■ 'Ml W.^K^t^ ■ilnlliiilkniililill'l mm Plfllili' (flltdii IlftlHffP imM iiif-0 nximij r. Ill I liiiiiiiiiiiii» of Cyrill of Jerusalem 376 j> of Gregory Nazianzen 377 » of Athanasius .... .:379 » of Synopsis of Scripture 381 » of Epiplianius .... 382 )> of the Council of Hippo 383 » of the Council of Carthage 384 )> of Jerome 384 » of Hilary .... 386 >» of Rutinus 387 ERRATA. Page 21, note, for xavon^a, read Kavovi^a. „ 27, last line,/or Pentateach, read Pentateuch. J, 63, line 18 from top,/o?- ^"T]yi^) '"««<^ ''^i^iO. "x: "t: „ 75, line 4 from bottom, for "yi^'Q^, read 'yi^'QJl, • T — T „ 79, line 21 from top,/or pi^hj ^^ad pl^h. „ 79, line 2 of note,/or j-f^^ read J-fli. -T - X „ 229, line 7 from bottom, ^r 'r^, read n^, „ 254, line 15 from top, /or i^*'!!^ read ^^^22, • T • T CRITICAL HISTORY AND DEFENCE OF THK CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. § 1. Introductory Remarks. The time has been, when few, if any, who admitted the Divine origin and authority of the Christian rehgion, deemed it consis- tent or decorous to deny the sacred authority of the Old Testa- ment Scriptures. But that time has passed away, and we have come to witness new developments of sceptical feelings, at which our ancestors would have stood astounded. I do not mean to aver, that there has not, for ages past, been a class of men in all Christian countries, who doubted the Divine authority of the Christian and Jewish religion, and of course the Divine origin and authority of the sacred books in general. But the professed reception of the Christian religion as Divine, with the admission that the New Testament contains at least a credible and authen- tic account of it; the admission, at the same time, that the Jew- ish religion had some proper and real claim to be considered as having been approved and established by God, while the Old Testament is regarded in the main as a work of sciolists and impostors, is a phenomenon that has rarely occurred, I believe, in any country, but which we of the present day are called upon, perhaps for the first time, to witness. Past experience and a priori reasoning from the nature of the case would probably have led most persons to conclude, that such a development would not take place on the part of any well-in- formed and consistent man; yet Mr Norton, in a work replete in many respects with learning and valuable matter — a work 2 § 1. INTRODUCTOKY REMARKS. which he entitles Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels — has taken the unusual position which I have been describing. In a note appended to vol. ii. of this work, extending from p. xlviii. to p. cc, in which he has brought under review "the Jewish dis- pensation, the Pentateuch, and the other Books of the Old Tes- tament," he has developed his opinions at length on these sub- jects, and actually and earnestly laboured to show, that in order to maintain the Divine origin of the Jewish religion, as founded by ISIoses, it becomes necessary to show that he did not write the Pentateuch; and in like manner, in order to show that the Jew- ish prophets and others who laboured to promote the observance of the Jewish religion, were the true disciples of a true religion, it becomes necessary to show that most of the Old Testament books are filled with incredible, or trivial, or superstitious nar- rations and notions, and that the best we can do, even with the prophets, is to select here and there a passage that accords with reason and sound judgment, to which we may give our assent as being worthy of the ancient dispensation, while the rest is to be placed under the same category as the fictions and extravagant accounts of all other nations, respecting their origin and their history in ages too remote to have been consigned to writing. It is not my design, in the present work, to review at length and controvert all the positions of Mr Norton. It will be seen, in the brief account that I shall give of them in the sequel, that a great proportion of them belong rather to the department of Christian theology, specially of apologetic and polemic theology, than to the department of sacred literature. I leave to others what properly belongs to them, not doubting in the least that there is the ability and the will, among some of the theologians of our country, to put on their armour and advance to the con- test, when the attempt is made to take our citadel by storm. My intention is to confine myself, in the main, within the limits of a critical and historical view of the Jeicish Canon of Scripture in the days of Christ and the apostles, and to show that this Canon, as received hy the Jews at that time, was declared hy our Saviour and his apostles to he of Divine origin and authority, and teas treat- ed by them as entitled to these claims. If it can be shown that Christ and the apostles, as the commissioned messengers of God to establish Christianity, did receive, regard, and treat the Scrip- tures of the Jews as obligatory and of Divine authority, and also that these Scriptures were the same books which belong to our § 1. INTKODUCTOHY UKMAKKS. 3 present Old Testament, then two consequences must follow from the establishment of these propositions. The first is, that what- ever doubts or difficulties any one may have about the critical history or origin of particular books in the Old Testament, still he must now acknowledge that they have received the sanction of an authority from which there is no appeal. Universal scepti- cism alone can make exceptions to them, on the ground of credi- bility and authenticity. The second is, that the man who admits the Divine origin and authority of the Christian religion, and that the New Testament contains a credible and authentic ac- count or development of it by Christ and by the apostles, must be altogether inconsistent with himself and inconsequent in his reasonings, if he rejects the Divine origin and authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. If I succeed in proving in a historico-critical way what I de- sign to prove, the nucleus of the question, as to the authority and claims of the Old Testament, would seem to be reached. I shall not endeavour therefore to invest myself, on the present oc- casion, with the panoply of the merely apologetic and polemic theologian. Let those use it, who have long worn it, and are semper parati for contest. The simple sling and stone of histo- rical criticism are all that I assay to use. And if I miss my aim, I must leave it for others to defend our common citadel in a more effectual manner; for defence would seem to be needed. The contest has become one pro aris et focis. Mr Norton's work consists of three volumes, and is printed in a splendid manner. The size of the work, and the consequent price of it, will doubtless prevent a widely extended circulation of the book. On this account, and because of what I have al- ready said respecting it, I have thought it would appear desir- able to most of my readers to learn something of the nature of the attack which he has made upon the Old Testament, through the medium of some brief communication. In as summary a manner as possible, I will therefore now present them with a coup cf wll, or table of contents, of that portion of his work which I have specially in view on this occasion. He commences with the concession, that the Jewish religion is Divine, and that Christianity is built upon it. But this, he says, does not make Christianity in the least degree responsible for the booh of the Old Testament. The Jewish religion itself, he avers, is no more responsible for the books of the Old Testa- 4 § 1. INTRODUCrORY HKMARKS. raent, than Christianity is responsible for the writings of the fathers from the second century to the eleventh ; p. 48 seq. The character ascribed by most Christians to the Old Testa- ment Scriptures, he goes on to say, brings them into collision with rational criticism in the interpretation of language, with the moral and religious conceptions of enlightened men, and with the progress of the physical sciences. They are contradicted by geology ; p. 50, The philosopher must reject their [the Scriptural] views of the Godhead ; the enlightened Christian and moralist mustjreject the cruelties which they often enjoin, as appropriate only to a dark and barbarous age; the careful in- quirer will be I'evolted by their contradictions and discrepancies. The explanations and defence of these things have been unsatis- factory, and built on false principles and assumed facts ; so that one can hardly believe that the men who have offered them have been sincere in so doing; p. 51 seq. In expressing these views, he says that he merely gives form and voice to the ideas and feelings that exist in the minds of a large portion of intelligent believers ; p. 52. To separate all these things from Christianity, so that it shall not be responsible for them, is the duty of every friend to this religion ; p. 53. To maintain that Moses was a minister of God, is one thing; to maintain that he was the author of the Pentateuch, is another. So far is the truth of either proposition from being involved in the other, that, in order to render it evident that the mission of Moses was from God, it may be necessary to prove that the books, which profess to contain a history of his ministry, were 7iot writ- ten by him, and do not afford an authentic account of it ; p. 67. The Pentateuch puts forward no claims to be considered as the work of Moses. The fact that the Law, in the time of Ezra, was ascribed to Moses, does not prove that the authorship of the Pentateuch was at the same time ascribed to him. In the reign of Josiah, a short time before the captivity, the Jews were ignorant of any written copy of their national laws, as is evident from the discovery as represented of a copy of the Law in the temple. Such a book was before unknown to Josiah a pious king, to the secre- tary Shaphan, and to the high priest Hilkiah. " The story of its being accidentally found in the temple, may be thought to have been what was considered a justifiable artifice, to account for the appearance of a book hitherto unknown ;" pp. 71, 84, 8(). The Canon of the Old Testament, after the captivity, com- § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 5 prised all the books of the Hebrews then extant. This Canon was formed upon no principle of selection, but comprised all the remains of ancient literature. There is little doubt that compo- sitions were ascribed to some of the prophets, particularly to Isaiah, of which they were not the authors ; p. 72 seq. The tradition that Ezra revised and re-edited the books of the Old Testament, is obviously fabulous. There exists no his- torical evidence that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. In the other books of the Old Testament, there is indeed refer- ence to various narratives and laws now found in the Pentateuch; but these references are in fact to traditions and national laws that existed before the Pentateuch ; and by the aid of these the Pentateuch was afterwards compiled ; p. 73 seq. No such book as a Pentateuch by Moses is mentioned in the books of Samuel, or Kings, or in those of the prophets who were the public teachers of religion; p. 82 .^eq. The Pentateuch could not have been the national code of the Jews ; for its ordi- nances were not observed during the long period of the monarch- ies, and many things were often done which the Pentateuch for- bids, or neglected which it enjoins ; p. 88 seq. The Pentateuch was not written until some time after the re- turn of the Jews from the captivity ; and then, traditionary sto- ries, laws, customs, ritual observances, &c., were inserted, and all these were attributed to Moses, in order to give greater weight and authority to the compilation; p. 96 seq. The art of wi"iting was not in use in the time of Moses ; and consequently the writing of the Pentateuch by him was impos- sible ; p. 100 seq. The style of Moses could not possibly have been so much like the style of the later writers. A period so long, without more change of language, is incredible and con- trary to all experience; p. 102 seq. The Pentateuch contains narrations of events later than the time of Moses, and if it had been really his work, interpolations of this kind could never have taken place; p. 105 seq. The Pentateuch does not make claim to Moses as its author. It always speaks of him in the third person, and not in the first. Such a semblance of modesty would have been wholly unsuitable for him in his official character; p. 106. T\iG facts related in the Pentateuch show that it is full of in- accuracies. The number of fighting men (600,000), when the Israelites left Egypt, is incredible and impossible. Their original 6 § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. number and time of sojourning in Egypt were utterly inadequate to have brought into existence such a number. The genealogy of Moses proves that the Israelites could not have been in Egypt more than 215 years at the most, instead of the 430 as commonly reckoned, and 215 years could have done but little toward pro- ducing such a number; p. 1 10 seq. The account of the flight from Egypt, and of the journey through the wilderness, is replete with difficulties, incredibilities, and impossibilities. How could two and a half millions of men bo put in motion in one night 1 Whence all their flocks, and herds, and wealth 'i How could they all quench their thirst at Marah, or at Horeb ? p. 118 seq. Before the birth of Moses, Pharaoh is represented as saying, that the Israelites had become stronger than the Egyptians, and thei'efore the male children must be destroyed. The thing is impossible. The command is incredible. How could Pharaoh wish to lessen the number of his slaves ? How could he suppose it possible that the Jews would submit to his cruel orders and obey him ? p. 115 seq. Moreover, how could such a multitude find food and drink in the Arabian waste ? The water was supplied miraculously but twice. What became of their flocks and herds ? They must have all perished in such circumstances ; and hence their state of starvation, i. e. by reason of losing them. And yet, before they quitted Mount Sinai, they appear to have had an abundance of cattle for sacrifices, lambs for the passover, and all manner of spices, flour, oil, wine, »fec. p. 116 seq. Whence came all their skill in the different arts? How could brick-making slaves understand architecture, engraving, and the manufacture of splendid furniture and garments ? How could they transport all these through the desert, when they had no camels? p. 119 seq. The Israelites are forbidden to destroy all the people of the land of Canaan, lest wild beasts should overrun the country. Were not two and a half millions of people more than enough to keep in due subjection tlie wild beasts of a country, which was only 200 miles in length and 100 in breadth? p. 120 seq. On the supposition that all the wonderful events took place which are narrated in the Pentateuch, how is it possible to be- lieve that the Jews would have been so stupid, ungrateful, and rebellious as their history represents them to be? p. 122 soq. § J . INTHODUCTORY KEMARKS. 7 There is indeed sublimity in the description of the creation, and lofty conception as to the true nature of rehgion in the precept, that men should love God with all the heart, and their neighbour as themselves. But " in coming to the Pentateuch \vc have entered only the precincts of true religion, while grotesque shapes are around us, and the heavens are obscured by clouds from which the thunder is rolling;" p. 123 seq. The conceptions of God in Genesis, are very rude ones. In Ex. iv. the account of Jehovah's meeting Moses and seeking to slay him, is strange indeed. Ex. xxiv. is not less so. The mar- vellous theophany related there, and all its tremendous solemnity of preparation, ends in the command to the Israelites to bring silver and gold and rams' skins and goats' hair and aromatics, &c. and make and furnish a tabernacle for Jehovah to dwell in. Many other directions in the sequel are equally trivial ; p. 126 seq. God is represented in a most unbecoming manner throughout the Pentateuch. The command to punish the Egyptian nation because of Pharaoh's haughtiness and cruelty ; the injunction to extirpate the Midianites, but to keep the virgin females for their own use, (which at least did but sanction and perpetuate the barbarism of the age) ; the command of utter excision in respect to the Canaanites; are inconsistent with the justice or the mercy of God. Why should the innocent suffer with the guilty, as an oriental despot exterminates a family for the offen- ces of its head ? The effect of making the Jews executioners of the Divine indignation against the idolatrous Canaanites, must have been to convert them into a horde of ferocious and brutal barbarians; p. 127 seq. The distinguishing rite of the Jews was painful, and the thought of it disgusting. Nothing can render it probable, that the laws respecting slaves were from God. And what shall we say of the command to destroy witches I AVhat of such conmiands as for- bid the eating of particular birds and beasts, some of which no one would ever think of eating, except in case of actual starva- tion i On many laws, moreover, which the Pentateuch contains, delicacy forbids one even to comment ; p. 131 seq. On the whole, it is altogether evident, that the original in- stitutions of Moses had been greatly corrupted and changed by superstition, and by hankering after ritual observances, before the Pentateuch could have been written as it now is; p. 1S4, The spirit of the prophets is wholly different from that of 8 § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. tie Law, and often in opposition to it. They put no faith in sacrifices or ritual observances ; p. 135 seq. The Pentateuch, in declaring that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, stands in direct opposition to Ezekiel, who declares that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the fathei-, nor the father the iniquity of the son; Ezek. xviii. This same Ezekiel is full of unseemly representations of the Godhead. His work is repulsive for other reasons. The last nine chapters show him to have been a stickler for mere rites and ceremonies ; p. 135 seq. Malachi shows how the Jews reasoned and felt, after the full ritual of the Pentateuch was introduced. What he says is di- rectly in opposition to Ps. 1.; p. 143 seq. The Son of Sirach, Philo, Josephus, the Essenes, all thought but little of the ritual ordinances of the Pentateuch; p. 145 seq. Our Saviour everywhere shows how little he regarded the Jewish ritual ordinances. " It is an unquestionable fact, that his words are not always reported to us with correctness." Sometimes, also, he employed Jewish modes of expression that were common, in order to avoid the exciting of prejudice among his hearers. Both these things are to be kept steadily in view, in the interpretation of what he may seem to have said about the ancient Scriptures; and nearly every difficulty can be remov- ed by the aid of these two considerations. E. g. where he is reported as saying: " Moses wrote concerning me," it is evident that the Evangelist, through default of memory or want of re- flection, used the word wrote instead of the word spoke. So in- stead of receiving, in its simple and obvious sense, the declara- tion of Christ as reported by John (John v. 46), viz. " Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he vvi-ote con- cerning me," we are to adopt the following substitute as expres- sive of Christ's real meaning, viz. " Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me ; for the books which, as you suppose^ Moses wrote, concern me," p. 150 seq. The Jewish Law was civil as well as ecclesiastical. It was on this ground merely that the Saviour and his apostles obeyed it, and required others to do so, while it continued; p. 143 seq. Sometimes, indeed, Jesus violated it; e. g. in order to do good on the Sabbath, and to inculcate the duties of kindness and humanity. This was intended to lead the Jews to reflect on the folly of their attachment to ritual observances; p. 164 seq. Occasionally Christ directly taught the vanity and groundless- § 1. INTUOUL'CTOKY REMARKS. 9 ness of the Jewish laws; e. g. by what he says about eating that which is unclean (Matt, xv.); by what he says in respect to the matter of divorces (Matt. xix. and v.); p. 1 72 seq. The conversation with the Samaritan woman (John iv.) shows, how little value Jesus put upon the whole Jewish ritual; p. 1 79. Thus much for the Pentateuch. Now for the other books of the Old Testament. In the books of Joshua and Judges there is a great mixture of fabulous traditions, such as are found in the early history of all other nations; p. 181. No one who puts aside the notion of the Divine authority of all the Hebrew books, can doubt that extra- vagant fables and false prodigies are found in all those which re- late the Jewish history antecedent to the time of Samuel; andthere seems to be no good reason why the books of Samuel and Kings should be regarded as exceptions to this mixture; p. 185. But still we may admit real miracles, in cases where an important and evident moral design is in view; p. 185 seq. The prophets were moral preachers. Some of their number may have been occasionally employed as the special ministers of God. Jesus never appeals to them for evidence of his Divine mission. Our Saviour did not accomplish any express prophecy relating to him; but he came in conformity to an expectation, which the whole tenor of God's providence had taught the Jews to entertain; p. 189 seq. The error committed in representing the Old Testament as of Divine origin, has, beyond question, been a most serious hindrance to all rational belief of the fact, that God has miraculously re- vealed himself to man; p. 198. I have now given a compressed view of the arguments em- ployed by Mr Norton, in order to overthrow the claims of the Old Testament to be considered as a book of Divine origin and authority. I have in no case made, by any design or effort on my part, the representation stronger than he has made it. It is not my wish to paint in more vivid colours than those which he has employed. In most cases, I have employed his own lan- guage; and where I have not, I have changed the diction merely for the sake of abridgment, and not from a design to employ any stronger colouring. Mr Norton himself declares (p. 52), that " in expressino- his opinions he is only giving form and voice to the ideas and feel- 10 § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. ings that exist in the minds of a large portion of intelligent be- lievers;" and also, that " there is nothing in them of novelty or of boldness.'''' It is indeed most obviously true, that there is no- thing special in them of novelty. For substance they have been before the woi'ld for some sixteen centuries. Porphyry and Cel- sus knew well how to manage weapons of this sort. But as to boldness, I think his modesty should not have shrunk from a claim to this. It certainly did require some boldness for one who had been a preacher of the gospel and a teacher in a theo- logical seminary professedly Christian, to make before the whole world declarations such as he has made. No one indeed who knows him well, can fail to regard him as an independent think- er and reasoner; and after what he has recently published to the world, he may not very unreasonably be denominated somewhat of n^free thinker. His objections to the Old Testament are, it is true, nearly all of a date somewhat ancient. But I do not re- gard him, on this account, as merely copying and retailing the opinions of others. It is manifest enough, through his whole work, that he has thought and reasoned for himself, even when he has employed material which others had collected, and which he found in a manner ready to his hand. I have already said, that it is no part of my design to examine in detail all the objections of Mr N. to the Old Testament. Most of them plainly belong to the province of polemic and apologetic theology; and I shall therefore leave them to those whose proper business it is to act in this department.* Why they have not sooner begun to act in defence of one of the cita- dels of revelation, I know not. I have not unfrequently heard the remark made, that "had the question been one oi metajjhysi- cal theology, which concerned points where even evangelical Christians may and do disagree, and have for centuries disa- * Tlie reader will find many of these objections, in so far as they are directed against the Pentateuch, handled in a very able manner, and with all the advantages of the most mature criticism, in Hengstenberg's Disxertalions on the (inndninexs of the, Pentateuch, lately translated by Mr Ryland of Northampton, and forming a part of Mr Clark of Edinburgh's Foreign Theohgical Library. The objection founded upon the command to exterminate the Canaanitcs, forms the subject of an interest- ing paper by Professor Edwards of Andover in the Bibliotheca Sncra for November 1845. While taking the same apologetic ground as Hengstenberg, Professor Edwards has made some material additions to the ai'gument, especially in the vindication which he offers of the Divine procedure in employing the Israelites as the instru- ments of his judgments upon the Canaanites, instead of iiiHicting these judgments by his own immediate hand, as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. — Ed. § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMAKK.S. 11 greed, there would not have been wanting a goodly number of defenders, specially against an attack made either by one side or the other upon points mooted by New School and Old School, But now, (they have the boldness to add), the theologians stand off at wary distance, as the camp of Israel did when Goliath came out to bid defiance to them." But I am reluctant to ac- cede to such an intimation, I know indeed full well, and I re- gret, the excessive zeal that is abroad about points of mere specu- lation in theology, which are never likely to be settled; but I must still believe, that there are not many Christian ministers in the evangelical ranks, who would not relax, and recede from the boundaries that sect and party names have set up, when it be- comes necessary to unite in order to defend and save the citadel of all religion. Time will show, whether I am not in the right. I cannot resist the impression made on me by the reading of Mr N.'s critique on the Old Testament, that the estimation in which he has for many years held it, has prevented him from devoting much of his time to the study of it. He tells us, (p. 62), that his remarks on the Old Testament were com- mitted to writing more than ten years before he put them to the press. If he had named a period thrice as long, I could easily have believed his declaration to be true. He has surely made some faux pas in matters of Old Testament criticism, which, had he read more widely, and kept up at all with the times in their development of historical criticism pertaining to the Hebrew Scriptures, he could not well have made, I do not say this ad invidiam, nor in order to wound his feelings, I say it from a full persuasion, that more enlarged views would have given quite a different direction to some parts of his critique, and spared him the labour of defending some things which he must now find, on a more extended examination, to be inde- fensible. My present design forbids me to go into detail at all, in order to justify these assertions, I can only glance at one or two matters, as explanatory of what I mean, Mr N. asserts, that there is no satisfactory evidence that alphabetical writing was known in the time of Moses. Should he not have known, that the recent paleographic examinations in Egypt, Phenicia, Persia, and Assyria, make entirely against this, even if he sets aside the abundant evidence of the Greek writers, that tlicir aljihabet is as old as the time of Cadmus I 12 §1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, Gesenius, most of his life a strenuous assertor of the late origin of the Pentateuch, was compelled by his Phenician and Ey-yp- tian investigations to say, that " alphabetic writing must have been in use among the Egyptians at least 2000 years before the Christian era;" and that "their neighbours the Phenicians, in all probability, must have employed this method of writing, as early as the reign of the shepherd kings in Egypt." Ges. Heh. Gramm. edit. xiii. Exc. I. p. 290. This pre-eminent paleographer, then, from whose decision it is not very safe to appeal as to such matters, places the art of alphabetical writing long enough before the time of Moses, to give it a wide sweep in Egypt and Phenicia, and indeed in the neighbouring countries. And if Moses was " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds," as the martyr Stephen asserts (Acts vii. 22), cannot one venture to attribute to him the know- ledge of alphabetic writing ? Again, when Mr N. avers (p. 102 seq.) that tlie Hebrew of the Pentateuch and of the later Hebrew books is of the same stamp, and that we cannot possibly suppose, that an interval of 900 or 1000 years would not have made a greater change in the Hebrew language than is developed by these Jewish writ- ings, I must think that he has not paid very strict attention to the history of languages. Is it not a fact, that the Peshito or old Syriac version of the New Testament, made during the second century, is altogether of the same linguistic tenor as the Syriac Chronicon of Bar Hebrseus, written about 1000 years later? Is it not a fact, that the Arabic of the Koran, and of the Arabian writers just before and after the time of Moham- med, differs but slightly from that of the Arabian writers from the tenth down to the eighteenth century ? And yet another fact: The late Dr Marshman, a missionary in Hindoostan, translated into English the great work of Confucius, the cele- brated Chinese philosopher and teacher, wlio lived more than five centuries before the Christian era. The same gentleman diligently consulted the principal commentators on the work of Confucius, and he assures us, that commentaries written 1500 and more years after the time of Confucius are altogether of the same type of language which is exhibited in the work of that philosopher. Facts like these, now, need no comment. They place the matter beyond fair appeal. Indeed the nature of the case speaks for itself. The Jews were neither a literary nor a S^ 1. INTROUL'OTORY I!I:MAHKS. 13 commercial people. They saw little of strangers abroad, and very few foreigners resided among them. They knew little of the arts and sciences, and certainly made no advances in them. What was there then to operate in the way of producing many and important changes in their language? There was nothing like to that which produces changes of this nature, at the present day, among the nations of the West. Their case was, in respect to intercourse, like to that of the Chinese. The effect of such a state of things upon language, was the same in Palestine and in China. Yet even in any state of a nation, however uniform, we cannot but suppose that a long time will make some variations in lan- guage. It did so among the Hebrews. The assertion of Mr N. is by no means correct, that there are no diversities of language between the Pentateuch and later books of the Hebrew. Jahn, that well known and highly respected theologian and critic at Vienna, just before his death, published a series of Essays in BengePs Archiv. which demonstrate the point in question beyond appeal. Archaisms^ or whatever Mr N. may call thein, abound to some extent in the Pentateuch ; and the aVa^ X'.^ oiLim of the Pentateuch, Jahn has shown to be quite a large number.* Once more, but in respect to a case of a different tenor. Mr N. thinks, that the use of the third person in the narrations of the Pentateuch, shows that Moses was not the author. There was no reason, he avers, for his adopting such a method of * The student wlio desires to peruse a fuller statement upon the interesting points of criticism i-eferred to in these last paragraplis, cannot fail to derive profit from a paper in the Bibliotheca Sacra for May 1845, on the Authenticity and Genvine- nessofthe Pentateuch, by Professor Edwards of Andover. It discusses at consider- able length the early origin of alphabetic writing, and shows with much copious- ness of argument that the language and stjle of the Pentateuch form no adequate proof of its pretended later origin. The paper is also valuable as containing a pretty lengthened list of specimens of the archaisms enumerated by Dr Jahn. " That enu- meration," it is stated, '' comprises about four hundred words and phrases peculiar to the Pentateuch, or but very seldom employed elsewhere, and about four hundred words and phi-ases in the later books which either do not occur at all, or but very rarely in the Pentateuch ;" and though Jahn's list requires revision, as Hebrew learning has made great progress in the last twenty-five years, yet, " after all allowances are made, the greater portion of the words in his enumeration are per- fectly in point." Professor Edwards adds that not a few wox'ds and phrases to which Jahn makes no allusion might swell the number. Compare, also, upon the antiquity of alphabetic writing, the articles "Alphabet" and " Writing," in Kitto's Cyclopadia of Biblical Literature; and Jahn's Biblical An- tiquities, Part 1st, chap, v., pp. 43, 4 4, of the London reprint of the American translation. For additional references, see subsequent note on p. 41. — Ed. 14 § 1. INTRODUCTORY RKMARKS. writing. It was Moses' business to speak with authority, and to place himself directly before the people. The histories of Csesar and Clarendon, which employ the third person, are no justification, in his view, of the usage in question. Yet Mr N. maintains, that the Gospels of Matthew and of John are worthy of credit. But where, I ask, have these wri ers spoken of themselves in the ^rs^ person ? Mr N. says that the Pentateuch does not claim to be the work of Moses, i. e. he has not affixed his name to it as the author, and therefore there is no certainty that the work is his. He will permit me to ask him, how he could write three volumes to show the Genuineness of the Gospels, when not a single one of them has the name of its author affixed to it, or contains an explicit decla- ration as to who was its author ? Every sciolist in criticism knows, that the titles now affixed to the Gospels, are the work of critics quite remote from the times of the apostles.* But I must withdraw my hand. I have said enough to illus- trate and confirm the representation which I have made above ; and this is all that can now be done. Mr N. appears to cherish strong feelings of disapprobation toward that branch of the so-called Liberal Party, who have dis- carded the authority of both the Old Testament and the New ; who doubt the personality of the Godhead ; and who flatly deny the possibility of miracles. He speaks of their system as a " shallow philosophy," and appears to be much in earnest when defending the miraculous power of Christ ; but rather less so, perhaps, when defending that of the apostles. Yet most of the reasons of any considerable weight which Mr N. has brought forward against the claims of the Old Testament, either flow from, or are connected with, his unwillingness to believe in the miraculous interpositions of the Godhead as there declared. Was there not as much need of these interpositions in the ancient times of darkness and ignorance, as there was at a later period when the New Testament was written ? He allows, indeed, a few cases in which he thinks that a miracle may be deemed pro- bable ; e. g. such a case as that of fire falling from heaven to con- sume the sacrifice which Elijah had prepared, in order to put to the test the claims of Jehovah and of Baal to divine honours. But he erases from the list of credibles every case of alleged " See ChrysoBtom, Homil. I. in Matt.; also Hug, Eiiil. ins N. Test. § 47. * § 1. INTUOOnCTOKY UK.MAIIKS. 15 miraculous interposition, where he cannot perceive the moral purpose accomplished by it. A subjective line of separation be- tween the true and the false, he has probably drawn for himself. A copy of the drawing, it may be, is impressed upon his own mind. But what the objective rule for testing the credible and incredible is, by which others, who are of different modes of think- ing, and who view religious matters in a different light, may be guided, and may thus possibly come to an agreement with hira, he has not told us. There are men who at least would be greatly offended at having either their learning, or their logic, or their piety called in question, and who in fact regard religion as a matter of very grave import, and yet have avowed themselves unable to discover the great moral end of converting the water at a wedding feast into a large quantity of wine ; who are not quite satisfied with the moral bearing of Christ's permission to the demons to enter an immense herd of swine and drown them in the sea ; who hang in suspense concerning the great moral design manifested by cursing and withering the fig-tree. Now, what has Mr N. to say, to satisfy these doubters? Whatever it may be, it will at least be as easy to say the like things, in order to satisfy our minds respecting many miracles related in the Old Testament, which he rejects with scorn. Some persons, in a state of mind quite different from that of Mr N., or of those who are filled with doubts about the miracles of Christ mentioned above, still hesitate to decide at once on the matters under consideration, and therefore enquire, and cau- tiously and candidly examine. It is quite possible to suppose, that there are men, who, after having done all this, are not entirely satisfied with the reasons alleged for defending the real- ity of these miracles, (I mean so far as their intellectual judg- ment is concerned), while at the same time, they remove all real stumbling-blocks from their way, by the consideration, that there may have been ends accomplished, or may be ends to be accomplished, by some miracles, of which they are not aware. They are conscious that their knowledge is imperfect, and that to decide with confidence against the truth of such narrations as relate the miracles in question, while all around is admitted to be credible and true, would be like to deciding that the black spots which have recently appeared in such numbers upon the face of the sun, do not in reality belong to that body, because, as they apprehend, it can be nothing but a uniform blaze of glory. -tl- 16 § 1. INTKODUCTOllY RKMARKS. « To me this state of mind, however undesiriiljle, presents u much more cheering aspect than that of Mr N., or of his bolder liberal brethren. My experience has taught me something in relation to such subjects. In the early part of my biblical studies, some thirty to thirty-five years ago, when I first began the critical in- vestigation of the Scriptures, doubts and difficulties started up on every side, like the armed men whom Cadmus is fabled to have raised up. Time, patience, continued study, a better acquaint- ance with the original Scripture languages, and the countries where the sacred books were written, have scattered to the winds nearly all these doubts. I meet indeed with difficulties still which I cannot solve at once ; with some, where even repeated efforts have not solved them. But I quiet myself by calling to mind, that hosts of other difficulties, once apparently to me as formid- able as these, have been removed, and have disappeared from the circle of my troubled vision. Why may I not hope, then, as to the difficulties that remain? Every year is now casting some new light on the Bible, and making plain some things which aforetime were either not understood, or were misunder- stood. Why may not my difficulties be reached by some future progressive increase of light ? At least, in the revolution of the sun, the dark spots will sooner or later disappear. And, what is more than all considerations of this kind — speedily the whole will be known. In the light of heaven no darkness is interming- led. Soon the anxious and devoted inquirer after truth, will, if a true Christian, enjoy the opportunity of asking the writers themselves of the books of Scripture, what they intended, and what they designed to teach. It is good, I do believe, both to hope and patiently wait for the light of eternal day, if, after all our efforts to clear up a few difficulties in Scripture that remain, we do not succeed to our utmost wishes. Mr N. evidently regards those who discard all revelation, as unbelievers. He speaks apparently with much feeling concerning them. I believe that he has given them an appropriate place in the category of religious names. The most liberal party, (who seem hardly to have acquired a distinctive name yet, but proba- bly would not dislike that of nationalists J, begin with a very simple process in the way of reasoning. I have it before me, in a letter from one of the first philologists and antiquarians that Germany has produced. It is this : " The laws of natui'e are merely developments of the Godhead. Ciod cannot contradict or § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 17 be inconsistent with himself. But inasmuch as a miracle is a contradiction of the laws of nature, or at the least an inconsist- ency with them, therefore a miracle is impossible." Now this is very short, and simple, and intelligible. At least we know what the writer means who says this. But how it can be proved, that the God who constituted the laws of nature as the usual way and method of his operations, is not at liberty to depart from these, for the sake of ends which he judges import- ant, or how it can be proved that he has not done so, is what I am not able to show or explain. Mr N. calls all such reasoning shallow philosophy. I assent. But what is the philosophy, which leaves us to select according to the measure of our light, our own personal feelings, and our wishes, a part of the miracles of the Old Testament and of the New, and reject all the rest? In other words : Is a revelation to prescribe to us, or we to the revelation I This is the simple question, divested of all the drapery thrown around it in order to conceal its real form and lineaments. Such is evidently the position of Mr Norton. I would not speak with any disrespect or unkindness ; but I cannot help the feeling, that Mr N. never travels on Scripture ground without furnishing himself, like some careful surgeons, with weapons adapted to probing and excision. He is ever ready to employ them, and prepared to sever a limb supposed to be withered, or a seeming excrescence, from the sacred body of the Scriptures, old or new. Does not Mr N., moreover, give up, yea strenuously oppose, the doctrine of future punishment, or certainly at least of eter- nal punishment ? Now if this position of his is true, of what great consequence can he deem it, whether the New Testament is believed or disbelieved ? For, in the first place, who, on his ground, can draw the line in all cases between what we are to believe and what we are to reject ? Then, in the second place, if the doctrine of all future punishment of sin is rejected, no wise man can deem it of importance to give himself any solicitude about religion. It would surely be a curious phenomenon in the religious world, and a matter of no small importance to the uninitiated, should Mr N. pubHsh an expurgated edition of the Scriptures, both New and Old, and let the public know what true and reasonable Christianity (as estimated by him) demands and expects of us. Or if he would even republish selections from some Catechism, c 18 § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. say the Racovian, with additions and alterations suited to these enlightened days, might he not do a great service to the cause of liberal Christianity ? To me, however, at present it seems, that Mr N. has a very brief creed, which might be expressed in a single sentence, namely, " I do not believe what the Christian churches in general do believe."" As to his more liberal opponents among the class of Liberals, I have but a word to say. I commend their honest and open- hearted course. They openly and avowedly discard all that is of a miraculous nature, and by consequence all the books of Scrip- ture, which either assert things of a miraculous nature, or are built upon that foundation. As the popular saying is, They go for the whole. For my own part I like this. We know where they are, and where we have to meet them. But in controversy with Mr N. we never know on what ground we are treading. We re- fer, for example, to facts or declarations recorded in the Scrip- ture, in order to illustrate or confirm any position that we have taken. But Mr N. meets us at once with the avowal, that he does not regard that fact or those declarations appealed to, as entitled to any credit. So we have, in our efforts to oppose him, all the while been merely sowing to the wind, and at last must of course reap — no very promising harvest. Some of the high Liberals, as it seems to me, would be Strauss- ites to the full extent, if they well knew what Strauss or Hegel in all cases really maintains. Alas ! there are few heads among us, from which spring the prominences appropriate to making such a discovery. Thus much, however, these Liberals seem to themselves to understand, and thus much they maintain, viz. that God is an impersonal being, the t& ttuv of the universe ; and that he developes personality only in rational beings, and for a little season at a time. In the meanwhile the argument against mir- acles, which has been stated above, is fully admitted by them, and the Scriptures are brought before its tribunal. But here I must demur. If the Godhead is an impersonal and unconscious being, as they assert, then how can it be impossible that the laws of nature should change ? If there be no mind, and no al- mighty power to direct and secure the natural order of things, what hinders these things from developing themselves in different ways ? Why may they not assume every shape, and go one way as well as another ? What is it which renders secure and constant, the uniformity of things ? § 1. INTKODUCTORY REMARKS. 19 But I must desist, or I shall intrench u])on the main object of my book. I cannot conclude these introductory remarks, how- ever, without saying, that so far as I know, all who sympathise with me in their theological views, feel much better satisfied with the honest and open avowal of the high Liberals, than with the ambiguous, reserved, non-committal creed of the more moderate class of Liberalists. The high Liberals or Rationalists are will- ing to stand before the world in the character which they really sustain. I do not think the same can be said with truth of their shrinkins; and non-committal brethren. In canvassing the subject of the ancient Jewish canon of Scrip- ture, it is not my design to exhibit a mere skeleton of the sub- ject. It is not with the view of answering merely what Mr Norton has said respecting the Jewish canon, that I have been induced to take up my pen. I feel as one may be naturally sup- posed to feel, who has spent his life in the instruction of youth, i. e. I feel a strong desire to communicate something on this important subject, if it be in my power, which may aid young theologians in forming more satisfactory and well-grounded opinions about the extent and authority and obligation of the Old Testament Scriptures. I desire to speak of the labours of others before me, in regard to this matter, with all proper respect and deference; but is it too much to say, that we have in English no book on this subject, which is sufficiently historico-critical to answer in a satisfactory manner all the present demands on sacred literature? If there be such an one, it is unknown to me. At least I know thus much, viz. that for years I wandei'ed in the dark in relation to this matter, not being satisfied with the evidence before me, and not knowing where to go for better views. If I do not wholly mistake the true state of the case, there is a great num- ber of pastors in our country in the same predicament. All young students in theology must of course be somewhat in the same predicament. It is an unpleasant one. The mind hesitates not only as to what kind of reliance to place on certain books, at least of the Old Testament, but also as to what relation the whole bears to the New Testament, in regard to authority and obligation. The use which should be made of much of the Old Testament must, in this state of the mind, necessarily become a matter of doubt and perplexity. My present object is, to aid, if it be within my power, in the removal of a part at least of these difficulties. I design to pro- § 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. duce the evidence that may be gathered from antiquity, as to the extent of that canon of Scripture which our Saviour and his apostles regarded and appealed to as Divine and obligatory. If this was the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, as then received by the Jews in general ; and if it can be shown that this canon was the same which is now comprised in the Hebrew Scriptures; then the doubts and difficulties which many entertain in regard to the Old Testament, or in respect to some parts of it, may be removed. The authority of Christ and his apostles to determine such a matter, should not be called in question; I would even say, cannot be consistently called in question, by any one who professes to be a Christian. Some things have been presented to my notice, in the course of the reading and reflection through which I have passed in order to prepare for writing the present treatise, which do not seem to me to have been adequately, or in some respects cor- rectly, developed in the pages of the leading writers on the sub- ject of the Old Testament canon. Things absolutely new I do not promise to bring before the reader. But there are some things, that have been noticed by even the more thorough inves- tigators, which ought in justice to be placed in a new attitude, in order that they should be seen in their true light. Something of the task of doing this, I would hope to perform. One thing at least will be achieved by the present work, if it does not miss its mark, and this is, the presenting in a body, and regularly dis- posed, the evidence extant respecting the Old Testament canon, accompanied by a historico-critical examination of the same. The reader, if this shall be done, will at least have the material before him, out of which he can make up his own opinion. I shall not advance to the consideration of this subject by tak- ing the attitude of one who assumes the point to be proved, and then pours forth monitions or comminations upon all who may even seem to doubt. For the present, I take my leave not only of Oalvinists and Unitarians, but of all the sects in Christendom, yea even of theology itself in its technical sense, and aim to act merely the part of a historical inquirer, who applies to the appro- priate sources of information, and endeavours in this way to find out what he ought to believe. This is the first step. The de- mands of intellect and reason must be met, in order to satisfy a reasonable being. Then comes, in proper order, the applica- tion of results thus won to the conscience and to the heart. § 2. DEFINITION OF CANON. 21 § 2. Definition of Canon. The meaning of this Greek word, (for such it is, viz. xavuiv), as now emi^loyed by our churches in reference to the Scriptures, hardly needs an explanation. It is employed as designating that list or collection of books, either of the Old Testament or of the New, which we are accustomed to regard as sacred or inspired, or of Divine authority. But it was not always so employed, in ages that are past; and the inquirer needs to be put on his guard with respect to the various uses of this word in ancient times. In classical Greek, the original meaning of ^.avuiv is straight stick or rod., staff, measuring- rod or pole., heam of a balance., &c. Hence tropically, rule, norma ; thence laiv, prescrij^tion, fundamental or guiding principle. Among the Alexandrine Greek grammarians xavutv was employed to denote a list or collection of ancient Greek authors, who would serve as models or exemplars for other writ- ers. It meant what we should call classical writers. One sees very readily, how this succession of derivate meanings sprang from the original sense of the word. The literal idea of rod, measuring-rod, measure^ was applied tropically to whatever was a rule, guide, model, or exemplar, of conduct or of actions, of art or of science. The Alexandrine granmiarians employed the word in a sense so kindred to that which we now give it, that the mind of every one must be struck by the resemblance. Those books which are the rule, measure, law, exemplar, of a moral and pious life, are the canonical books of the Scriptures, according to the present usage of this word. Among the Christian fathers the word canon obtained an en- larged and sometimes a technical sense. It was sometimes used to designate a list or catalogue of the clergy or of other persons belonging to a church ; a list of psalms and hymns appropriate ibr public worship ; and even a list of furniture belonging to a church, &;c. Very naturally it came to be employed to designate a list of the Scriptural booh which were publicly read in the chur- ches. It was not, however, until the third century, that these usages of the word commenced, or at least became common.* * The various senses in which the word Canon was used by the Fathers, are enu- merated and exempUfied at full Icngih in Suicer's Thesaurus Ecdcsiasticus, under the word xatuv. Compai-e also under the words xavon'|«u and xavovixoj. See like- wise the article "Canon," in Kitto's Biblical CychpcEdia -, and Alexander on the Canon, § 1. " The early use and import of the word Canon." — Ed. 22 § 2. DEFINITION OF CANON. Readers of the present day, in perusing the testimony of many of the ancient fathers and councils respecting the canon of Scrip- ture, often make great mistakes as to the meaning and force of the testimony. It is a fact which lies on the face of ancient church history, that in the latter part of the second century, and more in the third and fourth, other books besides those which were regarded as properly inspired, were read more or less in the churches. With the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which the Oriental and African churches everywhere made use of, was early intermingled more or less of the books which we now name apocryphal, and which for the most part were written in Greek, and not long before the commencement of the Christian era. The leading reasons for mixing these recent productions with the books of the Hebrews, seem to have been the following: first, they were mostly written by Jews, as the tenor of them demonstrates ; secondly, they were of a religious cast, and parts of them were adapted to useful instruction, wdiile other parts communicated narratives of some interest, whether considered in the light of history or of allegory. But be this as it may, the Christian churches, at least many of them, in the third century and onward, admitted a number of the apocryphal books to be publicly read along with the Jewish Scriptures. Now when the word canonical was applied in such a sense as to designate merely the books which were publicly read, the canonical hooJcs of the Old Testament, for example, would mean not only the Jewish Scrip- tures, but also such of the apocryphal books as were combined with them in the Septuagint version, and were publicly read. But to say that a book was canonical, and to say that it was in- spired, at that period and when this usage prevailed, was saying two very different things. There might be (and were) inspired books which were not publicly read; e. g. such as the Apocalypse of the New Testament, and the Canticles of the Old Testament. On the other hand, several books not inspired were included in the reading canon of the day, i. e. in the list of books publicly readable ; e. g. 