Jlk. John Fox The Shorter Bible The Old Testament v^^m t'^f Ifv %r^^ BSI95 iHm .I.K37 Ml ifi<^ A N 'asnjojXs Z=Z (^ 3 1922 OLD lary, 1922 FT '^r THE SHORTER BIBLE-THE OLD TESTAMENT JOHN FOX Reprinted from The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. XX, No. i, January, 1922 ^ The Shorter Bible — The Old Testament With the pnbhcation of the present volume/ the Shorter Bible is now brought to completion, the Nezv Testament having come from the press in 1918. The publishers of these two handy and beautiful companion volumes are here not merely publishers. Their official representative is also one of the au- thors and editors, thus bringing the prestige of this famous firm to the aid of the Shorteners and sharing their responsibili- ties. The Prefaces to the two Testaments should be carefully compared. They are just enough alike to sound practically identical, but they are not so. The N.T. Preface states that the Shorter Bible aims simply to single out "those parts of the Bible which are of vital interest and practical value to the present age." "These passages," we are assured, "contain the true heart of the Bible, that has proved the inspiration of past generations, and will prove in increasing measure the guide of those to come." This clearly implies that the omitted passages are not "vital and valuable" to present and future ages, not "the true heart of the Bible." Criticisms, many and severe, were made on such a disparage- ment of one third of the New Testament and a prospective two thirds of the Old, in spite of the disclaimer that the Shorter Bible is not to be "a substitute for the complete text of the time-honored versions." This disclaimer is now repeated, but the passages quoted above from the N.T. Preface are not re- peated. Instead we are told that the passages now published as the Shorter Old Testament are "especially well suited ... to kindle the interest of the busy modern reader in the Bible as a 1 The Shorter Bible: The Old Testament. Translated and arranged by Charles Foster Kent, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Literature in Yale University; with the collaboration of Charles Cutler Torrey, Pro- fessor of Semitic Languages in Yale University; Henry A. Sherman, Head of the Department of Religious Literature of Charles Scribner's Sons; Frederick Harris, Senior Secretary of the Publication Depart- ment of the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations; Ethel Cutler, Religious Work Secretary of the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations. 6j/^-4J/2, pp. 622. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, $;?.oo net.) whole." This change of key is quite significant. It cannot be accidental, and seems prudential, as of a soldier who has exposed himself prematurely. The Shorteners gave their case away too clearly in the first preface; now they draw back a little. But they do not repudiate anything they have said. How could they? For if evidence were lacking in the Shorter New Testa- ment of the real aim and purpose of the whole it is beyond peradventure in the Shorter Old Testament. The destructive criticism of both Testaments finds all too plain expression in the whole. The selection of passages to be omitted is unexplain- able otherwise. Is it quite honorable for scholars not to avow their real purpose more plainly ? It is a "Higher Critical" Bible, — why not have said so frankly? The book is sent out done up in a neat little paper jacket, in the modern fashion to catch the eye of the buyer, with a publishers' notice, to which might have been appropriately added, "Published in the Interest of Graf, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Driver, and their Heirs and Suc- cessors." The "Index of Biblical Passages" (pp. 602-622) and the "Contents" (pp. vii-xxxi) must be used with caution. They are certainly not infallible, which is at least appropriate. Ruth is allowed only three chapters in each (Contents and Index) but in the body of the book, all four appear, though the fourth is mutilated. The 49th Psalm likewise has in the book four more verses than Index and Contents call for. The 39th of Job is abolished in the Index and Contents, but part of it spared in the text; the war horse appears there though he only "neighs" somewhat tamely and no longer says, Ha! Ha! We may note in passing that Delitzch^ prefers Ha ! Ha ! as we do. Genesis ii. 32 is intentionally cut in half by the Short- eners; butt he Index (not the Contents) takes the whole verse away, including the last half, "And Terah died in Haran," which happily appears in the text. Such homilists as Dr. Harry E. Fosdick, who have recently ventured to preach on this portion of the verse, have had a narrow escape, granting that the Book and not the Index expresses the mind of the Editors. The next edition, for aught we know, may take the whole verse away. All this is confusing to those who may wish to compare the "Shorter" and "Longer" Bibles, for it is the 2 Commentary on Job, vol. II, p. 340. pride and boast of the Shorteners that they have neither chap- ter nor verse but 384 "sections" of their own, and as they have no hesitation in moving once famiHar paragraphs about, an inexact Index is somewhat irritating, and tempts one to wish it could be "put on the Index." A Scotchman in one of Barrie's stories complained that he never could find Ezra : "Ezra jumped about so." Ezra is static compared with the "sections" of the Shorter Bible- A thorough examination of the work is of course impossible within the limits of this notice ; its general character only can be indicated. The Shorteners have removed bodily from the Canonical Scriptures four whole books, ist and 2nd Chron- icles, Obadiah and Haggai. The present writer has called at- tention in noticing the Nezv Testament,^ to the bearing of this mode of procedure on the whole concept of a Canon. Is there such a thing as a Canon? If there is, on what principle does it rest? Practically its raison d'etre is taken away, if any group of modern scholars are privileged without any pretence of manuscript evidence or historical proof, to cast out of either Testament four whole books. In neither Preface are any sufificient reasons given for electing Chronicles and two Minor Prophets to reprobation. In the Chronicles we lose one of the longest pieces of historical narrative in the Bible and are left without satisfactory information about many important mat- ters. To this wholesale cancellation of Jewish history must be added the mutilation of Zechariah, companion to Haggai, of whose fourteen chapters we are allowed to keep only two verses. Out of the twenty-seven chapters of Leviticus only seventeen verses or parts of verses are spared. Forty-one whole chapters are taken from the forty-eight of Ezekiel, and in the seven remaining, 81 out of the 183 verses are gone, making from one-twelfth to one-fifteenth of the whole book left by the new Canonists. There is no hesitation in slashing wholesale any part of either Testament. Not a single book in the Old Testament escapes the spoilers altogether, and only one (Philemon) in the New. Zechariah predicted (xiv. 21) that every pot in Judah and in Jerusalem shall be holiness unto the Lord of Hosts and promised that "in that day there shall no more be the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of 8 This Review, for October 1919, p. 650. hosts." The Canaanite has gotten into the Bible and cut this out. The old-fashioned title, The Holy Bible, does not appear in the Shorter Bible, and somehow it would hardly seem in place there. In Genesis twelve whole chapters (v, x, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, XX, xxiii, xxvi, xxxiv, xxxvi, xxxviii) are absent, which describe such stirring events as the Battle of the Kings in the vale of Siddim, the rescue of Lot by Abraham, his meeting with Melchisedek ; also one of the signal theophanies to Abraham which Paul quotes with such point in Romans iv. If the aim of the Shorteners was to interest "busy modern read- ers" in the Bible as a whole, why did they blue pencil such readable stories as these? Very few chapters are given en- tire. The account of Noah's flood is mutilated by leaving out the age of Noah and the names of his three sons. Afterwards, in what are called "The Abraham Narratives," the names of Shem, Ham and Japhet are mentioned but transferred out of their proper place in Genesis ix. i8 to xi. 32. This seems in- explicable until we notice that the list of long-lived antedilu- vians in chapter v has disappeared; likewise the "generations of Noah" in chapter x. No doubt it is for the same reason that in xi. 32, "the days of Terah were 205 years," are cut away from the rest of the verse, "and Terah died at Haran." Noah's five hundred years when his sons are born and his six hundred when the flood came, and the antediluvians in general, are stumbling blocks and they are quietly dropped. Such trans- posings and eliminations are thoroughly characteristic. No whole chapter is taken from Exodus until we reach the significant and splendid twenty-fourth. Four others, the last four, share a similar fate. But all the rest are mutilated. The first five verses of the opening chapter are gone, the sixth has a single verse left out of its thirty, the twenty-fifth has two left, the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth one apiece, and so on. Capital punishment in China, is, or once was, inflicted by slicing the victim piece-meal. This is the method by which the Bible is done to death. If books could speak, surely they would beg for the coup de grace to end it. Twenty-six of the thirty-six chapters are taken bodily out of Numbers, and twenty-two out of the thirty-four in Deuteronomy, and the slicing process applied to the rest. Proverbs loses only one whole chapter, although that contains the matchless and ter- rible