LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. BS 1174 -03813 1889 Oehler, Gust Fr^ 1812 1872 Theology of the Old Testament >'r.r ui < r-'^'X^v-; #' 0jM THEOLOGY Wf ■'■''''!, OB* THE OLD TESTAMENT. BY / DR. GUSTAY FRIEDRICH OEHLER, LATE PBOFESSOB ORDINARIUS OP THEOLOGY, AND EPHORUS OP THE ETAKOELIOAI. THEOLOGICAL SEJUNABT IN TUBINGEN. A REVISION OF THE TRANSLATION IN CLARK'S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY, WITH THE ADDITIONS OF THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION, AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, GEORGE E. DAY, FB07ESS0B OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AND BIBLICAL TECEOLOGT IN TALE COLI.EaB, Jfotrrtl^ (^bitmn. FUNK & WAGNALLS, NEW YORK: LONDON 1889 All rights reserved. 1 SkQ 18 AND 20 AsTOR Place. xooi7 44 Fleet Street. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, By FUXK & WAGNALLS, la the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. INTRODUCTION BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. The singular helpfulaess of Oehler's Theology of the Old Testament to ministers of the Gospel and other biblical students, who have made themselves acquainted with its contents, either in the original or through the Edinburgh translation, is due to its subject, the wide range of thought which it opens, the thoroughness with which the several topics are examined and discussed, and the positive and in general satisfactory results to which the author arrives. Of the subject — the supernatural character and gradual progress of revelation as exhibited in the Old Testament — a subject now so prominent in the face of the sceptical denials of our times, little need be said beyond what is contained in the suggestive and stimulating introduction of the author. No one can read the clear and firm statements in § 7 without being stirred by the wide sweep of thought proposed to be presented. Embracing as it does the whole field of Israelitish history in its connection with the founding of a kingdom of God among men, the kindred subject of the theocratic ordinances and sacred antiqui- ties of the Jews as giving the limited and temporary form in which that king- dom for ages appeared, and finally the form, extent, and limits of the doctrinal truths presented in the Old Testament, it aims to weave the whole into an organic unity of which the final expression is Christ. The thoroughness with which this has been done, and the repeated revisions to which the author subjected his work during the thirty years in which he lectured upon the theology of the Old Testa- ment, are evident not only in the present volume, but in the forty articles con- tributed by him to Herzog's Real-EncyMopadie, in which several of the most im- portant subjects in this department of study are more fully discussed.* The foundation of the whole superstructure was laid by the author in a severe * Of these may be mentioned particularly : Feste der alten Hebraer, Herz im biblischen Sinn, Hoherpriester, Jehova, Kanon des Alten Testaments, K5nige in Israel, Leviten, Messias, Opfer- cultus des A. T., Priesterthum im A. T., Prophetenthum des A. T., Sabbath, Sabbath- und Jubel- jahr, Stamme Israels, Tag bei den Hebraern, Testament (Altes u. Neues),Volk Gottes, Weissagung, Elohim, Heiligkeit Gottes, Unsterblichkeit (Lehre des A. T.), VersOhnungstag. These in a very compressed form will be found translated in Dr. Schaff's JReligious Encyclopaidia, 3 vols. imp. 8vo, J883-1884. iv INTIiODDCTIOK. process of critical and cxcgctical study of the Hebrew Scriptures, the fruits of which appear at every step. It was once said of him that he seemed to be pre- destined to be an expositor of the Old Testament. His decisions upon the mean- ing of its most important and difficult passages will bear a comparison, there is no reason to doubt, with the Revised Version of that part of the Bible soon to be issued, as they certainly do with the best results of German biblical learning. So numerous are these passages, which are either critically explained or brought into luminous connection with the subjects to which they relate, that, taken along with the explanations given of their meaning, they supply to a large degree the place of a critical commentary. The hiatory of the Israelitish people, as recorded in the Old Testament, needs now, more than ever, to be made familiar, not only as exhibiting th,e divine guidance of a chosen race, with the constant revelation of the character and will of God which it involves, and also as containing the setting in which prophecy is put, and exhibiting the relations in which it was uttered, but as furnishing the means of judging of the validity of many objections which have been recently urged. The best refutation of not a few of the strange and distorted representations of sacred history now persistently made, is the history itself, and in presenting this in clear outline, to be filled up by the careful study of the biblical narratives, an important help is furnished for gaining a true idea of divine revelation. The same remark may be made of the sacrificial system and sacred ordinances of the people of Israel, with the additional consideration that the attempt of the recent criticism to represent the biblical account of them as self-contradictory, and to a large extent of comparatively late origin, renders necessary a more par- ticular study of these institutions and laws than has ordinarily been given to them. Altar, tabernacle, sacrifice, feasts, priests, and I^evites have now again become subjects of critical inquiry and investigation which cannot safely be neg- lected. Tiie principal diflicultics urged by the scepticism of De Wette and the reconstruction of biblical history propose. Continuation : The most recent literature 39 X CONTENTS. IV. Method of Bibucal, Theoloox. Division of Old Testament Theologt. PAQE § 15. Characteristics of the historico-genetic method 41 § 16. Division of Old Testament Theology stated and defended 43 PART I. MOSAISM. FiEST Section. THE HISTORY OF REVELATION FROM THE CREATION, TO THE SETTLEMENT OF THE COVENANT PEOPLE IN THE HOLY LAND. § 17. Division of this history 49 I. The PiiiMEVAii Age. § 18. The account of the creation 50 § 19. The origin of evil 52 § 20. The first offering. Cainites and Sethites. Tradition of the Flood. 54 n. The Second Age of the Wokld. § 21. Covenant with the world. Noah's saying. Division of mankind... 56 § 22. The foundation of a people of God 58 in. The Time of the Patbtarchs. § 23. Abraham 60 § 24. Isaac and Jacob 64 § 25. The twelve jDatriarchs 65 rV. The Time of Moses and Joshua. 1. The deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage. § 26. Condition of the people of Israel in Egypt 68 § 27. The deliverance from Egypt 70 2. Tlie institution of the covenant of the law and the march through the wilderness. § 28. Educational aim of the march through the wilderness. The Cove- nant of the Law established 72 § 29. The first breach of the covenant. Order of the camp. Departure from Sinai. Sentence on the people 7i § 30. The wandering during thirty-seven years in the wilderness, and events up to the occupation of the land on the east side of the Jordan. 76 § 31. Deuteronomy. Death of Moses. His position among the organs of revelation 78 3. 77te settlement of Israel in the Holy Land. § 32. Occupation of Canaan. Extermination of the Canaanites 81 § 33. Division of the land. Character of the Promised Land. Israel at the close of this period 83 Sboond Section. THE DOCTRINES AND ORDINANCES OF MOSAISM. § 34. Survey 88 First Division. The DocrnrNE of God and His Relation to the World. doHlEiT'rS. xi First Chaptee. The Mosaic Idea of Ood. FAOB § 35. Survey 88 I. The most Geneeax, Names of the Divine Being, El, Eloah, Elohim, El- Elton. § 36 87 II. El-Shaddai. § 37.... 90 III. The Name Jehovah. § 38. Pronunciation and grammatical explanation of the name 92 § 39. Signification of the name 95 § 40. Age and origin of the name Jehovah 96 § 41. Comparison of the name Jehovah with Elohim and El 98 § 42. Attributes or names of God which are derived immediately from the idea of Jehovah 100 § 43. The unity of God 102 IV. God as the Holt One. § 44. Formal definition of the idea 105 § 45. Fuller definition of the idea 109 § 46. Characteristics connected with the Divine holiness : Impossibility of picturing God, Omnipresence, Spirituality Ill § 47. The Divine righteousness, faithfulness, and truth 112 § 48. The jealous God 113 Second Chapter. TJie Eelaiion of God to the World. § 49. General survey .> 116 Mrst Doctrine. On the Creation and Preservation of the World. I. On the Ceeation. § 50. Creation by the Word ^. 116 § 51. The Divine Spirit in the Creation 118 II. On the Peeseevation of the Woeld. § 52 119 Second Doctrine. The Divine Aim of the World. Divine Providence. § 53. The design of Creation, and its realization through Providence 121 § 54. Belation of the Divine causality to moral and physical evil 122 Third Doctrine. Of Eevelation. § 55. Introductory remark and general view 124 I. The Eevelation of the Divine Being. §56. The Divine name 124 § 57. The Divine countenance, and the Divine glory 127 n. The Foems of Eevelation. §58. The Divine voice 128 XI 1 CONTENTS. PAGE 1^ 59. The tloctrine of the Angel of the Lord, of the Countenance, of the Covenant. The exegetical state of the case 129 § 60. Continuation. The different views 131 § 61. Other points of the Mosaic Angelologj' 134 § 62. The Shekhina 137 § C3. The doctrine of miracle. Its appearance in history and various names 138 § 64. Continuation. More exact definition of miracle 139 § 65. On the Spirit of God 141 § 66. The psychical states of the organs of revelation 142 Second Division. The Doctkine of Man. § 67. General view 145 First Chapter. The nature of man in its main unchangeahle features. I. The Idea of Man. §68 145 n. Man rs Ekt.ation to Sex and Race, §69 '.147 III. The Constituent Parts of Man. § 70. Body, soul, spirit 149 § 71. The heart, and its relation to the soul 152 Second Chapter. 'Hie doctrine of man in refei-ence to the contradictory element's which entered by sin into its development. I. The PREvnTivE State of Man. §72 156 II. Of Sin. 1. 77(6 orifjin of siyi. § 73. The formal principle of sin .... 158 § 74. The material principle of sin. The Old Testament names of sin 159 2. The state of .sin. § 75. Sin as an inclination. Transmission of sin IGi § 76. Antagonism of the good and the evil in man. Degrees of sin. Possibility of a relative righteousness 164 in. On Death and the State aftijb Death. § 77. The connection between sin and death 166 § 78-79. The doctrine of Mosaism on the condition after death 169 TJiird Division. The Covenant of God with Israei. and the Theocracy. First Ciiaptku. The naiurc (f the Covenant § 80 I'rcliiuiuary remarks and general survey I75 Rrst Doctrine. The Divine Election. § 81 . Israel's election as the full act of God's love 176 § 82. Forms in which the election of the people is expressed 178 CONTENTS. Xlli Second Bodrine. Man's Obligation. PAGE § 83. The servant of Jehovah 181 § 84. The Law 182 § 85-86. The Decalogue. Its division 184 § 87. Circumcision. Its historical origin 191 § 88. Keligious import of circumcision. The giving of a name 193 Third Doctrine. Divine Eetribtition. § 89. Blessing and curse 195 § 90. Solution of the apparent contradiction between the Divine election and the Mosaic doctrine of retribution. Attacks on the latter 197 Second Chapter. The Theocracy. § 91. The idea of the Divine Kingship 199 First Doctrine. The Theocratic Organism, and the Ordinances of Law and Jus- tice connected therewith. I. Theockatic Oeganization of the People. §92. The division into tribes. Israel's representation before Jehovah. ., . 200 1. The Leviies. § 93. The mode and meaning of the representation of Israel by the Levites 203 § 94. Official functions, dedication, and social position of the Levites 206 2. The priesthood. §95 209 3. The high priest. §96 214 n. The Theocratic Authority. 1. The legislative authority. § 97 217 2. The judicial power. §98. The principle and organization of the administration of justice..., 219 § 99. The course of justice and punishment 221 3. The executive power. § 100 223 III. The Organization of the Famtlx, and the Legaxi Provisions connected therewith. § 101. The subdivisions of the tribes. The principles and division of Mosaic family law 225 1. Ttie law of marriage. § 102. The contracting of marriage : the. dependent position of the wife and the forms of the marriage contract 228 § 103. Bars to marriage 228 § 104. The dissolution of marriage 230 2. The relation of parents to children. §105 232 Xiv CONTENTS. PAGE 3. The law of inheritance, and provisions for (he permanence of families and their inheritance. § 106. The law of inheritance. Laws concerning heiresses and the levirato marriage 234 § 107. Provisions concerning the preservation of the family inheritance . . 235 § 108. The avenging of blood 238 4. The rights of servants in the house 239 § 109. Bondage in the time of the patriarchs. The principles of the rights of bondmen 239 § 110. The regulations concerning Hebrew servants 240 § 111. The position of servants not Israelites 244 Second Doctrine. The Mosaic Public Worship. § 112. General introductory remarks. Essential character of this worship. 