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Judith, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Clemens Romanus, the Revelation of Peter, &c. In regard to this matter, viz. the extent of the canon or list of books to be publicly read for profit, there was, for a long time, no fixed rule among the churches. Each seems to have done what was right in its own eyes. It was not until the fourth century that coun- § 2. DKFINITION OF CANON. 23 cils interfered, and limited the number of books to be read in the churches. And these decided differently, as any one may see by reading the accounts of the council at Laodicea, at Hippo, at Carthage, at Rome under Gelasius, and elsewhere, as given by Mansi, in his great work, Hanctorum Conciliorum nov. et ampUss. Collection particularly in Tom. i. iii. viii. Indeed, in order to read these records of ancient times intelligibly, one must keep in mind what Jerome says, at the end of his enumeration of the books of the Hebrew canon, in his Prologus Galeatus. After naming the books in the Hebrew Scriptures, (the same which we now reckon as belonging to them), he goes on to say: "What- ever is not included among these, is to be placed among the apo- cryphal books," [i. e. in his idiom, among the uninspired books]. After particularizing various apocryphal works, he adds : " One reads them in the church, but he does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, . . . They may he read to the edification of the people, hut not for the purpose of estahlishing ecclesiastical doctrines. ''"' Jerome here plainly employs canonical in the sense of inspired, contrary to the common usage of the preceding cen- tury. And from what he says, it is plain that books for edifica- tion were read in the churches, for which no claims of inspiration were made, and which could not establish any religious doctrine. We often see quotations made from the fathers and from the decrees of councils, in order to show, that there was no prevail- ing and fixed belief in the ancient churches respecting the defi- nite number of books which are to be considered as belonging to the Scriptures. How easy to commit important errors in rela- tion to this subject, if one does not know the various uses of the word canon! To show that a book belongs to the canon, i. e. was publicly readable, is not to show that it was even regarded as inspired; less still will it show that it was in fact inspired; on the other hand, to show that any book was omitted or excluded from the canon, i. e. was not publicly read, is showing nothing to disprove its inspiration. As this is a matter of high importance, I would not deal in j assertions without adequate proof. What Jerome says, goes * directly to show that many books were publicly read, which were not at all regarded by the churches as sources of appeal in cases where doctrines were to be established. On the other hand, the case of Philastrius of Brixia, the intimate friend of Ambrose, near the close of the fourth century, illustrates and 24 § 2. DEFINITION OF CANON. confirms what I have said concerning books not publicly read, and yet admitted to be inspired. In his book De Haeresihus, c. 88, he exhibits a catalogue of canonical books, i. e. books which, as he says, ought to be read in the church, in which is found neither the Epistle to the Hebrews, nor the Apocalypse. Yet in c. 60 he says, tliat " they are heretics who do not receive the Apocalypse, and that they have no understanding of the excellence and dignity of this writing.'" In c. 88 the same writer speaks of Scripturce ahsconditw, [i, e. Scriptures apocry- phal^ in his sense of the word, viz. not to be publicly produced], " which," he says, " ought to be read for moral improvement by the perfect [i. e. full grown Christians], but not to be read by all." In the same way Gregory Nazianzen (Opp. II . p. 44) says: "I heard John the Evangelist enigmatically saying to such, sv avoy.ovfiaic, [q. d. in the apocryplial writinps, i. e. private ones, such as were not publicly read]; I would thou wert either hot or cold, fcc." Yet this same writer {Life of EpTirem III. p. 106) calls the Apocalypse 55 nXroTaia rrjg ya.otroz (3i[3}.n:, i. e. the last book of grace, or (in other words) of the New Testament dispensation. Now this same Gregory, {Opj). II. p. 98, in some verses reciting the books of Scripture, omits the Apocalypse at the end, and concludes his verses by saying: " vdmi 'iyjic,' I'l ti bk TocuToov £XTo'?, ovz SV yvYisioic, \. e. Thou hast all; if there be any be- sides these, they belong not to the genuine." There is only one way to solve this apparent inconsistency, and that is by apply- ing to his case the same considerations as those which belone: to that of Philastrius. Gregory, in his verses, included the canoni- cal, i. e. publicly readable, books only; in the other passages he gives his private opinion respecting the true character of the Apocalypse, Nothing is plainer, than that the words canonical and apocry- plial bear quite a different sense, in the works of different fathers and councils, in different ages and countries. Athanasius dis- tributes the so-called Scriptures into three classes of books, viz. canonical=inspired, apocryphal=spurious or deserving rejection, and books permitted to be read in the churches; Epist. ad Riifin. Tom. ii. p. 89 seq. Rufinus himself, a contemporary with Jei'ome, follows the same classification ; see in Opp. Cypri- ani, p. 575. After specifying the books belonging to tiie present Protestant canon, which he calls canonical=\nsi)ired, he names several of the books belonging to our present Apocrypha, toge- § 2. DEFINITION OF CANON. 25 ther with the Sliepherd of Hernias and the Judgment of Peter, and says of them, that they are called ecclesiastical, and " are to be read in the churches (whence their name), but not to be pro- duced as authority in matters of faith — non taraon proforri ad auctoritatem ex his fidei confirmandam." Other books which have respect to religion, but are not to be read in the churches, he names apocryplial. Jerome makes use of phraseology a little different from this. In the famous passage of his, in his Prologus Galeatas, he speci- fies the same Old and New Testament books which are now in the Protestant canon, and then adds, that " the books extra hos, i. e. not included in these, are to be ranked among the apocr^phaly and are not in the canon^'' Then, after mentioning several of the books in our present Apocrypha, he adds, respecting some of them: " The church indeed reads them [in public,] but does not receive them among the canonical [inspired] Scriptures [reads them] for the edification of the people, not to determine matters of faith," Thus it is perfectly apparent, that no one can read the eccle- siastical fathers or the decrees of ancient councils, on the subject of the canonical Scriptures, and rightly understand and appre- ciate them, without narrowly watching the use of the technical terms employed in describing their classification. Canonical at one time metx^nB puhlicly readable; at another it is the equivalent of inspired. Apocryphal at one time means not publicly reada- ble; at another, it is the equivalent of uninspired^ destitute of binding authority. Nor does this different usage belong exclusively to any one age. We find Origen dividing the religious books of his day into m%ow/ca?=inspired, and apocryphal=uninspired and (with him) unworthy of credit. Afterwards we find Eusebius dividing religious books, in relation to the New Testament, into (a) ' 0,7.0- '/jiyoijij.zvoi, i. e. the genuine and acknowledged writings of the evangelists and apostles, {b) \\vTiKi-yoiMi\ioi, books whose genuine- ness was doubted or was unsettled, (c) NJ3&/, books which were spurious, i. e. were not written by inspired men. Besides these, he mentions books arova %ai dvasilSri, stolid and impious. The result of this investigation is plain. We can understand ancient writers only by watching with the closest scrutiny how they employ the words canonical, apocryphal, ecclesiastical, and the like, and for want of so doing, many a glaring error has 26 § 2. DEFINITION OF CANON. crept into the works of some even recent writers on the sub- ject of the canon. Another consequence is also deducible from our premises, viz. that, if we mean to be rightly understood, we must define and unifoi'mly adhere to the meaning which we give to the words canon and canonical. We dismiss the subject of the New Testament canon, of course; for to canvass that, is not our present business. In re- spect to the Old Testament, what meaning shall we assign to the phrase, Canon of the Old Testament^ Shall we attach to the word canon the meaning of a list of books that were puhUcly read in the Jewish Synagogue., in the time of Christ and his apostles? Before the Babylonish exile the Jews had no synagogues. Previous to that time, only the Law of Moses, i. e. the Penta- teuch, appears to have been read once a-year in the temple. After the return from exile, and the erection of synagogues, the Law of Moses was read in them, being distributed into fifty-two Parashoth or sections, so that each Sabbath in the year might have its due proportion. When Antiochus Epiphanes (171-164 B.C.) invaded Judea, abolished the worship of the temple, and commanded all the copies of Moses' Law which could be found to be burned, the Jewish synagogue, according to the Rabbies, made selections from the prophets, corresponding to the Para- shoth of the Pentateuch, which they called Haphtaroth, (i. e. dis- missions., because when the reading of these was finished the peo- ple were dismissed to their homes, see "1^3, to dismiss), and — T which were read in the room of the Law. After the death of Antiochus, the Jews reintroduced the Law with its Parashoth, and also continued the reading of the prophetical Haphtaroth, which is still practised by them. At the feast of Purim, once in a year, the book of Esther is also read. If we should extend, therefore, the Jewish canon only to the books which the Rabbies suppose to have been publicly read, our list would comprise but a moderate portion of the books which were regarded as of Divine authority. Some books of Scripture, e. g. Canticles, and the first and last eight chapters of Ezekiel, the Jews did not permit any person to read, even in private, before he had attain- ed the age of thirty years. Yet they did not deny the Divine origin and authority of these aTox^u^a. We cannot use the word canoni- cal, then, in respect to the Old Testament books in the apostolic age, in the sense of including only the books publicly or private- § S. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 27 ly permitted by the Jews to be read. And if we should resort to the Christian fathers for information, in regard to the extent of the Hebrew canon, we should find so much variety in the use of the word canon, and such different usages in regard to the reli- gious books to be publicly read, that we could receive no assist- ance from this quarter. It becomes a matter of necessity, then, that we should fix upon a sense of the word canon which is definite and intelligible; and this being done, we must uniformly adhere to it. I mean, then, by the Canon of Jewish Scripture in the apostolic age, that class of books ivhich the Jews as a people regarded and treated as sacred, i. e. of Divine origin and authority. This agrees with the present general usage of the churches, as to the words in ques- tion, and therefore will occasion no embarrassment and no mis- take in regard to phraseology. The word canon, I would remark at the close, seems not to have been in use, in its technical sense as applied to the Scrip- tures, until the time of Origen. No trace of it can be found in the second century. In his Py^ol. ad Cant, Cantic, sub fine, Origen employs it; also in Schol. ad Matt, xxvii. 9; in a sense like to that which I have given to it. § 3. Commencement of the Canon. That books of this character existed among the Jews, from the time of Moses down to a period of some extent after the re- tui'n from the Babylonish captivity, few have denied; and none have been able to show the contrary. It is well known, how- ever, among critics at least, that the Mosaic origin of the Pen- tateuch has, since the days of Semler, been called in question by a, considerable number of German critics. At the time when Wolf had assailed the antiquity and genuineness of the Iliad and Odyssey, and spread far and wide his scepticism on this subject, the antiquity and genuineness of the Pentateuch began to be attacked on the like grounds, and about the time of Eichhorn's death, it was considered by the dominant neological party in Germany, as established beyond reasonable contradiction, that the Pentateuch was composed at a period near the captivity, or perhaps even after the return from it. By slow degrees the thou- sand years over which the Pentateach was made to leap, in or- 28 § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. der to find an appropriate birth-day, began to be diminished. By and by it was felt by some to be necessary to assign a date for it which was antecedent to the time when a copy of the Law was found by Hilkiah the priest, in the reign of Josiah, b.c. 624. Of late, the date of the Pentateuch, at least of a large portion of it, has receded still more, even back to the times of Solomon or David, b.c 1000—1040. Lately it seems, in part, to have made another retreat, viz. to the time of the Judges, or possibly even of Joshua. Such I take to be the view of Ewald and Tuch, and also of some other distinguished German critics. The next step may possibly be to a period of time which puts the whole matter in statu quo. But be this as it may, I must take for granted the fact now more generally acknowledged, that at least some parts of the Pentateuch were committed to writing in the time of Moses. I cannot indeed even conceive how the most important laws of the Mosaic institution, how the Levitical ritual in all its minutiae, how the sketch of the tabernacle to be built with all its apparatus, and the account of it as built and provided with such apparatus, should have failed to be committed to writing. The ten commandments, from their importance, would naturally be engraved on some permanent material. The other two classes of composition just mentioned, are of such a nature, that no memory could be trusted with them. No later age, in case these minute particulars concerning the tabernacle had not been early designated, yea even by Moses, could have ever dream- ed of making, and palming upon the Jews as Mosaic, such repre- sentations as these. No subsequent age could have admitted a ritual like that of the Jews, provided it was introduced long after the death of Moses and Aaron, and was attributed to them. It is not possible to suppose, that any one age or generation after Moses' time, could be made to believe that things which they had never before heard of in connection with their two leaders, and things which they had never been taught to practise, origi- nated from them, and had always been obligatory on the Jews. After the protracted and vehement contest about the origin and antiquity of alphabetical writing, which grew out of the Ho- meric Wolfian controversy, and extended itself to saci*ed as well as profane books, we have at length come to a result, and that result seems to be, that no reasonable doubt can be entertained, that the origin of alphabetical writing among the Egyptians, Phenicians, and Greeks, dates far back before the time of § 3. COMMKNCEMENT OF THE CANON. 29 Homer. The Homeric controversy was occasioned by the position of Wolf in his Prolegomena, which was that the Iliad and the Odyssey are full of interpolations and probable abscissions, and that they owe their present form and order and unity to the later writers of Greece, near or during the time of Pisistratus. To make this probable, it was necessary to show, that the poems of Homer were, for several centuries, not reduced to writing, but only sung by chanters and rhapsodists, aoibni ■/.».] oa-^'jjooi. Of course, it became in a manner necessary to show, that the art of writing, at least among the Greeks, was not as old as the time of Homer, i, e. did not extend back to about 1000 years before the Christian era. Every nerve has been strained for this pur- pose; while, on the other side, have recently been enlisted writers of the highest reputation. Among the combatants are Wolf, Heyne, Herder, Voss, Kreuser, W. Miiller, Hermann, Nitzsch, D. C. W. Crusius, and others. Nitzsch, in his Historia Homeri, seems to have made an end of the question, whether alphabetical writing is as old as the time of Homer. This is now, so far as I know, generally conceded. But whether alphabetical writing was so common at the time of Homer, that we can reasonably suppose him to have been acquainted with it, and to have avail- ed himself of it — that is a question, in regard to which no incon- siderable number of critics have stood and still stand arrayed in mutual opposition. It would be incongruous for me to turn aside for the purpose of discussing at length this question. Nevertheless, it has no unimportant bearing on the question which is now before us, viz., At what period shall ice date the commencement of the Jewish canon? If the art of writing was not in use among the Greeks, until the sixth century before the Christian era, then can it be probable, that the Hebrews, less literary than the Greeks, prac- tised it before that period? It is not essential, indeed, to my main design, to show ichen the Pentateuch was written, nor even by ichom. It may be a book worthy of all credit, if written by some other hand than that of Moses, or at some later period. If Christ and his apostles have sanctioned it as a sacred book, the main question is settled for us. It should be sacred to us, as well as to them. But to resume the subject of alphabetic writing among the Greeks, for a moment. It is said by the advocates of the Wol- fian theory, that there is no Greek prose writer upon record be- 30 § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. fore the Milesian Cadmus and Pherecydes of Scyros, who flour- ished about 544 b.c; and that there is no writer of tliis class who is of any note, until the time of Hecataeus of Miletus and Pherecydes of Athens, i. e. about 50 years later. About the same time, that is, some 350 or more years later than the time of Homer, the laws of Draco were reduced to writing, and these are said to have been the first written laws among the Greeks. Is it probable, then, it is asked, that the poetry of Homer was reduced to writing at a period some 350 or 400 years earlier? But on the other hand, we may well ask: Could two poems, one of about 16,000, and the other of more than 12,000 lines or verses, be brought down through so many centuries by mere oral and traditionary communication? Admitting even that there are a few interpolations in the Iliad and Odyssey, yet the unity and order of these poems demonstrate an origin from the same author; as do also their dialect and circle of words and imagery. How could so much be oi'derly composed by any man, without some means of consulting what had already been com- posed, as he advanced in his work? In fact does not the Iliad itself (Z. 168 — 9), by its ff^/xara A-oy^a, y^d-^ag sv Tuax/, advert to a letter addressed to Proetus? At any rate, this gives a more probable sense to the passage. See Trollope"'s Note in loc. Euripides (Hec. 856 seq.) makes Hecuba say: "Alas, no mortal is free ! For he is either the slave of money, or of fortune ; or else the mass of the city or tcritten laws {v6/maiv y^^u.pni) coerce him." In Hippol. 856 seq. (ed. Barnes), the same Euripides represents Theseus as speaking of an epistle or tablet (oi/.ro.-) written by Phsedra to him: " What then is the meaning of this appended epistle {h'sXroc) from her dear hand? What news does it communicate?" In the sequel he calls this h'iXrog an epistle (sT/(rroXac; = literas); and still further on, he names it b'i'Kro<; again. The time when Euripides represents Theseus as saying what has been quoted, was some 80 years before the Trojan war. In his Iphigenia in Aulis (1. 35 seq.), he makes the aged messenger of Agamemnon, about to be sent with a letter to Clytemnestra, thus address this king: " Thou writest (y^a^s/;) this letter, which thou boldest in thy hands, and again thou dost erase these let- ters (j^^a/x/i-ara), and dost seal them, and then unseal them, and cast the tablet on the ground, pouring forth large tears." The erasing {e-jyyjTg, dost intermingle) of the letters seems plainly to point to the corrections made on a waxed tablet, which was § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 31 done by smearing over or mingling (gvyx^oj) the wax. Here then are all the phenomena of writing, with sealing and unsealing of the letter. And most graphic is the description; for Agamem- non is writing to his wife respecting their daughter Iphigenia, who was to be sacrificed to Diana, in accordance with the direc- tion of the prophet Calchas. He had already sent her one letter, requiring Iphigenia to be given up. Now (1. 108 seq.) he says to the aged messenger: " I now rewrite in this letter {bi'Aroi/) what is proper to be done, which you, old man, saw me by night sealing and unsealing. But go now, taking this letter [rag saigToXug, like the Latin plur. literce^ to Argos. ^Whatever this letter hides in its folds — I will tell thee by word of mouth all which is written in it." Several times, in the sequel, is the same letter adverted to; and so as to leave no possible doubt, that Euripides describes a veritable letter, (like the epistles of his own time), folded and sealed in the same way.* The simple question now is, whether this distinguished poet would have made out such a description as this, and introduced Agamemnon in such a manner, if the persuasion had not been general, and even universal, at his time, that the art of writing • In like manner, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, is represented by Euripides as saying to Hermione: " I came hither, t«5 ira; ol fi.ivuv I-ttktto'Ku.s, not waiting for a letter from you;" Androm. 1. 90"5. This, of course, is just at tlie close of the Trojan war. In Iphig. in Aul. 1, 307, the aged servant says to Menelaus: " Thou must not open the letler (SeXt-ov) which I bear." The servant complains to his master Agamemnon, that Menelaus " had by violence snatched out of his hands the epistle" (Etr/o-raXas) of Agamemnon. In the sequel Menelaus refers to it, and calls it ViXtov. Tn Iphigen. in Taur., Iphigenia speaks of ti-ansmitting " a letter (SeXto^), which a captive who pitied her had written to her friends." In the sequel she says, that " she had no one by whom she could send her epistle" (i-s-dffroXds.) And again she speaks of " no mean reward for transmitting her liyht letters," (^x.o6(pav y^afcf/.a- Tuv), Orestes afterwards tells her to deliver the letter (liXrov) to a particular person; and she in the sequel says: " I will go, and carry a letter QiXrov) from the temple of the goddess;" and again (1. 640), " I will send to Argos, particularly to my friends, a letter (SeXt^v) which will tell them," &c. The same epistle, (SeXt-os, iTia-roXa,i) is again mentioned in 1. 727, 732, and in 734 she calls it y^aipas. A new epistle of joyous tidings to Orestes is written by Iphigenia, after she is delivered from death by Diana, which speaks of her iTia-roXai as containing the news, " even the things written Iv liXroiiriv." Again (1. 1446) she requests Orestes to inform himself what that is which is in her letter, (iTitrToXas). In the Bacchte, the servant of Theseus says to the captured Bacchus: " I lead thee captive, i^itrmXeiTs by the [written] mandate of Pentheus." Peutheus, it will be recollected, was the grandson of Cad- mus, who lived, it is supposed, nearly 1500 years B.C. The same woi'd (tT/irTaXay), in the like sense, occurs in Hel. 1. 1665. As to SeXto;, besides the instances already adduced, see in Hippol. 1. 877, 1057. In Iphig. in Aul., (including some instances 32 § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. was familiar to the Grecian chiefs at the siege of Troy. One cannot well bring himself to attribute a gross anacJironura and incongruity to such a writer. In the like manner Sophocles (Trach. 157) makes Dejan- eira speak of a h'O'.Tov yiy^aijjiMivriv or written will of Hercules, in favour of her, when he left her house. This was some time before the Trojan war. In Sophocles'* Antigone, he makes her speak of the ay^arrra Qiuiv v6,'Ji,i/J^a, in contrast with the Kri^yyMra of Creon. Does not the nature of the contrast here presented, allude plainly to the art of writing? And would these two con- summate poets, distinguished as much for their knowledge as their skill and taste, commit such an anachronism as the Wolfian theory would make them guilty of? Suppose a poet of Boston should write a tragedy founded on the overthrow and death of one of the native Indian kings in this country some five centuries ago, and should introduce him as writing letters to his wife? Would a Boston audience endure this without hissing the play down? I know it has been remarked, in the way of answer to the argument seemingly deducible from this in favour of the early discovery of alphabetic writing, that the poets have liberty to feign what they please, in making out the fable of their tragedies. But I am persuaded that this remark must be limited to bounds which forbid absolute and palpable incongruities. Very extra- vagantly and unaccountably the actors of a fabulous age may be represented as demeaning themselves, and all is well; because extraordinary actions are expected, and extraordinary powers of performing them are presupposed. But this is something exceedingly diverse from evident and monstrous incongruities in circumstantial matters, which belong not to persons but to things. There would not be a man or woman in a Boston audience, pre- sent at the exhibition of such a play as has just been mentioned, who would not in an instant perceive the gross incongruity of putting the wild Indian chief to the writing of letters; and who would not feel that the author of the play was stupidly ignorant, produced above), we find SsXrav in 1. 35, 109, 155, 307, 322, 891, 894. In Iphig. in Taur. 584, 760, 603, 615, 635, 640, 667, 733, 756, 791. Besides these, several in- stances occur in the Fragments of Euripides. In all these cases, let it be called to mind that the writer is speaking of persons and occurrences at or before the siege of Troy. It is impossible therefore to resist the impression, that he regarded epistolary correspondence as a thing then well known and commonly practised, certainly among persons of the higher rank. § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 33 or else destitute of all taste, or silly enough to believe that his audience would all be stupidly ignorant. I aver, then, that the familiar and often repeated usage of Euripides, of Sophocles, (and even of ^schylus), in introducing epistolary communica- tion among the ancients at and before the siege of Troy, implies, of course, a like belief on the part of the Athenian public, who were so sensitive as to even the minutest things in a player, that they would spontaneously correct a false accent or a wrong quantity. But if alphabetic writing began in Greece only about the middle of the sixth century b.c, then this public could not possibly have been brought to the general or rather universal belief, that it was four or five centuries older, to say the least; for, in a place like Athens, there must have been some well grounded knowledge in respect to such a matter. The common usage of the great tragic poets, in the introduction of epistolary communication among remote ancients, shows with certainty what the public sentiment at Athens was, in respect to this matter. And how can any one account for such a public senti- ment, on the ground that writing began among the Grecians only in the sixth century? This would be far more difficult, than to believe that the sentiment was grounded upon matter of fact? But we have something perhaps more definite and certain, than these allusions in the great poets. Plutarch {in Lycurg.)^ M\\^\\ {Var. Hist. XIII. 4), Dio Chrysostom (Orat. II. p. 87), Heraclides of Sinope (Gronov. Thesaurus Grcec. Ant. VI. p. 2823), all testify that Lycurgus, the great lawgiver of Sparta, brought the poems of Homer from Crete, where he met with them among the posterity of Oreophylue, which latter person was, (as tradition says), a son-in-law, or teacher, or guest of Homer. Plutarch and /Elian both aver, that in the land of European Greece, previous to this period, only an obscure tradition about Homer's poems existed, and one and another possessed some extracts from them. Lycurgus employed chanters and rhapsodists to recite them to his people, in order to inspire them with a mar- tial spirit. Now Lycurgus lived almost nine centuries before the Christian era; and if he found the complete poems of Homer in writing, and copied them, (as is most explicitly affirmed by the historians just mentioned), this would seem to settle the question as to the antiquity of the tcritten works of Homer. Wolf, Miiller, and others, examine this testimony adunco iiaso. No wonder; for it prostrates the fanciful edifice which they have 34' § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. reared. But Crusius (Pref. to his edit, of Mliller) has given the subject a fair investigation. The appeal to the so-called Homeridw, chanters^ and rhapsodists, (aoidoi, ^a-^'jjdol), as evidence that Homer's poems must have been diffused and preserved for a long time independently of writing, is not at all conclusive. The Homeridse were nothing more than an ancient and higher class of rhapsodists. The chanters and rhapsodists differed only in name, and perhaps in some peculiarities in the modes of recitation or recitativo. All were the viva voce reciters of Homer; and, in the earlier times, they recited without the immediate aid of manuscripts in the act of recitation. They wandered from place to place, reciting where- ever they could find encouragement and remuneration. But to argue from this, as many critics have done, that Homer's poetry could not at the same time have existed in writing, betrays but an indifferent knowledge of the customs of antiquity and special- ly of the East. The mass of Greeks, in Europe and Asia, could not read in those times. The price of manuscripts ample enough to comprise the Biad and Odyssey, was beyond the reach of any but the rich. Yet the Grecian people were of a romantic and po- etic turn of mind. The poems of Homer greatly delighted them. Hence the profitable employment of the rhapsodists. The brief and popular songs of times more ancient than the age of Homer, probably were not committed to writing, but were diffused and preserved merely by oral tradition. They were sung or chanted of course, without the aid, and without the need, of any loritten copy. When Homer came to be sung in like manner, and to be the popular poet of the Greeks, he was recited without book. This gave an opportunity for the rhapsodists to do, what their successors in office still do in Egypt and Persia and other countries of the East, that is, it gave opportunity to act, as well as recite, the works of Homer. This was a great advan- tage to the rhapsodists, since they could impart a much more lively * interest to their readers, by adopting such a method of exhibi- tion. To my own mind, the fact that there were chanters and rhapsodists of Homer's works, soon after they were composed, and for some centuries onward, is far enough from proving that these works were not reduced to writing. Let us look at experi- ence and matters of fact. The Thousand and One Nights of the Arabians has always from tlie time of its composition been in § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 35 writing, as all agree; for it is a production some centuries later than the era of Mohammed. Yet in Persia and Egypt, even in recent times, very few copies of this most entertaining and truly oriental work exist, since neither of these nations have availed themselves of the art of printing; at least not until these some ten years past, and now only to a small extent. Sir John Malcolm, in his notes on Persia, tells us, that on festal occasions and at levees, at the court of Persia, the chanters or rhapsodists are a regular part of the entertainment. He speaks of them as ready to recite, at an almost indefinite length, the Thousand and One, the poems of Hafiz, and the works of other distinguished Persian writers, and as being employed by the nobles and the rich for this purpose. He describes them as not simply reciting, but acting. He tells us that no actor on the stages of London or Paris ever played his part more significantly and satisfactorily. One of Sir John's attendants, who did not understand Persian, was about to withdraw, on one of the festal occasions, when the rhapsodist rose to commence his exhibition. The latter, seeing him in the attitude of withdrawing, inquired the reason. He was told, that it was because he did not understand the Persian language. The actor replied, that this was of little consequence; for he would make himself quite intelligible to him, notwith- standing this. The English gentleman remained, and the actor most amply redeemed his pledge. This gives us an instructive view of the interest which the rhapsodists of Homer might, and probably did, impart to their recitations; and shows that they might find full employ, not- withstanding the existence of MSS. The case is the same in Egypt. Mr Lane, in his admirable work on the Modern Egyptians, has given us a full account of their rhapsodists. The most numerous class of them is the SJwara, i. e. reciters of poetry, of which there are about fifty in Cairo. These confine themselves to the romance of Abu Zeyd, which is full of poetic passages. The prose they recite with measur- ed tone; the poetry with accompanying instrumental music. The next class (about thirty of them in Cairo) are called Mohad- diteen, i. e. Story-tellers, who recite nothing but the Life of Zahir, a romance founded on the story of an Egyptian prince who bore that name. It is very voluminous and expensive; and consequently, a knowledge of the work, such as it is, is mainly kept up by the viva voce reciters. There is, besides these, a 36 § 3. COMMENCEMKNT OF THE CANON. small class of reciters at Cairo, who are called Antereeyah^ in consequence of reciting the romance of Antar, which has been recently translated into English. Occasionally this class of per- sons extend their recitations to other works. Such then are the oriental modes of entertainment in the way of reading or recitation. Where the great mass of the popula- tion are unable to read; where printing is not introduced, and the price of MSS. is exceedingly dear; where the indolent habits of the Turks, Arabians, and Persians, forbid or at least dissuade from the effort necessary to read a book ; specially where a book needs comment and explanation; rhapsodists come in, and find ample and profitable employment. So it doubtless was in Greece; so, in western Asia Minor. But Mr Lane states one fact in regard to these rhapsodists, which strikes me as of serious import, in respect to the matter before us. He says, that a few years previous to his sojourn in Egypt, the romance of 8eyf Zid-l-Yezen^ abounding in tales of wonder, and the Thousand and One Nights^ were the subject of frequent recitation. But as these works became very scarce and very dear, the rhapsodists could not afford to purchase them in order to prepare for recitation, and so they discontinued the prac- tice. These last-named works are far superior to the others which are now recited, and would be preferred by the people, if they might have them presented. But this cannot be done for the reasons just stated. This throws light on the recitations of the Homeric rhapso- dists. Had they not been able to resort to some MS. copy of Homer, to refresh their memory, or to store it, they could never, or at least they would never, have brought down two poems of nearly 30,000 lines, through so many centuries. I allow that the force of memory is great, even surprising, where a man of talent gives himself wholly to the cultivation of it. Xenophon express- ly asserts (Sympos. HI. 6), that there were several persons at Athens, in his time, who could repeat memoriter the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey. So among the Persians and Arabians, there has been many a rhapsodist who could repeat the whole of the Thousand and One Nights, or other works of equal length. But after all, such a gift is occasional, and somewhat rare. On a succession of such persons, so as accurately to transmit the Iliad and Odyssey down through three or four centuries, one can place no safe dependence. The thing is incredible. The § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 37 Egyptian and Persian rhupsodists everywhere intermingle, with what they recite, so much of their own compositions, botli in poetry and in prose, as may serve to expand, embelHsh, or ex- plain their author. Often, men of talents among their rhapso- dists become so excited by the applause of their audience, that they improvise, in a manner that exceeds the originals. So it cannot have fared with Homer; for the present state of his works — so little being in them which is incongruous or super- fluous — demonstrates that improvisation has not wrought sensi- bly upon them by additions or diminutions, and of course that they can never have been long subjected to its sole influence. We may get along quite well as to oral tradition, when it is said to have preserved short song^, narrations, allegories, or fa- bles, independently of written records. But to think of an Iliad and an Odyssey being preserved for centuries substantially invio- late, in this manner, requires much more credulity, than it does to believe that alphabetical writing existed a considerable time before the era of Moses. At least, I cannot bring my own mind to a state of doubt or hesitation in regard to this whole matter. I am fully aware of the testimony of Josephus, in relation to the subject of ancient alphabetic writing in Greece. In his Contra Apion. I. 2, he draws the contrast between the antiquity of Greek and Hebrew letters, and, as might naturally be expect- ed from a Jew, greatly to the advantage of the latter. He says that even the Greeks themselves make their boast of learning their letters from Cadmus; that they have no monumental in- scriptions older than the siege of Troy; and no book older than the poetry of Homer. In respect to this, also, and whether the Grecians at the siege of Troy were acquainted with the use of letters, he says questions have arisen, and that the better opi- nion is, that the Greeks who destroyed Ilium were ignorant of letters. As to Homer he says: "' (paeh olbs rovrov h y^d/M/Musi rr,v avToO rroirtifiv xara/jcrs/'f, a'A/M 6ia.,u,yrifj,ovivo/j,'ivriv iz tmv aa/MaTajv van^ov e-ovTi^Tivai^ y.ai dia rouro rroXXag iv avrfi (i')(}h rag hiaiuviac' 1. e. they say that this one [Homer] did not leave his poem in letters [writing], but that being kept in remembrance by chanting, it was subsequently adjusted (composed or put together), and that it was because of this that so many incongruities were found in it." Such was the impression which Josephus received from Greeks with whom he was conversant, and he was very ready to receive it, because it made directly for the support of his opinion 38 § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. in favour of the greater antiquity of the Hebrew literature. But we learn from him, that it was then a contested question, whether the Greeks who besieged Troy were acquainted with letters; so that on the face of his testimony it appears that the point was regarded as a doubtful one. We have seen, however, that Euripides and Sophocles make appeals to Athenian audi- ences in relation to this subject, about four centuries before the Christian era, which leave no reasonable doubt as to what the general opinion at Athens then was. Josephus, by using auvri^riyai in respect to the arrangement of Homer's poems, doubtless has reference to the story so often repeated, and from a period somewhat before the Christian era (Cic. de Orat. 111. 84. Pausan. HI. 26. Mlian. Var. Hist. XHI. 14), viz.", that Solon, and specially Pisistratus and his sons the Pisistratidse, put together the disjointed and Sibylline frag- ments of the Iliad and Odyssey, and first reduced them to writ- ing, as well as to unity, regularity, and order. All the rhapso- dists, as the story goes, far and near, were collected by Pisistra- tus, and from them he obtained all the scattered fragments of the epic bard, and put them together as well as he could, sum- moning to his aid all the literary corps of Athens. So much of all this is doubtless true, namely, that Solon made an arrange- ment of the parts of Homer, which were to be chanted at the Uava^yimia, i. e. the feast of Minerva, which was held once in five years. All could not be then sung, and Solon decided how much should be sung, and in what order. Pisistratus and his son Hipparchus pushed criticism much farther. They obtained all accessible evidence of what belonged to Homer, and of what quality it was, and arranged the result in the best manner they could. To the famous Aristarchus of Samothrace (fl. b.c. 200), is generally attributed the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into twenty-four books each. Such is the sum of tradition, in regard to this subject. But that letters were not known in Greece earlier than the time of Solon and Pisistratus, (about 550 b.c), no one will now credit, since the publication of W\tzscK sHistorialfomeri. But how much the Dlaskeuastai just mentioned, or others after them, changed the text or the order of Homer, it is in vain now to surmise. The internal evidence of Homer's works is most unequivocally against any considerable interpolation. The unity of his poems, their dialect, the spirit of '"H the parts, (with slight exceptions), § 3. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CANON. 39 show a unity of authorsliip, and a unity of purpose, combined with a plan and a regularity which could not arise from diverse minds, A man might us well say, that the different parts of a watch were, in the first instance, manufactured by different per- sons without any concert; and that being accidentally brought together, they all perfectly fitted each other, and made a true time-keeper, which all succeeding watch-makers have only imi- tated. Who would believe such an account of the origin of watches? And yet it is even more credible, than the fabled composition of Homer by poets of different ages and different countries. All agree that Homer's is the greatest poem of an- ti — 46't), and for a few additions to that account, see his Eijijpl and the Hvah.s of Moses, pp. 8.'), 90. Compare also Jahn's Antiquilic-s, (London Edit.) p. 44.— Ed. 54 § 4, LITERATURE OF THE IIEnilEWS. II. We can make no thorough comparison of the present state of the Christian world with that of the ancient Hebrews, in respect to education and knowledge, without at once perceiv- ing the almost unappreciable difference that exists between them. Brought up as we are, in a land where from our very in- fancy the knowledge of letters is impressed upon us, and where it is a rare thing to find an individual who cannot read and write, and rare even to find any one who is not habitually a reader of some kind of book or periodical, or at least of some weekly or daily journal, it is very difficult for us fully to realize the condition of a people, among whom books never circulated, or could circulate, to any great extent, and of whom only a few priests and prophets, or some of the noblemen or of the rich, could even read a book. Yet such was the state of the ancient Hebrews. If there be any one thing which strikes us with astonishment in regard to the Mosaic legislation, it is, that no provision is made by the great Jewish law-giver for the thorough education and enlightening of the Hebrew nation at large. When viewed in contrast with the present legislation of most Christian coun- tries in respect to the subject of education, the Mosaic dispensa- tion would indeed seem to be one of types and shadows, in com- parison with that of the gospel. It was only once in seven years, viz. when the whole population of the country were required to assemble in Jerusalem at the feast of tabernacles, that the Law was to be read in the hearing of them all, Deut. xxxi. 10, 11, The usual period of this feast was seven days; and diligent must readers and hearers have been, if all the Law was read during that period. This is all the direct provision made by Moses, for the instruction of the people. Three times in a year, it is true, all the males were to appear before God in Jerusalem, viz, at the feast of unleavened bread or the passover, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of tabernacles, Deut, xvi, 16; Ex. xxiii. 14, 17; xxxiv. 2o.* Doubtless there were some selections from the • I cannot refrain from noticing here an important circumstance, added in the way of encouragement or assurance, in order to show the Hebrews the practicabil- ity of complying with the injunction to assemble thrice each year at Jerusalem, What I refer to follows immediately the injunction in Ex. xxxiv, 23, to " appear thrice in the year before the Lord," and it runs thus : " For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders, neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thrice in the year." Mr Norton and others, who speak with undissembled horror of the command to extirpate idol- § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 65 Pentateuch read on these occasions; but this is not expressly ordered by Moses; nor could the reading have been very exten- sive, because of other duties to be performed. Besides these means of instruction, judges and officers of the tribe of Levi, were to be appointed in all the Hebrew cities; whose business it was to judge in cases of dispute between man and man, to solve cases of conscience, and instruct those who consulted them as to the mode of performing ritual and cere- monial observances; Deut. xvi. 18, comp. 1 Chron. xxiii. 3, 4. Of this more will be said in the sequel, when we come to inquire what part the priests took in the instruction of the people. The very statute of Moses, which orders all the population of the land to assemble onco in seven years in order to hear the Law read, does in itself imply, that this was the only means provided generally for such a purpose. If each family possessed a copy of the Law, and could read it, of what possible consequence would be all the trouble and expense and risk of assembling at Jeru- salem in order to hear it merely I The defenceless state of the country, and the heavy expenses of travelling with one's whole family on these occasions, even from the remotest borders of the country, show that other more facile and more economical means of enlightening the people and of giving them full views of their religious and civil obligations, were no part of the Mosaic institution. Had they been employed, the general assembling of the whole mass, so onerous and expensive, must have been superseded. We know indeed that in the times of Samuel, and of Elijah and Elisha, there were something like schools of the pi^ophets^ in which young men were trained up for prophetic service. But the number of them could not have been very great. Omitting these, we hear or know nothing of schools for the education of the mass of the people. They seem never to have existed. Hence the mass could neither read nor write. Hence too the revolting fickleness and mutability of the Jews, in regard to the worship of the true God. A well-informed population must have viewed with disgust the abominations of the heathen wor- aters from the land of Palestine, probably may not have turned their thoughts to this necessary precaution for the safety of the Jewish people, when celebrating their national feasts during so many days of the year. The withdrawing of the great mass of the male population from theii' homes must of course have left the country defenceless. 56 {^ *!■• I'lTEHATURE OF THE HEBREWS. ship. But ignorance is always prone to superstition, and ia ready to believe anything and everything which superstition will inculcate. The morals of the heathen were of course low ; those of the JNlosaic system were sound and stern, and as to some fea- tures perhaps even rigid. Heathen rites, we may suppose, were naturally revolting to most Jews, so far as bloody human sacri- fices were demanded. Yet even Moloch was, at times, wor- shipped by many of the Hebrews with zeal. But what attract- ed the ignorant and unthinking was, the loose rein that was held over the passions. Impurity was even a part of the heathen religious rites. In the journey of the Hebrews toward Pales- tine, while under the guidance of Moses himself, the people joined themselves to Baal-peor, the God of the Moabites; and all this, because they were allured to " commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab;" Num. xxv. 1 seq. So down through the whole time of the judges, and, with few exceptions, down to the Babylonish exile itself, the Jews were continually prone to turn aside from their more rigid and pure and elevated worship, to the rites and ordinances of the heathen. Nothing but the gross ignorance in which they lived can adequately account for such a phenomenon. It is indeed true, that Moses commands Jewish parents to " teach his statutes diligently to their children, and to talk of them when they sit in the house, and when they walk by the way, and when they lie down, and when they rise up;" Deut. vi. 6, 7. But the instruction is all oral. No reference is made to letters or books. What the parents could retain in memory from hearing the Law read once in seven years, they were to inculcate upon their children. But how much the mass of the people ignorant of letters would retain and teach, was but too manifest in the subsequent ignorance and proneness to idolatry in all ages of the Jewish commonwealth, down to the time of the return from the Babylonish exile. Such is the remarkable difference between the effects of the Gospel dispensation, and that of the ancient Law. The votaries of Romish superstition would fain bring the mass of Christians back to the condition of the ancient Hebrews. With them it is at least a practical maxim, that ninorance is the mother of devo- tion; but above all, that ignorance of the Scriptures is the mo- ther of devotion. Hence the Bible itself is not to be put into the hands of the conmion people. Reliaion, therefore, with them ^ -i. LlTERATUIlli; 01' TIIIO lIKlfUEWS. 57 must practically mean, a readiness to submit to all which th« Pope and the priesthood prescribe. But here even the times of Moses were far in advance. All the people were required to hear the lohole Law once in seven years; and parents were also strictly enjoined to urge upon their children all the precepts which they could retain in memory. Moses, of course, did not leave the whole population to be managed only by the priests. I have only to subjoin under this head, that we must not judge of the policy or skill of Moses, in legislating for the Hebrews, by a comparison of the ancient Jews with our own population at the present day. The Hebrews as a nation were illiterate; and they long continued to be so. A command to set up schools among them, in the then state of things, and to furnish all their children with books, would at least have been deemed by them to be a practical impossibility. We, who purchase elementary books enough at the price of from two-pence up to fifty, can scarcely feel what a burden the general provision of books for all the children, and for grown-up readers, would have been in the Mosaic age. It is one of the things that the great legislator felt himself obliged to leave untouched, on account of the circum- stances of the Hebrews, and of the times in which he lived. Book-making or reading, and the possession of books, could at that time belong only to a few.