picture of an adulteress surely still needed today, but by the slicing process nearly one-half of the whole book is gone. Ecclesiastes appears in parts, we might almost say snippets, of eight out of its twelve chapters. The exquisite beauty of the Song of Songs is not enough to stay the hand of the ravish- ers; out of the 117 verses, full 86 are gone, each several verse a pearl, — it is like robbing the Taj of its proportions, its scrolls, and frets, and lights and shadows. The Greater Pro- phets are not so great, and the Minor are minus many a glow- ing rose-dawn and solemn thunder peal of commination. Jonah still prays from the whale's belly, but we do not know what liturgy he used, for his prayer is gone, nor does Malachi announce the Lord suddenly coming to his temple. Half a loaf is better than no bread, and half a Bible is better than no Bible. Sinners may be saved by reading even the Shorter Bible and saints edified, — somewhat, — but why should we stint ourselves by less than the whole honest loaf? The reason given in the Preface sounds plausible: "to kindle," we are told, "the interest of the busy modern reader in the Bible as a whole." Is it thought it may kindle such an interest to reduce large sections of it to kindling wood, by the slur cast on them in the New Testament Preface? Any Bible reader of reasonable intelligence who compares the "Shorter" with the "Holy Bible," must notice certain things on the very surface, producing first astonishment, then distrust. In the Contents, (p. vii), we read of "Stories and Histories." What kind of "Stories"? Are they true stories? Histories are presumably records of fact, while stories may or may not be so. "Bible Stories" used to be regarded as "true stories" and not as mere folk-tales, or mythological legends, half true and half false. Old-fashioned Sunday School teachers, for instance, would be startled by seeing the contrast implied in "Stories and Histor- ies." Next we read, "The Primitive Narratives," and then, "The Traditional Origin of Nations and Languages." Such a heading pretty nearly lets the traditional cat out of the bag. "The Traditional Origin" may or may not be the actual origin, and the most unsuspicious reader is apt to have a disagreeable fear of what such a dubious phrase covers up and might natur- ally ask, within himself or herself, — Can it be that two Divinity Professors in Yale University, and the Secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A., are trying to suggest that the Bible is not reliable? Why were the names of Noah's sons and his own age cut out of the flood story? Was that a rec- ord of fact, or ancient "Tradition" ? Why are we no longer to teach our children about Methusaleh, or Enoch who walked with God? Many of them are ignorant enough now. What will they be if they are brought up on the Shorter Bible ? "The Abraham Narratives" and "The Jacob-Esau Narratives," and "The Joseph Narratives," are these "Sories" or "Histories"? The constant suggestion of the headings and the nomenclature of the Shorter Bible, is of editors to whom the Book is not impregnable rock, but shifting sand. What has become of the tabernacle, whose divinely revealed plan and divinely directed construction are described with such picturesque circumstantiality, with all the web of dramatic events accompanying it? The last four chapters of Exodus are gone entirely, and of the last seventeen chapters containing 568 verses, just eleven verses are left. We can imagine some un- sophisticated reader saying to himself, Moses, it seems now, never went up into the mountain and stayed there for forty days and nights, and never heard what we always have thought he heard. There was a tent of some kind but not such a tent as we have always thought. The Shorter Bible always stops short when it comes to the parts which so affirm. There were ten command- ments, but no stone tablets for him to break, no sin of the golden calf to be punished; Moses' face did not shine so that he had to put a veil over it for the glory of the Lord which ap- peared as devouring fire in the mount is vanished. The Short- er Bible has the veil without the glory. A very simple explana- tion will make clear to the unsophisticated reader what this all means. The Shorter Bible may have been published as the O.T. Preface says, to persuade busy men and women to take an interest in the whole Bible, but it is plainly meant to teach them also not to believe the whole Bible and what part of the Bible to believe, and in proportion to the degree in which its princi- ples and spirit are accepted that is what it must result in. The school of critical scholars which it represents began by ques- tioning and ends by denying the truth of large sections of Scripture. This is especially true of the Old Testament, but it grows more evident every day that both Testaments are in the same boat and must sink or swim together. It is not meant by this that