246 § 113. The place of the word in public worship 248 Appendix ; The oath 248 I. The Place of Worship. § 114. The requisites for a place of worship 250 § 115. The arrangement of the Mosaic sanctuary 252 § 116. Meaning of the sanctuary. Its three divisions 254 § 117. Sacred vessels in the court and in the sanctuary 255 § 118. The ark of the covenant, with the Kapporeth and the tables of the law 257 § 119. The Cherubim 258 n. The Actions of the Mosaic Worship. § 120. Introductory remarks. On the idea of offerings in general 261 § 121. Pre-Mosaic sacrifice and the Mosaic covenant. Sacrifice as the basis of the Mosaic sacrificial worship 263 1. The material of the offerings. § 122. Bloody and bloodless offerings 267^ § 123. The material of animal offerings 268 § 124. The ingredients of the vpgetablo offerings. Salt in the offerings. . . 270 § 125. The principle on which the material of offerings was fixed 272 2. The ritual of saa'ifice. § 126. The ritual of animal sacrifice. Presentation at the altar ; laying on of hands ; slaughter 274 § 127. The use made of the shed blood 276 § 128. The burning of the-offering , 281 § 129. Ritual of the food-offering 283 5. On the various kinds of offerings icith reference to their purpose. § 130. Various kinds of offerings as thus distinguished . . 284 (a) The burnt-offering. § 131 285 (h) The peace-offering. § 132. Its name, notion, and division 287 i) 133. The ritual of the poaceroffering 289 ■ CONTENTS. XV PAGE § 134. Of VOWS 292 § 135. Nazaritism 294 Appendix. The theocratic taxes. § 136 298 (c) ITie atoning sacrifices. § 137. The difEerence between the trespass-offering and the sin-offering with respect to the end in view , 300 § 138. The ritual and import of the trespass and the sin offerings. The trespass-offering 304 § 139. The ritual of the sin-offering 305 § 140. The ritual of the Day of Atonement 309 § 141. Signification of the ritual and antiquity of the Day of Atonement. . 315 Appendix. Purifications. § 142. The Levitical purifications 319 § 143. Acts of purifications for removing the suspicion of guilt 320 m. The Sacked Seasons. 1. The Sacred Seasons in general. § 144. Survey of the sacred seasons and their designations 323 § 145. Reasons which determine the times of the feasts 324 § 146. The celebration of the holy days 326 2. The Sabbatical Seasons. (rt) The weekly Sabbath. § 147. Antiquity and origin of the Sabbath 328 § 148. The idea of the Sabbath 332 § 149. The celebration of the Sabbath 334 (b) The new moon Sabbath. § 150 336 (c) The Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee. § 151. Legal enactments 337 § 152. Import and practicability of the institution of the Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee ''..... 342 3. The three pilgrimage feasts, (a) The Passover. § 153. Enactments concerning the solemnity 345 § 154. Significance of the feast of the passover, and questions connected with it. 348 (&) The feast of weeks (Pentecost). § 155 350 (c) The feast of Tabernacles. & 156 351 XVI CONTENTS. PART II.-PROPIIETISM. FiEST Section. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEOCRACY FROM THE DEATH OF JOSHUA TO THE CLOSE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION. First Division. The Times of the Judges. J. The Disintegration of the Theocract till the Times of Samuel. PAGE § 157. Course of events. Import of the office of Judge 353 § 158. Religious condition. Decline of the theocratic institutions 355 § 159. Religious syncretism of this period 359 n. Restoration of the Theocratic Unity by Samuel. Growth of Prophetism. Foundation of the Monarchy. § 160. The Philistine oppression. Changes effected by Samuel 361 § 161. Nature, importance, and first beginnings of the prophetic office. . . . 362 § 162. The so-called schools of the Prophets. The projihetic office of watchman . . 363 § 163. Thefoundationof the Israelitish Kingdom : consecration of the king. 368 Seccmd Division. Period of the Undivided Kingdom. I. Saul. §164 370 II. David. § 165. Historj' of his reign. His theocratic position and personal religious development 371 § 166. The form of worship under David 376 m. Solomon. § 167. The building of the temple 378 § 168. Significance and dedication of the temple 380 § 169. Hebrew proverbial poetry. The Hhakhamim 382 § 170. Solomon's external organizations. The dark sides of his reign. Division of the Kingdom 384 Tliird Division. The Kingdom of the Ten Tribes. § 171. Preliminary remarks. First Period. From Jerohonm I. to the overthrow of the dynasty of Omri. § 172. Jeroboam I. to Omri 387 § 173. The dynasty of Omri 390 § 174. Schools of the Prophets and characteristics of the prophetism of the period. The Rechabites 392 Second Period. Erom Jehu to the overthroio of the kingdcm, of the ten tribes. § 175. The dynasty of Jehu 395 § 176. From Zachariah to the carrying away of the ten tribes 396 § 177. Origin of the Samaritans ..,.., , . , 399 COKTENTS. XTii Fourth Division. The Kingdom of Judah. § 178. Preliminary remarks and survey , 400 FiEST Period. From Rehoboam to Ahaz. § 179. Eehoboam to Jehoshaphat 403 § 180. Jehoram to Jotham 404 Second Pebiod. FVom Ahaz to Josiah. § 181. Ahaz and Hezekiah 408 § 182. Manasseh and Amon „ 412 Thibd Period. From Josiah to the overthrow of the state. § 183. Josiah 414 § 184. Profane history of this period. Death of Josiah. Jehoahaz 416 § 185. Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin 417 § 186. Zedekiah. Fall of the State and of Jerusalem 419 § 187. Gedeliah and the remnant of the people 421 Fifth Division. Histoet of the Jewish Nation from the Babylonian CAPnvrry TO THE Cessation of Peophect. § 188. Condition of the people and agency of the Prophets during the Captivity 422 § 189. Deliverance and return of Jews from Babylon. Commencement of the rebuilding of the temple 424 § 190. The period from Cyrus to Darius Hystaspis 427 § 191. The Jews under Xerxes. Beginning of Ezra's administration 428 § 192. Ezra and Nehemiah. The close of prophecy 431 § 193. The beginning of Sopherism. Public worship at the close of this period 434 Second Section. THE THEOLOGY OF PROPHETISM. § 194. Summary , 437 First Division. The Docteine of the Loed of Hosts and of Angels. § 195. Form and occurrence of this name of God. Partial views concern- ing its original meaning 437 § 196. The host of heaven. The heavenly bodies 439 § 197. The host of the heavenly spirits 441 § 198. Eesult with respect to the name Jehovah Sabaoth 443 § 199. Angels of higher order and special office 444 § 200. The doctrine of Satan 448 Second Division. Man's Eeligiotts and Moeal Eelation to God. I. Distinction between the Ceeemonial and the MoraIi Law. § 201 451 n. The Euinotjs Natuee of Sin. The Need of a new Dispensation of Grace. § 202 455 iviu CONTENTS. TIT JuEnncATioN by Faith. § 203. The Old Testament form of faith 459 § 204. The Old Testament experience of salvation 461 Third Division. Of Peophect. First Subdivision. The prophetic consciousness. § 205. Negative propositions 464 § 206. Positive propositions 465 § 207. Psychological definition of the prophetic state in ancient times 468 § 208. Phase of this siabject under Protestant theology 471 § 209. Continuity and elevation of the individual life in the prophetic state 473 § 210. Prophecy an inward intuition 474 § 211. The prophetic state illustrated by analogies : Dreams. Communion with God in prayer 478 § 212. The conceptions of genius and the natural powers of divination 481 Second Subdivision. Of prophecy. § 213. Its office in general 484 § 214. The prediction of particular events an essential element of prophecy. 486 § 215-216. The peculiarities of Old Testament prophecy 488 Fourth Division. Of the Kingdom of God. § 217. Survey 494 Urst Subdivision. TJie purpose of God's Kingdom; the contradiction thereto presented by the present ; the abolition of this contradiction by judgment. L The Design of God's Kingdom, § 218 495 II. The Relation of the Present to the Puepose of the Divine Kingdom. § 219 497 m. The Judgment. § 220. The day of the Lord. The judgment upon the Covenant people. .. 499 § 221. The judgment upon the heathen nations , 501 Second Subdivision. The future Redemption. I. The Deuverance and Restoration of the Covenant People. § 222. The restoration of Israel a necessary event 505 § 223. The remnant of Jacob. The new covenant an everlasting one. The forgiveness of sins. The outpouring of the Spirit 506 § 224. Other features of the times of redemption 509 §225,226. Death destroyed ]\[ 511 n. The Admission of the Heathen into the Kingdom op God. § 227. The extension of the Kingdom of God in the times of redemption 516 § 228. The conditions under which the admission of the heathen into the kingdom of God is to take place 51g CONTENTS. Xix ni. The Messiah. PAGE § 229. Twofold view of the consummation of redemption. The word Messiah. The roots of the Messianic hope in the Pentateuch 521 § 230. The promise in 2 Sam. vii. as the foundation of the Messianic idea in its stricter sense 523 § 231. The development of the idea of the Messiah in the Prophets ; the older prophetic writings ; the prophetic doctrine concerning the nature of the Messiah 526 § 232-234. The office and work of the Messiah 530 PART III.— OLD TESTAMENT WISDOM. § 235, 236. General preliminary remarks 537-539 I. Objective Divine Wisdom. § 237. The part of wisdom as an attribute of God in the universe. Its personification. § 238. The Old Testament view of nature 541 § 239. The intervention of wisdom in human affairs 545 II. Subjective Human Wisdom. § 240. The fear of the Lord the subjective principle of wisdom 546 § 241, 242. Practical wisdom 547-548 III. MoKAL Good. § 243. Its realization in the individual life 550 § 244. Eealization of moral good in the various social spheres. The view taken in Proverbs of evil and pain 553 IV. The Enigmas or Human Lite. The Struggle foe this Solution. § 245. The enigmas themselves 556 § 246. The struggle to solve the enigmas relating to this subject in the Psalms 558 § 247, 248. Solution of the enigmas in the Book of Job 561-564 V. Kenunciation of the Solution in the Book op Ecclesiastes. § 249. Standpoint of this Book. Inquiry concerning divine retribution and immortality 565 § 250. Moral teaching of the Book. Conclusion 568 Index of names and subjects 571 Index of texts 581 Il^TEODUOTOET LECTURE.* Within the last few years it has frequently been said, especially in ecclesiastical meetings, that a special need of the age is a fuller recognition of the importance of the Old Testament for religious knowledge and life, and that the treasures of this book, so little known, especially to so-called persons of culture, should be more fully laid open to the body of the Church. To this end the first requisite is, that theologians form a more thorough acquaintance with the Old Testament, especially that they become more familiar with it as a whole. It is true of every in- tellectual product, that it cannot be properly estimated by those who concern them- selves merely with its external features, or with individual fragments of it ; and of the Bible this is peculiarly true. What is unfolded in the Scriptures is one great econom^, of salvation — unum continuum systema, as Bengel puts it— an organ- ism of divine acts and testimonies, which, beginning in Genesis with the creation, advances progressively to its completion in the person and work of Christ, and is to find its close in the new heaven and earth predicted in the Apocalypse ; and it is only in connection with this whole that the details can be properly estimated. He who has not learned to understand the Old Testament in its historical connec- tion may bring to light much that is valuable and worth knowing in respect to particular things, but he lacks the right key to its meaning, and therefore true joy in the study of it ; he easily stumbles at the puzzles which lie everywhere on the surface of the Old Testament, and from them he condemns the whole. Now, to introduce to the organic historical knowledge of the Old Testament is the ob- ject of the branch of study to which these lectures are to be devoted. We must not think its dignity impaired by meeting the practical want indicated above ; nay, in general, he is no true theologian who leaves an open breach between science and life. We claim for Old Testament Theology also no small importance for science, especially for Systematic Theology. This importance it possesses as a part of Biblical Theology, since, in virtue of the Protestant principle of the authority of Scripture, every question for which the Protestant theologian seeks an answer leads back, directly or indirectly, to Scripture, and the historical in- vestigation of the divine revelation it contains. In its development as an independent science, Biblical Theology is one of the most recent branches of theology. We shall see by and by that the name and conception of Biblical Theology as a special historical science arose only in the * Delivered at the beginning of the course, in October, 1870. A few of the first sentences, as being of only passing interest, are omitted.