphanes. 
 It appears there as indiffcrentism in matters of ritual. But it 
 was not marked by strenuous effort after personal righteousness 
 according to any prophetic standard. It was probably not with- 
 out its influence on the moralizers, as appears in those maxims 
 
80 THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 
 
 which are rather shrewd than saintly. It was no natural soil for 
 the growth of the prophetic spirit. 
 
 5. One kind of prophecy, indeed, persisted, but it was an 
 exception that proves the rule. The apocalypse, or exhibition of 
 the future in symbolic pictures, had been used sparingly, if at 
 all, by the early prophets. Their minds had not moved in such 
 channels. They abound in figure, but their expectation is definite 
 and their portrayal clear. The apocalyptic interest appears in 
 Ezekiel, of course, who dwelt on a future whose conditions must 
 be different from those of the sad and evil present. Joel illus- 
 trates it. Daniel is largely given over to it. There are post- 
 canonical books, like Enoch and its kin, whose symbolic visions 
 are wild and vague. The apocalypse, for its real value, needs 
 more even than any other kind of prophecy to keep in close 
 touch with the ethical, and to be connected with the personal 
 life of its time. To an increasing degree this was not so with 
 the Jewish apocalyptic. Under the form of prediction it cut 
 loose from life. It abandoned to the sages the care of the indi- 
 vidual in his present moral concerns and perils, as well as the 
 care of immediate communal interests, and flung itself with un- 
 restrained imagination upon the future. Thus prophecy forgot 
 its true concern for men. Even life after death took on condi- 
 tions remote from those of life before. In this development, the 
 prophetic habit impaired the power to prophesy, and became a 
 specific cause, one may well think, of the disappearance of the 
 prophets, — a habit made sterile by its own excesses, — perishing 
 at length for lack of ethical content and touch with the vital 
 problems of men. 
 
 6. Probably chief among the phenomena which synchronize 
 with the decline of prophecy, was the increasing domination of 
 the religious life by ritual. There is clear proof that prophecy 
 was affected by this phenomenon. Ritualist and moralist lived 
 easily side by side, and at length united by amalgamation, as 
 ritual came to be regarded as of the essence of morals. Not so 
 with the ritualists and the prophets. The early prophets had 
 been foes of the ritual. A brave attempt to ethicize the ritual 
 and so unite these religious forces was made in the Book of 
 Deuteronomy. This appeared to be failing even before the great 
 cataclysm of the exile. What might have happened if the nation 
 
THE DECLINE OF PROPHECY 81 
 
 had lived on, we do not know. But in the narrower conditions 
 of post-exilic life, with the opposition between prophecy and 
 ritual broken down by Deuteronomy, and with Ezekiel shewing 
 prophecy fairly within the framework of ritual, the domination 
 of ritual might almost have been foreseen. Ritual was much 
 better qualified to govern the community as a provincial fragment 
 of the Persian empire than prophecy could be. And ritual, no 
 doubt, had its real service to render. But it is not easy to see 
 how, under the best post-exilic conditions, prophecy could have 
 flourished by its side. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi breathed its 
 spirit, but their work was done in view of circumstances which 
 did not recur. Jonah ignored ritual, and stands isolated. Joel 
 and Daniel united ritual and apocalypse, and were sporadic ap- 
 pearances due to special emergencies. It would not be easy to 
 shew how a permanent mating of prophecy and ritual could have 
 come about. Certainly the revival of prophecy, in John and in 
 Jesus, lends no colour to any such probability. 
 
 With all this it must be borne in mind that, to a large degree, 
 the work specifically aimed at by the ethical prophets was ulti- 
 mately accomplished. Their hope for a re-established nation of 
 wide dominion and ideal glories was not realized. The Macca- 
 bean era, splendid as it was, did not fulfil their expectations, 
 still less did the outbreaks and revolts that followed, down to the 
 second century a. d. But their belief in one only God was 
 established, and this belief was more effective in producing moral 
 life among the people at large, in the post-exilic centuries, than 
 anything we know of or can imagine in the times of Amos and 
 of Isaiah. The work of such men as these lived after them, as it 
 always does, and the Old Testament prophets had thus, through 
 the succession of generations and by the influence of their written 
 words, a great share in the revival of religion, and the institution 
 of a new and diviner spiritual order, which appeared among men 
 as the local life of the nation they loved and struggled for was 
 passing away. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 September, 1910. 
 
VIII 
 
 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 By Thomas Franklin Day 
 
 The writer wishes in the following pages to present a study 
 of the human aspects of the Messianic ideal; to show its rela- 
 tion to the needs and hopes of generic humanity; and to set 
 forth the racial significance of Israel and the Christ. 
 
 The basis of the Messianic hope lies in the intrinsic worth of 
 man as a rational being made in the image of God. Therefore, 
 while the Messianic hope in its distinctive sense had its historic 
 origin among the Hebrew people, none the less it belongs to man 
 as man. It was Hebraic only because it was first of all human. 
 It sprang primarily out of the heart of humanity, although it 
 took its initial form from the divinely nourished self-respect of 
 the Israelitish people. The Hebrews, as a representative people, 
 first and most fully apprehended the truth of man's essential 
 dignity as God's offspring. While the rest of the world was 
 still groping in darkness, the secret of man's larger destiny based 
 upon his divine lineage was made known to the chosen people. 
 
 The difference between man as he is when left to himself and 
 man as the subject of special revelation is strikingly presented 
 in the Book of Daniel (7^^) where, the world-powers having been 
 represented as beasts, the Hebrew people are designated as " one 
 like unto a son of man." It is as much as to say that the Hebrews 
 had reached the human level while the other nations had not 
 yet attained thereunto. This is more than a mere assertion of 
 superiority due to race prejudice. It is based upon a judicial 
 estimate of the characteristics of the respective peoples, and 
 history justifies the comparison. For, in the centuries before 
 Christ, humanity had attained its best estate religiously in Judoea. 
 The highest human ideals had there found their worthiest ex- 
 
 83 
 
84 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 ponents. What man ought to be, what he may and can become, 
 received illustration and enforcement on every page of Hebrew 
 history. For this reason the Hebrew people were in a position 
 to become the spokesmen for the rest of the world. It was the 
 entire race that uttered itself through Israel. The hope of 
 Israel was the hope of mankind. 
 
 Hebrew literature is at its best when it strikes this universal, 
 racial note. The eighth Psalm contains one of the classic ex- 
 pressions of Israel's conception of the intrinsic worth of man as 
 man: 
 
 " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
 
 The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 
 
 What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 
 
 And the son of man, that thou visitest him ? 
 
 For thou hast made him but little lower than God." 
 
 It took centuries of divine teaching to make the Hebrew people 
 realize this truth. When they learned it, it was not for them- 
 selves alone, but for all peoples to whom their message should 
 come. It is through fellowship with God that man comes to 
 himself and realizes to the utmost his innate possibilities. By the 
 interplay of these two ideals — man's inherent worth and God's 
 unstinted favor — the Messianic hope became a definite and 
 potent factor in human history. 
 
 We may say then that the Messianic hope is instinctive in 
 humanity; that it is based on an inherent sense of the worth of 
 man as man; that it came to its classic expression in the experi- 
 ence of the Hebrew people; and that it did so only because they, 
 in a degree far surpassing any other people, were the recipients 
 of the free grace of Yahweh who took them into fellowship with 
 himself and, identifying himself with them throughout their 
 history, made them his co-workers through the truth that en- 
 lightened and the love that redeemed them. 
 
 II 
 
 The Hebrew word rT'^D is not often used in the Old Testa- 
 ment. It refers usually to the priest or the theocratic king, both 
 of whom held official positions as representatives of the nation 
 and servants of Yahweh. It is used perhaps figuratively of the 
 
MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 85 
 
 patriarchs or, as some think, of the nation (Ps. 105^^). The 
 term is never used in the Old Testament of an ideal person of 
 the future, whether prophet, priest or king. Nor is it used in 
 the absolute sense of the Messiah. The references are uniformly 
 to historical personages. This is true even in the case of Cyrus, 
 who had already begun his victorious career when the great 
 prophet of the exile hailed him as Yahweh's "anointed" (Is. 45*). 
 Not until after the Old Testament canon was completed was the 
 term Messiah used as a designation of the expected One of the 
 future. 
 
 Although the term Messiah was applied for the most part to 
 individuals, the covenant idea which underlies it embraced the 
 nation as a whole. Such terms as "my son," "my chosen," 
 possess the Messianic quality as truly as the more distinctive 
 term, "mine anointed"; and these terms are unquestionably 
 applied to the nation. There is no mistaking their connotation : 
 they are signs and seals of Israel's intrinsic worth in the eyes of 
 Yahweh. They constituted the very soul of the covenant rela- 
 tion by which the Hebrew people were lifted above the indis- 
 tinguishable mass of humanity to a place of distinction. God 
 loved the Hebrews and therefore chose them to be his people; 
 but he loved them because they were men, he chose them be- 
 cause they were his sons. 
 
 In the strictest sense of the term, therefore, the Hebrews 
 became the Messianic people. By this phrase, more is meant 
 than that Jesus the Messiah was born of the stock of Israel. 
 It has, as we shall see, a real application to the chosen people. 
 But because the covenant was not for Israel only, but for 
 the world, all Messianic titles may be transferred to humanity 
 as a whole. The human race is the Messianic race in the sense 
 that God has chosen it in love to be the subject of eternal redemp- 
 tion. As Messianic individuals represented a Messianic nation, 
 so a Messianic nation represented the Messianic race of mankind. 
 In this view, the term "Messianic" has a wide meaning. In its 
 most generalized sense, it embraces the total of humanity. In 
 its more specific sense, it points to "Jesus only." The life- 
 history of the Hebrew people forms the connecting link between 
 the two. 
 
86 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 III 
 
 Why did God choose Israel to be the nation which should 
 represent the race in the preliminary stage of the redemptive 
 process? Undoubtedly it was, in part, because the Hebrews 
 had the Semitic genius for religion. But this of itself would 
 never have set them forward on their remarkable career as world- 
 teacher in the things of religion. We must add to their native 
 aptitude the touch of divine grace through special revelation. 
 There was something peculiar in the religious experiences of 
 Israel. We are content to call it the whisper of God in the 
 spiritual consciousness of an Abraham or a Moses, the response 
 to which ratified the divine choice and opened a clear pathway 
 for unbroken spiritual communion with the divine. 
 
 Thus Israel became a representative people; its spiritual his- 
 tory presents in miniature what the race-history would have 
 been under like conditions. The results of its experience re- 
 main valid for all time as a life-asset for the race. This was 
 God's method of awakening and developing the latent hopes of 
 mankind. He selected a nation which should serve as pupil and 
 teacher in one. 
 
 When a people acquire self-consciousness, they take their 
 place in the world as a factor to be reckoned with. Soon or late 
 they achieve prestige and power; they create a literature which 
 enshrines their characteristic spirit and ideals. It was so with 
 the Hebrews. Through the covenant they awoke to self-con- 
 sciousness as Yahweh's elect people. Their literary develop- 
 ment waited upon their political unification, and when the 
 literature began to take shape, it embodied the buoyant and 
 confident and joyous hope which never ceased in the darkest 
 periods of their history to strike its resonant and inspiring note. 
 
 In the representation of the future which is given us in the 
 earlier literature, no human figure stands out in isolated gran- 
 deur as the distinctive Messiah. We see only the ordinary 
 human functionaries who were the natural representatives of the 
 nation, viz.: The kings in their orderly succession (II Sam. 
 V-^y, the prophets (Dt. 18'"'); and the priests (Dt. 18'). 
 The central figure is Yahweh himself who shall come to dwell 
 
MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 87 
 
 on Zion as Israel's judge, law-giver and king (Is. 33^^). He 
 will be his own administrator; he will umpire the causes which 
 are brought to his judgment seat; he will speak peace to the 
 nations; he will make Jerusalem the center of the world's re- 
 ligious life; the instruments of war shall be turned into the im- 
 plements of peaceful industry (Is. 2^*). 
 
 IV 
 
 All this brings us close to the universal world-life. We see 
 how the welfare of the race is bound up with the destinies of the 
 chosen people. Israel, we have said, lived a representative life. 
 Let us note here some specific instances in which this vital fact 
 appears : 
 
 In the first place, it is prophecy that paints the picture of 
 the world-future. And Hebrew prophecy is characterized by 
 breadth of sympathy for all human needs and by a ready adapta- 
 tion to all human conditions. Everywhere it strikes the uni- 
 versal key. Even when it speaks to present conditions, it utters 
 truths of dateless significance and value. The greatest of the 
 prophets apparently were conscious of being called to a universal 
 ministry. When they summoned heaven and earth as witnesses, 
 they seemed to claim for their message a world-wide application. 
 When, as with a voice of thunder, they denounced approaching 
 doom upon guilty nations, they seemed to feel that the universal 
 moral sense would ratify the judgment. When they voiced the 
 hope that was in them — hope for Israel and for the world — they 
 expressed it in language so lofty and with a conviction so com- 
 pelling that subsequent ages have been content to accept their 
 words as expressive of their own highest hopes and aspira- 
 tions. 
 
 Secondly, the experience of Israel was representative in its 
 consciousness of sin. Sin as a fact of consciousness appears 
 nowhere so vividly in the ancient world as in the experience of 
 the Hebrew people. This was due to their tuition under the 
 law. But Hebrew law as a code of ethical requirements brought 
 to light only the sins which mankind in general commit: offences 
 against justice, purity and love. There would have been no 
 variance between Greek philosopher and Hebrew prophet in 
 
88 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 their estimates of moral conduct, if both had drawn their knowl- 
 edge of ethical principles from the same source. Despite the 
 disadvantage under which the pagan conscience labored, its 
 sense of sin was often remarkably clear. The difference between 
 Hebrew and non-Hebrew at this point was chiefly this: The 
 former saw deeper into the meaning of sin; he had a clearer 
 conception of it as a moral barrier between himself and God; 
 he strove more steadily and earnestly to remove the barrier; and 
 if at times he mistook ritual for righteousness, he found the very 
 law in which he trusted to be at last a "schoolmaster to bring 
 him to Christ." He learned that the divine election was an 
 election of grace and that there was no difference between Israel 
 and the rest of mankind in point of merit, but only in priority 
 of experience of salvation. What he learned of the "plague of 
 his own heart" the Gentile will learn too; and, making due 
 allowance for variety in the divine propaedeutic, both will 
 learn in essentially the same way how the plague-spot may be 
 healed. 
 
 Thirdly, Israel was representative in its experience of suffering. 
 From the beginning men had known what suffering was. Suf- 
 fering as punitive, the pagan mind could understand, but suffer- 
 ing as cleansing and redemptive was not in all its thoughts. 
 Much of the world's sorrow and suffering had without doubt 
 been vicarious, but the principle of vicarious suffering waited for 
 elucidation in the light of Hebrew experience. It was not the 
 quantity of suffering which "the servant of Yahweh" endured 
 that gave it its peculiar character; rather it was the perception 
 of its quality that gave pathos and pungency to the prophet's 
 description of it. It was suffering for a beneficent purpose. It 
 held in its bosom the secret of salvation. It foreshadowed the 
 crucifixion. It showed that suffering endured in patient love, 
 though in itself a thorn, will bear fruit to eternal life in the hearts 
 of its beneficiaries. The principle of vicarious suffering has 
 vital significance for all mankind. The Hebrews learned it and 
 applied it in their own experiences in advance of their fellows. 
 The cross of Jesus is its supreme example. 
 
 Thus far we have dealt with the national features of the Mes- 
 sianic ideal. Israel, as the Messianic nation, lived its unique life 
 not for itself alone. It sounded the depths of the moral life and 
 
MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 89 
 
 rose to the heights of spiritual exaltation in order that the whole 
 world might attain spiritual insight and enter upon its divine 
 inheritance. And in large part the Hebrews directly influenced 
 other nations along the line of their peculiar experience. Hebrew 
 thought and Hebrew faith permeated the civilized world through 
 the diaspora. The proselytes of the gate were frequently among 
 the choicest spirits of the time. 
 
 But it was not the divine intention that the world should receive 
 its spiritual education wholly at the hands of the Hebrews as a 
 people. The best and most vital things could be known only 
 from the lips of him in whom the Hebrew ideals and spirit should 
 at length reach their perfect efflorescence. Between Messianic 
 Israel and the personal Messiah ran various connecting lines on 
 which were threaded, so to speak, various Messianic individuals 
 — prophets, priests and sages, royal personages and men gifted 
 in song. 
 
 The Messianic ideal which was latent in the nation's organic 
 being could be expressed in its variety only through individuals. 
 For the prophetic ideal "men of spirit" were needed, and for 
 the kingly, "men of valor." At length the individuals stood as 
 the concrete realization of the ideal, but even so no single indi- 
 vidual realized it in its fullness, but only in part. Moreover, 
 prophet, priest and king, even at their best, were never con- 
 sidered apart from the nation. As they derived their position and 
 their meaning from the organism, so they reflected back upon 
 the organism the honor and prestige which they severally ac- 
 quired through their personal worth and achievements. Thus 
 nation and individual co-operated to produce the image of per- 
 fected humanity in which the general and the particular each 
 found its place. 
 
 Just as the national experience revealed generic relationships, 
 so each Messianic individual embodied some essentially human 
 trait which every man ideally considered should possess. 
 
 The principal emphasis was laid upon the royal function. 
 There was a reason for this. While prophecy is the living voice 
 that speaks for the conscience of mankind, and priesthood that 
 which promotes the culture of religion on its aesthetic or its moral 
 
90 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 side, kingship is the embodiment of the human will; not the 
 lawless self-will of the natural man, but the will as enlightened 
 by divine truth and swayed by divine power that persuades but 
 does not compel. The king must be the first subject of the 
 realm. He must enforce the law and be himself a pattern of 
 righteousness. Saul was rejected because he had not learned 
 to obey. David was a man after God's heart because he recog- 
 nized that he was but the representative of Yahweh on the one 
 hand and of the nation on the other. That David did not always 
 live up to this high ideal was painfully evident, but nothing more 
 signally proved the reality and imperativeness of the ideal than 
 the judgment that fell upon David's house. Chastisement, de- 
 feat, or impending dethronement warned the occupants of the 
 throne against placing too low an estimate upon the divine 
 requirement. 
 
 There was danger in making the royal type too prominent. 
 The current expectation regarding the Messianic king was a 
 constant embarrassment to Jesus. More than once he refused 
 the proffered crown, knowing that for him the royal idea in- 
 cluded elements of which the people had no conception. Long 
 ago prophecy had presented two ideals which tended greatly 
 to shade the splendor of the royal type, viz.: the portrait of 
 the ideal man and that of the patient sufferer. Both rest on 
 something more fundamental than royalty, something which be- 
 longs to man as man, and which glorifies the common man as 
 truly as it does the king. Either would serve as model for any 
 of the sons of men. 
 
 Jesus betrayed his unerring consciousness of his Messianic 
 vocation when he perceived that all these various elements were 
 necessary to the true Messiah and in his matchless way com- 
 bined them in his own strong and simple personality. The in- 
 dividualizing of the Messianic function was unified and perfected 
 in his person. He was in reality all that his forerunners were in 
 type. He exhibited in fullness what they performed in part. 
 In him all the Messianic forecasts were personalized and made 
 eternally sure. Henceforth we look not for another. 
 
MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 91 
 
 VI 
 
 The perfection of Jesus' character lies in its absolute human- 
 ness. That he lived a normal human life; that he was tempted 
 in all points like as we are; that he learned obedience by the 
 things which he suffered, we gather from the story of his earthly 
 career. That he lived his life without sin is also of record, and 
 the burden of disproof is upon him who would show the record 
 false. 
 
 We are fain to believe that Jesus chose the title "Son of Man" 
 because of its simple human connotation. He was very man 
 of very man. In him Israel flowered and humanity came to 
 its own. Generic humanity took fresh root in him. He epit- 
 omized in himself the race as it was destined to become. 
 
 In his teaching he worked constructively on the human plane. 
 He magnified the worth of the individual man. He held the 
 soul, the self, which is the core of personality, to be of more value 
 than the whole material world. He was the friend of sinners, 
 and in his intercourse with the lowest we can see what must have 
 been his constant feeling as he moved among the throng that 
 pressed him. Rank, wealth and culture, and the privileges of 
 birth were as nothing in his eyes compared with the simple fact 
 that men and women were born of the earth-mother and had 
 God for their father. Everj^here he felt the human touch, and 
 it drew from him the virtue of his unspent sympathy. Whether 
 to Zacchseus the extortioner or to the woman taken in adultery, 
 his appeal was to the best that was in humanity and the appeal 
 was always made in faith. 
 
 The story of the temptation throws a flash of strong light upon 
 Jesus' habits of thought. We are told that the devil showed him 
 all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. The vision 
 itself probably was not new to Jesus. The world as a whole had 
 been present to his mind before. He repelled the suggestion of 
 Satan, but he retained the panoramic vision. Out of his deep 
 brooding over it came his "Weltanschauung," His eye was fixed 
 upon the total of humanity as the sphere of God's present and 
 future working. He expected that when he should be lifted up 
 from the earth, he would draw all men unto himself. His out- 
 
92 MAN AND THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 look and his hope, and his invincible purpose, were universal, 
 racial. 
 
 Thus far we have been moving among things essentially- 
 human. And, not only his death, but his resurrection and ascen- 
 sion, — were they not as truly stages in his human career as were 
 his birth, his circumcision and baptism ? Was he not exalted to 
 the right hand of God because of what he had done as man when 
 he lived his life in the flesh? Was it not as the ideal man that 
 the divine benediction was bestowed on him — "This is my be- 
 loved Son in whom I am well pleased " ? And when we think of 
 Jesus as divine, is it not because his divinity is the irrefragable 
 conclusion of the argument which his total life presents? 
 
 Our vision still is of man; man on the way to a predestined 
 salvation. We have seen humanity as a whole rising through 
 Israel to a sense of its worth in the sight of God. We have seen 
 it come to maturity in Jesus in whom the divine Word was made 
 flesh. We have seen it made perfect through suffering and ex- 
 alted to a place within the Godhead. The task of Jesus which he 
 began on earth he completes from his theanthropic throne. He 
 sends forth his Spirit, which is the Spirit of sonship, to reproduce 
 in all the sons of men a character like his own, thus making them 
 partakers of the divine nature. We see not yet what man shall 
 be; but we hear the footfalls of an unnumbered host, and catch 
 the strains of an ascending song — the processional of redeemed 
 humanity. 
 
 San Anselmo, California, 
 July, 1910. 
 
IX 
 
 NOTES ON TWO PASSAGES IN THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA 
 
 By a. V. Williams Jackson 
 
 It may be somewhat hazardous for a non-speciahst in Biblical 
 and Semitic subjects to enter among the ranks of contributors 
 to this volume, but I remember the kindness with which Dr. 
 Briggs, the first president of our little Oriental Club in New 
 York, used to call upon me, as the only Indo-Iranian member, 
 to present something after the papers of the evening were read, 
 and how graciously the Biblical colleagues received such com- 
 munications, though not directly in their line. For that reason 
 I count it a privilege and a pleasure to add the accompanying 
 notes from the field of Iranian studies in connection with two 
 passages in the Old Testament Apocrypha as a memento of 
 kindness on the part of a friend and as a mark of regard for the 
 scholar whom I have long admired. 
 
 1. A Note on Ragau {Avestan Ragha, Old Persian Raga) in 
 
 Judith V"''^ 
 
 Owing to my interest in Zoroaster I have always felt an attrac- 
 tion for the history of ancient Ragha, the modern Rai, whose 
 ruins lie about five miles south of Teheran. Ragha is supposed 
 by tradition to have been the home of Zoroaster's mother, and 
 appears as 'Rages' or 'Ragau' in Tobit and Judith.* On each 
 
 * A description of the ruins of Ragha and a sketch of its history, by the 
 present writer, will be found in Persia Past and Present, pp. 428-441, New 
 York, 1906, and in the Spiegel Memorial Volume, pp. 237-245, Bombay, 1908. 
 For the tradition about Zoroaster's mother see Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient 
 Iran, pp. 17, 192, 204, New York, 1899. 
 
 93 
 
94 NOTES ON THE APOCRYPHA 
 
 of the three visits which I paid to Persia in the years 1903, 1907, 
 and 1910, I was particularly struck by the aptness of a local 
 allusion in Judith to the plain and mountains about Rai, what- 
 ever may be the inaccuracy of other allusions in this non-canonical 
 work. 
 
 The well known passage (Judith, V'^^) describes how Nebu- 
 chadnezzar marched against *(1) Arphaxad, who reigned over 
 the Medes in Ecbatana, . . . (5) and made war with King 
 Arphaxad in the great plain: this plain is in the 
 borders of Ragau, (13) and he set the battle in array 
 with his host against King Arphaxad in the seventeenth year, 
 and he prevailed in his battle and turned to flight all the host 
 of Arphaxad, and all his horse, and all his chariots; (14) and 
 he became master of his cities, and he came even unto Ecbatana, 
 and took the towers, and spoiled the streets thereof, and turned 
 the beauty thereof into shame. (15) And he took Ar- 
 phaxad in the mountains of Ragau, and smote 
 him through with his darts, and destroyed him utterly, unto 
 this day.' 
 
 I shall not enter here into the question of the historical or 
 pseudo-historical identity of Arphaxad,* but I wish to emphasize 
 the appropriateness of the references to the plain and the moun- 
 tains in connection with Ragha, a matter that might be in- 
 cluded with the local names regarding which Schiirer remarks 
 that 'der Verfasser seine Erzahlung nicht geographisch in die 
 Luft gebaut haben wird.' f In whatever direction one approaches 
 Rai (Ragau, Rages), whether from the south or from the north, 
 or when journeying to and from Khurasan, one is struck by the 
 impression of plain and mountain alike. The photographs 
 which are here reproduced will bring out that point more clearly; 
 and, as I have noted elsewhere,! the mountains in question may 
 either be a part of the Alburz range, as is generally thought, or 
 
 * See Cheyne, 'Arphaxad 2/ in Encycl. Bib. 1. 319, and W. Max MuUer's 
 'Arphaxad,' in Jewish Encycl. 2. 137 and Prdsek, Gesch. der Meder und Perser, 
 2. 35, n. 1. Gotha, 1910; and compare, O. Wolff, Das Buck Judith, pp. 51-56, 
 Leipzig, 1861, and especially Andre, Les Apocryphes de I'Ancien Testament, 
 pp. 153-154, Florence, 1903. 
 
 t Quoted from Lohr in Kautzsch's Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen, p. 148, 
 Freiburg i. B., 1898. 
 
 X See Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. 239. 
 
NOTES ON THE APOCRYPHA 95 
 
 they may rather be the spurs which form a minor ridge curving 
 around ancient Ragha and giving an elevated effect, which the 
 photographs show. 
 
 By way of supplement it may be added that 'the plain of Rai' 
 is referred to, for example, by the Persian writer Mustufi; * 
 while Ibn Haukal speaks of ' the mountains of Rai,' f Yakut 
 alludes to 'the bare and arid mountain' which dominates it, and 
 Strabo speaks in a similar manner of the district as mountainous. J 
 It is worth observing that the old Latin (Itala) versions of Tobit 
 state that ' Rages is built on the mountain, but Agbatana in the 
 plain,* and that they are 'two days' journey' apart, see Neu- 
 bauer, Book of Tobit, pp. 34, 53, 75. Knowing the topography 
 of Rages makes the apocryphal narrative seem at least more 
 vivid. 
 
 2. An Iranian Parallel to the Story of Bel and the Dragon 
 
 In the apocryphal story of 'Bel and the Dragon' a touch of 
 Persian color, beside the Babylonian and Hebrew tinges, is given 
 by the references to Astyages and Cyrus, in the favor of which 
 latter monarch the prophet Daniel is represented as standing. 
 The sequel of the discovery of the fraud of the Babylonian ' idol 
 called Bel,' and its overthrow (vv, ^"^), is furnished by the 
 fabulous tale of the dragon destroyed by Daniel through an arti- 
 fice. The passage is familiar, but I repeat it for convenience in 
 the Revised Version (vv. ^^'"). 
 
 (23) ' In that same place [as the idol] there was a great dragon, 
 which they of Babylon worshipped. (24) And the king said 
 unto Daniel, " Wilt thou also say that this is of brass ? lo, he liveth, 
 and eateth, and drinketh; thou canst not say that he is no living 
 god; therefore worship him." (25) Then said Daniel, "I will 
 worship the Lord my God: for he is a living God. (26) But 
 give me leave, O king, and I shall slay this dragon without 
 sword or staff." The king said, "I give thee leave." Then 
 
 * For Mustufi, see Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 218, Cam- 
 bridge, 1905. 
 
 t Ibn Haukal, ed. De Goeje, 2. 249, 1. 2, and 2. 289, 1. 9; cf. also Ouseley, 
 The Oriental Geography of Ihn Haukal, London, 1800. 
 
 I For Yakut, see tr. Barbier de Maynard, Diet. Geog. de la Perse, p. 274, 
 Paris, 1861, and cf. Strabo, Geog. 11. 13. 7, Casaub., p. 524. 
 
96 NOTES ON THE APOCRYPHA 
 
 Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did seethe them to- 
 gether, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the dragon's 
 mouth, so the dragon did eat and burst asunder.' 
 
 The Iranian quasi-parallel, to which I would call attention, is 
 found in the Pahlavi work, Kdrndmak-i Artakhsher Pdpdkdn, a 
 romantic sketch of the fortunes of the first Sasanian king, Arda- 
 shir Babagan (224-241 a. d.). The work itself, which is written 
 in Sasanian Pahlavi and is to be dated about 600 a. d., describes, 
 among other things, how Ardashir destroyed the dragon of 
 'Haftan Bukht, the Lord of the Worm (Kirm),' or 'ruler of 
 Kirman,' by an artful device. 
 
 Ardashir, after failing in an attempt to storm the fortress of 
 the dragon and its lord, is advised by two devoted followers to 
 resort to a clever piece of strategy in order to accomplish the 
 destruction of the monster. I translate the passage from the 
 Pahlavi, having at hand three editions of the text with versions, 
 and also a German rendering.* The counsel of Ardashir's 
 confederates is as follows: 
 
 'When the time comes for the dragon to devour its food, ar- 
 range so as to have molten brass ready to pour into the dragon's 
 jaws {rui i vltakhtak -pa zafar I an druj rezishn). That fiend in 
 spiritual form can be slain through worship and prayer to God, 
 and in its corporeal shape that fiend can be slain by molten brass.' 
 
 Accordingly, Ardashir, accompanied by the two trusty com- 
 rades, goes in disguise to the castle of the dragon, with gifts in 
 his hands as an conciliatory offering, and gains entrance on the 
 plea that he desires to worship and serve the monster. 
 
 'The idol-worshippers admitted Artakhsher with his two 
 manly men, and gave them a place in the abode of the dragon. 
 For three days Artakhsher made show of worship and devotion 
 to the dragon in this manner, and presented dirhams and dinars 
 and clothes to the worshippers, and so deported himself that all 
 who were in the fortress admired and blessed him. Thereupon 
 Artakhsher said : " It would thus seem good if I might give the 
 
 * See Noldeke, Geschichte des ArtacKsir i Pdpdkdn, in Bezzenberger's Beitr. 
 zur Kunde der idg. Spr., 4. 55-56, Gottingen, 1878; Darab Dastur Peshotan 
 Sanjana, The Kdrndme I Artakh-shlr i Pdpdkdn, 33, 36, Bombay, 1896; 
 Kaikobad Adarbad Dastur Nosherwan, Kdrndmak, pp. 13-14, Bombay, 
 1896; Edalji Kersaspji Antia, Karnamak, pp. 29-31, Bombay, 1900. 
 
NOTES ON THE APOCRYPHA 97 
 
 dragon food for three days." The worshippers and those in 
 command of affairs consented unanimously.* . . . On the day 
 appointed, he himself had molten brass ready, while [his com- 
 panions] Burjak and Burj-artaro occupied themselves in worship 
 and prayer to God. When eating time arrived, the dragon, 
 according to his daily habit, made a roar. Artakhsher had pre- 
 viously to this, at breakfast, made the idol-worshippers and 
 those in command of affairs drunk and unconscious. He him- 
 self went with his companions into the presence of the dragon 
 and carried into the presence of the dragon the blood of bulls 
 and sheep, just as it received every day. As soon as the dragon 
 opened its jaws in order to devour the blood, Artakhsher poured 
 the molten brass into its jaws; and when the brass came into its 
 body, the dragon burst in twain, and such a roar came from it 
 that all the men in the fortress came to the spot, and confusion 
 prevailed in the fortress. Whereupon Artakhsher laid his hand 
 on his sword and shield, and wrought mighty havoc and slaugh- 
 ter throughout the fortress.' 
 
 The date of this prose romance, as already stated, appears to 
 be about 600 a. d., and the same story is told in verse with some 
 variations and added touches by the Persian epic poet Firdusi, 
 1000 A. D., when describing the events of Ardashir's reign. This 
 latter version is easily accessible in a French and an Italian 
 translation, if any one wishes to examine the question further.f 
 In any event the quasi-parallel of the Pahlavi story to the Apoc- 
 rypha seems worth recording, even without going into the 
 question of possible influence from the Biblical side or through 
 the common stock of dragon myths, such as Tiamat, Vritra, 
 Python, Hydra, the St. George legend, or the Siegfried saga. 
 
 Columbia University, 
 September 29, 1910. 
 
 * I omit here a brief paragraph that explains how Ardashir had arranged a 
 signal which his soldiers outside the fortress should recognize as soon as he 
 killed the dragon. 
 
 t See Mohl, Le Livre des Rois, 5. 259-262, Paris, 1877; Pizzi, II Libro dei 
 Re, 6. 51 Turin, 1888. 
 
X 
 
 THE DEFINITION OF THE JEWISH CANON AND 
 THE REPUDIATION OF CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES 
 
 By George F. Moore 
 
 At the beginning of the Christian era, lessons from the Penta- 
 teuch were read in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the book being 
 for this purpose divided in such a way that it was read through 
 in course in three years. This first lesson was followed by a 
 second, selected from the Prophets, under which name the books 
 of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are included. These 
 scriptures were given by God; their authors were divinely in- 
 spired, and divine authority resided in their every word. 
 
 Besides the Law and the Prophets there were several books 
 to which the same character was ascribed: the Psalms — whose 
 author, David, was, indeed, a prophet — Job, the Proverbs of 
 Solomon, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Esther, Daniel, and 
 others. These books, for which no specific name existed, were 
 not read in the synagogue; it was not necessary, therefore, that 
 the synagogue should possess a complete collection of them, and 
 perhaps few private scholars had copies of them all. What 
 books belonged to the Law and the Prophets every one knew; 
 that was determined by the prescription of immemorial liturgical 
 use and by long-standing methods of study in the schools. 
 What books were comprised in the third class, " the scriptures," 
 was not so determined. In regard to most of them there was, 
 indeed, unanimous agreement; but others were not universally 
 accepted: Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and Esther, in par- 
 ticular were antilegomena; and on the other hand some reckoned 
 Sirach among the inspired books. The question had, however, 
 no great practical importance, and it does not appear that any at- 
 tempt was made to settle it by drawing up a list of the ' scriptures.' 
 
 99 
 
100 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 In the Christian church it was not the differences about anti- 
 legomena, such as the smaller Catholic Epistles and the Apoc- 
 alypse, that compelled a definition of the canon of the New- 
 Testament, but the rise of heresies, particularly gnostic, whose 
 writings, pretending to the authority of scripture, disseminated 
 doctrines at war with catholic tradition and in the eyes of the 
 catholic leaders subversive of the foundations of religion — writ- 
 ings doubly seductive because they professed to present the per- 
 fection of Christianity. The orthodox bishops were constrained, 
 therefore, not only to unmask these insidious errors, but to pub- 
 lish for the guidance of the faithful lists of the books which the 
 Church received as its inspired Scriptures, and to denounce as 
 spurious the writings of the heretics.* 
 
 The so-called Muratorian canon is peculiarly instructive here, 
 not only because it is the oldest list of this kind which has come 
 down to us,t but because the specification of rejected writings 
 shews clearly what were the heresies which gave its author the 
 greatest concern. Thus, at the end of the enumeration of the 
 Pauline Epistles we read: J Fertur etiam ad Laudecenses alia 
 ad Alexandrinos Pauli nomine finctae ad heresim Marcionis, et 
 alia plura, quae in catholicam ecclesiam recipi non potest; fel 
 enim cum melle misceri non congruit. Epistola sane ludae et 
 superscriptio lohannis duas in catholica habentur, et Sapientia 
 ab amicis Salomonis in honorem ipsius scripta. Apocalypses 
 etiam lohannis et Petri tantum recipimus, quam quidam ex 
 nostris legi in ecclesia nolunt. Pastorem vero nuperrime tem- 
 poribus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedra 
 urbis Romae ecclesiae Pio episcopo fratre eius, et ideo legi eum 
 quidem oportet, se publicare vero in ecclesia populo neque inter 
 prophetas completum numero neque inter apostolos in finem 
 temporum potest. Arsinoi autem seu Valentini, vel Mitiadis [?] 
 nihil in totum recipimus. Qui etiam novum Psalmorum librum 
 Marcioni conscripserunt una cum Basilide, Assianum cata- 
 phrygum constitutorem. . . . 
 
 The text is in more than one point obscure, but the names of 
 
 * This motive is set forth at some length by Athanasius at the beginning of 
 the 39th Festal Epistle (a.d. 367). 
 
 t Drawn up probably in Rome near the close of the second century. 
 
 J The text is based on Preuschen, Analecta (1893), p. 129 ff., with correc- 
 tion of manifest orthographical errors and the introduction of the punctuation. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 101 
 
 Marcion, of Valentinus and Basilides, and of the founder of the 
 cataphrygian heresy, suffice to render the situation clear. 
 
 Similarly in the Jewish church: it was not the diversity of 
 opinion in the schools about Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs 
 that first made deliverances about the 'scriptures' necessary, but 
 the rise of the Christian heresy and the circulation of Christian 
 writings. Older than any catalogue of the canonical books 
 which has been preserved* are specific decisions that certain 
 books are not inspired scripture, and among these repudiated 
 books the Gospels stand in the front rank. 
 
 The earliest deliverance of this kind is in the Tosephta,t 
 Jadaim, 2*^: 
 
 " The Gospels § and the books of the heretics are not holy 
 scripture; || the books of the son of Sirach and all books that 
 have been written since his time are not holy scripture." 
 
 To the same effect is the decision in Tos. Sabbath, 13 (14)^. 
 The question here under consideration is: What things may be 
 rescued from a burning building on the Sabbath ? ^ The gen- 
 eral principle is that holy scriptures (expressly including the 
 hagiographa) should be saved;** but "the Gospels and the books 
 of the heretics may not be saved" — they are not holy scriptures. 
 The passage is so important that it must be quoted entire. 
 
 mil mn^TKn ns Xt y^ "p ^""r: nais ''^•'^:n •'DV ^21 . cn\m-irTST 
 *»T^ •Sii"' cs^w^ "'•'ii ns naps psiD •'in nt:s .-is'^:'- ns cjir^i 
 
 * The oldest (before 200 a.d.) is a Baraitha in Baba Bathra, 14^, on the 
 proper order of the Prophets and the Hagiographa. 
 t Ed. Zuckermandel, Pasewalk, 1881. 
 
 I Ed. r^iNC-jr:. 
 
 § That gilion here and in the following quotations is eiayyfKiov will be 
 proved below. 
 
 II Literally, "do not make the hands unclean "; the principle being, "All 
 holy scriptures make the hands unclean." See below, p. 119. 
 
 ^ It being under ordinary circumstances a breach of the Sabbath to carry 
 anything out of a building on that day; Tos. Sabbath, 1, Mishna Sabbath, 1. 
 
 ** M. Sabbath 16'. 
 
 tt + P Ed. 
 
 it So Jer. Sabb. IG' (ed. Venet. f. IS''). Zuckermandel, with cod. Erfurt., 
 NiiP: other mss. and edd. of the Tosephta, Bab. Sabb. 116*, Sifre, Num. 
 § 16 (on 5=^) ■i-'V; Tanchuma, Buber, Korah, App. 1, -'^V. 
 
 ^ Of THC 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
102 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 ]nsi3i tms jn-'^D j^s nnr rrnny •'imyt:' in'^nn^ d:3j '':i\si nnr 
 n^in nnxi nms mnsn nn-'^yi in j^sidi im« jn-'SD ibbr^ ia 
 p m^tt' niiyy^ dn noi ^xdd'' ••an nD« .-[jinDT noiy nnTam 
 
 :jna«Dn ini b^^ K^i d-'Dh '':aD «^i m^san '':dd 
 
 "The Gospels and the books of heretics are not to be rescued, 
 but allowed to burn where they are, names of God and all.* 
 Rabbi Jose the Galilean says : f On a week day one should tear 
 out the names of God and put them away in safe keeping, and 
 burn the rest. Rabbi Tarphon said: May I lose my children,! 
 but if these books came into my hands, I would burn them, names 
 of God and all ! If a pursuer were after me, I would take refuge 
 in a heathen temple and not in their conventicles; for the heathen 
 deny God without knowing him, but these know him and yet 
 deny him. Of them the scripture says: "Behind the door and 
 the door post thou hast set up thy memorial." § Rabbi Ishmael 
 said: || If, to make peace between a man and his wife, God com- 
 manded, 'Let my name, which is written in holiness, be wiped 
 off into the water,' how much more should the books of the 
 heretics, who bring enmity and jealousy and strife between Israel 
 and their father in heaven, be put out of the way, names of God 
 and all. Of them the scripture says: "Do not I hate them, O 
 Lord, that hate thee? Do not I loathe them that oppose thee? 
 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies."^ 
 And as they are not to be saved from a fire, so they are not to be 
 
 * A pious man might scruple to allow the divine names to be destroyed, 
 even in a context that richly merited destruction. — The same rule applies to 
 written prayers and to amulets: "though they may contain the letters of the 
 divine name and many sentences of the law," they are to be left to burn. 
 Tos. Sabb. 13*; Jer. Sabb. 16^; Sabb. 61b, 115b. 
 
 t In Sifrfe, Num. § 16, the view here attributed to Jose is maintained by 
 Ishmael; Akiba says, One should burn the whole of it, because it was not 
 written in holiness. 
 
 t A favorite oath of Tarphon; see e. g., Tos. Hagiga 3^*. 
 
 S Isa 57^. 
 
 II See also Sifrfe, Num. § 16. If Ps. 139*' '•. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 103 
 
 saved from the fall of a building, or from flood, or from any 
 other destroying agency." 
 
 The whole passage is repeated — with minor variations which 
 do not affect the sense — in Jer. Sabbath 16* * and in the Baby- 
 lonian Talmud, Sabbath llG^.f In the latter the question is 
 thereupon raised whether the books of "Be Abidan" fall in 
 the category of heretical writings which may not be saved; and 
 further (a propos of Tarphon's violent words about the conven- 
 ticles of heretics), whether it is proper to visit the "Be Abidan'* 
 and the "Be Nizrephi."t Rabbi Abbahu, to whom the inquiry 
 was addressed, was not certain; precedents are quoted on both 
 sides. 
 
 After this digression the Babylonian Talmud resumes the 
 subject of the Gospels. In the current editions, since that of 
 Basel (1578-1581), the text has been so mutilated by the censors 
 that neither the connection nor the significance of the passage is 
 recognizable. The subjoined text is that of the first complete 
 edition of the Talmud, published at Venice by Bomberg in 1520. § 
 The most important variations of the Munich manuscript (M) 
 and of an Oxford manuscript (O) are noted after Rabbinowicz, 
 Dikduke Sopherim. 
 
 KD^« .p^^j ]^V n**^ "-np pnT* '\^^b'': ps n^b np n^SD ^t\ 
 i<}r[n '^\^n ^sin hi^^hti^ ^pm n^nns nry^x ^nm inn^m m^ty 
 
 K-ia DipD^T 'i^ 2\n3 n^^ noK ^Th^ \r\b nt:« ^^tt^: •'m ^Dnj^ ^b 
 
 pnn'' «nn3 sn-i.ai snn n^^ n-'nm ']*i^^^: pj; nn''n^n\si ntrisf 
 py-r n^D-'D^ n^b^^'^ yrh nns ^yh snon in^« n^^ b^^v ^i" ino^ 
 Ti^nx nt^DT sn^'-mK ]» nns^D^ ^b ji^^^i jiy k:« n-in n-'n^i p^^^:i 
 «nn mpDn n-'a 2^nDi ••n^nx ^"H'^d-i «n^ms b'g '•sdik^ '«^s 
 
 * In his edition of the Midrash Tanchuma, Buber inserts the passage — which 
 is not found in the common recension — at tke end of the Parasha Korah, from 
 a Roman codex, in which, as Buber shows, it is derived from the lost Midrash 
 Jelamedenu. 
 
 t Quoted in full from the Babylonian Talmud in Jalkut, II, § 488, on Isa. 57. 
 
 X What these assemblies were is a question that need not detain us here. 
 
 § From a copy in the library of Union Theological Seminary, New York. 
 The text of this edition is reprinted by L. Goldschmidt, Der Babylonische 
 Talmud, 1897 sqq., with variae lediones and translation. 
 
104 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 I + ■'31 M ^ + ?3 PJ'ois' M * + f*''!'"!"' '^''OP '^^'^i -'"■>"' "'■'^2 ^J''"' '^'^ •■'''"1 O 
 
 * rh-m M ^ > M ^ ^""^i O 
 
 ^Nn^niNa M 8 'nnnN Nn^iiN Modern edd. — O reads: '^sfm ^^n'-niN n'''?ajn''N 
 
 9 f<'^i Modern edd. 
 
 *" The three preceding words > M and earliest edd. 
 
 "Rabbi Meir called it 'awen gilion, Rabbi Johanan called it 
 'awon gilion.* 
 
 Imma Shalom, the wife of Rabbi Eliezer and sister of Rabban 
 Gamaliel, had in her neighborhood a certain philosopher f who 
 had the reputation there of not taking bribes. They wished to 
 bring him into ridicule, so she brought him a gold lamp, appeared 
 before him and said: I want to have a share in the division of 
 the patriarch's estate. J He said to them, Divide it, then! 
 Rabban Gamaliel replied. It is written for us that where there 
 is a son, a daughter does not inherit. § The judge answered. 
 From the time when you lost your independence the law of 
 Moses was done away, and the gospel (evayyeXtov^ was given; 
 and therein it is written, 'Son and daughter shall inherit alike.* 
 On the following day, Rabban Gamaliel brought him a Libyan 
 ass. The judge said to them, I have looked further down to 
 the end of the Gospel, and there it is written, ' I, Gospel, did not 
 come to take away from the law of Moses, but to add to the law 
 of Moses I came'; || and it is written in it, 'Where there is a 
 son, a daughter does not inherit.' Imma Shalom said to him, 
 
 * iix and W are both words of evil association in the Old Testament, 
 especially connected with religious defection; Iit< n^a is Hosea's opprobrious 
 name for Bethel (4'^ 5% 10'); for ?V cf. Hos. 5*, W, etc. 
 
 t/. e., heretic. Jebamoth 102b, "A heretic (f<J^^) asked R. Gamaliel," 
 etc.; in Midr. Tehillim on Ps. 10 near the end, the questioner is a 'philosopher.' 
 
 J The estate of their father. — Cf. the request addressed to Jesus, Bid my 
 brother divide the inheritance with me, Luke 12'^. 
 
 § See Num. 278.— The Sadducees (Tosephta, "Boethusians") held that a 
 daughter could inherit from her father, inasmuch as a granddaughter whose 
 father was dead inherited from her grandfather. Tos. Jadaim 2-", Baba 
 Bathra 115^. 
 
 II Cf. Matt. 5^' ff . The reading ><'^>< is original; it was changed to '^^i by 
 editors, who made the superficial observation that the following quotation 
 from the Gospel is identical with Gamaliel's from that law. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 105 
 
 May thy light shine like the lamp ! Rabban Gamaliel rejoined, 
 The ass came and kicked over the lamp !" * 
 
 The story of Imma Shalom has no pertinence to the subject 
 of Sabbath 16; it is brought in here because the judge in his 
 decisions cites the 'aicoii gilion. That this name is a perversion 
 of evayyeXiop -j- is put beyond question by the quotation of an 
 utterance of Jesus which we read in the Gospel of Matthew, 5^^4 
 
 The rabbinical puns attach themselves to the word gilion in 
 the preceding passage — "R. Meir called it 'awen gilion," etc. 
 Gilion itself,§ as a name for the gospel, is another example of the 
 same kind of wit; the word properly signifies a blank, writing 
 material not written on, as the margins of a manuscript or 
 blank spaces in one; 1| the evayyeXiov is nothing but a gilion, a 
 blank. 
 
 Constantly coupled with the gospel in the passages we have 
 before us are the j"'J''i2n ''"iSD. Mitiim is the common name in 
 the Talmuds and Midrashim for heretics; that is, Jews who 
 maintained opinions or practised rites and customs at variance 
 
 * Substantially the same story, without any names, is told in Pesikta, Echa 
 (ed. Buber, p. 122^,) and from the Pesikta in Jalkut on Isa. 1 (§ 391), as an 
 illustration of the venality denounced in Isa. 1-^ The bribes are respec- 
 tively a silver lamp and a little golden ass (asses colt); the last words are 
 n-(ijcn nN n^D r\s2. This apparently proverbial expression occurs in another 
 story of the venality of the priests of the second temple in Jer. Joma 1', Sifre, 
 Num. ■§ 131 (on 25'-), Pesikta, Ahare (ed. Buber, f. 177S Wayikra Rabba 
 21**, Jalkut, Ahare, near the beginning. 
 
 t Cf. Rashi on Sabb. 116 (in uncastrated editions) PJ'cn nsoSn^'? i-ip i^no'-i 
 nS'jjin iniN piip pa' ^dS jr'?j px (Evangile). 
 
 t Imma Shalom's words: "May thy light shine like the lamp," not im- 
 probably contain an allusion to Matt. 5'", "Let your light so shine before 
 men," etc. Gudemann (Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, 1876, pp. 79 ff.), 
 comparing the groups of stories about bribery cited in note* above, con- 
 jectures that in the original version Gamaliel's present was not an ass (■>■"") 
 but a measvu-e Ocn) of gold — an allusion to the lamp under the bushel. 
 Matt. 5'«. 
 
 § Cod. M consistently I^'jj (sing.); Tos., and edd. in Sabb. I. c. have the 
 plural. 
 
 II E. g. M. Jadaim 3*. — It is evident that the Babylonian Amoraim who 
 discuss the Baraitha in Sabb. 116^ were ignorant of the origin of the name; 
 they know only the ordinary meaning of the word, 'blank, margin.' But 
 the contradictions which this involves bring them very close to the true 
 explanation: The sense must be, the books of the heretics are like blank 
 pages. The mutilation or perversion of names as a testimony of pious 
 abhorrence is common in the Old Testament, and is explicitly enjoined, e. g. in 
 Tos. Aboda Zara, 6*. 
 
106 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 with the standards of the community at large and the teaching 
 of its recognized authorities.* The term conveyed the same 
 reprobation as its Christian equivalent, and was as freely ap- 
 plied. The vexatious questioners who bring up the difl&culties of 
 scripture are called minim, even when their questions betray no 
 tendency more dangerous than a disposition to pester the rabbis, j 
 It may be suspected that they are sometimes fictitious inter- 
 locutors, put on the stage only to give the doctors an opportunity 
 to show how easily such captious questions can be disposed of; 
 the audience of pupils not infrequently intimate their dissatisfac- 
 tion with the evasive answer, and ask for themselves a serious 
 solution. 
 
 The heretics with whom the rabbis of the first centuries of the 
 Christian era had to do were not a single school or sect, much 
 less were they exponents of a coherent and consequent system 
 of thought; they represent all the varying tendencies which in 
 that age led individuals or groups to diverge more or less widely 
 from the high road of sound doctrine and correct usage. J There 
 are heretics who deny the resurrection of the dead, or at least 
 that the belief has any foundation in scripture; and to the same 
 class belong those who affirm that there is only one world. § 
 Some deny that there is any divine retribution; others, at the op- 
 posite extreme, deny that God receives the penitent. 
 
 There are heretics who deny revelation — " the law is not from 
 heaven." In the damnation of these infidels the rabbis include 
 those who impugn a single word in the written law or the most 
 subtle point in the deductions of the learned. || Those who 
 ignore "the seasons and equinoxes" — that is, the rabbinical de- 
 termination of the calendar, are also heretics; singularities in 
 the form of the phylacteries or the manner of wearing them 
 are "heretical ways"; turning the face to the East in prayer is 
 a heretical custom. In particular, certain peculiarities in the 
 
 * Cf. Rashi on Gittin 45^: Sni nan"? vr^m irNB- >nin^ .pn. 
 
 t Sadducees, Samaritans, Romans — especially emperors — philosophers and 
 unlaelievers, miscellaneously play the same role and propound the same ques- 
 tions. 
 
 t See Jer. Sanhedrin 10' (Johanan) : " Israel was not exiled until there were 
 formed twenty-four sects of heretics." 
 
 § M. Berakoth 9^ 
 
 II Sanhedrin 99^, cf. Tanchuma, Ki Tissa 17. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 107 
 
 slaughtering of animals are condemned as the practise of the 
 heretics. 
 
 A heresy of a different type was the recognition of "two 
 authorities," or powers (nT'lD"! '•:*w'), or, as it is sometimes ex- 
 pressed, of more than one divinity (nin^t<), especially in the 
 creation of the world. According to Tosephta Sanhedrin 8', 
 Adam was created at the end, "in order that the heretics might 
 not say that God had a helper in his work." * These allusions 
 do not disclose the meaning or motive of the heretical contention. 
 It is only enveloping obscurity in confusion to label their error 
 with names so charged with foreign connotation as dualism or 
 gnosticism. t That they were influenced by conceptions of a 
 godhead too exalted to do things himself — conceptions which 
 were then everywhere in the air, and, as we see in Philo, found 
 acceptance among Hellenistic Jews — may reasonably be sur- 
 mised, but cannot be proved. No less uncertain is the common 
 assumption that the heretics to whom the Tosephta and Mishna 
 refer in the places quoted were Christians. Nothing that we 
 know about the Jewish Christianity of the second century would 
 lead us to think that the part of Christ in creation was a salient 
 feature of their apologetic, nor is there anything distinctively 
 Christian in the belief that God had a helper in creation. 
 
 From a much later time — the second half of the third and the 
 first quarter of the fourth century X — are the discussions in which 
 the minim bring a long array of biblical texts to prove a plurality 
 
 * Adam was not created an ordinary man, but a being of superhuman 
 dimensions and intelligence. Cf. M. Sanhedrin 4^^; Adam was created single 
 {i. e., only one man was created), "in order that the heretics might not say 
 that there is more than one power in heaven" (3''DB'2 Dvy^-\ ^3^.^). Bereshith 
 Rabba 1^: all agree that the angels were not created on the first day, that 
 it might not be said that Michael and Gabriel assisted in stretching out the 
 heavens. Therefore angels are not to be adored. 
 
 t Elisha ben Abuya (Aher) is said to have been led to believe in "two 
 authorities " by seeing, in one of his raptures, the "Metatron "; but we are 
 none the wiser for this information (Hagiga 15*). The restrictions put on the 
 study of the first chapters of Genesis and Ezekiel (M. Hagiga 2') imply that 
 secret cosmological and theosophic speculations, perilous for common minds, 
 were rife. 
 
 t The rabbis who take part in these controversies are Johanan (d. ca. 279), 
 Simlai, and Abbahu (d. ca. 320). See Sanhedrin 38^; Jer. Berakoth 9', and 
 parallels; and for Abbahu, the passages collected by Bacher, Agada der 
 Palastinischen Amoriier, II, 115 ff. 
 
108 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 in the godhead, such as the plural DTI^S in Gen. 1; "let us make 
 man in our image" (Gen. 1"®); "let us go down and confound 
 their speech" (Gen. 11'); the plurals in Gen. 35^ I^JJ Q'^ ••:) 
 DTi'^Sn V^S; "thrones were set" (Dan. 7^), and similar ex- 
 pressions. That the disputants who cite these passages are 
 Christians is altogether probable. Johanan, the respondent in 
 the earliest of these controversies, had studied in Caesarea under 
 Hoshaia, who may very well have been acquainted with Origen 
 during his residence in that city.* Abbahu, the most distin- 
 guished pupil of Johanan, taught in Caesarea, where he was 
 for a time contemporary with Eusebius; his familiarity with 
 Greek is repeatedly attested. Simlai's school was in Lydda, 
 which was a Christian bishopric certainly in 325 and probably 
 earlier. We seem to hear a distinctively Christian note when 
 the minim ask R. Simlai the significance of the three divine 
 names mn'' QTT^K ^K in Jos. 22^^ and Ps. 50Vt The Christians 
 in these controversies are, however, not representatives of Jew- 
 ish, but of Catholic, Christianity.t The discussions are, in any 
 case, much too late to throw any light on the beliefs of the her- 
 etics whose books are condemned in the Tosephta. 
 
 That among the heretics of the second century Jewish 
 Christians had the place of eminence is proved by many stories 
 of the relations of distinguished rabbis to them. Rabbi Eliezer 
 (ben Hyrcanus),§ the brother-in-law of Rabban Gamaliel II, 
 was once arrested on the ground of heresy (that is, as the 
 sequel shows, on the charge of being a Christian), and brought 
 before a Roman magistrate, who said to him, An old man like 
 
 * Origen was in Caesarea for two or three years from 215, and from 231 on 
 it was his home. He frequently consulted Jewish teachers about points of 
 exegesis. It has been surmised that the "Patriarchus Huillus " whom he 
 quotes as authority for certain interpretations was Hillel II. 
 
 t Unmistakable is also the point of Abbahu's polemic (against unnamed 
 opponents) in Shemoth Rabba 29*: An earthly king has a father or a son or 
 a brother; but God is not so (Isa. 44"): " I am the first " — I have no father — 
 and " I am the last " — I have no son — "and beside me there is no god " — I 
 have no brother. 
 
 J As in the second century Jewish Christianity was the heresy, the name 
 min, 'heretic,' was ordinarily equivalent to Christian, and later was applied 
 to Gentile Christians as well. Occasionally Christians of the uncircumcision 
 are distinguished, as in Aboda Zara 65^: a proselyte who lets twelve months 
 pass without being circumcised is nimxaiy por; cf. Hullin 13^. 
 
 § Tos. Hullin 2^*. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 109 
 
 you occupying yourself with these things ! Eliezer replied, 
 One whom I can trust is my judge ! The magistrate appHed 
 these words to himself (whereas Eliezer meant his father in 
 heaven), and said, Since you show confidence in me, very well. 
 I thought perhaps these errorists had seduced* you in these 
 matters. You are acquitted. When he was dismissed from 
 court he was much distressed because he had been arrested for 
 heresy. His disciples came to console him, but he refused to be 
 comforted. Then Rabbi Akiba came and said. Rabbi, may I 
 speak without offence ? He replied. Say on ! Akiba said. Is it 
 possible that one of the heretics repeated to you some heretical 
 utterance and you were pleased with it? Eliezer responded. 
 Heaven ! you remind me. Once I was walking in the main street 
 of Sepphoris, and met [one of the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene] f 
 Jacob of Kefar Siknin, who repeated to me a heretical saying in 
 the name of Jesus ben Pantera which pleased me well.t I have 
 been arrested for heresy, because I transgressed the injunction 
 of scripture, " Remove thy way far from her, and come not near 
 the door of her abode; for she has laid low many slain" (Prov. 
 
 In the corresponding passage, Aboda Zara 16^-17% the con- 
 versation between Jacob and Eliezer is reported by the latter, 
 as follows: [Jacob asked] It is written in your law, "Thou 
 shalt not bring the hire of a harlot into the house of thy God" 
 (Deut. 23^^). Is it permissible to use it to build a privy for the 
 high priest? I had no answer for him.|| He continued: Thus 
 did Jesus the Nazarene^ teach me, "From the hire of a harlot 
 she gathered it; to the hire of a harlot they shall return" (Mic. 1'). 
 From a filthy place they came, to a filthy place they shall go. 
 
 * Reading by conjecture, ^n^on; the text has i3^Dn. Cf. Sanhedrin 43*, 107^ 
 (of Jesus) n^DO n^en. 
 
 t These words are found in the parallel text, Aboda Zara 17^^. 
 
 j The curious halaka quoted below was perhaps not the only saying of 
 Jesus that pleased Eliezer well. His words in Sotah 48^, "A man who has 
 a piece of bread in his basket and says, What shall I eat tomorrow? is one 
 of them of little faith," sound like an echo of Matt. 6^'. — My attention was 
 called to this saying some years ago by Professor G. Deutsch. 
 
 § The warning of the proverb against harlotry applied to heresy. Sim- 
 ilarly Eccles. 7^* is interpreted in Koheleth Rabba. 
 
 II In Koheleth Rabba (on 1*) Eliezer gives the opinion that it is prohibited. 
 
 "H In Koheleth Rabba " So and So," as frequently to avoid the name Jesus. 
 
110 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 Rabbi Eleazer ben Dama,* a nephew of Rabbi Ishmael, was 
 bitten by a serpent, and Jacob of Kefar Sekaniaf came to cure 
 him in the name of Jesus ben Pantera, but Rabbi Ishmael would 
 not permit him, saying. You have no right to do it, Ben Dama.J 
 The latter replied, I can bring you a verse to prove that he may 
 heal me; but he died before he had time to adduce his proof- 
 text. Ishmael exclaimed, Blessed art thou, Ben Dama, that thou 
 didst depart in peace, and didst not break through the ordinance 
 of the sages, etc. 
 
 The heresy that could bring so eminently conservative a 
 teacher as Rabbi Eliezer into trouble had plainly a perilous 
 fascination. § Beside Ishmael's nephew, Eleazer ben Dama, sev- 
 eral other rabbis are named who had singed their wings in flutter- 
 ing around it.|| To guard against its seductive attractions, it was 
 forbidden to enter into discussion with the heretics or have any 
 intercourse with them.^f The ordinance is introduced in the 
 Tosephta in connection with the prohibition of a certain mode 
 of slaughtering animals (bleeding them over a hole in the 
 ground), which is said to be in accordance with the ritual rules 
 of the heretics. The edict then proceeds:** 
 
 " It is permitted to derive profit from flesh which is in the 
 possession of a gentile Q^'ii), but forbidden in the case of a 
 heretic (rc); flesh from an heathen temple is the flesh of sac- 
 rifices to the dead. For the authorities say: The slaughtering 
 of a heretic is heathen (n"lT rm^y), their food is Samaritan food, 
 their wine is libation wine,tt their fruits are treated as untithed, 
 their books are books of magic (pDDIp ''12D), and their children 
 are bastards (j''1TDI3). It is forbidden to sell to them or to buy 
 
 ♦Tosephta Hullin 2=^'-, immediately preceding the story of Eliezer ben 
 Hyrcanus; Jer. Aboda Zara 2^, Jer. Sabbath 14, end; Aboda Zara 27^. 
 
 t So in Aboda Zara 27^. The Palestinian tradition, t<w "idj, "Poison 
 Town." 
 
 t It is forbidden to employ heretics as healers either for man or beast (Tos. 
 Hullin 2-'). The Mishna allows them veterinary practice. 
 
 § So it is expressly said in Aboda Zara 17*. 
 
 II See Koheleth Rabba on 1^; Weiss, Dor wa-Dor, P, p. 222; Bacher, 
 Agada der Palastinischen Amoraer, III, 711. 
 
 TJTos. Hullin 2'^°; cf . Sanhedrin 38^. The rabbinical prohibition of discus- 
 sion with Christians is cited by Trypho in Justin's Dialogue, c. 38. 
 
 **Tos. Hullin 22"' ; cf. Hullin 13a-b. 
 
 ft Wine of idolatrous libations. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 111 
 
 from them, to enter into argument with them, to teach their 
 children a trade, to allow them to heal man or beast." 
 
 The stringency of this interdict and the violence of the lan- 
 guage in which it is couched show how critical the situation was 
 felt to be. To emphasize the danger of having anything to do 
 with the heretics, the Tosephta proceeds to narrate the stories 
 of Eleazer ben Dama and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus which I have 
 translated above; and these examples show plainly that the 
 heresy which gave the authorities the greatest cause for appre- 
 hension was Christianity. 
 
 The heretics are excluded from the society of the good not 
 only in this world but in the other. Their torment in hell is 
 eternal: * "The wicked of Israel in their bodies and the wicked 
 of the gentiles in their bodies go down to hell and are punished 
 there for twelve months. At the end of twelve months their 
 souls cease to be; their bodies are consumed, and hell spews 
 them out and they turn to ashes which the wind scatters and 
 strews beneath the feet of the righteous (Mai. 3^^). But the 
 heretics and the apostates and the informers and the Epicureans,! 
 and those who deny the scriptures, those who separate them- 
 selves from the customs of the community, and those who deny 
 the resurrection of the dead, and every one who sins and makes 
 others sin, like Jeroboam and Ahab, and those who create a 
 reign of terror in the land of the living, and those who lay hands 
 on the temple — hell will be locked on them, and they w'ill be 
 punished in it for all generations (Isa. 66^*)."$ 
 
 Beside the interdict on all intercourse with the heretics, an- 
 other measure adopted to check the spread of heresy was the 
 insertion in the Eighteen Benedictions of a prayer for the perdi- 
 tion of the heretics. The Palestinian recension of this petition, 
 in the oldest form in which it is preserved, runs as follows: § 
 "For the apostates let there be no hope, and may the proud 
 
 * Tos. Sanhedrin 13^ ■''; see also Rosh ha-Shana 17a. 
 
 t There is reason to suspect that this catalogue of candidates for hell has 
 been amplified in the course of time; but the beginning is indubitably au- 
 thentic, and that the heretics take precedence even of apostates to heathen- 
 ism is significant. 
 
 I Rosh ha-Shana adds; " Hell shall come to an end, but not they ! " 
 
 § Schechter, Jewish Quarterly Review, X (1898), pp. 654-659; from manu- 
 scripts found in a geniza in Cairo. 
 
112 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 kingdom be speedily uprooted in our days. And may the 
 Nazarenes and the heretics perish in a moment." In the Baby- 
 lonian tradition:* "For the apostates let there be no hope; and 
 may all the heretics and the informers perish in a moment; f 
 and may the proud kingdom be uprooted and demolished 
 speedily, in our days." 
 
 To the use of this prayer Jerome in all probability refers in a 
 letter to Augustine (Ep. 112 § 13): Usque hodie per totas Ori- 
 entis synagogas inter Judaeos haeresis est, qui dicitur Minaeorum, 
 et a Pharisaeis nunc usque damnatur: quos vulgo Nazaraeos 
 nuncupant, etc. 
 
 The introduction of this petition is ascribed to the Patriarch 
 Gamaliel II and his college at Jamnia; the formulation, to 
 Samuel ha-Katon.f The motive was perhaps not so much to 
 relieve the pious feeling v^hich the orthodox of all creeds and 
 times have cherished toward misbelievers as to serve as a touch- 
 stone for heretics ; § for we learn in the sequel of the passage 
 just cited from Berakoth,|| that if the leader in public prayer 
 made a mistake in reciting any of the other petitions, he was 
 allowed to proceed, but if he stumbled in the petition against 
 heretics, he was called down, because it was to be suspected 
 that he was himself a heretic. 
 
 The "books of the heretics" which, according to Tosephta 
 Jadaim 2^^, are not holy scripture, and, according to Tosephta 
 Sabbath 13^, so far from being rescued from fire on the Sabbath, 
 are rather to be burned on a week day, may therefore be — or at 
 least include — Christian scriptures T[; and the standing associa- 
 tion with the gospel suggests that Christian scriptures were pri- 
 marily aimed at in these deliverances.** The violent antipa- 
 
 * See Dalman, Worte Jesu, 1898, pp. 301 f. 
 
 t Compare the constellation of heretics, apostates, and informers in Aboda 
 Zara 26^. 
 
 J Berakoth 28^-29^; of. Megilla 17^. 
 
 § Like the recitation of a creed in the liturgy. 
 
 II The authority is Rab, quoted by Rab Judah. 
 
