V 1 PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SERIES No. I. Inaugural Lectures Delivered by Members of the Faculty of Theology SHERRATT & HUGHES Publishers to the Victoria University of Manchester London : 60 Chandos Street Manchester : 27 St. Ann Street Inaugural Lectures Delivered by Members of the Faculty of Theology During its First Session, 1904-5 EDITED BY A. S. PEAKE, M.A., B.D. Dean of the Faculty. MANCHESTER AT THE UNIVERSITY PHESS 1905 UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER PUBLICATIONS No. IX. PREFACE. THE present Yl ume contains a series of Inaugural Lectures delivered by members of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Manchester during the session 1904 1905. It is unnecessary for me to speak in detail of the newly- instituted Faculty, since Professor Tout has given an account of its constitution and aims in the opening lecture of this volume. Suffice it to say that in harmony with one of its fundamental principles the University is colour-blind to theological and denominational differences, and at every point, whether in teaching or examining, carefully protects the religious susceptibilities of its students from violation. It has been found possible for teachers of very different beliefs to accept this principle with perfect loyalty and, moreover, to work together in unbroken harmony. Students of various denominations mingle freely together to realise how much they have in common in scientific criticism and exegesis, or in impartial quest of historical truth. Who can tell what this may mean in the future for mutual tolerance and respect, for sympathetic insight into alien modes of thought, or forms of organization and worship ? The lectures were delivered to popular audiences, and the lecturers were left free in the choice of their subjects. Though the standard of popular treatment fluctuates, the lectures should be judged as intended for those who, while interested in theology, are not theologians. A university sinks below the level of its privilege and duty unless it hears the call to share the gains of scholarship with those whose life runs in other grooves. One of the greatest masters of our 2209389 viii PREFACE science has recently said to us : " the theologians of every country only half discharge their duties if they think if enough to treat of the Gospel in the recondite language to learning and bury it in scholarly folios." England has been eminent for its recognition of the truth expressed in Professor Harnack's words, and no deep cleft has divided the expert from the layman. It was therefore not surprising that this series of popular lectures should be one of the first tasks undertaken by the Faculty. A word of explanation may be offered as to the order in which the lectures are arranged. In the main the order adopted has been to begin with the Biblical subjects, to pass on to Church History, then to History of Doctrine, and to conclude with Speculative Theology. Professor Tout's lecture has been placed first, because it supplies an exposition of the character and ideals of the Faculty, and thus forms an appropriate introduction to the first volume of our Theological series. It was my original intention to have placed the lectures of Professor Rhys Davids and Professor Hogg next to represent the Oriental side of our work. The former, however, could not be ready till the rest of the volume was set up in pages, and it had therefore to come at the end. It seemed best under the circumstances to place the latter in the Biblical section. Professor Hogg's lecture is for the most part restricted to a small portion of an immense subject. But it confronts us with the problem, which grows more and more complex as new discoveries accumulate, of the relations between Babylon and Israel. For many years the debate between the " Pan- Babylonists " and their antagonists may go on, with less heat and more solid result, we may hope, than the Babel and Bible controversy initiated by Friedrich Delitzsch's well-known lectures. In that discussion it is desirable that Old Testament scholars should be better equipped on the Assyriological side than has hitherto been possible, and every year makes it plain PREFACE IX how needful it is for some of our theological students to specialise in Assyrian. For it is not simply the Old Testa- ment, but, as the far-reaching theories of Gimkel and others remind us, the New Testament as well that is implicated in this discussion. While the discovery of cuneiform documents has solved many problems and raised many new ones, the rescue of the papyri from the sands of Egypt has had results of perhaps equal moment. Dr. Moulton's lecture exhibits the bearing of these discoveries on the question as to the nature of Biblical Greek, and shows how alike in grammar and vocabulary, it is just the common spoken or written language of the time. That two lecturers should have independently chosen to speak on the Jewish Theology embodied in the non-canonical and especially in the apocalyptic literature, is a noteworthy symptom of the tendency of contemporary New Testament study. Few things are more impressive in Biblical study than the steady rise in our sense of the significance to be attached to this literature. Much light has already been cast on the New Testament, not simply in the detailed interpretation of dark passages and unfamiliar ideas, but in the larger and more vital matter of revealing to us the conditions in which it came to be. And in the question that looms larger and larger before us and beckons us more and more imperiously, that of reconstructing the whole of the conditions, Jewish and Pagan, social and intellectual, ethical and religious, in which Christianity had its birth, and then of determining what the new religion absorbed from its environment and what original elements it contributed, the contemporary Jewish literature will play a most important part. Dr. Adeney's lecture traces the growth of earlier schools of Theology and expounds their ideals, and thus fittingly reminds us, in the inauguration of a modern school of Theology, how our predecessors found in a liberal education the best basis for a course of instruction in Theology. x PREFACE Professor Tout and Mr. Gordon both deal with the study of Church History. The former discusses the relation of this subject to general history, and emphasises the fatal conse- quences of keeping the special isolated from the general, and the danger of relegating it entirely to the Faculty of Theology. The latter enforces and illustrates the principle that biography often gives the key to the origin of particular forms of belief, and shows us the creative part played by experience in Theology. Canon Hicks calls the attention of theologians to the much-neglected evidence supplied by the history of Christian art for the history of Christian thought and life, and of archaeologists to the value for them of Christian antiquities. In his lecture on the Growth of Creeds, Mr. Lockett treats of a subject which has a perennial interest for the theologian, but which has also evoked much stormy controversy in recent years, especially in Germany, where Harnack's lecture on the Apostles' Creed was the occasion for a hot battle of pamphlets. In the domain of Doctrine, and in that borderland where Theology, Philosophy and Physical Science seek to settle accounts with each other, the relation of the idea of Evolution to the doctrines of Christianity offers one of the most keenly-contested issues. One of the crucial points in the debate is selected by Dr. Mackintosh, the problem of Sin and the Fall. His discussion is concentrated on Mr. Tennant's striking Hulsean Lectures, which have attracted attention not only in England, but in Germany and America. Lastly, Professor Rhys Davids has given us an interesting illustration of the character of the Wisdom of the East, and in doing so has incidentally dispelled some cherished illusions. My editorial duties I have performed with such care as an unusually crowded life has permitted. I have not conceived it to be a part of those duties to interfere in any way with the freedom of the contributors. At most I have suggested in some instances such revision as might remove ambiguities and PREFACE xi preclude misunderstanding. I owe the preparation of the Index to Miss Marjorie Cooper, B.A., of this University, and thank her for the care and thoroughness with which she has done the work. I have also to thank my colleagues for their ready co-operation. My special thanks are due to Professor Tout, who, as Chairman of the Publications Committee, has given much time and trouble to the book, and to the benefit of whose advice in this, as in other matters, I have never appealed in vain. ARTHUR S. PEAKE. MANCHESTER, December 1905. CONTENTS. PAGE The Study of Ecclesiastical History in its relation to the Faculties of Arts and Theology in the University of Manchester. By T. F. TOUT, M.A., Professor of Mediaeval and Modern History, and Bishop Fraser Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History; late Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford 1 The Present Movement of Biblical Science. By A. S. PEAKB, M.A., B.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis; late Fellow of Merton College, Oxford 29 Recent Assyriology: Its Bearing on our Views of the History of Israel. By HOPE W. HOGG, M.A., B.Litt., Professor of Semitic Languages and Literature ... ... ... ... 65 Jewish Religious Beliefs in the time of Christ. By J. T. MARSHALL, M.A., D.D., Lecturer on the History of Doctrine ; Principal of the Manchester Baptist College ... ... 105 The Apocalyptic Schools of Judaism in Biblical Times. By LEONARD HASSE, Lecturer on the History of Doctrine; Principal of the Moravian College ... ... ... ... 125 The Greek Language in the Service of Christianity. By JAMES HOPE MOULTON, M.A., D.Litt., Greenwood Lecturer on New Testament Greek; Didsbury Wesleyan College; late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge... ... ... ... ... 161 The Biographical Method in Theology. By ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A., Lecturer on Modern Ecclesiastical History; Principal of the Unitarian Home Missionary College ... 177 Ancient Schools of Theology. By WALTER, F. ADENET, M.A., D.D., Lecturer on the History of Doctrine; Principal of Lancashire Independent College ... ... ... ... 193 Christian Art in Relation to Christian History. By E. L. HICKS, M.A., Lecturer on Christian Epigraphy; Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Cor responding Member of the Imperial Archaeological Society of Berlin; Canon of Manchester ... ... ... ... ... ... 219 The Growth of Creeds. By H. D. LOCKETT, M.A., Lecturer on the History of Doctrine; Principal of Ordsall Hall ... 235 Evolution and the Doctrine of Sin. By R. MACKINTOSH, M.A., D.D., Lecturer on the Fundamental Ideas of Religion; Lancashire Independent College ... ... ... 261 The Wisdom of the East, and how it came to the West. By T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, F.B.A., Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Comparative Religion... ... ... ... ... ... 283 THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN ITS RELATION TO THE FACULTIES OF ARTS AND THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOEY IN ITS RELATION TO THE FACULTIES OF ARTS AND THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER. BY Professor T. F. TOUT, M.A. THERE is an old custom which calls upon a new teacher to say what he thinks of his subject and how he proposes to promote its study. I cannot claim that what I have to lay before you is uttered in obedience to any such tradition. Since 1896 it has been my privilege as Bishop Fraser Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History to be responsible for this subject in our own University. Up to the present all that I have been able to do in this direction has been to give a couple of courses of lectures from year to year to those of our students who chose to take up this study as part of their general historical education, and to those theological students working in the neighbourhood who found it convenient to attend them. But it is not only in special courses so labelled that ecclesiastical history is taught. All general history must for certain periods deal largely with the ecclesiastical aspect of things, and the most unecclesiastical of historians of the Middle Ages, the Reformation and the Counter Reformation must be an ecclesiastical historian whether he will or not. Perhaps in the past we have done more for this subject in this indirect way than by more direct methods. Anyhow, we have managed, with all our limitations, to give a 2 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY distinct ecclesiastical flavour to a good deal of our work. One of our oldest graduates has won a position for himself as a student of English Presbyterianism and Puritanism in the seventeenth century, and the volume of essays, which we put together to give some notion of the work of the school at the time of the College Juhilee, includes ecclesias- tical topics ranging from Caesar-worship, St. Ursula and the Austin Canons down to the ideals of the Puritans and the Labadists, and the share of the Moravians in the Evangelical Revival. This year, however, we are inaugurating, if not a new teacher and a new subject, a new faculty, and the estab- lishment of our theological faculty will soon, I hope, make such increased demands for the direct teaching of ecclesiastical history that this occasion seems an appropriate one to review our ideals, explain our methods, and urge the widening of the scope of our work. It is for this reason that I venture to call your attention to the subject of the study of ecclesiastical history. I propose to deal with it from two different, but closely related, points of view. I shall speak first of ecclesiastical history in the narrower aspect of the study regarded as an end in itself. But I shall endeavour as soon as I can to get on to the wider problems involved in the relations of ecclesiastical history to a theological faculty set up on the lines on which we in Manchester have conceived it our duty to work. To put the thing in another way, I shall have to speak of the relations of ecclesiastical history, firstly to history and secondly to theology. Before we enter upon this, let us consider what we mean by ecclesiastical history. I cannot do better than quote the wise words of Stubbs, uttered so long ago as 1867, when he first entered into office as Professor at Oxford : "Modern History, including Mediaeval History in the THE UNITY OF HISTORY 3 term, is co-extensive in its field of view, in its habit of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History. We may call them sister studies, but if they are not really the one and the same, they are twin sisters, so much alike that there is no distinguishing between them." In the same spirit Professor Gwatkin, of Cambridge, wrote a few years ago : " He that will be a teacher of Ecclesiastical History must lay it to heart that there is neither art nor mystery in the matter beyond the art and mystery of teaching History in general. Ecclesiastical History is not an enchanted ground where the laws of evidence and commonsense are left behind, and partizanship may run riot without blame. It is simply a department of General History, like Political or Social or Economic History, and differs no more from these and others than they do from each other. Each of them leans on the rest, and in its turn throws light on them. The problems of one are often the answers of another. They all deal with the same mass of materials and they all deal with it in the same way. The difference is only that each has a different thread to disentangle from the great coil." So convinced is Professor Gwatkin of this view of his subject that when called upon to write an article on the teaching of Ecclesiastical History, all that he has to say on that special subject is contained in the remarks, the gist of which I have just read. The bulk of his paper tells us how history should be taught, in terms that would be as much applicable to the teaching of Constitutional or Economic History, or for that matter to the History of Architecture or the History of Chemistry as to the special aspect of history of which he is so distinguished an exponent. I might well be tempted to follow Professor Gwatkin's lead, and discourse upon the study of history in general 4 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and its study in our University in particular; but while holding with intense conviction the general view that Ecclesiastical History is nothing but one particular aspect of historic science, I may perhaps be permitted to hurry hastily over this attractive field and aim at limiting the issues before us to something more specific and more practical. Why, it may be asked, do we set up special claims for the study of ecclesiastical history, if it be simply history and no more? The answer is to be found in the principle of the division of labour and the growth of specialisation that the complexity of modern science involves. We all pay reverence to the great principle of the unity and continuity of history. Many of us will remember how the unwearied preacher of this doctrine, the late E. A. Freeman, complained that he could only work in chains because he was tied down at Oxford to the duties of a professorship of " modern " history. Yet one who has had the misfortune to be for a few years professor of history at large, may be allowed to point out that there is as much slavery in serving a master so exacting that it is impossible to satisfy him, as in being kept away by authority from a task that one would fain make one's own. No one nowadays can attempt, like Bacon, to take all knowledge for his province, and not even the boldest of modern academic teachers would follow the fashion of each "regent" of the Scottish Universities, who in turns undertook the whole instruction of the freshmen of a single year, so that in the course of the four years' curriculum each student had learnt every subject that he took up under the guidance of a single omniscient master. The modern professor is not called upon to teach every subject after this fashion; but the time is coming when the true University teacher must equally realise his incompetence to give more than the merest outline of the world's history DIVISIONS OF HISTORY 5 from the beginning down to our own days. If he attempt to keep his information up to a respectable standard over the whole ground, he will never be able to find time to make himself master of any one portion or aspect of it, and, though he may be a great teacher, he will never add anything of moment to our knowledge of historic science. " Divide et impera " is a sounder maxim in learning than in politics. It may not be always the highest wisdom to rule men by setting them by the ears; but it is almost a truism that the realm of knowledge can only be conquered by dividing it. History is too big a field for any one man : the only question is, How should this vast field be cut up into allotments that the individual can till, with the hope of making the ground yield good fruits? There are two ways of dividing the subject of history. One is the division in time, which happens when one man is told off to teach "ancient" history, another "mediaeval" and another "modern." The other is the division by sub- jects, when we have one instructor in "political," another in " economic," another in " military," another in " local," another in "literary," and another in "ecclesiastical" history. The endless rope of knowledge, which we have to pick to pieces, can thus be dealt with in two fashions. We can chop it up into convenient segments, and give each teacher his piece ; or we can give each teacher the task of unravelling his separate strand of the whole coil and hope that by limiting his labour he may manage ultimately to dissect out his particular thread. Both systems have their advantages, and both their inconveniences; and the best way to minimise the latter is probably to employ both systems, as we are already beginning to do in Manchester. Thus we have our professor of ancient and our professor of modern history : but we have also our teachers of the history of Israel, of the history of literature, of economic 6 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY history, and of ecclesiastical history. The distinguished scholar, whose addition to our departmental staff is directly due to the institution of our faculty of theology, illustrates how the same man can continue both methods. He is Lecturer in Modern Ecclesiastical History. It is much to be wished that, like the Universities of France, we had our special teacher of " local history." If we are to do much in ecclesiastical history, the teachers of that subject will have to be relieved from the claims of other branches of their science upon their time and attention. But how- ever much we split up a subject, the teachers of it must regard each other as sharers in a common task. "Water- tight compartments " may save a ship in a storm ; but they give a good deal of trouble in calm weather. A University, or even a department of a University, run on the principle of water-tight compartments will never have a sound and corporate life. Freeman's above-quoted complaint of being tied down to " modern history " is only valid because he happened to be a distinguished exponent of periods generally labelled "ancient." We may sympathise with him much more unreservedly when he complains that "so-called ancient and so-called modern history are taken up in distinct schools as wholly unconnected subjects, to be taught and lectured on by teachers who stand in no kind of relation to each other." Our divisions of "epochs" and " aspects " are, after all, for our own convenience and not because of any differences of the facts themselves. History is history, however much it be subdivided. And we have learnt in Manchester that history, whether " ancient " or " modern," or " ecclesiastical " or " economic," can all be made part of a school of history as such, while the student of ancient or modern languages, or the student of theology, or of commerce, can still take up in isolation that portion of history which is specially neccessary to DIFFICULTY OF ISOLATION 7 illustrate his own chief subject. It is in this sense that I hope that the study of ecclesiastical history will still go on in our University on its old lines in the Faculty of Arts as a part of history, even though our new faculty now gives it a further position as auxiliary to theology. Ecclesiastical history, then, is simply one aspect of general history, and the training of the ecclesiastical historian must in each case be that which is most appro- priate to the period of work which he proposes to study. In each case his ideal is to isolate his aspect of history as much as he can ; but in no case can he afford to neglect to regard history as a whole. The more rich his periods may be in events of specially ecclesiastical interest, the greater is the danger of his drifting into general history and away from his particular branch of the subject. Who shall draw the line between ecclesiastical and political history in the Middle Ages or in the days of the Reformation ? It is as impossible a task as for the mediaeval bishop or prince to determine in practice the line that separated Church and State. It was easy enough to speak in general terms of the things that were Caesar's and the things that were God's. The difficulty was to define in practice the boundary between them. The chronic feud of Church and State, which lasted until the State grew strong enough to coerce the Church into obedience, showed eloquently that the line could not, as a matter of fact, be drawn. A Henry VIII. might profess to get rid of popes and monks as a political measure; but however little religious Henry's motives might have been, he carried out a religious change, even when he protested that he did not do anything of the sort. The difficulty of the ecclesiastical historian in isolating his subject remains, even when the connection between religion and politics is less close. The student of Church History during the first three centuries, and during the 8 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is not constantly tempted to encroach upon the ground of the political historian. Yet how many sound theologians have been poor historians of the origins of the Church because they did not approach the subject with the training and temper of the historian of the ancient world : because they were contented with a general and superficial knowledge of the politics, the life, the thought, the literature, and the art of the early Empire ! It is significant of what the greatest English scholar of recent times who busied himself with ecclesiastical origins, thought of this matter, that when Bishop Lightfoot established at Cambridge the scholar- ships that bear his name, he emphasised that the special object of his foundation was not simply the encouragement of the study of ecclesiastical history in itself, but equally of its connection with general history. And how much has modern ecclesiastical history been thrown into dis- repute by the tendency so strongly manifested in many well-known books to resolve their subject into the history of eminent divines. We lose all grasp of the spirit of the evangelical revival, and of its relations to contemporary life and thought, when we work wearily through the petty and trivial details of long biographies which, valuable in themselves, are yet insufficient to illustrate the whole movement. The student of early Methodism traces the journeys and summarises the sermons of John Wesley, but seldom pauses to show the relations of that strong and masterful personality to the non-ecclesiastical movements of his age. Thus we learn rightly enough to regard Wesley as a protest against the tendencies of the eighteenth century, but we do not always pause to con- sider in what important ways he reflected the very spirit of his times. And in the same way the so-called Oxford movement is treated with the same limitations of vision as DIFFICULTY OF ISOLATION 9 were characteristic of the Oxford reformers. You cannot understand the full significance and place in history of the Tractarian revival, if you persistently ignore the Reform Bill, the march of democracy, the Corn Laws, the Industrial Revolution, the social and economic troubles which are reflected in the pages of Carlyle or Disraeli or Kingsley. There is little evidence that these matters profoundly moved the Oriel Common Room, but as soon as the revival spread from one little town to the country at large, they were the chief things that its disciples had to reckon with in their practical relations to their flocks. The difficulties of the ecclesiastical historian in isolating his field, and the dangers he incurs if he isolates it too narrowly, are in no wise troubles peculiar to his own particular subject. In absolutely no respect are his problems to be envisaged, or to be solved, by any other methods than those of the student of any other aspect of history. He has, of course, his special technical equip- ment. He must know something more of theology and something more of the history of thought and ideas than his political or economic fellow- worker need do ; but of this aspect of his work I will speak more at length later on. He has, however, to use the same sources, to apply the same rules of evidence, and to keep the same single eye to the pursuit of truth. In no field of enquiry is it more necessary to keep clearly before us the object of our investigations. Ranke's hackneyed formula, "ich will nur sagen wie es eigentlich gewesen ist," should never be out of the mind of the historian of the Church, even if such a dictum has led to J. R. Green denouncing the great German teacher as a " pragmatist." The historian's business is simply to tell what happened; to narrate and describe facts. He must not be too ambitious or claim too much for his subject. He is rather the provider of 10 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY material for the theologian, than the theologian. He is not so much the judge, as the witness. When he deals with opinions, it is not his primary business to say whether the opinions are right or wrong. He must strive to interpret the views that he has to present in such a way as the holders of these views would themselves have wished them to be expounded. He must realise that the most learned, able and sincere people are capable of holding all sorts of different views ; and that notions which seem to us quite ridiculous and absurd are held by people at least as well qualified to arrive at such judgments as we are ourselves, and that this has always been the case since the beginnings of recorded history. He may well succeed in doing this, and yet not be as successful in overstepping the subtle line that separates facts from opinions, possibility from probability, and probability from rigorously demon- strated truth. In claiming for ecclesiastical history the name and methods of science, that is to say, of organised knowledge, there is no suggestion that historical truth can be demonstrated like mathematical or physical truth. With us historians, what you can prove in a way that all men will accept, is as a rule exactly that which does not much matter. But this is not a special characteristic of the study of ecclesiastical history ; it is equally true of all the moral and political sciences, wherein probability must ever be the guide of life. Nor can it be admitted that there is anything in his subject that makes the ecclesiastical historian more specially prone to bias than his brethren dealing with analogous pursuits. However much we may preach the modern doctrine of objectivity and impartiality, there seems something unnatural and inhuman in the careful self-suppression and frigid narrowing of the field which such methods involve. We appeal to the science of PERSONAL BIAS OF HISTORIANS 11 Germany, but we are confronted by the fact that the greatest of German scholars, Theodore Mommsen, saw all ancient history in the light of his own personality and experience, and was aggressively partial whenever he spoke to the great public. It is much the same in our own land. The rigid self-suppression of a Stubbs or Gardiner is possible to very few of us. Freeman, though better informed and more careful in his facts, had as many prejudices as Froude. The "judicious Hallam" was only judicious to Whig eyes, and was not only biassed, but bitterly contemptuous. Green's " Short History " is intensely coloured by his personality, and the best brief account of English Church history (the late Mr. Wakeman's) is a High Church apology, not a scientific presentment of the facts. But these things only prove the weakness of human nature. They make it more and more the duty of the professional student to practise the lessons of self-suppression, or at least to distinguish between what he knows and what he believes. Anyhow the ecclesiastical historian is not to be specially blamed for giving way to a bias which is so deeply rooted in human nature. So far we have dealt with church history as a branch of history, and have sought to suggest that there is nothing in special that can be said of its study that cannot be said with equal force of any other subject of historical science. In practice, however, we shall find that ecclesiastical history has not been treated in this country, and is still not in a large measure treated, as a branch of history. Our professorships of ecclesiastical history are part of our divinity schools ; their holders are ministers of a particular religious body, bound in most cases to a definite theological standpoint. At Oxford the professor must be a priest of the English Church, and is ex-officio the Canon of a Cathedral. In Scotland the official exponents of Church 12 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY history are members of the Presbyterian Church, and it is the same in both countries alike with regard to the theological colleges not directly associated with a University. I am not concerned now with the policy involved in these limitations. What I rather wish to emphasise is the separation of ecclesiastical history from other sorts of history that has in most cases resulted from this policy. I am sure that the exclusive appropriation of ecclesiastical history to the faculty of theology, and the consequent separation of it from the faculty of arts is a mistake. The example of Bishop Creighton at Cambridge is the best instance to the contrary. Yet this separation is due to practical rather than to theoretical considerations, and has simply arisen from the circumstance that a knowledge of church history is a necessary part of the equipment of the theologian. We are thus presented with our second problem, the relation of ecclesiastical history to theology. Theology is the theory of the divine nature and operation, and the term was used in something approaching that sense by Greek philosophers long before Christianity had come into being. Only gradually was the term appropriated in the Christian Church for the subjects which specially concerned what we may call the metaphysics of religion. Ever since, its use has been gradually widening. By the fifth century it meant the whole circle of theoretical instruction in religion. Since the twelfth century it has been further extended to include even the practical exposition of religious doctrine. To us moderns its use fluctuates between these two extremes. When we speak with any precision, we mean by theology a species of philosophy, a theory of the universe, dogma or doctrine, a systematic exposition of the place of God and revelation, faith and conduct, in the economy of the world. But very often THE MEANING OF THEOLOGY 13 we use the word theology in a much vaguer sense. We indicate by it those varied branches of knowledge which directly make for the special education of those whose central interest is religious truth, or those who are pre- paring to equip themselves for the office of a minister of religion. To theology in the former sense ecclesiastical history is but a handmaid. It can supply the theologian with material; it can narrow his problems by stating them in the order of their occurrence in time, and by pushing them back to their origins; but it can never hope to solve them by purely historical methods. Ecclesiastical history, then, stands to theology in this sense as political history stands to political science, and as economic history stands to political economy. Your ecclesiastical historian should be something of a theologian, just as your economic historian should be something of an economist. If he is not, he is always liable to forget the limitations of his method and to ignore the fact that all the history in the world will not compensate for the lack of theory. On the other hand, if his search for the truth lead him to economic or theological agnosticism, he will, if also a historian, have the satisfaction of falling back on solid work done on his more limited historic field. To theology in its more comprehensive sense, as the whole of the education, theoretical and practical, of the theologian, the relation of ecclesiastical history is simply that of a part of the whole. Theology conceived in this fashion means certain aspects of history, certain parts of philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, approached from a particular standpoint ; certain portions of philosophy; nay, some very important elements of common-sense and practical rules for the conduct of affairs. In this sense teaching a student the right way of holding a baby when it is brought to the font may not be regarded as outside the scope of pastoral theology, and, if 14 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY we may judge from some press reviews of Bishop Stubbs' letters, we may even include in it the difficult art of suffering fools gladly. Our critics are agreed that failure in this branch of practical theology is almost enough to deprive a great historian of any claim to the title of a great bishop. This, our practical view of theology, ranges from the infinitely great to the infinitely little ; from sounding the deepest mysteries of the universe to the training for the everyday details of a clergyman's life. Such, then, is the relation of Church history to history and to theology. It is a Janus, facing both ways, turning its countenance with equal legitimacy and with equal persistency to both, and yet, though closely related to, not quite the same as either. But we may claim perhaps a special relation of our subject to the faculty of theology as established in Manchester. It will not be, I hope, entirely off my subject if I venture t remind you of the general lines upon which our faculty has been set up. The older faculties of theology have been confessional; they are the property of a single Church; they have their creeds and their standards. In the Middle Ages, when the Western World was all of one faith, this was of course necessary and inevitable, and we should perhaps rather commend the freedom with which mediaeval theologians formed schools and agreed to differ, rather than lament the self-imposed restrictions which to some impatient modern eyes limited their outlook and stereotyped their methods. With the Reformation the majestic unity of thought, faith and worship broke up, as far as we can see at present, for ever. This is not the place either to lament or rejoice at this. All we are concerned with is to note the undoubted fact that it did happen, and there is no present prospect of union being restored. Accordingly the theological faculties of the Universities of Europe took DIVERGENT THEOLOGIES OF EUROPE 15 their colour from the local form of religion accepted by the country in which they were situated. Thus Lutheran faculties arose in Germany and Scandinavia, Calvinistic faculties in Switzerland, Holland and Scotland, Anglican faculties in England, and Roman Catholic faculties in Southern and Central Europe. A certain timidity of the results that might occur from the results of this diversity of teaching, combined with an honest desire to make more general a special theological training, led also to the new departure of the Council of Trent, which set up the seminary system, by which multitudes of young theological learners were withdrawn from the Universities altogether and sent to study in strictly professional schools, where they had no opportunities of intercourse with men of other professions, faiths or outlook than their own. Subsequent ages have seen this system extended to the Reformed Churches, and not least has this been the case in England, partly by reason of the inaccessibility of the older schools of learning to those who refused to accept the doctrines of the Established Church, and partly for other reasons which in the nineteenth century have made small theological colleges the places of education of a very large proportion of the Anglican clergy. Meanwhile other movements of thought burst out, more radical and more destructive of ancient standards than the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. I am no more concerned with appraising the value of these tendencies than I am with discussing the validity of the position of the sixteenth century reformers. Again we have only to note the fact of their existence. As a result of their presence a great change came over the position of theology in the Universities of Europe. The more fluid theology of Protestanism was profoundly modified by these changes, and there was gradually brought about a more or less complete disintegration of the dogmatic restrictions 16 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY of the Protestant faculties in German, Switzerland and Holland; so that nowadays the teacher or student of theology can in practice believe as little or as much as he chooses; though side by side with them the Catholic faculties of theology in Germany continue to flourish, and produce scholars and divines of great distinction, as well as introduce the mass of the German priesthood to the broader life of a University and to contact with their fellow men. In the Latin countries the same movement led to the disappearance of theology almost entirely as a subject of academic study. The Universities were secularised; the priesthood were perforce thrown back on the seminary; it was made difficult or impossible to set up private Universities on a Catholic basis, and thus the clergy were cut off from University life almost completely. In more conservative England less drastic changes were brought about, but it will, I think, be generally admitted that no new University is likely to be either able or willing to set up a faculty of theology limited by tests or confessional restrictions. Indeed it seemed not so long ago that the new Universities of England would exclude theology as carefully as the Universities of Italy, and that not only a great subject but a great profession would be debarred from being brought within their purview. Of recent years there has been a change of feeling. First in Wales, then in London, and still more recently in Manchester, faculties of theology have been established, which, differing in many ways, have at least this in common, that they are free from all denominational restrictions and that they impose no tests on those who are brought within their sphere. To bring about this result, great sacrifices were necessary in more than one quarter. To many it seemed a grave danger lest the acrimony of sectarian strife should infect THEOLOGY IN UNIVERSITIES 17 the calm currents of academic life. To some the subject seemed unmeaning, and the profession that studied it to be losing its place in the modern world. To others there was the fear lest religious truth should be imperilled by the equal rights which all types of opinion must claim under such a system. But those who had faith in their convictions realised that it was part of the conditions of modern life that all views should be equally free to express themselves, and that the truth would have to win its way by its own merits. Sooner or later, if not at College, as soon as he entered the great world, the young divine would be brought into contact with every phase of belief, and it would be well for him if his apprenticeship began early rather than late. Then, like Guion, he will, in Milton's language, pass with his palmer through the cave of mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, and see, and know, and yet abstain. Thus friends of theological science realised that their subject could only enter into the University curriculum, if it were treated just like any other study; and they preferred to run any apparent risks that this course involved rather than see the "queen of sciences" shut out from the Universities altogether, and the Univer- sities themselves grow up in the assurance that theology was something quite outside the sphere of institutions that claimed to busy themselves with the pursuit of all know- ledge. The first steps taken to realise the theological function of the new Universities were tentative and cautious enough. Theology was approached as part of the ordinary man's training, as part of the faculty of arts. We have local instances of this in the famous lectures given by the first Principal of Owens College on the religion of the scholar. Our Greenwood lectureship in Hellenistic Greek, our Eraser lectureship in Church history, our long- established lectureship in Hebrew, and our Wellington 18 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Scholarship in the Greek Testament are all still abiding instances of these early efforts. This was good in its way, and here Manchester set the example, as it ought, yet it covered very little of the ground necessary, and left much still to be supplied. There was wanted professional as well as general training, and this was gradually brought about. First of all, a distinction was made between teaching and examining. You must teach definite views, it was said; but you can examine on knowledge and not on opinion. It was found that men of opinions very different from those of any shade of Anglicanism could obtain the highest distinctions in the denominational theological schools of Oxford and Cambridge, and that priests in Anglican orders could, and did, award first classes to men whose knowledge and calibre they recognised, even when they did not agree with their views. Accordingly the first thing that the Universities offered to the theologians was to examine them. The old examining body, called the University of London, examined from quite an early time in certain non-contentious theological subjects. A much further step was taken when the Welsh University began its work in this way. The Colleges of the University would teach no theology, for they were rigidly " non-sectarian," but the University would recognise efficient theological Colleges and allow their pupils, being also graduates of a University, to present themselves for examination under University auspices. A further step in advance was made when the teachers of these recognised institutions were organised into a theological faculty, and recognised, either directly or indirectly, as University teachers. This step, taken somewhat indirectly in Wales, was first frankly ventured upon in London, which also enlarged the sphere of its operations by including more than one Anglican College, the Welsh organisation being limited in practice MANCHESTER FACULTY OF THEOLOGY 19 to Colleges representative of various types of Protestant Nonconformity. In Manchester we have been able to go further. Like Wales or London, we have recognised theological Colleges of widely different types, and, like them, we have recognised teachers of academic distinction working in such Colleges. We have organised, as in London, an autonomous faculty, including, among others, teachers of the type that I have described, and we have given the faculty the same powers of initiating legislation and administering our academic organisation as belong to the other faculties of the University. But we have been mindful of the fact that our very existence as an independent University is due to our protest against the separation of examining from teaching and the elevation of examination into the special function of a University. That being so, it would have been against all our principles to examine when we had not taught, or to be content with instruction being entirely given in institutions over which we had but limited control. It was found on investigation that it was not only possible to examine, but also to teach many portions of theology with regard to facts rather than opinions. Accordingly we were the first institution in this country to lay down the principle that in our "undenomina- tional" faculty of theology a substantial portion of the teaching should be given by University professors and lecturers, appointed by and responsible to the University, and appointed, it may be emphasised, without tests or restrictions, and without regard to their opinions, but with sole reference to their scholarship and learning. All that we ask of our theological teachers is what we ask of every teacher in the University, namely, that they should follow the rule laid down by John Owens, that " nothing will be introduced in the matter or mode of education in reference 20 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY to any religious or theological subject which shall be reasonably offensive to the conscience of any student." It is in this that the Manchester faculty of theology constitutes an important new departure in academic history. It is the first occasion in this country on which theology, unfettered by tests, has been accepted as an integral part of the University organisation and has been treated like any other subject. At the same time, however, we recognised the patent fact that our new departure would have been useless, had there not existed already in our city a large number of theological institutions and a large number of theological teachers, whose work, though not formally, had long had practically the characteristic of University work, and these we have incorporated into our system, either as University lecturers in their respective subjects, or as recognised teachers in recognised places of effective theological instruction. Though our experiment is still young, we believe that events have already justified our boldness, and that the faculty established on this dual basis will combine the advantages of the old system of separate theological colleges for each denomination with the advantages of a wider and freer academic school. While we wish our teaching in all subjects to be equally free, we cannot, as practical men, blind our eyes to the fact that a large proportion of our students in the faculty of theology will be those who are preparing for the ministry of the various Christian denominations. We must respect their wants, if we wish them to take part in working out our ideals. Moved by these conflicting tendencies, we have set up a system in which the whole control of lectures, courses, examinations and curricula rests with the faculty of the University, subject of course to the supervision of bodies like the Senate, the Council and Court, to which each section MANCHESTER FACULTY OF THEOLOGY 21 of the University is subordinate. In our theological faculty, however, we have taken care that the various colleges in our midst shall each have their representatives, though those representatives come to the faculty, not as delegates, but as University teachers appointed ad hoc. We have set up an Advisory Board, which includes persons of position interested in theological study, and men of high theological distinction, whose occupations in other walks of life or in other universities, make it impossible for them to take direct part in our teaching; and to the advice of this body we have owed much at every stage of our formative work. The actual work of teaching we have divided between the University and the recognised colleges in something like equal proportions. One subject we have insisted upon all students taking within our walls, and that is the subject of Comparative Religion, for the teaching of which we have had the good fortune to obtain the services of a professor of acknowledged eminence. It has been thought that nothing is more likely to open the mind of the student than to be brought into living contact with the origins of religious beliefs, and with some of the great historical religions which divide with Christianity the allegiance of the world. One group of subjects is taught both by the University and by the colleges. These include Hellenistic Greek, Hebrew, Old and New Testament Criticism and Exegesis, Ecclesiastical History, and the like. Here recognition had to be made of the facts that many of these subjects were already expounded by teachers of eminence before the faculty came into existence, and that in some quarters it might still be thought wise to give to the teaching offered a particular stamp which the University was not in a position to accept. Students can choose, therefore, between university teachers and recognised teachers, at their dis- 22 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY cretion, provided that in the aggregate they put in a sufficient number of attendances at university lectures. To meet local convenience some university lectures are given at the various colleges, while all recognised lectures wherever given are open to properly qualified students of the University. On one subject only the University makes no provision within its walls, and that is the subject called by us the " History of Doctrine," which will correspond to the "dogmatic" or "systematic" theology of the confessional theological schools. Here it is recognised that grave diversion of opinion must exist, and that reduplication of teaching from different standpoints is therefore necessary to meet the wants of the students concerned. As we have recognised colleges belonging to the Church of England, the Baptists, the Independents, the Moravians, the Unitarians, the Primitive Methodists, and the Wesleyans, it is clear that such divergencies will exist. The examinations in this subject, like all others conducted by the faculty, will be in scholarship and knowledge, not in opinion, but the examiners will also largely be the teachers, assisted by competent external examiners. Our system is hardly yet in working order. It could never have been started but for the loyal and ungrudging co-operation of the teachers of theological colleges in our midst, and our additions to the theological staff of the University were only possible by the timely bounty of an anonymous benefactor. Thanks to these, we can claim to have initiated a considerable system at an extraordinarily small expense; but, if we are to go on developing on the lines on which we have begun, we shall need substantial additions to our staff, and even more substantial additions to our financial basis. But we have thought it better to begin as we could, rather than wait for a perfection that AIMS OF THE FACULTY 23 can best come gradually. We can appeal for substantial help more easily, when we have a record of work done to show. This sketch of the aims of the faculty has apparently taken us far away from the study of ecclesiastical history. But our distance from this subject is perhaps greater in appearance than in reality. The very existence of our faculty depends upon the separation between knowledge and opinion, which is, as I tried to suggest earlier, the essential function of the scholarly ecclesiastical historian. Our whole scheme is in effect based upon that historical method which has made so many conquests for science in our own age. All that I have claimed for ecclesiastical history in the narrower sense, can be claimed for Biblical history, which is only our subject at an earlier stage, for Comparative Religion, which is largely historical, though also largely descriptive of present conditions; and, with certain modifications, for the philological and philosophical sides of our curriculum. Theologians have often been reproached with their differences, and with the acerbity with which they express them. Perhaps they are no worse than other men, but it may be urged in mitigation of their attitude that the system of each theological school doing all its work in isolation is only too likely to emphasise differences, and lead people to ignore how much common ground they occupy. I do not wish to minimise any real differences of opinion, but rather to recognise that they will always exist. But I do claim for our system that it brings together those who would otherwise live apart. Such intercourse cannot but help forward toleration, sympathy, and common understanding. This will begin perhaps in the class room, but it must extend outside it, and for this reason I welcome very cordially the Theological Society which the students of our infant 24 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY faculty have set up, wherein teachers and taught can join in reverent discussion of the problems of their science, and get to know something more of each other than they can in the lecture room. But we may also anticipate a tendency towards more common teaching. I look forward to the time when an increasing proportion, especially of what I may call the non-contentious work of the theologians, will be done within the University. There is no real need for the different colleges to try to make them- selves complete at all points; they should rather aim at finding, first of all, the special practical and dogmatic instruction which each of them needs, and next to that the common home, the common life and the common sympathies which college corporate life so abundantly secures. I look forward to the time when there will be no difficulty in men of various faiths studying history and philosophy, criticism and philosophy, under a common teacher. There is nothing " denominational " in Hebrew grammar, or in the peculiarities of the Hellenistic Greek. Such subjects need not be reduplicated in every college any more than ecclesiastical history. Our theologians must specialise each in his particular department. Then only can they realise the true academic ideals; then only can they add to the teaching of their pupils that research and original investigation which is the main element in determining the rank of a University among the hierarchy of learned societies. Unless our faculty adds to theological knowledge, it will not have fulfilled the very purpose of its being. We shall not be satisfied until there is a long row of volumes of a theological series, side by side with the other publications of the University of Manchester. I must return from these larger matters to discuss for a short time the exact place which Church history should CHURCH HISTORY IN THE FACULTY 25 take among the various studies which are necessary to students of a theology faculty. This place must necessarily vary to some extent according to the different ideals which inspire divinity curricula, and also according to local circumstances. Perhaps its minimum position is in the courses of the University of Wales, which do not insist on any knowledge of Church history after 451, and only offer as an optional subject at an early stage the study of the Protestant Reformation. In Scotland there is rather more required ; for example, at Edinburgh ten years ago there was early Church history up to 381 and Scottish Church history during the 17th century; but there was no opportunity to those so minded to specialise more completely in that subject. In Manchester we hope to go further than that. It would have been tempting to have prepared as our programme a general survey of general Church history from the Christian era to our own days. That is certainly the ideal course, since the average theologian, like the average man, is more concerned with the general tendencies of history than with the minute details of any particular period. But to have done this would have overburdened the curriculum. This course also would have been open to the objection that the study of a period involves the possibility of insight into historic method such as the teacher of general outlines can never give. Moreover, in the case of our own men, they have had some such general survey as this in their Arts course, and it is with their wants that we are primarily concerned. A compromise has therefore been adopted between the ideal and the practical. One course of lectures will take the student through the period of Christian origins down to the end of the fourth century, while in that period a special study of the Arian controversy will afford a more precise training in detail. Another course will deal with 26 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY the whole of English Church history, of which the period of the Reformation will be selected for more special treat- ment; and, though it is not in the programme, we can promise that this survey of English Church history shall not be too "insular," but that some attention shall be directed to the great turning points of general Church history, without knowledge of which the study of the history of a particular church is not fully intelligible. For the majority, that is all that need be taught or examined in; one must recognise that many will have a philological or philosophical, rather than an historical bent, and not press them too hard. But for such as really wish to devote themselves to the more serious study of Church history, an opportunity will be given by the inclusion among selected subjects, one of which is compulsory, of a special period of Church history, including certain prescribed texts of original authorities. This part of our teaching will only begin in October, 1905, when the subject chosen will be the early history of Christianity in Britain, with special reference to the text of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. But the object of the course will be similar to the object of our "selected subjects" for history honours and H.A., with some of which, indeed, the course may occasionally with advantage be wholly or in part identical. We shall strive to teach historic method as well as historic facts : we shall bring the student face to face with the sources on which his knowledge is based, and encourage him to go on working for himself after he has taken his B.D. degree. There is still the D.D. before him, and this degree, like our other doctorates, will always, I hope, be awarded only on the results of serious original work. The highest hope of the teachers of Church history will be fulfilled if a reasonable proportion of the scholars who aim at this degree will devote their researches to THE NECESSITY OF RESEARCH 27 ecclesiastical history; and they will promise all the help that they can give in selecting subjects and in devising the best methods of approaching them. For those living in our neighbourhood, there are the immense collections of materials for every aspect of ecclesiastical history con- tained in our four great libraries ; and for all labouring in any one fixed spot, there is the opportunity of original investigation into local ecclesiastical antiquities, for which every parish, township, or ancient foundation affords a subject. The history of a parish or an ancient chapel is always worth writing, provided that its history is told in sufficient relation to the broader streams of ecclesiastical tendency. Much more so would be the history of the neighbouring dioceses, not one of which has ever yet been adequately treated; and the local materials for the early history of Nonconformity, despite the good work lately done on them, are still capable of much further investigation. Thus, in dealing with our particular subject as in dealing with the faculty of theology generally, we are at last brought away from examinations and lectures to something that is better than either; and this is the pursuit of study for its own sake, and in particular that independent and first hand study, which involves research and leads to additions to our knowledge. There is special need of emphasising this to an audience largely consisting of ministers of religion, since to none is the life of study more necessary, and to few, under modern conditions, is the life of study more difficult. We are all in danger of consuming our lives in practical work; there is much that has to be done and few who are able to do it. But, even looking at things from the most practical standpoint, it would be a real blow to their efficiency if the clergy as a body were compelled to give up study, and become merely administrators and men of affairs. The only remedy 28 STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY against a tendency that has already gone too far, is to insist on the fact that the quiet life of study and reflection is as compatible with the highest ministerial vocation, as the more bustling life in the world, and that unless this be recognised as legitimate for those who have a vocation for it, the clergy will cease to be able to assume intellectual leadership, or speak with the authority that teachers of the people have a right to assume. The faculty of theology in the University of Manchester will not have been created in vain, if it inspires a few of its alumni with the scholarly ideals of the older generation of divines so fast vanishing from amongst us. THE PRESENT MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE THE PRESENT MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE. BY Professor A. S. PEAKE, M.A., B.D. IN choosing as the subject of my Inaugural Lecture " The Present Movement of Biblical Science," I have been guided by the belief that the most fitting course I could adopt would be to present in rapid outline the main assured results, estimate the present drift of opinion, and possibly forecast the lines on which advance is likely to be made. It can only be a bird's eye view that I am able to offer, and the lecture must be all the more sketchy that my work lies both in Old and New Testament Science, and some attention must be paid to each. I pass over with the briefest mention, the improvement in theological equipment, the more scientific grammars, lexicons, concordances and texts now accessible over so large a part of our field. The Old Testament student has a whole series of important Hebrew grammars, the valuable Oxford Hebrew lexicon now nearing completion, and two important Hebrew German lexicons, Mandelkern's Hebrew Concordance and the Oxford Concordance to the Septuagint, admirable manual editions of the Septuagint, and the prospect that within a few years the first instal- ment of the large Cambridge edition will be issued. The New Testament student has also the prospect of the new Winer in which Dr. Moulton will incorporate the rich gains that have come with the papyrus discoveries. Side 30 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE by side with this work prominence must be given to Deissmann's "Bible Studies" and Blass's "Grammar of New Testament Greek." Grimm's Lexicon edited by Thayer still remains most valuable, though here again a standard authority is to some extent antiquated by the new evidence that has come from the papyri. In Moulton and Geden's Concordance to the Greek Testament we have a work which is based on our best critical text, not merely one which takes account of it. Nor do I stay to vindicate the legitimacy of Biblical criticism. If revelation is a visitant from eternity, it has at least come in the garb of time. It is a process in history, and as such invites, nay compels, the application of the historical method. Once we have recognised its fundamentally historical character we have committed ourselves to the duty of critical study. It would be a waste of time to linger over the futile irrelevances that are so often repeated : that the proof of the antiquity of writing has cut the ground from beneath the generally accepted critical conclusions; that these conclusions have been reached because those who put them forward are dominated by a disbelief in the supernatural; and that they are discredited by the disagreement among critics themselves. The argument from the late invention of writing plays no part whatever in the discussion. The question of the supernatural scarcely emerges at all in Old Testament criticism, and in the crucial questions it does not emerge at all; while on the most important points, a very large critical consensus has long ago been reached. But a few words may well be spared on the alleged veto of the monuments. We are assured with the utmost confidence that the cuneiform inscriptions have completely disposed of the main critical conclusions, and restored to history many facts that critical scholars have denied. CRITICISM AND ARCHEOLOGY 31 Now no scholar can speak with anything but thankfulness of the immense service rendered to Biblical Science by archaeology. No one more eagerly than the critic welcomes the fresh light that has come from the splendid discoveries of explorers, especially in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt and Arabia. The discovery of the Tel el Amarna Tablets, and even more important, the recent discovery of the Code of Hammurabi have placed us under a very heavy debt, which is likely to be greatly increased as excavation proceeds, and the immense collections of hitherto un- deciphered documents are made accessible. But while archaeology has done all this, it remains true, that so far as Old Testament scholarship is concerned, it has not con- firmed a single position doubted by a sober criticism. In fact for some of the most radical treatment that the Old Testament has ever received it is to Winckler, the archaeo- logist, that we must go. It would, indeed, lighten the task of Biblical scholars if archaeologists would always be careful to distinguish between the facts, the supposed facts, and their own inferences from both. It is quite possible that on many historical details new discoveries may reverse the present decisions of critics, but we may be fairly sure that the main results of Biblical criticism will not be destroyed by any discoveries that the future has in store for us. And this for the very obvious reason that the critical conclusions rest on data supplied by the Old Testament itself, and whatever discoveries are made, the Biblical phenomena would remain to be accounted for. It is just conceivable that some discovery should prove that Moses was the author of one of the codes of legislation attributed to him, though it is needless to say that such discovery is improbable in the highest degree. But it is incredible that any discovery should be made, which should prove his authorship of a second still more of a third 32 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE code largely inconsistent with the first. Yet that would be necessary if the traditional view is to be rehabilitated by archaeology. It is indeed one of the great services which criticism has rendered to the Bible, that by proving that these codes arose in different ages, and were elicited by different social and religious conditions, it has removed the great stumbling block presented by the spectacle of radically inconsistent codes given by the same legislator with an interval of a few months at most between them. We need then have no fear of a reaction such as is constantly foretold, though it is quite probable that deeper study and widening knowledge may correct many critical conclusions, sometimes in the direction of tradition, but sometimes in the other direction. We need not hesitate to claim that many assured results have been reached, which the future is not likely to reverse. Among these I may enumerate the analysis of the Pentateuch into four main documents, the identification of the law, on which Josiah's reformation was based, with some form of the Deuteronomic Code, the compilation of that Code in the reign of Manasseh at the earliest, the fixing of the Priestly Code to a date later than Ezekiel ; the highly composite character of some parts of the prophetic literature, especially the book of Isaiah; the post-exilic origin of most of the Psalms and large parts of the Book of Proverbs, the composition of Job not earlier than the exile and probably later; the Maccabean date of Daniel and the slightly earlier date of Ecclesiastes. On all these points it would be possible to name dissentient voices, but speaking generally these results would probably secure the adhesion of most Old Testament critics. If now we turn to the present movement of Old Testament criticism the first outstanding feature is the much larger prominence given to textual criticism. It has THE TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 long been recognised that some of the Old Testament books, notably Samuel and Ezekiel are preserved in a very bad text. Recently, suspicion of the text has been pushed much further than before, in some instances to extreme limits. I leave aside here the most astonishing of these developments, because it is a pain to criticise the work of a scholar, to whom students of the Old Testament are in- debted for stimulus and instruction in a very high degree, and who ranks with the foremost Biblical scholars of this or any land. But leaving aside the hypothesis which rests on principles quite different from those hitherto recognised by science as legitimate, and in which his most loyal fellow- workers have, with one partial exception refused to follow him, I have to emphasize the fact that far more than was the case a few years ago, the soundness of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is constantly challenged. It is quite probable that overmuch subjectivity and hyper-criticism has found expression in the Lower as in the Higher Criticism. Nevertheless, it can hardly be denied by an unprejudiced worker that the suspicions expressed are often only too well founded, though there is much room still for divergence of opinion as to the methods of restora- tion to be employed. A more thorough study of the versions, especially of the Septuagint (where unhappily the original text is still far from determined) will often guide the critic to a better Hebrew text. But frequently the versions give no help, and when the critic has made up his mind that the text is corrupt, the only method at his disposal is that of conjectural emendation. There is no need to emphasize how perilous the process is. Those whose business it is to study many of the emendations proposed, are well aware of the dangers that attend it. These dangers, however, may be mitigated. A careful study of types of corruption, where emendations are fairly 34 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE certain, will often give a clue to the correction required in a passage, where internal evidence alone is available; and naturally the scholar who steeps himself in his author, who studies him with sympathy, and is gifted with literary tact, will often be led by his feeling for what his author is likely to have written, to a happy emendation. In some instances it has to be confessed that corruption has operated on a rather large scale, and the mischief has gone so deep that it needs for its healing not a plaster but the knife. In such cases we have to content ourselves with at best a probable decision as to the general drift of the passage, renouncing all confidence in more precise restorations. This brings me to the question of Hebrew Metre which affects both Higher and Lower