— D. 2 OPENING WORDS. course of tho last century, and that the division into Old and New Testament Theology was made still later. The earlier theologians did not distinguish between Dogmatic and Biblical Theology, and were still farther from the idea of dividing Old and New Testament Theology, thus ignoring the gradual progress of revelation, and the constant connection of the revealed word with the progres- sive history of revelation, and treating the Old and New Testament as a sort of promptuarium, which could be used alike in all its parts — proof-texts for every Christian doctrine being brought together from the various parts of the Bible. We are now far beyond such onesidedness, although some recent Old Testament theologians (Hengstenberg) still show a tendency to confound the two Testa- ments after the fashion of the older orthodoxy. On the other hand, we are met in recent times by a view of the Old Testa- ment which entirely dissevers the Old Testament religion from any specific connection with the New Testament, placing it on the same line with the other pre-Christian religions, which also in their own way were a preparation for Christianity— a view of the Old Testament which scarcely allows its theology to claim a higher significance for the theological knowledge of the Chris- tian, than could, for example, be ascribed to the theology of Homer. This antipathy to the Old Testament in the spirit of Marcion a?id Schleiermacher is still prevalent among theologians, though far less so than it was twenty or thirty years ago. From tlieir point of view, the name Old Testament religion is as far as possible avoided, and Judaism and Jewish religion are spoken of by preference, although every one may learn from history that the Old Testament and Judaism are distinct — that Judaism begins where the Old Testa- ment is about to end, viz., with Ezra and the wisdom of the scribes who succeeded him. This view consistently leads to the denial of the specific char- acter, as a divine revelation, of the New Testament also — of Christianity. On this point we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. The relation of the New Testament to the Old is such that both stand or fall together. The New Tes- tament assumes the existence of the Old Testament law and prophecy as its positive presupposition. According to the New Testament, God made Chris- tianity to issue from other elements than those which the modern destructive criticism is accustomed to recognize. We cannot have the redeeming God of the New Covenant without the Creator and covenant God preached in the Old ; we cannot disconnect the Redeemer from the Old Testament predictions which He came to fulfil. No New Testament idea, indeed, is fully set forth in the Old Testament, but the genesis of all the ideas of the New Testament relating to salvation lies in the Old Testament. Even Schleiermacher was compelled to give a striking testimony to the organic connection of the two Testaments, which in theory he denied, when he reintroduced into doctrinal theology the treatment of the work of Christ according to His threefold office [of prophet, priest, and king]. Against the assertion that, to gain the true sense of Scripture, we must put aside evciry thing that is Israclitish, or, as the saying is, everything that is Jewish, or, in Bunsen's words, must translate from Semitic into Japhetic, our position is with Hofmann (in his Schriftlcrrcis), that the history contained in Scripture being the history of Israel, is wliat makes it Holy Scripture ; for Israel is the people wliose liistory is the call to salvation. 'II aurripia ek tuv 'lovdaiuv OPENIKG WORDS. 3 earlv, says our Lord to the woman of Samaria. Not to conceal God from the world, but to reveal him to the world as the Holy One of whom heathenism is ignorant, is the work for which Israel was chosen. In Israel such livmg forces were implanted, that it was only from this people that the God-man, the Re- deemer of the world, could be born. The whole national figure of Israel ; the election and the rejection ; the curse that lies upon the nation, which Hitzig has compared to the oyster, which produces the pearl by its own destruction — all these are revelations of God to the world. The theology of the Old Testament therefore still retains its importance for Christian doctrine, though not in the same way in which the older Protestant theology employed it. The old atomistic system of Scripture proof must be super- seded by one which shows that the truths of salvation formulated in doctrinal statements are the result of the whole historical process through which Revela- tion has passed. The possibility of such Scripture proof is presented by Biblical Theology, which exhibits the Bible revelation in its totality and in its gradual historical course, and so displays the genesis of the scriptural teachings from which doctrinal propositions are to be coined, and the connection in which they appear in the divine economy of salvation. Biblical Theology employed in the construction of Systematic Theology not only serves continually to renew and deepen the latter- in regard to existing dogmas, but also to give fuller justice to those biblical doctrines which, in the dogmatic labors of former centuries, fell too much into the shade. For Scripture is, as Oetinger has called it, the store- book of the world, the store-book of all times : it offers to the Church in every age just such instruction as it specially requires. Thus, to give a single example, recent times have directed attention to biblical eschatology and invested it with an interest in which the older Protestant Theology had no share. In these remarks I think I have brought forward the principal points of view from which the importance of Old Testament Theology is to be estimated, and which are my guides in dealing with the Old Testament. Of the greatness and difficulty of the task, no one can have a livelier conviction than myself. There are good reasons why, although there are innumerable monographs on isolated portions of Biblical Theology, there are few works on the whole subject, and in particular, works on the Theology of the Old Testament. Some of these are posthumous. If these lectures awake in one or other of you an inclination to labor at the solution of this problem independently, and not through the glasses of a theological system or a critical school, and to devote to the Old Testament more thorough study, with a receptive sense of its holy grandeur, tliis will be the best result which I could wish. Let us begin, then, the journey that lies before us, with trust in God, that we may pass through it witliout interruption to the end, and, on reaching it, may thank Him for His help in the wa^ INTRODUCTION. §1- Summary. The Introduction has — 1. To depie the theology of the Old Testament, and its relation to the cognate branches of biblical science. 2. To present the (inception of the Old Testament religion presupposed in our exhibition of the subject, together with the scientific standpoint of Old Testament theology thereby given. • Followed by — 3. A survey of the history of this branch of theology ; and 4. A discussion of the method of Old Testament theology, and its divisions. I.— DEFINITION AND LIMITS OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. §2. DEFINITION OP OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. IT EMBRACES THE WHOLE FIELD OP REVELATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. The theology of the Old Testament, the first main division of Biblical The- ology, is the historical exhibition of the development of the religion contained in thb canonical boohs of the Old Testameiit. As a historical science, Biblical Theology is distinguished from the systematic statement of biblical doctrine by this, that while the latter investigates the unity of divine truth, as seen in the whole course of revelation, and the aggregate of its manifestations, the former has the task of exhibiting the religion of the Bible, according to its progressive development and the variety of the forms in which it appears. The theology of the Old Testament has therefore to follow the gradual progress by which the Old Testament revelation advanced to the com- pletion of salvation in Christ ; and to bring into view from all sides the forms in which, under the Old Covenant, the communion between God and man found expression. Now, since the Old Testament revelation (cf. § 6) did not present itself simply in words and as a divine testimony concerning doctrine, but was made in a connected course of divine deeds and institutions, and on the basis of these pro- duced a peculiarly shaped religious life ; and further, since all knowledge derived 6 liTTRODUCTION. [§ ^« from revelation is not given independently of the facts of the history of salvation and the divinely instituted rules of life, but develops itself in continual connec- tion with them ; it follows that the theology of the Old Testament cannot limit itself to the directly didactic matter in the Old Testament. It must embrace the essential factors of the history of the divine kingdom in the Old Covenant : its task is, in short, the exhibition of the whole of the Old Tedurnent dispensation (1). Even on this view of the subject, the name Old Testament Theology is still too broad (2), but it is at least more appropriate than other names which have been chosen for the exhibition of the Old Testament revelation, particularly than the term. Old Testament Dogmatics (3). (1) This conception of the theology of the Old Testament is in accordance with the conception of Biblical Theology presented by Ch. Fr. Schmid (in a treatise On the Interests and Position of the Biblical Theology of the New Testament in our Time, Tiib. Zeitschr. f. Theol. 1838 ; and in his well-known Handbooh of New Testament Theology). This conception has, however, met with much opposition. The common conception is, that this branch should limit itself to 'he exhibition of the specially didactic contents of both Testaments. But here arises in the Old Testament the great difficulty, that this contains proportionally very little directly didactic matter. A separate exhibition of Old Testament religious teaching is, to be sure, possiljle ; but if it is not to prove quite incomplete, it will not be able to dispense with a reference at all points to the history of the covenant people and tlie institutions of the theocracy. This has been distinctly recognized even by Steudel {Vorlesungen uber die Theol. des A. T., Is40), although he limits this branch to the exhibition of the doctrines of the Old Testament. He says with truth (p. 18 f.) : " We should form for ourselves an incomplete idea of the substance of the Old Testament religion, and of biblical religion in general, if we looked upon it only as doctrine. It is facts which, with the greatest distinctness, are held before us as the source of the growth of religious conceptions and religious life. It was not on the basis of consciousness that objective views in religion established themselves. Consciousness did not create the thing held forth as fact ; but, on the contrary, the consciousness was produced by the facts, and often the facts lie before us, from which at a later time was deduced the religious element which they represented and offered as their lesson." Now, altiiougli this is recognized by biblical theologians, it has been generally thought to be sufficient to give a merely introductory survey of the history of revela- tion, as has been done by Steudel, and also by Schultz, in the most recent Old Testament Theology. But on this plan it is not possible to exhibit properly the internal connection of the doctrine of Revelation with the revealing history — the continual progress of the former in connection with the latter. We include, therefore, in Old Testament Tlieology the chief features of the history of the divine kingdom in the Old Covenant. (2) Properly speaking, all the biblical branches, viz. Biblical Introduction, Ilermeneutics, etc., should be included under the name Biblical Theology, as has been done by Rosenkranz in his EncyclopcRdia of Theological Science, and by others. (3) Tlie term Dogmatics (which De Wette and Rosenkranz substitute), or even History of Old 'Testament Doctrine, is not appropriate for the exhibition of the doc- trinal contents of the Old Testament, even if we extend the notion of Dogmatics (see Rothe, Zur Dogmatih, p. 11) to the practical sphere, in the sense of 66yiiaTa, Ei)h. ii. 15, Col. ii. 14. Dogmas, the positive doctrines of faith and life which de- mand acknowledgment and obedience, are found in the Old Testament, for the most part only in tlie Pentateuch fas. for example, the imposing passage : " Hear O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah"— Deut. vi. 4). The further develop- ment of religious knowledge, which is found in the prophetic books, the Psalms § 3.] RELATIOK TO OTHER 0. T. feRAKCttES. ^ and tlic books of the Ilhokhma (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), are inaccurately characterized by tliis expression. Even the prophetic announcements of the Messiah and Ilis kingdom, of the resurrection of the dead, and the like, first became doctrinal propositions — essential jiarts of