 ^ The Christians were, of course, not the only sect that had books. 
 
 ** Taken by themselves, the words o^ynn i-idd might mean manuscripts of 
 biblical books copied by the heretics, as o^nn ncD in Sanhedrin 90*^ (Sota 
 33b; Sifrfe, § 112, on Num. 15"; cf., however, Jer. Sota 7\ °''^'>^ ^■^3id, and 
 see Levy, NHWb. I, 530) are Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch, which the 
 Samaritans are accused of falsifying. According to Gittin 45*^ a Pentateuch 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 113 
 
 thy which Tarphon and Ishmael manifest toward these writings 
 and their possessors reminds us of the hostility toward the Chris- 
 tians and their books which breathes in every Hne of the inter- 
 dict in Tosephta HulHn 2"°"", and makes it reasonable to infer 
 that this intensity of feeling was aroused by the same danger. 
 
 In Mishna Sanhedrin 10^ the classes of Israelites are enu- 
 merated who have no lot in the world to come — the man who 
 denies that the resurrection of the dead can be proved from the 
 law; * he who denies that the law is from heaven; and the ' Epi- 
 curean.' f "Rabbi Akiba says, Also he who reads in the out- 
 side books (D'^JI^Tin □''"iSD); and he who murmurs as an incan- 
 tation over an ailment the words of Exodus IS^^""." 
 
 On the words Cil^'TiH D''1£D the Babylonian Talmud com- 
 ments : •'npa^ niDS ^d: si^d p nsD2 n»s pdi"' y\ . D^:^a "•nsso:: sjn. 
 
 ** Tradition % says, the books of the heretics. Rab Joseph § said. 
 It is also forbidden to read in the book of Sirach." In the cor- 
 responding passage in the Palestinian Talmud we read: "'Also 
 he who reads in the outside books,' such as the books of Sirach 
 and the books of Ben Laana."|| Koheleth Rabba, on Eccles. 
 12", declares that he who brings into his house more than the 
 twenty-four canonical books brings in confusion, "for example, 
 the book of Sirach and the book of Ben Tigla." T[ 
 
 copied by a heretic is to be burned; one that had been in the possession of a 
 heretic is to be carefully preserved ('JJ), but not used. The greater severity 
 of these regulations as compared with those concerning a copy made by a gen- 
 tile (Tos. Aboda Zara 3^; Jer. Aboda Zara 2-, end; see also Menaljoth 42^, 
 top) are probably attributable to the suspicion that the heretic might falsify 
 the text in the interest of his errors, while the gentile, who made copies 
 only to sell to Jews, presumably had no such motive. 
 
 Rashi (on Sabbath 116*) understands o^yo^ ""^bd in this sense — copies 
 of Old Testament books made by heretics. So also L. Low, Graphische 
 Requisiten, II, 19, and many others, among whom Bacher is to be espe- 
 cially mentioned. But for the reasons indicated above this interpretation is 
 improbable. 
 
 * The oldest statement probably was: "he who denies the resurrection of 
 the dead." 
 
 t The Epicurean in this context is perhaps a man who denies providence 
 and retribution; cf. Josephus, Antt. X, 11, 7. 
 
 X That is, authoritative Palestinian tradition earlier than 220 a.d. 
 
 § Rab Joseph bar Hiyya, Babylonian Amora; died ca. 330. 
 
 |( On the whole passage, see below, pp. 116 f., where it will be shown that the 
 inclusion of Sirach in this condemnation is the result of a scribal error. 
 
 ^ The first vowel is uncertain. See further below, p. 117*. 
 
114 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 In the light of these passages the words of Akiba have com- 
 monly been taken to mean, "books outside the Jewish canon," 
 more particularly, as the mention of Sirach suggests, books of 
 the class which we call apocrypha. In support of this explana- 
 tion is cited the analogous phrase nil^Tin nl^D (Bamidbar 
 Rabba 18^^) the Hebrew equivalent of the common Baraitha 
 (Xn''''13), a Mishnic tradition outside the Mishna of the Patri- 
 arch Judah. 
 
 This interpretation is, however, beset by grave difficulties. 
 ^Vhy should the reading of a book like Sirach be condemned in 
 this fashion? The question was discussed in the Babylonian 
 schools ; * Abbaye quotes some sayings in the book to which 
 objection might be raised, but has no difficulty in discovering 
 good biblical or rabbinical parallels to them. The one indefen- 
 sible utterance he singles out ("The thin-bearded man is crafty; 
 the thick-bearded man is stupid; he who blows the foam from 
 his cup is not thirsty; from him who says, What shall I eat for 
 a relish with my bread? his bread shall be taken away; the 
 whole world is no match for the man with a forked beard") 
 shows how hard he was put to it to explain why Sirach should be 
 on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In fact, the objections 
 made to Sirach on internal grounds are far from being as serious 
 as those which are brought up against the Proverbs of Solomon, f 
 not to speak of Ecclesiastes. 
 
 Rab Joseph, who attests the fact that Sirach was on the Index, 
 himself says in the course of the discussion, "We make homi- 
 letical use of the excellent sayings that are found in this book," 
 and adduces many such. Authorities of unimpeachable correct- 
 ness in all periods — including Akiba himself — quote Sirach with- 
 out suspicion that it is an interdicted book. Mediaeval quota- 
 tions, and the recovery in recent years of a considerable part of 
 the Hebrew text from fragments of several manuscripts, prove 
 that the popularity of Sirach continued unabated. 
 
 To remove this evident contradiction it has been suggested 
 that what was condemned was not private reading, but the public 
 reading of passages from Sirach and other Apocrypha in the 
 synagogue, whereby the distinction between inspired and unin- 
 spired writings was obscured. The principle seems, however, 
 * Sanhedrin 100^. t Sabbath 30''. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 115 
 
 to have been early established that even the acknowledged hagio- 
 grapha should not be read in the synagogue; * and if the public 
 reading of uncanonical books had become in the second century 
 an evil that needed to be checked, we should expect to find some- 
 where an express prohibition of the practice. 
 
 It is to be noted, further, that Akiba couples with the reading 
 of the "outside" books the use of Exod. 15^" as a charm. He 
 excludes from the world to come " the man who murmurs (pub) 
 over an ailment the words, ' None of the diseases which I inflicted 
 on the Egyptians will I inflict on thee: I am the Lord, thy 
 healer.' " f The use of verses of the Bible in connection with 
 medication or with what we should call magical healing was 
 common and pious practice; the most orthodox rabbis had no 
 scruples about it. Akiba does not condemn biblical incantations 
 in general, but a specific formula, and one which in itself appears 
 to be wholly unobjectionable. Why should the use of this par- 
 ticular verse deserve eternal perdition? 
 
 The hypothesis which seems best to account for Akiba's ab- 
 horrence is that this formula was employed by a class of healers 
 whom he deemed especially pernicious. We know that in his 
 time the Christian healers gave the authorities much trouble. { 
 The employment of these heretics to practice on man or beast 
 was prohibited; yet only Ishmael's prompt and positive inter- 
 vention kept his nephew Eleazer ben Dama from letting a Chris- 
 tian cure him of a snake bite in the name of Jesus; and he 
 might, in spite of his uncle's protests, have broken through the 
 ordinance of the sages with a proof-text in his mouth, if timely 
 death had not saved him from mortal sin. In the same context 
 in the Palestinian Talmud in which Ben Dama's case is reported, 
 another instance is cited, from a time a century later, in which 
 a Christian healer was called in to the family of one of the most 
 
 *Tos. Sabbath 13'; cf. M. Sabbath 16'. The different reasons for the 
 rule in the two codes warrant the inference that the rule itself was not a new 
 one. 
 
 t Tos. Sanhedrin 12'° adds the words, " and spits " (a magical averrunca- 
 tion). R. Johanan (Sanhedrin 101^^) sees in the spitting a profanation of 
 the divine name; in the recitation of the verse itself he finds no sin. See 
 Blau, Altjiidisches Zauberwesen, 68 f. 
 
 t Precisely as the healers of certain modem sects give concern to the con- 
 servators of ecclesiastical order. 
 
116 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 famous teachers of his generation.* "A grandson of Rabbi 
 Joshua ben Levi got something stuck in his throat. A man 
 came and murmured a charm (ll^n^) to him in the name of Jesus 
 Pandera, and he recovered. When the healer came out, he was 
 asked, What did you murmur to him? He repHed, A word of 
 So and So (Jesus). Joshua exclaimed. It would have been 
 better for him to die than to have such a thing happen to him !" 
 It is not a remote surmise that certain of these Christians may 
 have made use in their incantations of Exod. 15"^ combining it 
 in some way with the name of Jesus — perhaps even inserting his 
 name in the eflficacious part of the formula, so that it sounded, 
 I am the Lord Jesus, thy healer. 
 
 This is, of course, pure guessing; but independent of all 
 guesses remains the strong probability that Akiba's twofold 
 anathema was launched against heretical books and heretical 
 practices, rather than against liturgical irregularities or abuse of 
 scripture in orthodox circles. This conclusion, so far as the 
 books are concerned, is in conformity with the old Palestinian 
 tradition as recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, according to 
 which the "outside" books are the "books of the heretics." 
 
 The impossibility of identifying the "outside books" with 
 apocryphal books such as Sirach appears conclusively when the 
 context in Jer. Sanhedrin is considered. The whole passage 
 is as follows: 
 
 "l^^m p-'D lan^Jty n-^nso b2\ dt'DH ^nsD ^^s n:y^ p ••nsDi 
 
 "Rabbi Akiba says: 'Also he who reads in the outside books.' — 
 Such as the books of Sirach and the books of Ben Laana; but 
 the books of D"i''Dn, and all books that have been written since 
 then, he who reads in them is as one who reads in a letter. — 
 What does this mean? 'And as to what is beyond these, my 
 
 * Jer. Sabbath 14*; cf. Jer. Aboda Zara 2-; Koheleth Eabba 10^ The text 
 of the current editions is castrated out of respect for the censorship; see 
 Aruch s. V. V^^. — In Koheleth Rabba the sufferer is a son of R. Joshua b. 
 Levi; the rabbi himself fetches the healer — "one of those of Bar Pandera." 
 In answer to Joshua's question what charm he used, he replies: "A verse of 
 So and So after So and So " (Jesus). 
 
 ■j- For a reconstruction of the text, see below, p. 121. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 117 
 
 son, be warned' (Eccles. 12'^); they were given for reading 
 merely, not [like the scriptures] for laborious study."* 
 
 If any demonstration were needed that the text is in disorder 
 the labors of the interpreters would furnish it. With Tosephta 
 Jadaim 2^^ before us, it is manifest that S"i''D \2 and DT'ttn 
 have exchanged places; the last clause should read: "But the 
 book[s] of Sirach and all books that have been written since — 
 he who reads in them is as one who reads in a letter"; f that is, 
 they are purely secular writings (cf . Tosephta, " they are not holy 
 scripture"), which may be read as such, but are not a proper 
 object of that reverent and laborious study — a religious observ- 
 ance and a meritorious work — which is the prerogative of the 
 scriptures. 
 
 The dislocation of ^s■T'D p and D"i"'On, which must have 
 occurred very early, f is the root of all the difficulties in which 
 Babylonian Amoraim and modern scholars have found themselves 
 to explain why Sirach should be so signally damned. § With the 
 restoration of the true order the only colorable ground for inter- 
 preting D''J1^''n, 'books outside the canon, apocrypha,' vanishes. 
 
 In Mishna Megilla 4^ the word D''J1!f'*nn is used of persons, 
 and stands in close connection with mj''i2, 'heresy.' If a man 
 wears his phylacteries on his forehead or on the palm of his hand, 
 this is the way of heresy (m^'^cn "^IT ilT "»"iri); if he covers his 
 phylacteries with gold and puts them on his sleeve, "^"IT riT ''in 
 
 * In Koheleth Rabba the midrash plays on ^o^75"^c^D: Every one who 
 brings into his house more than the twenty-four canonical books brings in 
 confusion, for instance, the book of Sirach and the book of Ben Tigla. — 
 From the following words, ""^'^ nyj'' nam jnSi (E. V. "much study is a 
 weariness of the flesh ") the midrash extracts: un'j ah -\z>2 Dprh un^j nunS^ 
 "they were given merely to read; for a weariness of the flesh (i. e. for severe 
 study) they were not given." — Cf. Berakoth 28t>, among Eliezer's counsels 
 to his disciples: " Restrain your sons from mere reading " (of the scriptures). 
 In Midrash Tehillim on Ps. 1* (ed. Buber, f. 5^), Ps. 19"' is explained: David 
 prays that his words may endure to remote generations, and that men may 
 not read them as they read "na 11303^ that is, as secular books, but may 
 study them as scripture. The dependence on Jer. Sanhedrin 10' is evident. 
 
 fJoel, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, I, 72 ff., brought Sirach over into 
 the right company; but left " dt'Dh " ("Tagebiicher " = '')7M<^pas, after Griitz) 
 unmolested. 
 
 I It is presupposed in Koh. Rabba on 12'^. The transposition is probably a 
 transcriptional error of a common kind, due to the frequent occurrence of ^"^flO. 
 
 § See Dei Rossi, Meor 'Enayim, Wilna, 1866, p. 83 ff. 
 
118 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 D'^JIi'Tin.* The term is here in effect synonymous with D"'J"'I2> 
 but evidently carries a stronger reprobation. The Minim took 
 Deut. 6* hterally, disregarding the prescriptions of scribes 
 (Menahoth 37^); t whereas the CJI^fin had no authority for their 
 practise either in the written or the oral law J — it was, as the 
 Munich manuscript has it, njlifTI "31"! nj''D, 'heresy and ex- 
 traneous speculation.' So also the Talmud (Megilla 24^): 
 "What is the meaning [of D'':i:f"'nn "{m]? We suspect that 
 he is inoculated with heresy (m^'^a)." The Hisonim are, there- 
 fore, persons wholly 'outside' the fences of orthodoxy, heretics 
 of the most radical type. In the same sense the word is used 
 by Akiba in Mishna Sanhedrin 10^: Q'^JI^fTin CISD is a more 
 emphatic expression for heretical books — they are books outside 
 the pale, not of the canon, but of Judaism. 
 
 As types of these books, the reading of which shuts a Jew out 
 of his birthright in the world to come, Jer. Sanhedrin 10^ § 
 names D'T'On "'ISDI T\y^b (^ ''"ISD. || On these enigmatical names 
 there is a literature more voluminous than illuminating. Limits 
 of space precludes a discussion of the many fanciful identifica- 
 tions that have been put forward. It must suffice here to pursue 
 our investigation of the sources. 
 
 For D'T'DH '»"l£D the Aruch cites, besides Mishna Jadaim 4® 
 and Jer. Sanhedrin lOS Hullin 60*^, which is quoted as follows: 
 " Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish said. There are many verses in the 
 Pentateuch which seem fit to be burned like the books of ] 1 "l *• D, 1 
 
 * The reading px^nn -[-^^^ attested in the Aruch, is also found in a manu- 
 script of the Talmud. 
 
 t See Sanhedrin 88^, where the principle that the regulations of the scribes 
 have stronger sanctions than the words of the written law is exemplified by 
 the case of the phylacteries. 
 
 I So Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishna; Rashi on Megilla 24^. 
 § As emended above, p. 117; cf. p. 121. 
 
 II The best attested spelling is DTiDnj there are many variations in man- 
 uscripts, editions, commentators, and lexicographers, chiefly affecting the 
 vowels. Hai Gaon (on M. Jadaim 4^) reads oncn^ and takes this for Homeros; 
 his explanation is cited, with others, by Nathan ben Jehiel in the Aruch, and 
 was adopted by Mussafia in his supplements to the Aruch. It has been re- 
 peated by many since. The reading D">''n is found also in Midrash Tehillim on 
 Ps. 1** (see below); but the forms ending in d apparently have no support 
 in known manuscripts or in editions of the Talmud. 
 
 If So Kohut, on manuscript authority; the first printed edition has V"^^.- 
 Other manuscripts have cn^cn^ etc. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 119 
 
 and yet they are essential parts of the law." The italicised 
 words are lacking in the current editions of the Talmud, doubt- 
 less because the censors smelt a reference to Christianity. The 
 first edition, however (Venice, 1520), and the Munich codex 
 have D*'J"'i2n '•"ISD, and the unmistakable allusion to deliver- 
 ances about burning the books of heretics such as are reported 
 in Sabbath 116 * makes it certain that this is the original read- 
 ing, for which, at a comparatively late time, pT'D or something of 
 the kind was substituted. 
 
 In Mishna Jadaim 4" the Sadducees are represented as de- 
 riding certain Pharisaic decrees: We object to you Pharisees 
 because you say, 'The holy scriptures make the hands unclean; 
 the books of D"i''Dn do not make the hands unclean.' Rabbi 
 Johanan ben Zakkai replied. Is this the only thing we have 
 against the Pharisees? They also say that the bones of an ass 
 are clean, but the bones of Johanan the high priest are unclean. f 
 The Sadducees answered. Their uncleanness is in proportion to 
 the affection in which they are held. . . . He replied, Just so 
 with the holy scriptures, their uncleanness is in proportion to 
 the affection in which they are held. J The □"I'^an '•"IDD, for which 
 we have no love, do not make the hands unclean. § 
 
 The general rule which the Sadducees quote, * Holy scriptures 
 make the hands unclean,' is stated in Mishna Jadaim 3^ (cf. 
 Mishna Kelim 15^), and is assumed throughout in Tosephta 
 Jadaim 2*° *^-, cf. 2'^; to show the absurdity of the rule they ad- 
 duce a Pharisaic decision which corresponds word for word 
 to Tosephta Jadaim 2'M| D^^H m p«at2D p-'K j^J^'Dn nSD, 
 'the books of the heretics do not make the hands unclean,* 
 except that for D"'i''Dn the Mishna has Q'T«I2n. The commen- 
 tators on the Mishna Jadaim 4^ interpret DI'^DH "«"12D as writ- 
 ings of Jewish heretics; those who attempt an explanation of 
 the word regard it as a disparaging term, which they etymolo- 
 gize as if it were coined ad hoc.'^ However unconvincing we may 
 
 * See above, pp. 101 fF. t Cf. Nidda 55*. 
 
 J Cf. Tos. Jadaim 2"». For t^-iipn ^ana the Vienna manuscript of the To- 
 sephta has C'^icn noD ] (Zuckermandel, in loc.) 
 
 § Johanan's answer is an argumentum ad hominem. || Above, p. 101. 
 
 ^ R. Simson of Sens (12th century) says: " These are the books of the Sad- 
 ducees [substitution of n^inx for a^jT, as often], of which it is said in Sab- 
 bath 116 that they ought to be burned." Maimonides: "Books which con- 
 
120 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 find these etymologies, we must give its due to the exegetical 
 insight which recognized that the context in the Mishna de- 
 mands "the heretics," the minim; and since, in the dehverance 
 which the Sadducees quote, the Tosephta actually has D"'J''I2ri, 
 the inference can hardly be avoided that DT'Dn in the Mishna 
 is either a corruption or, more probably, a sophistication of 
 D''2''Dn,* as it demonstrably is in Hullin 60''. 
 
 There remains Jer. Sanhedrin lOS where "the books of Ben 
 Laana and the books of □^''On" are cited as examples of the 
 writings which are the object of Akiba's commination. — We 
 have seen that Akiba's contemporaries manifest a peculiarly 
 violent animosity toward " the gospels and the books of the here- 
 tics, " and there is a strong presumption that the ultra-heretical 
 writings against which Akiba fulminates are the same that aroused 
 the ire of his colleagues. This presumption is strengthened by 
 a confrontation of Jer. Sanhedrin 10^ with Tosephta Jadaim 
 2^^: in the former, "The books of Ben Laana and the books of 
 D1''0n . . . Sirach and all the books that have been written 
 since," etc.; in the latter, "The gospels and the books of the 
 heretics . . . Sirach and all the books that have been written 
 since," etc. The correspondence of the formulation suggests 
 that the same books are meant in both cases.f 
 
 In the other places where D1''I2n occurs it has been shown 
 that D''i''Dn is demanded either by manuscript evidence or by 
 the context and parallels, and the same is true here. "The 
 books of Ben Laana" we shall then take to be, not obscure 
 apocrypha of which nothing is elsewhere heard, but the gospels. 
 
 Ben Laana (Son of Wormwood J) has not the look of a real 
 
 travene our law and set forth dissident views about it. They are called '•isf 
 oi'Dj as if to say, May God thrust them away and banish them from existence I 
 meaning, destroy them, as the house in which they assemble for such purposes 
 is called Beth Abidan, meaning a house which may God cut off." — Bertinoro's 
 comment is: "The books of the heretics (D''J"'nn neo); they are called '•iop 
 D-i^DH because they have exchanged (ninn) the true law for falsehoods." 
 
 * Compare gilion, 'awen gilion, 'awon gilion for eiiayyi\iov^ above, p. 105. 
 
 t It is the correspondence of the formulation that is significant; that in 
 the Tosephta Sirach is put with the gospels in the category of uninspired 
 scriptures, while in Jer. Sanhedrin, Sirach as a secular book is contrasted with 
 the heretical books is here irrelevant. 
 
 X Heb. ^^V^ is a bitter and poisonous herb; the conventional rendering 
 ' wormwood ' is not meant to imply identification with Artemisia absinlhium, 
 L. The same reservation must be made about the translation ' hemlock ' below. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 121 
 
 name or a parody on a name, but rather of an opprobrious nick- 
 name, conveying an allusion to something in the character or 
 history of the person decorated with it. The point of the allu- 
 sion lies, if I mistake not, in the association of n^J?^ in the Old 
 Testament with apostasy and the fate of apostates. In Deut. 
 29*^ for example, the Israelite who turns away from the Lord 
 to follow the gods of the idolatrous peoples becomes "a root 
 bearing hemlock and wormwood" (n:j;^T ty«n); * Jer. 9^^"" " Be- 
 cause they have forsaken my law. ... I will make this people 
 eat wormwood and drink hemlock." Most pertinent of all 
 these passages is Jer. 23^^ : f "Therefore thus saith the Lord of 
 Hosts concerning the prophets; I w411 make them eat wormwood 
 and drink hemlock, for from the prophets of Jerusalem de- 
 fection (nsi^n, religious defection) is gone abroad into all the 
 land." The application of such utterances to Christianity and 
 its founder lay near at hajid. Rabbi Jonathan teaches that wher- 
 ever the Bible speaks of defection (nSUn, often with the con- 
 notation of hypocrisy) it means heresy (m^''D). Jesus was in 
 the eyes of the orthodox a seducer of the people,^ a false prophet; 
 he appears in the Talmud as Balaam, the type of the false proph- 
 ets. § From this point of view Ben Laana, " Wormwood Man," 
 is a cognomen as apt as it is pointed. || The "books of Ben 
 Laana" would then be the gospels; compare Mark 1^ The 
 beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.^f 
 
 The text of the much vexed passage, Jer. Sanhedrin lOS is 
 accordingly to be restored as follows: 
 
 * Note the use of this verse in Heb. 12'^; cf. Acts 8-'. 
 
 t See the whole of this drastic oracle against the false prophets, Jer. 23''"'. 
 
 j Sanhedrin 43a, 107b; cf. Deut. 13. 
 
 § E. g. Sanhedrin 106b. 
 
 II If Ben Laana is meant for Jesus, the probability is strong that Ben 
 Tigla in Koheleth Rabba is another nickname. 
 
 Tl Another possible association of the name may perhaps be suggested. 
 The story of Imma Shalom gives evidence that the Jews were acquainted 
 with a Hebrew gospel related in some degree to our Matthew. In the account 
 of the crucifixion in Matt. 27^* we read that they offered Jesus ohov fiera xo^'Js, 
 fi€fj.i.yfi4vov. By x"^^ some bitter drug is doubtless intended. In the Greek 
 Bible xo^^ sometimes translates •iJ)''' (Prov. 5^ Lam. 3''; it more frequently 
 
122 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 "*He who reads in the arch-heretical books.' — Such as the 
 books of Ben Laana [Gospels] and the books of the heretics 
 [Christians]. But as for the books of Ben Sira and all books 
 that have been written since his time, he who reads in them is 
 as one who reads in a letter." 
 
 It is evident from the texts that have been discussed that 
 there was a time when Christianity had for many Jews a danger- 
 ous attraction, and when the circulation among Jews of the gos- 
 pels and other Christian books gave the teachers of the synagogue 
 serious apprehension. The earliest mention of the ordinance 
 against "the books of the heretics" is in Mishna Jadaim 4®, 
 in a tilt between the Sadducees and Johanan ben Zakkai, which 
 may have occurred before the war of 66-70, and cannot be 
 more than a decade or two later. Johanan's successor at the 
 head of the college and council at Jamnia, Rabban Gamaliel 
 II, caused the petition for the downfall of the heretics to be in- 
 serted in the prescribed form of prayer; he and his sister Imma 
 Shalom, the wife of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, figure in the story 
 of the Christian judge who quotes the gospel; in the same time 
 falls the intercourse of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus with Jacob of 
 Kefar Sekania, "a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene." In the 
 second and third decades of the second century the situation be- 
 comes more strained; all the great leaders of Judaism — Ishmael,* 
 Akiba, Tarphon, Jose the Galilean — inveigh against the here- 
 tics and their scriptures with a violence which shows how serious 
 the evil was.f Tarphon would flee to a heathen temple sooner 
 than to a meeting house of those worse-than-heathen whose de- 
 nial of God is without the excuse of ignorance; the usually mild- 
 mannered Ishmael finds pious utterance for his antipathy, like 
 many another godly man, in an imprecatory Psalm: "Do not I 
 hate them, O Lord, that hate thee ? . . . I hate them with per- 
 fect hatred." Akiba, who was never a man of measured words, 
 
 Btands for ^'sn). It is conceivable, therefore, that in the passage correspond- 
 ing to Matt. 27^* the Hebrew gospel read: ^i^^^ J1'D P\ If so, the Jewish 
 reader might well be pardoned for seeing in the narrative a signal fulfilment 
 of prophecy. No such fulfilment would be necessary, however, to bring to 
 mind the words of Jeremiah. 
 
 * See also Ishmael's interpretation of the dreams of a heretic, Berakoth 56*^. 
 
 t Just as in the Church Fathers, the increasing vehemence of their ob j ur- 
 gations of heresy corresponds to the alarming progress gnosticism waa 
 making. 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 123 
 
 -consigns to eternal perdition the Jew who reads their books. 
 The rigorous interdict on all association with the Christians* 
 breathes the same truculent spirit; it bears every mark of having 
 been framed in the same age and by the same hands, as does 
 also the anathema which condemns the heretics, before all the 
 rest, to eternal torment in hell.f 
 
 In the second half of the century the polemic against Christi- 
 anity abruptly ceases. From Akiba's most distinguished pupil 
 and spiritual heir, Rabbi Meir, nothing more serious is reported 
 than his witticism on the name of the gospel — evayyeXtov 
 'awon gilion; from Nehemiah, only that among the signs of the 
 coming of the Messiah he included the conversion of the whole 
 empire to Christianity, t Of the other great teachers of the 
 generation no antichristian utterances are preserved. What is 
 much more significant, at the close of the century the Mishna 
 of the Patriarch Judah embodies none of the defensive ordi- 
 nances against heresy which we find in the Tosephta and the 
 Talmudic Baraithas. § The decision that the Gospels and the 
 books of the heretics are not holy scripture is not repeated in 
 the Mishna; it deals only with the Jewish antilegomena, Ecclesi- 
 astes and the Song of Songs, the long-standing differences about 
 which were passed on by a council about the beginning of the 
 second century — a decision which did not, however, prevent the 
 differences from lasting through the century. || The only mention 
 of heretical writings is preserved as a mere matter of history in 
 the account of the Johanan ben Zakkai's defense of the Phari- 
 saic ordinances against the criticisms of the Sadducees. 
 
 We shall hardly err if we see in all this an indication that the 
 danger had passed which in the early decades of the century was 
 so acute. The expansion of Christianity had not been checked, 
 nor was the attitude of the Jewish authorities to it more favorable 
 than before; but with the definitive separation of the Jewish 
 Christians from the synagogue they ceased to be a spreading 
 leaven of heresy in the midst of the orthodox community, and 
 
 * Tos. Hullin 2^0 « ; above, pp. 110 f. t Above, p. 111. 
 
 X Sanhedrin 97^, and parallels. 
 
 § If M. Hullin 2' be regarded as an exception, it is an exception that proves 
 the rule; cf. Tosephta Hullin 2'»-2''. 
 11 M. Jadaim 3\ 
 
124 THE JEWISH CANON 
 
 became a distinct religious sect outside the pale of Judaism. 
 The complete and final separation was brought about by the re- 
 bellion of the Jews in the reign of Hadrian. This rebellion 
 was not merely a national uprising, but a messianic movement. 
 Its leader was hailed as the "star out of Jacob" predicted by 
 Balaam (Num. 24^^),* and Bar Coziba became Bar Cocheba. In 
 such a movement the Christians could not join without denying 
 their own Messiah, Jesus, the signs of whose imminent return 
 they doubtless discerned in the commotions of the time. They 
 stood aloof from the life-and-death struggle of their people, and 
 incurred the double resentment of their countrymen as not only 
 heretics but traitors, f Before this storm they retreated to re- 
 gions beyond the Jordan, where their neighborhood was heathen. 
 In the eyes of the government, however, they were Jews; and 
 the edicts excluding all Jews from residence in the new city, 
 Aelia Capitolina, ended the succession of Jewish bishops of 
 Jerusalem; henceforth the church was a church of gentile 
 Christians, with Greek bishops. From that time Jewish Chris- 
 tianity, deprived of the prestige which the see of the mother 
 church gave it, left behind with its primitive ideas by the devel- 
 opment of Catholic doctrine — trying to be both Jew and Chris- 
 tian, and succeeding in being neither, as Jerome puts it — stig- 
 matized as heresy by both camps, languished and dwindled in 
 the corners in which it had taken refuge. 
 
 The Catholic Christianity which succeeded it in the centres of 
 Palestine was essentially a foreign religion, and had little at- 
 traction for Jews. By its side Judaism could live, as it did by 
 the side of a dozen other foreign religions, not without contro- 
 versy,J but without fear that it would spread like a pestilence in 
 the orthodox community. The Patriarch had no need, there- 
 fore, to repeat in his Mishna the deliverances against heresy 
 which had been so necessary seventy-five or a hundred years 
 earlier. But the memory of the crisis and the stringent measures 
 it demanded were perpetuated in codifications of the oral law 
 
 * This application of the prophecy is attributed to Akiba. 
 
 t There is no reason whatever to question the assertion of Justin Martyr, 
 a contemporary, that efforts were made to force them into line. 
 
 J On the controversies of the end of the third and beginning of the fourth 
 century, see above, pp. 107 f . 
 
THE JEWISH CANON 125 
 
 and traditions less exclusively dominated than his by a practical 
 end.* 
 
 Not the least interesting result of an examination of these 
 sources is the fact that the attempt authoritatively to define the 
 Jewish canon of the Hagiographa begins with the exclusion by 
 name of Christian scriptures. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., 
 September, 1910. 
 
 * It is perhaps not without a bearing on this point, that a prominent part 
 in the redaction of the Tosephta is attributed to Hoshaia, who, at Caesarea^ 
 was in close contact with a vigorous and aggressive Christianity. 
 
XI 
 
 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 By William Hates Ward 
 
 Even to the present day the sway of Phenicia on the mind 
 of the scholars of early history is not wholly broken. It has been 
 believed as if it were a fact unquestionable that the Phenicians, 
 with their wide commerce and colonies, were the intermediaries 
 of culture and art between Egypt and the Greek world. Slowly, 
 quite too slowly, we are correcting that error. We have learned 
 that a high culture could grow up, and did grow up, locally, very 
 little or not at all affected by Egypt, and long before the Pheni- 
 cians became a maritime and colonizing power. Phenicia as a 
 state did not exist before about 1000 or 1100 b. c. To be sure, 
 the Phenician coast was there, and the local cities of Tyre and 
 Sidon and others mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets existed, 
 just as dozens of other towns were scattered along the coast, and 
 inland on the rivers, but they were not predominant. W^e are 
 misled if when scholars like W. Max Miiller, in discussing the 
 Egyptian raids of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth dynasties, speak 
 proleptically of Phenicia, we imagine that they mean to use the 
 term in anything other than a geographical sense. Long be- 
 fore the rise of Phenicia as a state, not only Babylonia, but the 
 Cretan cities had achieved their own indigenous culture; while 
 yet another culture and civilization was predominant throughout 
 the entire region of Asia Minor and Syria ruled or influenced by 
 the Hittite Empire. 
 
 Scholars now have begun to discredit the preeminent in- 
 fluence of the Phenicians on Greek art and religion. They have 
 learned that the Phenicians came too late, long after the flowering 
 of ^gean civilization as seen in Crete, Mycense, Tiryns and 
 Hissarlik. The materials for this primitive Greek civilization 
 are vastly more abundant than those from Phenicia. Equally 
 
 127 
 
128 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 we have now a much richer mine of materials to illustrate Hit- 
 tite art than that of Phenicia. In the study of Greek religion 
 we no longer have to go to Phenicia for important Oriental in- 
 fluence, for much more likely sources are at hand. Accordingly 
 Eduard Meyer, in the article, "Phoenicia," in the "Encyclo- 
 pedia Biblica," recognizes the late emergence of the Phenicians, 
 although he inconsistently gives them their usually accepted 
 influence in the field of art and religion. Even this is too much 
 to allow. He says there was no distinctive Phenician style; for 
 " a decorative Western Asiatic style was developed, which began 
 to exert an influence on Greek art from the ninth century up- 
 wards." This is true, yet he says, "The Egyptian emblem of 
 the moon became a half-moon with the sun or a star around it." 
 But this was not Phenician, nor related to Egypt, but was 
 common in Asia Minor much earlier, taken from Babylonia. 
 S. Reinach in his "Le Mirage Orientale," has, as remarked by 
 Ridgeway in his "Early Age of Greece" (i, p. 473), shattered 
 the pretensions of the Phenicians to have exercised any special 
 influence on Mycenaean art. " Indeed," he says, " Mycenae rather 
 influenced Phenicia." 
 
 The Mycenaean art, if it has borrowed nothing from the Phe- 
 nicians, appears equally to have borrowed very little from Egypt> 
 and not very much from the Hittite civilization of Asia Minor. 
 What we call Greek art, however, borrowed much after the My- 
 cenaean period. The people of the Mycenaean or Cretan period 
 were Pelasgians ; and the Homeric Achaeans came later, and the 
 Dorian rule later still, and they borrowed much from the Ionian 
 coasts, and little from Phenicia; and the Ionian coasts were satu- 
 rated with Hittite culture, a culture itself complex, representing 
 its own indigenous elements, mixed with Babylonian, and even 
 Egyptian; for the Hittites came in contact with Babylonian cult- 
 ure say nearly as early as 2000 b. c, and with Egyptian culture 
 about the same time in the Hauran region of Southern Palestine, 
 as proved by Hittite seals discovered there. 
 
 Students of classical mythology often admit an Oriental 
 influence in the cases of a few Greek deities and heroes, such 
 as Aphrodite and Herakles, but they usually suppose that in- 
 fluence to be unimportant. The most distinguished of the 
 living Grecians, Dr. Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, declares it baseless 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 129 
 
 ("hodenlos") to seek the Greek Herakles in the Babylonian 
 story. Herakles, he says, is originally Dorian, an ideal Dorian 
 man. Even if there was an original Dorian Herakles, there was 
 time enough for the Dorians to have adopted Gilgamesh during 
 the centuries that they were in Thrace, just across the Helles- 
 pont from Phrygia and Troas. We must remember that nowa- 
 days we are putting back a somewhat advanced civilization in 
 all Asia Minor by many centuries. The classicists therefore 
 are in error when they seem to imagine that such names as Kad- 
 mos and Melikertes (Melkarth) prove that the Greeks got their 
 Oriental touch from Semitic Phenicia. They learned it nearer 
 at home and earlier, from Asia Minor, from a time before the 
 Phenicians began to rule the seas, from the Ionian coasts which 
 were not Seoiitic, but largely under Aryan rule, while under 
 Semitic influence from Assyria and the Aramaean states, but 
 hardly from Babylonia in any direct manner. 
 
 Herakles is one of those demigods which we can trace back to 
 the very earliest Babylonian art, a demigod, whether Herakles 
 in Greece, or Gilgamesh in Babylonia. The two had the same 
 character, performed the same exploits. Did Herakles slay the 
 Nemean lion? So Gilgamesh fought lions. Did Herakles 
 conquer the Kretan bull ? Gilgamesh did as much. Did Hera- 
 kles capture the hind with the golden horns? Gilgamesh is 
 holding horned stags. Did Herakles kill the Lernaean hydra? 
 Gilgamesh or his double, Bel, with the dragon, is figured with the 
 same exploit. Did Herakles fight the monsters, Cheiron the 
 centaur, Geryon and Cacus? So Gilgamesh appears in art, 
 fighting monsters whether Eabani, Humbaba, or the divine bull. 
 
 One of the most interesting of the Greek myths of Herakles is 
 that which relates the last of his twelve labors. He was to bring 
 back to Eurystheus a golden apple from the tree in the garden 
 of the Hesperides, guarded by a serpent. But the Hesperides 
 gave it to him, gift of immortality. What is this but the fruit of 
 the tree of life, which was always guarded by genii of some sort, 
 winged figures, or fantastic animals, or even serpents? (Ward, 
 "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," fig. 710.) It was a design 
 familiar from Assyria and all over Asia minor, and the fruit of 
 the tree was plucked off (ib. p. 230) as the gift of life for the wor- 
 shiper. It corresponds to the Gokart tree of the Persian Bunda- 
 
130 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 hesh, protected by ten kar-fish. It was the fruit of this tree of 
 life that Herakles was bidden to take by force from its protector, 
 which the Bundahesh represents as a great lizard. Among 
 other parallels observe his fight with the Stymphalian birds. 
 Gilgamesh and Marduk are constantly confused in Assyrian 
 art, and it is the composite god we see engaged in such a labor 
 in this scene (ib. figs. 595-598). Other parallels, quite as re- 
 markable, do not supply easy illustration, but the Gilgamesh epic 
 supplies them and they have attracted scholars. Such is the 
 leprosy which attacked Gilgamesh, to be compared with the 
 poisoned shirt of Herakles. Both made a wonderful journey 
 to the regions of the dead in search of immortality, in the course 
 of which Helios gives Herakles his boat that he may go to the 
 Garden of the Hesperides, while Gilgamesh is given the boat by 
 the Babylonian Noah. The parallels are too close to allow any 
 other conclusion than that Herakles is but the Babylonian, or 
 rather the Asianic Gilgamesh, made Dorian and Greek. 
 
 Like Herakles, Adonis was an Eastern immigrant, confessed 
 Syrian, with a Semitic name, and identified with Tammuz, lover 
 of Aphrodite as Tammuz was of Ishtar. His 
 
 " annual wound in Lebanon allured 
 The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
 In amorous ditties all a summer's day, 
 While smooth Adonis, from his native rock 
 Ran purple to the sea." 
 
 But he was a late entrant into Greek mythology, recognized as 
 Oriental, and to be mentioned here only as illustrating earlier 
 and nearly forgotten adoptions of Asianic deities. 
 
 It is a fact familiar to mythologists that Aphrodite is a com- 
 posite goddess having both Oriental and Greek elements. And 
 it is frequently affirmed that she is related to the Babylonian 
 Ishtar, through the intermediary Astarte, or Ashtoreth, of the Phe- 
 nicians, or some Syrian Ashera, or Atergatis. It is natural that 
 these mythologists should go no farther than to the Phenicians, 
 for the Phenicians are quite familiar to our Greek scholars, but 
 they know little of the Asiatic empires back of Phenicia and the 
 nearer Syria. It will be well to study a little the data open to us. 
 There is no similarity, as they are represented in art, between the 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 131 
 
 Greek Aphrodite and the Babylonian Ishtar. The former is a 
 naked, or nearly naked, goddess of beauty and love, unarmed 
 and unused to war. But the Babylonian Ishtar is most decently 
 clothed (ib. p. 155 ff.) and has a distinctly military character, 
 being represented in the earlier period with alternate clubs and 
 the serpent scimitar rising from each shoulder, and in the middle 
 period with a quiver and sheafs of arrows from either shoulder. 
 To be sure she is in literature a goddess of love also, but not in 
 art. When she descends into the under-world sexual love 
 ceases on the earth. It is also to be remembered that both 
 Aphrodite and Ishtar are connected with the planet Venus. The 
 classical dictionaries seem to think it necessary to make Aphro- 
 dite a moon goddess also, because they connect her so closely 
 with Astarte who may have been a lunar goddess, although the 
 moon is masculine in Semitic languages. If the Syrian Astarte 
 really represents the moon, and not the planet Venus, it may be 
 because she was, as I think probable, to the Syrians and Phe- 
 nicians an adventive deity, brought over from the conquering 
 Hittites, in whose language, as in other Aryan tongues, the moon 
 would be feminine. We seem to have Astarte occasionally with 
 the crescent in her head, and it is supposed that the crescent 
 represents the horned moon, and that it connects itself with the 
 crescent of a cow's horns. It is interesting to know that the 
 Hittite Ishtar, if we may call her so, stands on a cow, or bull. 
 
 Now I wish to describe this Hittite goddess more definitely, 
 with a view to showing it not improbable that she was the origin 
 of the Greek Aphrodite, at least in some of the manifestations of 
 Aphrodite. 
 
 I have elsewhere (American Journal of ArchcBology, Vol. 
 Ill, No. 1) called attention to the fact that there were three prin- 
 cipal Hittite deities; one a dignified superior god, very likely 
 Tarkhu, who is fully clothed to below the knees, and who usu- 
 ally carried no weapon, or only a spear on which he rests, or a 
 short rod, or scepter, though rarely in a militant attitude; next 
 a goddess, who was probably his wife, usually nude, sometimes 
 clad, and who often stands on a cow or bull, and third, a mili- 
 tant god, clad in a very short garment, who wears a spiked helmet,, 
 stands on the mountains, leads a bull by a thong, both of whose 
 hands are filled with weapons, and who is probably the son, cor- 
 
132 THE GREEK ATS^D THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 responding to the later Attis, of the superior god and goddess. 
 These three were probably the origin of the Egyptian Osiris, 
 Isis and Horns, who were a late trinity. 
 
 This goddess doubtless had many names, as she was wor- 
 shiped by various peoples. She seems to be called Ishkara, 
 and in Hittite Hepi. While sometimes decently clothed, as in 
 the Boghaz-Keui relief, which may represent the marriage of 
 the chief god and goddess, or the conquest of the capital by a 
 superior tribe, and the submission of the goddess and her citadel 
 to the conquering deity, or some other important ceremonial 
 event, she is usually nude, and takes pains to display her nudity 
 by drawing aside her garment (Ward, 1. c, p. 296 ff.). She is 
 the goddess of beauty and love, and in the better art is made as 
 attractive as possible. First we see her with her garment wholly 
 withdrawn on each side, then on one side, and sometimes winged. 
 Her characteristic bird is the dove, as it is of Aphrodite, and 
 this is a conclusive proof, as it appears again and again, of the 
 connection between the two. 
 
 The resemblance to Greek representations of Aphrodite is 
 notable. The Ionian colonists were familiar with her in Asianic 
 art. If they had a native Aphrodite of their own they could not 
 have helped identifying the two, and giving to their own the at- 
 tributes of the Asianic goddess. Aphrodite was not only the 
 goddess of love, but was related to moisture, rain and the fruits, 
 and here she has her parallel, and probably her origin in the Asi- 
 anic Ishkara, or Hepi, who is often represented in her modified 
 forms with streams of water about her, much as the Cyprian 
 Aphrodite is said to have arisen out of the foam of the sea. 
 
 The question naturally arises what is the relation between the 
 Hittite naked goddess and the naked goddess of Babylonian 
 worship, Zirbanit, wife of Marduk. This latter is a very widely 
 extended type, common at a late period from Babylonia through 
 Syria to Cyprus and Egypt. But this is to be noticed, that she 
 does not appear in the archaic art of Babylonia, not even in the 
 less ancient period of the elder Sargon. She is introduced into 
 the Babylonian pantheon not much before the time of Ham- 
 murabi, with her consort, Marduk and Ramman-Adad, and was 
 then introduced from the West, that is, from the Syro-Hittite 
 region where she was worshiped. In Babylonia she is entirely 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 133 
 
 nude and lifts both hands under her breasts. In Egypt she is 
 also a late importation, and there her hands generally hang down 
 by her side. These forms are both later than the true Hittite 
 form of the goddess with the single garment withdrawn, and I be- 
 lieve they spread from Babylonia, which had adopted the god- 
 dess from the West at the time of the great western invasion 
 W'hich culminated in putting Hammurabi on the throne. This 
 invasion was Hittite, and the Hittites were not Semites, but 
 probably Aryans, and it must be remembered that they were 
 an intrusive powerful fighting people who commanded an hege- 
 mony over a wide extent of Semitic or Turanian races. 
 
 Let it be understood that the Greek Aphrodite has no clear 
 relation to the true Babylonian Ishtar, with lions and quivers 
 full of arrows from her shoulders, or, at an earlier period, with 
 clubs and scimitars; but to the naked Hittite goddess who appears 
 with garment wholly or partly withdrawn and with her dove. 
 Nor is Aphrodite particularly related to the Assyrian Ishtar 
 (ib. p. 248 ff.) who is of a separate type, characterized by a circle, 
 or halo, of stars, about her body, or weapons radiating from her, 
 tipped with stars. This is a comparatively late representation, 
 somewhat less than 1000 b. c, an Ishtar, perhaps, of Arbela, 
 differing from the northern, or western Hittite goddess, attended 
 by the dove. She appears to have originated at a period much 
 later than the older dominant Hittite form, possibly from it, after 
 the goddess had been partially supplied with clothes, or even 
 with wings. The goddess of love was not received by the Greeks 
 by way of Phenicia, as so often assumed; for the Phenician god- 
 dess Astarte followed the middle Babylonian type of Zirbanit, 
 with hands on her breasts. Astarte's name, to be sure, is from 
 Ishtar, and not from Zirbanit, but the two goddesses were con- 
 founded, through their common function of love, the military 
 function of Ishtar being lost, and Astarte became the composite 
 of the two. 
 
 If it be true, as I have attempted to show, that the Greek 
 Aphrodite was closely related to the Syro-Hittite nude goddess 
 who has been called Ishkara or Hepi, and thus was in part de- 
 rived from the Asianic civilization of Asia Minor, rather than from 
 the Phenician civilization, as usually supposed, we are then led 
 to ask whether any of the Greek male deities were derived in 
 
134 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 whole or in part from the two Syro-Hittite gods whom we may 
 designate, the one as Tarkhu-Marduk, and the other as Teshub- 
 Adad. We will first consider the latter god (ib. p. 288 ff.). 
 
 A most extraordinary figure of Teshub (SBA, vol. XXXII, 
 p. 25) which Professor Sayce, following Miss Dodd, takes to be 
 an Amazon, has lately been discovered at Boghaz-keui, perfectly 
 preserved, and giving details of his embroidered garments. He 
 corresponds very closely in form and function with the Greek 
 Ares, the Roman Mars. Like Aphrodite, Ares was so far recog- 
 nized as an Asianic god that he fought on the side of the Trojans 
 at the siege of Ilium. According to Hesiod and ^schylus he 
 was the father of the race of Kadmos, for his daughter Hermione 
 was the wife of Kadmos, and the warriors of Kadmos came from 
 the teeth of the dragon of Ares, which Kadmos sowed. Thebes 
 was thus particularly sacred to him, and Thebes was a city of 
 the Pelasgians. He corresponds very exactly to Teshub- Adad. 
 Teshub is figured definitely as the god of war, is helmeted like 
 Ares, and the only helmeted god in the Hittite or Assyrian pan- 
 theon, as Ares was the only helmeted among the Greek gods. 
 Both gods are heavily armed. The Hittite Teshub if found de- 
 picted on a Greek vase would instantly be recognized as Ares. 
 I think it certain that the Greek Ares was not borrowed from the 
 Babylonian Nergal, god of war, nor from the later Babylonian 
 Adad, but directly from the corresponding Asianic god of war, 
 or at least drew from him his form and attributes. The Hittite 
 Teshub was introduced into Babylonia as Adad (ib. p. 131 ff.) 
 and there took the purely Babylonian weapon, the thunderbolt, 
 which the Hittites themselves later adopted and gave to Teshub. 
 
 While Teshub-Adad is probably to be identified with Ares, 
 the Hittite god in any region where he was worshiped as chief 
 deity would be later identified by Greeks and Romans with their 
 chief deity Zeus or Jupiter. Thus we have Jupiter Dolichenos 
 worshiped in Kommagene, in just the region that belonged to 
 Teshub. He is another form of Teshub, with axe and the later 
 thunderbolt, with the short garment about his loins, and standing 
 on a bull. But he lacks the helmet. Teshub's relation to 
 Poseidon will be considered later. 
 
 The third, or rather the first, of the Syro-Hittite triad (ib. 
 p. 284 ff.) is the god of dignified presence, well clad, not usually 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 135 
 
 carrying any weapon, or sometimes resting on a spear, or even 
 carrying the Hittite axe, whom we call, provisionally, Tarkhu, 
 the Kassite Turgu, and the biblical Terah, father of Abraham, 
 "Thy father was a Hittite" says the prophet and Terah was 
 a Hittite god. He passed into middle Babylonian worship, 
 with a western immigration, somewhat before the time of Ham- 
 murabi, and in two forms, and so, probably by different routes. 
 From him is derived the chief god Marduk (ib. p. 163 ff.) of 
 the Hammurabi dynasty, and also the Martu (ib. p. 176 ff.) 
 god of the West, who appears to be one of the two variant forms 
 under which Adad, or Ramman, was worshiped. As Marduk 
 he carries the old Babylonian scimitar, or serpent-weapon, at 
 rest by his side, and as Martu he simply holds a short scepter to 
 his breast. 
 
 For the earliest reported emergence of Marduk we are in- 
 debted to the Chronicle concerning Sargon and Naram-Sin 
 published in King's "Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian 
 Kings," ii. pp. 8, 9. We are there told, as translated by King, 
 of Sargon: 
 
 " The soil from the trenches of Babylon he removed 
 
 And the boundaries of Agade he made like those of Babylon. 
 
 But because of the evil which he had committed the great lord 
 
 Marduk was angry. 
 And he destroyed his people by famine. 
 From the rising of the sun unto the setting of the Sun 
 They opposed him and gave him no rest." 
 
 As I understand this, the account, as written by a Babylonian 
 scribe, shows that Sargon was punished for his attack on Baby- 
 lon. He filled up the trenches, or canals, with the earth on their 
 banks, and extended his borders of Agade (modern Anbar) 
 southward to Babylon, His later misfortunes the Babylonian 
 scribe refers to this insult to Marduk (ib. p. 11); Dungi was later 
 punished for similar impiety: 
 
 " Dungi, the son of Ur-Engur, cared greatly for the city of Eridu, which 
 
 was on the shore of the sea 
 But he sought after evil, and the treasure of Esagila and of Babylon, 
 He brought out as spoil. And Bel was . . . , and body and . . . 
 
 he made an end of him." 
 
136 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 We gather from this again, that this later Babylonian scribe re- 
 fers the misfortunes of Dungi to the anger of Bel, by whom he 
 doubtless meant Marduk. That Marduk's name appeared 
 in the original text from which he drew these records we may 
 doubt. 
 
 Neither as Marduk nor as Martu does the Babylonian god seem 
 to have definitely influenced the Greek religion, for the original 
 Hittite Tarkhu was too near at hand in Asia Minor and Syria. 
 Yet Tarkhu was usually so little specialized by an attribute, 
 being simply a standing clad deity, that he might be related to 
 any Syrian Baal, or to almost any Greek god, Zeus, or Apollo, 
 or Dionysos. But this may be mentioned, that to Marduk be- 
 longs the planet Jupiter, and the same planet belongs to the 
 Greek Zeus; and it is not unlikely that it belonged to Teshub. 
 It is a fact of moment that of the five planets four were male in 
 both Babylonian and Greek mythologies, and one, and the same 
 one, female; and this implies some early genetic relation be- 
 tween the two; and under that category, the fact that Marduk 
 and Zeus were both Jupiter seems to require us to presume that 
 the intermediary Hittite god may have been also Jupiter. Still 
 either of them, like almost any other god, may also, in certain 
 aspects, have been related to the sun. 
 
 The weapons carried by the Babylonian and Hittite gods, as 
 also by the Greek, require some consideration. In the earliest 
 Babylonian art we have the usual weapons of war and the chase, 
 the short sword, the bow, the club, also, perhaps, later, the long 
 spear. Besides these are two divine weapons carried only by 
 gods. One of these is the triple thunderbolt, which appears at 
 an extremely early period; the other is the sickle-like serpent 
 scimitar. The thunderbolt appears in the hand of a goddess, 
 in archaic art; while the serpent scimitar makes its appearance 
 also very early, in the armory of Ishtar, and in the hand of a god, 
 at the time of the dynasties of Ur. It is a weapon with a rather 
 long handle, and the end curved like a sickle. It is never used 
 in war, but only carried by a deity of high rank, and particularly 
 by Marduk, altho it is earlier than his emergence. This weapon 
 was originally a serpent, like Moses' rod; and in the earlier period 
 the curved portion is clearly the thickened neck of a serpent like 
 the asp, and the head with open mouth. 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 137 
 
 But it was a true divine weapon. At an early period it was 
 doubled, to form the Babylonian eaduceus; but this was con- 
 ceived of not so much as a weapon, but rather as a honorific 
 attribute of the god, or more often of Ishtar. The scimitar, 
 as I have said, is the special attribute of Marduk, carried by him 
 not in a militant attitude, but held downward by his side, as com- 
 ported with his quiet dignity. The Hittite Tarkhu, from whom 
 he was derived, sometimes held an axe or a peaceful spear or a 
 crook in the same way; and when the Babylonians adopted the 
 god, they gave him their own peculiar divine serpent scimitar, 
 just as they gave their thunderbolt to Adad, who had, in his 
 original Hittite worship, only the usual military weapons, such as 
 the axe and club. In the later Assyrian art, when Marduk was 
 represented fighting the dragon he made use of this same scimitar 
 or of a trident thunderbolt; but in Babylonian art he was almost 
 always represented as standing in a quiet attitude, holding his 
 scimitar downward by his side. 
 
 Now this sickle-like scimitar we find in Greek art, and always 
 belonging to a god only, never as an implement of war. It was 
 given by Hermes to Perseus, under the name of the apirrj^ when 
 he went to behead the Gorgon Medusa. The Greek word 
 apTrr) is applied properly to this divine weapon, while the usual 
 word for the sickle is hpeiravov. But the representation of 
 Perseus slaying the sea-monster is precisely parallel to the con- 
 flict of Marduk with the dragon. 
 
 The Greek thunderbolt and trident were also both probably 
 derived from the Babylonian thunderbolt. I have said that 
 originally the thunder-god Teshub-Adad, as worshiped by the 
 Hittites, was armed solely with the usual weapons of war, while 
 the triple thunderbolt was an invention of the early Babylonians. 
 But the thunderbolt became familiar all over the Asianic region, 
 hardly before 1000 b. c, and is the special weapon of Zeus, in 
 all probability taken from Asia Minor, and usually in the form 
 in which we see it in the earliest Babylonian and the later As- 
 syrian art, grasped in the middle with the trident prongs each 
 side. It is thus used by Marduk against Tiamat. But the thun- 
 derbolt as wielded by the Babylonian Adad was a single trident, 
 and such it became finally as carried by the Hittite Teshub, re- 
 placing the earlier ordinary weapons of war. It is the trident that 
 
138 THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 
 
 is wielded by Poseidon, god of the sea and ruler of the storms. 
 After him the storm-month, December-January, was Poseidon. 
 It is not strange that the thunderbolt, passed over from the 
 inland Babylonians and Hittites, and taken by the sea-faring 
 Greeks of the islands and coasts, should have been assigned to a 
 sea-god, who was, like Adad, also god of storms; and so it is that 
 Poseidon carries the trident of Adad. I am aware that the 
 classical authorities generally suppose that the trident is noth- 
 ing more than a fish-spear, and as such it is even figured in late 
 art; but Poseidon was no fisherman. He had a far higher role. 
 His trident smote the land as well as the sea. The thunder- 
 bolt much more befits him than the economic fish-spear. Like 
 Adad, his animal was the bull. A number of scholars, like Cur- 
 tius, have concluded that Poseidon was not an original Greek 
 deity, but was first worshiped by the Ionian colonists and was 
 a god of the Carians and Leleges. The Carians had a native 
 god corresponding to Poseidon, whom the Greeks knew as 
 Osogoa, or Zeus Labrandenos, Zeus with the axe, w^ho, under 
 either form, carried the thunderbolt and the axe in a warlike 
 attitude, both weapons those that were assumed by the Hittite 
 Teshub-Adad. Zeus-Dolichenus is the same god, all forms of 
 the original Hittite god. It is probable, then, that the Greek 
 Poseidon with his trident, who fought in the Trojan War on the 
 side of Asiatics against the Greeks, was originally the Hittite 
 Teshub-Adad, and reached the Greeks by way of the Ionian 
 settlers of the Ionian coasts of Asia Minor, where the native sea- 
 faring men worshiped him as master of the sea and its storms, 
 and gave him the axe and thunderbolt, the latter retained as the 
 trident of Poseidon, 
 
 I have said that as carried by the Hittite Teshub the thunder- 
 bolt is later than the usual weapons of war, the sword, axe and 
 spear. It may be worth while to observe that the Hebrews 
 did not know the thunderbolt, but imagined Yahve with arrows 
 and spear, as the god of lightning and storm. As Teshub 
 strided over the mountains, brandished his sword and axe and 
 spear to represent the glittering lightning and led a bull to 
 typify the bellowing thunder, so Yahve marched over the moun- 
 tains in anger, with the light of his arrows he went, and he was 
 represented at Sinai, Bethel and Dan under the form of a bull. 
 
THE GREEK AND THE HITTITE GODS 139 
 
 I have tried to show more at length elsewhere (American Journal 
 of Semitic Languages, xxv, 3) that the Hebrew Yahve was related 
 originally to the Syro-Hittite Adad. Professor Haupt, not long 
 ago, surprised scholars by an argument to show that Jesus was 
 of Aryan and not Semitic lineage. But an argument may be 
 presented for a more surprising conclusion, namely, that Yahve 
 was an Aryan god. We are definitely told that Yahve was 
 originally worshiped as Shaddai, which is not unlikely to be a 
 dialectic form of Adad, or Hadad-Adad, But Adad was de- 
 rived from Teshub, and Teshub was Hittite, and the Hittites 
 were Aryan, and knew Indra and Varuna and Mitra. So we 
 are at liberty to believe that Yahve was Aryan and not originally 
 Semitic. Stranger things have turned out true. 
 
 New York, September 15, 1910. 
 
XII 
 
 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 By Stephen Langdon 
 
 The Babylonian conception of life after death and the relation 
 of the dead to the living shews, as far as our archaeological and 
 literary sources permit us to infer, little change of ideas during 
 the three milleniums {circa 3500-300 b. c.) represented in our 
 sources. In essaying the task of outlining the Babylonian ideas 
 of the other world and the final fate of man, their burial cus- 
 toms must necessarily form the first subject for investigation. 
 It is precisely here that we find reflected the deeper spiritual 
 conceptions of eschatology, for ritual is the surest and most 
 fruitful source in studying the deeper problems of religions.* 
 
 When the civilization and political power of Babylonia and 
 Assyria perished at the hands of the Persians, Greeks and 
 Parthians, the ancient cities became mounds used largely as 
 Parthian and Sassanian burial grounds. In fact all the more 
 important sites — Babylon, Nippur, Ur, Erech, Sippar, Nine- 
 veh, etc., have been sites of Parthian, Christian and Arabian 
 cemeteries to this day. Abundant material, therefore, exists 
 for studying the late period which in a certain measure con- 
 tinued the beliefs and practices of the classical peoples. The 
 entire absence of burial remains of the Assyrian period in the 
 
 * Babylonian burial customs have been described by Jeremias, Holle und 
 Parodies, Der Alte Orient, I, 3, 1903, now antiquated by the recent excava- 
 tions at Nippur (Haynes and Hilprecht), Fara, Abu-Hatab and A§§ur (German 
 Oriental Society, chiefly conducted by Andrae and Koldewey) and by the 
 fact that the so-called " Hades Reliefs " used both by him and by Meissner, 
 Wiener Zeitschrift jiir Kunde des Morgenlandes, xii, 59-66, are not scenes of 
 hell but represent the ritual of healing the sick. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia 
 and Assyria, 595-611, gives a resumS of what was known at that time [1898]; 
 see also Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de I'Art, ii, 369-378, based principally upon 
 the reports of Taylor's excavations at Ur and Eridu; see also ibid., pp. 353-& 
 [upon the whole antiquated]. 
 
 141 
 
142 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 ruins of Nineveh and the neighboring mounds led to the infer- 
 ence of early excavators that the Assyrians either threw their 
 dead into the rivers or transported them to the sacred soil of 
 Sumer where vast necropolises were found dating from the ear- 
 liest period.* But the recent German excavations at Assur 
 have given us decisive information concerning Assyrian burial 
 customs, although an exact date cannot always be assigned to 
 the different tombs, coflfins and urns found beneath the Par- 
 thian remains. Nevertheless the suggestion of Loftus, one of 
 the early excavators who directed his attention principally to 
 this question, cannot be disregarded, namely, that the vast 
 majority of Assyrians preferred to bury their dead in the sacred 
 soil of Sumer. The total absence of inscriptions on or within 
 the tombs and coffins makes a decision on this point difficult, f 
 The evidence concerning burial, so far as the inscriptions are 
 -concerned, contains no reference to cremation. The dead were 
 ordinarily committed to the earth, J in which case every vestige 
 has long since disappeared, or in the case of more careful burials 
 brick vaults were used.§ The more ordinary custom, however, 
 consisted in placing the body upon a slightly raised platform of 
 bricks provided with a reed-mat (huru), over which was fitted 
 a large cover made either of one piece of baked clay, or by 
 fitting together several pieces. || A more simple method of in- 
 
 * On the mooted question of the date of these necropolises, whose great 
 antiquity is denied by Jastrow, see HUprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 
 288. The two necropolises Fara (Sukurru-Suruppak) and Abu-Hatab 
 (Kisurra), excavated by the Germans, are certainly very ancient. 
 
 t See Perrot et Chipiez, 352. 
 
 X As on the Stele of the Vultures {circa 3200 B.C.) where a number of soldiers, 
 naked, are being covered with earth by attendants who first placed the bodies 
 in a heap, each lying horizontally, one above the other, with the head of 
 one above the feet of the one beneath; beside the funeral pile is an ox teth- 
 ered for sacrifice. The most recent and accurate reproduction of this, the 
 earliest known funeral scene, is Heuzey and Thureau-Dangin's recent edition 
 of the Stele des Vautours. 
 
 § The greatest possible confusion still exists concerning the periods to which 
 we must assign the different forms of burial. The earliest vaults discovered 
 by Taylor at Ur, are illustrated and described in Perrot et Chipiez, 1. c. 
 
 II The covers seem to have been usually oblong and spacious enough to 
 admit the body together with the numerous water jars and other accoutre- 
 ments necessary to the welfare of the soul. Occasionally the platform is 
 round with a correspondingly shaped cover. For drawings after Taylor see 
 Perrot, 1. c, and Hilprecht, 1. c, 176. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 143 
 
 terment consisted of a baked clay coffin in capsule form made 
 by fitting together two deep bowls, or the coffin might consist 
 of a huge vase simply.* This description applies to the Sumerian 
 period, as well as the later Semitic period. The best examples 
 of vaults have been found recently at Assur, the ancient capital 
 of Assyria. In Babylonia the commodious brick vaults seemed 
 to have been walled up after the last interment, but in Assyria 
 an opening at the west end, as well as a covered and walled stair- 
 case leading down to it, has been found in all cases. Family 
 vaults of this kind have been found in great numbers at Assur,f 
 containing skeletons, sometimes in considerable numbers. 
 
 In one of the vaults at Assur were found funeral urns, cone- 
 shaped, made of baked clay and containing the remains of 
 cremation. J Funeral urns of this kind had been found every- 
 where in the upper strata of the mounds of Babylonia, but di- 
 rect evidence of cremation for the classical period had been lack- 
 ing. Remains of cremation were found in Nippur in the lowest 
 Sumerian strata in the court of the stage-tower beside the remains 
 of vaults ; § according to Professor Hilprecht a large crematorium 
 stood near the corner of the stage-tower. Several years ago a 
 German expedition exploited the remains of two vast necrop- 
 olises a few miles south of Lagash, modern Telloh, now famous 
 through the excavations of De Sarzec.|| Both were found to 
 be fire necropolises, in which the ashes of millions of ancient 
 Sumerians must have found a last resting-place. Here the bodies 
 were placed in narrow brick casings, wrapped with inflammable 
 material and covered with soft clay. Cremation was produced 
 
 * In which case the body was mutilated. Another much-used form of 
 coffin is the bath-tub shape, often very deep, in which the body was placed in 
 a sitting posture. Another curious pattern is a huge flask-shaped coffin, 
 bulging towards the oval base, in which the body lay on the back with raised 
 knees, Mittheilungen der Deutschen Orientalischen Gesellschaft, 36 p. 13. For 
 recent finds of variously shaped coffins see MDOG 17, 4 ff.; 20, 24; 22, 22 
 and especially 27, 20 ff. Scheil's resume of this matter as far as concerns 
 Sippar is of great importance, Une Saison de Feuilles a Sippar, pp. 55 ff. 
 
 t Descriptions and drawings in MDOG 21, 36; 25, 48; 25, 55; 27, 29; 
 31, 18; 36, 23. 
 
 t Ibid., 31, 10 f. 
 
 § Hilprecht, 1. c, 456 ff. 
 
 II These two fire necropolises, whose ruins now bear the names of Surghul 
 and El-Hibba, are fully described by Koldewey in the Zeitschrift fiir Assyri- 
 ologie, ii, 403-30. 
 
144 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 by burning a huge pile of wood above this clay covering. In 
 case this process reduced the body to ashes the remains were 
 placed in an urn and buried in the family plot. If the process 
 did not reduce the body to ashes, the casing remained the tomb.* 
 Brick vaults! were often constructed to contain the funeral urns 
 and last remains, the excavators found large rectangular struct- 
 ures containing large numbers of these rooms, whose pavements 
 were drained by sewers, descending to the water level. J 
 
 Undoubtedly the peoples of ancient times buried their dead in 
 their temple courts, a practice fully established by the remains 
 of the lowest strata of Nippur. Andrae found a vault at the very 
 foot of the stage- tower at Assur.§ The desire to have a last 
 resting-place in such consecrated soil is one universal in the 
 human race and is abandoned only for practical reasons. At Ur 
 certain parts of the city seem to have been reserved for ceme- 
 teries. In other parts of Babylonia, whole districts, including 
 large cities, buried in one vast city of the dead, the local ne- 
 cropolis. 
 
 Although the ancient Sumerians, whose beliefs were trans- 
 mitted to the Semites, conceived of an immediate separation of 
 body and soul at mortal dissolution, the latter passing at once to 
 Arallu, the land of the dead, yet the soul or edimmu maintained 
 a lively interest in the body which it had left behind. || In fact 
 
 * Jastrow refused to accept an early date for the ruins of these two sites, 
 and speaks of Koldewey's explanation as unacceptable, but the trend of 
 recent archaeology is in favour of cremation at an early date, which custom 
 seems to have existed in all periods. 
 
 t Called by Koldewey " Totenhduser." 
 
 J The two necropolises, Fara and Ahu-Hatah, located between Nippur 
 and Lagash, and hence in the centre of a most densely populated district, 
 contained no traces of cremation whatsoever. We must therefore infer that 
 customs differed in the various communities. For traces of cremation at 
 Babylon, see MDOG 36, 12; 38, 13, at a depth of twenty feet. 
 