Criticism. Naturally it has not been left for our own time to formulate systems of Hebrew Metre, but our own time is distinguished by the number of attempts that have been made in this direction. It would lead us too far away to give any account of these attempts, but while they are zealously defended and used with great confidence in determining critical questions, it remains true that with the exception of the so-called Qinah rhythm discovered by Budde, no generally-accepted results have been reached. If the existence of other types of metre could be established, the scholar would at once have a powerful instrument placed in his hands for the emendation of the text. Every unmetrical line in a passage of which the metre had been determined would need emendation, and the choice of emendations would be limited by the necessity of satisfying the metrical tests. At present it would be entirely unsafe except in the case of the lamentation rhythm already mentioned, to employ metrical rules in the restoration of the text. The only thing that can justifiably excite suspicion at present is abnormal irregularity in the length of the lines. If a line HEBREW METRE 35 is unusually short or unusually long, corruption may legitimately be suspected. Beyond this we have no right to go. It is certainly not impossible that a Hebrew prosody may eventually be firmly established, though it is only reasonable to suppose that if Hebrew poetry really was written in metre, it would be easier to detect it, and the text itself would have been better preserved. The fact that so much poetry is textually corrupt, must be allowed to stand as an argument against the hypothesis that it was written in metre at all. To take a related point. It is frequently assumed that the lines were grouped in a given poem in this way or that. Thus Bickell and Duhm hold that the original poem of Job was written in four-lined stanzas. The usual structure is in couplets, the second line forming a parallel to the first, and couplets may, as a matter of fact, often be com- bined into quatrains. But in several cases instead of couplets we have triplets, and where these cannot be forced into the scheme of quatrains they have to be eliminated or in other cases extended or curtailed till they are conformed to the regular type. No doubt it sometimes happens that the less usual form is combined with something objection- able in point of matter, and in that case suspicion may not unnaturally be aroused; but where the contents are unexceptionable it is pure arbitrariness to insist on such rigid regularity of form. The monotony of the parallel couplets is relieved by the occasional divergence into triplets. Another marked characteristic of recent criticism is its tendency towards a very elaborate documentary analysis. Where earlier critics such as Kuenen were content to leave further analysis as impracticable, though the fact of composite structure might be recognised, their successors have refused to be daunted by the alleged impossibility of 36 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE the task, and have carried through a much minuter dissection. That in doing so they have frequently followed a very dubious path is only too prohable, but some results have emerged, and in any case, good service has been done in forcing neglected phenomena into prominence. In the Pentateuch we might instance the attempt at a more precise separation of J from E, or the detection of strata within the different documents such as Steuernagel's analysis of Deuteronomy. Much more striking, however, is the activity which has been displayed in recent years in the analysis of the prophetic literature. Of course, certain results had been reached before. It was well known that the Book of Isaiah contained the work of several writers, and that the Book of Zechariah was of a composite char- acter, that the prophecy on Babylon in Jeremiah 50 and 51 was from another hand. But recent criticism has gone far beyond this. The year 1892 was memorable for the pub- lication of Wellhausen's " Minor Prophets " and Duhm's "Isaiah." It is true they had not been without their precursors, of whom Stade and Giesebrecht in Germany, and Cheyne in England, deserve special mention. But Wellhausen's work was, in spite of its brevity, one of the weightiest contributions ever made to the study of the prophetic literature, and has largely dominated later dis- cussions, while Duhm's Commentary on Isaiah created a new epoch in Isaiah criticism and interpretation. More than any scholar, perhaps, he has the faculty of troubling the too stagnant waters of Old Testament scholarship. When everything has been said as to his arbitrariness, his subjectivity and astonishing one-sidedness, it remains true that he is one of the most stimulating of the personalities at work in this field. Where an Old Testament writer has the good fortune to secure his approbation, we may be sure of a most suggestive treatment marked by unusual penetra- DUHM ON HEBREW LITERATURE 37 tion. His treatment of Isaiah was characterised by a very radical textual criticism, and in the former part of the book at any rate, by a hitherto unthought-of radical analysis. Much that had passed for Isaiah's was denied to him, often it must be confessed on not the most cogent grounds. Still more surprising was another feature in which he was a pioneer of some later criticism. I refer to the very late dates to which he assigned large sections of the book. It had been a generally-accepted conclusion that the canon of the Prophets was closed by about the year 200 B.C., so that Daniel, as a later book, could not be included among the Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, but had to be placed among the Writings. Duhm boldly set this aside, and dated considerable portions in the second century, and iu some cases in the early first century B.C. He has been warmly supported by Marti, but has probably, on the whole, found little following in this respect. His treatment of the Psalms was equally remarkable. The Psalms belong to the third collection in the Hebrew Canon, which has generally been thought to have been closed by the year 130 B.C. But Duhm regarded a very large number of Psalms as composed after that time, very many of them in fact as dating from the early decades of the first century B.C. It is hardly likely that in this respect he will convince many scholars. It was certainly very surprising, on the other hand, to find him placing the Song of Songs, which is now generally referred to the Greek period, in the century after Solomon. Duhm him- self, while denying to Isaiah several happy endings to prophecies of judgment, argued for his authorship of the two great Messianic passages, Isaiah 9 1-7 and 11 1 ~ 8 . Here, however, several scholars have gone further, and even Kautzsch, who regards some of the later developments as due to the most pitiful hyper-criticism, feels that he 38 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE cannot give an undoubting adhesion to the traditional view. It has been a characteristic of much recent criticism to make pre-exilic prophecy exclusively prophecy of judgment. This is a tendency for which little can be said. While it is true that predominantly prophecy before the exile was prophecy of judgment, it is extravagant to relegate all prophecies of a contrary character to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed there are certain facts which prevent our doing so. It is, for example, certain that Isaiah held a doctrine of the salva- tion of a remnant, because he embodied it in the name of his son, Shear-Jashub. Nor can I think that a case has been made out against the ascription to Jeremiah of the prophecy of the New Covenant. It has usually been agreed that no questions arose touching the authenticity of any part of Ezekiel, but Schmidt now refers his prophecy on Gog to the Parthians, and brings it down to the first century; while H. P. Smith has recently expressed doubts as to the prophecies against foreign nations. It is, however, difficult to believe that this will be justified, and the same remark applies to Schmidt's very radical treat- ment of the Book of Jeremiah. What has emerged with fair certainty from these discussions is that the prophetic literature underwent a good deal of editing in the post- exilic period, a fact which ought not to surprise us when we remember how changed were the conditions, and how needful it was felt to be that the prophetic message should come with power and freshness to a crushed and despondent people. A few words must suffice for the questions touching the history of Israel. The burning problems arise in connec- tion with the origin of the nation and its history after the captivity. The Exodus has for a long time presented serious difficulties. The question when the Hebrews left PROBLEMS OF HEBREW HISTORY 39 Egypt has excited much discussion, but recently the question has been debated whether they were ever in Egypt at all. The discovery in the Assyrian inscriptions of a North Arabian land of Musri has suggested that in several passages of the Old Testament, the word "mitsraim," which we translate Egypt, originally stood for Musri, and the problem is further complicated by the fact that there was a Musri in North Syria. There is no need to deny that in several instances one of these Musris is really in- tended where till recently everyone had identified the country mentioned with Egypt. It is, however, very dubious whether this can be substantiated with reference to the scene of Hebrew bondage, especially as there are several statements in the Old Testament which seem definitely to corroborate the traditional identification. At the same time it is a problem how large a section of the Hebrew people was in Egypt, especially as the discovery of the Stele of Merenptah has apparently revealed to us the presence of Israel in Palestine at a period when, according to the ordinary chronology, they ought to have been in Egypt. Moreover, there is evidence for the presence of Asher in Palestine at a date inconsistent with that given by the usual view. Possibly we may have to recognise that a smaller section of the Hebrews was in Egypt than we have been wont to suppose, but beyond that it is hardly likely that historical criticism will ultimately go- Some of the most revolutionary criticism has been applied to the history of the Jews after the captivity. It has usually been assumed that a section returned to Palestine in 536 B.C. Kosters, Kuenen's successor at Leyden, put forward the view that no such return really took place, and several scholars have been convinced by his arguments, though modifying it by the admission that 40 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE a certain number of exiles really did return from Babylon at that time. It is in fact very difficult to deny this, for unless the impulse to reform had come from the more spiritual Jews in Babylon, it is extremely improbable that the all but heathen remnant in Palestine would have risen to the work of re-building the Temple. More recently the attempt has been made to eliminate Ezra from history ; here again one must feel on quite inadequate grounds. Passing now to Old Testament Theology, the first point to be emphasised is the large contribution which has been made by Anthropology. Again and again the Old Testament student is forced back for the explanation of certain features in his documents on parallels in lower and especially in savage religions. The religion of Israel rose from the common ground of Semitic religion, and this in its turn arose out of a type essentially savage. The lower elements survived into the more developed forms, and often these incongruous survivals can be understood only through comparison with religions of a more rudimentary character, in which they would have been quite at home. For example, the laws of uncleanness have often been explained as if they symbolised some deep spiritual or ethical principle. But these attempts to read in loftier ideas have been characterised by extreme artificiality, and a persistent endeavour to force the material into a most uncongenial mould. All becomes clear once we are willing to learn from the anthropologist, and to see in these laws, which seem so inharmonious with the higher religion of Israel, survivals of the savage conception of taboo. Similarly the strange idea, as it seems to us, of an infectious holiness which constantly meets us in the Old Testament, has also to be explained as a survival of taboo, though it would be less difficult to fit much of TOTEMISM AND PRIMITIVE SACRIFICE 41 the Old Testment teaching about holiness into the more spiritual framework of Hebrew religion. Another problem which has excited great attention has been the question whether the Semites passed through the totem stage. It is well known how Robertson Smith argued in his paper on " Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament," in the Journal of Philology (Vol. ix.), in his "Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia" (1885), and in his "Religion of the Semites," that totemism at one time prevailed among the Semites. At present the tendency sets some- what strongly against this theory. It is deeply to be regretted not only that his premature death robbed us of the full harvest of his genius and learning, especially in his failure to complete his great work on Semitic Religion, but that he did not live to re-state his views on this question in the light of recent discussions. We may, I think, at any rate plead for an arrest of judgment, since it is far from clear that, in this respect, his critics are right and he was wrong. The problem for which this is most important is probably that of the nature of primitive sacrifice. We may take it as most unlikely, that primitive sacrifice was of a piacular character. It is true that Prof. S. I. Curtiss, in his interesting work " Primitive Semitic Religion To-day," has argued that Semitic sacrifice was originally sacrifice of expiation, but the arguments by which he supports this conclusion seem too weak to warrant it, inasmuch as the people among whom he has pursued his investigations can hardly be taken as presenting us with a primitive type. The same experiences which developed Hebrew sacrifice largely in the direction of expiation have been at work here also. The most probable explanation still remains that of Robertson Smith, that sacrifice was originally a communion feast of the deity 42 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE and his clan. But, as is well known, Robertson Smith brought this into connection with his totem theory and regarded the victim as the totem sacramentally eaten by the worshippers in such a way that the life of the kin which flowed in the totem victim's veins was not poured out and lost but re-absorbed into the kin itself, thus strengthening the bond and renewing the vitality of the clan. Against this brilliant hypothesis it could, of course, be urged that no case of a totem sacrament was known to anthropology. Since his death, however, the splendid researches of Spencer and Gillen embodied in their work, "The Native Tribes of Central Australia," have revealed to us religious rites in which the totem is sacramentally eaten by members of the clan. The object, however, is not at all that contemplated by Robertson Smith's theory. The intention is not to renew the bond of kinship which binds the totem stock into a close corporation, but to increase the food supply. All who belong to a given totem have it as their duty to provide a plentiful supply of their own totem. This is secured by magical ceremonies and then the sacramental eating of the totem by those who bear its name, releases it for unrestricted use by members of other totem clans. It would, however, be a mistake to lay excessive stress on this. The food supply on which these tribes have to subsist is of a very precarious character, so that it has become a matter of far greater importance in their ceremonies than is the case in many other countries where totemism has prevailed. Moreover, we cannot forget that the totemism of the Central Australian natives at the present day is the result of an extremely long development, as is clear from the amazing elaboration of their laws of relationship. Not only so but it has been a development largely unmodified by external causes. The outcome of a movement so protracted and so isolated HEBREW MONOTHEISM 43 cannot without great precaution be taken to represent the primitive ideas and customs that clustered about totemism. On the other hand, it is hardly possible for us to build anything in favour of Robertson Smith's theory on the new evidence which has come from Australia. It hardly needs to be pointed out that, while the interpretation of primitive sacrifice as piacular may be given up, there was in such communion feasts as we find in primitive sacrifice an automatic element of expiation which came into play whenever the deity happened to be estranged from his clan. Another problem of considerable interest is that which touches the rise of Hebrew monotheism. The famous theory of Renan that the Semites had a natural tendency to monotheism has not maintained its ground; but in the monolatry which characterised Semitic tribes, according to which a tribe had its own deity while it freely admitted the existence of other gods, monotheism had a better chance of emerging than in any polylatrous religion. So far as the Hebrews were concerned, we have no reason to regard them as setting up any deity in conscious rivalry to their own; they knew themselves to be the people of Yahweh, and while they fully admitted that other peoples had their own gods, the temptation to worship the deities of foreign nations was by no means so frequently victorious as is often imagined. It is quite true that side by side with the national worship, family cults such as the worship of the teraphim persisted. Moreover, the transition from the life of the desert to the settled agricultural life in Canaan brought with it a tendency to take over the religious rites which the Canaanites had practised to secure the fertility of the land. Thus the worship of the local Baalim no doubt was carried on alongside the worship of Yahweh, though it is quite a question how far the worship 44 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE was consciously directed to them and how far it was a worship of Tahweh with the old heathen rites. The Biblical writers saw in this worship, whether directed to Yahweh or not, nothing better than sheer heathenism, and that fact must be borne in mind in dealing with this special problem. Intimately connected with this is the question how early the Hebrews recognised in Yahweh the Creator of the universe. There are signs of a reaction from what has been a rather prevalent view that this doctrine emerged comparatively late. It is true that it finds special emphasis from the time of the exile onwards, and it is not unlikely that the creation passages in Amos are later insertions; but there are early references to Yahweh's dwelling in heaven and to His ruling the forces of nature, which point to a much earlier development of this doctrine. Especially one would call attention to the fact that, in our oldest piece of literature the Song of Deborah, the stars are said to fight against Sisera, while at a later period, but still early, Solomon, according to the utterance quoted from the book of Jashar, which has been recovered from the Septuagint, says that Yahweh placed the sun in the heavens. The genuineness of this utterance there is no valid reason to doubt. The conditions for the advance from monolatry to monotheism were present at a much earlier period than is often assumed. Another problem, which has excited much debate, is that touching the origin of the worship of Yahweh. Attempts to prove that Yahweh was a deity known in Babylonia long before the Hebrew people came into exist- ence can hardly be said at present to have been successful, though there is no antecedent improbability that such may turn out to be the case. It has been argued with consider- able power that Yahweh was originally the God of the HEBREW RELIGION ETHICAL 45 Kenites, and that Moses in his stay with Jethro came to know Him. It is, however, difficult to believe that he could have gone to the Hebrews in Egypt and rescued them from oppression, with the message that a wholly unknown deity had intervened for their deliverance. It is more reasonable to suppose that they already stood in some relation to each other, but what that relation was remains an unsolved problem. That brings us to the question, What was it that con- stituted the religion of Yahweh, so preeminently an ethical religion ? The Hebrews started from much the same level as kindred peoples, such as Moab or Edom. How was it that while the religion of these peoples remained on a purely heathen level, the religion of Israel rose above it and became what we know it in history to have been? The common explanation that the religion of Yahweh was from the first closely associated with the administration of justice, and in that way gained an ethical character which made possible its later development has been sub- jected by Budde to a searching criticism. He points out that such consecration of justice by religion was not un- common, moreover the function of Yahweh in this connec- tion was intellectual rather than ethical. The question was not whether a criminal should be punished, that went without saying; the only thing that had to be determined was the identity of the criminal. Here religion came in, and Yahweh was consulted to declare who the criminal was. Budde finds the origin of the ethical character of the religion in the relation which subsisted between Yahweh and Israel. Other nations had their gods by a natural necessity ; it was not a matter of choice whether a people belonged to this deity or that, or whether the deity had this or that people for his own. Yahweh Himself he regards as originally the God of the Kenites. But in the 46 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE religion of Israel a new element entered. Yahweh and Israel were originally unrelated to each other, and it was a matter of grace on His part that He took Israel to be His people, while on the other hand Israel freely chose Yahweh for its God. We have seen, however, that this theory that Yahweh was originally a Kenite deity is exposed to great difficulties. Nevertheless, it remains true that the Hebrews did regard their relation to Yahweh as resting on a covenant made at Sinai, in which each freely chose the other. We may see in this free choice the ethical relation which gave the starting point for the development into a purely ethical religion. Naturally, since the ethical is the universal, monotheism had a far better chance in an ethical than in a non-ethical religion. Yet we cannot forget that the religion remained to the last the religion of Israel, and therefore could never sustain itself permanently at its highest level; the soaring nights of the prophets or poets into pure monotheism were cancelled by a narrow national- ism which regarded Yahweh as Israel's peculiar possession. I must not omit to mention, though the question is rather one of detail, the problem presented by the Servant of Yahweh poems in the second Isaiah. This has perhaps been the most hotly debated question in the field of Old Testament scholarship for the last twelve yeaxs. For a time Duhm seemed to carry a large consensus of opinion with him in the view that the Servant should be interpreted as an individual, but there was a large divergence as to the identification of this individual among those who thought that he had made the individual interpretation good. Recently, however, there has been a considerable reaction to what I believe to be a much sounder view, that the Suffering Servant of Yahweh is to be identified with Israel. This identification has in one form found great acceptance in England, namely, the identification with the ISRAEL AND BABYLONIA 47 ideal Israel. There is no doubt much, to be said in favour of this view; at the same time it must be recognised that it is highly artificial and imposes inconsistent senses upon the term. It is accordingly my own belief that scholars will not ultimately be able to rest in it, but will come back to the view that the Servant is the historical Israel which died in exile and was to be raised again at the restoration ; in other words, it is the actual nation, no doubt idealised, that the prophet has in mind. Lastly, before leaving the Old Testament, I must refer to the problems which have been raised with reference to Babylonian influence on the religion of Israel. It has, of course, been long recognised that the creation and deluge stories go back ultimately to Babylon, but some very zealous Assyriologists are now claiming for Babylonia a far larger share in Israel's culture and religion than has hitherto been admitted. The proof that Canaan had been saturated with Babylonian influences long before its conquest by the Hebrews is no doubt a very important fact. Probably we should place in that period the diffusion of the Babylonian legends among the Canaanites and assume that the Hebrews learnt them, not at first hand from Babylon, but at second hand from the Canaanites. But that Israel was a mere intellectual province of Babylon, as some of our " Pan-Babylonists " are now assuring us, is a thesis which still remains to be made good, if made good it can. be. On this one may well express a strong antecedent scepticism. The recent discovery of the Code of Hammurabi shows us, however, that great surprises in this field may still be in store for us. Passing now to the New Testament, I have already mentioned modifications likely to be introduced in its exegesis by the discoveries of Greek papyri in Egypt, 48 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE which have shown us that the language of the New Testa- ment was the Greek commonly spoken at the time, and have also afforded us many examples of words hitherto unknown outside the Greek Bible, or authors who write under its influence. From this source we have no doubt much still to learn as new discoveries are made and the material at present collected is fully deciphered. There is, however, another line on which philology has recently assumed a new importance. It is generally agreed that Jesus spoke Aramaic and a student of His teaching is confronted with the problem whether he can work back from the Greek reports of His discourses to the original Aramaic in which they were spoken. Wellhausen has laid down the canon that no saying reported in the Gospels can be genuine unless it can be retranslated into Aramaic. It is clear that this principle might carry with it far-reaching results, and when the retranslation had been made the exegesis of the passage might be materially altered. It is not possible, in view of the uncertainties attached to the dialect of Aramaic spoken by Jesus, to feel such confidence as one could wish in the attempts to get behind the Greek to the original Aramaic. At the same time valuable work in this field has already been done, and one may refer especially to Dalman's Words of Jesus and Wellhausen's suggestive and masterly editions of the Synoptic Gospels. The point at which the discussion has raged most fiercely has been the interpretation of the term the Son of Man, which has held much the same position among New Testament problems as the discussion about the Servant of Yahweh among Old Testament problems. Even were it true, as Wellhausen insists, that the term cannot have been used by Jesus, it might still be held as Schmiedel has urged, that He might have used some equivalent term. It cannot be said, however, that Aramaic scholars are at all THE TUBINGEN SCHOOL 49 unanimous on this point, and quite possibly the philological aspect of the problem may ultimately occupy a much more insignificant place than at present. In New Testament Introduction the two features which stand out somewhat clearly are the general break with the Tubingen tradition and the break in England with the Lightfoot tradition. As is well known Baur applied the Hegelian formula that thought moves through thesis and antithesis to synthesis to the interpretation and reconstruc- tion of the early history of the Christian Church. Jewish Christianity, with its legalism and particularism, found its antithesis in the Pauline Theology, with its anti- nomianism and universalism. By a gradual process the two parties representing these tendencies moved more and more closely together, until at last they blended into the Old Catholic Church, combining the legalism of the Jewish Christians with the universalism of Paul, and abandoning the particularism of the former to the Ebionites and the antinomianism of the latter to Marcion. All that profound learning and brilliant genius could do for the theory was done by Baur and the band of scholars he gathered about him. The criticism was carried through with such relentless thoroughness that only the four great Pauline Epistles, Galatians, Corinthians and Romans 1-14, were left to Paul, while the Apocalypse, in virtue of its Jewish character and the bitter attack on "those who say they are apostles and are not," was left to the apostle John. All the other documents in the New Testament were dated by this criterion, according to the various stages in the struggle which they reflected. Those that presented a more pronounced form either of Jewish Christianity or Paulinism were regarded as the earlier, those in which the antagonism was weakening towards compromise were later, while those which were in the full sense Catholic, that is 50 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE which had transcended the opposing points of view in a higher unity, were the latest of all. Thus in Gospel criticism Mark had to be the latest of the Synoptists, inasmuch as his was the most neutral history, while John had to be brought down past the middle of the second century. Acts had to be treated as a Catholic re-writing of the history of the Primitive Church, in which Peter and Paul, the protagonists of the two parties, were assimilated to each other. Unfortunate incidents were omitted, dis- torted, or explained away, and in place of the savage conflict which had stained the Church's early career there was pre- sented an edifying picture of beautiful harmony. Much support for this was found in the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions in which Simon Magus was supposed to stand as a pseudonym for Paul, and the true attitude of the original apostles towards him was thought to be preserved. As is well known, this criticism has not held its ground. In the first place it rested too much on a theory of what the history must have been not to have presented a distorted statement of what it actually was. In the next place, the radical criticism of Baur has been almost entirely abandoned by those who would now be regarded as radical critics. Of the Pauline Epistles we may say that, by common consent, three more have been all but universally recognised as genuine, namely, I. Thessalonians, Philippians and Philemon. A consider- able number of critics would add to these II. Thessalonians and Colossians; some would even go so far as to add Ephesians, and the only point on which there is now a general consensus of opinion in that camp is that the Pastoral Epistles are not genuine. Even here there has recently been a strong tendency to recognise that they contain genuine Pauline elements. In the criticism of the Gospels again, the theory has received the most damaging FAILURE OF BAUR'S THEORY 51 blows. With the exception of Hilgenfeld, practically all critics are agreed that Mark is the earliest of the Synoptists, in other words, what Baur declared to he the latest because the most neutral of the Gospels is now placed first of all. The Gospel of John still presents a burning problem, but the majority of those who deny its apostolic authorship have retreated to a date very near to that assigned in tradition, roughly speaking, one might say half a century before the date at which it was placed by the Tubingen School. The apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse is now very largely denied by critics, so that its witness cannot be quoted in proof of the hostility of the primitive apostles to Paul. The theory entertained by this school as to the Acts of the Apostles has also been abandoned, the conciliatory tendency which was detected in it is seen to have been greatly exaggerated. Hilgenfeld has freely recognised that Simon Magus was a genuinely historical character, and thus one of the main supports of the theory, especially in its relation to the Acts, has given way. Apart from this abandonment of Baur's New Testament criticism, there are other objections to the theory which have contributed to its surrender. The contemporary Judaism was a richer and more complex thing than Baur recognised, and, on the other hand, he allowed altogether too little importance to the influence of the heathen environment on the development of the Early Church, and especially for the transformation which Christianity inevitably assumed, as numerous converts came into it from Paganism, who construed the Christian facts and doctrines through the Greek pre-suppositions they brought with them into Christianity. In other words, Baur accounted for the origin of the Old Catholic Church by the interaction of two factors, while that Church wa.s the product even more pre-eminently of factors which he left 52 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE largely out of account. On our break in England with the Lightfoot tradition a few words must suffice. As to the order of the Pauline Epistles, there is now a marked tendency in England to revert to what has always been the usual view in Germany. Lightfoot argued that Galatians and Romans were so closely connected that Galatians must be placed after II. Corinthians, similarly since Philippians has also close affinities with Romans and exhibits none of the peculiarities of Colossians and Ephesians, it must be placed immediately after Romans. Several English scholars, rightly distrusting the critical postulate implied, now confidently place Galatians before the Epistles to the Corinthians and make Philippians the latest of the imprisonment Epistles, some in fact regard Galatians as anterior even to I. Thessalonians. This position has its difficulties, but so far as it is rejected on grounds connected with the supposed development of Paulinism, it is not likely to be permanently shaken, inasmuch as we have excellent reason for believing that the whole theological position contained in Romans was Paul's conscious possession before he set foot in Europe. It would be too much to say that British scholars have abandoned Lightfoot's view that the Epistle to the Galatians was addressed to the churches in North Galatia, but the arguments of earlier scholars, especially Renan and Weizsacker, have been reinforced so vigorously by Professor Ramsay that it is probably the prevailing view amongst us to-day. On the Continent it has met with less acceptance. Similarly, the Gnostic character of the false teaching at Colossae and its affinities with Essenism were rejected on cogent grounds by Hort. On all these points my own sympathies are with those who have broken away from Lightfoot's influence, but it must be fully acknowledged that on all of them distinguished scholars still adhere to his views. HYPER-CRITICISM 53 While it is true that critics generally have broken with the Tubingen tradition, its criticism has been developed by a few scholars into an extreme negative form. Of these Van Manen is the best known in England through his contributions to the Encyclopaedia inblica. But he had several predecessors among whom I may specially mention Bruno Bauer, Loman and Steck. This school leaves not a single New Testament writing to its traditional author. The English student is tempted with some justice to regard such a position as the delirium of hyper-criticism and to pass it by with contempt. And a study of the grounds on which these conclusions are based will leave nearly all readers in amazement that scholars so learned and acute should be so lacking in balanced judgment. The arguments by which Van Manen seeks to establish his position are so flimsy that one would imagine they could not have imposed on their author but for the pre- suppositions that have driven him to his conclusions. His anti-supernaturalism in itself would not have taken him so far, for he shares this with many who utterly deny his extreme critical and historical theories. But in his case it takes the form of denying the possibility that such a system as Paulinism could have come into existence so soon after the death of Jesus. His fundamental position is accordingly an assumption as to the rate at which a theological movement may have developed. To this the Pauline Epistles have to be sacrificed; the arguments by which the sacrifice is justified are quite secondary. Van Manen accepts the historical existence of Jesus, His appearance as Messiah, His crucifixion, the historical character of Paul, and his activity as a follower of Jesus. But Paulinism is historically inconceivable to him till the second century. It may safely be said that criticism will utterly refuse to accept this position. In the first 54 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE place, some at least of tlie Pauline Epistles are beyond the power of a second century writer. It is a living personality that they reveal to us, not a bloodless block ; a many-sided personality, blending the most opposite qualities, fusing them into unity by its own interior heat. The picture of the intricate relations between the writer and the Church of Corinth is enough to prove that here we are dealing with real history in the making, not with a fictitious situation deliberately imagined or unconsciously created by the mythicising faculty. But, further, how can years be the measure for the rate of movement ? Not only is it credible that Paulinism emerged so early, but it is precisely what we should expect, when a powerful speculative genius swung from profound antagonism to loyal acceptance. The " scandal of the Cross " created a situation of extreme difficulty to a Jew, and, given an intellect courageous enough to think out the logic involved in this fact, something like Paulinism was inevitable. It seems to me then, that those who accept Yan Manen's position will have to move from it either backwards or forwards. His dissatisfaction with Tubingen is natural. Baur's lines of cleavage between genuine and spurious were very arbitrarily drawn, but the retreat of his school towards tradition is a much sounder movement than the revolutionary development it has received in the Dutch school. Yan Manen's position would be more consistent were it more negative. Some, it is true, though they hardly claim to be experts, have gone further. For example, Mr. Whittaker in his recent work on "The Origin of Christianity " has accepted Mr. J. M. Robertson's denial of the historical existence of Jesus. Paul, it is true, he regards as a historical character, not a Christian, indeed, but a propagandist of Jewish Messianism. Christianity he takes to have arisen from a fusion of the JESUS NOT INVENTED 55 idea of a suffering with that of a triumphant Messiah brought about by the destruction of Jerusalem. This position is, of course, impossible for all who accept even one of the Pauline Epistles as authentic, and therefore out of the question for nearly all critics of whatever school. But quite apart from the evidence of Paul there are insuperable difficulties inherent in the theory. It is pure assumption that the "slain-god" theology and ritual had even an underground existence in the Judaism of the first century A.D. It cannot be proved that the doctrine of a suffering Messiah had any vogue among those from whom Christianity sprang. But even if this assumption could be made good, we could not understand the rise on Jewish soil of the doctrine of a crucified Messiah, unless a Messianic leader had actually been crucified and in spite of this had been still regarded by his followers as Messiah. For the Jewish Law pronounced accursed him that was hanged on a tree, and the abnormal development of the Jewish Messianic belief into belief in a crucified and therefore accursed Messiah can be accounted for only if the leader of a Messianic movement had actually met his death by crucifixion. This is incontestable evidence for the historical existence of Jesus and for His death on the cross. I have already spoken of several detailed problems in New Testament criticism, but something still remains to be added on this matter. The very complicated questions raised by the literary relations of the Synoptic Gospels have been answered in a way to command the agreement of most New Testament scholars. The great majority definitely accept a documentary rather than an oral theory. It is, of course, not unlikely that, alongside of the documents, oral tradition may have exerted an influence, and the supplementing of a documentary 56 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE solution by recognition of the part thus played by oral tradition, may perhaps be the best account we can give of some features which are not easy to explain on the documentary hypothesis alone. But in the main, critics are agreed that the chief sources for our first and third Gospels are the lost Logia of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark in its present or some very similar form. But as I have said already, it is the fourth Gospel which presents the most difficult problem in New Testament criticism. The approximation of the two contending forces, which was perhaps the most noteworthy feature a few years ago, scarcely operates so strongly at present. It is not so long since the prospects of a reconciliation seemed very hopeful. On the one side the opponents of Johannine authorship seemed willing to concede that the Gospel stood in a close relation to the apostle John and in some respects included a valuable series of genuine sayings and historical incidents. On the other hand, the defenders of the Johannine authorship were prepared to admit that the discourses in their present form should be regarded as the composition of the Evangelist who had impressed upon the sayings out of which they were composed the stamp of his own individuality. At present the movement seems to have received a decided check, and indeed on one question, that of John's residence in Asia, to be less favourable to tradition than the Tubingen School itself. The denial of that tradition by Keim and Scholten had been regarded as a piece of unreasoning scepticism. But recently this position has been strongly re-affirmed, not only by the more radical negative critics but by such scholars as Harnack and Bousset. The difficulties that they press are very real, especially the silence of Ignatius. At the same time they do not appear sufficient to warrant our rejection of the tradition, which seemed even to a scholar like THE FOURTH GOSPEL 57 Weizsacker to be unassailable. The difficulties created for the traditional view as to the authorship of the Gospel, especially its divergence from the Synoptists are certainly of a very serious character. In estimating these, however, it is to be remembered that several opponents of the Johannine authorship admit that, in some respects, the author had access to a better tradition than that embodied in the Synoptists. It is possible to overstate the differences, but it is impossible to ignore them. The final verdict will have to take into account a large number of considerations, not all of which perhaps have received due weight on either side. That the author was a Jew and probably a Palestinian Jew, is now very generally admitted. Some who deny the Johannine authorship will even concede that he was an eye witness, though it is at this point that, as a rule, the two parties would decidedly break with each other. It is somewhat remarkable that scholars now lay so much stress on the impossibility that a primitive apostle should have been responsible for the lofty Christology of the Gospel when the Tubingen School found no difficulty in accepting the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse with a Christology almost as advanced. On the whole problem it may be said that the external evidence can be harmonised with either conclusion, and, while it may seem to favour the direct Johannine authorship, the parallel case of the first Gospel shows that the name of John might be attached to a document written by another, but believed to incorporate a tradition derived from him. The internal evidence tells rather strongly both ways. On the one side defenders of the traditional view have been quite justified in appealing to numerous evidences of familiarity with the conditions such as point to a memory stretching back to the actual events described and to the proofs already referred to of a knowledge of the history in some respects 58 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE superior to that contained in the Synoptists. On the other hand the marked divergence from the Synoptic Gospels in the representation of Christ's teaching both in form and content, and in its presentation of the historical develop- ment, are not unnaturally urged by many to be inconsistent with apostolic authorship. While several arguments which filled a large place some decades ago are now gener- ally abandoned, it cannot be said that all these phenomena have as yet received a completely satisfactory explanation. At the same time, the author does seem to claim to be an eye-witness, for it is extremely difficult to interpret the words " We beheld His glory " in the context in which they occur, especially when compared with the opening of the first Epistle, of anything but physical perception. This is freely admitted by Wendt, who, however, regards the Gospel as composite. He thinks that the apostle John wrote a work including a collection of discourses of Christ with much of the present prologue to the fourth Gospel, and that a subsequent writer set it in a historical frame- work and so compiled the present Gospel. This view, how- ever, has met with very little acceptance, and scholars generally have endorsed Strauss' famous comparison of the Gospel with the seamless robe for which lots may be cast but which cannot be divided. Before leaving the fourth Gospel I must refer to the recent work by Dr. Drummond. This contains a very thorough discussion of the subject and a defence of the Johannine authorship largely on the ground of the external evidence. Usually a recognition of the apostolic authorship is supposed to carry with it a belief in its historical trustworthiness. This is not the position adopted by Dr. Drummond. He considers that the Gospel is the work of John, but regards it as inferior in historical value to the Synoptists, and in some respects as distinctly CHRISTIANITY AND SYNCRETISM 59 unhistorical. It is not likely, however, that many will follow him in this combination of the critical views of one school with the historical views of another, or if they assent to his verdict on the authorship, see in the Gospel only a vehicle of deep spiritual ideas. On the other problems of New Testament introduction I must not say more now, and I must also omit all detailed reference to the problems of New Testament Theology. But one general problem meets us here which is too vital in its importance to be passed by. The most pressing question for us to-day in New Testament Theology is to reconstruct the environment in which Christianity grew up and settle, so far as we can, the question, What were the historical influences that helped to shape it? In an age of Syncretism, when the Orontes flowed into the Tiber, we may well ask what waters mingled in the Lake of Galilee, or, to vary the metaphor, from what quarries came the stones with which the New Jerusalem was built ? The teaching of Jesus has affinities with the Old Testament rather than with Rabbinism, though it has points of contact with the piety of the common people. He created a new doctrine of God, imparted a new worth to man, transformed political into spiritual ideals, preached an ethic unrivalled for its depth and inwardness and generated a moral passion adequate to its attainment. All this marks a great advance on what had gone before, but the chief thing has been omitted, His greatest contribution to religion was Himself. That Jesus was no Rabbi, and that he owed little, if anything, to Greece would be generally granted. The question of Paul is more difficult. That Rabbinism and Greek thought should have left their marks upon him could occasion no surprise, but experts are divided as to the 60 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE degree in which these influences affected him. Judaism itself had been penetrated by Greek thought in Alexandria and even Palestinian Judaism had not been untouched by it. What is very remarkable is, that in some points where we should have expected Greek ideas to have emerged, Paul betrays no consciousness of their existence. The Judaism of Paul's day is largely unfamiliar to us. We know it in the Apocalypses which throw much light on some obscure subjects in the New Testament. But the orthodox Judaism of Paul's time did not receive literary expression till some centuries later. It is therefore very precarious to identify the Judaism, as thus formulated, with that in which Paul was educated and derive from it such affinities with it as Paul may present. That would be to betray an excessive confidence in the fidelity of oral tradition. We must allow for the possibility that Judaism itself had undergone modifications through Christian influence. We know that controversy went on between Jews and Christians, and few come out of controversy precisely as they go into it. We need not suppose that there was any conscious borrowing from Christianity on the part of Judaism, but there may very well have been a transformation due to the detection of weak points in the Jewish armour. And quite apart from controversy, the atmosphere in which Judaism lived was impregnated with Christian influence, and insensible modification over a long period may have created a likeness to Christianity which was not present in the Judaism known to Paul. How far this was so, we have no means of actually determining, but so much seems to lie as a possibility in the nature of the case, and in view of it, we need to be cautious in explaining Paulinism through the Judaism of Paul's day. But the horizon of the investigator is by no means REVELATION AND EXPERIENCE 61 bounded by Judaism and Greek thought. How far did other religions or philosophies modify the Gospel? Probably India may be left out of account, but Babylonia and Persia are at present engaging in this connection very serious attention. No doubt investigation must go on for a long time before definite results are reached, but work in this field is a pressing necessity. And this leads me to a final point which emerges very impressively from the modern study of the Bible, and that is the large part played by religious experience in its creation. It is no doubt right that we should industriously bring together parallels from this religion and that, and seek to determine the influence of the environment in which the Bible grew up. But, however completely this is done, we cannot hope fully to explain it in this way. Unhappily the limitations of our knowledge forbid us, in the case of many writers, to recognise how large this element of experience was. But where we are taken behind the veil into the secret of the prophetic conscious- ness and are privileged to see revelation at work, we cannot fail to be deeply impressed with the part played by the religious experiences of the writers. In the Old Testament Hosea and Jeremiah, in the New Testament Paul are the conspicuous examples of this. Hosea, in the tragedy which wrecked his home and the love which would not give the offender up, saw only too true a reflection of the relations between Yahweh and His faithless people. Through his own heart he learnt to read the heart of God. And so against the infamy of Israel's shame he set the deeper passion of the divine love which, accepting no rebuff and crushed by no contempt, moved forward to the ultimate reform of the backsliding people. And just as the great doctrine of God's love for Israel was created through the experience of one prophet, the religious 62 MOVEMENT OF BIBLICAL SCIENCE ideal received its radical transformation through the experience of another. It was Jeremiah who, isolated and misunderstood, the victim of scorn and persecution, was driven back on God and found in communion with Him the only solace for his bitter grief. And this communion with God became so much the habit of his religious life that at length he came to see in it the essence of religion. So he made the immeasurable advance from religion conceived as a relation between a nation and its Deity to religion conceived as a relation between God and the individual. Hence in his doctrine of the New Covenant, although that is made with the nation not with the individual, its essence lies in the writing on each man's heart of the law of God and the immediate communion of each individual with Him. The case of Paul is even more clear. His great doctrine of the impossibility of righteousness for man under the law since the sin latent in the flesh awoke to consciousness at the touch of the law and was driven to rebellion by it, and on the other side his doctrine of release from the guilt and bondage of sin through union with Christ, whereby he shared Christ's status before God and Christ's holy life, were the direct creation of his experience. And indirectly it might easily be shown how some of his doctrines which seem to lie most remote from experience were really the creation of it. It would be out of place for me to insist that a book so largely created by experience needs experience in its interpreter, but at least I may emphasise this, that for the full understanding of it, the interpreter needs a sympathetic insight into religion. He should bring with him to his task a loving and reverential regard for every form in which the religious instinct has expressed itself. Nothing should lie beyond the range of his sympathy from SYMPATHY IN EXEGESIS 63 the wild rush of Corybantic emotion to the deep calm brooding of the contemplative mystic. He should seek by an effort of imagination to sink himself in those types of experience which are most alien to him, as well as those which are most congenial, and in that way fit himself to be an interpreter of the greatest religious literature the world has known. RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY: ITS BEARING ON OUR VIEWS OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL EECENT ASSYEIOLOGY: ITS BEAEING ON OTJE VIEWS OF THE HISTOEY OF ISEAEL. BY PROF. HOPE W. HOGG, M.A., B.Litt. [The lecture, planned for use with a series of lantern views, and to some extent determined in outline by the contents of the series of slides, was only partly written. In being prepared for publication it has changed its character to some extent, especially in parts. It seemed desirable to deal more carefully with the long gap between the documents discussed than was possible in an hour's lecture.] AT the present time some of the results of Assyriological investigation, and some of the theories based on them, have been made very prominent, especially in Germany. England has escaped the excitement that, in certain circles, prevails there. That is a matter for congratulation, unless it indicates lack of interest in a subject because it seems to lie off the beaten track. In this University we are wisely encouraging the prosecution of natural science, the study of the general formulae under which the phenomena revealed to us by observation may be classed. The result is that interest is felt even in the more recondite studies and investigations along such lines not so much interest, perhaps, as some would wish, but still a considerable measure of interest. Like all virtues this has its risks. 66 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY Fortunately, our University is also building up a school of history. Alongside of the emphasis on the study of the world in which man lives it is encouraging, in the same University-spirit, the study of man who inhabits and more and more controls the world he finds himself in. In certain portions of the vast field of history this interest is no new thing. The claims of the history of England, of Europe, of Rome, and of Greece are well established. These portions of history are specially suitable and directly useful ; but some amount of freedom, it is admitted, should be left for the play of individual taste, or inherited or acquired interest. The world in which we live did not begin with Greece, any more than it began with Rome. Europe inherited some things from Palestine, and Europe and Palestine alike inherited many things from a world which the researches of the last two generations have been restoring before our imaginations in a way that is positively exciting. The influence of that world, which seems to the average mental outlook far off, on the world in which we live is real and profound. It is desirable, therefore, that a certain proportion, not a large proportion, of students should be encouraged to devote some of their attention to its study ; and the clue to it is to be found in the Euphrates- Tigris valley. For the present, however, we deal not with Assyriology and general history, but with Assyriology and the history of Israel. Moreover, our subject is expressly limited to recent Assyriology. There is no lack of points that might be dealt with. There are questions connected with the settlement of Israel, its supposed Babylonian, Meso- potamian, or Egyptian origin. In particular, there is what is known as the Musri question. There are the important questions raised by the Khammurabi code of laws, and by the new texts dealing with the Creation THE PROBLEMS 67 story, and other more or less religious literature recently published. Not to prolong the list, within the last year or two interesting Assyrian documents have been found in Palestine itself. In regard to the questions about the settlement, we are constantly having to reconsider the data, and we must do so once again in the light of these new finds. The question of Babylonian, Mesopotamian, or Egyptian beginnings also assumes a new shape each decade. With regard to the question of Musri that some Assyrian references to Musri extend the term to tracts lying quite beyond Egypt proper I adhere to the position I took up in this place a year or two ago. The real burden of the proof falls on the passage in Tiglath-pileser where he appoints a man named Idibilu to the office of keputi over Musri. Since Tiglath-pileser had not conquered Egypt, Musri cannot be Egypt. That seems to establish a wider meaning for Musri. It is then to be considered impartially in individual cases in what sense the term is to be taken. The questions raised by the Khammurabi code I hope I may have other opportunities of discussing. To keep our subject within reasonable limits we must, in considering the significance of Assyrian documents, confine ourselves, as much as possible, to those discovered lately in Palestine itself. If we began with those documents, however, we should not see their real significance. At the present time the bearing of Assyriology on the history of Israel is not, as sometimes, a question of details. It is a question of the bearing of Assyriology as a whole : Are we entitled to assume that the civilisation which Assyriology reveals exerted a real influence on Israel more or less throughout all its history? Such are the claims that are being made in book after book by leading Assyriologists. A very 68 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY significant illustration of the change is the contrast between the second and the third edition of Schrader's well-known book on the cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament. The second edition was a series of notes on points of contact. The third is a continuous history and description of Israel and its neighbours and of Babylonia and Assyria, by two Assyriologists who have a feeling for the great Assyro-Babylonian world development. To appreciate the nature of the claim that is thus made, it would be helpful to take a comprehensive survey of what the Assyriology of to-day gives us. It must suffice to indicate in a few sentences what such a survey would present us with. By Assyriology is meant the study of the nature and history of the world that used the Assyrian, or rather Babylonian, language and script. It is a study advancing with great strides, and with the confidence of having a firmly secured base. The miracle of decipherment is at an end. Points are being constantly cleared up; but they are points of detail, which were obscure through inadequacy of material. All the time, new material is being obtained by French, Germans, English, or Americans. This and the older material is being continually made more fully accessible by publication, better understood by special investigations, and more widely known by the issue of popular manuals. A locally interesting illustration of the spread of these studies is the class of six students at present studying Assyrian in this University. The result of these discoveries and investigations is that a whole buried world has been brought to light. The views cast on the screen represent a great historical movement covering some three millenniums. Local Babylonian kingdoms give place, 2000 years before the RESULTS OF ASSYRIOLOGY 69 Punic wars of Rome, not to go farther back, 1 to the unified Babylonian empire of the great Khammurabi, reaching north into Mesopotamia, and west to the Mediter- ranean. As dynasty succeeds dynasty, Assyria becomes differentiated and independent. The decline of Babylonian power under the Kassites opens the way for Egypt to step forth into Asia, and a series of Egyptian, campaigns in Syria creates an Egyptian empire of states that had hitherto looked in an opposite direction. After some generations, that empire begins to lose compactness, and the local states have an opportunity to develop independently. Finally, Assyria, getting the better of Babylonia, begins its triumphal march to the supremacy of the Semitic world only to hand it back to Babylon, till the time should be ripe for the appearance of new forces, and the Aryan should step into the inheritance of the Semite. Now, how are we to fill in the skeleton of the history of those millenniums? A mere look at the pictures thrown on the screen is enough to convey the impression of an extraordinarily developed civilisation. A study of the details known to us only deepens the impression. One whose special studies entitles his opinion to weight has recently said : 2 " A right-thinking citizen of a modern city would probably feel more at home in ancient Babylon than in mediaeval Europe." There is reason to believe that Babylon was a centre from which this civilisation made itself felt in all directions. The theory is that Babylonia dominated Hither Asia; its civilisation was in the air. The Kassite period was, no doubt, one of a sinking political 1 The date of the earlier empire of Sargon I. and Naram-Sin is still uncertain ; but its reality and extent can no longer be doubted. 2 C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters, p. viii. 70 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY power; Assyria was rising relatively; peoples from Asia Minor were crowding in; Egypt took advantage of the change and founded an empire ; but Babylonian civilisation had so established itself that it nevertheless remained throughout the dominant element. What we are to consider is how far recent finds in Palestine have anything to say on this question in so far as relates to Israel. We may begin with the cylinder seal lately acquired by Mr. Joseph Offord, of which a representation has been published by Mr. E. J. Pilcher. 1 The cylinder, which is hematite, bears two distinct scenes, kept apart, as Mr. Pilcher remarks, by the naive device of the one being placed in an inverted position with respect to the other. The significance of the scenes, which are conventional and have no special interest for us at present, is that one, the larger, a priest leading a worshipper into the presence of a seated deity, is Babylonian, whilst the other, a monarch slaying a kneeling enemy, is Egyptian. Nothing is said in Mr. Pilcher's article as to where the seal was found; but it obviously belongs to a world in which both Babylonia and Egypt were represented. In art, yes; but the script used in the legend is cuneiform. Unfortunately, the three lines are obliterated all but a few wedges, and it is not possible to determine the language; but that is less important. The significant point is that, whilst one of the scenes is Egyptian, all the early writing is cuneiform. Over the obliterated legend are some bold lines in what looks like careless zig-zag. Mr. Pilcher holds that these are alphabetic signs of the Persian period, and are to be read as GHZ, with which he compares the obscure, 1 In the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for Nov., 1901, p. 362. EXCAVATIONS IN PALESTINE 71 though to the English reader well-known, name Gehazi of 2 Kings 4 8. That may be so ; l and then arises the question whether the seal may not have belonged in early times to Palestine. That it did we can hardly expect to be able to prove especially as long as we do not even know where the seal was found that it may have done so has been shown by recent excavations in Palestine, to which we now turn. Of the various places on the map at which excavation has been carried on, cuneiform documents have been found at five ; Tell el-Hasy, the " mound of many Cities," mid- way between Hebron and Gaza, excavated in 1890 1892 by Flinders Petrie and Mr. Bliss, plausibly identified with the Lachish of Sennacherib; Gezer, as far west of Jerusalem as Tell el-Hasy is of Hebron, mentioned in 1 Kings 9 16 , as the dowry city of Solomon's "Egyptian" wife, where the Palestine Exploration Fund have since 1902 been excavating successfully; Tell as-Safy, probably the ancient Gath, half-way between " Lachish " and " Gezer," where Bliss and Macalister excavated in 1899- 1900 with good results; Tell el-Mutasellim, probably the ancient Megiddo, where Schumacher has been excavating since 1903 for the German Palestine Society; and Taannek, on the southern margin of the plain of Esdraelon, where, in 1902 1904, a successful excavation has been carried on by Professor Sellin of Vienna. To go into the details of these excavations is obviously beyond our purpose. It is enough to say that at "Lachish" was found a letter, and at "Gezer" a deed of sale, 2 to both of which we shall return ; at " Gath " the remains of a Babylonian stele, three seals, and three cylinders 1 Cp. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fiir Semitische Epigraphik, 1902, p. 276. 3 On the uncertainty where it was found, see below, p. 101. 72 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY with. Babylonian mythological or religious subjects ; l at "Megiddo" a seal bearing a Babylonian legend, 2 and at "Taanach," among other things, no less than twelve 3 tablets or fragments of them. Unfortunately, the legend on the "Megiddo" seal is not decipherable. Happily, at Taannek Sellin was more fortunate. In a stratum which there is reason to assign to the middle of the second millennium B.C. he came on a cylinder seal which is well preserved. A glance at the picture on the screen is enough to show that it is of the same mixed character as that of Mr. Offord. Fortunately the cuneiform inscription is in this case legible, and the form of the name 4 of the owner agrees with the character of the script 5 in indicating what has come to be called the Khammurabi period, that is to say, the end of the third millennium B.C., as the date of the inscription, which reads thus: " A-ta-na-akh-ili apil Kha-ab-si-im arad Nergal," i.e., Atanakh-ili, son of Khabsim, servant of Nergal. If this is correct, the owner of the seal was long dead when it found a lodgment in the place where it was discovered by Professor Sellin. It would then be possible to suggest that, in the meantime, the seal had strayed ; that, in fact, the seal really belonged to a Babylonian, and made its way into Palestine only by some strange combination of accidents. That seems to be excluded, however, by the presence of the Egyptian 1 Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in Palestine, 1902, pp. 41, fig. 17 ; ib. fig. 16 ; and plate 83, respectively ; cp. p. 153. See also a picture of one of the cylinders in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1900, p. 19. 2 Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1904, p. 308. 1 Sellin, Der Ertrag der Ausgrabungen im Orient, 1905, p. 25. 4 See H. Ranke, Die Personennamen in den Urkunden der Hammurabi Dynastie (1902), p. 32, for the first component; and p. 20, for the second. 4 Zimmern, in Sellin, Tell Taannek, p. 27f. TAANACH SEAL 73 symbols on each side of the figures : the two 'nkh (life) signs, and the nfr (beauty) sign. From the presence of those Egyptian elements it seems to follow that the seal was not lost by a Babylonian, but owned by a native of Palestine, or at least someone resident there. That the significant writing is Babylonian shows clearly the relative positions of Babylonia and Egypt. Of course we must be careful not to push the argument too far. The possession of a seal bearing a Babylonian legend does not necessarily imply a wide use of the Babylonian language. The user of a seal need not be able himself to read the legend on it, to say nothing of writing the language, or even speaking it. What really gave the theory we are considering the hold it has obtained was the study of the now famous Tell el-Amarna letters. It is more than sixteen years since it became known that, at an obscure place on the east bank of the Nile, 150 miles or so south of Cairo, a collection of over 300 clay tablets belonging to the middle of the second millennium B.C. had been found. They suffered grievously, and many of them doubtless perished, before they, after many adventures, reached the hands of a competent person ; but when examined they proved to be letters from Asiatic rulers to kings of Egypt of about 1400 B.C. in the Babylonian language and script. That a king of Babylonia should so write, or a king of Assyria, or even of Mitanni in Mesopotamia, was not strange; but the letters came from everywhere. Here, for example, is a tablet letter in which the King of Cyprus explains to the Pharaoh that this time he can send him only 500 (talents) of copper, as a plague reigns in the land, and there can be no getting of copper, and asks for the restoration of the property of a Cypriote who had died in Egypt. The use of Babylonian for international correspondence of this 74 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY kind is striking enough; but even more interesting, and for our present purpose much more to the point, is the remarkable phenomenon of governors in Palestine, holding office under the Pharaohs Amenhotep III. and IV., actually writing to their suzerain the Pharaoh in the same Babylonian. Here, for example, is one of a famous series of seven tablets in Berlin, letters to the Pharaoh from the ruler of Jerusalem about 1400 B.C. He complains that he is accused of treason against the Pharaoh. His answer is : What possible motive could he have for taking side against the Pharaoh? He was not a hereditary prince, who might hanker after independence ; he owed his position as ruler of Jerusalem to Egypt, and his power to maintain himself depended on support from Egypt. He is in danger from the Khabiri on every side. If the king does not send troops it is a lost case. These letters from Palestine axe extraordinarily interesting ; but the question we have specially to consider is, Why were they written in Babylonian? Was it for the convenience of the writer? It may be suggested that the local rulers had to employ Babylonian scribes, 1 who would naturally use their own language. That they used scribes may be regarded as certain. 2 That can scarcely be the explanation, however, for the language is not that of a native Babylonian; it contains many expressions which are obviously local terms. They are, in fact, what we should call Hebrew words, and are indeed our earliest examples of Hebrew Hebrew not yet written in the 1 On the case of David see below, p. 92. 