religious confession — from the standpoint of the New Testament fulfilment. Still less does that wrestling of the Israelitish spirit with the problems of life, brought out in many Psalms and in the book of Job, lead to a doctrinal result. The theology of the Old Tes- tament has to handle as such tchat is only in germ, and of the nature of presen- timent ; it has to show how the Old Testament, in the narrowness and unfinished state which characterizes in many parts its doctrinal contents, points from itself to something higher. The Old Testament is of course treated differently by the later Judaism. Judaism finds iu the Old Testament the completion of dogma, as Mohammedanism does in the Koran. However, it is characteristic of the Jewisli theology that it always takes pains to prove from the Pentateuch even the doc- trines primarily drawn from prophecy, such as those of the Messiah and the resur- rection, in order to invest them with a doctrinal character. § 3. RELATION OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY TO OTHER OLD TESTAMENT BRANCHES. Among the other branches of Old Testament study, what is called Introductioti to the Old Testament, or the history of the Old Testament writings, falls quite outside of the sphere of Old Testament Theology ; they stand, however, in a relation of mutual dependence on each other, in virtue of which the criticism of the Old Testament writings must also have respect to the results of Old Testament Theology (1). On the other hand. Old Testament Theology has a part of its contents in common with Biblical Archceology, which treats of the whole natural and social condition of the old Israelitish people ; for, in fact, all the important relations of life in Israel are treated as parts of religion, and belong essentially to the manifestation of the Old Testament religion, because the stamp of the communion of the people with the holy covenant God was to be imprinted upon them. Still, even such common constituents in the above-mentioned branches will demand in each case a treatment differing not merely in fulness, but in some measure also in form. With regard to the ordinances of worship, the theology of the Old Testament must treat of these so far as the communion of God and the people is carried out in them, and as they consequently present a system of re- ligious symbols. On the other hand, the discussion of all purely technical questions must be left to archaeology (2). Finally, as to the relation of Old Testament Theology to the Israelitish history, the former has certainly to present the leading features in the facts of revelation which form the historical basis of the Old Testament religion, and in the divine leading of Israel ; but only as this history lived in the spirit of the organs of revelation, and was the object of religious faith. It is bound to reproduce faith- fully, and without admixture of modern ways of looking at history, the view which the Holy Scriptures themselves give of the purpose of salvation which is carried out in Israel. The history of Israel, on the other hand, has not only to present all sides of the historical development of the people of Israel, even in its purely secular connections, thus necessitating the examination of chronological and such like questions, but to sift and vindicate, by historico-critical research, S INTRODUCTION. [§ 3. the real historical facts which the theology of the Old Testament reproduces as the coutents of faith (3). (1) The prevalent manner of treating Biblical Theology places it in an entirely one-sided relation of dependence upon the criticism of the biblical writings. This process is described by Rothe, for instance {Zui- Bogmatlk, p. 304 ff.), as follows : " In order to extract the actual facts of revelation from the Bible, the theologian must beforehand, by critical methods, make the Bible 'available' for his purpose. For only when he has completed his investigation of the origin of the biblical books, and has tested on this basis their value as historical sources, can he gain from them, as far as they are interpreted, the true teachings of reve- lation." There would be nothing to object against this proposition of Rothe, were it not that the position t6ward the contents of the records of revelation, which the critic takes beforehand, in many respects determines for him the way in which he conceives of the origin of the biblical books. If a critic takes a view of revelation which is far from harmonious with the biblical one, and devises a scheme of sacred history which the history itself does not acknowledge, he will of course from these presuppositions judge of the time when these books origi- nated, and of other things, quite differently from what they themselves testify. Besides, Rothe does not himself claim for the critic an absolute freedom from all preconceived opinions, for he says, p. 309: "The one important point here is, that to us revelation is in itself, apart from the Bible, actually a reality. He before whose eyes, by means of the Bible as its record, revelation stands, in all its living majesty, as a mighty historical fact, can confidently exercise the most thorough and impartial criticism on the Holy Scrijitures ; he takes toward it as a believe?; a free position, without any anxiety whatever." On the point " that revelation in itself, aside from the Bible, is something real," there can be no reasonable controversy. The Bible is not revelation itself ; it is the record of revelation. Neither do we deny the proposition, that he to whom the reality of revelation is made certain by means of the Bible as its record, takes toward the Scriptures "a free position of faith." But now, if it is only through the Bible that the theologian receives this impression of the majesty of revelation as a mighty historical fact, it should rather be expected of him that, before he criticises the Bible, he should first surrender himself to its contents witliout preconceived opinions — should let the revelation in its majesty work directly upon him, in order, as Rothe (p. 339) strikingly expresses it, " to make it a constant factor in the experiences of his personal life." He who has won in this way the conviction that Holy Scripture is the truly witnessing record of the divine ])urpo3e of salvation, and of the historical facts which serve to its realization, and that in it is contained the word of God as the means by which every one can lay iiold of salvation — he, in the joyful consciousness of his faith in revelation, will certainly refuse to be bound by human traditions concerning Holy Scripture, whetiier these originated with the Jewish scribes or with the ancient Churcli, or with our older Protestant tiieology, whatever be the respect which he may feel due to them ; but neither will he surrender himself to a criticism in which we can everywhere see that it does not rest upon the con- sciousness of faith wliich Rothe commends. He knows tliat a criticism, with the results of wliich this treatment of the Bible is incompatible, cannot have found the truth, because it fails to explain that which the Bible in tlie Church has proved itself to be, and so leaves unsolved the very problem of historical criti- cism— the explanation of the facts. He simply makes the inquiry. What sort of a Bible would be the result of the factors which that criticism employs ? Would it be a Bible which presents to us this grand course of development of revelation, this grand system of facts and Avitnesses through the written word ? which, moreover, finds its proof in men's hearts, as the Bible has done for two thousand years ? Especially in regard to the Old Testament, the believer in revelation recognizes it as his task, before all things, to follow the gradual path § 3.] RELATION TO OTHER 0. T. BRANCHES. 9 of development presented therein, and at the same time to value the continuous connection in vfhich the Old Testament Scriptures stand to the ever-advancing revelation. In this respect it is inexplicable, when, for example, Schultz in his recent Theology of the Old Testament^ which contains so much excellent matter, on the one hand sets Moses so high as an organ of revelation, but thinks this man, who lived in an age in which, as shown b.y the Egyptian antiquities, writing was quite a familiar art, to have written absolutely nothing but a few scanty scraps. We must not forget that the Old Testament Scriptures stand in such essential connection with the history of revelation, that the fultiller of Old Testament reve- lation could at the same time represent himself as the fulfiller of Old Testament Scripture. As regards the mutual relations hetween Introduction and Old Testament Tlieology^ it will often be shown in the course of this work how the Old Testament, in reference to its didactic contents, presents not a uniform (completed) whole, but a regular progression of religious knowledge. Moreover, not only must the general view which we have of the g\..,dual progress of Old Testament revelation influence our determination of the position which is due to any one book in the whole of the Old Testament, but the criticism of the Old Testament must pay regard to the course of development of the individual doctrines of the Old Testament. For example, how is a genetic exhibition of the Old Testament doctrine of the nature and attributes of God, of angelology, of the doctrine of the state of man after death, etc., possible, on the presupposition that the Pentateuch is a comparatively recent production ? "We shall see how in many cases the Penta- teuch manifestly contains that which constitutes the basis for the development of the didactic matter in Prophecy and Hhokhma [for definition of this term see § 235]. This is a feature which the criticism of the Old Testament books, as a rule, either completely overlooks or handles in the most superficial manner. It is, to be sure, no proof that the Pentateuch in its present form is a production of Moses ; but it does show the relative age of the Pentateuch, even in its construc- tion, as compared with the prophetical books. (2) The definition of archseology given in the text is that of Gesenius {Hall. EncyMop., x. 74) and De Wette (Lehrluch der hebr. jiid. Arch. § 1 and 2), with which Keil (Handb. der hibl. Arch. § 1) agrees, according to which it has to exhibit the forms of life in Israel as the people elected to be the bearer of revelation. (3) In reference to the relation of Old Testament Theology to thehistory of Israel, I agree with Schmid (comp. § ii. 1) and differ most from the ordinary view. That history contains a series of facts wliich form the basis of the Old Testament religion. If we deny the exodus of Israel from Egypt, and the giving of the law from Sinai, the Old Testment religion floats in the air. Such facts can no more be separated from the religion of the Old Testament than the historical facts of Christ's person can be from Christianity. Hence Old Testament theology must embrace the chief facts in the history of the divine kingdom, since it must present the Old Testament religion not only as doctrine, but in the whole compass of its manifestation. But because it ought to report what men in the Old Testament believed, in what faith they lived and died, it has to exhibit the history as Israel believed it. As it cannot be our task in an Old Testament Theology to harmonize the Old Testament history of creation and other things of this kind with the propositions of the newer physical sciences, we have only, in the exhibition of the history of revelation, to reproduce the view which Holy Scripture itself has. With ethnological and geographical research and the like we have nothing to do. We thus conceive of the relation of the theology of the Old Testament to the Israelitish history, in a manner similar to that in which C. F. Nagelsbach, in his excellent and well-known work, has placed the relations of the Homeric theol- ogy to mythology, when he states, as the object of the former (Preface to Home- rische Theol. ed. 3, p. xiv.), to give " the knowledge which Homer's men had of the Deity, and the effects produced by this knowledge in life and faith," and, on the other hand, makes the work of the mythologist to consist in " the criticism and deciphering of the historical development of mythological representations." 