 § Ihid., 25, 55. Hommel and Hilprecht infer that the stage-towers are 
 really tombs of gods of vegetation, more particularly of Samas, the sun-god, 
 who is supposed to dwell in the nether world each year; see Hilprecht 1. c, 
 459 ff. This explanation, however, rests upon an improper interpretation 
 of the word gigund, which when applied to temples denotes a room in the 
 temple made in imitation of the land of the dead and is not a part of the 
 stage-tower. 
 
 II One might suppose that cremation would lead to a more spiritual con- 
 ception and detach the body forever from the .soul, but the post-burial rites 
 and ceremonies seem to have been the same whether the body was buried or 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 145 
 
 the future happiness of the soul depended largely upon the proper 
 care being given to its abandoned body. In every vault water 
 jars and bowls of food were placed beside the body, also in coffins 
 of every description. The same necessary supplies for the soul 
 accompany the funeral urns and remains of cremation. A prop- 
 erly buried person must take with him to the grave his jewels, 
 his own seal, his sword and whatsoever implements character- 
 ized his profession in the land of the living. In the graves of 
 women the excavators often find palettes, paint-boxes and remains 
 of paint-brushes for coloring the eye-brows and eye-lashes.* 
 The soul, therefore, continues its earthly existence in the lower 
 world, eats and drinks, and preserves its identity. Here one 
 finds kings, priests, magicians, and legendary heroes. f The 
 soul whose body does not receive provisions, or lies unburied on 
 the earth, is condemned to misery until its remains receive proper 
 burial. 
 
 I come now to the principal matter which I wish to discuss, 
 namely the evidence from the inscriptions themselves. The 
 earliest important reference to burial is found in an inscription 
 of Urukagina; | "When a dead man was placed in his coffin his 
 drink§ three jars, his breads eighty, one bed, one kid-.sa^r, || 
 as funeral offering ( ?) he received." Then follows the interest- 
 ing and hitherto unexplained passage; — "30 ka of barley the 
 waller \ received. If a [dead] ** man were placed in the dark 
 [chamber] of Eaff his drink 4 jars, his breads 240, 60 ka of barley, 
 as (his) offering ( ?) he received. 30 ka of barley the waller re- 
 
 cremated. No difference in beliefs concerning the fate of the soul can be 
 inferred from the different burial customs. Dr. Farnell has called my atten- 
 tion to his own views on this point in the Hibbert Journal, 1909, 422. 
 
 * MDOG 17, 4 ff.; for the same relics in Egyptian graves see ibid., 30, 9. 
 
 t Jensen, Mythen und Epen, 188. 
 
 t Circa 2900 B. c; a baked clay cone with duplicate, both in the Louvre, 
 published in Decouvertes, partie epigraphique, LI, f.; translated by Thureau- 
 Dangin, Sumerische und Akkadische Keilinsckriften, 46-54; the passage 
 under discussion is col. ix, 26-34 on cone A, =B, viii, 32-38. 
 
 § The word employed, kas, means a kind of beer. 
 
 II A special kind of kid, cf. BM 14335 obv. 5; RA iii, 122, 1., 14. 
 
 \ Galu dim-ma-ge, "man of wailing." 
 
 ** Text of B is illegible here, A has not the infix for dead, but the infix is 
 probably to be inserted. 
 
 tt gi-'^- en^ki-ka-ka, for gig-'^- en-ki-ka-ka, evidently a poetical phrase for 
 gig-unuygigunu, "great house of darkness," the ordinary word for vault. 
 
146 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 ceived," We have here a clear distinction between an ordinary- 
 burial in a sarcophagus* and the more stately interment in a 
 vault with corresponding difference in the amount of the offering 
 placed at the disposal of the soul for his last voyage.f A monu- 
 ment of the same period contains the following passage ; — " In the 
 city no coffin was interred, no dead were buried; the psalmist 
 raised his dirge, wailing arose not, the woman waller uttered 
 not wailing (sic!)." J 
 
 The passages cited prove that the drink-offering placed beside 
 the dead in the ancient period was not water but a kind of beer.§ 
 As a matter of fact water did not form the element of the offerings 
 in the tomb, nor is water mentioned among the offerings regu- 
 larly made by the living at the tombs of their ancestors. Only 
 in a later period arose the idea that water was necessary to the 
 existence of the soul. The original word for offerings made for 
 the souls of the dead is anag or more fully kianag. It has been 
 commonly supposed that a?ia^, which was borrowed by the Semites 
 as anakku, means "to pour out water," but there is absolutely 
 no evidence to support this interpretation. || Anag means, in 
 practice, any offering made for the repose of the dead. The liv- 
 ing not only buried their dead according to the customs dic- 
 tated by their eschatological ideas, but they continued to make 
 regular offerings at their tombs or graves. The relation be- 
 tween a man and his ancestors was not severed at the grave. 
 A decent burial constituted only the necessary beginning of a 
 happy existence in Arallu; the soul's happy existence could not 
 continue unless its kinsmen performed for it the necessary rites. 
 Inasmuch as those souls whose bodies failed to receive proper 
 burial or the proper continuance of attention by their kinsmen, 
 rose from hell to torment mankind and especially their own 
 negligent descendants, the offerings for the repose of the souls 
 
 * kimahhu. 
 
 t The passage continues with a list of allowances for other persons, viz., 
 the priestess, the galu ziga, the psalmist, and a large allowance for a meal. 
 If this part of the passage belongs to the description of the burial, then we 
 have here the long desired evidence of a funeral meal, the parentalia. I am 
 doubtful about this matter and hesitate to make far reaching conclusions on 
 the basis of this passage. 
 
 J Gudea, Statue B, v, 1-4. § kas = Slkaru. 
 
 II The root nag means "to drink," and anag, a drink offering. The prefix a 
 is the simple vowel augment and has no reference to water. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 147 
 
 formed an important part of Sumerian and Babylonian religious 
 practice. We shall see from the numerous ancient sources now 
 at our disposal that a general offering was provided for, in the 
 official religion, to appease the souls of the dead. We have 
 here truly the primitive conception of a feast of all souls. I 
 translate first the sources for private ancestral commemoration 
 and secondly those which concern a general offering for the repose 
 of all souls.* 
 
 OBV. 
 
 Col. i. — One she kid — unweaned. Col. ii. — of Enlitarzi 
 
 4 male kidsf — weaned, and of Dudu 
 
 20 male kids the priest, 
 
 set aside for the mortuary at the festival of Bau. 
 
 sacrifices Eniggal 
 REV. 
 
 Col. i. — the prefect Col. ii. — wife of Lugalanda, 
 
 has assigned priest king of 
 
 to the shepherd Lagash. 
 
 Lugalsagga. 3d year.J 
 [Property of] Baranamtara 
 
 Lugalanda son of Enlitarzi and his successor to the throne of 
 Lagash, here through his wife provides for the offerings to be made 
 at the tombs of his father and of a former high-priest. A small 
 tablet of the same period has the notice; — "One male sheep 
 has been slain for the mortuary sacrifice of Enlitarzi. The 
 sheep consumed was of his own estate."§ A list of offerings 
 for each of the eight days of the feast of the goddess Nina 
 
 * I have avoided the use of the term "cult of the dead," since a cult implies 
 the deification of the being worshipped. The Sumerians did deify their nders, 
 built temples to them and even identified them with planets, but the deifica- 
 tion of rulers has little relation to the problems under discussion. We have 
 in Babylonia only a tendency to an ancestral cult system, but the Sumerian 
 religion in the earliest period had already become too lofty in its conceptions 
 of divinity to descend to the level of ancestry worship. 
 
 ^ mas should always be translated "male kid," Semitic Idlu and sabitu, 
 although the latter form is feminine. The ordinary translation "gazelle " 
 for sabitu should be reserved for uniku. 
 
 X Nikolski, Documents of the Most Ancient Epoch, Collection LikhatchefiF, 
 No. 195. 
 
 § Literally, "of his own name." Allotte de la Fuye, Documents Prisargo- 
 niques no. 56. 
 
148 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 at Lagash contains the following entry among others for the 
 second day: 
 
 " 120 ka* of meal, 60 ka of servant's beer, 60 ka of black beer, 
 60 ( ?) ka of oil, one ka of dates, one ka of wine . . ., one basket ( ?) 
 of fish, one male kid, have been offered as the mortuary sacrifice 
 of the king of Lagash." f 
 
 The tablet from which I have taken this extract is dated in 
 the 3d year of Lugalanda, in whose time the rulers of Lagash 
 had long ceased to use the title of "king." The natural infer- 
 ence would be that regular offerings were maintained for the 
 souls of the rulers who founded the dynasty and who called them- 
 selves kings. 
 
 Tablets containing lists of regular offerings for the souls of 
 ordinary men and women are not wanting. In this regard the 
 most interesting document is a large tablet in the British Museum, 
 containing a list of temple ( ?) receipts and expenditures, among 
 which occur the following notices; — "270 ka (of barley) the regu- 
 lar religious tax X for the mortuary sacrifice § of the mother of the 
 priestess, barley from the field of the goddess Ningul";|| "300 
 female slaves for one day, the overseer being Ur-'' Lama son 
 of Uda, 108 female slaves for one day [the overseer being] 
 Ikkus son of Lala, paid from the regular religious tax for the 
 mortuary sacrifice of Gin-''' Bau the priestess and of the father 
 of the priestess."^ Here the state provides for the cults of 
 the father and mother of a priestess, as well as for that of the 
 priestess** herself. I use the term "cult" for the subject mat- 
 ter of this inscription, for we have here a real legal institution. 
 Evidently the state provided a regular income for the vault of 
 
 * The ka was a small vessel containing a little less than half a litre. 
 
 t Ibid., no. 53 obv. ii, 5-11. J satukku. 
 
 § Here I translate ki-a-nag by "mortuary sacrifice." 
 
 II BM 14308 obv. ii, 12-14. ^ Ibid.; rev. iii, 1-12. 
 
 ** nin-dingir-ra, cf. Urukagina, Cone A col. x, 12, and Jensen, op. cit. 
 439. Offerings for the ki-a-nag of the father of the priestess also in a frag- 
 mentary tablet of the same size, Reisner, Temple-Urkunden, no. 128, obv. iii.; 
 monthly offerings for the soul of the mother of the priestess are registered on 
 a fragment, ibid., no. 112; obv. col. i has part of the offering for the 2nd. 
 month, col. ii mentions allowances of beer for the ki-a-nag of the sabru (a re- 
 ligious office) and of the mother of the priestess [4th month], col. iii has the 
 end of an entry for the ki-a-nag of the 5th month, followed by similar allow- 
 ances for the 6th month. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 149 
 
 a family whose services in the official religion had been great. 
 We find, therefore, considerable property actually accruing to 
 the credit of this fund, which the authorities drew upon to pay 
 the ordinary expenses of the temple.* 
 
 Another tablet furnishes even more interesting evidence con- 
 cerning the part which respect for the souls of the great played 
 in the official religion :| 
 
 Obv: "60 servants of the prefect Enusimma, 60 servants of 
 the prefect Galu-** Ningirsu, (both are elders) ;| 23 servants of 
 the house of the messengers (whose overseer is Galu-'' Bau), 
 of the prefect Ursagga: 143 servants. Of these, 15 for the zi- 
 giir § of the temple Uz-ga, one for the mortuary sacrifices of 
 Ma-** Engur,|| one for the mortuary sacrifices of the deified 
 Dungi, 6 for the slaughter-house — Sagdana, 2 for the slaughter- 
 house of Nippur." Tf The tablet continues with a long list of 
 groups of servants who served in various capacities. 
 
 The sources do not always make clear whether the ofi'erings 
 were burnt, or whether they were consumed as a family meal in 
 memory of the dead. The jars and bowls placed with the body 
 provided for the needs of the soul for the time being. Inasmuch 
 as the vaults were found securely bricked up, we infer that they 
 were never entered again. The offerings in question can, there- 
 
 * Other instances, in which the ki-a-nag is represented as possessing prop- 
 erty, occur: Nikolski no. 236, in a list of skins of goats belonging to differ- 
 ent persons, the last entry is six skins of little kids, property of the ki-a-nag. 
 
 t BM 17775 published in Cuneiform Texts of the British Museum, vol. 
 vii, pi. 47. Cf. RTC no. 46, obv. II. 
 
 I ab-dS-dS-me: the ordinary meaning of ab is stbu "old man, councillor, 
 judge;" cf. amelu ab = irrisu K. 50, I 24. With this passage cf. 14595, "2 
 royal gur of barley Ur-Bau has received from Ur-"* Enlil, as provision for the 
 servants of the two elders {sag-gal erin ds-ds-me). In Thureau-Dangin, 
 Recueil de Tablettes ChalcUennes, 112, a man has the title ah of the king. Al- 
 though the ab appears to have been a councillor concerned with secular 
 matters, yet he belonged to the temple staff; BM 12232 obv. iii, 18, Lukani 
 is the ah of the goddess Ninmarki; the ah of Tammuz, of Nini, etc., also 
 occurs; also the abha of god, simply, in Nikolski 19, obv. iii, 7. For the 
 ah-ha in later t^mes see Zeitlin, Style Administratif, p. 42. 
 
 § The word is written ZI-IL; zi-giir may be Semitic for zigurat, stage- 
 tower. Cf. Reisner TU no. 173, obv. 6. 
 
 II /. e., one servant employed to do menial service in connection with rites 
 for the soul of Ma-'' Engur. 
 
 ^ Sic 1 The tablet comes from Lagash. The two buildings (e-gud-gaz) 
 mentioned were used for slaughtering victims for the temples. A house of 
 the same kind was built outside the north wall of Babylon. 
 
150 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 fore, have no reference to the food placed in the grave. For- 
 tunately at least one text is more definite on this point, proving 
 that we are actually dealing with a ceremony of eating a meal in 
 memory of the dead. 
 
 " One sheep for the priest-king, one kid for the priest of the 
 goddess Nina, one lamb and one kid for the priest of the goddess 
 Ninmarki, have been eaten in the assembly (?)*. One sheep 
 for the priest-king, one sheep for the chief scribe, in the month 
 gis-dim-ka-na-\ at the celebration of the mortuary sacrifice have 
 been eaten," { 
 
 Thus we see that the soul was nourished in Aralu by the me- 
 morial meals consumed in his memory by his kinsmen on earth 
 or in case of rulers, priests and important persons the memorial 
 meal formed part of the oflBcial religion. Such memorial meals 
 would naturally take on a more sacramental character when the 
 ruler was deified. Not only was he then raised to the rank of a 
 god, and worshipped and sacrificed to, as a god, but the ordinary 
 mortuary sacrifice in which his human nature persisted was main- 
 tained. § We have already found one instance of the mortuary 
 rites of the deified Dungi in the last inscription. A similar ref- 
 erence to the same deified ruler occurs on a tablet in Berlin.|| A 
 large fragment of the same collection has the following entry; 
 "One male kid, 5 ka of servant's meal,^ 5 shekel-weight of 
 butter, 2 large wicker jars [of oil of dates ?]** for the mortuary 
 sacrifice to Gudea the king."tt Here Gudea has not yet been 
 deified. 
 
 The evidence for a more general application of the memorial 
 feast in memory of all the souls who had passed to Aralu can- 
 
 * giln-a ba-kur. Some doubt exists about the word for assembly (jmhru), 
 but the word used for " eat " is certain. 
 
 t Otherwise unknown as the name of a month. 
 
 X Allotte de la Fuye, op. cit. no. 80. Naturally the participants burnt a 
 portion as a sacrifice to the dead. 
 
 § See Scheil's article on the Culte de Gvdea in Maspero's Recueil de Travaux, 
 vol. xviii. 
 
 II Reisner, TU., no. 173, obv. 7, "a servant for the ki-a-nag of the divine 
 Dungi." 
 
 ^ zid-kal, an inferior quality of meal. 
 
 ** id su-lum, cf. same column six lines below, and BM 17775, obv., 17. 
 
 tt Reisner, TU., no. 128, col. ix. Cf. the offerings to the ki-a-nag of the 
 kings, RTC 316, rev., 1. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 151 
 
 not be so abundantly documented but is none the less certain. 
 A large record of oiYerings for the six days of the festival of the 
 goddess Nina provides meal, beer, oil, dates, wine and fish for 
 the mortuary sacrifice of Lagash, that is, for the feast of "all 
 souls" for that city. This took place on the first day of the festi- 
 val. Another entry for the third day enumerates similar offer- 
 ings for the mortuary sacrifice of Nind-ki, a section of the same 
 city.* Another tablet, according to which the same festival 
 lasted only four days, fixes the feasts of all souls for both Sirpurla 
 (Lagash) and Niim for the first day.f 
 
 It need not be surprising, therefore, to find in an account of 
 the monthly tax paid by the wealthy consort of one of the priest- 
 kings of Lagash, an entry for the ki-a-nag,% or in a list of monthly 
 allowances for different temple expenses and offerings, a large 
 quantity of wheat given for the ki-a-nag of a certain Ningirsu- 
 urmu,§ in the 9th year of Lugalanda, and another monthly 
 account in the 4th year of the same ruler provides a smaller 
 quantity of wheat for the same purpose. || 
 
 When Gudea, the well-known priest-king of Lagash, placed 
 his own statue in the temple of Ningirsu before that god, among 
 the prayers which he inscribed upon it is the following: "May it 
 receive mortuary sacrifice. "Tf The same inscription begins with 
 an account of the regular (monthly)** offerings to be offered to 
 his statue during his lifetime. The two rites must, however, 
 not be confused. The worship offered to the statue of a living 
 monarch proves that the Sumerians deified their rulers even in 
 their own lifetime.ff It would seem, therefore, that the memorial 
 monthly meal was eaten in the presence of the statue of the de- 
 
 * See Nikolski, no. 23 obv., cols, i and ix. A feast of all souls at the 
 festival of Bau, RTC no. 60. 
 
 t H. de Genouillac, Tablettes Sumeriennes Archaiques, no. 1, obv., vii. 
 
 j Th.-Dangin, RTC 51 obv, v, end. The text is broken away so that 
 either the name of the city or the name of a person may have followed. See 
 also no. 47, obv., ii, 7. 
 
 § Ibid., no. 55. || Ibid., no. 66, obv., ii. 
 
 ^ ki-a-nag-e ga-ba-ttlm. Statue B. 7, 55. 
 
 ** satukku which seems to have been monthly and in case of Gudea (at least) 
 offered to him after his death on the 15th or day after the full moon, see 
 Scheil 1. c. 
 
 ft A practice known from many other sources. See Hilprecht, Earliest 
 Version of the Flood Story, 24-29. Dungi bears the title of "god" Dungi 
 in his own reign, CT ix, 44 col., ii, 18. 
 
152 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 parted, if the person in question was important enough to be 
 honoured with a statue.* This prayer of Gudea inscribed in 
 classic Sumerian upon his statue appears to have been worked 
 into a hymn to Ningirsu, of which we have a late fragmentary 
 copy supplied with a Semitic translation. "As for the king 
 whose being t has been created| unto a life of far-away days, 
 whose statue if one fashion unto eternal days and [bring] it 
 into Eninnu, the temple of gladness, the mortuary sacrifice § 
 ... as is fitting may he receive. "|| Another passage of great 
 importance in this connection, in which the primitive force of 
 the word ki-a-nag seems evident, is the following: "The ki-a- 
 7iag of the gods where the mortuary sacrifice is made,^ in the 
 temple Ninnu, the tarkullu, he fixed." This is not the only 
 passage in which the souls of the dead are called "gods"; the 
 demons, good and bad, were originally souls which arose out of 
 hell at the instance of the wizard, or sent by the powers of dark- 
 ness. This weird conception which peopled Aralu with spirits 
 who were capable of interfering with the affairs of men and upon 
 whose good will the happiness of the living largely depended 
 is illustrated by a passage from a late incantation, "The bound 
 gods arise from hell, the evil ghouls arise from hell, for the 
 breaking of bread and the pouring out of water." ** In an- 
 other passage Gudea refers to fallen heroes in affectionate terms: 
 
 * Offerings to statues occur in RTC no. 247, obv., i, 12, and TSA, no. 35, 
 obv., V. 
 
 t mu = sumu, literally "name." % ilakkanu, for iUakkanu. 
 
 § ki-a-nag is translated by asar . . . . , the decisive word being unfortu- 
 nately broken away. Assyriologists have inferred from this passage that 
 ki-a-nag refers to a place, i. e., an altar or a chapel of some, sort where water 
 was poured out to the shades of the dead. This practice, however, [nak me] 
 belongs to the late period only. The Sumerian ki of course means place 
 [asm] and a-nag should mean "to give to drink water." But the late term 
 kisig which replaced the earlier ki-a-nag means kasapu sa kispi, " breaking of 
 bread for the dead," and in no way is it used of a place. Both forms, however, 
 evidently mean the place where the parentalia was performed, but in actual 
 usage only the ritual itself is intended. If a-nag actually means to pour out 
 water to the dead, it is nowhere so explained, for nak me of the later paren- 
 talia is translated into Sumerian by a-nisag, CT, xvii, 37, 9. See below, note 
 on a-nag. || IV R 13a, 22-29. 
 
 If ki-a-nag dingir-ri-ka a im-nag-nag-a; here a-nag is a compound in which 
 a does not have the meaning "water," but is a vowel augment as in a-ru, 
 a-kid, a-sil, a-kesda, see Babyloniaca, ii, 96. 
 
 ** CT xvii, 37, 1-10. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 153 
 
 *'The dead heroes ... to them I administered at the place of 
 mortuary sacrifice."* 
 
 The material utilized in the foregoing discussion is entirely 
 from ancient Sumerian sources and must form the basis for our 
 study of the earliest ideas concerning eschatology. Our infer- 
 ences may not be altogether certain, yet we may perhaps as- 
 sume that the parentalia or solemn meal in memory of the dead 
 formed the essential act necessary for the repose of the soul. 
 The general parentalia or meal for all souls took place in most 
 cases on the first, second or third days of the great feasts of Nina 
 and Bau, i. e., at the beginning of the fifth and seventh months. 
 No importance should be attached to this fact, for the parentalia 
 seems to have recurred every month and it is only because we 
 have so much documentary evidence for the two festivals men- 
 tioned that the parentalia for these months is so often found. 
 
 When we reach the Semitic period of the first dynasty we find 
 a new expression which seems to have entirely replaced the ancient 
 term ki-a-nag "mortuary sacrifice" or more strictly, "place for 
 mortuary sacrifice,"! namely ki-sig which the Semitic scribes 
 interpreted by "breaking of bread." The earliest passage is a 
 pure Sumerian text;t "food of the parentalia § in its place I 
 eat"; the goddess Ininni, Semitic Itsar-Astoreth, uses this phrase 
 
 * Gudea, Cyl. A, 26, 15 f., ur-sag dig-ga-ni-me . . . KA-bi ki-a-nag-Su miir- 
 gar. KA-gar ordinarily means, "conduct a suit," in a hostile sense, hence, 
 " complaint"; but cf. KA-gar Sag-ga-a "good intention," Cyl. A, 20, 3. Our 
 passage means literally, "their affair 1 plead," and may include wailing. 
 
 t The notion of mortuary or memorial for the dead is not inherent in the 
 etymology of either of these words but they are, in fact, used only in this 
 sense. The Sumerian ki-sig is translated by kispa kasapu. The fundamental 
 notion is "to break bread together," exactly equivalent to the N.T. Greek 
 ro dpTov K\dv. In actual usage only the form ku^apa kasapu occurs for eat- 
 ing in common, whereas the form kispa kasapu is reserved for the paren- 
 talia. For the primitive idea, cf. Id kusapi tdkal, "thou eatest not broken 
 bread," Harper, Letters, 341, 9. ' The phrase occurs in the Gilgamis Epic xi, 
 300, ana esrd simdni iksupu kusapa, "every twenty double hours' march they 
 broke bread," followed by, "every thirty double hours' march they made a 
 night's lodging." [The passage has been universally misunderstood]; see 
 also V. col. iii, 44. kusapu Id ekuluni, "they ate broken bread," Harper, Letters, 
 no. 78, 11. 
 
 X CT XV, 7, 23, see my Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, p. 10. The new 
 term kisig may be due nevertheless to Semitic conceptions. 
 
 § So I translate ki-sig everywhere, to distinguish it from ki-a-nag, " mortuary 
 sacrifice." Both translations are only a vade mecum. 
 
154 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 in a lamentation over her city; she assists at the public feast of 
 the breaking of bread for the souls who perished in the destruc- 
 tion of her city. The lamentation continues: " Of the stalls their 
 cattle I sacrifice."* The rite now consists in the breaking of 
 bread together at a common meal, as well as the offering of a 
 sacrifice. The ancient ceremony seems to have been a sacrifice 
 which the family of the deceased partook of, but part of which 
 was burned for the soul in Aralu, the so-called Hebrew "peace- 
 offering," D^ti^. Alongside of this grew up a more spiritual 
 ritual, the breaking of bread. In the evolution of the rite, the two 
 practices merged into one, and the ancient term disappeared. 
 We now find the term kisig, kispa kasdpu, " breaking of bread," 
 used for the entire ceremony, in which it is difficult to separate 
 the ideas. t The word kispu soon acquired the meaning sacri- 
 fice for the dead and in the Cassite period several temple rec- 
 ords shew that the official religion provided for the public par- 
 entalia.J 
 
 In an inscription recently discovered at Eski-Harran, a priest 
 of the famous temple of the moon god in Harran affectionately 
 refers to the friends whom he had lost in the course of a long 
 lifetime, and for whom he had performed the monthly ceremony 
 for the repose of the dead.§ The description to be disengaged 
 
 *tur amar-bi a-nag-an me-en; the passage was not understood by me in 
 SEP, p. 11. Notice that we have here the verb anag. 
 
 t The Babylonians built special temples for the parentalia, probably only 
 for the general sacrifices to the dead which if carried out regularly would 
 absolve the individual families from these burdens. Reference to the bit 
 kisikki at Kes occurs, SBP 24, 74; at Adab 26, 6: cf. also, 214, 24. Especially 
 interesting is a letter of the Babylonian king Ammiditana (2021-1985 b. c.) 
 in Th.-Dangin's Lettres et Contrats no. 7. "To Summa-ilu. son of Idin-Mar- 
 duk say : — thus saith Ammiditana: Milk and butter for the kisig of the 
 month Ab are lacking iihhaSSem). When thou readest this letter may thy 
 overseer take 30 cows and 60 ka of butter and come to Babylon. Until the 
 kisig is finished let him supply milk. He shall not delay but come at once." 
 
 X Clay, Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, xiv, pi. 60, 
 43, fourteen animals set aside for the kispu; xv, 200, i, 6, in a list of grain 
 offerings to the gods, 20 ka for the kispu u rimku, " sacrifice to the dead and 
 libation." Cf. also xv, 185, i, 5; here the sacrifice took place in the bit Hani, 
 "temple of the gods." 
 
 § Henri Pognon, Inscriptions s6mitiques de la Syrie, Bowlder of Eski-Harran 
 iii, 16, "lambs, wine, etc. ... I offered unto them as a sacrifice to the 
 dead," [kispi] akassap Sunuti. The word for "monthly" is partly broken 
 away. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 155 
 
 from the fragmentary inscription clearly applies to a sacrifice 
 of which the priests probably partook. The monthly cele- 
 bration of this rite is made certain not only by the abundant evi- 
 dence from the period but by an entry in a late calendar in which 
 the ud kisigga appears as one of the regular monthly feasts.* 
 
 The Babylonians attributed many of their woes to the spirits 
 of the dead, who, not receiving their due respect at the hands of 
 the living, rose out of hell to torment humanity. Under such 
 circumstances they usually appealed to the gods Ea, Sama§ and 
 Marduk. One interesting ritual directs the aflflicted to erect 
 seven altars (?), with a censer for each and to sacrifice seven 
 lambs. Then he must offer the parentaliaf to seven statues. 
 According to Babylonian theology the devils were seven in num- 
 ber, whom they conceived of as wicked souls. They are here 
 represented by their seven statues at the meal which mortals 
 provide to appease them. Another ritual directs the persecuted 
 man to place a seat for the souls of his ancestors at the ritual- 
 istic scene and to offer them the parentalia.J 
 
 Only in the late Semitic period do we come upon the practice 
 of pouring out water for the soul of the dead in connection with 
 the memorial meal, the so-called ndk me.§ Ashurbanipal speaks 
 of this institution in the following line: "The regulations || for 
 the parentalia and the pouring of water for the souls of the kings 
 who preceded me, which had fallen into disuse, I organised."^ 
 The libation of water for the dead appears first in the Cassite 
 
 * K 6012, 1. 21, in PSBA 1904, after page 56. 
 
 t kispi takasip-^uiiuti. See Zimmern, RUualtafeln, no. 49. 
 
 X Zimmern, ibid., no. 52. The ordinary word for "soul " is edimmu, less 
 often utukku, and both are Sumerian loan-words. The seven devils usually 
 bear the names, asakku, namtaru, utukku, alu, edimmu, gallu, ilu limnu. They 
 are called "the offspring of hell," binut Aralle, IV R. 1, a 12. 
 
 § tiaku has the root meaning "pour " but soon took on the general mean- 
 ing "to offer as a sacrifice," and might be applied to libations, animals or 
 any kind of sacrifice. In the strict sense of "pour," the Sumerian equivalent 
 was bal, but in the wider sense of offering any kind of sacrifice the scribes 
 translated by the word nisag, correctly written DE (Briinnow, No. 6714), 
 but often confused with MURU (No. 6701). When either sign is used for 
 naku, or the noun niku the phonetic value is nisag. ndk in the phrase ndk 
 me is the infinitive, and we should translate, "giver of libation of water," 
 unless the notion of a person is indicated by amelu, or ia otherwise evident. 
 
 II adi. 
 
 ^ Lehmann, &amahlum-ukin H rev., 1. 
 
156 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 period, in the terrible curse, "May god deprive him of an heir 
 and a giver of Hbation of water;"* "May god cause him to have 
 neither heir nor giver of Hbation of water;" f "May god take 
 away heir and giver of libation of water." | 
 
 The land of the dead, which the Babylonians imagined to be 
 a vast chamber beneath the surface of the earth, was ruled by 
 the goddess Ereskigal § whose name means " mistress of the vast 
 place." An interesting myth explains how this goddess, sister 
 of the great gods, obtained her consort Nergal. She, in her ca- 
 pacity of queen of the dead, could not leave Aralu to attend a 
 feast of the gods, but sent her messenger Namtaru. When the 
 messenger arrived in the assembly of the gods all but Nergal 
 arose to salute him. Whereupon by the consent of the gods 
 Ereskigal summoned Nergal to hell for punishment. Nergal 
 arrived at the gates || of hell and was announced by the w^atch- 
 man. Admitted into the presence of the queen he violently 
 threw her from her throne and spared her life at her plea that 
 she be made his consort, Nergal thus became lord of Aralu. 
 As a matter of fact Eres-kigal seems to have been the original 
 ruler of the land of the dead. Nergal, originally the winter sun, 
 was supposed to dwell in Aralu half of the year whence his char- 
 acter as lord of Aralu and the pest god 'par excellence.*^ In re- 
 ligious literature and in the syllabars Nergal appears without a 
 consort.** His principal titles are, god of the grave, of percep- 
 tion f f of judgement,tt of wrath, of gladness, of plague, of the 
 street. §§ 
 
 * Inscribed Memorial Deed of Melisupak, col. vii, 9-11. 
 t l\S, iv, 86, 19. 
 
 I Ihid., 72, iv, 20. See Hinke, A New Boundary Stone of Nebtichadrezzar i, 
 p. 291. The same curse is frequently used and the references often referred 
 to in popular works; see Delitzsch, Handworterbuch, under nakiL. 
 
 § In ii, 59, 33 the name is interpreted by iltu Allatu, which scholars have 
 usually regarded as the Semitic equivalent. 
 
 II Here fourteen gates are mentioned. 
 
 ^ For this legend see Jensen, op. cit., 74-79. 
 
 ** See BoUenriicher, Hymn-en und Gebete an Nergal; also Langdon, Sumerian 
 and Babylonian Psalms, nos. vii, viii, xxvii. ft i^u Sa ha-j.a-ti. 
 
 J J sipti. See also Langdon, ibid., 84, 4, and iv, R, 24, no. 1, 27-8. This title 
 of Nergal is the only real evidence we have for supposing that souls were 
 examined concerning their good and bad deeds while on earth. 
 
 §§ CT. xxiv, 41, 64-74. Another list on the same tablet, 11. 89-95, where 
 he follows the grain goddess Nisaba, has the titles, god of lightning, god of 
 purification, god of Sutu, god of the mountain, and god of dwellings. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 157 
 
 The Babylonians had several picturesque names for the land 
 of the dead, which was often described as the irsit la tdri, "land 
 of no return."* The ordinary word is arallu or aralii, a Su- 
 merian word which means "place of desolation. "f The scribes 
 explained the word with other fanciful phrases — "mountain 
 house of the dead," "the vast city"; J irkallu "prison house,"§ 
 of which the soul of Eabani says to his comrade Gilgamish, " De- 
 scend unto me, unto the house of darkness, abode of the god of 
 irhalla." Another term, hit ilii Tammuz, " house of Tammuz," || 
 arose from the ancient myth concerning this god who abode in 
 hell each year during the autumn and winter season. 
 
 The descent of Istar into inferno to search for the departed 
 Tammuz has been described in a poem of remarkable beauty 
 and it is from this poem, which has been exploited, that most of 
 the popular ideas concerning the Babylonian Hades have been 
 taken.^ According to this poem Aralu is a land without light, 
 where dust is the only food and solitude reigns supreme. Seven 
 gates guard the descent into Aralu, at each of which a warder 
 challenges the visitor. In the interior Ereskigal holds her court, 
 w^hich consists of her messenger Namtaru, chief of demons, and 
 the Anunnaki, servants of the under world.** An ancient 
 Sumerian text mentions several demons who conduct the sister 
 Tammuz into the lower world in quest of her brother. The 
 scene is described as follows: 
 
 "The watchman, the graZ/w-ft demon, opponent terrible. 
 To the compassionate Belit-seri spoke, 
 'Why to thy brother, the lamented, will thou enter? 
 Why to Tammuz, the bewailed, wilt thou enter ? ' 
 With the gallu she pursued her way unto him. 
 
 * For this rendering of kur-nu-gl, see Jensen, op. cit., 80, n. 2. 
 
 t Cf. dra-li-a=karrnu, "ruin," [Ethiopic kamr] ii, 35a, 44. 
 
 j ii, R, 30d, 3-5. 
 
 § Sumerian kesda, v, R, 16, 80, with which compare the "mountain house 
 of the dead," the kesda azag, CT, xvi, 3, 95; irkallu also in Rm. 343, obv. 15, 
 between the words irsitum and nakbu. 
 
 II BM 93063 in CTxii, 23, where a Hst of words for "under world " may be 
 found, among them kartnu, "ruin," and kabru, "grave." 
 
 H iv R, 31. 
 
 ** One text mentions GOO Anunnaki, SBH, 87, 35. 
 
 tt Oiie of the seven devils. 
 
158 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 The slayer upon the route advanced* with her. 
 
 The sudu journeyed with her unto him. 
 
 The alu f journeyed with her unto him. 
 
 Together they hastened, together they pressed forward.''^ 
 
 We possess but one passage in which a soul rises from hell 
 to describe the existence of the dead. Nergal opens the earth 
 and allows the ghost of Eabani to ascend and reveal the horrors 
 of death to his comrade Gilgamish: 
 
 "Speak, O my comrade, speak, O my comrade, 
 The law of hell which thou hast seen, speak." 
 " If I tell thee the law of hell § which I have seen, 
 In . . . thou shalt sit, weep. 
 Truly in ... I sat, truly I wept." || 
 
 So runs the fragmentary text concerning the only message 
 which man has brought back from the " land of no return." 
 
 The entrance into Aralu was located in the far west^ at the 
 place where the inhabitants of Babylonia saw the sun descend 
 into the nether sea, as they supposed. I translate here an in- 
 cantation against restless souls who have w^andered from hell; 
 
 * Read dib, not ba. t One of the seven devils. 
 
 J Langdon, op. cit., 312, 22 ff. 
 
 § irsitu, hell, here and often. || Jensen, op. cit., 263. 
 
 *if Cf. the title of Nergal '^" mar-uru = ilu Sa suti. CT xxiv, 42, 91 f. MAR-TU, 
 the ordinary Sumerian word for abubu, "storm," "deluge," is to be read 
 mar-uru when it has this sense. [Not to be confused with the word md-gur, 
 "ship," ZA, XX, 451.] Although mar-uru is the form used in classical texts 
 for abubu yet the form a-md-uru > a-ma-ru [K 3372 + 5241 obv., 12 = CT xvii, 
 37] may be original. Since the ancient word for "quiver," iSpatu was e mar- 
 uru, "dwelling of the storm " and the primitive notion of abubu is "flood of 
 light," "quiver " meant really "abode of the shafts of light," mar-uru, a-ma- 
 uru, a-ma-ru [dialectic md-uru is frequent] "storm," and "quiver " [e mar-urii 
 later became mar-uru = iSpatu] is evidently a pure Sumerian word. Now 
 MAR-TU is the ordinary writing for Amurru, west-land, the land of the 
 Amorites, If we are to read mar-uru then the inference must be made that 
 Amurru, Amorite, is pure Sumerian meaning, "land of storm," hence west- 
 land. We have direct evidence for reading MAR-TU as mar-uru, when it 
 means West, Amoria, since in CT xxiv, 40, 48, Adad, god of the west-land, 
 usually written "'" MAR-TU, is explained by abubu. The reading mar-tu 
 for West is, therefore, definitely excluded. Sutu, already known to be a 
 Syrian province (iv R, 38, 22 f., su-ri-ki and su-ti-um-ki) is here written with 
 the Sumerian word for West, more especially Amoria. Nergal, therefore, is 
 god of the west-land, i.e., Sutium. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 159 
 
 it not only contains evidence for placing the entrance to hell 
 in the west but is one of the most useful sources for studying 
 Babylonian conceptions of the spiritual world. 
 
 "Mighty sage of the universe, Marduk, raging one, [who 
 
 makest glad] * Egurra 
 O Ea, Shamash and ^larduk come to my aid. 
 By your grace may I conduct my life rightly. 
 O Shamash the terrifying ghost, which since many days, 
 Behind me clings and cannot be loosed, 
 Which every day oppresses me, every night terrifies me, 
 Which persecutes ever (?)t) causes the hair upon me to 
 
 stand on end, J 
 Which makes my bosom gasp for breath (?)§ which hunts 
 my eyes.ll 
 
 Which brings woe to my back (?) poisoning my flesh, ^ 
 
 Which brings woe to my whole body. 
 
 Be it a ghost of my family by male or female lineage,** 
 
 Be it a ghost who was murdered. 
 
 Be it a wandering ff ghost — this one or that one, 
 
 O Shamash before thee I seek him. 
 
 * Read Sal-[ba-bu mu-res], cf. BA V, 347, no. xiii, 3. 
 
 "[ ridusu izzi-zu or uszi-zu; literally, "who stands in pursuit." ridusu<C. 
 ridntsu; for ridMu "succession," "following after," cf. Jensen on the root 
 rid-Q,, "follow after," in Mythen und Epen, 317. 
 
 X See Meissner, Supplement, under ■""'n. 
 
 § puti-ia ihissu. The information on the root hisu in the lexicons is false. 
 At least one root hisu, "to take refuge," "to conceal," seems to be certain. 
 Heb. ^on. Another root, "remove from the way," in Tiglathpileser I, col. 
 iv, 67, in P form "take for oneself," Delitzsch, AL*, 167, and cf. Behems, 
 Briefe, p. 2, also Meissner, Supplement 39. I have ventured to cormect the 
 root in this passage with Arabic hasiya. 
 
 II IP of sddu, ussanadu. 
 
 ^ iamamu, "to poison (?)," so Meissner: cf. Sammu, "drug," Kiichler, 
 Medicine, 66, Sera-Su iiammamusu, CT, xxiii, 46, 26; katd-su sepd-iu uSamma- 
 mu-hi, ibid., I. 27. 
 
 ** eimmu kimti-ia u salati-ia : the full phrase is kimtu nisutu u salatu. This 
 passage proves that blood relation is meant, hence the interpretation, " house- 
 hold," including slaves and servants does not come into the discussion. 
 Peiser first gave the interpxretation accepted here, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek 
 iv, 305, followed by Daiches, Altbabylonische Rechtsurkunde, 40. 
 
 tt murtappidu; cf. Meissner, Seltene Assyrische Ideogramme, no. 2313, where 
 the Sumerian sag-du-du is explained by iabbitu and murtappidu. For Sapddu 
 Krapadu, cf. Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmaler i, 70, col. v, 12; liStappud, 
 "may he wander about." iabbitu, therefore, for iappidu, "wanderer." 
 
160 BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 Garments for his wear, shoes for his feet, 
 
 A girdle for his loins, a leather bottle of water for his drink, 
 
 Meal of puklu-gTSim I grind ( ?) for him *, food for his jour- 
 ney I give him f. 
 
 To the sunset may he go. 
 
 Unto the god Ne-duh, great watchmen of hell J, I entrust 
 him. 
 
 May Neduh, great watchman of hell, keep strong guard over 
 him. 
 
 May he lay hold of the bar of their gate fastenings. "§ 
 
 The fundamental concept of Babylonian eschatology is the 
 inseparableness of the living and the dead. The welfare of 
 the living depended largely upon the care which they bestowed 
 upon their departed kinsmen. Although these disappeared from 
 the sight of men, yet their souls communed with them at the 
 solemn parentalia in the temples, or at their graves. Some change 
 of ritual may have taken place, but they found no higher revela- 
 tion of the whither of the soul than this. No trace of a resurrec- 
 tion, no promise of change in the monotonous and silent exist- 
 ence in hell. The emphasis upon the intimate interdependence 
 of the living and the dead tended to mystery in religion, to social 
 and family solidarity in politics. Dread of offending the dead» 
 whose wrath brought upon mankind most terrible aflBiction, 
 compelled respect for justice and aided powerfully in maintain- 
 ing the best institutions of the race. 
 
 PHILOLOGICAL NOTE ON "BREAKING OF BREAD** 
 
 I have translated the root kasdpu by "break," and when used with kusapu, 
 or kasapu, by "break bread." The passages cited make clear that we have 
 here an expression for eating at a common meal. The verb is, however, not 
 used in any connection except with kispu in the arbitrary sense of breaking 
 bread for the parentalia, and with kusapu, or kasapu of an ordinary meal. 
 The evidence for this root meaning rests principally upon a syllabar published 
 by Hilprecht, in BE xx, pi. 14, where we find: 
 
 * Read kirn pukli e-iah-hi. Cf. Meissner, SA I, 689, and Hrozny in Wiener 
 Zeitschrift, xx, 102. 
 
 t The last four lines are translated by Frank, Babylonische Beschworungs 
 relief, 89, n. 6. 
 
 Xirsitu. 
 
 § King, Magic and Sorcery, no. 53. 
 
BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY 161 
 
 [su]ku* = ku-ru-ma-tum, "ground food'* 
 (pa-ad) = ka-sa^'puru 
 [ditt6\ = pussiisu 
 [ku-]ur = saltu, hostility. 
 
 The fact to be disengaged from this text is that pussMsw and kasapu are 
 synonyms. The root pasasu means "to break," and pussusu probably means 
 "crumb," or "biscuit broken from a large layer of biscuits baked together." 
 kasapu has, therefore, a similar meaning. 
 
 The Greek phrase ^ /cXd^ts toO dprov, ro Aprov kXcLv^ in whatever form it 
 may occur must be the translation of some Semitic phrase like kusapa iksupu. 
 The Hebrew phrase back of the Greek is S!?^ o^?; cf. Je. 16^ "Not shall 
 they break bread in sorrow to comfort him because of the dead"; the Heb. 
 on!? if^s' (rd. on!? for s:?';') is translated by K\affdy Apros. Here we have an 
 exact parallel to the Babylonian parentalia and the passage must be so un- 
 derstood. In Is. 58^ " Is it not to break thy bread unto the hungry?" we 
 have a reference to an ordinary meal, the Babylonian kusapa iksupu. The 
 Greek has here diddpvirTe rbv dprov. La. 4*, "Children ask for bread but there 
 is none to break (it) unto them," en*; j^n f 72; Greek o buxKKQv. The Syriac 
 version uses the verb ksa in each case, the ordinary word for breaking bread 
 in the Eucharist. The Targum retains the verb d-ic for Je. and Is., but par- 
 aphrases by ii^y'iD^ " one who reaches bread to," for La. 4*. The Talmud has 
 a cognate construction ^o^-\a d-\d exactly parallel to Bab. kusapa iksupu: 
 Rosh haShanah29^, rn-^Mih nonD din diid^ n^, "Not does a man break bread 
 to guests " (unless he eats with them). Cf. also none, " a piece of bread," iden- 
 tical in meaning with Bab. kusapu, and pussusu. The ordinary Aramaic word 
 is >'S2, cf. Berakhoth, 46^. 
 
 1-I2D niNi px3 n^an Sya, "The master of the house breaks (bread) and the 
 guest blesses it." 
 
 We have here a widespread Semitic idiom for sharing a meal with relatives 
 and friends. The Babylonian and Hebrew phrases apply to the parentalia 
 as well as to an ordinary meal. A mysterious spiritual communion already 
 existed in this ceremony from an early period which hastened the early 
 Christian conception of a sacrament in connection with the Agape. [For the 
 Aramaic references on the phrase " breaking of bread" I have had the assist- 
 ance of Professor G. A. Cooke, whose abundant knowledge supplied a serious 
 defect in tracing the history of the institution.] 
 
 Oxford, May 10, 1910. 
 
 * See Briinnow, Classified Lists, No. 9922 ff. 
 
XIII 
 
 SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COMMON ARABIC 
 SPEECH OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE 
 
 By Frederick Jones Bliss 
 
 This brief paper does not, of course, attempt to compete with 
 the technical studies of Count Landberg, Dr. Spoer and others 
 in the same fields. It is literally a word "about" the subject, 
 seeking not so much to strike its centre as to touch on certain 
 matters that belong to its penumbra. The term "speech" oc- 
 curs in the title advisedly, for pronunciation, phrases, and even 
 gestures, or worldless speech will be touched upon. First of all, 
 however, we must contrast the spoken with the written language. 
 Such a contrast is common to all tongues, but in the Arabic 
 presents some unusual features. The difference between the 
 speech of the New York tenements and the language of the edi- 
 torial columns of the "Sun" may be conceded for the sake of 
 argument to be as great as that between the written and the spoken 
 Arabic dialects, but the editor of the "Sun" may reasonably be 
 supposed to talk at home in the same general style in which he 
 writes, whereas the most flowery Arabic rhetorician whose para- 
 graphs would bewilder the Fellah, uses in his family and with his 
 friends the language of the Fellah, or, at least, the common dia- 
 lect of the street. Exceptions, of course, may be found, for 
 there are pedants everywhere. Especially the initiated among 
 the Druses are apt to affect a literary style in their ordinary talk, 
 but, in general, given a certain district, the spoken language of the 
 educated and of the uneducated is one. What would be incor- 
 rect if written is quite correct when spoken. Your gramma- 
 rian frankly abandons grammar when he speaks, except in mak- 
 ing a public discourse. The spoken language is called " da'rij " 
 
 163 
 
164 THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA. 
 
 or current, the literary language "na'hawy" or grammatical. 
 Practically, however, there is a tacitly-acknowledged grammar 
 governing the speech of any district. The educated Syrian, 
 justly proud of his noble inheritance of the classical tongue, 
 often shows a sensitive reluctance to divulge to a stranger the 
 vernacular forms. When asked for a verbal translation of an 
 ordinary foreign phrase he is apt to give the literary equivalent. 
 With the uneducated, on the other hand, a contrary tendency 
 leads them to attempt a horrible imitation of the speech of for- 
 eigners, with the mistakes distorted and exaggerated, which they 
 firmly believe will be more comprehensible to their visitors than 
 the real thing. I have talked myself hoarse in my very best 
 vernacular vainly attempting to alter this presupposition. An 
 attempt of that brilliant Arabic scholar, Dr. Post, was more 
 effective. When a patient persisted in the use of the "Frangy" 
 Arabic, he gravely asked him: "Is your Excellency then the son 
 of a Turk ? You do not appear to be able to speak Arabic cor- 
 rectly!" A certain analogy is found in the celebrated Italian 
 manner of Mrs. Plornish in "Little Dorrit" who proudly felt 
 that she was almost addressing the unfortunate Italian in his 
 own tongue when she said to him, for example: "Me ope you 
 leg well soon . . . Peaka Padrona!"* 
 
 While the main difference between the spoken and the written 
 languages is shown in the deterioration and mutilation of gram- 
 matical forms, there are also interesting differences in the vo- 
 cabulary. In English, such words of the common speech, as are 
 not ordinarily written, usually fall under the category of slang, 
 such as "skedaddle." Now the common Arabic has its slang, 
 often local, such as the word "ha'lamy" used in Jerusalem to 
 signify " humbug," though not generally understood in any other 
 part of Syria where I have quoted it; but the common language 
 is also characterized by some perfectly normal roots, universally 
 used to describe simple and ordinary actions, that do not appear, 
 
 * (1) Dickens furnishes another curious analogy with the Arabic vernacular. 
 Mrs. MacStinger denounces with bitter emphasis Captain Cuttle's "guzzlings 
 and muzzlings." The irate landlady has not in mind the verb "to muzzle ": 
 she simply follows with the Syrians — and, I understand, with the Turks as 
 well — a tendency to emphasize a word by repeating it in altered form, substi- 
 tuting the letter M for the initial letter: "semen wa memen," "khubr, 
 mubr," etc., etc. 
 
THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 165 
 
 as far as I am aware, in the literary language. Such roots, for ex- 
 ample, form the basis of the conjugations of the verbs " to see " and 
 " to go." Thus " he went" is spoken " rah," it is written " dha'- 
 hab"; "he saw" is spoken "shaf": it is written "na'dhar."* 
 Some words, however, especially particles, which appear super- 
 ficially to have no connection with grammatical forms, are found 
 when analyzed to be corruptions or combinations of these. 
 One interesting question regarding the relations of the two dia- 
 lects is as to how far the uneducated people understand the classi- 
 cal language, which is wonderfully rich in synonyms. The old- 
 fashioned rhetorician, priding himself on his knowledge of ob- 
 scure words, might produce a speech that would entirely puzzle 
 the unlearned. But on the other hand it is quite possible to 
 write perfectly classical Arabic which the peasant may clearly 
 comprehend although he cannot use it. Thus the noble Arabic 
 translation of the Scriptures made by Doctors Eli Smith and 
 Cornelius Van Dyck, with the literary assistance of one of the 
 finest native Arabic scholars of his day, is a model of classical 
 purity, while at the same time it is easily understood by the people. 
 The same may be said of the Ritual of the Greek Church, as 
 well as of such parts of the Maronite Ritual as are translated into 
 Arabic. Summing up, it may be stated that whereas the great 
 majority of roots employed in the vulgar speech are also common 
 to the classical, the latter, being far richer, contains many that 
 never appear in ordinary use. 
 
 The differences between the S}Tian and the Egyptian dialects 
 are largely superficial, but like all things on the surface they are 
 at once apparent, especially as they characterize the forms of 
 speech in most constant use. Coming to Egypt from Syria for 
 the first time, the first day I understood little and was under- 
 stood less; the second day many of the puzzles of the first were 
 explained, and within a few days I found no difficulty in express- 
 ing myself and in understanding. When the Syrian finds that 
 he must say "Ai di?" instead of "Shu ha'dha?" in asking 
 
 * In reproducing forms that the Arabs themselves never write it would be 
 pedantic to use Arabic type. When the late Dr. H. H. Jessup brought out 
 an edition in Vulgar Arabic of the English Nursery Rhymes, the bewilderment 
 of the tjrpe-setters was equalled only by their amusement. Accordingly in 
 this paper the forms will all be transliterated. The accent is indicated by an 
 acute: "ac'cent." 
 
166 THE COMMON AKABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 
 
 "What is this?"; when he learns to drop the use of "bed'di" 
 (my wish), "bed'dak" (thy wish) to express not only desire but 
 present action; when he begins to accent the second syllable of 
 many words instead of the first — then he is on the road to talking 
 like an Egyptian. It is amusing how this lesson, once learned, 
 sticks to the learner, who after his first brief holiday in Cairo 
 may return to Syria with a fine Egyptian veneer over all his 
 speech. 
 
 I know of no language that has so highly organized a system 
 of wordless speech, to emphasize articulation as well as to sub- 
 stitute for it, as the Arabic. I refer of course to the gestures 
 which are commonly used in Syria and Palestine, even by the 
 most voluble in vocal utterance. One of the most expressive 
 signifies, in its elementary meaning, the idea of waiting. You 
 may be, for example, talking with some one; a servant looms on 
 the horizon, wanting to speak to you; instead of interrupting 
 the conversation to tell him to wait, you draw together your 
 fingers so that they meet the thumb, hold out your hand, fingers 
 pointing upward, and shake it up and down. I have seen a 
 school-boy make the same gesture, with an accompanying scowl 
 of menace, to his seat-mate, who had prodded him in the leg, 
 or had offered some similar indignity under the temporary im- 
 munity of school-time: what he meant was "Just wait till I 
 catch you outside!" "It's none of my business" is perfectly 
 expressed by shaking the lapel of your coat. You may signify 
 the idea of "nothing at all" by slipping your thumb-nail under 
 your tooth, and then rapidly jerking your hand forward. When 
 you want to know "What's up?" you give your wrist a rapid 
 turn with the hand half open. 
 
 Syria, including Palestine, is but the narrow strip of land at 
 the East End of the Mediterranean, about 400 miles long and — 
 exclusive of the Desert — ranging from 70 to 100 miles in breadth, 
 yet every variety of pronunciation may be found within its limits 
 from the broad vowels of the Maronite dwellers in the high 
 Lebanon, relic perhaps of their Aramaic origin, to the painfully 
 flat vocalization of the Druses. Apart from actual pronuncia- 
 tion, the inhabitant of any given district, sometimes of a given 
 village, may be bewrayed by his very tones. One learns to con- 
 trast the gentle, insinuating cadences of Damascus, and especially 
 
THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 167 
 
 of Hama, with the coarse robustness of the Beyrout Moslem; 
 the mincing tones of the Druse peasant with the abrupt ejacula- 
 tions of the dwellers under the shadows of the Cedar Mountain, 
 in the Besherreh district. You may pick out natives of Deir-al- 
 Qamr and of 'Abeih by their pronunciation of the word "ana" 
 (the first personal pronoun, I), which they turn into something 
 that sounds like "eh'na." Such great variations of speech over 
 so small an area are to be expected from an ancient civilization 
 whose law has been inter-marriage within narrowly circum- 
 scribed districts. As a rule, again, a Moslem may be distin- 
 guished from a Christian by his pronunciation, at least in the 
 cities. In the dropping of the letter Qaf, initial or otherwise, in or- 
 dinary speech, the country is almost universally Cockney. When 
 dropped from the middle or end of a word its place is taken by 
 a Hamza, or emphatic interruption of sound. The Druces, 
 however, even the Uninitiated, usually retain it in full force. 
 But as the London Cockney is apt to most betray himself when 
 he tries to be especially correct in the matter of the letter H, so 
 the uneducated Syrian falls into absurd blunders when he at- 
 tempts to show off a supposed knowledge of the classical. Once 
 when we had a rabbit hanging in the Kitchen Tent, a pompous 
 but ignorant Sheikh who was calling on us asked, with an af- 
 fectation of High Arabic, whether we ate Qar'nab, thus adding a 
 perfectly superfluous Qaf to the word "Ar'nab." The Syrians 
 tell a story of a village school-teacher, who desiring to inculcate 
 the pronunciation of the Qaf, which he had never been able to 
 master himself, said to his pupils: "You must always pronounce 
 the letter 'Af — but not like me!" 
 
 All languages, I presume, have certain forms of Baby-Talk 
 but I know of none like the Arabic Vernacular, which possesses 
 a list of words, short, indeed, but covering amply the simple 
 needs of infancy, being genuine duo-literal roots, and not ab- 
 breviations or corruptions of adult speech. I must content my- 
 self here with giving the list of words (monosyllabic but some- 
 times repeated), leaving an etymological study of them for other 
 times or persons. Almost all these words I learned as a child 
 in Beyrout and the Lebanon, but recently I have submitted the 
 list to natives of Mesopotamia and of Egypt, who recognized 
 part but not all. A few of the words might be characterized 
 
168 THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 
 
 as onomatapoetic. A child first becomes articulate on the sub- 
 jects of food and drink, and then rapidly learns to express the 
 elemental ideas of pain, pleasure, exercise, sleep, etc. His 
 parents soon feel the necessity of making him understand words 
 for prohibition and punishment. A vocabulary covering such 
 experiences is quite adequate. Here, then, is the list, as far as 
 I know it: 
 
 NAN (Egyptian MAM) food KAKH, dirty, ugly; 
 
 BUFF, hot food; WA'WA, pain; 
 
 EMBt)', water, drink; BAH! gone, out of sight; 
 
 O'OH', sleep; DID'DY (Egyptian A' AH') 
 DA'DA, walk; slap, punish; 
 
 TISH, go to walk; Dt ! you mustn't! 
 
 NU'NU, little; TISS, money; 
 
 DAH! pretty, nice; DEH, horse. 
 
 A Syrian parent or grandparent has a curious habit of attrib- 
 uting his own personality to the child: thus a father will call 
 his son "My father," a mother will call him "My mother," a 
 grandmother will say "My grandmother." Sometimes, to ex- 
 press greater love, a mother will address her daughter as a boy, 
 with all the masculine verbal and adjective forms. 
 
 The Syrian vernacular is rich in stereotyped polite phrases 
 which apply to all the ordinary emergencies of life. They form 
 a common inheritance, coming as readily to the lips of the peasant 
 or the beggar as to the lips of the courtier. They constitute the 
 " blarney" of the land. Much of this appears to be unfamiliar to 
 the dwellers of Egypt, and I gather that it is more widely diffused 
 in Syria than in Palestine. Such a blarney is known in Italy, 
 but for every conventional polite expression used in English, 
 the Syrian dialect can show a score. The salutations follow a 
 sort of antiphonal liturgy, often remarkable for its indirection. 
 A common sequence in the Lebanon is as follows: "Inhfi'rak or 
 naha'rak sa'id'": May thy morn be happy; "Inha'rak imba'rak 
 or muba'rak": May thy morn be blessed; "Kaif lia'lak?" How 
 is thy condition? "Al'lah sel'mak": God give thee peace; 
 "Inshul'lah mabstit'": God grant thou art well; "Taht nu'- 
 zurak": Under thy protection. This counter-stroke must at 
 once be parried by the exclamation : " Nu'zur Al'lah ! " : Under the 
 
THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 1G9 
 
 protection of God, before the dialogue can proceed: "Kaif hal 
 al mahrusin'?" How are the preserved, i. e., the children? 
 "Bibti'su i'dak": They kiss thy hands. And so on ad infinitum. 
 It is no wonder that when our Lord sent his disciples upon their 
 mission he warned them to salute no man by the way! 
 
 Among the phrases in general use the following are common:* 
 *' Na'ai'man " : Grace be upon thee (used when one has been to 
 the bath or the barber); "Imba'rak": Blessings on thee (used 
 when a friend has new clothes); "Heni'yan": Congratulations! 
 (when one has drunk water or sherbet); "Ah'lan wa sah'lan 
 (said in welcome and meaning: You are of our folk, it is easy to 
 entertain you); "Dai'man": Forever! (said when a guest has 
 drunk the coffee); "Sah'tain": Two healths! (said when a guest 
 appears to enjoy the food), to which the answer is — for each 
 phrase has its set answer — "'Ala qal'bak": Upon thy heart be 
 it. At the end of a visit there is this final exchange of polite 
 salutes: "Bil izn": By permission; "Izn'kum ma'^kum; shurruf- 
 tu'na": Your permission is with you; you have honored us; 
 " Tshurruf 'na ; bikhat^r'kum " : We have been honored; by your 
 favor. The host then has the last word: "Ma' sala'my": Go in 
 peace! On admiring a piece of handiwork or in acknowledging 
 some manual favor, you say: "Sel'lim dayya'tak": Peace to 
 thy hands. On receiving a compliment you are supposed to 
 protest: "Min lut'fak": This is of thy poHteness. It is expected 
 that you should murmur unobtrusively: " Istagh'far Al'lah " : God 
 forbid! when an equal or a superior refers to himself as your 
 servant. 
 
 On the etiquette of addresses much could be written, but this 
 hardly falls under our present subject. Here is a specimen: 
 " Ila Had'rat al Ba'ria', al Fa'dhil, al Ka'rim, al Muhadh'dhab 
 Mti'sa 'Abdullah, al Muhta'ram, dam baqa'hu": To the 
 Presence of the Distinguished, the Magnanimous, the Generous, 
 the Cultured Musa Abdullah the Honorable, May he live for- 
 ever! More germane to the present paper are the common 
 endearments, such as: "Ya ru'hi": My spirit; "Ya ai'ni": My 
 eye; " Ya tuqbur'ni": My gravedigger (literally, O thou who shalt 
 bury me; as who should say, My survivor). I may add that the 
 polite native is by no means confined to the use of stereotyped 
 * In some cases we translate in paraphrase. 
 
170 THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 
 
 phrases, but, however humble his condition, may be capable 
 of improvisation along the same lines. On my first visit to a 
 certain Lebanon village, some three thousand feet above the 
 sea-level, one of the inhabitants asked me how it happened that 
 I had never been there before. When I pleaded the steep ascent 
 as an excuse, he said at once: "Had we known of the possibility 
 of your Excellency's honoring us, we would have made the way 
 a plain!" 
 
 We are bound to state that an equal fecundity is shown in 
 the phrases of objurgation. Dr. Spoer gives a list of curses at 
 the end of his book. A very angry man may be spurred into 
 improvisation with results as shocking as they are amusing. It 
 may happen that a man will curse the religion of his own donkey's 
 master! It is interesting to note an analogy with the affectionate 
 use in English of "Confound you!" and of the words "rascal," 
 "scamp," "sinner," etc., addressed to children. The Syrians 
 often say: "Yukh'rab bei'tak!": May thy house be ruined! to 
 express amused admiration. 
 
 Twenty years since in an article on the Aramaic dialect of 
 Ma'lula, one of a group of three small villages to the north-east 
 of Damascus, where the ancient Aramaic has come down in a very 
 corrupt form, I called attention to the use of common Arabic 
 roots, which were subjected to the Aramaic laws of inflection, 
 conjugation, etc.* A similar tendency is going on today in 
 the United States where tens of thousands of Syrians are con- 
 gregated in different centres. Into the ordinary vernacular 
 have become incorporated many English roots, which follow the 
 grammatical changes of the language upon which they haVe 
 been grafted. Thus the Syrians have appropriated the word 
 Hotel, but instead of saying Hotels, they make a plural by in- 
 ternal change, according to a common Arabic formation, and 
 say " Howatil'." Taking an English root " to change," they make 
 an intensive or Piel verbal form; thus for "Change cars" they 
 say "Chen'nij"; "Chennej'elna" means "Give us change." 
 Here not only the middle radical is doubled, but we also find the 
 proper pronominal suffix. The vocalization of these hybrids 
 is as fluid as it is in real Arabic. Thus " They made me a present 
 
 * Published in the April number of the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine 
 Exploration Fund for 1890. 
 
THE COMMON ARABIC SPEECH OF SYRIA 171 
 
 of it" becomes, " Barzanti'ni ffha." Here we also note that B 
 substitutes for P, which is non-existent in Arabic. A more 
 compHcated expression of the same idea is found in the phrase 
 of a woman who, when asked where she got an expensive article, 
 said (referring to a rich lady friend): ''Farnatit'ni fi'ha as-Sitt." 
 What she meant was: "The lady gave it to me for nothing," 
 or better, "She for-nothinged me with it!" Such borrowings 
 are made from other languages also. From the Italian comes 
 the use of Fantasf yeh, the reflexive form being " Itfan'taz" mean- 
 ing " to have a good time." 
 
 Here are some of the forms from the conjugation of the verb 
 "to telephone," with the pronominal suffixes: 
 
 Telphentil'hu : I telephoned him; 
 Telphentil'lak: I telephoned thee; 
 Telphenit'li : she telephoned me; 
 Telphennel'hum: we telephoned them; 
 Telphenniil'na: they telephoned us; 
 Telphen'ni! : telephone me! 
 
 A supposed correspondence is traced by the emigrant Syrians 
 between many Arabic and English proper names. The ignorant 
 seem to regard them as real equivalents. At any rate, each name 
 may be said to have its recognized working equivalent, based on a 
 superficial likeness not often extending to all the radicals. Thus 
 Khaltr becomes Charlie; Nejib', Jim; Selim', Sam; Fuad', 
 Fred; Afffy, Eva; Shaffqa, Sophie; Nej'la, Nellie; Mahfba, 
 Mabel, etc., etc. The attempts to pronounce foreign names are 
 amusing, though following recognized phonetic laws of change, 
 and reminding one of the Arabicizing of ancient place-names in 
 Palestine, where you find Fendequmfyeh representing Pente- 
 komias, and Qasr BerdawiF standing for Baldwin's Castle. 
 Once when a returned emigrant gave me the name of the place in 
 South America where he had done business, I had to think a 
 minute before I could recognize in the Semitic-sounding term 
 " Bint-al-Beda'wi " the Latin capital Monte Video. 
 
 Clifton Springs, N. Y., 
 Jultj 19, 1910. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS IN THE DOUBLE TRA- 
 DITION OF MATTHEW AND LUKE 
 
 By George Holley Gilbert 
 
 This paper assumes, as well established, certain results of 
 synoptic criticism, viz., (a) that our Gospels of Matthew and Luke 
 originated in substantial independence the one of the other, (b) 
 that these Gospels in the sections which they have in common and 
 which have no parallels in Mark rest upon a common written 
 document (or, perhaps, documents), and (c) that this document 
 consisted mainly, if not wholly, of words of Jesus brought to- 
 gether without clear indications of the occasions on which they 
 were spoken. 
 
 Further, this paper also naturally assumes that the written 
 document which underlies the parallel sections of our Matthew 
 and Luke — those sections, that is, which have no parallels in 
 Mark — reflects the Christian tradition of a time anterior to the 
 composition of these Gospels, perhaps in large measure the tradi- 
 tion of the first Christian generation, and that it is for this reason 
 of very great value. It must have been highly esteemed and 
 widely circulated in the early Church to account for its large 
 use in iwo Gospels so unlike as Matthew and Luke, one of which 
 appears to have been written by a Jew, while the other was writ- 
 ten by a Gentile for Gentile readers. 
 
 It is the aim of this paper to ascertain as far as possible what 
 the ancient document in question had to teach in regard to the 
 person of Jesus. 
 
 Of the extent of this lost source we have no certain knowledge. 
 The material that Matthew and Luke extracted from it amounts 
 to about five chapters of average length (ca. 182 verses in Mt. 
 and 177 in Lu.), and since this material covers the entire public 
 
 173 
 
174 THE PERSON OF JESUS 
 
 ministry of Jesus up to the eve of his crucifixion it may be con- 
 jectured that our evangelists made use of practically the entire 
 document. This conclusion is somewhat confirmed by the con- 
 sideration that if this ancient document had not been absorbed 
 pretty completely in Matthew and Luke, it would naturally have 
 continued in circulation, for the Church would not consciously 
 have allowed any sayings of Jesus to be forgotten. 
 
