BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 PRE-GLACIAL MAN and the ARYAN RACE $1.50 
 
 ARYAS, SEMITES AND JEWS, 
 
 JEHOVAH AND THE CHRIST $1.50 
 
 LEE AND 8HEPARD PUBLISHERS BOSTON 
 
ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF THE 
 
 HEBREW SCRIPTURES 
 
 RECITING WHEN, WHERE, UNDER WHAT 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES, FOR WHAT PURPOSE AND BY 
 WHOM THEY WERE WRITTEN, AS OBTAINED 
 FROM THE WRITINGS OF THAT EMINENT PERSIAN 
 NOBLEMAN AND HISTORIAN NEHEMIAH WHO 
 WAS APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF PALESTINE 
 B.C. 445. . . . WITH AN APPENDIX CONTAINING 
 PROPHECY SUSTAINED IN THE HISTORIES OF 
 EGYPT, ASSYRIA AND BABYLON; AND A REVIEW 
 OF RADICAL VIEWS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 By LORENZO BURGE 
 
 AUTHOR OF " PRE-GLACIAL MAN AND THE ARYAN RACE " AND " ARYAS, 
 SEMITES AND JEWS : JEHOVAH AND THE CHRIST " 
 
 / vi 
 
 ^^"^^ 
 
 ( DEC 9 1889,/V 
 
 '^'^shin'gto^' 
 
 ^ 3/19 
 
 PUBLISHED A.D. MDCCCXC 
 
 BY LEE AND SHEPARD 10 MILK STREET 
 BOSTON NEXT "THE OLD SOUTH MEETING- 
 HOUSE" AND CAN BE HAD OF ALL RESPECTABLE 
 BOOK-DEALERS OR SAID BOOK WILL BE SENT 
 BY MAIL UPON RECEIPT OF THE PRICE $1.00 . . . 
 
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 Copyright, 1889, 
 
 BY 
 
 LORENZO BURGE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Hebrew Scriptures are composed of all the 
 books of the Old Testament except the Psalms, 
 Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. This 
 collection was known to the Jews as the " Law and 
 the Prophets," and is the foundation of our Bible. 
 
 Believers in the old theology claim that this collec- 
 tion, relating events thousands of years apart, was 
 written by men especially inspired by the Deity for 
 the work ; that these men were mere instruments in his 
 hands to record his will ; and the verbal inspiration 
 of the Bible as a whole is insisted on, and all unbe- 
 lievers in this doctrine are by them denounced as 
 infidels. 
 
 Later writers have taken an opposite position ; they 
 scout the idea of inspiration, deny the unity of the 
 Bible, and proclaim it to be a manufacture from be- 
 ginning to end, its writers having for personal ends 
 formed from old legends and sun myths the remarka- 
 ble history of the Hebrews recorded in the Old Tes- 
 tament, while the writers of the Kew Testament 
 books were led by personal hate and spite to falsify 
 
 7 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 the traditions of Jesus of Nazaretli, called the Christ, 
 and present to the world this false though wonderful 
 record of his life and acts. These two extreme views 
 are examined in the index. 
 
 Any person of common ability, desirous of ascer- 
 taining the authorship of the Hebrew Scriptures or 
 the Old Testament, will notice that, with slight excep- 
 tions, it is written in the third person ; that, like any 
 other history, the author relates in his own words the 
 events which happened at certain previous periods of 
 time, and he quotes freely incidents and conversations 
 verbatim. In the Mosaic history, he introduces his quo- 
 tations with, " thus saith the Lord," " then answered 
 Moses," " Moses said unto the people," etc. The whole 
 tenor of the writing shows that Moses could not have 
 written four of the books of the " Pentateuch," but 
 that some other person did write it. The fifth book, 
 Deuteronomy, is from the pen of Moses, translated by 
 the author, verhatim, with a few notes and necessary 
 explanations. The author, like Bancroft or any other 
 historian, used the authorities at his command, mak- 
 ing comments and explanations as he proceeded. 
 
 It is strange that, with all the critical examinations 
 of the Scriptures made by German scholars, the 
 peculiarities of the writer of the "Law and the 
 Prophets " should not have been noticed. More 
 especially as, when once pointed out, they are so 
 pronounced as to be readily observed by the most 
 
PREFACE, 9 
 
 careless reader. They run through the Old Testa- 
 ment to, and include, Nehemiah, also in portions of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah ; and the same author writes the 
 introductory passages of each of the other prophets. 
 
 In ancient times, books were written on skins of 
 animals prepared for the purpose, attached together, 
 and made into one continuous roll, as large as could 
 be conveniently handled, or the roll was confined to 
 one subject. When finished, the subject treated upon 
 was marked on the roll. There were no punctuation 
 or quotation marks, no chapter or verse. There were 
 no separate pages, consequently no notes at the foot 
 of the page, as is now done. All notes, comments, 
 references, or explanations were made in the body of 
 the writing. 
 
 In the Old Testament, the subject treated on was 
 marked on the outside of the roll ; and we have a 
 roll marked Genesis, meaning the beginnings of things. 
 The exode of the Hebrews is marked Exodus ; the 
 Levitical laws are recorded in the roll marked 
 Leviticus ; and the condition and numbering of the 
 Israelites is in the roll marked Numbers, and so on. 
 All the books of the Old Testament received their 
 title from the principal subjects mentioned in the 
 book or roll. 
 
 In this book we have given a slight sketch of the 
 contents of each book or roll, with the purpose of 
 calling the reader's attention to the main object of 
 
10 PREFACE, 
 
 the author in writing or translating the work, which 
 was to enforce on the notice of the new nation of 
 Jews the lessons of faith in, and dependence on, Je- 
 hovah, their tutelary god. In the history, he con- 
 stantly brings forward the fact that, when the 
 Hebrews were loyal to their God, they were blessed 
 with peace, prosperity, and length of days, and when- 
 ever they turned from their allegiance, and worshipped 
 other gods, they were punished by wars, pestilence, 
 famine, captivity. 
 
PERSONAL. 
 
 While I have been cliarged by critics who sustain 
 the mediaeval doctrines of the dark ages, with falsify- 
 ing the Bible in my first book/ I have been censured 
 by liberal Christian critics for ignoring, in my second 
 volume,^ the results of modern Biblical criticism, and 
 for sustaining the truth of the Scriptures and the 
 fact of and the necessity of miracles. 
 
 In answer to the charges of the first-named critics, 
 I assert that, instead of falsifying the Bible, I have 
 increased and enlarged it. 
 
 In that volume I revealed, hidden in the allegory 
 in G-enesis, a record of the evolution of, and the 
 changes in the configuration of, the earth, and the 
 creation of life, the laws governing the advance and 
 retreat of the glacial period, and their eifect in for- 
 cing man to " replenish the earth," during a period of 
 thirty thousand years, with a history of the intellect- 
 ual, moral, and spiritual advance of the Aryas for a 
 period of ten thousand years, and their final deca- 
 
 1 Pre-glacial Man and the Aryan Race. 
 
 2 Aryas, Semites and Jews. 
 
 11 
 
12 PERSONAL. 
 
 dence and fall, — the only history of that period yet 
 known to man. 
 
 In answer to the second-named critics, I ignored 
 the (so-called) scientific criticism of the Bible because 
 I did not believe in it ; and the present volume will 
 show why I did not accept it. 
 
 In this volume will be found a history of the origin 
 and formation of the Hebrew Scriptures, taken wholly 
 from its pages, yet, until now, unknown. In this and 
 the previous volumes, I have enlarged, not falsified, 
 the Bible ; I have sustained the fact and necessity of 
 miracles, and in the present volume have proved the 
 truths of prophecy by showing their strict fulfilment 
 after hundreds of years had passed, or their continued 
 life and action unto the present day. 
 
 Lorenzo Burge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE LAW 15 
 
 BOOK OF BEGIISr^INGS 22 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW RACE AKD NATION^ 24 
 
 Genesis 24 
 
 Exodus 25 
 
 Leviticus . 26 
 
 Numbers 26 
 
 Deuteeonomy 27 
 
 Joshua 27 
 
 Judges 28 
 
 Ruth 30 
 
 Samuel 30 
 
 Kings .31 
 
 Chronicles 33 
 
 End of the Hebrew Nationality ... 35 
 
 Ezra 35 
 
 Nehemiah 36 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE JEWISH NATIONALITY 86 
 That Nehemiah Wrote the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures, Proved 48 
 
 Esther 49 
 
 Job , . , . 50 
 
 13 
 
14 , CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NOT A PORTION OF THE LAW AND THE 
 
 PROPHETS 51 
 
 Psalms 52 
 
 Proverbs and Ecclesiastes 54 
 
 Solomon's Song 55 
 
 THE PROPHETS . 55 
 
 Isaiah 65 
 
 Jonah 57 
 
 Jeremiah 60 
 
 EZEKIEL 66 
 
 Daniel 66 
 
 Isaiah the Younger 67 
 
 APPENDIX 73 
 
 Prophecy Sustained 73 
 
 Egypt 74 
 
 Fulfilled by Assur-banipal, King of Assyria, 
 
 B.C. 668 74 
 
 Fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Baby- 
 lon, B.C. 572 . .76 
 
 Fulfilled by Cambyses, the King of Persia, 
 
 B.C. 525 77 
 
 Assyria 80 
 
 Babylon 87 
 
 Radical Views of the Bible .... 104 
 
 Scientific Criticism 105 
 
 Verbal Inspiration . . . ' . . .123 
 
ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF THE 
 HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 A CAEEFUL examination of the Old Testament 
 shows that the most important part of the book is 
 the work of one person. Who that person was 
 we shall see later. 
 
 The main portion, including a part of Genesis 
 to Esther, is a history of the covenants made by 
 the Deity with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a 
 personal or household god ; the national covenant 
 or contract made by the Deity as Jehovah with 
 the Hebrews, and the laws connected with and 
 consequent thereon ; the incidents leading thereto 
 from the call of Abram to the completion of the 
 work through Moses ; and the results of the con- 
 tract as shown in their history. 
 
 " The Book of the Law of Jehovah " is the 
 nucleus of the Hebrew Scriptures, the cause of 
 its being, and the means of its preservation. 
 
 15 
 
16 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 This history is written in a free and flowing 
 style with certain peculiarities of diction and 
 expression which give internal evidence of the com- 
 plete unity of the whole. It covers the whole life 
 of the Hebrew nation to the captivity, records the 
 return from captivity, the rebuilding of the temple 
 at Jerusalem, the re-establishment of the worship of 
 Jehovah, the formation of the Jewish nation, and its- 
 history to and including Nehemiah, and could not 
 have been the work of any one previous to his 
 time. 
 
 To fully appreciate the work, we must under- 
 stand the circumstances under which it was writ- 
 ten. 
 
 B.C. 606. Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah 
 and carried the king, Jehoiachim, with many of the 
 inhabitants, into captivity. A year after, his son 
 Jehoiachin, with many others, was also carried a 
 captive to Babylon ; and Zedekiah was placed as 
 a tributary king on the throne. At this time, 
 Jeremiah, who had foretold the captivity, proph- 
 esied that their captivity would be long; he wrote 
 to those who had been carried into Babylon, 
 " Build ye houses and dwell in them, and plant 
 gardens and eat the fruit of them, take ye wives 
 and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for 
 your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, 
 that they may bear sons and daughters, that ye 
 
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, 17 
 
 may be increased there and not diminished ; and 
 seek the peace of the city whither I have caused 
 you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the 
 Lord for it ; for in the peace thereof shall ye have 
 peace." Seventy years, he says, they shall serve 
 Babylon, then they shall return and rebuild the 
 temple. Desolation, he says, shall reign in Judah, 
 and Jerusalem shall become a heap. 
 
 Eighteen years after, B.C. 588, Nebuchadnezzar 
 again proceeded against Jerusalem, took it, de- 
 stroyed its walls, burned the temple, the palaces 
 and houses to the ground, put out the eyes of the 
 king, and carried him and the people captive to 
 Babylon, thus ending the Hebrew nationality. 
 
 B.C. 536. When the Jews, who by permission 
 of Cyrus returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, 
 arrived at the end of their long journey — just 
 seventy years from the date (B.C. 606) of the 
 conquering of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar — they 
 found the country desolate, without inhabitants, 
 overgrown in some portions with weeds, bushes, 
 and brambles, and other portions covered with 
 forests where wild animals lurked in the thickets. 
 
 Jerusalem itself was a heap of rubbish ; wild 
 vines and weeds covered with living green the 
 debris of the city ; the streets were obliterated and 
 desolation reigned supreme. This was the scene 
 which met the eyes of the Jews when they 
 
18 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 readied the site of the holy city, the city of their 
 hope and expectations. 
 
 These emigrants, who now for the first time 
 looked upon the city of David, were of the third 
 and fourth generations of those who had been 
 carried into captivity; they were of Babylonian 
 birth, and spoke the Babylonian language, the 
 Aramaic. 1 Few, but those of the priestly caste, 
 had retained a knowledge of Hebrew, the lan- 
 guage of their fathers ; to the remainder it was a 
 dead language. 
 
 The exigencies of the settlement of a new coun- 
 try, together with the hostility of the neighboring 
 tribes and nations, materially interfered with the 
 establishment of schools, and advance in knowl- 
 edge was very slow. The colony brought by 
 Ezra seventy-nine years later, B.C. 457, and the 
 thousand families who in B.C. 445 came with 
 Nehemiah, also spoke the Aramaic language. 
 The Hebrew national records, and the Book of 
 the Law, were all in the native Hebrew tongue, 
 and the obligations of the contract and the re- 
 quirements of the Law were alike unknown to 
 the people in general. 
 
 1 In " Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments," Professor 
 Sayce says, " In the latter days of the Assyrian Empire, Aramaic, 
 the language of Aram, became the common language of trade and 
 diplomacy, which every merchant and politician was supposed to 
 learn, and in still later times succeeded in supplanting Assyrian in 
 Assyria, and Babylonian as well as Hebrew in Palestine, until in 
 its turn it was supplanted by Arabic." 
 
EZRA. 19 
 
 Ezra, a studious and learned man, had no force 
 of character. For ten years he had been high- 
 priest, but he had done nothing to make the 
 " Law " familiar to the people until the arrival of 
 Nehemiah.i 
 
 On the occasion of rejoicing at the completion 
 of the walls of Jerusalem, Ezra, standing where 
 he could be seen, read aloud from the Law, and 
 this was interpreted to the people by some of the 
 priests and Levites. Apparently this was the 
 first time that the Law had been interpreted to 
 them. 
 
 Here was a people forming a new nation, desir- 
 ous apparently of establishing that nation on the 
 contracts made by Jehovah with their fathers, 
 yet having a very slight knowledge of that con- 
 tract or the laws and requirements or obligations 
 connected therewith. The Law was written in 
 Hebrew, to them an unknown tongue ; how should 
 they be made acquainted with its requirements ? 
 
 In this new birth of the nation, it was necessary 
 that the people should know their obligations 
 under the contract with Jehovah, and their duties 
 under the Law. With the stimulus of new hopes 
 and the beginning of a new nation, the govern- 
 
 1 Ezra had so little energy that when he sorrowed for the un- 
 lawful marriages of the Jews he did nothing, until he was urged 
 by others, who promised to support and aid him in purifying the 
 people. 
 
20 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 ment must be re-established on the basis of the 
 old covenant. Besides this, they were generally 
 ignorant of their own national history and of the 
 ancient geography of their country. In their 
 captivity, the records of the Hebrew history and 
 governments had been scattered, some of them 
 lost, and, being in Hebrew, if at hand, would have 
 been of little use to the people. 
 
 If this nation was to be established on the foun- 
 dation of the worship of Jehovah, the circum- 
 stances were ripe for some one to write in the 
 vernacular a history of the incidents and events 
 leading to the covenant made with their fathers, 
 giving them a copy of the Law, its obligations, its 
 cursings and its blessings, with a succinct history 
 of events to their own time. The want was felt ; 
 it was pressing, and the want found the man. 
 Books were collected, and after years of prepara- 
 tion and toil " The Law and the Prophets " trans- 
 lated from the Hebrew into Aramaic substantially 
 as we now have it was produced. 
 
 The author of this work shows some peculiari- 
 ties of diction, which enable us to trace liis 
 writing throughout the work. The most promi- 
 nent of these are the superfluous use of the word 
 " now," and the phrase " it came to pass," in com- 
 mencing paragraphs ; and the redundant use of 
 the conjunction "and." These mannerisms are 
 
PECULIARITIES OF THE AUTHOR. 21 
 
 prominent from Genesis to Esther, also in portions 
 of Isaiah and Jeremiah. One of the New-Testa- 
 ment writers uses the same expressions, probably 
 unconsciously influenced by his familiarity with 
 the Old Testament. They are not found else- 
 where except incidentally in the Bible.^ 
 
 In accomplishing his purpose, the author neces- 
 sarily gives a history of the nation itself. He 
 writes in a free, easy, almost colloquial style, and, 
 bearing in mind the people's ignorance of their 
 national history and of the geography of the 
 country, he frequently breaks the thread of his 
 narrative to give the old or Canaanitish names of 
 cities or towns, and the present names of old 
 places ; he makes explanations of old customs, 
 and refers to the time when certain events took 
 place or certain things were done. At intervals 
 he brings in genealogies as claiming the particular 
 attention of the Jews ; for instance, he breaks into 
 the allegory in Genesis, to give the genealogy of 
 Noah ; and in Exodus, sixth chapter, he interrupts 
 the narrative to give the genealogy of Moses and 
 Aaron ; in short, he endeavors to make their his- 
 tory plain to the Jews of Palestine, for whose 
 
 1 Any one keeping these peculiarities in mind, commencing 
 with Genesis, second chapter, can trace the writer tliroiighout the 
 Old Testament, and he will he convinced that one person wrote 
 the whole work to Esther, and other portions as we have men- 
 tioned. 
 
22 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 particular benefit lie was writing. None of the 
 many works to wliich he refers as authority for 
 the truth of his statements are now known to 
 exist, and it is solely to his labors as a historian 
 that we are indebted for our knowledge of the 
 early history of the Jewish nation. 
 
 That the Hebrew Scriptures were transcribed 
 from very full records is shown by the frequent 
 quotations of conversations, addresses, songs, etc., 
 introduced by the words, "and the Lord God 
 said," "and Abraham said," "and Jacob said," 
 "and the Lord spake unto Moses and said," "and 
 Moses said unto them." " Then sang Moses and 
 the children of Israel this song," "and Samuel 
 said," and others throughout the book. All com- 
 munications of importance are given in literal 
 transcriptions or translations of the original text. 
 
 BOOK OF BEGINNINGS. 
 
 Known to the Jews at this time (about B.C. 
 436) was a remarkable book or manuscript of 
 Aryan origin, "The Book of Beginnings." In 
 the Pentateuch this book was placed before the 
 commencement of the history of the Hebrew race 
 and nation, because of the nature of its contents. 
 
 Without comment or introduction the author 
 commences in a literal translation, giving " God " 
 as the name of the Deity acting, as in the original 
 
THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS. 23 
 
 text. " In the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth." This literal translation is con- 
 tinued through the creative week. At the fourth 
 verse of the second chapter, he continues the 
 account in his own words, adding to the original 
 "- God," the name of '' Jehovah " as the name of 
 the distinctive God who had done this work.^ 
 
 The author believed in many gods, but wor- 
 shipped only Jehovah, and he is determined that 
 he only shall have the credit of the creation of 
 man. In so doing he antedated the time when 
 that name was given unto Moses as the name of 
 the national or tutelary God of the Hebrews. 
 This " Jehovah " God is continued through the 
 Adam and Eve portion to Cain, when the word 
 "God" is dropped, the proper name " Jehovah " 
 only being used. When translating literally in 
 the further construction of the work to the time 
 of Moses, the author uses " God," or " Almighty 
 God," as in the original text. When telling the 
 story in his own words, he gives " Jehovah" as the 
 name of the Deity. 
 
 In the story of the Deluge there are two ac- 
 counts which in some way have become badly 
 mixed; the original can be traced by the name 
 
 1 The prohibition, "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah 
 thy God in vain," was observed so strictly that in their writings 
 and conversations the Jews substituted for his proper name the 
 words "the Lord,"' so that throughout the Hebrew Scriptures 
 those words cover the proper name " Jehovah." 
 