10 INTRODUCTION. [§ ■^• That Old Testament Theology has a history, as its critical sister science, while Homeric theology has only a mythology, is owing to the different character of the two religions. Here, indeed, there must be strife between those who— and I avow myself to belong to this class — acknowledge as facts_ what the Old Tes- tament religion lays down as such, and are consequently convinced that the thing believed was also a thing which tookjjlace ; and between those who see hi the Old Testament faith mainly a product of religious ideas, the historical basis of which can be ascertained only by a critical process resting on rationalistic presupposi- tions. The latter party, who despise the key offered by the Old Testament itself for the comprehension of its history, have been so fortunate in their attempts at explanation, as to have turned the providential leading of Israel into a dark riddle. (Rosenkranz, in his biography of Hegel, p. 49, informs us that the Jewish history repelled him (Hegel) just as violently as it captivated him, and troubled him like a dark riddle all his life.) But whoever occupies the liistorico-critical standpoint on this subject should endeavor to get at the point of view of the Bible itself in its purity, without admixture of modern views. In the common treatment of the theology of the Old Testament, however, we find a peculiar lack of firmness; where it is acknowledged that the Old Testament religion rests on facts, what these facts are is stated as indefinitely as possible. On the other hand, no criticism has as yet robbed of its force the judgment of Herder respecting the history of the Old Testament : " A thing of that kind cannot be invented ; such history, with all that depends on it, and all that is connected with it — in short, such a people cannot be a fiction. Its yet uncompleted provi- dential guidance is the greatest poem of the ages, and advances probably (we say certainly, on the ground of Rom. xi. 35 ff.) to the solution of the mysterious riddle of the world's history." §4. SOITRCES OP OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. The Theology of the Old Testament, according to the definition in § 2, must limit itself to the books of the Old Testament canon as received by the scribes in Palestine, and acknowledged by the Protestant Church, thus excluding the Apocrypha. For the canonical writings alone are a record of the history of revelation, and a genuine production of the spirit, which ruled as the principle of life in the Old Testament economy. According to the declarations of Christ in Lukexxiv. 44, Matt. xi. 13, etc., and the whole apostolic doctrine, there can be no doubt concerning the limits of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Covenant (1). Looking from the biblical standpoint, a specific difference must be made between the law, which claims divine authority, and the [human] prescriptions added to it and fencing it round — between ^>r*o;:>Aecy, which knows itself to be the organ of the Divine Spirit, and the scribes in their collective capacity, who lean only on human authority, since, even to a man so eminent as Ezra, who stands at the head of the latter, the authority of an organ of revelation is not ascribed (2). It may be said, perhaps, that tlie distinction between the Hagio- grapha and the Apocryphal books is incapable of precise determination (as also that the composition of some of the Ilagiographa falls later than the epoch which is marked by the silence of prophecy). Yet even in the better Apocryphal books it is impossible to ignore a lack of the depth of meaning that is found in the Old Testament, and in many cases an admixture of foreign elements (3). At all events, as soon as the theology of the Old Testament goes beyond the canoni- cal books, there is no firm principle 'mi which to fix its limits (4). [Prof. W. §4.J SOURCES OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. U Robertson Smith {Old Testameid, i). 141) has well stated the case : "They (the Apocryphal books) were not only written after the end of the living progress of the Old Testament revelation, but their contents add nothing to our knowledge of that progress, and therefore, on a purely historical argument, and without going into any knotty theological questions as to the precise nature of inspiration, we can say on broad grounds of common-sense that these books must not be in- cluded in the Bible record, but that their value is simply that of documents for the history of the connection of the Old and the New Testament." Comp, also Ewald {Lehre vom Worte Oottes) to the same effect. — D.] (1) In most statements of Old Testamer^ theology the so-called Apocrypha is in- cluded (Schultz, p. 15 ff., excludes it), in this way the significance of the Old Testament ca7ion is lost sight of. We take the following lemmata from the Introduc- tion to the Old Testament (compare my article, " Eanon des A. T.," in Herzog's Theol. Real-EncyUop. vii. p. 244 ff.). The Hebrew writings in the Old Testament form one corpus, which consists of three parts : 1. ni^in, the Pentateuch ; 2. D"^5■'^J, including (a) D'Jli^/Kl, the earlier 2J>'ophets, the historical books from Joshua to Kings — (&) D'innK, the later prophets, consisting of the three greater and the twelve lesser prophets ; 3. CIJinJD, Hagiographa. From this comes the full title of the Hebrew Bible, D'3inD1 D'KOJ min. With the books contained in the Hebrew Bible are united, in the Alexandrian translation, a number of writings of later origin, and thus a more extensive collection of Old Testament writings has been formed. On the question, what value should be attached to the writings added in the Greek Bible, in comparison with those in the Hebrew col- lection, the dispute has been chiefly as to the recognition of the bounds of the Old Testament canon in the Christian Church. The Catholic Church sanctioned as canonical at the Council of Trent the books which are added in the Septua- gint, called in the early Church Anagignoskomena or ecclesiastical lessons (hence a Theology of the Old Testament from the standpoint of the Eomish Church must of necessity embrace the theology of these books). But the Protestant Church, following the example of Jerome, gives the Anagignoskomena of the Romish Church the not quite suitable name of Apocrypha, and rejects them. That the canon of the Protestant Church is that of the Judaism of Palestine is not dis- puted. As certainly must it be maintained, that the canon of the Judaism of Palestine, as established in the last century before Christ, and then re-sanctioned after temporary hesitation at the Sanhedrim in Jamnia toward the end of the first century of our era [about a.d. 90] or a few years later, did not, as has been maintained, rest upon an interest of a simply literary nature, viz., to unite all the remains of Hebrew writings w^hich were still to be had ; for then it would be inconceivable why it did not embrace the book of the Son of Sirach, which long existed in the original Hebrew text. The point in question in the collection of the Old Testament writings was rather, as Josephus distinctly says in the well- known passage on the canon (c. Ap. i. 8), concerning the diKaiug de'ia TreTviaTev/uiva /iifSXia. In the same passage Josephus limits the Old Testament canon to the time of Artaxerxes, because from that time forward an exact succession of proph- ets is wanting. It may be said that this is an arbitrary limitation of the Pales- tinian scribes, and it has lately become the fashion (Ewald, Dillmann, Noeldeke) to efface this distinction between canonical and non-canonical Scriptures. But if we look into the JYe^D Testament, no doubt can remain as to where the Old and the New Covenants are connected ; since even the beginning of the New Testa- ment history of revelation attaches itself directly (comp. Matt. xi. 13 f.) to the close of Old Testament prophecy in Malachi. — A sharp controversy on the Apocrypha was carried on about the middle of the present century among the German theologians. On both sides weighty arguments were brought for- ward along with many controversial exaggerations. The conclusion reached is, 12 IKTEODUCTION". [§ 4. that that word of the Old Testament, which is so often referred to in the New Testament as a fulfilled word, is found only in the writings of the Hebrew canon ; that even if 'we admit as possible that there are allusions in some of the epistles, particularly the Epistle of James, to passages in the book of the Son of Sirach and the book of Wisdom, " yet there is never more than a simple allusion, and never a quotation properly so called," as even Stier, who is particularly zealous in searching out such correspondences il. c. p. 12), candidly acknowl- edges. (2) With Graf {Tlie Historical BooTcs of the Old Testament, 1866), the criticism of the Pentateuch has taken the turn, that many, declaring the legislation of Deuteronomy to be older than the law in the middle books, regard the Penta- teuch as having reached its final shape only in the time of Ezra through the labors of a supplementing editor. But it is historically certain that, in the time after the exile, the Pentateuch was regarded as an inviolable whole, because of which the fencing in (^0) of the Pentateuch then began with those ordinances to which our Lord assumes an attitude quite different from His relation to the vonoc. Conf. § 192 and Strack's art. '' Ka7iondes A. T. , " in Herzog, 2d ed._ [On the appearance of Graf's treatise, an account of which will be found in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1880 and July, 1882, it was promptly reviewed by Ewald in the Gdttingen, Oelehrte Anzeigei% June 1866, pp. 985-991, who pronounced it deficient in thoroughness, superficial and unsatisfactory. He says, ' ' Whoever adopts the opinion that the middle books of the Pentateuch were written after Deuteronomy will never be able to prove it, to say nothing of the fact that we should then be obliged to regard the contents of these books as imaginary and unhistorical." The theory, however, of the Levitical law as being of later origin than the earlier prophetical books, was defended by Reuss, who claims to be its author, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and others, and has been made familiar to the Eng- lish and American public by Prof. W. Robertson Smith in his lectures on The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 1881, and the article "Israel" in the Encycloj>CBdia Britannica, by Wellhausen. On the other hand it is repudiated by Dillmann, whose eminence in Hebrew scholarship and special familiarity with the Levitical legislation entitle his opinion to respectful attention, Bredenkamp, Oesetz u. Fropheten, 1880, and Delitzsch in a series of articles in Luthardt'sZe/tscArZ/Y, 1880. In America the work of Prof. Curtiss on The Levitical Priests, 1877, is directed against the Graf- Wellhausen theory on the single point that previous to the exile the priesthood was not confined to the family of Aaron, and that all Levites might be priests ; Prof. Green of Princeton, in Moses and the Prophets, 1883, has examined the views of Prof. Smith and Kuenen, and assigned his reasons for rejecting them, which has also been done by writers in the Presbyterian Revieto and other quarter- lies. Conf. also the art. '■'■Pentateuch'''' by Strack in the 2d ed. of Herzog, Real- Encykhp. Particular points in this controversy will be found discussed in the notes of this edition of Oehler. It can only here be said that the theory of de- velopment applied to the Old Testament in the central proposition that tlie ritual law or Levitical legislation is the latest product of the Old Testament develop- ment and belongs to tlie period of the second temple, while ardently embraced by some in Germany and elsewhere, is regarded by most scholars as wholly un- supported l)y facts, and as requiring too many assumptions to render it worthy of acceptance. — D.] (3) This is especially true of the celebrated book of the Son of Sirach, which, to mention only a single point, presses the Pentateuchal doctrine of retribution to an offensive Eudsemonism, without any consideration of the features through which the Old Testament itself breaks through the externalism of the doctrine of retribution. (See my remarks on the theological character of the book in the article, " Psedagogik des A. T.," in Schmid's Patdagog. Encyhlop. V. p. 694 f.). The same thing is true of the book of Wisdom, the most beautiful and excellent of the books of the Apocrypha. The ideas of the Greek philosophy are united in it with Old Testament doctrine, without any organic union of these elements. A tendency to syncretism [a mingling of ideas from other religions] is character' § 5.] VIEW OF O. T. RELIGION PROPER TO CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 13 istic of the later Jewish theology ; whereas, in the development of the Old Testa- ment religion presented in the canonical writings, the fundamental principle of the latter has force sufficient to subdue and assimilate the foreign elements which are taken up. This may be seen especially in the traditions of Genesis and the institutions of the Mosaic worship, and also in doctrines of the later books, such as the doctrine of Satan and the Angels, if we assume in these cases, as is gener- ally done, the presence of a foreign influence. (4) No settled types of doctrine are found in the Old Testament Apocrypha. A thorough statement of the doctrinal system of the Book of Wisdom would bring us to the discussion of Jewish Alexandrinism. If the historical influence of the forms of post-canonical Judaism on the development of Ohristian doctrine were attempted, we should have to take up, along with the history of the Jew- ish Alexandrian philosophy of religion, the no Lss interesting and important his- tory of the Jewish Apocnlyjytic books, the book of Enoch, the fourth book of Ezra, and the Psalter of Solomon ; and further still, the Jewish religious sects, and the earlier Rabbinic theology found in the older Targums and Midrashim, as well as in the Mishna, etc., would have to be discussed, as is done in the treatises of De Wette and von Colin. Instead of burdening the Old Testament with such bal- last, it will be more proper to refer the delineation of post-canonical Judaism to a special theological science to which Schneckenburger (in the lectures published by Loehlein, 1862) has given the name of the History of the Times of the New Testament. [Since Schneckenburger, the same subject has been treated by several writers — by Holtzmann, Hausrath, and finally by Schurer, Lehrbuch der Neutestameiitlicheii Zeitgeschichte, Leipzig, 1874. — Eng. Ed.] II.