 Of the general character of this source, in addition to the state- 
 ment already made, that it consisted mainly, if not wholly, of 
 w^ords of Jesus, it may now be added that these w^ords of Jesus 
 were short striking sayings, such as might easily have been kept 
 in memory and widely circulated long before they w^ere committed 
 to writing. It seems to have contained but one parable, that of 
 the Leaven. For though the parables of the Wedding Feast (Mt). 
 and the Great Supper (Lu.), may be modifications of one orig- 
 inal story, and though in like manner the parable of the Talents 
 (Mt.) and that of the Pounds (Lu.) may have sprung from one 
 utterance of the Master, it is not probable that the wide variations 
 between these parables are to be set down to the conscious ac- 
 tivity of the evangelists. The differentiation is more likely to 
 have been prior to the written sources whence Matthew and 
 Luke drew.* 
 
 Another general remark in regard to the sayings of the docu- 
 ment with which w^e are concerned is that the greater part of 
 them are purely ethical, such as the injunction to agree with 
 one's adversary (Mt. 5^^'^®, Lu. 12^^'^^), not to resist one who 
 does evil (Mt. 5'^ Lu. 6''), to love one's enemies (Mt. 5*\ Lu. 
 g27-28^^ and the teaching that it is impossible to serve both God 
 and Mammon (Mt. 6^^ Lu. 16"). This large group of utterances 
 puts Jesus in the class of great spiritual teachers. They make 
 no radical line of demarcation between him and an Isaiah or 
 Jeremiah. He appears in the prophetic succession, w-here some 
 of his contemporaries distinctly acknowledged that he stood 
 (Mt. 8"*), and where Jesus himself was also conscious of standing 
 (Lu. 13^^). On these passages, therefore, we shall not dwell, 
 
 * Professor Burton supposes that Matthew drew here from the Logia and 
 Luke from a Perean document, which he designates "P." For the text of 
 these documents according to Burton, see Sharman's The Teaching of Jestis 
 about the Future (1909). 
 
THE PERSON OF JESUS 175 
 
 but pass on at once to those data which seem at least to set Jesus 
 apart from the prophets, and in some sense above them. 
 
 Part of these data are in such a state of preservation in the 
 two Gospels that we cannot certainly regard them as belonging 
 to the more ancient common source. These we must first 
 consider: 
 
 1. In Mt. 5" (Lu. 6""^^) Jesus is represented as setting him- 
 self directly against the traditional law: "Ye have heard that it 
 was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy; 
 but I say unto you, love your enemies," etc. This strong as- 
 sertion of superiority to all former authorities in Israel which is 
 prominent in Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount 
 (see 5^*- ^^- ^*- ^^- ") is not supported by Luke. For though he 
 introduces the injunction to love one's enemies with the words 
 " But I say unto you," * the antithesis is with the verse immedi- 
 ately preceding, and that does not refer to the Law. There is 
 also an intrinsic improbability in supposing that Jesus, who, 
 in Mt. 5^^, had declared that while heaven and earth remain one 
 jot of the Law should not pass, would have voluntarily antago- 
 nized the scribes by setting his word above the sacred Law. As 
 he most carefully sought to avoid a popular misunderstanding 
 of his attitude toward Messiahship, even so, we may naturally 
 think, he would not have provoked a conflict with the rulers in 
 regard to that Law which was certainly of as great importance 
 in their sight as was the Messianic hope. It seems probable, 
 therefore, that the introduction to the injunction in Mt. 5", as 
 also in the other parallel cases to which references have been 
 given, belongs to the editorial activity of the evangelist. 
 
 2. It is doubtful whether Matthew and Luke go back to the 
 common written source of their double tradition in the word of 
 Mt. 7'^ and Lu. 6". This reads according to Mt. : " Not every one 
 that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven, but he that doeth the will of my father who is in heaven." 
 But Luke has in the same setting these words: "Why call ye me, 
 Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say." This saying in 
 Luke is a protest against present insincerity; that of Matthew 
 refers, according to the context, to the time of the future judg- 
 
 * Luke has a stronger adversative than Matthew (dXXd in place of 5^), but 
 does not have the personal contrast furnished by Matthew's ^Ifi. 
 
176 THE PERSON OF JESUS 
 
 ment. Moreover, the words in Matthew presuppose a concep- 
 tion of Jesus which cannot be carried back to so early a time as 
 that of the Sermon on the Mount. People who could possibly 
 imagine that a reverent attitude toward Jesus would be a suffi- 
 cient passport in the time of judgment must be supposed to have 
 clearly recognized him as the Messiah; but such recognition 
 seems not to have taken place before the great day at Csesarea 
 Philippi. While therefore the sayings of Matthew and Luke 
 may go back to the same utterance of Jesus, it is not certain what 
 that original saying was. 
 
 3. Another passage in the Double Tradition of Matthew and 
 Luke whose origin can hardly be placed in the common written 
 source which we are considering is that which asserts a judicial 
 function of the twelve apostles. According to Mt. 19^^ this reads: 
 " And Jesus said unto them. Verily I say unto you, that ye which 
 have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall 
 sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel"; and according to Luke 
 2228-30. "gyj; yg ^yg ^j^gy which havc continued with me in my 
 temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my 
 Father appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my 
 table, in my kingdom; and ye shall sit on thrones judging the 
 twelve tribes of Israel." It is noticeable, in the first place, that 
 the settings of the sayings in Matthew and Luke are unusually 
 divergent. In Matthew it is spoken in response to a question of 
 Peter, in Luke it is a spontaneous utterance of Jesus. Peter 
 seems to be actuated, in Matthew, by much the same motive 
 that led James and John to seek the first places in the coming 
 kingdom, but in Luke Jesus of his own accord promises kingly 
 rule to the Twelve in view of their faithfulness. Still more sig- 
 nificant are the phraseology and ideas. Thus the word ttoXiv- 
 <yeve(Tia occurs nowhere else in the Gospels, nor indeed in the 
 entire New Testament in the sense it has here, for in Tit. 3^ 
 it is individual and ethical, not cosmical.* Further, there is 
 nothing in the teaching of Jesus that throws light on the term, 
 no idea that is parallel to the meaning which it seems to have. 
 It appears in the text as a foreign element. Again, the thought 
 
 * It is of interest to note here that, according to Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, 
 p. 145, this word cannot be literally translated either into Hebrew or Aramaic. 
 
THE PERSON OF JESUS 177 
 
 that Jesus is to sit upon a throne is purely Matthsean, and the 
 other passage in which it is found (25^'"''") bears marks of a late 
 origin. Then the promise that the twelve should be enthroned 
 as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel seems to depart in two 
 fundamental points from the thought of Jesus. Thus he told 
 James and John that it was not in his power to assign places 
 of honor in the kingdom of the future (Mt. 20^'), and he made it 
 clear on more than one occasion that the way of true honor was 
 open to all disciples without distinction (Mt. 20^", 23"); but both 
 these positions, according to the present passage, he surrenders. 
 It may also properly be added that the strictly national outlook 
 of this verse does not accord with the thought of Jesus. Noth- 
 ing in his teaching is more certain than that he regarded his rev- 
 elation of God as fitted and destined to bring blessing to all 
 mankind. Even in the source now under consideration, on oc- 
 casion of the faith of a Gentile, Jesus declared that many should 
 come from the east and the west and sit down in the kingdom of 
 heaven (Mt. 8"'^^ Lu. 13"^"^^), a statement which is assuredly 
 not to be limited to the Jews of the Diaspora. It is a vision of 
 Gentile conversion, called out by Gentile faith. 
 
 There are still expressions in Luke's version of this saying 
 of Jesus which deserve notice besides those that are common to 
 him with Matthew. Thus it is without parallel in the Gos- 
 pels that Jesus speaks of his "temptations" (Tret/jacr/tiot?), 
 temptations which his disciples have in some sense shared with 
 him. Again, in the words " I appoint unto you a kingdom, even 
 as my Father appointed unto me," we have an unparalleled use 
 of ^aa-iXeia. For though in Lu. 19*^ it is used in the sense of 
 authority, it is nowhere so employed with reference to authority 
 in the kingdom of God. Finally, it is only here in the Gospels 
 that participation in the authority and honor of Jesus is set forth 
 in the figure of eating and drinking at his table. In view there- 
 fore of these peculiarities in the double text of this passage we 
 cannot regard it as a part of the common source from which 
 Matthew and Luke drew their parallel material. 
 
 We pass now to a consideration of the texts clearly belonging 
 to the common source which seem to put Jesus in a class by him- 
 self, separate from the prophets; and we shall take these up in 
 the order in which they occur in Luke. 
 
178 THE PERSON OF JESUS 
 
 1. The first of the data in this group concerns the attitude 
 of men toward Jesus. It is the great utterance closing the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, and its positive content is that one who hears 
 and does the words of Jesus is like a man who builds on a rock- 
 foundation (Lu. 6"-''^ Mt. 7'*-"). The floods cannot shake 
 his structure. It has the firmness of Jesus himself, for it is 
 built on the words of Jesus. Other sayings in our source that 
 bear on this same point may conveniently be brought together 
 here. It would appear from the narrative of the centurion in 
 Capernaum of whom, after his message to Jesus, the latter 
 said, " I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel " (Lu. 
 7^"^°, Mt. 8^"), that Jesus had been looking for faith on the 
 part of those who had heard his word and seen his works. To 
 judge from this narrative the faith which Jesus welcomed was 
 trust in him as one able and willing to help. It is not more 
 nearly defined in this source. Another significant saying in 
 regard to the attitude of men toward Jesus is that of Lu. 12^®, 
 Mt. 10^2-3^: "Every one who shall confess me before men, 
 him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God: 
 but he that denieth me in the presence of men shall be denied 
 in the presence of the angels of God." The term "confess," 
 though not found elsewhere in the synoptists, is in both Matthew 
 and Luke, and seems to have stood in the source. Its general 
 sense is determined by the antithetic word "deny," and by the 
 antithesis of the two scenes of mutual confession or denial, one 
 in the presence of men, the other before the angels of God, that 
 is, in the judgment. The saying clearly assumes that a man's 
 attitude toward Jesus is of fundamental importance.* 
 
 2. The message of Jesus to John the Baptist indicates his 
 thought of himself from another point of view. It defines by 
 contrasting him with the former revelation of God. John had 
 sent to Jesus, saying, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for 
 another?" (Lu. V^-^\ Mt. IP-'). The answer of Jesus contains 
 two important points, or rather two mutually supplementary 
 aspects of one relationship. In the first place, the messengers 
 
 * The word of Matthew, "He who loves father or mother more than me," 
 hardly belongs with the preceding passages. It might have been spoken by 
 a prophet. Any one conscious of having a message from God knows that his 
 relation to men, for this very reason, is of more worth than human friendship. 
 
THE PERSON OF JESUS 179 
 
 were to tell John what they had heard and seen, and it appears 
 that these facts were thought to be suggestive for John because 
 of their correspondence to such prophetic forecasts as those of 
 Is. 35^ and 60'; and second, they were to bear back this weighty 
 personal word: "Blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion 
 of stumbling in me." It is here plainly admitted to be possible 
 that, in spite of the fact that the activity of Jesus answers in a 
 remarkable manner to prophetic pictures of the coming age, 
 one may find in him occasion of stumbling. It appears from 
 this that, in the thought of Jesus, he did not altogether correspond 
 to the prophetic forecasts of the deliverer who should one day 
 arise for Israel. He fulfilled, and again he did not fulfill. 
 His appearance answered to Is. 60S but not to Is. 9^"^ One 
 micjht stand on Old Testament ground and yet not recognize 
 Jesus as "him that should come." 
 
 Such was the message to John. But the message about John 
 also helps us to discover the thought of Jesus regarding his re- 
 lation to former revelations made to his people. No prophet 
 had arisen, he said, who was greater than John, and yet John was 
 less than the little ones in the kingdom of God (Mt. 11^"", 
 Lu. T*-"^^). Since, therefore, he had established that kingdom 
 (Lu. 6"), one must infer that he regarded his office as essentially 
 higher than that of John and the old prophets. 
 
 Two other notable sayings in the common tradition of Mat- 
 thew and Luke give expression to the same consciousness. On 
 that occasion when scribes and Pharisees sought a sign from 
 Jesus (Mt. 12^^-", Lu. IP**-'^), he first put his appearance to 
 that generation in line with Jonah's appearance to Nineveh, 
 and then went on to declare that the men of Nineveh would con- 
 demn the present generation because they had repented at 
 Jonah's preaching, and something greater than Jonah was now 
 among them. In like manner the Queen of the South would 
 condemn the present generation for she came from the ends 
 of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and something 
 greater than Solomon was now among them. This "something'* 
 that is greater (TrXelov) than prophets and wise men of old is 
 not here defined, but obviously the connection leads us to see 
 it in the message of Jesus. The other saying that belongs here 
 is that of Mt. W-'\ Lu. 10-^-^": "Blessed are the eyes which 
 
180 THE PERSON OF JESUS 
 
 see the things that ye see: for I say unto you that many prophets 
 and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them 
 not, and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not." 
 This word Hke the preceding sets Jesus apart from the prophets, 
 at least in the completeness of his message.* 
 
 3. The next datum in the Lucan order is the title " the Son 
 of Man" (Mt. 8''-'', Lu. 9"-''). This occurs elsewhere in the 
 double tradition of Matthew and Luke four times, viz., Mt. 16^^"*^, 
 2427. 37. 44^ ^^^ jj^ ti^g Lucan parallels 16'*, W- ^^ and 12'°. It is 
 impossible to determine from these passages what content the 
 title had for Jesus. One of them mentions his poverty, another 
 that he, in contrast to John the Baptist, ate and drank as any 
 ordinary man, and was contemptuously styled the friend of 
 publicans and sinners. But these throw no light on the meaning 
 of the term. There is no suggestion that Jesus took the name 
 because of his poverty or because he ate and drank in a normal 
 way instead of appearing as a prophet of repentance, fasting 
 and clad in sackcloth; nor is there any implied contrast between 
 the title and the ch-cumstances predicated of the Son of Man. 
 The other passages are all eschatological in character, but do 
 not appear to throw any specific light on the title. They do 
 however intimate, though somewhat vaguely, that he who bore 
 the title believed that his function from God extended beyond 
 the present life. They do not, indeed, directly represent him 
 as the judge of men, but since "the day" or "the days" in 
 which one is to be "taken" (TrapaXajx^dveaOaC) and another 
 "left" are called "days of the Son of Man," it seems to be im- 
 plied that he is in some manner associated with judgment.f 
 More than this the source before us does not warrant us in saying. 
 
 4. The last passage in our common source, according to the 
 order of Luke, concerns the relation of Jesus to God (Mt. IP^-z?^ 
 Lu. 10^^"^^). Unfortunately the text of this passage is not al- 
 together certain, and its original setting is unknown. Matthew 
 lets it follow the woes on the Galilean cities, a connection that 
 
 * The passage concerning the guilty Galilean cities (Mt. 11-""-^ Lu. 10'-''^) 
 implies much the same thought as the last text. 
 
 t Though Luke wavers between "day " and "days," his language is to be 
 preferred to the term napova-la which Matthew has in 24^'- ^'. This is found 
 nowhere else in the Gospels except in Matthew. The " day of the Son of man " 
 may have been formed in analogy with the Old Testament "day of Jehovah." 
 
THE PERSON OF JESUS 181 
 
 offers no explanation whatever of the ravra which the Father 
 had revealed to "babes"; and Luke's setting is not better, for 
 in his narrative it follows the report of the Seventy on their 
 wonderful works. But what Jesus gave thanks for was a certain 
 knouiedge which God had imparted to his disciples, not for the 
 power to cast out demons. Whatever the specific occasion of 
 the thanksgiving may have been, this at least is clear, that it 
 marked a decided advance in the knowledge of God on the part 
 of Jesus' disciples. It was this progress that led Jesus to give 
 thanks to the Father, from whom, he confesses, the revelation 
 had ultimately proceeded. 
 
 Again, as to the text of Mt. 11"^ Lu. 10^', it is difficult to decide 
 what stood in the source. Harnack* has pointed out that the 
 clause /cal ti? ia-Tiv 6 mo? el firj oTrarrip does not suit the con- 
 text. The TrdvTa which had been delivered to Jesus was the full 
 knowledge of the Father. It was their participation in this reve- 
 lation by the disciples which occasioned the preceding words of 
 thanksgiving. It is this complete knowledge of the Father that 
 Jesus claims in the third clause of the verse and of which the 
 last clause treats. Knowledge of the Son is not the theme, but 
 knowledge of the Father. 
 
 Furthermore, the aim of these words seems to be theological 
 rather than practical. They affirm that no one but the Father 
 knows the Son, and there is no hint that the Father shares this 
 knowledge in any way with man. The assertion appears to 
 have no other aim than to claim that Jesus can be known by 
 the Father only, in other words, to claim that he is of the same 
 nature with the Father, as is done by the author of Mt. 28^®. 
 Thus these words contrast in the most striking manner with the 
 next clause, that only the Son knows the Father. This state- 
 ment is wholly practical, for the Son has this knowledge to im- 
 part to others. The utterance is born of a consciousness which is 
 the joy of Jesus' life. He knows the Father, and he can impart 
 this knowledge to his disciples. His knowledge then is clearly 
 not omniscience, but such knowledge as a man may have. 
 Jesus does not hint that he has for himself a knowledge of God 
 which cannot be imparted. He can share what he has and all 
 that he has with those who are receptive. Thus the knowledge 
 * The Sayings of Jesus, pp. 293-294. 
 
182 THE PERSON OF JESUS 
 
 of the Father of which the verse speaks has man as its destination, 
 while the knowledge of the Son in the clause koI, , , 6 ira-rrify 
 belongs only to the Father. Hence the clause appears to have 
 no other purpose than to suggest a certain conception of the nat- 
 ure of Jesus, and thus it has a character which does not belong 
 to any unquestioned utterance of the Master. We conclude 
 then that this clause did not belong to the ancient source of the 
 double tradition of Matthew and Luke, but was a later develop- 
 ment. 
 
 There remains in Mt. IV, Lu. 10^^, the great threefold* claim 
 that Jesus has a complete knowledge of the Father, that he alone 
 has this knowledge, and that he can impart it to such as are re- 
 ceptive. 
 
 We have now considered those passages in the ancient source 
 of the common tradition of Matthew and Luke that bear on the 
 person of Jesus, especially those that claim a super-prophetic 
 function, and now in conclusion will sum up their content. 
 This is virtually done for us in the last passage that was studied. 
 For the claim that Jesus and Jesus alone has reached a complete 
 knowledge of the Father and that he can impart this knowledge 
 to other receptive souls involves the thought of all the great 
 texts which have been passed in review. One conscious of 
 possessing this knowledge could say that the man who heard 
 and did his words was like one who builds on the rock; he could 
 reasonably look for faith in his word and rejoice when he found 
 it; he could say that confession or denial of him was of tran- 
 scendent importance; he not only could but must say, when 
 standing over against the Old Testament, that he fulfilled it 
 and also that he did not fulfil it, for if he was the first to have 
 complete knowledge of the Father, then that of former prophets 
 must of necessity have been incomplete; he could say also that 
 the members of his kingdom were greater than John though 
 John was equal to any of the former prophets; that something 
 greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon had been mani- 
 fested in his appearance and work, and therefore could pro- 
 nounce his disciples blessed as compared with kings and proph- 
 
 * It seems doubtful whether the word " my " should be regarded as belong- 
 ing to the source, since, with the exception of Luke 22-^, whose text is uncer- 
 tain as we have seen, it is confined wholly to Matthew. 
 
THE PERSON OF JESUS 183 
 
 ets of old. Yea, more, one conscious of possessing this knowl- 
 edge of the Father and of an appointment to transmit it to others 
 might naturally believe that the ancient "day of Jehovah'* 
 would at last appear as the day of the Son of Man. 
 
 The reader will observe that the source which we have been 
 considering lacked certain terms and ideas which, elsewhere 
 and chiefly at a later day, were regarded as furnishing important 
 material for the construction of the doctrine of the person of 
 Jesus. Thus it did not have the tide "Son of God," it made no 
 allusion to the pre-existence of Jesus, nor did it deal with his 
 death and resurrection. His conception of his person as com- 
 pared, for example, with that of the author or final editor of 
 the first Gospel, is characterized by unity and great simplicity. 
 
 Northampton, Mass. 
 June, 1910. 
 
XV 
 
 THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORINTHIANS 
 
 By Marvin R. Vincent 
 
 The question of the integrity of this epistle has been long 
 under discussion. The material for the discussion is distrib- 
 uted over more than a century, from Semler's Periphrasis in 
 1776. It has been treated by numerous critics since that date, 
 including Hausrath, Heinrici, Pfleiderer, Clemen, Klopper, 
 Krenkel, Drescher, Schmiedel, Van Manen, Lisco, Jiilicher, 
 Weizsacker, Zahn, and by Rev. J. H. Kennedy in The Expositor, 
 October and November, 1898. 
 
 The point in which perhaps, more than any other, the dis- 
 cussion has originated, and on which all critics are agreed, is 
 the sharp contrast between the contents of Chaps. 1-9 and 10-13. 
 This, with other considerations, has suggested the conclusion 
 that our canonical epistle consists of two letters, written at 
 different times, and placed in our Testament in inverse order. 
 
 Three points may be said to be fairly established: 1. That 
 before the composition of the First Corinthian letter, Paul wrote 
 a letter to the church at Corinth, which is alluded to in I Cor. 5^, 
 but which has been lost. 2. That Paul made a second visit 
 to Corinth which is not recorded in Acts. This appears from 
 II Cor. 2^; 12"; 13^^. He declares his intention to make a second 
 visit, in I Cor. 4^^"^^; 11^^; 16^- ^. This second visit is conclusively 
 demonstrated by Weizsacker. Both he and Schmiedel effectively 
 dispose of the attempt to identify the "sorrow" of II Cor. 2' 
 with the "weakness, fear, and trembling" of I Cor. P. The de- 
 pression and self-distrust described by Paul in the latter passage 
 differ radically from the indignant grief resulting from defection 
 and insult on the part of the Corinthian church. 3. The con- 
 trast already alluded to between Chaps. 1-9 and 10-13 is very 
 
 185 
 
186 THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORINTHIANS 
 
 sharp. The tone in the two sections is not only different, but 
 opposite. In the former, Paul appears as reconciled to the 
 church: his language is gentle, commendatory, forgiving, and 
 his spirit joyful. In the latter, he is involved in irritating 
 complications. He is afraid that the Corinthians will repu- 
 diate him and go over to his enemies. He is at swords' points 
 with the church. He is defending his apostolic prerogative and 
 his personal honor. Comp. lO"""; W''; 12"- i^. 20. 21^ ^-1^^ 
 
 Assuming these three points, it appears that Paul's first letter 
 failed of its desired effect. In that letter he announced his in- 
 tention of soon visiting the church again. This second visit 
 he made, but not according to the plan indicated in I Cor. 16^"^. 
 According to that plan he had not intended to visit Corinth until 
 he should have finished his work at Ephesus: but he broke off 
 that work, and went at once to Corinth, and then returned to 
 Ephesus. 
 
 During this visit he was subjected to a painful experience, 
 for which indeed he seems to have been partly prepared (I Cor. 
 ^17-21^ The precise nature of this experience he does not state. 
 He assumes that it is known to the church. It was, apparently, 
 a personal insult from an individual (II Cor. 2^; 12"^; comp, 
 y7-i5^ Those who have attempted to find in the first canonical 
 letter the facts presupposed in the second, have identified this per- 
 son with the incestuous offender of I Cor. 5; but it is quite enough 
 to say that the language of II Cor. 2^"" can be applied to that 
 case only by forcing. It is indeed urged that II Cor. 10-13 
 contains no demand for the punishment of the offender of the 
 second visit. Such a demand might be implied in 10*^, but it is 
 highly improbable that this would be the only form in which 
 Paul would have alluded to that matter, if he alluded to it at all ; 
 but, granting the omission, it is not conclusive against 10-13 as a 
 part of the intermediate letter, so long as other proofs are not 
 set aside. Moreover, it is not claimed that the intermediate 
 letter is entire. If an entire epistle like the one alluded to in 
 I Cor. 5® could be lost, why not parts of one ? Jiilicher thinks 
 that 10'" leaves no doubt as to the nature of the wrong inflicted 
 on Paul; but it is not Paul's way either to feel or to manifest such 
 violent emotion at a mere personal slur. Weizsacker (Apost. 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORINTHIANS 187 
 
 Zeitalt.) effectively disposes of the identification, and a full 
 discussion to the same effect appears in Schmiedel's excursus 
 on II Cor. 2^"", in the Handcommentar. 
 
 From II Cor. 7^"", it would appear that, immediately after 
 this second brief visit, Paul addressed to the Corinthian church 
 a severe letter so painful to the church that the apostle was dis- 
 posed, later, to regret his severity (II Cor. 2* ^■). 
 
 What of this letter? Is it lost, or does it appear elsewhere? 
 Hausrath, Pfleiderer, Clemen, Schmiedel, Kennedy and Mc- 
 Giffert, hold that we have this letter or a part of it in 10-13; and 
 that these chapters consequently antedate 1-9. 
 
 Certainly it cannot be maintained that the first canonical 
 epistle answers to the description of the intermediate letter in 
 II Cor. 2\ The words "out of much affliction and anguish 
 of heart with many tears," cannot be said to characterize the 
 first episde. Neither does II Cor. 7*- ^. The visit which Paul 
 was contemplating according to II Cor. 1-^, and 2^ was one 
 from which he shrank; while the visit proposed in I Cor. 16 is 
 apparently looked forward to with pleasure. On the other 
 hand, all the passages just cited exactly fit II Cor. 10-13. 
 
 Dr. Kennedy has made a strong case with his three pairs of 
 passages in his first article. In each pair he shows that the sec- 
 tion in Chaps. 10-13 is written about the present, describing the 
 apostle's present attitude, while the section in Chaps. 1-9 re- 
 fers to past events and feelings. If there is a real parallelism 
 between the members of each pair, which I see no sufficient 
 reason for doubting, it follows that 10-13 antedates 1-9. 
 
 Assuming then the existence of the intermediate letter, and 
 the second visit, the evidence points to the place of the second 
 visit between the first and second canonical epistles, and con- 
 sequently to the composition of the intermediate epistle between 
 the second visit and the second canonical epistle. Even Hein- 
 rici, who denies the partition of the second epistle, admits that 
 the assumption of a second visit bears on the second epistle only 
 in case it took place between two canonical letters. II Cor. V^ 
 must have been written before the second and after the first 
 epistle. The plan referred to in that passage could have been 
 communicated only after the second visit; and that this was 
 actually the case may be inferred from II Cor. 1'^ and 2'. Fur- 
 
188 THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORINTHIANS 
 
 ther, II Cor. 13^ seems to contain a definite statement that the 
 second visit had preceded the second canonical letter. 
 
 The sharp change of tone after the close of Chap. 9 cannot, 
 be explained by a change of disposition, or by distractions 
 (IP®), or by new and unfavorable tidings (see Jiilicher). None 
 of these would justify a letter so contradictory; and besides, as 
 Dr. Kennedy observes, if we are to take II Cor. 10-13 as indi- 
 cating the gravity of the situation which arose in consequence 
 of this new development, then these later tidings must have 
 caused the complete destruction of all the hopes which had been 
 excited by the result of Titus's mission, and have showed the 
 state of things at Corinth to be worse than ever. It is very 
 strange that Paul should never have mentioned or alluded to 
 such momentous news. Strange that he should have sent to the- 
 rebellious church the commendation of 1-9, and then have imme- 
 diately appended the censure without explanation, annexing it to 
 a heartfelt thanksgiving to God simply by a connecting ^c, "and, 
 strangest of all, should have fallen back on a declaration which 
 he had made before the mission of Titus, as if nothing had hap- 
 pened in the meantime" (13^). The introduction of such an en- 
 tirely contradictory line of thought merely by the particle ^e is 
 strange, on the assumption that the entire letter is continuous. 
 No antithesis appears to avTo^ Be ijo) HavXo^. Ae expresses con- 
 nective opposition. It does not surrender the sense of connec- 
 tion even when it introduces something opposite. Oftener in 
 the New Testament than in classical Greek, it is a mere mark 
 of transition at the beginning of a sentence. 
 
 Nor is the sharp change explained by the change from address- 
 ing a repentant and submissive church to addressing a rebellious 
 minority. The v/jb€i<i indicates the same class of persons as 
 those to whom he had been all along speaking. This is well 
 brought out by Schmiedel, Handcomm. A minority calling for 
 the words of 10-13 is surely not indicated by the strong and uni- 
 versal feeling on the reception of Paul's letter displayed in 1-9. 
 (See TrdvTcov^ 7^^- ^^y 
 
 A review of the evidence appears to me to justify Holtzmann's 
 words: "The second Corinthian letter will no longer hold to- 
 gether." I believe that Chaps. 1-9 and 10-13 represent two 
 different letters; that 10-13 is the earlier of the two, and that in it 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF SECOND CORINTHIANS 189 
 
 we have a part at least of the letter written shortly after Paul's 
 second visit to Corinth, and before the second canonical epistle. 
 This conclusion does not affect the question of Pauline author- 
 ship. It merely asserts a displacement or rearrangement, which 
 may have been the result either of accident or of design subse- 
 quently to the apostolic age. "Nothing," as Professor Mc- 
 Giffert remarks, "would be easier than for two comparatively 
 brief epistles to be joined together and counted as one, over 
 against the larger epistle which we know as First Corinthians; 
 and this would be particularly easy if one of the epistles lacked 
 the formal introduction which most of Paul's epistles bore." 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 April, 1910. 
 
XVI 
 
 O I "A T a K T I 
 
 (1 Thess. 5") 
 By James Everett Frame 
 
 The Christian community of the seaport town of Thessa- 
 lonica was made up chiefly if not wholly of Gentiles and that 
 too workingmen (I 4" ^-j II 3® ^•). It was small and poor. To 
 be sure, we hear (Acts 17^) of fivvaLKcov rcov Trpcoroyv ovk oXiyai, 
 but not of patronesses like Prisca (1 Cor. 16^^, Rom. 16^) and 
 Nympha (Col. 4^^ B). It is true that in the earlier days Jason 
 (Acts 17^ ^•) had opened his house to Paul, but, as II 3^ seems to 
 indicate, had received therefor some remuneration. And while 
 later on the names of Aristarchus (Acts 20*, 27', Col. 4'", Phm. 24) 
 and Secundus (Acts 20*) appear,* we learn of no such patrons 
 in Thessalonica as Gains of Corinth (Rom. 16'^), Philemon of 
 Colossae (Phm. 2), and the husband of Prisca. f In fact, Paul 
 found it necessary to support himself by manual labor while he 
 preached in Thessalonica in order not to put a financial burden 
 on his converts individually or collectively (I 2", II 3^ ^•), and 
 this in spite of the fact that he received at the time aid from 
 Philippi. X 
 
 But although the community was small and poor, made up, 
 as were most of the early Christian assemblies, of the humbler 
 classes (cf. I Cor. 1'^ ^•), yet it was rich in the possession of the 
 
 * It is not certain that Gaius (Acts 19-') and Demas (Phm. 24) were Thessa- 
 lonians. The Jason of Rom. 16-' may be the one of Acts 17^. 
 
 t Compare the names in Rom. 16; (to Ephesus?) 
 
 J The Philippians were in the habit of aiding Paul as Ph. 4'* shows: You 
 sent to help me both (while I was) in Thessalonica and repeatedly {dva^ Kai dlt 
 as 1 Thess. 2'**) (while I was elsewhere). 
 
 191 
 
192 "the loafers/ 1 THESS. 5" 
 
 Spirit.* The praise which Paul lavishes on the Thessalonians 
 as a whole (e. g. I 1^ ^-j 3^ II 1^ ^•) becomes even more remarka- 
 ble when we remember the social status of the community, its 
 poverty, and the persecutions it was compelled continuously to 
 undergo, and. above all the concern the believers felt at Paul's 
 failure to return. It would appear that the unbelieving Jews 
 of Thessalonica — the original instigators of trouble but not the 
 official persecutors — had, after the enforced departure of Paul, 
 been scattering broadcast the insinuation that the Apostle was 
 but another example of the common itinerant preacher or priest, 
 deluded, immoral, and deceiving, who engaged in cajoling speech 
 to win his hearers, who used the Gospel as a foil to cover selfish 
 gain, and demanded suitable honors to be paid him. Doubt- 
 less also they interpreted his failure to return as evidence of the 
 truth of their assertions. The converts must have been dis- 
 turbed by these rumors and anxious. Paul likewise, when he 
 learns the situation from Timothy, was greatly concerned, as 
 is seen from the fact that he devotes the first three chapters of 
 the First Epistle to a defense of his visit (especially 2^"^^), and to 
 his failure to return (2^^-3*'), praying finally (a"-'^') that the Lord 
 would direct his way to them. But notwithstanding the poverty 
 of the community, the persecutions, and the temptation to suspect 
 the motives of Paul, the Thessalonians as a whole stood fast in 
 the Lord, as the distinctly favorable report of Timothy (I 3®) 
 and the indications of the First Epistle in general make clear. 
 
 There were indeed some lacks in their faith (I 3®- ^°), im- 
 portant, but, if we may judge from the tactful way in which 
 the exhortations are qualified (I 4*"^- ^- ^°, 5"), not crucial. To 
 the perfecting of these lacks, the last two chapters of I are di- 
 rected. Three points are conspicuous. With some of the con- 
 verts, the temptation to sexual aberration (I 4^"*) seems to have 
 been keen, due no doubt either to the allurements of a port or to 
 the influence of pagan cults. f Still it is not improbable that the 
 
 * It was owing to a direct request from Corinth that we are in possession 
 of the discussion of spiritual gifts in 1 Cor. 12-14. In Thessalonica, it is 
 competent to assume a similar enthusiasm, even though it be referred to only 
 in I 5'8-2^ 
 
 t Note the cult of the /cci/Sipoi or Kd^eipoi; and see Lightfoot, Biblical Essays^ 
 257 ff., and Bloch in Roscher, 1897, article Megaloi Theoi, col. 2522-2541. 
 Indeed the charge of aKadapaia. made against Paul (I 2*) may have been 
 
"the loafers/' 1 THESS. 5'^ 193 
 
 exhortation to a consecration not simply religious but moral 
 (I 4^"^) may have been in part at least prophylactic* The 
 other two main difficulties presupposed by the First Epistle 
 centre about the belief in the nearness of the Parousia. In 
 I 413-18 an entirely new matter is discussed. (There is no otSare 
 here as in 5^). In the interval between the departure of Paul 
 and the writing of I, some person or persons had died, and the 
 question emerged as to the advantage of the survivors over the 
 dead at the Parousia. Paul replies tactfully that both classes 
 stand on the same level of advantage (cf. afj,a avv, simul cum 
 4", 5^"). Then too the ancient query as to times and seasons 
 reappeared. Into this, however, Paul refuses to enter, urging 
 that the believers were already accurately informed, and turning 
 the edge of their curiosity by reminding them that the Parousia 
 was for judgment upon the wicked (I 5*"").t For a few, how- 
 ever, and this for our purpose is important, the belief in the im- 
 mediate coming of Christ had stirred up serious complications. 
 Even when Paul was with them, he had been obliged to command 
 the brethren 'qavy^d^etv koI Trpdaaeiv ra tSca koI ip/jud^ea-dat rat? 
 ■)(epa\v vfioov (I 4") or more specifically et rt? ov OeXei ip/xd^eaOac 
 firjSe ia-Oierco (II 3^**). These commands indicate that the views 
 of some the of brethren touching the Parousia had unsettled 
 their minds and had led them to become meddlesome and idle. 
 The situation grew worse after Paul's departure as the exhorta- 
 tions of I 4" ^- and 5" intimate,! and became acute in the inter- 
 val between the writing of I and II, as is seen by the fact that II 
 is concerned solely with two problems, the Parousia (P-2") 
 and the Idlers (3^'^*). While it is quite true that Paul does not 
 state in so many words that the idleness in the community was 
 either simple inertia due to no specific cause or that it was di- 
 rectly the result of the excitement induced by the belief that the 
 Lord was coming soon, still the latter hypothesis is distinctly 
 
 suggested to the subtle Jews by the 'foul orgies ' (Lft.) of some such cult as 
 the Cabiri. 
 
 * Theodore Mops, {aptid Swete II, 37) with plausibility suggests a connec- 
 tion between I 4''* and ol dffOevels (I 5"): de illis qui jornicatione detur- 
 pabantur. 
 
 t ol 6\iy6\pvxoi. (I 5'*) naturally refers to those who were impatient of 
 the Parousia. 
 
 X As we shall endeavor to prove, ol S.TaKToi (I 5") refers specifically to the 
 fiT] epya^d/j-evoi (I 4"). 
 
194 "the loafers," 1 THESS. 5" 
 
 convincing in the light of I 4" ^- and especially of II where, as 
 already noted, the two points considered are Parousia and Idle- 
 ness. Lightfoot (ad I 4^^) is thus certainly correct when he re- 
 marks: "the supposition is so natural as to commend itself, and 
 we are not without instances of the disturbing effects of such an 
 unchastened anticipation in later ages of the Church." " Immer 
 ist es," says E. von Dobschutz (Die Urchristlichen Gemeinden, 
 1902, 72) "wie im Thessalonich die Flucht vor der Arbeit die 
 als entscheidendes Moment uns entgegentritt." 
 
 The purpose of this note is to prove, if possible, that oi araicTOL 
 in I 5^* is to be translated straightway " the loafers." It might 
 seem necessary first of all to consider the possible meanings of 
 the group of words which in the New Testament occur only 
 in I and II, namely cnaKrelv (II 3^), araKrco^ (II 3^- ^^) and 
 draKTOf (I 5"). From Suidas (on draKTrj/xa, dra^ia) and from 
 the passages gathered by Wetstein (1752 II 306) and Kypke 
 (1755 I 345), we could learn (cf. also Liddell and Scott) that 
 cnaKreiv and its cognates are originally military words, as 
 Chrysostom had already noted. The ra^t? is that of troops in 
 battle array or of soldiers at their post of duty. By a natural 
 extension of usage, these words come to describe irregularities 
 of various sorts such as "intermittent" fevers, "disorderly" 
 crowds, "unrestrained" pleasures and the like; and by a still 
 further extension of meaning, these words designate a disorderly 
 life in general. But since Milligan's convincing note (Comm. 
 on Thess., 1908, Note G, 152-154), in which not only the classical 
 but the later Greek usage including that of the Greek Bible* 
 and papyri are examined, it is unnecessary to do more than call 
 attention again to some papyri. Dr. Milligan notes first of all 
 P. Oxy. 275 (dated in the 13th year of Nero, i. e., 66 a. d.) where 
 Trypho apprentices his son to the weaver Ptolemaus. Among 
 other stipulations of the contract, it is said: ovic e^ovro^ ru> 
 
 * In the LXX, we have 6.TaKTo^ dp6iJLos 3 Mace. 1'"; Symmachus has draKTos 
 in De. 32'", Ezek. 122", and drdKTws 4 Reg. 9^" (of Jehu's driving). We may- 
 add Test. XII, Naph. 2^: ovT(j}soSi>€<TTa}cravTiKvaixovTrdvTaraepyavfjLC>vii>Td^ei, 
 eh dyadbv iv (pd^tfi, Kal fjLT]div draKTOv Troi^enyre iv Karatppovrjaei, ixr)5k e^oi KaipoO 
 a&rov; also the only cases in the Apostolic Fathers (cf. Goodspeed's Iiulex 
 Patristicus), 1 Clem. 40", ovk eiV^ ij drtiKTws dXX' cjpiafiivois Kaipoh Kal icpais, and 
 Diog. 9' drd/cTois (pvpais " unrestrained impulses " (cf . Plutarch de lib. ednc. 
 7 p. 5 A, noted by Wetstein, draKroi. rjdoval). 
 
"the loafers," 1 THESS. 5'' 195 
 
 ^pix^wvt airotTirav tov iraiha cnro rov JlroXefiaiov ^i-GXpL rov tov 
 Xpovov TrXrjpwOrjvai (i. e., the contracted period of apprenticeship), 
 6cra<i he iav iv tovtq) (the period stipulated) uTaKT-qarj (the boy) 
 rjfxepai), iirl Ta<; caa<i avrbv Trape^erai (i. e., Trypho) fiera tov 'x^povou 
 rj aTTOTeiaciTa) €KdaTr]<i ■^fie'pa^ apyvptov 8pa')(iJi,r]v fiiav /ctX.* 
 Grenfell and Hunt (Oxy. Papyri II 262 ff.) translate aTaKTrjarj 
 "fails to attend"; Milligan, "plays the truant"; the present 
 writer {Amer. Journ. TheoL, VIII, 1904, 614 ff.), in referring to 
 this papyrus, suggested: "is idle." 
 
 Dr. Milligan next alludes to P. Oxy. 725 (a. d. 183), where, 
 (1. 35 ff.) speaking again of a weaver's apprentice, it reads: 
 apyqcreL Se 6 Tral'i et9 Xoyov ioprcov kut eVo? r)/jL€'pa<s eiKoai, ov8€vb<i 
 eKKpovofievov rcov /xiaOwv tovtcov a^' ov xpovov iav X^PVyV^V /^^o'^oV, 
 iav Be irXeiova^ tovtcov apyrjarj \fi aa]6€v^ar] r) araKTrjcrri r] Si 
 dWrjv acTiav rjfji,€pa<i iirl ra? La-a<; iirdvayKe'; Trape^ei avrov 6 ^la-yypioov 
 Tft) BiSaa-KaXM •^/jiepa'i. " The boy may be idle 20 days yearly on 
 account of the festivals, nothing being knocked off from those 
 wages from the time when payment of wages is granted; but if 
 he is idle more days than these, [or is sjick, or loafs, or for any 
 other reason, Ischyrion shall be obliged to produce him for the 
 teacher for an equal number of days." Grenfell and Hunt 
 translate araKTijo-rj apparently "is disobedient.' Milligan (1. c. 
 154) does not happen to give a translation of this word. The 
 analogy of P. Oxy. 275 quoted above, and the similarity but not 
 identity of dpiyeiv and draKrelv, the latter implying neglect, sug- 
 gest the translation " loaf." 
 
 In this connection, attention should be called to P. Oxy. 
 724 (a. d. 155) which treats of apprenticeship to a short-hand 
 writer (ar}fi€io'ypa(f)6'i), where (1. 12 ff.) it reads: ovfc i^6vT0<; /xol 
 ivTO<i TOV xpovov TOV TTUiSa cnrocTTrav, Trapap-evet Be crol fieTO, tov 
 Xpovov 6aa<i iav apyrjcrr] r}fjL€pa<i rj prjva^. dpyelv and UTaKTelv are 
 in contracts practically synonymous (cf. P. Oxy. 731, 1. 12, where 
 dpyeiv is used). 
 
 Finally, in a note to the present writer dated Feb. 12, 1910, 
 Dr. Milligan draws attention "to a still more striking instance 
 of aTaKTeco = ' to be idle' than the Oxyrhyncus passages. In 
 
 * This contract of apprenticeship has been recently edited again with a 
 new translation and notes by Milligan in his admirable handbook: Greek 
 Papyn, 1910, 54 ff. 
 
196 "the loafers," 1 thess. 5^* 
 
 BGU 1125* (13 B. c.) — a contract — the words occur a? 8e 
 iav apra/crrjaTji rjl appcoa-Trjar^L. Evidently uTaKTijarjc is to be read, 
 with a confusion in the writer's mind with apry^a-qL (so Schubart)." 
 From this conspectus of usage, it is manifest that we are justi- 
 fied in translating araKreiv either generally "to be disorderly" 
 or specifically, as in the papyri quoted, "to be idle" or better, 
 to distinguish from ap'yeiv, "to loaf." With this result, let us 
 turn to I 5" where, as the definite articles indicate, three well- 
 known classes are mentioned, ol araKTOi, oi oXi'yoyjrvxoi and oi 
 aaOeveU. These we have already identified in passing (v. supra 
 Notes p, 193) with respectively the fir] ipya^ofievoi of I 4", 
 the impatient of the Parousia (suggested by I 4^^-5") and 
 those tempted to immorality (I 4^"®). At first sight however 
 it is not clear what the ra^i? is which araKToc implies; hence 
 various interpretations are adduced. (1) Chrysostom takes 
 ol draKTOL generally as oc irapa to tw 6e^ Sokovv 'Trpdrrovre'? , 
 TrdpTe'i ol afxaprdvovTCi, the reveler, the drunkard, the covet- 
 ous. He observes, as we have said, that dTa/cro<i is a military 
 term: "For the order of the church is more harmonious than the 
 military order. . . . They walk not orderly in their ranks, but 
 out of line." (2) Others, seeing a reference to ol druKrot in 
 I 4" and especially in II 3® ^- assume that the rd^i^ is the general 
 norm of Christian conduct. Bornemann for example (ad 
 5") remarks "Die Unordentlichen, diejenigen die ein ungeord- 
 netes ungeregeltes unstetes Leben fuhren, sei es in Miissiggang, 
 sei es in Zerfahrenheit, oder die sich in die allgemeinen Ord- 
 nungen und Regeln christlich-sittlichen Lebens in Haus und 
 Gemeinde nicht schickten." More concisely E. von Dobschiitz 
 (ad 5"): "Hier ist Miissiggang, Dreinreden in fremde Angele- 
 genheiten, exaltiertes Wesen gemeint." (3) Theodoret, how- 
 ever, had already observed: rois ctTdKrois tov<; dpyia a-v^SvTa^ 
 ovTco<; eKoXeaev; and Ephraem Syrus (Armenian commentary 
 on Paul translated into Latin by the Mechitarist Fathers, Venice, 
 1893): corripite ait inquietos qui otiosi ambulant et nihil faciunt 
 nisi inania. Ellicott similarly restricts the reference when he 
 notes (ad 5"): "Here the precise reference is probably to the 
 neglect of duties and callings into which the Thessalonians had 
 lapsed owing to their mistaken views of the Lord's coming." 
 So also Milligan: "In the present passage (5"), the special refer- 
 
"the loafers," 1 THESS. 5** 197 
 
 ence would seem to be to the idleness and neglect of duty which 
 characterized certain members of the Thessalonian Church in 
 view of the shortly-expected Parousia." 
 
 One or other of these three views is held by the commentators 
 and the translation of araKTov'i is as a rule literal; e. g., inordi- 
 natos (also delinquentcs, incompositos, indisci'plmatos (see Poole, 
 Syn. Crit. ad loc.) inquietos as Vulgate and Old Latin, offen- 
 dentes, as Syriac); or, in the English version, "the disorderly" 
 as AV^'s- RV. (also "unquyete men" Wick., "the unquiet" 
 Rhem., "them that are unruly," AV and six remaining versions 
 according to Ellicott, Thcss. 156).* 
 
 It is evident that the real question at issue is, granting a rela- 
 tion between ol aratcroi (I 5") and the exhortation (I 4""^^), 
 whether ol aruKroL refers generally to the firj rja-vxa^ovre^, the 
 7rpdaarovT€<; ra erepcov, and the firj ipja^ofxevoi — in which case 
 01 draKTOi should be translated "the disorderly"; or whether 
 01 araKTOL refers specifically to the firj ipya^ofxevot — in which 
 case it should be translated " the loafers." A brief examination 
 of I 4* ^•, 5^- ^^ 5^^ ^-y 5" may help us to a decision. 
 
 In I 4^ ^- Paul states that it is unnecessary to write about love 
 to the Christians, for the readers are already exercising this 
 virtue. Then in v, ^'^'', with 8e introducing a new point, he pro- 
 ceeds not, as we should expect, with irapa/caXovfjiev Se vp,a<;, 
 aSeXcfjOL, <f)iXoTLfieta9ai k.t.X., but with TrapaKaXovfiev Be vfia.<;, 
 aheX^oi, irepiaaeveiv jxaWov Koi (faXoT. k.t.X. The point is 
 that just as in v. ^ where he interrupts the run of his exhorta- 
 tion by a tactful statement that the addressed are already doing 
 what he is about to ask and exhort them to do and suddenly 
 changes to iva irepta-a-evrjre fxaXXov, so here, after observing that 
 they are loving the brethren at home and throughout all Mace- 
 donia, he bids them to abound the more. Clearly, as most in- 
 terpreters opine, this TrepiaaeveLV is a irepiarcreveiv iv rat a'^airav 
 aXXrjXom. jNIoreover, the koX after fidXXov, which grammat- 
 ically co-ordinates Trepia-aeveiv with the three main infinitives 
 
 * The rendering ' the disorderly ' is favored by Ellicott, John Lillie (whose 
 exceptionally excellent work, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians, New 
 York, American Bible Union, 1856, has been too frequently neglected), 
 Twevtieth Century Neiv Testament, etc. Wcizsiicker has 'die Unordentlichen.' 
 Dr. Vincent, Word Studies, IV, 1900 ad loc. prefers "them that are unruly," 
 as "more vigorous and less stilted than 'the disorderly.'" 
 
198 "the loafers/' 1 thess. 5" 
 
 ^avx^'^^i'V, Trpdaa-etv, and ipyd^eadaL (for it is probable that 
 ^ikorifjielcrOai is to be taken solely with i^crvx^d^eiv) , really intro- 
 duces the specific points at which (f>iXa8e\(f)ia needs perfect- 
 ing. The statement indicates not that Paul is setting one part 
 of the community over against the other, for the community 
 as a whole is addressed, but only that he recognizes tactfully 
 the incompleteness at certain points of love to the brethren. 
 That is to say — and the point is important — the exhortation in 
 V. ''"'-^' like that in v. """^ has to do with (jiiXaSeXcjiLa. 
 Furthermore, while the three main infinitives are themselves 
 in simple co-ordination (/cal . . . Kai), the logical relation appears 
 to be that the first ■qa-vxd^^tv expresses itself in the second and 
 third, 7rpd(T(T€iv to, Xha and ipyd^eaOai. But the meaning of 
 rjavxd^uv is problematic, (a) Some commentators, not uninflu- 
 enced by such passages as that of Plato, Re'p. 496 D, where the 
 philosopher retires from public affairs and pursues philosophy 
 'qav')(^{.av e^wy koX to, avrov irpdrrcov (cf. also Dio Cass. 60"^ T-r]v 
 r)av')(^[av d<ya)V koI to, iavrov Trpdrrcov), find in rjav^d^eiv a 
 political reference. They conjecture that some of the laborers 
 (who were not of course philosophers) having dropped their 
 work were proclaiming in the market places and elsewhere their 
 notions about the Parousia and were meddling in public affairs, 
 with the result of bringing the Christian body as a whole into 
 disfavor with the Gentiles.* Paul's exhortation is that they retire 
 from public affairs and so mind their own business and attend 
 to their own work. The reference in v. ^^ to tou? e|&) and 
 /u.TjSevo'i , if masculine, might seem to countenance this opinion. 
 (b) Other expositors, with greater probability in view of the 
 eschatological interest of I (not to speak of II), discover in 
 r)(Tvxd^eLv a specific religious connotation. f They assume that 
 the tranquillity of spirit enjoined presupposes a state of feverish 
 excitement due to the expectancy of the immediate coming of 
 Christ. As a result of this excitement, these brethren, unlike 
 the oXtyo-xjrvxot (I 5") whose impatience of the Parousia did not 
 bring them into trouble, began to be meddlesome and idle. Of 
 none of them could it be said with La, 3^^ vTrofMevel Kal '^av^d^ei 
 
 * So in general Zwingli, Schott, Koppe, Findlay apparently, and von 
 Dobschiitz clearly. 
 
 t So Lunemann, EUicott and others. 
 
"the loafers," 1 THESS. 5" 199 
 
 ek TO crcoT-qpiov Kvpiov. * This meddlesomeness had to do not 
 with public affairs, with the Gentiles, but with church affairs, 
 with the Christians, t as the context (vv. **""^^ and w. ^-loa-^^ 
 which touches the imperfections of the brotherhood, indicates. 
 Furthermore, this meddlesomeness is not so much the cause as 
 the result of firj ipyd^ea-dai as the iva clause (v. *^) seems to inti- 
 mate. This clause states the purpose X of irapaKaXovfxev 
 (v. "''), namely (1) that the Thessalonians might conduct them- 
 selves in a becoming fashion§ (not "in the eyes of," coram, but) 
 with an eye to the judgment of the Gentiles (7r/3o<? tois e^co as Col. 
 4^), thus preventing the Gentile employers of labor from judging 
 the Christians as a whole by the neglectful idleness of a few; and 
 (2) that they might have need of nothing (or no one), || the point 
 being that the brethren ought to support themselves by labor 
 and not be financially dependent on the group.^ In other words, 
 the lack of tranquillity of mind led to idleness, idleness to poverty, 
 poverty to demand for support from the brethren, and demand 
 for support to meddling in the affairs of the organization. 
 
 How far this idleness with its resulting meddlesomeness went 
 while Paul was in Thessalonica cannot be determined. That 
 it was present is evident from the command w^hich Paul then gave 
 (cf. V. " /ca^cb? v/xlv irap-qy^etXafiev and II 3*"), namely 'qcrv)(^d^eLV 
 . . . ipjd^ea-OaL. That it increased after his departure is like- 
 wise evident both from the fact that he repeats the command in 
 the form of an exhortation, adding the purpose clause (vv. ^"''-^2^ 
 and from the indications of I 5^^"". Assuming still a con- 
 
 * For the majority of the brethren, the Parousia was a sanction for viroixov^ 
 (I P). 
 
 t So Flatt, 1829, "wohl "; cf. Estius {ajmd Poole) ut quisque de suo habeat 
 unde vivat, nee otio suo fratribus oneri sit et infidelibus scandalo. 
 
 X In taking iVa as the object of wapriyyeiXatiev, von Dobschiitz breaks 
 away needlessly from exegetical tradition. 
 
 § Grotius notes I Cor. 14*" eiJo'xiJM^j'ws Kal Kara rd^Lv. 
 
 II Perinde est sive nrjdevbi in neut. gen. sive in masc. accipias. (Vorstius 
 apud Poole). Nor does it matter logically, for in either case the allusion is 
 to begging from the Church as in general Theodoret, Estius, Lightfoot and 
 others have surmised. Vulgate gives nullitis aliquid. Even those who find 
 in ija-vxd^eiv k.t.X. a reference to public affairs, and who incline, in view of 
 Toi>s €|w, to take jxrjdevbs masc, do not always restrict /MTidevbs to Gentiles (cf. 
 von Dobschiitz). 
 
 ^ That the iVa clause has in mind chiefly if not solely ipyd^tadai is suggested 
 not only by the contents of the clause but also by II 3'°. 
 
200 "the loafers," 1 THESS. 5^* 
 
 nection between ol draKToc (5") and the brethren intended in 
 4", we must admit that the exhortation (5^^'^^) to recognize 
 the worth of (etSeVat as in 4*) to 1/9 KOTnoivra'i iv v/xlv (an es- 
 pecially apt designation under the circumstances *) and to regard 
 them highly in love Sia to epyov avrcov, that is, because they are 
 laborers in the Lord, and the command elp-qvevere ev eavroi<i 
 (not fier avTcov); and the juxtaposition of 5"'^^ and 5" (which 
 begins vovderetre tov<; araKrovi) become extremely significant. 
 Clearly the peace of the church is disturbed and the blame is 
 not confined to one side (^elprjvevere iv eaurot?). Some of the 
 brethren had not shown that respect to the "workers" which 
 was their due, and the "workers" had not been quite tactful. 
 Precisely what the situation is we do not know, but it may not 
 be too rash to conjecture that the idlers had asked the "workers" 
 for funds and had been refused, with an admonition, on the 
 ground that the claimants were unwilling to work, thus violat- 
 ing Paul's oral command (i. e. in 4" Ka6di<i vfilv Trapr}^'- eLXa/xev). 
 May we go further and surmise that the demand of the 
 idlers had been made iv Trvev/iaTi ? f Such a request is not 
 without analogy, for in Did. 1 1^ we read : 0? S'av eLirr) iv Trvev/xarL' 
 Ao? fioL apyvpia 7) erepd rtva ovk uKovaeaOe avrov. And did 
 this unethical interpretation of the utterances of the Spirit so 
 affect the "workers" that they became inclined to distrust 
 somewhat the validity in general of the x^piafiara? Some 
 countenance is given to this guess by 5^^'^^ where Paul exhorts 
 the brethren on the one hand not to quench the gifts of the Spirit 
 and not to despise the x^pio-fia of irpoc^-qrela, and on the other 
 hand to test the utterances of the Spirit. This exhortation may 
 well be ad hoc, for (as Grotius remarks on 4") mos est Paulo 
 peculiariter ea vitia tang ere quce quoque in loco vigebant maximc. 
 
 *The designation "those who labor among you" is quite untechnical; 
 the labor is further defined also untechnically by irpoiffTaixivovs and povOeroOvras, 
 namely by looking after the needs of the group and giving brotherly admo- 
 nition. Koiridu is a favorite word of Paul used figuratively of himself and 
 others (e. g., Gal. 4", I Cor. 5'°, Rom. 16« '-, Ph. 2'", Col. 1=*) and also in con- 
 nection with ipyd^effOai (I Cor. 4'-, Eph. 4-*). As Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 
 1909^- *, 227 f., observes, the word discloses Paul's acquaintance with the 
 laboring classes. 
 
 t In this connection It is worthy of note that some of the brethren, inno- 
 cently or not, had interpreted the Spirit as saying: The Day of the Lord is 
 present (II. 2^ 6id irvevfuiTos). Were these brethren also idlers? 
 
"the. LOAFERS," 1 THESS. 5** 201 
 
 Clearly again in 5"^ it is appropriate to invoke in prayer the God 
 of peace. But why in 5" is it necessary to adjure solemnly that 
 this letter, our First Epistle, be read to all the brethren? Had 
 the idlers endeavored to take the management of the funds into 
 their own hands and refused to listen to any epistolary injunc- 
 tions from Paul?* However we may account in detail for the 
 indications of I 5^^'^^ it is evident from this as well as from 4""^^ 
 that the original difficulty with the meddlesome idlers had in- 
 <;reased since the departure of Paul, although affairs had not 
 reached the crucial stage presupposed by the Second Epistle. 
 
 If this brief examination of I 4^'^^ 512-27 ^^^ been successful, 
 it has made probable that ol araKToc is to be rendered not " the 
 disorderly," indicating the brethren of 4" as both unquiet and 
 meddlesome and idle, but " the loafers," singling out as important 
 the result of unquietness of spirit due to the belief in the near- 
 ness of the Parousia, and the cause of the meddling, namely 
 idleness, an idleness which is not simply a being without work 
 {ctpyelv) but an idleness which neglects the divine ra^i? of 
 labor (araKTetv). In this case, 5" with its definite articles f 
 refers to the three classes chiefly in mind in the last two chapters 
 of I, ot ara/cTot J who as the most troublesome are warned; oi 
 oXi'yo-^vxoi who, impatient of the Parousia but not mischievous, 
 are encouraged; § and ol daOevel'i who being tempted sorely to 
 impurity are to be clung to and tenderly but firmly supported. 
 
 While the indications of the First Epistle make probable the 
 rendering "the loafers" for ol draKToi, the full persuasion 
 thereof is from the Second Epistle, especially 3^'". This Epistle, 
 as already noted, is devoted to two points only, the Parousia 
 
 * If the meddlesomeness reached thus far, then Wetstein's comment on 
 (piXoTifieTffdai ijffvxd^eiv is, with modifications, apt: eleganter dictum: ambite et 
 expetite non honores et magistratiLS, quod plerique solent, sed vitam privatam et 
 quietam. 
 
 t naKpoOvfieTre (v. '^) is to be taken with opdre and Stci/cere (v. "*). 
 
 t The unique phrase 6 kSttos ttjs dydirri$ (I 1^), probably minted by Paul, 
 thus gains in meaning. This phrase like ij inrofiovr] rrj's iXirldo^ and rb epyov rijs 
 wlffTeus (cf. II 1") is not found elsewhere in the Greek Bible nor in the 
 Apostolic Fathers. 
 
 § In the light of 5'*, 2" irapaKaXovvre^ vfxds irapap.vdo'ufievoi Kal /xaprvpd/jLevoi ets rb 
 kt\ becomes definite, "urging you both by encouragement and by solemn 
 appeal to walk," etc. irapafivdeTa-dai only here and 5'* in Paul; the 6X176- 
 tf/vxoi are in mind. The stronger /xaprupd/xevoi would refer to ol AraKroi. 
 
202 "the loafers," 1 THESS. 5" 
 
 (P-2*^) and the Idlers (3^"^''). Our present concern is with the 
 latter point. Paul had been hearing * of some f who had been 
 and still were 7repL7raTovvra<;'l iv vfilv araKTca, that is, as the 
 explanatory clause without koX intimates, " not working but busy- 
 bodying" (v. ^^). Precisely in what this •jreptepyd^ea-Oai con- 
 sisted does not appear. Inasmuch, however, as there is no 
 mention of the Gentiles in the context, it is legitimate to infer 
 that the interference is not with public affairs, but with the affairs 
 of the church. This inference is supported also by vy. ^^'^^, 
 where, after urging the brethren not to falter in well doing, 
 Paul goes on to say: "If however any one (xi?, cf. Tiva^; v. ") 
 does not obey {viraKoveiv as Ph. 2^") our word (that is, the 
 gospel utterance on ipyd^eaOat v. ^^) expressed in this Epistle 
 (our II), mark him (whether by putting up his name on a board 
 or by publicly naming him at a meeting is uncertain); do not 
 associate with him" (//.^ avvavafiiyvvcrOai,', cf. crreWea-OaL v. ^). 
 This rather severe § command is modified by the statement of 
 its purpose, that the brother "may be ashamed of himself" and 
 presumably go back to work; and by the method of its execution: 
 "do not regard him as if he were an enemy but admonish him 
 (vovdereire as I 5") as if he were a brother." The meddling 
 then is with the affairs of the organization, and the consequence 
 was, as the prayer to Christ the Lord of Peace (v. ^^; cf. I 5^^) 
 suggests, a disturbance within the brotherhood. The origin 
 of the trouble seems to have been an unquietness of mind (v. ^^ 
 fiera 'qa-v^^a';) due to the belief in the nearness of the Parou- 
 sia. From this unquietness flowed idleness (ipyd^eadat v, ^^), a 
 blameworthy idleness, for it was a direct violation of the gospel 
 command (v. "). And this idleness in its turn brought on pov- 
 erty, and poverty the demand for support with its begging (v. ^ 
 rbv kavTMv dprov) and meddling. || 
 
 * dKoiJo/jLev as I Cor. 11'*, not riKoiffafiev as Eph. 1'', Col. 1*. We need not, 
 however, press the present to mean "we keep hearing." 
 
 t Though he does not say nms viiCiv, they too are brothers (w. ^- **). 
 
 X The participle, not the infinitive (I Cor. 11'*). 
 
 § Absolute excommunication is hardly intended, for the persons are not 
 enemies but brothers (v. '^) and no fi7) (rwea-dUiv (I Cor. 5") is expressed. 
 
 II The command of I 4" rjffvx^i'ei-v xal wpdffffeiv ra. t8ta Kal ipyd^effdai rats 
 Xepfflv v/xCjv is not repeated. By joining ipyd^ea-dai first with irepiep-yd^eadai 
 (v. ") and then with /xerd ■^o'ux^as and rbv eavrQv dprov (v. '-) Paul makes 
 
"the loafers," 1 THESS. 5^* 203 
 
 The indications of vv. ^^-^'^ reveal a situation similar to that in 
 I but somewhat more acute. We do not know, of course, the 
 exact run of events at Thessalonica in the interval between the 
 writing of I and II, but we may surmise that the "workers" 
 (I 5^^) had heeded Paul's advice about peace (I 5") and about 
 spiritual gifts (I 51^-22) and had, as vovderovvre'; (I 5^^) ad- 
 monished, the araKTov^ (I 5") to desist from their demands for 
 support and to return to work, as Paul had commanded both 
 orally and by letter. The idlers, however, refusing to acquiesce 
 asserted again (v. "; cf. rrda-iv I 5^') that they would pay no at- 
 tention to Paul's commands by letter. The result was naturally 
 that the "workers" grew tired of doing the right thing for the 
 idlers and the peace of the church continued to be troubled. 
 
 To meet this acuter state of affairs, Paul devotes the last 
 chapter of the letter. The approach (vv. ^"^) to the theme is 
 tactful. Speaking first of himself and the needs of his work, 
 he urges the brethren to pray for him that his gospel may run 
 its race successfully and be crowned with glory (cf. Rom. 15^"), 
 and that he may be rescued from those unrighteous and wicked 
 opponents, meaning doubtless the Jews who are still causing 
 trouble in Corinth.* Having thus asked for sympathy, he turns 
 sympathetically to his brethren in Thessalonica (v. ^), who also 
 are facing obstacles, and assures them that the Lord (Christ 
 not God as I 5^*), the faithful, will establish them and guard 
 them from the Evil One, the opponent of the kingdom as in the 
 Lord's Prayer. Then (v. *) somewhat abruptly he expresses 
 his confidence based upon the indwelling Christ that the Thessa- 
 lonians are doing and will do what he commands. Why this 
 just now? Without forcing TrapayyeWo/jbev to mean "we are 
 on the point of commanding," we cannot escape the impression 
 that a serious command is at hand. But why does he say not 
 7re7roidafi€v i(f)' vfjid'i iv Kvpioy " we have confidence in you who 
 are in the Lord" (as Gal. 5^"), but TreiroiOa/jLev iv Kvpio) e0' v/idf 
 "we who are in the Lord have confidence in you"? In the 
 
 clear what we assumed in I 4"''- that fii} ijavxd^eiv led to fiij 4pyd^€<rdai, and 
 this to poverty, begging, and meddling, and that nrjSevd^ xP^^a" fxvre (I 4'-) 
 refers to begging. 
 
 * The added ov yap wain-wv ij irla-ns indicates a mood similar to that in I 
 215-16. g^ similar situation prompts the similar mood. 
 
204 "the loafers," 1 THESS. 5" 
 
 light of the tactful Ka0o)<i koI v/jba<i (v, ^), it is clear that the ma- 
 jority of the brethren by reason of their confidence in the Lord 
 would do what Paul commands; but apparently he feels that 
 some have not that confidence in the Lord. Hence (v. ^) with 
 the minority in mind he prays that Christ would direct their 
 purposes to the end of possessing divine love without which 
 "the labor of love" involving hard work would be impossible, 
 and of possessing the endurance of which the Messiah is an 
 example * without which example steadfastness would be im- 
 possible. 
 
 With this tactful approach, the Apostle takes up in v. ^ the 
 specific command already in mind in v. ^ Invoking the name of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, he commands the brethren in a body to 
 stand aloof from every brother aTaKTca TrepLirahovvTo^ , that 
 is, who is violating the irapdhoai^ (singular not as 2^^ plural) 
 already received by his converts. What this TrapaBoaa is, this 
 fit} araKTco^ TrepiTrarelv is made clear by vv. '"^ and v. ^^ each in- 
 troduced by yap. In v. ^ the yap explains not directly what the 
 irapdhocn<i is, but indirectly how it was exemplified in the con- 
 duct of Paul: ovK yraKTTjaa/xev iv vfitv nor did we get sup- 
 port gratis from any one of you. That the 7rapd8oai<; includes 
 only the ovk araKrelv is evident from v. ® where it defines cnaKrw'i 
 TrepiTrarelv; and also from v. ^ where attention is called to the 
 fact that he worked (ipja^o/ievoL) incessantly, purposing not to 
 put a burden upon any one of the brethren, that is, in the 
 light of V. ^ to relieve the converts of the duty of supporting 
 him while he preached. | That the Trapd8o(n<i is epyd^eaOai is 
 even clearer in v. " where the yap (parallel to yap in v. ^) explains 
 directly the TrapdBo(TL<; thus : ec rt? ov 0e\et epyd^eaOat fjLtjSe icrOiero). 
 The aTdKT(o<i TrepLTrarelv which is contrary to the Trapdhoaa 
 (v. ®) is p,r) epyd^eaOai. This interpretation is strengthened by 
 w. ""^^ where yap (v. ") introduces the reason for repeating 
 the original command (v. *** = 57 Trapdhoac^ v. *), namely that 
 
 * Cf. II Cor. P, Col. 1^*. The phrase ^ viro/xovri tov xp'o'toO is apparently- 
 coined by Paul; cf. Ignatius Rom. 10*. 
 
 t Note the characteristically Pauline ovx Sn ovk exo/J-ev i^ovfflav. The same 
 claim to apostolic authority and the same waiving of it in love are to be found 
 in a different connection in I 2"' "although we were ever able to be in a 
 place of importance as Christ's apostles " we waived this right in love, choos- 
 ing to appear among you not as apostles but as babes. 
 
