^Axt^V^^i ... ol t\tt IHealapai ^ ■^ miu PRINCETON, N. J. % SA^// Division Section ... Number. i- THE DIVINE LIBRARY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT " As we are in no sort judges beforehand, by what laws or rules, in what degree, or by what means it were to have been expected that God Avould naturally instruct us ; so upon supposition of His atibrding us light and instruction by revelation, additional to what He has aflbrded us by reason and experience, we are in no sort judges by what methods and in what proportion it were to be ex- pected that this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us. . . . " Neither obscurity nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various readings, nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any other things of the like kind, though they had been much more considerable in degree than they are, could overthrow the authority of the Scripture ; unless the Prophets, Apostles, or our Lord, had promised that the book containing the Divine revelation should be secure from those things." — Bishop Butler, Analogy, Part ii. ch. 3. THE DIVINE LIBEAKY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ITS OEIGIN, PEESERVATION, INSPIRATION, AND PERMANENT VALUE FIVE LECTURES BY A. F. KIRKPATEICK, B.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND CANON OF ELY CATHEDRAL Houtron MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1892 All rights reserved First Editiofi iSgi. Reprinted lSg2. PEEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Of the Lectures contained in this volume four were delivered in the Cathedral of St. Asaph, at the invitation of the Dean and Chapter, to a gather- ing of clergy and laity from different parts of the Diocese, in Whitsun week of 1891. The third Lecture is one of a course given at Ely in 1885, with reference to the appearance of the Eevised Version of the Old Testament. I have added it here, as I had originally intended to include the subject of the Preservation of the Old Testament in the course of Lectures at St. Asaph, and it forms a natural sequel to the two Lectures on the Origin of the Old Testament. The Lectures are now published in accordance with a wish expressed by some of those who heard them at St. Asaph, and in the hope that they may be a contribution, however humble, towards the propagation, I will not say of right opinion, but of a right temper and attitude, with reference to the questions which are exercising the mind of the Church at the present time with regard to the Old Testament. The spirit in which these vi PREFACE questions are approached is more important than an immediate solution of them; and I rejoice to think that there are abundant and increasing signs of the spread of a right and wise spirit.^ Solutions of some of the questions at issue can only come with time, after patient examination and re-exam- ination of the evidence, and — I will venture to say — after first-hand investigations carried on independ- ently by English scholars from every possible point of view ; for which, alas ! so few have the necessary ability, taste, training, and leisure in combination. Meanwhile the temper and attitude of the Church, and especially of the clergy, are of prime importance for the future of the Church and of Belief The attempt to decry the critical study of the Old Testament on a priori grounds can only prove mischievous in the end. The intelligent Christian will not say, " These views are contrary to my theory of inspiration," or " They are incom- patible with this or t?iat dogma, and therefore they cannot be true "; but " Are these views grounded upon facts ? and if so how must I modify the theory, or qualify the inferences I have drawn from the dogma, and perhaps re-state it ? " Their apparent opposition to what we have received to hold may be good reason for special caution and reserve in accepting new ideas, but it is idle to invoke dogma to defeat critical and historical research, conducted upon sound principles, and limited to its proper sphere. 1 See Note A. PREFACE vii Some words of that great theologian Dollinger may well be applied to the study of the Old Testament at the present moment. " The work of a true theologian is to dig deep, to examine with restless assiduity, and not to draw back in terror should his investigation lead to con- clusions that are unwelcome or inconsistent with preconceived notions or favourite views. ... It is a law as valid for the future as for the past that in theology we can only through mistakes attain to truth. . . . Use none but scientific weapons in philosophical and theological inquiries, banish . . . all denunciation and holding up to suspicion of those who differ from us." -^ I have endeavoured in these Lectures to state and illustrate some fundamental principles which are helpful to myself, and I trust may be helpful to others, though they only form as it were a standing ground from which to survey more difiS- cult questions. On the one hand, no devout Christian who be- lieves the facts of the Incarnation and Eesurrection can possibly regard Christianity as merely one among the great religions of the world ; or view the religion of Israel, which formed the preparation for it, as merely a natural development out of the conscious- ness of a naturally religious people. He must hold fast without wavering to the conviction that Chris- ^ Quoted in tlie Preface to Oxenliam's translation of The First Age of the Church. viii TREFACE tianity occupies a wholly unique place in the history of religions ; that it is not merely somewhat superior to other religions, but differs from them in kind, as being God's supreme and final revelation of Himself to mankind in His Son. He must hold fast with equal tenacity to the conviction tliat the history of Israel was a divinely ordered history, and the religion of Israel a divinely given revelation, leading up to the Coming of Christ, and preparing for it in a wholly different way from the negative preparation which went on silently in the heathen world. This belief we accept as Christians on the author- ity of our Lord and the Apostles whom He taught. And when we pass from the consideration of the history of Israel and the revelation made to Israel to the consideration of the documents in which that history and that revelation are recorded, we cannot but accept them on the same authority as possessing a Divine element, as being, to use our ordinary word, inspired. But, on the other hand, they have a human element in them also. God speaks to men through men. The extent and nature of this human element, and its relation to the Divine element of which it is the vehicle, must be investigated with the fullest freedom, combined, it need hardly be said, with the most thorough reverence. The inductive method must be applied to the examination. Facts must be carefully ascertained and co-ordinated. From them we may frame a working hypothesis which must be verified by fresh comparison with facts. PREFACE IX and may lead us on a step farther. But nothing can be more fatal than to approach the study of Scripture with a rigid theory, and to attempt to force phenomena into agreement with that theory. " It is," as the Archbishop of Canterbury has pointed out, " of the transition from the spiritual into the natural that we are least able to form an idea . . . and it is to such a region that the thought of inspiration belongs, the thought of God passing into the limited thought of man." In defining inspiration, if indeed it is possible to define it at all, we must proceed with the greatest caution, and recognise that the definition can be only provisional. The analogy of Creation helps us. By faith we understa7id that the ivorlds have been framed hy the ivord of God; but that belief does not hinder us from examining by all the scientific methods within our power into the processes by which the worlds were made. Such an examination must in the end enlarge our knowledge of God and of His ways of working. The plan of these Lectures is a simple one. The first two treat of the orisjin of the Old Testament on its human side. Their object is to show to what a large extent the books of the Old Testament have grown to their present form by the action of literary processes. The human element in them is large, larger perhaps than we are readily willing to admit ; and so far as this element is concerned they cannot be exempted from literary and historical criticism, X PREFACE nay they cannot be explained witliout it. Sober criticism is the ally, not the enemy, of theology and religion. The third Lecture illustrates the same idea from the history of the text of the Old Testament. Once men found it possible to believe in a miraculous preservation of the text of the Old Testament from all error. Now, by the examination of facts, we know that this has not been the case. Here, too, a human element comes in. While we gratefully recognise that a superintending Providence has watched over the preservation of the Scriptures, candour compels us to acknowledge that it has not been part of the Divine plan to protect them supernaturally from all change and error in the manifold vicissitudes of a long textual history. Tlie fourth Lecture deals briefly with the Divine side of this Divine-human book. The fact of its inspiration is recognised, and some characteristics of inspiration, negative and positive, are considered ; but here again stress is laid on the necessity of deducing our conception of inspiration from the examination of inspired books, instead of approach- ing them with an a friori theory as to what inspira- tion can and cannot include. The fifth Lecture treats of the permanent value of the Old Testament for the Christian Church, wliich is the natural corollary to its inspiration ; and of the sense in which it is still valid for the Christian Church as ' fulfilled ' in Christ. PREFACE XI The Lectures do not attempt to deal with many of the graver questions which are being raised as to the Old Testament. I may have miscalculated, but it seemed to me that a frank and full recognition of the extent of the human element in the Old Testament, associated with an equally frank and full recognition of its Divine character, is the necessary preliminary to the solution of more difficult questions ; and that this step has still to be made by many who have grown up in traditional views of the origin of the Bible. It is for such readers that these Lectures are intended. I venture to ask my readers, as I asked my andience, that this course of Lectures should be taken and judged as a whole ; that they should not throw down the book in disgust after the perusal of the first two Lectures without going on to the fourth and fifth, which form the necessary supplement and corrective to them. The human and Divine elements in the Old Testament are inseparably joined together, though we are perforce obliged to consider them separately. We cannot see the whole of the sphere at once. And for my own part let me disclaim any wish dogmatically to impose certain views upon my readers. All I ask is that they should search the Scriioturcs, vjlicther these things cere so. The Lectures will not have been wasted, if they may serve to stimulate any hearer or reader to a more diligent study of the Old Testament. Each age has some- xii PREFACE tliino- fresh to contribute towards the better under- o standing of it. Each age has some fresh lesson to learn from it. If the special work to which our age is called is that of the historical study of the Old Testament in its origin and growth, as the record of the Divine education of Israel, one special lesson which we may learn from it is the lesson of the certain and wonderful accomplish- ment of God's purposes for His people, and through them for the world — a lesson of infinite encourage- ment in times when faith and patience are often severely strained. I must not conclude without a word of hearty thanks for much kindness show^n me in connexion with the delivery of these Lectures, and an ex- pression of my sincere admiration for the way in which the Dean and Chapter of St. Asaph, by gathering the often isolated and much-tried clergy of a scattered diocese for a short period of social reunion and theolof]jical instruction, are makino; the Cathedral a real centre for the diocese. To have been allowed to take part in such a gathering is no common privilege. It leaves behind many pleasant recollections, only tempered by the wish that the duty imposed on the lecturer could have been more faithfully discharged. Lastly, my thanks are due to my friend the Eev. li. Appleton for his kind help in revising the proofs. The College, Ely, August 1891. CONTENTS LECTURE I THE ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT PAGE The origin of the books of the Bible a legitimate subject for investigation — Such investigation not to be feared, in spite of the difficulties which it raises — Like the scientiJSic investigation of Nature, it must ultimately teach us more of the Divine methods ....... 1-3 The Divine Library an instructive title for the Bible — The broad distinction between the Old and Ncav Testaments — The triple division of the Old Testament into Law, Pro- 2)hets, ami Writings ........ 4-7 The function of Biblical criticism to confirm, correct, or supplement the traditional accounts of the origin of the books of the Bible — Criticism an inductive science ; its con- clusions more or less probable — Questions of authorship are not settled by Xew Testament references, which necessarily adopt the current nomenclature of the time . . . 7-1 1 The books of the Old Testament to a large extent the result of processes of compilation and editing . . . 11 {a) The Historical Books based upon earlier prophetic narratives — The method of Oriental historiography and its bearing on their character . . . . . . .12-15 (6) The Prophetical Books may in some cases owe their present form to the prophets whose names they bear, but in others are of composite origin — Much prophetic teaching in the first instance oral, and subsequently recorded in sum- mary by the prophet himself or his disciples — The teaching of different prophets may be combined in the same volume . 16, 17 XIV CONTEXTS PAGE A prophet's modus operandi illustrated from Jeremiah — The teaching of more than twenty years summarised in the roll dictated to Baruch— This roll the basis of the existing boolvT-Internal evidence points to the freer intervention of an editorial hand in the later parts of the book — Probable method of arrangement of prophecies in the roll — The two recensions of the book of Jeremiah ..... 17-22 Important bearing of investigations into the origin and character of the prophetic books upon their inter- pretation . - 22, 23 LECTUKE II THE ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT — COntinned Combination of the Avorks of different prophets in the same volume illustrated by the book of Isaiah — Grounds for at- tributing Is. xl.-lxvi. to a prophet living in Babjdonia towards the close of the Exile — The Exile an existing fact — Cyrus already in full career of conquest — The restoration of the exiles close at hand 24-29 Evidence of style and language confirms the conclusion that the prophecy cannot be Isaiah's — Probable incorpora- tion of older prophecies in the work — The author a true disciple and successor of Isaiah, worthy to share his master's fame — This view involves no denial of jirediction, and is in accordance with the general princiijle of the circumstantial origin of prophecy — Gain to the interpretation of this pro- phecy when it is brought into vital connexion ^^dth the history of the time . . 29-33 (c) The Hagiographa — The book of Proverbs a clear example of a composite work, consisting of three principal divisions, distinguished by marked characteristics — The product of the wisdom not of one individual or of a single age, but of many men and ages 34-36 The Psalter a composite work — Positive evidence of editing, adaptation, and combination in particular Psalms — Similar processes probably went on elsewhere also — The main divisions of the Psalter — Previously existing collec- tions included in them — j\Ieaning and value of the title a Psalm of David— 'No good reason for regarding all the Psalms as post-exilic ......... 36-41 CONTENTS XV PAGE {d) The Law- Pentateuch or Hexateuch ? — ]\Iosaic authorship of the whole Pentateuch a JeAnsh tradition, nowhere asserted in the Pentateuch itself — Com])aratively small portions only said to have been A\Titten by Moses — Grounds for maintain- ing its composite origin from four principal documents : the ' Priests' Code, ' the ' Elohistic ' and ' Jehovistic ' his- tories ; and Deuteronomy — These documents based upon still older materials ........ 41-47 Ancient Babylonian narratives of the Creation, Fall, and Flood, resembling those of Genesis — These traditions may have been brought with them by the Hebrews in their original migration to Canaan . . . . . . . . 47, 48 Critical investigation of the origin of the Bible the duty of the Christian student, not for its own sake, but for the better understanding of the Divine message . . .49, 50 LECTURE III THE PRESERVATION OP THE OLD TESTAMENT The history of the preservation of the Old Testament a natural sequel to the history of its origin — The Scriptures not supernaturally exempted from error in transmission . 51-53 Wide difference between the documentary authorities for the text of the Old Testament and those for the text of the New Testament in (1) age ; (2) character— Hebrew MSS. of the Old Testament comparatively recent, and all of the same type — This uniformity due to the adoption of a standard text, probably in the first century a.d. , Avhich superseded other forms of text ........ 53-55 Disappearance of ancient MSS. accounted for — Hebrew MSS. are either rolls for synagogue use, without vowels ('unpointed'), or volumes for private use, with vowels ('pointed') — Hebrew originally written without vowels; the ' vowel points ' a later addition ..... 55-57 The history of the text may be divided into four periods — (i. ) Before Ezi'a. The old Hebrew character in use, as seen on the Moabite stone, the Siloam inscription, and Macca- baean coins , . . . . . . . . 58, 59 (ii.) From Ezra to 70 a.p. Introduction of the ' square ' character — The existence of various forms of text in this XVI CONTENTS PAGE period proved by the evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX 60-63 (iii.) From 70 a.d. to 500 a.d. Determination of a standard text probably connected with the reconstruction of Judaism after the Fall of Jerusalem — Evidence of the Greek Versions of the second century ; of Origen ; Jerome ; the Targums ; and the Talmud — Labours of the scribes in this period — KHhlhh and Q'rl — The exegetical tradition gradu- ally hxed, but no vowel signs yet employed — Gradual development of the system of pronunciation ... 63-69 (iv.) From 500 a.d. to 1000 a.d. Reduction of the exe- getical tradition to writing by the addition of vowel points and accents to the text in the seventh and eighth centuries — Rival schools of Babylon and Tiberias — Elaboration of the Massdra as a safeguard for the exact preservation of the text — Character and value of the Massoretic Text . . 69-74 Controversies of the seventeenth century between the Buxtorfs and Cappel and Moriu — Proofs of the imperfec- tion of the Massoretic Text from (1) internal evidence ; (2) parallel passages ; (3) the Versions — Examples of pas- sages needing correction — Treatment of the text by the Revisers — Relative superiority of the Massoretic Text . 74-82 Textual criticism not merely negative and destructive — Its bearing on the study of the Old Testament . . . 82-84 LECTUEE IV THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT In all the variety of the books of the Old Testament there is a unity which testifies to a common origin — The fact of inspiration assumed in the New Testament and in the Christian Church, but no definition of inspiration given — We are left to deduce from Scrijiture what inspiration means .......... 85-90 The Divine and human factors in Scripture have been alternately exaggerated, and inspiration consequently re- garded as purely mechanical, or merely subjective — A true view must take full account of both factors . . . 90-93 The question of the inspiration of the Old Testament best approached from the consideration of its character as the record of God's revelation of Himself to Israel in His purpose CONTEXTS xvii PAGE of redeeming love with a view to the establishment of His universal kingdom — Israel chosen and trained to be the bearer of God's revelation of Himself and the mediator of His pur- pose of Redemption to the world — This revelation gradual, progressive, manifold — It required a record, which must correspond to the revelation, and be at once superhuman, as describing the will and action of God, and human, as written by men in a language intelligible to men . . 93-95 The characteristics of inspiration must be deduced from an examination of the inspired books . . . , . 95, 96 (1) Some positive characteristics. It takes primitive traditions and purifies them — It treats history from the religious point of view — It is readily recognised and gener- ally acknowledged in Prophecy and the Psalms — General evidence of the Providential superintendence of the record 97-103 (2) Some negative characteristics. It does not involve independence of existing materials, or of research, or of current literary methods — It does not guarantee immunity from error in matters of fact, science, or historj^ — It does not exclude imperfection, relativity, accommodation . 103-107 Difficulties raised by the neglect to observe the progress- ive nature of revelation ...... 107,108 Double proof of the inspiration of the Old Testament in its unity and in the response of the soul to its message 109-111 LECTUEE V THE USE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH The permanent value of the Old Testament for the Christian Church attested in the New Testament by positive state- ment, and even more by the use made of it — The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament recognises a deeper sense in it, but differs widely from the arbitrary use found in Jewish and later Christian writings — Use of the Old Testament not merely transitional .... 112-116 Alleged neglect of the Old Testament in the present day — Danger of such neglect — Due partly to past misuse, but more to vague suspicions — Critical uncertainties must not be allowed to deprive us of the use of the Old Testament 116-123 xviii CONTEXTS PAGE Some uses of the Old Testament for the Christian Church — (1) Its historic use as the record of the preparation for the Incarnation can never become obsolete — It must not be left to apologists, but is indispensable for the confirmation of faith — The argument from prophecy — The fulfilment of prophecy 123-126 (2) The Old Testament indispensable for the interpreta- tion of the New Testament, in regard to language ; theological ideas ; our conception of the course and methods of divine Providence and the establishment of Christ's kingdom 126-129 (3) National lessons from the Old Testament — The re- sponsibility of nations — Personality of nations — Continuity of national life • • 130,131 (4) Social lessons 131 (5) Devotional and practical value — Some religious ideas most easily comprehended in simple and concrete forms— The religious imagination — The language of the soul . 