24 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 " God " given to the Deity, which has been liter- 
 ally translated. In the other account, the days are 
 increased from forty to over a year; the name 
 Jehovah or Lord is given as that of the Deity; 
 clean and unclean beasts, and the law of blood for 
 blood, are introduced; the sons of Noah are 
 numbered, and names are given to them ; also, 
 there has been added a chronology from Noah to 
 Abraham. All of these changes and additions 
 were made after the establishment of the Hebrew 
 religion. 
 
 OEIGDf OF THE HEBEEW RACE AND 
 NATION. — GENESIS. 
 
 After completing the translation of " The Book 
 of Beginnings," the author commences his history 
 of the Hebrew race and nation. Beginning with 
 Abram, he relates the incidents which caused him 
 to leave Ur of the Chaldees, and finally migrate to 
 the land of promise, giving his personal history 
 and adventures; the promises made to and the 
 agreements entered into by him, his change of name, , 
 and the purpose and meaning of the rite of cir- 
 cumcision; he records the main incidents in the 
 lives of Isaac and Jacob, the events leading 
 Jacob and his sons into Egypt, and the life of 
 Joseph.! 
 
 1 As Abram was native of a country full of public libraries, 
 where every one could read and write, he undoubtedly kept a diary 
 
THE EXODUS, 25 
 
 The servitude of the Israelites is then shoTvn : 
 the infancy, and partially the life of Moses, to 
 the time ^hen he is selected by Jehovah as an 
 agent to work out his purposes. All this, covering 
 several hundred years, is evidently taken from full 
 records, as is shown in the frequent quotations 
 literally translated. 
 
 EXODrS. 
 
 The initial steps in the Exodus are minutely 
 described ; the conditional agreement between Je- 
 hovah and the Israelites : the results of that 
 agreement in the release of the people from the 
 bondage of Egypt, and the covenant or contract 
 made between Jehovah and the Israelites, which 
 is sealed by the blood from the altar. This con- 
 tract, and the laws consequent thereon, are trans- 
 lated literally, with occasional explanatoiy notes, 
 and with such connecting sentences and words as 
 were necessary for a perfect understanding of the 
 subject. 
 
 It may be well to notice that in the twentieth 
 chapter, eleventh verse, the reason given for observ- 
 
 of his movements and actions. He -would probably teach his son 
 the same knowledge. It is apparently from snch personal jonmals 
 or records that the author obtained a knowledge of the personal 
 iDcidems in the lives of the Patriarchs which he has related. In 
 translating he gives the only names of the Deity kno"UTa to the 
 Patriarchs, "God" or *' Almighty God."' When using his own 
 language, he adds the name Jehovah. 
 
26 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 ing the Sabbath day is very different from the 
 original, which we have from Moses himself in 
 Deut. V. 15. " Remember that thou wast a servant 
 in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God 
 brought thee out thence through a mighty hand 
 and by a stretched-out arm ; therefore the Lord 
 thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath 
 day." This statement is re-enforced in the 
 twenty-third chapter of Exodus, " Six days thou 
 shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou 
 shalt rest ; that thine ox and thine ass may rest, 
 and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger 
 may be refreshed." 
 
 In this book is also given an account of the set- 
 ting-up of the Tabernacle, and the laws regulating 
 the worship of Jehovah. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 In Leviticus these laws are continued, with 
 laws relating to their future action, when they 
 shall possess the promised land. 
 
 NUMBEES. 
 
 In Numbers these laws are continued and fin- 
 ished. The Israelites, fearing to enter the prom- 
 ised land, are detained in the wilderness forty 
 years. The history of these forty years was 
 apparently lost, as only a very meagre account 
 
DE UTER ONOMY — JOSH UA . 27 
 
 is given of their life and journeyings. Previous 
 to entering the promised land those over twenty 
 years of age were numbered. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 The author makes this statement respecting 
 Deuteronomy, " These be the words which Moses 
 spake unto all Israel." This statement is verified 
 in the contents of the book, which are written in 
 the first person, with introductory remarks, and 
 some notes and explanations by the author, such 
 as giving in the fourth chapter a list of the cities 
 of refuge on the east side of Jordan. In the 
 sixth chapter he records the death of Aaron and 
 the separation of the tribe of Levi, and in the last 
 chapter he relates the incidents attending and 
 records the death of Moses. 
 
 JOSHIJA. 
 
 He follows the footsteps of Joshua, giving an 
 account of the principal conflicts with the Ca- 
 naanites, emphasizing the blessing of success fol- 
 lowing a faithful performance of their obligations 
 to Jehovah, and the curse of defeat or death fol- 
 lowing disobedience. 
 
 In giving an account of the battle against the 
 five kings before Gibeon, the author, immediately 
 after his relation of the stupendous and long-con- 
 
28 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 tinued hail-storm, during which " were more " (of 
 the enemy) " that died with hail-stones than they 
 whom the children of Israel slew with the sword," 
 he suddenly breaks into the historical narrative, 
 and, oblivious of the incongruity of the terrible 
 hail-storm, and the shining of the sun and moon, 
 he introduces a passage from the book of Jasher 
 (supposed to have been a book of heroic poems), 
 in which Joshua is represented as commanding 
 the sun and moon to stand still : " Sun, stand thou 
 still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of 
 Ajalon." This poetic command was evidently be- 
 lieved in by the historian as an actual fact, for he 
 adds, " The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, 
 until the people had avenged themselves upon 
 their enemies ; and there was no day like that, 
 before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto 
 the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for 
 Israel." ^ 
 
 After this digression, he again takes up the his- 
 torical narrative of the battle, and finishes it. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 In the period of the Judges, after the settle- 
 ment of the tribes in their various localities, and 
 
 1 It was evidently the author's purpose, in making this quota- 
 tion from Jasher, to bring prominently to the notice of the Jews, 
 for their encouragement, the power of Jehovah, his particular 
 care of his chosen people, and his prompt answer to the perfect 
 trust shown by Joshua in his power and good-will. 
 
SAMSON'. 29 
 
 the death of Joshua, there seems to have been a 
 disintegration of the Hebrews. Each tribe pur- 
 sued its own way, and made war or peace at pleas- 
 ure. This disintegration gave opportunity for the 
 neighboring nations to overcome and subdue them 
 separately, and place them in bondage. There 
 being no central government, no records were 
 kept, and the author consequently had only start- 
 ling and strange occurrences, or noble incidents 
 and actions handed down by tradition, to record. 
 It is not a connected history, but a series of strik- 
 ing events exemplifying the results of the law of 
 blessing and cursing, which the author brings into 
 prominent notice, as a warning to his people. The 
 life of Samson is apparently given to show the 
 application of the same law as applied to the indi- 
 vidual. Samson was vowed or consecrated to 
 Jehovah as a Nazarite ; he was endowed by Jeho- 
 vah with extraordinary strength; this power he 
 retained as long as he was true to his vow ; his 
 uncut hair was the sign and symbol of his vow ; 
 when he allowed it to be cut he lost his power ; 
 afterward, having repented, and his hair, the sign 
 of his vow, having grown again, at his earnest 
 solicitation, Jehovah restores to him his strength, 
 which he uses in the destruction of the Philistines. 
 The period of the Judges was apparently with- 
 out law ; there being no central government, each 
 
80 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 tribe did whatever it deemed best. The historian 
 speaks of it as a time " before there was any king 
 in Israel," when '' each man did that which was 
 right in his own eyes." In illustration of this 
 want of law, and of their falling away from the 
 worship of Jehovah and its results, he relates a 
 series of events which took place in the early 
 days of the Judges, some three hundred years 
 before the date of Samson, when the setting-up 
 and worship of strange gods by one of the tribes 
 leads to deeds of violence, and finally to the death 
 of some fifty thousand Israelites on the one side, 
 and the destruction of twenty-five thousand men 
 and the almost total wiping-out of the tribe of 
 Benjamin on the other. 
 
 EUTH. 
 
 "Ruth" is a charming story of events taking 
 place about two hundred years before Samson, 
 illustrating the law of heredity, but introduced 
 here apparently to show the result of faith in 
 Jehovah, even by a Moabitess, and to give the 
 genealogy of David. 
 
 SAMUEL. 
 
 " Samuel," in reality the first book of Kings, 
 while in part a continuation of Judges, containing 
 the personal histories of Eli and Samuel, is prin- 
 
SAMUEL — KINGS, 31 
 
 cipally taken up with the events leading to the 
 choice of Saul as king ; his prowess, his impa- 
 tience with the restraints of the law; the early 
 history of David, his valor and discretion; the 
 love of Jonathan and David, the adventures of 
 David as an outlaw, and the death of Saul; the 
 accession of David to the throne ; his success in 
 solidifying the nation, in subduing the surround- 
 ing nations, in establishing peace, and the great 
 increase of the nation in power and wealth. 
 
 KINGS. 
 
 In Kings the history of David is continued; 
 his resolve to erect a temple to Jehovah, for which 
 he prepares the means ; the placing of Solomon on 
 the throne; the death of David; the erection of 
 the Temple by Solomon, his glorious reign, the 
 enlargement of the dominion, power, and wealth 
 of Solomon, and his death are recorded. 
 
 The formation of the monarchy, and the reigns 
 of Saul, David, and Solomon, are perhaps the most 
 romantic as well as the most interesting portions 
 of Hebrew history, to the events of which the 
 Jew refers with pride and delight. While this 
 portion is given in some detail, the history from 
 Joshua down is made to emphasize the lesson he 
 is desirous of teaching the Jews, namely, the con- 
 
32 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 stant fulfilment of the blessings and cursings of 
 the law. 
 
 The histories of the divided kingdoms of Israel 
 and Judah are then taken up and carried on side 
 by side. The government of each of the kings, 
 the character and result of their reigns in the 
 light of their obligations to Jehovah, the good 
 resulting from obedience and the ill effects of 
 disobedience, are portrayed to the destruction of 
 Samaria and the carrying of Israel captive to 
 Assyria, B.C. 721. The reason given therefor is 
 that the Israelites " did those things that were not 
 right against the Lord their God." "So was 
 Israel carried away out of their own land to 
 Assyria unto this day." 
 
 The author interrupts his judgments of the 
 reigns of Israel and Judah, to give his people a 
 glimpse of the doings of the early prophets, the 
 chief of whom at this time were Elijah and Elisha. 
 These prophets prophesied only of the near future 
 of the Hebrew nation. They had much to do 
 with public events, and we consequently obtain 
 more or less of the history of the two nations for 
 some seventy or eighty years. These, with other 
 prophets, held a conspicuous position among the 
 Hebrews, and served to keep alive, by their teach- 
 ings and their acts, the waning authority of Jeho- 
 vah. About eighty years after the death of Elisha, 
 
CHRONICLES. 33 
 
 in the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah, Isaiah 
 appears as a prophet, and takes even a more con- 
 spicuous position in Judah than did the former 
 prophets. 
 
 After the destruction of Israel the author con- 
 tinues the judgments of the kings of Judah, occa- 
 sionally recording incidents of national importance 
 or of religious interest. 
 
 In the reign of Josiah, the Temple was by his 
 order cleaned and repaired ; for seventy-five years 
 it had been desecrated by the worship of other 
 gods or had lain deserted. During this cleansing 
 a copy of the " Book of the Law " was found and 
 brought to Josiah, who re-established the worship 
 of, and with the people renewed their covenant 
 with, Jehovah. 
 
 CHEONICLES. 
 
 The early part of Chronicles contains genealo- 
 gies from Adam to the captivity, taken from the 
 " Books of the Kings of Israel and Judah." 
 
 The author then begins a separate history of 
 Judah, commencing with the death of Saul and 
 the choice of David as king. Passing over most 
 of what had been written of David in the book of 
 Samuel, he gives in some detail David's prepara- 
 tion for removing the ark of the covenant to, and 
 its establishment in, Jerusalem, the appointing the 
 
34 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 services of worship, and the renewal of the cove- 
 nant of their fathers.^ 
 
 He then gives an account of the preparations 
 made by David for the erection of the Temple, his 
 making Solomon king, and of David's death. 
 
 Solomon built the Temple, placed therein the 
 ark of the covenant, the altar, the molten sea, the 
 lavers, candlesticks, table, and all the various in- 
 struments and utensils used in the worship of 
 Jehovah, and dedicated the Temple with great 
 pomp and rejoicing. He became very rich, many 
 kings sent him presents, and others paid him tri- 
 bute. He built Tadmor of the desert and other 
 cities, and the country was very prosperous. 
 
 An account of the events in the reigns of the 
 kings of Judah, much more full than that in Kings, 
 is given, the reign of each king being again judged 
 as having done " that which was right," or as hav- 
 ing " done evil," in the sight of the Lord. 
 
 In the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah, Isaiah 
 the prophet appears, and for the next fifty years, 
 during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and 
 Hezekiah, he is a prominent figure in the history 
 of Judah. Some eighty years after his death, in 
 the reign of Josiah, Jeremiah appears, and, until 
 
 1 This was the j&rst natioaal acknowledgment and renewal of 
 the covenant made by their fathers with Jehovah since the days 
 of Joshua. 
 
END OF THE HEBREW NATIONALITY, 35 
 
 the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of 
 the people, he does not cease to warn and advise 
 them. 
 
 END OF THE HEBREW NATIONALITY. 
 
 The book of Isaiah should be read in connection 
 with the histories of the kings in whose reigns he 
 lived, and that of Jeremiah should accompany the 
 history of King Josiah and the other kings to 
 the destruction and fall of Jerusalem. The stir- 
 ring events of the last years of the Hebrew nation, 
 wliich are mentioned in a few paragraphs in 
 Chronicles, make a large part of the book of Jere- 
 miah, and they give a vivid and lifelike picture of 
 the closing scenes of the first or Hebrew nation- 
 ality. 
 
 Seventy years after the taking of Jerusalem by 
 Nebuchadnezzar, the returning Jews arrived at the 
 site of the holy city. Here they laid the corner 
 stone of a new Temple to be dedicated to the wor- 
 ship of Jehovah, the tutelar and national God of 
 their fathers. 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 In Ezra we find the history of the movement, a 
 list of those who returned from the captivity, and 
 a sketch of what had been done until the coming 
 of Nehemiah, ninety years after the first arrivals. 
 
36 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 NEHEMIAH. 
 
 In Nehemiah we have a continuation of the 
 history of the new nation in the first person, until 
 he returned to Persia. 
 
 THE BEGmNlNG OF THE JEWISH NATIONALITY. 
 
 To Nehemiah is due the credit of rebuilding the 
 walls of Jerusalem, restoring the ancient religion, 
 and establishing on a firm basis the poor and 
 struggling colony of Jews in Palestine, still weak 
 and scattered and without national organization, 
 after ninety years of growth as a Persian depend- 
 ency. 
 
 Still greater honor belongs to him for his labors 
 in collecting together the Hebrew records, scattered 
 as they were throughout Persia and Babylonia; 
 translating into the Aramaic tongue (the language 
 of Babylonia) the contract m^ade by their fathers 
 with Jehovah, together with the law, and the 
 blessings and cursings connected therewith; and 
 also, from the records mentioned, translating into 
 the same vernacular an epitome of the history of 
 their people for a thousand years, with particular 
 reference to the results of their contract with 
 Jehovah as shown in each period of their exist- 
 ence ; a work without which we should to-day 
 have no Old Testament, and perhaps no Bible. 
 
NE HE MI AH, 37 
 
 As the founder of the second or Jewish nation- 
 ality, Nehemiah deserves a more prominent posi- 
 tion than has been given him. 
 
 He was a man of eminence and wealth ; a de- 
 vout believer in Jehovah ; a man of great energy 
 and perseverance, and a trusted friend of the king 
 of Persia. 
 
 Excited to compassion by the report of the 
 poverty, suffering, and helpless condition of the 
 colony of his faith in Palestine, and desirous of 
 aiding and strengthening the infant nationality, 
 he obtained leave of absence for a term of years 
 from his sovereign, and with the appointment of 
 governor, and with letters of credit to various rulers 
 and other officials to aid him in his purpose of re- 
 building the walls of Jerusalem and a palace for the 
 governor's residence, he proceeded on his journey. 
 
 On arriving at Jerusalem, he made a private 
 inspection of the city, and, finding it still '' lying 
 waste," he called together the priests, nobles, and 
 rulers, and, rebuking them, proposed that they 
 unite in building again the city walls. Stung by 
 his rebuke, and aroused by his enthusiasm, they 
 resolved to attempt the work. Each prom.inent 
 family agreed to build a certain portion of the 
 wall ; thus apportioned, and urged by a spirit of 
 emulation, the wall began to appear above the 
 surrounding debris. 
 
38 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 When it was about half built, the Samaritans, 
 Ammonites, and others, enemies of the Jews, 
 heard of it, and they '' conspired together to come 
 and to fight against Jerusalem and to hinder it." 
 The people living in the neighborhood of these 
 opposing nations also attempted to dissuade the 
 Jews from continuing the work, saying '' they will 
 be upon you." Nothing daunted, however, Nehe- 
 miah armed the people, and set some to watch 
 while others builded. He encouraged the nobles 
 and rulers to continue, claiming that Jehovah 
 would help and protect them. He also set his 
 own servants, part to work on the walls, and part 
 with weapons to watch. The builders and " every 
 one had his sword girded to his side," and a watch 
 was kept up day and night. 
 
 In the midst of these proceedings, trouble arose 
 among the people. This building interrupted 
 their work at home ; some of them were in debt, 
 and had mortgaged their farms ; the children of 
 others had become, or were liable to become, bond- 
 servants to their richer brethren. 
 
 Aroused to indignation by this state of affairs, 
 Nehemiah called together the nobles, rulers, and 
 wealthy men; reproved them for their greed, 
 showing what had been done by the Jews in 
 Babylonia and Persia for the relief of their poorer 
 countrymen, and fairly shamed them into releasing 
 
BEGINNING OF JEWISH NATIONALITY. 39 
 
 their debtors, and restoring to their homes those 
 who had become bond-servants. 
 
 In connection with this matter, Nehemiah says 
 that former governors had received large sums from 
 the people, as salaries; and that "even their ser- 
 vants bore rule over the people, but so did not I ; " 
 on the contrary, all his "servants worked upon 
 the wall, and for twelve years he received no 
 salary," supporting personally his whole establish- 
 ment, and in addition he says, " there were daily 
 at my table one hundred and fifty of the Jews and 
 rulers, besides those that came unto us from among 
 the heathen that are about us." 
 
 In the face of the threats of their foes, and the 
 lukewarmness and even the secret opposition of 
 some of the Jews, Nehemiah continued the work 
 until the walls were up, the gates set in place, and 
 the work finished. He then established rules with 
 regard to the opening and shutting of the gates, 
 and placed the city in charge of his brother, and 
 the ruler of the palace. Thus far this liistory of 
 Nehemiah is written in the fii^st person, and is his 
 own account of his individual work as governor. 
 From this time he uses the public records in the 
 continuation of his history, occasionally, how- 
 ever, injecting his distinct personality into the 
 record. 
 
 The completion of tliis great work aroused the 
 
40 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 people to a desire (perhaps aided by some judi- 
 cious words of Nehemiah) for a knowled^^e of the 
 law and of their obligations under it. They there- 
 fore assembled in the city and requested Ezra, the 
 priest, to bring " the book of the law of Moses," 
 and read it to them. This was done. Ezra read the 
 Hebrew record, and, as he read, some of the Levites 
 and scribes translated the sentences into the lan- 
 .guage of the people (the Aramaic), " and the 
 ears of all the people were attentive unto the book 
 of the law/' And Nehemiah said unto the people, 
 " this day is holy unto the Lord your God." He 
 told them to be joyful and they rejoiced, " because 
 they had understood the words that were declared 
 unto them,'''' Notwithstanding Ezra had been with 
 them ten years, this was apparently the first time 
 that that generation had heard and understood 
 the words of the law. 
 