"the loafers," 1 THESS. 5** 205 
 
 Paul has been hearing and still hears of some who are irepi- 
 paTovvTe<; iv vfilv aTdKT(o<i, that is, jxrjhev ipja^ofievov^; but, using 
 a common pun, TrepLepja^ofie'vois. Again TrepiTraTeiv aTa/crtu? 
 like cnaKTelv (v. •*) is fir^ ipyd^eaOat,. Clearly then in vv. "'", 
 the specific rd^i'i in mind, the oral Trapdhoafi exemplified in the 
 conduct of Paul is labor. Having thus assured the brethren as 
 a whole (vv. ^'") that there is nothing new in the command to 
 work, he turns to the fir)8ev ipya^ofievot and commands such as 
 these and exhorts them as well that with tranquillity of mind 
 they work and earn their own living, suggesting that it is only 
 by working with a mind undisturbed by thoughts about the 
 nearness of the Parousia that they can support themselves as 
 Paul did. Then in vv. ^^'^^, he turns to the brethren as a whole 
 with the exhortation not to weary in their doing what is right 
 to the troublers and with directions how to treat the recalci- 
 trants, ending with a prayer for peace. 
 
 If then the rd^i^ in vv. ^"^^ is work, it is natural to translate 
 aTUKTelv " to be idle " and irepiiraTelv ara/cTco? " to walk idly '* 
 and consequently ot dra/cTOL in I 5" "the idlers," as indeed I 
 had already done in 1904 on the basis of these verses and P. 
 Oxy. 275.* It is to be observed however that the idleness 
 here is specifically a refusal to work (v. ^^ ov OeXei; Bengel 
 aptly: nolle vitium est), a direct violation of the irapdSoai'j 
 (v. ®) and of Paul's own example (v. ^■*), and of the gospel 
 utterance (v. " tm Xoyqy rnxoiv). To express this notion of 
 neglect, Paul chooses not (T'^okd^eiv (cf. Exod. 5*- " a'xpXd^ere, 
 (TxoXaaraL ia-re), a word he prefers to use in the sense " to have 
 leisure for" (I Cor. 7'; cf. Ps. 45"); not dpr^elv (cf. Sir. 30''* 
 e/i/SaXe avrov et? ipyacriav iva firj apjy; also dpyd^, Sir. 37", 
 Mt. 12'^ 20'- ^ I Tim. 5'\ Tit. 1*=^), a word Paul does not use 
 but which, as we saw, is in some papyri equivalent to araKTelu 
 though the latter has the nuance of neglect; but draKrelv and 
 ara/cTo)? and dra/cro^, words distinctly implying an infringement 
 of the divine order of labor. In English, however, this notion 
 of neglect is suggested best not by " to be idle, " etc., but by " to 
 loaf," etc. It was thus of interest to me to discover that W. G. 
 Rutherford, in his admirable translation entitled St. Paul's 
 Epistles to the Thessaloniaiis and to the Corinthians (posthumously 
 * See Amer. Journ. Theol. VIII, 1904, 614 ff. 
 
206 "the loafers," 1 THESS. 5" 
 
 published in 1908), translates in two of the four cases in which 
 the words occur: "not to be intimate with any of your number 
 who is a loafer" (II 3"); "we were no loafers when we lived 
 among you" (II 3^). Supported by the internal evidence of 
 the two epistles, and by the use of araKrelv in papyri, and by 
 Rutherford's translation in two of the four cases, I venture to 
 propose " the loafers " as the rendering of rois aTUKToix; in I 5".* 
 In conclusion it may be added that it is not accidental that 
 letters betraying the existence of feverish excitement about the 
 coming of the Lord should also contain the warning against 
 loafing; not accidental that the two main points of II are the 
 Parousia and the loafers; for, as we have seen, such expectancy 
 is frequently coupled with indifference to the ordinary duties of 
 life. (Cf. in certain respects even I Cor. 7" ^•.) It is however 
 worthy of note that it is in letters to workingmen that w^ords are 
 used in a sense as yet found only in the papyri reflecting the life 
 of the common people. And it is further significant that from 
 a situation created by the belief in the immediate coming of the 
 Lord, Paul stamps once for all as Christian the necessity and dig- 
 nity of labor. For it is to be remembered that the divine tra- 
 dition is not a mere Jewish or Greek proverb to the effect that 
 if a man does not work he does not get anything to eat, but 
 is a lofty ethical imperative: If a man %vill not work, he shall 
 not eat.f 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 June 29, 1910. 
 
 * Sir. Wm. Ramsay, in an appreciative review of Milligan's Thessalonians 
 {Expos. VII, 1909), remarks (pp. 2-4) that the context in II 3' «• places 
 beyond doubt that idleness is involved in draKrelp and concludes correctly: 
 "If that be so, there can be no justification for clinging to the harsher mean- 
 ing " (that is, apparently "the disorderly ") "in I 5"." See also the citation 
 from Dr. Milligan, quoted above (p. 195), dra/cr^w = "to be idle." 
 
 t It were indeed a pity if we had to assume that it was not Paul but a 
 falsarius who invented this "golden rule of labor " (von Dobschiitz) with its 
 fine ethical emphasis. But the assumption is unnecessary. As a matter of 
 fact the argument of H. Holtzmann, ZNTW, 1901, 97-108 (cf. Hollmann, 
 ibid. 1904, 28-38, and especially the brilliant essay of Wrede, Die Echtheit 
 des zweiten Thess. 1903) that a falsarius had enlarged I 4"'- into II 3*'^ 
 tends to neglect the exegetical fact that were it not for II 3''-'- we should 
 be unable to be sure of the meaning of I 4'''^- or of the translation of oi 
 AraKTOi in I 5'*. 
 
XVII 
 
 CALVIN'S THEORY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 By Arthur Cushman McGiffert 
 
 According to Catholic theory the Church of Christ is the visi- 
 ble and organized institution founded by the apostles and ruled 
 by their successors the bishops. This institution is the alone 
 ark of salvation and the supreme authority upon earth. Ac- 
 cording to Luther, the Church of Christ is the community of 
 all Christian believers, whether organized or unorganized, and 
 its vocation is to proclaim the gospel of God's forgiving love 
 in Christ, and to bind men together in mutual love and service 
 and in common labor for the good of others. Apart from it 
 salvation is impossible as truly as on the Catholic theory, not 
 however because it is the sole depositary and dispenser of saving 
 grace committed to its bishops by the apostles, but because 
 through it alone the gospel of God's forgiving love in Christ 
 is made known. 
 
 In order to understand Calvin's theory of the church and to 
 appreciate its relation to the Catholic theory on the one side and 
 Luther's on the other it is necessary to remind ourselves of his 
 fundamental conception of Christianity and the Christian life. 
 All controlling in his religious thinking was the doctrine of the 
 absolute and unconditioned will of God. For the manifestation 
 of his character as just and merciful God decreed human sin, 
 the punishment of some sinners, and the pardon and sancti- 
 fication of others. The means by which he accomplishes his 
 purpose concerning the latter are of his own appointment and 
 might have been quite other than they are. That men can be 
 saved only by the free grace of God through faith in Christ, %vho 
 has made atonement and paid the penalty of human sin, is due 
 not to the inherent necessities of the case but to the sovereign 
 
 207 
 
208 Calvin's theoey of the church 
 
 will of God. Under these circumstances the test of every sys- 
 tem, institution, doctrine and so-called means of grace, is not 
 its fitness for the work in hand but its conformity to the will of 
 God. What he has appointed or commanded is to be recog- 
 nized as necessary and of absolute obligation. Our duty is 
 undeviating conformity and unquestioning obedience. " Pure 
 and genuine religion," Calvin says almost at the beginning of 
 his Institutes, "consists in faith united with a serious fear of God, 
 a fear which comprehends willing reverence and leads to such 
 legitimate worship as is prescribed by the law" (book I, chap, 2); 
 and in the fourth book, "Everything pertaining to the perfect 
 rule of right living the Lord has comprehended in his law in 
 such a way that there remains nothing for men to add to that 
 summary. And he has done this first, that since all rectitude of 
 life consists in the conformity of all our actions to his will as 
 their standard, we might consider him as the sole master and 
 director of life; and secondly to show that he requires of us noth- 
 ing more than obedience." (Chap, x, § 7.) 
 
 God's will which is the rule of life is unknown except he re- 
 veal it, and this he does in the Bible, the authoritative code of 
 faith and conduct. The Christian life consists not in the free 
 and spontaneous expression of the character of a child of God, 
 but in faithful obedience to the divine commands as laid down 
 in the Scriptures. 
 
 Calvin claimed to believe in Christian liberty and devoted a 
 brief chapter to the subject in the third book of his Institutes, 
 but though in form his doctrine was identical with Luther's 
 at least in part — the Christian by his faith being set free from de- 
 pendence upon works for justification — in reality liberty had very 
 little place in his interpretation of the Christian life. He was 
 chiefly interested not to promote liberty, except from subjection 
 to ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies, but to guard against the 
 misuse of it by unworthy and slothful Christians, and Luther's 
 glowing tract on the Freedom of the Christian Man it would have 
 been quite impossible for him to write. He did not trust the 
 saved man as the great German reformer did. The Christian, 
 he felt, needs, as well as others, the pressure of an external law, 
 and it must be obeyed by him as by them, not because it is good 
 or expresses his character as a child of God but because it is 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 209 
 
 God's law. Calvin separated from the Roman Catholic Church 
 and opposed it with all his might, but he was a thorough-going 
 believer in authority in the religious sphere as everywhere else, 
 and his Christianity was in this respect as catholic as any 
 Romanist's. 
 
 Moreover, in still another fundamental matter he was a genu- 
 ine Catholic. He believed in the corruption of human nature 
 and the need of its transformation by divine power if it were to 
 escape eternal destruction. Regeneration was therefore neces- 
 sary, and although God might have used other means to effect 
 it, he actually chose to bring it about ordinarily through bap- 
 tism, the sacrament of regeneration, and to nourish the regener- 
 ated nature by the Eucharist, the sacrament of the body and 
 blood of Christ. Calvin, to be sure, rejected transubstantia- 
 tion, and also the realistic doctrine of Luther, and talked about 
 a spiritual instead of material presence of Christ in the Lord's 
 supper, but he was a sacramentalist nevertheless, much more of 
 a one than Luther, for he always thought of baptism and the 
 Lord's supper not merely as signs of the forgiving love of God 
 in Christ, the word made visible, but as having to do primarily 
 with the birth and sustenance of a new nature — an essentially 
 Catholic conception. Indeed, the whole notion of regeneration 
 is Catholic, involving a change of nature not merely of disposi- 
 tion and will. At this point Luther, too, often felt the influence 
 of Catholic tradition, but what with him was exceptional only 
 with Calvin was constant and controlling. 
 
 In the light of what has been said of Calvin's general posi- 
 tion let us consider his theory of the church. In the fourth 
 book of the last edition of his Institutes he sets forth his doc- 
 trine of the church at great length. It is the fullest and final 
 statement of the matter from his pen. In the Genevan Cate- 
 chism he had defined the church as "The body and society of 
 believers whom God hath predestined to eternal life." By the 
 church thus defined he meant, not the visible church, but "the 
 assemblage of those whom God has adopted by his secret elec- 
 tion, which is neither at all times visible to the eye nor discerni- 
 ble by signs." Also in the first edition of his Institutes, with 
 the same spiritual body in mind he said, " We believe in the Holy 
 Catholic Church, that is the universal number of the elect 
 
210 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 whether angels or men, whether dead or living, and however 
 widely dispersed among the nations. We believe that there is 
 one church and society and people of God whose leader and prince 
 is Christ our Lord, the head of the one body. In him, by the 
 divine goodness, they are elect before the foundation of the world 
 that they may all be gathered in the kingdom of God. This 
 society moreover is Catholic, that is universal, because there 
 cannot be two or three of them; but the elect of God are all so 
 united and bound together that as they depend on one head in 
 the same way they coalesce in one body, adhering to one another 
 as members of the same body do. They are truly one, being 
 called in one faith, hope and love by the same Spirit of God 
 while they live, and being made heirs of the same inheritance of 
 eternal life. The church is also holy, because as many as are 
 chosen by the eternal providence of God, that they may be re- 
 ceived as members of the church, are all sanctified by the Lord. 
 . . . Since, moreover, the church is the people of God's elect, 
 it is not possible that those who are its true members should ever 
 perish. . . . This is the Catholic Church, the mystical body of 
 Christ" (chap. 2). 
 
 Here the visible church, made up of good and bad, saved and 
 unsaved, is not dwelt upon, but in the last two editions of the 
 Institutes it is made the principal subject of discussion, a clear 
 indication of Calvin's increased ecclesiastical interest. To be 
 sure, the same theory of the invisible church still appears. Al- 
 most at the beginning of the fourth book of the edition of 1559 
 it is said, " Wlien in the creed we profess to believe in the church 
 reference is made not only to the visible church of which we are 
 now speaking, but also to all the elect of God, including in the 
 number even those who have departed this life. . . . But be- 
 cause a small and despised number is concealed among an im- 
 mense crowd and a few grains of wheat are buried in a heap of 
 chaff to God alone must be left the knowledge of his church of 
 which his secret election forms the foundation" (chap. 1, § 2). 
 He was thus both earlier and later in agreement with Wyclif 
 and Huss in his interpretation of the invisible church as the to- 
 tality of the elect. Indeed, in view of the controlling place which 
 the doctrine of predestination had in his system it would have 
 been strange had he not agreed with them at this point. But 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 211 
 
 he departed from them, particularly in later years, and followed 
 Luther in his recognition of a true visible church. Only such 
 recognition on his part, as on Luther's, made the establishment 
 of a new church possible, for with the theory of Wyclif and Huss 
 no church in a real sense as a community and association of 
 men here on earth could have any existence. 
 
 It is common to speak of the reformation distinction between 
 the visible and invisible church, but the distinction was not 
 Luther's. To him, at any rate after the first few years, there was 
 only one true church, the assembly of all Christian believers on 
 earth. It is at once visible, because it manifests itself in word and 
 sacrament, and invisible because nobody but God knows just 
 who and how many are its members. There are therefore 
 not two entities, the invisible company of the elect and the visi- 
 ble ecclesiastical organization, there is but one, the company of 
 true Christian believers. Calvin on the other hand preserved the 
 theory of an invisible church, composed of the elect both angels 
 and men, in heaven and on earth, which Luther had accepted 
 for a time but early abandoned, and set beside it the notion of 
 a visible church, or external ecclesiastical institution, not iden- 
 tical with it but equally a true church. "From what has been 
 said I conceive it must now be evident what judgment we ought 
 to form respecting the visible church which falls under our ob- 
 servation. For we have remarked that the Scriptures speak of 
 the church in a twofold sense. Sometimes in mentioning the 
 church they mean that which is really such in the sight of God, 
 into which none are received but those who by the gift of adop- 
 tion are sons of God, and by sanctification of the Spirit true mem- 
 bers of Christ. In this sense it comprehends not only the saints 
 on earth but all the elect who have lived since the beginning of 
 the world. But often the word church designates the whole 
 multitude of men scattered throughout the world, who profess 
 to worship one God and Christ, are initiated by baptism into 
 faith in him, testify to their unity by partaking of the Lord's 
 supper, agree together in the word of the Lord, and preserve the 
 ministry which Christ has instituted to preach it. In this church 
 there are many hypocrites who have nothing of Christ but the 
 name and appearance; many ambitious, avaricious, envious, 
 evil-speaking men, and some of impurer lives, who are tolerated 
 
212 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 for a time either because they cannot be easily convicted or be- 
 cause due strictness of discipline is not always maintained. 
 Hence as it is necessary for us to believe the invisible church 
 which is manifest to the eyes of God alone, that which is called 
 church in the eyes of men we are commanded to honor and to 
 maintain communion with it" (book 4, chap. 1, § 7). 
 
 Two diverse interests, that of the theologian and that of the 
 practical ecclesiastic, were here operative, and the result was 
 a confusion of thought, which was perpetuated in reformed 
 Protestantism, and has worked no little mischief. 
 
 In the later editions of the Institutes it was to the visible church, 
 as already said, that Calvin devoted his attention, and in the 
 standard edition of 1559 the discussion fills more than half the 
 fourth book. The visible church he defines as follows: "The 
 universal church is a multitude collected from all nations, who 
 though dispersed in countries widely distant from each other, 
 nevertheless consent to the same truth of divine doctrine and are 
 united by the bond of the same religion. In it particular churches, 
 distributed according to human necessity in various towns and 
 villages, are so comprehended that to each belongs of right the 
 name and authority of a church" (book 4, chap. 1, § 9.) 
 
 The marks of the visible church are the word and the sacra- 
 ments. " Wherever we find the word of God sincerely preached 
 and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the 
 institution of Christ, there it is not to be doubted is a church of 
 God" (ibid). "We see how great caution should be observed 
 on both sides. For to prevent imposture from deceiving us 
 under the name of the church every congregation receiving this 
 name should be brought to that proof as to a touchstone. If 
 it have in word and sacraments the order prescribed by the Lord 
 it will not deceive us; we may securely render it the honor due 
 to all churches. On the contrary if it exhibit itself without 
 word and sacraments we must be no less careful to avoid the 
 imposture than we were in the other case to shun pride and pre- 
 sumption" (ibid. § 11). 
 
 Only within this true visible church which possesses the word 
 and the sacraments can salvation be had. At the opening of 
 his discussion Calvin says, "I will begin with the church into 
 whose bosom it is God's will that his children should be col- 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 213 
 
 iected, that by her aid and ministry they may be nourished 
 so long as they are babes and children, and may also be 
 guided by her maternal care until they grow up to manhood and 
 finally attain to the perfection of faith. What God has joined 
 together it is not lawful to put asunder, that to whom he is a 
 father the church may also be a mother" (ibid. § 1.) "But as 
 our present design," he says a little later, " is to treat of the visible 
 church, we may learn even from the title of mother how useful 
 and even necessary it is for us to know her; since there is no other 
 way of entrance into life unless we are conceived by her, born of 
 her, nourished at her breasts, and continually preserved under 
 her care and government, until we are divested of this mortal 
 flesh and become like the angels. For our infirmity will not ad- 
 mit of our dismission from her school until we have been her dis- 
 ciples all our life. It is also to be remarked that out of her bosom 
 there can be no hope of remission of sins and no salvation" (§ 4). 
 This explicit assertion of the impossibility of salvation outside 
 the visible church is frequently repeated by Calvin. Indeed 
 one of the interests chiefly controlling him throughout the entire 
 iliscussion was to oppose those who decried the visible church 
 and separated from it, claiming that they could be saved without 
 its pale. To withdraw from the church, he says, is to re- 
 nounce God and Christ. " So highly does God esteem the com- 
 munion of the church that he considers every one a traitor and 
 an apostate from religion w'ho contumaciously withdraws from 
 any Christian society which preserves the true ministry of the 
 word and the sacraments. . . . Hence it follows that to depart 
 from the church is to deny God and Christ, and such a criminal 
 dissension is so much the more to be avoided, because while we 
 endeavor so far as we can to destroy the truth of God we de- 
 serve to be consumed by the power of his wrath" (§ 10). A 
 church may be at fault in many respects but if it have the word 
 and the sacraments it is a true church and is not to be forsaken 
 under any circumstances. Nothing could be more emphatic 
 than Calvin's insistence upon this point. 
 
 How then did he justify his own and his fellow-Protestants' 
 w^ithdrawal from the Church of Rome ? The answer reveals an 
 important difference between his and Luther's ideas of the word 
 of God. To him, as to Luther, the word was a necessary sign 
 
214 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 of the true church, but while to the older reformer it meant the 
 gospel of the forgiving love of God in Christ, to Calvin, as to 
 Melanchthon, it meant the Bible as a whole, or rather the Bible 
 properly interpreted, in other words, sound doctrine. ^Yhere 
 the sound doctrine of religion, which is set forth in the Bible, is 
 faithfully taught, there is the true church; where the teaching 
 of error takes its place, there the true church cannot be. Error 
 in minor matters may prevail even in the true church, but error 
 touching the fundamental doctrines of religion destroys it. 
 "The errors," he says, "which may thus be forgiven are those 
 by which the fundamental doctrine of religion is not injured, and 
 by which those articles of religion wherein all believers ought 
 to agree are not suppressed" (chap. 2, § 1). 
 
 That in this sound doctrine of religion he included much more 
 than the mere gospel of God's forgiving love in Christ is abun- 
 dandy clear from such a statement as the following: — "Some of 
 the articles of true doctrine are so necessary to be known that 
 they ought to be received by all as fixed and indubitable, as the 
 peculiar maxims of religion; such as that there is one God, that 
 Christ is God and the son of God, that our salvation consists 
 in the mercy of God and the like" (chap. 1, § 12). It is clear 
 also from the entire structure of his Institutes and from the atti- 
 tude he always took toward those who differed with him at all 
 widely in theological matters. 
 
 It was on the basis of this interpretation of the word as sound 
 doctrine that Calvin justified secession from the Roman com- 
 munion. "As soon as falsehood has made a breach in the cita- 
 del of religion, as soon as the sum of necessary doctrine is sub- 
 verted, and the use of the sacraments fails, annihilation surely 
 ensues, as a man's life comes to an end when his throat is cut 
 or his heart mortally wounded. And this is clearly evident from 
 the words of Paul when he teaches that the church is founded 
 upon the doctrine of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself 
 being the chief corner-stone. If the foundation of the church 
 be the doctrine of the prophets and apostles which enjoins be- 
 lievers to place their salvation in Christ alone, how can the edi- 
 fice stand any longer when that doctrine is taken away? The 
 church, therefore, must of necessity fall where that system of re- 
 ligion is destroyed which alone is able to sustain it" (chap. 2, § 1). 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 215 
 
 Corruption and immorality in a church, whether in its mem- 
 bers or its officers, is no excuse for separating from it. So long 
 as it has the word and the sacraments it remains a true church 
 however full of wickedness, and to withdraw from it is to for- 
 feit the possibility of salvation. "Let these two points then 
 remain fixed; first that he who voluntarily deserts the external 
 communion of the church, where the w^ord of God is preached 
 and the sacraments are administered, is without excuse; secondly 
 that the faults either of two persons or of many form no obstacle 
 to a due profession of our faith in the ceremonies instituted by 
 God; for the pious conscience is not wounded by the unworthi- 
 ness of any other individual whether he be a pastor or a private 
 person, nor are the mysteries less pure and salutary to a holy 
 and upright man because they are received at the same time 
 by the impure" (chap. 1, § 19). "We have already stated the 
 importance which we ought to attach to the ministry of the word 
 and sacraments, and the extent to which our reverence for it 
 should be carried, that it may be accounted a perpetual mark of 
 the church. That is to say that wherever it exists entire and 
 uncorrupted no vices and faults of conduct form a sufficient 
 reason for refusing the name of a church" (chap. 2, § 1). 
 
 The church is not made by persons, either lay or clerical, and 
 its reality is not affected by their character, but solely by the word 
 and sacraments. Even love itself is worthless without sound 
 doctrine (chap. 2, §§ 3, 5). 
 
 It is often said that the Protestant reformation was due to 
 the low moral state of the Catholic Church and represented pri- 
 marily an effort to improve the moral condition of Christendom. 
 Nothing could be farther from the truth, as appears clearly 
 enough from many facts, among them this position of Calvin's 
 touching withdrawal from the Roman Church. He was ethi- 
 cally the most rigorous of all the Reformers and spent much of 
 his time and strength in laboring for the moral purification of 
 Geneva and of the western Protestant world, but he declared 
 emphatically and repeatedly that no one had the right to with- 
 draw from an existing church on moral grounds. Only because 
 the Roman Church by its corruption of the word and the sacra- 
 ments had ceased to be a true church was the Protestant secession 
 justified. Its real basis was religious not ethical. 
 
216 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 The combination of his idea of the necessity of belonging to 
 the visible church with his disparate notion of the church as the 
 totality of the elect Calvin made, in the only way indeed in which 
 it could be made, by asserting that it was God's will that the elect 
 shall be in the church and find salvation only there. "God 
 might," as he says, " have made his people perfect in a moment, 
 but it was not his will that they should grow to mature age 
 except under the education of the church" (chap. 1, § 5). 
 And a little later, "Though the power of God is not confined to 
 external means yet he has confined us to the ordinary manner of 
 teaching." Of exceptions to this rule in the case of infants, 
 idiots and the mentally incompetent it is not necessary to speak 
 here. Calvin was no more liberal at this point than the Ro- 
 manists. 
 
 Thus the visible church as he conceived it rests upon the will 
 of God and is to be recognized as a part of his ordinance. Its 
 constitutive element is God's decree as truly as that of the in- 
 visible church, and we are saved only within it simply because 
 God has willed that we shall be so saved. The vital connection 
 between the gospel of the forgiving love of God and the salva- 
 tion of the sinner, which made the visible church essential to 
 Luther, was largely lost sight of by Calvin, and thus though he 
 emphasized the visible church as strongly as Luther his interest 
 in it was very different. In accordance with this difference 
 of interest it was conceived by him in a much more external and 
 formal way than by Luther. By the latter it was never sharply 
 defined and its boundaries clearly drawn. Wherever the word 
 and the sacraments might be there was the church. Calvin, 
 too, made the word and the sacraments marks of the church, 
 as has been seen, but he went beyond Luther in thinking of 
 the church as an organized institution with definite laws and 
 a fixed order of government. The ministry also he made much 
 more of. Whereas, according to Luther, any Christian had the 
 right to declare a repentant and believing brother's sins for- 
 given, and to comfort him with the assurance of the divine 
 pardon, Calvin, with his greater zeal for order and his greater 
 respect for authority, confined this office to the clergy. " In the 
 communion of saints, therefore, sins are continually remitted to 
 us by the ministry of the church, when the presbyters or bishops, 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 217 
 
 to whom this office is committed, confirm pious consciences by 
 the promises of the gospel in the hope of pardon and remis- 
 sion. . . . Here are three things, therefore, worthy of our ob- 
 servation. First, that whatever hoHness may distmguish the 
 children of God, yet such is their condition as long as they in- 
 habit a mortal body that they cannot stand before God without 
 remission of sins. Secondly, that this benefit belongs to the 
 church, so that we cannot enjoy it unless we continue in its com- 
 munion. Thirdly, that it is dispensed to us through the min- 
 isters and pastors of the church, either by the preaching of the 
 gospel or by the administration of the sacraments, and that this 
 is the principal exercise of the power of the keys which the Lord 
 has conferred on the society of believers. Let every one of us 
 therefore consider it his duty not to seek remission of sins any- 
 where but where the Lord has placed it" (chap. 1, § 22). 
 
 It was not because of any necessity in the case that ministers 
 were made the sole agents of forgiveness and hence of salvation, 
 but only because of the will of God who had seen fit so to order 
 the matter as a "yoke of modesty" to believers. Thus though 
 not controlled by the sacerdotal interest, as the Catholics were, 
 Calvin lodged in the ministry an authority scarcely less than 
 that possessed by the clergy under the old system. Moreover 
 he put the ordination of ministers into the hands of those al- 
 ready ordained and gave the latter the deciding voice in their 
 appointment to office. 
 
 To the authority and functions of the ministry he gave a great 
 deal of attention, discussing the matter at length in the third and 
 following chapters of the fourth book of his Institutes. Thus, 
 for instance, after quoting Ephesians 4, he says — " In these words 
 Paul shows that the ministry of men which God employs in 
 governing the church is the principal bond holding believers in 
 one body. He also indicates that the church cannot be preserved 
 unimpaired unless it be supported by those means which the 
 Lord has been pleased to appoint for its preservation. ... By 
 means of his ministers, to whom he has committed this office and 
 on whom he has bestowed grace to discharge it, he distributes 
 and dispenses his gifts to the church. . . . For neither the light 
 and heat of the sun nor meat and drink are so necessary to the 
 nourishment and sustenance of the present life as the apostolic 
 
218 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 and pastoral oflBce to the preservation of the church in the world " 
 (chap. 3, § 2). 
 
 It was no accident that Calvin laid so much greater emphasis 
 than Luther upon ecclesiastical polity, and did so much more for 
 the external framework of the church. His notion of the church 
 as an institution whose significance lay ultimately only in the 
 ordaining will of God made it necessary to bring it in all respects 
 completely into accord with the indications of the word. There 
 was no underlying principle, such as Luther recognized, in the 
 nature and purpose of the church itself, which could be trusted 
 to work out its own proper forms in accordance with the varying 
 circumstances of time and place. Luther was willing to let 
 the forms take care of themselves, but as Calvin thought of the 
 Christian life simply as obedience to the divine will, it was es- 
 sential that that will should be known and followed in all re- 
 spects. The Scriptures therefore must be carefully studied and 
 all the activities of the church as well as all the conduct of 
 Christians must be modelled thereon. It is true that Calvin 
 did not go as far as many of his followers. He left a consider- 
 able margin of liberty for individual and church in matters not 
 pertaining to salvation (cf. chap. 10, § 30). But in spite of 
 his insistence upon liberty in what he called non-essentials, his 
 underlying principle was genuinely legal, and the rigidity of 
 the puritanism of a later day was only the logical outcome of it. 
 The life and polity and worship of the Calvinistic churches, 
 whether they were more or less extreme in their application of 
 the principle, always bore a very different character from those 
 of the Lutheran churches. Of the freedom of the spirit there was 
 little; the control of the letter was minute and far reaching. 
 
 Another point of difference between Luther and Calvin was 
 in their respective ideas of the purpose of the church. Accord- 
 ing to the former its primary purpose is to proclaim the gospel 
 of God's forgiving love in Christ; according to the latter to 
 train the elect in holiness. The church has not yet reached 
 the mark of holiness but it is daily improving and advancing 
 toward perfection as God is continually sanctifying his elect 
 who are within its fold (chap. 1, § 17). The idea that there 
 rests upon the church a responsibility for the improvement of 
 the world, or the betterment of society, or the promotion of the 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 219 
 
 kingdom of God in the earth, was altogether foreign to Calvin's 
 thought. The end of the church, as he viewed it, was the ad- 
 vantage of its own members. They alone, or rather only the 
 elect among them, enjoyed its benefits, and for their good alone 
 it was established. Forgiveness of sins was to be had within 
 the church and only there, and the same was true of regenera- 
 tion and the spiritual nourishment of the new nature provided 
 in the eucharist. The church therefore, according to Calvin, 
 was a means of grace, not merely a communion of saints, but a 
 means of grace solely to those within its pale and not to all of 
 them, for the elect alone were truly blessed by its ministrations 
 (chap. 1, § 5 seq.). 
 
 The church was a body set apart from the world, "the pe- 
 culiar possession and portion of God" (chap. 1, § 3), and it 
 was better to hold aloof and keep itself pure than to endanger 
 its character by throwing itself into the world's work. The 
 supreme duty of Christians was not to serve their fellows and 
 establish the reign of the spirit of love in all the institutions and 
 relationships of this earth, as Luther believed, but to walk humbly 
 with God, to obey him in all things, and to keep themselves un- 
 spotted from the world. 
 
 Calvin did not advocate as extreme an asceticism as the 
 Catholics believed in, but he stood for an otherworldliness 
 in principle the same in spite of all differences in detail. "It 
 should be the aim of believers," as he says, "in judging of this 
 mortal life to understand it to be of itself nothing but misery, 
 that more easily and freely they may wholly apply themselves 
 to meditation on the future and eternal life" (book 3, chap. 9, § 4). 
 
 The attitude of Calvin in this respect became characteristic 
 of the Calvinistic churches in general. The notion of the church 
 as a community of holy people, pure both in doctrine and in 
 conduct, because governed wholly by the will of God, increas- 
 ingly overshadowed the idea of it as an agency for the procla- 
 mation of the gospel of God's forgiving love, and thus Luther's 
 controlling idea was more and more lost sight of. 
 
 It was in accordance with Calvin's interest at this point that 
 he laid much greater stress than Luther upon ecclesiastical 
 discipline. The older Reformer realized perfectly that Chris- 
 tians were not all they should be, but his confidence in the power 
 
220 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 of the gospel and in the transforming influence of faith was so- 
 great, and his devotion to the principle of Christian liberty so 
 controlling, that the development of a system of ecclesiastical 
 discipline was far from his thought. To Calvin on the other 
 hand, with his notion of the Christian life as obedience to the law 
 of God, with his deep-seated distrust of man, and with his theory 
 of the church as a body set apart from the world and composed 
 of those predestined to holiness, it is not surprising that ecclesi- 
 astical discipline was a matter of the greatest concern, all the 
 more so because, belonging as he did to the second generation 
 of Reformers, he saw clearly enough that the Reformation had 
 not borne fruit in the holy communities which he thought true 
 churches of Christ should be. He therefore instituted in Geneva 
 a very rigorous system of moral discipline, and in his discussion 
 of the church in the fourth book of his Institutes he devoted a 
 couple of long chapters to the subject, maintaining that the exer- 
 cise of strict discipline is one of the necessary marks of the true 
 church. "As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the 
 church so discipline forms the ligaments which connect the mem- 
 bers of the body together and keep each in its proper place" 
 (chap. 12, § 1). In the exercise of its authority the church must 
 admonish or visit with its censures all sorts of offenders, and must 
 altogether exclude from its communion those guilty of flagrant 
 sins, as well as the contumacious and rebellious. It is true that 
 he recommends that severity be tempered with mercy and de- 
 nounces the discipline of the Anabaptists as altogether too se- 
 vere. " The same conduct [that is, the conduct of the Donatists] 
 is pursued at the present day by the Anabaptists who, acknowl- 
 edging no congregation to belong to Christ unless it be in all its 
 parts conspicuous for angelic perfection, under the pretext of 
 zeal destroy all edification" (chap. 12, § 12). The visible church 
 in fact must contain both good and bad. Its character is not 
 destroyed, nor is its sanctity annulled, by the presence of the 
 latter, and so to leave it as the Anabaptists left it because of 
 the presence of unworthy members was quite unjustifiable 
 (chap. 1, § 19). 
 
 At the same time although Calvin, practical ecclesiastical 
 statesman rather than visionary enthusiast as he was, recog- 
 nized that the visible church is not and cannot be made a body 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 221 
 
 of perfect purity he still insisted on the exercise of very strict 
 discipline, particularly in connection with the eucharist, and on 
 the constant watchfulness of the authorities of the church over 
 the lives of its members. 
 
 "There are three ends proposed by the church in these cor- 
 rections, and in excommunication. The first is that those who 
 lead scandalous and wicked lives may not, to the dishonor of 
 God, be numbered among Christians, as if his holy church were 
 a conspiracy of vicious and abandoned men. For as the church 
 is the body of Christ it cannot be contaminated with such foul 
 and putrid members without some ignominy being reflected 
 upon the head. That nothing may exist in the church, therefore, 
 from which disgrace may be thrown upon his venerable name, 
 it is necessary to expel from his family those through whose 
 turpitude infamy would redound to the Christian name" (chap. 
 12, §5). 
 
 The exercise of discipline Calvin entrusted to the officers of 
 the church. Here is revealed what appears in many other con- 
 nections, his radical aversion to democracy. He did not trust 
 the ordinary man even though a Christian. He was instinctively 
 an aristocrat in religion as in civil affairs, and he felt that the 
 church could be properly governed and its character preserved 
 only as large authority w^as lodged in the hands of its ministers. 
 Their disciplinary authority did not rest upon the fact that they 
 were successors of the apostles and had received from them a 
 deposit of saving grace which they might dispense or withhold 
 — in other words it was not sacerdotal — but upon the fact that 
 they were ministers of the word. Because called and com- 
 missioned by God to preach the word they were also charged 
 with the responsibility of administering discipline in accordance 
 therewith, but this change of principle in no way reduced clerical 
 dignity and power. "Although the Lord alone ought to rule 
 and reign in his church, and to have pre-eminence in it, and this 
 government ought to be exercised and administered solely by 
 his word, yet as he dwells not among us in visible presence, he 
 uses the ministry of men that he may make his w^ill clearly known 
 to us" (chap. 3, § 1). "This command respecting the remis- 
 sion and retention of sins, and the promise made to Peter in 
 regard to binding and loosing, ought to be wholly referred to 
 
222 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 the ministry of the word, which our Lord committed to the 
 apostles, at the same time investing them with this power of 
 loosing and binding. . . . We hold that the power of the keys 
 in these passages is simply the preaching of the gospel, and con- 
 sidered with regard to men is not so much power as ministry, 
 for strictly speaking Christ gave it not to men but to his word 
 of which he appointed them ministers" (chap. 11, § 1). 
 
 Calvin's influence in promoting liberty and democracy is 
 often spoken of and counted to his credit. As a matter of fact, 
 it was only a limited liberty that he was interested in, and to 
 democracy he was unalterably opposed. He did much to break 
 the authority of the pope in western Europe and so to prepare 
 the way for the growth of a larger freedom in later days, but he 
 was at best only indirectly responsible for a development which 
 he would have been entirely out of sympathy with had he lived 
 to witness it. 
 
 In his idea of the relation of church and state he also agreed 
 with Luther in part but only in part. He recognized, as the 
 older Reformer did, the separate functions of church and state 
 and the sharp distinction between their spheres. "Whoever 
 knows how to distinguish," he says, " between the body and the 
 soul, between this present transitory life and the future eternal 
 one, will find no difficulty in understanding that the spiritual 
 kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very remote 
 from each other" (chap. 20, § 1). Civil magistrates are vicege- 
 rents of God in their sphere as truly as ministers of the church 
 are in theirs, but the spheres are entirely different. It may be 
 remarked in passing that Calvin emphasized in the strongest 
 possible fashion the divine right of civil government and of duly 
 constituted governors and princes. 
 
 Though he drew a sharp distinction between church and state 
 he followed Luther in laying upon the civil government the re- 
 sponsibility "to cherish and support the external worship of 
 God, to preserve the pure doctrine of religion, to defend the con- 
 stitution of the church" and to suppress "idolatry, sacrilege, 
 blasphemy and other offenses against religion" (chap. 20, § 2 seq.). 
 In all this Luther and Calvin were at one, but there was never- 
 theless a radical difference between them, for while the former 
 gave civil rulers the power of determining what true religion is, 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 223 
 
 according to the word of God, and laid upon them the responsi- 
 bility of supporting the true and prohibiting the false thus de- 
 termined, the latter, in agreement with the mediaeval Catholic 
 theory, made the state only the servant of the church in carrying 
 out its behests. It lies with the church and particularly with the 
 clergy as ministers of the word to discover what is God's will 
 and truth, and the civil government is charged with the duty 
 of acting accordingly. The power of the sword is not lodged 
 in the church but only in the state, but it is to be exercised by the 
 state for the support of true religion and for the overthrow of 
 its enemies who are the enemies of God. 
 
 In Geneva Calvin's theocratic principles were put into striking 
 practice, and the influence of his work there, Catholic as was the 
 underlying theory upon which it was based, constituted western 
 Europe's greatest bulwark against the encroachments of a re- 
 awakened papacy and a regenerated Catholicism. He fought 
 fire with fire, and if Puritanism and the puritan states that were 
 the fruit of his teaching and example were not in essence Protes- 
 tant they were at any rate Rome's most vigorous and successful 
 foes, and western Europe and America owe to the great genius 
 from whom they drew their inspiration an inestimable debt of 
 gratitude. 
 
 Calvin's general theory of the church appears in greater or 
 less detail in most of the important confessions of the early 
 Reformed churches framed after his influence began to be felt. 
 A few may be referred to merely by way of illustration. In the 
 French confession of 1559, which deals with the church in arti- 
 cles 25 to 32, special emphasis is put upon the ministry and upon 
 the importance of having the church governed according to 
 the order established by Jesus Christ. In article 28 it is said: 
 ** We declare that properly speaking there can be no church 
 where the word of God [that is, the Bible] is not received, where 
 profession is not made of subjection to it and where the sacra- 
 ments are not employed." Here the marks of the church are 
 three, subjection to the Bible, that is, obedience to its precepts 
 in doctrine, in conduct and in ecclesiastical polity, being added 
 to the two generally recognized marks, the word and the sacra- 
 ments. 
 
 In the first Scotch confession of 1560, which was framed by 
 
224 Calvin's theory of the church 
 
 John Knox, there is an article on the church in which the doc- 
 trine of the invisible church is clearly stated (article 16) and an- 
 other (article 18) on the notes of the church which runs in part 
 as follows — " Because that Satan from the beginning has labored 
 to deck his pestilent synagogue with the title of the kirk of God 
 and has inflamed the hearts of cruel murderers to persecute, 
 trouble and molest the true kirk and members thereof ... it 
 is one thing most requisite that the true kirk be discerned from 
 the filthy synagogue by clear and perfect notes, lest we, being 
 deceived, receive and embrace to our own condemnation the one 
 for the other." The notes are then given as "the true preach- 
 ing of the word of God," " the right administration of the sac- 
 raments," and "ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered as 
 God's word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue 
 nourished." The third note is not identical with the one given 
 in the French confession but both are alike true to the spirit 
 and interest of Calvin, 
 
 In the Belgic confession of 1561 it is said, in article 39, "We 
 believe that we ought diligently and circumspectly to discern 
 from the word of God which is the true church, since all sects 
 in the world assume to themselves the name of church. . . . 
 The marks by which the true church is known are these: If 
 there is the pure preaching of the gospel; if there is the pure ad- 
 ministration of the sacraments as ordained by Christ; if church 
 discipline is exercised for the correction of vice; in short, if all 
 things are managed according to the pure word of God, all things 
 contrary thereto rejected, and Jesus Christ recognized as the 
 only head." 
 
 Here the three marks are the same as those given in the Scotch 
 confession and the principle stated in the French confession of 
 submission to the Bible in all things is added, showing clearly 
 enough the identity of interest in all three confessions, and their 
 complete oneness with Calvin from whom they all learned their 
 doctrine of the church. 
 
 That doctrine, it may be said in conclusion, was not primitive, 
 nor Catholic, nor Lutheran, but it contained features of all the 
 older doctrines in a combination largely original with Calvin 
 and after him characteristic of Reformed Protestantism for many 
 generations. From the primitive period came the notion of 
 
Calvin's theory of the church 225 
 
 the church as a community of saints which must hold itself 
 aloof from the world and be kept pure by the exercise of strict 
 discipline, though here his ecclesiastical statesmanship and prac- 
 tical sense kept him from carrying his principles as far as many 
 others did and so reducing the church to a mere puritanic con- 
 venticle. From Catholicism came sacramentalism and clerical- 
 ism, held in check, however, on the one hand by his conception 
 of Christian liberty, emasculated though it was, and on the other 
 by the recognition of the supreme authority of the Bible, applied 
 in this case with uncommon seriousness. From Luther came 
 the notion of word and sacraments as marks of the true church, 
 though Calvin's interpretation of both, and particularly of the 
 former, was such as to displace Luther's gospel of freedom with 
 a legalism as oppressive as that of the Catholics. Finally, with 
 it all, there came from Augustine through Wyclif and Huss, the 
 doctrine of the invisible church as the totality of the elect, a 
 doctrine which Calvin succeeded in combining with his theory 
 of the visible church better than had ever been done before, but 
 which tended to make the church end instead of means, and to 
 substitute the complacent enjoyment of one's own blessings for 
 the sense of duty to one's fellows. Calvin's doctrine of the church 
 was a composite of many diverse and inconsistent elements, 
 and, because of this, confusion concerning the meaning, place 
 and purpose of the church has since his day reigned almost every- 
 where in the reformed wing of Protestantism. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 October, 1910. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN 
 THE ANCIENT CHURCH 
 
 By John Winthrop Platner 
 
 What was the difference between pagan and Christian thought 
 upon nature and the world-problem in antiquity ? It was not that 
 the one was wholly enlightened and the other wholly naive, nor 
 was it that the one indulged itself in scientific speculation while 
 the other abstained from it. Naive world-views were shared by 
 pagan and Christian alike, and cosmological theorizing was never 
 developed to ampler proportions than among certain Christians 
 of the second century. What Greek philosophers, from Thales 
 and Anaximander to the Stoics, had wrought out in world- 
 theory was known to Christian scholars, some of whom, them- 
 selves trained in philosophy, had contributions of their own to 
 make to the advancement of speculative thought on these sub- 
 jects. Nor was it true that Christian differed from pagan by 
 thinking teleologically. There was in ancient times little of the 
 objectivity of view in which modern science glories, but rather 
 constant effort to reach some principle of interpretation, which 
 modern science profoundly distrusts. Socrates defined natural 
 science (jrepl ^vcreco<i Icnopia) as " the science which has to do 
 with the causes of things, and which teaches why a thing is, and 
 is created and destroyed." * This definition indicates with per- 
 fect clearness the view of the matter in classic antiquity, a 
 view which Christianity inherited and heartily shared. 
 
 The fundamental difference between pagan and Christian 
 was this, that while Greek philosophic speculation and discovery 
 
 * Plato's Phcedo, 96, ed. Burnet, I, Oxford, 1900. Jowett's translation, I, 
 445, Oxford, 1871. 
 
 227 
 
228 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 were free, Christian thinking along similar lines was from com- 
 paratively early times increasingly bound. Limits were es- 
 tablished beyond which it might not pass. Catholicism, — that 
 potent, excluding, conserving, and unifying force, which for 
 at least twelve centuries controlled the church, — created these 
 limits, and by the exercise of ecclesiastical authority compelled 
 Christian thought to move safely within them. The same in- 
 fluence which operated to unify organization, worship, and creed, 
 operated also to suppress divergence of opinion concerning mat- 
 ters not properly connected with religion at all, or even, — as we 
 have at last come to see, — with theology either. 
 
 At the outset one is struck with the general freedom of opin- 
 ion on scientific subjects among Christians before and during 
 the third century, as compared with its increasing rarity after 
 that time. When the church emerged from its position of ob- 
 scurity and oppression into the light of public favor and the 
 pride of power, then cosmological speculation and all efforts 
 after scientific truth became merely so many more or less in- 
 genious attempts to set forth what the church held to be the teach- 
 ing of Scripture on the subject. For among the standards of 
 ancient Catholicism, it was especially the Scriptures which 
 furnished a convenient and sufficient source from which ortho- 
 dox knowledge respecting nature and the world might be drawn. 
 It is unimportant to inquire whether the literal or the allegori- 
 cal method of interpretation was the more to blame for the pro- 
 duction of crude and erroneous scientific notions. The simple 
 fact is that neither method as such, but rather the Catholic con- 
 ception of scriptural authority, is chargeable with responsibility 
 for the whole policy of censorship and repression of opinion. 
 Every novel and over-bold inquiry was answered by an official 
 disquisition upon what the book of Genesis, or Job, or Psalms, 
 taught regarding the matter in hand, and woe to the theory 
 which could not be made to square with these! It was pres- 
 ently branded as heretical, or erroneous, and its obstinate sup- 
 porters found themselves excluded from the church. The 
 truth in all such cases was held to be deducible, — or at any rate it 
 was deduced,^ — from Scripture, which, in the famous words of 
 Augustine, "gives no false information." * It can hardly be an 
 * De civ. del, xvi, 9. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 229 
 
 accident that this appeal to Scripture is heard most clearly 
 and most confidently at the time when the limits of the sacred 
 canon had just been fixed by the unanimous consent of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 It is the purpose of this paper to point out that the ancient 
 church, along with much that was absurd and silly, possessed also 
 a considerable amount of scientific information quite as respect- 
 able in quality as that of the non-Christian world, and also to 
 indicate the process whereby the pursuit of scientific studies 
 came to be officially discouraged within the church, — indeed 
 for about a thousand years officially suppressed, — only to be re- 
 vived as soon as the inherent, coercive power of truth should 
 overcome the fear of ecclesiastical penalties. 
 
 We need not pause over such natural history as that reflected 
 in the Epistle of Barnabas. According to the unknown author 
 of that interesting document, babies are "first kept alive by honey 
 and then by milk"; the hyena changes its sex in regular alterna- 
 tion year by year; and other curious things are alleged to occur 
 in the world of organic life.* Nor need we consider the zoologi- 
 cal monstrosities of the apocalyptic literature, largely borrowed 
 from Judaism, for they do not belong to the realm of experi- 
 ence. When for example Hermas tells us that near Rome he met 
 a huge sea-monster, one hundred feet long, raising a cloud of 
 dust as it approached along the road, — "its head was as it were 
 of pottery," and "from its mouth issued fiery locusts," — we know 
 that the gentle Hermas had clothed his nightmare in the garments 
 of the current apocalyptic. f None of this is observational 
 science or even the first steps towards it. 
 
 There are crudities of another sort which, while far enough 
 removed from fact, do nevertheless rest upon a correct method, 
 namely that of observation. The only trouble is that the ob- 
 servations are mistaken. Here belong Lactantius's interesting 
 assertion that the "secretions of the brain" escape through the 
 nose, and that the wind-pipe is made of " soft bones." % Owing 
 
 * Ep. Bar?!. 6, 10. t Hermas: The Shepherd, Vis. iv, 1. 
 
 X Lactantius: de opificio del, 10 f. 
 
230 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 to the fragmentary condition of the text it is not easy to decide 
 how much sound knowledge may have lain concealed in that 
 curious mixture of fact and fancy, the Kea-rot of Julius Afri- 
 canus.* Rural affairs, medicine, charms, geography, travels, 
 and military tactics all come in for treatment, and many foolish, 
 not to say immoral superstitions find a place. It is clear enough 
 however that the author had collected facts, as well as curiosi- 
 ties, under his quaint title of " Embroidered Girdles." 
 
 Astrology proved to be a prolific source of pseudo-scientific 
 theorizing, especially among Christians of heretical tendencies. 
 Everyone is acquainted with the grotesque frontispiece, found 
 in many modern advertising almanacs, which depicts the human 
 body parceled out among the signs of the zodiac. This astro- 
 logical superstition is as old at least as the fifth century, "that 
 monstrous division of the whole human body among the twelve 
 signs of the zodiac," being included by Leo I among the errors 
 •with which "the filthy puddle of the Priscillianists " was then 
 reeking, f 
 
 II 
 
 More creditable to the Christians was the open-mindedness 
 of many of them respecting the ultimate problems to which scien- 
 tific inquiry leads back. Whence came the world? What is 
 the origin of things? The early Christians were not nearly so 
 dogmatic on the subject of creation as some of their later breth- 
 ren. Tertullian, for example, who could be positive enough 
 when he chose, would not commit himself as to whether " this 
 entire world-mass was self-existent and uncreated, as Pythag- 
 oras maintains, or brought into being by a Creator's hands, 
 as Plato holds." J Origen believed the world to have been cre- 
 ated at a definite point of time, but he held that other worlds ex- 
 isted before it, and others still would exist hereafter, since it would 
 be both impious and absurd to suppose that the creating Deity 
 should ever be idle.§ Origen had already begun the process of 
 
 * See Harnack: Gesch. der altchristl. Litt. I, 508 ff. The tractate de re 
 militari, the longest surviving fragment of the Kearol, is printed in Veterum 
 Mathematicorum Opera, pp. 275-316 (Paris, 1693), and also in loannis Meursii 
 Operum Vol. VII, columns 899-980 (Florence, 1746). 
 
 t Epistle 15'. I Apologeticus 11. § De princip. iii, 5^. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 231 
 
 demonstrating theories from Holy Scripture, but his position is 
 very far from the dogmatic exactness of later ages.* 
 
 It is not uncommon to meet with a devout reticence on scien- 
 tific subjects among the early Christians, many of them evi- 
 dently preferring not to venture too far into the * unknown. 
 Thus Irenaeus hesitates to commit himself on such an apparently 
 harmless topic as the periodic overflow^ of the river Nile, a phe- 
 nomenon which had attracted attention and aroused perplexity 
 throughout the ancient world. "We may say a great deal, 
 plausible or otherwise, on the subject," writes the Bishop of 
 Lyons, "but what is true, sure, and incontrovertible regarding 
 it belongs only to God."t Hippolytus knew of Anaxagoras's 
 theory, that the annual flood was caused by melting snow, but 
 the only use he makes of his knowledge is to include it in a lengthy 
 catalogue of pagan philosophical teachings from which he al- 
 leges the heretics have drawn their errors. f Therefore all such 
 views are to be held in suspicion. But we can forgive Hippo- 
 lytus his uncertainty when so well-informed a pagan writer as 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, contemplating "that most useful of 
 all rivers," finds himself equally at a loss to account for the Nile's 
 overflow, and rests content with a recital of what others have be- 
 lieved to be its cause. § 
 
 Hippolytus has also heard of the rash conjecture of Anaxagoras 
 that the sun surpasses the Peloponnesus in size, |1 but apparently 
 not of the still more venturesome hypothesis of certain mathe- 
 maticians, reported by Cicero, who maintained that the sun is 
 "more than eighteen times larger than the earth." ^ He does 
 not however feel called upon to render a decision on the subject. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Fathers exhibit most clearly both their limitations and 
 their approaches to sound knowledge, w^hen they undertake to 
 treat of the world and man. Among works of this class three 
 
 * Precision was reached by Archbishop Ussher whose Annales veteris et novi 
 Testamenti (1650-54) placed the date of the creation at 4004 b.c. This was 
 surpassed by his younger contemporary, Dr. John Lightfoot, who deter- 
 mined the very day, namely the autumnal equinox {Works, London, 1822 ff. 
 iv, 112). t Irenaeus: Adv. hoer. ii, 28. % Rejutatio, i, 7. 
 
 § Res gest. xxii, 15. i| Refut. i, 7. *[[ Cicero: Academica, i, 82. 
 
232 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 may be singled out for especial mention, Lactantius' De opificio 
 dei (to which title Jerone appends the words, vel formatiojir 
 hominis*), Basil of Csesarea's Hexaemeron, and its supplement 
 by Gregory of Nyssa, entitled On the Making of Man (jrepl 
 KaraaKevrj^; dvOpoiTrov). 
 
 Lactantius inveighs against "the folly of Epicurus" and "the 
 ravings of Lucretius," but this is in the interest of his argument 
 from design, which he develops in considerable detail. Follow- 
 ing more congenial classical models, he philosophizes about 
 the human body, pointing out the beauty and utility of its several 
 parts and their admirable coordination in the whole, which in 
 turn is under subjection to the ruling intelligence or mind.f 
 Crudeness and error are common, but not constant, in Lactantius' 
 treatise. Where he goes most into detail, there we see most 
 clearly that he has been at pains either to make observations or 
 to read the recorded observations of others. He not only knows 
 that the tongue, rather than the palate, is the chief organ of 
 taste, but he has discovered which parts of the tongue are espe- 
 cially sensitive. J He has found out that air passages extend 
 from the mouth to the lungs, as well as from the nose.§ AYith 
 regard to certain organs, such as the liver and spleen, he confesses 
 ignorance; only the great Designer know^s their purpose. But 
 he seems to anticipate a time when more will be known about 
 these things. II 
 
 Especially interesting are Lactantius' excursions into psy- 
 chology. Where the mind is situated and what its nature is 
 he does not know, although he views with favor the theory that 
 its chief seat is the brain, but he does not wholly scout the 
 notion that it may be diffused throughout the entire body as 
 Xenocrates the Platonist believed. Is not the divine mind simi- 
 larly diffused throughout the universe ?^ On the subject of sense 
 perception he approximates to modern theories, as one may see 
 from his discussion of vision. Through the eyes " the mind sees 
 those things which are without," for " the office of seeing ought 
 to be in that which sees, not in that w^hich is seen." In the brain 
 
 * De viris illustr. 80. t -^^ opif. dei. 6 ff. 
 
 X "The parts which are more tender on either side [of the tongue], draw 
 in the flavor with the most dehcate perception." {De opif. dei, 10.) 
 § Ibid., 11. II Ibid., 14. If Ibid., 16. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 233 
 
 "is contained the system of the sensation."* "Man himself" 
 (i. e., the Ding an sich) "can neither be touched, nor looked 
 upon, nor grasped, because he lies hidden within this body, which 
 is seen." f As to the " soul," or life-principle in man, philosophers 
 are not agreed what it is, and perhaps they never will be. 
 Lactantius however thinks it worth while to raise the question 
 whether mind and soul are not the same thing. Finding argu- 
 ments on both sides, he wisely leaves the question open. J 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa in his work On the Making of Man like- 
 wise displays a considerable acquaintance with the structure of 
 the human body. Here he sets forth the raison d'etre of brain, 
 heart, liver, lungs, etc., and also describes the organs themselves, 
 indicating their position and their several functions. There are 
 of course many erroneous statements in the book. But the 
 noticeable fact is that Gregory is aware that progress has been 
 made in anatomy and physiology, he is familiar with the les- 
 sons of the dissecting room and with the writings of competent 
 investigators, and he by no means makes light of these things. 
 On the contrary, he freely utilizes the best knowledge at his com- 
 mand, — presenting his results in the light of the church's teach- 
 ing, and giving to everything a teleological interpretation. He 
 is finally brought face to face with the ultimate problem of the 
 nature of matter, but this, he says, may be "left without re- 
 mark" since it has no immediate bearing upon his "consid- 
 eration of the parts." § One could wish that Gregory had not 
 been so easily turned aside from this great problem. 
 
 Larger themes than the mere structure of the body challenge 
 the attention of Basil in his Hcxaemeron, but here again one 
 feels an occasional sense of disappointment, when some highly 
 promising line of inquiry is broken off by the simple confession 
 of ignorance. One was justified, one feels, in expecting some- 
 thing better. But this was a very common expedient among 
 Christian writers in the transition period of the fourth century. 
 Basil appears actually to have weighed in his mind the compara- 
 tive merits of the geocentric and heliocentric theories of the uni- 
 verse, — without of course appreciating the problem in anything 
 like its full significance. An earlier Christian writer, Methodius, 
 
 * Ihul, 8 and 10. t Ihid, 19. % Ibid., 17 f. 
 
 § Greg. Nyssse: irepl KaTaerKevrj^ ivdpwwov, 30. 
 
234 THE EEPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 had allowed one of the characters in his Symposium to ridicule the 
 accepted Ptolemaic view,* but we must not therefore hastily 
 conclude that he held the true theory. Even Cosmas combatted 
 Ptolemy, — but he did it in the interest of his extraordinary cos- 
 mography, as we shall presently see. Basil must have regarded 
 the heliocentric theory as at least possible, but instead of pur- 
 suing the inquiry to its utmost limit, he again contents himself 
 with the remark, " If there is anything in this system which might 
 appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of 
 such perfect order, for the wisdom of God." f 
 
 IV 
 
 We have already noticed the sympathetic acquaintance of 
 many early Christian writers with the scientific hypotheses of 
 the ancient world. To be sure the Christians are sometimes 
 ironical, sometimes even scornful in referring to these views, — 
 but not always. Tertullian, the Carthaginian lawyer, speaks 
 flippantly of an age long past when the earth is said to have been 
 covered with water: "To this day marine conches and tri tons' 
 horns sojourn as foreigners on the mountains, eager to prove to 
 Plato that the heights have undulated." J It was rather early 
 for appeal to be taken to geology in computing the age of our 
 planet. He is less scornful in his reference to the fabled Atlantis, 
 described by Plato § and familiar to every lover of the classics. 
 Lying westward from the pillars of Hercules, in size exceeding Asia 
 Minor and Libya combined, inhabited by a powerful people, 
 dread foes of the foremost nation of Europe, this island had been 
 swallowed up by the all-devouring sea not less than nine thousand 
 years before the Athenian lawgiver, Solon, that is, in the tenth 
 millennium before the Christian era, or six thousand years before 
 Archbishop Ussher permitted the world to be created. Ter- 
 tullian found Plato's fable useful in rebutting the popular charge 
 that all great calamities were due to the presence of Christians 
 in the world. There had been calamities before. Accordingly 
 he does not attempt to discredit the story, although his satirical 
 tone suggests that it scarcely meets his approval. || 
 
 * Symposium, viii, 14. f Hexaemeron, i, 10. J Tertullian: De pallio, 2. 
 § Timoeus, 24 f., ed. Burnet, vol. iv, Oxford, 1905. 
 II Ad nationes, i, 9, Apologeticus, 40, De pallio, 2. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 235 
 
 That there were worlds beyond the ocean, apart from fables, 
 was a very ancient and wide-spread belief, resting upon what 
 foundations, however, it is not easy to determine. It is at 
 least as old as Aristotle.* Adventurous Carthaginian navigators, 
 blown before a storm, claimed to have visited such a land,t 
 and nobody seriously doubted their claim. Western Christians 
 seem early to have accepted the traditional belief in transoceanic 
 lands, although they held the intervening sea to be impassable,t 
 and were apparently not interested in Seneca's striking pre- 
 diction that a time would come when the ocean gateway would 
 be unbarred. § Before the end of the second century a more 
 hesitant tone is heard among the Christian writers, and a dis- 
 position to be non-committal manifests itself. Things which 
 transcend our knowledge should be left with God, writes Ire- 
 nteus, and in this he includes, among other things, " what lies be- 
 yond the ocean." II But Irenaeus is acquainted with the opinion 
 that there are such lands. A half-century or so later Origen cites 
 the passage from Clement of Rome, finding in it a hint at a 
 plurality of worlds, — an idea quite foreign to Clement, but 
 which Origen could use to advantage in his speculative system.^ 
 Anything like an intelligent use of the old suggestion disap- 
 pears in the haze of the Alexandrian's allegorical fancy. 
 
 The most interesting form of the classical belief in far-off 
 lands was that relating to the antipodes, the existence of which 
 had been asserted by Anaximander ** and other Greek philoso- 
 
 * Meteorologicorum lib. ii, 5. 
 
 t Diodorus: Bibliotheca historica, v, 19 f. (ed. Vogel, Leipzig, 1890). For 
 the best sketch of ancient opinion on this subject, see Alex, von Humboldt: 
 Examen critique de I'histoire de geographic du nouveau continent, p. 14 ff. (Paris, 
 1814-'34). 
 t Clement of Rome: Ep. 20. 
 
 § Venient annis soecula seris 
 Quibtis oceanus vincula rerum 
 Laxet et ingens pateat tellus. 
 Medea, ii, 375 ff. Further information about a western land is found 
 in Plutarch; see especially Moralia, recog. Bernardakis, v. 459 ff. (Leipzig, 
 1893), Goodwin's translation, v, 281 ff. (Boston, 1878). 
 
 II Adv. hoer. ii, 28". ^ De princip. ii, 3". 
 
 ** According to Hippolytus: Refut. i, 5. 
 
236 THE REPKESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQLHRY 
 
 phers.* Seneca makes playful allusion to Vergil's lines which 
 imply the acceptance of this view: 
 
 "And when to us the dayspring doth appear, 
 And blushing morn shows Phoebus' steeds are near, 
 To them the ruddy eve with weaker light 
 Kindles the lightsome tapers of the night." f 
 
 "Your friends," writes Cicero, "allege that directly opposite 
 to us on the farther side of the earth are people who stand with 
 feet over against our feet, and these you call antipodes." X This 
 theory is openly ridiculed by Christian writers from about 
 300 A. D. onward. Lactantius has a short and easy method 
 with such " marvellous fancies," and he triumphantly flings down 
 his challenge, "Is there anyone so senseless as to believe that 
 there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? 
 . . . that the crops and trees grow downwards? that the rains 
 and snow and hail fall upwards to the earth?" § About twelve 
 hundred years later another good churchman, a Spanish mission- 
 ary in Peru, gently corrected his derisive predecessors, on the 
 ground of personal knowledge of the antipodes. He had actually 
 been there. || 
 
 Lactantius attributes the fictitious belief in antipodes to an- 
 
 * Lactantius: Div. instit. iii, 24. 
 
 t Epist. moral, xx, 5 (122), init. (ed. C. R. Fickert, Leipz. 1842). The 
 quotation is from Vergil's Georg. i, 250 f. 
 
 Nosque uhi primus equis Oriens adflauit anhelis, 
 Illis sera ruhens accendit lumina Vesper. 
 
 X Vos etiam dicitis esse e regione nobis, e contraria parte terrce, qui aduersis 
 itestigiis stent contra nostra uestigia, quos antipodas uocatis. Academicorum 
 priorum, ii, 123, ed. J. S. Reid (London, 1885). See his Eng. transl., p. 80 f. 
 (London, 1880), and of. Tusculan Disputations, v, 24. 
 
 § Div. instit. iii, 24. 
 
 II " Lactantius Firmian and S. Augustine mocke at such as hold there be 
 any Antipodes, which is as much to say, as men marching with their feete 
 opposite to ours. . . . But whatsoever he [Lactantius] saieth, wee that live 
 now at Peru, and inhabite that part of the world which is opposite to Asia 
 and their Antipodes (as the Cosmographers do teach us) finde not our selves 
 to bee hanging in the aire, our heades downward, and our feete on high." 
 Jos^ de Acosta: Natural and Moral History of the Indies, reprinted (for the 
 Hakluyt Society) from the Enghsh translation of Edward Grimeston, 1604. 
 I. Natural History, chap. 7 (London, 1880). Andrew D. White quotes part 
 of this passage from Acosta in his Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 110, 
 note. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 237 
 
 Other fiction, namely " that the w orld is round like a ball," * 
 which likewise was an hypothesis widely current in antiquity, f 
 Theophilus of Antioch, a contemporary of IreniEUS, is acquainted 
 with this view, although he does not accept it any more than he 
 does the apparently equally reasonable hypothesis that the earth 
 is cubical.^ The idea of sphericity is opposed a little later by 
 Eusebius of Caesarea,§ and is passed over as useless by Basil 
 the Great; since Moses is silent respecting the shape of the 
 earth, shape must be unimportant; why then concern ourselves 
 about it? II 
 
 Augustine applies the principle of ecclesiastical authority to 
 the solution of the problem of the antipodes and all that goes 
 with it. Their existence is not only incredible, — a fable produced 
 by mere conjecture, — but it is also contradicted by plain infer- 
 ences from Scripture, which tells us the truth and nothing but 
 the truth. ^ Here we are brought face to face with a new situ- 
 ation within the church. Lactantius, be it observed, rejects 
 the theories of the philosophers, when he does reject them, on 
 
 * Loc. cit. 
 
 t So Plato: "The earth is a round body in the centre of the heavens," 
 (Phoedo, 108). Similarly Aristotle: "The earth also has necessarily a spherical 
 figure. . . . Hence too those who apprehend that the place about the Pillars 
 of Hercviles connects that which is about India, and thus that there is one sea, 
 do not appear to think very absurdly." {axvt^^ S'exf'" <r(paipo€idis dvayKawv 
 air-fjv . . . dib toi)s viroXafi^dvovrai ovvairreiv top irepl ras 'HpaKXeiovs (rr^Xas 
 rbirov Tip irepl rrjv IvSiK-qv, Kal tovtov rhv Tpbirov elvai r^v ddXarrav fiiav, ht} \Lav 
 viroXapL^dveiv diri<7Ta doKuv). De ccelo, ii, 14 {Aristotelis opera omnia, ii, Paris, 
 1850). Aristotle proceeds to say that the earth's circumference has been 
 computed at only about 400,000 stadia, which makes it altogether likely that 
 it is small in comparison with other stars. The geographer Strabo thus re- 
 ports the views of Eratosthenes, which he in part accepts: "The temperate 
 zone, which we have already designated as the longest zone, is that which 
 the mathematicians denominate a continuous circle returning upon itself, 
 {kxikKov ffvu^dWovffav ovtt/j' eavry). So that, if the extent of the Atlantic ocean 
 were not an obstacle, we might easily pass by sea from Iberia to India, still 
 keeping in the same parallel. . . ." {Strabonis Geographica, i, 4, ed. Meineke, 
 Leipz. 1866, i, 85.) 
 
 Cicero has a notable passage on the shape and the revolution of the earth 
 in connection with what he writes of the antipodes: Hicetas Syracosius, nt 
 ait Theophrastus, cceluin solem lunam Stellas, supera denique omnia stare censet 
 neque proeter terram rem ullam in mundo moueri, quae cum circum axem se 
 summa celeritate conuertat et torqueat, eadem efflci omnia, quae si stante terra 
 caelum moueretur." (Academica, ii, 123.) 
 
 t Ad Aidolyc. ii, 32. § Proep. evang. xv, 56 ff. 
 
 II Basil: Hexaemeron, ix, 1. If De civ. del, xvi, 9. 
 