131-133 The Old Testament must not be confounded with the New Testament — The Christian interpretation of the Old Testament as fulfilled in Christ — It must be read in the light of that fulfilment — The deeper meaning of the Old Testament necessarily involved in the idea of its inspiration 133-141 Conclusion 141-143 Notes 145 LECTUEE I THE OEIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TToKvfxepujs Kol TroXvTpdirojs irdXaL 6 debs XaXrjaas roh iraTpdcnv iy Tots irpocpTjTaLS, — Heb. i. 1. There have been times in which it would have been thought a sufficient answer to the question, What was the origin of the Old Testament ? to reply that men spake from God, leiiig moved hy the Holy Ghost, and the result was the book which we call the Bible. The Bible, it would have been said, is an Inspired Book ; further inquiry into the processes by which the several books which it contains came into their present form is superfluous, if not irreverent. Such an answer, however, cannot be accepted as satisfactory in the present day. We cannot fail to recognise tliat this Book, the unity of which we can still affirm in virtue of its Divine origin, is, on its human side, a collection of books of the most varied character and origin. The Bible is in itself a litera- ture ; it records a history. It could not be exempted, if we wished it, from the laws and the methods of ^ B 2 THE ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT lect. literary and historical criticism. We should not wish to exempt it, if we could. The fact that the Bible is placed in our hands as the record of God's revelation of Himself to man, and the history of His gracious purpose for the redemption of the world, does not exclude, but rather invites, the fullest investigation of the methods of that purpose, and of the character of the record of it. We must not hesitate to subject the title-deeds of our faith to the closest and most searching scrutiny. It is true that the critical investigation of the Bible raises not a few questions of grave difficulty. The answers to these questions may not prove to be altogether such as we should have anticipated. But the criticism and interpretation and application of the Bible must be progressive ; different aspects of its character and teaching have come into promin- ence in different ages ; and the aim of true biblical students will not be " to defend what once they have stood in," but ''to find out simply and sincerely what truth they ought to persist in for ever." i Attention has often been called to the analogy between "the sacred volume of the Word of God and the Scriptures " and " the great volume of the works of God and His creatures." The comparison is fruitful and suggestive in many ways. Modern scientific research may sometimes seem to remove God farther from us, nay, even to banish the Creator from His creation. The uniformity of the laws of 1 Hooker, Ecd. Pol. iii. 8, 8. I A SUBJECT FOR INVESTIGATION 3 nature may appear to resemble the resultant of blind Force rather than the expression of sovereign Will. The methods by which creation, as we are now learn- ing, has been moulded into its present form may prove to be far different from those which we should have expected Divine Omnipotence to employ. Scien- tific research has raised problems which call for a readjustment of old conceptions of the relations of God and nature. Yet there is no doubt that religion has been the gainer. Even those of us who only pick up at second hand some disconnected fragments of the marvellous discoveries of modern science, know vastly more than previous ages could know of the wisdom and power and goodness of the Creator; of His inexhaustible patience and resourcefulness and adaptation of means to a distant end. Paradox as it may seem, the laws of nature as they are revealed to us by scientific research, stand to this age in the stead of the miracles which were given to former ages. And so it is with the Bible. As we let the light of historical research and literary criticism shine freely upon it, we learn more of the methods of God's dealings with men ; of His patience and resourcefulness and silent ways of working, unseen by any human eye, so that the seed of His purposes springs up and grows, man knows not how, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. And if we find that in the record of His dealings with men He has left more to the human instruments through whom He spoke than was once supposed, is 4 THE OLD TESTAMENT lect. it not rather cause for marvel at His condescension, than for distrust of the message ? The earliest collective title of the whole Bible/ first found in St. Jerome in the fourth century, is singularly instructive. " The Divine Library " (BibUotheca Divina) at once reminds us that we have in the Bible not one book, but many. The same truth indeed is latent in the familiar word Bible. The word Biblia, which was borrowed by Latin from Greek, means " the books," and it was not until the thirteenth century that " by a happy solecism, the neuter plural came to be regarded as a feminine singular, and ' the books ' became by com- mon consent ' the Book ' {Biblia, sing.)." ^ But the idea has been wholly lost in the modern usage of the word, and it is worth while to revive the older title in order to emphasise the fact that the Bible is in- deed a collection of literature of the most varied kind. History, codes of law, oratory, poetry, philosophy speculative and practical, epistolary correspondence public and private, are included in it. In this Library there are two great divisions, distinct, but linked together by the closest ties, and rightly regarded by the Christian Church as complementary each to the other. Yet how vast are the differences which distinguish the Old Testament from the New ! It is not merely that in the one we have the litera- ture of a nation extending over a period of a thousand years, in the other the writings of a Church during ^ See Bishop Westcott's Bihle in the Church, p. 5. ^ Ibid. I A DIVINE LIBRARY 5 little more than tlie first half century of its existence ; not merely that the contents of the Old Testament are more varied in their character than those of the New ; not merely that their original languages, and therefore to some extent their modes of thought and expression, are different ; not merely that they are separated by an obscure period of silence unbroken by the voice of authoritative revelation ; but that between them lies the unique and central event of the world's history, for which all that went before was the preparation, and of which all that follows after is the interpretation and application. It is with the first of these collections only that we are concerned in the present course of lectures. Let us begin by taking a broad general survey of its contents and divisions. The Jewish name for the Old Testament is ' Law, Prophets, and Writings.' This triple division of the sacred books is referred to in the New Testament in the words. All things . . . ichich are written in the law of Moses, and the proiohets, and the psalms (Luke xxiv. 44) ; and it is at least as old as the second century B.C. The wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, which we commonly call Ecclesiasticus, was translated into Greek by the author's grand- son, and in the preface to his translation, which is dated about 130 B.C., he speaks of the diligent study which his grandfather Jesus had bestowed upon the law and the lyrojohets and the other hoolcs of our fathers. It would be rash to infer that the Canon of the Old Testament was finally closed 6 THE TRIPLE DIVISION lect. against all fresh additions in the time of Jesus the son of Sirach ; hut it is important to ohserve that a clear distinction is already implicitly drawn between the primary Canonical Books and secondary books like Ecclesiasticus. The titles of these divisions deserve a moment's consideration. The Law or Pentateuch is obviously much more than a code of law or a history of legisla- tion. It derives its name from that part of its con- tents which came in the later history of the Jewish Church to be regarded as the chief and distinctive part of Divine revelation, the great barrier erected between Israel and heathenism. But it is well to re- member that the Hebrew word i(omA, translated "law," originally meant "instruction" or "direction." It was synonymous with the ivord of Jehovah (Is. ii. 3), and included all Divine revelation as the guide of life. It was only by degrees that the word came to be narrowed and petrified, so as to suggest the idea of restriction of liberty rather than direction of conduct. The 'Prophets' are divided into the 'Former Prophets' and the 'Latter Prophets,' the first of these divisions including what we commonly call the ' Historical Books ' of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; the second consisting of the books which we are accustomed to regard as ' Prophetical,' Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. This wide conception of Prophecy is very noteworthy. The Prophets were the historians of Israel ; it was I OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 7 the function of Prophecy not only to foretell the future and to declare the Divine will in the present, but to record and interpret the lessons of the past for the instruction of the future. Among the 'Writings' or Hagiographa are in- cluded books of the most various kinds. The book of Psalms is m itself a library in miniature, a golden treasury of sacred song gathered out of many centuries of Israel's history, giving expression to personal and national feelings of devotion in manifold forms of meditation and prayer and praise. The books of Job and Ecclesiastes are monuments of the ' Wisdom ' or religious philosophy of Israel on the speculative side, while the book of Proverbs collects its teaching through many generations in the sphere of practical ethics. We are considering the Bible, for the present, simply as a literature, and we naturally ask whether any light can be thrown upon the question. What was the origin of these different books ? How were the histories written, the prophetic utterances pre- served, the poetry and philosophy of the nation collected and arranged ? The traditions of the Jewish Church go some way, but only a little way, in furnish- ing an answer. But they are incomplete, and perhaps not always trustworthy ; and the science of biblical criticism endeavours to go further, and by interrogat- ing the books themselves, to ascertain whether they corroborate those traditions, or, in their absence, supply materials for a probable answer. " Criticism," 8 THE FUNCTION lect. to quote the words of an admirable and sober critic, Professor A. B. Davidson, "in the hands of those who use it with reasonableness, is entirely an in- ductive science. Its argumentation is of the kind called probable, and its conclusions attain to nothing more than a greater or less probability, though the probability may be such as entirely to satisfy the mind." The criticism of the Old Testament (if I may venture somewhat to enlarge Professor Davidson's words so as to apply to our present subject) starts with no a ^priori principles as to the nature of Inspiration or Prophecy, or the capabilities of the prophetic gift. It examines the books and observes the facts, and its conclusions are those which such an observation leads it to consider probable.^ Opinions will differ as to the relative weight which is to be attached to such probable conclusions from internal evidence and to the apparently definite statements of tradition, for example, in such a question as the authorship of Psalms ascribed to David, or of different parts of the book which bears the name of Isaiah ; but the general consensus of sober opinion tends in the direction of attaching greater weight to the verdict of internal evidence, when it is fairly conclu- sive, than to traditions which sprang up in an entirely uncritical age, and which have perhaps been supposed to mean more than may have been originally intended. It may indeed be asked whether the New Testa- ment references do not at once decide many of these ^ Exjjositor, vol. vi. p. 91. I OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM 9 questions for the reverent believer, and preclude critical investigation. If the Pentateuch is referred to as the law of Moses, or the latter chapters of Isaiah are quoted as the hook of the 'prophet Isaiah, are we not bound to believe that the one was written by Moses, the other by Isaiah ? If this position could be maintained. Christian criticism would be an anomaly and an impossibility. And there are some teachers who do not scruple to put before us the awful dilemma, "You must choose between Christ and criticism." I call it an awful dilemma, because, as it seems to me, it may amount to telling the student of the Old Testament that he must be false to his Divine Master, or false to the leading of the reason which God has s^iven him, — and that not in mysteries which are outside the province of reason, but in matters where reason is perfectly capable of judging. The teachers who have presented us with this dilemma can scarcely have realised the strain to which it must subject the faith of some of the younger generation. But I firmly believe that we are not forced to make the choice. It is not, I believe, contrary to the catholic doctrine of our Lord's Person to suppose that in such matters His knowledge was the knowledge of His time. Tliere can, it seems to me, be no impropriety or irreverence in such a view, when we are expressly told that He advanced in wisdom as well as in stature (Luke ii. 52) ; and when in regard to at least one matter He Himself expressly declared that His knowledge was limited, when He 10 QUESTIONS OF AUTHORSHIP lect. said, oftJiat day or that hour' hnoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, hut the Father (Mark xiii. 32) ; and this, although it was a matter of supreme importance, and intimately connected with the consummation of His own work. But apart from this deep and mysterious question of the limita- tion of our Lord's knowledge as man, it is difficult to see how He could (with reverence be it said) have done otherwise in literary matters than adopt the ordinary language of the time. He used, as we still use, popular and not scientifically accurate language with regard to natural phenomena such as the rising and setting of the sun. And in like manner it is difficult to see how He could have avoided using the language of tradition with regard to the nomenclature of the books of the Old Testament. If this is true as regards our Lord, it will be true for the Evan- gelists and Apostles also. Inspiration did not super- sede the current language of the day in such matters. There was nothing misleading in such usage at the time, but it must not be misunderstood and mis- applied to hinder the freedom of reverent critical research. I am glad to be able to refer to the Bishop of Manchester's admirable treatment of this subject in his recent volume, The Teaching of Christ. The whole sermon on the "Limitations of our Lord's Knowledge " should be read, but I may venture to quote a few sentences from it. " The question of the age or the authorship of any passage in the Old Testament was never either started I NOT DECIDED BY THE NEW TESTAMENT 11 by our Lord Himself or raised by His opponents. He did not come into the world to give instruction on such subjects. . . . When, however, we affirm our Lord's human ignorance of natural science, historical criticism, and the like, we are not to be understood as denying the possibility of the miraculous com- munication of such knowledge ; but only the affirma- tion, so often confidently made, that the union of our Lord's humanity with His divinity necessarily implies the possession of such knowledge. He might be with- out it. We know that in one case He was without it. He never claimed to possess it ; nor did His mission require that He should possess it " (pp. 42-44). The Christian student then may and must claim the fullest liberty to examine the internal evidence respecting their origin which may be gathered from the contents of the books of the Old Testament, and to apply that evidence if need be to correct the traditional accounts of their origin. Now the general principle to which I wish to call your attention in these lectures is that the books of the Old Testament, as we now have them, are to a far greater extent than was commonly supposed until recent times, the result of processes of compilation and combination and, in modern phrase, 'editing.' Many, perhaps most of them, were not, as may at one time have been thought, written as integral works or by a single author, and preserved precisely in the original form. Some were constructed out of earlier narratives ; some were formed by the union of 12 SOURCES OF THE lect. previous collections of poetry or prophecies; some betray marks of tlie reviser's hand ; and even books which bear the names of well-known authors in some cases contain matter which must be attributed to other writers. Let us look at the problem first as it presents itself in the simplest form in the historical books or 'former prophets.' No one, I imagine, feels any difficulty in acknowledging that the books of Samuel and Kings are compilations from earlier documents. In some cases they contain more than one account of the same event, — for example, of Saul's elevation to the throne, and of David's introduction to Saul. These accounts regard the events from different points of view, and cannot always be easily harmonised ; but the very fact of their discrepance makes for the good faith of the compiler who combined them. And, to borrow the words of Dr. Salmon with reference to the contradictions, real or supposed, in the Gospels, " it is the constant experience of any one who has ever engaged in historical investigation to have to reconcile contradictions between his authorities," but such apparent contradictions do not necessarily prove that the opposing statements do not both proceed from persons having a first-hand knowledge of the events. Similarly with regard to the book of Kings. It is obvious that the graphic flowing narratives of the ministry of Elijah and Elisha must be taken from some other source than that which furnished the dry I HISTORICAL BOOKS 13 annals and bare statistics of the life and death of kings and the duration of their reigns. Bnt we can go farther than merely pointing out that the books of Samuel and Kings were compila- tions. We can indicate with tolerable certainty some, at least, of the main sources from which they were compiled. The Chronicler (1 Chron. xxix. 29) actually names as the original authority for the his- tory of David's reign, the history of Samuel the seer, and the history of Nathan the ^prophet, and the history of Gad the seer. The author of the book of Kings names the hooh of the acts of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 41) as his authority for the history of Solomon's reign, and frequently refers for fuller information to the hooh of the chronicles of the kings of Judah, and tlie hook of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. But the Chronicler's reference to the original authorities for the history of Solomon's reign (2 Chron. ix. 29), makes it a tolerably certain inference that the hook of the acts of Solomon was a history of his reign written by the contemporary prophets Nathan, Ahijah, and Iddo. Again, the histories of Shcmaiah the projphct and of Iddo the seer are appealed to as the authority for the history of Eehoboam's reign (2 Chron. xii. 15) ; and the commentary of the 'pro]}het Iddo for the reign of Abijah (2 Chron. xtii. 22). But perhaps the most important notices are some which tell us that the history of Jehu the son of Hanani, recording the events of the reign of Jehoshaphat, was inserted in the hook of the kings of Israel (2 Chron. xx. 34, E.Y.), 14 THE METHODS lect and that the vision of Isaiah the prophet, which narrated the acts and good deeds of Hezekiah, was to be found in the look of the Kings of Judah and Israel (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). For here apparently we have a direct statement that prophetic narratives were incorporated in the comprehensive history of the kingdoms known to the Chronicler as the hook of the Kings of Judah and Israel, or briefly, the look of the Kings of Israel ; and there is at least a reasonable probability that these and similar narratives formed a part of the materials used by the compiler of our books of Kings, whether they were already embodied in some larger historical work, or still existed in an independent form. Now what follows from this ? Nothing less than that the primary authorities for large parts of the history in the books of Samuel and Kings were the narratives of contemporary prophets. Samuel may have been the historian of his own lifetime, which included the greater part of Saul's reign. Nathan and Gad together may have recorded the history of David's reign. The full and vivid account of David's friendship with Jonathan may possibly be preserved almost in the very words in which David told his story to his friends the prophets ; and the singularly graphic and detailed narrative of David's flight from Jerusalem reads like the description by an eye- witness of the events of a memorable day, of which every incident was indelibly stamped upon his memory. But in order to appreciate the full force of these I OF ORIENTAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 15 considerations, we must bear in mind the character and methods of Oriental historiography. Oriental historians did not write history as modern historians usually do, by studying and digesting their authorities, and then producing an entirely new work in their own language; but, like the mediaeval chroniclers, they incorporated the authorities which they made use of, with but little change. They might put such portions as they extracted from the different sources available into a new framework or setting ; sometimes they might modify one authority by comparison with others ; sometimes they might add new matter of their own ; but the language of the original accounts would frequently be retained with comparatively slight alterations. There are no cogent reasons for referring the compilation of the book of Samuel to a late date. The book of Kings may have been completed sub- stantially before the exile, though the last chapter carries the history down to the release of Jehoiachin in 561 B.C. (2 Kings xxv. 27). But whatever may have been the dates at which these books were brought into their present form, there is good reason to believe that their compilers had access to first- hand sources of information, and that in consequence of the method of historical writing in vogue, these books actually contain, with but little change, sub- stantial portions of original and contemporary nar- ratives. I have detained you too long over a straight- 16 THE ORIGIN OF lect. forward matter, but it seemed worth while to com- mence our investigation with a simple form of the problem, and to point out that this compilatory method of composition brings us into a closer con- tact with the events and the actors than any other method of historical writing could have done. From the historical books or ' former prophets ' I pass on to the prophetical books in our ordinary sense of the word. The idea of the composite origin of these books is far less familiar to the ordinary reader of the Bible. Many, if