all critics are higher critics, or all higher critics destructive critics. The words are used not always accurately but with a certain elasticity. "Higher" criti- cism in the proper sense is of course as legitimate a theological discipline as "lower," which it can admirably supplement. But in common parlance, higher criticism usually means that school of criticism now all the rage, which not only denies the plenary inspiration of the whole Scripture, but claims to have made and demonstrated its case. "Criticism has won," one of its eminent advocates boasts, "All that remains is to settle the indemnity." The present writer heard a former Presbyterian minister relate publicly twenty-five years ago why he became a Unitarian. He had only an imperfect theological education, he said, and when he "struck the higher criticism," he soon saw that the Old Testament must go. But he drew "a charmed circle about the New," saying, "I will never touch that." But that phase soon passed: "and last Easter," he concluded his confession of unfaith, "I rejected the last vestige of super- natural religion by rejecting the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Henry Ward Beecher used to say that people are saved by their inconsistencies. Few people are always logical — some never are. It is better to be an illogical believer than a logical infidel. The logical terminus of the Shorter Bible is undoubt- edly no Bible at all, but we may hope that not all who read it will arrive at the terminal station. But its bottommost princi- ples are the outcome of the anti-supernatural tide sweep- ing over the world leaving its wreckage on every shore. The excision of the last chapters of Exodus is a glaring in- stance of this. The historical statements about the taber- nacle are referred to in the New Testament, especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But the critics now tell us all this is incorrect. No such building ever existed except in the imagination of some Jews living during or after the Exile, centuries later, who were bent on glorifying the historical origin of the nation and its institutions, and so embroidered the prosaic facts by a fancy sketch of an imaginary taber- 8 nacle put forth in Moses' name. It was a good "Story," but not "History" ; no doubt not unlike "The Abraham Narrative," but less historical perhaps. This theory of the origin of the tabernacle story is closely involved with the still more extraordinary creation known as the Priest Code, supposedly that section of the Pentateuch, or Hexateuch, dealing with the priestly legislation, usages and cultus, including the tabernacle and all those books or parts of books having a genetic relation thereto. Professor Kent, the leading editor of the Shorter Bible, lauds Dr. Driver, magna cum laude, in his presentation of "the results of recent critical research."^ Dr. Driver uses the term Priest-Code, or "P" as "in strictness applicable only to the 'ceremonial sec- tions Exodus — Numbers' " but it is not unsuitable, he thinks, to extend it to the correlated sections in Joshua, considering them all, "the framework of our present Hexateuch." "This," he continues, "belongs approximately to the period of the Babylonish Captivity."^ Driver says this in his character- istic manner of hesitation, for which he incurred the dis- approval of the more radical Cheyne, but it is his definite judgment. "P" lived centuries later than the events he describes, and what he describes as actual facts were very many of them not facts but fiction. Driver gives Wellhausen credit for the term Priest-Code. Wellhausen regards the tabernacle as a creation of the post-exilic imagination. "It was," he says, "the copy and not the prototype of the temple at Jerusalem" ; thus putting the cart before the horse and insisting that it belongs there. "The Priest-Code was absolutely unknown even down to the middle of the exile-" Professor Kent commends Wellhausen though not so unreservedly as he does Driver.'' Wellhausen, from our standpoint, is not felicitious in alluding to Voltaire as one of the first skeptics about the tabernacle.'^ It must be evident then why, following Vol- *^ History of the Hebrew People— The United Kingdom, p. 209 (Ap- pendix). ^Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 10 and 136. ^History of the Hebrew People— The United Kingdom (Appendix), p. 210. 