1 Knudtzon has pointed out cases where a ruler has had some of his letters written by one scribe, others by another, as also cases where the same scribe has written letters for several rulers (Beitrdge zur Assyriologie, iv., 411). The demand for scribes was therefore greater than the supply. AMARNA LETTERS 75 Hebrew character. We have indeed no evidence that at that time the Hebrew alphabet had been invented. It may occur to someone, then, that in that fact we have the explanation of the use of the Babylonian script in these letters ; it was used because it was the only script available. That seems plausible; but it will not stand examination. The absence of any alternative to the Babylonian script was no reason why people should correspond in the Babylonian, language. Why should not the language of Palestine, which, as we have seen, was an early type of Hebrew, have been written in the Babylonian script? We are not, indeed, left to conjecture the possibility of such a compromise. Not to speak of the isolated words of " Hebrew " written in cuneiform mentioned above, there have come down to us not a few documents of such a character, cuneiform documents the language of which is not Babylonian, or even Semitic at all. The Amarna collection itself contains such documents. Moreover, unless the Babylonian language was for some reason a natural means of communication, it is not clear that there was no alternative to the Babylonian script. Why should not governors under Egyptian rule use some Egyptian script? There are in fact notes on the margins of some of the letters 1 in Egyptian script, although the many Egyption words written in cuneiform in No. 294 2 show that cuneiform might have been used. Cuneiform was used when circumstances demanded; there was even an Egyptian cuneiform "hand" by which the provenance of letters can be recognised. 3 Still it was naturally trouble- some to Egyptians we know that they helped themselves to recognise the divisions of the words by inserting red l Nos. 9, 2023, 29, 136, 163, 220, 255. * Beitrage zur Assyriologie, iv. 105, 106, 330. * See Knudtzon's details in Beitrage zur Assyriologie, iv. 128, 327 330. 76 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY marks l and they did not use it unless there was some good reason. If then their correspondence with Canaan was in cuneiform, it seems difficult, or impossible, to evade the inference that, although even Babylon had come to admit that Egypt ruled in Canaan, 2 Babylonia, by its civilisation was still there. We must next consider the suggestion, however, that the Amarna letters prove no more than that Babylonian was the language of diplomacy. The tablets, whether written in Palestine or written in Phoenicia, were all found in a foreign country, Egypt. The use of Babylonian may have originated primarily in inter-communication between Egypt and Babylon, and then been adopted in Palestine for diplomatic correspondence with Egypt, as easier for a Semitic scribe than the non-Semitic Egyptian. This suggestion is naturally one which we might hope to see put to the test by excavation in Palestine. Eeturning, there- fore, to that field, we look at the first cuneiform document unearthed in Palestine. It is a letter believed 3 to have been found by one of Mr. Bliss's workmen in 1891 at " Lachish." Unfortunately, a glance at the photograph shows that it is imperfect, which is still clearer in the cast. In fact, it does not appear who the writer is, or to whom the letter is addressed. We have letters in the Amarna 1 These are carefully given by Knudtzon, Beitrdge zur Assyriologie, iv. 128132. 2 Burnaburyash, writing to Amenophis IV. to complain of the attack made on his Babylonian traders (dam-gam-u-a) at Khinaton, regards the Pharaoh as responsible (see below p. 84) : Canaan is your land, and you are king. In your land I have suffered injury, restrain them (No. 11 Rev. line 1, 2). In letter 10 Rev. line 31 "your land," which (though undefined), as the scene of two attacks on Babylonian caravans, probably means Canaan, is described as a mat Tcisri; but it is not certain whether this means "powerful" (Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, 5, 144, 31, Zimmern; cp. Muss-Arnolt, p. 427b), or "vassal" (Winckler). 3 On such uncertainty see below, p. 92. LACHISH LETTER 77 collection from two governors of Lachish Zimrida and Yabni-ilu. Of Zimrida we are told by Abd-Khiba, the governor of Jerusalem, that the people of Lachish rose against him. The Tell el-Hasy letter says that a certain Shipti-Addi made proposals to Zimrida with regard to an unnamed town. Possibly the other governor of Lachish, Yabni-ilu, was now in possession of the town. He may have been the writer of the Tell el-Hasy letter. There is at least one letter 1 in the Tell el-Amarna collection from a certain Shipti-Addi to the Pharaoh, in which the writer represents himself (naturally) as a trusty servant. We may note that he commends Yankhamu 2 as a faithful officer. This is interesting in connection with the suggestion to be made about Yankhamu presently. In regard to the Tell el-Hasy letter, however, there is only one thing certain. That is, fortunately, for our present purpose the significant point : it was not addressed to the Pharaoh. Enough is preserved of the beginning of the letter to put that beyond doubt. It is a plausible theory that the letter is directed to some important representative of the Pharaoh resident in Palestine, e.g., Yankhamu. If that theory is accepted, the Tell el-Hasy letter carries us a stage farther than the Amarna letters we have yet dealt with, for it is addressed to a man whose name makes it probable that he was not an Egyptian but a Palestinian himself, or at least a Semite. The letter is thus not really international. Moreover, even the letters found at Amarna are by no means all directed to or from the Pharaoh. Several are addressed to a man named Amanappa, others to Khai, and Khaiapa. These names, however, suggest that their 1 No. 241. Compare also No. 243. 'Line 14. 78 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY bearers were Egyptian; they were certainly officers of the Pharaoh. The same will be true of the addressee of No. 82. The receiver of No. 282, however, may very well have been a Palestinian, resident or temporarily present at the Egyptian Court. Dudu (44f. 52), if we may judge from his name, though a high officer, was a Semite rather than an Egyptian; and Nos. 123 and 237 are addressed to the very Yankhamu to whom we referred before. Still, it will be observed that there is a considerable element of conjecture in all this. Moreover, it may be said that these men, even if they were native Palestinians (which is not proved) were all representatives of the Egyptian power. Special interest therefore attaches to No. 58 in the London portion of the Amarna collection 1 as being a letter from someone who calls himself simply " the great king," asking that his messenger Akia be allowed to proceed in peace to his "brother" the King of Egypt. The letter is addressed not to the Pharaoh but to " the kings of Canaan " (Kinakhkhi). This shows that the use of Babylonian in Canaanite correspondence was at least not confined to correspondence with non-Semitic Egypt ; but unfortunately we do not know who the king who sent the letter was. He calls himself the " great king." 2 Letter 125 takes us a little further if we adopt a plausible conjecture as to the "king" to whom it is addressed. The nature of the letter is sufficient to show that he is not the Pharaoh, and several reasons make it likely that he is none other than Aziru, the Amorite chief of northern Canaan, who was summoned by the Pharaoh to Egypt to answer the charges that had been made against him by neighbouring rulers. In that case tablet 125 is a 1 Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, Vol. V., No. 14. * "Great" is not certain; but if correct, the king may be Burnaburyash, and the letter may be a sequel to letter 11 referred to above (p. 76, n. 2). LETTERS NOT TO PHARAOH 79 letter of encouragement sent to him when in confinement at the Egyptian Court by his two brothers. This is extremely probable, 1 but not certain; it would show that in the Lebanon district Amorite chiefs corresponded with their relatives in Babylonian. 2 Fortunately, later excava- tion in Palestine has taken us a stage farther. We return therefore to the work of Professor Sellin. In the spring of 1903 Sellin found, resting against the wall of an excavated chamber, a clay tablet two inches square containing a letter written in Babylonian. The picture shows that it is complete, though not quite all legible. The following is the purport of it according to the scholar who published it : TO ISHTAR-WASHUR FROM GuLI-ABDI. Live happily. The gods procure you luck, for yourself, your house, and your children. You write me about the money ( ). Well, I will give 50 pieces to prevent that being done. In the next place, why have you again (?) sent me your greeting here (1)1 All that you heard I learned from there (?) through Belram. In the next place, if the finger of Ashirat shows itself, let them give the instructions, and carry them out. Report to me what the sign is, and what is done. As for your daughter, we know the one that is at Rubute, Shalmisha. When she grows up give her to the crown : she must be for the lord. 1 See the discussion of Winckler in the Mittheilungen der Vorderasia- tischen Gesellschaft, 1897, pp. 283 285. 2 We cannot lay any stress in this connection on the fact that tablets 173 and 174, which tell how the Khabiri (SA. GAS) have attacked Ajalon, Zorah, and Zaphon, and ask for succour, are letters from a woman. Of course she used a scribe. It is possible that Milkili whom she mentions is her husband, and that the troubles that led her to write to the Pharaoh occurred while her husband was at the royal court (cp. letters 171 and 172). So Carl Niebuhr, Die Alte Orient, I. ii. 30. The interesting little tablet No. 13 seems to contain the message of an (Egyptian) princess married to a Babylonian (king), doubtless Burnabur- yash, to her father the Pharaoh, as given to her attendant, Kidin-Adad, who naturally wrote it down in Babylonian. 80 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY Probably the royal harem for which Shalmisha is destined is the Egyptian. Guli-Addi, the writer of the letter, may be a representative of the Egyptian Court. 1 Ishtar-washur, the receiver of the letter, is apparently in straits, if he is in need of the 50 silver pieces. The reference to Ashirat is interesting, as being the first explicit mention of a goddess of that name, already known to us from the proper name Abd-Ashirti of the Amorite country in the Amarna correspondence. The chief deity of the town is Ishtar, though Baal, or Adad, also is mentioned. That Ishtar-washur was really the governor of Taanach was made very probable by the finding, two days later, a few feet distant, of another letter addressed to him. 2 The second letter runs thus : To ISHTAR-WASHUR FROM AKHI-AWI. The lord of the gods preserve your life : you are a brother, and have a friendly regard for me. When I was in ambush at Gurra an officer gave me two knives, a lance, and two clubs ; and if the lance is past using he will put it right, and send it with Buritpi. Next : is it (still) a case of bemoaning your (lost) towns, or have you again got possession of them? There is over my head some one over the towns. Now see whether he will do you any good. Besides, if he is incensed they will be confounded, and the assertion of supremacy will be vigorous. Moreover, Ilu-rabi must go into Rakhab, and either send my prefect to you or protect (him). Of the points of interest in this obscure letter we can only note a few. The name of the writer has naturally attracted considerable attention from the possibility of reading it Akhi-Yawi. That at once brings it into parallelism with the Hebrew name Ahijah. Follow- ing up this line of thought, Professor Sellin has noted the ICp. Peiser in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung , 1903, col. 322. 2 [For another letter announced since this was in type, see p. 103, note 1.] TAANACH LETTERS 81 invocation of the " Lord of the gods," and how, in view of the prevailing troubles, the writer says : " Over my head is one who is over the cities. See now whether he will show you good. If he shows his indignation, the enemies will be brought to confusion, and the victory will be mighty." Sellin admits that the reference may be to the Pharaoh, but asks, Why not mention him? Why the mystery ? Did people really talk to one another with such awe of the Pharaoh ? May the reference be to a god, e.g., Yahwe? It is held by some that a god with some such name must have been acknowledged elsewhere than in the historical Israel. The question has been asked, however, Was Akhi-Yawi a Canaanite? or was he perhaps a new settler? We cannot tell in what sense "brother" in line 3 is to be understood. If the Khabiri were not exactly Israel may they have included some who were afterwards Israelites ? Hommel connected them with Asher, which was apparently settled early. 1 Steuernagel sought to* connect them with the tribes traced in Genesis to Leah. Now we know that the Kinakhkhi (Canaanites) made in some cases common cause with Khabiri; and the same is true, according to the biblical narratives, of the Canaanites and Israelitish tribes or clans (Judg. 5 16 ff., Gen. 38, Judg. 9). Asher in particular is mentioned (Judg. 2 31 32 ); and in Judg. 5 17f - we see how other Israelites resented the independent bearing of Asher : Asher sat still at the shore of the sea, and abode by his creeks. Moreover, Rakhab, where Akhi-Yawi had a prefect, might be Rehob in Asher, and Akhi-Yawi might, therefore, be an Asherite prince. This interesting suggestion is attractive. It is, however, without any positive support. The question about the lost 1 See below, p. 87. [Halevy supports from the Taannek documents his view that the Khabiri were really settlers of Kassite origin (Revue Stmitique, 1904, 246258)]. 82 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY towns suggests that Akhi-Yawi did not live very near Taanach; but Peiser 1 has ingeniously suggested an identification of Akhi-Yawi with Yapakhi of Gezer, 2 and a site for Rubuti not far from Jerusalem. In any case, the inference which Sellin proposes to draw from the phraseology of the letter seems to imply a perspective of the development of religious ideas in Israel which distorts the view. Moreover, the reading of the name Akhi-Yawi is by no means certain. The last syllable may be mi, in which case mi may be a post-positive particle, 3 or Yami might mean not Yahwe but Hommel's sea god, Yam. 4 All these uncertainties may be left for the future to dispel. For our present purpose fundamental importance attaches to a point that is obvious : Two men living in Canaan, probably local chiefs, correspond with each other not in some Canaanite dialect but in Babylonian. The significance of this fact is apparent. It is as if the authorities of Sale and Knutsford were to correspond in German. An even more important point was brought out by two tablets that were discovered between the finding of the two letters, lying a metre from each of them. The picture shows that neither of the tablets is complete, and the mutilated condition of the text makes it difficult to interpret them. They contain lists, probably made by the ruler of Taanach, or sent in to him from dependent towns. That they come from different sources is perhaps favoured by differences in "hand" and otherwise in the 1 Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung , 1903, col. 322f. a The writer of Amarna letters 204206. 8 To this view Zimmern appears to incline (Sellin, Der Ertrag der Ausgrabungen im Orient u. s. w., p. 29). * See Hommel, Die altorientalische Denkmdler und das Alte Testament, 2 ed., 1903, p. 60. [So Halevy Revue Semitique, 1904, p. 252.] TAANACH LISTS 83 two documents. The first appears to reckon how many men each family in a town had to contribute to the army : one, two, or three ; altogether about sixty men. The second may be a list of those who were ministers or priests of certain deities (Adad, Amon, etc.), or again of soldiers. If the enumeration is of soldiers, every company seems to be named after a god. Broken as they are, these lists are valuable for the proper names, not as in the Amarna letters of chiefs, but probably of common people, mentioned; among which there is, e.g., again the possibility of a Yahwe compound in the name Yamibanda or Yawibanda, 1 with which Hrozny compares the Shubandu of the Amarna letters. Buduna he compares with Bedan of 1 Chron. 7 17 . The lists are specially welcome as random specimens of civil and military organisation such as the Babylonian civilisation made possible. We thus see the kind of world amid which came into existence, in due time, the Israel which we know through the Hebrew literature. The excavations of Sellin have shown 2 how gradually a city like Taanach showed any signs of the presence of such an Israel. There was no marked break. The chronology it may never be possible to determine precisely; but, until we come on evidence to the contrary, the obvious course seems to be to suppose that Israel grew out of a situation roughly similar to that revealed by the Taannek documents. These documents may have been contemporary with the Amarna letters, as Peiser's suggestions 3 as to persons and places imply, or they may have been somewhat later. 1 It has been proposed to find another in Yabi-sharru, the name of the writer of one of the two Amarna letters (see p. 86, n. 3) ; Revue Biblique, 1904, p. 141. Cp. Peiser's remarks in Orient. Litt-zeit., 1903, col. 380f. Halevy finds Kassite elements in the Taannek names. ' Sellin, Tell Taannek, p. 102. 3 Orientalistische Litter aturieitung, 1903, col, 322f. 84 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY What we have now to do is to inquire how far we are justified in supposing that the general conditions of the Amarna period did prevail till a time when we are sure that "Israel" was really there to be moulded by them. In doing so we shall try to avoid the ambiguous and perhaps insoluble question when "Israel" settled. We start, then, from a time when for generations Egypt had been the supreme power in Palestine and Syria, using in all its communications the Babylonian language, which had come into general use through the wide spread of Babylonian civilisation many centuries earlier. How far inter-communication had been constant during those centuries we have not yet the means of determining in detail. It seems natural to suppose that it had been kept up. Thutmosis III. claims to have received tribute from Asshur. If it should turn out that communication was not kept up to any considerable extent, we should simply have a proof that the Babylonian language and script could continue in use for centuries without the aid of much inter-communication. What we want to examine is the conditions which prevailed from the Amarna period onwards. We begin then with a suzerainty of Egypt in Palestine admitted even by Babylonia. In a letter to Amenhotep IV., referred to above (p. 76, n. 2), a Babylonian king, 1 far from pretending to any authority in Palestine, frankly recognises the right and responsibility of Egypt. In another letter 2 the same king of Babylon, in asking that Egypt should not treat with Babylon's vassal Assyria, 3 affirms that an earlier Babylonian king had similarly, even when invited lo 1 Burnaburyash. 2 No. 7. 3 See next note but one. FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH PALESTINE 85 interfere in Palestinian affairs, refused to listen to the Canaanites. 1 The implication is that Burnaburyash himself was acting in the same friendly way. He may, however, have seen that it was necessary to protest very hard. There are signs that Babylonia was by no means inert. 2 Bib-Addi of Gubla, in three letters 3 declares that the sons of Abd-Ashirta were in treasonable negotiations with the Kassite (i.e., Babylonian), Hittite, or Mitannite kings. Tablet Berlin 214 4 is a fragment of a letter mentioning the same Abd-Ashirta, telling of an expedition of the king of Mitanni. Tablet 291 is a very interesting fragment of a letter from some unknown agents of the King (of Egypt) informing him of an understanding between Aramaeans (Akhlami) and Babylon (Karduniash). Perhaps this is not unconnected with what we learn in a Babylonian chronicle of a later king (see below). Whatever political theories or diplomatic usages pre- vailed, no one was disposed to let such things stand in the way of interest. It is quite clear that trade relations were fairly established and felt by all to be of great value and importance. In letter 6 the King of Babylon says to 1 They had asked Kurigalzu to help in a revolt against Egypt (7, 19 22). 3 On the developed diplomatic espionage by which Ashur-uballit's direct negotiations with Egypt (see note 3 on page 84) were known to Burnaburyash, see Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 398, note 2. Ashur-uballit's great grandson Adad-nirari commemorates (tablet, line 30, 31) his great grandfather's diplomatic successes; cp. Winckler, 1. c. note 3, contrasted with p. 396, note 1. Egypt would naturally favour the hitherto unimportant Assyria as against Babylonia or Mitanni, former lords of Syria (cp. Die Keilinschri/ten und das Alte Testament, 3. ed., p. 195), still referred to by Abd-khiba (181, 32ff.) as rivals. Amenhotep seems to have ignored Babylonia's first remonstrance (see note 2 on next page). 8 Keilinschri/tliche Bibliothek, Nos. 56, line 15; 86, 20; 87, 71. * Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v., p. 415. 86 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY the King of Egypt l that they must continue the trade relations which had prevailed hitherto : (lines 13 16) "Whatever you wish from my land write for; they shall procure you it. And whatever I wish from your land I shall write for; they shall procure me it." In the same strain quietly writes the closely-watched 2 King of Assyria. 3 Letter 256 deals with Egyptian caravans travelling to Babylonia (and Mesopotamia). The writer, son of (Lap)aya, doubtless Lapaya of Central Palestine, protests that he will secure safe passage for the caravans the Pharaoh may send, as his father (Lap) ay a had done. In a letter already quoted (p. 76, n. 2), a Babylonian king refers, in a manner that implies the constant occurrence of the thing, to his traders making a stay 4 in Palestine, near Khinaton in Southern Galilee, 5 for purposes of trade. Egypt's neglect or inability to exercise adequate control, as the letter in question shows, hampered this commerce; but how loath Babylonia was to be debarred from the full advantages of it by the extending self-assertion of Assyria comes out clearly in what we learn from a Babylonian chronicle. 6 Burnaburyash's grandson, Kadashman-Kharbe, though half Assyrian, stole a march on his mother's country, by 1 Burnaburyash to Amenhotep IV. 2 Letter 7, 31 34. Burnaburyash says he had written before on the subject. Cp. above. 3 Ashur-uballit, Letter 15, Eev. 9 11 : "Write for whatever you wish; they will procure it. (Our) countries are far (apart). Let our agents go back and forth." Compare also the recently published second letter of Ashur-uballit : Scheil, Deux nouvelles lettres d'el Amarna, 1902, p. 1 4; cp. Orientalistitche Litter aturzeitung, 1903, col. 379f. 4 The exact meaning of the word ittaklu is uncertain. * See Shanda in Mittheilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1902, p. 62 (part 2, p. 46). Chronicle Brit. Mus. 82, 7 4, 38, col. 1 lines 59. Text in Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, 1, 298; translation, 6. 115. DECLINE OF EGYPT 87 his acute enterprise of establishing and fortifying with forts and wells a route across the Syrian 1 desert to the Mediterranean coast districts, where he established settle- ments, perhaps in the neighbourhood of Damascus. 2 In the period which followed, the Hittites, who had been pressing down towards Phoenicia and the Lebanons from the north, gained in influence. Forcing their wedge in between Mitanni and the vassal states of Egypt, they gradually, thanks to Egypt's increased weakness, gained the suzerainty over those states, down towards the borders of Palestine. The last king of the XVIII. dynasty 3 tried to re-assert Egypt's claims, but how effectively is doubtful. 4 The second king of the XIX. dynasty 5 penetrated as far as Kadesh, and, it is claimed, came into conflict with the Hittite Great King, 6 but mainly asserted his supremacy as far as Northern Galilee, 7 a large part of which he found in the possession of a people called Asar, apparently Asher. 8 Sety's son, Ramses II. (the " Great ") was very active in Palestine, where there was a general revolt as far south as Ashkelon and Southern Syria, but had eventually to be content with little more than Palestine. The text of a 1 His grandfather, Ashur-uballit, had found his communications even in the ordinary trade route, probably across Mesopotamia, impeded by the same Suti whom Kadashman-kharbe defeated (Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, v. no. 15, lines 1214). 3 Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, i. 147f. 1 Har-em-heb(e), in the time of Saparuru? (Asien und Europa, 332, n. 1. 4 According to the text of the Ramses II. treaty (line 14), Saparuru had made a similar treaty with a king of Egypt. 'Sety I., or Sethos. "Maurasera? (Asien und Europa, 332, n. 1). 7 There can be little doubt that it is with Sety that the Hittite king Maurasera, miscalled Mauthenra, is represented as having formed a treaty (Ramses II. treaty, line 14). 8 See above, p. 81. 88 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY formal treaty between Ramses II. and Khetasera, the Hittite King, has fortunately been preserved on the wall of Karnak in Egyptian translation. According to this text the document was inscribed on a silver tablet. We should be entitled to assume that it would be drawn up in Babylonian, and there are several linguisitic indications 1 in the Egyptian text that seem to imply a Babylonian original. Whether the Hittite-Egyptian treaty was entered into under the attractive power of a common fear 2 we need not stop to inquire. In any case about the same time Assyria was asserting itself in Mesopotamia, driving out the Mitanni, 3 and appropriating their territory right up to the Taurus, 4 and perhaps not very long afterwards 5 began the movement from Asia Minor which planted in Southern Syria the people whom we know as Philistines. The first to suffer from this movement would be the Hittite state, which had by this time pushed well down into middle Syria. The Hittite power was seriously broken ; 6 but it may have taken the Philistines some time to reach Canaan. In the meantime Egypt had successfully met a crisis. 1 See W. M. Miiller, Mittheilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1902, p. 202, n. 5; 203, n. 2, 7; 205, n. 2, 3; 210, n. 7; 211, n. 6. Miiller retracts (ib. 203, 204, n. 7) the view expressed inAsien und Europa, 335, n. 2. 2 Spiegelberg, Der Aufenthalt Israels in Aegypten (1904), p. 36. "Under Adad-nirari I., who thus completed the work of his great grandfather, Ashur-uballit (cp. Winckler, Altorientalische Forschungen, I. 240). 4 Under Shalmaneser I. and Tukulti-ninib I. Shalmaneser and his father had also to exert themselves in repressing the Aramaeans in Mesopotamia. 5 See W. M. Miiller, " Die Chronologic der Philistereinwanderung " in Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, pp. 30 42. *W. M. Miiller, Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, p. 35. THE PHILISTINES SETTLE 89 Under Merneptah. it was attacked on the west, and, although, it was apparently on friendly terms with the Hittites, 1 the Palestinian peoples took advantage of the opportunity to make a common revolt. It is in the suppression of this revolt that we have the first mention of " Israel." Canaan, including " Israel," had to continue vassal. Meanwhile the energy displayed by Assyria under Adad-nirari I. and his two successors being followed by a period of weakness, Assyria's place in Mesopotamia was taken by Babylon under Marduk-baliddin. Ashur-dan, indeed, inflicted on the Kassite dynasty a blow from which it did not recover; but the new Babylonian dynasty which took the place of the Kassite soon found in Nebuchad- rezzar I. a vigorous ruler, who re-asserted the power of Babylon in Mesopotamia and carried it right to the Syrian coast. It is thus probable that the " Philistines " were soon brought into touch with Babylon. The confusion in Egypt after the time of Merneptah enabled the " Philistine " immigrants to establish themselves in Syria, as far south as Canaan ; but the subsequent stoppage of the tribute from the Canaanite states eventually compelled the attention of Ramses III., who, perhaps in his eighth year, gathered a heterogeneous army, and forced the "Phili- stines" to acknowledge his suzerainty. 2 A quarter of a century later his son Ramses IV. was still receiving tribute 1 In a long inscription, Merneptah gives permission to the Phoenicians (Asien und Europa, p. 17, with note 2) to send the Hittites supplies of corn (ib. p. 322). 2 W. M. Miiller, Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, p. 34. Ramses III. hardly came into conflict with the Hittites (Asien und Europa, 323) ; his attack on the Amorites may have been a mere raid of his mercenaries (Asien und Europa, 226f, Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, p. 33). 90 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY from Syria, 1 and a few years later Ramses VII. is addressed in words implying interference in the affairs of Syria; 2 but the later Kamessides may not have been able to enforce any claims they made. 3 The report of the Egyptian emissary Wen Amon, 4 dating from about 1100 B.C., seems to show, in its lively narrative, how contemptuous the ruler of Dor, on the coast of Palestine, had become of the claims of Egypt. It is not certain, however, that the part of the narrative containing the undiplomatic expressions refers to Bidir of Dor. According to the arrangement of the papyrus fragments followed by Erman, the haughty words were spoken by Zakar-Baal of Byblos. Even of the consequent inference as to the attitude of Byblos we must not make too much, if we admit as correct the common view that it was just about the same time that a king of Egypt was presenting the great Tiglath-pileser I., a few miles farther north at Arvad, with gifts of strange animals. That no doubt acknowledged the Assyrian claim to have succeeded to the Hittite suzerainty in Syria ; but it implied that the status of Egypt was concerned in the appearance of Assyria in Syria. If Erman's arrangement 1 From the Rutennu and 'Amu : a stele from Hammamat in Lepsius, Denkmdler, iii. 223c (Petrie, Hist, of Egypt, iii. 168). 2 " Thou forcest thy way into the land of the Hittites, Thou over- throwest its mountains" (Pleyte, Papyrus de Turin 89, pp. 123ff). The words of the hymn may be bombastic (W. M. Miiller, Asien und Europa, 322 : Ramses IV. was the last to record his name at the mines in the Sinaitic peninsula: von Bissing, Geschichte Aegyptens, 1904, p. 75; but some meaning seems to remain. 3 The "Philistines" very likely developed unchecked in Palestine. That was no concern of Egypt's. 4 The text is now accessible in an English version (American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Jan., 1905, pp. 100 109), which should, however, be compared with the translations of W. M. Miiller (Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, pp. 14 27) and Erman (Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, 1900, 1 14). These trans- lations are made from the transcription into hieroglyphs published by Golenischeff (Eecueil de Travaux, etc., xxi. 74). EGYPT LAST IN PALESTINE 91 of Wen Amon's report is adopted, the attitude of Bidir of Dor is eminently respectful to Egypt, and would be quite consistent with the continuance till that time of something like the condition established by Ramses III. On the other hand, the extent of the " Philistine " rule makes it easy to understand the conditions which preceded the attempt of Saul to found a kingdom in Mount Ephraim. The Philistines were too strong for him. The answer to the question how David succeeded where Saul failed given by W. M. Miiller is attractive : David succeeded because Egypt came forth once more to assert its claim against the Philis- tines, and Tyre pushed southwards. 1 The difficulty is that no king earlier than Shishak would be likely to do so, and there is no proof that Shishak reigned more than 21 years. The interval between David's assertion of his independence of the Philistines and the expedition against Rehoboam, which was recorded not later than Shishak's 21st year, 2 would have to be under twenty years. Moreover, why does Shishak not mention the supposed first expedition as well as the second? Apart from these two difficulties not perhaps insuperable the theory would explain much. Shishak would be acting in each case on the principle " divide and conquer," 3 in the one case in reference to Philistines and Hebrews, in the other, in reference to Israel and Judah. We can imagine Rehoboam and Jeroboam incriminating each other with Shishak very much as did their predecessors with Amenhotep IV., five centuries earlier. With Shishak's early death, however, 1 Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesettschaft, 1902, pp. 37, 39, 41. Cp. now Die Alte Orient, v. 25. 2 Nor earlier : Petrie, Hist, of Egypt, iii., 235. 8 Against Spiegelberg's view of the expedition of Shishak as directed against Eehoboam alone (Aegyptologische Randglossen zum Alien Testament, 27 30) see now Breasted in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, July, 1905, p. 249. 92 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY they had to appeal elsewhither. Would the appeal to Bir-Idri of Damascus then be in Babylonian? and the correspondence with Hiram of Tyre? Or, to go back a generation or two, David's letter to Joab about Uriah? The case of David is particularly interesting, because it has been suggested l that the explanation of the strange name given to his secretary, Shavsha, is that he was a Babylonian. Scribes might with advantage be Babylonians if Babylonian were less widely known than before. Yes; but how if Babylonian had passed out of use entirely? We must therefore consider whether there are any evidences that would justify the conclusion that Babylonian did not continue to be the language of communication till the time we have now reached. To answer this question we must glance back over the period the international relations of which we have rapidly sketched and look for hints on the question of language. A point to notice at the outset is that the prevalence of Babylonian in Syria in the Amarna period was due not so much to events of that time as to events which had happened some thousand years earlier. Egypt had been in possession a century or more, and yet its intervention, far from substituting Egyptian, served to rivet the use of Babylonian by providing additional occasions. It is not illogical, therefore, to hold that any signs of the continuance of Egyptian sway in the following period are so far probable warrants for a belief in the continued use of Babylonian. Of course, long before the Amarna time communication with Egypt had brought products of Egyptian civilisation. Scarabs and other articles of Egyptian character have been excavated in Palestine 1 J. Marquart, Fundamente israelitischer und judischer Geschicte (1896), p. 22. Cp. now Stade in Mittheilungen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Pdlaestinavereins, 1904, p. 82. BABYLONIAN WRITTEN IN PALESTINE 93 without number. On the whole, however, the current flowed quite as strongly the other way, and that seems to be true of language as much as of anything. The fact therefore that excavation has revealed many Egyptian articles dating from the period following the Amarna age, but few if any certainly Babylonian, does not seem to be as significant for the question we are discussing as might at first be supposed. 1 That is specially true in the light of the considerations we shall presently adduce. In the Amarna period, then, Babylonian is in use everywhere. Unfortunately, Egypt has yielded us no diplomatic letters from the period following the Amenhoteps. If it is always unsafe to argue e silentio, in this case it is specially dangerous. There is a definite reason why the letters that have reached us come all from the same generation. Whether or not Amenhotep IV., in his zeal for asserting the domain of Aton, which in the remarkable Amarna hymn 2 comprises the lands of Syria (Khar) and Kush (Nubia, etc.) and the land of Egypt, actually established a centre for his worship in the two foreign lands, 3 he certainly did in Egypt; and it was there, at Tell el-Amarna, that the letters were found. Ekhnaton's city, at Tell el-Amarna, however, was inhabited for only one generation. After that time letters would go to Thebes (or, in Ramses II. 's time, to Tanis). They perished, or have not yet been discovered. 1 See, for example, Sellin, Der Ertrag der Ausgrabungen im Orient, 27. 3 See Griffith's translation in Petrie, Hist, of Egypt, ii. 215 218. 3 Spiegelberg suggested (Recueil de Travaux, xx. 37, 38, note 1, more fully, xxi. 47, 48) that the town name Khinaton referred to above (p. 76, n. 2) may contain the divine name Aton specially honoured by Amenhotep IV. (see some difficulties pointed out by W. M. Miiller in Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung , i. 176f, and Knudtzon in Breasted's article quoted below), and Breasted finds an Aton-town called Gm.Aton in Kush. See Breasted's interesting article : "A city of Ikhenaton in Nubia" (Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, xl., 106 113). 94 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY When, a generation or two later, Ramses II. and Khetasera drew up their treaty in Babylonian (see above, p. 88), Asher was already settled in Galilee. It was a larger Asher than that of later times. 1 There seems to be no reason to doubt that its correspondence would be in Babylonian, like that unearthed at Taanach which may, for aught we know, belong to this time. The same may not unnaturally be assumed of the correspondence of Ramses' son, Merneptah, with Phoenicia alluded to above, (p. 89, n. 1). The memoranda on the back of Papyrus Anastasi III. show how constant was communication with Syria in the third year of his reign : in eleven days eight persons of some importance and seven dispatches, including a letter to the King of Tyre, crossed the frontier. The memoranda on the papyrus are, of course, in Hieratic, as are those on the Amarna letters (above, p. 75, n. 1) ; but the Amarna letters themselves were in Babylonian, and so may these have been. Ihe advance of Adad-nirari I., Shalmaneser I., and Tukulti-Ninib I. makes anything else seem improbable. There is nothing positive to suggest a change by the time of Ramses III. some two generations later, about the end of the 13th century B.C. A priori, therefore, one would expect to find that the communications of the Philistines with Egypt would be in Babylonian. Unfor- tunately the report of Wen Amon is ambiguous, on account of the uncertainty how the fragments into which it was divided (to increase its price !) by the Egyptians who found it, should be pieced together. As arranged by its owner, whom W. M. Miiller followed, it speaks of regular records 2 1 W. M. Miiller, Asien und Europa, p. 238. 2 Breasted : "The journals of his fathers" (op. cit. p. 106). L. B. Paton, The Early History of Syria and Palestine (1902), 170, remarks : "Doubt- less cuneiform tablets like the Amarna letters." TWELFTH CENTURY 95 kept, as we should have expected, by the rulers of Dor, but does not tell in what language they were kept. As arranged by Erman, 1 however, who is followed by Breasted, the document tells little about Dor; the records referred to were kept at Byblos. It does not appear whether Wen Amon would be able to read them himself ; they were read to him. This is at least not positively favourable to Breasted's suggestion that they would be written in Hieratic. Still they might have been written in Hieratic without Wen Amon's being able to read them, for he need not have been able to read at all : the general impression one gets of him is not that of a man of much culture or ability. When he wants to write to Egypt he has a scribe to write for him. 2 The governor seems to suggest (line 59) that Wen Amon would not be able to read such a memorial inscription about himself as might be erected at Byblos. Of course a memorial might be written quite differently from an ordinary letter. How such a document would be written, however, is precisely one of the things we want to know. The inscription on the funerary statue found at Gezer by Macalister in 1902 3 was in hieroglyphic. It is to be noted that, as long as Wen Amon was at Dor or Byblos, he had no difficulty in making himself understood ; it was only when he reached Cyprus that he was in distress till he found someone who understood Egyptian. Of course various explanations are possible. On the 1 Erman's persuasive arrangement is based on the meaning of the con- tents of the several fragments. Golenischeff does not appear to have published any statement as to whether the appearance of the fragments supports Erman's view. W. M. Miiller in Die Alte Orient, v. 25, hardly needs to express his opinion on Erman's arrangement. 3 The hieroglyphic transcription of Golenischeff makes the scribe Wen Amon's own ; but Erman plausibly questions the text (Zeitschrift fiir Aegyptische Sprache, 1900, p. 34, n. 5). 3 Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1903, p. 36f. 96 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY Syrian coast there might be many who understood Egyptian, or there might be an international language. We should have some light on literary practice at Byblos (or Dor) if we could be sure that Erman and Breasted are justified in adopting the translation "500 rolls of papyrus " l for an item in the list of objects sent by the Egyptian rulers to the ruler of Byblos. This would imply that papyrus was a writing material in demand at Byblos, although Breasted perhaps goes too far in saying that it would show that clay tablets were no longer in use; both were certainly once in use in Egypt at the same time. The reading, however, is perhaps not certain; the last character in Golenischeff's reproduction in hieroglyphs is supplied in brackets ; and even if it be correct, the meaning is ambiguous. The rendering " 500 rolls of variegated stuff " suggested by Golenischeff, and adopted without comment by W. M. Miiller, seems to be quite legitimate. It appears to be safest, therefore, to leave this point out of account. In the absence of positive ground for it, it would hardly be safe to suppose that communication with Egypt had become relatively so much more frequent than it was in the Amarna period as to lead to disuse of Babylonian. The fact, already referred to, that at very nearly the same time Tiglath-pileser I. was a few miles north, at Arvad, holding negotiation with the King of Egypt implies on his part a desire to maintain, or restore, the old trade relations which made the Babylonian language that of commerce and politics. Tiglath-pileser's boast, indeed, that in the forty-two countries which he conquered as far as " the upper sea of the west," he had '"Feines Papier" (p. 11). So von Biasing in his short history of Egypt (Geschichte Aegyptens im Umriss, 1904, p. 76). Petrie, perhaps, "stuffs" (Hist, of Egypt, iii. 200). EARLY ISRAEL 97 imposed a common language 1 need not 2 be understood literally of speech; but his words imply a strong influence. The uncertainties about the beginnings of Israel's history make it difficult to pass from the point we have now reached to the history as gathered from the Hebrew literature. Part of the population of David's kingdom were descendants of the people of Zimrida, Abd-khiba, and the other town -kings of Amenhotep IY. Another part were descendants of the Khabiri who gave some of those politicians so much trouble. Another part were descen- dants of still later immigrants. In so far as they immigrated as tribes they would settle mainly in the open country. In so far as they immigrated under conquering chiefs, their chiefs would supplant the Abd-khibas and Zimridas, but would retain the services of such of their officers as they might need. It seems likely that in some cases these would be scribes. The Amarna letters show that that must have been so. It has been plausibly suggested, as remarked above (p. 92), that in fact David had a Babylonian scribe. Nor have suggestions of other traces of Babylonian letters been wanting. It has, for example, been conjectured that, amid the obscurities of the fifth chapter of Judges, are to be found evidences that it has, in part, been recovered, not without difficulty, from a document written in cuneiform. 3 It has been argued, from the implications of the narrative in 2 Kings 18f , that Assyrian cuneiform was understood by educated men at Jerusalem, and that what was really intended by the 1 Pa-a ishten (Prism inscription, vi. 46). So Lindl. Cyrus, p. 56b, literally. 2 So Winckler in Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, i. 37, and King and Budge in Annals of the Kings of Assyria, i. 83. 3 Winckler, Geschichte Israels, ii. 128, explained by Altorientalische Forschungen, iii. 167, note 1. 98 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY request made to Sennacherib's emissary was that he should speak in his own language, which the historian, in accordance with the conditions of his own time called Aramaic, but we should call Assyrian. 1 The distinction, therefore, implied by Isaiah between the vulgar script (Is. 8 1 , called "human") and some other (presumably, therefore, called divine : cp. Exod. 31 18 , 32 16 ) would be that between a demotic and a hieroglyphic, perhaps such a script as that of the Siloam tunnel, which may be of Isaiah's time, and a cuneiform. Winckler even suggests that the narrative of Hebrew history known as E was the first of the kind for which the alphabetic script was used. 2 If that conjecture, even in a modified form, be found to be supported by further investigations, it would imply that when Israel began to adopt the institu- tions of an organised state it had within reach the fruits of the civilisation of Babylonia. There is no longer any doubt that the influence of the civilisation that we call " Babylonian " is discernible in mythic allusion and early narratives in the Hebrew literature. It is of course possible that there was, between the cuneiform writings and their parallels in extant Hebrew literature, a chain of tradition that was purely oral. It is obvious, however, how much of conjecture there is in that. We know from 1 Peiser, Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung , 1902, col. 41 44 ; cp. A. Jeremias Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alien Orients, p. 323. 2 " Der Gbrauch der Keilschrift bei den Juden " in Altorientalische Forschungen, iii. 165 174. Conder tried to show that some of the variations in the names in the Old Testament might be due to ambiguities in the cuneiform script, in which he thought all the earlier Hebrew literature had been written. He thinks that the " men of Hezekiah " (Prov. 25 1 ) copied out the older cuneiform documents in the later alphabetic script (The First Bible, 1902, p. 92f.). Peters argues per- suasively for the use of clay tablets in Israel (The Old Testament and the New Scholarship, 1901, pp. 256265). EARLY HEBREW MONARCHY 99 the Amarna collection that Babylonian myth literature was drawn upon for texts in which to study the inter- national language in Egypt. 1 We may suppose a similar method to have been followed in Palestine, 2 and we know, as we have seen, of no definite point at which to assume that it ceased. The Hebrew alphabet was in use in the middle of the ninth century, 3 and the appearance of the script offers nothing to suggest that it was a novel thing. It was used for the purpose of memorial inscriptions. It may very well, however, have been regarded as unsuitable for legal, or state, or religious documents. For such purposes cuneiform may have continued in use, as was suggested above, just as, in modern Germany, the more ornate alphabet is retained for many purposes, although, for example, all scientific publications appear in the more legible Roman letter. As time went on, too, linguistic conditions changed. The population of large parts of the Babylonian world was becoming largely Aramaised. It has been held that Shishak's list of Palestinian towns shows .signs of Aramaic 4 influence. It is no more impossible for different languages to be used in the same country at the same time for different purposes than it is for different scripts to be so used. We can afford to leave the whole question somewhat open because excavation will in time supply us with new material which may, we may hope, suffice to clear up everything. It is to be observed that the question we have been 1 There are four such texts in the Amarna collection (Beitrdge zur Assyriologie, iv. 127ff.). 2 Cp. Winckler, Geschichte Israels, ii. 29. 3 On the genuineness of the Mesha inscription see now Konig, Zeit- schri/t der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, 1905, pp. 233 251. * W. M. Miiller, Asien und Europa, 169ff. That, however, is ques- tioned by Noldeke (Encyclopedia Biblica, 277). 100 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY discussing is how far Israel may be supposed to have been in a position to draw on Babylonian sources, not how far it did so. How far, for example, Israel may have been influenced in one way or another by such a legal system as has been brought to light in the Khammurabi code, we have expressly reserved. Similarly, we have only been trying to determine how far it would be plausible to find Babylonian loan words even in early Hebrew, not whether, as a matter of fact, there are many such. The question of fact would require a special discussion. 1 In the ninth century began the great forward movement of Assyrian arms which necessarily made Babylonian civilisation more and more prominent. It is an example of the surprises of excavation, and the caution necessary in dealing with its yields, that that period, when beyond doubt Assyrian influence became great, has so far yielded only one cuneiform inscription in Palestine. 2 As if to emphasise the singularity, that solitary document was found at Gezer, a place that suggests links with the south rather than the north. The picture shows that the Gezer tablet is broken off below, and at the right side. 3 Not more than half of it is preserved, and it is difficult to solve many of the questions that arise. It is clearly a deed of sale of an estate with houses, and the slaves by whose aid the work of the estate was carried on. The script and language 1 It is dealt with succinctly by Zimmern in Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3 ed., pp. 648 651. R. D. Wilson's interesting article " Babylon and Israel : a comparison of their leading ideas based upon their vocabularies" in The Princeton Theological Review for April, 1903, is useful, but deals only with selected aspects of the question of loan words. 2 [See now, however, below, p. 103, note 1.] * Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1904, pp. 207f., 229 243, where photographs are given. GEZER TABLET 101 are pure Assyrian. The two sellers bear Assyrian names ; but that does not necessarily prove that they were Assyrians. Children of foreign parents in Assyria, as Johns remarks, may bear Assyrian names. How the sellers acquired the right to dispose of an estate called " the household of Mushetik-akhe " does not appear. Johns notes the fact that a man of the name of Mushetik- akhe was sold a few years later in Nineveh. 1 The seals of the sellers, which can be clearly seen in the photograph, should be followed by an account of the property sold, specifying its position by naming the owners of adjoining properties. The picture shows that all this, which would probably have determined whether the property was really at Gezer, is lacking, except the first line and beginnings and endings of some of the others. The names of two slaves which are wholly or partly preserved are names which might belong to natives of Gezer. We need not delay over the first lines preserved of the reverse which are parts of the conditions of sale. The last two lines above the horizontal ruling, which contain the date, we shall return to. Below the ruling follows what is left of the list of witnesses. The man whose name occurs in the third line is called mayor (khazanu); 2 but the name of the place is lost. If the tablet was really found at Gezer, he may have been mayor of Gezer. Johns points out that the four men whose names precede his must have been still more important, and three of them have Assyrian names. The uncertainty whether the tablet was really found at Gezer is due to the temptation to deception on the part of the hired diggers. There is nothing in the inscription 1 Assyrian Deeds and Documents, No. 178; cp. iii. 406. J On this office see, e.g., Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, ii. 148. 102 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY to determine certainly the provenance of the document. 1 It might have been written in Assyria ; but it may belong to Gezer. The peculiarity of the method by which the date is indicated as the year after, not the year of, the Eponymy of Ashur-dur-usur 2 could, as has been suggested, be due to word not yet having reached so remote a place as Gezer of the name of the new Eponym. That the Assyrians should be in force at Gezer in the time of Ashur-bani-pal, in the later years of King Manasseh, we may very well believe. It is interesting to have this possible confirmation. The strange thing is that, in a city from which Yapakhi wrote three letters to the Pharaoh complaining of the attacks of the Khabiri, 3 a city mentioned in at least five other 4 Amarna letters, no Assyrian documents of earlier date than 649 B.C. 5 should be dug up. 1 Sellin seems to go too far when he asserts (Der Ertrag der Ausgrabungen im Orient, p. 28) that it has been shown that the tablet was brought in some mysterious manner from North Syria. He perhaps refers to Sayce's "difficulty about accepting the statement of the work- men" (Palestine Exploration Fund Statement, 1904, p. 237) ; but see Macalister's remarks ibid, pp. 355f. The presence of the Assyrian names seems to make it unwise to infer much as to site from the others. [See now p. 103, note 1.] 3 Two tablets dated in this eponymy are listed by G. Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 95; cp. Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, No. 86, 491 ; cp. No. 533, where the Eponym is called, as in the Gezer tablet, governor (but shaknu instead of bel pakhati) of Barkhalza. On the other hand, the parallel case, S 701, G. Smith, Assyrian Eponym Canon, p. 91, No. 213 in Johns, Deeds and Documents (see 693), of a deed of sale in the Eponymy (B.C. 681) after that of Xabu-shar-usur shows that in troublous times there might be uncertainty as to the Eponymy even in Assyria. SA GAS. 4 Nos. 163, 22; 177, 21; 180, 14; 183, 8; 239, 43. s [Johns now assigns the date B.C. 651 to the Eponymy after Ashur-dur- usur (Palest. Explor. Fund Quarterly Statement, 1905, p. 210)]. CONCLUSION 103 It is an impressive object lesson, as Johns well remarks, how risky the argument from silence is. The same remark applies to the whole of Hebrew history. It would be rash to conclude that, because we have not yet dug up proof of the presence of Babylonian letters in historical Israel before the time of Manasseh, the Babylonian influences which prevailed had long absolutely disappeared when the new political advance of Assyria under the great conquer- ing kings began. Only if a large number of important sites, including Jerusalem, yielded no result would it be safe to listen to such an argument. We may confidently expect the future to bring to light startling facts to clear up the uncertainties. 1 The same remark applies with equal force to the further question, which lies beyond our present subject, how far Israel's achievements are to be regarded as dependent on such stimulus from Babylon. That there was such a relationship is probably admitted by all. The future will clear up the details. In the case of the present war in 1 [Since this was in type comes the announcement of a second deed of sale found at "Gezer." It has been published in the Palest. Exploration Fund Quart. Statement for July 1905 (pp. 206 210) by Johns, who assigns the Eponymy by which it is dated to the year 649 648 B.C. The tablet would thus be written early in B.C. 648. The finding of this second tablet removes Sayce's doubts as to the provenance of the first (ibid, p. 272). The same number of the Quarterly Statement contains (p. 176) some notes forwarded by Sellin regarding his work during 1904, including a translation, agreeing with that in the Revue Biblique for April 1905, p. 271, of one of the seven new cuneiform letters found during that season. It will be observed that it also is addressed to Ishtar-washur. It reads thus : " To Ishtar-washur from Aman-khashir. May Adad preserve thee ! Send thy tribute, and presents, and all prisoners who are with thee, to Megiddo on the day of the reception." We shall not speculate on the meaning of this letter till we see the text of it and of the other six. What will Sellin have to report from Dothan?] 104 RECENT ASSYRIOLOGY the East, no one can foretell the issue. 1 What is clear is that the struggle has revealed to the world a new first-class power. That will remain whatever be the issue. So in the case of Babylon and Israel. Their achievements are manifest. The world needed both. Patient study and exploration will bring us nearer a determination of their mutual relations. 1 This remark was made in the beginning of January, 1905. JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. BY THE REV. J. T. MARSHALL, M.A., D.D. IT is of great importance that Bible students should have an intimate acquaintance with the religious atmosphere into which Christianity was introduced. A knowledge of contemporary History is valuable, but far more important is it to be familiar with the religious beliefs of the people at the time. At the very outset of Christ's ministry, His doctrines were recognised even by the populace as " new teaching," and yet Christianity never attempted to sever itself from the past. Its early disciples rather saw in it " the fulness of the seasons " ; the focus towards which all events of the past had been steadily converging (1 Cor. 10 n ). The importance of the century before Christ has been much underestimated. It has even been designated a period of " silence," because the Jewish literature of that period is, by Protestants, excluded from the canonical writings. I concur in the wisdom of that exclusion, but by no means with the wholesale neglect with which that exclusion has been accompanied. I believe that Dr. Sanday and Dr. Headlam that it is to a caieful study of the literature of this period that we must look for our next advance in the exegesis of the New Testament (Romans page vii.). In fact, I hold a brief this evening 106 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS for Jewish literature, as of immense importance for New Testament students. The Jewish mind was by no means inactive during the post-Maccabean period. It was much stimulated by contact with Greek thought. It pondered profoundly on many important themes, and we cannot afford to be indifferent to the results arrived at. In some respects, the advance made on the Theology of the Old Testament was a distinct gain. We seem to glide much more simply and naturally from the literature of the century before Christ to the New Testament, than from the Old Testament to the New. In other respects, it is true, the attitude of the New Testament is one of distinct antagonism to the Jewish Theology of the day. But in either case, it is important for us to know what was the current Theology into which Christianity was introduced. When it was favourable to Christianity, we gladly make use of it, as disclosing the intervening steps between the Old Testament and the New ; and when it was unfavourable we shall certainly under- stand our New Testament better, if we know both sides of the polemic ; especially if we know what were the doctrines of the Pharisees, to which our Lord and the Apostle Paul were so strongly opposed. At the outset it will be well to lay before you our sources of information. In the first place, there is, of course, the Old Testament Apocrypha, which has been revised by a select committee of the Revision Company, and is now, in a reliable translation, brought within the reach of all. This, I scarcely need say, forms part of the Bible used by the Latin and Syrian Churches. Besides the Apocryphal books we have a number of works, equally valuable for our present purpose, though never considered by any Church Council to be canonical. Foremost among these we place the Book of Enoch, famous as being the source of the JEWISH LITERATURE 107 quotation in Jude 14 15 ; and also of much other matter found in Jude and 2 Peter. The passage quoted in Jude u occurs in Enoch 1 9 . The Book of Enoch professes to give a number of revelations, made to the patriarch after he was translated. In a series of peregrinations over the universe, he was shown the secrets of meteorology, and the dread wonders of Heaven and Hell. The book is a com- posite work, and the dates of its authorship are uncertain ; but the majority of competent scholars assign the latest portion to the century before Christ ; though the book may give some indications of having been transcribed by a Christian scribe. Somewhat similar to this, is a book, known only in a Slavonic version, called the " Secrets of Enoch," or the " Slavonic Enoch," as distinguished from the former book which is called the "Ethiopic Enoch," be- cause our most complete copy is in Ethiopic. Next in importance come the so-called Psalms of Solomon; or, more sensibly, the " Psalms of the Pharisees " ; composed about the time when Jerusalem was besieged and taken by the Roman General, Pompey, B.C. 63. We are much in- debted to these Psalms, for our knowledge of the nature of the Messianic hope, among the upper classes in the time of Christ. Then we have the Book of Jubilees or " Little Genesis," which gives a legendary embellishment of the lives of the Patriarchs, magnifying their virtues and minimizing their defects. It continues the narrative down to the giving of the Law on Sinai; and one motive of its composition was to insist rigorously not to say fanatically on the observance of the Sabbath. Then we have the so-called Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in which the twelve Sons of Jacob are severally described as, like their father Jacob, foretelling the history of their descendants, and giving them sound moral admonition. There is an old nucleus of this work which is pre-Christian. i 108 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS In its present form it has been skilfully re-edited by a Jewish Christian. Then of lesser importance, conies the Assumption of Moses, which claims to be a revelation made by Moses to Joshua, giving the History of Israel onward to the death of Herod the Great. A little later, and of much less value for our purpose, are a number of works of Jewish-Christian authorship; the production of imperfectly Christianized Jews Jews of the type referred to in Acts 21 20 , where the elders of Jerusalem say to Paul : " Brother thou seest how many myriads there are among the Jews who have believed, but they are all zealots for the Law." The books of this period, which we can do no more than name, are : The Apocalypse of Baruch, The Ascension of Isaiah, and The Apocalypse of Moses. Of much more value are the Jewish Targums. These are translations of the Hebrew Bible into the vernacular of Palestine, with more or less interpolated matter, exposi- tory, explanatory and legendary. In Christ's time, Hebrew was the language of none but the learned, and they used it only professionally. The language of the home and the street was Aramaic. Hence in the reading of the Scriptures in the Synagogue, the Law was read one verse at a time in Hebrew, and then translated, or rather paraphrased, by another person, into Aramaic. At a later period these recognised oral paraphrases were committed to writing, and have come down to us. The alterations and additions often indicate a theological bias and thus disclose to us the Jewish Theology of the period. In the limited time at my disposal, I can but touch upon the fringe of the subject announced. I will endeavour briefly, but I trust clearly, to place before you the state of Jewish belief in the first Christian century, as to three or four important matters. CONCEPTIONS OF "THE MESSIAH" 109 I. JEWISH CONCEPTIONS OF "THE MESSIAH." "We read of Simeon (Luke 2 25 ) that lie was " looking for the consolation of Israel." This was a common designa- tion of the Messianic reign. Indeed, the favourite name for the expected Messiah was Menahem " the Comforter." This throws light on the words of our Lord in John 14 16 : " I will pray the Father and He will give you another Comforter." The Psalter of Solomon (1 T 5 - 23 ) calls the expected King, the Son of David. This name occurs also in the famous eighteen liturgical Psalms which certainly belong to the first century, and this was the popular designation, as is evidenced from the exclamation of the blind men (Matt. 9 27 , 20 30 ) and of the Syrophenician woman (Matt. 15 22 ). The title "Messiah," or "Christ," each of which, of course, mean "the Anointed One," is found somewhat extensively in pre-Christian literature. Less so is the title " Son of God " : both being borrowed from the second Psalm. "The Elect of God" is a favourite title in the Book of Enoch (45 31 , 49 2 , 61 8 ), and it is twice used of Jesus in Luke's Gospel : 9 35 : " This is my Son, my Elect," and 23 35 : " Let Him save Himself, if He be the Christ, the Elect of God." Perhaps I can best give a conception of Jewish Messianic views by translating a few verses from the Psalter of Solomon. In the 17th of these Psalms we read " Behold, Lord ! and raise up for them their King, against the time which thou knowest, God ! to reign over Israel. Purge Jerusalem with Wisdom and Righteous- ness from the heathen who trample her down to destruc- tion. Then shall the King gather together a holy people, whom He shall rule with righteousness ; for He shall know 110 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS them, that they are all sons of God ; and He shall not suffer iniquity to dwell in their midst. And the King Himself is righteous, taught of God, and there shall be no iniquity in their midst in His days. For they shall all be holy, and their King, the Messiah of the Lord. He shall not put His trust in horses or chariots, Jehovah Himself is the King. He is pure from sin, that He may rule over a great people and rebuke princes and overthrow sinners, by the might of the word of His mouth. This is the majesty of the King of Israel, whom God knoweth, to raise Him up over Israel, to give Him instruction. Blessed are they that live in those days, to see the good of Jerusalem in the gathering of the tribes. May God hasten His mercy to- wards Israel." This is a picture of Messianic expectations among the Pharisees in 60 B.C., and also in the times of Jesus. But the most remarkable conception in all Jewish litera- ture is the description of the Son of Man, in that portion of the Book of Enoch, which is known as the Similitudes (37 71). We have here no worldly monarch, born on earth, descended from David. The Son of Man in Enoch is a Heavenly Being " much better than the angels." He is called "The Christ" (48 10 , 52 4 , 90 37 ) : "The Righteous One" (38 2 , 53 6 ): "the Elect One" (40 5 , 45 3 , 49 24 ); but far most frequently "the Son of Man" (46 2 , 48 2 , 61 14 , 70 1 ), and all these names are associated with superhuman attributes. He existed "before the sun and the stars were made." He bears the sevenfold name of the Spirit given in Isaiah 11. He is seen by Enoch sitting on God's throne (51 3 ) which is also called "the throne of His glory" (62 5 ). "He has the appearance of a man and His face is full of gentleness" (46 l ). "The glory of the Son of Man is for ever, and there is a day coming when all the elect shall stand before Him" (62 7 ). "Kings and mighty men shall THE SON OF MAN 111 fall down and bow the knee before Him" (48 3 - 6 ). "They shall worship before Him and shall set their hope upon that Son of Man, and will pray to Him and beg for mercy at His hand" (62 9 ). The day of final judgment is called "the day of the Elect One" (61 5 ). "In those days," we read, " the earth will give back those who are treasured in it, and shall also give back that which it has received. The Elect One shall sit on my Throne and all the secrets of wisdom will stream forth from the counsels of His mouth" (51 3 ). "He shall sit on the throne of His glory and the sum of judgment is committed unto Him; and He will cause sinners and seducers to pass away from the earth" (69 27 ). "He shall judge Azazel and all his associates" (55 4 ), and "Kings, with those who are mighty and exalted, will be terrified, when they see Him sitting on the throne of His glory" (62 s - 5 ). It is highly probable that all this is an expansion in some sense of Daniel 7 13 , where the seer beheld four beasts emerge from the sea, which were symbolic representations of four foreign nations; and after these Empires, whose authority is simply brute force, there is to follow one whose symbol is Humanity. " There came one like a Son of Man with the clouds of Heaven." But if the remarkable Enoch passages hark backwards to Daniel 7 13 , they have also a strange re- semblance to passages which fell from the lips of the Lord Jesus. When we hear Him say " The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matt. 12 6 ), "has power on earth to for- give sins " (Matt. 9 6 ), " has had all judgment committed to Him, because He is the Son of Man " (John 5 22 ) when we read of " the Son of Man who is in Heaven," who has descended out of Heaven (John 3 13 ) and who shall ascend where He was before (6 62 ) ; and when we read of the Son of Man " sending His angels " (Matt. 13 41 ), " coming in His glory," and " sitting on the throne of His glory " 112 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS (Matt. 25 31 ), we cannot but think that if it is certain that "the Similitudes" of Enoch were written in the century before Christ, they formed part of our Lord's library at Nazareth. While I say this I would gladly appropriate the words of Dr. Bruce, who admits that Christ may have been familiar with the book ; but then adds : "Jesus did not simply adopt traditional notions of Jewish Theology concerning the Son of Man. He borrowed from the past in such a way as to transmute traditional data into a new conception." II. CURRENT EXPECTATIONS AS TO THE "MESSIANIC KINGDOM." The Jewish popular mind dwelt much on Old Testament prophecy. The Jews revelled in the anticipation of a glorious future, when Jehovah shall be Lord of all, when righteousness shall be triumphant and Israel supreme among the nations. They were very inquisitive in speculating when these things would be. In the literature, to which I have called your attention, there is considerable difference of view, as to when the Messianic kingdom would be established, and the divergent views are deeply interesting to the New Testament student even now. Among these writers there was for the most part a fixed belief in the Resurrection; but men were divided then as now as to whether the glorious reign of the Christ on earth would be before the Resurrection, or after it. The oldest view is that it will be after the Resurrection and Judgment. When these dread events have taken place, the saints in glorified bodies will reign upon this earth. They shall eat the tree of life and live as long as the Patriarchs. Jerusalem and the Temple shall be the centre of the new Kingdom and Messiah will be King over THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM 113 all the Gentiles. This view is advocated in the oldest sections of the Book of Enoch. A second view, rather later, but more widely held, is that there will be a temporary Messianic kingdom, estab- lished on earth before the Resurrection and Judgment. The Resurrection is no longer regarded as introducing the Divine rule on earth, but there is to be a glorious kingdom of limited duration, prior to the great judgment. In the Psalms of Solomon 17 50 we read of a kingdom in which the righteous dead have no share ; but only the righteous living take part in it. "Blessed are they which live in those days : to behold the blessing of Israel which God shall bring to pass in the gathering of the tribes." The author of the third section of the Book of Enoch divides human history into 10 world-weeks. Seven are passed already. The eighth will be one of universal righteousness. The saints shall reign on the earth. The ninth week will open with the great judgment. The former heaven and earth will pass away and there will be a new heaven, peopled by the righteous dead, who have been raised again. The Slavonic Book of Enoch gives the duration of the Messianic kingdom at 1,000 years, but the Second Book of Esdras at 400 years. The latter work teaches that Elijah and Enoch will return to resuscitate faith which had almost died out from the earth, then Messiah shall be revealed and will reign 400 years. As a third view the author of the Similitudes in the book of Enoch (37 60) anticipates a Resurrection of the righteous only, at the beginning of the Messianic reign. This reign will however take place, not upon the present earth, but upon a renewed and transformed earth. The righteous and the elect shall have their mansions in the new earth and shall live in the light of eternal life (58 3 ). It is remarkable to find men divided then as now on these 114 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS mysterious, but, to some minds, strangely fascinating subjects. III. THE JEWISH CONCEPTION OF "THE WORD" OR "Locos." We must always keep clearly in mind that Jewish speculation