they have thought at all about the question, probably suppose that the prophets themselves wrote down their own discourses before or immediately after their oral delivery, and themselves collected their writings into the books which bear their names. This may have been the case with some books, such, for example, as Joel and Ezekiel, but it can hardly have been the case with other books, such as Hosea and Isaiah. In these books it is scarcely possible to suppose that the dis- courses were written down and arranged by the prophets in the form in which they have come down to us, and it is a positive hindrance to their interpre- tation to suppose it. It is only when we realise that we may be passing, without any external indica- tion of the transition, from a discourse delivered to one audience under one set of circumstances, to a discourse delivered to a different audience under an entirely different set of circumstances ; when further w^e recognise that some of the discourses are only I THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS 17 condensed summaries of teachim,' which extended over considerable periods, and others in all proba- bility notes, and sometimes fragmentary notes, of their master's teaching preserved by the prophet's disciples ; when once more we admit at least the possibility that some of the prophetical books con- tain the writings of other prophets than those whose names they bear, and of an entirely different period, — it is only, I say, w^hen we recognise possibilities such as these, which a careful critical study raises to the level of practical certainties, that we are in a position to approach the study of these difficult and obscure books with any hope of success. I wish to illustrate these remarks from the books of Jeremiah and'saiah. In the one case we have certain definite statements, from which important inferences may be drawn, and which are remarkably corroborated by internal evidence ; in the other we have to argue from internal evidence only, but in- ternal evidence of a singularly convincing kind. The book of Jeremiah contains an extremely in- structive account of the way in which a part — but a part only — of that book was committed to writing. We read in the 36th chapter that in the fourth year of Jehoiahim Jeremiah received this command from God : Take thee a roll of a hook, and ivrite therein all the ivorcls that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. Twenty-one or twenty-two years had C 18 JEREMIAHS lect. passed since Jeremiah's call in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah. During all this time he had been prophesying, but as yet, it would, seem, he had committed nothing to writing. Now, however, in obedience to the Divine command, he called his disciple Baruch the scribe ; and Baruch wrote down at Jeremiah's dictation all the words of the Lord, which He had spoken unto him. The task occupied a considerable time, and it was not until at least a year afterwards, in the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim, that Baruch, acting for Jeremiah, read the words of the Lord, in the ears of the pieoijle, in the Lord's house upon the fast day. We know the sequel : how the king sent for the roll, and when it was read before him, contemptuously shredded it to pieces and burnt it on the fire in the brasier before him. But the matter did not end there. Jeremiah, by Divine command, took another roll, and Baruch re-wrote at his dictation all the words of the hook luhich Jehoiakim had hurned in the fire\ and the account concludes with the significant statement that there were added besides unto them many like words. This narrative throws important light upon a prophet's mode of working. There was a long period of oral teaching, during which he committed nothing to writing ; and obviously it can only have been a condensed summary of that teaching which was embodied in the roll. Doubtless it represented faithfully tlje sum and substance of the message which he had been commissioned to deliver ; but it I AMANUENSIS 19 can scarcely have repeated the ijmssima verha of discourses spread over a period of more than twenty years. It is interesting to observe the instrument- ality of the faithful disciple Baruch, acting as the prophet's amanuensis, as Tertius did for St. Paul (Eom. xvi. 22). And further, it is to be noted that the first form of this collection of prophecies was not its final form. ]\Iuch was added when it was re- written. The roll cannot, of course, have been co-extensive with the existing book of Jeremiah, which contains many prophecies belonging to a later date than the fifth year of Jehoiakim, nor can we be sure that the whole of the roll is preserved to us. The prophecies have certainly not been kept in their original order, for the prophecies against the nations, some at least of which were included in the roll, are collected at the end of the book according to the arrangement of the Hebrew text. But much, if not all, of the roll is doubtless embodied in the present book ; and there is a remarkable difference between the language of the earlier parts of the book, wdiich were presumably taken from it, and the later parts. In the earlier parts of the book Jeremiah speaks in the first person. The formula, tJic ivord of the Lord came unto me, or some equivalent, is frequently used. Do we not in this formula hear the very voice of the prophet dic- tating to his amanuensis ? The first person appears still in some few of the later prophecies in chaps, xxiv., xxvii., and xxviii. ; but in the later chapters 20 TWO RECENSIONS OF lect. the third person takes its place, and the regular formula is, the word of the Lord came to Jereiniah. Again, from chap. xx. onwards Jeremiah is very fre- quently styled Jeremiah the 'prophet, but this desig- nation does not occur in the earlier chapters. Such a designation would scarcely have been used by the prophet himself, but would have come quite naturally from the pen of Baruch ; and this is a corroboration, slight in itself but clear, of the inference ^Yhich may be derived from the use of the first and third per- sons noticed above — that in the later parts of the book Baruch (if we may assume that it was he) was acting more independently as the collector and editor of his master's prophecies and the records of his life than in the earlier parts, which he had in the main written down from Jeremiah's dictation. Thus the positive information which we have with reference to the origin of the book of Jeremiah is remarkably confirmed by internal evidence, and we are able by the help of the internal evidence to supplement that partial information by an exceedingly probable conjecture. The question still remains whether we can draw any inferences from an examination of the earlier prophecies, which were presumably taken from the roll, as to the plan and method adopted by the prophet in recording the teaching of those twenty- one years. It is difficult to trace a distinct plan of arrangement; but the framework appears to be in the main chronological. But within, and to some I THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 21 extent traversing the chronological arrangement, there is an arrangement according to subject-matter. The prophet appears to have taken important dis- courses or incidents at successive periods of his ministry for his starting-point ; and to have attached to these other incidents or discourses of similar character which might confirm or illustrate them, although belonging to a different time. The book of Jeremiah is thus seen to be composite in its origin, and to consist partly of discourses which were written down from the prophet's own dictation as a summary record of his previous teaching, partly of narratives and discourses which probably owe their preservation and their present form to the faithful care of his disciple Baruch. As a further indication of the gradual way in which the Old Testament grew into its final form, it may here be noticed that the book of Jeremiah evidently passed into circulation in two recensions, differing considerably from each other. One of these is represented by the Septuagint Version, the other by the Hebrew text. The Septuagint differs from the Hebrew both in order and in matter. In the Septuagint the prophecies against the nations (chaps, xlvi. — li. of the Hebrew and A.V.) stand after chap. XXV. 13, and they are arranged in a different order. Moreover, a considerable number of passages, longer and shorter, which are found in the Hebrew text, are not found in the Septuagint. There can be little doubt that the book existed in what we 22 THE BEARING OF CRITICISM lect. may call a longer and a shorter recension, the former of which is represented by the Hebrew text, and the latter by the Septuagint. In this variation we see a trace of the process of ' editing ' which the books of the Old Testament have undergone. The copy from which the original used by the Septuagint translators was derived had not received its final revision. Baruch or others after him subsequently revised the text, inserting some paragraphs, the con- nexion of which was doubtful, in more than one place, and adding others, which were, or were com- monly reputed to be, the work of Jeremiah. The history of the origin of some of the other prophetical books is probably not very dissimilar to that of the book of Jeremiah. It is possible that some of the prophets only wrote down some part of their prophecies, or even committed nothing to writ- ing themselves. Partial collections of a prophet's works may have been in circulation in his lifetime, and after his death these would be united, and supple- mented by such recollections of their master's teach- ing as his disciples could supply. While the living voice was still among them, less need would be felt for a record of the prophet's teaching ; but when the voice was silent, loving care would strive to preserve some permanent memorial of his work. The endeavour of criticism to discover the way in which the prophetic books came into their present form is not due to mere idle curiosity, nor is it a fruitless expenditure of labour. All that can be I ON INTERPRETATION 23 ascertained with more or less probability as to their literary origin has an important bearing upon their interpretation. Wliile for our instruction and profit we may be content to read the books in the form in which they have come down to us, critical study requires that at least an attempt should be made to place a prophet's teaching in connexion with the events of his time ; to arrange, if it may be, his prophecies in approximate chronological order ; and to mark, where it can be done, the progress and development of his teaching in the successive periods of his ministry. Much must to the end remain un- certain, but real advance has been made, and is being made, towards the fuller understanding of the in- timate relation of the prophets to the times in which they lived and worked. LECTURE TI THE ORIGIN OF THE OLD TESTAMENT — continued dalv avrQv ol KarfKiirov ovofxa toO iKdiriyrjaaadaL eiraivovs, Kal elaiu u}p ovk 'iaTiv fxvrj/xocrvi'ou. — EcCLESiASTiCUS xliv. 8, 9. What has been said thus far leads on to a graver question, which has sometimes been viewed with unreasonable dislike and suspicion. May there not be included in the same book the writings of prophets other than the one whose name it bears ? May not the title represent (so to speak) a school rather than an individual ? May not disciples have not only preserved but continued and completed the work of their master? The combination of the writings of different prophets in the same volume may have been accidental or intentional. It may have hap- pened accidentally through the combination of writ- ings to form a roll of a certain size, or it may have been brought about intentionally, with the object of supplementing or completing an existing work. This may have been done without the slightest idea of fraud or bad faith, or wish to give currency to a prophecy by the authority of a great name. The LECT. II THE BOOK OF ISAIAH 25 Divine message was regarded as something far greater than the human messenger through whom it was communicated : it threw his personality entirely into the background. We know absolutely nothing of some of the prophets. Joel, the son of Pethuel, is a mere name to us. Of others, such as Amos, we know nothing but what we learn from their own writings. History does not mention them, even though, like Micah, they may have played an im- portant part in the religious movements of their time. The combination of the works of more than one writer in the same volume cannot, in view of what we have already learned as to the origin of some books of the Old Testament, be regarded as impossible or even improbable. But the evidence for it must in the nature of things be wholly internal evidence. It cannot, as we have seen, rise above probability, though that probability may amount to practical certainty. And it has to be balanced against the tradition, which, whatever may be its meaning or value, has united the writings in question together under one name. The most important and most familiar case in which modern critics have agreed to see the work of a plurality of authors in one book is the book of Isaiah. Not only the last twenty-seven chapters, but considerable portions of the first thirty-nine chap- ters, are thouf^ht to show clear indications of an ajje later than that of Isaiah, the contemporary of Heze- kiah, and of a writer or writers clearly distinguish- able from that prophet. With regard to the portions 26 DATE OF lect. of the first thirty -nine chapters which are thought to be the work of sorae prophet other than Isaiah, I do not wish to say anything now. But I propose to lay before you, so far as it can be done in a brief compass, some account of the grounds upon which the last twenty- seven chapters are attributed to a prophet — or, possibly, prophets, though for our present purpose we need not enter upon that question — who lived in Babylonia towards the close of the Baby- Ionian exile ; for those grounds appear to me to be en- tirely convincing, and to offer one of the best examples of the methods and results of biblical criticism. Let it be remembered that the problem is to be approached " with no a priori principles as to the nature of prophecy or the capabilities of the pro- phetic gift." We will not say that prediction is impossible, or necessarily limited to vague generali- ties. Let us then for the time forget that this writing — or, rather, whether it is the work of one writer or of several, this group of writings — is attached to the book of Isaiah. Let us simply interrogate the document itself, and collect the evidence which it offers concerning its author, and the time and place and circumstances of its writing. Direct statement there is none. Very rarely does the author let his own personality appear at all. But of indirect evidence, indicating the circumstances under which he wrote, there is no lack. Jerusalem is in ruins ; the temple, in which past generations worshipped, is a heap of ashes ; the cities n ISAIAH XL -LXVI. 27 of Judali are deserted; the land is desolate. Thy holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion is become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers jpraised Thee, is hcmed with fire; aiid all our pleasant things are laid ivaste (Is. Ixiv. 10, 11). Israel is iu exile, suffering the punishment of its sins. Jehovah has surrendered His people to their enemies. They are being tried in the furnace of affliction. Jerusalem has drunk to the dregs the cup of Jehovah's fury. She lies prostrate in the dust. The chains of captivity are on the neck of the daughter of Zion. The mother-city Zion is bereaved of her children, a barren exile, ivandering to and fro. Her children are scattered from their home. Jehovah's wife is divorced from Him for her chil- dren's transgressions, and they are sold into slavery for their iniquities. Babylon is the scene of Israel's captivity. Baby- lon is the tyrant who holds Zion's children in thrall. Babylon has been Jehovah's instrument for execut- ing His judgments, and she has performed her task with cruel delight. The exile has already lasted long. It seems to have become permanent. Jehovah sleeps. Zion fancies herself forgotten and forsaken. The weary decades of captivity are lengthening out into an eternity of punishment. But when faith and hope are strained to the point of breaking, deliverance is at hand. Jerusalem's 28 THE EXILE lect. time of servitude is accomplished; satisfaction has been made f 07' her iniquity. The decree has gone forth for freedom, redemption, restoration. The deliverer is on his way. Cyrus has been raised up from the East. He is already in full career of conquest. Babylon is doomed. Her gods are to be humbled. Jehovah is about to lead forth His people in a second exodus which will eclipse the glories of the first, and to conduct them through the wilderness to their ancient home. Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the temple restored. Now what I want you to observe is this — and pray do not take the statement on my authority, but verify it for yourselves — that the prophecy does not profess to predict the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the mission of Cyrus. These things are described or assumed as existing facts. Jerusalem is destroyed, Israel is in exile, Cyrus is already triumphantly advancing from point to point. What is foretold is the speedy deliverance of the exiles from their captivity. All these data point un- mistakably to the last ten years of the Babylonian exile as the time at which the prophecy was delivered. Moreover, there are indications, less definite perhaps, but tolerably convincing, which point to Babylonia as the place in which the prophet was living. He speaks in the presence of a dominant heathenism. Idolatry in all its grossness and stupid folly surrounds him. He has watched the infatuated idolaters manufacturing their gods, and carrying them II AN EXISTING FACT 29 in solemn procession, and setting them up in their temples. With unrivalled eloquence, inspired by mingled feelings of pity and indignation, he con- trasts the power and wisdom of Jehovah, the living God, the God of Israel, with the impotence and ignorance of these lifeless idols. The whole drift of his description makes it plain that it is idolatry in its own heathen home of which he is speaking, not the idolatry of apostate Israelites in Judah. More- over the prophet is in closest touch and sympathy with the exiles. He is fully acquainted with their circumstances, their character, their sins, their hopes, their fears, their faithlessness, their despondency; and when we note how he unites himself with them in confession, in thanksgiving, in earnest pleading, we can scarcely doubt that he was himseK one of them. It follows that if this prophecy was composed in the last ten years of the exile, by a prophet who was himself an exile, living among the exiles in Babylonia, its author was not Isaiah the son of Amoz, the con- temporary of Hezekiah, whose life must have ended more than a century before. This conclusion is corroborated by the evidence of style and language and theological ideas. These arguments time would not allow me to adduce now, and this is the less to be regretted because, although they form a very strong confirmation of the conclusion drawn from positive indications, they are not in themselves so convincing, and cannut well be stated in a summary 30 TKADITION AND lect. form without some discussion of possible answers and qualifications.-^ We have then to weigh the conclusion derived from a study of the book itself against the tradition of the Jewish Church, which ascribes this prophecy to Isaiah. That tradition is undoubtedly very ancient. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus regarded these prophecies as having been written by Isaiah, who saiu hy an excellent sjnrit what sliould come to pass at the last, and comforted them that mourned in Sion (xlviii. 24) ; and his authorship was not seriously questioned until modern times. But we know nothing, except what we can gather from the books themselves, of the circumstances under which the writings of the pro|)hets were collected; and if once the right of criticism to confirm or dispute the statements of tradition on the ground of internal evidence is admitted, I do not see how we can resist the conclusion that these chapters were not written by Isaiah, but by an unknown prophet toward the close of the Babylonian exile. This conclusion rests, let me repeat, upon no " a prio7'i arguments as to the impossibility of prophecy," but upon a sinq^le induction from the contents of the book. No doubt the problem is not quite so simple as the broad general arguments here given in outline seem to represent. For instance, there is a section of ^ An excellent statement of them will be found in Dr. Driver's Tsaiah, his Life and Times, pp. 185 ff. n CRITICISM 31 the prophecy which appears to go back into pre- exilic times, and speaks as though the Israel of the kinsjdom were still existinir. But I believe that the prophet is borrowing the language of his predecessors in order to describe the old sins for which Israel was suffering in exile ; and he does so in order to emphasise the truth of the continuity of national life, and to show the people how the guilt of old sins, which they had never disowned and repented of, still clung about them. There are, moreover, many resemblances of thought and style between this book and the acknowledged prophecies of Isaiah, and it may be hard to see how the name of such an eminent prophet could have been lost, or how his work came to be incorporated along with the prophecies of Isaiah. But the resemblances are on the Avhole less than the differences ; they can be accounted for by the author's familiarity with Isaiah's writings; he was a true disciple and successor of Isaiah. In such a disciple Isaiah himself lived on; where could a more fitting place for his works be found than in the same volume with those of his great master ? Here too, as in other cases, the individuality of the prophet who was charged with a Divine commission seemed to be of comparatively little moment. The messenger was lost sight of in the message ; nay, the more divinely wonderful the message, the less it mattered to posterity to know from whose lips or pen it came. But you will bay, what do we gain by sepanttiiig 32 POSITIVE GAIN lrot. these prophecies from the time-honoured name of Isaiah, and relegating them to the time of the exile ? We should indeed be glad, as a German commentator observes, to vindicate this most wonderful of Old Testament prophecies for the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and to regard it as the crown of Isaiah's work. And it will inevitably seem to many students of the Bible that in assigning the prophecy to a date so near to the events which it foretells we are detracting from its truly predictive character, and diminishing its value. But Isaiah is great enough to share his glory with this disciple in whom being dead he yet spoke; and, paradox as it may seem, the truly prophetic character of the work gains by being referred to the time of the exile. For while it is comeivahle that Isaiah might have been trans- ferred in spirit to a future age, and taking his stand in the midst of tribulations which he foresaw were to come have predicted the deliverance which was to follow them, such a hypothesis is not in accordance with the general economy of revelation. The more carefully we study the Old Testament, the more constantly are we impressed with what may be called the circumstantial origin of prophecy, with the fact that the teaching of one prophet after another arose directly out of the circumstances of his own time, and was providentially designed to meet the needs of that time. Adaptation is a law of Divine action in revelation as well as in nature. Here, on the other hand, if the prophecy were Isaiah's, we II FROM THE CRITICAL VIEW 33 should have an example of a proj)liecy entirely dis- connected from the events of the author's time, the practical value of which would not have been felt for at least a century after his death. And prediction, though one of a prophet's credentials, was not the whole, or even the most important part, of his work. That such a prophet as the author of this w^ork was raised up at this unique crisis in Israel's history, is surely even a greater proof of God's superintending care and providence than the abstract prediction of events a century and a half beforehand could have been of His omniscience. If ever an age needed the living voice of a prophet, it was this age of the closing years of the exile ; and it w^as in this crisis, a crisis not only in the history of Israel, but of the history of the world's redemption, that (as criticism tells us) God raised up a prophet second to none of the older prophets save Isaiah himself, to comfort the desponding spirits ef the exiles, and to bring home to them the conviction of the grandeur of Israel's mission for the world, and the certainty that Jehovah, who had chosen Israel to be His servant to accomplish this mission, w^ould assuredly fulfil His purpose. If any prophecy bears the stamp of Divine appropriateness it is this, and it is only wdien it is brought into the closest connexion with the circum- stances of the closing years of the exile that it gains life and reality, and that its full significance can be appreciated. 