238 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 the ground of their irrationality, not by appealing to an external 
 ecclesiastical standard. But the dilemma, rational or irrational, 
 no longer suffices for Augustine.* The century which had in- 
 tervened was the precise period when Catholic authority was 
 being worked out into a practical principle. And Augustine 
 defines its scope more clearly than any of his predecessors or 
 contemporaries, f — once even going so far as to affirm that he 
 would not believe the Gospel itself, except for the authority of 
 the church. J 
 
 VI 
 
 The fully developed application of ecclesiastical authority to 
 the domain of knowledge is found in a work of the sixth century, 
 the Christian Topography of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes. 
 The author was a learned Egyptian merchant, traveller, and 
 monk, who had seen much of the ancient world, and recorded 
 his information (and misinformation) in this important treatise, 
 with the special aim of combatting the theory that the earth is 
 a sphere. The book is conclusive evidence that there were still 
 not a few Christians who held that theory, notwithstanding the 
 opposition which had been exerted by influential churchmen for 
 more than two hundred years. § 
 
 According to Cosmas the "world," that is the universe, is an 
 oblong structure, shaped like an old-fashioned Saratoga trunk 
 with a rounded top,|| or (to use his own metaphor), "a house, 
 as one might call it, of enormous size, like an oblong vaulted 
 vapor-bath." ^ Our earth is a flat parallelogram, forming the 
 
 * So Acosta rightly understands him: "The reason which moved S. Augus- 
 tine to deny the Antipodes was other than that formerly alleadged, being of 
 a higher judgement. . . . Doubtlesse he drew the motive and cause from the 
 bowels of divinitie, whereby the holie Writ doth teach us that all mankinde 
 doth come from the first man Adam; and to say that men could passe to that 
 new world, crossing the great Ocean, were uncredible, and a meere lye." 
 (De Acosta: Nat. Hist, of the Indies, i, 8.) 
 
 t Except perhaps his younger contemporary, Vincent of Lerinum. 
 
 X Ego vero evangelio non crederem nisi me catholicoe ecclesioe commoveret 
 auctoritas. {Contra ep. Manich. 6.) 
 
 § KofffMa aiyviTTiov fjiovaxov xP'<'"'''o«'tK7) Toiroypa<f>la. The Christian Topog- 
 raphy of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk. Translated from the Greek by J. W. 
 McCrindle. (London, Hakluyt Society, 1897.) 
 
 II See Plate I, fig. 7, at the back of McCrindle's translation. 
 
 ^ Christian Topography, ii, 129. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 239 
 
 lower part of the " house." Its outer sides, beyond the surround- 
 ing ocean, are bounded by high walls, and overhead, separated 
 from the earth by the "firmament," is the cylindrical vault of 
 heaven, which thus forms an upper story of the "house." * In 
 view of this theory it is of course impossible that the earth should 
 be a sphere, — indeed it is "quite inconsistent with the nature of 
 things." As for the antipodes, they are "old wives' fables," 
 and the mere mention of them is prohibited by the plain teach- 
 ings of Scripture, f 
 
 One notes an unconscious mingling of reason and authority 
 in Cosmas* book. The earth, he tells us, belongs at the bottom 
 of the whole structure because it is heavier than anything else 
 and would naturally sink. X Heaven, on the other hand, is a 
 vaulted arch, in accordance with Old Testament prophecy.§ 
 Yet it is certain that Cosmas meant to rely ultimately upon the 
 authority of Scripture in establishing his views. "We have 
 advanced the foregoing conclusions," he writes, "as expressive 
 of the true Christian theory, having been moved to accept them 
 by divine Scripture, for they are not inventions or conjectures 
 of our own, but we have strictly followed what God has spoken 
 to us through the prophets and the Apostles and his own Son."|| 
 It is simple truth to say that Cosmas was honest in believing 
 the whole of his absurd system to be in harmony with Scripture, 
 and to be its sure exposition. If what the Bible was supposed 
 to teach about the world was rational, well and good. If not, 
 its authority was still paramount. What was man that he should 
 presumptuously dispute the church? With William of Occam, 
 Cosmas might have said that even if ecclesiastical doctrine were 
 much more irrational than any of it is, it must still remain obli- 
 gatory upon all Catholics, because it rests upon the indubitable 
 authority of the church.^ What the Indian navigator shows 
 
 * See the summary given in Book iv. 
 
 t Op. cU. i, 117, 121, ii, 157. 
 
 X Op. cit., ii, 128. He also gives other reasons. Reason apparently led 
 Acosta to a different conclusion, and it is difficult to doubt that he had Cosmas 
 in mind when he wrote of the "gross error " of supposing that the universe 
 is like a house, having the earth for its foundation and heaven for a covering. 
 {Natural History of the Indies, i, 7.) 
 
 § Ibid., ii, 129, referring to Is. 40^^ (Sept.). || Ibid., ii, 158 (end). 
 
 f Loofs: Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, p. 609. C4th ed. 1906.) 
 
240 THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 
 
 US is not so much the extent of his ignorance, — he is really a very 
 learned man, — but rather the power over men's minds already 
 exercised by mediaeval Catholicism. 
 
 VII 
 
 The attitude of the church towards natural science from the 
 sixth century onward was much simpler than before. There 
 was no longer a wide margin of doubt as to what and how 
 Christians should believe. Cosmography, like doctrinal theology 
 proper, became fixed and stereotyped, and there was an ortho- 
 doxy of nature as truly as of God. The truth was settled for 
 the people by the doctors, and the rank and file needed not to 
 concern themselves with endeavoring to know what it was; 
 the church knew, and that sufficed. The principle of "implicit 
 faith" was capable of application to every department of inquiry, 
 and momentous consequences followed Gregory the Great's 
 famous interpretation of the oxen and the asses* in Job 1". 
 Under the skillful treatment of Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the 
 Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas f this principle was so thor- 
 oughly established that it is hardly too much to say it directly 
 discouraged the advancement of learning. What was true of 
 sacred knowledge was still more true of what lay outside the 
 theological domain. Ecclesiasticism had for the time being 
 set its premium upon ignorance, and in two ways: first, by erect- 
 ing as a standard of scientific truth a book, whose sole function 
 should have been to teach religion; and, secondly, by the syste- 
 matic discouragement of independent inquiry. There were sur- 
 vivals here and there of the older Christian freedom, as for in- 
 stance in the writings of John Scotus Erigena and Roger Bacon, 
 but these were suffered to pass unchallenged rather through over- 
 
 * Quid aliud in figura per hoves quam bene operantes? Quid alivd per asinas 
 quam quosdam simpliciter viventes accipimus? (cited by Hoffmann: Lehre 
 von der Fides Implicita, p. 40 f. Leipz. 1903.) 
 
 t Unde in Job: boves arabant et asinoe pascebant juxta eos. Isti erant 
 asinoe pascentes juxta boves. Sicut hodie in ecclesia multi simplices, etsi ita 
 distincte nesciant trinitatem assignare, credunt tamen, quia in fide et huniilitate 
 adhcerent illis, qui et hoc sciunt et credunt. (Hugo of St. Victor, cited by 
 Hoffmann, p. 50.) The principle is set forth with admirable lucidity by 
 Thomas Aquinas, in his Quastiones disputatce, xiv, 11. 
 
THE REPRESSION OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 241 
 
 sight than through approval.* The poHcy of the church was 
 fixed. 
 
 But while mediaeval Catholicism must bear the responsi- 
 bility for having inaugurated and long maintained an obscu- 
 rantist policy with reference to scientific studies, there is some- 
 thing to be said on the other side. Those who are loudest in 
 denunciation of her stupid bigotry in adhering to an impossible 
 world-view and defending it by the illegitimate weapons of 
 ecclesiastical authority and false exegesis, — who remember the 
 condemnation of the heliocentric theory in astronomy and the 
 trial of Galileo before the Inquisition, — often forget that the 
 great astronomer, Copernicus, was a loyal son of the church, 
 himself in holy orders, and that his epoch-making book, De 
 revolutionibus orbium coBlestium, was dedicated to Pope Paul 
 Ill.f After all is said, one should remember that it was in this 
 same intolerant church that the learning of antiquity as well as 
 of the middle ages was preserved, and at her bosom were 
 nourished children who should in time break down false barriers 
 and once more make both religion and science free. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., July 30, 1910. 
 
 * Erigena's extraordinary treatise, De divisione naturce, enjoyed a limited 
 circulation for nearly four centuries before a pope discovered that it "teemed 
 with the worms of heretical depravity." (Bull of Honorius III, Inimicus 
 homo, Jan. 23, 1225.) 
 
 t For the condemnation of Copernicus' views see the decree of the Con- 
 gregation of the Index, in 1616, in Mirbt's Quellen zur Geschichte des Papst- 
 tums, p. 280. (2d ed. 1901.) 
 
XIX 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY : ITS NATURE 
 AND IMPLICATIONS 
 
 By William Adams Brown 
 
 One of the effects of the recent movement of thought known as 
 Pragmatism has been to raise anew the question as to the nature 
 and the extent of the rehgious interest in unity. Various mo- 
 tives have combined to render this question a vital one for re- 
 ligion. The curiosity of the mind as to the nature of ultimate 
 reality is re-enforced in the case of religious men by their de- 
 sire for the supremacy of the good, and the more intensely they 
 realize the gap which separates the world of actual experience 
 from the world of the divine ideal, the more acute must be their 
 longing for some assurance that the gulf is not an impassable 
 one, but that in some way and at some time God will make his 
 control manifest and bring about the complete supremacy of the 
 right. So it has come to pass that in every age, the Theodicy, 
 or the question of God's relation to evil, has held a central place 
 in Christian theology. 
 
 In the older theology, the aflfirmation of God's complete con- 
 trol was consistent with a clear recognition of the facts of experi- 
 ence which seem inconsistent with a monistic view of the uni- 
 verse. The fact of sin, with its tragic challenge and its appalling 
 consequences, meets us on every page. Theologians of all 
 schools, Roman and Protestant, Arminians as Calvinists, feel 
 that in dealing with so far-reaching a phenomenon no half-way 
 measures will do. Whatever unity religious faith may ulti- 
 mately build up in a world which seems so hopelessly divided, 
 it must take its departure from the actual dualism of experience. 
 So Catholicism makes its great contrast between the Church 
 and the world; Calvinism between the elect and the non-elect." 
 
 243 
 
244 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 Arminianism between the right and the wrong choice. Each 
 deals with an absolute antithesis — a contrast, the significance and 
 reach of which it is impossible to exaggerate. For each the world 
 of experience is divided into two rival realms; nature and the 
 supernatural; the secular and the religious; the world of law and 
 the world of grace; the dominion of sin and the sphere of salva- 
 tion; the city of Satan and the city of God. 
 
 We are not concerned here with the various methods by which 
 the older theology tried to overcome this antithesis. In the case 
 of the official Roman theology this was done by a complex ma- 
 chinery through which the Church, the divinely appointed rep- 
 resentative of God on earth, made its authority progressively 
 effective in the territory of its rival, and subdued his subjects to 
 its allegiance. In Arminianism it was secured through a self- 
 limitation of God, manifested in the gift of freedom, — a self- 
 limitation, such that the apparent failure which was its result 
 was not to be regarded as a defeat of God, but only as the means 
 which he had voluntarily chosen to secure a larger good, namely 
 the union of free beings with himself by their own voluntary 
 choice. In Calvinism, most daring but also most consistent of 
 the older systems, the dualism was carried back into the nature 
 of God himself, and the double outcome of the universe explained 
 through a divine decree which required such a divided issue — 
 the salvation of the elect for "the praise of his glorious grace" 
 but no less the condemnation of the reprobate for "the praise 
 of his glorious justice." What interests us here is the fact that 
 in each case the contrast which suggests the problem remains 
 unmodified. The unity which is finally obtained is consistent 
 with a full recognition — and what is more important — with an ad- 
 equate emotional valuation, of the actual dualism of experience. 
 
 With the rise of modern science we find the introduction of a 
 new factor. Here the intellectual motive, which underlies phi- 
 losophy, and the practical motive, which inspires religion, are re- 
 enforced by a third, which partakes of the nature of both. Science 
 shares the theoretical interest of philosophy, in that it is in search 
 of principles or rules of thought — laws, as we somewhat inac- 
 curately call them — but it shares also the practical interest of 
 religion, in that the problems which it seeks to solve are set for 
 it by a definite set of human experiences, and their solution will 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 245 
 
 lead, if successful, to the possession of practical powers of great 
 importance to human welfare and happiness. Philosophy had 
 dreamed of unity; religion had prophesied it. Science has set 
 itself the task of achieving it. This it does by taking the recalci- 
 trant facts which elude generalization, and putting them in their 
 places as parts of a consistent and orderly whole; and — what is 
 even more important — by showing us how, when so related and 
 ordered, they lend themselves to a practical use, or at least con- 
 trol, possible in no other way. An age of science, such as ours is, 
 must, by the very nature of the case, be pre-eminently an age of 
 unity. 
 
 The great idealistic systems of the nineteenth century are the 
 emotional counterpart of the modern scientific movement. In 
 part they anticipate its results, in part they accompany and in- 
 terpret it. In the writings of Hegel and his successors, the unity 
 of which science is in search is pictured as already attained, and 
 the entire process of the universe is represented as the unfolding 
 of the logic of the immanent idea. God, or the Absolute, is the 
 one all-comprehending reality, and finite experience, in all its 
 phases, is but the objectivication of his infinite thought. Ap- 
 parent contradictions find their reconciliation in the higher syn- 
 thesis of his all embracing intuition. What seems to us evil 
 appears from the divine point of view but as good in the making. 
 Death is the gateway to life, ignorance to knowledge, sin to 
 salvation. Thus, by the magic of the formula, the wizard 
 Thought unlocks mysteries hitherto deemed insoluble, and, for 
 the first time, in the world of absolute idealism, presents us with 
 a universe in which unity is not simply an ideal, but an attainment. 
 
 The effect of this transformation is nowhere more apparent 
 than in the sphere of religion. Here the contradictions of life 
 had been most acutely felt, and here, therefore, their resolution 
 produced results most revolutionary. The absolute contrasts 
 of the old religion are now reduced to relatives. Nature and the 
 supernatural are not two kinds of reality, but two aspects of 
 one and the same experience. Sin is not an appalling catastro- 
 phe; it is an element in every normal ethical experience. Atone- 
 ment is not the great exception; it is the universal law. Christi- 
 anity is not the only religion of salvation for a world otherwise 
 hopelessly sunk in ignorance and corruption; it is the culmina- 
 
246 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 tion of a series of ascending steps through which, age by age, God 
 has been progressively training mankind for himself. Incarnation 
 is the necessary expression in fact of the logic of the immanent 
 idea; and if we had no record of Jesus' life and teachings in the 
 Gospel, we could still have predicted his appearance as infalli- 
 bly as the astronomer can detect the presence of some unseen 
 planet or anticipate the reappearance of a vanished comet. 
 
 The great theological systems of the latter half of the last 
 century, were written by men who w^ere under the spell of these 
 daring generalizations. Dorner, Martensen, Biedermann, Pflei- 
 derer and Frank, to mention only a few out of many, take up the 
 task where Hegel had laid it down, and try, each in his own way 
 and by his own methods, to make of Christian theology a 
 speculative philosophy which shall fit all the facts of human ex- 
 perience into place as parts of a consistent and all-embracing 
 world view. In England Greene and the Cairds have carried 
 on the same philosophic tradition, and the liberal theology of 
 the last generation has made its positions familiar to English 
 and American students. 
 
 For some time past, however, the tide of absolute idealism has 
 been ebbing. Its claim to give a satisfying world view has been 
 rudely challenged, in Germany by Ritschl and his school, 
 and more recently in this country by our own pragmatists. The 
 unity of the Hegelian philosophy, they tell us, has no existence 
 in reality. It is a figment of the mind, a pleasing picture painted 
 by men of artistic temperament to blind their eyes to the ugli- 
 ness of life and to protect their sensitive feelings from the shock 
 of its discords. Life, as we know it, is not order, but, in part, at 
 least, chaos; not harmony, but strife; not certainty, but chance; 
 not unity, but multiplicity. For the all-embracing reality of 
 the older idealism we are offered our choice between dualism 
 and pluralism, with the odds in favor of the latter. 
 
 It must be admitted that the challenge has been a salutary one. 
 It has been a good thing for theology to be recalled from its 
 dreamland to the actual facts of life. It is well that we should 
 be reminded that for our present experience, at least, unity is an 
 ideal and not an attainment; that the world in which we live is 
 full of tragic possibilities of failure and shipwreck; that evil is 
 a real and present fact; that the possession of freedom involves the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 247 
 
 power of wrong choice, and that the wages of sin is death. The 
 practical test to which the pragmatists would subject all thought 
 is one to be welcomed by the disciples of him who said: "If any 
 man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." But where 
 the ideal of unity itself is challenged, and we are bidden to face 
 with an even mind the possibility of a universe permanently di- 
 vided against itself, it is a question whether the reaction has not 
 gone too far. Unity may be simply an ideal, and yet an ideal 
 which is necessary for the highest practical efficiency. At all 
 events, in view of the place which it has held in the past, this is 
 a possibility not lightly to be dismissed. 
 
 The present paper is offered as a contribution to this discus- 
 sion. I propose to consider the religious interest in unity, as it is 
 illustrated by that one of the great religions with which we stand 
 in closest relations — I mean the Christian. We shall inquire 
 what are the motives which lead the Christian to desire a uni- 
 fied world view; and shall consider in some detail what this desire 
 involves, how far it extends, and what is its relation to other 
 motives which lead men to seek unity in other fields. 
 
 But here a preliminary definition is necesssary. Christianity 
 is a very comprehensive and indefinite term. It has been asso- 
 ciated at different periods of history with widely different con- 
 ceptions of religion, and almost every one of the possible philo- 
 sophical positions has been defended by men who have called 
 themselves Christian. If our discussion is to be fruitful, w^e must 
 begin by explaining in what sense we ourselves use the word. 
 
 By Christianity, for the purpose of the present inquiry, we shall 
 understand not merely the religion which Jesus founded, but 
 that for which he is normative. Many forms of historic Chris- 
 tianity have departed so widely from the ideals of the Master 
 that they can in no sense be regarded as the legitimate develop- 
 ment of his teaching. With these we are not concerned here. 
 The Christianity with which we have alone to do is the religion 
 which makes Jesus central in fact as well as in name; or in other 
 words, which is the expression of the principles and convictions 
 by which he lived and for which he died.* 
 
 * This does not mean, of course, that Christianity must be simply the re- 
 production of the teachings of Jesus, but that it must be consistent with them. 
 It must not contradict them. 
 
248 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 Among these are the following: 
 
 (1) The conviction that God is our Father, and that we are 
 his children and so brothers of one another. 
 
 (2) That Jesus has given us in his own person the supreme 
 revelation, both of the character of God and of the ideal for man. 
 
 (3) That the Kingdom of God, or the society of men living 
 in conscious sonship and brotherhood, is at once the final pur- 
 pose of God and the supreme end for man, so that the indi- 
 vidual fulfils his own true end only as he makes this wider social 
 purpose his own. 
 
 (4) That salvation is not a matter of reward or of merit, but 
 of one's attitude toward God and indirectly toward man, that 
 it begins with trust, has its characteristic mark in freedom, and 
 its fruit and test in brotherly love and service. 
 
 (5) That this state of trust, freedom and love, is possible here 
 and now, and that it was Jesus' life purpose not only to show men 
 its nature, but to make them sharers in its experience; yet that 
 none the less the complete realization of the Christian ideal 
 belongs to the future, since it involves a social transformation 
 not yet completely attained. 
 
 (6) That the certainty of this ultimate realization is guaranteed 
 by faith in the fatherly purpose of God, who is not only the saviour 
 of individuals, but the ruler of the world, and hence able to bring 
 his purpose to a successful issue in the world. 
 
 No doubt historic Christianity contains much more than this, 
 and many Christians to-day would feel that such a statement 
 omitted much that they regarded as important in their faith; but 
 so much as this, at least, most men would admit, belongs to 
 Christianity. To be a Christian means to believe in the Father- 
 hood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, 
 the ethical and spiritual nature of salvation, and the Kingdom 
 of God as the final goal and the certain outcome of history. 
 
 Taking this, then, as a working definition of Christianity, 
 sufficiently accurate for our present purpose, we proceed to raise 
 the question as to what follows for the Christian view of the world. 
 What is the Christian attitude to this wide-spread human demand 
 for unity? How far does Christianity make it its own? How 
 far is it indifferent thereto? AMiat special contribution has it 
 to make to the problem of unity, and what is its relation to the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 249 
 
 historic solutions which have been proposed by others? In 
 other words, we have to do with the Christian demand for unity, 
 its nature and its impHcations. 
 
 I say, its nature and its impHcations. The distinction is an 
 important one. We may agree that the Ciiristian interest de- 
 mands unity, without accepting all the conclusions which have 
 been drawn from this premise. Indeed, we shall find that a clear 
 definition of the nature of the Christian demand is the first con- 
 dition of a right determination of the extent and limits of the re- 
 sulting conclusions. 
 
 I remark, then, in the first place, that the Christian demand for 
 unity is a practical demand. By a practical demand, I mean a 
 demand growing out of the active side of man's nature as dis- 
 tinct from that which is merely theoretical or speculative. The 
 motive which leads the Christian to seek unity in the philosophic 
 sense of the term is not the same which leads the philosopher 
 or the scientific man to seek it, though we shall see later that there 
 is a point at which the Christian interest touches the philosophic 
 and the scientific interests, and can make them its own. It is a 
 practical problem which leads the Christian to raise the ulti- 
 mate theoretical questions, namely, the problem how to realize 
 the ideal of Jesus in his own life, and to fulfil the purpose of 
 Jesus in society at large. No sooner does he make the attempt 
 to translate his faith into practice, than he is brought face to face 
 with obstacles, which seem insuperable, and it is in the desire 
 to overcome these obstacles that the specifically Christian de- 
 mand for a consistent and harmonious Weltanschauung first 
 makes itself felt. 
 
 The experience is so familiar a one that it needs no lengthy 
 description. We live, every one of us, in a physical and a social 
 environment, in which we touch and are touched by forces and 
 influences which we must be able to control, if we are to realize 
 our ideal, either for ourselves, or for others. These forces and 
 influences are the same with which science and philosophy deal, 
 and, whether we will or no, we are obliged to take account of 
 them. Ritschl has well said that in religion we have to do not 
 simply with God and the soul, but with God, the soul and the 
 world. Even in those ascetic and other-worldly forms of re- 
 ligion, like Buddhism or thorough-going mysticism, which realize 
 
250 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 their ideal through the negation of the world, it is still the world 
 to be denied which determines the nature of the problem and the 
 character of its solution. But, in Christianity, which is not 
 primarily an other-worldly or a mystic, but a social and ethical 
 religion, this contact is much more intimate. The Christian is 
 conscious of being a fellow-laborer with Christ in his great work 
 of establishing his Kingdom in the world, and, that he may 
 be able to do this, he must be sure that the power upon which he 
 relies for help in his own spiritual life is so far, at least, master of 
 the world and of other men that no hindrance can come from them 
 which will prevent the realization of his purpose. How much 
 this involves in detail we shall consider presently. Here it is 
 sufficient for us to note the fact of the demand and its nature. 
 
 I note, in the second place, that the Christian demand is an 
 ethical demand; that is, one which is determined by the char- 
 acter of the divine purpose to establish the Kingdom. The unity 
 which the Christian seeks in his world is such a unity as this in- 
 volves. As such, the Christian view of the world is contrasted 
 with all forms of monism which seek unity in the region of the 
 abstract and the sub-ethical, or, in other words, with panthe- 
 istic monism, whether in its religious or in its philosophical 
 form. It is Ritschl's great service that he has brought out this 
 contrast so clearly. Indeed, so vehement have been his attacks 
 upon philosophy, falsely so-called, that the speculative interest 
 in his own theology has been unduly obscured. It is a great mis- 
 take to classify Ritschl, as is prevailingly the custom, with the 
 philosophical dualists. Ritschl feels the impulse to unity as 
 strongly as any monist, only it is in the specifically Christian 
 way, a way which finds its gratification in an ethical rather 
 than in a physical or a pantheistic monism. Ethical monism, 
 by the very necessity of the case, makes place for a relative 
 dualism or better pluralism, a pluralism in which many indi- 
 viduals, capable of divided interests and purposes, are bound 
 together by their common relation to one controlling ethical 
 personality and their common acceptance of his purposes. It 
 is such a unity as this that Christianity demands. 
 
 And this leads me to remark, in the third place, that the Chris- 
 tian demand for unity is a religious demand, that is, it is a demand 
 which springs out of the nature of the Christian conception of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 251 
 
 God. The Father whom Jesus trusted was not simply a God 
 of righteous and loving purpose, but one who was able to realize 
 that purpose. The Christian God is not indeed a God of mere 
 power, but none the less he is a God of power. If not necessarily 
 strictly omnipotent, in the abstract sense of the word, he is yet 
 strong enough to overcome all obstacles which may impede the 
 accomplishment of his purpose. Certainly faith in such a God 
 was an essential element in the religious consciousness of Jesus, 
 and the motive which held him true when the supreme test of 
 his life came. If, then, by essential Christianity be meant the 
 principles and convictions which were controlling in Jesus' own 
 life, we must admit, among such necessary principles, faith in a 
 God of power adequate to complete ethical control. 
 
 If it be asked whether a man may not be a Christian who has 
 lost this faith, one who believes in a good but limited, or even 
 impotent, God, one who is content to follow the right even if it 
 leads to ultimate defeat and destruction, not only for himself, 
 but for society and the world at large, the answer is that certainly 
 such a man is more Christian than one who believes in a God of 
 power without right. He is one who is on the way to Christian 
 faith, one with whom Christians can sympathize and work, but 
 not a typical and normal Christian in the sense at present under 
 discussion, a Christian, that is to say, who reproduces in his own 
 experience those elements which were controlling in the religious 
 experience of Jesus. Christianity, so defined, involves faith, 
 not simply that God is Chrisdike, but that the Christlike God 
 is supreme. Indeed, it may be said that the element of supremacy 
 is always present in the idea of God, and it is a fair question 
 how long religious faith could endure, if the believer's confi- 
 dence in the power of his God to control were to be under- 
 mined. 
 
 So much for the nature of the Christian demand for unity. But 
 the recognition of such a demand leaves the question of its ex- 
 tent and limits still undetermined. Here there is more room for 
 difi'erence of opinion, and to this second and more difficult phase 
 of our question we now turn. 
 
 There are two spheres in which the Christian demand for unity 
 needs to be tested, the realm of the sub-personal and non-moral, 
 which we call the physical universe, or nature; and the sphere of 
 
252 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 spiritual relationships where personality has its home. We shall 
 consider each in turn. 
 
 With reference to the physical universe, it is sufficient to say 
 that the Christian demand for unity extends so far, and so far 
 only, as is necessary to secure the supremacy of the Christian 
 principle in the second or spiritual sphere. The question under 
 debate is as to how much this involves. Does it involve the recog- 
 nition of a common principle in both realms? Must the Chris- 
 tian God be also the complete master of nature, either in the sense 
 of having created and now preserving and ordering it, as in the 
 older realistic philosophy, or as its immanent ground, as in mod- 
 ern monism? This is in part a speculative question, to be an- 
 swered according to our general view of the relation of the two 
 realms and the character and extent of their connection, as mani- 
 fest in experience. We are here concerned with the general 
 principles which determine the Christian attitude to all such ques- 
 tions. 
 
 In the first place, then, the control of God over nature is re- 
 quired by the Christian principle, so far as the functions of the 
 human spirit may be shown to be dependent upon physical 
 causes. If God is Lord of the spirit, and the Christian life is 
 the life of free sons with their Father, then, so far as the spirit 
 is influenced or affected by physical conditions, God as the 
 supreme Spirit must be able to control these. 
 
 In the second place, the control of God over nature is required 
 by the Christian principle, so far as the realization of the ideal 
 human society may be shown to be dependent upon physical 
 (e. g., sanitary, economic, etc.) conditions. So far as environ- 
 ment shall be found to influence and determine the nature of 
 the Christian society, so far God must be shown to be master 
 of the environment. This connection is actually made in the 
 Christian estimate of pain. Pain is the form in which the eftVcts 
 of the physical environment upon the spirit of man make them- 
 selves felt most adversely. Christianity makes room for pain 
 in its view of God's Providence. The Christian God may not, 
 indeed, send trouble in the sense of arbitrary suffering for its 
 own sake, but he is one who uses and controls trouble. Through 
 suffering — physical and moral — he is continually teaching 
 spiritual lessons of the highest importance, and so making it the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 253 
 
 instrument of the advancement of his Kingdom. As to the exact 
 way in which we are to think of God as exercising this control, 
 there is room for difference of opinion. The older theologians 
 conceived of God as exercising his sovereignty in a more or less 
 external way, and relied for their proof of his presence in nature 
 upon special acts of creation, or of providence, or of miracle. 
 We to-day emphasize the orderliness and consistency of God's 
 dealings, and interpret the laws which science formulates as 
 the normal method of God's self-manifestation. The change is 
 due partly to a better philosophy and partly to an enlarged ex- 
 perience. The result of both changes has been a new conception 
 of the supernatural, or in other words, of the way we conceive 
 spirit as manifesting itself through nature. Instead of identify- 
 ing the supernatural with the exceptional, we interpret it as the 
 worthful and meaningful, and gain our assurance of God's 
 presence in nature from the purposes it serves, rather than from 
 the power w-hich it manifests. This change is of the highest 
 importance philosophically, yet of itself it does not touch the 
 essence of Christian faith. That which is essential for Chris- 
 tianity is that the Christ-like God shall control, and this is a con- 
 viction which men have held and do hold, whose views of the 
 supernatural are very crude and imperfect. To us to-day, 
 trained in modern science and philosophy, the conception of 
 God's immanence is probably more natural and helpful than the 
 older conception of his transcendence. But here again, that 
 which is essential is that the Christian God shall control, not the 
 way in which we conceive his control to be exercised. It is not 
 even necessary from the Christian point of view to believe that 
 God is the author of nature, provided we are sure that, now that 
 nature is here, God is in complete control. It may indeed be 
 difficult for most of us to see how it is possible to affirm complete 
 control without at the same time believing in creation, but if 
 any one finds this position philosophically satisfactory, he is at 
 liberty to hold it, without sacrificing anything which is vital to 
 Christian faith. 
 
 So far we have spoken of the indirect interest of the Christian 
 in the assurance of God's control over nature. There is, how- 
 ever, one point at which the Christian demand for unity passes 
 beyond this indirect interest and leads directly to the affirma- 
 
254 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 tion of God's presence in nature. This is in connection with the 
 phenomena which we call beautiful. In itself, of course, the 
 discovery of beauty in nature is not a specifically Christian ex- 
 perience, but the interpretation of beauty, when discovered, as 
 the handiwork of God, is the natural consequence of the Chris- 
 tian principle. It is a part, and a necessary part, of that process, 
 by which all the phases of human experience are brought into 
 harmony with the Christian principle and interpreted in the light 
 of the divine purpose. Nothing that is good and true can be 
 alien to the God whom Jesus reveals. But if this be true, beauty 
 must have its place as a revelation of the divine nature. We 
 have the highest authority for this attitude. Jesus himself sets 
 us the example in those wonderful passages in the Sermon on 
 the Mount, in which he carries back the painting of the lilies 
 to his Father's love and care. In this religious interpretation of 
 nature he shows his kinship with the poets and the artists of 
 every age, who have made beauty their god. But he goes be- 
 yond them in emphasizing the moral significance of beauty as 
 simply one aspect of that supreme harmony which dominates 
 all life, and which is some day to find complete expression in the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 But with this reference to the artists and the poets we have al- 
 ready passed from the first stage of our inquiry to the second, 
 from the realm of nature to that of personality. WTiat, we have 
 still to ask, does the Christian demand for unity involve here? 
 Here again our question divides itself. In considering the bear- 
 ing of the Christian demand for unity upon the personal world, 
 we have to distinguish its relation to those permanent types of 
 spiritual experience which, while not specifically Christian, have 
 appealed to a large multitude of men as inherently worthful, 
 and secondly, to those phases of human experience which retard 
 or oppose the realization of the Christian ideal. 
 
 And first of the bearing of the Christian demand for unity 
 upon other worthful types of experience. Of these the most 
 important are the artistic, the scientific and the ethical. With 
 reference to all three, it is clear that the Christian principle re- 
 quires an attitude not merely of tolerance, but of sympathetic 
 appreciation and of appropriation of the good which they con- 
 tain. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 255 
 
 We have already spoken of the true attitude of the Christian 
 to the beauty of nature. The same principle applies with even 
 greater force in the case of art, which is man's attempt to beautify 
 human life. There are two possible attitudes which the Chris- 
 tian may take toward art. He may be indifferent to it, as some- 
 thing which, while in itself legitimate and innocent, and useful 
 for those who like it, is of no importance to the Christian as such; 
 or he may value it as one of the forms in which the many-sided 
 life of the Kingdom manifests itself. The latter is not only 
 preferable on practical grounds; it is the only position theoreti- 
 cally compatible with the Christian principle itself. How can a 
 Christian, who accepts Jesus' law of brotherhood, be indifferent 
 to art? That law requires that so far as strength and time ad- 
 mit, the interests and concerns of each of the members of the 
 Kingdom shall be the interest and the concern of all. It is the 
 Christian's duty, as it is his highest privilege, to understand and 
 sympathize with everything by which his brother's life is enlarged 
 and enriched. How, then, can he be indifferent to the joy of 
 the artist in creation or of the art lover in appreciation? But 
 the Christian principle reaches farther still. We have some- 
 thing to give as well as to receive, something without which art 
 cannot realize its highest mission, namely, the vision of that su- 
 preme harmony which unifies all life, and helps us to discover 
 in regions of experience, which, seen without the illumination 
 of the Christian principle, would seem partial, distorted, and 
 therefore ugly, the beauty of holiness and the glory of sacrifice. 
 
 W^hat is true of the artistic, is true also of the intellectual 
 life. We have contrasted the scientific and the philosophical 
 interest with the Christian, and such contrast is necessary. None 
 the less it is true that the Christian attitude toward philosophy 
 and science cannot be one of indifference. Here again the 
 principle of sympathy applies, and here, too, the principle of 
 ministry receives a new illustration. As Christians we are inter- 
 ested in philosophy and in science, because they are forms of 
 the life of the Kingdom, and permanent interests of our brothers, 
 in which we cannot but sympathize; but this is not all. We 
 believe we have something to impart which philosophy and science 
 need. We have something to give philosophy. The God in 
 whom we believe is for us the ultimate reality; — if not the phil- 
 
256 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 osophic Absolute in the technical sense, at least the Being through 
 whom unity is attained in the sphere of practice. Any attempt, 
 therefore, on the part of philosophy, to solve the problem of unity, 
 which takes no account of the contribution of Christianity, must 
 reach an inadequate result. We have something, too, for science. 
 In the Christian experience we find the clearest illustration of 
 spiritual laws of the highest practical importance. Until this 
 experience is taken into account, the evidence as to man's nature 
 is not all in, and we cannot therefore be indifferent to the question 
 as to whether or not those who are studying the problems of 
 the spirit make use of the clue which we believe we possess. 
 
 Even closer is the connection between Christianity and the 
 ethical life. This connection has been so much emphasized in 
 recent years by Ritschl and his school, that it is not necessary to 
 linger over it here. That the Christian is vitally interested in 
 the moral life wherever it is found; that he sees in it an evidence 
 of the working of his Father's spirit, and a preparation for 
 his kingdom; that every one who loves and serves his brother 
 is following in the footsteps of Jesus, whether he is conscious 
 of the fact or not; and conversely, that Christianity has a con- 
 tribution to make to these unconscious followers, by providing 
 them with a religious basis for their instinctive faith in the worth 
 of the individual, w^th a comprehensive programme for social 
 effort, and with a satisfying comradeship: all these are facts toa 
 patent to be denied. The danger is rather that in our emphasis 
 on the ethical element in Christianity, we shall under-estimate 
 the value of other types of human experience which are often 
 contrasted with it. 
 
 Such an example of under-estimate may be found, I believe, 
 in the attitude of some recent writers to the type of religion 
 known as mysticism. The characteristic feature of the mystic 
 experience is its immediacy. The soul feels itself lifted into the 
 immediate presence of God, and in the emotional exaltation pro- 
 duced by this contact, all else is forgotten. The world of com- 
 mon experience, of daily duty, even of human love and sympathy, 
 drops below the level of consciousness, and nothing remains 
 but the glow of an indescribable joy. Now, it cannot be denied 
 that mysticism has often assumed forms that are not merely un- 
 christian but anti-christian. It has been individualistic, in- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 257 
 
 trospective, unethical, selfish. Yet none the less is it true, if 
 history and psychology are trustworthy guides, that in the mystic 
 experience we have to do with a tendency in human nature too 
 deep-seated to be dismissed with a simple denunciation. Mere 
 negation does not meet the case. With the mystic, too, it is the 
 Christian's duty to enter into sympathetic fellowship, partly 
 that he may understand that which is precious and vital in his 
 experience, and, so far as he can consistently do so, may make it 
 his own; partly that he may correct its inadequacy and narrow- 
 ness by supplying that which it lacks. What mysticism lacks 
 is a clear vision of the kind of God with Avhom we should seek 
 communion in religion. What mysticism has, and present-day 
 Christianity often lacks, is the sense of joy in communion. We 
 need to remember that the consciousness of God's presence in 
 which the mystic finds his satisfaction is not to be found only, 
 or even chiefly, in the self-centred, introspective life. It is through 
 the service of man that we enter most directly into the presence 
 of God and become most aware of his fellowship. Yet none the 
 less that consciousness is something supremely to be desired for 
 its own sake. There is a real danger that in our opposition to 
 what seems an unethical individualism, we may lose that which 
 has always been regarded as the supreme blessing of religion, 
 namely, the sense of personal communion with the personal God. 
 It is well to emphasize the purpose of God as the central fact 
 of the Christian revelation; but God's purpose is not a substi- 
 tute for his presence, but the means through which he manifests 
 it to the intelligence and the will. Religion is more than ethics. 
 Faith in God adds something to love for man, just as in the 
 life of the home the consciousness of the father's love and care 
 for each individual child gives added meaning to the homely 
 acts of service through which alone the ideal of the home can be 
 realized. 
 
 With reference to the other class of phenomena, those which op- 
 pose the realization of the Christian purpose, it is possible to be 
 more brief. Not because the problem is unimportant or its so- 
 lution easy, but because it is that phase of the question which has 
 received most attention in the past, and in which the issues at 
 stake are therefore most familiar. When we approach the facts 
 of moral evil we face in its clearest form that relative dualism. 
 
258 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 or pluralism, which is involved in all ethical life and which, con- 
 sidered in itself, is not the negation, but the condition of unity. 
 The difficulty arises when the discord which sin at present causes 
 is regarded as ultimate, and evil exalted to a power permanently 
 independent of the divine control. This is a position which no 
 Christian theologian has been willing to take, since it would in- 
 volve the destruction of that practical supremacy, which is the 
 fundamental postulate of Christian faith. Somehow or other we 
 must believe that, while sin is sin and therefore hateful and harm- 
 ful, it is here as part of God's plan and subject to his control. 
 
 The historical positions on the subject are familiar, and it is 
 not necessary to linger over them here. Three possibilities seem 
 open. We may explain sin with historic Calvinism as the neces- 
 sary background for the display of the divine holiness. Or we 
 may account for it, with Arminianism, as due a self-limitation of 
 God, in the creation of free beings. Or finally, with Universal- 
 ism, we may regard sin as a temporary incident in a process of 
 divine training, whose end will be the salvation of all. 
 
 Of the three the first, at least in its older form, seems incon- 
 sistent with the Christian principle. According to this view God 
 could have prevented the entrance of sin into the world, and, 
 now that it is here, if he so decide, he can banish it completely 
 through the conversion of all sinners, but he refrains from doing 
 this because a double outcome of the moral life is necessary for 
 the full display of his own perfections. Justice has its rights as 
 well as mercy, and justice requires the final condemnation of 
 some sinners, as mercy requires the salvation of some. This 
 gives us a unity, indeed, but not the kind of unity which Chris- 
 tian faith demands. The God whom Jesus reveals desires the 
 welfare of all his children, and it is impossible to believe that he 
 would arbitrarily exclude any from participation in his salva- 
 tion. Justice is not an independent principle in God, which re- 
 quires vindication for its own sake, but rather the expression of 
 that consistency of moral purpose which finds its highest satis- 
 faction in the salvation of man. 
 
 As between the other alternatives, the issue is not so simple. 
 Strong arguments may be cited on either side, and a full discus- 
 sion of the subject would require a paper in itself and lead us into 
 bypaths into which it is not possible to enter here. This only 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 259 
 
 need be said: that whatever self-limitation may be involved in the 
 creation of freedom, it must not be such as to imperil the divine 
 control. We dare not say with a recent theologian* that God 
 has failed in his plan for men, and that the world which we now 
 see is only his second choice, a world with which he puts up for 
 want of a better. If all individuals are not ultimately saved, it 
 will be because the salvation of individuals as such is not the 
 primary object of God's plan — because, in other words, his plan 
 is social and not individual, and the accomplishment of this social 
 purpose involves a double issue, inexplicable, if not indefensi- 
 ble, from a purely individual point of view. 
 
 The difficulty with this solution lies in its application. Theoreti- 
 cally there is much to be said in its favor. It corresponds with 
 what we know of God's method elsewhere. It seems most in 
 accord with the facts of experience, which point to a double issue 
 of the moral life, while at the same time it relieves us of the 
 aroitrariness of the older theodicy, where the problem is conceived 
 in terms of the individual alone. But when we attempt to apply 
 it to the practical problems of every-day Christianity, it breaks 
 down. It is hard to see how Jesus' estimate of the worth of each 
 individual soul can be compatible with any such limitation of the 
 range of God's purpose. The logic of Christian faith is as un- 
 willing to set limits to the love of God as to his power. 
 
 We face here the old antinomy to which all consistent thinking 
 is brought at last, — the question of the reconciliation of the claims 
 of power and of love. What Christianity offers us here is not 
 a new theoretical solution — the differences of opinion which have 
 obtained among Christians in the past are the best proof of 
 this — but such a reinforcement of faith in the love and power 
 of God as to make it possible to hold fast to the possibility 
 of an ultimate reconciliation in spite of theoretical difficulties. 
 Whether, as individuals, we shall adopt one or the other of the 
 forms of the historic theodicy will depend, as in the case of our 
 interpretation of the relation of God to nature, on philosophic 
 and scientific considerations which are in themselves apart from 
 Christian faith. 
 
 * O. A. Curtis : The Christian Faith, Personally Given in a System of Doc- 
 trine, p. 4G5. " The final universe will be nothing but a second best, a drop 
 down from the wish, an ideal mangled." 
 
260 THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR UNITY 
 
 In the preceding discussion we have confined ourselves to 
 the question of unity in the theoretical sense; but it is obvious 
 that if the positions which have been taken are correct, they have 
 an important bearing upon the practical questions before the 
 Church. It follows from our faith in the supremacy of the Christ- 
 like God that we must recognize his presence and activity in 
 aspects of experience and among groups of persons, not at pres- 
 ent included within organized Christianity. But it is equally 
 clear that this separation between that which is Christian in 
 name and in spirit is unfortunate, and that it ought to be our aim 
 to bring to explicit consciousness and to effective expression the 
 unity which we believe to exist in fact. This is the practical 
 problem before the Church to-day. How it is to be solved in 
 detail, it is not the purpose of this paper to inquire, but we may 
 be permitted, in conclusion, to sum up in three simple princi- 
 ples the lines along which such a solution is to be sought. 
 
 (1) It is our duty, as Christians, to co-operate with any man, 
 no matter what his intellectual views may be, who is willing to 
 make Jesus' purpose his own and to labor for its accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 (2) It is our duty to enter sympathetically into the under- 
 standing of all those forms of human experience which differ 
 from our own, that we may find the elements of truth or beauty 
 which they contain, and may appropriate them. 
 
 (3) It is our duty so to organize the specific forms and practices 
 through which the Christian principles find expression in the 
 world, that all true and good men everywhere shall find in them 
 something which answers to the needs of their own particular 
 type of spiritual life. Only through some such comprehensive 
 programme as this can we hope to secure that practical unity 
 which will be the one conclusive proof of the theoretical unity, 
 to the discussion of which this paper has been devoted. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 August 23, 1910. 
 
XX 
 
 A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 
 By Thomas C. Hall 
 
 1. It would be a gain in many ways if the word mysticism were 
 used more exactly and more narrowly defined, particularly in 
 works dealing with the development of religious thought. Schel- 
 ling says: "Mysticism can only be called that spiritual state 
 (Geistesbeschaffenheit) which turns with contempt (verschmiiht) 
 from all scientific basis, or even discussion, and regards all truth 
 as springing from a so-called inner and not at all universal, but 
 rather individual light; from immediate revelation; from simple 
 ecstatic intuition or simple feeling." That this describes ele- 
 ments in the great classic mystics cannot be denied. But prac- 
 tically the immediacy of nearly all religious and even aesthetic 
 feeling defies in like manner scientific analysis, and the artist 
 trusts to the immediate musical revelation, the poet to the rapt- 
 ure of poetic ecstasy, or the prophet to the profound sense of 
 divine revelation for reaching his type of truth in thought or 
 conduct. The impatience of romanticism with the formal shal- 
 low rationalism of the preceding age was justified by the facts 
 of human life. But the message of romanticism was the place 
 this immediacy had in human experience, and romanticism, even 
 on its religious plane, was very far removed from classic mysti- 
 cism. So that although immediacy is always an element in 
 mysticism it can hardly be called its definite essence without 
 introducing mysticism where it certainly does not belong. 
 
 2. Nor is mysticism simply sentimental piety. Its classic 
 forms cannot be enclosed in a "phase of thought or perhaps 
 feeling," as Andrew Seth in his most admirable summary of 
 mysticism in the Encyclopedia Britannica seems to do. In 
 these classic forms mysticism is both a goal, and a method for 
 
 261 
 
262 A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 
 
 reaching that goal; and where this goal is clearly apprehended 
 then the various types of mysticism may most conveniently be clas- 
 sified in accordance with the ways they take to attain their end. 
 The main element in a satisfactory definition of mysticism must 
 therefore be found in its fundamental purpose. And once this 
 purpose is firmly grasped it may be clearly seen how a narrow 
 stream of classic mysticism flows steadily down the history of 
 thought, now widening out and losing itself seemingly in a gen- 
 eral religious demand for immediacy of vision, and personal ex- 
 perience, but whenever it comes to self-consciousness we find 
 it stating again its essential purpose with insistent and decisive 
 cleprness. This purpose is metaphysical union with the source 
 of all Being, the identification of the soul with the very sub- 
 stance of God. 
 
 3. The word metaphysical is here used to sharply divide classic 
 mysticism from simple religious longing for union w4th God. 
 This longing is a common element in all religious experience, 
 and differs in its expression according to the worshipper's idea 
 of God. The union with him may be as loyal subject to a chief 
 or king, submission to him as Lawgiver and Creator, or loving 
 obedience as to a Father, etc., etc. In such religious surrender 
 there is no metaphysical background at all, and to make mysti- 
 cism identical with this simple longing is to so widen the defi- 
 nition as to lose all that is really characteristic of the great classic 
 mystics, and would result in making us all "mystics." The 
 unio mystica is indeed often thought of as such simple submis- 
 sion to the divine will, and as such is an element in all religious 
 experience worth the name; but classic mysticism has never been 
 satisfied with any such simple definition of the religious longing. 
 Indeed such a union is generally only the means mysticism would 
 take for reaching its end. And from the Neoplatonists to Jacob 
 Bohme that end is always the actual metaphysical swallowing 
 up of the individual life, however defined, in the All. Wherever 
 mysticism is true to itself and clearly conscious of its message 
 it insists upon the disappearance of the phenomenal individual, 
 and the absorption of individuality into the universal source of 
 all Being. It may discuss the character of this phenomenal 
 separation, and may call it evil or misfortune, or even as in some 
 of its utterances (pseudo-Areopagite) seem to treat it as a neces- 
 
A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 263 
 
 sary step in the revelation of the consummate All, but in all that 
 really deserves the name of mysticism there is the underlying 
 conception of a separation between the phenomenal seen, and 
 the true source of all things, and a sense that this separation must 
 be overcome, and the goal is stated as a reunion with the unseen 
 in a metaphysical sense. 
 
 4. Whether this separation is thought of as sin or misfortune 
 or weakness or temporary but necessary imperfection, the effect of 
 mysticism is always to reduce the bodily and phenomenal to 
 an evil or limitation, and the religious life is flight from this 
 phenomenal world to the unseen reality. Therefore what is 
 characteristic of the religion of mysticism is hardly what Seth 
 describes as " on the practical side. . . . The possibility of direct 
 intercourse with the Being of Being." For this is a postulate 
 of nearly all developed religious thought, but rather the possi- 
 bility of direct union in a metaphysical sense with the eternal 
 Being, and, for however short or long a period, a complete identi- 
 fication of the soul with God. For this reason, as Seth him- 
 self most justly remarks, "as this goal (interpenetration of the 
 essence) is unattainable while reason and consciousness of self 
 remain, the mystic begins to consider these as impediments to 
 be cast aside." Hence underlying all real mysticism is a meta- 
 physical pantheism as the ultimate reality, and a phenomenal 
 dualism as a present evil to be overcome. This is variously 
 expressed, and often shaded and even confused in the expression, 
 but throughout the history of mysticism with greater or less 
 clearness this underlying philosophy is a determining element. 
 It would be well if in all histories and discussions of mysticism 
 the various degrees of clearness with which this metaphysics is 
 expounded were made more decisive in the inclusion or exclu- 
 sion of religious writers within the ranks of mystics. Some ordi- 
 narily classed with the mystics, and using their language, are so 
 evidently indifferent or hostile to this main interest that it would 
 be well to exclude them from the ranks of the classic mystics 
 altogether. 
 
 5. It is in this sense that mysticism must be regarded as a 
 providential addition to, or an unfortunate intrusion upon, primi- 
 tive Christianity, according to the attitude taken toward mysti- 
 cism. It is certainly in this sense a foreign element in Judaism, 
 
264 A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 
 
 because Judaism has never been primarily metaphysical or cos- 
 mological in its interest. Even when taking over from another 
 culture the cosmological stories (Genesis, etc.) it deals with them 
 from an ethical and religious point of view and with obviously 
 no metaphysical interest. And it is equally remarkable how 
 distinctly the Hellenistic speculations taken over by Philo (omit- 
 ting the De Vita Contcmplativa) remain within the framework of 
 an ethical and religious interest. Nor does this metaphysical 
 speculation come directly from Greece. The Greek mind was 
 not prone to mysticism, not for the reason, it seems to the writer, 
 given so often, that the Greek was naturally hopeful and took a 
 bright and natural interest in life. For the Greek mind, whether 
 reflected in Homer or the classic drama, does not seem especially 
 either joyous or hopeful. But in Greece speculation was early 
 linked with empiric observation and physical experiment, and 
 mysticism has almost nothing in common with empiricism. It is 
 from the Orient, with its overweening faith that one may by pure 
 intellectual analysis without empiric experiment reach the highest 
 truth, that mysticism comes. And it comes weighted with the de- 
 spondency bred of a political helplessness on the part of a highly 
 gifted race. Hellenism had ceased in a large measure to be really 
 empiric and had become oriental, and thus within Hellenism mys- 
 ticism found a field, and all the more readily because the de- 
 spondency of political helplessness had fallen upon the scattered 
 Greek race. The power, moreover, of conceptual abstraction has 
 been so all-important a factor in enabling the human mind to 
 organize and master the manifold in its infinite variety, that phi- 
 losophy has always been prone to separate the machinery from 
 the data, and to regard the concept, or pure mental abstraction, 
 as having a higher type of reality than that possessed by the 
 phenomenal manifold which it seeks to organize. Plato and 
 Descartes have modern followers in their superstitious Avorship 
 of the conceptual machinery as a means for superseding the phe- 
 nomenal experience of the manifold. But mysticism goes even 
 farther, and is perhaps more logical when once the possibility 
 of such transcendence is granted, for it would not only transcend 
 the phenomenal manifold but even the conceptual machinery 
 by which the manifold is organized as knowledge, and by pure 
 abstraction gain its end apart from the phenomenal altogether. 
 
A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 265 
 
 6. This transcending of the phenomenal world must present 
 itself primarily to the mystic as a psychological process; but it 
 also carries with it a tendency to ascetic treatment of the body, 
 as in itself an evil and a hindrance to the pure vision. Indeed 
 the writer could wish again that the term asceticism were always 
 carefully and narrowly confined to this method of thought and 
 feeling. True asceticism is never content with a simple sub- 
 jection of the body, but has as its logical culmination the ridding 
 of the soul of its bodily limitation altogether. It is in both these 
 forms that mysticism has found its way into historic Christianity, 
 and we have speculative mysticism attempting by mental ab- 
 straction to transcend the mental process or by emotional ec- 
 stasy to transcend emotion, or by exercise of the will to gain an 
 absolute passivity, and an ascetic mysticism seeking by pain and 
 deprivation to render the soul independent of its phenomenal 
 environment. The clearness with which the goal is compre- 
 hended varies very greatly. IMuch Roman Catholic piety is 
 only mystical in its use of a language and ascetic discipline 
 which it has rather unintelligently accepted on the basis of au- 
 thority. The valuable book of Baron von Hugel on Catherine 
 of Genoa is greatly marred by confusions along the line of defi- 
 nition of both mysticism and asceticism; and by the mingling 
 of what may be called the externals of mysticism taken over me- 
 chanically on authority, with the conscious pursuit of the mysti- 
 cal goal. An extremely skeptical nature often takes refuge in 
 an abject surrender to an external authority (Cardinal Newman), 
 or it may sometimes fling itself upon a whole-hearted rejection 
 not only of phenomenal process with its confessed empiricism 
 and relativity, but of all phenomenal reality, and seek its type 
 of reality in an abstraction from all bodily and mental process. 
 The "world-weariness" of all true mysticism is due to this de- 
 spair of the tentative, relative and hesitating approach to truth 
 that is alone possible to the relative empiricist. Great outbursts 
 of human energy and periods of supreme confidence and hope 
 inspired by great but incomplete victory over the phenomenal 
 environment are apt to be followed by periods of depression and 
 despondency when refuge is sought either in surrender to au- 
 thority of an external kind or in mysticism with its real rejec- 
 tion of all rationality. 
 
266 A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 
 
 7. If the goal of mysticism is once clearly apprehended then 
 the various ways that are taken to reach the goal furnish us with 
 a convenient index for the classification of the mystics properly 
 so-called. This is not the place to more than indicate along 
 what lines the present writer has sought to classify for his own 
 use, he thinks with some success, the classic mystics of history. 
 
 (a) There are those whose world-weariness has a profoundly 
 intellectual caste. The overcoming of doubt and the realiza- 
 tion of the Eternal is sought by these mystics by transcend- 
 ing the intellectual process in speculation. Thus Neoplatonism 
 sought its goal, and the intellectual mysticism of Dyonisius the 
 pseudo-Areopagite is of the same type. The Gnostic systems 
 by which so much of the apparatus and the phraseology of mys- 
 ticism found its way into dogmatic Christianity was intellectual 
 and speculative in its primary interest, and by fantastic cosmo- 
 logical constructions sought to transcend the analytical process and 
 find metaphysical unity in and with the final and highest Being. 
 
 (b) There is however no real separation possible save in thought, 
 between emotional and intellectual processes. The difference 
 is one rather of emphasis, hence all mysticism has sooner or later 
 sought in ecstasy to transcend alike thought and feeling. Among 
 the German mystics this emotional element has its roots in the 
 spiritual awakening, whose origin it is still hard to trace, but 
 whose fruits were the cathari, etc., and finally the reforming 
 orders. The mystic elements may be a direct reimportation 
 from the East. Such seems now the prevalent view, but although 
 the mysticism of the movement is most certainly oriental, there 
 is no need to suppose much new importation, for all that is found 
 in German mysticism may be traced directly to older sources 
 within historical Christianity, save only that the emphasis is 
 now rather upon feeling than upon thought. Hence dogmatic 
 speculation is an exceedingly secondary interest, (c) And lastly, 
 there is a ritual mysticism in which the way to abstraction from 
 the phenomenal is by means of rite, exercise, asceticism and sub- 
 mission. So by acts of will the will is transcended and pas- 
 sivity is attained. The individual is swallowed up in God, and 
 the essence of individuality is found not so much in thought 
 or emotion as in will. Here again it is by the emphasis we are 
 enabled to classify various types. But Bonaventura and most 
 
A DEFINITION OF MYSTICISM 267 
 
 of the monastic mystics like the Victors represent this type. 
 Here also the emotional reappears in an aesthetic interest which 
 is logically an intrusion, but which finds its way into ecclesias- 
 tical mysticism through the rite and ceremony of the church. 
 Indeed the whole apparatus of sacramental magic so developed 
 in Roman Catholicism became linked with this special school 
 of mystical thinking, and obedience to outward authority, run- 
 ning counter to the general extreme individualism of mysticism, 
 becomes a means for the suppression of the individual will. 
 But as in all t}^es of mysticism these things are but means to 
 the end. Neither speculation nor ecstasy, nor yet obedience to 
 authority, has 'per se any merit; all are but methods of attaining 
 the supreme purpose, namely, absorption of the individual and 
 finite into the infinite, and thus attainment of ultimate meta- 
 physical union with God, which is for classic mysticism the final 
 definition of salvation. Even the momentary vision, the tem- 
 porary union with the Infinite in the rapture of ecstasy, the sense 
 of loss for ever so short a time of the sense of individuality in 
 emotional excitement, are but foretastes of the final and complete 
 absorption of all phenomenal being in the Source of Being, the 
 definite consummation which is the final aim of all really self- 
 conscious mysticism. 
 
 This is not the place to enter upon any criticism or history 
 of mysticism, nor even to indicate its relation to Christian thought 
 and feeling. It is only necessary to sum up in a word the ele- 
 ments of what the writer deems an adequate definition of mysti- 
 cism: mysticism as a system makes the religious goal the meta- 
 physical union of the soul of the worshipper with God, and seeks 
 this union by the way of speculation, ecstasy, rapture, emotional 
 surrender, as means for the escaping from the limits of person- 
 ality. It expects to overcome phenomenal dualism by a divine 
 absolution into the All. It is therefore despondent as regards 
 the phenomenal present, but is stayed up by the religious faith 
 in the transcendent victory of the Eternal God. 
 
 GoTTiNGEN, June 15, 1910. 
 
XXI 
 
 ONE LAW OF THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 By Edward C. Moore 
 
 No question is more seriously before us at the present moment 
 than the question — What is Christianity? This is the form 
 which the question takes among us, because we dwell in a nomi- 
 nally Christian land. For us the alternative in the large is Chris- 
 tianity or irreligion. Judaism is the vital faith of some among 
 us. But Jews too are asking — What is Judaism? And in 
 that astonishing parity of movement, which now pervades all 
 the world which thinks, Asiatics are raising the same question 
 about their indigenous faiths. Sober spirits in Japan are asking 
 — WTiat shall take the place to us of that which Shintoism and 
 Buddhism have been to our ancestors ? Will these recover their 
 prestige? Must we take the western man's religion, as we have 
 already taken his civilization; or is there no longer any place for 
 religion, any need of religion? Men are asking the same kind 
 of question as to Confucianism in China. Can Confucianism 
 possibly make this astonishing adjustment to new conditions 
 which seems requisite ? Can an ethical system, the very gist of 
 which has been to look to the past, learn to look to the future? 
 Can it be to the men of the new generation what it has been to 
 their ancestors? If not, what can be put in its place? It will 
 be just so in Turkey when the stupendous changes inaugurated 
 in these last years have had time to do their work. Can Mo- 
 hammedanism keep pace with the changes which are being 
 made? 
 
 We say that this immense change in culture and civilization 
 has come all suddenly to Japan, and still more recendy to China. 
 This is the reason why those nations feel the stress as they do. 
 We must reflect concerning many of the major changes in the 
 
 269 
 
270 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 view of the universe possible to an educated man, how recently 
 these have come to us in Christendom. We must not imagine 
 that a generation ago we gave to Japan sciences of nature, of 
 man and of society, which were already current among us many 
 generations ago. The view of nature and of man's relation to 
 it, which now so generally prevails, was by no means axiomatic 
 here in America when Pumpelly, Morse, Clark, and Lyman took 
 it in 1872 to the University of Tokyo. It was a theory not long 
 made, but then only in the making. The evolutionary view of 
 society, of morals, and of religion for which Comte and Herbert 
 Spencer stood was not then long-accepted among us. Those 
 views were at that time, by Christian men at all events, almost 
 universally dissented from. The view of sacred history and 
 Scripture, which now so largely obtains among us, did not gen- 
 erally obtain until long after the time of which we speak. In 
 certain portions of our country it does not yet prevail. It dis- 
 placed a view of oracular revelation practically identical with 
 the view which the Mohammedan holds of the Koran or the 
 Chinese man of the Great Learning. Such a view of the divine 
 revelation was for those who held it the foundation of a view of 
 nature and of society which could not possibly maintain itself in 
 the face of that which the sciences were declaring. Christianity 
 itself has not perfectly made, and in some regions has scarcely 
 begun, this great adjustment. These facts should be encourag- 
 ing to us. 
 
 We said a moment ago that we had no occasion to feel our- 
 selves alone, because all of our contemporaries, with their re- 
 ligions, are passing through this same experience. To them also 
 has come, with its resistless force, this much altered and still- 
 altering world view. We might add that we have no occasion 
 to think ourselves particularly unfortunate. All of our ancestors 
 have passed in their measure through a like experience, and all 
 our progeny will have to do the same. The Renaissance virt- 
 ually created a pagan Europe. The Reformation was in part 
 made necessary by that paganism. But also the Reformation 
 was made possible only by that Renaissance. Save for that, 
 Christianity might have gone on for ages, as it had done for a 
 millennium, unaltered in itself but steadily losing its power over 
 the world. 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 271 
 
 This action and reaction, this interaction of the moral and 
 spiritual power in men with the ever-advancing, ever-destroy- 
 ing, ever-rebuilding activity of the intellect and the shaping and 
 re-shaping of the outward life of men which that imposes — 
 this is the greatest drama of the human race. This is the move- 
 ment to which if religions are not able to live up, they must per- 
 ish. A whole class of them, the nature religions, are perishing 
 under our very eyes. They can never live through the trans- 
 formation involved in conformity to their environment in the 
 view of the universe of the modern educated man. Whether 
 a religion which turns its face away from this life and the world, 
 as does Buddhism, can abide this transformation remains to be 
 seen. On the other hand, the utmost magnificence of the devel- 
 opment of the outward life of man in the woild, all the marvel- 
 lous achievements of the mind, are nothing save as these create 
 in this new world only a new field for the moral powers and a new 
 scope for the spiritual experiences of men. No inference could 
 find less justification in the history of the human race than the 
 inference that religion will not survive. But what form relig- 
 ion in the future will take is difficult to forecast. 
 
 If what we have said is true, then we are prepared to find that 
 it is no easy matter to win a satisfactory answer to the question 
 — What is Christianity? So many interpretations Christianity 
 has had! Such manifold effects have been ascribed to it! So 
 long is now the retrospect and so wide has been the area of its 
 operation! The claims grow strident among us. Old mean- 
 ings are discredited. The very newest ones divide attention. 
 But among all these interpretations which are being set forth 
 with emphasis, we may at least discern two groups. We may take 
 as examples two larger types of apprehension, which are at the 
 present moment, through agitation, criticism and propaganda, 
 present to almost every mind. 
 
 There is on the one hand the whole group of movements which 
 have for a decade or more claimed much attention, of which the 
 common thesis is that Christianity is health. The health of the 
 body is the immediately necessary thing which the religion of 
 the soul is to subserve. Religion is healing. This healing is an 
 individual end; that is, it is an end in the aspiration of the indi- 
 vidual for himself. It is as truly an individual and not a social 
 
272 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 end as was the old-fashioned soul-salvation. It inverts the re- 
 lation of the physical and the spiritual, as these used to stand. 
 For the moment at least, the great significance even of the soul's 
 condition is in the service it may render to the body's state. An 
 outward, present, temporal end is thus set in the forefront of 
 religious discussion. 
 
 Over against this stands our second group and type. Chris- 
 tianity is social amelioration. It is this reform in civil or eco- 
 nomic condition of the poor and distressed. It is that necessary 
 and beneficent work. It is sympathy with the victims of the 
 industrial order. It is the endeavor, by persuasion if feasible 
 and by force if necessary, to bring about a new order. It is the 
 beneficial alteration of the whole outward state of man. What we 
 have here is not an individual end; at least, not dominantly 
 such. It is the appeal to men to sacrifice themselves, if need be, 
 for a common end. Devotion to this aim may have as its con- 
 sequence the sacrifice of the individual, his wealth, his health, 
 his life itself if need be, for the good of others. This is the point 
 of contrast with that other type. It hardly admits of question 
 that the contrast is immeasurably to the advantage of the type 
 of which w^e just now speak. 
 
 Yet the coincidence also is striking. This social amelioration 
 is, like that other end of health, a present, outward, an immediate 
 aim. It is the condition, the environment, the circumstance of 
 life, which is to be transformed. The belief is wide-spread even 
 among the deeper spirits of this advocacy that the inward trans- 
 formation of men's characters can take place only after an out- 
 ward change in their lot in life has been achieved. Many others 
 are of course entirely frank in saying that their minds are not much 
 occupied with this matter of inward and spiritual change. They 
 are not debating character. They want more comfort. Economic 
 conditions, social welfare, are thdr only ends. If religion will 
 help them to get these, they are for religion. If not, then they 
 have no use for religion. And, to be just, no one can deny that 
 the altruism and heroism shown in this crusade do fill the place 
 which religion, as some of these men and women have been taught 
 it, has left vacant in their souls. 
 
 Often enough has this quality of Christianity which is here 
 revealed, this attitude of men toward Christianity which is here 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 273 
 
 illustrated, been commented upon. Almost as often has it been 
 forgotten again. Being forgotten, men are bewildered by the 
 divergent and often mutually-contradictory claims. The Gos- 
 pel seems to each age, and almost you might say to every indi- 
 vidual upon whom it has really laid hold, as if it had been writ- 
 ten for the sake of the special problems which, to that age or 
 for that man, appear the pressing problems. The real religion 
 of any age, of any man, is not a sacred tradition brought along 
 from the past, no matter how much men may think that this is so. 
 The language of the professedly religious may become well- 
 nigh unintelligible, the aims which they have associated with 
 religion obsolete. The real religion of any man is in the things 
 which seem to that man divine and worthy to have life staked 
 on them. What we mean by God, as Goethe said, is always 
 just the best we know. When this condition has been reached, 
 men will divide according to their temperament. Some men will 
 serve these ideals, and yet carry forward the tradition for a time, 
 so to say, in a separate compartment of their souls. Others will 
 serve these same new and majestic ideals without the slightest 
 regard to the tradition, or in bitter condemnation of the same. 
 Looking askance at the Galilean Church in its unholy alliance 
 with the Bourbon state, Madame Roland said in the great days 
 of '89: "The declaration of the rights of men is the new Gospel 
 of God. Religion? The French Constitution is our religion, 
 on behalf of which the French people are ready to die." 
 
 But the interesting thing is that, so likely as men are in such 
 a crisis either sadly or else madly to break with institutional 
 Christianity, they do not always seem to themselves to have broken 
 with Christ. The old name exerts a spell. It has, in Schiller's 
 phrase, been "hallowed by the might of years." The real re- 
 ligion of any age is in the masterful and actually mastering ideals 
 of that age. But new religions are not now manufactured. 
 Old ones must be stretched to do. ^\^lere, in a na'iver time, a 
 great new insight would have fathered a new faith, now men cry — 
 "Not at all! This is no new faith; it is only the true interpreta- 
 tion of the faith which we have already had." A new purpose 
 dawning upon a new generation in all the freshness of its majesty 
 yet sets men only reaching backward through sixty generations. 
 It causes men to say, often with sublime self-confidence, Christ 
 
274 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 had this purpose too; in fact this was his main, his sole purpose. 
 Is this feehng true, or false? Does it signify, as some would 
 say, that Christianity is by this very fact proved to be of infinite 
 significance ? Is it thus clear that Christ's religion is of limitless 
 freshness and originality, of unwasting power, holding in germ 
 all things within itself, evolving gradually all things out of itself, 
 even some things which previous generations of true Christians 
 never would have dreamed? Upon other minds the same 
 phenomenon produces just the opposite effect. They say — " On 
 your own terms, Christianity is anything and everything. Any 
 good which the old world by its tears and sweat and blood has 
 won, the Christians claim. That is, they claim it after it is won. 
 Ignored, fiercely resisted by the religion of its day, bloody and 
 miry, the new era beats its way forward on its lonely, glorious 
 road. It has always trodden the wine-press alone — this advance 
 of humanity." Yet in the end you men of Jesus say — "It is 
 true that our fathers did not clearly perceive all this. But you 
 have said nothing which Jesus did not say, done nothing which 
 Jesus did not plan." 
 