as to the Logos or the Word, and the popular belief in the Messiah, had nothing whatever in common. The two doctrines had quite different origins and moved in quite different grooves. No Jew, untouched by Christian influences, for a moment supposed that the Messiah was the Logos. When the primitive Christians identified the two, it came to the Jew as a bewildering surprise. Unknown to themselves the Jews were developing two halves of a truth, which the early Christians blended together as the elucidation of the mysterious person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Messiah had its origin in the Jews' unbounded faith in Jehovah. Believing in the power, goodness and righteousness of Jehovah, the pious Jew believed with all his soul, that righteousness must one day be triumphant; and since Israel is the only nation that knows Jehovah, Israel must one day rule over the nations ; and her King, the anointed of Jehovah, must be the universal monarch. That this Messiah was Divine was repellent to the heart of Judaism ; that there is a heavenly Being known as the Son of Man, who possesses super- natural attributes, was only believed in by the disciples of Enoch or rather, by ardent students of the book of Enoch. And that this book, though quoted respectfully by Jude, the Lord's brother, had a limited circulation, confined perhaps to Galilee, is evident from the fact that in Judea the people were ignorant of the title, as they asked : " Who is this Son of Man ? " (John 12 34 ). Enoch did identify the THE ALOOFNESS OF GOD 115 Messiah with the Son of Man, in name, at all events ; but to identify the Word and the Messiah never occurred to Judaism. For the origin of the doctrine of the Word we must turn to the philosophers among the Jews. For two or three centuries before Christ, as a reaction from Polytheism, there had been a growing tendency to emphasize God's transcendence. [The same tendency is discernible in the Philosophy of the Platonists and Stoics, but into that we cannot now enter.] The Hebrew word for "Holiness" probably means " separateness," " aloofness," and there were many of the Jews who dwelt so much on the majesty, the holiness, the spirituality and aloofness of God, that they felt it difficult to conceive how God could have immediate intercourse with a material world and with sinful men. They pushed the conception of aloofness to such an extent, as to produce a distinct chasm between God and His world. The problem then was, how to bridge the chasm they had made. The desideratum was to find something or somewhat which is Divine, but not God some intermediary between God and the world, which possesses Divine attributes, but is distinguishable in thought from God Himself. God had become to them far, far away, " beyond all knowledge and all thought." Yet they believed that God rules the world, mediately if not immediately; being Monotheists, the Jews could not sur- render their belief that only Divinity can rule the world. The problem was then to discover a mediator something intermediary between the world and God divine but not God. How can this be made thinkable? Well, the wind was conceived to be God's breath, both in the zephyr and the storm God's breath; and if it be God's breath, it is divine. So thought the Jew; and in course of time, the Hebrew word ruah, which first meant " breath " or 116 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS "wind," was supposed to be endowed with the attributes of God, such as power, wisdom and holiness ; and then "spirit" became the more appropriate rendering. God's breath or spirit is thus divine an effluence from Deity, and is thus fitted to be an intermediary between God and His world. Then there was the Divine Word. It was a marked feature of later Judaism to assign great importance to Divine utterances or words. Along with a large part of the ancient world, they ascribed causal efficacy to an uttered word. This underlies all belief in the potency ascribed to magical formulae. The very words of the Incantation were supposed to affect the forces of Nature and bring about the dread result. So to Judaism, the very words " Let there be light " were supposed to be a real cause in the natural world and to be instrumental in causing the Light to come into being : as Zechariah 5 4 speaks of an uttered "curse" as entering a house, and "consuming its timbers and its stones." Believing that an utterance of God is something Divine : as potent as God Himself, the Divine WORD lent itself to Jewish philosophy as a divine intermediary between God and the world. In the Targums, the Aramaic paraphrastic translations of the Hebrew Bible, the conception of God's aloofness is very discernible ; and in every instance where God comes into very intimate contact with man, or is said to do any- thing which the paraphrast deems unworthy of a trans- cendent spiritual Being, the " Memra " (Aramaic for " Word ") or the " Shekinah " is substituted for the name Jehovah. It is the Word of Jehovah, and not Jehovah, who in the Targum is said to have shut the door of the ark (Gen. 7 16 ), who appears to Jacob (Gen. 35 9 ), comes to Abimelech (Gen. 20 3 ), and to Balaam (Num. 23 4 ). The Memra plagued the people (Ex. 32 35 ), smote Uzzah (2 Sam. 6 7 ), accompanied Israel (Num. 23 21 ), and went before Cyrus (Isa. 45 12 ). PHILO'S THEOLOGY 117 It is, however, in Philo, the Jewish philosopher, who was writing erudite treatises in Alexandria, at the time when Jesus was living in Nazareth, that the doctrine of Divine Transcendence is carried to its utmost possible limits. He taught that God is pure Being, the Absolute, the Indeterminable, of whom no predication can be made beyond that of Existence, devoid of qualities or attributes. To predicate anything of God, Philo taught, would be to limit Him, to reduce Him to the realm of the finite. Of God we can only say that He is, not what He is. Philo held, therefore, very strongly the doctrine of the Logos or Word as an intermediary between God and Man, and there are certainly some very remarkable expressions in Philo's writings, echoes of which, meet us in Paul's later Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews. He designates the Logos as "the first-born Son of God"; "the shadow of God"; " the Image," " the Bond, whereby all things hold to- gether " ; the divine " helmsman," " the pilot," of all things. " The Word," says he, " penetrates all things, whetted like a sword to its finest edge, the Word never ceases to pierce all things that are perceivable by the senses." The Word is God's "choicest gift," standing midway between man and His Maker ; the " mediator " and " intercessor of mortals " ; " the ambassador from the Euler to the subject." "To ordinary men who cannot ascend by ecstatic intuition to the supreme God, the Word stands in the place of God." It is certainly remarkable that all this was written before any of our New Testament was penned. Not that these phrases meant all to Philo, which many of us would read into them. These quotations are gems in a system of Philosophy, from which we should in many respects dissent. Christianity did not borrow from Philo, except to this limited degree : When the more thoughtful among the 118 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS early Christians sought to explain to the educated the unique phenomenon, which in their esteem, had appeared among men, the language which Philo had produced the vocabulary he had invented and which had become common property as to the Divine Logos, helped them to interpret some of the mysteries of the Person, sayings and deeds of the historic Jesus, whom they believed to be a unique manifestation of God in a human life. " In the beginning was the Word," we read in the fourth Gospel, " and the Word was with God," and so on. To the end of the fifth verse, every phrase can be verbally matched in Philo ; but when we read " The Word became flesh," that was a proposition which Philo would energetically have repudiated. And yet the philosophy of Philo had immense influence in moulding the beliefs and doctrines of the early Christian centuries. IV. JEWISH TEACHING AS TO " SALVATION." Here we enter on a subject on which the New Testament took up an attitude of strong opposition to current Judaism. The Jews of our period held in full development the doctrine which Protestants call "Justification by works." The Apostle Paul recognised to the full the zeal of the Jews after righteousness. " They have a zeal for God," he says, " but they seek to establish their own righteousness." The Jew was very anxious to be right with God, to be acceptable in His sight, but he sought to merit his own salvation. He dwelt much on the Justice of God as the supreme Judge. He took the phrase in Daniel "by Him all actions are weighed," in strict literalness ; and believed that man's good deeds and his evil deeds are placed in opposite scales of the Divine Balance, and, according as one or the other proves the heavier, he is a good or a wicked man, and will be recompensed accordingly. JUDAIC SOTERIOLOGY 119 The Jew drew a marked distinction between "deeds of Law" and "deeds of Benevolence" or "good works." The former are commanded in the moral Law of Moses, and every man is guilty before God if he violates them. The latter were not supposed to be commanded. They are well- pleasing to God, but a man may leave them out of his life without incurring positive guilt. To obey what is definitely commanded is man's simple duty and does not establish a merit from God. How then shall man make amends for his misdeeds his violations of Law? Jewish Theology gave several replies. The first was, By ritualistic observ- ances and by deeds of benevolence. The Jews imagined that God holds a continual court of sessions in Heaven with the angels, and before them the actions of men are often passed in review, especially on New Year's day. One part of the angels takes up the accusation of each man; the other, the defence. Moses and the archangel Michael are often spoken of as advocates for Israel. By very scrupulous observance of ritual, and by kindly, charitable actions, it is possible for men to counterbalance the demerit of their evil deeds. All the meritorious deeds which a man does over and above his duty, were believed to be carefully numbered, weighed, and treasured up in Heaven. This is clearly taught in Jewish authors : 2 Esdras 7 77 , "A treasure of good works is stored up for thee with the Most High"; 8 33 , "The just, who have many good works stored up with Thee, shall from their own works receive their reward"; Apoc. Bar. 14 12 , "The righteous justly look forward to their end, and without fear depart from this habitation, because they have with thee a store of works preserved in treasures." The Jews divided men into three classes, the good, the bad, and the middling. It is this last class which gives most trouble to the angels. They undergo the balancing process daily, and if they die 120 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS suddenly, their state hereafter is determined by the pre- vious stocktaking. These men are thus in continual un- certainty as to their acceptance with God. A second source from which the Jew might draw to his credit account was the merit of the ancestors of Israel. This is the creed which John the Baptist so sternly re- proved when he said : " Say not in your hearts, We have Abraham for our father." The theory was a rigidly mathematical one. All the meritorious deeds which a man does, which are more than sufficient for his own demerits, are carefully treasured up in the heavenly storehouse, and are available for the demerits of his descendants. A good ancestry had therefore a higher value in the matrimonial market than worldly wealth. A bride with a large store of ancestral merit was much coveted. On the other hand, the Rabbis unsparingly denounce the wretch who hands down no legacy of merit for those of his descendants in whom the evil nature may be exceptionally strong. Great merit was attached also to confession of sins, to Prayer and Fasting. These things, not being commanded in the Law, were considered meritorious; and to weigh heavily in the scale to counterbalance evil deeds. Even more valuable than these is suffering. All suffer- ing was believed to atone, especially if voluntarily borne for others. Those who suffer much here are exempt from suffering hereafter. The influence of this belief has enabled the Jews bravely to endure the cruel persecutions which all down the ages have been launched against them by those who ought to have known better. The purpose of my lecture is purely historical : not critical or theological. I content myself therefore with merely indicating the contrast between this teaching and that of Paul, who taught that salvation is all of grace, "not of works lest any man should boast." WHAT AWAITS MAN AFTER DEATH" 121 V. JEWISH BELIEF AS TO "WHAT AWAITS MAN AFTER DEATH." There is no subject on which the Jewish mind was more actively engaged during the period between the close of the Old Testament Canon and the opening of the New, than that of Eschatology; and none in which we see more distinct marks of advance. The creed of most of the Old Testament is very gloomy. Its belief in Sheol is, in the main, the same as we find among the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. The souls of all men go to Sheol, and there they continue in a state of drowsy semi-consciousness. Jacob and Hezekiah had no higher anticipation. They expected to go to Sheol, a land of darkness and gloom, where there is "no remembrance" of God (Gen. 37 35 ), where the shades cannot stand up and praise God (Isa. 38 18 ). It is true that some of the Psalmists give utterance to a brighter Hope, based on Faith in God's unchangeable Love. They were so conscious of the intimacy of the bond which binds the saint to his God, that with the energy of a living Faith, they leapt to the conclusion that nothing whatever can sever such a bond. Even Death itself could not finally, if at all, separate a godly man from his God. " God will redeem my soul " (says one) " from the power of Sheol, for He shall receive me" (49 15 ). " Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see Shahath," 16 10 . The words " Shahath " and "Abaddon " indicate a change in belief. Like the phrase "the depths of Sheol" they imply a partition among the dead. Whereas in early times, all the dead were believed to sleep side by side in Sheol, good and bad alike; there are, even in the Old Testament, intimations of a belief which became general 122 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS in later times, that there are two compartments in Sheol : where the righteous and the wicked are separated, as in the parable of Dives and Lazarus. It is interesting to note the same change of belief in Greek Eschatolgy. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Hades is the abode of ghosts or shades of all who have lived on earth. They spend the time mostly in somnolence, though they are capable of engaging in conversation occasionally; as we find also in Isa. 14 9 10 , where the prophet describes the death of the King of Babylon and his descent into the lower world, and we read : " Sheol beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It arouseth the shades for thee." They say : " Art thou become weak as we, art thou become like us ? " When in Greek literature we pass from Homar to Pindar we note a change. Pindar taught that there is a God in the underworld, who decides on men's after-life from their life on earth, and when we come to the tragic poets and to Plato we find this developed and generally accepted, that men are divided hereafter on moral lines. The Old Testament says very little indeed as to the state / */ of the wicked after death, but in the book of Enoch this receives great attention, and the sufferings of the lost are described in very lurid colours. The author claims to have been permitted to see a fourfold division of Sheol. He saw four hollow places, deep, wide, and very smooth ; three of them gloomy and only one bright. In them the souls of men were assembled ; and this is their habitation, until the Day of Judgment. This is a marked advance on the oldest views of Sheol. Sheol is no longer a place where existence is at its lowest ebb and moral distinctions unrecognisable, it has now become a place where there is a vigorous, con- scious existence ; where ethical distinctions are paramount and character determines everything. JUDAIC ESCHATOLOGY 123 So in the Apocalypse of Baruch, the righteous and the wicked are both in Sheol. Both are conscious, the one happy, the other miserable, but their condition is pre- liminary. They are but partially happy or wretched. They await a more acute state after the Resurrection. Josephus also believed in a conscious hereafter prior to the Resurrection. In his Antiquities xviii. 1, 3, he says : " Souls have an immortal vigour, and under the earth there will be rewards and punishments according as men have lived righteously or viciously in this life." In his Jewish War ii. 8, 11, he says that the Essenes believed in a blessed immortality awaiting the souls of the righteous, but that those of the wicked are destined to a dark, cold region full of undying torment. As to the lot of the righteous, the time is too far advanced forme to expatiate. I must content myself with quoting a few passages in which their condition is called "Life" or "Eternal Life," the miserable condition of the wicked being " eternal perdition." Psalter of Solomon 3 16 , "They that fear the Lord shall rise again unto eternal life " ; 15 7 " The saints of the Lord shall inherit life with gladness " ; 13 9 , " The Lord will spare His saints and will blot out their transgressions with His chastening ; for the life of the righteous is for ever." In Enoch 37 4 Enoch exclaims, " The lot of eternal life has been given to me." In 40 9 an angel called Phanuel is said to be set " over the repentance and hope of those who inherit eternal life." This is a very wide subject, one on which the Jews themselves were much divided. I will bring my lecture to a close by giving summarily the three prominent views as to the Hereafter, which prevailed at the time of Christ. 1. The Sadducean view, the conservative doctrine of the early Old Testament, that at death the souls of men enter on an eternal sleep, from which there is no Resurrection. 124 JEWISH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS This is found in Baruch, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus and 1 Maccabees. 2. The Alexandrian view, that at death men enter on the retribution merited in this life. The righteous are beatified. The wicked receive tribulation and anguish. This is final for each class. There is no Resurrection. This is found in Wisdom, 4 Maccabees and Philo. 3. The Pharisaic view, the one popular in Palestine. The souls of men enter at death on a state of Happiness or Misery in Hades, from which there is for both a Resurrec- tion. This is found in Enoch, 2 Maccabees, Apocalypse of Baruch, Second Esdras and Psalter of Solomon. THE APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM IN BIBLICAL TIMES Synopsis of tbe apocalyptic Writings. I. THE HASMONAEAN GROUP, c 175-63 B.C. 1. The Hasmonaean Cycle. Consecutive Date. Title. Reference. Number. 1. c 175 The Book of the Watchers. Enoch A. Cap. 1-36. 2. c 162 The Dream Visions. Enoch B. Cap. 83-90. 3. c 120 The Book of Jubilees. 4. c 100 The Book of Woes. Enoch C. Cap. 91-104, 5. c 80 The Book of Similitudes. Enoch D. Cap. 37-71. II. THE ROMAN GROUP, c 63 B.C. 100 A. D, 2. The Pompeian Cycle, c 66-46 B. c. 6. 7. c 66-46 The Psalms of Solomon (more than two authors.) 3. The Herodian Cycle, c 30 B.C. 10 A.D. 8. c 30 B. c. The Wisdom of Solomon, 9. c 1 A. D. The Secrets of Enoch. 10. c 10. The Assumption of Moses. 4. The Vespasian Cycle, c 50-70 A. D. Apocalypse of Baruch A 1 c 50-70 A* 5. The Final Cycle, c 70-100 A. D. 14. Apocalypse of Baruch S 15. B 1 16. 11. 1 12. I 13. J 17. 18. c 100 Apocalypse of Salathiel. IV. Ezra S. A. .\ Dates doubtful The Eagle Vision, \ \ may belong to \ rvTrtio c: ^~ *rt J Cycle 5 or to Cycle 4 22. J Son of Man Vision. B 3 E 2 E. M. Literature Omitted. 23. 24. Sibylline Oracles. (more than two authors). (Procemium and Book III.) 25. Daniel. (Composite). 26. The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. Note. The denominations of the several parts of the Apocalypse of Baruch, and of IV. Ezra, are taken from Dr. Charles' edition of the Apocalypse of Baruch, 1896. 126 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM THE APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM IN BIBLICAL TIMES. BY THE Rev. LEONARD HASSE. THE Jewish Apocalyptic literature of Biblical times, as we now handle it, is, for the most part, collected into several books. But this is not its original form. We must distinguish in almost all cases between at least two stages in the history of these writings. First, there is the stage of original production. In very few cases if in any do we hold the writings solely or fully in the form of their original composition. This is a matter of moment in some instances. Then at a date, considerably later than the original issue, the second stage ensues. The past and earlier writings are gathered together and put into a collected book-form. The several parts have been either simply strung together in sequence, with new materials taken from elsewhere sometimes inserted, or there has been occasionally a re-arrangement of some of the sub-sections, and we have again to unravel this. This is the character of one of the great collections (the Book of Enoch). Or, in other cases, the component parts have been dissected and have been woven, skilfully or otherwise, into a new order, so that the threads of the several parts disappear and re-appear, as the new arrangement required it. This is the character of two others of these composite books (Apocalypse of Baruch and 4th Book of Ezra). Every- THE SERIES OF WRITINGS 127 where even though the touch in a few cases may be only slight we have an editor's hand. Thus, what were originally in all cases a number of independent single compositions, distinct and unconnected, separated from each other by longer or shorter intervals of time, are, under the editors' hands, now combined in nine collections (1) the Book of Enoch; (2) the Book of Jubilees; (3) the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs; (4) the Psalms of Solomon; (5) the Wisdom of Solomon; (6) the Book of the Secrets of Enoch; (7) the Assumption of Moses ; (8) the Apocalypse of Baruch ; (9) the Fourth Book of Ezra. To these should be added the Jewish portions of the Sibylline Oracles. The series contains or represents at least twenty-five separate writings, some short and meagre, like a few of the fragments among the minor prophets of the Old Testament, but some of moderate or considerable length. Now, in view of the extent of this literature and of the length of time over which it is spread nearly three centuries it is to be regretted that the title "Apocalyptic Literature " has been fastened upon it. The title has once become fixed, and it will probably remain. Nor is it in one respect inappropriate. It expresses quite aptly the form the outward literary form in which this literature has in most cases been cast. The greater part of the series professes to contain disclosures, either by revelation or by vision, given under the names of some of the great legendary or real heroes of the past Enoch, Moses, Solomon, Baruch, Ezra, and several others. But the title "Apocalyptic Literature" does not do justice to the contents of these writings, and is apt to produce a wrong and unfavourable impression as to their character. It would be much more correct to call them simply '' The Literature of the Schools of Biblical Judaism." They 128 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM deserve the title. There are other writings of the period, and these have found a place for the greater part in the Apocrypha (The Ascension of Isaiah, in its original Jewish part, is not included). But they are neither as many in number, nor are they in the aggregate as voluminous, nor are they to a large extent of so high a quality as the majority of the Apocalyptic writings. The greater part of the entire literature of the three centuries in question (from 200 B.C. 100 A.D.) lies in these so-called Apocalyptic books, and they hold the place of pre-eminence, not of inferiority. Under all circumstances we must treat the entire series simply as historical documents, attesting the movement of life and thought in the last centuries of Biblical Judaism. As such, the Apocalyptic Literature is invaluable to us. There is no doubt that this Literature has large significance for the interpretation of the New Testament Scriptures, and the correct reading of the New Testament times. Indeed, it is indispensable to an historically reliable grasp of the period. From the point of view of a New Testament interest, these writings have chiefly been examined. Such enquiry is quite authorised. But the original interest, which regards them first irrespectively of Christianity, and treats them simply as the proper material for a study of Judaism,, should precede the New Testament interest, and should be made as full and complete as possible. It is to the original inherent interest that I wish to confine myself in dealing with this literature. And even in doing this, I must limit myself to the external historical side. The statement of the deeper problems, which are involved in the subject an analysis of the death struggle of a great Faith is not in place on this occasion. The entire series comprises five cycles, but they fall into two great groups the Hasmonaean Group and the Roman THE FALL OF PERSIA 129 Group. The first of the five cycles is the largest, and constitutes the Hasmonaean Group. The four remaining cycles belong to the Roman Group. The first cycle contains six separate compositions, viz., four in the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. With the historical setting of this first cycle we have now to occupy ourselves, and to this end we must go back to the first contact of Judaism with the Western world. This begins with the coming of Alexander and the Greeks (B.C. 332). Next to the Exile, it was in its effects the most critical period of Jewish history. A time of severe oppression in JudaBa had preceded the campaign of Alexander. For the greater part of Persia's rule over Palestine the little community of Jerusalem enjoyed rest and protection. The population probably gradually increased and some degree of external prosperity may have been attained. But some twenty years before the overthrow of Persia things changed. For reasons unknown to us Artaxerxes Ochus (c. 351 B.C.) became a scourge of the land. The neighbouring peoples at no time too well disposed to Judaism were encouraged or directly authorised to raid the country; amongst them, Israel's old and hereditary foe, the Edomites. Jews were deported to Asia Minor or to Media (Obadiah and Joel), and there ensued under the Persian General Bagoses the so-called "seven years of slavery" (348 340 B.C., Josephus Antiq., xi., 7). But all this was merely the darkness before the dawn. As an immense relief, as a wondrous deliverance from God, the news of the overthrow of the Persian power must have come upon the Jewish people. It is quite incredible that the Old Testament Scriptures should contain no reference to the event. We have it almost beyond reasonable doubt 130 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM in some of the Psalms, probably about thirteen in number. We hear of a deliverance, which has been effected far away, not on the stage of local Jewish History " Zion heard and was glad " and yet this deliverance has been complete. It would indeed be strange if this unexpected turn of events had not aroused a spirit of intense gratitude to God, and awakened the praises in some of these gems of the Old Testament faith, which tell of the " New Song " (as it was called) that God had put on the lips of His people. For a little over the first hundred years of Greek rule that of the Ptolemies in Egypt things went comparatively smoothly. The great public pathway of History as we know History did not run over Palestine. It lay to the North, through Syria and Asia Minor ; so it was a time free from incidents and from trouble in Palestine. Yet there was one feature which was serious. The handful of Jewish people did not expand in territorial possessions. Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, and a few villages here and there in the country were substantially all of Judaism that externally existed. On the other hand, Greek settlers increased ominously all around it, and the worst sides of Greek life began to assert themselves in a manner menacing to the religious and moral sensibilities of the Jews. The question was bound to arise sooner or later in an acute form : could these two types of men, as they then were the Jews and the Greeks blend together in peace, and if not, which of the two, if either, was the stronger? In the year 198 B.C. a turn came for the worse. Palestine passed under the rule of Syria, and Syrian notions now Hellenised differed greatly, as they always indeed had done, from Egyptian ways. Antiochus the Great (223 187 B.C.) and Antiochus Epiphanes (175 164 B.C.) were each in their way characteristic embodiments of Grasco- THE EFFECTS OF HELLENISM 131 Syrian methods, and the real effects of the coming of the Greeks began to show themselves. They were two-fold, the one of an inward and spiritual character, the other of an outward order. Hellenism began to disintegrate Judaism. A Hellenising party arose among the Jews themselves (II. Maccabees). Their policy was simply that of surrender, the abnegation of nationality and all that it contained, a policy of self-extinction. They would cease to be Jews, they would be Greeks like the rest of the world. This party was strong among the most representative men of the nation, in the very priesthood of the people, and no doubt they had a considerable following. But, side by side with this, the hard hand of compulsion was laid on the Jews. Hellenism began also to coerce Judaism. Greek life and Greek worship were to be imposed ruthlessly on the people of the Jews. The " desolating " (or desecrating) " abomination" of the Book of Daniel, i.e., the sacrilege of a Greek altar erected on that of Jhvh, was enacted in the sacred precincts of the Temple of Jerusalem, and a Greek gymnasium with its naked combatants exposed to public view, was instituted for the entertainment, and possibly the demoralisation, of the City. Jewish religious rites (circumcision and the Sabbath) were forbidden, and the sacred books of Jewish Ritual and teaching were burnt. Judaism was to be exterminated by compulsion and persecution. Then began the heroic wars of the Maccabees, first for religious liberty (167 162 B.C.), then for political freedom (162 142 B.C.). Judged by all external measurements the enterprise was absurd. The instability of the Syrian Kingdom was certainly Israel's vantage ground. But, even allowing for this, the Jews were numerically merely a handful. For all practical purposes Judaism was con- fined solely to Jerusalem and JudaBa. And yet in both of 132 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM the above respects the contest was successful. First religious liberty was conceded to the nation (162 B.C.) then political independence was secured (142 B.C.), and at last, after having been in suspense for nearly 450 years (586 142 B.C.), a self-governing Jewish State and people were once more in existence. Territorial expansion gradually ensued. Samaria was engulfed, the Temple on Mount Gerizim was demolished. The Edomites were forced to accept circumcision. Galilee, with its almost completely Gentile population was annexed, and probably to the wonder and surprise of all, something of the dimensions of the old Davidic Kingdom was regained for the Jewish State. As History moves in the East, the Maccabean wars were not long. They filled twenty-five years, and terminated when in 142 B.C. Simon, the last of the five Maccabean brothers, was appointed High Priest and "Governor" (Ethnarch, I Mace. 14 47 ), the spiritual and civil head of the young and still small state. Between 142 B.C. and 63 B.C., the first coming of the Romans, there lie 79 years. During this period a striking change in the interest of Israel is perceptible. The interest becomes self-centred. The problem of life is realised as one chiefly of internal national well-being. The relation of the people to the great world powers recedes from view. Israel has to deal with itself. This change is very noticeable in the Apocalyptic writings of the period. There is little and only passing allusion to the outside world around. The greater part of this period is occupied by the two kings John Hyrcanus (30 years, 135 105 B.C.) and Alexander Jannaeus (26 years, 104 78 B.C.). The remaining years fall to the reign of Aristobulus I., who first assumed the title " King," and bore it one year (105 104 B.C.) to the reign of Queen Alexandra Salome (78 69 B.C., nine years), ENOCH, SECTIONS A AND B 133 and to the conflict of the two sons of Alexander Jannaeus (69 63 B.C., six years), whose quarrels brought about the intervention of Rome in 63 B.C. With Simon the days of heroic leaders seem to us to cease. The tension between ultimate principle and immediate opportunism begins in the later years of John Hyrcanus. Under Alexander Jannaeus the cleavage was complete. The party of the Sadducees, with the King at their head, represented the State, the party of the Pharisees were the spokesmen of the Church. The State became the oppressor, and massacred the party of the Church in thousands; and a period of external aggression but internal violence and cruelty ensues. All this century of "storm and stress," from about 175 63 B.C. is faithfully reflected in the Hasmonaean cycle of the Jewish Apocalyptic. The first of the four Enoch sections Section A (chs. 1 36) we may, from its most instructive portion, designate "the book of the Watchers." Section A is the weakest part of Enoch. It belongs to the eve of persecution, to a time before the pressure of Greek aggression had become intolerable. As yet only the long-suffering cry of the righteous is audible. I may pass over the contents of this section. There is still an old-world atmosphere in it. The policy of the Jews towards all the newcomers must be simply one of passive resistance. But in Section B (chs. 83 90) the storm has already broken loose. Judas Maccabeus has withstood the oppressors, and he has been successful. The Section dates- from the time of his leadership (c. 162 B.C.). It is the most dignified of the Enoch writings. The author narrate* two dream-visions. In the second of these the calamity of foreign oppression, under which Israel has suffered from the time of the Exile, is interpreted by accounting- 134 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM for all national hardships through the neglect or vindictiveness of the " 70 shepherds." These are spiritual powers (not human agencies) appointed by God for the discipline of Israel, and they neglected or exceeded their functions. Though it is admitted that severity was needed (89 35 58 ), only a part of the past and present evils have been merited by the defects of the people. For the rest, the situation of the author's day is very clearly marked. The Section shows the most careful handling in order to avoid anything compromising. It is as ambiguous as possible without becoming actually obscure. This is most evident in the first dream-vision. The terms "Israel" and " the Gentiles " are never used. The allegory of wild beasts and birds and of sheep, as marking off the contrast between Israel and its neighbours, is employed. Evidently the times required -great caution and circumspection to be observed in any literary work. It was not expedient to speak too plainly. Allegory was the only form of speech that was safe. But the main interest of the Section is for deliverance. The days of the 70 shepherds are now over. The rescue of Israel from Egypt is in the dream-vision dwelt on much more explicitly than the enactment of the law on Sinai. The Messiah, who is eventually expected, will be merely a figure-head of the State, the final ruling house or the human. King of the people. The real deliverer, Judas Maccabaeus, has already come. We must here interrupt the sequence of the Enoch writings in order to pass in review one of the intervening and contemporary productions of the Apocalyptic School ihe Book of Jubilees. 1 The Book of Jubilees belongs approximately to the first 1. The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, even with the analysis of "the book by Schnapp in Kautzsch's Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen, must be held in reserve pending the forthcoming edition of Dr. Charles. THE BOOK OF JUBILEES 135 half of the rule of John Hyrcanus (c. 120 B.C.). It is by far the most ambitious of the Apocalyptic series. The book comes from the Schools, not from the politicians of the day ; and the Schools claim to teach. The author gives a recast of the Book of Genesis and of the opening chapters of Exodus. He tells the story in his own way, and it is very different from that of the Hexateuch. He omits from it what he does not like in his originals. He inserts, under varying influences, what seems to him to require emphasis and sanction for the religious observances of his own day. One must almost conclude that the Torah as a collection of writings was at his time but little in public use. Else it is difficult to conceive how an author could offer a substitute for it, which deviated, so much as his writing does, from the original. The literalism of the later Jewish schools had certainly not yet come into existence. The author's use of the Biblical narrative is of the very freest kind. He is no doubt of priestly stock, but he has nothing of the Sadducee about him. This scholar of Judaism is a hard and masterful man. The phrase : " There is no limit to this or that ordinance " is of frequent occurrence. He is as relentless as Torquemada to all infidelity and apostasy. This priest knows no compassion. He knows only law. Abraham's intercession for Sodom is expunged from the narrative of the Jubilees. Outside of Israel there is not a gleam of kindness for the world. His book is the most pitiless and exclusive of all Apocalyptic writings. The prerogative of Israel is made supreme. "All nations and peoples are God's. But God has placed spirits in authority over them, to lead them astray from Him." Israel alone has no such angel or spirit. God alone is his Ruler (15 31f ). This was so from the beginning. The end will correspond to it. Israel will have possession of the whole earth, and inherit it for ever 136 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM (32 19 ). The nations, who worship idols, will be taken away from the earth, and into the place of condemnation they will go (22 22 ). It follows, of course, that with such outcasts from. God the people of Israel can have no ties of relationship, no connubium, no common meal. The direction is distinct : " Separate thyself from the nations, and become not their associate " (22 16 ). The exclusive- ness of Israel is not a casual matter. It is at this stage a principle which allows of no modification. The days of the Proselytes had evidently not yet come. All this is perhaps the reflex action of the successful Maccabean wars. The allusion to the triumphant campaigns of John Hyrcanus against the Philistines, the Edomites, and the Samaritans ("Amorites") are numerous. Judaism has, indeed, become the aggressor, and it is not to spare. Syria's hand was now weak. It was no longer to be feared. Political prosperity has hardened the writer's mind. And yet it was Rome far-distant Rome that had probably already intervened to restrain Syria's advance. The irregularity of this does not seem to strike the author of Jubilees. For his own people he has great hopes. The days of Messianic happiness have already set in. By a slow and gradual transformation the weakness and incon- sistency and spiritual defects of Israel will pass away, and the blessing of perfection on earth will be attained. There is no cataclysmic finale here. There is nodeus ex machina on the stage of the future. Out of Judah eventually a Royal House or a Royal Ruler will arise, and with him the end of trouble will be reached. The Book of Jubilees treads always the hard earth. Idealism is absorbed by exclusivism. But history pursues its own way, despite the teaching of the schools, and the third and fourth sections of the Book of Enoch have a very different tale to tell of the state of the people, and of its prospects in the future. ENOCH, SECTIONS C AND D 137 The third Section of Enoch Section C (chs. 91104) we may, from the main body of the writing, call " the Book of Woes." It is a tremendous indictment of the self-sufficiency and satisfaction of the Book of Jubilees, which had preceded it perhaps only by some twenty years. The author has thirty-two definite imprecations on the unrighteousness and wickedness of his own day. The Jewish state, which the Book of Jubilees had adjudged to be incipiently Messianic, he condemns as the embodiment of apostacy and of self-assertive secularism. The Sadducees are the authorities of Government, and no more full and intelligible statement of the pure secularism of this class at that time is found anywhere than that put on their lips in this Section. Indignation and passion breathe through the whole writing. The denunciatory tone prevails. The cry is, not for resistance, but for judgment. The internal disruption of Israel into two antagonistic parties finds here for the first time a distinct literary expression. The last of the four Sections of Enoch Section D (chs. 37 71) belongs to the later years of Alexander Jannaeus (c. 80 B.C.). It is known as the Book of Similitudes Things have gone from bad to worse. The blood of some thousands of the Pharisees has been shed. There is now more than moral indignation and resentment against the evils of the times. There is burning exasperation and bitter intolerance. The writing is more than a protest or remonstrance against the rulers of the day. It is an ultimatum of the schools. There is the threat of judgment, definite and impending. Retribution, unrelieved, is approaching. The book is vindictive in the extreme towards the offenders. Yet the writing is, after all, the noblest in the Enoch series. For the basis of judgment is broad. There is no single reference to the Jewish law, 138 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM and very little to Jewish worship in the book. We might again almost infer that the law had been superseded in public regard in the author's day. Not the past, but the present living revelation of God in the hearts of the righteous is taken as the standard of life. Not the neglect of the law, but the violation of right, is impugned. Correspondingly, not the man of the law, but simply " man," as he ought to be the true man the " son of man " shall be the judge of men. This coming " man," 2 who will be the Messiah (the word "Messiah" as a technical term first occurs here), is described as the incarnation of righteousness and of wisdom. This "wisdom" is not "intellect," and not "common sense." But it is akin to these. It is simply the divine light of moral insight into the realities of things, something like Thomas Arnold's "moral thoughtf ulness " as God's gift to men. The " Man " of the future (quite indefinite) is pre- existent in the intention of God, and only by virtue of this divine intention can he be said to be superhuman. He has not this nature in himself. Towards the Gentile world the author is liberal. The true " Man " will be " the light of the Gentiles, and the hope of those, who are troubled of heart" (48* 5 ). They will eventually "drink of the fountains of wisdom, and be filled with wisdom." There is, therefore, hope for the world. Its ultimate evil is ignorance. This is a generous interpretation of heathenism the most sympathetic (" all the thirsty," " the troubled of heart ") which the entire Jewish Apocalyptic discloses. As to his own immediate surroundings in the country the author is guarded, indefinite and ambiguous. The references are purposely wide and general. They apply rather to a class of people than to any one distinct 2. See article. " Son of Man," in Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. IV,, Col. 4711. CHARACTER OF PUBLIC LIFE 139 individual. The oppressors of the righteous are a party in power, not merely a person. They are the civil rulers of his day, from Alexander Jannaeus down to the administrative officers of State, the temple-aristocracy (i.e., the Sadducees) and their agents, whether Jews or Gentiles. The King and his supporters were a vigorous civil power. Hence to confront him and to overthrow the evil in high places a personal agent is required, i.e., a personal Messiah is postulated as the hope of the righteous. In leaving the Hasmonaean Cycle, it only remains to add that the scaffolding of visions and revelations thins out perceptibly as we advance. The figure of Enoch plays progressively a diminishing part. The utility of the pseudonym was evidently becoming exhausted, 3 and though we shall encounter the name of Enoch again once more, it will not be any longer on Jewish soil, but in Alexandria. With the accession of Alexander Jannaeus (104 B.C.) the character of public life in Palestine undergoes an evident change. Josephus speaks in terms of commendation of John Hyrcanus, but of Jannaeus no writer has a good word to say. The struggles of the people cease to be national. They become dynastic. Jannaeus follows his father in employing mercenaries. With these he wins or he loses his battles. The nation is fighting no more. The party divisions keep it asunder. The Sadducees support the throne and themselves; the Pharisees embody the traditions of a Theocracy. War, murder, bloodshed, the ups-and-downs of politics, the vicissitudes of adventurers fill the stage. There is no peace, no security, no progress. When Jannaeus died (78 B.C.) he advised his wife, 3. There seems to be no reason for concluding with Dr. Charles that the cessation of the authority of Enoch dates from and is due to the adoption of any of the Enoch writings into Christian literature. 140 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM Alexandra, to entrust herself to the guidance of the Pharisees, and she did so. For nine years (78 69 B.C.) there was quietness, and the Pharisees held power. This is the background of the earliest of the Psalms of Solomon. Then Alexandra died (69 B.C.), and civil war broke out again, and was still raging, when the armies of Rome first drew near the land of Palestine. There is something tragic in this approach of mighty Rome, the best, the strongest, the most temperate and fair- minded of all the great world-powers of antiquity. The stage is, so to speak, cleared. Syria and Phoenicia, the old enemies of Judaism, are simply annexed, and are made a Roman Province. In the rear, the King of Arabia is peremptorily bidden to draw off. In some thirty years' time Egypt will also become a Roman Province, but this little islet of the Jewish people is left holding its head aloft over the floods of water, which have engulfed the neigh- bouring lands. This enclave among the nations maintains itself in semi-independence. Rome deals with Judaism, as far as possible, on the terms of Judaism. Yet Rome was omnipotent and irresistible; Rome was, in point of power, the mistress of the world, imposing its sovereign rule on all nations. The increasing tide of Rome's advance came only slowly on Judaism. It was like the gradual approach of Assyria in early Jewish History. It was in its entire course within a year of the same length of time (Battle of Karkar, 854 B.C., to fall of Samaria 722 B.C. = 132 years). It extended over 133 years, 63 B.C. to 70 A.D. Then at last the full force and rush of the waters broke finally on the land. The country was doomed. The waters swept it away, and Jerusalem fell. To this whole period from 63 B.C. 70 A.D. the Roman Group of Apocalyptic Literature with its remaining four cycles belongs. We may denominate them respectively THE PSALMS OF SOLOMON 141 by the names most prominent at the times from which they spring. Thus expressed, we have the Pompeian Cycle, which lies approximately between the years 66 46 B.C. (the time shortly before the entrance of Pompey into Jerusalem 63 B.C. to a time shortly after the murder of Pompey in 48 B.C.). Then follow the Herodian Cycle, extending from c 30 B.C. to 10 A.D. ; the Vespasian Cycle from approximately 50 70 A.D., and the Final Cycle reaching from c 70 A.D. to the close of the century. With the literature of Judaism in these 133 years we have now to deal. The so-called Psalms of Solomon exhaust the Pompeian Cycle. This writing is included in the series of the Jewish Apocalyptic, though in point of fact there is no Apocalyptic proper in it. It is of very considerable importance to the New Testament exegete and historian, but this is not the point of view from which I deal with it here. It comes from a temple school or guild. We are not quite sure how it obtained its title. It probably belongs to the original composition, and, if so, it represents the boldest bid for public attention which the authors or the editor could well submit. This collection of Psalms, by its title, claims to take rank next to or alongside of the Canonical Book of Psalms in authorised use, i.e., " the Psalms of David." It belongs plainly to the devotional literature of Israel, and suggests some points of Jewish ritual, on which perhaps more light is still required. The Psalms were unmistakably written for some public religious functions, some national Church festivals, probably at Jerusalem (see Pss. 10 78 ; II 1 ). Liturgical endings, which indicate some public use, are common (Pss. 2, 4 6, 8 12, 17, ten in all). The Psalms eighteen in number are not all of one time. They are spread over a period of at least twenty 142 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM years. They are for this reason probably not all from the same author. We are rather driven to conjecture that they are a selection made, at the time of compilation, out of a much larger stock of hymns and odes, which were composed for the stated religious service of the Temple. We may assume that this supply was regular, though we do not know its frequency. We have possibly, in this collection, some of the best of these productions in our hands. We have, however, to add that the collection did not apparently sustain itself long in liturgical use. It has, indeed, had only a very quiet and retired existence in literature. It fell on evil days soon after its issue, and its teaching was discarded or suppressed. The Psalms vary greatly in character. Some are veiy passionate. One of them is horribly imprecatory (Ps.4 7 - 28 ). But some are full of repose and strength, even in the consciousness of peril (Pss. 5 9 10 n - 17 , 9). Others are words of joyous praise and confidence (Pss. 11, 13). All of them preserve the devotional tone. They are not argumentative, but assertive. They never demonstrate a position; they simply assume it and illustrate it. But the colouring of their day runs, strongly marked, through most of them. First there is the sense of a rude awakening to the presence of the godless apostates in Israel itself the Sadducees who are supporting one of the political rivals for power (Pss. 4, 12). Then there are allusions to Pompey's approach to and entrance into Jerusalem, references to the storming and desecration of the Temple, and to the exportation of Jews to Rome (the majority of the Psalms; 1, 8, 17 most pronounced). Finally, there are later Psalms, which refer to the death of Pompey, and perhaps even to the hope of better things with the accession of Csesar to power (Pss. 2, 5, 11). The conception of the Messiah, which we find in one of the earlier Psalms THE RULE OF HEROD 143 (Ps. 17) as the Lord Protector of the Land, the future Public Man of the Nation, is extremely rich. It is emphatically expressed. We notice very distinctly how all through the public interest predominates, though it is quite realised that the man in himself will make the man in public. The Messiah will be the right man for the day ; wise and righteous (we have had this combination before). He will put things straight in Israel, but to this duty his real functions are apparently restricted. The Psalmist is beneficently indifferent to the rest of the world. If they wish it, Israel is there to be resorted to by the Gentiles for enlightenment and truth. The new feature in this description of the Messiah is that he is expected to come from the House of David. He is to be a Davidic King. The old Hasmonaean dynasty is hopeless. It is set aside and ignored. But the man, who was working his way to the front, when this Messianic Psalm was written Antipater was very different from the ideal Ruler, whom the Psalmist prayed for; and Herod, Antipater's son, who became King, shortly after the latest of the Psalms of Solomon, was a perfect travesty of the nation's hope. Herod, the man, was highly irregular. But Herod, the politician, was capable. For thirty-five years (39 4 B.C.) he ruled the country, if with austerity, yet in political peace. He kept Home out ; but he also would have no rivals within. The Pharisees remained strikingly inactive. We can quite understand how the Psalms of Solomon would have to be withdrawn from public use. The influence of Herod's regime on literature was no doubt repressive. Public utterance was hushed. In Judaea it is not a productive time. It was possibly a time of collecting and editing on the quiet the earlier writings of the Apocalyptic Schools. The days of the great writers were beginning to give out. Men spent 144 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM their energies in watching Herod, or in organising the public worship of the land. The rush of the spirit of thought had either subsided, or had been subdued. But we have here to realise that Judaism, at least in its schools, existed outside of Palestine as well as in Judsea, and that the Jews, who came up from abroad to the great national festivals of the Temple, could be the true sons of Abraham quite as well as the best of the citizens of Jerusalem. What could not be said or written in Palestine, might yet be said and written elsewhere, and thus we do possess a literature of Herod's time. The books of the Herodian Cycle (c 30 B.C. 10 A.D.) are three in number. Two are of Alexandrian origin; one is from Judsea. All three disclose the conditions of Herod's day. Though they have sprung from different quarters, they have features in common. They agree in two important respects (1) they are all three of a strictly quiescent type. They commend endurance, and not recrimination. And (2) they all dissociate themselves from the thought of a personal Messiah. It is significant that the literature of the days nearest to the beginnings of Christianity, and in part coincident with its beginning, is entirely devoid of the expectation of the Christ. Of these three writings of the Herodian cycle the first in point of origin and of rank is " the Wisdom of Solomon." It is unquestionably the gem of the Apocalyptic literature. It is entitled to a place in this class, broadly because it is pseudonymous the writer impersonates King Solomon and because the great future day of judgment and of final retribution is fixed in the writer's mind, not as an accessory of the faith, but as the only real solution of earth's follies and depravities and wrongs. There is a great charm about this book. Here we have a cultured Jewish mind. He knows the sacred books of his own people, but he is also THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON 145 influenced by Greek learning. He is perceptibly broadened and refined in contact with Hellenism. He is a precursor of Philo. He may have written in or shortly after the year 30 B.C., when Egypt became a province of Rome, and passed under Roman rule. The book is, however, probably composite (112, 1319). There is a delightful gentleness of temper in the original author. He knows of no drastic methods in the moral government of the world. The Divine Wisdom controls all things even now, and the final judgment awaits all. Yet the writer is true to his own faith. His confession of belief is not attenuated. The Jewish religious standards are not lowered. He condemns frankly and fearlessly the vices of the Gentile world (14 23 - 26 ), though he does it with good grace. But the revelation of God is, in his view of things, not tied to the historic embodiments of it. It is not restricted to a Jewish source, or to the Canons of the Israelitish law (in Part I.). It is rather diffusive and universal (I 7 , 7 27 , 8 1 ). It is present with all who accept it (6 12ff ). It is generous and kind, and " is a spirit that loveth man" (I 6 ). The weakness of the Gentile world is self-indulgence, violence and intolerance of correction (ch. 2). There is brightness and certainty in the lives of the godly ; the reward of the martyr to the truth is immortality (3 2 - 4 ), and remorse shall finally overtake the godless for their indifference and hostility towards God's people (ch. 5). The wisdom of God is the true discipline of life (ch. 6). We cannot say that the author solves the problem of the universe, but his catholicity of spirit leads him a long way towards its solution, and in his universalism he is far ahead of any position we have yet encountered in the Apocalyptic Schools. He addresses himself to his fellow citizens in Egypt, and to the new rulers, who have come into the land, 146 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM the Romans (6 2 21 24 , 14 22 , 15 15 ), not to those only who are of his own race. This interest in the well-being of the world is new. The second writing of the Herodian Cycle is, in its own way, as interesting as the first. The book is called "The Secrets of Enoch," and it has only recently 4 been discovered in a Slavonic version. The original was written in Greek. Like the "Wisdom of Solomon," it is an Alexandrian production, but it is later in origin than the previous book. It belongs approximately to the beginning of the Christian era (1 A.D.). Enoch passes through the seven heavens, each of which he singly describes, until he reaches the presence of God. Then God recounts to him the creation of the universe in seven days. To the seven days the duration of the world will correspond, each day of creation being 1,000 years. When 6,000 years of the world's history have gone by, there will be the Millennium of Rest, but no Messiah, and then will follow unbroken Eternity. Enoch returns to earth, laden with books which he had written in heaven. He addresses his children, and the princes of the people, in exhortations and admonitions, and after the lapse of thirty days he is translated before the face of God. This is the outline of the contents of the book. It makes no reference to the Gentiles at all, but similarly, perhaps for reasons of literary consistency, there is also no allusion to the Mosaic Law. The book is apparently for use only among the Greek-speaking Jews, whether of Alexandria or elsewhere. There are only three slight references to the situation of the author's day, and they enjoin restraint and endurance in spite of calumny and insult (50, 51 and 66 6 ). The great day of judgment comes, but it is not represented as near at hand. 4. 1880, and translated into English in 1896. THE EDITING OF THE ENOCH BOOKS 147 One very peculiar feature of the " Secrets of Enoch " must still be referred to. It is the singular pretentiousness of the book. It claims direct inspiration (39 2 , 40 1 ) and a superiority over every other literature. This is stated quite unequivocally. " There have been many books from the beginning of creation and shall be to the end of the world, but none shall make things known to you like my writings. If you shall preserve my writings, you will not sin against God" (47 23 ). The references to the author's own writings run through the whole book. The true inwardness of this is not quite transparent. It is hardly crude conceit. It rather suggests that the collecting and editing of the entire Enoch Series had only recently taken place, probably in Palestine, and that the " Secrets of Enoch " is not so much a self-advertisement as an advertisement of the whole Enoch Literature to the Alexandrian Jews of the writer's own day. If this con- jecture explains the pretentiousness of the book, it also enables us to find the material which the author claims to possess, but certainly does not give in the volume before us. He presents himself simply here as the same Enoch who has already written many other works. He refers to all these consistently as his own. But if the writer's intention was to win Alexandrian Judaism to an Enoch cult, he utterly failed. Philo, the great Master of the next generation, will have none of Enoch, or of the Enoch Literature. The Assumption of Moses is the third writing of the Herodian cycle. It takes us back to Palestine. Herod is dead, but his sons still rule in parts of the Holy Land. Judaea itself has passed under Roman administration. Judaea is now a Roman Province. The book may have been written approximately in the year 10 A.D., about fourteen years after Herod's death. It is the saddest of 148 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM the Apocalyptic series. The gloom of Herod's stern repression still hangs over it. It is very bigoted (I 12 13 ), but not worse than the Book of Jubilees of more than a hundred years earlier. There is a terrible resignation in it born equally of faith (II 4 ) and of despair (II 18 ). The attitude of the true Israelite is to be strictly quiescent. There is none of the spirit of fight in the book. Submission, even to the point of extinction, is enjoined (9 67 ). There are no dreams of a conquering Messiah, as in the Psalms of Solomon awaited him. There is no Messiah at all. All except the end is hopeless. There is nothing good to be expected from the Gentiles ( 12 n ) or for them (10 7 10 , 12 12 ), but there is also no hope for the Apostates of Israel, the dominant party of the Sadducees (7 3 - 10 ). Moses is the speaker. He gives to Joshua a survey of Jewish history up to the days of the author. It is one of the frequent attempts of the Apocalyptic to read the times of the nation's past, and it is of the same mechanical order as the rest. The hope of the author, on the human side, is centred solely on the observance of the law (9 5 , 12 10 ). Here, for the first time, we encounter what we may call the Apotheosis of Moses. He was prepared of God before the foundation of the world (I 14 ), i-e., he was in God's purpose pre- existent, like the Messiah man of the Similitudes of Enoch (46 2 ), or as all men in the Secrets of Enoch (23 5 ), and in the Wisdom of Solomon (8 19 20 ). Moses is " God's chief prophet throughout the earth, and the most perfect teacher in the world " (II 16 ). The world is not too large to be his sepulchre (II 8 ). He is the Mediator of God's Covenant (I 14 ), and the mediator of the people's worship (3 12 , II 17 ). The writer has a suspicion that the nation as a whole has fallen greatly away from the testimony of Moses (II 16 - 18 ), and he is very THE VESPASIAN CYCLE 149 disheartened (12 3 ). The final recourse is to the Rule of God, and to his coming intervention in the interests of his own purpose (I 12 , 7 1 ). We have thus traversed two-thirds of the whole field of the Jewish Apocalyptic, passing through two centuries of its history. One century the first of the Christian era is still left. It is represented in the two remaining cycles of the series. We have in these two cycles some ten different authors. Their writings are contained in two collections, which are known to us now under the titles of the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the IY. Book of Ezra. But all that we have of these authors is in fragments only. As already stated in the beginning of this lecture, the single parts are in these two collections quite disjointed, re-arranged, and interwoven with one another, and one is not always quite sure of the details in the analyses, which have hitherto been made. Somewhere about the year 50 A.D. the Vespasian Cycle opens. If we give it this title, it is merely because the Roman power, which dominates the whole of it, is embodied at its close personally in the figure of Vespasian. This is the smaller of the two cycles. It is represented by three short fragments (A 1 , A 2 , A 3 of Charles' Analysis). Only to one of these I can refer, the latest of the three. There is in it (A 3 ) the vision of a great cloud overspreading the Heavens, which sends down on the earth alternate showers of six bright and of six black waters. These fill the time of the world till somewhere in the Persian period. Then comes a last shower of black waters, and after it follows the descent of the bright lightning, which crowned the heavenly cloud, probably the glory of God, from which the Messiah comes forth. As the grip of Rome on Israel tightened, there is the suppressed feeling of intense eagerness, with which the 150 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM final deliverance from God is anticipated (ch. 55). For of the Gentiles at large (62 7 ), as of Rome in particular (36 7 ), no single good thing can be predicated. Only those nations, which have not come into contact with Israel will be spared by the Messiah, and this merely because some out of each of them will be reduced to submission to him. All the rest of the nations he will destroy (ch. 72). We have here before us an expression of some of the inflammatory spirit which ruled among the people of the Jews before the fall of Jerusalem. For the course of things was otherwise than these writers had hoped. Jerusalem was made into ruins by the Roman conquerors. Israel as a nation, having a country of its own, ceased henceforth. All the Apocalyptic Literature that comes alter the events of 70 A.D. belongs to the Final Cycle. This Final Cycle is difficult. It is composed of many fragments. The dates of five of these are well certified (S in Baruch; B l , B 2 , B 3 and S in IV. Ezra), but the time of composition of other parts is doubtful. They may belong to this or the preceding cycle (IV. Ezra A, E 2 , E and M). Of all these writings I select only one for reference. It is the so-called Apocalypse of Salathiel, which, with the omission of alien matter, is still the larger part of IV. Ezra, and is probably the latest of the entire Apocalyptic series. Its date is A.D. 100. The book is a catechism of pathetic grief, a compendium of plaintive trouble. The facts of the world and the destiny of the individual clamour for an explanation. The intellectual moral and emotional faculties of the writer are equally engaged in the discussion. The universal and the personal interest are alike present. The range of enquiry is retro- spective, present and prospective. The writing is a modernised version of the Book of Job, but without the art QUESTIONS ON THE APOCALYPTIC 151 and self-restraint of Job, and with a heavier handicap on the purpose of human existence. The historical premises of Genesis 1 and 2 are invariably invoked a stepping- stone to their further use by Augustine and the chasm between the present and the future remains unbridged. The argument is finally restricted to the problem of the godly in Israel only, and to their fate. Universalism is abandoned, the principle of selection for eternal life is sanctioned (7 47 ). God will rejoice over the few that are saved, and will not grieve over the multitude that perishes (7 61 ). The old prepossessions of Judaism dominate the author. Israel excels all (5 23 - 27 ), but Israel has no obligations to the rest. God loves his people more than they themselves can do (5 33 , 8 47 ), but the nations of the world are contemptible. God has no regard whatever for them (6 56 ). The promise to Abraham that in some way he should be a blessing to all nations is deliberately ignored (3 15 ). Thus the grim antithesis between gentle- ness and hardness, that so strongly characterises much of Judaism, still survives. No solution to the problem of God's ways with man is attained. We have thus completed in outline a brief survey of the more important parts of the Apocalyptic Literature. But there still remain some general questions of importance in reference to it, which serve to bring it into relation with its historical surroundings, and to give it its proper place in the national life, and to these questions we must now finally address ourselves. There are four such points of enquiry : 1. Where must we locate the origin of these writings? To what body of men do these pseudonymous authors, who seem to withdraw themselves from sight, belong ? 2. Who were their original audience ? To whom did they speak, or for whom did they write? 3. Did this teaching immediately or in the sequel gain a 152 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM wider range of hearers? How did it reach the general public ? 