— FULLER STATEMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. §5. THE VIEW OP THE OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION PROPER TO CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. The Christian theological standpoint for the theology of the Old Testament is already expressed in its name, by virtue of which it does not treat its subject as the Jewish religion, but as the divine revelation of the Old Covenant, which on the one hand is fundamentally different from all heathen religions, and on the other forms the preliminary stage to the revelation of the New Covenant, which is with it comprehended in one divine economy of salv^ation (1). Since the definition of Old Testament revelation will be discussed more fully further on (comp. § 55 if.), only the more general propositions will here be stated. (1) That view of the Old Testament which is now prominent in claiming that it seeks to understand the Old Testament historically, and yet at the same time to be just to its religious value, amounts essentially to this : that Israel, by virtue of a certain genius for religion rooted in the natural peculiarity of the Semitic race, was more successful in the search after the true religion than the other nations of antiquity, and soared higher than the rest tow^ard the purest divine thoughts and endeavors. As the Greeks in the ancient world were the people of art and philosophy, and the Romans the people of law, so the people of religion /car' k^oxTjv sprang by natural growth from the Semitic stem. While it pleased the earlier rationalists to reduce the contents of the Old Testament as much as possible to things of little value, and then to condemn the whole as Jewish national delusion, this newer view, whose principal representative is Ewald, 14 INTRODUCTION. [§ G. fully recognizes the depth of thought und moral loftiness of the Old Testa' ment ; indeed, it finds there already, more or less distinctly expressed, the eter- nal truths which Christianity subsequently placed in full light. [As Dornei" {Hid. of Prot. Theology, ii. Am) sharply states it : He suppresses all that is new in the New Testament, and makes it nothing more than a purified Judaism. — D.] Yet, although individual contributions made to the matter of Old Testament theology from this standpoint have great value, the Old Testament can never be historically understood in this way. Does even a single page of the Old Testa- ment agree with this view, by which Israel is represented as a people of such genius in the production of religious thought, and the Old Testament religion as a natural product of the Israelitish spirit ? All that the Bible recognizes is the decided opposit.ion in which the Old Testament religion stood from the very beginning to all that Israel had sought and found in the path of nature. And how this view fails to recognize the difficulty of the divine tuition expressed in Isa. xliii. 24: "Thou hast made me /«?wr with thy sins, thou hast ■wearied me with thine iniquities." In Jer. ii. 10 f. we find Israel's position toward revela- tion distinctly characterized. When it is there said, " Pass over to the isles of Chittim, and see ; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing : Hath a nation changed its gods, which are yet no gods ? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit," this charge becomes Intelligible, if we remember that the gods of the heathens were a pro- duction of the natural national mind, but not so the God of Israel. And there- fore the heathen nations do not exchange their gods — so long, that is, as their religions thus originated have power to develop organically ; but Israel had to exercise on itself a certain compulsion in order to rise to the sphere of the spirit- ual Jeliovah-worship, and therefore it sought after the gods of the heathen — this borrowing from other religions, in fact, being characteristic of Israel, so far as it was not subject to revelation. The entire Old Testament remains a sealed book, if we fail to see that the sub- duing of the natural character of the people is the whole aim of the divine tui- tion, and that therefore the whole providential guidance of the nation moves in this antagonism. [From the point of view here controverted, the objection might arise that as in every department of mental activity the mass of the people occu- py a lower position than that of the more gifted intellects, while yet we re- gard the latter as the highest development of a nation's mind (the Greek philosophy, for example, as a production of the Greek national mind), so the loftiest religious teachings found in the prophets may be regarded as the highest development of the Israelitish national mind. This objection would hold good, if the struggle which goes through the whole history of Israel, between what Israel should be and what it was, had respect only to such an antagonism as we find, for instance, in the reproof in Is. i. or subsequently between John the Baptist and the Pharisees. But the antagonism which really appears is one entirely dif- ferent. The struggle maintained i)y Moses and the prophets is not a struggle on the part of those who have embraced the religious principle in its purity and truth, against the mass who stand upon a lower plane and are under the influence of sense, but it is a struggle of men who remain true to the God who has re- vealed himself to their fathers, against the mass who have apostatized to strange gods and to strange religions. Not bondage to sense but unfaithfulness is the charge against the people made by the true servants of Jehovah.] §G. THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF KEVKLATION. I. GENERAL AND SPECIAL KEVELATION. The Biblical idea of revelation has its root in the idea of Creation. Revelation is the development of the relation in which God has placed Himself to the world in bringing it into existence. The basis of revelation is laid in the fact that the § 6.] THE BIBLICAL IDEA OF REVELATION. 15 world was called into existence by the word of God, and was animated by His Spirit. The production of different classes of beings advances teleologically, and reaches its goal only when God has created man in His own image. In this progression the foundation of revelation is laid. For revelation is, in general, OoiV s icitness and communication of Himself to the xoorldfor the realization of the end of creation, and for the re-establishment of the full communion of man with God. After the tearing asunder through sin of the bond of the original com- munion of man with God, God testifies, partly in natui\. and the historical guid- ance of mankind, and partly in each one's conscience, of His power, goodness, and justice, and thus draws man to seek God ; comp. how the Old Testament points to this witness of God, which is perceptible even to the heathen, in Isa. xl. al-26 ; Jer. x.; Ps, xix. 2 if., xciv. 8-10 (1). The outer and inner foims of this universal revelation stand in a continual relation of reciprocity, since man's inward experience of the divine testimony is awakened through the objective outward witness of God ; but this outward witness is first understood by the in- ward (see Acts xvii. 28, in its relation to ver. 27). Yet the personal communion of man with God, as demanded by his ideal constitution, is not recovered by means of this general revelation. The living God remains to the natural man, in all his searchings, a hidden God (comp. Isa. xlv. 15 ; Jer. xxiii. 18 ; John i. 18). The knowledge of His a'L&ioq 6vva/xcc kuI 0Ei6T?/g does not in fact lead to the knowl- edge of the true and living God, nor does the testimony of conscience that we are bound to Him produce a personal vital communion with Him. Nay, con- science rather testifies to man of his separation from God, and that he has dis- owned the being of God attested to him in nature and history ; whence the Old Testament calls the heathen "those that forget God," Ps. ix. 18 (2). It is only by God's stooping toman in personal testimony to Himself, and by the objective pres- entation of Himself, that a vital communion is actually established between Him and man. This is the special revelation (3), which first appears in the form of a covenant between God and a chosen race, and the founding of a kingdom of God among the latter, culminates in the manifestation of God in the flesh, advances from this point to the gathering of a people of God in all nations, and is completed in the making of a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22 ; Pvev. xxi. 1 ff.), where God shall be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28). The relation between general and special revelation is such, that the former is the continual basis of the latter, the latter the aim and completion of the former, as, according ' to the Old Testament view, the covenant in the theocracy is presupposed in the worldwide covenant with Noah. As in nature each realm has its own laws, and yet the several realms stand in inseparable connection, since the lower steps always form a basis for the higher, and the higher a continuation and completion of the lower, so the general and special revelations, the order of nature and of salvation in the system of the world, are knit together in organic unity, as, according to the doctrine of the New Testament, the Logos is the Mediator of both (4). (1) What is called t\\Q j)hysirj)-theological, the moral evidence of God's existence, etc., is repeatedly presented in the Oid Testament in a popular form ; it occurs in the protest of the prophets against heathenism. Comp. Isa. xl. 21-26 : " Do ye not know ? do ye not hear ? hath it not been told you from the beginning ? have ye no understanding of the founding of the earth ? He that sits enthroned 16 INTRODUCTlOIf. [§ 6. over the circle of the earth . . . tliatstretcheth out the heavens as a curtain . . . that bringeth the princes to nothing, and maketh the judges of the earth like a waste," etc. Ver. 2(5 points to the starry sky. Jer. x. brings to mind the living God who rules in the universe. Ps. xix. 2 11. shows specially how God has revealed His splendor and order-establishing sway in the sun and its course. Ps. xciv. 9 presents the argument : "He who jjlants the ear, shall He not hear ? fie who formed tiie eye, sliall not He see ?" This verse admits of no difference of exposition. Tiie thought is this : the Creator of hearing and sight must Him- self have an analogous knowledge — must be a living God, who sees all things, and hears [)rayer. Ver. 10, " He wlio chastises the nations, shall not He punish, He, who teaclies man knowledge?" is often explained thus: He who punishes the nations in general, shall not Ho also punish in the actual case which is before us ? To me, tlie exposition of Hupfeld and Hitzig appears to be more cor- rect, according to which the D^IJ "l?' refers to divine correction in man's con- science. Then we get a good parallelism to the second member. The verse is thus a reference to the revelation of God in man's conscience and reason : He who has given conscience and reason. He who proclaims Himself in them to be a God of retribution, should He not also proclaim Himself so in reality, in His providences toward the nations ? (2) The expression D'h'^X Tl-?"