 This did not satisfy them, for the next day they 
 again came together, and again called upon Ezra 
 and the scribes, " even to understand the words of 
 the laivT As they read, it was found that that 
 very week was the time for the Feast of the 
 Tabernacles ; and they were told to gather palm 
 and other branches, and make booths on the roof 
 tops and in the streets, and eat under them and 
 rejoice ; and they made booths, and sat under them, 
 "and -there was very great gladness. Also, day 
 
NEHEMIAH'S CO VEX A XT. 41 
 
 hi/ day^ from the first day unto the last day, he 
 (Ezra) read in the book of the law of God." 
 
 Taking advantage of the new religious enthu- 
 siasm of the people, Xehemiah caused a written 
 covenant to be drawn up, binding the signers of 
 the covenant, under an oath and a curse, to *' walk 
 in God's law which was given by Moses," and " to 
 observe and do all the commandments of the Lord 
 our God," at the same time binding themselves to 
 support the temple services, to bring their offer- 
 ings of the first fruits of all their possessions, and 
 to pay tithes for the support of the priesthood. 
 This covenant was signed by Xehemiah, by the 
 priests, Levites, and the rest of the people. 
 
 This matter, which was a work of time, — re- 
 quiring not only perseverance, but also a persuasive 
 abihty to overcome objections and reconcile oppos- 
 ing interests, — having been accomphshed, the 
 next thing was to people the city. 
 
 It is worthy of note that in the ascription of 
 praise with which this covenant begins, Jehovah 
 is for the first time addressed as '• Thou, even 
 thou, art Lord alone ; thou hast made heaven, the 
 heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, 
 and all thino-s that are therein, the seas, and all 
 that is therein ; and thou preservest them all ; and 
 the host of heaven worshippeth thee." 
 
 The Jews generally had established themselves 
 
42 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 in various towns and localities outside of Jerusa- 
 lem, being engaged principally in farming and in 
 the raising of sheep and cattle. Jerusalem re- 
 mained almost uninhabited. It was the home of 
 the governor and the seat of government, " and 
 the rulers of the people dwelt at Jerusalem." 
 Nehemiah gives a list of 3044 inhabitants. 
 
 A call being made for people to occupy the city, 
 a few offered to do so, but the number was so 
 small, it was decided that one in every ten of the 
 inhabitants of Palestine should remove to Jerusa- 
 lem, and who should go was determined by lot. 
 The natural increase in Palestine, in ninety years 
 of peace, would give at least a half-million of 
 inhabitants, and this movement would give to 
 Jerusalem fifty thousand citizens, and make it a 
 city of some prominence and importance. 
 
 To carry out this programme, several years were 
 necessary. Debris was cleared away, streets were 
 laid out, houses built, and all the various trades 
 and occupations necessary to the requirements of 
 a large city were provided. This done, Jerusalem 
 began to take upon itself an appearance worthy 
 its old name and reputation. 
 
 All this work was done openly, with the full 
 knowledge and sanction of the king of Persia, 
 and in some points directed by him. Nehemiah 
 says that " Pethahiah the son of Meshezabeel, of 
 
REPEOPLING OF JERUSALEM. 43 
 
 the children of Zerah the son of Judah, was at the 
 king's hand in all matters concerning the people." 
 
 Finally, when the repeopling of the city had 
 been accomplished, it was determined that the 
 walls of the city should be dedicated. The city 
 was now a city in fact as well as in name ; the 
 walls protected fifty thousand people, and there 
 would now be a meaning in the service. We are 
 given an account of the services, and of the en- 
 thusiasm of the people ; '' for God had made them 
 rejoice with great joy; the wives also and the 
 children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was 
 heard afar off." 
 
 To establish the services of the Temple on a 
 firm basis, treasurers were appointed over "the 
 chambers for the treasures, for the offerings, for 
 the first fruits, and for the tithes ; to gather into 
 them out of the fields and the cities the portions 
 of the law for the priests and Levites." 
 
 Nehemiah had been at Jerusalem apparently 
 about ten years ; on his arrival he had found the 
 Jews dispirited and poor, without a religion, with- 
 out a purpose ; Palestine a mere colony, dependent 
 on Persia, and Jerusalem a waste. By his great 
 energy, skill, and perseverance, he had changed 
 the whole aspect of affairs, and when he returned 
 to Persia, in accordance with his original promise 
 to the king, he left the country prosperous, full of 
 
44 ORIGIN OF HEBREV/ SCRIPTURES. 
 
 enthusiasm for their new religion, and with a 
 growing patriotism for their renewed nationality. 
 During his absence he retained his rank as gover- 
 nor, and his establishment, with its freedom of 
 support for the homeless and strangers arriving at 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 He found the king at Babylon, and he employed 
 his time, while in Babylonia and in Persia, in 
 searching for and gathering together the various 
 religious, biographical, and historical works men- 
 tioned by him as authorities for his history. The 
 Jews, upon the destruction of their nation, had 
 carried with them into Babylon the records of their 
 national history ; these were still in the hands of 
 their descendants, and from them they were ob- 
 tained by Nehemiah. 
 
 The author of the Maccabees says that " Nehe- 
 miah gathered together the acts of the kings and the 
 prophets^ and of David^ and the epistles of the 
 kings concerning the holy city^^ and credits him 
 with '-'•founding a library ; " he also speaks of 
 " the writings and commentaries of Nehemiah^^ and 
 says of the library, and of other things collected 
 by Judas, " They are still with us." 
 
 Twelve years from the date of his first visit to 
 Jerusalem, Nehemiah obtained permission to return 
 to the city of his adoption. On his arrival he 
 resumed his duties as governor. He found some 
 
TOBIAH THE AMMONITE. 45 
 
 abuses had grown up in his absence which needed 
 his personal attention, and he continues the narra- 
 tion of events in the first person. 
 
 In accordance with the requirements of the law, 
 the Ammonites and Moabites had been " separated 
 from Israel" and had been refused admission to 
 the congregation. Eliashib the priest, however, 
 was allied unto Tobiah the Ammonite, and, despite 
 the action of the people, he had seized a great 
 chamber, — " where aforetime they laid the meat 
 offering, the frankincense, and the vessels and the 
 tithes of the corn, the new wine, and the oil," — 
 for the use of Tobiah, and no one had dared to 
 interfere. As soon as known to Nehemiah, he 
 proceeded at once to dispossess Tobiah. " I cast 
 forth (he says) all the household stuff of Tobiah 
 out of the chamber ; then I commanded and they 
 cleansed the chamber, and thither brought I again 
 the vessels of the house of God, with the meat 
 offering and the frankincense." 
 
 Owing to the neglect of the people to pay the 
 tithes of the Levites, they had sought other means 
 of support. For this he rebuked the rulers, and 
 brought the Levites back to Jerusalem, " and all 
 Judah paid the tithes of corn, wine, and oil," and 
 he appointed treasurers to receive and disburse the 
 same. 
 
 He found a general disregard for the Sabbath ; 
 
46 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 men attending to their work, mercliants buying 
 and selling as on other days. After some trouble 
 be rectified this desecration. Learning that some 
 of the Jews had married daughters of Ashdod, 
 Ammon, and Moab, he caused them, as well as a 
 grandson of Eliashib the high-priest, to leave the 
 city, and thus cleansed it from all strangers. 
 
 Having by his energy and decision rid the city 
 of backsliding Jews, cleansed the priesthood, and 
 restored the proper worship of Jehovah, he com- 
 menced the great work which he had resolved 
 upon, and for which he had prepared while in 
 Babylonia and Persia. 
 
 In his first visit, Nehemiah had seen the neces- 
 sity for making the people better acquainted with 
 their obligations as the wards of Jehovah. Their 
 quick backsliding from the position in which he 
 left them a few years before emphasized this 
 necessity, and at his first leisure he proceeded to 
 translate for the use of the new nation the book 
 of the law. But this was not all ; he had several 
 great objects to accomplish. 
 
 First, To give to the Jews a full and clear his- 
 tory of all the circumstances connected with the 
 call of Abraham, and the beginning of their race, 
 and of the principal events leading up to the 
 covenant or contract made by Jehovah with their 
 fathers. 
 
PLANS OF NEHEMIAH, 47 
 
 Second^ To make them acquainted with the con- 
 tract itself, its blessings and cursings, and the laws 
 connected therewith and consequent thereon. 
 
 Thirds To give them, as far as possible, a knowl- 
 edge of the historical events of importance, their 
 localities, and such explanatory notes as would 
 make the incidents of their ancient history familiar 
 to them. And, 
 
 Fourth^ To trace for their encouragement on 
 the one hand, and their warning on the other, the 
 results of the blessings and cursings of the law 
 as exemplified in their individual and national his- 
 tories. This thought, it will be seen, is carried 
 out in every portion of the history he has written. 
 If we read the story in this light, it will be found 
 to be a perfect history of the dealings of the Deity 
 as Jehovah with that people. 
 
 Every civilized nation on the earth had its god 
 or gods who were the objects of worship, and who 
 were credited by those nations with giving them 
 peace, plenty, earthly prosperity, and success in 
 war. This loyalty was required by Jehovah. 
 Serving other gods was rebellion, disloyalty, trea- 
 son, and was sternly punished by the general law 
 of nations. In the case of the Hebrews it was 
 more ; it was a departure from the contract made 
 by the fathers in the formation of the nation, a 
 denial of their obligations to Jehovah and their 
 
48 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 dependence on him. In their constitution it 
 merited severe punishment, and Nehemiah calls 
 their particular attention to this matter in the 
 judgments he gives of the rulers or judges of the 
 Israelites, and of every reign of the kings of Israel 
 and Judah. 
 
 These " writings and commentaries " of Nehe- 
 miah were ever after treasured by the Jews, and, 
 with the prophetical works, became " the Law and 
 the Prophets " of the Hebrew Scriptures of the 
 time of the Christ. 
 
 THAT NEHEMIAH WROTE THE HEBREW SCRIP- 
 TURES, PROVED. 
 
 There is no direct statement in the Bible that 
 Nehemiah wrote the " Law and the Prophets ; " 
 but the circumstantial evidence is so strong as to 
 make it morally certain that no one but he could 
 have done it. 
 
 We think that we have proved in the preceding 
 pages that the " Law and the Prophets " was the 
 work of one hand. 
 
 It is certain that until his advent the Jews in 
 Palestine were ignorant of the law of their fathers. 
 They had even forgotten their feast days. It was 
 through the influence of Nehemiah that the Jews 
 renewed their compact with Jehovah. He organ- 
 
ESTHER. 49 
 
 ized and put in full operation the Temple services 
 with the priests and Levites, and gathered the tithes 
 for their support. He gave the new nation its ma- 
 terial and religious start or impulse. He saw the 
 people must have the law and its obligations in 
 their own language, or it would again be forgotten. 
 He it was who collected the necessary books form- 
 ing a library of Hebrew, Historical, Personal, Epis- 
 tolary, and other books, the names of twenty or 
 thirty of which are mentioned or quoted as author- 
 ities. His interest in the well-being of the new 
 nation and in establishing the worship of Jehovah 
 on a firm basis was very strong, and he is the only 
 person of sufficient energy and determination to 
 accomplish such an undertaking, which would be 
 a work of years. Tradition says he was governor 
 for forty years, and lived to a good old age. 
 
 Finally, all commentators agree that the first six 
 and the thirteenth chapters of the book of Nehe- 
 miah were written by him. An examination of these 
 chapters shows the same peculiarities of style, the 
 same mannerisms, as do all the other books of the 
 " Law and the Prophets," and it is certain that if he 
 wrote the chapters mentioned he must have written 
 the whole work. 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 In Esther we find recorded the events in the life 
 of the Jews in Persia, which led to the establish- 
 
50 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 ment of the feast of Purim. Those events, taken, 
 as the author says, from '' the chronicles of the 
 kings of Media and Persia," are evidently extracts 
 from official documents. They are not of Jewish 
 origin, as they contain no reference to the early 
 history of the Hebrews, nor do they mention the 
 name of Jehovah. In the simplicity of their 
 statements they bear internal evidence of their 
 truth. These events happened about one hundred 
 years after the commencement of the captivity of 
 the Jews, and give evidence of the great numbers 
 and position of the Jews in Persia at that time. 
 The author adds this to his history, apparently for 
 two reasons. The first, because it showed the 
 continued care of Jehovah in saving his people 
 from slaughter ; the second, that he might intro- 
 duce the feast to the Jews in Palestine. 
 
 In order of time, "Daniel" precedes Esther, 
 but, because of its prophetical utterances, it is 
 placed with the other prophetical books. As a 
 continuation of the history of the Jews, it should 
 be read before Esther. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 The book of Job is evidently a Persian produc- 
 tion. The scene of the poem is laid in Southern 
 Babylonia, on the shore of the Persian Gulf. The 
 character of the Deity as therein set forth is 
 
NOT OF THE LAW AND PROPHETS. 51 
 
 Persian, not Mosaic. Satan was a being unknown 
 to the Jews until after their Persian nationality 
 had given them a knowledge of the Persian reli- 
 gion. The Mosaic or Jewish name of the Deity 
 is used only by Nehemiah in his introduction, and 
 in the answer of the Deity to Job, where he inter- 
 polates "Jehovah " as the name of the Deity speak- 
 ing. In the conversations throughout, " God " and 
 " the Almighty " are the names given to the Deity. 
 
 The book has nothing to do with either the 
 religious or material history of the Jews, and the 
 author's object in including this book, we think, is 
 plain. He desired to enlarge the Jews' idea of 
 Jehovah. This poem showed 
 
 First., God's special knowledge of each individual ; 
 all his children are known to and cared for by him. 
 
 Second., It controverted the Jewish idea that per- 
 sonal misfortune, sickness, or disease was proof of 
 a vicious life, and 
 
 Thirds It gave a more glorious and powerful 
 picture of the Deity than any presented by Moses 
 or the Prophets, and this picture, the author 
 claimed, represented Jehovah. 
 
 NOT A PORTION OF THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Between Job and the prophetical works are the 
 Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of 
 Solomon. None of these books have the slightest 
 
62 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 bearing on the purpose Nehemiah had at heart; 
 they are no part of the material or religious history 
 of the Hebrews. They have no introduction, nor 
 is there any cause for their appearance in this place. 
 David performed on the harp before the Lord, and 
 it is possible some of the Mosaic Psalms may have 
 been written by him, but most of them are far be- 
 yond his spiritual position and knowledge. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Trinitarian commentators acknowledge that 
 many of the Psalms are wrongly attributed to 
 David. They generally divide them into five 
 parts, as belonging to five periods of time, extend- 
 ing to the second nationality after the return from 
 the captivity. 
 
 In 1 Chron. xvi., we have David's song of 
 praise upon the establishment of the ark in Jeru- 
 salem. This song is thoroughly Mosaic, and gives 
 us an utterance of David's, wherewith to try 
 the Psalms. If we compare this production with 
 the greater part of the Psalms, we find a world- 
 wide difference. It is almost impossible that the 
 same hand which penned that ascription of praise 
 should have also written the 19th Psalm, "The 
 heavens declare the glory of God ; " the 23d, 
 "The Lord is my shepherd;" the 24th, "The 
 earth is the Lord's;" the 34th, " Trust in God;" 
 
PSALMS, 53 
 
 or the Both, 39tli, 40tli, 42d, 43d, 51st, and many 
 others. 
 
 It is true we have in 2 Sam. xxii. a song of 
 praise of a higher character than that mentioned 
 in 1 Chron. xvi. ; but on examination we find it 
 is not David's, and does not belong there. No 
 occasion calls for it ; it is pushed in without cause 
 between the 21st and 23d chapters : it interrupts 
 the narrative ; we find further that it is a copy of 
 the 18th Psalm, and the incidental reference to 
 the Temple shows it was not written until after 
 the death of David. 
 
 The 22d, 26th, 27th, 28th, and other Psalms 
 ascribed to David also have allusions to the Tem- 
 ple. Others, like the 79th, 100th, and 137th, were 
 evidently written while the Hebrews were in cap- 
 tivity. The 107th, 122d, 126th, 135th, 138th, 
 147th, and others refer to the rebuilding of Jeru- 
 salem after the return from captivity. 
 
 Many of the Psalms recognize God as the crea- 
 tor and sustainer of the universe, but no other 
 Old Testament writers until Isaiah the younger, 
 in the time of the captivity, do so. 
 
 In the 17th Psalm, and perhaps in one or two 
 others, there is a distinct recognition of a future life. 
 
 David was a zealous supporter of the authority 
 of Jehovah and of the Mosaic law throughout his 
 life, and always acknowledged his dependence on 
 
54 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Jehovah for Ms success. In this, he was a man 
 after God's own heart, but in this only. Judged 
 by the light of his time, he was not only a success- 
 ful but a good king. Yet he was an adulterer, a 
 murderer, and a cruel and bloodthirsty conqueror. 
 While he might have believed it was his duty to 
 utterly destroy the enemies of his country, such 
 acts as are described in 2 Sam. xii. 31, were not 
 called for. "And he brought forth the people 
 (the Ammonites) that were therein, and put them 
 under saws, and under harrows of iron, and made 
 them pass through the brick-kiln, and thus did 
 he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon." 
 That is, he sawed them asunder, tore them to 
 pieces with the harrow, and baked them alive 
 in the brick-kilns. Can such a foul murderer, 
 such a cruel and bloody conqueror, have written 
 the Psalms mentioned in the paragraphs above ? 
 Impossible. Some of the Mosaic Psalms may 
 have been written by him, but those that are 
 generally loved and indorsed by Christians are 
 the work of a later period, a higher and more 
 spiritual inspiration; they are a prevision of the 
 coming of the Christ and of his teachings. 
 
 PROVERBS Xmy ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are not religious writ- 
 ings ; incidentally they show influences of a higher 
 type than the time of Solomon. 
 
ISAIAH. 55 
 
 Solomon's song. 
 
 Commentators have in vain endeavored to find 
 a meaning in Solomon's Song. If it is remem- 
 bered that through the whole life of the Hebrew 
 nation large numbers worshipped Ashtoreth or 
 Venus, and that in the days of Jeremiah the 
 people generally sacrificed to the queen of heaven, 
 as they then called her, it may show the origin of 
 and account for the presence of these amorous 
 songs. See Jeremiah xliv. 15-30. 
 
 Probably none of these books were known to 
 Nehemiah; they form no part of the Law and 
 the Prophets, and they were undoubtedly placed 
 in their present position at a much later period. 
 
 THE PROPHETS. — ISAIAH. 
 
 Many of the prophetical writings show the 
 mark of the same pen that wrote the Law. 
 
 Nehemiah introduces the prophecies of Isaiah by 
 the statement that they were written " in the daj^s 
 of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of 
 Judah." The vision of Jehovah (6th chapter) 
 occurred "in the year that King Uzziah died." 
 In the 7th chapter Nehemiah recites the causes 
 leading to Isaiah's assurance to Ahaz that Rezin 
 and Pekah shall not prevail against Jerusalem. 
 Then come prophecies against Assyria, Babylon, 
 
56 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 Moab, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, against Tyre 
 and against Jerusalem. In the 36th and 37th 
 chapters, Nehemiah gives an account of the inter- 
 view between Rabshakeh, an officer of Sennacherib 
 king of Assyria, with Eliakim, Shebna, and Joab, 
 officers of King Hezekiah: and the appeal of 
 Rabshakeh to the people, the appeal of Hezekiah 
 to Isaiah, his prophecy, the message of Sennache- 
 rib, the prayer of Hezekiah, the message of Isaiah, 
 and the death of Sennacherib according to Isaiah's 
 prophecy. 
 
 The history is continued in the 38th chapter, in 
 the record of the sickness of Hezekiah, the message 
 of Isaiah, and the lengthening of his (Hezekiah's) 
 days. In the 39th chapter Nehemiah continues the 
 history of the times in connection with the acts of 
 Isaiah, giving the letter of Merodach-baladan, 
 king of Babylon, the indiscreet action of Heze- 
 kiah, and the prophecy of Isaiah against his house. 
 This apparently ends the prophetic utterances of 
 Isaiah. At the 40th chapter an unknown prophet 
 appears who will be mentioned later. 
 