34 COMPOSITE CHARACTER lect. When we turn to the third great division of the Old Testament, the ' Writings ' or Hagiographa, we find similar indications in some of the books that they have had a long literary history before they reached their present form. Let us take first, as the simplest and most readily intelligible example, the book of Proverbs. In it external landmarks coincide most remarkably with differences of in- ternal characteristics. The book bears the title : The p7vverhs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel; and we may believe that it does so with justice, because Solomon was the originator of the proverbial philosophy which is collected in it. But directly we examine it, we see that it bears upon the face of it the clear marks of being a composite work, all the parts of which cannot be due to the same author or the same period. The first nine chapters contain a series of hortatory discourses; and these are followed by the primary collection of ' Solo- monic' proverbs, properly so called (x. 1 — xxii. 16), which bears the special title (x. 1) : The proverbs of Solomon. To this is appended a collection of ivords of the wise (xxii. 17 — xxiv. 22), with a farther short supplement (xxiv. 23-34). Then comes a second collection of ' Solomonic ' proverbs (xxv. — xxix.), bearing the title, These also are proverbs of Solomon luhich the men of Hezehiah king of Judah copied out. The book concludes with certain say- ings of Agur (xxx.), and of Lemuel (xxxi. 1-9), and an acrostic poem (xxxi. 10-31). II OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS 35 Now the three principal sections of the book are distinguished by marked internal character- istics. The introductory discourses (i. — ix.) are not, strictly speaking, proverbs at all, but a series of short didactic poems or exhortations, the general purport of which is to recommend wisdom in view of the various dangers to which the young men of the time were exposed. The proverbs contained in the first collection (x. — xxii. 16) are all dis- tichs, consisting of two lines only, and they are mainly of the form called antithetic; that is to say, the truth stated in the first line is confirmed or illustrated by the contrast of its opposite in tlie second. In the second collection (xxv. — xxix.) there are many proverbs of more than two lines, and they are chiefly of the paraholic or emhlematic form. Indeed, proverbs of this kind are so common that the collec- tion has been compared to a picture scrap-book with explanatory titles written underneath the pictures. Here obviously are interesting problems for the critic to solve. Is this remarkable difference of form and character in the proverbs of the two collections due to the taste of the collectors or to the object for which the collections were made ? or is it due to a difference in the age of the proverbs, tlie simpler form being the older, the expanded and developed form the later? Was the introduction a separate w^ork, or was it composed as a preface to one of the collections, or to the whole book, after the collections had been united? May we suppose that any con- 36 COMPOSITE CHARACTER lect. siderable part of the proverbs in these collections proceeded from Solomon himself, or are there in- ternal characteristics inconsistent with such a view ? These are questions which I can only throw out, and cannot stop to answer. I will only say now, that as there are remarkable differences between the form of the proverbs in the first collection and that of the proverbs in the second collection, there are also remarkable differences in the condition of affairs and the historical situation which they reflect. The proverbs of the first collection belong to a time when men knew the kingdom from its best side ; those of the second collection contain references to the miserable condition of the people, due to the oppress- ive behaviour of the nobles and the evil effects of misgovernment, which clearly reflect the disastrous experiences of a reign like that of Ahaz. On these and other grounds we are led to the conclusion that much of the book must belong to a later age than Solomon's, and must reflect the history not of one age, but of many, and the thought not of a single individual, but of many generations. From the book of Proverbs we turn to the Psalter; and here too we find plain proof that the book has had a long literary history. As the Proverbs of Solomon derived their title from the sage who we may believe founded the school of proverbial wisdom in Israel, so the Psalter derived its popular name from the poet who, in spite of recent criticism, I must still believe was the founder II OF THE PSALTER 37 of tlie sacred poetry of Israel and of the Catholic Church. It is true that the Psalms are not in the Old Testament called as a whole the I'salms of David, yet already in New Testament times the whole collection appears to have been called by his name, and he was popularly regarded as the author of it.-^ This is instructive, for not only is no claim made in the Psalter itself for the Davidic authorship of all the Psalms, but it is obvious from their contents that many of them could not have been written by him. The book of Psalms is a subject which might well have a whole course of lectures to itself; and all I wish to do now is to indicate one or two points in which it illustrates the general idea which I am trying to put before you, that the books of the Old Testament have grown to their present form by pro- cesses of editing and compilation and collection going on through long periods. First, then, with reference to the origin of particular Psalms, I should like you to note how Psalms were revised and adapted and combined by later poets or editors. We have positive evidence of this. The Eighteenth Psalm is found in the second book of Samuel as well as in the Psalter ; and there are numerous variations between the two copies. Some of them are mani- festly due to the mistakes of scribes in copying ; but others are plainly due to deliberate revision of the text. The Fourteenth Psalm, again, recurs as the Fifty-third, and here again there are some remark- 1 Cf. Heb. iv. 7. 38 THE DIVISIONS lect. able variations ; and it seems to me to be tbe most probable explanation, that the conclusion of the Psalm was altered by some poet or editor who wished to adapt it to the circumstances of his own time, by introducing an allusion to a special event, not improbably the destruction of Sennacherib. We know how in the present day the compilers of hymnals have in some cases altered and added to the hymns even of living poets. Once again, the One hundredth and eighth Psalm is simply a combination of portions of the Fifty-seventh and Sixtieth Psalms. Now when we find these instances actually before our eyes, we are justified in assuming, if critical con- siderations require it, that other Psalms owe their present form to revision and adaptation and com- bination, and we need not be shocked if comment- ators take such a view, and regard the Nineteenth Psalm, for example, or the Tw^enty-seventh, as com- binations of poems by different authors. With reference to the origin of the Psalter as a whole, I need only point to what is probably familiar to you all, that there are three main divisions in the Psalter. First, there is the 'Davidic' collection, Ps. i. — xli., all the Psalms in which except three bear the name of David. Secondly, there is the 'Elohistic' collection, so called because Eloliim, i.e. God, is used in it in the place and almost to the exclusion of the name Jehovah. This collection extends from Ps. xli. to Ps. Ixxxiii., and Ps. Ixxxiv. — Ixxxix. form an appendix to it and may be classed II OF THE rSALTER 39 along with it, although they are not marked by the peculiar use of Elohim. This collection has itself been formed by the union of smaller collections of Psalms bearing the names of the Sons of Korah, of Asaph, and of David, and its Elohistic character is due, I believe, to the hand of an editor. In the third division, Ps. xc. — cL, most of the Psalms are anonymous, but a few bear the name of David. It is an interesting problem, and one which is worth while examining for a moment here, for the sake of the side-light which it may throw upon the composite authorship of prophetic books, how far the titles which ascribe Psalms to David can be regarded as trustworthy. Most critics agree that many of the Psalms which bear his name cannot have been wiutten by him. IMany Psalms ascribed to him assume situa- tions and circumstances wholly unlike any in which he can be supposed to have been placed ; some, e.g. Ixix. and ciii., refer to the destruction of Jerusalem; the language of others, e.g. cxxxix., is unquestionably late; others, e.g. Ixxxvi., are mere compilations. While, then, a certain relative weight may be assigned to the title A Psalm of David, its probability must in each case be tested by the internal evidence of the contents of the Psalm. But how did these titles come to be prefixed to the Psalms ? All the Psalms in the first book (with the exception of the first two, which are prefatory, and Ps. xxxiii.) bear tlie name of David; and it is not unlikely that they were taken from a collec- 40 PSALMS OF DAVID lect. tioii wliicli bore some such imme as The Psalms of David, or perhaps, The Prayers of David (Ps. Ixxii. 20) ; not that all the poems in the collec- tion were written by David, but because he was the original founder of it, and the most famous contributor to it. We commonly speak of Newman's Lyra Apostolica, though five other writers beside ISTewman contributed to it. Then when the Psalms of this collection were taken over into the Psalter, the name of David was placed at the head of each Psalm taken from it. With regard to the Psalms in the later books which bear the name of David, it is possible that some of them may be authentic pro- ductions of his, which had not found a place in the earlier collection. But it is also possible that imi- tations of Davidic Psalms may have been called by his name without the slightest intention of fraud; or again, that Psalms may have been written by other poets to illustrate particular episodes in his life, or to express the thoughts which might be sup- posed to have been in his mind on certain occasions ; and these again may easily have had his name affixed to them, without any idea of passing them off as his for the sake of giving them currency and authority. Delitzsch observes^ that it was characteristic of the spirit and custom of ancient historians and poets, and especially those of the Bible, to live themselves into the modes of thought and expression of great men, and by imitating their thoughts and feelings, ^s, p. 30. II THE PENTATEUCH 41 make themselves their organs. ]\Iiich doubt rests, and must necessarily rest, upon tlie authorship of most of the Psalms, and even the age to which a particular Psalm is to be attributed may be quite uncertain; but I cannot but think that it is an extreme and passing phase of criticism which would deny the existence of Davidic Psahns entirely, and relegate all the Psalms, with perhaps one or two excep- tions, to the post-exilic or even the Maccabaean age.-^ We come now to the Pentateuch, or to use the language of modern criticism, w^hich on literary grounds connects the book of Joshua with the five preceding books, the Hexateuch. I have reserved this to the last, because it seemed to me that we might most advantageously approach the question of its origin by a consideration of the somewhat simpler and less controverted questions of the origin of the Historical, Prophetical, and Poetical Books. For, somehow or other, the critical analysis of the Hexa- teuch has been viewed in this country with more sus- picion and disfavour than critical inquiries into the origin and composition of the other books of the Old Testament. If, however, you have followed me thus far, you will be prepared to regard it as at least not antecedently improbable that the Hexateuch, like so many of the other books, is composite in its origin, and has a long literary history. Modern criticism claims, and claims with justice, to have proved that it is so. 1 See Note B. 42 THE PENTATEUCH DOES NOT CLAIM lect. First let us clear tlie ground by interrogating the books themselves, and inquiring what they have to say about their own authorship. The Pen- tateuch nowhere claims to have been written by Moses. That it was entirely written by Moses, with the exception of the account of his death and burial in the concluding verses of Deuteronomy, which was added by Joshua (though according to some author- ities even these verses were written by Moses him- self), is simply a Jewish tradition which passed into the Christian Church and was commonly accepted until modern times. The tradition of the Mosaic authorship was already well established in New Testament times ; but as we have already remarked, the adoption in the New Testament of popular and current nomenclature cannot foreclose investigation in literary any more than in scientific questions. What, then, has the Pentateuch itself to say about its author ? Time forbids me to go into the question in detail, but the facts are briefly these. Genesis contains no statement whatever about its author. In the three middle books of the Pentateuch Moses is said to have been directed to commit to writing accounts of certain events, and to have recorded certain laws and other matters ; but these statements refer to compara- tively small portions of the whole work. They include the curse upon Amalek (Ex. xvii. 14) ; the book of the covenant (Ex. xx. — xxiii. ; see Ex. xxiv. 4-7) ; the short code of laws which is given in connexion with the restoration of the broken Tables II TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY MOSES . 43 of the Law (Ex. xxxiv. 10-2G ; see Ex. xxxiv. 27, 28) ; and the list of the stations in the journey of tlie Israelites through the wilderness (Num. xxxiii. 2). Besides these references to documents written by Moses, there is an interesting mention in Kum. xxi. 14 f. of the hooh of the vxcrs of Jehovah, from which the very ancient fragments of poetry quoted in that chapter were probably taken. In Deuteronomy, on the other hand, there are statements which at first sight may seem to attribute the writing of the whole Pentateuch to Moses. A closer examination, however, shows that they cannot refer even to the whole of Deuteronomy. It is said that he wrote the vjords of this law in a hooh (xxxi. 24; of. vv. 9, 26), but exactly similar language is used when it is evident that the reference cannot be to the whole law, or even to the whole of Deuteronomy. It is plain, for example, that the command to write all the words of this laiu upon the stones which were to be set up on Mount Ebal (xxvii. 3) can only refer to a nucleus of the law, perhaps no more than the Ten Commandments. It is also said that Moses wrote his song (xxxi. 19, 22). So far as the Pentateuch itself is concerned, we may safely come to the conclusion that it makes no claim to have been written by Moses, and that we are free to examine what indirect evidence as to its origin can be derived from the books themselves. And it may be taken as the accepted result of such an examination, that the Pentateuch is a composite 44 COMPONENT ELEMENTS lect. work, which has grown into its present form by the combination of a plurality of documents. The principal grounds upon which the composite origin of the Pentateuch is maintained are briefly the following : (1) Different parts of it are distin- guished by the use of the different Divine names, MoJiim and Jehovah. (2) It contains duplicate accounts of the same events, sometimes placed side by side, as the two accounts of creation ; and some- times fused into one narrative, as the two accounts of the Flood. (3) The portions thus marked by the use of the Divine names, or standing as duplicate narratives of the same events, are found to be further distinguished by peculiarities of language and con- ception. (4) Inconsistencies and contradictions are to be observed, which can scarcely be reconciled with any theory of unity of authorship. A vast amount of labour and ingenuity has been spent upon the critical analysis of the Hexateuch, with the result that there is a very general consensus that four principal documents have been combined to form the Hexateuch as it now stands. (1) There is the document which forms the basis of the whole, and is therefore often spoken of as the '' foundation document " {Grundschrift). It is also often called the Priests' Code, because the ceremonial legislation in Exodus, Leviticus, and N'umbers formed the chief part of it. It began with the account of creation in Gen. i. — ii. 3, and contained an outline of the patri- archal history. To it belongs in the main the de- II OF THE PENTATEUCH 45 scription of the distribution of the land in Joshua xiii. — xxi. In this document the name Eloliim (God) is used in the primitive period before Abraham. In the patriarchal age the name El Shaddai (God Almighty) appears. From Ex. vi. onward Jehovah is employed. (2) and (3) Two parallel narratives of the patriarchal and early history of Israel, one marked by the use of the name Jehovah, the other by the use of the name Elohim, These were com- bined at an early date by a compiler who took such extracts from each as suited his purpose, and the result may be termed the 'prophetical narrative.' It contained legislative matter, both civil and reli- gious, e.g. Ex. XX. — xxiii., as well as history ; but it is of a simple and elementary kind. (4) Deuteronomy. The difference of style between these different elements is well marked. " The priestly narrative," says Professor Driver, " is characterised by a system- atic arrangement of material ; great attention is paid in it to chronological, genealogical, and other statis- tical data ; it is minute and circumstantial, even in its aim to attain precision not avoiding repetitions ; it abounds in stereotyped phrases and formulae. The prophetical narrative is free and flowing, it details scenes and conversations with great force and vivid- ness ; the style is much more varied, and its repre- sentations of the Deity are far more anthropomorphic than those of the priestly document." . . , "The characteristic feature in Deuteronomy is its parenetic treatment of the laws, and the stress which it lays 46 DATE OF lect. upon the moral and spiritual motives which should prompt the Israelite to the observance of them." -^ These documents themselves had a literary history before they were welded together in our present Hexateuch. They were composed out of existing elements, partly oral and partly documentary. Critics are fairly unanimous in distinguishing these different sources, but they are not so unani- mous as to their chronological order and actual dates. For a long time it was supposed that the ' primary document' or 'priestly code' to which belongs the ceremonial legislation was the oldest document, and Deuteronomy the latest; but the theory which is now most in favour regards the ' prophetic narrative,' with its simple legislation, as the oldest, Deuteronomy as an intermediate stage, and the 'priestly code' as a later codification of the developed ceremonial law. It would carry us far beyond our present limits of time, and indeed beyond the strict limits of our subject, to discuss the relation of these docu- ments to one another and to the other books of the Old Testament. What I have wished to make clear to you is simply this, that the compilation of the Hexateuch from pre-existing sources must be accepted as one of the certain results of critical inquiry. For the rest, I must content myself with quoting the words of Delitzsch.