4. What is the permanent value of all this literature ? Has it only an historical interest, or does it possess a permanent worth and value of its own? Before coming more closely to these enquiries, it will be well first to fix clearly in our minds some of the striking features which attach to the whole class of writings. We must do so in order to be able to answer the questions proposed. (a) This literature is continuous, though intermittent. It has a long term of life. It ranges over three centuries. It survives much disturbance and many changes, its authors ever from time to time feeling themselves charged with the mission to speak. We see, further, a continued interest attaching to its maintenance. A sequence of use is discernible. The writers of a later day know the productions of their predecessors, even when they are not tied by them. And, finally, an editor or editors have collected the earlier writings or some of them, and have combined them or woven them into a collective shape. All this means a continuity of existence. (6) Yet this literature is never official. There is no authoritative office behind it. No sanction is sought or asserted on its behalf, except that it comes in proper descent from ancient times. To stand in such succession is its sole warrant, and with the warrant of its being the voice of the people's own past, which still speaks, it is prepared to stand on its own merit. (c) On the other hand, this literature is distinctly of a public-spirited character. It has always before it the nation as a whole, not the individual as such, the corporate privilege and the common life of the people. It knows the defects of many of the sons of Israel, and it roundly condemns them. But in doing so, it is the corporate well- THE PLACE OF ORIGIN 153 being that it wishes to preserve and to stimulate. There is nothing of " Welt-flucht " here, there is never anything of the principle of selection; even the doctrine of the " remnant " of the older prophets, the survival of the fittest, the principle of individualism is not to be found. The Apocalypse of Salathiel is no exception to this statement. We move always along the public street; we see the public institutions of the day, the palace, the temple, the market, the law courts. The life of the times is open to view. There is nothing of the seclusion or limitation of interest, which might attach to particular centres. The writers stand for a common public life, which shall be righteous and reverent, and for a common public authority, which shall establish or maintain this life in the nation as such. It is chiefly from premises such as these broad, general lines of observation that the question of the place of origin for the Apocalyptic Literature can be approached. There are three claimants for its source : (a) Can we identify these writings with any private circles in the land with any possible sectaries of the pious, with the pietist element of their day, the men most pure of life, and most fervent in personal faith ? Such sectaries may or may not have been connected with the Essenes, who were more or less an organised body of ascetics, and to some extent the Dominicans of their times. They had their settlements in the desert, but they also undertook "missions" in the country. It is conceivable that such sectaries may have existed in Jerusalem. Yet it is clear that the features, given above, do not suit such a private society, and we must turn elsewhere to find the source. (6) The claim of production by the Pharisees the Pharisaic Order, or the Pharisaic Party appear to me for other reasons untenable. It is true that the figure of the L 154 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM Pharisees is by no means so clear to us as we could wish. We do not know with certainty what it was possible for them as an Order or Party to do, and, above all, we do not know what they consistently could not do. We know their aims and their religious and ethical programmes, and with these the Apocalyptic Literature, on the whole, may be said distinctly to agree. So it is just conceivable that this literature might have sprung from their ranks. There may have been literary men, and Revivalists, and Preachers, a ad Ritualists among them. Yet, if historical evidence is worth anything, the Pharisees were essentially Church Politicians. Now, here we encounter one striking fact. The Apocalyptic never touches Politics practically. It never advances any scheme of action, it never defines a party programme. We have here the atmosphere of the Lecture Room, not that of the Council Chamber. The Pharisees might receive incentive from the Apocalyptic, Out they could receive no directive from it. These are not the plans, and this is not the speech of a body of men, who are ready to act. However much the Pharisees might be in agreement with the teaching of the greater part of the Apocalyptic Literature, they neither appear to be its parent, nor does it appear to be their child. (c) There remain the Scribes and, ff we speak of Scribes, we must understand the term to refer to schools, to a literary quarter, to some, whose pursuit was discussion and teaching. The circumstance, which commends this view at once, is that the schools of the Scribes represent plainly neutral ground, not a party platform, or a political standard. There were at a late day in New Testament times Scribes who might be Pharisees, but there were also evidently such as were not Pharisees. They might conceivably be Sadducees, or in many cases they might be neither the one nor the other. It is this neutral character THE SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM 155 of Scribism which commends it most as the place of origin of this Literature. Our data of information are too meagre to allow us to say anything definite about the organisation of these schools, or to permit us to conjecture more than a little. They were never, we have reason to think, a closed corporation. Their democratic character may be taken as assured. The admission was open to all. For this reason the constituency of the schools probably fluctuated greatly. It no doubt generally was comparatively small. But one thing we may predicate of the schools with certainty, viz., their uninterrupted continuity. That the Schools of Judaism were the same in interest and in view at the time of Simon, Alexandra Salome and Herod, we cannot assert. But this we can assuredly affirm : the schools were always there always constant, always more or less continuous, and always adhering to traditional authorities quite as much as to Biblical warrant. On the other hand, we must not take them to have been uniform in argument through- out their whole career, and we must above all not read back into their history at earlier dates, what we can only be sure of in their later stages. It is only in the schools that we can conceive the varieties and alternations of view to have been possible, which we discern in the Apocalyptic. Again it is only because the schools were represented in Alexandria as well as in Judsea, that we can account for an Egyptian section of these writings. This Egyptian section bars the idea of a Pharisaic origin. We know of no Pharisees in Alexandria. We reach the conclusion, that the Apocalyptic is the product of the schools. With the answer to the first question, thus obtained, the second and third questions become relatively easy. The original audience of these writings was probably not large. No doubt the schools were open to the public ; the writings 156 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM were read in the schools and were discussed before the public present. But the public of the schools were probably also the members of the school, not the general public. The writings will in succession have awakened some interest, and have received some attention. Then the interest would subside ; finally it would expire, except among those members of the schools who may have cherished their contents. Yet the influence of this literature did not stop at the temple chambers or lecture rooms of the schools. That a good deal of the language and some of the thought of the schools percolated into a wider area, and eventually became to a varying degree public property, we can quite readily understand. We see the evidence of this abundantly in the New Testament. But that the literature itself ever circulated to any appreciable extent in the nation at large I find no sufficient evidence for affirming. One more question still remains. What is the value of all this literature ? Had it the ingredients of permanency in it in its own day, and possessing them then, does its meaning still last down to our day? What survives to us in worth now of all this literature ? It has already been suggested that a great deal of the faith and thought of the Apocalyptic literature passed directly or indirectly into, and lives on in the convictions of the first generation of the Christian Church. This is only what we should expect. No impassable gulf ever separated the schools from the public. No such barriers have ever existed in the East. The people at large and the men of the schools held substantially the same faith. The schools were partly the teachers, but partly also the spokesmen of the people, and many of the sons of the people became Christians. The material of this Jewish faith, which Christianity adopted and perpetuated is of FUNDAMENTAL VALUE 157 supreme significance in one particular. It is all of it of the nature of a fundamental value. We move here, ever and to the last, among the very foundation stones of what came to be the Christian faith. They ever surround us as we go through these writings. On these we tread. We never leave them. Two primary convictions especially, which dominate the thought of all the writers without intermission and without variation which the Christian faith has at no time ever questioned or discarded which are themselves deep of the very depths stand out prominently to view. They are the belief in the authority of God, and in the responsibility of man. One has to be careful in the very wording of the statement. We are hardly authorised to qualify either of the two substantives, God or man, with any adjective. If we did, we might miss the mark. We should have to limit or weaken the state- ment, and we should be off the track. Foundation stones must be unconditional and self-contained. We cannot say " sole authority," or even " supreme authority," nor can we say " ultimate responsibility " or " moral responsibility " of man as long as we stand strictly on the stage of Judaism. These definitions are not uniformly maintained. We must leave the terms in their naked unpredicated state the authority of God and the responsibility of man. Christianity took the two foundation stones as it found them. It has built on them and round them a fabric of life and thought very different from that of Judaism. But it is Judaism which has supplied these foundation stones. One last enquiry may arise in our minds, now that we have reached the end, and with it we may conclude. What brought about the cessation of this Literature? As the Apocalyptic of Judaism it ceased. But probably it is not sufficient to assign merely general causes for this, and to say that the overthrow of the Jewish nation brought 158 APOCALYPTIC SCHOOLS OF JUDAISM about the close. Jewish, schools of faith and thought outlasted the destruction of Jerusalem. No doubt the stern facts of history were against it. In the dread crisis of the year 70 A.D. the world powers had triumphed. No Messiah had come. God's Kingdom had not appeared. All this must have had its weight. But the fact that as we have seen the Apocalyptic survived this event for one whole generation, justifies us in seeking for some specific causes of its cessation. The chief of these we have, it seems to me, in the influence on Judaism itself, which the two great Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus must almost certainly have had. These two men practically killed the Apocalyptic in the Jewish schools. Both men were devoted Israelites, as true probably to the faith of their people as any Pharisee of Jerusalem, or as the best of the Sadducees of the Temple. But they both came boldly as literary men before the public of the Empire under their own names. There was, with their example in view, no need of anonymity, or of the Eastern figurative type of authorship. Provided one wrote and spoke as they did, there was no further place for any concealment of authorship. But the influence of both these men undermined the Jewish Apocalyptic in another and deeper direction. Philo represented the critical mind of philosophy. He knew all the schools of Greek thought as well as he knew the Scriptures of his people. He recast the Jewish faith into new dialectic form, and he made the principle of allegory do service, where the principle of literal meaning would not serve. Josephus, on the other hand, is the first Jewish writer whom we, with our canons of judgment, would call a historian. For better or for worse, he has adopted Western points of view, as well as rules of taste. He knows his Thucydides well he knows Herodotus, he PHILO AND JOSEPHUS 159 knows Strabo, lie knows even Livy. The type of history, which is common to these European writers, he employs for his own use. With all the defects in his application of it, he is still on historical ground a purist in the handling of his material. He does not arrange things in any preconceived or figurative order. There is nothing about "weeks of years" or jubilees, or twelve times, or ten times in the course of history. All this is dropped. He takes the historical documents of the Old Testament as he finds them, and he reproduces the thread of their narrative simply as they disclose it. There are no Angels of Judah, or Angels of the Nations, or Archangels in all this. Josephus deals with things visible, and though Heaven remains above us, its control of the earth is direct and immediate. Perhaps in this literal purism of Josephus we have the true and best features of Sadducean tradition preserved. Josephus was the son of a distinguished Sadducean house. Now these two principles, the dialectic criticism of Philo and the literal purism of Josephus the philosophy of the one and the historical treatment of the other are a death- blow to the Apocalyptic methods. We seem to be authorised in concluding that the influence of two such high placed and public men, who yet remained true Jews, must have operated inimically to the maintenance of the old Apocalyptic type of Literature. Philosophical analysis and the historical method were the solvents which proved its destruction. It did not extend beyond the first Christian century. THE GREEK LANGUAGE IN THE SERVICE OF CHRISTIANITY THE GREEK LANGUAGE IN THE SERVICE OF CHRISTIANITY. BY THE REV. JAMES HOPE MOULTON, M.A., D.Lit. THE nature and claims of Greek studies are being at this moment brought before the attention of the man in the street by the struggle at Cambridge over the reform of the " Little-go." A Cambridge man is naturally tempted at such a time to discuss a subject in which he is deeply interested. But I shall say no more to-night on a problem in which men who are enthusiasts for Greek are deeply divided. I refer to it only that I may remind you how unique is the debt which the modern world owes to the marvellous people of whose language I am to speak. We may differ as to the policy of enforcing this study upon all candidates for an Arts degree; but the most fervent devotee of natural sciences could not wish to injure the cause of Greek study in this country, without proclaiming himself indifferent to that which has been the very foundation of all scientific progress, and which shows itself as far as ever from having exhausted its capacity of ministering to the intellectual development of mankind. I hope to show to-night that, at the very time when Greek is supposed to be in peril of extinction in the schools of our country, this wonderful language is bringing us treasures of unsuspected wealth in bewildering abundance, enough to occupy us in fruitful labour for many years to come. 162 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY A scientific outline of the history of Greek ought strictly to begin with the prehistoric, and trace the developments of that great Indo-Germanic ("Aryan") family to which nearly all of the languages of modern Europe belong. I could not take you through a more fascinating subject, but I should run great risk of being "left speaking" at the end of the hour without having started the topic which is to be my special charge to-night. So I will barely sketch the earlier separate life of the Greek language, as an introduction to the story of rejuvenescence with which I am specially concerned. The earliest probable monument of Greek goes back to the year 1275 B.C., and naturally comes from Egypt. It is only a single word, 'Akaiwasha, which is read as Achaiwos ('Axcu/ws), and shown to be a prehistoric but linguistically certain form of the name of the old Greeks that prevailed at the beginning and again at the end of their history as a nation. This is three or four centuries before the composition of those parts of the Homeric poems which begin our extant Greek literature. We have to wait till the seventh century B.C. for con- temporary monuments on stone. But meanwhile the literature was growing fast; and by the output of those two marvellous centuries, the fifth and fourth before our era, it had abundantly established its right to stand unchallenged at the head of all the literatures of the world. I must, however, leave this well-worn subject alone. I have to take you aside from the Greek of Sophocles and Herodotus and Pindar to a Greek which a very respectable Hellenist might stumble at without a blush. In a country half the size of Scotland an extraordinary variety of dialects were spoken. Small States no bigger than Rutlandshire kept a constitution, a dialect, and even an alphabet of their own. In the invaluable " Teubner Classics " there is a small book of GREEK DIALECTS 163 dialect inscriptions, edited by a well-known philologist "in usum scholarum" the German schoolboy must be well up to Macaulay's ideal ! which contains specimens of no less than twenty distinct dialects from continental and insular Greece. The differences of these dialects are astonishing. Thebes and Athens were about as far apart as Liverpool and Manchester; but the Theban said wittho Deus 1 (firrw Aevs) in adjuring the national deity, while the Athenian said isto Zdeus (to-rw Zeus). The country interposes so many natural barriers between contiguous territories that it took ages to establish the regular intercourse by which alone a unification of language could be developed. This unification became complete a few generations before the period of which we are specially speaking to-night. But before we begin to deal with this subject we must turn back awhile to examine the language of literature. Among all these dialects to which we have referred there was one which attained an unapproached literary eminence. It was the dialect of Athens, in which were written the masterpieces of tragedy, comedy, history, and philosophy, which still form the basis of the world's thought. The supremacy of Attic was so overwhelming among the Greek dialects that when at last Greek became a unity, it was the Attic dialect which was universally recognised as the language of literature. Naturally, this Attic was not as it was in the period of its prime, but was mingled with many features from the vernacular of which we shall speak later. It is this language which even at the present day is the language of books and newspapers in Greece. The contemplation of the language of modern Athens reveals some very curious features. We find that the language of books is totally 1 eu = ay -oo pronounced rapidly. It should be added that the pro- nunciation both of TT and of is very debatable. 164 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY distinct from the language of daily life. In books men must use the old language altered according to a series of formulae, not numerous and very easily learnt, resulting in a fearful and wonderful dialect mostly unintelligible to the man in the street. In a newspaper, when men wish to speak of a train, finding no term for it in the language of Plato, they must call it "waggon-concatenation" (d/moo-Toixeia), whereas in common life men are quite content to catch "TO rpevo." The contest between these two languages is a very serious matter at the present day. Blood was shed in the streets of Athens only a few years ago for what was regarded as a sacrilegious attempt to represent the Greek New Testament in a language intelligible to the masses ; and at this day Greece, the country which still speaks the language of the Gospels, is the only country where the British and Foreign Bible Society is not allowed to circulate the Bible in a language understood by the people. Let us go back now to examine the history of the vernacular, in which we shall see the New Testament itself was written. The great solvent of the innumerable dialects of which we have been speaking, the dialects which kept apart the Greek-speaking people of the classical period, was the army of Alexander. That extra- ordinary man, in the brief career in which he aimed at, and to a large extent attained a universal empire, produced as a by-product of his colossal schemes a unifying of the language of Greece. It was not possible for men from Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Aetolia, Achaia and every corner of Greece, when serving side by side in Alexander's army and sharing tents with men who spoke a dialect strangely different from their own, to keep up very long the differences which severed Greek from Greek. In the course of a generation we suddenly find a new language RISE OF "COMMON" GREEK 165 springing into existence, a language for which the learned man would hardly find a name, but for which we generally appropriate the name of "Common" Greek (Koiv^), which the grammarians assigned to the modern Attic as used for literary purposes. In this vernacular Greek the most peculiar features of the various dialects were pruned away and a kind of compromise effected. Even here the Attic had essentially the pre- eminence, but the other dialects took no small share, especially in the pronunciation. The most conspicuous part, after Attic, was taken by the Ionic, spoken in the busy Greek cities of Asia Minor. It is this dialect which was glorified by the history of Herodotus and by the poems of Homer, if we classify their dialect according to the form in which they have come down to us. But there are other dialects, some, like the rude patois of North- West Greece, destitute of literary monuments altogether, which left some traces upon this resultant language. Having thus outlined the genesis of the later Common Greek, we must proceed to describe briefly the sources in which we study its development. Greek inscriptions have been for the last century a constantly increas- ing subject for scholarly research. In this place we like to remember how large a part in the investigation has been taken by a distinguished member of our own Theological Faculty, Canon Hicks. The inscriptions, however, do not take the first place in the study of the language of the common people. The very material upon which they are written proclaims that they were meant to last; and the language accordingly is often of a stilted and semi-literary character. Our most important source by far for the study of Common Greek is found in the non-literary papyri, which have been dis- covered in marvellous abundance, especially during the 166 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY last ten or fifteen years. There were papyri in plenty before, but their importance was not understood ; and in the goodly volumes which have within the last few years poured forth with amazing rapidity from our own Egypt Explora- tion Fund, as well as from corresponding centres of activity in Berlin and elsewhere, we have learnt to recognise a new and fertile source for the study of the inexhaustible wealth of Hellenism. There was a time when classical scholars looked down upon this sort of Greek with contemptuous indifference. The only Greek that was worth studying was the classical; and the debased idiom of a later age was hardly worthy of the most passing attention as a foil to the perfection of the classical idiom, or, if it must be, for the sake of historic and scientific information that could be gained from its extant literature. But in recent years scholars have learnt to take an interest in the later developments of the Greek language; and the high and dry Atticist who sniffs at " Hellenistic " is already quite out of date. A journal has been devoted in Germany exclusively to the study of the Byzantine Greek, to which in former days only historians would care to pay attention, receiving the com- passion of their classical brethren for being compelled to meddle with such jargon. And a jargon more contemptible still the common Greek of peasants and artisans in the Hellas of to-day has within the last generation engaged the interested attention of scholars like Hatzidakis of Athens, and the Germans Krumbacher and Thumb, who have discovered that this despised language is the heir of an uninterrupted development, reaching from Homer three thousand years ago down through the classical, the Hellenistic, the Byzantine and the mediaeval periods to our own day. This study is still comparatively new, and there is much more to be done, especially in the examination of the dialects of the HELLENISM AND CHRISTIANITY 167 modern Greek-speaking world. But we have learnt enough to realise that everything which we can find in the spoken Greek of to-day goes back directly to the spoken Greek of two thousand years ago; and that we are to recognise the language with which we, for this evening's purpose, are most concerned, as standing in the direct line of develop- ment between the Greek of Plato and the Greek of modern times. And now we are ready to look especially at the subject which is suggested by our title. Our theological studies take up the religion of Israel in the period immediately preceding the birth of Christ, and we take stock of the contribution made to the world's religious thought by the wonderful development which took place within that little country of Palestine. Our reading soon shows us that the Hebrew language in which the Old Testament comes down to us was not adapted in the highest way for the expression of philosophic thought. It lacked precision and subtlety. The Jewish idea of wisdom was essentially ethical, and the time had not yet come for the development of a philosophy. But when the Old Testament culminated in the teaching of Jesus, the truth was ready for thought to take it up. A more flexible and resourceful language than Hebrew was needed for that purpose, and a new kind of genius was to be employed upon the further development of truth, in a people trained to scientific methods and prepared to bring philosophy into the service of the Gospel. It was this function which the Greek people were uniquely fitted to fulfil. There were disadvantages connected with the qualities which they brought to their task, disadvantages which were vividly set forth in the well-known Hibbert Lectures of the late Dr. Hatch, of Oxford. There was danger that rhetoric would often take the place of 168 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY simple earnestness, that theoretical subtlety would overwhelm the divine simplicity of the Gospel. Never- theless, there was a worthy part for the successors of Plato and Aristotle to play in transmitting the message of Christianity to the Western world. It was not until the Gospel was wedded to a system of thought that men could understand the essential unity of religion and science, which might otherwise have seemed mutually exclusive; and when the language of the very founders of science was used to set forth the truths of revelation, the union was established for many a day to come. We cannot too strongly insist that the language in which the Greek Testament comes to us is essentially a world language, so far as one can speak of a " world " two thousand years ago. Throughout the world that counted as such, conterminous with the Roman Empire, every known civilisation could speak Greek. Even in Rome itself we have startling evidence that, if Latin was the normal language, yet Greek was almost equally at home. When St. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians it was in Greek. When the Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his philosophic meditations, he did not think his patriotism damaged by clothing his thoughts in Greek. The fierce satirist Juvenal records for us the disgust with which, as he says, he found the City turned Greek. The inscriptions to which we have already referred emphasise for us in the strongest way the universal distribution of the Greek language. It is easy for us, therefore, to see what was the nature of the weapon that lay ready to hand for the first missionaries of Christianity. We read in the New Testament of the mysterious " gift of tongues " ; but it is abundantly evident, whatever we are to understand by this phenomenon, that we must not suppose it a miraculous endowment whereby the missionaries of Christianity were A WORLD LANGUAGE 169 able to preach in unknown languages successively as they visited new countries. To go no further than one reason, such an endowment would have been unnecessary, for Greek would take them everywhere. Moreover, as far as we can tell, the Greek that was thus spread over the whole Mediter- ranean world was essentially one language, with dialectic differences so small as to be almost wholly beyond our capacity for detecting them at the present day. Differences in pronunciation and in vocabulary there may well have been, but the conditions were probably very much like those which prevail in our own language now. An Englishman travelling in America will recognise at once the different intonation of the people among whom he moves, and many words the meaning of which he may not be able to grasp; but essentially he will feel that he is speaking in his own language to people who are perfectly able to understand him. In the world through which St. Paul made his missionary journeys there were in most places the conditions of bi-lingualism. When he and Barnabas visited Lystra, they preached to the people as elsewhere, without any hint of an interpreter's presence. Then we read of the stupendous impression produced by a deed of healing, which prompted the simple country folk to cry out in the language of Lycaonia that the gods had once more come down to them, as in their old legend, in the likeness of men. But the apostles understood nothing of this Lycaonian speech, and it was only when the meaning of what was going on became clear to the eye that they began their protest. And just as in Lycaonia Greek and the local dialect existed side by side, so it seems to have been in Palestine itself. No better illustration of the bi-lingual condition of Palestine can be found than the story in the Book of Acts of the speech of Paul on the steps of Antonia. 170 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY He motioned with his hand to the people, who were immediately silent to hear him speak ; but we are told, when he began to speak to them in the Hebrew (that is, the Aramaic) language, "they were the more silent." In other words, they would have understood him had he spoken to them in Greek, but naturally the sound of their own language was a welcome surprise. We may, in fact, see exactly similar conditions prevailing at our own doors in the Principality of Wales. If an English orator were to visit some village in the heart of Wales, the people would gather to hear him, and would understand him if he spoke in his own language ; but if he surprised them by dropping into Welsh, there would certainly be the more silence, as there was when Paul spoke in Aramaic to the crowd at Jerusalem. It seems to follow that the writers of the New Testament, even those who were comparatively unlearned, were capable of writing some sort of Greek, and that not as a painfully acquired foreign language, but as a language which they had been obliged to use to some extent from their youth. We come then to sketch the history of the New Testament Greek, as it has been conceived in very varying terms by the scholars of the last few generations. A century ago a vehement controversy was raging on this question. One side in the contest called themselves Purists. They ransacked the highways and byways of Greek literature to prove that the peculiarities of St. Mark's or St. John's grammar and phraseology could all be paralleled from the "profane" writers; and great was the ingenuity with which they essayed a task inspired by the confidence that the Greek of Scripture must needs be classically pure. On the other side were the Hebraists, whose doctrine was that the Greek of the sacred writings was only a veil which hid Hebrew thought and Hebrew idiom at every turn. "PURISTS" AND "HEBRAISTS" 171 The violence done to Greek grammar and to exegesis by the extravagance of this party was far more mischievous than the amiable absurdities of the Purists. Let me give one example which may serve as a reductio ad absurdum. Theologians had always felt difficulty in the passage in which our Lord declares, " Of that day or that hour knoweth no man . . . not even the Son." But the Hebraist was equal to the occasion. In Hebrew there is a voice of the verb which is causative in its meaning, and the Hebrew verb "to know" might be so modified as to mean "to cause to know." Therefore and the proof was triumphant when the Greek Gospel tells us that our Lord declared He did not know the time of His second coming, He really meant He did not let others know ! A more logical kind of Hebraist arose as the century grew older, and in the epoch- making grammar of Winer we see a line taken which appears eminently reasonable. We know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament is full of unidiomatic phraseology due to over-literal translation of Hebrew which was imperfectly understood, and this Greek Bible was thoroughly known and constantly used by the writers of the New Testament. What more natural than that they should colour their Greek by the familiar phraseology of this venerated translation ? And there was another force at work. These men who wrote in Greek were men who spoke the Aramaic tongue, and thought out in Aramaic what they afterwards put into Greek. Was it not natural that when they thus translated their own thoughts, or translated the Aramaic sayings of Jesus and the Apostles, they should constantly introduce idioms which were foreign to the Greek language? All this was entirely in accord with the strange isolation of the biblical Greek, which had become all the more conspicuous the more scientifically it was studied. Even contemporary Jews like Josephus and 172 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY Philo wrote a Greek which did not essentially differ from that of ordinary Greek writers of their time. But the biblical dialect was something quite apart : even the Greek Fathers did not long make any effort to follow its style. No parallel literature could be traced anywhere. What wonder if men said that here was a Greek entirely by itself, " a language of the Holy Ghost," fit medium for the unique revelation which was to be enshrined in it? This view of the New Testament prevails in some of the most recent commentaries and grammars that we have in our hands to-day. But in the year 1895 there appeared in Germany a book which marks a new era in our study. It bore the simple title " Bible Studies," and was written by a young pastor, G. Adolf Deissmann, hitherto known only by one small, but very promising, essay in Pauline theology. Deissmann had been examining the newly- discovered papyri, and he had found there evidence that the isolation of the sacred Greek could be maintained no more. The idioms which had been supposed to come from over-literal translations of Hebrew or Greek originals, turned up with astonishing frequency in the rough, ill- spelt letters and petitions and accounts of Greek-speaking farmers in Upper Egypt, who could not by any possibility have been brought under the influence of Hebrew thought. One after another the Hebraisms vanished, to be replaced, not by the classical parallels of the Purist, but by a phraseology now for the first time traced in everyday uneducated Greek speech. It became plain, and it is becoming plainer with every fresh volume of papyri, that the " language of the Holy Ghost " was, as we might have expected, simply the language of the common people, the language in which He could make Himself understood everywhere by the masses to whom His revelation came. It would not be possible in a non-technical lecture to DEISSMANN AND THE PAPYRI 173 give any account of the grammatical revolution that Deissmann's pioneer work has led us to, but I might mention a few lexical examples, partly from Deissmann himself, and partly from later gleanings in the field which he has opened up. There are technical ecclesiastical names, such as presbyter, bishop, church, which we suppose to be peculiar, or almost peculiar, to Christianity. We now find that every Egyptian village had its " presbyters (or elders) of the cultivators." We find from inscriptions that the Greek god Apollo had a "bishop" at Rhodes; and the word church, a derivative from the Greek KV/HOS, " lord," which Professor Jiilicher thought Paul himself invented, turns up on numerous papyri with the meaning " imperial." This is, indeed, not by any means the only case in which the servile and even blasphemous language of Roman Emperor-worship is annexed by the Church in the service of One to whom such titles belong as a right. It startles us to see the title " Son of God " figuring in the papyri as a standing epithet of the Caesars, and the title " Saviour " given by sycophants to such an emperor as Nero. Passing on, we might mention a few miscellaneous words the meaning of which has been elucidated by their occurrence on the papyri. There is a puzzling word (fTrifiaXuv'), in Mark 14 72 , which is translated " when he thought thereon," but mostly by guesswork. Now it figures in the letter of an Egyptian peasant, who complains that his neighbour had " set to " and dammed up the canal that irrigated his field ; and we are able to amend the translation in the story of Peter's denial very much in the direction of the Revised Version margin, which has " and he began to weep." Again, in 1 Cor. 10 u , we read of things that " were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come." But this perfectly colourless word come has lately been noted in at least a score of papyrus 174 GREEK LANGUAGE AND CHRISTIANITY wills and similar documents as a technical term for property " descending " to an heir. The "ends of the ages " are our inheritance then; and when Tennyson wrote "We the heirs of all the ages," he was unconsciously copying St. Paul. One more example must suffice. We are familiar with the definition of faith in Hebrews II 1 , "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." In a recent volume of papyri we are told by Drs. Grenfell and Hunt that the original word here (uTroo-rao-is), from the meaning substance, that is property, comes to mean the whole collection of documentary evidence by which a man established his right to property. In other words, if we may apply this meaning, " Faith is the title-deeds of things hoped for." At this point we must close our illustrations. We have tried to show a full proof may be studied now in English in Professor Deissmann's deeply interesting pages that we have a new field from which we may secure invaluable illustrations of the meaning of the New Testament writers. We have seen that the biblical Greek was the Greek of common life, and from the language of common life we must learn what we need to learn for the interpretation of the Book which so long has been supposed to stand apart in its language as much as in the truths it conveys. We stand at the outset of a new era of study; a new field has opened up before us, and we cannot tell how much more the future may have to reveal. The magnitude and importance of the discoveries which may yet come from the tombs and rubbish heaps of Egypt will depend upon other conditions besides the indefatigable industry and acuteness of Dr. Grenfell and Dr. Hunt, who discover and edit the documents for us. The day when the treasures of Egypt will no longer reward the explorer's skill is fast drawing near, as Dr. Grenfell himself told us last term. It is distressing to think that mere lack of financial support TREASURES OF EGYPT 175 is likely to curtail so seriously the magnificent work of our own Egypt Exploration Fund. Let us hope that before the rise of the damp level irretrievably ruins documents of incalculable value, the public will realise more power- fully the worth of what they have received, and the possibilities latent in what may yet be done. New " Sayings of Jesus," new fragments of Gospels, new MSS. standing nearer to the apostolic autographs than any we have already such finds we can all appreciate, and deduce the possibility of finds more sensational still. But I hope I have shown to-night that the most trivial scraps from the old Egyptians' waste-paper can contribute material at least as important as these for the student of the sacred literature of Christianity. THE BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY THE BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY. BY THE REV. ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A. SAINT ATHANASIUS, in his vigorous and powerful polemic against sectaries of his time, makes this point. Inasmuch as they designate themselves by the personal name of a distinctive leader describing themselves as Yalentinians, Meletians, Arians, and so on he urges that thereby they dissociate themselves from allegiance to the sole and supreme Head of the one and only Church, thus forfeiting all claim to the title of Christian, the only title owned by genuine followers of Christ. A similar view is taken by a respectable community on the continent of America, who decline for their parts to be known by any name but that of Christians only. Among other authorities for this course, they fortify themselves by that of St. Paul. Yet St. Paul might be cited in another sense, on proper occasion. He who exhorted, " Become imitators of me, as I also of Christ," was assuredly sensible of the value of a subordinate leadership, as conducting to the common Lord. Those friendly to the community in question, desirous to meet their wishes, yet anxious to avoid confusion, are in the habit of calling them Christ-ians. Those unfriendly have been known to speak of them as choosing a Christ of their own making. Irreconcileables have ventured a like remark in regard to the great Alexandrian himself. But these are the mere gibes, which serve to enliven the pursuit of Theology. It is more to the purpose to observe that, in taking this rigid line, the Saint of old and the modern religionists 178 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY of Canada and the United States set themselves at war with a tendency of human nature, which may even rank as a principle. A natural instinct draws, if not compels, a majority of earnest believers to place themselves under the segis of a particular religious leader, as a means and condition of their entrance on the duties of the Christian calling. They own their debt by merging themselves into his name. Doubtless there are disadvantages attending this custom, but these do not operate as contended by Saint Athanasius. To take more modern and current instances, when persons avow themselves to be Franciscans, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Arminians, or Socinians, or Wesleyans, assuredly they do not take this course with any idea of detaching themselves from Christian allegiance. The name they wear is dear to them as that of the guide who has conducted them beyond himself, bringing them to the life, teaching and spirit of his Master and theirs. To accuse or to suspect them of abandoning that Master, would be as futile as to affirm that when a man professes membership in the Church of England or of Rome, he thereby renounces membership in the Church of Christ. Even my good friends the Muggletonians, interesting in their eccentricity, as breaking the monotony one encounters in researches into the minor sects, would never dream that, in taking the name of their Prophet, they falter in devotion to Him whom they venerate as the true and only God. Indeed the danger lies the other way, namely, that those who have thus attached themselves, as they think, to the best interpreter of the Master's mind, may deem themselves not merely Christians, but Christians par excellence, on a higher level than others, and of superior type; thus emulating the exclusiveness which the great Alexandrian vindicated for himself and his friends. In the personality of religious teachers we find the key FOUR METHODS 179 to the formation of theological systems, and the clue to the understanding of them. While the Gospel is Revela- tion not Philosophy, yet in Theology the part played by Humanity is quite as conspicuous as that due to Divinity. What may be done by a strong personality is forcibly illustrated whenever, in saying the Lord's Prayer, we substitute "trespasses" for "debts," and "them that trespass against us" for "our debtors," in accord with neither of the Evangelical records, and on the authority of no version of the New Testament, but simply at the bidding of Henry Till. It is remarkable that English Roman Catholics, when they recite the oratio dominica in the vernacular, do so in terms dictated by the ex- defender of their faith. In the study of Theology more than one method is requisite. We have the method of Dogma, the method of System, the method of History. There is yet a fourth method, which has certain relations with the other three, the method of Biography. For obvious reasons recourse to the method of Dogma is imperative and indispensable. It is the only means of ascertaining what is de fide, what has been determined and defined as essential to the creed, either of the Church at large or some section of it. Dogma, if we use the term correctly, is the expression of the collective judgment of a religious body, issued in precise form and with legislative force. Thus it differs from mere opinion, however pious and widespread, and from mere doctrine, however customary and well-founded, in that it possesses a kind of sanction and therewith a species of authority, wanting in other cases. Hence the value of the careful study of those positions which have received the distinctive stamp of Dogma. Now there are two features of Dogma which compel us to 180 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY pass outside the limits in pursuing the study of Theology. To begin with, Dogma always bears a certain aspect of insulation. It deals with a given point, and as a rule with nothing else. It is judicial, determining the point at issue, and therewith content. It is the outcome of controversy; and in controversy this restriction is a main condition of good result. Such was, for example, the working plan of Bull, perhaps the greatest of English controversialists. His remarkable " self-restraint, in never being tempted to diverge " from his particular point (signalised by that admirable writer the late Canon Overton), while it withheld him from covering the whole field opened before him in the course of his enquiry, was the secret of his concentrated power. There was no scattering of force, even on closely-related positions. The restraint of Dogma, and its limitation, may be instanced in the case which especially exercised the energies of Saint Athanasius. Closely connected in the majority of minds are the question of Incarnation and the question of Virgin Birth. The Nicaean Dogma had to deal with the Incarna- tion, and with that alone ; its definition makes no reference whatever to the earthly parentage of our Lord. Again, when we dispute about Transubstantiation we are usually involved at once in details of the doctrine of substance and accidents. The Tridentine Dogma of Transubstantiation says nothing of accidents; it defines without any use of that term. In short, were we to construct the most complete compilation of actual extant Dogmata, we should find gaps between them. Topics which Theology cannot overlook would be passed over, or not treated in full. Therefore, in obedience to a practical necessity, resort is made to the method of System. Dogmata are correlated; points of doctrine which have not reached the stage of Dogma METHOD OF HISTORY 181 are determined by individual judgment, interpreting a consensus of opinion, or striking the balance of conflicting views. Provisional definitions are introduced; the whole field is tentatively covered. For it is obvious that to Systematic Theology, however, distinguished its merit, however emphatic the approving voice of many generations, the force of Dogma cannot attach. Whatever sanction, for example, may exalt the system of Aquinas of whom we find Priestley affirming, somewhat unexpectedly, " it is probable the world never produced a greater man " it is quite within the bounds of legitimate choice to prefer the rival system of Scotus. Though one is a saint, the other not even beatified, both are doctors of the Church. Further, while the decision of Dogma is final on its own point, still it does but reach a stage in the process of thought on theological subjects. It establishes a land- mark in the course of theological development. As the result of the interaction of antecedent trains of thinking, its problem had become critical. The very fact that this problem is now disposed of, opens the way for consequent trains of thought, with their new problems. Hence we are constrained to have recourse to the method of History, if we would know how Dogma came to be, and what came of it; if we would follow in general the processes of the inception and the ripening of doctrine. The study of Theology by the method of the History of Doctrines is, at the present day, a favourite one, and deservedly so. It has given stimulus to theological pursuits, it has given life to Theology itself. The observed phenomena of the growth of a doctrine, the very fact of its putting forth new powers, and in fresh directions, from one age to another, has been rightly taken as demonstrative of its having exhibited, perhaps we may say earned, the right to live. Indeed, nowadays, for the proof of a doctrine we 182 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY look not merely to the circumstance of its initiation, sometimes hard to discover, but to the nature and endurance of its life. We have, then, the History of a Dogma and a History of Doctrines ; the distinction between them may be compared to the difference between Biography and History. In the former of these we treat of a career that is closed, we work up to a known termination ; in the latter we are dealing with an unexhausted line of life. Fix what bound we may, a great event or a given year, it is arbitrary. The stream of events is not checked, the progress of the years rolls on. It is just the same with the History of Doctrines ; we may pause, but development does not cease. On the other hand, the History of a Dogma is a species of Biography. While it is often as difficult to fix the natal moment of a Dogma as of a man, yet in either case our task has its goal. We arrive at a conclusion, an apotheosis causa finita est even though we may think it well, in appendices, to trace the fate of bequests, of offspring, or of followers. This analogy, however, does not describe the application of the Biographical method of Theology. To put the matter briefly, the study of the course of Theology introduces us not merely to a current of ideas, but to a procession of persons. The formation alike of Dogma and of Doctrine is in great part due to the pressure of human circumstances and the action of human characters. It is here that Biography comes in. Take the case already alluded to, the forming of the Nicaean Dogma. To realise how and why this was effected it is not enough that we make ourselves familiar with needs of the age, and tendencies of thought, and a theory of the upward and onward march of Christian principles. Abstract considerations of this kind have their place, but PERSONAL FORCES AT NIC^EA 183 by themselves they are certainly not adequate to account for the particular result. Nor, again, will it suffice to ascribe all to the action of the Holy Spirit, and make the transaction merely miraculous. We must bring into clear view at any rate the personalities of those prominently engaged in various ways on this momentous settlement; of the imperial statesman, Constantine, whose genius conceived, whose mandate summoned the Great Council of the Christian World; of Hosius, called out of Cordova in venerable age to blend with the subtlety of the East somewhat of the disciplinary wisdom of the West, which had subdued the nations; of Eusebius the courtier, who sweetened the Dogma to his palate with a light touch of the pen, and, substituting a smile for a grimace, remarked that the soul was none the worse for a drop of ink; of that more renowned Eusebius the compiler, father of Church History who scarce would know his offspring, and who departed from the Council with more chagrin perhaps than any other. Outside the throng of adjudicat- ing bishops, yet determining every movement of their deliberations, we must contemplate as living beings, living forces, the two main combatants in the strife of theories ; the one, sneered at by Julian as avdpumo-Kos tr/reA.^, that fiery little Welshman of the ancient world, ubiquitous and indomitable; the other, more of a Scottish type, ungainly yet ingratiating, with a curious reliance on mere keenness and hardness of logic, clothing consecrated themes in jingling measures, which remind us of the "gude and godly ballads " of the Reformation, or the " gospel sonnets " of Erskine, a procedure of which his adversary could only see the ludicrous aspect and the dangerous side. Did we know more of these men than we do, our knowledge of the personal forces at work in giving shape and validity to the Nicsean Dogma would be correspondingly increased. 184 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY But of Biography as we understand it to-day, the history of mind as well as the complex of action, we have no samples in the early Christian records, not even in the New Testament. Take as further illustration of the prime importance of human personality in the rise of doctrine, the terrible and pathetic case of the ill-starred Gottschalk. Out of what other life-career than that of this longing, aching, despairing spirit, imprisoned within the religious vow by no responsible act of his own, could the dread vision of a Double Predestination have emerged? For such a victim of suffering and sorrow, without release, it seemed but half the problem that there loomed before the utterly impenitent the pain of hell as a providential destiny. Surely it was suggested by his own experience that a predestinating decree, from which there was no escape, had fixed for some, from the first, nought but a doom of irremediable woe. The comparison between this and the Augustinian doctrine exhibits no mere logical divergence of closet theories. It reveals the vivid and even lurid contrast between the ways of God as pictured by a soul renewed, and shrinking from the remembrance of its own sin, and the scheme of crushing fate, imaged by a soul in agony, that had gained no pity from men. So will it always be found, that the roots of doctrine, when we can trace them, are twined in the deeper experiences of human Biography. If we pass from the genesis of particular Doctrines to the construction of a Theological System, the same method will avail us for the explanation of the special conforma- tion. Systems of Theology differ very largely on questions of adjustment. The same topics necessarily appear, more or less, in all ; but they are presented in different propor- tions and in different relations to each other. A main THE GOVERNING IDEA 185 thing is the choice of the governing idea. It is this which determines the specific type of Theology, and controls its general character. Under the influence of the central conception, the common topics assume their relative place and importance. And where Theologies are not merely conservative and imitative, reproductions of precedent, the presence of the guiding and informing verity will not result from a dry and deliberate act of selection, it will preside in virtue of its intimate relation to the very heing of the Theologian, it will constitute the pith and core of his spiritual vitality, and be the index of his religious Biography. We have witnessed in our own time the shifting in modern English Theology of the commanding centre from which the whole field of Theology was surveyed the controlling conception which marshalled all the forces of religious thought and experience. Once, this was the Atonement; since, it has been the Incarnation; perhaps there are signs which betoken a further shifting to the Divine Fatherhood. Change of this sort means that in the living hearts of men this or that portion of truth is kindled into a new glow. It becomes regnant in the experience, dominant in the construction of System. We learn from this, sometimes to our surprise, what it is that most deeply touches and most strongly moves some earnest religious lives; and, again, what misses its effect upon them. This is not to say that it will miss its effect upon all. As in the pursuit of Science there are some parts which the investigator will feel to be intensely interesting, and elevating to the whole intellectual being, while others fail to charm or to uplift ; as in our use of the Bible we find radiant pages, golden verses, through which a life- giving inspiration flows, yet these are not at all times the same to all; thus is it also in Theology. Probably most 186 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY of us have a good deal of Theology of which we make very little use. It may be evidently of some value elsewhere. For while, indeed, there are those whose lives, and good lives, make no argument for their Theology, there are those again whose lives make everything for it. In addition to its influence in the formation of a Theology, we may safely say that in Biography we are furnished with the most effective means for the under- standing of it. Biography is the best interpreter of Theology; it brings us to admit the significance of doctrines. When in themselves they had appealed to us very little, or not at all, it forces from us some degree of appreciation and even sympathy. Were I anxious to bring home to an inquirer some sense of the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity, and some feeling of its spiritual power, I do not think I should urge the perusal of Horsley's Tracts, brilliant and biting; though to these Candlish was wont to ascribe his own lifelong hold of the doctrine. Rather should I recommend the study of a deeply impressive autobiographical piece by Thomas Scott, the evangelical commentator to whom the great Cardinal said that, humanly speaking, he almost owed his soul; whose writings " first planted deep " in Newman's mind the doctrine which he regarded as the " fundamental truth of religion." In Scott's personal narrative " The Force of Truth" he calls it; it were even better named "The Force of Spirituality " we are admitted to see and to comprehend the passage made from a bald rationalistic Unitarianism up to the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Were I desirous, again, to evoke some perception and some appreciation of the mind and meaning of Roman Catholic religiousness, I should take the same course. Much as I admire it, I should not direct the reader to the great Cardinal's " Loss and Gain," with its caustic satire CALVINISM 187 piercing to the weak points of every variety of Protestanism, but to the record of homely and quickening faith in the Life of Mother Margaret Hallahan, who in pure joy of heart danced before that image of the Maiden Mother she had brought from Belgium with a frank simplicity which even a Michal could not despise. Let us look at a well-known theological system. In connection with recent ructions and ruptures, north of the Tweed, we have been assured that Calvinism is dying or dead. Calvinism, like Socinianism, has been on its death- bed more than once, ere this; yet has shown marvellous powers of resuscitation and revival, proving that it has some stubborn roots in human nature. If you would estimate the real significance of Calvinism, whither should you turn? To the English Confession of Westminster? To the folios of Turretine? To the Institutio of John Calvin himself, greatest of the Reformers? By strong preference I should invite you, first to Biography ; and not necessarily to religious Biography. William III. was probably not a particularly religious man ; but in him, and in his ancestry, you see what Calvinism, as a personal and moral force, could and did do, for the securing of the in- dependence, nay, in some cases, even the existence, of the Northern nations of Europe. Then, observe that Calvinism has enlisted what is not common among professors of Theology. In wit, theologians abound; and in sarcasm those are adept whom Moses Mendelssohn describes as "pugnacious proclaimers of peace." They remind us, on occasion, of the title of a once famous Puritanical pamphlet, " The spiritual man in a carnal fit." Yet who can dispute the humour, pungent but humane, of Bunyan or of Defoe ? The picture-portraits of Bunyan are common property. Would that you would read Robinson Crusoe, and not merely pretend to have read it. The colloquies 188 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY with Man Friday you know, and about at that point you generally stop. If you went on, you Avould find Defoe pleading in the person of a Benedictine, for a modus Vivendi between missionaries of the Roman and the Cal- vinistic faith; and, further on still, in the conversations upon religious topics between the uncultured seaman and his Pagan wife, touched with humanity and brightness, not to be overheard without a smile, and perhaps a sigh, you would encounter the thoughts of a genuinely religious man, who was no bigot, respecting the way, the right and natural way, of attempting the conversion of the heathen. Again, whatsoever one's theology may be, is it possible to overlook the mindful fervour, sagacity and benevolence, which animated the career of Whitefield? But, for myself, I confess that Calvinism as a religious reality, beneficent and potent, was first brought home to me in the biography of Chalmers. Much more than a generation ago, the late Professor Blackie, at the opening of a session of the Edinburgh University, referred to Chalmers as " not a theologian." The undergraduates at once raised an uproar, which might have been heard across the relics of the Wall of Hadrian. Blackie apologised by affirming that he meant to say that Chalmers was not a " scientific " theologian ; and as the undergraduates of that date probably imagined that a " scientific " theologian was a man addicted to physical science, who denied that the world was made in six days, beginning on Saturday night, they willingly exempted Chalmers from any such stigma. The apology was accepted, and the uproar warmed into applause. Now, whether Chalmers was, or was not, a theologian, of the scientific order or any other; in the record of his life one may read the emancipation from an in- different latitudinarianism, easy-going and inefficient, followed by the steady upward tread, which reached its ETHICAL VALUE 189 \ goal in a Calvinism, strenuous in itself, and socially regenerating. One more illustration let me take, and from a topic already glanced at. A prominent man of science has recently declared that the doctrine of our Lord's earthly parentage, that is to say, the Virginity of his Mother, in and after giving birth to the Saviour of men, possesses " no ethical value." This is interesting, and deserves consideration. For it is precisely on account of its ethical value that many, owning the evidence to be, as it must be, indirect and imperfect, uphold the doctrine on its own merits. Thus we encounter, as already said, those who find, and those who fail to discover, any particular personal significance in a doctrine. Ethical value is not, of course, an essential point in the determination of truth. Whether the sun rolls round the earth, or the earth round the sun, is a question not of morals but of fact. We can easily imagine obscurantists affirming that, as far as they could see, astronomy had no ethical value, and might therefore be neglected. On the whole, who can profess that he understands either of Theology or the Religion of a hundred and a half years in our country's history, if he have not steeped his mind in the journals of George Fox and of John Wesley? These were enthusiasts, you say. Very good. But Baxter was no enthusiast, nor was Tillotson, nor Doddridge, nor Bishop Wilson. Yet, to these we must go, if we desire to ascertain what Theology and Religion meant, in the period which they cover. Nothing has been, so far, said, about the Mystics, who seem just now to be somewhat in fashion. To them, the same method of judgment appears distinctly applicable. It is to Santa Teresa as a personality, to Anthoinette Bourignon, more winning perhaps, and infinitely more 190 BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY pathetic, as a personality, that one turns, when the real significance of their mysticism is in question. The half- formed glimpses of Jakob Boehme (in himself a beautiful and enlightening character) the sing-song couplets, mere surface efflux of the genius of Angelus Silesius, the un- instructed crudities of John "Ward, unique as an Irish mystic, these, taken by themselves, yield matter only for dull and labouring investigation. In their lives, the meaning of these stammering speakers shines. It is time to close. Three things, however, must be emphasised before the bell rings. 1. The attempt to understand another's religion should in no way render you one whit less in love with your own. Ilather should it strengthen you to make new calls upon the faith that already is in you. It should simply enrich your capacity, and fortify your resolve to develop the resources of that in which, we feel, your life is planted; so that it may meet new needs, revealed to you by converse with other spirits, of the purely living or the mighty dead. 2. This survey may teach you the incalculable value of that personal contribution which each, that is which you, may make ; God having dealt to every man a measure and only a measure of the faith. Something, but not everything, you may do, for the interpretation of the Infinite Mind. It is the duty, and it should be the delight, of a man to render in this respect, as in all other respects, a man's best. Still, there are claims of modesty and of opportune occasion. There is a hymn we have sorry stuff in some of our hymns which bids its thoughtless singer sow, what seed he has, with heedless hand, stock the highway furrows, drop it where thorns and thistles grow, scatter it on the rock. This is the very melody of Bedlam. Many a thrust of genuine verity falls unfruitful, because ill-timed, ill-placed. TOLERANCE 191 3. It were well to emphasise in the ears unwilling of this age, the possibility of Tolerance. The grand defect of pleas for tolerance aforetime has been that those who urged them were thinking only of the need of elbow-room for themselves. This obvious aim belittles even the monu- mental plea of Jeremy Taylor. We have to cultivate and recommend the virtue of tolerance for others. The cry of Religious Equality assaults our ears in these days. If this be short-hand for Civil Equality without reference to religion, all will endorse its demand. That all religions are of equivalent value, no man to whom religion, his own religion, is a personal possession of unspeakable price, will for a moment concede. Yet he will, if a patient scholar in the School of Christ, be both willing and anxious to allow free course, and even to admit justification, for religions and religious experiences which are not his. That is but a poor form of Tolerance which rests on the fallacy that all men think alike. It is Emerson who says, in a chanting measure, that " all sorts of things and weather must be taken in together, to make up a year, and a sphere." Mystics and Huggletonians, Romanists and Quakers, Supralapsarians and Brethren of the Free Spirit, all have their place, all have their power. Suppose we cannot learn from them anything but this, this surely we may learn, that those things which seem to us to be more feeble, are nevertheless necessary. If we may paraphrase the great saying of him whose name, so Origen has it, is known only to God, we may thankfully own that God hath provided, in the stores of His infinitude which open by degrees in time, "some better thing" than we, as yet, with all our wisdom, have been able to grasp; so that they neither "they without us," nor we without them, can be made perfect. ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY. BY THE Rev. WALTER F. ADENEY, M.A., D.D. THE recent establishment of a Theological Faculty in this University invites us to look back on the historical development of institutions devoted to the study and teach- ing of the Queen of Sciences in early ages. Theoretically this subject might open up to us investigations into the methods of training in all religious cults among all races of mankind from the dawn of civilization the education of Babylonian and Egyptian priests; the pre- paration for the Greek and Roman religious functions of the temple and the mysteries; the schools of the philosophers, all of which have seriously affected the theology of Christendom; and indeed theoretically it would include the Brahminical and Buddhist, and Confucian teaching of the East, and, if only we could discover it, the crude, barbarous Druidical or other primitive Western traditions. Leaving all this as beyond the range even of the most cursory survey in a single lecture, I propose to trace in rude outline the course of ancient theological study in Christendom. In order to understand this study it is necessary to have some knowledge of the soil in which it sprang up. That soil was partly Hebrew, partly Greek. The two most scholarly theologians of the Apostolic Church, St. Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, were trained, the one in the traditional teaching of the Palestinian 194 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY School of Jewish. Rabbis, the other as his anonymous work plainly shows in the Alexandrian School of Philo, which was eclectic and almost as much Hellenic as Hebrew. The Johannine writings which give us the third type of New Testament Theology are more Jewish in some respects and yet plainly affected by the Alexandrian movement. The Founder of the faith was a Jew ; all the Apostles were Jews ; the mother church at Jerusalem consisted of Jews ; there were Jews in all or nearly all the primitive churches ; these churches were shaped after the model of the synagogue ; the only scriptures most of them possessed were the Jews' scriptures, the LXX. version of our Old Testament. It is necessary therefore to have some conception of Jewish Schools of Theology before we come to look at the Christian, if only in order to appreciate the latter. 