 Joel and Hosea's prophecies were uttered to 
 the Israelites from twenty-five to forty years before 
 the time that Isaiah warned Judah. Amos also 
 prophesies against Israel in the days of Jeroboam, 
 son of Joash, king of Israel, "two years before the 
 earthquake," which, Zechariah says, was "in the 
 
JONAH. 67 
 
 days of Uzziah, king of Judah." Thirty-five years 
 after Amos and Hosea, MiCAH prophesies ; his 
 utterances are against both Judah and Israel. 
 NahuinI, thirty-five years later still, prophesies 
 against Nineveh ; Habakkuk, nearly one hundred 
 years later, against the Chaldseans, Zephaniah 
 against Judah, and Obadiah against Edom. 
 
 JONAH. 
 
 Distinct from all the other prophetic writings is 
 the book of Jonah. The books of the prophets 
 from Isaiah to Malachi, excepting Jonah and 
 Daniel, are full of promises, reproofs, and warnings 
 to the Hebrews, of threats against and denuncia- 
 tions of the various peoples and nations with 
 whom they came into contact. 
 
 Jonah, on the contrary, gives neither warnings 
 to the Jews nor denunciations to other nations, 
 except the message sent to Nineveh; the very 
 nation against whom, a few years after, Isaiah and 
 the other prophets hurl prophecies of destruction 
 and annihilation. 
 
 The very full history of Assyria which we now 
 have from her own records, contemporary with 
 that of the Hebrew nation from David down to 
 the destruction of Nineveh, shows that no such 
 incident as that recorded in Jonah could have 
 taken place, 
 
68 ORIGIN OF HEBREYi SCRIPTURES, 
 
 The Ninevites liad tlieir ov/n gods, wliom they 
 held ill the hio^hest esteem and reverence ; several 
 of them they believed were self-existent; they 
 were endowed with the various powers and attri- 
 butes of the Deity. Through their favor, the 
 Assyrians, as a nation, obtained their victories, 
 and by their love and care they enjoyed fruitful 
 seasons and were protected from famine and pesti- 
 lence. 
 
 At the date of Jonah it is doubtful if they had 
 ever heard of Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, 
 and, if they had, it would only be to desjjise him, 
 as the god of a small and insignificant nation, of 
 whose power they had no fear; a nation, in fact, a 
 portion of whom a few years after this date they 
 made tributary to themselves, and still later de- 
 stroyed, carrying their inhabitants captive to Assy- 
 ria. There never was a time when they would 
 have listened or paid attention to a message such 
 as is represented as delivered by Jonah. 
 
 That being the case, what is the story, and what 
 does it mean ? 
 
 Apparently it is a parable, written to teach a 
 lesson. With the Hebrews a miracle was a nat- 
 ural event. It vv-as familiar to their minds from 
 its daily occurrence in the early life of their 
 nation, and its power had been shov/n in every 
 exigency of their national existence, when they 
 
the' LESSONS OF JONAH, 59 
 
 depended on Jehovah their God ; and they would 
 not hesitate to use such a power to illustrate a 
 tale, or to point a moral lesson, as is done in this 
 case. 
 
 This parable contains several lessons, needed 
 not only by the Hebrews of that day, but lessons 
 which the Christians of this day may lay to heart 
 and profit by. 
 
 The fii'st lesson shows God's individual knowl- 
 edge of each man, and the duty laid upon him to 
 perform. He cannot attempt to evade this work 
 without danger to himself and to others. If in 
 his misery, disobedience, and sin the man repents, 
 then the Deity will bring him out of the depths, 
 and give him another chance to fulfil his obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 The second is the power of and the answer to 
 prayer. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his 
 God out of the fish's belly ; " I cried, by reason of 
 my affliction, unto the Lord, and he heard me ; out 
 of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardst my 
 voice." " And the Lord spake unto the fish, and 
 it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." 
 
 The third is a lesson of toleration. The Jews 
 believed that all mankind outside of their own 
 race were enem^ies of Jehovah, and that he would 
 willingly destroy them. In this story Jonah is 
 represented as warning the heathen city; when 
 
60 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 the inhabitants repented, the Deity forgave them ; 
 and, in answer to Jonah's petulant remonstrance, 
 he gives as a reason therefor, " should not I spare 
 Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than 
 six score thousand persons that cannot discern be- 
 tween their right hand and their left hand; and 
 also 7nuch cattle f " 
 
 He had compassion for the ignorant inhabitants 
 who knew not his law, and even for the innocent 
 cattle. Is this not a lesson also for so-called 
 Christians who, by their intolerant bigotry, con- 
 demn the ignorant nations who know not God — 
 who " cannot discern between their right hand and 
 their left hand " — to eternal condemnation and tor- 
 ture because of their ignorance? They would not 
 have saved Nineveh any. more than would Jonah. 
 
 JEEEMIAH. 
 
 The prominent figure in the last days of the 
 Hebrew monarchy is Jeremiah; and Nehemiah 
 gives us a history of the last twenty-five years of 
 the life of Judah, so far as the events therein de- 
 scribed make plain the actions and prophecies of 
 Jeremiah. In so doing we obtain an insight into 
 the character of the people, their disregard of and 
 disbelief in Jehovah, their national God, and the 
 difficulties and dangers surrounding, and the suf- 
 ferings of the prophet, when carrying out the be- 
 hests of Jehovah. 
 
JEREMIAH, 61 
 
 Nehemiah's introduction declares that Jeremiah 
 commenced his work in the thirteenth year of the 
 reign of Josiah, king of Judah, B.C. 628, and he 
 continued until the eleventh year of Zedekiah, 
 and the carrying away of Jerusalem captive, a 
 period of forty years, extended a few years while 
 in Egypt. 
 
 The first nineteen chapters contain warnings 
 and admonitions and prophecies, addressed princi- 
 pally to Judah ; they are without date, but were 
 probably uttered during the reign of Josiah. These 
 utterances of Jeremiah were not relished by the 
 people in general, and conspiracies were formed 
 against him, which resulted in the incidents men- 
 tioned in the twentieth chapter. 
 
 Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, smote 
 Jeremiah and put him into the stocks. The next 
 da}^^, however, he released him. Jeremiah then 
 prophesied against Jerusalem, and against Pashur 
 and his house. At the same time he complained 
 to Jehovah that ''I am in derision daily, every 
 one mocketh me." 
 
 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiachim, the 
 son of Josiah, the people became so incensed 
 against Jeremiah because of his prophecies against 
 Jerusalem that " the priests and the prophets and 
 all the people took him, saying. Thou shalt surely 
 die." He was brought before the princes of Judah 
 
62 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 and charged with prophesying against the city; 
 he was, however, finally released. 
 
 In the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiachim, 
 Jeremiah says that for ten years he has warned 
 them " that the Lord hath sent unto you all his 
 servants the prophets . . . but ye have not heark- 
 ened, nor inclined your ear to hear ; therefore, he 
 says, Nebuchadnezzar shall carry this people away 
 captive, this whole land shall be a desolation and 
 an astonishment, and these nations shall serve 
 the king of Babylon seventy years." A list of 
 these nations is then given, beginning with Egypt 
 and ending with " all the kingdoms of the world 
 which are upon the face of the earth." At another 
 time he prophesies against Jehoiachim, that he 
 shall be buried with the burial of an ass, and that 
 his son shall be childless, and shall be carried 
 away captive to Babylon, where he shall die. 
 
 After the King Jehoiachim, the queen, the 
 eunuchs, the princes, and many of the people of 
 Judah and Jerusalem had been carried captive to 
 Babylon, Jeremiah sends to the Jews in Babylon 
 a letter informing them that their captivity shall 
 last seventy years. 
 
 In the early part of the reign of Zedekiah, who 
 was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar, 
 under a charge of desertion, Jeremiah is seized, 
 beaten, and put in prison in the house of Jonathan 
 
ZEDEKIAH, KING OF JUDAH. 63 
 
 the scribe, from ^s^liich lie is removed by order of 
 the king to the court of the prison in the king's 
 house. At the accusation of the princes, he is 
 removed from thence and lovv'ered into a miry 
 dungeon, after being loaded with chains, from 
 ^vhich he is afterward released at the intercession 
 of Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, and is 
 removed again to the court of the prison, but still 
 kept in chains. The King Zedekiah then seeks a 
 private interview T\T.th Jeremiah, and, upon swear- 
 ing that he would not put him to death for his 
 revelations, Jeremiah promises personal safety 
 and the safety of the city if he shall deliver him- 
 seK and city into the hands of the Chaldseans, but, 
 if not, "then shall this city be given into the 
 hands of the Chaldfeans, and they shall burn it with 
 fire, and thou shalt not escapewDut of their hand." 
 After the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchad- 
 nezzar in B.C. 598, in the fom-th year of the reign 
 of Zedekiah, king of Judah, Hananiah, the son of 
 Azur, the prophet, prophesies, '• Thus speaketh the 
 Lord, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken 
 the yoke of the king of Babylon," and says that 
 within two years the vessels of the Lord's house, 
 the king with all the captives of Judah, shall come 
 back to Jerusalem. He is rebuked by Jeremiah, 
 and is told, "This year shalt thou die, because 
 thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord," and 
 
64 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 the record is made that he " died the same year, in 
 the seventh month." 
 
 In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, 
 Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. At this 
 time Jeremiah was still in prison. He continued 
 to prophesy against Jerusalem and Zedekiah, but 
 mingles with them promises of the restoration and 
 the repeopling of the country. At this time, too, 
 he prophesies against the Philistines, the Ammon- 
 ites, the Edomites, and against Babylon. 
 
 "In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, king of 
 Judah (B.C. 588), in the fourth month and ninth 
 day of the month, the city was broken up." Zede- 
 kiah fled from the city, but was overtaken in the 
 plains of Jericho. He was taken before Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, who slew his sons in his presence, put out 
 his eyes, and carried him in chains to Babylon. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar caused Jeremiah to be released 
 from the court of the prison, removed his chains, 
 and he returned to his home. Previous to doing this, 
 Jeremiah saw Ebed-melech, through whose inter- 
 cession he had been released from the loathsome dun- 
 geon, and promised him the protection of Jehovah. 
 
 The Chaldseans burned the king's house and 
 the houses of the people with fire, and broke down 
 the walls of Jerusalem. Then Nebuzar-adan, the 
 captain of the guard, carried away captive into 
 Babylon the remnant of the people that remained 
 
JUDAH TAKEN TO EGYPT. Q5 
 
 in the city, but he left of the poor of the people, 
 which had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave 
 them vineyards and fields at the same time. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar made Gedaliah governor over 
 the people remaining in the land. He was after- 
 wards slain by Ishmael, of the seed royal, who then 
 fled to the Ammonites. The people then consulted 
 Jeremiah as to what should be done, they promis- 
 ing to "obey the voice of the Lord our God." 
 After prayer to God, Jeremiah delivers the mes- 
 sage, promising them prosperity if they remained 
 and served the king of Babylon, but if they de- 
 cided to go to Egypt he threatens " that the sword 
 which ye feared shall overtake you there in the 
 land of Egypt, and there ye shall die." 
 
 The people then charge Jeremiah, " Thou speak- 
 est falsely ; the Lord our God hath not sent thee 
 to say. Go not into Egypt to sojourn there." The 
 result is given in these words, " But Johanan the 
 son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, 
 took all the remnant of Judah that were returned 
 from all nations, whither they had been driven, to 
 dwell in the land of Judah ; even men and women 
 and children, and the king's daughters, and every 
 person that Nebuzar-adan, the captain of the guard, 
 had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the 
 son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and 
 Baruch the son of Neriah ; so they came into the 
 
66 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 land of Egypt, for they obeyed not the voice of 
 the Lord. Thus came they even to Tahpanhes." 
 
 After their residence at Tahpanhes, the Jews 
 burned incense to other gods, for which Jeremiah 
 rebuked them, and prophesied that Egypt would 
 be delivered into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, 
 and that the Jews who had fled there should be 
 destroyed by the sword, by famine, and by pesti- 
 lence. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Ezekiel was a captive in Babylon. His prophe- 
 cies are mostly in the shape of visions, and are 
 against Jerusalem, Tyre, and Egypt ; his time 
 being contemporaneous with Jeremiah. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 Daniel is one of the sons of King Hezekiah, 
 who, with three of his brothers, was carried cap- 
 tive to Babylon. Nehemiah gives us the incidents 
 leading to their selection as attendants on the 
 king; the danger of the wise men because they 
 could not inform the king of the dream which he 
 had forgotten; the offer of Daniel to reveal the 
 dream and the interpretation thereof, resulting in 
 the brothers being made rulers of the province of 
 Babylon. 
 
 The remainder of the book appears to be tran- 
 scripts of public documents ; relating the throwing 
 
ISAIAH THE YOUNGER. 67 
 
 of three of the brothers into the burning fiery 
 furnace, and their escape, Nebuchadnezzar's proc- 
 lamation of his di^eam relating to himself, its 
 interpretation by Daniel, the result, and his return 
 to reason. These visions, together with those of 
 Daniel, were considered of national importance, 
 and were made matters of public record, and ap- 
 pear to have been copied verbatim^ with such con- 
 necting statements as were necessary to a right 
 understanding of the record. Daniel's life covered 
 the seventy years of capti^dty and to the reign of 
 Darius the Mede. 
 
 It is noticeable that the Deity in this book is 
 spoken of as the " God of Heaven," " The most 
 high God," and in Nebuchadnezzar's proclamation 
 he is styled " God of gods ; " thus giving him a 
 place above all gods. 
 
 During the life of Daniel an unknown prophet 
 appears, of whom we know nothing but his 
 writings. 
 
 ISAIAH THE YOUNGER. 
 
 At the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, the old prophet 
 ceases and this new one appears without introduc- 
 tion of any kind. His first words, " Comfort ye 
 my people," are a key to the spirit of liis writings. 
 
 This prophet without name might be called 
 Isaiah the younger. His time is one hundred and 
 
68 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 fifty to two hundred years later than Isaiah, or 
 about B.C. 550, and his standpoint is different. 
 He is a dweller in Babylon and his utterances are 
 of a joyful nature. He prophesies relief to the 
 Jews through the downfall of Babylon, and names 
 Cyrus as the instrument of God's will, through 
 whom they will be released from bondage and be 
 permitted to return to Judah. The temple will 
 be rebuilt at Jerusalem, the worship of Jehovah 
 restored, and the walls of the city be re-established. 
 In the utterances of this unknown prophet, 
 Jehovah ceases to be the tutelary god of the 
 Hebrews, standing on a par with the gods of 
 the surrounding nations. He for the first time 
 becomes the sole and only God of the universe, 
 the creator and sustainer of all. " Thus saith the 
 Lord, I am the first and I am the last ; and beside 
 me there is no God." "Thus saith God, the Lord, 
 he that created the heavens and stretched them 
 out; he that spread forth the earth and that which 
 cometh out of it ; he that giveth breath unto the 
 people upon it, and spirit to them that walk 
 therein." These avowals of the greatness and 
 power of Jehovah are many times repeated, and 
 appear only in the writings of this unknown 
 prophet ; they are entirely distinct from the older 
 prophets, and there is a note of gladness and joy 
 running through the whole of his utterances which 
 separates him from all others. 
 
MALACHL 69 
 
 Haggai prophesies after the return of the Jews 
 to Jerusalem. About the same time Zechakiah 
 issues his prophecies ; both reprove and encourage 
 the Jews. 
 
 At the ninth chapter Zechariah ceases, and 
 another unknown peophet appears. He resides 
 at Damascus, his time is nearly one hundred years 
 earlier, or during the period of Jeremiah, and his 
 utterances are against Jerusalem, Tyre, Sidon, 
 and the Philistines. 
 
 Malachi is the last of the prophets. He re- 
 bukes the priests of the restored worship in the 
 new Jerusalem, and his time is during the gover- 
 norship of Nehemiah, probably not far from B.C. 
 410. The Bible date is B.C. 397. 
 
 All the prophets at the time of and after the 
 captivity speak more or less distinctly of the com- 
 ing of the Christ, of his power and rule, and the 
 extent and perpetuity of his government. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PEOPHECY SUSTAINED. 
 
 Prophecies form a prominent and striking portion 
 of the Hebrew Scriptures. Beginning with Abram, 
 they are continued through the whole history of the 
 Israelites. These predictions are both personal and 
 national, affecting not only the Israelites but the 
 nations also with whom they came in contact. The 
 fulfilment of some of them is recorded in the Scrip- 
 tures, and history records the accomplishment of 
 others. 
 
 As it has been claimed that the prophecies in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures against the surrounding nations 
 were uttered at a point of time so near the occurrence 
 of the events as to be easily foreseen, or that they 
 were written out after the event had happened, and 
 were then put into the mouths of these prophets, 
 we have traced the fulfilment of some of them in 
 the light of these statements ; and herein will be 
 found prophecies against Egypt, Assyria, and Baby- 
 lon, and the particulars of their specific fulfilment 
 or of their continued action until the present day, as 
 taken from Assyrian records and from ancient and 
 modern history. 
 
 73 
 
74 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 Isaiah prophesied, according to the Bible, from 760 
 to 712 B.C. German critics make his years from 740 
 to 710 B.C. They also claim that chapters 40 to m 
 of the book of Isaiah were written by some other 
 person, at a later period. We will therefore confine 
 our selections to the portions that are unquestioned. 
 
 "Woe to the land shadowing with wings. . . . Be- 
 hold, the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud and shall 
 come into Egypt ; and the idols of Egypt shall be 
 moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall 
 melt in the midst of it, and I will set the Egyptians 
 against the Egyptians, and they shall iight every one 
 against his brother, and every one against his neigh- 
 bor ; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom ; 
 and the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof 
 . . . and the Egyptians will I give over into the 
 hand of a cruel lord ; and a fierce king shall rule 
 over them, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts. '^ . . . 
 " In that day shall Egypt be like unto women ; and 
 it shall be afraid and fear." ..." So shall the Assy- 
 rian lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethi- 
 opians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot." 
 
 FULFILLED BY ASSUE-BANIPAL, KING OF ASSYRIA, 
 
 B. c. 668. 
 
 This prophecy was literally fulfilled by Assur- 
 banipal, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, forty 
 years after the death of Isaiah. Assur-banipal, in 668 
 
ASSUR-BANIPAL OVERRUNS EGYPT. 75 
 
 B.C., attacked and routed the Egyptian army at Kar- 
 banit, and marched on to Memphis ; the king of 
 Egypt fled. Many of the petty kings of the country 
 joined the victorious army and aided the Assyrians. 
 Thus brother fought against brother, neighbor against 
 neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against 
 kingdom. Three several times was the Assyrian yoke 
 thrown off, and as often did Assur-banipal reconquer 
 the country. On the last occasion, about B.C. Q%5, 
 the Assyrians wreaked their vengeance on the city of 
 Thebes.^ " No city in the world had such a series of 
 public monuments ; the temples, statues, obelisks, and 
 palaces, the work of ages during the glory of Egypt, 
 were now, as far as possible, disfigured and destroyed. 
 The Assyrians carried away silver and gold, precious 
 stones, the furniture of the palace, robes of various 
 materials, horses, people, male and female, elephants 
 and monkeys. Two of the great obelisks were taken 
 to Mneveh as trophies ; the Assyrians boasted that 
 they swept the city like a flood, and the army returned 
 from Egypt laden with spoil." 
 
 Jeremiah, B.C. 629 to 587 (Chadwick says Q>2Q> to 
 584 B.C.), writes, "Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I 
 will give Pharaoh-Hophra, king of Egypt, into the 
 hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that 
 seek his life." . . . ^^The Lord of hosts, the God of 
 
 1 To George Smith's works, Assyria from the Earliest Times to 
 the Fall of Nineveh, and History of Babylon, I am indebted for 
 most of the facts relating to the actions of the Assyrian and Baby- 
 lonian monarchs. 
 