^ " Such a distinc- tion of sources naturally involves temporal succes- sion . . . but though in more exactly determining ^ Contemjm-ary Eeview, Feb. 1890. ^ Genesis, p. 18. II THE DOCUMENTS 47 the dates of tlie various elements we may have to come down to thnes far later than the ]\Iosaic age, this does not exclude the possibility that the narra- tive rests on tradition, and the codified law springs from Mosaic roots." Similarly with reference to Deuteronomy he says : " We assume for these testa- mentary discourses a traditional substratum, which the free reproduction follows. . . . The author of Deuteronomy has completely appropriated the thoughts and language of Moses, and from a genuine oneness of mind with him reproduces them in the highest intensity of Divine inspiration." There is one point connected with the origin of the Pentateuch so remarkable that I cannot refrain from briefly noticing it. The decipherment of the cuneiform tablets brought from Assyria has revealed the start- ling fact that the ancient Babylonians possessed accounts of the Creation and the Flood, and according to the most recent discoveries, of the Fall also — but on this point I am told by one who has a good right to speak that we must still reserve judgment — so closely resembling those of Genesis, that it is impossible to suppose that they are independent one of another. AYhen and how did these narratives come from Babylonia to Palestine ? Some critics have attempted to maintain that the Hebrews only became acquainted with the Babylonian legends during the exile. Such a theory is in itself so intrinsically improbable that it would require to be supported by the very strongest proof. Is it likely 48 PRIMITIVE TRADITIONS lect. that the Israelites in exile would have adopted the traditions of their oppressors, and even placed them in the forefront of the Law ? Did the nation whose earliest prophets insisted with such eloquence upon the creative omnipotence of Jehovah, possess no account of creation until the exile ? But apart from this, it is pointed out by Schrader, one of the fore- most students of these inscriptions, that it is the Jehovistic document which most resembles the Babylonian legends, and this document is acknow- ledged on all hands to be much earlier than the exile. By far the most probable way of accounting for the resemblance is to suppose that the Hebrews brought these primitive legends with them when they migrated from Ur of the Chaldees. Of the significant difference between the Babylonian narra- tives and those of Genesis I shall have occasion to speak in my fourth lecture. Now I will only add that if this view is the true one, there are elements in the Hexateuch of vast antiquity, coming down from the twilight ages of the childhood of the world before the call of Abraham. The documents which can be traced in the Hexateuch already had a literary history and embodied the traditions of many generations before they reached the form in which they were found by the redactor who united them into the present structure. I have dealt in these first two lectures with the outward form of some of the books of the Old Testa- n THE DUTY OF CRITICIS^I 49 ment. I have endeavoured to give some idea of the literary processes by which they were brought into their present shape. I am aware that such dealing with Holy Scripture seems to some devout lovers of the Bible unprofitable if not irreverent, unspiritual if not profane. Unquestionably our highest con- cern is not with the outward form, but with the life which animates that form ; not with the letter, but with the spirit which is breathed into all these manifold documents, giving them a common unity, and stamping them all as parts of one Divine plan and purpose. Yet it is the duty not less than the right of the Christian student to investigate by every means in his power the origin of those books which he holds to be the title-deeds of his faith. He must not be deterred by the fact that such researches have often been carried on in a spirit the very reverse of reverent, and with the aim rather of discrediting the Bible than of discovering the truth regarding its origin with a view to its better interpretation. He must work with an open mind and a good courage, neither hastily accepting what is new nor obstinately clinging to what is old ; not anxiously inquiring how- much of old traditional views may be retained and how little conceded in the direction of change, but patiently and impartially endeavouring to ascertain, so far as it is possible to ascertain, the exact facts of the case. If the critical study of the Bible is pur- sued in this spirit, " every result which can be surely established will teach us something of the manner E 50 THE USE OF CRITICISM lect. ii of God's working, and of tlie manner in wliicli He provides for our knowledge of it." ^ But criticism, it must always be remembered, is not an end in itself, but a means, — a means towards the better understand- ing for ourselves and our times of the one Divine message communicated to man in many parts and' in many fashions. 1 Bishop Westcott, Hebrews, p. 493. LECTUEE III THE PRESERVATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Kadus 7rape8o(xav rjjxiv. — St. Luke i. 2. From the consideration of the origin of the Old Testament we pass to the history of its preservation. What is known of the way in which the text of the Old Testament has been handed down throucrh all tlie centuries which have elapsed since even the latest book in it was written ? Through what vicis- situdes has it passed in that long history ? Can we believe that the existing Hebrew text faithfully represents the original archetypes, or must we admit that it has suffered corruption and alteration in the process of transmission ? If the admission must be made, what is the extent of the corruption, and what means, if any, have we for restoring the true text ? The subject is no doubt a somewliat technical one, and it is in many respects extremely obscure ; but it seems to me that the broad general outline which is all that can be given here may not be without interest, and certainly is of importance in its bearing on the results arrived at in the preceding lectures. We 52 THE OLD TESTAMENT NOT EXEMPTED lect. have seen that many of the books of the Old Testa- ment are the result of literary processes, in some cases of long and complicated literary processes. It pleased God to communicate His revelation of Himself to man through men, and it did not please Him to exempt the records of that revelation from the literary and historical methods of the age and the country. Those records were placed in men's hands to transmit to posterity, and we shall now see that it did not please Him to exempt them from the vicissitudes to which other monuments of ancient literature have been subject in the course of their transmission from age to age. In the preservation as well as in the origin of the Scriptures there has been a large human element, larger than was at one time supposed ; and while we reverently acknow- ledge the Divine origin of those Scriptures, and gratefully recognise the providential care which has watched over their preservation, we must not exag- gerate inspiration into verbal infallibility, or pro- vidential guardianship into absolute protection from error. It is necessary to emphasise this point, be- cause extraordinary misconceptions have been, and in some quarters still are, prevalent with regard to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. It is still not uncommonly supposed that from the earliest times it was copied with the scrupulous accuracy which characterised the scribes of a later age ; but as we shall presently see, this cannot have been the case. In the Old Testament as well as in the New textual Ill FRO.AI ERROR IN TRANSMISSION 53 criticism is tlie indispensable preliminary and liand- maid to the work of interpretation. The student must endeavour to ascertain what is the original text of the passage which he has to explain; to eliminate, if possible, errors which have crept in through the care- lessness or ignorance of scribes ; to confess, it may be, that the extant evidence no longer enables him to determine the original text with certainty. The student of the text of the Old Testament has to work under entirely different conditions from those which present themselves to the student of the text of the ]^ew Testament. The MSS. of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament differ most widely in relative age and actual character from the MSS. of the Greek text of the New Testament. There are numerous Greek MSS. of the New Testament in existence. Most of them are comparatively modern ; but several are earlier than the ninth century ; one almost complete MS., the Codex Alex- andrinus, the great treasure of the British Museum, dates from the fifth century; and two, the Codex Yaticanus in the Vatican Library at Eome and the Codex Sinaiticus in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, were written in the fourth century. These MSS. by no means all agree; and it is a laborious and difficult task to compare their various readings, and determine how w^e may most nearly arrive at the original w^ords used by Evangelists and Apostles. Tlie evidence of these MSS. is checked and corroborated by the existence of versions made 54 AGE AND CHARACTER lect. in the second and third centuries, as well as by numerous quotations in the works of the early Fathers ; and it is the deliberate judgment of the greatest textual critics that " the books of the New Testament, as preserved in extant documents, as- suredly speak to us in every important respect in language identical with that in which they spoke to those for whom they were originally written."^ Of the Old Testament there are also numerous Hebrew MSS. in existence. But the majority of them are later than the twelfth century, and the oldest of which the date is known was written in 916 A.D. That is to say, while we possess Greek MSS. of the New Testament written little more than two centuries and a half after the date of the earliest of the books which they contain, our oldest Hebrew MS. of the Old Testament is separated by more than a thousand years from the latest of the books in- cluded in the Canon. But this is not all. Unlike the Greek MSS. of the New Testament, the Hebrew MSS. of the Old Testa- ment all agree in giving substantially the same text, which is commonly called for reasons which will be explained presently (pp. 69 ff.) the Massoretic Text. They contain no various readings of real importance. The variations between them are, to speak quite roughly, less than the variations between the different editions of the Authorised Version from 1611 onwards. This uniformity might be due to one of two causes : ^ Westcott-Hort, The Neio Testament in Greek, ii. 254. Ill . OF HEBREW MSS. 66 either to the accurate transmission of the text from the very first, or to the adoption, at some time or other, of a standard text, which was universally accepted, to the exclusion of all variations, and has been preserved without alteration since. In this case the text may of course contain errors more or less numerous which already existed in the MS. or MSS. from which it was taken. I will anticipate somewhat by saying at once that the evidence is conclusive in favour of the second hypothesis. The history of the text goes to show that an official or received text was settled by the Jewish scribes soon after the destruction of Jerusalem. When once this standard had been determined and accepted at the great centres of Jewish learning, MSS. differing from it would be condemned and fall out of use, or be deliberately destroyed. In this way the disappear- ance of all MSS. presenting a different form of text may be easily accounted for. The entire disappearance of ancient MSS. may also partly be due to the Jewish practice of destroy- ing, from motives of reverence, old and worn-out copies of the Scriptures. Attached to each synagogue was a chamber called the Gcniza, in which torn and mutilated copies of the Scriptures were deposited in order that they might not be profaned by being applied to common uses. From time to time the Geniza was cleared out and its contents buried. At one time it was customary to bury a worn-out copy of the Law by the side of a scholar. 56 ANCIENT HEBREW lect. We need hardly take into account causes so remote as the destruction of the Scriptures in the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, when the mere possession of a copy of the Law was a capital offence (1 Mace. i. 54-58). But similar wholesale destructions of the Scriptures have probably taken place since. In the Diocletian persecution the Christian Scriptures were made the object of special attack ; and multitudes of copies of the Old Testament have perished by violence in the numerous persecutions and frequent exiles of the Jews. The existing Hebrew MSS. of the Old Testament are of two classes. (1) MSS. for synagogue use, written on parchment or leatlier, in the form of rolls. They contain (in separate rolls) the Law, the Haph- tdrdtli or Lessons from the Prophets, and the five Megilloth or Eolls (Song of Songs, Euth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther), which are appointed for use on certain days. These MSS. always contain the ' un- pointed ' or consonantal text (p. 57) only. They are written wdth extreme care. The traditional rule given in the Talmud was that a copy of the Law with two errors on a page might be corrected, but if it had three, it must be put in the Geniza. The scholar Ben Chayim asks. Is not the scroll of the Law in which one letter is omitted illegal ? (2) MSS. for private use, written in book-form on parchment, leather, or paper. They contain the ' pointed ' or vocalised text (p. 57), with more or less of the Massoretic critical apparatus (p. 72), and sometimes Eabbinic Ill WRITTEN WITHOUT VOWELS 57 commentaries in addition. Sucli a ]\IS. would generally be prepared by several scribes. One would write the consonantal text, another would add the vowels and accents, another the Massora, another the commentaries, another would correct it, and so forth. They are somewhat less accurate than the synagogue rolls, but nevertheless were often prepared with extreme care. Here I must make a brief digression in order to explain the terms ' pointed ' and ' unpointed ' text. Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, was originally written with consonants only. A few long vowels were indicated by certain consonants, but in the most ancient times, as we know from inscriptions, even these were very sparingly employed. The reader had therefore to supply the vowels necessary for pro- nunciation, and this might obviously be done in different ways. For example, the same consonants KTB might be read to mean, he wrote, writing, written, ivrite thou, to write, a loriting. Of course in most cases the context would decide at once how a word was to be pronounced, but sometimes consider- able ambiguity might exist, which could only be obviated by a traditional system of reading orally handed down and carefully committed to memory. The inconveniences of such a system of writing are obvious ; and it is not to be wondered at that the Jews at length invented vowel marks or ' points ' which could be added to the consonants to indicate the exact pronunciation. A ]\IS. or printed Bible 58 THE ARCHAIC lect. containing these marks is said to be pointed, and one not containing them is said to be unpointed. I will now proceed to give a brief sketch of the history of the text of the Old Testament. Many points in that history are involved in great obscurity, and it is only possible to give approximate dates. Still certain periods can be marked out, each of which is distinguished by some important fact ; and the sketch, rough as it must necessarily be, may enable you to understand something of the vicissitudes through which the text has passed. Tor our present purpose the history of the text may conveniently be divided into four periods. (I.) The pre-canonical period before the time of Ezra. This period belongs almost as much to the history of the origin of the Old Testament as to the history of its transmission. We have seen indications that the scribes allowed themselves considerable freedom in dealing with the books which they copied, while the Scriptures were still in the process of growth. In this period books were written on skins or linen, or possibly on paper, which was used in Egypt at a very early date. They seem to have been generally in the form of rolls.^ But the most important fact to remember with reference to this period is that the character em- ployed was the old Hebrew character, which was in 1 Ps. xl. 7 ; Jer. xxxvi. 14 ff. ; Ezek. ii. 9 ; Zecli. v. 1 ; Ezra vi. 2. The ' ' leaves " in Jer. xxxvi. 23 mean columns. Ill HEBREW ALPHABET 59 general use in Phoenicia, Palestine, and Moab. Our oldest monument in that character is the famous Moabite stone, which records the exploits of King Mesha, about 890 B.C. This stone was discovered in 1869 at Dhihdn, the ancient Dibon. Unfortun- ately it was broken up by the Arabs, but the greater part of it was secured, and is now in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The same character is found in the inscription recording the construction of the tunnel connecting the Virgin's Spring with the Pool of Siloam, which is certainly not later than the time of Hezekiah, and may possibly be earlier. It is found on seals and gems assigned to dates from the eighth century B.C. onwards. It is used on coins of the Maccabaean period (141 — 135 B.C.), and even as late as the rebellion of Bar-cochab (132 — 135 a.d.) It is still retained in a somewhat modified form by the Samaritans. In this period of course writing was consonantal only, and the use of consonants to represent long vowels (p. 57) infrequent and irregular. It is scarcely probable that the text escaped cor- ruption and alteration during this period. The form of the archaic characters was irregular, and they were peculiarly liable to confusion ; and while as yet the canonical books were not separated off from other books, it is scarcely probable that they would be copied with precise accuracy. Many of the varia- tions between parallel texts probably arose in this period. 60 INTRODUCTION OF lect. (II.) The second period reaches from the time of Ezra to the Fall of Jerusalem (450 B.C. — 70 a.d.) The first great work of this period was the de- termination of the Canon of the Old Testament. This was a gradual process. We have seen (p. 5) that the prologue to Ecclesiasticus speaks of " the Law, the Prophets, and the rest of the books," as already forming a definite and well-known class of writings Cin a way which corresponds to the idea of a Canon, and distinguishes them from secondary books such as Ecclesiasticus. No doubt the Canon of the Old Testament was fixed substantially as we receive it before our Lord's time ; though the canonicity of the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes was challenged upon internal grounds, and the doubts respecting these books were not authoritatively settled until the Synods of Jamnia, 90 and 118 A.D. The second important fact of this period was the adoption of the 'square' character now in use in place of the archaic character. Jewish tradition, followed by Origen and Jerome, attributes the change to Ezra. But there is always a tendency to connect important changes with great names, and it is more probable that no formal transcription of the Scriptures from one character into the other took place, but that just as the Aramaic language gradually superseded Hebrew after the captivity, so the square character, which appears to have been of Aramaic origin, gradu- ally superseded the older character. The tradition may be based on the fact that the square character HI THE SQUARE CHARACTER 61 was introduced by Ezra, but the evidence of coins and inscriptions proves that the two forms of writing co-existed side by side for a considerable time. But by our Lord's time the character in ordinary use was the square cliaracter. This is plain from the refer- ence to yod as the smallest letter in Matt. v. 18, " One jot . . . shall in no wise pass away from the law," for yod is the smallest character in the square, but by no means the smallest in the archaic alphabet. As, however, the older character was still employed on coins, it cannot have been wholly unintelligible. AYith this chansje from one character to another we may compare the substitution of cursive for uncial writing in Greek MSS., and the superseding of black- letter by Roman type in our own language. But the change in Hebrew was more abrupt, and we can scarcely be wrong in supposing that not a few errors crept into the text during the process. What was the state of the text during this period ? Is there any evidence to show that there was a fixed and uniform " received text," or on the contrary that various forms of text were current in the Jewish Church, and that no stress was as yet laid upon a precise verbal uniformity of copies ? There is evi- dence, and it points clearly to the latter conclusion. (1) The Samaritans have preserved the Pentateuch independently of the orthodox Jews, in a character not differing materially from the archaic Hebrew character. This Samaritan Pentateuch contains read- ings which do not agree with the existing Hebrew 62 DETERMINATION OF lect. text. Some of tliem are, beyond question, alterations introduced to give support to the Samaritan schism, e.g. the substitution of Gerizim for Ehal in Deut. xxvii. 4; but a number remain of which the most natural explanation is that they existed in the copy originally received by the Samaritans. (2) More important, however, is the evidence of the Greek version, known as the Septuagint (LXX.), made in Egypt in the third and second centuries B.C. for the use of the numerous body of Greek-speaking Jews and proselytes in that country. That version differs very considerably from the present Hebrew text. Thus, for example, in Samuel there are con- siderable omissions ; in Kings and in Proverbs there are considerable additions ; the prophecies of Jere- miah are arranged in a different order. Some of the variations of the LXX. from the Hebrew text are due, no doubt, to errors and interpolations and deliberate alterations; but after all allowance has been made for these, I do not see how any candid critic can resist the conclusion that many of them represent variations existing in the Hebrew text from which tlie translation was made. Whether the readings which the LXX. offers are superior to those of the Massoretic Text is another question, which will have to be considered presently. What we have to observe here is that the LXX. gives positive evidence that different recensions of the Hebrew text existed in this period. The Massoretic Text may be regarded as repre- Ill A STANDARD TEXT 63 sentino' the text current in Palestine, while the LXX. represents that in use in Egypt. But the Egyptian Jews were desirous of maintaining their connexion with their brethren in Palestine, and we can hardly suppose that they would have differed from them on such a crucial point as the text of the Scriptures, if the same importance had been attached to a rigid uniformity of text as was done by the scribes of a later age. (III.) The third period in the history of the text extends from the Fall of Jerusalem to the end of the fifth century, when the great storehouse of Jewish learning, known as the Talmud, was completed and committed to writing. It was probably at the very beginning of this period, towards the close of the first century A.D., that the final settlement of an authoritative text took place. When Judaism was reconstructed after the destruction of Jerusalem, a spirit of stern dogmatism was dominant. The literal- ism of scholars like Eabbi Aqiba, who spent twenty- two years with his teacher in studying the meaning of the common particles, prevailed. The Scriptures were appealed to for dogmatic purposes, and it be- came necessary to fix authoritatively the ipsissima verba of the standards of relisfion. o It is possible that this was done in the schools of Jamnia, to which the most learned rabbis fled after the Fall of Jerusalem. But be that as it may, it is clear that the text was definitely settled early in this period. Three Greek versions were made in the 64 DISAPPEARANCE OF lect. second century ; one by Aquila, who is said to have been a pnpil of Eabbi Aqiba, in the time of Hadrian, 117 — 138 A.D. ; another by Theodotion ; and a third by Symmachus, a little later. Of these versions considerable fragments are preserved, which for the most part agree closely with the present Hebrew text. We have further evidence from Origen in the third century (185 — 255 A.D.) and Jerome in the fourth (331 — 420 A.D.), as well as from the Targums, or trans- lations into the vernacular Aramaic, which were com- pleted in these centuries, showing that varieties of text were disappearing, and a form of text agreeing almost exactly with the Massoretic Text coming into universal currency. The Talmud regards the text as absolutely fixed. The evidence, then, is fairly conclusive that a standard text not