1 Judaism at the time of the birth of Christianity was a literary religion, and a religion of culture. Its foundation was a book, and its development was in the hands of scholars. The law was its fundamental authority, and the Hebrew name for Law [Torah] means instruction. But one consequence of this was that its sanctity permitted of no amendments to the law; there being no possibility of abrogating obsolete statutes or enacting fresh statutes, progress and adaptation to new circumstances were only possible by ingenious methods of interpretation, many of them pure quibbles. The bold idea of seizing the essential principle and re-shaping it for the needs of the day was beyond the reach of jealous custodians of the law, who rather sought an outlet in the opposite direction by pre- serving the letter while abandoning the spirit. The law, 1, On this subject see Schiirer, The Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ (Eng. Trans.), Division II,, vol. ii. (to which I am especially indebted) ; Gratz, History of the Jews, vol. ii. chapter xxi. ; Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Zweiter Abschnitt, iv. THE HALACHA 195 though a religion, was none the less a code for civil practice. In the courts it had to be applied to particular cases. This gave rise to strings of instances of specific interpretation, making up a second law which might be compared with our judges' law. Its name is significant Halacha, that is " custom." But over and above the custom law thus established in the courts there were theoretical discussions of points of law carried on between scholars and their teachers. The issues of these discussions of the lecture-room were treasured up and handed down in tradition; and the dictum of some great rabbi when not contradicted by another rabbi of equal authority was accepted as authoritative. This also was part of the Halacha. All, both the decisions in court and the class- room dicta of rabbis, was supposed to be commentary on the law. Sometimes it involved a fantastic deduction from a single word twisted out of its clear meaning; and sometimes it added so much to the real intention of the law that we should call it a supplement, or at most a corollary. Still, technically and theoretically it was Midrash commentary on the sacred, unchangeable text. The subject of this Halacha was mostly ritual. It was in the main concerned with questions of correct sacrifices, holy seasons, things clean and unclean. It scarcely touched spiritual religion, pure ethics, abstract ideas, speculative theology. A more dreary study can scarcely be imagined. Fortunately outraged nature had ways of avenging her- self ; and this was seen even among the dignified teachers of the law. We must not think of them as dry-as-dust pedants. They had a grim humour. They were Orientals, living not so far from the land of the Arabian Nights. The Oriental dearly loves a fanciful tale, and as around their camp fires the Bedouin whiles away the long hours of the night with story-telling, so also the teacher of the law 196 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THE1OLOGY lightened his labours and kept his pupils awake with all sorts of quaint legends, which went under the name of " Haggada." These too, equally with the Halacha, were a kind of pretended interpretation of the law, a Midrash. A single letter, a mere dot in the MS., unexplained, might serve as a point on which to hang a tale. We have instances of the more sober Haggada in Josephus; it be- comes homiletic with a grave religious purpose in Chronicles which may be regarded as a Haggadistic Midrash on the Books of Kings, in other words a homiletic application of the old history to the religious teaching of later times. Freer Haggada gives us "Daniel" and "Jonah," both books of high inspiration, written with important religious purposes, especially the latter. "Judith," "Susanna," and " Bel and the Dragon " carry us into fields of fancy, but for the most grotesque stories we must go to the Talmud. Here the Jewish scholar has his Litterce Humaniores, his belles lettres excepting that the Talmud was not written, it was all pure tradition till the second century of the Christian era. For the rest he had no Arts course to drill him for the severe strain of Theology. He plunged at once in medias res. He was a theologian and nothing but a theologian ; or, if you like to say so, a lawyer and nothing but a lawyer, except that his law and his theology dry and dreary subjects were surrounded by a wilderness garden of fancy and fiction luxuriously imaginative, though not exactly beautiful or poetical. The scribes, whose specified duty it was to preserve, administer, and teach the law, constituted a professional class; but they were not wholly, if at all, dependent on their vocation for their livelihood. Gamaliel III. said : " The study of the law without employment in business must at last be interrupted; it brings transgression after it." Some rabbis, however, like some bishops in the early THE TEACHING OF THE RABBIS 197 church, were accused of absorbing too much time in busi- ness. Rabbi Heir said : " Give yourselves less to trade and occupy yourselves more with the law " ; and the great Hillel : " He who devotes himself too much to trade will not grow wise." It was quite in accordance with custom that St. Paul, who by profession was a lawyer, should also be by trade a tent-maker. Still it would seem that in practice these austere teachers of the law were not above taking presents from their pupils. Wealthy ladies some- times gave lavish gifts to favourite rabbis. It is not beyond suspicion that money was made out of the law by less honest means. The rabbis knew how to look after their own interests. They taught that a student should take more care of his teacher's life than of his father's. Since only the Pentateuch was in writing, and the rabbinical teaching was largely concerned with the traditions of the scribes, which it was not permissible to write down, the teaching was wholly oral. We often hear it described as the mere repetition of set sayings which the students were to learn by heart, the deadest, dullest method of teaching imaginable. The good student is likened to a well-cemented cistern; he retains all that is poured into him. The rabbi's pupil was taught to hand down the traditions in the very words in which he had received them. He was even to imitate his teacher's very expression of countenance. All this was a very near approach to intellectual suicide. But there is another side to the case. How did that vast mass of Hebrew law, the Talmud, come into being? It is a slow accretion of ages of tradition living, growing tradition. Most of the scribes were Pharisees, and the chief charge brought against them by their rivals the Sadducees was on account of their innovations. Now most of these innovations grew up in the course of discussions with pupils. The rabbi sat 198 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY on a dais, his disciples on the ground below, and his teach- ing was entirely conversational, catechetical, the pro- pounding of problems for discussion, the teacher putting questions to his class and the class in its turn enjoying the right of questioning him surely when well managed in the hands of a man of fresh mind and wide sympathies, about the most stimulating kind of education that it is possible to invent. It is what we admire as the Socratic method. It is the teaching experts now recommend as immeasurably superior to mere cramming. According to St. Luke's narrative this was the method followed in Jerusalem when the boy Jesus was found in the temple. The reason why this method proved to be so disappoint- ingly infructuous was partly that it was hampered by a superstitious reverence for tradition, consisting of solutions given by previous generations of rabbis; partly that its method was deductive, the law and tradition being forced to give answers to all possible questions by ingenious methods of reasoning; and partly because it concerned itself too much with minutiae, and too little with great principles. For instance, the law of the Sabbath gave rise to innumerable points of casuistry, such as the question, whether if a hen was guilty of breaking the Sabbath by laying an egg on that day it was lawful for a devout Jew to eat the egg. But we must not accuse the rabbis of never rising above such trivialities. The two most famous of the earlier teachers of the law are Shammai and Hillel. Shammai is said to have been the more rigorous. It is told of him that when he had a grandson born during the feast of the Tabernacles, he had the roof taken off the house where the mother and child lay, and green boughs spread over, that the infant might keep the festival. But it is Shammai who is credited with saying : " Promise little and do much, and LATER JEWISH SCHOOLS 199 receive every one with kindness." Hillel, on the other hand, has the reputation of gentleness and leniency. Yet it is he who is reported to have said : " He who will make himself a great name forfeits his own name " ; and again, " Unless I work for myself who will work for me ? But if I do so for myself alone, what am I?" His son Simon would have delighted Thomas Carlyle. He said : " I have grown up from early youth among wise men, and have found nothing more profitable among men than silence." He adds : " Study is not the chief thing, but practice." Gamaliel I., of whom St. Paul tells us he had been a disciple, is said to have been a grandson of Hillel. The schools of the rabbis became more important after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the better Jews having lost territorial nationality, turned their attention to their law as their very raison d'etre. The school at Jabne in the south-west of Palestine finally settled the Canon. Rabbis also gathered for the study of the law in the neighbouring city of Lydda. In the second century Tiberias rose into importance as the chief Jewish school in Palestine. Mean- while a school of a very different character had risen and flourished and faded at Alexandria. But this was so re- markably anticipatory of the Christian Alexandrian school that I say nothing about it now. It was never intended that Theology among the Jews should be the exclusive property of specialists ; it was not regarded, as with us is too much the case, as merely the professional study of the clergy. The Jewish priests make no pretence to be expert theologians. The scribes were laymen. Thus, while the clergy treated Theology with indifference, contenting them- selves with the observance of ritual, the laity honoured it and pursued the study of it with enthusiasm. It was the understanding that every Jewish boy should study the law. But in practice this study absorbed so much time that only 200 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY a few could afford to follow it. Thus specialising grew up unconsciously. The scribes, and later the rabbis, tended more and more to become an order, their life a profession. Then Jews less cultured in the law were regarded with contempt the common people were even said to be accursed because they knew not the law. Amazement was expressed at the preaching ability of the Apostles, since they were unlearned and ignorant men. Common ignor- ance is not what is here meant. It is the lack of the special training of the lawyer. The word rendered ignorant (iSiwrai) stands for the ordinary public as distinguished from a professional class. The original Apostles did not belong to this class. But, as I have observed, the three theologians of the New Testament were men of culture. St. Paul had been trained in the law by one of its greatest teachers. He there- fore could not be classed with the despised iSiwrai. He met the scribes on their own ground a university man among university men. Then the unknown author of the epistle to the Hebrews must have been versed in the culture of Alexandrian Judaism; and the Prologue to the fourth gospel shows that its author was not unacquainted with the language and thought of the Philo school. Though culture did not give us Christianity, culture had something to say to its expansion and elucidation. It is impossible to imagine what Christianity would have been without St. Paul and the authors of Hebrews and the Johannine writings the three New Testament men of scholarly attainments. After this it is to be expected that the early Christians would give attention to the education of their converts and children. I am inclined to think that they did this more effectually than we might suppose from a superficial reading of their history. The first thing to strike us in the EARLY CHRISTIAN METHODS 201 rapid spread of Christianity is the readiness with which new converts were admitted into the Church. Immediately they made confession of faith they were baptized, it might be after a single hearing of the message of an Apostle or Evangelist; and immediately they were baptized they were received to the full privileges of membership in the Church. There is no trace of a catechumenate in the primitive Church; nothing of the kind appears till some way down in the second century. It may be that this important system grew out of an attempt to remedy the evils that were seen to have accompanied the earlier method. The state of the Church at Corinth, evidenced by St. Paul's correspondence, may be traced to the readiness with which immature converts were admitted, and the advice in the 1st Epistle to Timothy that the bishop should not be a novice points in the same direction. For all that, there is reason to think that some consider- able attention was given to instruction among the primi- tive churches. The bishop should be apt to teach. Elders who are able to give instruction, as well as administer affairs their primary duty, are to be reckoned worthy of double honour. Such writings as the epistles to the Hebrews and the Romans, themselves elaborate and scholarly dissertations on recondite points of theology, imply a more advanced condition of knowledge and thought in the minds of their readers than is common among ourselves in the present day; and those books over and above the immediate purpose they were designed to serve are instruments of theological culture, the use of which, in the Church, necessarily brought with it some attention to the deeper questions of Theology. Then, as Professor Harnack has shown, the teacher and reader were much more important persons in those early days than is generally supposed. We may safely conclude 202 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY that it was their duty to train the new converts and the children of the Church in the facts and principles of Christianity. Further, we may gather from that most ancient Church manual the Didache that this training was largely moral a department of teaching to which, at last, happily our educationalists seem to be waking up. Of Theology in the technical sense of the word probably there was but little in this elementary teaching. The first impulse to the development of Theology came from the contact of Christianity with the Greek world. The Apostolic Fathers are sublimely indifferent to specula- tive ideas. The practice of the Christian life is with them the one absorbing theme. It has been said with some truth that the earliest theologians in Christendom were the Gnostics. These men faced the everlasting problem the perplexing question of the relation of the perfect God to an imperfect world, the dark and dreadful question of the existence of evil in the universe, while over all there is an infinitely good, wise, and mighty God. And they did more they answered the question according to their light. The answers were many and various. But one fact may be traced through all of them. They were all more or less syncretic combining Christian and Pagan ideas in an ingeniously constructed amalgam. It was an age of syncretism in religion and eclecticism in philosophy, and the Gnostics were proud of being men of the age, sympathetic of the Zeit-Geist, au fait with the latest ideas in culture, in the upper ten of the intellectual aristocracy. The Gnostic leaders were above all things thinkers and teachers, and their rivalry with the bishops of the orthodox Church provoked these officials, who had been at first chiefly disciplinarians and administrators, to enter the arena of intellectual conflict. Then, out of this conflict with Gnosticism Catholic Theology was evolved as a system THE CATECHUMENATE 203 of ideas based on intelligible grounds, and fortified by means of logical arguments. Thus Catholic Theology is in the first instance a protest against Gnosticism. Even orthodox teaching in its turn sought the aid of Greek meta- physics. The old, simple, practical piety did not seem sufficient as a bulwark of the faith. It needed the aid of philosophy to justify it at least so men thought. Another influence tended in the same direction. Men endowed with some amount of scholarship, entered the Church and got promoted to positions of influence. Such men could not abandon their scholarship if they would. Even St. Paul, while reckoning his early training as but dung in comparison with his Christian privileges, found weapons in his rabbinical armoury with which to fight the pretensions of Judaism. In this way Greek culture directly influenced Christian thinking, and to the religion of the first century was added the Theology of the second century. One consequence of this movement was a call for theological education. Theology demands the theologian; and the theologian, setting a high value on his ideas, concludes that they should be imparted and cultivated. At first, however, this was done in a very elementary way. It began in the training of Catechumens. I have pointed out that in the days of the Apostles converts were admitted to the Church and its full privileges immediately on their confession of faith, that is to say, on their acceptance of Jesus as Christ. There was no further test and no delay. But during the second century "the rule of faith" was crystallizing, but taking various forms in the several Churches. We are most familiar with the Roman form of it, known as the "Apostles' Creed." The creed which became the basis of our "Nicene Creed" was shaped at Csesarea or Jerusalem. Other creeds were drawn up in 204 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY other places. But though they varied in expression, they all aimed at presenting the rule of faith which was sub- stantially the same in the Catholic Church, and adhesion to which in some form was increasingly thought to be essential to salvation. Now here was a call for definite teaching. In response to it baptism was postponed and candidates for admission to the Church were put through a course of preliminary training. While in this preparatory stage they were known as Catechumens. The Catechumenate grew up in the course of the second century. The basis of its teach- ing was "the rule of faith." The various Church creeds that were produced about this time seem to have been con- structed to serve in each case as a syllabus of subjects to be taught in the Catechumen classes. It does not appear that in this early period the candidates for baptism were required to profess their individual belief in every item of their creeds. Apparently a much simpler confession of faith was all that was demanded of them. But these creeds formed the basis of their instruction. Subsequently in some cases, out of the training of the Catechumens, there emerged Divinity schools of the highest order, led by men of the first rank, whose lectures became the fore- most expositions of Theology in the Church. All this was intended for the main body of the Church. That is the first point to be grasped with reference to the ancient schools of Christian Theology. They were not like our Theological Schools training grounds for a profession. They were not seminaries for priests. Not only were they open to the laity, but the laity were expected to attend them. Of course, practical necessities would be considered and personal sympathies would have their influence. When the Catechetical teaching became very elaborate most people would have neither the leisure THE TRAINING OF THE MINISTRY 205 nor the inclination to go through the full course. On the other hand, those who were led to give their attention to it would be likely to wish to continue on the same lines and to find their vocation in the ministry. Nevertheless, there was no essential connection between these two things the study of theology and a professional career in the Church. I cannot think the specialising of our own day wholly a gain in this respect. It enables the training for the ministry to be more thorough and effective than otherwise would be the case. But it leads to unwholesome con- sequences in treating Theology as the peculiar province of the clergy. The clerical mind tends to regard it profes- sionally, and so to degrade it and rob it of all its higher interests; and the lay mind is inclined to let it alone as a matter for the experts, or if that is not the case, to dash in with the hasty judgments of untrained thought. Since Theology concerns itself with the greatest of problems, then simply as denizens of this mysterious universe, it would seem to be only right and fitting that men and women should use all the means within their reach for training their minds to face those problems. There is one body of people that constitutes an honourable exception to the deplorable custom in regard to this matter. The Society of Friends, not recognising any clerical order, is seriously alive to the desirability of the higher religious education of its members. I cannot but think that it will be a misfortune if the Theological Department which has just been established in our University is regarded as designed only for professional training. If few laymen can afford time to take the full B.D. curriculum, surely there must be many persons in this great city, who though not contemplating entrance into the ministry, could attend some part of the course with profit. 206 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY On the other hand, it is now almost universally granted that the ministry does need training. This idea, however, was not prominent in early ages. While the primitive Theological Schools were designed to meet the needs of the laity, there was no special facility for training the clergy. At first, and for some generations both presbyters and bishops were engaged in business some as farmers, some as tradesmen, some as bankers. It was necessary to have a canon forbidding a bishop to become a commercial traveller, since this would involve his being too much away from his flock. Men were sometimes called to the pastoral office without any time being allowed them for training. The most famous instance is that of St. Ambrose, who, as Prefect of Liguria came into the great Church at Milan in the midst of a disturbance over the election of a bishop, and was there and then himself called to the office by acclamation. Nowhere is there set forth a loftier idea of the Christian pastorate and its severe requirements than in Gregory Nazianzuen's Defence of His Flight to Pontus. Gregory deplores the haste and unpreparedness with which men take up the sacred office. "The guidance of men," he says, " seems to me in very deed to be the art of arts and science of sciences." He speaks of the responsibility of dealing with various kinds of people which falls to the office of a pastor as more difficult than walking on a tight rope. "Only he can be a physician," he says, "who knows the nature of diseases ; he a painter who has gone through much practice in mixing colours and in drawing forms; but a clergyman may be found with perfect ease, not thoroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants." Nevertheless, Gregory himself, like his friend Basil, had spent years of training at Caesarea, Alexandria, and EPISCOPAL SEMINARIES 207 Athens, not leaving the famous university at the latter city till he was 30 years of age. Most of this time the education was on Pagan lines consisting in study of the classics and philosophy. Christian parents did not fear to send their sons to these classical colleges, valuing highly a sound liberal education. It is noteworthy in spite of what Gregory said concerning the unfitness for the ministry of so many who took up the sacred office in his day that most of the great Fathers of the Church, most of the theologians who have influenced Christendom by their writing and teaching, were men of large secular culture, men who had passed through honourable careers in the universities. They demonstrate to us the immense advant- age of what we call an "Arts course " previous to entrance on the study of Theology. The concern which Gregory felt for a more specific training in view of the ministerial office was shared by others. The council of Carthage in the year 397 passed a canon requiring an examination in knowledge and orthodoxy previous to ordination. The more state-bound Eastern branch of the Church was ordered by an edict of the Emperor Justinian, in the year 541, to require similar tests. Gradually there grew up various local episcopal seminaries in which the necessary work was done, and the monasteries where they were seats of learning trained their own monks, some of whom became priests. Thus it came about that the monks and clergy monopolised not only Theology, but even all learning. A clerk was a scholar, while a knight or a baron was as ignorant of letters as a yeoman or a serf. That was the medieval condition, especially in the west. But, as I have pointed out, it was very different in primitive times. Schools of Theology, whose fame was world-wide, grew out of simple, local classes of Catechumens. 208 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY The most famous were at Alexandria, Caesarea, Antioch, and Edessa. Of these the greatest in name and influence were the rival schools of Alexandria and Antioch; each adorned with brilliant leaders of thought, each having its own characteristic method and spirit, each sending out powerful influences over Christendom in the clash of con- flicting ideas, which rent the Church for centuries, and in the later days, each fighting for power at Court and position in the imperial city of Constantinople. The Alexandrian school was the earliest of all four to attain importance. Here taught Pantaenus, its first leader of mark, living as far back as the middle of the second century of the Christian era, who cut short his work in the quiet retreat of scholarship to go forth as a missionary to "the Indians"; his successor, Clement, the most learned Christian of the age, a cultured Greek, well-trained in the classics in the university of Athens, who drew on the rich resources of literature for illustrations of his teaching, and to whom we go to-day as our only source of knowledge concerning many lost Greek works, a man so liberal in sympathy that he held the poets and philosophers to be for the Greeks what the law and prophets were for the Jews, schoolmasters to bring them to Christ; the great Origen, the most daring, original, and powerful thinker of the Ante-Nicene Church, the founder of Systematic Theology, the first man to attempt to set forth a complete, coherent scheme of Christian truth on philosophic principles, him- self like More and Cudworth and John Smith in England, half a Platonist, attending the lectures of the Neo- Platonist, Ammonius Saccas, Pagan though they were, at the very time when he was conducting the Christian Catechetical School, and interpreting Christian doctrine by means of the principles of the Academy; lastly Dionysius, the originator of what we now designate by the ORIGEN'S METHOD OF TEACHING 209 commonly misunderstood title of "the higher criticism." These four, but chiefly Clement and Origen, are the most distinguished names associated with the Alexandrian School of Theology in its palmy days. Fortunately we have a very full account of the curriculum drawn up and carried out by Origen, contained in the panegyric written by his admirer Gregory Thaumaturgus. It was arranged in five stages. First, logic. Origen held that the mind must be cleared of false methods of thinking before it can pursue any study successfully. It must be guarded against sophistry. It needs especially to be liberated from slavery to words the most common source of error. The prominence given to this subject on the threshold of study shows us what Origen was aiming at throughout. This was not the mere insertion of information into the brain, crowding the memory with ready-made conceptions; much less was it the dogmatic inculcation of a rigid system of divinity which seems to be some people's notion of what we mean by lectures on Theology even in these late days. Origen began by preparing the minds of his students to think correctly. In the first instance the reasoning faculty was to be rectified and cultivated. The instrument was to be set and sharpened before any attempt was made to use it. This preliminary exercise in logic was no mere dry exposi- tion of the laws of the syllogism. It was a real mental discipline, personal tutorial work, a wrestling with the mind of the student to bring it to sound methods of think- ing. I can best explain this important matter which lies at the root of all sound teaching by an extract from the pane- gryric on Origen, by Gregory Thaumaturgus : " In such wise, then, and with such a disposition did he receive us at first, and surveying us, as it were, with a husbandman's skill, and gauging us thoroughly, and not confining his 210 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY notice to those things only which are patent to the eye of all, and which are looked upon in open light, but pene- trating into us more deeply, and probing what is most inward in us, he put us to the question, and made proposi- tions to us, and listened to us in our replies ; and whenever he thereby detected anything in us not wholly fruitless and profitless and waste, he set about clearing the soil, and turning it up and irrigating it, and putting all things in movement, and brought his whole skill and care to bear on us, and wrought upon our mind. And thorns and thistles, and every kind of wild herb or plant which our mind (so unregulated and precipitate in its own action) yielded and produced in its uncultured luxuriance and native wildness, he cut out and thoroughly removed by the processes of refutation and prohibition; sometimes assail- ing us in the genuine Socratic fashion, and again upsetting us by his argumentation whenever he saw us getting restive under him, like so many unbroken steeds, and springing out of the course and galloping madly about at random, until with a strange kind of persuasiveness and constraint he reduced us to a state of quietude under him by his discourse, which acted like a bridle in our mouth. And that was at first an unpleasant position for us, and one not without pain, as he dealt with persons who were unused to it, and still all untrained to submit to reason, when he plied us with his argumentations; and yet he purged us by them. And when he had made us adaptable, and had prepared us successfully for the reception of the words of truth, then, further, as though we were now a soil well wrought and soft, and ready to impart growth to the seeds cast into it, he dealt liberally with us, and sowed the good seed in season, and attended to all the other cares of the good husbandry, each in its own proper season; and whenever he perceived any element of infirmity or baseness GREGORY THAUMATURGUS 211 in our mind (whether it was of that character by nature, or had become thus gross through the excessive nurture of the body), he pricked it with his discourses, and reduced it by those delicate words and turns of reasoning which, although at first the very simplest, are gradually evolved one after the other, and skilfully wrought out, until they advance to a sort of complexity which can scarce be mastered or unfolded, and which cause us to start up, as it were, out of sleep, and teach us the art of holding always by what is immediately before one, without ever making any slips by reason either of length or of subtlety. And if there was in us anything of an injudicious and pre- cipitate tendency, whether in the way of assenting to all that came across us, of whatever character the objects might be, and even though they proved false, or in the way of often withstanding other things, even though they were spoken truthfully, that, too, he brought under discipline in us by those delicate reasonings already mentioned, and by others of like kind (for this branch of philosophy is of varied form), and accustomed us not to throw in our testimony at one time, and again to refuse it, just at random, and as chance impelled, but to give it only after careful examination not only into things manifest, but also into those that are secret." l After this drastic preliminary discipline we come to the second stage of the curriculum science. That consisted in a classification of physical existences, mathematics especially geometry, and astronomy. The third stage was devoted to ethics. This, too, like the logic, was made very real by direct observation and mental and moral in- vestigation. It was not a study of pure ethics, the abstract 1. Gregory Thaumaturgus, The Oration and Panegyric addressed to Origen, vii. 212 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY questions of right and wrong, justice, veracity, etc. It was what we should should call psychological ethics, and the psychology on which it was based was experimental. The fourth subject was philosophy. Here Origen did not simply expound his own philosophy. The task was to study the great literature of Greece. Consider what that meant in his time. It was in the days of Roman disfavour for the Church. When Origen was quite a lad his father died as a martyr. Origen himself was tortured for his faith, and though death did not deliver him immediately his constitution was so shattered by it that he did not survive many months. In times that gave birth to scenes such as these, Origen calmly led his students through a study of Pagan writers, extracting from them what he held to be good and true. It was like Samson drawing honey from the body of the lion. Few members of the persecuted Church could take so fair a view of the litera- ture and thought cherished by their persecutors. Further westwards along the shore of the Mediterranean Origen's contemporary, Tertullian, was denouncing philosophy as Rouseau in the eighteenth century denounced civilization in favour of an appeal to simple, unsophisticated human nature the Anima Naturaliter Christiana. Origen, on the other hand, advised his students to familiarise them- selves with the great writers and thinkers of Greece. " For he deemed it right," says Gregory, " for us to study philosophy in such wise, that we should read with the utmost diligence all that has been written, both by the philosophers and by the poets of old, rejecting nothing and repudiating nothing (for indeed we did not yet possess the power of critical discernment), except only the philosophy of the Atheists. . . . He thought, however, that we should obtain and make ourselves familiar with all other writings, neither preferring nor repudiating any one kind, whether ALEXANDRIAN THEOLOGY 213 it be philosophical discourse or not, whether Greek or foreign, but hearing what all of them have to convey." l Lastly, and only after all these preliminary studies in logic, science, ethics, philosophy and literature, the student was introduced to Theology. Here Origen followed in the traditions of the scene of his work. Next to Athens, Alexandria was then the greatest seat of learning in the Empire. The grammarians devoted themselves to a minute study of the classics Homer in particular, the bible of the Greeks, interpreted allegorically to echo current ideas in religion and philosophy. In Ammonius Saccas Neo-platonism was awaking the Academy from the scepticism Cicero had described, and developing a theosophy that was to become the most deadly opponent of Christianity in the next century. Earlier by nearly 200 years Philo the Jew had been adapting Platonic and Stoic ideas to the Old Testament by an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, corresponding to the Pagan teachers' allegorical interpretations of Homer. Origen absorbed all these traditions and influences. He did not anticipate the coming rivalry of Neo-platonism and Christianity. On the contrary he took the cream of Neo-platonism and re- produced it in his Christian Theology. If only his influence had prevailed it was avoided with suspicion by the bulk of the Church instead of the deadly antagonism of the two systems, through which one was finally trampled to death, and the other narrowed and hardened, we might have had a large, liberal, healthy, ChristianTheology, broadening out down the ages and always ready to widen its borders and accept whatsoever was good, true, and beautiful, in thought and experience. It was not to be. Origen was centuries in advance of his age. Even 1. Opus, cit., xiii. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More found similar conceptions beyond their age at the time of the Reformation. So Origen passed and Augustine came on to inspire the Theology of the West with new interests, and John of Damascus to crystallize the orthodoxy of the East. For Origen himself we may well cherish high admira- tion. His genius was transcendent, his industry colossal, his personal attractiveness as Gregory testifies charm- ing. Yet his very excellencies roused jealousy. He began to teach in his 18th year. Only a year later he was made the head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria. Then, in order that he might devote himself wholly to study and teaching without fee or reward, he sold his classical library a heroic sacrifice for such a lover of letters, and with the proceeds purchased an annuity of sixpence a day on which he lived. Trouble at Alexandria led him to retire to Caesarea in Palestine. Here he mortally offended his bishop Demetrius by preaching without sanction from the head of the Church at Alexandria, and that while he was but a layman. During his second stay in Casarea he gave deeper offence to Demetrius by becoming ordained as a presbyter by bishops of Palestine, without the consent of his own bishop. It really seems as though this had shown want of con- sideration for his pastor. Evidently there was no love lost between them. Possibly Demetrius was jealous of the brilliant fame of the young theologian; but it is likely that he feared the dangerous novelty, the daring thought, of Origen's teaching. The incident is interesting as show- ing how even in this advanced state of theological culture a layman was the leading theologian of his age. In Origen's successor the theological and clerical authorities are united; Dionysius was both bishop of Alexandria and head of the Catechetical School. THE SCHOOL AT ANTIOCH 215 Origen's residence in Caesarea gave an impulse to theological learning in that city, and brought its Catechetical School to the front. Much of his best work was done at this centre. A little later Csesarea became distinguished by the work of one of its presbyters after- wards a martyr, Pamphilus, who collected the best-known library of early Christian writings. It was especially rich in manuscripts of the Scriptures. One of the most mischievous doings of the Arab invaders when Mohammedanism spread through the East was the ruthless destruction of this priceless library. What treasures we have lost no one can say probably, among other precious works, the " Gospel According to the Hebrews," Papias's " Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord," and possibly even St. Matthew's "Logia." But before this the library had served one good purpose of permanent value. Eusebius, the father of Church history, was bishop of Csesarea. He had the great library of Pamphilus to resort to in the composition of his history. To this library, then, we owe our best source for the knowledge of early Church history. Having Origen for its leading light the school of Caasarea reflected the generous temper of the greater school at Alexandria. It was both learned and liberal. The Alexandrian scholarship met with a rival at Antioch in Syria. Here there grew up a great school of Biblical study and theological teaching. The most famous of its sons is Chrysostom. The spirit of this school and its methods were very different from what we met with in Alexandria. It is justly celebrated for its close attention to the exposition of scripture. Then, while the Alexandrian teachers adopted the method of Philo and allegorised the sacred word, the Antiochene exponents kept close to grammar and history, in the spirit of what we should call scientific exegesis. Their object was not to draw out of 216 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY the text recondite meanings and secondary senses ; it was to discover the plain, original signification of it. With this end in view they studied the circumstances under which the several books were written, the characters and objects of the writers, the aim and general drift of their arguments. For this reason Chrysostom's commentaries remain of per- manent value for us to-day in the study of the Bible, while Origen's are of more service as throwing light on the wonderful mind and thought of the theologian himself. One result of this sound method of Bible study was that at Antioch Theology was simpler and less speculative than at Alexandria. While Alexandrian Theology was meta- physical, Antiochene Theology was historical. In this way it did the Church a very great service. At Alexandria Christianity was in danger of being transformed into a system of philosophy, a Christianised Platonism in which ideas are everything while facts are of little account. But at Antioch great pains were taken to bring out the facts of the historical revelation. This led to the best of all the results of the liberal and historical method there pursued a recovery of the human portrait of our Lord as it is painted in the four gospels by a return to the actual events of His life on earth. The Alexandrian School tended to lose the human Jesus in the Son of God regarded meta- physically as the second person of the Trinity; but the Antiochene students of the New Testament made much of the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. We might almost compare the Alexandrian School to Hegelianism, finding a Christian exposition in Dr. Caird's Philosophy of Religion; and the Antiochene to the Neo-Kantian movement, applied to Christianity by Ritschl. We may regard it therefore as a direct consequence of their methods that at Alexandria first Cyril, within the Church, and then Eutyches, cast out as a heretic, lost the idea of any real THE SCHOOL AT EDESSA 217 Immanity of our Lord, swallowed up in the immensity of His divinity, as it was said, like a drop of honey in the ocean; while on the other hand, at Antioch, Theodore of Mopsuestia, within the Church, prepared the way for Nestorius who was condemned as a heretic in separating the two natures in Christ, so as to preserve the reality of His manhood side by side with His divinity. It was in this school a century earlier that Lucian had developed the ideas which were afterwards made more clear and forcible as Arianism ; and here earlier still Paul of Samosata, the Unitarian teacher, had been bishop, protected on his episcopal throne, in spite of the condemnation of councils, by Queen Zenobia, until her overthrow by the Romans. Thus from early times a simple, historical, human conception of Christianity was cultivated at Antioch, though under Chrysostom this went with a full admission of the Nicene doctrine. The fourth of these famous schools was at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, east of the Euphrates. The Church in this remote region must have nourished with some care for Biblical study in very ancient times. For here they used in public worship the Diatessaron, or Harmony of the Four Gospels, made by Tatian the Assyrian. The school as a centre of advanced theological study was founded by Ephraim the Syrian, as a branch of the great school at Antioch, and it followed the methods of its parent, as the school at Csesarea which sprang out of that of Alexandria followed the Alexandrian method. These greatest centres of learning among the Christians of early times were all maintained in the interest of Theology. In subsequent ages the domination of all other sciences by the " Queen of Sciences," had very mischievous effects. That danger is passed. The opposite extreme a university excluding the study of Theology appeared as a starting anomaly when the London University was founded. 218 ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF THEOLOGY But this was when it was only half a university. No sooner did it become a teaching university than it formed a Faculty of Theology. Many of us rejoice that a similar anomaly at Manchester has now been abolished by the creation of a Divinity Faculty. Surely the time will never come when people will cease to wish to study the historical foundations of religion, the course of its develop- ment through the ages, its relations to speculative Theology, the special thought that enters closely into the life and character of a Christian civilization, or the original languages of its sacred books. Nor, it is to be hoped, while now giving attention to practical needs and social problems, will the Churches be content with this, or fail to recognise that a powerful ministry must be, if not exactly what we may venture to name "a learned ministry," still a ministry trained in a scholarship which does not shrink from the test of ordeals as rigorous as those by which candidates for the professions of law, medicine, and science, are tried. CHRISTIAN ART IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN HISTORY CHRISTIAN ART IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN HISTORY. BY THE REV. E. L. HICKS, M.A. [NOTE. This Lecture was but a sketch, delivered from notes, and illustrated by pictures and diagrams. It is here reproduced, as nearly as could be, in the words originally used, but without illustrations. E. L. H.] THE great teachers who first introduced me to the study of ancient Greek religion laid down one severe and simple rule for my guidance, viz., to ignore the literature of Greece, and to handle perpetually its monuments; to become more and more conversant with the ruins of tombs and temples, with the vase - pictures and the coins, with the statues, the bas-reliefs and inscriptions; to study these without end, and only to consult the literature the Greek poets, historians and philosophers to illustrate or interpret the monuments. Now in the study of the Christian religion a method precisely the opposite is commonly followed. There has indeed been much exact and fruitful study of Christian archeology, especially of recent years; but the art has been rather studied for the art's sake, and the monuments from a scientific curiosity. So far as I am aware, Christian monuments (architecture, statuary, painting) have seldom been examined as being an index and 220 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY evidence of the spiritual complexion of the Christianity of their time ; they have seldom been studied with the object of discovering the real character and tendency of the contemporary Church ; or of forming in our minds a fuller and truer picture of what Christianity actually was what its concrete form, its colour and movement, as it really existed and influenced the world in this or that particular age. Now I am not so presumptuous as to propose to myself a reversal of the common method, or to endeavour to study with you the history and developments of the Christian Church its character and beliefs by the aid (alone, or even chiefly) of monumental evidence. To such an enterprise I am neither led by inclination, nor by the possession of adequate knowledge. I only know that it is a method of dealing with the subject which has been far too commonly neglected. On the present occasion I shall be more than satisfied if I am able to inspire you with some appreciation of what we may term the archa3ological method of handling Christian history, by placing before you a few very simple, but, I trust, interesting examples of its application. The subject is vast in the length of the period it covers, and vast in the width of its range. There are many of my hearers who surpass me in knowledge of certain departments of it. I am further embarrassed by the reflection that the high road of Christian history is strewn with rocks of offence, and the embers of age-long con- troversies are yet warm. Periculosae plenum opus aleae Tractas, et incedis per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso. I bespeak your forbearance at once for my ignorance THE DAWN OF CHRISTIAN ART 221 and for my temerity. I shall be free, I hope, from personal bias, and shall try only to speak the truth, for the truth's sake. THE FIRST AGE. The art of the Catacombs extends from the second century to the fourth. It is of course limited in its range, being merely sepulchral. The forms are frankly borrowed from contemporary pagan art. These frescoes or reliefs represent a very simple and direct mode of symbolism. A ship is expressive of the Church in peril ; an anchor of its faith in Christ. A fish (1X0 YC) indicates the sea of trouble, or the waters of Baptism, besides containing within it, as an acrostic, the Sacred Name and titles : Irjcrovs X/DICTTOS, Qeov vios, crdaTTjp. At times we find scenes from the Gospel story, but idealised, e.g., the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness. There is no attempt at portraiture or realism. Christ is depicted as a youthful, beardless figure, graceful and joyous. All is bright, simple, hopeful. It was the first age of the Faith, and the first rapture and joy of the Church had not yet faded away. It was also the age of persecution. It was not yet safe to own the Sacred Name. True, that the Gospel was making its way slowly within the Flavian household, and the first Catacomb dates from Domitilla, the niece of Domitian. But such conversions were sporadic and rare, and brought no safety to the Church. This was the age of the martyrs, and of the earliest Christian literature. We know it by the writings of St. Clement of Rome and the " Shepherd " of Hermas. We know it by the letters and the martyrdoms of the gentle Polycarp and the fiery Ignatius. The Church was living above the world in it, but not of it; and this sense of unworldliness is reflected in its art, to which it lends an ideal beauty and heavenly calm. 222 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY The study of Christian antiquities on Greek soil had been for centuries strangely neglected. Well do I recollect Sir Charles Newton telling me of his researches in Asia Minor, and how he had ignored everything which was " merely Christian." Archaaology confined itself to pagan art and antiquities only. It was Professor W. M. Ramsay who showed us how great was our mistake. The brief, ill-spelt and homely epitaphs and other inscriptions collected by himself and by American explorers are found to yield important evidence of the ethnography of Central Asia Minor, the progress of its civilisation, and even the comparative influence of Christianity upon different districts. One feature, however, of the Asia Minor inscriptions may be here mentioned. Pagan forms of expression were at first retained by the Christian believers. If Christian facts or ideas are referred to, they occur so closely veiled in pagan phrase that it needs some attention to discern them. Christianity, clearly, was not yet safe from persecution. One recalls the famous correspondence of Trajan and Pliny, dated A.D. 103, On the whole, we may say that research into the monumental evidence of the Christianity of the earliest centuries is only yet in its beginning. THE AGE OF CONSTANTINE. When, in the fourth century, persecution ceased, the spread of Christianity became more rapid. Hitherto its hold had been strongest in Greece and Asia Minor. Now we begin to find evidence of the Christian Church in regions near the Rhine, such as sepulchral inscriptions and glass cups with Christian legends. In Gaul and in Spain we meet with fine sculptured sarcophagi, and also in Italy, and especially in Ravenna. It is clear that, after the conversion of Constantine, the Church could boast of DOWNFALL OF PAGANISM 223 more and more members drawn from the wealthier and more educated class; nor were they afraid, as formerly, to confess their faith on their monuments. These sarcophagi resemble contemporary pagan ones in the elaborateness of their bas-reliefs, and so are of importance in the history of Christian art. The subjects are taken from Christian history and symbolism. Meanwhile Gaul and Britain began to have a Christian history, of which the buildings and other monuments that recall the labours of St. Patrick, his companions and followers, afford valuable illustration. Xorth Africa was the great centre and focus of early Latin Christianity. Carthage and its district have proved rich in Christian architectural and sepulchral remains, besides minor antiquities. Egypt and Syria have yielded strange quantities of early Christian lamps. GNOSTIC ART. The contact of Christianity with paganism had given rise, as early as the second century, to the great Gnostic systems. The Christian faith was often half accepted, and pagan beliefs were allowed to combine themselves with it, with strange and fantastic results; for Oriental mysticism is very tolerant and elastic. This kind of syncretism begins to betray itself in artistic forms in the third and fourth centuries. A whole class of fantastic designs on gems and signet-rings of this period is described by collectors as " Gnostic," though they use the term rather loosely. These designs have little interest save as illustra- tions of that remarkable age of transition. It is also a problem worthy of thoughtful enquiry, how far in any after-age of the Church heresy has ever revealed itself by 224 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY means of its art or monuments. It is not criticism or negation, but faith, that is creative. BYZANTINE ART. We must not, however, travel too fast, but revert to the foundation of Constantinople, A.D. 330, to be the first centre of a Christian Empire. By imperial decree pagan temples were converted into Christian shrines, and the lands and properties of the old gods became the endowment of the Church. If we remember that all the wealthier temples held property in lands, fisheries and other possessions, leased to numerous tenants, we can imagine how strong a motive inclined all the dependents and retainers of a pagan temple to change their creed with the changed dedication of the central building. Other natural consequences followed when the momentous influence of the Empire was felt to be behind the new faith. For the first time the Christian Church began to rear buildings for worship. These followed two well-marked types one was the Basilican type, the other the circular or memorial Church. The interior walls of these buildings afforded ample opportunity for decoration. Hence came the use of mural paintings and mosaics, so characteristic of this and of later periods. An accomplished critic 1 compares the Christian art of this age with the earlier. The lyrical ecstasy of the first age was succeeded (he says) by the epic scheme of mural decoration by means of narrative pictures. The walls of churches were covered with cycles of Old Testament and New Testament scenes, usually meant to be typical of each other. But the method pursued is historical, and not by means of symbolism. At the same 1. Prof. Baldwin Brown. THE CHURCH TRUSTEE OF THE ARTS 225 time, various minor arts were enlisted in the service of religion the embroidery of vestments and hangings, the illumination of manuscripts, and the exquisite carving of ivory Diptychs. These last were the note-books in which were written for every church, the names of bishops, martyrs and other Christians, living or dead, for whom intercession had to be made at the time of the consecration of the Eucharist. Rapidly these forms of art, at first pagan and Hellenistic, became Christianised, and represented purely Christian subjects. Of course, Justinian (A.D. 527 565) was the great builder of churches. To him we owe St. Sophia; and when he drove the Goths out of Italy (A.D. 553 and Ravenna became the Western capital under Constantinople, the fine church arose, from whose walls the portraits of Justinian and Theodora still look down upon us across the centuries. But the Empire was tottering to its fall, and the Grseco- Roman civilisation that passed away became the inheritance of the Church, and so was transmitted to the modern world. Philosophy found endless, and not always profitable, employment in the discussions of creeds and formulae. The rhetoric of the old schools found new and living force in the sermons of the great Christian preachers. The pomp and rhythm, the music and colour of beautiful worship, all found a new employment in the service of the Church. Greek Christianity in this age took a peculiar delight in portraiture imaginative and ideal, indeed, but at first without symbolism. Our Lord and His Holy Mother, and the Archangels, are depicted without end, and, after the Council of Ephesus in 431 had condemned Nestorius, the titles Georoxos and M^-n/p Qeov meet us perpetually. With the growth of monasticism the adoration of these ideal portraits of Our Lord and the 226 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY Saints became a regular part of Eastern religion. To this day, let me add, no Greek ever keeps his own birthday; he observes the day of the saint after whom he is named, and whose prayers and protection he craves. On that day the poorest peasant will dress himself in his best and walk over hill and dale to church to place a lighted taper before the ikon of his patron-saint. This period of Christian art, which we have so hastily reviewed, was a glorious period in the history of Christian literature. It was lit up with the names of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzum, Cyril, Chrysostom, not to mention the Latin Fathers of North Africa, and Jerome, the greatest scholar of his age. ICONOCLASM. Only a few words can here be spared for the extra- ordinary movement known as Iconoclasm. In 725 the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, throwing himself into the agitation, ordered the removal of all images and pictures from the churches. There followed an internal conflict on the question which lasted for a century and a half, at the end of which time toleration for the ikons was won for ever. The party of reform was undoubtedly strong and earnest. But the change demanded was too sweeping to prove successful. Campaigns against the Saracens had brought the Greeks into close contact with a race of strict monotheists, who hated idolatry, and whose prowess in war was unquestioned. This experience gave a new meaning to the Second Commandment and the many texts which enforce it. Image-worship, moreover, found its stronghold with the monks, and there may have been in Iconoclasm a certain reaction against monasticism, which had outgrown all reasonable limits. In any case the revolutionary movement was never able to find full play, RISE OF GOTHIC ART 227 and in the end it suffered defeat. Its influence on Christian art was felt in various directions. It threw back the designers upon old pagan motives and subjects, which had a wholesome effect upon art. It gave also an impetus to the minor arts of illumination and of miniature painting, which did not fall within the scope of its prohibition. Perhaps also it encouraged the study of floral and animal designs, in which the Persians and Arabians had led the way. Eminent craftsmen, too, found their way to the West which was now more than ever divided from the East, and wholly unaffected by Icono- clasm and here extended and introduced the Christian arts so long established among the Byzantines. In Constantinople, upon the suppression of Iconoclasm in 842, a strong reaction set in, and the finest works of Byzantine art belong to the tenth century. ART IN THE WEST. A new era opened for Christian art when the Gospel began to take root and expand north of the Alps. Rome had brought to her provinces the splendours of the old architecture and the circular arch. Out of this grew the beauties of the Norman doorway and tympanum, and its endless arcading. Then, among the new, fresh, aspiring races of the North, with their genius illumined by the Gospel, were developed the superb glories of the pointed arch, and all that went with it. During the thirteenth century France and England stood supreme in the magnificence of the cathedrals and other churches that arose on every hand. Vast and lofty, yet full of fresh and lovely thoughts, combining strength with grace, and mystery with an airy and winning charm, these buildings remain the eloquent witness of a glorious time. I know of nothing like it in the history of the world, unless it be 228 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY the age which saw the great development of Hellenic temple-building, the fifth century B.C. For that age of the early Gothic art was a splendid time in Christian history. It was the age of the Crusades. It was also the age of St. Dominic and St. Francis; the age of the early schoolmen, of Anselm, of Duns Scotus, of Grossetete, of St. Thomas Aquinas. Great abuses there were; much luxury, much love of wealth and pleasure ; much grinding of the faces of the poor. It was a time also of intellectual stress and struggle. But an age which could produce a St. Francis, and could welcome him as a great prophet and saint, compels our reverence and regard. There underlay the rules of the mendicant orders a real sense of human brotherhood there was an appeal to the spirit of the Gospel age, there was a passionate desire to see the comforts and joys of life more widely diffused, and there was a consecration of the noblest genius to the service of God and man. True, that St. Francis wholly abjured all art, and even elegance. Not one of his poverelli must own so much as a breviary, nor even wish for a beautiful church. Yet ere long, just as the Franciscans found at Oxford that they had to become learned, in order to help the poor, so they soon discovered the value of art as the handmaid of the teacher. We cannot fail to see in the buildings and paintings of that time some reflection of the noble thoughts and pure aims of the early mendicant orders. Fra Angelico was a Dominican, and his date (1385 1455) is rather later; but in his heavenly visions we feel ourselves lifted into another world. PAINTING IN ITALY. So soon as painting began to feel her own powers in the West there arose unconsciously the eternal problem of art : should it pursue beauty for beauty's sake, or remain ART FOR ART'S SAKE? 229 the submissive handmaid of religion, the tool of the teacher? We are even yet a long way off from the settle- ment of that controversy. The aim of G. F. Watts was to be didactic and allegorical; Burne Jones was wholly romantic and medieval; Mr. Frederick Shields is all for the devotional and mystical; naturalism is with most men the dominant mood. But in the fifteenth century art was not yet emancipated from the Church. Robert Browning in his Fra Lippo Lippi states the problem with a modern explicitness, but it is no essential anachronism : The world's no blot for us Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good : To find its meaning is my meat and drink. " Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer ! " Strikes in the Prior : " When your meaning's plain It does not say to folks remember matins, Or, mind you fast next Friday ! " Why, for this What need of art at all ? A skull and bones, Two bits of stick nailed cross-wise, or, what's best, A bell to chime the hour with, does as well." Then he tells of the St. Laurence fresco. Every " phiz " " Is scratched and prodded to their heart's content." The " pious people " have come to say their prayers there so often : " Expect another job this time next year, For pity and religion grow i' th' crowd Your painting serves its purpose 1 " Hang the fools ! One great advantage, at all events, was conferred upon mediaeval art by its close association with the Church. 230 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY Each generation of artists, each successive school, was furnished with a vast variety of recognised subjects, well known to the whole European world, and appealing to the faith and feeling of every man. In this respect the great cycles of the Nativity and the Passion, together with Old Testament Types, and the Lives of the greater Saints, may be compared with those great cycles of legend and of heroic suffering or achievement, which occupied the genius of every painter, sculptor and designer in ancient Greece. Art in this way made an instant appeal to popular imagination. The themes were full of tragic grandeur or of tender charm. And the originality of the artist found play in an endless variety of colour, grouping or motive in handling the same or similar subjects. Modern art has lost immeasurably by ceasing to be popular, by the narrowing of its appeal. Its emancipation from Church traditions has brought more weakness than strength. BEAUTY AND DECLENSION OF LATER MEDIEVALISM. In the fifteenth and following centuries the Churches, apart from mere educational decorations, became great art museums; for, in addition to the treasures of sculpture, fresco or wall-painting, which were part of the fabric, altar-pieces of the choicest beauty and other paintings were there to be found. And besides all this, it was in the Church that music found fullest scope, and all that was lovely in solemn and rhythmical movement or reverential gesture found a sacred opportunity. Here also embroidery and the minor arts felt themselves dignified with holy use. Even the call to worship became for ever a thing of beauty in the mediaeval discovery of church bells. And, as if no sense should be without joy in worship, there had been added the swinging censers and the incense-cloud. We have to exercise some imagination BEAUTY OF MEDIEVAL WORSHIP 231 before we can conceive of the beauty, the colour, the solemn and symbolic movement of mediaeval worship. Even in the homeliest country church the walls were made beautiful with coloured frescoes; and the very windows, ever since the introduction of glass enabled them to be enlarged, were not suffered to convey light to the eye, without transmitting a beautiful picture also, to charm with its colour and to impress with its meaning. I speak here of the West. In Greece, ugliness seemed to develope with the downfall of freedom and the deepening of national degradation. Only in the wall-paintings and frescoes did a real sense of beauty seem to survive. I have spoken strongly and warmly of the beauty of the mediaeval Church. It is part of my duty, as a lecturer on Christian art. Yet I am sensible of the inevitable dangers of such developments. A progressive degeneration of religion may be traced in the history of mediaeval art. We seem to have travelled veiy far from the childlike, happy faith of the earliest days. Then, and long after then, it was a rare thing to find a representation of the Last Judgment or of the Crucifixion. No such appear before the fifth century, and then only here and there in small decorative ornaments. The " Tragic " period of religious art had succeeded to the " Lyrical " and the " Epic." As we approach the close of the mediaeval age Religion assumes a more gloomy aspect. More and more she filled men's minds with the terrors of Judgment and of Hell. The Good Shepherd is transformed into the "Rex Tremendae Majestatis" of the Dies Irae. As this idea of Christ becomes dominant, the Virgin Mother is viewed as the merciful Intercessor. The mind of Christendom is pre-occupied with the awful mysteries of the other world. The wills of the period teem with directions about post-obits, chantries and endowing Masses 232 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY for the dead. Altars for this purpose began to crowd the churches. The Morality " Everyman " is a striking example of this age and type of Christianity. The Crucifix became the prevalent and universal symbol. THE REFORMATION. In relation to art the Reformation was a destroyer. The evolution of the Middle Age had made the Church trustee and guardian of nearly all beautiful things ; " but now they broke down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers." Architecture was spurned and derided ; sculpture, on principle, destroyed. Painting, embroidery and those minor arts that had thriven through their consecration by religion, were ruthlessly cast aside. The storied windows were broken. The lovely illuminated service-books were treated as footballs or tossed to the flames. Innumerable manuscripts of Church music went the same way, and the organs which had led the Church singing were turned into firewood. Our land has never yet recovered from the shock; we received a national set- back in the arts, and we have not yet recovered our place among European peoples. In the seventeenth century there still lingered a tradition of the beautiful which we trace in the noble woodwork of many of our Churches, and in the quaint decorations of funeral monuments. The eighteenth century witnessed the eclipse of art in the English Church. The traditions of beauty seemed to be lost. Yet it was a time of abundant church-going, so that the Churches were fitted with galleries to hold the crowds that attended. Partly this was due to the Church revival of Queen Anne's reign, and partly perhaps to the disabilities which attended dissent. Certainly the great flagons and chalices which are so characteristic of this period are explained by the obligations which lay upon all THE TRACTARIAN REVIVAL 233 municipal officers to be communicants of the Church of England. Then came the Wesleyan movement, and the revival of Nonconformity, and with these the building of chapels. These chapels were, as far as might be, copies both within and without of the type of Church which was then in vogue. It is unfortunate that Nonconformity started with so bad an example before her. Perhaps art at large in England had never fallen to so low an ebb, had never been so much isolated from European influences, so lost to a sense of beauty, as in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century. MODERN ENGLISH RELIGIOUS ART. Then began the Oxford movement, with its romantic sentiment, its religious zeal, its passionate appeal to an idealised past. It has revolutionised the Church, and has given a new and mighty impetus to English piety. But its influence upon ecclesiastical art has not been wholly good. It has flooded the land with imitative Gothic, which is not better than imitative classicism. It has ruthlessly destroyed, in the name of restoration, many precious remains of the past. We have still to lament that our Churches contain so few really beautiful things. We have not yet evolved an architectural style that we can call our own, and the verdict of aftertime concerning us will be that we could criticise and copy, but could not create. We are still painfully afraid of anything unconventional; we lack courage and originality. If a thing be really beautiful, chastely and sedately beautiful and suited for our religious purpose, then let us adopt and use it. But while English art witnesses to the lack of originality and creativeness in the Church revival of the last century, it witnesses no less to the strong hold of religion albeit of undogmatic and humanitarian religion upon the heart 234 CHRISTIAN ART AND HISTORY of the nation. Our greatest modern painters have been, I think, essentially religious painters. I will name only three : Watts, with his allegorical visions of practical Christianity; Holman Hunt, as intensely religious as Watts, whether his art goes out in the direction of realism or of allegory; and Fred Walker, whose reverence for the mystery and the tenderness of human life marked him no less as a truly religious painter. Our retrospect has led us among the triumphs of human genius, the marvels of human skill and devotion : yet it has been tinged with a sense of imperfection and of failure. This need awaken no surprise ; for the history of the Christian Church is, after all, only the history of human nature, though linked with the Divine. Is it beyond the limits of hope to look forward to a religion at once rational and reverent, at once assured and tolerant; alert to welcome the new and the true, yet loyal in its continuity with the past; eager to consecrate all that is most beautiful and perfect in art to the service of the sanctuary, yet mindful that the most acceptable service of God is the service of man? THE GROWTH OF CREEDS THE GROWTH OF CREEDS. BY THE Rev. H. D. LOCKETT, M.A. A CREED is a confession of faith, and therefore the word may be applied as well to the Confession of Augsburg or the Thirty-nine Articles as to the repentant and exultant confession of St. Thomas " My Lord and my God " and to the Confession of the Church assembled at Nicsea. Reformation Confessions must be regarded as temporary and local, and therefore cannot have the same interest as the (Ecumenical Creeds. There is a second reason for neglecting them in this lecture ; they bear upon them the stamp of manufacture. The same thing may be said of many of the theological creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries, and we shall equally neglect all such. Of the rest, every adoring confession of faith, such as that of St. Thomas, has a personalness and an intensity too simple and sacred to allow of discussion. That leaves for our consideration a very few fixed creed-forms of early Christianity. In spite of the set phrases of these creeds they retain the freshness of the primitive days. What that quality is we can best see from a liturgical form in which it is more evidently present the Kyrie eleison Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. With regard to it, Bishop Dowden writes : " It carries with it the unmistakable characteristics of primitive spontaneity, directness and simplicity. How impossible it is by any effort of imagination to conceive a commission of 236 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS modern divines, say a committee of Convocation, sitting round a table with their sheets of foolscap, blotting paper and quill pens, and devising the Kyrie eleison." 1 Creeds are not emotional utterances, and therefore this intensity is not to be expected, but in certain of them there is a like spontaneity. It is felt by those who sing the Te Deum and hardly recognise that they are reciting one of the creeds : and that same spirit of triumph breathes in the rythmical sentences of the psalm Quicunque Vult, incorrectly called the Athanasian Creed and unfortunately known by many who have never read it as a sort of dry, hard malediction. It can, however, only belong to those which grew with the Christian Church. Controversy, hot and bitter, may have preceded and influenced their phrases, but they were not baked in that oven or kneaded into shape by angry theologians. They may be intellectual or theological, but just as the theologian can retain in his heart the simplicity of a child before God, so the mature creeds of Christendom may deal with subjects that are not simple and yet retain a remarkable freshness of spirit. We select as being typical, and as being the best known, the three great creeds, known as the Apostles' Creed, the ISTicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, though in each case the name gives a mistaken idea of the origin of the creed. And if we are to try and denote their characteristics by single words we might call the first Historical, the second Theological, and the third Dogmatical. But this division, like many others which we make for convenience, is too distinct. The Apostles' Creed is almost as theological as the Nicene Creed. It is impossible to have the historical presentment apart from the theological, and the theological is only one stage in the necessary progress towards the dogmatical. 1. Workmanship of the Prayer Book, p. 71. THE CREED OF CREEDS 237 We start with history. Philosophers tell us that history is a very uncertain thing : it is discounted : it is full of inaccuracies. However we must start with history and claim some facts, the main outline of the Christian tradition, or we shall utterly misunderstand the attitude of mind of those who first uttered the creeds. They are all included in the one fact of Jesus Christ : And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought. "We have heard, we have seen with our eyes, our hands handled," says the writer who in his gospel, as well as in his first epistle, calls Christ the Word : yet he writes an account of the life of Christ so strongly reflective and theological that to many his gospel is not history. Must we say because " the beloved disciple " saw in his Master what not all men who read the gospels are forced to see, and because his belief and reflection strongly colour his recollections, that therefore his gospel is not historical? Accounts may be more or less historical -so we say, meaning that the writer may detach himself more or less from the object before his mind, and may set himself to picture things as on the outside they appear to the casual observer rather than to shew the whole truth as it appears to him. But it is doubtful whether it is possible to set down the most ordinary facts of life without some implicit interpretation of them. It is certain that the most important facts of history, persons, cannot be retained in the memories of succeeding generations except through the interpretation of their character, their work, their influence, made by contemporaries. In the case of most 238 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS historical characters, for all practical purposes of life, the dispute might be left to the historians, but in the case of Jesus it is not and never will be. If the Person be unique his true character and power will be attested in a unique manner unceasingly in the present as well as once in the past. Thus the simple germ of the creeds, the creed of creeds, is a Person as He made Himself known to those nearest to Him. The presentment is now more historical and less theological, now more theological and less historical. Every year added something to a fuller appreciation of the meaning of that life. There is no reason why that process should ever cease in the Christian Church ; but thoughtful and reverent students of the New Testament will generally be forced to the conclusion that no one under the limita- tions of human life can rise to a more vivid and lofty realisation of what Christ is than did St. John and St. Paul. Professor Harnack, in a great passage l of his History of Dogma, remarks how obscure to the historian proper is the origin of a series of the most important Christian customs and ideas: "but," he continues, "the greatest problem is Christology .... in its deepest roots as it was preached by Paul as the principle of a new life (II. Cor. 5 17 ), and as it was to many besides him the expression of a personal union with the exalted Christ (Rev. 2 3 ). But this problem exists only for the historian who considers things only from the outside, or seeks for objective proofs. Behind and in the Gospel stands the Person of Jesus Christ who mastered men's hearts, and constrained them to yield themselves to Him as His own, and in whom they found their God. Theology attempted to describe in a very uncertain and feeble outline what the 1. Eng. Trans., vol. i. p. 133. CHRISTIAN CATECHISING 239 mind and heart had grasped. Yet it testifies of a new life which, like all higher life, was kindled by a Person and could only be maintained by connection with that Person. ' I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.' 