7 Wellhausen, Prolegomena to History of Israel, pp. 37, 39 and 48. taire's lead, twentieth century skeptics, now called critics, ex- clude "the ceremonial sections" of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers from the Shorter Bible and then proceed to weed out of the rest of the Bible any and every allusion that can lend support to the notion that the Priest-Code came from the time of Moses, or was in actual use before the exile. As long as these books and passages stand in the Bible they are like the dykes of Holland. The flood of doubt can not rush in. The skeptical critics naturally would like to make leaks in the dykes. To see how thoroughly, we may better say ruthlessly, this is done, let the reader turn to page 91 (section 43) where the "Construction of the Tent of Meeting" is de- scribed. Exodus XXV. I tells us that "The Lord spake unto Moses saying," and then follows a detailed list of the mater- ials needed for a "ceremonial" tabernacle: gold, silver, brass, blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, oil, spices, incense, onyx stones, &c. All these the Shorteners omit, jumping over to the eighth verse which reads "And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." The innocent reader of the Shorter Bible would naturally suppose that there were no such materials used in the "tent of meeting." The ninth verse en- joins "the pattern of the tabernacle," which is evidently the one showed to Moses in the mount. This also the Shorteners omit and also the rest of that chapter, and the rest of the book and such passages in the succeeding books as cannot be plausi- bly made to consist with the theory that there was no cere- monial tabernacle. We raise the question — Is this or is it not suppressio verif Is the public, especially the unlearned public, dealt with fairly? Almost the whole book of Leviticus is omitted, — shut out of the witness box, — although the phrase "The Lord spake unto Moses" occurs twenty-nine times, with two special and solemn repetitions that these commandments were given through Moses at Mount Sinai. The moiety of Leviticus allowed to remain is placed after Ezra and Nehemiah along with a few fragments from Exodus and Deuteronomy, thus proclaiming them all as dating from exilian or postexilian times. In other words the editors, all and singular, having accepted the ration- alistic speculations and "results" of the destructive criticism, deem it permissible to propagate their views by leaving out of the Bible passages which contradict their views, without any explanation of the principles on which the omissions were made. If they had said plainly in the Prefaces what these prin- ciples were, no objection could be made on ethical grounds. As it is, the ethical propriety of such a propaganda is open to the gravest question. If a jurist, no matter how eminent were to publish a Shorter Constitution of the United States, or, say, a Shorter Blackstone made on similar principles, especially if it were intended for the unlearned in the law, withholding expla- nation of the principles underlying the omissions, as a means of propagating his views of the Constitution or of Blackstone, what would his standing be with his professional brethren? Why are the Books of Chronicles absent from the Shorter Bible? The Preface does not tell, but the masters of the art of Bible dissection, leave us no room for doubt. Driver says •} "It does not seem possible to 'treat the additional matter' [addi- tional, i.e., to Samuel and Kings] as strictly and literally his- torical." Professor Kent himself says "the Chronicler naively read into earlier epochs the conditions and current traditions of his own times," though he acquits him of intentional decep- tion.^ This means that the Chronicler "naively" pictured the tabernacle and Solomon's temple and the worship and cultus centering in them as really originating under Mosaic law, and being developed by David and Solomon especially. Other critics speak more unqualifiedly. Dr. H. P. Smith says flatly,^" "His work must not be called history," and,^^ "Later times made David a saint after their own ideal, a nursing father of the Old Testament church, organizer of the Levitical system, and the author of the Psalter" — all absurd of course, and David as a Psalmist the crowning absurdity. "See what Chronicles has made out of David," Wellhausen exclaims,^^ and then paints a ^Introduction to Literature of O. T., p. 532. ^ History of the Jewish People, Greek Period, p. 272. 10 O. T. History, p. 5. " O. T. History, pp. 154-5. '^^ History of Israel, p. 182. The critical view is not that Samuel and Kings are always historically reliable, but only more reliable than Chronicles. Wellhausen calls i Samuel ii. 17 a "pious make-up" and says "There cannot be a word of truth in the whole narrative" (His- tory of Israel, pp. 248-9). The Shorter Bible omits the whole chapter. picture full of scorn: "feebly holy picture seen through a cloud of incense," the "head of a swarm of priests and Levites." We may turn his own words against him. Chronicles has made out of David a picture very unwelcome to the critics, the continua- tor and restorer of the priestly worship and cultus, as pre- scribed in the Law of Moses, which is so hard for the critics to get rid of that the only safe way to deal with Chronicles is to expel it bodily from the Canon, and — out of the Canon of the Shorter Bible Chronicles goes. By the grace of God Chronicles still remains in the real Bible to