* in. Let us now look at this subject in another point of light. I refer to the subject of religious instruction. We who have enjoyed the privileges of the Christian Sabbath and of the sanctuary, are but ill-prepared for the due estimation of the ancient laws of Moses, in respect to these matters. The Jewish people were forbidden, on the penalty of excision, to kindle a fire in their dwellings on the Sabbath, Ex. xxxv. 3. * On the interesting subject of the state of education among the ancient Hebrews, the reader may be referred with advantage to Jahn's Antiquilies, in those articles where he treats of the state of the arts and sciences among tlie Hebrews, and of theii' customs in the treatment of children. See also his Historn of the Iltbreiv Comvion- wealth, chap. ii. § 12, " On the learned class." Michaelis, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, pi'esents substantially the same views as Jahn, and the impression left by the statements of both these learned writers is certainly a good deal less unfavour- able with regard to the state of learning among the Israelites, than that which the reader receives from our author's observations in the above paragraphs. Compare also a comprehensive and valuable article on the subject of " Hebrew education," in the Biblical Review, for July Io48, (London, Jackson and Walford,) in which the writer has, with much research and skill, brought together all our available informa- tion upon the subject. — Ed. 58 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. They were even prohibited from leaving their habitations on that day (Ex. xvi. 29), although the spirit of this precept would not seem to extend to leaving their dwellings for the purpose of re- ligious worship. But all idea of religious social instruction on the Sabbath is entirely lacking here, and is to be excluded. We shall soon see that there was no provision for social worship among the Hebrews on the Sabbath, and no order of men whose business it was regularly to superintend their habitual religious instruction. Parents are the only persons required by Moses to perform this office; and how well it would be performed by those who could neither read nor write, and had no books, it is not difficult to perceive. Nothing is plainer, than that the very arrangement of the ta- bernacle, its ritual, its priesthood, (and so in respect to the tem- ple), presupposes and takes for granted that there is only one lawfully constituted place of public ritual worship. Three times in each year are all the males among the Hebrews to repair to the tabernacle or temple, and spend, on two of these occasions, a week each time (at the Passover and also at the Feast of ta- bernacles), and at least one day as sacred time at the feast of weeks or Pentecost. The reason why no more time was de- manded on this last occasion, which occurred just seven weeks after the feast of the passover, is obvious. It was the beginning of harvest time, and the absence for even a few days of the great mass of the population from their homes, would occasion the loss of their main sustenance. The sacrifices appropriate to these occasions could be offered " only in the place which the Lord Jehovah had chosen." Spe- cially was this true of the passover-lamh. It must be killed and dressed in the outer court of the tabernacle or temple, while its blood was carried within, and sprinkled upon the altar. Of course there could have been no other lawful places of worship, i. e. of ritual worship, which would have rivalled the tabernacle or temple. But still, may there not have been houses built in at least the larger towns for public, social, devotio^ial worship? May not the Hebrews from Joshua down to the Babylonish exile, have had their synagogues, i. e. places of social religious meeting, in order to read and expound the Scriptures, to sing hymns, to commu- nicate instruction, and to give utterance to exhortations? Nothing is easier, I answer, than for us, brought up as we have § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 69 been, to suppose this. Indeed it is even difficult for us to sup- j)ose tlie contrary. We can scarcely credit it, that Moses should have overlooked or failed to make an arrangement so obviously important and useful. But still, when we make the most strict and thorough scrutiny of the Hebrew Scriptures, both in the history which they contain, and in the prophecies, we cannot find a trace of any such thing as public social worship, either on the Sabbath or on any other day of the week, from the time of Moses down to that of Ezra. There is not a word in all the Pentateuch of command to the Hebrews to keep the Sabbath, by attendance on public worship* There is no intimation of even voluntary asso- ciations of individuals in any part of Palestine, to hold any stated • It may be useful to bring into view here the following remarks of Michaelis, whicli will serve to account for so little being said iu the Law of Moses regai'ding the religious observances of the Israelites on the Sabbath day. " Moses found a cus- tom among the people, established from the very earliest period, by which they solem- nized the Sabbath day, and it is probable that even the Egyptians had left this day to them as a day of rest ; at least he describes this solemnity as instituted by God immediately alter the creation, and he nowhere mentions its having been abolished or become obsolete. It appears therefore that he found it still subsisting as a cus- tom handed down from their ancestors, and thus it was not very necessary for him to describe very circumstantially wherein it should consist, that being already fami- liar through common use. Hence we have from him no account of the manner in which they were to worship the Deity on this day, excepting only the statute respect- ing the public Sabbatical sacrifice in Numb, xxviii. 9, 10, for he adhered, iu this point, to the usual practice from the days of theii' forefathers, and at the same time left the people at liberty to regulate their religious worship, which cannot always be perfectly uniform, and, as it were fitted to one last, as circumstances, events, or ex- isting abuses might suggest." — Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, vol. iii. pp. 156, 157. However, in point of fact, Moses was not entirely silent upon the subject of Sabbath worship. He expressly provides in Lev. xxiii. 2 — 8, that the weekly Sabbath, as well as the first and last days of the yearly Passover, should be a holy convocalioii, which can only mean that it should be celebrated by the people meeting together for worship in solemn assemblies. If the phrase Jtohj convocation, \2J'7p"t^'np72' denoted such solemn assembling for worship in the case of the Passover, it can only denote the same thing in the case of the Sabbath, for, in the passage referred to, the Sabbath and the Passover are put upon exactly the same footing, as " feasts of the Lord." It should also be well observed that Moses adds to the injunction respect- ing the Sabbath, "It is a Sabbath to Jehovah in all your dwellings," i. e. as Rosenmiiller renders the original, ubicimqiie locorum habitaverilis, wherever you dwell throughout the whole land. It clearly then follows, that the IsraeUtes were com- manded by Moses to observe the Sabbath by meeting together in devotional assem- blies in all parts of the land, however remote they might be from the Tabernacle or the Temple. Our learned author must have overlooked this important passage. See further Jennings' Jewish Antiquities, Book II. chap. 2 on Synagogues.— Ed. 60 ^ 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEHKEWS. public and social worship, or to procure religious instruction for such occasions. In the book of Judges, (the brief history of a period of about 800 years, there is little else but a record of Jewish propensities to idolatry, and of the chastisement which ensued upon the in- dulgence of these propensities. There is, however, one notable woman, Deborah, who is called a prophetess^ whose histoi'y is given; but apparently more on account of her political than her religious achievements; Judg. iv. seq. She, as it would seem, was the civil head of the Hebrew nation during a period of some length. Her triumphal song on account of the victory achieved over Sisera and his army, is on record, Judg. v.; but we hear nothing of any religious instruction that she gave. After this period, when the Midianites invaded Palestine, overran it, and greatly oppressed the Hebrews for seven years, we are told of a prophet, whose name is not given (Judg. vii. 8 — 10), who was sent to administer reproof to his countrymen. This is all re- specting religious instruction, which the history of 300 years presents. Can we suppose synagogues to have been extant, and regular worship to have been carried on during all this time? Nothing is more unlikely, or more foreign to the demeanour of the Jewish nation, at that period. Scarcely did they rise up and free themselves from one neighbouring heathen nation, who had been commissioned to chastise them for their idolatry, before they relapsed again into the commission of the same crime, and again were obliged to undergo the like punishment. Nothing can, to all appearance, be more true than the last verse of the book of Judges, in reference to those times: " In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." This verse, moreover, seems to show that the book of Judges must itself have been written after kings arose in Israel. Whether, as the Talraudists suppose, it was written by Samuel, or whether more probably by some other and later personage, we cannot now stop to inquire. But if the whole book, as it now is, was always the same from its origin, it might seem to have been written at quite a late period of the Jewish kings; for chap, xviii. SO mentions " the captivity of the land," i. e. seem- ingly of the ten tribes, which was at the commencement of He- zekiah's reign. But I do not, with De Wette, regard this as decisive of the age of the whole book, any more than I look upon § 4. LITKRATUKE 01' THE IIEUHKWS. 61 the late protracted account of the dukes of Edoni (Gen. xxxvi.), or the account of the death of Moses (Deut. xxxiv.), as decisive of the age of the Pentateuch in general. Some of the documents (for several are plainly combined in the book of Judges), beyond reasonable doubt, are of the more ancient stamp, and might have been written soon after the events which they describe have taken place. In respect to the book of Joshua, which also is made up of several ancient documents, this could not well have been com- pleted until the reign of David, inasmuch as we have repeated references to Jenisalem in \i (Josh. x. 1; xv. 63; xviii. 28), which was, before the time of David, called Jebus (Judg. xix. 11), and was subdued by David and made his capital, 2 Sam. v. 1 — 9. But the registers of the division of the country among the twelve tribes of Israel, and some other matters in the book, it is quite probable, are of a date contemporaneous with that of the con- quest by Joshua. Thus it seems to be plain, that for a period of about three centuries after the death of Moses (b.c. 1451), there could have been no other Scriptures extant among the Jews, than the Pen- tateuch, probably some parts of the book of Joshua, and some portion, it may be, of the book of Judges. These Scriptures, instead of being in the hands of the great mass of the people, or of being read every Sabbath, could have been possessed by very few even among the priests and rulers. Indeed it is difficult to find any recognition at all of priests, during the period covered by the book of Judges. Mention is made, Judges xx. 28, of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron, at the time wheri the Benjamites were nearly destroyed by the other tribes. But after this we hear no more of priests or prophets, (with the exceptions above noted as to the latter), until the time of Eli and Samuel. It does not follow, indeed, that there were no persons of these respective orders among the Hebrews. But that they performed no conspicuous part, that they were not numerous or active enough to have much influence on the nation at large, seems to be nearly certain from the manner and tenor of the history in the two books before us. In such a state of things, how was the Pentateuch preserved? By whom was it watched over and guarded, and how much was it diffused among the Hebrews? These questions very naturally arise ; but we cannot stop to answer them now, without inter- 62 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. rupting the history of religious instruction among the Hebrews. We shall revert to these inquiries as soon as the course of our discussion will permit. Let us pursue the inquiry respecting social synagogue worship from the era of Samuel down to the Babylonish exile. Not one word in regard to this subject can I find, in the his- tories comprised in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, or in the Psalms, Proverbs, or works of the prophets who lived during this period. When Jeremiah pours forth his pathetic Lamentations over the fallen city and country of the Hebrews, he describes the ruins of the temple, the metropolis, the strong- holds, and the villages; he weeps over the multitudes of the slain, the famishing, and the exiled ; but not a word respecting the destruction of any synagooues of the land, or places of public social worship. The comminations of the prophets in regard to judgments about to be inflicted, all have respect to the objects first mentioned and not to synagogues. It is affirmed of no in- vading enemy, whether Babylonian or other foe, that he assault- ed or destroyed any such buildings or places of worship. The great public fasts, on extraordinary occasions of distress and danger, are always proclaimed and spoken of as celebrated in Jerusalem. Thus Joel, in a time of famine threatened by the incursion of locusts, proclaims a fast in Zion, and the summon- ing of the solemn assembly there, Joel ii. 15, seq. When several enemies had combined, and were on their march to invade Judea, the pious Jehoshaphat proclaimed and celebrated a fast of the whole nation at Jerusalem, 2 Chron. xx. S, seq. When Jehoiakim, stricken with terror at the approach of Nebu- chadnezzar"'s army, proclaimed a fast to all the realm, this fast was to be held at Jerusalem, Jer. xxxvi. 9. Now as the law of Moses had made no prescriptions in regard to any temple ritual for such fasts on extraordinary occasions, what necessity could there be of assembling at Jerusalem for services merely devo- tional, in case there were synagogues dispersed through all the land? The nature of the arrangement, on the very face of it, imports that there were no such places of public and social worship, where the people were accustomed to perform their devotions. And this is plainly confirmed by the fact, that when Jehoshaphat sent princes and Levites through all Judea, in order to give the people religious instruction, they carried a copy of the Law with them, which they obtained at Jerusalem, in order to § 4. LITERATUKE OF THE HKBHEWS. 68 aid and confirm their instructions, 2 Chron. xvii. 7, seq. This was surely a needless precaution in case there were synagogues in all parts of the land, and of course copies of the Law in them. I am aware that it has been alleged by some advocates of the early existence of synagogues, that there is a plain reference to them in Psalm Ixxiv. 8, which contains a lamentation over the wasting of Judea — probably its desolation by the Babylonish army. Of the enemy the Psalmist says, " They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land." So runs our English version. The original Hebrew runs thus, V;ii^2i St^""'Ti;'i?2''7!3. The word i^'')?^) ^^^^ rendered tabernacles^ means, first of all, a fixed appointed time or season; then, very naturally, the assembling or convention of men at such appointed seasons; then, thirdly, (like our word churchy which means assembly^ and then the place of assembling)^ it stands for temple or place of assembling. So Lam. ii. 6, "[The Lord] hath destroyed 'i-[^'Q> ^^'^ temple.'''' But in Ps. Ixxiv. 8, the plural number of this word is employed, ^t^""^"TJ^iO. ^"^ *^^^ account Gesenius says, in his lexicon, " It is difficult to say what this means;" and on the whole he thinks it may refer to the high places at Rama, Bethel, Gilgal, &ic. Rosenmiiller cuts the knot, which he cannot untie. He says, that the Psalm was doubtless composed in the time of the Mac- cabees, and refers to the destruction of synagogues by Antio- chus. More recent criticism seems to have laid aside the idea of Maccabsean psalms, and we are thrown again upon the diffi- culty which the case appears to present. But it seems to me much less formidable than it did to Vitringa, or to the critics just named. Let us compare the synonymous word ptj;^, dwell- ing place, temple^ (synonymous with "^^^^ when this means temple), and see what the usage of the Hebrew is. In Ps. xlvi. 5; cxxxii. 5, the word (^3^i^) is in the plural number, with the sense of the singular; in Ps. Ixxiv. 7, Ex. xxv. 9, Ezek. xxxvii. 27, the same word with the same meaning is employed in the singular number. What difficulty then in interpreting ^i^'^"Ti^i?D 3-fter the analogy of p^i'?^' ^^ cases where both words have the same sense ? The simple truth of the matter seems to be, that the use of the singular or plural, as to a considerable circle of words, was a matter left to the choice of the writer. Thus he might say ^^, or n'fej^, or D''n■^^^; ^^IN or "•iTt^; G4 i< 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. and so in the New Testament GulSiSa-ov and GdiSiSa-a, ou^c/.Wjg and ov^avo!, dvaro'/.rj and dvaroAai, and the like in many other cases. Substantially there is no difference of meaning between the siii- gular and plural forms, where such a usage prevails. The plural may indeed, almost at any time, be used instead of the singular, whenever a writer conceives of an object as composite, i. e. as consisting of various parts, and he has reference to this circum- stance in the language which he employs; or, when he means to designate intensity. When simple unity is designated, the sin- gular number only is of course employed. Finally, inasmuch as the temple, with all its courts, was a large mass of buildings, the plural of "l^^'^r^ might very appropriately be employed to designate it, as thus conceived of. How much more easy and simple this philological explanation is, than those of the critics just named, every one may easily perceive. If it be said that ^^ stands in the way of this, and requires the real plural, my T reply would be, that the plural form of the noun may well admit ^^, while the sense of the whole is not substantially affected by it. If there be any passage besides this in the Old Testament which has even a seeming reference to spiagogues properly so called, it has escaped ray notice. I am aware, indeed, that some have supposed that certain other passages miglit refer to them; but the probability that they do so refer, is so small, that I do not deem it proper to occupy my own or the reader's time with the consideration of them. In whatever way then the Law of Moses, or any other ancient books of the Jewish canon were preserved, before the Babylonish exile, it could not have been by the aid of si/nagogues. When these arose, and what was done in them with reference to the Jewish Scriptures, are questions that must be touched upon in the sequel.* • It is by no means so cleai' a case as our author appears to thinlc it, that there were no synagogues, or at least some equivalent provision for public worsliip, in use among the Israelites till after the Babylonish captivity. It is difficult to believe this, seeing that Moses, as was shown in a preceding note, had appointed holy convo- cations to be held over all the country upon the weekly Sabbath. The reader will find very grave reason to question the soundness of our author's reasoning upon the subject, particularly in the attempt which he makes to nullify the argument drawn from Psalm Ixxvi. 8, in favour of the early existence of synagogues, by referring to Carpzov's Apparatus Antiquitatuin Sacri Codicis, p. 308, where Vitringa's views, which were the same as those adopted by Professor Stuart, are very solidly refuted. § 4. LITERATURE OP THE HEBREWS. 65 One other circumstance of a seemingly extraordinary nature in regard to the Law of Moses, deserves some special attention. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah (about 624 b.c.) the high prif^st Hilkiah, on occasion of making a thorough repair and expurgation of the temple, "found the book of the Law of the Lord by Moses," 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14 seq., 2 Kings xxii, 8 seq. This he announced immediately to the king's scribe, who took the book and read it before the king. The surprise and agita- tion which this occurrence occasioned in all quarters, are repre- sented as being very great. Josiah immediately convoked the whole realm, and in person read the book of the law to them, and exacted from them a promise to obey it. What is to be deduced from a circumstance so peculiar and extraordinary as this ? We know what Mr Norton has deduced from this narration. On p. 87 he says: "The story of its being accidentally found in the temple may be thought to have been what was considered a justifiable artifice, to account for the appearance of a book hitherto unknown." Not a few of the German critics have, in like manner, traced the origin of the Pentateuch to the transac- tion in question. If the Pentateuch was before in existence, it was impossible, they allege, that Josiah and the high priest Hil- kiah should have been ignorant of it or destitute of it. First of all, then, as to the probability of such a forgei-y on this occasion. What kind of persons were concerned in it? Jo- siah was the most pious king that ever sat upon the throne of Judah, from the time of David down to the captivity. He en tered upon his office at the age of only eight years, and before he had arrived at his eighteenth year, he had cut off and de- stroyed all the idols of the land, with their temples, groves, and monuments of every kind, and in the way of disgrace he had burned the bones of idolatrous priests upon the altars where they had ministered. Not only so in Judea, but he went beyond his own specific boundaries, and destroyed all the insignia of idolatry to be found in the land of Israel, 2 Chron. xxiv. 8 — 7. Having accomplished this work, he immediately set about repair- ing the ruins of the temple, which had been occasioned by the fifty-seven years of idolatry under his predecessors. Most zeal- See also Jennings' Jewish Antiquities, Book II. chap. 2; Jahn's Biblical Antiquities, p. 174.— Ed. 66 § 4. LITEKATUBB OF THE HEBREWS. ously did he engage in this work, in which he was seconded by the pious and distinguished high priest Hilkiah, who was pro- bably the father of the prophet Jeremiah. In the prosecution of these repairs, the copy of the Law in question was found. That there was no concert between the high priest and the pious Josiah, to introduce a new system of law among the Jews, is quite clear. When the scribe or secretary of state, Shaphan, read the Law to that king, the latter rent his clothes in token of grief and distress ; unquestionably because of the heavy denun- ciations in that Law against idolatry and such sins as were com- mon among his people. Immediately he sent to inquire of a prophetess, what was to be done to propitiate the anger of the Lord, which had been kindled because of the breaches of his Law that had so long taken place. The answer returned was, that " God would visit upon Jerusalem all the evil that had been done there, but would be propitious to him, on account of his humility and penitence." Immediately Josiah assembled all Israel, read to them in person all the words of the Law, solemnly engaged to obey its precepts with all his heart, and obliged all the people to enter into the same covenant, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 20 — 32. He extended the reformation to Israel also; and all his days he departed not from following the Lord the God of his fathers, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 33. This moreover was the king, who renewed the passover-rites which had fallen into desuetude, and kept such a passover " as had not been kept from the days of Samuel the prophet, nor by any of the kings of Israel," 2 Chron. XXXV. 18. And as to Hilkiah, the record of his life and actions is brief, but full of significance. To him were committed all moneys for repairing the house of the Lord, even without being required to account for them. The work of repairing was carried on with great zeal and complete success, under the same high priest. Were these men, now, and others their associates who were evidently of the like character, persons who would undertake to commit a forgery in the name of Moses, and to palm it off, as the genuine production of that great lawgiver, upon the whole Jewish people? Then, moreover, were the people so stupid and tame, as to receive such a book as coming from the hand of Moses, and to swear fealty to all its statutes and ordinances according- ly? Did they not know whether such a book had been received or known by their ancestors, not to speak of themselves afore- § 4. LITERATURE OP THE HEBREWS. 67 time? In short, whatever may be the position in which such a forgery may be placed, or argued for, it is a manifest and utter improbability. It scarcely deserves a serious notice. Indeed, such a thing was all but impossible. But then all difficulties are not removed, by removing this obstacle from our path. How could the pious Josiah, and above all, the high priest Hilkiah, have lived and acted so long (some eighteen years), without possessing any copy of the Law of Moses? That all the ordinary routine of temple-rites was well known and familiar to the priests who ministered at the altar, must be quite certain. To suppose these to have been regularly perform- ed by virtue of traditional knowledge, is doing no violence to pro- bability. It is only what has happened in all ages and in many countries. I mean not the performance of the same identical rites, but of others of the like nature, as it respected the religion of the heathen. It is true, that nearly the time of two genera- tions preceding the reign of Josiah had passed away, while idol- ati'y in its grossest forms had pervaded the land under Manasseh and Anion, whose reigns lasted fifty- seven years. Manasseh not only " walked in the ways of Ahab," but he built altars and set up carved images for his idols in the very temple of the true God ; he offered up his own children to Moloch, and " did even more wickedly than the Araorites themselves had done." Besides this, " he shed much innocent blood in Jerusalem from one end to the other." To him, Jewish tradition (with much probability) attributes the massacre of Isaiah. He was succeeded by Amon, who trode in his steps, and withal was so tyrannical, that his own courtiers formed a conspiracy against him, and put him to death when he had reigned only two years. In this history, now, as it seems plain to me, lies the solution of the problem, arising from the fact that a copy of the Law of Moses was found, after so long a time, by Hilkiah. Nearly sixty years of undisguised and most thorough-^oing idolatry, carried out even to the most bitter and bloody persecution of the true worshippers of God, had obliterated nearly every trace or monu- ment of proper religious worship. The number of copies of the Pentateuch had probably never been great, at any one time, among the Hebrews. Those moreover which had been in exis- tence, were written upon perishable materials. Such devoted idolatry as that of Manasseh, it is probable, would not permit any copy of the Pentateuch to remain safe, which could be de- 68 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBKEWS. stroyed. Antiochus Epiphanes, when he wished to extirpate the Jewish worship and introduce the rites of the heathen into Jiidea, ordered all the copies of the Law to be burned. It was an obvious measure for Manasseh, in order to carry through his designs. The story of finding the copy of the Law in the tem- ple, which created so great a sensation in the court and among the people, is a good voucher for the fact, that Manasseh aimed at building heathenism upon the ruins of Mosaism and all its monuments, so far as it lay within his power. In some secret recess of the temple, it is altogether probable, had some pious priest hidden the copy of the Law found by Hilkiah, in order to prevent its destruction by Manasseh. That priest had probably died, or been martyred, during Manasseh''s impious reign, and the secret died with him, as to the place where the Law was deposited. In making extensive repairs of the temple, the secreted volume was discovered, to the astonishment and great joy of the king, the high priest, and the mass of the Jewish people, who seem to have been thoroughly disgusted with the reigns of Manasseh and Amon. If any one should regard it as quite improbable, that the copies of the Law could be reduced to a single one at this period, let him read the religious history of France during the reign of terror and of atheism. In less than an eighth part of the time in which idolatry prevailed under Manasseh and Amon, France had succeeded so entirely in obliterating all traces of the Scriptures, in and about Paris, numerous as Bibles were in that city at a period preceding the reign of tei'ror, that for many weeks the Committee of the Bible Society could not find a single copy from which they might print a new edition. How much easier to produce a like effect in the time of Manasseh, when the copies of the Scriptures were so very few, and when almost every individual who possessed them, must be publicly known as the possessor ! It is true, indeed, that, according to the book of Chronicles (chap, xxxiii.), Manasseh was taken captive and carried to Babylon in chains, and after a while being released, he returned to his kingdom penitent and humbled, and endeavoured to repair the mischief he had done to the true religion, by building up the altars of the Lord, and removing and destroying the images of false gods. Of all this, it is true, the book of Kings says nothing; but still, the history is not the less credible on this account. § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 69 Even the book of Chronicles, however, does not give us any data by which we can estimate with certainty at what time in the reign of Manasseh his exile took place. But the probability seems to be, that it was in the latter part of his very long reign {55 years), and that he had not then either the time or the means necessary to repair the mischief he had done. He could not restore the copies of the Law which had been destroyed, if it was a matter of fact that he had destroyed them; and it is altogether probable that he knew nothing of the fact or circum- stance, tliat the Pentateuch roll had been secreted in some part of the temple. Then his son Amon walked in the wandering steps of his father, and matters remained as they were until Josiah came to occupy the throne. Mere child as the latter was, he appears to have been deeply imbued with the spirit of piety, and to have commenced the work of reformation as soon as his government was fairly established. The sequel of his history has already been presented to view. On the whole, strange as the finding of a copy of the Law of Moses, after an eighteen years' reign of Josiah, appears at first view to be, and much as has been made of it by interested critics against the antiquity of the Pentateuch, it turns out, upon more careful examination, to be nothing incredible, nor even very strange. But thus much at least may be gathered from it which is appropriate to our present purpose, viz., that there were at that time no synagogues in the land which were depositaries of the Law of Moses, and that few persons indeed, in a time of general idolatry and heathenism, possessed copies of the Penta- teuch. We cannot conclude, for certainty, that no copy was extant in Judea at that time, except the hidden one in the tem- ple. There were pious men, beyond all reasonable doubt, among the idolatrous mass of the people; and some of these might have a copy of the Law. When Elijah, in the time of Ahab and Jezebel, complained to God that he alone of all his true worship- pers was left in the land of Israel, he was told by Him who is the searcher of hearts, that 7000 were yet left, who had not bowed the knee to Baal. And so it might be, at least in some measure, under the reign of Manasseh and Amon. But still, the fact that Josiah reigned eighteen years before the book of the Law was found, seems to import, that no other copy of this book was then procurable in his dominions. The fact, then, that before the Babylonish exile there were 70 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. no synagogues, and no public, social, devotional worship, lies upon the very face of the whole Jewish history. An extraordinary fact, I am ready to confess, it seems to us to be, so different is it from a state in which a Christian education and weekly devo- tional worship are general, and are regarded as indispensable. On what ground the great Jewish legislator omitted to make provision for the general education of the Jewish people, and above all for their religious education and for their social devotional worship, we do not know. But at all events, such a matter goes fully to illustrate the truth of what the Apostle says, when he declares, that " the Law was the shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of those things," Heb. x. 1. It seems also to illustrate the declarations, that " the Law made nothing perfect," Heb. vii. 19; and that " the first covenant was not faultless," Heb. viii. 7, 8. Yea, in view of these matters, one may even venture to say with Paul, that the Jews, who had only a public ritual, with all its external pomp and show, instead of a religious education, and stated social devotional worship and in- struction, w^ere " under bondage to the elements of the world," Gal. iv. 3. Or one may express the feelings which spontaneous- ly arise in his bosom, after such a survey of the religious state of the ancient Hebrews, by saying with Paul, " Even that which was made glorious, had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory [of the gospel] which excelleth," 2 Cor. iii, 10. That the Jews had no regular places of public and social wor- ship, and no religious services appropriate to these, while in a state of exile and servitude in Babylonia, need not be shown. " How could they sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" No ; " by the rivers of Babylon they sat down and wept ; they hanged their harps upon the willows," Psalm exxxvii. One might naturally expect an altered state of things, after the Hebrews had returned from a seventy years'" exile. The bet- ter portion of the people would naturally be the portion who went back to their native land. Some time (about seventy years) after permission to return and rebuild the temple, Ezra and Nehemiah appeared as religious and political reformers among the Jews living in and around their metropolis. The services of these distinguished men were great and important. Indeed, I think we can hardly look upon Ezra in any other light than as a kind of second Moses among his countrymen. Yet in all the accounts of what these two reformers did, there § -i. LITERATURE OF THE UEUREWS. 71 is nothing which expressly recognises the institution of the syvia- gogues. Still, the public reading and exposition of the Law, so cir- cumstantially related in Neh. viii. 1 seq., might very naturally lead the people and their governors to see and feel the import- ance of providing the means for employing the like method of instruction — means that would ensure its being often and stat- edly given. But of this express mention is not made in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah; and after these, we have no Jewish historical writings on which we can rely, until near the time of the Maccabees, about 170-160 b.c. Nor does even the first book of the Maccabees (one of the oldest and most credible of all the apocryphal books,) say a word of synagogues. But it says of Antiochus Epiphanes, that he burned up ra ^ilSX/'a tov ho/xou, and also intimates that copies of the Law, in the hands of indi- viduals, were not unfrequent, 1 Mace. i. 56, 57. This imports a very different state of things from that which existed, as we have seen, in the time of Josiah. The Jews themselves have nothing more than mere floating traditions about the origin and introduction of synagogues. In 1 Mace. iii. 45, 46, mention is made of the Jews, after the sanc- tuary was laid waste, as assembling for prayer at Massepha (Mizpeh), because it was formerly a romg 'TToosvjyji:^ i. e. a place for prayer. But this merely refers to the occasional worship at Mizpeh, in the time of Samuel and afterwards, 1 Sam. vii. 5 seq. In the 8th chapter of Nehemiah we have a history of the read- ing and explanation of the Law, which might well serve as a model for synagogue worship ; but still nothing is said of the institu- tion of synagogues. It is only the Jews of a late period who refer to Ezra the institution and modelling of synagogue worship. So does Maimonides fully and without scruple; but yet he sup- ports himself merely by appealing to tradition; see in Yitr. De Vet.Synag. p. 414 seq. Josephus speaks repeatedly of synagogues in the time of Claudius ; e. g. in Antiq. Jud. xix. c. 5. c. 6. Bell. Jud. VII. c. 21, edit. Colon. Philo speaks of synagogues beyond the Tiber, at Alexandria, and in other large cities ; De Legal, ad Caium. Of the fact that these were common and numerous, there is no doubt, for the New Testament is full of references to synagogues, both in and out of Palestine. But all this does not give us anything to depend on, as to the first origin of syna- gogues. This is lost in antiquity. No Jewish author has given us any express and credible history respecting this point. 72 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. The Rabbinic tradition about the Paraslioih^ or sabbatical lections of the Law, viz. about ceasing to read these in the time of persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, and putting the Haph- taroth or prophetical lections in their stead, seems not improbable at first view ; and if this was matter of fact, then synagogues would seem to have been in existence in the time of Antiochus ; for the Parashoth and Haphtaroth are adapted to synagogue worship, and not to the ritual of the temple. We are left then to conjecture as to what time after the return from the Babylonish exile, the public and social worship of the synagogues commenced. That it began soon after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, if not in their day, would seem to be indi- cated by the declaration of the apostle James (Acts xv. 21), that " Moses of old time (ex y^viuiv d^yjiim') hath in every city (xara TeoKiv) them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day," comp. Acts xiii. 15, 27. I will not say that such a phrase as Ix yiviujv a^ya'im might not be employed in reference to a custom which originated even after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, i.e. B.C. 170. But such is not the natural import of the phrase in question, in the mouth of a Jew. One can hardly satisfy him- self with a period much short, to say the least, of that in which Ezra, Nehemiah, or Malachi lived. The nature of the case ap- pears very much to favour this more extended latitude of mean- ing. From the time of Joshua down to that of the Babylonish exile, the Jews had been ever prone to fall into idolatry, and to practise all the rites of the neighbouring nations. What could be plainer, than that the want of an adequate religious education was one of the principal causes of their defections? Men of such learning and skill as Ezra could not help discerning this. What more rational and probable, than to suppose that he and Nehe- miah concerted and carried into execution some plan for the general instruction of the Jewish people, specially as to the nature of their religious duties ? I am aware that we should examine with caution the Rabbinic stories respecting Ezra and his colleagues, who are said to be the members of what is called the Great Synagogue. But while I would lend no willing ear to the ]i'iii^;-i or romantic conceits of the Jewish doctors, I cannot persuade myself, as many of the recent liberalists in criticism have done, that there is no proper historical basis on which we may repose confidence, in respect to the existence or achievements of the Great Synagogue. All § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 75 Rabbinic antiquity takes for granted, that in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, there was a select body of men in Judea, who were named the Great S^narjogue^ and who had much to do with arranging the Jewish Scriptures, making provision for their cir- culation, furnishing the best text to be had, and, in a word, per- forming the part which was afterwards performed by the well known Jewish Sanhedrim. Rau {De ^ynagoga Magna), and Aurivillius of Upsala, (Diss. Sac, edit. J. D. Michaelis, p. 139 seq.), have endeavoured to undermine the whole of this tradition, and to show that it is unworthy of credit. But after all, nothing but the conceits which the Rabbins have connected with the tradition, seem to demand rejection. If these were a good reason for rejecting the tradition itself, then many, or rather most of the narrations in the Old Testament Scriptures must be rejected in the like manner; for what is there to which the Rabbins have not attached some phantasies not unfrequently bordering upon the ridiculous. On the other hand; nothing can be more probable, than that two such patriots and men of ardent piety and sound under- standing and great zeal, as Ezra and Nehemiah, would call into council and active co-operation some of the wisest and best and most influential men among their Hebrew contemporaries and countrymen? The Jews have ever and always believed this, so far as we know. I do not aver, that Josephus has expressly said anything of the Great Synagogue; and the plain reason seems to be, that he has merely followed the sacred records in his account of those times. Philo had no occasion to speak of the formation of the Hebrew canon, in those of his writings now extant; and the Son of Sirach, in his catalogue of Jewish wor- thies (Sir. xlv — xlix), has even omitted Ezra himself, probably because of his lack of political eminence. No certain conclusion can be drawn from such omission on the part of these writers, against the fact that there was a Great Synagogue. The Mishna {Pirqe AbotJi, c. 1) expressly appeals to it; and so do the train of Rabbinical writings in after times. One striking fact, of a historical nature, will serve to render probable the supposition, that synagogue instruction and worship must have been somewhat early instituted after the return of the Jews fi'om their long exile. We have no knowledge, that the mass of that nation have, at any period since that, become the devotees of heathen and idol-worship. Antiochus Epiphanes 74 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. did his best to corrupt them, both by persuasion and force. He even bestowed the office of high priest on such persons as seconded his views. But all in vain, as to the mass of the peo- ple. Only the refuse of the Jewish community hearkened to him. Judas Maccabeus and his companions made opposition, roused the Hebrew nation, and finally expelled all traces of heathen worship from their borders. What now was it which kept the Jews, for more than five centuries before the Christian era, from becoming idolaters, as they had so constantly been (short intervals excepted) during almost a thousand years before the Babylonish exile? Some- thing must not only have operated, but operated powerfully. Their temptations to embrace idol- worship were not stronger or more frequent before this exile, than after it; specially under the Syrian kings, the Seleucidse. Yet they remained firm and imwavering, with the small exception mentioned that took place during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. I cannot imagine any causeadequate to produce such an effect exceptingthat oi religious instruction. Nor can I see any way in which this could be ac- complished, excepting in that of reading and preaching in syna- gogues. The Mosaic institute, that the Law should be read once in seven years to the assembled mass of the Hebrew nation, had been tried for almost a thousand years, and had been found quite inefficacious, particularly as this reading was often ne- glected. What more probable, than that the enlightened and patriotic and pious Ezra and Neheraiah devised and established the social worship of the synagogues, as a preservative from all inclination to future apostasy and idolatry? Since we have no express and certain history in regard to this point; since moreover we know that synagogues were in being a long time (kt' aoya'njiv yinSjv) before the Christian era; since the Jews were actually preserved from idolatry and heathen rites, and no means but efficient religious instruction which is general are adequate to produce such an effect; I see no good reason why we may not regard it as altogether probable, that synagogue-worship was devised and commenced under the super- intendence of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the men of the n^'iliirT DD^S or Great Synagogue. But there is another branch of this topic respecting religious instruction, to which I have hitherto but merely adverted, but § 4. LITKKATURE OF THE HEnHEWS. 7-5 which, standing intimately connected as it does with the topic just discussed, should here be brought more distinctly into view. I refer to the priests and Levites of the Mosaic dispensation. Whoever borrows his views of the offices of these from the functions of a Christian pastor, and regards them as having a similar employment among the ancieut Hebrews, will find, on examination, that he is radically mistaken. The fact that there were no synagogues before the Babylonish exile, i. e. no places for public reading of the Scriptures and for preaching, of itself shows, that there could have been no regular order of men among the Jews, who performed a public part in social and de- votional worship. Had Moses made provision for such an order of men, he would have made provision for the means of perforn> ing their proper duties. A fflance at the Mosaic institutes serves to show at once, that the sura of duties attached to the fr'iestly office, was the per- formance of those services which were appropriate to the ritual worship of the tabernacle and temple. These duties required so much bodily vigour and activity, that they were limited to those who were between the age of thirty and fifty. Num. iv. 3, 23, 30, 35, 39, 43, 47. To the office of priest, only Aaron and Ms pos- terity were consecrated^ Ex. xxviii. 1, xxx. 30, xxix. 5 seq. All the rest of the Levites were given to Aaron and his sons, as mere subsidiaries in the performance of their duties. Num. iii. 9, viii. 19, comp. iv. viii. throughout. In the time of David, the priests had become so numerous, that they were divided by him into twenty-four courses or divisions, each of which in turn served a definite period of time in the temple, 1 Chron. xxiii. 3, 6, xxiv. 3 seq. comp. Luke i. 5. As to the Levites, it appears that there were, at one and the same time, 38,000 males, who were of the age of thirty and upwards. To these were assigned by that pious king, duties appropriate to their condition in accordance with the institutions of Moses, 1 Chron. xxiii. 3, 4, comp. xxvi. 29. The greater part, at that time, were employed in aiding to build the temple to be erected by Solomon. But still, 6,000 were appointed to be Q"^t2CTvL*1 Q'^'^I^t!.^ magistrates and judges. Inasmuch as the verb ^yi^l^ signifies to write or inscribe, it would T seem quite probable that the Shoterim were magistrates who kept records for their own use and for the public weal. In a literal sense, "^tO'iir would seem to be equivalent to yga/Xjaarcuj ; but it 76 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS, is evidently of wider usage in the Hebrew Scriptures, and de- signates magistrates^ probably those whose business was connect- ed with records. In Deut. xvi. 18, the very same officers are named, and Moses gives commandment that they shall be ap- pointed in all the gates of the Hebrews. Moses does not say that these respective offices shall be hmited to the Levites only; but it is quite evident, that since they were the most enlightened part of the Jewish community, on this account they would most naturally receive such appointments. The manner in which the Levites were disposed of by Moses and Joshua, shows that they were not, and were not designed to be, teachers among the people in the capacity of school- masters. God gave commandment to Aaron, that neither he nor his pos- terity, the priests, should have any inheritance in the land of Palestine, or any part among their brethren. Num. xviii. 20. At the same time, provision was made for the maintenance and ac- commodation of priests and Levites. Unto Moses it was said, that he should command the children of Israel to assign unto the Le- vites cities to dwell in, and the suburbs around then. Num. xxxv. 2. Accordingly, after the conquest of Canaan we find Joshua assigning to them forty-eight cities with their suburbs, scattered over all the country. As they were restrained from the owner- ship and cultivation of lands for agriculture, (the suburbs of their cities being assigned to them merely for gardens,) their fellow-citizens were bound to provide for them by tithes, first- fruit offerings, and parts of beasts sacrificed, Deut. xviii. 3 — 5, comp. xxvi. 12. Special liberality and charity to the Levites are strongly enjoined by Moses, Deut. xii. 19, xiv. 27 — 29. In re- turn for all these contributions, the Levites were to be the judges and magistrates of the land, in both an ecclesiastical and civil respect. Indeed the one was inseparably connected with the other. It was predicted by the dying Jacob, that the posterity of Levi should be scattered in Israel, Gen. xlvii. 7. This was necessary, indeed, according to the arrangement made by Moses. The Levites and priests were the appropriate y?fnscows%?^s of the nation. They did not go round, and preach and teach in a pub- lic capacity; but it was their business to settle and adjudicate all controversies between man and man; to declare the law in all cases of trespass or injury; to decide all dubious cases of con- science about rites and ceremonies; to give counsel, whenever asked, about anything which pertained to duty; and in a word, § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 77 to perform tho office of judges and of religious and civil monitors. In this light Ezekiel places the matter, xliv. 23 seq. So Mai. ii. 7. Thus did Jehoshaphat regard their office, specially the priestly office, 2 Chron. xix. 8 seq. In the same light Moses has placed the whole matter, Deut. xvii. 8 — 10, xxiv. 9, Lev. x. 10, 11. Ordinarily, to say the least, and at any rate according to strict rule, the Levites were to abide in the cities assigned to them, and not go elsewhere to reside. And if this be so, how could they be religious teachers in synagogues, (if such there had been), in all the villages of Palestine. In Judg. xvii. 7 seq. is an account of a wandering Levite, who at the invitation of Micah at Mount Ephraim, took up his abode with him, and became his priest. But Micah was an idolater (Judg. xvii. 4, 5); and the Levite of course must have aposta- tized from the worship of Jehovah, in order to become a priest of Micah. This therefore is no example in point, to prove that the Levites ordinarily wandered through the land, taking up their residence wherever it might suit their convenience. We have also an account of Jehoshaphafs sending a special deputation of princes and Levites " to teach in the cities of Judah," 2 Chron. xvii. 7 seq., who carried with them a copy of the Law. But this was an extraordinary, not an ordinary measure. Indeed, there is nothing in the Old Testament which shows that the priests or Levites were travelling preachers or teachers; nothing which shows that they were teachers in their own limited circle, in the ordinary sense of that word. As judges and jurisconsults, and expounders of the Law in doubtful cases, and helpers in matters of religious doubts or scruples, they were indeed teachers. But this duty they performed only when required to do it. They were passive in the business of teaching, not active and aggressive. It was their business to give an opinion when asked, but not to persuade others to assemble and learn their duty from them. We must, in justice to the case before us, proceed one step further still. I know of no passage in the Old Testament which enjoins upon priests or Levites, as their' ordinary duty, to 'pray with and for the people, and to give them religious instruction by sermons or by reading the Scriptures. If there is any pas- sage in the Old Testament which even hints at prayer for the people being a duty of the priests in the temple itself, yea of even the high priest, it has escaped my repeated and attentive search. I doubt not that all pious priests did pray in the temple. I 78 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. cannot doubt that every pious high priest especially would inter- cede for the people, on the great day of atonement, and on other like occasions. But where is this enjoinedf What part of the Mosaic institutes made it their duty? In Luke i. 10 seq. we have an account of Zacharias in the act of his official duty. And what did he? He burned incense in the temple, while all the multitude of the people were praying in the outer court. If it be said that the angel who appears to him, promises the birth of a child in answer to his prayers (Luke i. 13), yet we cannot suppose these prayers to have been then and there uttered. They would have been unseemly, unbecom- ing. And besides this, it appears from ver. 18, that Zacharias had for a long time utterly despaired of offspring, and therefore we cannot suppose him to have been then and there praying for what he plainly deemed impossible. Of course his prayer, to which the angel refers, must have been on some former occasion, and probably in a place more appropriate to such a request, than that of the temple of God, where he had an important public part to act. Let the intelligent and considerate reader now put all these things together, and ask himself whether there were any regular and stated means of instruction, or active instructors, for the Jewish nation, before their exile. He cannot find them. But he can find, on extraordinary occasions, fasting, prayers, reading of the Scriptures, a renewal of the covenant, and other religious transactions. But all this is nothing to the purpose of establish- ing the position, that before the Babylonish exile there were synagogues, and regular and stated religious teachers of the people. One remark here forces itself upon me. To argue from a Levitical priesthood to a Christian ministry^ and to prove the va- lidity of the latter institution by an appeal to the former, and specially to compare the official duties of the two respective classes with an assumption that they are parallel — is out of all question. The ancient ritual is abolished. The whole of the sacrifices and offerings, and of course the whole of the rites and forms belong- ing to them, is for ever done away by the death of Christ, if any credit is to be given to Paul, particularly in his epistle to the Hebrews. And as to the main official duty of a Christian min- ister, viz. the communication of religious instruction^ it stands as it were even in direct contrast with that of the priest and Levite, so § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 79 far as all its active aggressive functions are concerned. If Chris- tian ministers are to find any parallel under the Mosaic dispen- sation, it must be in its prophets^ not in its priests. To complete the course which we have pursued, in making in- quiry respecting the state of literature and education and reli- gious instruction among the Hebrews, it is necessary that we should take a brief view of the prophetic order belonging to that nation; and particularly ought we to do this, because of the re- lation which the prophets sustained to the Holy Scriptures, whose critical history we are endeavouring to pursue. The word prophet has had a variety of meanings attached to it by various critics. The biblical idea, as it seems to me, is fully unfolded and designated in the definition which Knobel has given: " A prophet is a person gifted with superior intelligence, and filled with religious inspiration, who stands in an intimate rela- tion to Grod, and as the servant of God is active in the promotion of religious purposes, specially those which concern the Divine authority and government;*" Knobel, Prophetismus, i. p. 113. The most usual name oi prophet m the OldTestament Scriptures is ^^^2-* Other not unfrequent names of prophets are prtH ^ ^^^''> T and ni^l ^ heholder. Of course the meaning is one par excellence^ denoting a person who sees or beholds what others do not, such • The verb J^^IlI' employed only in Niphal and Hithpael, Knobel regards, (and T * rightly in my apprehension), as related to the Hebrew verbs ^*^^,*!T3,2)n3.