T6 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Israel, saith, Behold, I will punisli tlie multitude of 
 No, and Pharaoh and Egypt, with their gods and 
 their kings, even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in 
 him ; and I will deliver them into the hand of those 
 that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hand of his ser- 
 vants, . . . and when he cometh he shall smite the 
 land of Egypt, and deliver such as are for death 
 to death, and such as are for captivity to captivity, 
 and such as are for the sword to the sword, and I 
 will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt ; 
 and he shall burn them and carry them away captives ; 
 and he shall array himself with the land of Egypt, 
 as a shepherd putteth on his garment." . . . '"He 
 shall break also the images of Beth-shemesh, that is 
 in the land of Egypt ; and the houses of the gods of 
 the Egyptians shall he burn with fire.'^ 
 
 FULFILLED BY NEBUCHADNEZZAK, KING OF BABYLON, 
 
 B. C. 572. 
 
 "B.C. 572, twelve or fifteen years after the death 
 of Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, 
 marched in person into Egypt, and, defeating the 
 army of Hophra, overran the country and plundered 
 it of all its wealth." Hophra fell into his hands, and 
 was deposed, a general named Ahmes or Amasis 
 being acknowledged as king of Egypt in his stead, 
 the new monarch being installed as a vassal of Baby- 
 lonia. 
 
 Ezekiel, B.C. 595 to 574, prophesies, " Son of man. 
 
EGYPT OVERRUN, 77 
 
 take up a lamentation for Pliaraoh, king of Egypt, and 
 say unto him : Thus saith the Lord God, I will therefore 
 spread out my net over thee with a company of many 
 people ; and they shall bring thee up in my net. 
 Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee 
 forth upon the open field, and will cause all the fowls 
 of the heaven to remain upon thee, and I will fill the 
 beasts of the whole earth with thee ; and I will lay 
 thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys 
 with thy height. I will also water with thy blood 
 the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the moun- 
 tains.'' . . . ^' For thus saith the Lord God: The sword 
 of the king of Babylon shall come upon thee; by 
 the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitude 
 to fall, the terrible of the nations, all of them : and 
 they shall spoil the pomp of Egypt, and all the mul- 
 titude thereof shall be destroyed." 
 
 FULFILLED BY CAMBYSES, THE KING OF PERSIA, 
 B. C. 525. 
 
 B.C. b2^, fifty years after the death of Ezekiel, 
 Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Persian, who conquered 
 Babylon, proceeded against Egypt, and it fell into 
 his hands. The adjacent tribes of Libyans, with the 
 Greeks of Barca and Cyrene, also submitted to his 
 arms. The Egyptians had made a stubborn resist- 
 ance ; — Psammenitus the king was executed by order 
 of Cambyses, whose armies ravaged the country, and 
 the land was watered with the blood of the Egyp- 
 tians. The vengeance of the Persian was terrible. 
 
78 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Even now the means by whicli lie accomplislied his 
 desolating work is a problem; but under him the 
 prophecies were fulfilled, the idols were destroyed, 
 and the images ceased out of Noph. 
 
 For more than one hundred years Egypt remained 
 a Persian possession, a province of the empire. About 
 B.C. 414, the Persians were driven out, and for about 
 sixty years Egypt was again governed by native 
 rulers. 
 
 But Ezekiel had prophesied, " There shall be there 
 a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of kingdoms ; 
 neither shall it exalt itself any more above the 
 nations ; for I will diminish them that they shall no 
 more rule over the nations . . . and there shall be 
 no more a prince of the land of Egypt." 
 
 About B.C. 350, Artaxerxes III. (Ochus) recon- 
 quered Egypt. He " re-enacted the scenes attributed 
 to Cambyses, but with a bloodthirstiness and cruelty 
 of his own, and, having completely crushed out the 
 last seeds of rebellion, returned to Susa with an enor- 
 mous booty." 
 
 B.C. 332, Alexander the Great having overcome the 
 Persians, Egypt became a Grecian province. Here 
 he founded Alexandria as the capital of the world. 
 For three centuries Egypt was under Grecian rule, 
 which then gave way to Eome. 
 
 B.C. 30, Egypt became a department of the great 
 Roman Empire, and so continued for nearly seven 
 hundred years. 
 
 A.D. 639, Egypt came under Mohammedan sway, 
 
PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH. 79 
 
 and from that time has been a possession of the 
 Turk. 
 
 From the conquest of Egypt by Artaxerxes, B.C. 
 350, to the present time, a period of oyer twenty-two 
 hundred years, the sceptre has gone from Egypt ; it 
 has been subject to foreign sway. It has been "the 
 basest of kingdoms," it has been '• diminished," the 
 land has been "' laid waste by strangers," and there 
 has been •• no more a prince of the land of Egypt." / 
 
 Egypt, the oldest, had been the most powerful »/ 
 empire in the world. There was the seat of luxury 
 and learning. Her history extended back so far that 
 her beginning was unknown. The first glimpses we 
 haye of her show her well adyanced in all the arts 
 of ciyilization. Iron, steel, bronze, gold, and silyer 
 were used in the mechanic arts. Painting, m.usic, 
 and sculpture were studied. Their architecture was 
 massive, their structures stupendous. They excelled 
 in the manufacture of linen; costly furniture, rich 
 with coyerings of gold cloth, adorned their houses. 
 They were expert potters, glass-blowers, and carpen- 
 ters, and astronomy and medicine were carefully 
 studied. 
 
 "When Isaiah uttered his prophecies, Egypt was in 
 the height of her power, and a long time after (B.C. 
 610) she aided in the downfall of Assyria; she 
 exulted in her strength and in the power of her arms. 
 
 If we examine these prophecies, and the records of 
 the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, we see 
 how accurate was the prediction to the facts, as stated 
 
80 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 in these records, of events taking place from fifteen 
 to seventy years afterward. Egypt was not to be 
 destroyed, but to remain in existence, the basest of 
 kingdoms, without native rulers forever. 
 
 The Turkish Empire is tottering to its fall. In its 
 destruction the nations of Europe will divide the 
 spoils. Egypt will come under Christian sway and 
 influences, and the native Egyptian race be blotted 
 out of political existence forever. 
 
 ASSYRIA. 
 
 Of Assyria it was foretold by Isaiah, "It shall 
 cease among the nations." Fifty years before the 
 days of Isaiah, Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, re- 
 ceived tribute from Jehu, king of Israel. Pul, or 
 Tiglath Pileser II., who reigned about the time of 
 Isaiah, received from Menahem, king of Israel, one 
 thousand talents of silver as tribute, as recorded in 
 Second Kings. The Assyrian had extended his govern- 
 ment to and received tribute also from the Medes, 
 Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, and Idumea, and his empire 
 at that time also included Babylon. At this time it 
 is that Isaiah declares, " It shall come to pass that 
 when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon 
 Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, I will punish the 
 fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and 
 the glory of his high looks ; " again, " I will break the 
 Assyrian in my hand, and upon my mountains tread 
 him under foot." " Through the voice of the Lord shall 
 the Assyrian be beaten down." " He shall flee from 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH. 81 
 
 the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. 
 He shall pass over to his stronghold for fear, and his 
 princes shall be afraid." 
 
 Micah, B.C. 750, says, "They shall waste the land 
 of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod 
 in the entrance thereof." 
 
 Nahum, about 715 B.C. (Chadwick, B.C. 630), says, 
 " But with an overflowing flood will he make an utter 
 end of the place thereof.". The manner in which the 
 place should be taken is indicated. "The defence 
 shall be prepared. The gates of the rivers shall be 
 opened, and the palace shall be dissolved." Again, 
 "Thy people in the midst of them are women, the 
 gates of thy land shall be set wide open unto thine 
 enemies ; the fire shall devour thy bars." " Then 
 shall the fire devour thee, the sword shall cut thee 
 off. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy cap- 
 tains as the great grasshoppers which camp in the 
 hedges in the cold day, but when the sun riseth they 
 flee away, and their place is not known where they 
 are." " Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of 
 gold, for there is none end of the store and glory out 
 of all the pleasant furniture. She is empty and void 
 and waste, and the heart melteth, and the knees smite 
 together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces 
 of them all gather blackness ; " " Thy nobles shall 
 dwell in the dust, thy people are scattered upon the 
 mountains and no man gathereth them ; there is no 
 healing of thy bruises." 
 
 Zephaniah, B.C. 712 to 680 (Chadwick, 630), says, 
 
82 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 " He will stretch out his hands against the north and 
 destroy Assyria, and will make ISTineveh a desola- 
 tion and dry like a wilderness, . . . and flocks shall 
 lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the na- 
 tions ; both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge 
 in the upper lintels of it, their voice shall sing in the 
 windows, desolation shall be in the thresholds, for he 
 shall uncover the cedar work.'^ "This is the rejoi- 
 cing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 
 I am, and there is none beside me; how is she be- 
 come a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in." 
 
 About the time of these first prophecies Assyria 
 had overthrown the kingdom of Israel, and at two 
 separate times had carried portions of the inhabitants 
 away captive. Finally Sargon, B.C. 721, completed 
 the capture of Israel and carried the citizens of 
 Samaria away captive. 
 
 B.C. 700, Sennacherib invaded Judah, took forty-six 
 fenced cities, and carried 200,150 of the inhabitants 
 into captivity. These cities he separated from Judah 
 and divided them among the neighboring kings. He 
 then captured Lachish, one of the last remaining strong 
 cities of Judah, and from thence dictated terms to 
 Hezekiah, the humbled king of Judah ; receiving " a 
 forced tribute of thirty talents of gold, eight hundred 
 talents of silver, and precious stones of various sorts, 
 couches and thrones of ivory, skins and horns of 
 buffaloes, girls and eunuchs, male and female musi- 
 cians, together with horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen, 
 and sheep, in great numbers," 
 
SENNACHERIB BUILDS NINEVEH. 83 
 
 Nineveh was made the royal city by Sennacherib, 
 who repaired and rebuilt it until it became a city 
 ^' splendid as the sun.'' Three hundred and sixty thou- 
 sand men, captives taken in war, were employed in 
 building it, very possibly some or many of the Hebrew 
 captives were so employed. He erected the new 
 palace of Koyunjik, which covered more than eight 
 acres of ground and was ornamented with great 
 splendor. The city formed a quadrangle of sixty 
 miles surrounded by walls one hundred feet high, 
 broad enough at top for three chariots to drive 
 abreast, and defended by fifteen hundred towers, each 
 two hundred feet high. Within were palaces, struc- 
 tures by the side of whose gigantic proportions the 
 grandeurs of Greek and Eoman architecture are 
 dwarfed into insignificance, in whose halls kings had 
 feasted and revelled, and in which he had received 
 the tribute of distant nations. 
 
 Esarhaddon, the younger son of Sennacherib, suc- 
 ceeded his father B.C. 681. He "rebuilt the walls 
 of Babylon, which had been destroyed by his father, 
 raised again the temple of Bel, returned the various 
 images of the gods which his father had carried to 
 Assyria, and restored to the Babylonians the plunder 
 of their cities ; and, proclaiming himself king of 
 BPobylon as well as Assyria, passed much of his time 
 in his southern capital." 
 
 About B.C. 670, the whole of Palestine and the 
 surrounding country submitted to Esarhaddon. In 
 the list of twelve kings who submitted to his sway 
 
84 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 was Manas sehj king of Judah, wliom lie bound and 
 brought captive to Babylon. 
 
 A few years afterward lie conquered the Medes, 
 then Arabia, and finally Egypt. 
 
 It was during his reign that the predictions of 
 Nahum and Zephaniah were uttered. 
 
 Assur-banipal succeeded his father Esarhaddon, 
 B.C. 668, and reigned forty-two years. In the latter 
 years of his reign he exerted himself in ornamenting 
 and beautifying Mneveh. He enriched it with spoils 
 of countless cities. His conquering arms had drawn 
 tribute from all nations. Thousands of captives were 
 at his command, and were employed in building his 
 palaces and other worts. He patronized the arts, 
 established schools and colleges, collected in his Halls 
 of Eecord, or Library, at Koyunjik, the extensive 
 literature of a race far advanced in civilization before 
 the flood. These records consisted of clay tablets 
 and cylinders on which were stamped, while soft, 
 the wedge-shaped or cuneiform characters, v/hich, 
 being hardened in the fire, were easily handled and 
 read. 
 
 At this time Nineveh was the most splendid and 
 the richest city on the earth ; its king was ruler of 
 the civilized world. According to Chadwick's date, 
 the most particular and distinct predictions of the 
 fate of Nineveh were uttered by the prophets at this 
 time, when Assyria was at the height of its power as 
 here described, and twenty-four years before their 
 accom plishment . 
 
SIEGE OF NINEVEH. 86 
 
 Bel-zakir-iskun, about B.C. 626, was probably the 
 next Assyrian monarch, but little is known of his 
 reign. Being threatened by the king of Egypt on 
 one side, and the Median king on the other, while 
 Babylon had thrown off the yoke of servitude, he 
 acted with great vigor. He raised two armies ; one 
 he committed to the care of Kabopolassar, with orders 
 to reconquer Babylon and protect the region of the 
 Persian Gulf, while he himself proceeded against the 
 king of Media. ISTabopolassar was successful, as was 
 his royal master for a time, but the Assyrian monarch 
 was finally driven back, and the Median king fol- 
 lowed him with the intention of besieging Nineveh. 
 This enterprise was checked by an irruption of 
 Scythians, who crossed the Caucasus in great num- 
 bers, and overran Assyria, Media, and Syria. The 
 dominion of the Scythians lasted many years, but 
 they were finally driven out, and the government re- 
 verted to the former rulers. 
 
 About B.C. 610, Nabopolassar, the tributary king 
 of Babylon, resolved to overthrow the Assyrian 
 power, by alliances with Necho, king of Egypt, and 
 Cyaxares, king of the Medes. About B.C. 609, the 
 war commenced, and the Assyrian king, after defeat- 
 ing his enemies in three pitched battles, was obliged, 
 by the continual accessions to the enemy's forces, to 
 retreat to and shut himself up in Nineveh. The 
 siege of Nineveh by the combined forces lasted over 
 two years, the walls of the city, a hundred feet 
 high and fifty feet thick, keeping out the enemy 
 
86 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 and foiling all their attempts to scale or breach 
 them. 
 
 In the third year there was an extraordinary rise 
 of the Tigris Eiver, and the flood carried away a 
 considerable portion of the wall of the city. On the 
 subsiding of the flood, the besieging host entered by 
 the breach and took the city. The Assyrian monarch, 
 seeing that all was lost, gathered his wives and 
 valuables into his palace, and, setting it on fire, 
 perished in the flames. 
 
 The allied armies swept the city with the sword ; 
 and, after plundering it of all its gold and silver and 
 jewels, the accumulation of centuries of aggressive 
 and successful war, they destroyed its walls and re- 
 duced its palaces to ashes. Nineveh was no more ; 
 and Assyria ceased to exist as a separate nation. So 
 thorough was the destruction of the city that even 
 the site of it was lost, and for ages unknown. 
 
 Mneveh became ^^a desolation and dry like a 
 wilderness." The destruction of the dam across the 
 Tigris, and of the elaborate methods of irrigation, 
 produced this result. For generations " the flocks of 
 the Arabs have lain down in the midst of her." 
 
 Layard's description of the Arabs and their flocks, 
 his account of the desert aspect of the region during 
 the summer heats, fulfil the prophecy, " She is empty 
 and void and waste." The researches of Layard show 
 that it was by fire the palaces were destroyed. The 
 prophecies respecting her downfall were fulfilled to 
 the letter. Diodorus says, " The river, swollen with 
 
BABYLON, 87 
 
 the rains, overflowed and carried away twenty fur- 
 longs of the walls. Then the hing, frightened by the 
 apprehension that an old prophecy, that the city 
 should not be captured till the river became its enemy, 
 was now fulfilled, built in his palace a large funeral 
 pile, and burnt himself, his concubines, his wealth, and 
 his palace to the ground. The enemy, meanwhile, 
 entering by the breach in the walls, captured the 
 city." Thus with an "overflowing flood" was "an 
 utter end " made of Nineveh's glory, while the " fire 
 devoured her," and the " sword cut her off." 
 
 Thus were the prophecies by various prophets, 
 uttered from twenty-four to one hundred and forty 
 years before, literally fulfilled, and the words used in 
 the prophetic denunciations by Isaiah, Nahum, and 
 Zephaniah give the best descriptions of the actual 
 events. 
 
 BABYLON. 
 
 Of Babylon, that great, that mighty city, whose 
 name became a synonyme for colossal pride, power, 
 and licentiousness, — the downfall was pronounced by 
 some of the same prophets that predicted the down- 
 fall of IsTineveh. This city figures largely in the pro- 
 phetic utterances of the Hebrews. The country was 
 for many years the place of their captivity, and it 
 was the native country of Abram, whom they claimed 
 as their ancestor. 
 
 The Bible credits Nimrod with being the founder 
 of Babylon, but the early records claim it as beiug 
 
88 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 a city "before the flood. Berosus, a native historian, 
 possessed apparently authentic records dating back 
 to about 2300 years B.C. He gives a mythical period 
 of 34,080 years during which eighty-six kings reigned, 
 down to a time when the country was conquered by 
 the Medes, Avho reigned two hundred and twenty- 
 four years. 
 
 In the early times there appear to have been 
 several districts, each with its capital city and sepa- 
 rate rule. The first mentioned in the inscriptions is 
 "Ur," earlier known as "Xipur," the birthplace of 
 Abram. Another capital city was Karrak, a third was 
 Larsa. A king named Kuder-mabuk conquered the 
 country which he called Lower Babylonia. Kuder- 
 mabuk was afterward overcome by Hammurabi, 
 ruler of Upper Babylonia, thus uniting the whole 
 country under one rule. 
 
 Although Assyria was the child of Babylon, the 
 child gradually outstripped the mother, and for 
 several hundred years Babylonia, with fitful excep- 
 tions, was subject to Assyria. 
 
 In the division of the spoil at the taking of Nineveh, 
 by the armies of Egypt, Media, and Babylonia, about 
 B.C. 607, the southern portion of Assyria and a 
 portion of Arabia fell to the king of Babylon. The 
 sudden extinction of the Assyrian Empire relieved 
 many of the smaller governments from the rule that 
 had dominated for hundreds of years, and three 
 apparently nearly equal powers took the place of 
 jissyria : Egypt on the south. Media on the east, and 
 Babylonia in the centre. 
 
NEBUCHADNEZZAR CONQUERS EGYPT. 89 
 
 B.C. 605, Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia, became 
 engaged in a discussion with Xecho, king of Egypt, 
 respecting boundaries, which soon led to hostilities. 
 Entering into the war with vigor, he placed his son 
 Nebuchadnezzar in command of his armies, who sud- 
 denly attacked and routed the Egypti?ons at Car- 
 chemish, gaining thereby the control of all Syria, 
 through which he marched unopposed ; receiving the 
 submission and tribute of the various petty kings and 
 princes, to the borders of Egypt; among these was 
 Jehoiachim, king of Judah, who had been placed on 
 the throne by Necho, king of Egypt, but was now 
 forced to submit to the Babylonian yoke. While on 
 this expedition i^abopolassar died, and Nebuchad- 
 nezzar returned to Babylon to assume the govern- 
 ment.^ 
 
 B.C. 602, Jehoiachim revolted against Babylon, and 
 in B.C. 598 Nebuchadnezzar swept down upon Pales- 
 tine. Jehoiachim had died, and his son Jehoiachin 
 had ascended the throne. Nebuchadnezzar dethroned 
 him, and placed his uncle Zedekiah on the throne, 
 carrying Jehoiachin and numerous other captives 
 with him to Babylon.^ 
 
 1 The Bible date is B.C. 606. 
 
 2 Mr. Chadwick says that the Jews were in captivity hut fifty 
 years, instead of seventy years, as prophesied by Jeremiah. 
 
 Jeremiah's prophecy is against " this land and against the in- 
 habitants thereof and against (not the Hebrews only, but against) 
 all these nations round about . . . and these nations shall serve 
 the king of Babylon (not by captivity, but by paying tribute) 
 seventy years." 
 