witness to this age that the Priest-Code and its corol- laries are not a fraus pia perpetrated by a coterie of patriotic Jews after the exile and palmed off as Moses' own, but a true and living part of the warp and woof of Scripture, which holy men of God were inspired by the Holy Ghost to create. Chronicles has its difficulties, but the words of Klosterman^^ might have been profitably remembered before the authors of the Shorter Bible wrested it violently from its place in the Canon: "Chronicles demands an able and cautious examina- tion, if we would not sin against any Biblical book, nor against the sense of impartial investigation." The attitude of the Shorteners to the Psalms is of a piece with the rest. Professor Kent says :^* "Probably a few of the proverbs and Psalms in our present collections are from Israel- itish authors." Driver^^ thinks that "very few of the Psalms are earlier than the seventh century. . . . the Psalter in all its parts is a compilation of the postexilic age,"^® though there may be some of preexilian origin. Wellhausen is more radical. "The Psalter is the hymn book of the second Temple."^''^ "The question is not whether it contains any postexilian Psalms but whether it contains any that are preexilian.^^ Accordingly, of the 150 Psalms eighty-one are omitted altogether. Of the re- maining sixty-nine, twenty-one are so cut to pieces that, reck- "^^ New Schaff-Hertzog Encyclopedia, vol. Ill, p. 71. 1* History of Hebrew People, Divided Kingdom, p. 108. By Israelitish he means non-Judean we understand. 15 Lit. of O. T., p. 384- 18 Op. cit., p. 386. 17 Orr, Problem of O. T., p. 434. note. 18 See also, Wellhausen, Hist, of Israel, p. 501. 12 oning roughly, the total loss amounts to about two-thirds killed, wounded and missing. In some cases we can see no special reason why one Psalm or verse is taken and its fel- low left. But usually the reason is writ large. Whatever favors the historical reliability of the entire record of the wonders and judgments of the Exodus, especially the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and chiefest of all the early origin of the Priest-Code and its correlates is on the black list. Exceptions there may be, but they are rare. Classic examples are the 78th, 105th, io6th Psalms, which rehearse the history of the nation in detail, along the lines to which we are accustomed, but which the "new view of the Bible" rejects, — the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tribe of Judah, David his servant, the calf at Horeb, &c. The Shorteners first cut this and its connectives out root and branch in the Jewish law book, why should they let it stay in the hymn book? Would they sing in the 132nd Psalm, "Lord, remember David," when their avowed purpose is to teach us to forget that David was the sweet singer of Israel; or keep the 99th which classes Aaron as a Priest, whereas the Shorter Bible scarcely has a bowing acquaintance with Priest or Levite until after the exile ; or the 80th, with its exquisite exordium, "Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock," or especially the 89th, with its motif deeply rooted in the covenant with "David, my servant," of whom it is said, "With my holy oil have I anointed him." What would be thought of a musician who should shorten Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the climax of his genius, by censoring phrases, en- chanting passages, the Hymn of Joy, a whole movement, to gratify some sukunft theory of his own? The Psalter is too firmly mortised into the framework of the Psalmody of the Church Universal to yield readily to such sacrilegious vandal- ism. All the Imprecatory Psalms are deleted, as might be ex- pected. The 7th, 35th, 69th and 109th are examples, par emi- nence, but there are nearly fifty more that contain imprecatory elements. These also are rejected either wholly or in part. The magnificent 139th contains an imprecatorial passage (vss. 19-22). "Do not I hate them that hate thee." This is stricken out with the usual sang froid of the Shorteners. Many devout Christians have found such passages stumbling blocks. Alexan- 13 ier Duff, first missionary of the (Established) Church of Scot- land to India, and an acknowledged primus inter pares among all missionaries, confessed this of himself until the horrors of the Indian mutiny opened his eyes to the need of "naked piti- less justice" at some crucial epochs. He must be blind who cannot perceive that since 19 14, Almighty God has been writ- ing his Commentaries on the Imprecatory Psalms in letters of blood and fire on the face of Europe, and not only on such Psalms as these but on those deep strains in both Testaments which magnify his just and holy Law and its terrors and threatenings. The Shorter Bible, like the "modern mind" that produced it, betrays the sentimental aversion for Mt. Sinai and what it stands for, which includes the Anathema of the first great missionary