'I live, yet not I, but Christ, liveth in me.' These convictions are not dogmas and have no history, and they can only be propagated in the manner described by Paul (Gal. I. 15 , 16 )." Among all the bonds of the " unity of the Spirit," this consciousness and these convictions were the strongest. The Church was one principally because its members knew that they were Christians. There was "one Lord, one faith." "One baptism" made this unity something definite. It did this partly by admission to a visible society, and partly by the definite teaching concern- ing the " one Lord, one faith," which accompanied it. The instruction dealt with the life of Jesus Christ, with Christian morality and Christian doctrine. The preface of the Gospel according to St. Luke shows us that converts to Christianity were carefully taught the tradition of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Gospel professes to be a fuller and more critical account of the things recounted in the " catechism " or oral instruction of the catechumen or candidate for baptism. There may have been more ways than we are aware of for a dissemination of a knowledge of the history of Jesus. It is possible that Apollos gained his first knowledge from a very early gospel; or he may have been taught by some who had been influenced in the first days of our Lord's ministry and saw no further. We know that he appeared in the synagogue at Ephesus and " spake and taught carefully the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John." 1 Two Jewish Christians present, l. Acts, 18 ". R 240 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS Aquila and Priscilla, " took him unto them and expounded the way of God more carefully." Here the context suggests fuller teaching about the life of Jesus and instruction in doctrine, at least about Christian Baptism. Going outside the limits of the New Testament, we have an interesting book called the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The date generally accepted for it is about 100 A.D. The first half of it is an instruction in morality, based upon the Sermon on the Mount. The second part is a manual on prayer, fasting and the sacraments. The second portion begins thus : "And con- cerning baptism, baptize ye thus. Having first declared all these things, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Here the instruction con- templated is what is contained in the first part morality. But that alone, we may feel sure, was not the rule except among some Jewish Christians. We get a different idea as we read the description of Christian Worship given by the converted philosopher, Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century, to the emperor Antoninus Pius. "As many as are persuaded that the things are true which are taught by us and said to be true, and promise that they can live accordingly they are taught to pray and to ask of God with fasting forgiveness of their former sins, and we pray and fast together with them In the name of God the Father and the Lord of the Universe and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost do they then receive the washing of water." 2 History and morality and worship are here plainly referred to in general terms. But can we doubt that where the Trinitarian formula of baptism was used there was also simple instruction about the Name? 2. Justin, First Apology, 61. NEW TESTAMENT CONFESSIONS 241 How far back does that formula go? It occurs at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel and is there ascribed to our Lord. Those who assert that such is the true origin of the words have a strong case, but yet the balance of the evidence is against it. There is nearly the same authority for saying that the first gospel has undergone one transformation as for ascribing it to St. Matthew as its original author. It is one of the most assured results of a conservative criticism that the change was something much greater than translation. It is very possible that even after the Gospel appeared in Greek it was again re-edited. Add further that we never read in the new Testament of the use of the Trinitarian formula, but of baptism into the name of Jesus Christ or the Lord Jesus, and that this simpler form lasted on with the other into the third century, and we have considerations of such weight as to turn the balance against the general traditional opinion. The question must be discussed purely as a literary and historical one. It does not affect religious belief. Earlier than the earliest date that can be suggested for St. Matthew's Gospel St. Paul wrote his second Epistle to the Corinthians concluding with the words, " The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the Communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all." The Trinitarian formula of baptism must have won its way to general acceptance in the third quarter of the first century. If we accept that then we shall look for a developed creed in the New Testament with less expectation of finding it than if we thought that the words came directly from our Lord; for the baptismal creeds of Christendom were built up round that formula. A strict examination of the New Testament does not disclose any developed creed or confession. All that we 242 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS can with certainty point to is the simple confession contained in such passages as these : " No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, save in the Holy Ghost " (I. Cor. 12 3 ) "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt he saved " (Rom. 10 9 ) "Whosoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God " (I. John 4 15 ) "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (I. John 5 5 ). Both the form and the context of I. Cor. 12 3 suggest that the mention is of a recognised formula, Jesus is Lord. The watchword of belief and active unbelief are opposed to one another Kvpios 'I-rja-ovs and 'Ava&jua 'Irjo-ovs. The language of I. John, especially in the Greek, suggests it still more strongly. As we read, " every spirit that confesseth (6p>Aoyti) that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (I. John 4 2 ), we are not likely to imagine that the reference is to a fixed form of belief : but I. John 4 15 (quoted above) gives that impression, and the use of the aorist tense (os av o/AoAoyrjo-^) instead of the present tense which is used in I. John 4 2 points to some single definite act of confession. Whether the words 6ju,oAoytv and 6//,oAoyia are ever used in the New Testament in a technical sense is, apart from such evidence as the above, not certain. It seems very likely that in I. Tim. 6 12 (wjuoAoyT/fras Trjv KaXr/v 6/zoAoyiav evtuTriov TroAAwv fj.a.pr\>p^v\ there is a reference to the baptismal confession, and in Heb. 10 22 > 23 " the confession of our hope " is mentioned just after a reference to baptism. In other cases there is no reason for giving a technical sense to the word, but equally no reason for refusing it. The accumulated force of such pieces of evidence is very LITURGICAL FORMS 243 considerable. It leads us to say that it is highly probable that there are references in the New Testament to baptismal creeds and that in some places, at least in Asia Minor, the baptismal confession was the simple one : I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. One additional piece of evidence raises the probability almost to a certainty. The Johannine writings most undoubtedly were composed in Asia Minor. From that part of the world came also the two writers, Papias and IrenaBus, to whom we are chiefly indebted for information about the origin of the New Testament writings. The latter became Bishop of Lyons in S. Gaul, but he spent his early life in Smyrna as a disciple of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John. It is likely that so earnest and learned a Christian as Irena3us would have in his possession before he left his native land a copy of the Acts. We see from a quotation that his manuscript included verse 37 of the eighth chapter as we read it in the Authorised Version, containing the confession of the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip baptised " I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." But they have no place in the correct text and the verse is missing in the R.V. Some scribe feeling sure that the convert professed his faith must have added the confession in the marign, whence it crept into the text. But the quotation in Irenseus is the earliest trace of this corruption of the received text and points to Asia Minor as the probable source : therefore, since the probability is that the same confession is referred to in the first epistle of S. John which we know emanated from Asia Minor, the conclusion that the baptismal confession of that part of the Christian world was " I believe that Jesus is the Son of God " seems almost certain. Against it is the difference in the order of the Greek in Acts 8 37 (A. V.) and I. John 4 15 , but it is not an insuperable objection 244 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS in the case of a form of words so simple that one hesitates to speak of them as a formula. By the end of the first century the churches of Asia and churches elsewhere were on the point of adopting a longer creed. In fact the transition may have taken place within the first century in some churches, for the need of a summary of right teaching was great and the tendency towards the use of fixed forms was strong. Those who have any experience of Christians of the present day whose worship is not liturgical are aware how rapidly a norm of expression emerges amongst them when outside influences and different customs do not interfere. Such a development we should naturally expect in Apostolic Christianity, and that expectation is supported by elements of liturgical worship which appear in the New Testament, by the existence of very primitive elements in the ancient liturgies, and by the provision in the Didache of a form of eucharistic prayer to be used in the absence of a prophet. In a single short lecture we cannot do more than merely refer to these liturgical elements; an equally insufficient mention must be made of that other requisite for the emergence of a creed, viz., an oral catechism. We need not go outside the bounds of the New Testament to find proofs of the existence of schemes of instruction. It was indeed not long ago the common explanation of the origin of the first three gospels to state that they were the independent results in writing of an oral instruction so thorough, with such care for preserving the form of words, and with such attention to certain limits, that three gospels were created with the most striking similarities in order, matter and language. We may hold in the main the generally accepted theory of "THE PATTERN OF SOUND WORDS" 245 the present, that the similarities are due to the use of common documents, without abandoning the belief that the catechetical instruction of the members of the Church of the first days was very careful and thorough, and according to a natural and generally accepted order or scheme (see Luke I 1 - 4 ; Acts 10 36 - 43 ; I. Cor. 15 1 ~ 8 }. Moreover, there were short summaries of the tradition and the teaching, catechisms if not creeds. The New Testament passages which are sometimes appealed to as referring to an apostolic creed at least support this. There was " a pattern of sound words " probably a catechism of Christian truth rather than what we under- stand by a creed. In the epistles to Timothy we read of the TrapaO^KTj which has been committed to Timothy, and we may translate the word " deposit " or more generally " that which is committed to one." Twice it occurs. " Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called." (I. Tim. 6 20 ). "Hold fast the pattern of sound words which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. That good deposit guard by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us." (II. Tim. 1 13 .) Something very definite seems to have been committed to Timothy. In the first passage it is contrasted with profane babblings and speculation : in the second it appears to be equivalent to the " pattern of sound words." The natural interpretation of TrapaOrJKrj is therefore a summary of teaching which is definite in form and avoids speculation. This interpretation is not undisputed; opinion is swayed one way or the other in this case by presuppositions as to the character and method of teaching in the Church of the Apostolic Age. We have said that the Church was ripe for a creed at the end of the first century, and as a matter of fact local 246 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS baptismal creeds are now proved to have been in existence not long after that period. Yet we do not discover the full and exact form of any creed before the fourth century. The historical records of that century are deluged with them; for it is the period of the Arian Controversy. The churchmen of the time, when they wished to turn an opponent's position, issued a creed. The bishop accused of heresy cleared himself by reciting a creed. Thus Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra in Asia Minor, an exile from his see, and accused of Sabellian heresy, proved his orthodoxy to Julius, the Bishop of Borne, by reciting a creed. The confession was considered satisfactory naturally so, for Marcellus recited the Roman Creed which we now know as the Apostles' Creed. Probably it goes back to about the year 100 for its beginning, and yet, if so, it is in existence for two and a half centuries before it appears in its exact form in any literature which is now extant. That is only one example of the well-known dislike of the early Christians to make public their sacred things. This reticence was due partly to fear of persecution, partly to shrinking from the blasphemous uses to which they might be put by the heathen; and anyone who has come into contact with persons who have learnt some of the set forms of religion without the fear of God, and are unchecked in their thoughtlessness or their hostility to religion by a code of manners, can sympathise with the Christians of the second and third centuries for a reserve which in later times became foolish and super- stitious. The Creed which Marcellus professed was the following : square brackets enclose the clauses of a later date familiar to us in the Apostles' Creed. THE ROMAN CREED 247 I believe in God [the Father] Almighty [Maker of Heaven and Earth] And in Christ Jesus, His only-begotten Son, our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, Was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried ; The third day He rose again from the dead, And ascended into Heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father, From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, The Holy Church, [The Communion of Saints] The Forgiveness of Sins, The Resurrection of the Flesh [And the Life Everlasting.] Its basis is the baptismal formula, with which is fused the Confession of Jesus Christ as the Lord, the Son of God. Upon that is imposed the outline of the life of Jesus, " manifested in the flesh," " received up in glory." That was a necessary part of catechetical teaching and the early attack upon the reality of the Incarnation, the attempt to explain the Deity of Christ by denying to Him a real and bitter human experience, made emphatic assertion of the tradition all the more essential. The form and contents of a baptismal creed are natural and inevitable : they are everywhere the same in substance though not in phrasing. Into the evidences of the date of this creed we shall not inquire : they are very complex. It must be sufficient to say that it is generally agreed that it existed at Rome in the second half of the second century : its origin falls probably within the first half. Neither can we discuss 248 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS all the evidences for the statement that this creed was changed by the Church to parry the attacks of those who were considered heretical. Every sort of heresy came to Rome in the second and third centuries, and there is nothing antecedently improbable in the suggestion that the Church which adopted a particular form of words to express the main articles of the common Christian Faith, might modify them in order to express its faith more clearly and securely, especially during the earlier years of the creed's history, before it had gained a character of such rigidity and sacredness that its clauses were ascribed to the twelve apostles. It would not have been surprising if, in answer to the widespread Gnostic belief that matter was evil and that therefore the earth and the bodies of men could not have been the work of the Almighty and Good God, the Roman Church had added the clause which we use Maker of Heaven and Earth. But it did not, and therefore we conclude, in the first place, that the creed is earlier than the active period of the Gnostic heresies, that is, it must be an early product of the century; and, in the second place, that from the very first there was a strong feeling against the alteration of the creed. On the other hand, there is good evidence which points in the other direction. It is exceedingly difficult to determine whether the epithet " Only " or " Only Begotten " was added to " Son " or not : and there is a very strong case for saying that at the beginning of the third century the Roman candidate for baptism professed his belief in "One God the Father Almighty" and that later the adjective "one" was removed. What might be the reason of that change ? Possibly, a very unhappy experience of the Roman Church : its bishops threw in their lot with false teachers, who reconciled the difficulties of belief in one God with belief FACT AND SPECULATION 249 in Christ as God, by saying that the Father and the Son were simply different outward manifestations of the one God, so that it would be possible to say, " I believe in one God, Jesus Christ." The minority, who finally won back the Church to its old faith, did not cease to believe in one God, but they found that hidden in that adjective there was, for their times, a secret spring which if pressed telescoped the three divisions of the creed into one with much ruin, and perhaps to safeguard the whole creed they removed the word that caused the mischief. That division of opinion a.t Rome reminds us that with the third century the Trinitarian Controversy of the Primitive Church really began. It led to a great develop- ment in the making of theological creeds, and finally to the emergence of one creed as a universal test for the whole world a position already attained for the West by the Roman Creed. It arose out of the speculation of active minds about the relation of Christ to God, a subject which is so mysterious as to baffle thought and is so important and full of apparent contradiction as to force thinking upon us. When Christian thinkers set themselves the task of explaining the Christian revelation and experience of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, they had to consider the wrong theories of the Gnostics and the Monarchians and they were confronted with the opposition of many who held the same faith as themselves. Tertullian contributed a great deal, especially in terminology, to thought about the relation of the Persons of the Godhead, but he complains that amongst Latin-speaking Christians at the beginning of the third century there was great suspicion of his attempts to explain the mystery. In time however, the newer theology, with its technical terms and attempts to define clearly, was embraced, and the Latin Christians 250 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS as a whole stood in solid array in its defence as it was embodied in the Nicene Creed. It is only with the aid of the mass of Christians who are always conservative, just because their experience is of eternal realities and is somewhat detached from systematic thought, that the theologians win their battles ; but they win them far less by the excellence of their own thought than by the fatal mistakes of their opponents. Gnosticism, for instance, found its great intellectual antagonist in Irenseus, but probably the worst was over when he attacked it with arguments which fixed both the idea of God and the method of forming it for the Christendom of succeeding centuries. It was not mind which won the day : in that case victory would have rested with the intellectually superior Gnostics. It was Christian worship the coming to God through Christ that deter- mined the issue. That God, the Father, never seemed so far off as the Gnostics said He was : the Mediator who was their Saviour could be no unreal man or some very inferior being among the many who made up the Fullness of the Godhead. Mind only leads the way, expresses the truth, and secures the position in every advance which the Christian conviction of the many faithful does not finally reject as error. This is not to say that the only force worth noticing as determinative in the conflicts of Christianity is an infallible inner sense. It is, however, to lay chief stress upon Christian inspiration which is not the monopoly of a particular class or of a particular age of the Christian Church; and though its most characteristic effect is in convincing the whole man of the Christian verities, yet its normal action is neither independent of the Christian tradition nor of the Christian society : it is nourished and corrected by both. We bring disputed teaching to the test of Scripture ; but THE CONSERVATISM OF CHRISTIANITY 251 in the first quarter of the second century the appeal to Holy Scripture would have meant to most Christians an appeal to the Old Testament, though they were beginning to quote the writings now included in our New Testament as Scripture. Even if the mystical method of interpreta- tion of the Old Testament which prevailed had allowed of any finality, which in general it did not, those Scriptures did not give an answer to the questions which were agitating the Church. Who was Jesus Christ? What was his teaching? What was the commandment of the Lord through the Apostles? these were the vital questions. In other words, the men of that generation were without a settled New Testament, and, according to the answers which they gave to these questions, were the writings which they selected as being authoritative. The variety of selections was as extraordinary as the variety of doctrines, and the various systems of doctrines based their claims to authority on varieties of tradition. The deciding factor was tradition, and guarantees for a right tradition were therefore of the first importance. The word tradition has come to mean in a Christian connection something that may be true, but is not so certain as the history and teaching in the New Testament. That distinction is a natural and necessary product of later centuries, but it hardly existed at all in the time of which we are writing. The Apostles, the Evangelists, the Elders handed down the tradition, and they might either write it or speak it. There were some who, like Papias, preferred to hear the story from a reliable companion of Apostles when every Apostle was dead rather than to learn it from written tradition. It was always possible to claim that much had been handed down which had not been written, and that was what the Gnostics did. The only way of meeting the insidious attack was by pointing to certain 252 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS guarantees which ensured the preservation of a true as against a false tradition. Irenseus, in the later part of the century, appeals to two such. Irenaeus writing to his friend Florinus, who had forsaken the Christian faith of his youth, reminds him of the happy days which they had spent together in Asia Minor as disciples of the saintly Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. He says that he remembers the events of that time much better than the things which had happened to him later in the press of a busy life, and among them he recalls the many reminiscences which Polycarp related of his inter- course with the last of the Apostles, St. John. That single line of clear tradition through well-known leaders of the Church, with the best opportunities of knowing the truth and above suspicion of intentional unveracity, is invaluable to the historical student. But there must have been thousands of instances of similar connections in every Church which had been blessed with the residence of, or a visit from, one of the Apostles; in fact, the continuity of the Church meant that. The historical student may prefer to follow the single clear thread of personal connection, but the Church of Rome or of Ephesus was anchored by a stout rope to the primitive tradition through its connection with Apostles; and, though we cannot unravel the strands and threads, we ought to be able to appreciate the stability which it ensured. Thus, Irenaeus supposes that there is doubt in the Church as to what was truly apostolic, and says that the answer must be sought in the consentient teaching of the apostolic churches, which, moreover, had been so well ordered by means of a regular succession of ministers, especially of chief ministers, the bishops, that there was a strong guarantee for the preservation of character, of teaching, and of historic tradition, whether written or oral. It is true that THE RULE OF FAITH 253 lie goes a step further, and that, feeling both the possibility of some error and the need of certainty, he claims for the bishops a charisma veritatis certum a sure gift of the truth but, apart from that, his argument is good to establish a strong presumption in favour of the truth of the teaching of apostolic churches. If, however, these conclusions were disputed, there remained the simplest form of Christian tradition as the very citadel of the orthodox position. That was the Creed. The careful instruction of the catechumen before baptism was the best guarantee for the preservation of the main facts and doctrines of the Christian Faith. When that instruction had been summed up in a form of words the position was doubly assured; and that was done at Rome early in the second century. Thus, Irenaeus, at the end of that century, appeals for his authority to the general tradition of the Church, organised under its bishops and most clearly set forth in those writings generally acknowledged by it to be apostolic, and to the Creed. All this he regards as the " rule of faith," but he more particularly uses the term in reference to that Roman Creed which all the West accepted " the rule of faith . . . received through baptism." More and more the stress was laid on the Creed, as we may see from the writings of Tertullian, Bishop of Carthage, a younger contemporary of IrenaBus on the other side of the Mediterranean. To him, the Creed was the rule of faith : adhesion to it was the sign of a Christian and divergence from it deprived the heretic of the right to use the Scriptures of the New Testament. Christians might search after truth, but they must be assured that it did not lie outside the limits of the Creed : the old woman looking for the lost coin in her house was to be their example. The Roman Creed or the " Apostles' Creed " had become 254 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS a " test of things not seen " (Heb. 11 1 ), the judge of speculations, for the Western half of Christendom ; but in the fourth century we have an example of a Creed as a test for the whole Christian world. Just when the Trinitarian controversy of the third century seemed to be dying away, the whole question was raised during the fourth century in a new form by Arius. The conflict divided the Eastern Church as nothing had done before. Arius was ready to worship Christ, to exalt Him as far as possible above men, but felt it necessary to deny Deity to Him except in some secondary sense. We will not go into the merits and weaknesses of the opposite schools of thought, nor involve ourselves in the toils of the weary creeds of that time. In the end the issue became clear as between two extremes and the middle party vanished. The original party of Arius became more negative and logical, and shocked all those who worshipped Christ. On the other hand the old conservative theologians who disliked the use of non-biblical terms and the attempt to explain or define the mysterious relations of the Godhead, and had tried to compromise by saying of the Son that He was "like in essence" (o/totovo-to?) with the Father, came to see, that in order to preserve the truth which they possessed, they must go further and say that He is co- essential (6/xoovo-ios) with the Father. The Creed in which that definition is preserved is the Nicene Creed. There was a terrible growth of bitterness and irreligion during the Arian Controversy. Some think that it was the wildest folly for Christians to quarrel about questions of Greek Metaphysics. Was it necessary? The West accepted the Nicene position very easily because it already had the same truth expressed in a form congenial to itself and was not speculative enough to care for the refinements of Eastern thought. Probably most Western Christians THE NICENE CREED 255 accepting the terms, Person and Substance, which Tertullian gave them, had crude and wrong ideas about the Holy Trinity as have also very many English Christians. Words which to the theologian or the philosopher mean one thing may to the man in the street mean another, and whilst on the one hand that suggests the immense importance of selecting the right terms, on the other it suggests that it is practically impossible to find terms which will not suggest wrong conceptions about such a mystery as the Holy Trinity to the average unmetaphysical believer. Again, further east than Constantinople or Antioch, at Edessa in the Euphrates valley, there was a Syriac- speaking Church which seems to have escaped the troubles of the Arian controversy. Edessa was the centre of a group of Churches and this is the Creed of Aphraates, a Bishop of great influence and unblemished reputation. When a man shall believe in God, the Lord of all, That made the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that in them is, Who made Adam in His image, Who gave the Law to Moses. Who sent of His Spirit in the Prophets, Who sent His Messiah into the world ; And that a man should believe in the bringing to life of the dead, And believe also in the mystery of Baptism : This is the Faith of the Church of God. And that a man should separate himself From observing hours and Sabbaths and months and seasons, And enchantments and divinations and astrology and magic, And from fornication and from revelling and from vain doctrines, The weapons of the Evil One, and from the blandishment Of honeyed words, and from blasphemy and from adultery. 256 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS And that no man should bear false witness, And that none should speak with double tongues ; These are the works of the Faith that is laid On the true rock, which is the Messiah, Upon whom all the building doth rise. 1 It is difficult to conceive that a Creed of so simple, religious and practical a character expressed the faith of a Church not far from the Syrian Antioch. There is not a trace of the Nicene Creed in it and the rest of the writings of Aphraates show little or no sign of Pauline theology. Mr. Burkitt expresses his sympathy with the simple religious spirit of this Syriac Bishop who exalts Jesus, the Messiah, to the right hand of God in the spirit of the hymn The highest place that Heaven affords Is His, is His by right. That will ever be the attitude, for himself, of the unmetaphysical Christian who believes, worships and feels unable and unwilling to define. But all are not so, and the Creeds grew up to meet the needs of a whole Church of many nations and of men of different tempers ; and one feels that Dr. Fairbairn is right when he says that " unless religion be an eternal challenge to the reason it can have no voice for the imagination and no value for the heart." 2 History proves that " clear and sweet as the Galilean vision may be, it would, apart from the severer speculation which translated it from a history into a Creed, have faded from human memory like a dream which delighted the light 1, The creed is quoted from Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 84. 2. The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 5. THE ATHANASIAN CREED 257 slumbers of the morning, though only to be so dissolved before the strenuous will of the day as to be impossible of recall." Nevertheless, we have cause to be thankful that the Nicene Creed with its anathemas has been quite unintentionally replaced by another Creed, which the whole Church in East and West uses, viz., that Creed which we call the Nicene Creed. Dr. Hort proved the opinion of many centuries to be wrong and showed that the original of our Creed was the Baptismal Creed of the most ancient of all the Churches, the Church at Jerusalem. Cyril, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who took infinite pains with his catechising, has left it to us in his published lectures to catechumens, and it was probably he who was responsible for adding to the Creed of his Church certain Nicene phrases and thus creating the Creed which is used throughout Christendom under that name. Clearly it is not the original Creed, but yet it serves the purpose of the original, and those who recite it have to be thankful for a change which has given them a Creed so ancient and natural, so full of the spirit and beauty of worship, and so absolutely free from the bitterness of theological controversy. Prolonged controversy, clear definition of " the mystery of godliness," a highly organised church with a vigilant discipline, bring their own dangers. That the Church did not escape without injury is attested by that psalm of victory, the Quicunque Yult, commonly but wrongly called the Athanasian Creed. The introductory and concluding clauses 1 err by making a saving faith identical with adherence to dogma. However much one may be convinced that dogma is inevitable and necessary as the 1. The introductory clause to the second portion of the creed is of the same nature. 258 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS intellectual expression of our faith, however great be the responsibility of a Christian with a mind for the use of his mind, however great the condemnation of the individual for rashly breaking away from the dogmatic definitions of the Church because he is unable to under- stand or too wilful to seek humbly and patiently, we must allow that dogma is not equivalent to religion, and that adherence to Catholic Dogma is not the one thing necessary. " Christian metaphysic is no more an end in itself than the analysis of good drinking water. By itself it leaves us thirsty." x Yet the Creed is a very grand and valuable assertion of the mind of the Church as it had been formed by the Arian controversy, and the debates which followed on the two-fold nature of Christ. The solemn and emphatic language with which it affirms the great facts of Christian revelation and experience without hinting how its assertions are to be harmonised or reconciled, shews us the true aim of the creeds. They are intensely practical and really conservative. If they had depended for their value on the truth of some metaphysical system, they would have vanished with the system which they represented, and from the first would have been painfully inadequate. On the contrary, the conduct of the leading defenders of the Nicene Faith shews that they were not logic-ridden when they had to deal with men who really agreed with them. " The main object of Nicene opposition to Arianism was religious rather than theological, to ensure that prayers might be offered to Christ not with hope only, but with certainty." 2 The Christians of apostolic days had made their prayers to the Lord who redeemed them : St. Paul, mainly in the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians and Philippians, 1. Burn, Introduction to the Creeds, p. 6. 2, Burn, Introduction to the Creeds, p. 96. THE PURPOSE OF THE CREEDS 259 provided a theology to justify that; the Nicenes claimed to do no more than to make St. Paul's meaning clear in such language as would exclude a contrary doctrine of the day. And the object becomes still more apparent as we follow the history of the troubles which ensued next upon the attempt to explain the union of Deity and Humanity in one person. Every experiment of thought was tried. There were many councils and many condemnations for heresy, but such definitions as resulted do not go very far in explaining the mystery of the Incarnation; they are chiefly useful as warnings against mistakes that have been made. "What the Church aimed at was not so much to furnish an exhaustive definition metaphysical or other of what it always recognised to be an ineffable " mystery of godliness " as rather to maintain the integrity of the Christian faith against theories and speculations which did profess to explain it in a variety of directions. Christian faith may not be able to solve the mystery of the Incarnation, but it may recognise that certain theories do conflict with vital religious interests, and may feel called upon to contend very earnestly against them on that account." l Christian theology did not cease to advance when creeds ceased to be promulgated. During the century in which the Quicunque Vult came from some unknown source into the world, St. Augustine was contributing great thoughts about the Church and Sacraments, Sin and Grace. The Middle Ages professed to accept his position, but it was not stated in a creed. That period was fertile in thoughts about the Atonement, but we find nothing more than text-books of an authoritative character. Indeed, the bonds of authority were drawn so tight that there was 1. Orr, Progress of Dogma, p. 177. 260 THE GROWTH OF CREEDS no revolt of such force as to necessitate any important reconstruction; but when the spirit of enquiry and doubt again took hold of the populace in the times of the Reformation every branch of the Church in the West set forth a confession of its faith. They all differ from primitive creeds, in that they aim at completeness. They are most valuable expositions of doctrine, but any confession that tries to deal with all the different subjects of Christian doctrine necessarily abdicates a rightful claim to universality and permanence. It is just about subjects of which we can by reason know least that the Church may be most dogmatic, for there it appeals to revelation. The three creeds which we have mentioned claim to be necessary deductions from the revelation of God in Christ. Their aim is to preserve the revelation of the Father through the Son, and belief in the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Upheavals of life and thought at various times have seemed to threaten these foundation truths of Christianity, but just because the real active life of such movements was the knowledge of the only true God and Him who was sent by Him, even Jesus Christ, they have reasserted not merely in a conservative spirit, but as a fresh conviction, the truth about God expressed in the three Creeds which we have taken as typical and universal. EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. BY THE REV. R. MACKINTOSH, M.A., D.D. No one can deny that evolution is the master thought of the present age. The statement holds good whether we look to the serious thinker or turn to his poor cousin "the man in the street." Now the evolutionary spirit is sure to challenge or modify perhaps to transform many of the doctrines of theology; they are asked at least to show their credentials; and these are submitted to a fresh and sharp scrutiny. We intend to deal here with one doctrine, and with it as handled by a recent writer, Mr. F. R. Tennant a writer full of enthusiasm for evolutionary science. Thus our undertaking has limits in more than one sense. There are many Christian beliefs, besides the doctrine of sin, which assume a new aspect in the light of modern evolutionary theory. Yet we speak only of the one ; and it constitutes quite a sufficient task. But again, there are limits set to our inquiry in another direction. It may seem as if the conception of man as a product of evolutionary forces swept away all vestiges of the doctrine of sin. Or to put this differently : there may be forms of the evolutionary theory which are consciously and aggressively anti-Christian. But it is not with such forms that we deal. We speak of evolutionary concepts not as opposed but as applied to theology. Provisionally, at least, we have a right to expect a friendly synthesis, 262 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN for Mr. Tennant seeks not to deny but to interpret or restate the doctrine of sin; he argues as a Theist, as a Christian. Along these lines, and within these assump- tions, we venture to follow him. Provisionally, then, our course is clear. Yet assuredly we have no guarantee that the difficulty hinted at may not meet us later, and compel us to reckon with it. Our brief study may, after all, reinforce the impression that certain evolutionary conceptions are too weak to sustain the structure of a sound philosophy or of Christian faith. The older forms of the Christian doctrine insisted upon a great catastrophe at the outset of the world's history. Many readers will remember the sombre and powerful words in which the late Cardinal Newman 1 gave expression to that belief. Some may also recall the words in which tentatively, perhaps, rather than from any sure convic- tion James Anthony Froude set over against this accusing voice a sunnier and more optimistic view 2 of the world's inhabitants. The first of these, Newman's, the speech for the prosecution, expounds the traditional doctrine of sin; the second statement, Froude's, the speech for the defence, gives us a literary man's graceful interpretation of the findings of evolution. How are we to compare these two views of mankind as ruined by the Fall, and as slowly emerging into better things? Can we harmonise them? If a harmony is possible, how is it to be achieved? Or where is concession to be made? Such questions as these invite our attention. Perhaps it need not be deemed surprising that Christian theology was somewhat long in grappling with the difficulties which belief in evolution suggests for doctrines 1 Apologia pro Vita Sua, chapter v. 3 Short Studies: "The Oxford Counter Reformation," Letter 6. HENRY DRUMMOND ON EVOLUTION 263 of sin or of a Fall. The late Henry Drummond left the problem severely alone, although all his life he was feeling for a reconciliation between religion and science. His earlier book, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, contained a very grave, almost a fatalistic, doctrine of sin. And this doctrine was supposed to find support in science ; but the aspect of modern science to which it appealed was that furthest removed from evolutionism. The book appealed to Biogenesis to the disproof, by experiment, of spontaneous generation to the proof that life never originates in the world to-day save from antecedent life of kindred stock, so far at least as our knowledge reaches and our tests apply. These are not evolutionary doctrines ; these are rather difficulties for evolutionary belief. It was upon such scientific but scarcely evolutionary findings that Drummond built up the argument of his earlier treatise. Life in the soul of man, he inferred, can come only from the direct touch of God. His later considerable book was the Lowell lecture, entitled The Ascent of Man. Drummond's views, we may safely take it, had undergone a change. He did not wish the second book regarded as a supplement to the first, but rather as a substitute for it. In the later book he is a very thoroughgoing evolutionist, but he takes no notice of the problem constituted by the fact of sin. The truth is, he was engrossed with a different problem : Does nature, as evolutionists interpret it, reveal, or even admit of, a God of love ? Is not nature too truly, too terribly, "red in tooth and claw," to spare the sweet dreams of early ignorance or to sanction the credulity of faith ? Drummond took, in reply, the line associated with the name of John Fiske. He claimed that struggle for existence is but a one-sided description of the facts of nature that there are beginnings of morality, love, self- sacrifice, far down in the animal world. We understand 264 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN how Drummond came to omit dealing with the fact of sin; yet we cannot but mark the omission. A beginning of study occurs in an essay by the late Aubrey Moore, to which Mr. Tennant refers us : "All this beautiful theory of evolution, of progressive development from inorganic to organic, from brute to man, and its continuation in the history of man from primitive times to the present day, is confronted by the doctrine of the Fall." 1 Aubrey Moore's answer to the difficulty suggested by the "beautiful theory" was, in effect, that science itself knows of retrogression, and that the fall of man was simply the greatest instance in all history of Nature's tendency to retrogression or degeneration. We find essentially the same position, upon this particular point, in a recent interesting popular book, The Ascent Through Christ. The author, Mr. Griffith- Jones, tries to carry one step further the argument of I)rummond's Ascent of Man. Not Descent indeed, but rather Ascent ! Only the ascent has difficulties, and it has conditions. Its great difficulty is sin or the Fall; it great precondition, according to Christians, is the appearance on earth of Jesus Christ; evolution goes victoriously onwards through His agency. So far as sin is concerned, this author, we say, essentially concurs with Aubrey Moore. Nature knows of degenera- tion; the fall into sin is the great degeneracy. When we pass from these sketches and suggestions 2 to Mr. Tennant' s work, we feel that he leads us much more into the heaxt of the subject. He has written two books upon the general theme. First, there is the Hulsean lecture of 1901-2 on the Origin and Propagation of Sin; 1 Essays Scientific and Philosophical, p. 61. 2 Mr. Tennant has his own list of precursors, different from ours. To one of these, Manchester, like other parts of our land, owes no small gratitude to Archdeacon (now Canon) Wilson. MR. TENNANT'S WRITINGS 265 its preface is dated April, 1902. Secondly, there is a historical study of the growth of beliefs regarding sin, in the Old Testament, in Jewish literature, in the New Testament, and in Christian theology before Augustine. This is entitled The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, and dates from July, 1903. Naturally, our limitations here confine us almost entirely to the first and smaller book; indeed, to portions of it. The subject is further elucidated in several reviews of Mr. Tennant's writings one, enthusiastically favourable, in the American Journal of Theology, by Professor Stevens ; one, pretty stiff in condemnation, in the Journal of Theological Studies, by Canon Mason ; and one by Mr. Boutwood in the Hibbert Journal. 1 Two notices in the Theol. Literaturzeitung come from the pen of Dr. Clemen, himself a worker in similar fields. They are respectful and appreciative quite unusually so, for a German notice of English work, though we believe Dr. Clemen has given evidence of candour and large-mindedness before now, in reviewing English contributions to theology. There can be no doubt as to the learning and diligence of Mr. Tennant, or as to the value of his contribution to the history of opinion. On that side he is probably very strong. We cannot, however deal with his views on that side. And in the region in which we do try to scrutinise his writings, we may unhappily be forced into a more critical attitude. First of all, then, Mr. Tennant denies the historical character of the Fall story. Here it would seem that he iWith the last, the present writer finds himself particularly in agree- ment. When one considers what unsatisfactory and superficial things book-reviews generally are, one may congratulate Mr. Tennant upon having set his reviewers thinking, and upon having secured from them real contributions to debate. 266 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN is plainly right. It seems a hopeless thing to try, like some writers, simply to cut away excrescences, while preserving a belief in the original innocence of the human race. It will not do, with Mr. Aubrey Moore, to attenuate the implications of the Church doctrine of Adam. " No one supposes that the first man was supernaturally gifted with scientific knowledge, or that he was a born meta- physician, or a mathematician, or an artist, or a musician." 1 A "born" metaphysician is a strange phrase, by the way, for one who, at least according to the literal tenor of Genesis 2, never was born at all, but was framed out of a little dust, and made alive by the Divine breath; but let that pass. " No one supposes," says Mr. Moore ; do they not ? They certainly did, in previous centuries ; and among them not the least considerable of writers. "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens the rudiments of Paradise " this is South's assertion ; and Mr. Tennant's further quotation, from Bishop Bull, is in substance, if not in form, still more extravagant. A doctrine of sin, we may affirm, must not any longer strive to support itself by imaginary constructions of the pre- history of the human race. Nor did men need evolutionary theories to teach them this. If some divines erred extravagantly, there were others who spoke words of sober- ness regarding Genesis 1 3 before modern evolutionary theories were dreamt of. Dr. Nathaniel Lardner, the very learned apologetic writer of the 18th century, who fights a battle all along the line, resolving every doubt, dis- entangling every scriptural discrepancy even he will not grant that the Genesis 3 is history. Still there is no doubt that the acceptance of the origin of the human race from races of a purely animal type furnishes a new objec- 1 Essays, p. 61. ORIGINAL SIN AND HEREDITY 267 tion to regarding the Fall as literal fact. If fresh arguments were needed, evolution has supplied us with them. And, so far, Mr. Tennant's attitude towards the narrative of Genesis 3 is an application of evolutionary theory to the theological doctrine of sin. If we had time or liberty to go further into detail, we should find that Mr, Tennant agrees with those l who place the Fall narrative ethically pretty low. It is a culture myth, he thinks; and the central idea is that of a jealous Divine power which grudges man his advancement. But it is not within our scope to inquire whether that view is just. In the second place, quite apart from the question of the historicity of Genesis 3, theology has asserted the universal inheritance of sin, passing by descent from father to child. Indeed, as men's minds have opened to the modern or scholarly view of the early chapters of Genesis, there has been a disposition to concentrate attention upon the facts of experience in laying a foundation for Christian dogma. The fact, or apparent fact, of hereditary sin is what recent conservative theology generally means by original sin. Any critic of the doctrine of original sin may indeed fairly hold it to its larger assumptions; as also to certain unsavoury details, upon which we will not enter. Still, the modification hinted at results in a characteristically modern theology ; and those who maintain this conception of sin often appeal to the teaching of Biologists. Mr. Tennant quotes from Dr. Orr's Christian View of God and the World; Augustinianism " has singular support in the modern doctrine of heredity." A distinguished teacher at Lancashire Independent College in a former generation, the late Mr. Herbert, 1 With Wellhausen, e.g., against Gunkel. 268 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN pencils on the margin of Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination : " Heredity is the physical counterpart of the doctrine of original sin " a more guarded phrase. 1 Nay, even if it is not to be viewed as a modernised doctrine of original sin, hereditary wickedness is at any rate one part or phase of the old doctrine. How then does Mr. Tennant deal with it? He states very clearly the theological puzzle which axises for Christians in connection with the fact of sin. He calls it "the old antinomy, first brought to light in the Pelagian controversy." " On the one hand, evil is so universal as to suggest a common origin for the sinfulness of the whole race; on the other hand, our sense of guilt demands that each one is ' the Adam of his own soul.' " 2 The explanation of universality by heredity fails, however, to meet the needs of the case. First, Mr. Tennant tells us that there is no heredity on the psychological side. Traducianism involves impossible materialistic metaphysics of the mind. The only admissible doctrine of the origin of human souls is a purified creationism, such as we find in Lotze. Here, it would seem, Mr. Tennant the philosopher speaks. Now it is as a student of science that he offers us fresh light. Science in contrast to philosophy is, almost narrowly, his chosen basis of argument. Yet he rejects traducianism, not apparently on grounds of science, in the strict sense rather because he cannot see how one pair of minds should possibly be able to procreate another mind. Is not this perilous reasoning for an empiricist? 1 A friend of the present writer's, having incautiously censured Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World, in conversation with the late Dr. James Candlish of Glasgow, as " leading to a most horrible Calvinism," received the quiet and confident answer, " The close study of science generally does lead to Calvinism"/ 2 Page 79. WEISMANN'S LIMITATION OF HEREDITY 269 Thousands of processes go on around us whose mechanism eludes us. In other words, processes are constantly taking place, as facts, which antecedently we should have called impossible. And we may very well agree with Mr. Boutwood l that, if traducianism is hard to think out or to accept, creationism is in not much better case. But, secondly, having limited heredity to the physiological or bodily side of man's being, Mr. Tennant next appeals to Weismann's ultra-Darwinian doctrine. It is doubtful whether acquired qualities are inherited or it is worse than doubtful. If sin were to descend from parent to child it must resemble all mental qualities that descend; and these (says Mr. Tennant, quoting Ribot) are inherited through the correlated physical structures. Does sin do that? Does the flesh count for so much? Mr. Tennant does not press this difficulty, but rather appeals directly to Weismann's views. If sin is acquired, then it cannot be passed on by inheritance; that is his plea. He admits that Weismann has published many perilous speculations ; yet he thinks there is a solid basis of facts below them, separable from the superstructure. Such facts, growingly if not yet quite universally admitted, narrow the scope of direct heredity. Here, then, in dismissing belief in the literal inheritance of sin from parents to child, Mr. Tennant is explicitly following the guidance of evolutionary science. Still, in this, he follows only one school of scientific opinion. The authority is precarious. One is tempted to hint a further criticism, and to ask for a careful metaphysical scrutiny of the tools with which evolutionary science works. Are its conceptions clear and satisfactory? What is an acquired quality? Is it a purely new thing, tied up in a iHibbert Journal for July, 1904 (review of Mr. Tennant's books), p. 831. T 270 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN bundle with other separate qualities? Mere science, for its own ends, may not need to ask such questions. A little philosophy might, it is true, help even the specialists in their narrow round. Still, if the man of science says : "My conceptions are my tools, and they do the work I require them for," perhaps that is enough. But to cut all things in heaven and earth to the pattern of these working tools is the sort of proceeding that takes one's breath away. However, we need not press this criticism, at least for the present. There are difficulties other than those which Weismann alleges in the conception of physically inherited moral depravity. It is even doubtful whether hereditary sin would amount to what theology is in search of. As far as one can perceive, a doctrine of sin, on the basis of a theory of heredity broader than Weismann's, would teach that the children of very bad men have, in the language of a great lover of theology, "a double dose of original sin," including, one presumes, a double dose of the Divine displeasure. That is early Old Testament doctrine, ensconced in the Ten Commandments; but we are not aware that any school of Christian theology has followed this lead. May we not say that the appeal of theology to heredity, even if heredity were at our service here, is a false start? One can accept Mr. Tennant's conclusion at this point, whether or not one agrees with his arguments. There is no need to thread the perplexities of the scientific objections to an inherited condemnation. Morality objects ! That is relevant, and that suffices. Thirdly, we have to consider Mr. Tennant's positive and constructive teaching on the question of sin and its origin. Referring to a rather doubtful sally of Mr. Aubrey Moore's : " Sin cannot be explained, for it is irrational the one irrational, lawless, meaningless thing in the whole universe," Mr. Tennant draws an apt SIN AS AN ANACHRONISM 271 distinction. Aubrey Moore, he says, plays on the word " irrational." " Sin is irrational in the sense of foolish, but not in the sense of being inexplicable, as we hope to show in a subsequent lecture." 1 These last are brave words. The problem of evil, from which so many intellects have turned away with a hopeless sense of mystery, is to have its heart plucked out in a little thin octavo of less than 250 pages. Modern science is to elucidate the whole origin of evil. What is the explanation offered us? The explanation is twofold, or proceeds along two lines, which, it is claimed, yield a consentient testimony. There is first the evolutionary doctrine in the stricter sense the doctrine of the descent of mankind from merely animal races. And there is, secondly, the contribution of child psychology the study of the young human individual emerging out of merely animal existence into the life of reason, conscience, morality. Morality is nothing else than the humanising of the brute instincts. We are to "move upward, working out the beast " or rather, perhaps, transforming the beast within us into a really higher animal. Sin, in language which Mr. Tennant owes to Canon Wilson, is an anachronism. What once was good, because innocent, turns bad, because it persists too long. The same conclusion, we are told, is reached by all child- psychologists in regard to the individual. Impulses and passions which strike the onlooker as disproportionate, and therefore as bad, are really, it seems, signs of a healthy strength of nature, which will find its way by and bye into the right channels. The result is apparently this there is no such thing, in a moral sense, as human nature, antecedently to the action of will. Everyone starts at the same point, with his animal inheritance, neither 1 Page 184. 272 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN vitiated nor refined by centuries of human history. Even Jesus Christ, we are plainly told, inherited exactly the same animal nature, of neutral moral colour not a sinful nature; not a sinless nature; just an animal nature; that is all, it would seem, that can be transmitted from parent to child. At every generation, in every young human life, there is a reversion to the purely animal, and moral evolution begins afresh. Up till now, it has always happened that each child of the race, somewhere or other, has fallen into sin. Only one exception can be found in "the sinless years That breathed beneath the Syrian blue." That the exception has been a solitary one does not surprise Mr. Tennant. He thinks the animal instincts, while they are the raw material of goodness as well as of sin, and while they are not incapable of being controlled by our higher powers, are yet very difficult to control. And so the problem is solved. The universality of sin is due to the universality of our animal inheritance. We all start with this strong, crude, promising, yet perilous endowment with this high but most difficult task. The guilt of sin is due to the fact that each of us miscarries. We might have done better; but we do not achieve the difficult possibility. We all slip into evil ways. There is no single Fall ; there have been as many Falls as souls in history, not before history; in the world, not before birth; yet as many Falls as human souls, save only for the case of Jesus Christ. Mr. Tennant is anxious to avoid what he regards as the onesidedness of Pelagius, though he frankly tells us that, in blaming Pelagius, he does not mean to acquit Augustine of blame. 1 Is not his own doctrine, after all, deeply 1 Pp. 13, 14. PELAGIAN VIEWS OF SIN 273 marked with Pelagian characters? We do not wish to raise a prejudice against it by saying this only to learn where we really stand. If a leading politician did not entirely jest when he said, a few years since, " We are all Socialists now," the theologian may be tempted to exclaim with a good deal of earnest meaning, " We are all Pelagians now." l Historic Pelagianism anticipated the cheerful verdict of popular evolutionism the wording, we believe, is due to Henry Ward Beecher that the Fall was a fall "upwards." Julian, if not Pelagius, claimed that the Fall of man, looked at all round, amounted to a distinct improvement. 2 Again, if Pelagianism tended to speak more boldly than Mr. Tennant of the possibility of sinless men appearing among mankind, that is perhaps rather a difference in the working out of principles, or in the open statement of results, than in the substance of the principles themselves. A third distinction may seem to be more solid. The Pelagians, with their comfortable optimism, declared that it is easy to be good. And hence men are to be blamed; they go out of their way to do wrong. Mr. Tenuant on the contrary, as we know, tells us our task is difficult " stupendously difficult," he writes in one 1 An important school of German theologians ought to be excepted from this statement. Dr. Clemen, in the review already mentioned, blames Mr. Tennant for pinning himself to Free Will " in the meta- physical sense," and claims that a determinist can adopt great part of Mr. Tennant's theodicy a chapter in his little book on which we have not been able to touch. So, too, Professor Otto Ritschl, Albrecht Ritschl's son, biographer, and disciple, has lately announced his pre- ference for determinism. One may, for one's own part, feel this new theological determinism to be a very bewildering thing. But one must note its existence. 3 Harnack's Hist of Dogma, Part ii., Book ii., chap. 4 ; E. T. vol. v., p. 197; quoting the Opus Imperfectum of Augustine, vi., 14. 274 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN passage, where lie emphasises "man's crying need of grace, and his capacity for a gospel of redemption." 1 This may seem a marked difference; but is it so great? The Christian word is not "difficult " but impossible. " The things that are impossible with men are possible with God." "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." If the thing is pronounced possible, sanguine temperaments will judge it easy, while the anxious-minded call it difficult. 2 Such differences are far from being fundamental. Further, one may quote against this theory some paragraphs by J. B. Mozley. Mr. Tennant refers to Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, and also to his paper on Mysterious Truths. But he makes no reference to the paper we have in view, on Original Sin. Yet it is surely a much superior discussion, exhibiting Mozley, a strong but unequal writer, at his best in point of thought, and free from entangling assumptions; if not immaculate in grammar or style. " Original sin is, fundamentally, simply universal sin. That is the thing which is at once the evidence and the substance of it. We know that, if sin is universal, and if there is no instance of a human being without it, universal sin must receive the same interpretation that any other universal does, namely, that it implies a law, in consequence of which it is universal. Nobody supposes that anything takes place universally by chance, accident, or what we call curious coincidence. We know that there must be 1 Page 110. 1 A great deal of Augustinianism, which sounds like a libelling of human nature, is a roundabout way of extolling the grace of God. We do not say that the Augustinian doctors have fitted the puzzle together in the right fashion. But we do say, That is their motive. MOZLEY ON ORIGINAL SIN 275 some law working in the case. That is the reason why we talk of the laws of Nature. The laws of Nature are only, in their foundation, facts facts which always happen in certain circumstances ; but, because they are universal, we invariably, and by the very construction of our minds, infer that there is a cause for their universality ; we cannot imagine that a thing occurs universally by chance." . . . "And this consequence applies just as much to the fact of sin in the human race, if it is universal. If it is universal, if no man who ever lived was without it, and not only his whole life without it, but if no man was ever without it altogether, in any moment of his life if not in act or word, still in thought or some inner and latent desire and inclination of his mind; if sin is thus universal, it must be so by some law." ..." Supposing we knew nothing of the existing facts of human nature, and were only told that a race of beings were created who had the power of acting well or ill, according as they chose, and that the side each individual would take was beforehand a contingency, could we prophesy that all would be sinners? We should have no ground for such a prophecy. Beforehand, each man would be as likely to avoid sin as to fall into it. When, then, in matter of fact we find that all men are under sin, and that nobody gets free from it, we find a state of things that could not have been calculated upon, on the sole hypothesis of a contingent action of freewill in each." 1 We must confess that this criticism seems to us to refute by anticipation Mr. Tennant's whole theory. That theory does not fit the facts. It points to the frequency of sin; it may even account for the preponderance of sinners in the human race ; but it does not afford any explanation of the universal prevalence of sin. There is another pair of 1 Lectures, pp. 136-138. 276 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN sentences from Mozley's paper which may be added here, in view not only of Mr. Tennant's results, but of Professor Stevens' enthusiastic praise. " It is sometimes said St. Paul only makes mention of original sin in four or five texts as if it were a slight exceptional and casual basis in the apostle's language on which the Church had founded the doctrine of Original Sin. But when we examine although the actual law itself is seldom laid down in terms in reality and implicitly every universal of St Paul's is a law; for you can not assert a universal without tacitly asserting a law. In truth, then, the doctrine of Original Sin is contained in that whole language in which St. Paul asserts the universal fact of sin." 1 These are forcible words. Fourthly, there is another element in Mr. Tennant's appeal to evolution which we have not yet stated. He seems to attach great importance to it, for he names it over and over; and it constitutes peihaps a more real variation from the Pelagian type than anything else we have discussed above. The element is this : Man is still developing; no abstract concept of human nature can be a safe guide; we must leave indefinite room for growth and change in the powers of the race. What does this mean? Taken in an extreme sense, the doctrine would strike us dumb. There is no use in making remarks about man, or about anything else, if the creature may evolve into something wholly different while we are talking. We should have four terms then, if not more, in every syllogism; the subject of our propositions, like a restive horse that kicks and plunges, could never be harnessed to that which it is meant to draw. But, as Mr. Tennant himself offers us doctrines of man and explanations of the 1 Lectures, p. 141. MODIFIABLENESS OF HUMAN NATURE 277 mystery of sin, he cannot mean anything so extreme as that. Does he mean that human nature grows worse ? It is not inconceivable. Mr. Tennant by no means belongs to the party who tell us that sin is a trifle to ignore, or a superstition to cast aside. Away back at the dawn of history he seems to recognise progressive degeneration. The first sin was probably a very small matter; but gradually the bad state established itself. 1 However, it would be a quaint type of evolutionism that chiefly insisted on limitless evolution in evil. On the other hand, does he mean that the race may evolve into perfection? As was said before, we see nothing in his principles which precludes the possibility of perfect men arising in the course of nature. Such a hope might take the form of expecting a future evolution into perfect goodness. But then one recalls that Mr. Tennant believes himself to have given a scientific explanation of the universal fact of sin. And one has to drop that view. Briefly, we do not think that this doctrine of evolutionary modifiableness affects Mr. Tennant's argument. It is rather a display of rhetoric than a piece of logic. It makes an effective appearance, but does little work even in the author's own mind. We do not deny his facts only their relevance. Of course there is modifiableness in man. We all grant it; we all assert it. But one must claim further to advance, with no very wide margin of error, an assertion as to the possibilities and impossibilities of natural human modifiableness. Or, if we cannot do that, what help is to be got from empirical knowledge of the past? If man is growing into the Uebermensch it doth not yet appear, says Mr. Tennant, what man shall be even in this life 2 are not records of 1 Page 91. 2 Page 172. 278 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN earlier days doubly useless? They tell only of the lower levels; of stages which, according to Mr. Tennant's philosophy, seem fossil things, long ago dead and done with. Our task was to discuss evolutionary theories in their bearing on the doctrine of sin. No wise man will doubt that these theories have contributions to make to theology, as to everything else that investigates man or nature. So far as the theories incorporate proved facts, we must defer to them. So far as they are speculative, we may hope to derive from them luminous suggestions, in the theological as in other regions. In order to criticise Mr. Tennant further, one would have to diverge into philosophy, on lines briefly, but suggestively, sketched by Mr. Boutwood. The latter hints the inquiry, whether we are to place Mr. Tennant among the adherents of philosophical naturalism. It would hardly be fair to answer "yes" to this very searching question. No Christian theologian, unless by a tour de force, can place himself in the camp of naturalism; and Mr. Tennant writes straightforwardly, betraying no morbid taste for subtlety or intellectual intrigue. But it seems perfectly true that evolution, as Mr. Tennant conceives it, is simply naturalistic evolution. He borrows the concept, unexamined, and unaltered, from the men of science. In biology, their definitions may work well enough. But the fresh materials of philosophy and theology demand a fresh study and a higher point of view. In the substance of his teaching, Mr. Tennant makes a protest against the difficult or intolerable elements of Augustinianism. No wonder he protests. We have said it already; in a sense, we are all Pelagians now. But is there not another side? Always relapsed from, dismissed, despised, does not Augustinianism always rise up again HARNACK ON ST. AUGUSTINE 279 alive? Why is this? Unless because Augustinianism bears witness to instincts in our nature, and elements in the Christian scheme, not easily done justice to by those who have been angered into revolt and antagonism. Many members of the University of Manchester have lately heard, from one of their number who has studied at Berlin, how a great living teacher of theology, Dr. Harnack, glows with enthusiasm as he expounds St. Augustine. 