 We have shown above that, B.C. 605, Nabopolassar received the 
 
90 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 At the time of his death, B.C. 562, Nebuchadnezzar 
 was master of the western world ; he had reigned 
 forty years ; while carrying on his wars he had also 
 employed himself in increasing the magnificence and 
 grandeur of Babylon. " He rebuilt the great temple 
 dedicated to Bel, and adorned it v/ith gold and pre- 
 cious stones. He raised again the tower, called the 
 foundation of heaven and earth. The sanctuary of 
 Bel he roofed with cedar brought from Lebanon, and 
 overlaid it with gold;" he also rebuilt or restored 
 the temple of the moon-god, " the temples of the sun, 
 of Yal, and of the goddess Gula ; the temple of Ish- 
 tar or Venus, and other buildings," and, to please his 
 wife, a Median princess, he built the celebrated Hang- 
 ing Gardens, with arched terraces which were ca^rried 
 to a height overtopping the walls of the city, were 
 covered with earth, and irrigated by water raised 
 from the Euphrates by machinery. In this garden 
 grew all manner of trees and plants to delight the 
 eyes and gratify the taste. He enriched the city 
 with the spoils of other nations ; he rebuilt the walls 
 
 submission of tlie king of Judah, and all the nations round about, 
 from which time they served the king of Babylon as vassal 
 nations. Nebuchadnezzar carried the king and a hirge number of 
 the inhabitants of Judah captive to Babylon, and to these 
 Jeremiah sends a letter, informing them of the length of their 
 captivity. 
 
 Ezra records that, B.C. 536, Cyrus issued a proclaination for the 
 return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and the next year, B.C. 535, they 
 "laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord," just seventy 
 years from the commencement of their servitude. 
 
 By the overthrow of Babylon the surrounding nations also 
 were relieved from their subjection to the Babylonian king; 
 these nations were Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Sidon, and others. 
 
BABYLON THE MAGNIFICENT. 91 
 
 of the city, and in every way increased its magnifi- 
 cence and strength, and we can well credit the words 
 put into his mouth by the Hebrew chronicler, " Is not 
 this great Babylon that I have built for the house of 
 the kingdom, by the might of my power and for the 
 honor of my majesty ? '' 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar had made Babylon so magnificent 
 that it was known as Babylon the Great. Herodotus 
 reports it as a "large, wealthy, important, and popu- 
 lous city;" he describes it as " fifteen miles square, 
 sixty miles in circumference, enclosing two hundred 
 and twenty-five square miles, with walls of brick 
 cemented with bitumen, three hundred feet high, and 
 eighty-seven feet thick at top, the Euphrates flowing 
 through the city and dividing it into tv/o parts. In 
 the circuit of the walls were one hundred gates of 
 brass with brazen lintels and door-posts. There was 
 an inner wall enclosing the city proper, with walls 
 also at the river's bank, and in these walls were brazen 
 gates fronting the principal streets, which were one 
 hundred and fifty feet wide and crossing each other 
 at right angles. When the gates were shut, there 
 was no entrance into the city proper from the river, 
 and a hostile force would be shut in between the par- 
 allel walls that lined it, and at the mercy of the 
 besieged." All these mighty works were erected by 
 the hundreds of thousands of captives brought back 
 by the king in his various wars. 
 
 The earliest prophecies of the fall of Babylon 
 were made by Isaiah, 760 to 712 B.C. 
 
92 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Jeremiah (Chadwick says his time was 626 to 584 
 B.C.) wrote while Nebuchadnezzar was ruler of all 
 the eastern world and Egypt, and at least fifty years 
 before the taking of Babylon by Cyrus. When Neb- 
 uchadnezzar said in his pride, "Is not this great 
 Babylon that I have built ? " was there anything in 
 this almost universal empire, this great prosperity, 
 that could lead a contemporary to prophesy calamity ? 
 Nay, was it not very improbable that such a strange 
 fate, so specifically described, should overtake this 
 great, this magnificent city ? How improbable that 
 a capital like this should become utterly deserted and 
 desolate ! 
 
 Isaiah, speaking in the name of Jehovah, says, " I 
 will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not 
 regard silver, and as for gold they shall not delight 
 in it.'' Jeremiah says, "Out of the north there 
 cometh up a nation against her." ... "I will raise 
 and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of 
 great nations from the north country, and Chaldea 
 shall be a spoil." ..." Behold, a people shall come 
 from the north, and a great nation, and many kings 
 shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth." 
 These statements are repeated with slight variations. 
 Even the time when the overthrow should take place 
 is mentioned. 
 
 Jeremiah speaks of Nebuchadnezzar's conquests, 
 and the subjection of the neighboring kingdoms to 
 his power, and, in the name of Jehovah, says, " I 
 have given all these lands into the hands of Nebu- 
 
CYRUS THE PERSIAN. 93 
 
 chadnezzar, king of Babylon. All nations shall serve 
 him and his son and his son's son (or descendants) 
 until the very time of his land come, and then many 
 nations and great kings shall serve themselves of 
 him.'^ In another passage he says, " These nations 
 shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years, and it 
 shall come to pass when seventy years are accom- 
 plished that I will punish the king of Babylon, and 
 that nation, saith Jehovah, for their iniquity." 
 
 Herodotus informs us that for fifteen or twenty 
 years Cyrus the Persian had been at war against vari- 
 ous nations, and in the spring of 538 B.C. he led his 
 conquering legions to the plains of Babylon. For 
 this undertaking he had swelled his forces from 
 distant nations and many different people. The 
 armies of these subjugated nations were incorporated 
 with those of the Medes and Persians, and they 
 approached Babylon from the north. 
 
 The leader of the invading host was designated by 
 Isaiah the younger, "Thus saith the Lord to his 
 anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden 
 to subdue all nations before him." . . . 
 
 ... "I will open before him the two-leaved gates, 
 and the gates of brass shall not be shut. ... I will 
 give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches 
 of secret places, that thou mayest know that I the 
 Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of 
 Israel." 
 
 The fulfilment of these prophecies seemed impos- 
 sible, yet they came to pass, and the method by 
 
94 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 which they were accomplished is also foretold. "A 
 drought is upon the waters and they shall be dried 
 up. ... I will make drunk her princes and her wise 
 men and her mighty men, that they may rejoice and 
 sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake." 
 
 A battle was fought before the walls, and the Per- 
 sians obtained the victory ; the Babylonians retreated 
 to the city, and Cyrus immediately commenced the 
 siege. The city was invulnerable to attack, and for 
 full two years the siege continued. The Babylonians 
 had laid up vast quantities of provision, and the ex- 
 tent of ground within the walls was so great, they 
 could raise crops sufficient to support its inhabitants. 
 
 Confident and secure, they derided the invader 
 from their walls. Their pride was excessive, they 
 made light of the siege, and the king and his nobles 
 passed the time in revelry and feasting. We have a 
 picture in Daniel of the feast in which Belshazzar 
 with a thousand of his lords participated on the very 
 night in which Babylon was taken. 
 
 Herodotus says, " As tiiey were engaged in festival, 
 they continued dancing and revelling. . . . The vigi- 
 lance of the guards was relaxed. The court and the 
 people were lulled into false security, the river gates 
 were left open. Cyrus turned off the water of the 
 Euphrates into the artificial lake above. Had the 
 Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus had done, 
 they could have closed the gates of the inner city, 
 and, mounting the walls on both sides of the stream, 
 would have caught the enemy in a trap and annihi- 
 
THEIR TEMPLES AND RICHES TAKEN. 95 
 
 lated them. But the gates were open, the enemy 
 entered, and the slaughter began. Owing to the vast 
 size of the city, the inhabitants of the inner city 
 knew nothing of the taking of the outer portions 
 until the enemy were upon them." 
 
 Jeremiah's prophecy gives us a description of what 
 actually took place. "A sword is upon the Chal- 
 deans and upon the inhabitants of Babylonia, and 
 upon her princes and upon her wise men, upon her 
 horses and upon her chariots, and upon all the mingled 
 people that are in the midst of her, and they shall 
 become as women ; a sword is upon her treasures, and 
 they shall be robbed." 
 
 The riches of Babylon were immense ; the spoils 
 of many years of war and the tribute of nations had 
 been poured into it. It had been the centre of the 
 world's commerce and industry, and vast wealth had 
 been accumulated, much of which was "hidden in 
 secret places." The temples were highly ornamented 
 and enriched with gold, silver, and precious stones, 
 and many of their gods were made of solid gold. 
 Their fate was foretold. "Bel boweth down, Nebo 
 stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, they could 
 not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into 
 captivity. . . . Babylon is fallen, and all the graven 
 images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground, 
 and they also became the prey of the conqueror." 
 
 Babylon was not to be suddenly destroyed as was 
 Nineveh. " I will punish Bel in Babylon. . . . The 
 nations shall not flow together any more unto 
 
96 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 her. . . . Babylon shall sink, and shall not rise from 
 the evil that I will bring upon her. . . . Come down 
 and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon, sit 
 on the ground. There is no throne, daughter of the 
 Chaldeans ; sit thou silent, get thee into darkness, for 
 thou shalt no more be called the lady of kingdoms." 
 
 Cyrus removed the seat of empire to Shushan, and 
 Babylon began to decay. 
 
 Alexander the Great held court in Babylon B.C. 324. 
 
 His successor, Seleucus I., B.C. 312, took the mate- 
 rials from Babylon to build the city of Seleucia, on 
 the banks of the Tigris. 
 
 About B.C. 140, it was taken by the Parthians, and 
 Ctesiphon was founded on the opposite side of the 
 river. 
 
 In the first century of the Christian era, although 
 much reduced, it still contained a population of six 
 hundred thousand. 
 
 In A.D. 114, it became the possession of the Eo- 
 mans, again in A.D. 199, and again in A.D. 363 under 
 Julian. 
 
 About this time Gibbon says, " The adjacent pas- 
 tures were covered with flocks and herds. The park 
 was replenished with pheasants, peacocks, ostriches, 
 roebucks, and wild boars. Nine hundred and sixty 
 elephants were maintained for the use of the king. 
 Six thousand guards successively mounted before the 
 palace gates, and treasures of gold, silver, gems, silks, 
 and aromatics were deposited in a hundred subter- 
 ranean vaults." 
 
BABYLON IN RUINS. 97 
 
 Isaiah had said, " Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, 
 the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as 
 when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall 
 never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from 
 generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian 
 pitch his tent there ; neither shall the shepherds 
 make their fold there, but wild beasts of the desert 
 shall lie there ; and their houses shall be full of dole- 
 ful creatures : and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs 
 shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the islands 
 shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in 
 their pleasant palaces." 
 
 At a somewhat later date, '^ the great towns at the 
 north of Babylon, which had succeeded to its wealth 
 and fortunes, formed, so to speak, one street of 
 twenty-eight miles." 
 
 About A.D. 650, the country fell into the hands of 
 the Mohammedans, who erected a capital for their new 
 empire at Bagdad. The materials for building were 
 largely taken from Seleucia and Ctesiphon, which had 
 fallen into ruins, these materials having been pre- 
 viously taken from Babylon. 
 
 During these events the decay of Babylon had 
 been rapid, and finally the water of the Euphrates, no 
 longer kept within bounds by embankments, poured 
 over the level plain, and transformed it into malarial 
 swamps. Temples, palaces, and mansions of brick 
 became masses of ruins. The whole plain became 
 the seat of virulent disease. The canals, being choked 
 or broken^ ceased to irrigate the land, and the former 
 
98 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 fruitful plain became arid and waste, the home only 
 of the wandering Arab. 
 
 Layard describes the plain as covered with a per- 
 fect net-work of ancient canals and water-courses. 
 " The face of the country," he says, " is dotted over 
 with mounds and shapeless heaps, the remains of 
 ancient towns and villages. On all sides fragments of 
 glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick strew the 
 ground. Owls start from the scanty thickets, and 
 jackals skulk through the furrows. For mile after 
 mile the track winds around and between low mounds, 
 shapeless heaps of brick and rubbish. Babylon is 
 tenantless and desolate. The Arabs will not pitch 
 their tents there because they say it is haunted by 
 evil spirits, which they dread more than they do wild 
 animals, which they say also abound there." In fact, 
 the prophecies themselves give the best description 
 of the present condition of Babylon the great, the 
 mighty, the powerful, the golden city. Isaiah says, 
 " Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there." ..." I 
 will make it a possession for the bittern and pools 
 of water, ... a dwelling-place for dragons, an aston- 
 ishment and a hissing." Thus are the prophecies 
 fulfilled to the letter, yet not until ten or twelve 
 centuries after their utterance. 
 
 We have thus shown the specific fulfilment of the 
 various prophetical utterances respecting the greatest 
 nations that came in contact with the Hebrew nation. 
 These prophecies were uttered by many prophets, at 
 
OVERRULING POWER OF JEHOVAH. 99 
 
 times covering a period of four hundred years. In 
 the case of Egypt, so far as they were immediate, 
 they were fulfilled by Assyrian, Babylonian, and Per- 
 sian kings, at times hundreds of years apart ; the 
 remaining predictions are still in force, and in con- 
 tinual process. 
 
 Assyria was suddenly blotted out of existence, and 
 even the site of its great city Nineveh was forgotten ; 
 yet, when found, its appearance was particularly and 
 truthfully described by the original prophecies. 
 
 Babylon was not to be destroyed at once. The 
 manner of its taking was foretold, and was accom- 
 plished, but that did not complete the prophecies. It 
 was gradually to be diminished, and we find it took 
 twelve hundred years to accomplish the work; and 
 the present appearance of ancient Babylon answers 
 to the prophetic description. 
 
 Through the Hebrew people the Deity, by miracle 
 and by prophecy, was making himself known to man. 
 Mankind were reached and influenced by the senses 
 only. An event out of the common course, they at 
 once accredited to the power of a god. It was the 
 direct act of a being higher and greater than a human 
 being. This power was used in releasing the Israel- 
 ites from the bondage in Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar 
 acknowledged the power of the God of the Hebrews 
 while they were in Babylonian captivity, and through 
 his proclamation other nations were made aware of 
 his being and power. 
 
 In the fulfilment of the predictions of the prophets. 
 
100 ORIGIN OF, HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 tlie foreknowledge and the overruling power of Jelio- 
 vah. in the affairs and destiny of nations were made 
 known. As these predictions, made in his name, 
 were one after another accomplished, the Jews, and 
 through them other nations, became aware of the 
 greatness and majesty of Jehovah, and looked upon 
 him with awe and reverence. 
 
 Among Christians, these evidences of the power 
 and majesty of the Deity have been and are received 
 with full faith by trusting hearts, and they have 
 believed and do believe that God saw and knew 
 everything from the beginning, and that he over- 
 rules all things for good. 
 
 It is only within the last hundred years that men 
 have arisen who have thrown doubt upon the reality 
 of miracles and upon the truths of prophecy. 
 
 Because man has so far advanced as to need no 
 such supernatural proofs of the existence of God, and 
 of his constant oversight and care, they reason that 
 such proofs were never necesdary, and therefore could 
 not have been, and, forgetting that it is through the 
 teachings of the Christ that they have arrived at that 
 high state of being, they even belittle or deny him. 
 
 The truth is, it is useless for a disbeliever in the 
 supernatural to attempt to understand the Bible. 
 The book is a history of the supernatural. There is 
 hardly a writer that does not record it. The Hebrew 
 nation was born and cradled in the supernatural ; in 
 its youth it was led and strengthened by it ; in its 
 culmination it was supported by it, and in its death 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 101 
 
 it was accompanied by it. The nation was brouglit 
 into being for a special purpose and object; that 
 purpose was carried out, that object attained; and, 
 when attained, the nation thus supernaturally brought 
 into being and supported ceased to exist. 
 
 The Bible contains a record of the instrumentali- 
 ties through which God, the spiritual being, commu- 
 nicated with man, his child, also spiritual (but in 
 this world encased in the natural, and while here sub- 
 ject to natural laws), enabling him by reason of his 
 spiritual nature to comprehend the communications 
 made, and to realize, to a limited degree, his own 
 affinity to the Infinite Father. 
 
 These communications, commencing with man in 
 his lowest spiritual state, and gradually advancing to 
 fuller and greater revelations as he was able to 
 receive and comprehend them, were accompanied 
 through the whole by supernatural occurrences which 
 we call miracles, intended to impress, not only the 
 nation that was the recipient and witness of them, 
 but, through it, to claim the attention of other nations, 
 who, equally ignorant, were thereby made cognizant 
 of the greatness and power of Jehovah; until, in 
 process of time, mankind were ready to receive the 
 full revelation of the being, power, character, pur- 
 poses, and requirements of the Deity, as made known 
 through Jesus the Christ, the consecrated messenger 
 for whose coming and teaching all this preparation 
 had been made.^ 
 
 1 In " Aryas, Semites and Jews," these revelations are traced 
 and the gradual spiritual progress shown. 
 
102 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 What are these supernatural exhibitions which we 
 call miracles, but exhibitions of the power and maj- 
 esty of the Almighty ? 
 
 In the spiritual childhood of man these powers 
 were shown in acts of injury and death, even as in 
 the natural world the lightning injures and destroys. 
 In later years, as man advanced, these same powers 
 were exhibited in deeds of benevolence and love. 
 To-day they are placed in the hands not of one man 
 alone, but in the hands of thousands. Instead of one 
 man alleviating the sickness, pain, and distress of the 
 hundreds of Judea, thousands, by their increased 
 knowledge of chemistry and of the healing art, are 
 enabled to control disease, alleviate distress, and by 
 their anaesthesia remove pain from millions, all over 
 the world. 
 
 It is only within the last hundred years that man 
 has advanced sufficiently, spiritually and intellect- 
 ually, to receive the mighty powers which God is now 
 placing in his hands. The sun paints his pictures, 
 and children play with the wonders of photography. 
 The lightning, his former dreaded enemy, is now 
 bound with metal bands and compelled to do his will. 
 The various powers of the universe, before shown in 
 the limited way we have mentioned, are now being 
 placed in his hands, that they may minister to his 
 well-being. 
 
 Man uses these latent powers of the universe to 
 create new varieties of fruits, flowers, fowl, and ani- 
 mals. The chemistry of the sun, earth, air, and sea; 
 
MAN'S IMMENSE ADVANCE. 103 
 
 tlie powers of nature, hidden since the creation of the 
 world, are now being brought to light and controlled 
 by him, and, as he continues to spiritually advance, 
 new and still greater powers, now unthought of, will 
 doubtless become his allies ; and yet man does not 
 realize that he is using some of the tremendous 
 powers which in their earlier crude shape he calls 
 miracles. 
 
 God places these powers in the hands of thousands, 
 and they cease to be miracles ; and yet what does 
 man know of electricity ? he has found out a few of 
 the laws governing it, and is thus enabled to use it 
 for his benefit, and he looks forward to still greater 
 power to be obtained in the future ; but even the 
 present powers would have been miraculous a few 
 hundred years since. 
 
 In the pride of his knowledge, man says, to-day, 
 '' There is no such thing as miracle." He scouts the 
 healing and beneficent miracles of the Christ, and the/^/ 
 injurious and murderous powers of Moses. He can '^ t ; 
 look back a few hundred years to the blackness of 
 spiritual ignorance then existing, but cannot look 
 back three thousand years and imagine the total dark- 
 ness of the spiritual sense at that time. G-od places 
 his powers in the hands of man at this time with 
 lavish freedom, because, in his immense advance, he 
 can understand them in part, and use them. But 
 three thousand years ago the Deity could only reach 
 man through the evidence of his senses, and that not 
 in acts of love and beneficence ; they would not have 
 
104 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 been appreciated. Exhibitions of power and strength, 
 the ability to injure and destroy, were the only exhi- 
 bitions that would reach, not the hearts, but the fears 
 of man. 
 
 Let man gradually work back and see the spirit- 
 ually ignorant hordes of Hebrew slaves, and the 
 equally ignorant millions of Egypt, and ask himself 
 in what other way could the Deity have given to 
 these darkened minds evidences of his power that 
 would have been understood. Evidences of injurious 
 and destructive powers were the only means by 
 which to reach these feeble and darkened minds. 
 By denying the truth of these miracles, men blunt 
 their own powers of perception, and blindly disown 
 the Bible, because it contains the records of these 
 events. 
 
 RADICAL VIEWS OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 While there are various and conflicting views of 
 the Bible, there are two that, though widely apart, 
 are equally destructive to the calm and thoughtful 
 examination of its contents. 
 
 The first is called a "scientific criticism of the 
 Scriptures." This destroys all belief in the Bible, 
 either as the result of inspiration or as the work of 
 man. The writers throughout are charged with de- 
 ception and lying, and a work purporting to contain 
 revelations from Grod is denounced as a tissue of 
 falsehoods. 
 