 The antagonism to religion and Christianity is only an apparent 
 one. It results from the mistaken assumption that Christianity 
 is something definable, and furthermore that it is something 
 stationary. We must own that the guardians of the Christian 
 tradition have themselves confidently asserted that Christianity 
 is definable. They have described it as unchangeable. The 
 alienation from an unalterable Christianity may be quite ex- 
 plicable. But if religion is the force of ever-expanding truth 
 and ever-enlarging goodness, if it is coincident with truth ever 
 freshly revealing itself, ever to be revealed — if it is itself identical 
 with the advance of humanity to new goodnesses which make 
 the old goodnesses to seem inadequate or even bad — surely that is 
 a different matter. Only, to make good that contention, one has 
 to realize how large a part of the religion of the world is of the 
 unofficial, the unprofessed, and even of the unconscious sort. 
 Not in the tenets, the practices, the concrete manifestations of 
 the spirit of the confessedly religious, but in the moving of the 
 ever-living and all-loving God upon and in and through the whole 
 humanity — there lies religion. " God is not the God of the dead, 
 but of the living." 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 275 
 
 If this is true, then it appears to be quite obvious that no claim 
 can be made for a complete and absolute revelation of religion. 
 The revealer of religion, in proportion as his own soul is pure 
 and his own ideal high, must have had his times of realizing that 
 every word he said, every deed he did, was but a bare fragment. 
 It drew from out the infinite. It had reach into the infinite. 
 But in itself it was set round with sharp, prosaic limitations of 
 the actual life. He must have had sorrowful, sure forecast how 
 his zealous followers would seize upon some aspect of his teaching 
 or example, and would fairly crush in their tenacious grasp the 
 perishable flower which his pure spirit had put forth as time and 
 circumstance had called for it. They would cry — " This was his 
 religion!" He would answer — ''No, that was only a passing 
 expression of it." 
 
 It belongs apparently to the intensity of the revealing temper, 
 it has been a general trait of the monitors for God to men, that 
 they have lived within a certain stress. They saw their given 
 truths in fiery isolation. They set them forth with a tremendous 
 emphasis, as if there were no other truths besides. It was said 
 concerning Luther that apparently even God could hardly make 
 a man strong enough without making him too strong. Without 
 diminishing our reverence for these revealers, Mohammed, 
 Confucius, Buddha, Moses, one may say that their truth was not 
 the whole truth. Nor, on the same principle, can Jesus' truth 
 uttered in specific words or given in concrete example have been 
 the whole truth. On the contrary, it is in Jesus' larger sense for 
 the whole, his realization of the limitation of the parts, his refusal 
 to say that in given tenets or certain practices lay the whole 
 Gospel; it is in his serene view of every aspect of man's life, his 
 infinite patience with things which he could not conquer, his 
 brooding over the men and things he could not shape to his de- 
 sire; — it is exactly in his sense of limitation, as truly as in his 
 sense that he had hold on the unlimited, that we feel that Jesus 
 is a greater revealer of the meaning of religion than the rest. 
 
 The tenor of Christ's life, the body of his teaching, gives us 
 the right and lays upon us the injunction to say something to 
 this effect: There is no human woe of whatsoever sort or source 
 to which he was indift'erent, or of which he would not censure 
 us for being negligent. There is no improvement of the condi- 
 
276 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 tions of man's life thinkable, no enlargement of liberty or privi- 
 lege possible, no enhancement of man's power of attainment of 
 the good things which appeal to him, no uplifting, widening and 
 enriching of existence, which would not appeal to Jesus. Noth- 
 ing could be easier than to prove from the face of the New Testa- 
 ment Jesus' compassion for the sufferings of men and women 
 in the body, his gentle solicitude for those under aberration of 
 the mind. He seems to have been unfailing in his eagerness to 
 do what in him lay to mitigate and to forefend these woes. So 
 true is this that we cannot sufficiently wonder that men in Chris- 
 tian ages have esteemed it the superior piety to neglect these 
 things, and have so prevailingly lived in a fixed attention upon 
 an alleged other world than this. 
 
 None the less, when one shuts the Book, and with quiet mind 
 would conjure up the benign figure of the Christ; when one asks 
 — Did he really see the problems of the outward and the present 
 in the proportions and the isolation that we do ? — surely there can 
 be but one answer. It seems the very sacrilege of misunderstand- 
 ing to link his name with a cult whose major emphasis is upon 
 the care of the body and the escape from suffering. So many 
 things palpably appear to his mind to have been of an impor- 
 tance infinitely greater than the body's life. So incredible does 
 it appear from Christ's standpoint, when one sees him clearly 
 and sees him whole, that a man should, because of distress, stand 
 back from sacrifice, or for a pain evade a heroism, or lose faith 
 in God if torture should befall, or imagine that in gaining health 
 he gained anything which differentiates him from the beasts, 
 unless indeed he uses health for a transcendent end. 
 
 And again, nothing could be easier than to prove from the very 
 face of Scripture, Jesus' sweet compassion for the poor; his fierce 
 wrath against those who in oppression made them poor; his con- 
 tempt for and his menace toward the unjust, the ungenerous, 
 the indifferent rich. That thing is so easy that verily it requires 
 no extraordinary art to do it. Nothing could be easier than to 
 show his interest in what we now call the social questions. The 
 amazement is that with such an example of Jesus before our 
 eyes, this whole range of his opinions and his sentiments should 
 have left the Christian body so long measurably untouched; that 
 the Church could have remained so long on good terms with a 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 277 
 
 social order, which you would think could not have escaped its 
 condemnation the first moment that the Church seriously thought 
 of Christ. 
 
 None the less, when we close the Book and think, we realize 
 that what we have in Jesus is not a theorist upon society. He 
 was no theorist upon government, or commerce, upon crafts, 
 trade, capital and labor. He had not that kind of mind. He 
 was not at the level of knowledge of those subjects, even as 
 that knowledge existed in his day; much less had he the miracu- 
 lous forecast which would have made him level with the achieve- 
 ments of the social sciences in our own day. All that seems the 
 ecstasy of a partisan misunderstanding. What we have in 
 Jesus is transcendent religious genius. What we have is the 
 consequent appreciation of the principle of love. What we have 
 is the proclaimer of brotherhood, the apostle of selflessness, one 
 who made earnest with the precept as old as Confucius, though 
 no doubt Jesus did not know that, — " Whatsoever ye would 
 fiiat men should do to you, do ye even so to them." 
 
 But over and above his solicitude for a man's outward state, 
 his wrath at injustice, his demand of rights, his proclamation 
 as to duties in this sphere, it seems as if one must be altogether 
 carried away in his excitement if he does not hear an altogether 
 different note. It is the note of one to whom, for himself, the 
 outward life means not overmuch. It is the note of one who 
 would teach others to care for that life not overmuch. It is the 
 note of one whose heart would have been broken if in giving men 
 mere things, which, to be sure, he might rejoice to give them, 
 he yet fostered in them an insatiable lust for the mere things. 
 It is the note of one who knows that for a man there will always 
 be facts infinitely more significant than those which come to 
 him, or which can be taken from him, in the chances of his out- 
 ward lot. It is the note of one who profoundly distrusts wealth, 
 comfort, leisure, power. He distrusts them because by wealth, 
 ease, power — possessed or even only inordinately striven for — 
 men's souls are prone to be made sordid and their characters made 
 base. It seems an utter eclipse of insight into the meaning of 
 religion, a well-nigh incredible vanishing from the conscious- 
 ness of the age of the obvious meaning of Christ, to set him forth 
 in this exclusive apprehension as the patron saint of schemes 
 
278 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 whereby outward, present, earthly wishes only, no matter how 
 legitimate, may be gratified. 
 
 Now all of this which we have been saying is only another 
 illustration of the great law of religion to which we alluded above. 
 It is only a reminder from the life of our generation how each 
 succeeeding age has read into Christ's teachings, or drawn out 
 of Christ's teachings, that special meaning which that generation, 
 or that race, that social level or that individual man needed to 
 have drawn. Nothing could be more enlightening than is re- 
 flection upon the process of which we speak — this reading of the 
 ever-changing ideals of man's life into Christianity, or of Chris- 
 tianity into the ever-advancing ideals of man's life. This chame- 
 leon-like quality of Christianity is the farthest possible remove 
 from the changelessness which men have loved to attribute to 
 their religion. It is the most wonderful quality which Chris- 
 tianity possesses. It is a quality which Christianity apparently 
 possesses in a degree far greater than has any other religion 
 which has ruled the hearts of men. It is upon this sensitive 
 response to the law of change, this preservation of itself as 
 spiritual impulse in and through all change; — upon that, and 
 upon the hunger and thirst of men after that moral fortifying 
 and that spiritual impulse in the midst of all the changes of their 
 lives, that one may base his absolute confidence in the perma- 
 nence of Christianity. 
 
 Shall we say that we can infer the ruling ideas of an age from 
 the complexion which its religion takes? Or shall we declare 
 that we can be sure of the complexion which the religion of an 
 age, a race, a social level, or of an individual man will take, when 
 once we know the aims which really dominate that age? This 
 method of diagnosing the ever-varying states of our religion is 
 in high degree suggestive. We have perhaps been used to think- 
 ing that religion makes the age. In larger measure possibly 
 than we suspect, the age makes the religion; that is, it determines 
 that aspect of religion which will be real to that age. It is the 
 fact that our generation makes so much of getting well and keep- 
 ing well which has transformed the confessional into a clinic, 
 made the cure of souls the patching-up of bodies, replaced the 
 preacher-pastor by the healer, or at least given some ministers 
 the unquiet feeling that unless they set up a healing annex they 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 279 
 
 may be displaced. Ours is an age supremely sensitive to physi- 
 cal discomfort, preoccupied with provision for comfort, averse 
 to pain, and glad to turn away from sorrow. It is an age firmly 
 convinced that men and women have suffered many things in 
 time past as irremediable, which, rather, it is our obvious duty 
 to remedy. In such an age we find the parallel and subordi- 
 nate phenomenon of an interpretation of religion, also, in which 
 the point of central interest for many is the abolishing of pain, 
 the turning away from sorrow, the achieving and maintaining 
 at all costs of the blessing of good health and of an untroubled 
 mind, not because, in the old worn path of conflict, it has tri- 
 umphed over trouble, but because it has fled from it or even has 
 denied that there is trouble. 
 
 Equally upon the other side, it is an age haunted by the sense 
 of the terrific social and economic inequalities which prevail, 
 which has set its heart upon the redress and elimination of those 
 inequalities. It is an age whose disrespect for religion is due to 
 the fact that religion has not done away with those inequalities; 
 which is interested at once in an interpretation of religion which 
 will make central the contention that, before all else, these par- 
 ticular inequalities are to be done away. These are the terms, 
 so to say, upon which religion can have men's suffrages, but not 
 on any other. They know what they want. If religion will help 
 them to get what they want, then they want religion. If not, then 
 they will make their religion out of the pursuit of these things 
 for themselves and others. There never was an age of greater 
 intensity of life. But that intensity sets tangible objects before 
 itself. It seeks to compass definite ends. It is intolerant of waste 
 of energy on other ends. If religion can be made a means of 
 every man's getting his share of the good of this world, — well and 
 good. If not, then there are many men to whom religion seems 
 utterly meaningless. 
 
 We run some risk of seeing these facts in an inverted order. 
 It is not Christianity as it has been generally taught in the past 
 which has created this type of mind — unless, indeed, you well 
 say that it may have aided to create this type on the principle of 
 contrariety. Rather the reverse is true: — it is the type of mind 
 which is just now so largely prevalent among us which has cre- 
 ated the interpretation of religion of which we speak, which has 
 
280 ■ THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 given it its prominence in the present, and which sets it forth 
 with confidence as the religion of the future. 
 
 Let us seek for a moment for some other illustrations. There 
 is an old tale of a man in Constantinople to whom, when he asked 
 for a bath, it was replied that " the Son was consubstantial with 
 the Father." We find it hard to put ourselves in the position 
 of men who had such a taste for metaphysics. But it is a relief 
 to be convinced that it was not the Christian religion which cre- 
 ated that taste. Rather, the Christian religion was accommo- 
 dated to that taste, already existent and wide-spread. There 
 are many of us who have stood before these great old creeds, 
 the Nicene, the Athanasian, and the rest, and wondered how 
 Christianity could ever have produced them. It is a comfort 
 to argue that Christianity alone and unaided never did produce 
 them. Christianity, entering upon the declining world of Hel- 
 lenic intellectualism, became transformed in the hands of the 
 men of that age into the sort of thing which they esteemed of 
 transcendent significance. 
 
 The early Church taught submission to the powers that be. 
 The later Church taught submission of the powers that be to 
 the Church. You will say that the Christians submitted when 
 they were forced so to do, and dominated when they could. 
 That is, however, not quite the whole case. They clothed their 
 submission in the old days of persecution and of martyrdom with 
 a great ideal. They submitted to outward tyranny as men who, 
 in submission, could maintain the freedom of the soul. They 
 suffered reproach gladly, so only that in the eyes of God and of 
 men of like mind with themselves they were above reproach. 
 Kings in the spirit, what mattered the bondage and torment of 
 the flesh! Furthermore, the better men among them meant to 
 stand also for a great ideal when they came to rule. There 
 swayed before the mind of many a pope and bishop the vision 
 of an earth ruled as God would have it ruled. It is difiicult to 
 withhold this meed of praise from a man like Innocent III, or 
 Alexander in his struggle with the Barbarossa, or Hildebrand in 
 his conflict with Henry IV, or Becket in his strife with Henry II. 
 But the vision was beyond the power of realization of men. 
 Most of all, a quality which they had when they were weak — 
 respect for the lowly, sense for the holy — largely forsook them 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 281 
 
 when they were strong. Their dominion became just like the other 
 dominions, only the worse for its shams and its hypocrisies. 
 
 It is hard for us to make real to ourselves the attitude of mind 
 of men who felt that they must leave the world to walk with 
 God. The eremite, the celibate, the ascetic, we have so long 
 judged without sympathy that we now judge them without even 
 intelligence. The monastic life probably seems to many of 
 us absolutely foolish and inane. There we are wrong. Too 
 many wise and great and good have lived that life, that we should 
 be quite so cavalier. One stands before the vast fabric created 
 by an apprehension of Christ's religion essentially from the point 
 of view of the total denial of the worth and significance of this 
 present life and world; one reads the words of Benedict and Ber- 
 nard, of Francis, of Xavier and Loyola, of Pascal and Molinos, 
 and says — "How did Christ's Christianity ever come to that?" 
 The answer is, as before, — Christ's religion alone and unaided 
 never did come to that. It was Christianity working on an age 
 in which those ideals were regnant, which made that the regnant 
 Christianity and was itself transformed after those ideals. 
 
 We cry — No, the world, with its wonderful, rich, full life, is 
 the place to walk with God! The world needs to have Chris- 
 tians walking in it, not withdrawing into holes and corners from 
 it. The Christians need the world, that they, on their part, 
 may not become mere shadows and parodies of men, but compe- 
 tent and practical, turning the wisdom of God's spirit to some 
 good account. One wholly admits that. And one sees many 
 men who are walking in the world, of some of whom one is not 
 so sure that they are walking it with God. One sees many men 
 who represent what they, with furtive glance at others, have called 
 *'& working gospel." But one is not sure that the Kingdom of 
 God is nearer by their work. One thing we may know: — that 
 if we keep on sufficiently long with this our boasted religion of 
 the outward, of the practical, of the present, of the human, 
 we shall have need of some man from the wilderness to come some 
 day and tell us what religion is. 
 
 We boast ourselves of our Puritan forefathers. If we were 
 quite honest we might say that they are good to be descended 
 from — better than to live with. But frankly it is beyond our 
 power to enter into their sense of the eternal, of the future, of 
 
282 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 the transcendent worth of the spiritual; into their conviction of 
 the worthlessness of life save as grandly controlled from within 
 and animated from above. We do not instinctively understand 
 their construction even of the liberty for which they strove, — 
 not as freedom to do what a man himself may choose to do, but 
 merely as a necessary condition of man's being able to do what 
 God chooses to have him do. We read Jonathan Edwards' 
 sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." W^e per- 
 ceive how real it was to him that man has no worth or hope until 
 God shall supervene upon his damned state; how real it was to 
 him that the new birth was a convulsion, a total separation of 
 the man's new self from his old self. Religion meant always 
 giving up. The world was created apparently on purpose to 
 be given up. We know how near to insanity the question some- 
 times brought men as to whether or not they were the elect of 
 God. If one looked out of eyes to which all that was real, how 
 unreal all the life of men here upon earth, alike its happiness and 
 its miseries, must have seemed. We stand before this truly 
 Dantean fabric and ask — "How did Christianity ever come to 
 that?" The reply is, as before, that Christ's Christianity alone 
 and unaided never did come to that. 
 
 Yet it might be worth while to ask ourselves what Jonathan 
 Edwards would think of our resolution of religion into a so- 
 licitude for the body's health and an exclusive enthusiasm for 
 man's economic state. We think his religiousness unreal; but 
 what would he think of our realities ? Thomas Carlyle has told 
 us, in no measured language, what he thinks of the kind of re- 
 ligion which most takes our fancy. This was not because Carlyle 
 would have been in all respects at one with Jonathan Edwards. 
 Carlyle is not prejudicedly orthodox; he was agnostic, pessimistic, 
 he has several of the marks of the liberal; but he does know what 
 religion is. We turn the pages of Tolstoi. If ever there was 
 a country in which agitation might seem justifiable, that country 
 might be Russia. But Tolstoi too has moments when the Chris- 
 tianity in'him brings his socialism to a full pause. We read Ibsen. 
 We are shaken by his terrible realism. He talks much of the 
 Christian religion. Religion is too great a factor in life not to 
 be drawn within the vortex of his realistic delineation. But we 
 close the book often with the wonder whether Ibsen really did 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 283 
 
 know what religion was. We read Fogazzaro — II Santo. Our 
 idea of a saint would hardly be his. But he is not a Roman 
 Catholic for nothing. He knows that the greatest saint is not 
 the most assiduous shiner of brasses in this brazen and shiny 
 world. 
 
 Religion has had these two seemingly-opposite effects upon 
 the souls of men. It has tended to give men inward peace and 
 power by revealing to them the beauty and the glory of the life 
 which is by the things of the spirit, often in the face of the bitter 
 oppositions and insuperable obstacles of the life in the flesh. 
 It has made them lords of the world within, even if they were 
 bound in affliction and iron in the world without. It has been 
 the secret of the magnificent denial of any decisive significance 
 of the world, with its strivings and its ills, so only that a man 
 put it under his foot and set his heart upon holiness within and 
 God above. Stoicism, which, besides being a philosophy, was 
 also a religion, was a religion of this cast. The clear soul of 
 Aurelius found here its refuge amid the incredible abominations 
 and monstrous wickednesses of the decadent ancient world. By 
 this he held himself to his duty as emperor when all else within 
 him would have prompted him to flee from that duty. 
 
 Buddhism, with its outlook on the illimitable woe of man's 
 existence, on the hopelessness of man's striving after worthy 
 things and the worthlessness of most of the things for which men 
 strive, was a religion dominantly of this cast. Whole ages and 
 areas of Christianity, as well, have worn this cast. Jesus had 
 this side. Here his serene, triumphant spirit rescued itself as 
 over against a world of pagan rottenness and Jewish bigotry. 
 This recourse religion was to him in proper part as he lived out 
 his little span of life in a world which he could hardly, in smallest 
 measure, yet begin to transform according to his holy will. 
 Fortified in his unstained conscience and upheld in the faith of 
 God, the more absolute is the catastrophe of his outward lot, 
 the more is his soul sure of belonging to a realm in which such 
 catastrophes never by any possibility occur. The world has 
 not been wrong in supposing that exactly in this he was the great 
 revealer of religion. 
 
 Paul, fighter that he was, well knew that there were more vic- 
 tories in the world than he would ever win. Slavery might be 
 
284 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 the absolute contradiction of the principle of Christian brother- 
 hood, yet even slavery might stand temporarily, so only that 
 master and man knew each the other as a brother-soul. The 
 persecuted might have to put up with persecution. Christian- 
 ity does not mean every man's taking up cudgels with all the 
 world at once. The distressed may still have to bear distresses, 
 the poor their poverty, the sick and crippled their disease. The 
 complete remedies of all these things might still be far off, and 
 none the less a man might know himself to be God's child in all. 
 "For this thing" — the Apostle himself says — "I besought the 
 Lord thrice that it might depart from me; and he said unto me, 
 * My grace is sufficient for thee.' " Hear George Fox, the Quaker, 
 in prison, sick, insulted: "Christ it was that opened to me when 
 I was shut up, and had no hope or faith; Christ who enlightened 
 me, gave me his light to believe in. He gave me hopes which he 
 himself revealed in me; he gave me spirit and grace which I found 
 sufficient in deeps and weaknesses." 
 
 Nor is this all the religion of times dead. The poor, the sick, 
 the despondent, the defeated, the broken-hearted — these are with 
 us still. Even the mightiest struggler for reform, so only that 
 he do not blind his soul with clay, so only that his hope is still 
 of such grandeur that all successes seem but failures when they 
 are won, — these represent that old religion still. They wait not 
 for the heaven of the fat and prosperous, but having done their 
 part toward the great transformation, they make of troubled 
 earth a heaven by the spirit which they show. Even Goethe 
 said — "Who never ate his bread in tears, or weeping watched 
 through anxious nights, he never knew the heavenly powers." It 
 is sometimes said that this is the religion of the passive Orient. 
 Even that is a mistake. The religion of the militant West is 
 full of it. With all its agitating, fighting, reforming, it would be 
 far less religious than it is did it not answer to this note. Not 
 even from the soul of the same person do these two aspects of 
 religion shut one another out. 
 
 But it must be owned that this one of which I have just spoken 
 is not the phase of religion which our own age best understands 
 and loves; rather it is the one which we, ofttimes with scorn, re- 
 pudiate. A conquering age, a dominating race, personalities 
 used to achievement in the outward, set their hearts on other 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 285 
 
 things. The scorn of content with the things with which we 
 ought not to be contented possesses us. The very words which 
 pious souls have framed seem blasphemous to us in our altered 
 mood. The present violent denunciation of the Church voices 
 itself in some such terms. The Church's condemnation of 
 itself runs to the same effect. To have pointed men to heaven 
 when it should have lent a hand to make the earth a little less 
 like hell; to have harped upon the soul when what was needed 
 was to feed and clothe the body; to have asked men to be patient 
 when sick, instead of taking up into our holy place of religion the 
 intent to make them well — these seem the last betrayals of re- 
 ligion by supposedly religious men. And so it has come to pass 
 that there is not a problem which modern society presents which 
 is not being set forth in the light of an object of religious pur- 
 pose and religious apprehension. Admirable is the recognition 
 that it is within the scope of our Christianity to take up every 
 fight that needs to be fought, to bear every burden that is to be 
 borne, to hold back nothing until the full idealization of man's 
 life, as we believe that God designed it, shall have been secured. 
 
 But what we wish to bring out is that this view is no more 
 adequate when it stands alone than is that other view when it 
 stands alone. The excesses and extravagancies upon the one 
 side are as disastrous as are the exaggerations on the other. A 
 religion which is all of this world must in the end be but a parody 
 of religion, so surely as must a religion which is all of the soul and 
 of the other world. It is this which we feel when the smallness, 
 the fragmentary nature, the outward and passing quality of that 
 which thus for some takes up into itself the whole energy of re- 
 ligion, sometimes appals us. 
 
 For this would seem to be the true thing here to say: A single 
 object of ethical, social, economic endeavor may be quite le- 
 gitimate. It is the great sign of the times that we seek to spread 
 thus the apprehension of the sacred and eternal over the things 
 which have been left altogether on one side by the religious, or 
 dismissed as secular. A single object of social, ethical, or eco- 
 nomic endeavor may be upon occasion, above all others, the prop- 
 er object for the Christian enthusiasm to set before itself. But 
 so surely as that single object, or that single kind of object, is 
 torn from its relation to the whole of life, is made the limit of 
 
286 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 the horizon, the absolute tontent of hfe and goal of our endeavor, 
 it loses all its light as a divine ideal, its glory as an object upon 
 which true religion may expend itself. Religion cannot be thus 
 circumscribed, shut in, cut off. The moment you limit it in 
 this way, it ceases to be religion. It was at this point that the 
 men of the elder view of religion, as belonging solely to the inner 
 life and the other world, made their mistake. We are in danger 
 of making precisely the same mistake, only the other way about. 
 It may be true that I, as a Christian man, may be under obliga- 
 tion to pour out my life for the bettering of the economic condi- 
 tion of the poor. But if I am so carried away by my sympathy 
 as to think, or to make those for whom I labor think, that that 
 better economic condition of the poor is all, or even a large part, 
 of what is meant by the Kingdom of God, then we are in danger 
 of forgetting what religion is. Then the pursuit even of a great 
 end becomes narrowing, hardening, lowering; the following of it 
 does not lift us up in the old way, but drags us and all men down. 
 The thing becomes a mere fad and fanaticism, and even the 
 successful achievement of it would leave us only more sodden 
 than we were before. A mind sobered by reflection upon the 
 experience of humanity cannot but feel the infinite pathos of the 
 assumption so widely current among us that where reforms — 
 these or those, any or all — have been accomplished, all that we 
 mean by the Kingdom of God will have come. 
 
 If ever an age should have been cured of the hallucination 
 that wealth or the being absolved from toil brings blessedness, 
 it should be this age of ours. Who is the man whom wealth 
 blesses? Surely only the man who has something for which 
 he cares more than he does for wealth; something which he would 
 not have sacrificed to gain wealth; something for which he uses 
 wealth now that it is gained. Caring most of all for that, he 
 could be blessed even should he lose his wealth. Who is the 
 man whom health blesses? Surely only that man who, having 
 health, uses it as a priceless endowment of the power for work. 
 On any other basis, the oxen beat us. But such a man as this 
 of whom I speak would sacrifice health and even life itself to- 
 morrow for a worthy end. Such a man, if he lost health, would 
 then be exalted in character and hallowed and glorified through 
 pain. Emerson said — " If a man will have too much, what goes 
 
THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 287 
 
 into his bag comes out of his soul." How much is too much? 
 You can never answer that question in dollars. You have to 
 know the man. A little is too much if one sets his soul upon it. 
 In fact, even the dollars which a man never got have been too 
 much for the man whose soul was shriveled through the passion 
 for the getting them. At the bottom of our hearts we all admit 
 that for anything concerning the constitution of the universe 
 which we yet know, it will draw much nearer to being a God- 
 forsaken world than it now is when all the courage, patience, 
 tenderness, which are born of sorrow, and all the power and 
 majesty of manhood which come by conflict and toil, are gone 
 out of it and the sodden millennium of the flesh is come. Never 
 fear! the millennium of the flesh thus isolated from the kingdom 
 of the mind and spirit will never come. In every effort thus to 
 bring it in, humanity has overreached itself. It will never come, 
 the ideal condition of the outward lot and life, save by the same 
 steps and in the same measure that the millennium of the mind 
 and spirit come as well. When these come together, then the 
 outward condition will be a benediction and not a curse. 
 
 For there is another thing which in this connection we must 
 never forget. Into the things which we just now propose to 
 storm by violence, or steal by sentimentality, the mental toil — 
 most likely of whole generations — to discover principles and learn 
 how to apply them must yet go. Nothing whatsoever can be 
 counted gained here until it is intellectually valid. The mind of 
 man, intent ofttimes upon the most painful problems, yet as 
 problems of pure science and as if there were no pain, has worked 
 out all the previous questions in the issue of which we, in modern 
 civilization, stand in any way secure. One marvels, therefore, 
 how in this day of universal praise of education, it is as if, mid- 
 way of the process of discovery of the intellectual basis of the 
 changes which our eager hearts forecast, the generation had sud- 
 denly lost patience. It is as if men could not wait for science, 
 but must steal that good sign and set it up upon their own imagin- 
 ings, must disregard the remonstrances of those who have made 
 it their life business to try to find out what is the underlying truth 
 in these relations. They must fall to abusing slow-footed, plod- 
 ding intellect in the same breath with which they have decried 
 the ancient faith. In the long period of difficult adjustment 
 
288 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
 
 which we have been passing through, the disagreement between 
 the sciences and faith has sometimes been assumed to be a funda- 
 mental one. But to have the whole intellectual endeavor of a 
 generation flouted because it also is not able to march fast enough, 
 that is a picturesque experience. We advocates of religion, so 
 long down-trodden, are touched in our sense of humor to find 
 our old opponents, the scientific people, now somewhat in the 
 same case. It looks as if we were going to be pungently reminded, 
 from this side as well, of the wholeness of man's life, of the in- 
 tegrity of scientific processes, of the inviolable nature of evidence, 
 of the impossibility of any real advance of man into a realm to 
 which the sober, patient study of the facts and cautious induc- 
 tion from the facts, the brave and often costly experiment in 
 the application of the facts, have not prepared the way. 
 
 Nothing that is not intellectually sound can possibly stand. 
 Nothing which is not economically right, socially just and advan- 
 tageous for all concerned, can in the long run by any possibility 
 prevail. And concerning much that with passionate zeal and hot 
 heart we do desire for others, or demand for ourselves, just that 
 it is which has got to be worked out. The question is whether 
 they are sound. You say that the Church must show sympathy. 
 By all means! but sympathy is not the only quality requisite to 
 leadership. Upon occasion it means more to leadership to be 
 right than even to be sympathetic. We do not think so meanly 
 of our fellows as to believe that any great majority of them want 
 coddling. They do not know what is right. We do not any of 
 us know altogether what is right. But the instant we go within 
 ourselves we know that many things which are now being held 
 out to people in the name of religion and to impress upon them 
 the notion that we are sympathetic are not right and not wise. 
 They are not intellectually sound, and they are not morally for 
 the best. They refer too much, if not wholly, to rights, present 
 advantages, outward gains, ease, and escape from toils and pains. 
 They have not that note which every man knows to be true, 
 that note which, believe me, this age and land of ours is waiting^ 
 to hear, and knows that it ought to hear of all places on earth 
 in the church of Christ; and which, when it hears, it obeys. 
 
 Harvard University, 
 May 7, 1910. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 Harry Norman Gardiner 
 
 The word "pleasure" is ambiguous. We call a man's 
 "pleasures" the things he takes pleasure in, usually his amuse- 
 ments. Again, "pleasure" is used to denote the whole of a con- 
 crete pleasurable experience. In psychology the term has a more 
 restricted meaning. A distinction is drawn between the other 
 factors of the experience and the feeling of its pleasantness. 
 "Pleasure" then denotes this feeling, an aspect, moment or ele- 
 ment of the pleasant experience. The distinction is in certain re- 
 spects important. It is a question, for example, in the discussion 
 of hedonistic theories of ethics, whether pleasures differ in qual- 
 ity, and so afford a ground of preference, or only in degree. 
 Clearly if the question relates to concrete pleasures, the answer 
 is plain : the pleasures differ in quality so far as there is any quali- 
 tative difference in their constituents, and this difference may be 
 a valid ground of preference. But if the question relates to the 
 mere pleasantness felt in the different experiences, abstraction 
 being made of the other elements of the content, the answer is 
 not so easy, for mere pleasantness is unanalysable and different 
 instances of it are difficult to compare; hence the conflict of 
 opinion on the subject among trained observers. Presumably 
 a decision can be reached, if at all, only from considerations that 
 are indirect. Again, it is sometimes asserted that pleasure is 
 always the object of desire. But this, if mere pleasantness is 
 meant, is evidently false, for it is only in the rarest cases that that 
 is thought of as an object at all. On the other hand, if concrete 
 pleasurable experience is meant, the assertion becomes almost 
 a truism, for we certainly desire an experience fulfilling the desire 
 and so far pleasant, though not necessarily so in other respects. 
 
 289 
 
290 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 Psychology, then, understands by "pleasure" the feeling of 
 pleasantness, of being pleased. This feeling cannot be defined, 
 it can only be felt. But its psychological relations, the conditions 
 of its genesis, its function in the mental and bodily economy can 
 be studied and speculated about, and it is these which consti- 
 tute what we call its "nature," and which form the subject- 
 matter of the psychological theory. 
 
 The interest of such a theory is obvious from the place occu- 
 pied by pleasure and its antithesis, displeasure, in human life. 
 It is doubtful if there is a single moment of our waking conscious- 
 ness in which one or the other of these feelings is altogether ab- 
 sent. It may indeed be that a given object appears to us as 
 relatively, or altogether, indifferent; it is certainly true that we 
 are not all the time rejoicing or grieving, nor much of the time 
 reflectively thinking of how pleased, or how displeased, we feel; 
 we may hardly be aware that we are feeling at all. But it is ex- 
 tremely doubtful whether, if we take pains to examine the matter, 
 we shall not find either in the whole or in some aspect of our ex- 
 perience at a given time a degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, 
 of being well or ill at ease, of liking or disliking, in a word, of 
 feeling pleased or displeased. There can at any rate be no doubt 
 concerning the universality of the experiences to which these 
 feelings attach themselves. There is no kind of experience which 
 may not excite them; sensations and ideas, emotions and actions, 
 states and functions, things present, past and to come — every- 
 thing that can in any way enter into consciousness at all is capa- 
 ble of affecting it in one or the other of these modes. These 
 feelings have also a remarkable range of intensity, now pervasive 
 and overwhelming, now restricted and more subconscious than 
 noticed. The close connection of the two has often been com- 
 mented on; the keenest pleasure seems often akin to, or to be 
 mixed with, pain, and there is frequently a very rapid transition 
 from the one state to the other. The influence of these feelings, 
 moreover, on the course of mental life can hardly be exaggerated. 
 They affect our sentiments, beliefs, judgments and conduct. 
 The principal reason for this influence appears to be that they 
 register for us, not indeed the reflective, but the immediate 
 values of our experiences as agreeable or not agreeable. We 
 naturally like what is pleasant and dislike what is unpleasant. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 291 
 
 What pleases us is in so far good and accepted, what displeases 
 us is in so far evil and avoided. True, there is such a thing as 
 pleasure in pain. This phenomenon may be pathological, but 
 it may also be an incident in the highest form of spiritual life. 
 Christians have obeyed the injunction to " rejoice in tribulation '* 
 in both ways. In either way the phenomenon is due to special 
 conditions and proves, not that pain or unpleasant experience 
 is in itself pleasant and an object of liking, but only that, under 
 certain circumstances, it may excite pleasure. On the other 
 hand Antisthenes the Cynic expressed his abhorrence of "pleas- 
 ure" by saying that he would rather be mad than pleased. But 
 this was a judgment of moral reflection and implies what we are 
 asserting, namely, the natural tendency to regard pleasure as a 
 good, a tendency which Antisthenes found it important to resist, 
 especially when "pleasure" was identified with the gratification 
 of the sensuous appetites. The Cynic doubtless took pleasure in 
 his Cynicism. The natural identification of pleasure and good 
 has been the absorbing theme of ethics. Religion deals with 
 the same subject in connection with ideas of sin and grace, of 
 rewards and punishments, and of the future life. And both re- 
 ligion and ethics, while often condemning pleasure as a snare 
 and the love of it as a sin, nevertheless recognise its claims. 
 The rigoristic Kant admits it into the ultimate ethical ideal, 
 the Puritan preacher extols it as it exists forevermore at the right 
 hand of God. 
 
 It is not strange that a feeling so universal and significant 
 should early have become an object of scientific reflection. Dis- 
 cussion took its rise prominently in the ethical schools of Greece 
 in connection with the assertion and denial of the doctrine of 
 hedonism.* Aristippus, identifying pleasure, good and utility, 
 made definite what Socrates had left vague in his conception of 
 happiness. The Cyrenaics joined to this evaluation of pleasure 
 as the good or end of life a physiological doctrine of its nature: 
 pleasure, they said, is a smooth or gentle "motion," in con- 
 
 * There were earlier speculations. Heraclitus, e. g., connected pleasure 
 with the soul's humidity; Diogenes ot Apollonia, with aeration of the blood. 
 The general tendency was to regard pleasure as related to suitable organic 
 conditions, pain to their disturbance. But these early speculations were 
 sporadic and led to nothing. 
 
292 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 trast to pain, which is hard or rough, and in distinction from 
 the intermediate state, which is either one of rest or a motion too 
 shght to be perceived. As motion it is something positive, as 
 gentle agreeable to nature, but it allows of no differences except 
 of degree. Antisthenes and the Cynics, in repudiating hedon- 
 ism, conceived of pleasure as something merely negative, the ces- 
 sation of pain; some even declared that there was no such thing 
 as pleasure, but only its illusory appearance.* 
 
 The questions thus raised needed profounder investigation, 
 and this they received first from Plato and afterwards from 
 Aristotle. In his estimate of pleasure as related to the end of 
 life Plato varies. In the early Protagoras Socrates is represented 
 as arguing on the basis of the assumption "that the pleasant 
 is the good and the painful evil."f Know^ledge has then the 
 function of weighing and balancing pleasures and pains to the 
 end that the conduct of life may lead to the greatest sum of 
 pleasure. But in the Gorgias the pleasant and the good are 
 sharply contrasted, and the advocate of pleasure being forced 
 to admit the distinction between good pleasures and bad, is 
 brought to the conclusion that pleasure is to be sought for the 
 sake of the good, and not the good for the sake of pleasure. 
 Neither view expresses the full Platonic doctrine. The first in- 
 deed is merely a stage in the defense of the Socratic thesis of the 
 unification of the virtues by knowledge as against the sophistic 
 assertion of their multifariousness, and may possibly be regarded 
 as an assumption common to the disputants and sufficiently 
 near the doctrine of the historical Socrates to be plausible. But 
 the opposition of pleasure and good in the Gorgias was also not 
 final. In the Republic, and more definitely in the Philcbus, the 
 relations of the two are more carefully considered, the conclusion 
 being reached that pleasure, qualified as to its kind, is an essential 
 ingredient of the highest form of life, the finally good life being 
 one in which wisdom, pleasure and truth are symmetrically 
 combined. J 
 
 The considerations which lead to this result are partly logical 
 and metaphysical, partly psychological, the different points of 
 view never being sharply distinguished and the ethical interest 
 
 * Plato, Phileb., 44 B, 51 A. Cf. Zeller. Phil. d. Gr. II, i\ p. 308, n. 1. 
 t Prot., 358. % Phileb., G4 f. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 293 
 
 predominating throughout. An important section of the Phi- 
 lehus (12-16) treats dialectically of the relations of the one to 
 the many in the realm of ideas, the object being to indicate the 
 possibility and necessity of a division of the one thing called 
 'pleasure" into its kinds. Pleasure in general is defined as a 
 restoration of the natural organic harmony, the dissolution or 
 destruction of which is pain.* This definition, like that of the 
 Cyrenaics, conceives of pleasure as a positive organic process, 
 though, of course, for Plato the feeling of the process is in the 
 souljf but a process of repair, of replenishment, conditioned, 
 therefore, on an antecedent disturbance, the feeling of which is 
 Dainful The normal condition would be one of calm, neither 
 pleasant nor unpleasant, a state ascribed to the gods. Plato 
 is ever aware of the close connection of pleasure and pain, two 
 bodies, as he says, with a single head.f The conditions of 
 pleasure and pain are more precisely defined in the Timmus.^ 
 There we learn that it is not any and every disturbance of har- 
 mony which is painful and its restitution pleasant, but that the 
 respective movements must have a certain degree of intensity and 
 suddenness. These qualifications enable Plato to bring under 
 the terms of his theory dissolutions which are painless because no 
 resistance is offered by the particles, and restorations which are 
 without pleasure because the process is too gradual, and — most 
 important for the classification and appreciation of pleasures — 
 pleasures like sweet smells which have no antecedent pain, the 
 explanation being that the " withdrawings and emptyings" are 
 too gradual to be noticed, while the corresponding replenish- 
 ments are great and sudden. A little later in the dialogue he 
 accounts for the euphoria which, as he alleges, attends death 
 from old age, contrasting with the painfulness of death from 
 accident or disease, on the general principle that what is accord- 
 ing to nature is pleasant, what is contrary, painful, without show- 
 ing, what might perhaps have been for him not easy, that that, 
 too, was a case of organic replenishment. 
 
 The above definition of pleasure, though stated in the Phl- 
 lebus in general terms, applies directly, it would seem, only to 
 
 * Phileb., 31 E ff.; cf. 25 E f., Cratyl, 419 C. 
 
 t Tim., 64 B, Laws, 673 A, Phileb., 33 D, Rep., 462 C, 584 C. 
 
 t Phoedo, 60 B. § Tim., 64 f. 
 
294 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 bodily pleasures, and Plato held that some pleasures were only 
 of the soul. But he uses the general conception, either directly 
 or analogically, in establishing the distinctions required by his 
 theory of the sort of pleasure worthy of admission into the ideally 
 good life. These are the distinctions of "pure" and "mixed" 
 and of "true" and "false" pleasures. By a "pure" pleasure 
 Plato means one free from pain, either as an antecedent condi- 
 tion or as a necessary concomitant; if it is conditioned on or com- 
 bined with pain, it is "mixed." He finds, accordingly, that most 
 sense-pleasures are "mixed," though some few are "pure" in 
 the manner already explained in the case of sweet odors. Many 
 mental pleasures are also "mixed," for they may be combined 
 with bodily disturbance or depend on the fulfilling of a desire, 
 which implies the unpleasantness of want. But characteris- 
 tically and for the most part "pure" pleasures are of the mind. 
 Now Plato is probably right in recognising mixed states of feel- 
 ing, that is, states in which there is a feeling at once of pleasant- 
 ness and unpleasantness. "Our sincerest laughter w^ith some 
 pain is fraught." But he unites this psychological doctrine with 
 the questionable assumption that pleasure which is won at the 
 cost of pain is itself contaminated by the pain and therefore of 
 an inferior order. This assumption is developed in considering 
 the pardy coincident distinction of "true" and "false" pleasures. 
 Pleasures are "false," he explains, when they import a wrong 
 judgment regarding their objects, their quality or amount, or 
 their intrinsic constitution. Here again Plato is on good psycho- 
 logical ground so far as he calls attention to the illusions to which 
 we are all subject regarding the sources and attributes of our af- 
 fective states.* But he regards the illusion as affecting not a 
 mere attribute, but the very essence of the feeling; we suppose 
 ourselves to be enjoying pure pleasure, when in reality we are 
 experiencing a mixed state of feeling, pleasure infected with pain. 
 And this, he holds, is more especially the case where the pleasure, 
 as in sensual delight, is intense. Such pleasure he therefore 
 disparages, not only as morally dangerous, but as pleasure. 
 He maintains that " a small pleasure, or a small amount of pleas- 
 
 * Phileb., 36 C ff. Cf. for a recent treatment of this theme Ribot, Prob- 
 Ibmes de psychologie affective (1910), pp. 147-170 ("Sur une forme d'illusion 
 affective "). 
 
\ THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 295 
 
 ure, if pure and unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter (as 
 well as truer and fairer) than a great pleasure, or a great amount 
 of pleasure, of another kind."* As only "pure" pleasure is 
 " true," or strictly, pleasure, it alone is admitted as a constituent 
 of the good, which thus includes for Plato some simple sense- 
 pleasures and some of an analogous sort, but pre-eminently 
 the pleasures of knowledge. In the Republic the conception of 
 the greater reality and truth of mental and moral pleasures is 
 supported by the metaphysical argument that what is filled by 
 the more real being is more really filled than what is filled by the 
 less.f We have seen Plato explaining, in accordance with the 
 terms of his theory, the painless pleasures of sense by the unsup- 
 ported hypothesis of a gradual emptying and a great and rapid 
 replenishment. Here the theory appears in a form which tran- 
 scends all psychological boundaries under the analogy of a " fill- 
 ing" of the soul with reality. It needs scarcely to be remarked 
 that the conclusion as to the superior "truth" and "reality" of 
 certain pleasures is also extra-psychological. The intrinsic 
 quality of pleasure, whether as such or in any respect good or 
 bad, can only be precisely as it is felt. Under what conditions it 
 is experienced with, or without, pain is a psychological question 
 to be settled by induction; but whether it is always better and to 
 be preferred when unconditioned by or unmixed with pain is 
 not strictly a psychological question at all, but a matter of appre- 
 ciation to be determined by other considerations than that of 
 mere "purity." 
 
 Aristotle's doctrine of pleasure takes a broader and more ob- 
 jective sun'ey of the facts. At the outset he frees himself from 
 the ambiguities attaching to the conception of pleasure as "mo- 
 tion" and places himself squarely on psychological ground by 
 declaring it to be, like the act of vision or a mathematical point, 
 whole and indivisible and all at once. In particular he rejects 
 the Platonic notion that it is a process of replenishment, regarding 
 that notion as suggested by the pains and pleasures of nutrition, 
 but as inapplicable to many other pleasures which are not pre- 
 ceded by a sense of want.| Positively, his own view is that 
 
 * Phileb., 51 ff. t Rep., IX, 583 ff. 
 
 t Eth. Nic, X, cc. 3 and 4. In Rhet. I, 11, 1369, b 33 we find pleasure 
 defined in terms strongly reminiscent of Plato as "a certain movement of 
 
296 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 pleasure is a concomitant of the normal exercise of the faculties. 
 The free and unimpeded exercise, or functional realisation, of any 
 natural capacity and of the vital energies in their totality is 
 pleasant; experienced restriction, unpleasant. The greatest 
 pleasure relatively to a given function is obtained when the 
 faculty is at its best and the fullest scope is afforded by the 
 stimulus to its exercise. This is one ground for the superiority 
 of the pleasures of the intellect as compared with those of sense. 
 In the latter the ratio of stimulus to capacity is limited: transcend 
 the limit and the exercise is impaired; but in thought, although 
 owing to natural conditions its exercise cannot be continued in- 
 definitely, activity increases and the faculty is more fully realised 
 with every advance in the intellectual character of its objects. 
 Hence so far is Aristotle from agreeing with Plato in thinking 
 it unworthy of the gods to ascribe to them pleasure, that he con- 
 ceives of the Deity as experiencing in the uninterrupted exer- 
 cise of perfectly fulfilled intellection highest and completest 
 
 joy.* 
 
 Now this doctrine which connects pleasure with the normal 
 exercise of faculty undoubtedly accords with a far larger number 
 of facts than that which makes it consist in a process of restora- 
 tion of a disturbed organic harmony. But does it fit in with all 
 the facts? There are pleasures of activity, certainly, many of 
 them; but there are also pleasures of recreation and repose. 
 And there are "pathological" pleasures which appear to contra- 
 dict the assumption that pleasure is always a symptom of " nor- 
 mal" activity and, therefore, an index of welfare. How does 
 Aristotle deal with such cases? Well, he notices them and sug- 
 gests explanations. He tells us, for instance, that " all conditions 
 of ease, comfort or inattention, amusements, recreations and 
 sleep " are pleasures, the reason being that they fulfil and express 
 either natural or acquired tendencies and conform to the general 
 
 the soul and a sudden and sensible settling into the normal state." But, 
 however this is to be interpreted, it cannot be set against the express rejection 
 in the Ethics of the idea that pleasure is a Klvrja-is. The definition, which is 
 introduced by viroKelffdu ijfxTv, may be taken as an assumption sufficiently 
 accurate for the purpose in hand. In the sequel the emphasis is on the normal 
 and natural conditions of the affection. See Cope, Introduction to Aristotle's 
 Rhetoric (18G7), App. D to Bk. I. 
 
 * E. N., X, 7; Met. 12 (A), 7, 1072 b 14 f. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 297 
 
 conditions of life.* This is clearly a modification of the original 
 doctrine in that it includes, along with the actual realisation of 
 faculty, the realisation of tendencies incidental thereto. But 
 abnormal tendencies may be acquired and their fulfilment, on 
 the theory, must also yield pleasure. Pleasure, therefore, will 
 not be in all cases an index of the normal fulfilment of vital en- 
 ergies. But it may still be "natural" in one sense of the term, 
 for habit is second nature. The difficulty is to define the "nor- 
 mal." Aristotle does not attempt to formally define it, but 
 assumes an ayadbi; ctv-qp as the standard and declares that base 
 pleasures, like perverted tastes in disease, are not pleasures 
 "except to corrupt men."t This is his version of Plato's " false" 
 pleasures. 
 
 Aristotle holds that pleasures differ in kind according to the 
 differences in the faculties whose exercises they complete, and 
 this view he supports by observing the facilitating effect of the 
 pleasure attending any kind of activity on that kind and its 
 inhibitory effect on rival activities. J They thus differ in purity, 
 for sight is "purer" than touch, hearing than smell and intel- 
 lection than any sense. Independently of this distinction, which 
 refers not to freedom from pain, but from "matter,"§ Aris- 
 totle also recognises, with Plato, "mixed" states of feeling, the 
 most conspicuous illustrations of which are found in the emotions. 
 He further notes the differences of pleasure relative to the total 
 life-functions of one species of animal as compared with another 
 and the individual differences among members of the same spe- 
 cies, using these facts as a background for the conception of a 
 normal life-function for man. 
 
 Besides its relation to the cognitive powers, pleasure has im- 
 portant relations to conation and conduct, the outstanding 
 features of which Aristotle has drawn with a firm and sure touch. 
 It is unnecessary to go into details. The point of ethical inter- 
 est is that while pleasure consolidates or suppresses tendencies, 
 it is not itself a criterion of the tendencies desirable to cultivate, 
 nor does it show how the different tendencies of our nature are 
 
 * Rhet. I, 11; cf. Prohl., 878 b 11: "the way to what is natural is sweet, if 
 only it be perceived." 
 
 t E. N., X, 5, 10 f. t lb., 5, 1-5. 
 
 § See Stewart, Xotes on the Nicomachean Ethics, II, p. 435. 
 
298 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 to be organised into a perfect life. Life consists essentially for 
 Aristotle in the continued renewal and fulfilment of functions. 
 Pleasure and life seem constantly conjoined, as the theory, 
 partly supported by this observation, requires;* pain marks a 
 disturbance, an interruption. But pleasure is not the realisa- 
 tion of any vital function. It is not ivepyeia, but iv ivepyeia. 
 There is no faculty of pleasure in the exercise of which life finds 
 even a partial, much less its complete fulfilment. Pleasure is an 
 added perfection, a supervenient grace, "like the bloom of 
 youth. "t If, therefore, the end of life is the fulfilment of life, 
 pleasure will be a concomitant of it, but not the end itself. 
 And if the end of human life is the realisation of man's specifi- 
 cally human functions, we must seek it in the fullest expression 
 throughout its whole extent of man's rational nature. This is 
 " good life," a state of evSaifMovia, pleasant, but not '^Bovi]. This 
 is Aristode's reply to hedonism. 
 
 Little of importance was added by antiquity to the psychology 
 of pleasure except perhaps the teaching of Epicurus, which 
 Cicero and others found an object of ridicule, that the calm, 
 but fixed and stable (^KaTa(n7]fiaTLKrj) pleasure of the memory 
 of days spent in the study of philosophy was capable of over- 
 coming the acutest bodily sufl'ering. This, however, was not a 
 theory of its ultimate nature. The Stoics made 'qhovq one of the 
 four principal "passions," which they defined, now as excessive 
 impulses, now as false judgments or perversions of reason. This 
 uncertainty of classification prevailed, pleasure and pain being 
 reckoned now with the "active" and now with the "cognitive" 
 powers, till Sulzer, Tetens and Kant set up the present traditional 
 tripartite division of the mental faculties and assigned pleasant- 
 ness and unpleasantness to the distinct division of "feeling." 
 The wholesale condemnation of r)hovri did not prevent the Stoics 
 from admitting pleasurable states among the approved disposi- 
 tions, e. g., repyfrL'i, wholesome pleasure in the use of the higher 
 senses, and evc^poavvr}, bonhomie, or delight in social intercourse. 
 
 * E. N., X, 4, 7. 
 
 t Ih., 4, 8. It apparently conflicts with this that pleasure is described in 
 E. N ., VII, 12, as an unimpeded iv^pyeia riji Kara (piia-iv ^|ews. It is sufficient 
 to remark that Bk. VII (with V and VI) is in all probability derived from the 
 Ethics of Eudemus. See Stewart, op. cit., II, pp. 218 ff. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 299 
 
 But they had no theory of pleasantness as such. Thus the theo- 
 ries of Plato and Aristotle stand out as typical and representative. 
 And they have remained so not only for antiquity, but to a 
 large extent for the history of opinion on the subject down to the 
 present time. Hamilton is not altogether wide of the mark when 
 he classifies all conceptions of pleasure as either Platonic or 
 Aristotelian, as repeating with various modifications the idea 
 that it is either connected with the restoration of equilibrium or a 
 concomitant and sign of unimpeded activity.* 
 
 It is no part of our present purpose to trace the history of the 
 modern doctrine. We turn rather at once to the more recent 
 phases of the discussion and, confronting that with the ancient, 
 enquire in what respects our knowledge has been advanced and 
 our insight developed. Now there are at least three things 
 characterising the present state of the psychology of the affec- 
 tions which offer a favorable comparison. First, its strictly 
 empirical attitude: it seeks to study the facts, to discover their 
 causes and effects and to build up a theory of their conditions, 
 relations and general significance in life as far as possible with- 
 out farti pris. It is, therefore, no longer controlled by ethical, 
 metaphysical or other practical or theoretical interests. It is 
 not free from presuppositions, nor even altogether from hinder- 
 ing prejudices, but it has become extremely critical of possible 
 sources of error and extremely suspicious of the invasion into 
 its territory of ideas not derived from the accredited results 
 or working hypotheses of recognised science.f Secondly, its 
 interpretations are aided by the total outcome of its own discipline, 
 so that, for example, it is no longer concerned with the relation 
 of an affection to our " faculties," but only to the movement and 
 organisation of our functioning, empirically conditioned, life, 
 as well as by the positive knowledge and guiding ideas furnished 
 by the modern advances of the biological sciences. It is charac- 
 terised, in the third place, by a rich development of methods of 
 investigation, largely experimental. In a recent article Kiilpe 
 
 * Hamilton, Lectures o« Metaphysics, II, p. 444 ff. 
 
 t As an illustration of the strictly empirical, critical spirit of modern enquiry 
 we may refer to Ribot's demantl that in studying pleasure we free ourselves 
 fiom the confusing prejudice that pleasure is the " contrary " of pain; op. cit., 
 p. 127 ("Sur la nature du plaisir "). 
 
300 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 distinguishes six classes of methods, enumerating under each a 
 variety of elementary methods, in one case, that of registering 
 the reactions, as many as fourteen.* 
 
 The meagreness of positive results obtained from all this ex- 
 perimental research is, however, it must be sadly confessed, 
 exceedingly disappointing. We have learned a little about the 
 relation of intensity of stimulus to intensity of feeling, and know, 
 for example, that increasing the stimulus adds to the displeasure 
 of an unpleasant impression, but does not necessarily increase 
 the pleasure of a pleasant one; and similar relations hold with 
 repetition and continuance of the impression. But all this we 
 know, if not precisely, from every-day experience. We have also 
 discovered that pleasure, when obtained under the simplest 
 experimental conditions, characteristically "expresses" itself 
 in movements of the vital organs: the pulse, for example, is 
 strengthened and retarded. But it is not easy to interpret the 
 phenomena and many of the results of this sort obtained by 
 different investigators are conflicting and the suspicion which 
 attaches to certain instruments of measurement, e. g., the ergo- 
 graph and dynamometer, which were at one time supposed to 
 show that pleasure increased, while pain decreased, the vital 
 energy, at least temporarily, is extended by many to the whole 
 method of expression, at least when employed apart from the 
 introspection required by the method of impression. Meanwhile 
 many problems, capable of experimental study, press for solution. 
 What, for instance, is the exact relation of pleasure and dis- 
 pleasure to facility and arrest? Does pleasure always attend 
 unimpeded activity? How about the "res severa verum gaudi- 
 um" and the joy of struggle? What is its relation to attention 
 and interest? Scores of such questions rise up to remind the 
 psychologist how much this department of his science lags be- 
 hind every other in definite achievement. 
 
 Contrasting with this meagreness in positive results we have 
 a luxuriant variety of conflicting hypotheses. Opinions differ 
 even as to the kind of mental fact we are here dealing with, for 
 while all call it a "feeling" or "affection" and most assert a 
 generic difference between that and other aspects of the mental 
 
 * 0. Kiilpe, Pour la psychologic des sentiments. J. de psych, norm, et 
 path., VII, pp. 1-13. 1910. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 301 
 
 life, some hold it to be a general "attribute" of consciousness 
 (e. g., Marshall), some a unique "element" (Kiilpe, Titchener), 
 while others, finding no clear criteria by which to mark off feel- 
 ing from sensation, declare it to be a kind of sensation, either 
 organic, as c. g. a sort of diffused tickling (Bourdon), or central, 
 a form of cerebral coenaesthesia (Stumpf). This last view claims 
 support from the analogy with bodily pain, for which special 
 nerves have been discovered, and also from a certain localisa- 
 tion in sexual pleasure. But its opponents point in refutation 
 to the absence of any evidence for special organs of pleasure and 
 explain so-called bodily pleasures and pains as sensations mark- 
 edly affective in quality or effect. A broader theory (Baldwin's) 
 holds that pleasure and pain (displeasure) are probably both sen- 
 sations and qualia of consciousness according to the genetically 
 determined conditions of their appearance. They have also been 
 described from the point of view of the "action" theory of con- 
 sciousness as impulses in the service of perception (Miinster- 
 berg).* 
 
 As to kinds of pleasure, the distinction being drawn between 
 the concrete mental state and the feeling of pleasantness, it is 
 still possible to distinguish it according to its sources as sensuous 
 and ideal and according to its character as exciting and calm, 
 general and particular (attached to individual objects), and the 
 like; but whether it embraces a plurality of qualitative differences, 
 as Wundt thinks, or is always intrinsically the same, as Kiilpe 
 holds, is a question not yet settled. Probably the majority of 
 contemporary psychologists favor the latter opinion. 
 
 As to the immediate conditions of its genesis in the individual, 
 the theories may be broadly divided into psychological and physi- 
 ological. Psychological theories tend to be either intellectual- 
 istic or, in the widest sense of the term, voluntaristic. The 
 former, assuming the priority in mental life of the presentational 
 content, make "feeling" in general a function of the content 
 and pleasure in particular a product of its freely developing ac- 
 
 * It is perhaps worth noting that Aristotle commonly assigns them to 
 ataO-qffis and occasionally to the rb iiridvix-qTiKbv {Top., IV, 5, 126 a g). But 
 these ascriptions, from which the scholastic reference to the affections to 
 the "sense-appetite " is derived, have nothing in common with the " action'* 
 theory and are far from identical with the "sensation " theory. ^Aristotle's 
 atadr]<Ti.s is our "feeling " in the broad sense. 
 
302 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 tivity, or of the favorable relations of its elements. This was 
 the view of Herbart. The latter, assuming activity or func- 
 tional process as fundamental, make pleasure and displeasure 
 functions in the process of apperception or assimilation of con- 
 tent or in some form of psychic activity agreeing or disagreeing 
 with the tendencies uppermost at the moment, whatever their 
 character in other respects, whether profound or superficial. 
 This is the view, with varying shades of difference, of Ward, 
 Stout, Lipps and Wundt. Physiological theories, divided over 
 the question of a central organ of affection — for which there is 
 little evidence — tend to agree in connecting pleasantness and 
 unpleasantness with conditions suitable or unsuitable for efficient 
 organic activity and ultimately with contrasting processes in the 
 trophism of the higher centres. There are numerous forms of 
 the theory, some highly speculative and hardly to be followed 
 in details. One of the best known, and on the whole most plausi- 
 ble, is that of Dr. Marshall. Marshall conceives of pleasure and 
 pain as determined by the relation of the energy stored up by 
 nutrition of the blood in the neural elements or systems corre- 
 sponding to noetic consciousness and the demand made by the 
 stimulus. If the neural elements or systems are so well nour- 
 ished as to react forcibly to the stimulus, we have pleasure, if 
 they are so ill-nourished as to act but feebly to the same stimulus, 
 we have pain.* Many facts of experience favor this hypothesis, 
 notably those in which a change from a moderate to a great 
 stimulus brings about a transition from pleasure to pain; but 
 it does not well fit them all. Even with the gratuitous assump- 
 tion of Dr. Marshall that every sensation is, or would be, pleas- 
 ant, with a stimulus moderate enough, it is hard to believe, for 
 example, that the neural elements corresponding to the smell 
 of rotting fish are so ill-nourished as compared with those excited 
 by the scent of honeysuckle that the demand made on the former 
 by even a slight stimulus is excessive, while the response of the 
 latter, under normal conditions, is invariably efiicient. 
 
 The idea, common to nearly all modern and ancient doctrine, 
 that pleasure is a concomitant and sign of ease, efiiciency, suc- 
 cess in the ongoing mental and bodily processes, is expressed in a 
 
 * H. R. Marshall, Paiji, Pleasure and Esthetics, pp. 15 ff. (189-1.) Con- 
 sciovsness, pp. 250 ff. (1909.) 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 303 
 
 special and significant form in the modern biological theory, 
 associated partii'ulariy with the names of Bain and Spencer, 
 that pleasure is the product, symptom and cause of organic wel- 
 fare, the contrary being true of pain. "Pains," says Spencer, 
 "are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while 
 pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare." 
 And again, "Every pleasure increases vitality; every pain de- 
 creases vitality. Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain 
 lowers the tide of life."* Stated thus, the theory is more a* de- 
 duction from the assured principles of evolution than an inductive 
 generalisation from observed facts. Recent criticism has brought 
 to light such a mass of adverse evidence — harmful pleasures 
 (alcohol, morphine), beneficial pains (surgical operations), grave 
 organic troubles without pain (arterio-sclerosis, phthisis, tuber- 
 culosis), pleasure which the bodily condition fails to justify 
 (euphoria of the dying and insane), displeasure having little or 
 no connection with bodily health (intellectual, aesthetic, moral 
 displeasure), sensations having a degree of unpleasantness out 
 of all proportion to the organic injury involved (e. g., from a 
 cinder in the eye), useful actions the pleasure in which bears 
 little relation to the degree of their utility (breathing air, eating 
 bread): — the classes might be variously extended and the illus- 
 trations indefinitely multiplied — that it is impossible to main- 
 tain with any strictness the existence of a connection between 
 pleasure and organic welfare, pain and organic injury. We may 
 then either acknowledge the connection in general while denying 
 it in detail, or we may acknowledge it in the details of the organic 
 process while denying it for the organic process as a whole. 
 The first is the cour.se adopted by Mr, Spencer himself when he 
 admits, indeed insists, that the pleasures acquired by past ac- 
 commodations are no criteria of what is useful for an organism 
 required to accommodate itself to ever new conditions, especially 
 those arising, as in the case of man, from an artificial civilisation; 
 but this fails to explain the many persistent anomalies in purely 
 organic pains and pleasures. The latter is the explanation of 
 Lotze, Lehmann and others, who hold, for example, that a pleas- 
 ant poison is good for the tongue, though bad for the blood and 
 the organism generally; but this isolates the interrelated parts of 
 * Spencer, Principles of Psychology, § 124; Data of Ethics, § 36. 
 
304 THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 
 
 an organic process and leaves little remaining of the theory that 
 pleasure is an index of organic welfare.* 
 
 There are two truths, however, underlying the theory which it 
 is important not to lose sight of. One is that the conditions and 
 meaning of pleasurable experience have to be sought in part at 
 least in the evolutionary history of the race. This is an essen- 
 tially modern way of looking at the matter which, when the hypo- 
 thetical construction goes hand in hand with observation of facts 
 now open to our inspection, promises a genuine development of 
 our insight. And it seems altogether probable, in view of what 
 we now see of the effect of pleasure on action and of the connection 
 of pleasure with healthful activities, that the habitual reactions 
 to the conditions favorable to life — reactions to light, air, warmth, 
 food, .etc. — when sufficiently intense to rise to consciousness and 
 not too intense for easy accommodation, were originally connect- 
 ed with pleasant feeling and constitute its primordial and funda- 
 mental source. It cannot be denied that pleasure, as such, al- 
 ways feels good and that pain feels bad. But the conditions of 
 organic evolution are so extraordinarily complex, the lines of 
 hereditary transmission so tangled, and the aims and interests 
 of a human being so far in excess of those concerned with the 
 maintenance and propagation of the life of the organism, that any 
 advances in the interpretation of the principle as applied to our 
 affections seem bound to be slow and likely to remain always 
 more or less tentative. A theory which connects them all with 
 organic welfare and injury is too simple. The second element 
 of truth in the biological theory is that pleasure seems always to 
 be connected with enhancement of function. The mistake lies 
 in identifying that with organic welfare. It is not of the further- 
 ance of energies conducive to organic or mental well-being that 
 pleasure is the sign, but of the emergence into consciousness of 
 inherited or acquired organic or mental dispositions with which 
 the self of the moment, and not necessarily the larger self of re- 
 flective consciousness, feels itself identified. Pleasure is an in- 
 dex of value, but what it indicates is not, as such, the real and 
 
 * For criticisms of the theory, see Wundt, Phys. Psych. ^, II, p. 354 f.; 
 Ribot, Psych, d. sentiments, pp. 87-91; Kiilpe, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 
 268-270; especially C. Nddejde, Die biologische Theorie der Lust u?id Unlust, 
 Heft I. Leipzig, 1908. 
 
THE THEORY OF PLEASURE 305 
 
 permanent values of existence, but the subordinate, though in 
 many respects still highly important, value of the free and lively 
 play of function agreeable to the latent and more or less pro- 
 foundly organised tendencies of the psychic individual. What 
 pleases is an object, state or activity by or in which a function is 
 consciously exercised conforming to the demands of the ten- 
 dency. Pleasure, as expressing and furthering this function, 
 is indeed a sign of enhanced vitality, not, however, of the organ- 
 ism, but of the tendency and of the function sustaining it. 
 
 This view of pleasure is substantially the view of Aristotle, 
 substituting "function" for "faculty." If we may assume in 
 the free and unimpeded exercise of a function above the level of 
 mere mechanical adjustment or a subconscious stirring too slight 
 to be noticed a vital process disturbing to the bare equilibrium 
 of latent energies, but tending to settle and consolidate them as 
 functional tendencies, we may even include in it a character- 
 istic moment of the conception of Plato. But modern psychol- 
 ogy, speaking broadly, lends no countenance to the notion that 
 every pleasure is preceded by conscious pain. Nor does it sup- 
 port the contentions of either pessimism or hedonism. It agrees 
 with the ancient doctrine that pleasure is a "good," for which 
 even Plato may be cited, and which cannot be successfully de- 
 nied. The theologians and moralists who have decried pleasures 
 as evil have not really meant to include all pleasure in their con- 
 demnation. The distinction of pleasure from its conditions 
 enables us to go farther and say that it is always a good. But 
 it is a good strictly limited. It is not a measure of all the values 
 of life, but only of the unobstructed flow of the energies tempora- 
 rily expressing present tendencies. The origin of these tenden- 
 cies must be sought in the complicated phylogeny and ontogeny 
 of the individual. Their ultimate evaluation belongs partly to 
 biology, partly to the normative sciences of the mind, and in 
 practical reference in large part to ethics and religion. 
 
 Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 
 September 5, 1910. 
 