1 True, when we turn to the Berlin Professor's History of Dogma, we find that, after eloquent and striking pages on the great African Father, the author disengages himself from any acceptance of Augustinian principles. The sense of personal sin, it would appear, denotes a " limit " 2 mysterious term and the historian has nothing to do with it. If this merely meant that we are not entitled to project our doctrine of sin into an imaginary history before history, or to assert the literal Fall of Adam, we might readily accept Harnack's statements. But one judges that Dr. Harnack means more. He seems determined not to recognise the vision of sin in the human conscience as a thing which imparts knowledge of real facts. And so we cannot rank Harnack as, in any sense, an Augustinian. Yet does he not remain perhaps strangely enough among the witnesses to the vitality of Augustinianism? We are not certain that Albrecht Ritschl was as much in sympathy with Augustine as Harnack is, or even that his doctrine makes room for that deep-rooted belief of pious minds which Augustinianism seeks to express. But 1 An interesting paper on Adolf Harnack: the Man and his Work, was read by the Eev. H. J. Eossington, M.A., before the Manchester University Theological Society, on the afternoon of Feb. 28th, 1905. (See Primitive Methodist Quarterly for April, 1905). 1 E. T., vol. v., p. 220. 280 EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SIN one feels pretty sure that Mr. Tennant dismisses Ritschl's views too hastily. The distinctive features in E/itschl's doctrine of sin are two in number. One is the contrast between sins of ignorance and wilful sin. There seems no justification at all for the common charge, repeated once more by Mr. Tennant, that Ritschl regards the mass of sins as resulting purely from ignorance. He does not believe that sin is due to ignorance in any such sense as would remove its guilt. There is simply an element of ignorance in it ; "forgive them, they know not what they do !" It is, says Ritschl, the Divine point of view which connects sin with ignorance. For us, the main point remains sin needs to be forgiven. 1 The second feature in Eitschl's construction is a kind of doctrine of social heredity. We inbreathe, as it were, a morally tainted life, along with the intellectual attainments, along with the very moral ideals, which society hands on to us. Thus we all become, so to speak, guilty in the first degree, without and before the exercise of will. No one, however, becomes guilty in the second degree the degree which is fatal except by his own deliberate choice. We do not say that this makes the difficulty (or, as Mr. Tennant calls it, the antinomy) dis- appear. On the contrary, the difficulty remains universal sin, personal guilt. But in Eitschl's treatment it is at least re-stated, attenuated, made more bearable to the conscience, brought closer to facts. God's anger does not attach, upon this view, to anything except deliberate personal evil. If the universality even of a measure of sin perplexes us and it does yet is not this implied in every serious doctrine of sin? A socially propagated heredity in evil, however mysterious upon one side, seems 1 Justification, vol. iii. ; E.T., p. 377. Compare also Unterricht in der Christlichen Religion. MORAL ATOMISM 281 more credible than any physical transmission of the burden. Perhaps it is more credible, too, than moral atomism. And one cannot dismiss the fear that, if the conception of mankind is to be confined to "zoology," 1 we shall have nothing left us on the moral side but a congeries of human atoms, without relation to each other, and without meaning or worth. 1 Page 172. THE WISDOM OF THE EAST, AND HOW IT CAME TO THE WEST. THE WISDOM OF THE EAST, AND HOW IT CAME TO THE WEST. BY PROF. T. W. EHTS DAVIDS, F.B.A., Ph.D., LL.D. IT will be my task to-night to give you an account as clear as I can make it in the very short time at our disposal of what has been known in the West about the Wisdom of the East. This may, I am afraid, be disappointing to some of you. I should not be surprised to learn that some have come here to-night to hear, in the course of a single lecture, what the Wisdom of the East is. It would be characteristic of some modern views of education to suppose that to be possible; and Western self-complacency might possibly imagine that all the Wisdom of the East could be adequately treated in one short hour. I cannot share that view. There are many systems of the Wisdom of the East ; and the greatest proficient in the art of boiling down could not hope even to make himself clear were he to attempt, in an hour, a description of the divergent and conflicting views of Confucianists and Taoists, of Brahmins, of Bud- dhists, and of Jains, of the Magi of Persia, and of the important schools of thought and ethics in China and Japan. But what has been known of all these in the 284 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST West is a smaller matter. The story of how that knowledge came to the West is full of interest, and full also of sug- gestion. One may reasonably hope, with the help of your kind attention, to compress at least the main features of it into the time allotted, and even to draw the moral of the tale. We all know the description of the wisdom of Solomon, how it "exceeded the wisdom of all the children of the East." This is conclusive evidence that, at the time when the passage was first written, the Wisdom of the East had, on the shores of the Mediterranean, a very high reputation among the more cultured people, the writers and readers of hooks. And this evidence does not stand alone. We have quite a number of Greek stories of the men considered wisest among the Greeks- Thales, Pythagoras, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Demokritos having travelled to the East to learn wisdom there. We need not stop to discuss whether the stories are true. It is evident that to the inventors and repeaters and hearers of them this was con- sidered probable, or, in other words, that, in their opinion, Wisdom was to be found in the East. So in the Gospel story of Bethlehem, when wise men came to worship the new-born child, it is from the East that they are said to have come. In all these traditions the very vaguest ideas are con- nected with both expressions, with Wisdom and with the East. If we examine the details we find that wisdom means knowledge about plants and birds and beasts and stars, wise saws about human conduct, what we call worldly wisdom, and those vague speculations which were the first beginnings of thought. Were we to translate these notions into our modern terms botany, biology, astronomy, ethics, and philosophy we should effectually hide from THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH 285 ourselves what the ancient wisdom was. It does not follow that we need think it unworthy of respect. No one specialised. It was an all-round training. And the ancient guesses at truth are often evidence of intellectual power and moral earnestness, as well as of rare thought. It was by their own that the dwellers by the Mediterranean, very naturally, gauged the Wisdom of the East. Only they thought it better. Did they hope that it would give them a key to all mysteries? If we may argue back from a touching and instructive story of a later date, we may surmise that they did. The story is as follows : In the 6th century of our era in the time of Khosru Nushirvan, King of Persia, there lived in that land a famous physician, wealthy, beloved of the king, a friend of the poor. He charged no fee to any man, and ga,ve money to those patients that were in want. But after many years he becomes disenchanted. The ills of the mind are a constant obstacle to his efforts to cure the ills of the body. How to cure them? That seems to him to be the question now. And he devotes his life to finding out the answer. All systems of religion and philosophy he studies. But in vain. Then he hears of Wisdom in the East; of wise men there, and of a wonderful book. So he goes to India, and after years of search and study returns home with the book, which he translates into Pahlevi, the ancient Persian of that time. Now, we have that book. The original work of Barzoye the famous physician, is indeed lost. But we have a translation of it into old Syriac of nearly contemporary date, and another translation, independent of the Syriac, into Arabic, made under the Khalif Almansur, about two centuries later. From these two versions we can obtain a very exact idea as to what the original was like. What 2S6 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST was it then this outcome of hopes so high pursued with an earnestness, an intelligence, and a patient labour so rare? It was a collection of beast fables. It seems, at first sight, that, though the very mountains have been in labour, they have brought forth a ridiculous mouse. In some respects that is so, but not in others. Two ob- servations press themselves upon us. The first is that at the time when Barzoye spent those years in India there were in full vigour there at least two of the most note- worthy philosophies (or religions, or views of life) which the world has produced. There were others also of lesser note. But we need only mention two the sublime teach- ings of the Upanishads, a poetical Pantheism of remark- able insight and power; and the system of self-training, the conquest of the world by the conquest of self, elabo- rated on the basis of an intellectual psychology by the early Buddhists. Either Barzoye was himself incapable of appreciating either of these, or he considered his public incapable of appreciating them. In other words, the amount of intellectual profit any individual or nation can receive from abroad depends upon the degree of its own individual attainments, of its own receptivity. A more constant recollection of this obvious truism would have prevented many of the vague statements that have obscured this important historical question. The other point is not nearly so obvious; but it is, historically, a very interesting one. Beast fables do not occupy now among ourselves a very high place in litera- ture. Stories about animals, such as those of Rudyard Kipling and other popular writers, belong to a different class altogether. Simple fables, like those of ^Esop, are no longer written; and when the old ones are read they are considered milk for babes. It is the same wherever we look in Europe and Asia Minor,in Persia, India, and TRANSMIGRATION OF FABLES 287 China, fables are no longer written. The world has out- grown them. Their place has been taken by more elaborate stories. But in Barzoye's time, and for centuries before and after, they were all the vogue. His work was trans- lated into all the principal languages of Europe, that into Greek being entitled "A sample of the Wisdom of the Indians of Old," and that into Latin, "A Guide to Human Life." The stories were repeated and dispersed in every possible way. They were turned into poetry. They are constantly quoted in Christian sermons, homilies, and books of edification. And I have no hesitation in saying that in Europe, through the Dark Ages, the fables of Barzoye, and those allied to them, were more read, and more popular, than the Bible itself. I have said, " those allied to them." For we now know the original source from which Barzoye's fables came ; that it contained others of a like tendency ; and that these others had also reached the West. In the 3rd Century B.C., that is in the 3rd Century after the Buddha's death, the Buddhists had included in their sacred books a col- lection of Indian folklore, the oldest and most authentic collection of folklore in existence. This happened in a curious way. The Indians, as is well known, believed in previous births. Everyone had had such previous births, though only those far advanced in the spiritual life could recollect their own, or point out those of other people. The Buddha had been, very naturally, at first identified with certain famous sages and prophets of old. But a few generations after his death the Buddhists were not satisfied with this. They thought that so excellent and so wise a person as the Buddha must have taken many previous births in which to acquire his goodness and wisdom. And as they really knew nothing about such previous births the happy idea occurred to some early Buddhist, 288 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST whose name is now forgotten, to fill up the gap by sup- posing that the hero or good character in each of the then most popular folk tales and fables was really only the Buddha himself in a previous birth. Now, I need not ask you to believe in these previous births. Even the earliest Buddhists, whose ideas on the subject were quite different, did not believe in them. But I can ask you to rejoice that, by this curious chance, this invaluable old collection of folklore has thus been preserved in the very language of the people among whom it was current. By way of introduction or preface to this collection the compiler or compilers prefixed a life of the Buddha in his present ordinary life. And now comes in a curious fact. This life of the Buddha was worked up by a Christian at the court of Almansur, into an edifying novel. This book, the first religious romance published in the West, became most popular. It was translated into Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch so much did its moral tone please the taste of the Middle Ages. And its hero, the Buddha, was canonized as a Christian saint, and had a day ap- pointed for his worship in both the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.* But we must leave these fables, however interesting their story, and however large their importance in what was then considered to be the Wisdom of the East. There are other matters, of higher import, in which Eastern and early Western speculation were so closely allied that it has been supposed that the West was indebted to the East. Take a striking case, the use of the doctrine of Herak- leitos that everything in the world is in a constant state *See for further details my "Buddhist Birth Stories," pp. xxxvi. xli. NOTHING IS, EVERYTHING BECOMES 289 of flux, afterwards expressed by the celebrated phrase, iravra. pel. Nothing ever is, everything is becoming. That is precisely a fundamental doctrine, one of the three base-doctrines, of Buddhism. Or take that other doctrine of Herakleitos, that the many apparently independent, conflicting, impermanent things are really one, are really in harmony. This is very closely allied to the main doctrine of the Upanishads the rival teaching in India to that of the Buddhists. In both case the date would allow of a borrowing. The Indian ideas are earlier. And inter-communication, through Persia, was then possible. But similarity, or even identity of ideas, is no proof of borrowing. There can be independent development. And we must be very careful. For Western scholars are often very jealous of the credit of their own intellectual forefathers, and loth to admit that they can have borrowed anything. A distinguished Oxford scholar has said : " The Greeks did not borrow their philosophy from the Orientals, and that for the very good reason that the Orientals had no philosophy at all to borrow." We cannot be so bold as that. We cannot sweep away, with a gesture of contempt, Confucius and Lao Tsii, the Upanishads, and the Buddha and Zoroaster. But we can recognise that of the two explanations, inde- pendent development and direct borrowing, the former is, on either side, very much more probable. And that is especially the case with large generalisations such as "There is no being, there is only a becoming." Where we can postulate a borrowing is in more concrete things. Anaximander, for instance, is said to have learnt the secret of the sundial from the East; and that is very prob- ably so. We know that the Greeks obtained their alphabet from the East. We moderns, in arithmetic, use the numerals wrongly called Arabic. They came from India; 290 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST and are only Arabic inasmuch as it was through the Arabs that they were introduced from India to Europe. Just so we are accustomed to talk of Turkish baths. But they are fully described in Indian Buddhist books of the 4th Century B.C., and are only called Turkish because they were adopted by us, in modern times, through the Turks. As is well known, the Romans also had such baths. I am not aware of any evidence that the Romans borrowed them from India; and it is just possible that the Turks learnt the habit of using such baths only after they had conquered Constantinople, and derived them, therefore, from Roman civilisation. The probability, however, is the other way. But the Eastern origin of the so-called Arabic numerals is quite certain, for they have been clearly traced to India. And there are other instances of such borrowing of concrete notions, but these may suffice- In regard to the higher philosophy, I know only of two instances which are not really open to doubt. The first is that of Pythagoras. We have, in the teachings of this prophet, about whose life so many extraordinary legends have gathered, quite a number of details (each of which forms an integral part of the teaching in India before his time) which were always foreign to Greek conceptions, and cannot be explained by them. No one of these, standing alone, would be at all convincing. The whole, together, can most reasonably be explained by the hypo- thesis of direct borrowing. Pythagoras, who was born about the middle of the 6th Century B.C., founded an order of precisely the same kind as the orders then established in India. He taught a theory of transmigration agreeing, not only on its main outlines, but in many details, with the theory on that point then held by everyone in India. This theory has great attractions for many minds. But, in PYTHAGORAS 291 spite of its having been taught so early in the history of Greek thought, in spite of its having received the powerful support of Plato, it was, and always remained, an exotic in Greece. Pythagoras was a vegetarian, as the Indians were, and his practice was, in details, modified by excep- tions and restrictions just the same as obtained in India. The interdict on animal food was applied to beef; and a curious point is the prohibition against eating beans, found also in the Brahmin law books, and the rules of the Buddhist Order. He taught the doctrine of five elements, as held in India earth, air, water, fire, and a?ther the addition of asther being peculiar to him and the Indian philosophers. He was the first to enunciate in the West the so-called Pythagorean problem that is, the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid ; and also the square root of 2 both of them propositions solved, before his time, in India. When we also compare the importance attached to numbers, the peculiar mysticism, the claim to supernatural powers, peculiar to the Pythagoreans, with the similar phases in the Brahmin schools of India, we are forced to the conclusion that all this is not a mere matter of chance, and that there is a basis of truth in the legends about the long-continued sojourn of Pythagoras among the schools and teachers of the East. The other case is well known and undisputed. Porphyry (232304), the disciple of Plotinus (204269 A.D.), copies directly from the treatise of Bardesanes, which contains an account of the Brahmins. Both of these writers, and Philo, and Basilides, have strong points of affinity with certain phases of Indian thought. And it may be stated generally that both Neo-platonism and Gnosticism were permeated by Eastern speculation. But we should not forget to add that much of what was borrowed by these writers from the East belonged to the bizarre and ex- 292 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST travagant side of Mysticism ; for that was the sort of doctrine that most appealed to those who borrowed it. There was litle in this, or, indeed, in Pythagoras, of any real philosophic importance. Far better and deeper was that sort of Pantheistic mysticism which, imported through the Arabs (or rather through the learned Jews, who were the glory of the Arabic University of Cordova, in Spain, Averroes and Avicenna) exercised so deep an influence on the German mystics of later times. It has been shown that Spinoza was in his turn greatly influenced by this phase of thought. In our own days there has been also an influx of Eastern ideas into the West. But here I would desire to call your attention to a curious fact, namely, that there is a good deal of what purports to be the Wisdom of the East which does not come from the East at all. As an example, let me take the little book I hold in my hand, called " The Economy of Human Life." This is said on the title page to be " translated from an Indian manuscript written by an ancient Brahmin," and there is prefixed to it a long and circumstantial account of how the original MS. was ob- tained from Lhassa, in Tibet, by a gentleman then (in 1749) residing in China, who made, from Chinese, the version published in the little volume. The volume had a great success. It has just been republished in London, with a preface stating that the book, first published in 1783, had attained its 50th edition in 1812. Now this little book is not Eastern at all. We know enough of Brahmin views, and of the views current in Tibet, to know that it gives expression to neither the one nor the other. I need not detain you by pointing out the improb- abilities, not to say the impossibilities, of the elaborate story as to how the MS. was obtained in Lhassa. My opinion having been lately asked about the book, I looked THE ECONOMY OF HUMAN LIFE 293 into it and found that internal evidence made it abun- dantly clear that it must have been written in Europe, and probably by an Englishman. And I am now informed by my friend, Mr. Arthur W. Ilutton, that that is so ; and that the author of the work is the Earl of Chesterfield of that time, the author also of the famous letters to his son. In it he sets out his own view of the economy of human life. His manner of doing it, his pretence that it came from Tibet, gives him the opportunity of praising very highly his own book, at the same time investing it with a surreptitious mystery. This plan has its obvious advantages. And as to its morality, the Earl was only following very ancient and very famous examples. It .is particularly clever to have located the original work at Lhassa, in Tibet, as no one could then get there to inves- tigate the truth of the matter. Another example of the same kind, and manufactured, not improbably, in imitation of this very work, is Madame Blavatsky's " Secret Doctrine," which also purports to be founded on a MS. found in Tibet. Both books have been put together with very considerable ability; each has deceived many; but neither of them is any contribution to our knowledge of the Wisdom of the East. I am afraid I have wearied you with this slight sketch of what has actually happened in the West with regard to the Wisdom of the East. I will only now, very shortly, submit to you one or two of the conclusions which may, 1 think, be drawn. The first will sound to you very ungrateful. It is this : that hitherto, in spite of the long history we have skipped through, it is, as a matter of fact, very little of the Wisdom of the East which has got through to the West. We have in the world four districts inhabited by progressive peoples, 294 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST among whom the ancient magical and animistic beliefs have developed into an ethical religion, a beginning of science, an attempt at a philosophical view of life- These four are districts in the North of China, in the North of India, in the Mesopotamian valley, and on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. From the latter has arisen the civilisation we call the West. It knows a good deal of the thought of the district nearest to it, the thought of Persia; and through Persia it has received certain Indian ideas, especially those most easy of transfer, and most allied to its own thought, belonging to the Panthe- istic scheme of life contained in the Upanishads. But of the real wisdom of India, China, or Japan, its knowledge has hitherto been superficial and inaccurate. Secondly, what has been assimilated, or even understood, has not been any one of the systems of wisdom prevalent in the East, but only scattered fragments of various sys- tems, just as the soil happened to have been prepared for them by the stage of culture reached, at the particular time and place of each assimilation, in the West. In the third place, it has, I trust, been made evident that in one sense, the sense in which the expression has too often been used, there is no Wisdom of the East at all. That is to say, there is no one system of belief, no one body of doctrine or faith, no single rule for the conduct of life, which like some philosophers' stone can solve all our problems for us. There is no wise man, or body of wise men, hidden away in the recesses of the mountains of Tibet, or anywhere else, who can act as infallible and kindly guides and give us, with little or no trouble to our- selves, an easy solution of all the deepest mysteries of exis- tence. Wise men there have been, giants in intellect, masters of themselves, inspired by a noble moral enthusiasm, trained to think, and striving to think out, to NO ROYAL ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE 295 the best of their ability, those problems in religion and philosophy that are so vital to the welfare and progress of mankind. But each one of them has been the creature of his environment. He has built up (and has always been careful to emphasize the fact) on the foundations laid by previous workers. The doctrine he lays down, the arguments he uses, are profoundly modified by the pre- vious history of thought in the country where he lived and taught. The results, therefore, are not only diverse, they are often contradictory. And for us in the West to make any profitable use of those results, or even to grasp their higher meaning, must always be a matter of diffi- culty, a task only to be accomplished by industry and care. That such efforts would be amply rewarded the best authorities agree. The happy dwellers in the sunny East have in some respects a great advantage over us. We here are compelled, by the necessities of our climate, to think first of the means of providing food and warmth, so that considerations of pecuniary profit are apt to over- shadow all other pursuits. We scarcely give heed, so much as we ought, even to our own teachers in higher things. There, with no questions of economy to force themselves imperatively upon the attention, with no landlords, no slums, no struggle for wealth, the best thought of the people was able, already many centuries ago, to direct itself to the highest problems. We are still in the midst of our long conflict with nature. The condition of England question is still, and ought still to be, the pressing question. But the victory is in sight; and when we can turn from questions of economics to the sort of questions that have always loomed largest to the vision of the East, we shall find that in them also there is no royal road to knowledge, no escape from the necessity of self-control and work. 296 THE WISDOM OF THE EAST We are beginning already to know something more sub- stantial than has hitherto been known in the West of the Wisdom of the East. It is not a matter now of fragments. The devoted labour of the last generation of scholars of all nations has resulted in the publication of the whole literature of the Brahmins, and of all that is left of the literature of the Magi. The Pali Text Society, which I had the honour to found in 1882, has succeeded, though working under great financial difficulties, in publishing in the original Pali dialect all the early literature produced by the movement we now call Buddhism. And a fair beginning has been made towards deciphering in a similar way the literatures of Assyria and of the Far East. We owe a debt of gratitude to the men who have condemned themselves to a life of poverty, or even sacrificed their lives, in this pioneer work. One result is the wide increase of the interest felt in these questions. Another is the higher character of that interest no longer a mere senti- mental curiosity, but a craving of the intellect for real knowledge. The Universities of Europe, especially the more enterprising ones, are feeling the necessity of satis- fying, in some measure, this legitimate desire. Germany has now established no less than fifty-four chairs of Oriental research. The University of Paris has founded a special school for the comparative study of the history of religious beliefs. In England your own University at Manchester has set the example by founding the chair of Comparative Religion of which I have the honour to be the first incumbent, and of which this is, in a sense, the inaugural lecture. And since that appointment the young and vigorous University of Tokyo has established a similar chair. This the right method has, indeed, accomplished more in a life-time than had been accomplished in the nineteen THE RIGHT METHOD 297 previous centuries. By it, and by it alone that is to say, by the passionate patience of a band of earnest and critical students, East uniting with West and West with East the problem of the Wisdom of the East will at last be solved, and so thoroughly solved that it will be swallowed up in the larger problem of the religious and philosophical advancement of mankind. INDEX INDEX. A. Abd-Ashirta, sons of, their treasonable negotiations, 85 Abd-Khiba, town king under Amen- hotep IV., 97 Abraham, claimed by Jews as their father, 120; "true sons of," 144; promise to, 151 Acts of the Apostles, the, 50, 51 ; Jews referred to in, 108 ; on instruction of members of the church, 245 Adad, a deity, 83 Adad-nirari I. , King of Assyria, 89, 94 Adam, church doctrine of, 266 JEsop, fables of, 286 Africa, North, a centre of early Latin Christianity, 2;23 Ahijah, possible identity with Akhi- Yawi, 80 Akhi-Yawi, letter from, 80; identity of, 81, 82 Akia, messenger from "the great King," 78 Alexander the Great, effect on Judaism of coming of, 129 ; unification of Greek language produced by, 164 Alexandria, Schools of Judaism at, 155 ; Schools of Theology at, 199, 208 ; Training of Gregory at, 206 ; Origen at, 209-214 Almanzur, Khalif, 285, 288 Amanappa, letter addressed to, 77 Amarna, letters found at, 31, 73, 75, 77, 78, 80, 93, 94, 97, 99, 102; period, 92, 93, 96 Ambrose, St., his election to bishopric of Milan, 206 Amenhotep III. and IV., letters to, 74 IV., letter to, 84; establishes centre for worship of Aton, 93 ; town kings under, 97 Ammonius Saccas, Neo-Platonist, his lectures attended by Origen, 208, 213 Amon, a deity, 83 Amos, Book of, creation passages in, 44 Anaxagoras, his journey to the East to learn wisdom, 284 Anaximander, 289 Angelico, Fra, Dominican painter, 228 Anne, Queen of England, revival of church in reign of, 232 Anselm, St., 228 Antioch, Schools of, 208 ; rival to schools of Alexandria, 215 ; methods of, 216, 217 Antiochus Epiphanes. 130 the Great, 130 Antipater, 143 Antoninus Pius, Roman Emperor, description of Christian Worship given to, 240 Aphraates, Bishop, creed of, 255 ; shews no sign of Pauline theology, 256 Apocalyptic writings, Synopsis of, 125 ; Literature of centuries 200 B.C. 100 A. D., included in, 128; change in nature of, 132 ; Pompeian, Herodian, Vespasian and Final Cycles of, 141 ; place of origin of, 153-4; the product of the schools, 155 Apocrypha, Old Testament, 106 books included in, 128 Apollo, "bishop" of, at Rhodes, 173 Apollos, origin of his first knowledge, 239 Apostles, the handers down of tradition, 251 Aquila, expounding the way of God to Apollos. 240 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 228 ; system of, 181 Arabia, discoveries in, 31 King of, bidden to draw off, 140 Arabic, numerals so-called are really Indian, 289 Aramaeans, understanding between Babylon and, 85 Aramaic, language spoken by Jews, 48 ; influence in Babylon, 99 ; language of the unlearned, 108 ; translations of Hebrew Bible, 116 ; thought of, translated into Greek in New Testament, 171 Arian Controversy, the, 246, 254 Aristobulus, I., King of Israel, (105-104 B.C.) 132 IV INDEX Arminians, the, 178 Arnold, Thomas, " moral thoughtful- ness " of, 138 Art, Christian, in relation to Christian History, 219; Greek, 219, 230; Gnostic, 223 ; Byzantine, 224, 225 ; in the West, 227228 ; in Italy, 228, 229, 230 ; later Mediaeval, 230, 231 ; Reformation, 232 ; Modern English, Religious, 233 Artaxerxes Ochus, oppresses Palestine, 129 Asher, 81 ; settled in Galilee, 94 Ashirat, goddess, 79, 80 Ashkelon, revolt as far south as, 87 Ashur-bani-pal, 102 Ashur-dur-usur, Eponymy of, 102 Asia, churches of, on the point of adopting longer creeds, 244 Asia Minor, 70 ; Jews sent to, 129 ; pathway of History runs over, 130; Ionic spoken by Greek cities of, 165 ; feature of inscriptions of, 222 ; Christianity in, 222 ; baptismal confession in, 243 ; fables no longer written in, 287 Assyria, discoveries in, 31 ; supremacy over Semites of, 69 ; Babylon's vassal, 84 ; King of, 86 ; asserting itself in Mesopotamia, 88 ; place taken by Babylon, 89 ; claim to Hittite suzerainty, 90; in Syria, 90; cuneiform writing of, 97, 98 ; forward movememt of its influence in 9th century, 100102 ; movement to- wards deciphering literature of, 296 Athanasius, St., speaking against sec- taries of his time, 177, 178 ; lived in Byzantine Age, 226 Athens, training of Gregory of Nazianzus at, 207 Attic, supremacy of its dialect, 163, 165 Augsburg, Confession of, in some sense a creed, 235 Augustine of Hippo, St., contributions to thought about the Church sacra- ments, etc., 259; use of historical premises of Genesis I. and II., 151 Augustinianism, Mr. Tennant's protest againt difficult elements of, 278 Australia, Central, Natives of, 42 Averroes, 292 Avicenna, 292 Aziru, Amorite chief of northern Canaan, 78 B. Baalim, worship of, 43 Babylon, extent of its Empire, 69 ; decline of, 69 ; supremacy over Assyria, 69 ; its scribes, 92, 97 ; language of, 73, 74, 75, 92 ; its civilisation in Canaan, 76, 82 ; its influence in Egypt, 75, 76, 84 ; king of, 86 ; its power in Mesopotamia, 89 ; evidence of its civilisation in Hebrew literature, 98 ; Jews in, 40; Yahweh known in, 44; its influence on the Gospel, 61 ; discoveries in, 31 Bagoses, Persian General, captivity of Jews under, 129 Bardesanes, an account of the Brahmins contained in treatise of, 291 Barnabas, missionary journeys of, with St. Paul, 169 Barur.h, Apocalypse of, 108, 119, 123, 124, 126, 127, 149, 150 Barzoye, famous Persian physician, 285, 286, 287 Basil, St. , training of, 206 Basilides, affected by Indian thought, 291 Bauer, Bruno, New Testament critic, 53 Baur, F. C., founder of Tubingen school, 49, 51, 54 Baxter, Richard, importance of study of life of, 189 Beecher, Henry Ward, on the Fall, 273 Bel and the Dragon, instance of "Haggada," 196 Belram, mentioned in Babylonian letter, 79 Berlin, the study of Greek at, 166 Tablets, 74, 85, 86 Bethlehem, wise men came from the East to, 284 Bible, Hebrew, translated into verna- cular of Palestine, 108 Bickell, his reconstrnction of Job, 34 Bir-Idri, of Damascus, appeal to, 92 Blackie, Professor, declared Chalmers "not a theologian," 188 Blass, Author of Grammar of Neiv Testament Greek, 30 Blavatsky, Madame, real author of Secret Doctrine, professedly Eastern, 293 Bliss, Mr., excavator of Tell-el-Hasy, etc., 71,76 Boehnie, Jakob, mysticism of, 190 Bourignon, Anthoinette, importance of her life in study of mysticism, 189, 190 INDEX Bousset, his views on St. John, 56 Boutwood, Mr., his review of Mr. Tennant's book, 265, 298 ; on Tradu- cianism, 269 Brahmins, views of the, 283, 291 ; publica- tion of literature of, 296 Brethren " of the Free Spirit," 191 Britain, beginning of Christian History of, 223 Browning, Robert, Fra Lippo Lippi quoted, 229 Bruce, Dr., his view that Christ knew Book of Enoch, 112 Budde, Biblical critic, discoverer of Qinah Rhythm, 34 ; his view on religion of Yahweh, 45 Buddha, life of, 287, 288 Buddhists, views of, 283, 286 ; include Indian folklore among sacred books, 287 ; belief in previous births, 287 ; rules of, 291 ; publication of litera- ture produced by, 296 Bull, Bishop, on origin of human race, 266 Bunyan, John, humour of, 187 Buritpi, mentioned in Babylonian letter, 80 Burkitt, Mr., on Creed of Aphraates, 256 Burnaburyash, King of Babylon, recog- nises supremacy of Egypt, 84, 85 Burne Jones, Sir Edward, aim of, 229 Byzantine art, the age of, 224, 225, 226 C. Cresar, hope of better things from accession of, 142 title of "Son of God" applied to, 173 Csesarea, Nicene creed drawn up at, 203 ; training of Gregory of Isazianzus at, 206 ; schools of, 208 ; Origen at, 214, 215; Library at, 215 Caird, Dr., his Philosophy of Religion compared with Alexandrian teach- ing, 216 Calvin, John, Institutio of, 187 Calvinists, the, 178 Canaan, correspondence with, 76; rule of Egypt in, 76 ; letter addressed to Kings of, 78 ; Philistines reach, 88 ; Hebrews in, 43 ; Babylonian in- fluence in, 47 Canaanites, their use of Babylonian language, 81, 82 ; they make common cause with the Khabiri, 81 Carthage, Council of, prescribed examina- tion previous to ordination, 207 rich in Christian architecture, 223 Catacombs, the art of the, 221 Catechumens, training of, 203, 204, 207 Chalmers, declared "not a theologian," 188 Chesterfield, Earl of, real author of The Economy of Human Life, 293 Cheyne, Prof., Old Testament critic, 36 China, its schools of thought, 283 ; fables no longer written in, 287; philo- sophical thought of, 264 Christ, collection of his discourses, 58 ; ministry of, 105 ; opposed to doctrines of Pharisees, 106 ; use of Hebrew language in time of, 108 ; meaning of title, 109 ; different titles of, 110 the " Word," 237 ; the germ of creeds, 238 ; as preached by St. Paul, 238, 239; the Son of God, 240, 242, 243, 247 ; his relation to God, 249, 250, 251, 260 Chronicles, Book of, instances of " Hag- gada" in, 196 Chrysostom, St., scholar of Byzantine Age, 226 Clemen, Dr. , his review of Mr. Tennant's book, 265 Clement, the successor of Pantaenus at Alexandria, 208 Saint, of Rome, 221 Colossians, Epistle of Paid to the, 50, 52 Concordance, Mandelkern's Hebrew, 29; Oxford, to Septuagint, 29 ; Moulton and Geden's, to Greek Testament, 30 Confucianists, views of the, 283 Confucius, 289 Constantine,Roman Emperor,summoned Great Council, 183; "the Age of, "222 j Constantinople, the first centre of the Christian Empire, 224 ; reaction against Iconoclasm in, 227 ; Turkish civilisation affected by conquest of, 290 Cordova, Arabic University of, 292 Corinth, state of church at, 201 Corinthians, Epistle of Paul to the, 49, 52 ; I. xii. 3, quoted, 242 ; xv. 1-8, on the instruction of members of the church, 245 Creed, interest of (Ecumenical, 235 ; " Athanasian," 236, 257, 258 ; " Apostles," 203, 236, 246. 247, 253 ; " Nicene," 203, 236, 250 ; relation of Father and Son defined by, 254 VI INDEX Creed, not fully developed in New Testa- ' ment, 241, 242 ; baptismal creeds, 242, 243 ; has no exact form before ! 4th century, 246 ; grew up to meet needs of whole Church, 256 Curtiss, Pi of. S. I., on Primitive \ Semitic Religion To-day, 41 Cyprus, King of, letter from, 73 Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, lost idea of | humanity of Christ, 216; as scholar of Byzantine Age, 226 Bishop of Jerusalem, probably j created Nicene Creed as now used, j 257 D. Dalman, the author of Words of Jesus, 48 Damascus, settlements of Babylon near, 87 Daniel, Book of, its Maccabean date, 32 ; " desolating abomination " men- tioned in, 131 ; instance of " Hag- gada," 196 ; phrase in, 118 Daniel, vision of, 111 David, his successful assertion of in- dependence against the Philistines, 91 ; Letter to Joab, 92 ; Psalms of, 141 ; a Messiah expected from the House of, 143 Deborah, Song of, 44 Defoe, Daniel, humour of, 187 Deissmann, G. Adolf, wrote Bible Studies, 30 ; his discovery of affinity between Biblical Greek and Greek of Papyri, 172, 173 Demetrius, Bishop of Cresarea, offended by Origen, 214 Demokritos, his journey to the East to learn wisdom, 284 Deuteronomic Code, the, 32 Didache, the, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 240, 244 Dionysius, originator of " higher criticism," connected with Schools of Alexandria, 209, 214 Dives and Lazarus, parable of, 122 Doddridge, importance of the study of his life, 189 Dominic, St., the age of, 228 Dominicans, the, Apocalyptic Literature in connection with, 153 Domitilla, niece of Domitian, the first catacomb dates from, 221 Dor, on coast of Palestine, Bidir, ruler of, 90, 91, 95, 96 Dowden, Bishop, on the Kyrie Eleison, 235 Drummond, Dr., his opinion on the Gospel of John, 58 Henry, his doctrine of sin, 263 ; his Ascent of Man, 263 Dudu, a Semite, 78 Duhm, his view on poem of Job, 35 ; his commentary on Isaiah, 36, 37; his view on the Song of Songs, 37 ; his treatment of the Psalms, 37 ; his view on Isaiah, 37 ; his view on Servant of Yahweh, 46 Duns Scotus, 181, 228 E. ; East, the Wisdom of the, its influence in the West, 283297 Ecclesiastes, Book of, slightly earlier date than Daniel, 32 Ecclesiasticus, Book of, quotes Sadducees' view on Hereafter, 124 Edessa, Schools of, 208, 217 ; its Syriac- speaking church escapes Arian controversy, 255 Edomites, the, old foe of Israel, 129 ; forced to accept circumcision, 132 ; campaign of John Hyrcanus against, 136 Egypt, discoveries in, 31 ; Hebrews in, 39 ; a Roman Province, 140, 144 ; writing of, 75 ; her power in Asia, 69, 70 ; meets crisis, 88 ; asserts claim against the Philistines, 91 ; her prevalence in Syria, 92 ; her supremacy in Palestine, 84 ; her use of Babylonian language, 84 ; King of, writes to King of Babylon, 86 ; her conflict with the Hittites, 87 ; makes a treaty, 88 ; Explora- tion Fund of, 166, 175 ; Christian remains found in, 223 Ekhnaton, city of, at Tell-el Amarna, 93 Elijah, to "return and revive faith," 113 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on need for Tolerance, 191 Empedokles, his journey to the East to learn wisdom, 284 England, art of, in 13th century, 227 English Church, eclipse of art in 18th century in, 232 INDEX vu Enoch, Book of, 126, 127 ; one of Apocry- phal books, 106, 107 ; quoted in Jude, 107 ; speaks of "Son of God," 109 ; describes Son of Man, 110, 115 ; divides human history, 113 ; stu- dents of 114 ; belief in eternal life, 123, 124 ; Section A., 133 ; Section B., 133; third and fourth sections, 136, 137 The Secrets of, 127, 129 ; the second Book of the Herodian Cycle, 146 ; pretentiousness of author of, 147 Enoch, prominence in Apocalyptic literature, 107, 127, 146 ; diminishing part played by his figure, 139 Ephesians, Epistle of Paul to, 50, 52 Ephesus, Council of, 225; Apollos at, 239; connection of Apostles with Church of, 252 Ephraim, the Syrian, founded school of Edessa as branch of school of Antioch, 217 Erasmus, has similar conceptions to those of Origen, 214 Erskine, Gospel Sonnets of, 183 Eschatology, Jewish doctrine of, 121 ; Greek, 122 ; Sadducees' view of, 124 ; Alexandrian view of, 124 ; Pharisaic view, 124 Esdraelon, Plain of, 71 Esdras, Second Book of, 113, 119 ; quotes Pharisaic view on Hereafter, 124 Essenes, the, an organised body of ascetics, Apocalyptic Literature in connection with, 153 Europe, fables no longer written in, 286 ; fables of Barzoye read there in Dark Ages, 287 Eusebius, the courtier, 183 the father of Church History, 183 Eutyches, at Alexandria, lost idea of humanity of Christ, 216 Everyman, morality play, 232 Exodus, Book of, difficulties presented by, 38 ; recast of opening chapters of, given by author of Book of Jubilees, 135 Ezekiel, Book of, Priestly Code later than, 32 ; preserved in bad text, 32 ; authenticity of parts of, 38 Ezra, Book of, attempt to eliminate it from history, 40 Fourth Book of, 126, 127, 149. 150 F, Fairbairn, Dr., on religion, 256 Final Cycle, of Apocalyptic writings, 141 Fiske, John, quoted by Drummond, 263 Florinus, written to, by Irenseus, 252 Fox, George, importance of study of his journals, 189 France, her art in 13th century, 227 Francis, St., of Assisi, 228 Franciscans, the, 178 Friends, Society of, sees necessity for higher religious training, 205 Froude, James Anthony, his defence against Newman's doctrine of sin, 262 G. Galatians, Epistle of Paul to the, 49, 52 Galilee, annexed by the Jews, 132 Gamaliel, 1., Paul a disciple of, 199 III., quoted on "the study of the law," 196 Gaul, sculptured sarcophagi found in, 222 ; beginning of Christian History of, 223 Gaza, 71 Gehazi, 71 Genesis, Book of, 81 ; recast of, given by author of Book of Jubilees, 135 ; truth of first chapters of, 266 Gerizim, Mount, demolishing of Temple on, 132 Germany, fifty-four chairs of Oriental research established in, 296 Gezer, excavation of, 71, 100, 101, 102 Giesebrecht, Old Testament critic, 36 Gnosticism, permeated by Eastern speculation, 291 Gnostics, art of, 223 ; beliefs of, 248, 249, 252 ; opposed by Irenaeus, 250 God, Hebrew conception of His aloofness, 115, 116; Philo's view of transcen- dence of, 117, 118; Christ the Son of, 240, 242, 243, 247; the Father Almighty, 248 ; Christians' idea of, 250 Gothic architecture, 227 Gottsclmlk, illustrates importance of personality in rise of doctrine, 184 Greece importance of monuments of, in study of Christian History, 219; Christianity in, 222 ; ugliness of her art in decline of freedom, 230 ; the soil on which schools of theology sprang up, 193 Vlll INDEX Greek, claim of, 161 ; outline of history of language, 162, 163 ; " Common," 164, 165 ; Hellenistic, 166 ; Byzantine, 166 ; takes the place of Hebrew, 167 ; transmits Christianity to Western world, 168 ; spread over Mediterranean world, 169 ; controversy on New Testament, 170172 Greeks, influence of their thought, 106, 145; their coming in 332 B.C., 129, 131 ; the first years of their rule. 130 ; the men considered wisest among them, 284 ; they learned their alphabet from the East, 289 ; their theology developed by Christ- ianity, 202, 203 Gregory of Nazianzus, his views on the unpreparedness of men for sacred offices, 206, 207 ; great scholar of Byzantine Age, 226 1 haumaturgus, his panegyric on Origen, 209, 210, 211 Grenfell, Dr., discoverer and editor of Egyptian documents, 174 Grossetete, Bishop, 228 Guli-Addi, Babylonian letter from, 79,80 Gurra, mentioned in Babylonian letter,80 Gwatkin, Professor, on Church History, 3 H. Hades, mentioned in Homer, 122 ; Pharisaic view of, 124 Haggada, legends, pretended intrepreta- tion of the law, 196 Halacha, "custom" as opposed to "law," 195 Hallahan, Mother Margaret, her life, 187 Harnack, Dr. Adolf, his views on St. John, 56 ; on the importance of the teacher and the reader, 201 ; his History of Dogma quoted, 238 ; on St. Augustine, 279 Hasmoneean Group, of Apocalyptic writings, 128 ; it reflects the Jewish History (of 175-63 B.C.), 133 Hatch, Dr. of Oxford, his Hibbert Lectures, 167 Hatzidakis, of Athens, a student of Common Modern Greek, 166 Headlam, Dr., his opinion on Jewish literature in the time of Christ, 105 Hebraists, the, their doctrine of New Testament Greek, 170, 171 Hebrew, text, challenge of its soundness, 33 ; metre, it affects criticism, 34, 35 ; the language of the learned, 108 ; the word for "Holiness," 115 ; not a language adopted for philoso- phic thought, 167 ; Paul speaks it, 170 ; Schools of Theology, 193. Hebrews, 39 ; their Monotheism, 43 ; their religion, 45,46 ; their language, 74, 75 ; Shishak in reference to, 91 ; their alphabet, 99 Hebreivs, Epistle to the, the training of the author of, 193, 200 ; implies an advanced condition of knowledge, 201; "confesson of our hope" mentioned, 242 ; xi., quoted, 254 Gospel according to, probably lost at destruction of library of Cflesarea, 21o Hebron, 71 Henry VIII., prescribes common version of the Lord's Prayer, 179 Herakleitos, doctrine of, 288 Herbert, Mr., on original sin, 267-8. Hernias, the author of the Shepherd, 221 Herod, the Great, 108 ; the son of Antipater, 143, 144 ; his death, 147 Herodian Cycle, of Apocalyptic writings, 141 ; the nature of the Books of, 144 Herodotus, Greek of, 162; History of, 165 Hezekiah, his belief in "Sheol," 121 Hicks, Canon, and the investigation of Greek inscriptions, 165 Hilgenfeld, his views on the Gospels, etc., 51 Hillel, quoted on "trade," 197; a famous teacher of the law, 198 ; son of, 199 Hittites, the, the King of, 85 ; their in- fluence over the vassal states of Egypt, 87; in middle Syria, 88; they suffer from the Philistines, 88 Homer, the allegorical interpretation of, 213 Homeric Poems, the, 162, 165 Hommel, his opinion on the Khabiri, 81 ; his view as 'to the identity of Akhi-Yawi, 82 Horsley, the Tracts of, 186 Hort, Dr., on the origin of the Creed, 257 Hosea proclaims God's love to Israel, 61 Hosius, called from Cordova to effect a union between East and West, 183 INDEX IX Hunt, Dr., the discoverer and editor of Egyptian documents, 174 Hohnari, as a religious painter, 234 Hu-rabi. mentioned in Babylonian letter, 80 Hutton, Mr, A. W. , his opinion on real author of The Economy of Human Life, 293 Hyrcanus, John, King of Israel (135 to 105 B.C.), 132, 133, 134; campaigns of, 136 I. Iconoclasm, 226, 227 Idibilu, keputi over Musri, 67 Ignatius, of Antioch, letters and martyr- dom of, 221 India, journey of Persian physician to, 285 ; fables no longer written in, 287 ; philosophical thought of, 294 Ionic, next in importance after Attic dialect, 165 Irenseus, one of the chief authorities for the origin of New Testament writ- ings, the career of, 243 ; baptismal confession contained in his copy of Acts, 243 ; the antagonist of Gnos- ticism, 250; on "true as against false tradition," 252 ; he appeals to the general tradition of the Church, 253 Isaiah, the Ascension of, 108 ; not in- cluded in the Apocrypha, 128 Book of, distinction between the scripts in, 98 ; the composite char- acter of, 32, 36, 37 ; Duhm's views on the problems in, 46 ; describes the death of the King of Babylon, 122 Israel, questions touching the history of, 38, 39 ; the religion of, 40, 45, 46 ; Babylonian influence on, 47, 100, 103; the bearing of Assyriology on the history of, 67 ; known through Hebrew literature, 83 ; a vassal to Egypt, 89 ; the uncertainty about the beginnings of its History, 97 ; the political advance of Assyria on, 103 ; the History of, 108 ; the Edomites its old foe, 129 ; its interest becoming self-centred, 132 ; alle- gorical representation of, 134 ; ex- clusiveness of, 135, 136; the internal disruption of, 137 ; problem of the godly in, 151 ; its religion in the period just before Christ, 167 Ishtar-washur, Babylonian letters to, 79, 80 Italy, sculptured sarcophagi found in, 222 ; painting in, 228 J. Jabne, school at, settled Canon, 199 Jacob, Sons of, 107; "Word of Jehovah" appears to, 116; Jewish expecta- tions from, 121 ; his belief in Sheol, 121 Jains, the views of the, 283 Jannreus, Alexander, King of Israel (10478 B.C.), 132, 133, 137; conflict of his sons, 133 ; the accession of, 139 Japan, its schools of thought, 283 ; real wisdom of, 294 Jehovah, 110 ; faith of the Jews in, 114 ; Memra substituted for, 116 ; Word of, appears to the patriarchs, 116 Jeremiah, Book of, Prophecy on Babylon, 36 ; Prophecy of the New Covenant, 38 ; treatment by Schmidt, 38 ; doctrine created by experience, 61 Jeroboam, 91 Jerome, scholar of Byzantine Age, 226 Jerusalem, the siege of, 107 ; elders of, 108 ; to be the centre of the new Kingdom, 112; in peace during Persia's rule, 129 ; the only home of Judaism, 130 ; the fall of, 140, 150 ; the entrance of Pompey into, 141 ; St. Paul speaks in Aramaic to the crowd at, 170; Christ found in the temple at, 198 ; schools of rabbis after the destruction of, 199 ; the Nicene Creed drawn up there or at Csesarea, 203 ; the Baptismal Creed of its church, 257 Jesus, spoke the Aramaic language, 48 ; rise of Paulinism so soon after his death denied, 53 ; the historic existence of, 53, 54, 55 ; the teaching of, 59, 167 ; found in the Temple with the doctors, 198 Jews, the, the history of, 39 ; their expectation of the Messiah, 112; their Monotheism, 115; their con-" ception of the "Word," 114, 115, 116 ; their zeal, 118 ; their teaching, 118, 119; their belief in the Here- after, 121, 122, 123 ; their ideas of wisdom, 167 ; their Schools of Theo- logy, 194, 199; at the Arabic University of Cordova, 292 INDEX Jewish literature, the importance, of, 105. 106 Job, Book of, probably post exilic, 32 ; various views on, 35 ; modernised version of, 150 Joel, Book of, on Jews' captivity in Asia Minor, etc., 129 John, St,, the writings of, 194, 200; his realisation of Christ, 238 ; his confession quoted, 242 ; wrote in Asia Minor, 243 ; baptismal con- fession referred to by, 243 ; inter- course of Polycarp with, 252 John, Gospel according to, 50, 51, 56 58, 109 Apocalypse of, 49, 57. John, the Baptist, reproves Jews, 120 Johns, Mr., his opinion on Assyrian influence, 101, 103 Jonah, Book of, an instance of " Hag- gada," 196 Jones, Mr. Griffith, The Ascent through Christ, 264 Josephus, the l>eliefs of, 123 ; Antiq : (xi., 7), quoted, 129 ; he commends John Hyrcanus, 139 ; his influence on Judaism, 158 ; his knowledge of classical authors, 158, 159 ; the Greek of, 172; instances of "Haggada" found in, 196 Jubilees, the Book of, or Little Genesis, 107, 127, 129, 134, 135, 136, 137, 148 Judaea, oppression in, before Alexander, 129 ; Apocalyptic book of Herodian Cycle from, 144; a Roman Province, 147 Judah, a Royal Ruler to arise out of, 136 Judaism, its nature at the time of the birth of Christianity, 194 ; the literature of the Schools of, 127 ; study of, 128 ; its contact with the Western world, 129 ; disintegrated by Hellenism, 131 ; dealt with by Rome, 140 ; outside Palestine, 143 ; Schools of, 155, 157 Jude, the brother of Christ, quotes Enoch, 114 Judges, Book of, 5th chapter of, 97 Judith, Book of, instance of " Haggada," 196 Julian, on the Fall, 273 Jiilicher, Professor, his views on New Testament Greek, 173 Justin Martyr, description of Christian Worship given by, 240 Justinian, Roman Emperor, prescribed examination before ordination, 207 ; great builder of churches, 225 Juvenal, "found City turned Greek" 168 K. Kadashman-Kharbe, grandson of Burna- buryash, 86 Karkar, Battle of, 140 Karnak, Egyptian translation of the Hittite treaty on the wall of, 88 Kassite Kings, the power of Babylonia under the, 69 ; treasonable negotia- tions of, 85 ; blow to the dynasty, 89 Kautzsch, doubts Isaiah's authorship of Messianic prophecies, 37, 38 Keim, denies Asian residence of John, 56 Kenites, the god of the, 45 Khabiri, the danger from, to Jerusalem, 74 ; the identity of, 81 ; the descen- dants of, 97 ; Yapakhi complains of the attacks of, 102 Khai, letter addressed to, 77 Khaiapa, letter addressed to, 77 Khammurabi, code of laws, 66, 199 ; empire, 69 ; script of, 72 Khetasera, Hittite King, 88 Khinaton, in Southern Galilee, 86 Khosnu Nushinran, King of Persia, 285 Kingdom, Messianic, current expecta- tions as to, 112, 113 Kings, Book of, II., narative in, 97 ; instances of " Haggada " found in, 196 Kipling, Rudyard, his animal stories, 286 Kosters, Successor to Kuenen at Leyden, his view that the Jews did not return to Palestine under Cyrus, 39 Krumbacher, his study of the Greek language, 166. Kuenen, Old Testament critic, 35 L. Lao Tsii, 289 Lapaya, of Central Palestine, letter from. 86 Lardner, Dr. Nathaniel, on pre-history of the human race, 266 Leah, 81 Lebanons, the, the Hittites coming towards, 87 Leo, the Isaurian, Roman Emperor, Iconoclasm of, 226 INDEX Lhassa, in Thibet, original MS. of Indian manuscript, professedly written by an ancient Brahmin, found at, 292 Lightfoot, Bishop, 8 ; break with the tradition of, 49, 52 Loman, a predecessor of Van Manen, 53 Lotze, on the origin of human souls, 268 Lucian, he developed in school at Antioch the ideas which became Arianism, 217 Luke, Gospel of, 109 ; and the Socratic method, 198 ; aims of, 239 ; on the instruction of members of the church, 245 Lutherans, the, 178 Lycaonia, language of, not understood by the apostles, 169 Lydda, the study of law in the city of, 199 Lystra, visited by Paul and Barnabas, 169 M. Macalister, Mr., excavator of Tell as- Safy, 71, 95 Maccabreus, Simon, 132, 133 ; Judas, 133, 134 Maccabees, period after the, 106 I. quotes Saducees' view of the Hereafter, 124 II, 131 ; quotes Pharisaic view of the Hereafter, 124 IV. quotes Alexandrian view of the Hereafter, 124 heroic wars of the, 131, 132 Magi, publication of literature of the, 296 Manasseh, King, 102 ; compilation of code in reign of, 32 Manchester, Faculty of Theology at University of, 14, 18-24 ; a chair of Comparative Religion at University of, 296 Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, accused of heresy, proved orthodoxy by recit- ing Creed, known as Roman later Apostles' Creed, 246 Marcus Aurelius, wrote in Greek, 168 Marduk-baliddin, King of Babylon, 89 Mark, Gospel of, the latest of the Synop- tists, 50 ; the earliest of the Synop- tists, 51 ; present form of, 56 Marti, supports Duhm's criticism of Isaiah, 37 Matthew, lost Logia of, 56 Mason, Canon, his review of Mr. Tennant's book, 265 Media, Jews sent to, 129 Medievalism, beauty and decline of later, 230, 231 Mediterranean, philosophical thought on eastern shores of, 294 Meir, Rabbi, quoted on "law," 197 " Memra," the "Word," appears to Jacob, Balaam, etc., plagues the people, etc., 116 Menahem, the " Comforter," 109 Mendelssohn, Moses, description of theologians by, 187 Merneptah, King of E^ypt, 89, 94, discovery of a Stele or 39, Mesopotamia, power of Assyria in, 88 ; power of Babylon in, 89 ; philoso- phical thought of, 294. Messiah, the, 53, 54, 55 ; the hope of 107, 134, 138, 139, 149, ; various con- ceptions of, 109, 142-3 ; Pharisaical expectation of, 110; to be King of the Gentiles, 112; divinity of, 114 Michael, the Archangel, advocate for Israel, 119 Midrash, "commentary on the text," 195 Mitanni, King of the, 85 ; Hittites approaching, 87 ; Assyria driving out, 88 Mommsen, Theodore, 11 Monarchians, beliefs of, 249 Moore, Aubrey,on evolution etc., 264, 266 ; on sin. 270 More, Sir Thomas, had similar concep- tions to those of Origen, 214. Moses, the Assumption of, 108, 127 ; revelation of, to Joshua, 108 ; Apocalypse of, 108 ; moral law of, 119; advocate for Israel, 119; the Assumption the third writing of the Herodian Cycle, 147 ; character of, 148 the possible author of a code of legislation, 31 ; knew the God of the Kenites, 45 Mount, the Sermon on the, instruction based on, 240 Mozley, J. B., His Augustinian Doctine of Predestination, 168 ; on Original Sin, 274 Muggletonians, the 178, 191 Miiller, Prof. W. M. , his opinion on Saul and David, 91 ; his opinion on the report of Wen Amon, 94 Musri, possibly a land in North Arabia, also in North Syria, 39, 67, Xll INDEX N. Nebuchadrezzar I., King of Babylon, 89 ; Neo-platonism, permeated by Eastern j speculation, 291 Nero, Emperor, title of " Saviour " applied to, 173 Nestorius, condemned by Council of Epliesus, 217, 225 Newman, Cardinal, effect of Thomas Scott's writings on, 186 ; bis view on the traditional doctrine of sin, 262 Newton, Sir Charles, his researches in j Asia Minor, 222 Nicrea, Confession of Church assembled at, 235 Nicenes, opponents of Arianism, 258 ; ' make clear St. Paul's doctrine, 259 O. Obadiah, Book of, on Jews' captivity in Asia Minor, etc., 129 Offord, Mr. Joseph, acquirer of cylinder seal, 70 Oracles, Sibylline, Jewish portions of, 127 Origen, of Ante-Nicene Church, founder of Systematic Theology, 208 ; curri- culum carried out by, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213 ; character and career of, 214, 215, 216 Orr, Dr., his Christian View of God and the World quoted, 267 Oxford Movement, the, 9 P. Palestine, Asher in, 39 ; Greek thought in, 60 ; excavations in, 67, 71, 92 ; Babylonian seal found in, 72, 73 ; its revolt against Egypt, 89 ; traders of Babylonian king in, 86 ; revolt in, 87 ; ruled by Persia, 129 ; left out of public pathway of History, 130; ruled by Syria, 130 ; Enoch series edited in, 147 ; bi-lingual condition of, 169 Pali Text Society, 296 Pamphilus, presbyter of Ciiesarea, collected library of early Christian writings, 215 Pantfenus, first famous leader of the Alexandrian School, 208 Papias, of Asia Minor, authority on the origin of New Testament writings, 243, 251 Paris, University of, founded school for study of the history of religious beliefs, 296 Patriarchs, lives of the, 107; Testaments of the Twelve, 107, 127, 129 Patrick, St., illustration of Christian History found in the monuments of, 223 Paul, St. 50, 52 ; recognised as a his- torical character, 54 ; Judaism of the day of, 60 ; his doctrines the creation of experience, 62 ; opposed to the doctrines of the Pharisees, 106 ; he recognises the zeal of the Jews, 118 ; his teaching on salvation, 120 ; he writes against sectaries, 177 ; his use of Greek language, 168 ; the missionary journeys of, 169 ; his training, 193, 200 ; a lawyer and a tentmaker, 197 ; the weapons with which he fought the pre- tentions of Judaism, 203 ; his realisation of Christ, 238 ; his use of the Trinitarian formula, 241 ; his views on the universal fact of sin, 276 Epistles of, 49, 50, 52, 55 ; later epistles, 117 ; Colossians, Ephesians and Philippians mentioned, 259 Paul, of Samosata Bishop at Antioch, 217 Peiser, his opinion on a letter dis- covered at Taannek, 82, 83 Pelagianism, 273, 278 Pelagius, Mr. Tennant's views on, 272 Pentateuch, analysis into four main documents, 32 Persia, her influence on the Gospel, 61 ; her rule over Palestine, 129 ; views of the Magi of, 283 ; fables no longer written in, 286 ; thought of, 294 Persian period, alphabetic signs of, 70 Peter, St, 50 ; translation of the denial, 173 Petrie, Flinders, excavator of Tell el- Hasy, 71 Pharaoh, officers of, 78 Pharisees, the, the doctrines of, 106; Psalms of, 107 ; accused of innova- tions, 197; their party represents the church, 133 ; their disputes with the Sadducees, 137, 139 ; they hold Sower, 140 ; they are inactive uririg the reign of Herod. 143 ; their claim to the production of the Apocalyptic literature is untenable, 153, 154 INDEX Xlll Philemon, Epistle of Paul to, 50 Philip, confession of the Ethiopian baptised by, 243 Philippians, Epistle of Paul to the, 50, 52 Philistines, the, in Southern Syria, 88 ; reach Canaan, 88 ; brought into touch with Babylon, 89 ; forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Ramses III., 89; established in Syria, 89 ; too strong for Saul, 91 ; overcome by David, 91 ; their com- munications with Egypt, 94 ; the campaigns of John Hyreanus against, 136 Philo, Jewish philosopher, his doctrine on the Divine, 117; the writer of the Psalms of Solomon a precursor of. 145 ; he despises the Enoch literature, 147 ; nis influence on Judaism, 158-9 ; the Greek of, 172 ; Alexandrian School of, 194, 200 ; his allegorical interpretations of Scripture, 213 ; his method adopted at Alexandria, 215 ; affected by Indian thought, 291 Phoenicia, the Hittes coming towards, 87 ; annexed by Rome, 140 Pilcher, Mr. E. J., editor of representa- tion of cyclinder seal, 70 Pindar, change from the beliefs of Homer, 122 ; Greek of, 162 Plato, language of, 164, 167 ; a supporter of the doctrines of Pythagoras, 291 Pliny, Ids correspondence with Trajan, 222 Plotinus. 291 Polycarp, of Smyrna, a disciple of St. John, connection of Irenreus with, 243, 252 ; letters and martyrdom of, 221 Polytheism, reaction from, 115 Pompeian Cycle, of Apocalyptic writings 141 Pompey, besieges Jerusalem, 107 ; his entrance into Jerusalem, 141, 142 ; murder of, 141, 142 Porphyry, he copies from Bardesanes, 291 Priestly Code, 32 Priscilla, expounding the way of God to Apollos, 240 Proselytes, and the Book of Jubilees, 136 Proverbs, Book of, post-exilic origin of, 32 i Psalmists, their doctrines of Faith and Hope, 121 I Psalms, Book of, date of origin of, 32, 37 \ eighteen liturgical, speak of the Messiah, 109 ; refer to overthrow of Persia, 130 of David, 141 of Solomon, 127, 140, 141, 142. i Ptolemies, the, their rule in Egypt, 130 Purists, the, their doctrine on New Testament Greek, and their con- troversy with the Hebraists, 170 Pythagoras, his journey to the East to- learn wisdom, 284 ; philosophy of, 290; influence of India on, 291 Quakers, the, 191 R. i Rabbinism, 59 I Rabbis, the Palestinian School of Jewish. 194 i Rakbah, mentioned in Babylonian letter. 80 Ramsay, Professor, his views on the Epistles of Paul, 52 ; on the im- portance of inscriptions, etc. , 222 Ramses II. , active in Palestine, 87 ; his treaty with Khetasera, 88, 94 III., suzerain of the Philistines, 89 \. the condition he established, 91, 94 IV. he receives tribute from Syria,. 89 VII., his interference in Syria, 90 Ravenna, became the Western Capital of the Roman Empire, 225 Reformation, the, as a destroyer of art,. 232 ; temporary nature of the " Confessions " or, 235 ; its spirit of doubt, 260 Rehob, identity with Rakhab, 81 Rehoboam, expedition against, 91 Renan, his theory of Semitic Mono- theism, 43 ; on the Epistles of Paul, 52- Rhine, the, evidence of a Christian Church near, 222 Rib-Addi, of Gubla, 85 Ritschl, Albrecht, his views on the Antiochene and Neo-Kantian move- ments, 216 ; his doctrine of sin, 279 r 280 Robertson, Mr. J. M., denies the his- torical existence of Jesus, 54 XIV INDEX Roman Group, of Apocalyptic writings, 129, 140 Romanists, the, 191 Romans, the, first coming of, in 63 B.C., 132 ; baths of, 290 Romans, Epistle of Paul to the, 49, 52, 201, 242 Rome, restrained the advance of Syria, 136 ; the mistress of the world, 140; the exportation of Jews to, 142 ; kept out by Herod, 143; supreme in Judaea, 147, 149; the Greek language known in, 168 ; the Art of, 227 ; Julius, Bishop of, 246 ; the Apostles' Creed existed in 150 A.D. in, 247 ; heresy in, 248 , position attained in the West by her Creed, 249, 253 ; the connection of its church with the Apostles, 252 Rubute, 79, suggested site of, 82 S. Sabbath, the, observance of, 107 ; Lord of, 111 ; the law of, 198 Sadducees, the, party of, they represent the State, 133, 137, 139, 142, 148; their view of the Hereafter, 123, 124 ; rivals of the Pharisees, 197 Salathiel, the Apocalypse of, 150, 153 Salome, Queen Alexandra, of Israel (7869 B.C.), 132, 140, 155 Samaria, engulfed by the Jews, 132: campaign of John Hyrcanus against, 136 ; fall of, 140 Samuel, Books of, preserved in bad text, 33 Sanday, Dr., his opinion on Jewish literature in the time of Christ, 105 Saracens, the, influence on the Greeks of their campaigns against, 226, 227 Saul, his attempt to found a kingdom in Mt. Ephraim, 91 Schmidt, he questions the authenticity of parts of Ezekiel, 38 ; on Jeremiah, 38 Schmiedel, his view on the interpreta- tion of " Son of Man," 48 Scholten, he denies the Asian residence of John, 56 Schrader, his book on the Old Testa- ment and the inscriptions, 68 Schumacher, the excavator of Tell el- Mutasellim, 71 Scott, Thomas, the study of his auto- biography recommended, 186 Scribes, the, their connection with the Apocalyptic Literature, 154 Sellin, Professor, of Vienna, his excava- tions at Taannek, 71 ; he discovers a Babylonian tablet, 79, 80, 81 Semites, the, 69, 76 Sennacherib, request made to the emissary of, 98 Septuagint, the, manual editions of, 29 ; the study of, 33 Shalmaneser I., 94 Shalmisha, the daughter of Ishtar- washur, 79, 80 Shammai, one of the most famous teachers of the law, 198 Shavsha, David's secretary, 92 Sheol, Jewish belief in, 121, 122; advance from oldest beliefs in, 122 Shields, Mr. Frederick, aim of, 229 Shipti-Addi. proposals from, 77 Shishak, King of Egypt, 91 Shubanda, compared with Yamibanda, 83 Silesius, Angelus, mysticism of, 190 Simeon, expecting the Messiah, 109 Similitudes, Book of, is section D. of Book of Enoch, 137, 110; known to Christ, 112 ; it anticipates the Resurrection of the righteous, 113 Smith, Prof, H. P., his doubts on parts of Ezekiel, 38 Prof. Robertson, his paper on Animal Worship, 41 ; his Totem theory, 42, 43. Sinai, Mount, Covenant made at, 46 ; Law on, 107 Socinians, the 178 Sodom, Abraham's intercession for, not found in Jubilees, 135 Solomon, 44, 284 the Psalms of, 107, 109, 113, 123, 124, 127, 140, 141, 142, 143 the Wisdom of, 127, 144, 148 Son of Man, interpretation of the term, 48 ; the title of, 110, 111, 114, 115 Sophia, the Church of St., built by Justinian, 225 Sophocles, the Greek of, 162 South, on the pre-history of the human race, 266 Spain, sculptured sarcophagi found in, 222 Spinoza, influenced by Pantheistic mysticism of East, 292 Stade, Old Testament critic, 36 Steck, a predecessor of Van Manen, 53 INDEX XV Steuernagel, his analysis of Deu- teronomy, 36 ; his opinion on the Khabiri, 81 Stevens, Prof., his favourable review of Mr. Tennant's book, 265, 276 Strauss, his opinion on the Gospel of John, 58 Stubbs, Bishop, his opinion on the teaching of History, 2 Supralapsanans, the, 191 Susanna, Book of, instance of "Haggada" 199 Synagogue, the, reading of the Scrip- | tures in, 108 Syria, the Hittites in, 88 ; the Philis- j tines in, 88 ; Egypt interfering in, 89, 90 ; the communication of i Egypt with, 94 ; her rule over Palestine, 130, 131 ; Rome intervenes to restrain her, 136 annexed by Rome, 140 ; Christian remains found there, 223 Syrian desert, route across the, 87 Syrophenician, woman, the, speaks of " Son of David," 109 T. Taannek, the excavation of, 71, 72, 79: letters to the governor of, 79, 80 ; tablets found at 82, 83 Talmud, the, grotesque stories found in, 196 ; question of its origin, 197 Taoists, views of the, 283 Targums, the Jewish, 108, 116 Tatian, the Assyrian, he drew up the " Diatesseron " used at Edessa, 217 Taylor, Jeremy, his plea for toleration, 191 Tell as-Safy, probably the ancient Gath, excavation of, 71 Tell el-Amarna, see Amarna Tell el-Hasy, identified with Lachish, excavation of, 71 ; the discovery of a cuneiform document at, 76, 77 Tell el-Mutasellim, probably ancient Megiddo, excavation of, 71, 72 Tennant, Mr. F. R., on evolution and the doctrine of sin, 261, 264, 265, 266 ; on the Fall, 267 ; on heredity, 268, 269 ; on sin and its origin, 270 278, 280 Testament, the New, no creed found in, 241, 242 ; the liturgical worship which appears in, 244 ; included in " Scriptures," 251 Tertullian, Bishop of Carthage, appealing to human nature as against philo- sophy, 212 ; his contributions to thought about the relations of the Persons of the Godhead, 249 ; he lays stress on creed, 253 Thales, his journey to the East to learn wisdom, 284 Thayer, the editor of Grimm's Lexicon, 30 Thebes, letters go to, 93 Theodore of Mopsuestia, prepared the way for the separation of the two natures of Christ, 217 Theology, Old Testament, 40, 106 ; Pauline, 49 ; New Testament, 59, 106; Jewish, 106, 108, 119 Theresa, Santa, importance of her life, in the study of mysticism, 189 Thessalonians, Epistles of Paul to the, 50,52 Thomas, the apostle, his confession of faith, 235 Thumb, his study of the Greek language, 166 Thutmosis III., receives tribute from Ashur, 84 Tiberias, the chief school in Palestine at, 199 Tiglath-pileser, a passage in, 67 ; gifts from the King of Egypt to, 90 ; negotiating with King or Egypt, 96 Tillotson, John, importance of the study of his life, 189 Timothy, 1st Epistle to, advice that bishop should not be a novice, 201 ; refers to baptismal confession, 242 ; a "deposit" committed to, 245 Tobit, Book of, quotes Sadducees' view of Hereafter, 124 Tokyo, a chair of Comparative Religion at University of, 296 Torah, as a collection of writings, little used publicly in the time of John Hyrcanus, 135 Trent, the Council of, 15 Trinitarian, formula of baptism, 240,241, 254 ; ascribed to our Lord, 241 ; not read of in New Testament, 241 ; Controversy of Primitive Church on, 249 Tubingen School, tradition of, break with, 49, 5 1,53, 54 ; accepts Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, 57 Tukulti-Ninib I., 94 Turks, their baths, really Indian, adopted by us, 290 XVI INDEX Tyre, 91 ; Hiram of, 92 ; Letter to King of, 94 U. Upariishads, philosophy of the, 286, 294 ; rival doctrine to the Buddhists, 289 Uriah letter from David to Joab about, 92 V. Van Manen , New Testament critic, re- jects all Pauline Epistles, 53, 54 Vespasian, Cycle, of Apocalyptic writings, 141 ; opens 50 A.D., 149 W. Walker, Fred, as a religious painter, 234 Ward, John, the mysticism of, 190 Watts, G. F., aim of, 229 : as a religious painter, 234 Weissman, the ultra-Darwinian doc- trine of, 269, 270 Weizsacker, his view on the Epistles of Paul, 52 ; his views on St. John, 57 Wellhausen, commentary on Minor Prophets, 36 ; on the Aramaic language, 48 ; editions of the Synoptists Wen Amon, Egyptian emissary, report of, 90-94 ; Mr. Erman's arrange- ment of, 91, 95, 99 ; W. M. Miiller's opinion of, 94 ; Mr. Breasted's opinion of, 95, 96 ; Mr. GolenischefFs opinion of, 96 Wendt, his opinions on the Gospel of John, 58 Wesleyans, the, 178, 233 Wesley, John, 9 ; importance of study of his journals, 189 West, Art in the, 227 Whitefield, George, sagacity and benevo- lence of his career, 188 Whittaker, Mr., on " The Origin of Christianity," 54 William III., the influence of Calvin seen in, 187 Wilson, Bishop, importance of the study of his life, 189 Canon, quoted by Mr. Tennant, 271 Winckler, archfeologist, his radical treat- ment of the Old Testament, 31 ; on Hebrew history, 98 Winer, Grammar of, 171 Wisdom, the Book of, quotes Alexandrian view of Hereafter, 124 Woes, the Book of, is third section of the Book of Enoch, 137 Word, the, or " Logos," Jewish concept- tion of, 114, 115 ; Aramaic transla- tion of, 116 ; appears to Jacob, Balaam, etc., 116 ; view of Philo on, 117 ; view of St. Paul on, 118 Y. Yabni-ilu, governor of Lachish, letter from, 77 Yahweh, creator of the Universe, varied views on, 43, 44, 45, 46, 61 ; possible connection with Akhi-Yawi, 81 Yam, sea-god, suggested connection with Akhi-Yawi, 82 Yamibanda, possible connection with Yahwe, 83 Yankhamu, a faithful officer, 77, 78 Yapakhi, suggested identity with Akhi- Yawi, 82 ; letters from, 102 Z. Zakai-Baal, of Byblos, 90 Zechariah, Book of, its composite character, 36 ; description of a "curse," 116 Zenobia, Queen, protected Paul of Samosata, 217 Zimrida, governer of Lachish, letters from, 77 ; people of, 97 Zoroaster, 289 A 000122458 3