^'^1-' all of which mean to ■pour forth, to pour out, to cry out, i. e. to pour forth words or sounds, to shoot or streamforth, &c. ; and kindred to these are the Chaldee ^1^ ^5^ ni5 '■> the Syriac ^^o] ^ . ^^ i the Arabic "J^ ^ x^ >>-^i all kindred in meaning to the Hebrew verbs named above. Hence i»^3,^ seems to mean, to pour forth or pour out, i. e. or to utter one's internal excitement or inspiration. It is not difficult, perhaps, to assign a good philological reason, why the verb H^!5' ^!^'^nn> is used only in the reflexive conjugations ; for the generic mean- ing of these verbs thus employed seems to be, to exhibit one's self as excited or inspir- ed. Hence the manifold application of the words in question; for they apply not only to uttering predictions, but to commination, reproof, condemnation, warning, exhorting, consoling, exciting, promising, and the like. In a word, to prophesy em- braces every thing which a religious and moral teacher may say or utter by the aid of inspiration. Of course it applies to sacred music, i. e. to psalms or hymns sung either with or without instrumental music; see 1 Sam. x. 5; 1 Chron. xxv. 1,2; 1 Sam. xix. 20; comp. 1 Kings xviii. 2S, 29, where the verb is applied to the shout- ing and cantillation of the priests of Baal, who attempted an imitation of the true prophets. The Jews, as every reader of the Hebrew Bible knows, have designated the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as prophetical books, probably from 80 § 4. LITERATURE OF THB HEBREWS. as secret things, future events, and the like. In a number of cases, prophets are called □"iq^, i. e. tJiose who espy, explore, &c. This refers to the appropriate duty of prophets as the moral guardians and observers of the people. In the same way is the designation 'y^y^i^ watchman, employed, and for the like reason. In reference also to spiritual care for the people, and for their proper religious nurture, the prophets are occasionally named D"^i?h' shepherds. In regard to the proper work which a prophet has to perform, he is also occasionally named man of God, ser- vant of Jehovah, and now and then angel ov messenger of Jehovah. Among these appellations, man of God and seer are the more ancient, (see 1 Sam. ix. 9) ; ^^"1^3, (in inspired man, is more gen- eral after the time of Samuel; and spy, watchman, and servant of Jehovah, appear more frequently in the later Hebrew writers. If the reader will cast his eye, for a moment, over the various appellations of the prophets now placed before him, he will gather at once, with a good degree of certainty, what the pro- per office and duty of a Hebrew prophet was. Instead of being a mere (j^avng, i. e. a superintendent of ritual observances, a soothsayer, an oracle-monger, or the like, he was the moral teacher and preacher of his nation. His duty was not like to that of the priests ; although occasionally some of the prophets superintended sacrifices and other parts of the ritual, e. g. Sa- muel, Elijah, and some others. All that was ritual, however, if resorted to on any occasion by a prophet, was merely subor- dinate and subsidiary, and not his main or appropriate business. The Old Testament is full of the history, doings, and sayings of the prophets. Nearly one half of it consists of their peculiar discourses or prophetic compositions ; of which only a small part is prediction in the proper sense of that word. Prophets were the principal instruments in keeping alive the Mosaic religion at all times, whether one looks to the spirit or to the ritual of it. Inasmuch as the Jewish commonwealth was ecclesiastico-politi- cal, prophets were politicians as well as preachers. Nothing is more common, than the history of their interposition in matters the persuasion that they were composed by prophets. According to the broad meaning given to ^^1^ above, any book composed by an inspired writer might be named prophecy. And in a similar latitude are the words ■7r^o(friTua and ■^^otprinuu employed in the New Testament. In the language of the Bible, the uttering of predictions, in the appropriate sense of this word, is only a species under the genus prophesying. § 4. MTKRATURE OP THE HEBREWS. 81 that concern the political weal of the Jewish state. To give counsel to magistrates, on occasion of exigency, was regarded as one of their appropriate duties. It is singular, that after Moses and Miriam, no prophet or prophetess is mentioned until the time of Deborah, which was more than a century after the conquest of Canaan. And even she seems rather to be called a prophetess on account of her song of triumph (Judges v.), than on account of her mode of life. It is clear that she was a remarkable woman ; for she was at the head of the nation, a ni^CiT' ^^hen she led on the Hebrew army to battle against Sisera; Judges iv. 4. An anonymous prophet is presented to view in Judges vi. 8 seq., who adminis- ters severe rebuke. Besides these, we meet with no prophetic personages until we come down to the time of Samuel, which, counting from the death of Moses, makes a period of more than SOO years. If there w^ere no more prophets than appear on the face of the sacred records during this long period, it is no won- der that the Jews, who had been partially idolaters in Egypt, relapsed very often, as the book of Judges tells us they did, into the idolatry of the heathen. This had its attractions. It put no restraint on the passions. It might be (although it does not seem probable) that priests and Levites urged the ritual of the Law, and exacted all its ceremonial observances ; but if they did, these would have had but little efficacy in preserving the nation from corruption, so long as prophets, the preachers of righteousness, were wanting. With Samuel opens a new and splendid era, both as to the civil and religious concerns of the Jews. This distinguished servant of God acted not only as prophet, but was also a judge (l^-rtr)' ^^^ "o^ unfrequently did he act as a priest; see 1 Samuel vii. 9 seq.; ix. 22 seq.; x. 8; xi. 15; xvi. 1 seq. He commenced his duties about 1100 c.c, and the prophetic order, founded (if one may use the expression) by him, continued, with little interruption, down to the time of Malachi, i. e. about 400 B.C. Thus, for some 700 years, was the Jewish nation provided with religious teachers, by special Divine interposition, and there- fore they had much less apology for departure during this time from the institutions of Moses, than they had in former days, during the administration of the Judges. Samuel began his career very young, and nobly did he main- G 82 § 4. LITEUATUUE OF THE HEBREWS. tain it during a period of some forty years. It was during his life, that prophetic institutions or schools of the prophets first made their appearance. Doubtless this illustrious reformer saw and felt the necessity of more efficient and more widely diffused reli- gious instruction, than had previously been given. The young men educated at those schools seem plainly to have been design- ed for the prophetic office. Hence they are frequently named prophets^ (e. g. 1 Sam. x. 5, 10 — 12; xix. 20, 24; 1 Kings xviii. 4, 13; xix. 14; xxii. 6 seq.) in relation to the office for which they were being qualified. At other times, their discipleship or relation to their prophetic masters is pointed out by the appel- lation sons of the prophets; e. g. 1 Kings xx. 35; 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 7, 15; iv. 1, 38; v. 22; vi.l; ix. 1, 4. The Hebrews often called a teacher /a^/ier {'2'^'-> ^-^d of course the pupil or learner T was a son. So in the New Testament, li/oc, rsx.m, and Ti-mov^ are employed to designate disciples or learners. The notices of these schools, in sacred history, are confined to the time of Samuel, and to that of Elijah and Elisha. We find nothing concerning them at other periods. If such schools ex- isted after the last-named period, it would seem at least that they could not have had any considerable notoriety. In SamueFs time there were large companies of prophetic pupils in several places, 1 Sam. x. 5, 10; xix. 20. Ahab could, in his day, mus- ter 400 prophets of Baal at a time, 1 Kings xxii. 6. Obadiah, one of his pious officers, concealed a hundred of the prophets of Jehovah from Jezebers bloody persecution, 1 Kings xviii. 4, 13. Fifty of the prophets at Bethel attended on Elijah and Elisha, 2 Kings ii. 8, 7. Those at Jericho, at the same time, appear to have been still more numerous, 2 Kings ii. 16 seq. In Elisha's time we find a hundi'ed of the prophets at Gilgal, 2 Kings iv. 38 — 43. Various places also are named as the abode of the sons of the prophets^ viz. Rama, Bethel, Gibeah, Jericho, Gilgal, and Mount Ephraira. They appear, moreover, to have lived together in the manner of coenobites, and to have been superintended and in- structed by some aged prophet. But sacred history gives us no minute particulars as to the manner of their education. Yet doubtless, as they were to be moral and religious teachers, the Law of Moses must have been the subject of their special study. Even Knobel, who maintains the later composition of the Pen- tateuch, asserts that they must have been orally instructed in the theocratical law (as he names it) that was traditionally cur- § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 83 rent at that period, Proph. ii. p. 46. That sacred music, with the voice and with instruments, was in part an object of special attention, is clear from 1 Sam. x. 5; xix. 20. Saul, who meets with a company of these prophetic musicians, is said, by the sacred historian, to have prophesied along with them, because he united in their music, 1 Sam. x. 6, 10 — 12. It does not fol- low, however, that all who attended the schools of the prophets did actually assume the prophetic office after quitting the schools, but it is altogether probable, that most of the religious teachers among the Jews, from the time of Samuel down to the death of Elisha, (a period of about 200 years), w^ere first learners in the schools of the prophets. That the notable age of sacred lyric poetry among the Hebrews, during which David, Asaph, Heman, Ethan, the sons of Korah, Solomon, and others, were so conspicuous as poets, connects itself with the instructions given in the schools of the prophets, one cannot well doubt. During the period, moreover, between Samuel and Elisha, we find a considerable number of distin- guished prophets as well as poets; e. g. Gad, 2 Sam. xxiv. 11 — 18; Nathan, 2 Sam. xii. 15 ; Ahijah, 1 Kings xi. 29 seq. ; Shemaiah, 1 Kings xii. 22; several prophets whose names are not given, 1 Kings xiii. 1—3, 1 1 ; Iddo, 2 Chron. ix. 29 ; Oded, 2 Chron. XV. 1; Hanani, 2 Chron. xvi. 7; Jehu, 2 Chron. xix. 2; Jahaziel^ 2 Chron. xx. 14 ; Eliezer, 2 Chron. xx. 37 ; Elijah, 2 Chron. xxi. 12 ; and Elisha, 1 Kings xix. 16. During the lives of these two last-named prophets, we find repeated mention of hundreds more of prophets, many or most of whom had probably been connected as pupils with the schools which they taught. As to all the prophets now in view, however, although some of them were most highly distinguished by talents, activity, and usefulness, we have no remains of works written by them, but only a brief account by others of their sayings or doings on par- ticular occasions, which is contained in the historical books of our present Scriptures. It is an assertion of the Talmudic Rabbins (Baba Bathra fol. 14. c. 4. comp. fol. 15. c. 1), that " Samuel wrote the books which bear his name, and also the books of Judges and Ruth." The two latter, i. e. the substance of them, it is possible that he wrote. But as to the two books of Samuel, they are out of the question. The death of Samuel is related in 1 Sam. xxv. Consequently he could not have writ- ten the remainder. Nor is it probable tliat he wrote what pre- 84 § 4. LITERATUnE OF THE HEBREWS. cedes chap. xxv. The great era o^ prophetic composition com- mences with Joel, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, about 800 — 730 b.c. From the more circumstantial history of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, it appears that they continued in their office down to the time of their decease. In other words, the prophetic office, as then held and exercised, seems to have been a business of life. Was this so with all the prophets who have been named or ad- verted to above? Or did they assume the office merely for a temporary exigency, and lay it aside when that exigency had passed by? With entire certainty we cannot answer these questions. As to most of the prophets, it seems to me more probable that they held their office permanently; for the moral necessities of the people, which called the office into being, seem to have been such as to render the continuance of it highly important and useful. We meet with aged prophets; and the tenor of the nar- rations respecting this order of men favours the idea that the office was one which was regular and long continued, so far as it respected the duty of moral and religious teaching. It is un- necessary to assume that all prophets were endowed with mira- culous powers. Such was not the case even with Christian pro- phets, if we may credit the declarations of Paul in his account of their gifts, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians; and I know of no testimony more authentic than his. But the fact that the prophets ix^'^'i^'^'yi) were inspired persons, would seem of course to indicate, that they addressed the people under the special aid and guidance of the Spirit of God. It need not, and should not be supposed, that at all times, and on all occasions, these pro- phets spoke and acted under such a special guidance. So much was not true of even the apostles of Christ, Enough that at due times, and in appropriate circumstances, they were specially guided and aided by the Spirit of God. Their sermons or addresses to the people they did not, as it would seem, commit to writing at the period in question. We have therefore, at the present time, only some fragments of what they uttered, which were collected and recorded by others. It is natural to conclude from this, that they regarded themselves as ministers of God and servants of the theocracy, only for their own day and generation. The permanent monuments of the pro- phetic class are of a later date, and commence with Joel, Hosea, and Isaiah. § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 85 A glance at facts such as these, specially if we view them as they stand connected with and related to each other, would seem to admonish us quite plainly, that in the prophetic order, if we except Moses the distinguished founder of the Jewish common- wealth, a gradual advance to higher degrees of culture and use- fulness is perceptible. Who, except Moses, can compete with those prophets, whose immortal works are still so conspicuous in the Jewish Scriptures? We do truly revere and honour such men as Samuel, Elijah, and others of the like spirit; but we do more than homage or honour to such men as Isaiah, Joel, Nahum, and their compeers. To the canon of Scripture some considerable accession was made as early as the time of David and Solomon. There might have been a part of the books of Joshua and Judges extant at that period ; and if so, these, with the Law of ^Moses, constituted the then Jewish canon. David and his contemporary sacred poets made vei-y valuable accessions to the Jewish Scriptures; especially to the devotional part of them. Down to the present hour, the compositions of these men are regarded as excelling those of any or all others, in respect to their adaptedness to be the medium of praise and of devout meditation. I will not say, that these compositions introduced a new element into the Jew- ish religion and worship; but I may safely affirm, that at least they made a new development of the Mosaic religion, and gave to all ages then to come some of the most exquisite models of expressing devout, grateful, humble, and pious feeling. They will go down to the end of the world with unabated, yea with increasing honour. The greater part of the book of Psalms was composed by David and his contemporaries; and the few Psalms that have been since added, show that sacred lyrics among the Hebrews had its golden age and also its silver one, and that the golden age commenced, and attained its highest elevation, under David and his contemporaries. Only now and then did some peculiar occasion afterwards call into exercise talents of a lyric nature, in the composition of devotional psalms and hymns. The book of Proverbs, moreover, must have been a substantial aid to the prophetic teachers of morals. It would seem, however, that from the 25th chapter onward, the composition lay in an uncopied JNIS., until the time of Hezekiah; Prov. xxv. 1. But be this as it may, the preceding portion of the book is exceeding- ly weighty, particularly on the score of morals and circumspect 86 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWfti. and prudential behaviour. Prophets who lived after the writing of this, certainly had a somewhat ample store of choice texts, for discourses on the subject of morality and sober demeanour. I have distinguished David and his colleagues, the devotional poets, from the prophets, who were the subject of our preceding consideration. But in so doing, I have rather followed our own common usus loquendi than that which is appropriate to the Scriptures. Whatever is written or uttered by the aid of in- spiration, the Scriptural wi'iters name 'prophecy. The ground of employing the word in this extensive sense, has already been presented in the preceding pages. Let us now pass to the next and most splendid period of the Plebrew prophetic development. It begins with Joel, in the reign of Uzziah, about 800 b.c, and continues down to the end of the Assyrian dominion, not far from 700 b.c. It has been named the Assyrian period by Knobel, because most of the pro- phets during this period have reference more or less, in their discourses, to the Assyrian invasions of Palestine, or to those of the neighbouring countries of the heathen who were under the dominion of Assyria, or were associated with it. It would not be consistent with my main design, to discuss such questions respecting each prophetic book, as belong only to the specialities of an ample and scientific introduction to the Old Testament.* I shall not therefore enter into any minute discussions, the particular object of which would be to vindicate the genuineness of those 'prophetical hooks ichich hear the names of their authors. Nor will the plan of my work permit me to can- * Such an ample and scientific introduction to the Old Testament, embracing full discussions of all the questions proper both to the general and special introduction, is supplied to us in Haveruick's Handbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleiluny in das Alle Testament, Eriangen 1836; and it is much to be wished that the translation of this valuable work, announced by Mr Clark of Edinburgh, as a part of his interest- ing series, the Foreign Theological Library, may be given to the public without delay. We rejoice that the promised translation should have been undertaken by one so competent to do it justice, as Dr Alexander of Edinburgh, The pubhcation of the original work was left incomplete by its lamented author, but the remaining portion of it, which treats of the poetical books of the Old Testament, is announced as beiug now in the press. Still more recently has appeai'ed in Germany, an Introduction to the Old and Neio Testaments by Dr Scholz of Eonn, the enun<,'nt text-critic. The first volume, contain- ing the general introduction, was published at Cologne in 1845. The work is still in progress, and will prove a valuable addition to this department of Biblical liter- ature. — Ed. § 4. LITERATURE OP THE HEBREW8. 87 vass at length the question, whether particular parts of Isaiah, for example, or of Zechariah, or of Daniel, are supposititious; which two last works, however, belong to a later period than the one with which I am now concerned, unless indeed (with Knobel and some others) we attribute Zech. ix — xi. to the Zechariah the son of Berechiah mentioned in Isa. viii. 2. Enough for my purpose, that the Old Testament books which bear the names of their authors, were extant, and were acknowledged by the Jewish nation as genuine works, before and at the period in which Malachi, the last of the Hebrew prophets, lived; that they were regarded as inspired and authoritative; and that Christ and his apostles have sanctioned them as such. On the general subject of the genuineness of the Hebrew Scriptures, I shall produce, in the sequel, a striking passage from Eichhorn. Their authority or sanction does not depend on the fact, whe- ther this prophet or that one wrote a particular book, or parts of it, but on the fact that a prophet wrote them. Of course, this is my main point. And since I am not now writing a critico- exegetical introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, I may dispense in general with all questions which belong merely to minute and special criticism. My object leads me to bring to view the Jew- ish sacred books as regarded in a general way; and I may be permitted to treat them, when they are not anonymous, as pro- ceeding from the persons whose names they bear. When I mention then, as belonging to the period in question, the works of Joel, Hosea, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, and Nahum, (and perhaps Jonah), I need say nothing more to characterize this golden age of the prophets in the capacity of writers. Isaiah is surely without a parallel; and as for Joel and Nahum, all ef- forts to commend them to readers of taste would be useless. In the other prophets just named, there are passages of great splendour; and in all of them there is such a lofty tone of piety, and zeal for God and his honour, with such inflexible morality, as almost transports the reader into New Testament times. Indeed one may well compare the spiritual and elevated views of these writers, with the leading principles of the gospel dispen- sation as developed by our Saviour in his conversation with the woman of Samaria, John iv. 19 seq. Let us listen for a moment to Isaiah: " What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, saith Jehovah ? I am satiated with the oftcrings of rams and of fatted beasts; 88 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. The blood of bullocks and of lambs and of he-goats I do not desire. When ye come to exhibit yourselves before me. Who hath required this at your hands — the treading of my courts? Bring no more worthless oflFerings; Incense! — it is an abomination to me. As to your new moons and sabbaths and summoning of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn meeting. Your monthly festivals and appointed feasts my soul hateth; They are a burden to me, I cannot bear with them. And when ye spread out your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you, Yea, when ye multiply prayer, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash ye; make ye clean ; Put away your evil deeds from before mine eyes; Cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; Seek after justice ; console the afflicted; Vindicate the orphan ; plead the cause of the widow." Who cannot easily imagine himself to be listening to the Great Teacher, the Light of the world, when he hears such a passage as this? And many such, i. e. of the like tenor with this, are there in the works of the prophets now before us. In respect to the so called pseudo-Isaiah and Jonah, placed by recent critics among the works of the second or Chaldee period of prophecy, I shall notice them in my remarks on that period. The last king of Assyria, of whom any mention is made in the sacred records, was Esar-haddon, who sent colonists from his do- minions into the land of the ten tribes, about 678 b.c, Ezra iv. 2. He was the last of the Assyrian kings who appears to have pos- sessed any great degree of energy and activity. At all events, we hear no more of incursions into Judea, after his reign ; and it was but some fifty years afterwards, that Nabopolassar, a tri- butary king of the Babylonian province, threw off the yoke of Assyria, and made Babylon an independent kingdom. His son Nebuchadnezzar enlarged its borders, and became master of the greater part of Asia west of the Euphrates. To Babylon then are we to look, from the latter part of the reign of Josiah on- ward, for most of the annoyances which the Hebrew common- wealth experienced during its last period before the exile; and most of the prophets who lived from the time of Josiah onward to the end of the captivity, in their writings still extant, refer principally to Babylon, or the land of the Chaldees (which is the same), or to some of its tributaries or allies, as the enemies whom the Hebrews have most reason to dread. Hence, in clas- § 4. LITERATURE OP THB HEBUEWS. 89 sifying the prophets with reference to a predominating element in their discourses, we may name this latter period, in which the prophetic order were somewhat conspicuous, the Chaldean PERIOD. It is remarkable, that from the year 710 b.c. down to 640 e.g. i. e. for seventy years, scarcely a vestige of any Hebrew prophet is to be found in the Jewish history. No wonder at this. The fifty-seven years of unrelenting persecution of the true worship- pers of God, and the rank and zealous idolatry even of the gross- est kind, which made up the reigns of Manasseh and of Amon, must needs have cast off or driven away all the true prophets of God. At first there seem to have been some who warned Man- asseh, 2 Chron. xxxiii. 10, but he would not hearken to them. And so entirely does the Holy Land appear to have been destitute of prophets, in consequence of persecution and idolatry, that they did not make their appearance again, so far as we know, until some time during the reign of Josiah, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 8, 22. Under him we find Zephaniah predicting the destruction of As- syria and its capital, Nineveh, ii. 13 — 15, which took place about that time. Moreover Huldah, a prophetess, is consulted by Josiah and Hilkiah, on the occasion of finding a copy of the Law in the temple, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 22. Jeremiah began his pro- phetic duties in the thirteenth year of Josiah, i. e. 629 b.c. If Zech. xii. — xiv. belongs to an older prophet than the Zechariah who lived after the return from exile, it should probably be as- signed to the period about 607 — 604 e.g. (See Knobel, Proph. ii. p. 280 seq.) At the same period the prophecy of Habakkuk may most probably be placed. Ezekiel, who was carried into exile about 600 e.g., began his prophetic work about 595 e.g., and continued it until 573. The greater part of his prophecies relate to his countrymen who still remained in Palestine, after the deportation to Mesopotamia in the reign of Jehoiachin. But some of them relate to his fellow-countrymen in exile with himself. The brief work of Obadiah seems, by the historical circumstances to which it refers, plainly to belong to the period of the exile. His prophecy is directed against the Edomites; and one may compare with it Jer. xUx. 7 — 22; Ezek. xxv. 12 — 14; XXXV. 1 — 15. Those who maintain the late composition of Isa. xl. — Ixvi., also compare Isa. Ixiii. 1 — 6 with the prophecy of Obadiah; and it seems to tally well with this and with the other prophecies just named. 90 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. The turn which recent criticism has taken among a large class of commentators and writers on subjects of sacred literature in Germany, with respect to various and extensive portions of the book of Isaiah, must be well known to all who are acquainted with the recent history of sacred literature. As I have already said, it comports not with my present object minutely to discuss the questions in regard to this matter, which have recently sprung up. But I must at least touch upon this topic, although as summarily as may be. No allegations are made at present with more confidence by many, than that Isa. xl. — Ixvi. belongs to a writer near the close of the exile, to whom Cyrus was known by name, and whose in- tentions he well understood. To the same period, but (as most of these critics suppose) to a different author, is to be assigned Isa. xiii. xiv. In their opinion, to the author of the latter, per- haps, belongs Isa. xxi. 1 — 10; at any rate, it must be assigned, as they aver, to the close of the exile. Isa. xxiv. — xxvii. be- longs, as some of the latest critics say, (e. g. Knobel) to a pro- phet who lived near the beginning of the exile. Isa. xxxiv, xxxv. is to be assigned to the middle of the exile. Thus we have, if we may believe these critics, no less than five or six works of so many different pi'ophets, in our present book of Isaiah. A few hints I may be permitted to suggest in relation to this critical theory. It seems to me to be pressed with some serious difficulties, from which no adequate relief has yet been found. (1.) All ancient Jewish and Christian tradition is against it. So far back as Sirachides, we have express testimony of the Jewish views. He calls Isaiah " the great prophet, and faith- ful, (or, worthy of credit, -rieH;) in his vision." He speaks of him as comforting Zion, and showing " the things that would happen sw; toZ aluvo:, for ever, and hidden things before they take place, xlviii. 22 — 25. Does not this specially refer to the latter part of Isaiah ? So Philo, Josephus, and the New Testa- ment in very many places from the so-called pseudo-Isaiah, (in- deed altogether most frequently is this part of the book referred to in the New Testament), which are ascribed to Isaiah ; and so the Christian fathers, and the Talmud. The discovery of diverse authors is one that is acknowledged to have been made but a few years since. (2.) The discrepancy of diction, which is even confidently al- leged to be a satisfactory proof of different authorship in the § 4, LITEKATURE OP THE HEBREWS. 91 various parts of the book, in ray apprehension has no solid basis adequate to support this allegation. The several parts of the book which are conceded to Isaiah, between chap. xiii. and xxxix. are in general more discrepant from the first twelve chapters (acknowledged to be genuine), than some of those genuine chap- ters are from the alleged interpolated portions of the book. In other words, Isaiah differs more from himself than he does from others. These portions, moreover, which are said to be inter- polated, are so widely distant from the idiom of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other Hebrew prophets during and after the exile, they have so little of the later so-called degenerate Hebrew idiom in them; that to my mind they present a very serious dif- ficulty in the way of believing that they could have been written near the close of the exile, or even at the middle, or the begin- ning of it. So very different from the work before us are the productions of this period, in regard to diction and style, that even the liberalists feel compelled to confess, that the pseudo-Isaiah was a writer of rare talents at imitation of the ancients, and they even allege, that he has copied from the true Isaiah. I cannot here exemplify and confirm the position, that the resemblances between the confessedly genuine parts of Isaiah and the suspect- ed parts of his book, are so many and so striking, that even De Wette confesses that " they must arise from imitation or sontswie^ i. e. in some other way !" Einl. p. 288. To the some other way in which these resemblances arose, we may assent ; but not to the assertion that the writer in question was an imitator. I can only refer the reader, for an ample statement, to Kleinert's Aechtkeit des Esaias^ p. 220 — 279, and to Havernick's Spezielle Einleit. Esai. p. 192 seq. Every discriminating reader well versed in the Hebrew must feel, as I think, that there is in- deed, in some respects, a notable difference between the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah and the first part of his work. It seems to me that candour will not — need not deny this. But, as I have intimated above, this difference is not so great, in my apprehension, as the difference between the first twelve chapters of Isaiah and other acknowledged parts of his work between chap. xiii. and xxxix. Let any one compare the circle of imagery, the sources of metaphor and comparison, the historical examples of ancient times appealed to in both parts of the book, the absence of particular visions and symbolical actions in both, the insertion of triumphant lyrical songs, and the like, and he cannot refuse 92 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. to recognise most striking similarities ; see Hiivernick ut sup, p. 191. " They that be for the antiquity of the alleged adsciti- tious portions of the book, are more than they that be against it." I am persuaded that the Neologists have evidently the worst of the argument on this ground ; and this is a ground which they are prone to consider as one of their choice posi- tions for defence. (.3.) What example is there, among all the prophets, of a book so patched up by putting together six different authors, five of them without any names ? Who did this ? Where, when, was it done ? If parts of the book are so late as is alleged, why have we no hint about its compilation, no certain internal evidence of it ? How can we account for it, that all the minor prophets, even Obadiah with his one chapter, should be kept separate and distinct, and this even down to the end of the prophetic period, and yet Isaiah be made up by undistinguished fragments and amalgamations ? These surely are serious difficulties ; and they have not yet been satisfactorily met. (4.) In numerous places of chap. xli. — xlviii. the prophet ap- peals to his own predictions concerning Babylon's fall, as uttered long be/ore the time of fulfilment. Even Rosenmiiller confesses (iii. p. 5, 6), that " the writer, who lived near the close of the Babylonish exile, has assumed the personage of some ancient prophet." This same prophet adverts to localities and nations, to which it would be very strange for a Jew in exile to advert, e. g. xli. 9, where he speaks of Israel as being " taken from the ends of the earth," i. e. Ur of the Chaldees ; which would do well in case he was in Palestine, but be quite incongruous if he were in Chaldea. As to nations ; Egypt, the land of Sinim, (xlix. 12) i. e. probably the Pelusiotes, the appeal to offerings of swine (Ixv. 4) which were made in Egypt but not in Babylon, the frequent appeals and addresses to Jerusalem and the towns of Palestine, all seem to betoken the presence of the writer in the Holy Land, and his familiarity with objects there and in the neighbourhood. Then the historical relations are to be added to these. Egypt and ^Ethiopia are joined, and also the Sabeans ; xlv. 14. In xli. 11, 12, the active and assailing enemies of those addressed are mentioned; but who were they, during the exile? In Iii. 4, the writer adverts to the past captivities of the Jews, and mentions only those of Egypt and Assyria. How could he omit that of Babylon, if it had taken place ? In Isa. Ixvi. 19, § 4. LITERATURE OF THE IIEDREWS, 93 the Jewish exiles are represented as being gathered only from countries connected with Egyptian or Assyrian sway. These things have not been satisfactorily explained by the recent libe- ral critics. I am not aware how they can be. (5.) In chap, xl — xlvii. are very many passages which are ad- dressed to a people under the influence of idols, and who prac- tise heathen rites; and they are reproved for not presenting the offerings due to God. How could this be, while the Jews were in exile ? They served no idols then and there ; and how could they be reproved for not presenting offerings there, which could be lawfully presented nowhere but at the temple in Jerusalem ? Besides, the people addressed are represented as seeking ybr| ^-f, a great fish, to swallow up the prophet, where the epithet great has of course a very appropriate meaning. But how is it with a great boat? Then again, the vomiting (i^ft'^'^) upon the land — appropriate enough to the great fish, but how the hoat vomited out Jonah, looks rather problematical. Others, therefore, not liking these explanations of the nai'ration, say, that Jonah, when thrown overboard, found a dead fish, on which he got a station, and was thrown, at last, upon the land un- harmed. But still, the swallowing up of Jonah, and the vomiting of him out, are lost sight of, even in this exegesis. To remedy this, ingenuity has contrived to ma.ke Jonah cut a hole in the fish, so that he could lodge in his interior ; and from this he came out, when cast upon the land. But even hero, Jonah seems rather to manage the fish, tlian to be managed by him. The view attributed to the famous Von der Hardt, who wrote § 4. LiTERATUur: or the Hebrews. 101 several volumes upon Jonah, viz. that Jonah put up at a tavern which had the simi of a whale, is closely allied to this. Futile, not to say ridiculous, attempts are all these and the like, to do away the force of a narration, which plainly savours of the miraculous. Not but that the whole matter, in respect to the fish, might be shown to be a natural possibility. The Canis Carcharias, common in the Mediterranean, can surely swallow a man, for it has done so ; and so can some other fishes. That a man should preserve life for a while in the stomach of a fish, under certain circumstances, is no impossibility. Living reptiles often spend years in the human stomach ; some of them, moreover, are such as need air for respiration, (as indeed what living and breathing creature does not?) As to throwing up Jonah upon the land, there are places enough of deep water up to the very edge of the sea-shore, where this might be done by a large fish. The objection that the stomach of the fish must have dissolved and digested Jonah, is of no weight ; for every one acquainted with physiology knows, that living flesh does not di- gest in the least in the stomach. The gastric juice has no power over it. And last but not least — the God who meant to punish, but not to destroy, Jonah, could arrange all these circumstances, and also preserve his life, in such a way as is stated in the naif- ration. The same God could cause the fish to throw him out of his stomach; the Bible affirms that he did ; Jon. ii. 10. So would I say, moreover, of the gourd, and its withering, al- though the latter circumstance is pressed by no special difficulty. Its growth, however, must be supernatural. The panic, the fast, and the penitence of the Ninevites, are doubtless all circum- stances extraordinary and without a parallel in sacred history. Yet surely they cannot be deemed impossibilities. The mission of Jonah to a distant heathen country, in his day scarcely known among the Jews, and not yet having made any incursion upon Palestine, is undoubtedly one of the most serious difficulties that the book presents. The mission of a man who had such a tem- per as Jonah, to execute a commission so grave, stands next to this. And then — what was the object ? What was achieved ? What had the Jeios to do, at that time, with the Ninevites ? It is easy to ask many questions of this kind ; but it is not so easy to answer them satisfactorily. The book itself presents us with no key to unlock these mysteries. I cannot much wonder, therefore, that allegory ov parable has 102 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. been resorted to by so many interpreters (and of different sen- timents too in theology), in order to explain the book. Jonah, they say, designed to teach the Hebrew nation to feel more libe- rally towards the heathen ; to show them that even the latter were more susceptible of moral impression than hardened Jews; and to impress them with the idea that God was the common Father of all men — of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. He wrote this allegory, as they aver, in order to accomplish this end ; just as the Saviour uttered the parable of the good Samaritan, and of the rich man and Lazarus, or of the sower, in order to illustrate and confirm certain moral truths. In itself this exhi- bits nothing impossible or even improbable. Yet the want of all intimations of this nature in the book itself, is somewhat of an objection against this mode of exegesis ; although it has been adopted, for substance, by such men as J. D. Michaehs, Herder, Eichhorn, Staiidlin, Meyer, Miiller, Niemeyer, and others. In the Gospels, and generally in the prophets, the context gives us a key to the allegory or the parable. I am constrained also to ask : Can what the Saviour says about Jonah and the Ninevites, be reconciled with the idea that the book is only an allegory? The first spontaneous prompting of the mind seems to be an an- swer in the negative. Yet it is asked : Do we not every day refer to the Good Samaritan, and to the Prodigal Son, in the same way, as if they were real historical personages? And in fact one cannot deny this ; but still there is this difference be- tween the two cases, viz. that in the Gospels the nature of the allegory is palpable. However, at all events, this method of in- terpretation is much preferable to one lately come into vogue, through Goldhorn, Gesenius, De Wette, and Knobel, viz. that the book has only a few facts at the basis, simple and credible, while all the rest is a mythic romance — a narrative made out of floating popular stories. Jonah, they say, was a prophet. He uttered oracular threats against Nineveh. He made a voyage to sea; was shipwrecked; narrowly escaped the sharks; return- ed to his prophetic duty; but was indignant that his first pre- dictions had not been fulfilled, and therefore wished for death, through fear of disgrace. So much they allow to be fact. Then as to the myildc part, it comes, as they think, from the story among the Greeks, that Hercules, at Sigeum, rescued Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon king of Troy, from the jaws of the sea-monster to which she was devoted. In order to do this, he § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 1 03 sprang himself into the monster's jaws, was swallowed down, and there he fought three days and nights in his belly, destroyed him, and came out alive with only the loss of his hair, which had been burnt up by the heat within; Diod. Sic. VI. 42. Ovid. Met. XI. 211 seq. Tzetzes ad Lycoph. Cassand. 33. This myth, as some of the recent critics suppose, was combined with another, the scene of which is at the shore of Joppa. There Perseus rescued from a sea-monster Andromeda, the daughter of king Cepheus; and Pliny {Hist. Nat. V. 14) and Jerome {Comm. in Jon. I. 3) tell us, that the people of that place were accustomed to show to strangers the rock where Andromeda w^as chained, and the huge bones of the sea-monster; [whales' bones no doubt]. Both of these fables are united, and forthwith out comes the onyth of Jonah. So even Rosenmiiller. To this I have only to say: " Humano capiti cervicera pictor equinam Jungeve si velit, et varias inducere plumas Undique collatis membris ; ut turpiter atrum Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne ; Spectatum admissi, risum teneatis, amici 1"* What others may do, who have more power over their risibles than I, is not for me to say. But for myself, I cannot do other- wise than Horace supposes his friends would do, when looking at the strange production of the painter whom he describes. Winer, (not restrained most surely by any orthodox notions from admitting neological exegesis), says, in respect to this ttiythical explanation: "It always must appear very improbable, that a Hehreio writer would have found any occasion of working over the materials of a Philistine Myth ;'" Bib. Lex. art. Jonas. It is even worse than Horace's supposed picture ; and so we may emphatically ask: Eisum teneatis, amici? How it is possible thus to overlook the very genius of the Hebrews, and the nature and design of the sacred books, and to suppose that the book of Jonah was wTitten with such views, and admitted to a place in the sa- cred canon — I leave for those to explain, who have done the deed of making up the monstrous compound, I wash my hands of such high treason against the fundamental laws of sacred criticism. * In English thus: " If a painter should undertake to join a horse's neck to a hu- man head, and to cover with variegated feathers the limbs collected from all quar- ters, so that a woman beautiful in the upper part should disgustingly end in a black fish ; if admitted to such a sight, my friends, could you keep yourselves from laugh- ing?" — Ars Poet. 1— .5. 104 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. Doubtless the question will be put by the reader : And what then, after such remarks on the exegesis of others — what do you yourself regard as the object of the book of Jonah I What es- timate do you put on the narration ? So far as I am able, I am willing to give an answer; but it must be brief, after dwelling so long upon this book. When the scribes and Pharisees said to Christ, " Master, we would see a sign from thee," he told them that " the men of Nin- eveh should rise in judgment with that generation, and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah," and then immediately added that a " greater than Jonah" was before them ; Matt. xii. 41, Luke xi. 32. Did he not mean now to com- pare one historical person and transaction with another ? If the Ninevites had been known and regarded only as an imaginary people — the offspring of allegory or romance — there would be no difficulty in the case. The comparison then might be placed on the same ground on which we now place the conduct and person of any one actually living, when we compare him and his de- meanour with the prodigal son, or with the rich man and Lazarus. But the Ninevites are surely historical and veritable personages, as much so as the queen of the South, who is joined with them in Matt. xii. 42 ; and the force of the Saviours appeal is greatly strengthened by the supposition that they are real personages. Not a word from Jesus to make us suspect that he regarded the matter of the Ninevites in any other light than that of a real historical fact. Again, when Jesus says to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were seeking a sign from heaven and tempting him, that " no sign should be given them but the sign of the prophet Jonah," (Matt. xii. 39, 40, xvi. 4), does he not compare the abode of Jonah for three days in the belly of the fish, with his own abode in the grave during the same period? Matt. xii. 40. In other words : Does he not compare one historical fact with another ? It seems so. I know not how to throw off the im- pression which these passages make upon my mind. When Paul tells us, in Gal. iv. 24, that the narrative in Genesis con- cerning the son of Hagar and also of Sarah is allegorized, we know where we are and what to expect. But is there anything in the passages just cited in respect to Jonah, which is adapted to make an impression that the story of Jonah andof the Nine- vites is an allegory ? If there be, it has escaped my notice. The authority of Christ, then, seems to bind me to admit the § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. lOo facts as they are stated in the narrative of Jonah, They are in- deed strange facts apparently; but not therefore untrue. They plainlyare not inipos&ihilitles; although I acknowledge,|very readily, that they are improbabilities, when compared with the common course of things. But are not all miracles of this character? Or, putting aside (as I would) absolute miracles in regard to the things recognized by Christ with respect to Jonah, do they not border upon the marvellous? Certainly they do; but is all that the Old and New Testament contains, which is of the like character, to be therefore rejected ? Neologists say : Yes. But the believer in Divine revelation has no need to join in this answer. He may rank the occurrences in the book of Jonah with other occurrences related in the Scriptures, which are of a similar, i.e. of a mi- raculous, character. So much ioY facts. Now for the object of the book. This is indeed a problem of difficult solution. What can it be, unless it is to inculcate on the narrow-minded and bigoted Jews, (there were many such), the great truth, that God regards the humble and penitent everywhere with favour; and that even the haughty, cruel, idolatrous and domineering heathen, in case they repent and humble themselves, become the subjects of his compassion and clemency, and are more acceptable than the haughty Jew, claiming descent from Abraham, but still the devoted slave of ritual observances and of his own evil passions? So much lies on the face of the book. There is no strange doctrine in it, therefore, but a plain and simple truth is illustrated and impressively taught by it. No difficulty, indeed, of a doc- trinal nature attends the work. Whatever difficulty there is, it lies in the tenor of the nari^ation. The only question over which darkness seems to a believer in miracles to hover, is, how Jonah alone, of all the Hebrew pro- phets, should be a missionary to the heathen? And, (as connected with this), why was he sent, in the reign of Jeroboam U. to per- form such a service? My ignorance as to those things which would make out a satisfactory answer to these questions, can prove nothing against the facts themselves. The time when he was sent, is indeed of no great importance. These facts, more- over, are in themselves so far from being impossibilities, that, if admitted, they actually help to commend the prophetic dispen- sation to our feelings. We are heartily glad, to see in what manner the Divine Being recognizes the relation of all parts of 106 §4'. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. our race to himself, and how willing he is to pardon the penitent. The unusual occurrence of such an event as the mission of Jonah, and the apparent strangeness of the whole matter, are about the only things, in the end, that afford any serious doubts or difficul- ties to the believing mind. But I do not think these to be sat- isfactory or valid reasons for rejecting the book, or for turning it into an allegory or an ethnico-Judaic myth. But I must not pursue any further the examination of these particular works. I return to our Chaldean period of prophecy, which extends down to the end of the exile; I have only to add here, in regard to the prophetic order, that we have no history of any other than those prophets before mentioned. If there were men capable of writing such compositions as the so-called pseudo-Isaiah, then why, as has already been suggested, is no mention made of them, no hint given respecting them ? Could men capable of writing in that manner, have lived in entire ob- scurity, while Zephaniah, Obadiah, Haggai and Malachi, not far from the same period, are all distinctly recognized and well known? At least this is something, which those, who feel so free on all occasions to doubt, may allow us the privilege of doubting, until the matter is better cleared up. In addition to the anonymous prophets already adverted to, (who are brought into being by recent criticism), another pro- phet, it seems, must be reckoned. Jer. 1. li. is thought by some critics of name to have been composed about the middle of the exile, and therefore not by Jeremiah the well-known prophet, who most probably must have been dead before that time. But the arguments drawn from the diction, in this case, surely make against this, if the whole of the resemblances to Jeremiah are set over against the alleged discrepancies ; and there is no his- torical or critical necessity of supposing the chapters in question to be an interpolation. If we turn now from this brief survey of the prophets who lived and acted during the Chaldean period, to a moment's con- sideration of their characteristics of style, we shall be struck with the greatly altered tone of their compositions. The bre- vity, simplicity, majesty, and beauty of the golden age, have in a large measure passed by. The dialect, though still Hebrew in all its substantial elements, differs much from that of Isaiah, Joel, and Nahum. Allegory, figure, symbol, and parable, are frequent almost everywhere ; and in fact they make up almost § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 107 the whole of Ezekiel. Jeremiah has a great deal of historic matter, and is less inclined than his contemporary to allegory and symbol; but still the tenor of his style differs so exceeding- ly from that of the previous writers already named, that one can hardly persuade himself, that more time than is usually allowed did not elapse between the Assyrian and the Chaldean periods of prophetic composition. As to pathos, tenderness, deep-felt grief on account of the desolations of Judea, and still more on account of its wickedness, there is nothing in the writers of any age which exceeds some parts of Jeremiah. Another circumstance should be noted. Instead of employ- ing 'poetry as the vehicle of instruction, which for the most part the prophets of the golden age did, the compositions during the period in question were generally in prose; but not unfrequent- ly in a kind of measured prose. Habakkuk is indeed an excep- tion to this, as well as to the style in general of his times. How now shall we class Isaiah xl — Ixvi, with the poetry of this Chal- dean period, when the former consists of some of the most symmetrical poetry to be found in all the Hebrew Scriptures ? If the so-called pseudo-Isaiah be indeed of later composition, it stands out a singular phenomenon amidst the other prophetic remains of that age. A writer of that day, on a theme so in- teresting as that which is presented in Isa. xl — Ixvi, who could with such wonderful success transport himself into the midst of the golden age, and adopt its general manner, imagery, and diction, one would be prone to think must have had some memorial left of him. Knobel alleges, that the prophets of the Chaldean period ex- hibit more attachment to the ritual Law, than those of the preceding era. What little foundation there is for this remark, seems to me to rest merely on the fact, that Jeremiah and Ezekiel were both priests as well as prophets. How natural then that they should look somewhat more to the violated ritual, as well as to the moral law. We have no history of the Jews during their exile, excepting the hints in Jeremiah and Ezekiel respecting them. But these do not disclose to us any particulars respecting any true prophets of the Lord, if such there were among them. In Jer. xxix. we have an account of several false prophets among the exiles, by the name of Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah. The two former were roasted by the king of Babylon in the fire (Jer. xxix. 22), 108 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. probably because they excited their countrymen to uneasiness in their exile, by false promises made to them. Jeremiah strongly denounces these false prophets; and in a similar manner does Ezekiel denounce men of the same class, who were flattering the exiles with deceitful promises, Ezek. xiii. 1 — 16. In like manner the false shepherds of Israel, (probably false prophets, see on p. 80 above) are severely rebuked in Ezek. xxxiv. May we not, then, in the absence of direct testimony, assume as altogether probable the continued existence of true prophets among the Hebrews in their exiled False coin does not usually make its appearance where there is no true coin. The analogy of former and of subsequent periods would seem to plead in favour of the position, that among the exiles in Babylon were more or less of true prophetical teachers. The people were humbled by this exile. They grew better under their chastisements. Many of them sighed for a return to Palestine, and a renewal of their re- ligious state and privileges. And when they did return from exile, in consequence of the proclamation by Cyrus who gave them liber- ty, they had such men for leaders as Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high-priest ; also the prophets Zechariah and Haggai, Ezra v. 1 , These, and in the sequel Malachi, contributed important aid in re-establishing the Jewish commonwealth and worship. We can hardly suppose, therefore, that the Jews were at any time dur- ing their exile entirely destitute of true prophets, although we have no explicit account of such persons among thera. In 536 B.C. Cyrus attained to the sole regency of the Medo- Persian empire, and during the same year he published his edict, permitting and even exhorting the Jews to go up to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. About 70,000 persons returned to Pal- estine (Ez. ii. QQ ; Neh. vii. QQ seq.), the same year, in conse- quence of this edict, having Zerubbabel a descendant of David as their civil head, and Jeshua as their high-priest. Great trouble and hindrance were soon given to the Jews by their heathen and envious neighbours, so that the rebuilding of the temple and city was often interrupted and long delayed. For the fol- lowing seventy-five years we have no particular account of their religious state, and only a few notices of their civil condition. Who were their prophets, if prophets they had, excepting Haggai and Zechariah (Ezra v. 1), we know not. After Darius Hys- taspes had come to the throne of Persia (521 b.c), i.e. some fifteen or more years after the edict of Cyrus, those prophets § 4. LITERATUUK OF THE HEBREWS, 109 contributed much in stirring up the Jews to go on with their teniple-buildintr. In the sixth year of Darius, (516 b.c), was this great undertaking finished. From that time down to the seventh year of the reign of Artaxcrxes Longimanus (457 n.c. — or as some maintain 460), we have no historic notices in the Jewish Scriptures of the state of the nation. In the year just named, Ezra, " a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord had given," came up to Jerusalem from Babylon, by leave of the Persian king, and brought with him between two and three thousand of the exiles, Ezra vii. viii. Here Ezra employ- ed himself for several years in the accomplishment of a reforma- tion both in worship and in morals; for both of these had greatly degenerated after the death of Zerubbabel and Jeshua. In about ten years, Neheraiah, the cup-bearer of Artaxerxes, by leave of this king, paid a visit to Palestine, and found the walls of Jerusalem in a ruinous state. These he repaired, and being made governor (Tirshatha) of the place, he resided there some twelve years (Neh. vi. 14), and not only did he fortify the city, but contributed greatly to bring every thing, both civil and reli- gious, into a state of order and regularity. In this he was much assisted by Ezra (Neh. viii.) who took the lead in all religious matters. After twelve years he returned to Persia, according to agreement, but within a few days he obtained leave to go back to Palestine, Neh. xiii. 6. There he spent the rest of his life. But of his further actions, excepting for a short period after his return, wo have no account ; and the history of the Jews after the Babylonish exile ends with the doings of Nehemiah, i. e. about 434 b.c. It is said of Nehemiah (Neh. vi. 7), that he had appointed prophets to preach in Jerusalem. Who these were is not said, in the passage to which reference has been made. But that Mulachi was among them scarcely admits of a doubt. That he was later than Haggai and Zechariah, and lived after the building of the temple was completed, is quite manifest to any one who will take pains to consult and compare the following passages ; viz. as to the completion of the temple, Mai. i. 10; iii. 1, 10; as to duties neglected by priests and Levites, comp. Mai. i. 6; ii. 1, 8, 9, with Neh. xiii. 10, 11, 28 — 30; as to the people's withholding gifts for the temple, comp. Mai. iii. 8 — 10, with Neh. xiii. 10, 12, 41 ; as to marriage with foreigners, comp. Mai. ii. 10 — 16, with Neh. xiii. 23 seq. ; as to oppression of the poor, comp. Mai. iii. 110 § 4. LITEUATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 5, with Neh. v. It would seem then that Malachi flourished 440 B.C. When he died we know not ; but it is conceded on all hands, that he closed the series of that very extraordinary class of men, the Hebrew Prophets. We have then, after the return from exile, only three prophets whose names and works are known to us. These are Zechariah Haggai, and Malachi. But we find kindred spirits in Zerub- babel, Jeshua, Ezra, and Nehemiah ; and specially does it seem to me that Ezra had much to do with the republication, ar- rangement, and completion of the Jewish canon. But of this more in the sequel. I have as yet made no mention of I)a7iiel, because he was not a prophet among the people of Palestine, although born in that land. He was very young at the time when Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem (606 b.c), and was carried away to Babylon as a hostage by the king, Dan. i. 1 — 6. Most proba- bly he was the son of a nobleman, or perhaps of the royal family. We have an account of him in the third year of Cyrus (534 b.c.) so that he must have lived to the age of eighty or ninety years, Dan. X. 1, He might be placed among the prophets of the third or Chaldean period ; for some of his visions were before the close of the Babylonish monarchy ; yet some of them also were after the edict of liberation to the Jews was issued by Cyrus. Recent criticism has ascribed his book to some writer in the time of the Maccabees ; and some have even denied that any such distin- guished person as Daniel lived at the Babylonish court,'and held an office there. The writer of the book, it is averred, has merely feigned such a character, in order that he might compose a work suited to console the Jews who were suffering under the perse- cution of Antiochus Epiphanes, as the more ancient Jews had done under their Babylonish oppressors. Of course the book of Daniel is ranked, by critics of this class, as last of all in the prophetic Scriptures. It would be inconsistent with my present object, to turn aside here, in order to vindicate the genuineness of the book of Daniel. It has found an able advocate in the work of Hengstenberg on its authenticity, Authentie des Daniel, 1881; and also in Hiiver- nick's recent Elnleit. ins Alt. Testament. Nearly all the argu- ments employed to disprove its genuineness, have their basis more or less directly in the assumption, that miraculous events are impossibilities. Of course, all the extraordinary occurrences § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. Ill related in the book of Daniel, and all the graphic predictions of events, are, under the guidance of this assumption, stricken from the list of probabilities, and even of possibilities. All that is said of Antiochus Epiphanes, and other Syrian and Grecian kings, is prophetia post eventum, i. e. real narration of events past, rather than prediction of events to come. Beyond the objections which are founded entirely on these assumptions, there is little, as it seems to me, to convince an enlightened and well- balanced critical reader, that the book is supposititious. After examining the subject with much attention, I must confess my- self to be far from believing that the objections to the authenti- city of the book can maintain their stand, before the bar of en- lightened and truly liberal criticism. But be this as it may, it matters but little to the main object of my present work. All agree that the book of Daniel was written a considerable time before the Christian era ; and none can well deny that our Saviour has expressly recognised it, in Mark xiii. 14, Matt. xxiv. 15, as a book of prophecy. Josephus bestows upon it more commendations than upon any book of the Old Testament, Antiq. lib. x. I am aware how much has been said, on account of the Jewish classification of the book in ques- tion among the Hagiography or □i2^r>3. ^^^^^ indicates, it is averred, that the book was composed very late, i. e. a very con- siderable time after the other prophetic books, and that the Jews did not deem it worthy of a place among their prophetic books in general. The questions to which these allegations give rise, are of importance, and some of them will be resumed and examined in the sequel. But nothing more can be said respect- ing them at present, inasmuch as we are bound now to pursue the interesting theme that has so long occupied our attention. We must not take our leave of the Hebrew prophets without subjoining a few remarks in respect to the character of these extraordinary men. The mental endowments of many of them are sufficiently dis- closed by the works which they have left behind them. There is indeed among them, as among the writers of the New Testa- ment, a great diversity of style, and evidently also of taste and capacity. The Spirit of God, when he speaks by men, does not create new mental and psychological powers, but employs those already existing, and acts by enlightening, and sanctifying, and guiding them, still leaving each individual to develope his own 112 § 4. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. peculiar characteristics of taste and mental endowments. But if there be any compositions of the kind which exceed many of the Psalms, much of Isaiah, Joel, Habakkuk, Nahum, and not a few portions of Jeremiah ; if there ever have been any of any age or nation down to the present hour, which exceed them, I have no knowledge of such compositions, and do not expect to attain to such a knowledge. The prophets need only to be read with intelligence, with candour, and with some good measure of oriental taste, (I believe this to be indispensable), to take, in one's estimation, an exalted, I would say the most exalted, place among the literary productions of any or of all ages. Other works of the Old Testament, indeed, besides those which we of the present day usually name prophecy, most pro- bably came from the pen of the prophets. But of these, as they are anonymous, I do not speak at present. I shall come to the consideration of them, when we have dismissed our present theme. Let us now, at the close of this view of the Hebrew writers, teachers, and means of instruction, bring distinctly be- fore us the question: What was the moral and religious character of the Hebrew prophets? My answer must be brief; but I cannot forego it, as their character stands in so intimate a connection with the rise of the Old Testament Scriptures. I must say, then, from both a general and particular survey of their history, that as a body they stand on a lofty pre-eminence above all their contempo- raries, whether judges, kings, priests, Levites, or the common people of the Hebrews. I speak, of course, of true prophets, not of pretenders, soothsayers, and fortune-tellers. Not a few of these, from time to time, arose and had a baleful influence. But the Mosaic Law condemns them, and the true prophets of God denounce them in unmeasured terras. From the first appearance of Hebrew prophets on the stage of action, down to Malachi the last of the series, prominent traits of character mark them as a distinct class of men. One sees in them, at all times and places, an animated zeal for the worship of the only living and true God, and a correspondent, in- extinguishable, irreconcileable, steadfast hatred and contempt of all idols and false gods, of their worship, their worshippers, their rites and ceremonies. Conscious of the integrity and upright- ness of their own designs, the pi'ophets never shrinlc from urging their views upon all around them. Do threats of violence, per- § 4. LITEIIATUUK OF THK UKBUEWB. 113 secution, or even martyrdom, ensue, they never shrink back from their undertaking. It matters not with them whom they are addressing, be they kings, princes, nobles, priests, Levites, or common people. They have but one and the same message for all, and that is, the necessity of sincere and hearty obedience to the laws of God. Their courage and resolution never fail, or even seem to abate. Whether Nathan appears before David to accuse him of adultery and murder; or Elijah before Ahab to remonstrate against his oppression and idolatry; or Jeremiah before Jehoiakim or Zedekiah to admonish them and their cor- rupt courtiers; or Urijah before Jehoiakim, who persecuted even unto death; it matters not as to the fidelity, boldness, zeal, and constancy of the prophet. They do not appear even to have asked themselves, whether they might not avoid persecution, or danger, or death, by withholding their message. Enough that they felt commissioned to say : Thus saith Jehovah. With them it seems to have made no practical difference, whether the raes- sacre connected with their commission was to be addressed to the king on the throne, or to the beggar on the dunghill. On the side of right, justice, humanity, uprightness, sincerity, true kindness, we are always sure to find them. The widow, the orphan, and the oppressed, they are ever ready to succour. They spare none who violate the sacred principles of the moral virtues; surely not those who hanker after idols. On the side of law, order, decorum, peaceful demeanour, we never fail to meet with them. Their zeal for the only living and true God, his honour, his worship, his ordinances, never cools, and never per- mits them to temporize or hesitate, when any of these are in jeopardy. We always find them, moreover, to possess rational and spiritual views of religion. Rites and ceremonies they re- gard as only subordinate means to an ultimate and higher end. Bigotry and superstition form no ingredients of their character. The Mosaic rites with them are but rites, and nothing more. That these were only the shadow of good things to come, is the sum of all they ever said, or would say, respecting them. With all this, they were unflinching, undeviating patriots, having the prosperity of their country most deeply at heart. When kings and counsellors erred, and formed dangerous alli- ances, they always remonstrated boldly. They did not even wait to be sent for and consulted, on such occasions. Urged on by the fear of God and the love of country, they spake with en- I 114 §4'. LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS. tire freedom on subjects pertaining to the weal of the common- wealth, to the king on his throne even when his menacing executioners were around him, or to the raging multitude who were ready to tear them in pieces. With all this boldness, yea, indomitable courage, they do not appear to have been rash, or impetuous, or foolishly prodigal of life by exposing themselves unnecessarily to danger which they might anticipate. Elijah, after delivering his prophetic message, fled from the face of Ahab and Jezebel, who meant to take his life; 1 Kings xvii. 1 — 6. The good Obadiah concealed a hun- dred prophets in caves, and supplied them with nutriment, when Jezebel persecuted them with relentless fury; 1 Kings xviii. 4. Elisha bars his door against the approach of an assassin; 2 Kings vi. 31, 82. Jeremiah hid himself from the rage of his persecu- tors; Jer. xxxvi. 26. The like was done in other cases; and so was it afterwards done by the Saviour, and by his apostles. Yet when duty called, suffering and death were met with equa- nimity and unshrinking boldness, by these faithful ministers of virtue and piety. In all this, they differed widely from the rav- ing fanatics, who now and then, in every age, make their appear- ance, and rush on death with a fool-hardiness which makes no distinction between the claims of conscience and duty and those of mere enthusiasm and momentary excitement. To have maintained such a character, and this through, it may be, a long life, required an unshaken confidence in God. This the prophets did doubtless possess. They were conscious of something within, to which the woi'ld were strangers, and which, therefore, the world did not well appreciate. Look at the demeanour of Isaiah, after having severely reproved Ahaz for his league with the Assyrian king, and predicted the overrunning of the kingdom by the Assyrian forces ; he seals up the prophecy, and suspending his reputation and not improbably his life on the issue, he waits quietly the fulfilment of what he had pre- dicted; Isa. viii. 16 — 18. A most vivid picture is drawn in Jer. XV. 10 — 21; XX. 7 — 18, of the agonies which this prophet en- dured in the execution of his office, and also of the fidelity and confidence which he still exhibited. It would be easy to enlarge this portion of our sketch, by adding many instances of the like nature; but our present limits forbid. It has been brought as a matter of accusation against the prophets, that they were rigid and severe, not only against the § 4. MTEUATURE OF THE HEBREWS. 115 heathen in general, but against their own fellow-countrymen whenever they betrayed any symptoms of idolatrous inclinations. This charge I do not feel much interested to repel. If the Mosaic law can stand before the tribunal of criticism in respect to matters of this nature, sure I am that the prophets may maintain their position. Their prophecies against the heathen are to be regarded in a two-fold light, viz., in that of religion and in that o^ politics. The heathen were all idolaters. They were of course naturally enemies to the Jews, who despised their idol- gods. The heathen aimed to destroy both the religion and the national independence of the Hebrews. With the prophets, it was a question whether religion and the people of God should become extinct or not, when they contemplated the invasion of Judea by the heathen. How could they speak on such occa- sions, either as patriots or as worshippers of the true God, with- out strong feeling and much excitement? And with respect to the vicious and idolatrous among their own people, were not such far more guilty than the foreign heathen? I know well, indeed, after all this, that the times in which the prophets lived stand chargeable with no small portion of the alleged severity of this order of men. The all but universal persuasion was, that strenuousness in urging the claims of justice, and in humbling enemies, was by no means a trait in the rulers of a nation which could be disapproved of or condemned. The oriental world re- tain that characteristic down to the present hour. In Persia, they are even now wont to say, that such a Shah as Mohammed Aga Khan was the kind of king that Persia needed. In their view he was the model of a great prince. Yet this same Mohammed Aga fairly outdid Nero in atrocities. I do not say this in order to justify undue severity, at any time or in any age. But it is ever to be remembered, that Judaism is not Christian- ity. Law and justice were inscribed on the standards of the Mosaic institutions. We find there " the mount that burned with fire, and blackness, and darkness, and tempest;" we hear the trumpet proclaiming the law with a sound that shakes the earth, fills the people with awful terror, and makes even Moses himself to tremble; Heb. xii. 18 — 21. On the other hand, the first proclamation of Christianity is the greeting of the joyful angels: "Peace on earth, good- will to men." How can it be, that the principal ministers of the Old Testament dispensation. IIG § 4. LirKRATUriE OF THE HEBREWS. i. e. the prophets, should not conform to the tenor of the dispen- sation itself? And now, let the intelligent and honest reader compare the order of prophets among the Hebrews, with any other class of men, not of that nation only, but among all the nations of the ancient world. With the priests and Levites among the Jews one may most naturally compare them. The offices of both orders were important to the purposes of the Mosaic dispensa- tion. But after all, the priests were the ministers oi form and ritual — the prophets oi substantial morality and piety. How little do we hear of the priests in the Old Testament records, except- ing now and then in the way of reproof by the prophets for their malversation. Now and then a high priest, a man of superior intellect, piety, and patriotism, meets our view. Yet these in- stances are few and far between. How could the Jewish people take the same interest in them, as they did in their substantial and active religious instructors and advisers? Occasionally, yet quite seldom, Si priest is also n, prophet; and then, of course, we may expect from him a prominent part. But otherwise we find, that all the Jewish kings go to the prophets for advice, in their exigencies; and that no affairs of state are regarded by consid- ei:ate men as promising good, which have not the concurrence and co-operation of the prophets. Certainly it was on these, that all sober and pious people among the Hebrews relied, far more than they did upon kings and princes with their counsel- lors, or upon the priests and Levites. I would moreover solicit a comparison of the prophets, with the men of an alleged similar office among the heathen. What are the //-airs/c, the TP&^jJT-a/, 'i^Kfriffral, ^/Pj/ff/Ao/voyo/, d\/si20,'jbdvrsic, ovsioo-roXoi, (miooaxoToi, and the iiPOffx-oToi, of the Greeks, and those of corresponding names among the Romans, in comparison with the Hebrew prophets? The heathen prophets, (if we may so name them), made an art of soothsaying. They played all man- ner of tricks, and resorted to all manner of devices, in order to support the reputation of themselves and their pretended oracles. Cicero tells us that two diviners could never look each other in the face without laughing; evidently because both were conscious of the frauds which they practised, and of the success of their impositions. And where, in all antiquity, are they presented to us as the zealous defenders of real piety and good morals? § 4. LITKHATUUE OV THE IlJinilliWS. 117 Wliere are their missions to guide and instruct the peoi>le in matters of morahty and real rehgion? Superstitious they were, indeed, to great excess. The persecution and death of all who were opposed to their views, not unfrequently followed any active opposition. But neither their office, their lives, their favourite objects, nor even their influence, at least their influence for (/ood, will bear any comparison with those of the Hebrew prophets. To this extraordinary class of men, now, we owe most, if not all, of the Old Testament Scriptures. What one among them all, if Ezra and perhaps Nehemiah be excepted, came with any cer- tainty from the hands of a priest, who was not also a prophet? Hence, tracing the history of the rise and progress of the Hebrew canon, it was necessary to bring before the mind a somewhat full picture of the class of men who were active in its composition. They stand on a lofty eminence above all their contemporaries. They bear a character which the tongue even of slander cannot assail with any success. Perfect men we need not and do not suppose them to have been. But it would be difficult perhaps to find, under the Christian dispensation itself and among its ministers, men of more unblemished and exalted character. From the prevailing vices of their times they plainly stood aloof. It would seem that in some respects they even went beyond the let- ter, (yet not beyond the true spirit), of the Mosaic Law. I cannot call to mind a single instance of polygamy or concuhinage among them; although the Law of Moses allowed at least the former, or at any rate did not forbid it. The alleged case of the polygamy of Isaiah (chap. vii. viii.), turns out to be wholly without proof or foundation, when the meaning of the prophet is strictly ex- amined. The virgin who was to conceive and bear a son, in case we insist on her marriage antecedent to his birth, is not spoken of still as the wife of the prophet, or as about to become his wife. I cannot doubt that the great law of monogamy, which the God of nature has impressed upon our race by dividing it into halves between the sexes, was practically recognised and complied with by the prophets as a body. Such are the men, then, from whom come the books of the Old Testament. God has put an honour upon them far above that which belonged to priests and Levites. How could this have taken place, if the ritual was, in his eyes, entitled to the most conspicuous place under the Jewish dispensation? It would be a most interesting topic of discussion, were we to 118 § 5. HISTORY OF THE CANON. pursue inquiries respecting the times, places, and manners of pro- phesying or preaching among the Hebrews. The characteristics of prophetic discourse, its tropical language, its symbol, its alle- gory, the manner of dehvering and of preserving it, the impres- sion which it made, the topics which were the most usual themes of it — all these and other matters in relation to the subject it would be delightful to discuss. But these belong to an appro- priate treatise on the Hebrew prophets, and must, for the sake of brevity and unity of design, be excluded from our present consideration.* § 5. Continued history of the Canon ; hooks supposed to hear the names of their authors. It is time to inquire in what position we now stand in respect to the canon of the Old Testament Scriptures. Beginning, as we have done, with Moses, the greatest prophet of all in ancient days, and following the books down, ivhose authors areknoivn^ we have, according to the representations made above, the Pentateuch, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel (for I cannot regard this work as supposititious), and the twelve Minor Prophets. If there be any exceptions to these, they must be some parts of Isaiah and of Zechariah, which, as we have already seen, are thought, by most of the recent critics in Germany, to belong to anonymous writers; and possibly the book of Jonah may have been written by a person different from the prophet himself. Whether this be so or not, is a question which belongs to the special criticism of the Old Testament, and does not affect at all the nature and design of my present undertaking; for it is conceded on all hands, that even the anonymous compositions among these, (if such there are), must have sprung from so-called prophets; and with scarcely any exceptions, if any at all, from prophets before the termination of the Babylonish exile.f With us the question at present is not, what specific individual wrote this or that book • The reader will find much that is interesting and instructive upon the subject of the prophetic office, and its relations to the civil and religious conditions of the Hebrew nation, at successive periods of their history, in Professor Alexander's In- troduction to the Earlier and Later Prophecies of Isaiah. — Ed. t For an able vindication of the " integrity of Zechariah," in opposition to those critics who have contended for a distinct authorship of the latter part of the book, see Hengstcnberg's Dissertation on the subject, translated in Clark's Foreiyn Theo- logical Library. — Ed. § 5. HISTORY OF THli: CANON. 119 » of Scripture,or this or that part of any book, but whether it was written by such men as gave to the composition a I'ight to be placed among the sacred booh of the Hebrews. In our historical sketch of the prophets, we have passed in brief review the works which bear their names, and in respect to which we do not think there is any reasonable ground of doubt as to their genuineness. We now come to a second class of books, which, without bearing the name of their authors, seem to ascribe their composition to particular individuals, in the inscriptions affixed to them. In consequence of this, I forbear to put them among the books which all confess to bo anonymous. Of the books now before us, some appear to be properly assigned, as to most of their contents, to particular individuals; while the in- scriptions prefixed to others are of a doubtful character. We begin with the first class of these. And to this class belongs the book of Psalms. That this was principally compos- ed by David, has been generally acknowledged. (I have found no one but Lengerke who seems to doubt or deny this). But there were several coadjutors, some contemporary and others not, in this work. Thirty-four Psalms only are without any in- scription; but the inscription does not always give the name of the author, for sometimes it merely refers to then existing out- ward circumstances, sometimes to the music to be employed, and then to some special use of the Psalm. A part of the inscriptions is probably from the hand of redactors, and is not always trust- worthy. About one hundred Psalms are usually assigned to David; some of which perhaps are of doubtful authorship, and some most probably did not come from his pen. To Moses is assigned Ps. xc; to Solomon, Ps. Ixxii. cxxvii.; to Asaph, Ps. 1. Ixxiv — Ixxxiii, making eleven; to Heman, Ps. Ixxxviii; to Ethan, Ps. Ixxxix. De Wette himself concedes, that a number of the anonymous Psalms may not improbably be assigned to David and his contemporaries. Ten Psalms, i. e. Ps. xlii — xlvii. Ixxxiv. Ixxxv. Ixxxvii. Ixxxviii. are usually supposed to be as- signed, by the titles, to the sons of Korah; i. e. to Korahites, who were priests and sons of Levi. The usual title is: To the chief musician, for the sons of Korah; but n-)p 13^7 may also designate the authorship of the Psalms, inasmuch as ^ often, and even usually, stands before an author's name, as indicating the source whence the composition sprang. What inclines one to doubt 120 § 0. HISTORY OF THE CANON. that sense of the expression here, is the 'plurality or partnership which it would make in the authorship ; a thing hterally impossi- ble in compositions so brief, and of such a marked character. Moreover, one might almost say of the Psalms in question: A greater than David is here. From one pen and one heart they must have come; and that the authorship should be assigned in such an indefinite way as the expression sons of Korah would in- dicate, — that Su partnership in the composition of such pieces should be deemed feasible, are serious difficulties in the way of suppos- ing that authorship is indicated by the title. For our present purpose, indeed, it matters not who was the particular author of this or that Psalm. The authors named, almost without exception, lived at or near the time of David. A few Psalms are unquestionably of later origin; some of them were composed at the period of the captivity, and even after the exile; e. g. Ps. Ixxxv. cvi. probably cvii. cxxvi, cxxix. cxxxvii. cxlvii. De Wette himself confesses it to be doubtful, whether any of the Psalms (e. g. xliv., Ix., Ixxiv., Ixxvi., Ixxix., Ixxxiii. cxix., reckoned by some as of Maccabsean times) are to be assign- ed to the period of the Maccabees; Einleit. § 270. 3d ed. That question I take to be now generally regarded as settled by Hassler, in his Comm. Crit. de P salmis Maccab. 1827. Eichhorn and Gesenius moreover doubt so late an origin. Rosenmiiller unequivocally abandons such a position, in the preface to his compendious Comm. in Psalmos, 1883: while, in explaining Ps. Ixxiv. 8, he again adopts it. The fact, that the book of Psalms was long in the process of formation, (if we begin with David, about 1050 B.C. and go down to 536 — 457, the time at and after the return from the captivity in which some scriptural books were written, we must make more than 500 years for the period of formation), occasioned it to be compiled in five various books. Thus we have in the first book, Ps. i — xli; in the second book, Ps. xlii — Ixxii; in the third, Ps. Ixxiii — Ixxxix; in the fourth, Ps. xc — cvi; in the fifth, Ps. cvii — cl. At what particular time these various portions or books were collected and published, we do not know for certainty. But it is quite manifest, that in ge- neral the older Psalms, i. e. those of David's time, were first col- lected; and so in succession, as Psalms worthy of introduction were composed. Now and then some more ancient compositions make their appearance in the later books of the Psalms, viz. in the fourth and fifth, which had been overlooked in the former § 5. IJOOKS OF DOUBTFUL AUTIIOIIS. 121 compilations. If any Psalms were added in the time of the Maccabees, it would seem then to be nearly or quite certain, that they would be found in the fifth and last book. But as the alleged Maccabsean Psalms mostly belong to the earlier rather than the later portions of the book, the improbability of their late composition becomes too great to support a critical belief. The early establishment of such musical choirs as belonged to the temple-service, both old and new, would cause all psalms and hymns fitted for that service to be early and earnestly sought for. We may therefore, without any danger of erring, place the completion of the book of Psalms at a period antece- dent to the death of Malachi, for it will not be seriously conten- ded that anything in them obliges us to assume that they are later. On the question, whether the anonymous Psalms were properly included among the contents of the sacred books, we are not competent to pass a judgment which is grounded on his- torical and minute information, since we have not such informa- tion, and cannot obtain it. But it is enough for our present purpose, if we can show that the book of Psalms, as it now is, comes down from a period near the death of IMalachi. The con- trary of this we may challenge any criticism to establish. The book of Proverbs may well be referred to Solomon as its principal author. The Hebrew is of the golden age, and speaks most decidedly against a late composition. The titles which we find in Prov. i. 1, x. 1, ascribe the work to Solomon. Possibly xxii. 17 — xxiv. 34, may have originated from another hand, and been incoi'porated by Solomon. Chap. xxv. 1 gives an entirely new and singular title: "These are the Proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, transcribed^ or copied out, ^'n^^yr^- I understand this of transcription from some MS. of Solomon, which had not before (so to speak) been published. The verb ^p"^jri^n cannot possibly be understood of original com- position, for '^^]-i3 would be the word to designate that. De Wette understands Prov. xxv. 1 as asserting, that the men of Hezekiah reduced to writing proverbs that were orally circulat- ed before, and ascribed to Solomon. But this too would require inniD' ^® th^^ matter however as it may, it makes nothing to : IT our present purpose. That the composition is not late, is agreed on all hands. Prov. xxx. is ascribed to Agur; Prov. xxxi. to king Lemuel, as taught by his mother. The time of their com- 122 § 5. HISTORY OF THE CANON. position we know not. But De Wette himself, (always inclined to make the origin of books as late as possible), fully concedes that they could not have been written after the Babylonish ex- ile; Einl. § 281. EccLEsiASTEs was regarded by all the ancients as a production of Solomon. But doubts respecting such an origin have recent- ly been brought forward, and seem to be of such a nature as cannot easily be solved. The title (Ecc. i. 1), seems to appro- priate the work to Solomon. Yet the like language might be employed by a later writer, whose plan was to repeat the sayings and detail the experience of Solomon. Peculiarly impressive does the book become, in respect to the subject of the emptiness and vanity of all earthly objects and pursuits, when presented as derived from the experience and reflections of such a king, who was at the very summit of human greatness. That this, however, belongs rather to the plan of the book than to the category of realities, seems to be made probable by arguments drawn from the matter and manner of the book. The com- plaints, in many parts of the book, of crushing oppression (Ecc. iv. 1); of the exactions of provincial rulers (v. 7); of the exalta- tion of low men to high offices (x. 5 — 7) ; of the present as in- ferior to the past (vii. 10); of the frequent changes of regents and their unsuitable behaviour — all seem to betoken a book written at a very different time from that of Solomon. How singular it sounds, moreover, when we hear Solomon say : " I was king over Israel at Jerusalem'"' (i. 12); singular, I mean, on the supposition that Solomon was the actual author. Did any one need to be told this? How singular for Solomon himself to say, that " he was wiser and richer than all the kings in Jeru- salem before him" (i. 1 6, ii. 7, 9), when David his father was the only king who had reigned there. The diction^ moreover, of this book differs so widely from that of Solomon in the book of Proverbs, that it is difficult to believe that both came from the same pen. Chaucer does not differ more from Pope, than Ecclesiastes from Proverbs. It seems to me, when I read Coheleth, that it presents one of those cases which leave no room for doubt, so striking and prominent is the discrepancy. In our English translation this is in some good measure lost, by running both books in the same English mould. There is only a single trait of resemblance, which any one would consider as marked or noticeable; and this is, the sententious or apothenmatic turn of § 5. BOOKS OF DOUBTFUL AUTHORS. 123 the book. In this respect one is often led to direct his thoughts toward the book of Proverbs, which abounds in, and almost wholly consists of, sayings of such a sententious nature. Yet how very different is the diction and style of each book, in the original Hebrew. And then the general circle of thought is still more discrepant. The philosophic doubts and puzzles of Ecclesi- astes, and the manner of discussing them, have no parallel either in Proverbs, or in any other part of the Hebrew Scriptures. They remind one of many things discussed by Socrates, in the Dialogues of Plato. I cannot help thinking that the writer must have been a Hebrew who had resided abroad, where he had formed some acquaintance with the philosophic discussions of the Greeks. So unique is the tenor of his book, and so widely different from the usual circle of Hebrew thinking, that no very probable account can be given of these matters, without such a supposition. As to the age of Ecclesiastes, critics have widely disagreed, ranging from Solomon down to the time of the Maccabees. But the appeal usually made to the language or diction of the book, in proof of a very late age, will hardly stand the test. Knobel, in his recent and much praised commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes, asserts and has endeavoured to show, that the book is deeply tinctured with Chaldaisms, and words of the later Hebrew. He even thinks that it savours strongly of the diction of the Eabbins and Talmudists. But the scores of his Chalda- isms have been reduced by a later writer, better acquainted with this idiom, (Herzfeld, a German Jew, in his notable work, Goheleth translated and explained, 1838), to some eight or ten; and his later Hebrew words (some scores more), to some eleven or fifteen. The investigation of Herzfeld is so thorough, that appeal from it seems to be nearly out of question. And besides the fact, that the quantity of later Hebrew diction and Chaldaism is so small, we must take into view the additional consideration, that the Phenician language, unquestionably of the same character as the Hebrew in its basis, resembles more what is called the young- er Hebrew, than it does the ancient. The young Hebrew, therefore, may in fact be very old. So Gesenius, after all his in- vestigations of the Phenician; Hall. Lit. Zeit, 1887. No. 81. There is nothing, either in the matter or diction of the book, absolutely and exactly to settle its age. But the course of thought seems to indicate an acquaintance with philosophical 124 § 5. HISTORY OF THE CANON. disputes: and the complaints of oppression, of frequent change of rulers, of the exactions of provincial satraps, and of the toils and dangers of life — all seem to indicate some period of its com- position under the Persian government. If the opinion of Jose- phus is to be relied upon {^Contra Apion. I. § 8, which will be hereafter adduced and examined), Ecclesiastes must have been composed at some period before the death of Artaxerxes Longi- manus, i. e. antecedent to 424 b.c. De Wette and Knobel think, that the end of the Persian period, or the beginning of the Ma- cedonian one, was the time. But there are many and weighty objections against such a supposition, as we shall see in due time.* The Canticles present a difficulty somewhat like to that which we have just been considering. The title purports that the book came from Solomon; at least if n?:2'^UjS ^^ ^° ^® regarded as indicative of authorship; which is usually the fact. That it may be regarded in this light, so far as the language is concerned, there is no doubt. But if the idiom of the book, which differs not a little from that of the book of Proverbs, is to be taken into consideration; if moreover such passages as Cant. i. 4, 5, 12; iii. 6 — 11; vii. 5; viii. 11, 12, be attentively examined, the difficulty of regarding Solomon as the proper author of the book will not be inconsiderable. That Solomon is the subject of the book, there can be no doubt. That some writer contemporary with him may have composed it, is quite possible, notwithstand- ing its idiom. The freshness of all its scenery seems to betoken much in favour of such a view. The diction is neither Chaldaic nor Aramgean in such a degree as to render this either impossi- ble or improbable. Herder and Dopke strenuously maintain the eai'l;)/ date of the book. De Wette thinks the composition of the poem may have been early, and that it may have been only orally preserved for a long time; which, moreover, he supposes may account for the want of regular order and unity in the pre- sent arrangement of the book. But I cannot deem this pro- bable, considering that the book obtained a place in the sacred Canon. It is enough for my present purpose, however, that the book was, beyond any reasonable critical doubt, included in the " Hengstenberg has contributed to Kitto's Biblical Cychpadia a very masterly article upon the book of Ecclesiastes, in which the inquirer will find discussed with much viguur not only the question regarding its age and authoi'ship, but also the still more difficult and vexed question respecting its plan and objects. — Ed. § 6. nOOKS ANONYMOUS. 125 canon whenever the same was completed. Josophus, at any rate, appears most plainly to include it; for without it we cannot make out the number of sacred books which he specifies. The theological scruples w'hich have raised, or at any rate sought for, objections against the Canticles, stand on the basis of its contents. How, it is asked, can an amatory/ poem be a part of Scripture? This question brings into view the main ob- jection which is felt against the book. On this question I hope to say something in the sequel; but in order to avoid repetition, I must omit remarks pertaining to this part of the subject for the present. One thing seems to be quite clear, viz, that who- ever they were that inserted this book in the canon of Scrip- ture, they must have regarded the work as of a religious cast. There is no other example in all the Old Testament of any work of a different tenor. If Ruth or Esther should be appealed to as exceptions to this remark, it would be easy to show, that both of these books have an important bearing on points of conse- quence in the politico-ecclesiastical history of the Jewish nation. § 6, Continued History of the Canon; Booh which eire Anonymous. Thus far of books supposed to be inscribed with the names of their author, with the exception of a few Psalms, We come now to those which are anonymous. Among these the book of Job stands the most conspicuous, whether we have respect to the splendid poetry which it exhibits, or to the nature of the discussion with which it is occupied. Who wrote it? When was it written? When annexed to the canon? These are questions about which there has been and still is endless dispute. The main difficulty is, first, the want of any proper historical evidence respecting its authorship; then secondly, the want of internal evidence of a definite and decisive character, as to the age in which it was written. It abounds in references to natural scenery, and to Idumrean and Egyptian localities and objects; but this does not help to decide, whether it was written earlier or later. Its idiom, which abounds in Aramaean diction, and often approaches the Arabic, seems to betoken an author who lived out of Palestine, or at least in a border country. But its Aramaan idioms are not sufficient to settle the question in favour of a later age for the book. Very 126 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. much in this book closely resembles the diction of most of the Psalms and of Proverbs. And besides this, it is an acknowledged fact, that nearly all the poetry of the Old Testament verges to- wards the dialect in question. The Aramaean hue is to Hebrew 'poetry^ something like what the Doric one is to the choruses of Greek tragedy. Nothing decisive, therefore, can be made out from this quarter, as to the age of the book. It is beyond a question, that the author of this book was ac- quainted with many of the Hebrew notions of things, with their opinions, their formulas of speech, and the like. With events in general before and after the flood, the book manifests an ac- quaintance. But all this does not decide anything for certainty, as to the time in which it was written. Carpzov, Eichhorn, Jahn, Stuhlmann, Berthholdt, and the great mass of English critics, give to the book a date anterior to the time of Moses. A number of vvriters have referred it to Solomon, or to some person of his time. More recently, Gesenius, Bernstein, De Wette (first two editions of his Introduction), Umbreit, and others have set the work down to the Chaldee period, i. e. to some period after 610 B.C. De Wette now dates it earlier, (as well he may), because of EzekieFs express recognition of Job, in chap. xiv. 14, 16, 20. Rosenmiiller {Proleg. p. 20) places it before the time of Heze- kiali. Thus the whole matter is in a floating state; but still, the only question really important to us at present is, whether it was composed either before, or during, the time of the Babylon- ish exile. If so, it then was undoubtedly a part of the Jewish canon, at the close of that exile. It is singular to see with what warm zeal the question about the age of this poem has been, and still is discussed. Not a few writers set about the work of discussion, as if the matter were one stantis vel cadentis ecclesiw. How can it be so to us? Of what consequence is it, whether the book is older or younger, if it belong to the canon, and did belong to it before it was for- mally closed? Not a few, moreover, appeal to the speeches of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, in support of ^oc^Kw- a^ propositions; just as if these angry disputants, who contradict each other, and most of whom God himself has declared to be in the wrong (Job xlii. 7 — 9), were inspired when they disputed ! The man who wrote the book, and gave an account of this dis- pute, might bo (I believe he was) inspired; he had a great mor- al purpose in view; but how Job is to be appealed to for a sani- § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 127 pie of doctrine, who curses the day of his birth, and says many things under great excitement, I am not able to understand. Are we indeed to follow him in the sentiment of chap. xiv. 7, 10, 12? "There is hope of a tree," says he, "if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease But man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? . . . Man lieth down, and riseth not ; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." And are we to appeal to his an- gry friends, who are in the wrong as to the main point in ques- tion, for confirmation of a doctrinal sentiment of the gospel ? The practical amount of the matter is, that those who refer in such a way to this book, merely select what they like, and leave the rest. They complain, however, in other cases, of doings like to this. They accuse the Unitarians and the Rationalists of very unfair and unscriptural practices, in so doing with other parts of the Bible. After all, it seems to be quite plain, that one might as well appeal to what is said by all manner of persons who are brought to view in the Gospels, as authoritative in matters of doctrine, because what they said stands in an inspired book, as appeal to the speeches of Job and his friends for a like purpose. When will it be understood, that the disputants themselves were not inspired? Did they, moreover, all speak in 'poetry^ and all in the same cast of poetry, exhibiting such a unity of style? A rare faculty of improvisation those five men must have had, if we assume such a ground as this. But I am indulging in digression. I return to our immediate object. To my own mind, the strongest objection against the great age of the book of Job is, that it is nowhere referred to in all the Hebrew Scriptures, except in the case of Ezekiel; and it appears to have produced no influence upon the manner and te- nor of the Hebrew sacred writings. I am not able to conceive how such a book should have existed so long, and have produced no more effect ; for there is not even a single quotation of it, or a reference to it in the other Old Testament Scriptures. Not so with the Pentateuch. I must therefore believe, on the whole, that the book of Job was composed during the troublous times of the Jews, in the later periods of their kingly government. Yet the fact, that there is not in all the book a distinct and certain re- ference to anything belonging and peculiar to the Mosaic insti- tutions, rites, sacrifices, and feasts, or to Hebrew personages, or 128 § 6. HISTOKY OF THE CANON. history, is almost astounding, and seems to stand in our way when we assign to the book a later origin. Especially is this so, when we consider that it was a Hebrew who wrote this book; which beyond all reasonable question must have been the case. Yet it is quite possible, that the writer's plan definitely preclud- ed references of the nature in question. It was a part of his deli- berate plan to compose a book independent of Jewish peculiari- ties, and based upon the more general views of the patriarchal religion. It is certainly easier to believe this, than to suppose the book to be very ancient, and yet not be able to find a trace of its existence or influence, until the time of Ezekiel. To al- lege, as some have done, that the reference in Ezekiel (xiv. 14, 16, 20) is only to an allegorieal personage, and therefore proves nothing — is not alleging what seems to be very probable. Were Noah and Daniel, who are joined with Job, mere fictitious per- sonages in EzekieFs view? If not, it hardly seems probable that this prophet has united real and allegorical personages, and pla- ced them both in the same predicament. Besides this, the Job to whom Ezekiel refers, seems plainly to be such a personage as the book of Job presents to our view. If, as has been alleged by some critics, the book of Job was composed by a foreigner, an Aramaean or an Arabian, how came he by such a knowledge of Hebrew diction and rhythm? It would be next to an impossibility. Above all, how came the Jews to admit the book of a foreigner into their sacred canon ? W7iO composed the book, whether Job himself or some of his friends, we have no means of determining. Exactly ivhen it was composed, we cannot decide for want of data. I suppose, how- ever, that no one well acquainted with the book, will doubt its claims to a place in the Jewish canon, although, before EzekiePs time, we can find no certain traces of it. It makes notliing against this, that the genuineness of the pro- logue and epilogue to the book, and also of the speech of Elihu, has of late been often called in question. The criticism of the Destructives^ as I am inclined to believe, reached its highest point of culmination some time since. Its sun is now descending. Whenever it sets, I hope and trust it will set to rise no more. The same spirit which makes up the Iliad and Odyssey of frag- ments from a multitude of singing beggars brought accidentally together, has made up the book of Job in the same way, and with reasons equally good. The most recent criticism, however, § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 129 seems verging back again toward the opinion of all ages and na- tions, which knew anything of the book in question, viz. the opinion that the whole of this book belongs to one author, and is one and but one work. The numerosity of.the book, i. e. the divisions throughout into groups of tliree^ strongly favours the genuineness of the whole book. Moreover the poem, without the prologue and epilogue, if not absolutely unintelligible, would at least lie, in every reader's mind, in a dark, confused, and un- satisfactory state. De Wette, as usual, not only doubts the genuineness of Elihu's speech (ch. xxxii — xxxviii), but also of xxvii. 11 — xxviii. 