XXIII 
 
 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 By Frederick J. E. Woodbridge 
 
 The operations of nature do not appear to be aimless changes. 
 They issue in specific products the history of which can be traced 
 and construed as the adaptation of means to ends. It is, doubt- 
 less, this aspect of nature as the producer of definite and particular 
 results which, more than any other, profoundly stirs the imagina- 
 tion and provokes scientific curiosity. From of old the coming 
 into being of things in an ordered world and their passing away 
 has been the theme of both poet and scholar. Reflection, after 
 it has endured disappointment and sophistication, may come to 
 view nature with eyes less fascinated by her productivity, seeing 
 in her nothing but an aimless and ceaseless rearrangement of 
 elements to which chance or a human prejudice in favor of final 
 causes imparts the illusory appearance of direction; but such is 
 not the spontaneous vision of things. There they are, constitut- 
 ing the great whole w^e call nature, each of them with its indi- 
 vidual history culminating through many helps and hindrances 
 in the present product. Illustrations are so abundant that choice 
 is baflfled in selecting the most appropriate. For while living 
 things may at first appear to be more evidently the products of 
 directive and selective forces, inanimate nature itself — the plain 
 with mountains about it, the river with its course motived by the 
 character of the land through which it flows — exhibits likewise 
 the adaptation of means to ends. And the adaptations are 
 admirable, well-calculated, the more they are analyzed, to pro- 
 duce the specific results which eventuate. Thus we come to 
 think that we have explained the origin of anything when we are 
 able to view it as the kind of result we should expect from the 
 
 307 
 
308 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 operation of the factors which have produced it. But this means, 
 of course, that these factors serve. They aid and abet the out- 
 come in definite ways and will produce it if no obstacles of suf- 
 ficient contrary influence thwart their natural productivity. 
 Thus individual existence appears to be the outcome of the suc- 
 cess of processes which help toward the realization of some spe- 
 cific end over those that hinder this realization. Nature is a 
 domain, not of chaotic changes, but of definite, teleological 
 changes pointing to particular results. In other words, in view 
 of nature's productivity, there are helps and hindrances; things 
 and the elements of things have specific uses. 
 
 Philosophy has not always been content to take this fact of 
 specific usefulness as metaphysical, something to be set down 
 as of the nature of things. Explanation has been sought of it 
 and the question asked. Why do things have their uses, and, in- 
 deed, their specific uses? In asking this question philosophy 
 has been stimulated by an analogy which has often proved of 
 striking value, the analogy between nature and art. For art, 
 like nature, produces. Its procedure is an adaptation of means 
 to ends. Now art is controllable and its manner of operating 
 is measurably obvious, while nature is stubborn and obscure. 
 The building of a house is a comparatively simple process for 
 analysis, but the factors which combine to produce a star re- 
 quire long searching for their discovery. To pass from art to 
 nature thus affords knowledge the desired opportunity of passing 
 from the better to the less known. Science has ever availed 
 itself of this opportunity and by so doing has often attained its 
 most signal achievements. The analogy between nature and 
 art captivates the imagination also and has been no mean in- 
 strument in the poet's hands. And it has an obvious bearing 
 on the problem of use. Its record in this respect has, however, 
 been unsatisfactory. Instead of leading to accepted and in- 
 telligible opinion, it has led to bitter controversy. Instead of 
 clarifying use, it has, more often, obscured and mystified use. 
 Its procedure is reviewed here, not for the idle purpose of fight- 
 ing old battles over again, but in the hope of securing fresh empha- 
 sis upon the obvious, but often neglected, fact that teleology is 
 natural; that use is something on which to build, not something 
 requiring explanation; that it is a datum in metaphysics. 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 309 
 
 Art, when consciously productive, evidently intends its prod- 
 ucts to be useful. A house is made for shelter, clothing for pro- 
 tection or adornment, pictures to delight the sense. The skill 
 of the artist is measured by the success with which he makes 
 his materials serve his chosen end. The finality of art appears, 
 thus, to be an imparted and intended finality. So we find a 
 ready explanation of the usefulness of the things man makes in 
 the intention or design with which he makes them. Asking 
 why the loom so successfully weaves the colored fabric, we get 
 the answer, it was made in order that it might do precisely the 
 thing which we admire. Furthermore our admiration of the 
 product passes over into even greater admiration of the skill 
 which could contrive a machine so useful. Thus in the products 
 of art we seem to have instances where the explanation of use is 
 obvious. The ease of the explanation readily begets a habit of 
 thinking about use generally, leading us to regard all uses as de- 
 signed for the ends they serve. Since the hand is so useful for 
 grasping it may be thought of as made in order to grasp. Since 
 the adaptations of nature grow more wonderful the more they 
 are perceived, nature may be thought of as directed by a skill 
 commensurate with such wonder. The analogy between nature 
 and art thus easily constituted is reinforced by human necessities. 
 For man needs the useful in order that he may live long and well. 
 His life is a struggle for help. Nature, too, appears to struggle 
 and its products, like man himself, fail if help is not attained. 
 Indeed, so profoundly may this analogy between nature and art 
 affect the mind, that it becomes incredible that the uses of nature 
 have any other explanation than in a power great enough and 
 intelligent enough to contrive their manifold adaptations. 
 Thus philosophy is led to explain natural use by design and to see 
 in the varied adaptations of means to ends in nature proof of 
 intelligent direction. Nature becomes thus a work of art. 
 
 If this explanation of the uses of things, this thinking of nature 
 as somehow a work of art with its adaptations admirably con- 
 trived, does not settle down into an unquestioned faith, it suf- 
 fers in its satisfactoriness from further reflection. For no work 
 of man's art is so perverse as nature. The spider and the fly 
 
310 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 have afforded a favorite illustration of this. How admirably- 
 adapted is the spider's web for catching flies! But shall we also 
 say, How admirably are flies adapted to be caught! Such a 
 summer's day illustration may provoke a smile at the ease with 
 which philosophy may embrace a hasty conclusion. The 
 tragedies of life, however, the tragedies which arise out of these 
 same adaptations which we have been asked to admire, provoke 
 amazement and leave the mind bewildered. Expected harvests 
 blighted in a night, lives of promise lost through no discoverable 
 fault, even the kindnesses of men turned to cruelty when blame 
 can be lodged at no one's door — these and a multitude of similar 
 instances make nature as a work of art irrational and perverse. 
 Indeed, if philosophy has found it easy to accept the adaptations 
 of nature as evidence of intelligent contrivance, it has also found 
 it easy to tear that evidence to shreds. Count only the gains, 
 the seed breaking upward towards the life-engendering sun, and 
 the inference to design looks easy; but count the losses also, 
 the frost that kills before the blossom, and the inference is hard. 
 If, when all is considered, belief in design still lingers, it is belief 
 in a design the purposes of which are past finding out, and clear- 
 ness of philosophical vision gives place to profound bewilder- 
 ment. Nature, as a work of art, becomes, thus, an inscrutable 
 mystery. 
 
 There are other considerations besides nature's perversity 
 which disturb the opinion that use may be explained by intelli- 
 gent design. The analogy between nature and art may be pre- 
 served while the inference to intelligent direction is abandoned. 
 For the products of art often turn out to have uses which the 
 artist neither intended nor suspected. In breaking stones, 
 man discovered fire. In trying to make gold, he found what 
 gold could never buy. But there is no need of striking illustra- 
 tions, for accidental advantage is one of the commonest attendants 
 of directed activity. Now this fact may be generalized as well as 
 that of intelligent direction, and use be, consequently, explained 
 as an accident, as something which attaches to things not by 
 design or for any ascertainable reason, but, as we are wont to 
 say, by chance. Incredible as such an explanation often appears 
 when first proposed, it grows in credibility as it is steadily con- 
 templated. For, contradictory as it may seem, the appeal to 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 311 
 
 chance tends to become, when attention is focused on the thing 
 that happens, an appeal to necessity. Long ago Democritus 
 noted that the orderly arrangement of the sand, the pebbles, and 
 the stones upon a beach was not due to any designed selection, 
 but was the necessary result of the coincidence of these things 
 and the action of the waves. So, too, while the arrangement of 
 plants in a garden may show the gardener's taste and skill, the 
 distribution of vegetation about the shores of a lake, although 
 no less remarkable in its arrangement, needs no gardener for its 
 explanation; for, again, the fact that water and soil have hap- 
 pened to meet there under certain natural conditions excludes 
 any other explanation of the resulting order. And it has not been 
 difficult to extend a similar explanation to the marvellous struct- 
 ures and functions of animals. Its apparent incredibility 
 when so extended steadily diminishes with greater familiarity 
 with the facts and wath increased experimentation, until it be- 
 comes no longer easy — it may, indeed, become impossible — to 
 think of nature as a work of art. Its uses and adaptations ap- 
 pear rather to be accidental, because they simply befall under 
 the conditions w^hich happen to exist in any given case. They 
 appear also to be necessary, because, given these conditions, no 
 other results than the actual appear to have been possible. 
 
 The explanation of use by design founded upon the analogy 
 between nature and art finds thus a rival explanation in the con- 
 tention that use is the outcome of chance and necessity, a rival 
 founded upon the same analogy. The first is a generalization 
 from intended use and the second is a generalization from un- 
 intended use. Yet the second has a certain superiority over the 
 first. The perversity of nature, as we have seen, reduces the 
 generalization of design to a mystery, making the purposes of 
 nature inscrutable. But it is just this perversity which the con- 
 trasted generalization appears competent to explain. For, if 
 there is no design in nature, but advantage and disadvantage 
 fall out as the conditions happening at the time determine, per- 
 versity in nature is something to be expected. Life will be 
 quickened under the sun's grateful warmth, but be destroyed 
 by the sudden frost. As nature works for no hoped for or ex- 
 pected results, its results are simply those that happen. Thus 
 within the limits of their definitions, within the limits, that is. 
 
312 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 set by the facts from which they are generalizations, the infer- 
 ence to design is inferior to the inference to chance and necessity. 
 Yet the conviction that things must be as they are is a potent 
 means of obscuring what they are, and the appeal to chance is 
 often only a device to end our curiosity. To conclude, therefore, 
 that the teleology of nature has been explained, may not, after 
 all, be an exhibition of wisdom. 
 
 There lurks in the argument which, in contrast to the argu- 
 ment from design, may be called the argument from chance 
 and necessity, an obscurity regarding what it has really achieved 
 which is seldom sufficiently emphasized. The argument is essen- 
 tially negative. It insists that there is no valid reason for appeal- 
 ing to design in explaining the adaptations of nature; it points 
 out that these adaptations, when clearly seen, appear to be the 
 natural outcome of the conditions under which they arise; when 
 applied to specific cases, it often succeeds in tracing admirably 
 the history of the adaptations involved. These are admitted 
 services. But it may not claim that use has been explained, 
 that a world of useless things could by chance or by necessity 
 become a world of useful things. Its most ardent supporters 
 would hardly venture to make such a claim. Yet the suggestion 
 of it serves to show the limits within which the argument moves. 
 Chance, that is, can operate to produce adaptation only under 
 conditions where that adaptation is already possible. A varia- 
 tion can turn out to be useful only in an environment where it has 
 a possible use. It would be quite profitless, for example, for 
 an organism to develop eyes in a world where there was nothing 
 to see. Thus chance and necessity can operate to secure adap- 
 tation only in a world where things have their specific uses, only 
 in a world already essentially teleological. The uses and adapta- 
 tions of nature remain, having lost nothing of their teleological 
 character from our efforts to explain them or to explain them away. 
 Nature may not be a work of art. It may not be a work of chance. 
 It is a domain of uses where chance and design may operate, but 
 it is a domain of uses first. 
 
 Still the analogy between nature and art may be preserved, 
 but it should now be less ambitiously construed. Art and nature 
 both produce and their products are both useful and instances 
 of the adaptation of means to ends. But in neither case is use 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 313 
 
 itself something produced. Not to be sufficiently conscious of 
 this fact is to run the risk of confusing the analogy and indulging 
 in unwarranted speculations. Art makes useful things and may 
 make them with or without intention, but it never makes things 
 useful. That fact alone renders the argument from design or 
 from chance logically illegitimate. Since the sun's warmth is 
 grateful, it may be thought of as graciously bestowed. Life 
 would indeed be poor if such a sentiment were forbidden; but 
 sentiment is not reason. It is one thing to call the sun gracious 
 because its effects are grateful, but it is quite a different thing 
 to regard these effects as evidence that the sun acts with a motive. 
 Poetry and science are separated by that difference. It is im- 
 perative in science that evidence should be evidence, that the 
 facts cited should be unequivocal in their import. But in the 
 illustration it is clear that the sun's warmth would be grateful 
 even if it were bestowed with malice or with no motive at all. 
 To be sure a generous gift implies a generous giver, but the thing 
 given is not a gift because it has the quality of being generous. 
 It is a gift for other reasons, and no connection is discoverable 
 between these reasons and that quality which warrants an in- 
 ference from the one to the other. So too with respect to use; 
 if a thing is useful, it is useful irrespective of the causes which 
 produced it, and no connection is discoverable between its use 
 and its causes which warrants an inference from the one to the 
 other. It is not because it is a work of art that a watch is use- 
 ful; and it is not because the adaptations in nature may be the 
 work of chance that they are useful. The use of anything is, 
 thus, no evidence whatever of the character of its origin. A 
 thing may originate by art or it may originate by chance, but 
 whether it is useful or not is not thereby determined. Since, 
 therefore, there is no ascertained connection between use as 
 use, on the one hand, and chance or design, on the other, the 
 arguments which have been considered lack the kind of evi- 
 dence required by science. Use is, accordingly, to be set down, 
 not as a product of nature or of art, but as a factor in their pro- 
 ductivity. Art and nature are, therefore, alike in this, that in 
 their productions use is discovered and applied. 
 
314 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 II 
 
 The argument thus far pursued points to the conclusion that 
 use, when it exists, is not produced, but discovered, that, in the 
 last analysis, it is an original property of whatever possesses it. 
 Teleology is natural, something to build upon, not something 
 to be explained. There is, as Aristotle insisted long ago, a 
 final factor in every instance of production, and thus a final 
 factor among the factors of evolution. But it may be urged that 
 thus to regard use as natural is not to provide knowledge with 
 a valuable category. It is the business of knowledge, one may 
 claim, to study how things do and may go together. It is causes 
 and not uses which constitute the object of scientific research. 
 To look for them with an eye on use is to rob science of its dis- 
 interestedness. For use is detected only as means and ends 
 are distinguished, while causes operate independent of such dis- 
 tinction. If, therefore, it is afiirmed that use is a factor in 
 nature's processes, must it not also be affirmed that nature dis- 
 tinguishes between means and ends? And does not this latter 
 affirmation imply that nature, after all, operates intelligently, 
 and so open the door again to visionary speculation ? 
 
 But there is no peculiar sanctity attaching to the category of 
 causation, just as there is no peculiar sanctity attaching to any 
 category of thought. Consequently, when it is asserted that 
 nature must operate intelligently if means and ends are to be 
 naturally distinguished, there is a ready retort in the assertion 
 that nature must also operate intelligently if causes and eft'ects 
 are to be naturally distinguished. Yet it is not good philosophy 
 to dismiss an objection simply by pointing out that it shares the 
 difficulty which it raises. For simply to put one's argument and 
 objections to it in the same boat is not to be well-assured of a 
 prosperous voyage. Reason may be better served by a considera- 
 tion of her chart, for her voyage is not arbitrary, nor her port 
 self-chosen. To drop the figure, the mind cannot create the dis- 
 tinctions which it discovers. Were there no causes and effects 
 discoverable in nature, nature would never be construed by the 
 mind in those terms. And the same is true of means and ends. 
 That ends are reached in nature through the utilization of ser- 
 viceable means is as simple and unsullied a fact of observation 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 315 
 
 as any other. It is not read into the order of things; and surely 
 disinterested inquiry should not read it out for the irrelevant 
 reason that intelligence is necessary in order to observe it. The 
 sole question to be raised about any category of thought is the 
 extent of its applicability. Now to claim that the distinction 
 between means and ends is known only when intelligence oper- 
 ates is not the same as to claim that the distinction exists only 
 when intelligence operates. Indeed, as has already been pointed 
 out, there is no discoverable connection between intelligence and 
 use which warrants an inference from the one to the other. 
 The category of use is not, therefore, necessarily limited in its 
 application to the field where intelligence operates. Philosophy is 
 amply justified in supposing that a world of useful things could 
 exist, characterized by the adaptation of means to ends and yet 
 unillumined throughout its whole extent by the presence of 
 thought. Only, let it be added, such a world would not be our 
 world. 
 
 Our world is illumined by thought. By such illumination 
 the distinction between means and ends, together with all other 
 discoverable distinctions, gains in significance. The gain, how- 
 ever, is still natural. It is another instance of natural teleology. 
 For nature produces thinking beings as well as whirling stars. 
 It is, consequently, no more astonishing that men should phi- 
 losophize than that bodies should fall; that nature, through its 
 products, should operate intelligently, than that it should oper- 
 ate unintelligently. There are, doubtless, difficulties in tracing 
 the natural genesis of intelligent beings, but these difficulties are 
 not reasons for concluding that their genesis is not natural. Men 
 are not dropped into the world from without. Nature may, 
 therefore, be said to be intelligent, but the statement should not 
 be rendered absurd by a misuse of the concept of totality. One 
 may speak of nature as a whole if one's intention is to be as in- 
 clusive as possible in one's utterances. For nature as a whole 
 is simply nothing left out, but nothing more. As a whole, nature 
 allows no other descriptive predicates. It is simply the domain 
 where predicates are specific in their application. To affirm, 
 therefore, that nature is intelligent, is to affirm that among the 
 total of its specific operations intelligence is to be included. 
 Since nature appears to be intelligent in this sense, since our 
 
316 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 world is illumined by thought, the distinction between art and 
 nature turns out to be a distinction within nature itself, a dis- 
 tinction between nature as intelligent and nature as unintelli- 
 gent. It points to a specific instance of the adaptation of means 
 to ends. It is a special case of use. Thus, far from creating 
 the distinction between means and ends, intelligence is one of 
 its most significant illustrations. 
 
 In metaphysics, moreover, the category of use W'Ould appear 
 to be indispensable. Here, at least, where the aim is to define 
 the factors which enter into existence generally, our view of things 
 is warped by a too exclusive emphasis upon causation. Meta- 
 physics may be limited in the appeal it makes, and our chief 
 business in life may remain the discovery of the quantitative 
 value of the factors which combine to effect any change; but 
 only a mind long habituated to the disregard of all but the quanti- 
 tative can be content to construe the world generally only in 
 quantitative terms. The quantitative is only so much, and al- 
 ways so much of the concrete and the qualitative, of sugar and 
 salt, of gold and silver, of space and time, of motion and elec- 
 tricity. Furthermore, all our skill is unable to discover any con- 
 nection between the quantitative value of a cause and the pe- 
 culiar character of its efficiency. The quantity of food required 
 to sustain life does not resemble the quality of the life sustained. 
 And while we may consider such a generalization as the con- 
 servation of energy to be among the triumphs of scientific in- 
 duction, its value consists, not in rendering the characteristic 
 efficiency of any cause intelligible, but rather in showing that 
 all causes appear to be connected and subject to control. Con- 
 sequently philosophy can never be satisfied with the attempt 
 to regard the qualitative features of the world as negligible in 
 any effort to construe existence generally. For this purpose the 
 category of causation is inadequate, because it is colorless. More- 
 over, it is useful only because, in its application, it presupposes the 
 characteristic and qualitative efficiency of the factors w'ith which 
 it deals. To define a world, therefore, solely in terms of the di- 
 mensions of energy, is to define another world than ours. The 
 vision of things is only distorted when their qualitative features, 
 their esthetic character even, are regarded merely as the inciden- 
 tal byplay of factors which have no other law than the equation. 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 317 
 
 III 
 
 The justification of the category of use has, thus far, been 
 mainly negative. The attempt has been made to show, first, 
 that there is no relevant connection between the fact of tele- 
 ology and the operations of chance or design; and, secondly, 
 that intelligence may not be regarded as the source of the dis- 
 tinction between means and ends, because it cannot be credited 
 with creating the distinctions it discovers, and because it is 
 itself an instance of teleology. These considerations do not, 
 however, amount to a positive definition. They produce at 
 best a negative conviction and so serve to warn us that teleology 
 is to be reckoned with. But if teleology is natural, how is it 
 to be naturally construed and worked out? This study would 
 be incomplete if no attempt were made to answer the question. 
 For the baffling thing about the distinction between means and 
 ends is that it is a distinction which points towards the future; 
 and to regard an end not yet attained as an efficient factor in 
 producing present changes has never been productive of gener- 
 ally convincing reasoning. Historically the progress of knowl- 
 edge has often been arrested by some fresh and fascinating ap- 
 peal to final causes, but knowledge has usually proceeded again 
 unmodified by the appeal except in so far as it has directed at- 
 tention to new methods of obviating the difficulties it raises. 
 The science of biology is a pertinent illustration of this. Its 
 history is marked by repeated appearances of vitalism in some 
 form, but its great gains have not been made by the use of that 
 hypothesis. There is, thus, in the fact noted, cause for inquiry 
 and caution. The appeal to final causes always commands 
 interest, but it is always regarded with suspicion. The interest 
 appears to be due to the fact that the appeal forcibly calls atten- 
 tion to the habitual presupposition of finality in tracing the course 
 of any natural process. The suspicion appears to be due to the 
 fact that the appeal insists that what the presupposition involves 
 should be regarded as an efficient factor during the process. The 
 issue thus raised is more of a logical tangle than a question of 
 fact. Its analysis may serve to indicate that a definition of 
 natural teleology must recognize an ultimate diversity in the 
 character of the factors with which we have to deal. Use is 
 always specific use. 
 
318 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 The bare statement that the attempt to trace the life history 
 of a given organism is the attempt to follow the movement from 
 its germ to its matured forai, is suflBcient to indicate that the finality 
 of the movement is presupposed. For the germ is not the germ 
 of an organism in general, but the germ of a particular organism. 
 A kernel of corn is not a grain of wheat. And, to transfer the 
 illustration to the inorganic world, carbon is not oxygen. Con- 
 sequently, whether we are dealing with elements or with com- 
 plexes, with dead things or with living things, these factors, 
 if they are to enter into the production of any future result, are 
 never conceived irrespective of the particular part they are to 
 play in that production. Their finality, their serviceableness in 
 the production of definite ends is presupposed. Without the 
 presupposition inquiry could not go forward, but, when once 
 made, the presupposition may be disregarded without any dam- 
 age resulting to the explanation. To conclude, however, that 
 teleology does not exist or that it has been explained is unwar- 
 ranted. It both exists and is unexplained. An appeal to final 
 causes directs attention to this fact. But it goes further. It 
 insists that an additional cause should be incorporated among 
 the already ascertained factors in any process. It invokes some 
 "end," "form," "idea," "entelechy," "psychoid," "soul," to 
 account for the fact that specific ends are reached. The situa- 
 tion thus produced is ambiguous and confusing. If one asks 
 what is the specific function of the final cause, the answer is, 
 obviously, to give the product its specific character. Since, 
 however, the product must first exist before its specific character 
 is realized, and since this character has already been presup- 
 posed, the answer appears to mean nothing at all or an absurd- 
 ity. An acorn is not an oak, but to put an oak into the acorn 
 in order to explain why acorns grow into oaks instead of into 
 fishes, is like putting an explosion into gunpowder in order to 
 explain why it explodes when ignited. In other words to put 
 the end of a process into the beginning of it in order to explain 
 why that end is reached, is either meaningless or absurd. For, 
 assuredly, if the end existed at the beginning we should need 
 more than all our wit to distinguish the one from the other. A 
 world so constituted would be a world where nothing could hap- 
 pen, a perfectly static world. If it is urged that this is only a 
 caricature of the doctrine of final causes, the reply may wisely 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 319 
 
 be made that that doctrine is only a caricature of the facts. 
 For Httle more is gained besides a kind of mystification of the 
 mind by expressing the doctrine in terms less gross than those 
 here employed. 
 
 Yet something is, perhaps, gained, although a more refined 
 expression is not necessary to secure it, and although the gain is 
 not a gain for the doctrine itself. The appeal to final causes calls, 
 as we have seen, attention to the fact that teleology exists, but 
 is unexplained. Its own explanation is devoid of force because 
 it turns the necessary presupposition of teleology in any movement 
 toward a result into a cause why the particular result is reached. 
 That is why it fails to be logically convincing. But its failure 
 does not constitute a reason for rejecting teleology. It points 
 rather to the fact that what is needed is not explanation, but defi- 
 nition. It does more. It points also to the fact that any defini- 
 tion of teleology must recognize an essential diversity of character 
 in the processes involved in any change. Things and the elements 
 of things are specifically different in their character and their 
 operations. In terms of use, uses are always specific and in 
 specific directions. 
 
 When we indulge in speculations about the origin of things 
 in general we are forced to conceive that origin as capable of 
 yielding the kind of world we discover ours to be. Such specula- 
 tions may at first impose themselves upon the mind as explana- 
 tions of why things are as they are, but candid scrutiny can find 
 in them only more or less successful generalizations of the ob- 
 vious. Thus our attempts to explain why the processes of the 
 world move on in specific and distinguished directions with spe- 
 cific and distinguished results, amounts, in the last analysis, to 
 a generalization of the fact of specific difference in a dynamic 
 world. In biology, for instance, the problem of the origin of 
 species is always the problem of the origin of particular species, 
 and its solution is not an explanation of the existence of species 
 generally. The solution is rather the fact of specific differences 
 generalized and refined in view of the conditions under which 
 they exist. By this is not meant, of course, that biological species 
 must always have existed, but that ultimately specific difl'er- 
 ences in the factors dealt with must exist if specific differences 
 in the results of their operation are to be made clear. Express- 
 
320 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 ing the matter once more in general terms, recognition is here 
 asked of the fact that uses are specific and operate in specific 
 directions. In other words, to claim that things are generally 
 useful is not to exliibit the fact of teleology in the processes of 
 nature. The particular — and, indeed, many — ways in which 
 they are useful must first be discriminated if there is to be any 
 pertinent consideration of the adaptation of means to ends. 
 The teleology of nature is not, therefore, a general drift toward 
 some general result, it is always in individualized directions. 
 It is a teleology of special cases. Our world is thus a collection 
 of concretes, so that we are always inquiring about some definite 
 thing, a star, an atom, an element, an organism, or some specific 
 relation of these things to one another. There is no other kind 
 of profitable inquiry, because there is no other kind of sub- 
 ject-matter for investigation. Ultimately concrete and specific 
 differences in the character and operations of whatever factors 
 go to make up the world, appear, thus, to be the first element in 
 a definition of natural teleology. Given such dift'erences, any 
 change, no matter how it originated, would be subject to them, 
 and the resulting movement be consequently a controlled move- 
 ment. 
 
 Natural teleology involves more than controlled movement. 
 We get but an inadequate picture of things if we view them only 
 as the arrangement of given factors under fixed conditions. 
 For the movements of nature are marked by unmistakable gains 
 and losses; they are helped and hindered. In view of these helps 
 and hindrances, it is possible for us to select any one of the con- 
 crete things of the world and regard it as a center, while the 
 others form its varying attendants or environment. The world's 
 processes may thus be regarded as the interaction between a 
 thing and its surroundings. Since the selection of any center is 
 at our pleasure, this procedure has a certain universality about it, 
 so that the complete natural history of anything would be a his- 
 tory of nature itself. Yet many such histories would have to be 
 written, for the world as a whole has no possible single history, 
 because it has no possible environment with which to be related. 
 But one may say that it has many histories, because, as a whole, 
 it is but the sum of all possible distinctions between a thing and 
 its environment. Thus we come once more upon the fact of 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 321 
 
 ultimately specific differences, but we come upon it under new 
 aspects. For to construe the world as the environment of any 
 chosen thing as its center, reveals the world as contributing, not 
 only in different ways, but with unequal success to the processes 
 of that thing. The elements in the environment are not all use- 
 ful, and those that are useful are not all equally so. Any thing's 
 existence presents itself thus as a kind of survival, as a cen- 
 ter where the useful in a given direction has been in excess. 
 While attempts to explain survival are not usually successful 
 because they have a fatal tendency to reduce themselves to 
 the simple statement that things do survive, it is evident that 
 only in a teleological world is the concept of survival appropri- 
 ate. Indeed, when the concept is critically examined, it appears 
 to mean primarily that all things are not equally useful in sup- 
 porting individual existence. Natural teleology involves, there- 
 fore, the recognition that use is comparative. Things and the 
 elements of things differ in their teleological importance. De- 
 ductively expressed, one might say: Given a world made up of 
 specifically different elements in dynamic relations and of differ- 
 ent values with respect to any processes which might occur, 
 these processes w'ould result in specific products the existence of 
 which could be construed as survivals, as the adaptations of 
 means to ends, as the success of processes which help more over 
 those that help less. The deductive expression ought not, 
 however, to blind our eyes to the fact that it is not an hypothesis 
 invented to explain the world. It is only a generalization of 
 familiar facts. 
 
 The third element in a definition of natural teleology is a cor- 
 ollary of the preceding. Uses are not only specifically different 
 and of comparative value, they also persist and accumulate. 
 The eye, when it appeared, afforded, not a temporary glimpse of 
 the world, but a continuing vision of it. This persistence and ac- 
 cumulation, however, should be construed under the general 
 limitations already set for the definition. That is, we do not 
 appear w^arranted in speaking of progress in general; we may 
 speak only of specific and individualized progress. Conse- 
 quently, when we affirm that natural teleology is progressive, 
 we affirm that factors of greater teleological importance have con- 
 tinued to operate. The fact of such continuance is the fact of 
 
322 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 progress. It is possible, therefore, to imagine that a given 
 thing, if it met with no hindrance in the progressive appropria- 
 tion of the useful, would present an instance of the steady ap- 
 proach towards complete adaptation to its environment and 
 towards a conquest of the uses of the world. The Malthusian 
 rabbit might thus become sovereign of the universe. It is, there- 
 fore, not unnatural to believe that, if there is any dominating 
 direction in the appropriation of the useful, that direction must 
 be due to the operation of some individual being. But sober 
 thinking is reminded that the directions in which use is appro- 
 priated are many and diverse, and that hindrances consequently 
 oppose complete adaptation. There is war in the world and 
 sovereignty there is hazardous. The most dominating of beings 
 may succumb to the most insignificant, as man may be destroyed 
 by the animalcule. Yet sober thinking must also recognize that 
 the symbol of war is appropriate, and that uncertainty in the 
 tenure of supremacy does not obscure the fact that there are 
 genuine victories. 
 
 The definition of natural teleology involves, therefore, be- 
 sides the recognition that uses are specific, in specific and con- 
 trolled directions, and of comparative value in view of these 
 directions, the further recognition that uses are progressive. Let 
 it be insisted once more, however, that the definition is not pro- 
 posed as an explanation of teleology in the world's processes, 
 but as a generalization from facts which we can, in wisdom, 
 neither overlook nor explain away. While no attempt has been 
 made to question the right of any science to employ the cate- 
 gories it finds best adapted to its specific aims, the attempt has 
 been made to justify metaphysics in the employment of the cate- 
 gory of use. 
 
 IV 
 
 There are, doubtless, various applications of the general 
 definition of natural teleology which has been here proposed. 
 These lie outside the scope of this discussion. There is, how- 
 ever, a special instance of teleology which may serve to throw 
 the definition into sharper relief, and which aftords inquiries 
 of special interest — the teleology of consciousness. That it is 
 useful to be conscious is palpably evident in spite of the diffi- 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 323 
 
 culties one may encounter in defining just how thought can change 
 the world. These difficulties cannot obscure the significance to 
 be attached to these moments in the world's history when its 
 teleology becomes a conscious teleology and is reflectively con- 
 sidered. The significance may at first be emotional. Con- 
 sciousness may be a "lyric cry" — to adapt Professor Santayana's 
 phrase — involving joy over discovered uses or sorrow over 
 frustrated aims. But the deeper significance lies evidently in 
 the direction of foresight and knowledge. To anticipate advan- 
 tage or disadvantage, and to know the means by which the one 
 may be gained and the other avoided, presents the most signal 
 instance of natural teleology that can be cited. 
 
 The conception of a world like ours in all respects save the 
 presence of thought has already been suggested as philosophic- 
 ally warranted. Such a world would have a past and a future, 
 and its history would display the facts of comparative use and 
 progressive adaptation which have been embodied in the general 
 definition of natural teleology. Yet it would appear to be im- 
 possible to assign to these facts or to the past and the future 
 any characteristic efficiency. This statement does not mean 
 that such a world would lack continuity in its development, 
 that any given factor in it would be what it is irrespective of its 
 past, or that its future would be out of relation to other future 
 factors. But it does mean that the teleology in such a world 
 would be only a characteristic of it, indicating the appropria- 
 tion of use, but that this characteristic would not be de- 
 tached from the specific instances of its operation and thus be- 
 come itself a factor in that world's processes. This, after all, 
 is but a way of saying that a world so conceived lacks conscious- 
 ness, that its processes go on uncomplicated by any recognition 
 of their uses, actual, prospective, or retrospective. Yet it may 
 serve to indicate the kind of complication which the presence 
 of consciousness introduces. The spider may spin its web un- 
 consciously and produce thereby a product useful to it; but if it. 
 spins consciously, the past and future have entered into its ac- 
 tivity in a new and significant manner. It may even be led tO' 
 contemplate the miserable fate of its prey. Without conscious- 
 ness, yesterday is only to-day's past, to-morrow only to-day's 
 possible future. With consciousness to-day's changes occur in 
 
324 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 view of yesterday and of the possible to-morrow. With con- 
 sciousness the processes of the world become at once retrospec- 
 tive and prospective in their operation. 
 
 There is, therefore, design in the world. Only, as we have seen, 
 that design may not be invoked to explain the world's teleology, 
 because it is one instance of that teleology. But the fact that it 
 is such makes it unnecessary to seek further for the ground of 
 moral distinctions or for a rational confidence that nature is 
 sufficient for the demands design may make upon it. Responsi- 
 bility is not imposed from without. It arises from no authori- 
 tative command. It is, rather, the inevitable consequence of 
 design. For to plan and put the plan in operation is to become 
 the cause of the issuing result, the point where responsibility 
 is definitely lodged. So we do not hold rocks responsible be- 
 cause they fall, but we do hold men responsible because they think. 
 Because they think to-day is changed in view of yesterday and to- 
 morrow, and consciousness being the possibility of such a change 
 takes upon itself the thoughtful construction of the issue in the 
 light of the world's natural teleology. That is the essence of 
 morality. Man was not made moral by the prohibition of an 
 apple. The fruit was good to eat, and the conscious discovery 
 of its use turned man into a designing being. Thereafter he 
 must learn the natural uses of things and turn them to his ad- 
 vantage, but at the risk of reciprocal demands. Thus, with con- 
 sciousness, the world's teleology is a moral teleology. Given 
 the world, which is not that world unillumined by thought 
 which philosophy in its freedom may imagine, but a world among 
 whose factors conscious beings must be numbered as instances 
 of its productivity, these beings may not be surprised that their 
 world is moral. Its moral character impresses them as again 
 something necessary, something for the absence of which they 
 can discover no reason. What the sun is to the movements of 
 the planets, that justice is to the movements of design. 
 
 Perfect justice, like perfect equilibrium, may be unattainable, 
 but justice is not a visionary ideal, unsupported by the teleology 
 from which it arises. For, as we have seen, uses are specific, 
 cumulative, and of comparative value in their operations. Jus- 
 tice has, therefore, for its exercise, not only the distinction of the 
 useful and the useless, the good and the bad, but also the dis- 
 
NATURAL TELEOLOGY 325 
 
 tinction of the better and the worse. Accordingly, while de- 
 sign may despair of success in eliminating evil, it ought not to 
 despair of success in attempting to achieve the better. For these 
 attempts are supported by the world's natural teleology, by the 
 comparative value of the uses of things. Knowledge thus min- 
 isters to morality in a twofold manner, by the localizing of re- 
 sponsibility and by the conscious discovering of the more useful. 
 The end of such discovery is most evidently beyond our vision. 
 Every new^ scrutiny of the world's uses reveals new and unsus- 
 pected possibilities, and warrants the conviction that the better 
 is attainable and attainable with a diminution of injustice. 
 The world may not have had its origin in reason, moral progress 
 in it may waver, great gains may there be lost, and civilization 
 go backward, but the world affords of itself the vision of its own 
 rational conquest. To fix responsibility and to promote science 
 appear thus to be the primary essentials of moral progress. To 
 entertain, therefore, the vision of the world's rational conquest 
 is not to be an optimist by temperament, but an optimist by con- 
 viction. We may not proclaim out of an abundance of well- 
 being that this is the best possible world and that all things 
 work together for good. For the moral lesson of natural tele- 
 ology is that the world can be improved. Ours is the best possi- 
 ble world only because it has the capacity to engender and support 
 the effort to make it better. 
 
 Yet enthusiasm is not to be denied to philosophy. To en- 
 visage the world in the light of reason is to beget emotions for 
 which the impersonal categories of knowledge afford inadequate 
 expression. These emotions, too, are natural, responses to 
 provoking stimuli as much as the vibrating chord to the finger's 
 touch. INIan may, therefore, sing the praises of nature and be 
 devout or fearful in her presence, for to personify her is but to 
 accord her the filial recognition that persons are her offspring, 
 born of her body, and nourished at her breasts. To refuse 
 emotional responses to her revelations because they do not in- 
 volve an explanation of her origin or of her destiny, is not the 
 sign of wisdom, but of insensibility. For the contemplation of 
 the stars has other natural uses besides the advancement of 
 astronomy. 
 
 Indeed, man can hardly be indifferent to the fact that nature 
 
326 NATURAL TELEOLOGY 
 
 evokes from him emotional responses as well as intellectual 
 curiosity. But it is impossible for him so to divorce emotion and 
 reason that his thinking and his feeling may remain unrelated 
 and independent activities. For consciousness is comprehensive 
 in its scope, including in its survey the fact that we live fully as 
 much as the fact that we fall. It is also reflective, embracing, 
 as we are wont to say, its own operations as something of which 
 it also takes cognizance. This is, however, only the afiirmation 
 that consciousness is consciousness, that the existence of facts is 
 not the considering of them. But it serves again to render con- 
 spicuous the particular use to be assigned to consciousness, the 
 use of rendering the past and the future connectable and con- 
 tinuous now. It is creative of nothing but comprehension, and 
 is subservient to the materials it finds. Its task is thus the ra- 
 tional organization of this material in its entirety. While, there- 
 fore, its exercise may discover emotions, we may not say that it 
 is because we are conscious that we rejoice or fear, just as we may 
 not say that it is because we are conscious that we have a certain 
 specific gravity. The emotional life presents itself, thus, as one 
 object for intelligent control and organization. But it does pre- 
 sent itself as such an object. To claim, therefore, that teleology 
 is natural and that consciousness is its most signal illustration, 
 is not thoughtlessly to discard the obligation to seek for the emo- 
 tional life its appropriate support and the befitting sphere of its 
 operation. It is, rather, to urge that the search be conducted 
 with an intensified appreciation of the immediate sources by 
 which that life is quickened and refined. 
 
 Columbia University, 
 July, 1910. 
 
XXIV 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 CONTAINING A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WRITINGS OF THE 
 REV. PROFESSOR CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., D.LITT. 
 
 It is not an easy task to make a complete collection of the 
 titles of the writings of a man as prolific as Dr. Briggs, one 
 whose interests are manifold, and whose pen has been active 
 ever since his student days. The list which follows does not 
 lay claim to exhaustiveness. Doubtless some titles have escaped 
 the eye of the compiler. No attempt has been made to include 
 editorial articles contributed to The Evangelist, or book-reviews 
 printed in the Presbyterian Review and other periodicals, with a 
 single exception. Most of the material has been obtained in the 
 library of the Union Theological Seminary, of which the com- 
 piler was librarian for twenty-five years. Even if the list should 
 prove to be defective in some particulars, that which is given 
 will serve to indicate the range of Dr. Briggs's writings, and to 
 show that his studies have covered many fields. This contribu- 
 tion to a memorial volume is submitted with the filial devotion 
 of a former pupil, the admiration of a colleague, and above all 
 the deep love of a personal friend. 
 
 Charles R. Gillett. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary. 
 August 29, 1910. 
 
 1868 
 
 Justification by Faith in Christ. By Dr. J. A. Dorner. 
 Translated by C. A. Briggs. 
 
 In The American Presbyterian and Theological Review. New Series: Vol 6, 
 1868. Pp. 186-214. 8vo. New York: Sherwood. 
 
 327 
 
328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1869 
 New German Works on Theology. 
 
 In The American Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1869. Pp. 774-780. 8vo. 
 New York: Sherwood. 
 
 Recent German Works. 
 
 In The American Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1869. Pp. 401-406. Svo. 
 New York: Sherwood. 
 
 Theological and Literary Intelligence: Germany. (Notes on 
 
 German Universities, etc.) 
 
 In The American Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1869. Pp. 419-422; 800- 
 803. 8vo. New York: Sherwood. 
 
 1870 
 
 Biblical Theology, with especial reference to the New Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 In The American Presbyterian Review. Vol. 2, 1870. Pp. 105-133; 293- 
 306. 8vo. New York: Sherwood. 
 
 German Theological Literature. 
 
 In The American Presbyterian Review. Vol. 2, 1870. Pp. 170-176; 364- 
 367; 560-562. 8vo. New York: Sherwood. 
 
 1872 
 
 The Psalms. By Carl Bernhard Moll, D.D. Translated 
 
 from the German, with Additions, by Rev. Charles A. Briggs, 
 
 Rev. John Forsyth, D.D., Rev. James B. Hammond, Rev. J. 
 
 Fred McCurdy; Together with a new Version of the Psalms 
 
 and philological notes by Rev. Thomas J. Conant, D.D. 
 
 In Lange's Commentary: Old Testament series, Vol. IX. New York: 
 Scribner. (1872). 8vo. Pp. ii, 816. 
 
 1876 
 
 Address (on Exegetical Theology) ... on occasion of his 
 Inauguration as Davenport Professor of Hebrew and the Cog- 
 nate Languages in the Union Theological Seminary, New 
 York City. 
 
 New York: Rogers and Sherwood. 1876. Svo. Pp. 30. 
 
 1877 
 The Book of Ezra. Theologically and homiletically ex- 
 pounded, by Fr, W. Schultz, Professor in Ordinary of Theology 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 329 
 
 in the University of Breslau, Prussia. Translated, enlarged, 
 and edited by . 
 
 New York: Scribner. (1877). 8vo. Pp. (1), 100. 
 
 Exegetical Theology, especially of the Old Testament. 
 
 In The Presbrjterian Quarterly and Princeton Review. Vol. 6, 1877. Pp. 
 5-29. 8vo. New York: Sherwood. 
 
 The Languages of the Bible. 
 
 In "God's Word Man's Light and Guide." New York: American Tract 
 Society. (1877). Pp. 39-76. 12mo. 
 
 1S79 
 Origin and History of Premillenarianism. 
 
 In The Lutheran Quarterly Review. Vol. 9, 1879. Pp. 207-245. 8vo. 
 Gettysburg: Wible. 
 
 1880 
 
 The Documentary History of the Westminster Assembly. 
 
 In The Presbi/terian Review. Vol. 1, 1880. Pp. 127-163. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 An Exegesis of Exodus xxxiv, 29-35. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1880. Pp. 565-566. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 The General Synod of the Evangelical Church of Prussia. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1880. Pp. 169-170. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 The Robertson Smith Case. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 1, 1880. Pp. 737-745. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 1881 
 
 Critical Theories of the Sacred Scriptures in relation to their 
 Inspiration. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 2, 1881. Pp. 550-579. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 Hebrew Poetry. 
 
 In The Homiletic Quarterly. Vol. 5, 1881. Pp. 398-404; 535-542. 8vo. 
 London: Kegan Paul. 
 
 The Provincial Assembly of London, 1647-1660. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 2, 1881. Pp. 54-79. 8vo. New York: 
 Randolph. 
 
330 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Second General Council of the " Alliance of the Reformed 
 Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian 
 System." 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 2, 1881. Pp. 169-174. Svo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 1882 
 
 Argument e silentio with special reference to the Religion of 
 
 Israel. 
 
 In The Journal of Religious Literature and Exegesis. Vol. 3, 1882. Pp. 
 3-21. Svo. Boston: Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. 
 
 C Biblical Theology. 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 3, 1882. Pp. 503-528. 8vo. New 
 ork: Randolph. 
 
 The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 
 United States of America: 1882. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 3, 1882. Pp. 589-601. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 The Literary Study of the Bible. 
 
 In The Hebrew Student. Vol. 2, 1882. Pp. 65-77. 8vo. Chicago: 
 Hebrew Book Exchange. 
 
 The Recently Discovered Inscription at the Pool of Siloam. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 3, 1882. Pp. 401-404. Svo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel. 
 
 In The Hebrew Student. Vol. 2, 1882. Pp. 8-14. Svo. Chicago: He- 
 brew Book Exchange. 
 
 1883 
 
 The Biblical Millennium. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 35, 1883. Pp. 1029-1030. Fol. New York: 
 The Independent. 
 
 Biblical Study: its Principles, Methods, and History. To- 
 gether with a catalogue of Books of Reference. 
 
 New York: Scribner, October 11, 1883. Pp. xv, 506. P. Svo. (Re- 
 printed in April, 1884; April, 1885; February and October, 1887; October, 
 1889; May and November, 1891; August, 1892; and January, 1894.) 
 
 CA Critical Study of the History of the Higher Criticism with 
 special reference to the Pentateuch. 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 4, 1883. Pp. 69-130. Svo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 331 
 
 Editorial Statement (on Biblical Criticism). 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 4, 1883. Pp. 425-428. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 The Greater Book of the Covenant. 
 
 In The Hebrew Student. Vol. 2, 1883. Pp. 289-303. 8vo. Chicago: 
 Hebrew Book Exchange. 
 
 The Interpretation of Scripture. Opening Lecture, Union 
 Theological Seminary, September 20, 1883. 
 Incorporated in "Biblical Study." 1883. 
 
 Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 4, 1883. Pp. 638-639. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 The Little Book of the Covenant. 
 
 In The Hebrew Student. Vol. 2, 1883. Pp. 264-272. 8vo. Chicago: 
 Hebrew Book Exchange. 
 
 The Millennium. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 35, 1883. Pp. 931-932. Fol. New York: 
 The Independent. 
 
 The Tract Baba Bathra of the Talmud and the Old Testament. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 4, 1883. Pp. 417-420. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 1884 
 
 Correspondence between Richard Baxter and Thomas Gataker 
 
 with reference to the Salvation of Baptized Children. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 5, 1884. Pp. 700-711. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 Edwin Francis Hatfield. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 5, 1884. Pp. 125-131. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
 English Puritans in New York City in the Seventeenth Century. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 36, 1884. P. 134. Fol. New York: The 
 Independent. 
 
 The Hebrew Poem of the Creation. 
 
 In The Old Testament Student. Vol. 3, 1884. Pp. 273-288. 8vo. Chicago: 
 American Publication Society of Hebrew. 
 
 The Principles of Puritanism. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 5, 1884. Pp. 656-675. 8vo. New 
 York: Randolph. 
 
332 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Third General Council of the Alliance of the Reformed 
 Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian 
 System: 1SS4. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 5, 1884. Pp. 330-337; 690-700. 8vo. 
 New York: Randolph. 
 
 Tyndale's Pentateuch. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 5, 1884. P. 131. 8vo. New York: 
 Randolph. 
 
 1885 
 
 American Presbyterianism: its Origin and Early History. To- 
 gether with an Appendix of Letters and Documents, many of 
 which have recently been discovered. With maps. 
 
 New York: Scribner. April 4, 1885. Pp. xviii, 373, cxlii. P. 8vo. 
 
 The Great Awakening. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 37, 1885. P. 323. Fol. New York: The 
 Independent. 
 
 The New Organization for Elementary Instruction in Hebrew. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 6, 1885. Pp. 134-136. 8vo. New 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
 The Poem of the Fall of Man. 
 
 In The Reformed Quarterly Review. Vol. 32, 1885. Pp. 311-333. 8vo. 
 Philadelphia: Reformed Church Publication Board. 
 
 Puritanism in New York: its Origin and Growth until the 
 
 middle of the XVIII Century. 
 
 In The Magazine of American History. Vol. 13, 1885. Pp. 39-58. 8vo. 
 New York: Historical Publication Company. 
 
 The Revised English Version of the Old Testament. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 6, 1885. Pp. 486-533. 8vo, New 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
 Scholarship by Vote. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 37, 1885. P. 1099. Fol. New York: The 
 Independent. 
 
 More Scholarship by Votes. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 37, 1885. P. 1258. Fol. New York: The 
 (__Independent. 
 
 A Short Declaration of the Westminster Assembly by way of 
 
 detestation of the Doctrine j;hat God is the Author of Sin. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 6, 1885. Pp. 315-318. 8vo. New- 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 
 
 The Song of Hannah. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. G, 1885. Pp. 112-114. Svo. New 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
 Thomas Cartwright's Letter to his Sister-in-law to dissuade 
 
 her from Brownism. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 6, 1885, Pp. 101-111. Svo. New 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
 The Wiclif Quincentenary. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 6, 1885. Pp. 136-138. 8vo. New 
 York: Presbyterian Review Association. 
 
 The Attitude of the Revised Version toward the Textual Criti- 
 cism of the Old Testament. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 2, 1885-8G. Pp. 65-78. 8vo. Chicago: American 
 Publication Society of Hebrew. 
 
 1886 
 The Discussion of the Revised Version of the Old Testament. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 7, 1886. Pp. 369-378. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 Evangelization. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 7, 1886. Pp. 161-164. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 Hebrew Poetry. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 2, 1885-86. Pp. 164-170. 8vo. Chicago: American 
 Publication Society of Hebrew. 
 
 James Eells. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 7, 1886. P. 357. 8vo. New York: 
 Scribner. 
 
 Messianic Prophecy. The Prediction of the Fulfilment of 
 Redemption through the Messiah. A critical Study of the Mes- 
 sianic Passages of the Old Testament in the Order of their 
 Development. 
 
 New York: Scribner. October 28, 1886. Pp. xx, 519. Svo. (Reprinted 
 in June, 1889; December, 1890; March, 1891; August, 1892; July, 1893; 
 December, 1894; December, 1897; and April, 1902, and translated into 
 Japanese.) 
 
 1887 
 The Barriers to Christian Union. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 8, 1887. Pp. 441-471. Svo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
334 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Genesis of the Ten Words. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 29, 1887. Pp. 355-356. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 Rupertus Meldenius and his Word of Peace. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 8, 1887. Pp. 743-746. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Strophical Organization of Hebrew Trimeters. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 3, 1886-87. Pp. 152-165. 8vo. New Haven: 
 Hebraica. 
 
 The Ten Words. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 29, 1887. Pp. 338-339. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 Terms of Christian Union. 
 
 In The Christian Union. Vol. 35, 1887. Pp. 8-9. Fol. New York: 
 Christian Union. 
 
 Was Vesey a Puritan Minister? 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 8, 1887. Pp. 491-496. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Westminster Doctrine of the Salvation of Infants. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 8, 1887. Pp. 316-325. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Work of John Durie in behalf of Christian Union in the 
 
 Seventeenth Century. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 8, 1887. Pp. 297-309. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 An Ancient Type of Presbyterianism. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 40, 1888. Pp. 833-834. New York: The Inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 1888 
 
 The Apocal}^se of Jesus. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 9, 1888. Pp. 263-284. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Christian Evidences: How affected by Recent Criticisms? 
 
 In The Homiletical Review. Vol. 15, 1888. Pp. 9-14. 8vo. New York: 
 Funk and Wagnalls. 
 
 The Hebrew Hexameter. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 4, 1887-88. Pp. 201-205. 8vo. New Haven: He- 
 braica. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 
 
 The Hebrew Pentameter. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 4, 1887-88. Pp. 129-139. 8vo. New Haven: 
 Hebraica. 
 
 The Hebrew Tetrameter. 
 
 In Hebraica. Vol. 4, 1887-88. Pp. 65-74. 8vo. New Haven: Hebraica. 
 
 The Lambeth Conference of Bishops of the AngHcan Com- 
 munion. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 9, 1888. Pp. 657-659. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Messiah of the Gospels. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 30, 1888. Pp. 338-340. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The New Theory of the Apocalypse. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 9, 1888. Pp. 109-115. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Offerings of the Old Testament. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 30, 1888. Pp. 451-452. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The One Hundredth General Assembly. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 9, 1888. Pp. 128-136. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 A Plea for an American Alliance of the Reformed Churches. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 9, 1888. Pp. 306-309. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 Thomas Cartwright's Letter to Arthur Hildersam on the Study 
 
 of Divinity. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol 9, 1888. Pp. 116-121. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 Union of Northern and Southern Presbyterians. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 40, 1888. Pp. 515-516. Fol. New York: The 
 Independent. 
 
 1889 
 
 Biblical History. A lecture delivered at the Opening of the 
 Term of Union Theological Seminary, New York, September 19, 
 1889. With an Appendi.x. 
 
 New York: Scribner. October 22, 1889. Pp. 45. P. 8vo. (Reprinted, 
 October, 1890.) 
 
336 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Christian Guilds. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 31, 1889. Pp. 99-100. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 United States of America. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 10, 1889. Pp. 464-474. 8vo. New- 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 / The Higher Criticism and its Results. 
 
 1 In The Congregationalist. February 21, 1889. Boston: The Congrega- 
 
 1 tionalist. 
 
 The Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan. 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 31, 1889. Pp. 563-564. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The Last Words of David. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 31, 1889. Pp. 961. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 Ministerial Education. 
 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 10, 1889. Pp. 107-115. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 "~ The New Creed of the Presbyterian Church of England. 
 In The Evangelist. October 31, 1889. New York: The Evangelist. 
 Redemption after Death. 
 
 In The Magazine of Christian Literature. Vol. 1, 1889. Pp. 105-116. 
 8vo. New York: Christian Literature Company. 
 
 Songs of the Angels. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 31, 1889. Pp. 819-820. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The Study of the English Bible in Theological Seminaries. 
 In The Presbyterian Review. Vol. 10, 1889. Pp. 294-300. 8vo. New 
 York: Scribner. 
 
 The Terms of Subscription of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. 
 In The Independent. Vol. 41, 1889. Pp. 1528-1529. Fol. New York: 
 The Independent. 
 
 The Westminster Confession and the Traditional Dogma. 
 
 In The Christian Union. Vol. 40, 1889. Pp. 417-418. Fol. New York: 
 Christian Union. 
 
 The Westminster Creed. The Difficulty with the Third 
 
 Chapter. 
 
 In The Christian Union. Vol. 40, 1889. Pp. 562-563. Fol. New York: 
 Christian Union. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 
 
 The Westminster Standards. How far they have been revised. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 41, 1889. P. 850. Fol. New York: The 
 Independent. 
 
 The Westminster Standards: II. The DiflBculty. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 41, 1889. Pp. 946-947. Fol. New York: 
 The Independent. 
 
 The Westminster Standards: III. Methods of Relief. 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 41, 1889. P. 979. Fol. New York: The In- 
 dependent. 
 
 What Shall We Revise? 
 
 In The Christian Union. Vol. 40, 1889. Pp. 525-526. Fol. New York: 
 Christian Union. 
 
 Whither? A Theological Question for the Times. 
 
 New York: Scribner. September 14, 1889. Pp. xv, 303. P. 8vo. (Re- 
 printed, October, 1889; and Februray, 1890.) 
 
 1890 
 
 The Advance Towards Revision. 
 
 That Tenth Chapter. 
 
 The Confession Tested by Scripture. 
 
 In " How Shall We Revise? A Bundle of Papers." New York: Scribner. 
 May 7, 1890. 12mo. Pp. vii, 214. 
 
 Church Unity. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 32, 1890. Pp. 386-388. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The Message of John the Baptist. 
 
 In The Sunday School Times. Vol. 32, 1890. Pp. 67-68. Fol. Phila- 
 delphia: Wattles. 
 
 The Middle State in the Old Testament. 
 
 In The HomiLeticaL Review. Vol. 19, 1890. Pp. 20-25. 8vo. New York: 
 Funk and Wagnalls. 
 
 The Middle State in the New Testament. 
 
 In The Homiletical Review. Vol. 19, 1890. Pp. 106-112. 8vo. New 
 York: Funk and Wagnalls. 
 
 Have the Quakers Prevailed? 
 
 In Bibliotheca Sacra. Vol. 47, 1890. Pp. 325-352. 8vo. Oberlin: 
 Goodrich. 
 
338 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Revision of the Westminster Confession. (Address before the 
 
 Presbyterian Union of New York; enlarged.) 
 
 In The Andover Review. Vol. 13, 1890. Pp. 45-68. 8vo. Boston: 
 Houghton, Miflain & Co. 
 
 The Votes of the Presbyteries (on Confessional Revision). 
 
 In The Independent. Vol. 42, 1890. P. 611. Fol. New York: The In- 
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 The Westminster Confession and the Old Testament. 
 
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 1891 
 
 C The Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology in the 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York. (Inaugural Address 
 
 Lon "The Authority of Holy Scripture".) 
 
 Printed for the Union Theological Seminary: New York. MDCCCXCI. 
 Pp. (3), 84. 8vo. 
 
 LAn Answer to Dr. Shedd's Criticism. 
 In The New York Tribune. November 5, 1891. New York: The Tribune. 
 
 The Authority of Holy Scripture. An Inaugural Address. 
 
 Second Edition, with Preface and Appendix containing additional 
 
 notes and explanations. 
 
 New York: Scribner. March 6, 1891. Pp. (1), 111. P.8vo. (Reprinted, 
 twice in March, April, twice in May, October, 1891; and February, 1893.) 
 
 The Authority of Holy Scripture. An Inaugural Address. 
 Third Edition, with Preface, an Appendix containing additional 
 notes and explanations, the Charges of Heresy, and the Re- 
 sponse thereto before the Presbytery of New York. 
 
 New York: Scribner. 1891. Pp. (5), 161. P. 8vo. 
 
 The Higher Criticism. The Old Testament as read in its 
 
 light. An Address, at the League of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, 
 
 N. Y. December 15, 1890. 
 
 In The Christian Union. Vol. 43, 1891. Pp. 306-307; 338-339. Fol. 
 New York: Christian Union. 
 
 Response to the Charges and Specifications submitted to the 
 
 Presbytery of New York. 
 
 No imprint. Dated, November 4, 1891. Pp. 34. P. 8vo. Reprinted in 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 
 
 Syllabus (of the Inaugural Address on "The Authority of 
 
 Holy Scripture"). 
 
 Reprinted in The Magazine of Christian Literature. Vol. 3, 1891. Pp. 
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 The Theological Crisis. 
 
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 1892 
 
 The Best Book of th Year. 
 
 In The North American Re iew. Vol. 154, 1892. Pp. 103-107. 8vo. 
 New York: North American Revew. 
 
 The Bible, the Church, and the Reason. The Three Great 
 
 Fountains of Authority. 
 
 New York: Scribner. April 16, 1892. 8vo. Pp. xiii, 298. (Reprinted, 
 March, 1893.) 
 
 The Case against Professor Briggs. I. The Charges and 
 Specifications Submitted to the Presbytery of New York, October 
 5, 1891. II. Response of Professor Briggs to the Charges and 
 Specifications, November 4, 1891. III. Action of the Presbytery 
 of New York in Dismissing the Case. IV. The Complaint to 
 the Synod of New York Against the Presbytery of New York for 
 Its Decision of the Question of the Original Party of Prosecution, 
 November 13, 1891. V. The Appeal of the so-called Prosecuting 
 Committee to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
 in the United States of America, November 13, 1891. VI. The 
 Argument of Professor Briggs before the General Assembly 
 Against Entertaining the Appeal, May 26, 1892. VII. The 
 Entertainment of the Appeal, May 27, 1892. VIII. The Argu- 
 ment of Professor Briggs Before the General Assembly Against 
 Sustaining the Appeal, May 27 and 28, 1892. IX. The Action 
 of the General Assembly in Sustaining the Appeal and Reversing 
 the Dismissal of the Case. 
 
 New York: Scribner. August 27, 1892. Pp. (5), 171. P. 8vo. (Re- 
 printed, January, 1893.) 
 
 The Defence of Professor Briggs before the Presbytery of 
 
 New York, December 13, 14, 15 and 19, 1892. 
 
 New York: Scribner. 1892. Pp. xx, 193. P. 8vo. (Reprinted, twice 
 in January, 1893.) 
 
 1 
 
340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Evidence Submitted to the Presbytery of New York by 
 Professor Briggs, December 5, 1892. 
 
 (New York: 1892). Pp. 1-31, 216-247. P. 8vo. 
 
 f — ^he Future of Religion in America. 
 
 1 In The Review of the Churches. London. July, 1892. Reprinted in The 
 \ Magazine of Christian Literature. VoL 7, 1892. Pp. 425-432. 8vo. New 
 lYprk: Christian Literature Co. 
 
 The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch. 
 
 (New York: Jenkins, Printer.) Pp. (1), 238. P. 8vo. (Distributed to 
 Presbytery.) 
 
 Professor Briggs on Moderator Young. 
 
 In The Magazine of Christian Literature. VoL 7, 1892. Pp. 50-51. 8vo. 
 New York: Christian Literature Co. Reprinted from The Presbyterian 
 Journal, Philadelphia, September 8, 1892. 
 
 The Proposed Revision of the Westminster Confession. 
 
 In The Andover Review. Vol. 18, 1892. Pp. 124-138. 8vo. Boston: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
 
 Theological Education and Its Needs. 
 
 In The Forum. Vol. 12, 1892. Pp. 634-645. 8vo. New York: The 
 Forum. 
 
 Who Wrote the Pentateuch? (Original copy placed before 
 the Presbytery of New York; being the Argument on Charge IV 
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 (New York: Scribner. 1892.) P. 238. P. 8vo. 
 
 rl893 
 The Alienation of Church and People. 
 In The Forum. Vol. 16, 1893. Pp. 366-378. 8vo. New York: The 
 Forum. 
 
 The Bible, the Church, and the Reason. The Three Great 
 Fountains of Divine Authority. Second edition. 
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 liminary Objection of Professor Briggs to the Status of the Com- 
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 fessor Briggs to the Synod of New York. II. The Amended 
 Charges and Specifications Submitted to the Presbytery, Novem- 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 341 
 
 ber 9, 1892. III. The Preliminary Objections of Professor 
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 1892. IV. The Action of the Presbytery of New York on these 
 
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 to the Synod of New York. V. The Evidence Submitted by 
 
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 Briggs to the New Matter Introduced by the Prosecution into 
 
 Their Argument in Rebuttal. VII. The Final Judgment of the 
 
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 1893." 
 
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 The Defence of Professor Briggs Before the General Assembly. 
 The Case Against Professor Briggs. Part III. I. The Appeal 
 of the so-called Prosecuting Committee to the General Assembly 
 of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 
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 the General Assembly Against Entertaining the Appeal, May 24 
 and 25, 1893. III. The Entertainment of the Appeal, May 26, 
 
 1893. IV. The Argument of Professor Briggs before the Gen- 
 eral Assembly against sustaining the Appeal, May 29 and 30, 
 1893. V. The Action of the General Assembly in Sustaining 
 the Appeal, May 31, 1893, and the Final Judgment of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, June 1, 1893. 
 
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 The Future of Presbyterianism in the United States. 
 
 In The North American Review. Vol. 157, 1893. Pp. 1-10. 8vo. New 
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 The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch. 
 
 New York: Scribner. January 20, 1893. Pp. xii, 259. P. 8vo. (New 
 and revised edition, April 3, 1897.) 
 
 t Rally About the Constitution. 
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 The Truthfulness of Holy Scripture. 
 
 In "The World's Parliament of Religions"; John Henry Barrows, Editor. 
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342 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1894 
 The Messiah of the Gospels. 
 
 aew York: Scribner. November 7, 1894. Pp. xv, 337. P. 8vo. 
 ^he Salvation Army, 
 n The North American Review. Vol. 159, 1894. Pp. 697-710. 8vo. 
 ' York: North American Review. 
 
 The Sunday School and Modern Biblical Criticism. 
 
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 1895 
 International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of 
 
 the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 New York: Scribner. P. 8vo. 1895 ff. (Co-editor with Prof. S. R. 
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 The Messiah of the Apostles. 
 
 New York: Scribner. April 6, 1895. Pp. xv, 562. P. 8vo. 
 
 1896 
 The International Theological Library. 
 
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 Qhe One Flock of Christ. 
 
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 1897 
 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Its Relation to Church Unity. 
 
 In The New World. Vol. 6, 1897. Pp. 117-143. 8vo. Boston: Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co. 
 
 The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch. New Edition, re- 
 vised and enlarged. 
 
 New York: Scribner. 1897. Pp. xii, 288. P. 8vo. 
 
 (Orders in the Church of England.) A Review of " The Letter 
 
 Apostolic of His Holiness Leo XIII," and of " The Answer of the 
 
 Archbishops of England." 
 
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 Clarke. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 34S 
 
 The Scope of Theology and Its Place in the University. 
 
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 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
 
 A Study of the Use of 27 and 227 in the Old Testament. 
 
 In "Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut." Berlin: 
 Calvary. 1897. Pp. 94-105. 8vo. 
 
 The Use of ^2^ in the Old Testament. 
 
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 Boston: Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. 
 
 The Westminster Assembly. 
 
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 The Wisdom of Jesus the Messiah. 
 
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 452-455; 492-496. Vol. 9: Pp. 69-75. 8vo. Edinburgh: Clarke. 
 
 Works of Imagination in the Old Testament. 
 
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 1898 
 
 The Institution of the Lord's Supper. 
 
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 Romance of a Cash-Book (of the Society for the Propagation 
 
 of the Gospel in New England). 
 
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 Scribner. 
 
 1899 
 
 General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture. The 
 Principles, Methods, History and Results of Its Several Depart- 
 ments and of the Whole. 
 
 New York: Scribner. January 14, 1899. Pp. xxii, 688. 8vo. 
 
 An Inductive Study of Selah. 
 
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 The Scientific Study of Holy Scripture. 
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344 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Is the Christian Religion Declining? 
 
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 New York: Appleton. 
 
 1900 
 
 The New Testament Doctrine of the Church. 
 
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 The Present Crisis in the Church of England and Its Bearings 
 
 on Church Unity, 
 
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 The Use of m in the Old Testament. 
 
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 1901 
 The Inspiration of the Bible, 
 
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 taker. (1901.) Pp. 39-55. 12mo. 
 
 1902 
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 In "Studies in Honor of Basil L. Gildersleeve," 1902. Pp, 1-18. 8vo. 
 Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 
 
 Elias Neau, the Confessor and Catechist of Negro and Indian 
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 the Huguenot Society, April 18, 1889.) 
 
 The Incarnation of the Lord. A Series of Sermons Tracing 
 the Unfolding of the Doctrine of the Incarnation in the New 
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 New York: Scribner. September 13, 1902. Pp. xi, 243. P, Svo, 
 
 1903 
 Catholic — The Name and the Thing. 
 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 345 
 
 Problems of the Gospels: When Did Jesus Begin His Ministry ? 
 The Twelve and the Seventy. Where was Jesus During the 
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 1904 
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 How May We Become More Truly Catholic? 
 
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 New Light on the Life of Jesus. 
 
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 A Plea for the Higher Study of Theology. 
 
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 The Use of the Logia of Matthew in the Gospel of Mark. 
 
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 1905 
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 The Question of Orders. 
 
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 Reform in the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
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 1906 
 
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346 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Criticism and Dogma. 
 
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 A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an 
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 The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch. By , and 
 
 Baron Friedrich Von Hiigel, Member of the Cambridge Philo- 
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 1907 
 
 La Commission Pontificale et le Pentateuque. Par le Rev- 
 erend Charles A. Briggs, . . . et le Baron Frederic de Hiigel. 
 Traduction autorisee de I'original anglais. 
 
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 The Great Obstacle in the Way of a Reunion of Christendom. 
 
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 The New Encyclical. 
 
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 The Real and the Ideal in the Papacy. 
 
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 1908 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 347 
 
 The Encyclical Against Modernism. 
 
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 The Virgin Birth of Our Lord. 
 
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 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Separately reprinted with an Intro- 
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 1909 
 
 Modernism Mediating the Coming Catholicism. 
 
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 The Precedents of 1610. 
 
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 Church Unity: Studies of Its Most Important Problems. 
 New York: Scribner. September 18, 1909. Pp. xii, 459. P. Svo. 
 
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