 The other claims for the Bible, — not that it con- 
 
SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM. 105 
 
 tains revelations from tlie Deity, — but tliat it is the 
 actual ^' word of God ; " that the men who wrote it 
 were the mechanical instruments through whom God 
 communicated with man ; that the book is entire and 
 complete, and as the word of God must be believed 
 in its entirety without comment or distrust, notwith- 
 standing its many mistakes and contradictions, its 
 multiple pictures of the Deity, and its contrary and 
 incongruous teachings. 
 
 While scientific criticism fosters disbelief in the 
 Bible, the dogma of its verbal inspiration is a source 
 of disbelief in God, and in religion as now generally 
 taught. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM. 
 
 Of late years, critical investigations of the Bible 
 by Ewald, Colenso, Kuenen, Hooykaas, and other 
 scholars, have led to results startling in their charac- 
 ter, and requiring careful consideration. These, with 
 names more familiar, such as Dean Stanley, Matthew 
 Arnold, Eenan, Strauss, Neander, and many other 
 writers, are referred to as authorities consulted, in a 
 work called "The Bible of To-day, by John W. Chad- 
 wick, Minister of the Second Unitarian Church in 
 Brooklyn, N. Y.^' This work claims to give "the 
 principal results of the best historical and scientific 
 criticism of the separate books of the Bible. They 
 are (says the author), almost without exception, those 
 which have been reached by many scholars of unim- 
 peachable orthodoxy." 
 
106 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 In a study of the Bible, a work of this character, 
 claiming to represent the latest results of scientific 
 criticism by scholars of unimpeachable orthodoxy, 
 cannot be passed by without notice and examination. 
 
 Mr. Chadwick says, " Here in America, so far as I 
 can judge, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch 
 is commonly assumed in all the Evangelical churches. 
 A history purporting to begin with the beginning of 
 the world, 4004 B.C., and to end in 1451 B.C., shortly 
 after the death of Moses, whose death it piously re- 
 cords. All this is supposed to have been written by 
 the hand of Moses, and to be a faithful and consist- 
 ent account of things which really happened, and 
 words which were really spoken by the persons or the 
 deity to whom they are ascribed. If it were so, we 
 should still have a history written at a distance, in 
 many instances, of from five to five-and-twenty hundred 
 years from the events recorded. To such a history, a 
 theory of supernatural inspiration is absolutely neces- 
 sary, if it is going to have any authority whatever. 
 But the theory of supernatural inspiration, as well as 
 the theory of Mosaic authorship, was never started 
 till ten or a dozen centuries after the death of Moses. 
 The theory of Mosaic authorship was part of a gen- 
 eral system which, just before the beginning of the 
 Christian era, ascribed the Old Testament books to 
 those persons who figured in them most conspicu- 
 ously ; for example, the book of Joshua to Joshua, 
 the books of Sa^muel to Samuel. But this conclusion 
 of the Talmudists, ever the most uncritical of men, 
 
THE BOOK OF COVENANTS. 107 
 
 was without any critical justification wliatever. There 
 is not a sign that the book of Joshua was written by 
 Joshua, or the books of Samuel by Samuel, or the 
 five books of the Pentateuch by Moses." "So far 
 was the composition of the Pentateuch from being 
 contemporaneous with even the latest events which it 
 narrates, that the oldest fragment of any size which 
 it contains dates from the ninth century B.C. . . , J 
 The gap between this fragment and the patriarchal 
 times is about a thousand years. This fragment, 
 which the critics have agreed to call the Book of Cove- 
 nants, extends from Exodus xxi. to xxiii. 19. The 
 next considerable portion of the Pentateuch was prob- 
 ably written about B.C. 750, a dozen centuries and 
 more from the events to which it gives most atten- 
 tion. These are the events of patriarchal times. In 
 this document appear the patriarchal stories in their 
 most charming form. . . . The Book of Covenants is 
 included in this document, and also (according to some 
 critics) another very considerable one is amalgamated 
 with it, the author of which is sometimes called the 
 older Elohist, because he uses the word Elohim for 
 God. . . . Here, then, we have already three consider- 
 able documents included in the Pentateuch, but as yet 
 it had not attained to half its present bulk. The next 
 great addition was made in the time of King Josiah. 
 This was the book of Deuteronomy. It was made 
 public in 621 B.C., and had been written just before, 
 six hundred and fifty years after the death of 
 Moses. Soon after, it was incorporated with those 
 
108 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 parts of the Pentateuch, which had been previously 
 written." 
 
 This book is "much more of a manufacture than 
 any previous portion of the Pentateuch. Here cal- 
 culation takes the place of spontaneity. . . . The 
 Deuteronomist went about deliberately to invent a 
 great historic fiction. He knew what he wanted ; 
 namely, to abolish all idolatrous worship of Yahweh 
 (Jehovah), all worship of all other gods, a.nd, as a 
 means to these ends, to confine the worship of 
 Yahweh (Jehovah) to Jerusalem. . . . Choosing Moses 
 as his mouthpiece, he represents him as calling the 
 people together in the fortieth year of their wander- 
 ings in the wilderness, to refresh their memory of 
 the Law which had been previously revealed to them, 
 sternly commanding them to serve no other god but 
 Yahweh (Jehovah)." 
 
 "The Deuteronomist does not by any means con- 
 fine himself to the outward forms and ceremonies of 
 religion. His book abounds in precepts which are 
 political aud civil and domestic in their character, 
 and many of these are very noteworthy for their 
 moral excellence. A spirit of equity and clemency 
 in some of his social regulations allies them to the 
 teachings of Jesus more closely than any other 
 portion of the Pentateuch." 
 
 "And still the Pentateuch awaited an immense 
 accession to its priestly elements, an immense addi- 
 tion to its bulk." This was the "Book of Origins," 
 which Ewald says " dates from the time of Solomon." 
 
THE BOOK OF ORIGINS. 109 
 
 This theory is not satisfactory to our author, who 
 instead accepts the theory of Kuenen, that the Book 
 of Origins dates from the fifth century B.C. 
 
 " This Book of Origins," he says, " as it now exists, 
 begins with the first line of Genesis, and runs in and 
 out through all the other documents, not meddling 
 much with Deuteronomy, up to the end of Joshua. 
 It contains the first account of the creation and 
 Adam's family register, an account of the Flood and 
 Noah's family register. It deals with the Patriarchs 
 much more summarily than do the earlier documents. 
 In fact, until the time of Moses the portions of this 
 book are only introductory to the writer's special 
 theme, which is the publication of the Levitical Law. 
 The book of Leviticus is almost entirely his, and the 
 larger part of Numbers. Here, in with parts of 
 Exodus, we have a sacerdotal code, which marks an 
 immense advance in priestly notions and pretensions 
 on the book of Deuteronomy. Whenever it is neces- 
 sary to his purpose, the writer freely recasts the 
 history of the Mosaic and pre-Mosaic times." This 
 "Book of Origins, already incorporated with the 
 remainder of the Pentateuch, . . . was promulgated 
 by Ezra and Nehemiah, at Jerusalem, 445 B.C. Who 
 had done this work of incorporation we do not know ; 
 . . . not Jerusalem, but Babylon, it is most likely, 
 was the scene of this development. Not Sinai and 
 the wilderness, but Babylon and Jerusalem, witnessed 
 the promulgation of the Levitical Law. Its priest 
 was Ezra, and not Aaron." 
 
110 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 " We have here a book (the Pentateuch) made up 
 of fragments arbitrarily forced together, which frag- 
 ments made their appearance all the way alpng from 
 900 to 450 B.C. . . . There was a great stock of oral 
 traditions to draw upon, and also various books, the 
 names of which, in a few cases, have been preserved 
 to us, as, for example, the book of Jasher, and the 
 book of the Wars of Jehovah. But even the earliest 
 of these was antedated a long time by the events 
 recorded, and they are only quoted in the most frag- 
 mentary manner." 
 
 Of the book of Joshua he says, " We have reason 
 to believe that the same hands that shaped the prin- 
 cipal documents of the Pentateuch shaped the two 
 principal fragments of the book of Joshua. These 
 are, first, chapters i. to xiii. ; second, chapters xiv. to 
 xxiv. The book is naturally divided into these two 
 sections. The first recites the story of Joshua's con- 
 quest of Canaan ; the second, his division of the land 
 among the tribes. The first is mainly from the 
 Deuteronomist, the second is mainly by the ' author 
 of the Book of Origins ; ' and the date of the book 
 would be, say, ^by the Deuteronomist about 600 B.C., 
 and by the author of Origins, after the captivity, 
 about 450 B.C.' '' 
 
 '^In a book written so long after the events which it 
 records, ... we should not expect to find accurate 
 history. But it may be said that in our day the best 
 histories are the latest ; for example, Green's History 
 of the English People, and Freeman's History of the 
 
THE DEUTERONOMIST, 111 
 
 Norman Conquest. True enough, but the superior 
 value of these histories is based upon their critical 
 use of contemporary documents. But the authors of 
 Joshua had, in the first place, no contemporary docu- 
 ments that came within centuries of the events. . . . 
 They were not in search of truth, their writings were 
 tendency writings : that is, they were written to 
 carry a point." The Deuteronomist "wanted the 
 sanction of antiquity for his passionate exclusive- 
 ness, and for his centralized worship at Jerusalem." 
 The author of Origins " wanted the sanction of antiq- 
 uity for his Levitical enthusiasm." 
 
 "Judges is a wonderful treasury of almost contem- 
 porary traditions of the period between the conquest 
 and the time of David, from about 1280 to 1050 B.C. 
 or thereabout. According to Joshua, the tribes acted 
 in perfect unity, subjugated Canaan entirely in one 
 year, and divided its territory among the tribes. As 
 there was never any such conquest as that of Joshua, 
 recorded in the first of the thirteenth chapters, so was 
 there never any such division of the territory as that 
 of Joshua, recorded in the fourteenth to the twenty- 
 seventh chapters." 
 
 "Judges is a tendency writing. It has a thesis to 
 maintain, viz., that faithfulness to Jehovah is the 
 only means of national prosperity; and was edited 
 by one of the Prophets. The traditions embedded 
 in his argument sufficiently confute his darling theo- 
 ries. His time was certainly no earlier than the 
 seventh century B.C." 
 
112 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Rutli is also claimed as a "tendency writing, and 
 dates about 400 B.C.'' 
 
 Of the first and second books of Samuel our author 
 says, " It is not likely that these books attained their 
 present form till just before or soon after the begin- 
 ning of the captivity. The object of the writer was 
 to glorify Samuel and David at the expense of Saul. 
 . c . The writer made use of various legends, written 
 and oral, and joined them together in a very crude 
 and blundering fashion." 
 
 Next, '^we have the two books of Kings. The 
 books are written with a purpose, to show that only 
 in the faithful service of Jehovah is there safety and 
 success for kings and people. The suffering of Israel 
 and Judah are the merited punishments of their 
 idolatry and disobedience. Probably the work was 
 finished about 562 B.C., and was written in Babylon, 
 by one who was a captive there. . . . He made use 
 of many written sources," and "sometimes stands 
 corrected by the narratives which he incorporates 
 into his own. But, with the exception of the inci- 
 dental history embodied in the Prophets, he is our 
 only historian of Israel, for five hundred years, who 
 is at all trustworthy. With the books of Kings 
 ended the treatment of history from a prophetic 
 standpoint." 
 
 " The books of Chronicles go over the same ground, 
 but they pervert our knowledge more than they in- 
 crease it." They "were written about 300 B.C., and 
 are a reconstruction of the entire history of Israel, 
 
MANASSEH AND HIS CAPTIVITY, 113 
 
 in order to compel the sanction of that history for 
 that scheme of priestly worship which had been 
 developed in Babylon and set up in Jerusalem by 
 Ezra and Nehemiah. . . . Whatever his materials, 
 they were all fluid in the heat of his Levitic zeal, 
 and all received the impress of his cherished theory, 
 that the acceptable worship of Jehovah consisted in 
 the minute observance of a ceremonial and sacrificial 
 system of religion centralized in the one temple at 
 Jerusalem. . . . The persistent idolatry of the nation 
 is scarcely mentioned, except when it is needed as a 
 background to bring out the virtue of the kings who 
 labored to suppress it. . . . David and Solomon are 
 idealized; the credit of designing the temple and 
 the organization of the temple service is given to 
 David. . . . ISTothing remains for Solomon but to 
 carry out the plans of David. . . . The fondness of 
 Solomon for other forms of worship is passed over 
 lightly, or his wives are charged with causing his 
 defection." . . . "Manasseh, whose reign lasted the 
 longest of any king of Judah, and the most pros- 
 perous and peaceful, offered a very knotty problem 
 to the Chronicler, who, with Ezekiel, believes that 
 national prosperity depended on the faithful service 
 of Jehovah, for Manasseh fostered all the abomina- 
 tions of the Canaanites . . . and so Manasseh is made 
 to suffer captivity, and to repent in dust and ashes 
 for his wickedness, . . . but for neither repentance 
 nor captivity is there any warrant in the earlier and 
 more truthful histories. This story is, perhaps, the 
 
114 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 earliest prototype of a numerous class of famous 
 recantations, of which. Voltaire's and Thomas Paine's 
 are modern illustrations, and equally without a parti- 
 cle of evidence." ^ 
 
 Of the other books of the Old Testament, our 
 author writes in much the same manner. They were 
 books written to serve a purpose. Of the predictions 
 contained in the prophetical books (he says), " some 
 of the more general were fulfilled, the most were 
 doomed to utter disappointment." ^ 
 
 He sums up the political history of the Hebrews 
 
 1 Relative to this statement of our author regarding Manasseh, 
 among the Assyrian archives, as translated hy George Smith, 
 Esq., of the British Museum, is the following. About 680 B.C., 
 Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, " marched against Sidon, which he 
 besieged, captured, and destroyed." At this time the whole of 
 Palestine and the surrounding places submitted to Esarhaddon, 
 who gives a list of the kings, and among them is Manasseh, 
 king of Judah. Some years after, he made an expedition against 
 Judah ; a portion of the record is defaced, but this statement re- 
 mains, " Manasseh, king of Judah, submitted to Esarhaddon;" 
 "he carried large numbers of Israelites away captive, and re- 
 placed them by colonies of Babylonians, and he bound Manasseh, 
 king of Judah, and brought him to Babylon." There is no record 
 of his return, which is stated in the Bible to have been the fact. 
 Kev. A. H. Sayce, the editor of " Smith's History of Babylonia," in 
 a footnote, says, " It was while Esarhaddon was holding his court 
 at Babylon, that Manasseh of Judah was brought there captive. 
 . . . The character and rule of Esarhaddon seem to have been 
 mild, and the release of Manasseh from captivity is paralleled by 
 other similar acts of clemency on his part." 
 
 2 In a previous chapter we have carefully examined the proph- 
 ecies against Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, and have obtained 
 from Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders, as translated by Profes- 
 sors Smith, Sayce, and others, and from ancient and modern his- 
 tory, facts showing their complete fulfilment, or that they are 
 still active and in process of being fulfilled. 
 
JOSEPH IN EGYPT, 115 
 
 as follows : " In all strictness this does not begin 
 until the exodus from Egypt in 1320 B.C., and there 
 are some things antecedent to the exodus which we 
 can dimly fashion. For centuries before the exodus 
 — such would appear to be the import of the patri- 
 archal stories — Semitic hordes from beyond the 
 Euphrates were pushing down into Arabia, Palestine, 
 and Egypt. Sometimes the races already in posses- 
 sion forced them back. The journey of Abraham 
 was most likely the emigration of a tribe ; its start- 
 ing-point, Ur of the Chaldees, being about one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles due south of modern Erzerum, 
 on the south side of the Taurus.- The journey of 
 Jacob back into Haran was a great backward move- 
 ment of the swaying mass. His subsequent return 
 to Canaan, another great migration." 
 
 "Joseph in Egypt possibly represents the first 
 wave of migration into Egypt, followed ere long by 
 that of kindred tribes, but these Hebrews were not 
 the first Semitic tribes to go down, they were the last. 
 About 2100 B.C., Lower Egypt was conquered by a 
 Semitic race, which ruled over it till 1580 B.C., when 
 
 1 Recent explorations show that our author is probably mis- 
 taken as to the situation of " Ur " of the Chaldees, which was a 
 large and important city at the time of Abram, the capital of 
 Southern Babylonia, now "represented by the mounds of 
 'Mugheir,' about six miles from the Euphrates, on its western 
 bank, about latitude 31°. It was probably not far from the old 
 mouth of the Euphrates," " The city of Ur was devoted to the 
 worship of the moon god, called in early times Ur, and the place 
 itself appears to have been named, after that divinity, the city of 
 Ur." 
 
116 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 it was driven out by the native Egyptians, who had 
 maintained themselves in Upper Egypt. The Hebrews 
 were a later wave of immigration, and they remained 
 in Egypt after the shepherd kings (of whom Joseph's 
 Pharaoh was one) had gone. ... A king arose who 
 knew not Joseph. In other words, the native Egyp- 
 tians had reconquered Lower Egypt. So long as the 
 Israelites could be kept contented, they made a living 
 wall between the banished Hyksos and the Egyptians. 
 But they at last grew restless under the oppression 
 of the great Rameses II., and under his son Menephta 
 (Amenophis) they rebelled, and, aided by the Hyksos, 
 they broke away from their allegiance, and resumed 
 their old nomadic life. Such was the exodus, the 
 Bible date of which is 1491. Instead of this date, 
 write 1320 B.C., as the best approximation we can 
 make by carefully comparing the Pentateuch and 
 Manetho (an Egyptian historian) and the monu- 
 ments." 
 
 " The towering personality of Moses was equal to 
 the task of holding them together in the act of their 
 rebellion and deliverance, but after that there was 
 little united action. The different tribes went each 
 its way to plant and graze. . . . Some of them con- 
 quered the district east of the Jordan, with the help 
 of the Moabites. Others, under Joshua, with the 
 help of the Midianites and Edomites, pushed their 
 way into Canaan about forty years after the exodus, 
 and there they remained ignorant tribes, with little 
 civilization or religion, among the more civilized 
 nations around them." 
 
SAUL AND DAVID. 117 
 
 " To Saul belongs the glory of arousing the senti- 
 ment of nationality and fusing the discordant tribal 
 elements into a political unit. His reign was short, 
 but did him no dishonor. '^ 
 
 David was a fierce soldier. " He had none of SauPs 
 scruples about slaughtering the Canaanites. He was 
 every inch a king, and consolidated the nation. He 
 subdued its enemies, and utilized the zeal alike of 
 priests and prophets." 
 
 It is hardly necessary for us to follow this author 
 any further. The extracts from his book which we 
 have given reveal the character and animus of the 
 work, and they show his utter disbelief in the Bible 
 either as a historical or religious book. 
 
 Now let us see what this writer claims. 
 
 All the books forming the Pentateuch were manu- 
 factured. 
 
 The oldest portion of the Old Testament, the " Book 
 of Covenants," was written about the ninth century 
 before Christ. 
 
 The patriarchal stories, about B.C. 750. 
 
 The book of Deuteronomy, "a deliberate inven- 
 tion," "a great historic fiction," was written in the 
 time of King Josiah, and made public B.C. 621. 
 
 The " Book of Origins," " containing what is now 
 scattered through Genesis, Exodus, the greater part of 
 Numbers and Leviticus, was written about B.C. 450, 
 by some one unknown, to give the sanction of an- 
 tiquity to the Levitical laws, and was promulgated by 
 Ezra and Nehemiah." 
 
118 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES, 
 
 '' The same hands wrote the history of the division 
 of the landj fourteenth to twenty-fourth chapters of 
 Joshua.'^ 
 
 " The history of the conquest in the first thirteen 
 chapters was written by the Deuteronomist." " Both 
 of these authors wrote for a purpose, and each falsi- 
 fied history to carry out his object." 
 
 The author of Judges has a thesis to maintain, 
 and "it was written for a purpose by one of the 
 prophets." 
 
 Euth, the same. 
 
 The books of Samuel are also false, and were 
 written for an object during the captivity in Babylon. 
 
 The books of the Kings, the same. 
 
 The books of Chronicles, worse than all. They 
 were written about B.C. 300. " The materials of the 
 author were all fluid in the heat of his Levitical zeal, 
 and all received the impress of his cherished theory." 
 