28. Douhting seems to be an essential element of this critic's literary life ; and he appears to derive more plea- sure from it, than he does from believing. Upon the whole I am disposed to think, that few persons who are familiar with the course of human mind in ancient times, as to doubts and reasonings on difficult problems of morals or of the Divine government of the world, will yield their assent to the probability of the very early origin of the book of Job. The main question of the book, whether the Divine Being constantly and adequately rewards virtue and piety and punishes sin in the present world, is one that seems to spring from an investigation and a spirit of philosophizing, which is rarely to be met with among the most ancient Hebrews. Ecclesiastes is full of a simi- lar spirit; but as this book is manifestly among the later ones, I am inclined to place the book of Job in the same age, i. e. in the Chaldean period of the prophets, or not long before. The diction decides nothing certain for any particular age. The almost un- equalled sublimity of the composition, the rhythmical perfection of its parallelisms, and in general the whole contour of the style, would seem to mark it as a production of the golden age of He- brew ; as also do its many resemblances of idiom to the idiom of the Psalms and Proverbs. But if the German critics ai*e in the right as to pseudo-Isaiah, we have an eminent example in a late age of the like graceful and lofty diction and sentiment. At all events, Habakkuk belongs to the Chaldean period; and he has few equals even in the golden age of prophecy. So it may be with the book of Job. Great talents, enlightened and guided by the Spirit of God, will overcome every obstacle, and present us with portraits that breathe, and move, and speak.* • Hengstenberg comes to nearly the same conclusion regarding the age of the K ISO § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANOX. The book of Lamentations is without an inscription. But from the most ancient times it has been attributed to Jeremiahs The contents, tone, spirit, diction, and style of the book, accord entirely with tradition. The Septuagint version has prefixed an inscription that attributes it to Jeremiah; which at least shows what tradition taught some 130 or more years befoj'e the Chris- tian era. Josephus {Antiq. X. 5. 1.) also attributes the book to Jeremiah; but he avers, that it was written on the occasion of Josiah's being slain by Pharaoh Necho. This seems to accord with, and most probably was deduced from, the declaration in 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, viz. that " Jeremiah lamented for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day." Similar compositions, on like occa- sions, we find in 2 Sam. i. 1 7 — 27, iii. 33, 34. Critics, therefore, have been divided in opinion, respecting the question, whether the book of Lamentations was written before or after the cap- ture of Jerusalem. I cannot bring my own mind, however, to a doubt respecting this question. That Jeremiah composed an clecjiac song on the occasion of Josiah's death, as the book of Chronicles states, I have no doubt. It was altogether a subject suited to the taste and genius of this writer. But that our pre- sent book of Lamentations exhibits this elegiac ode, I must greatly doubt. What is there in it about Josiah ? It is the holy city, its solemnities, its feasts, its people gone into captivi- ty, the horrors of the siege, the famine and pestilence that en- sued, and the like, on which the book dwells, and which consti- tute the whole burden of the elegies. What concern has all this with the death of Josiah? But be this matter as it may, there can be no question that the Lamentations is a book which existed before the return from the captivity; and it takes a place in the canon of the Old Tes- tament Scriptures, because it contains matter so deeply interest- ing both to the ancient church and people of God. Neological criticism has little to say about the book, seemingly because it Book of Job, as our learued author. " Summing up the whole of our investigations," hesajs, in a valuable article, in Kitto's Cijclopadia, " we take it to be a settled point, that the book of Job did not belong to the time of the Babylonish exile; and it is nearly equally certain that it was not composed prior to the time of Moses. And it cannot have been composed later than Isaiah, who alludes to it. Thus we come to the general determination of the age of the book, that it was written not before Samuel and David, but not later than the era of Isaiah. With this result we must rest satisfied, unless we would go beyond the indication presented." — Ed. § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 131 contains no accounts of miraculous events, which are sure to pro- voke an attack. We have yet a considerable class of historical books, which bear no name of their authors, but receive a name from the leading subject of them, viz. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2d Samuel, 1st and 2d Kings, 1st and 2d Chronicles, Esther, perhaps Nehemiah and Ezra. Of several of these I have already spoken. The book of Joshua is naturally divided into two parts. The first part, chap. i. — xii., contains the history of the conquest of Canaan; the second, chap. xiii. — xxiv., contains the history of the division of the land, and of subsequent arrangements to pro- vide for obedience to the laws. According to the account of the neological critics, it is full of myths [i. e. stories of miracles], of contradictions, and of a Levitical spirit. It is also pronounced to be a mere book of fragments, made up of Elohistic and Jeho- vistic [?J documents, and other scraps and traditions which had floated down to the writer on the surface of time. Van Her- werden divides it into ten separate documents; but Koenig, in a recent work, maintains the unity of the book. This same writer also maintains, that it was written at or near the time, when the events which it records took place. Others place its origin at the time of Saul, others of David, of Josiah, and even of the exile. If we can place any dependence on internal evidence, (and why not?) then would Josh. xv. 63, which speaks of " the Jebusites, i. e. the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as not driven out, but dwelling with the children of Judah unto this dayl^'' compared with 2 Sam. v. 6—9, which shows that David thoroughly sub- dued them, seem to render it very probable, that the book was composed before the reign of David, or at least before his con- quest of Jerusalem. Nothing can be more natural than to sup- pose, that a record would be made of the conquest and the divi- sion of Palestine, soon after those events. How could the divi- sion and apportionment of it be rendered authoritative and permanent, unless by some record of the same? That it was written after \\\q death of Joshua, and of his contemporary elders, seems to be certain, from Josh. xxiv. 31, where Israel is spoken of as serving the Lord until after the death of these persons. So the death of Eleazar the son of Aaron is recorded, (Josh. xxiv. 33), but not of his successor Phinehas. But if the book be so fragmentary as is alleged, then such declarations would only go to show the age of the fragment in which they are contained. 132 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. Mr Parker (in his additions to De Wette, ii, p. 188 seq.) has exhibited a graphic specimen of the usual neological reasoning. " The book of Joshua," he suggests, " makes frequent appeals to the Law of Moses; but this Lato could not have been written until the time of Josiah; ergo^ the book of Joshua could not have been written until after the same time." The main proposition is plainly a mere petitio principii. But no matter: Delenda est Carthago. The Samaritans^ along with the Pentateuch, have also a book of Joshua, containing much of what is in the Hebrew book of the same name, with additional fabulous matter of their own. Was there not, then, a book of Joshua, when the ten tribes separated from the two, in the reign of Rehoboam? Appear- ances seem to favour this supposition. Those tribes retained the Scriptures then extant, but never added any more. I would not deny the probability, that documents of several kinds are con- tained in the book of Joshua; but that they passed through the hands and under the revisal of some one compiler, whose office or name gave authority to the book, I cannot well doubt. Many of the alleged contradictions and discrepancies are easily removed, on such a ground; but it comports not with my present object to enter into the discussion of these matters. The book of Judges is also anonymous. The main historical elements of the book end with the biography of Samson, Judges xvi. 31. Chap, xvii — xxi. contain an appendix, showing how anarchy and hcentiousness were introduced, after the death of Joshua, among the men of the following generation. There is nothing in the diction or style of the book, which would serve at all to prove a late origin. But such passages as those in Judg. xvii. 6, xviii. 1, xix. 1, xxi. 25, which attribute certain evils to the times, because there was no king in the land, seem strongly to savour of being written after there was some example of an efficient and orderly monarchical government. The book is strongly marked with several peculiarities. Ex- cept reference in the song of Deborah (v. 4, 5) to the appearance of Jehovah on mount Sinai, there is nothing in the book of Judges that refers to the Law of Moses, to the priesthood, to the Levitical rites, nor to any prophets, excepting in one case (vii. 8), and the instance of Deborah, iv. The truth plainly is, that the writer did not design to give anything like a regular and connected series of history, during the 300 years which are § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 133 covered by the book of Judges. (De Wette makes them above 400.) The peculiar sins of the people, their exemplary sufferings in consequence of them, and the signal deliverances which they experienced under this heroic leader, and that, occupy the whole book, with the exception of the appendix before mentioned; and this stands in connection with the general subject. As to the ckronolopy of the book itself, I question if any regular and cer- tain series can be satisfactorily made out from it. The most natui'al origin of such a book would be, during the prevalence of idolatry in Judah or in Israel. A true prophet would seize such an occasion, in order to hold up to view past experiences, as a warning to the idolatrous people of the danger which they were encountering. That he possessed notices, pro- bably written ones, of the past, seems highly probable. Even oral tradition would preserve a knowledge of many things related in the book of Judges, which were of an extraordinary and won- derful nature. The tone of piety and zeal for the honour of God, as manifest in the book, is elevated and pure. Bitual services are plainly quite secondary in the writer's view. But idolatry, and oppression, and other vices, he censures with unsparing severity. A spirit kindred to that of David and Samuel, must have animated his bosom. The so-called myths (/-cD^o/) of the book are numerous. In other words, (not to speak with the neological critics), the ex- traordinary and even miraculous occurrences related in it are not a few. The stories of Gideon and Samson, in particular, elicit a tempest of objections from recent criticism. Among all, however, who accuse the book of anile attachment to fables and myths, I find none who go so far as Dr Palfrey, late Professor of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Cambridge, in the tone and manner of criticism. In his Academical Lectures (ii. p. 1 94 seq.), speaking of Samson, he says^ " The character of Samson is but a wild compound of the buffoon, the profligate, and the bravo. With a sort of childish cunning, and such physical faculties as a fantastic invention has ascribed to the ogre^ he is without a common measure of capacity to provide for his own protection,'" &c. Dr Palfrey, if I am rightly informed, has a great and unconquerable aversion to such freethinkers as Mr Parker, the translator of De Wette on the Old Testament. Yet I recollect nothing in what I have read of Mr Parker, 134 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. nothing in Strauss, nothing in any of the neological critics of Germany which I have consulted, (and they are not a few), which compares with this scornful caricature. Bruno Bauer, (whom I have not read), if the reviewers fairly represent him, may, under the maddening influence of the potions which he is reported to love too well, have said some things more indecorous than this. I would hope, however, that such is not the case. How Dr Palfrey can be so displeased with Mr Parker and his associates for thorough rejection of the Divine authority of the Scriptures, after writing such a passage as this, is more than I am able to explain. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who classes Samson with such worthies as Barak and Jephtha and David and Samuel (Heb. xi, 32), must have viewed the charac- ter of Samson, taken as a whole, in a very different light from that in which the Cambridge Professor has placed him. Samson was not without great faults; can it be proved that he had not some conspicuous virtues? His zeal against heathenism and idolatry, at least, will not be called in question. The book of Judges, however, depends not, for its credit, on the judgment of Dr Palfrey respecting the character of Samson. It was, beyond all doubt, among those books which Christ and the apostles spoke of as being holy Scriptui'es. The first and second books of Samuel are but one work, severed into two parts. The ancient Hebrews always reckoned them but as one book; and so of Kings and Chronicles. They contain the history of SaraueFs administration, who was the last oi the Judges, \ Sam. i — xxv; the partly contemporaneous his- tory of Saul, an account of whose death terminates the so-called first book of Samuel; while the second exhibits the history of David's government. It is generally conceded, that there is nothing in the idiom of these books, which indicates with any certainty a late origin. In 1 Chron. xxix. 29, it is said, that " the acts of David, first and last, are written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer." From this passage, many in ancient and in modern times have drawn the conclusion, that the so-called books of Samuel were the work of these three different individuals, 1 Sam. i — xxiv., being from the hand of Samuel, and the rest, (containing history after his death), by the other prophets just named. The fact that David's death is not mentioned at the close of 2 Samuel, § G. liOOKS ANONYMOUS. 155 would seem to import, that these books were written before that event. But I can hardly bring myself to believe, that the author- ship of these books belongs to three different persons. Much more probable does it seem to me, that the author made use of the three works in question, in compiling his book; while the conception of the plan of the books, and the selection and asso- ciation of the parts, are the work of one and the same mind. De Wette ventures to bestow some faint praise upon these books, on the ground that they have so little of the mythical in them, and little or nothing of the ritual and Levitical spirit; E'lnl. § 178 seq. The story of the witch of Endor, however, he thinks is an instance of " ideal pragmatism," i. e. a representation in which the author labours to account for certain phenomena, the real history of which remains doubtful. The apparent predic- tions in the book, he says, were written jyost eventum. Withal, too, he says there is much disturbance and confusion in these books; but still, that there is much of genuine history in them, and that the narrations are lively and true to nature, § 1 78. The chronology, moreover, he pronounces to be imperfect and legendary; and he avers, also, that there are some contradictions. But Mr Parker, his translator and commentator, goes still far- ther in his critical remarks. " Some passages savour of anthro- pomorphitic and mean conceptions of God ; unworthy actions are attributed to him; there is a sacerdotal spirit in the books; and a few miraculous legends are mingled in the story;" Add. to §178. That different sources from which the writer drew, have occa- sioned some appearances of discrepancy, the attentive critical reader will not perhaps deny. Let him compare 1 Sam. xvi. 14 — 23; xvii. 31^ — 40; with xvii. 55 — xviii. 5; and he will perceive what I mean.* The passage in xviii. 54 wears every appear- * The apparent discrepancy here alluded to, the reader will find explained in a very simple manner, by Bishop Ilorsley in his Biblical Criiicisvi, vol. i. p. 330. Instead of rashly cutting the knot with Dr Kennicott, by the violent supposition of a lengthened interpolation in the 17th chap, from ver. 12, to ver. 31, he ingeniously and skilfully unties it, by the supposition, that the " ten last verses of chap, xvi., which relate to Saul's madness and David's introduction to the court, are misplaced, and that their true place seems to be between the 9th and UUh verses of the 18th chaptei"." Dr Townsend has adopted this suggestion of Horslcy in his useful Chronological Arrangement. Dr Davidson, in his Sacred Ilermeneulics, pp. 541 — 544, does not accept the solution as a satisfactory cue ; but the reasons which he assigns against it are by uo means conclusive. — Ed. 18G § 6. HISTOKY OF THE CANON. ance of a late and very unskilful interpolation. How could David carry the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, which came not into possession of the Hebrews for many years after this period? See 2 Sam. v. 6 seq. A fair investigation and candid judgment of the books in question, as it seems to me, will however re- move most of the alleged objections against them. I except, of course, those objections which lie against all accounts of mira- culous events. But it is not a man's critical judgment or skill, Vv^hich leads him to make objections of this nature,- it is his a priori reasonings and his theology which move him to object on such a ground. At all events, no doubt can remain, that these books were written long before the Babylonish exile. And this is enough for our present purpose. The 1st and 2d Kings (one book in two parts) contain the history of the Jewish kings from the reign of Solomon down to the exile; and with this is incorporated the history of the ten tribes, from the time of their separation down to that of their deportation by the king of Assyria. De Wette allows to these books a prophetic origin. He says, that " the chief object aimed at, is to set forth the efficacy of the prophets." It is admitted, that there is a uniformity of style and a general unity of design. But the neological critics, of course, are full of objections against the myths of these com- positions. Some think the accounts are from mere oral and tra- ditional sources; others, that written documents were employed by the redactor, as the basis of his work. This latter opinion is rendered more probable by the fact, that the book of Kings refers by name to several other books, as containing a more am- ple account of particular things, than that which the author of the books in question has given; e. g. the Book of the Acts of Solomon, 1 Kings xi. 41; the Book of the Kings of Israel, 1 Kings xiv. 19; xvi. 5, 20, 27; xxii. 8i); and the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, 1 Kings xv. 7. From the manner in which the writer refers to these, it would seem plain that he considered them of the same credibility and authenticity as his own book. As to the time in which the books before us were written — the close, at any rate, must have been written late down in the ex- ile; for 2 Kings xxv. 27 — 30 brings the history down to the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin. In addition § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 137 to this, the remark in 2 Kings xxiii. 25 respecting Josiah, viz. that " there was no king before him Hke to him . . . neither after him arose any Hke him," shows, that when the books were written several kings after Josiah had arisen. On the whole, there can be no good reason to doubt, that the compilation, as it now is, must have been made near the close of the exile. The arguments mainly employed by Do Wette, however, to prove this, amount to nothing in the view of any one who believes in the reahty of prophetic foresight. He says, that the return from exile is mentioned in 1 Kings viii. 47; the destruction of the temple, in ix. 7, 8; the dispersion of the people, in xiv. 15; and the Babylonish exile in2 Kings xx. 17. All these passages, however, I must regard as merely 'proplietic anticipations of the events in question. But as he rejects every thing of this nature, so he inter- prets the passages just adverted to as being written 'post eventum. Who the author was, is not known. The Talmud attributes the authorship to Jeremiah. But Jeremiah cannot well be sup- posed to have lived and been active in the prophetic office in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's exile, although Havernick adopts this view; for he must then be at least some 110 years old. Movers supposes, that Jeremiah wrote an older book of Kings, from which most of the present one was taken ; De utriusque Vet. Jer. Indole., &c. There can be little doubt that, whoever was the author, his work was completed before the return from the Babylonish exile. The books of Chronicles, as we might naturally expect, have been more vigorously assailed, than any other historical book of the Old Testament. De Wette made his debut upon the stage of historic criticism by an attack upon them, in his Krit'ik der Israel. Geschichte. He has bestowed particular labour upon them in his Introduction., occupying some ten pages; which his trans- lator and commentator, Mr Parker, has, with a special purpose, spread out into sixty- four pages. The contents of the Chronicles are genealogies and Jewish his- tory, from David downward to the exile. The history of David (1 Chron. x — xxix.) is of course a repetition in the main, of that in the books of Samuel, but diversified particularly by minute accounts of Levitical arrangements. The history of Solomon occupies 2 Chron. i — ix, which stands related in the like manner to that in 1 Kings. The remainder is the theocratic history of the kings of Judah, rarely glancing at that of the ten tribes. It 138 § 6. HXSTOKY OF THE CANON. was evidently the writer's design, to make an appropriate history of only the legitimate kings of Judah, and of them in particular as they stood related to matters of religion and of the priest- hood. He brings it down to the period of liberation from exile by the proclamation of Cyrus, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21 seq. In 1 Chron. iii. 19 — 24, is a passage of genealogy, which brings us down to the grand-children of Zerubbabel, who was the leader of the returning exiles. If this passage be genuine, it will bring the book down to a period near that in which Nehemiah and Malachi lived. The orthography (scriptio plena), and the idiom of these books, also contribute to render probable their very late origin. De Wette (§ 189) reckons the union of the Chronicles with the HagiographT/ an evidence of the late origin. But are the Psalms shown to be of late origin, by the circumstance that they are classed with the Hagiography? The gi'avest objections which are brought against these books, are founded in their departures from Samuel and Kings, in mat- ters of a historical nature. E. g. when Joab numbered the peo- ple, i. e. the military force of Israel, at the command of David, it is said in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, that there were 800,000 soldiers in Israel, and 500,000 in Judah; while 1 Chron. xxi. 5 says, that the number in Israel was 1,100,000, and in Judah 470,000. In 1 Kings xxiv. 24, David is said to have bought of Araunah a threshing-floor and a pair of oxen for sacrifice, at the price of fifty shekels of silver; in 1 Chron. xxi. 25, David is said to have given 600 shekels of gold for the same. In 2 Kings viii. 26, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram begins to reign at the age of twenty-two; according to 2 Chron. xxii. 2 he begins at the age of forty-two, this book thus making him two years older than his father, who died at the age of forty, 2 Chron. xxi. 20. In 1 Kings V. 16, the overseers of temple- work are said to be 3,800; in 2 Chron. ii. 2, they are estimated at 3,600. In 1 Kings xv. 32, it is said that " there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days ,•" in 2 Chron. xiv. 1 it is said, that under the same king Asa "the land had rest ten years;" and after the invasion by Zerah the Ethiopian, that " there was no more war unto the thirty-fifth year of his [Asa'sJ reign." In 2 Chron. xiv. 2, 3, it is said of Asa, that "he did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord; for he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves," (comp. vi. 5); in 2 Chron. § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS, 139 XV. 17 it is said, that " the high places were not taken away out of Israel." Possibly the latter may mean " out of the land of the ten tribes;" but I cannot think this is probable, for Asa had no control over that land. In 1 Kings vii. 15, the two pillars of brass for the temple are said to be eighteen cubits in height; in 2 Chron. iii. 15 they are represented as thirty-five cubits high; and the like in some other cases. Besides these and similar discrepancies, the statement of num- bers occasionally wears the air of something very extraordinary. E. g. in 2 Chron. xxviii. 5 seq., which gives an account of the in- vasion of Judah by Pekah king of Israel and Rezin king of Sy- ria, it is stated that " Pekah slew 120,000 men of Judah in one day, all valiant men." In this connection we may also note, that Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign (2 Chron. xxviii. 1); that in the next year of his reign the invasion of Pekah took place, in which (as is said in 2 Chron. xxviii. 7) a " mighty man of Ephraim [one of Pekah's captains] slew Maa- seiah the king's son.'''' How could Ahaz, then twenty-one years of age, have a son old enough to bear arms? The implication seems to be such; and yet the meaning may simply be, that Pe- kah's captain destroyed one of the royal progeny (not in arms;) and this is (juite possible, as marriages often take place in the East, when the husband is only some fifteen or sixteen years old. In 2 Chron. xiii. 17 it is stated, that Abijah king of Judah smote of the children of Israel who were led on by Jeroboam, " 500,000 chosen men," in one rencontre. Could the ten tribes have pos- sibly furnished such an army as this, from their population and limits at that time? The army of Asa with which he went out to battle against Zerah the Ethiopian, is said (2 Chron. xiv. 8) to be "300,000 men out of Judah, and 280,000 out of Ben- jamin, mighty men of valour," i. e. five hundred and eighty thou- sand soldiers from only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. This would require the population of these tribes, at that time, to con- sist of two and a half or three millions at least. Could one half of this number have been supported in the small tract of land — small at any rate as to fertile land — within the borders of Judah and Benjamin? 1 Chron. xxii. 14 represents David as having collected for the use of the temple, 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver; which, according to the generally ac- credited reckoning of Richard, the bishop of Peterborough, are equivalent, the gold to L. 500,000,000 sterling, and the silver 140 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. to L.353,000,000; the whole sum amounts to L.853,000,000 sterling, i. e. about 4,265,000,000 dollars. The precious metals must have been more plentiful at that time, than they ever have been since, to render it possible for the king of a country some 150 (possibly at that time some 200) miles in length, and from 70 to 90 in breadth, to have amassed such an unexampled sum as this. The conquests of David, although somewhat extensive, were still limited to countries not rich in the precious metals. Such are some of the difficulties that meet us in the books of Chronicles. But even these are not all. There seems, at least at first view, to be a design, on the part of the compiler of these books, to cast into the shade, or to keep out of view, some things which would detract from the character of the persons who are concerned with them. In the account of David's domestic rela- tions (1 Chron. xiv. S), no mention is made of his concubines; which last are mentioned in 2 Sam. v. 13. In 2 Sam. viii. 2, David is represented, after conquering Moab, as " measuring with two lines to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive," i. e. as putting to a violent death two-thirds of its inhab- itants; in 1 Chron. xviii. 3, this circumstance is altogether omit- ted. The Chronicles make no mention of David's adultery and murder, in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah, so particularly related in 2 Sam. xi. 2 — xii. 26. Little or nothing is said in the Chronicles respecting David's troubles on account of Amon, Absalom, and the rebellious Ahithophei, and others. Nothing is said in the Chronicles of Solomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines, nor of their causing him to apostatize ; nothing of his building temples for them around Jerusalem to Chemosh and Moloch; nothing of all the disturbances that ensued, caused by Hadad, Jeroboam, and others ; all of which are so fully related in 1 Kings xi. In respect to the impious and tyrannical Manasseh, the book of Kings (2 Kings xxi. 16. xxiv. 4) twice mentions his " shedding very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other;" all of which the book of Chronicles omits, (2 Chron. xxiii); and moreover, it gives an account of Manasseh's penitence, and of his efforts to restore the worship of the true God (2 Chron. xxiv. 11 — 17), all of which is omitted in the book of Kings. Like to these traits are many other tilings in the Chronicles ; and circumstances such as these serve to show the peculiar texture of these books. The genealogies in 1 Chron. i — ix. present a variety of dif- § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 141 ficulties, being quite incomplete in many cases, and apparently at variance with some other portions of the Scriptures in others. Indeed it is very difficult to discover the specific object of these genealogies, unless indeed it was to show the descent of some leadinff families who had returned from the exile. We need not wonder, under these circumstances, that those who speak so freely about other historical books of the Old Testament, here find occasion to utter much of disapprobation, and sometimes even to say what is lacking in decorum. E. g. Mr Parker, in his edition of De Wette, intimates (ii. p. 294), that the historian who could omit so many notable offences of kinirs, as the author of the Chronicles has done, " must write with some other design than that of telling the whole truth." He even makes himself merry with some of the alleged mis- takes of the Chronicler, (as he calls the author). " An amusing mistake occurs," says he (ii. p. 268), " in 1 Chron. xi. 23, as com- pared with 2 Sam. xxiii. 21." The cream of the jest is, that in the book of Samuel it is said of Benaiah, that " he slew an Egyp- tian, a man of remarkable appearance" (nt^";i^ "^^i'^^' w^"''® ^^"^^ passage In Chronicles says, that " he slew an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits high." Now what part of this it is which Mr Parker pronounces amusing, I do not readily perceive. I can easily see that five cubits = 7^ feet, is an uncommon height for a man ; yet this is not without a parallel, or rather it is even surpassed, e. g. by the Kentucky giant, in our own day. That a man of this height might be called a man of aspect T\'i^y^ ll)^t^' (for ^"1^ is plainly implied here), as the writer of the Kings has called him, in a military respect, (which is what the passage clearly has in view), there is no good reason to deny. The Latin aspectabilis would give the exact meaning ; while Mr Parker has translated it, respectable man ! That the writer of the Chronicles might choose to state with particularity the height of the Egyp- tian, rather than to say (as in the book of Kings) that he was a man of aspect, conveys to my mind no impression which is special- ly amusing. I cannot even suppose a mistake on the part of the Chronicler, as to the import of n^^'1?2 "^ Kings. I can only see, that one writer meant to characterize the Egyptian as a man of remarkable appearance, while the other gives us the specific quality which made him remarkable. After all, there is some- thing to amuse us in respect to this matter ; and that is, that 142 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANOX. Mr Parker has translated the passage which means aspectahilis as if it meant venerandus. And this is the criticism, then, which looks at the book of Chronicles with scorn ! To be brief: De Wette and most of the Neoloo-ists in criti- cism who sympathize with him, consider and treat the books of the Chronicles as a mei'e farrcujo of scraps, made up partly from written records, partly from tradition, partly by a superstitious reverence for the priesthood and the ritual law, and partly by the vain-glorious boastings of a Jew in respect to the royal race of David and the tribes which adhere to the Davidic dynasty. Hence they give little credit indeed to the testimony of these books. The devout and reverential reader of the Old Testament has, it must be confessed, some difficulties of a serious nature to en- counter, in regard to such things in the Chronicles as have been pointed out. The tyro in matters of sacred criticism must cer- tainly feel, that he has a somewhat formidable task before him ; specially if he adopts the theory of plenary verbal inspiration. I will state in a few words what my own impressions are ; for I have already dwelt so long on these books, that I must not say much more. I cannot well doubt, that the Chronicles are the last of all the historical books, possibly with the exception of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. That they were written by some Jew, for the use of the renewed Israelitish commonwealth, and that the author was a priest or Levite, seems to me, all things considered, to be nearly certain. Let any one peruse the prophecy of Malachi, written about the same period as the Chronicles, and he will find it filled with grievous complaints of the neglect and contempt of the Mosaic ritual, exhibited by the Jews. The prophet com- plains that they offer the lame, the blind, and the sick, in sacri- fice ; that they have snuffed at the offerings to the Lord ; that they have robbed God in tithes and offerings, besides being guilty of many other sins. It was not unnatural that some pious priest or Levite, or prophet, should assay to remedy these evils, by giv- ing a particular history of past well-known and renowned kings, as to the efforts which they made to carry the Mosaic institu- tions into practice. Hence the enlarged account of all David''s arrangements in respect to the ark of God, the sacrifices, the priests and Levites, the singers and porters of the temple, and the like ; 1 Chr(m. xv. — xxvii The same is true in regard to § 6. BOOKS ANONYxMOUS. 143 Solomon. 2 Chron. i — ix.; in regard to Abijah, 2 Chron. xiii.; Asa, ch. XV. ; Jehoshaphat, ch. xvii. geq. ; Joash, ch. xxiv. ; Uzziah, ch. xxvi.; Hezekiah, ch. xxix. seq. ; and Josiah, ch. xxxiv. A prominence is consequently given to things of this nature, which is wanting in the books of Kings, for this was writ- ten earlier and in different circumstances. The sacred writers of the Old Testament and the New adapt their works to the wants of the times in which they live. Why should they not ? It lies then upon the face of the books of Chronicles, that they were composed with special reference to the state of the times, as to the Mosaic worship and rites. This will account for a great portion of the differences in the narrations between this and the books of Kings. It is equally plain, that the history of the ten tribes, the anti-Davidic government, is purposely omitted. The writer found so little to his purpose in the examples of the kings of Israel, with respect to the Mosaic religion, that he chose wholly to omit them. Moreover, as it respects the kings of Judah, it is plain that the writer did not purpose to give ^ full history. His work is rather what the Septuagint version names it, viz. naeaX£/To',ae!/a, i. e. Supplement^ or things that remain^ that is, remain to be recorded. The frame- work of his history is of course the same as that of Judah in the books of Kings ; but for a particular purpose he has given to it a different fin- ishing of costume. It is no more true of Kings and Chronicles, that what one of them omits is to be considered as fabulous or unworthy of credit, than it is of the Gospels. Silence proves nothing, unless in peculiar cases. There is even nothing parti- cularly improbable, in all the accounts which the Chronicles give us, of the arrangements in respect to religious matters made by many of the kings of Judah. With these considerations in view, we can easily account for the often-varying narrations in the Kings and Chronicles. It ought no more to offend us, than it offends a believer of the Gospels, when he finds such a wonderful variety as there is in the style of John and of Luke. Beyond this, however, we have seen that there are apparent contradictions between the Kings and Chronicles, and some apparent inaccuracies in the latter. We cannot refuse to acknowledge this; for we see with our own eyes. It is simply a question of fact, not of theological opinion or theory. Facts which are presented to us in a record, cannot ! 144 § 6. H ISTORY OF THE CANON. be altered by any doctrinal theory which we may devise or maintain. That the present book of Chronicles is in a somewhat imper- fect state, I must regard as true. Otherwise, how could Ama- ziah, the youngest son of Jehoram, be made two years older than his father? 2 Chron. xxi. 5, xxii. 2. I am inclined to be- lieve, that some of the excessive numbers of men, and of the astonishing amount of treasures, have suffered in transcription, or from marginal addenda. Almost all the discrepancies be- tween Kings and Chronicles, and almost all of the seeming ex- cesses in statements, have respect to proper names or numbers. These are plainly the most liable of all things to error on the part of copyists. If it could be shown that the old Hebrew MSS. designated numbers by alphabetical letters, as the later Hebrew does, it would be very easy to make out the probability of error in transcription, and to account for it. But inasmuch as this, though often assumed, has never been rendered very probable, we must content ourselves with the not improbable supposition, that at least some of the apparent errors in ques- tion have arisen from transcription or unskilful redaction. We cannot prove this, indeed, by appeal to direct testimony; and the contrary of this, moreover, is not capable of satisfactory proof. But in such a case as that of the age of Amaziah just mentioned, it would be preposterous to suppose that the error came from the pen of the author, for it would prove him to be destitute of common sense ; a position which the rest of the book would not permit us to maintain. The like to this might be said of several other apparent errors of these books. I regard it as more probable, that the statements in Kings are in general the more accurate of the two, when there is a dis- crepancy between that work and the book of Chronicles. One good reason is, that the book of Kings rarely developes an excess in point of numbers. Internal probability is therefore in its favour. How far the books of Chronicles, in our Saviour's time, were identical with our present books of the same name, it would be difficult to show. That these books have in some way been tampered with, or in some degree negligently transcribed, since that period, appears to be not improbable, when we look at the history of the canon. In Josephus' time, the Chronicles were § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 145 arranged or classed with the other historical books, (as we shall hereafter see), instead of being where they are now, i. e. at the close of the Kethuhim^ and therefore at the end of the Old Tes- tament. What else was done in re-editing them, besides changing their place of arrangement, we know not. But as they now are, there are certainly, as we have seen above, several passages which disagree with other parts of the Old Testament, and some which disagree with other parts of the Chronicles themselves.* It does not strike me, that the omissions in detailing the sins and weaknesses of David, Solomon, and others, are to be much accounted of in the way of objection to these books. If the de- sign of the writer, or a promise on his part, had been to give the lives of the Jewish kings complete, I see not how we could then exempt him from the charge of having performed his task in an unsatisfactory way, at least of having left it very incom- plete. But this is evidently not his plan. The theocratic policy and efforts of the Jewish kings are his main object. And so far as this is concerned, I am not aware that his narrative is open to " Dr Davidson, in his Sacred Hermeneuiics, has offered suggestions for ex- plaining several of the discrepancies between the books of Chronicles and those of Samuel and Kings. But, like Professor Stuart, he does not think that uU the dis- crepancies which have been pointed out can be explained satisfactorily, in any- other way than by the assumption of a considerable degree of deterioration in the Masoretie text. " It is well known," he remarks in an article upon Chronicles in Kitto's Cyclopcedia, " that the text of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles is in a worse condition than that of the other inspired writings. The fact is unques- tionable, in whatever way it may be explained. It is time that the text of these historical books should be rectified in those instances where an unquestionable ne- cessity exists." Nor will any enlightened Christian man grudge that concessions like these should be made, when they come from men whose learning qualifies them to judge, and authorises them to speak upon such a subject; for, as Dr Kennicott long ago remarked, in reference to the books of the Old Testament, " Though these sacred books were at first composed by men who were all directed to truth, and secured from error by the immediate agency of God himself, yet, what was thus inspired by God was committed to the care of men, and we must acknowledge that we have had this treasure iri earthen vessels. To suppose an absolute freedom fi'om error in the transcribei's of these books, the most ancient in the whole world, what is it else but to suppose a constant miracle wrought in favour of every such transcriber, and the Divine assistance communicated in the formation of every letter." ..." Surely, it must be a proper foundation for satisfaction and joy to every friend of Revelation to find, that the difficulties and obstructions which he now meets with in the printed copies of the Old Testament are not so necessarily owing to Moses and the pro- phets, as to demand his absolute assent and resolute vindication." Vid. The Slate of the printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament considered, pp. 7, 8, 270, 271. — Ed. L 146 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANOX. any serious and well-grounded objections. The few particulars of incongruity that we have found, amount at the most to no- thing which is very important. As to the rest, I have examined the almost innumerable difficul- ties and incongruities suggested by De Wette, and presented in English and augmented by Mr Parker. Very many of them, I am fully persuaded, will not stand the test of a candid critical scrutiny. Others are more apparent at first view, than real. De Wette has made capital for himself out of everything, even out of a change or variation in the diction, phraseology, &c. So we cannot, or should not, do with the Gospels; so we must not do with the book of Chronicles, if we mean to preserve the re- putation of being truly candid and liberal-minded. I will only add, that after all which Keil has said in his Versnch ilber die Bucher der Ckronik^ 1833; Dahler, de Lib. Paralip. Auctoriiate, 1819; and Movers Ueber die Chronik. 1884; in defence of the books in question, there is still need of some other labourer in this field, who will do the work more thoroughly. Havernick is reported to have performed this task; but it has not yet been in my power to examine what he has written. The book of Ruth has plainly for its object, to trace the ge- nealogy of David to a source which is honourable. The proba- bility seems to be, that it was written during the reign of David, or soon after. The variations of the language from the usual Hebrew of that period, are not remarkable enough to afford any ground of argument for the late age of the book. The history which it gives, belongs to the period of the Judges; as is ex- pressly stated in Ruth i. 1. Moreover, "the days when the Judges ruled," is spoken of as a period already passed by. Ear- lier than the time of David, therefore, it could not have been written; and as the special reason for writing it seems to be, to do honour to David in respect to his descent, he must have been a king before it was written ; for this was the particular induce- ment to do him honour. The character of Boaz and of Ruth is truly noble and ingenuous. It is easy to see, moreover, that the poverty of Ruth was not regarded as a matter of any re- proach. Riches, in those days, at least in the author's view, constituted no part of true nobility. The whole picture is a delightful one. The simplicity, integrity, and kind feelings of the principal persons exhibited by this book, are altogether re- markable in any age or country. David had at least some an- § ('). BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 147 cestors who were nature's noblemen, if not decked with stars and garters. That Ruth was a foreigner by birth, is no objec- tion to the place assigned her. There can scarcely be a doubt that she became a proselyte to Judaism. The genealogy, at the close of the book, ends with David. The writer of the Chronicles has made use of it in his genealogy, 1 Chron. ii. 11, 12. This shows that the book was extant in his time, and that is sufficient for our present purpose. On account of the period to which the book of Ruth relates, it is placed in modern times, and probably in more ancient ones, next to the book of Judges; for we shall see in due time, that in the ancient division of the Scriptures, in and before Josephus'' age, this book was appended to that of the Judges. The Tal- mudic arrangement, which tore it away from this connection and placed it among the Kethubim, was the result of a later and merely artificial disposition of the sacred books. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah contain the history of the restoration of the Jewish commonwealth, after the exile. In classifying the sacred books, they were usually joined together, in ancient times, as one book in two parts ; because they both have a relation to the same subject, viz. the reestablishment of law and ordei*, after the return from the exile. I shall, how- ever, consider them separately here. The various matters of which the book of Ezra treats, and the Hebrew and Chaldee languages which are employed, have led to a great variety of opinion among critics, as to the author- ship of the book. Chap, i — vi. contain the history of the return of the first colony from the exile, and connect closely with the end of 2 Chronicles. The decree of Cyrus (536 b.c), a register of the returning exiles, the hindrances to the building of the tem- ple, and the completion of this work in the sixth year of Darius the king (515 e.g.), form the first part of the book of Ezra. The principal Chaldee portion of the work comprises iv. 8 — vi. 18. The second part of the book gives an account of the immi- gration of the new colony under Ezra, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, 457 u.c, and of course about 79 years after the first company of exiles returned under Zerubbabel and Jeshua. The decree of Artaxerxes, permitting Ezra's immigration with a colony of Jews, is also written in Chaldee, vii. 12 — 26. The rest of the book details the efforts and arrangements of Ezra, in reforming the people and the priesthood. ]48 § 6. HISTORY 01' THE CANON. Evidently the first portion of the book is constituted in part by two documents, different from the main narrative of the writer of the book. Chap. ii. is a register of those who first re- turned from exile, which Nehemiah found in a document by itself, and from which he took his copy; see Neh. vii. 5, and comp. Neh. vii. 6 — 73 withEz. ii. TheChaldee (iv. 8 — vi. 18) seems to have been from another hand than that of the principal author of the book in general; and not only the letter to Artaxerxes written by the enemies of the Jews, and his answer to the same (iv. 11 — 22) are in Chaldee, but also the narrative that follows, on as far as vi. 18. In the sequel of the book, Ezra speaks sometimes in the Jirst person, vii. 27 — ix. 15; while chap. vii. 1 — 26 and X. speak of him in the third person. The last part of the book is occupied with the narration of Ezra's efforts to bring about a reformation, in various respects, among the Jews ; although its chronology/ is not distinctly marked. For aught that appears, these efforts might all have been made in 457 B.C.; for Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month of that year; Ez. vii. 8. Twelve years after this, when Nehemiah came up to Jerusalem from the Persian court, we find Ezra sedulously engaged in the appropriate duties of his office as priest and scribe; Neh. viii. 1 — 6, 9, 13. But the history in the book of Ezra seems to comprise only the first portion of these twelve years. Whoever wrote the book, then, he seems to have written it soon after Ezra had taken up his abode in Jerusalem ; for otherwise we should expect from the author a further account of Ezra. 1 think we may set it down as nearly certain, that the book was written not far from 456 b.c. That Ezra himself wrote vii. 27 — ix. 15, is plain from the fact that he constantly employs the Jirst person in his narrative. Whether he wrote vii. 1 — 11 and x. 1 — 44, where the third person is constantly employed, is more doubtful; and especially so from the circumstance, that in xi. 6, it is said of him, that he was " a ready or expert scribe in the law of Moses." It seems al- together probable to me, that some one of Ezra's friends, probably of the prophetic order, compiled the book in question from the various documents named above ; and that he did this, by pre- facing and interweaving remarks and narrations of his own. The book has every appearance of authenticity, and of course of credi- bility. No reasonable doubt can be critically entertained, of its being joined with the Jewish canon about the period above named. § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 149 The book of Nehemiah purports to be from one and the same person. The inscription presents us with the following title: " The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah." But the Heb. ^"^11 niay mean matters^ affairs, or concerns^ as it does in the title to the book of Chronicles. It may be regarded then as somewhat uncertain, so far as the inscription is concerned, whether this book is one of those whose names designate the author. Still, as all the narration, down to chap. vii. 5, employs the first person, so far it is plain that all comes from Nehemiah. Then follows the register of the names of those who came up with the first colony to Jerusalem; plainly a repetition for sub- stance of that which we find in Ezra ii. Yet the discrepancies between these two registers, as to numbers in particular cases, is striking. Let the reader compare the following names and associated numbers in the two registers, viz. Arab, Pahath-Moab, Zattu, Bani (Binnui, Neh.), Bebai, Azgad, Adonikam, Bigvai, Adin, Hashum, Bezai, Jorah (Hariph), Bethlehem and Netophah, Bethel and Ai, Lod, &c., Senaah, Asaph, Shallum, &c., Delaiah &o., — in the whole, nineteen cases in this single register, in which the numbers are discrepant in the two copies of it. Yet in Ezra ii. 64 and Neh. vii. QQ, the su7n of the whole is said to be 42,3 (iO — a signal proof that the numbers in one or in both copies, have, in this case as in many others, suffered as to accuracy by transcription. The sums of gold and silver given, on the occasion of colonizing, by the chiefs of the fathers, are stated very diversely in Ezra ii. 68, 69 and Nehemiah vii. 70 — 7o. Some other and slighter discrepancies occur, in the inser- tion of names in the one, which are omitted in the other; and some still slighter in the mode of writing and pronouncing the names. The sequel (viii. 1 — x. 39) seems plainly to be from another hand, and speaks of Nehemiah in the third person as Tirshatha or governor. The register of names, in chap, xi., of those who lived at Jerusalem; and in chap, xii., of those priests who came up from the captivity with Zerubbabel, seems to me to be from one and the same hand; at all events, xii. 81, 38, 40, shows that the writer again is Nehemiah himself, who uses the first person. It may be, hovvever, that the two registers, in xi. 1 — xii. 26, are merely copied by him. Of the same tenor is chap, xiii., which gives an account, in the first person, of what Nehe- miah did after his return a second time from Persia. His first 150 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. journey to Jerusalem was in 446 b.c, when he had obtained liberty of absence for twelve years from Artaxerxes, in the twentieth year of his reign; Neh. v, 14, In the thirty-second year of the same king (434 b.c), Nehemiah returned to Persia, and in a few days obtained leave again to go to Jerusalem and preside there; Neh. xiii. 6. During his absence there had been a great falling off among the Jews, as to the observance of the Law; and the book ends with a description of his efforts to pro- duce a general reformation. There is no difficulty in the way of supposing that all the mat- ter of this book passed under the eye of Nehemiah, or was com- piled by him, even if we admit that other compositions than his own are inserted. It amounts therefore to the same thing as his composition, so far as the credit of the book is concerned. The history contained in the book closes with 434 b.c, or about that period, and it was therefore probably written as early as the book of Malachi, if not somewhat before it. There is indeed one serious difficulty in the genealogy of the high priests, xii. 10, 11, 22; which is, that (including Jeshua who was of Zerubbabers time, 536 b.c), there are six generations re- gistered. Excluding Jeshua, however, as we should do in this case, the remaining five generations must occupy a period of some 160 to 170 years, extending to some 376 or 366 years b.c, i. e. nearly to the time when Alexander the Great came upon the stage of action. The Jaddua of Neh. xii. 11, 22, is supposed by many to be the same high priest, who went out to meet Alexan- der, on his approach to Jerusalem ; and in fact, the time is so near to that period, that one can hardly believe that it is a dif- ferent person, inasmuch as it may easily be supposed that he lived at that period. But I could not set down the composition of the book in general to so late a period, any more than I should be disposed to regard the book of Genesis as of late composition, merely because of the late genealogy of the dukes of Edom in Gen. xxxvi. The tenor of the book, and the time down to which it brings the narration; the fact that Nehemiah's own hand is visible in so much of it, and that there is nothing else besides the genealogy in question which betokens a later origin — all combine to persuade me, that the protracted genealogy of the high priests comes from a subsequent and marginal interpola- tion, or from something of the like kind, at a later period. Why should a later writer not have continued the history of Nehe- § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 151 miah down to the time of his deaths It is against all probabil- ity, that he would not have done so. One book remains, viz. that of Estheb. Of this book De Wette, in his usual manner, says: " It violates all histoi'ical pro- bability, and contains the most striking difficulties, and many errors in regard to Persian manners," § 198. a. One of the main difficulties is, that there are no certain data in the book, by which we can settle its chronology, or (in other words) that determine which of the Persian kings was called Ahasuerus by the writer. That he could not have lived hefore the time of Dar- ius Hystaspes seems to be evident from the fact, that it was not until his reign that the Persian empire was extended from India to Ethiopia; to which the statement in Esth, i. 1 alludes. That Darius himself was not the Persian king, who issued such an edict against the Jews as that described by this book, seems probable from his character as known in history, and from his very favourable regard for the Jews, as developed in Ezra v. 6, vi. 15. The objections raised against the book are various, and some of them, as the text of it now stands, not easily disposed of. " (1.) Ahasuerus gives to all of his high officers a feast oi half a year; how could they leave their provinces for so long a time? (2.) His command to Vashti, the queen, to appear unveiled be- fore the whole company, at a drinking bout, is incredible. (3.) That Esther is of Jewish descent seems entirely unknown to Ahasuerus, until after the time when Haman's bloody decree was sanctioned; and still Mordecai is represented as a daily atten- dant at the court, in order to carry on some correspondence with Esther. (4.) Haman himself is ai, foreigner ; and such could not be prime ministers. (5.) Mordecai obstinately refuses all court- eous respect for him. (6.) Haman designs to destroy a whole na- tion of some two millions of people, and this merely because of an affront from Mordecai. (7.) He offers the king 10,000 talents of silver to sign the decree, which is equal to about 17,650,000 dollars ; a thing incredible," &c. I cannot enter into any discussion here of these and the like objections to the book; most of which Eichhorn (§ 509 seq.) has satisfactorily answered. In the sequel this subject will receive more attention. I merely observe here that there are two or three circumstances related in the book, which one finds it diffi- cult to explain in a satisfactory manner. The decree of Haman 152 § 6, HISTORY OP THK CANON. for the destruction of the Jews was issued on the thirteenth day of the fir&t month in the year (Esth. iii. 1 2), and this decree is not to be executed until the thirteenth day of the twelfth month; Esth. iii. 13. It would seem that Haman betook himself to the lot, in order to fix upon the proper day; Esth. iii. 7. The diffi- culty in this case is, to account for it that Haman should adver- tise the whole empire of the massacre, eleven months before it was to be perpetrated. " What could be the use," it is asked, " of putting the Jews on their guard so long beforehand? The Sicilian Vespers and the massacre of St Bartholomew were not conducted thus; and Haman must have been as weak as he was wicked, to do this." One might suggest, in answer to this, that Haman probably indulged the hope that the Jews, through fear, would exile themselves from the kingdom. Perhaps this may be representing him as more humane than he was ; but even a murderous tyrant must be supposed to be apprehensive of trou- ble, from destroying a whole nation that amounted to several millions of men, and above all, when he had given the intended victims nearly a year's notice of what he was about to do. If the decrees of the Persian monarch had not been irreversible, I should be quite disposed to believe that the whole measure, on the part of Haman, was designed mainly to terrify and vex the Jews. But the true solution seems plainly to be, that Haman having cast lots for a lucky day, could not change it when it was once fixed by the lot. Superstition did not permit a change. The decree which Mordecai obtained from the king amounted to merely a license that the Jews should arm themselves on the massacre-day, and make defence against any assailants. It is said in the book before us, that when the day came, the higher officers of the king befriended the Jews (Esth. ix. 3); vvhich is not improbable, considering that Mordecai was prime minister. According to the narration in Esther, the Jews on that day destroyed 500 men in the palace itself at Shushan (Esth. ix, 6), and 75,000 in the provinces; Esth. ix. 16. On the fourteenth day of Adar (the twelfth month), thoy also slew 300 more in the palace; Esth. ix. 18. Yet in all these rencounters, we have no information that a single Jew lost his life, or was even wound- ed. Could a massacre of 75,000 Persians take place, without any mutual slaughter? And would it be necessary for the Jews to destroy so many, when the people of the empire at large seem to have been so favourably disposed toward them, as the book § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 153 represents them to be? It would seem, moreover, that " many of the people of the land became Jews," while Mordecai was prime minister or grand vizier (Esth. viii. 17); a circumstance, moreover, not at all improbable, considering the influence which Mordt'cai had at court. But that 75,000 Persians were slaugh- tered in this rencounter, after eleven months' warning and pre- parations of the parties, and none of the Jews destroyed, (the book does not assert the latter, but some have supposed it to be implied), is one of those facts which can only with difficulty be admitted, unless some miraculous interposition on the part of Heaven should prevent the harming of the Jews. But of this the writer has taken no notice. Some other difficulties press upon the book. There is not even once the name of God to be found in it, or any special recog- nition of his holy providence in the whole affair. This is alto- gether the more singular, inasmuch as it has no parallel in any part of the Old Testament, unless in the book of Canticles. All the other sacred writings of the Jews represent God not only as the theoretical, but as the practical Sovereign of the universe, dis- pensing both good and ill, prosperity and adversity. Not so apparently with the book of Esther. Even the days of Purim, set apart in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews, as related in the book, are to be kept as " days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and of gifts to the poor," Esth. ix. 22. This narration, omitting as it does all reference to an overruling providence, shows how transformed as to his style of thinking and writing the writer had become, by living in a foreign country; (for I take the author to be a foreign Jew). The fasting and weeping (ch. iv.) betoken, indeed, a sense of religious dependence; and in iv. 14, there is an evident allusion to the promises of preserving the Jewish nation, let the danger be what it might. But whatever the writer's reasons were for a uniform silence on the subject of religion and of Divine interpo- sition, he has not given them to us. It is certainly with no small difficulty, that we can make out reasons satisfactory to our own minds. On the supposition that Xerxes was the Ahasuei'us named in the book of Esther, there is still further difficulty. That the same Xerxes, who scourged the sea for carrying away his bridge over the Hellespont; who ordered the heads of the builders of the bridge to be cut off", because their structure could not resist 154 § 6, HISTORY OF THE CANON. the irresistible tide and storm in the straits there ; who slew the eldest son of his friend and generous benefactor, Pythias, before his eyes, because he asked for his release from the army of Xerxes in which he had five sons; who suspended the headless body of Leonidas on a cross, because that with a mere handful of Grecians he had withstood many myriads of Persians; who offered by proclamation a great reward to any one who would invent a new pleasure; — that such a man should sanction such a decree as that of Haman, is to be sure not very strange. But if, with the great mass of modern and recent critics, we admit Ahasuerus to have been Xerxes, what shall we do with Esth. ii. 5 — 7, which tells us that Mordecai was carried away captive from Judea with Jehoiachin, in 599 b.c, and that Esther was his cousin? Now Xerxes did not begin his reign until 485 b.c, and the third year of that reign, when Vashti the queen was re- jected, must bring Mordecai to the age of 117, even if his exile took place in his infancy. His cousin Esther, moreover, must at this time have been nearly a century old; while the book of Esther represents her as a young maiden. How then can we admit, with Scaliger, Drusius, Carpzov, Eichhorn, Jalin, Ber- tholdt, Gesenius, Hiivernick, Baumgarten, and others, that Xerxes is the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther? If we go back to Cambyses, and even to Cyrus, we shall, after all, still find Mor- decai to be some seventy to sixty years old — an age hardly con- gruous with the part which he acts in the book before us. If we go still farther back, we must seek for Ahasuerus among the separate kings of Media or of Persia. But we are forbidden to go back, for then we could find neither the 127 provinces of the empire (Esth. i. 1), nor were the Jews under the dominion of any Persian or Median king, before the time of Cyrus. All these difficulties, however, are the result of interpreting the text in Esth. ii. 5 — 7, in such a way as seems, at first view, to be the most natural and facile. The Hebrew runs thus: " There was a Jew in Shushan the palace, and his name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite, who was carried captive from Jerusalem with the company of captives who were carried into exile with Jechoniah king of Judah, who was carried away captive by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. And he brought up Hadassah, (the same is Esther), who was the daughter of his uncle," &c. The question which we may naturally rjjise, is whether Mordecai is asserted § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. 155 by this text to be among the exiles that accompanied Jechoniah (5i)9 B.c) or whether this exile is affirmed of Kish the Benjamite. The interpretation which adopts the former meaning, is perhaps the most facile and natural, in case tliere is no obstacle in the way; but plainly it is not a necessary one. The who {'y^^'^), at the beginning of v. 6, may refer to the noun immediately antece- dent (Kish), and then we are at liberty to place the period of Mordecai just where the genealogy demands. The time, reckoned from the exile of Jechoniah in 59.9 b.c. to the seventh year of Xerxes, is about 120 years; and this would correspond right well with the fotbr generations mentioned in Esth. ii. 5. Why then are we not at liberty to adopt this exegesis? I would not do so merely in order to avoid a difficulty; for we cannot satisfy our own minds in that way. But the Hebrew is fairly open to either construction; and when the question comes up: Which shall we prefer? what hinders our adopting that which best agrees with the time and circumstances presented in the book? Even if the book of Esther be supposititious, it is still a book be- longing to the period that soon followed the return from exile, and its anonymous author can scarcely be supposed to have made Mordecai and Esther contemporary with Jechoniah's exile, and at thesame time with the seventh year of Xerxes' reign, or indeed with the reign of any Persian prince from the time that Cyrus began to be sole regent of Middle Asia. The parachronism is too palpable to be attributed to any one, who could write as the author of the book of Esther has done. Some of the most serious difficulties, then, are removed by the interpretation which I have now suggested. In respect to the early publication of Haman's decree, commanding the excision of the Jews, I have already made some suggestions. And as to the passiveness of the Persians when the day of slaughter arrives, and the numbers said to be slain by the Jews, while they apparently remained unhurt; there may be facts, unknown to us, which would render these matters altogether credible. Clearly there is nothing impossible in the case. But it is better to confess our ignorance, than merely to guess at a ground of explanation, and then proffer it as something substantial. The reader will perceive, that I have dwelt much longer upon the books of Chronicles and that of Esther, than on the other books of the Old Testament. I have done so because I deemed it to be necessary. Few readers investigate difficulties of such 156 § 6. HISTOKY OF THE CANON. a nature as these books bring to view; and when they are brought forward by those who doubt or deny the claims of the Old Testament to authenticity and genuineness, most readers feel astounded by them. In presenting these and the like mat- ters to the reader, I hope to satisfy his mind, that my object is not to cai-ry a point 'per fas aut nefas. Truth needs no pious fraud to support and commend it. If the Bible is indeed the word of God^ it certainly does not shun investigation, but de- mands it. The example of the noble Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily in order to ascertain whether what an apostle had preached was true or not, is one which is commended in the word of God, and worthy to be commended to all who reverence his word. Much as my own mind has been sometimes rendered anxious by critical doubts and difficulties thrust upon it, yet I have never for a moment deemed it best to conceal these diffi- culties, or to look away from them merely to get rid of the trouble of studying and examining. On the same ground I do not think it expedient merely to glance at difficulties, sufficiently to show that one is not altogether ignorant of them, and then to dispose of them by a general condemnation of everything which approaches minute or doubting inquiry. It may be dex- terous management in a pleader before a court and jury, to conceal the weak parts of his cause, and to keep out of sight whatever can be said against his client's interest; but how long will the same jury continue to confide in such a pleader's decla- rations, or in his management of causes, if he is wont to do this? If we, who profess to believe in the Divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures, decline to examine and consider the diffi- culties which attend a minute and critical inquiry into their con- dition and contents, how can we expect to convince those who differ from us and reject them? I do not indeed think it to be the dictate of prudence and sound judgment, to anticipate the time and circumstances in which we live, and publish to the world doubts and difficulties that have not yet come before the minds of the community who surround us. But when they do come, it is not sound policy to aim at winking them out of sight, nor to treat them as altogether unworthy of notice, especially when they are apparently founded upon what the sacred text itself seems to disclose. But doubts and difficulties have already been published to our religious community, by the works of De Wetto and of Mr Norton; and no silence on our part will help § 6. BOOKS ANONYMOUS. lo7 this matter. I accede, in my own judgment, to what the cele brated Dr Bellamy of Connecticut used to say to his theological students, in his parting Lecture, " Gentlemen, on the subject of polemics I have one piece of advice to give you; and this is, that you should never raise Satan unless you can lay him." But in the present case, I have not raised him; that has been the work of others. Whether I can lay him, is indeed a serious question, and one which it is not for me to decide. But to return to our subject; that the book of Esther relates a story which is substantially true, tliere is no good reason to doubt. The feast of Purim, celebrated as a memorial of the deliverance of the Hebrews from massacre, has confessedly been celebrated among the Jews ever since the times of the Persian monarchy. Now this is the same evidence that some signal de- liverance took place, as our celebration of the fourth of July is evidence, that our independence as a nation was proclaimed on that day. The great numbers of Jews in Persia, in the time of Xerxes; the hatred which foreigners have nearly always borne towards them on the ground of their peculiar observances; and the envy and jealousy that would exist among the Persian nobi- lity, when any of them were promoted or treated with special favour — are all circumstances which serve to show the possibility, not to say the probability, of the things related in the book of Esther. There can be no good ground for doubt, that the book has truth for its basis. But the number of Persians slain by the Jews, and the amount of money promised to the king by Haman, wears an appearance like to that which sometimes belongs to numbers in the books of Chronicles. Yet so far as the amount of money is concerned, it is not very difficult to believe that Haman may have promised so much to the king, on the ground that he had liberty to appropriate all the property of the Jews, when slain, to his own use, Esth. iii. 1 1 . Nor is the amount so strange a thing. The prime minister of the late emperor of China is said to have amassed more than L. 25, 000,000 sterling, in jewels, money, and costly furniture and array. For myself, if I may be allowed to speak in my own behalf on this occasion, 1 confess that the faith which once has come to admit miraculous events, in earlier and in later times, is not seriously staggered by the extraordinary or even apparently im- probable events related in the book of Esther. To any one who has become well acquainted with the history of Persian tyrants, 158 § 6. HISTORY OF THE CANON. it will be no matter of surprise, that an intoxicated Xerxes should order his queen to appear unveiled before a banqueting company, nor that he should, in a like condition, stimulated by favouritism and the love of gain, have signed the decree of Haman. The surprise which Ahasuerus manifests, when told by Esther of this decree, (Esth. vii. 1 — 6), wears very much the air of his having signed it in a state when he was unconscious of what he did. Whoever has read the history of the late Moham- med Aga Khan, shah of Persia, will readily see, that Persian tyrants who could sign such a decree are no impossibility. The most serious difficulty to a mind which is religiously dis- posed, is the omission, throughout the book of Esther, of all mention of God or of his providence. And yet it seems to be plain from iv. 14, that Mordecai is acquainted with and fully believes in the special promises made in the Old Testament Scriptures to the Jewish nation. Nor is there room for reason- able doubt, that the writer of the book means to present the Jews in the light of a people specially favoured and protected by Heaven. But he has confined himself to mere simple nar- ration of facts, and does not undertake to be argumentative or parsenetic. So far as the aesthetics of the book are concerned, it has no small claim to merit. There is no narration so long, in any part of the Old Testament, which pres^^rves a unity so com- pact and unbroken. There is no bombast, no affected pomp of diction. All must admit, that the writer has told his story with much skill, and made it such as to excite a deep interest in the reader. The impression made by the whole is, that the Jevi's, even in their exile, were under the guardian care of Heaven, and that in the most adverse and threatening circum- stances, they had abundant reason to trust in God. Such an impression, moreover, stood intimately connected with the Jewish religion. There are, however, some circumstances brought to view in the book, which at first sight appear somewhat revolting to the feelings of those who live under the light of the gospel ; e. g. Esther's being brought, consentingly as it would seem, into the royal harem (ii. 8, seq.), and her vengeance in hanging Haman's ten dead sons upon the gallows erected for Mordecai (ix. 15). But are not these easily accounted for, by the state of manners and the low degree of civilization in Persia? We indeed, with S 7. I-OST BOOKS OF THE HEBREWS. 1 59 our feelings and views, cannot praise, nor even approve of, any- thiner like to either of these transactions ; but we can see, if we read the ancient work before us in the spirit of antiquity, that queen Esther did nothing which she believed to be wrong, or judged to be inconsistent with justice or decorum. The book, moreover, does not commend such things as those in question; it simply relates them. In Persia, the king has a sovereign right to any woman in his kingdom; and in theory, even the sacredness of the harem cannot guard it from his entrance. Of the importance of the book of Esther, and also of some others in the Old Testament, to us at the present time, I intend to say something hereafter. But for the present, we must dis- miss the critical history of particular books, in order to turn our attention to other circumstances important to the accom- plishment of the main object in view. § 7. Lost Books of the Hebrews, some of ivMch appear to have been canonical. According to the views which have been taken of the com- position of the canonical books of the Old Testament, they were all in existence as early as 400 years before the Christian era. But the question when the Jewish canon was actually completed , has become, in recent criticism, a question of great importance, and therefore it must receive a separate and distinct investiga- tion. I must solicit the reader's attention, for the present, however, to some things necessary in order to render more com- plete our view of the ancient Hebrew literature, whether sacred or common. The point cannot be decided with certainty as to several of the books alluded to or quoted in the Old Testament, whether they were considered as sacred, or not. Some, e. g. the ivorks of prophets., it seems to be quite plain, were regarded as sacred and authoritative. Others again, e. g. Solomon's works on botany and zoology, and his one thousand and five songs (1 Kings iv. 82, 83), we are not bound to regard as sacred. But there is a third class, the character of which, as we shall soon see, is some- what doubtful. My design is, briefly to mention the works to which the Old Testament refers, and this in the order in which they occur to the reader of our English version. 1 60 § 7. LOST BOOKS Of THE HKBUEWS. (1.) In Num. xxi. 14, the writer appeals, for confirmation of his narrative, to the Book of the Wars of the Lord. The title itself seems to import, that the book was of a reh'gious cast, and it is not unHkely that it was regarded as sacred, in the time of Moses. Still, a reference might be made to it in the manner of the Pentateuch, without rendering the point of its sacredness certain. It is clear that it was regarded as a book of grave authority. (2.) The hook of Jasher, i. e. of the upright, seems to have been a book of poetical eulogies, written respecting distinguished men, actors in distinguished events. The writer of Josh. x. 12, 13, appeals to it as confirming his narration in respect to the standing still of the sun and moon, at the command of Joshua. Again, it is appealed to in 2 Sam. i. 18, as exhibiting evidence respecting David's lamentations over Saul and Jonathan. The credit of the book must of course have been good; for otherwise the sacred writers had no inducement to appeal to it. But whether the book was sacred or canonical at that time, is not decided satisfactorily by these appeals. (3.) When Samuel had anointed Saul as king, it is said that " he wrote the manner of the kingdom in a book, and laid it up before the Lord;" 1 Sam. x. 25. Undoubtedly this was author- itative; but of the book itself we have no further notice or know- ledge. It has been called. The Booh of the Constitution of the Kingdom; but no name is given to it in Scripture. (3.) Solomon"'s three thousand proverbs, his thousand and five songs, and his works on natural history (2 Kings iv. 32, 33), may have in part been sacred. E. g. the present book of Pro- verbs may not improbably contain some of the 3000 which he spoke. Possibly some of the songs may have been sacred ones ; but if they were, we should naturally suppose that some of them would have been preserved, with his name attached to them. I suppose no one will contend, that Solomon's works on natural history belonged to the canon. If the Canticles could be shown to be a work of Solomon, with any good degree of probability, they might be regarded, perhaps, as a part of his songs. That no more of his poems (if any) have been preserved, may not improbably be the result of that distinction, which the Jews early made between books of a sacred nature and those on other topics. Yet all-destroying time has taken from us not a few books once undoubtedly regarded as sacred. § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THE HEBIIRWS. H)l (4.) Tlie book oi the Acts of Solomon appears to have been a copious history of his reign and achievements; to which refer- ence is made by the sacred writer in 1 Kings xi. 41, as a stand- ard and authentic work on this subject. (5.) The book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is appealed to in 1 Kings xiv. 19; xvi. 5, 20, 27; xxii. 39, as containing copious accounts of five several Israelitish kings, in distinction from those of Judah. (6.) The book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is indicat- ed, in 1 Kings xv. 7, as a more copious source of the history of Abijam, a king of Judah. (7.) The Acts of David, first and last, are said in 1 Chron. xxix. 29, to be written in the Book of Samuel the seer, in the Book of Nathan the prophet, and in the Book of Gad the seer. Such a king as David would naturally have many biographers. In this case, three contemporary prophets, it seems, wrote an account of this extraordinary ruler. Possibly our present book of Samuel may be one of these, or a combination of more than one. (8.) A copious life of Solomon was also written by Nathan the prophet, and Ahijah the Shilonite, and Iddo the seer. The two last books are entitled, respectively, prophecy, and visions; 2 Chron. ix. 29. (9.) The acts of Rehoboam were also written by Shemaiah the prophet, and by Iddo the seer, in a work concerning genea- logies; 2 Chron. xii. 15. (10.) A copious Life of Uzziah was written by Isaiah the son of Amoz; 2 Chron. xxvi. 22. (11.) The Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah, appealed to in 2 Chron. xxviii. 26; xxxv. 27; xxxvi. 8, may possibly be our present book of Kings. Yet I do not think this to be certain. (12.) The Book of Jehu the son of Hanani (see 1 Kings xvi. 1, 7) contained the history of Jchoshaphat; 2 Chron. xx. o4. (13.) A special Life of Hezekiah, written by Isaiah the pro- phet, is mentioned in 2 Chron. xxxii . 32; which is perhaps that portion of our present Isaiah contained in chap, xxxvi. — xxxix. Also the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah is mentioned; which may be our present book of Kings. (14.) The biography of Manasseh, that wicked king of Judah, is said, in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18, to be written in the Book of the Kings of Israel. The ^"{'^,j-^ "^"^l^f J" the same passage may mean, and probably does mean, the icords of Ilozai (a prophet) M 162 § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THE HEHREWS, who spake to Manasseh in the name of the Lord. What he said is also recorded in same book of Kings. Mr Parker (I. p. 41 1 ) represents these words of Hozai as being of themselves a book. (15.) Tlie Lamentations of Jeremiah over Josiah's untimely death, 2 Chron. xxxv, 25, seems plainly to be a different book fi'om that which we now have under the like title, and which says nothing of Josiah. Besides these, mention is made of a book in Exod. xvii. 14, xxiv. 7; in either case it is probably one of the compositions of Moses, which are now embodied in the Pentateuch, to which reference is made. In Isa. xxxiv. 16, the Book of the Lord seems most naturally to mean, the Scriptures then extant, and which reveal the certainty that what God had promised he would perform. As to the passages in Isaiah xxix. 11; 1 Chron, iv. 22, no particular book is meant, but a book in a genuine sense. In the last case, perhaps, no book at all is meant, for Qij^ip^ □''■^H'^ ^^^y-i ^^^ probably does, mean ancient matters. From this brief sketch of ancient Hebrew writings, no longer extant, it appears that many books containing more am- ple histories of all the leading kings of Judah and Israel, and more ample biographies of their distinguished men, have perish- ed. It is in vain to argue against this; as Hottinger {Thes. Philol. p. 534 seq.) does, and many other strenuous Protestants have done. Hottinger assumes the position, that God in his providence would not permit a canonical hook to be lost; and that the church, the faithful depository of the Divine records, cannot possibly have been so deficient in its duty, as to suffer the loss to take place. But what has become of Paul's (really first) epistle which he wrote to the Corinthians, and to which he appeals in 1 Cor. v. 9? What has become of John's letter to the church with which Diotrephes was connected? 3 John ver. 9. I know of no a priori reasoning, on such a question, that can satisfy us. The loss of a writing is a possible thing — in a long series of exile and misfortune, even a probable thing; and at all events the question concerning it is one merely oi fact. As such, in the present case, it is easily decided. Are the books above named now extant? If they are, nothing is known of them, either among Jews or Christians. It will not do to say, as Hottinger and others have said, that the very fact of the loss proves that the books in question were never a part of the Jewish canon. As to the technical sense of the word canon, it § 7. I.O.ST BOOKS OF THP: HKKKEWS. 1 G'j was introduced only after the Christian era liad advanced a con- siderable period. But the main thing aimed at by employing this word, can, as it seems to me, be well predicated of many, yea of most, of the lost books in question. What were these books i Prophecies, or prophetico-historical works, the religious annals of the Jewish nation, both as to historical and biogra- phical matters. Plainly the writers, as a body, were of the order of the prophets. And were not books written by Nathan the prophet, and Gad the prophet, and Iddo the seer, and Isaiah the prophet, and by others of the same office, counted sacred by the Hebrews ? We can hardly imagine the contrary. But if any one should hesitate to acknowledge this, on the ground that prophets might write other books than those which were inspired, still the manner of appeal to the works in question which are noio lost, both in Kings and Chronicles, shows beyond all reasonable doubt that they were regarded as authoritative and sacred. For how could a writer remit his readers for fuller authentic infor- mation to those books which he did not regard as standing on the same basis as his own work, in respect to being worthy of credit? Had we now those fuller narratives which are so fre- quently appealed to in the present books of Kings and Chroni- cles, who can well doubt that many a seeming difficulty, in these abridgments of Jewish history, would be solved to our entire satisfaction? I have called these last-named works abridgments. In truth all the historical books of the Hebrews that we possess, wear the appearance of abridgments, if we except perhaps the books of Samuel, Ruth, and Esther. It is impossible to read, with a critical eye, the historical books of the Old Testament, without being struck with the palpable difference between them and the leading historical works of the Greeks, Romans, and modern nations of Europe. As to chronology, there is no general era to which all events are referred, in order to mark the time when they took place. The localities are everywhere supposed to be within the knowledge of the reader, with the exception that sometimes the older and the more recent names of places are both given. Then as to general plan, the exhaustive, or all- comprehensive method of modern history is a total stranger to the Scriptures. It plainly is not the design of the sacred wri- ters to chronicle civil events because they are civil events and relate to the civil and social state of the Hebrew nation, but 164 § 7- LOST BOOKS OF THE HhBRtWS. because they are events connected with the theocracy, and are more or less connected with the rehgious developments of that nation. The book of Chronicles, so much decried of late, has above all others this aspect ; which perhaps is one of the rea- sons why so much critical displeasure has been shown toward it. Were it not that the name would sound as a novel thing, and be considered by some perhaps as a little derogatory to the sacred histories, we might name nearly all of them Anecdota Sacra, i. e. brief sketches of historical events, which have a con- nection with sacred things. This is their character throughout; with perhaps the few exceptions already named. The tribunal of modern historical criticism would doubtless have many a fault to find with them, in respect to historical aesthetics. But this tribunal is one that has been erected by science, and rhetoric, and the strict method which a logical connection demands. The Hebrew compositions cannot fairly be tried by this. The He- brews never had schools of science, of rhetoric, or of philosophy. To the technical demands of these they do not respond. All their compositions have a higher end in view, than that of an- swering the demands of science or philosophy. The all-pervad- ing element in them is that of religion and morality. To be eloquent, to be attractive, to be graceful or amusing in narra- tion, seem never to have been objects distinctly before the minds of the Hebrew writers. To record what concerned the worship of God, the religious state of his people, their chastisements and their blessings, and not unfrequently what concerned distin- guished individuals among them; to say or to sing what would make the people wiser and better — these are the objects always before the minds of these peculiar writers. They have followed no models of writing among other nations. All that they have produced is of spontaneous growth. But is it not a vigorous one? Has it not borne much wholesome fruit? Has science, philosophy, rhetoric, the art of criticism — all scientific means and cultivation united — produced compositions of more power, and of higher perfection in their kind, than those of the He- brews? I know of none. I know of no narrations that surpass in interest some of the scriptural ones; no epics that make a deeper impression than the book of Job and the Apocalypse; no lyrics that exceed those of David and the sons of Korah; no preaching, no moral painting, more elevated, sublime, graphic, soul-stirring, than that which can be found in the prophets. § 7. LOST BOOKS OF TlIK IIKHIIKWS. 165 In passing such a judgment on these books, I do not and would not summon them before the tribunal of occidental criti- cism. Asia is one world, Europe and America another. Let an Asiatic be tried before his own tribunal. To pass just sen- tence upon him, we must enter into his feelings views, methods of reasoning and thinking, and place ourselves in the midst of the circumstances which surrounded him. Then we must sum- mon the books of the Hebrews before us; and if, on a fair trial, they are not found to exceed in the sterling qualities of good writing, those produced by any other nation, I can only say that my partiality for them has misled me. In the mean time, this matter proffers to the mind of a reflect- ing person some considerations of serious moment. How came a people, who never had schools of art, science, rhetoric, or phi- losophy, to write in such a manner, and to attain to such excel- lence? This is a problem for the Naturalists or Rationalists, who doubt or deny all inspiration; a problem which they have not hitherto satisfactorily solved ; one which we may, without any great degree of presumption, believe they will not be able to solve. But to resume our present theme; it is not difficult to account for the abridged histories of the Hebrews being preserved, while the more copious ones, which have been brought to view above, have perished. During the long exile of the Jews in Babylonia, they must have been in circumstances very unfavourable to the cultivation of letters, or to the preservation of their former litera- ture, either sacred or common. Manuscripts were costly; the men who could copy them, in their state of slavery, must have been few. Under such circumstances, the books already writ- ten, being extant in only a few copies, and these written upon perishable material, and specially the more copious and therefore themore costly books, might easily be lost. More particularly may we suppose this to have been the case, after the abridged works of Kings and Chronicles were compiled. It strikes me that both of these works were mainly compiled during the exile, for the very purpose of preserving, in a brief and compact form, the memora- hilia of the Jewish history. Such abridgments could be copied, and purchased, at a much easier rate than the original and more ample works to which they continually refer. The very fact, that the references to ampler sources are so frequent, shows the honest and huiia fide design of the compilers. Tiny were not 166 § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THE HEBREWS. only satisfied themselves that they composed a faithful narration, but they were willing that others should go to the originals and see for themselves whether such was the case. If any one is disquieted still with the idea that many of the original and more copious sacred books have been lost, he would perhaps do well to ask the question : " How large would the Scriptures now be, if all the sacred books had been preserved ? The apostle John, in apologizing as it were for the briefness of his narrative, tells us that he has omitted many things which Jesus said and did, because the world would not contain {yy^Yimi) the books that must be written, if all should be narrated. I do not understand x^j^^^ai here in the physical sense, i. e. to afford place for, to afford physical room for, but in the tropical sense, viz., that the times would not bear with such copiousness, and that therefore it would be inexpedient. So of the Jewish histori- cal books. We possess abridgments of them — such as are worthy of credit. We have before us the main points of their history that stand connected with the development of religion and of moral character. We possess that portion of it which is adapt- ed to make religious impressions. Curiosity would reHsh more, but religious exigency calls for no more. The more copious his- tories, now lost, once had their day of usefulness. They were not written in vain, for the ancient people of God. But to make the Scriptures a volume portable, procurable for all, and one which may be read by all, may have been one design of an overruling Provi- dence in permitting so many of the more copious books to perish. If this be still deemed improbable or impossible by any one, we may ask him to explain how or ichT/ such errors in the book of Chronicles, and in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, (e. g. in re- gard to the numbers in the register which they have respectively recorded, Ez. chap, ii., Neh. chap, vii.), have been permitted to creep in, and thus deform the sacred text. Why have heresies been permitted to come into the church? Why has the church general, and almost without exception, been suffered to wan- dor far away from the simple and spiritual truths of the gos- pel, and to substitute rites and forms for penitence and faith? Would it not be easy to show by a priori reasoning, (at least as good as that employed to show that no sacred books can have been lost), that errors in the sacred text or in the church can- not be deemed probable or even possible? Where, it may be asked, are the promises of God to his children, and to his church? § 7. LOST JJOOK.S OF THE HEBREW'S. 167 What sliall be said of his assurance that he will teach and guide them in the way of his testimonies, and make his churcli always a pillar and ground of the truth? These and the like questions are very obvious ones, and are much more easily asked than answered. The truth seems to be, that some, perhaps many, expect too much of a revelation made in ancient times. It must be absolutely perfect, in all respects, and moreover be immutably preserved. And although they have read in PauTs epistles that " the Law made nothing perfect,*" yet they seem not to recognize the truth of this in any one particular, save in respect to Leviti- cal rites and ceremonies. It is my belief, that the gospel has a high pre-eminence above the Law; but also, that the Law was as really from God as the Gospel. Why should not the Mosaic in- stitution be viewed as being what it actually was, a mere intro- ductory dispensation in respect to the gospel? As such it had its time and place, its means, its regulations, rites, laws, revelations — all adapted to accomplish the subordinate objects to which they had respect. Viewed in this light, the institutions of Moses will bear a thorough examination. The fair question in respect to anything belonging to it always is : Is that thing adap- ted to answer the end proposed, in a dispensation which is mere- ly prefatory, or introductory to a higher and more perfect dispen- sation? The lost books of the Hebrews may have been subser- vient to the purpose for which they were composed ; they doubt- less were. But if Heaven had judged them to be essential to the prosperity and well-being of Christianity, we may well suppose they would have been preserved. They were not judged to be necessary; at least, if events may explain the designs of Provi- dence, this would seem to have been the case. There are even some parts of our Old Testament canon, as it now is, which, if they had been lost, would not have changed the face of a single doctrine or duty of Christianity. Yet, while I readily accede to this view of our subject, I should be far from saying that any of the books which we have are useless. But on this part of the subject, I hope to say something in the sequel, when our inves- tigations shall have come to a close. I do not pretend that there is nothing mysterious in the dis- pensations of Providence, which have permitted some of the sa- cred books to perish, and others to have been in some slight re- spects marred, in the course of transcription. I am well aware that a perpetual miracle in order to preserve the Scriptures has 168 § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THE HEBKEWS. not unfrequently been assumed, and zealously maintained. But facts contradict this. It is of no use to close our eyes against these. We shall neither convince ourselves, nor any one else, by such a process. But if I reject the Scriptures as a revelation from God on this account, I must reject the church as a divine institution on the like account. There is not a church on earth there never has been one, in which some of its members did not entertain erroneous or imperfect views of some truth with which religion has a more intimate or more remote connection. Yet after all this is conceded, it remains a truth, that there is, and always has been, a real and spiritual church on earth, a spiritual kingdom of God among men. There is nothing which is depen- dent on the agency and management of erring man, but what will sooner or later, in one way or another, receive some stain from the hands through which it passes, or be in some respect marred by human management. It has been so with Christian- ity itself. It has been and is so in respect to the rational and moral powers of man. The Bible, in the long and difficult, and in some cases even perilous, transition of it from one age to ano- ther, has come to bear some traces of having been subjected to a like, — i. e. to human, — care and management. But sliall it be urged as a valid objection against the God-like nature of reason^ that men abuse and pervert this faculty? Is there no evidence that conscience is heaven- born, because there are perverted con- sciences and seared consciences? And by virtue of a similar process of reasoning, we may also ask: Does it follow that the Bible, in its origin, is not a Divine book, an authoritative book, because, in transmitting some parts of its records for a period of more than 3000 years, and in transmitting all of it, even the latest books in the New Testament, for a period of some 1800 years, (most of this time, be it remembered, by mere chirography in MSS., before the art of printing was known), some things of comparatively small moment have been disturbed, or by mistake in transcribers and redactors subjected to error? Not one doc- trine is changed by all this; not one duty affected; not even the relation of any one historic event has been so disturbed, that the moral impression which it was designed to make is in any im- portant degree subverted. There is surely nothing short of a perpetual miracle which could have prevented some mistakes. But is there any evidence of such a miracle? I know of no satis- factory evidence, to say the least. I am well aware that the § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THK HEBTIEWS. 169 time has been, when leading men in the Protestant church main- tained the absolute inviolahilitT/ of the Scriptures. The Buxtorfs, and men of that class, gigantic scholars too in their way, did not scruple to maintain, that not only all the Hebrew letters were the same in all the MSS. the world over, but that even the vow- el-points and accents were, and always had been, identically the same from the time of Moses down to the then present hour. Investigation has dissipated this pleasant dream. In the Heb- rew MSS. that have been examined, some 800,000 various read- ings actually occur, as to the Hebrew consonants. How many as to the vowel-points and accents, no man knows. And the like to this is true of the New Testament. But at the same time it is equally true, that all these taken together do not change or materially affect any important point of doctrine, precept, or even history. A great proportion, indeed the mass, of variations in Hebrew MSS. when minutely scanned, amount to nothing more than the difference in spelling a multitude of English words. AVhat matters it, as to the meaning, whether one writes honour or honor ^ whether he writes centre or center? And what matters it in Hebrew, whether one writes ^p or ^^■p, -j-por-^p, Tj'^?p*i or .-pi^^^? Indeed one may travel through the immense desert (so I can hard- ly help naming it) of Kennicott and De Rossi, and (if I may ven- ture to speak in homely phrase) not find game enough to be worth the hunting. So completely is this chase given up by re- cent critics on the Hebrew Scriptures, that a reference to either of these famous collators of MSS., who once created a great sensation among philologers through all Europe and America, is rarely to be found. So true, cogent, and applicable to the case in hand, is the old maxim of critical jurisprudence, De minimis non curat lex. But still, the ground taken by most of the older Protestant writers, in regard to the inviolahilitT/ of the sacred text, has been shown to be altogether untenable. Facts contradict their theory; and there is no arguing against facts. Why, moreover, should the advocates of this antiquated view of the subject before us, (for there are not a few of them even at the present time, although they are rare among the more en- lio-htened part of the religious community), — why should they be so strenuous in regard to a thing which is not only disproved by fact, but altogether unnecessary to an enlightened belief in the Divine authority of the Scriptures, or to the well-grounded ad- l70 § 7. LOST BOOKS OF THE HEBUEWS. vocacy of this authority? I am ready to say, that their fears about concession here are vain ; their hopes of convincing others, who examine critically into matters of this kind, are vain; and, I would add, the confident expectations of those who disclaim and oppose the Divine authority of the Scriptures, so far as objections of this nature are concerned, are also vain. We freely yield our assent to the allegation, that in our present copies of the Scriptures there are some discrepancies between different portions of them, which no learning or ingenuity can reconcile. Humanum est errare. The Bible has passed through the hands of erring men for a series of ages; and even the most sacred waters, flowing through a channel that has some impuri- ties in it, must contract some stain, or undergo some deprecia- tion. But what then ? As I have said once and again, not a doc- trine is changed, not a duty altered or obscured, not an impor- tant historical fact perverted. If so, we have no special interest in labouring with the Buxtorfs and others to establish views of the sacred text, which are contradicted by facts that lie upon the very face of the Scriptures. The honesty of their purpose, and even the warmth of piety which gave birth to it, I readily acknowledge and approve. But zeal without adequate know- ledge does not always propose the best ends, nor choose the best means to accomplish those ends. In the case before us, we may confidently take the position, that their theory, or at any rate, their mode of maintaining it, is destitute of solid support. On the other hand, when JMr Norton, De Wette, or his transla- tor, and a large portion of the German critics, assail the Scrip- tures, particularly the Old Testament, on the ground of discre- pancies and contradictions, (and they habitually do this), we need not say, in reply to them, that absolutely no discrepancies and no contradictions exist in our present Scriptural text; but we may say truly, — at least such is the view which I feel con- strained to take of the subject, — that these are so easily account- ed for, they amount in the whole to so few. they are in fact of so little importance, that they make nothing of serious import against the claims which the matter, the manner, and the cha- racter of the Scriptures prefer as the stable ground of our be- lief, and confidence, and obedience. One thing is absolutely certain. There is not in the world — there never has been — any such book as the Bible. There is none which looks to ends so § 8. PUESEKVATION OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 171 lofty, SO worthy of our highest interest and regard. If the Bible be not true, the destiny of man still remains enveloped in more than Egyptian night. § 8. Manner of preserving the Sacred Books. Since the art of printing was discovered in Europe, there has been little or no difficulty as to the preservation of valuable or interesting books. Copies being multiplied by thousands at a time, and this being repeated at intervals of time, such an occur- rence as the absolute loss of a valuable book has hardly been possible. It is difficult for us who live amidst the doings of the printing-press, of Bible Societies, and Tract Societies, to make a correct estimate of the state of the ancient Hebrews in regard to the diffusion and preservation of written compositions. Nothing is clearer, than that the art of writing, and even of reading, in the time of Moses, and indeed for centuries after- wards, was very limited among the Hebrews. The SJioterim (q-.«^^^S), however, a class of officers or magistrates among them, one must naturally suppose, were acquainted with the art of writing, and of course with reading; for the verb -^^^, of which the above word is a regular participle, means, both in Hebrew and Arabic, to write. The literal translation of "^t^tT ^® scriha^ y^a/x/xarsus, scribe. We find this class of men among the people in Egypt, Exod. v. 6 — 19, and in the desert. Numb. xi. 16. We trace them down to the latest period of the Jewish common- wealth ; see in 1 Chron. xxiii. 4, xxvi. 29, 2 Chron. xix. 1 1 ; xxxiv. 13. We are not, however, to understand that this class of men were mere copyists or chirographers, but magistrates, probably of different gradations, who kept written records of the things which they transacted. Besides these, the priests, at least some of them, and probably some of the Levites, were ac- quainted with reading and writing; for being the jurisconsults oi the nation, one cannot well divine how intelligent men among them would think of discharging their duties well, without being able to read the Law of Moses. There must be still less doubt as to the prophets among the Hebrews. They were the preachers of the Mosaic religion. The office which they performed was, as we have seen in the preceding pages, altogether analogous to that of ministers of the 172 § 8. PRESERVATION OF THE SACRED BOOKS. gospel. Priests neither preached nor prayed, i. e. as public teachers and in their official capacity; but they gave advice, when consulted, as to matters of law, of duty, and of conscience. Ministers of religion, in the sense of being its public teachers and defenders, they were not. Above all the men in the Jewish com- munity, it behoved the prophets to be acquainted with the Mosaic Law, and, from time to time, with such other Scriptures as were added to it. The very essence of their official duty, as preachers of righteousness, consisted in inculcating the doctrines which their sacred books and their holy men had taught. Still, plain as all this seems to be, there is no very definite and certain evidence, that priests and prophets themselves always, or even in general, were actually possessed of copies of the Mosaic Law; and so, after the time of David and Solomon, in respect to other portions of Scripture written during their reigns. Had the Mosaic Law been obeyed by all the kings of Judah and Israel, each king must have written out a copy of the Law for himself; for so Deut. xvii. 18 enjoins. That David, whose " delight was to meditate on the Laio of the Lord by day and by night," complied with this requisition, there can be no room for rational doubt. Perhaps as little doubt can be enter- tained respecting Solomon, who, in the former part of his reign,, was much devoted to study and to the promotion of the interests of religion. The like was doubtless done by other kings, who were distinguished for their piety and the spirit of obedience to the law. It will be recollected that, from Moses to Samuel, (about 300 years), we scarcely find mention of a prophet. Only one makes a momentary appearance in the book of Judges, Judg. vi. 8 seq. Almost as little, also, seems to be said aoncermng priests, during the same period, as concerning prophets. But from the time of Samuel down to Malachi, there was a succession o^ pro- phets in all probability unbroken, and priests are not unfrequent- ly brought to view. Were the Old Testament Scriptures in their hands? Were the copies of the Law, and other Scriptures, as they arose, so multiplied that all who wished could have access to them? A question not devoid of interest, but one which can scarce- ly be decided by any direct testimony within our reach. We can reason quite conclusively in respect to the subject, if we assume that all classes of the Hebrews, the Shoterim, the priests. 