differing materially from our pre- sent text came into general use in this period. But how was this uniformity attained, and how came it that all the copies containing other readings have disappeared? A bold conjecture has been advanced that all our Hebrew MSS. are derived from a single copy which survived at the destruction of Bether, when the rebellion of Bar-cocliab was suppressed by Hadrian (135 a.d.) Hence their uniformity. But there is no need to have recourse to such a violent hypothesis. When once the religious authorities of the nation had determined what was to be the standard text, that and that only would be per- petuated by the scribes. Copies differing from it Ill DIVERGENT FORMS OF TEXT 65 would die out or be deliberately destroyed. The practice of destroying worn-out or inaccurate MSS. (pp. 55, 56) accounts for the disappearance of all such copies, and it will be remembered that we have no MS. or even fragment of a MS. of this period of any kind whatsoever surviving. There are two remarkable parallels to the uni- formity of the text of the Old Testament in the Koran and the Vedas. In the case of the Koran uniformity was secured by the Caliph Othman, who destroyed all the copies which diverged from the standard text which he had adopted. In the case of the Yedas, a diligent school of grammarians in the fifth century B.C. occupied themselves in settling a standard text which has been preserved without variation ever since. Traces of the minute labours of the scribes of this period are found (1) in what are known as the ' removals of the scribes,' five passages in which the word and was struck out ; and (2) in the ' corrections of the scribes/ eighteen passages in which, mainly for dogmatic reasons, certain readings were adopted in preference to others. Thus in Hab. i. 12, we shall not die was pronounced to be right in preference to thou diest not, from motives of reverence. But (3) still more important are the variations known as K'thihh and Q'rl, to which reference is made in the preface to the Ee vised Version. These words mean respectively luritien and read, and we find from time to time in the margin of the Hebrew Bible notes to F 66 GROWTH OF THE lect. the effect that certain words are written hut not read {e.g. ill Jer li. 3) ; or that certain words are to be read tliough not ivrittcn {e.g. 2 Sam. xvi. 23); or that certain words are to be read otherwise than they are written {e.g. Ps. c. 3). Many of these variations have only a grammatical interest, as for instance those which substitute ordinary forms for archaisms. Others are euphem- isms, the commonest being the substitution of Adonai (Lord), or Elohlm (God), for the ineffable Name yhvh (Jehovah), which is accordingly for the most part represented in the A.Y. by Loed or God, the small capitals indicating that the sacred Name actually stands in the text. Others, however, are relics of real various readings, and originated in a divergence between the MSS. used by the scribes. But it must not be supposed that it was left to the reader's discretion to choose between conflicting readings. The decision was absolutely and authori- tatively made that such a word or form of a word was to be read ; but — and in this we see a proof of the scrupulous care with which the scribes of this period abstained from tampering with the text — the word to be read was not inserted in the text itself, but only noted in the margin. Sometimes the Qrl and sometimes the KHhibh appears, upon internal grounds, to be preferable ; and the A.V. and E.V. follow sometimes one and some- times the other. But it must be clearly understood that the Qrl or marginal reading is the received Ill EXEGETICAL TRADITION 67 reading, and when they adopt tlie K'tluhh \\\ prefer- ence to the QWl, as for example in Ps. xxiv. 4, they are desertincj the orthodox Jewish tradition. Many of these variations are recognised in the Talmud; and as they were probably transmitted orally and not committed to writing in the period which we are considering, it is only a part of them that have come down to the present day. Simultaneously with the determination of the consonantal text grew up an exegetical tradition, or fixed method of reading and dividing the text. But as yet this method was transmitted orally only ; no written vowel marks were added to the text. The Talmud knows of no written vowel points, although it regards the pronunciation and meaning of words as definitely fixed. Jerome knew^ of no written vowels, and pro- nunciation was in his day still to some extent a matter of choice and locality. Thus he writes : " It does not matter whether it be called Salem or Salim, for the Hebrews very seldom use vowel letters in the middle of a word, and the same words are pronounced with different sounds and accents according to the choice of the reader and the locality." ^ The " vowel letters " to which he refers are not the vowel points, but those consonants which, as has already been ex- plained, are sometimes used to mark long vowels. In his commentary on Jer. ix. 22 he illustrates the possible varieties of pronunciation and meaning of a ^ Ejj. 72 ad Evangclium. 68 GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF lect. word tlms : " The Hebrew word which is Aviitten with three letters Daleth, Beth, Res (for there are no vowels between them), according to the context and the reader's pleasure, signifies, if it be read dabar, word ; if deter, death ; if dabher, speak." But though he had no written vowels, it is plain that he was acquainted with an "exegetical tradition," and that this very closely resembled that which the Jews have per- petuated to the present day. We go a step further back to Origen. One column of his great Hexapla was devoted to a transliteration of the Hebrew into Greek characters. His pronunciation is analogous to the present pro- nunciation, but still not so close to it as Jerome's. But if we go back still further to the period before the Christian era, we find evidence that this system of pronunciation had not yet been developed. From the way in which the Septuagint translators transliterate proper names, it may be inferred with certainty that the pronunciation of Hebrew to which they were accustomed differed in many respects from that of later times. It was rougher, less artificial, less systematic. Unquestionably it belonged to an earlier stage of the language. To give one example out of many, Hebrew, as now read, never doubles the consonant r. But this was not anciently the case, as the Septuagint pronunciation of the name Gomorra indicates. But further, the Septuagint translators read many words — which in the absence of written vowels or a Ill THE SYSTEM OF PRONUNCIATION 69 fixed exegetical tradition might be read and explained in more ways than one — quite differently from the tradition of later times ; though, on the other hand, in some obscure and ambiguous cases their inter- pretation agrees exactly with the later tradition. These facts then point to the following con- clusions : (1) that before the Christian era, while the written text was still current in various forms, the exegetical tradition was still in a rudimentary stage. Something was fixed, in certain obscure and ambiguous cases, but much was still fluctuating, and was left to the intelligence of the reader. (2) That in the period from 70 A.D. to 500 A.D., simultaneously with the authoritative determination of the conson- antal text, a fixed tradition sprang up, regulating the orthodox method of reading it even in minute peculiarities. This method of reading, so far as pronunciation is concerned, w^as largely influenced by the solemn chant -like mode of reciting the Scriptures which was in use in the Synagogue. (IV.) The fourth or Massoretic period in the history of the text may be taken to extend from the sixth to the eleventh centuries. It witnessed two events of the greatest importance : (1) the reduction of tlie exegetical tradition to writing by the invention and adoption of a full apparatus of vowel points and accents ; (2) the elaboration of the ingenious machinery for preserving the integrity of the text known as the Massora. This period was essentially conservative, not productive. Its highest 70 VOWELS AND ACCENTS lect. aim was the faithful preservation and transmission of the traditions it had received. Its distinguishino: characteristic was a painful and anxious literalism. (i.) Babylon and Tiberias were the great centres of Jewish learning in this period, and between these schools certain readings remained in dispute. They are known as " Eastern " and " Western " readings ; they concern letters and not vowel points ; but they rarely affect the sense of a word, and for the most part relate to questions of orthography only. I think this is worth mentioning because it shows to what petty minutiae — the most trivial of trifles — the Eabbinic textual criticism had come down. The authority of the Western readings prevailed in Europe, and they are generally adopted in our printed Bibles. Babylon and Tiberias each adopted a distinct system of pronunciation marks. In all essential points the two systems agree. The Babylonian, however, is less elaborate. It was completed first, probably in the seventh century, but it fell entirely into disuse. It does not appear in any printed Bibles, and is known only from MSS., of which the most famous is the St. Petersburg Codex of the Prophets, dated 916 A.D. The Palestinian system of reading marks is that which is found in our printed Hebrew Bibles. It includes three classes of marks. (1) Those determin- ing the pronunciation of consonants : e.g. whether a consonant is to be doubled, and whether certain m ADDED TO THE TEXT 71 consonants are to be unaspiratecl. (2) Vowel marks, ten in number, and a mark denoting the absence of a vowel. (3) Accents, twenty -seven in number, serving not only to mark the accented syllable of a word, but to show the logical connexion of words in a sentence, and the proper cadence for reading or chanting it. They form, in fact, a most elaborate system of punctuation in the modern sense of the word, and a rhythmical notation indicating the proper inflexion or intonation of the whole sentence. This notation of vow^el points and accents was probably fully developed by the middle of the eighth century ; but it is important to bear in mind that it did not originate a new method of reading and interpreting the text. It merely stereotyped what had long been current as oral tradition, and that tradition carries us back to the first centuries of the Christian era. Absolute uniformity could not of course be secured even now. The exact method of reading many w^ords still remained in dispute. Two MSS., written by famous scholars of the tw^o schools, are often referred to by subsequent writers. The great authority of the Western Jews was the Codex of Eabbi Aaron ben Asher, written by him in the early part of the tenth century ; and Rabbi Moses ben Naphtali wrote a codex to criticise his readings from the Eastern point of view. Both MSS. are lost, but a list of 864 readings more or less, in which they differed, is preserved. The points at issue between them 72 THE MASSOKETES lect. concern vowels and accents almost exclusively, and rarely affect the sense. To all intents and purposes the text of the Old Testament had been fixed in the preceding period. (ii.) The text having now been fully committed to writing, it remained to secure it from corruption. With this object an elaborate system of checks and safeguards, known as the Massora, was devised. It was a saying of R Aqiba, that " Tradition [Massora) is a fence to the Law." The Massora of which he spoke was the tradition of customary rules, which by enlarging the sphere of duty protected the actual precepts of the Law from the danger of violation. But the textual Massora was also designed as a fence to the letter of the Law. It would require a separate lecture to give any adequate idea of what is embraced by the term Massora. It includes (1) a reckoning of the number of verses, words, and even letters in the books of the Old Testament. The middle verse, word, and even letter of a book are noted. (2) Peculiar forms of words and peculiar phrases are noted, with the number of times which they occur. (3) All the notes of Q!ri and K'thibJi, the corrections of the scribes, etc., were carefully collected and pre- served. (4) Eules are given as to certain words which are to be marked with special points, letters to be written large, small, suspended, or inverted, spaces to be left between words, etc. Much of this material belongs to an earlier age, but the systematic elaboration of the Massora must Ill AND THE MASSORA 73 belong to this period, for many of the notes refer to vowel points and accents. The scribes who compiled this mass of critical material were called " masters of tradition " or Mas- sorctes, i.e. traditionalists. Their chief centre of activity was Tiberias, and hence Buxtorf called his commentary on the Massora — a w^ork of vast learn- ing which has never been superseded — Tiberias. From the labours of these men the Eeceived Text of the Old Testament is commonly called the Mas- soretic Text. That text has been preserved unchanged for a thousand years with the most minute accuracy. Indeed, we may go much farther and say that so far as the consonants are concerned it has remained substantially the same for nearly eighteen hundred years. We have traced the history of the Massoretic Text, but we have still to inquire into its character. Water cannot rise above its own level ; and the most careful preservation could only perpetuate error, if error had crept in previously to the time at wdiich the standard text was adopted. We have already seen by the way (p. 62) that the Septuagint Version supplies evidence that variations of the text existed in the earlier period. Can it be supposed that the Massoretic Text has preserved the true and un- adulterated text, and that these variations are all errors and corruptions? Is the Massoretic Text to be placed on a pedestal by itself, beyond the 74 INTEGRITY OF THE lect. reach of the audacious touch of criticism, or must we call in the aid of the Versions to correct it, or even in the last resort, have recourse to conjectural emendation in desperate passages ? The question of the integrity of the Massoretic Text was hotly debated in the seventeenth century. On the one side were ranged those famous Hebrew scholars the Buxtorfs of Basle, and their followers. They defended the absolute integrity of the Hebrew text, and agreed with the authorities of the Syna- gogue in maintaining its exclusive validity. They held that the final and authoritative revision of the text was made by Ezra and the men of the "Great Synagogue," to whom was also due the collection of the books of the Old Testament and the determination of the Canon. Ezra and his com- panions, they taught, had purged the text from all extraneous additions and accidental errors, and had finally settled the authorised method of reading it by the addition of the vowel points. The whole work, they believed, was carried out under the guidance of Divine inspiration. The theory is temptingly complete, but it is shattered to pieces by the inexorable logic of facts. There is no trace of the existence of the vowel points before the seventh or eighth century a.d., and there is clear evidence of their non-existence in the previous period. The opposition to the Buxtorfs was led by Louis Cappel, a Protestant, Professor at Saumur, and Jean Ill MASSORETIC TEXT 75 Morin, a Paris Oratorian. They maintained that the Massoretic Text was far from being absolutely perfect, that the vowel points were of late origin, and that in a large number of passages the Hebrew text must be corrected by the help of the Versions, especially the Septuagint. They may have gone too far in depreciating the value of the Massoretic Text, but their view is in the main supported both by external history and by internal evidence ; and it is now generally admitted that instead of the Mas- soretic Text being the work of Ezra and his con- temporaries, it is the production of far later times, and instead of being absolutely perfect, it has only a relative superiority, and needs frequent correction. It may be taken as certain that, as we have already seen, there was a period in the history of the text of the Old Testament when it was not preserved with the same scrupulous care and accuracy which were such remarkable characteristics of the later Jews. Like the text of the New Testament, it suffered from intentional alterations, and to a still greater extent from accidental corruptions, in the process of tran- scription. Like the New Testament, the Old Testa- ment was at one time circulated in forms differing considerably from one another. The Alexandrian Jew of the two or three centuries before the Christian era read his Old Testament in a form differing from that in which the Jew of Palestine was familiar with it ; just as the Western churches in Italy and Africa during the first two or three centuries of the Christian 76 EXAMPLES OF lect. era read the ISTew Testament in a text differing con- siderably from that which was current at Alexandria. The history of the text which has been traced in the preceding pages raises a presumption that the text will not be found to be free from error; and that presumption is converted into a certainty by the examination of the Massoretic Text itself, and by the comparison of it with the ancient Versions. The proofs of the imperfection of the Massoretic Text lie partly in the consideration of the text itself, partly in the comparison of parallel passages, partly in the evidence which is supplied by the Ancient Versions. (1) There are many passages in which the Mas- soretic Text, as it stands, cannot be translated without doing violence to the laws of grammar, or cannot be reconciled with the context, or with other passages. In some of these the Versions offer no help, but in others the LXX. or some other Version supplies the necessary correction. Thus, for example, to take a simple instance, the Massoretic Text in Gen. iv. 8 reads, And Gain said to Abel his Irother. The word said cannot be rendered as in the A.V., talked with. The usage of the language requires that the words spoken should be expressed. Something is undoubtedly lost in the Hebrew text, and the LXX. and some other Versions fill up the gap suitably enough with the words, Let us go into the field. When we read that the Lord smote of the people seventy men, and fifty thousand men in the village of Ill FALSE READINGS 77 Beth-shemesli (1 Sam. vi. 10), we may be tolerably sure that there is some error in the numerals. The villagje of Beth-shemesh cannot have contained such a number of inhabitants, and the anomalous order of the numerals and the absence of the conjunction and mark corruption, to say nothing of the tolerably evident signs of much deeper-seated error in the verse. But here the LXX. does not help us. Similarly in 1 Sam. xiii. 5, thirty thousand chariots can hardly be right. The number of chariots was always less than that of cavalry, and such an enormous force of chariots is not only quite unparalleled, but w^ould have been useless in the mountainous country of Judah. The common text of the LXX. has the same reading, but Lucian's recension and the Syriac Version read three thousand, which may be right. In Ps. xvi. 2, the ellipse of my soul which is assumed by the reading of the Massoretic Text, thou hast said unto the Lord, cannot be grammatically justified. The LXX. and other Versions are no doubt right in reading / have said, which is adopted by the E.V. What sense can be made of the Massoretic Text in Jer. xi. 15 ? The A.V. certainly contrives with some ingenuity to translate it thus : Wliat hath my heloved to do in my house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many, and the holy flesh is passed from thee ? but the result is unintelligible. The LXX. at any rate gives a good and clear sense : TThy hath the heloved wrought abomination in my 78 EXAMPLES OF LECT. house ? Shall voios and holy flesh take away from thee thy wickednesses, or shalt thou escape hy these ? But I need not multiply examples. I pass on (2) to the evidence of parallel passages. A careful com- parison of the variations between Ps. xviii. and 2 Sam. xxii. makes it tolerably certain that some at least of the variations are due to errors of transcrip- tion, while others are probably due to intentional changes. The text of the Psalm appears to have been subjected to a careful literary revision. In 2 Sam. xxi. 19 v^e read that Mhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite slew Goliath the Gittite, whereas the parallel passage in 1 Chron. xx. 5 says that Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the hr other of Goliath the Gittite. The A.V. smooths over the difficulty by the insertion of the words the hr other of before Goliath in Samuel. This is only a con- jectural emendation, and it is evident that one, or more probably, for reasons upon which I need not enter here, both of the texts are corrupt. (3) The ancient "Versions represent various read- ings, which in many cases bear a strong stamp of probability upon them, and often lessen or remove the difficulties of the Massoretic Text. Let us glance at a few examples. In 1 Sam. xiv. 18 the Hebrew text reads : And Saul said unto Ahijah, Bring hither the o.rh of God. For the arh of God was there at that time xoith the children of Israel. But the LXX. reads : Bring hither the ejphod. For he wore the erghod at that time hefore Ill FALSE READINGS 79 Israel. Which is the more- probable of these rival readings ? Saul wished to " inquire of God " before going to battle. No doubt it was an ancient practice to carry the ark out to battle as the symbol of God's presence, and the ark might have been there, though we have had no mention of its transportation from Kiriathjearim. But it was not the Ark, but the Ephod with Urim and Thummim, which was the regular instrument for ascertaining the will of God. Moreover, bring hither is a term applied to the Ephod (1 Sam. xxiii. 9; xxx. 7), but not to the Ark. Hence it is almost certain that the LXX. has pre- served the true reading^. Take as another and an important instance Ps. xxii. 16. The Massoretic Text reads : like a lion my hands and my feet, and a verb did they mangle must be supplied to complete the sense. But most of the ancient Versions represent the word now read like a lion by a verb, though they translate it in different ways, and there can be no reasonable doubt that a verb originally stood in the text, and that our trans- lators were right in adopting the rendering they pierced, which is substantially that of the LXX. Space forbids the multiplication of instances in which the LXX. or other Versions help the interpre- tation of the Old Testament by presenting or suggest- ing readings which carry conviction with them. But enough has been said to show that it is idle to talk of "the incredible folly of tinkering the Massoretic Text," when that text cannot be for a 80 RELATIVE SUPERIORITY lect. moment regarded as so perfect as to be exempt from criticism. The Eevisers were unquestionably right in adopting some readings from the Versions, and in placing others in the margin, as at least worthy of consideration. It may be doubted, indeed, whether they did not err on the side of caution, and whether they should not have taken most of these marginal readings into the text, and placed a number of others in the margin. For example, in Gen. xlvii. 