 All these books, our author says, are false, written 
 by men who, impelled by the desire to advance their 
 own views, falsified the truths of history and the 
 events of their own time, and manufactured these 
 various books, skilfully interweaving a few old tales 
 and traditions. 
 
 According to this writer, Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob are myths ; their stories, specimens of the 
 novelist's art; or, if they ever existed, they were 
 names of nomadic migratory hordes. The slavery of 
 the Israelites is a fiction. The contest between Jeho- 
 vah and the Egyptian gods, a myth. In fact, there 
 
ABRAHAAI, ISAAC, AND JACOB. 119 
 
 was no Jehovah, except as created by the novelist 
 who composed the story. There was no river of blood, 
 no frogs, flies, or locusts ; no murrain on cattle ; no 
 boils ; no hail and fire ; no darkness, nor death of the 
 first-born ; no passing over of the angel of death ; no 
 passover instituted until long years afterward; no 
 crossing of the Eed Sea nor destruction of Pharaoh's 
 hosts ; no Sinai, no earthquakes, clouds, or trumpets ; 
 no delivery of the law ; no covenant ; no worship ; 
 no pillar of cloud and fire ; no forty years in the 
 wilderness ; no conquest of Canaan. These are all 
 merely the dramatic characters and incidents of the 
 fiction. 
 
 There were no prophets except those who prophesy 
 in general terms ; or, where the predictions were 
 specific and particular, they were never fulfilled. 
 
 In fact, according to Mr. Chadwick, the Hebrew 
 Scriptures are a tissue of falsehoods from begin- 
 ning to end, and every writer thereof a deliberate 
 falsifier. 
 
 In the Pentateuch we have the only account in the 
 world of a revelation made to and a contract or cove- 
 nant made with man by the Deity until the time of 
 Christ. In these books, we trace the incipient steps 
 in the revelation to and covenants made with Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob; then the greater revelation 
 and covenant made through Moses with the Hebrews. 
 With these revelations is the promise that the seed 
 of Abraham shall become a great nation, and shall 
 
120 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 inlierit tlie land pointed out to him. This promise is 
 fulfilled by their servitude to the Egj^ptians. Their 
 delivery from bondage by means of miracles of a 
 nature before unknown ; their departure from Egypt ; 
 the many and unexampled miracles of the journey; 
 the delivery of the law; the covenant with Jeho- 
 vah ; the forty years' instruction ; the final entrance 
 into, the conquering, and the taking possession of 
 this land; all these things are accomplished with 
 the aid of Jehovah, by ways perfectly adapted to 
 the end desired, and thoroughly unique in the means 
 taken to that end. Yet we are asked to believe that 
 there is not a particle of truth in these statements, 
 that several hundred years after the events described 
 are said to have taken place, some unknown writers 
 of the Hebrews, with imaginations greater far than 
 any that have appeared before or since, and writing 
 at periods from two hundred and fifty to five hundred 
 years apart, and from four hundred to one thousand 
 years after the events related, created this whole 
 story. The allegories of Genesis ; the stories of the 
 patriarchs' lives ; their communion with God ; the 
 promises made to them ; their various adventures 
 until their descendants are brought into Egypt, and 
 there increase to a great nation ; the life and charac- 
 ter of Moses, and the unique miracles, both in Egypt 
 and Sinai, are the work of these writers. They also 
 created the being and character of Jehovah, no such 
 god having been found in the records of any other 
 nation. Without correspondence or unity of interest, 
 
JEHOVAH. 121 
 
 they unitedly carry this nation, the creature of their 
 separate brains, through all these strange vicissitudes, 
 (experiences entirely unknown to any other nation or 
 people), and bring it by these unexampled means to 
 its haven of rest. 
 
 These fictions, we are told, were discovered and 
 adopted by Ezra and ISTehemiah, and by them were 
 applied and fitted on to the then existing Hebrew 
 nation ; such previous traditions and writings as they 
 had being of course altered to agree with it ; thus 
 giving us a book thoroughly homogeneous in its 
 character, similar ideas of Jehovah being presented 
 by all its various writers ; the teachings of Moses 
 continually referred to as if true ; the covenant with 
 Jehovah repeatedly re-adopted, and the fiction estab- 
 lished by frequent references to the incidents of 
 their invented history. And this fabrication is so 
 natural as to have imposed upon the Jews of a 
 later time, who, even unto this day, believe in its 
 truth. It was also believed in by Christ and his 
 apostles, and by Christians until now. What mira- 
 cles are these, greater far than any mentioned in 
 the Bible, or ever before heard of in history or 
 fiction ! 
 
 We are asked to believe that all the books of the 
 Hebrew scriptures are figments of the imagination, 
 written by prophet, priest, and scribe, for the pur- 
 pose of each carrying out his own plans and ideas, 
 yet all agreeing in the delineation of the great char- 
 acters and events of their nation, which were, not- 
 
122 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 withstanding, entirely fictitious. Can such, a thing 
 be possible ? Yet this is the ground taken by this 
 writer, this is the result of his statements. Can we 
 believe this ? Is it not more impossible than the 
 wildest tale of Munchausen ? Does it not require 
 more credulity than " The Thousand and One Tales " ? 
 
 Here is a writer who freely charges the Old Testa- 
 ment authors with tendency writing, with falsifying 
 the truths of history and the events of their own 
 times, with inventing stories and incidents with the 
 novelist's art, all to serve and carry out their own 
 private views and purposes. 
 
 Can there be a more thorough specimen of such 
 tendency writing than the book we have been exam- 
 ining, as shown in its vain endeavor to dethrone 
 Jehovah, in its ability to stumble over and not see the 
 hundreds of miracles that obstruct its path, and in 
 its blind denial of the fulfilment of prophecy ? 
 
 Any one would suppose that the certainty with 
 which the author makes his statements, and an- 
 nounces the dates at which the several books were 
 written, was the result of combined scientific exami- 
 nation and criticism ; but what do we find ? Let us 
 compare the results arrived at by Mr. Chadwick and 
 several of the prominent German critics regarding the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 BOOK OF COVENANTS. 
 
 CHADWICK. 
 
 EWALD. 
 
 COLENSO. 
 
 KUENEN. 
 
 B.C. 900. 
 
 B.C. 1095. 
 
 Myth. 
 
 B.C. 1320. 
 
 B.C. 750. 
 
 
 
 
VERBAL INSPIRATION. 123 
 
 BOOK OF ORIGINS. 
 CHAD WICK. EWALD. COLENSO. KUEJ^EN. 
 
 B.C. 445. B.C. 1075. B.C. 1095. B.C. 800. 
 
 B.C. 445. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 B.C. 621. B.C. 621. Legendary. B.C. 621. 
 
 This is the result of Scientific Criticism. What a 
 wonderful science ! 
 
 VERBAL INSPIRATION. 
 
 The second radical view of the Bible is that of 
 verbal inspiration. According to Kitto's "Encyclo- 
 paedia of Biblical Literature/*' an accepted exponent 
 of Trinitarian beliefs, the dogma of the inspiration of 
 the Scriptures rests upon the assertion that "the 
 books of which it is composed are of divine author- 
 ity; that they are entire, incorrupt, complete," and 
 that " this divine authorship can be proved." 
 
 In attempting to sustain this assertion, while ac- 
 knowledging that doubts have arisen respecting the 
 authorship of the Pentateuch, — several Trinitarian 
 authorities having stated that its author is unknown, 
 — Kitto finally, as the result of his study, ascribes 
 it to Moses. 
 
 He also considers it "highly probable that the 
 whole book of Joshua, up to the twenty-eighth verse 
 of the last chapter, was composed by Joshua." Later 
 Trinitarian authority pronounces the author of Joshua 
 unknown. 
 
 Kitto says the author of Judges is unknown. Ruth 
 also unknown. First and second books of Samuel 
 
124 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 unknown, but thinks they were written by Samuel, 
 Nathan, and Gad. First and second books of Kings 
 is a compilation, the author unknown, but Jewish tra- 
 dition makes Jeremiah the author. First and second 
 books of Chronicles unknown, but are ascribed to 
 Ezra and finished by Daniel. Book of Job unknown. 
 Psalms of David unknown ; a portion were completed 
 during the reign of Hezekiah, others in the reign of 
 Manasseh, Nehemiah, and even to the date of the 
 Maccabees. Ecclesiastes unknown. The remaining 
 books of the Hebrew Scriptures are generally as- 
 cribed to the persons whose name they bear, but 
 without authority or proof. 
 
 The Bible date of Malachi is about 400 B.C. The 
 intervening period to the time of the Christ is par- 
 tially covered by apocryphal books, bringing the 
 biblical history down to about B.C. 160. 
 
 Thus we find, by Trinitarian authority, that there 
 is a great uncertainty regarding the authorship of the 
 principal books comprising the Old Testament. 
 
 THE CHKONOLOGY OF THE HEBREW SCRIPTUBES 
 
 is so generally acknowledged to be unreliable that it 
 is hardly necessary to more than mention the fact 
 that between Usher's (the Bible chronology) and the 
 Septuagint there is a difference of 1504 years. 
 
 THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Kitto defines the Canon to be "the authoritative 
 standard of religion and morals, composed of those 
 
THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 125 
 
 writings which have been given for this purpose by 
 God to men." He says, in order to establish the 
 canon of Scripture it is necessary to she \V, — 
 
 First, "that all the books of which it is composed 
 are of divine authority." 
 
 Second, " that they are entire and incorrupt." 
 
 Third, "that, having them, it is complete without 
 any addition from any other source ; " and 
 
 Fourth, "that it comprises the whole of those 
 books for which divine authority can be proved." 
 
 "It is obvious," he says, "that if any of these 
 four particulars be not true. Scripture cannot be the 
 sole and supreme standard of religious truth and 
 duty." 
 
 In support of the first of the above requirements, 
 "we want to know," he says, 
 
 First, "that these books were really written by 
 the persons whose names they bear." 
 
 Second, "we want to be satisfied that these per- 
 sons were commonly reputed and held by their con- 
 temporaries to be assisted by the Divine Spirit in what 
 they wrote." 
 
 Third, "we want to be sure that care was taken 
 by those to whom their writings were first addressed, 
 that they should be preserved entire and incorrupt j " 
 and 
 
 Fourth, "we want to see . . . that their authors 
 really assumed to be under the Divine direction in 
 what they wrote." 
 
 With these requirements before us, let us see the 
 
126 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 result of our examination of the Hebrew scriptures. 
 In support of these positions, as applied to the 
 Pentateuch, Kitto quotes Deut. xxxi. 9, 26, to which 
 we have added the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth 
 verses. "And Moses wrote this law, and delivered 
 it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, which bare 
 the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto all 
 the elders of Israel. . . . And it came to pass, when 
 Moses had made an end of writing the words of this 
 law in a book until they were finished, that Moses 
 commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the 
 covenant of the Lord, saying. Take this book of the 
 law and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant 
 of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a 
 witness against thee." 
 
 It is evident that Genesis, one of the five books of 
 the Pentateuch, is no part of the " Book of the Law." 
 That probably consisted of the laws now contained 
 in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, with the law and the 
 covenant, and its record of blessings and cursings 
 recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy, together with 
 the renewed covenant made through Joshua with the 
 Israelites, as recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter 
 of Joshua, which was added thereto. 
 
 As applied to Joshua, Kitto quotes Josh. xxiv. 2Q, 
 " And Joshua wrote the words in the book of the law 
 of God." 
 
 The context here shows that this writing referred 
 to the covenant with Jehovah, which the Hebrews 
 had at this time renewed. 
 
THE BOOK OF THE LAW, 127 
 
 Kitto declares the authors of Judges, Euth, Job, 
 and Ecclesiastes unknown. 
 
 Of the first and second books of Samuel, first and 
 second books of Kings, first and second books of 
 Chronicles, the authors are unknown. The author- 
 ship of many of the later books of the Hebrew 
 scriptures is disputed, but thev are of less conse- 
 quence than those mentioned. 
 
 On applying these tests we find not one of the 
 ancient books of the Hebrew scriptures, outside of 
 the prophetical writings, can sustain them, except 
 portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuter- 
 onomy. Kitto claims it for the Pentateuch and 
 Joshua, but, as is shown, with only partial effect, and 
 other Trinitarian writers pronounce the authors of 
 Genesis and Joshua " unknown." 
 
 There is no proof that 
 
 First, "all the books of which it (the Old Testa- 
 ment) is composed were written by divine authority.'^ 
 
 Second, " that they are entire and incorrupt." 
 
 Third, "that it (the Canon) is complete without 
 any addition." 
 
 Fourth, "that divine authority can be proved for 
 any of these books." 
 
 There is no proof 
 
 First, " that they were really written by the per- 
 sons whose names they bear." 
 
 Second, that the authors "were assisted by the 
 Divine Spirit." 
 
 Third, " that the books were preserved entire and 
 uncorrupt ; " or 
 
128 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Fourth, that '^tlieir authors assumed to be under 
 Divine direction in what they wrote." 
 
 Moses was ordered to put down certain things in a 
 bookj and the prophets alone in the Hebrew scrip- 
 tures claim to speak by divine authority and to have 
 been divinely inspired. 
 
 Thus we find the authorship of most of the ancient 
 books forming the Hebrew scriptures doubtful or 
 unknown, its chronology generally rejected, and the 
 claim of verbal inspiration unsupported, and in fact 
 disproved, by the very requirements laid down for its 
 establishment, consequently the portion of the Bible 
 known as the Old Testament cannot be "the author- 
 itative standard of religion and morals " that it has 
 been claimed to be. It cannot "be the sole and 
 supreme standard of religious truth and duty." In 
 fact, in the teachings of Moses, it inculcates but a 
 very low standard of religion or morals. 
 
 It certainly is not the word of God, nor was it 
 written by inspiration of God, yet it contains inspired 
 utterances, and records acts and deeds also inspired. 
 Its statements are undoubtedly founded on fact and 
 mainly correct. In the coincidence of ideas, it bears 
 evidence of the authenticity of its sources and the 
 honesty of its purpose. Above all, it contains the 
 records of revelations made by the Deity to man, and 
 of covenants made by God with man ; and these reve- 
 lations give to it a character and value possessed by 
 no other book except the Christian scriptures. 
 
 The Bible itself makes no claim to verbal or other 
 
THE HEBREW COVENANT. 129 
 
 inspiration ; the prophets speak by the inspiration of 
 Jehovah ; Moses refers his power to Jehovah, and 
 claims to have received communications from him. 
 
 The only claim made by the book itself is in its 
 titles, the "Old Testament/- the "New Testament." 
 Testament means the will or purpose of the Deity as 
 shown in the Old Covenant and in the ]N"ew Covenant. 
 A covenant, or contract, is a mutual agreement made 
 between two or more parties. 
 
 The old covenant, under which the Hebrews acted, 
 was made between Jehovah, on the one side, and the 
 Hebrew people, acting through Moses as their agent, 
 on the other. 
 
 The people, on their part, agreed to honor and 
 serve Jehovah as their God, and to worship no other 
 god; they bound themselves and their children to 
 the faithful performance of these obligations under 
 penalties of the curses of the covenant. 
 
 " Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a 
 curse : a blessing if ye obey the commandments of 
 the Lord your God, which I command you this day ; 
 and a curse if ye will not obey the commandments of 
 the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way 
 which I command you this day, to go after other 
 gods which ye have not known." 
 
 The agreement on the part of Jehovah was that 
 he would be the tutelary or national God of the 
 Hebrews ; he would advance their interests, and 
 bless them with the blessings of the covenant as 
 long as they continued faithfully to worship and 
 
130 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 serve him. If they failed in their allegiance to him, 
 he would punish them by sending on them the curses 
 of the same covenant. This covenant was sealed 
 with all due formalities by the contracting parties. 
 It was a contract with the Hebrews, a people distinct 
 and separate from all other people, and binding on 
 them alone. It was made with them as against all 
 nations then existing, and it was repeatedly renewed 
 and indorsed by the Hebrews, thus evidencing the 
 truth of the original records, and witnessing to the 
 binding force of the covenant. 
 
 This covenant is entirely earthly ; its blessings are 
 earthly peace, happiness, riches, health, plenty, and 
 prosperity, and its curses are also earthly trouble, 
 poverty, sickness, famine, adversity, war, and cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 If we read the Hebrew scriptures in this light, we 
 shall find the constant and exact fulfilment of the 
 promises and threats of the covenant. 
 
 Christians have erred in placing the Hebrew scrip- 
 tures on a plane of equality with the Christian scrip- 
 tures. The coming of Christ and the promulgation 
 of the new covenant open to all mankind, closed and 
 ended the old and partial covenant made with one 
 nation. Christ says, "The law and the prophets 
 were until John, since that time the kingdom of God 
 is preached." 
 
 The covenant of the law ceased with the advent 
 of the Christ, and the requirements of the Jewish 
 religion actually ended in the downfall of the Jewish 
 
THE GREAT EVANGEL. 131 
 
 nation. All its forms, ceremonies, and sacrificial 
 system are gone ; it was a system established in an 
 early period of the world's history, with an ignorant 
 nation, and suited to their capabilities and knowl- 
 edge ; it was established to introduce to and keep 
 alive in the world a knowledge of God, and that 
 purpose was accomplished. 
 
 The Jews cannot now fulfil its requirements: the 
 Jehovah of the Jews is no more ; he has gone forever, 
 has ceased to exist, and God, our heavenly Father, is 
 all in all. 
 
 The principal value of the Old Testament to the 
 Christian, other than its literary character, its beau- 
 tiful religious imagery, and its many noble utter- 
 ances, is that therein we have a record of the first 
 revelations from God, and the first contracts entered 
 into between God and man. Here we have the 
 incipient steps towards the revelation of that great 
 evangel which commenced in Abram and continued 
 in Moses and the prophets, culminated in Jesus the 
 Christ, which gives to the Bible pre-eminence over all 
 scriptures of all times and all nations. 
 
 The Bible is the only book which claims to contain 
 a revelation direct from the Deity. In this the Bible 
 is unique, and in this only can a claim be made, not 
 of verbal inspiration, but of divine revelation. All 
 others contain the religious utterances of men only, 
 some evidently from divine sources, the origin of 
 which are now unknown, notably the Hindu and 
 Persian ancient religious writings or scriptures, which 
 
132 ORIGIN OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 
 
 are full of faith and trust in God, in his love and care, 
 and in immortality ; and they teach purity of thought 
 and life. 
 
 The revelation to and covenant with Abram was 
 personal, not national. It was crude, initiatory, 
 requiring faith and obedience to the light given 
 him, and was accepted by him in the rite of cir- 
 cumcision. The larger revelation made through 
 Moses to the Hebrews was national, made to that 
 people alone. It was also accompanied by a covenant 
 which was accepted and ratified by that nation, and 
 was on many occasions renewed. It has not, nor 
 ever had, the slightest claim on any other people, 
 nation, or tongue. 
 
 The final and full revelation made through Jesus 
 the Christ to all mankind is also accompanied by a 
 covenant already signed on the part of God, which is 
 open to all of every tongue and nation for their 
 acceptance or rejection. 
 
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 Being the Adventures of a Naturalist Bird-hunting in the West-India Islands. 
 
 By Fred A. Ober. New edition. With maps and illustrations. $1.50. ^ 
 
 " During two years he visited mountains, forests, and people, that few, if 
 mny, tourists had ever reached before. He carried his camera with him, and 
 photographed from nature the scenes by which the book is illustrated." — 
 Louisville Courier-Journal. 
 ENGLAND FROM A BACK WINDOW; With Views of 
 
 Scotland and Ireland 
 By J. M. Bailey, the " * Danbury News' Man." i2mo. $1.00. 
 
 " The peculiar humor of this writer is well known. The British Isles haro 
 never before been looked at in just the same way, — at least, not by any on» 
 who has notified us of the Izct. Mr. Bailey's travels possess, accordingly, a 
 value of their own for the reader, no matter how many previous records of 
 journeys in the mother eountry he may have read." — Rochester Express. 
 
 fold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of pn'M 
 
 LEE AND SHEFAED Publishers Boston 
 
as 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 327 420 2 
 
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