Apostle, on men or angels who per- vert the gospel and wrest the Scriptures. They likewise have forgotten the Dies Irae and the "wrath of the Lamb" in the Apocalypse. Such Psalms as these are quite intelligible when read in the light of David's life, the man after God's own heart, in spite of his sins; the anointed executioner of divine justice on guilty men and nations; not out of personal malice to his enemies, as his behavior to Saul and his grief over Ab- salom show. But all who gird at Old Testament proclama- tions of divine judgments will like the Shorter Bible for that very reason. What the Old Testament needs is not "shorten- ing," but "italicising," not abbreviation, but emphasis. Our Lord Jesus Christ selected the iioth Psalm for especial em- phasis, arguing out of it with the Pharisees about his own claims, — "How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David ?" The Shorter Nezv Testament rejects this by omitting the entire chapter in Matthew and again in Luke in which it occurs, and by slicing deftly out of Mark the verses in which it is found, though this requires the cutting of a verse in two. Now the Shorter Old Testament omits the whole Psalm, in the face of Christ's own solemn asservation, in Mark (whom the critics think the more reliable), "For David himself said by the Holy Ghost." Thus both Testaments are stripped bare of this witness of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost to his Divine Sonship. Can the Christian churches sit silent and see their Lord thus wounded in the house of his friends? There are at least two Isaiahs in the Shorter Bible: Isaiah 14 the son of Amoz lived two centuries or more before the exile, the other Isaiah (or Isaiahs) in exilic or postexilic times. This is indicated by placing certain extracts from the son of Amoz on pages 356-372 among preexilian prophets, and other ex- tracts, also labelled "Isaiah,'" on pages 413-437, among or after exilian prophets. "Contents" (page xviii, and pages xx, xxi) marks the same difference. The leading editor of the Shorter Bible says there was "a collection of prophecies coming from the anonymous co-workers of the author of Malachi, appended to the writings of the great prophet of the Exile."^® Else- where-" he attributes it "probably" to the second Isaiah. Th exact number of second Isaiahs has evidently not yet been determined by the "consensus of criticism" ; and their "Great Unknowns" (it is now more accurate to use the plural!) are in this respect like Melchisedek, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. No one knows anything about them. We cannot be surprised, then, that Isaiah, the son of Amoz. should be denied part and lot in the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah. This was to be expected. But the acme of abomination is reached when this holy of holies is retained, indeed, but onl\ to have part of its most precious contents discarded: "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong Jiis days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied : by his knowledge. . . ." These precious words are not merely denied to the Evangelical Prophet, Isaiah the son of Amoz, but they are rudely severed from the sayings of the Great Unknown of the critics, as though not worth the preserving. The literary fiction of Deutero- or Trito-Isaiah appears innocent beside this dagger thrust in the cor cordis, "the real heart of the Bible," which these enemies of evangelical faith claim they wish to preserve. They did a like thing when they struck the 30th verse from the 8th of Romans, "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." But, somehow, the attack ^^ History of the Jewish People, Persian Period, p. 112. 20 Social Teachings of Jesus, p. 127. 15 on Isaiah seems blacker and more inexcusable- Why should these modern Jehoiakims forbid Paul and Isaiah to speak what the Spirit moved them to utter? It is grievous to see again the names of official representa- tives of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association appearing on the title page. Do the responsible managers of these two great institutions ap- prove or disapprove of this rationalistic assault on the Bible? If they approve it or allow it, they must not be surprised if in due time the churches take official action withdrawing their support from the Associations themselves. All concerned may profitably remember the Second Psalm, retained happily by the Shorter Bible: "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little." i6 PKINTCO IN U.S.A. on Isaiah see these modern the Spirit mo It is grieve tives of the Y Women's Ch Do the respor prove or disa If they appro due time the support from All concern retained happ "Kiss the S when his wrat DATE DUE 1 ..^l^fiM*?^ ^fe^alii*' 1 1 1 — — i CAVLOftO BS195.1.K37F7 The Shorter Bible - the Old Testament. Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00046 6211 ■^^ X <^,r .■f^ .M m m a^^