8 8. PRESERVATION OF THE SACRED HOOKS. 1 73 the Levites, kings, and other liigh officers of state, did their duty in regard to seeking the information requisite to discharge well and faithfully the functions of their office, under the Mosaic constitution. But it lies upon the very face of the Jewish his- tory, that all of these classes of officers did not usually perform the duty of making themselves familiar with the Mosaic insti- tutes, except as they gathered them from common and tradi- tional report. The frecjuent lapses of the nation into idolatry, which are everywhere recorded, are satisfactory proof that the Hebrews were not well instructed in the Mosaic laws, and that oftentimes the magistrates who governed them must have been ignorant as well as themselves. It is impossible to suppose, with any degree of probability, that the nation would have so often attached themselves to idol-worship, had the light of the then existing Scriptures been generally diffused among them. Moses did not make provision for schools, nor for early and efficient instruction in the Scriptures. Hence, when there were no prophets, (as seems to have been the case in the time of the Judges), or afterwards when there were but few in comparison with the wants of the people, it is no wonder that the mass of the nation fell into a state of the grossest ignorance. The Mosaic provision for reading the Law only once in seven years to the whole population (Deut. xxxi. 10 — 13), could not possi- bly be efficient enough to prevent this. Besides, in times of general declension from the spirit of piety, and above all in times of devotedness to the worship of idols, it was a matter of course that this public reading should be neglected. The his- tory of circumcision, of the passover, and of other public feasts, shows that such was the case in regard to these institutions. In times of idolatry, the people would not be duly summoned by the magistracy or the Levites to hear the Law; and if they were, they would not listen to the summons. The very fact that Moses provided for such a public reading, and ordered it, shows that he did not expect his written Imcs to he circulated in manuscrnpt among the mass of the people- In times of alienation from the worship of the true God, when the leaders of the peo- ple were themselves their misleaders, is it rational to suppose, that they would have subjected themselves to the trouble, and very serious expense, of procuring for themselves copies of the Pentateuch? Few, indeed, of the kings, either of Judah or Israel, (probably none of the latter), ever took pains to copy 174 is 8. PRESERVATION OK THE SACRED BOOKS. the Law; at least, the history of them gives us reason to believe that such was the case. A few occasional notices of arrangements made by some of the pious kings of Judah serve to show that the statements just made are in all probability correct. The pious Jehoshaphat, in the third year of his reign, sent out, as teaching missionaries among his people, some of the princes, Levites, and priests, and they went round among all the cities of Judah, and carried the hook of the laiv of the Lord with them, 2 Chron. xvii. 7 — 9. Now clearly, if these princes, Levites, and priests, had each a copy of the Law, which was their own property, and if this were a com- mon thing among them, it never could have occurred to the his- torian to make mention of such a circumstance. In giving the history of missionaries now, does any one ever think of specifying the fact, that they carry a Bihle with them in their journeys? If not, then does it not seem altogether probable, that in the case before us, the missionaries were required to take the copy of the Law from the temple, where it was deposited, in order that they might appeal to it in all their public instructions? Could other copies of the Law have been accessible among the Jews, at that time, when this copy in the temple was permitted to be taken? It seems, at least, to be very improbable. Who should have such copies, if not princes and Levites and priests who attended on the court, and who were sent on this mission? In the great reformation under Hezekiah, we find an express recognition of celebrating a famous passover " according to the law of Moses" (2 Chron. xxx. 16); but there is nothing men- tioned in this connection which would cast light on the subject before us, excepting the fact, that many came to the passover unsanctified, and of course unprepared to celebrate it in a legal manner, 2 Chron. xxx. 17 — 20. Must not this have been in consequence of ignorance respecting the Mosaic law? It seems probable, at least; and the more so, inasmuch as Hezekiah ad- mitted them to the passover, and prayed the Lord to forgive their sin of ignorance, which prayer was granted. A circum- stance this, I may add, which is replete with instruction to those who place too much stress upon the rites, and forms, and exter- nals of religion. In Josiah's time, it seems nearly certain that the copies of the Law were reduced to one; at least that no more could be found or were accessible. The astonishment of the king and his court, 8 8. ritESKBVATION OP THE SACRED nOOKS. 1 75 yea of the hiirh-priest Hilkiah himself, who found a copy in the temple, is such as to show, that none of these persons possessed a copy of their own, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14 seq. We have already seen, that the fifty-seven years of idolatry under the reign of Manasseh and Amon had probably occasioned this dearth of copies: and also that the bitter and bloody persecution of that time, was probably the cause why the copy had been hid which was found by Josiah. But be this as it may, it is clear enough that the supposition of a general circulation of the Scriptures in MS. among the Hebrews before the exile is out of all question. It seems to be almost equally clear, moreover, that kings, princes, priests and Levites, did not ordinarily take any pains to possess themselves of a copy of the Scriptures. Individuals among all these classes there might be, and more probably still among the prophets, and some also even in private life, who did possess copies of the Law; I mean that such might be, and occasionally was, in all probability, the case. But the perishable materials on which these copies were written, and the little interest that would be felt in them in times of deep and general declension from the spirit of true religion, sufficiently account for the speedy loss or destruction of most codices once (as we express it) in circulation. That the fear of an entire and utter loss of the Pentateuch, after the occurrence already spoken of in the time of Josiah, would probably lead to a considerable multiplication of copies, there can be no good room to doubt. That the brief reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakira, Jehoiakin, and Zedekiah, (only some twenty-two years in the whole,) before the exile, would destroy all, or even most, of these codices, cannot be deemed very pro- bable. These kings did not persecute in such a furious manner as Manasseh had done. When the king of Babylon " burnt the house of God, and all the palaces thereof, and slew the young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary,"" (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16, 17,) it is not probable that ho destroyed the sacred books in the temple; for as the city of Jerusalem had sustained a siege of about two yeai's' continuance, sufficient warning must have been given to priests and prophets to take care of those books. The story in 2 Mace. ii. 1 seq., respecting the part which Jeremiah acted, when the temple was burnt, is very curious; and although mixed with a spicing of fable, in all probability has 176 § 8. PllKSEHVATlON OF THK SACRED BOOKS, some truth for its basis. The substance of it is, that this pro- phet took some of the holy fire and the book of the Law, and committed them to the charge of some of the exiles, with strict injunction to keep them safely and never neglect them. At the same time, (which is the fabulous part of the story,) the prophet, moved by a special revelation, commanded the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant to follow him to Mount Sinai, where he hid them, with the altar of incense, in a cave, until the time of restoration and prosperity should return. The writer appeals to d~D'yia(pc/j and to /jf/f)? as containing this account, ver. 1, 4. He relates moreover what Nehemiah did in collecting sacred books for the renewed commonwealth of the Jews; but this belongs to a subsequent part of our subject. In respect to this whole matter, it seems altogether probable, that such a man as Jere- miah, himself a priest and having ready access to the temple, would preserve the sacred records deposited there, and secure them against destruction. However this may be, it is at least certain, that Zerubbabel and Jeshua arranged the ritual of Jew- ish worship according to the Laio o/3Ioses, when they came up with the first colony of the returning exiles, Ezra iii. 2. After- wards, when it is related that Ezra came up with a second colony (Ez. vii. 1 seq.), he is spoken of as " a ready scribe in the Law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given," Ez. vii. 6. That the Law, therefore, and probably other Scriptural books, were in the hands of the Jews, i. e. of the literary part of them, during the exile, seems quite certain. Private individuals doubt- less possessed some copies; and surely such a man as Ezra must have had it in his power to be a diligent student of them, while he was yet in exile. Let us advert, for a moment, to the account which is given in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, of the preservation of at least some of the sacred books, as they came from the hands of their authors. In Deut. xvii. 18, Moses speaks of a cop^ of this Law in a boo^, to be made by each king with his own hand, and then speaks of that book as being before the priests the Levites, i. e. under their inspection or guardianship, and of course in the temple. In Deut. xxxi. 9, it is said that " Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi," i. e. he committed it to them for safe keeping. In Deut. xxxi. 26, Moses is said to have commanded the priests who bore the ark of the covenant, to " take the book of the Law and put it in the side § 8. PRESERVATION OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 177 of the ark of the covenant," there to be kept as a permanent witness against the Israelites, in case they should break the co- venant. It is not essential to our present purpose, whether the whole of the Pentateuch or of Deuteronomy, or only a portion of the latter, is here designated by the phrase p[.-j,-f n'linn 1DD5 . . — ^ — Y .. although no one can give a satisfactory reason, why one portion of Deuteronomy should be so preserved and not another. But still, the word -^Qp ^® employed to designate a writing which is complete in itself, whether longer or shorter, and it can hardly mean merely extracts from the Law, or a certain small portion of it. That there was a book in Moses"* time, a record in which were written important laws, arrangements, and occurrences, and which was deposited by the ark, seems to be nearly certain from the manner in which it is so often adverted to; e. g. Moses is commanded (Ex. xvii. 14) to write an account of the contest with Amalek "^55^, in the hook (not in a book), and of course in some noted or well-known book; in Ex. xxiv. 7, it is said, that " he tooJc the hook of the covenant and read in the audience of the people," which doubtless means the laws in Ex. xx — xxiv; in Deut. xxviii. 58, Moses speaks of the words of this Law written n'?n "^QDi' ^^^' ^'^ ^^''^ ^''^'"'^ hook, (which is the most exact trans- lation that we can make of the phrase in English); and in Deut. xxviii. 61, he speaks of the hook of this law; and in these two latter cases, what he says was in an address to the people. To be intelligible, he must have referred to a icell-knoicn book, probably to one which was held up before them while he was addressing them. This same book, called the hook of the Law in Deut. xxxi. 26, was the one which Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant, to take and put h^ the side, or at the side, or on the side (t^, 72 being often used in Hebrew to denote proximate or dependent localities), of the ark of the covenant. There is nothing inconsistent with the suppo- sition that the book of the Law, i. e. the Pentateuch as a whole, was kept in that place, in the assertion made in 1 Kings viii. 9, and 2 Chron. v. 10, viz., that "there was nothing in the ark [when it was transferred to the sanctuary of the newly built temple], save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb." The Hebrew here is p'^fc^^, in the ark, which is quite a different phrase from the 'j'i'^i^ 12i'2' ^'^ '^^^ ^^^^<^ of the ark, in N 178 § 8. PRESERVATION OF THE SACRED BOOKS, Deut. xxxi. 26; although De Wette in his Introduction has confounded them, and endeavoured to make some capital out of this circumstance for his purpose of destructive criticism. The Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 4) speaks in the same way of only the tables of the covenant, i. e. the stone tablets on which the ten commandments were engraved, as being in the ark, see Ex. xxxi. 18, xxxii. 15, 16, xxxiv. 1, 28, Deut. ix. 10, and particu- larly X. 1 — 5. Josephus repeats the same idea, Antiq. VIII. 4. 1, " The ark contained nothing else except the two tablets of stone, which preserved the ten commandments spoken by the Lord to Moses, and written upon them at Mount Sinai." Traces of the fact that the law of Moses was deposited in the sanctuary along with the ark of the covenant, for safe keeping, may be found in subsequent parts of the Old Testament. In Josh. xxiv. 26 it is said, that " he wrote these words [which most naturally means the two addresses that he made to the people near the close of his life. Josh, xxiii. xxiv.] in the book of the Law of God; and he took a great stone and set it up there [as witness betweeen him and the people] under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord;" in other words, he wrote down his solemn addresses, and joined them to the Pentateuch or words of Moses kept in the sanctuary. Again, in 1 Sam. x. 25 it is said, that this prophet "told the people the manner of the kingdom [of Saul], and wrote it "^r^n, in the hook i" which of course must mean a well-known book; and what other one could this be than " the Law of the Lord," to which Joshua had annexed his admonitions? The solemnity and importance of the occasion demanded such an authentication as would be made by this circumstance, and perpetuity, moreover, would thus be secured to the written constitution of the kingdom. Of course we are prepared by occurrences like these, to ex- pect what is related of the Pentateuch in the time of Josiah, viz., that it was found in the temple; although in this case surely not in its usual place by the side of the ark. It had been with- drawn and hidden by some pious hand, to save it from the deso- lating fury of Manasseh. Does not, moreover, the passage in Isa. xxxiv. 16 refer to the holy hihliotheca in the temple, surnamed the hook of the Lord? After predicting various evils to Edom, the prophet says: " Seek ye out o^ the hook {"yrO ^2^?2)) of^J>'^ Lord, and read; no one of these shall fail." That this expression does not refer to what § 8. I'nESEUVATION OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 179 the prophet had himself just uttered, Knobel has clearly shown in his Commentary on this book; although Rosenmiiller and others have defended this mode of interpretation. Gesenius supposes him to advert to a collection of sacred booh, with which his own was to be associated. That he refers to some prophecy or predictions in other and sacred books, seems to be quite cer- tain from the tenor of the passage and the nature of the reason- ino-. But whether these books were a part of our present canon or not, it would be more difficult to say. Still, the phrase, book of the Lord, and the certainty of the writer that what was con- tained therein would take place, show that the book in question was a well-known and definite one, and one also of sacred au- thority. There was therefore, at the period when this was writ- ten, a collection of sacred writings ; and the expression, book of the Lord, may refer either to the divine origin of the book, or to the fact that it was kept where God was supposed to dwell, viz. in the inner sanctuary. It is quite possible, moreover, that the prophecy referred to, maybe virtually contained in the declarations of Isaac respecting Esau in Gen. xxvii. 37 seq., so that the Penta- teuch itself is the book of the Lord to which reference is made. That what was done in ancient times, in respect to the sacred books of the Hebrews, was done at a later period, after the se- cond temple was built, seems to be manifest from various passa- ges in Josephus. Speaking of Moses' bringing water from the rock (Antiq. III. 1, 7), he says: That God had foretold this to Moses, hrt}.o7 sv T/,ovig ; -^1. Hist. An. xi. 10; Aristot. Pol. vi. 8; Demosth, pro Cor. c. 27. Among the Romans, also, the most ancient literature, viz. songs and annals, was the production of priests; Niebuhr Bom. Ge- schichte, i. p. 247, ed. ii. Biihr, Gesch. d. Bom. Lit., pp. 53 seq,, 250 seq. It is no matter of surprise, then, that Strabo (Lib. xiv. p. 734, ed. Xyl.) calls temples Tr/vaxoSJixa/, i. e. tablet or book- depositories. In accordance with this is the account given of Sanchoniathon, the Phenician historian, who, about the time of the Trojan war, or perhaps earlier, compiled a work out of the temple- archives — a work which was translated into Greek by Philo Biblius (c. A.D. 100), in nine books, and then was quoted largely by Porphyry, and also by Eusebius {Prwp. Evang. i. 9). San- choniathon himself quotes older writers ; all of which, by the way, has a decisive bearing on the question about the antiquity of alphabetical writing. Berosus, in the time of Ptolemy Phila- delphus (c. 280 b.c), wrote, in three books, the Antiquities of Chaldea and Babylonia, the materials of which he drew from the archives of the temple of Belus, where he was a priest. The kings of Sparta, who were also j^riests, kept prophetic writ- ings in tho temple, which had respect to their country; Herod. vi. 67. At Athens, oracles, and secret compacts important to the welfare of the city, were kept in the Acropolis, in order to prevent all falsification; Dinarch. Orat. cont. Demosth. 91. 20. Heraclitus deposited his Work upon Nature, in the sanctuary of Diana at Ephesus, in order to withdraw it from the eyes of the profane; Diog. Laert. ix. 6. So also the Romans kept their 188 § 9. GENUINENESS 01-' THE OLD TESTAxMENT. Libri Fulgurales in the temple of Apollo (Sere, ad Aen. vi. 72); their Libii Lintel, in the temple of Juno Moneta (Liv. iv. 8; ix. 18); the Sibyls, priestesses of Apollo, kept their Carmina in the Capitol; Niebuhr, Eom. Geschichte, i. p. 256 secj. A practice of this kind could hardly have become so general, without some obvious reasons for it. In all cases of this nature it is quite plain, that the sacredness of the place was relied on as likely to secure the inviolability of the books; and the perma- nent structure of the building was also relied on, as affording good assurance of preservation. In the case of the Hebrews, many reasons combined to induce them to institute and keep up such a usage. The priests were the masters of the ritual, which was exceedingly minute and circumstantial; and they were also i\iQ jurisconsults and ecclesiastical judges of the nation. The ne- cessity of having the code of laws always at hand, would compel them to have temple-archives. That they did so, admits of no reasonable doubt. § 9. General Considerations respecting the Genuineness of the BooJis in the Old Testament Canon, I have now gone through with some account of the books comprised in the canon of the Old Testament, in regard to their origin and authorship, and also in respect to the manner in which they were preserved in the early ages. It may not be impi'oper to introduce, at this juncture, a few considerations of a general nature, in regcard to the collection of books which we name the Old Testament, Whoever is acquainted with the works of the late J. G. Eich- horn of Gottingen, knows full well, that for some thirty years he was the sun of the neological firmament. Doubtless his writings, many of them being at the same time both popular and learned, did more than those of any other person of his time, to bring forward and consummate the great revolution in theology and criticism, which has taken place in Germany and the bordering countries. Such a man no one will suspect of orthodox prejudice. All his feelings and his writings were alien enough from this. Still, on mere subjects of critique and of {esthetics, he was usually a candid and fair-minded man. At all events ho rarely says anything that is not worth listening to, and he may put in a just claim at least to a respectful attention. § 9. GENERAL CONSIDF.nATIONa. 1 S9 In his Introduction to the Old Testament, (3d edit. § 12 scq.) he has given his views of the genuineness of the sacred books in general; and he has expressed them in such a way, that I have thought it on the whole better to employ his words than my own, in reference to the topic under consideration. If I am suspected of hemg juratus in verba magistri, as doubtless I may be by some who do not know me, he at least is removed far enough from all possible suspicion of this sort. If the Destructives 'wiW not listen to my suggestions, because, as they say, I must talk ortliodoxly, at least they ought to listen to him, who claims so near a relation- ship to them. Having described the general nature, names, and order of the Old Testament books, Eichhorn proceeds as follows : I. They do not arise from the forgery of any one individual. Whoever is endowed with adequate knowledge, and investigates with im- partiality the question, whether the ivrilings of the Old Testament are gen- uine, mu-t surely answer it in the affirmative. No one deceiver can have forged them all — this every page of the Old Testament proclaims. What a variety in language and expression! Isaiah does not write like Moses; nor Jeremiah like Ezekiel ; and between these and every one of the Minor Prophets a great gulf of style is fixed. The grammatical edifice of language in Moses, has much that is peculiar ; in the book of Judges occur provincial- isms and barbarisms. Isaiah pours forth words already formed in a new shape; Jeremiah and Ezekiel are full of Chaldaisms. In a word, when one proceeds from writers who are to be assigned to early periods of time, to those which are later, he finds in the language a gradual decline, until at last it sinks down into mere Chaldaic turns of expression. Then come next the discrepancies in the circle of ideas and of images. The stringed instruments sound aloud when touched by Moses and Isaiah ; soft is the tone when David handles them. Solomon's muse shines forth in all the splendour of a most luxurious court ; but her sister in simple attire wanders, with David, by the brooks and the river banks, in the fields and among the herds. One poet is original, like Isaiah, Joel, Habakkuk ; ano- ther copies like Ezekiel ; one roams in the untrodden path of genius, another glides along the way which his predecessors have trodden. From one issue rays of learning; whilst his neighbour lias nut been caught by one spark of li- terature. In the oldest writers strong Egyptian colours glimmer through and through ; in their successors they become fainter and fainter, until at last they entirely disappear. Finally, there is in manners and customs the finest gradation. At first, all is simple and natural, like to what we see in Homer, and among the Be- douin Arabs even at the present time ; but this noble simplicity gradually loses itself in luxury and effeminacy, and vanishes at last in the splendid court of Solomon. Nowhere is there a sudden leap; everywhere the progress is gradual. None hut ignorant or thoughtless doubters can suppose the Old Testament to have been forged by one deceiver. 190 § 9. GENUINENESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. The colouring which the painter has here employed is vivid, but the objects are true and real, and are not formed by his fancy. It is impossible to read the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exercise of any discriminating judgment and sesthetical feeling, without acceding in the main to what Eichhorn has stated. Thousands of nice touches and dashes of hght and shade, in the original objects, are lost in our English version, where all are mingled together, and melted so as to become one mass in the Anglo-Saxon crucible. But as to the critical reader of the Heh- rew — if he has one spark of sesthetical fire in him, or if he car- ries along with him even the feeblest torch of discrimination, he must accede to the truthfulness and the sound judgment of Eichhorn, as to this matter in general. A forgery of all these books by one person, would be a greater miracle than any which the books have related. But let us join again the company of the Gottinsren Professor: 'o^ II. They are not the forgery of many deceivers. " But perhaps," some one may reply — " perhaps many forgers have made common cause, and at the same time, in some later period, have got up the books in question." — But how could tliey forge in a way so entirely conform- ed to the progress of the human understanding? And was it possible in later times to create the language of Moses? This surpasses all human powers. Finally, one writer always supposes the existence of another. They could not then all have arisen at the same time ; they must have existed succes- sively. " Perhaps then," it may be further said, " such forgers arose at different times, who continued onward, in the introduction of supposititious writings from the place where tlieir deceitful predecessors had stopped. In this way may all the references to preceding writers be explained ; in this way may we explain the striking gradation that exists, in all its parts." But (1.) How was it possible that no one should have discovered the trick, exposed it, and put a brand upon the deceiver, in order that posterity might be secured against injury? How could a whole nation be often de- ceived, and at different periods? (2.) What design could such a deceiver have had in view? Did he aim at eulogizing the Hebrew nation? Then are his eulogies the severest satires: for according to the Old Testament, the Hebrew nation have acted a very degrading part. Or, did he mean to de- grade them? In this case, how could he force his books upon the very peo- ple whom they defamed, and the story of whose being trodden underfoot by foreign nations is told in plain blunt words? These remarks seem to me to be equally just with the preced- ing ones. A series of forgers, in such a succession of ages, all de- veloping an intimate acquaintance with predecessors, and still true to their own particular age in all their characteristic fea- § 9. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 191 tures ! And a nation distinguished above all others for activity and shrewdness, tamely receiving and submitting to all these im- positions! The thing is unheard of; it is improbable; nay, it is absolutely impossible, in the common course of things. Impos- tors and forgers write Isaiah, and Joel, and Habakkuk, and Na- hum, and Job, and the Psalms! It is impossible. It is alto- gether more incredible than any so-called myth in all the Old Testament. The story of Jonah and of Samson, which have set in motion the whole circle of obstreperous and vituperative criti- cism, is a matter quite within the reach of ordinary faith, in comparison with such a figment as this. I must solicit the attention of the reader to one point in par- ticular, to which Eichhorn has adverted, and which is peculiarly characteristic of the writers of the Old Testament. It is this, viz. that they disclose W\q faults as well as the virtues of men whom they hold up to view, and of the people to whom they be- long. What shall we say of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ja- cob, Moses even, David, Solomon, Asa, and others, in every way so conspicuous as ancestors or as kings of the Jewish nation? Is there one whose faults are not unveiled ? One even whose weak- nesses are not revealed? And what can we say of the whole his- tory? — the history of God's chosen peo^le^ distinguished from all the nations of the earth — the posterity of Abraham — the nation " to whom belongs the adoption, and the glory, and the cove- nants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises?" Is there a history on earth of any people, (unless it be some caricature sketched by the hand of an enemy), which is half so full of narrations that respect their perverseness, and dis- obedience, and rebellion, and gross idolatry and immorality? Where is there such a history? Who wrote it? Or if such an one exists, where is there an account of its being received by the very people whom it characterizes, and regarded as a book re- plete with truths that are Divine? The challenge to produce it, may be fearlessly made. The result is beyond a question. Will any one explain to me, now, how such a matter as the reception of the Jewish Scriptures as sacred was brought about, in the natural course of things? The historians and the pro- phets, one and all, charging the nation with ingratitude and rebellion, and threatening them with subjugation and exile, with sword and famine and pestilence — and yet these historians and prophets admitted as counsellors and guides, and their works 192 ^9. GENUINENESS OK THE OLD TESTAMENT. canonized! There is something of the extraordinary in all this, which is no myth^ to say the least. Naturalists are bound to untie the knot, we cannot permit them to cut it. But when one adds to all this the consideration of the matter as connected with forgery and imposture^ it becomes quite unen- durable. Forgers and impostors so elevated and honoured for characterizing a people in such a way, as must cause the cheek of every ingenuous Hebrew to blush for his nation! Is there nothing mythic in this? Men too of such a stamp as forgers and impostors, filled with overflowing zeal on all occasions for the worship and honour and glory of the true God, and for the holi- ness and benevolence, and justice and integrity, of the Hebrew nation! Is this the character of men of such a stamp? It is a downright contradiction of all that belongs to the history of our race. It is neither more nor less than a moral impossibility. " Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi." Romancers have in view the exaltation of their hero. Even the gravest and most tasteful of them scarcely glance at a fault. How has Xenophon presented his Cyrus; Homer his Achilles; Virgil his ^neas? Whatever we, judging by our standards, may find in them which is faulty, it was not the intention of these respective writers to hold up any faults to view. Is it so with the picture of David, in the book of Kings? So with the picture of even " the wisest of men'"? And if it be said that the books of Chronicles have kept the faults of these distinguished personages out of view, the reply is easy : The story was already told in the book of Kings, and the chronicler had in view prin- cipally what these Jewish monarchs did to accommodate, arrange, and complete the worship of God in the manner prescribed by Moses. No; the histories of the Jews are unlike those of all other nations. God and his honour, and worship, and ordinances, are the nucleus of them all. Men — the whole nation — are but secon- dary actors in this great drama. A David and a Solomon come before the tribunal of the historian, at his bidding, laying aside their crowns and their heroism and their wisdom, and standing there to be judged for their vices as impartially as the meanest subject in their kingdom. Is this so elsewhere, and in respect to men whoso virtues are preeminent? I cannot find it. How then was all this brought about? Not by forgers and impostors; not by the ordinary tactics of national historians and § 9. GENERAL C0N,S1DERATI0NS. lOo the writers of memoirs. There is an honesty, an integrity, a boldness, an independence, a love of truth, and a hatred of sin in every form, which stands out to view so prominently in all the historians and prophets of the Hebrews, that I feel compelled to say. The hand of the Lord is here; his Spirit breathed into these writers the breath of a piety which could not die; it kindled a flame in their breasts, whose light all the surrounding dark- ness could not extinguish. But I must desist. Once more then let us listen to the for- mer Coryphaeus of Neology. He gives us some diagnostics by which we may judge in respect to the genuineness of the books in question, § 13. Tlie Old Testament bears all the marks of genuineness enstami)eJ upon it. (I.) Tlie very same grounds which are available in a contest for Homer, establisli the genuineness of all and particular the books of the Old Testa- ment. Why should one deny to these the equity which he extends to heatlien writers? If a profane writer plants himself in some particular age and country, and if all the external and internal circumstances of his book accord with this, no impartial inquirer refuses to acknowledge him. Yea, one does not hesitate at all to determine the uncertain age of any writer, by internal arguments drawn from his Avorks. Why should not the critical inquirer respecting the Bible, walk in the same path? (2.) No one has yet, Avith any good grounds, been able to overthrow the integrity and credibility of the Old Testament. On the contrary, every discovery in ancient literature has hitherto only served for the confirmation of the Hebrew Scriptures. No one has shown, that any writer of the Old Testament has exhibited a style, or knowledge, or introduced circumstan- tial matters, which are not appropriate to the age assigned to him. (3.) In brief, all the books of the Old Testament, which bear the names of their authors, are marked with the stamp of integrity on the part of these autliors. And with respect to the books that are anonymous, internal grounds demonstrate that we must regard them as genuine. The book of Joshua, for example, whose author is unknown, goes so deep into the detail of the most ancient geograpliy, that a forger must have wrought miracle upon miracle, in order to put himself in a condition so as to compose it. Let one examine this matter in a discriminating way, and without preju- dice, and I am certain that he must convince himself of the integrity of the Old Testament. Eichhorn goes on, in the sequel, to show, that even on the ground that new accessions have been made to some of the books, and that several of them are compounded of various authors, no argument of any force can be drawn from this source, to confront the allegation of integrity. Such things have hap- pened to most of the early writers among other nations. Not a few books of the Scriptures are professedly drawn from other o 194 § 10, COMPLETION OF THE CANON. sources; and others not professedly so, exhibit internal marks of the fact. But a book compounded in this way may be as gen- uine and worthy of credit, as any other book. Thus thought and wrote the great leader of the new array, in the war against the Divine authority and obligation of the Scrip- tures. With him, when writing here, the question was one merely of critical judgment and feeling. Nobly has he managed the cause of what I believe to be sound criticism, and justly has he decided it. With all his freethinking and independence of mind, he is left, in the race of neological criticism, immeasurably behind De Wette, Ewald, Lengerke, Mr Norton, and their compeers. Leaving all theological bearings of our matter out of question for the present, I do not see how, as fair-minded critics and exe- getes, we can refuse to adopt the sentiments of Eichhorn, as exhibited above. I would not undertake to prove, that all which this writer has published will harmonize with these views. But I am gratified to have it in my power to express, in language borrowed from him, the views which I entertain in respect to this very important subject. § 10. Time when the Canon of the Old Testament was completed. This has, in recent times, become a uiuch contested question. The criticism that has been moving on in the wake of Wolf, Heyne, and their compeers, (who discovered that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are nothing but a mere farrago of many songs com- posed in different ages and countries, and that the art of alpha- betic writing was unknown in the time of Homer, and of course in the time of Moses), has made the like discoveries in regard to almost all the books of the Old Testament. According to recent critics, every book of the Old Testament, with the excep- tion of Ruth, Esther, possibly Canticles (but here they differ), Ezekiel, and some of the minor prophets, is a patch-work of cloth and colours, of all textures and all varieties. The time in which most of these books were composed, was, according to them, at or after — in some cases long after — the Babylonish exile. In particular, the book of Daniel is placed deep down, even into the time of the Maccabees, i. e. about 160 — 140 b.c; as also some of the Psalms, and not improbably various other portions of books the body of which may be older. The question in § 10. COMPLETION OF THE CANON. 195 respect to this matter is one of deep interest to sacred criticism; although it would not be very important to my present main purpose, which is to show what that canon of Old Testament books consisted of, which was sanctioned by Christ and his apos- tles. Even the most loose of the so-called liberal critics do not pretend that any of the Old Testament books have been added to the canon since the commencement of the Christian era; so that, come into being when or how they may, if they existed before the Christian era, and wei*e sanctioned as of Divine au- thority by the Author himself of Christianity, and by his apos- tles, it would be enough for my special purpose. But as I said at commencement of this treatise, I have a more general object in view, as well as the particular one just named; and this is, to give the outlines of the critical history of the Old Testament canon in general. To do this, it is indispensable to investigate, with some particularity, the point which is brought before us by the heading to the present section. I begin with the testimony of Josephus in relation to the mat- ter in question, because, although it is not the most ancient, it is still the most definite and particular that can be found in any writer of the more remote antiquity. It is found in his work Contra Apionetn, against whom he is defending the credibility and authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures. After appealing to the Agreement between profane and Old Testament history as to many important facts related in the Hebrew Scriptures, he then goes on to express himself as follows: — " We have not a countless number of books, discordant and arrayed against eacli other ; but only two and twenty books, containing the history of every age, which are justly accredited as divine [old editions of Josephus read merely; " which are justly accredited" — ^i7a. comes from Eusebius' transcript of Josephus in Ecc. Hist. iii. 10]; and of these ^i^e belong to Moses, which contain both the laws and the history of the generations of men until his death. This period lacks but little of 8000 years. From the death of Moses, moreover, until the reign of Artaxerxes, [Euseb. — ' from the death of Moses to that of Artaxerxes,' — and so most of the codices omit- ting a^z^ii, reign'], king of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets who follow- ed Moses have described the things which were done during the age of each one respectively, in thirteen books. The remaining /oj/?- contain hymns to God, and rules of life for men. From the time of Artaxerxes, moi'eovei", until our present period, all occurrences have been written down ; but tkey are not regarded as entitled to the like credit tvith those which precede them, because there tvas no certain succession of prophets. Fact has shown what confidence we place in our own writings. For although so many ages have 196 § 10. COMPLETION OF TIJE CANON. passed away, no one has dared to add to them, nor to take anything from them, nor to make alterations. In all Jews it is implanted, even from their birth, to regard them as being the instructions of God, and to abide stead- fastly by them, and if it be necessary to die gladly for them." (From tlie original Greek, see Appendix No. III.) Of the historian from whom this passage is taken, it is not necessary to say much. Josephus was perhaps more distinguish- ed and learned, than any other man of his time belonging to the Jewish nation. His father was a priest in the regular order of the twenty-four courses ordained by David; and his mother was a lineal descendant of the INIaccabean kings, who also were priests. His father Matthias was a man distinguished not only for his no- ble birth, but for his praiseworthy deeds. To his son Joseph or Josephus, lorn about a.d. 37, he gave the best education in his power; and so effectual were the means employed, that at the age of fourteen this boy was consulted by the chief priests and leaders of the city respecting difficult passages of the Law. So Josephus himself has told us; and this seems to render altogether improbable the allegations made here and there not unfrequent- ly, that Josephus had no tolerable acquaintance with the He- brew. At the age of sixteen he began his inquiries respecting the several Jewish sects, and actually spent three years in soli- tude with Banus one of the Essenes, in order to become thorough- ly acquainted with the principles of that sect. At the age of nine- teen he joined the sect of the Pharisees, which was altogether predominant at that period. At the age of twenty-six he went to Rome as advocate before Nero Csesar for some falsely-accused Jewish priests, and procured their liberation. Not long after this the 'Jewish war broke out, and Josephus, espousing the part of his countrymen, was put in command, and made a most gallant defence of Jotapata against Vespasian. But there, at length, he was taken prisoner, was subsequently kept by Vespasian and Titus as a medium of communication between them and the Jews; and finally, when the conquest of Judea had been complet- ed, he was taken by Titus to Rome, where Vespasian assigned him a dwelling in a part of the palace, with honorary mainten- ance. There he wrote his great works, the Antiquities and the History of the Jewish War. Later in life he wrote his Treatise afjaiiist Apion, in defence of the Jewish religion and their sacred books. Apion was a grammarian of Alexandria, who, under Caligula's reign, wrote a violent attack upon Philo Judaeus and § 10. COMI'LETION OF THE CANON*. 197 upon the Jewish nation. Near the close of the first century, Josephus wrote the Treatise in question; so that it is to be re- garded as the fruit of his most mature reflections and studies. His knowledge of Greek literature is spoken of by Jerome with astonishment. There is abundant evidence of it in his Contra Apionem. Ilis knowledge of the history of his own na- tion is sufficiently testified, by his two great works in relation to this subject. It has been thought that he was but moderately skilled in Hebrew, because he usually appeals to the Sept. Ver- sion. But for this, two good reasons can be assigned; the one, that he fully believed in the miraculous rise of the Septuagint, as is shown by his account of this matter; the other, that the Romans for whom he wrote the history, could read the Sep- tuagint but not the Hebrew Scriptui'es. That of all the men of his time among the Jews, he was best qualified to give an account of Jewish affairs and Jewish opin- ions, there can be no reasonable doubt. I can see nothing that could sway him to give a wrong account of what his countrymen and himself believed, in regard to the history of the Jewish can- on. What that behef was, his rank in life, his office as a priest, and above all his great learning, must have rendered him able to know. Can any good ground be assigned for the supposition, that he has not given a true account of this matter? The sect of the Pharisees, among whom he formed his re- ligious opinions, were of all men the most tenacious of traditions, and of the customs of former days; and when he assures us of this and that opinion among the Jews of his time, I do not know of any writer among the ancients, the sacred writers ex- cepted, who is more trust-worthy than he. Thus much, that the reader may understandingly appreciate the testimony which we have before us. I return to the con- sideration of that testimony. My first remark is, that there is no ground to suppose, that Josephus gives us any other than the general and settled opinion of the great mass of the Jewish nation. To the party of the Pharisees this mass assuredly belonged. The Sadducees were powerful only by virtue of wealth, and perhaps learning. They were but a small party. The Essenes lived mostly abroad, in desert or lonely places, and avoided mixing with the world, Josephus then gives us not a peculiar opinion of his own merely, but speaks evidently in behalf of the great mass of the Jewish 198 § 10. COMPLETION OF THE CANON. people. Finally, if there were anything merely sectarian in the views of the Pharisees respecting the Hebrew canon, Josephus would not have been likely to embrace that in the latter part of his life, inasmuch as he evidently lost, in later life, his early zeal for Pharisaism, as appears from many passages in his Antiquities. On the whole, we can hardly conceive of any one in a better con- dition to give a clear and impartial account of the light in which the Hebrew Scriptures were viewed by the Jews of that period. Secondly, We might be in some doubt what king of Persia was meant by the Artaxerxes of Josephus, (inasmuch as this same name is given by some to several Persian kings), had not the historian been so explicit as to dispel all doubt on this point, by saying, that the Artaxerxes in question was the follower of Xerxes upon the throne of Persia. This Artaxerxes (Longi- manus) began his reign in 464 b.c, and died in 424 b.c. Of course he reigned forty years. Later than 424 b.c, then, no part of the Hehreiv canon can he, if the testimony of Josephus is well grounded. Thirdly, Josephus assigns all the historical books of the canon to prophets: ^'' The prophets, after Moses, described the events which took place iu their respective periods, in thirteen books." The word prophets, therefore, is plainly used by him, in the sense in which I have defined and employed it in the preceding pages. What books are included in this enumeration of thirteen, is an inquiry that will be made in the sequel. Fourthly, He states in the most plain and unequivocal manner, that since the reign of Artaxerxes, down to the time in which he himself lived, passing events had been fully noted — ysy^uTrai (Av 'ixaera — but " credit was not attached to these histories, in like manner as to the earlier ones [the canonical books], he- cause there was no certain succession of prophets''"' during that per- iod. Here then are two facts on which he rests the opinion that he gives; the first, that the sacred books were completed in the reign of Artaxerxes; the second, that other books, continu- ing the history of the Jews, were composed by those who were not prophets, and therefore could not claim that credit which belonged to the former. How well this view of Josephus accords with what I have stated in the preceding pages, viz., that books were not admitted to the Jewish canon unless regarded as of prophetic origin, must be obvious to every reader. Had Josephus been an ignorant or § 10. COMPLETION OF THE CANON. 199 unlearned person, who had no knowledge of other books than the Jewish Scriptures, we should attribute less weight to his opinion. Such a man could have examined only one side of the question. But here is a witness who, as we may reasonbly say, has read all the books which pertain to Jewish affairs, and who still draws a distinction wide and broad between those that are sacred and fully credible, and those which can be regarded only as the works of erring men. No reasonable advocate for the claims of in- spiration at the present day, could ask for stronger or more de- finite and intelligible expressions, than those of Josephus. I know not how language can make it more certain than that of Josephus has made it, that he knew well, and made definitely, the distinction between the now called apocryphal books and those of the canon. It is beyond a doubt that he was acquainted with both; for he has drawn from both in his Antiquities. In order that we may have no doubts left as to the exact mean- ing of Josephus, we must advert to the order which he has fol- lowed in the historical narrations of his Antiquities. In lib. xi. he presents us with the history of the Jews, from the time when the decree of Cyrus for their liberation was issued (586 e.g.), down to the time when Palestine was overrun by Alexander the Great (331 e.g.). In chap. v. of this book he has presented us with an account of events recorded in the book of Ezra, in res- pect to this distinguished priest and leader of the new colony of Jewish immigrants; and he places all these events under the reign of Xerxes I. taking him to be the king, who, in Ezra viii. 1 seq. of our Scriptures, is named Artaxerxes. The journey of Nehemiah and his friends to Jerusalem, he assigns to the twenty- fifth year of the same king's reign (Antiq. xi. 5, 7), while the Bible assigns it to the twentieth year of Artaxerxes; (Neh. ii. 1. comp.v. 14), i. e. about twelve years after the immigration of Ezra. Whether the error lies in the reading of the codices of Josephus, or in his oversight, in this case, it would be difficult to decide, and it is not of any importance to my present object to make a decision. Xerxes' reign lasted but twenty-one years. There are, moreover, other small discrepancies of the like nature be- tween Josephus and the Scriptures; e. g. as to the time (fifty- two days) in which the walls of Jerusalem were completed under Nehemiah (see Neh. vi. 15), while Josephus assigns two years and four months as the period of completion; Antiq. xi. 5, 8. But still, nothing is plainer than that this historian abridges and 200 § 10. COMPLETION OF THE CANON. copies the whole book of Neheniiah, for substance, into his own, and he represents the death of this distinguished leader as taking place under the reign of Xerxes I. In xi. 1 seq. he gives, in like manner, a sketch of the events related in the book of Esther; or rather, we might say, an account more copious even than that which is contained in the Scriptures. All these events he assigns to the reign of Artaxerxes (Longinianus), who reigned more than forty years (464 — 424 b.c). The Persian king of the book of Esther, is uniformly called Ahasuerus* At what time during the reign of this king, the deliverance of the Jews, as recorded in Esther, took place, Josephus does not say. I must believe, however, that if one reads carefully the passage from him, which is print- . ed, on page 195 above, ho will perceive on the whole that it makes for the position, that it was at a late period of his reign. If we read the clause: ktoos r^g MwuVsws nXiVTvig ij^i^?,' '^^'^' ^i'^^^H'^"^ rou (j^tra 'B,ii^t;fiV Us^doov (SagiXsug "-s^yjii, with an omission of the final word d^yjic, (which is omitted in Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. iii. 10, and in most of the manuscripts of Josephus), then it is clear that Josephus intends to fix his limit at the death of Artaxerxes (424 B.C.), beyond or since which no book that has been written has any just claim to beconsidered as a part of the Hebrew can- on. The manner in which he has drawn up his account of these times, proves beyond a doubt that he regarded the book of Es- ther as the last in the canon of Scripture, as well as that he coii- sidered it a sacred book. Beyond this and further on, he draws indeed from other histories of the Jews; and so in all the latter part of his Antiquities; but he compiles here much more loosely than before, and evidently proceeds as considering himself more at liberty to depart from his sources, as we may learn by com- paring his history, e. g. of Antiochus Epiphanes, with that in 1 Mace. It is to be deeply regretted that he has not given us a particular account of his sources, as he had the fairest opportun- ity for doing it at the close of his Antiquities, xx. 11, 2, where he has made a statement of the object which he had in view in the composition of his work, and of his qualifications to accom- plish it. But he goes no farther in mentioning his sources than • Josephus seems to have considered Ahasuerus as the proper name of only one Persian king; whereas it is plainly an appellative (like Pharaoh, the Czar, etc.), and belongs to Cambyses, Ez. iv. 0', and to Astyages the father of Darius the Medc, Dan. ix. 1 . The meaning of the name, as developed by the cuneiform writing re- cently decyphered, is lion- /tin ff=hero; nee in Ges. Lex. § 10. COMPLETION OF THE CAXON. 201 to say, that he has given an account of ancient historical events, " W5 a/ li^ai (3113X01 'Tspi 'xdvTUv 'iyjauai rriv ava'y^a