21, the words. As for tlie ijeople, he removed tJiem to the cities from one end^ of the oorder of Egfpt even to the other end thereof, can hardly be understood of a general removal of the people from the country to the cities where the corn was stored; whereas the reading of the LXX., the Samaritan, and the Vulgate, he made hondmen of them, which is given in the margin, agrees exactly with the request of ver. 19, hm/ us and our land for hrcad, and should have found a place in the text. Again, in 2 Sam. XV. 7, four makes sense, and forty does not. Absalom could not have been hatching his rebellion for forty years. No notice is taken even in the margin of the fact that in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13 the LXX. agrees with 1 Chron. xxi. 12 in reading three for seven years of famine.^ Opinions will differ as to the degree of corruption present in the Massoretic Text. No doubt it differs ^ For further illustrations I may be allowed to refer to a paper read at tlie Churcli Congress at Portsmouth in 1885, p. 54 fF. of the official Report. Ill OF THE HEBREW TEXT 81 largely in different books. But it may be safely asserted that this text, as a whole, is superior to the LXX. as a whole. There does not appear to be any ground for the charges which were at one time freely made against the Jews, of corrupting the Old Testament Scriptures out of hostility to the Christian Church ; and there are not wanting indications that the scribes who were responsible for the Massoretic Text faithfully followed their ancient MSS. Peculi- arities of different writers, archaisms, dialectic colour- ing, particular idioms, even unusual ways of writing, have in not a few cases been faithfully preserved. The recognition of the relative superiority of the Massoretic Text must, however, by no means be taken to exempt it from criticism and emendation. To what aids, then, can we appeal for the purpose? Little or nothing is to be gained from the most careful collation of Hebrew MSS., for, as has been pointed out, they all belong to one recension. It is only from the Versions which preserve traces of earlier forms of the text that help can be derived. In the use of this help much must depend on tact and judgment and instinct. The textual criticism of the Old Testament must go hand in hand with its exegesis. The 'subjective element' in it is neces- sarily large, and, in the absence of adequate materials, the methods by which this element has been reduced to a minimum in the textual criticism of the New Testament cannot be applied. Under these circumstances, moreover, conjectural G 82 NECESSITY OF lect. emendation may find a place in the criticism of the Old Testament which would be wholly anomalous in the case of the New, where the documentary evi- dence is of such an entirely different character. It may even be our duty in the last resort to confess that the text is uncertain, and beyond the reach of even probable restoration. Much of what has been said in this lecture may seem to some to be negative and destructive, and even mischievously unsettling. Why, it may be asked, should these doubts be raised about the integ- rity of the text? I answer (1) that honesty requires it. The cause of truth is ill served by concealing facts, or affirming uncertainties to be certainties. And (2) the attempt to maintain the absolute integrity of the Massoretic Text loads students of the Old Testament with a burden heavier than they can bear. There are enough real difficulties in it, with- out the addition of the adventitious difficulties which arise from trying to defend the soundness of a corrupt text. It is no doubt one of the " trials of a new age " to find that "the text and the interpretation of the constituent parts of Holy Scripture have not been kept free from corruptions and ambiguities which require the closest exercise of critical skill." ^ Perhaps younger scholars can hardly recognise the greatness of the trial to those who have been trained in traditional views. But here, as elsewhere, the * Bishop Westcott, Christus Consummator, p, 7. Ill TEXTUAL CRITICISM 83 object of the removal of tlie things that are shaken is "that the things which are not shaken may remain." It is not without instruction to remember that the LXX., which with all its value for interpre- tation and criticism is an imperfect and inadequate version, was for many centuries the only means by which the Old Testament was known to the Christian Church. The majority of the quotations in the New Testament are taken from it. Many of the ancient Versions were made from it, not from the original Hebrew. The Fathers were with rare exceptions ignorant of Hebrew, and dependent on the LXX. or other Versions. From the undoubted fact that it has not been God's will to preserve the letter of Holy Scripture in a precise and unaltered form, and that the inter- pretation of the Scriptures is necessarily gradual and progressive, we may derive a clear warning against that worship of the letter into which the Jewish Church fell, and into which parts of the Christian Church have from time to time fallen. True, the spirit must be reached through the letter, and to tlie devout student even the smallest word of Holy Scripture will not be a matter of indifference. But the imperfections and uncertainties of the letter bid us look from the letter to the spirit ; from the words to the truths which the words convey, — truths, we may be assured, unshaken and unimpaired by such defects as have been allowed to creep in ; from these 84 FROM LETTER TO SPIRIT lect. hi truths, indeed, to HIM in whom all partial truths are summed up, and who is Hmiself the Truth to whom all the Scriptures point. " Tlie testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy . . . Christ is all and in all." LECTURE IV THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Statp^creis 5^ %aptcr^tdrwi' elaiv, rb 8^ avrb Trveu/xa. — 1 CoR. xi. 4. Thus far we have considered the testimony, direct and indirect, which the books of the Old Testament give to their literary origin, and traced the history of their transmission through more than two thousand years. Our survey has necessarily been partial and superficial ; but we have seen, in typical instances, that Holy Scripture is no book fallen from heaven in an ideal completeness, but is marked in every feature with signs of its human origin, with characteristics of place and age and circumstance and personality, and bears in many of its parts the evidence of a long and often complicated literary history. We have seen, moreover, that the Old Testament has not been exempted from the errors to which all works of literature are liable in the process of transmission. Yet in all this diversity of many ixcrts and many fashions there is a unity which binds together the vari- ous books into a single whole. It is no artificial and external uniformity, but a natural and organic unity of 86 INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT lect. life and spirit. E'atural and undesigned, so far as the several authors of the many books collected in tlie Divine Library of the Old Testament are concerned, and therefore all the more attesting itself as super- natural and designed. For to the question, Whence comes this living unity which pervades and animates this whole in all its diverse parts ? the Christian student can make but one answer : that it comes from God Himself, who speaks through historian and prophet and psalmist. These books, in all their variety, are oracles of God ; they are living oracles ; and because the life which is their common characteristic was breathed into them by the Holy Ghost, tlie Giver of life, we agree to call them inspired. The Inspiration of Scripture ! It is a sacred and difficult subject, not to be handled without caution and reverence. Yet I should separate what is insep- arable, and put asunder what God has joined together by an indissoluble bond, if I were to speak, as I have done in the preceding lectures, of the human origin of the Scriptures, without going on to speak, however inadequately and unworthily, of their Divine origin. The unique position of the books of the Old Testament is assumed in the New Testament as an axiomatic truth. They are lioly Scriptures, bearing in themselves the marks of a Divine origin ; sacred vyritings, fenced off as it were and distinguished from the mass of ordinary books. Nor are we left in doubt what is the source to which they owe this character. God spake unto the fathers in the prophets ; the Spirit IV ASSUMED m THE NEW TESTAMENT 87 of Christ testified beforehand in them ; the Holy Ghost spake through the prophets; psalmists wrote in the Holy Spirit. Does the dignity and pre-emin- ence accorded to these Scriptures need illustration? It was the highest glory and prerogative of the Jews that unto them loere intrusted the oracles of God. And from the whole treatment of the Old Testament Scriptures in the New Testament, even more than from explicit statement, it is clear that they are regarded as being of Divine origin, and as possessing Divine authority ; as being, in fact, what we generally understand by the term inspired. But no definition of inspiration is given in the New Testament — in fact, the word inspired is only once applied to the Scriptures, and in that case inspiration is rather assumed as an attribute {every scripture inspired of God) than affirmed as a predicate {cdl scrip)ture is given hy inspiration of God), — nor has any definition of it been given by the Church. Hence while the fact of inspiration is an essential article of the Christian faith, the nature of inspiration is left to be inferred from the Scriptures themselves. May we not venture to say that it is providential that it has been so ? For as our conception of the operations of God in nature must necessarily be modified by the discoveries of science, so our view of the methods of God in the record of His revelation must inevitably be changed by the results of criticism. Theories of inspiration which once found wide accept- ance are shattered to pieces on the hard rock of facts. 88 DIFFICULTIES lect. We are familiar with the old objections to the inspiration of the Old Testament drawn from its moral character. How, asks the sceptic, can you maintain that a book which contains such crude anthropomorphic representations of God, such im- perfect ideas of morality, so nmch that is positively revolting to an enlightened conscience, is inspired ? These old difficulties are still brought forward ; and they get their chief weight from the erroneous concep- tions of what the Old Testament is, and what inspira- tion means, which have too often been put forward by defenders of the faith as though they were an integral part of the faith itself. But in the present day we have new difficulties to meet, in view of the results at which criticism arrives as to the origin and character of the books of the Old Testament. In what sense, it is asked, can this legislation, which is now said to be Mosaic in elemental germ and idea only, and to represent not the inspired deliverance of a supremely great in- dividual, but the painful efforts of many generations of law-makers ; these histories which have been compiled from primitive traditions, and chronicles, and annals, and what not ; these books of prophecy which are not the authentic autographs of the pro- phets, but posthumous collections of such writings — if any — as they left behind them, eked out by the recollections of their disciples ; these Proverbs and Psalms which have been handed down by tradition, and altered and edited and re-edited ; these histories IV OLD AND NEW 89 which contain errors of date and fact, and have been perhaps ' idealised ' by the reflection of the circum- stances and ideas of the writers' own times upon a distant past ; these seeming narratives which may- be allegories ; and these would-be prophecies w^hich may be histories ; — in what sense can these be said to be inspired ? The problems raised are grave. There are some to whom the inspiration and authority of Scripture seem to be seriously im- perilled by critical inquiries, and they would bid us hold our hands for fear of the results to which they may lead. Unquestionably those who approach the Bible with preconceived ideas of what inspiration must be, and what must be the characteristics of an inspired book, may find much in the conclusions of modern criticism to shock and scandalise. But, as has been wisely said by Bishop Westcott,^ "the student must not approach the inquiry" [into the origin and relations of the constituent books of the Old Testament] " with the assumption — sanctioned though it may have been by traditional use — that God must have taught His people, and us through His people, in one particular way. He must not presumptuously stake the inspiration and the Divine authority of the Old Testament on any foregone conclusion as to the method and shape in w^hich the records 'have come down to us." The Old Testament is placed in the hands of the Christian Church as the inspired, authoritative record of 1 Hebrews, p. 493. 90 SCRIPTURE AT ONCE leot. God's revelation of Himself to His chosen people, and of His education of that people. We accept it as such on the authority of Christ and His Apostles. But into the character and methods of that record we are free to examine — it is our duty to examine — by the help of all the faculties which God Himself has given us. " Fresh materials, fresh methods of inquiry, bring fresh problems and fresh trials."^ It cannot but be that as the day wears on, and the sunlight falls at an ever- changing angle, the observers, as they bring fresh instruments of greater power into play, should find the distant object of their scrutiny far different in the details of its structure from what they imagined in the morning twilight by the unassisted eye. The majority of men, indeed, desire a clear-cut definite theory ; but clear-cut definite theories may come into awkward conflict with facts, to the grave injury of those who have pledged themselves to stand or fall by them. And, indeed, no abstract dis- cussion or formulated theory of inspiration is possible. Life is not a thing to be analysed and defined, but an energy to be recognised and observed in operation. The gist of the matter is given in the familiar words, Of old time, God spake ^tnto the fathers in the prophets. The words affirm the harmonious union of the Divine and the human factors in indissoluble connexion. In theories of inspiration one factor has too often been brought into exclusive prominence ^ Bishop Westcott, Hehrcivs, p. 492. IV DIVINE AND HUiMAN 91 and the other passed over. A purely mechanical theory has practically ignored any real activity on the part of the human instrument ; or an entirely subjective theory has virtually denied the reality of the Divine communication of truth which could not otherwise have been known. The proposition that " Scripture is the word of God " has been hardened into the dogma of the verbal inspiration and absolute inerrancy of every word of the Bible, and the Jewish theory of the dictation of the Pentateuch to Moses has been extended to the rest of the Old Testament ; or, on the other hand, the proposition that " Scripture contains the word of God " has been volatilised till all distinction between Scripture and other books is obliterated, and the inspiration of Moses or Isaiah is held to be not materially different from the inspira- tion of Solon or Aeschylus. The analogy between the Incarnate Word and the Written Word has often been noticed, but it is worth while to recall it once more in this connexion. In the doctrine of our Lord's Person, His Divinity has sometimes been allowed virtually to annihilate His true humanity ; at other times His humanity has been made the exclusive object of attention so as practically to ignore His inalienable Divinity. So too it has fared with Holy Scripture. The Bible is a unique book; but no absolute monopoly of truth is to be claimed for it, as some- times seems to be asserted. God left not Himself without witness even in the heathen world. Not 92 THE OLD TESTAMENT THE RECORD lect. seldom to the poet seers and philosophers "high thoughts beyond their thought were given." Yet elevate other literature, and depreciate this literature as you will, the distinction approves itself. No other literature is linked into one whole like this, instinct with one spirit and purpose, and, with all its variety of character and origin, moving forward to an unseen yet certain goal. No other literature is so intimately connected with a national life unique in its claims and its character. Not that there are not books outside the Canon which might, to our individual judgment, have seemed worthy of a place in it, and books included in it whose presence there seems to us hard to account for. The distinction between canonical and deutero-canonical books may be less sharp and in- telligible than was once commonly supposed. We may even acknowledge, as the ancient Jews did, various degrees or modes of inspiration within the Canon. God does not speak with the same immedi- ateness or fulness or permanence of teaching in every part of all the books of Scripture. It is a natural inference from the distribution of the quotations in the New Testament, that some books were much read and almost known by heart, others little used and almost unknown. "In revelation and in the record of revelation all parts have a Divine work, but not the same work nor (as we speak) an equal work."^ But still, speaking broadly, the selection * Bishop Westcott, Hehreus, p. 4. IV OF THE DIVINE TURPOSE 93 of the Canon approves itself as a providential selection, the mind of the Church answering to the Will of God ; here we are within a sacred enclosure; the atmosphere is different from that which we breathe outside. I have said that no abstract discussion of the nature of ins^^iration appears to be possible ; and it seems to me that the consideration of the inspira- tion of the Old Testament may best be approached by a general consideration of the Divine purpose of which it is the record. For what is the Old Testa- ment from the Christian point of view — and from no other point of view can it be rightly understood — but the record of God's gradual revelation of Himself to Israel in His purpose of redeeming love with a view to the establishment of His universal kingdom ? The Incarnation was to be the culminating point of that revelation and that purpose. In it the old order was to be consummated and the new order to be founded. But for that unique event a long prepara- tion was necessary. That preparation was carried on negatively and generally in the world at large, positively and specifically in the chosen people. The "father of the faithful" was called from his distant home and made the heir of the promise. Slowly yet surely the family grew into a nation. The nation, in spite of wilfulness and apostasy and failure, was shaped and moulded by the discipline of Law and the teaching of Prophets, by the rule of Judge and King and Priest, for its predestined task. 94 THE TRAINING lect. It grew to rankness in the days of its prosperity; it was refined in the furnace of adversity ; it died in the Exile and came to life in the Eeturn, a dimin- ished but purified remnant of its former self, still in spite of itself led on towards the appointed end. Step by step God revealed Himself, and Israel be- came the trustee for the world of the primary truth of ethical monotheism. As He revealed Himself they learned little by little what Eighteousness and Holiness mean, and in the awful light of the Divine attributes and the Divine demand on the nation and the individual that they should reflect those attri- butes, they grew to learn a deeper conception of the nature of sin and the need of Divine pardon and cleansing and renewal. The institutions of the nation were all propae- deutic. The kingdom, with its unique idea of a king who was at once the representative of God to the people and of the people to God, who stood in a unique relation of sonship to Jehovah, and in virtue of that sonship was the heir of a world-wide inherit- ance, presented the type of a King to come who should establish a universal kingdom of peace and righteousness. The priesthood, with ritual of sacri- fice, maintained the need of mediation and inter- cession between sinful man and a righteous God. The prophets pointed forward to the time when Zion should be the centre from which an universal revela- tion should issue. At length the great prophet, who in the days of the Exile strove to stir Israel to a IV OF ISRAEL 95 sense of its high calling as the servant of the Lord and of its failure to fulfil that mission, delineated the portraiture of the Ideal Servant, fulfilling for His people the work in which they had failed. King, Son, Priest, Prophet, Servant; what were they but unconnected and apparently parallel lines until they met in the One Person of Him who united and interpreted them all ? It is impossible to read the Old Testament with open eyes without seeing that we have there the record of the Divine plan and purpose worked out unhastingly, unrestingly, " in patient length of days." The revelation was gradual, progressive, manifold. God's purpose was one and the same throughout ; His truth is one and unchanging. But the purpose must be wrought out step by step in successive ages, in many fashions ; the truth must be communicated fragment by fragment, in many parts, as men were able to receive it. The child's perception of truth cannot be the same as the youth's, nor the youth's the same as the man's. The modes of education which are fitting for the child must gradually be changed as he passes from childhood to youth, and from youth to manhood. So it was in the education of the chosen nation ; so it must be in the education of the human race. The record of Eevelation may be expected to cor- respond to the Pievelation itself. In part the Old Testament narrates the history of the facts and the institutions in and through which God manifested 96 THE RECORD OF lect. Himself and prepared the way for the accomplish- ment of His purposes ; in part it preserves the messages of those whom He chose and commissioned directly to communicate His will ; in part it records the thoughts and aspirations of those who lived under this system of Divine education, and responded to its influence. Now it is at least a reasonable hypothesis, that the same Providence which moulded the course of the history, and shaped the form of the institutions, would in some sort and degree superin- tend the record of them ; that the same Teacher who spoke through the prophets would watch over the preservation of the records of their teaching for the instruction of future generations ; that the same Spirit who stirred the feelings and emotions of the holy men of old would not let the response of their hearts to that awakening be lost and vanish out of hand. The idea of an inspired record is the natural correlative to the idea of a Divine revelation ; and the inspired record may be expected to reflect the characteristics of the revelation. But as we have no right to determine for ourselves a priori what the character and methods of a Divine revelation must be — Bishop Butler long ago warned us against that — so neither have we any right to determine a 'priori by what methods that Divine revelation will be re- corded, and what must be the precise character of the record. No! we must go to the record itself, and endeavour to learn from it in what ways and by what methods and under what conditions God was IV ISRAEL S TRAINING 97 pleased to preserve the record of His dealings with Israel and His words spoken to Israel for our ad- monition njyon wJiom the ends of the ckjcs are come. Let us then approach the Old Testament, and try to pick out some of the characteristic features, posi- tive and negative, which may help us, not indeed to define inspiration or formulate a theory of it, but to understand somewhat better what an inspired book is, and what — popular ideas notwithstanding — it does not profess to be. With this view, let us look first at those accounts of the childhood of the world, which, as we have seen, recent discoveries show to have been current among the Babylonians as well as among the Israelites. The common origin of the Chaldaean and the biblical narratives of the Creation and the Mood cannot be disputed. But with all their striking similarity, there are yet more striking differences between them. What power is it that has taken these primitive traditions of the human race, purified them from their grossness and their poly- theism, and made them at once the foundation and the explanation of the long history that is to follow?