^, Ps. ix. 18, is not, with Umbreit, to be con- nected directly with the forgetting of a purer ancient religion, but with the for- getting and denying of God's testimony, as it comes continually to the D'Ij them- selves. (3) In treating of special revelation, we meet one prominent point of difference between the biblical idea of revelation and the idea usually developed in the so-called Vermittelangstheologie (comp. Schultz's Old Testament Theol.). This school limits the idea of revelation as much as po<5sible to the inner life of man ; revelation is made to consist essentially' in a divine " self-communication through men inspired of God." Kevelation operates by working in the heart of man " an immediate certainty of divine life" (s. Schultz, p. Gl, and my review in Zoeckler und Andreie, Allg. literar. Anzeiger, 1870, p. 101 f.). The objective facts are not entirely denied ; it is not denied that events did occur in the history of the Israelites to which that inward self-communication of God to the prophets (of whom Moses may bo regarded as tiie first) attaches itself. But the objective personal self-presentation of God which the Bible undoubtedly asserts is^ not admitted, for fear of too dangerous an approach to the sphere of the miraculous, or else it is spoken of in a very indeiiuite way. [Gomp. the chapter on Moses in Schultz, especially p. 129 ff. j But [to tliis it may be answered] if revelation is at bottom only God's conuuunication of Himself throuuli inspired men, if it acts only to awaken in the mind of ccrtiin chosen men an immediate certainty of the divine existence, no specific difference between a })rophet and a heathen sage can be made out ; for even in the heathen an inmiediate certainty of the divine existence existed. In ord( r that such a relation of personal communion between God and mm as the idea of humanity requires may exist, we must have that objective presentation of Himself by God which is pointed out in the word, " Here am I," Isa. lii. 0, Ixv. 1. Luther, for example, luis with reason, in his commentary on Ps. xviii. {Exc- getica opera latina, Eri. Ausg. xvi. p. 71), ])ointed out how, from the beginning, the divine government aimed at binding tlie rev^elation of God to a given object : " Voluit enim dominus et ab initio sem|)er id curavit, ut csset aliquyd mouumen- tum et signum memoriale externum, quo alligaret tidem credentium in sc, ne ad- ducerentur variis et peregrinis fervoril)Us in spoiitaneasreligiones seu potius idolo- latrias." Divine revelation must enter tlie world as a proclamation, in which the personality of God as sucli mee s man, not as an inexpressible numen or Divinity, but as God Himself. When that is made clear to us, we discern the educational character of the divine f(U-ms of revelation. To mankind in its childhood God's existence must be tauglit in lheu[)hany f.oni without, and iheu § 7.] HISTORICAL CHARACTER AND PROGRESS OF REVELATION. 17 from that point revelation advances toward the manifestation of the reality of this God in the spirit (comp. § 55). (4) If an older supernatiirnlistic view places revelation in the more restricted sense in direct opposition to the order of nature, and represents special revela- tion as entering into the world as a Deus ex machina, this is in nowise the bibli- cal view. \ §7. II. HISTORICAL CHARACTER AND GRADUAL PROGRESS OP REVELATION. ITS RELA- TION TO THE WHOLE OP MAN'S LIFE. Its Siqiernatural Character. According to this, the special revelation of God, since it enters the sphere of human life, observes tlie laws of historical development which are grounded in the general divine system of the world. It does not at a bound enter the world all finished and complete ; but from a limited and relatively incomplete begin- ning, confining itself to one separate people and race, it advances to its com- pletion in Christ in a gradual manner corresponding to the natural development of mankind, and guides that development into the path of the divine order of salvation, so as to communicate to man, by an historical process, the fulness of God which Christ bears in Himself. And because revelation aims at the restora- tion of full communion between God and man, it is directed to the whale of man'' s life. It does not complete its work by operating either exclusively or mainly upon man's faculties of knowledge ; but constantly advancing, it produces and shajies the communion of God and man, as well by divine witness in word as by manifestations of God in the visible world, the institution of a commonwealth and its regulations, revelations of God witliin, the sending of the Spirit, and spirit- ual awakenings ; and all this so that a constant relation exists heticeen the revealing history of salvation and the revealing word, inasmuch as each divine fact is preceded by the word which discloses the counsel of God (Amos iii. 7) now to be com- pleted ; and again, the word of God arises from the completed fact, and testifies thereto (1). In these operations revelation makes itself known as differing from the natural revelations of the human mind, not only by the continuity and the or- ganic connection of the facts which constitiite the history of salvation, but also in its special character {miracle), which points distinctly to a divine causality. It is rec- ognized by the organs of revelation themselves through a special influence of the Spirit, of which they are conscious as a divine inspiration, and finally, by all who in faith accept revelation, through their own experience of salvation (2). (1) Biblical revelation, as here defined, is distinguished from the view of the older Protestant theology in two respects. On the old view, revelation was essentially, and almost exclusively, regarded as doctrine. In other words, what was urged was chiefly the influence of God on human knowledge — a defect which appeared still more one-sidedly in the older supernaturalism, which regarded revelation as concerned with the communication of a higher knowledge, which human reason either would not have found at all, or, as the rationalistic supernaturalism teaches, at least not so soon nor so perfectly. But if this was all, it would in fact have been better if it had pleased God to send directly from heaven a ready-made system of doctrine. This is, as is well known, the Moham- medan idea of revelation. And what need was there of this vast historical ap- 18 iKTRODUCTION. [§ 8. paratus in onlor simply to l)ring to tlio world a diviue doctrine wliich was then to be accredited by the facts of revelation? The second point in -which the older view of revelation was unjust to the biblical one, was the failure to recoja^- nize tlie (jradnal decelopmeiit whicli revelation passes through in the Scripture itself. The Bible, as the record of the teachings of revelation, was supposed to attest equally, in the Old and New Testaments, the truths which the Church has accepted as doctrines ; the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, was found in the Old Testament. If we look into the Scriptures, we see that, without doubt, revelation has to do with an influence on man's knowledge, but not this exclusively, and never so as to make this stand in the foreground. A people of God is to be created from our sinful race ; a community having in itself divine life is to be planted, and man- kind thus to be transformed into a kingdom of God, a tabernacle of God among men (Rev. xxi.). Revelation, then, cannot possibly confine itself to the cognitive side of man. Biblical Theology must be a theology of divine/acfsy Bot, indeed, in the limited view which has been taken (comp. Ad. Koehler's paper in Ullmann's Stud. XI. Krit. 1852, p. 875 ff.), as if the work of revelation simply consisted in divine acts and then all knowledge originated merely through reflection on the facts of revelation ; — on a similarly limited view of Hofraann, in his Weissagung und Erfallung, comp. § 14. The matter stands thus : between the facts or the history of revelation on one side and the testimony of the divine word on the other, ?kmtitaal correfipondence exists : for example, the flood is announced as a divine judgment — the threatening word precedes it ; and then, after the fact has taken place, a further word of God grows from it. This goes on down to the resurrec- tion of our Lord. — Amos iii. 7 : " The Lord Jehovah does nothing without re- vealing His secret to His servants the prophets." This passage points to the close connection of the words and facts of divine revelation. (3) The true definition of miracle and inspiration will be discussed further on. — The living experience of salvation is indeed first found complete on the basis of the New Testament revelation. It is there the testimony of the new creature, who knows that what he owes to the word of God differs specifically from that which he could have found in the path of nature. But in the Old Testament also there lies a mighty witness in the passage, " Who is a God like unto Thee ?" (Ex. xv. 11), as well as in the acknowledgment that Israel had a law such as no other people on earth had (Deut. iv. 6-8 ; Ps. cxlvii. 19 f., etc.). §8. III. THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS IN THEIR KELATION TO HEATHENISM AND TO EACH OTHER. Revelation falls into two principal divisions, the Old and the JVeio Testaments, which stand to each other in the relation of preparation and fulfilment, and are thus, as a connected dispensation of salvation, distinguished from all other relig- ions. Comp. specially Eph. ii. 12 (1). The law and the prophets are ful filled in Christianity ; while, on the contrary, the heathen religions are not fulfilled in Christianity, but come to naught. It is true that heathenism was a preparation for Christianity, not simply negatively by the exhaustion of the forms of religious life which it produced, and the making felt the need of salvation, but also, by bring- ing the intellectual and moral powers of the human soul to a richer development, it added to the gospel — which seeks to enlist in its service all the powers of man's nature — many homogeneous elements, thus opening to the truth many paths among men. But heathenism not only lacks the series of divine facts through which the way was prepared for the completion of salvation in Christ, and like- § 8.] THE O. AND N. T. IN THEIR RELATION TO HEATHENISM. 19 Avise all Inoirlcdge concerning the divine counsel of salvation (comp. Isa. xli. 22, xliii. 9 flf., xliv. 7 ff., etc.) (2); but it has not so much as prepared the human basis from -which the redemption of man could historically proceed. For, on the one hand, all heathen culture, even if capable of being shaped by revelation, is yet no necessary condition for the redemptive operation of the gdt.pel, 1 Cor. i. 18- 30 ; and, on the other hand, heathenism, which has no knowledge of the holiness of God, and so no full idea of sin, but only a keen sense of injustice, lacks those conditions under which alone a sphere of life could be generated which presented a fit soil for the founding of the work of redemption (cf . Rothe's Theol. Ethih, 2d ed. ii. p. 120 ff.) (3). But the unity of the Old and New Testaments must not be understood as identity. The Old Testament itself, while it regards the decree of salvation revealed in it, and the kingdom of God foimded thereupon, as eternal, as extending to all times and to all races of men (from Gen. xii. 3 onward, comp. also the parallel pas- sages ; further, Isa. xlv. 23 f., liv. 10, etc.), acknowledges that the manifestation of God's kingdom at that time was imperfect and temporary ; for it points forward to a new revelation, in which that which is demand^ by the letter of the law and signified by its ordinances shall become a reality through divine communication of life (comp. Deut. xxx. 6); indeed, at the very time in which the old form of the theocracy was overthrown, it predicted the new eternal covenant which God would make with His people (Jer. xxxi. 31 ff.) (4). — But still more distinctly does the New Testament emphasize the difference from the Old which subsists within the unity of the two covenants. The eternal counsel of salvation, although announced by the prophets, is nevertheless not completely revealed till after its actual realization (Rom. xvi. 25 f. ; 1 Pet. i. 10 ff. ; Eph. i. 9 f., iii. 5). The tuition of the law reached its goal in the grace and truth of Christ (John i. 17 ; Rom. X. 4 ; Gal. iii. 24 f.). In the saving benefits of the new covenant, the shadow of the old dispensation passes into reality (Col. ii. 17 ; Heb. x. 1 ff.) : therefore the greatest man in the old covenant is less than the least in the kingdom of Christ (IVIatt. xi. 11); indeed, the Old Testament teachings and institutions, divested of their fulfilment in Christ, sink down into poor and beggarly rudiments (Gal. iv. 9) (5). (1) According to Eph. ii. 12, the heathen, as aTTTjAXoTptufiivoi ttjq ■KoliTEiaq tov 'lapaifk, are also S,kvoL ruv Stadr/Koii' rf/c iTrayyeXiaq. Israel has hope, the heathen are ilTTlSa fifj exovreg : Israel has the living God, the heathen are aOeoL ev tu KOGfiu. (2) What did heathenism ever transmit to the coming generations after its bloom was dead, as the w^ork of its seers and oracles ? What permanent knowledge to comfort men and inspire them with hope in times of trouble ? The answer to this can only be, that heathen divination which searched heaven and earth to find signs of God's will, which even knocked in its questionings at the gates of the kingdom of death, which listened for the divine voice in the depth of the human breast, never gained a knowledge of the counsel of the living God ; so that the old heathenism at the close of its development stood helpless — in spite of all its searching, possessing no key to the understanding of God's ways, and no knowl- edge of the goal of history. Or did not its knowledge of the divine counsel take refuge in poetry, philosophy, and political wisdom, when the mind of man emancipated itself from the decaying power of divination ? The idea of a provi- dence, of a moral order of the world, everywhere appears, no doubt, as a witness of the religious constitution of man and the indestructible power of conscience. 20 IKTRODtJCTlOK. [§ 8. But with this thought wrestles the belief in dark fate ; and this, as is forcibly brought out by Wuttke {OescUchte des JIeide?ithums, i. p. 98), is " the evil conscience of heathenism continually admonishing and tormenting— the conscious- ness of guilt on the part of the gods making it more and more evident that they are not what they ought to be ; that they are of this world, wiiile they ought to be a spiritual power over it, and therefore bear in themselves the gerni of death."— Whether destiny or virtue determines the world, or how the operations of both are divided, is a riddle which ever turns up unsolved, although boldly answ^ered now in this way, now in that. Observe, for example, to cite but a few instances, how a Demosthenes at first testifies to the reign of divine justice in the history of nations ; how he prophetically announces the fall of the power which rests on falsehood and perjury ; how he concedes, indeed, that destiny deter- mines the issue of all things, but holds its gifts of fortune possible only where there exists a moral claim on the favor of the gods {Olynth. ii. 10. 23); and how, in the evening of his life, he knows no better explanation of the misfortune of his people than that the destiny of all men, as it rules at present, is hard and dread- ful, and that therefore even Athens must receive its share of the misfortune common to man, in spite of its own good fortune {de cor. p. 311). Or see how a Plutarch, who, in his remarkable book on the late execution of divine punishment, shows a deeper understanding of the divine method of judgment, but acknowl- edges in his consolatory epistle to Apollonius, chap. vi. ff., no higher law for human things than the law of change — see how he answers the above-mentioned question in his treatise on the fate of Rome ; how he seeks to comprehend the course of the history of the world by the combination of the two principles, des- tiny and virtue. He teaches (chap, ii.), that as in the universe theSearth has established itself gradually out of the conflict and tumult of elementary matter, and has lent to the other things a firm position, so it is with the history of man. The greatest kingdoms in the world were driven about and came into collision with each other by chance, and thus began a total confusion and destruction of all things. Then Time, which with the Godhead founded Rome, mixed fortune and virtue, in order that, taking from both what was their own, it might set up for all men a holy hearth, an abiding stay and eternal foundation, an anchor for things driven about amid storm and waves. Thus in the Roman empire the weightiest matters attained stability and security ; everything is in order, and has entered on an immovable orbit of government. [Programm uber das Verhilltniss der alttest. Prophetic zto' lieidniscTien MantiJc, 1801. j (3) In asserting on biblical grounds the essential connection of the Old and New Testaments, we stand in opposition to that view of the Old Testament especially which has been advanced by Schleiermacher in his Glauhenslehre. Schleier- macher's position (§ 12) is this : " Christianity stands, indeed, in a special historical connection with Judaism ; but in respect to its historical existence and aim, its relation to Judaism and to heathenism is the same." The more this view of the Old Testament has become prevalent, as it has in late years, the more necessary is it to look at it closely. [Ritschl, in his Christian Doctrine of Justification, opposes it.] When Schleiermacher, in the first place, bases his proposition on the assertion that Judaism required to be re-fashioned by means of non-Jewish elements before Christianity could proceed from it, this is an assertion in the highest degree contrary to history. For to what does Christ attach His gospel of the kingdom ? Is it to Judaism as re-shaped by Greek philosophy into Hellenism ? or is it not rather to the law and promise of the Old Covenant ? Even where the New Testament comes into connection with ideas of Alexandrian Judaism, as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, tliere is still an essential difference between that Alexandrian self-redemption and the Christian facts of redemption. This is so clear and certain, that it is not necessary to waste words upon the subject. Rather we must say, conversely, that heathenism, Itfore receivinff Christianity, had to he prepared monotheistically ; which was mainly effected by that mission of the Jewish Diaspora, which had so great an influence on the Roman world. Schleiermacher is right when he argues, in the second § 8.] THE KELATION" OP tHE O. T. TO CHRISTIANITY. 2l place, that it is possible to pass directly from heathenism to Christianity without passing through Judaism ; but it must be remembered, that in heathenism the training of the law is partly supplied by conscience (Ep. to the Romans), and that even the gospel includes the preaching of the law, when it Cvtmmences with the word " Repent." To Schleiennacher's third objection, that though Christ sprang out of Judaism, yet many more heathens than Jews have embraced Christianity, we have to say that Israel hardened its heart because it had from the first a possession which it deemed sufficient, while in heathenism a conscious need of salvation and a seeking after God existed. Nagelsbach has well pointed out {Vorrede zur homer. Theol., 2d ed. p. xix.) how the " seeking after God was the living pulse in the whole religious develop- ment of antiquity." " But," he continues, " it is clear as can be, that this seek- ing was much further developed in the vague feeling of want and a longing for its supply, than in the capacity to satisfy it by its own power." The attempts " to find the real and essential Deity" failed altogether. Schleiermaclier'a fourth argument is as follows : What is most valuable for the Christian use of the Old Testament is to be found also in the utterances of the nobler and purer heathenism — for example, in the Greek philosophy (a view often expressed ; comp. V. Lasaulx, Socrates' Life, Teaching, and Death, 1858); while, on the other hand, that is least valuable which is most distinctly Jewish. Now it is undoubtedly correct that much which belongs specifically to the Old Testament is abolished in the New Testament. But if we ask what is specific and essential in both the Old and New Testaments in opposition to heathenism, the answer is not Monotheism ; for there is a monotheistic heathenism as well, and heathenism wrestles to lay hold on the Deity as a unity ; but for the Old and New Testament in opposition to heathenism, the common bond is, above all, the knowledge of God's holiness. "With this it follows, as shown in the text, that, because the heathen had not the knowledge of the divine holiness, they also had not a complete sense of sin (comp, the striking remarks of Carl Ludw. Roth in his critique of Nagelsbach's " Homer. Theol.," Erlanger Zeitsclirift far Protestantismus und Kirche, i. 1841, p. 387 ff.). In regard to the alleged expressions in agreement with Christianity which can be traced in heathenism, it must be noticed that all those dispersed rays of light do not make a sun — that, with all these, the conditions were not given for the founding of a community of salvation. It remains undeniable that the community which was gathered out of Israel forms the true root of the Christian Church (comp. Rom. xi.). With good reason has Steudel (in his Theologie des A. T. p. .541) met Schleiermacher with the question, where it could be said to the heathen in the same way as to the Jews : " He is come, to whom all the men of God have pointed, and for whom they have waited." This is not simply an external historical connection, (4) It lies in the nature of the case, that the law at the time in which it was given did not present itself as a law to be abrogated, for thereby the law would have weakened itself. Certainly the Mosaic regulations are given very posi- tively, as everlasting regulations, from which Israel was not to deviate ; but that the position of the people toioard the law shall in the future be different from what it is in the present time, is stated in the Pentateuch very distinctly, viz., Deut. XXX. 6, where it is declared, that in the last times God will circumcise the heart of the people, and so will not meet them merely in the way of command, but will awaken in them a susceptibility for the fulfilment of the law. Thus the germ of the prophecy of a new covenant of an essentially different character, as it was uttered by Jeremiah in those very days when the battlements of the old city of David sank in the dust, lies already in the Pentateuch. (5) Since such a difference exists between the Old and New Testaments — a difference which chiefly centres in the contrast between the law and the gospel — it is to be expected from the outset that with this practical difference a theoretical one must correspond, and that we shall not find in the Old Testament the meta- physical doctrines of Christianity. This is the point in which the earlier theology erred. 22 INtRODUCtlOK-. [§ 9. in.— HISTORY OF THE CULTIVATION OF OLD TESTAIMENT THEOLOGY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (1). §9. TnEOLOGICAL VIKW OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE EARLT CHURCH AND IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Old Testament Theology, as an indci^endent branch of history, is, like Biblical Theology in general, a modern science. During the whole development of church doctrine down to the Reformation, and also in the old Protestant theology, no distinct line was drawn between the essential contents of revelation as they are laid down in the Scriptures, and the doctrinal formulas elaborated from them ; and still less were the successive stages of revelation and types of doctrine which are presented in Scripture recognized. While, on the one hand, the early Church succeeded in overthrowing the heresy of Marcion, which completely severed Christianity from the Old Testament revelation, it did not avoid the opposite error of confounding the two Testaments. The proposition, Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus Testamentum in Novo jxitet, which is in itself correct, was so perverted as to be made to mean that the whole of Christian theology, veiled in- deed, but already fully formed, could be shown to exist in the Old Testament (2). Especially was this the case in the Alexandrian theology, which changed the distinction between the law and the gospel into a mere difference of degree, and attributed to the prophets in general the same illumination as to the apostles (3). But even those doctors of the Church who, like Augustine, more correctly apprehended the distinction between the law and the gospel, and the difference of degree between the revelation in the Old and in the New Testament with respect to the benefits of salvation, failed to recognize this difference in theory, and, so far as the more enlightened men of the Old Testament are concerned, almost entirely abandoned it (4). Still Augustine's treatment of Old Testament history in his work de Civitate Dei, lib. xv,-xvii., is not without interest in its bearing on Biblical Theology (5). On the other hand, the chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (G), which, in the first book and the beginning of the second, discourses compendiously on the whole Old Testament history, is of no importance to Biblical Tlieology, though it is not wanting in interest on individual points (7). Still less was the cultivation of Bil)lical Theology as an historical science pos- sible under the influence of the theology of the middle ages, or at all consistent with the tendencies pf that period. Even the mystical tendency, which went back more to the Bible, was deficient in sound hermeneutical principles, and so, no less than scholasticism, did violence in its speculations to the Scriptures. Even those who, like the theologians of the School of St. Victor, had a presentiment of a more legitimate treatment of ScripUire, were unable to carry tlieir ideas out (8). (1) This survey of the history of our science will show how far the view of the Old Testament which we have presented in the preceding pages lias been adopted by those who have written on Old Testament theology. Comp. witli this my ih'olegomena to the Theology of the Old Testament, 1845 (also my article " Weissa- gung" in Ilcrzog's llcal-Eacyldoj). xvii.), and DienteVs Uistory of the Old Testament § 9.] THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE O. T. IK THE EARLY CHURCH. 23 in the Christ km Church, Jena, 18G9. The very excellent work of Diestel not only gives a history of the way in which the Old Testament has been viewed and ex- pounded in Christian theology, but seeks also to point out [though much more l)riefly than might be supposed from Oehler's statement — D. J the influence which the Old Testament has exercised in the course of centuries on the life of the Cliurch, on its constitution, worship and doctrine, and on the arts and laws of Christian nations. This attempt has succeeded so well, that we find a tolerably complete mass of material brought together in a very instructive manner. (See my review of the work in Andreae und Brachmann, AUg. litterur. Anzeiger, April, 1869, p. 245 ff.) (2) The earliest treatment of the Old Testament, not simply practically, but theologically, is found in the New Testament : comp. especially the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. Tlie controver)