^ Surely it was the Holy Spirit of God working, as it is the economy of Divine method to work, upon existing materials. Jehovah did not " obliterate the whole contents of the religious consciousness of the Abrahamic family " when He called Abraham to leave his country and his kindred and his father's house. He did not create afresh their whole mental ^ See Bishop iMoorliouse's Teaching of Christ, pp. 4 fP. H 98 POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS lect. furniture. But He did elevate and purify that religious consciousness. When Abraham in faith obeyed that call, he left behind him the gods which his fathers had served in their Mesopotamian home. He did mould that mental furniture into a new shape and for a definite purpose. We do not know how the primitive legends came into existence, but we can see how they were transformed by inspiration to convey fundamental truths with regard to Creation and Divine judgment upon human sin, which it was essential should be known. The first chapter of Genesis is not, as we now know, a scientifically exact account of Creation; the account of the Fall is, it may be, an allegory rather than a history in the strict sense of the term ; ^ the Deluge was not uni- versal in the sense that the waters covered the whole surface of the entire globe. But I think we may confidently say that the account of Creation presents the essential religioits truths concerning the origin of the universe in a form which is as unrivalled for majestic simplicity as it is inexhaustible in profound significance ; that the story of the Fall explains the entry of evil into the world which God made with a solemn pathos in a way which is at once the condem- nation and the consolation of humanity ; that the nar- rative of the Flood is a parable of judgment and mercy which will never become antiquated till the completion of that final exhibition of judgment and mercy of which it is the type. These narratives convey their 1 See Note C. IV OF INSPIRATION 99 lessons in a form whicli is intelligible to the least edii- cated race and to the youngest child, and yet ^vill never cease to grow in meaning for the most cultured race and the wisest sage. They proclaim with Divine authority truths which man needs to know, but which, apart from revelation, he could only have guessed. And for the rest of the Pentateuch, if the Mosaic law was Mosaic in germ only and not in its complete development, are we therefore to say that it was not Israel's divinely - given schoolmaster, or that the record of it cannot be inspired ? May we not see an analogy between the record of Creation and the record of the Mosaic legislation? The work, which is pictorially represented as completed in a week of six successive days, we now know from the researches of geology to have been extended over vast periods of untold duration as we reckon time. And so, too, the legislation which is connected in its completed form with the delivery of its original elements during the forty years' wandering in the wilderness, historical criticism is leading us to regard as the outcome of centuries of national life. To the eternal present of the Divine mind " all creation is one act at once," and from the concentration and condensation of the record we may be intended to learn the unity of Divine plan and purpose which was operative alike through the aeons of creation and the centuries of Israel's history. If Deuteronomy is not the ipsissima verba of Moses, but a prophetic re-casting of Mosaic elements. 100 IXSPIRATION OF lect. are the truths which it contains less true ? May we not believe that he has found a faithful interpreter, Avho wrote through the inspiration of the same spirit by which he spoke, putting old lessons into the new form which his own age needed ? Turn from the Pentateuch to the Historical Books. Do not they too bear the marks of Divine superin- tendence? Partial and incomplete and dispropor- tioned they are, if we view them as histories of the nation. How much is left untold which we would gladly know, in order to understand the course of history, or the relations of Israel to its neighbours, or the chaTacter of social life at various periods of the kingdom. But with all that is passed over in silence, how striking a view do these compilations from ancient records present of the religious history of the nation and the steady evolution of God's purposes in spite of Israel's frowardness. They interpret the course of Israel's history in its relation to the history of Eedemption, and in this w^e discern the marks of their inspiration. What need is there to speak of the inspiration of the Prophets ? Whence came those sublime views of God, those lofty ideas of His righteousness. His lovingkindness, His faithfulness, His holiness, those inflexible convictions of His corresponding demands on men, those deepeningly spiritual conceptions of the meaning of sacrifice? Wlrcnce sprang that inextinguishable certainty in days of evil rule that a Divine kingdom of truth and righteousness must IV HISTORY AND PROPHECY 101 ultimately be established ; that luidauuted proclama- tion at the moment when the old covenant seemed on the point of being cancelled that a new covenant should be made and written in the heart of every Israelite; that unhesitating prediction at the time when Israel lay prostrate in the dust, a captive exile, that Israel should yet fulfil his mission to the world ? Whence came these things but from the Spirit of God speaking in the prophets ? ISTatural growths out of a soil where religious ideas germinated spon- taneously, some would call them. But spontaneous germination is unknown in nature. There must have been a seed. Nor is it so clear that Israel was really a favourable soil for the growth of pure and high religious thought ; and tender plants do not come to maturity without constant superintendence. Splendid ideals, noble aspirations, sublime imaginations — is that a sufficient account of prophecies which were fidfilled in ways transcending human thought ? ISTay, it was the Sjnrit of Christ that testified heforehaiul in them ; and whatever may be the literary relation of the prophetic records to the original prophetic words, they still speak to us as the voices of the prophets, — an authentic and sufficient record of the testimony of that goodly fellowship. And the Psalms? What of them? Let me answer the question in the words of a master of insight and eloquence. " Where, in those rough, cruel days, did they come from, those piercing, light- ning-like gleams of strange spiritual truth, those 102 NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS lect. magnificent outlooks over the kingdom of God, those raptures at His presence and His glory, those wonderful disclosures of self-knowledge, those pure outpourings of the love of God? Surely here is something more than the mere working of the mind of man. Surely they tell of higher guiding, prepared for all time ; surely, as we believe, they hear the ivord behind them saying, This is the way, ivalk ye in it, they repeat the whispers of the Spirit of God, they reflect the very light of the Eternal Wisdom. In that wild time there must have been men sheltered and hidden amid the tumult round them, humble and faithful and true, to whom the Holy Ghost could open by degrees the ivondrous things of His law, whom He taught, and whose mouths he opened, to teach their brethren by their own experience, and to do each their part in the great preparation." ^ Yes ! in that varied record of the Old Testament, in law and history and prophecy and psalm, we hear the voice of the living God, condescending to work and speak within the limits of a narrow nationality, in order ultimately to instruct the world. The more patiently we study the manifold ways in which eternal truths are enshrined in facts and words, the more surely shall we perceive that these writings are no mere natural growth or development, but instinct with a life which could only have come from the one unfailing Fountain of life, replete with truth which could only have flow^ed from the one inexhaustible ^ Dean Church, DisdiMne of the Christian Character, p. 57. IV OF INSPIRATION 103 source of trutli, radiating light wliicli could only have come down from the one eternal Father of lights. So God speaks to men, through men, in human lan- guage, and the old words still speak to those -who have ears to hear. Such are some of the characteristics of the inspired books, which enable us to feel the reality of their inspiration, though we may not be able to formulate a precise definition of it. But it will be well further to note explicitly some things wdiich an examina- tion of the inspired books teaches us that in- spiration does not do. Once more let me repeat emphatically that we have no other means than such an examination for judging what may or may not be compatible w^ith inspiration. (1) Inspiration does not, as we have seen, involve independence of existing records whether traditional or written, nor of historical research, nor of the literary methods of the time. Inspiration took the primeval traditions of the race and purified them and moulded them anew to convey its message. It took prophetic narratives and state annals and folk- ballads and current traditions, and, looking back over a long period, selected portions of these materials, and wove them into the texture of a history which should sum up and interpret the lessons of that period, and bring them into relation with the course of God's providential purposes. But in so doing the historians were not exempted from the need of care and dilig;ence and research. If an Evanojelist 104 NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS lect. claims a hearing for his presentation of the Gospel on the ground that he liad traced the course of all things accurately from the first, the writers of the Old Testament, we may be sure, do not stand upon an essentially different footing. They used, as we have seen, the methods of composition current in their time and country ; and this consideration should lead us to abstain from making dogmatic a priori assertions as to what kinds of literary composition may or may not be found in the Bible. If, for example, allegory was a familiar mode of instruction, what right have we to assert (as some do) that the Old Testament cannot contain allegories, nay even what we call myths? For, as the Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out not long ago, we liave in the Holy Scriptures the fullest use made of poetry in all its forms. "Even fable, in the fullest meaning of the word, is used to convey Divine truth, — not only parable but fable. Then are we prepared positively to lay it down as a thing not to be credited that the Spirit of God had ever used what we now call myth?^ If we say that, we lay down a canon which the Church never ruled. Are we prepared to say that it was impossible that the Divine Spirit could ever have made use of that one remaining form of litera- ture ? Shall we tell our people that if certain passages are a myth then the whole of the Bible is untrue ? That would be a most dangerous course." ^ 1 See Note C. - Report of the Canterbury Diocesan Conference, 1890, p. 41. IV OF IXSriRATION 105 (2) Inspiration does not guarantee absolute im- munity from error in matters of science or fact or history. Thus, for example, the narratives of crea- tion in the first chapter of Genesis, while it presents a most remarkable counterpart to the discoveries of science, cannot be said to tolly precisely with the records written in the rocks, so far at any rate as they have been read at present. Nor need we be troubled if it does not, nor strive anxiously for a literal harmony. God's two great books of the Bible and of I^ature each contain truths which are not and could not be communicated by the other. Each of them must be studied by the help of the light which is thrown upon it by the other, but the purpose and the limitations peculiar to each must never be forgotten. Again, in the department of history, the decipher- ment of the cuneiform inscriptions, while it has illustrated the Old Testament from many points of view and confirmed its accuracy in not a few instances, makes it plain that the biblical chronology is far from exact, and must in many cases be corrected by the help of the more precise Assyrian system of reckoning.^ ^ It sometimes appears to be assumed that tlie use of the Old Testament by our Lord and His Apostles is an attestation of its absolute historical accuracy. It may therefore not be superfluous to quote Paley's words on this point. ' ' Undoubtedly om* Saviour assumes the Divine origin of the Mosaic institution . . . and recognises the prophetic character of many of thejancient Araters [of the Jews]. So far therefore we are bound as Christians to go. But to make Christianity answerable with its life for the circumstantial truth of each separate passage of the Old Testament, the genuineness of every book, the information, fidelity, and judgment of every wTiter in it, is to bring, I will not say gi'eat, 106 NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS lect. (3) Inspiration does not exclude imperfection and relativity and accommodation. The Old Tes- tament is not an instantaneous, complete, final communication of absolute truth. What holds good of God's revelation of Himself to Israel, must hold good of the record of it. The failure to bear this in mind has given rise to much misunderstanding. Take one or two illustrations. Human sacrifice cannot be acceptable to God ; yet in an age when human sacri- fices were common, Abraham's faith could be tested by the command to slay his son. No trial could so unmistakably have exhibited the unswerving loyalty of his devotion to Jehovah, and in relation to the circumstances of the time the command and the readiness to obey it are alike intelligible, and the record of it is preserved in the Bible without fear of its being misunderstood. In an age when wars of extermination were but unnecessary difficulties into the whole system. Tliese books were miiversally read and received by the Jews of our Saviour's time. He and His Ajfostles, in common with all other Jews, referred to them, alluded to them, used them. . . . "In this view, our Scriptures afford a valuable testimony to those of the Jews. But the nature of this testimony ought to be understood. It is surely very different from what it is sometimes represented to be, a specific ratification of each particular fact and opinion ; and not only of each particular fact, but of the motives assigned for every action, together Avith the judgment of praise or dispraise bestowed upon them, ... A reference in the New Testament to a passage in the Old does not so fix its authority as to exclude all inquiry into its credibility, or into the seimrate reasons upon which that credibility is founded, and it is an unwarrantable as well as imsafe rule to lay doAm concerning the Jewish history, Avhat was never laid down concerning any other, that either every particular of it must be true, or the whole false." — Evidences, Part iii. ch. 3. IV OF INSPIRATION 107 common and not repugnant to the moral sense, the Israelites could be employed as the executioners of a judgment upon the Canaanites ^Yhich they richly deserved ; but it does not follow that the form which that judgment took is one which was meant for the admiration, still less for the imitation, of later ages. In days when no distinction was made between evil and the evil man, and when the triumph of evil seemed to mean the defeat of God's kingdom and the withdrawal of His sovereignty from the world, men could pray for the destruction of their enemies, and their prayers are preserved even in the most spiritual part of the inspired volume. The form in each case was relative to the ideas and circumstances and limitations of the age ; but inspiration records them as lessons of unquestioning devotion, of inevitable judgment upon irremediable profligacy, of the duty of moral indignation and un- compromising hatred of evil. The truth, the Divine and eternal truth, is there if w^e will look for it, beneath the outward form which belongs to the cir- cumstances of the age. We raise untold and insoluble difficulties for our- selves if w^e fail to recognise to the full that the Bible is not homogeneous in all its parts, but is the record of a gradual and progressive revelation which was made known to men by slow degrees as they could bear it ; and that inspiration has not obliterated the steps of progress and raised all to one uniform standard, but shows us, for our instruction, God's 108 THE LIVING lect. untiring patience in the gradual education of His people, and through them of the human race. The caution is not unnecessary, for the old Jewish error of bibliolatry has survived into modern times. There have been those who have treated the Bible as an end, and not a means. They have searched the Scriptures as though they thought that in them they had eternal life. They have "set up their theory of Holy Scripture against the Divine purpose of it," and in their zeal for their theory have almost lost sight of the cardinal fact, that that purpose is to lead us to know God, and God in Christ. Thus, then, even if it should come to be the generally received opinion that the Law was not written by Moses, but codified in its present form by Ezra and the priests after the Eeturn from Babylon; even if we should have to believe that the teaching of the prophets preceded the discipline of the Law, and was its foundation rather than its interpretation ; even if we should be compelled to admit, with whatever regret, that we possess few, if any, relics of the poetry of him whose name is most closely associated with the Psalter; even if we should be forced to acknowledge that what we once supposed to be literal history is but "truth embodied in a tale," and that some parts of the history have been coloured by the conceptions of the age in which it was written long after the events themselves, like the work of a mediaeval painter depicting the scenes of the first century IV BOOK 109 witli tlie scenery and dress of the sixteentli ; even if there are some books which we find it hard to fit into their place as parts of the record of revelation, and in which we cannot easily discern the marks of inspiration; even if all this should come to be so — and I am very far from thinking myself that the extreme views with regard to date and character of some of the books of the Old Testament which are now put forward in some quarters will long hold their ground in the face of sober criticism — in spite of all that has been or will be said to depreciate the Old Testament, the life is there. The Book lives. The Churcli accepts it upon the authority of Christ and His Apostles, and with whatever occasional and tem- porary intermissions of care and regard, she will continue to accept and use it, and will — so we are convinced — learn through the attacks of enemies as well as through the labours of friends, to under- stand it more truly, and value it more w^orthily. In conclusion, let me commend to your reflection the double proof of the inspiration of the Old Testa- ment which is to be derived from the essential unity which characterises it, and from the response of the soul to its message. Of the first of these proofs I have already spoken incidentally, but I should like to sum up and empliasise what I have said by the quotation of words more weighty and eloquent than my ow^n could possibly be. "The Bible," writes Bishop Westcott in The Bible 110 THE TWOFOLD PROOF lect. in the Chnrcli} " contains in itself the fullest witness to its Divine authority. If it appears that a large collection of fragmentary records, written, with few exceptions, without any designed connexion, at most distant times and under the most varied circum- stances, yet combine to form a definite whole, broadly separated from other books ; if it further appear that these different parts when interpreted historically reveal a gradual progress of social spiritual life, uniform at least in its general direc- tion ; if without any intentional purpose they offer not only remarkable coincidences in minute details of facts, for that is a mere question of accurate narration, but also subtle harmonies of comple- mentary doctrine; if in proportion as they are felt to be separate they are felt also to be instinct with a common spirit ; tlien it will be readily acknow- ledged that however they came into being first, however they were united afterwards into the sacred volume, they are yet legibly stamped with the Divine seal as 'inspired by God' in a sense in which no other writings are." The proof of the Divine inspiration of the Bible which is derived from the essential unity of spirit which characterises it in spite of the manifold diversity in form and .substance of its different parts is confirmed by the response of the soul to its message, or perhaps we should rather say, by the marvellous way in which, by tlie consentient 1 P. 14. IV OF INSriRATIOX 111 testimony of one generation of Christians after another, its message finds the human soul. Let me borrow the well-known words of Colerid^re, in his Letters on the Inspiration of the Seripturcs,^ to express this thought. After telling us how he had re-perused the books of the Old and Xew Testament — each book as a whole, and also as an integral part, — he continues thus — "Need I say that I have met everywhere more or less copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying impulses; that I have found words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness ? In short, whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit, even from the same Spirit, icliich remaining in itself, yet regeneratefh all other powers, and in all ages entering into holy souls maheth them friends of God and prophets (Wisdom, \\\. 27)." In such wise then will come to the devout and loving student of Holy Scripture a continuous personal verification of its inspiration in the ex- perience of life. Thy ivord is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path. 1 Letter!. LECTUEE V THE USE OF THE- OLD TESTAMENT IX THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH iypd